#i blocked them forever ago youre safe to bitch about them here

[demadogs]

is the foah account you're talking about @/foahchoseme?

yep

[lindisworld]

Close || Matt Murdock x Reader

summary: Soulmate Au! In which [Name] has Daredevil as a soulmate and Matt unwillingly wants [Name] in his life. However Fate does its job and always brings them together.

Chapter six.

After Brett took care of Frank, who was passed out in the cemetery, and briefly put Matt in handcuffs. Matt’s only priority was getting to [Name]. It had taken awhile for Brett to let Matt go, almost convinced he was helping the Punisher.

Matt soon rushed towards the direction of [Name]’s coffee shop faster than he had ever before, his thoughts scrambled, he couldn’t focus on anything or anyone no matter how hard he tried. He had let his emotions overtake him causing his senses to become overstimulating. The whole city on blast, why is Hell’s kitchen bustling this time of night?

Time felt like an eternity, each second stretching out into an infinity of its own. Everything around him seemed to move in slow motion, as if the world was operating on a different frequency than he was. His heart pounded in his chest, his breath ragged and labored as he pushed his way through the crowded street. In the moment, nothing mattered, not even when his legs were screaming at him to stop and rest. He just needed to be there with her. He needs her to be safe.

Matt didn’t understand the depth of the soul tie, he couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Was life this cruel to give him a soulmate after all he’s been through? Matt’s been over exerting himself for the past few days in hopes he wouldn’t have to think about it.

What felt like forever ago, he reached the coffee shop. He tilted his head slightly, attempting to focus on anything that might be out of the ordinary. He heard a couple of voices that led him to the back of the building, Matt distinguished two heartbeats but none that belonged to [Name].

“The girl isn’t here. She might’ve went home.”

“Notify Finn. Let him know we’re on the way to her apartment.”

“We’re gonna have fun with her.”

Before the guy could call and do anything further, Matt came from behind. “You aren’t going anywhere near her,” he spoke in that deep raspy voice. His hand clenching around his baton, throwing it at the guy’s temple that knocked him out instantly.

“The devil protecting a dumb girl. Stupid choices lead to bad consequences.” The guy snapped at him, drawing out his gun, aiming the weapon at Matt. “I suggest you leave me alone before you die right here.”

Matt shook his head in a dismissive manner and let out a laugh, “Oh. I’m not dying today, but I know you are.” He responded, clarity in his voice that hinted at more than just confidence. Matt knew that second when the man pulled the trigger, immediately getting into a close range, disarming the man within seconds. Matt's movements were a dance of controlled grace, each action calculated yet fluid.

“Son of a bitch.” The man spat out, “i’m gonna kill you, asshole!” He threatened, he leaned forward and aims a punch towards Matt’s face, but Matt’s quick reflexes allowed him to block the shot. Matt returned the attack and punched the male on the cheek.

The air crackled with tension between them, one man wanted to shed blood but the other wanted to get to his soulmate. The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the sound of heavy breathing and the low hum of distant traffic. Matt stood his ground, his jaw clenched tightly as he stared down his assailant.

“C’mon man, I’m just trying to get to my lady. I wanna have fun with [Name].” The man casually spoke, a shit eating grin appearing on his face. Only if Matt was able to see, he might’ve broken his moral code of the no deaths while Daredevil. Yet the tone of the guy was enough to send Matt over the top.

“Didn’t your mom teach you not to play with the Devil.” Matt said before closing the distance, his hands that turned to fists colliding with the guy’s face. His knuckles turning white with the force of his emotions. As the fight unfolded, it was evident that Matt's actions were not merely fueled by anger, but also by a sense of protective instinct, a primal urge to shield against the threats about [Name].

—————

Yet meanwhile, [Name] laid uncomfortably in her own bed, her blanket wrapped around her body like a cocoon. Her blanket covering her entire face except for her nose so she can breathe. [Name] felt the stress of knowing who’s behind all the murders that’s been happening throughout Hell’s Kitchen, it definitely made her an accomplice, even if she didn’t partake in it, she still knows about. Now if anyone were to find out, she’d be in deep shit. A part of her denied it because why would a random man who’s named Frank be the Punisher?

She believed they were friends so why would a friend of hers be a murderer? Was she out of her mind for not being scared of him? She honestly thought she should seek some help because a normal person wouldn’t be reacting how she did when Frank admitted it. A rational human would have immediately went to the police and reported it.

[Name] tosses and turns around the bed, her mind clouded. It’s like she couldn’t find a proper position to fall asleep in. Maybe it’s her guilty conscience telling her to do something about the matter. She groaned loudly in frustration, she should’ve banned Frank when he first didn’t pay a coffee, although she did tell him it was on the house. Since then, she refused any money from him, so it definitely was her fault. It’s not like she knew.

All these scenarios going through her head, but there’s no way she can go back in time to fix it. However, if she became friends with the Avengers or more specifically, Tony Stark. She might have a chance to create a time traveling machine, but hey, that’s a long shot. There’s no hurting anyone if she sent a quick dm to Tony on Instagram about her idea.

“No, I can’t do that. Things happen for a reason.” [Name] spoke to no one in particular.

[Name] unraveled herself from her blanket, sitting up with a scowl on her face. She rubs her face harshly, a tired yawn escaping her. She swings her legs to the edge of the bed and began walking towards her kitchen. She rummages through her cabinet and grabs any bowl that was there, reaching over the table to pick up the cereal box.

After setting her bowl of cereal onto the table, she heard a knock from her front door. It was 2 am, who would be knocking this time of night?

[Name] tiptoed where the knives were placed on counter, she reached out and selected the sharpest blade, feeling its chilling edge against her trembling fingers. A sense of dread washed over her as the knocking at the door grew more forceful, sending shivers down her spine.

As she approaches the door closer, she could hear their heavy breath as they muttered something that sounded like her name. [Name] knew deep down that she was incapable of inflicting harm upon another, let alone taking a life. This was her karma for not going to the police about Frank, she thought. Now she got some random person knocking on her door.

“[Name], I know you’re in there.” Wait, the voice sounded a bit too familiar.

“Matt?” [Name]’s voice wavered out of fear.

“No, it’s Daredevil. I need you to open the door. It’s urgent.”

[Name] quickly scurried to the door, knife still in her hand. Even if she knew it was him, she couldn’t take the chance of letting her guard down. She unlocks the doorknob, opening up the door slightly ajar so she could get a clear view of Daredevil.

“I could’ve swore you sounded like an acquaintance of mine,” [Name] laughs nervously, allowing Daredevil to walk in. The voice sounded way too close like Matt’s. However, the idea quickly went down the drain since she’s spoken to Matt quite a few times and her tired mind couldn’t recall his voice at the current moment.

“I can tell you, I’m the one and only, sweetheart.” The stupid smirk of his appeared on his face as he walked through the door as he stood close to [Name]. “There’s no one like me.” Matt cockily added.

“Don’t you think it’s too late to be visiting and for you to be acting like that?”

Matt simply shrugged, his smirk still plastered on his face. “You’re not going to kill me, right?” He asked, his finger pointing to the direction of the knife in her hand.

[Name] closed the door, making sure to securely lock it. She knew it probably seemed she was going to murder the Daredevil, but considering it was 2 am, she rather lock the door than keep it unlocked. Even though she did have Daredevil in her house and needed any protection, she’d just hate if something were to happen in her apartment. [Name] pays a good amount of money to live here and God forbid, a burglary or other serious crime happens in her own home.

“Can’t be too sure, you know?” You replied as you walked over to the kitchen where you left your now soggy cereal on the table. “Considering you made me leave my cereal and it’s soggy now, I might have to commit a crime.” [Name] sighs and throws away her bowl, already lost her appetite from the sudden scare.

“You’d attempt to kill the vigilante that protects Hell’s Kitchen over a bowl of cereal?”

In a quick second his usual smirk went into a serious straight line. [Name] spoke too quick about her apartment as Matt swiftly grabs her out the way. A bullet going through the window that was in direct sight of her from the outside was shattered within seconds.

A/n: Was not proofread, i’ve been slacking on writing 💔 this goes out to @bullseye-devil

[fandom-imagines-stories]

Run to You Part Three

Derek Morgan x Reader

Words: 1758

Part 3 of 3

Part One; Part Two

Summary: Having been dating for a while, you finally feel comfortable enough to introduce your boyfriend to your daughter, Angelica. Derek takes on the role better than you could have imagined and you start to feel like a family. Then one day, Angelica disappears from a friend’s house and your ex husband starts making demands. 

Notes: Is this procedurally correct? Probably not. But here it is! The last part to my Derek Morgan imagine! I hope you guys enjoy this and never forget that replies mean the world! This one kinda feels jumbled, but I hope you still like it. (I’m sorry it took forever! I got caught up with other projects, which I hope to be sharing soon!)

More Criminal Minds: HERE

-

The swarms of cops were overwhelming. You watched teams and teams of people surrounded the block Dr. Reid was the one that figured out that Lance had brought Angelica to the church that you got married, especially upon the discovery that it was going to be torn down in a few weeks. The idea of losing the one connection to you he had left was likely a trigger. 

No one was allowed to get too close. They worried that cornering Lance would make him panic and kill Angelica, so you were forced to stand back and watch. They made sure you weren’t alone, of course, though you weren’t sure if it was to comfort you or to make sure you didn’t try and run in alone. With all of the standing around you were doing, you felt ready to break down the front door. 

“Alright, so we’re sending a team around to the back to get in as quickly and quietly as possible. That’ll be me, Prentiss and a couple of the local P.D.” Derek explained, keeping his eyes locked on yours to make sure you understood that he wasn’t going to let anything happen to your baby. 

“He wants me, Derek. What if he knows you’re in there and he panics and he-”

“Hey, listen to me,” He put a hand on your cheek. “I’m not gonna let that happen.” Despite the eyes of his coworkers, he pulled you in for a gentle, reassuring kiss. It did little to calm you down, but just having him there made the situation that much easier. That moment, however, was cut short by the ringing of your phone. 

“God, not again.” You cried, pulling the device from your pocket. This time, Derek held out his hand. You gave him a confused look, but handed it to him. 

“Mr. Booker.” 

“You must be Agent Morgan.” Lance spat. “I know that you and your gang of federal pigs are coming after me. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because Y/N will see she’s wrong. I’ll show her she’s wrong.”

“Mr. Booker, we just want Angelica to be safely returned to her mother.” 

“What about her father, Agent Morgan? What about me!” 

“I want to make this as easy on you as possible, Mr. Booker, but you’ve got to help me out here.”

“Just bring my wife to me and nobody will get hurt.” 

“I can’t do that, Lance. You know I can’t do that.” Derek could tell that you were starting to panic from the way your eyes kept darting to the church and you slowly crept closer. He took your hand to keep you from bolting in there. 

“If I don’t see her in the next half hour... I’m taking my baby girl with me.” The call ended, but Morgan was already prepping his team to go in. 

“Derek, what did he say?” You kept your grip on his hand, following him to join Prentiss. 

“Nothing that he hasn’t already said.” He gave you the most reassuring look he could, but he knew that they had to act fast. 

“I’m going with you.”

“No. No, baby, you can’t.” He took your face in his hands. “Y/N, I need you to stay here. I need you to be safe. I can’t go get your little girl if I’m worried about you too, okay?” You shut your eyes, feeling more frightened tears slip down your cheeks. 

“What if he… what if you don’t get her in time? I need to see her, I-I need-”

“Don’t even think like that, baby.” He looked over your shoulder and motioned to the younger agent to stand beside you. “Now Reid is going to stay here with you, okay?” Reid gave him a small nod and put a comforting hand on your shoulder. Derek kissed your forehead. “I’ll be right back and I’m bringing Angel with me.” 

As he walked away, you could feel your body start to shake. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. You shut your eyes tight, the foolish part of you hoping that when you opened them, Derek and Angie would be smiling in front of you. But when you finally opened your eyes, all you saw was him walking away.

-

Morgan moved silently, followed closely by his team. Prentiss was right behind him and the other officers were ready to go. From what they could tell, Lance was in the chapel, keeping Angelica towards the back. The church had multiple entrances with one leading to the basement. This was determined to be the best point of entry since Lance was least likely to hear the team coming. 

While you couldn’t see him anymore, your heart beat more with every second. Dr. Reid stood by your side, his presence serving as a small comfort as he listened to the situation through his earpiece. He shifted suddenly and gave you a small, if not nervous, smile. 

“They’re in.” 

Derek directed the officers to one staircase while he and Prentiss crept up the other. The old floors creaked as they walked, making him wince. He could only hope that Lance couldn’t hear them. They moved fast and efficiently like they would any other raid, but his body was buzzing more than usual. He focused on the image of Angelica and kept going. 

“Morgan,” Prentiss stopped suddenly, looking around the corner. 

Angelica was seated on top of the old alter, swinging her small legs back and forth while she colored in a tattered psalm book. Booker was nowhere to be found. Morgan and Prentiss approached her slowly, double checking to make sure Lance wasn’t waiting for them. As soon as they were sure, Morgan ran to the little girl. 

“Derek!” She cried, throwing her arms around his neck. 

“It’s alright, Angel. I’ve got you. It’s going to be okay.” He cradled the back of her head, holding her closed to his chest. 

“Sweetheart, I need you to tell us where your dad went.” Prentiss said gently. Angelica just gave her a tearful look and pointed up. The two agents exchanged a look, reaching the same conclusion. Derek motioned to one of the officers and reluctantly handed her a crying Angelica. 

“I wanna stay w-with D-Derek!” 

“I know, sweetie, but this nice woman is going to take you out to your mama, okay? I have to go find your dad with Emily. I’ll be out before you know it, but I need you to be brave. Can you do that?” 

She nodded, but held onto his hand until he had to pull away. Prentiss put a hand on his shoulder. 

“Morgan if you need to-”

“No, I want to finish this. I’m not letting that son of a bitch take the easy way out.” 

As they made their way to the roof, you were desperately watching the door of the church, gripping Dr. Reid’s hand a little too tightly. Time was ticking and your heart beat faster every second. 

Suddenly, a group of officers exited the church. You didn’t see Derek, but at the back of the group, a female officer held Angelica. Immediately dropping Reid’s hand, you sprinted towards her, taking her from the officer’s arms and holding her closer than you ever had. You cried as her hands clung to your shirt, promising yourself to never let her out of your sight again. 

On the roof, Derek stared down Lance as he prepared to jump. 

“Don’t do it, Mr. Booker.” Prentiss said, carefully taking a step towards him. 

“There isn’t a point anymore.” The man swayed back and forth, almost losing his balance. “I just wanted us to be a family again.”

“Killing yourself won’t fix what you did all those years ago, Lance.” 

“I loved Y/N. I swear I did. But I kept hurting her. I kept hurting her and now my daughter doesn’t even know who I am.” 

“Is this how you want Angelica to remember you? The man who hurt her mom and took her away?” Derek inched closer, careful not to provoke him into jumping. “If you die now, that’s all she’ll know.” 

“Don’t come any closer!”  Lance screamed, but he had stopped swaying. 

“Lance, you can spend the rest of your life giving her something good to remember. You owe her that much.” A darker part of Derek wanted Lance to know the pain that he inflicted upon you and your family, but the words he said now were true. The best thing Lance could do was try to redeem himself after everything he had done. 

“I...I… okay.” Lance seemed in a daze as he stepped off of the ledge. Prentiss cuffed him and the two led him back downstairs. 

Lance left the church first, making your heart sink. You almost didn’t recognize him. He was just a shell, nothing like the man you knew all those years ago. Maybe, one day, you would learn to feel sorry for him, but for now, as you watched him be loaded into the patrol car, you only felt relief. 

“Derek!” Angelica squealed, reaching out her arms. You whirled around and felt another sob escape your throat. 

The team watched Derek run to you, taking both you and Angelica in his arms. Prentiss finished getting Booker into the car and joined Hotchner, Reid, and Rossi. 

“That’s not something I thought I’d see.” She whispered with a smile. 

“Did you not think we’d get to the little girl on time?” Reid asked. 

“No,” She motioned to the trio in front of them. A family. “Derek falling in love.” The rest of the team smiled and separated into their designated vehicles. 

-

The crowd shouted and cheered as Angelica sprinted towards home plate. Visitors 3, Home team 6. You cheered louder than anyone. Well, maybe not anyone.

“That’s right! You can’t touch her!” Penelope screamed at the other team’s players. Everyone from the BAU had shown up. Over the past few months, you’d gotten to know all of them pretty well, even earning Penelope’s approval.  

“She’s good.” Emily smiled at you. You nodded. 

“She has a good coach.” You looked down at the dugout where Derek was waiting to give Angel a high-five. You must have caught his eye because he beamed up at you with that knockout smile. You grinned back. 

“You guys seem really happy.” J.J. mused, giving you a supportive smile. You nodded, keeping your eyes on Derek. 

“Yeah.” You waved down at him and your daughter as she came in for her victory. “We are.”

-

General Tag: @rae-gar-targaryen; @takemepedropascal; @childhood-imagination;  @mylovegoesto; @yellowbadgergirl; @itmejado; @suckmyapplejacks

Series: @ weasleytommy, @ lowsodiumfreaks67, @panhoeofmanyfandoms, @ literallyprentissstwin, @ yallgotkik

[emerald-chaos]

Already Gone

**gif not mine, credit to the owner below!!**

Oh hohohohoho besties. You are in for it on this one. The other night I had an idea that popped into my head and to say I got carried away with it would be a gross understatement. This is the first time I've written smut in forever so bear with me as I get back in to it. I hope you guys enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. As always, please feel free to send feedback!

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Word Count: 5.3k (oops)

Warnings: Smut, 18+ (MINORS DNI), language, ANGST (holy shit is there angst), fingering, unprotected sex (please be smarter than these two), infidelity, and I think that's about it? Please let me know if I left something off.

A/N: Thanks to my sweet, sweet friend who read through this for me and helped me fix a few things. Also I take the, MINORS DNI, warning very seriously, so please only interact if you are of age. Please have your age in your bio so I can confirm. By clicking "read more" you agree to this. I really don't want to have to block people.

The cacophonous trill of shattering glass erupted through the space. Raised voices, thick with rage, echoed off the walls. It was difficult to tell which words were coming from which mouth, the both of you overlapping as you spewed out hatred toward one another.

“What in God’s name is going on here?!” Steve shouted as he entered the room, coming back from a late night run at the most inopportune time.

“Stay the fuck out of it!” Your two voices shrilled together as you both pointed toward Steve.

You could feel your chest heaving and it almost felt as though you were foaming at the mouth. Rage was completely consuming every crevice of your body and spilling out into your actions and your words. You turned back to the object of your aggression and watched as he ran a hand through his hair and turned to walk away from you.

“You’re nothing but a coward, James Barnes. A goddamn selfish, son-of-a-bitch, coward!” You screamed with every ounce of energy you had left in your body.

The two of you had some knock-down drag-outs in your past, but it was nothing compared to this. Months of pent up feelings, insecurities, jealousies, and secrets were all coming to a head at this very moment. The last few months the two of you had been incredibly short with one another - a stark contrast from your usual loving tone. Passionate kisses became brief pecks to the cheek, midnight roaming hands became backs set to one another, and ‘i love you’s’ felt more like a habit than a genuine feeling. In your heart you feared it would come to this one day. No matter how hard you tried, how much you wanted to, you were never going to be able to fix what had been done to the man you loved. There was no amount of love in the world that could reverse the tragedy of the Winter Soldier - at least that’s what you were convinced of now.

The man in front of you turned and strode across the room, minimizing the space between the two of you. His metal hand in a fist as he brought it up to jab a finger into the middle of your chest. Pupils were blown wide, what was once a lustful look was now filled with only pure anger. As he opened his mouth to speak, spit flew into your face.

“And you are a self-righteous, ignorant, self-important bitch!”

As your eyes raked over the contorted facial features of the man standing in front of you, you realized you couldn’t recognize them. The man standing in front of you was not Bucky. It was not the man who twirled a strand of your hair when he sat with his arm behind your chair, not the man who pulled over the car to help a turtle cross the road, and definitely not the man who held you in his arms as he cried after a nightmare. The man standing in front of you was a frightening enigma of hatred and rage. This was not your Bucky. In fact, you were almost certain you lost your Bucky months ago.

* * *

You hadn’t noticed the bouncing of your knee until the man who sat beside you gently cupped it with his hand, stilling your nervous movements. It was enough to break you from your thoughts as you turned your head to meet his kind eyes.

“We don’t have to do this, you know. I’ll have them turn the car around and we’ll go back to the airport. We catch the next flight back home.” He whispered in reassurance. Even though your mind was anxiously racing, you couldn’t help but smile at the compassionate gesture.

“Of course we do,” you started, cupping his cheek with your hand as the sunlight glinted off your pristine wedding ring, “Tony was one of the most important people in my life. Plus, I’m pretty sure he would haunt me if I didn’t go to his funeral.”

8 years ago you promised yourself in the taxi ride to the airport that you would never step foot in this place again. That all changed when you got the news of Tony’s death. Your time working with the Avengers was a life-changing experience and it was all thanks to Tony. The memory of him seeking you out to work alongside Dr. Banner in the research lab was one that you could never forget. Tony was an arrogant, pompous asshole but he was undeniably a good man. You would curse yourself for the rest of your days if you let your own baggage get in the way of that.

“Alright,” your husband responded with a sigh as he squeezed your knee, “But please, promise you’ll tell me if there’s anything I can do for you.”

“Promise.” An agreement that you sealed with a kiss.

Mike was a good man, he was someone who cared for you deeply and who made you feel safe. After your transfer to the DC Shield Office, you had sworn off any more office romances. Those never ended well. That was until your path crossed with Mike. From the beginning of the relationship, you were upfront about your past issues with relationships and how you weren’t ready to dive into anything and he simply stated that he was okay with that, that he would wait.

The marriage was a happy one, Mike always playing the role of doting, caring husband. No matter how much you pushed back against him, he was always willing to give you space and to let you feel what you were experiencing. Mike was a good man. But he wasn’t him.

Your gaze left his as your eyes returned to the skyline, the familiar pressure clawing its way back to your chest. It’d been 8 years since you saw him. 8 years since you packed your bags and left the only home you’d ever truly known. Sure, you had this new life - a new husband, new friends, new job with similar duties, but there was still a piece of you that was missing. A piece you knew could never possibly be filled again. You had come to terms with that, slowly, but it had happened eventually. Now that you were back, you knew you were going to have to see him again - see all of them again. While a lot of good memories resided within this area, there was a hell of a lot of pain that went along with it. All you could do in that moment was remind yourself that you were here for Tony - to honor his memory and pay your respects. You didn’t owe anything else to anyone else. Something in your chest, however, told you that wouldn’t be the way things played out.

* * *

The service was beautifully executed. It was obvious that Pepper had poured her heart and soul into ensuring that Tony Stark was remembered as he should have been. The walls of your heart tightened as you saw Pepper clutching their young daughter to her side. Although Tony had made a lot of mistakes in his life, he spent his last years making sure to do good and to make things right. While it felt like a hot knife had been stabbed into your chest as you said goodbye to a once dear friend, you took solace in knowing that Tony was so loved by so many. That his legacy would live on in so many different ways. And that Pepper was there to say goodbye.

It had been your plan to attend the service and then leave immediately after it had ended. Of course, life has a funny way of never doing quite what we want it to.

It was Sam who stopped you first, pulling you into a tight hug against his form as your fingers gripped his jacket. Sam, being the angel he was, never once mentioned anything from the past and instead expressed his happiness with seeing you again and learning that you were doing well. The one thing Sam was not good at however, was keeping his mouth shut. Word quickly traveled through the crowd of your attendance and one by one old friends began to find you. Wanda didn’t have much to say but kept you in a grateful embrace while you expressed your condolences for Vision. In a shocking turn of events, It was actually Peter who was the most difficult to see. The once bright, happy-go-lucky, smiling boy was visibly devastated - heavy dark bags lingered under his eyes and his glow had been severely dimmed by the loss of his mentor. You couldn’t help but cry as you held him in your arms, expressing to him how proud of him Tony was and how he’d told you just that on several occasions.

After the hellos, the hugs, and the reminiscing you had told yourself that was it, that you were going to leave. It was then that Pepper stopped you with a soft hand on your shoulder, a kind smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, and a warm embrace. After a pause of silence, she pulled away and invited you and Mike to stay for the gathering that had been planned following the service. Your mind screamed at you, begging you to politely decline - tell her you had to get back to DC, that you had a flight already booked that you couldn’t miss, that you had important business to get back to.

“Of course, Pepper. We’d love to.”

* * *

The gathering was exactly what Tony would have wanted. It was family and friends gathered around eating and drinking, but most of all - it was a bunch of people talking about Tony Stark.

You told Mike before the two of you arrived that you would stay for 20 minutes tops. That it simply would be out of respect for Pepper and once you felt your presence had been noted that the two of you would slip out unnoticed in the sea of people.

That was 2 hours ago.

Laughs came easy, tears flowed frequently, and stories were shared amongst friends. Surprising to you, it felt good to be around these people again. A familiar pang of home would hit you every now and again as you reconnected with those who you hadn’t seen in years. You introduced Mike to your old friends, who welcomed him warmly and with open arms. What you had thought would be a stressful, gut-wrenching day had actually turned out to be a joyful celebration of life. The day had been progressing smoothly and you wanted to chastise yourself for being so pessimistic.

That was, until you saw him.

Hands stuffed into the pockets of a black bomber jacket, long chestnut hair falling onto his shoulders, and a familiar collection of facial hair decorating the lower half of his face. He looked as terrible as you felt at the beginning of the day. Dark circles had only grown more prominent beneath his beautiful blue eyes and the corners of his lips were drawn down in a permanent frown. You couldn’t help but notice that he’d lost a considerable amount of weight. The once broad, thick man was now far more lean and toned than you ever remember him being.

A breath caught in your throat as the cerulean eyes met yours. Unable to stop yourself, you shoved your drink into Mike’s chest and hurried off to the nearest bathroom. Barely making it in time, you emptied your day’s stomach contents into the toilet. Breathing heavily, you fought back sobs as they threatened to leave your throat. To anyone else, it may seem you were simply grieving the loss of your friend, perhaps taking it harder than most. Oh how you wish that were the case.

You knew it would be difficult to see him again, but you didn’t expect it to feel as though someone had set your entire body ablaze. The heavy feeling of grief, anxiety, and stress from the beginning of the day was crushing your lungs, your stomach still trying to lurch although it had nothing left to give up, and tears burned the rims of your eyes. As you cleaned yourself up and flushed the toilet, you exited the stall to wash your hands and rinse your mouth. You tried to convince yourself it was the entire day's worth of emotions that had led you to this moment. That man no longer had this kind of hold on you - you had moved on. Or, so you thought.

Slowly, your gaze met your reflection in the mirror. The woman there looked worn and tired, like she had been fighting a raging war that she had been losing miserably. Mascara had begun to run down the apples of her cheeks and lipstick was smeared across her mouth. A heavy sigh left your lips as you did your best to make yourself more presentable. A shaky hand entered your clutch as you retrieved your lipstick and applied another layer. You gave yourself a final once-over and decided that your current appearance was as good as it was going to get. Just as you were going to turn around and return to the party there was movement in the mirror that caught your eye. The door was being pushed open from the outside. You turned to protest, to let the intruder know that the bathroom was occupied.

“Excuse me, sorry, there’s someone--”

It felt as though all the air had been taken from your lungs and your heart threatened to beat out of your chest as you came face to face with the man you had tried so hard, for so long, to forget. It was as though you were frozen in time, as if he were Medusa - turning you instantly to stone. Logically, the thing to do would be to tell him to get out or for you to leave the bathroom so that he could occupy the space alone. However, all you could do was stand and watch as he closed the bathroom door behind him, as his fingers closed around the lock and clicked it into place.

Then it was just the two of you. Bodies unmoving, aside from the rapid rise and fall of your chests in tandem. The air felt 100 degrees warmer than it had when you were alone. The silence, paired with the thump of your heartbeat, was deafening to your ears. You were hyper-aware of his gaze as he studied you the way you had him not minutes before. His eyes finally met yours once more and there was a poignant silence before he finally spoke.

“Can’t believe you still have that dress.”

Your eyes blinked a few times, brain trying to process his words and the situation you had currently found yourself to be in. You looked down to the front of your dress and smoothed your hands down it. How could you have gone the whole day without realizing that the dress you were wearing had been a gift from Bucky on your first anniversary? You were positive you had rid yourself of anything even remotely related to him. In fact, you distinctly recall dumping a box of momentos into a barrel and tossing a lit match inside. You don’t remember making the conscious decision to keep the dress, or why you would have made the decision. Now here you were - mere feet away from the man who had put it on and so delicately took it off of you many times.

“S’perfectly good dress. Shouldn’t go to waste.” Was all you could muster as a response in that moment.

The man before you took a step forward and you took a step back, hips coming into contact with the cold marble counter of the sink.

“Thought I’d never see you again. Y’look...different.” His gaze roaming its way down your body once more.

As his eyes landed on the diamond ring nestled onto the 4th finger of your left hand, you felt a lump begin to form in your throat.

“Congratulations.” His words were cold. Inauthentic. “He’s a lucky guy.”

“What the fuck are you doing in here, James?” The words were supposed to be sharp, but instead came out shaky and insecure.

“Saw you out there, starin’ at me. Guess I just wanted a closer look at you.”

By the end of the sentence he had closed the gap between the two of you even more, chests threatening to bump one another. His metal hand slowly reached forward and brushed a piece of hair off your shoulder. The cool appendage felt like fire against your skin and you know he heard the way you sharply inhaled, but you just couldn’t help it. You swallowed hard, head reeling and knees trying to buckle beneath you when you felt his cool palm cup your fiery cheek. It took everything in your body to avert your eyes from him, especially when you felt him even closer than before - warm breath fanning the expanse of your face. Why was he doing this? What was he going to accomplish? The fight or flight response in your body was screaming at you to push him away and run, but you didn’t.

“I’ve thought about you every day since you left, sweets. There’s not a moment that passes by where you’re not on my mind.”

Your eyes closed tightly, tears now welling up and spilling over.

“Everything you said about me that night was true. I am a coward. A coward who lost the best fuckin’ thing that ever happened to his sorry, broken ass.”

A small sob escaped your chest as your hand flew to your mouth, failing to keep it from tumbling out. Bucky found a loose thread and was slowly unraveling everything you’d worked toward in the last 8 years, every step toward progress and peace that you had worked so hard to find.

“I’m so fuckin’ sorry, doll” Bucky was now fully cupping your face with his large, calloused hands, “I’m so sorry that you fell in love with someone like me - a broken son of a bitch who never got put back together. I’m sorry that I hurt you so badly. I’m sorry I didn’t protect you the way I promised I would. I’m sorry that -”

In a moment of weakness, before he could finish his sentence, you were crashing your lips to his. There was nothing else that existed in your world - there was only you and there was only Bucky. Seemingly moving on their own accord, your hands found their way into his hair, grasping wildly for something to hold on to. As your fingers tugged on his roots, Bucky let out a deep moan into the kiss, sending a shiver down your spine.

The kiss was sloppy and desperate, all tongue and teeth. It was a balance of dominance between the two of you - although you were the one who initiated the kiss, Bucky was the first one to gain access to the inside of your mouth, and you were the first to tug his lower lip between your teeth. A pathetic mewl left your lips as Bucky’s mouth began trailing wet kisses across your jaw and down the column of your throat. The heartbeat in your ears from earlier was much worse now, making your head throb in pain. Every nerve ending in your body felt as though it was on fire and a small voice in the back of your head kept pleading with you to stop. For a moment you entertained the idea of shoving him off and telling him to fuck off, but that was before he started sucking that spot on your neck that he knew drove you mad. It was your turn to moan this time as you involuntarily arched your back, pressing yourself up against his firm torso.

You knew the way that you were tugging on the strands of his hair had to be incredibly painful but it only seemed to urge Bucky to continue. A soft gasp tumbled past your lips as you felt Bucky’s thigh push against your aching core. The sensation had you digging your fingernails into the back of his jacket as you finally released your grip on his hair. Before you could stop yourself, you could feel your hips grinding yourself down against his clothed thigh. Your dress had been pushed up around your waist, now only a small piece of cloth covering you as you desperately chased a high.

“I shoulda never let you go. Shoulda been at the airport to stop you before you got on that plane.”

His teeth sunk into your pulse point once more, earning himself another moan from your lips. The sting was soon replaced with the cool sensation of his tongue tracing the marks he had left.

“I love you, doll. I haven’t ever stopped lovin’ you.”

“Show me,” you whimpered pathetically against his shoulder, “show me you love me, Bucky. Please.”

An audible breath caught in his throat as he pulled himself back to look at you. Your chest was heaving, make-up smeared once more, and your pupils were blown wide with lust. You obviously weren’t able to see the look you gave him, but judging by the way he looked back at you it was fair to say you looked broken, pathetic, and desperate for him. The eyes looking back at you had the softness to them that you remember, the strokes of his hands against your body contained the passion that you’d so been longing for, and the tone in his voice told you that he was desperate for you too.

Within seconds your feet were lifted from the ground and your ass made contact with the cold, wet countertop. There wasn’t a lot of room, objects were scattered onto the floor and others were left to push into your hips with aggressive force, but you just didn’t care. It was impossible to care when Bucky moved your knees apart and dragged a finger along your clothed pussy. The sensation made your head fall back against the mirror with a hard thud but you couldn’t feel any of the pain from it at all. The only thing you felt was the way electricity rippled through your body when he used his thumb to apply pressure to your aching clit. Bucky groaned and rested his forehead against yours, lips slightly parted as he felt your need for him growing.

“So wet for me, just like I remember. Lemme make you feel good, sweets, hmm?” He had leaned forward to whisper softly in your ear as his teeth grazed your lobe.

It was you who reached down and shoved your panties down your thighs, meeting a surprised look from Bucky as he helped you drag them down to hang around your ankle. Bucky’s tongue darted out to wet his bottom lip as he hooked his hands underneath your knees to spread your legs open for him. Another groan came from him, this time more guttural than the last. You felt small underneath his gaze and the cool air in the bathroom brushing across your soaking core made you shiver.

Your hand flew to your mouth to suppress the noises you made as his finger slipped through your folds, running up and down to collect your wetness.

“More. God. Please, Buck. Need more.” You whined, attempting to roll your hips against his hand to find any form of friction that you could.

“Anything for you, baby.” He whispered as he gently inserted a finger inside of you. The two of you moaned in tandem.

There was a brief moment of embarrassment with the way your walls immediately clenched around his finger and the way his finger immediately found that soft spot. It was shortly replaced with a feeling of ecstasy. Bucky captured your lips with his to swallow your moans as he added another finger. The way his fingers were curling and pumping inside of you already had you close to the edge. Bucky pulled back and held your gaze as he added pressure to your clit with his thumb, circling the area as his fingers continued to repeatedly hit that spot inside of you.

“Please, please don’t stop.” You begged as you felt the pressure building within the lower part of your body.

“S’okay. I’m right here.” Bucky’s other hand was cradling the back of your head as he whispered to you. “I know you’re close. Can feel you squeezin’ me. You can let go for me, I got you.”

As your eyes met his, foreheads pressed together, you finally came apart. The white hot sensation tears through you as your legs quake. You squeeze your eyes shut and allow Bucky to help you ride through your orgasm as he peppers light kisses along your neck.

“I almost forgot how pretty you look when you cum.”

You whine at the emptiness and loss of contact when Bucky removes his fingers from your center. As your eyes flutter open you see him push the fingers into his mouth and suck them clean. The look on his face was euphoric.

“God. Almost forgot how fuckin’ sweet you taste too.”

Mustering up all the strength you had, you sat up and pulled him closer by his belt. The two of you worked together to rid him of his pants and boxers. Your hand wrapped around him, thumb swiping the red tip and using the pre-cum to help lubricate as you pumped your hand down his length. Bucky’s jaw clenched as he moaned at the sensation. Just as you were going to leave the counter, you felt his hands grabbing your shoulders and halting your movements.

“Maybe a different time, sweets. But right now I gotta be inside you.”

You caught your bottom lip as you nodded and released your hold on him. Bucky’s hands wrapped around your thighs as he pulled your hips to the edge of the sink. The metal hand left your thigh as he grabbed himself at the base and pushed his length through your folds. The two of you once more shared a moan at the sensation. As he lined himself up with your entrance, your hands wrapped around his neck to pull him in for another kiss. The next thing you felt was the familiar sting of his cock stretching your walls as he slid into you. Your lips left his and your forehead found itself pressed against his once more. Both of you panting heavily as neither of you dared to speak a word.

Following a moment of silence, allowing your body time to stretch to accommodate him, you nodded slowly as to signal to him that it would be okay for him to move. His thrusts were slow and calculated at first, as if he was attempting to regain his memory of your body - one that he once knew so well. You couldn’t help but dig your fingernails into his shoulder as you held on to him for dear life, subconsciously afraid that if you were to let go of him he’d be gone again forever.

“Faster, Bucky. Please.” You whimpered into his ear as you took his earlobe between your teeth and nibbled softly.

A low growl left his chest as he grabbed your hips and lifted you off the counter, moving slightly so that he could cage your body against the wall. You wrapped your legs firmly around his waist, locking them at the ankle. His thrusts became faster, deeper, and it was apparent he had gained his confidence back.

“You feel so fuckin’ good, baby. Just the way I remember.” He grunted as he dug his fingers harder into your hips.

His lips were on yours again, this time tears were starting to decorate the corners of your eyes. The pleasure, the regret, the passion, the guilt - every feeling was building up along with your orgasm. Bucky pulled away from the kiss to tap on your bottom lip with two of his fingers, which you greedily accepted into your mouth. Your tongue swirled around his digits until he pulled them out and used them to circle your clit. The added pleasure was almost too much to handle.

“C’mon, baby. Wanna cum with you. Can you do that for me, huh?” Bucky whimpered, his thrusts beginning to falter from the calculated snaps he was giving you before.

All you could do was nod your head quickly as the pressure steadily increased, bringing you to the brink of your second orgasm.

“I love you. I love you. I love you so fuckin’ much, oh my god.” Bucky grunted as the two of you reached your peak together.

You leaned forward to bite down on his shoulder and suppress the scream that left your mouth as pleasure erupted through your body. The two of you assisted each other through the high of your release and you felt your ass make contact with the cool countertop once more.

The only noise present in the space was your heavy breathing and a small dripping noise that came from the sink. Bucky’s final words before he came replayed in your head over and over again as you attempted to slow your breathing and bring yourself back down to earth. Your body shuttered slightly as Bucky slipped himself out of you. As you sat up, you noticed he was looking around the bathroom.

“Shit, sweets. I don’t think there’s anything I can use to help clean you up.” He sighed and turned to meet your gaze that was locked upon him.

“It’s fine, Buck. Not a big deal.”

Bucky bent over and helped you pull your panties back on before he redressed himself. Neither of you spoke for what felt like eternity.

“I-...” You muttered finally, “I love you too, Buck. I thought I was over you, I thought I moved on but...I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop loving you no matter how hard I try.”

Bucky reached out to stroke your cheek with the back of his hand as he listened to you lament to him. His eyes were soft and caring and you could almost swear he was looking into the depths of your soul.

“I think —“

Your conversation was cut short by the sound of knocking at the bathroom door.

“Hey, are you okay in there? Do you need anything?” Mike’s voice had your entire body flooded with the shame of your infidelity. In one swift movement, you were on the floor and turning the sink on to make it appear you were just washing your hands.

“Y-yeah I’m fine! Just finishing up! I’ll find you out there in a minute!” You squeaked.

Mike seemed to pause for a moment before you heard his footsteps retreat from the bathroom door. A wave of relief washed over you, but it was only temporary. As soon as you were relaxed the gravity of the situation you were in was clouding you once more.

“I have to go. I can’t give him any reason to think he needs to come in here.” Bucky nodded, eyes not leaving yours as you spoke while collecting yourself, “but we need to..we should..we have to address this. Later.”

“I agree.”

“Our flight leaves tomorrow night. I’ll...see what I can come up with as far as an excuse. Then we can put this to bed for good.”

“Absolutely, sweets.”

The nickname made your knees buckle once more as you sighed.

“Goodbye, James.”

You finally tore your eyes from his as you unlocked the door and slipped out of the bathroom. In reality, however, you knew this really wasn’t goodbye. Not even close.

[worldwidemochiguy]

Love You A Latte (MFEEU! Jimin)

➵ You have always wanted a story book romance, no matter how many times your friends tell you it’s unrealistic, and even unhealthy to have such high expectations. You can’t help but yearn for the one who will make your heart sing, who will captivate you with one word, who will treat you like you’re worth more than anything else in the world... and then Park Jimin crashes into your life, with a pretty smile and a warm cup of vanilla latte with your name on it. 

➵ Warnings: Yandere Jimin, Stalking, Daddy Kink, Masturbation, Unhealthy Idealisation of Romance 

➵ Word Count: 9.1K

➵ MFEEU Masterlist

➵ General Masterlist 

➵ a/n: it’s finally here!!! and i made it part of the mfeeu!!!! idk it just felt right also i actually finished this a few weeks ago but i wanted to add a bonus scene which had smut lol. buuut i was finding it hard to write and i didn’t want to make u guys wait any longer :/ so,,, sorry for the wait! but i hope you enjoy :D

“You do realise that kind of stuff isn’t real, right?”

Your head jerked up, fingers curling slightly around the dog-eared page you were just about to turn, leading you deeper into the intoxicatingly perfect story. Your friend looked almost concerned, worry digging a groove in between her eyebrows.

“Huh?” You replied absently, mind still fixed on the story beneath your fingertips.

“I mean, you’re always reading those books, where a perfect guy comes and steals the girl away into a world of love and happiness and all that crap. You know that won’t actually happen to you, right?”

“…Uh, yeah?” You laughed nervously, one hand releasing the book to come up and brush your hair out of your eyes. “Any particular reason why you’re saying this, Buttercup?”

Buttercup’s expression was pinched, almost painfully so.

“I just… I don’t want you to waste your life away waiting for a guy who’ll never come.”

‘I know.” You said, your throat uncomfortably dry, “I know. It’s just… it’s nice to imagine, right?”

Watching you was the most treasured part of Jimin’s day. Thanks to the multiple cameras he had installed in your apartment while you were out of town, he was able to spend many happy hours watching you, completely besotted.

If he ever missed you, maybe while you were in your classes or meeting with your friends in that ridiculous coffee shop — a practice he planned to stop as soon as he officially became your boyfriend — he could just open his laptop and watch endless saved recordings of you. He even had the cameras linked to his computer at work, though he had to make sure Jungkook wouldn’t peak over his shoulder as he opened the webcam viewer, the nosy little brat.

If he was lucky, you might have danced around to the music on the radio while you were waiting for the kettle to boil, or you would be on your couch, giggling as you read one of those romance novels you were so fond of. Little things. Domestic things, which made it easy to image the day when you would dance around in his apartment, safe and happy in his embrace.

Jimin was thankful you didn’t spend much time in the bathroom. He had refrained from placing cameras in that room because he wanted the first time he saw your beautiful body to be a conscious choice on your part. He would also do his best to avert his eyes whenever you got changed in your bedroom.

However, that didn’t stop him from shamefully imaging you in the privacy of his own penthouse apartment, when the nights became long and lonely without you, or any other human company. More often than he would like to admit, Jimin found himself fantasising about how tight you’d feel clenched around him, how sweet your release would taste on his tongue.

Though the two of you had never actually spoken, Jimin knew everything about you, from your favourite colour to the way you had your eggs in the morning. From a little extra research, made easy by your friends’ various social medias and the occasional overworked college administrator that was sweet-talked into giving out students’ personal information, he knew your birthday, your blood type, and many other precious facts that he wrote down in a diary personally devoted to you, containing his photos of you taken from afar and and Jimin’s records of what you did that day. He had filled up several diaries after having first laid eyes on you only a year ago.

The moment Jimin saw you for the first time was forever burned into his memory. He was waiting in front of the office building, checking his briefcase to make sure he had remembered to bring an important file in for that day’s meeting, when the shopping bag of a passerby had broken, spilling all of their belongings onto the ground.

Jimin had merely watched, unperturbed, as the stranger struggled to pick everything up, and it appeared everyone else was content to do the same. Well, everyone except you.

You descended like an angel from heaven, the only one to help him. Jimin could barely feel his heart pounding in his chest, he was so enraptured by your beauty, your kindness, the grace with which you held yourself. Even your scent, wafted over to him by a blessed breeze, was enough to make Jimin realise that you were the one for him.

The only one there could ever be.

Jimin had listened, captivated, as you comforted the stranger with your melodic voice, all the while helping them to collect their possessions which had spilled out across the sidewalk. You were just- ethereal, as you comforted the stranger — they seemed to be having a bad day, not that Jimin cared at all — introducing yourself as a friend. Your name was the most beautiful thing Jimin had ever heard.

Jimin repeated that name over and over again in his head, and with little difficulty he located you and immersed himself in your life. He had to make sure that when he ‘met’ you, he would not be like that bumbling stranger, too weak to even reply to your kind words. He needed you to realise immediately that he was the one for you, your soulmate, as you were his.

Jimin grinned as his laptop started up again, finally fully charged up. When he woke he discovered that the battery had died as he had it playing all night while he slept. Jimin loved linking it to the live stream while you were asleep and then listening to your cute mumbles and sleepy groans, imagining that you were lying beside him, safely wrapped in his arms.

Usually, he would remember to plug it in so that it wouldn’t run out of charge, but Jimin had been a little distracted that night after you released some… strange noises in your sleep, noises that sounded like moans. Jimin was glad you didn’t say a name — he really didn’t have time to murder someone, what with all the workload on his hands — though your moans slightly tarnished his innocent vision of you.

Jimin knew you were undefiled, a fact that brought him great delight and daily erections. He knew this because during that dark period several months ago when you had that despicable ‘boyfriend’ hanging around you, a constant source of contention between you and him was the fact that you wouldn’t let the bastard touch you.

After he drunkenly attempted to pressure you into making out with him on your couch — a proposal you strongly rejected much to Jimin’s delight — the drunk asshole had left you, sobbing into your hands, to ‘get his dick wet’ elsewhere.

It really was too easy for Jimin to follow him out that evening. To knock him unconscious and then drag him into his rundown car. To place his heavy leg on the accelerator and let it speed into a tree, and watch him regain consciousness a second before the car collided and a branch fell through the windshield, stabbing him in the chest.

Jimin watched it all, and smiled, knowing you were safe from that monstrous son of a bitch. You were safe from everyone, as long as he was there to protect you. Not that you knew it yet, of course.

The cops ruled it as an accident caused by drunk driving, a verdict supported by your testimony of his behaviour earlier that night and his general reputation as an irresponsible party-goer. How that scumbag ever got you to go out with him was beyond Jimin, especially given all the work Jimin was putting in to even be worthy of your attention.

But it didn’t matter. After the death of your boyfriend, Jimin watched as you became happier, rising out of the depression that asshole had put you in. Though, to his consternation, you were spending more time with other people, even widening your previously small friendship group, it was worth it given that he was able to see your bright, joyful smile all the more often.

Jimin let out a groan of frustration as the livestream continued to take its sweet time loading. Thankfully, he had a day off today so he didn’t have to worry about being late to work, not that Taehyung was particularly strict about that sort of thing.

It was now 10 in the morning, a Saturday, so according to the rough schedule Jimin had worked out, scrawled on the inside cover of his diary and imprinted into his brain, you should be just starting to wake up. You were a bit of a late riser, but that just made Jimin love you all the more, imagining lazy mornings filled with kisses and pillow fights that devolved into indulgent morning sex.

An excited grin spread across his face when the picture finally cleared and he got to see your beautiful face. The grin dimmed slightly when he saw you were just putting the finishing touches to your outfit, seemingly leaving your apartment to go somewhere. Jimin scowled.

Who did you have to meet that was so important you would wake up specially to see them? He hurriedly got dressed, eyes still pinned on the live feed which made putting on his trousers a tad more difficult than usual.

Thankfully, he was able to be out of the door more or less the same time you were. He followed the now well-trodden route of shortcuts and back alleys that led to your apartment. Or rather, the road across from your apartment.

Jimin followed a block behind you, baseball cap pulled low over his face so you didn’t recognise him, watching as you strolled along the avenues, smiling to himself whenever you saw a pile of autumn-tinted leaves and jumped into them, creating a cacophony of crackles which made you giggle cutely. He almost regretted not bringing his camera to capture these adorable moments, but he knew it would look strange to the other pedestrians if they saw him following behind you taking photos.

Jimin finally realised where you were headed with a bittersweet smile. The coffee shop you loved, The Roasted Bean, which you frequented with your friends. He was hesitant to go in there, worried that your friends, stupid though they were, would notice his constant presence and poison you against him.

He couldn’t resist strolling up to the window, though. Watching as your face brightened when you saw your friends (who had already ordered without you, the ungrateful swine). He imagined a similar look appearing on your face whenever you saw him — except happier, because obviously you would be more excited to see your boyfriend rather than your friends. Maybe when he was coming home from work to greet you in your and his’ shared apartment.

A handwritten note stuck to the window distracted him from his reverence, something which originally irritated him but what he soon realised was in fact a blessing. The ‘help wanted’ sign, proclaiming that the shop needed a new barista, and that they didn’t mind if the applicant had no previous experience, was all Jimin needed to situate himself in your life.

After all, if he started working at the cursed coffee shop, he would get to see you every day when you visited in the mornings, and after that Jimin was sure it wouldn’t take long to make you fall in love with him.

Of course, if Jimin wanted to get the job at the coffee shop, he would have to do something about his proper, full-time job.

“Uh, Taehyung?”

Two heads popped up as Jimin knocked on the office door. They must have been having a meeting. Fuck, Jimin really didn’t want to have this conversation with Jungkook as a witness, but it seemed he had no choice as Taehyung waved him in and Jungkook showed no sign of getting up. On the contrary, he settled into the office chair and looked for all the world as if he wanted a bag of popcorn to snack on while he watched the conversation.

“What’s up?” Taehyung asked, and Jimin felt a slight lick of heat paint itself across his cheeks. He cleared his throat and pointedly ignored Jungkook’s snort.

“I want to cash in my vacation days.”

“Oh, really?” Taehyung’s brows flick up, “It’s… September. Shouldn’t you save them for… I don’t know, summer?”

“No, I want to use them now.” Jimin asserted, and Taehyung gave a puzzled little frown, before shrugging.

“Okay, well, there’s a a form you’ll have to fill in. How long are you thinking, a week? Two?”

“About two months, I think.” Jimin said, less confident than he would have liked, and Taehyung’s jaw dropped.

“Two months? Why on earth do you want to take two months off all of a sudden?” Taehyung asked incredulously, before his expression sobered abruptly. “Is there something wrong with your health?”

“No, no, it’s nothing like that, Taehyung-ah, don’t worry.” Jimin assured his friend quickly, “I just… want to pursue something else for a while, that’s all.”

“Want to pursue someone else, you mean.” Jungkook cackled, obviously casting off his role as a spectator, and Jimin fought to keep his expression unmoved. “You’ve been bright red ever since you stepped into this office.”

“It’s… warm.” Jimin muttered, and he wasn’t wrong, his cheeks certainly were warm at that point.

“It’s September, Jiminie,” Jungkook laughed, “and you’ve got a crush!”

“Is it true, Jimin-ah?” Taehyung asked delightedly, “You’ve found someone?”

“That’s hyung to you, brat.” Jimin snarled at Jungkook, ignoring Taehyung’s coos and his shouts to his girlfriend to come into the office. Jungkook stuck his tongue out at Jimin.

“Wow, look, hyung’s blushing.” Jungkook announced, before walking over to the office door and swinging it open. “Hey, everyone, get in here, look how red hyung’s cheeks are! Hyung looks like a strawberry!” Jungkook turned back to Jimin triumphantly as the rest of the boys came to the office to see what all the commotion was about. He gave Jimin a saccharine smile. “Is that better, hyung?”

“Respect your elders, kid.” Yoongi drawled as he reached the office, the rest of the floor in two. “Anyway, what the fuck is happening?”

“Yeah, why did you call me here, Taetae?” Taehyung’s girlfriend asked, who had come in from her section of the office and been promptly tugged onto Taehyung’s lap. He merely stared up at her, utterly besotted. Fuck, is that what Jimin would look like with you? Gross.

“No reason, I just missed you.” Taehyung smiled dopily at her, and she giggled, pressing a quick peck on his cheek and actually, Jimin would murder every single person in this room if you looked at him like that. Maybe affection isn’t so gross, as long as you’re involved.

But then Jungkook crowed, “Jiminie’s in love!” And affection very quickly became intolerable again.

“Shut up.” He snarled as they all begin laughing and cooing at him jokingly, “I’m just going to be leaving the office for a while.”

“What, so you can take a job at her favourite coffee shop and write love notes on her napkins?” Jungkook laughed, and Jimin-

Jimin looked at his shoes and used the age-old logic of if I can’t see them, they can’t see me.

“No-” Hoseok gasped, equally shocked and gleeful, but Jin interrupted him.

“Jimin,” He said calmly, and Jimin could just imagine his lips twitching up and down as he desperately tried not to break into peals of windshield-wipe laughter, “Look me in the eye and tell me you aren’t going to get a job as a barista as an attempt to get a girl.”

“He can’t look you in the eye, he’s too short.” Jungkook whispered, and Jimin generously refrained from hissing at him.

“I-” Jimin stuttered as he looked up and deep into Seokjin’s pitiless eyes, “I’m not-” He started to say, but… honestly no one can lie while looking at Kim Seokjin.

“She’s so cute!” Jimin bursted out, and immediately there was chaos. Several people were yelling. Hoseok somehow produced a bottle of champagne which he must’ve just been, like, carrying around with him, but Jimin simply did not care anymore.

“She’s so fucking cute all the fucking time and she goes to this coffee shop so fucking often, so if I become a barista there then I’ll see her every day! Do you understand?” Jimin asked, before shaking Jungkook — who had risen from his seat in celebration — frantically by the collar. “Every single day, Jungkook!”

“He’s worse than Taehyung!” Jungkook shouted gleefully, and Taehyung — who was still sat on his chair with his girlfriend — frowned.

“I- don’t know if I should be offended or not.”

“You should always be offended when it comes to Jungkook.” Namjoon told him sagely, and Jimin yelled a wordless noise of agreement.

His yell seemed to remind Taehyung of why Jimin came into his office in the first place, and he starts rifling through his desk, having to shift his girlfriend off his lap slightly to do so.

“Here, Jimin- sorry baby, this’ll just take a second — here’s the file for the vacation days.”

Taehyung passed Jimin a sheet of paper, having to lean around Hoseok, who had just started a conga — where the fuck was that music coming from? Who the fuck brought speakers to an office? — to give it to him. “Take as much time as you need.”

“Thanks, Taehyung-ah.” Jimin grinned as he left the office, pausing half-way out the door as he heard Taehyung call his name. He turned around to see his friend grinning at him.

“Good luck, Jimin. I hope it goes well.”

So do I, Jimin thought as he left the building, calling a taxi to take him to his next job, and (hopefully) closer to you.

You sighed as your alarm went off, jolting you from your dream. It was another romantic one — what a surprise, your friends would probably mutter sarcastically — but it truly hurt your heart to let it drift as your mind fully woke up. That was always the way. Real life coming to interrupt what you dreamed your life could be.

Another sigh escaped your lips as you imagined him. The one who starred in all your dog-eared romance novels, who would sweep you of your feet and take care of you, both in the bedroom and out of it.

In your head, you knew that you should probably want to be self-reliant and independent, values that your family and friends and teachers tried to drill into you, but you couldn’t help creating day dreams of a man whom you could trust enough to let yourself be truly submissive to him, to allow him to make all of the difficult decisions and comfort you when you got upset.

You used to be certain you would find him, your soulmate who would do anything for you, who would be endeared instead of weirded out by your odd quirks, who would love you no matter what happened, but to be honest you were starting to lose hope. With the disaster of your first ever relationship — the one that ended abruptly with his death — you vowed to stay away from boys until you found the one.

This inevitably led to you spending more time indoors and refusing whenever your friends wanted you to join them in going to all the hottest clubs, simply because you were tired of the whole thing. By now, you had pretty much accepted that you would die a spinster surrounded by fourteen cats.

Your alarm blared again, somehow more grating and obtrusive than the first time, and your eyes flicked to the analog display, swearing quietly when you saw the time. You stumbled out of bed, internally cursing the day you decided to sign up to an early morning lecture class, a bizarre decision considering you were so much not a morning person that you gave Garfield a run for his money.

Speed-walking to class, you were thankfully ahead of schedule since you managed to get dressed at the speed of light, forgoing any kind of beauty routine beyond jamming a toothbrush in your mouth and scrubbing frantically. By a rare stroke of luck, this class was quite small so not many people would bear witness to the horror that was bare-faced you with partial bed-head.

Since you, surprisingly, had more than enough time, you decided to pop into your favourite coffee shop. The familiar tinkling bell went off as you entered but, instead of greeting your favourite barista Rosa at the counter with a sunny smile and your usual order already prepared, you came face to face with the most beautiful man you had ever seen in your life.

You locked eyes with him and watched, awestruck, as his full, pillow lips tugged up into a smile, exposing his perfect teeth. His eyes almost disappeared as he grinned, turning into twin crescents above mochi cheeks, so soft and adorable that you felt all the thoughts you ever had fly out of your head, all replaced by one overwhelming sense of… something.

Something strange, that you had never felt before, which made your knees weaken imperceptibly as you made your way to the counter, closer to this Adonis in human form.

He obviously noted your flustered state, which only intensified your embarrassment, and his adorable expression melted into a smirk that had your heart racing and your libido awakening with a vengeance. It was just unfair. The barista somehow managed to be cuter than any puppy you had ever seen in your goddamn life, and then turn you on more than you thought was physically possible.

If this was what a sexual awakening was, you didn’t know how people managed to refrain from having sex all day, every day. And then you were struck with the image of having sex all day, every day, with the Greek God of a barista, and decided there was not enough holy water in the entire world to cleanse you from your sins.

“Hello,” the absurdly attractive barista said, after several minutes of you wordlessly floundering in equal parts of embarrassment and arousal.

“My name is Jimin. What would you like me to make you?” I’d like you to make me come, your traitorous mind suggested, causing even more heat to rise to your cheeks.

“H-Hello… Jimin.” you stuttered, praying for the sweet release of death. The Adonis- Jimin - watched you expectantly, gaze fluttering from your eyes — wide as a deer’s caught in the headlights — to your cheeks — probably so red they had surpassed the visible spectrum and were now emitting radiation — and he chuckled. You wanted to cry. Of course he’d be one of those people with low, sultry chuckles.

“Do you want to tell me your order, Princess?” He questioned, when it became clear you were more focused on not melting into a puddle than telling him what drink you wanted, and you became certain you had died and gone to hell. This was torture, having this perfect specimen of humanity in front of you, having him call you ‘Princess’ with his bedroom eyes dark and mischievous, and choking on your own tongue.

His eyebrow quirked — and of course his eyebrows were just fucking perfectly shaped — and you somehow managed to pull yourself together enough to remember the order you had given every damn day of your life since discovering this godforsaken place, the place you would never come back to due to a mixture of shame and self-preservation (there was a real possibility you might just die if you ever saw Jimin again).

“V-Vanilla latte… please.” You practically whimpered, too distracted with your own internal chaos to notice him cooing over your choice quietly.

“A cute drink for a cute girl.” He smirked again before striding to the espresso machine to fulfil your order, leaving you shocked on the other side of the counter. He called you cute. Cute.

You had never been more aware of your makeup-free face and unbrushed hair, quickly swept up into a messy bun. Fuck, you could've had dried up drool on the corner of your mouth and you wouldn’t have even known it. He returned with your order just in time to catch you running your tongue over your bottom lip, the pink muscle darting out just in case you had missed any on the side of your face.

If you hadn’t been so focused on your own appearance, you would have noticed Jimin falter for a second, his eyes widening, fixed on your mouth.

You caught his attention and sealed your lips together firmly, determined to not let him think you were some weirdo who licked her lips excessively in public. His dark gaze made your mouth go dry. You tried to subtly swallow down the lump in your throat, but his eyes tracked the bob under your skin.

The two of you stood in an oddly charged silence for a moment before he remembered himself and handed over your latte.

Your skin brushed his and you held your breath, his hand pausing over yours for what felt like an eternity, but it was still too soon when you forced yourself to pull back. He smiled again, the adorable mochi-cheeked smile that still managed to turn you on despite its sweet and innocent appearance.

“There you go, Y/n.”

You were so flustered by the sound of his pillow lips curving sensuously over the syllables of your name that you didn’t even question how he knew it, content to stumble backwards out of the shop. You were still caught in his gaze until you backed straight into the door, knocking you out of your stupor and causing you to practically fly out of the shop, his warm laughter chasing you up the street.

You barely heard a thing during the lecture, your pen had dried out after you uncapped it and then did not replace the cap for a solid forty minutes, letting it rest on your blank notepad. The professor had given up calling on you and asking you to pay attention, drawing the conclusion that this was an off-day for his normally-attentive student. You were actually very focused at that moment, it was simply just not directed at the professor.

You were pouring over your memories of Jimin, recounting with perfect clarity how his soft-looking hair fell over his forehead perfectly. It looked so pretty and you would sell your soul for a chance to run your fingers through it. The corners of his perfect lips tugged upwards into a smile a million times in your imagination, and you wondered what it would feel like to be kissed by those lips, to have those lips running all over your body, dipping downwards and tasting-

The professor signalling the end of the class could not have come at a better time, and you rushed out of your seat as fast as your shaky legs could carry you, the heat coiling in your belly tugging you home. You spared a moment to thank past-you for not scheduling any other classes today, because, judging by the slight damp spot in your panties that was growing embarrassingly quickly, you would be quite busy for a while.

Jimin rushed home as soon as his shift ended. His elation invigorated his steps to the point where he was practically skipping. Holy shit. Holy shit. He had met you. He had talked to you and you had blushed and stuttered and been perfect in every single way. He always thought there was no way he could love you more than he already did but that was just another way you changed his outlook on life.

Seeing your beautiful face, devoid of makeup and yet still you put any work of art to shame, and hearing your soft voice speak his name — you knew his name, holy shit — and smelling your sweet perfume was a life changing occurrence for Jimin.

Of course, he had smelt your perfume before — he wrote down what scent you preferred when he broke into your apartment to place the cameras and he had a pillow at home that he doused with the stuff so that it smelled like you — but experiencing it in real life was on a whole other level.

He got back to his apartment and switched on the live feed just in time to catch you coming back from your lecture. Jimin cooed softly at the sight of you, your eyes were wide and vacant, distracted, and your cheeks were adorably flushed, like you had been rushing. You dumped your bag by the door — Jimin couldn’t wait until he could be the one holding your bag for you, having you tucked under his other arm — and went straight to the bedroom.

Jimin switched the feed to the bedroom cam, holding his breath in anticipation. When you came home and went straight to the bedroom, that usually led to-

You flung yourself on the bed and started working your pants down. Jimin stopped breathing entirely as he felt all the blood in his body, and possibly some extra, rush down south. He knew he should look away, should let you have this moment in private, but he found himself unable to stop palming his erection through his jeans.

He pulled his hand away briefly to turn up the audio feed, and your soft moans filled the air. Jimin almost came on the spot, but he forced himself to wait, he promised he would never come before you. Your lower half was entirely bare and Jimin’s mouth watered at the sight of your pretty pussy, wet and glistening, positioned in the perfect spot for him to see it, for him.

He tugged himself out of his jeans and spread the beads of precome over the head of his cock distractedly, watching as you teased yourself open with one finger. Fuck, you were so fucking tight. He could see the slight discomfort on your face as you thrusted your finger into yourself again and again, obviously trying to get yourself adjusted as fast as possible.

Jimin felt a curl of jealously flare up within him, even as he started pumping his fist up and down his cock faster. What had made you so desperate to come? Who had done this to you? As far as he was aware, there hadn’t been anything new that day so far, unless-

You started to relax, the finger gliding in and out so easily, aided by the slick coating your digit. His mouth dried up just thinking about the taste of you. Jimin watched as your head fell back, your eyes rolling in their sockets, and your perfect lips parted.

“Jimin,” you moaned, and Jimin almost blacked out.

He was so hard it was physically painful, but he gripped the base of his cock tightly, unwilling to come because he knew if he did he would miss the rest of your magnificent performance. You were properly riding your hand now, your hips rolling to meet your own thrusts, eyes shut tight, imaging something- imagining him. Jimin had never felt such sweet torture, needing to come so badly, but needing to watch you come more.

You moaned his name again, sounding more debauched than the first time, and Jimin knew you were close. He wanted so desperately to know what you were imagining him doing, so that he could recreate it with you once he had you. It was like you had read his mind, because a second later you granted his wish.

“P-please, daddy.” You moaned, and Jimin whimpered, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold on.

Daddy.

You were going to be the cause of his death and Jimin found that he didn’t mind at all.

“Ple-ease,” your begging was interrupted by a drawn out moan, and if Jimin could have thought straight at that point, he would’ve frowned. Imaginary Jimin was much crueler than Real Life Jimin. Real Life Jimin knew without a doubt he would give you anything in the world if you begged him like that.

“Fuck me, daddy, please,” You cried out, somehow managing to add a third finger, thrusting into your tight, tight wet heat, “Fuck your princess.”

You called out his name again as you came, and Jimin lasted a few seconds watching you pant and ride through the aftershocks of your orgasm before he simply loosened his tight grip on the base of his cock and finished.

When he regained consciousness, you were still splayed out on your bed, seemingly unable to move just like he was, but if he could move he knew he’d be jumping around the room in elation. This was undoubtedly the best day of his life, maybe even better than the one in which he first caught a glimpse of your angelic face.

He had met you in person for the first time, and you had been so obviously flustered by his presence, which was something that delighted him more than he could say and he had thought the day could not have gotten any better, but then you went home and masturbated and moaned out his name and called him daddy and then came with his name on your lips and Jimin honestly didn’t know how he was still breathing.

You were perfect, and amazing, and Jimin was almost mad at himself for not realising just how perfect you would be. He hadn’t anticipated you being this affected by him so soon. He had planned to gradually introduce himself into your life, ‘coincidentally’ running into you outside of the coffee shop after a few weeks, slowly integrating hang-outs and seamlessly turning them into dates. Shyly confessing his feelings after a month of being ‘friends’.

Jimin was not exactly a patient man, but you mattered more than anything to him, and he knew that he would have to be careful until you were so in love with him that you wouldn’t leave no matter what. That would be the point where he would break out the diaries and the videos, and bask in your gratitude that he was so enamoured with you from the very moment he met you, just like those romantic heroes in the books you were so fond of.

But at this rate, Jimin was practically ready to start shopping for engagement rings. He knew your ring size, of course, and your jewellery preferences due to studying your buying habits, but he managed to calm himself down enough to realise you probably wouldn’t appreciate a proposal just yet. But you were certainly attracted to him. Very attracted, Jimin thought smugly. He couldn’t exactly fault you though, since he had looked in a mirror before.

Jimin was an attractive man, he was fully aware many would call him stunning, and now he finally met his match: you. God, Jimin could not wait to see how amazingly perfect your children would be.

You chewed your lip as you ran over the dilemma in your head. It had been two days since you last went to The Roasted Bean. Coincidentally, it was also two days since you saw the most attractive man on the planet. And two days since you had the most intense orgasm you’d ever experienced.

You were seriously craving your caffeine fix, and a small, perverted part of you that was heavily repressed was desperate to catch another glimpse of the beautiful barista, Jimin. But the last time you saw him, you embarrassed yourself so much you wouldn’t be surprised if he turned on his heels and fled at the sight of you.

It was so annoying. You had waited your whole life to meet the perfect guy, but the second you meet him, you realise that you can’t spend longer than three seconds in his presence without melting into a puddle of goo.

After another five minutes spent deliberating outside the coffee shop in the chilly weather, your nose had turned so red you could practically see its glowing reflection in the cafe window. You decided that the chances of Jimin even having a shift now were very slim, and it was even less likely that he would remember you.

He probably got reactions like that (maybe slightly less embarrassing ones) every day given how stupidly attractive he was. He probably had girlfriends to spare. You scowled. Getting jealous over a stranger’s hypothetical girlfriends? Wow, you really have hit a new low, you taunted yourself.

The door opened suddenly, shocking you out of your thoughts so much that you jumped, much to the amusement of whoever opened the door, judging by their chuckle. You looked up at them, and then regretted every life choice that brought you to that exact moment.

It was Jimin, because of course it was, and he looked as stunning as ever, his complexion glowing, his eyes shining, his existence in general devastating. He was in his cute little barista outfit, a fitted white button up and black apron that might as well be a runway look for how much it suited him.

“Are you going to come in, Y/n?” Holy shit he knows my name, you screamed to yourself, vaguely hoping your face had an expression of pleasant detachment and not the strange amalgamation of shock, delight and arousal that you were experiencing. He chuckled, shaking his head slightly as if privy to some inside joke.

“Yes, of course I know your name, Y/n.” You stopped dead in your tracks. Could barista boy read your mind?

“No, I can’t, you just say everything you’re thinking out loud, which is very cute. And you can call me Jimin, you know.” Oh, if you thought you were embarrassed last time, that was a sweet walk in the park compared to today. You cleared your throat quietly, refusing to let yourself be dumbstruck again.

“I do call you Jimin.” You replied, trying to make him believe that you remembered his name because God, you were unlikely to forget it. For some reason, this made him pause for a second, his expression darkening and his tongue darting out to wet his lip.

“I know you do, baby.” He said, low enough that you questioned whether he said it at all, and he had already moved past, slipped behind the counter as you advanced to be opposite him, just like you were when you first met.

“Vanilla latte, right?”

You really should stop getting shocked by Jimin’s seemingly eidetic memory.

“You remember my drink?”

“When a customer is as beautiful as you are, Princess, you tend to remember their drink.” You elected to ignore the way that nickname had your toes curling in your boots, and instead fixated on the pinch of jealousy in your gut.

“I guess you must remember many customers orders then.” You knew you sounded too jealous for someone he barely knows, but your strange possessive behaviour seemed to please him, for a small grin tugged his mouth upwards.

“Nope, just you, Princess.”

“Are you flirting with me?”

The question blurted itself out, bypassing both your common sense and your anxiety. Jimin, however, replied promptly.

“Yes.” His confidence, evident in the way he leaned over the counter and into your space, began to falter as you just stared at him wordlessly. “That is, if you want me to-”

“I do!” You blurted out again, and you really needed to gain a filter, but his confident smirk returned.

“Actually, I was going to say: if you want me to stop-”

“I don’t!” Jimin let out a laugh, eyes crinkling in the most adorable way, before he continued.

“Will you ever let me finish what-”

“No.” At that, he threw his head back, releasing a peal of laughter that you swore could’ve lit up the world with its brightness.

He finally stopped laughing, his eyes still swimming with ill-concealed mirth. You were pretty sure your cheeks were about three seconds away from setting the coffee shop and the surrounding neighbourhood aflame, so it was a relief when Jimin turned to the machine, snapping the mechanism into place, even if you felt a hint of disappointment when you lost sight of his beautiful smile.

God, even his back is sexy, you thought, watching as he tinkered with the various machinery behind the counter. At one point, he bent over to check the positioning of the cup and, well, you had never really paid attention to any guy’s ass before but maybe you should start because damn.

Finally, Jimin turned back to you with a perfectly made latte in his hands. You noted how cute his fingers were absently as they brushed yours. But, when you made to grab your drink, he retracted it suddenly, a Cheshire Cat grin on his face.

“Not so quickly, Princess.” You humphed,

“It’s funny, Jimin, you claim to know my name but you never use it.” He laughed again and you tried to convince yourself that your heart wouldn’t always skip a beat at that sound.

“Oh, so you want me to use your name, huh?”

“It’s only fair, considering you wanted me to use your name, Jimin.”

“Alright then, Y/n.” He purred, bending down to scribble your name on the cup, a bit unnecessary considering he could’ve just handed it right to you, but you got the sense he was trying to drag out your interaction for whatever reason.

He straightened up, the glint of mischief present again in his eyes, and you prepared yourself for another verbal sparring match.

“Do you not want me calling you Princess, then?” He winked at you as he said the nickname, which was frankly quite rude. You would have to send him a bill for all the batteries he made you buy, since your vibrator was definitely going to be running out of power soon thanks to him.

“I didn’t say that.” You hated how quiet and meek your voice came out.

“Oh, it sounds like poor little Y/n’s a bit confused. What do you prefer? Y/n? Or Princess?”

“S-stop it. You’re not funny. I’m going to class.” You spun around and marched towards the door, trying to ignore his laughter following you.

“Baby!” Jimin yelled, and, for some reason, you turned around.

“What?”

Jimin smirked when you responded to the new nickname. “Since you couldn’t decide, I thought I’d use Baby instead. Do you like it?”

“No! I mean, yes- no, I don’t. Goodbye.”

“Baby! Aren’t you forgetting something?” At that, you finally exploded, all the sexual frustration caused by him bubbling to the surface.

“What?” You yelled, “You want a kiss farewell?”

“I was going to say you’d forgotten your drink but, since you asked, I wouldn’t mind a kiss.”

You stomped back to grab your drink, avoiding his eye contact like the plague. As you took the cup your fingers brushed his and the odd, frustrated tension between the two of you dissipated into something almost tender. His skin was so soft and warm. Everything about him seemed so cozy and inviting, and hopeless romantic part of you wanted to sink into his arms and never be let go of.

You left before your tongue released the stupid feelings you were longing to express. Jimin couldn’t even watch you go because he was smiling so wide his eyes had disappeared into little crescents.

“-and then he called me baby!”

“Awww-” “Ew!”

Two very different reactions emerged from your friends as the three of you sat cross legged in your friend’s apartment, a haphazard ‘study session’ with open textbooks spread across the floor beside a half-empty takeout pizza box.

“Buttercup!” Two of you whined simultaneously at the third girl, who remained unbothered, tipping her head back to dangle a stretched slice of cheese into her mouth. The three of you had been practically joined at the hip since birth, and — due to an adolescent obsession with ‘The Powerpuff Girls’ — you each had a corresponding nickname, which had stuck as the years passed you by.

You had been nicknamed Blossom, due to your — usually — level head and desire to make peace whenever your two friends were fighting. Your friend — the one who had cooed at the ending of your story — was chosen to be Bubbles, given that she was the personification of candy floss and possibly the closest thing Earth had to a real life fairy.

Your second, much more cynical friend who was currently finishing her slice of pizza and determinedly not looking at Bubble’s puppy eyes, was Buttercup. Self-proclaimed hater of all romance. Given what happened with her parents in your teenage years, you couldn’t really blame her.

“That’s so romantic.” Bubbles sighed dreamily, before huffing slightly. “I wish you hadn’t told me that tonight. I have to study for-” She flushed delicately, “Mr Kim’s lecture and now I won’t be able to think about anything else but my maid of honour speech at your wedding.”

“Hey!” Buttercup interjected, “I’m going to be maid of honour!”

“But you don’t even like weddings-” Bubble started to protest, and you cut them both off.

“There will be no maid of honour!” You announced shrilly, before forcing yourself to relax. “And also, Bubble, you don’t need to study for Mr Kim’s lecture. It’s not like it’s a class or anything, he’s just a guest lecturer.”

“Yes, but…” Bubble mumbled, docilely accepting the pizza slice that Buttercup held up to her face and continuing to speak through a mouthful, “I wuhmfda fimprsh im.”

“What?”

Buttercup scowled, but translated for you.

“She wants to impress him. Gross.” She turned to Bubble. “Isn’t he, like, forty?”

“First of all, he’s in his mid-twenties at most,” You admonished Buttercup as Bubble let out an indignant wail, “and second of all, we were talking about my problem!”

“Oh, what was that again?” Buttercup drawled. You snatched the pizza slice out of her hand in retaliation.

“Jimin! The hot barista! Calling me baby! And, just, existing in general!”

“Oh, that,” Buttercup sighed, as if you hadn’t literally just been talking about it. “That’s simple. Just bang him.”

“I- You- What?” You spluttered as Bubble giggled quietly.

“You’re thinking of this too romantically, like you always do.” Buttercup continued, sounding fantastically confident for someone who had even less experience with relationships than you did. “You just need to bang him and realise that the feelings you’re having are all just repressed horniness.”

“I mean, I would’ve put it differently, but… I agree.” Bubble chirped, paying no attention to your embarrassed whine, “He definitely… sounds attracted to you, and clearly he’s not alone in that.”

“But… I’m a virgin.” You argued dumbly, and Buttercup snorted.

“Do you want to stay a virgin for the rest of your life?”

“No,” You replied, frowning, “…but… it’s kind of a big deal to me. I want it to be special.”

“Haven’t you already said that the guy is like the hottest person on the planet or something like that?” Buttercup asked, raising a lazy eyebrow. “Isn’t that special enough?”

You didn’t reply, too busy blushing furiously, and Bubble squeaked with excitement.

“Oh my god! He’ll be your one and only! This is so exciting!” She cheered, before abruptly slumping down. “I really wish you had told me this after Mr Kim’s lecture. I can’t study now, I’m too excited.” She mumbled forlornly, shutting the textbook and grabbing another slice of pizza. Your mind was still stuck on Buttercup’s suggestion.

“I mean… I barely know him. I just know his name. And his smile. And the way his eyes twinkle when he laughs, oh my god it’s so cute-”

“Y/n,” Buttercup interrupted you, a rare use of your actual name stopping you in your tracks as she framed your face with her hands and shook it gently. “Bang. Him.”

“I-”

“No, no,” She chided you, putting a finger over your mouth, “No overthinking. Just… do what you want to do. Okay?”

Okay, you repeated to yourself. What you want to do. What you want to do…

But what do you want to do?

“I want you to ask me out!” You blurted over the counter the next morning when you walked into the coffee shop and saw Jimin’s back facing you as he cleaned out the milk-frothing machine.

It was only when he turned around that you realised the guy was decidedly not Jimin, and this random stranger was now looking at you confusedly as you debated the advantages and disadvantages of sprinting out of the shop and directly into oncoming traffic.

It would be a quick and painless death, you mused absently, certainly much less painful than this-

“Y/n?” A voice interrupted your thoughts and you whirled around to see Jimin standing in front of the staff door, seemingly just ended his shift with his uniform off. Oh no, he’s even hotter without the apron, you realised miserably.

His gaze darted between you and not-Jimin, something strange and unfamiliar solidifying in his eyes.

“I didn’t know you knew Sungwoon.” He commented mildly, before shooting an abrupt glare at the other barista- Sungwoon, who hurriedly went back to work.

“Oh, I don’t.” You told him immediately, feeling some kind of compulsion to tell him the truth, “I thought he was you.”

The — anger? you weren’t quite sure, only directed at Sungwoon though, not at you — on Jimin’s face melted as realisation dawned. “Oh-” Then his face did something strange, morphing into a smirk which had you biting your lip. “Oh.” He purred, stepping closer to you. “So… you wanted to tell me something, baby?”

Oh no. He called you baby again. Someone call Life Alert.

“I- uh-” You stuttered, thoughts grinding to a halt as he approached you. And then closed his hand around your wrist. He was closing his hand around your wrist. If Bubble were here she’d be having a fit.

“Let’s go and sit down in a booth, huh?” He said smoothly, before tugging you along to the most secluded corner of the coffee shop. After he guided you onto the cushioned bench, he didn’t sit across from you, sliding right in next to you so you could feel the warmth emanating from his skin. He didn’t let go of your wrist.

You were trapped between the wall and him, and as he smirked down at you, you thought that the wall was probably more merciful.

“Anyway, baby, you were saying?”

All the courage which had somehow flooded into you as you stormed into the cafe had abandoned you, wasted on the not-Jimin who had moved onto wiping down the tables, studiously avoiding your corner.

“I…um,” You mumbled, wringing your fingers together nervously. Jimin stopped you by releasing his hold on your wrist and moving his hand upwards to intertwine with yours instead. Your breath hitched as he smoothed a thumb over the back of your hand gently.

“It’s okay, baby.” He said, his voice soft and comforting, “Just say it. I promise… whatever it is-” His lip quirked up slightly, “I won’t say no. I would never say no to you.”

“Never say never.” You mumbled, and he chuckled. You could feel the warm puffs of air brushing your cheek.

“Okay, um, please don’t laugh. I know we don’t really know each other or anything, but… I… like you.”

“You like me?” Jimin parroted, and you would worry he was mocking you, but his eyes were far too happy for that.

“Uh huh,” You replied quietly, squeezing his hand. He took your other hand in his, and you squeezed that one as well.

“Like… like me like me?” He asked, and you could tell he was joking now, so you whined and gave him a half-hearted shove. He shifted slightly, only to rear back and cage you in his arms, dragging you onto his lap.

“I’m sorry, baby,” He murmured, burying his nose in your neck, and you felt like you were going to melt in the middle of the cafe. All those romance books never told you how embarrassing it was to have someone actually pay attention to you. “You just look so pretty when you get teased. My cute little baby.”

You squirmed on his lap, and his hands came to grip your hips securely.

“Baby’s a little restless?” Jimin asked, his voice low, and you let out another little whine. His hands tightened.

“Does this mean… does this mean you like me too?” You asked timidly, and he huffed a laugh against your hair.

“What do you think, Y/n?” He asked, squeezing your hips playfully. After a moment, he softened, tilting his neck slightly to plant a kiss on the crown of your head. “I like you too much.” He said simply, making you flush.

“Well, that’s good, because I like you too much too.”

“You might even say that I like you-” Jimin wiggled his eyebrows, “-a latte!”

You didn’t react, and Jimin’s smile dimmed slightly.

“You know, because I’m a barista?”

“Actually, never mind, I don’t like you that much-” You said as you tried to shift off his lap, but he held you firmly, tugging you back with a smug laugh.

“No, baby, you won’t get away that easy.”

He pressed you back against the wall bordering the booth, and-

So this is what true love’s kiss is like, you thought, before you stopped thinking altogether.

His lips were soft against yours, but insistent as they slanted over your mouth and pressed urgently until you gave in and parted your lips. He swallowed your whimpers as he skilfully twisted his tongue around yours, licking and sucking and biting and-

He drew back so both of you could catch your breath, and you slumped forwards into him.

“Now I’ve got you…” He said, his voice gravelly from the kiss. You did that, you realised smugly. “Now I’ve got you, I’m never letting you go.”

You hummed happily, curling into his arms without protest. Of course he’d never let you go. Why would you want him to? You’ve finally found your fairytale ending, except you hope it never ever ends. And, just like he promised, Jimin never lets you go again.

[lovelessdagger]

Starlight - Prologue: Before

Pairing: Din Djarin x OC, Din Djarin x OFC

Rating: Mature

Enemies to Lovers, Slow Burn, Canon Divergence

Warnings: Blood, Violence, Explicit Language, Trauma

Words: 2000

Summary: What's past is prologue.

There's a new trend since the fall of the Empire, everyone is rising from the dead.

She's haunted by memories of the Empire that abandoned her, he's plagued with thoughts of what if and doubts of the future. The stars align in a string of constellations which guide them to their fates, decided long before them. 

Tortured with echos of before, they're alone in an endless galaxy. But orphans have a funny way of finding each other, and the gods have a sick sense of humor.

Read on AO3 Here

Tatooine was the galaxy’s own personal hell, Mustafar at least had the pleasure of fauna. Demonic nightmarish fauna that was more than likely poisonous, but fauna nonetheless. Tatooine? Tatooine was a barren wasteland that had gone to the dogs, and even the dogs had decided they wanted no part in its misfortune. At least on Mustafar she could go inside and be relieved of the heat, at least Mustafar could be considered home. 

Or at least it used to be, before.

“Maker,” An assassin mutters, crossing over a sand dune. The red tracking fob in her gloved hand sounds, it’s light flashing a similar color. To her relief, she was close. The sooner to the target, the sooner she could leave and never set foot on sand again. 

She could count the total number of visits to Tatooine in her lifetime on one hand. The first she couldn’t have been more than fourteen, then again at an older age to meet with the Hutts. Nine years ago, her father had sent her on a reconnaissance mission to some abandoned moisture farm. It had been terribly boring, full of memories of family dinners and old beaten up droids.

The irony that that very mission essentially caused her to lose everything wasn’t lost on her.

Five years ago she sat in the very cantina she walks to, warned to run away. A mere twenty-one years old—give or take, her birthday after all was a random day chosen by her and the waking sun. There was no telling her true age, so with her knowledge of human anatomy and development, nine years ago she decided on being seventeen.

“Why seventeen?” He asks her. Entering hyperspace she sits behind him, tracing passing stars on the window.

“Because,” she begins matter-of-factly, “Seventeen is a completely insignificant year to be alive. Sixteen is old enough that I won’t be questioned for traveling alone, but still too young to be taken seriously. I’m not quite ready to be an adult yet, but next cycle I will be. So I am seventeen now, so that I may be prepared to be eighteen later.”

Eighteen hours later, the first Death Star exploded. 

The events which follow guide her on a fragile string of stars throughout the galaxy, the culmination of which lead her back to hell. Or Tatooine, as the New Republic liked to call it.

Maybe if she had listened things would have been different.

Or maybe they would be worse.

Either way she would be here. The designer of her cruel fate and dictator of her misery have decided this long ago. Forever would she be trapped in hell with her memories.

And everyone else’s.

Condemned to relive the worst of what humanity had to offer, over, and over, and over again. It wasn’t so bad anymore, it’s easy to get numb to that sort of thing when your entire life was filled with it. Still, out of all the places in the galaxy, why did it have to be Tatooine?

She could understand the appeal for those on the run. Away from the New Republic’s oversight, moisture farms as the only viable landmark, and everyone being too overworked to give a damn. Theoretically it should have been easy to hide, the only issue was every criminal in the Outer Rim had the same idea. Originality be damned.

A detached hood and mask shield her identity, not that she believed anything with a penchant of life would be anywhere near. All that surrounded her was sand, rocks, and sand. Still, she could never be overly cautious. Walking up to the cantina, her eyes roll. It was like they wanted to make her job difficult. She could only assume the bar would be crawling with other criminals. Defected imperials, thieves, murderers.

It could have been a family reunion.

Eyes fall on her entrance, the suns backlight her into a silhouette. She becomes the one cascade of darkness in the light of the desert. 

“Boys,” she greets, walking in. Her eyes scan the room, there couldn’t be more than ten men. She counts the passing of ten seconds before one approaches her. Within those seconds her mind remarks on the state of the bar, essentially unchanged. Same busted chairs, same creaking floors, same hideous decorations. 

“What’s someone like you doing here?” a man grunts, stalking up to her. The most she does to acknowledge him is an eye roll. He grabs her arm, holding her in place. “Does your daddy know you’re out here?” he asks, leaning down to her ear.

She mocks a laugh. “Does yours?”

The man spits at her boots. “Bitch,” he says, walking away from her. His spit slowly rolls off her toe, leaving a glimmering streak along the leather in its wake. She pulls her blaster out, pointing the gun behind her, she shoots the man in the back of the head. He drops, his body heavy with a thud. 

The cantina falls to silence. Nine bodies are now watching her. No one makes a move, even the bartender stops his clinking glasses. She’s almost inviting them to try her next.

“No?” She asks, holstering her gun. “Pity,” she mutters. 

She walks up to body number seven, he sits in the same spot she had all those years ago. She places her soiled boot on his seat, grabbing his attention. Motioning for him to stand, she barely makes eye contact.

 Her fingers run across the tables’ wood, rubbing over permanent stains and rotting cracks.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” he says. He always worried too much about her, “Whatever he’s planning, you won’t come out of it.”

“I’m not a little girl anymore,” she says. “I can take care of myself now.”

“I know. That’s what scares me. You’re not safe anymore,” he replies.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been safe.”

Seven stares at her incredulously, slurping his liquor.

“Come with me,” his voice echos around her. If she closes her eyes it’s like he’s still sitting in front of her. Pleading.

“I don’t like making messes inside, it’s bad manners,” she says, reaching for her blaster. “Get up.” 

“Am I supposed to be scared, girl?” Seven asks. He scans her appearance and truth be told she was no Rancor, certainly no Hutt. While her build was athletic, her height physically left her the smallest in the room.

“You owe a lot of credits—” Seven stands, “—That’s better.” She drops her foot. “Now—“

“Step aside,” a modulated voice speaks behind her. She catches a reflection of the intruder in the glass of the framed artwork above Seven’s head. A Mandalorian, covered in pure Beskar, stands a whole head above her. Of course a fucking Mandalorian would show up right now, this had to be his doing. Even in the grave he had to fuck with her.

“Mando,” Seven laughs, he wipes his sweaty palms on his trousers. “I was uh, I was just talking to the missus here,” he grabs the girls shoulder. “Say, now’s not really a good time so how about we—“ 

“I don’t have time for this,” the Mandalorian says. He drops a bounty puck on the table, in blue holograms Seven’s profile appears.

WANTED: EDI MOURI 

“Let’s go,” Mando says.

The girl shakes herself from Seven. “Listen Shiny, I was here first so move along.” The Mandalorian’s head tilts.

“Are you with the guild?” He asks.

She picks up the bounty puck, examining the emblem. “Not yours.”

Mando’s head turns to One’s fallen body on the ground, a growing pool of blood by his head. 

“Your work?”

“You could say that.”

Seven clears his throat. Whispers of bets trail within the crowd. “In fairness. She did find me first.”

The pair are incredulous in their stare. “You want to go with the assassin?” Mando asks, a slight twinge of amusement escapes past his modulator.

Seven’s face turns to ice, his deep emerald skin becoming a pastel like hue. “On second thought. I always loved the Mandalorian stories I heard as a kid, I’m a big fan. Let’s go big guy.” He takes a step towards Mando, the assassin pulls out her blaster, pointing it to his head. At the same moment Mando pulls out his own, pointing it to her.

“Drop it,” he says. “I need him alive.”

She cocks her head to the side, pressing her forehead against the barrel of the gun. “Do it,” she purrs. 

He’s motionless.

She grabs the Mandalorian’s wrist with one hand, striking the bend in his arm with the other. A blaster shot fires, Three falls to the ground with a hole in his head. 

Mando lifts her by her neck and slams her into the table where Seven sits. Her vision flashes white and she groans on impact. Her hands fumble across the wood in frantic search of anything to defend herself with.

“Wait for me, I’ll come for you in two days.”

She smashes Seven’s plate against the table, shattering it. With a jagged edge of porcelain she slashes the Mandalorian’s arm, staining the edge with his red blood. In his stumble back she rolls off the table.

Harsh stabs are swung to the openings between the pieces of armor, he easily blocks but her movements are quick in succession. He ignites the flamethrower on his arm and she flips out of range.

Six isn’t so lucky.

She lands on his table, he’s charred and slumped over. She grabs a baton resting against his chair, cringing at its touch. Jumping of the table she strikes his helmet. The tune of impact horrifically melodic. 

Brought to his knees, Mando grabs her leg sweeping her onto her back. The baton falls out of her grasp. They tumble on the ground, scathing for any advantage they could find on the other. She slaps a taser disk on his armor, the shocks malfunction the electronics.

The Mandalorian lays on the ground, emitting heavy gasps for air. Sounds of passing credits come from a back table. She straddles him, pulling out the knife kept in the welt of her sleeve. It’s metal presses against his capes fabric gathered around his neck.

A smile twinges under her mask. “Not bad,” she pants, leaning down over him.

The cantina doors automate open, in perfect eye-line, a green little creature. It waddles in, cooing with bright eyes at the patrons, greeting them all. It locks eyes with her, head tilted. The veil of her mask conceals her dropped jaw. 

The Mandalorian takes the chance of her distraction; flipping their bodies over, he straddles her waist, pinning her hands above her head. The assassin’s chest rises and falls heavy from under him. “I told you to wait outside,” he grunts. The green thing coos, waddling to the pair. It reaches out for her. “No,” he says next, raising a scolding finger to it. It whines, plopping on its rear. 

Past the visor, his eyes lock onto hers, he clears his throat. Suggestive positioning aside, he had claim to victory. Though, had it not been for the child he would have been a dead man, throat slit under her knife. 

He could still kill her, his blaster was in reach, so was her knife. 

He should kill her.

But he doesn’t.

“Hey Mandalorian,” she breathes. “Where’s your bounty?” Seven’s seat empty, table broken, shattered porcelain fallen on the floor.

“Fuck,” he swears. He stands, pocketing the knife she held. He picks up the creature, sparing her one last glance. “Stay out of my way,” he warns. Exiting the building she’s left on the floor. 

The surviving witnesses avoid her glare. There are holes in the flooring, broken furniture, blood stains splattered on every surface.

So much for not making a mess indoors.

She scoffs, picking herself up. Her muscles ache, bruises are forming under her clothing, her head pounds.

Carelessly, she shoots Five on her way out.

It’s a redemption of sorts.

Officially, Tatooine was worse than hell.

Chapter One: The Meeting

[harringtonstudios]

best friend’s ex.

plot: he’s your best friend’s ex and you should stay away. 

A/N: i wrote this in one sitting and it’s very long <3 took some creative liberty here so imagine 2020!kells but he hasn’t made it just quite yet in the industry. this is heavily based off the song release tonight with blackbear so enjoy (maybe while listening!)

masterlist!

The circles in New York are different than the ones in Los Angeles. There’s a hint of familiarity in the New York circles, everyone seems to know each other connected by one person or a distant story of that one night the whole crowd tripped on molly. It’s dizzying, intricately knowing every single person backstage or at some club without recognizing them exactly.

You haven’t gotten used to the life, not yet acclimated with the high-fives and looks thrown your way at a party, or the nameless phone numbers crowding your text messages. It’s all new, fun and exciting and you have no one to thank but your best friend.

She’s made for this life, for the late nights and the rushes, the sticky floors and glittery lipgloss. This is her environment, where she thrives, and sometimes when you look at her in the club, necklaces shining with the overhead lights, you find it hard to connect this Domi to the one who you’ve seen crying on your bedroom floor after watching a despairing animal shelter commercial. But then she throws you a grin, crowds close, drapes her arm over your shoulder, and it just makes sense.

It’s been years of friendship, ever since you two met at freshman orientation for college. Her roommate was terrible, and more often than not, she’d be camping out on your twin-sized bed, offering you bites of her snacks in exchange for a safe haven. You both hadn’t really been into the party scene at school, too busy scrambling for reports and fibbing results for the endless lab sessions.

Domi graduated a semester early, spent an entire summer taking accelerated classes so she could go fly off to New York right before the new year started. That’s when things seemed to change. You’d been upset with her, hints of jealousy tinging in when she’d send you pictures of fancy clothes and people she was hanging out with, the nicely decorated venues she’d find herself in. She invited you to come to the city a few weeks in, buzzing on Facetime about backstage passes.

Then you were graduating yourself, packing two suitcases and jetting halfway across the country to live in the shitty apartment Domi’d been renting out with a couple of strangers. It had been hard to settle down at first, the air was different in the city and you’d had to up your resting bitch face game when you sat on the subways late at night, but before you knew it, you were enjoying the city that never sleeps, best friend right by your side.

Colson had stumbled into your life a year ago, and then been ripped out six months after. He was a up and coming musician (self-proclaimed) and had taken a chance bet on the city, moved from Cleveland with his friends and a mixtape. He was beautiful in a rugged way, angled cheekbones and lanky limbs, but Domi had taken one look and called dibs, so you tampered any attraction down.

It hadn’t taken long for them to start dating, even if Domi claimed they were just fooling around, it was clear to see that there was some level of intimacy there, a relationship itching to be formed. You’d been happy for her truly and it was easier than you’d expected to fall into a camaraderie with the guys.

Colson’s friends were funny, quick on their toes and absolutely chaotic. They fit into New York better than you did, and almost every single night, you would find yourself at their apartment, playing shitty drinking games and jamming to loud music.

Domi kept the relationship as lowkey as she could, and at some point, you would hear less and less about Colson. It didn’t really hit you then, but it was the beginning of the end in a way, and then she was walking in, eyes red and wet before yelling out the fated words, “We broke up.”

Everything you had gotten used to was suddenly taken away. You spent weeks consoling her, reminding her that she was better than this guy, stronger and that time was the only way this would heal. She begrudgingly listened, and then took your phone from you, casually blocking Colson’s number along with all his friends.

At first, you’d been mildly upset. She was the one who’d fucked up, the one who’d decided to break up with him, so why was this effecting you? It didn’t make sense, they were still your friends and you liked them more than anyone else you’d met here.

But then she’d given you her patented puppy dog eyes, and you’d dismissed it, decided that if this was what she wanted, so be it. You could stand to lose the drunken nights, your liver would thank you.

Colson Baker and his friends disappeared from your life as fast as they had appeared into it. You spent your nights cooking at home instead of going out, focused on building back your sleep schedule instead of getting drunk off your mind, and the days went by.

-

Of course, nothing lasts forever and six months later, your coworkers’ are begging you for a night out, like the old times. Everyone’s antsy for your reply, know that you haven’t been to a social function with them in ages, and you take one look at their faces before sighing and agreeing.

The entire office claps, you flip them all off before catching sight of your boss, who simply smiles and shakes his head. There’s a faint flutter in your stomach, memories rising from months ago, parties and late nights, flashes of lights and thumping music. You shrug it off, tap your pen against the desk, bring your focus back to work.

Three hours later, you’re catching the train back home. It isn’t exactly rush hour yet, you’ve gotten out a little earlier than usual, Friday evenings usually being dull at work anyway and you’re glad because there’s less people mulling around in the sticky heat of the train station.

The station doesn’t smell great, there’s a tinge of stale pee filling up the air and you discreetly move to the other side of the station, trying to get as far away from the smell as you can. New York City man.

The train pulls in, and you automatically put in your headphones, music blasting in your ears as you sidle into the train car, passing the passengers coming out. It’s relatively empty, being near the front and you thank the train gods before sliding into an orange seat near the door.

There’s a couple of guys sitting at the other end, they’re loud and boisterous, shoving each other and you give them a once-over before settling into the seat. The train moves, and you pull your purse onto your lap, patting it once before letting your eyes fall close.

The next stop comes abruptly, jolting you out of the little dreamscape you’d created. There’s a shout as the doors open and you pause your music trying to tune into what’s going on. It’s still the group of guys, but now there’s more of them and you roll your eyes at the banter drifting across the car.

The music starts up again and you lean your head back, try to get comfortable again, but it doesn’t work. There’s a weird feeling in your gut, making you uneasy but you brush it off, raise the volume until all you can feel is the dirty bass.

A minute later, someone kicks at your shoes and you open your eyes, ready to angrily scold at them until they can feel the rage across the car.

The words die in your throat. Colson Baker’s standing there in all his glory, lanky arm leaning against the metal, blonde hair puffing around his head, grin lighting up his face.

His nose is pierced now and you take it in, the way it brings out his eyes and you pause the music mumbling out, “Nose ring looks good on you.”

You bite your tongue right after, embarrassed that after months of silence that’s the first thing that falls out of your mouth. He laughs, body shaking and you’re flashed back to nights in his apartment, watching him laugh on the other couch, head thrown back.

“Thanks,” he murmurs before going, “How’ve you been?”

“Good,” you answer honestly and there’s another shout from across the car, Colson turning to wave a hand.

“It’s the guys. They didn’t think it was you, but I could tell yanno,” he explains and you raise your eyebrows as he continues, “They’re all still kinda pissed you blocked us.”

The statement falls between you two, awkwardly as the train car rumbles on. You wince a little as he fake coughs to fill the empty space.

“Yeah, I’m sorry about all that man. You guys were like family,” you carefully mention, hands playing with the hair tie on your wrist.

“It’s cool. I get it, I mean we both know Domi,” he stammers out and his own hand goes to rub at his chin.

This conversation isn’t what either of you expected and you shift up in your seat, trying to change the topic at the mention of your best friend.

“So what’ve you been up to?” you ask and he smiles at the gateway question, eager to get rid of the uncomfortable energy.

“Got signed to a record label,” he murmurs and the smile that takes over your face is unreal. There’s pride blooming in your chest.

“No way!! Oh my god, congrats dude. That’s killer,” you gush out and his cheeks taint red at your words.

“Thanks,” he says, eyes meeting yours.

“I knew you’d do it. You’re immensely talented,” you continue on as the train comes to a stop.

It’s not yours but it seems to be his. The guys all shout over at him and he’s looking up and then gazing at you, caught between the two options before he makes up his mind.

He doesn’t choose you, you’re not surprised.

“I appreciate you!” he shouts out before running off the car, joining the rest of the guys on the station.

You turn in your seat and wave at them, catching a couple of glares and hesitant waves back before the car pulls away, to the next destination.

The music starts up again and you will your heart to slow down for reasons you can’t even comprehend.

-

Domi gives you a look as you rush into your room. Usually after work, you spend time in the kitchen, milling around grabbing little snacks as she cooks, but you actually have plans tonight.

It’s the first time you’re going out in months and you take a quick shower before pulling out all the old outfits you’d shoved into the back of your closet.

There’s a nice dress, black with faint traces of glitter and you eye it for a second before deciding against it. This is a fun night with the coworkers, not your insane best friend who’d always managed to get you to dress your very best.

There’s a pair of skinny jeans tossed into a dresser, and you eye the rips in it before pulling it on. It looks good, tight in all the right places and you root around for a shirt that can be just fancy enough.

There’s a nice purple one tossed in the closet, slipping off of a hanger and you grab it before pulling it on and tying it up in the front.

It’s pretty, makes you look just right and you play around with your hair before sitting down and committing to a makeup look.

Fifteen minutes later, you’re throwing your keys, a pack of gum, gloss and your phone into a small purse. It hangs off of your wrist and you take a look in the mirror before stepping out of your room.

“Where are you going?” Domi asks, her tone slightly cold.

“Night out. Coworkers invited me and I couldn’t say no,” you explain, running your hands down the jeans.

“Oh,” her face falls.

“Do I-look good?” you ask hesitantly.

“Yeah. You always do bitch,” she half-heartedly adds and you smile at her.

“I’ll see you tonight,” you say, grabbing a carrot from the countertop.

“I’ll wait up,” she smirks and you nod before heading out the door.

The club’s only a few stops away and when you swipe your metro card again, you groan at how low the funds are running. You haven’t filled it just yet, and the $1.25 flashes up at you, taunting.

“I’m poor,” you scoff at the machine and the girl swiping next to you laughs.

You get in somehow, sneakily using the swinging baby stroller door and by the time the train pulls up, you’re only running a few minutes late.

It only hits you when you sink into the familiar orange seat that you didn’t tell Domi about running into her ex. You know she doesn’t care as much about Colson now, scorchingly refers to him as that one rapper, but it’s an unspoken rule. You always tell if you run into the ex.

Your fingers tap against your phone screen, wondering if texting her is appropriate but you drop it quickly. It’s not a big deal. You’ll just let her know when you get home tonight.

The doors open, you leave and then you’re stalking towards the club doors, eyeing the long line. The bouncer is staring everyone down, and you wade up to the front. You’ve learned enough tricks in the short party lifestyle you’d had.

“I’m with the VIPs,” you flash your ID and then a $5 discreetly tucked under it. He looks you up and down, grumbles slightly before taking the money from you.

The rope opens and you smile before stepping through into the dark. It’s loud inside already, the lights contrasting the slight evening colors from outside. You look around before you spot the team and walk over to them.

“Hey!!!” they exclaim and then you’re being handed a glass, cheering the night as everyone drinks it down.

It’s tequila, stings in the back of your throat and you cough before wiping your mouth, “God, I haven’t had this in so long.”

“See that’s why we needed you out tonight,” one of them goes, checking your shoulder with theirs. You laugh before agreeing and order your drink of choice, chiming into the conversation.

It’s going so well, the night seems to be twinged with good vibes. You feel nice and loose, arm draped over your nearest friend as you two sway at the songs playing.

There’s a commotion at the door and you guys turn towards the bouncer only to see people scuffling around, pushing to get closer.

“Hey dude! I’m playing tonight. Musical guest here!!!” comes a loud voice, and it rings familiar in your head. It’s faint, digging somewhere into the back of your mind and you get on your tip-toes trying to see.

“Fuck you,” someone else spits and it echoes around the club.

The crowd splits open then, and you get a glimpse at old friends, adjusting their hats as they stalk across to the stage.

Rook’s fuming as he walks past you, and you spot the tell-tale crease on his face, the grit of his teeth. It scares you, the memory of it all after late night game losses, the way he would blow a gasket about cheating.

Slim and Baze wander behind him, they seem cooler, always are, but the anger is brimming under and you look away as they pass you.

AJ isn’t there and you guess he’s already in the club. He’s always been the sensible one, stable and ready to take control of the situation when it inevitably turns bad.

Colson’s following the rest but his eyes are on the crowd, hand going out to meet people, smiling at everyone. There’s a faint cut on his lip, blood trickling out and you want to scream at him. He comes up around to where you’re standing, and you step back, let your coworkers high five him as he passes.

He doesn’t see you, it’s better that way.

You order up another drink, ignore the whispers of the pesky rapper as they fill up the air around you. He’s well known here apparently, people aware of him in the scene. They mumble about the fights, the way he never seems to show up without a cut or bruise.

You take a shot, sip at the alcohol, smile fading as your coworker ravishes on about how good looking the musician is.

It takes about twenty minutes, and then the music shuts off. There’s a squeal of microphone feedback and everyone around you ducks, hands rushing up to cover their ears.

“Fuck,” a mumble comes across the sound system.

There’s another shuffle and your friend grabs your arm, pulling you closer to the stage. There’s already people there, milling around, clutching drinks and you try to stay on the sidelines, out of view.

“We should go closer,” he determines and then you’re being pulled forward again, swimming around in the second row.

Colson is standing front and center in all his glory. The shitty lighting makes him glow, and he looks big, energy filling him up. He pulls the mic off the stand and steps back before going, “Afternoon. We are Machine Gun Kelly.”

The name isn’t familiar. You don’t know it and quite frankly, it doesn’t place anywhere either but that’s all you get before the music starts up. It’s weird, a pace you don’t expect from him and then he’s off, singing with a grit in his voice, fingers flying across a guitar draped over his shoulder.

Everyone seems to bob along in the crowd and you do too, losing yourself in the way he sounds, the tone of his voice as he croons. The music is great, drums harsh and strong, guitar loud behind the vocals.

The set’s over quick and you’re slightly sweating by the end of it. He thanks the crowd before jumping off stage, and you immediately retreat back to the bar, anxious to steer clear of him.

Even in your drunken state of mind, it’s a bright red flashing light: Stay away from Colson. Stay away from the guys.

You switch to water for a while, try to stop your head from spinning with the lights. Everyone you came with is somewhere on the dance floor, so when an arm drapes on your shoulders, you freeze up, still facing the bar.

“Hey,” and then you’re looking up at Slim’s face, sweaty and eager.

“Slim,” you breathe out, vice in your chest loosening at the fact that it isn’t Colson. You don’t know why this is better, but it is.

“What’re you drinking?” he asks, hand going up to call over the bartender.

You don’t have the heart to say water, know that he’ll laugh and then get you a beer, so you murmur, “Get me a shot of vodka?”

His smile widens and he shouts the drink order over the counter before dropping his arm, “You sipping the hard stuff now?”

Shaking your head, you respond, “I’ve always drank the hard stuff.”

“Yeah, back when we hung out,” he slips into the banter, and your heart stops. You didn’t realize it had hurt them this bad, that months later, drunk and high off of a good show, Slim still manages to bring it up, voice tightening slightly.

“Look, I’m sorry about all that. I really am,” you start, but then he’s passing you the drink and locking arms.

“Cheers,” he says and you clink your shot glass against his, tipping it back.

“I’m sorry,” you mumble out but he throws you a look.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says and then he’s shouting out, “Yo Kells!”

It clicks into place then, the Machine Gun Kelly. It’s his nickname, has been for years apparently since he was rapping in middle school hallways, but he’d always introduced himself as Colson to new friends, let them decide whether the Kells fit him or not.

You hadn’t called him Kells once, in the months of knowing him, had laughed about it a couple of times with Domi, who loved to mock it any chance she could.

“You stalking me?” Kells sleazes out, there’s already a drink in his hand, someone following him around with bright eyes.

“No,” you state, moving away from the counter. The red lights are in full effect, this could end up terribly.

“Seems like it,” he sums up, coming in closer to lean against the bar. His lip is still cut, looks swollen as he approaches you.

“You fucked up your lip,” you state, mind cursing at the lack of filter you seem to have around your best friend’s ex.

“What?” he goes, and then his fingers are rubbing at the fat lip, eyes scrunching, “Guess I did.”

“Well it was nice to see you again,” you try.

“I just got here, you leaving already?” he murmurs, brushing off the person following him.

Slim’s moved to the other end of the bar, Rook’s throwing you a glare.

“Don’t think your friends want me around,” you nod over.

He turns his head and makes some kind of motion. Rook drops his eye contact, head going to duck at the bar. Slim smiles.

“They don’t know what’s good for them,” he mumbles, head turning back. His fingers tap at the bar, and there’s a beer appearing. He smiles at the bartender.

“I’m good for them?” you scoff, there’s a hint of bitterness at your tone, but it’s not directed exactly at them. It isn’t their fault.

“Always have been. The good influence when we would try and do stupid shit,” he says thoughtfully. He’s almost as drunk as you, eyes slightly red.

You laugh at that, “You’re always doing stupid shit. Great set by the way, impressed the fuck out of me.”

“You didn’t expect it?” he says as if you were supposed to have known all his songs by heart.

“I haven’t heard any of your music,” you honestly reply.

“Not even the mixtapes?” he seems shocked.

“No, Domi never sent them to me and you all just assumed so,” you stop yourself, falling into dangerous territory.

At the name drop of his ex, he winces a little, “God she was a fucking head-case.”

“Hey that’s my best friend you’re talking about,” you shout a little too loud. You catch Slim slamming a hand onto Rook’s shoulder. The air becomes stifled.

“Sorry,” Colson offers, taking a long, pointed sip.

You sigh, “Don’t be. She can be a little much sometimes. I’m sorry for how it all ended.”

“You should hang with us tonight,” he calmly says, switching the subject. Your breath catches in your throat.

“I don’t know-“ you start.

He cuts you off, “I get it. If you want, we’ll be here for a while. Find us.”

That’s all you get and then he’s walking towards the gang, slipping into the crowd. You drop your head onto the shell covered bar, groaning out.

-

The night dwindles down, your coworkers trickle out, slamming messy kisses on your face before walking out. You’re left by yourself soon enough and there’s a pulsing in your head, matching the music vibrating under your shoes.

It doesn’t take long to decide. You want to hang out with Colson and them, with Machine Gun Kelly. It’s a bad idea, you can tell before you’ve even fully determined it, but it’s as if fate’s lined everything up for you. It’s gonna happen.

You push away the nagging thoughts, wander around the club trying to find someone, coming up empty. Everyone seems to have left and you roll your eyes before stepping out yourself. Maybe fate doesn’t want this to happen.

As soon as the thought crosses your mind, you spot Rook across the street, blunt in hand. He hasn’t seen you, looking down at his shoes but you know him well and if he’s around it means the others are close by.

You brace yourself, work up some form of courage and walk over. He looks up at the sound and there’s immediate dislike flashing across his face.

Out of everyone, Rook’s been the most temperamental. You’d thought it was going to be Colson at first glance, but were quickly proven wrong by his friend, by the harshness of his demeanor at times. He doesn’t hide his feelings, and while you respect that, you’re also intimidated by his posturing.

“Hey Rook,” you mumble.

“Y/N,” he bluntly states.

“How have you been?” you try, but immediately know it’s the wrong thing to say.

“Cut the shit. What’d you want?” he bites out, eyes hard.

“Was wondering if I could catch a ride with you guys?” you question. 

AJ usually drives them around, his black van large enough for the gang, and his self control strong enough to stay sober. You don’t know if it’s changed since the last time everyone hung out, but you’re hoping it hasn’t for the sake of your almost empty metrocard.

“Why’d you think we drove here?” he’s shrugs, giving you a hard time, and you shake your head wondering if your pride is worth this.

“Never mind dude,” you turn around but then he’s groaning behind you.

“Yeah we’ll take you back home. Kells’ kill me if I let you walk around here drunk. C’mon,” he says and you try to hide your smile as you follow him.

He takes a few more hits before tossing his blunt to the ground, and you’re glad he hasn’t offered you any. It would be too forgiving of him, too close to what you all used to be, and you wouldn’t know what to do if it came to that. Domi would kill you, hell she’d kill you if she knew you were getting into a car with them right now.

He stops in front of the familiar van, opens the door with force and everyone’s shouting inside, clambering over each other. You almost smile at the chaos, the familiarity of it all.

“Y/N!” Colson’s shouting and you do smile then. He slumps over long limbs and comes over to the door, reaching his hand out to you.

“You coming with us?” he asks and you nod before Rook mutters, “She needs a ride home.”

Colson purses his lips before looking back over at you, hand still outstretched, “Yeah, c’mon in. AJ got you.”

It’s late, later than you should be out and there’s a reminder that Domi’s waiting for you back home, wants to hear about your night. Your resolve flickers the minute his hand wraps around yours.

He tugs you in the van, and you follow, stepping in before they all scatter around, making enough space. There’s another girl with them, someone you don’t remember meeting or knowing but she smiles at you and curls into Rook’s side.

The music in the van is almost as loud as in the club, filling up the space. You wonder, not for the first time, how AJ drives like this, how he casually sings along, fist bumping the rest of the guys after a song.

Before you know it, there’s a blunt being passed around. Colson skips you on the first round, and you try not to let it hurt, remind yourself that you’ve stung them harder than this, hurt them worse.

He leans into your space after handing it off, whispers, “You still don’t smoke right?”

There’s a painful twist in your stomach at his question. When you all first met, you wouldn’t smoke blunts with them, hesitant about the strain and Domi’s eyes on you. She hated weed, despised the smell and would always remind you of that fact before you’d all spend the night out.

After the breakup, she’d loosened up on that, didn’t care if you smoked out on the fire escape, and sometimes even joined in, it was weird. Weirder than the fact that Colson somehow remembered all this months later.

“I do,” you whispered back, licking your lips, “smoke I mean.”

“Oh,” he softly says and then the blunt’s coming back around. He barely takes a hit before handing it off to you, pushing your hand slightly with his fist.

“Thanks,” you mumble, smoking it in. It’s strong, brings an immediate rush. You close your eyes.

When you open them, Colson’s too close to you. The red lights flash hard in your head and then the car’s stopping in front of their building.

You don’t even hesitate, “Is it wrong if I come up with you?”

His eyes look into yours, it’s quiet enough that you feel the weight of your statement sink in. This is bad, so bad.

He doesn’t say anything but everyone around you is moving, pulling off instruments and slamming doors. He carefully takes your hand, pulls the blunt out from your other one.

“AJ, we’re gonna chill for a while,” he says, towards the front seat, giving him the blunt. There’s a hum and then he’s opening the door, pulling you out just as he’d pulled you in.

For a second, you hesitate and then you’re falling into him. His arm wraps around your hips, pulls you back up on the sidewalk.

“You okay?” his voice is quiet, the world still moves around you both but it feels like you’re the only two people who matter.

“Yeah,” you nod.

“Wanna go home?” he says, and the words hit you for a second before you shake your head.

“No, this is cool,” you tongue out.

You’re both walking into the building then, satisfied with your answers. The manager gives you a once over at the front desk but that’s all before Colson’s thumbing the elevator button.

“What about everyone else?” you murmur.

He looks at them unloading the van and lets out a laugh, fingers tightening slightly against yours as he shakes, “They’re gonna be busy a while.”

You laugh back, try to tamper down the feeling of seeing him full-body laugh for the second time that day. The elevator dings and you step in, he follows.

It’s the same damn elevator as it was six months ago, but there’s something different in the air right now. It’s staticky, thrumming through you and it feels like you’re stumbling right on the edge of something.

The doors close, it’s just you and him. The feeling gets stronger, his fingers loosen against yours. You grip harder and he looks up straight into your eyes.

The door dings open again and he huffs a little, “Forgot to click the button.”

You smile but it feels thin. Your brain is flashing wrong, flashing red, screaming Domi’s name, but your heart is racing, pounding against your chest.

You screw your eyes shut.

He hits the button, the elevator starts going and you step closer to him. His back is against the elevator wall and there’s a calm look on his face, but you can tell he’s nervous, can feel it in the clamminess of his palm where it’s sticking to yours.

“I’m going to kiss you,” you blurt and you don’t even have time to regret the words before he’s pushing into you, lips finding yours within seconds.

They’re warm and softer than you expected. He lets out a groan as you kiss back, and you’re reminded of his cut, the swollen lip he’s sporting now. You move back, rest your forehead against his.

“Sorry, your lip,” you attempt to explain, but he shakes his head, forehead sliding across yours, twisting it.

“I like it,” he mumbles and you smile before kissing him again, feeling his arm wrap around you, pull you closer.

It’s the first time you’ve kissed him, he’s strictly off limits, a forbidden idea, but it feels like everything has suddenly fallen into place. The warning signs dissolve into bursts of serotonin as he makes little sounds, pressed up with your mouth.

The door dings open. You break apart and step out. Is kiss drunk a thing, or are you losing your mind? He grins at you, pulls your joined hands up for a soft kiss brushing on your knuckles.

Your heart flutters right then. If you’re losing your mind, you’re glad it’s with him. Dealing with the aftermath is something you’ll do later, so you push all thoughts of Domi and her complications aside and follow him straight into his apartment, consequences be damned.

-

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[fictional-thoughts]

Bitter

nsfw. the mandolorian x reader

warnings: slight angst, smut w a hint of rough sex, rollercoaster of emotions in dis bitch

words: 5.8k

He’s standing outside her door, feeling a thousand feet away but it’s only a lock and a few inches of wood separating him from you. His gloved fingers tap nervously on the hilt of his long weapon, under the helmet he’s chewing his bottom lip, colouring it red, contemplating, thinking, smoothing over the idea in his mind.

He can’t see her now.

He’s a mess, still pumped on adrenaline from returning from his last job, it ended brutally, all he remembers is blood running down the street in thick streams, cracked open skulls and the dim echos of screaming. His eyes close, dark lashes kiss his cheeks and he’s erasing the memories from his mind, only wishing he didn’t have to knock on that damn door, pass over the threshold and finally be rid of recollection.

Surely she’d answer. She always did.

What is holding him back? His own guilt of betrayal? His errors of the past haunt him, soak deep into his skin he nearly finds himself turning away from you when he needs her most. That’s it. The Mandalorian is chewing on the idea that he does need her, it feels sharp on his lips, its thick and sickly sweet, a poisoned wine he’s desperate to try and accept. The thought of her is held high over his head, a knife of vulnerability threatening to drop over his skin, slide and peel back the foundations of his history. He’s alone in the galaxy, a hunter, a killer, torn from all things the world says people need in order to survive.

She’s not that.

She’s everything he knows he would want to be.

And he needs her. Maybe not forever, but not another moment should go by without him near her.

The Mandalorian sighs deeply and lifts his fist to tap on her door, number 017. He’s been there so many times the number greets him with familiarity. He’s rolling his sore neck, the helmet tilted and he’s staring at the ugly brown ceiling as short steps approach the door, its creaking open and his heart is starting to beat faster, trapped under the confines of his ribs it’s threatening to escape.

The world calms and she’s in front of him, dressed down in casual clothing she’s barefoot and her hair is let down. It’s warm light and the smell of home, wrapped in her curiosity filled eyes he’s finding no words to speak. It’s been so long.

“Mando,” she’s whispering softly but no one is around to hear the gentle way she’s saying his nickname she claimed as her own. Her arms cross, there’s a chill in the hallway and he sees her shiver. Her eyes scan him over, searching for a wound or ailment. The Mandalorian is okay, he’s safe and she’s been worried over nothing. His armour clinks as he shifts his boots on the hard ground. “Come in,”

She’s stepping back and offering him room to pass over the threshold, his aura of power and destruction follows the soldier into the room. Her eyes are on the guns and the knife concealed on his lace up boot. He’s still the same. The door closed behind him and he’s alien to her homely flat, plants and books stacked everywhere he’s picking small details about her place he doesn’t remember from the last visit. It’s all her own personality turned into a place where even he feels welcome.

“Thank you for seeing me,” he thumbs a green plants soft petals and stares down at the short bit of life in the pot. He feels her eyes on him, soft and bright they’re unwavering and he feels the pressure to gaze back, to look across the room as if she’s stars away.

“I’d never turn you away,” her arms are still crossed over her chest, she’s freezing. The Mandalorian sighs, he’s brought icy winds with him and the frigid night air. He turns and sees just how little she’s really wearing.

She can’t tell but through the visor he’s gazing into her eyes, searching for a clue of what she’s going to say next. He’s never been able to read her. “Did I wake you?”

He nearly takes up the bulk of the small flat with his broadness and layers of armour but you don’t mind. He’s here and she’s unsure of what to say, her eyes downward she draws an invisible pattern on the wooden floor with her bare foot. “I’d just fallen asleep,” she’s lying but how could she tell him she lies awake most nights and pray he’ll show up at the door? Not injured or broken but whole and wanting for her company; though she wouldn’t mind him to be broken, bruised and in need of her help. That’s never happened and she knows the Mandalorian suffers alone.

“I can leave if you wish.” He turns with a step towards her and he’s looking down, her body so small compared to his, she’s beautiful in the semi darkness, it reminds him of sunsets on the horizons and lunar eclipses, of dying stars that shine so brightly in the last living moments — things he never thought to take notice of before he met her. “I shouldn’t have come.”

Regret seeps through the particles of air all around them, sucking the space and drowning out the noise of the world. He’s slowly breaking as she looks up, hurt in her eyes. The Mandalorian sighs, he didn’t mean that. He rarely speaks the truth and it’s hard even with her. The bounty hunter is skilled in many things but expressing the art of softer emotions was never on the list.

They’re close and she’s thinking of what to say, her mind a cage of birds. She should be bitter, angry and cold towards him, blocks of icy bricks and unbreakable walls made of iron. But she’s soft and can’t bring herself to hurt him more than he’s hurt himself in the past. “Stay,”

She’s staring at the visor, where she knows his eyes are, she can feel the deeper eye contact, sense his dark eyes connected with her own, each afraid to break the gaze she’s feeling her breath pick up. She’s missed him.

A glimmer of hope sparks and the Mandalorian is releasing a breath he wasn’t aware he’d been holding. “Thank you.” The helmet manipulates his tone and he’s sure his words sound heartless to her, of forgotten promises and crumbled love letters, spilled ink and empty words. He cannot give into that again, he’s a Mandalorian, a fighter, unbreakable and strong. It’s a tangle of his history and oath, his chosen path of culture and personal dependence, welded to his life, he’s stuck in time.

“Why are you here, Mando?” She’s pulling at the strings of bitterness, her gentleness has morphed into hints of resentment blended into her question. She’s close to him and yet so alone.

He’s not looking at her but removing his weapons from his form, the weight they carry is pulling him down, the very objects behind his life, his only possessions besides the ship he flies through the stars from planet to planet. He wishes he had more, but of what? What could a wandering hunter possess? The long rifles set down, its base thumped on the ground and the length is leaned against a dark bookcase and his blaster goes next to it. The knife is set down on the shelf with a careful hand. There’s more but they can come off later. “I’m here for you.” His gravelly tone is curling around her ears like a thousand deadly drums, beating out in time to the time of her breathing. He’s sincere and getting closer to her. “I want —”

She’s soft but not stupid. “You want to forget.” Shaking her head she’s a little hurt, a little on the edge of a steep cliff but it’s all foggy, unknown and he’s so close is suffocating. 

He’s pausing and the grips on his heart fade away. She knows him so well and it’s slowly tearing him apart, you’ve always been there to become a beacon and block the echos of his past. He thinks back to a time where he was caught after a battle, war torn and crushed he arrived at her door, tearing from him his battle gear and allowing her to blindly feel his scars, map this history of his body, he devoured every breath she took, sunk into her warmth he never wanted to leave. She’s never turned the Mandalorien away.

“You’re right.” He can’t lie, not yet.

She’s unfocused, her lip drawn under her teeth, bitten to a soft red, swollen under pressure. The thumping of her heart in her chest is loud enough for it to echo in her mind, she’s pulled in different directions, to remember the bitter past or take soul advantage of the present before her. She’s torn, spread so thin. He looks the same, and you can only really wonder who he was under the mask, though a little bulkier and clad in new armour he is still the Mandalorian, he is still yours. It’s all a mess but didn’t they used to thrive on the chaos? Get off to the secret, the whispered words and hidden touches. They were so young and blind and bonded together, it felt like ages ago. “Its just been so long,”

She’s missed him.

He’s stepping closer and sees just how small she is, compared to him. Metal to silk, ash to spring like winds she’s all the light in the world and he can only be her match. Their words built on an equal balance of light and dark, of shifting tides and uncertain times but in the end, one shall always meet their match. He’s exhaling shakily and he’s never one for words but he wishes to tell you everything, his sins, his purging of the innocent and its only a job but its not. It’s wearing him down to slide back into his bunk every night with his thoughts on you and what you once were, to him. Please, he’s thinking, its burning and rocking inside him and why cant he just tell you what he wants.

“Mando...” she’s looking down at his hands, his right curled over her own wrist, thumb rubbing circles.

The glove is worn and soft, leathery and not what she wants. He is silent and she’s tugging the gloves from his hands and tossing them to the floor. His tanned hands are bruised and split knuckles, trophies of his winnings.

“I don’t want to relive the past.” He tells her, tone neutral and softer, only for her. He cant think back to the times they’ve hurt one another, times when the moments never ended and they knew it would be alright in the end. But things like that never last. “I just need -”

“Me,” she’s completing his sentences and he’s alive with hope, waves of curling heat are smoothing his skin. And he tries not to go fast but he’s got her pulled into his arms and she’s so smooth and soft in his hands he’s nearly saying her name in prayer. Her backs arched to him and she’s got wonder in her eyes, he feels her hand slide over and up his shoulder and he’s suppressing the shivers that run through him, lit from a fuse thats connected only to her. “I can’t promise things will be the same,” she’s whispering through him, her hand on his cool helmet, just where his cheekbone would be and the Mandalorian is leaning into her touch. At her words his hands spread and squeeze her waist.

“I don’t want it to be the same,”

She’s being backed up, slowly and careful steps and she’s pressed into the wall. “We can make it better.” She knows the Mandalorian, she’s been his home, his secret for years and it cant ever be the same. She knows all he wants is to burry within her and forget the sounds of bombs, the taste of blood and rustic metal and smoke. “Mando,” she says his name and he’s already helping her from her clothes.

Gods, he’s feeling chunks of himself melting and falling to your feet, his girl, tender and lovingly she’s a mess of bittersweet romance and the feeling of flowers that you can only touch but not pick from the garden it’s planted. Is that all she is to him? A beauty to only observe and continue on the journey? “Mando, wait,” she’s gasping softly and he can barely stop, his hands splayed over her ribcage, the bumps of her bones under taunt skin he’s waiting for her to continue, her voice sending sparks to alight within him. He’s got his hand cupped around her jaw and the other sliding downwards to span her thigh, he’s going to lift her to the wall and push himself onto her. “Mando,” and he stops, leaned back he’s watching her to make sure she’s okay. “The blindfold, its, its in my room,” she’s flushed and stumbling on her words and he’s only wondering how such a beautiful thing could be in his grasp.

The Mandalorian shakes his head lightly. “Not yet.” His armours being untied by your careful hands and he’s silent, watching her work, cheeks flushed and eyes shining. Hotness seeps into his stomach, it’s craving and desperate. Bit by bit she’s pulled the metallic layers away, stripped him of his defence, he’s just as bare as you, with thin clothing thats close to the skin, close enough to feel the radiating heat. “Can I trust you?”

She’s mustering a soft smile and nodding, “’course, Mando.” 

“Close your eyes,” his voice is rough and tender, sandpaper and featherlight and seeping into her skin: she obeys, letting her eyes slide closed she’s surrounded by darkness and the gentle click and hiss of air as the Mandalorian is removing his helmet. He lets it drop to the floor and she jumps at the noise but he’s already pulled her close, he finds her lips and its a clash of rough remembrance, of slick and stolen moans he’s kissing her so hard she might just shatter in his arms. He feels himself weaken as she’s winding her arms around his neck, fingers swirled in the tendrils of his hair she’s so perfect and he just wants her now. It’s growing faster and more desperate, he’s got his hand curved around your jaw and his tongues flicking in between her lips and she’s a whimpering mess of sweetly melted emotions.

She’s got her eyes squeezed shut and her heads thrown back as the Mandalorian is moved down to the curve of her neck, he’s lined her throat with slicked kisses, his hands slide over her breasts and she’s moaning softly. His attention to detail is immaculate and he’s got her whimpering in moments with the curve of his hands on her tits and lips on her throat, he’s greedy and she tastes so sweet. He’s breathing is picking up and the sounds catch on a gasp as her hands trail down his chest. “Please,” she’s blind to him, her eyes never opening but picking up on every slight movement he’s making against her pressed to the cold wall. Use me.

Without warning his mouth leaves her own and he’s got her turned, front to the wall and his own pressed to her back, his large hands curved over her ass he’s groaning at the feeling, his lips on her shoulder and neck the Mandalorian is living for the soft sounds she’s making, without the helmet obscuring his vision its all the more real and he’s watching her hands close into fists as he’s pulling at the lobe of her ear with his teeth. He gets an idea. “Wait here.” And he’s gone. 

She’s already slick and her stomach is tense, she’s resting her forehead to the wall as the Mandalorian is turning down all the lights, she hears him blow out a candle on the desk and she realizes he doesn’t want the blindfold, he wants it to be raw, unconfined and free. His steady and slow steps are closer and soon she’s whirled around, crashed into his chest. Its dark in the room, in contrast to the stars above the room could be dark as night.

Its soon a mess of stripped clothing and her nails are carving marks into his naked broad back, skipping over the flexing muscles she’s got her head thrown back as his mouth covers her breast, its the art of passion drawn with sound and the unspoken rule to give in to one other and forget everything else, from one broken soul to another.

She’s bare and exposed to his hands, rough and tugging he’s got her so ready for him she’s feeling weak. “Bedroom,” she pants, he grunts softly in response, his hand slipping between her thighs he’s pulling aside her underclothes and she gasps, his fingers gather her slick and curl up into her its sending shocks through her system.

In the darkness he’s so close to her, too far gone to tell her how good she is, how he’s barely holding it together, he wants them to fall to the ground, lay her down to explore every inch of what she has to offer, he’s going mad with the feel of her quivering with only his fingers inside her and his teeth on her neck and god she’s so wet and he can tell she’s needed this. Needed him. 

“Gods, Mando,” she has a grip on his shoulder and the other moves to graze over him and its sending him into a shock. He’s in denial of the feelings she’s giving him, and soon its all too much and his fingers leave her warm cunt and he’s tasting them on his tongue.

She’s growing more frantic with every second as she leads him to her bedroom, sliding her hand along the smooth wall she finds the door and the Mandalorians quick to push her to the bed. She’s pulling his bottom lip in her teeth, her hands knitted in his thick hair, thigh curved around his waist, hes so close and so hard against her through the restricting fabric. He’s groaning softly as her hands move downward, it’s been so long and Mando quietly gasps against her swollen lips. She’s realizing that she’s using him too, to forget the pains of the past, of forlorn moments and bitter goodbyes.

She’s under him on the bed, curved to his body in the eerie darkness. It’s just like old times except he’s different, he’s more quiet and controlled, rough on the edges and confident. He’s dragging her underclothes down and sinking past her thighs, forehead leaned onto her stomach the Mandalorian takes a moment, eyes closed, breathing in her sickly sweet scent that’s all her before he’s burrowing his head in between her legs it’s a mess of his lips on her soaked cunt, he’s fast and his fingertips dig into her hips, spanned over the ridges of her hipbones; his mouth is on her sweet slick and not stopping until she’s close.

She cries out, whimpering his name and her hands fly to his head, her thighs ache, they close around his head and the warmth of his tongue sliding across the softness of her core is pulling her closer and closer to the edge, controlling her form.

Then he’s gone, pushing her thigh off his broad shoulder his tongue is replaced with two fingers, curved deep inside her — hot and tight around him, she’s got a grip on the while sheets under her and he’s swallowing her moans, lips against hers it’s fast and messy, she’s gasping into his mouth, her hands taking advantage of the removed helmet she’s mapping out what he looks like through the darkness, his hairs thick and turned with soft curls, she feels the contours of his jaw and cheekbones under her fingertips, raised lines of scars and indents of a once broken nose — he’s beautifully tragic, compiled of her imagination he’s everything that and more.

He’s beckoning, sliding his fingers into her she’s panting wetly against his skin, it’s so dark she can only see the outline of his body over hers, blocking out the light she’s picking up on the small details, the scars on his shoulders, of bullets and knives, stitched by his own hand? She’s feeling lower and he’s packed on muscle and bulk until she’s sure he could crush her if he so pleased — not that she would complain.

The Mandalorians never been so exposed, he thinks his oath is broken, his ties to his own religion snipped away. But as the light panels over her, he’s easing his fingers from her cunt, they’re slippery with her slick and it’s carving out his innocence of pleasure and shaping him into a place wretched and sinful. He’s looking down at her, beautiful, gentle, and the Mandalorian wants to ruin it. He’s raising his hand, sliding over her chest, past her pretty neck and slips his two digits past her parted lips. She moans at the sharp taste of herself, tongue curled around him she’s sucking hard and he’s nearly done for. His head lowers to her tits and teeth close around her nipple, pulling, tugging he’s buried in the softness of her skin. His lips span over the arches of her breasts, stopping to kiss her sternum, the valley in between.

She’s biting down on the tip of his pointer finger, smiling through a moan as he looks up at her, wonder and adoration swirled through the darkness. “What do you want?” He’s recalling their past, her favoured touches, sweet spots — he can’t think of just one, to bring her to the edge, to hold her down and have him engulfed within her, his hands moulding her flesh, dragging his teeth over her throat, catching her soft cries and matching her with his own.

His fingers slip from her lips and he’s gripping her jaw, shifting above her he’s pressed so tightly it’s hard for her to breath but it’s so worth it. Use me, she wants to plead, to have him grip her tightly, take everything he has out on her, break through the barriers of bitterness, soothe her wounds. The catch, there’s always one, the catch is: will he leave again? Vanish without a word, escaped into the night, never to see her again?

It’s happened one to many times. She should hate him for it, slam her door in his stupid fucking helmet face, one she’s never seen underneath and banish him from her life. But, in the months past, the Mandalorian just feels too good between her thighs, his hand around her throat or gripped in her hair, guiding her head down on his hard cock — he’s ever so tempting, a rush of adrenaline, he’s a drug in her veins, and she’s not broken her addiction.

“You,” she bites her lip, “just you.”

He’s kissing her, feels his tongue slip against hers it’s hot and heavy, messy and wet and bruising. Hands pulling at the ties of his pants they’re undone and she’s jerking beneath him, a wave of flushed arousal, unfurling and powerful she’s welded to him, darkness to light, magnetic force, of blinding stars and broken planets. “You’re so good,” he’s growling into her skin, pushing her thighs upwards he’s sliding against her, teasing, held back. He can’t, it’s the pounding of the air around him, the world blinks out and all he has is her, her body, crashed to the planets, exiled down from the gods she’s surely an angle, dammed to give herself to him, and he in turn, gives everything to her.

But he just can’t.

She’s surrounded by soft sheets, her beds worn and warm — how is she so soft? “You’re,” he’s groaning, pushing himself against her, large hand curled around her jaw she’s whimpering, chewing on begs, his name mixed within the words. “You—” he’s inhaling shakily, his nose follows up the line of her throat, behind her ear she’s covered in goosebumps and he’s sucking and biting her skin. “You’re mine.” He’s trying to convince himself of that, she’ll never be anyone’s; she’s her own. He’s never allowed himself to pin her down, fuck her and call her his to keep.

She’s nobodies. All her own.

But in between the moments of shattering lust and forgotten anger of abandonment, she could be his. The Mandalorian is the only one who’s cared, given a fuck — but it’s never been enough. She’s not accepting his words, she’s not his. “Shut up,” she’s turned her head away and his lips follow, sliding from her jaw to her own swollen and pink parted lips, his body heavy on hers she’s alive with desperate longing.

She’s pushing at his shoulders, roughly pulling herself from under him and before he’s complaining she’s shoved him back to the bed, he’s staring at her form through the darkness. She’s changed. It’s rough and she’s climbing into his lap, he groans as her soaked cunt slides over him and she’s surprising him with her nails dragging down his chest, skimming over the hard ridges of muscles.

It’s a game, teasing and seductive she’s on top of him, her lips on his throat as his large hands take handfuls of her ass.

She’s wretched, complied of what the stars wish they had she’s furious, kissing down his throat, she’s trailed hot spots down his chest, her warm breath fanning over him, his taunt muscles tighten and she hums in approval, her delicate hand trails over his rigit abdomen, bending down she’s licking a trail up and closing her lips around the collom of his throat.

“Gods Mando,” she’s an absolute angel, cursed to the darkness and awoken sin she’s grinding her hips down over his. It was never his, she’s claimed him and as she’s twisting her wrist, fingers slicked and wrapped around his cock he’s realizing it’s always been her.

Mando relaxes into the bed, his muscles strain and all he wants to do is sit up and jerk her up to straddle him properly, he’s groping her ass and it’s all he can do but not lift her, pull her close and sink her soaked cunt around him, a battle between logic and fantasy — he’s getting harder thinking about her, fucking up into her, hand wrapped around her throat, pursing the chase. She’s so good.

Lets not relive the past she said. It can be different. I can make it better.

All this? To be his beacon of light, a glimmer of hope in this bitter and isolated life he’s chosen? She’s whispering praise into the Mandalorians ear, her guts rolling with arosual and he’s not even inside her yet. He’s achingly hard, it’s closing in around him, how quickly everything would be over after he’s fucked her one last time. He shouldn’t have come, shouldn’t have knocked on her door. It’s going to be over and he’ll have to leave again.

He’s swearing, his voice deep and guttural she’s grinding down so hard the thoughts are slipping from his sober mind, he’s drunk on her skin, stuck in a daze of boiling emotions, tucked just a little too far away to reach.

The Mandalorian is getting frustrated, he’s preparing to slide his hands around her and throw her under him, have her whithering and saying his name like it’s the only thing she knows. “Wanna, wanna fuck you,” the words come out harsh, clipped with the moments of blinding pleasure, he’s so close and she’s only grinding faster, pushing her anger into him. “C’mon—”

She suddenly stops, gasping she fills her lungs with air. Both her hands cupping his face, it’s suddenly gentle — intimate — and the moonlight seems to be inline with the art of the lovers, a sliver of the dim and glowy light is passing by the window, it pans across the floor and the Mandalorian can finally see her, her eyes have softened and they’re almost nose to nose, her finger strokes down his cheekbone and he’s realizing she can see a part of him.

They’re sharing the light and their breathings in tune with one another. Her lingering eyes drop to his lips and she’s soft, a silken cloud, kissing him so softly, it’s not rushed, it’s stopping the planets circles around the moon, and suddenly time doesn’t exist.

She’s melted down, her anger and bitterness cooled to a point of gentle adoration, her lips fit with his, he’s made for her, made for her to care for him.

Surges of softer emotions swell inside her chest, it’s brimming and she feels her throat tighten. She can’t cry. But it’s all too much and the memories coming back, of waking up with the Mandalorian vanished from her bed, no sign he’d ever been there aside from her wrinkled sheets and marks of his passion etched into her skin — but even those fade over time.

Her breath catches and the Mandalorians pulling her close, curling her in his arms, brushing slim fingers over her blushing cheeks, he’s searching her face, gazing up at her and they both know the unspoken words.

“Mando,” she’s whispering, letting him shift her, settling her over him properly, skin to skin they’re the only two lovers in that moment. “Please,” don’t leave again.

The Mandalorians silent, spreading his hands over her hips she’s helping him move her upwards, lined up she’s got her hands braced on his broad shoulders. They both utter soft groans, she’s sliding down around his length and she’s shivering, her back arching, pressing her chest to his as he’s sitting up, curved his arms around her waist the Mandalorians done for. She’s panting, swollen lips glossed over and parted, she’s a mess of sweat slicked skin and burned and blackened passion. She’d scratched down his chest, raising thin red lines under her nails, she’s tearing him apart, devouring all what’s given to her, only in the fear if she doesn’t this will be the last time.

Everything’s okay, she cannot physically get any closer to him, flesh to whatever he’s made of, of metal and the war. He’s got his hand on the back of her head, chin tucked into her shoulder she’s seeping into his form, her fight gone — vanished, forgotten once more as the tides change, they’re gentle to each other. She’s moving over him, fists clenched he’s filled her perfectly, it’s a balance of their moments, of his hands lifting her again so she’s pressed to the bed, her back once more against the smooth sheets. He’s inside her again, his hand pulling her thigh up — smooth, fluid. She sighs softly, at each strokes he’s pulling her release closer, to feel the warm waves crash and battle within her.

The lovers are quiet within one another, her body curved to his its not a mess anymore, things have fallen into place and she’s so so so close, her hands tug at his hair and he’s kissing her neck, holding back from having his own way with her, keeping the rush at bay. She’s pleading his name, lip caught under her teeth she’s suddenly gasping, tense and quivering beneath him.

She’s got her eyes screwed shut, “don’t stop, don’t stop,” it’s a winding and beautiful build up, hotness pools into her core, thick and spreading through her nerves she’s trying to stay still, but he’s chasing the fleeting moments with rough movements, his hands on her skin, lips at her ear he’s so close it’s nearly unbearable.

“Come for me,” his gravely voice sends vibrations through her and she falls apart under him, her body floating through a daze it’s fast and coming in waves, she chokes on a gasp, tasting the sparks of heat, they’re smooth on her tongue and she’s seeing everything all at once.

“Gods,” she’s gasping, sensitive, overworked, but the Mandalorians going, his hand curved around her breast, he’s shaking and suddenly it all stops, he’s dropping from his high and the electricity of his release is explosive, wrapped in pleasure it’s blocking out everything but her, her tightness and warmth and the feeling of him buried so deep he’s unable to stop, she’s catching his moan, parted lips against his own they’re falling together, crashed to the ground with unfurling webs of pleasure.

The Mandalorians slicked with sweat and he’s tangled with her, his chest heaving he’s telling her only the way she’s made him feel.

He’s got his eyes closed and when he opens them, it’s not a dream, she’s there, tears brim her eyes and her hands trail down his shoulders. They’ve forgotten, all he hears is the sound of his heartbeat and the echos of gunfire is gone.

-

“You’ve always been there for me,” he’s saying, hours after the battle of passions and forgetting of the past. His tone is kept of the brimming emotions that had broken free of his cage, birds of flight they’re taking off, flying just from his reach. “I’m n-not enough for you.” He’s catching the air that’s not going through his lungs fast enough, lying next to her he’s unsure if this is all real, not a work of fiction. She’s got her head on his chest and his hands are sliding over her lower back, feeling the softness of her hips.

“I’ve never thought less of you,” she’s sighing, sleep digging its self into her body, she’s bruised, wrecked and exhausted; her thighs ache but it’s a good burn. She turns and pressed a short kiss to the middle of his chest, pulling her arm from the warm blankets she’s trailing a slim finger up and down his skin, tracing a slashed scar.

“Stay with me.” She looks at him, it’s still dark but the suns nearly about to rise, it’s golden rays peeking over the mountains outside the city. “Please?”

The Mandalorians hand comes up to smooth her hair from her face, running over the top of her head he’s watching her lean into his touch, angelic, perfect. “You know my chosen path,” he’s tearing him apart, he’s drowning. “I made a vow, long before ...”

“Before me,” she’s got a distant look in her eyes. It’s okay. It’s okay. She’s too weary, too beaten down with emotions she’s not used to feeling, she sinks into the bed beside the Mandalorian and allows him to curl around her, hold her for the last few moments before sleep takes her.

-

She wakes alone the in bed. The sun high in the sky, her room is filled with a golden yellow glow and her skins warm against the sheets. Sitting up she’s looking for the Mandalorian, he’s not beside her and she’s cursing herself for drifting off to sleep.

He’s got to be here.

Dressed in her wrinkled oversized covering from the night before, she pads into the open flat, flooded with light she looks around and realizes she’s all alone.

—

thank you for reading!! sorry for all the mistakes i just really wanted this posted, i’ll come back and do the editing tmrw! feedback is always appreciated ♥️

[hypnoticwinter]

Down the Rabbit Hole part 34

“Roan?” Elena repeats. “I thought I heard – Roan? Are you - ?”

I’ve dropped the radio. I kneel and fumble at it with my nervous hands. My breath is coming too quickly and my nose is plugging and hot tears are welling in my eyes. I reach up and slap the quick-release on the helmet and it clatters to the ground, leaving a wet thud ringing in my ears as it squashes into a fatty outcropping of flesh pooling on the third step down.

“El-Elena,” I mumble. My fingers are sweating so badly inside the suit gloves that I can’t push down the transmit button.

“Roan?” Elena asks again. All of the sudden cheer that had burst in her voice like a newborn sun when she had heard me calling her name is rapidly draining out of it. “Roan, is that – is that you?”

I can’t bear to listen to the agony in her voice, I have to, I have to push this fucking button…

I rip the glove off with my teeth and squeeze the radio tight enough that the hard plastic cuts into the soft flesh of my thumb. “Elena,” I say. I swallow hard and then try again. “Elena, I’m here. It’s me. I came down to get you.”

For a moment I hear nothing, just the crackling hiss of static and, a little muffled but still audible, the wailing of the siren down in the baths. “Elena?” I ask, trying not to let terror creep into my voice. What if something happened and right now she’s –

The radio squawks and inside it I can hear a sob. “Roan,” she manages to get out, “Roan, y-you came back?”

“To get you, yes,” I tell her. I can’t stop smiling or crying. I want terribly to hold her. “I’m coming to get you, don’t worry.”

“You should have stayed –“

“I wasn’t going to leave you,” I tell her softly. “I’m never going to leave you. I promise. I’m going to get you out. But Elena, where –“

“I’m at DUSA,” she says.

“At DUSA?” I ask, stupidly.

The autodoctor unit. Of course.

“Yeah,” she says. I hear her sniff. “It’s a – well, it’s sort of a secret installation down here where they –“

“I know what it is, I was there just seven or eight hours ago.”

“You were here?”

“Yeah, Makado came down to get me so I could take the fall for her, but I was pretty fucked up so she had to get me to DUSA so she could use the autodoc to heal me and set my leg and –“

I hear Elena splutter for a moment. “You used all the ballast? That was you?”

“Yes, Makado threw me in it, I was poisoned and I’d been breathing spores and it was – it was a lot. Listen to me, I remember seeing it when she took me out, I know there was ballast left in it, are you okay? Was it able to fix that gunshot wound?”

“It got the bullet out,” she says, “but there wasn’t enough left to heal it fully. It’s –“

“Are you okay?” I blurt, feeling a sudden clench of desperation in my gut. “Elena, are you - ?”

“I’m okay,” she tells me, “I’m okay, but I need to see a real doctor. Soon. I was down in the pleasure domes, or what’s left of them, for a while, but there are a lot of fucking critters down there and I needed to get the bullet out and I couldn’t – I couldn’t make myself do it with a knife. So I –“

“Okay,” I tell her. “Okay, I’ll come get you and we can haul ass all the way back up and get you to a doctor.”

“Roan, you –“ I hear a note of steel return to her voice. “No, I’m okay. I need to just rest a little and then I can try to make my way back up. If you got hurt or if you died –“

“No!” I bark. I wipe my eyes and sniff hard. “No,” I say, a little calmer. “I came this far to get you, I am not going to turn around now.”

“What do I do if you die?” she says. For the first time, I can hear fear in her voice. “What do I do, huh? If I know that you died down here, got eaten by a triocanth or a shamble or something, because of me?”

“What do I do if you do?” I murmur, and for a long while, long enough that I check to make sure my radio hasn’t died, Elena is silent.

“I thought you were going to be safe,” Elena says finally. “When I said goodbye to you two days ago I thought you would be safe. I got to a call box as soon as I could and told Makado what was going on and she said she would send a team down and get you out. I thought –“

“That bitch,” I spit. “She came straight down here and –“

“Hang on, what did she set you up with? What do you mean –“

I blow out my breath. “Look,” I tell her. “It’s a long story and we don’t have any time. I’ll tell you everything on the way up. I’ll be down to get you, I don’t – I don’t know if I can make it today but I’m going to try. I’ll be there.”

“I’m okay here for now,” she reminds me. “You don’t have to rush, I’m okay. If you want to go back up to the surface and –“

“That just – that isn’t an option right now. Just trust me. Please?”

“Okay. Do you even know how to get down here?”

“I have a map, I can figure it out,” I bluster. I’m tapping at the map trying to orient myself but the three-dimensional model is just giving me a headache.

“Are you sure? The map can be a little tricky –“

“I think I’ve got it. I’m at the ballast bulbs right now so –“

“You’re at the bulbs? Roan, be careful, there’s a fucking enormous siren down there.”

I laugh a little wryly. “Already found it, thanks.”

“Okay. Just – be careful, you know? They can be really nasty.”

“Don’t worry, I made it all this way, I’m not going to let myself get eaten.”

“Okay, but –“

“Elena,” I tell her. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”

“I – okay.”

“I’m going to head out. Call me if you need anything, alright?”

“Alright, Roan. I – “

I glance down at the radio and then set my helmet back down again. “Yeah?”

“Nothing. I’ll tell you when you get here.”

“If it’s something important –“

“It is important,” she says. Somehow, through the static, I get the sense that she’s smiling. “But I’ll tell you when you get here. Out,” she adds, before I can reply, and then the line collapses into a crackly hiss of interference. I get to my feet, snap my helmet back on, and start to climb.

 * * *

 I don’t make it very far before I have to stop and sit down and spend a solid twenty minutes poring over the map to try and actually figure out how the hell I’m going to get down to DUSA from here. I’m no slouch when it comes to maps, I never had trouble reading an interstate map or one of those horrible little area maps you pay out the nose for when you go camping – really camping, that is – but something in my brain just isn’t clicking with the loopy, curvy 3-D model of the Pit displayed on the screen embedded in the arm of the suit.

Part of the issue is that I have no sense of scale. With a little fumbling I can pull up a scale, and then with more fumbling I can use a tool that tells me the distance between two points and will construct a route between them, but trying to use it takes forever, and whenever the line crosses one of the hazy sections on the map where the coverage is either spotty or nonexistent, it screams flashing red warnings at me and won’t let me path my way through those areas. The jargon it uses is intense and multisyllabic. That area there is blocked due to an ambulatory hematomid cluster, whatever that is, this giant hazy spot that looks like an octopus is extremely dangerous due to an outbreak of seven-legged mortuary mites, that spot there is blocked off by a bile geyser eruption (ongoing)…everywhere I look there are errors and warnings and tags and it’s all a bit overwhelming.

If I find DUSA and try to path my way there directly it kicks up about a dozen errors relating to dangerous zones that it’s trying to go through. Begs the question why it can’t just path around them, but there can’t be that much computing power in the thing – maybe it’s easier to have it just kick up an error and make the ranger in the suit figure out how to go around it.

I’m sweating in this horrible suit, even with the climate control kicked up all the way. It’s probably because I’m still breathing outside air. The suit has air tanks so you can turn it into a closed-circuit if you really need to but the tanks are small and I don’t want to waste them. The air intakes go through a filter but even so you can still smell and taste and feel the Pit on it. It’s easy to imagine it coating your throat as you breathe, sending little fruiting blossoms up in the bronchial jungle of your lungs. Something about the image makes me shudder and I shake my head, frown at the map, bring my two fingers together and send it whizzing past the point I wanted to examine. I let out a muffled curse and drag it back to where I wanted to look – the thing is so damn sensitive that even the slightest motion will make the viewpoint do a 360, and then getting control back from there is an exercise in patience.

I wipe my sweaty fingers on the thick orange rubber of my thigh and then resume tapping. I think I’ve almost got it, if I path here first to avoid this annoying blob labeled [signal lost, presumed total muscular infarction] and then down to here, I can –

There is a quiet, subtle noise behind me and I freeze. All of a sudden I can hear my very, very loud heartbeat throbbing heavily in my ears, and it occurs to me just how quiet it is. Sure there are drips and drops and, someplace far off, the groan of stretched, anguished muscle, but right here at the upper landing of the stairs, it’s absolutely still.

I turn slowly and scan the red, inflamed-looking passage leading back the way Fumi and I had came. Nothing is immediately apparent; no big scary monster sneaking up on me, no Leechman peeking his throbbing, writhing head around the corner like Mike Myers.

“Huh,” I mutter. The sound had been almost too quiet to hear but something about its tone had made me prick my ears up – a sort of subtle, wet slipping sound. It was a guilty sound, a sound that immediately made me think whatever had made it hadn’t wanted me to hear it.

Or perhaps my already frayed nerves are giving way a little further. God, it’ll be a miracle if I come out of this without PTSD or something similar. The last time I managed to get some sleep, back in DUSA, I had woken with the fading aftershock of a nameless dream still stamped into my mind, but it had departed quickly and I hadn’t remembered much of it until now. Even now I don’t, but I remember that it had to do with leeches. And Peter – god, poor Peter…

It hadn’t even felt real, when we had happened upon him, down there in the dark, I hadn’t felt like I was there, I felt like I was watching it all happen from a great distance away. When Erica had shone her flashlight on Peter’s face and I had seen the – I had seen the wreckage the leeches had left of it, I felt as though I were going to go –

There’s the sound again.

I whip around, rising into a low crouch, my hand darting down to the holster slung low along my thigh, and when I remember that I had lost the pistol down in the ballast bulbs I try to ignore the icy stab of fear piercing upwards into my throat like a fishhook. Part of me wants to freeze, part of me wants to scream, out of terror and frustration and exhaustion, but I push them both back down and force myself to reach down the other side of my belt and grab the long savage bowie knife from its streamlined scabbard. The edge catches the light as I draw it and it makes an exaggerated swish, the air parting across the blade as I transfer it to my right hand.

I still don’t see anything unusual down the passage. It’s returned to the same level of stillness as before, the same utter, eerie silence. All the way up here I can’t hear the ballast siren any more, its screams are smothered by the overwhelming weight of flesh above us. I shine my flashlight carefully along the ceiling, along the walls, along the floor. There isn’t –

Something I had initially thought was a weird little polypous growth about head-height up on the left wall opens a set of six faceted eyes and looks at me, and my mouth drops open because I know what this is, I know what is about to happen, but the knowledge isn’t enough to save me. The triocanth bursts from its bored-out hide in the wall, trailing ichor and slime behind it and slams like a football straight into my chest. I think I feel a rib creak under the sudden pressure, and I stumble and fall flat on my ass, the air whooshing out of my lungs and leaving me gasping.

It fixes one tentacle like a whip around my left wrist and crunches the other one inward around my neck, but before it can do more than tug itself forward against me I slam the knife six inches deep into its abdomen, the force knocking it sideways and tugging me after it. It vomits a frothy purple bile all down my front, its tentacles writhing in shock, and then slowly its dull eyes turn even duller and the rhythmic slap of the tentacles slows to a writhing stop.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I murmur to myself. I try to haul the thing off of me but its blood has made it slippery and I end up completely covered in it before I can finally toss its weighty carcass off of me and get to my feet. I look down at myself, down at the thing, the hilt of my knife sticking straight upwards like a morbid Excalibur, and then pop the helmet’s quick release and vomit.

“God damn,” I murmur when I’m done. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and watch it tremble. Even when I make a fist there’s still a little shudder there, a little shakiness. A week ago I was fine, I was rock-solid.

Fuck.

I move on. There are arteries and canals and veins and chutes. Some of them have stuff inside, gunk and blood and lymph and other nameless substances that I can do little more than wrinkle my nose at and wade through, while others are crinkled and lifeless and dry.

My leg hurts. It’s a dull, bone-deep ache and just the harbinger of something worse, but its throbbing reminds me that I really only have a limited window to go down and get Elena and get her out. If I stay too long I’ll end up as something’s dinner, I’m sure of it.

Sometimes I see things, down here in the dark, in the tubes and tunnels and vast fleshy protuberances I travel through. The marker on the HUD in the helmet will blink right on top of a wiry, long-limbed copepod (the lesser variety, thankfully), staring at me with a baleful look, but nothing has been brave enough to try me, everything so far has sized me up and then turned and scuttled or crawled or slithered the other way.

It’s an environment that reminds me a lot of the nature documentary I watched that one time over at Thor’s place about the very bottom of the ocean. Something something Abyss. Enter the Abyss? I forget. It had a British man with a soothing voice narrating, but not David Attenborough, because I know his voice and it was someone else.

Everything down there is an optimization monster because there’s such little resources available. Something like a shark wouldn’t be able to survive at that depth, even if you ignore the pressure that would squish it, there isn’t enough energy for a big alpha predator like that. Everything is waiting in ambush, black and midnighted and serrated. It made me shiver a little, watching the crabs clustering over a whale carcass that had fallen all the way down, watching the black, invisible fish that are ninety percent teeth, floating and floating until they happen to spot something or something happens to spot them.

Here is the same, just the same, everything is so – so desperate here. Or perhaps that’s just how I perceive it; I’m sure to one of these overgrown lice there’s no desperation, just calculation and analysis and arithmetic. Can I eat this or will it eat me? Do I have enough energy to just sit here motionless and wait for something stupid enough to walk beneath me or do I have to actually hunt?

It seems like a very clean sort of life but not one I have the stomach for.

I make it to the ranger station I had waypointed at nine at night. At least that’s what the suit tells me; as far as I know it could be three in the afternoon and I’d never be able to tell. The only thing that matters to me is that I’m dog tired. I’ve dodged three (fairly halfhearted) copepod attacks, noticed and avoided two more triocanths, stopped and hit to let a bumble of macrobacteria pass by, and once stood stock-still and trembling as a massive shadow, lit by the pale red glow of – of something, I don’t know what – slipped past, projected on the wall before me, all many-legged and sinuous and nameless. I didn’t know what it was, only that it was big and that it awoke some kind of primal fear within me that I desperately, desperately wanted not to confront.

But it passed me by. And who knows, I reason, thinking of the enormous slimy lizards, lurking down at the bottom of the Pit, feasting on the toxic mushrooms, perhaps it was some sort of bottom-feeder, some kind of thing that just lives off the Pit itself.

I’d seen things like that, here and there, not quite as common as I might have otherwise expected, considering I’m inside an enormous edible environment. There are things like ticks, bloated and heaving, suckered onto one of the pale blue veins that crisscross the Pit’s innards in wavy spiderwebbed patterns, great clusters of them like bunches of hideous grapes, swaying gently with the motion of, I discovered to my horror, their lapping suction at the Pit’s veins. I would occasionally see one or two of them, sated, unhook themselves and scuttle downwards on chitinous legs, their bulbous abdomens bobbing like balloons in the wind, and scurry off to some hidden cranny to hide and digest.

Maybe the Pit’s flesh is just poisonous, or gamy, or…or whatever. Otherwise you’d think this place would be an Eden, or at least a kind of Eden. Eden for the copepods. If they could just pluck a handful of flesh out of the wall and chow down, why bother being that big? Why bother being so cantankerous? Why bother being intelligent? No, it makes sense that the Pit’s flesh isn’t edible except for a couple of these strange little bottomfeeders. And then things eat the bottomfeeders, and things eat the things, and bigger things eat the other things, and…

The ranger station looms ahead of me and I cast my flashlight warily over it. It looks as though it hasn’t seen human habitation since way before 2007. Maybe it hasn’t; maybe it’s just been abandoned, ditched for being too out of the way and hard to get to and so on. There’s grime on the thick safety windows and an enamel-like coating of hardened slime on the sterile grey surfaces. The exposed metal of the beams is rusted to shit, and it looks as though it’s about to collapse if I breathe on it wrong.

I shove the door open, crumpling a horrible crinkly film of ichor behind it, pivoting on squealing, rusted hinges, and move through two dusty, disheveled rooms before I find a serviceable cot waiting for me. I had been expecting that I’d have to sleep on the grimy, moldy floor, but if there’s a bed I can use instead I’m all for it. I’m dog tired, bone tired, and though I had initially planned to just power through it and make it down to DUSA today without having to take any breaks, the deeper down I went the more obvious it became that that was just not going to happen.

I peel out of the suit, down to my panties and my tank top, and then I fiddle with the radio, squawk it on and off. “Elena,” I say. “Elena, come in.”

I wait. Five, ten, fifteen seconds. There’s a little pinprick of fear down deep in my gut but I smother it. “Elena?” I ask again. The radio blares static back at me.

“It’s okay,” I murmur, staring at the radio. “It’s okay,” I tell myself. “She’s asleep, or there’s no signal, or…”

I look away from the three full bars of signal displaying in the upper right corner of the LCD screen on the radio’s front. “Fuck,” I murmur.

I call her name two more times before I give up. She just isn’t there, I reason.

Nothing to panic about.

I fall into the cot and sneeze as it kicks up a cloud of dust. I lay there for a while, trying to get the worry out of my system, before I flick my eyes down to the door and get up again, wedge a chair underneath the doorknob. I look around at my things, holding the flashlight loosely in my left hand, and then settle with leaving the knife underneath the pillow and the flashlight on the floor right by the bed, right where I can reach it. I crawl again into the cot. I think briefly about masturbating so I can get to sleep more quickly but after a few experimental gropes at my breasts I conclude that turning myself on would be more effort than it’s worth.

I shut my eyes and try to think of nothing, but I keep worrying about Elena. It’s pitch-black in here without the flashlight and so I can barely tell the difference between shutting my eyelids and leaving them open. I wonder briefly if I could sleep with them open but then I realize my eyes would dry out and shut them again. Plus, of course, it takes too much energy to just hold them open…

Elena.

God, if I get down there tomorrow and she’s – she’s gone, I’m going to –

In the dark I let my lips curl back in a silent snarl of laughter. I’m going to what? What’s the end of the sentence? I’d kill myself? Pathetic. Even when I thought I had HIV and I…well, I guess I still have HIV. I’d just sort of pushed it out of my mind. Ironic.

I’d toyed with the thought, of course, back when I got the letter. That same sort of weighty finality shifting heavily, like a center of gravity too far over an edge. But ultimately I’d realized I was too much of a coward to ever go through with something like that, or that if I did work up the nerve to give it a shot I’d just take a bottle of Advil, wash it down with a glass of wine and fall asleep in the bathtub after giving myself a small scratch on the wrist with a dull knife. Or would the Advil actually kill me? I don’t know. Somehow I doubt it but I don’t know. It’d be ineffectual and pathetic and a cry for help and attention, that’s all, and I’d hate myself when I woke up the next morning.

I can’t tie myself to Elena, even if I want to. Whenever I love someone my impulse is to offer everything up to them to make them better while asking nothing in return but I can’t keep doing that. If she dies I have to live, out of – out of sheer bloody-mindedness, I guess.

I yawn.

It’s all so ridiculous. Get a grip, Roan. Either she’s dead or she isn’t. If she isn’t, great. If she is, have a cry and then drag yourself out of here. It’s so callous but it’s what you’d end up doing. Even if you really do love her you’re not going to play Juliet to her Romeo and dagger yourself at the end of the play. Or does Juliet poison herself? I don’t remember.

I shift in the bed, roll over onto my side. My leg twinges warningly and I freeze, holding it still, and then carefully maneuver it away so it has space to itself.

I want to burst into tears at the very thought of her even possibly being dead, despite my hard-edged nitrogen queen pep-talk. Instead I fall asleep.

 * * *

 In the dream I’m falling into a very deep pit. I can’t see the sides of it and the light at the mouth is far too dim for me to really make out anything at all, but I know I’m falling, I can feel the lurch of it in my gut, the way I reflexively seize up. I get the sense that I’m falling toward something, there’s a sense of impendingness hurtling at me like a brick wall across a highway. I want to try and twist over onto my back so I can at least see it coming but halfway through the motion I stop myself, wondering if it might be worse if I can see it coming.

I’m in that weird sort of half-state where some part of me is aware that I’m dreaming but it isn’t a significant enough part to override the animal inside of me that thinks that it’s really truly falling to its death.

I slowly force myself to turn, and there below me is a vast plain of slowly writhing leeches, black and inky and horrible, leaving castings of slime on each other as they slop endlessly across the hidden ground. There is a crack of thunder and I scream, and for a moment I think that that is what brings me crashing awake, the sound boiling up out of my throat, but as my brain hurriedly clears the cobwebs from its sleep-dulled senses, I realize very quickly that what I had thought was thunder was really the crash of the chair being knocked to the floor and the creak of the door slipping open. My heart leaps up into my throat instantly but I resist the urge to freeze. Instead I grab the knife from beneath my pillow and dart downwards to the floor next to the bed. My hands sweep over empty space for a moment before after what feels like ages I brush the flashlight with the tips of my fingers and finally gather it up and snap it on.

The beam flashes over the rugose, squamous head of a venous shamble, shoved through the gap in the door and regarding me curiously, and I scream again, getting to my feet on top of the cot. I stumble and nearly pitch sideways but I reach out and steady myself against the wall.

The shamble presses a little more of its bulk into the room, its swaying, delicate tendrils extending stealthily towards me.

This is the point where I freeze. I can feel my eyes bugging out and my voice catching in my throat as it comes even closer, the tendrils slipping up onto the bed and reaching for my foot before I manage to take a faltering step backwards. My back is against the far wall now, and I have to hunch a little to not hit my head on the bulky, crenelated ceiling. I just can’t – force myself to move, I’m absolutely terrified. It’s a miracle I haven’t wet myself like a baby. Something about the thing’s eyes is – is eating at me, there’s a tremendous depth to them, like a fifty-foot-deep vat of red gelatin, with little sparks and currents and intricacies hovering inside it. I can feel my hands shaking, I can see the cone of the flashlight shuddering as I struggle to force my traitorous muscles to move –

The tendrils wrap around my ankle and something about their shuddering, slimy touch wakes me from whatever trance I had fallen into. I can feel my lip curl in disgust. I tug my foot back once again but the shamble holds on tight. More tendrils are slithering towards my arms and legs and neck and torso and from a tiny, plated orifice something like a horrible, sucking proboscis is emerging from the middle of the shamble’s head. Its eyes are still boring into mine but something is different, something about the, about the tone of them is different, and I realize that I can -

I bring the knife sweeping up in a long, wide arc, with as much force behind it as I can muster, and slam it into the underside of the shamble’s head. The light leaves the thing’s eyes as quickly as if it were switched off, and the tendrils around my ankle and my waist fall off of me like coils of rope. There is a horrible sort of jelly leaking from the wound in its head, a great string of it shot outward and splattered onto the ceiling from the force I had used to shove the knife in.

I stand there on the cot, staring, as the thing shudders and writhes and shrivels, and then, ten minutes later, I get down and put my suit back on and retrieve my knife and I leave.

 * * *

 DUSA is easier to get to than I thought it would be. Although the route the suit computer plotted for me looks torturously circuitous, it turned out to be a wide, clean, spiraling ramp of sorts at a very agreeable grade, the flesh beneath seemingly encased in some kind of resin or enamel. I can feel a wide tread evenly spread in two spots all the way down, so I conclude this must have been some sort of route used to construct DUSA to begin with. The reinforcements are wide and clean and strong-looking, evenly spaced every twenty feet or so.

Once again I boggle at the sheer scale of this place. It must have taken so much effort and resources to put all of this in place, and then to lose it just because of a titanic hiccough, because of pure chance…

Two hours of walking and the suit guides me to a branching offshoot of the main route that leads me across a wide bridge over a vein, full with pounding carmine liquid, thick and sticky and glutinous, and then down a steep ramp and into the sordid, fleshy grotto that holds the cylindrical lozenge of DUSA. I’d tried to call Elena two more times on the way down, but the timbre of the static I get back is thicker. A few times I think I hear something between it, some attempt at a reply, but I can’t make it out. I abandon that after a few attempts and try to keep myself cheery by imagining how good it’ll be to see her again, to hold her again, how good her lips will feel against mine.

When my weary flashlight beam finally rakes over the stained, pitted metal of the outpost, I can feel tears coming to my eyes and for a moment, just a moment, I let myself wallow in hopelessness.

Something has stomped into the organ and torn a massive chunk out of DUSA’s side like it were nothing, left the curved blunt metal bury itself halfway into the Pit’s flesh like a knife dropped point-down. DUSA’s innards are ominously dark, but I can see lights flickering inside and for a moment, just a moment, I think I can see something moving within.

I call out for Elena at least a dozen times but nobody comes to the vast rent made in DUSA’s side to see what all the racket is. Eventually, my hands trembling with a horrible, horrible anticipation of what I might find, I force myself to go in.

Inside, DUSA is a mess. It looks as though a tornado has swept through, leaving shelves knocked onto the floor with their papery guts spilling out like crime scenes, leaving dents in the foot-thick metal walls, leaving scattered debris and mess everywhere. The crater I had climbed in through was worrying enough but seeing the trail of destruction leading down to the stairwell in the back, which itself is crushed and mangled beyond recognition, leaves me practically quivering with trepidation. I clamber down the stairs, making a hell of a racket with the clunky boot banging off the crumpled metal steps.

In the floor below me, the room with the autodoctor unit, a trail of rubble leads over to the autodoc, which itself is crushed to hard-shelled plasticky smithereens. There is someone in an orange ranger suit, standing there in the middle of the room, examining a small chunk of something. As I watch they drop it and start towards the autodoc. “Elena!” I call out, my heart leaping, and the person spins, their hand darting down to their pistol and drawing it on me. “Hey, it’s me,” I tell her, my smile losing a couple of molars. I clamber out of the staircase and come fully into the room, my hands held wide, palms out, empty. “Elena, it’s me,” I repeat.

My heart is beating very quickly. I can feel a bead of sweat trickle down the back of my neck and nestle under the lip of my tank top.

I am only just now realizing that the person ahead of me is much, much shorter than Elena.

“Yes,” Makado agrees, slipping her helmet off, revealing a set of hard, hard eyes and a mouth twisted into an ugly scowl, keeping the pistol trained on me with her other hand. “It’s you.”

Continue with Part 35

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[hatsukeii]

Sorry if this is becoming a Tsukki stan blog with all the requests you get for him lmao. All of your precious depressed!Tsukki asks got me thinking. How would he comfort his girlfriend who is having nightmares about him committing suicide after she found him cutting or maybe attempting? I had to break into a friend’s house a couple years ago to stop him from committing suicide and as much as I love him, the thought of that night still haunts me. Thank you for even reading this honestly. 🥺

Okay this was on my list for one of the requests I had to do asap bc it seems like a serious issue that needs attention so I’m putting off the matchups and hcs and doing this one first.

But like it’s still super late I’m sorry-

Plus there’s nothing to be sorry about lol this blog becoming a tsukki stan blog is 100% okay-

I sure as hell hope you’re doing alright, and that your friend is safe, you two seem like amazing people:)

Darling, I’m right here//Depressed!Tsukishima x Reader

Word count: 1600+ (A bit shorter than usual I’m sorry-)

Warnings: Depression, attempted suicide, mild swearing

Summary: You wake up to a reoccurring nightmare.

“Tsukishima?”

“Kei? What are you doing?”

Thank god you had to get to school extra early that day. There Tsukishima was, sitting on the train platform, his feet dangling off the edge. “Kei?” He stayed silent, ignoring you as a bright light headed towards his direction. You knew he was depressed, but you sure as hell didn’t think he would actually try to commit suicide. Your eyes widened as you watched his hands push himself off the platform, landing onto the train tracks. You lifted your leg, desperate to rush over and pull him back up, but it was as if your feet were bolted to the ground, refusing to move. “COME ON! MOVE!” The train was now nearing him, it was guaranteed that it would hit him if he didn’t get out in the next three seconds. You tried to scream, tears flowing freely down your face, but nothing came out. You felt your throat burning, however all that was produced from your mouth were inaudible wheezes and whimpers. Your legs wouldn’t cooperate with you however hard you tried, refusing to leave the cold ground. Your fists were clenched so tight crescent shaped marks etched themselves into your palm. Everything went into slow motion as the train came into sight. Tsukishima sent you one last glance, smiling softly, before everything was painted red and his body was gone. Time seemed to go straight back to normal right afterwards. At the same moment, your legs decided to detach themselves from the ground, and your voice came back almost instantly. “KEI? KEI NO!” You bolted to the platform, hoping to find something, anything, that could convince you this was fake. The air around you was thick, the smell of blood wafting into your nose as you stare at the train tracks in horror. “Why? Why couldn’t I save you just now?” Your heart was thumping furiously, blocking all foreign noise out as you squeezed your eyes shut. You don’t even know what happened, but the second you opened up your eyes, you were in the hall at school, students crowding around your locker. “Wait, you were there when he did it?” “Why didn’t you save him?” “How could you just let him jump off?” The questions never stopped coming. You slammed your hands over your ears, frantically trying to shut out the haunting voices. “No, nononononono stop, please! Please, I couldn’t do anything I couldn’t save him!”

“I COULDN’T SAVE YOU!”

You gasped, hitting your head on the coffee table as you bolted upwards, cold sweat dripping off your forehead as you panted. Tear stains were evident on your face, although you swear you didn’t know you were crying. Your hair was a disheveled mess, strands of baby hair sticking out of your head. Grabbing your sheets in one hand and your chest in the other, you continued to pant heavily, your mind racing in between your reoccurring nightmare and reality. Why was it that again? That was at least a year ago, and yet it still haunted you to this day. You were quick enough to grab Tsukishima from the platform during his attempt, but was that nightmare going to happen if you couldn’t pull him back to safety in time? Would he have died just like that, with no one knowing until a day later? Just the thought of the possibility made you shudder. Your hands made their way next to you, where your boyfriend was comfortably sleeping. Scrambling for his chest, you heaved a heavy sigh when you felt his steady heartbeat on your palm, breathing along to the beats on his chest. You gulped down your saliva, gripping his shirt tightly, as if you were too afraid to even let go for a second. You weren’t going to let him go ever again. Not when he obviously needed support and affection. You looked around Hinata’s living room. The movie from an hour ago was still on, however all the boys were already fast asleep. Kageyama was peacefully snoring away on the couch, Hinata was drooling all over his pillow, Nishinoya was grumbling in his sleep, Tanaka was making weird punching motions, and Yamaguchi stirred a little bit, his eyes squeezing shut. You pretended to lay down again, not wanting to concern the freckled boy with your sudden outburst. His body eventually went limp again as he continued to snore softly. Seeing that the coast was clear, you sat back up, trying to calm yourself down for the third time this week. Your hand was still grabbing onto the blond’s shirt, feeling the soft fabric in between your fingers.

“(Y...Y/N)?”

You froze.

Shit. You forgot that Tsukishima was a light sleeper.

Feeling him shift underneath your hand, you instantly let go of his shirt, gripping onto the mattress Hinata gave you two instead. The mattress dipped a bit, Tsukishima starting to carefully sit up. His hair was messier than usual, despite it being relatively short. Rubbing his eyes, he gave your hunched over figure a glance, completely confused. “(Y/N), what are you doing up so late?” Rapidly turning around, your hand landed on his chest, feeling for his heartbeat. Next, it went up to cup his cheeks, then his arms as your eyes took in his entire body frantically. Finally, your arms wrapped around his neck, burying yourself in his presence. Awkwardly, he returned the embrace by patting your back with one hand, the other arm wrapping around your waist. Your mind was on the verge of insanity. His attempt at suicide was still overwhelming to you, even if it’s already been an entire year. Most people would ask why you haven’t moved on, but truth be told, you couldn’t. Tsukishima was still depressed, he could very well try doing it again, maybe this time in an even more subtle way. In a way where not even you can stop him. You were scared. Anxious. Terrified. Just the thought of him leaving you forever was too much to bear, and brought you to tears. You would have frequent nightmares about him killing himself in various ways. Pills, hanging, jumping off a roof, and the worst of them all, jumping into the train tracks. His initial attempt. And every single time, you wouldn’t be able to save him. You would be stuck to the floor, hopelessly draining yourself of your energy as you try to scream. “I couldn’t save you, what? Why? How are you here? I thought you jumped in? This isn’t a dream right?” 

That was when it struck Tsukishima. Everything was clear as day now. The reason why you came to school sleep deprived every day. Why you constantly fell asleep in class. Why you were always last online at three in the morning. “Why did you never tell me about this?” He could feel the wetness of your tears as you forced your face into his neck more. “Didn’t want you t-to worry more than you already do. I’m gonna go crazy if I see another c-cut on that beautiful skin of yours.” His hand stopped, resting in the small of your back. “(Y/N)...” He didn’t think his self harming tendencies and his suicide attempt would affect you this much. He never thought anyone really cared. However when you hauled him home and screamed at him after catching him trying to jump into the train tracks, that ignited something in him. He now had someone he had to- no. Wanted to protect. One person cared enough to save him, and that was all it took for him to realise a bit of his self worth. He would do anything to keep you happy and safe. One of your first requests was for him to stop cutting. He had stopped scattering his skin with cuts, despite his crippling depression. He had done it just for you, and it felt amazing. You usually just waved him off with a casual “Insomnia’s a bitch” whenever he asked about the dark eye bags, or the questionable time you were last online. Never did the thought that you were still traumatised from events that happened over a year ago pass his mind. He should’ve known that this would affect you badly. How could he have been so selfish? Disregarding your emotions as he tried to end his life. He felt terrible. He was pissed at himself. For being so selfish and foolish.

He heaved a heavy sigh, mentally punching his nuts. Moving his hand from your back, he caressed your head tenderly, as if you were a glass statue that would break with the tiniest push. You sobbed even harder, squeezing him tight. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” His eyes fluttered shut as he held onto your trembling figure, peppering your head with tiny kisses in an attempt to comfort you. You smelled like shampoo and roses. He couldn’t help but take a sniff. You were the sole reason he was still here, living and breathing as he plummeted through his hole called life. Without you, he would’ve been dead ages ago. You were the guiding light in his life, reminding him about everything he should live for. Everything he should be happy for. Taking your head off his neck, you look straight at him with teary eyes. “You’re here right? This is real?” His heart shattered at the sight. His beautiful, amazing, precious, perfect girlfriend, was crying because of him. He pushed your head back into his shoulder, giving you the biggest hug as he held his grip on you tightly.

“Darling, I’m right here. I’m always gonna be here.”

Ahhhh I hope you liked it even though it’s a lot shorter than what I usually write🥺👉👈💖💕

Tags: @ewfilthymundane @izzyphantomgamer @sunshines-and-tatertots @tiger1719 @trashcanweeb @inlwlevi @itmekisuu @just-another-bored-writer @justachillgirl @burnt-tomato @for-ests @bokutokoutarou @kaylacinderella @random-fandomlover @xonfusedsoul @estherwritess @macaronnv @talks-a-lot-of-stuff @agentvicinity @sakusasgarbage @tiredgr3mlin @emsvegetables @fullmetalfangirl21 @poppirocks @mariechan123 @tokyoghoose

Dm or comment if you wanna be included in the taglist or if I forgot to tag you!

[youllneverknowrac]

Oscar Diaz-Pull up

For @cherrymoon-12

“Keep up guys, you don’t have to walk so slow!” You complain, walking a few paces in front of Cesar and Monse. Deciding to tag along to bring her back to her house since Oscar was out doing drops offs with Sad Eyes and Smiley.

“You didn’t have to come.” Cesar laughs,”I was perfectly capable of walking Monse home alone.”

“Shut up, we would have left her all alone.” She defends with a shake of her head.

“Thank you Monse, glad to see you care about my feelings unlike my little ‘brother’ here.” You tease,”Besides it’s late and I’m not gonna let you be out on the streets alone.”

“What are you gonna do Y/N?” He laughs,”You won’t even hurt a fly.”

“Shut up, I’m tough and I got a mouth on me. That’s enough to scare anybody off.” You laugh, the first part of your sentence not true, but the second part sort of was. Being Oscar’s girlfriend made you feel invincible, knowing that you could get away with a lot by running your mouth when you needed to since almost everybody feared him. It was worse when he was actually there with you, when that was the case you absolutely had no filter.

“If by mouth you mean just annoying me to death by talking then yeah, it’s your superpower.”Cesar laughs, bright headlights blinding the three of you as a green car comes to a stop. Latrelle popping his upper body out of the passenger side window moments later.

“Aye yo. Aye, what’s good with you ma? You two are looking good. Let me get that ass at pimp lane. Yo Monse, Y/N, why you two still hanging out with these broke ass Santo’s?”

“Fuck you.” You scoff and turn away, not wanting to feed into his attention,”You’re not gonna do shit, cause you’re not about shit. So I suggest you leave.” The words flying out of your mouth, Latrelle not having time to respond as Cesar speaks up.

“Ah, you spend some time in juvie and now you think you ballin?” Cesar asks seconds later with a scrunched up face, your phone already in hand as you text Oscar. Knowing he wasn’t too far out of the neighborhood, if anything just a few blocks over.

“Yeah. Where do you think I knocked off a bunch of your punk ass homies? Ask about me! Go ahead!”

Cesar doesn’t reply as he throws his can of soda to the ground angrily, Monse holding him back as she try’s to get him to calm down and walk away. Her actions don’t work however, Cesar moving around her and taking a step towards the car.

“Screw the Santos and your dead homies.” Latrelle pushes

“You know what side you on? This is our block, feel me? They call me LiL’ Spooky. I’ll blast on your ass.” Cesar fumes, causing you to step forward as well and put your hand on his shoulder. You were not going to let him fight Latrelle, cause then you would feel obligated to have his back and throw in a few hits of your own. That is not what you needed to happen tonight.

“Please, Cesar!” You and Monse both say in unison. Not wanting anything to escalate.

“I don’t care what side I’m on.” The prophet snaps as he pulls out a gun, the younger Diaz stepping in front of the two of you protectively,”You lucky your bitches are here, cause when I catch you slipping next time, I’m gonna put a hole in you.”

The three of you stay quiet, with as much as you wanted to say you weren’t a idiot. Luckily Oscar’s red car comes zooming down the street, barley screeching to a stop when he and the two other members hop out of the car with their own guns drawn,”What’s up fool? Get out the car since you so hard.” Oscar barks as he uses his body now to block you three from the gun,”You wanna fuck with my family? With my girl?”

No response coming from the teen prophet or the driver of the car, knowing that they were outnumbered and outsized.

“You don’t have noting to say now?” You chirp from behind the safety of your boyfriends shoulder, the notorious mouth that was mentioned earlier coming into play as you smirk,”You sure did a lot of talking a few minutes ago...something about bringing me to pimp lane? Didn’t know you were such a bitch Latrelle. Come on, say something now.”

“Get your ass in the car and keep your mouth shut, all of you.” Oscar demands, his voice rough and full of authority. Your lips instantly zipping as the three of you scurry to the red car and climb into the back, which was strange since you always sat in the front.

You stare out the window, the standoff lasting a minute or so longer before some silent threatening words are exchanged. The Prophet’s car driving away, the Santos’s not joining you until it was gone from the street completely. You release a breath you didn’t know your were holding, relief flooding through you since your boyfriend was okay and nothing had to go down. Monse climbs into Cesar’s lap, Sad Eyes squeezing in next to you as Oscar and the other member get into the front. The car ride silent as he drops everybody off until it’s just you, him, and his brother left.

“Why the fuck where you taking your hyna home so late?” He asks through gritted teeth as he pulls into the driveway,”I’m tired of telling you to stop being out when it’s dark.” He lectures Cesar, the two of you still sitting in the back like little pouting kids,”And you.” He says as he locks eyes with you in the rearview mirror,”need to learn to keep your fucking mouth closed. Don’t talk shit to someone who has a gun when you don’t even have anything to defend yourself with.”

“Sorry.” You both mumble quietly

“Get out of my car and get inside.”

You and Cesar scurry out of the back seat and run inside the safety of the house,”Good luck with him, I’m staying in my room.”

“Don’t leave my by myself.” You exclaim as you throw your hands up,”You’re the reason why we’re even in this mess.”

“Yeah, but you’re my brothers girl so you get to deal with his temper tantrums.” He shrugs with a small stupid smirk,”So bye.”

“Hate you.” You whisper shout down the hallway just before he enters the room, Oscar coming inside seconds later and pushing past you.

“Don’t be mad.” You groan as you walk behind him, following him to the bedroom,”We lost track of time while watching movies. We didn’t know when you were going to be back and Monse needed to get home...I didn’t want him walking back by himself.”

“It don’t matter, you should have waited. You’re lucky I was there. He had a gun, and y’all had nothing.” He says with a shake of his head, rummaging through the closet and pulling out another gun.

“What’s that for?” You ask, his actions catching you off guard.

“Just extra precaution.” He huffs, placing it on the nightstand with his other gun,”Those Prophets are getting too big of a head. Deja que traten de aparecer aquí, les dispararé a todos. I want them to try me, we ain’t gonna just be talking this time.”

You look down at the ground, trying to calm your nerves before heading over to do the same with Oscar,”They’re not gonna come here papi. They wouldn’t do that, they act tough, but they aren’t.” You reason,”I’m sorry we went out late. I’m sorry for putting us in that position, and you’re right I should learn to keep quiet when I need to. So just chill out, don’t work yourself up.”

“You two are all I got in this world. You know that, no sé qué haré si pierdo a alguno de ustedes. That’s why I tell you guys these things, but neither of you ever listen to me.”

“I know Ozzy, I know. No more going out after dark without you, I promise.” You say

“I’m sorry too, I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that back there. I just didn’t want you to be caught in any crossfire if it came down to it. I love you, con todo dentro de mi.” He sighs, his arms wrapping around you in comfort. Letting you bring him back down to Earth as he inhales your scent,”I love you.” he repeats

“I love you, forever.” You say as you scratch the back of his head with your nails softly,”Thank you for coming to our rescue tonight.”

“Always.” He mumbles,”I’m always gonna keep you safe mami.” Oscar promises, which is something he didn’t even need to say. You knew he would always be there when you needed him.

[fandom-imagines-stories]

72 Hours

Dean Winchester x Reader

Words: 3742

Part One

Summary: With only three days until being dragged down to hell, you hope to spend them in the embrace of the man you love. The man you're dying for. 

Notes: Alright, here is part two for The Deal! This might be my favorite series for this month and I am really proud of how it turned out. I told you there would be some dark Dean imagines this October. Let me know what you guys think and you think it’ll end!

Warnings: Death, gore, mentions of Hell, plenty of guilt, sacrifice

Special shout out to my amazing beta reader Sarah, @suckmysupernatural​ . I love her so much and honestly, she’s helped me so much in getting these imagines out for you and she has some absolutely killer writing of her own!

Want more Supernatural? Find it HERE

-

Saturday 12:50 A.M.

“Tell me you didn’t,” Dean begged, his hands cradling your face. You didn’t say anything. “Damn it Y/N, tell me you didn’t do it!” He shook you slightly when he yelled. 

“I had to get you back,” you cried. Dean pushed away, forcefully knocking over a stack of books and kicking a table into the wall. “Sam wasn’t going to find anything else and you know it.” 

“Then you let me stay dead.” He boomed, furiously turning towards you. You had never seen him this mad before. Not at you. “You bury me and you move on.”

“I thought you were in hell!” You screamed. Both of them just stared at you, fuming. “I-I saw you. It was like a dream, but it wasn’t. I saw you in hell screaming for help, in agony. I couldn’t sit by and do nothing.”

“That’s what last night was about?” Sam asked, feeling a wave of guilt rush over him. He could have stopped you. If he had just paid more attention, he could have figured out your plan. 

“I saw him, Sam.” You wished you could make them understand. “Dean, you spent forty years in hell for Sam, I couldn’t let you spend any more for me.” 

“Well I wasn’t there.” His tone was harsh, making your heart sting. 

“What do you want me to say? I’m sorry?” You crossed your arms over your chest. “I’m not.”

“This is the most selfish thing you have ever done, you know that?” Dean was hiding his pain with anger, but damn he was good at it. But so were you. 

“Look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing.” You challenged. His jaw clenched. “You can’t, Dean! Because you have done it!”

You stared each other down, casting an icy chill over the room. You didn’t have time for this. You stiffened, eye darting to the clock. Time. Sam noticed this and finally spoke. 

“Y/N, how long did the demon give you?” Judging by the way your body tensed at the question, it wasn’t the usual decade. You clammed up, the adrenaline of the argument fading. Your silence sent a terrible pang through Dean’s chest. He repeated Sam’s question. 

“How long do we have?” Through his anger, you still caught one of his words. We.

“Dean…” Your fire was gone and you couldn’t help but think about the demon. She said he was in hell. The bitch had tricked you. And you fell for it completely. Even so, as you looked into Dean’s rage filled eyes you knew it was worth it. You would have saved him with only three minutes to live if you had to. Dean roughly grabbed your shoulders.

“How long?” This close to him, you could see it. The fear. You had to look away. 

“Three days.” 

Dean stumbled back like he’d been punched in the gut. 

“What?” Sam gasped, taking a step towards you. Dean wasn’t moving. He was hunched over, unable to breathe.

“I have until Monday at midnight, so you can understand why I don’t want to spend my time fighting with you.” Dean slowly straightened up, putting on his emotionless soldier face. He stalked towards you until your faces were inches apart. 

“What did you expect, Y/N? That we would be all kisses and cuddles?” The low rumbling growl in his voice scared you. “You want to throw away your life, fine. But when the bitch comes to drag you down to hell, don’t expect me to be there to watch.” He spat and Sam watched him in shock. 

“Dean!” Sam exclaimed. Dean tried to fight it, but a tear streaked down his face. He tore his gaze away from you and stormed out of the room. Your body relaxed and you let your own tears fall. You knew this would happen but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt like hell. Pardon the expression. 

“I- um, I should probably go.” You gulped, shoving your hands in your pockets. Sam moved to the base of the stairs to block your way. 

“Don’t.” 

“Sam-”

“You are not going to just crawl into some hole to die.” He loomed over you, his anger having changed to protective determination. “You brought my brother back and I can never repay you for that. But what you did…” He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Do you have any idea what that’s going to do to him?” 

“I didn’t have a choice, Sam.” You smiled sadly. “I love him.” Sam didn’t say anything for a moment. The woman that he saw as a sister was going to die the same way his brother had. But there wouldn’t be an angel to pull you out of hell this time. He backed up suddenly. 

“Oh God, I have to call Cas.” 

-

4:41 A.M. 

Dean was surrounded by shattered glass and crumbled wax. It was a miracle that he hadn’t set the room on fire. He sat against the wall amongst the carnage of candles with his head in his hands. Alone, he cried- screaming and destroying anything he could get his hands on. Now, he just sat in the corner, feeling the fight draining out of him. Even if there was a way to stop the deal, it would take longer than you had. He was going to lose you.

A knock at the door pulled him out of his miserable thoughts. Sam came in before he could tell him to go away. Dean rested his head against the wall and dried his face with his sleeve. 

“How are you feeling?” He asked cautiously. Dean didn’t say a word. He just picked up a piece of glass and flipped it between his fingers. “Dean, this isn’t something you can just ignore.” 

“Sam if you try and pull any of that Dr. Phil crap, so help me God, I will shove this candle wax down your throat.” He hissed. Sam kept a cool head, knowing that his brother’s animosity wasn’t directed towards him. He also knew that it wasn’t directed towards Y/N either. 

“Dean, you have to talk to her.” The older Winchester lifted the shard of glass to throw it at him. Sam smacked it out of his hand and yanked him to his feet. “Y/N is going to die, Dean. She’s going to hell unless we can figure something out to stop it.”

“What do you want me to say?” Dean pushed Sam away from him. “Gee Y/N, I’ve spent every minute of our relationship trying to keep you safe, but now that you’ve sacrificed yourself let’s all sing Kumbaya!” 

“I don’t like this anymore than you do. Y/N’s family. So yeah, I’m going to work my ass off to try and stop what happened to you from happening to her. But if nothing works…” He wanted to have hope, but even his optimism couldn’t triumph over this. “We have to be there for her.”

Sam looked like he wanted to say more, but decided against it. This was something they needed to figure out themselves. Besides, Cas was on his way after being on the road and he had a lot to catch up on. He walked out of Dean’s room passing you in the hall. 

You entered your room slowly. Dean stood in the middle of the floor, bits and pieces of candle around his feet. You stopped moving when his gaze lifted to your face. He didn’t look as hostile as he had before. He just looked broken. 

“I just came to get some clothes.” You said as calmly as you could with him looking at you like that. Dean made no movement to stop you so you walked over to the dresser and grabbed some shirts and a few pairs of jeans. Just enough for three days. You tried to make a quick exit, but Dean’s voice stopped you. 

“Don’t.” Your hand fell away from the doorknob, now shaking nervously at your side. 

“I told you I don’t want to waste the time I have fighting.” You sighed, almost afraid to turn around. You felt his hand on your shoulder and your solemn resolve crumbled. 

“I won’t fight you.” He whispered. “Just stay here.” He slowly turned you around. Your eyes locked together and he pulled you into his arms. You reveled in his warmth. Less than 24 hours ago, he had been lying on that bed, his body cold and his eyes empty. You were sure nothing in the world would ever feel better than his embrace. 

“Why did you have to do it, baby?” Dean cried, the crack in his voice shooting up through your heart. You pulled back, running your fingers through his chestnut hair. 

“I told you, Dean. I need you alive. I can’t do this without you. Sam was barely holding on. I thought you were in hell. You were crying out for help. For me. It was my fault you were dead and I couldn’t live with it.” 

“But I-”

“Shhh,” You hushed, pressing your forehead against his. “There’s nothing we can do about it now. Please, can we just be together? We’ve already wasted enough time and I don’t want to be alone.”

“I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart.” He promised, gently lifting your lips up to his. 

-

8:30 A.M.

You and Dean got a few hours of sleep before cleaning up the room. Cas had finally arrived and pulled Dean into an awkward Cas-like hug. 

“Sam told me what happened.” He looked at you disapprovingly. “I won’t be able to pull you out.” 

“I know.” 

“If there’s anything I can do…” Again, the angel felt so powerless to help his friends. 

“Thanks Cas.” You kissed his cheek affectionately. You knew that there was nothing to be done and frankly, you didn't want to waste the precious time you had searching for a way out. You just wanted to be with your boys. 

“How are you feeling this morning?” You fretted, instinctively putting your hands on Dean’s chest as if you were making sure there was a heartbeat. Dean put his hand on top of yours, holding it close to his heart. 

“I’m not the one we need to worry about.” He wished that he could hold you there forever, but the clock was ticking fast. Only 63 and a half hours left. 

“How about I make some breakfast?” You suggest cheerily. “We should still have some stuff for omelets and lots and lots of bacon.” You knew that your boyfriend couldn’t object to that. 

You yanked him to the kitchen and connected your phone to Sam’s bluetooth speaker that Dean still called ‘new fangled tech’. Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls” started to play and you just couldn’t resist dancing. Dean was leaning against the fridge until you grabbed him and forced him to shimmy a little with you. 

Dean’s laugh filled the kitchen as he spun you into him. He wrapped his arms around you from behind and you both rocked to the music. It was almost like nothing had happened. Like you were going to dance and laugh like this a week from now. The song ended and you felt Dean’s arm tighten around you. Neither of you said a word, but you knew that he was thinking the same thing. He didn’t want this to end either. 

-

3:01 P.M

“So get this,” Sam set his laptop down in front of you. “Two missing persons reports in Kansas City. Witnesses described a strange woman stalking the house before the couple disappeared. They just found the husband yesterday… his heart ripped out.”

“Sam, you’re seriously looking for a case right now?” Dean snapped. You put a hand on his arm to calm him.

“No, this is perfect.”

“Y/N, you can’t be serious.”

“Dean, the best way to get our minds off of this is to go kill some evil son of a bitch.” Looking between the brothers your hearts swelled proudly. “What do you say, boys? One last hunt together.”

Dean wouldn’t argue with that. When he was on the fast track to the underworld, all he could do was waste as many monsters as possible. You had earned one more victory. Besides, it would distract you enough for him to make a call.

-

8:14 P.M.

The drive took roughly four hours and Dean even let you drive part of the way. The three of you agreed to hit the coroner’s office first and then head over to the couples’ house to see if the wolf had left any clues as to where it took them. 

“You know what, we should just knock two birds with one stone.” Dean suggested. His girlfriend and his brother gave him a questioning look. “I’ll head to the house and you two go check out the body.”

“I guess so, but why?” You wondered. Dean shrugged. 

“I just figured we could bust this thing tonight and be back home by morning.” He mainly needed enough time to call a certain reluctant ally.

“Sounds good to me.” You gave him a quick kiss before grabbing your pantsuit from the trunk. You and Sam quickly departed and Dean started walking to the suburbs where the couple lived. He pulled out his phone and waited for that grumpy accent to answer. 

“What do you want?” Crowley barked, sounding especially annoyed. 

“We’ve got to talk. I need you to undo a deal.”

“I’m sorry, you want me to what?”

“Y/N made a deal with one of your lackeys and I need you to erase it or whatever the hell it is you do.”

“That’s not how this works, Squirrel. You can’t just call me, making demands because your girlfriend is an idiot.” Crowley sounded like he was about to hang up, so Dean spoke quickly. 

“What if it wasn’t a square deal?” 

“We’re demons, you imbecile, nothing we do is ‘square’. Now don’t call me again.” The Crossroads King hung up before Dean got another word in. 

“Damn it.” Crowley was Dean’s one shot at fixing this. For the time being, he channeled his frustration into investigating the house. On the other side of town, you and Sam finished up checking out the body and headed back to the impala. 

“Hey Sam.” You said suddenly. 

“Yeah?”

“I never said thank you for being there for me that night.” You leaned on the car’s hood. “You had just lost your brother and you didn’t hesitate to comfort me. I appreciated it.” Sam wrapped an arm around your shoulders for a side-hug. 

“You’ve been there for me and my brother more times than I can count.” He kissed the top of your head. “I’ll never forget that.” You blinked rapidly, feeling the water works coming on.

“Damn it, Samuel, you’re ruining my tough bitch cover.” You laughed, fully hugging the younger Winchester. “Look after him for me, Sammy.” Sam didn’t respond, but you knew he would. It’s what Winchesters did best. 

-

11:49 P.M.

Dean was able to trace the werewolf to a dive bar because of a dropped napkin. Due to the time of the moon cycle, you knew you were dealing with a pureblood so you’d have to be extra careful. With guns loaded with silver bullets, you strode in with a Winchester on each side. 

It was pretty empty, but seeing as it was a dump that didn’t surprise you. What did surprise you was the woman who was supposed to be missing sitting in a corner booth. She was with another woman with a tattoo on her hand. A full moon. 

“They make it so easy.” You muttered and started towards them. 

The chase was always your favorite part of a hunt. Once you were out in the open, they turned. The pureblood must have turned the woman and fed her her husband’s heart. Gross. Sam and Dean went after the newbie but the pureblood was all yours.

You tackled her to the ground, pinning her down with all your strength. She struggled, but you had your gun on her quickly. She looked up at you with a smile full of fangs.

“You don’t have long.” She sneered. “I can smell the death radiating off of you.” You took aim at her heart. 

“Yeah, well I’ll see you in hell, bitch.” You pulled the trigger and heard another shot from across the empty lot. Sam and Dean sauntered back towards you. This was just what you needed. One last hunt in the books before you punch your clock.

-

Sunday 6:40 P.M.

After a great night of hunting, you’d earned the right to sleep in. You lounged in bed with Dean while Sam left for coffee. Majorly craving cheeseburgers, you all stopped at a local dinger for a late lunch. It wasn’t until around 3:00 that you finally got on the road back to the bunker. 

The sun was setting, giving everything a pretty orange hue. You were hogging all the beers since you were in the back seat and Dean was driving. The open road and the beautiful rumble of the engine made for the perfect combination. 

“Wait, turn up the radio.” You cheered, hearing the beginning lines of “Drive Away” by Dobie Gray begin to play. Sam chuckled and turned up the volume. Reaching the chorus, you leaned forward, draping your arms over Dean’s seat, resting them on his chest. You all sang off key, but it didn’t matter. 

“Give me the beat boys and free my soul! I wanna get lost in your rock n roll and drift away.” 

It took a moment for the lyrics to sink into Dean’s head. Free my soul and drift away. Damn. As crazy as it sounded, maybe this was Baby’s goodbye to you. His smile was sad, but watching you grin, singing at the top of your lungs, he loved you more than he ever had before. 

It was all perfect. From the sunset to Dean and Sam belting out the song with you, you couldn’t have imagined a better way to go. Even if you could go back, erase all of the loss and pain, live a life without hunting, you wouldn’t do it. No matter what, you would always pick this moment every time. Drifting away with your boys in the best car in the world. 

-

10:00 P.M.

Dean was taking a shower and you were changing into your sexier pajamas. You wanted your last night to be perfect. You knew you would be gone before he woke up. The ringing of Dean’s phone caught your attention. Why was Crowley calling him? You decided to answer.

“Alright, I looked into the deal so you would stop bothering me about it.” Crowley said gruffly. 

“What?” You tried to lower your voice so he couldn’t tell the difference. 

“How stupid to you Winchesters get?” He snarked. “Your girlfriend’s deal. The one you wanted me to reverse?”

“Oh, um, right.” You stammered.

“Well like I told you before, I can’t just snap my fingers and undo what’s been done. The demon was clever in manipulating her dreams, I’m actually quite impressed.” You rolled your eyes. “Anyway, Y/N made the deal of her own free will, so it’s legitimate. Now seriously, never call me again.” He hung up abruptly and you felt your blood start to boil. Dean did what?

“Woah, you haven’t worn that in ages.” Dean smirked, coming out in his sweatpants, droplets of water still dotting his chest. You tossed his phone on the bed, giving him a death glare. 

“You called Crowley…” You seethed. Dean’s smirk fell instantly. 

“Yes.” He crossed his arms over his chest, daring you to argue. 

“Dean, this isn’t a game of tug of war where we fight over who’s dying for who.” You mimicked his stance. “I made my bed. I know what I got myself into.” 

“No, you don’t!” He shouted, voice echoing down the hall. He closed the door with a hard slam. “You have no idea what it’s going to be like.”

You watched his entire body tense and his eyes glazed over. This is not how you wanted this night to go. Dean was trying to keep it together, but the memories were too much. 

“I remember every minute of it.” He wasn’t looking at you anymore. Rather, his eyes were focused behind you, staring into his past. “From the second the hell hound tore me up to Cas raising me out. I can’t get it out of my head, even after years of being out. It was agony.”

You screwed your eyes shut, but Dean crossed to you, holding your chin between his thumb and pointer finger to make you look at him. Tears had escaped onto his face now and his voice cracked as he continued. 

“And then when I couldn’t take it anymore, I did it to other people. I tortured those poor souls to save myself. So if I thought there was a change to save you from that pain, I would take it without flinching.” This was different from your other fight. You weren’t hiding behind anger anymore. You could see the pain in his eyes and it was breaking your heart. 

“I won’t pretend that I wasn’t selfish.” You sighed, taking his hands in yours. “I needed you back and I didn’t care how I got you. I knew that you would hate me for what I did, but it didn't matter. I had to get you back.”

Dean’s gaze fell to the floor and his voice dropped to a devastated whisper. 

“How many more people have to die for me, baby?” He looked up again and for the first time, you regretted putting him through this. “How many more people do I have to lose?” He rested his forehead against yours and you draped your arms around his neck. 

“Don’t think about that now. Let’s just have tonight.” You said, bringing your lips to his. You moved together, desperately savoring this moment knowing it would be your last. 

Dean laid back on the bed and pulled you onto his lap. Your hands ran through his hair as you deepened the kiss. It was your last night to love him and you damn sure weren’t going to waste it.

-

Continue to The Last Toll

General Tag: @rae-gar-targaryen; @takemepedropascal; @childhood-imagination;  @mylovegoesto;  @yellowbadgergirl​

Supernatural: @desimarie12; @deandreamernp; @vicmc624​; @halesandy​ @livshaes​;  @d-whinchestergirl87​

[ficforthought]

The state of fandom, J2 things & me being done with shitty people!

So, I’m late to the party however 2021 is finally here. To date not an improvement on 2020 but the year is still young and there are always positives to be found for those who care to see them. Even though Supernatural is over now *muffled sobs* some out there still can't get over their issues with the show or the finalé enough to stop constantly bitching about it. Everyone has their opinion, I'm not 100% happy with it myself but we got so much good stuff that the ending was fitting and mostly positive. I firmly believe that Dean did deserve better, though I was as prepared for his death as much as I could be because it was what I anticipated would happen, though hoped it wouldn’t actually happen. It doesn't make it any less heartbreaking or mean that I don't wish he'd got more time with Sam and Miracle, it just means that I've accepted what we got which ultimately was Sam and Dean together forever, and that's what I wanted above anything else. Almost two months after the show has ended I'm seeing the same things time and time again, some from seasons ago...like six or seven seasons ago! SMH.  I've never actually had my say on it publicly because I chose to step away to process it all. Now I'm bored of the same things being said ad nauseam so I'm laying out my thoughts on the situation as a whole and then getting on with my fandom life.

I have always been - and will always be - a Jensen/Dean girl, however I also adore Jared/Sam and have no interest in seeing any BS about either of them. Why people feel the need to put one down to make 'their' J look 'better', I will never know. Why people question J2's friendship and say it's not going to be solid after the show is also beyond me. It'll certainly be different because they won't be physically spending the time together like they did, but the core relationship is still there, that doesn't just go away because they're not on set together. They're both moving on to other things which is hard to see, but also great as well because they will have new audiences and new showcases for their talents. New doors will be opened and they can explore their passion projects with what lessons they learned on SPN. They gave us so much for fifteen years, the least the fandom can do is let them move on to those new things in peace, right? Let the drama and infighting stay in the past. None of us will ever forget SPN, least of all J2, so anyone who actually cares about the actors and not just characters, IMO, should to continue to support them...but if people don't want to do that? That's fine, nobody is forcing us to watch everything they do from now on. Liking Sam and Dean is enough, not everyone is interested in what J2 or other cast members do from here on out but for the love of everything you hold dear, STFU and move on with your bitching. I'm not saying I'll watch everything they're involved in but I'll support J2 with everything I have regardless of whether I watch whatever it is, because I do care. That also goes for my other favourites from the cast. Support comes in many forms - a simple reblog, retweet or liking an IG post is all support and the minimum those of us who spend a lot of time on social media can do, it's a few taps on the screen or clicks of a mouse. We should also never forget that J2's biggest supporters are J2 themselves, no matter what. They are under no obligation to like each other's posts or publicly support everything the other does - yes, it's nice to see that, however, there is more to life than social media. None of us know how much J2 and the other cast communicate with each other privately. They let us into their lives for a decade and a half, they openly talked about their friendship, their families, and their own children. I know more about J2's kids than I do about any of my colleagues’ kids and grandkids, not because I want to (it's none of my business) but because they've put it out there so it's impossible to avoid. They’re actors, they didn’t have to do that but they chose to because they’re wonderful humans and know that the majority of the SPN Family are good people.

Everywhere I turn ATM there are more and more Jared articles and pictures because of Walker and Mantra Labs, and you know what? Even though I'm a Jensen girl I'm genuinely happy for Jared, and am looking forward to Walker and everything that will bring him. Am I bitter that there's been so little Jensen content? No. Disappointed? Yeah, a little, but that's because I always want Jensen content, why wouldn't I? He's amazing, and his time in the spotlight will come but for now its Jared's turn and I'm proud of how well he's doing, all the attention for Walker and other things going on in his life, like the Men's Health article. He looks so happy and excited to work on new things.

From a Jensen PoV I'm thrilled we've had the - too short but still lovely - snow covered snippets, and we've got all of the filming and BTS stuff to come from The Boys S3, then all the build up to it airing as well as when we finally get to see it. It's going to be a very long wait (and JFC does it already feel like a long wait!), but it will be worth it.

I said last year that 2021 would see changes here in terms of who I follow, what content I post etc and you'll start to see that. I will unfollow anyone who repeatedly posts negative and/or derogatory comments about either J, or any cast member I care about. I don't like seeing shit about those I have no interest in, either, but I make use of filters so I don't see very much anyway. Twitter continues to be a cesspool of hate and toxicity, it's never going to change but the mute/block functions are there to be used. It's never possible to only see positive things in life, but I certainly intend to do my part to make my online fandom experience as positive as possible. I know lots of you here do the same thing, so that's already a bonus! Other fandoms will be on my blog as well as SPN and I always tag so feel free to filter those out, or if you're only interested in my SPN posts and/or fics, hit that unfollow button here if that's what you feel you want to do, and subscribe on AO3 instead if you only want fic. It's all good, do whatever you need to do to tailor your experience to your specifications. Fandom spaces should be somewhere we enjoy being otherwise there's just no point.

OK, I think I'm done! 😆 Happy new year and I hope everyone is keeping themselves and other people safe and healthy.

[puckinginsane]

If The World Was Ending

Isn’t that your house?

That wasn’t the text message he was expecting from his teammate. Maybe are you ok? Did it hit you? Have you heard from anyone else? What was more unexpected was what was on the link he sent. A link to a tweet. A tweet that had a picture of his house on it. Not the house he currently lives in, but the house he currently still owns. It wouldn’t have been for much longer. He was weeks away from closing on the sale. The sale he had been waiting one long year for. It didn’t look like his house anymore, though. It was in shambles. It looked like a tornado hit it. It looked like a tornado hit it because a tornado actually did hit it. 

As soon as he got over the initial shock he went right into panic. Was his girlfriend there when the tornado hit? Ex. Ex girlfriend. They’re not together anymore. Sometimes he forgets. Sometimes he is in denial. Sometimes he’d rather not remember. The decision was a mutual one, but that didn’t make it any less harder. It was about a year ago that they realized that they were looking for different things. He wasn’t looking for forever, although neither was she. Sometimes people just grow apart and that’s what happened to them. It didn’t mean they stopped wondering about each other and it sure as hell didn’t mean they still didn’t love each other. 

He didn’t care that there could be potential for another touch down. He didn’t care that it wasn’t safe to be driving. He didn’t care that roads were closed. He didn’t care that the neighborhood he used to call home was in shambles. He had to make sure she was ok. It was dark but he could still see the devastation on people’s faces. Some of them lost everything. At least they were ok. Maybe she’d be ok too. The pictures of the house looked bad. Could she survive that? He didn’t waste time in trying to get in touch with her, not even knowing if he’d get through, he just knew he had to go. 

They had broken up and he was planning on selling the house but said she could stay until it was sold. There was no use in it being empty when she needed a place to stay and he had moved out. She was taking care of it. Getting it ready for showings. Making sure the landscaping was kept up with. She was happy to do it even though the memories that the house held kept it impossible to move on. 

She didn’t tell him but she stopped staying at the house a few months ago. It was too painful. If she was going to get over him she had to leave everything behind. She didn’t want him to think it was harder on her than he thought so she couldn’t tell him. She still looked after it, though, she'd never break a promise to him. 

She saw the house on the news and her heart immediately sank. She knew he’d think she was there and assume the worst. She didn’t think about anything else but needing to go there, if not for anything but to see the damage. Maybe he’d go too and she could show him that she’s ok. It didn’t matter how much seeing him again would hurt, thinking about him worrying was so much worse. 

The road was blocked from driving all the way to the house so she stopped at the roadblock and walked the rest of the way. She didn’t see him or any of his vehicles. Maybe he wasn’t worrying as much as she thought. She didn’t think too much into it, though, she wasn’t staying that far away. She gasped when she got to the house. It’s absolutely destroyed. It looks like a child came by, ripped the roof off, bent the gate like a paperclip, tore everything out and threw it all over like it was nothing. 

There are people taking pictures, some just looking around in shock, some falling to their knees over the sight of their empty foundation where their house once was. As bad as the house looks, some people have it a lot worse. She thanks her lucky stars she decided to move out, she would have been home.

He arrives not much longer after she did. Even with all of the carnage around them the first thing he saw was her. All he wants to do is walk up behind her and hug her. Relief rushes over him. He thought she could be dead. The house is just a building but she is family. It doesn’t matter that they broke up and haven’t talked in a while, she will always be family to him. 

As he walks towards her he starts to take the rest of the scene in. It looks like something straight out of a movie, straight out of a nightmare. He never thought he’d be right in the middle of something like this. He watches as she looks at her phone, seeing if she has service, she doesn’t. She wants to reach out to him. She doesn’t even know if he knows. 

It doesn’t dawn on him that he might startle her since she is unaware that he is even there, but he doesn’t care. Everything in him is screaming that he needs to hug her, to be close to her. He wraps his big tattooed arms around her and she jumps but immediately settles down when she realizes it’s him. She takes a deep breath. “Oh god, Tyler, you scared the shit out of me.” Her voice is soft and sullen. He silently laughs to himself. He had forgotten how easily she startles. 

“I’m sorry,” his low, deep voice vibrates in her ear. “Are you ok? Were you home? Fuck, I’ve been so worried.”

She turns to face him and hugs him, he hugs her back. He hugs her so tight and this time he may not ever let her go. “I wasn’t here.”

He breathes a sigh of relief. “Thank god.” He buries his face in her hair, taking in the all too familiar scent of her shampoo. A scent that hasn't changed in the whole time he's known her. A scent that once gave him comfort and now every time he smells anything close to it, it pains his heart just a little bit, reminding him of how stupid he was to let her walk away from him. “I don’t know what I would have done if anything happened to you.”

She can feel the tension in his body slowly begin to dissipate. She rubs his back, knowing that calms him. "I'm sorry about your house." That's not what she should have said. That's not what she meant to say. Something like I'm fine or thank you or anything other than that, but she was caught off guard and wasn't expecting him to say something like that. 

"The house doesn't matter. I mean it does, but it doesn't. All that matters is that you weren't in it." He then starts to wonder if she wasn't here then where was she? An irrational wave of jealousy rushes over him as he assumes she was with some guy. "Where were you?" He never had a great poker face, wearing his heart on his sleeve, no filter. He was honest and said whatever came to mind, usually before thinking about it first. He knows he has no right to question where she was or be mad about it. "Sorry. Forget I asked."

"I was at my condo."

"Oh. I didn't know you had one."

"I couldn't stay here any longer. I thought time would have made it easier but it just made it harder. The more I lived here without you, the more I wished things were different. I still come by and make sure everything is taken care of but I just couldn't sleep here anymore." She tried everything. She tried sleeping in different rooms thinking that maybe it was their room that was the problem, it wasn't. She slept in every room in the house and it didn't change how she felt. She couldn't move on without leaving it all behind.

"I would have helped you, you know." Meaning he would have paid for the whole thing and not think twice. He wants her taken care of. 

"I know you would have, but it would have been something else tying us together and that's the last thing I needed."

"Right."

"The timing couldn't have been better. The house sold."

"And you weren't here tonight."

"And I wasn't here tonight."

They stand there, where the entrance to the driveway once was, and look at what's left of the house and the property. Mother nature can be a cruel bitch sometimes. It only takes a few minutes to destroy everything. They could have been home. If they were still together they would have been here. He bought the new house to start a new beginning. To figure out his life. To decide what he really wanted. This could have been so much worse if they were still together.

It's so dark out since the power is out everywhere in the neighborhood and it's 10 pm. And eerily quiet other than the occasional tree branch snapping from someone stepping on it. People are starting to come by just to take pictures. Tyler decides that it's best to just go home, regroup, and come back in the morning when it'll be easier to see.

"I should get going. There's not much we can do tonight. I'm coming back in the morning to get a better look at it."

"Are you sure you want to do that?" Her playful tone tells him she's asking just to bust his balls, not that she's actually wondering.

He grins. She always was quick witted, something he liked most about her. "No, but I don't have a choice."

"Do you want me to meet you here?"

"Yeah. If you're not busy. If you want to."

"I want to."

"Thanks." He rubs his hand over his beard. A nervous habit of his. "So, uh, I parked next to you."

"Let's walk back together then."

He walks close behind her, making sure she keeps her balance as she walks over some rubble. She gives him an appreciative smile and they proceed to their cars. They both feel drawn to each other, neither of them wanting to part ways, but they have to. There’s nothing they can do tonight. Tomorrow’s another day. Tomorrow they assess the damage and truly say goodbye to the last thing that was connecting them together.

“Hug the dogs extra close for me tonight.” One of the hardest parts of their breakup was having to leave the dogs behind. Technically they were his dogs but they became hers too. She’d take care of them when he was away, even before they moved in together. Sometimes she feels as if she misses them more than she misses him, most times. It’s easier to miss them, they never did anything wrong. She often wonders if they miss her too, how hard it was on them when she didn’t move to the new house, if they’re ok without her there.

“I will.” He almost tells her they miss her, but knows it wouldn’t be fair to her to say that. Tyler isn’t known for thinking before he speaks but he couldn’t do that to her. He knows how hard it was to leave them. He gives her one more hug before tearing himself away. He almost offers to follow her home to make sure she gets back safely, but thinks better of it. He’d just want to come in, to see how she’s living now, if she needs to be taken care of, to spend more time with her. “Get home safe. Text me when you get there.”

“You do the same.”

They finally go their separate ways and they do let the other know when they reach home safely. She goes right to bed even though she knows it will be impossible to fall asleep. The silence of the night is too much for her to bear. Her mind starts to race. She can’t stop thinking about him, wondering if it’s all in her mind, wondering if he felt it too. There’s something still there between them. She feels drawn to him. Seeing him again brought all of those feelings back that she thought she finally got over. She thinks about texting him, but knows no good would come from it so she turns on some music and tries to drown out the world.

When he gets home he does as he promised and hugs the dogs just for her. They’re happy for the love and attention. They follow him to bed and join him, giving him little room to himself. Three labs take up a lot of space. He’s having a really difficult time falling asleep, and it’s not because of the dogs. He doesn’t want her to be alone tonight. He doesn’t want her to be alone ever. He’ll see her in the morning, though, and that’s going to have to be good enough. He picks up his phone to text her, but puts it back down and turns on a movie instead. 

It's a rough morning for both of them. He has to find a way to get through practice on very little sleep, which is not anything new for him but today he's emotionally drained and needs to pull himself together and get focused. His teammates count on him and even though they all know by now that his house was destroyed he will not use that as an excuse to work less hard than anyone else. The first thing he does it check in with everyone else to make sure they're ok, the rest is routine. 

She called out from work knowing she wouldn't be productive and that she'd need to take a half day anyway. There's no way she was going to let Tyler go to the house and deal with it on his own. She manages to get a few hours of sleep before she gets a text that he'd meet her at the house at 1pm. She takes a longer shower than usual, hoping that it will wake her up a bit more. She stops at Starbucks on the way there to pick up a coffee.

Tyler gets to the house first. His heart almost stops when he sees it in the daylight for the first time. It looks so much worse than he even imagined. He could barely see what it actually looked like last night in the dark. Seeing how bad the damage is just makes him even more thankful that she wasn’t there. She probably wouldn’t have made it. It’s almost hard to concentrate on anything else but the fact that he could have lost her forever. Sure, losing the house is a tragedy but losing her would have been the end of the world. 

Her heart sinks when she pulls up to the end of the street and she can see the carnage. The closer she gets, the worse it looks. She sees Tyler frozen in place and can only imagine what’s going through his head. She wraps her arm around his back and hands him a coffee of his own. “I figured you’d need it if your night was anything like mine.”

He sighs. “Couldn’t sleep either?”

“Not at all.”

They look around at the neighborhood at everyone else assessing their damage. “It’s fucking crazy, right? This sucks.”

She turns her attention back to the house. “It does.” For the first time it dawns on her that she actually could have been there. It had crossed her mind last night for only a moment but this is the first time that she realizes that she could be dead right now. She was so worried about what he was thinking that she didn't really take the time to think about everything else. A wave of emotions rushes through her and she lets out a sob she didn’t know she was holding in. 

He quickly wraps her up in a hug. The sound of her crying breaks his heart and he’d do anything to make it better. “We’re ok and that’s what matters.”

“Yeah. I know. It’s just...shit it’s so bad, Ty.”

He rubs her back,  trying to find the right things to say. He knows that there's nothing he can do to change what happened and that he has to try to bring her mind somewhere else. They start to walk up the driveway as far as they can go before they hit the palm tree that fell right in front of the front door. “Remember when we barely made it through the door that day?” She smiles, remembering the exact day he’s talking about. “You kissed me like...it was the greatest kiss.”

“I remember. It’s not like we made it too far into the house before clothes started disappearing.”

“I never looked at that kitchen counter the same again after that.”

He laughs. “Yeah. It was great, though.”

“Really great.” 

They look into each other’s eyes, smiling and remembering all of the good times they had together, until the sound of Julie’s voice behind them makes them both jump. They didn’t know she was there, or how long she’d been standing there. They bashfully say their hellos and start to walk around the property. Each step is more painful than the last. It’s quickly becoming apparent that there’s no salvaging the house. The backyard, one of their favorite parts of the property, is unrecognizable. The roof was completely torn off and destroyed. Most of the house is destroyed.

They talk with their real estate agent about the next step. He has already called his insurance company so he’s going to have to deal with that at some point. He will have to revisit this heartbreaking scene all over again. After Julie leaves they stick around a little longer, neither of them wanting to go. Not only would they be leaving the house behind, but each other. He’s not ready to let her go just yet. This time he’s spent with her has sparked something. Maybe it’s just familiarity, maybe it’s just getting over that worry he had that she was gone, maybe he’s second guessing every single decision he’s ever made. Who knows if this feeling will wear off or not but right now he knows that all he wants is more time with her. 

He’s not crazy. She feels the same things he is. She could have been in that house last night. It starts to put things in perspective. What is the point of living if you’re living without the one you care about the most? Isn’t it time she put her fears aside and take a leap of faith? It could have been her last day on Earth and all she could think about was him. That look in his beautiful brown eyes says that he feels the same. Neither of them have been great with words but they could always tell what each other were feeling by the looks on their faces. She sighs. Will she even sleep better tonight than last night? Will the same thoughts keep her awake? 

“Do you want to go out to lunch?” he finally breaks the silence. 

She knows she should say no, that she’s just kidding herself thinking that there’s still anything between them. Lunch wouldn’t hurt, though, right? It’s just lunch, and she didn’t eat breakfast. “Lunch sounds good. Where do you want to go?”

“Do you want to pick some stuff up from Eatzi’s and go to my place?”

“Oh I don’t know, Ty, the dogs…”

“Would love to see you again.”

“Exactly. And I’d love nothing more than to see them but I don’t want to leave them again, and honestly I’m not sure I could handle leaving them.”

“We can go to your place then. I don’t feel like being out anywhere. I’m tired and this shit has gotten me so fucked up.”

She can’t say no to that. She doesn’t really want to be alone either. “Ok, yeah, we can go to my place.”

After they pick up their lunch Tyler follows her to her condo. It’s an upgrade from the condo she lived in when they first met, so he’s happy about that. He still wishes he knew. He wishes that he could have helped. It’s close enough to her job that on cooler days with nice weather she can walk, which is one of the reasons she chose it. She gives him a quick tour before they sit down to eat. 

“Do you like it here?” He can’t help worrying about her. If there were any notion that she was unhappy he would do anything to fix it.

“I do. It’s close to work, modern, perfect for me.”

“It’s nice.” He’s so happy that she found this place and loved it enough to move in. It saved her life. He knows that memories of him is one of the main reasons she moved, besides the fact that the house sold, but he’s fine with that as long as she’s safe. “I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks. How are you liking the new house?”

“I love it. The boys do too. You’d like it too.” She just gives him a look. The look that tells him don’t start. A look he had become all too familiar with during their relationship. He got that look a lot. He can’t help smiling. It’s like nothing has changed in the year they’ve been apart. It feels like no time has passed. 

“That smile isn’t going to help you this time.”

He coyly shrugs, as if he has no idea what she’s talking about. “No?” He often uses his charm to get out of trouble, and more times than not it works. She always puts him in his place when he needs to be, though, another thing he loves most about her. 

“Nope.”

“You’ve changed.” He loves teasing her. He knows she can take it and that she loves it too. It became their language at one point.

“I know.” She rubs her eyes to try to stay awake. The lack of sleep is starting to catch up to her. She can’t even muster up the energy to joke back with him. Normally she would quip back with something like you’re not as cute as you think you are, but not this time. She’s enjoying his company, though, and doesn’t want him to leave.

“If you need me to go so you can sleep, I’ll go.” He would rather stay but would never put her in an uncomfortable situation. He leaves it up to her. 

“Please stay. You’re tired too, right? Maybe we can lay down? If that’s ok. If you’re not seeing anyone, obviously.”

He can’t fight the grin that creeps across his face. “I’m not seeing anyone. I’m down for some cuddles if you are.”

“I honestly don’t think I could sleep without them at this point.”

“You neeeeeed me.”

His sing-songy tone makes her smile and she rolls her eyes. He’s so full of himself and she absolutely loves it. “I’ve had a lot of time to think since last night. I just don’t want to waste any more time pushing you away because I’m scared of the future. I forgot to focus on what’s important, and that’s the now. I don’t know if you feel the same…”

Before she can finish talking he gets up and hugs her. He wasn’t sure if she was on the same page as him, but this confirms that she is. Maybe they can make things work, maybe they can’t, all he knows is that right now all he wants is to be with her.  He can worry about tomorrow tomorrow. “I do.” He takes her hand and sands her up. “I want to be here for you however you need me.”

She hugs him and rests her head on his chest. “Thanks, Ty.”

It’s a little surreal for both of them as they walk towards her bedroom. Neither of them thought in a million years that this would ever happen. They had moved on, so they thought, or didn’t think, it’s all a blur now. Sometimes it takes a life changing event to put things into perspective and skew the way you thought you wanted to live your life. People grow and learn and evolve. They thought they were growing apart, but maybe they needed that time apart to realize that what they really need is to be together. They get into bed and he holds her close. He may never let her go. She immediately relaxes against his body and closes her eyes. He may or may not be her forever, but all that matters is that he’s her right now and that’s good enough for the both of them.

[kelyon]

Golden Rings 10: A Favor

The Storybrooke sequel to Golden Cuffs

Rumple deals with the Savior

Read on AO3

He frowns at the parchment in his hands. The twittering bluebird that delivered the message flaps its wings to get away from the window as quickly as it can. The clever animal must sense that the Dark One is in a mood to throw firebolts. 

“How bad is it?” His wife gets up from the dining room table. She stands beside him in a patch of sunlight by the uncurtained window.

He slides his arm around her waist. After a year of marriage the gesture is automatic. Touching her is as natural as breathing. 

“It is all of our nightmares come to life!” He says the words lightly, as though that will diminish the truth of them.

Belle takes the letter and reads it for herself. “Princess Ella is having twins?” She reads further. “And she thinks you’ll want to take both babies? But the deal was only for her first-born. She would know that if she had read the contract before she signed it! ”

Softly, Rumpelstiltskin drifts away from her. He walks a slow circle around the dining room. Though he never thought much about the castle, he has lived there for hundreds of years. Soon he will never see this place again. He married Belle here. It is his home. It is their home. 

“Do you know what really annoys me?” 

Belle looks up from the letter. “What, Rumple?”

“In the message,” he takes the parchment back, “the cinder-girl says that a dwarf heard a second heartbeat in her womb. A dwarf. How would a dwarf know to listen for that kind of thing? Dwarves are hatched, fully-grown, from eggs.” He paces back and forth across the room. “In the entire history of time, fewer than a hundred dwarves have ever come out from their mines to interact with the above-ground. How in any hell would one of them be knowledgeable about the pregnancy of a human woman?” He shakes his head. “It’s sloppy. By acting like I believe such a ruse, I will look an utter fool.”

“Then you shouldn’t go!”

The words come out as a cry, and Belle’s hand covers her mouth. Her eyes are wide. She is shocked that she would allow such a thought to escape her lips. He knows that she would take it back if she could. 

But the words have already been spoken. They hang in the air between husband and wife like a barrier.

He goes to her, without hesitation. He breaks the barrier of her words. He takes her hand away from her mouth, kisses her fingers, then her lips. There is nothing she can do or say to him that she will ever need to take back. He loves her, and her love for him is his only certainty. 

 When they pull apart, Belle’s cheeks are wet with tears.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. She shakes her head and lowers her eyes. Rumpelstiltskin holds her in his arms and lets her cry. 

“It’s all right,” he murmurs. He rocks her gently, swaying from side to side. It’s almost like they’re dancing. The last dance they will ever share in this world. 

He cannot fault her for not wanting to be abandoned. When he is gone, she will be vulnerable, even with all their best precautions in place. There is still a risk, and Belle is right to be mindful of her own safety. He needs to be near her in order for her to be protected.

“I thought I could be brave enough,” she murmurs. “But I can’t.” She puts her hands on his chest and takes a deep breath. “I can’t let them do this to you!”

Stunned, Rumpelstiltskin looks at his wife. Gently, he brings his hands up to her face. There is nothing but honesty in her eyes. He sees her so clearly, his Belle, his beloved. This tiny, fragile, mortal woman is more fearful for his comfort than her own survival.

“Me?” he whispers. “Belle, what about you?”

“They’re going to put you in a cage, Rumple! A cage with no magic! You’ll be powerless! Those people could do anything to you! They could hurt you or--”

“You’re the only person who can hurt me, Belle,” he assures her. “You are the mistress of the dagger. Nothing anyone else does to me matters.”

Her breath shakes. “I just wish--”

“Shh.” He pulls her close, holds her tight. “No wishing. Wishing is how little cinder-Ella got into the position she’s in. Wishing is wanting something without putting in the work to get it, and we know better than that. After all, my love, all magic--”

“Comes at a price,” she finishes it with him. “I know.” 

Her hands go up to his face. She traces his lines and his scales, rubs her palms against his sharp jaw, his cheekbones. He closes his eyes and rests against her touch. Belle runs a finger up the edge of his nose and over his eyebrows. She cups his cheeks in her soft hands. By the end of it, both of them are breathing more easily.

“When will the Savior be born, Rumple? When will the curse be cast?”

“By tradition, the announcements are made in the royal mother’s sixth month of pregnancy. That was just a few days ago. Snow White is about as far along as the ash-girl.”

“So three months,” she says. “For three months, you’ll be in prison and I’ll be pretending.”

“It will keep us safe.” He takes her hands, kisses her ring. “You will be safe from Regina and everyone else will be safe from me. Whoever wants to find me will know exactly where I am. They’ll see me beaten, and will have no reason to fear me.”

“But we won’t see each other for three months.”

He embraces her again, kisses her forehead. “Three months, and twenty-eight years.” 

Belle shudders. “Tell me you don’t have to leave right now.”

He squeezes her, and shakes his head. “Tomorrow night, the letter said. At the stroke of midnight. I think the princess thought that was clever.”

Belle scoffs.

Rumpelstiltskin tilts her chin up so that she’s looking at him. “I am yours forever, sweetheart. But for this plan to work, I must play my part. I must be all the darkness mothers tell tales of to frighten children. I must steal babes and trick maidens and be vanquished by heroes who are oh-so-very-good and clever. I must be every evil thing they think I am. And then, Belle, in order to win--I must lose.”

****

Rumpelstiltskin came out of the darkness to the sound of a frantic banging and a woman’s voice:

“Oh my God! Are you alright?”

Belle. His eyes stung and his head hurt. He couldn’t say what he wanted to say. Sweetheart, don’t worry about me…

But Belle’s voice kept shouting, almost screaming. It came from some distance away, even more than through the fog of his unconsciousness. It was like she was in another room. Once again, they were separated by a locked door.

He was lying on the ground. The floor, inside somewhere. A wooden floor. 

It was dark. When he tried to open his eyes, lights streamed in through the windows. Orange, electric lights. Street lights. Storybrooke.

“The door’s locked, but I’ve got my new key!” Belle’s voice cried. But it wasn’t Belle on the other side of the door to Gold’s shop. “I’m coming in!”

Rumpelstiltskin raised his head for a moment, but then the pain flashed like lightning and he sunk back to the ground.

“Oh, Jesus!” Mrs. Gold opened the door and turned on the lights. He winced at the brightness. Eyes closed, he heard the crunch of broken glass under her gray suede boots. “Oh Jesus Christ, Mr. Gold! What happened? Are you okay?”

She knelt on the floor beside him, touching his face and chest frantically. Like she was trying to assure herself that he was real, that he was breathing. Her touch was warm on his skin. Belle was always so warm... 

“Christ, Mr. Gold, you’re bleeding! Can you talk to me? Please talk to me!”

Obedient to his wife, Rumpelstiltskin opened his mouth and made a noise. It was mostly a groan, but it was enough to calm her a little. 

“Can you open your eyes?”

Her concerned face blocked the light, so it was easier to do what she asked. Slowly, Rumpelstiltskin sat up. He pushed himself backward with his good leg, until he was leaning against one of the glass counters. 

“I’m all right,” he whispered.

“Bullshit! You’re bleeding. And you were clearly knocked out! What happened? Who did this to you?”

“I did it to myself,” he breathed. True, his assailant had sprayed his face with some noxious chemical potion. Blinded, he had flailed back into a display. But he hadn’t gotten the cut on his head until he tried to lunge forward and his ankle had given out on him. He had fallen onto the corner of a chess board on the counter.

It could have been worse. The girl could have bashed him in the head with the brick she had used to break the window. His mortal skull could have shattered just like the glass. He could have bled out on the shop floor without ever seeing the curse broken. He could have died without ever seeing Belle again, without ever finding Bae...

“Oh my God.” Tears rolled down Mrs. Gold’s cheeks. Why would she cry for him? Gold had never been anything but awful to her, and Rumpelstiltskin hadn’t been much better. 

“Check the safe,” he said, mostly as a way to get her away from him for a moment. He needed to think.

“Jesus, were you robbed?” Mrs. Gold scrambled to her feet and hurried to the back wall of the shop. Framed paintings crowded every inch of wall space. One picture swung open on a hinge. Behind it, a metal safe door was also open. When she spoke again, her tone was less teary.

“You were robbed by an idiot,” she said. “They left the key in the lock. And they locked the side door on the way out!” Rumpelstiltskin heard the rustling of papers. “They left all the cash too. It looks like the only thing missing is--”

“A contract,” he finished. Where was that cane? A moment’s reprieve had given him time to come up with a plan. But he couldn’t enact it on the floor. “Ashley Boyd’s contract.”

Mrs. Gold scoffed. “Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? That stupid bitch!” Slamming the safe closed, Mrs. Gold stormed through the curtain into the back room of the pawn shop. 

“What are you doing?” he called weakly. 

“Getting the first aid kit!”

Rumpelstiltskin leaned his head back against the display case. Right. Gold kept a good stock of medical supplies in his house, his car, and the shop. Bandages, burn ointments, medical scissors. Considering what Gold liked to do with his wife, it was best to be prepared for injuries. 

Mrs. Gold reappeared with a white metal box in her hands. Kneeling beside him, she opened it. She put on a pair of rubber gloves before she began to clean the cut on his forehead.

He let her. It was the first time he had allowed Mrs. Gold to touch him. The first time anyone had touched him, since the last time he had seen Belle.

“I can’t believe that sneaky little skank!” Her touch was gentle, but her words were furious. “You’re saving her by taking that baby off her hands! And this is how she repays you? She thinks she can weasel out of a deal with you? Unbelievable!”

Rumpelstiltskin closed his eyes again. “The girl said something about changing her life.”

“Ruining her life is more like it!” Mrs. Gold huffed. “Ashley Boyd thinks she can be a mother? She’s too stupid and irresponsible. She’s always wanted some fucking fairy godmother to solve all her problems for her. You just know she got pregnant on purpose.” Mrs. Gold squeezed a paste out of a white tube and spread it over his skin. Careful to brush his hair out of the way first, she adhered a plastic bandage to his scalp. “She wanted Sean to marry her, so she decided to trap him. And when his father found out, he came to you to take care of it. You found some family to adopt the baby and got Ashley to sign the contract. But now she wants out of it? Why? What reason could she possibly have for wanting a fucking baby?”

Snapping the metal lid shut on the box, Mrs. Gold stormed back into the other room to put away the first aid kit.  

“Something must have changed,” Rumpelstiltskin said when she returned. Gingerly, he brought his hand up to the bandage. “I suspect Ashley spoke to someone who convinced her that she was stronger than she thought.” Despite the pain, he found himself grinning. “Someone who made her believe in the possibility of a happy ending.”

Mrs. Gold handed him the cane and helped him stand up. “Who would do that?”

“The same person I’m going to talk to in the morning.”

****

Technically, an unauthorized roommate was a violation of the lease on the studio apartment that Mary Margaret Blanchard rented from Gold. But that didn’t matter to Rumpelstiltskin. It was convenient for him that Emma Swan had taken to living with the woman she didn’t know was her mother. It made her easy to find. 

When Snow White answered the door, the former princess went even paler than normal. She had never seemed afraid of him before, even when he looked his most inhuman. Of course, to the people of Storybrooke, Gold was more of a monster than the Dark One could ever be. 

“Is Emma Swan here?”

Mary Margaret Blanchard looked over to the side of the room before speaking. It looked like she was trying to be discreet about having a guest, while simultaneously advertising the fact for all to see. Well, that was to be expected. Snow White had never been known for her ability to keep a secret. 

Emma came to the door.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

Even in this world, she was a princess. A true princess, someone who had battled and politicked and worked her way to whatever power she had. Emma Swan had been born in a castle, but she had spent her first eighteen years of life in a dozen different foster homes. Gold knew that Henry Mills’ birth mother had had him in jail. She had given birth while handcuffed to a hospital bed. Since then, the woman had made a career as a bail bondsperson. Her job was to find people who were running from their fates and force them to do the right thing--by hook or by crook, as the shepherds used to say when herding sheep back into the fold. 

There was a fire in her green eyes, a vibrant spirit that no one else in this town had. Even if Rumpelstiltskin didn’t know she was the savior, it was obvious there was something special about this woman. From the moment she was born, she’d had to fight. 

And there was nothing a fighter needed more than an opponent. 

“Hi,” Rumpelstiltskin extended his hand out for her to shake. “I’m Mr. Gold, we met briefly when you first came into town.”  

“I remember.”

She wasn’t, exactly, unfriendly. But she spoke with a businesslike brusqueness, a tone that said get to the point more than any actual words. She certainly was her father’s daughter.

“May I speak to you about something? Privately?” He gave a meaningful look to Mary Margaret, who bolted like a rabbit away from her own door. 

“Sure,” Emma said begrudgingly. 

Without asking, Rumpelstiltskin walked in to the apartment. The central room was as neat as a pin, except for a dozen packing boxes in one corner. All of them were opened, half the contents of each box scattered and piled around that section of the room. A knitted blanket was draped over a chair. It was a small blanket, the kind in which a loving mother would wrap a newborn before sending her on a perilous journey. The name Emma was stitched out in royal purple. 

“Moving in?” he asked.

“Yep,” she said, neither denying the obvious nor giving any extra details. “So what can I do for you, Mr. Gold?”

Emma Swan’s natural posture was to keep her back to the wall, her feet apart, and her hands on her hips. Not aggressive, but not one to be pushed over either. She was a rock, as so many heroes were. No force could move her unless she thought it was her idea to move.

“I don’t want to go to the police about this,” he began. “But something has been stolen from me, and I understand you’re good at finding people.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “Where’d you hear that?” 

“There was a write-up about you in the paper,” he answered. “If you were hoping to avoid attention, breaking the ‘Welcome to Storybrooke’ sign on your first night in town wasn’t the best move.”

With a rueful expression, Emma wiped her hands on her trousers. “So what was taken?”

“All due respect, Miss Swan, one of the advantages of you not being the police is a certain level of discretion. Let’s just say it was a precious object and leave it at that. I’m more concerned about who did the taking. Last night, a young girl named Ashley Boyd broke into my shop and opened my safe. She’s also responsible for this.”

 Brushing his hair back, Rumpelstiltskin revealed the cut on his forehead. It had scabbed over, but the wound was still a vivid red. 

Emma frowned. “So that’s breaking and entering, petty burglary, and assault. You’re sure you don’t want to call the cops?”

He looked at the ground, made a show of playing with his cane. He had to make sure Emma underestimated him. “Ashley’s a nice girl. She’s never been in trouble like this before. She’s young, she’s pregnant. She’s just a confused young woman at a bad place in her life. I’m more than willing to forgive and forget, as long as my property is returned.” Rumpelstiltskin looked up at Emma, and mentioned something that hadn’t been published in the paper. “Can you imagine one bad decision leading to a baby being born in jail?”

It was gone in a flash, that flicker of emotion in Emma’s eyes. He would have missed it if he hadn’t been looking for it. Emma’s masks were better than Regina’s, but he had been manipulating people for centuries. He knew how to recognize that moment of decision--often long before the other party knew it. That moment when he knew that they were his.

“Yeah, that’d be terrible,” she muttered, crossing her arms over her chest.

Rumpelstiltskin pressed in. The deal would be finalized before she even knew she was seriously considering it.

“So you’ll help me?”

“I will help her,” Emma said. She was stone again. The Savior had wavered for just a moment, but that moment was all he needed. 

“Grand.” He gave her a smile. Nothing nicer than making people feel good about doing exactly what you wanted them to. 

Before they could say anything more, the apartment door opened.

“Hey, Emma, I think we need to--” Henry Mills stopped talking as soon as he saw that his birth mother wasn’t alone. 

“Hey, Henry.” Rumpelstiltskin’s cheer became more genuine. There was something about Henry Mills that he liked. The boy had an insight and a determination that were rare gifts in a cursed town. Something about him reminded Rumpelstiltskin of Baelfire when he was that age. “How are you?”

“O...kay.” The boy took a step back. His excited features slowly schooled themselves into a cautious non-expression. 

To Rumpelstiltskin’s sorrow, the sudden transformation from excitement to sobriety was also something he had seen in Baelfire. Shrewd children could always identify monsters, no matter how friendly they tried to act.

“Well then.” He made his way to the door, passing by Henry in the process. The boy swiveled so he never had his back turned to the fearsome Mr. Gold. “Give my regards to your mother. And Miss Swan?” He nodded to the Savior before he let her go fulfill her destiny. “Good luck.”

****

    When he got back to the shop, Mrs. Gold was behind the counter, ringing out a customer. 

“Your sister is going to love this! A cute little pin is a great fashion statement. And where else could you find jewelry that looks like a brick wall? It’s so different!” 

She handed a gift bag to the middle-aged woman, who took it with a dubious expression. 

When Mrs. Gold saw that he had walked in the side door, she quickly added. “Of course, it all depends on how you like getting pinned!”

The other woman went pink and barreled out of the shop, her stick-brown hair streaming behind her.

Rumpelstiltskin didn’t talk to Mrs. Gold about how she intimidated people with her innuendo. What else could he expect from her? She did and said what she thought her husband wanted.

“Was everything alright while I was out?”

Mrs. Gold nodded. “No break-ins today, though I did keep a weapon handy.” From the far side of the cash register, she pulled out a flat, heavy wooden paddle. Gold identified it as a cricket bat. Mrs. Gold twirled the handle with practiced deftness. “But now that you’re here, maybe we can put this to better use?” 

He didn’t give her an answer. He didn’t need to. After just a moment of glittering hope, Mrs. Gold lowered her gaze and set the cricket bat aside. 

“Sorry for asking, Mr. Gold. I know that’s not my place.” Still looking down, she knocked her knuckles against the countertop. “I, uh, I just wanted to show you that I’m willing, always. For anything.”

Rumpelstiltskin licked his lips and resisted the urge to reach out to her. He didn’t desire Mrs. Gold, and he wasn’t going to treat her the way she wanted him to. But she looked so helpless now--so small and confused, seeking affection from the only person she had, in the only way she could think of. He wanted to help her, he wanted to comfort her. 

He wanted to hold his wife in his arms and let them comfort each other.

But he didn’t do any of those things. Instead, he took the cricket bat from the counter and put it back in its proper place among the store’s merchandise. Out the front windows, he saw a bright red vintage sports car make its way up Main Street.

“That’s Ruby Lucas’ car,” he said mildly. “But that isn’t Ruby driving.”

Mrs. Gold rushed to the window. “Who is it?” She craned her neck to see, then grinned as she recognized the driver. “A dumb blonde in a ratty sweater, that’s Ashley Boyd alright.” She looked to her husband. “Now that we know where she is, are you going to call Sheriff Graham?”

 Rumpelstiltskin shook his head. “I have every confidence Miss Swan will work things out.”

“She’d better work fast.” Mrs. Gold squinted out the window. “It looks like Miss Too-Good-For-Birth-Control is trying to get out of town.”

“You sound pleased to know that.”

“Idiot’s taking the Widowmaker Highway.” There was a grimness seeping through Mrs. Gold’s vindictive pleasure. “Even in broad daylight, that road is a death trap.” She shook her head, moved away from the window. “If Ashley doesn’t know enough to stay in Storybrooke, she deserves whatever happens to her.”

Despite his better instincts, Rumpelstiltskin decided to keep talking to Mrs. Gold. “Why do you hate her?”

“Huh?” She blinked. 

“Ashley,” he said. “You seem… uniquely unsympathetic to her plight.”

Mrs. Gold pursed her lips in thought. “I mean, she broke in here and knocked you out. I’m not nuts for taking that personally, am I?”

“I suppose not,” he assured her. “But your enmity clearly runs deeper than that.”

Shrugging, she began to wander back to the cash register. “She’s stupid, that’s the main thing. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, so she’s bad at it. That offends me on a professional level.”

Rumpelstiltskin raised his eyebrows. He stayed where he was near the door. “Professional?”

“Well, yeah, it’s…” Mrs. Gold began to search around the counter, less like she had something to do and more like she was finding an excuse to fidget. “I mean, it’s not a secret that  I know a thing or two about a trashy Old Town slut trying to get a better life by marrying someone rich enough to make her problems go away.” Now she looked at him, her face determinedly impassive as she said what she thought was the truth about her own life. “I don’t blame Ashley for wanting Sean to marry her. He’s an idiot too, so they’ll get along well, and his parents will always bail him out if things get too tight. But she didn’t get the job done. He split and she’s trying to avoid the consequences of her failure.”

“She wants to keep the baby,” Rumpelstiltskin said. “That doesn’t sound like avoiding consequences.”

Mrs. Gold shook her head. “Even if she hadn’t made a deal with you, things were never going to work out for that girl. Not so long as she went around thinking that she didn’t have to work for what she wanted to get out of life.”

 She slid her forearms over the glass as she leaned against the counter. The posture displayed her cleavage, but it didn’t seem to be an invitation. Not a pose, just a slump. 

“It was the first lesson you ever taught me, Mr. Gold.” She gave a smile, wistful, nostalgic. “Everything comes at a price.” 

****

Shortly after Ruby’s car had left town, Emma Swan’s yellow Volkswagen rumbled down the road in the opposite direction.

Half an hour later, the Beetle drove past the shop again. Faster than before, it was now heading the same direction as the runaway Ashley. 

Later still, the car raced up the street at a frightening speed. This time, Emma and her passengers made a turn at the hospital.

Rumpelstiltskin smiled and checked his pocket watch. It was almost four in the evening. Gold didn’t normally close the shop so early on Saturdays, but this was a special occasion. 

“I’m going to drop you off at home,” he said to Mrs. Gold. “I’ll be back in time to make supper.”

Mrs. Gold looked up from the small case of rings she had been arranging according to size. “Am I allowed to know where you’re going?”

“The hospital,” he answered with no small amount of pleasure. “I’m going to see if Miss Swan will let me steal Ashley’s baby.”

 ****

Gold was familiar with Storybrooke General Hospital. His physician, Dr. Whale, did his private practice on the third floor of this building. Today, Rumpelstiltskin was heading for the maternity ward. 

When he rounded the corner around the reception desk to the waiting room, he saw Emma talking to a nurse. Henry was there too, patiently sitting in one of the stuffed vinyl chairs. The boy’s feet swung back and forth and didn’t touch the ground.

 “It’s a healthy six pound girl,” the nurse told Emma. “And the mother is doing fine.”

“What lovely news.” He announced his presence. “Excellent work, Miss Swan. Thank you, for bringing me my merchandise.”

Before Emma could react, before she could vent out any of her undoubtedly righteous fury, Rumpelstiltskin slid past her to get to the vending machines, cool as a mountain stream. He took some coins out of his trouser pocket and deposited them into the coffee machine. He had no intention of drinking any coffee, but it would serve a purpose. When Emma saw that he had a styrofoam cup in one hand and the cane in the other, she would see that he was powerless. Just a harmless old cripple. Not a threat at all. 

“You could have mentioned that the precious object Ashley ‘stole’ was her own child.”

Interesting that Emma’s wrath was not the fiery passion of her parents. Prince Charming would have drawn his sword as soon as the Dark One had made his presence known. But  aggression had never done the prince any favors, and maybe Emma knew that posturing would only waste time. Get to the point, was the Savior’s way of doing things. Whatever needs to be done, just do it. 

How delightfully refreshing. 

“You didn’t need to know,” he answered calmly. “All you needed to do was keep Miss Boyd from leaving Storybrooke.”

“She isn’t going to run,” Emma said. “I talked with her today. She wants to stay. She wants to raise her kid.”

“Now, that’s a very heartwarming sentiment.” Rumpelstiltskin brought the cup to his lips to look like he was drinking. “But I have a contract that says that baby is going home with me. I even have a car seat for the wee thing.”

“That’s a lie,” Emma said, correctly. “Consent to adoption papers can’t be signed sooner than seventy-two hours after the birth.”

That was a good strike, but he didn’t let it land. “I also have an envelope filled with more cash than Miss Boyd has ever seen in her life. I find that sort of thing tends to smooth over certain technicalities.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What do you even want with a newborn? Why are you adopting?”

His instinct was to let out an impish giggle from the old world. But he restrained himself just in time. “I’m not,” he said simply. “I’m merely the go-between. I arranged things with a very nice couple. They’ve already adopted one daughter, and were willing to take on a second.”    

“‘Willing?’” Emma repeated the word with exaggerated brightness. “Well, Ashley is more than ‘willing.’ She is eager. She is desperate to keep this baby. And I’m not going to let you stop her from being a mother.”

Rumpelstiltskin grinned. Here it was at last, the declaration of intent. In her own way, Emma Swan had just drawn her sword. Now he could draw his.

“A mother who committed--what did you say earlier? Breaking and entering, petty burglary and assault?”

She clenched her jaw and he went on.

“All I have to do is press charges against the mother, and that baby is going into the foster care system. And that would be a real shame. Did you enjoy your time in the foster system, Emma?“

At that barb, she fought back. “No jury in the world is going to convict a woman who only committed crimes so she could keep her kid.”

He shrugged, dodged the attack. “Maybe.”

Emma pressed in. “And maybe a court of law will think there’s something kind of fishy about a pawnbroker pressuring a teenage girl into placing her baby for adoption for financial compensation. ‘More cash than she’d ever seen in her life,’ isn’t that what you said? Why do you have that much cash, Gold? Do you want a court looking into your business dealings? Or into any other contracts you might have?”

Rumpelstiltskin smiled. Oh, the Savior was magnificent--like a force of nature or a perfectly executed spell. If she was ever actually a threat to him, he might well have something to worry about. 

“I like you, Miss Swan,” he said. “You’re not afraid of me. That’s either cocky or presumptuous, but I find it charming. And I’d like to have you on my side.”

She raised her eyebrows, but didn’t loosen her stance. “So you’ll rip up Ashley’s contract?”

He raised his cup of coffee in a gesture of helplessness. “That’s not what I do. After all, a contract, an agreement between two parties where both of them benefit--that’s the very foundation of a civilized society.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “Yes, what happened today has all been very civilized.”

“And there’s the adoptive family to consider. I’ll have to make things right with them and that won’t be easy. It’s not something I’ll do for nothing.”

Arms still crossed over her chest, Emma stepped closer to him. “Alright, Gold. What will you do it for? What’s your price?”

Rumpelstiltskin gave her a long, slow look. “I don’t know just yet,” he said. “But seeing the lengths you went to for Ashley’s sake is rather inspiring, Miss Swan. You said you were going to help her, and you did. I may be wrong, but I think you have the resources necessary to  help a lot of people.”

“So what’s your point?”

“Help me,” he said with all the sincerity he could while still acting like Gold. “When there comes a time, when I--or one of mine--needs the assistance of Emma Swan, fight for me. The way you did for Ashley. Call it a favor.” 

“A favor, huh?” Emma offered her hand. “Deal.”

He tossed the coffee in the trash to take her hand and shake it. Now he knew how the Savior worked. He knew what she was capable of, and now she owed him a favor. He had won so much--and all he’d had to do was lose. 

“Deal.” 

[theatreslave]

Recovery

Chapter One

Drea Mikami silenced her cellphone for the third time in ten minutes. It was ringing incessantly, receiving calls from a number she didn’t recognize. She was supposed to be concentrating on paperwork but the sinking feeling that had started in her stomach two weeks ago when the number called her for the first time, was growing.

The phone rang again and she silenced just as her partner Michaela Stone-Landon reached her desk.

“You’re popular.” Michaela said with a raised eyebrow.

“It’s nothing just asking about my vehicle warranty or whatever. I swear those telemarketers are trying to annoy me to death,” Drea replied with her usual sass, trying not to show her nerves to her partner. Her amazing partner who was soon to be leaving her for a while. “Did you finish up everything? Are you excited?”

“Yeah I tied up loose ends and I have the rest of my paperwork done. Any open cases have been transferred to different detectives, barring the ones you wanted of course,” She said fondly. Silencing her friend’s phone for her the next time it rang. “In a couple hours I will be on a flight to my honeymoon, stress free!”

“I’m really happy for you Mick. I hate you for leaving me here by myself but how could I stop such a happy couple from enjoying their private time! Just make sure to have a few margaritas for me. Or better yet a few mai tais.” Drea laughed.

“You gonna be ok? I know Bowers assigned you to work with Jared while I’m gone.” Michaela asked, feeling a bit awkward.

Drea scoffed, “It’s just Jared. Afraid I’ll steal him away?”

“You can have him. Just don’t let him sulk too much ok. And take it easy on him. Your unending enthusiasm might actually make him smile and he might get a cramp in his face.” She joked.

“Oh trust me Mrs.Landon, I will make sure your ex-boy toy has nothing else to worry about except how to shut me up.” Drea stood up next to her partner and gave her a hug. “He’ll be ok Mic. He’s a big boy. I’m sure under all that brooding he is happy for you. Jared is just a passionate guy and you were all he was passionate about for a while.”

Drea released Mick from her hug. Mick nodded in agreement. “I know. He was all I knew for a long time too but Zeke, he’s everything and more. I can’t explain it. We are more than just soul mates. It’s deeper than that.”

“I know it is. I mean he survived against all odds because of you. So don’t worry, a dose of MIkami and me gushing over all the nauseatingly cute pictures you send me from your trip, will turn Jared off of you forever.” Drea was more than confident that she would have some fun while Mick was away. “And speak of the Devil.”

Jared Vasquez, newly appointed lieutenant, strode into the precinct confidently. He shrugged off his jacket and paused before scanning the bullpen and spotting the two women next to Mikami’s desk.

“It’s our big strong lieutenant back from a successful mission,” Drea teased. “I was just saying ‘bon voyage’ to the newly wed before she leaves tonight.”

Jared chuckled a bit then turned to Michaela, “Have a safe trip, and come back on time. Or if you’re going to disappear, take me with you this time.”

Michaela smacked the man’s arm, then gave him a hug as well. “I’ll be back, I promise. Be nice to Drea ok. I don’t wanna come back here and find out that you made her cry.”

“Like he could make me cry!”

“I’m not that mean!”

Drea’s phone rang and she absentmindedly silenced it again. Jared noticed but ignored it, figuring that she didn’t want to interrupt the conversation.

“So Vasquez, was it a successful mission?” Drea diverted.

“Yup, finally caught those Irish mobsters after, what, 6 months of tailing them. I am ready for something simple after all that.” Jared said as he loosened his tie and unbuttoned his top button.

“Congratulations! That’s great I know how that case has been bothering you. Using their prep-school sons as drug mules was a new low.” Michaela said with a sad look as she started packing up her bag at her desk just across from Drea’s.

Drea’s phone rang again and this time she flinched. Michaela reached over and silenced it again. Before Jared could ask what was up with that Michaela was ready to head off.

“I will see you guys in a month. I’ll send you guys some pictures. Call me if you need anything. But only if it’s urgent.” Michaela said with a wink and then waved as she walked out of the precinct.

“Aww they grow up so fast.” Drea said, wiping away a fake tear.

Jared stared at her for a second before rolling his eyes, “Make sure your weirdness doesn’t rub off on me.”

“I’m not weird! I’m just confident in my uniqueness.” Drea stuck her tongue out at him, “At least I know how to have fun.”

Her cellphone rang again. Jared finally lost his battle against his own curiosity and swiped Drea's phone and answered it. “Hello, you’re calling this phone an awful lot and it’s really starting to get annoying.”

Drea’s eyes were wide as saucers as she tried to take the phone from the much taller man in front of her. “Jared, what the hell! Give that back.”

“Who are you? Why are you answering this call?” A male voice answered. The tone he used alarmed Jared.

“Hey man, just stop calling this number ok. She doesn’t want to talk to you. And you’re making it so I can’t even enjoy the silence of a nearly empty precinct.” Jared scoffed.

“Are you that bitch’s new lap dog? She’ll curse you like she did to me. She’ll ruin you. Drea I know you’re there! You fucking bitch!” The man would have been foaming at the mouth if he were in front of Jared.

Drea finally pulled the phone from Jared’s grasp and disconnected the call. Jared was shocked then angry. “ Drea what the hell was that? Who was that? Are you in trouble?”

“Jared, it's nothing. I promise. Just some guy that’s mad that I didn’t go on a second date with him. Don’t worry about it. I was gonna get a new phone tomorrow anyway.” Drea just shut her phone off and tried to busy herself at her desk.

Jared took a moment to stare at her then went to his desk to grab a couple things, threw his jacket back on and then found his way back to her desk. “Grab what you need, the day is over and I am taking you to get a new phone.”

“Jared you really don’t have to do this,” Drea refused.

“I don’t but I’m not going to have a sleepless night thinking about that grim reaper calling you every ten minutes, so let’s move Mikami.” Jared said jokingly, trying to lighten the mood. At first Drea hesitated then grabbed her things and followed the Cuban man out of the precinct.

Drea sat in Jared’s passenger seat, having taken the bus that morning instead of her own car. It was silent as they made their way to the closest AT&T store. She played with her fingers feeling nervous for some reason.

“Do you need help getting a restraining order?” Jared asked, keeping his eye on the busy evening streets of New York.

Drea considered being honest but decided against it. Her and Jared weren’t very close and she didn’t need to involve him. “Yeah but it’s not like he’s stalking me. I probably should have given him a social media account instead of my actual number.”

“Don’t take any of the blame here, Drea. If this guy is really just being an asshole because he can’t take rejection. That’s all on him. You’ve blocked his number?”

“Yeah but he just calls with new ones. But it’s ok, I have my knight in shining necktie taking me to get a new phone so everything should be fine.” Drea teased, hoping the topic would be dropped.

“Brat,” Jared glanced at her, “If you ever need my help with some dude, don’t hesitate to ask. I know I may not be the best guy but I won’t stand for any of you girls getting treated like shit.”

“Thank you, Jared. Really it means a lot. But I don’t think this will be a big deal so don’t worry too much. That wrinkle between your brows will just get deeper.”

“I do not have a wrinkle!” Jared shot back as he parked the car. “Come on, let's go.”

“You’re coming with me?” Drea asked, surprised.

“And what, leave you here to take a night bus or taxi by yourself? Not a chance, especially after that phone call. We are getting you a new phone then you are buying me dinner for driving you around.” Jared said as they both exited the car and made their way across the street.

“How about I just cook you something? I was going to make some ramen when I got home anyway.” Drea said, smiling at Jared, honestly relieved to not be alone.

“That sounds like a deal. Just don’t poison me ok.” Jared joked as he pulled the store door open for her.

“You’ll see. Unlike Michaela I am an amazing cook!” Drea smacked Jared’s shoulder lightly as she walked past him.

The process of getting a new phone was a bit of a hassle as it always is. The minute Drea turned her old phone on, to transfer data, it started pinging with ‘missed call’ notifications followed by more calls from mystery numbers.

Jared looked a bit concerned but as soon as the service was cut off the phone stopped chiming. Drea opted for a Samsung, switching her allegiances, as the sales rep called it. It made transferring her phone numbers and data a little incomplete but Jared made sure to grab her phone and edit his contact information for her.

“Hey I literally just got that!” Drea said after saying ‘goodbye’ to the young man who helped her with her phone.

“I’m just making sure you have me saved properly.” Jared said with a laugh before snapping a picture of himself. “There ya go.”

Jared handed her the new phone as they both made it back to his car. Once they were both seated and Jared had her address in the GPS, Drea finally had a chance to look at his contact info. He had taken a quick selfie with a smile on his face from that dumb angle that guys always take it from. And had saved himself as Jared “Knight in Shining Necktie” Vasquez.

“You’re honestly a giant dork under all that machismo, aren’t you?” Drea smiled as she looked over at him.

“Only around my friends. So keep it a secret. Now are you really going to cook for me or am I just dropping you off? I’m starving after that kid couldn’t stop talking about Samsung being better than Apple blah blah blah. “ Jared said as he made his way down her street.

“Hey, we made a deal. Plus you were right, I definitely prefer this over taking the bus or subway. You can just have the valet take your car. Jonathan will take care of it.” Drea said as they pulled up to an upper class apartment building. Jared let out a low whistle.

“Your apartment complex has a valet? I knew you came from money Drea, but come on now.” Jared said, looking in awe as he stopped the car and spotted the valet driver.

“Jonathan, you’ll take care of Jared’s car won’t you.” Drea asked happily as she made her way into the building.

“Of course, Ms. Mikami. Will the Sir be spending the night?”

“Jonathan! You’re scandalous. Jared is just having dinner with me as a favor so don’t you go reporting to my mother about anything.” Drea teased the older gentleman.

“Of course Miss. Have a wonderful dinner.”

Jared watched the exchange and couldn’t help but chuckle at Drea’s cheerful manner. He followed Drea through the lobby to the elevators which were just as extravagant as the front of the building. “I’m guessing your mother likes to keep an eye on you.”

“She’s always been a tiger mom. She never did forgive me for going into law enforcement and now she wants me to apologize by getting married to one of her friends’ sons.” Drea scoffed. They made it to her apartment and she swiftly let them in.

Jared was pleased to see that her apartment was rather simple but lived in. She had a cat, or he figured she did from the litter box in the corner of the living room that opened up from the front door.

“You can hang your jacket up right there. And take off your shoes please!” Drea called as she rushed into what he assumed was the kitchen to work on their dinner. “Have a look around while I cook. And if you see Mimi, she’s friendly, I promise!.”

“You named your cat ‘Mimi’?” Jared asked as he made his way further into the apartment. He noticed a VR headset promptly displayed next to the TV, a bookcase filled to the brim, and that most of her furniture was a dark cherry color. The depth of which was offset by her cream colored walls and the shine of her lights off the various mirrors that helped make her apartment feel larger than it was.

“Yeah, why? You don’t like it?” Drea called back. The sounds of running water and then the telltale chop of a knife on a cutting board filled the apartment.

“Mimi Mikam? It’s cute.” Jared said with a laugh. He stood at the threshold of the kitchen.

“And she’s cute. If you haven’t seen her then she will come out when I bring her food out,” Drea said absentmindedly as she busied herself with the bowling water and what looked like noodles.

“Where’s your bathroom? I wanna wash up.” Jared asked, not wanting to try and find out himself in case he got accused of snooping. Not that he wasn’t a little interested in the inner workings of his silver spoon fed coworker.

“Just keep going down the hall past the living room. The first door on the right. The door on the left is the guest bedroom. The one at the end of the hall is my room, and across from it is a closet.” Drea answered not looking up from the meat she was slicing.

“Thanks. Not that I needed a full floor plan,” Jared replied as he turned to the hallway.

“I’m just being thorough. Like I am with this food you’re going to love by the way,” Drea shot back.

Jared just chuckled to himself as he walked down the hall, flicking a light switch as he went. The hall was longer than he expected. He found the bathroom easily and washed his hands. He pulled off his tie, finally letting himself relax after the long day. The Lieutenant looked at himself in the mirror, taking in the littering of grey hairs and the deepening crease between his brows. Jared let out a long sigh, he really wasn’t getting any younger. He shook his head and let his mind focus on the enigma that was Drea and her mystery caller. He had a feeling there was more to this than some stilted “nice guy” but he didn’t want to pry. He wasn’t as close to Drea as Michaela but hopefully a month as partners would remedy that.

Jared exited the bathroom only to hear the sound of something falling in what he now knew was Drea’s bedroom.

“Jared,” Drea called from the kitchen.

“Yeah?” Jared called back, his sense on high alert and his hand on his gun which was still at his belt.

“Can you make sure Mimi didn’t knock over the glass I keep on my bedside? She does that sometimes when she realizes I’m home,” Drea requested.

“Yea sure,” Jared let out a sigh of relief and then made his way down the hall. The door to her room was already ajar. Knowing that Drea asked him to check made it easier for him to flick the light switch and enter her bedroom. Jared chuckled to himself, “I guess this is one way to get into a woman’s bedroom.”

Drea’s bedroom was the definition of feminine sophistication. She had a four post canopy bed with light gauzy curtains that were pulled open. Her sheets were a cream color with mauve accents. The wood of her furniture matched the furniture in the rest of her apartment. Her side tables matched and had gold filigree lamps atop them. The carpets were plush and squishy under Jared’s socked feet. He noticed an empty glass laying haphazardly on the floor and moved to pick it up. The glass was placed neatly back on her bedside table.

Jared took a moment to snoop, unable to help himself. There was a small porcelain tree next to her lamp. A ring holder. He did notice she always wore a pinky ring on her left hand and a plain gold band on her right ring finger. A simple brush lay next to it along with a novel. Something horror related from the looks of the cover. Across from the foot of the bed was a dresser and next to that a vanity. In the opposite corner was a desk and a door that he assumed led to the master bathroom.

His attention turned at the soft mewl of Mimi who made herself known. She appeared and with the usual agility of a cat, hopped on to the vanity. That’s when Jared noticed that Drea’s window was open. She hadn’t been in here since they arrived and he doubted that she left it open by accident. Jared shut the window and did a quick sweep of the room. Once satisfied that no one was hiding in the room he turned back to Mimi.

“You wouldn’t be in here if there was an intruder right?” Mimi just blinked up at him. She was a short haired cat. Small and white, with striking blue eyes. She mewed at him and made a movement trying to rub up against him. Jared wasn’t a cat person but he had to admit she was cute. He stepped closer and tentatively reached out a hand. Mimi happily bumped her head against his palm asking for pets.

Jared smiled down at the cat just as Drea called, “Dinner’s ready! Quit snooping and come back out here.”

Jared slowly picked up the snow white cat and was surprised to see how easily she curled into him and purred. He held her to his chest, scratching her head as he made his way back to the kitchen where Drea had set a table for two at the small dining table. “Hey, I wasn’t snooping, I was bonding. See.”

Drea turned and smiled at the sight of the normally stoic detective holding her purring white cat while he scratched her head. “ Aww that’s so cute. Mimi likes you.”

“By the way did you leave your window open? I closed it for you. You should be more careful.” Jared said as he took a seat. Finally he relinquished his hold on Mimi who was more than happy to make her way to her food bowl which Drea had filled.

Drea hesitated then sat down as well, “Uh, yeah I must have forgotten about it when I went to work this morning. Thanks. I really should wake up earlier. Anyway, here we are, a Mikami special. Tonkatsu ramen and shredded seaweed chicken rolls with a side of rice.”

“Wow, it definitely smells better than anything Mick has ever tried to make,” Jared joked..

“Dig in. You had a long successful day and this is our first time hanging out as partners.” Drea said, “Thank you for coming with me to get a new phone too.”

“If I get fed like this every time I might have to do you more favors.” Jared happily dug in.

They chatted throughout dinner enjoying the food and eventually opening up a bottle of wine. Drea reasoned that they were both off tomorrow anyway. Jared, having loosened up, asked Drea about the VR headset he saw and she was more than happy to teach him how to use it. And that’s how they ended up in the living room, Jared exhausted after playing a shooting game and Drea exhausted from laughing so hard at his irritation.

“You know, I should get one of these. It’s like working out without a gym.” Jared said between breaths as he turned off the headset and returned it to its stand.

“I never took you for a gamer. But I must say that was definitely entertaining. You get way too competitive.” Drea said with a laugh. “You should just bunk out in my spare room. It’s late and we drank the whole bottle.”

“Are you sure? I’m not drunk or anything.” Jared realized it was nearing 2 a.m.

“You still drank. We’re cops Jared, we have to set a good example. And you won’t have to worry about me drunkenly jumping you in bed, the spare room has a lock.” Drea said cheekily as she started cleaning up the errant wine glasses and napkins.

“Let me do that then. You cooked and let me stay so I will wash the dishes. Go get ready for bed.” Jared insisted as he started picking up bowls and utensils.

“Yes dad, “ Drea joked as she let him take over, a yawn escaping her mouth.

“I prefer Daddy.” Jared quipped before he could stop himself. Drea let out a laugh and threw a pillow at him. “In your dreams Vasquez.”

He caught the pillow laughing as he cleaned up the remains of their dinner. It wasn’t until he was nearly done with the dishes that he felt the wine headache coming on. Drea met him in the hallway with some extra towels and a pair of sweats that were much too large to be her actual size.

“Here. So you can wash up and change. You’re lucky I like to wear big mens sweats when I’m home by myself. I will be off to bed now. Goodnight Jared.” Drea said nonchalantly as she handed him the pile then made her way back to her room, picking up Mimi who had been winding around her legs.

“Thanks Drea, goodnight.” Jared said. He washed up in the bathroom then went into the guest bedroom to change. It was simpler than her bedroom and slightly smaller but still had the plush carpet and elegant side tables. He took off his shirt and pants, hanging them up in the empty closet, then unfolded the sweats. They were a bit loose on him but were worn in. He could tell from the creases that Drea normally folded the legs up quite a bit. His eyes barely staying open, he hopped into the bed, thinking for a moment about how he ended up here. A ghost of a smile on his face as he drifted off to sleep.

Saying goodnight to Jared was an odd feeling but not bad. Drea definitely didn’t think her day would end with Jared Vasquez sleeping in her apartment. But as she went over the events of the day, it seemed to be an appropriate ending. Drea was about to climb into bed when she noticed something green on her vanity.

As she walked across the room and started to recognize the object, her blood ran cold. She stood less than a foot away, staring down at the handmade Valentine’s Day card wishing it would burst into flames. She looked up at the window next to the vanity, the one that had been open. For a split second panic filled her at the idea that he had made his way into her apartment. But Jared would have noticed, he wouldn’t let her get hurt. He wasn’t here but he had been.

Drea swiftly walked to the kitchen and grabbed some chopsticks and a ziplock bag, hoping her movements wouldn’t wake Jared. She was back in her room with the door shut behind her. She paused again, staring across the room at the offensive item. Until she let her anger surge up within her and drive her forward. She used the chopsticks effortlessly and put the card into the ziplock bag before shoving it in a bottom drawer of her vanity.

Breathing heavily she made her way to her bed. Hoping she would be able to get some sleep. Hoping the vents of the past two days wouldn’t send her spiraling back into her nightmares.

AND THATS IT FOR CHAPTER ONE. SOON TO BE ADDED TO AO3 and FANFIC.NET