#but maybe half of the time was because suddenly halfway through everybody needed my help for something or other that required me to leave

[crystalpallette]

get you a girl who can give you everything

this started a long long time ago when I made a joke about how sega should put ringo in more dresses, and then my friend reminded me that oh yeah!! I can do that instead!!! and then one thing led to another and we joked about punk ringo and I drew that too. using ringo like a dressup doll is so cathartic it's kinda crazy

some bonuses (original designs, timelapse) under the cut bc I like these designs!! I might do some more with them!! please disregard the band poster in the first second of the timelapse that's something else!!!

[alpacaparkaseok]

Spooked

Requested by anon - a picture of your request will be at the bottom of the post! Thanks for sending it in, I had so much fun with it! :)

Pairing: best friend!BTS, maybe some secret crushes going on? 👀

Premise: You + all 7 members of BTS visiting a haunted house. What could go wrong?

So, so much.

Word Count: 4k

Warnings: they are touring a haunted house, so there’s gonna be some scary story/spooky things going on. hopefully there’s enough fun things/fluff to counter it? 

a/n: this was longer than I expected it to be...but I was having fun with ot7. hopefully nobody minds lol

It wasn't your fault that Hobi had never seen "A Quiet Place". He had mentioned it as you scrolled through the options on his TV while lounging on his couch like an overgrown cat. Everyone else was in the process of scarfing down their dinner, popping popcorn, and laughing over whatever Jimin and Yoongi were bickering about.

Obviously you had to watch it.

Naturally, the conversation had drifted to a bit more spooky topics. You'd come back from grabbing more popcorn surprised to find Jin talking about his friend that wanted to open up a house they'd inherited for ghost tours.

After nudging Jimin out of the way, you took up your usual spot next to Taehyung. They all watch you with amused eyes, knowing full well that Taehyung is the only one that willingly scratches your back on movie nights.

"Really, like is it the kind of haunted house where people dress up and scare you?" Jungkook asked, his interest piqued.

Jin shook his head. "No, not really. It sounds like they just walk you through the house and tell stories and stuff."

You and Jungkook share a look, already thinking the same thing. A glance at Hobi shows him clutching a blanket to his chest, caught between the events of the film and the conversation taking place.

"We should go," you ventured, immediately earning a startled stare from both Jin and Hobi. The others chuckle in response, Namjoon swatting Jungkook's hand half-heartedly as he tries to steal more popcorn from him.

"...noooo," Jin began. "It's not like it's up and running yet, they're just working on getting it ready for the fall-"

Jungkook picks up where you left off. "Perfect! We can be their test group. That way they'll know what they can do for the general public, get an idea of what works and what doesn't."

You jump in again before Jin can protest more. "C'mon! And besides, this may be your only chance just to go for fun! Otherwise you'd have to find a way to go without running into all of those people, and have to contact management about it..."

Jin sighs, looking at Hobi who stares back at him with an expression of defeat. You grin, Taehyung chuckling beside you.

"Fine."

It was all too easy. Standing here now, you can see just why they want to open this up for ghost tours. Of course you won't admit it, but you already have chills running down your spine.

Or maybe that's just because Jung Hoseok is currently breathing down your neck.

"Alright," Jin's friend, Gina stands at the top of the steps, smiling down at you all. "Everybody ready?"

Jungkook and Taehyung, completely riled up, let out whoops and cheers while everyone else grunts in acknowledgement. Hobi clings to the back of your jacket, whimpering like a lost puppy.

This should be fun.

Jungkook doesn't bother to wait for everyone else, heading straight inside after Gina. Taehyung and Jimin are hot on his heels, joking about something back and forth. You follow after them, glancing back at Hobi with an amused grin.

"Oh," he realizes that he's still clinging to you. "Right." Extracting his hand from your jacket, he lets you move forward. He remains close behind you, Jin at his side.

Namjoon and Yoongi bring up the rear, hardly paying attention to anything that's going on as they chat about a business they saw not far from here.

"We'll begin in the front study here," Gina adopts a spooky tone as she stands in the candlelight. Shadows dance along the walls, making the hairs on the back of your neck stand up straight.

Suddenly you wish that Hobi was still holding onto you.

Slowly, so as to not draw the attention (and teasing) of the maknae line, you step back until you're between Namjoon and Yoongi.

The two of them smirk down at you, knowing full well that you're already spooked.

"What are you doing?" Jin whispers back to you, eyes wide while he rubs his arms as though he's cold. "Trying to abandon us to the ghosts?"

You shake your head fervently, hoping that they don't notice the way you're sneaking your hand into the pocket of Yoongi's jacket.

"No, the middle is the safest place," you argue. Yoongi gives a breathy chuckle beside you, his hand finding yours in the warmth of his pocket and giving it a squeeze. Thankfully the house is dark enough that the blush on your cheeks shouldn't be visible.

Absentmindedly you link your other arm through Namjoon's, hardly able to breathe properly when he instinctively moves closer.

What were you even saying?

"A-and now you've got three in front and three in back. You're totally safe."

Hobi and Jin look at each other like they know exactly what you’re up to, but don't push it as they suddenly begin walking again. Gina leads the way toward the dining room, weaving a tale of how the estranged wife of the owner of the house swore she would never leave the property.

"Did she?" Jungkook asks from the front, peeking in closed off rooms along the way. You can't help but marvel at his fearlessness.

Gina's eyes glow with excitement, almost as though she were waiting for someone to ask that. "No. Years later, when the owner sold the house, the new occupants said they found a sealed off room in the basement." You gasp, the sound echoing through the hallway. You miss the look Jimin gives you, too attached to the story.

"What..." you clutch Namjoon's arm, the fabric of his jacket bunching in your hand. "Did they ever open up the room?"

Gina grins. "They did. They hired someone to come and open the sealed door. However, the man they hired only got about halfway before quitting. He was terrified."

Yoongi leans down to whisper in your ear. "Are you trying to cut off my circulation?"

It's only then that you notice you've been squeezing his hand with startling strength. "Whoops." Going to remove your hand from his, he frowns, holding it tighter before you can move.

Well, if this isn't a rollercoaster of emotions.

"Why was he so scared?" Namjoon pipes up beside you, a hint of a smile gracing his features as he reads the expression on your face. Oh, you're so screwed. "Did he find something?"

"It's not so much what he found as what he didn't," Gina replies. "But we'll have to save that for last. For now, the dining room. Come on in, everyone."

Hobi looks back at you, a mixture of horror and overall curiosity on his face. “Oh, she’s good.”

Indeed, Gina definitely seems to have a way with words. You’re just having a hard time understanding them as your heart beats loudly enough to drown out any other noises. Yoongi has taken to tracing circles on the back of your hand, which you think are meant to be soothing. 

It only serves to send your heart rate skyrocketing. You stare at the portrait on the far end of the dining room, practically boring holes into the painting of the young woman. 

Breathe, don’t do anything stupid.

“...alright?”

You blink, finding yourself to be the sudden center of attention. Jungkook grins widely at you. 

“What?”

Jungkook repeats his question. “Are you doing alright?”

“Oh.”

Jimin bursts out laughing. “That’s not an answer, jagiya. Need us to protect you from the ghosts?”

Your wide eyes immediately give you away, and even Gina is offering you a look of pity before deciding to continue on with the tour. Before you embarrass yourself even more, you slip out of Yoongi and Namjoon’s grasp, sneaking up behind Jin and Hobi.

“Hello boys,” you drawl, making Hobi nearly jump out of his skin. You earn a laugh from the group, Jin chuckling at his scared friend. Hobi just glares at you. 

“This sucks,” he whispers to you, pulling you up to stand between him and Jin. Immediately they stick to your sides like magnets and you realize that you have indeed done something stupid as Jin’s breath ghosts over the shell of your ear as he goes to whisper something to you.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, it would seem. Your heart certainly agrees. 

“I’m not scared, you know,” Jin whispers. You take a deep breath, reminded yourself that these idiots are your best friends, not menu items. 

You shoot him an incredulous look. “I doubt that.”

He grins at you, eyes lingering a bit longer than usual. “You’ll see.”

Tearing your eyes away from his and hearing his deep chuckle, you wonder if it’s too late to ask Gina where the nearest exit is. 

Don’t do anything stupid.

“Shall we head up to the attic?” Gina asks. “It’s a small space, we can only go three at a time. However, there are some really interesting old photographs up there that we should look at.”

In the blink of an eye everyone is paired off, and you find yourself face to face with Jimin. He grins at you like the Cheshire Cat, making you wonder if he isn’t the most dangerous thing in this house. 

Jin and Hobi have the glorious opportunity to go up together while Gina leads the way, and several screams accompany their little trip. In the middle of the candlelight in the hallway, you chuckle with the rest of your friends. 

“It’s been interesting so far,” Jungkook muses. “I really want to know what they found in that sealed off basement room.”

Taehyung hums in agreement. “Mmm. Or rather, what they didn’t find.”

“What does that even mean?”

Nobody is given a chance to answer Jungkook’s question as Hobi and Jin come scrambling down the ladder, faces pale even as they laugh. Gina chuckles from above, beckoning the next pair to come up.

Jimin looks at you with an arched brow. “Wanna go next?”

“Sure.” You follow him up the ladder, laughing as Jin recounts how he swore the woman in the photograph blinked. 

The attic is filled with moonlight, and under other circumstances it might be pretty. However, amongst the old heirlooms sits an ominous scrapbook, filled with black and white photos of less-than-happy people. 

Jimin reaches down, grabbing your hand and helping you to your feet as you look around. When he lets go you aren’t sure whether or not to be disappointed. 

You’ve hardly made up your mind when he leads you to where Gina stands beside the scrapbook and slips behind you. A moment later his arms encircle your waist, chin propped up on your shoulder. 

So there’s that. 

Gina points to the first photo, a grim-looking man standing behind a chair where a young woman sits smiling. “This is the estranged wife, before she was estranged, of course. And this is the owner of the house. From what we’ve been able to dig up about his past - no pun intended - he was always deathly serious.”

Jimin hums in acknowledgement, the vibrations going straight into your spine. Unsure of what to do with your arms, you gently place them atop his arms around your middle. 

You swear he smiles for a moment before turning pensive again. “Why did they separate?” You manage to ask, applauding yourself for getting a complete sentence out while Park Jimin hugs you from behind. 

“Rumor has it she cheated on him with his best friend,” Gina whispers, pointing to another photo where the solemn owner stands beside a smiling man. “He was driven mad with jealousy. Terrible, isn’t it?”

Gina gives you a long look, and suddenly you straighten your spine. “I-uh, yeah. Horrible.”

She shows us another photo, explaining something about it while Jimin mumbles out a couple of questions. You hardly process any of it, staring at Gina and wondering if she thinks that you are somehow cheating.

But on who? Jin, maybe? Since that’s her friend?

“Alright, send up the next pair,” Gina croons. Jimin detaches himself from you, suddenly leaving you cold. You turn to follow him, but stop as Gina places a hand on your arm. 

“Yes?” You ask, struggling to keep your tone even. Gina motions for Jimin to keep going, pulling you back to the scrapbook. She tilts her head to one side. 

“Forgive me for maybe overstepping a boundary but...” she motions toward the ladder, where everyone waits below. “Don’t tell me you’re flirting with all of them.”

Your eyes widen, and a breathy laugh comes out. “Me? What? N-no. They’re my best friends, why would I-”

Gina laughs, the sound too loud for the small attic. “Well, they’re flirting with you.” She playfully elbows me. “Speaking from girl to girl...enjoy it. For the rest of us.”

Nearly choking, you frown but nod all the same. “...ok?” When she makes no move to say anything else, you head down the ladder. The boys look up at me with confused looks, Jimin waiting at the bottom to make sure you get down safely. 

“What was that about?” Jin asks, looking a little nervous. “She didn’t say anything to make you uncomfortable, did she?”

You blink at him, wondering for a moment if the boys have always been like this around you. Surely not. It’s just the haunted house bringing out this protective side, right?

Right?

“No, she just wanted to show me something else. She’s actually really nice.” You think.

The other groups go up, and nothing else happens to pique your interest. Gina comes down last of all, giving you a wink before walking down the hallway. 

“I think we’re ready to go down to the basement, everyone!”

Somehow you end up at the front, surrounded on all sides by the maknae line. You crane your neck, looking back to see the older boys all lost in a heated discussion. Hobi catches your eye after a moment, elbowing Namjoon who looks up at you with fake innocence. 

You frown, Gina’s words coming back to you. “They’re flirting with you.”

You must have lost your mind. Was the haunted house really that traumatizing as to make you start coming up with such ridiculous things? How silly of you. 

The feeling of a hand resting on the small of your back has you yelping, jumping to face forward again. Taehyung gives you a sheepish grin. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles, gently pushing you forward to stand in front of him. “Are you really that spooked?”

“I...no.” You fail to come up with a complete sentence, but shrug it off. Taehyung smiles brightly at you, gesturing for you to head down the stairs. 

“You seem distracted tonight, are you alright?” 

The way your heart had begun palpitating calms down as you notice the obvious concern on Taehyung’s face. You give him a small smile, allowing yourself to relish the feeling of his fingers splayed against your back as you move down the stairs. 

“I’m fine, don’t worry. Just distracted by the story.”

Taehyung looks at you for a moment longer, not quite believing you but shrugging it off. He brings both hands to your shoulders as you enter the basement, an obvious chill in the air. 

You fight off a shiver, Taehyung noticing and beginning to rub at your arms in an attempt to warm you up. Gina immediately notices the action, hiding a smile as she pretends to cough. 

“Well,” she says once her ‘coughing fit’ subsides. “We’ve made it to the final leg of the tour. How’s it been so far?”

This time everyone cheers with renewed vigor, although a part of you has a hunch that it’s because Hobi knows he’s nearing the end of this scary experience. The thought makes you grin. 

“Earlier, you guys asked me what was found in the sealed off room. It’s easier to show you, rather than explain.” Gina walks backward, motioning for everyone to follow her. It’s darker down here, only a few candles light the way. Despite being surrounded by people you trust, you can’t fight the fear that sneaks inside of you. 

Rounding a corner, you see a small hallway with a half-open door. Jin curses behind you, clearly feeling just as freaked out as you.

“Remember how the estranged wife said she’d never leave this place?” Gina nods toward the door and dark entryway. “In that room there’s evidence that she may have had an...extended stay here. It’s very small, and the door only opens to a certain point. Almost as though whoever designed it didn’t want to have an easy escape point.”

Chills run down your spine, and even Taehyung’s ministrations pause for a moment as he takes in this new information. 

Jungkook speaks up, ever the curious one. “Wait...her body isn’t still here, right?”

Gina shakes her head. “No, although we think that she may have been buried somewhere on the property. We have yet to find her, though.”

“That...” you shake your head, shuffling from foot to foot. “That sounds so ominous. Like she still walks the property or something.”

The smile Gina sends you is enough to make your blood run cold. “We haven’t ruled anything out.” She gestures toward the door. “Due to fire hazards, we can only have two people at a time in the hallway and in the room. Do I have any volunteers?”

Jungkook’s hand immediately shoots up in the air, and he looks at his hyungs pleadingly. You remain still as a statue, refusing to look up for fear of being called on. 

You swear you can almost hear Taehyung sigh before he speaks. “Well, obviously you have to go.” He nudges you forward, and you whirl on him in absolute horror. 

“What?!” You shout. “How could you betray me like this?! I- no way!”

The boys can’t help but laugh at you, Namjoon clapping Taehyung on the shoulder. Taehyung gives you an apologetic look, shrugging. 

“C’mon, I’ll keep you safe,” Jungkook promises, his big pleading eyes on yours.

You hate how you can never say no to him. 

Gina pats your shoulder as you walk past, laughing lightly. “Have fun,” she croons. “Ok everyone, let’s go into the open area just around the corner-”

“You’re leaving us?!” You shout again, stopping in your tracks. “Noooo, no no. Not happening.”

“Jungkook will take care of you,” Yoongi says over his shoulder. “Or do you not trust him?”

Jungkook pauses, looking at you with those big brown eyes. “You don’t trust me?”

Yoongi chuckles darkly before leaving the hallway, and you know he’s aware of what he did. You’ll have to make him pay for it later. 

Possibly in the form of food.

“No, I do Kook,” you sigh. He extends his hand out to you, waiting patiently. 

You take it a little too quickly.

Gina was right, the door only opens to a certain point, leaving you no choice but to shimmy through. Jungkook inspects the entire area, pointing out what looks to be scratches on the doorframe. You shiver. 

“It’s not real,” he reassures you, keeping his hand in yours as he shimmies into the room. You hesitate for a moment, daring to glance at where your hands are connected before following after him. 

It’s nearly pitch black in the room, hardly allowing for you to see anything. “Can you even see anything?”

Jungkook laughs, squeezing your hand. “Nope. I think we’ll have to wait for our eyes to adjust. You good?”

You squeeze back. “Yeah, I think-”

The door is shut.

The door is shut. 

Suddenly delved into complete darkness, your breath hitches in your throat. “Jungkook,” you whimper. “Jungkook, I’m scared-”

“Shhh,” Jungkook hushes you, pulling you closer until you bump into his chest. “You’re fine. They’re just pulling a prank on us.” 

Without thinking anything other than, I’m too young to die, you instinctively wrap your arms around his waist, burrowing your head against his chest as he chuckles. 

“I can’t die, Jungkook,” you mumble into his chest. “I’m too young. I have so much to do. I have a test this week to take, and I’ve studied so hard for it, I have to take it. That’d be so stupid to die before taking that dumb test. And I have to yell at Yoongi or something, I don’t know-”

Jungkook’s giddy laughter pulls you out of your daze, and if you weren’t so scared you would be glaring at him. He laces his fingers behind your back, pulling you impossibly closer.

“You’re so cute,” he whispers into the dark, making every last thought eddy out of your brain. “Have I ever told you that before?”

Finding just enough willpower to move, you shake your head. Jungkook harrumphs above you, the sound almost pulling a giggle from you. Then you remember the situation you’re currently in. 

Jungkook sighs. “Well, you are. That, and a lot of other things. Would you like me to tell you what else I think you are?”

Hands bunching in the fabric of his clothes, you find your voice. “...yes.”

Jungkook takes a deep breath. “Scary smart. It’s horrifying.” A chuckle bubbles up from your chest. “And inclusive. That’s so underrated these days, you know? But you’re always making sure everyone is involved and enjoying themselves.”

You can tell that he’s holding his breath from the way his chest has stopped moving, and you’re about to ask him if he’s alright when he hesitantly runs his fingers through your hair. 

If that wasn’t enough to send you over the edge, he lets out a shaky breath before continuing on. “I’m sorry I haven’t told you those things before.”

You manage a laugh. “I’m sorry that it took us going on a haunted house tour for you to say it.”

Jungkook smiles down at you, your eyes finally adjusted to the dim room. He stares at you for a long moment, and you wonder if he’s going to kiss you.

You wonder if you’d let him.

He must see the question in your eyes, but he gives you a knowing look before heading toward the door, making sure your hand is in his. 

“You don’t have to worry about that,” he says, testing the door and giggling at your sigh of relief when the door is unlocked. 

“Worry about what?” You feign ignorance. Jungkook sees right through your, tugging you along as you head out the door. 

He shrugs, suddenly unable to look you in the eyes as pink no doubt paints his cheeks. “You know...overstepping any boundaries.” He looks down at his feet. “Making a move.”

“Why?” The question comes out before you can stop it, and you inwardly curse yourself. Jungkook smiles softly at your inquiry. 

The sound of everyone chatting makes you almost want to cry with relief. They must be just around the corner, waiting for you to return. 

Jungkook leans over, whispering to you. “Because we have a pact.”

You turn to question him further, eyes wide. He anticipates this, taking long strides until you find yourselves back in the open area with everyone else. 

“We’re back!” Jungkook announces, shooting you a smirk. You can’t help but stare at him, mouth slightly agape. 

A pact?

Gina smiles broadly. “How was the room? Did you find anything interesting?”

You shake your head, trying and failing to stop yourself from overanalyzing every glance the boys give you. “...no. I was too freaked out to even look around after the door closed on us.”

“Yeah, who did that? We didn’t even hear you guys,” Jungkook asks. 

Everyone looks at the two of you before looking at Gina, clearly just as confused. 

Gina, on the other hand, looks absolutely terrified. 

“Ummm...” she begins, rubbing her arms in an effort to warm herself up. “Remember how I said that we haven’t ever found the body of the estranged wife?”

You nod your head but stop, the words sinking in. The hairs on the back of your neck rise up, and you find yourself shuffling over to stand next to Jin, clinging to his arm. 

“Yeah...” Namjoon says, eyes darting around the room.

Gina sighs. “Alright, everyone, single file line. Head out as quickly and quietly as possible.”

You don’t need to be told twice.

masterlist

this has been turned into a series!

 series masterlist ∆∆∆ join the taglist

oooh so spooky ;) 

[astaroth1357]

"Hi kinda new. I don't know if this is where requests go, but if you haven't done it yet can I request an MC sneaking into the boys beds?" ~irenethehotdog

The MC Sneaks Into the Brothers' Beds While They're Asleep

@irenethehotdog don’t worry, I found ya anyway. 😁 Sooo there was a kind of tender way I could have played this… but then there was a funny way. I hope you're alright that I went with the funny way. 😅 I got two bed requests that are kind of similar-ish but how I’m interpreting them makes them just different enough to warrant two different asks. Here's the first one!

Check out my Masterlist for more!

Warning: Comical nudity? Is that NSFW-ish?

Intro:

Sometimes everybody needs a little comfort, especially in the middle of the night. Any number of things could have drawn the MC out of their bed: bad dreams, nagging thoughts, just general fear of the darkness of Hell that surrounded them, but they decided to try to soothe their unease with the company of their demonic housemates! Wonder how that turned out for them..?

Lucifer

I mean, if you’re feeling a little alone at night, maybe a little scared, it would only be natural to want to seek solace with the strongest person in the nearest vicinity, right? ...Right?

To say it was maybe ill-advised to just climb into bed with Lucifer would be an understatement… Frankly, if the enchantments he had on his door weren’t specifically meant for Mammon then they might have ended up in a very compromised position. But somehow, they managed to infiltrate the demon’s private sanctuary and get right up to his bed.

Now, Lucifer is not a heavy sleeper. Not at all. He’s grown pretty accustomed to waking up at all hours of the night because of his brother’s antics, so he felt the shifting weight on his mattress almost instantly.

They probably weren’t expecting him to suddenly jerk upright and spin towards them, fireball in hand ready to lob at their face... but that’s what they got.

After realizing that it was just the human and not Mammon coming in to take his stuff again, he made them sit down in front of his fireplace while he gave them a looong lecture about personal boundaries and how it’s really not smart to sneak up on demons like that… 

But he was still sympathetic to their sleep-deprived state so he offered them some tea and Devildom sleep remedies in hopes of getting them back to bed. ...Just not his. Back to your bed with you, MC.

Mammon

Mammon was their “babysitter.” Their protector. Their guardian. So why wouldn’t they want to go to him on a difficult night?

Getting into Mammon’s bed was hardly a challenge, sure they had to tiptoe through the garbage heap that made up his bedroom floor but it wasn’t Mission Impossible or anything…

What did catch them off guard was just how… not clothed he felt after they slid in under his covers. Like, pretty much wearing nothing at all. Not even a pair of courtesy boxers. 😓

It was their squeal as they flung themselves out of the bed that actually woke Mammon up. They had him ripping the covers off, ready to leap into action and everything, which definitely didn’t help matters. (Or maybe it did, depending on your point of view 🤷‍♀️).

Both parties pretty much turned into a cursing/blushing mess as he shot them embarrassed, rapid-fire questions while desperately trying to pull on some sweats. Meanwhile the MC stayed plastered up against the wall of his bedroom, answering him in equally defensive shouts.

Eventually, their fuss woke up Lucifer who was quick to send both of them back to their respective beds. The House teased them mercilessly for weeks… How were they supposed to know Mammon slept naked??

Leviathan

Levi might be a… strange choice for bedmate at first glance (he doesn’t really even sleep in bed, but a tub hardly meant for two people). However, there’s a certain level of approachability to him, isn’t there? Considering his own struggles with anxiety, maybe they thought he could relate…?

They tried knocking on his door first, thinking he might have been gaming, but there was no answer. When they walked in and found the otaku actually asleep for once, it seemed like their wishes might have actually been granted!

...But then came the actual trouble of trying to get into bed with Levi to start with. There wasn’t really an easy way to squeeze their body in past his because the tub was so dang narrow…

Any rational person might have just given up on the venture, but not MC. Whatever's possessed them to want to sleep with this awkward shut-in has a pretty good hold on them yet.

Lack of sleep might have been what gave them the bright idea to just try and lay on top of Levi veeerrry sooooftlllly…. Which is how the poor demon woke up to them halfway straddling his waist in the middle of the night.

His remarkably high-pitched scream woke up the whole dang House and the sheer amount of force he used when trying to jerk out of the tub toppled it over… Even after many apologies (and a trip to go buy a new tub), Levi still double locks his door at night to this day… 😓

Satan

Really an odd choice there, not going to lie. They’re well aware of the possibility that they could accidentally wake him and he maaaay not be the best waker (what being Wrath and all) but if it’s irrational worries that got you down, why not go to the most rational person in the House? Sounds like a perfectly logical decision, right?

That might have been what their half-baked disillusions were telling them on the way to Satan's bedroom but actually standing in front of the sleeping man was a whole other story. They felt crazy, genuinely crazy… But they still slipped in under the covers anyway.

Satan stirred almost immediately and turned to face them… but his eyes could hardly keep focus and the look of dopey confusion on his face could have honestly made the perfect screen background. "Huuuuuh…? MC…? What're you doin' 'ere…?"

They kind of had to hold in a laugh while they explained that they just wanted to sleep next to him that night. Satan beamed them an oddly serene smile and just nodded. "Okaaay…" With that he seemed to roll over to go back to sleep… but his mind caught back up with him before his drowsiness did.

"Wait a minute..." Ah shit….

 Like Lucifer, Satan ended up giving them a pretty good lecture on boundaries and the like when he finally snapped out of his stupor. Thankfully he wasn't mad, just a little embarrassed that they had seen him like that. He offered them a good book or two to pass the time if they couldn't sleep, but sent them back to bed all the same.

Asmodeus

Asmo probably doesn’t get people coming into his bed with completely chaste intentions very often, but he’s by far the most emotionally in-tuned demon in the House. If they're after a little sympathy, best just go to Asmo right?

They weren't really sure what to expect when they walked into his room... Does Asmo sleep like a Disney Princess, hair and makeup done perfectly in defiance of all laws of beauty?

Does he sleep like a '60s housewife, with curlers in his hair and leftover chips of mud mask on his face?

Does he sleep like the god of all sex that he is, sculpted chest for the eyes to see and everything underneath laid bare like a honeypot of temptation??

The MC doesn't really get to know, because when they pulled back the covers to climb inside they were met by the sight of someone else's very naked ass taking up the spot where they thought Asmo should be.

They go back to their room willingly, dejected and maybe a little scarred... Apparently they were just too late to the party...

Beelzebub

Okay, everything about Beel screams “Hello! I’m a warm comforting teddy bear!”...aside from the hungry parts. It’s really not hard to see why they’d want to go to him if they’re feeling a little vulnerable.

They didn't worry too much about being quiet when they walked into the twins' room. Belphie could sleep through a rock concert and Beel wasn't too far behind him (as long as he wasn't hungry).

They figured that the tall twin wouldn't mind too much if they just crawled into bed with him… He had make a similar request of them before, it was only fair right?

As they were preparing their tired body for a good night's sleep, they gently pulled the covers back next to Beel but they probably weren't expecting to find so many food wrappers surrounding him… or bags of chips… or packages of cookies… or-

Apparently Beel had yet another sleep-eating run and this time he seemed to have brought the whole kitchen back with him. There was hardly enough room left for Beel anymore, let alone the MC!

Considering their options were to either wedge themselves between a havoc roast and a bag of jerky or just brave one more night on their own, they cut their losses early and went back to their own bed...

Belphegor

They didn’t have to know Belphie since Day One of being there to pick up on how hard he slept. The man was pretty much in a coma for most of the day and that included his nightly rests too. Would he even notice if they… per say… slipped into bed with him to get a little comfort from their nightmares? Surely, he’d stay asleep, right?

When they didn't see his sleeping form in the room he shared with Beel, the MC eventually found Belphie up in the attic room. His little hideaway with a plush-ass bed to boot.

They didn’t bother being quiet at all. They figured that Belphie could have stayed under for anything short of banging pots and pans in his ears so why try to mask their footsteps?

They never expected him to be awake. 😰

The moment they lifted the covers, Belphie struck like some kind of blanket crocodile! He grabbed them by the waist and dragged them into the spot of the bed right under him with a impish grin on his face.

Turns out they weren't the only ones having sleeping problems that night and as they felt the full weight of his worn out body settle in nicely up against theirs they knew that maybe, finally, they'd get a good night's sleep… 🤭

[arrowflier]

hi arrow! can i get a fic of ian being jealous on a date (maybe someone flirts with mickey??) and mickey just loves it bc it makes ian all passive aggressive and bossy and saying 'my husband' 283949 times ❤️

Of course you can!  Or at least I tried lol, it got a little random.💖

That Green-Eyed Monster (is my husband)

They never had really gotten in the habit of going on dates, before. Not real dates at least, in public places where you could eat with utensils or sit side-by-side and pretend to watch the entertainment while you were really just watching each other. They had tried, but something always got in the way--the military, jail sentences, arrest warrants, pandemics, family emergencies--they just had shit luck, alright?

So when things got a little less crazy on the aforementioned fronts, they started trying a little bit harder. They had a designated date night, now. Sometimes they planned together, sometimes they took turns surprising each other with heartfelt (or sometimes comical) plans.

This time, it had been Mickey's turn.

“Where are we going?” Ian asked yet again from where he was blindfolded in the passenger seat of Tami’s car.  They’d usually take the ambulance, but Mickey didn’t want to stick out too much today—not in a place where an ambulance could potentially be needed.

“I still ain’t gonna tell you,” Mickey answered, but relented enough to add, “we’re almost there though, you’ll see soon.”

Sure enough, the entrance to the parking lot came up on the right, and Mickey swung in in that ridiculous little car.

As soon as Ian felt the car stop, he was reaching for his blindfold—not one of their good ones, just an old headband they had found on Debbie’s floor—but Mickey grabbed his hand before he could slip it off.

“Hey hey hey,” Mickey chastised.  “What’s the rush there, flash?”

“What, I can’t be a little eager for our date?” Ian pouted, knowing it would get Mickey to give in.  No matter how many times he tried to pretend that he wasn’t soft, Mickey always gave in to the pout.

He was right.  Gentle hands pushed the headband off of Ian’s eyes, which were immediately filled with the sight of Mickey’s own as the other man ran fingers through Ian’s hair in an attempt to smooth it down.

“Alright, come on then,” Mickey ordered, leaving one firm kiss at the corner of Ian’s lips before pulling back and getting out of the car.  “If you’re so eager, you get to pay.”

Ian chuckled as he let himself out and met Mickey around the front of the car.  “Why would I pay?” he asked jokingly.  “It’s your week to woo me, asshole, you get to foot the bill.”

“Foot the bill with your money, sure,” Mickey retorted, and Ian rolled his eyes as he automatically fell into step beside him.

“Our money,” he reminded his husband, getting an arm around his waist.  He was always surprised when Mickey let him do that—he said it felt awkward to walk with the jolly red giant suckered onto his side—but this time Mickey actually leaned into him.

He didn’t even notice where they were, outside a little building in the middle of nowhere.  He let go of Mickey to walk through the door ahead of him, fully intending to continue their playful banter, when he stopped still.

There were a lot of guns in this place.

Paintball guns, that was.

“Mickey,” Ian said slowly as his husband came up behind him, “did you bring me here to shoot me?”

Mickey just smirked as he swanned past toward the check-in desk.

“Maybe, hotshot,” he answered.  “You gonna complain?”

Ian shook his head with a shit-eating grin.  

“Hell no,” he declared.  “You better be ready for me.”

Mickey signed his name on a waiver with a flourish and took the gun handed to him by a worker, tossing it to Ian.

“Am I ever not?”

—

Ian was having a blast, pun intended, as he shot the shit out of everybody else on the range.  Mickey wasn’t faring too badly either; despite being on the opposite team, neither one of them had managed to shoot each other yet.

It didn’t hurt that Mickey looked damn good, either.  He was completely in his element out here, taking guys out left and right with perfect marksmanship and even more perfect form, his shoulders barely moving with the recoil as he shot.  Half the time, Ian missed his chance because he was too busy watching him to fire—the other half, he didn’t even want to if it meant taking Mickey out of the game and losing his eye-candy.

Finally, a break was called, and everyone filed off the course while it was reset for the next round.

Ian grabbed a bottle of water from a long table near the building, guzzling half of it in one go before looking around for his husband.

He found him quickly enough, recognizing his back immediately even in unfamiliar gear with his hair all mussed from the protective helmet they had to wear.

But he did not recognize the man standing next to Mickey, raking his eyes over Mickey’s stocky build.  

The stranger was saying something, Mickey tossing his head back in laughter, and then a hand was on Mickey’s arm and Ian suddenly found himself at Mickey’s back.

“Everything good here, fellas?” Ian asked casually, standing a couple feet away.

“Fine, Gallagher,” Mickey said with a smile.  “Johnny here was just tellin’ me he could give me some pointers before the next round.”

Ian raised his eyebrows, glancing from Mickey’s face to the stranger’s and back.

“Pointers?” he asked, voice going a touch high at the end.  Who the fuck did this guy think he was, offering shooting pointers to Mickey fucking Milkovich?  He had gotten there just in time, it seemed, because there was no way in hell Mickey would let that insult slide.

“Yeah,” Mickey said.  “Says I need to work on my form a little, widen my stance, you know.  Thought I’d give it a shot.”

Wait.  What?

“I was just telling him,” the stranger—Johnny, though how they were on a first name basis already Ian had no idea—chimed in, “that I have a lot of experience with real firearms.”

“And I was sayin’ how much I admire a military man,” Mickey interjected with a smirk, “so I might as well let him show me some moves.”

“Mickey,” Ian hissed lowly, “what are you doing?”

Mickey didn’t answer.

“You ever shot a real gun, Mick?” Johnny asked abruptly, catching on that he was missing something but determined not to lose Mickey’s attention.  

“It’s like nothing else, dude, I swear.  The feel of that smooth metal in your hands,” he continued as he moved closer, lifting a hand to Mickey’s arm again. “The way it moves with you, goes off when you,” he leaned in even closer, and added in a low voice, “pull the trigger.”

Alarm bells were ringing in Ian’s head at this point.

“Nah,” Mickey was answering, “my guy won’t let me play with the real stuff.”

“Sounds like you need a new guy, then,” Johnny murmured, and Ian had had enough.

“He’s taken,” he cut in gruffly, moving to stand by Mickey’s side.  He couldn’t hold Mickey with the gear in the way, but he got a hand on his back, at least, curling fingers into the top of his waistband.

Johnny looked at him askance, and shrugged.  

“I don’t see a ring,” he pointed out, and Ian grit his teeth.  They had taken them off before starting, for safety, and he never regretting following the rules more a day in his life.

“Besides, who are you to speak for him?” Johnny asked.

“Oh, this is Ian,” Mickey introduced quickly.  He was smiling, the asshole, like some guy wasn’t trying to steal him from right under Ian’s own nose.  “He’s my—”

“His husband,” Ian stated firmly, and watched Johnny’s eyes go wide.  “His ex-army, ex-con husband.”

“Hey man, I’m sorry,” Johnny apologized, hands up.  “I didn’t know.”

Ian nodded, ready to let it go despite his urge to send the man packing, when Johnny insisted on talking again.

“You can’t blame me though, right?” he said with a little, nervous laugh.  “I mean, he looks so damn—”

He didn’t finish his sentence, too busy keeling over with his hands on his groin after Ian shot a paintball right at his balls at point-blank range.

—

Two minutes later, Ian and Mickey were racing to the car as employees chased behind them, yelling.  Apparently it was frowned upon to shoot someone on your own team, outside the course itself, during a break.  It didn’t help that Mickey had done the same right after, just for fun.

“Hurry up, you jealous fuck,” Mickey shouted at Ian as he fumbled with the door handle.  “We gotta get outa here before they realize I gave them fake names!”

Ian fell into the car, giddy with adrenaline and laughter.

“The fuck did you do that for?” he giggled as Mickey threw the car into reverse and peeled out of the lot.

“Cause I knew you would do something stupid!” Mickey said, shoving at Ian’s shoulder with one hand when Ian just laughed harder.

Ian gather himself as they drove, and felt his heart-rate start to normalize after a few minutes on the road.  He held Mickey’s hand over the gearshift, finger rubbing over the spot where his ring should be—where it would be again as soon as they had a minute to breathe.  Then, just as he was almost calm—

“Shit, Ian,” Mickey gasped.  “We didn’t return the fucking guns.”

That set them off again, and they had to pull over halfway home until they could stop laughing and hide the paintball guns under the back seat.

Franny and Fred would love them come Christmas.

[cow-smells]

Party Favors (Eli “Hawk” Moskowitz / reader)

Request:  Can I have one for a Hawk smut where he’s having a little pool party and  the reader is usually always wearing modest/baggy clothing but she wore  a pretty sexy bikini to the party and everybody is shocked cuz she is  hiding a super nice body under all those clothing. Hawk gets a boner  seeing her and has to go inside the house to fix his problem and the  reader goes inside the house and catches him and offers him some help  and he’s shocked because she seems innocent. Basically a version of that  fast time at ridgemont high bikini scene lol  (for: @le-fashionmwah )​  

A/N: there’s been an influx of requests for Hawk smut so I really hope this hits the spot lol. felt really dirty writing this even tho its probs not that bad?? idk. lemme know. also, for some reason i only looked up that scene/movie halfway in to writing this, so i hope this is somewhat what you visioned

Words: 1582

Warnings: nsfw :)

Read on AO3

It had been a couple of months since your family moved to California, and you were loving it.

You befriended the Cobra Kais as soon as you started school and they had invited you to a pool party today at Sam's house.

You were a little bit reluctant to go at first, preferring to keep your weekends to yourself, reading a good book all curled up in one of the over sized hoodies you usually wore; that was, until Hawk came along.

    “Come on,” he whined to you a couple of days earlier. “Miguel's going to be all up in Sam's ass and I'll be bored as hell. You gotta come keep me company.”

You hated to admit it, but you were putty in his hands. You were nursing an ever growing crush on Hawk from the moment you first layed eyes on him; so naturally, you were easily convinced. You were desperate to make a move on him, but you were still new and friendless other then the Cobra Kais; you feared making a wrong move and losing them all.

    That is how you came to find yourself in Sam's back yard, trying to recognize familiar faces. You arrived with Miguel who as per Hawks prediction quickly abandoned you to chase after Sam, leaving you to fend for yourself. You scanned the yard filled with your peers; you couldn't recognize anyone – at least, not by name. Taking your phone out of your hoodie, you tried calling Hawk to no avail. He didn't pick up.

Assuming he wasn't answering because he was driving over (you didn't want to think he might have decided to pass on the party after convincing you to come), you decided to do the only thing there was left to do at a pool party – go for a swim.

    You took a deep breath and took hold of your over sized hoodie, pulling it up and off of you, leaving you in nothing but the new bikini you got just for this (and maybe, just maybe, for Hawk too).

    You didn't notice the many pairs of eyes that were suddenly focused on you.

Embracing the carefree air of the party, you jumped in to the deep end of the pool, letting your body sink for a moment before propelling yourself up to breathe. The cold water woke up your senses, letting you forget about your previous shyness if only a little. You swam to the edge of the pool and pushed yourself up to sit on the ledge.

    “You're the new girl,” a voice suddenly asked. Looking aside, it was a boy you recognized from English class. He allowed himself to take a seat by you. “sit behind me in English, right?”

    “Yeah,” you smile, happy to have been noticed. You two go on with your small talk for a little while until an extremely recognizable figure walked out the house.

    “Hawk!” you called, more eager than you probably should have. You excused yourself from the boy who acted as a pleasant distraction, rising to your feet and making your way over to him, your bikini dripping heavily.

    It took Hawk a heavy moment until he responded, his jaw slightly slacked as you came to stand in front of him.

    “Hi,” he finally said, feeling his mouth dry. Hawk had to train his eyes intensely on yours, lest they venture downwards.

    “Took you long enough,” you tease, nudging his arm playfully. “oh, sorry,” you apologize at seeing the spot you touched become dark with moisture. “I'm wet.”

    Yes, you are, Hawk thought to himself.

A slight gust of wind hits you, and you cross your arms under your chest, trying to preserve your heat.

    Hawk looks aside bashfully, heart pounding at your now even-further pronounced breasts. “I, um,” he mutters, “forgot my bike running. I'll be right back.”

Without a second glance to you, Hawk leaves in a rush.

You see him through a window and to your surprise, he doesn't leave the house. He detours to a bathroom.

You felt confused and slightly offended – what was the rush to leave you like that, after you greeted him so publicly too? Was he... embarrassed to be seen with you?

The negative thoughts began plaguing your mind; there was only one way to settle this, you decided. With that, you entered the house to confront him.

    You're two steps in to the living room when Moon gets an eyeful of you. “Damn, Y/n!” she surveys your scantily clad body with a grin. “You were hiding that under all those layers? Good for you, girl,” she winks. Your quest to Hawk continues with reddened cheeks and a little grin.

    You reach the bathroom you saw Hawk enter and knock, calling his name.

    “What?” Hawk replies, his voice strained and perhaps agitated.

    “I'm coming in,” you declare boldly, turning the door handle and prying it open.

    “No, don't -” Hawk begins, but it's too late. You're already in.

Hawk's face is red, his shirt is tousled – which brings your eyes down to his unbuttoned jeans, and a prominent bulge coming from them.

    Your eyes widen as you realize what you just walked in to. “Oh.”

Hawk looks just about ready to bury himself alive. “Would you get out already?”

You space out for a moment as your brain runs through the course of events. He walked in, saw you, left with a boner.

    Huh.

    “I can leave,” you finally reply. “or,” his eyes lighten in confusion. “I can help you out.”

    “Help – help me out?” Hawk stutters and he scolds himself for acting so timidly, like Eli rather than Hawk. He needed to regain control of the situation.

You shut the bathroom door, making sure to lock it. Walking up close to him, Hawk looks down at you, trying so hard to regain his composure. You sink down to your knees.

    He nearly protests, cowers away, asks what you're doing. But then he doesn't. He's Hawk, and Hawk doesn't back away when the girl he's infatuated with is eye-level with his dick. He stays put. He takes control.

Your hand goes to caress his hardness over his clothes. Hawk one-ups you and pushes his jeans and boxers down, revealing himself to you completely. His hand weaves through your hair, letting him see your expression better.

He's worried, for a moment, that he might have taken things too far, read you incorrectly. A thought that's quick to leave his mind once your tongue is on his tip.

    He thinks his heart might actually beat out of his chest. He would have never, not in his wildest dreams, be able to imagine this scenario happening in real life. Although he wanted you for a while now, he didn't think you returned his feelings. Besides that, you were usually modest, you clothing hiding your body under it and you never flirting with anyone. He'd never peg you for the type to go down on him in a bathroom during a party with half your school year just out the door.

    Hawk groans as you slide your tongue from his tip to his balls, cupping them in your hand. It's nearly overwhelming to him when you spit in your hand and begin to pump his shaft.

Hawks grip on your hair tightens; you take him in your mouth. Hawk can't help the throaty moan that leaves him as you take him as deeply as you can, hollowing your cheeks as you pull away.

His free hand comes behind your head and his fingers find the strings holding up your bikini, which he allows himself to pull on until they sever and the top of your bikini comes loose.

    Finally taking control, Hawk uses his grip on your hair to guide you on and off his dick, making you take him deeply enough you have to relax your throat to accommodate him.

    “You're such a good girl for me,” Hawk groans as he gazes down at you with his dick in your warm mouth. “you take me so well.”

Your heart swells at the compliment, at the clear pleasure you're bringing him.

    Hawks moans rise in volume and his hips rut gently forward while he holds your head in place. Without warning a gust of warm liquid pools in your mouth. Hawk pulls out and before you can think to move he cums, white strands painting your lips and cheeks before dripping down to your bare breasts.

You swallow what made it to your mouth and look at Hawk towering above you. He looked absolutely spent... and content.

Hawk helped you to your feet, this time allowing himself to stare at you to his hearts content. He helped you clean off your face before taking it in his hands and kissing you deeply. You couldn't believe you had managed to do all that before sharing your first kiss.

Breaking apart, Hawk lets his hands skim down your body, his thumbs flicking your nipples playfully before taking hold of your bikini strings and tying them back up behind your neck, leaving your breasts still covered with his cum underneath the fabric.

He finished tying the knot, kissing you once more. “You're my girl now.”

There's a question there, beneath the deceleration, so you nod. Feeling bolder than before, Hawk holds your hand as he leads you back to the pool.

[maybe-theres-hope]

Tarlos Fic - Dinner Date

3.2k | T | Warnings: Blood, Injuries (mostly minor) | Contains: Judd/Carlos friendship, Tarlos being perfect, blue Camaro (rip)

Read on AO3

“So, what are your plans for the night?” Nancy asked as they exited the ambulance, their shift nearly over as long as the bell didn’t go off in the next ten minutes. 

TK smiled to himself for a moment before he spoke. “Well, Carlos is taking me to Jeffrey’s, so…”

“Holy mother,” Nancy breathed, looking at him with obvious envy. “Do you guys have a ten year anniversary or something coming up? Did he get some kind of commendation at work? Because I know your last one was like a month ago, so.”

“No, no anniversary, that’s in a couple of months. And its three years, Nance.” He chose to ignore her muttering about their mushiness ‘aging me ten years’. “And nothing from work that I know of. Maybe he just loves me?” TK couldn’t stop grinning while they stocked the bus and readied for the handover. 

“He loves you crap ton! Their wagyu strip steak is a hundred and twenty-five dollars!” Nancy had her phone out, obviously googling the menu. 

“Well at least we’ll save money on wine,” TK said with a chuckle.

“I’ve heard of the place by reputation but like, dude, who ever gets the chance to actually go there?”

“TK it seems,” Tommy cut in. “Why don’t you go on? We got it here and you’re gonna need at least an hour to pick out an outfit.”

“And gel your hair. You and your dad are way more alike than you want to admit,” Nancy added with a roll of her eyes.

“Yeah, yeah. You sure, Cap? I can stay and help?”

“I’m sure, kiddo. Go get dolled up for your man. Eat a few bites for us, yeah?” Tommy yelled at his retreating figure. She and Nancy looked at each other with grins as they caught the little skip in his step. 

“So, what do you think the occasion is?”

Tommy looked back at Nancy with a gleam in her eye. “I can wager a guess, but I don’t want to jinx it.” Nancy just gave her a look and went back to restocking.

--

Around 8 p.m., Owen was sitting in his office toying with his phone in his hand, smiling at his last text exchange. 

we’re just leaving the house now, wish me luck!

you’re not gonna need it, kid :)

“Not if I know my son anyway,” Owen said aloud to the empty room. He wondered if it’d happened yet. No incoherent string of emoji’s from TK yet, so he doubted it. 

He was shoving the phone back into his pocket with the bell went off. 

--

“Alright guys,” Owen said into the mic from the Captain’s chair. “Dispatch says three vehicles involved, two still on the road and one went over the side into the ravine. Police are on their way but we’ll probably beat ‘em there. Strickland, Marwani, soon as we get there I want you to harness up and get down in that ravine. Judd, you too. You’ll be in command down there and I’ll stay up top with the other two vehicles. Everybody else you’re with me, got it?”

A chorus of “Copy that, Cap,” and suddenly they were on the scene. 

--

“Marjan, Paul, we’re goin’ down!” Judd called to them as the rest of the crew went over to the silver Prius and black Mazda that were crumpled in the middle of the two-lane highway. Judd wasn’t a prayin’ man, but he sent up a little something to the man upstairs that this went their way. It looked bad. 

Paul arrived at his side first, strapped into his gear. “Marjan’s grabbing the bag from the truck, she’s coming.” 

“Alright. We’ll go down this way,” Judd said, pointing to a safe-ish stretch of hillside. “Can’t see the other car from here but dispatch said bystanders saw it go over. Probably just hidden in the trees.”

“Okay guys, let’s do this!” Marjan called, harnessed and carrying the medical bag and a backboard. “TK’s gonna be sad he missed this. Medical doesn’t get to harness up a lot and I know he loved it. He coulda helped.”

“Nah, he’s got better things tonight. Carlos was takin’ him to Jeffrey’s,” Paul said with a waggle of his eyebrows.

“Ohh, fancy,” Marjan said with a smile. “What’s the occasion?”

They’d reached the bottom and were starting to look through the brush and low-hanging trees for a vehicle. 

“Don’t know,” Paul answered. “But I think Cap’s in on it somehow.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Judd cut in as he whacked a few branches out of his way. “Carlos came by the station a few weeks ago, and they sat up in Cap’s office for an hour before he left grinnin’ like a possum eatin’ a sweet tater.” 

“I have no idea what that means,” Paul said with a laugh. 

“Hey guys, look!” Marjan called from a few yards to the left. The other two went to her position and saw what she’d found. A track in the underbrush where it had been torn at and flattened. “Think this is the place.”

“Let’s go,” said Judd. They followed the path through the brush for a couple of yards before they caught sight of it: taillights. “Alright, Marjan you go on the passenger side, I got the driver. Paul you see if you can clear some of that brush off the back in case the doors are jammed and we gotta get ‘em out that’a way.”

Visibility was still low despite the lights of the car and their flashlights, but as they approached they saw the car wrapped around the trunk of a tree on the passenger side. “I don’t know if I can get in there, Judd, but I’ll try,” Marjan said as she broke out into a jog.

“Wait!” Paul cried. Judd looked over at him, and he would have said such a thing couldn’t happen to a calm and collected person like Paul, but his face had gone ashen. “That’s Carlos’s car,” he said on a breath. 

“What?” In the dark, now that he was really looking, he could see they were coming up on—what used to be—a blue Camaro. 

“I’m sure of it. TK bullied him into putting that sticker on the back because he said it was too pristine and it needed personality.” He shone his flashlight at the rear bumper and sure enough, there was a SXSW sticker half ripped off from the path the car had taken to get there. 

“Come on,” Judd said, heart rate kicking up.

“Should we call Cap?” Paul asked.

“No, we stay down here and do our jobs, and he stays up there and does his. We’ll get ‘em.” His voice sounded numb even to his own ears, but he was determined. 

“They were on their way to dinner,” Paul said lowly.

“Yeah, probably takin’ the backroads to avoid traffic,” Judd said, shaking his head. Fate was hell sometimes.

When they reached the car, Marjan was yelling. “TK! TK can you hear me?” She turned to Judd. “I can’t get in there. The tree trunk is halfway into the car, probably pinning him to the console. He’s unresponsive.” Her face was also pale, but determined. 

Judd went to the driver’s side and saw Carlos, head hanging to the side facing the broken window. He tried the door as he called out. “Carlos? Hey Carlos, come on buddy. Can you hear me?” The door wouldn’t budge; Judd figured the car had rolled a couple of times coming down the hill, crumpling it like a tin can. Then he heard a soft groan.

He looked up, and one of Carlos’s eyes was trying to open. The other was swollen shut, where he’d probably hit his head on the steering wheel before the airbag deployed. Half his face had burn marks from it. 

“Hey, hey Carlos, look at me, that’s it.” That one eye tracked around before it landed on Judd, drawn to the light of the flashlight on his helmet. “Hey man. We’re gonna get you out okay? Now, can you move your fingers and toes for me?” Judd stuck his head into the window to see down in the floor boards. “Alright, likely no spinal damage. How’s your head?”

“Hurts. Shoulder, too.” His voice was barely audible. 

“Okay, it looks like you dislocated it,” Judd said as he prodded his left shoulder. “I don’t see anything broken but we’ll have to get you out to determine that.”

“TK—“ a wheeze, “TK…first. Been out…a while.”

Judd peered over to the passenger side, where TK was shoved almost fully into the center console, head laid back on the headrest and his face covered in blood. Marjan and Paul were still hard at work outside trying to clear a path into the car. 

“We can’t get to his side just yet, but we can get you out first and then we’ll be able to pull him out this way, okay? We wanna focus on you right now.”

“Alive.”

“Yeah, you’re alive, Carlos. You’re not gonna leave us yet,” he said as he assessed the door panels where they could cut through with the saws they brought. 

“No. TK. Weak, but…alive,” Carlos breathed out, coughing through the end.

“We’ll make sure he’s alive, okay?” Judd said, trying not to lose his professionalism at this whole messed up situation.

“He is.” Judd stopped looking around and looked back at Carlos. The man raised his right hand just as much as he was able, showing where he had two fingers on TK’s radial pulse. 

“Good, that’s good Carlos,” Judd assured him. That meant Carlos had had some minutes of consciousness after the accident before they showed up. “Was he talking at all? After you hit the tree?”

“Little. Minutes, maybe.”

“That’s good, that’ll help. Alright Carlos, we’re gonna get this door off so I’m gonna cover you with this while we do okay?” Judd waited for a small nod before he covered Carlos’s face and torso with his own turnout coat. 

After an agonizing four minutes, the door popped off in a shower of metal and broken glass. Judd removed the coat and went back in to assess. “Carlos? How you doin’?”

“Tired. But won’t…sleep. Promise. That’s bad.”

“You learn a few things from your Paramedic boyfriend?” Judd said with a watery smile.

“Mmm.”

“Judd, I got the back cleared. Maybe we can get in there to at least check TK’s vitals,” Paul informed them. 

“Get on it, I’ma try to get Carlos here out onto this backboard. Marjan, radio for another backboard and have two RA’s ready to go topside!”

“Copy that!” Judd had to admire those two. They never let their professionalism slip too far, though he could see they were worried sick. He could relate. He wouldn’t relax until both of the boys were back up the hill and on the way to the hospital.

From the looks of things, maybe not even then. But he had hope.

“Alright, Carlos, I’m gonna grab your legs and behind your shoulders here and pull you out, okay? It’s gonna hurt like hell, but it’ll be quick.”

“Wait.”

Judd stopped cold.

“Left…pocket. Please.”

“You want me to get at your left pocket?” A nod. “Alright, hang on.”

Judd carefully shifted Carlos’s leg so he could reach into his slacks, which had probably been part of a very nice suit at the beginning of the night. His fingers searched until they hit a small bump, an object no bigger than a baseball, soft velvet over a hard shell. He sucked his lips between his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment as he pulled it free in his hand. 

“Keep it…safe…for me?”

Judd looked down at the little black box for a moment, then clutched it tight in his hand before transferring it one of the innermost pockets of his turnout. 

“Of course, man. I will guard this with my life.” He looked up and saw Marjan coming back with another backboard. “Alright, buddy. It’s go time.”

Carlos gave a weak nod and winced when Judd started to pull. 

--

“Welcome back, man. You had us worried there for a bit.”

Carlos opened his good eye to see Judd sitting at his bedside, smiling softly. It took a moment to remember where he was. Hospital. Accident. Tree.

“TK—“

“Is fine. Banged up and will need crutches for a few weeks, not to mention a killer headache with no meds, but he’s fine. All things considered.”

“Where is he?”

“On his way, so you just stay put, okay? You’re pretty banged up, too, ya’know.”

Carlos shifted a bit and winced. His left arm was in a sling, his head bandaged over his left eye, and his right side hurt like hell.

“Broken rib when the tree went into TK’s door, door went into TK, TK went into the console, then the console went into you. He’s got a femoral fracture in his right leg but like I said, all things considered, you’re both pretty well off for how far you fell and probably rolled.” 

“Yeah, he said his leg had gone numb but he could still move his toes. He made sense for about five minutes, then started talking all jumbled, then went quiet. I uh…freaked out a bit after that. I thought he had…” Carlos trailed off, looking haunted. 

“Yeah, and you kept your fingers on his pulse that whole time. What you were able to tell us at the scene helped us treat him. You did good, Carlos.”

“Not good enough to swerve in time,” he said.

“Not your fault. And don’t you dare go thinkin’ it is. I don’t wanna hear it, Carlos,” Judd said in what TK called his Dad Voice. Stern and no room for argument. Carlos just nodded. 

“And uh, hey. I been waitin’ to give this back to you.” Judd stood and walked over to the bed, holding out a tiny black box. Carlos took it and cradled it against his chest. “It better be a nice one, cuz I about had a heart attack while I was showerin’ thinkin’ someone was gonna come get my pile a’clothes and take ‘em to the laundry while I was gone.”

“You didn’t open it?”

“Nah, I figure the big reveal? TK deserves that all to himself.” 

“Owen’s seen it,” Carlos countered, smirking.

“Uh huh. He approve?”

Carlos laughed. “He whistled and said I spent too much.”

“To impress the Cap it must be a lot,” Judd said with a small whistle of his own.

“Well, what was it Michael Scott said? Three years’ salary?”

Judd’s eyes almost popped out of his head, and Carlos laughed harder before wincing again at his broken rib. “I’m kidding, Judd. But I can tell you, no matter the cost, TK deserves the best and that’s what I hope I got.”

“You gonna make another reservation? Soon as y’all get back into fightin’ shape?”

Carlos looked down at the box again for a moment, contemplating. “I…don’t think so.”

Judd had a confused expression on his face but at that moment, a nurse was wheeling TK into the room, followed by most of the 126. Carlos’s face lit up like starlight at the sight of him.

“Hey, babe,” TK said with a smile. His leg was in a full cast, so the nurse was careful in maneuvering him around to Carlos’s bedside. 

“Hey, I feel like you should be the one in bed! Why are you out and about?”

“Because you were still asleep and he’s an absolute menace. We made multiple apologies to the staff on his behalf for the last hour,” Owen said as he walked into the room behind his crew. “He’s a stubborn little shit. Always has been, always will be. You sure you’re up for that?” He asked knowingly. TK was still looking at Carlos, blushing at his dad’s ribbing. Carlos met his eyes and said, “Yes.” He blushed more. 

“In fact,” Carlos continued. “I’m ready to get started. I’ve waited too long anyway. I mean, how many times do you and I have to beat death before I get the nerve to do this?” He said, looking into TK’s beautiful eyes which were looking confused. 

“What are you talking about, babe?”

“Look, I’m sorry this didn’t go how I planned. And I’m sorry I can’t get down on one knee right now, but. I hope you love me enough not to mind.” He lifted his good arm, his hand holding out the box. “A little help, Judd?”

“It’d be an honor,” the man said before leaning in and opening the box, since Carlos only had one good arm. 

At the sight of the contents of the box, TK’s eyes went as big as saucers. Surprise was written clearly over every inch of his features, which were all still beautiful even scarred and stitched up as they were at the moment. God, Carlos loved this man so much. 

“Tyler Kennedy Strand, you are the love of my life. I tried so many different scenarios in my head of how this speech would go, before I just said screw it, I’ll speak from the heart. You’re kind, funny, sexy, sweet, and everything in between. You can’t boil water and you absolutely can’t properly separate laundry. I have a dozen pink shirts as proof of that.” At this, the gathered group chuckled and TK went bright red. “Ah, but you also know just how to ease the tension from a long day just by hugging me on the doorstep. And I can always count on you to be there for me when the world gets too much, when what we see out there creeps in too far. And I want you to know, that I want to be that for you too, for the rest of our lives. So, TK. Will you marry me?”

The room was silent, apart from the hum and beeps of the machines. Everyone on the edge of their proverbial seats, but no one having any doubt to the outcome. 

“Oh, my God! Of course I’ll marry you! Yes, yes! Yes!” The last was said through TK’s fingers covering his red face, hiding the few tears that had started to fall. He held out his left hand to Carlos, who Judd had kindly helped by removing the ring from its box and handing it back to him. He slid it over TK’s finger, smiling like an idiot the whole time, barely registering the whoops and hollers of the 126 throughout the room. 

He only had eyes for TK. 

“I love you,” TK breathed through his happy tears.

“I love you too, baby. Always.”

“Oh, my God, dude, were you seriously surprised?” Nancy asked incredulously once the commotion had died down.

“Well…yeah? I didn’t expect this at all,” TK said, looking sheepish. 

“TK…my dude…he was taking you to Jeffrey’s! How could you not know?”

Once again, the room erupted in laughter and TK ducked his head again. Carlos reached out and touched his chin, catching his eyes again.

There was nothing but love there. 

CLEARLY every Tarlos fic I write has to have a proposal in it *shrug emoji* 

Also I wrote this in like an hour after I had a dream so please excuse any typos I didn’t catch!

Please reblog if you liked it! I would really really appreciate it :) Thank you for reading!

[k-comfyspace]

Izone Reaction s/o falling asleep while doing their school work

Idol: Izone

Request: No

A/n: My brain is destroyed, this took longer than expected, sorry if this had a lot of grammar issues! Hope you like it, loves!

Eunbi

Eunbi swore that she would take care of everyone as your leader. The constant late nights you spend in the dining room answering your books, the times she sleeps seeing you working and waking up to you in the same spot.

So when she came home from doing the groceries, a frown etched on her face when she saw you passed out on the table, your books and laptop opened while a pencil hung from your ear. She approached your sleeping form, taking a look at your work and saving it before shaking you awake,

“Y/n,” she shook you until you groaned, opening your eyes and groggily calling out. “Unnie?” You called and she smiled at you, cooing at your cuteness,

“Let’s get you to bed,” you couldn’t argue with her and just stood letting her lead you to your room before tucking you in. The soft pillow knocking you out instantly, “Sleep well, baby,” she whispered before leaving your room , closing the door and making her way to tidy your things.

Sakura

Your girlfriend was busy cleaning the dorm, she was left behind while the others had their own plans, she saw the opportunity and decided to clean the whole dorm. Halfway through the front door opened, followed by your tired form entering, dropping your bag beside the couch and slumping on the couch.

Sakura peeked and saw you, a smile forming on her face as she continued cleaning,

“How was your project, love?” She called out but when she didn’t get a response she peeked again, cooing when she saw how your body was unmoving and relaxed, followed by a quiet snore. She smiled at your form, moving to take the blanket and drape it over you, making sure to keep her noise minimal as to let you rest.

Hyewon

Hyewon left her room, going to the kitchen to retrieve the leftover gummy bears she had saved last night. She paused when she saw you slumped on the table, various books and papers littered, one of said books resting on your head. It made her laugh at the state you were in before she sat next to you.

Quietly pulling a chair and eating her food, silently watching you as the book lifted and came back down, your breath moving some of the papers as your snoring echoed a little because of the book.

Maybe if someone saw her it would be creepy, but she enjoyed it, seeing you so peaceful made her heart tickle because she knew that she was the lucky one getting to date such a hard working person.

Yena

Your girlfriend would be on the softer side.

Though she is known to be quite playful, she has this side of her that only is soft to you. She’s definitely been teased by her members but she doesn’t care, she’s soft to you and only you.

One time to prove it is when she saw you at midnight, working on your computer while she busies herself on instagram, you two often enjoy the silence, especially if you were working on a paper while Yena was also comfortable, all she needed was you in a room anyway.

But halfway through, the typing sounds stopped, Yena thought you were thinking. Since she knew that this paper would be graded by one of the strict teachers, every word and sentence had to be right.

But for a few minutes it didn’t continue so she looked up, only to gasp when she saw you, face slumped against the desk snoring. Yena stood, padding to your place and rolling your chair to the bed before rolling you on the mattress since she knew that your back would hurt otherwise.

Chaeyeon

Like Eunbi, Chaeyeon kept her promise in becoming the second leader. She took care of everyone and made sure you were all healthy and taken care of.

As your leader and girlfriend she made sure to look after you a little more than the rest. She knew how difficult school could get, though going to school while being an idol is a different story, she would try her best to understand and help you as best as she could.

When she came home and you crashed on her bed, snoring while you clutched her pillow, Chaeyeon cooed.

Even though you were only a few years younger than Minju she still considered you as a baby. So she changed and snuggled beside you quietly, your arms looping around her unconsciously, making Chaeyeon’s heart melt at your actions.

Chaewon

“You need to sleep, love,” you looked up at your girlfriend, squinting your eyes and removing your glasses, rubbing your eyes. It was sore from the hours you spent looking at your computer.

“I’ll just finish this, I promise, I’ll sleep soon” you said and busied continued your work, fingers gliding against the keyboard while Chaewon sighed and decided to let you be, she knew how stubborn you were.

Half an hour later when she went to check on you, she shook her head when you were already knocked out.

Sleepily sighing on your seat while she shook her head but nonetheless she couldn’t help but coo but your peaceful face before she woke you and forced you to sleep.

Chaewon laying beside you as she ran her fingers through your hair, soothing you until your tiredness took over completely.

Minju

When you met Minju at SOPA she was the definition of shy. Minju had a lot of friends but it was you specifically that managed to take her heart and attention.

So she understood the struggles that came with your industry and school. So usually the two of you would spend a lot of time together doing your work.

But sometimes you had more work than her, surprisingly while being in the same year, so she took care of you.

Often calling to make sure you weren’t overworking yourself. When she came to your apartment she was expecting to see you watching TV but a frown etched on her face when she saw you sleeping on your couch, your books on the table.

Minju sighed and took a blanket covering you before leaving a kiss on your forehead before she started to clean up your things, she would be sure to scold you tomorrow but that could wait, for now you needed rest and she was willing to give that to you.

Nako

Nako would be worried when she saw you sleeping on the floor. Your papers and school work scattered around you, it was almost as if you were dead, but your breathing made it clear that you were somewhere in dreamland.

“Aish, I told her to get some rest,” your girlfriend whispered to herself before she walked to where you slept.

Picking up your stuff, making sure not to mess up anything, then she went to your room to get a spare blanket and some pillows, because there was no way that she could carry you up those stairs.

She laid down the blanket and set up the pillows before rolling you carefully into a comfortable position. Making sure to call her leader before she joined you, opting to stay with you for now to make sure you would take care of yourself.

Hitomi

“Didn’t I tell you to rest?” You snapped your head up to your girlfriend as you smiled at her,

“Just one more, Tomi, I promise I’ll finish this then I’ll rest,” you reasoned but she wasn’t having any of it.

“You said that half an hour ago, so no more excuses, you’re sleeping and that’s it” you couldn’t argue with her.

Though she was often cutesy and baby-ish around you she was also demanding sometimes when it comes to your health. She wants you to be healthy because it would hurt her heart too much if she saw you sick.

It was mostly because of your soft spot that you weren’t able to refuse her but she had a point.

“I’ll help you tomorrow with your work, just please get at least a few hours of rest, if you want I’ll come back so we could sleep together” she said earning a nod from you before she gave you a peck on the lips leaving the room to tidy up outside, but when she came back to the room you were already asleep.

A giggle pulling out of her before she joined you, wrapping her arms around your body and caressing your hair, happy that you finally got the sleep you needed.

Yuri

Everybody knows Yuri is a cuddler. Oftentimes it was her greatest strength or her weakness. It was powerful because at times she could use it to her advantage, getting what she wanted easily, and adding puppy eyes as well as a pout seemed to be in her favor.

But sometimes she was getting too sad not being able to cuddle you, so when she got back you were forced to be trapped in her arms until she decided it was enough to let you go.

Both were pretty much a disadvantage to you but you loved her anyway. But unfortunately this was one of the times where she used it to her advantage.

She’s seen you work, for 12 hours straight to be specific, and she had told you. Multiple times to get some rest but every time you would reply a ‘yes’ but still have yet to leave your place.

So she sighed and made a decision. Quietly she tiptoed to your place making sure you didn’t hear her until she suddenly jumped in between your legs.

Resting her back against your front. You complained and told her to move but she made up an excuse and told you to rest your head on her shoulder.

Unfortunately for you it was comfortable, too comfortable, where Yuri started to smile when she constantly heard you yawn.

Added to the fact that she started to play with your hair made you sleepier until half an hour in she felt you sigh against her neck.

With a victorious smile she stood up and prepared a makeshift bed laying you down before cuddling with you.

Though it was a disadvantage for you, it proved to be useful at times you didn’t think it would be.

Yujin

Yujin understood how tough it is to balance school while being an idol. Oftentimes she’s gotten lucky because she didn’t have much work.

But with you being a year higher it was a much more different case. She tried to help you, seeing that you were nearly crying at the number of work you had to do.

But there was only so much she could do being a year below.

She didn’t know but it meant so much to you, seeing how she tries to understand your papers while having her own work to do.

It warmed our heart endlessly, so when the night was high in the moon and you were already passed out, It made her giggle every time she saw your head bobbing in the corner of her eye, seeing you fight your sleepiness until sometime later it finally won and dragged you to dreamland.

While Yujin stayed awake trying to understand a particular lesson of yours, sometimes looking at your peaceful face in awe at how much you still kept going with this kind of life

Wonyoung

Like Yujin, Wonyoung found you to be the role model in her life. Seeing you work so hard in balancing two completely different things in your life made her want to do the same.

To her you were the perfect kind of person, though you told her it was the determination to graduate and prove the haters wrong that you did deserve to graduate and be an idol at the same time.

But that only made her look up to you even more. Of course she knew that you made mistakes too, so when she often sees you struggling she would try her best to help, because while she did look up to you as a student she was also your friend who cared about you a lot.

She was the person to remind you to not work that hard and remember to take breaks.

Though there were times where she listened she still knew that you are a very stubborn girl which was the one thing she hated about you.

You often used her words of being a role model as an excuse but she was quick to shut you down, claiming that sleeping late and not eating healthy is a bad example.

So when one day she saw you passed out against the dining table she sighed and went to wake you quietly before moving you to bed.

When you laid on the soft mattress your body relaxed, putting you to sleep instantly making her laugh and admire your sleeping face, a soft smile spreading through her face before she moved to the living room to clean up before joining you in your sleep.

[ghost-of-winters-past]

can’t blame me for falling (when you look at me like that)

summary: On the road to see your old childhood friends with Bucky, you found yourself wishing you’d never reach your destination. Oh, the line between friendship and love could be so thin, especially when Bucky kept looking at you like that.

pairing: bucky x fem!reader

warnings/synopsis: AU, mutual pining, swear words, another friends to lovers because honestly we love to see it. Requested by the wonderful @barnesbabyy​ You have no idea how much fun I had writing this! Feel free to request again whenever! (4.3k words) Also, I have a smutty part 2. Raise your hands if you want it.

"Fucking hell." The black duffel bag stuffed to the brim with clothes, toiletries and a few bags of chips hit the ground with a heavy thud. The zipper had only closed halfway so that the football tricot you had thrown in last was still sticking out of it. Waving your arms in the air like some kind of flightless bird, you tried to get back control of your body while your feet were busy sliding over the iced patch on the New York sidewalk. "You okay over there?" Bucky sent you a bemused look, his tousled, brown hair sticking into every direction due to just waking up. "No. I almost just died!" you shot back with a dark look after finally managing to not smack face-first onto the street. Muttering a few obscene swear words, you took Bucky’s offered hand and let him help you off the slippery ice. "Yeah, looked pretty bad. Was already planning which headstone I was gonna buy you." "Haha, really funny." "Admit it, you would miss me," you then added and watched Bucky picking up your bag from the pavement. "Jesus Christ, woman. What’s in this thing?" he groaned and still hauled it into the car trunk as if it weighed absolutely nothing. Show-off. "Just some essentials," you shrugged and went to round the car so you could finally get on the road when Bucky suddenly opened the bag and started to dig through its contents. "Hey! Get your filthy paws out of my stuff!" "What the hell do you need five king-sized packs of Reese’s Cups for?" he asked with a raised brow and an amused smirk tugging on his pink lips. "You know we’re only gone for like five days, right?" With flaring nostrils, you ripped the sweets from his grasp. "One for every day! And now you’re not gonna get any of these, congratulations!" you huffed, pushed him to the side with your elbow and stuffed the candy back into your bag. Beside you, you could hear Bucky laughing, a deep rumbling belly laugh that made something flutter in your stomach. Maybe you had caught his flu after he kept annoying you to take care of him last week, insisting he couldn’t leave the bed and needed someone to make him soup and bring him lemon tee every two hours. Normally you would have just told him to suck it up and quit being a baby like he always did when you were sick, but when he had looked at you like that with his stupid big blue ocean eyes you just couldn’t say no.

"Can we leave now? There’s supposed to be a lot of traffic and I wanna at least get to North Carolina before sundown." You didn’t even wait for his answer and just slid into the passenger seat where you had already bunkered some water bottles and salty pretzels. Just in case you or Bucky would get car sick. You were already buckling up and hoisting your socked feet up onto the dashboard after kicking off your boots. With a little sigh, Bucky got into the driver's seat. A groan rolled over his lips when he saw your propped-up feet. "Get your smelly feet off my dashboard." "My feet don’t smell, asshat," you said, stretching to reach the radio to try to connect your phone cable. From the corner of your eye, you could see Bucky shaking his head before starting the engine and mumbling something along the lines of being rude to the person chauffeuring you along half of the American east coast under his breath. Miley Cyrus' deep voice started to blare through the speakers and you could hear Bucky’s annoyed sigh, but chose to ignore it. Everybody knew the person in the passenger seat had the power over the music. "Let’s go!" you yelled and put on your sunglasses as Bucky expertly wove into traffic. There were at least nine hours of road ahead of you for today and you couldn’t wait to get going. The sooner you left, the sooner you could finally see Sam and Steve again.

"Hey, let’s play a game!" you excitedly suggested after about thirty minutes of driving. Bucky chuckled. "If that means you turn off the music, I’m in." You turned the music down. "Okay. Fuck, marry, kill." Bucky threw his head back, groaning annoyed. "That’s not the driving game I was thinking of," he said. You shrugged. "Don’t care. You start. Sam, Steve and me. Go." Giggling when he threw his head back again and let out an even louder groan, you turned around to face him and crossed your legs on the seat. "First of all: Kill Sam. That’s not even a question." Agreeing, you nodded your head. "I really don’t wanna answer the rest." "Oh come on!" you yelled and playfully shook his shoulder. "No!" he yelled back, a laugh rolling over his lips right after. "Bucky!" "Okay, okay!" Grinning, you watched him think about his answer for a while. His eyes wandered over to you for a few seconds, his cheeks reddening a little. "Say it!" "I refuse!" "Bucky, say it!" "Don’t force me to do this!" "Say it!" "Fuck and marry you, dammit!" It was dead silent. You were confused. "That’s not-" "I’m not gonna do shit with Steve! I’m either gonna fuck and marry you or nobody at all!" Slapping your hand over your mouth, you tried to hold in your laugh. "That’s not what I meant," he mumbled, embarrassed. "You love me," you started to tease him, dragging out the love in a high voice. "No. In fact, I’m gonna throw you outta the car right now." Bucky started violently pushing at your upper arm. "Get your fucking eyes back on the road!" you yelled and slapped his hands away, trying to catch your breath from laughing so hard that your eyes had teared up.

You had been sitting in the car for just over three hours when you had to make your first pit stop to get gas. Passing through most of Pennsylvania with just a few complications due to traffic, you were now just about half an hour away from crossing the border to Maryland. You were currently filling up the tank while Bucky escaped to the toilet. He had complained about needing to pee for at least 45 minutes, and you had just blown him off by reminding him that he should have gone before you left New York this morning. He was like a little child, telling you that he didn’t need to pee this morning so he didn’t go and when you had noticed the almost empty tank, you had let him wobble off while taking care of getting gas. "You want me to drive for a while?" you asked as you saw him coming back towards the car, a content look on his face. "Nah, I’m still good. You can drive tomorrow." "Okay, I’m just gonna pay real quick and then we can hit the road again," you said, putting the tank cap back into place and grabbing your wallet from the passenger seat.

Waiting in line to pay, your gaze wandered out of the big shop windows onto Bucky. He was standing in front of the open car door, languidly stretching his arms above his head so that the hem of his blue shirt kept riding up. Even from the distance, your breath hitched a little as you saw the toned sliver of skin that was now exposed to the cold February air. You had seen him without a shirt many times, and every time you had to suppress the need to run your hands over his defined muscles. Constantly you had to remind yourself that friends usually didn’t do that. The veins in his arms were almost bulging out, and you could have kept watching him for ages if the cashier wouldn’t have cleared his throat at that moment and ripped you from your observations. You put a bar of chocolate and a bottle of coke on the counter and proceeded to pay before heading back to Bucky. He was now sitting in the car again, his feet dangling out the open door and typing away on his phone. He quickly put it away when he saw you approaching.

"Can you gimme the chocolate?" he asked after getting back on the highway. "Not when you’re driving, you’re gonna kill us!" He sighed exasperated, knowing you were referring to the one time the two of you were driving upstate and he almost swerved off the street trying to open a bag of skittles. "It was one time, get over it!" You let out a little scream as he tried to reach for the chocolate in your hands, the car immediately swaying a little to the right. "Okay! I’m gonna give you a piece when you put both hands back on the wheel. Ten and two o’clock, mister!" Bucky let out a little huff, opening his mouth to complain when you held a piece of chocolate in front of his mouth. Not taking his eyes off the road, he gently closed his lips around it. The pillowy skin grazed your fingertips, sending an electrocuting tingle up your arm and then down your spine. You could feel your heart thrumming in your chest as you slowly lowered your arm. Clearing your throat, you got back to stuffing your own and suddenly very hot feeling face with chocolate.

You had been watching fields and trees passing you by with your arm propped up on the car window. After your little gas stop, it had been silent between you two. When Bucky had looked over to you after another hour of driving, he found you sound asleep with your head resting on the cold window. A small smile spread on his lips when he heard your quiet snoring. Careful, he first slipped one arm out of the sleeve of his brown jacket, then the other one before placing it over you as a makeshift blanket, not even taking his gaze off the road once. From the corner of his eye, he could see you pulling the jacket up to your chin in your sleep, a content sigh escaping your pretty lips. His eyes flickered over to your thigh, fingers itching to reach out and place his hand on the soft fabric of your sweat pants. But he didn’t know if you would be okay with it, even though you’d probably not notice. So he restrained himself and gripped onto the steering wheel tighter, focusing on the road again.

You didn’t know how much time exactly had passed, but when you woke up, it was already getting dark outside. Yawning, you stretched your arms above your head, promptly bumping into the car ceiling. In the process, the jacket slipped down your torso. Confused, you looked over to Bucky. "Hey, sleepyhead," he said and sent a warm smile in your direction. "Hey," you grumbled back, your voice still thick with sleep and yawned again. You could feel the cold seeping through to you, so you decided to slip into Bucky’s jacket. The smell of mint and his aftershave, something woodsy and warm, surrounded you, and you couldn’t help but take a deep breath. How did he always smell so good? "Where are we?" "Just a few miles outside of North Carolina," he said. "You hungry? I saw a sign for a 24-hour diner a few minutes ago," he then added. "I could go for a burger." "You got it, doll." Warmth spread through your chest when you heard the nickname he usually just reserved for women he tried to pick up at your local bar. You just hoped he didn't hear your heart beating in your chest. Clearing your throat, you let your gaze wander out of the window again, letting Bucky's delicious smell fill your nose, almost lulling you back to sleep.

There were just two other cars parked in front of the retro diner when Bucky killed the engine. It was dark now, the cold air filling the car as soon as you opened the door. Burying your hands deep into the pockets of his jacket, you followed him to the entrance. "Thanks." Bucky noticed the red hue that was spreading on your cheeks when he held the door open for you, his heart doing a little jump when he saw how cute you looked in his jacket. It was a good few numbers too big on you, the sleeves bunching up around your wrists and its length covering up your butt. His head shot back up immediately when he realized he was checking out your ass, something he usually didn’t do. I mean, he had noticed you had a nice ass. Many times. And yes, admittedly, he had caught his hand reaching out to give it a good hard slap every now and then, but that’s just what best friends did, right? Right? That didn’t mean he was actually checking you out. He was just…observing.

A waitress motioned you over to a free booth at a window. She handed you two menus as you sat down and quickly took your drink order before leaving you to decide on food. "I need something greasy," you stated with a longing look at the cheese fries that were displayed on the plastic-wrapped cards. When Bucky didn’t say anything, you lifted your eyes from the menu and found him staring at you with a thoughtful look, his tongue running over his plump lips. "What?" "You just look so damn good in my clothes," he said, his voice a few octaves deeper than usual. Goosebumps spread over your arms when you watched him biting his bottom lip. Then he suddenly seemed to snap out of it, eyes widening a little before clearing his throat and hiding his face behind the menu. Even if you had known what to say, you physically couldn't bring yourself to even utter a word. Your throat was suddenly so dry that you greedily took a big gulp of the water the waitress had just placed in front of you. Awkward silence took over after ordering your food. "So, are we gonna stop for a motel soon?" "Let’s just take the first one we see, yeah?" Nodding your agreement, you started to play with the sleeve of his jacket. Then it was silent once again. Thankfully it didn’t take too long for your food to arrive, and once you started to dig in, Bucky’s comment from earlier was long forgotten.

"Shit, this is amazing," you said in between bites, an appreciative moan leaving your lips when you bit into the juicy burger. "You have a little something. Right there." Bucky motioned to your mouth, a little laugh tumbling from his lips when you tried to reach the cheesy spot with the tip of your tongue. "Wait. Let me." Reaching out over the table, his thumb moved to the corner of your lips. You could feel your heart stop for a second as you looked up into his wide blown eyes. Something was different. You didn’t just see it in the blue of his eyes, you could feel it in the air. Bucky’s thumb stilled, pulling down your bottom lip as his eyes settled on the sight of his thumb resting on the delicate skin of your lips. Without even a second thought, your tongue shot out, licking the cheese from his fingertip. "Fuck," you heard him curse quietly, a shaky breath escaping his mouth. Your eyes widened in shock and a weird feeling settled deep in your stomach. "I need to pee."

Jumping from your seat, his hand fell from your face. You could feel his stare on you as you ran off to the restroom, inwardly cringing at your own words. A hand came to rest on the spot he had touched after you had locked yourself in one of the stalls. Staring at the beige tile, you could not believe what had just happened. It was almost as if your brain had short-circuited. You didn’t even realize what you were doing until you had already tasted the salt of his fries on his fingertip. Convinced that you had just ruined your friendship, you sat down on the closed toilet seat, burying your head in your hands. You still had to spend at least ten more hours crammed in the car with him, and you could already imagine the awkwardness. Why? Why did you have to act this weird? It’s not like you had confidently decided to suck his finger into your mouth, your body had just acted on its own. He must have been thinking you’re a freak now. I mean, who did this kind of thing?Realizing that things would only get weirder the longer you hid from him, you tried to calm your nerves and slow down your breath. You were almost sure you were close to the brink of a panic attack, but maybe you were just overreacting.

Bucky was staring out of the big window next to the table, absently playing with his fingers. He could still feel your tongue running over his fingertip. Groaning, he shifted in his seat and pressed his eyes together. But all that came to his mind was the way you had looked up to him through your lashes while your tongue had been wrapped around his thumb. "Fuck," he muttered again, knowing he couldn’t just forget what it had felt like. Where did this suddenly come from? Initially, all he wanted to do was wipe the melted cheese from the corner of your mouth, but it was as if his own body had betrayed him. He hadn’t even realized what he had done until he could feel the warmth of your mouth. His eyes shot open again and he found your approaching reflection in the mirror. He could already see the uncomfortable look on your face. Immediately he felt guilty. You didn’t say anything when you sat down, just reaching for your burger and calmly starting to eat again. So he did the same, his eyes glued to the silver table and an awkward silence between you two.

Bucky wordlessly paid for dinner and silently followed you back to the car. You didn’t even dare to argue with him about paying for you. Hell, you didn’t even look at him anymore. He was almost 100% sure he had ruined your friendship. You drove about another twenty minutes before finding a decent motel and booking two rooms for the night. "Well, night then," you said with a timid smile, not really meeting his eyes, once you were stood outside of your room. "Good night," he responded and let out a sigh when you shut the door. It was not even nine o’clock, usually the two of you would hang out a little longer, but he could understand that you didn’t want to see him. He felt horrible for backing you into the corner like that. He had been laying on the bed for what felt like an eternity, his thoughts jumping between the fact that you were childhood friends and literally had seen each other in diapers, and the feeling you had evoked when you had looked at him like that. He could not deny the tingle in his bones when he had felt the warmth of your tongue. And it really shouldn’t affect him like this. After all, he had done way more intimate things with women, but when he now thought about it, he realized that he hadn’t brought one home in a long while. In fact, he couldn’t even remember the last time he picked up a pretty girl from the club or the bar. He would rather leave with you, getting a coffee at midnight or playing video games at your apartment until the sun would rise. You just gave him this feeling he couldn’t even put into words. But he had never felt like this with anybody else. Even now, when there was a thin motel wall separating you two, he could feel your presence. It was as if his mind was desperately trying to reach out to yours, craving to intertwine itself with you. Bucky shot up when he realized it. Fuck it, he decided. He was out the door in seconds.

You were sitting on the bed absently playing with your phone, your chin propped up on the palm of your hand. The beige wallpaper suddenly seemed extremely interesting. You groaned as you tossed your phone aside and let yourself fall back into the mattress. The hungry look in Bucky’s eyes had imprinted itself on the back of your mind, making itself comfortable there. You didn’t think you could ever forget the way he had looked at you, the way he had tasted. Letting out a quiet scream into your hands you threw your head from left to right. No, this was a bad idea, you decided. But what if- You didn’t even allow yourself to complete that thought. There’s just no way he had felt the air change around you back in that diner too. There’s just no way his heart had been beating like crazy too ever since. But what if it had? You didn’t know what to think, you just knew one thing. If you didn’t get off your ass and ask him, you would never know. And probably go crazy. You clumsily stumbled over your bag that was lying in front of the bed on your way to the door. You were almost completely sure of what you were about to do, but you didn’t have any more time to think about it, because when you pulled the door open, Bucky was already standing there.

It was as if you both finally stopped thinking altogether. Your bodies were gravitating towards each other as if you had never done anything else in your life. You could feel his warm lips pressing onto yours with the same desperation you felt. Eyes closed, your hands buried in his short locks, you pulled him as close to you as possible, and shamelessly pushed your body into his, the two of you moulding together perfectly. A shiver ran up your spine when you felt his tongue slipping into your mouth, a little sigh escaping your lips. It was as if all the tension left your limbs as soon as you tasted him on your tongue. Hurriedly you led him back into your room, not daring to let off his lips for even a second. The door slammed shut behind you before Bucky’s hands gripped onto your waist. You could feel his lips spelling out your name against yours, his beard pleasantly scratching at your skin, a quiet moan following when you tugged at his hair. His hands wandered down to your hips, pulling your lower half into his, and you obediently melted into him. "Should we talk about-" he mumbled against your lips. "Stop. Just-just stop talking," you groaned out, the kiss too amazing to ruin it with a serious conversation. He happily obliged, pushing you deeper into the room until the backs of your knees hit the edge of the bed, and you tumbled onto the sheets in a giggly mess of tangled limbs. For tonight you agreed to stop thinking about what could possibly happen after this and gave into what your bodies and minds so desperately craved for.

"There you are! Oh man, I’ve missed you guys! Come, give me a hug!" Sam had a huge smile plastered on his face as he pulled Bucky and you into a greeting hug. "It’s been ages!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Looking good, Sam!" you complimented him smiling and giving his arm a gentle squeeze. "Guys! Look at you!" A grin tugged at Buckys lips as he pulled Steve into a brotherly hug, slapping his back lightly. "You ready to watch the big game?" you asked the tall blonde and found him showing you his blinding teeth. "Hell yeah. It’s not every day that the Giants play in the Super Bowl!" "Do you need help with your stuff?" Sam asked, but before you could say anything, Bucky shook his head. "We’re good. You wouldn’t be able to lift her bag anyway," he teased him and just earned himself a light smack on the back of his head from you. Even in the setting sunlight, his eyes twinkled a little as he fondly looked down at you. Sam and Steve were already making their way back inside the house while the two of you started to unload the trunk.

"Here, let me." Bucky gently took the bag from you and shouldered it. "What a gentleman," you grinned up at him, almost getting lost in the sweet look in his baby blue eyes. "For you, always." He slowly leaned down to you, as you gently placed your palm over his chest, right where his heart was beating in an elevated, steady rhythm. "Now I just need to kill Sam and marry you to complete my list," he joked, referencing your driving game from yesterday. Immediately your face felt like it was on fire. "And there we go, back to being a pig." "Come on, you love it." Yeah, you did. You had never seen the type of smile now displayed on his face before. His eyes roamed over your entire face as if he tried to commit it all to memory, right hand resting low on your back, just over the swell of your ass. "Say it again," you then whispered, your face only inches away from his. "Don’t know what you mean, doll." Clicking your tongue on the roof of your mouth, you smacked his chest. "Say it. Need to hear it again." A lazy grin took over his handsome features. Bucky lowered his lips onto yours, but before you could kiss him properly, he moved them over your cheek, down to your neck and then back up again, where he found that place right under your ear. He placed a quick, loving kiss onto the spot he had already marked repeatedly last night, your trembling legs almost giving out under you. His lips grazed the shell of your ear, making you shiver excitedly as he whispered the words he had traced and mumbled into your skin at least a million times the night before. "I love you."

[tatooedlaura-blog]

Interim

set somewhere around Unrequited, that interim time when fighting fear in the daylight is one thing but battling it alone in the dark is another ...

Our Moment Chapter 1: Five Words (post-Leonard Betts) Chapter 2: Sidebar Nonsense (post-Memento Mori) Chapter 3: Interim (floating somewhere around Unrequited)

@today-in-fic

&&&&&&&&&&

It had been a longer case than normal, draining in every sense of the word: physically, mentally and emotionally, but they were almost there, he could feel it. Finally seeing a connection, everybody moved, organized chaos, Mulder and Scully amongst the throng of officers storming the building, guns out, ready for anything.

As with everything they ever did, it wasn’t easy. The suspect ran, hid, fired, threatened, ran again, fired some more, was finally taken down by one of the local cops but there was a foot chase first, that had them all running, searching, wishing his ass would just collapse and die in the middle of the street.

But it was done and sooner rather than later, they were de-briefing in the conference room, getting their paperwork in order. Looking around for Scully, to ask her what his writing said, he saw a glimpse of her back as she disappeared out the door. Usually she would have said something about going so, instead of letting her be, which she probably wished he would, he stood to follow, excusing himself from the talking crowd.

Scanning the front parking lot, he didn’t see her but deciding he might as well enjoy the unseasonable warmth of a Tennessee winter, he turned left, following the sidewalk around the building. Another turn left and he spotted her, sitting on the hood of their rental, facing away, small, hidden by a sea of police vehicles and employee parked Fords and Chryslers. He measurably widened his stride when he noticed her hand held up to her face.

He could see the blood dripping from between her fingers and down onto the pavement. Making it to her side, he pulled out one of several handkerchiefs he’d taken to carrying in his pockets and held it out to her, “take this.”

They had a routine, he helped, she let him.

It wasn’t long before the handkerchief saturated, Mulder touching her shoulder, “I’ll be back in a second with something else.” Seeing her nod, he ran back to the front door, asking calmly for some towels and getting them almost immediately, thanks to the helpful front desk officer and his mad organizational skills. Heading back Scully’s way, he was breathing heavy by the time she took his offering and dropped the soggy handkerchief to the ground. “Is it slowing down any?” Muffled ‘yes’ reached his ears but behind the wadded green towel obscuring half her face, he saw her skin sallow, white and translucent, veins beneath a blue map of fear. Now in front of her, he rested his hands on her thighs, leaning forward to kiss her forehead, smelling the iron tang of blood four inches below his nose, “do you want to go to the hospital?”

“Probably but I’d really rather just lay down for a few minutes, then get some orange juice or something, anything with some sugar in it.”

One last kiss and he pulled away, hand off thigh and up to towel, holding it for her so she could put her arms down, which she was grateful for. Every few seconds he’d move and check, finally finding the flow had slowed to a trickle, then finally stopped all together. Gently wiping away the smears from her chin, “I need maybe another half hour inside, then we can go or I can drop you at the hotel and come back.”

Desperately wanting a bed, she shook her head, “if you could just go find me something to eat, I’ll stay out here and wait for you.”

As he held her elbow, watched her slide from car to ground, “are you sure you don’t want a hospital?”

“I really don’t but thank you.”

“Fair enough.” Soon, she was settled in her seat, tilted back, coat near in case she got cold, “I’ll be back in a few. Don’t go anywhere.”

Eyes already shutting, “I won’t.”

&&&&&&&&&&

Tossing out the browning handkerchief, he carrying the clean towel he still had back to the station, having left the other with Scully. Handing it back to the officer, “thank you. I think we’ll need to keep the other one so if you’ll let me know what I owe you for it, I’d appreciate it.”

Shaking his head, “they’re just shop towels. We have boxes of them in the back.”

“Thank you.”

“Did you need any help out there? Something happen with your car?”

Another shake of his head, “no, we’re fine but thanks.”

Mulder then headed back towards the room of officers, finding the meeting over and the chief watching him approach, “everything all right? I saw your partner go, then you.”

Needing to be blunt because she wouldn’t be back in to help them finish, “I’d like to keep this quiet but Agent Scully has a medical condition that caused severe nosebleeds and she felt one coming on so she left. She’s out in the car now and I need to get her some juice first, then I’ll be back to finish up our end of the paperwork.”

Everyone had been cooperative, treating them well and even now, instead of irritation, the chief showed genuine concern, “is she alright now? Do you need to take her to the hospital?”

Looking around quickly, “she actually has cancer and the most the hospital could do would give her some juice and remind her that this kind of thing will happen.”

The chief liked the pair of them and crossing his arms, attentive, “is she getting treatment?”

Mulder really didn’t want to talk about this anymore, his mind divided between juice, Scully, paperwork, and Scully, “she is but with her type of tumor, surgery isn’t an option and the treatments aren’t doing much.” Needing to extract himself before he began sobbing in the large man’s arms, he inhaled slowly, “but we deal with it. Do you have anything I can take out for her?”

Having lost his wife to cancer several years ago, the chief recognized the look in Mulder’s eyes and knowing to end the conversation, he nodded, “come with me.”

Soon, Scully had her juice and crackers, Mulder returning inside yet again, this time determined to finish everything in under 30 minutes. As he watched Scully drink, he could see her color wasn’t returning as quickly as it should and the vacant look in her eye told him to hurry the hell up.

Thirty-four minutes later, he was shaking hands with the chief, accepting the man’s ‘good luck and God bless’ before leaving for the last time, opening the driver side door and driving off, his partner asleep in the seat beside him and even though he would never tell a soul, he actually checked to make sure she was breathing before anything else.

That action would haunt his sleepless nights for weeks to come.

She stirred once the car hit a pothole and looking up at his, blinking, “are you done?”

“Yeah. I’m going to pick us up some food first, then I’ll get you home.”

“I’d like a cheeseburger, if possible.”

Bag of food in hand 10 minutes later, Scully was nearly asleep again by the time they got to the hotel. Getting out of the car, she stumbled her way directly to her door, leaving behind bag, coat, shoes, and food. Smiling as he gathered their things, he followed her through her still open room door, shutting it with his foot, “do you want to change first or eat?”

“Eat, please.” Holding her hand out, “sorry. I didn’t even think to grab the bag. I just thought door and bed.”

“I’m keeping track. Once you get better, you’ll be my slave for a few weeks and we’ll call it even.” Saying it with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, he handed her a napkin, “you’re gonna need this.”

Dinner was quick, inhaled more than chewed, Scully unfocused as she chewed, her body exhausted, her mind slow enough to allow sleep if she could just lay down. Halfway through her second burger, she suddenly put it down, “I need to go to sleep.” Mulder tossed her the pajamas from the top of her luggage and after quick changing in the bathroom, door open, who cared, she crawled under the covers, apologizing as she went, “I’m sorry. I just … I need to lay down.”

“It’s fine.” Continuing to eat at the small table, “I’ll clean this up when I’m done and go back to my room but I’d like to leave the door between us open, if that’s all right? If you need anything, you can just yell for me.”

She was already halfway to dreaming but pretty sure she mumbled ‘okay’, she stopped caring, her muscles relaxing, finally, horizontal so much better than vertical.

Good to his word, he ate, cleaned up, covered her better with her blankets, kissed her twice on the forehead, then disappeared next door, opening the door between their rooms enough to hear her but not enough to disturb with the light of the TV.

&&&&&&&&&&

Her clock read 11:52pm when she woke up. Groggy math concluded she’d been asleep for about five hours and rolling over, she saw the adjoining door open as promised, faint light fluttering from some late-night B-movie Sci-Fi flick no doubt. She tried to go back to sleep, but a restlessness had settled, her mind beginning to churn with thoughts she didn’t want and emotions she didn’t need. Another glance at the clock told her she’d killed six minutes.

God-dammit.

Standing, she shuffled her way over to the adjoining door, pulling her side open more, then slowly pushing his, standing for a moment, watching him read the book propped on his vee’d knees. Leaning on the frame, bringing back a rush of memories from their first night together, years ago, running request submitted and denied in the middle of the Oregon wilderness, she cleared her throat, causing him to turn in her direction but not startle, which she would question at another time. Once he’d focused in on her in the darkness, she asked quietly, “want to go for a drive?”

He was having the same flashbacks and tilting his head at her, “you okay?”

“Can we just … I want to get out of here for awhile … ignore my brain …” head now against the frame, “I woke up and now … … … yeah.”

Tossing his book to one side, he stood, grabbing his wallet and keys, “let’s go.”

She loved that he didn’t ask anything, didn’t inquire, didn’t turn loose his psychology degree on her midnight suggestions, but instead, reached for her back and held the door.

“Any destination in mind?”

Settling into the passenger seat, shoes off, feet tucked under her, crisscross style, “anywhere but here.”

“Midnight wandering. Excellent.”

They drove in their typical silence, comfortable, comforting, depending on Scully’s frame of mind, for almost ten minutes before Mulder reached over, tapping her thigh, “how’s your head?”

“Attached.” Eyeing his hand, now dangling over the console, fingers still easily within tapping range, “nose is stuffy but the taste in the back of my throat is gone, so that’s something.”

Finger against her again, this time fingernail catching on the fuzzies of her flannel pants, “you scared me. A lot.”

Left hand shifting so she could stoke his knuckles, weaving in and around them in soft, satin fashion, “I’m sorry. I was doing fine. I felt fine until it just … happened.”

Hand finally moved enough to squeeze her knee, both shocked at his action and both wanting him to stay, “just … don’t do it again, okay?” Now he slid his hand over to wedge in at the bend behind her knee, “fingers are cold.”

They were most definitely not cold.

Another five in quiet, Mulder shifting to get more comfortable, left hand lightly on the wheel, right hand firmly on her and she returned to his knuckles, ventured to that little round nubbin’ bone in his wrist at times, until, “what will I have to do while I’m your slave? Are you going to make me clean your bathroom and feed your fish? Or will it be more of a Princess Leia thing? Gold bikini, ball and chain, looking hot in the corner when your friends come over?”

How he didn’t crash, he would never know, “do you own a gold bikini?”

“Like I’m going to answer that.”

Genuine grin out the windshield, “I think it’ll be more that I’ll make you watch movies with me and go play miniature golf and maybe, just maybe, I’ll force you to go to dinner with me.”

“Oh, the perils of slavedom in Mulderworld.” Resting her head back against the seat, “huh. Did you realize,” reaching her hand to the ceiling, pushing a panel back, “that we have a moonroof.”

Quick glance up, “I did not. I wonder if I paid extra for that.”

“The Bureau may have and I’m okay with that.” Studying the sky above, “I’m thinking that we should find a nice, quiet sideroad and turn the car off and open this up and see what there is to see.”

Giving her leg another squeeze, “I believe when I was sixteen, that was the line I used to get to second base.”

“I’ve always enjoyed baseball.”

He looked at her, face turned up still, smile faint but there, “how can you still shock me after all this time?”

“I’m amazing.”

Finding the sideroad and turning, “I’ve known that since the beginning.”

Her smile grew wider as he turned off the car, “you were weird at the beginning but intriguing enough to keep around.” Finally looking at him, “and I guess I’d use the word amazing … at times.”

Restarting the car just to get the roof open, he turned it off again, the sounds of night filling the car, “I’d like to talk about baseball again.”

Now she laughed, putting her seat back, “talk to me about the stars.”

Hating to do it, he removed his hand from her and matched her tilt back, scooting a little to the right so his head was near hanging off the rest, pretense of seeing out the roof better and all. She did the same and soon their forehead were almost touching, shoulders were. His hand missed her so it went searching again, this time finding her upper thigh, resting lightly, not allowing gravity to work in his favor, to pull him closer to third-base territory, “what do you want to hear about them?”

“Everything. Nothing. I just like to hear you talk, especially in the dark.”

Wondering if confessions were the name of the game tonight, “Sam once told me that she made a wish on every star, not just the shooting ones.”

“That’s an awful lot of wishes for an 8-year-old.”

“She had a lot of time on her hands apparently.”

Turning her head so she could kiss his nose, she returned to her side of the car quickly, “I wish I had that kind of time. I don’t think we’ve stopped long enough to have an actual conversation in months.”

Finally connecting his forehead to hers, “is that why we’re out here talking about stars?”

“Possibly.” Silence reigned again until Scully’s hand shot up, “shooting star!”

“Make your wish.”

Once she’d squinched her eyes shut, made her plea to the starry gods, she said, absently, into the shadows, “I know it won’t come true but I don’t think it hurts to ask.”

Twisting to his right side to face her, switching hands on her leg, quiet cursing that the console separating them dared to exist, “it never hurts to ask. I’ve been screaming the same wish for months. Someone’s bound to answer me, if for nothing else, just to shut me up.”

If she looked at him, in this instant, in this universe, she would fall apart, cracked pieces in his hands with no hope of re-assembly. Keeping her eyes on the sky, “my favorite constellation is the Southern Cross. You can only see in in the southern hemisphere but one day, I’m going to go to Australia and I’m going to sit there, on a beach, all night long, just to stare at it.”

“Whirlwind world tour?”

“I’d like that. I’ve got six other continents to see. Might have to start as soon as I can.”

“If I offer to provide breakfast and lunch, can I come?”

He watched her nod and smile in the starlight, “I never thought you wouldn’t.”  Catching his gaze at her out the corner of her eye, “you’re not looking at the stars anymore, Mr. Mulder.”

“I’ve got a better view down here on Earth, Miss Scully.”

Shaking her head, “the things you say sometimes.”

“Hey, I’ve slept in your bed. I’m allowed to call you ‘pretty’.”

Shifting to face him instead of the stars, she wondered if she dare share how much those nights still sat in the forefront of her mind, first before her diagnosis and second after he’d driven her home, taken care of her as she was sick, kept her warm as she came off her first round of chemo, “twice, actually, I’ve let you sleep in my bed.”

Moving his hand from her leg to run along her hairline, brief stop to rest his palm over her neck, “I think, someday, we should do that again, have a sleepover of epic proportions: scary movies, ice cream, pizza, and pillow fights. What do you say?”

Instead of the smile he’d been hoping for, he watched her face tighten, forehead wrinkle, nose flare, then contort back to normal Scully, just as her eyes filled with tears, which began falling immediately, “I’m scared.”

Sliding himself forward, hand still on her, he tugged gently at her neck until she moved towards him, “come here.” Meeting her lips for a brief moment, he went back in for another before resting forehead against hers, “I’m scared enough for both of us so maybe we should take turns. I’ll be scared Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and you can do Tuesday and Thursday.”

Wanting another kiss, she remained still, “what about the weekends?”

“We can share those. We’ll stay at your place one weekend then at mine the next. We’ll deal with it together. How’s that sound?”

Still crying, she almost laughed at the depth of the burden of solitude she didn’t know she carried until Mulder offered to carry it with her. Desperation nearly moved her to his mouth again but fighting it, she let out a wet, crackling sob before sighing, “thank you.”

“You’re not alone, I promise.”

Another shuddering breath out, she forced herself to back up, return to her own space, but found she couldn’t get far, Mulder’s hand still firmly on her neck, “Mulder.”

“I think we should talk about baseball again.”

Shutting her eyes against his searching look, she ignored the sudden tingling up her spine, “my head’s a mess right now. I don’t think I could separate ‘baseball’ from fear and I don’t want to ruin … it can’t be done like this. I’m sorry.”

She felt him pull away, then kiss her forehead lightly, talking into her skin, “you’ve got a dirty mind. I just wanted to discuss this year’s lineup for the Sox.”

Finally, she did laugh, gently bumping into his head with hers, “I’m more of a Cubs fan myself but talk away.”

“The Cubs? Really? What the hell is wrong with you?”

As they both separated, settled back into their own seats, Mulder’s hand back on her leg, “to be fair, that’s the first team I thought of.”

“Thank God. I thought I was going to have to rescind everything I just promised you. Although now, our Sunday fear sharing is going to be filled with baseball games, both live and from my couch.”

“I’d like that.” Silence between them filled with crickets chirping and frogs croaking, Scully reached down her leg to find his hand, lacing fingers together, pulling his knuckles to her mouth to kiss them, one by one, before, “I’d like that a lot and by the way, pretty sure you already rounded first.”

“Ahh, yes,” grinning upwards, “yes, I did.”

“Mulder.”

Her voice pulled him back from his amusement, “yeah?”

“I’m finally tired.”

With a chuckle, he looked over at her, “ready to go back?”

“No, but we probably should or we just sleep out here tonight and pray we don’t get eaten by bears or overzealous hunters.”

Mulder snapped his seat back up, “home it is.” It took twice as long to find the hotel because Mulder hadn’t paid attention as he was driving but eventually, they found their home away from home. Both were sleepy at this point and once inside Mulder’s room, Scully headed, heavy-lidded, to the adjoining door but stopped when Mulder spoke, “thanks for asking me to go for a drive.”

“Thanks for driving me.” Knuckling a knock on the door frame where she’d been leaning a few hours earlier, “it’s Friday now, right?”

“Yeah. My day to worry. Now go to bed before you fall down.”

With a nod and a smile, she disappeared into the darkness.

[ava-candide]

Poldark’s Aidan Turner on playing Leonardo da Vinci

The newly married heart-throb actor learnt to paint left-handed for his new role, and he’s still daubing now, he tells Ed Potton

Aidan Turner takes on the role of Renaissance polymath Leonardo

I’m trying to work out where Aidan Turner is Zooming from. Is it London, where he moved to in 2017 after his Ross Poldark became the drooled-over king of Sunday-night television? Dublin, where he grew up, trained as an actor and returned to spend the first lockdown with his parents? Or Rome, where he shot his new series, Leonardo, in which he plays a young Leonardo da Vinci?

“None of the above!” Turner says. “I’m in Toronto.” The enigmatic charm, feline eyes and gleaming locks that he deployed so mercilessly in Poldark, The Hobbit films and Being Human are all there. “My missus is working here,” he explains, and so is he. That’s the American actress Caitlin FitzGerald, his partner of three years, whom he met when they starred in the 2018 film The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot. At first I assume the “missus” is laddish affectation but it turns out that it’s official: Turner and FitzGerald, both 37, got married in secret in Italy in August after filming finished on Leonardo. You can almost hear the sighs of disappointment ripple around the world.

Turner won’t say any more — he is famously guarded about his personal life — but he looks insanely happy in the couple’s rented apartment. FitzGerald — whose grandfather Desmond was a CIA agent and organised several plots to assassinate Fidel Castro — is shooting a series, Station Eleven, in Toronto while her husband works on another project that he’s not allowed to talk about. In their downtime they’ve been watching I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, an HBO documentary series about the Golden State Killer, and, on a lighter note, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles. They share the apartment with Charlie, an ebullient Norfolk terrier that Turner has to eject from the room halfway through our interview when he starts yapping. “I’m surprised he behaved for so long,” he says

Eight-part series Leonardo has been criticised for warping history

Like many of his fellow thesps, Turner has been doing a great deal of lockdown painting. “We have a roof garden here and the light has been really good,” he says. “I probably shouldn’t be saying this because I don’t know if the landlord knows. It’s not messy work anyway!” Unlike some of his peers — I’m looking at you, Pierce Brosnan — he has yet to unleash his daubings on the world. How would he describe his style? “I struggle to say abstract, but I haven’t quite figured out what it is yet.” Did it help with playing Leonardo? “I don’t know. If you saw my paintings, you’d assume very much not,” Turner says. He has a studied line in self-effacement, honed after years of “sexiest man on TV” questions.

Leonardo premiered in Italy last month and was watched by seven million, many of them doubtless keen to see Turner brooding in a succession of smocks. The eight-part series has been criticised for warping history, having the artist accused of murder and featuring an apparently fictional muse, Caterina da Cremona, played by Matilda De Angelis from The Undoing. Luca Bernabei, the chief executive of Lux Vide who produced the series, defended it stoutly. “Matilda De Angelis’s character did exist. She was a model Leonardo asked to paint,” he said. “We have been really careful in our research. But this is not a documentary, we are not historians and this is not a university history lecture.”

And if the history pedants are spluttering, the art pedants should be happier — the series goes to considerable lengths to make the painting look authentic. Each episode is themed around a different masterpiece, from the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci to The Last Supper to the Mona Lisa, and the candlelit cinematography is often sumptuous. Turner’s research included a private view of a Leonardo exhibition. “I spent some time alone with the actual paintings, which was brilliant,” he says. “They’re just like high-definition photographs. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that a human had done this.”

Aidan Turner attended an artist’s boot camp before filming started

The series opens in Florence in the 1460s, with Leonardo a pupil of Verrocchio, played by the veteran Italian actor Giancarlo Giannini. Before the shoot Turner and his co-stars went on an artists’ boot camp (brush camp?) supervised by professionals. He says the hardest part was learning to paint, as Leonardo did, with his left hand. He compares it to learning to ride a horse for Poldark, which he pretended he knew how to do before going on a crash course when he got the part.

Brushwork was the same, he says. “I realised I had to get good quite quickly and look like I knew what I was doing with my left hand, which is more difficult than you would think. It’s keeping it steady — you find it just moves around a lot. Leonardo was very slow and precise — I think I got it down. After a few weeks you start picking up the brush with your left hand, it becomes natural.”

Leonardo was a vegetarian, Turner tells me, “and apparently later in life opened some sort of vegetarian restaurant”. He was also gay, something that, despite reports, the series does not shy away from. Was this Turner’s first time kissing a man on screen? He laughs. “Of all the things I was expecting you to ask next, that wasn’t one of them! In a lot of ways it was just another love scene. The fact that the gender was different — that was never a thing. No, it felt right. It didn’t feel any different at all. But yeah, to answer your question, that was the first time, which I’d never really thought of until now.”

What did feel weird, he says, were the Covid protocols. “Suddenly people are wearing masks and shields and hazmat suits. We had a big sanitisation machine as we walked in that would spray us. You take off the mask when you shoot the scene and it’s a bit strange for a second. Then you realise it’s the first time you’ve seen your co-star’s face that day. It’s not conducive to a very creative environment, for sure. But we made it work and nobody got sick.”

Turner spends a chunk of the first episode painting De Angelis, and both actors know what it’s like to be ogled. She has been asked endlessly about her naked locker-room sequence in The Undoing, just as he has been reminded of his shirtless scything scene in Poldark. Before that there was his lusted-after vampire in Being Human and his sexy dwarf in The Hobbit — branded a “dwilf” in some quarters — although that “definitely wasn’t the intention”, he says. “I think I just had less prosthetics on my face. My make-up call was 20 minutes and everyone else was sitting in the chair in the morning for three and a half hours. It wasn’t good to be around the other dwarfs in the mornings, that’s for sure.

“I get why people are interested,” he says of the ogling. “It’s just when it keeps coming up.”

We move on. According to a recent survey Cornwall has overtaken London as the most desirable place to live in Britain. Does he think Poldark played a part in that? He laughs. “Maybe we nudged a few people in the right direction. I think people forgot how beautiful that side of the world is. One of the first reviews of Poldark we read was like: ‘We can’t believe that this is our country, it looks like the south of France.’”

Could Poldark return, and would Turner be in it? If they stuck to the chronology of Winston Graham’s books they would have to leap ahead a few years. Maybe he could play an aged-up Ross Poldark in latex and fake paunch? “I don’t know if I’d be keen on the ageing-up thing,” he says. “It never really works. I don’t know whether they need to be too strict with that gap anyway. There’s the possibility someday, maybe. I enjoyed working with everybody on Poldark, from the writers right down to all the cast and crew. It really is like a family. So I’d be open to chat about it. But not for a while.”

Before that he will appear as the apostle Andrew in The Last Planet, the forthcoming biblical epic from Terrence Malick, revered creator of The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life. Well, he doesn’t know for sure if he will appear. Actors of the calibre of Rachel Weisz, Mickey Rourke and Jessica Chastain have seen their performances in Malick films vanish during editing.

“You want what’s best for the film. And if you don’t fit into it, you don’t fit into it,” Turner says in the tone of hair-shirt devotion that actors tend to use when talking about Malick. With a cast including Ben Kingsley and Mark Rylance as Satan, the movie is meant to tell the story of Jesus through a series of parables. Turner doesn’t really have a clue, though.

“You don’t necessarily know what you’re signing up to. You’re signing up to Terrence Malick,” he says. The director has “a great way of working. Everything is around ‘where is the sun’ at this particular time. That’s our natural light and it’s all we use. So things happen fast. There’s no trailers, hair, make-up, we’re just all together. You don’t know from day to day what you’ll be doing. It’s quite renegade stuff. That’s the way I always wanted to work.”

It’s closer to the immediacy of the theatre, which is where Turner started out. The son of an electrician, Pearse, and an accountant, Eileen, he represented Ireland at ballroom dancing before falling into acting. After studying at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin he acted in plays for five years and in 2018 he returned to the stage to rave reviews in Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore in the West End. Rave being the operative word — his performance was bracingly unhinged. “I can’t wait to get back to the theatre,” he says. “That’s what we’re looking at probably next.”

Turner’s character in The Lieutenant of Inishmore was an Irish freedom fighter, but he is reluctant to talk about the prospect of Irish reunification (“So I don’t get shot when I get home,” he told one interviewer). Culture is safer ground, and his native country is going through a purple patch with Sally Rooney in literature, Fontaines DC in music and the likes of McDonagh, Jessie Buckley and Denise Gough in drama. “It tends to happen in waves,” Turner says. “Coming out of drama school, Colin Farrell was such a big thing. When these actors really make it you can feel some of their light begin to shine on the industry back home.”

Like Farrell, Turner is an international star, although it has mainly been in period roles: Poldark, Leonardo, Andrew and his breakout turn as the 19th-century poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the 2009 series Desperate Romantics. It must be something about the hair.

That could be about to change, though. Toronto often stands in for New York, which suggests that his current mystery project has a contemporary setting. Does he yearn to act in jeans? “Yeah, you’re right,” he says with a laugh. “After Leonardo, I think tights and knee-length boots are out for a while.” Many would beg him to reconsider.

[captain-ross-poldark]

Poldark’s Aidan Turner on playing Leonardo da Vinci

Ed Potton

Friday 2 April 2021

Aidan Turner takes on the role of Renaissance polymath LeonardoJUSTIN SUTCLIFFE/EYEVIN

I’m trying to work out where Aidan Turner is Zooming from. Is it London, where he moved to in 2017 after his Ross Poldark became the drooled-over king of Sunday-night television? Dublin, where he grew up, trained as an actor and returned to spend the first lockdown with his parents? Or Rome, where he shot his new series, Leonardo, in which he plays a young Leonardo da Vinci?

“None of the above!” Turner says. “I’m in Toronto.” The enigmatic charm, feline eyes and gleaming locks that he deployed so mercilessly in Poldark, The Hobbit films and Being Human are all there. “My missus is working here,” he explains, and so is he. That’s the American actress Caitlin FitzGerald, his partner of three years, whom he met when they starred in the 2018 film The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot. At first I assume the “missus” is laddish affectation but it turns out that it’s official: Turner and FitzGerald, both 37, got married in secret in Italy in August after filming finished on Leonardo. You can almost hear the sighs of disappointment ripple around the world.

Turner won’t say any more — he is famously guarded about his personal life — but he looks insanely happy in the couple’s rented apartment. FitzGerald — whose grandfather Desmond was a CIA agent and organised several plots to assassinate Fidel Castro — is shooting a series, Station Eleven, in Toronto while her husband works on another project that he’s not allowed to talk about. In their downtime they’ve been watching I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, an HBO documentary series about the Golden State Killer, and, on a lighter note, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles. They share the apartment with Charlie, an ebullient Norfolk terrier that Turner has to eject from the room halfway through our interview when he starts yapping. “I’m surprised he behaved for so long,” he says.

Eight-part series Leonardo has been criticised for warping historyPA

Like many of his fellow thesps, Turner has been doing a great deal of lockdown painting. “We have a roof garden here and the light has been really good,” he says. “I probably shouldn’t be saying this because I don’t know if the landlord knows. It’s not messy work anyway!” Unlike some of his peers — I’m looking at you, Pierce Brosnan — he has yet to unleash his daubings on the world. How would he describe his style? “I struggle to say abstract, but I haven’t quite figured out what it is yet.” Did it help with playing Leonardo? “I don’t know. If you saw my paintings, you’d assume very much not,” Turner says. He has a studied line in self-effacement, honed after years of “sexiest man on TV” questions.

Leonardo premiered in Italy last month and was watched by seven million, many of them doubtless keen to see Turner brooding in a succession of smocks. The eight-part series has been criticised for warping history, having the artist accused of murder and featuring an apparently fictional muse, Caterina da Cremona, played by Matilda De Angelis from The Undoing. Luca Bernabei, the chief executive of Lux Vide who produced the series, defended it stoutly. “Matilda De Angelis’s character did exist. She was a model Leonardo asked to paint,” he said. “We have been really careful in our research. But this is not a documentary, we are not historians and this is not a university history lecture.”

And if the history pedants are spluttering, the art pedants should be happier — the series goes to considerable lengths to make the painting look authentic. Each episode is themed around a different masterpiece, from the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci to The Last Supper to the Mona Lisa, and the candlelit cinematography is often sumptuous. Turner’s research included a private view of a Leonardo exhibition. “I spent some time alone with the actual paintings, which was brilliant,” he says. “They’re just like high-definition photographs. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that a human had done this.”

Aidan Turner attended an artist’s boot camp before filming startedVITTORIA FENATI MORACE

The series opens in Florence in the 1460s, with Leonardo a pupil of Verrocchio, played by the veteran Italian actor Giancarlo Giannini. Before the shoot Turner and his co-stars went on an artists’ boot camp (brush camp?) supervised by professionals. He says the hardest part was learning to paint, as Leonardo did, with his left hand. He compares it to learning to ride a horse for Poldark, which he pretended he knew how to do before going on a crash course when he got the part.

Brushwork was the same, he says. “I realised I had to get good quite quickly and look like I knew what I was doing with my left hand, which is more difficult than you would think. It’s keeping it steady — you find it just moves around a lot. Leonardo was very slow and precise — I think I got it down. After a few weeks you start picking up the brush with your left hand, it becomes natural.”

Leonardo was a vegetarian, Turner tells me, “and apparently later in life opened some sort of vegetarian restaurant”. He was also gay, something that, despite reports, the series does not shy away from. Was this Turner’s first time kissing a man on screen? He laughs. “Of all the things I was expecting you to ask next, that wasn’t one of them! In a lot of ways it was just another love scene. The fact that the gender was different — that was never a thing. No, it felt right. It didn’t feel any different at all. But yeah, to answer your question, that was the first time, which I’d never really thought of until now.”

What did feel weird, he says, were the Covid protocols. “Suddenly people are wearing masks and shields and hazmat suits. We had a big sanitisation machine as we walked in that would spray us. You take off the mask when you shoot the scene and it’s a bit strange for a second. Then you realise it’s the first time you’ve seen your co-star’s face that day. It’s not conducive to a very creative environment, for sure. But we made it work and nobody got sick.”

With his wife, the American actress Caitlin FitzGeraldREX FEATURES

Turner spends a chunk of the first episode painting De Angelis, and both actors know what it’s like to be ogled. She has been asked endlessly about her naked locker-room sequence in The Undoing, just as he has been reminded of his shirtless scything scene in Poldark. Before that there was his lusted-after vampire in Being Human and his sexy dwarf in The Hobbit — branded a “dwilf” in some quarters — although that “definitely wasn’t the intention”, he says. “I think I just had less prosthetics on my face. My make-up call was 20 minutes and everyone else was sitting in the chair in the morning for three and a half hours. It wasn’t good to be around the other dwarfs in the mornings, that’s for sure.

“I get why people are interested,” he says of the ogling. “It’s just when it keeps coming up.”

We move on. According to a recent survey Cornwall has overtaken London as the most desirable place to live in Britain. Does he think Poldark played a part in that? He laughs. “Maybe we nudged a few people in the right direction. I think people forgot how beautiful that side of the world is. One of the first reviews of Poldark we read was like: ‘We can’t believe that this is our country, it looks like the south of France.’”

Could Poldark return, and would Turner be in it? If they stuck to the chronology of Winston Graham’s books they would have to leap ahead a few years. Maybe he could play an aged-up Ross Poldark in latex and fake paunch? “I don’t know if I’d be keen on the ageing-up thing,” he says. “It never really works. I don’t know whether they need to be too strict with that gap anyway. There’s the possibility someday, maybe. I enjoyed working with everybody on Poldark, from the writers right down to all the cast and crew. It really is like a family. So I’d be open to chat about it. But not for a while.”

Turner with Eleanor Tomlinson in PoldarkMIKE HOGAN

Before that he will appear as the apostle Andrew in The Last Planet, the forthcoming biblical epic from Terrence Malick, revered creator ofThe Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life. Well, he doesn’t know for sure if he will appear. Actors of the calibre of Rachel Weisz, Mickey Rourke and Jessica Chastain have seen their performances in Malick films vanish during editing.

“You want what’s best for the film. And if you don’t fit into it, you don’t fit into it,” Turner says in the tone of hair-shirt devotion that actors tend to use when talking about Malick. With a cast including Ben Kingsley and Mark Rylance as Satan, the movie is meant to tell the story of Jesus through a series of parables. Turner doesn’t really have a clue, though.

“You don’t necessarily know what you’re signing up to. You’re signing up to Terrence Malick,” he says. The director has “a great way of working. Everything is around ‘where is the sun’ at this particular time. That’s our natural light and it’s all we use. So things happen fast. There’s no trailers, hair, make-up, we’re just all together. You don’t know from day to day what you’ll be doing. It’s quite renegade stuff. That’s the way I always wanted to work.”

It’s closer to the immediacy of the theatre, which is where Turner started out. The son of an electrician, Pearse, and an accountant, Eileen, he represented Ireland at ballroom dancing before falling into acting. After studying at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin he acted in plays for five years and in 2018 he returned to the stage to rave reviews in Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore in the West End. Rave being the operative word — his performance was bracingly unhinged. “I can’t wait to get back to the theatre,” he says. “That’s what we’re looking at probably next.”

Turner’s character in The Lieutenant of Inishmore was an Irish freedom fighter, but he is reluctant to talk about the prospect of Irish reunification (“So I don’t get shot when I get home,” he told one interviewer). Culture is safer ground, and his native country is going through a purple patch with Sally Rooney in literature, Fontaines DC in music and the likes of McDonagh, Jessie Buckley and Denise Gough in drama. “It tends to happen in waves,” Turner says. “Coming out of drama school, Colin Farrell was such a big thing. When these actors really make it you can feel some of their light begin to shine on the industry back home.”

Like Farrell, Turner is an international star, although it has mainly been in period roles: Poldark, Leonardo, Andrew and his breakout turn as the 19th-century poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the 2009 series Desperate Romantics. It must be something about the hair.

That could be about to change, though. Toronto often stands in for New York, which suggests that his current mystery project has a contemporary setting. Does he yearn to act in jeans? “Yeah, you’re right,” he says with a laugh. “After Leonardo, I think tights and knee-length boots are out for a while.” Many would beg him to reconsider.

All episodes of Leonardo will be on Amazon from April 16

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/poldarks-aidan-turner-on-playing-leonardo-da-vinci-wnmqhxqxr

[whimperwoods]

Part 5 of Gozukk and Anna

First part is here. Second part is here. Third part is here. Fourth part is here.

I think I got everybody who asked to be on the tag list but lmk if I missed you and I’ll add you! I want to say thankful gratitude words here because of the support I’ve gotten on this one but I’m stressed out and can’t find them? Anyway, here are some Thanks and some Gratitude.

tw: slavery (past), tw: past abuse, tw: restricted eating behaviors, tw: past withholding of food

Tag list: @redwingedwhump, @nine-tailed-whump, @thehurtsandthecomfurts @kixngiggles, @bluebadgerwhump, @dragonheart905, @carolinethedragon, @whumpzone, @newbornwhumperfly, @cupcakes-and-pain, @much-ado-about-whumping

****

Gozukk knew when to leave well enough alone, but he mostly knew it because having Djaana for a sister had taught him the hard way more than enough times. Even so, it was difficult going about his day with the image of the half-elf woman’s wide, frightened eyes stuck in his mind.

Anna, her name was, apparently, and Djaana had faithfully reported back to him about her injuries and left him quaking with anger, standing helplessly beside his own tent while she went back to her own and rejoined the group of laughing, talking women mending clothes. Djaana had told him the woman would calm down in her own time, as if he hadn’t known that already, and he’d taken it as a tacit instruction to stay away from her for a while and not try to help.

It didn’t make it any easier to do.

He wasn’t out with the scouts and he couldn’t take out a hunting party just now and he needed something to do with his hands. More than with his hands. He needed full-body work, something to keep him distracted and let him get out the frustration of not having a way to fix things, just yet.

There was so much that needed doing, but he couldn’t stand still to work out a good list of priorities, not like he wanted to, so he settled for the first thing his mind hit on that seemed physical enough and collected rugs from the midwife’s and healer’s tents, hanging them from a line and beating the dust out of them so that they would be clean if anyone came back injured and needed help.

Mazogga looked at him like she knew exactly what she was up to, and maybe she did. She’d delivered him when he was born, and he remembered being a child and being sure she could see right through him, him and everybody else. She let him take her rugs, though, and she asked after the half-elf girl without pressing too hard, and the clouds of fine dust he could beat out of her rug were calming, somehow. She wasn’t as strong as she’d once been and the rug had been swept plenty, but the full strength of his arms drove more free than he thought she could manage and made him feel useful.

Before he gave in to the urge to check on his guest, he returned everything to its proper place and gathered up something for her to eat. She was too thin, but he wasn’t sure whether that meant she needed more food or gentler food, just now. He settled for dried fruit, bread, and some of the yogurt from the herd’s milk. Then, after a moment’s pause, he retrieved a small piece of honey comb, harder to come by, but good if the woman wasn’t used to anything so tart.

He took a deep breath and stepped into the tent.

The woman was kneeling with her head down, just as she’d been when the humans pushed her down in front of him, but at least this time, surrounded by cushions and soft lantern light, she looked a little bit more relaxed. Maybe. He hoped.

“Hello,” he said, his voice as gentle as he could keep it without falling into the tone one used with babies and toddlers and not grown women, “I’ve realized I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Gozukk. I’ve brought you something to eat.”

Anna looked up, the bruises on her face a little bit less obvious in the lantern light than they’d been in the full sun, but still clearly visible around her eyes. She looked startled and afraid, but at least this time she kept breathing normally, ducking her head back down but keeping together much better than she had the first time.

“Thank you, Master,” she said softly. Then, hesitantly, she added, “I’m -” she bit her lip, “not sure . . . what I’ve done to earn it yet.” Her voice faded nearly to a whisper and her eyes closed tight, flinching away prematurely.

Gozukk’s gut tightened, but he kept his face even as he moved to sit beside her, not too close, with the food laid out between them. Anna was trembling faintly, but her breathing was steady, and he needed to keep it that way.

“Look at me,” he ordered, nearly at a whisper himself.

She obeyed immediately, wide brown-green eyes meeting his own deeper brown ones.

He reached over and cupped her cheek in one hand. “I understand why you don’t believe me. But you are safe here. I will not ask anything of you that you do not volunteer to give, yourself.

Her hands had come up instinctively, suspended in the air, halfway to his arm, not willing to touch him, but ready to fight him off, and he let go of her face to let her look down again if she wanted to. Instead, those striking eyes searched his face, and he suddenly had no idea what she saw in it. He was thinking too hard about his own face and it had become a mystery.

When her eyes flicked downward again it was almost a relief. “I - I don’t understand why you traded for me, then.” She licked her lips like her mouth was dry, looking pained. “I heard your agreement, and I know the stones he gave you aren’t worth . . . enough.” She paused again, her voice sounding suddenly scratchy and dull. “I  . . . know what I am. Sir. I don’t need you to pretend. I’ll be good.”

By the end, every phrase sounded painful, like she was forcing it out of her body, air from a bellows.

He didn’t have an answer for that. He couldn’t have an answer for that without standing up and pacing, moving until he could think again, and there was no way that wouldn’t frighten Anna. He was angry, angry deep, down to his soul, but not at her. He took a breath to steady himself and rose to his feet. “I forgot to bring you something to drink. I’ll be back.”

He gestured toward the plate, “That’s for you. Eat whatever looks best.”

He took the long way around the camp to fetch water, and then collected some soft cheese, and a handful of nuts, and his thoughts.

When he returned, a few of the dried fruits were gone and Anna looked guilty, though whether she felt bad for having eaten or not having eaten, he couldn’t say.

“You don’t have to eat everything,” he said, still careful with his voice, careful with his volume and his tone, careful not to sound angry, not to sound pitying, not to sound as if he thought she were an infant, and he realized he was holding tension in his shoulders. “Just know that it’s here to be yours. I want you to have what you need.”

He put the cheese and nuts on her plate and set down the water skin, then busied himself getting a brazier set up, its coals lit, and a fired clay pot heating for tea. The motion was good. Helpful. It kept him from having to talk or keep silent, helped his brain keep working even as the woman a few feet away from him continued to fill him with an exhausting mix of anxiety and rage.

She ate another few pieces of fruit hesitantly, half watching him through her eyelids, and he kept his eyes on his hands, kept his mind on lighting fire, pouring water, measuring tea, so that he wouldn’t have to decide what he wanted her to see as she looked at him. It was better that way. Trying to decide was too complicated, and too confusing.

By the time the tea was ready, her fingers had flicked toward the bread, but then she’d stopped herself, reached for the nuts instead, a little at a time, as if expecting to be cut off or to have her hand slapped away. Little pieces, then. He catalogued that away for the future. Little pieces, he could manage.

“Be careful,” he said, holding a cup of tea out toward her, “It’s hot.”

Her eyes flicked up to his face for just a moment as she took the cup, and whatever she saw seemed to reassure her, because she pulled the cup in toward her chest, held it awkwardly close, but did not refuse it or put it down.

He lifted his own cup, blowing on the liquid and then taking a sip to prove it was alright.

“Hmmk,” he grunted, “Nope. Still too hot. Give yours a minute.”

For a moment, he could almost swear he saw the ghost of a smile on her lips, but then it was gone again, the anxious wrinkle between her eyes all that was left behind.

Hesitantly, she reached for the cheese, eating it in slightly larger bites than he had expected. Another thing to file away for later. Cheese.

He blew on his tea again, but there was only so much he could do now that he didn’t have a task with his hands. He should have made coffee, instead, but he hadn’t known if she would like it. Or perhaps he shouldn’t have. Either way, his hands were unoccupied again and he hated it.

“Djaana, the woman who was here to look after your wounds, is my sister. She told me your back’s in pretty bad shape. I have some salves for treating battle wounds that you’re welcome to use if you need them.”

Her eyes flicked upward toward him again, glancing through her eyelashes and the steam from her cup.

He held out a hand. “I notice she didn’t bandage your wrists. Do you mind if I take a look? Just while the tea is cooling.”

Anna’s arms twitched instinctively closer to her chest and he started to withdraw his hand, but then her fingers clenched around the cup in her hand and she spoke up, stopping him. “I - I think it’s a good idea. But perhaps . . . perhaps after? I-” she ducked her head down farther. “I am hungry.”

He wanted to reach out and pat her arm, her shoulder, her cheek, anything to prove he was happy to hear it, but he kept his hands to himself and just smiled, instead. “Of course. There’s a good chance the scouts will come home with meat when they’re finished looking over the humans’ tracks. Until then, I can bring you more of anything that’s helping. We’ve got enough.”

She blushed. “Oh, Sir, I didn’t mean - I couldn’t possibly. This is - this is enough.”

She let go of the cup with one hand and grabbed for the bread before she could think herself out of it again, taking a bite quickly and then closing her eyes again, though this time he couldn’t read why in her face.

He nodded, even though she couldn’t see. “Just as well. I’ll get the salve from the other room.”

Moving away didn’t feel quite as essential this time, and Anna seemed to shrink away less as he walked past her. Progress, if slight. He took deep breaths and let himself calm down into it. They were making progress. Things were going to be alright. Right?

He rearranged his medicine kit as he drank his tea, re-rolling bandages and sorting them by length, his hands moving and his eyes focused on his task so Anna wouldn’t feel like he was watching her eat, even as he kept half an eye on the plate of food and her fingers dancing across it, choosing, hesitating, and taking.

When they were both finished, he held his hand out again. “Your wrists?”

He expected her to avert her eyes again, to refuse to watch, but this time she held an arm out tentatively toward him with her head up, her eyes searching his face. Her arm shook, but not with the same full terror as before.

It was the arm he’d examined earlier, but this time she was watching him look at it, and he felt himself blushing slightly this time, his turn to feel watched. He wanted to get a better look at the welts this time, but he needed to make the most of her trust while he had it.

He pulled a small container of ointment from his medicine kit, one he knew was soothing on shallowly broken skin, and smoothed it over the rope burns, covering it with a thin layer of bandages he secured carefully. “Too tight?” he asked.

She shook her head no, her eyes still on him, openly watching him for the first time.

Moving on instinct, he lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it, and this time when she looked down, it was more down than away and the ghost of a smile hovered longer, verifiable in spite of how fast it vanished again.

He got up and moved to her other side so that she wouldn’t have to hold her arm out across her body, where it might feel less under her own control. This time, he took her arm gently without asking first, waiting for her to look at him and meeting her eyes instead.

The welts on her right arm were worse, half of them scabbed over where she had been cut.

“I’ll need to wash and bandage all of this. I hate to think what your back feels like, if Djaana didn’t notice these.”

Anna looked down again. “I - think she did. I was - I’m -” she swallowed heavily, squeezing her eyes shut. “Will you tell her thank you, from me? I - I think I did, but I can’t remember.”

Gozukk smiled. “I’m sure you did. She said you were very polite.”

Anna’s arm was still in his hand, and he became very aware of the contact as she started blushing again.

He squeezed her hand and got up again to make sure he had clean water and a cloth.

The slight flinches under his touch as he trailed the damp cloth over her scraped wrist and battered arm came only when his hand crossed one of her wounds, and not from the touch itself, and when everything was clean and ointmented and bandaged, he gave into another impulse, kissing her palm this time before he let her hand go.

“There,” he said, “all set.”

The arm he’d bandaged first was tucked up against Anna’s stomach, but the second arm didn’t immediately join it, resting farther out, closer to him, and he suddenly needed to leave. He couldn’t possibly be measuring trust in quarter inches. He couldn’t. He couldn’t live like that. Could he?

“Djaana or I will let you know when the scouting party returns or it’s time to eat again. For now, you still look like you could use some rest. The blankets in the other room are yours to use if you need them.”

Leaving the tent was not running away. It was giving Anna some space. Wasn’t it? There were things that needed repairing, now that he had the time for a real project. One of the wagons had seemed to be riding unevenly last week, so surely that needed looking after. He almost turned back toward the tent, but instead, he kept moving forward.

[miraclekittyandbug]

Ten Questions With A Twist Chapter 4

Here’s the next chapter! We’re now more than halfway through the series now, and WOW this is an eventful chapter. 

I hope you enjoy and don’t forget to give me a follow and let me know if you’d like to be tagged in future chapters!

~ Chapter 1 ~ Chapter 2 ~ Chapter 3 ~ This Chapter ~ Chapter 5 ~ Chapter 6 ~ Chapter 7 ~

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

That night was cool, simply a perfect patrol night. Ladybug had gotten to their spot on the Eiffel Tower first, leaving Chat to find her looking very frustrated. 

“What's wrong, Bug? Didn’t get a chance to ask any of those questions today?”

She huffed. “Well I managed to get one answer, but I need to figure out a better way to go about this. The way it was asked today isn��t gonna work for the whole list.”

Chat was startled. Had she overheard Alya ask her the vacation question? He took his seat next to Ladybug. “You could get a friend to help you out.”

Ladybug looked surprised, but quickly covered it up. “Yeah? And what would I tell this friend? ‘Oh yeah, my crime fighting partner thinks that he knows the answers to these questions that I have to ask this boy I like’? No chance. I’ll have to find a different approach.”

“Asking questions shouldn’t be too hard. They’re also pretty easy getting-to-know-you questions. If you know him well enough, he shouldn’t find it too difficult to believe you want to get to know him better.”

Ladybug’s face lit up with a revelation. “I’ve got it! Thanks, Chat. I’ll have all the answers soon enough. And that means you’ll finally have to admit that puns are terrible.”

“Alas, my lady, the only thing you’ll be winning is a date with me! I can just see it now: You, me, a high-up rooftop, and a romantic meal prepared by some of the finest cooks in the city.”

“We’ll see about that, kitty. For now, though, the rooftops of Paris are calling our names. Shall we?”

“After you, my lady.”

The roofs and balconies of the city felt the footprints of two heros, but Chat could only pray that soon enough, he would be sharing a date with the love of his life- out of the masks they wore. 

Despite the confidence he showed his lady as Chat Noir, Adrien only became more and more unsure of himself as the night progressed into the next day. And so, Adrien went to school without the usual pep in his step. He could practically feel his lady getting further and further away from him, all the while she was growing closer and closer to the person she actually loved. He felt like a fool. He had let a single coincidence go to his head and went on assuming that he could be the person his lady adores. He went and gave Ladybug questions that were designed to make her fall more in love with him, he just hadn’t considered that it wouldn’t be Adrien she was falling in love with.

He managed to meander his way through the first half of his classes, only half paying attention. At some point he vaguely remembered agreeing to have lunch with Nino, who had agreed to have lunch with his girlfriend, who was invited by Marinette.  Lunch continued to bore him, only bringing his thoughts of his lady and another man closer to the front of his mind. It wasn’t until about twenty minutes into their meal that Marinette finally said something that interested him.

“Hey, guys, I found this cool questionnaire, you wanna answer it with me?” Affirmations came from everybody at the table, including a casual shrug from Adrien. Definitely not the questions I want to hear. But anything to keep my mind away from the obvious.

“Alright,” She started, sitting up straighter and clearing her throat, “If you were stuck on an abandoned island, what three things would you bring?”

Adrien’s heart stopped. That was his question. One of them anyway. And for the second time this week, he started to try to talk himself out of being excited. Because those questions that he had given Ladybug, they were pretty basic questions. Questions that would be found in a million other places for much the same reason. But everybody was staring at him and he suddenly feared that he had thought all of those thoughts out loud. 

“What about you, Adrien?” Marinette asked, looking concerned that her friend had zoned out so quickly.

“Easy. You three. Who would want to go it alone?” His answer was honest, for the most part. In reality, he would never be able to choose just three people. While his friend group meant the world to him, he would be lost without his Ladybug. 

Marinette put her hand over her heart and sighed, but Alya quickly cleared things up, “You would just want us there so we can show you how to build a tent.”

They all chuckled and Marinette continued, “What’s your favorite animal?”

“Fox!” Alya said, though Marinette didn’t seem too surprised.

Nino chimed in, saying he liked monkeys a lot growing up, but he much preferred turtles now. 

“Cats,” Adrien heard himself respond, but his mind was elsewhere. Suddenly, he wished he had paid more attention in math class. If I were asked three questions over the last two days, what’s the probability that all three would match up with three of the ten questions I gave ladybug? Three doesn’t go into ten evenly, and should I take into account the trains leaving opposite sides of town travelling at different speeds somewhere in America?

“Okay,” Marinette said, keeping one eye on Adrien, “And if you could have any pet in the world?”

“Well that’s just the same question twice,” Alya pointed out.

“Not really,” Nino interjected, “I’d rather have a dog than a turtle. Dogs travel better.”

Adrien had to hold onto the table, for fear of falling out of his chair. “I’d definitely get a pet cat. A black one. I’d name it The Plague.”

“That’s a sick name, dude,” Nino approved, “What about you, Marinette?”

“Hamster. But I wouldn’t mind a black cat for myself.” She paused, but when it didn’t seem that anybody else would add anything, she continued questioning. “What is your biggest fear?”

Adrien mumbled, “This. Right here, right now, these specific questions, in this exact scenario.” 

“What was that, dude?” Nino asked. 

Adrien just looked at him with a hollow look in his eyes, “I, uh, I said my worst fear is working for my father for the rest of my life.” 

Marinette could barely be heard, “That’s… heartbreaking, Adrien.” The others just watched as Adrien tried to lighten the subject.

“Nah, that’s just my worst fear. It’s not what’s gonna happen.” He managed to focus on making eye contact with Marinette, “There’s nothing on that list about dream jobs, is there?” He hoped aloud.

“Actually, there is! What is your dream-”

“And THAT’S where I’m calling it in,” Adrien mumbled, his eyes bulged out of their sockets and he took a deep breath that filled his cheeks. He stood and started to walk away. “Alright, guys, I’m not feeling well, I need to leave. Right now. Immediately. Thank you. Goodbye.”

He was halfway across the courtyard in under thirty seconds. He ducked into a doorway and opened his shirt so he could see Plagg in his pocket, who was laughing incessantly.

“I don’t see what’s so funny, Plagg!”

“I do!” his Kwamii stated, “I think you found your girl!”

“Who, Marinette? No she can’t be Ladybug.”

Plagg’s face fell. “Why not?”

“Marinette is just a friend.” Plagg paused for a split second to stare at his chosen, then started laughing even harder. Adrien was about to tell him to quiet down when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He closed his shirt and whirled around, surprised, but not too surprised to see that Marinette had followed him. 

“Hey, Marinette!” Adrien put on his best “everything is fine” face, but even he could tell he wasn’t pulling it off. 

“Hey, Adrien. Are you okay? Over the course of, like, one minute your face lost all of its color.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he responded, “I just don’t feel well all of a sudden.”

Marinette made a face of understanding, but eventually spoke, “Are all these questions rubbing you the wrong way?”

Adrien was in shock. Not just from the questions, but from the company in which he answered them and the honest concern he felt from Marinette. Shit, maybe he did like Marinette as more than a friend. That thought alone freaked him out. How could he love two people at the same time? He didn’t think he was polyamorous, and thinking on that further, he was certain he wasn’t. He didn’t want two girlfriends, he just wanted one. Whether it was Marinette or Ladybug that he wanted, well that was too much to think about.

Before he could consider how to respond, Marinette interrupted his thoughts.

“Yeah, I just, my friend and I made this bet. This friend thinks they know all your answers to these questions-,”

Adrien was sure there was an end to that sentence, but he didn’t hear it.

Suddenly everything made sense. Her obsession with akumas. Always disappearing around the same time he did. The similar times of their arrivals to the site of the akumas. It could only be one person.

“Alya,” he said, breathless. 

“What?”

Adrien responded, “What?” He mentally slapped himself. Of course it wasn’t Alya. Jeez, she had been akumatized! She had been used as bait for an akuma. Adrien must have been losing his mind. But even though he guessed wrong, he was on the right track. Whoever Marinette’s friend was, had to be Ladybug!

I guess it isn’t true that opposites attract, he thought, those two are so similar.

“So who is it?”

Marinette seemed confused, “Who is Alya?”

“No!” he corrected, “Who’s this friend? The one with all the answers.” 

“Oh,” Marinette panicked. She didn’t seem prepared to answer this question, which only solidified Adrien’s belief that this friend was his Lady. “I actually don’t know his name.”

Adrien blinked through his confusion. That was odd. He and Ladybug had talked about this before. Ladybug was born a woman. She identified as a woman, as well. So was Marinette trying to protect Ladybug’s identity? Pretending that her friend was a man? Smart, he guessed, just very confusing.

Marinette seemed to notice that he hadn’t responded, so she continued, “Yeah, we’re actually…. Internet friends! Yeah, we’re friends on an internet. The internet. An internet site. Yeah. We go by screennames, that’s all.” Adrien found that explanation to be a little too convenient. 

“Oh yeah? And what do you call this… boy?”

Her face drained of color, but she choked out her reply, “Black cat.”

A moment of silence later, Adrien replied. “What?”

“You know, that’s the, um, American, er English, for Chat Noir. He’s English. Well, he speaks English, he is… American.”

No… Adrien thought, But that would mean… no way!

“What’s the bet?” he asked, surprised at how sure he was.

“Oh, that? He thinks he knows all your answers to these questions. And if he wins,” she quickly added, “which he won’t! If he wins then I have to go on a date with him.”

Adrien couldn’t seem to think properly, but he was slowly realizing that his ‘liking two girls at the same time’ problem might not be much of an issue. “A date. Him and you? You specifically?”

“Yeah,” Marinette shrugged, “It’s just a stupid bet, but he seems really certain that he’ll win.”

“Well, if he does win,” Adrien sighed, letting his shoulders drop and his eyes glass over, “Then he is one lucky guy.”

Marinette stared at him. Adrien enjoyed their first bit of real eye contact. Normally looking somebody in the eyes was nerve-racking, but when those eyes were that specific shade of blue? He noticed how comforting they were. He realized maybe why. 

Because those eyes weren’t just the blue of his friend who sat behind him and always had his back in his everyday life. They were also the blue that had his back in combat. That sat with him all night long when he didn’t know which way was up. That made him laugh under the stars when he couldn’t find the humor in life anymore. All of the times he came home to a cold house with no family, he felt lonely despite his friends at school. And on those days, blue eyes, the same ones that were in front of him right now, sat with him on a ledge of the Eiffel Tower and talked with him until he felt whole again.

Marinette’s face went pinker than pink instantly. Adrien enjoyed seeing Ladybug like this. Not just with a blushing face, though he liked that too. He liked seeing Ladybug whole. All of her. Without the masks, she could actually be herself, all of herself with him. 

They stood there, both speechless, for what felt like an eternity. And then… the bell rang. Signaling the end of their lunch period. Adrien just chuckled, but his crime-fighting partner was still frozen. Alya walked up to the pair and Adrien just shrugged. Alya took Marinette’s shoulder and ushered her away. Nino did the same with Adrien, but he couldn’t pay much attention to the conversation his friend was trying to start. 

His world had just changed.

~~~~~~~~~~~

There ya go! Only three chapters left and next chapter is one for the history books! Stay tuned!

~ Chapter 1 ~ Chapter 2 ~ Chapter 3 ~ This Chapter ~ Chapter 5 ~ Chapter 6 ~ Chapter 7 ~

[im-a-space-gay]

Welcome to Camp Sanders!

(I’ve downloaded three translators to find out half the time Google Translate was either the only one getting it right or the only one getting it wrong. If there is any mistakes in any language besides English, I am sorry as I only speak English fluently [ha, fluently]. Also yes, ANOTHER AU. Look, I’m idea/story fluid along with gender fluid. Deal with it.)

“I do not see the point of summer camp,” a fourteen year old boy stated, looking out the car window in resentment towards the camp and kids of varying ages running around.

This boy’s name was Logan Lee Lucy, born November 3rd in Japan and moving to the U.S. when he was three. With black hair pushed away from his eyes that were sapphire blue, he wore rectangular glasses and a black T-shirt with gray shorts. Normally he wore polos and ties, but his awful mother said that was too formal for where she was sending him.

Camp Sanders.

Camp Sanders was a summer camp for kids from eight to eighteen, and was in the middle of a forest without anything around it. It was a place for kids to find and pursue interests, and there was plenty activities from outdoors to indoors, pleasing every kid.

Every kid, except for Logan, of course.

“You need to spend some time in the sunshine and make friends,” his mother said in response, and Logan huffed, crossing his arms and sliding down the seat.

“Friends are for spineless maggots who are dependent on others for happiness,” Logan glared, and his mother sighed.

“No wonder why you’re never happy.”

“I’m happy plenty, I’ll have you know!” Logan lied, finally unbuckling his seatbelt, and grabbing his backpack.

“Alright,” his mother said, twisting around to look at him with a smile from the driver’s seat. “Just... try to have a nice summer, okay? I love you.”

“I love you too,” Logan said before leaving, grasping his backpack straps as he stared down the streams of kids, his mother driving away behind him. He was just about to follow the children before someone poked his shoulder. He looked over to see a boy that was probably his age, smiling widely.

He was fairly tan, with a infinite amount of freckles and curly orange locks with bright blue eyes. When Logan paid attention to the smile, he could see a small gap between his two middle incisors on the top. He had a baby blue crop top and khaki short shorts, with a pink backpack and round glasses.

“Hiya! I’m Patton Hart, fourteen, he/him!” He said, sticking his hand out to shake, which Logan did with a raised eyebrow.

“Logan Lucy, fourteen, he/him.”

“Nice to meet ya Logan!” Patton smiled wider, and Logan picked up on a small Irish accent. “Now, I’m no expert, but are you new?”

“Yes?” Logan blinked, wondering if he was that obvious before something else crossed his mind. “Wait, some people come here repeatedly?”

“Yeppers!” Patton said, pointing at himself. “I’ve been here for three summers before this one, and I’m friends with most that keep coming here! I just really love this camp! Among other things....”

Patton murmured the last part with a blush, suddenly acting shy as he fiddled with his earlobe with a tiny smile. Logan would ask, but he was rather befuddled with this new information.

“So you come back to summer camp... because you want to?” Logan asked in desbelief, and Patton’s shy demeanor vanished as he nodded with a bright grin.

“Uh huh! Who knows, maybe you’ll do the same!” Logan scrunched his nose at the statement.

“Doubtful, but alright.”

“Now, I’ll help you get signed in since you’re in my age group!” Patton said cheerfully, taking Logan’s hand and dragging him with the rest of kids that were going to a giant building, which Logan found out was the mess hall upon entering.

Logan, after looking around the -rather aesthetically pleasing- hall, realized that Patton was talking to him and listened in.

“-onder which cabin you’ll be placed in!”

“Cabin?” Logan parroted, and Patton glanced in his direction before pulling him to a forest green table with a couple clipboards.

“Yep! You’ll be placed in a cabin based on age and sex -unless you’re trans, than you go in with the gender you identify with so you don’t feel dysphoria- and you get five bunk mates!” Patton explained, telling him to sign in while he checked which cabin Logan was placed in.

Logan finished his signature when Patton gasped loudly, and Logan jumped, looking at him in confusion. Patton faced him excited, showing the clipboard to him.

“You’re in the Sides cabin! THAT’S MY CABIN!” And before Logan could open his mouth, Patton gasped again with a worried look and turned the clipboard to him again.

After scanning it, he sighed in relief.

“Uh,” Logan intelligently said, and Patton looked up, blinking.

“Oh sorry, I was just checking who left the Sides cabin. It was just Dev, so no reason to worry!”

“Alright,” Logan nodded, feeling like he was missing something.

“Well,” Patton said, grabbing Logan’s hand again. “Let’s head to our cabin! You’re going to love the others!”

They were out of the mess hall before Logan could blink, Patton being in more of a hurry than before, they weaved through the crowd before arriving at a small cabin that looked exactly the same as the rest of the cabins, if you excluded the sign above the door reading “Sides”. Patton took a calming breath before opening the door, and everyone in the room looked over, making Logan flinch even as they looked at Patton with wide grins.

Two of the boys were undoubtedly twins of Hispanic origins, one wearing a red T-shirt and washed out overalls, while the other wore a green T-shirt and black overalls with holes, their dark brown hair swooping dramatically and brown eyes filled with energy. It seemed these two were playing tug-o-war with a small rope before they opened the door.

Another had dark skin with a splotch of a lighter skin tone on the left side of his face, black hair braided away from his eyes. His left eye was green, while his right was brown, and he had a yellow tank top with a two headed snake and ripped jeans. It appeared this one was recording what the twins were doing with a smirk on his lips.

The final one seemed to be the only one of American descent in the cabin, with pale skin and brown hair long enough that it covered his eyes and ears and touched the tip of his nose. He had a strange hoodie that mainly was black, but the sleeves had alternating black and purple stripes, and the hood and pocket were purple. He also wore black high-waisted shorts with black thigh highs that almost reached the shorts, leaving the smallest sliver of pale skin between them, and purple headphones around his neck. He was hanging upside down, halfway off one of the top bunks, showing his emerald eyes.

“Hiya!” Patton said excitedly, dragging Logan in behind him, making Logan barely have time to close the door behind him.

“Patton!” The twins yelled simultaneously, dropping the rope and running over to hug Patton, thankfully making him let go of Logan’s hand so he could back away from the group hug.

When they pulled away, they looked at Logan, and smiled near-identical grins.

“Who’s this you brought with ya?” The one in red asked, making Logan happy when he stayed out of his personal bubble. Patton gasped and clapped, gesturing widely to him.

“Everybody, this is our new bunk mate, Logan! Logan, meet everybody!”

“Hi?” He said confused, and Patton pointed at the twins.

“These are Roman and Remus Royal, the twins! Roman wears red and Remus wears green,” Patton explained, and Logan nodded, making a silent note that the twins were color-coded. Then Patton walked over to the dark skinned one and slung an arm around him. “This is Janus Smith, a ball of sarcasm and friendship!”

Janus snorted, waving before saying, “less friendship, more snake.”

Logan blinked confused, wondering what that meant but Patton was already bounding toward the one hanging precariously from the bed, blush on his face.

“And this is Virgil Storm! He’s really anxious, listens to music a lot, and speaks any language except English out of spite, I’ve been told. He still understands English though!”

“こんにちは,” Virgil nodded, biting his lip. Logan nodded back, pleasantly surprised when Virgil spoke in his home language.

“こんにちは。英語を話してみませんか?” Logan asked, and he saw the others looking confused while Virgil smiled.

“私の家族は英語しか話せません。私は家族が嫌いです。”

Logan rose his eyebrow but nodded.

“Okay.”

“Anyways,” Patton said, dragging everyone’s attention to him. “It’s nice to see you all again!”

“You too!” The twins chimed, Janus nodding.

“Tú freisin Patton,” Virgil said, finally moving so he was not about to fall off the bed, covering his eyes with his bangs, and Logan was pretty sure Patton was blushing again. Probably because of everybody saying it was nice to see him as well.

At least, he thinks Virgil said that. Logan only spoke English and Japanese, not whatever that was. Though that did make him curious how many languages Virgil knew.

“So, shall we play twenty questions?” Janus questioned as Logan and Patton put their stuff on the remaining bunks. Everybody was quick to agree (wow okay he was going to have to get used to people speaking languages he didn’t understand), and Logan had only one thought as he watched Janus play catch with the twins, with Patton telling them how his year was and Virgil occasionally muttering to him in Japanese that he wished Logan luck with dealing with all of them.

Maybe this summer won’t be so bad.

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Intro to Balancing Your Life || Morgan & Sasha

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @sasha-r-blog & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Sasha drops in on a new class on campus; Morgan is only too happy to offer encouragements.

“…And who is it that determines the definition of humanity? What kind of definitions do we see offered by Victor, or Henry Cleveral, or the Creature?” Morgan asked the class. The students, while not thrilled with some of Mary Shelley’s ‘big words’ had enough preparation to offer semi thoughtful ideas. Obviously, Victor thought he could define what human means. One of her try-hard students, eager to please every adult in sight, posited that while Victor’s definition of humanity is the one that dominates the narrative, the intrusion of the creature’s perspective halfway through the book is meant to compel the reader into questioning its validity. “Yes!” Morgan tossed the kid a candy from her bowl. “The midpoint crisis here upends our expectations through thought, rather than action. It is, structurally, the center, the heart of the story, changing what we believe to be true. But, are we convinced by the Creature’s definition of his humanity? Why or why no–”

Morgan’s timer, the theme song of The X-Files, went off.

“Shit. Alright, that’s time everybody! Do your homework, do your reading, and get ready for Fan-Fiction Friday! And you–” She pointed to the newcomer sandwiched at the corner of the seminar table. “Come see me for a minute. The rest of you: glad you love each other, but please get out.” As the room cleared out she began to gather up her things. “I’ll level with you, I haven’t checked my roster, so I’m not sure if you’re a late add or just checking things out. But either way, I might be able to answer any questions you have better one-on-one instead of just looking at you across the room.”

Sasha watched the other students mingle and leave, a second of nervousness keeping her in her seat before the professor called out to her. It was hard to parse the tone in Professor Beck’s voice when Sasha’s immediate assumption at a teacher saying to “see me” was that she had fuck up somehow. But either way, Sasha walked towards the desk, dodging any curious looks from her exiting classmates.

“Um, hi. Sorry I didn’t mean to cause any trouble by sitting in.” She shifted the straps of her backpack, tugging them against her shoulders, as if the weight would somehow shield her from the awkwardness. “I’m Sasha Rodriguez. You gave me your office hours awhile ago. I uh, didn’t get a chance to visit but I saw your name on the winter session course list  and thought I’d check it out. I’m trying to branch out I guess.”

It took Morgan a few minutes to place the girl. She didn’t give out her school contact information to everyone, but it happened often enough that she had more than one name floating around her head. But the more she looked at her, the nervousness, the eagerness, the closer Morgan got to a hunch. “Oh, you’re the girl trying to figure everything out in college. I’m glad you decided to come by. If you’ve got some spare time, we can go somewhere and talk? I’d love to have you join in the spring, if you like what you’ve seen so far.” She dumped her books and laptop into her bag, and shouldered the load, handling the bulk with ease thanks to her strength. “Come on. Why don’t you start by telling me what you’re branching out from and what you thought about class today.”

“Oh, yeah, okay.” Sasha said as she moved to follow the professor. She still wasn’t used to how casual some professors could be. In high school they made it sound like professors were all strict, no nonsense, and unforgiving. And Sasha had certainly had professors like that during her first semester. But here was a professor throwing candy to students and cursing in class and talking about fan fiction. It was cool, but weird to process.

“I’m in computer science and I’ve only really taken courses in that department and math stuff. Oh, and also English 101, for the gen ed.” Those classes had been a lot different from what Sasha had just sat in on. Even the one English class she took didn’t really match up, that one having been run by an exhausted looking graduate teaching assistant who didn’t seem all that interested in teaching.

“The class was cool, though I feel like a lot of the stuff you were saying went over my head.” Sasha had a moment of internal panic, worried that came off as implying Professor Beck was bad at teaching. “I’ve just never been good at looking into books, but the class was interesting. I was surprised you mentioned fanfiction at the end. I didn’t think most professors even knew what that was.” Oh no, did that sound rude too? Sasha closed her mouth before she could say something dumb. Besides her advisor, if you could even count their meetings as conversation, and Ben, Sasha hadn’t really spoken one on one with a professor before. It still felt a bit surreal.

“Oh, that’s just because you’re coming in at the tail end of the course. I don’t throw my students into the deep end before I’m certain they can at least, you know, doggie paddle.” Morgan smiled good naturedly and lead them up to the main sitting area in the English building, setting her bag down carefully and making herself comfortable. “I can tell you that looking into books isn’t so different from the way you look into the stories in other media. Movies, TV, video games, comic books--our relationship to the stories we engage with say so much about what we envision for ourselves and the world. The more we understand and invest that relationship, the more empowered we feel to take control of our fate.” Morgan stopped herself from saying anything more and laughed, low and self deprecating. “Oh, jeez, don’t tell the other professors I said that. But, anyways, yes, the aforementioned reasons are what fan-fiction and other forms of counter-storytelling are so important. But more important than that is doing something that’s going to challenge you in positive, enjoyable ways. And making time for a little fun.” Morgan held her fingers up, like this much. “Can I ask how the rest of college is going for you, Sasha?”

Sasha followed her and sat in the unfamiliar sitting room. She gave a small smile as Professor Beck talked about stories and how people related to them, finding that she had been nodding along without realizing. She stopped once she did, somehow worried that it came off as over eager, as if a professor would ever get mad at someone being interested in what they were saying. If only the professor knew how close that hit to home for her. All those stories of kids getting superpowers, it was real. As if it had jumped straight off the page. As if Sasha had willed it into being. In the back of her mind Sasha wondered how she would have reacted to suddenly growing calls if she hadn’t grown up on comics and superhero movies. It felt like the blueprint to everything now.

Lost in her own thoughts she was a bit startled when the professor’s tone shifted. “No, no I agree, I think. I think all that stuff is important. Storytelling. I mean, I’m not much of a reader but comics and games and movies have been really important to me.” She wished there was a major in that stuff. Or crime fighting. She’d be on the dean’s list if her nightly patrols counted for credits.

“It’s been going okay. I mean, I don’t really do much outside of classes. I’ve been trying to do more but I mostly keep to myself.” It was the same thing she had told her advisor and Professor Campbell, but more and more Sasha felt silly for saying it. It wasn’t like she did nothing, just nothing related to college life. But it wasn’t like she could tell her professors she was protecting White Crest. Or at least trying to.

Morgan noticed Sasha’s interest and perked up at once. “You know, we do cover films in my class,” she said, grinning slyly. “And books. But still. It’s the same kind of thought process as with books, so it might as well be given its time and place. There’s plenty of other courses like that in this department, even a film and media studies minor. You should do what makes you happy, because undergrad coursework doesn’t matter half as much as you think it does. It’s all internships and jobs and connections and recommendations that help you get anywhere. And this place, college, has a lot of flaws and problems, but one of the best ways to make it worth it is leave knowing as much as you can about the things that matter to you most.” But that was about all the pitching she was willing to do on behalf of her class. Besides, being a student at UMWC came second to being a kid in White Crest. Morgan couldn’t help but look at the girl and wonder what this place would do to her. Morgan pushed the thought away, she couldn’t let herself focus on a big, bad future like it was some kind of unstoppable force.

“This might sound silly, coming from a professor who just tried to recruit you to their class, but I hope you do find other things besides school studies. There’s a much bigger world out there, and you should have something else in your life. At least friends and playing video games or going to Al’s at one in the morning or whatever kids your age do now. Life is for doing stuff, you know? Whatever it is you’re thinking about doing or joining, you should go for it!”

“I never really thought about taking a minor. I didn’t know they had one about film.” Honestly, more and more Sasha felt like she hadn’t planned much of anything when it came to school. Or life in general. But she supposed she could change that. If anything this talk had made her actually interested in looking into classes, something she had mostly breezed through doing in the past, simply checking off the boxes of what she needed for her degree. But if the professor was right and it didn’t matter that much... “Maybe I’ll try looking into classes for film and english and stuff like that. They seem fun. At least the stuff you were talking about seems fun.”

Maybe it would make school more interesting, instead of something Sasha went through the motions of to get to her real job. “Real job,” as being a superhero paid. As if she wouldn’t one day need a day job. College was a convenient way to pass the time and something she was told she had to do, but it would be nice to actually care about it, to feel like she was actually doing something.

“I do have hobbies...” Just none she could tell Professor Beck about. “But yeah, I should probably try to do more. I wanted to check out the library. I was supposed to help out with the comic collection there as a volunteer thing. So that’s a start I guess.” It had almost slipped her mind, but that was something she had been genuinely excited for. It was just hard to remember stuff like that during the day when she was normally up all night. Her nightly patrols had turned her days sluggish and uneventful, filled with quick naps between class and maybe some video games alone in her dorm before she put on her costume and went out again. And she loved doing it, of course she loved going out at night to keep White Crest safe. But at the same time...

“Do you ever just get really focused on one thing?” Sasha asked the question before she was thought about it, but decided to keep going, even if it was dumb. “Like, you have something you like or is important and you just focus on that and everything else just kinda blurs into the background?”  Sasha rubbed nervously at the back of her neck. “I don’t know if that makes sense. I guess sometimes I feel like that. But I don’t know if I want to change it.”

“The library is a great start!” Morgan said. “You’re going to learn so much, and probably find people who have similar interests to you when they come to check out materials. But I hope you do other stuff, not for credit, just for you. You’re only going to be young once--” Hopefully.

She couldn’t help but smile at Sasha’s notion, that hyper-focus was something rare or embarrassing. “Oh, all the time. I have some art projects that I do on the side, and I can get so lost in my carving that hours can pass by so easily. Same with baking, or cooking something really involved. It’s almost like you’re connecting to something else, outside of or beyond you. There’s you, the thing you’re doing, and this energy it gives you, right?” Morgan watched the girl’s expression to see if she was getting it right. “Even if it’s just kind of like that, I don’t think you should change it. Whatever that thing is, it sounds to me like the universe is giving you the green light to keep going.”

Sasha nodded, giving a small smile. She was happy that Professor Beck seemed to get it and not think it was weird. Sure, Sasha's focus wasn’t on crafts or cooking, but it was the thought that counted. Her mind lingered on what she said about being given a green light. Really, what was a bigger green light than getting her powers? But she knew there was more to it than that. There had to be a reason it was her. She had to be able to do something with her powers, something to really help people. It was comforting to have the professor say she was right, that the universe wanted her to do what she was already doing, but there was a pang of melancholy knowing Sasha couldn’t tell her, or anyone, the truth. How much did advice and validation matter when the person saying it didn’t know the full truth?

She shook the thought from her head. “Thanks. Sorry, I didn’t mean to ask you a bunch of weird questions when I came to sit in. I think it would be cool to try out one of your classes though if you still have room for students.” Sasha chased away the worry of struggling in a class she wasn’t used to. If worst came to worst she could always drop that class. At least it would be something new, something she might actually end up liking.

Beaming and unawares, Morgan took out a post-it from her bag and scribbled out the class information before handing it to Sasha. “Don’t be embarrassed about questions,” she said. “Questions are how we learn. You’re never going to find anything interesting if you always leave well enough alone.” She stood up, getting the vibe that Sasha had opened up all she felt like so far. “I hope to see a lot more of you this coming semester,” she said. “Hoping even more that you do something just for you, but.” She put a finger to her lips. That’ll just be our secret.

“Thanks. I’ll try to keep asking them.” Well that was one social interaction that didn’t go horribly. Wasn’t great that Sasha considered that a victory for herself but she was going to take the feeling of accomplishment anyways. “And I’ll try to do stuff for myself too.” That was going to take more work than just registering for a class, but maybe it wouldn’t be the worst. She couldn’t promise herself she would put in the effort though. Tucking the post-it note into her backpack she smiled and said goodbye to Professor Beck. Maybe a few new classes would be enough to make her college life, and her daily life, seem a bit more exciting and a bit less like time to just get through. But her patrolling White Crest at night was still more important. Professor Beck didn’t have to know that part though.

[gamerwoo]

[Tales from the Pack] Minghao: Find Our Way (Part Four)

Characters: Minghao x female reader

Genre/warnings: werewolf au, fantasy, fluff

Word count: 1,596

Summary: You already knew who you were meant to be with and how your life was supposed to go. The only thing keeping you and the life you were destined to lead apart was the fact you were blind. At least, for now, you could meet him in your dreams.

Tag list: @choiminjae0325​ @heolykpop​ @fullsun-donghyuck​ @yoonbabe-d​ @exuwu​ @lets-get-1t​ @vintageot5​​ @sehunnies-hunnie96​ @childfmoonn​​ @wobwobkpop​​ @henloimawierdobye​​ @dirinast​​ @hhhhwww7​​ @joshwoah​​ @wreckedbytae​​ @salty-for-suga​​ @janellxu​​ @doyouknowkpopp​ @xu-miseo​ (if you wanna be added please send an ask or a dm!!)

Unable to tag: @uglyratlmao @birthday-prinxess @sooooofrench

a/n: things in bold are in mandarin

Previous | Next | Find Our Way Masterlist

You were sitting pretty comfortably on Soonyoung’s back as you listened to the sounds of the dead leaves and twigs crunching under their feet. At first, Chan carried you, but Seokmin decided that they should take turns so nobody got tired out. So then you were with Seokmin for a little while, who pretended to be a horse at first just to make you giggle. And now, you were on the back of one of the alphas, who enjoyed chatting to you as much as you enjoyed chatting in general – what else was there for you to do?

“Won’t your neighbor miss you?” Soonyoung wondered when you mentioned the girl who took care of you. “She’ll know you’re missing.”

“No, I think she considered me a burden,” you admitted with a shrug. “She had a boyfriend she would rather be off with.”

“How much longer until we’re home?” Jooyeon wondered quietly, sticking close to whichever werewolf you were being escorted by -- you thought that was very sweet that she wanted to be close to you. You did feel a little of an attachment to her since she had put so much trust in you when she was afraid of her mate.

“A few hours,” Seungcheol replied. “Why, are you tired?”

“Sort of,” she told him, which was understandable since they’d been walking for a few hours already. “I’ll be fine.”

“I can carry--”

“I don’t want you to be even more tired,” she told him.

It was cute that she cared about Seungcheol’s well being, too. She’d definitely come a long way.

You always wanted nothing more than to help the pack you belonged to, just because you liked to help and feel useful. Knowing you helped somebody always made you feel better, but it was rare anybody ever let you help considering you couldn’t see. With the pack, though, your strange power came to good use. You had a hand in helping Jooyeon and Seungcheol become closer.

Through your dreams, you’d gotten a lot closer with Jooyeon, too. You were one of the only people able to calm her down back then. You felt very close to her despite knowing her for not nearly as long as you knew most of the pack. You spoke to her more frequently other than your mate. She was like your best friend now.

“_____?” Chan spoke up.

You hummed in reply, letting your chin rest on Soonyoung’s shoulder.

“Is your hearing as good as ours?” he wondered.

“No,” you laughed softly. “It’s better than most peoples but it’s definitely not on a supernatural level. Why?”

“Because you’re half werewolf, and you got the special werewolf gene passed down to you. …How come you get a power but a lot of werewolves don’t?”

“Actually, some werewolves don’t get their power right away. It can take years, sometimes. But it does usually come around while they’re body is younger -- between the time they actually become a werewolf and their twenties, I believe. After that mark, it is rare to get a power.”

“None of us are twenty anymore,” Jeonghan scoffed.

“No, I mean your body’s age, not your actual age.”

You heard Seokmin gasp, “There’s hope for me!”

You giggled softly at his excitement, “It’s actually not as rare to have a power as you’d think it is. I heard of a werewolf nearby that can control fire.”

“Whoa, really?” Soonyoung asked, sounding absolutely amazed. “I want to meet him.”

“There’s also rumors he has a twin brother who controls water,” you continued, recalling what you’d heard from eavesdropping on the front porch. Guards typically walked by and would chit-chat on the corner of your street. “I believe they belong to a small pack made of only special wolves, but I’ve only heard bits and pieces. Besides, nobody has ever gotten close enough to them to observe the others.”

“You know quite a lot, _____,” Jeonghan told you with amusement in his tone. “You’re a smart girl.”

You grinned proudly, happy your hearing finally came to good use – you couldn’t tell any of this information to anybody else, “Thank you!”

“The less talking there is, the faster we’ll get back,” Jihoon sighed, sounding a bit annoyed.

“You need to lighten up,” Soonyoung told him.

You giggled softly, “Yeah, lighten up, Jihoon!”

And you swore you heard him chuckle.

-

After all that running around, the wolves desperately needed showers. Minghao was the last to go, walking out of the bathroom in new clothes and a towel draped over his shoulders as he continued to dry the excess moisture from his hair.

Truthfully, their activities in the yard just made them miss their missing brothers. Soonyoung and Seokmin were always two of the most excited to get outside and run around, so it was odd not having that extra energy there. But at least Minghao had his mind taken off of things for a little bit.

But now there were other things to be worried about on top of everything else. The sun had set, the night sky full of stars, and there was no sign of the search party or Jooyeon. The pack was growing more and more anxious, but nobody knew what to do. Should they go looking for them? Should they stay put?

“It would be good if we had Soonyoung’s power,” Junhui was saying as Minghao entered the kitchen in search of food. He hadn’t eaten all day – other than that one pancake – because of his nerves. “He could get information with--”

“Minghao!” Joshua cut off Junhui when he noticed the younger wolf enter. “Whose power do you have currently?”

Minghao shrugged, trying his best to channel Soonyoung’s powers, but nothing happened, “Not the one we need.”

“Chan’s, maybe?” Junhui suggested with a shrug.

“No, I’ve been moving normally all day,” Minghao sighed. “I don’t have anything useful to us right now. Probably Cheol’s. Or Shua’s, actually. I think he’s the last person I touched.”

“Well, maybe we could--” Joshua suddenly stopped mid-sentence, perking up like he heard something. “Do you hear that, too?”

The two wolves stopped and listened before they were able to pick up footsteps in the forest that were coming toward the den. Joshua nodded his head to the hallway, silently telling them they should go check out what it was.

As the three wolves went for the door, Joshua told Minghao to stay inside with everybody else, just in case it was some of the guards from town. So Minghao went and perched himself on the arm of the couch, keeping his eyes trained on the door.

“Why are you sitting like you have a stick in your ass?” Seungkwan asked.

Danbi smiled a bit at his comment, but kept her laughter to herself.

“Junhui and Josh heard something,” he explained. “They went to investigate.”

“Maybe they found Jooyeon,” Wonwoo shrugged.

“Or maybe it’s the guards,” Hansol reminded them.

The living room sat in silence as they strained to hear for any noise. Eventually, though, they could hear excited talking coming closer to the den. The tension from the room melted, and everybody visibly relaxed.

The group waited for the search party to come back into the house, but Minghao suddenly felt his heart rate pick up. He stood from the arm of the couch to go to the door, and the whole world froze.

Being set on the floor by Jeonghan and handed your cane by Seokmin, was you. Your almost white eyes stared at the floor as you concentrated on all the commotion around you. You didn’t even know he was only halfway down the hallway.

“_____…” your name fell from his lips in a sigh of disbelief, gaining your attention.

Your head snapped up as all the talking stopped, “Minghao?”

You heard his footsteps as he rushed up to you, and you were suddenly being lifted up by strong, warm arms around your waist. As soon as you were in his embrace, you got emotional, tears filling your eyes as you took in his touch, his scent, his everything. You’d only imagined this moment to finally happen, and it didn’t even seem real. It felt too good to be real.

Minghao just held you in his arms, your legs wrapping around him as you hugged him just as tightly. His face buried in your hair, letting the scent of purely you fill his nose so he’d never forget it. He was smiling and quietly laughing and crying all at once, and he didn’t care if the pack was watching because he’d never felt happier. His world finally felt complete having his mate in his arms. He refused to ever let you go.

“I love you,” you told him quietly in your native tongue, your words muffled by his shoulder as your tears stained his fresh shirt.

“I love you,” he hummed in the same language, his chest vibrating with elation and content. His inner wolf couldn’t be more happy. “I can’t believe I have you in my arms.”

He pulled back enough to cup your cheek, and finally – finally – bring your lips to his. The kiss was slow and sweet, but had a passion and neediness behind it. Neither of you ever thought you’d see each other, yet it was finally happening. This kiss was long overdue.

The pack was watching, you were crying, Minghao was crying, and you were miles from the only place familiar to you, but none of that mattered.

You were home. That was all that mattered.