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lowkeyerror · 1 year ago

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The Family Business Ch.2

WandaNat x Reader

Word Count: 2.5k

Ch Notes: No warnings for this chapter, Krolik=Bunny, Sestra=Sister

Summary: Wanda was sent away on important business, by the time she comes back you're all grown up and a part of the family company. Wanda doesn't come back home empty handed in fact she returns with a brand new wife.

An: Ok someone asked me for Ch.2 early and I had to deliver. Next Ch.3 will be up on Monday. Stay tuned and hope you enjoy.

Series Masterlist | Masterlist

True to their word, the Maximoff’s provided you with a roof over your head and protection wherever you went. You never worried about your mother again and you saw your father whenever his schedule permitted. However, your primary residence was with the Maximoff’s. They were just as kind as they had always been.

Dragos and Flora paid for anything you could ever want or need. They paid for your tuition at NYU, though you tried to argue against it. You double majored in software engineering and physics. Without the constant insecurities that your parents piled on you, you were able to reach new academic heights.

Wanda had gone off right before her college graduation, Dragos said she was doing important work internationally. He didn’t know when she would be returning. There was a small part of you that hated that the woman didn’t come to your graduation, but a card from her in the mail was enough to make you smile.

Once you had your degrees you weighed your options. After multiple boring interviews and under stimulating work you finally asked Dragos if there was anything you could do in the family business. Pietro wasn’t thrilled about you wanting to be involved, but once he saw you at work, he knew you’d fit right in.

The crime was fronted by a legitimate business that Dragos owned. Which meant that you got to work out of one the tallest office buildings in New York. Your standing with the family also afforded you a desk pretty high up. When you weren’t hacking into competitors’ systems or running field operations, you did simple accounting for the company. It was easier that way, as the numbers for both the true business and the under-cover business were vetted by you.

“Y/n, come on a delivery with me?” Pietro pops his head into your office space.

“What kind of delivery?”

He smirks, “Special.”

You quickly grab your jacket and follow him out of your office. As you navigate to the bottom floor the two of you make small talk.

“So, when are you going to stop playing around and ask Monica out?”

Pietro rolls his eyes, “When you date someone for more than 2 outings.”

You feign a pained look, “Ouch, that one hurts Piet.”

“The truth often does.”

Once you both are out of the building and into the car your demeanor changes a bit, “So who are these going to?”

“Mr. H.”

You groan, “That guy’s sketchy, I don't like him.”

Pietro laughs, “I’m sure a lot of people feel the same way about us. “

“Whatever,” you mumble, scrolling through your phone.

The rest of the ride is quiet, until you pull up to the drop of location. “So, I’m going in and dropping the stuff off. You’re going to wait for me in the driver's seat.”

“Why the driver’s seat?”

He blinks at you, “In case we need to get away faster, you'll already be in here. Keep the car running, this should be quick.”

While Pietro goes in to handle the business, you let your mind spiral into thoughts about Wanda. You miss her and feel like it has been too long. Dragos said that she ended up staying in Russia for awhile before heading to their home country of Sokovia. Apparently, while he ran the business here, she ran the operations over there.

You weren’t surprised that Wanda was trusted with such an important role, she always had leadership qualities. For a long while you thought you wanted to be just like her. Instead, you realized that the older woman had been someone you were interested in. Wanda had nearly a decade on you in age, but how could you not like her as a young queer girl.

Sometimes you could still feel her hand delicately grazing your torso as she patched up the wounds your mother inflicted. For awhile in the Maximoff’s home everyone treated you as if you would break into a million pieces. Maybe Wanda did too, but it was different with her.

She wasn’t just careful with you because she was scared, you’d break, but she truly believed that you deserved the care. Even when you began training with her, she treated you delicately. You wanted to learn how to protect yourself and she stepped right in and became the perfect teacher. You also began going to the gym with Pietro at least once a week. You weren’t trying to be buff, but just in shape enough to defend yourself if you needed.

Even though your outward appearance changed to be stronger. You felt as though Wanda saw right through that into your deepest insecurities and tended to them accordingly.

Your daydreaming is cut short by Pietro busting out of the warehouse where the drop was supposed to take place, with the goods still in his hand.

“DRIVE! DRIVE! DRIVE!”

He jumps into the passenger seat, and you hit the gas. Pietro is talking to you, but your adrenaline is kicking in. Your fieldwork doesn’t really get this exciting without a debrief. Getaway driver is definitely a new change in speed.

Your eyes focus solely on the road, ignoring what the man is saying as his chest heaves up and down. A quick glance in the rearview mirror tells you that they are following you. While you are curious about what happened, those questions can be answered later.

Pietro is actually mildly impressed with your driving skills. Your sharp turns and redirections are top notch in his opinion. Though you are doing great the guys are still tailing you.

You think for a moment, trying to remember the nearest parking garage. You realize that it’s behind you and brake hard, you weave through oncoming traffic to try to get to the parking garage.

“Get ready to hop out,” you say to Pietro parking the car. Once you do the blonde starts running on foot and you call after him. He stops in his tracks frantic until he sees you breaking into another car. When you get in you drive normally out of the parking structure and straight back to the office.

“Jesus Christ, Y/n I didn’t know you could drive like that?”

Pietro grabs the wooden box from his lap before walking to the elevator. He wipes his hands on his jeans and proceeds as though it was a just another day.

“So, what the fuck happened?”

He raises an eyebrow, “You weren’t listening in the car?”

“Duh, I was a little preoccupied with the whole driving for my life thing.”

“I guess you'll hear it when I tell Papa then.”

The two of you are definitely headed to the top floor of the building to inform Dragos of what has transpired. Pietro is never one for knocking and simply barges into the man’s office.

“Papa, do you have a- Sestra?”

Pietro’s sentence dies in his throat as he gets a glimpse of his older sister. He wastes no time sitting in the wooden box on a couch nearby and scooping up the redhead in a tight hug. You could hear them exchanging more words in their mother language. It’s an unexpectedly tender moment as Pietro tries to keep things on the light side.

Somewhere in the hug Wanda’s eyes land on you and they widen slightly. She untangles herself from her brother to get a good look at you. She’s older, as expected, but age had been more than kind to her. Wanda looks as elegant as ever, an air of distinguish surrounds her.

The way she looks at you makes you feel like a teenager again. You do your best not to squirm under her gaze. When a smile placed itself on her lips, you feel relief washing over you. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she pulls you in to a big hug.

Her hands rise to hold your face, pulling back just slightly. She wants to get a good look at you. The softness of her hands causes you to blush.

“You’ve grown up on me little krolik.”

She releases the hold, and you speak, “You’ve been gone a long time, Wanda.”

There it is, in your voice for the first time in years; That fragile tone that you had only ever allowed Wanda to hear. You hope it didn't sound as desperate to everyone else in the room and it didn't. But Wanda picked up on it instantly.

“I have, but now I'm back; permanently,” Wanda says, keeping her eyes on you.

“And she brought a friend,” Dragos interjects, and you watch Wanda roll her eyes.

“She’s more than a friend Papa, she’s my wife and she’s sitting right here. I expect you to treat her kindly.”

Wanda is married and to a woman. Your mind scrambles to piece together what had happened in the years that she was gone for this to be the case. It is hard for you to digest what the woman had said. Your breathing becomes a little shallow, but no one takes notice.

Finally, you take notice of the other woman in the room, sitting in the chair next to the one Wanda had just been sitting in. Your mouth dries at the sight of her. The woman is stunning. Her auburn hair is a few shades darker than Wanda’s. She has a button nose, soft pink lips and piercing green eyes. You couldn't be mad at Wanda for marrying such a beautiful woman.

“Sestra, you’re married?” Pietro exclaims, looking between the two women dramatically.

“Yes; Y/n, Pietro, this is my wife, Natasha Romanoff.”

Your eyes linger on the woman even when Dragos claps his hands together to get the attention of the room, “Piet you were saying something important. I see that Mr. H didn't get his package.”

Any further pleasantries would have to wait.

“Papa it was a bad deal. They tried short me on our exchange, so I told them they could either bring me the rest of what they owe, or I’d be walking. They planned to take the package from me, so I ran immediately to the car. Of course they chased after me, but thanks to need for speed over here we got away.”

Dragos pinches the bridge of his nose lightly, “Don’t I always say being back up?”

Pietro answers back, “I took Y/n.”

This causes Natasha to chuckle a bit.

Your eyes narrow at her, “Something funny?”

She doesn’t back down, “Well from the way Wanda described you, you don't necessarily scream back up.”

Your jaw clenches slightly and you steal a quick glance at Wanda, “Wanda hasn’t seen me in over 5 years. I’m not that fragile little kid anymore.”

Dragos nods proudly, “Y/n is the biggest asset we have in this organization. She’s by far the glue that holds this all together and I will not tolerate any disrespect thrown her way.” The final part of his sentence carries a lot of weight to it, it’s a verbal warning.

Wanda clears her throat, “Hammerhead is a loyal customer, why would he try to cheat us?”

“He could have a new dealer,” you speak up. “Someone who might be charging less for similar goods.”

“You think someone is dumb enough to try to undercut us?” Pietro questions.

You speak candidly, “I think that people in this city can be greedy, and greed blinds all good sense.”

Dragos clearly agrees, “We need eyes and ears on the streets listening to anything about dealers that aren't us. I need a meeting with Hammerhead to make sure he’s got that big ugly head of his on straight. Y/n if I can't sell this, I'm going to have see a profit of this quantity somewhere else on the sheets.”

“Let Natasha and I come with you to your meeting Papa. I want you to see what we're capable of.”

“Papa, is this woman going to be joining our group?” Pietro asks.

You turn your attention to Dragos, curious of what the man has to say. There is an unbridled shine in Wanda’s eyes and a small upturn of Natasha’s lip. They seem to think that the man would say yes immediately.

Instead, he heavily sighs, “For now Ms. Romanoff is simply Wanda’s… wife. There is a chance that she’ll be given access to join. However, her involvement isn’t guaranteed. So just to be clear, she’s not going to be sitting in on the meeting.”

Wanda wants to fight back, you can tell, but she refrains. The playfulness of her features dissipates as she responds, “Is she at least allowed to stay and watch them work?”

“Y/n do you mind if Ms. Romanoff shadows you for the rest of the day?” You know what Dragos was actually asking of you. He wants you to vet her.

Your eyes land on the woman, staring at her intensely, “Sure.”

She squirms in her seat which makes you smile a bit.

“Pietro,” Dragos starts.

“Eyes & ears I’ve got it Papa,” he’s out of the door fast, setting the plan in motion.

Dragos presses a small button on his desk, “Kate can you set up a meeting between Hammerhead & I. It needs to be as soon as possible. Make it clear that if I’m kept waiting, there will be extra fees to pay. Ones that can't be bought by money.”

“No problem Mr. Maximoff. Should I have Clint get the car ready?” She responds over the intercom.

“That’ll be great, thank you Kate.”

Now it is Wanda who claps her hands, “So I guess it’s time to get to work. Which mean it’s time to say goodbye to my beautiful wife and my little krolik.”

Natasha stands from her seat and places a gentle kiss on Wanda’s lips. “Be safe,” she murmurs, not quite ready to part from her wife.

“I’ll be fine Nat, it’s just business as usual.”

Something about the two women in the same line of sight together made you feel weird. You had seen beautiful couples before, but you seem to be a little mesmerized by the sight of Natasha and Wanda. For now, you would say that it was just the shock of seeing Wanda after all these years and being blindsided by the news of her marriage.

“Have you changed too much to give me a hug before you go?”

The teasing tone in Wanda’s voice makes you roll your eyes. You walk over to her nonetheless, “I hugged you earlier, you know.”

Wanda doesn’t hesitate to pull you into another hug. “I know, but maybe two is too much for the new Y/n.”

You look up at her, maybe for a second too long, and you can’t help yourself, “Don’t worry, part of me is still your little krolik.”

A slight blush paints over her features as she smiles at you, “Good, keep my wife safe, ok?”

Your eyes cut to Natasha, “Of course, I’ll leave you guys to it.”

You walk out of the office with Wanda’s wife trailing closely behind you.

“So, are you going to show me what makes you the glue?”

Her words make smile tug on the edge of your lips, “If you’re lucky.”

#lowkeyerror #wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff imagine #natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff imagine #natasha romanoff x reader #pietro maximoff #kate bishop #clint barton

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songmingisthighs · 3 months ago

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Maudit

introduction pt. i | pt. ii | pt. iii

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ch. lxv - babysitting

cursed!jongho × reader

genre : mythology!au, smau

rating : mature; crude jokes and filthy language

buy me coffee ?

wc : 1.3 k

so long i've been here, so long are the stories i've written. of what i gathered and lost, loneliness becomes me and pain refuse to depart from me. i've embraced that which ate me away so when you came along, i had no part of me left to give.

The very minute- nay, the very second you got Yunho and Mingi out the door, you and Jongho immediately collapsed onto the couch with a loud sigh. The two stayed over for a little bit too long which was an understatement because when they came, the sun was still out and they only left after badgering you and Jongho for dinner and dessert.

Due to having to cater to two adult children who came by without any notice. Both you and Jongho sat wordlessly for a bit, enjoying not talking for a bit while Jongho put on whatever song that he wanted.

After the third song, you scoffed and smirked, "Oh my God, you're such a nerd," you teased. Jongho turned and raised an eyebrow at you, "Excuse me? Which of us is majoring in history?" he scoffed back. "You're just jealous that I'm studious, smart, and a scholar. You're jelly that I know so much and all you know is 2nd generation boybands apparently," you teased. Jongho nudged your knee with his in defiance, "Excuse you, but I know a lot! I lived through most of the history you're learning, alright? And Infinite was and still is an icon, I will not apologize for still listening to their songs," he huffed. You rolled your eyes and muttered under your breath, "Songs you said when you listen to The Chaser 75 times on loop," to which Jongho heard and retaliated by throwing a couch cushion at you gently.

His reaction made you laugh and despite teasing him, you went back to a more real topic, "But really, I don't know how people do it," you groaned, catching Jongho's attention, "Do what?" He asked. You huffed and shifted to curl up on the couch, "Take care of children. Multiple children specifically because we just took care of two and I'm about to go absolutely bananas." "I mean... You could ask me, " Jongho answered, causing you to raise an eyebrow at him in slight confusion, "How do you mean?" "Well, I deal with you all the time so I'm practically an expert in child rearing at this point," he teasingly grinned. You scoffed and kicked him on the leg which barely did anything as Jongjo simply cackled and grab your ankle. "You're horrible!" You exclaimed but he didn't it seriously, "Sorry! I'm just kidding, I do enjoy spending time with you!" After eyeing him, you huffed and pulled your ankle from his grip, "As you should, Mr. Choi. I have been nothing but pleasant with you and I refuse to fall into your previous treatment!"

At the mention of his previous treatment towards you, Jongho sheepishly grinned and he started rubbing his thighs nervously, "I was horrible to you, wasn't I?"

He didn't seem like he was particularly trying to be apologetic or anything, he was just stating about how differently he had treated you back then. "Yeah you were but with the working hours and the pay you gave me? I take that over any other jobs, honestly. My classmate told me about his experience working in corporate, about how he basically had no life because his boss would make him come on weekends. He was only an admin staff, he wasn't even involved in any particular projects!" Jongho chuckled at your words, not fully understanding what you meant by "working in corporate" or how bad it is exactly, but he appreciated your passion in the matter. "But really (y/n), who are you to complain about working on weekends when you LIVE in your office?" He smirked.

You scoffed and squinted your eyes at him accusatorily, "Because my boss has no office and his couch is ridiculously comfortable so you can't really blame me for practically moving in!"

Jongho bit his bottom lip, (uselessly) trying to prevent his grin from widening while his eyes wandered around his place. Just from his living room, he could see how his house had changed since you, well, "moved in". The usually empty, barely used couch now had an afghan in one corner and a tiny splatter of food stain. He could no longer find the tag on his oven because you had started using it. Some things were also moved around for convenience, like his vase, which was put in a corner to gather dust. You had managed to move it around so it was given the attention it deserved, admiring it every so often. Then there was the shoe rack you installed because, before that, Jongho simply shoved his shoe underneath the elevated platform that led into his house. Just to bring his sentiment to full circle, Jongho caught the red coffee maker you had hauled yourself because Wooyoung decided to be a menace just to get your attention.

"You have practically moved in, haven't you?" Jongho mused.

You furrowed your eyebrows, confused at this sudden musing.

"I... Have I told you how grateful I am that you've been spending time with me more?" he asked, his head resting on the couch in your direction, causing you to blush slightly at how soft he looked. "What are you talking about?" you coughed, trying to push the embarrassment away (which was futile). "I mean... I... I was lonely. I fit in with my friends and all but I was never one of them, you know? We had different backgrounds and even situations and I think I convinced myself that my loneliness was nothing, I shoved it to the back like my other negative emotions and refused to deal with it so I didn't realize how much I needed to go back to being human until you actually humanize me again and... It actually felt nice."

The way he was smiling at you made you feel all warm and gooey inside and considering you were in his home, talking about how you practically moved in, you felt so domestic. It was more than you can handle truly because you weren't sure how to proceed with Jongho. "Oh please, I-I bet if it wasn't me, someone would've-"

Your words were halted when Jongho reached forward and grabbed your hand in his, effectively shutting you up as he stared into your eyes, unmoving as if he was hypnotizing you which was working because you found yourself relaxing and mirroring his pose.

"But no one did, (y/n). No one but you," he smiled.

It was ridiculous how his words were all it took to pull you into a state of disarray. You felt a tug in your heart, an electrifying, magnetic pull that caused your body to move closer to Jongho's. "Jongho..." You called out, wanting to say something but not knowing what, so you could only call out his name which seemed to cause a chain reaction because soon, Jongho started leaning in also.

Your heart was beating out of your chest, realizing what was about to happen and alarm bells rang in your head, warning you that it was a bad idea to kiss your boss. But you were so drawn into Jongho's plump lips that all senses dulled.

Luckily (or unluckily) for you, Jongho suddenly inhale sharply.

"I need to take a shower," he stated, slowly moving back until there was some distance between the two of you. You almost whined at the lack of proximity, already missing his body warmth but you held it in, you coughed slightly and pulled away yourself. "I... Need to wash the day off of me, Mingi hyung and Yunho hyung did a number on me," he chuckled as he stood up, "Wanna have some tea after this?" You simply blinked and nodded, not really able to say anything. "Alright then, I'll see you in a bit," Jongho grinned, shoving his hands in his pants pocket and walking upstairs to shower in his own room.

As soon as you heard his door closed, you let go of the breath that you didn't even realize you were holding and slumped into the couch. Your brain was working overtime, trying to make sense of things but failing. It didn't help that the song Jongho had put on was still playing, now seemingly like it was mocking you and your situation. Without hesitation, you lifted the cushion on the couch, pressed it onto your face, and screamed. You screamed and screamed to your heart's content because what. the. actual. fuck?

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@roronoas-wife

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hoe4sports · 1 year ago

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“I wanted tall, I wanted green eyes”

Jessie Fleming x reader

A/N: mentions of symptoms of the flu. Denial of being gay. This is a part of my new Jessie series called 10x better. It’s based off of the song x10 better by Marielle Craft. There will be multiple parts.

You groaned as you ripped the paper out of your workbook before cramming it into a ball and chucking it towards the bin. It was close to summer, and the last month of College was wrapping up. You hadn’t really wanted to do college, but you didn’t have anything else going on so your parents pulled some strings to get you into UCLA’s prestigious engineering program going with a major in material engineering. The school had a decent track program where you had excelled into a good athlete. Luckily you had found yourself a bouquet of girls in class and in track who sticked together with you through the college years. The group of you went through all kinds of hardships together as you gradually turned into adults. That had led you to sitting with the girls at a table in the library‘s area specifically dedicated to group projects and talking.

«I cant for the life of me figure this out. It just won’t stick! It really makes no sense.” You huffed at Aubrey who looked just as lost as you did. Normally, you were a decent student. Getting good grades; mostly A’s and B’s but you had the occasional C+. It didn’t bother you at all, grades and school wasn’t what defined you as a human. “What part is it that your stuck on? Maybe I can help?” Your friend Mia suggested. You dramatically flipped your textbook towards her to let her see the materials you were struggling with. She read through the page quickly before taking off her glasses dramatically. “You are on your own kid, I barely passed the test about that part.” It left you with rolling your eyes as you huffed again.

«What about that boyfriend of yours? Isn’t he like supersmart? William or whatever his name was» Ella teased as you laid your head down on the table and covered it with the book. “Ugh” you said. “Ooo, trouble in paradise!” Amalia teased. You sat up and crossed your arms as you shook your head. “Guys, cut her some slack. Y/N, I have a friend who is really smart. She plays soccer with me, I could give you her number” Mia suggested causing everyone to shut up. You sat up interested. “I’m listening” Mia smiled. “Her name is Jessie, she’s the smartest person I know! She told me that I could always ask for help so I supposed I can lend you my favor.” “Deal!” You said as you handed over your phone for Mia to type in the number of your saviour.

—

You sat infront of the big mirror in your down curling your hair like a last minute touch up. Your boyfriend had blown you off once again for studying, so you had decided to hit up Jessie so she could help you study. William was always so busy, always studying or going to his little clubs. It wasn’t that you didn’t like him, but he was just there. Life hadn’t handed over a boyfriend before college, so when William asked; you jumped on it. It wasn’t like people describe it. Like butterflies, romance and giggles. It was just like a friend that you would kiss occasionally. You had settled on the thought of you be a-romantic or asexual, it was painful to know that you were never going to experience the bliss, the romance and the tickling sensation of a relationship. It wasn’t something you wanted people to know, so you decided to keep it to yourself. It was the ugly truth, but it was still the truth that you had to deal with.

You sat in the library, waiting for this mystery Jessie to pull up. She was late, 13 minutes late. You hated people who were late, but you made an assumption that practice had ran late. You took a sip of your smoothie as you looked out of the big window infront of you. It was already dark outside, but the campus was buzzing. People were getting ready to push through the last few weeks of school before finishing college. Some of the students already had landed good jobs, some had gotten accepted into further studies, some had planned for a gap year and some people, like you, had no clue what to do. You just didn’t know what was in store for you. Your parents expected you to get a high paying job, but you just wanted to live. They wanted you to get married and have kids. You wanted to travel the world. You had talent in track, and you were pretty close to becoming an established runner in the 1500m and the 3000m. The expectations didn’t fit your dreams, but after all; you could chase your dreams once your parents had passed.

“Y/N?” A voice said behind cutting of your chain of thoughts leaving you to jump in your chair causing all the hairs on your body to rise. You practically whacked your head around somewhat resembling an owl as you turned to the girl next to you. “You are Y/N, right?” The girl said. “Uhm, yea. You must be Jessie? Mia’s friend?” You asked as you desperately tried to shake yourself out of the state of shock. “Yes, correct! I’m sorry for being late, practice went over and I had to shower so I wouldn’t stink out the library” she said as she turned into a shade of light pink. «I get it, i do track» you said as you gestured for Jessie to sit down in front of you. “Here, I brought you a smoothie as a thank you” you said as you pointed towards the cup next to her. Jessie politely accepted as she took a sip before beginning the session.

After a few hours of Jessie explaining the chapter tremendously, you were starting to slowly understand it. At least, enough for you to study the rest the following day. You were busy packing up your backpack with your books, MacBook and iPad when Jessie tapped your shoulder. “Wanna grab something to eat before bedtime?” Jessie’s suggestion was music to your ears as you loved food.

At the dining hall, it was pretty much empty. The large room was quiet, like all of the energies had gone to bed and left for the evening. It was a nice hall with tall walls and decent food. You grabbed a piece of pizza, some salad and a Pepsi Mac. Jessie grabbed Fanta to her Mac and cheese. Your conversation was flowing, and Jesse was quite funny. The sight of Jessie was adorable. She had this amazing aura that your soul craved to be around. Her freckles were cute, like a sky of stars in the middle of the night. And her eyes? Oh god, they felt warm and safe. The was she told stories enchanted you. She was the perfect woman, and that confused you. Not perfect like you wanted to be her, but like you wanted to be with her?

You were snapped out of your dreaming when Jessie called your name. “Hm? Sorry? I got distracted” You said as you took a bite of your pizza while waiting for Jessie. “I asked if you wanted to study tomorrow? I have practice at 5.30, but I’m free by 7” she said as you nodded. Oh god, did you seem desperate? Why were you like this? It felt like your skin was on fire. “Uh, yea, I have track at 5, but I’m free after 7” you confirmed as you changed the subject talking about how Mia had ended up falling asleep in a bush after a party during your freshman year.

After eating, Jessie insisted on following you back to your dorm. The walk from the community building to your dorm was refreshing. The chill spring air was crisp, cooling down your burning skin. It made your curled hair blow in the wind, just like in one of the dumb teenage movies you watched as a kid. The wind was however leaving you slightly cold as you had just worn a simple tank top with flowers printed on it for the day. You felt your body forcing you into a slight shiver, but before you were able to say something; Jessie had already wrapped her jacket around you.

When you reached your dorm, Jessie hugged you goodbye. She insisted on you keeping her jacket until tomorrow’s session which you honestly didn’t mind. You swung the door open as you waved after her and slipped into the dorm before flopping down on your bed with your backpack still on and your face looking up into the ceiling. Your skin felt even warmer now, it was practically boiling hot and your stomach was hurting. It felt uneasy, like it was tickling. It wasn’t a common feeling, and you were hoping that it wasn’t gonna turn into the y when you had plans with Jessie the next day.

“So, how was it?” Mia said as you looked into the ceiling. “Normal, it was studying” you said as you touched your burning cheeks with your cool hand. “Girl, you are blushing! Do you like Jessie?” Mia asked with seriousness in her voice. “I’m not blushing! Jessie is a friend, and I’m not into girls” you tried to advocate for yourself, but it turned out to be a miserable attempt of redemption. “You are not into girls? You came in her all smiling with stars in your eyes” she suggested as you sat up in your bed to look at her. Sure, Jessie was fun, kind, caring, sincere, smart. Pretty much all the positive verbs in the English language, but did that mean that you liked Jessie. “Besides my stomach hurts and I feel feverish, so I’m gonna go to bed miss noisy” you said as you took off Jessie’s jacket.

Mia raised an eyebrow at you. “Jessie’s jacket? You are not feverish; it’s called blushing. Your stomach dosent hurt; it’s called being in love. You like Jessie, and it’s okay! William is as interesting as drying paint” Mia finished as she grabbed her book and got cozy in her bed. “I don’t like girls! And William is tall and he has green eyes” you said as you hid your face in your pillow. Could it be that you actually liked Jessie? It wasn’t possible because you were aromantic. “Is that the best words you can use to describe him? Girl, get your ass down to earth! It’s okay to have a little crush! Mia continued as you buried your face even deeper down in the pillow. She had a point, but you were not sure. You felt like you couldn’t trust yourself. You ended up huffing in a respond hoping Mia would let you off the hook.

“I don’t know who you are trying to convince out of us two; but it’s not me.”

#woso imagine #woso x reader #jessie fleming x reader #jessie fleming

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thehypnone · 9 months ago

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Symbol on the Surface Chapter 6

WC: 1,1k

Relationship: SwissAlps

Tags: Transmasc Swiss, Pregnancy, Vaginal Sex, Mommy Kink, Implied Daddy Kink, Breeding, Titty Sucking, Mentions of Lactation, Multiple Orgasms, Knotting, Aftercare, Showering

“Was supposed to try to put more kits in you, yeah?” Mountain pants. “‘M gonna do that.”

Notes: This chapter isn't essential to the plot so feel free to skip if the contents aren't for you—you won't miss anything major. As usual, tysm to @jimothybarnes for beta reading :3

Chapter 1 here or on AO3.

Read chapter 6 under the cut or on AO3.

Swiss’ pants are off before they reach their room.

He winces as something cracks in his back when Mountain quite literally throws him onto their bed before backing up to get rid of his clothes. The multi ghoul wiggles out of his shirt, sighing as the cold air hits his chest, making his nipples harden.

Mountain’s eyes widen as he catches sight of them and he’s on them in no time.

Swiss giggles when the earth ghoul’s mouth descends onto his chest at first, but it quickly turns into moans and groans as Mountain begins to suck and nibble and roll his tongue over the sensitive buds. Swiss’ nipples have always been sensitive, but now?

Now, Mountain could make him cum just by playing with them.

The multi ghoul’s hands fly to the other’s head to keep him where he is; he can feel Mountain groaning against him as he covers his chest in spit. Swiss arches his back at the pleasure, but—once again—it hurts like a bitch. Mountain seems to sense his mate’s discomfort and moves one of his hands under the small of his back to support it.

“How have I never—fuck—discovered that one?” Swiss tries to tease as the earth ghoul keeps sucking on him: nursing. It’s going to be so much fun once he starts lactating. “You’ve got a mommy kink.”

“No, I don’t,” Mountain protests with a huff, nuzzling into his mate’s chest. After a moment, he sighs, “Yes, I do.”

Swiss laughs, but it’s only affectionate. “That's why you want me to be your kits’ mama? ‘Cause mommy is for you?”

“Fuck,” he breathes, “uh–huh.”

“Well, in that case,” Swiss hums, “you're gonna be Papa, ‘cause daddy is for me.”

Mountain shudders.

“Now c’mon, baby. Make mommy feel good.”

The earth ghoul groans at that and Swiss can feel his cock kicking and spilling some precum against his shin. Swiss asked him so nicely…he can’t say no to that, can he?

He sits up and looks down at his mate with nothing but love in his eyes. It’s sweet for a second, but then Mountain’s gaze trails down to the multi ghoul’s wet cunt and the affection turns to hunger.

He grabs Swiss’ legs and all but bends him in half, shoving a pillow under his hips.

“Was supposed to try to put more kits in you, yeah?” he pants. “‘M gonna do that.”

The multi ghoul is distracted from the tension in his back by the tip of Mountain’s cock pressing against his cunt. He’s a little worried about it hurting—considering they haven’t been having as much sex as they usually do, lately—but he trusts Mountain.

And surely, he’s gentle as he presses in, making sure Swiss isn’t in pain. The multi ghoul can see desperation pulling at every single muscle in Mountain’s body, but he’s still holding himself back for his sake.

Lucifer, he’s so in love with him.

“Alright?” the earth ghoul asks to make sure.

“Alright,” Swiss confirms, and a smirk grows on Mountain’s face. “Uh–oh…”

He snaps his hips with a growl and not a second passes before he’s got Swiss in a full mating press, jackhammering into his cunt at inhuman speed. Mountain mutters something incomprehensible against the multi ghoul’s neck as he fucks the life out of him and he can do nothing but moan and enjoy his mate’s…enthusiasm.

The closer Mountain gets to cumming, the more delirious and desperate he becomes—his filter gone completely.

“Gonna knock you u–up, fill you with my kits,” he babbles, “you’re g–gonna look so pretty, carrying my–my kits.”

He’s so lost in it, completely brainless—he forgot Swiss already is carrying his kits.

“‘M gonna–” he growls, “gonna make you a mommy.”

“Oh, my love,” Swiss takes the earth ghoul’s hand and guides it to his stomach—his baby bump; made slightly bigger with the addition of Mountain’s fat cock in his cunt, “you already did. Don’t you remember?”

Mountain freezes, with his eyes blown and mouth agape. There’s a split second of realization before he folds his entire body over Swiss’, twitching and whining through his first, earth-shattering, orgasm of the night.

A few more light thrusts throw the multi ghoul over the edge, too—making him dig his claws into his mate’s back and all but scream into his ear.

Even once they get down from their respective highs, they stay panting against each other, waiting for their overstimulation to pass so they can go again. It does not take Mountain long to get hard again, and in no time at all he’s pounding Swiss again.

And then they both cum again, and then go once more, and once more, and by the fifth round Swiss can finally feel Mountain’s knot growing.

“Gonna knot you, mommy,” he promises, “gonna get you s–stuck to keep it all in, make it catch.”

And knot him he does, stopping the count. Swiss is half passed out by now and Mountain’s entire body is shaking from exertion. After hours of holding him up his arms finally give out and he flops down onto his mate.

He squishes the multi ghoul a little, but he doesn’t mind. It takes a longer while for Mountain to come back down, this time, and even when his brain is back in his head, he doesn’t move an inch—staying cuddled up to Swiss until his knot goes down and then a bit longer.

They both start purring, lazily running their hands over each other for what feels like hours, until Swiss starts feeling gross between his legs and asks for a shower.

“You might have to carry me, big guy,” he chuckles in an attempt to hide a wince; he’s sore all over and his back feels as if his spine got broken in half. Mountain blushes a little and whines—feeling guilty, but proud of himself at the same time. He goes to turn the shower on, first, before returning to grab his mate.

He’s gentle—now—making sure the water is at a perfect temperature, tying Swiss’ locks up, and helping him step into the shower without slipping. Mountain doesn’t even let him grab a loofah and the shower gel for himself, insisting on doing it all for him.

The earth ghoul washes him with light hands and near reverence, carefully scrubbing every inch of Swiss’ skin. It’s not only for him; it’s self-indulgent for Mountain, too.

He loves the way Swiss’ body feels under his touch, the way he holds onto his shoulder when Mountain lifts his legs, the way he sighs when the earth ghoul gets his soapy hand between his legs and gently cleans him up there, too.

Their love is beautiful.

Taglist: @arkeusruin @skele-bunny @everybodyshusband @ratsummer @jazz-bazz @mac-and-thefox @karmicbias @wine-irytatus

#cw pregnancy #hypnone writes #the band ghost #nameless ghouls #swiss ghoul #mountain ghoul #swissalps #symbol on the surface #cw breeding #cw mommy kink

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lxnely-lullaby · 5 months ago

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A Small Analysis of the Cars 2 Crash from the Porto Corsa Grand Prix

Thought I'd give my hand a try at analyzing scenes from movies. It's my first time, so please be gentle with me. I've watched the major crash in Cars 2 multiple times, and recently, I noticed a few things in between frames. But first, let's get into the start of the crash.

When Shu passes by the camera-disguised electromagnetic pulse emitter, the power is in the orange. This means that the ray's power is at an estimate of 70% - 80% power or 80% - 90%. That's enough for a car's engine to spontaneously explode, because the Allinol is just gasoline specifcally engineered to respond to the ray by doing just that when the car is in direct contact.

When Shu's engine explodes, at first glance, he looks surprised, as one would be if their engine blows up, because it's all so sudden to him. But if you go deeper into it, he looks scared and he feels scared. He doesn't know what's happening to him. All he knows is that he needs to stop and pull over to the right side of the track so the racers behind him won't crash right into him.

The explosion from his engine pulls him into a loose drift on the track. Darrel Cartrip says, "Number 7 is loose! Shu Todoroki!" That's a racing term for the word "oversteer", which means that a race car's rear tires have less grip than the front tires, causing the back end of the race car slide out and have less control. That's what Shu is doing right now; He's having trouble regaining control because he's currently in oversteer from the explosion. This would make it all the more likely for him to crash or spin out on the track if he weren't able to regain control sooner.

Miguel, right behind Shu, sees Shu going out of control on the track, and his first and foremost instinct is to brake, so he wouldn't crash into the number 7 racer. He knows that Shu's engine just exploded, judging by the black smoke emitting from his engine, and because it just happened, Shu wouldn't be able to regain control of himself in time to stop and pull over to the right side of the track.

SInce Miguel was going at such a high speed, much likely his top speed or close to, he isn't able to stop in time and he makes a hard impact on Shu's side. If you look closely or pause the video at exactly this frame, you could see Miguel's face is clearly scared, because the inevitable was going to happen at that very second. He was scared he was going to crash into the number 7.

When Miguel finally crashes right into Shu, there's that few seconds that look like Shu was going to flip over and experience a roll-over crash, because he was launched into the air briefly, but he doesn't. There isn't enough inertia to flip him over completely. His back tires end up on Miguel's hood, and if you look closely, you can see that Miguel is still braking, trying to stop the both of them, since Shu is compromised and isn't able to do anything in his current position. They're both taken further along the track, with Miguel practically dragging Shu.

Max, who was behind Miguel, sees what's going on and tries to stop himself, but it's already too little too late. Shu sees Max's attempt to stop himself, since he's turned almost fully on his left, while Miguel is too focused on stopping both himself and Shu.

The Japanese racer, already having been scared out of his mind after Miguel's painful impact on his side, is now even more afraid than ever, knowing what's just about to happen next.

Max rams himself right into Miguel. The impact is just enough to take Shu off Miguel's hood by lifting him up into the air, the only thing keeping him on the ground is the tires on his right side because he's tilted in such a way. Shu is practically scrapping himself onto the asphalt by this point, and thankfully, there isn't enough inertia to cause him to flip over and possibly careen off the track.

Miguel also suffers damage by hitting the track barrier on his right side. When Max opens his eyes again for a brief second, there's a look of regret and worry on his face for hurting his friends. You can see the white smoke emitting from both Miguel and Max's tires, due to the friction it created from braking so hard, they were literally burning rubber.

Max and Miguel are still braking, hoping to end their nightmare. However, there were still two more racers following close behind them - Raoul and Rip, who notice what's happening right in front of them. They brake at the same time, but again, it's too little too late.

Right as Raoul closes in on Max, you can see the look of pure fear on the WTCL racer's face. It's like he doesn't know what to be more afraid of - Getting hurt or Miguel and Shu getting more hurt than they already have been. It could be both.

You can also see the look of complete horror on Miguel's face when he sees Raoul and Rip right about to crash into the three of them, as if he thought the worse of over, until he realized it was about to get much, much worse.

Raoul crashes right into the trio, with Rip being the last to follow. You can see the racers being crammed right next to each other on the already narrow track, as when Rip crashes right into the GRC racer, Raoul's tires were on his hood for a brief second before he settles between Rip and Max. Miguel is pushed against the track barrier, and Max is right next to Shu, who is barely conscious at this point.

Jeff and Lewis are the last racers on the track. Upon seeing the pile-up, Jeff is the first one to take immediate action by braking hard, while Lewis just looks terrified for two split seconds, as if his mind was trying to process everything in front of him and his best friend.

Lewis then takes action to apply his brakes, and thankfully, he and Jeff were able to stop just in time, right in front of the injured racers.

Thankfully enough, they didn't crash and they didn't get hurt in the process, but the fear on their face isn't just for what could've happened to them, but it's for what happened to Shu, Miguel, Max, Raoul and Rip.

Upon having crashed, you could see the five racers in the aftermath of it all.

Shu looks barely conscious and is on the verge of passing out. There's still black smoke emitting out from underneath him, and not only is he experiencing the pain from his engine having exploded, he's also experiencing the immense pain of four other racers having crashed into him. There isn't any white smoke coming from his tires, due to the immense pain he was in, so it looks like he wasn't even bothering to brake at all after coming down from Miguel's hood.

There is white smoke coming from the tires of six other racers, four of which are experiencing pain from the crash. Max looks halfway conscious, despite experiencing the third-most damage, Raoul is coming in and out of consciousness, and Miguel is barely awake. Although it's hard to tell, it can also be assumed that Rip is fully or mostly conscious, having experienced the least damage out of everyone when he crashed.

Lewis is looking at Jeff, scared and worried out of his mind for his friends, and wondering what to do next. Jeff feels the same way, having no idea what to do except offer comfort and reassurances to whoever is conscious in the pileup until help arrives.

And from the looks of it on the large TV screen broadcasting the live feed, Jeff and Lewis are coming closer to the injured racers carefully as the ambulances arrive. It seemed like they were reassuring their friends that the ambulances were coming very soon, and they wouldn't leave their side. At this point, most or some of the racers have passed out from the immense pain - Shu, Miguel and Max, since they experienced the most damage, while Raoul and Rip are mostly or halfway conscious. That's my take on the Porto Corsa crash, and my overall analysis of it. Let me what you guys think, and as always, stay safe and have a good morning/afternoon/evening.

#pixar cars #cars 2 (2011)#miguel camino #raoul caroule #lewis hamilton #jeff gorvette #rip clutchgoneski #shu todoroki #max schnell #movie quotes #movie scenes #movie analysis #scene analysis

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ascorpiosramblings · 8 months ago

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Stressed out

(Ratio x Aventurine college AU-Yes I am projecting)

warnings: none

Tap. Tap. Tap. For the 13th time his fingers moved on the worn keys, typing away like a mad man as he sat among a sea of empty energy drink cans. His soft fingers caught a break as he laced them through his hair, tugging on his locks as he sighed. Its useless, so useless. The suffocation of independent research mixed with never-ending stream of assignments yet to be done left his wrists aching. Life truly had no mercy even for a genius like him, forcing him to follow the path of obtaining a bachelors, masters and PhD just like most researchers even if he already outclassed the masses.

He leaned on his chair. Pain shooting through his spine to his shoulders as he let his eyelids obscure the glow of his monitor. His body completely relaxed as he felt himself inching closer to the sweet embrace of slumber. But alas, the task at hand required his full attention as he reached for the cold can of caffeine dense poison. Cracking it open he practically inhaled it out of desperation to relieve himself of the curse of enervation.

He turned to face the multiple tabs open on the monitor and mentally prepared himself for another long night. "You look as terrible as ever" The voice took Veritas out of his work induced trance. It was Aventurine. Who let him in? Did he not lock his door?. Aventurine stood next to the taller man "I was knocking for a while and thought you died or something with how long I was out there." Veritas narrowed his eyes at the blonde before letting out a sign of resignation and falling back on his chair. "You certainly have impeccable timing". Aventurine laced his fingers with his, pulling him up from his seat. "You look exhausted, are you sure you're alright?" "I'm Fine" "Liar". Veritas was pulled out of his room.

"Lets go out on a walk, you look like you need to touch grass". Aventurine tugged on his hand, whisking him away into the midnight glow of the outdoors. Veritas could feel his heart speeding up, his gaze was taken by the way the moonlight bounced off the complex contours of his face. His thoughts started to scatter in all directions as his eye remained glued to the business majors face, feeling himself get lost in his eyes.

"The moon is beautiful, isn't it?" Aventurine said, gazing up at the sky. He took a step closer to the taller man "the bags under your eyes make me wonder if I can use them for groceries. Are you sure you got the memo that sleep is, you know, actually important?" Veritas rolled his eyes. "Tell that memo to the university, I have to publish my research paper before mid terms and finish a pile of assignments. Everything is easy, but the amount of physical labor required for such tasks is simply a nuisance. I already know what the Chinese Remainder Theorem is I do not need twenty questions to get it."

Aventurine chuckled as he listened to him rant. He walked with him, listening to every word said, memorizing each syllable as if it were an unforgettable melody even if it was a benign conversation. He wanted to savor this moment, he was enthralled by him. Everything he did. This one moment was one of many and each one was like a precious gem to Aventurine. The only dilemma left now was how unaware the genius was of the depth of admiration he had for him.

Their hands brushed against each other. This was enough to take Veritas out of his rant as he felt the softness of the others hand. Once again he felt his beating heart pick up the pace as if to remind him how truly beautiful the man in front of him was, how truly gorgeous he was. Their eyes met and in that moment Veritas laced his fingers with the blondes, finally giving into an impulse.

Realizing what he had done he tried to pull back. His face turning scarlet as he reminded himself of the possibility that Aventurine may not like it. But to his surprise, Aventurine doesn't let go.

"You were saying?". With that Veritas got back to his rant, yet his mind didn't stray from the fact that they were holding hands. As he spoke he noticed he soft smile on Aventurines face accompanied by a crimson hue on his cheeks.

"I am taken by you"

#hsr #hsr fanfic #aventio #hsr aventurine #hsr veritas ratio #dr. ratio #aventurine #hsr dr ratio #hsr drabbles #honkai star rail

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mania-sama · 1 year ago

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hesitated all my life (but i'm all done running)

RUNNING - NF

➼ information ❧ Haikyuu ❧ Pairing: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru ❧ Additional Characters: Hanamaki Takahiro, Matsukawa Issei ❧ Tags: character study, angst with a happy ending, blood and injury, implied/referenced child abuse, implied/referenced drinking, internalized homophobia, homophobia, homophobic language, starvation, dehydration, childhood trauma, heavy angst ❧ Summary: Oikawa Tooru is mugged after volleyball practice and becomes the next victim in a cat-and-mouse game between a criminal and the police. Being tucked away underneath the floorboards of his practice court, Oikawa can no longer escape the overbearing feelings he has for his best friend. Iwaizumi Hajime tries to find his best friend before it's too late. ❧ Word Count: 12,646 ❧ Cross-posted from Archive of Our Own ❧ Original post date: 7 November 2023

A volleyball rolls on the ground, far away from where the rest are contained in the set bin. It’s going to be painful getting it back, Oikawa knows. His knee has flared up in aching pain. He sits on the ground and rubs it back into a condition where it can take him around the gym to lock up, then home.

That walk is going to be rough. He doesn’t live far nor in a bad part of town, it’s that he has to actually travel on his bad knee. It’s going to take him at least five more minutes, maybe ten if he has to stop frequently. He sighs, pushing himself slowly off the ground when the pain subsides ever so slightly. It’ll have to do.

He limps to and fro the gym. He’s lucky he’s even playing. His injury over the summer nearly cost him the season, and he doesn’t know what he would’ve done if he had been benched. It’s his final year of schooling before he moves on to higher education. He already has a scholarship lined up, but nothing can quite replace this; the late nights in the gym, practicing solo drills over and over again until he collapses, and gazing up at the Aobai Johsai banners hanging limply from the walls.

And then, of course, there are the people he’ll be leaving behind. It’s not so much the school experience, but the friends and teammates he’s experienced triumph and defeat with. He doesn’t know what to do with the heavyweight in his chest when he realizes he will never sit on the same bench with them or play on the same side of the court. The only way that would be possible is if they all somehow managed to go to the same university as he is.

Which they aren’t. At least, only one of them has been accepted to the same university as him. He and Iwaizumi are sticking together, but not on the court. Iwaizumi isn’t playing collegiate volleyball.

Oikawa shakes himself loose as he turns off the lights of the gym. Getting emotional now will do horribly for his sleep tonight, which he so desperately needs. He has two major tests the next day, and not to mention a volleyball match that afternoon. They’d be playing an unranked school, but it’s a game nonetheless. He wants, and needs, to be well-rested and energized.

The door opens with effort on his part, and he steps out into the chilling air. Seasons are changing, and that makes the nights colder and stretch on for longer. The freezing breeze bites his bare skin, cooling the sweat on his arms, neck, and face. However, it stiffens his knee and reinvites all the pain he was carefully controlling a moment earlier.

He turns to lock the door behind him when his heart seizes. A click of a gun. Clicks. Multiple guns. He stares at the door, his hands frozen mid-air. His entire body stands as still and stiff as possible. Unwanted bile climbs up his throat in complete, unadulterated fear. He doesn’t want to turn in the case they think he has a weapon of his own, or that he’s making a break for it. He doesn’t want to do anything that might make them pull their triggers.

“Drop the bag. Empty your pockets,” a disembodied voice says. Oikawa drops the keys to the ground immediately, then shoulders his duffel bag off of his shoulder. He doesn’t have much in there — a volleyball, a pair of shoes, the set of dirty clothes he wore to practice, and his wallet, probably the only thing in the bag they’re going to want.

He turns out his pockets, slowly drawing out his phone on one side and a lighter on the other. He can’t explain the lighter without outing the fact that his girlfriend smokes and occasionally forgets her lighter — she then gets mad at him for not remembering to carry one, as though he’s the one who smokes.

Only Iwaizumi knows about that. He knows most things about his life that Oikawa wouldn’t tell other people. Things that he wouldn’t tell his own family or his girlfriend.

He wonders what Iwaizumi would say to Oikawa in this situation. Would he hold his hand with a silent promise to keep safe? Or would he somehow try to preserve their belongings by running, or fighting? Perhaps he would’ve seen the glint of the muggers' guns before they could move in from the shadows, and then they wouldn’t be in the situation in the first place.

Well. It doesn’t matter. Iwaizumi isn’t here. He left thirty minutes ago when Oikawa said he couldn’t stop practicing just yet. He’d only even stayed as long as he did under the pretense of walking home with Oikawa.

If they had left together, Oikawa wouldn��t be slowly turning around under the orders of other people. He wouldn’t be staring into the barrels of three guns. “Where’s your wallet? You trying to cheat us?” The middle guy threatens. The voice sounds the same as the other orders, so it must be the same guy. He’s probably the ringleader.

“It’s in— my bag. I can— I can get it out for you,” he says, stuttering through his words. His heart beats erratically in his chest, and it feels like his entire body trembles underneath the rabbit-fast rhythm. The men are wearing ski masks to hide their expressions, but the main guy doesn’t shoot or yell at Oikawa, so he thinks he made the right call.

The middle mugger indicates his gun in the direction of the bag. “Get it out, now.”

Oikawa crouches and tries not to flinch under the distinct sound of guns shifting to follow his movement. One gun is necessary for a robber, he supposes. Three is excessive. Oikawa is unarmed, quite injured, and certainly not trained to fight three robbers with guns at one time. They don’t have anything to fear.

He unzips his bag and pulls out his wallet. It pathetically shakes in his grip. He doesn’t want to part with it. It is a good amount of cash as well as his credit card, which is currently stockpiled with unspent money. He spent all summer working nearly every day, and he has yet to dig into his stash. The plan was to use it on getting a flight to and from Argentina, as well as the various other expenditures that would be required of him during his stay.

Collegiate isn’t his end goal. Argentina is in his sights.

But now, he has his hand out, departing with his money, identity, and bank account. They don’t have his social security, at least, but it won’t mean much with his ID card stolen. It will take him forever to replace all that he will lose.

No, he can prevent most of the damage. He just has to wait until he gets home, and then he’ll call the bank before they can buy much of anything. He can’t do anything about the physical yen , but that’s okay. It has to be the sacrifice.

“Phone. Tell me the passcode while you’re at it.”

Fuck. His social security is in there, as well as his bank. Not to mention it’s a phone, which is expensive and will definitely hurt to replace. But it’s not like he has a choice. The man on the left takes his wallet, and Oikawa grits his teeth against the pain in his knee to pick up his phone. He hands it over while saying the six-digit passcode, and then —

The man on the left says: “What are we doing with this one, boss?”

Boss. Oikawa’s mind reels at that. He thought they were just a couple of guys low on money which resulted in unsavory methods. There are only three of them, and their weapons don’t look spectacular, nor their clothes. Boss would indicate a gang, or yakuza, or some sort of organized crime.

Oikawa is well and truly fucked.

He doesn’t know what to do when the right and left men move forward, seizing his arms and keeping one gun to his temple and another in between his ribs. He wants to struggle, to somehow run away, except there are three guns and he is one injured man.

“The floorboards of the gym,” the one remaining says. “It should be interesting. I want to see how long it takes them to crack this one.” He lowers his gun, but that’s only to retrieve the rolls of black cords behind his back. They were probably stuffed there and hidden by his shirt, or something. Oikawa doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything, other than the likelihood he’s going to make it out of this alive or sane has suddenly slimmed to a very, very small margin of possibility.

God, he has two tests tomorrow. He has a volleyball match. His mother is waiting for him at home with a cold dinner that he’s going to have to reheat. His sister is off working in a different district, but she’ll be home to visit in a couple of weekends. Iwaizumi usually texts him before they sleep, making sure he got home okay and that his knee wasn’t bothering him too badly.

His girlfriend...

They manhandle him into the gym and shove him out of their grip when he’s inside. He would’ve run, he would’ve done anything if it weren’t for the fact that they immediately pressed the gun back to his temple. The boss nods to one, and they trade places. The apparent boss starts wrapping Oikawa tight with a black cord while the other keeps Oikawa in check.

“What are you going to do to me?” Oikawa asks, the first question he’s been able to produce on his own since this whole thing started. His voice is rather small and too shaky for his own good. “Please, I’m just a student. I haven’t done anything wrong. I—”

“Stop begging,” the boss grumbles and pulls the restraint binding his arms to his back by crossing his entire abdomen. Another one spans his waist to bind his wrists. “I’ll reconsider this whole thing and just shoot you right here. Would you like that better?”

Oikawa only responds with a shake of his head. The boss scoffs and continues with the last two pieces of cord to wrap Oikawa’s ankles and legs. Beside them, the last man tears up the gym floor with a hammer he must’ve pulled out in a similar fashion as the ropes. The strips of wood give way easily under the prying end of the hammer.

He thought that there was only solid ground beneath the hard flooring of the gym. He was wrong. There, in the center of the left side of the volleyball net, is a rectangular, less than a foot hole. He tears up more to reveal the most of it that he can, showing that it spans just long enough to fit someone as tall as Oikawa.

“I did my research on this place. The yakuza used this place as a money and weapon stash, once. One of those holes on either side of the court. Hope you don’t have a preference,” the boss says, tugging the final restraint on his ankles. It nearly knocks Oikawa over, but the other man has a steady, iron grip on his shoulders. The gun isn’t needed any longer — Oikawa can’t do anything.

Without ceremony, the man behind him forces a strip of cloth in between his lips, painfully pulling the sides of his mouth and triggering an uncomfortable salivating response immediately. He ties it behind his head, secures it, and wraps duct tape several times around his head. All the while he supports Oikawa’s weight carefully on his chest and leg.

He drags Oikawa to the pit and dumps him onto his back. Oikawa lands hard on the cement, halfway onto his shoulder before he lays flat. He’s too afraid to try and plead again, to ask them to please reconsider. He can’t, in any case. The cloth and tape have him completely muffled. When he tries to make a sound, absolutely nothing reaches his ears.

“I would tell you I’m sorry for this,” the boss says, waving for the man to start replacing the flooring again, “but I couldn’t care less. I have this game with the police. I rob and hide people, they try to find the victims before they die of whatever torture I’m putting them through. Great fun. You will die of starvation, I hope.”

The boards are close to Oikawa’s face. Close. The end of his nose presses up against the board — it’ll break if the board gets pushed in too hard. Considering that most of this is empty space, and it’s the dead center of the court, it would be hard to not hit his nose.

“Right under their noses. To put it simply, you’re an insult. I’m playing a practical joke.” It’s not funny in the slightest. Oikawa’s hungry, tired, and utterly terrified. His mouth is rubbing raw from the gag, and the cord hugs his body too tightly to the point where it digs harshly into his skin and flesh.

They leave only after stomping on the replaced floorboards. The sound reverberates through his tiny space, made perfectly to fit just one human person. Made for a victim like Oikawa. The lights turn off, and Oikawa is, one hundred percent, alone.

His stomach growls in the silence of his underground coffin. It’s quiet. It’s nothing but darkness and silence and the adrenaline-boosted exhaustion of being robbed and then locked under his gym. He’s an insult to the police, a practical joke.

Body tingling with the edges of hunger, Oikawa does the absolute only thing he can do. He sleeps in a fitful, restless night, with his body encased in cement and his face pressed against the floorboards of the volleyball court. Sleeping may be too harsh-defined for what he did. It was more like closing his eyes, forcing his breathing to even out, before startling back awake to phantom sounds of guns clicking and feet walking above him.

He doesn’t cry, even though he wants to. His family will notice that he’s gone, his friends, his teammates, and probably his girlfriend. Iwaizumi will see that Oikawa didn’t respond, even though he always does. They’ll tear the world apart looking for him.

He hopes they will.

—

The door opens with a bang, and the only indication that the lights are turned on is from the faintest of yellow outlines in the toothpick-thin space between each board. Footsteps echo through the room, and presumably his head coach sets to work preparing for morning practice. Carts are rolled out from where Oikawa hid them in the closet the night before, and the head coach paces the area. It won’t be long before the team starts filtering in.

It’s never too late to get a head start, though. Oikawa shifts, trying to make as much noise as possible by hitting his feet against the boards. Tapping is all he can manage — the cords have him restrained oddly, the tight quarters of the cement on either side, and the fact that he’s already extremely close to the boards make it so he can’t utilize much force. He tries to make vocal noises, but that’s a lost cause. Nothing makes it past the gag and layers of duct tape.

Oikawa hears his head coach mutter something faintly, then the door opens again. “Good morning, Irihata-san,” Mizoguchi, the other coach, greets.

Irihata quickly shushes him. “Do you hear that? There’s this incessant tapping noise.”

They are silent for a beat. Then: “Maybe Oikawa used the bathroom and forgot to turn off the water. I’ll check.”

The sound of footsteps carries Mizoguchi away toward the bathrooms. Oikawa continues to tap the floorboards, but it’s getting harder with each passing minute. He hears the head coach pace the gym, occasionally getting near to Oikawa, but always turning before he can get close enough to register the exact location of the noise.

Multiple people filter in at once. They greet Irihata in a disjointed manner, and Oikawa does whatever he can to keep tapping. But his body will fail soon. It’s not meant to move in this way, pinned and held together by cords, with nothing but his core to lift his legs a couple of centimeters. And with the gag strangling his ability to breathe, the task becomes a lot harder than it should be.

He hears his friends, Hanamaki and Mastukawa, talk together and say nothing about Oikawa’s absence. Iwaizumi arrives much later than everyone else, much to the coaches’ chagrin. “Where’s Oikawa?” Mizoguchi asks, having returned from the bathrooms a few minutes ago.

Oikawa’s heart races as he waits for his best friend’s reply. I’m here, he wants to scream. Help me! “I have no idea,” Iwaizumi says. “His mother called me this morning asking if Oikawa spent the night with me. Which he didn’t, by the way,” he adds rather hastily. “He hasn’t responded to any of my texts.”

“Call him right now. If he’s hungover from a party or something, I don’t care. We’ve got a game today, and he needs to get his butt over here,” the coach orders.

“I don’t think…” Iwaizumi starts and then trails off. He’s likely getting the death stare, which would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that Oikawa’s anxiety is skyrocketing. Hunger has truly struck him now, having missed two meals already and suffered through an incomplete night of sleep. His friend’s phone rings faintly from where he’s standing closer to the door than to Oikawa.

Louder, he hears: “Hello! This is Oikawa. Sorry, you just missed me! Leave a message, and I’ll consider getting back to you.”

Hanamaki calls from further away: “He hasn't replied to either me or Mattsun.”

“He better have a good reason for this,” Mizoguchi grumbles. “Whatever. Everyone else is here, so no point in delaying practice any further.”

Oikawa’s real Hell begins here.

Each step reverberates through the cement and pounds into his ears. In the close encasement, it sounds like bombs are raining down on his coffin. After they complete their sideline drills, it takes exactly two nanoseconds for someone to step on the floorboards holding him in. His noise splinters and cracks under the pressure. Blood trails down the sides of his face, and suddenly, breathing becomes one of the hardest tasks he’s ever had to do.

He stops tapping the floor in order to carefully control the air flowing in and out of his nose. He can’t exert any effort with his bones misplaced and blood seeping out his nose. His eyes sting up with the tell-tale blur of forthcoming tears, and he shuts his eyes tight. He can’t start crying. If he does, it’ll open a floodgate, and then he really won’t be able to breathe.

Oikawa isn’t keen on dying just yet. They are going to realize he’s missing soon. Hopefully. Even if they, for some reason, think he was partying and got too drunk. Iwaizumi doesn’t think that. If he can just come to his senses and report him to the police, then maybe he’ll get out of here before starvation takes him.

Practice ends without Oikawa ever making an appearance. The bones of his nose have been shattered from repeatedly being smashed in unknowingly by his teammates. He has cried if only for the sheer pain he’s experiencing. It’s only survival instincts that keep his breathing even under the pressure of his broken bones. Iwaizumi had called him again during their small break, and still, voicemail. Even Hanamaki and Matsukawa tried, but they received the same response.

The coaches dismiss them with a thinly veiled threat to make sure Oikawa attends school so he can play the game. To Iwaizumi, Mizoguchi lays the punishment thicker. They know their close friendship, he supposes.

He can’t help but find it a little odd. He has time to dwell on it since everyone clears out of the gym and they shut off the lights. They don’t stick around, because Oikawa has stopped tapping the floor due to his shattered nose. He can’t make a noise.

A few pathetic tears slip down his face. This time from sorrow — any pain he feels has become a monotonous throb hidden behind the heavy pounding of his heart. His mouth dries out, and a headache builds at the base of his neck. Yet, he is utterly alone. Though it’s morning, his world is dark and contained in a cement coffin underneath the floorboards of his volleyball gym.

Oikawa doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to step foot in this place again once this is over. If he even gets out of here.

He presses his head as close as he can to the ground to relieve his nose of any kind of pressure, and he tries to sleep. Tries. He’s not very successful. More than anything, he’s bored and alone with only his thoughts to keep him company. No music, no entertainment, nothing. Just him, unbearable pain, and his incessant inner voice.

He thinks about his mother. He wonders if she’s worried sick about him, or if she thought he had been off at a party like his couches assumed. Oikawa wants to think that she knows him better than that; honestly, he’s not much of a party person anyway. Partying takes away from the time he could be spending watching matches and studying. School and volleyball are too important to him.

That doesn’t mean he hasn’t gone to a party. His friends have dragged him to them on occasion, but they’ve never had a problem with him leaving when he doesn’t feel like staying for long. He’ll pick them up if they need a drive home in exchange. His girlfriend doesn’t like it as much when he leaves, so he stays to please her.

He wonders if that’s why they’ve grown so distant. Oikawa can’t go to parties. He didn’t bring the right lighter. He has too many fangirls, too many high-level classes to attend, and too little time to spend with her, even though he tries so hard to make time.

The silent treatment recently has struck a chord in his heart. He doesn’t even know what he did wrong, but she won’t answer his texts and she looks the other way when he speaks to her. So he can’t even find out what happened. It’s driving him up the wall, but mainly, it’s made him upset.

Upset because he doesn’t even know if he wants to salvage their relationship.

His breath shudders as that thought crosses his mind, blatant and blaring like a police siren. Their downfall isn’t a tragedy, it’s merely an inevitable end. Oikawa had felt their tether loosening and splintering over the past few months. He doesn’t mind her smoking habits; he minds her jealousy streak, the way it’s always his fault and never hers, and how she really, really didn’t like Iwaizumi.

The slimmest reflection of his best friend sent his hands tremoring with a new kind of anxiety. He doesn’t know what’s gotten into him recently — it’s like every time he sees Iwaizumi, his heart races, body heats, and tongue thickens, causing him to stumble over his words as though he’s a young girl giving a confession. It’s embarrassing.

He doesn’t know what it means. Or rather, he doesn’t want to know what it means. Oikawa would rather focus on anything else in the world, but bringing himself back to the present is worse than the tumultuous words banging around his head. All that’s here for him in reality is his various aches and pains, the sharp sting of the cords keeping his body tight and still, and the complete darkness of his cement coffin.

Iwaizumi is a much better topic to think of. He always has been, and always will be, and reflecting on their relationship is much more fun than focusing on his pain. And as he reflects on his odd ailments regarding Iwaizumi’s presence, he remembers the entire, sorrowful ordeal concerning the university.

Oikawa had a very quiet meltdown when Iwaizumi texted him about the university he’d sent an application to, decidedly one that was not the same as the one that had offered Oikawa a full-ride scholarship to play collegiate volleyball. The thought that they would be separated so soon after high school made him so unbearably upset, and he couldn’t even comprehend why. His reaction to Hanamaki and Matsukawa’s decisions had been bad, but not that bad.

The day Iwaizumi revealed where he was going to university was the day Oikawa blessed the sun, the moon, and the stars, and sent his gratitude to every god of every religion. He doesn’t think he’s clingy, but when he reflects on his stroke of luck, he rethinks his entire self. Maybe he isn’t clingy, per se, but he doesn’t like losing the things he loves. Like volleyball, which he’s signed to play collegiate for. His family, whom he would lay down his life for.

Iwaizumi.

Oikawa promised himself the moment they met eleven years ago that he wanted Iwaizumi to be his best friend to the end of time. He still holds to that now, even as he starves and breathes shallowly and evenly beneath the Aoba Johsai gym floor. There’s nothing false about his eternal vow. It’s just that love is a strong word to use for a best friend.

Yet, he cannot deny that he truly does love Iwaizumi. As an extremely close best friend. Nothing more, nothing less. That’s all they ever will be, and Oikawa knows this. He doesn’t know why there’s an achingly familiar pang in his chest so vastly unrelated to his current predicament when he repeats the label of their relationship. Best friend.

He redirects his thoughts to the tests he’s missing today. He’s in his last year of English language, and though his grades are fine, he can’t help but worry over structure. Everything has become a lot more complicated after they’ve started doing complex sentences, each one being in a different tense and containing vocabulary words he’s not sure he fully understands. He went over them with Iwaizumi the other night, and it honestly seemed like his friend was fairing much better with the vocab than Oikawa.

Before his mind can travel down that familiar road of late-night study sessions, he associates English with learning Spanish in his free time, then Spanish with Argentina, then Argentina with volleyball. And where there is volleyball, there is Iwaizumi. He’s right back where he started.

He tries aliens and the various theories that follow, but that goes even quicker to Iwaizumi than English had. His other test is Calculus, he thinks desperately, but then that goes to how he struggles with the equations and graphs and Iwaizumi can just do it so effortlessly —

Everything comes back to Iwaizumi. Always.

And that leaves him with the muggers, guns, cords wrapping his body tight, cloth and duct tape binding his mouth, and a broken nose strangling his breathing.

So he goes back to Iwaizumi in a vicious cycle that repeats until he falls into a frustrated, headache-induced sleep.

—

He wakes to nothing but the deep-set ache of his body and the tight constriction from starvation. His throat is dry and his mouth is sore from the gag.

Other than his breathing, he hears nothing. He cannot tell how far into the day it is, when school will let out, or when the next day will come. Since there’s a match, nobody will be in the practice gym all afternoon. He’ll have to wait until tomorrow to try his luck again.

Distantly, he wonders if they’ll notice him tomorrow. Oikawa may be weak at that point. A full day and a quarter without any food or drink is hard on the body. It’d be one thing if he was getting water, but he was barely even taking in an adequate amount of oxygen . This careful equilibrium can’t last him forever. Besides, if they keep crushing his nose underneath their feet, then he really won’t be able to breathe.

The thought is upsetting enough that he returns to the snake biting its tail. Iwaizumi and him. He and Iwaizumi.

He works on trying to pry the duct tape off by scraping it against the cement wall. It’s not like there’s anything else he can do. He’s pressed in close enough that it doesn’t work very well, and he has to take frequent and inhibiting brakes every thirty seconds or so on account of his nose. It’s positively miserable. More miserable is sitting and doing nothing in agony.

He questions fleetingly, with objective curiosity to cure incurable boredom, what it would be like if Iwaizumi was born a girl. Oikawa shuts it down before it can bloom. It’s not like he can imagine Iwaizumi looking any different, anyway.

—

It’s incredible how fast his thoughts turn sour.

In his intense avoidance of Iwaizumi, he ends up recounting his entire life from the point of remembrance to his current, unfortunate predicament. He starts off innocently enough, but then it moves on to the first embarrassing moment of his life. Then the next, and then the avalanche of his Worst Days comes crashing down on him in a violent flurry of misery and distress.

His stomach curdles and coils with hunger, uncomfortableness, guilt, and regret. Reliving your tragic memories of humiliation isn’t something he thought he’d be dealing with when he first got shoved underneath the floorboards. At that point, he’d been too scared to think about anything but his imminent death and what he could do to avoid it. However, now he’s alone and most of the initial terror has worn off — the anxiety of it all doesn’t quite abandon him — so all he’s left with is an impenetrable amount of boredom.

He recalls the times when he caused scenes over minor things, when he’s cried in front of his classmates in elementary and lower secondary school, and been unreasonably rude or angry to his friends and family. Those in particular make his head reel and jaw flex. He has a mean streak — he’s well aware, and he doesn’t always feel sorry after he’s laid a few thick words — but something about the cramped darkness of the gym floor has him rethinking his actions.

The words he could have chosen differently. The people he’s hurt.

God, he never apologized to Kageyama for that shit he pulled when they were younger. Slapping a child because Oikawa felt sorry for himself is such a shitty move that he can’t even find the wherewithal to come up with a better justification for it. Even though it happened literal years ago, his heart pangs, and his gut clenches in that familiar, pitiful self-loathing agony.

He spirals before he knows it, and it jumps so fast to yesterday, or the day before, or however long it’s been since he and Iwaizumi had gotten into an argument, the same old fight, and Iwaizumi left Oikawa to practice in the gym alone for longer than usual. Iwaizumi wanted to walk Oikawa home, as they usually do, but Oikawa was confounded with a fit of nerves and anxiety that was overall foreign to him.

Or rather, it had been foreign to him, but in the past few weeks, he’s noticed an uptick in tremoring heartbeat and frantic thoughts. Nothing had changed between him and Iwaizumi, not anything that Oikawa had picked up on. Yet, on the basis that he was sure he was going to have a nervous breakdown if he walked in the dark with his best friend, he vehemently denied the offer and said that he should practice more. Iwaizumi argued that his knee was hurting, which it was and despite Oikawa’s best attempt at lying, Iwaizumi saw right through him.

Oikawa resorted to his usual defense mechanism, except he was much worse. The insults he swore cut deeper than he intended, and he knows it’s because of this thing he’s developed around Iwaizumi that’s completely fried his nerves. Iwaizumi left before the argument could turn from normal to violent, as though he knew that Oikawa hadn’t been feeling his best.

It didn’t mean that his face wasn’t twisted when he slammed punched the gym doors open and that Oikawa spent the next thirty minutes pushing himself as hard as he could to forget his jittery nerves and the hurt expression on Iwaizumi’s face. For the most part, it had actually worked. His knee was in enough pain and his exhausted, sweaty body averted his attention.

He’s cognizant of the fact that he was being unreasonable and that there has to be a root cause of his apparent fear of being close to Iwaizumi despite the fact that they’d been that way for their entire friendship. It came with the territory of being friends since they were six, and staying that way until they were both seventeen and drank themselves into a stupor over their eleven-year friendship.

Alone. Together. Just the two of them in the backyard of Iwaizumi’s house when his parents weren’t home. It would be one of his favorite memories, honestly, if it weren’t for the intense anxiety and heartache it causes him to recall it. It’s the way Iwaizumi looked at the time, with his face flushed with alcohol and his lips looser than usual, calling Oikawa more endearing terms than meaningless insults. He can’t remember much from that night past the hours they spent downing shots and cups that gradually led to a horrid, impromptu one-on-one volleyball match that ended with them sprawled out on the grass, laughing and making non-existent shapes of the stars hanging above them.

Oikawa woke up in Iwaizumi’s bed with the worst hangover in his entire life, pressed close to Iwaizumi, and starfished around him like a jellyfish clinging to an unsuspecting human leg. His and Iwaizumi’s torsos were bare, and thank fuck their pants were on or Oikawa would have had a panic attack for not remembering their first time together.

His thoughts come to a halt at that, and he feels his neck and face heating at the imagery of sex with his best friend. Who is a boy. Who is someone that Oikawa is not at all attracted to, and never will be attracted to. It’s embarrassing, he concludes, that he would even entertain the idea for more than half a second.

His heart palpitates and his breathing falls uneven, sending a spike of panic through his veins as he struggles to take in air through his shattered nose. It doesn’t help that he’s now actively thinking about having sex with Iwaizumi, even though he keeps trying to banish the thought. He blames it on the gym floor and boredom. He doesn’t want it to be anything else.

Even if his whole body twinges at the phantom feelings of his best friend planting kisses on his face, licking his neck, roughly unbuttoning his shirt, and sliding his hands down past Oikawa’s boxers. He moans into Oikawa’s ear, and instead of being entirely aroused, Oikawa feels uncomfortable and insurmountably guilty. He shouldn’t be having these thoughts – not about his best friend, who is not a girl and is very much a boy. He pushes imaginary Iwaizumi away from his two-thirds exposed body, unfathomably worsening his guilt and regret, and forces his mind to search for another topic.

Anything else. Please. Anxiety thrums through him as he keeps coming back to Iwaizumi, and his family, and about how horrified they would be if they found out Oikawa had been having these wretched, immoral fantasies. Ones that he’s tried for years to control but keep coming back to haunt him like a restless ghost. He can’t imagine the anger and betrayal Iwaizumi would feel if he ever had a peak into Oikawa’s intrusive, unforgiving mind. Iwaizumi would never talk to Oikawa again. Their eleven-year-long friendship would splinter and snap like a twig, and Oikawa’s friends would all leave him because he keeps pulling Iwaizumi back to him, pressing his hands to his chest, and tearing him apart with his mouth even though Iwaizumi is the same sex as him and that makes this so, so wrong.

The metal doors of the gym creak and groan. Multiple sets of footsteps glide into the court, carrying them only a few paces before they stop entirely. They’re probably grouped at the front.

“Is there any place he could be hiding?” An unfamiliar voice asks. It’s deep and masculine, and the distinct sound of clanging metal makes him wonder if the group of people is the police coming to investigate his disappearance.

His evil fantasy disbands before him like dust in the wind. He focuses on the conversation, trying to regain his breath so he might be able to tap on the floor. If anyone can find him, it would be them or Iwaizumi. Distantly he thinks that Iwaizumi wouldn’t make a horrible officer.

Speak of the devil. “The changing rooms is where I’d look first. Nobody saw him at practice, but he spends more time here than anyone else. If there’s a place to hide, he knows it,” Iwaizumi says. His voice is tight and tired. Oikawa's heart starts hurting all over again, and something akin to strong desire throws his breathing far off-kilter again.

Moreover, the fact that Iwaizumi is directing the police to look here, where Oikawa really is. They are so close. They just need to focus and see that he’s right under their noses. If the men who did this to him were able to find out that the yakuza used this gym once — the thought sends a shiver down his spine. How long has it been since they abandoned it? Were they still using it when Oikawa attended in his first and second year, waiting for him to leave the gym so they could unload weapons, drugs, and God-forbid bodies? — then surely the police could as well.

Surely, he thinks when they pass over his coffin. Not all of them went to the locker room. Some were directed to search the main area while they thoroughly ransacked the changing room. Unfortunately, Oikawa hadn’t left anything behind when he finished practice. He doesn’t like to give any indication he was there in the first place, which is an odd behavior he’s kept since he was young. Even though the whole team knows he stays for an hour or so after practice is over, Oikawa refuses to leave a trace of his presence.

Oikawa knows exactly where, when, and why this habit developed. It doesn’t matter, now, though. His father has been out of his life for seven and a half years. He has no reason to be thinking about the awful man any further.

“And you’re sure he had no connections with any gangs, drug dealers, or the yakuza?” An officer asks, their voices filtering in as they re-enter the court.

“Yes, I don’t—” Iwaizumi’s voice cuts out abruptly. It sounds so unlike his best friend that Oikawa could honestly cry. “I didn’t go through hours of interrogation for it to continue here. Just do your job and find him.”

It’s not an officer’s place to give condolences or comfort where they aren’t strictly necessary, so the policeman predictably doesn’t respond Oikawa’s still not breathing right; every voice he hears sends jolts through his aching head, knocking away all of the progress he’d made in the second before. He can’t scream to let them know that he’s here, that someone from his past or a mugger playing an awful practical prank has laid him under the floorboards to die.

They pass over him without pausing. His nose is bent far enough back that their footballs are unable to damage it any further. Splitting in different directions, he assumes Iwaizumi is going back in the direction of the changing rooms while the police officer heads the opposite way. Oikawa has the sickening premonition that they aren’t going to find him after all.

Oikawa is overridden with panic and dread as they search through the gym and come up with nothing. They meet in the middle after a while, and a long, tense silence stretches among them. “Nothing?” One asks. Another parrots the same word as an answer. “Then let's keep going. Iwaizumu-kun, take us down his usual route home.”

“... Okay,” Iwaizumi consents.

Oikawa never got his breathing under check in time. He continues to struggle, wondering if the light-headed feeling is coming from the lack of oxygen, hunger, dehydration, or sorrow. Most likely an amalgamation of all four to maximize his misery. The door closes behind them and locks into place.

He is alone. Even his intrusive thoughts are unable to keep him company as he silently processes the likelihood that he will die.

—

Memory is inherently fallible, but Oikawa remembers his father perfectly. It’s a trick of the universe, another set of unwanted thoughts to corral his misery. He’s too tired to fight them anymore. Hunger and thirst have started to drain him in earnest.

In truth, he didn’t get to see his father that often. The custody agreement between him and his mother meant that Oikawa only went to his dad’s house on the weekends. He didn’t hate his dad at the time, but he certainly enjoyed his mom’s place more. She had all of the posters he liked, the action figures from his favorite comics, three volleyballs, and most importantly, Iwaizumi. He only lived a few houses down from his mom’s house, while his dad lived on the other side of the city. Much further away from Iwaizumi, which made it extremely inconvenient for Oikawa to hang out with his best friend.

Oikawa was young at the time. He didn’t have any comprehension of divorce, or why his mom and dad lived in two separate houses. It didn’t matter to him, really. It wasn’t until he was older that he was slowly taught all of the reasons why his father was abhorrent, and why Tooru should strive to clear the dirt off the Oikawa family name.

He was seven years old when he first heard the word fag at his dad’s house. It was about some television show his father and his friends were watching, strewn around the living room while having Oikawa serve them beer at intervals. They laughed loudly, and when Oikawa came into the room with four bottles balancing carefully in his arms, his father said the words that continue to haunt Oikawa to the present day:

“Never be a dirty bastard like that, son, or I might just have to kill you myself.”

His dad said things like that. Casual threats, slurs to anyone different than himself, and overall degrading comments to women. His dad’s friends weren’t any better, and they tended to goad his behavior rather than amend it. The abnormality of his father’s personality became more apparent to him as he got older.

Iwaizumi’s dad didn’t leave bruises on the places where he gripped too tight. Iwaizumi’s dad didn’t leave cans of beer on the ground for his son to clean up. Iwaizumi’s dad was nothing like his own dad. Oikawa liked Iwaizumi’s house better than he liked his dad’s house.

Oikawa’s room was barren at his dad’s house. He tended to keep people over when Oikawa wasn’t there — and he did when he actually was there, sometimes — so he was ordered to pick up anything that might indicate that he even had a son in the first place. Of course, Oikawa knows why that happened: his father invited women to his house almost every night. Multiple, in many cases. They couldn’t all sleep in one bed, so they were delegated to what was supposed to be Oikawa’s room.

Then there was the other stuff. His dad didn’t like how Oikawa preferred to keep himself pristine and clean, didn’t particularly enjoy any other sport than volleyball, and hadn’t shown much interest in any of the girls in his class. He only really talked about Iwaizumi, and when he met them, Mastukawa and Hanamaki. His father would warn him not to be a disgusting homosexual, and that would be that.

Oikawa only got to learn about the really bad things after his father killed himself in the living room on a Saturday night.

He was ten years old, and the sound of the killing gunshot woke him up from his shallow slumber. His room was plain and bland, just like always, with his clothes packed in his duffel bag. He raced down the stairs and found his father dead on the couch with two empty bottles at his side.

It’s only on bad nights that Oikawa recalls this. And on those bad nights, he calls Iwaizumi, who always manages to answer him despite the fact that it’s three in the morning and they have morning practice, or Iwaizumi’s at the beach, or something or the other.

He only ever asks to hear Iwaizumi’s voice. His best friend always obliges. They don’t talk about it the next day, though even if Iwaizumi asked, Oikawa would have denied him. He doesn’t like to think about it, much less talk about it.

Besides, he doesn’t know what to do with the guilt that overrides him on those nights, and the day after when his mind supplies him with the gruesome scene of his father’s pink and red brains splayed out over the dirt brown couch.

The truth is, Oikawa doesn’t feel sorry that his dad committed suicide.

He feels sorry that he had to see it. He feels sorry that his mother suffered all his dad’s abuse and degradation for years, yet not be able to obtain full custody of her children. His father was a piece of shit through and through, and Oikawa does not mourn his death as a seventeen-year-old.

Oikawa only fears the person he will become, fears that to this day, his father clutches his mind so tight that he thinks his own brain matter is seeping between his fingers.

“Never be a dirty bastard like that, son, or I might just have to kill you myself.”

The disembodied voice echoes and bangs around his skull like a bullet’s ricochet path. Bile climbs up his throat when he thinks about Iwaizumi and all of the nasty thoughts he’s had about him in the eleven years of their friendship.

Oikawa’s father is dead, but the weight of his impact clings to him as though he were still alive to repeat those threats. Oikawa knows that the world has differing views on homosexuality, but he also knows that in the Miyagi Prefecture, there are way too many people who hold similar, if not identical, beliefs. Oikawa plays men’s volleyball for God’s sake. If he was gay, they’d all turn their backs on him. They might beat him, leave him for dead, or shoot him in through the temple like his dad did to himself all those years ago.

That’s why Oikawa likes girls, not boys. He doesn’t like Iwaizumi that way, despite his brain unhelpfully supplying him with the night they got drunk out of their minds in his backyard.

Oikawa only enjoys alcohol when he’s with Iwaizumi. That he can admit to without feeling a convoluted mess of emotions that make him want to rip out his hair, which he can’t do regardless. His arms are tied firmly to his back, and he doesn’t have nearly enough space to attempt wiggling out of the cords.

He wonders what his father would do in this situation, but he can’t imagine he’d be in it in the first place. He would’ve gotten himself killed in the process of being robbed, probably. Then, he reprimands himself. He doesn’t want to do whatever his father would do. That man was a liar, a bastard, and a cheat.

Oikawa pretends he’s called Iwaizumi. Pretends that his chest isn’t constricted with the terror that he’s become exactly like his father. Pretends that he doesn’t want Iwaizumi to hold him tight in his arms, because his father would kill him if wanted that, his teammates would abandon him, he’d never be successful in his professional career, he’d stain the family name more than it already has been, he—

—

It takes ten years for the doors to be opened again. According to his vague perception of time, — calculated mainly on his increasing thirst and hunger — Oikawa thinks it should be time for morning practice. That means a day and a quarter has passed underneath the floorboards. He feels gross from the dirt and dust coating his body. A shower would be nice. So would food, water, more than two centimeters of space to move, and real human interaction.

Alas, every man wants what they cannot have.

Instead of the slow pace and quiet grumbles of Irihata, two sets of footsteps land heavily on the gym floor. They rattle the cement coffin, though they never quite step on top of him. “Oikawa!” Hanamaki’s familiar voice calls. “This isn’t fucking funny! Oikawa!”

After a beat of silence that is filled entirely with Oikawa’s mental screams of desperation, his other friend’s voice cuts in. “Yeah, I don’t think he’s here,” Matsukawa says, and there’s an edge in his tone that Oikawa isn’t fond of.

“Fuck,” Hanamaki sighs. It’s truly amazing how one word can summarize Oikawa’s entire situation.

He hears the distinct rustling of paper and his friends moving a few paces. The pulling and ripping of tape comes next, and while Oikawa knows they’re putting something on the wall, he’s a little lost as to what. “This feels useless,” Makki professes.

“It��ll guilt the team into trying harder to find him,” Mattsun steadfastly replies. An unsettling feeling coils in his stomach when he realizes that his friend is being reasonable. Not only that, he’s become a comforting figure. Truly terrifying. The world may as well collapse underneath their feet.

Another lull haunts their conversation, as though they can’t quite figure out what to say. Or rather, everything that they wanted to share had already been discussed before they arrived at the gymnasium. Either way, it helped Oikawa very little in terms of gleaning information about the living world.

“LSD,” Makki starts. The word makes Oikawa’s eyebrows furrow painfully, given his pounding headache. “All his money went to LSD and some other drug, right? That doesn’t seem right.”

What?

“He barely even drank, and he was saving for a trip to Argentina,” Mattsun agrees.

“He seemed nervous, though, right? Like, all last month.” Makki pauses. Then, “Do you think—”

“No gangs. Oikawa doesn’t have the guts for that.” Oikawa would be offended in any other scenario. But, given his predicament and the dots connecting in his head, a bitter taste fills his parched mouth instead. “Besides, we agreed his behavior was linked to college and Iwaizumi. Getting into a gang and doing hard drugs is far out, even for us.”

What the fuck, Oikawa thinks incredulously, do they mean by that.

“Shit. I hate this. I hate this so much. It’d be easier if he ran away. At least he’d be okay. And we’d probably know where he went,” Makki rambles, then follows up with a string of curses.

Matsukawa mutters inaudibly. A little louder, he says: “We aren’t helping anyone by standing here. Let’s get changed.”

Out of all the things they’d said in their short conversation, that threw Oikawa for a loop the most. If it’s morning practice, then they should already be in their practice clothes. Their footsteps led away to the changing room, leaving Oikawa to stew in his thoughts as he always does.

A second later, the door opens again. This time, Oikawa is sure it’s Irihata. He’s usually there after one or two early players in the afternoon practice. though the fact that Hanamaka and Matsukawa are the early ones this time calls for concern. He knows why. They’re worried for him.

The anxiety and despair crushes any warmth he may have felt at the sentiment. Not only is it afternoon practice, meaning his perception of time is worse than he imagined, but morning practice had been canceled, likely from his disappearance. It surprises him — one person not being able to show up shouldn’t have made his coaches cancel the whole thing. Unless, of course, the brief investigation happened in the morning rather than at night as Oikawa originally thought.

More irritating than anything is that Oikawa has absolutely no way of confirming this unless someone happens to talk about it at a distance where he can hear, and the likelihood of that occurring is even worse than his chance of making it out alive. He resigns himself in his bristling agitation as Irihata begins setting up the court and more players, along with Mizoguchi, enter the gymnasium.

Iwaizumi’s gruff greeting captures Oikawa’s attention for a second. It doesn’t sound like much at first, but for the second day in a row, he’s come far later than the rest of the team. He knows the observation isn’t lost on his coaches, yet they opt out of saying anything about it. They let Iwaizumi pass through to the changing room without so much as a hint of displeasure.

Oikawa feels his heart hurt unbearably in his chest. Iwaizumi and Oikawa usually walk together to practice, and if they don’t, they’re on time regardless. Lateness could only mean Iwaizumi was waiting for a person who will never come, or searching for a friend whom he won’t find.

We agreed his behavior was related to college and Iwaizumi, Matsukawa’s voice echoes in his head, only slightly overshadowing the rough threat of his father.

He’d been as discreet as he could over the past few weeks. He didn’t hang out with his friends any less, didn’t break up with his girlfriend out of the blue, and certainly didn’t do anything to indicate that his heart rate went through the roof when he was with Iwaizumi for more than five whole seconds. The issue of his anxiety was something he resigned to solving by himself. Enough self-berating over time should have done the trick.

Except it didn’t, and his friends were able to pick up on it. His father, Matsukawa, and his own voice run together in a murky, slow-moving river. It rises past his shoulders and clogs his nose with muck.

“Before we begin,” Mizoguchi begins after all of the players gather in a stiff silence, “if anyone has any idea where Oikawa Tooru has gone, speak now. I don’t care if someone has given you hush money. This is bigger than pride or volleyball or whatever profit you made. A real person’s life is at risk.”

The silence prevails. Oikawa screams behind his cloth gag and layers of duct tape.

Mizoguchi continues awkwardly. “Practice and games will continue like normal. Please, keep your eyes out for Oikawa. Don’t stop searching.”

Practice is only marginally more bearable than last time. His headache splinters the space between his eyes from the constant rattling of the cement and floorboards. Although his nose is no longer in mortal danger of being broken again, he can’t quite pull it far enough back. The wood bending under hard, falling feet, chests, arms, and the occasional butt, still taps his nose in painful bursts. It makes it hard to breathe, and he spends most of practice filled to the brim with panic. Less so because he thinks he will die from suffocation, though always a prevalent fear, but because not being able to breathe makes the heart behave erratically.

His best friend leads the drills, just like he had the day before. While he isn’t toned down at all, he definitely seems out of it. Talking to the same person every day for eleven years has allowed them to gain the innate ability to tell when something is wrong with the other using simple inflections of the voice if no physical cues are given. Oikawa’s disappearance is bothering him a lot. More than Oikawa would have guessed.

He’s only been gone for nearly two days. They could easily guess that he’s run away, taken his trip to Argentina a little earlier without telling anyway, or got really messed up on LSD, if his friends’ earlier conversation is anything to go by. It wouldn’t be wrong for them to still hope that he’d pick up his phone soon and respond to the texts and calls they’d sent him.

Of course, that isn’t what happened. Hajime knows him too well. He knows that Oikawa could never keep plans of running away a secret for so long, that he still doesn’t have quite enough for his Argentina vacation yet, and he’s never been high despite the several attempts made by others. He doesn’t smoke and can count on his fingers on one hand the amount of times he’s been tipsy or drunk. The obvious conclusion Iwaizumi would come to is that Oikawa has been kidnapped or murdered.

The reality is a mixture of both. Oikawa has a feeling that Iwaizumi knows that, too.

Hearing his taut voice order the players around in place of Oikawa is too much for him to bear. It sends spikes of anxiety and such intense longing through his veins, and for the first time in his life, he can’t smother it. He can’t pretend it’s about anything else, because he isn’t doing anything else. There’s no person he can turn to blame his tremoring body on, no place to direct the pull of his heart, no game to accuse of causing his elevated temperature.

And when Iwaizumi leaves, the last person to do so without actually practicing any extra drills, Oikawa feels a part of himself leave, too. The part that has been held in Iwaizumi’s hands since they were six years old.

However, Iwaizumi fails to take Tooru’s hysterical emotions with him. It remains trapped with him in the six-foot by ten-inch coffin.

He has no road to run away from his feelings.

He takes a deep breath through his nose, experiences the pain it creates, and cries.

—

Time passes without him. It could be the next day, next month, or next year. It’s impossible to keep track anymore. All he knows is that he’s steadfastly dying under the floorboards of the practice gym, and nobody has come to tear him out of his coffin. They are only going to realize their mistake when his corpse is rotting and emitting a foul smell that attracts ants and maggots alike to feast on his flesh. His silent heart and brain will be the delicacies they save for dessert.

Practice occurs four more times: morning, afternoon, morning, afternoon. Oikawa’s convinced he’s missed some more in between there. He drifts in and out of sleep, but never long enough to allow him dreams or make him feel well-rested. He’s hungry, so unbearably hungry, and he can’t quite feel his mouth anymore. The only sensations he comprehends are the cloth pressuring his aching teeth and the duct tape sticking to his skin.

It comes to a head at no specific given point. Practice ended some time ago, and he is alone as usual. There’s nothing special about this time, and yet.

He thinks about Iwaizumi, as he has been recently. Always is his friend accompanied by the harsh words of his father, mainly because when he imagines Hajime, he’s pressing a kiss to Oikawa’s head and reassuring him that everything will be okay.

For the first time, it occurs to Tooru that his worst nightmare will come true. His number one fear, just after being outed and suffering ridicule for his sexuality, is that he will become just like his father.

Oikawa hasn’t gone out of his way to treat women poorly, but he knows that his long history of short relationships can’t be blamed on the individual girls. He doesn’t drink often, but he has and that’s worth something. This slow death of his is practically his fault, making it suicide. He hasn’t done enough tapping or wriggling or shoving.

He’s homophobic to a fault.

A painful memory resurfaces in his mind. He was sitting on a couch in Iwaizumi’s living room, two years after his dad shot himself in the head, and they were watching some television show that happened to be on. Oikawa doesn’t remember all the details. He doesn’t have to; only one scene matters.

It happened to be that two men kissed on the screen at that very moment. Iwaizumi wasn’t paying much attention, since he was actually doing his assigned homework that Oikawa was definitely not procrastinating on. The couple had been developing at a fast rate in the episode, and Oikawa’s conflicting emotions prevented him from properly distancing himself from the screen.

As such, when the scene occurred, he made a noise that was something between a gag and a whine. Iwaizumi looked up in slight alarm, looking from Oikawa, to the screen, then back to Oikawa. Raising an eyebrow, he said: “Are you okay?”

“I– uh— is that not… weird to you?” Oikawa nodded to the screen, and he felt the flush on his neck that had quickly overtaken the biting cold that had drained his body all at once.

Iwaizumi’s forehead crinkled in confusion. “What?”

“That!” Oikawa waved a shaky hand at the men who were then holding onto each other. “That shouldn’t be on screen. Right?”

Even then, Tooru’s inner conflict had raged within him. As young as twelve, he’d recognized that he was different from other people. But, at that point, his father’s death was still fresh in his mind, along with the words that would continue to haunt him for years to come. Oikawa will never forget the affronted look on Iwaizumi’s face when he realized what Oikawa was specifically pointing out.

“Don’t be an asshat, Oikawa. Boys can like other boys. Girls can like other girls. Get over yourself,” Iwaizumi asserted and then returned to his homework.

They didn’t bring it up again after that.

There were more times that Iwaizumi got hints of Oikawa’s homophobia, like when he’d startle seeing two men holding hands or two girls dancing close together in the rain. Iwaizumi would give him a look, slap him on the back or head, and that would be it. It didn’t take long for Oikawa’s outward homophobia to dissipate. He dragged it all inward, pointed it to himself, and let people live their lives without his hateful judgment.

But homophobia is homophobia, regardless of who it’s being directed to. He doesn’t care anymore when two people of the same gender share a kiss, hold hands, or dance. At least, that’s what he told himself. Oikawa reflects, and he recognizes the viper of jealousy that strangles his intestines.

He cares that people care about him, and the image he needs to uphold, and the father that’s been dead for years but is still terrified of disappointing. He’s denied himself the happiness reflected in the eyes of couples by forcing himself into relationships that won’t work because, quite simply, he doesn’t like girls.

He never has, and he never will. It’s the exact sentiment that would’ve driven his father into beating Oikawa until his heart stopped beating and then killing himself again.

His father was homophobic. So is Oikawa, despite his best efforts not to be.

He doesn’t want to be like his father. He doesn’t want to die a liar, a bastard, and a cheat.

For so long, he’s listened to that deceased voice like it can come back and kill him, like his words carry more weight than the dirt he’s buried in. Oikawa knows what it’s like in his country, and he’s aware that his father’s views were a little more radical than most. He won’t get shot in the back of his head by his teammates, and they certainly wouldn’t kick their best player off the court.

Besides, he doesn’t have to tell them anything. They aren’t entitled to his personal life — if they want to make assumptions when he stops dating girls, so be it. He’s not going to keep lying and lying and lying.

He will tell Hajime, and he won’t cut the truth down. He’ll tell his best friend that he’s gay, that he’s been in love with him for at least three years, and that if this changes anything between them, Oikawa will understand.

The thought of Iwaizumi separating himself from Oikawa’s life entirely is painful. It hurts more than his stomach eating itself to survive. But this way, he won’t be like his father. He won’t run from his problems any longer. The voice in his head will mean less than the scuff on the bottom of his shoe. Tooru will be an Oikawa in name only.

He just has to be found.

Please, he prays, uncaring of which god his words reached, I’ll do it. Please don’t let me die as my father. Please don’t let me die. I’ll do it. I’ll tell him I love him. I won’t keep living a lie. I don’t want to die. Please.

Oikawa barely hears the doors open over the pounding of his headache. He’s had it for so long that it should’ve become dull and forgettable, but he’s been acutely aware of its growing intensity. What little water is left in him is wasted by the tears trickling down his face in slow, agonizing droplets.

He knows he will die before the next practice.

The tell-tale rattle and shake of feet stepping on the gymnasium floor startles him. They pace directly to where Oikawa thinks the flyer is. Matsukawa and Hanamaki taped it up to the wall a while back, but it’s clearly not done any good. Oikawa is still missing, and he won’t be found.

Then, the sound of ripping paper cuts through his headache like a steaming knife in sharp bread.

“Damn it!” Iwaizumi yells, and his previously faint heartbeat picks up rapidly in Oikawa’s chest. “Where are you? Where are you? I can’t do it anymore. You never left. I know you didn’t. You’re somewhere in here, and I can’t—” His voice breaks into choked sobs. “Where did you go?”

Oikawa can’t breathe. Every breath hurts more than the last like a searing firestick being jabbed directly into his lungs. There isn’t enough energy in his body to keep him alive for much longer.

For the first time, he ignores his shattered nose. He ignores the fact that he cannot breathe at all without pain splintering his head as though he’s a piece of firewood being chopped in half by an unskilled lumberjack. He takes his feet and slams them as hard as he can against the floorboards. It’s probably not as loud or effective as he imagines it would be if his body wasn’t ninety-nine percent of the way dead from starvation, but he does it anyway.

And he does it again, and again, and again. All the while, he pressed his face as close as he could to the floorboards, willing his nose to be felt as an odd lump underneath Iwaizumi’s foot. His chest constricts, his heart unable to keep up with the effort he’s applying. It’s why he hadn’t done this before — the likelihood he’d make it out alive would be slim to none.

Well, if he doesn’t try now, he will die regardless.

“Oh my God,” he hears Iwaizumi exclaim, horrified, as his foot finds Oikawa’s nose. As soon as he hears his best friend and feels the pressure against his broken bones, he passes out. He knows this because when he opens his eyes next, his body is limp on the cement, and the distinct sound of metal scraping the floor filters through toothpick-thin cracks.

The wood peels up off the floor, right on top of Oikawa’s eyes. The brightness of the gymnasium lights hits his fattened pupils hard, for he’s staring directly at a burning light fixture above.

He blacks out again.

The time discrepancy between his past and current wakefulness is shorter because Iwaizumi has barely started on another board. He’s slow to comprehend his surroundings and sensations, staring blankly at the peeling wood without much going on outside of his slowing heart.

“I’m gonna get you out. Don’t die. Don’t fucking die,” Iwaizumi warns between heaving gasps in the struggle against the wood, and Oikawa truly sees him.

Iwaizumi’s short hair is more tangled and mussed than usual. His voice is frantic, hard, and frail all at the same time. He’s wearing one of his pajama shirts with his cross necklace dangling off of it. Oikawa gave it to him as a good luck charm a year ago, more so to tease him about the fact that he’s baptized, though he doesn’t believe in the Christian God. He knew Iwaizumi wore it every now and again as a fashion icon rather than his baptized status.

The sight of it now encourages his heart to keep him alive a little longer.

Tear stains mark Iwaizumi’s face as he rips out floorboard after floorboard. Oikawa doesn’t know when he stopped crying, or when Oikawa started. The scent of fresh air hits his shattered nose in a wave of flowers with thorns sticking out of every fiber. The bulbs strangle his eyesight as his pupils slowly adjust to light after bearing complete darkness for so long. The rest of his body has gone numb entirely, save for his headache.

When the last board is pulled out, Iwaizumi drags his dead weight out of the shallow cement coffin. Oikawa’s ears ring as he’s dropped onto the wooden floor, and it takes everything in him to not pass out again. His best friend wastes no time in picking at the duct tape holding his lips together, and then untying the gag that has rubbed the edges of his mouth into raw. Those parts of the cloth are stained with Oikawa’s blood.

Oikawa takes his first, deep breath of fresh air. It prickles his dry throat, and he greedily takes in all that he can in the shortest amount of time possible. He knows he must look like a drowning fish, what with his mouth gaping open and water streaming down his face, but he doesn’t care.

His mouth is open, and he can close whenever he wants. He can make sounds, and he can breathe.

“Oh my God,” Iwaizumi repeats. He’s shaking as he finds the tied ends of the cords, untying Oikawa as fast as he can. Unfortunately, Oikawa is extremely unhelpful in this process as he gets his bearings, processing the arms that are now free, the mouth that is open by his free will, the air flowing through his lungs, and the Aoba Johsai banner hanging loosely from the ceiling.

Once the final cords come off on his ankles, Iwaizumi pulls him into a tight hug. It crushes his chest and weak bones, and Oikawa would tap out of it if not for the fact that this is Hajime, who’s wound his hand through Tooru’s greasy hair and is holding on like Oikawa is his lifeline. His body is trembling and his chin rests against Oikawa’s head.

From this position, Oikawa’s ear is pressed to Iwaizumi’s chest. The beat of his friend’s heart is set in a fast, comforting rhythm. In this hold, he’s warm and safe. He wants to stay in Hajime’s arms until the world catches fire, and for some reason, he thinks Iwaizumi would let him.

Naturally, he breaks away from the hug.

Iwaizumi’s right hand remains tangled in Oikawa’s hair, but the other drops soundlessly from his back. The loss of contact makes him shiver. Hajime’s turbulent gaze is enough to get Oikawa to make use of his aching arms, bringing them up to cup Iwaizumi’s face in his hands.

His cheeks are warm to the touch. His jaw is trembling in Tooru’s weak hold. Oikawa’s arms are too weak to hold this position for long.

Iwaizumi starts to say something, and Oikawa can tell it’s going to be an apology, to ask how he’s feeling, and if he’s okay. Oikawa doesn’t give him the chance. He leans forward and presses their lips together, savoring the way Iwaizumi’s wet lips feel against his own, healing the cracks and split, bloody ends.

Their kiss only lasts but a second. Hajime doesn’t reciprocate, and Oikawa can’t physically deepen their kiss. His mouth is far too dry and weak, and his arms are shaking with the effort it takes to keep them up. He pulls back, opening his eyes to find Iwaizumi staring wide-eyed back at him with his lips slightly parted.

Oikawa knows what this means, and although he told himself it would happen, it doesn’t make it sting any less.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his throat scratching on every syllable, struggling to produce anything above a hoarse whisper. “I’m so sorry. I can’t—- live like this. I won’t run from you— anymore.” His salty tears flow over the sticky residue of the duct tape and slip into his mouth. Iwaizumi’s holding onto his wrists, keeping Oikawa’s arms from falling away from his face. He still has that shining stare that stabs Oikawa’s heart. “I’m in love with you. I’m— sorry I’m like— like this. I’m—”

Then lips are pinned against his own, silencing his rambling, shaky apologies. This time, it’s Oikawa who isn’t reciprocating. His mind has stuttered to a stop with the fact that his best friend instigated a kiss with him, and when he pulls away, he finds Iwaizumi’s eyes aren’t hard and disappointed. One of his wrists is dropped, but only to allow Hajime to rub his thumb across Oikawa’s cheek.

Hajime offers the barest hint of a smile, though it doesn’t hide the quiver of his lips. “Will it take you dying again to see how long I’ve been in love with you?”

And Oikawa can’t help it, really, when sobs tear away his soul. He collapses forward into Hajime’s chest, and Iwaizumi cradles him as gently as he can. His head splits and his eyes drain away the rest of his body fluids. He’s dry, completely, and all that’s left are desperate gasps and pained coughs while Iwaizumi repeats how worried he was, and that he’s so glad that Oikawa’s alive.

“I’m— going to die,” Tooru somehow manages. “Food. Water.”

Immediately, Hajime shifts to grab his phone from his pocket. It takes him less than a second to dial the correct numbers.

“Hello, this is one-one-nine. What’s your emergency?” A dispatcher answers.

“I need an ambulance,” Hajime says shakily, and the hand he has in Oikawa’s hair tightens only a fraction. It’s painful for his headache, but comforting all the same. Human contact is something he has been devoided for so, so long. “I found missing person Oikawa Tooru. He hasn’t eaten or drank anything in four days.”

His hand trembles against Oikawa’s scalp, carding his fingers through his crusted, greasy as he gives the dispatcher directions to the practice gym. When the call is over, he presses one gentle kiss to the top of Oikawa’s head.

“I’m sorry it took me so long. I’m so, so sorry,” Iwaizumi says.

His energy is too depleted for him to respond, his throat too scratchy and dry, so he opts to do the only thing he can do: burying his head deeper into Iwaizumi’s chest and letting Hajime hold him as though he’ll never let go.

Oikawa doesn’t want him to let go.

#fanfic #fanfiction #ao3 fanfic #haikyuu #hq #iwaoi #iwaoi fic #oikawa x iwaizumi #oikawa tōru #tooru oikawa #oikawa tooru #iwaizumi hajime #angst with a happy ending #angst #one shot #iwaizumi x oikawa

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mjonthetrack · 2 months ago

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Chapter Seventy-Six — The Dead Woman’s Will

The room was quiet except for the occasional rustle of linen or the hum of the television someone forgot to turn off. Emori was asleep again, tucked into her silk hospital gown, her body still too fragile to remain awake for long stretches. Her face was turned slightly toward the wall, and the black AMEX card that had upgraded all of their lives to surreal levels of comfort sat untouched on the bedside tray. Tay stood at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, a rare stillness to her energy. Jey was hunched in a plush chair flipping through a velvet binder that had been delivered without ceremony, dropped off by hospital staff with a sealed envelope resting on top. Jimmy sat on the couch, elbows on his knees, eyes trained on the floor, the weight of the past few weeks dragging his posture low.

“This shit is wild,” Jey muttered, flipping another page.

“That's one way to put it,” Tay murmured. “Read the list again.”

Jey looked up, brow furrowed, but complied.

“Assets personally held under Emori Monique Carter or entities affiliated with her include: One fully paid 2.2 million dollar beach house in Miami, title confirmed. Five luxury vehicles: a G-Wagon, two Porsches, a custom Hummer with armored features, and an electric Rolls. Ownership of three LLCs and co-ownership in six others—including the strip club franchise in Miami. Full black card access from two major banks. Lifetime VIP access to several celebrity clubs. Stock in multiple entertainment and beauty companies. Oh, and... gifts from public figures.”

He flipped another page.

“Untraceable jewelry assets include: Mozambique rubies, diamonds of varying cuts, custom watches worth a small country, and other gifted valuables. One of the pages just says, ‘This vault would make the Kardashians cry.’”

Tay blew out a breath, eyes wide.

“Wait—what’s this part?” Jey pulled a smaller envelope from the back of the binder. The handwriting on it was scrawled but undeniably hers. Slanted, messy, and half smudged. Her name was on the outside. Just her name. Not Black Bird. Not Cali. Emori Monique Carter.

Jimmy sat up straighter, and Tay moved to sit beside him, legs touching his as she leaned into his side.

Jey read:

“If you’re reading this, it means I probably died, or I’m too far gone to remember how to tie my shoes, let alone who you are. If that’s the case, please don’t make a big scene. Don’t cry too hard. I probably hated the idea of people crying for me more than anything.

For the three who used to be a part of me:

You each get an equal share of the gold—yeah, like actual bars. Thirty million split three ways. They’re stored in a vault in LA, instructions enclosed. Keep it, burn it, I don’t care.

Jey—keep being brilliant. You always were. I hope you didn’t let your anger eat you alive. Tay—you’ve always been the strongest person in the room. Even stronger than me, even when I faked like I was bigger. I hope your softness never gets punished again.

And Jimmy. I don’t even know what to say to you. I don’t have a name for the grief I feel when I think of you. So I won’t say anything.

If this life gave me anything, it was the brief feeling of being loved. Even if I lost it. Even if I broke it.

Do what you want with the beach house. Burn the cars. Sell the diamonds.

I just hope—whatever anger you have, whatever grief— You find a way to live a good life. Even if I couldn’t.”

Silence.

Tay had her hands over her mouth, eyes glassy. Jimmy had stood up somewhere in the middle and now stood by the window, fists clenched, his back a taut wall of pain.

Jey whispered, “She really thought she was going to die.”

“She wanted to make sure we’d be okay even if she did,” Tay said quietly.

“She was ready to be a memory.” Jimmy’s voice cracked, low and hard.

Jey set the letter down with shaking hands. “Thirty million in gold bars. Real gold. And she didn’t even blink about giving it away.”

“I don’t give a shit about the gold,” Jimmy snapped.

“We know,” Tay said, reaching for his arm. “But it means something. She wanted us to know she wasn’t just gone. She left pieces behind.”

They all turned toward the bed. She stirred faintly, her lips parting in sleep, eyes twitching under her lids. Her curls had been freshly oiled, face gently moisturized. She looked young again. Fragile, but alive.

Tay wiped under her eyes. “She doesn’t remember all of it. Not yet. But she wrote that while she was still in it. All of it. The drugs. The nights. The death wish. And she still thought of us.”

“Then we hold onto this house,” Jimmy said, his voice final. “The beach house. It’s hers. Ours. We don’t sell shit. We protect it. Like she wanted.”

“I’ll call the lawyer,” Jey said quietly.

Tay looked back at the letter and whispered, “She gave us more than any will ever could.”

And outside, the sun began to rise over the Miami skyline, gold light slipping through the windows, warming the cold edges of the room.

Chapter Seventy-Seven: Mid-Care

The room was warm with sunlight and softened by the hush of professionals who didn’t ask questions—they just worked. There was a reverent rhythm to it, almost sacred, as Emori lay half-limp beneath a cotton blanket, her eyes cracked open just enough to show she was present, but not fully there. She didn’t flinch as the gynecologist lifted the hem of her gown to finish her exam. She didn’t blink when the dental hygienist scraped gently at her lower teeth while humming Marvin Gaye. Her hands stayed folded on her chest like she was bracing for something to go wrong.

"Still got unusually strong walls," the gynecologist murmured, more to herself than anyone else, snapping off her gloves and making a note. "Uterus looks fine, no sign of permanent damage. She's holding on in ways most wouldn’t."

The dentist leaned in, swiping a sterile wipe across Emori’s gums. “Good enamel under the damage. Grinding, maybe from stress. Minor decay, nothing we can’t fix.” She turned to the nurse with a smile. “Put her down for deep cleaning next week.”

Jimmy, Jey, and Tay watched in turns—overwhelmed, impressed, exhausted. Tay sat in the corner painting her own toes absently, letting the scent of eucalyptus and peppermint oil from the massage station behind her lull the tension in her shoulders. Jey had two cold cucumbers over his eyes and his curls held up with clips while a woman massaged a thick conditioner into his scalp, half-laughing that the boys had finally been forced into self-care.

Jimmy stood near the window, arms folded, his hoodie still wrapped around Emori’s shoulders even though she was in the hands of a dozen different professionals. He was tense, jaw clenched as he watched the nutritionist hold a palm against Emori’s belly, checking her bloat level after meals.

“She’s gained six pounds,” the woman said quietly, eyes meeting Jimmy’s. “That may not sound like much, but for someone who was two days from organ shutdown, it’s a miracle. She’s responding to the healthy sugars, the hydration… the love.”

Love. He flinched at the word.

In the adjacent bathroom, Emori was carefully washed by two gentle-handed nurses, her body scrubbed and wrapped in warm towels. Her eyes flicked open every so often, but her lips never moved. They were delicate with her. They didn’t rush. Waxing was done slowly, soothingly, her brows trimmed, her lashes cleaned. Her hair was conditioned and braided loosely in a crown that framed her gaunt but softening face.

She emerged in a fresh silk hospital gown in a muted mauve, slouchy soft socks pulled high up her calves. She looked a touch more human.

And in the quiet that followed her re-entry to the room, a man entered. He wore a white lab coat, but no clipboard. Just a tablet in hand and a kind smile. He glanced around, eyes scanning and locking onto Jimmy.

“You’re the tall one, right? Beard. Ex-fiancé,” he asked, walking up and offering his hand.

Jimmy eyed him suspiciously, then shook it.

“Just wanted to let you know,” the man said with an unnerving brightness, “everything’s still viable.”

“What?” Jimmy asked.

The man tapped his tablet. “Her numbers, her levels, your genetic compatibility from the bloodwork we pulled. Everything’s clean. Optimal. Reproductive success won’t be a problem, if that’s ever something you both… consider again.”

Jimmy stared at him, momentarily frozen. “You’re telling me this like it’s good news.”

“It is good news,” the doctor chuckled. “Not every day someone walks out of what she’s been through and still has a shot at real life. Think of it as… options. She’s got them. You’ve got them. She’s young. The body wants to live.”

The doctor exited as quickly as he came, and Jimmy was left standing there, blinking like the ground had just tilted beneath him.

Across the room, Emori sat gingerly on her bed, holding a cup of warm broth in her hands. She looked up at him like she didn’t quite know what had just passed between them—but she felt something shift. She tilted her head.

"You look like you got some bad news or some real good hope,” she whispered, voice hoarse.

Jimmy didn’t answer. He just walked over, sat beside her on the bed, and gently placed his hand over hers.

The others didn’t speak either. In that room of recovery, they all knew one thing: nothing was back to normal—but damn if it wasn’t the first time anything felt possible.

Chapter Seventy-Eight: Glimmers of the Past

When the morning light filtered into the suite, it felt different. There was a sense of calm in the air, a soft change that lingered in the room. Emori lay still, the covers shifting gently as her body rose and fell with each breath. She had been sleeping longer these days—resting in a way that seemed to hold onto something deeper than just recovery. The trembling had stopped. The violent shakes, the wild, unpredictable movements that once defined her waking hours, were gone.

It wasn’t a full return to herself, not by a long shot, but it was progress.

Jimmy stood at the window, staring out at the view. His mind was a maze of thoughts, but it was hard to ignore the physical changes happening right in front of him. Every day, he saw more of Emori’s body returning to a semblance of the woman he once knew—before the drugs, the dark spirals, the pain that had claimed her. The bony face was no longer as sharp, her skin now plump and soft, a glow beginning to return. She no longer looked like a shell of herself, her face no longer etched in hollow lines. Instead, there was a suppleness to her cheeks, a small hint of the warmth that had once made her smile so full of life.

Tay sat beside the bed, eyes focused on Emori as she stirred. It was hard not to notice the difference—the way her eyes weren’t as cold, as vacant, anymore. The once shark-like blackness in her gaze had softened. They were still tired, still worn from the fight, but now there was a faint spark, like a dim flame trying to reignite. Her body, still frail, had gained some weight. The faint color of health had begun to return to her face, and her legs—those wobbly, weak things—had steadied.

Thirty minutes of physical therapy a day now, instead of ten. Every session, every step, was a small victory. No longer did she struggle to stay upright, no longer did she rely solely on the support of her therapist. Emori could stand on her own, albeit shakily at first, but with each day, she was growing stronger. Even her appetite was coming back, slow but steady—her desire for real food returned in bursts of hunger, and when she ate, she ate like someone who had been starved. Slowly but surely, her body was fighting its way back to life.

The nutritionist had taken charge of her meals, carefully monitoring what she put into her body, focusing on rebuilding what she had lost. High-protein meals, healthy fats, fresh fruits and vegetables—the essentials to regaining what was once so frail. She wasn’t just putting on weight; she was nourishing herself for the first time in what felt like forever.

Jey stood in the corner, arms crossed, watching her with a mixture of admiration and wariness. This new version of Emori, this flicker of life, was fragile. Yet it felt more like her than the hollow, broken version they had brought back from the edge of death. But there was still so much work to be done. Still so many moments when she didn’t recognize who she was or the people around her.

But those moments were fewer.

“Jimmy,” Tay said softly, her voice cutting through his thoughts. “Look at her.”

He turned slowly, his heart in his throat as he saw Emori’s hands shifting in the sheets, her eyes slowly blinking open. She had always been beautiful, even at her worst—but now, now she looked like the woman he remembered. Her face, free from the harshness of addiction, held a softness, a vulnerability that was both endearing and heartbreaking.

She let out a small groan, her body stretching lightly, as though testing the limits of her newfound strength. Her eyes opened more fully, though they still looked distant, as though she hadn’t fully emerged from whatever haze clouded her mind. But there was a depth to her gaze—something human, something real.

“Good morning,” she muttered weakly, her voice raspy from disuse. She shifted her head to look at the group, though her focus was still unsteady.

“Morning,” Jimmy said quietly, his voice gentle as he sat down beside her. “How’re you feeling?”

She blinked, trying to gather her thoughts, but there was a brief, fleeting look in her eyes—something that almost resembled recognition. She swallowed hard, her voice low, strained, “Better.”

Her eyes flitted to the small, empty plate beside her bed—empty except for a few crumbs from the meal she'd eaten earlier. She licked her lips instinctively, and Jimmy’s heart clenched as he saw the hunger in her eyes. Not just for food, but for life. For something more than what she had been living.

"How about we get some more food in you?" Tay asked, her voice warm. "Something good, huh?"

Emori’s lips twitched in the faintest of smiles, but it quickly faded. “Maybe,” she said, her voice uncertain. She seemed unsure of herself, her own body still unfamiliar.

Jimmy gently placed his hand on hers, giving her a soft squeeze. “We’re gonna keep going, Emori. We’re gonna get you back.”

She gave him a blank stare for a moment, then nodded weakly. The fight wasn’t over, but today, it felt like they had made it through the worst of it. She was alive. She was here. And for the first time in a long while, there was something like hope in the air.

Chapter 79

Jimmy sat on the edge of the second bed, idly scrolling through the ridiculous list of amenities they now had access to. Gourmet room service. Therapy dogs on-call. A rooftop garden. All thanks to Emori.

She was resting again—or so he thought.

Her voice slid out like smoke, low and hoarse but with enough bite to slice clean through the silence.

“Hey,” she murmured. “Tall. Beard. Mean mug.”

Jimmy turned, brow furrowed. “Yeah?”

Emori shifted on the bed. Her hospital gown was slightly wrinkled, her legs tangled in the soft sheets. She looked half-dead and still too beautiful to be real. Her eyes—though no longer lifeless—held a gleam of mischief dulled only by exhaustion.

“I heard you were my ex-fiancé,” she muttered, almost casually, eyes dipping down, lingering somewhere below his belt and then darting back up to meet his stare. “So maybe you can help me out.”

“…With what?”

She blinked slowly, her voice dipping into a whisper not meant for the others in the room. “I’m having needs.”

Jimmy froze.

“What kind of needs?” he asked, even though he already knew.

Emori gave a slight roll of her shoulder, a lazy, sultry shrug that made the corner of her mouth twitch like she almost remembered how to smirk. “Not water. Not crushed ice. Not cucumber. Not even steak. Grown-ass-woman needs.”

Jimmy stared at her like she’d thrown a brick through a window.

“You’re recovering.”

“I’m breathing. Everything’s starting to work again. That includes that.” She gestured faintly toward her own body. “And before you go noble, Tay’s not doing it. Jey’s got curls and a skincare routine. So…”

She blinked up at him. “That leaves you, fiancé.”

Jimmy exhaled hard, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Jesus, Em.”

Her voice dropped to a whisper so low he had to lean in. “You’re the only one I even halfway remember touching me like that. And if I’m gonna go crazy again soon, I wanna feel something real first.”

The silence afterward was almost comedic. Jimmy just stared at her, red creeping up his neck, stunned stupid.

And Emori? She closed her eyes, as if the offer was nothing, like she hadn’t just upended the air in the room. Like this was survival. Instinct. A flicker of the woman who used to know exactly what she wanted, even if her body still bore the toll of forgetting.

Jimmy didn’t move.

Didn’t blink.

Didn’t breathe.

His jaw clenched, and for a full five seconds, he looked like he was buffering—staring at her with an expression somewhere between shell-shocked and painfully flustered.

Across the room, Tay looked up from her phone and squinted. “You good?”

Jimmy blinked hard. “Yeah, just—uh…” He cleared his throat and looked away, ears tinged red.

Jey arched a brow at the sudden shift in energy, reading Jimmy’s body language like a damn novel. “We were gonna go check out that rooftop spa situation, remember?” he said slowly, nudging Tay. “See what other amenities come with being mysteriously rich and emotionally destroyed.”

Tay glanced between Emori and Jimmy and caught the weird tension immediately. “Right. Yeah. Self-care. You two… take your time.”

Neither needed an explanation. They just walked out—Tay snickering under her breath, Jey shaking his head with a smirk.

The door shut behind them with a soft click.

Jimmy turned back, and Emori was still looking at him, a little more alert than before, the sleep-worn fog in her eyes replaced by something else. Something bold. Her voice was quiet, but her intent came through like a freight train.

“I don’t know how close we were before all this,” she said, shrugging slightly. “But I want to satiate us both.”

Jimmy's brows twitched at the word.

She went on, unapologetically, “Mostly because you’re incredibly attractive. And I would very much enjoy you exploring me… to the edge.”

He inhaled sharply, dragging a hand down his face.

“Emori,” he rasped, voice low. “You just got out of detox. You’re still healing.”

“And I’m still human.” Her voice didn’t rise, but it was firm. “Don’t confuse my survival with some kind of purity. I’m not looking for fantasy. I’m just saying I’m here. You’re here. I feel things in this body again. And you’re the only one who makes me feel safe enough to want something like that.”

Jimmy swallowed hard. His chest rose and fell as he stared at her—really stared. At the weight she’d begun to put back on. At the softness returning to her face. The way her lips moved when she said edge like it wasn’t the first time she’d brought a man there and left him ruined.

“You’re gonna kill me,” he muttered.

She tilted her head. “Only in the best way.”

Chapter Seventy-Nine: Fire Reborn

The silence was thick, like the air just before a thunderstorm. Emori didn’t flinch. She leaned back on the bed, legs parted slightly, Jimmy standing over her like he hadn’t breathed in two minutes.

“Close the door,” she said quietly. Not sultry. Not begging. Just a woman who knew what she wanted and had bled enough for the right to take it.

Jimmy closed it.

With a soft click, it was just them.

Her legs swung over the edge of the bed, feet pressing down on the cold tile, and she stood on her own for the first time in days. Her body trembled—not from weakness but anticipation. She walked to him slowly, the silk hospital gown hugging every part of her that had started to return. Her thighs. Her hips. Her breasts fuller again, her curves reemerging like they'd fought their way back from the grave.

Jimmy’s breath hitched when her fingers reached for his shirt, tugging him down until his mouth was against hers.

No hesitation. No soft start.

Their mouths collided like impact was the only language they knew—teeth, tongue, desperation and ache all rolled into one crashing heat. He wrapped his arms around her like he’d waited years—because he had. She gripped the hem of his shirt and pulled, fists clenched in fabric until it was off and tossed.

Her voice cracked against his mouth. “I want to feel everything. No pillows. No soft lighting. No fucking hesitation.”

He growled low in his chest, catching her under the thighs and lifting her, her legs wrapping around his waist. She gasped at the strength of it—at the feeling of being small in his arms again, at the feeling of him. Her back hit the mattress. He stood over her, stripping off his sweats, her eyes locked on every inch of him, as if his body was a memory her skin had forgotten but her soul hadn’t.

She arched her hips toward him, gown bunched up, heat pulsing. “Give me that work, Jimmy. Make me remember.”

He didn’t answer with words.

He gripped her by the thighs, dragged her to the edge of the bed, and pressed into her—deep, slow, claiming. She gasped, back arching, and he held her there, just letting her feel him inside her for the first time since everything.

Her hands clawed at his back. “F-fuck—Jimmy—”

“I got you,” he murmured. “I got you.”

Then he moved.

Thrust after deep, unrelenting thrust, her body jolted with life. The silk gown slipped from one shoulder. Her hair wild, head thrown back as her body met his rhythm with a hunger that wasn’t delicate—it was survival. Her hands clutched his face, pulling him down to kiss him again, deeper this time. Slow and dirty and raw.

She whispered into his mouth, “Don’t stop. Don’t stop until I forget the drugs. Forget the stage. Forget everything but you.”

He answered with his hips.

The bed creaked. Her moans spilled loud and beautiful into the room, broken up only by the sound of skin and sweat and the wet, perfect rhythm between them. She broke once—completely shattered beneath him, legs shaking, nails raking down his back as her climax ripped through her like a violent resurrection.

But he didn’t stop.

Not until she begged.

Not until she looked at him through tear-filled eyes and whispered his name like it was the only word she remembered from her old life.

“Jimmy…”

He came close then, burying his face in her neck, arms tight around her as his body convulsed with a groan that only she could summon.

They stayed like that. Tangled. Gasping. Alive.

And for the first time in what felt like forever, there were no ghosts in the room. Just skin. Sweat. And something they thought they’d lost for good:

Home.

Chapter Eighty – “No Ring, Just Ruin”

The room was dim—just the soft cast of amber light spilling from the bedside lamp. The silence between them wasn’t awkward; it was loaded. Heavy. Hot. The air had thinned from the moment she murmured that request with such blunt honesty it nearly buckled him.

Now? Now it was all skin and breath and heat. Her legs wrapped around his hips, her fingers locked behind his neck, trembling—not from weakness anymore, but need. His name spilled from her mouth like a prayer as he drove into her slow and deep, steady but starved. Every inch they reconnected felt like a stretch of time unraveling, stretching between the pain of the past and the unknowns of now.

Her nails dragged down his back, not hard, but present. Real.

“You feel like home,” she whispered brokenly against his mouth.

But then she froze.

Tears welled.

Not from the pain. Not from the pleasure. But from a wave hitting so hard it pulled everything out from under her. Her lips parted, eyes locked on his—and he saw it. The storm behind them. The recognition.

She remembered.

She remembered everything.

Selling everything she had. Her car, her jewelry, her dreams.

The tears slid sideways across her cheeks. She clutched at his jaw, her body still quivering around him, but it was no longer about lust.

“I did it for you,” she whispered hoarsely. “I gave it all up so they wouldn’t take you from this world. Sold my life to save yours. And I left, Jimmy. I left without a ring. Without a name. Just ruin.”

His thrusts slowed to a near stop as her body rocked with silent sobs, but he stayed inside her, forehead resting against hers, the gravity of her confession anchoring them both.

“You… remember?” he whispered.

Her lip trembled. “I didn’t just disappear because I didn’t love you. I did it because I did. You would’ve died in there. And no one was gonna save you. So I did. I gave up everything for a man who never even had time to call me his wife.”

He swallowed hard, emotion clawing up his throat.

“And I would do it again,” she said, voice cracking as her legs stayed wrapped around him. “But it broke me, Jimmy. It broke me because I never got to tell you why. I just vanished. And all I ever wanted—was us.”

He pulled her to him, burying himself deeper like it would protect her from the world. From the memory. From the ache. Their movements became less about lust, more about desperation. She sobbed into his shoulder as he rocked into her with reverence, with grief, with love that never died but got buried under years of pain and poor choices.

They unraveled together—he spilling into her as her tears spilled from the corners of her eyes, gasping for him in every way possible.

She was the ex-fiancée with no ring, no closure, and no peace—until now.

Chapter Eighty-One – “The Ring That Never Was”

The room was quiet again, the air clinging to them like the heat hadn’t left. But this time, there was no rush of bodies, no heavy breath or ragged moan. Just her. Emori.

She stirred slowly beneath him, her lashes wet, skin flushed from more than just the intimacy. Jimmy was still there—holding her as if letting go would send her vanishing into that black void all over again.

But she moved. Carefully. Gently. Pulling herself from him with a reverence that made his chest ache. She sat upright on the bed, tugging one of the silk throws over her shoulders, her back to him. Her hands shook in her lap. Her breath hitched.

She didn’t look at him.

That’s when the door creaked open. The unmistakable sound of sneakers and soft laughs drifting in. Tay and Jey had returned—smug, sated, their cheeks pink with the aftermath of whatever they’d been off doing.

But it died in their throats when they saw her. The tension. The shift in air.

Jey’s grin faltered. Tay’s brows pulled together.

Emori didn’t look at them. She didn’t look at anyone. Her fingers clenched the silk tighter around herself, eyes glazed but locked on something invisible.

“You promised me,” she said softly. “You promised, Jimmy.”

He stood slowly from the bed, not bothering to hide the concern in his voice. “Em…”

“You said we were gonna go look at rings.” Her voice cracked. “You said it. That morning before it all went down… we had it planned. I held onto that. I waited for you.”

Tears welled in her eyes again, but this time there was a fire underneath them. A wound being torn wide open as if it never healed.

“But then it all blew up,” she whispered. “And I left. I left to save you, to keep you from rotting behind bars like they said you would. I sold everything. I burned every fucking bridge. And I didn’t even get a ring out of it.”

Silence.

The kind that hums and presses against every wall.

“I don’t even know if I can call myself your ex-fiancée,” she whispered, finally looking up—and straight at him. Her eyes brimmed with more than pain. They brimmed with lost time. With the weight of what she had carried alone.

“I left without a ring. Just heartbreak and shame.”

Tay’s hand slowly lifted to her chest, expression softening with a guilty pang. Jey looked like he didn’t know whether to stay or vanish into the wall.

Emori clocked their stares, her gaze flicking to the side, her voice cracking again.

“Can I—” she swallowed hard. “Can I be alone? With one of the therapists, please?”

Jimmy stepped forward, aching to reach for her.

But she shook her head. She didn’t scream. Didn’t sob. She just stood—shoulders shaking slightly, silk robe clinging to her like armor—and moved toward the hallway. Her feet were bare. Her dignity wasn’t.

A therapist was already waiting outside, as if she knew. As if Emori’s pain called out in a language only the broken could hear.

The door shut behind her.

And Jimmy stood frozen, feeling like the man who had everything but still let it all slip through his fingers.

#x black oc #romance #jimmy uso fanfiction #jimmy uso x black oc #mature fic

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astoldbyaja · 11 months ago

Text

The Orisha and the Hashira- Ch.18

“The Entertainment District?” I asked never having heard of such a place.

“It’s a place where many go to fulfill their deepest sexual desires, and a breeding ground for demons. Now we won’t need to go there right away, I think we can leave in a week actually.” Tengen said rubbing his chin and looking upward.

“Absolutely not!” Kyojuro said with bright eyes, a smile still on his face. I looked at him stunned he would ever speak for me.

“I need a medical corps member and someone who can fight. Ayo is both of those. She can handle herself.” Tengen said.

“I said no!” Kyojuro said, and I placed my hand in his.

“Are you afraid of the demons we may come up against? I can do this.” I assured lightly. He did just recover from a demon attack. Maybe he’s just feeling vulnerable is all. Kyojuro looked at me warmly.

“I know you can my lily, but the vast majority of people there will take one look at you and not see you as a woman to respect! They will surely see you traveling with Tengen and throw money at his feet for time with you!” he said. I blinked rapidly at his words and nodded gently. Tengen growled.

“You think I’d let anyone put their hands on Ayo like that! Come on give me some credit! Look, my wives were on missions there now under cover. People are disappearing a lot of them. I fear this will be more than what they can handle. I’m worried for them. We need all the manpower we can get if this demon is an upper moon or working with other demons.” he said. I gasped hearing the pain in his voice, and I looked at Kyojuro with worry.

“If these women truly need our help, we must help.” I said, and my mate looked down with a gentle sigh before nodding.

“I understand.” he said. Tengen nodded.

“Good we leave in seven days! Be ready!” he said before turning and walking out with a wave. I stared at the door he left out of before looking at Kyojuro. He was still looking down at his lap, his hands curling into fists and shaking on his lap.

“What’s troubling you? You have never feared for me on a mission?” I asked sitting beside him now and gently rubbing his face.

“I’ve always feared for you. I just try my best to hide it. Ever since you told us that Kibutsuji tried to force himself on you, that’s all I could think about. I replay your words in my mind, the fear on your face plays like a loop in my brain… I was so angry at myself for not being there to protect you. And now the entertainment district where sex both consensual and not happens for hours a night, never stopping… I just imagine men surrounding you grabbing at you, wanting a part of you that they will never deserve.” he said. I could feel his blood boiling with anger beneath his skin and I moved his face to look at me.

“You have to believe that I can hold my own against such things.” I said leaning in to press my forehead into his. He sighed leaning forward into me.

“If anyone, man or demon, tries to hurt you in that way… I cannot begin to fathom what I would do to them.” he said in a low dangerous tone that makes me shiver. I liked the way he talked, and I gently pecked his lips in response with a soft moan. He leans forward not wanting my lips to leave his. Our mouths open so that we can devour each other. Our tongues moved together in their usual dance as we panted against each other. He takes hold of my uniform and pulls me into the bed. I swing my legs over his lap and wrap my arms around his neck.

I feel the heat between our bodies and his lips trail down my neck. I let my head lull back and I sigh gently as I feel his lips suck on the front of my neck. I moan ever so gently and begin to slowly rub my crotch against his. He groans lowly as I can feel his shaft hardening immediately. Before we could do anything else, I could hear multiple people talking, the noise coming this way. Kyojuro and I both looked over to see the door was still very much open. Quickly, I rolled off him and laid down beside him, and we both chuckled as he pulled the blankets over our heads.

We were quiet now as we heard the talking pass us and once the noise faded away, we both sighed gently. I closed my eyes in relief before looking at Kyojuro.

“I will be training this week to prepare for my mission at the lake side, and resting here so I may be close if needed. You are free to watch or train with me if you’d like.” I invited and he nodded with a confident hm.

“I would love to!” he said happily.

I took my training seriously, moving through the forest at heightened speed, striking different target spots I had set up high in the branches. Kyojuro joined, both of us jumping from different branches crossing each other as we struck different targets. His speed was impressive! We clashed weapons together now, our faces close to each other, before we jumped back and ran for each other yet again. It was easy to see his moves as well and so I could not get the best results from this.

I screamed as I went for his neck, and he held his sword up to block my attack.

“Kyojuro, come at me as if you were trying to kill me!” I snapped.

“I could never do that even if it were for training!” he bit back, and we jumped back from each other, spinning my spear before planting it in the ground. He was not even panting, and neither was I.

“Then I need a stronger opponent to train with.” I said. Kyojuro looked at me with an undecided look.

“Are you trying to rile me?” he asked calmly. I looked down and shook my head. It was the same with Giyu. I sighed and shook my head.

“No. But I need more of a challenge.” I replied. I realized I was irritated, and he could sense this.

“Ayo what is the matter?” Kyojuro asked.

“I worry for you and the other Hashira. You couldn’t take me down if you all came at me. There are demons stronger than you all out there, and it irritates me that there is an enemy out there that can hurt you- kill you.” I said. Kyojuro stared at me for a moment before smiling and walking over to me. He stood in front of me now and nodded.

“Yes, that may be true. But that is to be expected. As Hashira I know I could die in battle with a demon. It is the sacrifice I am willing to make to keep you and everyone else safe.” he said.

“Is that why none of you have filled out the documents on being revived by me? The other demon slayers have given me their documentation, but none of the Hashira have come to me to tell me if they want to be revived or not. Do you not wish to return to my arms if something takes you from me before it is your time?” I asked. Kyojuro looked at me stunned now as I could feel tears swelling in my eyes. He raised his hand to wipe the tear, but I turned my face wiping the tears away myself.

“Oh, my beautiful water lily. I am sorry I have not given you an answer yet. I myself have been wondering what death could mean for us if one of us or both dies. I wanted to talk with you about it.” he said.

“So, talk.” I said. He gave a gentle smile.

“How many self-portrait paintings are there of you? If we have never met, how many lives could you live?” he asked. I looked back at him. Femi has many self-portraits of the family hidden on the Mother Continent where no one could ever find them. When I am reborn, I will be reborn in that location.

“Ten.” I replied softly. He nodded.

“You have ten lives you have been blessed to be able to live as a spirit. I only have one as a human. That is how it should be for me. Our souls are already connected… Even if I die, I will be reborn and will meet you again, same for you even when all of your lives are lived.” he said gently. “Even when we part in death, we will never truly be a part.”

I looked down and sighed, his words not making me feel better.

“Such a human thing to say.” I pouted softly, and he chuckled.

“Yes, I suppose it is,” he said before taking both my hands and making me look at his warm eyes, “But while I am here, my duties will forever be to you and the corps.”

I smiled at his words and nodded leaning forward to rest my forehead into his. My hands pressed into his chest and ran down it slowly before gently moving to unbutton his uniform. He did not stop me and for this I was happy.

It took us hardly any time before we were naked and I was leaning over Kyojuro as he lied back on his haori, his eyes never leaving mine as I was over him. I gently let my hand move between our bodies and when gently I took hold of his cock, a sharp gasp escaped him. I smiled and positioned him at my entrance before slowly taking him in. We both moaned out as my walls clamped down around him and pulled him right in.

His hands locked down on my hips and I began move my hips against him, my breasts pushing up and down against his chest. We moaned and panted against one another feeling the pleasure churning up in our bodies. I could feel every inch of him scraping my walls in the most delicious of ways. His eyes were glazed over with lust and my mouth found his, my tongue exploring every inch of him.

His grip tightened on my hips as he guided my hips up and down. He was moving me faster and I answered moving my hips harder into him as he hammered up into me. I moaned sharply into his mouth feeling him bruise that hot spot inside me. Our bodies writhed against each other fast feeding the delicious throbbing in me. I could feel Kyojuro’s cock twitch inside me and I smiled as his movements grew sloppy. I leaned back so I could look down at him and drink in the lust of his face. He had the cutest blush over his face and his eyes were closed and mouth hanging open to let out all the moans he wanted.

“Ah Ayo I’m cumming!” he said, and I moved even faster on him before I felt my walls tighten up and I cried out as my orgasm hit me next. My walls milked his cock for everything he had until my legs began to shake from its orgasm. I slowed my movements and groaned falling over him and gently lying on his chest. He wrapped his arms around me and held me close. We lied there silently for a moment.

“Please be careful on this mission.” I hear him say and I looked up at him, kissing his chest before resting my chin on him.

“I will.”

We leaned forward and kissed each other passionately.

When the time came, I was waiting for Tengen outside the Butterfly Mansion. Kyojuro was beside me waiting. My spear was in its holster at my back.

“Ayo! Mr. Rengoku!” a familiar voice called, and we turned to see Tanjiro approaching with Zenitsu and Inosuke.

“Young Kamado, boy of yellow hair and boy of boar mask!” Kyojuro greeted happily.

“Boys what are you doing here?” I asked.

“We’re also joining you and Tengen on your mission at the Entertainment District.” Tanjiro said.

“That’s great! If there is a demon, it won’t stand a chance against all of you.” Kyojuro said happily. I smiled thinking my darling was more relieved than he let on that we’d have more slayers to help.

“Oh great, you’re all here. Are you ready for the flashiest mission ever!” Tengen called as he landed on the ground, having appeared on the top of the gates.

“LET’S DO THIS!” the boy said. I guess this was it. I looked at Kyojuro and gave him a passionate kiss.

“I will see you soon, my darling.” I replied. Kyojuro nodded kissing my knuckles.

“I fervently await your return.” he said.

“Oh God get a room you two!” Inosuke said as the group was already starting to leave. I chuckled and waved at my love before departing from him. I couldn’t hide the mild excitement I felt getting to fight alone both the sound Hashira and these children. I sensed great powers from them, and I wondered how they would fair in a place like this.

The entertainment district was full of life in the night. Numerous people flooded the streets, Oirans were in windows waving at future customers. I was in my black fabric without my mask, but I had it with me just in case. Many people looked at me as if I was some exotic creature.

Right now we were all in a carriage being taken to an inn.

“Now remember right now we are casing the joint. Ayo you control water. Demons don’t have any water in them, and their aura can cause the water to dry up immensely in the air. When we get situated, I’d like to you scan from the rooftops and look for any areas where the water in the air is lacking.” he said. I looked at him stunned.

“Who told you this?” I asked, who was telling my abilities to people.

“Your brother did.” he exclaimed.

“Which one?” I asked lowly.

“I am not telling.” he boomed. Once we stepped out of the carriage, a man ran up to Tengen.

“Sir, you’re walking around with an African! How much for her time?” he asked. Tengen growled.

“She’s not an oiran. She’s a dancer only!” he said before swatting him away.

“A dancer?” I whispered harshly to him.

“Yes. With your mask you can be a masked dancer and dance your way into the heart of these brothels and help gather information about some of these people who have been disappearing.” he muttered. I rolled my eyes noticing, Zenitsu and Inosuke were trying to run off, yet Tanjiro was holding them back.

“We have to stay together you two!” he strained. I looked all around the place noticing the different eyes that were looking my way. Men were murmuring to themselves and not even hiding their fingers as they pointed to me. I even noticed some of the women above scowling down at me, obviously not liking the attention taken away from them. So, I calmly removed my spear with a firm stare and banged it twice on the ground causing a loud metallic noise to echo through the area making everyone tense. If anyone tried to bother me, they will be carried out on their backs!

“Allow me to introduce you to the Yoshiwara Entertainment District, awash in vanity and desire. Flashy, isn’t it?” Tengen told. This entire place was bright.

“What kind of place is this? There’s too many people to count!” Inosuke yelled.

“Come on we need to get indoors and discuss our plan.” Tengen said as we moved into the Inn with a wisteria sigil on the drapes.

By night five, I walked across the rooftops of the building, my mask on my face. It felt odd wearing it now. Tanjiro and the boys disguised themselves as courtesans to infiltrate three of the brothels of which women are disappearing. I merely looked down on the district listening to the water all around. In my vision I saw nothing but blue. There was water everywhere. There were no specific spots devoid of water unless it was underground. The hairs on my neck stood up as I paused and looked down.

A demon found me before I could sense it. I turned seeing a flash of green coming my way. I whipped my spear out and held it firmly before me before I was flying through the air with great force and falling into a building. My body broke through, and I landed, quickly and got up on my feet.

“Wow you’re a resilient one aren’t you. Good for you!” A voice croaked lowly. I was in an abandoned building looking at the figure before me. However, my eyes widened at the monstrosity before me.

The creature is a tall man of fairly muscular build and a pale gray complexion speckled with black blotches. His body is strange to me. He had defined upper torso, arms, and legs. His waist was incredibly skinny to the point of looking skeletal! His pelvis jutted out at an unnatural angle.

His spine is prominently visible through his back, and he was hunched over with thin, green and red eyes, their sclera bright yellow orange, that are slanted drastically downwards at the sides, giving him a permanently haggard gaze. Kanji marked in his eyes. My eyes widened as I saw the words Upper Rank Six in them.

His hair is black that transitioned to a brighter lime green around the crown of his head, worn messily in uneven bangs and several locks. His body and limbs had noticeable ink-like markings in the form of black spots on it and a flowing water-like pattern on his face. He also had a full set of sharp, interlocking teeth. This is an Upper Moon.

“Wow, you’re really skinny. And you smell really weird. No wonder I was able to smell you in a crowd of people. I guess I don’t mind trying something new for dinner tonight.” he chided. I looked down to his hands noticing the sickles in them. The demon frowned now giving a low growl.

“Oh what, am I too ugly for you to even speak!” he roared, his sickles glowing red. My eyes widened as he swung his arms about. “Blood demon art! Flying Blood Sickles!”

Before I knew it, blades of blood were flying at me. I spun my spear swiftly, slashing at them, however the blades continued to fly about coming at me. So, he can control the blood and they’ll continue coming at me until they hit their target. I avoided the blades and they continued to come, until I raised my hands letting blades of water attack him. It distracted him enough that the blades hit the walls of the building instead.

“Demon! If you wish to die by my hands, you need only tell me you are suicidal, and I will ease your passing!” I said violently, keeping a crouch with my spear out. The demon wiped his face some of the water.

“So, you have some tricks, don’t you? No meager demon slayer is that strong. Are you a Hashira?” he asked. I kept my core tight, staring intently as I watched the water move into his mouth. Blood demon art. I heard that’s supposed to be some strong ability certain demons have. His could definitely be a problem if I let them hit me. Suddenly, I felt a pulse inside me. I looked down at my body. Poison was flowing through my veins and my body was already attacking itself to stop it. His sickles must be drenched in poison. I was cut on my forearm.

“I am no Hashira.” I replied. The creature slowly scratched and itched at its skin.

“You talk funny too. You wear a mask. Are you ugly behind it too?” he cackled. No more talking. With great speed, I ran at him, clashing my spear with his sickles and we moved through the room meeting each other head on. He’s strong, stronger than the Hashira I even sparred with. I spun my spear around my back for swiping at the air, creating a blade of water that connected with him, but his sickles sliced right through it. I used that to jump through the water and with scream, I made a move to slash at his neck.

However, he inched back fast enough, and my blade cut the fabric around his neck, grazing his skin. A soft trickle of blood moved down his throat. I jumped back with a gentle shake feeling this poison in my body. Something isn’t right. My body isn’t attacking the poison to heal me but attacking my body outright! I felt my heart suddenly jerk and I gasped spitting out blood. The liquid poured over the slit of my mask’s mouth. The demon cackled now before letting out a loud laugh.

“My poison usually kills humans instantly, but you must be pretty special to still be standing.” he mocked. He was in front of me in seconds and I felt myself just barely able to dodge his attack. His sickle slices at my face, my mask cutting in half and falling to the ground. The attacked doesn’t touch my face thankfully, but the poison has my knees so weak, that I slid down holding my spear. I needed to dissolve my body to get away! But I could hardly get my system to work. The demon was cackling as he finally hunched over my body raising his sickle up.

“Say goodbye- huh?” he paused in his attack looking at my face. My breathing was ragged as I looked him in the eyes. Should I have been afraid to die? No. I knew what was on the other side. I could taste blood in my mouth as the demon looked at me with wide eyes. “Th-that streak. The streak of white… I-it’s you!”

What was he talking about? His voice is echoing, and my eyes are getting heavy. My body is shutting down to fight the poison. If I wake up back on the Mother Continent, then I would have failed my mission to protect Femi.

“Kyo-juro.” I whispered gently before everything went black.

Normal POV- Rashomon Bank

Every moment he was alive felt like complete agony. He was weak, ugly, and frail. He gave off the stench of death as he moved about the village. He often wondered how he survived this long even with his mother trying to kill him in her own womb and even now.

He felt rocks hitting at the back of his head, a feeling he was used to.

“Hey ugly! You’re still alive!”

“Vermin!”

“Cretin!”

“He smells so bad!”

He hid from the tormentors, sitting against a fence for a moment with tear flowing down his face. It burned to cry so he tried not to do it as much. His hunger was growing, and he felt the only thing he could do was remove the sickle from his grime covered robes and kill the closest thing he could find. Lucky for him a snake was quietly slithering past him. There was no taste that he could describe for the snake. Everything tasted the same when you’re trying to survive.

“You poor thing.” A voice split through his ears, and he slowed his chewing. He looked up not even noticing the woman who stood in front of him. His pale eyes widened at the figure before him. It was a woman covered in more dirt than he was. She had blue eyes, and her hair was pulled back in a tight bun. It was as black as the night, but the long streak of white was what caught his attention immediately.

She was in a black kimono with what looked like an apron around her. She sounded weird, her tone different than others in the village. She was covered in mud or dirt, yet neither stained her clothes. What was she? He groaned in utter shock. The woman smiled taking a step forward making the boy immediately cower. He curled up against the fence thinking this woman was going to kill him! “Oh, sweet boy. I am not going to hurt you. Here have some food.”

He peaked his eyes out and looked up at her noticing how close she was, squatting and at eye level with him. How is she not gagging from the stench of death that plagued him? He looked at her with shaky eyes as he noticed the rice ball in her seemingly dirty hands. The woman tilted her head.

“Are my Japanese words not, right?” she asked gently. The boy stared at her even more as she gently leaned in to take hold of his hand. His eyes widened as he looked fearfully at the hand that took his. He was too weak to resist the beating she was about to inflict. She carefully held his palm up. Her skin was so soft and smooth. She then placed the rice ball into his weak hand then she opened her own mouth and pointed inside it.

He looked down at her hand and his own that had the food in it. No dirt or grime rubbed off her and onto him. But he couldn’t stop himself from shakily raising his other hand and touching the woman’s hand. And what she didn’t do made him gasp. She did not recoil in disgust or frown at his curious grazing fingers. She wasn’t dirty like him. Her skin was black!

“Ayomide! Ayomide where are you!” a man’s strict voice calls. The woman looks over her shoulder in the direction of the voice before looking back at the young boy, raising her hand to gently place her palm on his cheek. His eyes widened at the gentle touch.

“Goodbye, sweet boy.” she said placing one more rice ball in his other hand and leaving. He watched her form walk away, a part of him wishing to chase after her, to beg her to take him with her to wherever she was going. Who was she? Where did she come from?

Gyutaro raised the unconscious woman up bridal style, her arms sprawled out over her head, hair flowing beneath her. He then walked into the darkness with her.

“I won’t let you slip through my fingers again.” he promised.

#kyojuro rengoku #kyojuro rengokuxblackfemaleOC #blackfemoc #smut #demon slayer #kimetsu no yaiba #kyojuro rengoku x blackfemOC #kny hashira #rengoku kyojuro

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freedomarrow · 1 year ago

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Leonardo does not comment on Sir Sain's words in any way outside of a silent shake of his head. He has seen enough people like that in his life - stubborn if one were to be diplomatic, delusional if no punches are to be pulled - and knows that arguing achieves nothing beside a waste of energy.

Alas, however odd that may be in this particular situation, fate sees fit to try and prove to Sir Sain that Sir Sigurd and Leonardo were telling the truth in its own way.

For all of a sudden, multiple statues begin to move.

Difference being, this time they are holding weapons.

Leonardo does not even have the time to shout a warning before they strike, with particular fury directed towards Sir Sigurd, the vast majority of the hostile statues aiming their attacks at him. He wants to charge in and assist, but just then, one blocks his way.

Statue G hits Leonardo with Iron Bow (roll: d20-4=8; -1.5HP) Leonardo 3/8.5HP

Unlike the opponent itself, the bow is of regular make, and the arrow that flies into his shoulder is a standard iron head.

Gritting his teeth, he staggers back a step; the damage may not be serious, but the pain does a fine job reminding him just how tired he is, still having not recovered after the chaos and tragedy of the cave passage.

But Leonardo is nothing if not an expert at handling crises with far too much experience in the art of hopeless odds.

Leonardo counterattacks and hits with Bow of Zoltan (roll: d20+4=13; -3.5HP) Statue G 2.5/6HP

Though he is not certain just how effective shooting against a statue can be, he fires nonetheless, and the arrow whistles through the air before embedding itself in the stone, painting cracks all around it. Sir Sigurd lands one more solid hit against it, doing even more damage - one more proper strike, and it will crumble.

But the onslaught is devastating, and the man's strength begins to wane. "Sire!" Leonardo shouts as he falls to his knees, before quickly switching bows, the ever trusty Lughnasadh offering more mobility - before loading and firing off two arrows in quick succession.

Leonardo hits and hits Statue D with Lughnasadh (roll: 2d20(+4)=17, 12; -2.5HP, -2.5HP) Statue D 0/6HPStatue D has been defeated

Just as expected based on the other opponent, this one first cracks, and then shatters under the damage of the well-placed shots. The axe clatters onto the floor among the rubble.

One down, seven to go...

> @enarmor

✢⁎. smiles go for miles!

Roll 1d10 for every post after your starter. Starting with your third post (including your starter), with every post, add +1 to your d10 +1 counter resets after +5 1-8: carry on 9-10+: ping key

#enarmor #bxldrsdraumar #【 thread ⁎ smiles go for miles 】#【 i have my orders ⁎ ic 】#【 event season ⁎ apollyon ouranos 2024 】#aopi2024 #【 a heart steadfast; a lance sharp in steel; what is knighthood if not service ⁎ support: sain 】#【 the past leads through the present; and ever on into the future without you ⁎ support: sigurd 】

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askkirito · 3 years ago

Note

So, how about that Variant Showdown?

I'm having fun with it! c: It has a lot of potential and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

The battling aspect is very reminiscent of Memory Defrag ? The two things I don't like about it is that we can't freely control the camera and that the character sometimes takes a little too long to recover from an enemy attack. I'm invested in the story too. ;vvv;

I haven't done much in the team building aspect so I really don't have an opinion there (literally just used the automatic team formation;;). I did reroll until I got the SSR Kirito though. :')

Anyway, the fact that they used the Rulid Trio on the Formation tab is going to make me sob for the next eight years.

It's only been what... three days?? since it released so my thoughts on it might change later down the line, but as of right now its fun. c:

#ooc #sao #i really hope they let us change the menu background because the white endless hallway thing it has going on doesnt look too nice #i'm excited for eugeo and alice to come (and to see their animations :D)#also the scouting animation is SO LONG....#doing multiple pulls in a roll is going to be a major pain

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rishiguro · 2 years ago

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“YOU’RE BLEEDING” - DABI

a/n: i love him so much it hurts

warnings: major character death. dabi‘s real identity. blood. mention of fire. desperate!dabi. implied murder. injury gets cauterized. 2k of angst.

“if you close your eyes, i’ll fucking burn you to a crisp” dabi‘s voice was stern as he talked, eyebrows furrowed with his teeth clenched. “you hear me?”

you blinked multiple times, trying to get your eyes to focus on the blurry person in front of you. why was it so bright? you tried lifting a hand up, shielding your face from the sun, however your arm felt too heavy for you to move it even an inch.

“huh?”

with heavy eyelids you decided to give it up, wanting nothing more than to succumb to your body‘s cries for sleep. it wouldn’t hurt, right? just a couple of minutes maybe?

you hummed, content with your decision, letting your eyelids drop.

“you’re going to stay awake and look at me with these dumb eyes and you’re going to listen to what i say” dabi‘s harsh voice made you rip your eyes open again, vision slowly clearing and allowing you to look at his face. “understood?”

you studied his face slowly but carefully. it felt like the first time you had seen him and you took your time to examine him.

your eyes wandered upwards from his chin, however halted the moment you looked at his eyes and the purple scars underlining them.

dabi‘s scars weren‘t red, were they?

“dabi,“ you tried, your voice weak but filled with concern. you had to tell him. what if something bad had happened to him?

“shut the fuck up,“ dabi insisted harshly, his jaw still clenched to the point where his words were barely comprehensible, “you can’t talk right now” the villain knew he had to get you out of here somehow, this area wasn’t safe for you anymore. you couldn’t move, you couldn’t defend yourself.

he was pretty.

“dabi”

didn’t you hear what he had just said? he grew impatient, couldn’t you just listen to him for once? it took everything in him to not yell as he looked around, assessing the situation the both of you were in. the alley was dark, only a dumpster shielding the two of you from the street if it wasn’t for the blue flames burning behind it. a charred heap lazily kicked away, ashes dirtying the cold floor even further. at least he couldn’t hurt you any further. “i said shut up”

cursing loudly, he took off his jacket, grabbing the hem of his white shirt and roughly pulling at it. the tearing of the fabric was louder than you could bear, ears starting to ring in pain.

“touya,“ you whispered impatiently, mentally praying for him to just listen.

“be fucking-“

“you’re bleeding,“ you interrupted him, not paying any attention to the way his head snapped back at you and how he was fully ready to cuss you out.

“the hell have i just-“

“why are you bleeding?” you asked, concern filling your voice. “are you hurt?”

whatever it was that dabi believed you would‘ve said to him, it certainly wasn’t this.

him? hurt? were you serious?

dabi couldn’t help but huff at your questions, rolling his eyes. “you’re one to fucking talk”

“now just—“ he stopped briefly, assessing the state you were in. he had to act quick, do something. “just lay still and don’t fucking talk”

you however didn’t pay any attention to what he was saying, instead carefully lifting your hand to his face, thumb rubbing over the scarred skin.

blood.

“i’m gonna get you out of here,“ dabi promised. he knew he couldn’t wait much longer. you grew weaker by the minute and he for sure wasn’t skilled enough to save you right then and there. but he had to do something. anything.

“i’m tired,” you whispered, your heavy eyelids close to shutting again.

“no you’re not,” dabi replied, skillfully dismissing you.

“don’t you dare to close your eyes,“ he continued to threaten you, a warm hand grabbing your face and turning you towards him again, “keep looking at me. you hear me? you’re not going to go now”

you didn’t like how his voice sounded, so rough and hoarse, almost like he couldn’t speak properly. it was a rare sigh for you to see, the villain was hunched over you, his breathing flat and his teeth digging into his bottom lip. you couldn’t see what he was doing and you didn’t have the strength to lift your head, even if you wanted to. but something about him was so raw, so vulnerable.

he was hurt, dabi was bleeding, his blood still adorning the tip of your fingers, and yet he kept talking to you, letting you hear him and telling you to just listen to him, do as he told you to. that’s the least you could do for him, wasn’t it?

you groaned, opening your eyes again, even though everything in yourself protested against it. you were so tired. “that’s it, keep looking right at me, you’re doing so good for me”

“you’re pretty” dabi froze, his eyebrows furrowing, before shaking his head, dismissing you again.

him and pretty?

“you’re seeing things,” he muttered, throwing his head around and searching the area. the blue flames burning multiple feet away, shielding the two of you from the streets slowly started to dwindle. dabi could hear the commotion that was going on on the other side of it, the bright fire attracting the attention of civilians. it wouldn’t be much longer till a hero would come around.

he had to get you out of here, move you to a safer location. dabi cursed as soon he looked back at you. you were pale, too pale, and your breathing was barely audible. he didn’t even know if you were breathing properly. “i’m gonna pick you up now. it’s gonna hurt,” he warned, trying to shove his arms underneath you to support your body and carry you away.

“don’t,” you pleaded, looking at the villain with a scared look on your face. he couldn’t do that now, he shouldn’t. he was hurt, he was bleeding. you had to take care of him, you had to make sure he was safe, but you were too weak to get up. why were you so weak?

dabi’s jaw clenched, shaking his head at your protests. why couldn’t you just listen to him for once in your life? “this is really not the time for you to pick a fucking argument with me, so shut up and let me get you out of here”

weakly you shook you head, fully aware that you weren‘t strong enough to stop him in his doing anyways. “no, you’re bleeding,” you insisted. why wasn’t he listening to you?

why were you so stubborn? digging his fingernails into his palm, dabi fed into the flames shielding you from the public before he turned back to you. his mind was racing as he desperately tried to come up with a solution, a way out of any kind. “i fucking know, but so are you so please just—“

why was he so adamant to get you to agree to him? why couldn’t he just move? why couldn’t he just do as he wanted?

“you shouldn’t be bleeding,” you stated.

you shouldn’t be bleeding either, dabi thought, and yet here you were.

“for fucks sake, just please shut up,” dabi grew more and more agitated by the second, feeling the anger rise in him, skin slowly heating up. why was it so hard for you to listen, just for once? dabi cringed as he looked down at your torso, your shirt soaked in blood that by now has started to spill on the ground underneath you, your face drained of all color. dabi could hear how hard it was for you to talk, how your voice was nothing more than a pained whisper, a plea for him to listen to you. “stop talking, you’re only making it worse,” he chided, now not caring anymore about the potential pain he might cause you. he cursed, ripping a hole in your top, only to immediately shut his eyes in defeat as he assessed the damage.

this was bad. there was no way he could get you away in time.

turning your head away from him in shame, you muttered a small apology. you always managed to make things worse somehow.

truth to be told, dabi didn’t pay a lot of attention to what you said. instead he carelessly pulled on his own white shirt again, to the point where he ripped the hem of it. fisting the fabric he pressed it against your open flesh, watching as it turned crimson way too fast. “you should be. shit, it won’t stop”

you couldn’t help but smile weakly at his snarky comment. “you’re an asshole”

“doing my best, doll,” the villain replied, his lips curved upward too. however his smile fell immediately as he tossed the bloody fabric away.

dabi pulled at his hair in frustration. this wasn’t working, he wasn’t helping. he couldn’t just helplessly watch as your life force drained away, flowing right out of your body.

his stomach turned at the thought of his head, the only way he could try to save you right now— but he hated it. he didn’t want to do it, he didn’t want to hurt you even more. but what more could he do? if he cauterized the wound maybe then he could get you away, to safety, maybe then someone could patch you up, somehow.

maybe you could be kept alive then.

dabi swallowed, closing his eyes as he took in a deep breath. “i need to stop the bleeding, this is gonna be very hot but i need you to take it“

he didn’t wait for your reply till he pressed his palm against your wound, heating it up as soon as he came in contact with it. dabi turned his head away in shame as you cried out in pain. the smell of burned flesh filled the villain‘s nostrils, making his stomach turn in disgust.

when he turned back to you, after moments that felt like an eternity, he was horrified as he saw you with your eyes closed, your chest barely moving. were you even breathing anymore? “keep your eyes open,” he commanded sternly, hand against your blood-stained cheek.

but you barely moved. only now did he notice how cold your skin felt against his hot hands. eyes wide in terror, he grabbed your shoulders, slightly shaking your body. “fuck, stay with me”

“please, don’t do this to me,” dabi pleaded, pulling your form into his lap.

“look at me,” he continued, shoving a hand underneath your knees and lifting your body off the ground. he pulled you close to him, hoping that his own warmth might heat your body up a little.

“listen to me”

dabi ran faster than he ever has, pressing you against his chest. he had to run faster, be quicker, get you away from here.

“stay with me,” he pleaded, trying to catch his breath.

you however didn’t seem to listen, to even hear him and his cries. no, you didn’t move in his arms. you almost looked like you were sleeping peacefully.

too peaceful for his liking.

dabi clenched his teeth, muttering curses under his breath. “are you deaf, you’re gonna keep your pretty eyes open and you’re gonna stay right here with me,” he commanded coldly, trying to mask just how desperate he was.

you could barely hear what the villain had just said. it took you everything to open your eyes again, to look at him. was he always this blurry? “i don’t feel so good, touya”

“i know, fuck, i know,” he answered, turning around to see if someone had been following him. hiding between some dumpsters in the outskirts of the city, he carefully placed you down again, grabbing your hands to get your attention. “but you’re not gonna leave me now, forget it”

dabi sat down in front of you, grabbing your shoulders as he noticed you slumping. “i’m not letting you,” he insisted, pulling you into a tight embrace. you couldn’t leave him, you couldn’t just go and leave him behind. he needed you. he wanted you by his side, he had to have you by his side. “you’re not fucking leaving me”

you meant so much to him that it hurt, and now you were practically at death‘s door, and dabi couldn’t help but feel like you wanted to leave him. if you didn’t, why weren’t you fighting harder? why weren’t you staying awake? why couldn’t you hold on for him just a while longer?

you only managed to sigh in his hold, your eyes now too heavy to keep open. it wouldn’t hurt to shut them, right? you were so tired, so, so tired.

dabi stayed like that, holding you close to him, taking deep breaths to calm himself down. you were going to be okay, you had to be. you couldn’t leave him. “hey, open your eyes”

so why didn’t you respond? why were you so still? “i said open your eyes”

why were you so cold? why were you so pale? “fuck, open them”

why didn’t you move?

“doll, please,” the villain begged, pushing you away from him to take a look at you. you‘re eyes were shut, your mouth slightly opened, almost like you were just about to say something. you were, weren’t you? “just look at me, you can do that, can’t you?”

but why didn’t you do anything? why were you so still? you were supposed to open your eyes, to reassure him, to tell him you were here with him, that you listened, that you wouldn’t leave him. that you‘d never leave him.

“open your fucking eyes!“ he demanded now, violently shaking your still form. a loud, pained cry burned his throat as he threw his head back.

“you said you wouldn’t leave me!” he cried, yelling at you accusingly, like he was expecting you to answer, to justify yourself. how could you just leave him behind like that, how could you just go like you didn’t care how he felt about it. “i told you, you can’t!”

dabi pressed you against his chest again, curling your body in his hold, rocking the both of you back and forth. “i need you, please”

as he looked down at your face, he noticed small drops of crimson falling onto your skin.

dabi was bleeding.

reblogs are appreciated

#₊❏❜ ⋮myheroacademia #dabi x reader #dabi angst #dabi headcanons #dabi x you #touya todoroki x reader #mha x reader #bnha x reader #todoroki touya x you #dabi imagine #mha imagines #mha headcanons #my hero academia #mha angst #todoroki touya #mha dabi

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inklore · 3 years ago

Note

Hmmm..which kinks would each of the three spideys have that would surprise you the most?

jor, omg. you're killing meee! this took me to a dark feral place ok!

no one come at me for these and don’t ask me what im basing it off of, it’s just my peter tingle (horniness) ok!

peter 1:

if any of the peter’s lean more towards sub (more often than not) its definitely this peter. like i just cant explain it ok. do i think he could take control? absolutely, i think that he would definitely be the one to ask to try new kinks all of the time, or try different techniques to make you cum harder/faster/multiple times

him making you cum is like a reward to him, idk if that's a kink? but he loves it. makes it his mission to see how many times he can make you cum, or how many new whiney noises he can make slip out when he twists his tongue this way, or sucks on your clit that way

i think all of the peter’s are excellent at eating pussy, but if there's any of them that's so needy for it, to feel your juices run down their chin, to feel you pull their hair, having him moan against your cunt? THIS ONE IS IT!

which also brings up the next kink: begging. this could go both ways for him, either having you beg for him to fuck you, he just loves to hear how much you want him, see it, feel it.

but also he would be the type to be on his knees for you, kisses trailing from your knees to your inner thighs, looking up at you and mumbling “please, just want to make you feel good”

he would be PULLING you to his mouth, on his tongue, moaning as he ate you out, eyes rolling back an fluttering

also praise kink! again i say both ways, he loves telling you how good you make him feel, how good you feel, how much he’s wanted you all day. but when you run your fingers through his hair when he’s on top and you tell him HE feels so good, that he fucks you so good, that you love him, he goes insane for sure

also think he might have a hidden pain kink, just slight, nothing serious. the moans he lets out, his back contorting when you run your nails down it? its game over for him

and maybe….on occasion, under certain circumstances, i can see him using the word ‘mommy’

peter 2:

he is the only spidey with a daddy kink and no one can change my mind!! end of story, this man would literally be giving you those slow, long, deep strokes, hands in your hair, lips pressed to your ear asking you “are you mine? who do you belong to? tell me”

and i know some of yall are probably like WHAT?! but hear me out, this older peter radiates ‘if you act up you get no dick and i wont even punish you i just wont touch you for hours’ energy. like i feel like since his life was a bit out of his control growing up that he has a major controlling/dom dynamic kink

not to mention that he wasn't big with the ladies so that means when he’s with you it’s intense passion, like you’re the last person on earth, so he’s willing to give you whatever you want, whatever you need, you just gotta ask nicely

he’s also maybe a pleasure!dom, i feel like he gets off on pleasure torture just a bit. loves seeing someone losing complete control all for him. loves to hear the begging and incoherent things coming out of your mouth

he also has a praise kink, loves telling you how good of a girl you are, telling you “just a little bit more, daddy needs just a little bit more and i’ll give you what you want”

i also feel like he would be the best at aftercare, his fingers in your hair, the soft touches, reassuring words telling you how good you were, like he would literally go get you a capri sun to get those electrolytes back

dumbification? absolutely!

peter 3:

if any of them has a true pussy eating kink its this man, he will have you coming five times in a row just to drown in your taste, to hear your moans, to map out your entire body and where to touch, how to touch, so he can have you melting in his hands

not to mention he loves pushing inside of you when you're absolutely soaked, loves saying dirty things like “you hear that? hear how wet you are for me?” and “my girl is so wet for me, feels so good”

neck biting? sucking? leaving marks not only to see your blush the next day but just to have him stuck on you, a part of him that’ll be a reminder that you’re his, that he’s with you

he loves when you ride him, loves loves sucking on your nipples, loves gripping your ass, loves watching you grip onto him when he thrusts up in to. if ‘losing control completely’ while fucking was a kink he would own it

dirty talk and teasing are his forte, not to mention i feel like he’s not too opposed to sex in the spidey suit, but also public sex, “what if someone looked down this alley and saw you coming on spidermans fingers? hm, they'd think you were such a slut”

he’s that ‘calls you a slut in the bedroom but sweetheart in public’ type energy through and through, he would fuck you so filthy at night and cater to you the next morning, this man would worship the ground you walked on

he’s also a bit demanding, loves telling you what to do in the bedroom, asking you to look at him when you cum or saying things like “don’t get shy on me now, baby” all smiling and teasing while his palm is rested on your neck, lips hovering over yours

i also think his moans would sound so needy, mumbled, whispered, his hot breath against your ear or neck or lips, him telling you he’s about to cum, asking you if you want it inside or do you want to taste him

WHICH SPEAKING OF he loves watching you suck his cock, he has an oral fixation going both ways!

send me thots and filthy things!

#peter parker #peter parker headcanons #peter parker x reader #peter parker smut #tasm!peter parker #tom!peter parker x reader #tobey!peter parker #peter parker x you #tasm!peter parker smut #thots !#laur loves jordan #/ jordan

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glamoureddreamer · 3 years ago

Note

Yandere Bob Velseb from Spooky Month x Reader please?

Creepy cannibal

Spooky month (Yandere Bob x Reader)

Warnings: kidnap, violence (does Kevin count as a major or minor character death?), forced/implied/mention cannibalism, forced kissing (please let me know if I’ve missed anything)

If you or a loved one is in need of help in anyway please get help from one of the multiple help hotlines. You matter and you deserve help. Thank you everyone, have a great day and know it gets better <3

(Y/n) walks into the candy store. She smiles when she locks eyes with the candy man himself, Kevin. He glances at her and gives her a genuine smile before going back to the customer. (Y/n) decides to walk around and look at all the candy. It was always a hard choice between chocolate and other candies. (Y/n) glances at the window she could’ve sworn she had seen something red outside. Once it was clear she shook the thought away, passing it off as just a reflection. She glances at the customer and Kevin, and she internally groans. Did this customer order like a million things? Eventually, the customer left, and (Y/n) walks up to the counter with a smile. She sets a bag of candy down.

“Hey there stranger, come here often?” (Y/n) chuckles, Kevin huffs and rolls his eyes at the comment. (Y/n) could tell he wanted to grin.

“You serious?” (Y/n) giggles with a nod. Kevin rings her up, she ordered the same thing every time.

“Your day was that bad, huh?” (Y/n) pays for her things as Kevin and her talk. Though it was mainly Kevin ranting about his job.

~~~

(Y/n) glances at the clock, there were only ten minutes until Kevin’s shift is over. Kevin’s eyes follow, and he took a deep breath before letting it out.

“Hey (Y/n) do you uh…do you maybe want to go-“ The front door opened a sound Kevin had learned to hate, it had a specific noise. The jiggle from the bells attached to the door along with the squeak. Kevin huffs and looks up.

“Hello wel-“ He freezes mid-sentence a look of fear coming over his features. (Y/n) follows his look turning around. A man stood there in a red devil costume with a knife in his hand. Along with the costume he wore an unnaturally large grin that drool leaked from. The man stalks over making eye contact with (Y/n), and that was enough for Kevin to jump into action- well his own form of it. He runs to the gum ball machine and twists the handle, gum balls roll out in front of the man’s path. However, the man just slid his feet pushing them out of the way. Kevin’s eyes widen as he takes (Y/n)’s hand to pull her way. They try to escape out the back door, however, it was blocked.

“G-go!” (Y/n) stutters watching the man grow closer. Kevin slams his body against the door.

“I-I can’t- it’s blocked.”

The man grew close enough for (Y/n) to at least land one good punch. (Y/n) tried to kick and punch him, she aims for his balls but he grabs her leg and pulls her close. Kevin couldn’t do anything, the man drapes a cloth over her mouth and nose. Her eyes widen as she struggles against the man, trying not to breathe. Kevin jumps trying to attack the man, and (Y/n) drops to the floor unconscious. The man catches Kevin’s punch and twisted it until there was a sickening snap. Kevin yells out in pain, which was music to the man’s ears. The man grabs Kevin’s hair and slams his head into the wall knocking him out.

~~~

(Y/n) wakes up her vision was swimming and everything sounded like it was underwater. She was vaguely aware that she was tied down to a chair in a dark room. As her hearing started to fix itself a heart-crushing sound started to make itself known. She looks towards the source. She can just barely make out the man standing over Kevin cutting him in various places.

“Stop! Stop! Hurting him!” She cried the man stops immediately and turns towards her with the same grin. (Y/n) felt scared but relieved that he wasn’t hurting Kevin anymore. The man begins to walk over to (Y/n). Kevin struggles against his restraints.

“(Y/n) no!” He groans out.

The man leans over her, she turns her head expecting the worst. The man grabs her chin forcing her to look at him. She whimpers and squeezes her eyes shut.

“Open your eyes.” He says in a deep raspy voice, she could hear the grin. It made her sick, but she does as she’s told out of fear.

“Hello darlin’” He runs the dull end of the blade against her cheek, being careful not to hurt his prize. The man squeezes her chin and pulls her into a kiss. She squirms around trying to escape, she starts to cry. Kevin watches in a pure white rage, the man lets her go.

“You taste better in person.” He grins, and (Y/n) lets out a sob of fear and disgust.

Kevin tries to fumble with the ropes that tied him down, but unfortunately, it didn’t get him anywhere. The man obviously knew what he was doing.

“W-who are you?… What do y-you want?” She manages to choke out in a shaky voice. The man brings a hand to her tears and wipes them, she flinches away.

“I’m Bob darlin’, and I’ve been watching you for quite a while. And I must admit that I couldn’t wait to have you all to myself.”

“Fuck you! She doesn’t want you fucker!” Kevin practically screamed, he shocked the whole room into a silence. Bob turns towards him, he was frowning. Somehow that was even scarier. Bob grips his knife and walks over to Kevin. Kevin shrinks away in fear- he knew his big mouth was going to be the death of him. Bob grabs ahold of Kevin’s neck choking him. (Y/n) immediately cries out.

“No! S-Stop! Plea-“ She cut herself off when there was a loud crack. She stares as Kevin’s body goes limp and unmoving, when Bob let his body go he slumps. (Y/n) choked on a sob she couldn’t tear her eyes away from Kevin. Apart of her hoped and begged that Kevin was still alive…but she knew the truth. She began to hyperventilate, short quick breaths shook her body. She faintly hears the door open and then close. Was he gone? Could she try to escape? Would it matter if she could?

~~~

(Y/n)’s eyes flutter open, it takes her a moment to remember the waking nightmare she was in. When did she fall asleep? She looks hesitatingly to the other chair, Kevin wasn’t there. She didn’t know if that was worse or better. She begins to cry again, thankfully Bob was nowhere to be seen. She tried to loosen her ropes but only ended up rubbing her skin raw. She heard a soft click and the small creak of a door, and her head shoots up. Bob walks into the room holding a plate of food, it looked to be a Burger. (Y/n) whimpers closing her eyes as he approached.

“P-please let me go.” She begs, Bob said nothing with a grin. He sets the food on a table that was a few feet away from her. He grabs her ropes and cuts them, freeing (Y/n). He gently takes her hand and rubs the raw skin.

(Y/n)’s breath hitches, Bob allows her to pull her hand away. She wasn’t going anywhere so he had all the time in the world to make her like him. (Y/n) begins to overthink and starts to shake. He was being nice why?

“Go on darlin’ you need the protein.” He says setting the plate of food in her lap.

“Why?” She cried.

“Cause darlin’ I love you and I’m never letting you go.” Bob smiles. “Now eat, it took me a long time to prepare that meat special just for you.”

She cries as she picks up the burger, fearing that she wouldn’t eat he would hurt her. She takes a bite and would never admit it but it tasted good, kind of like pork in a weird way.

Bob's grin widen as if he knew something she didn’t it made her scared.

“You finish your food, I’ll be in the living room. Meet me there darlin’” He pats her head like a dog.

“Oh and darlin’, don’t try escaping. You won’t get out.”

#kevin spooky month #spooky month tender treats #spooky month kevin x reader #spooky month #spooky month kevin #spooky month bob #sr pelo spooky month #sr pelo #spooky month 5 #tender treats #spooky month Bob x reader #spooky month bob velseb #spooky month sr pelo

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mollymauk-teafleak · 2 years ago

Text

as if it might turn out this time

So I'm on my gf mandated Tom Cruise Cruise and guess which film jumped out and grabbed me by the throat! So enjoy this Edge of Tomorrow icemav au, made possible with enormous thanks to my lovely @hangsters!

Please reblog and comment over on Ao3!

---------

Sergeant Tom Kazansky is a battle hardened solider known as the Iceman, he's killed hundreds of mimics across multiple time loops, he's the freaking Angel of Verdun.

But he's never come across someone like Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell.

Because this time, Maverick's the one in control. He's the one in the loop, he knows whats coming.

At least until something takes them both by surprise.

--------

Apparently they had two hours. That’s what Maverick said anyway. Even though IIce had never seen a still moment in this war since it began, that’s what Maverick said.

And he’d followed him this far.

‘This far’ was the decaying corpse of the Lyon countryside, it was a hastily abandoned farmhouse in the middle of the overgrown fields and cracked, scarred roads. And if Maverick was telling the truth, Ice had followed him even further than this, thousands of miles across the same day played out fuck knew how many times. More versions of himself than it was comfortable to think about, getting reset over and over whenever the guy pulling them through it all couldn’t go any further. Time itself apparently stopping and restarting with Maverick’s heart.

It would be impossible to believe if Ice hadn’t done it himself.

“You don’t need to stand guard. I told you, we’re good for two hours.”

Ice looked over his shoulder, into the converted farmhouse where Maverick was getting embers going in the fireplace. The frenetic energy they’d rolled here on, the sidestepping obstacles like they were doing some kind of complicated dance, the one-two-three-one-two-three-one that got them off that beach and it’s slice of hell, it had stilled for now. They had two hours, like Maverick said, and he was filling a kettle, for crying out loud, so he was either correct or insane. Depending on how many resets he’d been through, it could well be both.

“Walk me through it one more time,” Ice said with a poor attempt at patience, “If we have two hours why aren’t we just taking that helicopter and heading for the dam right now? Why aren’t we using every second to get to the omega, kill it and save the whole of humanity?”

Maverick didn’t respond to the snap in Ice’s tone, just setting the kettle on the hook above the low fire and then heading back to the kitchenette, to the cabinet where he already knew the mugs would be. Movements practiced and precise, exactly like a soldier. Odd, when Ice had clocked Major Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell as a showpony, as a recruitment tool, the moment he saw him on television screens flashing those white teeth and giving polished, repainted updates on the invasion. Clearly whatever he’d been through since getting stuck in the loop had taken that poster boy and turned him into something else. At least he still had the nice smile.

“We can’t do that because the moment you go outside and start up that helicopter, a mimic bursts out of that south field and attacks. Same for if you try and start siphoning the gas into the truck,” Maverick recounted it all as he busied himself, pulling a spoon out of a drawer, “And this happens whether you do it right now or whether you sneak out at any point in the next two hours, thinking I’m not looking.”

Ice had the same uncomfortable sensation he felt when he looked at his own x-rays, a feeling like someone had seen something they weren’t meant to. He set his jaw and loped to one of the chairs, sinking into it like he was trying to prove he could relax. He was rewarded with a cloud of dust and a shooting pain through his hip.

“The other one’s more comfortable,” Maverick called, perfectly on beat, “It’s better for your leg.”

“For my leg?” Ice shot back, the pain making his voice sharper than he meant, turning the surprise into a challenge. Maybe because he knew he should have shopped being surprised long before this.

“You told me about that injury you took in Verdun, the one that never healed right,” again, Maverick didn’t react to the snappishness, making Ice wonder how grumpy he’d been in all of the other runs, “How you don’t tell anyone because they’ll ground you. I can rub your leg down for you, that always helps?”

Ice felt his cheeks flame, ducking his face even though Maverick wasn’t even looking at him. There had been comments like that here and there, ones that had mostly passed Ice by as he’d focused on training, on hitting that beach and surviving each step forward. But now it was occurring to Ice, hours later than anyone normal would have noticed, that he was definitely being flirted with.

But not even the forward, slightly aggressive way military guys usually flirted with him and then promptly gave up when they realized they may as well have been trying to fuck a glacier. Maverick spoke to him, looked at him, offered things selflessly to him the way you would with someone you’d been married to for decades. Like there was a comfort to having Ice there, like Maverick somehow saw reassurance in the hard, fierce Angel of Verdun. Something no one else had seen, not even Ice himself.

“So I don’t tell anyone but I told you?” he stared into the low fire, just to give his eyes somewhere to settle. He wasn’t sure why he was pushing back, why he was throwing more roadblocks against this strange kindness, “What other secrets have I told you while we’ve been fighting for our lives, out of interest?”

Maverick actually laughed, bringing two mugs over to where the kettle was now singing out a plume of warm steam, “Let’s see…I know you have a cat, your sister’s looking after her while you’re deployed. I know you played football in college. Linebacker, obviously, look at your shoulders. I know you suck at driving a stick shift. I know you have nightmares. I know you have freckles on your shoulders…I know you’re probably blushing like crazy right now…”

Ice started a little at that one, sinking a little lower in the chair he was still insisting on sitting on.

“And,” Maverick turned, holding two mugs that he seemed to have magicked out of thin air, “I know you miss coffee like crazy. So here. Black, two sugars, right?”

He held one out to Ice, grinning at the expression on his face as he took it. Ice didn’t need to say anything, Maverick was right, of course. Maverick had been right about everything and would be, until whatever misstep got him killed and reset the clock. Or until they saved the world.

“Seems like all the previous versions of me were pretty chatty,” Ice hummed into his mug though his eyes didn’t leave the strange partner the universe had given him.

Maverick perched on the small side table right next to Ice’s chair rather than taking the other one for himself. Probably just to be closer to the fire, the thin under armor they were wearing was designed to have eighty five pounds of metal exoskeleton around it so it didn't keep much heat in. Especially when they were torn, bloodstained and somehow still drying from their brief dip in the Normandy sea.

“Chatty? Fuck no,” he chuckled, folding one leg under himself, proving again that this wasn’t a man used to standing to attention, “I’ve just gotten good at listening to you.”

Ice glanced away from Maverick at that, like he’d suddenly become a source of light too bright to look at without pain. He looked into his mug instead, trying to focus on the swirls of steam leaving his mug. Trying to enjoy a moment of quiet when life had been so chaotic and frantic for the last year.

Maverick didn’t seem to mind the lack of an answer or maybe he found his answer elsewhere, in some silent way. He’d drained half his mug already, probably scalded his tongue in the process and set it aside to lean closer.

“Let me see,” he prompted gently.

Ice felt like he’d blushed more in the last twenty minutes than he had his whole life, “Excuse me?”

Maverick’s smile turned up at the edge and he pointed towards Ice’s shoulder, “Let me see.”

Ice opened his mouth to protest before snapping it shut again, sighing. What good was a lifetime’s worth of carefully cultivated stubbornness against a man that had all the time in the world. He shifted gingerly, setting his mug down next to Maverick’s to pull off his shirt, wincing as sweat and semi dried blood clung on stubbornly. After a moment, he felt a second set of hands helping, the pain easing as Maverick’s warmer skin brushed his own.

“It’s not that bad,” he mumbled a little sourly, like a small child trying to defend himself after doing something he shouldn’t have, “Looks worse than it is.”

Mav’s eyebrow raised, “Oh yeah, sure…”

Ice wasn't strictly lying, he’d had far worse injuries than the puncture wound just a little ways in from where his left arm met his shoulder. A piece of flying debris had caught him just before they’d cleared the drop site, in one of the few places where the mech suits had to sacrifice coverage for movement. It had been a brief burning sensation, a dull pain and then quickly forgotten in the adrenaline, following Maverick like a beacon through the slice of hell that had opened up back on that beach.

“You never get moving as quickly as I tell you to after we land,” Maverick tsked fondly, gently studying the wound with its layers of cracked, drying blood and fingers of fast rising bruise snaking out from it all the way along Ice’s clavicle.

“Can’t break the habit I guess,” Ice grunted at the press of his fingers, as careful as he was trying to be, “I’m the squad leader. I’m supposed to wait until everyone else has dropped.”

Saying that made a sudden, sharp grief rise in his chest, a fresh layer to the pain. The thought of the men he’d left behind back on that beach, the ones he was supposed to lead and protect. If this run was the one, if they saved the world, those men, the closest thing he’d had to friends would stay dead.

Thinking of Slider was the hardest. Slider, with his booming voice and bad jokes and comforting presence at Ice’s right shoulder. Slider with his wife serving as a volunteer field nurse, his twin baby daughters at home. They’d been together since basic training, he’d been the one Ice had tried to explain Verdun to, run after run, until Ice realized it was safer if he didn’t know. If Ice just focused on winning that battle and protecting his friend. He’d managed it back then but there had always been that cold, uncomfortable knowledge that there would be one time where Ice wouldn’t be able to save Slider.

Knowing about it in advance didn’t make living it any easier.

Maverick must have seen the shift in Ice’s face, he took his other shoulder in a comforting grip, “Hey. I’m sorry.”

Ice looked up at him, at the sincerity in his face, the understanding. Knowing what someone was going through and wishing you could have saved them from it.

“I know,” Ice swallowed hard, “Who’d you lose?”

Maverick tilted his head slightly, his smile growing softly pained, “You.”

He left Ice with that, getting the rest of the water from the kettle, taking it back to the kitchen. He came back with a chipped bowl, white cloth, bandages that must have been tucked under the sink.

“Sorry if this hurts,” Maverick hummed, aiming for his usual light tone, “We didn’t have time to cover field medicine in training, mostly just how to not get my head chopped off by a mimic and how to turn the safety off my suit.”

“Fuck,” Ice laughed shortly, leaning back so Maverick could start gently cleaning off the wound, “You were really that bad?”

“Worse than you’re imagining,” he gave him that smile Ice had seen on so many TV screens, selling the United Defence Force, like he’d just pulled it out of a hat, “I can look real pretty on an enlistment ad though.”

Ice laughed, “I’ll give you that one…would have worked on me…”

“Oh?” Maverick’s face softened into a more natural, more pure smile, like those words had been enough to delight him.

“Well…yeah,” Ice shrugged with the one shoulder Mav wasn’t cleaning out, “Shut up.”

“Didn’t say anything,” Mav grinned, the bowl of water now the color of rust, switching to the roll of bandages, “Drink your coffee, Sergeant.”

Ice did. Maverick was right, he had missed it like crazy. He could almost forget about the low thrum of pain in his shoulder, the empty stomach sickness left behind by fleeing adrenaline, the raw, frayed edges of his nerves, some of which were still calling for this stillness they’d found to erupt in screams and bangs and chaos, just to get it over with. Ice pushed that instinct away, got it to fade into static along with the hurt. If Maverick said they had two hours, they had two hours. He was the one person on this planet even Tom “Iceman” Kazansky couldn’t find reason to doubt.

“Y’know, I’m kind of jealous,” he observed lightly, mouth seeming to have detached itself from his brain and running off by itself, “Of you still having the power, I mean.”

“Yeah, you've said that before,” Mav chuckled, finally happy with how he’d tied the bandages and sitting back. His gaze flickered to Ice, like he knew what he was going to say but was letting him say it anyway.

“I know it’s because I’m a control freak,” Ice hummed, tapping his fingers against the chipped tin of the mug, “Saving the entire world was just on my shoulders, I had all the time in the world and I didnt have to worry about anyone else fucking it up. It was all up to me.”

“Yeah,” Maverick tilted his head, “Up to you to die over and over. Sacrifice yourself until an ancient hive mind alien had to change its plans because you were so damn stubborn.”

Ice looked at Maverick steadily, for once not letting himself be afraid to really study the other man’s face. There was a lot there that was familiar, the general air of resignation, the bags under the eyes, the ease of invincibility. Back when Ice had picked up the reset back in the very first battle of Verdun- the only battle anyone else ever saw- he’d felt completely alone. He’d felt like an alien himself, like in amongst it all he’d forgotten how to be human, even after a blood transfusion had unknowingly tethered him back to time. He’d told himself it didn’t matter, he was a soldier, a damn near perfect one, and that’s all he had to be.

But he’d never imagined that one day he’d look into someone else’s face and see that same feeling. That maybe they’re was more he could do for Mav than teach him to be faster, stronger, how to use the weapons in his hands and send him into the breach. That maybe he might actually be able to help someone, to be the steady, calming voice he’d never had to say it’s going to be okay, you’re still you.

“We’ve got two hours, right?” Ice murmured, aware that he’d been lost in thought for a long moment.

“One hour and twenty,” Maverick corrected gently, though there was a soft hope in his dark eyes, “Close enough.”

It would do. If there was anything this war had taught Ice, it was how to make the most of every second.

Maverick’s lips were already waiting for Ice’s but there was something comforting about this particular inevitability, the idea that the soft, sweet things were as predetermined as the bad, even if they didn’t stick around as long. The kiss opened up into something deeper, Ice’s more mobile hand coming up to grasp the back of Maverick’s shirt, Maverick himself cradling Ice’s face like he was trying to hold him in place, hold him in this moment. It was messy, rushed, like two teenagers in the back of a car, like both of them were sure they’d be yanked apart at any moment and had to fill every second with each other.

All thoughts of the invasion, the rest of the human race, what was possible and what was impossible, it all faded into a meaningless dial tone in the back of Ice’s mind as Maverick came in to straddle his lap. Even breathing became a secondary concern against Maverick’s tongue brushing against his own, his thumbs brushing across his cheekbones, that heartbeat thumping against his own. Ice was left gasping, snatching lungfuls of air in the spare seconds before he willingly sank back into this quiet bliss.

Maverick drew back to yank off his shirt, dog tags rattling. To his surprise, Ice found himself shaking for the first time in nearly a year, like fucking another man was terrifying when a beach full of horror wasn’t. But Maverick caught his hands, pressing kisses to the scarred knuckles, soothing those tremors. Like there was nothing shameful about it.

“Have we done this before?” Ice breathed, voice shaking slightly, like it was struggling to contain all this hunger.

He wasn’t sure why he asked, why he was wasting time when he could be testing the limits of his repaired shoulder. Maybe he wanted to reassure himself, confirm that this was all part of the plan. That there had been other versions of himself who’d been allowed this brief selfishness.

And that there would be others after.

Maverick flashed him a grin, breathless excitement alight on his face, “Kind of…”

“Kind of?” Ice half laughed, voice strained by a poorly held back moan as Maverick rose up enough that he could draw his trousers down.

Underneath he wasn’t strong but lithe, tightly wired muscle, skin softer than Ice thought possible when he took hold of his hips. He had freckles scattered across his stomach, scars that Ice immediately wanted to know the story behind, a light dusting of dark hair leading down from his navel. He drank every detail in with uncharacteristic greed as his hands slid down to press daringly against the hardness in his boxers.

“Here’s the thing…” Maverick rolled against that pressure, eyes dark as his pupils swelled, “I’ve been doing the same day over and over for fuck knows how long now. And also much of it is identical, I know exactly what's coming down to every minute…”

The boxers were gone too now, just burning skin against his hand. Things were coming loose, unraveling at the edges but every word of Maverick’s ran right to his heart.

“But you, Tom Kazansky, no matter how many times I do this…” Maverick moved back so close until they were nose to nose, forehead to forehead, “You never stop surprising me.”

Ice was aware of Maverick’s heartbeat before he was aware of his own.

The other man was burrowed against Ice’s chest like he wanted to live inside his rib cage, his thumping heartbeat a thread that he followed back up into the waking world. It came slow and sluggish, Ice’s body reluctant to stumble out of the first decent sleep he’d had in a long time. Consciousness came in other pieces of Maverick, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. His dark hair ticking Ice’s jaw, his fingers gently resting on his hip, his steady breath across Ice’s collarbone, the skin of his back warmed by the fire, now down to less than embers.

Ice frowned. If the fire was dead, where was that orange light coming from?

The answer brought a shock like cold water. Outside the window, the sun was setting.

“Fuck,” Ice bolted upright, giving Maverick a much less gentle awakening as he was nearly tipped onto the floor.

“What?” he mumbled groggily, trying to still cling to Ice on instinct.

“We’ve slept too long,” Ice shook his head, scrambling up, reaching for his clothes, “It’s been way more than two hours. Fuck…”

Maverick somehow looked smaller, left in the chair on his own, like some piece of him had left with Ice. The guilt boiling hot in his chest jerked and twisted into sudden anger, why wasn’t he moving, why was he just sitting there, didn’t he know they had a mission to complete?

“Where are the keys to that helicopter?” he demanded, words quick and bitten off like he didn’t even have time for them.

Mav sat up, wincing a little, “Tom, listen-”

“No,” Ice shook his head firmly, “No, we had our fun but we’re wasting time now, we need to get back to the mission. It’s still going to take us hours to fly to Switzerland and get to the dam. I know you know where the keys are, Maverick, we’ve done this before so tell me and let's go.”

Maverick flinched a little, biting down on his lower lip. He moved for his clothes too, but slower, more gingerly, making Ice want to scream.

“Look, I’ll tell you where the keys are but you’re going to hear me out first,” Maverick set his jaw desperately, yanking his shirt over his head, “I’ll go. I’ll go to the dam, I’ll wrap this up but you stay here, okay?”

Ice froze in the middle of tying his boots, staring at him in confusion, “Excuse me?”

Maverick had a look on his face like a man standing before a losing battle. Surely something he was familiar with by now.

“Please, Tom,” he kept using that name, that name Ice didn’t know how to connect to himself anymore, “I…I don’t know how to explain it so you’ll see, can you just trust me? You need to stay here, you can’t go to Switzerland.”

“What the hell are you talking about, soldier?” Ice narrowed his eyes, aware that there was something he wasn’t quite seeing, something on the edge of his vision that was rushing towards him.

For the first time since he’d known him, or at least since this version of him had known him, Maverick looked uncertain. More than that, he looked terrified. So much of Ice wanted to take him back in his arms, comfort him and promise him that everything was going to be okay even though he had no idea. But that was exactly the problem.

So Ice dragged that part of him back into the guilt and the shame and the anger, and focused instead on the fact that Maverick’s eyes kept flickering back to the kitchen.

He’d said Ice kept surprising him and he proved it now, getting ahead of him, too quick for the hands that tried to reach for his shoulders. Sure enough, there was a set of keys hanging there on the wall, alongside empty hooks that were probably meant to hold the car keys the family that owned the farmhouse escaped with. Ice grabbed them, felt them bite into his tightly closed fists as he marched out of the back door, trying to deafen himself to Maverick’s pleading even as he felt it break his heart.

“Tom! Tom, for God’s sake, can you stop being the world’s most stubborn bastard for five seconds and look at me!”

Ice turned sharply, trying to imagine his mech suit around him, trying to imagine that he was strong, that nothing could reach him, “Fine. I’m looking at you. Now explain to me why I can’t get in that helicopter and do my goddamn duty.”

Maverick gripped his shoulder, like that alone would be enough to pin Ice down, “Because if you do, you die.”

His voice actually broke as he said it, like out of all the death he must have seen, others and his own, this was the one he couldn’t take.

“I’ve tried every single way I can think of, I’ve done everything I can but it never works,” the exhaustion was now obvious on Maverick’s face as he spoke, like Ice could finally see the mark that each run had left on him, “If you get in that helicopter, if you take one more step past this point, you die and I can’t stop it. I’ve reset over and over but every time-”

“Wait,” Ice’s voice was strained and slight, brittle with shock but it stopped Maverick all the same, “You…have you been resetting just because I died?”

Maverick bit his lower lip again, his chest rising, like words were building but he was scared to let them go. It was all the answer Ice needed.

“Mav…” he swallowed hard, feeling a weight pressing down on his chest, “It’s the whole world at stake here. It’s the whole goddamn world.”

“I know…” Maverick met his eyes, helpless, “But it’s you.”

For the first time, Ice realized that while he’d been broken, burned, crushed repeatedly every time he’d thrown himself at the battle of Verdun, there was a deeper hurt to these endless repeating loops. One he hadn’t ever had to feel because he’d never let himself but Maverick was braver than that. Ice couldn’t even imagine the pain of it, of coming to love him, to know him so deeply, run after run. And to look into each fresh set of Ice’s eyes and know he didn’t feel the same because he just didn’t know Maverick.

“Pete…” Ice tried to steady himself, not even sure what he was about to say.

But it didn’t matter. Their time was up.

That sound, that painful inorganic chattering that they knew too well, ripping the still air in two. Ice snapped to attention, turned, put himself between Maverick and the gaining mimics but he was reaching for guns that weren’t there. They’d had their two hours, they’d overstayed their welcome and now they were cornered, their punishment bursting from the ground and rushing towards them.

“Helicopter!” Mav yelled by Ice’s ear and he obeyed, rushing forward but the mimics were faster, their writhing black forms like glitches in nature itself rising over the roof, skittering over the fence, swarming.

Ice knew the taste of a doomed run. He knew how this ended.

But still, in spite of it all, he turned, went backwards rather than forwards, shoved hard. Maverick went stumbling back into the facsimile of safety inside the farmhouse, Ice on his heels, the door slamming shut with death on the other side. It wouldn’t hold for long but Ice didn’t need long.

As the mimics screamed outside and beat on the walls, he took Maverick’s face in his hands and kissed him, trying to find that peace again. He tasted tears on the other man’s lips, felt his arms shake as they wrapped around him but it was close enough.

“Listen,” Ice panted, pulling away enough to speak, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Pete but if it comes down to me or the world, you need to choose them. I’m not worth it.”

Maverick’s breath caught as he shook his head, “I wish I didn’t know you.”

“I know,” Ice swallowed hard. Glass broke in the kitchen, they’d found their way inside. They had moments, seconds.

“I wish I didn’t know you,” Maverick gasped again, “But I do. I know you, Tom.”

Ice didn’t have time to try and figure out what that meant, if the stubborn man in his arms was going to listen or not. It didn’t matter, not to this version of him anyway.

Ice just tried to be glad that this time, he wasn’t alone when he died.

Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.

Ice counted his pushups steadily in his head as he rose up and down. If he counted, he wasn’t thinking about the throb of pain in his arms. If he counted, he was apart from the air of tension about the military base, the taste of fear in the air as the next morning’s attack crept closer. It was all uneasy jokes, too loud laughter, brittle smiles. It would all turn to screams by tomorrow as soon as they hit that beach.

Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.

He’d been training by himself in the hangar all afternoon, excusing himself from the drills the fresh meat were doing. No one said anything, they never did. No one was about to try and pull rank on the Angel of Verdun, they just studied him the way they always did, a little apprehensively, like they were trying to learn the secret to survival in the few seconds as he strode past them. The thought had just enough grim humor to it to curl the edges of his mouth into a smile.

Eighteen. Nineteen…twenty…twenty one…

Footsteps. Ringing out loudly across the metal floor of the hangar where he trained, interrupting his rhythm. Ice turned, teeth already bared in frustration.

“Yes?” he rose to his feet, ready to unleash his irritation.

It took him a moment to place Captain ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, he’d never seen him in the flesh, only projected up on a screen, leaning back in a TV studio with that inherently punchable grin and wearing his uniform like a costume. Well, it didn’t seem as though the United Defence Force’s poster boy was doing so well, walking up to him a little too fast with a shell shocked expression and a rumbled uniform that looked very obviously naked, stripped of its insignias. Maybe not Captain, then. Private. Which meant Ice didn’t have to put up with any bullshit.

“Who let you in here?” he bristled, hoping the guy would just turn and go running.

But this Maverick didn’t even slow, just walking right up to Ice, far closer than he was comfortable with. Until he stopped, just as suddenly as he’d appeared, the strangest expression on his face, like he’d been following the steps of a dance and the music had just cut out.

“Well?” Ice stepped back, unnerved. What the hell was wrong with this guy?

“Sargeant Kazansky…” Maverick began but trailed off, brow furrowing a little.

“You’ve found him,” Ice tilted his head, something oddly familiar about the look on his face.

But Maverick just shook his head, a decision clear on his face, “Sorry. Never mind. Didn’t mean to bother you, Sergeant.”

And he left Ice with that, turning on his heel and walking out. Ice was seized by the sudden desire to call out, get him to stop, grab his shoulder and make him explain, the oddest sensation like the train he needed was pulling away from the station without him on it. But Maverick was gone before he could decide whether or not to follow that mad impulse, disappearing into the square of daylight at the mouth of the hangar.

Ice exhaled softly, the irritation burned away but nothing to fill the space it had occupied in his chest. He told himself to let go of it, making himself shrug and sink back down to the floor. Whatever was wrong with Maverick, he didn’t have the time to deal with it. Tomorrow was on its way, whether they liked it or not and every second was going to count.

No one knew that better than Ice.

#icemav #top gun #edge of tomorrow au #iceman #maverick #tom kazansky #pete mitchell #angst #please reblog and comment!

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