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tsukishimas-shortcake · 3 years

Text

Relationship Headcanons

↦ Character(s): Hakkai Shiba x fem!reader

↦ Rating/Warning: No rating though there are some light mentions of abuse (if you have read the manga you are aware of what I am talking about, I’m not going very deep into it though it literally just mentions it), mentions of anxiety attacks (no detail though), fluff, not proof read

↦ Word count: 1.8k (longer than planned, sections are bolded)

↦ Your Momo’s Receipt: Hello~ I’m post yet another TR headcanon and this was requested by the lovely @strawbub I hope this doesn’t disappoint, it did get longer than planned but I enjoyed writing it. I'll prob do a part two that's more of a scenario based on your first date or something since I didn't go into it here. Please note: for those of you who don’t know my blog is currently under construction, meaning I will not be updating my masterlist for the time being.

So how did you guys meet, well mostly because of Yuzuha,

One day in like elementary you’re walking home and you see this super pretty middle school girl just like yelling at this small group of guys

The guys end up running off just because they don’t wanna deal with her or the attention she's drawn to them

Behind her was a boy, taller than her but obviously younger. You didn’t assume they knew eachother though.

The boy and yuzuha began walking in opposite directions because one was going home while the other was going to pick up something like groceries

You’re so entranced by how she stood up to them yet she’s a girl who was far smaller and you end up catching up to her, almost stepping on her heels

You end up absent mindedly following her into the grocery store and eventually she just freezes, turns, and stare directly at you

Your eyes widen since you must’ve been staring and she just goes “may I ask why you’re following me?” And you explain how cool she was earlier. She invites you over for dinner (esp since her older brother won’t be home) and figured it’d be good for Hakkai to meet someone his age

You end up going over but Hakkai didn’t come down to eat so you never actually got to meet him, though from then on you would see Yuzuha every so often, visit every other weekend or so

But no matter how often you came over the next few months, you never once met hakkai,

That was until you both reached the end of your middle school education and we’re about to begin high school

You had gone over because you were going to borrow an old work book from Yuzuha, and when you go to knock on the door the door opens before your closed fist could hit it, instead hitting a firm chest

You blush and quickly apologize but the person in front of you doesn’t move at all, doesn’t say anything and almost looks like they drifted into space with their dead stare

You assume this is yuzuha’s older brother because you’ve also never met him and you immediately turn to walk away but Yuzuha calls over hakkai’s shoulder

“Y/N-Chan! You just got here where are you going?” This was def not yuzuha’s older brother. There’s no way she’d be that happy with him around; oh my god. Realization hit, the guy who you hit (though it was more of a tap) was hakkai.

The hakkai you had only caught a glimpse of in yuzuha’s photos, never talked to or actually seen in person despite going to the same school and living in the same neighborhood

He must hate you. That’s why he avoids you. That’s def why - is what you think

Yuzuha drags hakkai back inside and invites you in; you sit down with them in the living room and watch hakkai visibly relax now that he’s inside his house, his own space, with a pillow behind him and a blanket covering his lower half, he almost curls up into it as he continues to avoid your stare

“Hi hakkai…Kun? Im L/N Y/N” you say and you see his face dead pan once again

Yuzuha can be heard laughing from the kitchen as she comes back in.

She leans over and begins explaining that hakkai literally just freezes with any interaction between him and girls who aren’t in his family

You nod, thinking maybe it’s an anxiety thing? Which is the case with you, but only because he’s been watching you since you’ve come over (not in a creepy way) wanting to and working the courage up to talk to you

The 5th or so time you came over after that encounter he was inches away from introducing himself before the house phone rang causing everyone to kind of “wake up” in a sense

Every time since then he gets closer and closer but isn’t able to say anything; he even realizes he has a crush on you.

The way you sit when you do homework and how cute you look when you’re focused.

How your forehead scrunches up when you’re trying to figure something out and you end up just sitting back with a small huff followed by yuzuha’s signature laughter.

It’s also a huge thing that you get along with Yuzuha.

So enough with first meeting time for the confession.

He ends up confessing accidentally. He didn’t know you were coming over to begin with so he was flustered out of his mind. And how was he supposed to know you hadn’t actually fallen asleep and you could hear him over the tv

The tv was more white noise than anything and the day was hot since it was the middle of summer causing the window to be open and the sound of soft wind and small birds to drift in; this was the hot that makes you tired so you were all sprawled out of just sitting in a daze

So while resting your head on the table you’re dozing in and out but then you hear hakkai begin to speak, something he never really did around you

Now did you and hakkai text? Yes. Did it take him an hour to reply because his brain would explode when you replied to him? Yes. But was it a start to communication? Also a yes.

You hear him say your name quietly before he moved closer, you can feel his gaze on your features

“I like you” is all he says. Simple and sweet. But you sit there in shock, trying not to blush so he’ll have no idea you heard him but he can tell because your forehead scrunches

You heard him and are focused on if you should reply or not. And he knows that.

You open your eyes and just look up at him, he’s closer than expected. His hand close to yours on the floor and he reaches over and grabs it lightly. Hoping you’ll also return the gesture by holding his hand instead of leaving your hand limp inside his.

And you do, thank goodness, and Hakkai almost mentally can’t handle it.

Once you start dating it’s more so just hanging out at his house or yours; however he talks a bit more and you text a lot more. He’s gotten better at replying. It usually takes him like 15 minutes now

He’s kinda stressed about your relationship but not due to anything you or him did

He’s stressed because of the mentality his older brother gave him

Is he even allowed to be this happy?

He finally has someone thats small enough and naive enough that he can protect you; compared to constantly being protected it’s a sudden, strong, yet good change for him

He’s touch s t a r v e d

Yes Yuzuha shows affection; but he stopped accepting her hugs when he was around 8 just because he physically wasn’t able to handle it due to his bruises and such

But with you, even with his bruises and all you take care of him. Able to coax him into using medicines and toning down the physical violence (that he can control himself)

He also finds it super soothing when you lightly brush over his scars (especially those that his brother gave him), it helps him believe that scars are only physical and can fade with help

One thing that stresses him out the most is trying to hide you from his brother. Any time you leave something at the house its easy to pass it off as yuzuha's but when it comes to things like photos he has with you, he can't hang them up, show them off, or have them as his phone Lock Screen, etc. because he just really doesn't want his brother to know and target you since he'll then know that you're his weakness (aside from yuzuha as well)

Sometimes won't explain why he can't hang out and has legit pushed you out of his house before at the last minute notice of his brother coming home

Will always make sure you get home safe though, usually by having Yuzuha go with you since then she can just say you're a friend from school

Your parents love him, though they were a bit hesitant it became a "you always have a place to stay" because they learned about their family situation from you and yuzuha. So expect him to spend the night when he's too scared to deal with his brother. Same with yuzuha. (yes I know this isn't yuzuha head canons but its hard to write for him without mentioning her when they're so close)

We're talking three person sleep overs. Yuzuha and you of course share the bed and Hakkai takes some time to even set foot in your room much less sleep on a mattress that's on the floor

He has a small heart attack every time he comes into your room because he's overwhelmed with everything, he's never been so comfortable and it makes him feel restless. Like he's never and I mean n e v e r been less stressed and slept better than when he does so in your room

The smell, the colors, just being surrounded by you is something that completely changes his mood

Once showed up after he fought with his brother, tears in his eyes and clothes a bit tattered and you just pulled him to your room, and sat down with him.

You laid on your bed with him laying down onto of you, head on your chest as you rubbed his head and only said a few words "its not your fault"

He ends up crying so hard he falls asleep and gets dehydrated and you have to make him drink a bunch of water when he finally wakes up.

NSFW

super fucking careful w you

almost annoyingly so, but you're understanding

He knows that he might be taking things frustratingly slow but he knows that since you understand and know his history that you can help him get through it

Your first time you think you'll have to call it off because he's shaking so bad

"baby... are you sure it won't hurt you?" he keeps asking.

pretty sure that's the longest its ever taken him to finish because he was so anxious

despite being so slow and hesitant, late he isn't too scared to get a bit rougher

but im not talking anything crazy im talking like he's willing to pull your hair a bit or nip a bit harder at your neck.

Please never ask him to do anything like degrade you or some type of harsh physical rough shit, he can't

like literally im 99% sure that if you ask him to choke you or something he will pass out because of the anxiety attack he would have at even the thought.

in short with nsfw though he is sweet boy. He's a switch through and through. Loves when you take care of everything because then he doesn't have to be scared of hurting you.

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korgidorgi · 3 years

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Caitlyn Kiramman x Reader

Word count: 1790

Warnings: Injury, cursing

Summary: After your first attempt at finding a long lost friend, you attempt again, somehow thankfully landing yourself in the right place at the right time.

Gender not specified, but intended for fem!reader

Your last attempt to find your friend in Piltover failed. It landed you nowhere except for two months in prison for “assaulting an officer” and “resisting arrest”. You were in rich boi clothing, you fit right in! But they still managed to arrest you. Upon release, you returned to Zaun to catch your breath and rethink your next approach.

“Hey, dipshit, do you remember what happened last time? Or has that fled your mind like everything else?” Your brother in arms yells at you. “You just got out of prison!”

“I’m going back. You can’t stop me.” You retort, gathering money from your sales in Zaun and shoving it into your satchel.

“You don’t even have any clothes to fit in!” He continues.

“I’m not taking Piltover rags. I’m going at night and they’re not going to see me at all this time.” You reason. “I’ll be on the roofs the entire time. Hidden in the shadows during the day. Plus, I don’t plan on interacting with enforcers anyway, so they can’t arrest me this time.”

“You’re not thinking straight-” He rubs his forehead in frustration.

“Well that explains a lot.” You halfheartedly joke.

“Y/N-”

“You said it!” You accuse.

He sighs, “There’s no stopping you, is there?”

“Nope. You can either come with me, or stay here in the safety of your workshop.”

“I’m not going to get arrested, but if you disappear for two months again, I’m not risking my ass to come up there to bail you out again.” He gives you a hard glare. “That was all of my savings to get you out last time. I don’t have that anymore.”

“Fine. I’ll deal with the consequences of trying to get the enforcers to not be dicks then.” You shift your satchel onto your shoulder, swinging your jacket on over it.

“Don’t die.” He takes your hand in a handshake as he lets you go to Piltover.

“I’ll try not to.” You give him a smile before placing a mask (or bandana/scarf/whatever) over your nose and mouth.

With a last farewell, you slip into the streets and head towards the bridges connecting the two worlds. You scale the underside of the bridge, away from the searching eyes of the enforcers posted around. It takes a hot bit, as it’s a bit of a challenge, but you manage to make it to the other side, taking a short break to catch your breath before continuing to find a wall to scale to the rooftops.

Once on top of the roof, you glance back at Zaun across the water. You watch the light filter through the smoke that's scattered through the tattered city. The air on this side of the river is much fresher than it's less bougie counterpart. You turn to begin your search from above for your friend, leaping to the next rooftop and scanning the dark streets and the apartments you pass. You stay low to the roof in case anyone sees you from the streets.

You’ve lasted about 3 hours now, way into the night, but you’re still going relatively strong.

A spotlight from an airship overhead ports directly at you, lighting up your whereabouts and your path. You shield your eyes from the harsh light, letting them adjust before looking around for the enforcers responsible, and an escape route. Three of them are on the same roof as you while two others are on the ground. There’s no doubt they’ll call in backup.

You sprint for the edge of the roof, taking a leap off onto the next roof, landing solidly and continuing. The spotlight follows you closely and the three behind you give chase. You slide down the slanted roof, the gutter catching you as you reach the edge. You drop down to the small balcony, leaping onto the next roof over and scrambling up to the top. You follow the peaked roofline to the other side, trying to remember where that damn walkway was. You need to get out of sight of the spotlight.

You traverse a few more rooftops, finally spotting the walkway and sprinting for it. You can hear the footfalls and conversations between the enforcers behind you as they fall only a few paces behind. You slide down another roof and leap to the next and continue onto the now flat top towards the suspended walkway. The telltale whiz of their toys reaches your ears, quickly followed by a quick collision with your side as the three roped gadget bounces along the roof. You drop down to the walkway as the gadget slides off to the streets. A burning sensation then begins to quickly spread from the point of contact on your side, causing you to hiss at the sudden sensation. You bite back your pain, now noticing two enforcers trapping you on the walkway.

Leaping over the edge of the walkway, you drop a couple stories to the streets, trying your best to roll and distribute the impact. You hear your ankle pop a tiny bit, taking on a little too much force from the fall. You turn a corner into an ally, taking a couple turns on the streets. Staying in the shadows, it takes them a few moments, but they eventually lose you, looking elsewhere for you. You scale the side of a building, reaching the third floor balcony, which is quite extensive. A sudden change in the enforcer's direction forces you to back around the corner of the balcony to avoid the spotlight. It eventually forces you onto the railing, holding the gutter above to keep your feet out of the light.

It soon passes and you drop to the floor, letting out a quiet yelp at a sudden shock of pain from your wound. Your hand flies to the injury, feeling blood soaking through your clothing.

“Fuck.” You curse, leaning against the wall to give your legs and ankles a break.

Your relaxation is cut short, however, when the doors to the balcony burst open and the nose of a gun aimed at your head. You raise your hands, your left covered in the blood from your abdomen. You recognise her.

You move slowly to remove your mask, dropping it to the side. You watch her face soften and she lowers her rifle.

“What happened to you?” She asks, setting her rifle aside and approaching you. Her British accent has only gotten stronger over the years.

“Oh, y’know, got locked in my own basement, banished from Topside, broke out, found a brother, came here, went to prison, got out, came here again. Y’know, the usual.” You cooly say, leaning against the wall as if you didn’t just have your side sliced open by the enforcers.

“Your side, idiot.” She sternly elaborates, grabbing your arm to put over her shoulder to help you inside.

“Oh, uh, the enforcers may or may not be hunting me right now.” You say. “Again.”

“How many times have you had a quarrel with them?” She leads you through the door, holding you carefully as she takes you to a sofa in the room.

“What is this place?” You ask.

“My brother made this his workplace. I came here to make sure it’s locked up and grab a few things for him.”

You sit on the couch, wincing at your side, your hand making its way back to your wound. She gets up to grab a med kit from the next room and returns.

“Hands off, Y/N.” She instructs, swatting your hand away. “Shirt and jacket.”

“What?” You say, taking your jacket off and setting it aside.

You slide your satchel off your shoulder and set it on top of your jacket too. You then slide your shirt off, exposing your battle-scar riddled body, and set it aside with your other things.

“Y’know, normally people would wait a while longer before instructing the other to take their clothes off.” You tease.

The burning in your side stings as she places a damp cloth to it to clean it, effectively shutting you up as she gives you a short glare.

“Why are you here anyways?” She asks, her brows furrowed as she continues to clean your wound.

“I was looking fo-” Your sentence is interrupted by a small grunt of pain before you continue, “for you, Caitlyn.”

“Why now? Why not earlier? Why at all?” She presses.

“Well, I couldn’t exactly break out of my basement with the locks on the other side of the door, now could I?” You answer. “I missed you. I needed to know if you were- jesus- still doing okay up there- here. I didn’t abandon you, Cait, I promise. My mother was an over-controlling piece of- shit. Take it easy, wouldja?”

“Well, maybe if you hadn’t been hunted down by the enforcers like a dog, we wouldn’t be here.”

“Probably not.”

She drops the now bloody rag and reaches for a needle and thread and begins to tie it.

“But if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been on your balcony at the same time you were in this place.”

“Shut up and let me work.”

“You’re the one asking me questions.” You pout, crossing your arms across your chest.

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“You’re blocking my workspace.”

You huff, lowering your arms and leaning back a bit to allow her space to work while you support yourself comfortably. You let out hisses and grunts as she works in silence, stitching your wound shut. She finally finishes and wraps it up. The silence lingers for another few moments.

“I missed you too.” Caitlyn finally speaks, setting her stuff down and sitting on her heels on the floor. “I thought something happened to you. I thought you were dead. And I couldn’t go looking for you, so I just tried to come to terms with the fact that you’d probably never return.”

“I tried.”

“I know.”

You, less painfully, lean forward, sitting up and catching her attention, yet she refuses to meet your eyes. You sigh, elbows on your knees, looking at the floor, thinking.

“You promised you’d be back, and then you just- disappeared.”

“Can’t exactly send you a message in a bottle from my basement, Cait.”

“I know…” The room fills with silence once more.

“I’m sorry I never came back.” You sigh, glancing back up at her.

Her eyes meet yours briefly before she looks back down. She then moves closer and wraps her arms around your shoulders, embracing you. It catches you off guard, but you gently wrap your arms around her and bury your head into her hair and shoulder. She adjusts her grip, her hand holding the back of your head.

“I’m glad you’re back now.”

#arcane caitlyn x reader #x reader #fanfiction #arcane netflix #arcane #arcane league of legends #caitlyn #caitlyn kiramman

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sunset-curve-fantom · 4 years

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Home- Bucky Barnes x Reader

A/N: I HOPE YOU ENJOY THIS!

MATURE MATERIAL, 18+, SMUT INCLUDED

FOR @ghostofreggie WHO HAS DONE NOTHING BUT SUPPORT AND FEED INTO MY PHASE OF BUCK. YOU ARE AMAZING AND I COULDN’T IMAGINE WRITING THIS WITHOUT YOU.

Missions far from home were never easy for any of you. But for Bucky they became harder and harder the more he felt for you. You had walked into his world at the right place, and at the time he needed someone the most. When he met you, all he saw was beautiful and all you saw in yourself was the nerd of an assistant for Tony Stark. He knew he could never hurt you, and in doing so he never told you what he was feeling.

The moment you laid eyes on Bucky; your world shifted. He was the only one who caught your undivided attention, whether you were focused on something in the lab or not. He could walk in the room and your whole world would be black except this light that surrounded him. That being said, you guys were far from being anything official. It was just a few one-night stands, and in-depth conversations here and there.

A new mission had come to a head, which included Sam, Sharon, and Bucky attempting to override some of Hydra’s files to unearth any new leads into where or what Hydra wanted. You on the other hand were stuck in the office, attempting to help Tony upgrade his Ironman suit with some new perks, I guess being his assistant is a perk in itself though. But your mind was everywhere but focused on Tony and what he needed. Buck was leaving on this mission tonight, and you had every intention of telling him how you felt before then but didn’t know how.

The doors opened to the lab, the eerie silence was filled with a familiar voice, “Hey we are getting ready to take off….”

The voice was hesitant, but you knew it belonged to Bucky. He was the only one who made your heart skip a beat or cause the eruption of butterflies in your stomach.

You took a deep breath before turning to him, a fake smile plastered on your cheeks, “Oh okay- be careful?”

He shot you his signature smirk before making his way over to your desk, you couldn’t help yourself from chewing on the inside of your cheek- one of your worse nervous ticks.

“I’ll be careful…. I’m always careful.” he said as he stood in front of you, hands stuffed deep into his pockets. You couldn’t help but give him a real smile as you stepped towards him, engulfing him in your arms. His beard tickled your cheeks as you hid you face in the crook of his neck, taking in his cologne that made you feel at home.

His grip loosened before he stepped back, placing a swift, soft kiss to your forehead. The gesture only causing a blush to erupt on your cheeks, and a soft smile to remain more than present.

He smiled down at your short stature before turning away from you, your smile slowly turned to a frown… you hated to see him walking away from you, like you were nothing to him.

But the question was…. Do you tell him how you feel? Or do you just let it go, and hope to god that the feelings stop growing…

“Buck?” You said, your eyes widening at your shaky voice. The concerned look he gave you was making your insides turn at what words were about to escape past your lips.

“Yes?” He questioned, as you didn’t say anything more. The words you wanted to say found themselves stuck in your throat, unable to tell this handsome man what you were truly feeling.

You took a deep breath, opening your mouth to spill your undying love for James Buchanan Barnes, when she came in…

There was Sharon, in all her glory. The most beautiful girl in the room, the one who always got any man she wanted, and the one who had all her sights set on Bucky.

“I’m sorry but we have to go” She said, a hint of annoyance in her voice as she watched you push up your oversized glasses, as your twirled you rings around your finger unconsciously. You were nothing to her, and the look on her face only confirmed that.

Bucky looked back at you, the nervousness was apparent on your face, “Go…” you murmured, not being able to spare him another look. You knew that you would never be enough for him, so why even try to fool yourself?

A smirk appeared on Sharon’s face as she turned hot on her heel, Bucky following behind but not before sparing you another look. He will never forget the look of heartbreak that crossed your features when Sharon came in to get him, to take him away from you.

The minute the door to the lab closed, the eerie silence overtook you once again. You turned towards your desk; a deep breath escaped you as your started throwing your work off your desk. Paper flying through the air, pens hitting the floor in a clatter. The noise was so overwhelming that you missed the sliding door opening again, the anger in the room could be cut with a knife.

“Sooooo are you going to clean up your mess?” Tony said from behind you, terror crossed your features as you turned to face him.

“I-I-I-iiii” You tried to find the words, to apologize, to try and make what you had just done better. But Tony cut you off, sending you a soft smile.

“I’m assuming… that uh you didn’t tell Bucky how you are feeling?” He said, taking a seat at the desk next to yours, trying to read your reaction to what he was saying.

“Me and Buck? No-no- “You started, only causing a bout of laughter to fall from Tony’s lips. Your eyes wide as you watched him fall apart in front of you, his laughter cutting through the anger you were radiating.

“Oh don’t even. We both know how you feel, and I know that he feels the same about you” He said, reaching out to grab your hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. His gesture bringing tears to your tired eyes, it was the first time that you felt that someone understood how you were feeling.

“How I’m feeling is alone. This man is doing things to me that I have never felt, and never thought I would get to feel. I was always the nerd in school, with no friends or anyone to love me. And now- now I have this man who I love, a man I have given my everything to, but I can’t even tell him the words. I can’t even tell him how much I want to spend the rest of my life dealing with his bipolar ass.” The words finally flowing out of you, finally confessing to someone how I felt about Bucky.

You wiped your cheeks, the tears continuing to dampen them. Tony just reached out, taking you into his arms. He knew how you were feeling, you knew that you wanted nothing more than to be loved and not worry about the future.

You couldn’t help the sob that escaped you as you clung to your boss, tears continuing to flow.

“How about you go home? I can text you when they get back…. I think you just need some time to think, you know?” Tony said, placing a soft kiss to the back of your head.

“Thanks Tony… and I’m sorry for the mess….” You said, pulling away from him and shooting him a soft smile.

Carefully you grabbed your things, heading out to your room. The sound of your shoes clicking on the floor, echoing in the silent hallway. The silence only following you once you step into your dark room.

A deep sigh escaped you as you laid back on your bed, your head swarming with scenarios about Buck and if you had told him how you were feeling. To explain the deep love, you felt for him.

Sitting back up, you began to strip yourself of your work clothes. The heavy denim of your jeans hit the floor with a thud, and your thin black tee fell right beside it. Ruffling through your drawers you came across a shirt that belonged to Bucky.

It was from a night, not long ago when he came over late at night for some comforting after a mission. A smile appeared across your cheeks as you shrugged the shirt over your tired body, it barely covered your black panties.

A tired smile appeared on your face once again as you made your way to your empty bed. The coldness of your sheets feeling good against your achy, tired body. Sleep quickly overtook your sense, and your dreams were filled with the what ifs of your life if Bucky was yours.

*BANG, BANG, BANG*

You were drawn from your vivid sleep by several hard knocks at your door. Quickly you rushed over, opening the door swiftly.

There was Bucky…

His lip was split open, a bruise was developing on his cheek but overall, he seemed none too harmed. The light from the hallway showing off his bruised and tattered body.

“I-uh-uh I… I just needed to see you.” he finally choked out, you stepped aside leaving room for him to slip by you in the darkness of your room.

“Okay?” You said, tiredness still clouding your senses.

“I-uh this…. This mission was just really hard, and I know you wanted to tell me something before I left and it was all that I could focus on” he said, you knew that he was embarrassed by what he was saying. He never felt like this before and it was clear by his stuttering.

The Winter Solider was standing in your room, at god only knows what time because he couldn’t stop thinking about something you wanted to tell him.

You ran your hand through your hair, eyeing his figure in the darkness. You stepped towards his, brushing his tattered hair out of his face, making his deep eyes more noticeable.

“You really want to know?” You said, the flirtatious tone flowing out of your mouth, you could see him take a deep breath before nodding at you.

“Well, I was going to tell you that-uh I’m uh in love with you” You stuttered, blush crawling up onto your cheeks. You were nervous about what he was going to say, you knew he never felt that way about anyone.

“You don’t have to say anything” You said quickly, seeing his face change as he processed your words.

You loved him.

Opening your mouth again, wanting to speak more about how you were feeling. The idea that you had ruined your chances with him forever, that he was going to walk away, and you would never see him again.

But your thoughts were hushed when he rushed forward swiftly taking your lips in his. You couldn’t help the shocked moan that fell past your lips as you wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling at his tangled hair.

He growled as you pulled hard at his hair, carefully he slipped his hands under your thighs before picking you up. Pulling your body close to his, your nipples only hardening against your shirt.

You pulled your lips away from his, carefully pressing small kisses to his neck causing a guttural moan to escape from his throat.

You felt your back fall onto your cold sheets, a moan falling from your lips as Bucky found your sweet spot on your neck that was ever so hidden. You could feel a bruise forming under your jaw from his excessive suckling.

Moans continued to fall from your lips as you reached down to pull at his shirt, pulling the torn material over his head, revealing more bruising and blood dried cuts. Your cold fingers ran across his chest as he watched you carefully.

You caught his eyes, smiling up at him. He was concentrating on your face, the way your face lit up when you saw him.

His thumbs brushed up against your hips, slowly lifting his shirt off your body. The cold air rushing to your hard nipples, sending a chill through your body, which only made Buck chuckle under his breath.

Your shirt went over your head, and almost immediately Bucky took your hard nipple in his mouth, sending a chorus of moans to fall from your lips.

“Buck” you moaned, gently taking his hair in your hand, and pulling slightly.

Rubbing your cunt against his crotch, only causing you to leak more wetness than you already were. Your motions caused a guttural moan to escape from Buck.

He pulled back from your nipples, taking in the moaning mess that you had become under him. He wrapped his fingers around your panties, before ripping them clean off your body.

You gasped at his action, before quickly sitting up and beginning to mess with his pants. You fumbled with the button and zipper before stripping off his pants. His cock was straining against the confines of his boxers, with a stain of precum beginning to appear.

Biting your lip, you lowered his boxers down his legs and letting them pool at him feet.

You took his length in your small hands, but he stopped you. His eyes met yours before he started to speak.

“This is all about you doll.” He spoke in a low tone before pushing you back onto the bed.

You felt his cock at your entrance, brushing against your clit which only sent chills of pleasure through your body.

The feeling of your being stretched as he entered you with his length sent a loud moan to escape from you. Causing your eyes to roll back as you grabbed onto him, bringing him closer.

He waited for a moment, giving you a moment to adjust to him.

You nodded at him, giving him the silent signal to move.

The pleasure began to overtake your senses, causing your eyes to roll back into your head. You could hear the wet sounds of your pussy as he pushed his cock deep inside of you, stretching your walls more and more.

Guttural moans feel past Bucky’s lips, which only sent your over the edge. Your orgasm quickly fell over you as he continued to hit your sensitive spot.

“Oh-uh-ooohhh Buck” You moaned, as your back arched from the overwhelming orgasm.

He threw his head back as your cunt pulsated around his cock, he was on the edge and he knew it.

His speed began to quicken as your cunt still was pulsating from your mind-blowing orgasm, your eyes continued to roll back into your head from the pleasure that was overtaking you.

Your cunt was leaking up a storm as he continued to fuck you hard, before he wrapped a hand around your throat. The action only making your eyes go wide, he never did that.

“Buck” You whimpered to him, as his grip tightened on your throat.

“You’re gonna take it all doll.” He moaned, his metal hand coming into contact with your clit. He quickly began rubbing circles, which drove you into a moaning mess as your cunt began to tighten around him again.

“Buck…. Buck…. I’m gonna-” You began before getting cut off by a moan.

“I’m right behind you” he moaned in your ear as you pulsated around him, scratching at his back with the overwhelming amount of pleasure.

He rutted his hips against yours as he spilled his hot seed into you, causing a small moan to pass your lips as your felt the heat in your core.

“In case you didn’t know- I love you too” He murmured against your ear, causing a huge smile to appear across your features.

In that moment, you knew… Bucky Barnes was yours and only yours….. He was your home.

379 notes · View notes

whitesparrows97 · 4 years

Text

Underdog – Part 1

Pairing: Dog Shifter!Taehyung x Human!Reader/Kim Taehyung x Reader

Genre: Shifter AU/Hybrid AU

Summary: Even though humans and shifters coexist in one world, it’s still a rarity for hybrids to openly show themselves. One evening, when you hit a stray dog with your car, you feel so guilty that you bring him home with you. But you don’t realize until much later that you let a stranger into your house.

Warnings: Angst, being in a car accident

Word Count: 7.8K

Authors note: Hello, hello! I had this story in my drafts for months now (thanks overthinking me) and I really wanted to get at least the first chapter out before Taehyung’s birthday. I’m not sure how many chapters this story will have, but I’m aiming for around four. I really hope you’ll like this story and this chapter and I’d be happy about every kind of feedback from you guys! Thank you so much for reading!

. . .

With a gasp you woke up from a dreamless sleep. You were confused for a moment as you let your gaze glide through the dark room and could only make out the outlines of your living room. When you looked outside the window, you realized that it had already become dark.

Crap.

You only wanted to take a short nap after work before going grocery shopping. Your refrigerator and the cupboards in your kitchen were devastatingly empty. But, as was so often the case, your nap turned into a deep sleep which left you even more exhausted than before.

In the dark, you searched for your cell phone, which you had placed on the small coffee table before falling asleep. When your fingers finally hit the small, square device and enclosed it, you breathed a sigh of relief. But the relief disappeared just as quickly and gave way to the hectic when you saw how late it already was. You had about half an hour before the supermarket would close. By car, it took you about fifteen minutes… maybe ten if you were lucky with the traffic lights.

You closed your eyes again for a short moment and thought about whether it was really worth the stress to rush off. If you were thinking about your bank account, which was already in the red, you knew that you could not afford to order food. You puffed out the air in frustration and got up from the sofa. In record time you put on your shoes and jacket and grabbed your bag before you were in your car a few minutes later. When you stopped at a red light, your fingers drummed a rhythm on the steering wheel while you kept your eyes focused on the light.

Impatient, you honked at the person in front of you when they didn’t start moving as soon as the light turned green. When you made a turn and could see the park, which was only illuminated by the moonlight and the few street lamps, you exhaled with relief. All you had to do was drive past it, take the next right before you–

The suffocated scream got stuck in your throat when you pressed your foot on the brake. Your fingers clutched firmly into the steering wheel and you tried to yank the car to the side, but then you heard the dull thud that shook your car. With screeching tires, your car came to a halt and only the roar of the engine mixed with your loud heartbeat pumping blood through your body filled your ears.

Panic rose inside you as your eyes looked out at the road ahead, hoping to see something in the light of your headlights. You hoped that you had only imagined the small, dark tuft of fur that had run in front of your car. Perhaps a hallucination due to your lack of sleep? Maybe you had also imagined the impact. You were sure you had read about it on the Internet before.

Your cramped fingers hurt when you peeled them off the steering wheel and you noticed how they trembled – you didn’t know whether it was fear or overexertion – when you tried to loosen your seat belt. It took you three attempts until the belt finally rolled back and you were able to get out of the car. Immediately, your legs buckled under you and you had to support yourself against the door. In the cold of the late evening you could see your own breath, but still you were sweating. Hesitantly you tried to look around the fender of the car, hoping to see only the asphalt there. Unfortunately, fate did not seem to be on your side tonight.

You managed to stifle a sob when you saw the dog lying in front of your car. As fast as your shaky legs carried you, you ran to the huddled figure. You scratched your knees open as you let yourself fall next to him, but you hardly felt the pain. He showed no reaction to your presence and kept his eyes firmly shut. You looked up hoping to see his owner coming out of the park. But the path to the park was empty, as were the area around you. You were completely on your own and more than overwhelmed by that.

There was nothing else you could do. Without a second thought, you slid your hands under the dog’s body and grimaced when your knuckles scraped across the asphalt. But the dull pain in your hands was immediately forgotten when the dog whimpered softly. It was as if this sound loosened your rigidity and immediately hot tears streamed down your face. You lifted him up and brought him as fast as possible to your car where you carefully laid him on the back seat.

“I’m so sorry,” you brought out between sobs before you stroked his fur briefly and took a seat behind the wheel again. You blinked away the tears, even when new ones immediately took their place, and dialed your best friend’s phone number. While it was ringing, you started the car and made your way to the practice.

“Come on, Hoseok,” you mumbled and bit your lower lip to stop your teeth from clattering. You wiped tears from your face again with the back of your hand as the road in front of you blurred and slowed down. One accident would be more than enough for today. When you heard the familiar crack of the line as Hoseok answered the call, tears of relief mixed in.

“Y/N? Why are you calling so late–”

“Hobi!” you interrupted him and you could hear the panic in your own voice. “I’m on my way to your practice. I just hit a dog and I don’t know how badly he is hurt. Oh God, he’s not moving and he was just whimpering. I don’t know what to do.” Another sob escaped you.

“Hey, hey, it’s all right,” Hoseok tried to calm you down “I’m going straight to the practice, okay? It’ll be fine, you hear?” When you didn’t answer and suppressed more sobs, Hoseok asked again, “Okay, Y/N?”

You nodded. When you realized he couldn’t see that through the phone, you answered his question and hung up. Worried, you glanced over your shoulder at the brown dog who was still taking shallow breaths and lying motionless on your back seat. “It will be all right,” you repeated Hoseok’s words. Whether you wanted to calm the dog down or yourself, you didn’t know.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

“I came as fast as I could,” Hoseok greeted you and opened the small veterinary practice. It had been his childhood dream to become a veterinarian and unlike many others in that age who had the same dream but dropped it when they’d grown older, his desire only grew stronger. Now, more than twenty years later, not only did he have nearly six years of training behind him, but he even had two employees working under him.

Tonight, however, the practice was empty and dark; hours ago, it had treated its last patient. “Lay him on here,” Hoseok said as he put on a gown and gloves and additionally disinfected his hands. Carefully you laid the dog on the hard table and a chill ran down your spine as you touched the cold metal. Immediately you wanted to pull him right into your arms again. But you knew you were here so Hoseok could help him.

“Let’s see what the little one has,” Hoseok said, more to himself than to you. You watched Hoseok palpate the dog before he pulled up his eyelids with his practiced movements and pointed a flashlight into his eyes. “He doesn’t appear to have a concussion.”

Relieved, you exhaled.

“But he seems to have broken one paw and at least one,” he palpated his torso again, “no, probably two ribs,” Hoseok finished his diagnosis for now. You wanted to throw up, so guilty you felt. “Could you hold him for a moment, just in case he suddenly moves? I’ll get the x-ray.” He looked up at you from the dog and immediately stepped towards you. “Is everything okay? Are you feeling dizzy? You look like you’re gonna faint.”

You shook your head, but which of his questions you denied you didn’t know. The tears that you had had under control ran down your cheeks again. When Hoseok saw this, he bridged the last steps to you and squeezed your shoulders tightly. “We can do this, Y/N. It’s nothing serious, I promise you. Almost daily we have people here who have hit an animal. It happens more often than you think.”

“Okay,” you answered quietly and Hoseok hurried to get the x-ray machine from the next room. Hesitantly, you stepped closer to the metal table and stretched out your hand. The dog’s fur was tattered and you even saw some bald spots where the fur was completely missing. You let Hoseok know as soon as he came back and pulled the device clattering behind him into the room.

“I know, I noticed that too. Seems like he had been living outside for a long time. At least a few months, if not more.” He plugged in the device and immediately the room was filled with the constant whirring of the lamp. “Put this on,” Hoseok said, holding out a dark blue gown. When you reached for it, you were surprised at how heavy it was. “Protects you from the radiation,” Hoseok explained, wearing the same gown and matching gloves. He pressed numerous buttons before he fixed the dog’s legs and started the machine.

It didn’t take more than ten minutes, but you were so restless that it felt like hours watching the dog lying lifeless in front of you. Hoseok turned the machine off and moved it to the side when the process was complete. Your eyes were still on the dog when he suddenly opened his eyes. Two dark orbs stared at you and you froze in place staring right back at him.

“We were lucky,” Hoseok said, and you flinched as his voice cut loudly through the oppressive silence. “His paw is only sprained, as is one of his ribs. One rib though is broken but this should heal on its own with rest and medication.”

Hoseok reached into a drawer and pulled out a small device that looked like a magnifying glass, but was made entirely of gray plastic. He moved it straight over the dog’s neck and after a few seconds he clicked his tongue in frustration. “He has no chip.”

“What does that mean?” You chewed on your lower lip and tasted the blood as one spot ripped open.

“That he has no owner, or at least we can’t find out who his owner is. The only thing I can do is check to see if a dog has been reported missing.” Hoseok began applying a bandage around the dog’s torso and, when he was finished, pressed a pack of medicine into your hand. “Three times a day, morning, noon, and in the evening. Just mix this into his food.”

Hoseok sat down at the computer and started to enter some data. Confused, you looked at the package in your hand. “What should I do with it?”

“Huh?” Hoseok asked over his shoulder.

“The medicine, what am I supposed to do with it?” You waved the little package in question in the air for him to see.

Now, Hoseok turned completely around to you. “You’re supposed to give those to him,” he answered, as if it were a matter of course.

“Hobi, I can’t take him home,” you clarified. “I have no experience with dogs. I have no food at home, no basket and no toys. And I have a job, how will that work?”

Hoseok sighed and let his head fall forward. When he looked up again, he had a mischievous smile on his lips. “He is not reported missing. If you don’t take him in, I’ll have to take him to a shelter.”

You didn’t say anything because you knew exactly what Hoseok was talking about.

“And you know what it’s like with animals that are injured. Many people shy away from taking on such an animal because of unexpected costs–”

“Yes, all right,” you interrupted your best friend and a triumphant smile spread across his face. “But I still don’t know how I’m going to manage all this,” you said with concern.

“Don’t worry about it,” Hoseok reassured you and he got up from his chair to approach you. “We have some dog food here and I’m sure I saw a toy somewhere. You can use a couple of blankets and pillows as a bedding, that’s enough for one night. And about work…” He rummaged in one of the many cupboards and took out two cans of dog food, “Didn't you say that you were going to work part-time? You have a big garden, so he can be alone for five hours. He won’t feel the need to run around much for the next few weeks anyway.”

When Hoseok told you all these things, you found it hard to say anything to him. He was right – you had a small, cozy house all to yourself, which you could never fill out alone. The garden was hidden behind the house and fenced in on all sides and you didn’t have to worry in your neighborhood anyway. You also had a secure job that brought you halfway good money…

With a smile, Hoseok handed you a small toy dog before carrying the real dog to your car. You put the two cans of dog food in the footwell and placed the toy dog right in front of the dog’s nose. Your heart began to beat faster when you watched his nose move and he picked up the scent of what were probably other dogs who had already played with the toy.

“He’s an Australian Kelpie by the way,” Hoseok said as you were about to get into your car. “Very intelligent animals and once he trusts you, very affectionate.”

You nodded. You knew what Hoseok was getting at.

You knew your best friend long enough to know that he would never forgive you if you took the dog to a shelter. But he didn’t have to worry – you felt way too guilty. You wouldn’t hit an animal and then dump him at the next opportunity in an animal shelter; out of sight, out of mind. You were not like that and you were not raised like that. You had always taken responsibility for your deeds – and also mistakes – and now would be no different.

Exhausted, you leaned back in your seat when you were on your way home. When you looked in your rear-view mirror and saw only two pointed ears, a little smile was stealing onto your face. But it fell right out of your face a second later as you turned back in shock. Indeed, the dog was no longer lying on the back seat, but had meanwhile sat up and looked at you.

“Hey, you are supposed to rest!” you scolded him as if he could understand what you were saying. “Not that you’re going to hurt yourself even more.” Anything else would have surprised you, but the dog stubbornly continued to sit and look at you. Two dark eyes watching your every move. Each of your facial features as you nervously chewed your lip or slid restlessly back and forth in your seat at a red light.

You were happy when you finally drove up your driveway to the house. “Here we are,” you told him and turned off the engine. You decided to check the damage to your car tomorrow morning before work. You didn’t know whether a visit to the repair shop was financially feasible at the moment. You doubted it when you looked at the dog behind you. It would not be cheap to buy all the necessary things for a dog. But it would be worth it for the fact that the house was no longer as quiet and deserted.

And slowly, very slowly, your guilt was replaced by another feeling; excitement.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

You had to blink a few times to get the sleep out of your eyes and get used to the sun that was shining through your window. For a brief, calm moment, everything was like twenty-four hours ago. Your thoughts had not yet caught up with you and were still hanging on to the confusing dream that slowly sank further and further into oblivion. After a few more seconds, you had completely forgotten what it had been about.

You stretched and your bones cracked. It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to do some exercise again. But… what would be an even better idea would be a big cup of coffee and a nice breakfast. By nice, you meant a bowl of the cheap cereal that was on sale at the supermarket last week. After your first bite a few days earlier, you could imagine why it had been on sale. It was amazing that cereal could taste like cardboard, but you never stopped learning, right?

You straightened up and let your legs dangle from the bed before you put them on the floor. At least you wanted to, but instead of the cold, hard laminate floor, you stepped on something fluffy and soft.

Immediately you pulled your legs up and leaned forward to look over the edge of the bed. Right. How could you have forgotten that? It really seemed that thirty seconds after waking up you didn’t remember anything.

You let your gaze glide over the bundle of dark brown fur that had curled up into a ball and had buried its nose almost protectively under its paws. Almost as if he wanted to hide from the world.

You stretched out your hand slowly. You had such a strong need to let your fingers slide through his fur. But in the middle of your movement you paused when you saw two eyes staring right at you between his paws.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” you muttered and pulled your hand back again. He had probably woken up when you almost stepped on him by mistake. You just didn’t seem to have any luck with the little four-legged friend. “Are you hungry?” you asked, hoping that he would forgive you your little mishaps with some food.

Immediately he pulled his head out from under his paws and raised his head. “You hungry?” you repeated and he tilted his head. You assumed that he still knew the word from his former owner and that he recognized it now. “Let’s go,” you said and stood up. You were careful to keep some distance between you and the dog. You didn’t know what he had experienced and if he liked physical proximity. But what you knew was that he was still watching you with a skeptical look.

You put on warm and cozy socks, which were still lying on the floor next to your bed from the previous evening, and made your way to the kitchen. When you took a bowl out of the kitchen cupboard and opened the can of dog food, your eyes fell on the dog, who was standing a few meters away and watching you. “What should I name you? I can no longer call you just dog.”

You went over some names in your head while you filled the food into the bowl. You put it on the floor and prepared your own breakfast. You didn’t have much choice anyway, so you were left with the cardboard flavoured cereal. Sighing, you pressed the button on the coffee machine and breathed in the scent that filled the room.

As you sipped from your cup, you watched the dog as he hesitantly paced towards the bowl. His nose picked up the smell of food in front of him, then he shook himself and nudged the bowl away from him. Astonished, you put the cup down on the worktop. “Don’t you like your food?”

The dog snorted and looked at you as if it was an impertinence that you even asked such a question.

“But you must eat something. I promise you, I’ll go shopping later and bring you something better. But for now, this will have to do, I’m sorry,” you explained to him. You knew he didn’t understand you, but you hoped that he could tell by the tone of your voice what you were trying to tell him.

The dog stared at you for a moment longer before making a sound that sounded almost like a sigh and he reluctantly walked towards the bowl. He sniffed at the indefinable mass once more before he hesitantly started to eat from it.

“Well, there you go,” you whispered and began to choke down your no less appetizing-looking breakfast. “And I’ll bring something for me, too. I swear, I wouldn’t be surprised if the packaging tastes better than the cereal itself,” you whispered in frustration.

When you put your empty bowl in the sink, you noticed that the dog had eaten his food too. He took a few steps back when you approached him to put the bowl away as well. Immediately you felt the lump in your throat and stopped moving. Slowly you let yourself sink into a crouch and carefully extended your hand.

His gaze was fixed on your hand, which was gripping the bowl. Just as slowly you straightened up again. You were already dreading it when you thought of the upcoming walk. How could this work when he hardly let you within a radius of less than one meter? You were surprised that he had even accepted to sleep beside you. But he probably had been too exhausted yesterday and hadn’t had the strength to move the blankets or find another place to sleep.

You supported yourself with your hands on the worktop and looked out the patio door into the garden. You could see even from a distance how the grass was covered with a blanket of fresh morning dew. The fog was still hanging in the treetops of the adjacent forest so early in the morning and it would probably take a few more hours before it disappeared.

Maybe it would be better if you only let him into the garden? At least there he would have the possibility to keep some distance to you. And that would probably also be better for his injury. Your lips were pressed into a straight line when your gaze fell on the white bandage around his one front paw and his torso.

You dispelled the guilt that was building up inside you and pushed yourself off the countertop to go to the patio door. “Would you like to get some fresh air?” You flinched at the loud noise the door made when you opened it. But the birds chirping their first songs brought a smile to your face as the sun carefully sent its rays over the trees.

You turned around to the dog, who also had his eyes on the garden. His tail swung slowly from side to side and you grinned. “Go ahead, you can go out,” you encouraged him and stepped aside so that there was enough space between you as he slowly walked towards the door. He looked at you once more before he put one of his paws first on the terrace and then followed with the other three. You watched him briefly as he explored the garden and slowly looked at the various bushes, shrubs and plants.

Your parents had always been keen on a well-tended garden. Even if it was not the biggest, it certainly offered enough work for one person. A narrow paved path divided the various flower beds from the small green area where you had always splashed in a small inflatable pool as a child. The path led to a garden gate that was built into the fence. This fence surrounded the entire garden, so you didn’t have to worry about unauthorized people entering the property or animals from the adjacent forest suddenly appearing in front of your patio door.

That’s why you checked one last time on the dog before you went into the bathroom. You wouldn’t want to be watched either during your morning business, so you gave him the few minutes of discovery and privacy. You needed the time to get ready before you had to go to the office as well.

To be honest, you often had a bad feeling in the pit of your stomach when you were on your way to work. You knew that these were probably not the best conditions for a healthy working atmosphere and that you might need to find a new job. However, that was easier said than done. The job prospects were rather bad in the small town, which was why you had been more than happy when you found this job right after your graduation.

Why exactly the job was available was something you experienced first-hand on your first day of work. You had just said introduced yourself to your new colleagues when they had already warned you about your new boss. Phrases like ‘absolute choleric’, ‘lazy bastard’ and other, far more vicious insults had been uttered even before they had told you their own names.

The fact that you had lasted so long at all was probably not very healthy for your overall well-being. But as soon as you had something new in sight, you would be gone faster than the insults of your boss yelled at you would reach you.

Almost automatically, you went back into your bedroom and put on your dark blue pinstripe pants and a plain white blouse. You looked at the crumpled up pile of blankets and pillows that you had made a makeshift bed. With a small smile and absorbed in thought, you loosened the pillows and rearranged the blankets neatly so that no bald spots formed in between and the dog had to sleep on the cold floor.

You went back into the kitchen and let your gaze wander over the various bushes in the garden and frowned. You leaned forward to catch a glimpse under the leaves of the bushes, but everything seemed quiet and your eyes didn’t notice any movement in the small rectangle.

Immediately your heart beat faster as you stepped onto the terrace and frantically continued to search the garden. “Doggie?” you asked quietly and more to yourself. “Where are you?” you asked louder this time and stepped onto the wet lawn. You felt the panic rising inside you and took quick steps towards the garden gate. You reached for the latch, but the lock was still in place. So it definitely could not have blown open or someone had stolen the dog from the garden.

Almost to tears, you turned back and flinched when the dog suddenly stood in front of you not even a meter away. “There you are!” you exclaimed in relief. You would love to bend down to him and fluff through his fur. But you held yourself back. “I was looking for you, I thought you had disappeared.”

You were almost embarrassed how weepy your voice sounded, although you had held back the tears well until now. Yet you couldn’t deny the pure relief that passed through you as he looked back at you.

“Shall we go back inside?”

When the both of you were back inside, you looked at your watch and knew that you should leave. You put another bowl of water for the dog, grabbed your bag and kept an eye out for him. This time you found him quickly. All you had to do was take a peek into your bedroom and hold back your laughter.

“Just so we’re clear,” you said gently, “this is my bed and I’m only allowing you to sleep in it today.”

He didn’t even look up, he just turned to the other side and you saw that as a clear sign to leave him alone and drive to work.

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

Five hours later you stepped out of the multi-story office building and could finally breathe again. The atmosphere in the small office, where you were all squeezed together, had once again been almost unbearable. In fact, it was already so bad that you considered a working day successful when your boss had paid no attention to you at all. Most of the time he sat in his own office, which took up a good third of the entire office.

The only thing you liked about your work were your colleagues. You were a sworn team and you allied yourselves against your boss when he went crazy again. It seemed there was something to the saying that a common enemy made you friends. At least you knew that the others were always behind you when your boss yelled at you. You also knew, purely rationally, that it had nothing to do with you as a person, but that it was his fault. But that didn’t make the situations any better when you’d rather hop into your car and drive home after one of his outbursts.

But then you didn’t even have to show up the next day.

When you sat down in your car and entered the destination in your cell phone, you had to smile despite everything. At least now you had something to look forward to at home. Someone would be waiting for you; or at least you hoped he would. He still seemed to be rather sceptical about you. But you were sure that this would change with time.

You pulled into the large parking lot of the shopping mall and already saw the large pet store. You were a bit excited when you took the note out of your bag on which you had written down the essential things you had to buy today. The store was well sorted and fortunately had everything you needed.

You were a bit overwhelmed with the food you had to choose. It felt like there were hundreds of different kinds of food, fish, beef, pork… how were you supposed to know which tasted good and which didn’t?

Your eyes fell on the bottom row of the shelf, in the very corner were a few cans, which were different in color from the others. You rolled your shopping cart to the side and crouched down to read the label on the cans. But you didn’t get a chance to read the label when you heard someone clearing their throat next to you. Immediately you turned your head and looked at the employee.

He moved the glasses that were sitting on his nose and had slipped down a bit back into place and gave you a nervous smile. “Can I help you?”

Surprised, you straightened up again. “Actually, yes, I’m a little overwhelmed, to be honest.”

“I understand,” he replied sympathetically, “hybrids are very complex beings. If you don’t give them the attention they need, they can be very resentful.” He pointed to the cans in front of you and you jumped aside in surprise to make room for him.

“Wait a minute, you’re talking about a hybrid?” you began wondering.

The man had taken your position in front of the shelf and grabbed one of the cans from the shelf. “You were in front of the shelf for hybrids, I thought… I thought you had a hybrid.” His smile was gone, what remained was a confused frown.

“Oh no, no,” you made yourself clear and waved your arms wildly in front of your torso, hoping to underline your statement. “He’s an Australian Kelpie, just an ordinary dog.” You threw him a smile, hoping to make the situation a little less awkward.

“Ah, okay,” he said and put the can back in its place, “Then you’re free to choose,” he went on and made a broad arm movement to the rest of the shelf.

“You don’t have much choice for hybrids,” you noted as you glanced again over the countless cans, almost dwarfing the handful of cans for hybrids by comparison.

The employee sighed, which made you turn your attention back to him. “You don’t know much about hybrids, do you?” Your expression seemed to alarm him because he promptly added, “No offense.”

“None taken, I just didn’t think it was that obvious,” you reassured him and took the can he handed you.

“This is perfect for Australian Kelpies. Especially for puppies to strengthen their bone structure.”

“Oh, he’s not a puppy anymore. To be honest, I don’t even know how old he is. But he’s definitely full-grown.”

“Oh, I see. You adopted a dog from a shelter. That’s very commendable. Then I recommend this one,” he said and handed you another can. “I also recommend a beef or veal bone, that will keep him busy for a while. And I would supplement the food with a simple but high-quality dry food.”

“Perfect, thank you so much! I just hope he likes the food. This morning he barely wanted to eat. Almost as if he was disgusted.”

“Hm, funny,” he replied, “normally they are very easy to care for and don’t have too high demands on their food. But dogs also have different personalities, maybe you have a little diva at home.”

You laughed and lifted the heavy bag of dry food into the cart. “I hope not.”

𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁𐄙𐄁

One hour and a car packed with groceries for you and your new resident later, you made your way home exhausted. The horrendous amounts of money you spent today you pushed far back and out of your consciousness. If need be, you had a little something put aside that you could fall back on if the money ran out at the end of the month.

“I’m back!” you shouted into the dead quiet house as you closed the door behind you and the purchases took up the entire entrance. You climbed over the dog bed and carried the groceries into the kitchen. You stowed everything in the refrigerator and the cupboards and were just about to go back into the hallway to get the rest when your eyes fell on the sink.

Your eyebrows were drawn together as you looked at the two bowls and the spoon that were on the tray for draining. Had you washed the dishes this morning? You were convinced that you had only put them in the sink. But maybe this process was already so automated in your brain that you hadn’t even noticed it.

Without a second thought, you grabbed the dog bed and dragged it into your bedroom. Your bed was deserted, so you just quickly picked up the blankets and pillows from the floor and put the dog bed in its place instead. You looked at the position for a moment before you pushed it with your foot half a meter away from your bed. You didn’t want to make the same mistake tomorrow morning, if you were still not used to having a dog sharing your room from now on.

“Where are you?” you shouted as you left the bedroom, looking for the dog in every room on the first floor. The house was not infinitely large, so it couldn’t be that difficult to find him. You paused for a moment and listened if you could hear the paws tripping somewhere, but the house was quiet.

With careful steps you climbed up the stairs. Most of the doors were locked and you actually thought you had closed all the doors. However, one of them was ajar, so that you headed towards it. “You in here, doggie?”

Carefully you pushed the door open and the question popped into your head how he had fitted through the slit. But this thought was displaced by the feeling that spread through you when you took a look into the room behind the door.

Your father had used this room as an office and you had hardly had the time (and money) to decorate the room the way you wanted it to be. Therefore there was only a simple desk in the room, numerous shelves that you had more or less filled with your things and documents, an easel with a blank canvas on it and your mother’s old piano that she had left you when she moved out. As a child, you had taken lessons twice a week, but hadn’t played in ages now.

Right in front of this dusty piano the dog stood on his hind legs. His front paws he had supported on the cushion of the seat. “What are you doing there?” you asked laughing and the dog’s head moved around to you. He must have pulled the seat out because you were sure you had never pulled it out from under the piano.

You crouched down and hesitantly stretched out your hands. To your surprise, he pushed himself off the chair and slowly came towards you. He stopped just before you and you waited a moment longer to see if he changed his mind and backed out. But he still stood in front of you and looked at you waiting. Slowly you approached one hand to his nose and held it out to him so he could sniff it.

But he ducked away from your hand and came another step closer so that his nose almost touched your upper body when he looked up at you. “Do you want me to pet you?” you asked, your voice no more than a whisper for fear he might shy away from the sound. Of course, no answer came back, so you let your hand, which was still hovering in the air, sink slowly. Gently your fingers came into contact with the fur on his back. You knew that once you had washed him, his fur would soften. Right now it was still ruffled and dirty from the weather outside. Who knew how long the poor guy was out there on his own…

You moved your hand up and down his back for a few more seconds before you slowly straightened up so as not to frighten him. “Shall we go outside?”

Immediately, his head rushed to you and a blink of an eye later he started jumping up and down. You had to laugh. “Not so fast, not that you hurt yourself,” you warned him, but by then he was already on his way to the stairs. You only heard his paws on the wood and hurried after him. When you came downstairs, his nose was already halfway into the shopping bags that contained the cans of his dog food. With a smile, you grabbed the harness from a bag to which you attached the leash.

You were relieved that the time alone had apparently done him good and that he had warmed up a little with you in the meantime. This would make things a lot easier if you tried to put the harness on him. You called him to you and were amazed at how well he obeyed you. Whoever his former owners had been, they must have raised him well. Without resistance, he had the harness put on.

You too became a little more courageous and stroked his chin. “I have thought of a name for you in the meantime, too,” you said and he tilted his head. “There was once a children’s series about a bear who got into trouble from time to time. You also look like you like to make some trouble.” He turned his head to the other side, as if to say: Me and trouble? Never.

“Anyway, you remind me of a bear, and grizzly didn’t quite fit. So how about Paddington?”

The dog in front of you almost snorted contemptuously and your smile disappeared. You had thought about it the whole time at work and found the name fitting. “Don’t you like Paddington?” Another snort, this time followed by a shake of his whole body. “Okay, okay, all right,” you said thoughtfully. “But you look like a slightly undersized bear and I think you like Winnie the Pooh even less.” This time the dog showed no reaction at all, just stared at you from his almost black eyes. “I’m just kidding, Baby Bear,” you reassured him and immediately his head shot up. “Oh, you like that nickname?” He took a step forward and licked your hand. “But it’s just a nickname, we still have to think of a real name. But it can wait.”

You straightened up with the leash in your hand and grabbed your keys. You both left the house through the patio door and went through the garden gate towards the adjacent forest. As a small child, you had often been afraid of the dark pines and large deciduous trees, which filtered much of the daylight with their canopy of leaves. Nowadays you loved the silence that surrounded you as soon as you stepped into the forest. It felt like a different world, all the stress was forgotten for a few minutes and the noise of the city fell silent. Instead, the songs of the birds, the rustling of the leaves in the wind and the sticks cracking under your feet as you stepped on them embraced you.

And you felt even better now that you had a little four-legged friend by your side.

You watched him stop here and there to smell plants or pick up a stick to drop it a few meters later when something else caught his attention. Normally at this time, and in general in this part of the forest, you did not meet a soul. That’s why the blood froze in your veins when the dog suddenly stopped as if frozen, so you staggered back a little when the leash was stretched. You didn’t realize that he had stopped, but when you saw his expression, you knew something was wrong.

You didn’t dare to ask what it was. Even if he couldn’t answer, you wanted to draw his attention back to you. Maybe he had just smelled a rabbit or heard a noise in the distance. The fact that he pointed his tail straight back and snarled his teeth did not necessarily mean that something was wrong. Or at least that’s what you tried to tell yourself.

You backed off a few steps so that you stood behind him and you half-heartedly pulled the leash to lead him back to the house. When you turned around, you could still see the top of the roof of your house between the trees. When you turned back, you thought you saw a silhouette standing between the trees. Immediately a shiver ran through you and the hairs on your arms stood up.

“Let’s go,” you whispered, that was all you were capable of. Again you pulled on the leash, but this time the dog growled in front of you. Still he had not turned his gaze away from his intended target. But when you looked in the same direction, you couldn’t see more than the small forest path leading into the gloom of the forest. But that changed a second later when a figure stepped out of the bushes. At first you only heard the rustling of the leaves, then you saw the branches being pushed aside as a big grey wolf came towards you.

Instinctively you recoiled, you had the leash so tightly wrapped around you that your fingers hurt. You tried to pull the dog towards you, but he did not move a bit. You thought about running back to the house alone. Maybe you could call Hoseok, but even that wouldn’t help you at this moment. You didn’t want to leave the dog alone with the wolf. Maybe they would get into a fight or he would run away in front of a car of the next speeder.

No. You kept clutching the leash and trying to remember what you had read, how to react when a wolf was facing you. You were sure that the majority had assured you that wolves were so shy that they avoided humans. So why this wolf came closer and closer to you was a mystery to you. You were unsure whether you should continue to stand there as if rooted in the ground or chase him away with loud noises.

But even if you wanted to make a sound – it did not work. Not even the smallest sound came out of you. You couldn’t even breathe properly when you watched the wolf stop right in front of you. His gaze lay on your dog and the two of them seemed to be having a staring contest. Whether this was a good sign or meant that they would start attacking at any moment, you did not know. But you were sure that you would find out at any moment.

The wolf gave a deep growl of itself, which went through your marrow and leg and you had to suppress a shiver. Your dog also gave another growl and he took a confident step forward. You were pulled along and gave a choked gasp of fear. This did not go unheard by the two animals in front of you and suddenly the attention of the wolf was on you.

You dodged his gaze and turned your head to the side, hoping to turn his attention away from you as quickly as possible. You flinched as your dog growled again, this time louder and slowly backed away. You took this as an unspoken invitation to imitate him and to go backwards as well. Step by step you brought more and more distance between you and the wolf, which turned around after a few steps and disappeared back into the forest.

You ran as fast as your feet carried you back to the house. Startled, you cried out when you almost ran over a rabbit, which hopped back into the bushes. But you had no room in you to feel guilty. Too great was the fear inside you. You could only exhale with relief when you had closed and locked both the garden gate and the patio door behind you. But for the rest of the afternoon and evening you felt as if the inhabitants of the forest were watching you and the tops of the trees gently swaying in the wind were laughing at your naivety.

#taehyung x reader #dog hybrid!taehyung #hybrid!taehyung x reader #bts smut #bts angst #bts hybrid au #bangtanarmynet #thebtswritersclub #hybridbtsnetwork #hybrid taehyung x reader #bts fanfic

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klbwriting · 3 years

Text

Unexpected Allies - Chapter 1

Fandom: Six of Crows/Shadow and Bone

Pairing: eventually will be Kaz/female!Reader but for now nothing

Warnings: I mean, Kaz Brekker is involved, someone is getting maimed

Summary: The Darkling won the Ravka civil war, defeating the Sun Summoner and taking command of Ravka. Then he went looking for ways to make his Grisha more powerful. Kaz Brekker knew this but took the job at the Ice Court anyway, getting himself and Jesper Fahey thrown into a Ravkan prison for his efforts. After getting broken out by the Darkling's second in command the trio has to find their way to the Permafrost and the resistance gathering there. And then Kaz has to figure out a way to get his crew out of this whole mess. But how can he get himself out of the mess of feelings he has for the Grisha with all the powers?

Note: Hello! I am alive! I have found motivation for something else! As much as I loved the Shadow and Bone show I have found more love in the Six of Crows books so this fic is an AU based on both. In this the Darkling won out over Alina and then Six of Crows happened like it does, except the Darkling showed up to ruin things as he does. Also going to address the Inej sized elephant in the room, in this Kaz’s feelings were less strong towards her because I ship the fuck out of Kaz and Inej but I also ship the shit out of Kaz and myself too and I needed some self-insert. I hope you like it, I missed writing and I’m glad to find some inspiration again.

Kaz Brekker was known even in prison as the guy who didn't need a reason. He wanted his infamy to spread even behind bars, the better to keep those looking for a pigeon to harass away. On his first day in this hellscape he had stolen a fork from the dining hall and used it when his cellmate attempted to take the makeshift cane that he had been provided from his hand. Now he no longer had a cellmate and his old cellmate no longer had his eyes, and word spread quick of the young man willing to kill to be left alone. That had given him the time and space to start to plan his escape.

First, get Jesper as his cellmate. That was accomplished with ease. Anyone else they put in with him would be blind or deaf or crippled within 24 hours so it came down the guards asking him straight out who he wouldn't maim. He said Jesper Fahey and they allowed it if only to have a night's peace. Jesper didn't look like he was faring well. In a cell at Hellgate Jesper would have been alright but here in a West Ravkan prison near Os Alta where his Zemeni features made him stand out he had become a target. When he entered Kaz's cell rage filled the young crime lord. Jesper was thinner than ever, dark circles under his eyes and hands fidgeting constantly, almost like he needed a drug but Kaz knew it was just because he couldn't focus his energy.

"Jesper," Kaz whispered after the guard had left and his sharpshooter sat on the cot. "What do you need?" Jesper looked at him slowly and gave half a smile.

"Just my friend, s'all ok now," he said. Kaz felt the side of his mouth twitch up just a little. "But I could also use a way out of this damned place." Kaz nodded, gripping the wooden walking stick a little tighter. He wanted to put a comforting hand on Jesper's shoulder but he could not, Jordie's body, cold and wet and dead flooded his mind, and he couldn't bring himself to reach out. He hated that this place seemed to be tearing his friend apart slowly. It was even taking a toll on him. Everyday was the same, waked up with the sun, eat a breakfast of stodgy porridge and soggy bread, washed down with possibly the grimiest coffee ever made. The prisoners were then sent outside to work on either the large farm for the prison and surrounding towns or they were forced to be target practice for the Grisha guards. Normally only the worst of the worst were reserved for practice, or those that pissed off the guards. Kaz had avoided this so far but he knew Jesper had run his mouth one day, getting snarky with the yard guard and he had almost been drowned by a Tidemaker the next morning. Lunches were non-existant most days. They were shuffled from work to 'free time' which meant sitting in the hot afternoon sun either playing cards, or, if they were lucky, sitting under one of the shady trees that scattered the yard. Evening was the only decent time at this hellhole, it was dinner, and then back to the cells. Kaz enjoyed this time, he was normally alone to plan, and now that Jesper was here they could plan together. He had the beginning, how to get out of the cell, but the rest he was still working on.

"I have been planning this since we got in here, you were the first part of my plan," Kaz said, watching as another set of guards walked by. He checked the small window above their heads. "She's coming any minute now." Jesper looked at him confused for a moment before the cell door opened and a guard told Kaz to get up. Kaz nodded and stood, Jesper rising as well.

"This one should come too, he was at the Ice Court with me on that night," Kaz said to the guard. The guard looked between them and shrugged, motioning for another guard, a Grisha Corpolaki judging from the kefta he wore. They led Kaz and Jesper out of the cells and into one of the small interrogation rooms. Kaz was familiar with the room at this point, having been there several times in the past few months speaking with the Grisha Infernei who was seated at one of the two chairs in the room. She looked up as they entered and he noticed that she seemed relieved, something she hadn't shown before.

"Are there anymore of your comrades from the Ice Court in this prison?" she asked, motioning for another chair to be brought in. Jesper sat down hard while Kaz stood still, leaning on the walking stick and once again studying the Infernei. She wore a red kefta with black stitching, something different from the others and he was still not sure why. He supposed it was because she was high in the ranks. After the Darkling defeated Alina Starkov and her followers he had gone back to using his true name, Aleksander Morosova, and became king of Ravka. He used the power that he had sucked from the Sun Summoner to control the Fold now, moving and reshaping it to whatever he needed and on the night of Kaz's jurda parem heist he apparently needed the jurda parem also. Kaz and Jesper had been taken but the others had escaped.

"No, no more of us, just we two were involved," he said. The Grisha looked between them, assessing them. Kaz took another moment to look over her while she studied Jesper. He always liked to measure who he was up against, and he didn't mind studying her. She was curvy, seeming to like waffles more than Nina did, with hair a deep auburn and eyes the color of dark chocolate. The first time he saw them they reminded him of Inej's eyes except her's were more hopeful than he had ever seen Inej. This Grisha fully believed that something good could still happen in the world. Kaz was almost jealous of this, but of course, this Grisha had seen her side win the Ravka civil war. His eyes now met hers and he saw that while he was studying her she had been doing the same to him. He could tell she knew he was lying but he didn't care. He had spent the last 4 months keeping his answers vague, giving just enough information so that she would feed him information back about the current situation at the Little Palace, now the true royal home since the Grand Palace lay in ruin. King Aleksander left it as a reminder to those who would attempt to assassinate him, bodies still left scattered around the rubble, Alina Starkov's kefta in tatters on the front steps. Kaz hadn't seen it but from the way this Grisha described it, he believed it was terrifying.

"Mr. Brekker, we both know the heist you were attempting could never be accomplished with just two people," she said, a knowing smile on her face. This seeming infatuation the Grisha had with him was a plus for Kaz. He often wondered if he could possibly seduce his way out of the situation but his mind couldn't fathom the interactions involved, so he would wait. Perhaps this woman had a inclination towards criminals, she might be seduced by anyone, Jesper could do it easily, Kaz just had to get the ball rolling so to speak.

"I don't know, I think Jesper and I can accomplish anything we put out mind to," he answered, bringing himself to nudge his partner in crime with his elbow. The Grisha nodded and opened her notebook as she did at every meeting and began to write.

Y/N had noticed the look on Kaz Brekker's face when he elbowed Jesper Fahey. She could see his hesitation, she noticed the look in his storm gray eyes. He was bracing himself for impact as if the touch would somehow hurt him. Jesper's face was surprised at the touch, and he physically turned towards Kaz with shock. She opened her notebook and pretended to jot down something important as she did every day, but she mentally notated this interaction. She had been listening to others in the prison and despite his limp Kaz never let anyone see him as weak, however, this aversion to touch was never mentioned. He hid it well out in the general population but she could see something about touch bothered him immensely, that information could be useful later. Kaz Brekker was a tough nut to crack she had to admit, but eventually she would get to where she needed to be with him, hopefully sooner rather than later. Aleksander was having a tough time buying her excuses and she had to become even more convincing for him, continuing to keep his trust after the betrayal of the Sun Summoner was an arduous task. She hoped soon she could drop her facade and begin her true purpose, breaking Kaz Brekker and his cohorts out of this prison and find the gathering resistance in the Permafrost.

"Alright Mr. Brekker, we left off yesterday with you explaining to me how you came to know about jurda parem and what the Fjerdans were doing with Bo Yul-Bayor and his son Kuwei?" she said. It had taken months for Kaz to even start explaining anything to her. She had hoped that agreeing to allow his friend to be his cellmate would open him up. Luckily the gamble had worked at their last interrogation. His answers had still been too vague to really make an impact but it was a start. She hated to make him desperate but she needed the information, something to feed to Aleksander and send him on a chase for more jurda parem. Kuwei Yol-Bo had escaped from the Ice Court and that knowledge was keeping Bo from cooperating with the Second Army. He had recreated exactly one vial of jurda parem and refused to create another until his son was returned safely to him. Kaz Brekker and Jesper Fahey had been the last people to see Kuwei alive and she needed something to tell Aleksander before he decided to come here and do the interrogations himself.

"Yes, I believe I told you that a rumor had gone around Ketterdam and that I just happened to hear it," he said, making sure he was as convincing as he could be. Once again Y/N pretended to write something down, pretending to believe his lie. He was a very good liar, she could see that in the way his eyes held truth, his body language said honest, even his pulse was calm, however, the blood in his veins moved just a milisecond faster during his falsehoods. It had taken nearly a month to figure out the tell in his body but she had done it and now she used this against him.

"Must have been quite a rumor to make you put your friends in the line of fire of Fjerdans and of King Aleksander," she said, keeping her voice light, leaning a little closer to him. She couldn't lie, she was enraptured by the young man from the Barrel of Ketterdam, but she wasn't foolish enough to believe that he would ever see her as anything other than another Ravkan Grisha blindly serving her king, but she could pretend that she hoped to lure him in, get him feeling confident about her.

"Jesper will tell you, he was eager to join me to find this new drug, imagine the kruge we could make from such a thing," Kaz said, standing suddenly and poking Jesper towards Y/N with his cane. He moved towards the wall, leaning against it. Y/N watched him for a few moments before turning her attention to Jesper. He wanted to push someone else at her? Why? She could tell he liked the attention she gave him, maybe not in a way most men did, but he liked it all the same. Jesper barked a laugh.

"Eager? You came back and acted like we were going to be rolling in kruge, become kings of Kerch," Jesper said. He was also a practiced liar, following the lead of his boss as it were. Y/N smiled at Jesper then, making sure her brown eyes looked intrigued and enraptured. She noticed the Zemeni man leaned back in his chair then, clearly not interested in the attentions of a Grisha like herself. "But ya, I mean, I wanted the kruge and I was having a good run that night at the tables, felt lady luck was on my side." She saw him fidgeting near his waist, where his guns should be. She had those stored in her private quarters, along with a certain crow headed cane, waiting for the right moment. She had been watching Kaz and Jesper since they arrived, having her spies give her information on them. They were the only link she had to Kuwei and Inej Ghafa and she needed to know all she could before she continued her plan.

She tried to pry more out of the two for several minutes before one of her people, a young Squallor entered.

"The hour is late Korovsa, the king is finished waiting," she whispered. Y/N’s jaw tightened. Her eyes flashed to Kaz and she saw him take notice of the slight change in her features. Her fears were starting to come to pass. She needed to end this charade now.

"Guard, please escort Mr. Fahey back to his new cell. Mr. Brekker and I have more to discuss," she ordered. The guard grabbed Jesper's arm, hauling him from the seat. Y/N wanted to say something, tell them to lay off the guy, but knew she couldn't appear as if she cared. Once he was gone she made a motion for Kaz to sit. He still stood. "Sit, now," she insisted, hoping he heard the urgency in her voice. He eyed for another moment before he moved to sit. She leaned closer, all of her coy attitude gone.

"What's happened?" Kaz asked casually, working the top of the walking stick with his hands, the only sign of his concern. Y/N let out a breath.

"My time is up, tomorrow night expect there to be a riot, stay in your cell with Jesper, don't leave until you hear 2 bells, then leave the cell and go to your left, the door will be ajar due to the last guard through it mistakenly knocking over mop. Once you are in the corridor go right and follow it to the deserted morgue. I will join you and lead you and Jesper out, do not leave without me," she said.

"Why should I believe any of this? That you're just going to help up walk out of there?" Kaz asked, trying to read her, seeing if she was lying. She groaned annoyed. Why was it that her only hope was as distrustful as her current king?

"Because I want to see the king's body burn before he destroys all of us," she whispered, voice dripping with venom. Kaz looked a little surprised at her viciousness and he nodded. She sat back, knowing that by now the guard had returned.

"Well Mr. Brekker, you've once again been no help, tomorrow the king will be coming to personally interrogate you, I hope you are looking forward to it," she said. "Guard take him back to his cell." The guard nodded and yanked him out of the chair. "Careful, the king won't like it if he can't inflict the pain himself," she warned, more to Kaz than the guard. She hoped Kaz believed her enough, that she had shown her hand to him enough that he would do as she asked. If he didn't they were all screwed.

#six of crows #kaz #kaz brekker #kazbrekker #kaz x reader #kaz brekker x reader #shadow and bone #crooked kingdom #jesper fahey #unexpected allies series

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c-optimistic · 4 years

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Great! I asked because if you didnt take prompts I wanted to be respectful of it, also okay if you dont feel like doing it or if you take your time, I admire and appreciate all your work. It's an angsty one😅 after the supergirl reveal, all the events and their drifting apart, Kara and Lena are rekindling their friendship, kara tells lena she's in love with her, lena confesses her feelings too but tells kara that after everything they cant be more than friends, angst here, then a happy ending 😁

“You’re my Lois,” she said softly, almost to herself.

(It had been on her mind for days and weeks and months now, words she was afraid to fully verbalize, thoughts and feelings she wasn’t sure she quite wanted to string into something coherent.

But now, in the silence, in their solitude, the words slipped out as easy as breathing, slipped out without her consent, her knowledge, her desire.)

Lena didn’t turn towards her, just wrapped her arms tighter around herself to stave off the chilly bite of the air. “I don’t know what that means,” she finally offered, voice terribly soft, eyes still focused on the city lights below them.

(National City was beautiful in the fall. Parks turned orange and yellow and red, pumpkins and cartoon turkeys and the strong scent of cinnamon could be found on every street corner. Jackets got dusted off and pulled on, scarves wound their way around people’s necks, the smell of hot chocolate seemed to permeate the air.

And Lena looked at home in the fall. Her hair was down more often than not, gentle curls framing her face. She was wrapped in soft sweaters and warm colors, looking gentler, calmer, more at ease.

And she was, in every way, Kara’s Lois.) “It’s...I—well.” Explaining was harder than she thought. Giving meaning to what she said was harder than she expected. “You’re the one I’d spin the world the opposite direction for, you know?” “Don’t be ridiculous, Kara,” Lena scoffed, turning away from the city and meeting Kara’s eyes briefly before walking through the sliding glass doors and back into her apartment. Kara followed sullenly behind. “What good would that even do?” “Turns back time,” Kara joked softly, watching Lena pour herself a glass of wine. Once maybe, days and weeks and months ago, she would have offered Kara a glass as well. Now she just set the bottle aside and sipped slowly, as if daring Kara to comment. “Why would you want to turn back time for me? And what does this have to do with Lois?” She seemed genuinely confused, and Kara realized she needed to be more direct.

(In and of itself, it was a scary thought. She didn’t want to confess her feelings and be rebuffed. She didn’t want to tell the truth and leave herself open to...what, pain? A lack of reciprocation? Laughter at her expense?

And yet, and yet...Lena was her Lois, and she was worth it all the same.)

“What I’m trying to say,” Kara tried again, biting on her lip as she attempted to find the right words, beginning to think there were only three, not quite sure how to gather the courage to say them. “Remember Mon-El?” she said, switching tactics.

“Vaguely,” Lena responded, amused. She walked over to her kitchen, pulled out a kettle, a mug, and a packet of hot chocolate mix (an item she only kept at her place because she knew about Kara’s preference for it over tea). “What about him?” she asked as she put the water to boil, raising her eyebrow and looking at Kara expectantly.

“When I sent him away, chose to save everyone over keeping him, Clark told me he could never do that,” Kara explained, that moment etched into her memory, inescapable and dare she say profound in the absence of feeling. “He said if it came down to keeping Lois or the world...well, he wouldn’t know what to do.”

Lena looked down, focusing on pouring the boiling water into the mug and adding the hot cocoa mix, stirring it in slowly. “Oh,” she whispered finally, pushing the mug towards Kara, “that’s what you mean about my being your Lois.”

“Lena, I—”

“—to be honest, though,” Lena interrupted, frowning, “I don’t think you have a Lois.”

(Well, if anything could make those three words Kara wanted to say shrink back into their shell, it was that.

And for it to be said so casually, so abruptly, so utterly convincingly, as though there wasn’t any doubt in Lena’s mind. Well. That more than hurt, that felt vaguely offensive.)

“That’s so—”

“—you’re too,” Lena waved her hands, struggling with finding a word, “honorable,” she finally settled on. “You believe in duty, in sacrifice, in putting everyone before you.” She smiled, looking inexplicably proud, and picked up her wine glass, taking a small sip. “You’re too selfless. If it came down to it, Kara, you’d break your own heart a thousand times over for the world.”

Kara blinked, wondering how Lena misinterpreted her. “No, Lena, I’m saying—”

“—no, I know,” Lena interrupted, setting her wine aside and walking over to stand in front of Kara, so close that Kara could practically smell the alcohol on Lena’s breath. Rather than meet Lena’s eyes, Kara kept her gaze on the ceiling. “And I love you, too. But we’re not Clark and Lois.”

(And oh, Lena got it. She got it and she was braver than Kara, laying the words out there, giving the feelings between them a name, finally, finally, calling it what it was.

Love. She loved Lena.)

“I don’t pull off the suit as well as he does, I know,” Kara joked sadly, eyes still on the ceiling, knowing where Lena was going with this.

(It was too soon. It was too much. It was too hard.)

“Kara,” Lena admonished, forcing Kara to meet her gaze. Kara’s vision was a little blurred, so she wasn’t quite sure if those were tears in Lena’s eyes or if her allergies were just working up again. “We can’t,” Lena told her, voice trembling.

“Right. No. Of course.”

“Kara, after everything, being friends is hard enough, do you really—”

“—I said I got it,” Kara interrupted, blinking, horrified when her vision cleared and she felt something wet roll down her cheeks. She was crying. Crying. How utterly embarrassing.

(She looked away again, unwilling to see pity in Lena’s expression, unwilling to confirm for herself that what was welling up in Lena’s eyes was indeed allergies.

She looked away again, because she was willing to break her heart a thousand times over for the world, but she didn’t know how to cope with her breaking heart now.)

“I’m just.” She stopped, heaved a breath, and nodded curtly. “Just friends sounds good. But I’m going to go now.” She stepped back from Lena, practically power-walked towards the balcony door, stopping only when she felt something tug on her cape.

“Kara,” Lena began, but Kara didn’t turn. Couldn’t turn. Whatever courage Lena had been on when she’d managed to say the words Kara couldn’t seemed to fade, however, and she released her grip on Kara’s cape and pulled back. “You pull the suit off way better than him, don’t sell yourself short.”

(It wasn’t what Lena wanted to say, Kara didn’t need the uptick of Lena’s heartbeat or the soft, regretful sigh she released a moment after the words escaped her lips.

It wasn’t what Lena wanted to say, but it was what she did say, and Kara managed nothing more than a strangled laugh in response, taking off into the night and leaving Lena and a mug of hot chocolate untouched behind her.)

xxx

The next time she saw Lena was at game night.

(This was not for a lack of trying on Lena’s part. She’d invited Kara to lunch, to coffee, to a variety of science-related events—even Lena’s TED Talk—but Kara had declined them all, citing work or Supergirl-catastrophes.

Finally, Lena had sent a text reading just hmph, and Kara had spent the rest of the afternoon asking Nia if it was a good or bad hmph.)

Game night, however, Kara couldn’t avoid. Namely, because it was at her own apartment. She had managed to avoid directly inviting Lena, resorting instead to a group chat message, something that had Nia shaking her head and muttering “children.”

(And rationally, Kara knew better. She knew that she was supposed to be a better friend, that they were working on repairing their tattered and bruised friendship, that they needed to reestablish all those lines of communication and trust that had been burned to the ground.

She knew, but she struggled. She struggled with the thought of looking at Lena and not thinking about how much she loved her, not thinking that Lena felt the same way, not thinking that had she been better—a better friend, a more honest friend, a kinder friend—then there would have been nothing in the way of her reaching out to take Lena by the hand, tug her forward, chase her lip, and—

Well. All those were things she was determinedly not trying to think of.)

She was a bit of a mess by the time Lena arrived, looking as beautiful and breathtaking as ever, a bag of takeout in her hand, an unsure smile on her lips.

“Are you sure?” Lena whispered, not entering Kara’s apartment. “If this is too much—”

“—I want you here,” Kara cut in, not really embarrassed by how desperate she sounded. Because now that she was looking at Lena, she forgot why she had wanted to maintain distance in the first place. Self-preservation no longer seemed very important to her. “I always want you with me.”

“As a friend,” Lena added, cheeks flushed, suddenly very interested in her shoes, her heart pounding away, teeth digging into her bottom lip.

Kara wasn’t sure what it all meant. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. So instead, she responded with the honesty she should’ve afforded Lena sooner—the honesty her best friend was owed. “In any capacity you’ll have me,” she said.

Lena didn’t respond, but as she walked by to enter Kara’s apartment, the fingers of her free hand ran over the inside of Kara’s hand, barely brushing over Kara’s palm, really, and it was like an electric shock, leaving Kara paralyzed to the spot until Alex took pity on her and unrooted her—physically dragging her over to the food and games.

(And the entire night, as Kara flexed the hand Lena touched repeatedly, she noticed that every time she looked over at Lena, Lena was already looking at her.

And the entire night, as Nia muttered “children” under her breath, Kara began to hope.)

xxx

As the weeks dragged on and Lena showed no signs of wanting anything to evolve between them, much of that hope evaporated. She was only holding onto the last tendrils when she had to show up at L-Corp (again) to stop some madman’s mad henchmen from trying to kill Lena (again).

When the men were appropriately stopped and detained, Kara found herself on the balcony with Lena (again), staring out at the city (this too, again). Lena wasn’t drinking anything, and she wasn’t dressed in her soft sweaters. Instead, she was wearing a navy suit, hair pulled tightly back, hands in her pockets as she leaned against the balustrade, eyes on Kara.

“You took awhile to get here,” Lena finally said, and Kara turned to her, a little offended.

“There was a fire, Lena. I had to make sure it was out before—”

“—but I thought I was your Lois?” she interrupted, with more than a little snark. Kara straightened, standing at her full height as she approached Lena.

“First of all, low blow. Secondly, you said it yourself, I don’t have a Lois. Maybe you need to find a less honorable friend,” Kara told her, eyes narrowed.

Lena didn’t look sorry. If anything, she seemed...content. “I’ve been thinking about it, you know?” She tugged her hands out of her pockets, and Kara thought her heart slammed to a halt when Lena reached out and placed her hands on Kara’s shoulders, drawing her in. “I think the truth is,” she continued, hands sliding across Kara’s shoulders, interlocking behind Kara’s neck, “you’re my Lois. Because there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep you, even give up a chance at something more, something I really want, because I was scared it wouldn’t work and I’d lose you completely.”

“Something you really want, huh?” Kara said, her heart jumpstarting at the feeling of Lena’s fingers against her neck, at the way Lena’s thumbs rubbed gently against the base of her skull, at the way Lena leaned up, pressing their foreheads together. “Are you still scared?”

“Terrified,” Lena breathed. “But I figure I could be a little more like you, potential heartbreak and all.”

Kara tried to nod, managing nothing more than gently head-butting Lena and making her laugh. “We probably need to figure out a better way to describe how we feel about each other, I think my cousin and Lois may get concerned—”

“—Kara?” Lena interrupted, pulling away just a bit.

“Yeah?”

“We can definitely talk about this if you want. Or you could just kiss me. Whichever you prefer.”

(In the end, it was an easy choice.

And judging from the way Lena sighed into her mouth, she felt the same way.)

#supercorp #fanfic #it's not exactly what you wanted #less angst #but I hope you like it!

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darling-i-read-it · 3 years

Text

Temple of the Forbidden Eye

Indiana Jones x reader

Word Count: 2.8k

Warnings: bugs, skeletons, lava, danger, running lol, insinuations to smut

Author’s Note: This is, in fact, the plot to the disneyland ride. I’ve been on it so many times, when I was trying to think of an Indiana plot to do I literally just wrote the ride. And i love this.

Summary: You and Indiana are tasked with going to look into a Temple.

Song: Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye by John Williams

I don’t own these characters. They belong to author/director

(not my gif)

Sallah stood in front of you, frantically opening up a tattered map. He ushered it over to you and you looked down at it, breathing in the hot 80 degree air. He pointed at the picture of the Temple, looking up at your face as he did so.

“That is where you need to go.” You pursed your lips.

“You’ve spoken to Indiana about this?”

“He is already on his way. He is in a hotel, awaiting my call for your answer,” he explained. You looked up at the blue sky and took a deep breath. You told yourself you wouldn’t get caught up in anything like this again. Going to India, trying to find this Temple of the Forbidden Eye. Working with Indiana Jones again. “You should go. He will need help, it is dangerous.”

You looked at Sallah hard and you saw him realize that you were going to go. A small smile creeped onto his face and he nodded quickly, slapping your shoulder happily.

“I will call him.” He started to walk away and you sighed loudly, shaking your head. You raised your hand to him.

“Sallah wait.” He turned back around to see you. You shut your eyes tightly and opened them again, allowing yourself to realize what you were about to do. It was dangerous. “Tell him to book me a room.”

====

You stepped into the hotel. It was even hotter in India than it had been back where you were. The hotel offered no solace. You were pretty sure it was more humid in it than outside where at least there was some wind. You held your suitcase tight and approached the desk.

“Hello I’m Y/N-”

“Indiana reservation?” the front desk manager asked. His accent was thick which was understandable. You were the tourist after all.

“Yes,” you told him, nodding. He smiled sweetly and handed you a key. He gestured to the right of him where there were some stairs leading up to the rooms.

“Room 341.” You nodded and gave him a smile in return before walking up to the room.

It was nicer than you expected but you didn’t expect to be spending much time here. Once you spoke to Indiana the two of you would be out and going to see the Temple. But first, some rest. If you could get it in this heat.

You put your bags down and looked out the window at the small town outside. You were about to sit down on the bed and get changed when the door opened. You quickly turned around and saw Indiana there, a smile on his face.

“You made it.” You rolled your eyes.

“Against my better wishes, yes.”

“Sallah told me he could convince you. Although I heard you didn’t need much convincing,” he teased. You rolled your eyes and he sat down on the bed so you stayed standing.

“So this Temple... anything I should know before getting into it?” you asked. He raised an eyebrow. His temple was sweating but he didn’t seem to be affected much by the heat.

“They say it’s a chamber of destiny. A fountain of youth, riches, all that regular stuff,” he explained. You nodded, crossing your arms and leaning against the wall.

“It’s always the greedy stuff that gets people flocking.”

“You say that like you speak from experience.” You rolled your eyes.

“I am nearly as experienced as you.” He stood up and walked over to where you were standing, getting a little to close. You made no attempt to move. “Are you disagreeing with me?”

“No. You’re right. It is the greed.” You rolled your eyes.

“If we’re going to do this you need to forget about what happened last time. It was a one time thing and we’re better off moving forward as partners,” you told him evenly. Your face was hard and your eyes were giving nothing away. He admired that.

“Whatever you want,” he said but it sounded like he didn’t mean it.

“Indiana I’m serious.”

“So am I. Be ready by tomorrow morning at 8, I got us a car to take us as far as it can. If you need me, you know where I’ll be.” He walked away and you nodded slowly watching as the door closed behind him.

You shook your head and smiled.

======

You were ready to go before he was so you waited in the hallway for him to come out. The ride was short before you reached the spot where you had to walk. That was surprisingly short as well and you were at the Temple in no time.

People were lining up out front. They praid, left presents, and some even cried to the Temple for help. You and Indiana had to step over these people and they paid you nearly no mind as you approached the doorway.

“Here,” Indiana said gruffly. You looked over at him and he handed you a hat.

“Not my style but thank you.”

“Put it over your eyes when we get to the eye of the idol. Unless you would like to die an untimely death,” he said. You looked down the menacing hallway of the Temple and tried not to show your fear. It was always easier when Indiana was around to pretend you were braver than you actually were.

You took the hat and put it on your head.

“It’s going to fall off.”

“I got one fitted to your head.” He started to walk inside. “It’s not going to fall off.” ====

Once you got past the first hallway, it did not get any better. The pathway got narrower and colder. You were lucky that Indiana lit a torch to illuminate the small path.

He suddenly stopped in front of you, putting his arm against your chest. In other circumstances you probably would have made a quip about that but you didn’t. You were both in danger now and the only person who could save you if you messed up was Indiana. You weren’t about to question him now.

“Look at the tiles.”

Your eyes went down in front of him. There were regular tiles and then ones with diamonds on them. They were few and far between but that didn’t matter. They were still there.

“I take it we shouldn’t walk on those.”

“I think it wouldn’t be advisable.”

“Then we probably should also not pull on that rope,” you muttered. He looked further in front of him where you were looking and noticed a pile of rocks in the distance, tied together with some rope. He nodded.

“Not a bad idea.”

You pushed forward, stepping only where he stepped. You barely even touched the walls.

“What you were saying yesterday-” he started.

“Right now is not the time,” you grumbled, eyes glued to your steps. His face was on the ground as well as he held up the torch.

“We may die.”

“You cannot use that line more than once. We lived last time,” you muttered. He chuckled and bit and turned to you, causing you to hit his chest because you weren’t paying attention. “Indiana-”

“I liked last time. We worked well together.” You shook your head and grabbed the torch out of his hand.

“I will lead.” He shook his head and took a step back which caused you to stumble backwards a bit. That was when you realized that the door behind you was shutting. You turned quickly and then noticed the spikes above you. There were skulls attached to some, a couple heads that had barely decomposed.

He grabbed your arm before you could say anything and dragged you out of the small room into a bigger clearing. You looked up and there it was. Surrounded by green neon light, the huge face of the idol.

“Hat down!” he screamed and grabbed your arm before running. You followed his lead, hoping that he hadn’t looked in the eyes. You held your hat down with the other hand, unfortunately dropping the torch and leaving it behind.

Slowly you came to a stop. You felt hot and you could hear bubbling. Indiana pulled your hat up and you rubbed your eyes to gain focus back. Before you was a bubbling chasm of lava. At the other side was a menacing face in stone.

“You still going to lead?!” Indiana asked and you got your bearings together before grabbing his arm and running in to your left. Your lungs were burning but the adrenaline was pumping.

“What is that?!” you asked and he put his arm in front of you as he looked up at the skeletons hanging from the wall. The room was lit with torches, a tall rock ceiling above your heads. You grabbed his arm tightly. “The people who looked into the eyes of the idol,” he said seriously. You hardened your face and started to run again, jogging this time as you searched for a way out. There was no coming back this way.

“Damn the search for the truth. We have to get out of here,” you told him stiffly. He didn’t react even as you heard thousands of bugs crawling above your head. You held his hand tightly and ignored the urge to stop.

“Y/N…” he said carefully and you shook your head. You looked at the bridge across the chasm of lava and shook your head more violently this time. You backed up. There was no way. It didn’t look like anyone had crossed it in centuries. It wouldn’t hold the two of you up, he couldn’t. “We have to cross it.”

“Oh yeah?! And fall in?! Be my guest Indiana but I chose to live another day.” He turned to face you and it was the first time you had looked him straight in the face since before you started running. Your breath was heaving and so was his. There was a cut across his face, likely from bumping into a jagged rock when the two of you were all but blindfolded. Sweat poured down his forehead and his expression was hard.

You looked almost the same. Sweating, cut up, breathing hard.

“You gonna climb your way over sweetheart? Huh?” You didn’t answer him. You just breathed. “I didn’t think so.”

Then before you could even think of an answer, he was running across the bridge. You waited for a moment, looked behind you and then cursed under your breath as you ran forward across the bridge. Indiana reached the other side and just as you started to reach it the bridge creaked and caved underneath you. The plank you were standing on broke under your foot and you fell, foot lodged in between planks. The bridge split. You erupted in screams. You grabbed onto the planks, wrapping your arms around them as Indiana looked down at you, hanging from the edge. He reached his hand down and you took it, using every ounce of strength you had to get your foot unstuck.

He pulled and finally you climbed over the top. He wrapped his arms around you to hold you steady and finally was able to gauge what else was on the other side of the chasm.

And it was crawling with snakes.

Indiana stumbled back and you caught him before he fell into the lava.

“Henry Jones I swear to God if you leave me-” His face was riddled with fear and he started to run to the left, away from the snakes. “Henry!” There was a door on the other side of the snakes and he was climbing up to try and find another way. You shook your head and carefully but quickly crossed the snake pit. You held your breath until you were back on regular ground.

You looked up and Indiana was gone. He must have found another way. You just hoped that he would be able to get out of here. You were not coming back in. Well if he didn’t make it out before you, you might think about it.

The doorway opened up to a smaller room but it was still huge. The cave was littered with skulls, illuminated with lit red candles. You took a deep breath.

“I take it this is not a place I want to be,” you whispered to yourself. Bats flew above your head which ushered you along to the next room, through a large cave opening. You were just running from room to room, hoping to find something that would lead you out.

That was when you saw the walking skeletons. You stopped in your tracks and looked at them, on the left and right of you. There was a narrow opening between the two groups and you made a split second decision. You put your hat down over your eyes and ran.

You could feel the air of them shooting things at you. Their wordless attacks were terrifying. All you could hear was air and their bones moving against each other. You gasped and finally hit a spot where you didn’t feel any air anymore. You moved the hat up and turned around quickly.

Nothing.

You looked forward again at the darkness and your breath started to pick up. It was then that Indiana hung down on the rope. You looked up at him and he was yelling but you almost couldn’t hear him as the boulder started to come down.

He reached his hand down and you grabbed it just in time for him to pull you up onto the rope, the boulder moving beneath the two of you with a loud crash. You hoped it took out the skeletons.

You held onto him, feet dangling and muscles screaming. He held onto you as best he could, although he was keeping himself up as well.

As the boulder crashed you saw daylight from the place it had been stuck. You grunted from the effort of keeping yourself up.

“Look,” you whispered. He followed your gaze and you dropped yourself back down to the ground. He did so as well and followed you as you ran to the light.

You emerged in the jungle, the sun against your skin. You wanted to kiss the ground, bathe in the sun, never go in another Temple again.

“I didn’t see any riches,” you said, coughing. He chuckled, lying on the ground of exhaustion. You got on your knees and breathed in the fresh air.

“Can’t say I did either.” He looked over at you, hat on the ground above his head. “But we didn’t do too bad. For tourists.” You laughed dryly. You laid down next to him and looked up through the trees at the sky. You were sweating and the wind was welcome.

“Yeah,” you breathed. He looked over at you and you felt his stare. You waited a second and then turned to kiss him. You leaned against your elbow as you did so, the hat falling off your head. “I thought you said it wouldn’t fall off,” you whispered. He took a breath in from his nose and laughed.

======

Sallah was waiting for you at the hotel. He had flown all the way up to hear about your findings. He was sitting on your bed when the two of you walked in, still covered in dirt and sweat, in desperate need of a shower.

“We’re kind of busy,” you muttered, barely recognizing his presence.

“What did you find?!” he asked, standing up. Indiana looked him in the eye.

“We’ll talk after a shower,” Indiana said tiredly. You opened the bathroom door and gave Sallah a dismissive wave.

“I take it the two of you will want to work again soon?” he asked, ignoring your dismissive signals.

“Stay out of trouble will ya?” Indiana said before following you into the bathroom.

Sallah smiled but he also noted the lack of treasures in your hands. Disappointing. Perhaps you got the fountain of youth.

#indiana jones x reader #indiana jones imagines

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slowpoke-fics · 3 years

Text

The Run | The Good Doctor pt 3

Fandom: The Walking Dead

Pairing: Negan x Reader slow burn

Summary: You had a bit more responsibility than you'd expected, not to say you didn't know what you were doing

Warnings: none really, cussing, ooc Negan, slow burn, it's cute, I miss some and am not perfect, read at your own risk

A/N: This is part three to the Good Doctor Part 3! Thank you for being patient and I hope to have part four up much quicker. I liked this even though it's just some logistical stuff and insight, here is part two!

Maybe he thinks he can fix me, sucks for him, I'm broken beyond repair.

When you woke up, Negan had his hand on your shoulder, you immediately grabbed the gun under your pillow, holding it under his chin. He immediately grabbed the gun and twisted it out of your hands, your eyes now fully open and awake. You didn't realize he was eye level with you, how hot it was for him to control your gun like that, how hot he was staring into your eyes, waiting for your next move. You were frozen, you're not sure he equated it with anything but sleep, but he was captivating.

He laughed, hands up, "Damn, doll, just trying to fuckin' wake you up without fuckin' scaring you, see that was fuckin' pointless," his eyebrows raised as he shook the gun by the barrel at you, "you want it back or not?" You shook your head in disbelief as you took your gun and put it down, shocked that you held a gun to someone for just trying to wake you up. "I-I'm sorry, I guess it was just-" Negan laughed, "No worries, doll, at least I know you can take care of yourself."

You smiled, throwing the blanket off of you and swinging your legs over the couch, “So,” you stood up and began folding the blanket, “what’s the plan?” He watched you fold the blanket, not trying to hide the fact that his eyes roamed your body. Taking in the battered bluejeans that hugged your body, the scratched and slightly torn tank top, your hair shining against the sun, really popping the color out. “We’re going to drive a little longer than I’d hoped but,” he huffed, “the towns supposed to have some more supplies left than we’d originally thought, we should be back by dark.” You shrugged, “Should be fun, are we ready to leave now?”

Negan leaned against the desk, you took all of him in. He was wearing his classic leather jacket over the tattered t-shirt and blue jeans that laid over his steel toe boots. He watched as you put your hair into a pony tail, shirt playing peekaboo with the skin on your torso, “Right after breakfast doll. You ready?” You nodded at him, heading to the door with him following close behind.

Once you had sat down for breakfast Negan started shoveling food down, a full plate compared to your half rations. You didn’t really have much of an appetite, worried about everything that could happen with Negan today. He didn’t seem to notice, and by the time you’d finished your small plate, he was already done eating too. He grabbed your plate so he could return it with his own. You picked up the bags and followed suit, following him out the door and to his truck.

The truck was huge. Had to have been able to fit half of Alexanndria's storage. You’d wondered how much he was planning to come back with. It started to make a little more sense when a small portion of his crew jumped into the back, probably for protection. You climbed into the truck after Negan opened the door for you, closing it once he’d known your feet were out of the way. Then proceeding to climb in his own side.

Negan started the truck, taking you in before he started rolling. Your legs crossed, fingers interlocked at the top of your thighs, thumbs picking at each other, ankle continuously moving. You watched the trucks behind you, following close, at least three others. Did all of them have people in the back? How big was this run?

You were clearly nervous and he hated that, he wanted to make you as comfortable as possible. He tried to ignore it, but after fifteen minutes of non stop thought through his head, he had to say something. "God damn doll," Negan bellowed, "you're gonna roll the damn truck if you don't stop shaking so much," Negan lightly rubbed your forearm, a foreign thing to you, "what're ya so fuckin' nervous about anyway princess?"

You shrugged, a look of uneasiness resting on your face at his nickname for you that didn't go unnoticed, "Just don't know how to act with your group, what're your run rules? Where do I not be in the way? Will I distract you and your men? I'm used to going solo, or with one or two people. There's so-" Negan had to stop your monologue, knowing you've asked these questions twenty times since yesterday. "Don't fuckin' worry about it," Negan smiled, "I made sure this was gonna be fun for you." Your eyebrows curled, needing him to explain.

Negan blushed? No way, you thought and left it alone. "What do you mean?" He shrugged, "You'll see, won't you doll?" You huffed, "Well that just makes me more nervous." Negan let out a hearty laugh, "Damn girl, pull at this old assholes strings huh?" He shook his head, "I'm your personal companion today," he giggled at your slap to his arm. "I don't need a baby sitter!" He raised he hands very quickly to show defense, "No! But, wherever you go, I do. Whatever you fuckin' say, that's law. Everyone else goes at your direction too," he paused, looking at you, "but you don't leave my fuckin' sight," his eyes bore into you, demanding confirmation. "Yeah, okay," you smiled lightly.

"So," Negan's fingers drilled the steering wheel as he hummed at you to continue, "what's in this place?" Negan shifted, "It's a little town, the rest is a surprise." He looked genuinely excited, and you wondered how this apocalypse had changed him as a man. He couldn't have always been this heartless. "Do I get any hints?" Negan hummed again, this time searching for something to give you, "You'll fuckin' like it." You shrugged, "Maybe." He glanced to your bag where you keep your notebook, a gentle reminder of his broken trust. "Oh," you cleared your throat, "hopefully." He beamed at you, "Come on lil' fuckin' firecracker," he pressed the gas a couple more times, gently swerving the car to play with you, "be more fuckin' excited! I'm fuckin' kidding!"

The rest of the way you could believe how different Negan was being. He was intently talking to you about the grid of the town, what his crew already know about, how his crew has already been briefed that you're running it, explained the teams to you and that you're header, leading the team leaders, and he's told you that he's confident you have this ability. You were shocked about him being completely different man that with other people. You were sure that you could be with the man sitting in the truck with you, and you were sure that you couldn't be with the man who murdered someone you considered to be your brother. You were torn between seeing his good and never forgiving him for killing Glenn, how could he do something so vile? You shook your head, drawing attention back to the road and off of your thoughts.

When you arrived, Negan placed his hand on your thigh, just barely touching you. "There is one rule," he smiled, "stay here." Negan was gone for no more than two minutes. He finally came to your door, opening it and revealing his many men standing behind him, "Make sure you're safe." He reached for your hand, dropping you down to the same man who stole from you in your clinic, you glared him hiding behind Negan.

Negan stepped out of the way, the man looking guilty, "Hello, Doctor Y/n," he cleared his throat, "I'm sorry for stealing from an honorable woman." He handed you a gum pack, missing a few pieces, and a small pack of skittles, "I couldn't find gum to replace what I'd stolen, so I hoped that the skittles would excuse my poor manners." You smiled hatefully at him, taking what was in his hand, "Apology accepted..." you waited for him to say his name, but Negan chimed in. "Brady," and he slapped the other man on the shoulder eliciting a smile, "and Simon." You smiled, reaching your hand out to shake Simon's hand, "I've heard." Negan smiled at you, "Good we're all fuckin' aquatinted," he roughly slapped Brady's shoulder, you didn't miss the wince he tried to hide, "these two travel with us period. So, Y/n," a bright smile, "what's the fucking plan?"

With that you noticed the other men had cleared a path for you, letting you view the town. At this point you took in the town, looking at the tiny shops and small streets. Negan wasn't kidding, it's a small town, surely the four trucks you bought could fit everything. You thought for a second, and it hit you, how much work he had put into this. You smiled to yourself, knowing that he wanted to make this go smoothly for you, hence the perfect amount of trucks, a grid, briefed men.

You walked a little behind you, looking at the different streets, looking at Negan, he smiled, giving you some confidence. "You said that you'd already separated these men by trucks? With their usual teams?" You whispered to Negan, "Yes ma'am, they're with their usual team leaders and already armored, just need you to tell them where to go n what to do."

"Okay, so here's my plan-" Negan put his hand up, gesturing to the men when you realized you should be talking to them. You cleared your throat, "Okay, so here's the plan," Negan's body was just barely pressing against you, standing behind you on your left side, his hands in his pockets, watching his men intently listen to you. How hard did he work on this for you?

"If you came in Negan's truck, you're with us on main," you motioned with your hand to have them move to the side, "Truck two-or rather-team two, you're going to our left, Combs Street, when you get to the library, we're looking for education books, if we have time and space after you've gotten everything else essential on the street, comb the library taking the fun books, that's a good part of life now." Negan nodded, liking your plan for education first, noting that the houses on the street might hold value, but acknowledging that we still need distractions like 'fun books' if circumstances allowed.

"Truck three, hit the residential area, on Langley Street," you continued when the men nodded their heads, "Truck four, hit the shops to our right on second street," everyone started moving and you shouted, "wait!" You cleared your throat once again, "Team leaders, I need you and your right hand man, everyone else stay put."

You pulled out the grid as the men surrounded you, "So you've got the left and right sides on your street, split in half, half on Side A, the left, half on side B, the right, this will increase the time we can spend in the houses and avoid stepping on each others feet. Every time you clear a house you call it in, for example, team four A, you would say 'Team Four, A1 clear, moving to A2,' or 'Team Four A Trapped, requesting Four B at A3.' I need you to do this so I can designate resources and men, keep up with the lives and walkers. No need for needless death, check in." Everyone nodded, you smiled, "Anybody have questions, comments or concerns?" The men shook their heads and you turned back towards the crowd, "Alright, everyone knows what you're doing, no-one goes anywhere alone or unarmed. Take everything useful. Do not let your guard down and watch your backs. Dismissed." At that the men dissipated, going on their own assignments.

"Was that okay?" You looked to Negan, the need for approval swimming through your eyes, Negan nodded, "I think it was great, Simon what about you?" Simon chirped up, "Oh yeah, couldn't have done it better myself, I don't make them check in that much but that's okay." You smiled at Simon, wondering how he could not worry about his men that much. You watched as Team One had already started moving toward the first building, them the first check-ins started.

"Team One, heading to A1," a pause, "Team One, heading to B1," another pause, "Team Two, heading to A1." You listened to the team list off their locations, smiling as everyone checked in. "Alright, doll," Negan leaned against the truck, "Where to first?"

#twd negan #twd fanfic #twd fanfiction #negan x y/n #negan angst #negan fluff #negan x you #negan imagine #negan fic #negan fanfiction #negan x reader #the walking dead fanfiction #fanfic #fanfiction #Jdm fanfic

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serendipityjxmn · 3 years

Text

Mr. President

Chapter 16

TW: Rape attempt

Words Count: 1.6k

Link to Masterlist

Link to Chapter 17

You wake up feeling thirsty that night. Jimin isn’t in bed, as he’d been the past few days. You briefly wonder if he’s sleeping in some other room. You don’t glance at the clock but figured that it’s around 2 or 3AM.

You reach the teapot on your bedside to pour some water into a glass but none of it comes out. You’ve forgotten to refill it before you head to sleep. Too sleepy to curse at yourself, you stand up albeit groggily.

You make your way downstairs and only after gulping down two glasses of water do you feel sated of your thirst.

You’re about to head back upstairs when you heard some noise. You freeze in your steps, unsure of the source. Did someone break into your house? Though you don’t think the securities in this house is that amateur.

Taking another step, you hear the noise again and it takes you a moment to realize it’s your husband’s voice. Unknowingly, you walk towards the source of the noise and your husband’s voice that leads you to the house backyard.

Your husband is shouting at someone. There’s probably about 8 or 9 people including your husband, you couldn’t be sure. Someone is brought to kneel in front of him.

“Why the fuck would you bring him here?” He hisses.

“Sorry sir- I thought-“

“I don’t give a fuck about what you thought- my wife’s here-“ he runs a hand through his hair, speaking in harsh hushed tone. “Fuck it, just do it quick, give me the silencer-“

Someone thrusts a gun into your husband’s hand.

He cocks the gun and-

A piercing scream breaks out and suddenly everyone turns towards you. You realize the sound comes out from you. You’re screaming hysterically, eyes wide as soon as you see the man that was kneeling in front of your husband few seconds ago is now lying on the floor, no longer breathing.

Hands clasping your mouth, you swing around and starts running, too shell shocked to even cry.

You’re freaked out, you don’t even know your destination until you see the room at the end of hallway, the small room that had been your safe space and without thinking, you run towards it.

As soon as you lock the door, you find yourself sinking to the floor. Your body trembles and you feel hard to breath and then you start crying. You cry and simply cry for hours until your body’s too exhausted to cry anymore. You’re still trembling, lips pale from the traumatic scene that you just witnessed.

Jimin did come, knocking on the door and frantically shouts your name. But eventually he stopped. And you fall asleep, body still shivering.

When you finally find the strength to stand the next morning, Jimin has already gone out. He didn’t come home again that night.

You know your husband is a dangerous man. You’d seen it firsthand when he beats your brother half dead when you first saw him, and he’s never failed to remind you how dangerous he is.

From his cold demeanor, his reflex when someone is too close to him, how his footsteps are so silent, how he expertly handles the gun like he’s been doing it all his life, you know Jimin’s way more dangerous than he lets on to you.

He’d done a perfect job in hiding that dark part of his life, you’d give that to him.

And now that you know, you guess Jimin assumes it’s more dangerous as he levels up the security for you. Taeseok had kindly introduces you to them all, which by the way are four of them including Taeseok himself and informs you that you’re not allowed out unless there’s security with you. This is all by Jimin’s orders which he tells through Taeseok since he doesn’t come home for days now.

For someone who thinks you’re nothing, he sure is taking your security too seriously.

You’re angry with him. You really are. But when he doesn’t come home for the next whole week, you end up pacing back and forth in the foyer.

From prying and constantly pestering your poor new bodyguard, you’ve finally confirmed your suspicion that Jimin’s in a mafia gang. But that doesn’t surprise you. It is the fact that Jimin is actually the head of the mafia gang called BTS, and is the most notorious and influential as they hold most of the areas in Seoul. You couldn’t even bring yourself to ask the specifics of his underground business. Having a thug brother, you perfectly know well that there would be drugs and gamblings involved, or women.

You should be worried about that fact. The fact that your husband is a mafia leader. Your level of worry each night he doesn’t come home has increased on a significant level. You don’t really know if he’s gonna come home in one piece.

You find yourself staring blankly around the house because it feels even more empty than usual. There’s a strange hollow that follows it. And that’s how you find yourself sleeping again on the bed that the two of you share in the master bedroom. With his shirt.

You’ve always loved his smell. His vanilla scent that smells soft to your nose yet manly at the same time, his smell. So you pick one of his white shirt and sleeps hugging it.

The fact that you found out your husband’s a killer.. and yet you’re still worried about him.. what level of twisted is this?

It’s about at 3AM, you think, that you heard a sound, waking you up from slumber and you’re immediately aware of every sense, eyes shot open.

“Fuck-“ it’s Jimin’s voice that makes you sit up immediately. You can barely see him in the dark of the room with very little light illuminating.

“Y/N?”

You fumble to switch the bedside lamp on and scramble to your feet immediately and approaches him in the speed of light.

“Sorry didn’t mean to wake you-“

You’re about to throw your hands around him, to just hug him tight but stops short when you take in his disheveled appearance. He’s in his white shirt, his blazer and tie already discarded. But something feels wrong.

You reach out and almost jerks away when you feel a wet patch on his shirt. It takes you a few moments to realize it’s blood. The thick smell of copper filling your noise instantly.

Your eyes widen and you gasp aloud, “Oh God Jimin, are you okay? What’s this?” You ask frantically.

“I’m fine-“

“No Jimin, let me see-“ your hands are trembling, flashes of images of him killing the person few nights ago that still traumatises you filling your mind, you frantically unbutton his shirt, desperate to check if he’s okay and he just lets you.

Your hands are everywhere on the expanse of his chest and his chiseled abs and then you realize he’s perfectly fine and it isn’t his blood. Your whole body visibly relaxes and you let out a relieved sigh.

And then it suddenly dawns to you that you just unbuttoned him all the way down and now he’s half naked.

You fumble to take a step back but he catches your wrist immediately, startling you.

“What’s wrong, kitten?”

Kit.. kitten? “N- nothing.”

He juts his jaw towards the bed. “What’s my shirt doing on the bed?”

Your whole body goes rigid. You don’t even know how to explain everything.

“Did you miss me..?” He whispers, voice close to your ear making you shudder.

You stand frozen in his grip, shaking your head slowly. He only stares at you as you look down.

Thankfully, he releases you, perhaps taking pity after your shock. “I’m gonna shower.” He says then just leaves for the bathroom.

Flushing red, you sprint towards the bed to fetch his shirt back and chuck it into his drawer. You climb back onto bed, heart still beating fast. Where had he been? You were wondering if he would even tell you if you ask or if that’s stepping over the line or boundaries.

You’re lost in your own thought, eyes about to flutter shut when suddenly you feel a hand firmly placed on your waist.

Your hearbeat picks up again.

You turn around, lying on your back now to see Jimin, hovering above you and hands now all over you. Your stomach, your chest, your breasts-

You start to panic. “J-Jimin what are y-you doing?”

His hands are quick to hold your wrist firmly when you start to squirm, trying to escape. He leans down, lips dangerously close to your face.

“You are mine. To kiss anywhere I want.. To touch wherever I want.. and to kill.. whenever I want. Do not forget that.”

His left hand remains on your wrist, gripping it tight above your head while his other hand goes to the strap of your nightgown. You swallow thickly when he slides them down your arm. His hand brushes your half exposed breast very slightly and your entire body go still in shock.

You feel his tongue nipping at your neck as his fingers move daintily from your jaw to your neck, your shoulder and then your breast.

He moves and you gasp when you feel his hardened crotch against you and you’ve never felt so terrified.

You like him. No, you love your husband.

And what you would give for him to touch you intimately.

But you don’t want to give it to him like this, in this state. No emotions, no feelings, no love.

His head dips down to kiss you but you’re quicker to turn your head and avoids him.

“Jimin stop!” You yell.

And all his actions ceased.

Hot tears roll all over your cheeks. Clutching onto your tattered nightgown, trying hard to prevent the silk material from further slipping, you get up from the bed and leaves the room.

Link to Chapter 17

Posted on 210517 9:00PM

#serendipityjxmn #serendipityjxmnmrpresident #mrpresident #mr president #bts fic #bts au #bts smut #jimin au #park jimin #parkjimin #kpop fic #jimin smut #jimin ceo #jimin mafia #bts mafia #jimin x reader

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wardenannie · 3 years

Note

In a rainy night they meet again, where Hanji is drenched in the rain accentuating her curves and that sparks romance and they later fuck.

Hope you like it

I took some liberties with this, I hope it still works for you 💚

NSFW under the cut

It is a rainy night when the expedition returns. They are in tatters, bleeding, pelted by raindrops like falling bullets. Hange is hanging halfway off of her horse. Arm ripped open, blood mingling with rainwater as her animal carries her through the streets.

She leans on its withers, eyes closed, cloak lost beyond the wall. She shivers with the falling rain.

Ultimately it is Levi who pulls her from her horse. The animal wanders into the stables on its own, it's rider limp on its back.

"Hange?" Levi calls to her, pulling her down and into his arms. She's soaked to the bone, freezing and shivering. Her arms bleeds unhindered.

"Hange..." He carries her to his quarters. Intent to treat her on his own. If the nature of their relationship hadn't been apparent to their comrades before, it certainly is now.

As he carries her up the stairs of HQ he cannot help but notice how her clothes cling translucent to her skin. Her yellow shirt is entirely see-through, giving way to the powerful lines and curves of her body.

She is a lean, hungry creature. Battle hardened the same as he, and achingly beautiful, even wet and shivering and bleeding in his arms.

When they reach his quarters he undresses her methodically. Peeling away each garment and tossing it to be forgotten in a corner. He kisses her as he goes; her face, her hands, her breasts, the smooth plane of her belly.

He cleans the arm with iodine and bandages it before he strips and climbs into bed beside her, pulling the covers up around them. Intent on warming her with his own body heat.

He kisses her hair, shutting his eyes. The image if her body, drenched with rain, clothes clinging to her skin, is a frightening one. But he cannot help his physiological reaction to being so near to a beautiful, naked creature such as Hange.

Eventually, as she starts to warm, she stirs in his arms, murmuring. Her hips rubs against his unbidden erection and her eyes flutter open.

"Levi?"

He hums and kisses her jaw tenderly.

"How did I get here? ...Why are you hard?" Her hand moves to cup his naked erection, giving it a gentle tug.

"You were soaked and bleeding and unconcious, freezing too. Thought I'd warm you up," Levi explains.

Hange chuffs, snuggling closer to his chest, "And the erection?"

Levi is quiet for a long moment, hands caressing over the musculature of her back. Eventually he answers, soft as a breath, "You're so beautiful, Hange."

His fingers trace along the lines laid into her flesh by the ODM gear. Following the curve of one up her thigh. He finds her wet and pliant under his fingertips, despite her previous ordeal.

Hange flushes and rolls onto her back, pulling Levi with her. His hips slot between her legs and her injured arm rises to cup the back of his neck.

Their eyes meet, slate and wine, and they hold for a long beat before Hange whimpers, "Fuck me, Levi."

Levi fists the bedsheets and buries his hard cock into her wet warmth with a single, smooth thrust.

They know one another's bodies well. Hange's hands slide down his back to grip the tight globes of his ass as he pounds into her.

"Fuck, four-eyes," Levi curses as he ruts into her, her hands on his ass propelling him forward harder. "You feel so good."

Hange bites her lip, nodding frantically, "You do, too. So big inside me."

Levi continues pumping, pace increasing as he cunt begins to tighten. Wetness spills between them, onto their abdomen and down to soak into the sheets.

Hange is totally warmed now, flushed to her toes, panting and sweating as she mounts towards her climax.

"'M gonna come, Levi," she moans, wrapping her wounded around around the back of his neck to keep him close. She can taste his breath, feel it hot against her jaw. She cranes her neck to kiss him just as her body goes rigid, vision blurring as she seizes around him like a vice.

Levi gasps against her mouth as she nibbles his lower lip, hips rocketing forward in one final thrust as he buries himself deep and comes.

Mixed fluids leaked between them.

They pant and kiss, sweaty under the sheets.

"You scared the shit out of me, you know," Levi says finally. "You looked dead."

Hange lays her head on his chest, tracing a finger along the scars that litter his skin, "I wasn't. It was a hard mission. I needed this release."

Levi hums and kisses her hair, "Go to sleep, shitty-glasses."

Wrapped in Levi's arms, warm and safe, she does.

#levihan #my writing

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yukidragon · 3 years

Text

Our Life Snippet - Pretzels and Pop

Been a while since I flashed a clip of my Our Life: Beginnings & Always novelization’s first draft, huh? This time let’s take a peek at part of the Step 1 moment Shopping.

As always, credit for the original wonderful visual novel that fuels so much inspiration in me goes to the game’s creators, @gb-patch.

...

The scent of baked and fried goods, both savory and sweet, wafted through the air, drawing the children’s attention away from the keychain. Cove turned further down the street where he quickly spotted numerous different food carts lined in a row. Most importantly, he saw an array of delicious goodies people were happily eating.

Cove frowned, placing his uninjured arm over his now grumbling tummy as the delicious smells almost seemed to tease him. A quiet rumbling from his side drew his eye to Jamie and he saw she was holding her stomach now as well. “Let’s go get some food.”

“Yeah,” Jamie said with an eager nod. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and she was more than ready for lunch after so much walking around.

The children hurried their footsteps to reach the food vendors quickly, then slowed to consider their options. An array of foods both salty and sweet lay before them, their enticing smells serving to make their stomachs growl louder than before. Everything looked delicious, but they couldn’t sample it all.

After a short discussion considering the merits between foods such as pizza and hot dogs versus snow cones and ice cream, the pair came to a decision and got in line for the pretzel vendor. Cove eagerly ordered a pretzel covered with cinnamon that came paired with a little cup of icing that was far too tempting for him to resist. Jamie almost gave in to that same temptation, but ultimately she chose the pretzel already coated in vanilla icing and adorned with a rainbow’s worth of sprinkles.

Jamie licked her lips as she accepted her colorful treat from the vendor, barely resisting the urge to take a bite before they found someplace to sit. Her moms didn’t want her to eat too much sugar, but it should be fine, she thought; this was a special day and a special outing with Cove after all.

Besides, if Jamie drank milk with it, which was good for her, it would balance out the sugar, right? That’s why she got a carton of milk instead of soda pop like Cove did. She made sure to be the one to carry their drinks for the both of them after tucking her precious keychain away in her pocket, as Cove’s hands were getting pretty full.

The children hurried along to find an empty table for them to sit and eat their tasty treats. Fortune smiled on them as they found one close to the beach, which gave them an unobstructed view of the ocean.

Unfortunately for Jamie, this also meant that it was close enough for sand to cover the ground, and she winced as the chairs made terrible scraping sounds when moved. If her hands weren’t full, she would have covered her sensitive ears, so all she could do was grit her teeth and bear with the pain until they sat down, letting out a sigh of relief when the awful noise stopped.

Cove had been too distracted by setting things down on the table and getting into his seat without letting go of the balloon to notice Jamie’s discomfort for more than a moment before she relaxed. He didn’t know what to make of it, and she brightened up right away, so he supposed it wasn’t anything important.

Besides, there was a bigger issue they had to deal with right now. “These balloons are gonna make it hard to eat,” he said as he looked between the balloon and his pretzel as he tried to puzzle out the problem. He had a difficult enough time carrying everything while trying to keep a hold on the balloon’s string, especially while wearing something as unwieldy as a cast. It was going to be harder when his fingers got sticky with cinnamon, sugar, and icing.

Jamie looked at their balloons and opened her mouth, ready to agree, when an idea suddenly hit her. “Oh!” she gasped. “I know.”

Without bothering to stop to explain, Jamie went into action. She placed the drinks on the table alongside her pretzel, careful to keep her tasty treat on its waxy paper wrapper so that it wouldn’t get sandy. With her hands now mostly free, she hopped out of her chair without moving it so she could round the table to join Cove at his side. Gently, she tugged at the string of his balloon, taking it from his hand. Before he could ask her any questions, she tied it in a delicate bow around the wrist of his uncasted arm.

“Oh,” Cove said, blinking at the balloon now tied to his wrist. He moved his arm up and down a little, testing the stability of the knot. After seeing his balloon bounce and jerk but remain attached to him, he gave Jamie a satisfied smile.

Jamie returned the smile with one of her own as she offered her balloon to Cove. “There, now can you do mine too?”

Cove was only too happy to repay the favor. Unfortunately, the cast got in his way again with the way it restricted his fingers on his left hand, making it difficult for him to move them the way he wanted. The string tied to his right wrist also proved an additional challenge, as he had to be careful not to accidentally tangle both strings together.

Jamie watched Cove work patiently, his fingers feeling ticklish as they kept touching her wrist. The sensation was strange. It made her feel… happy? She liked it, but it was different in a way that left her face feeling warm and unable to look her friend in the eyes.

Finally, Cove managed to overcome the challenge, letting out a satisfied hum as he finished the knot. “Got it,” he said happily.

The two children took a moment to admire their handiwork. It also helped Jamie calm down from the weird feelings. With everything now settled, she returned to her side of the table after placing Cove’s soda closer to him. She was careful not to move the chair again as she squirmed back into it.

Now, both friends were able to finally enjoy their sweet treats and drinks as they admired their ocean view. The sounds of the sea mingling with the crowd served as a pleasant backdrop of ambient noise that left conversation unnecessary as they focused all their attention on enjoying their meal.

Jamie was the first to finish her pretzel with a little bit of regret that there wasn’t more of it. She licked what remained of the icing off her fingers, trying to get every last bit of the sugary goodness until she was sure there was nothing left. As she wiped her sticky hands on a napkin, she looked over at Cove and saw that he was close to being finished, but not quite.

Jamie didn’t want to rudely interrupt Cove’s meal by talking, but without anything to do, she quickly found herself growing bored. She drained the last of her milk as she looked around for something to occupy her time when she spied her balloon bobbing back and forth from the movements of her arm.

Inspiration struck, and Jamie pulled the string down until she could bring the balloon down into her hands. She held it more delicately than any of her stuffed animals as she moved it in what she felt confident was a good imitation of a real dolphin. She twisted in her seat to face towards the beach and held the balloon a little out in front of her as she continued her play, smiling proudly at how it looked as though it was swimming through the waves like that pod of dolphins she saw.

Cove curiously watched Jamie mess around with her balloon as he continued to eat. From his angle, he was able to see what she was going for. A delighted laugh escaped him as he could imagine exactly what she was, and he wanted to join in.

Jamie glanced over at Cove and watched him place what little was left of his pretzel down onto its wrapper so that he could take a hold of his dolphin balloon like she did. She beamed, eager to start a game of pretend with her friend. “Mine’s name is Merriweather,” she said proudly. “He’s the prince of the dolphins. He wears a crown of seaweed and all his friends are merfolk!”

Jamie turned ‘Merriweather’ towards Cove and bobbed it in the most regal manner she could manage, which elicited a giggle from her friend. “Every now and then, he’ll make friends with a kid and let them ride on his back,” she said before letting out a wistful sigh. She wished she could meet a magical dolphin prince like Merriweather for real.

“What’s yours?” Jamie asked eagerly once she shook off the fanciful thought.

Cove took a moment to consider the question seriously. He placed the balloon on the table, laying his cast covered arm across it as his gaze grew distant with contemplation. It took him some thinking to come up with an idea. “It’s-”

A loud and terrible pop destroyed the fantasy Cove had conjured up as the poor dolphin balloon exploded into green ribbons.

The children reeled back from the explosion, both yelping in surprise. For a moment after, the two could only stare at the tattered remains of what had been Cove’s balloon, which now looked more like a pile of seaweed that washed ashore.

Jamie was the first to break the silence. “Oh no…”

When the shock melted away, what had just happened hit Cove hard. His balloon was gone, destroyed beyond hope of repair. It wasn’t fair. He barely had a chance to enjoy it and now it was gone… forever.

#Our Life Beginnings & Always #Our Life #ourlifeba #Cove Holden #Jamie Last #Jamie Leimomi #My Writing

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ddarker-dreams · 4 years

Text

first kisses / scarlet ribbons.

[Scarlet Ribbons description]

> Concept; Situations from the different “universe” possibilities in Scarlet Ribbons, where SR Reader ends up with a respective partner. All world building/Pre-VA events are identical in each universe, until they split off into romantic pursuits Post-VA.

>Bruno Bucciarati;

It’s been a strange vacation. You’d like to think that you’re patient, but this is testing the limits of what you can handle. To think that Bruno finds this an enjoyable hobby is difficult to understand.

"I don’t think I can do this, Bruno...”

Your hands are shaky around the fishing rod’s handle, making the task at hand all the more difficult. He places his hand atop yours in hopes of reassuring you. The sight before you is stunning, clear ocean water as far as the eye can see, accompanied by a breeze that tickles your face. It smells of saltwater and Bruno’s musky cologne. He’s envelopes you from behind, whispering words of encouragement, warm breath fanning against your earlobe.

“You’re doing just fine,” he hums, clearly amused with your predicament. You pout, uncaring that he can’t see, thinking of how to best get revenge on your Capo later. When he mentioned a getaway weekend to the beach, this wasn’t what you were expecting. “You’ve made it through situations more strenuous than this one, cara. Steady yourself.”

You grumble out a low string of words. He’s impossible to stay upset with. Time passes by, no fish biting the bait in the water. Finally, you feel the unmistakable tug, adrenaline pumping through your veins. Summoning all your strength, you hoist the fishing rod over your shoulder. Your catch hangs from the hook, a sign of victory, and a reward for your patience.

Pivoting on your heel, you beam up at Bruno who returns your enthusiasm. “I did it, I did it!”

“What did I tell you?” He chuckles as you celebrate, jumping up and down on the pier. Everything hits at once. The thought of how his father would’ve loved you as much as he does, how the sunset complements your glowing complexion, of how long he’s wanted to be intimate with you like this. Softening his gaze, his hands cup either side of your face. Anything up until this moment is forgotten, Bruno looking deep into your eyes.

He closes the distance, head tilting to the side. He tastes of finely aged wine, kissing you with every ounce of emotion that’s been repressed for so long. You return the sentiments with equal fervor, the two of you breathing in sync as your lips mesh together. It’s you who pulls back first, lips tingling from the sensation of Bruno’s passion. He has successfully taken your breath away, a factor he’ll undoubtedly tease you about later. Not that you can be upset with him. If there’s anything Bruno is good at, it’s winning you over.

He chuckles as you rush to catch your breath, fixing a stray strand of your hair behind your ear. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.”

>Giorno Giovanna;

Hand in hand, you stroll down the streets of Naples by your lover’s side. It’s been an evening long in the making. Giorno is busy as he is diligent, another reason you’re grateful that he had a lull in his schedule to spend the day with you. Your day has overwhelmed your heart with joy since its conception, the two of you partaking in a variety of activities. All of which pales in comparison to spending time with the one you love. Quality time with Giorno is meant to be treasured, and you intend on doing just that.

He comes to a sudden pause, earning your attention. You follow his example, standing in place until he explains what he’s up to. The night sky hangs overhead, not a single cloud in sight. Moonlight shines against his face, eyebrows furrowing and full lips parting. Giorno takes the time to prepare his words, hoping to still his rapidly beating heart. You blink, recognizing his thoughtful countenance, wondering what he intends to do next.

He takes a deep breath. “[First]... I wanted to thank you. For lending me your strength.”

The statement feels out of the blue, sincerity interlaced with every word. You tilt your head. Where is this heading? Giorno wills himself to continue, momentarily distracted by your cute expression. With the hand that holds yours, he brings it to his lips, placing a chaste kiss against it. Warmth floods your face at the intimate gesture. It’s hard not to recall how you did the same thing to him long ago, when Giorno first took his role as Don of Passione. For someone this important to be doing that for you, it’s dizzying.

Giorno looks up at your flustered self through thick eyelashes, drinking in the sight.

“Y-you don’t need to thank me for anything.” You stutter out, feeling vulnerable under his gaze. If anything, you’re immensely grateful to him, for giving you the possibility at a different life. Had it not been for Giorno, crippling debt would still have a stronghold on your life. He shakes his head in disagreement.

“I don’t get to express my gratitude for you often,” he releases your hand, going to cup your face. The pad of his thumb rubs circles lovingly into your cheeks. “So please let me do so now.”

His words are so quiet, meant only for you to hear. You know how vulnerable he’s allowing himself to be with you. Love swells in your heart, and you meet him halfway to reciprocate the kiss he initiates. Your eyes flutter shut, arms wrapping around his neck; and his hands settle on your waist. There’s so much work to be done to secure the future he wants. A future with you in it. But for now, his mind thinks of none of the sort, too taken with your existence to entertain the thought of anything else.

>Guido Mista;

“You should feel all better now, right?”

Number Five’s sniffles settle down when you pull back, face morphing into a teary eye smile. This has become a tradition of sorts. When the other Pistols take to bullying Number Five, you make sure to pepper him in tiny smooches. Finally content after receiving his share of affection, Number Five returns to his spot of sitting on your shoulder. You’re about to return to looking at your phone when you hear someone clearing their throat.

Mista is stealing glances, his hat having been removed at your behest. Loose, brown curls frame his face, which has an uncharacteristic frown on it. “So, [First]...”

“So, Mista?” You repeat back to him, raising an eyebrow. His arm is behind you on the couch, fingers curling up and warm eyes avoiding yours. His sudden shift in mood strikes you as odd. Mista is the confident, boisterous type. Fluctuating from winking at you, to sharing god awful pickup lines from his favorite movies, and even trying to hit on you in your native tongue. So this apprehension is jarring.

He lets out a laugh, a nervous tick you’ve picked up on. “I was just thinking, babe. About how we haven’t... well, y’know...”

Mista is talking with his hands, trying to communicate what’s on his mind. You have a slight idea at what he’s hinting at. Instead of playing along with him, you decide to tease him as revenge for all the times he’s embarrassed you.

“That we haven’t slept together yet? Is that it? Hm, it’s pretty bold of you to try and come out and try to say that...”

You can’t hold back your grin at how his eyes widen, tan face accented with a bright blush. He’s sputtering out words in a last ditch attempt to salvage his tattered pride. When he sees you breaking out into laughter, and realizes you’re just messing with him, he fully intends to return the favor. Your wrists are grabbed ahold of, Mista pushing you down against the couch. Even as he hovers above you with what’s supposed to be a threatening look, your laughter only grows louder.

What should he do with you...? There’s always the option of tickling you until you’re begging for forgiveness. Or, he could just get what he originally wanted, by making your first kiss his. Opting on the latter, he brings his face down to meet yours. The kiss is everyone you wanted. A bit sloppy, his teeth tugging on your bottom lip, and chest heaving with excitement. Wrapping your arms around his neck, he lets out a noise of surprise when you draw him in closer.

>Narancia Ghirgha;

“So, what does this lyric mean?”

This has become a familiar game between you and Narancia. He tends to enjoy English music more than anything else, and jumps at the opportunity to listen to it with you. Today, you’re sitting shoulder to shoulder on your bed, sharing headphones. It’s a hot day out, your fan trying its best to stave off the summer heat. It’s always the little moments like this with Narancia that you treasure the most.

He waited until the song was finished to pose his question. You place a finger to your cheek, attempting to translate the notable lyrics in your mind before you explain them. You’re surprised that he’s expressing an interest in this particular song — Nights in White Satin — since it isn’t his normal taste. You were hoping to expose him to some other genres. The lyrics of the chorus are the simplest to bring over into Italian, so you start off with that.

His face goes red as a cherry as you repeat “I love you”, for every time the chorus would. Narancia stares at you, jaw agape, and it takes a moment for you to realize why he’s acting this way. Despite your close relationship, and evident feelings, neither of you have spoken those intimate words to one another before now. Feeling suddenly self conscious, you go to reaffirm that you were just translating the lyrics as he asked.

“I was just—“

“I, uh, I l-love you too, [First]!” He exclaims at a loud volume, interrupting you.

You stare at him. He stares at you. Ah. It looks like you weren’t fast enough to explain the situation. You’re uncertain of who is most embarrassed at this rate. Neither of you speak a word, Narancia experiencing this situation through an entirely different viewpoint. Well, it’s not like you’d be lying if you had said those words with different intent. Still, such a heartfelt confession should be saved for a more fitting environment. Not when you’re wearing booty shorts and a tank top, fighting off sweat from Naple’s oppressive summer.

Narancia seems to be processing things on his own, shuffling to move even closer to you. He’s thinking that, after such a confession, now is the best time to make a move. His face is in front of yours before you know it, a shaky hand being pressed against the side of your face. He squeezes his eyes shut, puckering his lips, and leans in for the kiss. You’re in disbelief over how all of this is going down. It’ll be a story for the ages, you think.

Reaffirming his actions, you return his kiss with a smile, fighting off a laugh. Narancia’s body stiffens when your lips make contact, uncertain if he should hold back or go all in like he desperately wants to. The anxiety swelling up inside him wins out in the end. He pulls back, chest heaving, even though the kiss was very brief. He decides that you taste good, sweet as your personality.

“Nara, amore mio,” you smile, giggles sneaking past your lips. “Those were just the lyrics to the song. So I’ll say it for real this time. I love you.”

He was... so enamored by you saying it the first time, but now everything makes sense. It hits him like a ton of bricks. Narancia wants nothing more than to sink into the earth, but settles for shoving his face into your pillow and screaming. This has got to be the most humiliating moment of his life. You find it endearing, reassuring him that this is a fitting first kiss from him.

That doesn’t make him feel better.

>Pannacotta Fugo;

“So, to repeat my previous point, you will need to find the value of x by using this process...”

Fugo, blessed be his soul, has appointed himself as your math tutor. While you’re immensely grateful for his efforts, it’s currently one in the morning. You’re fighting the urge to doze off, his velvety voice not making it any easier on you. The topic at hand has long since been forgotten, you think it may have had something to do with algebra. You watch him through lidded eyes, adoration bubbling up from within. He looks so serious, it’s precious. Every time he goes into a new explanation, you can tell that this is a subject he loves to talk about. You could listen to him speak for hours. Though it’d be preferable if it weren’t about math...

“[First]. You’re not listening, are you?” He inquires with a frustrated sigh, poking your cheek. At the interruption of your daydreaming, you lift your head up, straightening your posture. In a meager attempt to prove you were paying attention, you say the first thing that comes to mind.

“W-what was that? Sorry, I didn’t catch the last part, something about capybaras right...”

Fugo squints at you, lips pursing. He takes in a deep breath, willing himself to stay calm. You’re lucky that he loves you. Anyone else would’ve had a fork or some other sharp object shoved into them by now. He fights off any bitter feelings, looking down and catching the time. The excitement of teaching you got the better of him, he didn’t even realize that it had gotten this late, no wonder you’re falling asleep.

He closes your college textbook, pinching the bridge of his nose. “That’s enough for tonight. You need to get to bed. Now.”

You mistake his concern for your well being as anger for not paying attention. Fugo always has a difficult time getting the full extent of his feelings across, and he normally doesn’t have any motivation to try. You’re a different story. A reason to better himself, so that he might feel deserving of your love. Fugo’s eyes soften at your crestfallen form, scooting his chair next to yours.

“Hey,” he speaks up in a whisper, tipping his head down to look you in the eye. “You did good today, I’m proud. We’ll continue tomorrow, but you should rest now.”

“Mm, alright. But first, you need to do me a favor,” you respond through a tired haze. In this sleep deprived state, you’re acting on impulse, your eyes fixated on Fugo’s lips. There’s a single goal at this point. “I want... I want kisses.”

He’s never seen you this bold before. How tired are you...? He’ll need to ask Bucciarati to reduce your hours after this. For now, he’s flooded with tingling warmth. Fugo has long awaited this day, a day where he could get his feelings for you across. A silent prayer is said that you’ll remember this in the morning. Fugo nods once, pressing a quick peck to your lips. Then to your nose, and your forehead after that. You’ve already fallen asleep, a content smile on your lips. What should he do with you?

Sighing, he picks you up, careful not to wake you. “You’re so much trouble, [First].”

And he loves you for it.

>Leone Abbacchio;

“For once, just let me show you that I’m serious!”

It hurts. The corner of your eyes are stinging, your throat raw from screaming. Abbacchio stares down at you, his own chest heaving from putting up a verbal fight. You’re insufferably persistent in seeking him out. He’ll give you one thing, when you don’t want to back down, you give it your all. Not that he understands it.

Why won’t you just leave me alone already? It’s for your own good. What you see in him is a mystery, that he isn’t willing to entertain any longer. He hurts people. He has hurt too numerous to count, and doesn’t want to add the person he loves to the ranks. Should you hate him, then so be it; maybe then it’ll be easier for him to move on. When you’re staring up at him with fire burning in your eyes, it makes it all the more difficult to hold his ground. He has to, he tells himself.

“Enough with this already. I’m done here.” He inhales sharply, wanting nothing more than to vanish from this convicting situation. A part of him knows that it’s wishful thinking, the part that knows you. And how stubborn you can be once there’s an idea in your mind. It’s what he both dreads and adores about you.

You rush to block his path of escape, borderline stomping on the way there. He’s taken aback by how bold you’re acting — you’re so certain of yourself. This is how you’ve always been. Abbacchio can’t help but feel jealous at this self-assured nature, how you know what needs to be done. Dammit, even when he’s trying to distance himself from you, his mind drifts elsewhere...

The two of you glare at one another, both parties refusing to back down. If Abbacchio is going to cower away from you, so be it; but not before he understands how much you care. That you’ve meant every word you said. That every action, the hand of compassion you’ve extended towards him, and the relationship built off of it means something to you. You hope it means the same amount to him.

Grabbing a hold of his collar, you jerk the fabric down towards you. He’s scowling, about to ask what the fuck you’re doing, when your faces are inches apart. He needs to move away. He needs to keep you at an arms length, like it’s supposed to be. Abbacchio knows this, and yet, he remains still as a statue.

In stark contrast to your rough actions, your lips meeting his is anything but. It’s driven by months of suppression. Time is at a standstill, neither of you knowing with confidence of what to do next. He doesn’t reciprocate or push you away, too absorbed with his self deprecating thoughts to act clearly. It’s only when you pull back, eyes glassy, that he comes to his senses.

Was your hunch wrong? Does he really not...?

Abbacchio’s body acts on his behalf. As he now leads the kiss, it’s far rougher, conveying all that he’s afraid to say. It’s imperfect, as all things are; but the start to a brighter future. You won him over in the end, as frustrating as it may be to admit. It’s a victory that he doesn’t mind.

>Trish Una;

“I-I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone so beautiful.”

Is this what it’s like to see a goddess in the flesh? Trish stands before you, wearing a stunning outfit unlike anything you’ve ever seen; a black as night dress that hugs against her curves. She’s completely dolled up, ethereal. Wearing winged eyeliner, crimson lip stick, highlighter complementing her cheekbones and blush dusting across her face. It’s mixing in with how flustered you’re making her with that doting stare, Trish having a difficult time maintaining eye contact.

She looks down to her stilettos, the distraction offering an opportunity to think. You’re the first person to ever look at her like this. To offer your full heart and adoration, with no agendas hidden beneath the surface. No, there’s nothing but unabashed care in you directed towards her. Rivaled only by Trish’s love for you.

“D-don’t get all cheesy on me now,” she stutters out, willing herself to return your gaze. Your smile is contagious, and she finds herself returning it. You’re wearing a formal getup as well, and she admires every detail of your outfit. It was one that she picked out for you a week prior, and as predicted, it suits you perfectly. “You look... good. Amazing, I mean.”

Trish’s heart flutters at the laugh that leaves your lips. Every movement you make has this bewitching power over her, a spell that she doesn’t mind being under. If it’s for you, that is.

Tonight is an important one -- her first live performance in front of a crowd. You’re nothing if not proud. The two of you have come far, overcoming tribulations that most would crumble under. It feels right. Earned. After the hell you endured together, to experience a shot at something new. Your support for her is what’s made it all possible.

It won’t be long now until she’s called on stage. If anything, she should be in the greenroom by now, checking through the final touches for the performance. Knowing that you’ll be in the crowd, listening to her song is a motivator unlike any other. For now, though, all of that has been put to the side. It feels like the perfect time.

Heels click against the ground as she approaches, taking your hands in her own. Swinging them back and forth, she struggles to find the proper words. “Tonight... tonight was only possible because of you. I wanted to tell you that.”

“But you--”

A manicured finger is pressed against your lips, and she shushes you.

“Let me finish,” she smiles, content at how you nod, a blush forming on your face. “There’s one thing missing that you need to fix. Give me a kiss for good luck, or I won’t forgive you.”

You’ve never been happier to follow an order. Her lips are soft, feather light against your own. Some of her lipstick is bound to rub off -- not that either of you care -- and she wraps her arms around your neck. Knowing Trish, she’ll be upset should you mess up her hair. You settle on wrapping your arms around her waist, bringing her in closer. The taste of her lip primer is addicting, tasting faintly of bubblegum.

Trish doesn’t let you pull back for air, too intent on drinking you in for as long as she can.

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ghostfacesvalentine · 4 years

Text

It’s my dad - Billy Hargrove x Fem!Reader

Pairing: Billy Hargrove x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Some mention of abuse/overprotective father, some cursing.

Type: One shot

Request: N/A

Word Count: 1538

Prompt: Billy Hargrove helps fen!reader escape home and she ends up being his girl

Notes: I kind of feel like I'm slacking in my writing a lot, but this just kinda popped into my head on the drive home so I hope you enjoy it. It was going to end in smut but maybe another time or a part two maybe??? idk

"I'm not scared of him Y/N" Billy protested as he slung his keys onto the nightstand, you tossed your tattered backpack onto the floor next to the bed and fell back into it. Relief overcame your joints as you looked up to see Billy, his messy hair, chest heaving from the adrenaline rush of your recent escape. "I know you're not, but if he finds me, I don't really know what'll happen." You admitted, you were sick of living at home with your father. There had been so many failed attempts in running away and far too many plans in the making. You tried everything, bus, trains, cars, even an airplane, but nothing was successful to your luck. Your father would always find you and it wasn't even like he had to try hard, you weren't the best at planning.

Each time you were caught, you were defeated more and more each day. He took away all your privileges, it was so frustrating. You were never walking to school with bruises or cuts, but this was all psychological. Your dad would tell you he's just looking out for you, or he's protecting you, but this wasn't normal and it was getting hard to breathe. This was your junior year of high school and you had absolutely no freedom. It was all helpless until a shiny blue camero revved up into the Hawkings high school parking lot. There was no way you stood a chance, there just wasn't. Still, you had Billy in history class and you caught his attention fast. After only a few weeks of hanging out you were making out under the stairwell, skipping class with him, mostly in his car. You didn't make much mention of your dad and he didn't really ask. It didn't come up until a few months into this little fling, he said he'd pick you up at eight. You would always put him off, using lame excuses about school work or that you weren't feeling well, eventually you said you just weren't feeling like it. Billy wasn't used to rejection and he didn't take to this kindly. "Alright so what the fuck is it? What's the deal? I'm just wasting my time or what." He sneered as you jolted when he slammed his car door shut. In defeat you looked down, hugging your books, pursing your lips you avoided his eyes. "Earth to Y/N." He snapped, visibly frustrated. "It's my dad Billy." You explained to him everything, absolutely everything. You didn't have many close friends to unravel in front of and so this all just poured out of you. Before you knew it tears were rushing out of your eyes, hot streams flowed through your cheeks as you took everything out of your chest. You didn't think Billy would care, but at least he'd know why you were putting him off. Rubbing the back of your hand across your cheeks, still avoiding eye contact, you could feel Billy just staring at you. Through the blurry vision, you could make out a frown, the bell had rung some time ago, the parking lot was empty, the cool breeze hit your exposed skin. You wanted to run and hide, but where to. Billy pulled you into a hug when you fell silent, trying to steady your breathing, he didn't let you pull away until you eased. "So your dad's a dick. You could've told me this before." He uttered, looking down to you, cradling your face between his hands, your eyes red and puffy as they looked up to him.

Now you were in a hotel room, in the same position, cradled between Billy's hands. "He's not going to come get you, he'll be dead before he takes a step into the room." It seemed like he almost promised. You were still taken aback as to how far Billy had gone for you. It had been weeks you were planning this with him. You packed up all your valuables, anything that could be replaced was left behind. Traveling lightly was key according to Billy. He parked at the end of your street at two a.m flickering the lights of his car four times. The week before he had snuck over to pry the screen off the outside of your window for tonight. He struggled a bit, but it came off, making it easier to slide out onto the lawn. When you plopped onto the dewy grass you stood still for a second, waiting for your dad's shadow to appear and your heart to fall to your stomach, but there was nothing. So you made a run for it.

You ran like you never have before, you almost slipped a few times but eventually made it into the car, Billy didn't take long to speed off.

"Thank you for helping me Billy." You winced as he pressed his lips down onto yours, walking you back slowly. The back of your knees hit the bed, causing you to fall back. Billy held himself up on top of you, pressing his lips against yours over and over. His lips tasted like peppermint gum and cigarettes, he smelt like cologne and smoke. You were intoxicated by his warmth.

You were still paranoid your door would come flying down, but you knew you could hide behind Billy. He pulled his head up to look down at you, his eyes meeting yours, noses barely touching

"What?" You whispered, frowning gently as he took a moment. He shook his head slightly, kissing your nose. He was progressively gentler, opening up slowly, you never expected this from him, only thinking yourself to be another girl of his, but it wasn't like he's done anything like this for anyone else no?

"You're safe Y/N. I promise. If we gotta keep running, then we will, but I'm not letting you out of my sight." He comforted as he kissed the top of your head. He slid onto the side of the bed, rolling you over onto his arms which you happily snuggled into. His hands flowed down to your sides, pulling you closer to him.

"Billy." You whispered again.

"Yeah?" He responded.

Your eyes opened and stared into his shirt "Why are you doing this, you could get in trouble you know." You wondered out loud. It was a real question. You liked Billy, you liked him a lot, but you were never sure if he felt the same way, not to the extent you did at least.

There was some silence for a second, you began to regret speaking until Billy interrupted your thoughts.

"I've never felt more at home with anyone, you know you started to push me away, find every excuse known to man to avoid seeing me, I thought you were seeing someone else for a while... or maybe that I wasn't good enough for you.. and that crushed me."

You could feel his chest tense up at the last pair of words.

Pulling your head out of the embrace to look at him, you frowned staring at him "No BIlly, it's not like that at all. I never knew if you were serious about, whatever this is, I don't know. Every girl in Hawkins has been all over you since you stepped foot in this town, I thought I was just another girl but, I haven't really seen you do anything this... crazy for anyone. Not that I know of."

You kind of regretted saying that, he could've of course replied by mentioning things he's done for other girls, but he didn't. Instead he took your head into his hands and pulled you in for a kiss, then another one and another one. Once you were out of breath, dazed and mesmerized, your eyes met him.

"Y/N. I've never done anything like this for anyone. I care for you, I want you to be my girl, I don't wanna see you hurt in the hands of anyone." He admitted with a soothing sleepy voice. "I mean it." You could only stare at him for a moment, it could be sudden, a few months in, but you didn't have this kind of softness or care from any of your exes, much less your dad.

"Do you wanna be my girl Y/N? Sweet face don't leave me hanging."

That cracked a smile in your face, you wrapped your arms around his neck and kissed him softly. "Of course Billy I'd like to be your girl." A smile swooshed across both of your faces, laying there for a few seconds before BIlly broke the embrace and sat up "Come on sweetheart we gotta get ready for bed, I'm beat."

You sat up after him, he began to slide his clothing off, grabbing the tv remote and turning the box on. You scrambled through your bag looking for a tank top and some shorts to slide on. "Look at that, movie night." He grinned as he slid the remote onto the nightstand.

You smiled wide as you climbed back into his arms under the covers, you were exhausted and all you really wanted was to sleep and what better sleep than in Billy Hargrove's arms.

#Billy Hargrove #Stranger Things #Billy Hargrove x Reader #Billy Hargrove imagine #Billy Hargrove one shot

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shootybangbang · 3 years

Text

[Talking Bird] 17: In which beans are ruined

[Ao3 Link]

At the mention of Trelawney, Arthur dimly recalls a scrap of half-remembered conversation from last year, when he’d idled with the man in a Lemoyne saloon while waiting for a mark to arrive. The first flicker of your existence, passing him by unknown. Like the brief touch of a licked finger through candle flame: deceptively benign, with just a whisper of the burn to follow.

Somewhere between his first and second glass of whiskey sours, Trelawney had mentioned the burgeoning demand for opium in Chinatown. A former contact of his had recently left the high stakes poker circuit to get in on the profit, and he’d lamented the loss.

“It’s a shame,” he’d said, absently swirling the ice cubes in his emptied glass and regarding the swirling wood grain of the countertop with a pensive, faraway look. And for once, the sentiment had sounded genuine. Knowing him, the man was grieving a lost business opportunity more than anything else, but it’d been a long time since Arthur had heard him even bother to feign emotion for a stranger. “She’s not suited for smuggling in the least. Can’t say I can see this ending well.”

Less Trelawney’s gift for prophecy and more stating the obvious, now that he knows exactly who he’d been talking about. Prickly disposition, clueless when it comes to violence, and far too trusting of strangers. The cavalier attitude of someone who’d never been exposed to serious conflict and who, having since been exposed, lacks even the conviction necessary to put a bullet in the man holding her hostage.

And far too delicate besides.

When you’d pulled the blanket down your shoulders to untie your braid, Arthur had tilted his head back just enough to catch an eyeful of your backside. A pretty thing to put to paper: the wet swathe of hair draped over your shoulder, the faint shadow of your spine a dark curve flickering with the shifting of firelight. Soft, dappled lines wrapped in the body of someone who’s caused him nothing but grief in the past weeks.

The view had confirmed something he’d already been suspecting: your lack of threat to anything larger than a rat terrier.

Judging by your physique, you’d probably struggle to lift anything more than fifteen pounds. Maybe twenty, on a good day. A veritably pathetic amount of muscle tone with none of the etchings that rough living leaves behind.

Some foreign high society girl fallen on hard times, he guessed. But oddly, none of the clumsy caution people of that strata have when confronted with any sort of real work. You’d fallen into the rhythm of whittling bark off the cottonwood branches too comfortably for someone unacquainted with physical labor, handled the knife with a deftness that comes only from rote repetition.

“I knew Trelawney had connections to some gang out west, but I never thought…” You shake your head slowly, dazed by the absurdity of this new development. “Did he know? When I sold them those bonds, did he realize they were yours? And why—”

“Nah, he wouldn’t have known. I, uh… wasn’t too keen on tellin’ folk I got robbed by a woman.” He rubs the back of his neck and lets out an embarrassed huff. “Told ‘em the whole thing was a bust.”

Looking back, he may as well have told them the truth. The lie hadn’t done much to salvage his pride, and had prompted weeks of jibes at his own expense. Snide little asides from Micah, overt ridicule from Bill, and the painful ordeal of Sean.

“Gettin’ sloppy in your old age,” he’d quipped. “I’ll tell you what you need, Morgan. You need to let someone else hold the reins for a change. Someone quick on the uptake, someone young and hot-blooded and—”

“Get back to me when you’re done complimentin’ yourself,” Arthur had replied, already walking away.

“Wait, Morgan — take me with you next time you ride out! I’ll scout somethin’ out, and we can…”

Sean had been insistent as a mosquito and twice as annoying, but ultimately bearable so long as he had a beer in his hand or a pillow over his head. His own head, though he’d been sorely tempted otherwise.

No, what had really driven him to leave camp had been Dutch.

Dutch and his put-upon fatherly air, all stern mouthed disapproval and downward sloping shoulders. His pointed observations of Jack’s tattered jacket, well on its way to becoming a patchwork Ship of Theseus. Pearson’s dwindling supply of seasonings, so scarce that the stews have become bland to the point of near inedibility. The stocks of medicine running low, bandages boiled so many times that their fibers have since frayed to a cobwebbed consistency.

“I know you’re doing your best, son,” Dutch had sighed, casting a weary eye over his threadbare kingdom. “God knows you’re the only man I can depend on to get anything done around here. But folks are… well. Folks are struggling.”

Arthur’s eyes had slid momentarily towards Dutch’s tent, resting on the golden gleam of the gramophone and the crisp cotton sheets laid across the bed. An unbroken sea of white, with not a stitch out of place. And not twenty feet away, Hosea’s shabby lean-to, the older man’s bedroll bearing the same disjointed array of colors as the rest of the camp’s accoutrements.

Dutch always did have a taste for the finer things in life. A level of refinement proportionate to the depth of his ambition, which in earlier days had been tempered by kinder, simpler ideals. Feed those that need feeding. Shoot those that need shooting. Robin Hood-esque, with a western (and occasionally lethal) twist. Evelyn Miller had been a fixture even then, but in those halcyon years Dutch had not yet twisted the author’s words to the tottering worldview that he’s since constructed.

The gang’s nascent success had bred standards and attracted new followers. A ragtag flock all too eager to nourish their leader’s growing, malignant appetite for grandeur.

“Just one last score, and we’ll be clear of all this… this manmade rot.” Dutch said, gesturing in the direction of Blackwater. “But for now, we’ve got to play their game. Get our hands dirty for the time being so we can wash ourselves clean of all this when we’ve finally got the means.”

Arthur had departed under the pretense of retrieving the missing bonds (impossible) or locating some cache of similar value (near impossible), but in truth he’d done so primarily for the preservation of his own sanity. More and more these days, he’s been seeing cracks in the foundation of the man who’d given him this life, dragged him out of the gutter and set him with a previously unwavering sense of purpose. And it feels treacherous — traitorous, even — to take any of it into question.

But as always, the open road and the unabiding sky of the prairie settled him into a different mindset altogether. The cycles of flora and fauna in untouched wilderness exist completely separate from the artifices of men, with the legacies of countless tiny lives encapsulated in the fine grit of the dust to which all things return. And in that certainty comes an overwhelming comfort. Everything else seems trifling in the wake of the vast perpetuity of nature.

A few days spent wandering would do him good, he’d decided. Spend some time away from all the trappings of civilization, then rob some poor sap on the side of the road so as not to return empty-handed.

And then you’d ruined his plans entirely by literally walking into him as he’d been passing through Strawberry.

“Well,” you say, offering up a small, nervous smile. “What now?”

What now, indeed. Arthur pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes. “Guess we take a visit to Trelawney’s,” he replies, already dreading the inevitable embarrassment of explaining the whole sorry situation to the man. “And if it turns out you’re tellin’ the truth, I’ll give you a ride from Rhodes to St Denis.”

You frown and furrow your brow. “Rhodes?”

“Yeah, Rhodes. Trelawney’s got a caravan there on the outskirts of town. You didn’t know?”

“You can’t take me to Rhodes,” you say automatically, as if stating the obvious. “I mean… look at me.”

“You’re a woman?” he asks stupidly.

“I’m an Oriental, you moron. And Rhodes is a fucking… it’s a fucking Raider town.”

“You’d be with me. I’ll keep you safe.”

You shake your head and set your mouth into a grim, flat line. “That’s worse. They might think we’re together. And they don’t take kindly to miscegenation.”

Your words have to them the quality of a veil being drawn back, exposing a corner of this country’s ugliness he’s not often been privy to. A familiar knot of guilt tugs at his innards, accompanied by the unpleasant, impotent sensation that surfaces each time he catches the ungracious stares of the crowd when walking into town with Tilly by his side. Each time he hears the practiced courtesy in a shopkeep’s voice drop away when the man turns away from him to address Charles. Each time he watches Lenny reread for the thousandth time the letter from his dead father, the creases in its paper worn so deep that it would have long since fallen apart were it not for the boy’s careful, reverent handling.

“You know those big plantation houses just south of Rhodes? They hire Chinese sometimes to work the fields. Cheaper than sharecropping, apparently.” The look on your face is drawn and bitter. The bite in your voice suggests something personal, the sting of an injury not yet healed. “One of the boys got involved with a white housemaid. He’d saved up for train tickets to Philadelphia, and they were… he was going to marry her there. Wanted an August wedding. The number eight’s lucky for us, you see. So August 8th, 1898… he thought it was all very romantic. Used to make this stupid joke that he wished he’d met her ten years earlier. Raiders strung him up in an oak tree a couple weeks before they were set to leave.”

Arthur’s tongue lies silent and heavy in his mouth.

You take in a deep breath that rattles with the failing determination of someone struggling not to break their composure, then look to him with a desperation so absolute that it seems almost indecent to witness. “Why don’t you just leave me here? Keep me tied up if you have to. Come back for me when you’re done with Trelawney.”

In the short span of time that he’s known you, you’ve made enough of an impression to warrant several conclusive classifications. A haughty, pampered little thing. An ineffective liar. A self-destructive fool — but not stupid. Definitely not stupid.

The sheer idiocy of your suggestion indicates a fear so deep that it’s completely severed you from your senses. Just a frightened little bird caught in a trap, scratching and clawing for the narrowest possible opening for escape.

“You’re tellin’ me to tie up a woman and leave her in the middle of nowhere? May as well just hand-deliver you to the wolves. No,” he says firmly, trying to shake off the unwanted pang of sympathy. Dutch had been right about one thing — the gang did need money, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let this opportunity for it slip away out of misguided compassion for a woman who’d literally robbed him as he’d bled out. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Soon as we near Rhodes, I’ll tie you to Boadicea the same way I did when we left Strawberry.”

You blink and utter a disbelieving, “Excuse me, what?”

“Reckon they’ll treat us both a hell of a lot nicer if they think you’re a bounty. Gives me plenty excuse for keepin’ you in one piece, too.”

Your face ventures on a quick journey through the five stages of grief. The grief in question being for the loss of your dignity. The blank look shifts to a glare. You open your mouth to spit out something no doubt acerbic and very rude, but a flash of uncertainty crosses your face and you quickly bite your tongue. Then you lower your head and squeeze your eyes shut. When you finally open them again, there is a defeated resignation in them that attests to a lost mental argument.

“You better ride slow if you don’t want a repeat of this morning,” you say wearily.

Arthur shrugs. “Can’t throw up if you got nothin’ in your stomach. We’ll just skip feeding you breakfast tomorrow.”

To his relief, the atmosphere lightens to blessed, familiar hostility. You tell him to go fuck himself. That you’ll literally fight him for the apples you know he has tucked away in his saddlebags. That maybe you’ll throw up anyway purely out of spite. That he’s a miserable piece of shit who you wish—

A sudden flash of lightning illuminates the outcrop for a fraction of a second, painting everything beneath it into harsh shades of white and black. It strikes as sudden and violent as a fiery whip crack, leaving behind it the bittersweet scent of burnt grass and a curl of grey smoke like a departing ghost. Its near-simultaneous clap of thunder drowns out your last sentence with an ear splitting boom so encompassing that the vibration of it seems to rattle down to the bone. The silence that follows has in it the anticipatory hush of the void prior to Genesis. You shatter it with a quiet but appropriately placed, “Jesus Christ.”

The land outside is hedged low in the horizon, and the vastness of its sky swallows all else. It crowns as its dominating feature the movement of its anvil-shaped clouds. They shift leaden and portentous, translucent bellied and lit up by the jagged tongues of lightning darting throughout quick and sporadic as pale dragonflies. Roiling violet like the murky blood of some vast organism, pulsing membranous over the prairie with a fury of near biblical proportions. And below, the buttes with their strange eroded shapes like scattered islands in a black sea of grass. In the torrential dark, their silhouettes flash ivory with every strike of lightning only to sink back into the hushed umbra of night.

There is a muted look of awe on your face, as if witnessing for the first time the true scale of a storm. Something that before now had been glimpsed only through the gaps between high-shuttered buildings. Tempests caught in concrete snares and, not unlike the men that build them, diminished until they are but a feeble whisper of their former selves.

“It’s beautiful,” you murmur. “I never knew rain could be like this.”

With a jolt of displeasure, he finds that the soft expression on your face renders you unexpectedly pretty in the fire’s flickering light, the amber reflection of it bright as copper in your eyes. A gentle chiaroscuro, the smooth line of your cheek and shadowed hollow of your throat the anchor points to which his eye is drawn.

You shuffle a little closer to the outlook’s rain-veiled edge. The roughspun blanket, still drawn tightly around your shoulders, shifts. Arthur quickly averts his eyes, but even so is met with a sliver of bare skin that runs neck to navel. The subtle outline of a breast, the mild fishbone curve of a rib.

And all at once he’s unbearably, disastrously hard, filled with a painful but directionless longing — not just for intimacy, but for the simple reassurance of another body pressed close, skin to skin and breath to breath. A kind of tenderness he’s been deprived of for so long that the memory of it brings not warmth but the brittle cold of hoarfrost. Absence like a thick pane of ice, the things he’s lost visible just underneath.

From the periphery of his line of sight, you’re but an indistinct blur in the vague shape of a woman. How appropriate then, that you should be the focus of this formless arousal. And how infuriatingly pathetic. He hadn’t lied when he’d said you weren’t his type, and yet here he is, his cock stiffer than it’s been in months at just the suggestion of a woman’s naked body.

In desperate search of both distraction and something to obscure himself with, Arthur pulls back the front flap of his satchel and fishes out your blue notebook. He glances briefly in your direction, already anticipating your angry shout of indignation — but you’re far too occupied with watching the progression of the storm to so much as glance in his direction.

The notebook’s contents are far more legible than he’d initially assumed. Most of the foreign characters seem to be either names or places, which makes it possible for him to pick out the main thread of most sentences.

Its first half consists of what looks like a ledger. Neatly organized columns with foreign characters and numbers that he hasn’t the slightest idea how to parse. When he flips past it, a slip of paper scrawled with the same strange, flowing text flutters from the pages and alights delicately into his lap. Arthur picks it up, and as he examines it, it occurs to him that he has no idea how to orient it.

Prior to this, he’d only ever seen Chinese characters painted on the roadside food stalls accompanying railroad workers on their long trek westwards. A strange, complex syllabary. He’d once read somewhere that each word of the language had its own unique character. A sort of pictograph that, when studied, relays its meaning to those who knew how to read it.

He scrutinizes the slip of paper in his hand, but finds himself unable to pick out even the vaguest of resemblances. The corner of the paper bears a square seal of red ink, inset with an intricate consortium of straight lines. Curiosity spent for the moment, Arthur slots the document back in place.

The rest of the notebook looks to be an odd mixture of field observations and long, ornate paragraphs about various landscapes. A few pressed wildflowers, field observations of city flora and fauna, crudely drawn animals reminiscent of the scattered petroglyphs he’s found carved in long-abandoned settlements. An earmarked passage describing the wetlands bordering St Denis, full of strikethroughs and hastily added phrases squeezed into the margins. Another describing what sounds like Cotorra Springs.

“The amber fields are dotted with sprigs of larkspurs and wild flax like blue-violet stars,” Arthur reads aloud.

You turn to face him so quickly that your wet hair arcs through the air like an ink-stained brush, scattering water droplets that sizzle and hiss when they fall into the fire. Wild-eyed as a spooked horse, but frozen into a horrified silence as he licks his finger and traces the rest of the line across the page, continuing, “And even further north, viridian-blue pools from which rise plumes of white smoke, the water still and clear as glass. Hills of black obsidian —”

You scramble towards him and, while clutching the blanket around your shoulders shut with one hand, slap the notebook out of his grip with the other. It lands perilously close to the fire, but you snatch it up without giving a second thought to the nearness of the flames.

“That’s private,” you hiss, hugging the notebook to your chest the way one might accidentally smother an infant.

“Thought it was fair turnaround, seein’ as you never extended that same courtesy to me,” he retorts.

The memory of that miserable morning after surfaces in him like a bloated corpse too persistent to stay hidden. His billfold emptied, ill-gotten gains vanished, and his journal speckled with smeared, bloodied thumbprints from beginning to end. Above a sketch of a mountain wildflower he’d drawn a question mark next to, the word “crocus ?” written in an angular, jagged scrawl.

“Yeah, because I thought you were going to die!” you argue back. “Figured you probably had your next of kin listed somewhere in there!”

Next of kin. The phrase pierces through like a stitch popped out of place, and Arthur nearly flinches. It’s an unintentional blow on your part, but nevertheless he deflects the only way he knows how. When bitten, bite back.

“Oh that’s real charitable, comin’ from the dope-peddler,” he jeers. “You save this compassion for everyone you fuck over, or just me?”

A clear and unguarded expression of hurt crosses your features. The same you’d worn when he’d had to pry his shotgun out of your hands. Forlorn, helpless as a wounded prey animal. But it passes quickly into a cold disdain, your head raised high again and your eyes hard as flint.

“Do you know,” you say quietly, lip curling with contempt. “I seriously considered cutting your throat when I finally realized who you were. I should have.”

Then you blink, forehead wrinkling as you sniff at the air. You glance at the fire, where his forgotten can of beans is beginning to burn.

Arthur curses. He hastily swipes one of his discarded riding gloves from the grass and pulls it on, then grabs the can and blows on its contents, fanning away its delicate wisp of black smoke.

You retreat to the far inner corner of the outcrop and frantically page through the notebook until you find the red-sealed paper sheafed inside. With a sigh of relief, you slump against the rough granite wall, the tense set of your shoulders loosening as though some secret string stretched taut through the frame of your body had suddenly been cut loose.

A sullen silence permeates the shelter, punctuated only by the grating scratch of metal as he scrapes burnt food off the edges of the can with a spoon.

“You forgot to mention that the whole place smells like shit,” Arthur says finally. He keeps his eyes on the can, attention focused squarely on the arduous task of excavating beans.

“What?”

“Cotorra Springs. Smells like week-old shit. Especially around the pools.”

The rustle of blankets. From the corner of his eye, he watches you tentatively scoot closer. “You’ve been there?” you ask. Your voice is still deeply reproachful, but touched with genuine curiosity.

“You haven’t?”

“No. I’ve just seen pictures. And notes from people who have.”

“Huh,” he says. He scrapes another carbonized mouthful from the can. “Could’ve fooled me, the way you wrote about it.”

You raise your eyebrows. “You think so?”

“Sure.

The corner of your mouth quirks upwards in a reluctant smile that unfolds like the breaking light of a clouded dawn. “Well, that’s… that’s good to know.”

“You writin’ a book or something?” he asks.

“That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” The smile wilts slightly, and you drop your gaze down to the notebook on your lap. “No. Just a favor for an old friend’s husband. The man fancies himself an explorer, but can barely string a sentence together. He’s paying me to pretty up his notes for him. Half of which I think are made up. There’s some bullshit in there about an enormous rainbow colored pond full of boiling water.”

Arthur laughs. “Naw, that bit’s true. I’ve seen it. It’s a hell of a thing.”

You seem skeptical. He doesn’t blame you. Even after having walked the rust-banded edge of that craterous spring himself, his memory of it still carries with it the preternatural awe of a place half-dreamed. He tells you about the slow gradation of color leading inwards from the rim. Ochre to cadmium, to turquoise, to a deep cerulean with the unreal brilliance of a painted ocean. Steam hanging like a pungent fog. Entire stretches of ground covered in a thick, boiling mud, bubbling ominous as something out of Dante’s Inferno. A constant gurgling of earth and water, as if he were treading upon some living thing in the midst of an infernal digestion.

Halfway through his description, you flip the notebook to a clean page and ask him for a pencil, then begin scribbling down his words with an unceasing, determined hand. This bemuses him. That anyone might find his drivel meaningful enough to commit to paper is a new experience altogether. It’s an odd feeling, but not at all an unpleasant one.

That is, until you begin peppering his narrative with so many questions that it takes the better part of an hour to accommodate them.

What kind of plants grew there?

“Bunch of disgusting slippery shit around the edge. Algae or something. Other than that, can’t think of a single thing that’d lay roots in boiling water and sulfur.”

Did the mud boil like roiling water, or was it more the viscosity of a slow simmering stew?

“More like wet cement, really.”

Were there animals?

“No. Nothing there for ‘em.”

Birds?

“Didn’t see any.”

Insects?

“A shit ton of gnats, but not much else.”

How wide were the prismatic bands around the crater? What was the geology like? Did the surrounding forest taper off gradually in the vicinity of the spring, or was the loss of vegetation sudden and absolute as a drawn border?

“Give me your notebook.” he says, having finally reached the point of exasperation. “Easier if I just draw it for you.”

To his faint surprise, you hand it over without hesitation. He sketches out what he’s able to recall, all the while acutely aware of the madness of the situation. Fucking illustrating an account of his own wanderings for the woman who robbed him while they both sit in varying states of undress. Scribbling out a messy landscape in the same notebook whose contents he’d derided just a little while ago. Focusing all his attention on Cotorra Springs so as to ward away the unfortunate possibility of another inopportune erection.

The mediocre drawing he finally manages to scratch out would have disappointed him under any other occasion. Instead, he feels a warm flood of relief at its conclusion. If this doesn’t shut you up, then nothing will.

Nothing will, it seems. To his immense chagrin, the drawing sparks another round of questions. After silently admiring his work just long enough to spark hope of your satiety, you ask him about the species of the trees. Had he explored the nearby forest? Were there flowers? What season had he visited in? Was the acrid smell of sulfur present even here?

“Look,” Arthur says wearily. “You clearly come from money. Why don’t you just hire someone out to take you sometime?”

You snort at the suggestion. The corner of your mouth lifts upwards into something that’s only nominally a smile, and more the type of grimace that accompanies an old wound. “The only two men I’d trust enough to take me out into the middle of nowhere are dead. And with the money I owe, I can’t… I can’t just… you know what?” you say abruptly. “It’s getting late and I’m fucking exhausted. I’m going to sleep.”

And with that, you tug the blanket tight around your shoulders and huddle against the ground like a felled shrimp. You lay with your back to him, the words left unsaid hanging over you both like an unripe fruit of a question.

Arthur fetches his bedroll and unfurls it close to the fire. A battered pillow emerges from the worn tarp as he spreads it flat. After a moment of contemplation, he picks up the pillow and tosses it in your direction. It hits you square on the head.

Immediately, you sit up and snarl at him. “What the fuck is wrong with — oh.” You pick up the pillow and grasp it tight, as if at any moment he might change his mind and demand it back. Your small “thank you” is puzzled and uncertain.

“I’m gonna put out the fire,” he says. “You try to slit my throat in the dark, I’ll wring your neck.”

But the threat comes out empty and toothless, and judging by the renewed sarcasm in your voice when you tell him you’ll keep it in mind, you seem fully aware of it.

Arthur douses the flames by kicking dirt over the embers, which glow dim and vermillion for minutes afterwards, fading slow to dull, crumbling ash when the heat finally bleeds out of them. The pleasant smell of smoke lingers inside the shelter for a good while longer, but even that dissipates eventually, leaving just petrichor and the crisp, clean scent of early autumn rain.

The worst of the storm has shifted westwards. Water drips in a steady stream from the outer edge of the overhang, churning the ground below to a soup of mud. The cloud cover is still dense, but it’s thinned enough that moonlight gleams through the feathery underbelly in a pale and spattered mottle. With it, he can make out the dim outline of your body, the rise and fall of your chest in a slow, steady rhythm he sorely doubts you’d have the patience to feign.

He lies awake there in the dark for a long while, shuffling through a jumble of discordant emotion. It’s as if the pieces of several sets of puzzles have been mixed together and jammed into an incomprehensible mess, so hopelessly and thoroughly muddled that he can no longer tell where one thing starts and another ends. He sorts his way through it until the rain weakens to a grey drizzle and the drip of rainwater turns from the unbroken stream of a faucet to a series of droplets beating out an abstruse morse code against the ground.

In the end, he’s only able to definitively place a single solid sentiment. Pity.

———

Couple notes:

Arthur's understanding of Chinese is incorrect, but aligns with the assumptions a lot of Western scholars during that time period had regarding it. There was a big tendency to treat it like Japanese, which despite using some of the same characters, uses a completely different structure.

Cotorra Springs seems to be based off Yellowstone. The big boiling rainbow spring is actually real: it's called the Grand Prismatic Spring and seriously does look like something out of a fever dream. Yellowstone also does smell like sulfur in some places, but it’s not so much like week old shit as it is the potent fart of someone who’s eaten far too many deviled eggs.

No algae grows in the spring. It's actually cyanobacteria, but there's no reason Arthur would know this. It does look pretty gross up close.

#arthur morgan #arthur morgan/reader #arthur morgan/oc #fic #red dead redemption #rdr2 #my work #talking bird

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