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muertawrites · 2 years

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Damsel in Destruction (Eddie Munson x Reader)

Summary: Jason and one of his cult members attack you and Eddie as you escape from the Upside Down. You show him just how fed up with his shit you are. (Takes place after the scene where Eddie absolutely destroys it on his guitar. I’m taking creative liberties as to the context of that scene but I have a feeling I’m right.)

Word Count: 2k

Warnings: blood, mentions of bullying / physical abuse, harsh language, some slightly anti-religious phrasing

Author’s Note: y’all i’m on the verge of a total mental break. i got my heart ripped to pieces by someone i really cared about and probably could have loved, lost my job without warning because everyone i worked with was a backstabbing cunt, and lost a fundamental human right at the hands of my government. all in less than three months. so this is actually an eddie munson x me fic bc i want to express how totally unhinged i feel and still have someone love me for it. or honestly just to have someone love me period would be nice. i’m losing my fucking mind y’all. i’m gonna go drink myself into a stupor and apply for jobs i no longer feel passionate about and pray for a quick and painless death ✌

“Let's go. We gotta get back."

Eddie's rough, firm grip seized around your bicep and hauled you up off the forest floor, your own hand latching around his arm and clutching him as you stumbled upon standing. Your part of the work was done - Eddie had effectively shattered Vecna's ability to possess minds with the killer shredding of his guitar. Now you just had to meet up with the others without getting caught by the police, an angry mob, or the swarm of demabats and other horrendous beasts that Vecna had set loose upon the living world. Easy.

You jogged through the woods behind Eddie's trailer, hand clasped within his as you traversed roots and rocks and your own shaking legs. He pulled you along, almost ripping your arm out of its socket for his hurry; when you cried out, he slowed and wrapped an arm around you, pressing you into his side.

"Sorry," he murmured. "I'm worried about the kids."

You grinned, squeezing his waist.

"They're okay," you assured him. "They do this all the time."

You walked like that for another mile, tucked under Eddie's arm with his hand rubbing apologetic circles into your shoulder. Eventually, specks of light began to emerge on the horizon, poking through the trees - you were almost to Hawkins High.

Then something heavy collided with the back of your head, knocking you off your feet in a dizzy, blacked out haze.

"Get her," commanded a familiar, chilling voice from somewhere beyond your now blurred vision. "I'll control the animal."

"Don't fucking touch her," you heard Eddie snarl.

His words were followed by the sound of skin hitting skin, bone on bone. Something metal clattering to the ground. Shuffling, bodies struggling against each other, insults and slurs thrown back and forth. More blows.

A hand seized the nape of your neck, using the collar of your denim jacket to force you onto your feet. Your sight came back to you, head clearing enough to realize that the back of your skull was throbbing, and a leather-clad arm was wrapped around your throat. It wore the sleeve of a letterman jacket.

At least the angry mob was smaller than you expected it to be.

You started to thrash. Your hands flew to the arm at your neck, pulling and scratching, while your body slammed back forcefully into the chest of the boy holding you.

"Let go of me!" you shrieked, enraged. To your glee, he struggled to keep his grip on you.

"Shut her up," Jason ordered. "I'll deal with her next."

He stood several feet away, leaned menacingly over the trunk of a tree. Eddie's throat was crushed under his forearm, blood pouring from his nose and a gash in his eyebrow, his guitar shattered at his feet.

"Like hell you will," you muttered.

At your neck, your captor's sleeve had raised just enough to expose a length of skin; you bit down with all your might, teeth sinking in until you tasted blood. The boy howled in pain and flung you to the ground, spitting the words "crazy bitch" through his tears. You rolled, coming to a stop on your side.

Something was lodged beneath you. It stabbed into your hip, up the length of your torso, its pointed end poking your ribs. You reached underneath you, wrapping your fingers around it and finding it cold to the touch.

A crowbar. The same one that had probably knocked you out.

"What the fuck happened?" Jason shouted.

His crony didn't get a chance to respond. You sprung to your feet, swinging the blunt end of the crowbar into the boy's gut, doubling him over; you then slammed it down onto the back of his neck, effectively incapacitating him. He toppled with a groan, and you raised your eyes to find Jason turned around, staring at you in shock and ire. Eddie lay slumped against the base of the tree, stunned.

"Just fuck off, Jason," you warned. "You don't want to find out what your medicine tastes like."

He laughed, a condescending smile spreading across his waxen face.

"You're gonna hit me with that thing?" he teased. "I'm bigger than you, sweetheart. Don't get yourself hurt."

"Go ahead and hurt me," you retorted. "You'll just prove that you're the monster. Not Eddie."

He scowled, showing his teeth and contorting his mundanely handsome features into an ugly position. Your grip on the crowbar tightened.

"He's possessed by Satan!" Jason bellowed. "I am doing God's work by casting him from this community! From this earth! You... You little whore. Jezibel! You'll rot in hell. Both of you will!"

Fire rose in your chest, the seething burn of a hatred rooted so deep within you that it could never be removed. Jason had hurt you beyond repair; he'd brought you to tears with his words, mortified you in front of your peers, touched you like he owned you, made you believe in the self-loathing he'd inflicted on you every day since you were children. You still could feel his breath on your neck, his hand up your shirt, his laughter when you couldn't control your tears. All of it was horrifying; a nightmare you couldn't wake up from, a monster you couldn't escape because it had made itself a home your mind.

But none of it compared to the fury he sparked in hurting someone you loved.

You took a step forward, murder in your eyes.

"I am so. Fucking. Sick-"

You swung the crowbar at him; he dodged backward.

"-of your stuck up-"

Another swing; another dodge.

"-psychopathic-"

You swung again. He stumbled.

"-bullshit!"

You had him up against a tree, cornering him so he had nowhere to go. You seethed, knuckles white around the handle of the crowbar, shoulders heaving with your ragged breaths. He stared at you with wide, terrified eyes.

"Are you scared, Jason?" you taunted. "Nobody's ever fought back against you? Have they?"

You lunged, cackling when he flinched.

"I always knew you were a coward. Scaring the shit out of other people because you, yourself, are afraid. And of what? People who don't think, or act, or look like you? People who won't bend to your will? People who can see through all the weights you lift and punches you throw? People you can't control? Everyone knows that's why you hate Eddie so much. Because he never gave a single fuck what you or anyone else thought of him, and no amount of threats could make him fear you. And then you go and pull the oldest, slimiest white man trick in the good book and hide behind your religion; use it as an excuse to hurt the people who see you for exactly what you are. To the extent that you're willing to ruin their lives, even take them with your own disgusting hands. You are nothing but a sad, sniveling little roach, who's never known true friendship or respect in his life. It almost makes me feel bad for you."

You grinned maliciously, blood trickling between your teeth and dribbling down your chin. Jason visibly quivered when he realized it wasn't yours, but the boy's you had bit.

"Almost."

You thrust the crowbar upward under Jason's jaw, savoring the sickening, satisfying crunch of bone. Another swing, sent forward with every muscle in your body, and you cracked his nose, his skin splitting open and spurting blood down the front of his shirt. He let out an anguished sob, the sweetest noise you'd ever heard.

"Look at that!" your joyous holler echoed through the trees. "You can't even take a fucking hit."

You swung again, the sharp edge of the crowbar slashing open his cheek. He was thrown off balance; you brought the crowbar hard into his knees, not caring what damage you inflicted. As he crumpled, you beat him in the back, sending him down harder. He rolled over, crying out in agony, and you dipped the sharp end of the bar under his chin, tilting his head up to look at you; your booted foot pressed mercilessly into his chest, threatening to snap ribs.

"If you touch me, or anyone I care about ever again, it'll be me who destroys you. Not the wrath of your false god."

Jason whimpered in response. You spat in his face - one final blow - before dropping the crowbar and rushing back to Eddie, all of your rage forgotten at the sight of him bludgeoned and bleeding.

"Eddie..." you cooed, falling on your knees in front of him. "Oh, Eddie, your face..."

He silenced you by grabbing your face in his hands and kissing you, pressing you close with a ferocity you'd never witnessed in him beyond a D and D campaign. You closed your eyes and melted into him, opening your mouth so you could feel his tongue against your teeth. He tasted of blood; you snapped back to reality and pushed him away, concerned again for his well-being.

"Dude, that was the sexiest thing I've ever seen," Eddie gushed. His face was absolutely caked with blood, his teeth beaming white through black streaks as he grinned. "You were so fucking unhinged... Will you go out with me sometime?"

You chuckled, the sound leaving your chest in little more than a breath.

"Eddie, you're bleeding profusely," you reminded him. "And I think we're both concussed."

You removed the bandana from around his head, refastening it over his brow so it soaked up the blood and helped stop the bleeding. His knuckles were also split open from the force of punching Jason square in the jaw, so you covered them with a strip of fabric torn from the hem of your dress. He gazed at you dreamily, taking your hand in his once the makeshift bandage was adhered.

"You know I'm in love with you, right?" he confessed.

Your eyes met his reluctantly, heart jolting in your chest at hearing the words you've always wanted him to say.

"Ever since I met you, I haven't been able to stop thinking about you," he continued. "I think you're amazing. And you just saved my fucking life. You're the most fucking incredible person I've ever known and if I'm not buried beside you I'll die twice."

You laughed at his dramatics, one of the many things you adored about him. His hand raised to your face, his thumb swiping the blood from your chin. The way he looked at you was like slipping into a warm pool - safe, comfortable, freeing. If someone as dark and cynical as Eddie Munson could trust someone enough to love them openly, you knew you could bring yourself to do the same - and he was the one who deserved your love most.

"We can pick out headstones once we make it out of this," you promised him. "But right now, we've gotta get you to the school. You need stitches and a good cleaning up."

Eddie obliged, allowing you to ease him off the ground and drape his arm across your shoulders, leaning some of his weight on you. As you plodded your way across the school's parking lot, he stopped, turning to face you.

"Kiss me again," he pleaded.

"I would love nothing more," you told him, "but we have to get you inside."

"Please, baby, just kiss me again."

The pet name made you shiver, a lightheadedness overcoming you that had nothing to do with blunt force trauma.

"If we die tonight, I wanna die thinking about what it's like to kiss you."

You scoffed, the sound playful as a drunken smile curled across your face.

"We're not gonna die," you stated. "At least not if you just let me get you some fucking first aid."

"God, I love you..."

Eddie leaned in and kissed you again, wrapping his arms around you to pull you in close to him. You held him tightly as you molded your lips to his, swearing in defiance of Heaven itself that you would never let him go.

#muerta's works #eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you

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hotmesshapa · 4 years

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VIP • Bang Chan

pairing: bang chan x female reader

genre: smut • DJ!chan x stripper!reader

rating: 18+

word count: 4.6k

warnings: strong language, explicit sexual content, unprotected sex, slight jealousy, very light orgasm denial and spanking, a bit of fluff

a/n: this is the first fic I’ve written in literal years and I have no idea what I’m doing, so I’m sorry in advance lol. also shoutout to these lovelies for being interested from the start 🖤 @mikoto-ica-fics @missskzbiased @bratforbin @jungkooksbroski

There are three strict rules in the club: no touching the strippers, no romantic work relationships, and absolutely no sex in the club. Your manager had everyone sign off on his rules for a reason; you didn’t even want to imagine the chaos that could ensue if everyone was allowed to do whatever they desired in the club.

However, whenever Chan was DJing on the nights you worked, you always considered blowing off those rules. But you knew better. You both enjoyed your jobs at the club and wouldn’t risk getting fired over something as stupid breaking the few rules, despite the obvious sexual tension between the two of you. It’s not your fault that he always came into work wearing tight shirts that clung to his muscles in ways that made you drool. It’s not your fault that he flirted back whenever you playfully hit on him while handing off your playlist for the night. It’s not your fault you noticed the way his eyes hungrily stared you down whenever you were on the main stage, or the way his jaw clenched in jealousy whenever you took a guest to the VIP room.

But rules are meant to be broken, right?

Tonight starts out no different from any other work night: greeting the other girls and bartenders, taking a quick shot of tequila for an extra boost of confidence, and digging through your purse trying to find your flash drive of songs you want played for your routines.

“Got anything new for me, babygirl?”

You snap your head up at the sound of the handsome DJ’s voice. “Hello to you too, Chan,” you reply, rolling your eyes. He shamelessly checks you out and gives you a cocky grin that you can’t decide if it makes you want smack him or pounce on him “You know if Minho hears you speak to me like that, you’re in a world of shit.”

“Then it’s a good thing he’s not here tonight. But even if he was, he wouldn’t dare fire me. I’m the best DJ this club has.”

“Well then, fuck my drag,” Changbin pipes up from behind the booth, shooting a glare at Chan. “If you’re so great, set up your own table then.”

“Don’t listen to him, Binnie,” you giggle as you go back to searching for your flash drive, “He just likes to think he has all the power around here.”

Changbin scoffs as he continues to set up his mixers. “Only when you’re around. The other girls would kill to have him flirt with them.”

You feel your cheeks flush at the comment, but try your best to ignore the feeling as you turn back to Chan and hand him your music. “I have some new songs for tonight. Feel free to play whichever ones you want to watch me dance to.”

“Jesus,” Changbin rolls his eyes, “get a room, you two.”

You shoot Chan a quick wink, earning a smirk from him, and turn around to head to the dressing rooms, well aware his eyes are glued to you as you leave.

You close the door behind you and set your purse down on the vanity, checking your phone and cursing at the time. You hadn’t realized that your mini flirting session took up more time than expected, and start frantically getting ready, changing into your black satin two-piece that left very little to the imagination and applying a generous amount of body highlighter to every exposed part of you.

As you stare at yourself in the mirror, you can’t help but think about what Changbin had said. You and Chan flirt all the time, and normally it doesn’t affect you, but something about Changbin’s comment has your head spinning. Something about discovering Chan only flirts with you just makes you want to break the rules even more, but you don’t want to risk your jobs just because you desperately want him to dick him down. You wouldn’t do that to him. You sigh and slip into your stilettos, checking your appearance one last time before stepping out onto the main floor for your night to begin.

The night had been running smoothly as usual: three pole routines with the songs Chan chose from your collection (all by The Weeknd, of course), and a few rotations around the club flirting with guests, giving a couple of lapdances. You have a generous amount of bills tucked into your thong and bra, and you pull them out to count, trying to smooth them out and make them look somewhat presentable. You make your way to the DJ booth, where you find Chan leaning against the wall beside the booth, scrolling through his phone and sipping on a beer, while Changbin is behind the table, engrossed with the set he was playing.

“Here,” you say, handing Chan his tip. “You made some really good choices tonight. I had a feeling you’d choose The Weeknd.”

“What can I say,” he smirks, “You can’t just give me the option to play his hottest songs and not expect me to do anything about it. Especially when I get to watch you dance to them.”

He suddenly leans in, closing any space there was between you two. “By the way, your routine to ‘Life of the Party’? So. Fucking. Hot,” he purrs, looking straight into the eyes.

“Chan,” your voice falters for a second, your eyes unintentionally dropping to his lips, before bringing them back up to meet his stare. You clear your throat in efforts to recover, desperately trying to ignore the heat rising in your core. “You’re gonna get us in trouble.”

“Come on, Y/N, would that be so bad?”

“God, I can’t leave you two alone for one set, can I?” Changbin slides himself between you and the other DJ, throwing an arm over your shoulder and playfully wiggling his eyebrows at you both.

You elbow him in the ribs, earning a dramatic cry from him in return, and you can’t help but giggle. “How much have you had to drink?”

“Three shots? Maybe four? I don’t remember.” He hums in appreciation as you hand him a wad of cash. “I can’t believe I’m gonna pay this month’s rent with your ass money,” he laughs, trying to shake off as much body glitter from the bills you handed him before sliding them into his wallet.

You roll your eyes. “I can give you tit money, if you pref-“

“There’s my baby!”

The three of you spin around at the familiar voice, coming face to face with a young man, his dark hair grazing his eyes as he shamelessly checks you out.

“Jisung! I was wondering when you’d show up!” Changbin greets the man with a typical bro handshake, before swinging an arm around his neck. “Here for the usual?”

“Of course,” Jisung smiles at you, “It’s not a Friday night without a visit with Y/N.”

Jisung was one of your regulars; he came in every Monday and Friday to book private lapdances with you, and only you. The first night he booked you, he almost immediately admitted how enamored he was with you, and ever since then, he refused to book with any of the other girls. And to be fair, you might have allowed him to break one of the rules, letting him grab your ass, hips and breasts as you danced, especially since that always earned a better tip from him. But now, while he still did request lapdances every now and then, he mainly booked you just to talk, and fortunately for you, he still tipped generously. He was an assistant to a big-time music producer, a job that came with a handful of stressors that he just needed to rant to someone about, and you were always willing to be there to listen.

While the relationship you and Jisung formed over the past year is strictly platonic, that hadn’t stopped Chan from developing a slight sense of jealousy. And to make matters more complicated, Jisung was well aware of that tension and loved to push the DJ’s buttons, much to your chagrin.

Jisung shifts his focus to Chan, giving him a cocky smirk that you know will be followed by a snarky comment. “I’ve been dying to see this pretty lil’ lady all day. You don’t mind if I steal her away, do you?”

“Of course not,” scoffs Chan, rolling his eyes. “You don’t need my permission. She doesn’t belong to me.”

“Awww. And I know that must be difficult for yo-”

“But she doesn’t belong to you either.”

Jisung says nothing for a moment, before cocking his head at the DJ with a smirk and stepping towards him. “Oh? Is that so? I don’t see anyone else going to the VIP room with her the nights I’m here.”

“Guys-” you feebly try to take control of the situation, but your words fall on deaf ears.

“Y/N is a human being, not a fucking dog, Jisung. Nobody ‘owns’ her.” Chan crosses his arms against his chest, looking the younger man dead in the eye. “If anything, considering you’ve been coming here and paying her the big bucks, for what, a year now? I’d say she’s the one that owns you.”

Jisung smirk immediately disappears and you swear you can feel the air between the two men flood with tension. But within an instant, he smiles again, throwing his hands up in defeat. “Now, now, there’s no need to get your panties in a twist. But don’t worry, I’ll take good care of her and have some fun for the both of us. If you want, I can tell you all about it later.”

You quickly glance at Chan, his fingernails digging into the skin of his biceps, his jaw clenching so hard he looks like he could bust a vein in his neck.

“That’s enough,” Changbin interjects, massaging his temples in frustration. “Come on, Chan, you’re in the booth next. And Jisung? Just remember the club rules-”

“I know, I know,” Jisung rolls his eyes and turns back to you. “Shall we, baby?”

You nod, silently praying that Changbin will calm everything down once you leave, and the two of you head to the VIP room. Jisung opens the door follows you inside, jumping in surprise when you slam it shut and shoot him a glare, and he only laughs in response. “What? If you can tease him, why can’t I?”

You sit on the maroon leather couch in the VIP room, counting your tips and mentally making sure you had enough to pay your upcoming bills for the month. Jisung had left about twenty minutes ago, and the lack of muffled music from the main floor indicates that it’s finally 3am and the club is closed for the night. You release a long sigh, slouching in your seat and resting your head back on the couch. You close your eyes, your mind still reeling from everything that happened. Everything about tonight shocked you. Usually, Chan was good at hiding his jealousy, since the last thing both of you want was to scare away potential guests, or for Minho to notice. But Chan talking back? His reaction to Jisung’s last jab before leaving for the VIP room? Those were new.

You have never seen Chan that jealous, and if you’re being completely honest with yourself, it was fucking hot. Thoughts of Chan not only standing up for you, but also being possessive of you, and what he could do to you out of jealousy filled your head, and you feel a sudden tingle shoot down to your core. Everything in you knows that you shouldn’t fuck Chan. There are rules, but you can’t stop your mind from imagining all the possible sinful acts you could do with him that you would do anything for at this point. You know that would be a bad idea, but the delicious wetness pooling between your thighs shoves any inhibitions you previously had out the door.

Fuck the rules.

You walk out onto the empty main floor, letting out a breath of relief to find Chan packing up his mixers - alone. You tap on the booth to get his attention, giggling when he jumps in surprise.

“You’re still here? I’d thought you’d be gone by now.”

“I was just counting tips,” you reply as you glance around the club, making sure you two were truly alone. “Chan… about earlier-”

“Yeah... sorry about that.” He lets out a long sigh and runs his fingers through his dark, messy hair, the tips of his ears turning pink in embarrassment. “I don’t know what came over me. I just... you know I get a bit jealous sometimes, and that prick was being extra annoying about it tonight.”

“Not gonna lie though, your clapback was pretty great. And hilarious,” you nudge his arm with your elbow.

He laughs. “Yeah, well I’m glad you thought it was, because Changbin sure as hell lectured me about it for a solid 15 minutes.”

A comfortable silence falls between you both as Chan goes back to packing up the table. You chew on your bottom lip, trying to figure out the best way to ease any tension that might be lingering, and to bring up what you truly want from him. “Chan... Jisung and I just talk when we’re in the VIP room. Nothing happens-”

He shakes his head, keeping his focus on his current task. “You don’t need to tell me, Y/N. It’s honestly none of my business what you do with the guests. Like I said earlier, you don’t belong to me.”

“But what if I want to?”

His head snaps up to meet your gaze, and you have to bite down on your bottom lip to keep yourself from giggling at the look of utter confusion on his face. You lean in closer, lips inches away from his, wrapping your arms around his neck. “Y/N… w-what are you doing?” Chan shakily asks, his stare flicking between your eyes and your lips.

“Something I’ve been wanting to do for ages.” With that, you close this distance between the both of you, and you practically feel him melt into your touch. His wraps his arms around your waist to pull you closer to him, kissing you with such an intensity that ignites a fire in your core. He backs you up against the wall of the DJ booth, pressing his hips against yours and gently rolling them into you, making you moan against his lips.

Chan hesitantly breaks away from the kiss, breathing heavily as he searches your eyes for any sign of uncertainty or regret. “Y/N. The rules. I don’t want you to get fired-”

“I honestly don’t give a flying fuck about the rules at this point,” you purr, placing kisses along his jaw and neck. “Do you?”

He breaks into the biggest grin you have ever seen, and it makes you smile in return. “Fuck no.” His lips come crashing onto yours, deepening the kiss to the point where it’s a mess of teeth and tongues, indicating how desperately both of you have been wanting to do this.

“Something I’ve been wanting to do for ages.” With that, you close this distance between the both of you, and you practically feel him melt into your touch. His wraps his arms around your waist to pull you closer to him, kissing you back with such an intensity that further ignites the fire in your core. He backs you up against the wall of the DJ booth, pressing his hips against yours and gently rolling them into you, making you softly moan against his lips.

Chan hesitantly breaks away from the kiss, breathing heavily as he searches your eyes for any sign of uncertainty or regret. “Y/N. The rules. I don’t want you to get fired-”

“I honestly don’t give a flying fuck about the rules at this point,” you purr, planting kisses along his jaw and neck. “Do you?”

He breaks into the biggest grin you have ever seen as he brings a hand up to gently cup your cheek, and you can’t help but smile in return. “Fuck no.” His lips come crashing down onto yours, nipping and sucking at your bottom lip, asking for entrance which you instantly give him. You can feel his hard on growing beneath his jeans as he rolls his hips against you once more, making the knot in your stomach tighten.

“Hey, so I’m done-”

Changbin’s voice abruptly interrupts your heated rendezvous, making you frantically scramble out of Chan’s arms and dive underneath the table, while Chan quickly pretends to continue breaking down the DJ booth.

“You guys are literally the least discreet people I know. It blows my mind that you haven’t been caught yet.” You can’t see him, you just know Changbin is shooting Chan one of his signature death glares, intended for the both of you. You poke your head out from behind the booth, which only gets you dramatic eye roll from the other DJ. “Just don’t make a mess and don’t forget to lock up,” he grumbles as he turns to leave. “Oh, by the way bro, you got shit on your face.”

You glance up at Chan, giggling at your lipstick smeared along his lips, jaw, and neck, the bright red color prominent against his pale skin. He narrows his eyes at you, and you innocently mouth the word “whoops”, grinning as he rolls his eyes.

As soon as you hear the doors close, Chan pulls you to your feet, lifting you up and pinning you to the table. He attacks your neck and collarbones with rough kisses, but thankfully not rough enough to leave any marks that’ll need to be covered up for your next shift. Desperate for more, you wrap your legs around his waist and grind your hips up against his, smirking against his lips as he groans into your mouth.

Chan begins to plant wet kisses down your stomach as his hands frantically move from your hips to his belt. He begins to undo the buckle before you grab his hands to stop him, which only gets out a small whimper in confusion from the man. “Not here,” you lean up to pull him closer and playfully nip his bottom lip, before grabbing the hair at the nape of his neck and pulling it so he’s looking you straight in the eyes. “The VIP room.”

Chan’s eyes darken with lust as he harshly kisses you again, deepening the kiss to the point where it’s a mess of teeth and tongues, but it makes the heat between your legs grow by the second. You let out a yelp in surprise as he lifts you into his arms without warning, making his way to the infamous room where he’s watched you lead guests into night after night.

The second he steps into the VIP room, it’s as if both of your desires are kicked into overdrive, the desperation for what you’ve been waiting for all this time becoming almost unbearable. You take his bottom lip between your teeth again and tug on it lightly, relishing the way his grip on your ass tightens exponentially. Chan kicks the door closed, not breaking the kiss for one second as he sits down on the leather couch, positioning you so that you’re straddling his lap. You can feel his prominent bulge underneath the rough material of his jeans as he ruts up against your clothed heat, and you whimper as you grind against him, desperately wanting more and trying to indicate how much you want him need him now. You feel his hands firmly hold you in place, halting your motions and making you whine in frustration, which only earns you a low chuckle in response.

“Use your words, Y/N. Tell me what you want.”

You roughy kiss him and swivel your hips against him, smirking when he releases a throaty groan against your lips. You take a hold of the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him away from you so you can look him in his lust-filled eyes. “I want you, Chan. All of you.”

Chan smirks, giving you a quick kiss before lifting you off his lap, pulling down his jeans and flinging them off to god knows where. You hastily rip off your two piece and toss it haphazardly across the room, giggling when Chan pulls you back into his lap the second you’re bare in front of him. His gaze is locked on your form, taking you all in before looking back into your eyes. He stares at you as if you are a goddess, and you feel your cheeks flush from the attention.

“Fuck, you’re so beautiful,” he mutters, his hands sliding up and down your sides, leaving goosebumps in their wake. He brings one hand to your jaw, pulling you into a searing kiss, his other hand taking hold his rigid member and sliding it through your sopping folds, making you shameless moan aloud. “Ride me babygirl,” Chan mumbles as he begins to kiss and nip at your collarbone, “take what you want from me.”

With that, you slowly lower yourself onto his cock, keening at the way he deliciously stretches you out, finally giving you the taste of what you’ve been wanting for so long. Chan throws his head back, screwing his eyes shut, a sinful groan falling from lips as you sit on him completely. Giving yourself a moment to adjust to his size, you wrap your arms around neck and pull him back so he’s meeting your gaze. You take his hands and intertwine them with yours, pinning them behind his head as you begin to ride him, slowly lifting yourself off him before quickly dropping back down. A string of illicit moans and curses falls from Chan’s lips, his hands firmly gripping yours, desperately trying to keep himself from breaking your grasp and taking control. He trails wet kisses down your chest, licking your nipples before taking them into his mouth and rolling them between his teeth, making you whimper and lean into his touch. You pick up for pace, admiring the way his face contorts into different expressions of pleasure as he throws his head back and looks up at you with glassy eyes.

“S-shit babygirl...”

His bout of self control doesn’t last much longer, because the next thing you know, Chan rips his hands from your grip, placing them on your hips as he begins to thrust up into you, meeting your movements halfway, hitting you in just the right spot. He moves a hand from your hips to rub firm circles against your clit, making you cry out in pleasure.

“F-fuck... Chan- oh my god...”

You try your best to continue to ride him, but you feel your thighs getting weaker and weaker with every thrust. You feel the pressure in your core building to the point of complete euphoria, when he lifts you off of him completely. You whine in frustration, feeling your high fade, hating how empty you feel without him buried inside you.

“Don’t worry baby,” Chan chuckles at your protests, suddenly flipping you around and positioning you on all fours on the couch. He places a tender kiss on your shoulder blade, before moving up to nibble your earlobe. “You’ll get to cum soon enough.”

He aligns himself with your entrance and eases into you, the new position allowing him to fill you deeper than before, making you both release illicit moans at the feeling. Chan slowly retracts his rock hard member from you, only to instantly plunge back into you, taking no time to pick up the pace, slamming into you at a rate that’s making you see stars. The momentum of his actions force you forward on the couch, making you cling desperately to the armrest in attempt to stable yourself, praying your shaky legs won’t completely give out underneath him. Suddenly, a sharp slap comes down on your ass, making you cry out and clench around him.

“Fuck... you like that, baby?” He massages where his hand had landed, only to spank your ass once more.

“G-god, yes Chan... p-please... harder.”

You feel another slap, come down on your other cheek, this time much harder, and you can’t help but moan loudly at the feeling, the delicious sting causing your grip around his cock to tighten exponentially. You hear him let out a low groan as his hips begin to slap against yours at a brutal speed, and you feel the knot in your stomach begin to unravel again.

“C-Chan, I’m... I’m close...”

“I know, babygirl, I can feel you.” Chan leans over you and plants rough kisses against your neck. “Go on, Y/N, cum for me.”

With his permission, you come undone around him, your release white hot, hitting you like a train and making your mind go completely blank as he continues to roll his hips into you, helping you ride out your high. Your legs feel useless under you, but thankfully Chan’s firm grip on your hips keeps you from collapsing from exhaustion. His thrusts start to become more and more erratic, desperately chasing his own high, groaning at the feeling of your tight pussy still throbbing around him. You can tell he’s close, and clench around him hard, smirking as you hear a string of curses fall from his lips, his hips rutting and quivering against you as he paints your walls white, and you hum in content at the warm feeling.

Chan slowly pulls out of you and falls back on the couch, gently pulling you so you’re laying on top of him. You leans up and playfully nip at his bottom lip, making him chuckle.

“That was...”

“Amazing,” you giggle, burying your face into his chest.

A comfortable silence falls between you two, and you eyes flutter close as you bask in heat the radiates from his body. He absentmindedly run his fingers lightly up and down your back, placing a soft kiss on the top of your head.

“Did you mean what you said earlier?” He quietly asks, as if he’s hesitant to bring it up again. “Do you want want to belong to me?”

You look up at him, and you swear you can feel your heart expand at the way he’s staring back at you with so much hope and adoration. “I do... god I really do, Chan, but you know we can’t. We barely manage to flirt without getting caught, so this has to be one-time thing-“

“I got offered a job at a different club,” Chan quickly blurts out. “It has better hours, more creative freedom since I wouldn’t be DJing for strippers... If I took it, would it change things?”

“You’d do that? But you love this job.”

“I do, but not gonna lie, I mainly love it because I get to see you.” His comment makes you blush, and you bury your face in his chest again if efforts to keep him from noticing, which only gets you a soft laugh as he gently tips your chin up to face him again.

“Honestly, if it means I can do what we just did with you whenever we wanted, without having to worry about stupid rules or anything, then fuck yeah I’d take another job. The only downside is I won’t be able to watch you dance when I work.” He wiggles his eyebrows at you, laughing when you just roll your eyes at him.

You sit up, positioning yourself so that you’re straddling him once more. “That just means you’ll have to come back here as a guest.”

“Hmmm...” he mumbles as his eyes travel up and down your body, his hands reaching around and lightly squeezing your ass. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to follow the club rules though.”

“Don’t worry about those,” you purr, leaning down and nibbling on his ear, earning a quiet moan from him. “If you become my regular, all the rules are off the table.”

“I like the sound of that.” Chan gently cups your jaw and pulls you into a tender, but passionate kiss.

You smile against him, running your fingers through his hair, before pulling away slightly, your forehead resting against his. “Then I’m yours, Chan.”

“And I’m yours as well,” he whispers, pressing one more kiss to your lips, before wrapping his arms around your waist and lifting you off the couch, earning him a yelp from you. He lays you down on the couch, hovering over you with a mischievous smirk plastered on his face. “What do you say, let me show how I can really treat you in the VIP room?”

#bang chan smut #bang chan imagines #stray kids smut #skz smut #stray kids imagines #skz imagines #stray kids fanfiction #kpop smut #kpop imagines #bang chan #stray kids

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stay-tinystars · 4 years

Text

Office Wars: Love and War

Ship: San x fem reader

Warnings: Angsty, Y/N is a jerk most of the time. Female reader

Enemies to Lovers.

words: 3,289

A/N: I found a post last week which assigned you an AU for your birthday. So I wrote this Slice of Life Enemies to Lovers because of it. Though to be fair, it’s kind of a one sided enemy situation. It ended more abruptly than I expected, but I hope you guys like it.

----------

The tension was obvious. As he sat across from you.

"You two will just have to deal with each other til we move to the new place next month" your boss, Mr. Kim said. You supposed it made sense, since you had the only solo office in your building, and being as San held the same position as you.

But it isn't your fault the two branches of your work are merging to a central location triple the size of your current office space. Nor is it your fault that the other locations lease ended 4 weeks early, due to some weird clause within the contract.

You sighed as you left your bosses office.

"Look, I know you’re not happy about this, and neither am I, but we've got to make this work" San said as he followed you. You stopped abruptly, and turned on your heel. His shocked face ended up being closer to you than expected.

"Look, I will be as nice as I can," You glared. "But that’s only because Mr. Kim is the best boss I've had."

You started storming back to your office, leaving San staring as you walked away. The bane of your existence was now sharing an office with you. If he only wasn't so 'perfect', you'd think you could manage.

He started at the company almost a year after you did, and started moving up the corporate ladder quicker than you had. He had skills, that you could admit. You only wished he hadn't gone and applied for the same position you wanted a month after he started. You both got considered, and ended up being the top two for the position. You had been working so hard that when San got the position over you, that is when the hatred really started. Once the company got larger, they decided to open a new location, you hoped that meant your dream position, and maybe a change of scenery. Well, you got the position, but San due to his sweet talking got the new location. Worse of it all, being as the boss considered San to be an attractive man, as did everyone else in the company, he became the face of the company on the advertisements. So, no matter where you turned in the city, there he was. San seemed to get it all, and everyone seemed to fawn over him, except you. To you he lived up to his name "mountain", because all he ever seemed to do was be something you could never beat, and he was always in the way of your goals.

They had moved your desk and items all to the right side of the room, and had placed an unfamiliar ornate desk flush with the front of your desk. So now you not only had to share the office, but now you had to look at him the whole time. Everything seemed so cramped, instead of spread out like you enjoyed. You sat down on your chair grumpily, as you decided to start to work.

"Wow, this actually looks nice" San said, entering the room, and smiling at you.

"It will do" you grumbled.

San sauntered over to his desk, and sat down. Everything he did just seemed to grind on the last nerve you had. So, you decided that you would just do your best to keep to yourself, and stay focused on your work.

"So, where do you usually go for lunch around here?" He questioned, as he gazed at you over his computer monitor. You took a deep breath trying to hide your annoyance at being disrupted.

"Well lunch is usually at 12:30, and I usually bring my own, or go to the small Cafe next door" you responded dryly.

"How about I treat my new office mate to lunch then." He said cheerily, showing his million-dollar smile, complete with dimples. You considered lying and saying your brought lunch today, then your tummy grumbled. You glanced at the clock 12:15.

"Sure, I guess." You muttered, as you continued typing. It seemed too quick when lunch came, but the thought of free food was your only motivation as you and San walked together to the small Cafe next door.

"I never came here when we worked together before" San said as the waitress showed you to your normal booth.

"That’s because everyone else tends to want to go somewhere fancier. I’ve always just liked the small soups and sandwiches here." You said looking over the menu, even though you got practically the same thing every time you came here.

"Oh gosh, Y/N! You brought a date! That's so exciting! You never bring anyone around here!" The overly excited waitress Jin said. You were about to correct her, when San reached over and placed his hand on yours.

"Yes, she told me how amazing this place is, and I just had to try it" San said, oblivious to the daggers you were glaring at him.

The waitress just looked at San, with the same admiration as everyone else did.

"Well, she usually gets the Gilgeori toast, and a water." The waitress said, never taking her eyes away from him.

"I will take that as well" San said happily, and the waitress nodded and skipped away. You ripped your hands away from him.

"What the hell was that?" You fumed wiping your hands on your pants.

"Just trying to get to know my new office mate." he smiled.

"That doesn't include touching me! Nor does it include making the staff here think I'm on a date!" Your words dripping with venom.

"Well they seemed so excited that you were on a date I didn't want to let them down." He smiled, "but I’ll refrain from touching you again." rolling his eyes.

"Here are the waters, and the food will be out shortly" Jin smiled, as she placed the drinks on the table.

"Thanks Jin" you smiled at her. She nodded, then looked at San raising her eyebrows, then winking.

You folded your arms and sat back in the booth, as San laughed.

"You definitely don't ever bring anyone, here do you?" He asked.

"Why would I? It’s my lunch break."

"By the way they are all acting, you must never date." he chuckled as he watched the small staff gossiping behind the counter as they all kept looking towards the two of you.

"My love life is none of your business" you glared, fists tightening in my crossed arms. He leaned back putting his arm over the back of the bench. A smirk dancing across his face as he stared at you.

"Why do you act as if you hate me?" He questioned.

"Because I do"

"Why"

"Because, you.... ugh” you almost yelled.

"In my 23 years on this fine earth, I have never heard a worse answer. I expect more." His smirk growing, as well as your anger.

"So not only are you so perfect, besting me at my own job, you're also younger than me!" You snapped.

"So you hate me, because I'm perfect, Noona, tell me more" he said emphasizing the fact that you are older than him. He usually was so nice, but oh boy was he enjoying pushing all your buttons.

You went to stand up, when Jin brought your food over. Along with a piece of chocolate cake.

"The cake is on the house, for your date!" she squealed, oblivious to the body language and tension in the air. You just stared at her.

"Thank you, Jin! That’s a lovely gesture" San said, his voice sounding like honey, overly sweet. It made you sick.

You looked towards San as he smiled and picked up his toast, biting one corner. You looked down at your food, the warmth and smell helping you calm down.

A smile reached your lips as you savored the warm sandwich. This meal was always one that comforted you. Despite the stress of your job, or anything else going on in your life.

"You look very happy, I don't know if I've ever seen you smile like that" San stated as he continued on his toast.

"Overall, I'm a happy person" you replied, taking another mouthful.

"I've never seen you happy." he thought aloud. You decided against responding as you continued eating. He was really pushing all your buttons, but you couldn't let him win, not over lunch.

You wiped your mouth as you finished your sandwich. A content sigh leaving your lips as you looked towards the slice of cake. San grabbed a fork, and scooped off a piece.

"Here " he said, moving his fork towards you.

"I can feed myself." you stated, grabbing the other fork.

"But we're supposed to be on a date" he raised his eye brows, then gestured towards the counter where three employees stared at the two of you like a k drama. You debated shoving his fork towards his face, but decided against it. Leaning towards him you ate the piece he offered you. The sounds of excitement rang through the small Cafe as the three employees freaked out.

"Now it’s my turn" he smirked. You imagined picking up the plate and shoving it in his face. Instead, you scooped up some cake with your fork. Lifting it towards him, he went to eat it and you purposely moved it to smear it on his face. "You want to play dirty?" He chuckled, and grabbed some cake with his hands then shoved it into your face, with laughter.

"You’re wasting a perfectly good cake!" you hollered as you went to grab some, only to have San move the plate away from you, holding it high above your head.

You took a deep breath, and looked down at yourself. You had chocolate all over. You prayed it was just crumbs. You quickly left the table and went to the bathroom. Your face was covered in cake and frosting. You quickly grabbed some paper towels and got them wet and started cleaning your face off. Once that looked acceptable, you did your best to brush off the cake from your blouse. Luckily there was only a small spot of frosting, unfortunately it was dead center on your chest. You did your best to clean it off, only succeeding in making your shirt damp and the spot slightly larger. Today was the wrong day to wear lavender.

"You and your boyfriend are too cute!" Jin said as you exited the bathroom.

"He's not my boyfriend, he's barely a friend" you mumbled, knowing she wouldn't even care what you said.

"He already paid, and is waiting outside" she giggled.

"Thanks, and sorry for the mess." you waved, as you exited the door. A quick glance told you San had already headed back to work. You sighed grateful for the short but peaceful walk alone.

~~~

The rest of the week San continued to smile at you, he tried going to lunch with you again, but you brought your lunch from home the rest of the week. He knew how to push your buttons, but most days he held back, being just overly sweet to you, which almost made it all worse.

You began counting down the days til the office move, because every day meant one less day sharing an office.

"Noona, want to join me for lunch today?" San asked the following Monday.

"I swear San, stop calling me noona!" You threw a pen at him. He dodged laughing.

"But you're older than me noona." A smirk gracing his lips.

"I have told you to just call me Y/N" you said, as you continued on your work.

"Ok Y/N, would you join me for lunch today"? he asked again.

"I brought my lunch today San"

"So did I" his dimples seeming to swallow his face.

"So how would I join you?" You asked, looking over the document you had just finished.

"Well I was thinking we could go sit at the park just down the street. We can have a picnic” he stated, lifting up a blanket he pulled from under his desk.

San was starting to wear you down, and you hated admitting it. He was so nice most of the time, despite every harsh and mean thing you said, he would always have a smile.

"It does seem like a nice day, so I suppose I'll join you" you said looking outside.

Once outside, you felt the warm sun, and smiled. It was a perfect day to sit outside and soak up the sunny rays. Most work days you sat in the small break room, and ate while reading. This was a nice change of scenery.

San set out the blanket, and you sat atop it. Legs straight in front of you, crossing your ankles and leaning back onto your hands, closing your eyes, you basked in the sun.

"Wow" San said.

"What" you said opening your eyes and looking around.

"You" he said, you just rolled your eyes.

"Me?" You sighed, as you grabbed your lunch bag.

"Yes, you! Have you seen yourself?" He asked.

"Yes I've seen me." You scoffed, pulling out your food.

"You are gorgeous, especially when you let go. When you are just enjoying the moment, it’s just wow" he smiled.

"You are officially crazy" you said, shaking your head.

"I'm not crazy. Well, maybe I'm crazy about you."

"San, you know I hate you, right?" You said narrowing your eyes, and taking a bite of food.

"If you hate me so much, why are you having lunch with me?"

"Because I'm trying to be somewhat nice to make this forced office situation work, plus it’s a nice day"

"I think you're starting to like me" he said raising his eye brows.

"You’re so full of yourself." you said.

"No, I'm just seeing your wall crumble more and more every day" he said triumphantly.

"Doubtful"

~~~

Tuesday was going quite well, San was being nice, you were being pleasant, when there was a knock at the open office door.

"Come in" you said as you looked up. You saw a beautiful bouquet of wild Sunflowers, your favorite flower. You stood up, smiling.

"Delivery, for San" the man said. As he placed the flowers on San's desk. Your smile faded.

Of course, Mr. Perfect got flowers.

"Wow," he muttered, as he picked up the card. "Congratulations on your new advertisement! I see it every day on my way to work. Love, H" he read aloud.

"So you have an admirer, who gives you flowers" you grumbled.

"No admirer." he said, smelling the flowers.

"Then who are they from?" You asked.

"Are you jealous?" He questioned.

"Of you, no. The flowers, maybe" you responded.

"They're just sunflowers."

"They are the best flowers."

"You can have them if you want" he offered, sliding them towards you.

"No, they are yours, and your admirer would be heartbroken if they didn't see you carry them out of work"

"I told you, I don't have an admirer. And she lives on the other side of the city, she won't care if I don't take them home."

"So the admirer is a girl" you teased.

"No. The girl is my sister. I don't see her often." He sighed.

"Oh" you said looking down at your desk.

"Here have the flowers, I'm more of a roses guy" he said, walking around the desks and handing the flowers to you.

"You really don't have to"

"The way your face lit up when you saw them, you need them more than I do". He said returning to his work.

~~~

By the following week, you had grown comfortable with San. You still despised him, for being the golden child of the company it seemed. Yet he was kind, and you both saw the wall you had built crumble further every day.

"Morning, Noona" San smiled, as you entered the office Friday morning.

"I really wish you'd stop with the noona stuff" you said as you sat at your desk.

"But you are my noona, and doesn't every girl want that noona K drama to come to life?" He laughed.

"Not every girl, some girls just want to be treated well, and not be called noona" you shook your head as you began working.

"So, Y/N." San said, as the work day started winding down.

"Hmm" you acknowledged, as you continued typing.

"I want to.... Can we.... I mean" he stumbled over his words, you looked at him puzzled. He looked flustered; you'd never seen him like this.

"What is it San?" You asked, trying to make eye contact with him.

"Well.... I have these dinner reservations tonight" he started

"Ok?"

"They are at Han Pine" he stared down at his hands.

"Isn't that the new five-star place? How did you get reservations there?" You asked.

"It is the new place, I kind of know the head chef. I made the reservations for two" he looked at you.

"Cool, who are you taking?"

"I was hoping you" he asked. You just sat there for a second.

"Are you asking me out, San?"

"Yes" he said timidly. You sat back. You had never seen him like this, it took you by surprise. The date also took you by surprise.

"I, uh... sure. I'd love to go" you stammered; his face lit up.

"Wonderful!" He smiled, and took a deep breath. "So uh, I'll pick you up at 7, the reservations are at 7:30"

Panic set in at 6:30. What where you supposed to wear? It’s super fancy. Was this a date, or more of a casual thing? What if San just needed a date because of the reservations?

"Y/N, calm down" Yeona your best friend, and roommate said, as you rifled through your closet.

"I can't calm down, he was my enemy. Now I'm going on a date with him! What if this is all a prank?"

"It’s not a prank. I really think he likes you" she reassured.

"But how could he, I've always been a jerk to him. Plus, I'm nowhere near a model like he is. I'm average."

"You're not average! You are gorgeous." She said as she started grabbing your dresses, she tossed them on your bed next to you, "Now put on a dress, and don't smudge your makeup."

You knew better than to argue with her tone. You grabbed your simple plum purple knee length dress, and put it on with some cute black wedge boots.

"Do I look alright?" You asked Yeona.

“You look great!” She nodded while smiling.

"Wow" was all San said, when you opened the door. He was in a nice black suit, a white shirt, and a gray tie. He pushed his hair back nervously.

"You look nice" you said as you stepped out of your apartment.

"You look, just wow" he smiled.

“Thank you” you said looking at the floor.

“Shall we go?” He offered his arm, and you wound your arm in his and started walking.

The new restaurant was beautiful, and the head chef had prepared a special menu, which ended up being delicious.

"This has been incredible, San" you said as you placed your spoon back into the small empty dessert cup.

"It has been" he smiled, as his hand reached towards yours. He stopped, looking at you, as he set his hand on the table.

"What is it?" You asked, moving closer to him.

"Last time I touched your hand you kind of freaked out" he smiled at the memory.

"Well, things have changed." you smiled placing your hands over his.

"Do you still hate me?" He asked, a smirk playing on his lips.

"Just a little." you teasingly winked.

#ateez #Ateez San #ateez fanfic #Ateez Fluff #atiny #san x reader #ateez angst #san fluff #san angst #ateez imagines #choi san #san fanfic #san oneshot #san enemies to lovers #enemies to lovers #slice of life

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sabretoothandsin · 4 years

Text

Black is the Color

The reader fell in love with Ahkmenrah after meeting him at one of the ‘living history’ nights at the New York Museum of Natural history. A little while after finding out the truth about him and everyone else in the museum during your courtship, you were able to get a job as the second night guard. Sure you did help Larry out with some of the more unruly exhibits but mostly you just spent time with your love. The two of you have fallen into a comfortable, romantic, bliss. You spend a night teaching him how to paint his nails and just spending time together. The next night Ahk's world changes forever.

(It’s much better written than the description I’m just a bit burnt out as I right this.)

Word count: 1797 // Warnings: death of reader, mention of terrorism, slight talk of death and Ahk’s mummified state // Genre: very fluffy then very angsty // Reader information: she/her pronouns used once or twice but other than that nothing really gendered like a physical description or being called “a girl” or anything

One of those calmer nights, you were sitting on the floor with your hands resting on one of the many benches, painting your nails. Black first, then a shiny red top coat.

Ahkmenrah approached and sat on the floor beside you. "Would you teach me to do that?" he asked with a smile.

"Sure," you said, a bit surprised but eager to show him all the same.

"Here,” You took his hand in yours and inspected it for things like bad hangnails before setting it back down again.

As you held his hand you saw the way he was looking at you out of the corner of your eye. That way that he looked at you nearly every night, but that still made your heart flutter and your face flush. But you really didn’t feel like getting flustered right now.

“You can use this one,” you cleared your throat as you offered him the small bottle of black paint.

“Black?” he questioned.

“It’s very manly,” you mused, “And it would go great with all the gold you wear.”

Your fingers brushed over the beaded fabric that draped over his chest as you said this.

“If you say so, darling.”

You walked him through the whole process. You giggled when he awkwardly shook the little glass bottle as you had shown him, and at the frustration on his face when he spilled polish on the bench. "Oh it's fine," you said, "just don't drip it on that priceless capey thing of yours."

"It’s a tunic," he chuckled. That was probably the thousandth time you’d said that and the thousandth time he’s had to correct you.

When you showed him how to apply the nail polish, he was a little messy at first and hummed at each mistake.

“Ya know,” you began, watching him meticulously slide the brush over his nail, his lips pursed as he concentrated. Perhaps he was a bit too focused.

“Painting one’s dominant hand is actually one of the most difficult tasks a modern person can face."

"Oh really," Ahk half-laughed. “If that’s the case I don’t think the human race will survive to see another generation. That is, unless of course, we intervene.”

You hid your face as you felt it turn red. Sometimes you forgot that he could be… like that.

Your love nudged you with his elbow before he started to stand.

“You’re not going anywhere just yet, pretty boy,” you said, pulling him back down, “you've gotta sit here and let them dry."

"I can't do anything else?"

"Nope.”

"For how long?”

"Too long. Now sit.”

He obliged.

You blew on your nails in demonstration and he timidly mimicked you. He coughed and shook his head when the chemical scent hit his nostrils.

"Ah, yeah you don’t want that." you said, "give me your hand."

His hand rested on yours while you fanned the drying paint with your other hand.

After a bit, you showed him how to test if they were dry. You smiled at the way he cringed at the sticky feeling.

You two just sat there for a while, enjoying each other’s company. You loved every moment you got to spend with him even if all you were doing was watching paint dry.

"Ahk, they look great!"

He beamed at the compliment.

"Thank you for teaching me, darling," he said.

You kissed him on the cheek in response.

"Oh, and you should definitely keep this," you said, handing him back the bottle of black polish.

It was movie night at the museum. The whole time, both yours and Ahk’s attentions were completely on each other, rather than the film. You held his hand in yours beneath the blanket you shared, brushing your thumb over the smoothly painted surfaces of his fingernails. Your hands remained intertwined as you walked back to his exhibit.

"Good night, my darling," he said, kissing your forehead, "you are truly a wonderful teacher."

“Goodnight, Love,” you said.

You brought his hand to your lips and pressed a lingering kiss to the soft skin. Your lips trailed to his wrist and then his palm.

Without even looking up at his face you could practically feel how he was melting. His skin grew warmer beneath your touch. Had there been more time before sunrise, you knew he would have liked to grab you and kiss you hard and probably ravish you on his bed, concealed by the Anubis statues. But eventually, reluctantly, he pulled away and stepped into the sarcophagus, still holding your hand.

"See you when the sun goes down,” you said quietly.

“Until then, I’ll dream of you.”

He placed the little bottle in his encasing and you closed the lid. He had never quite figured out if he was able to dream, but it was a nice thought. He closed his eyes and clutched the glass bottle in his hand, trying not to focus on that familiar pain of the transformation back to a corpse.

Tonight he didn’t feel the decay of his flesh or the air being sucked out of his lungs. All he felt was the ghost of your hands holding his.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next night, Ahkmenrah was greeted by Larry instead of y/n.

"Oh," he said, surprised. Larry hadn't been the one to help him out of his exhibit in years.

"Hey, Ahkmenrah," Larry said hesitantly, after the man had gotten unwrapped and dressed, "can we sit down? " he motioned to the nearby bench.

"Sure," he said, a bit perplexed, "is y/n sick?"

The man beside him didn’t answer. He just looked down at his hands in silence for a minute. The minute dragged on for ages, to Ahkmenrah. He shifted in his seat, suddenly overcome with a wave of anxiety. His hands fidgeted in his lap, fingertips running over smooth, painted nails.

"Um, so,” Larry finally stuttered, “this afternoon, there was a terrorist attack - wiped out three whole blocks."

The pharaoh felt a pang in his heart at the same time as a weight lifted off his shoulders. The anxiety washed away.

"My friend, I'm so sorry," he said, resting a comforting hand on the other man's shoulder. “I will pray to the gods for all the innocent souls who were lost to your people.”

“Thank you, Ahk.” The night guard's face hinted at a sad smile before it became even more forlorn and... sympathetic.

"But, ya see," he said, the words getting stuck in his throat, "those three blocks included y/n's apartment."

The pharaoh looked confused. His head felt heavy. He furrowed his brow as he tried to comprehend what the other man was saying.

"She was inside," Larry continued, "when the building collapsed. I'm- I’m so sorry."

Pain and grief seared through the Egyptian, but he shook it off.

"It's alright," he said, taking a deep breath, trying to banish the sobs that threatened to breach his lips, "I know how to perform a mummification. I have all the same rights as a high priest. I can preserve her body and she can be restored to life by the tablet. Where's her body?"

The other man didn’t say anything for a moment as he wiped tears from his eyes.

“Where is her body, Larry?” Ahkmenrah demanded, urgency rising in his voice.

"Ahk, there is no body - the whole area is- it’s just dust." His voice trailed off.

"You mean-” Ahkmenrah’s head was swimming. He had just seen her last night. None of this could be real.

And yet the words still escaped his lips. His mind knew what his heart refused to admit.

“She's gone?"

His friend nodded, squeezing Ahkmenrah’s hand which at some point he had started holding without him noticing.

The beginnings of words sputtered out of Ahkmenrah's mouth as his face grew more and more distraught and his heart grew more and more heavy. Finally, a silent sob shook his body and he found himself falling onto his friend. Larry held him and ran his hands up and down his back. The tears flowed freely for hours. That night, the museum halls were filled with hardly any sound besides the anguished cries of an immortal in mourning.

That night Larry and whoever else was within hearing distance would learn that there’s no sound more melancholic than that of one who can not be touched by death, feeling its affects more than anyone else ever could.

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

The once-strong pharaoh was never the same. The first night after, he asked Larry to let him remain in his sarcophagus.

"You know I might be too busy to let you out later?" the man asked, concerned.

"I know. Please close the lid." there was no emotion in the king’s voice.

He slept with the little bottle of black nail polish curled up in his hand. The next night, when Theodore did finally convince him to come out, he just sat on the edge of the glass case that covered his sarcophagus, staring at his hands.

He was never truly his old, more energetic self again. And his fingernails were always perfectly painted black.

Larry POV

"Larry! Larry!" a voice shouted, rapidly growing closer to the busy night guard. Running down the hall was... Ahkmenrah? He hadn't seen him run in months, ever since she had passed.

"What's wrong?" He asked. He figured whatever it was must be terribly serious.

"I ran out," Ahkmenrah panted.

"Of-Ran out of what?”

Ahk showed him the little, scratched up, empty bottle.

"I ran out!" he said again, the distress in his voice palpable. He sounded almost on the verge of tears.

Realization dawned on Larry. It must have been hers. In fact, it was probably the only thing Ahkmenrah had left from her.

"Hey, it's okay,” he said, resting a soothing hand on the pharaoh’s shoulder, “I'll pick some up for you in the morning, okay? It’s alright.”

"Okay" Ahkmenrah choked out.

End Larry POV

Ahkmenrah slept from that night on with the old bottle in his palm under his wrappings. Before he knew it, it had been decades since Larry had taken the job. Tonight was the new guard's first night.

A woman with short, blue hair let him out of the coffin. Her gold necklace dangled above him.

"Hello, I'm Kirstin," she said, offering her hand to help him out of his resting place.

Ahk looked at her apathetically. He sat up, took her hand, and inspected it. Her nails were painted a neon blue.

"I need some of this. Black." he said dryly.

He dropped her hand.

"Do you need help with the-"

"No."

When she left, he unwrapped his hands. His fingers brushed the aging glass of the bottle, before he gently placed it down in his sarcophagus.

'Good morning, my love.'

'Good evening, my darling.'

#ahkmenrah #natm #night at the museum #ahkmenrah x reader #x #reader #reader insert #y/n #fanfic #fanfiction #fic #angst #larry daley #pharaoh

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priorireverte · 4 years

Photo

Congratulations Ashley!

Your application for Andromeda Tonks has been accepted. She’s going to have a lot to deal with. At least it looks like her spouse is on the horizon soon! Unless that just causes more problems.

Please look to the checklist for the next steps and reach out if you have any questions!

OUT OF CHARACTER

NAME & PRONOUNS: Ashley / she/her

TIMEZONE: EST

ACTIVITY LEVEL: I would consider myself to be fairly active! I work a full-time job which is 3 12 hour shifts per week, so I’m usually not around on those days other than mobile. However, I’m usually always around on discord if needed. On my days off, I’m always active unless something else comes up!

ANYTHING ELSE: N/A to triggers! I’ve been writing and roleplaying since 2006 aka the days of myspace. I’ve been roleplaying on tumblr and in the Harry Potter community since 2009. Also ! My rp partner is applying for Ted and we’ve discussed their background together and are a cohesive unit, LOL!

CHARACTER DETAILS

NAME: Andromeda Dorea Tonks (nee Black)

BIRTHDATE: 12 February, 1954

DEATHDATE: N/A

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Cisfemale, she/her, pansexual

BLOOD STATUS: Pureblood

HOUSE ALUMNI: Slytherin

OCCUPATION: Healer at St. Mungo’s. After the deaths of her husband and her daughter, Andromeda only remained on as part time staff due to her commitment to raising her grandson. With her son-in-law back from the dead and expecting his son, Andromeda has picked up more shifts to distract herself from her mixed bag of feelings.

FACECLAIM: Rachel Weisz

CHARACTER BACKGROUND

POSTBELLUM

War is ruinous. It’s evil and endless. It’s something that Andromeda has learned. Now, she’s lived through two wars and managed to lose almost everything. During the first war, Andromeda refused to choose a side. She remained strictly neutral. Supporting the Death Eaters was what her family expected from her. However, she didn’t share the same beliefs. Supporting the Order, however, felt like the ultimate betrayal. Something that she couldn’t explain. So, she remained neutral. When the second war began to brew, she supported the Order because of her daughter’s involvement as an auror. She and Ted were never official members of the Order, but they helped where they could. This later led to the both of them being tortured for information by Death Eaters. The two were shaken, but otherwise okay, thankfully. Andromeda didn’t turn her back on the Order after this. If anything, it only made her support stronger.

When Nymphadora learned that she was pregnant, Andromeda was overjoyed, but afraid just the same. Edward went on the run due to the persecution of muggleborns and Andromeda had never been so afraid in her life. Ted was the only family that she’d had. The only person that she’d relied on for years. When the news of Edward’s death came, Andromeda tried her best to keep a brave face in front of others. She knew that the war was far from over and she couldn’t bear to upset her pregnant daughter.

Nymphadora gave birth to a bouncing baby boy and everything seemed right, if only for a moment. They honored Edward in the name and he had equal parts of her daughter and son-in-law. Andromeda begged Nymphadora to stay home, to not go to the Battle of Hogwarts, but she went anyways. The news of her daughter’s death at her sister’s hands broke Andromeda completely. She had a newborn, now, that she was responsible for and in the first few months of his life, she wasn’t sure who cried more.

If it weren’t for Teddy, Andromeda doesn’t know if she would have been able to go on. Her grandson gave her life purpose. She had reminders of the two people that she loved most and Teddy became the third. She’s taken to part time at the hospital while she’s cared for him the past couple of years.

The news of the dead coming back is all the rage and Andromeda is skeptical. Despite the skepticism, she was also hopeful for a very brief second. Then, she was disappointed and then her anger took another turn. She hoped for her husband. For her daughter. For her cousin. So far, she’s gotten none of them. The news of Remus being back has placed a pit inside her stomach that she can’t handle. She wants to be happy, but she also abhors the thought of losing her only link to her daughter, to her husband. She doesn’t know how she’s going to cope.

PERSONALITY

(+) Ambitious: Andromeda excels at anything she puts her mind to and more. Failure is not an option for her. It is a trait that she learned from her father.

(+) Eloquent: Growing up in one of the pureblood elitist families, Andromeda was taught how to be very persuasive. She knows how to use this trait and although she doesn’t use it much, it is always in her back pocket when she needs it.

(-) Stubborn: Andromeda’s stubbornness will one day more than likely get her into trouble. When she decides on something, it is rare that she changes her mind. She does not like to admit that she is wrong and rarely does so.

(-) Conflicted: Andromeda knew that befriending muggleborns would upset her family. It was against the beliefs that she had always been taught. Since her Hogwarts days, she was always incredibly conflicted. She felt a strong sense of duty to her family, but felt unable to meet their demands. When she fell in love with Ted, she knew it was the final nail in her coffin. Andromeda no longer struggles with the choices that she made. She sticks with them. However, she will always be conflicted over the bond she still feels towards her family.

ENFJ – The Giver - “Popular and sensitive, with outstanding people skills. Externally focused, with real concern for how others think and feel. Usually, dislike being alone. They see everything from the human angle, and dislike impersonal analysis. Interested in serving others, and probably place the needs of others over their own needs.”

Andromeda has the fatal flaw in which she decides that others needs are more important than her own. It was only magnified when she became a mother herself. Her people skills were groomed to perfection when she was forced to attend the numerous pureblood galas as a teenager. As a healer, she enjoys being able to put back together the hurt and heal those that are harmed by those closest to her blood relations.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY

Andromeda Dorea Tonks nee Black is the original family disappointment. Cygnus and Druella prayed for a boy the second time around and when Andromeda came out a girl, it was where the disappointment started. Growing up, she always felt like the odd one out. She wasn’t strong and fiercely loyal like Bellatrix. She wasn’t graceful and beautiful like Narcissa. She was the middle child through and through. Despite the disappointment and the short comings that she could not prevent, Andromeda’s loyalty was to her family. The Black family had a strong name within society. They were revered. A part of the sacred 28. Any child of the Black family would act like they were one.

She grew up with pureblood beliefs force-fed to her and being taught to believe nothing else, she actually thought that they were the only way of life. Andromeda was sorely mistaken, however, and she didn’t realize how much so until she met Ted Tonks. Edward Tonks changed everything for her. Ted Tonks was a muggleborn boy and although she didn’t want to admit it, she was smitten. Her resolve faded during their years at Hogwarts and eventually, she couldn’t deny the chemistry anymore. The rest of their years at Hogwarts were filled with letters written in invisible ink, heated meetings in empty classrooms, and plenty of sneaking around.

She struggled with her feelings for Ted and her loyalty to her family for years, until one day she chose Ted. She found out that she was pregnant and she knew it’d be the final nail in her coffin. Andromeda chose Edward and their unborn daughter and she was promptly burned from the Black family tree. Family is important to Andromeda; however, she’s learned over the years that chosen family can be more important than blood relatives.

Despite all of this, she still feels a sense of loyalty to Narcissa. A feeling like reconciliation wouldn’t be so bad. Bellatrix – however – she knows they’ll never repair their relationship. Not after what was done to Nymphadora.

After losing her husband and her daughter, Andromeda clings to her grandson. A reminder of what she’s lost – in the likeness and the name. The idea that she’s going to lose him too is killing her inside.

HISTORY

What was their life before the end of the war in ‘98 or before their death? What was important and formative for them?

Hogwarts: Andromeda’s early life was filled with piano lessons, ballet lessons, and etiquette training. She was to be the perfect pureblood daughter, even if she was a disappointment. Her parents spoke of their beliefs and taught them to their daughters, accepting no questions. Until Andromeda went to Hogwarts, the pureblood beliefs were all that she knew. She knew that she was above everyone else because she had pure blood and that she should never question it. The moment that she was sent to Hogwarts; everything changed. The things that her parents had taught her to believe – they simply weren’t true. The muggleborns and the halfbloods weren’t different than she was. In fact, there were some that were truly brilliant.

For the first few months of her education, she kept her nose up in the air because she knew her older sister was watching her every move. Andromeda pretended like she wasn’t curious to know more. Like she didn’t have questions. It was only the moment that Bellatrix looked away that she discovered everything she knew to be a lie.

Edward Tonks: When she met Edward Tonks for the first time, Andromeda didn’t give him a second thought. It was only after months of studying and tutoring that things began to shift. She began to think about him moreso than she’d like to admit. Their gazes would meet over the school books because neither of them was paying attention to their texts. Soon, the two began to sneak around, knowing the dangers that this posed for the both of them if they were to be caught. Thankfully, they weren’t caught until Andromeda chose Ted. She chose him over her family and never looked back.

Ted changed everything for Andromeda and she doesn’t deny a moment of it to this day.

Healing: Despite the arguments from her family, Andromeda chose to take a healing internship at St. Mungo’s after she graduated from Hogwarts. Her parents were not pleased and that was putting it lightly. Why should she work when all she needed to be good for was a quiet, proper pureblood wife and mother? Her parents had the perfect pureblood for her to marry, but Andromeda didn’t want any part of it. She decided to do what she loved and being a healer was everything that she needed. She needed to do some good in the world to cancel out all of the bad that was happening around them.

Nymphadora: Finding out that she was pregnant with her daughter was the final nail in her coffin. It was the final sign that she’d never be welcome on the Black family tree again. The moment that she found out that she was pregnant, Andromeda was terrified. She didn’t have a great relationship with her mother when she was growing up. She didn’t know how to be a mother. How could she take care of a child? Despite her fear, she told Ted and she’s not sure she’s ever seen him so happy before. Andromeda is fearful her entire pregnancy. She despises herself for it. It’s something that she hides. However, the first time that her daughter is placed in her arms, it’s something that comes naturally. Her love for her daughter is something that she can’t explain, but she knows that Nymphadora is the person that she loves the most in the world. Her new favorite job is being a mother.

All of her life, Andromeda tries to protect her daughter. From the evil things in the world. She tries to shield her from the things that will hurt her. The Black family. The war. When Nymphadora decides that she wants to be an auror, Andromeda supports her, but knows that she can’t protect her baby from everything. Inevitably, she’s unable to.

OOC EXPLORATION

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO? I love the idea of this roleplay and bringing back the dead. I think it’s an amazing idea and I cannot wait to interact with others and see the interactions that will play out. I love the passion that everyone seems to have for writing and I’m excited to possibly join the fun.

ANYTHING ELSE? Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/sortoutherpriorities/she-walks-in-beauty-andromeda-black-tonks/ Boggart: As a child and a teenager, Andromeda’s boggart was failing her parents. As it ultimately came true, Andromeda’s boggart eventually changed to the loss of Ted and Nymphadora, which also came true. When she became the primary caregiver of her grandson, her boggart changed once again to the loss of Teddy.

#andromeda tonks #prioriacceptance

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19mrs-barnes17 · 4 years

Text

As Long As I Can Get - Chapter Two: Fairfield

Summary: Y/N Fairfield has spent the last 10 years pushing past all the hurt and putting all her focus into her career. A familiar face back in town threatens the peace she found. [prompt: Small Town Lovers AU]

Part: 2/5

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader (AU)

Warnings: at a hospital, mentions of death and abandonment

Word count: 3,198

A/N: It’s been a wild week but here it is, chapter two! Enjoy! Special thanks to @wxntersoldiers for beta reading.

“Y/N? You think you could pick up my shift tonight? Missy is running a fever and I can’t get ahold of my mother to come take care of her.” Holding the phone away from her face Y/N sighed heavily as she rolled out of bed.

“Of course Dawn, just call in for me and tell them I’m on my way would ya? Thanks, it’s no biggie. I’m happy to help, let me know how Missy is doing later.” Hanging up the phone she’s up and changing in a flash, quickly moving across her apartment and back.

Within 6 minutes she’s in her scrubs and locking her apartment door, rushing down the stairs and out the front in another 3. She slides into the driver's seat, buckles in, and on the road to the highway in record time.

This was becoming a routine every week, someone would have an emergency and she’d be asked to pick up the slack. Her regular shifts at the ER in town kept her busy through the day, but her Thursday or Friday nights were often filled up by favors and desperate calls. She had a limit though, each person could only ask her one favor a month and she would cover one emergency. But when the emergencies came she could tell when they were real or just another masked favor. So by now the only emergency usually came from a mother whose kid was hurt or sick.

Pulling into the employee parking lot, she exited her car and speed walked into the building, making her way to the sign in at the station. She prayed this would be a tame night and that Dawn didn’t have any difficult new patients because she was far too tired to argue about something that she was more of an expert on.

Covering for Dawn was usually not too bad, most of her patients typically being older and gentle folk who treated her like a loving grandkid. Always gave her some nickname, rarely ever calling her nurse or even her name. All of which was fine by her.

Being a nurse hadn’t always come easy for her, remembering all the medications, the proper doses, the schedules, and how to do every aspect of her job was a lot to take in. But the moments in which she connected with a patient were the reason she got into the specific role in the medical field. Well that and her father.

Most of her family had joined the field, all three of her brothers had either become paramedics or a physical therapist. Her mother was the chief physician at the ER in Brightbarrow and her father was a private care nurse typically working with elderly or terminal members of the town. On a few occasions he had brought her along to see his patients, acting as a distraction for those who were living with severe pain. Through these visits in her childhood she began to realize how she enjoyed helping people who were hurting, and giving them a sense of peace for a little while.

One college degree later and she was back in town applying to work in the ER, her scheduled shifts hardly ever including weekends unless someone needed a cover and she was the only one who could spare the time. Her work there was routine, but here at this hospital outside town? She had found some gentle souls that brightened her day.

“Oh my, is that you Sunshine?” Claudia was sitting up in the hospital bed, remote in her hand to flip through the limited channels. “What a lovely surprise.”

“How are we tonight? Take our medicine okay today?” Claudia smirks and nods, the crinkles in the corners of her eyes forming as a flicker of mischief shines in her eyes. “Mhhmm.”

“I have somethin’ for ya sunshine. Made it yesterday when they let me do some crafts.” Claudia reaches to the table rolled off to the side of her bed and picks up a bracelet with rainbow thread. Y/N walks over to the woman and allows her to gently tie off the multicolored bracelet around her wrist. “There, perfect size.”

“Thank you Claudia, that’s awfully kind of you.” A smile is shared between the two before Y/N motions for her to hand over the remote. “Now how about we shut this off and I read you a little something so you can doze off, sound good?”

“Only if it's that one you told me about, the one with the little guys.” Y/N chuckled at the description but nodded in agreement nonetheless as she powered down the television and left to get her novel.

“Alright get comfy now.” She waited for Claudia to adjust her bed and helped her with the pillows before cracking open the small book and beginning the tale. “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

“Ah that’s what they were, that’s right. Hobbits.”

At the end of her shift Y/N was exhausted and ready for bed, doing her best to keep wide awake on her drive back by playing her dad’s favorite rock station. Thankfully it did the trick and she made it into town without issue, turning down the volume and switching stations as she made her way through the town like she’d done a million times before.

Turning onto her street she was perplexed to notice a man walking the sidewalks this late in the night, his movements slow and steady. The closer she got to him the sooner she realized she knew exactly who the man was and she had some theories about what was keeping him up so late. Pulling to the side of the road she exited her car, slamming the door shut behind her before glancing up to meet the gaze of a man she hadn’t seen in ages.

Bucky Barnes stood across the street staring at her like he’d seen a ghost, his features painted with something along the lines of guilt or sorrow. The man was frozen in place by her, his eyes watching as she raised a sleepy hand to wave at her old friend. To her surprise he waved back and yet he didn’t move a muscle as she turned away from him to head to bed.

The next morning she woke late, the Saturday sun shining through the cracks of her blinds stirring her from her sleep. Her stomach grumbled, craving some of Winifred Barnes’ cooking ASAP. Instead of driving she opted to walk over there, let the sun and the exercise wake her a little more.

Winnie’s Diner was the town staple, the place that every person went at least a few times a week. It was the kind of business that had become the heart of the town, the comfort and hospitality center. If you wanted to get a feel for the town you didn’t have to look any further than this diner, it was where Y/N had gotten her first job. She had one of her first dates in a corner booth and had been stood up in another. This building was a hub of memories, good and bad.

“Hey Y/N! Have a seat. I'll be right with you girl.” Becca was zooming around the place in a graceful hurry, placing plates and clearing tables as she went. “What can I get ya?”

“A coffee, a biscuit, some bacon, and an update. Please.” She watched as her best friend shook her head with a reluctant nod before dropping off the order.

Once the coffee was poured she told her brother she was taking her 15 and slid into the other half of the booth. Y/N sat patiently, prepping her coffee as she waited for Becca to collect her thoughts.

“He’s back for good, got a job working for Thomas Geldin constructing those new homes over by your parent’s house.” Sipping her coffee Y/N did her best not to allow her emotions to betray her.

“What changed?”

“Not sure. He seems different, like his load is heavier. Almost like he was when Daddy died, just emotionally cut off and distant. But he is making an effort to get closer and he comes in here every day for his lunch break. Which is in a few minutes now.” Y/N coughed, nearly choking on her coffee as her eyes went wide.

“Sneak.”

“Hey don’t look at me, you two just are fated to dine at the same time.” Becca smirks before rushing off to grab something to eat before her break ends.

She hadn’t actually spoken a word to Bucky since he came back to town, and yet he suddenly lived across the street and worked by her old home. Now he would be here within minutes and she would once more feel compelled to initiate conversation, but she wouldn’t let herself. If he wanted to talk he would approach her, not the other way around.

He arrived the same time her food did, his eyes scanning the room to presumably locate his sister but freezing on Y/N who sat before her. A mixture of emotions flashed across his features rapidly before settling on a guilt ridden expression. Bucky approached the booth, his sister pausing to greet him and casting a wink over her shoulder before speeding away. Standing before the booth he shifted his weight nervously as he seemed at a loss for what to say. His eyes are no longer able to maintain contact and he casts them to the empty seat.

Don’t invite him. Don’t invite him. It took all her strength to refrain from being polite, her eyes never leaving him as her gaze intensified.

“Mind if I join you?” Her heart dropped, she was expecting a simple hello or quick apology and not a full on meal with the guy. She nodded her head, refusing to take the bait just yet as he slid into the booth.

“Here’s your usual James.” Becca slid a plate with a steak and cheese melt and fries onto the table before rushing off again. She was pushing him, Y/N knew that his mother and the older townspeople were the only ones who used his actual name. To everyone else he was Bucky.

“I’m sorry about not keeping in touch, there’s been a lot that I had to work through the past 10 years.” God she could hardly believe it had been that long since he left, an entire decade had passed by without him. “Can we start again?”

Once more she had to use all her might to restrain herself from instantly agreeing and forgiving what he had done. She didn’t understand why he cut her off so quickly and completely, their friendship wilting through high school and fading in the decade following. But she knew why he had become so emotionally reserved, after watching his father wither away slowly and gradually lose the ability to even function Bucky had begun to close himself off from everyone. He smiled less, got into more trouble with other kids, and barely made it enough to enlist.

Sure she had missed him dearly and knew he had suffered greatly, probably even worse after his service, but she couldn’t risk getting too quickly attached again. Not when she knew how much his leaving her behind tore her apart.

“I’ll have to think about it.” She could see her words striking a nerve within him, his appetite diminishing. “But I’d like to.”

His eyes snap up to meet hers, relief flooding them as he gazes at her fondly. Y/N wanted desperately to forget it all but she knew that proceeding with caution was the best course of action. She would let him have the opportunity to rectify his past mistakes, but it was up to him to take it.

“City noise or quiet town?” He knit his brow and gave her a perplexed look before taking a bite of a fry. “Pick one.”

“I’m not sure I have a preference anymore.”

“But you had one.”

“City noise.” She shook her head with a small smile, curiosity overtaking her careful approach. “Drowned everything out.”

“Patty’s coffee or city coffee?”

“Patty will forever have the world’s best coffee. No one in New York believed me, kept saying European coffee was where it was at.”

“I’m going to move on before I get so offended I bring her coffee to New York.” Bucky laughed lightly, eyes crinkling shut as he shook his head at her. The sound warmed her heart and she could already tell this was going to be hard not to fall into.

His break eventually comes close to an end and he has to rush back to work but leaves a napkin with his phone number behind. She shook her head at the gesture, he knew full well that she and Becca were very close friends and she could have gotten his number from his sister. One point to him for ensuring she had it.

Becca was off at 3 so Y/N spent her time walking around the book shop, glancing at summaries and running her fingers over the spines. Her mind was far too crowded to pick anything out, focused on how she was going to make it through this renewal of friendship after so much pain. This place usually put her at ease, the sight of the full shelves and atmosphere calming her active mind. But today her mind had won and so she wandered around town until she had nowhere else to go but home.

A knock sounded on her door an hour or two later and an exhausted Becca made her way inside to fall onto the couch and groan dramatically.

“I take it we’re getting pizza from Toni’s tonight?” This catches the attention of her best friend who suddenly perks right up.

“And wine.” Y/N opens her fridge door and pulls out a bottle, holding it up for Becca to see and receives a nod of approval.

“Pull up netflix and I’ll order the pizza.”

Several glasses of wine and pieces of pizza later the two are sitting on the floor going through a shoebox full of old memories. Memories of their friendship.

“Oh remember this?” Becca holds up two ticket stubs, one to their high school dance and the other to see a Panic! concert.

“We showed up in full formal wear, not thinking to pack another outfit to change into.” Y/N dug in the box and produced a photo of the two from that night, Panic! at the Disco tour shirts over their dresses. “I can’t believe we didn’t get caught until your mom saw the shirt in your laundry.”

“Almost the perfect crime. Kind of dumb of us to pay the money for the ticket when we never even went to the dance though.” The two fell into a fit of giggles and struggled to compose themselves. “We were not the best planners apparently.”

“Are you kidding? The College Bar Crawl fiasco?”

“Oh Jesus, yeah we really should have thought through where we were going to end up staying the night. Next time we do something, we need a fully thought out plan.”

“Agreed. It’s too dangerous for us to do any less. We might end up in Europe and somehow married.” Becca falls flat on her back as laughter bubbles through her, her head turning and spotting another box under the bed.

“What is this?” She slides the box out and removes the lid before Y/N can stop her, her fingers gingerly sifting through the contents as a smile tugs at her lips. “Oh, you’re a sentimental sap.”

“Gee thanks.”

Inside were pictures of her, Bucky, and Steve throughout the few years they were all together. She instantly gravitated toward them when she moved to town at 8, sick of being the new girl and ready to settle into a place. They stuck up for her when she was mocked by some older kids, Bucky and Steve became her dearest friends in only a few years.

There were more photos of her and Steve together, seeing as he was the only one out of the two boys to keep her in his life. Pictures of them at his prom, no girl seemed to see past his physical change and so he invited her. She remembered how her parents felt about that night, so proud of who they thought she was choosing to be with. A boy who was going to college, who had aspirations but remained loyal to his town. One with a kind heart and a gentle soul. She knew what they expected from the night, but they never understood that she and Steve were simply good friends and nothing more.

The photos of her and Bucky begin to dwindle around when she was 13, the year after his father died. Slowly Bucky grew apart from her and Steve, more the former than the latter. Something after her birthday party that year changed everything and she began to lose him piece by piece until he finally enlisted and left altogether.

She held a photo of the two of them between her fingers, eyes tearing up at the sight of their smiles. It was the day of her party, when she could still make him smile and forget about his troubles even if just for a moment. Bucky had both arms around her torso, his head resting on her shoulder and a bright smile on his face. Her cheek was against his face, hands and arms resting on his forearms with a dopey big smile stretched across her face.

“I swear I could kill that boy for what he did. I get losing touch while overseas, but cutting you out of his life while still in the same small town? That’s just cruel.” Becca sighed and took the photo from Y/N’s hands, placing everything back in the boxes before sliding both back under. “And to think I used to believe he liked you.”

“That would have made things worse.”

“C’mon let’s forget about that punk and eat some chocolate.” Y/N leaned into Becca as she was held by her, sighing deeply. “You’ll always have me, and Steve. That boy would rather dive face first out of an airplane than ditch a friend.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

After Becca left Y/N spent some time cleaning up after their roller-coaster of a night. Her body was tired but her mind was far too active to rest. Thoughts of what she lost sticking in her brain as she watched out the window as Bucky exited his townhouse and began to walk aimlessly in the night. She almost wanted to join him, not speaking just walking.

Instead she readied herself for bed, lying under the covers and staring out the window at the stars. Her mind traveled to something Bucky once told her about his dad and how if he found the North Star then he would never be alone, because someone else was always looking too.

And she knew exactly who that was.

Tags: @asphalt-cocktail @qtmeryr @broken-hearted-barnes @cantnkrusshedevil @gstran18

#marvel #beautiful #small town lovers au #james buchanan barnes #Bucky Barnes #bucky #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #justtryingtowrite #writing challenge

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specdracers · 4 years

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LANDON BENNETT + THE MOMENTS THAT MADE YOU

"thought i got through it, maybe i didn’t ; thought it was over, maybe it isn’t.”

he’s five years old in southern alabama, and he’s at the first foster home he can remember. landon’s happy. the parents are kind; there’s another little boy here, and they become friends. it’s like he finally has that brother he’s always been wishing for. at this point, he’s too young and naive, not having seen the harsh reality of the world. he thinks he’s going to be able to stay, the parents seem nice enough. his belly is full and the clothes are new, and the foster parents make it seem like he’s going to stay there for the rest of his life. he grows used to it, growing far too attached to the family, and there’s even talk about him being adopted! ( but he’s too young to really understand what that means. ) but he finally learns that all good things must come to an end when the social worker comes to the door and his foster parents have already packed his bags. he can’t remember what they tell him, probably blocked it out. but as he gets into the van and his friend waves goodbye to landon from the door, he can’t help but wonder what he did wrong as he’s being brought into the next house.

now he’s eight and in the third grade. he isn’t too cynical yet, but he’s known to be a loner amongst his classmates. he’s so, so young and he’s already learned that things are better if you keep people at a distance. he does pretty well in classes, getting by with what’s available at the home he’s at. the foster parents are okay, but he’s convinced they’re just doing it for the extra money because the mom just got laid off. the teachers look at him with sad eyes most of the time but he’s grown so used to it. the report card goes home with comments about applying himself and getting out of his shell to make friends. but he always ignores it ; why try to make friends when everyone inevitably leaves him?

middle school is rough for everyone, but for landon, at the age of twelve, he hates it with his entire being. kids aren’t kind, and he’s already gotten into so many fights. they think it would be easy to pick on the kid from the crappy group home on the wrong side of the tracks, but little do they know that he sometimes has to fight over his food when he leaves to go home at night⎯⎯ he’s learned how to throw a pretty nice right hook by now. but this time, they’re not picking on him ( thankfully ). instead it’s another boy, one that he knows just moved into the group home, and they’re talking about his clothes, or his shoes, maybe his hair? landon can’t remember, but he just thinks of how many times he’s been in that position and within seconds he’s on top of the bully, seeing everyone who has ever hurt him until the gym coach has to pull him off.

it’s freshman year of high school, and he’s on the bus to the town’s high school, knees pulled into his chest. and even though he’s trying his best to not get his hopes up, fourteen year old landon finds himself praying to every higher power in the universe that high school won’t be nearly as bad as middle school, he doesn't know how much more he can take of it. the bus pulls up at a huge building with teens all around the front, and he already begin to hide, drowning out the chaos with his headphones blasting 90s rap. a small part of him wants to make friends, but it’s been so long he’s forgotten how. so instead, he walks around the crowded high school hallways, hood pulled up as he ignores pretty much anything and anyone. it’s like this for months, him going through the motions and his teachers are always shocked when landon actually turns in work. they know he has the capacity of doing it, he just lacks the motivation for well, anything.

sophomore year, and his classmates are beginning to get their licenses and cars as they turn sixteen and he’s jealous. he knows he won’t be getting one, he’s not stupid. that doesn’t prevent him from walking around with a chip on his shoulders. landon’s developed quite the temper over the course of his adolescence, and he doesn’t take shit from anyone. he’s the poster child of teenage angst, a tongue that’s wicked quick and fists sometimes just seeming to itch for a fight. people take note of this and for someone who has always wanting to be invisible, he gains a reputation around the school. his teachers mutter it’s a coping mechanism, the poor boy’s never known a family. and they’re right, but they could at least have the decency to not say it when landon’s within earshot.

it’s about halfway through his sophomore year and all the rich kids are talking about their holidays down to florida for christmas when he’s approached by a group of boys. he knows who they are; while landon has a reputation of getting into fights some days, that’s about the most trouble he causes. but this group? it’s a whole other animal compared to getting into fights because someone looked at you wrong. they’re the type to get into trouble with the law ; it’s just petty robbery most days, but when they come to him asking if he wants to join, they say they need a driver, he can’t say no. he’s gone his whole life without being wanted, so he takes the first chance he can when sometimes says differently.

junior year comes around, and the boy just turned seventeen. he’s still with the same group of friends, and landon’s become the stereotypical stoner. comes to class high, sits in the back, and his teachers are still amazed at how landon manages to scrape by in his classes. it’s almost time for him to start applying to colleges ( as if he’s ever planned to go ) and he laughs in the counselor’s face when she says that he’s no future ivy league student but she knows he would have a good chance of getting into auburn ; what type of backhanded compliment is that for a seventeen year old boy? he leaves the office, throwing away the brochure for auburn as he leaves.

this is the year where landon knows he’s on the wrong path, but he doesn’t care. his friends and him wreak havoc on their town at night in a way of graffiti and breaking shit in alleyways. but one day as they’re walking down the street, his friends attempt at a robbery of a small convenience store ( the old guy was far too scary for these amateurs. ) too bad they were too dumb and didn’t even attempt to cover their faces and the store’s camera catches their faces. and after school the next day, the cops pull up arresting all of them. it’s quite a scene, and landon makes sure to smile for his peers’ cameras as he’s getting pushed into the back of a cop car. hours go by, and landon’s told that he’s free to go, considering the fact they didn’t steal anything and they are all minors. when he gets home, the old foster parents he had been staying tell him they’ve had enough of his bullshit. that they’ve tried to get through to him but he’s a lost cause. landon takes this as them basically pushing him out of the house, and he knows that the next day he’ll be whisked away to another home until he’s phased out of the system. with a quick and heartless ‘ fuck you ’ to the couple, landon stomps out of the door and to the closest bus stop with only a backpack full of clothes. after, he’s made his way to new york with the small amount of cash that he had saved for a rainy day ; he’s learned through his years that he always needs an escape plan. but just because he has an escape plan doesn’t mean he has a damn clue about what to do after the fact.

eventually, he figures out a way to survive. not many places hire high school drop-outs so he gets a job waiting tables. it’s not a lot, but it’s something. he’s staying in a halfway house that he found, and while there are plenty of unsavory characters around, it’s nothing he hasn’t dealt with before. he saves up just enough to get a shitty apartment that’s more like a closet, but it’ll have to do for now.

he’s twenty now, and he’s working probably close to three jobs a week just to make ends meet. landon is many things, but the one thing that his friends in new york can’t call him is lazy. his friends are a slightly older than the twenty year old, and he never really knows what type of jobs they do, but he knows whatever they do pays well. they have the nicest clothes and shoes, and he tries his best to not get jealous of them. one day, his friends ask him about his driving, and he laughs, saying they’re in new york and he grew up poor; why the hell would he need a car? but they explain to him that that wasn’t the question, and landon’s confused. he’s never told them about fucking around as a high schooler with his friends, doing donuts in the grassy fields of his hometown. when he tells them that he’s pretty decent, there’s a special kind of glint in his friend’s eye.

a year later, and twenty-one year old landon is in the middle of a crime-ring. did he mean to? absolutely not, but it beats having to wait tables with rude customers anyday. he’s moved out of the closet that his landlord had marketed as an apartment and moves in with his friends. and for once, landon is happy. he has friends that want to be around him ( granted they’re all criminals but at least they’re bonding! ) his clothes are nice, and he drives a decent car on a daily basis. for the time-being, he forgets what it’s like to constantly be worried about everything being taken away from you. and then it becomes too late.

it’s a STUPID easy job, the words of nolan ring through his head over and over again as his torso is flush against the hood of the cop car. it had happened so fast, all landon had to do was just drive and he obviously couldn’t do that very well considering him and his friends are all going to be thrown in jail because of his own stupidity. he can’t look at his friends, knowing that it is his fault that it happened. it’s almost like he blacks out before he finds himself handcuffed in front of a detective wanting to know more information about who he and his friends work for. and even though it’s his fault for getting everyone into this mess, he’s not a snitch. at all his questions, landon sits across, silent with a stupid smug grin across his features. his only demands have been a lawyer. did law and order lie to him? he’s always thought they couldn’t interrogate him until a lawyer was present. and soon, someone walks in and the detective leaves and he can only assume it’s a lawyer.

but it isn’t. it’s some instructor from a school called gallagher and all landon does is laugh. he doesn’t take it seriously for the first couple of moments, but the eerie stare of the instructor shuts him up enough. at first, he refuses. he argues, what about his friends? what about their freedom? surely, there’s room for them at the school too, right? but the solemn shake of the instructor’s head gives landon all the answers he needs. he decides to go with them, the charges dropped and he’s free, but he isn’t happy about bailing on his friends.

at gallagher, twenty-two year old landon is majoring in driver’s ed. it’s such a lame name in his eyes for such an exciting major, but he loves it here ( despite always acting like he’s too cool for it ). he’s known to be a little shit once again, but landon makes it fun. for once, landon feels like he has a home.

#* 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐞𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐭 / development.#tl;dr?? i dont blame you!#me all semester tryig to write papers - took weeks #me writing an emo self-para about landon - sAY LESS #literally it's just ... landon being emo tbh #yall: not a damn thing said #me: LET ME WRITE U 2K WORDS #i h8 myself

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shakespeareanwannabe · 4 years

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Engineering the Future

Hi everyone! So this is my second Supernatural fic, the first one I cross-posted here on Tumblr, though I have written a couple of other things on this wonderful series. So here’s the thing: this is a bit of a project that I’ve been working on to keep myself writing even when I feel like I have nothing to say.

So here’s the deal: I’m going to write one one-shot per episode. Multiple friends say that I’m driving myself to drink, but so far it’s been fairly smooth sailing. If you guys have any ideas about certain episodes, I’d be happy to hear them, but know that I’ve got a list of prompts for three quarters of the episodes, so I may not write your prompt. But I’d love to hear your ideas. Just, no Wincest or Destiel because I honestly don’t ship either of them (no hate please, it’s just the way I feel. And no, I don’t hate anyone who does ship them). Just brotherly love here!

This chapter is tagged to episode 1x01, Pilot. Hope you all enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural. This is a work of fiction based on characters from The CW’s Supernatural, created by Eric Kripke.

To completely plagiarize someone else, “Being his real brother I could feel I lived in his shadows, but I never have and I do not now. I live in his glow.” Who said that? Why was his relationship with his brother so important? Doesn’t matter. This isn’t about him. This is about them, and the moments we don’t get to see.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Dean had imagined this day since that balmy July evening when a rickety tin door had slammed shut and seemingly separated his family forever.

Depending on his mood, there were several different scenarios that would play out. When he was at the bottom of his third bottle, he would imagine showing up at his front door, having him open the door, stare at him, then shut it again without a word. The second bottle was kinder, allowing them to pass on the streets, perhaps nodding at each other before the one went on with his normal life, leaving the other to thank a God that he didn’t believe in that he had at least seen him one last time. The first bottle didn’t give him enough hope to even attempt to dream up a reunion with his little brother.

The fourth bottle was Dean’s favourite. He would get an excited phone call and drive all the way to Stanford just so that Sam could tell him he was getting married face to face. They would settle into a table at some hoity-toity bar or into a booth at some frou-frou café and would talk as though no time had passed. The natural lighting would fade to black and neither of them would move. Topics of conversation would wax and wane until they found themselves in the same companionable silence that graced the majority of their childhood together.

Sam would eventually sigh sadly and mutter something about having to be in court early the next morning, to which Dean would make a crude joke that would have Sam blushing behind the ears as he laughed. Dean would walk him to his car and deal with the chick-flicky hug bestowed upon him by a drunk and/or over-caffeinated Little Brother. As they pull apart, Sam would get all shy and red again as he stammered through saying that he hoped Dean would be his Best Man (because screw this Brady kid that introduced the happy couple). Dean would laugh, hug his brother, completely deny the tears in his eyes, and say “Who else could fill those shoes, bitch?”

Dean would hang around in California for a couple of months and relish in being stationary for the first time since he was four. He would meet Jessica, automatically start calling her Jessie, and plan a small bachelor party for Sammy and his college pals before taking his kid brother on a kick ass, blow out ‘Brochelor’ party in Vegas to make up for every birthday, Christmas, and any other calendar holiday that they had missed out on. On the day of the wedding he would straighten out his brother’s tie, all the while denying that he had asked the guy at the store how to do so. He would give the kid the picture of Mom that he carried around in his wallet with the explanation that she needed to be there with him on this day. He would stand up next to his little brother during the ceremony, give the most awesome speech ever written during the reception, and dance with his new sister-in-law when the time came.

While he and the other, less important guests waved the happy couple off (he had even given them the Impala to borrow for their honeymoon road trip up the Pacific Coast Highway) he would get a phone call from Dad, saying that he had finally pinned down the son of a bitch who had killed Mom, and that he needed his son there with him. Dean would hotwire a car and go. He’d stand side-by-side with his father as they ganked the sucker, turn, and shake his father’s hand before walking away from the life.

He’d stand hat in hand on Sam’s doorstep when they returned from their honeymoon, praying that his baby brother still had room for his older, less intelligent but far more handsome brother in his new married life. Sam would laugh and pull him into a hug, ensuring him that of course he would always need his big brother. After all, he and Jessie apparently hadn’t come home from their month-long vacation on their own, and this kid was gonna need a really cool uncle to bitch at when his/her parents were giving them a hard time. Any nephew of his was gonna be educated in the ways of the Impala, rock music, and the Dean Winchester Scale of Burger Perfection. Any niece of his would also be educated in these things, but he would need to be there more for Sam when the boys came snooping around, because what was more intimidating than two guys over 6-feet tall who had marksmen’s abilities?

Dean would maybe become a cop, or a mechanic, or maybe even a firefighter, but one thing he would do for sure is protect his family. He’d gank any evil bastard that came within a thousand miles of that two story, white picket fenced house on Normal Boulevard.

Maybe he’d settle down, maybe not. All that was important to him was that his Sammy was happy.

That was all that would ever matter to him.

So, when it came down to it, Dean would have traded everything he had for it to have not happened like this. Never like this.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Sam had imagined this day since that first night alone at Stanford.

At first, he’d dreamed that Dean would show up, kick his roommate out, and curl up in the twin bed approximately six feet away from him. Dean would go to the registrar and apply to the school and get in, obviously, because his big brother was a genius. He’d probably take engineering, because Dean could do things with machinery that Sam could never have dreamed about. They’d watch each other’s backs on and off campus, and when one of the dorm rooms ended up being haunted, they’d take care of it, as though they had never been off the job. Dean would go on to open his own body shop, while working side projects like helping to rebuild homes for people who lost them in fires or natural (and supernatural) disasters. Sam would become a kick ass lawyer and help the law protect people. He’d help Dean on the weekends at the shop or with the houses, because they were brothers and why wouldn’t he? They’d still go out and watch the stars when they could, and they’d make sure to go to the first game of every season for the Jayhawks. They’d make a weekend of it. Just Sam, Dean, and the Impala. Of course, Jess would be fine with it. She’d love Dean as much as he did, because what wasn’t there to love? Eventually, he and Jess would get married and Dean would be his Best Man (even though Brady would throw a fit about it, but Dean was right, he was better off without douchebags like Brady in his life), then go on to be the best uncle to the kids they would have. Dean would meet a nice girl and they’d settle down too, and soon it would be Winchester Weekends, filled with barbeques and Little League games and dance recitals and tinkering with the Impala while drinking a cold one together and hiding from their wives and kids.

A few months in, the dream changed. One of the kids in Sam’s classes had a brother in the military, who surprised her by showing up during lecture wearing his fatigues and announcing that he had been honorably discharged and was staying home for good. She’d broken down into tears and hugged him until the professor had just wiped his eyes and dismissed the class, claiming that he didn’t want to bring the room down by talking about the Battle of Yorktown in 1781.

Sam started imagining that something similar would happen to him. Dean and Dad would kill the thing that had killed Mom, then Dean would stroll right into his Economics class wearing his torn jeans, steel toed boots, band shirt and leather jacket (the uniform of one of the longest living hunters out there, and the youngest to boot), acting as though he owned the joint. Sam would launch himself into his brother’s arms, not even minding that that cute girl Jessica sat only a few rows behind him, and bury his face in his brother’s shoulder to hide his tears. Dean would clasp him around the back of his neck and whisper that he and Dad had gotten the damned thing, and that he was quitting the life. Dad would keep hunting with Uncle Bobby, Pastor Jim, and Caleb as back up when needed, but he was out.

Dean would help him hook up with Jessica, because he had seen the way they looked at each other, and Dean couldn’t stand the lovesick puppy dog eyes anymore, then the rest of the daydream would stay the same. Engineering, lawyering, cars, court cases, house building, Jayhawks, star gazing, the Impala, wives, kids, all culminating in the two of them sitting side by side at some Old Folks Home, the lines between what they knew and what the world knew blurred by old age and one too many hard knocks to the head courtesy of any one of monsters of the week that they used to hunt. They’d sit on the front porch, drinking whatever alcohol they could get their hands on, loudly debating the proper way to kill a wendigo (Sam would say iron because he knows his big brother’s mind is fading and he needs him to stick around a while longer because Jess was already gone and he wasn’t quite ready to go and he doesn’t want to be left alone, not again).

No matter which scenario he dreamt up (defending Dean in court, forcing him into retirement when a werewolf gets the better of him and his left leg is basically useless so Sam brings him home with him, or even something as simple as Sam just picking up the phone and asking him to visit (because it’s DEAN, and there’s nothing he won’t do for his little brother, and Sam knows it), there was one common thread that remained the same, and that was that the time they had spent apart held no consequences. They would just fall back into being brothers, knowing that if they were back to back or side by side they would be fine.

That’s why, when Dean bursts through the bedroom door and drags him out of the burning brownstone, Sam couldn’t bring himself to fight at full strength. Dean was there. As much as Sam wished it had been any other scenario he had dreamt up (and not the nightmare that had been plaguing him for weeks), he knew that his big brother was there. And since when had there been any problem that Dean couldn’t solve? He could’ve been an engineer, after all.

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

#supernatural #supernatural fanfiction #crosspost #in his glow

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hockeylvr59 · 5 years

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Life Changes Part 2 || Paul Bissonnette

Summary: It’s crazy how quickly your life can change...one minute you’re a struggling personal injury lawyer and the next you’re working for one of the hottest sports podcasts to supplement your income. A new job and the end of a long term relationship was just the beginning for Leigh Thompson when it comes to life changes. Thankfully she has the one and only Paul Bissonnette at her side to help her handle them all.

Authors Note: Part 2 of my Biz rewrite. Goodbye Boston...hello ? (well you know if you’ve already read the original part three but if not I won’t spoil it.)

Requested: [ ] yes [x] no Warnings: language, infidelity Word Count: 2070

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“Change the changeable, accept the unchangeable, and remove yourself from the unacceptable.”

With our sponsorship meeting scheduled for eleven, I was up with my alarm at precisely eight am. After pulling myself out of bed, I quickly threw on sweats and a sweatshirt to head down to the lobby for breakfast. I really didn’t expect to see any of the guys until it was time to head across town to the sponsor’s office. After my travel yesterday and night out, it was relaxing to just curl up in a chair with a muffin and some orange juice to watch the news on the tv. Slowly I pulled myself from the lingering remnants of sleep and shook off the desire to crawl back into bed.

Despite being a lawyer, I hated dressing in suits and the fact that they weren’t required for day to day in law school had been a godsend. Today though it was a necessity, so after applying a light coat of natural makeup and pulling my hair into a messy bun, I slipped into a pair of dress slacks and a light floral blouse. Checking the clock, I made note that I needed to leave in about fifteen minutes so after making sure I had all of the materials I’d prepared for the meeting, I slipped my suit jacket and winter coat on before quickly slipping my feet into heels. Though I hated them, sadly they were almost a necessity and expected when it came to business.

Balancing the padfolio full of material and my purse in my arms, I quickly moved to the elevator, praying that I wouldn’t fall over or trip in the heels. Half the group was in the lobby when I arrived this time, laughing and talking about what had happened after I’d left the night before. We exchanged ‘good mornings’ and once everyone was there a few minutes later we hailed a cab to the office building of the new potential sponsor.

Upon our arrival, we were given a quick tour before being escorted up to the conference room for the meeting. The first hour of meetings went by quickly and we were close to wrapping things up to the point that the lawyer for the podcast would have to just look them over and that would be it. A phone call with the VP we were meeting with delayed matters and so given the break I excused myself to the bathroom.

On my way back to the conference room I could hear Whit and Biz talking with someone, their voices carrying down the hall. The moment I heard the third voice I froze, stepping back into the wall before peeking around the corner. Hearing my ex’s voice made my skin crawl and I honestly wanted to just disappear back into the bathroom. I had forgotten he worked for this company and was frequently in the Boston office. I knew I shouldn’t be eavesdropping but when I tried to turn away, my body wouldn’t move. There was also a part of me that was glutton for punishment and needed to know what they were talking about. Either way, I certainly wasn’t going to continue in that direction and have to encounter the man who had broken my heart. I wasn’t sure I was strong enough for that.

“Yeah, yeah I’m a huge fan of the podcast, you guys are great.”

Hearing those words leave his mouth disgusted me, but also made me want to laugh out loud because he had no idea who they were. I was the fan and he had only listened because he’d been in the car with me. It was just the kind of thing I’d expect from him though, always trying to make himself fit in even if it required lying.

Distracted by my thoughts about his many unattractive qualities, I’d missed a fourth male approaching the group but my ears certainly caught the mention of the word ‘wife.’

“Oh yeah, she’s great. Still can’t believe I’m finally married.” Glancing around the corner once more I saw my ex clap the unknown man on the back before turning back to Whit and Biz. “Got married last week after three years of being together. Guess it was about time huh?”

As his words processed in my brain I felt like I wanted to hurl. He was married and had been with another woman the entire time he’d been with you? It took everything in me to push the tears back for the moment knowing I needed to get back to the meeting and that arriving with smudged makeup would probably not look very professional. Glancing down the hallway I remembered that the office was basically a square and that I could get back to the conference room by going the other way.

The entire rest of the meeting was a blur. Though I tried to keep my mind focused, I couldn’t help the feeling of betrayal that kept pushing itself toward the front of my mind. Whits and Biz never returned but it wasn’t a big deal at this point anyway. Gathering up the final version of the sponsorship contract, I finished shaking hands with the company’s executives and then quickly made my way to the emergency stairs, flying down all fifteen floors before bursting through the lobby and out to the side of the building where I finally let the tears flood forward.

I’d been back outside for maybe fifteen minutes before my phone started ringing in my purse. Ignoring it first once and then twice, I tried to pull myself together to no avail. When I finally wrapped my shaking fingers around it and pulled it out of my purse there were texts wondering where I’d disappeared to because I wasn’t in the conference room when the guys had returned.

Still struggling to breathe I simply texted back that I was outside, if there were typos, that was just too bad, before leaning back against the wall, again struggling to try and find composure. I didn’t really care what I looked like to anyone passing by, or that my makeup was a mess because none of that compared to the dirty, used feeling that came with finding out I was the other woman. That someone else had been intimate with him when he was intimate with me.

It felt like forever before the familiar voices approached and within moments of hearing them, I was being pulled into a solid chest, strong arms wrapping around my back.

“Shh….” Sounds of comfort filled my ears, as a hand rubbed my back, only pulling away when my breathing had steadied. Glancing up embarrassed, my eyes met the warm brown set belonging to Paul Bissonnette. “Leigh…what happened?”

I knew that I owed them an explanation but even thinking about saying the words made me wobble on my heels.

“Later…can…can we get out of here?” I found myself pleading, voice moist and cracking trying to get any sounds to come out at all. Confused, concerned, and completely unaware of how to handle this, the guys simply just nodded after a moment, calling an uber to take us back to the hotel. When we got there they let me head back to my room but declared that they were going to bring lunch back.

A knock on my hotel door sounded their arrival and I quickly finished wiping my smudged makeup off my face before opening the door and letting them in. Now changed back into sweats I felt more like myself but changing my clothes couldn’t change the fact that my entire life felt like a lie now. The smell of pizza filled the air as the four men made themselves comfortable on the chairs around the table and the unoccupied bed beside my own.

No one said a word at first, instead shoving pizza into their mouths. I was hungry but my mind refused to let me eat right now.

“I’m sorry…” I whispered, blinking back another round of tears. Grinnell, the youngest of the group, was, of course, the first to open his mouth.

“What the hell happened back there? When we stepped out of the room the sponsorship negotiations were going fine.”

A strangled chuckle escaped my throat at his words and I sighed softly.

“Me crying…has absolutely nothing to do with the sponsorship. The meeting was fine, the lawyer just needs to look the final version of the contract over.” That statement caused even more confused looks as they all wracked their brains trying to figure out what could possibly have upset you so much. Sinking into the mattress of the hotel bed as far as I could, I pulled my knees to my chest. I really just wanted to be left alone but I was fairly certain these guys wouldn’t leave my room until they had answers.

“That guy you were talking to in the hallway…” I trailed off waiting for acknowledgment from Whits and Biz. “That…He’s the ex.” Swallowing hard, I waited in hopes that they would put the pieces together so that I didn’t have to spell it out.

“Motherfucker.” The curse that spilled from Whits lips clearly signaled that at least he had gotten the point and when he stood up and started pacing I tugged my bottom lip between my teeth after murmuring a soft ‘yeah.’

Silence followed and when I looked up again Biz was red, stewing in anger having put it all together in his head as well. RA and Grinnell just looked confused and I sent a pleading look to Ryan to explain it to them.

“The fucker that dumped her because he ‘found someone else’ just two weeks ago comes up to us today declaring that he’s a big fan and during the conversation, one of his coworkers comes to congratulate him on the wedding. That asshole has been seeing his now wife for three years prior to them getting married last week. Shit Leigh. He’s a fucking asshole and moron.”

Hearing that he was an idiot and that I deserved better helped in a way but it didn’t take away the ache knowing that I’d been the other woman for eight months and that he’d dumped me either because he thought he’d get caught or his real girlfriend was pushing for marriage and he finally felt guilty. The knowledge that every time he had a business trip or couldn’t come see me was because he was likely with his actual girlfriend made my skin crawl and suddenly I was crying uncontrollably again.

Seeing me cry made Biz jump to his feet, still fuming.

“I’m gonna go down there and kick his ass.” Gasping, I quickly climbed off the bed to stand in front of him, my hand falling to his forearm as it flexed, his hand clenching into a fist.

“No…please just let it be…all of you. I…I don’t want him to know I know. Please, please promise you won’t go back there.” Biz’s arm twitched under my touch as he dropped the fist and I heard him sigh as he pulled me into a hug.

“Alright. I’ll let it be. But if you change your mind let me know.” Murmuring a thank you, I attempted to force a smile onto my face.

“Good. Now if all of you could get out I’d appreciate it. I’d like to be alone for a bit.”

In turn, each hugged me, insisting that I text them if I needed anything, before leaving me alone in the hotel room. As the door clicked shut I crawled back into bed, tugging the covers over myself so that I could cry myself to sleep.

Around 8 that night, a knock had come at my door before disappearing, quickly followed by a text from Biz that he’d left me a pint of ice cream and to please not let it melt all over the hallway floor.

Other than that small gesture in which I didn’t even see Biz, I kept to myself in a state of mourning, not seeing any of the boys before flying back out of Boston.

I wasn’t close to accepting what had happened or forgiving my jerk of an ex anytime in this lifetime, but thankfully I could at least remove myself from the city which broke my heart in two all over again, tearing open the freshly healed scars.

Sponsorship meeting outfit:

No social media updates for this chapter.

#paul bissonnette #paul bissonnette imagine #Arizona coyotes #arizona coyotes imagine #former player #nhl imagine #nhl imagines #hockey imagine #hockey imagines #014.1

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confessionsfromachristian · 5 years

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As a millennial myself, I’m not particularly surprised by this.

Organized religion increasingly feels hollow and insincere in a world where religious leaders play politics both within and without the church, literally everything important turns into another power struggle, and no one seems interested in discussing the important questions.

Pretty much every public religious figure treats their religious text of choice as if they, and they alone, definitely have it all figured out. And if their interpretation (which is definitely, 100% correct, mind you) happens to benefit their interests at the expense of other people, then that’s fine, because it’s religion and therefore it’s good. Televangelists are what most people see of organized religion, and frankly most televangelists seem to be interested first and foremost in what you and God can do for them.

Which isn’t what religion is supposed to be, or what it has to be, but it’s often what it looks like in the here and now.

On a personal level, organized religion is designed astonishingly well to break faithful hearts. If I didn’t have someone to pull me back into church (someone whom I care about deeply, and want to support), I probably wouldn’t ever attend church, between the heartache religion has inflicted on me on a personal level and the disgust I get watching it on an organizational level.

(Story under the cut, because it’s rambling and still fueled by a lot of pain. TW: parent death)

I grew up Catholic, and I left the Catholic church in college because, increasingly, Catholic doctrine started having more holes than substance (at least, to me and my reading of the Bible) and none of the priests I reached out to were willing to give me anything more substantial than “the Bible says so,” even when I couldn’t find where the Bible actually said anything about the matter at hand.

Add on the longstanding problems in the Catholic church (where priests’ jobs have been repeatedly placed ahead of innocent children’s physical and psychological wellbeing, and the few authority figures who try to take local action keep getting told to wait for a comprehensive plan), and, well… I realized that I was getting more stress than fulfillment, and I felt like an outsider every time I went to Mass, so I stopped going.

So I turned to Methodism, because I was raised to be a Good Christian Girl™ and not going to church just wasn’t really an option. I ended up really involved in the Methodist Church in the mid-2010’s, and particularly in the children’s program at my own small church. And that was great for a while.

My conversion to Protestantism was always a sticking point between me and my mother, and I will always regret that a difference of religion meant that many of the times I saw her in the last months of her life were filled with bitter, frustrated arguments.

The day I finished the long process of writing and defending my undergraduate thesis, I drove 3 hours to my hometown with my roommate (a friend from my pre-college years), and didn’t go home because I was too proud of my pro-same-sex-marriage thesis (this was pre-Obergefell) and too tired to put up with another argument about my Protestantism, my liberal views, and my different interpretation of the Bible from the priest at my former church. I called her, told her I was done, that I’d done well, and that I’d see her the next evening, but I was going to crash with my roommate at her parents’ house.

My mother died the next afternoon, before I could call her again. I missed my last chance to see her because I feared another fight about religion. I would give anything to take that decision back.

My father was not thrilled at my conversion, but he’s come around since my mom passed away; he supports me finding a place where I feel spiritually filled, I think more or less because he’s lonely and he’s afraid to lose me (but I won’t ever let a difference of religion come between us). He volunteers at the church I went to as a child, and, up until the events that led to me leaving my small church, he always supported our kids’ programs to.

Although my church always had problems that left me frustrated, I got a lot of fulfillment out of teaching the kids in the church. But then, in 2016, I ended up as an Annual Conference delegate, and I think that’s where things started to spiral, happy as I was to go at the time.

AC was great, and I’m a law-brained sorta person, so all that legislation was wonderful. But I also had the opportunity to see the gritty reality of a world where religion is designed to make money, not just to fill spirits. Churches that don’t make money - even if they don’t lose any - can be closed, regardless of the negative effects, if someone in power thinks that a different kind of church can be more profitable. And if people at AC express dismay over the results? They’re probably good Christians, or they wouldn’t be at AC. Call for a prayer so they’ll shut up and you can move on.

But, you know, power corrupts. So I went back to my small church to try and fix everything I could on a local level, because I while I couldn’t fix the United Methodist Church, I could fix MY church. And, as an AC delegate, I had a spot on the Church Council to help with that goal. But, as it turns out, sometimes even people on a local level really just want the church to make more money. My dream (shared with a couple other church members, admittedly, but by no means all) was to use our children’s program to reach unchurched and underserved kids and bring them to Jesus. That, unfortunately, is not a financially profitable dream. Kids cost money, and unchurched kids are usually not rich ones. And their families often don’t come for more than the children’s events - and they only come for the children’s events because it’s free babysitting.

So every step was like clawing my way out of quicksand. Getting volunteers was like pulling teeth. Getting supplies was usually a matter of “do what you can with the church budget, and donate the rest.” Without volunteers, setup became “work until you’re about to pass out, go home, sleep two hours, then come back and finish before the kids get here.” Meanwhile, programs meant to draw in rich retirees from our community (so that they could give donations while they were in the building, of course) had more volunteers than they needed, and no one questioned whether practically every single man in the church was going to stay after on Sunday to help set up.

And the pastor at the time really was great. But they were a peacekeeper; any problems that arose always had two sides, and always ended in whatever decision kept the status quo because the status quo was safe, and easy.

But then the next AC came, and my pastor retired. The pastor that replaced them had wanted to retire, but had been encouraged by the district superintendent to take on our church instead, as a “part-time full-time assignment.” And I hoped and prayed that they’d bring with them change, but I should’ve been more careful with what I wished for.

They cannot tell the truth to save their life. They would approach me about an issue that was “very important” to them. We’d talk, and come up with a solution. At Church Council, without fail, the pastor would come in and insist that, in fact, we had decided on some entirely different plan. The pastor rarely showed up at children’s ministry events, so getting volunteers got even harder (why care about VBS if the pastor doesn’t?). Slowly, but surely, the church eroded every program I had helped put in place, watering it down or trying to monetize it. So, the Book of Discipline actually mandates a YA representative have a spot on the Church Council. For a while, I and one other millennial (also an AC delegate) fulfilled that role. But the pastor felt it was more important to send the church treasurer, so he could learn to make more money for the church. And that was fine; I and the other millennial approached the pastor at the end of the year about having a YA rep on the council either way (I’d always gone as an at-large delegate; our church was small enough that we only needed 1 lay delegate), and he more or less told us that the Book of Discipline didn’t apply when it was inconvenient for the church.

That’s where I realized that the bridge I was standing on would, inevitably, crumble. But I told myself it was worth trying to fix what was wrong. So I tried. And for a short time, I thought my biggest problem was going to be ensuring that the 2019 General Conference decision didn’t change the way my church embraced its LGBT members.

This new year had brought someone I’d always viewed as a friend into a position of authority in the church. I was excited for her, and I really hoped and prayed that she could do good for the church, and that we could work together to build an inclusive church with a healthy outreach to the underserved and unchurched, things I had always thought she agreed with me about (because she’d told me to my face that she did).

But no sooner did she take the reins than she implemented the volunteer dress code. Which was a far worse thing than it sounds.

We live in Texas. The dress code? No tank tops, no shorts. Ever. Apparently, some anonymous complainer had, at some point, seen an underwear slip or a bra strap. And rather than talk to the volunteers, they wrote a policy. Side note, apparently skirts of any length were fine for women.

Goodbye VBS. I can’t in good conscience ask anyone to monitor children outside, in June, in Texas, in full-length jeans and a t-shirt.

Also, no going barefoot in the sanctuary, ever, for any reason. I was one of two people who regularly shed my shoes during kids’ events where we used the sanctuary. But rather than talk to me about it, it was better to make a policy about it that literally everyone I spoke to knew was a rebuke.

Then, in one of the brand-new children’s oversight committee meetings, they decided to dismantle the children’s program bit by bit. Children’s church? Cancelled. Apparently, we were running a renegade program without pastoral approval anyway.

VBS? “If we can’t charge for it, let’s just cancel it. Add on a few lies about how poorly it was run (by me, in part) to make it seem like a logistical problem.” The children’s director objects to a sexist-worded dress code and refuses to impose it on those under her? “Fire her, no need to look at whether there’s a problem. Make the volunteers (including me) sign the policy before you’ll let them teach the kids on Sunday. Remind them explicitly that this is a prerequisite to working with the kids, so that they don’t feel they have any choice if they want to say goodbye, because they already know that it’s over and they don’t want to blindside the kids.”

I posted about it on Facebook in my frustration and pain at watching them tear apart everything I’ve tried to do for kids that I love like they were my family. I received a termination letter in my e-mail the next day. They proceeded to send a newsletter to the entire church (except me and my family) informing the church that I had been removed as a volunteer for lying on Facebook. No goodbye for the kids. No warning. They couldn’t handle public dissent.

I hadn’t told a single lie. I dared the person who drafted the newsletter to tell me where I lied. No answer.

Of course I left. And it still hurts to walk into a church building. It still hurts to see the kids on my FB feed. I’m still friends with a few of the moms, because I still love their kids. And it will keep hurting me, because I trusted my church. And even though I still go to church now and then, I know damn well not to trust anyone inside.

#religion #christian #christianity #small church #catholic #methodist #parent death #mom death #fivethirtyeight #millennials are ruining #millennials #organized religion #church

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inuyashasnook · 5 years

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Feral - Chapter Two

I’m pretty sure that I’ll try to upload this series every Sunday. However, I can’t make the promise it’ll always be released on time due to the fact that I’m pretty much always on call for work. I absolutely need this summer job even if the schedule is pretty crappy since I’m applying to vet school in September and need a secondary vet on my application. Oh well. My s/o is also on weird night-shift schedules 7 on/ 7 off, possibly changing to 10 on/4 off out of town, and since I haven’t seen him for the last 4 months really, I want to spend some time with him. Plus, I’m the process of adopting an adorable kitten, in two Saturdays from now, so I’ll be missing in action that entire weekend since she’s 10 hours away from where I currently live.

So, I’ll try my best to stick to this schedule, but it might not always be feasible.

I also want to thank everyone for the kind words and all the positive feedback on this story so far! It really warms my heart! I originally had no idea how this story idea would turn-out, but I’m glad people enjoy it!

I’ve been editing this for over 8 hours and I’m certain it’s still covered in grammatical errors. I apologize!

»»———————————————- ♡ —————————————««  Feral: Chapter 2 // FF.net Rating: M (nothing graphic, a bit more suggestive than the last chapter)

<< Previous Chapter // Next Chapter >>

After the tub had finished filling with warm water at a level she deemed acceptable, the professor figured it was time to invite over her new housemate. She’d have to think of a clever way of luring him out because he had taken off the second he had realised what was about to happen.

He was just like a puppy - curious at first, but gone in a flash at the sudden sight of danger.

Kagome scanned the bathroom for the nearly naked figure. Nowhere in sight.

The woman grunted in displeasure at his sudden decision to finally not be in her way. That annoying dog hadn’t left her line of sight all day and he was finally choosing now for his great escape when she needed him.

She peeked around the corner of the doorframe. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the dimly light corridor.

Her next stop- the living room. She scanned every nook and cranny of the area, turning over her fuzzy blankets, checking behind the chic cream-colored leather couch. He was not here either.

The same could be said of the kitchen. The white-haired man had not chosen to hide in her barren fridge or one of her cluttered cupboards. There was still no sight of the half-demon anywhere.

How could someone that had pestered her all day disappear just as suddenly?

The last place she determined was an acceptable hiding place for a full-grown man was her bedroom, which she had purposely locked earlier that morning to prevent him from going inside. This time, she was certain she had double-checked the door on her way to fill the tub and she couldn’t blame it on her sleep-laden brain like she had done the previous night.

When she turned the knob to test the door and make sure she truly wasn’t losing her marbles, it was unlocked.

Kagome carefully opened her creaking bedroom door, examining the room under a very inquisitive eye. Her bedcovers were still in order, tucked in from when she had made her bed. None of her furniture was displaced, moved or their contents jumbled.

Where o’ where could he have run off to?

A sudden movement under the bed caught her attention. She quickly dropped on all fours and brought her face close to the ground to get to the eye-level of the man that was now hiding under her bed.

He hastily turned his head to face hers, ears pressed towards his forehead to prevent them from scraping against the bottom of the furniture piece. He had his arms tucked neatly under his chest, resembling a cat loaf. He didn’t growl at her, but his scrunched facial features and curled lips radiated displeasure.

“C’ mon! Come out from out of there and take a bath. You stink,” Kagome pleaded as she lightly tapped the floor in front of her to get him to come forward as if he was a pet dog.

The white-haired man wouldn’t budge. His golden orbs exuded determination. There was no way this human would get him to move a centimeter from where he was situated. What surprised him is when she temporarily left her crouched position and the room entirely. Kagome didn’t strike him as a woman who gave up so easily when she wanted something.

Tracking her movements around the house proved difficult because of his compromised position. He couldn’t quite tell where the padding of her footsteps was coming from.

She returned a minute or two later with something that smelled delectable.

Meat.

And she waved it right in front of his nose.

His nose twitched a few times while his eyes fixated on the source of the scent. This allowed her to know that he had realised she had a treat for him.

Kagome mentally and physically prepared herself to pull the piece of bacon away from him when she felt the need to. She had seen how fast her test subject could be.

The professor slowly backed it away at first, wiggling the piece of meat further and further away from him, making the man inch forward. The half-demon couldn’t extend a clawed hand out due to his compromised position, and this was frustrating him. A low rumbling noise resembling that of a cat growling was slowly being emitted by the tucked-in figure trapped under the bed.

Her plan was working marvelously.

As the white-haired man was nearing the edge of the bed, she bounced up from being crouched on her knees and took off running towards the bathroom as she figured she wouldn’t have long until he caught up with her.

With the bathtub in sight and her socks sliding on the varnished bathroom tiles offering her little traction, this made it difficult for her to reach her goal. It was near, but it might not be near enough.

The creature was only a few centimeters behind her. She could feel his presence behind her, causing the strands of hair at the nape of her neck to rise suddenly. The coiling of her stomach leading her to believe his aura was almost inhuman.

It wasn’t right. It was different.

Not wasting another second, she threw the few pieces of bacon she had clutched within her hand, praying that the man would not beat her in grabbing them before they fell in the tub. Kagome exhaled at once, releasing the breath she had been holding when she heard the distinct sound of a small object hitting the water.

Success!

A heartbeat later, she noticed a flash of white lunge for the pieces of bacon she had thrown in the bathtub. As his body hit the bottom of the porcelain structure ungracefully, the water splashed accordingly. Kagome’s bathroom walls were completely soaked, but hey—at least she had gotten him where she had wanted him.

He had snatched the pieces of meat floating lazily in the tub and was ravenously wolfing it down, leaving him distracted while Kagome approached him. It was too late to back away from her when he noticed she was only a few centimeters away from him, holding a piece of cloth within her hand and a strange plastic bottle in the other. He sniffed in the bottle's direction a few times when she squeezed a decent-sized drop of the bottle’s content onto the surface of the cloth. A floral scent hit his nostrils at full force. It smelled just like her.

She had never hurt him yet. Actually, it was quite the opposite so far. She had fed him and offered him a warm place to stay, especially since the air outside had gotten rather crisp as of late. She didn’t seem like the rest of the humans so far, running away at the mere sight of him.

But, he couldn’t let his guard down. Enemies always struck when their target’s guards were lowered.

The dog-eared man growled in protest and barred his jagged teeth when the professor first approached him with the piece of cloth. Their pitch slowly receded as the soft material contacted his barren skin, slowly rubbing circles. The water was lukewarm, unlike the frozen water he had been bathing in for his entire life up to this point, enhancing the comforting feeling of the bathing experience.

It felt so soft. It was almost as if he was being stroked by his mother’s delicate and caring touch. How long had it been since they took away her from him? Plus, it’s not like he’d complain about being smothered in her smell.

Too proud to admit defeat by such simple actions, the man huffed and looked away from the woman’s deep brown eyes. Kagome. Her voice emitted sounds he couldn’t understand, but she used a very reassuring tone while she continued to wash him from head to toe. He didn’t understand what she was trying to accomplish by running the wet cloth all over him, or what she was saying, but he would not protest or run away. If she would waste her time being in his presence, that would be her problem.

Kagome blushed furiously as her prediction had come true. The man did not seem to know how to wash himself. It had been surprisingly easier to get him to sit still while she actively scrubbed his back. He didn’t fight her like a cat submerged in water would, which was how she imagined him reacting.

The hardest part of the whole experience, after that of getting him in the tub, had been to add shampoo to his hair. He was very sensitive around the area where his ears protruded, causing her to have to reassure him multiple times before he allowed her to lather up the stands that surrounded that area.

His white mane was extremely matted and caked in dirt, so Kagome decided she’d have to add conditioner to his silky hair, hoping it would help her remove the knots after it had air-dried. She decided it was a bad idea to introduce a loud hair-blower right away, for fear it would startle him too much. She didn’t want to push her luck since he was already very skittish and on-guard.

The only place she had left to wash was there. There was no way she’d stoop that low and wash another man’s privates. Hell no.

Sensing the distress in the woman beside him, he detected the changes in her scent having piqued in a way he’d never smelled in a human before, along with the distinct aroma of salty sweat. He turned back to face her, his ears perked and ready, helping him assess the surrounding situation. Eyes glancing around the tile-laden room, he tried to distinguish for any source of movement that wasn’t the woman. Had a danger appeared and escaped his watchful eye?

What he felt next made the hairs on his arms and legs stand up. The woman had shoved her hand between his legs, at the level where his cloth draped around his hips. He jerked his head to look at her straight in the eyes, his irises enlarging and his face flushing to shades of a deeper and deeper red. The white-haired man’s ears jutted forward, like those of a German Shepherd puppy’s who hadn’t grown into them yet. His breathing hitched and his heartbeat thundered in his chest.

His clawed hand met hers, snatching the cloth from her slender fingers. This caused Kagome to retract her arm as quickly as she had laid it there, turning around and giving her companion the privacy he deserved. The professor also mentally noted that he seemed to be aware of the intimacy and delicacy of that. She fidgeted, her fingers and feet twitching nervously while she turned her back to the man.

“Are you done?” she asked inquisitively, unsure what kind of answer her feral friend would return, inquiring mostly to calm her own nerves.

The room had grown into an awkward silence. The noise of the water droplets falling off of the man’s figure was the only thing grounding her and preventing her from running out of shame from her own bathroom.

She peeked over her shoulder and her eyes met those of tomato coloured half-demon. He faced her for only a few seconds, returning his gaze at the bottom of the tub while sitting in a strange dog-like position, his knees raised and his hands completely submerged under water. His pair of triangular Akita ears twitched nervously.

“Ok, good. I’ll rinse you now, okay? Don’t freak out,” she continued in the softest voice she could muster, pushing herself off from her knees into a standing position.

Kagome leaned over the bathtub and turned the silver handle, allowing the water to reach a temperature that wouldn’t freeze the poor man. She proceeded by opening the drain, letting the mud-filled water her companion had been sitting in to seep out and grabbed the adjustable shower head. After testing the temperature once more, she carefully rinsed off the suds covering his body.

As she went to cover his ears as one would do when bathing a dog to prevent liquid from entering their ears, he helped her by instinctively flattening them. He didn’t pull away immediately at her touch. The professor counted this as major progress. She rinsed the remaining shampoo out of his hair and secured the shower head back to its wall mount. The next step was to add a few globs of conditioner to his animal-like hair. The white tuft adorning his head reminded her so much of her late cat Buyo’s fluffy coat.

After she completed her task at hand and every centimeter of soap was rinsed off, she turned off the shower. Kagome ambled towards the closed toilet lid, where she had deposited a large cream towel and a pile of neatly folded clothes.

It was then she sensed that she had made a terrible mistake. It was already too late, and she knew what was coming.

It hadn’t even been a few seconds before she heard and felt the droplets of water scatter.

Every surface of her bathroom now found itself drenched as the man had attempted to dry himself off of like a freshly bathed dog would. He wasn’t the only wet dog in the room - her sweatpants and sweater were now damp from all the water he had sent hurtling around the bathroom.

She glared at him, causing his ears to droop significantly. A mirror image of a puppy, uncertain about what he had done wrong.

“Next time, use this. Towel. Tao-wull,” Kagome repeated a few times as she approached him, holding the drying cloth to ease draping it around his shoulders while presenting it to him.

She delicately enveloped his body in the absorbent material, and he shuddered at her soft touch.

She calmly showed him how to dry off, as if he were a child, rubbing his shoulders and back with the towel as a mother would, leaving him to do the rest. He tried to dry the remaining areas that were damp by imitating the back-and-forth movements she had shown him, but he’d successfully dried off most of the water off his body when he shook himself off earlier.

After inspecting him for missed spots and deciding that he passed the dryness test, Kagome handed him a pair of boxer briefs and large sleeping shorts that her ex-boyfriend Hojo had left at her house. The professor also had a few oversized T-shirt she hoped would do the trick. She wasn’t sure how the overall ensemble would fit since Hojo had been shorter and much scrawnier than the man that stood a couple meters in front of her. She was also not sure how she’d get him to put them on.

She glanced over at the tall, muscular figure standing in front of her. She exchanged his towel for the briefs, handing him the smaller piece of material. He stood in front of her; the briefs clutched into a clawed fist, giving her a very confused, but curious look. His head was cocked to the side, resembling a dog hearing a noise for the first time.

Figuring it was the best way to teach him, Kagome removed her sweatpants, stepped out of them and held them in front of her in a presenting manner. She slowly grabbed their hem and slid them back on, entering one foot at a time, hoping her new companion would get the message.

“Go on, put them on instead of that dirty rag,” she pressed on, tilting her chin as if to give him permission to mimic her.

The white-haired man still stared at her in puzzlement before glancing at the pair of boxers in his hands. Without a second more of hesitation, he wiggled his rear out of the piece of cloth he had been wearing for god knows how long, allowing them to drop on them the floor. He then slid the pair of boxers on, with difficulty, piercing a few holes in them in his attempts to tug them onto his muscular thighs as Kagome had done with her pants.

Kagome tried not to stare at the spectacle unfolding in front of her.

The half-demon was now wearing very tight boxer briefs, which she considered an improvement over the loose and torn up rag. It would have to do for now since she didn’t have any pants or shirts that would fit him to perfection. The professor was certain that regardless of the T-shirt she’d try to lend him, it would end up looking like a crop top on her very tall guest. Which they, in fact, did.

“Let’s go to bed,” she muttered to herself, yawning loudly.

That had been enough excitement for a day she decided.

»»———————————————- ♡ —————————————«« 

As Kagome opened the door to her bedroom and her companion tailed behind her, she was still trying to figure out the sleeping arrangements. She wasn’t certain about leaving him on his own in the living room again, or even the guest bedroom, but having a man sleeping in the same room as her gave her a bad feeling.

Perhaps if she helped socialize him more to teach him right from wrong, he could get “promoted” and get his own bedroom in her guest room. She didn’t have faith in him just yet though, that was for certain. Not after yesterday’s or today’s events, anyway.

Kagome sauntered towards her closet to pull out an oversized duvet and an extra futon which she dragged towards the opposing corner of her room. Glancing back at the white-haired man, she saw him lazily splayed across her bed.

Kagome wasn’t having any of it. Although his intentions might not have been bad, the psychology professor did not find this acceptable. She’d have to teach him the rules of her household one way or another if he wanted to keep staying with her. Sharing a bed was just a no-no.

Sighing and ignoring him for now, she set up the guest bed in a manner that would still allow her to keep an eye on him would he be noisy or destructive, but far enough she considered acceptable in her eyes.

“Look, you have to sleep here okay? My bed is off limits,” she told him while patting the down-filled duvet, emitting a soft thumping noise.

He didn’t look at her directly, but one of his fluffy ears rotated in her direction. She knew he had heard her, but made the conscious decision to ignore her completely. The nerve!

Kagome crossed her arms, sighed audibly and shifted her weight to one hip to stress her displeasure. The man would have to listen to her whether or not he wanted to.

Picking up on her annoyance because of her scent spiking and her audible grunts, he gave up looking at the brightly illustrated book he was contemplating. His amber eyes met hers, but he refused to budge, giving her a stern but confused look since he wasn’t understanding what she wanted of him this time.

He was comfortably laying on a soft surface, relaxing and she wanted him to do something. Again.

Why couldn’t this human just let him do as he pleased? He could destroy her entire living area in two simple swipes if he wanted to. Why didn’t she realise this?

Figuring that he wouldn’t come down without her physically dragging him away, she walked towards the bed and remarked that he had one of her bedside books opened up and tucked under his left arm. There was no way he could read, was there?

She concluded that he was probably just looking at the images. She extended an arm out and snatched the book to see which one he had picked.

Demons of Japan? What an interesting choice.

Her country had such a rich and interesting mythology. There were also so many terms to designate demons, gods and deities. She chuckled to herself while imagining the strange man lying atop her as an Inugami. He reminded her so much of the ones in the stories that her mother used to read her as a child.

Her companion wasn’t exactly a spirit though, reminding her more of a dog demon. A stupid demon dog that tore into her kitchen the previous day.

Inuyasha. Maybe that’s what she should call him since he didn’t seem to have a name. She decided that he had to have one since she couldn’t keep referring to him as the stranger or the man. Kagome had no idea at what point the white-haired man had been ostracized from the human population and if he had even received a name at birth.

“Inuyasha, that’s enough. Go to bed,” she commanded, pointing toward the freshly prepared futon that lay a few meters in front of the pair.

His ears perked up, and he faced her with a surprised expression for a brief second. It didn’t take long before he scowled at her and rose.

It seemed like the puny human wanted him to move to a location further away in the room. At least she had provided him with a place to stay, so he’d refrain from angering her too much, although seeing her furious entertained him quite a bit. Kagome had fed him and gave him these uncomfortable pieces of fabric to wear which kept him warm, not that half-demons ever got cold though, of course. He figured he’d have to show some sign of respect since this human had treated him better than any of them ever had before.

Plus, she had this stupid smell. She smelled so freaking good and he couldn’t understand why she did either. God damned dog nose.

He growled and pinned back his ears as he heaved his body and limbs off of her bed, unhurriedly making his way to the futon she had prepared for him. Ungracefully, he dropped onto the pile of blankets and turned to face away from Kagome’s bed.

Good. Then the professor wouldn’t have to fall asleep with Inuyasha, who was now cohabiting her room, staring at her while she fell asleep.

Kagome shut off her bedside lamp and crawled under her own down-filled comforter. She breathed a sigh of relief when she felt that comforting and pleasant weight of a blanket wrapping around her petite figure. Curling and uncurling her toes a few times while stretching her limbs allowed her to relax and gradually lull her into a deep slumber.

»»———————————————- ♡ —————————————«« 

This morning would be a nerve-wracking one.

She’d have to leave Inuyasha unattended while she went shopping for clothes to dress him. There was no way she’d bring him out in public with him dressed in either just a simple cloth or clothes that were several sizes too small. While they nicely accentuated his muscles, she imagined that they mustn’t be too enjoyable to wear all day.

She figured as much as her new roommate had torn off all of his clothes throughout the night. He was sprawled across the blankets snoring softly while in his birthday suit.

Of course, he wouldn’t make things easy for her.

He seemed to be aware that she had awoken as his ears jotted in her direction again, twitching slightly as she ruffled her own blanket and slip out of the warmth her bed previously enveloped her with.

Kagome left the room to use the restroom, hearing an extra pair of footsteps behind her. Entering the bathroom, she closed the door on a pair of golden eyes and a perplexed expression. When she finished her business and opened the wooden door once more, they greeted her with the same curious face. He hadn’t budged.

Figuring this would be as good of a time as ever, she seized his arm and gently tugged him towards the entrance of the bathroom. They both made their way towards the white porcelain toilet.

“Inuyasha, this is a toilet. Toi-le-tte. This is where you use the restroom,” she explained slowly.

Teaching him how to knock would come later she figured. For now, the basics.

Kagome pulled up the toilette seat to demonstrate the first important step.

“Toi,” he decidedly managed to stutter while showing Kagome exactly how it was supposed to be used as he recognized the smell associated with the piece of furniture.

Catching her completely off guard and rendering her flushed from head to toe, she turned away in a flash, covering her eyes as she spun her heels to face away from him. She didn’t want to get caught peeping at a man. He, on the other hand, seemed unfazed by answering to nature’s call in front of her.

Relax Kagome, he’s more of a child than anything. He’s just completing his body’s natural biological functions. Nothing more.

There was no way Inuyasha was a normal case of a feral child. He was simply too aware of her expectations and sentiments to fit the normal profile of one. The man was making progress too fast, rendering him an incredible test subject. Despite what was unfolding in her bathroom, her discovery thrilled her.

Kagome waited a few more seconds until everything was quiet, when she deemed it safe, turning around to see him flashing her a large toothy grin, proud of himself for catching on so quickly. He was opening up to her much more quickly than she’d ever imagined possible for someone who had been kept distant from society for such a long period of time. She’d definitely have to note all this after she fed him some breakfast.

“Good job,” she cooed as would a mother to her child when they correctly used their potty chair for the first time. “Now you just have to wash your hands. Like this.”

She twisted the left knob adorning a white countertop sink and rinsed her hands in slow, exaggerated movements. Kagome then pushed some soap into her hands and leisurely rubbed the soap between each of her fingers. Inuyasha’s golden eyes focused on her hands, his attention not peeling away for a second. He tracked every one of her movements rhythmically as would a hawk ready to dig its talons into a mouse.

The woman finished up by rinsing off the suds that had formed between her digits. She dried all the remaining water off with the help of a baby pink hand towel a few centimeters away from the tap.

“Now you try,” she gestured at the sink.

Unceremoniously, he completed the task at hand with near perfection when it came to washing his hands. He had, however, not accomplished this feat without leaving a lot of water marks on her freshly washed mirror from splashing as the man seemed to enjoy playing in the warm liquid more than anything.

After cleaning the newly made mess up and finishing the necessary preparations, the pair had an uneventful breakfast. She didn’t manage to make him eat with the help of utensils, but his eating pace had slowed down slightly, not acting as if he was on the verge of starvation anymore.

Closing up her freshly typed report with the many observations she had mentally noted earlier that morning, she prepared herself to go shopping for some clothes. Not knowing Inuyasha’s size, she determined that she’d most likely have to estimate it, hoping that she’d at least be able to bring home a few items that properly fit him.

She hoped at the very least as she watched a butt-naked man lay across the carpet of her living room, scratching his back with a clawed hand, once again glued to the moving images of her television.

#feral #feral:chapter 2 #inuyasha #inukag #feral children #iki's fanfiction #iki #inuyasha fanfiction #fanfiction #fanfic

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captnbarnesrogers · 6 years

Text

9,445 Miles From You - Your First Day

Pairing/Characters: Bartender!Harry Styles x Waitress!Reader, a shit load of OCs Warnings: nothin too bad in this chapter; swearing, anxiety Chapter Summary: You fought your anxiety and now you’ve got a job. You meet your co-workers and managers but most importantly, you meet Harry Styles, who is one of a kind. Word Count: 3.1k+ A/N: Mostly some background stuff but Harry makes an appearance :)

9MFY Masterlist

February 2018

At this point in time, you weren’t exactly sure what was happening with your life. You were eighteen and jobless and so far, not even McDonald’s wanted you. You were depressed. You had no money of your own and financially, your parents couldn’t provide everything for you without sacrificing everything else that needed to be done. You needed to be independent. You wanted to be independent so that you could, even just a little bit, take a bit of weight off of their shoulders.

Another day, another failed interview. You huffed with frustration and threw your folder into the nearest bin. You tried to stay positive, but this was the seventh interview in a row where they had found a “more suitable candidate” – excluding all the previous interviews within the last three years. You gave them all of your hours, even the hours you didn’t have and couldn’t give but still, they had advised you to put down “more” hours. A more suitable candidate? More hours? Bullshit. There were only so many hours in a day and you had put down ‘24 hours’ in your resume and yet, they wanted more hours. You were angry with the world. Why couldn’t they just give you a job? You were hard working. You had initiative. No experience due to the fact that no other place wanted to hire you but nonetheless, you were the person who wanted to learn anything and everything in anyway you possibly could. You had a smile for days even if you didn’t want it for fucksake! You sighed and eventually, when you got home, cried into your pillow.

“I just don’t get it, I’m giving them everything I’ve got, even everything I don’t.” You cleansed your face as your best friend was on loud speaker.

“I know, Y/N, but like your mom said, if it’s for you then you’ll get but obviously these places don’t have a spot for you, it’s not you, Y/N, they’re dickheads.” You sighed after grabbing your phone off of the marble top bathroom bench. There was a moment of silence due to the fact that Anastasia was working on an assessment for one of her classes – most probably due the next day due to the fact that she kept complaining about how much she wanted to die.

“You know…” You began.

“What?”

“Paige told me about this group on Facebook and I joined it a couple of days ago.” You pulled up the group and took a screencap, sending it to Anastasia.

“Hospitality Job Hunters? Are you sure this is legit?”

“Yeah,” You shrugged as if she was actually right in front of you, “I know some people who got jobs from there, I guess people just post pictures of themselves and a description of what they’re about and a future employer responds.” Anastasia hums in response, looking through the photos you’d sent her.

“So, why not do it?”

“Well, first of all have to seen my face? My body? Compare all of this to the people who post on there.” She scoffs.

“Okay, first of all, shut the fuck up, you’re fine, and second of all, you’re posting to get a job, it’s not Tinder!”

“It’s like Tinder for jobs though.” She sighed through the phone, the taps of the keyboard loud enough for you to hear through the phone.

“I don’t know, Y/N, I reckon, just do it, you never know if you don’t try.” You mumbled a ‘whatever’ through the phone and another moment of silence crashed the entire conversation, “Anyway, I gotta get this done, text me in the morning?”

“Will do, ya lil bitch, have fun with that.” She laughs.

“I will, don’t worry.”

“If another person rejects me, I’ll stick my head between a door and slam it on myself.”

“You’ll be fine! Just relax and rip it off, like a band aid.” You let out a deep breath, “I love you, okay?”

“Love you too.” And with that, the phone call ended. You laid in your bed staring at the wall. You just needed to sleep this off, you can decide in the morning.

When you woke up, you still hadn’t decided and on top of that, you barely slept, making you cranky and ridiculously sleepy on the train. When you arrived to your class, you sat down next to your friends who greeted you warmly as they always did. Jean noticed your intense stare at your phone; three photos – one happy which showed your outgoing personality as much a still photo could, one smiling before seeing a musical, and one that looked like a headshot.

“Nice photos.” Jean compliments. Kadia looks over and agrees with Jean with a smile.

“What are they for?” Kadia asks.

“I’m kind of looking for a job on that Facebook group.” Jean nods. Shortly after, your other friends, Kiley, Bea, and Megan walk in and sit at the table just behind you. Kiley moves her blond hair away from her face.

“Just post them, Y/N.” She suggests, her sweet and shy voice comes out. The other nod.

“This is your last option, if you don’t get it, you’ll just have to wait until we graduate.” Bea interjects, “And that’s two years away.” And with that small push from your friends, you write a small description of your personality and attach the three photos into the post, pressing ‘post’ as quickly as you could. You set your phone down as Jean rubs your back in support and after fifteen minutes, you phone vibrates.

‘Jacob Fisher commented on you post on Hospitality Job Hunters’ It had said. You squeezed Jean’s arm and she looked at you with concern.

“Someone commented.” You whispered.

“Check it.” And so, you did. You gasped after you read it, “What?!”

“’Hey, Y/N! Send your resume through to my email and leave your number as well, I’ll call you today, so we can set up an interview.’” You read out to her quietly. She shook you by the shoulders and gave you a warm hug.

“This is it, Y/N, this is your job.” And you could feel it too, this was the one. This was your job, you believed. Eventually, Jacob called you with an interview waiting the next day. So far, everything was going great. You felt like you could breathe even just for a moment.

The next day, you’d met up with Jacob at a tall building, obviously the bar you were to hopefully going to work at. A small but very visually appealing sign hung above the entrance, ‘Heavenly Gin’, blinking bright and very pink. You sat by the front side of the bar where you were greeted by a blonde-haired girl with bright blue eyes, her smile was warm and welcome.

“Hi! How can I help you?” Just in front of you was a man, he too had blonde hair but his eyes were green and almost hazel, not a bad sight at all. You blushed softly at the sight of him when he smiled at you.

“I’m actually here to see Jacob Fisher.” You smiled at the girl.

“I’ll get him for you.” She held her hand out for you to shake. With nervous and clampy hands, you shook it, “I’m Regina, by the way.”

“Y/N.” As you waited, the blonde-haired boy began to make conversation.

“Hi, Y/N.” He greeted with a smile. Everyone, so far, seemed to be chirpy and you felt right in place, “I’m Roger.” He too held his hand out for you to shake which you did. He continued to polish the cutlery in front of him and separated them into different trays, “So, how’d you find us?”

“I, uh, posted on this Facebook group.”

“Ah.” He nodded, “Most of our bartenders here did the same.”

“Really? I feel less weird now.” You chuckled.

“Oh yeah? I’ve got another one for you, one of our bartenders actually ‘applied’, if you will, when he was drunk out of his mind during a night out and now, he’d been working here for two years.” It made you laugh. The though of a drunk guy having a very drunk conversation with Roger about how he needed a job, “On a scale of one to ‘I feel so out of place’, how weird do you feel now?”

“After that? I’m at a two.” He chuckled at your reply, “How long have you worked here?” You continued.

“I was hired just before the renovations, so around seven or eight months.”

“So, long?” You questioned, and he nodded.

“Long enough.” Footsteps were heard behind you.

“Aha! There she is, hi, Y/N, I’m Jacob!” Jacob was just a bit shorter than Roger. He wore a colourful Hawaiian shirt with some khakis, his brown hair was slicked back and his beard was quite thick. You jumped off of the bar stool and shook his hand, “Just come through here.” He took you behind the bar through a dining area after waving goodbye to Roger and Regina. He asked you about your likes and dislikes and why you wanted to work there. You chatted heavily about the Winter Olympics which you bullshitted a little bit due to your lack of knowledge on most of the sports but in the end, Jacob smiled and commended you for your quite outgoing personality. He had let you know that there was another waitress he needed to interview but so far, everything was going good for you and if he hadn’t taken another interviewee, he would’ve hired you on the spot but still, things were looking up. You thanked him for his time and said your last goodbyes to Regina and Roger before exiting the venue. You took and deep breath and prayed to whatever God there was up in the heavens and down below hell to bless you with this job and these seemingly good people.

By the week after, sure enough, Jacob had emailed you a list of uniform preferences and where to be when.

Friday, February 23rd, 2018

The smell of brewed beer and oak flooring filled your nose as the clock struck 3:30 PM. You wore a black top and blue jeans with black and white sneakers – regulatory uniform for staff at the venue. You were once again greeted by Roger who introduced you to the Venue Manager, Tyrone, and the Bar Manager, Josh. Tyrone looked down at you, not in a euphemistic way but in the literal sense. The man was at most, to you, like six foot five. He greeted you with what you sensed was an absolutely fake smile. He was unsure of you, almost like he didn’t trust you and your lack of experience and skills. You were used to the stare due to the fact that most places you had applied for, the interviewers had the same belittling stare. Tyrone showed you around the venue and the staff area before giving you a name tag and sending you upstairs into the high ground bar. Josh greeted you after you pushed your way through a sea of people.

“You feeling okay?” You nodded, “I can tell you’re overwhelmed and if you feel anxious at all throughout the night, just let me, Gianna,” He gestured to a small woman, with curly hair sticking out of her bun, “or Jane,” She was tall with blonde hair who smiled sillily at you, trying to make you feel welcome, “know, okay?” You nodded again with a much realer smile. Josh then introduced you to a fellow waiter, Joe, who wore glasses and had his long hair tied into a bun. He smiled sweetly at you and shook your hand. Josh left you with Joe who showed you every basic thing you needed to know; collect plates, glasses, light the candles, and of course, take some orders. He explained that at night, the bar turns into a club and that we needed to keep the place clean which meant checking bathrooms and cleaning up broken glass. To be quite frank, you didn’t know that waitressing meant doing all of this stuff, though, you weren’t complaining.

“So yeah, we’re pretty much the back bone of the bar, without us, these people would go to shits.” He laughed. Joe was sweet and made himself feel welcome and approachable. This was dangerous, knowing yourself, this would eventually get messy. He was sweet, handsome, funny, and approachable which was honestly a recipe for disaster for someone looking for love and affection. Someone who was inexperience with the world like you. He interrupted your thoughts, “By the way, you’re not the only new kid, see that guy over there?” He pointed over to another guy who looked almost exactly like him; long hair tucked away in a bun and glasses. You nodded, “That’s Harry, he’d new as well, maybe you could both bond over that.” He chuckled.

As night fell, Joe asked you to light up some candles and start spreading them out on each table. You subtly observed Harry from afar. He was handsome, incredibly handsome. When the light shone on his eyes, they were emerald green. His smile was contagious, evident in the fact that the girls he was serving were all smiley and giggly which also meant that he was probably a good conversationalist. You hadn’t noticed yourself staring until Harry quite loudly placed a glass into the dishwashing rack, making you clear your throat and look away.

“Girls seem a li’l crazy tonigh’, aye?” He began.

“Yeah, crazy.” You reply, still lighting up the candles.

“’M Harry.” He smiles.

“I know,” You cringed at yourself, “I mean, I don’t know but now I do know since you told me- Jesus, sorry, I’m- I’m Y/N, sorry to ramble, I guess I’m just nervous.”

“First day too?” You nodded, “I was like tha’ when I first started workin’ at a bar bu’ don’ worry, shit gets easier, don’ stress, yeah?” At this point, you were trying not to. And just like Joe had said, the bar had turned into a club type scene. People were starting to stumble in from their pre-drinks and began to order drinks from the Heavenly Gin bar. They started gathering on the dancefloor as early 2000s and late 1990s music blasted from the speakers. This was all fun and laughter to you since you’d never actually been clubbing or the such. You danced and sang along but still worked hard which you were commended by Josh when he laughed as he walked by. You continued collecting glasses that were empty and even collected one that was sitting in the same spot for almost four hours, untouched. It was almost empty, a sip left, and it would’ve been completely drained and so, you took it upon yourself to collect the glass, knowing that it was a rule to collect such glasses just in case it’d been spiked. The music was getting better and better which only made you dance more, making Harry laugh and join in. A few moments later, while putting some glasses away, you heard a commotion at the bar, making you turn your head. A dishevelled man was arguing with Harry.

“Who the fuck took my glass!?” He pointed at you and began to make his way behind the bar, “It was you, wasn’t it!?” The slur in his voice made it evident that he was, in fact, drunk.

“I- I, I just- I-it was s-sitting there, almost empty, I-” Harry watched as you stammered and stumbled on your words. He inched closer trying to keep him away. The man kept coming closer which only made Harry grow more protective over you. He held his arm out in front of you to keep you away from the intoxicated patron.

“I will talk t’her, mate, jus’ step outta th’bar.” The man growled in frustration.

“Next time, don’t take someone’s-“

“Mate, jus’ calm down! I said I’ll talk t’her, I’ll get yeh anotha drink, jus’ step out, yeh don’ need t’yell at her, I’s no’ tha’ big of a deal.” You stood behind Harry with the tea towel, that once hung off of your apron, covering your face. The man walked away with a huff, “Hey, yeh okay, love?” You couldn’t breathe, it was like the world suddenly crumbled around you, “Okay, okay, yeh alrigh’, Y/N, I’s no’ yeh fault, I’s yeh job, lovie.” He tapped the other bartender and let them know that he was off to take care of you. He took your hand and led you to the side door which led to the staff entrance. He rubbed your back and held you in his arms, hushing your sobs, telling you that you were going to be okay. After a while, Harry left you to calm down, Josh telling him the he urgently needed to be back at the bar. He left you with sad and sorry eyes, completely regretful and not wanting you to be left alone with your thoughts. You guessed that he knew what this feeling was like. When you had calmed down, you returned to your work and tried to cast away the anxious thoughts of being fired after your first day and to be faced with, once again, with the intoxicated patron who had been the source of your panic attack. Harry checked up on you frequently, rubbing your back comfortingly whilst speaking to you. It was later, after work, when you found out that Harry had spoken to the security guards and asked them to eject the man which made your heart warm. After work, you sat in the locker rooms by your locker and took a deep breath. Harry walked in and gave you a soft smile.

“How’s m’girl?” He asked, taking his jacket, bag, and red and white bobbled beanie out of his locker.

“I’m okay now.”

“That’s good.” He nodded. You weren’t really good at expressing gratitude and making the words ‘thank you’ leave your lips felt almost foreign in the sense that no one had really done this for you before. You cleared your throat and stood in the middle of the room.

“Harry?” He hummed in response, “I- I just wanted to say thank you for what you did.”

“Y/N, I’s alrigh’ I promise.”

“I know but you didn’t have to stick up for me like that but you did it anyway.” He walked over to you and engulfed you in a hug.

“I wasn’t gonna let some drunk guy yell at yeh fo’ summat so trivial, I’d never let anyone yell at yeh if I can help it.” He pulled away from you and looked at you, “A’ve always got yeh back yeah? From now on, yeh got me.” You smiled and hugged him tightly once again.

“Okay.”

“Okay!” He pulled away from you and put his backpack on, “Now, how ‘bout we get a drink downstairs an’ I’ll take yeh t’th’ station, how’s ‘at sound?”

“Sounds good, Harry.”

MASTERLIST

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eleanor-writes-stuff · 6 years

Text

oh baby, you could devastate me [one-shot]

moodboard courtesy of @reylocalligraphy

Rey works for the Admissions & Recruitment department at the University of Naboo because she loves her alma mater and never wants to leave. Kylo works for A&R because he's the disgraced former president of a for-profit university, and his mom told him to. When these two are paired up, things go... surprisingly well, actually.

Until they start sleeping together, that is.

For Day 5 - Alternate Universe of @reyloveweek.

Below please find nearly 10k words’ worth of a uni recruiters!AU. (Is that a thing? I’ve made it a thing. I apologize.) Also, my first M-rated fic ever.

Also available on AO3.

The summer after high school, Rey makes a two-hour drive to the nearest big city in order to attend a U of Naboo reception. It’s taken her all year to save up enough money for the trip, and she’s pretty sure it won’t lead to anything – this is the University of Naboo they’re talking about, and she only applied because her guidance counselor managed to get the application fee waived – but this might be the closest she’ll ever get to her dream school, and the forums tell her the food at these receptions are great, so off she goes.

She sits through an hour-long presentation, tries to pace herself at the buffet, and nearly smashes a plate full of tiny appetizers into the chest of one Amilyn Holdo, the provost herself.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry-” Rey stammers as she takes three steps backwards and sets her plate down on the nearest table. Half of the appetizers fell to the ground when she made a last-minute adjustment to avoid Holdo, and her cheeks burn with shame as two staff members rush forward to deal with the mess. She’s about to crouch down and help them when Holdo wraps one well-manicured hand around her elbow and gently pulls her away.

“It’s okay, Rey. I should’ve watched where I was going, really,” the woman says with a smile, and Rey can only blink at her dumbly while she processes that sentence.

“You… you know who I am?”

“Of course I do! Your essay has been making the rounds at the university, you know,” Holdo tells her almost proudly, referring to the essay Rey hates herself for writing, the one that’s all about the sob story she never tells anyone, the one her guidance counsellor had assured her would get the attention of the scholarship department. “We’re really looking forward to having you join us this fall. And on behalf of the university, I’d like to be the first to congratulate you – in person – on winning the scholarship. It was a close call – we always get such strong applicants – but I fully believe you deserve it.”

And that’s how Rey learns that she’s won a life-changing full ride to the University of Naboo, courtesy of the Padmé Amidala Education Fund.

The next two months are a whirlwind of selecting her courses and uprooting her entire life and applying for part-time job after part-time job, but it’s all worth it – the past two months of planning and the past year of waiting and the past eighteen years of hard work – the second Rey sets foot on campus.

For the first time in her life, she feels at home.

A week before graduation, Rey gets an email that sends her sprinting back home.

“Finn!” she calls out to the empty apartment the second she gets home. “Finn! I got the job!”

Her roommate comes running out of his room and charges at her, picks her up in a huge bear hug and allows himself five seconds of excited, high-pitched squealing. “Me too! I just got the email!”

They scream in joy and dance around the apartment and pop open a bottle of sparkling juice that’s been gathering dust since their housewarming party three years ago.

A month later Rey and Finn show up for their first day of work at the Admissions and Recruitment department, a job that’ll allow them to stay in the safe and familiar bubble that is U of Naboo indefinitely even though they’ve just graduated.

Poe Dameron, head of the department and Finn’s longtime crush, takes it upon himself to personally show them around an office they’re more than familiar with and introduce them to staff members they’ve already known for years, thanks to their work as student ambassadors. “Best job ever,” Finn gushes in a low whisper when Poe reminds them that their work as recruiters will include a lot of travel.

The first few weeks go remarkably well. They’re paired up with various members of the department to learn the ins and outs of the job, and their first major assignment – a briefing for that fall’s incoming students – goes off without a hitch.

By October, Poe decides they’re ready to travel.

“Rey, you and Jessika will be heading to Coruscant,” Poe tells her, and she bites on her lip to hide her smile when Finn lightly elbows her and excitedly mouths Coruscant!!! at her. “You’ll be hitting up a lot of high schools and a few education fairs, but I’m sure you’ll be able to handle it. And Jessika is one of our most experienced staff members, so you’re in good hands.”

“Finn,” their boss says next, and there’s no mistaking the apologetic look on his face. “This was totally random, we needed someone to pair him up with and he’s burned through half of the department already-”

“Oh, no,” Finn says, holding his hands up as he takes a step backwards. “No no no, please don’t say-”

“You’ll be heading to Canto Bight with Ren.”

Rey watches with equal measures of sympathy and amusement as Finn stomps his foot. “Poe,” he whines. “You know he hates me.”

“I’m beginning to think he hates everyone,” Poe mutters under his breath before he starts comforting Finn and assuring him it won’t be that bad.

It is that bad, Rey figures when Finn sends her four disgruntled texts within the first hour of his trip with Ren. Canto Bight is a city best described as an excess of extravagance, and Rey knows that Finn will instantly fall in love with the glitz and glam of the place. It’s a shame that he has to share the experience with Kylo Ren, the surliest member of their department and a notoriously difficult person to work with.

On their own flight to Coruscant, Jessika fills her in on Ren’s checkered past, the highlight of which has to be his involvement with a for-profit uni that turned out to be a scam. “They shut the whole place down, even threw the founder in jail, I think,” Jessica whispers over a dinner of surprisingly tolerable airplane food. “The only reason Ren didn’t go down with him is because they found out he really didn’t know anything about the scam. It was all Snoke and Armitage Hux, who was CFO of the parent company. Ren cooperated with the investigation and testified against them both, and when it was all over Leia Organa dragged him back home and insisted that he apply for a job here.”

“Leia Organa?” Rey asks in confusion, wondering why the President of the university would involve herself in something like this.

“Oh, I forgot,” Jessika sets down her cutlery and turns to Rey. “Mrs. Organa’s his mom. They try to keep it a secret, so that people don’t think she got him the job. Though really, if nepotism were involved you’d think Mrs. Organa could’ve done better than a lowly recruiter position in Admissions and Recruitment. Not that I don’t love our jobs, but… you know. The guy was president. And she’s the president. It’s obvious she wasn’t involved in this beyond making him apply.”

“Right,” she mutters absently as Jessika goes back to her food, her mind reeling from this new information. They don’t talk about Ren again for the rest of the flight, and when Rey lands she busies herself with catching up on her messages while Jessika takes advantage of the duty-free shops.

Worst job ever, Finn’s latest text reads. Pray you never get paired up with Kylo Ren.

Rey manages to go a full year before Poe comes to her with that all-too-familiar look of preemptive apology.

“Fuck,” she mutters as Poe hands her a file, unease pooling in her stomach. A year is plenty of time to hear all of the department’s worst horror stories about Ren, and she’s been dreading this moment ever since Finn’s first run-in with the man.

“I’m sorry, Rey,” Poe says, and she knows he means it but still. “He’s worked with literally everyone else, and not a single one of them is willing to do it again.”

That reminder really doesn’t help. “You’re making it worse,” Rey tells him as she flips the file open to find nearly a year’s worth of scheduled trips. “What the hell, Poe? You’re making me work with him permanently?”

“No! God, no!” he exclaims, taking the file from Rey. “This is Ren’s schedule, not yours. You’ll be heading to Coruscant with him,” Poe points out the details for the Coruscant trip, which seems to be more or less the same as the one she took with Jess a year ago. “And we’ll see how it goes from there.”

“What do you mean, we’ll see how it goes from there?” Rey asks warily.

Poe sets the file down on her desk and sighs. “Look, I’ve been watching you work for a while now and I think you and Kylo could really get along. Not as friends or anything, but I think if anyone in this office can work with him, it’s you. You don’t let others get you down, so I know he’s not going to depress you or anything, but you also don’t put up with bullshit, so he won’t be able to walk all over you.”

In some strange way, all of that is probably a compliment since it’s coming from her boss. But pretty words aren’t going to distract Rey from the matter at hand. “So this is a trial run for some kind of, what, permanent partnership?”

“Only if you’re okay with it,” Poe assures her. “I promise, Rey, if you really hate him then we’ll just go back to making him work with rotating partners. But I really think this could work, if you’d just give it a chance.”

Poe gives her those puppy dog eyes Finn is such a sucker for, and she caves with a heavy sigh. “Fine. One trip. And then we’ll see how it goes.”

Badly, Rey predicts as Poe thanks her. It can only go badly.

They decide to meet at the airport after a string of brief, to-the-point emails discussing their upcoming assignment. Ren is seldom in the office – god knows what he gets up to, but it’s not like anyone’s going to complain about not having him around – and the few times she’s spotted him skulking around, Rey has gone out of her way to avoid interacting with him in person.

Which means that when she walks up to him at the airport on a chilly October morning and introduces herself, it’s the very first time she hears his voice – his normal speaking voice, that is. Everyone in the office has overheard his occasional heated debate with Poe behind closed doors.

“So you’re the girl I’ve heard so much about,” Kylo muses as they shake hands, and the combination of his thoughtful tone and his low voice nearly knocks Rey off her feet. Isn’t this the guy who routinely yells at Poe about mismanaged funds and unnecessary trips? Isn’t this the guy who greets everyone with a scowl, then proceeds to ignore them as much as possible?

Flabbergasted, Rey turns to her default setting when meeting strangers: suspicious. “What do you mean?” she asks warily, pulling her hand out of Kylo’s when she realizes they’re sort of just…holding hands.

It’s not unpleasant.

Kylo shrugs; the motion looks out of place on his broad shoulders, too casual for a man who routinely stalks around the office and leaves a cloud of gloom and doom behind him. “Everyone in A&R loves you. Even Poe gushes about you all the fucking time. It’s like you’re God’s gift to this whole damn department.”

Poe does not gush – not unless it’s about Finn, anyway – but Rey’s too busy taking offense at that last muttered bit to contradict him on his claim. “I just care about my job,” she crosses her arms and narrows her eyes at Kylo, “unlike some people.”

He stares at her for a beat, something incomprehensible clouding his eyes while he scrutinizes her. Finally Kylo sighs, shakes his head, and throws a mumbled “whatever” over his shoulder as he turns his back on her and proceeds towards the check-in counter.

Rey feels oddly guilty as she scurries off to catch up to him, and she spends the rest of their time in the airport dissecting their brief conversation to figure out whether she was needlessly rude.

But this is Kylo Ren – the bane of their department’s existence, the asshole who insisted on referring to Finn by his employee ID. No matter how gentle or teasing or whatever his tone had been, none of what he’d said to her could possibly have been anything than a snide insult… right?

It’s a five-hour flight to Coruscant, which is all the way on the other side of the country. As soon as they’re in the air and the seatbelt signs are turned off, Rey reaches for her laptop and starts working on her slides for their presentation.

“This is a waste of time,” Kylo mutters as he flips through their itinerary. “Coruscant U is our biggest rival, and they’ve beaten us in the rankings for two years now. Anyone there with the grades and money to get into a top five uni has probably already applied and accepted an offer to go to CU.”

Rey bites her tongue, counts to ten, and plasters on some semblance of an encouraging smile – her best customer service smile, Finn calls it – before she turns to her downer of a colleague. “CU might have beaten us in pre-med and law, but we’re still globally #1 when it comes to the arts and engineering. We’ve also got more reasonable tuition, more famous faculty, and the biggest university library on this continent.”

Kylo shakes his head at her. “Sure,” he scoffs derisively, but his pinched features have given way to something almost like a smile. “Kids will definitely pick a university based on library sizes.”

“I did,” Rey shrugs as she goes back to tinkering with the size and color of her text. From the corner of her eye she sees Kylo still turned towards her, still watching her. There’s an awareness around his presence, of his presence, that she’s never really felt with anyone else. But then again, she’s never spent a full year hearing about and dreading and avoiding anyone else, either. That’s all there is to it, she tells herself.

“Did you?” Kylo asks after a while. “Pick U of N because of the library, I mean.”

“Among other things,” she says, as if U of N hadn’t become her dream school the day Luke Skywalker joined their faculty, as if the deciding factor had been anything other than a full scholarship. These are things Finn and Poe and Jessika know about her, things they earned with respect and friendship and common decency.

Kylo Ren hasn’t earned any of that, but he does earn some brownie points when halfway through the flight he turns to her and says, “That would’ve worked on me. Your pitch from earlier, about our arts program and our tuition and the library. It was a good pitch. I see why the department loves you.”

It’s the longest string of sentences she’s ever heard him put together, heated debates with Poe included. When she lands, a text from Finn awaits: how’s it going? I know he’s a monster but please don’t kill him, he’s sorta childhood friends with Poe and that would be awkward.

Rey sneaks a look at Kylo, standing by the baggage carousel after offering to wait for her bag if she’d get them both some coffee in return. When he catches her looking, he offers her the tiniest of smiles.

She smiles back and shoots off a reply to Finn. Surprisingly well, actually.

When Rey comes into work with a smile on her face a week later, Poe follows her to her cubicle with baited breath.

“So…” he produces a to-go cup of her favorite coffee and hands the blatant bribe to her nonchalantly. “How’d it go?”

She takes her time sipping her coffee, setting up her computer, pulling her planner out of her bag. When her boss starts wringing his hands in obvious unease, Rey tilts her head and allows her hair to fall forward and hide the smile tugging on her lips at Poe’s expense.

“Rey,” Poe finally snaps when she pulls up a blank document and pretends she’s going to start typing up her report right there and then.

“Oh, right,” she turns to him with an innocent smile, lets it widen into a grin when Poe huffs at her. “It went okay. You can go ahead and partner us up for the rest of the year.”

Poe blinks at her.

Rey stares back.

“Oh my god, you mean it?” he exclaims loudly, his voice drawing the attention of her cubicle mates. Poe clears his throat and pulls an empty chair up to her table. “Rey, you’re serious? You’ll do this for me?”

She rolls her eyes at him. “Not everything is about you, Poe. But yes, your days of Kylo roulette are over. No more blindly selecting his next victim and getting all the blame for it.”

Poe draws even more attention when he lunges forward and picks her up off her chair, drawing a surprised yelp from Rey when he pulls her into a hug. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

The rest of the office casts them puzzled looks that slowly morph into expressions of sheer relief when Poe whispers the news into Jessika’s ear, who quickly spreads it like wildfire.

For the next week, Rey is treated like a benevolent goddess, sent from the heavens above to take pity on Kylo’s poor, tormented colleagues. Every single day there’s someone waiting to treat her to lunch (and a horror story or two about their time with Kylo), and no one steals any of her snacks from the breakroom as a silent gesture of appreciation.

The first few times she comes back from an assignment with Kylo, she’s painfully aware of everyone’s eyes on her, of everyone holding their breath and waiting for her to declare that she’s changed her mind and he can be someone else’s problem because she’s done.

It never happens, and slowly life at the office settles into a new normal – a ‘normal’ which now includes Kylo smiling at her whenever they’re both at the office.

The rumors shouldn’t come as a surprise, but they do anyway.

She remains blissfully unaware of the office’s favorite gossip topic for the first four months of their partnership. And then–

“Jessika thinks you and Ren are sleeping with each other,” Finn declares at lunch one day, prompting Rey to choke on her sandwich while Jess punches Finn in the arm.

“No, I don’t!” she cries defensively while Rey struggles to catch her breath in between bouts of coughing. “It’s just something Rose said about them. Right, Rose?”

Rose, who’d been in the midst of offering Rey a glass of water, freezes. “What? No, no, it was definitely not me. Snap, didn’t you say something about Ren the other day?”

Poor Snap stares at them with his best deer-in-headlights look and shakes so hard his fork clatters to the ground. “It’s just. He smiles. At you. A lot.”

“So what?” Rey rasps, her voice still scratchy from the coughing. She clears her throat a few times before adding, “I smile at all of you a lot. It just means we’re friends.”

“Yeah, buuut…” Jessika trails off with a shrug as everyone else shares a knowing look.

“He doesn’t really smile at anyone else,” Rose points out gently. “And the way he looks at you…” she sighs, looking dangerously close to swooning.

“Look, I hate to admit it,” Finn says quietly as he leans forward, blocking the others out from their conversation. “But Ren actually acts like a person around you. That’s got to count for something, right?”

“Oh god,” Rey groans, letting her head fall forward into her hands. “Not you too, Finn.”

Finn gets the message and forcefully changes the topic to his budding relationship with Poe – because he really is the best friend a girl could ask for – while Rey composes herself. She joins the conversation a few minutes later, and shoves all of these ridiculous ideas about her relationship with Kylo to the back of her mind.

The thing is… Kylo does smile at her an awful lot, doesn’t he? She’s never even seen him smile at Poe, and they’ve apparently been friends since they were in diapers. And there have been times, on the plane first thing in the morning or at the bar after a long day or even just on the way to their separate rooms, when they accidentally fall asleep on each other’s shoulders or their knees bump or their hands brush – times when Rey wonders, what if?

So two days later, when they’re having drinks together at a hotel bar in Corellia after a long day of briefing sessions, Rey finds herself saying, “The entire department thinks we’re hooking up.”

Kylo sets down his whiskey, a local variety he appears to begrudgingly appreciate. All of a sudden Rey finds herself wondering why she didn’t just ask about that instead of blurting out the first thought that came to mind. “And why is that?” he asks, turning around in his bar stool to face her.

“Just, you know,” Rey falters, swipes at the salt on the rim of her glass and absentmindedly licks at her finger out of habit. Somewhere between licking the salt off her finger and finding the courage to face Kylo, her brain finally catches up to her actions and points out, in a rather panicky and loud voice, just how obscene that gesture could be in the wrong situation – a situation like this one, where you’re discussing why your colleagues think you’re sleeping together.

In the dim lighting of the bar, she thinks she spots a smirk playing on his lips.

“Because you’re not an asshole to me,” she blurts out, shoving her margarita glass aside so forcefully the contents nearly slosh over the rim. “They think that just because we get along it has to mean something. You know, because you’re legendarily awful to everyone else.”

“Is that all?” Kylo raises one skeptical brow, because of course the man has perfected the single-raised-brow look. Rey suspects that in any other situation, it might be an effective manner in which to convey disappointment while still giving off an air of superiority, somehow. But in this case, it comes across as a challenge – familiar ground, then, in this odd partnership of theirs.

“There was something about the way you look at me,” Rey adds almost casually as she moves closer, turns to mimic Kylo’s position and shifts her feet to his footrest so that her legs are bracketed by his. He leans in, presses the length of his legs up against hers.

“How do I look at you, Rey?”

He’s warm where they touch and his voice makes her toes curl and still, still there’s that familiar glint of a challenge in his eyes even as they flit down to her lips for the briefest of moments before they move back to her eyes.

“You tell me,” Rey hears herself saying as she moves to the edge of her seat, close enough for her knees to graze the inside of Kylo’s thighs.

“Rey,” he murmurs, eyes searching hers as one hand reaches out to curve around her hip, warm and heavy and not enough. “Are we doing this?”

She backs away, hops off her stool and watches a flicker of disappointment flash through Kylo’s eyes before he sets his features into a polite mask. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pushed-”

“Kylo,” she can’t help but smile at him, at the way he perks up like an overeager puppy when she curls a hand around his arm and makes her intentions known. “Settle the tab. I’ll be upstairs.”

Then, for good measure, Rey leans in close enough for her lips to brush his ear and whispers, “Don’t keep me waiting.”

Kylo goes back to his own room after – they’ve still got some packing to do – and they don’t talk about it on the flight home the next morning. They talk, instead, about the whiskey he both hates and loves, about the father he both hates and loves. Somehow, it feels more intimate than what they’d shared the night before.

Two days later they find themselves in Jakku, and Rey finds herself drowning in memories when she’d rather be drowning in him. She sticks close to him as they make their way to their rooms at the one respectable inn the town has to offer, and as soon as Kylo opens his door she’s pushing him past the threshold and into bed.

After, while Rey stares out the window at the oppressive, suffocating sight of the never-ending wasteland she once called home, Kylo takes it upon himself to do some research on this one-horse town they’ve somehow found themselves in.

“Why are we even here?” he wonders out loud after going through some unhelpful data. Jakku is a tiny town, with an even tinier population. As far as prospective students go, they only ever get a handful of applicants at most each year. It makes no sense whatsoever for the university to have channeled any money or manpower here at all, let alone two of their best recruiters. “I know I said Coruscant was a waste of money, but this, this really makes no sense at all. Why did the department even–”

“It wasn’t the department,” Rey says quietly, her hunched back still turned to him, her unfocused eyes still staring out at the desert. “Necessity is the mother of all invention, right? That’s what they say, at least,” she shrugs, twisting slightly so that half of her face is visible to him, so that all of him is visible to her.

Kylo watches her with confusion on his face but patience in his eyes. Somehow he knows to set down his tablet, to crawl across the bed and move closer to her.

“Necessity is a fact of life here in Jakku,” she tells him, pressing her cheek to the sun-warmed glass as Kylo comes to sit right at the edge of the bed, just two feet away from the ratty old armchair she’s curled up in. “It’s all we ever know, from the day we’re left in this desert until the day we leave it. You’d be surprised what kind of innovation that can lead to.”

“You’re from here,” Kylo realizes out loud, his voice uncharacteristically gentle and hushed.

“I grew up here,” Rey murmurs. “I thought that all the things I did, all the things Jakku kids grow up knowing how to do, were just ordinary skills – or less than that, even, because none of us learned from proper schools or fancy textbooks or futuristic labs. And then I went to Naboo and I realized that none of this is normal, none of this is even close to average.”

Finally she tears her eyes away from the window, turns back to Kylo and his understanding eyes. “There are kids here who are just like me. Kids who’ve had to make do with scraps all their lives, kids who are more creative and intelligent and inventive than you could ever believe. They might not make it to Naboo– not everyone can be as lucky, even if they deserve to be – but I just want them to know that someone believes in their potential, that they have potential.”

She reaches for his hand, and Kylo tugs at her until Rey turns her back on the desert and moves back to him. “Let’s get back to work, then,” he says even as he pulls her into his lap and wraps his arms around her waist. “I want this to be our best presentation ever. They deserve that much.”

Rey smiles, wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him slow and lazy. “You’re not all bad, Kylo Ren,” she declares with a grin.

“Call me Ben,” he murmurs against her lips, pulls her back in and holds her close.

They don’t talk about it.

They don’t talk about it when they fall asleep in each other’s arms, or when they wake up and head to the airport together. They don’t talk about it when they run into each other at the office, or around campus. They don’t talk at all outside of work, in fact, and even at work they only ever discuss upcoming assignments.

But it works, somehow. Rey knows it can’t last, knows Kylo – call me Ben, he’d told her, but somehow she knows that only applies to very specific situations, the ones they don’t talk about – probably never meant for it to. But for now, as long as they’re traveling every week, as long as they can disappear into a world of their own every now and then, it works.

Two months after that first night in Corellia, they find themselves in Kylo’s birthplace of Hanna City, Chandrila. He’s tense the entire flight there, grumpy as hell when they land, and he outright ignores anyone who recognizes him.

Their presentation at the local high school is… difficult, especially when one of the teachers turns out to have been a classmate of Kylo’s back in the day and keeps trying to rope him into some reminiscing. After, when they’ve dumped everything back in their rooms and Kylo suggests hitting up the hotel bar, Rey comes up with a different idea.

“There’s a beach here, isn’t there? And the sea?” she asks, going through tourist attraction pamphlets on his coffee table while Kylo changes out of his work clothes.

“Rey,” he pokes his head out from around the bathroom, “I’m not exactly in the mood for sightseeing.”

She neatly rearranges the pamphlets, stands up and crosses the room to lean against the bathroom doorway while he finger-combs his hair. “Please, Ben? I’ve never been to the beach.”

Kylo catches her eye in the mirror, sighs and turns around to face her. “Only because you’ve never been,” he tells her and then adds, with an unexpected tinge of hometown pride, “and because Hanna City has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world.”

The beach closest to their hotel, the one his parents used to bring him to as a toddler, truly is beautiful. It’s too bad that Rey is too busy making out with Kylo and laughing at his muttered complaints about sand to pay much attention to it.

“Can’t do anything in this fucking sand,” he mumbles against her neck as if she hadn’t grown up in a desert, and then he picks her up and carries her away from the beach, Rey shrieking with laughter and poking fun at him the entire time.

Together they travel the country and even some neighboring nations, and between it all they don’t even trade so much as a text message while they’re home. For their grand finale that summer, before the freshmen come pouring in and it’s all hands on deck back home to welcome the students, Poe sends them off on a months-long international trip.

Not going home between trips means no sudden silences, no prolonged absences. Rey loves every minute of it, loves having Ben as her one constant while they jet from one foreign place to another and deliver their well-rehearsed presentations and speeches.

And Ben – well, Ben seems to like it just as much, because by the time they reach their final stop, he has no qualms about wrapping an arm around her waist as they walk into their hotel.

Maz’s Castle is said to be the finest hotel in Takodana, and any questions Rey had about why the department had shelled out the money to put them up here are laid to rest the second a tiny old woman heaves herself up on the counter.

“Ben Solo! You don’t write, you don’t call, and when you finally do visit you bring along some pretty young thing instead of that handsome uncle of yours?”

“Hi, Maz,” Ben smiles as they reach the counter, and he lets go of Rey to hug the tiny woman who’s apparently the Maz Kanata. “Uncle Chewie says hi, of course. He misses you.” Even with her perched on the counter, Ben still has to bend down to reach her. It’s adorable, Rey thinks. She’s adorable, all tiny and wizened with glasses that look more like goggles and lenses that give her the illusion of goldfish eyes.

Those goldfish eyes stop being as adorable when they’re focused on her. “So, this is the girl you’ve chosen to bring home to your aunt Maz,” she says to Ben as she studies Rey from head to toe. It’s unnerving, it’s as bad as all of her nightmares about running into Leia Organa, and it takes what feels like an eternity but is probably less than a minute.

Maz nods decisively, holds out her hand and yanks Rey into a surprise hug when she reaches for a handshake. “Welcome, dear. We’re so happy to have you here.”

“Um, thank you,” Rey says, smiling despite her confusion. She catches Ben’s eye over Maz’s shoulder and does her best to convey how lost she is, but Ben simply shrugs and mouths just go with it, grinning all the while.

It makes him look boyish and happy and young. Young, happy, boyish Ben Solo does things to her, things she should not be contemplating while an ancient woman is hugging her.

“Okay!” Maz scoots backwards and hops off the counter, climbs up a stepstool and adjusts her glasses as she types something into the computer. “Knew you were coming, so I’ve prepared a special surprise for you,” she tells Ben conspiratorially. “Our best cabin by the lake! It’s a beautiful lake, and there’s a lovely view of the forest too, you’ll just love it,” the little old lady assures Rey with a wink.

“Maz, you didn’t have to–” Ben begins to protest.

“Of course I didn’t have to, darling, I don’t have to do anything and haven’t for a very long time now,” she sniffs almost imperiously. “But I wanted to, and so I did. Now off you go, I have better things to do around here than squabble with you Solos. Lovely meeting you, dear,” Maz tells her, and with one last nod at Ben she motions for a young woman to replace her before disappearing into a door at the end of the check-in counter.

“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Solo. It says here that you’ll be staying in one of our lovely lake cabins for the next–”

Rey is painfully aware of how rude she’s being, but she can’t stop herself from turning to Ben to whisper, “Mr. and Mrs. Solo?”

The smile he gives her is pinched. “Maz’s idea of a joke,” Ben tells her flatly, and they don’t speak of it again as the woman finishes her introductory speech and hands them their keys.

There’s barely time to appreciate the cabin before they’re rushing to get showered and changed for the evening’s reception, and they take turns using the hair dryer while making last-minute changes to their Welcome to life in Naboo! presentation.

The rest of the day is a blur of coordinating with hotel staff and welcoming attendees and mingling with alumni, and by the end of the night they’re both so drained from traveling and interacting and presenting that they end up just falling into bed and dozing off almost immediately.

Rey dreams in disorientating snippets that night, jump cut after jump cut with barely anything in between, just a never-ending series of hotels and smiling receptionists and bookings made under the name Mr. and Mrs. Solo.

She wakes to the sound of birdsong, the gentle warmth of diffused sunlight, and a hand between her thighs.

“What time is it?” she asks in lieu of a good morning, moving closer to Ben without opening her eyes.

“Nine,” he murmurs against her bare skin, presses a kiss to her shoulder as his free hand snakes underneath her to cup her breast. “Still three hours before we have to be at the airport. Plenty of time to spare.”

Rey blinks as the world slowly comes into focus, smiles to herself at the sight of Ben’s eager hands moving underneath her tank top and pushing her underwear aside. She lets him work in silence for a while, helps him along by reaching down to take over when he finally slips two fingers inside her.

Ben nuzzles into her neck while they move in tandem, a well-practiced team at this point when it comes to preparing her for him. He speeds up when her breath starts coming out in sharp little gasps, slows down when she finally melts into him and turns around to blindly place an appreciative kiss somewhere on his upper arm. Rey knocks his hand aside while she regains her breath, and he takes the opportunity to properly divest the both of them of what little clothing they’d worn to sleep the night before.

“Like this?” Ben asks when Rey starts squirming against him, her back to his front, and waits for her to hum a small mm-hmm before he lines them up and pushes into her as if they have all the time in the world.

She tries very hard not to think of the fact that this is their last trip together for the foreseeable future, that this might be the last time she’ll ever get to share this with Ben. But it’s soft and slow and he’s whispering sweet nothings into her hair, and all Rey can think of is Mr. and Mrs. Solo and the fact that Ben has never once shown even the slightest interest in meeting up with her back home.

“You okay?” Ben murmurs, and Rey realizes that at some point she’s stopped moving with him.

“Perfect,” she claims, turns around to give him a smile and a chaste peck before she reaches for the hand around her hip and moves it to press down on her lower abdomen, right over the bulge of him inside her.

Ben moans at the feeling, his breath warm and ticklish on the sensitive skin right under her ear. Rey presses as close to him as humanly possible, clutches at his arm and begs him to go harder, bites back the desperate plea bubbling up her throat to make me forget, please, Ben, make me forget this is the last time make me forget this isn’t forever.

“Rey–” Ben chokes out her name, snakes his hand down to where she needs him. “So close, sweetheart.”

Their time together is drawing to a close, and Rey realizes with a burst of panic that she’s been so worried about it ending that she hasn’t taken the time to fully appreciate it, to feel everything and commit all of it to memory. She closes her eyes and makes a conscious effort to clear her mind of everything but this, everything but Ben and her and how they feel together.

“Me too,” she whispers as Ben’s movements start growing erratic, his lips dotting little kisses along her neck as he rubs tight, frantic circles into her clit.

He comes first, muffles a loud Rey by sinking his teeth into her shoulder. The intimacy and bittersweetness of it all pushes her over the edge not long after, and Rey twists uncomfortably in Ben’s arms to bury her face in his neck as she falls apart.

The sun has climbed higher now, past the canopy of trees. When Rey finally gives in to her aching muscles and turns back, she glimpses a thousand dazzling pinpricks of light dancing on the surface of the lake in between the gaps of their curtains.

It’s beautiful, and Rey mourns briefly for the fact that they didn’t even have the time to appreciate the view during their short stay.

She wants to voice her thoughts, wants Ben to hold her tight and promise her they’ll come back here someday and see everything together. But her phone goes off before she can come to a decision, an alarm set for 9:30 lighting up her screen, and suddenly it’s time to shower and pack and grab something to eat.

In the cab, on the way to the airport, Ben wraps an arm around her and looks at her with a tiny little furrow between his brows. “Are you okay? You’ve been a bit quiet this morning.”

“I’m great,” Rey assures him with a plastered-on smile, the one she hasn’t given him in months. It doesn’t set him at ease. “Just, you know, thinking about home and the office and real life. It’s going to be weird, adjusting to everything again.”

Ben’s arm slips from her waist and he retreats to his side of the backseat. “Yeah,” he mutters, looking out the window. “Weird.”

She knows that today’s the end, knows that it’s time to slowly start the adjustment process, but a part of her had hoped that Ben would at least play along until they land in Theed. Instead he pulls away from her at the first mention of their lives back home, and for the rest of the journey they barely talk aside from the occasional inane comment about last night’s reception.

At the baggage carousel, Ben wordlessly picks up their bags and hands Rey her carry-on and her suitcase before he shoulders his weekend bag and checks to make sure that his common black luggage is actually his.

“All right,” he says once he’s satisfied with his inspection, straightens up and runs a hand through his hair, looks at her without ever really meeting her eyes. “See you around, Rey.”

And with that, he walks off.

Finn comes over later that night with their usual celebratory Chinese to welcome her home. The minute he catches sight of her red-rimmed eyes, he turns around and walks back the way he came. “I’m going to kill that bastard,” he seethes, and Rey rushes out of her apartment barefoot and clad only in an oversized tee-shirt to stop him.

“No, Finn, come back. It’s not his fault,” she says weakly, pulls her best friend back into the safety of her home and locks the door behind her.

“You come home after two months with Kylo ‘Asshole’ Ren only for me to find you crying your heart out and somehow you expect me to believe it’s not his fault?” Finn demands, albeit gently.

“It really isn’t,” Rey insists, swiping at her eyes while she attempts to focus on unpacking the food he’s brought. “It’s just… it’s me. This one’s on me. God, Finn,” she chokes on a sob, slams down a pair of disposable chopsticks so hard they snap in half. “How could I have been so stupid?”

Finn rushes forward and pries the chopsticks out of her hands, inspects her for splinters before he guides her to the couch. “Hey. Talk to me, peanut. What’s going on here?”

The thing is, Rey’s been keeping it together – somewhat. Sure, her heart had broken at the sight of Kylo walking away from her at the airport. And fine, so maybe she had cried a bit while unpacking her bags only to be greeted with little memories of their time together. But for the most part, she’s been fine – up until Finn turns those big, worried eyes on her, calls her peanut, and pulls her into a familiar, comforting hug.

She clutches at his shirt and muffles a wail against his chest, and it’s like she’s opened the bloody floodgates because no matter how hard she tries, she can’t stop crying for even one fucking minute to give Finn a much-needed explanation.

Finn, to his credit, just holds her tight and runs a soothing hand up and down her back until she calms down.

“I’m gonna get you some water,” he says when Rey finally pulls back, diplomatically giving her a private moment to wipe her tears away and blow her nose.

Rey takes the glass from him with a shaky smile, sips at it while she tries to gather her thoughts and Finn turns the TV on but keeps it on mute. Finally, she settles into her nest of pillows on the far side of the couch and regards her best friend – her first friend, her oldest friend. He might well be the only person on Earth she’ll ever be able to admit this to, and so she does.

“I love him, Finn,” Rey confesses in a whisper, and it’s as much a revelation to herself as it is to Finn. Somehow, she hadn’t known the full extent of her feelings right up until the very second those words decided to escape her.

“I love Kylo Ren, and he doesn’t feel anything for me.”

Rey has spent her whole life studying the mechanics of addiction, trying to figure out how her parents could’ve been so far gone as to abandon their own child in the name of their endless quest for alcohol. She’ll never fully understand them, but she likes to think that at least this way she’ll never be like them.

But the part of Rey that misses him, the part of her that craves him the way her parents must’ve craved their next drink… that part of her isn’t something she’s proud of, but it isn’t something she can deny either.

So when Poe hands her a proper assignment sandwiched between a dozen on-campus student engagement activities, Rey jumps at the chance to see him again, to be near him again, even if it’ll only break her heart even more. All she wants is another hit, no matter the cost.

She wakes up bright and early on the first day of the Naboo Education Fair, held on the first week of October every year. The U of N booth is basically the fair’s crowning jewel, and every year the department sends two senior staff members to supervise the student ambassadors on their first day to make sure everything’s properly set up.

It’s her first time being assigned to the fair, but Rey barely even notices. She gets in the car an hour before she needs to leave, drops by the nearest café to pick up drinks for the both of them. There’s a joke around the office that Kylo is definitely the kind of person to drink coffee as black and bitter as his soul, but none of them have seen Ben fumbling with his coffee first thing in the morning, scooping in lump after lump of sugar and creamer until the drink is practically a dessert. It takes Rey a good five minutes to modify the drink to his liking, and as she walks out of the café she takes pity on the poor, horrified barista.

At ten to eight, Rey strolls into the office fully prepared to give Kylo a polite smile along with his cup of coffee, to pretend that he didn’t break her heart.

Instead, she finds herself face to face with Jessika Pava.

“Jess! What are you doing here?” Rey asks, her eyes discreetly scanning the rest of the office for Kylo even as understanding dawns upon her.

“Isn’t this exciting? Poe just called me yesterday, said Ren has something else to do and asked me to cover for him. I said yes soon as I heard what it was for and who I’d be partnered with. We haven’t worked together in ages! Oh, is that for me?” Jess asks, reaching for the cup of coffee.

“Um, I mean, you can have it. But be careful, it’s–”

Rey scrunches up her nose as Jess chokes down the coffee. “Holy mother of diabetes, what is this?” she asks, holding the cup at arm’s length. “It’s worse than one of those Starbucks frappes.”

“It was for Ren,” Rey mutters, taking the cup from Jess as they make their way outside.

“Was it a prank? Rey, that’s brilliant!” Jess laughs as they make their way to the sidewalk. Rey should’ve noticed Jess’ car parked out front, she realizes as she dumps the contents of the cup into a patch of grass before throwing the cup itself into the trash.

They decide to take Jess’ car – Rey puts up significantly less of a fight than she normally would have, but Jess doesn’t notice – and she uses the rest of the hour-long trip to the convention center to snap herself out of it and dive into work.

She ends up volunteering to supervise the fair for the rest of the week, but she needn’t have bothered – Finn tells her Ren doesn’t show up at the office the entire week, and Poe explains that he’s been borrowed by the President’s office for a bit since they’re short-staffed this semester.

Rey doesn’t buy it for one second, but it’s not like her opinion matters to him anyway. She throws herself into work, takes charge of every assignment that’s up for grabs, and somehow manages to make it all the way to Christmas before she sees Kylo again.

Well, see isn’t exactly the right term for it.

She catches a glimpse of him at the office holiday party, towering a full head above everyone else, and her heart starts beating so fast it physically hurts. Kylo turns around, definitely sees her too, because before she can gather up the nerve to say hi his head is bobbing away in the opposite direction.

He avoids her for the entire night, as if to really drive home the point that whatever they had is in the past now. Rey gets the message loud and clear, but that doesn’t stop her heart from aching for him anyway.

God, she misses him so much, and he can’t even be bothered to say the briefest of hellos to her. How are they ever going to work together again?

Even worse – what if they never work together again?

January rolls around and with it comes a new travel schedule.

To Rey’s surprise, she finds she’s been partnered up with Kylo again. To her total and utter lack of surprise, he goes ahead and boards the plane separately, greets her with a curt nod, and doesn’t say anything to her for the entirety of their flight to Canto Bight.

Canto Bight is too loud, too bright, with too rich kids ready to throw an obscene amount of money at Naboo as long as it means getting into a top five school and getting their parents off their backs. Rey hates every second of it – hates how her cheeks start to hurt from her fake smile, hates how some of the prospective students are clearly paying more attention to her body than her slides, hates how Kylo doesn’t say a single word to her all evening.

He comes to stand by her side as she thanks the attendees and wishes them a good night, and every single fiber of her being reacts to his physical proximity in a way that makes her want to tear her heart out and throw it into the ocean.

“So,” one of the rude douchebags from earlier saunters up to her, gives her a clear once-over as he picks her business card up from the table, “guess I’ve got your number now.”

“My work number, yes,” Rey says, feeling her smile start to crack as the rest of the boys join their friend. From the looks on their faces, she’s in for even more insufferable bullshit.

“So, Rey – I can call you Rey, right? –, how old are you, anyway?” a second boy asks, his friends snickering behind him as they jostle each other in a playful manner. “Because I think older chicks are pretty hot,” he adds with a smirk before Rey can so much as roll her eyes, and the rest of his entourage howls with laughter and drawn-out calls of ayyy.

An arm snakes its way around her waist, and the boys seem to take a collective step backward as Kylo moves forward. “So, how did you gentlemen enjoy the presentation tonight? I trust you found my wife’s slides very informative, since you don’t appear to have any actual questions about the university.”

Wife, he says so casually, as if it doesn’t hurt like a dozen knives through her heart, as if she hasn’t been haunted by Mr. and Mrs. Solo for the last five months.

The kids back off, stammer something about the presentation and yeah it was super helpful really looking forward to uni okay good night bye, and suddenly she finds herself all alone in a darkened hall with no one but Kylo, his arm still tightly wrapped around her waist.

Rey shakes him off and storms over to the table to collect what’s left of their course catalogues and pamphlets. “I could’ve handled that myself,” she mutters when Kylo’s shadow falls over the table.

“Well, it was taking you a while, so I thought I’d speed things up,” he bites back, stuffing their business cards and pens and sign-up sheets into his messenger bag.

“By pretending we’re married?” Rey confronts him, and makes the mistake of looking up just as he steps into her personal space.

Kylo grits his teeth, his jaw tense as he avoids her eyes. “If I had known that the mere thought is so abhorrent to you, I would’ve kept it to myself. My apologies.”

He snatches the pile of catalogues from her hands and storms off, and something about the sight of his retreating back just breaks her.

“Don’t you dare!” Rey calls out, picks her bag up from the floor and abandons the rest of their stuff to stalk after him. “You’re not walking away from me again, not after saying something like that.”

“Like what, Rey?” Kylo turns on her when she catches up to him at the bank of elevators, and for all the emotions she’s seen on his face, for all the tales she’s heard of his anger issues, the sight of him angry at her nearly knocks her off her feet. “Like the truth?”

“What do you even–” The doors open with a soft chime, and she follows him into the elevator. “What truth, Kylo? Because all I heard was you assuming that you know how I feel about you or marriage or anything! How the hell would you know the first thing about me after avoiding me for five months?”

Kylo stabs the button for their floor and backs himself up against the opposite wall, putting as much space between them as possible in this tiny metal box. “What was I supposed to do, Rey? Hang around the office and wait to see you walk in and out every day the way you walked in and out of my life? Did you really think we could go back to being whatever the fuck we used to be after you made it clear that our time together meant nothing to you?”

“Oh my god,” Rey yells as they storm off the elevator, “what even the fuck are you talking about right now? I made it clear? You’re the one who said see you around and turned your back on me!”

“Because you dumped me!” Kylo growls as he swipes his keycard into the slot, and Rey is so taken aback that she doesn’t move in time to follow him before he shuts the door in her face.

He thinks she dumped him. Ben thinks she dumped him, and he’s been… nursing his wounds for the past five months? Avoiding her because he was hurt?

“Ben!” She knocks on the door, starts all-out pounding her fists against it when he fails to open up. “Ben, let me in. Let me in right now, you impossible, unbelievable, idiot of a–”

She doesn’t notice the tears streaming down her face until he opens the door and stares at her in horror. “You’re crying. Why are you crying?”

“I’m crying because you’re an idiot and you broke my heart,” Rey says bluntly as she shoulders her way past him and stomps into the room.

“Rey–” Ben closes the door behind him, leans against it as he watches her pace the length of his room.

“How the hell did I dump you?” she demands, still pacing. “Explain. Now.”

Ben walks towards her almost warily, each step slow and deliberate and cautious. “That morning in Takodana… you were so quiet, so off. And then you said all that stuff about getting used to normal life again, and I just… I knew – I thought – you meant life before us. Life without me.”

Months. For months they’ve both been in pain because of a stupid misunderstanding. “Ben,” she sobs, brings a hand up to her mouth to muffle her cries.

“I waited,” he tells her, moving close enough to sit on the edge of the bed. “For you to call, to visit… hell, I would’ve been happy with a text, Rey.”

Rey stares at him while the gears in her brain grind to a sudden halt, and then she’s throwing herself at him and rolling them towards the center of the bed. “I missed you,” she gasps, taking his face in her hands, “so much,” tears obscure her vision as she leans down to kiss him, “every day.”

Ben brings a hand up to wipe her tears away. “Then why didn’t you–”

“I thought you didn’t want anything more! I thought I was being stupid and sentimental and–”

He stops her right there, pulls her down for a kiss and rolls them over until he’s all she can see, all she can feel. “I want more. I want everything with you, Rey.”

“Good,” Rey smiles, chokes on a laugh as she threads her fingers through his hair, “because I love you, and I want everything with you too.”

Ben laughs, leans down to press their foreheads together. “God, we’re such idiots. And I love you too, sweetheart.”

. . .

In the morning, Rey scrunches up her nose in delight when Ben greets her with an Eskimo kiss and burrows into his side.

“Now what?” she asks with a smile as Ben laces their fingers together.

He sits up straight, puts enough distance between them to look her in the eye. “We could get married. I mean, when in Canto Bight…”

Rey stares at him in wide-eyed shock until she spies a familiar gleam in his eyes. “You’re joking,” she calls him out, half-relieved and half-wary.

“You did say everything,” Ben reminds her very seriously, manages to keep the act up for a whole ten seconds before he gives in to the grin tugging at his lips. “But yes, I’m joking. For now, anyway.”

Rey tugs him down for a kiss. “Let’s revisit that in a couple of years,” she suggests.

(They do.)

Gods above and below, I thought this fic would never end! Look, at this point most of you probably know I always end up running over my self-imposed word limit. That's normal, I've gotten used to it. But this was a projected seven thousand words at most, and now it's nearly ten. It's ridiculous, even by my standards.

Also this is my first M-rated fic ever. Yeah, you read that right: after more than a decade of tame fics, I sinned for this ship. And you guys. Mainly you guys. Feedback would be great, but also maybe let's never talk about this again while I go burn in the eternal flames of my shame?

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this. As usual, thank you for reading and I'd love to hear from you guys so don't hesitate to like/reblog/comment/etc.

#reylo week 2018 #reyloveweek #reylo #rey/kylo ren #rey/ben solo #kylo ren x rey #ben solo x rey #modern au #star wars #rey #kylo ren #ben solo #fic: oh baby you could devastate me #fic archive #my fics

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