#i mean the show did kinda make him kinda does that but it was dragging on too late

[sethdomain]

Okay i get the salter now, i fucking hate y’all 😹

[un-lawliet]

WHAT IF teen!Gojo and teen!reader are best friends teetering on the edge of lovers but they get into a petty little argument and start ignoring each other right???? so reader goes on a date with someone else to be petty and Gojo internally freaks out. So, him and his friends get in disguises as Gojo tries to sabotage the date without being noticed but instead he accidentally helps the other guy look great and impressive every time💀

Geto, shoko, and Nanami don’t help Satoru. They just watch and laugh😭 good fluffy ending though pls

THANK YOU FOR THE REQUEST !!!!! i loved this idea so so much- i kinda tweaked the request slightly but i hope this is ok <3 i love you and thank you for your patience !

“Normal”

- in which you’re on a date with someone that isn’t Gojo.

“Does this count as stalking?”

It absolutely did count as stalking.

Gojo, Shoko, Nanami and Geto were currently huddled in a dimly lit booth hunkering down as to not be seen by you…or your pompous looking date sat opposite you.

“It’s not stalking.” Gojo splutters, glaring at Geto through the top of his sunglasses, “It’s just..just-”

“You tracking Y/N down and making us watch her on a date.” Shoko muses, rolling a cigarette between her fingers, reaching for her lighter.

“Exactly!”

Nanami groans, his head falling backwards, hair falling over the curve of his eyebrows, hiding his face slightly.

Shaking his head, a small grin dances across Geto’s calm face, watching as Gojo pouts and glares at your table, eyes completely trained on your face.

“‘S’not even that good looking, she just has a thing for guys that flatter her.” He grumbles under his breath, flicking the fancy wall he leaned on.

“Think most girls enjoy feelin’ pretty Gojo.” Shoko replies, hand still feeling around in her pocket, “Oh fuck sakes, I’ve lost my lighter…Hey- Geto, you wouldn’t happen to have a spare one on ya?”

Geto nodded, tossing her a purple lighter from across the table, smiling gently as she thanked him.

“You shouldn’t smoke inside.” Nanami mutters, now staring down at the menu in-front of him, finger tracing along the prices in thought, seeming to pause on the brownie section.

“No one can see, we’re fine.” She sighs, taking a drag and blowing it towards Gojo, grinning as he dramatically clutches his chest, gasping for air.

“What’s the point of us even being here Gojo.” Nanami huffs, side eyeing the bakery stand parallel to their table.

“Because, I need to show her that this..this loser is nothing compared to me!”

“I don’t know Satoru.” Geto muses, taking a sip of his camomile, “Y/N seems pretty into him.”

“Suguru!” Gojo gasps in horror, betrayal dripping from his voice and on to the curve of his disgusted face.

Shoko wiggles her eyebrows teasingly, inhaling before continuing. “He has a point Gojo, I mean look, you ever see her smile like that?”

Gojo whips his head around to stare at you, and Shoko covers her mouth to hide a poorly restrained giggle, sharing a glance with Geto.

“I make her smile like that- She smiles like that with me!!” He whines, and Nanami rolls his eyes.

A waitress smashes a glass from behind the café’s counter, you jump slightly in your seat and turn to look over at the sound, you don’t notice the group of strange looking teenagers ducking down at your movement, concealing themselves poorly in their seats.

Your date laughs at you, you blush and turn back to him bashfully, excusing yourself for being so on edge.

Gojo glares.

“So what’s the plan then Gojo.” Nanami drawls, resting his face on his palm.

“Yes! The plan!” Gojo splutters, looking away from your pretty, pretty face to look at the three of them.

He hesitates and Shoko groans.

“You do have a plan don’t you?”

“Of course I do!..So, the plan..the plan um, well-”

“He has no plan.” Geto interrupts.

“Jesus Christ Gojo.”

“Does that mean I can leave?”

“Shut up!” Gojo exclaims, “I’m thinking give me a second would ya?”

“Nanami if your leaving I’m coming with you.”

“Wanna go now Shoko?”

“Guys!”

Gojo slumps forward in his chair, his face resting on the table as he whines.

Geto rests a hand on his back and chuckles, shaking his head at the two other sorcerers.

“It’s ok Satoru, we can all figure something out ‘kay?”

“Yea?” Gojo replies, his voice muffled by the table.

“Yea.”

Instantly, Gojo springs up, his eyes as wide as his smile.

“Ok let’s brainstorm.” Geto suggest, his voice like honey as he removes his hand from Gojo’s back and reaches back to his tea.

“What if we spill tea over him!” Gojo gasped, pointing towards the cup in Geto’s hand, a sharp look crossing his face.

“Stupid. Y/N would see us.” Shoko grumbles.

“No- See Shoko, the point of a brain storming session means we make suggestions and listen without judgement.” Gojo argues, crossing his arms.

“Yea but your idea was stupid.” Nanami concludes, watching as Shoko nods.

“You suggest something then Nanamin!”

“I’m suggesting nothing, this whole idea is foolish.”

“OoOoh “Foolish” is it?”

“I’m leaving.”

Nanami stands up reaching for his bag, scowling at Gojo.

“Hey, hey Nanami c’mon ignore him he’s just..” Geto pauses with a quick regard to Gojo, “He’s just Satoru.”

“An idiot.” Shoko chimes.

“Yes, an idiot.”

Nanami sighs as he sits down, placing his brown bag back at his feet reluctantly ignoring Gojo’s grin.

“…What if we trip up the waitress as she’s bringing them their food.” Shoko suggests, twirling a piece of hair around her finger.

“That could work!”

“No, Satoru, that just causes trouble to the waiting staff.”

“And?”

Geto rolls his eyes, “We don’t need to cause anyone any trouble just because you’re too afraid to just ask Y/N out.”

“I am not afraid!” Gojo moans, putting his face in his hands.

“Uh huh, that’s why you fell out with her when she told you about the date.” Shoko laughs, wiping off ash from her arm.

“What was I supposed to do?” Gojo queries, frowning.

“Talk to her?” Nanami deadpans, “Like a normal person.”

“Our Gojo isn’t normal though.” Shoko winks, nudging an unamused Nanami.

“Focus guys.” Geto says, clapping his hands twice to draw attention.

Your sweet laugh echoes through the cafe, and Gojo pouts, shoulders slumping.

You were supposed to be sitting opposite him laughing.

It was supposed to be his food with which you shared.

And yet one petty argument about some random guy you had met in returning from your last mission asking you out, had ruined everything.

The shared glances between you and Gojo, how you leaned on his shoulder when you slept in classes, the way he would always keep an eye on your cursed energy when joining you in battle.

All those little moments had dissolved in the bitter moments after you informed him of your date, a small smile dancing in your eyes.

“He said I was pretty Toru’” You had said, your eyes wide, and Gojo wanted to cover the love sick gleam glistening in your eyes with his hand.

“I always think your pretty.” He mumbled, watching you cock your head in confusion.

“What was that?” You questioned, leaning towards him slightly, trying to recall his quiet words.

“Nothin’.” His curt response didn’t phase you as you moved backwards, a charming skip in your step.

“Think he sounds stupid.” Gojo was never good at expressing his true feelings, and in that moment, Gojo’s sheer panic over you leaving him overpowered his aloofness.

“You think someone thinking I’m pretty is stupid?” Your shoulders fell, and you turn to him, a small lour crossing your face.

“What? No? That’s not what I-”

“It what’s you said though Toru’” You sighed, and Gojo cursed at himself for the glimmer of insecurity that appeared to vex you in that moment.

“It’s just- Well he’s just stupid.”

“So you are calling him stupid for telling me I’m pretty.”

“No! He’s stupid! Not his words!”

“That’s the same thing Gojo!”

“Is not!”

“Is too!”

And now Gojo’s watching as Geto summons one of his smallest and weakest curses to push your stupid dates chair over, sunglasses off and held in his fist.

“Oh so we’re actually going with this plan? I wasn’t imagining it?” Shoko muses, stealing a forkful of Nanami’s brownie.

“Nobody else had any better ideas.” Gojo silenced, waving a hand in her direction, practically clamouring on top of Geto to watch.

“Satoru watch it, I can’t see where my curse is going with you on me.” Geto scolds, brushing the white haired man off.

“I can’t believe this is happening.” Nanami’s disinterest oozes out from his voice, nudging his plate over to Shoko who smiles brightly at his offer.

Geto flexes his hand, ensuring that the curse went unnoticed by you, it ducked under a table and weaved between chair legs.

“Make sure Y/N doesn’t see it!” Gojo panics, his hand covering his mouth.

Geto pauses, and looks over his shoulder towards Gojo, eyebrow raised.

“…Sit down Satoru.”

And Gojo immediately drops, hands on his legs.

The curse bobbles over to under your dates chair, and Geto smiles, before releasing his hold.

.

.

.

The sound of your dates chair toppling over boomed through the cafe, and with a swift flick of his finger, the curse dissapears, and all four of the sorcerer’s immediately drop their heads.

“Oh my God? Are you ok?!” Your concerned voice follows, and you stand up instantly, rushing towards your date, who grins at you from the floor.

“Oops, must have slipped.” He smiles, accepting your hand in helping in up, wiping the memory of his fall off of his jeans. “At least I have a pretty lady to help me in my moment of weakness.”

You giggle, and push his shoulder, “Oh shush you tease.” Bending over to pick up his chair.

“Oh no don’t worry I got it.” Your date winks, helping you lift the chair.

“How??!?!” Gojo groans, watching you swoon, “What is happening?”

“Man.. She must really like him eh?” Shoko offers, sharing a cheeky smile with Geto.

“Maybe it’s hopeless.” Nanami chimes in, “Do you want to finish this?” He asks Shoko, gesturing to the half eaten brownie.

“Actually?”

“Yea go on, you seem to be enjoying it.”

“Maybe.” Geto cuts in, “Maybe we should just leave them be? Let it fizzle out naturally?”

“What if there is no naturally Suguru.” Gojo mopes, kicking the leg of the table.

“Gojo it’s obvious she likes you, and it’s obvious you’re both smitten.” Shoko says, her voice muffled and she finishes Nanami’s brownie.

“..You think?”

“Everyone thinks.” Nanami replies, “Haibara thought you two were dating when we first joined the school.”

“How is Haibara by the way?” Geto questioned, “Why didn’t he join us?”

“Not sure, he said something about needing more sleep before his first solo mission.”

“Isn’t that next week?” Shoko adds.

“He likes his sleep.”

“Come on guys! Focus!!” Gojo exclaims. “I’m in a dire situation here!!”

“A dire situation that could be solved with a conversation, Gojo.” Nanami rolls his eyes.

“Try the curse again Suguru.”

“Satoru it didn’t work once, it probably won’t work a second time.”

“Ugh.” Gojo slumps back, a sigh escaping his lips. “If you’re all so sure Y/N likes me, then why is she with that loser right now?”

“She probably got tired waiting for you to make a move Gojo.” Shoko replies.

“Yea the “will they, won’t they” becomes tiresome after a while.” Geto agrees, pushing his empty cup towards the middle of the table.

“Ah!” Shoko says pointing over at you.

“They’re leaving Gojo.” Nanami affirms, joining Shoko in pointing.

“What?!?” Gojo gapes, “No!”

Geto laughs, shoving Gojo to his feet, watching you leave the cafe. “Go get her Satoru.”

“But how?” Gojo moans.

“Just go!” They all exclaim, and Gojo pauses for a split second before he’s bounding towards the door.

By the time he’s outside, you’re waving goodbye to your date, promising to call him as he walks the other way.

You look happy he thinks, and suddenly feels very out of place.

Gojo’s begins to turn to go back into the cafe, admitting defeat, when he hears your voice behind him.

“Gojo?” You gasp, disbelief permeating from your voice. And Gojo freezes, turning around awkwardly to face you.

“Hi.” Gojo replied, scuffing his shoes against the ground as he approaches you, hands in his pockets attempting to appear cool.

You look at him, your mouth slightly agape as you fiddle with the sleeve of your jumper, processing his appearance.

“You followed me to my date?” You ask accusingly, glancing around.

“He didn’t offer to take you home?” Gojo chooses to ignore you, refusing to acknowledge the implication of your words.

“I told him I could go back by myself.”

“Some guy.”

“Satoru.” You pause, lifting a hand to stop him, “Why are you here?”

A car drives past the pair of you, it’s headlights cast shadows across his perfect face and your hold yourself back from staring.

He stalls, looking at you for a moment. “C’mere, I’ll walk you home.”

“Satoru.”

You’re tired of his deflections, for once you just want to talk.

You both stare at each-other, silence decorating the air between you.

And Gojo shakes his head, stepping backwards and looking away.

“You look good.” He mutters.

“Good?”

“Pretty alright? You look pretty, he was right.”

“My date?”

Gojo’s sunglasses fall down the bridge of his nose slightly as he leans down to look at you.

“Who else?” He muses.

You don’t understand, your heart fluttering pathetically in your chest as you prove further.

“Why are you telling me this now?” You ask, your voice light, scarce of hope.

“Because.” Gojo hesitates, hating how unsure he sounds in this moment. “Because you are.”

You step towards him, it’s a slow movement and Gojo watches you almost cautiously.

“It took me going on a date with someone else for you to finally say something?” You tease, your hands shaking despite the confidence in your words.

“Would have said something without him, y’know?”

“..Really?” Your eyes widen, a tiny grin crossing your face.

Gojo nods, and you take another step and hug him, burying your face in the warmth of his chest.

And Gojo’s smile almost hurts his cheeks as he wraps his arms around your figure, pulling you in closer.

“You’re an idiot.” You mumble, looking up at him.

“But you like me.” He replies, cockily grinning down at you, blue eyes sparkling.

“Yea, I do.” You whisper, clinging to him, moving your head backdown to face his chest, face burning with your confession.

A small kiss is placed on the top of your head and you hold back a giddy laugh, pulling away from his embrace completely.

“So…Does that mean you’ll let me take you out?” Gojo questions, taking your hand and pulling you gently along to walk with him.

“Hmm I don’t know..Are you asking?” Your head leans on his arm, grabbing his arm as you walk.

“I would take you somewhere much better than that shitty cafe.”

And you’re laughing, “You love that cafe Toru.”

And he laughs with you, a long arm circling around your shoulders, pulling you impossibly closer to him.

And Geto, Shoko and Nanami watch from the window of the cafe, shaking their heads.

“Idiots.” Shoko says.

“Completely.” Nanami agrees.

Masterlist <3

Feel free to leave a request !

A/N : HELLLLLOOOO PEOPLE !! ABBY’S BACK !!! thank you for the request sweets this is literally one of my favourite concepts ever I cannot cope!!!! I love teenage Gojo so much :( BUT ALSO Shoko <333333 — i hope everyone is happy and healthy, i finished this at 2am and i have school tmrw pls kill me rn i hope a car hits me when i walk in, genuinley this no longer a joke.

LOVE YOU

[luveline]

a halloween june baby drabble mom!reader, 1k.

"Sweetheart," Eddie says, closing your door behind him with a resounding click, "you are not gonna believe this."

"Eddie!" 

He spins on his heel, stopped. "Hi." 

Junie looks at him like she hasn't just said his name, little chin tucked toward her neck, hesitant where she stands by her overturned toy box. You laugh from somewhere behind him in the kitchenette as she smiles at him and asks, "Present?" 

"Present!" He agrees, the plastic bag in his hand crinkling as it twists on itself.  "But after dinner, okay?" 

She nods seriously. 

"What, you're not saying hello anymore?" he asks, bending down with an arm extended. "Come say hello to me, lovely girl."  

Junie giggles and races for his legs. "Hello," she says dramatically, almost with the drama of a frustrated teenager. "Kiss." 

He kisses her forehead obediently. She preens under his gentle touch and rubs her soft cheek into his, but the scrub of his stubble is too much for her and she runs away again before he can give her a proper hug. 

"What am I not going to believe?" you ask as he stands straight.

"How beautifully gorgeous you are, for starters." He offers you the plastic bag, shortening the gap between you so he can kiss you chastely in greeting. "How much I adore you." 

You touch a hand to his chest lightly. "Where have you been?" 

He told you he'd be around to see you hours ago, and he's sorry to make you wait. He tells you this, and explains his reason for being late as he slides a hand under the back of your shirt, rubbing at the small of your back. You do your melting thing into his chest like a deflated balloon.

His present pokes out of the bag, but you're not interested. You're not uninterested, you ask him what it is, but when he says he can't show you, you snort and drive your face into his chest. You're more than pleased with him alone. 

Eddie likes that about you. He shows up with presents often (though he doesn't see them as presents as you would, or as Junie does, it's just one of those things, buying stuff for your family), but he could show up empty handed as he does the majority of the time and you wouldn't bat an eyelash. 

Your arms around his neck, twining one of his curls between your fingers. The sensation sends shivers down his arms, his hair standing on end. "I really missed you," you say under your breath, your cheek resting on his shoulder. 

"I really missed you," he says, not because he has to, but because he truly means it. Being away from you is the main torture of his job. "Hard to explain, right? Spent all those years without you and now…" He draws a line down your curved neck with his knuckle, a slow drag. You turn into him like you're hiding, though you don't tell him to stop. "I miss you all the time." 

"Love you," you murmur.

"How awful would it be if I just said ditto?" he asks with a sticky smile. You pinch his waist in warning. "I love you, sweetheart. You know that." 

"Mm," you hum in agreement. "Kinda made me beg for it, though, didn't you?" 

"No I did not." 

"Did too." You sigh with pleasure as he hugs you as tightly as he can, happy to be crushed by his arms. "Rough, mean guy." 

"I love you so much," he says. 

Eddie insists it. He likes to think of it as his happy beginning, you and him together. How lucky he was to fall in love with you, how lucky he was that you did the same with him. Maybe there are universes where you never met, where you take June to start a new life somewhere else, just you and her in Sacramento, or Williamsburg, or Palm Beach. Kind of breaks his heart thinking about it… all those Eddie's without his girls, missing out on the great loves of his life. 

But there's time for them, as there's time for him and you here. "I love you," he says again. 

"I love you too." 

A little while later he takes his mystery present into the living room with Juniee. "Don't look!" he tells you, turning to Junie with a big smile. "It's a costume, okay?" he whispers. "For Halloween." 

"Costume?" she asks too loudly. 

Your laugh is a breathy sound. He throws a quick glare at you from over his shoulder. "You could at least pretend you didn't hear." 

"What's a costume?" Junie asks. 

"Dress up, pretty girl. It's dress up, like your teddy bear costume. Sound fun?" 

She raises her arms. Eddie bunches the sleeves and body of the costume, pushing it gently over her head and needling in her little arms. She's patient for once and he's getting better at dressing her, so it's only a matter of seconds before it's on and velcroed shut around her tummy. 

Eddie pulls up her hood before walking on knees to give you an unhindered view. 

"Oh my gosh." You cross your legs where you're sitting on the couch and lean forward. "Junie, honey, you look so cute!" 

She grits her teeth at you. "Rah!" 

"And so scary!" you breathe, hiding your face behind your hands. 

Eddie beams at Junie and her eight arms, her spider costume pitch black with red eyed baubles on her head. You peek at them between your fingers.

"I'm a 'pider!" 

"Yeah, baby, you're a spider!" you cheer. "She's so smart." 

"Scary!" Junie corrects, holding her hands up like Eddie does when he's telling ghost stories, claws extended. 

"She's Junipider," he says smugly. 

He thought of it before he bought the costume. 

[kaciebello]

 Bring a scythe to a sword fight

Masterlist Luke Castellan x Hades! reader (implied, fem) Percy Jackson x Hades! reader (platonic) Summary: The reader is gradually suspicious, not believing Clarisse is the lightning thief  Warning: Angst?, no use of y/n authors note: Idk, I kinda blacked out writing this, sorry if it does not make sense. English is not my first language so I am sorry for any mistakes beforehand. Proofread by me and me only :( Word count: 1.6k

Ever since Poseidon claimed Percy and he was moved to cabin 3, the camp became lonely. He eats at his own table, gets to choose his camp activities, and calls ‘ lights out ‘ whenever he feels like it. The other campers think he's a monster magnet now. Most people avoid him, and even Clarisse stays clear of him. Only 4 people in this camp don't seem to be afraid of him. Grover, they often pick strawberries together. Annabeth, who took it upon herself to teach him ancient Greek. Luke, who still gives him sword lessons, although they are now more of one-on-one sessions. And the girl Luke seems to have heart eyes for. She mostly hangs out around them when they are training. Such as now.

Luke, was not going easy on him, as always. But Percy was still on his feet, meaning he was improving. Or that is what he believed in before Luke managed to tap the back of his knee and make him fall. A frustrated groan leaves him when Luke's sword touches underneath his chin.

“Giving up?” Luke asks and moves the sword away, extending his hand to Percy. He takes it and gets up. Percy can't help but curse a little.

“Don't worry bubble boy, Castellan is just a show-off, you're doing great.” Says the girl, who was sitting on a rock this whole time, nose in some sort of book he did not recognize. Scoff leaves Luke as he puffs out his chest. Percy picks up his sword and turns his whole body to the girl.

“I'm not really sure of that.” He says, hesitant.

“Trust me, once you take on one of the other campers you'll be alright, Lukes is just hardcore when it comes to it.” She says, putting her book down and getting up, stretching her body.

“ How about we give Percy a break. Why don't you fight me? A little spar?” Luke says and walks to the girl, offering a sword to her. Her face twists in disgust and pushes it away. Laugh just leaves his friend before he turns to Percy in the fastest way possible.

“ She claims I'm hardcore, but the truth is, I've never seen her with a sword in her hand,” Luke says, smirking when he hears the girl scoff. Percy's eyes widen.

“You don't fight?” He peeps out, higher than he wanted to. She just shook her head.

“I'm a healer, I don't fight. And I certainly don't play with swords” She says and flicks her hand. Luke rolls his eyes when she sticks her tongue at him.

“How do you survive capture the flag?” Percy asks, he's still not sure he understands the game. He also notices his friend now sitting down and decides to sit down on the floor as well. She, again, shakes her head.

“ I don't play, I stay in the med tent.” She says sitting down next to Luke. Although to Percy it looked like Luke dragged her to him more. He wondered if he could also do that. Just not play. Although Luke probably wouldn't let him. Percy spaces out, not noticing the older campers sitting now a little bit close to anyone's liking, giggling. He also does not notice Annabeth heading their way. But in his defense, she could have been wearing her Yankee cap, he would not know. Her voice snaps him out.

Turns out she was not there to laugh at Percy's poor fighting skills, nor was she there to spy on his progress. Luke was needed, ‘counselor duties’ she said. Completely ignored the fact the other two campers there were technically counselors of their cabins too. Luke told them both he would see them at the bonfire and followed Annabeth back to the camp. Leaving the two forbidden kids alone.

“Ya know,” she says. “I could beat him.”

“What?” Percy turns to her.

“I could beat him up in a sword fight, I just chose not to.” She says getting up, and picking up her book. Percy just gives her a confused look and she sighs.

“ You could too, with time I mean.” She extends her hand to him and helps him up. “We are children of the big three, Percy. There is a reason why they promised to stop having us. You and I, by default, can be the strongest people here. Even someone like me can beat the best swordsman in the last 300 years in his own game. You just need time.” 

Till now Percy thought he was the only one. I did not accrue to him that she may understand. Now that he thinks about it, Percy can count on one hand that he has seen her interact with other campers, not counting Luke of course.  Percy now realized he wasn't alone in this lonely life of Poseidon's son. She is, kinda, his family now too.

—

“ We know who’s the lighting thief.” Says Percy on the other side of the Iris message. She and Luke were just in Chiron's office discussing what to the with the other campers, as they started to take sides.

“How do you know?” “Who?” They say simutainlusly. She looks at him weirdly for a second, thinking that that's not an appropriate question. Percy and Annabeth ramble about meeting Ares, he says something about Ares knowing who the lighting thief is and protecting him.

“ His favorite daughter. Clarisse is the lighting thief.” Luke finishes Percy's thought.

“Nonsense, Clarisse would not do that.” The girl defends her. She may not like the girl very much, but her being the lightning thief is ridiculous. Luke just gives her a pointed look and promises to tell Chiron. Percy turns to say more, but the iris message ends. Luke looks at her softer than he expected.

“ I don't think we should tell Chiron anything.” He says and takes her into a hug. She wrapped her arms around him and they swayed from side to side. Nodding in agreement.

“ If we go by their deductions, it could be anyone. I mean think about it. You would not be in the clear either. Who else than Hermes's son, the god of thieves, to steal the lighting bold.” She was just saying her thoughts out loud. However, Luke's hug tightens. He narrows his eyes and she can see the anger that shows up whenever someone mentions his father. 

“ I did not mean it li th-”

 “ Or you, who better than a daughter of Hades, someone who hates both Poseidon and Zeus.” Luke cuts her off. His eyebrow rose, wanting to see her reaction. She sighs and wraps her hands around his neck. Her comment was not meant to hurt him, but she knows she went overboard and decided to stay silent. Her fingers tangled in his hair, tugging a bit. His eyes close for a minute. She went to play with the camp necklace hanging on his neck. When he opened his eyes again, the hatred was gone.

“Come on, I'm sure someone needs medical assistance.” He says and makes his way out of the office.

“The Apollo kids can do that.” She says but follows him nonetheless. A laugh escapes him. They stop at the outside porch. He turns to her with soft eyes, some would say lovesick one.

“Ya know, there is one thing I did steal,” he says. She just gives him a confused look. “ Your heart.” 

A smile spreads on his lips as she groans. He turns around and walks down the little porch. She stops him when he gets to the bottom.

“Luke.” He turns to her with a hum.

“Whose side are you on?” She asks him, looking down at him from the top of the stairs. He was hesitant to answer, so she continued.

“ Percy or Zeus?” He just smiles, takes her hand, and helps her down.

“ I don't side with gods.” He says.

—

Before Luke could strike Percy something blocked his sword. When he looks up he sees her. Before he can react, however, a dagger is thrown his way and he dodges it. Looking that way he sees Annabeth take off her cap. This is not how it was supposed to go. 

“Annabeth…” He breathes out. They were not supposed to be here. He was supposed to recruit Percy. He was gonna recruit them later.

The girl helped Percy up but kept him behind her scythe. Standing in the way of any danger that could come his way. When Luke turns to her, she points her scythe at him.

“Come on, sweetheart…” he tries, but by the look on her face, he can tell it is not gonna do anything.

“ You need to leave,” She says, her face hard as stone. Luke could not read a single emotion from her.  He tries to take a step to her but she swings her scythe at him. He blocks it with ease. He knows she does not want to fight. He knows that the swing was a warning, to keep him away. He knew she would never fight him.

So when he swings it does not come to his surprise she only defends herself. Never playing offense. To others, it may look like they were just dancing, old partners getting together for a spar. It was when Luke felt the wind from the portal he realized she moved him away from his original position. He knew that Annabeth and Percy would tell Chiron right away. She was allowing him to escape.

She stood in front of him. Scythe in a tight grip. Her eyes reminded him of a momma bear defending her cubs. With tears in his eyes, he turns around and leaps into the portal. In his mind, he promises to go back for all of them.

[mysecretlittlelibrary]

My Heart Is Thrilled By The Still Of Your Hand

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Word Count: 3.3k

Warnings: okay uh praise kink, touch starved bucky, kinda size kink, a little bit of cockwarming, creampie, unprotected p in v (wrap it UP), oral f receiving, minor overstimulation idk I think that's all but I'm probably missing something

Genre: fluff + smut

Summary: You find out your very not physical boyfriend is actually touch starved

***

Your boyfriend does not like physical contact. You'd figured that out pretty soon after you'd met him. Granted he started out as your neighbor so there was really noreasonto have physical contact exactly, but when you introduced yourself to him, he didn't shake your hand. You seriously thought you messed up that first impression when he glanced at your outstretched hand and just nodded a hello. You obviously didn't because after months of friendly conversation, he eventually asked you on a date. A date on which he didn't touch you not once. Even when he was guiding you somewhere, his hand hovered at your back but never actually made contact. You thought maybe he was being overtly cautious to make sure he didn't cross any boundaries. Your second date was the same and while you tried not to think too much of it you'll admit it was a little awkward when you returned to your apartments and he rushed out a goodbye before disappearing into his place when you had stepped forward to tell him you had fun. Your third date went similarly, except you grabbed his hand while crossing a street without thinking and though he did let go after a few minutes you took it as a good thing that he didn't immediately snatch his hand back.

His lack of physicality didn't bother you really, especially because you'd met his closest friends and they don't seem to touch him either. When they visit he sits in the armchair while they're on the couch even though his couch does fit the three people. You know it does because when you hang out with all of them you usually take that third spot on the couch with your back against the armrest closest to Bucky. You know not everyone likes being touched so you allow Bucky to decide most of your physical contact. Aside from the rare occasions where you hold his arm for balance while walking in heels or grab his hand in busy places, which he tends to avoid, you let Bucky initiate things. He hardly does but your relationship is still new, a few months at this point, so you don't feel the need to rush him. You're perfectly comfortable with that choice until Sam pulls you aside one day when you're all at Bucky's apartment.

"I need to talk to you for a second y/n." Sam tells you, grabbing your arm before you can follow Steve out of the kitchen.

"What is it Sam?" You ask, tilting your head.

"What's up with you and your man?"

"I'm not sure what you mean?" Your brows knit together at his words.

"How do I put this? If I didn't know y'all were a couple I would assume you barely know each other. You don't hug, you don't kiss, you don't cuddle, you don't even sit together when we all hang. At first I thought you were just shy about affection around strangers but we're friends now I think and nothing has changed."

"I'm sorry do I need to reintroduce you to my boyfriend, one of the most physical touch adverse people I think I've ever met?"

"So it's not a you thing?" Sam asks.

"No! As far as I know Bucky pretty much hates being touched. I figured that out when I met him. I just don't push the issue." You shrug.

"I mean I know he doesn't like being touched but you're his girlfriend."

"Being his girlfriend doesn't give me permission to ignore his boundaries Sammy."

"I'm not saying ignore his boundaries, I'm saying his boundaries are probably different with you."

"Sam it took Bucky three dates to hold my hand and that was becauseIgrabbedhishand to drag him across the street. I really don't think I'm an exception."

"At this point I think you've made it seem so small that he assumes you don't like it either. If you showed him that you cared about all of that stuff I'm sure he'd show out." He says.

"Okay but Idon'tcare about all that stuff." You sigh, "I mean, I guess I do but not in the sense that I want to force him out of his comfort zone or anything like that- I'm fine Sam really."

"Are you guys coming because I will start this movie without you!" Steve shouts from the living room.

"We're coming!" You shout back. Sam grabs your arm before you leave the kitchen.

"Just give a little nudge." He says quickly. The two of you make it out to the living room and Sam nudges you as soon as you're by Bucky's seat. You trip just a little at the sudden shove and shoot a glare at him. He makes a not so subtle gesture at Bucky and you roll your eyes.

"Did you guys pick something?" You ask hesitantly placing a kiss on Bucky's cheek before taking your seat on the couch next to Sam who's in the middle. You don't notice the way Bucky touches his cheek or blushes at your sudden affection.

"Technically Sam picked this movie." Steve says.

"I did? Is itNow You See Me? Y/n you know they've never seen that?"

"I believe it." You nod.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Steve scoffs.

"You two are basically grandpas, now start the movie." You wave your hand at him, grabbing a handful of popcorn from the bowl in Sam's lap. Sam laughs while Steve starts the movie. By the time you've finished both that and the sequel it's pretty late and everyone seems ready to wind down for the night. Steve and Sam say their goodbyes while you stick around to help Bucky clean up.

"I'll do the dishes tomorrow doll, just leave them in the sink, okay?" Bucky says when he sees you turning on the faucet.

"I don't mind doing them now-"

"It's late,andyou've already helped me straighten up. I'll take care of those." He pulls you away from the sink and turns it off. You put a hand on his cheek, your thumb gently stroking his face for a moment.

"You're sure?" You ask quietly. Bucky's eyes have fallen closed at this point and he lets out a content sigh before he replies.

"I'm sure." He says eventually.

"Alright, then I'll see you soon." You say giving him a quick kiss before going back across to your own apartment. It shouldn't, but your fingers against his skin stir something inside Bucky he hasn't felt in a long time and it makes him ache in more ways than one. For the next few weeks you take Sam's advice and test the waters in small ways. You put your arm around his when you're out together, offer hugs and kisses whenever the opportunity presents itself, you've even been finding ways to touch him while you watch TV together as opposed to sitting on opposite ends of the couch. It's all little innocent changes that you implement over time gaging Bucky for negative reactions and adjusting accordingly. He's not noticeably averse to anything you do so while there's no acknowledgment of your increased affection, you presume he's indifferent to it. Oh, how wrong you are. With each soft touch or gentle kiss, Bucky is only wound tighter over time. It takes everything in him not to react when you press yourself against him while leaving the movie theater or when you shyly kiss him before rushing into your apartment after saying goodnight. The more you do it the more he realizes how desperate he is to feel you but he can't bring himself to do anything about it. He wills himself to relish in the touches you give and not crave more. To his credit, for a while, that works. He's content with your shy kisses and gentle caresses until tonight. You're even more affectionate than you've been as of late and while Bucky loves the feeling of your hands on him, it's making the blood rush south while you're watching TV.

"Bucky are you alright?" You hum looking up at him from where your head is resting against his shoulder.

"Hm? Yeah, why?" He asks.

"Well, you've been pretty tense since I got here. I didn't wanna say anything but- I can feel your heart racing." You say patting his chest for emphasis.

"Oh is it?" He asks with forced ease that makes you chuckle.

"Babe what's going on?" You sit up to look at him.

"Nothing. You don't need to worry doll." He says grabbing your hand that's resting on his chest and squeezing reassuringly.

"Bucky, you don't have to lie to me." You frown.

"I'm not- lying." Bucky says. You look at him for a long moment before you shrug and lay your head back against his shoulder, turning your attention to the TV again absentmindedly tracing patterns on his chest with your finger. A few minutes pass before Bucky lets out a harsh breath and you sigh.

"What's going on with you? And don't say nothing this time. If you're bored or something you can just say so instead of acting all weird."

"I'm not bored, trust me."

"Then tell me what's up with your behavior."

"I'm just- on edge. I guess." He shrugs.

"Why? Did something happen today?" You ask, concern in your voice.

"No no, nothing happened. I'm sorry for being weird, I'm just- god you drive me crazy." Bucky sighs.

"What didI do?" 

"The way you touch me is maddening doll."

"Wait what? I haven't been doing-"

"I know. It's embarrassing how easily you manage to rile me up. All you've done is hug me and now I want to pin you against a wall." He grunts out. Your eyes widen at his confession.

"Pin me against a wall?" You gasp.

"I've been trying to control it so much I'm sorry I-"

"Bucky I'm not scandalized that you want to fuck me, I'm your girlfriend. I'm just- surprised because you hardly initiate contact and sometimes you shy away from it, I kind of just assumed you hated it."

"Well I, I'm not usually comfortable with it and with you, it, makes me dizzy. I can't think straight."

"So like this," you place your hand back on his chest, tracing gentle swirls against his thin t-shirt, "this makes you dizzy?" You ask curiously. Bucky's hand grabs your wrist in an attempt to keep you still.

"Yes it makes me dizzy. It's been making me dizzy for the last hour."

"I had no idea you'd be so easily excitable." You giggle.

"I'm not it's just you." Bucky says.

"If you want to pin me to a wall so bad I won't stop you."

"Y/n, don't tempt me."

"I mean you don't have to if you're not ready for that-"

"That is not the problem."

"Well what is?" You ask.

"Y/n," Bucky sighs and you shrug.

"Like I said, we don't have to. I know it's not you're thing, I'm only teasing." You tell him. Bucky lets out a grunt before pulling you into his lap so suddenly that you gasp.

"I don't think you understand how hard I'm trying to not fuck you silly doll."

"What if I want you to?" You ask and Bucky's hand tightens around your waist. He brings his other hand up to the back of your neck and sighs.

"You're going to be the death of me." He growls out before pulling you down to kiss him. The kiss is rough, Bucky's tongue claiming your mouth. When Bucky pulls away, you're panting harshly as he trails kisses down to your neck. He litters your throat with marks that have little whimpers falling from your lips. "God you sound so pretty." He mutters against your skin. Your hands slip under his shirt and you drag your nails across his abdomen, enjoying the way the muscles tense under your fingers. When you attempt to tug his shirt over his head he stops you.

"Is everything okay?" You ask breathlessly.

"Bedroom." He grunts.

"Does it matter?" You frown.

"To me yes. I'm not fucking you for the first time on my couch." He says. He tucks his hands under your thighs and stands from the couch with ease. You wrap yourself around him, leaving teasing kisses along his neck as he carries you down the hall.

"I'd let you fuck me in the back of an alley if you wanted Bucky." You tell him when he kicks the door of his room open.

"What're you trying to do doll? Gimme a heart attack?" He grumbles tossing you onto his bed.

"Never." You giggle tugging him towards you by his shirt. When Bucky's shins hit the edge of the bed he falls forward with his lips against yours, bracing himself against his hands on either side of your head.

"Hard to believe when you talk like that." He jokes as he sits back on his knees. He tugs his shirt quickly over his head and you let your eyes roam freely across his chest.

"God, you're hot." You sigh which makes him chuckle. He leans forward to kiss you and then pulls your shirt up and off of you, tossing it somewhere behind him. Bucky dips his head to your collarbone, scattering your skin with wet kisses as he tugs your bra below your breasts. With your boobs on display, Bucky is quick to take one into his mouth, his tongue and lips lavishing your nipple with attention while his fingers tug and tease the other. Your back arches against his ministrations, quiet mewls filling the space.

"I love your little noises baby." He mutters, swapping his attention.

"Your mouth feels so good." You whimper, threading your fingers gently through his hair.

"Wait til you feel it between your legs doll." He smiles, kissing down your abdomen. Bucky pulls your shorts and underwear off in one go as he shuffles down the bed. "Such a pretty pussy." Bucky mutters, his hands on your thighs hold your legs open as he stares at you.

"Bucky," you frown, squirming against his hold impatiently.

"I gotchu doll." He says licking slowly between your folds. You suck in a breath at the feeling of his tongue against you. Bucky lets out a groan at your taste before burying his face fully between your legs. He laps at your core like a man starved, his tongue sharp and unforgiving against your clit. He has you so worked up that you're writhing against him, making him wrap his arms around your thighs to keep you still enough for him. Bucky pulls an orgasm from you embarrassingly fast, that tightly wound ball of pleasure in your gut snapping so soon it even shocks you. You draw a shaky breath that turns into a shakier moan when your body registers Bucky's mouth still on you, even stronger now than before.

"B-Bucky wait." You stutter out as you twist in his hold unsure if you want more or less of him.

"Gimme another baby. Love seeing you lose control." He growls out, two metal fingers joining his mouth, gently working you open as your walls continue to spasm helplessly in the aftermath of your first orgasm.

"I- Bucky- wai- I nee- God! I can't think!" You pant out, your fingers in his hair tugging harshly.

"Good, don't. Just be good and cum for me doll." Bucky says and when he wraps his lips around your clit, sucking harshly as his fingers curl just right against that spot inside you, you have no choice but to follow the directive, cumming with a loud whine as Bucky eagerly indulges in your juices. When your breathing starts to slow, Bucky lets up, adjusting enough to shove his pants off and line himself with your entrance. "How ya doin' sweetheart? Still with me?" He asks, softly caressing your cheek. You hum in response at first, giggling as you lean into his touch. "Need you to speak for me doll. Can't give you more til you use your words." He chuckles.

"It'll take more than that to take me out baby." You wink at him, taking his dick in your hand and stroking it slowly. He's hot and hard in your grasp and you smile when Bucky's head drops to your shoulder as he groans at your touch.

"You're killing me sweetheart." He laughs breathlessly. You let out a laugh of your own and turn your head enough that your lips kiss the shell of his ear.

"It's only fair." You whisper, scraping your teeth gently against his earlobe. You can't help but delight in the way he shivers. Bucky pulls your hand from his length, trapping it under his against the bed.

"Who said anything about fair?" He manages before you feel him thrust into you. Your head snaps back at the feeling of him stretching you as he slowly rocks into you inch by inch. His size is almost overwhelming but you can't help but moan when he's finally bottomed out. Bucky's groan is strained as he sets a measured pace, clearly trying to give you time to adjust. His unhurried movements only serve to rile you up more and you're squirming against him as your hands still trapped under his clenches around it.

"Fucking hell Bucky move, please!" You finally grind out when it becomes unbearable. When your walls clench around him, any plans of leisure Bucky had in mind are tossed out. He grabs your hips tight enough that you're sure there will be bruises come morning, but you have no time to dwell on it as measured movements become unrelenting, his hips snapping against yours so hard the bed moves with each thrust. Your back arches into him as he presses into you repeatedly.

"This what you wanted doll? 'Be split open on my dick huh?" He huffs out.

"Yes- fuck, ohGodyes!" You cry out, your body overwhelmed with the feeling of him.

"That's it baby, scream for me. Let everyone know who's got you like this." His commands are breathy and gruff when they reach your ears.

"Bucky! More please! Oh my God Bucky!" You whine.

"Fuck you look so good taking my dick baby. Nice and stretched out like you should be- damn I could get used to this." Bucky's words only pull more sounds from you as another orgasm builds inside you. His fingers reach between the two of you to toy with your clit, rubbing circles against the bundle of nerves and hurdling you faster towards that third release.

"F-fuck- fuck I'm close- god I'm gonna-" it's not a full sentence, your brain is too scrambled to string together the proper thought.

"You gonna cum for me baby? Gonna make a mess all over my dick?"

"Yes, shit- yes, god yes."

"Go ahead doll, cum. Wanna feel you squeezing me." Bucky huffs out and with a few circles against your clit, you're doing just that, your third orgasm making you shake so hard Bucky has to hold you to chase his own release. His thrusts are more frantic now focused on finding his own end.

"God you fuck me so well baby, you're gonna cum in me aren't you? Want your cum leaking out me Bucky. Please- please fill me up." You whine.

"Fucking hell- you want itinyou? Want it flooding that needy little pussy?"

"Yes! Please Bucky! Please cum in me. Want it so bad." You plead breathily. Moments later his hips stutter and you feel the heat of his release as it fills you. His harsh breathing is the only sound in the room for a few minutes as you feel your heartrate slowing.

"Yeah you really are going to be the death of me." He chuckles breathlessly as he attempts to recover from his high. You giggle and wrap your arms around him, pulling his full weight onto you.

"Wait a sec babe let me-"

"Whatever it is can wait, I just wanna lay like this for a while." You tell him. Your soft voice and gentle strokes of his hair are too soothing for him to even want to argue and so you lay like that for who knows how long. Bucky's head on your chest as you play with his hair, he doesn't even attempt to take his dick out of you, just wanting to prolong your closeness.

As it turns out your boyfriend does like physical contact, but only when it comes from you.

***

[ickypuppi3]

billy meets andy in fourth grade.

andy’s a year older than the rest of the class and doesn’t ever talk.

billy gets paired with him for a project and andy doesn’t move. billy stands up and calls his name but he still doesn’t turn around.

“andy’s deaf, billy.” ms. mackenzie tells him.

“oh.” billy’s eyes widen. he’s stumped, for a moment. “um. how do i…”

billy trails off. not sure what he wants to ask, exactly.

“just make sure he can read your lips.”

billy nods. he walks over to stand in front of andy and holds out a hand. like he sees adults do. andy raises his eyebrows but takes billy’s hand. shakes it. billy tells him his name and andy smiles.

andy’s taller than billy. most people are but billy still whales on anyone who makes fun of andy. billy’s small, sure. but he’s scrappy.

he’s sitting outside the principals office with mark p’s blood on his knuckles when andy walks past. billy pulls a face and andy laughs.

billy likes it when andy laughs.

andy uses sign language to talk to his sister and his aunt.

teaches billy, when he asks.

billy shows some of it to his mom. teaches her how to tuck her two middle fingers down, index and little finger pointed skyward and thumb sticking out.

“like this?” she asks, forehead creased in concentration.

“uh-huh.” billy smiles. puffs out his chest. proud. “it means ‘i love you.’”

billy’s walking andy home when andy points up at the stars dotting a purple sky. signs pretty. billy walks right into him when he suddenly stops walking.

andy catches billy when he stumbles.

sand shifts beneath billy’s feet as he leans up on his toes to kiss andy. it’s childish. a quick peck, awkward and clumsy. billy doesn’t really know why he did it but andy doesn’t frown or push billy away.

he smiles, instead.

signs pretty again and hugs billy tight.

billy’s mom leaves and neil loses his job. they move away and billy doesn’t see andy again. neil calls him words that didn’t exist in andy’s world.

when billy’s seventeen, neil packs up again. takes him, max and susan to hawkins. neil’s family. and billy.

billy locks eyes with steve harrington across the parking lot in september. gets on his knees and blows him in tina’s parents guest bathroom in october.

steve corners him in the showers after practice the next day. reopens the split on billy’s lip and gets blood all over his own.

they communicate with hands, mostly. grabbing, pushing, pulling. jerking each other off in the backseat of steve’s car. fists come in to play when billy finds steve in a house alone with a bunch of kids, max included.

billy’s bruises are somehow worse a week later and steve tells him to come over that evening. doesn’t ask. just tells.

billy sneers. spits and swears at steve.

rocks on his heels as he waits on the harrington’s doorstep at 9:15.

“you’re late.” steve says.

billy doesn’t say anything. doesn’t need to.

something changes after that. steve fucks billy in his plaid nightmare of a room and drags him to the bathroom to dab at his cuts and scrapes right after.

brushes the backs of his knuckles across bruised ribs and frowns.

billy tugs at his hair and brings their lips together. almost gentle.

it’s too fragile for a name, whatever they have.

it’s summer when billy first mentions andy. billy’s sitting on steve’s bed and steve’s looking at him in the way that he does whenever billy reveals a part of himself. eager to soak it up and bask in it.

billy shows steve how to sign his name. how to say please and thank you, bitch and motherfucker.

“what’s-” steve’s hair has fallen over his forehead and billy reaches out to brush it back. unthinking. “what’s ‘i love you’?”

billy freezes.

his heart pounds. they haven’t- they don’t-

“you sweet on someone, harrington?” teasing is easy and billy’s a coward.

“oh, you know.” steve shrugs and it would be casual if he wasn’t looking at billy like that. “kinda.”

“yeah?” billy looks away. focuses on steve’s boxers which billy knows have been in that exact spot on the floor for the last three days. “anyone i know?”

“you might.”

billy shakes his head, grins. “hot?” he asks.

steve just nods, smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth as he edges his fingers towards billy’s on the comforter until they’re intertwined.

billy opens his mouth but steve leans forward and kisses the next smart ass response right off of his lips. winds long fingers into his hair and steals billy’s breath away.

makes his stomach do flips in that way that only steve can.

billy leaves with a smile on his face.

something crashes into his car on the drive back and everything goes dark.

five months, a ‘mall fire’, a shadow monster and seemingly endless hours stuck in a hospital bed later, billy finds himself in a house straight out of texas chainsaw, standing next to max as everyone debates on what to do next.

billy keeps quiet. doesn’t have much to say these days. he bites at his lower lip before looking across the room at steve.

steve smiles at him. something small and private.

everyone’s talking, no one’s paying attention to them.

steve raises his right hand. tucks his two middle fingers down and points the other two toward the ceiling, thumb sticking out.

billy’s cheeks flush and his heart pounds.

thinks it might jump right out of his chest if he isn’t careful.

his stomach does somersaults and he vows that if they get out of this, he’ll tell steve.

he’ll tell him.

for now he raises his left hand. two fingers down, two up, thumb out.

[lueurjun]

shy soobin as your boyfriend

shy bf! soobin x reader — loving soobin hours rn majorly<3 in which soobin is completely and utterly enchanted and captivated by you, enamored with all that you are.

oh you lucky lucky gorgeous specimen

he is fr the perfect man but ur just as perfect so you know what? MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN

the way you met is pretty standard

you worked at the barista he liked to visit frequently

he visited the coffee shop twice a day just to see you

and you had no idea that he thought u were a lil cutie patootie so you were a little concerned by his caffeine intake

he would stay and have like 3 cups each visit just so he could see you for as long as possible

most of the time he would be trying to work up the courage to say something other than his order but he couldn’t get the confidence

and despite you being concerned for his health, you lowkey HIGHKEY got excited everytime he came in because he was just so???

perfect

like you’re sure you heard wedding bells the first time you saw him

it’s okay babe so did the rest of us

we’re all a little delulu for soobin

anyways one day you’ve had enough

running off like two hours of sleep, the delirium kicks in and you have a massive burst of confidence

so you write your phone number on the cup for his final order which is to go

and soobin doesn’t notice until he gets home and taehyun spots the number on the side

“who in their right mind decided to give you their phone number? are they okay? why would they want you?”

soobin’s kinda like ??

because first of all RUDE of taehyun to attack him like that unprovoked

and second of all WHY IS THERE A PHONE NUMBER ON HIS CUP

from what he saw, you were the only one on shift making his drinks so??

it had to be from you

omg. the poor boy nearly goes into cardiac arrest

because wtf does he do now? he can’t just text you

what if it’s an accident?

there’s no way he can embarrass himself like that

so he decides to leave it despite the agonising ache to do anything but that

once he’s out of the room taehyun’s little shit mode is activated

soobin may not have the confidence to text you

but he sure does

‘hi. is this the girl from the coffee shop?”

honestly your heart shits itself

because you totally were not expecting him to text you back

‘yeah. sorry if this is weird and unprofessional. you can totally get me fired- i mean-i’d like prefer you to not but you totally can… i’m not a creep though… i promise’

you totally nailed that babes

definitely didn’t come across as a creep

already taehyun ships it and decides he has to play matchmaker because he already knows you’re perfect for soobin

so he sets the two of you up on a date

soobin damn near cries when he finds out an hour in advance

“a date? what? i don’t know how to do that”

poor boy is STRESSED

but much to his surprise, he doesn’t totally mess things up

the date actually goes smoothly and he leaves you with a kiss on the cheek after setting up a second date

you both squeal when you part ways

you’re both so cute pls get married

lemme be your maid of honour

ONTO THE RELATIONSHIP BC THIS IS ALREADY LONG IM VERY SORRY

boyfriend soobin is straight out of a book istg

he’s so awkward but in the best way??

like he’s not afraid to show you affection and tackle you with love

but the second you do something as simple as kiss his cheek

BLUSHING STUTTERING MESS

you have him wrapped around your pinky finger

honestly you could probably tell him to jump into a river and he most likely would without any questions

follows behind you like a lost puppy despite towering over everything

holding onto the tips of your fingers letting you drag him along

fancy dinners happen but the two of you are more order in and play mario kart

he’d probably let you win the first few times but the second you gloat about it

nah he’s playing like there’s 100k on the line

BACK HUGS BACK HUGS BACK HUGS

BACK MF HUGS

he loves snuggling into your neck and inhaling your scent. it calms him down for sure

you do this thing where you gently slide your hands up the back of his shirt

AND HE GIGGLES EVERYTIME

silently sharing his food and drink with you

he just holds the straw or food to your mouth without saying anything

whenever he buys you flowers, he takes one out and keeps it for himself so he knows when it’s time to replace them

you also love buying him flowers

he gently didn’t know what to do with himself the first time you did it

“these are for me? no way- you didn’t-babyyy”

can you hear my cries?

sliding down the wall rn

his instagram is pretty much a y/n fan page

like genuinely his feed is just you

visits you during work and spends half of the time flirting with you and the other half stuttering over his sentences because you threw a compliment at him

also your concerns for his health lessened once you realized he only drank that much caffeine just because he wanted to see you

if anyone tries to flirt with him, he’ll incorporate you into the conversation

the other person will just be stood there whilst he rants about all of the things he loves about you

it’s a reflex. he just loves you sm

taehyun can’t tell whether he’s happy for you both or genuinely disgusted

“the happiness i caused for you both makes me severely sickened.”

cue beomgyu popping up like “ALSO WRITING YOUR NUMBER ON HIS COFFEE ORDER? REALLY Y/N? THATS SO LAME”

they’re super happy for you both tho they just won’t admit it

you and soobin are in your own little love bubble

two hopelessly in love puppies who are destined to be together

absolutely adorable.

[niefics]

“JUST FRIENDS” — P.SH X FEM!Y/N

Sypnosis : Y/n L/n struggles to keep her friendship with her closest friend Sunghoon normal, however they struggle horribly, fighting their urges for him in more ways then one. PART 2 !

Warnings : Possibly cringey jokes, cursing, pet names, smut, not proofread, sloppy (?) blowjob

Wc : 2021

— I wake up immediately, startled by the sudden noise. I hear constant banging coming from my apartment door, I got up walking into the living room to my front door. I stepped on my tippy toes looking up into the peephole to see my bestfriend, park sunghoon. I open the door tiredly to see him, giving me a bright smile, weird for this hour. “Why are you at 12am?” I asked in a tired tone, rubbing my eye.

“Because, I wanted to see you that’s all.” He spoke, I knew for a fact there was a reason he’d come over so unexpected. “Jake has a girl over doesn’t he ?” He nodded quickly, i moved to the side letting him in as he takes his shoes off and going to my couch sitting on it. “Y/n, it’s so loud I wanted to break down.” He whined to me. I rolled my eyes knowing he wouldn’t have a care in a world if it was him getting laid. “Her moans aren’t even hot so it’s wor-.” The actual fuck

My face contorted in a way it showed my disgust. “Why, did I have to know ?” I asked, he laughed. “I mean trust me if you were there you’d understand, she sounds like a donkey.” Alright that one was kinda funny but he doesn’t need to know. “A donkey is crazy, truly.” I spoke finally sitting on the couch beside him crossing my legs. “No, but I really did miss you.” He spoke in a more serious tone. I lift my eyebrow crossing my arms.

“You saw me earlier ?” “So, and I can tell you missed me too look at you in my hoodie.” I scoffed, I can’t deny I like him not enough for it to be obvious in my opinion. A simple smile whenever I see him is the most he’ll see. “Okay? It’s comfortable and the perfect size.” Sunghoon looked at me, with a look on his face. “You know what else is the perfect size.”

“I will send you home to hear Jake bend some girl over don’t start with the dick size bullshit.” Honestly, I’ve heard those same jokes since middle school, and the fact we both decided to go to the same university was worse. I was kind of glad to see him here and there, I mean he is my bestfriend after all. “Y/n,” he dragged my name out like he always does when he’s about to ask me something like a child. “Can we make food and watch a movie ?” I got up, going into my kitchen pulling out a pot filling it with water. I pulled out his favorite ramen pouring it into the water with the seasoning.

The food was getting closer to being done when I felt his figure above me grabbing extra things from above me like bowls for our food. He pulled them down with one hand his hand staying in my waist as he grabbed one more thing from the cabinet. I look down and saw his conventionally veiny hand on my waist whilst I was also wearing his hoodie still. I took a deep breath worrying more about our food and less about the fact his head is right beside mine .. wait.

“Y/nnie, how the food going ?” He asked, closed to my ear. His warm breath cm away from my ear. “.. Almost.” I spoke trying to make it not obvious it was doing something to me. “Okay, I’ll be waiting, call me when you’re done.” He suddenly kissed my cheek, I turned my head back to see him, I looked up at him. “What’s wrong sweets?” He asked calmly. “What’s up with you and this sudden affection ?” I asked. He shrugged his shoulders, walking away soon after.

Finally the foods finished, I make out plates. Sunghoon comes in to check on me seeing that the food is done he come sun and decides to take over. “Hmm, let me take these you can carry the waters.” He spoke walking into the living room with our food in hands. “Why are you acting so .. affectionate.” I questioned. “I can’t be nice ?” He spoke. “What? No! No.. you’re just acting different.” I spoke watching him stand in place turning toward me. “What are you talking about ? I don’t think I’m acting weird.” I nodded slowly. “Yes you are. You’ve been more, how can I say this.” I spoke. “Clingy .. you know ?” I said after collecting my words. He looks at me confused yet trying to understand what I was talking about. “Hey let’s eat before the food gets cold.” He spoke, sitting the food down on my coffee table. I roll my eyes and frustration.

— As he watched our favorite movie that we occasionally watched together while eating, I occasionally glanced at him wondering what was going on for him to do that. I was trying so hard to understand. I finished my food, placing it in the coffee table and grabbing my water bottle opening it and as soon as I opened it to drink from the bottle, I feel my things get cold causing me to curse under my breath. “Fuck.” I got up quickly to go change tops and to wipe my wet thighs down. “Y/n?” He spoke watching me get up so abruptly, getting up soon after me to follow me into my room. I didn’t notice, as I thought he was still engulfed by the comedy movie.

“Fuck.” He spoke realizing what I was doing by the time I was searching through my closet for a top to wear.. nothing on my chest since I was just at home. “Shit!” I spoke in a whisper realizing he was there, he wasn’t there for long covering his eyes after seeing a glimpse of my bare chest. My nipples were surprisingly hard and very noticeable in his small glimpse. “Im.. I’m sorry I didn’t mean to.” He spoke walking into the nearest room which was the bathroom.

The moment replayed in his head like a catchy song making it hard for him to think about anything else but the boner growing in his grey sweats. He didn’t expect something as a bare chest to get him hard, he didn’t know wether it was because of how close he was to her early being a factor or the innocent look I gave him unintentionally.

I quickly changed to a big tshirt, running to my bathroom to knock on the door. “Did you see anything ?” I asked, to be fair i would be to embarrassed to face him weather or not it was a yes or no. “N.. no.” He spoke, slowly starting to panic trying to find a way to quickly conceal his aching boner. He pulled down his sweater which was conveniently dark, hopefully it was hard to notice. He opened to the door to see. “Don’t worry .. I didn’t see anything anyways. Let’s finish the movie.” He spoke, as we walked back into my living room. He knew one way or another he’d half to find a way to calm himself down. Taking the blanket covering himself.

I took a bit of the blanket to cover myself and to keep warm, I feel him snatch the blanket a little in fear of me noticing his still aching boner. “What are you doing ?” I questioned trying to act like he didn’t see me half naked. “I’m cold that’s all.” He spoke, i questioned why he would be cold when he is covered head to toe, i on the other hand would be the one cold in the situation. “Sunghoon.. you have a thick ass hoodie on.” I spoke, he yanked the blanket once again. “So ? It’s still a bit chilly in here.” Sunghoon is acting way to strange for me genuinely.

“I’m not about to playing tugle war with you.” I spoke pulling the blanket back and seeing that there’s enough space for both of us. “Stop snatching the blanket, you have some.” I spoke, taking my eyes back to the movie while sunghoon struggled to keep his mind off the sight he saw earlier. The movie seemed like it was gonna play forever, he sighed his mind and body becoming impatient. “Y/n..” he spoke looking at me. I turned to look at him, humming to his call of my name. “Can you help me with something?” He asked softly looking at me in the eyes, i hummed. “With what?” I asked, feeling my hand get grabbed by his pulling me a little closer to him as he guided my hand to his boner, surprising me.

I was startled snatching my hand back, I don’t know what I expected but it wasn’t that. “I tried to hide the fact I did see you topless for half a second, but the thought is eating me alive .. please help me fix it?” He spoke with pleading eyes making think about it extra hard. He moved the blanket showing me his boner, the tv reflection hitting it. I looked at him, debating if I should let him hit or something faster, a blow job. I mean I might be a little rusty but it’ll help with his problem for the most part.

I never really expected our friendship to come like this, me helping him with a blowjob. I mean yes I kinda like him, but never expected this to ever happen.

— I sighed, slowly rubbing his hard on. He relaxed trying to calm his nerves down. My nervousness skyrocketed, looking at him, giving him a signal to pull his sweats and boxers down. I am truly glad I didn’t let him fuck because the fear that came on my face when I saw how big it was. It was bigger then I’ve ever had and a little longer too. I started rubbing his shaft as I saw precum seep out of his slit as I started to collect my saliva. I lowered myself down closer to his shaft slowly spitting on it, pulling back up and rubbing it just as before.

I rubbed my thumb over his slit, as i tried to calm my nerves down before putting my mouth on his member. He realized I was a bit nervous, rubbing my back ultimately calming me a little. I sighed finally putting my mouth on his shaft causing him to gasp. I went up and down slowly molding my mouth to fit around him almost perfectly. He started breathing faster, grabbing my hair and helping me go down a little more till I started gagging. There was still space left before I hit the base of his shaft, I placed my hand around it to pump it as i bobbed my head.

Low groans, cursing and wet gag noises could be heard, the movie long over. “Ah .. fuck!” He groaned as I struggled to breathe, tears falling down my face while my hands were no longer on his shaft after I was finally able to take it all like a “good girl.” As he put it.

His thighs were a bit messy with slobber. He didn’t care whatsoever, enjoying the sight of using me to get off. “I’m so cl.. o.. se.” He whined unintentionally thrusting into my mouth while still holding my hair. “G..onna le..t me use that cunny too?” By now I could tell he was lost gone, nothing but the thought of cumming in my mouth was his main and only thought. But I couldn’t deny the thought of him fucking me made me wet and needy.

His hips stuttered as he held my mouth as he came shortly after he let me breathe moments before. I tried my best to swallow all of hit, some seeping onto my lips. I bobbed my head a little so he could ride out his high, his hand letting go of my now messy hair. I sit up whipping and kicking the rest of the cum off my thumb.

He patted his lap, wanting me to sit on it. “Come here.” He demanded.

[fanficriter]

I wanna request a Saiki x GNreader! 🌸 if possible!! That’s it hope u have a good day!

Dating Saiki K

Characters - Saiki Kusuo

Warnings - None!

Notes - I’m not sure if you meant to do this, but this request came thru like 10 times lol

Not proof read :3

Gender Neutral Reader

- You guys are absolutely chillin all the time

- Doesn’t talk to you that much during school, he just wants to get through the day 😭

- But after school, your always walking home together, and end up at one of your houses

- When at said house, you’re both sprawled across the bed, legs entangled and SNOOZING

- Usually has you on his chest with an arm draped over you, or curled up on his side

- Very lazy cuddler

- Lowkey starts tweaking when he gets butterflies in his stomach bc he’s not used to feeling it

- “What is happening to me…? Did Kusuke mess with my antennas..??”

- SPEAKING OF KUSUKE !!!!

- Actually dreads whenever kusuke shows up when your around

- Kusuke is always flirting with you and saiki HATES IT

- Of course you just be ur lovely self and try to politely shut him down

- If (when) he does not take no for an answer, saiki will hold your waist, and make kusuke leave by any means necessary

- and i mean ANY means….

- His parents love you tho

- His mum is so excited to meet you

- Makes a whole dinner for you (i love her 😭)

- Saiki isn’t very good with words

- He’s an acts of service kinda guy 🤤

- You need help reaching something? He’s reaching up and grabbing it for you

- Need help with homework? He’s already done his AND yours before you could even pull it out of your bag

- Will also share his coffee jelly

- Not very big on PDA, but will occasionally link your pinkies as your walking

- He’ll hold your hand if ur lucky

- His friends are always crowded around you guys, so sometimes he’ll just drag you away to a quiet spot and sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes

- He loves you, he’ll try his best to let you know without words

——————————————————————————

[infinizero]

Ok so

There is this trope about ghosts not reaching maturity until they've been ghosts for several centuries

There is ALSO the trope that ghosts fight as a sort of way to communicate

With the power of these two tropes combined-- I give you this strange headcanon:

Ghosts become mature adult ghosts after 500 years.

Danny and his usual troublemakers are all in the same "daycare".

He's just the youngest + most unique ghost so they like playing around with him the most. In other words, it's the ghost version of older siblings ordering their younger siblings around

As far as ghosts go,

There are blobs, ghost animals, shades (those are ghosts as we know it) and ghosts (aka Infinite Realms Beings) etc etc

The blobs and etc are, well, blobs and etc

But ghosts need a while to fully grow up and be considered adult

And so, if these ghosts are children, they need guardians or caretakers at the daycare right?

Correct

Baby ghosts are under the care of the nearest authority (Ancient or Leader or etc etc)

Except baby ghosts usually stay near where they were born and Danny and Co just so happen to be near Pariah Dark

Pariah Dark is asleep

But Fright Knight is there!

Except Fright Knight is also sealed

And it's one thing to wake up the ultra powerful megalomaniac tyrant kinda parent figure but not really you're supposed to have and another to drag your oldest adult sibling out of their room to touch grass

In other words, the surrounding authorities just went eh the babies can contact fright Knight if anything happens

But then Danny defeats Pariah and inherits his authority

So he technically becomes the caretaker of baby ghosts in the area while being the youngest baby ghost himself

Hence the other ancients visiting and *playing* with him to see if it's ok to leave the babies with this other baby

And since they're ghosts who don't have human guidelines or morals, decide that since he's that strong it should be fine to leave it alone

Besides he has Fright Knight! Good 'ol Frighty will definitely help out this new baby kid ghost with doing everything!

Meanwhile, Fright Knight waiting for Danny to come claim the crown and ring: ...

Cue Danny's rogues coming up to him to show him shit they accomplished

Youngblood : Phantom look at this cool baking soda volcano that spews out real lava!!

Danny: It does WHAT

Youngblood: Look!

Danny: NO

Ember: Hey Babybop wanna listen to the new song I wrote? It compels humans to start cults based on my name!

Danny: Ember, no

Ember: I think you mean Ember YES

Skulker: Ghost boy I have skinned an alien and brought you a pelt turned into a coat

Danny: ...you did WHAt

Skulker: It is nearing winter time and one must always be ready for winter time

Danny, having an existential meltdown after seeing his parents and Vlad get it on together: Desiree what the actual fuck??? Did you do????

Desiree: I merely fulfilled a wish

Johnny: Hey Phantom look we got matching tattoos to celebrate our anniversary!

Kitty: Wait what did you just say?

Johnny: uh, we got tattoos for our anniversary?

Kitty: ...our anniversary is in TWO MONTHS. THAT was for my DEATHDAY.

Johnny: ...oh shit

Danny, about to soup them both: Man, get good

Lunch Lady: Phantom have you eaten your proteins today?!

Danny: uh... Yeah?

Lunch Lady, already throwing meat at him: EAT MORE

Danny:

Box ghost: WITNESS! THE GREAT BOX MECHA!

Danny: oh come on seriously

And on the other hand,

Walker, dumping ten piles of paper in Danny's room: Phantom, here are the latest forms that need revisions

Spectra: What do you MEAN you're not allowing me to open a beauty salon in order to dig into other girls' insecurities and maintain my own beauty?! That's why it's called a beauty salon!!

Cujo and Wulf who are both the best boys and favorites, with smug faces:

Fright Knight still waiting for Danny to accept the ring and crown:

Plasmius: What the heck is this weird feeling my ghost side keeps making me feel??

Plasmius: is it... Is there perhaps a ghostly way I can adopt the little badger??

[echobx]

husband & business man!Rafe hcs

◆ he'll be coming home from some dumb golf game or something boring and it was so annoying that he has to let it all out by fucking you into subdrop

◆ and then he'll be all sweet after peppering you with kisses to bring you back to reality

◆ but the first time it happened he was actually scared that he hurt you and kept rambling, like "shit baby, I didn't think that was even a real thing. you good? can I keep going or do you need a break?"

◆ and he's never been good at aftercare, but he gets into it and somehow it's incredibly fulfilling to carry you around after and wash you and put you in your favorite pjs so you can sleep and regain your strength

◆ and the morning after he'll make you breakfast in bed and shower you with compliments of how good you were to him the night before

◆ and that rhythm repeats once or twice a month because that's just how his work life is

◆ and he's a busy man, so every time he leaves for a project somewhere else he drags you with him because "we gotta get a scratch away map and scratch off all the countries I made you cum at least five times in a row"

◆ and although he's a doggy kinda guy, he's not appalled by doing a little missionary once in a while because you look so pretty when you cry because his dick is just that huge

◆ and he'll kiss away the tears and tell you to not be such a little bitch about it and just take it like a good girl

◆ and you'll nod, because who are you to argue with him over it because you know he's right

◆ still the tiny fight just always gets him to fuck you a little harder every time you do it

◆ he'd say shit like "gonna fill you up and get you pregnant like a slut" but he's also the one who made you get on birth control, so you know he doesn't actually mean it

◆ but he does mean it when he says he wants to make a little tape in case you can one day not go with him on a trip so the both of you have something to work with

◆ and you do it and it's not bad but not very good either but he doesn't care at all bc "look at that, such a pretty pussy taking all of me. god, you sound pathetic when I fuck you, baby. I love it."

◆ he'd tell you to get your nipples pierced but you refuse at first bc that shit hurts but he keeps saying it and once you do it he acts all surprised "oh baby, you really shouldn't have. that's the best birthday gift ever."

◆ ofc he pays for your manicures and for every little thing. but especially the manicures bc god damn he loves it when you scratch him like a wild animal

◆ he loves showing you off too, especially to his friends who still don't understand how you got him to settle down

◆ and he'll be a real ass over it too, telling Topper and Kelce to look at how hot you are

◆ and the first time round they actually did look at you, but just a bit too long for his taste and then he threatened them and they know him well enough to be actually scared

◆ and you're so sweet and bubbly and he's always looking at you

◆ especially when your eyes are fixed on some other girl who keeps eyeing him and he knows you could tear her to pieces if he let you

◆ the thing is, you know he only wants you, you know there's no real threat, but it still makes your blood boil to know that they think they have a chance

◆ sometimes you even let him fuck you right in front of them, like that one time at a party in a hot tub

◆ and he'd never deny your wish to show off how good he is at fucking you

◆ but once you get back home he makes sure that you remember that he is the one in control

◆ and you'll babble on and on about how you can't take it anymore but you both know it's a lie so he keeps railing into you until you squeeze him so hard that he sees stars

◆ and every time it ends the same, with the two of you cuddling and him showering with "I love you's" and whispered musings, telling you "if I hadn't already married you I'd do it again and again"

please don't copy and/or post my work onto other platforms! ~e©ho

[meangirls-imagines]

Frat Parties Suck

Description: It's basically that episode of SLOCG where Leighton and Alicia kiss for the first time but reader replaces Alicia.

WARNINGS: leighton being a gay mess, reader getting beat up, love confessions, fluff

leighton was extremely nervous.

not for her brother or his fraternity. no, she didn't really care about them. she was nervous because the girl she had been pining over for the last two weeks was going to said frat to "inspect" it. 

she met y/n after she got assigned community service for underage drinking and vandalism (that she thinks if she doesn't remember it happening, it didn't happen). the president of the school didn't take too kindly to that and sent leighton to the campus women's center.

her and y/n butt heads the second they met. leighton thought she was too good for the women's center and tried to bribe y/n but the girl wasn't having it. by the end of their first conversation, leighton was storming out of the building pissed off and turned on. y/n was hot as shit. 

the weeks went by and somehow some way, the blonde managed to kinda weasel her way into y/n's life. she had been making y/n smile more than yell so she thought she was getting somewhere.

and then the frat party came up.

while going through clothes they were going to donate, towa brought up the plan of the group going to a drag brunch, leighton politely declined, stating that theta was throwing a huge party. the group went silent and leighton looked confused. she smiled at them. "why is everyone so quiet? did i say something triggering again?"

y/n spoke up. "i get that your brother is in theta, but frats can be extremely sexist, toxic nightmares. we have been campaigning to get rid of greek life for over a year." leighton sighed. i know frats get a bad rep but theta actually does good. they just finished a construction project in mexico." y/n scoffed. "yeah, for the bar that they burned down."

leighton sighed again. "okay, maybe they aren't perfect but have any of you actually been to a frat party?" silence. the blonde grinned. "so we're making a judgmental assumption?" leighton smiled at y/n who smiled back. "you're right. i mean we shouldn't be judging theta until we go to one of their parties." leighton nodded, satisfied with how the conversation went.

"so maybe we should all go tonight."

leighton shot it down instantly. "no! you guys have your super fun....plans." y/n shook her head. "no, we are going to give theta a chance to prove us wrong. send me the invite." y/n crossed her arms and leighton shamelessly stared at the girl's biceps. 

i wonder how they would feel around my ne-

"leighton, you still with us?"

the blonde nodded. "yup. invite. i will send it."

leighton stood next to her brother, impressed with how fast theta changed gears for the party. "we got rid of any and all triggers." the blonde smiled at nico. "yeah, it looks good. i don't think there's anything that the women's center will hate." speak of the devil(s), ginger, towa and the rest of the women's center crew walked in, sans y/n. nico offered to show the girls around as leighton let out a breath, sighing deeply.

then, like something out of a movie, y/n walked in, sighing. leighton felt like she was going to pass out at how hot the girl looked. she wasn't dressed too fancy, a hoodie and some jeans, but leighton felt like she couldn't breathe. y/n smiled at the girl, walking towards her. "so, tonight is going to be a shit show isn't it?" 

leighton laughed. "oh yeah. um, do you want a drink?" y/n laughed. "oh, i already pregamed in the driveway but yeah, let's keep drinking shall we?" leighton giggled and led the way to the drinks.

tonight was going to be a long night.

nico was in the middle of explaining how parties worked at theta before y/n cut him off. "you can calm down nico, i know you think that i'm some big, scary lesbian protester or something." nico laughed a little. "i did not know you were a lesbian. it would be rude of me to assume that." leighton rolled her eyes. "nico. less. please." nico straightened up as y/n laughed. "dude, i'm just here to have a good time. now, will you please hold my feet for a keg stand?"

nico looked shocked and then smirked. "only if you hold mine afterwards." both girls looked at him blankly before he whispered. "equality." leighton shook her head before spotting cory. "oh look, it's cory, i'm going to go and talk to him." she left without another word as y/n and nico went to the keg.

after dominating all the games with nico, y/n found leighton outside nursing a drink. "hey." leighton looked up and smiled at y/n. "hey. heard you and nico kicked ass. congrats." y/n chuckled. "all in a day's work." y/n glanced behind her and saw a trash can overflowing with sombreros. "uh, why are there so many sombreros in that trash can?" leighton winced. "i think that they ditched some of the more problematic elements of the party when they heard we were coming and by problematic i mean deeply, deeply racist." 

y/n laughed as leighton saw kimberly frantically waving at her from behind y/n. "um, i will be right back, it looks like my roommate needs me for something." y/n nodded. "i get it, i'll be here." leighton smiled shyly and headed toward kimberly.

leighton wasn't gone for five minutes before nico came running towards her and her roommates. "nico? are you good?" nico was panting. "you gotta come with me. it's y/n. some dude called her a dyke and she said something back and then he just started beating the shit out of her."

leighton's heart dropped to her stomach. she took off running in the direction nico came and found the group of people that had gathered. she pushed through the crowd and gasped at the sight of y/n. her face was covered in blood thanks to the gash above her eyebrow. it also didn't help that her nose was bleeding. leighton could already imagine the shiner y/n was going to have tomorrow.

she rushed to the beaten girl's side, gently cupping her face. "y/n? can you hear me?" the girl softly groaned, covering leighton's hand with her own. leighton sighed in relief. nico kneeled on the other side of the girl, ordering his frat brothers to get rid of the guy. "leighton we have to take her to the hospital." that's when y/n spoke. "no..no hospital." it was slurred but leighton was able to make out what the girl said. 

leighton sighed. the best thing would be to take y/n to the hospital but she also didn't want to go against the girl's wishes. she stood, making a decision. "no. we're taking her to my dorm."

an hour later, thanks to nico, leighton and y/n made their way back to the blonde's dorm. the girls had gone out to get some stuff to help maintain y/n's injuries since the first aid kit kimberly had wasn't going to be enough. leighton was grateful that her and y/n had some alone time. thanking nico for helping her, she grabbed a washcloth she had in her room and a water bottle, using it to wet the towel.

she gently began wiping the drying blood off the girl's face, being careful of the cuts that littered her skin. y/n groaned a little before leighton gently shushed her. "shhh, you're okay y/n. you're safe." y/n groaned again, grabbing leighton's hand that was cleaning her face. "mmm..leighton. my face hurts." 

the blonde's heart broke and she took a risk. she gently kissed y/n's forehead, letting her lips linger. "i know, the girls are getting you some stuff to take care of that okay? they'll be here soon." y/n moaned in pain as leighton began to gently wipe her face again.

the girls soon returned and allowed leighton to finish cleaning y/n up. they all checked in on the girl before bela went to hang out in kimberly and whitney's room. leighton sat next to a cleaned up y/n, running her fingers through the girl's hair. y/n smiled at the contact. she pulled the blonde to lay next to her. "you know, i hear cuddles from a pretty girl are the best medicine." leighton giggled before making herself comfortable on y/n's chest. 

the two laid in silence before leighton spoke up. "i was so scared. seeing you like that. i didn't think you were going to get up and there was so much blood and-" y/n shushed her, pulling the blonde closer to her. "i'm okay leight. i'm here aren't i? i have the hottest nurse taking care of me too." leighton laughed before sitting up and looking at y/n. 

y/n noticed leighton's eyes shining in a way she hadn't seen before. it was like y/n hung the moon and the stars. she couldn't stop herself from gently cupping leighton's cheek, rubbing the girl's cheekbone with her thumb. leighton couldn't take it anymore. she leaned down and slowly placed her lips on y/n's.

fireworks went off in y/n's head as she kissed the girl back. all this time, she thought leighton was straight. just a common, cis blonde woman. boy was she wrong. the two kissed for a little longer then leighton pulled away. y/n looked shocked. "woah. i was really wrong about you." leighton chuckled before leaning in again. 

"shut up."

[ebbaskz]

an 'accident' | c.bc x reader (s, f)

masterlist | series masterlist

pairing : skz!chan x reader (y/n)

content : 18+, kinda exhibitionism? i mean someone else is in the house, dry humping/grinding over the clothes, kinda vivid depictions but not really, needy chan, meeting the parents af, finishing in pants

wc : 858

Chan had been nothing but antsy all night. You were nervous to meet his parents, but you figured that if they were anything like the kid they raised then you would be set for a nice conversational dinner. As you arrive at his parents’ home, he clumsily gets out of the car to hurry and open the door for you, leading you inside with a sweaty, shaky hand.

“Channie,” you call out to him soothingly, “It’ll be fine stop worrying.”

“I know, baby. I’m just so nervous for no reason,” he says with a sigh.

You give him a reassuring squeeze to his hand as the door swings open, revealing his smiling parents.

The introductions go well, but his mother says that dinner won’t be ready for another 30 minutes, redirecting you and Chan upstairs to show you around to kill some time. The walk around the house brings you to his childhood bedroom, letting you wander around, admiring the pictures and posters, while Chan takes a seat on the edge of his bed, patting down his hands on his paints to dry the sweat coating his palms.

You take your time venturing and then take a seat next to him on the bed, resting your head up against his shoulder.

Chan takes ahold of your hand, resting it on his knee. You want to relieve this tension and stress, reaching your hand up to the side of his face. The readjustment of your positions allows for you to leave a gentle kiss on his lips.

He visibly releases the tension of his shoulders, but he still feels like he needs more from you, reaching a hand up to the nape of your neck to keep you attached to him.

You appeal to his wants, deepening the kiss and allowing him to lead you into laying down on the bed with him atop you.

You really did think this was an innocent stress-relieving kiss until you felt Chan start to grind himself against you, making your empty cunt clench at the feeling of his bulge against your core.

Sighs are released out of his mouth, breaking the kiss to lower his head to your neck with a trail of open-mouthed kisses trailing along the way. His movements become more heavy, pushing himself into as if he was truly fucking you instead of your current predicament.

Speaking of, the reality of the situation really kicks in for you, remembering that his parents are less than 100 feet away and you are in the bed of baby Chan. This clearly does not appear as an issue or even a thought for Chan who just continues to lightly sigh and groan in your ear.

You figure there's no harm in taking it any further as there is still time to spare, but your hand is halted as you travel it down to the zipper of his jeans. Chan grabs your wrist with one of his hands, leaving himself supported above you with the other. He's moving frantically at this point, shocking you as you have never seen him get this into some foreplay.

The ultimate shock comes from the shudder that shoots through his body, slowing his grinds and leaving you with an ear full of incoherent mumbles of apologies. You realize whats happened in the moment as you look down to see a wet patch on the front section of his pants.

"Holy shit," you mumble out, "you just... in your pants?"

He buries his face into your neck, trying to hide himself from the pure embarrassment of the situation. "It was an accident, I'm sorry. I didn't- I mean I did know it was coming, but I just couldn't hold it any longer," he mumbled out with a slight whine of embarrassment.

"Don't worry, baby. It was actually really hot," you say adoringly in his ear.

The last comment makes him shoot up out of the crook of your neck with an eyebrow raised, "HOT??? Y/n that was embarrassing, don't even try to make me feel better about that-"

His words are cut off as you drag his hand down to between your legs, past the flows of your dress onto the fabric covering your cunt, which is soaked from watching him lose himself over you like this.

His eyes widen, and you see the cogs turning in his head, debating if you have time to further satisfy your needs after his were met. The thought is sadly broken by a call from downstairs, specifically the voice of his mother, summoning both of you for dinner.

Chan sighs in disappointment, leaving a kiss on your forehead before standing up awkwardly as he feels the remnants of his orgasm coated in his boxers.

"I'm going to hit up the bathroom before I go down, but don't wait for me," he says while opening the door and heading out of it before pausing.

"I'll make this up to you later when we get home, baby, yeah? I promise I will make this worth leaving you high and dry, a night all for you, okay?"

You are definitely on board for that.

a/n : hi hi! i am very excited to write a few of these because this is very self-indulgent. i love me some downbad desperate men :) ill try to get out one a day so ill be done in a week hopefully. as always, requests are appreciated and asks are open. ily all! - eb

[ugh-yoongi]

the very last thing i decide | pjm

(or, the one in which a love exists that's easy and instinctual as much as it is painful and self-destructive.)

✘ PAIRING jimin x f. reader ✘ SUMMARY you learn what it means to love with blood on your hands. ✘ GENRE hitman/assassin au; angst, smut ✘ RATING explicit. minors dni. ✘ WARNINGS they are both hitmen (hitpeople?) so there's all the content that goes along with that: violence, death, mentions of blood (a lot) and weapons, murder, but no explicit gore. everyone is morally grey at best and downright psychotic at worst (especially yoongi). reader gets stabbed. no one knows how to be a functional human being. swearing, smoking, light smut (penetrative & oral sex), miscommunication and unrequited love but not really, i drop a classic tumblr meme in a line of dialogue. ambiguous/hopeful ending!! some of the themes here are kinda heavy and i am not entirely sure how to tag them so if you have any questions pls don’t hesitate to ask! ✘ WORDCOUNT 12k ✘ LISTEN TO manchester orchestra - telepath ✘ THANK YOU i cannot remember everyone i’ve showed this to over the years. @the-boy-meets-evil for looking this over and brainstorming with me today. @hot-soop for always being a help. @effortandmore because you told me an embarrassingly long time ago this was worth finishing. and i’m pretty sure i also sent this to @jihopesjoint at some point too. i did a quick edit of this on my own, but after nearly three years i just wanted it posted and out of my wips so i'm sure i missed things. pls ignore them. ✘ AUTHOR'S NOTE fic drops two days in a row?? who am i?? i started this in may 2021 and it was supposed to be a simple pegging fic. i abandoned it bc i was convinced no one would want to read it. between today and yesterday i have written thousands of words and made it across the finish line. i hope you like it. the violence is a metaphor for love or whatever.

[37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA]

Jimin’s hair had been red the first time he met you.

How fitting, he thinks, considering he’s currently bleeding out on a table.

Well, there’s still a bit of fight left in him. He hasn’t lost consciousness yet, which he assumes is a good sign; he can still hear Hoseok barking out orders quite clearly. The edges of his vision are fuzzy and the pain in his abdomen is sharp and unrelenting, but he still has enough brain power left to wish he’d died instead.

Because you’d saved his life. And now he’s further indebted to you.

(Jimin never leaves a debt unpaid, but he’s not sure how to make even on something like this.)

Jungkook and Taehyung are fetching supplies faster than Hoseok can ask for them. Two pairs of frazzled, spaced-out eyes. Four sets of trembling limbs. Namjoon’s wearing burn marks into the floor, his cuticles bloody and nearly worried to the bone since he can’t keep them out of his mouth.

And then there’s you.

Sitting cross-legged in a chair as you scroll through your phone. Jimin’s blood is still drying on your hands, leaving smears as you drag your thumb back and forth across the screen, and this doesn’t seem to faze you one bit.

Behind you, Yoongi takes a seat at the piano and starts playing Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and Jimin simply cannot die like this. He can’t die on a wooden table in a room with a piano on which Min Yoongi is playing Baroque organ pieces.

“What is this, a fucking funeral?” Hoseok snaps, though there’s a desperation creeping into his tone that Jimin does not like, does not want to hear. “Cut it out, Yoongi.”

Said man staunchly ignores the doctor, transitioning flawlessly into the fugue. Jimin barely hears the tinkle of your laughter but he hears it all the same, and he wants to pretend it doesn’t calm him, bring him back down to earth when he starts drifting too far away. But you do, and it does, and all he can think about is: will you miss him if he dies? Will it take you long to wash his blood from your hands?

Hoseok’s absolutely incensed, pushed to the limits of his stress at the thought of not being able to save Jimin’s life, and Jimin appreciates this, really, but not when Hoseok pushes two gloved fingers deep into the wound in his stomach so hard all he can do is cry. “Yoongi—”

You snort. You don’t even look up from your phone.

Namjoon, for all his leadership and stoicism and poise under pressure, is just as frantic and panicked as the rest. It’s not everyday one of his people is inches from death ten feet away from him. Most people usually die in the shadows. Kim Namjoon has faced down death more times than most, yet watching the life slowly fade from Jimin’s eyes is too much even for him. “Yoongi, please—”

But the fugue keeps going, tempo change after tempo change, the two pillars of this organization spiraling completely by the time the coda starts, unfocused and sweating and praying. To gods they don’t believe in, to hope, to chance—whatever and whoever might be listening. Jimin usually loves hearing Yoongi play. It’s the only thing that humanizes him, and Jimin had spent so many restless nights shoulder to shoulder with him on that exact bench in the blue hours of the early morning, hypnotized by the way the older man’s knobby fingers moved across the keys.

This is it, he thinks.

Jimin’s going to die with Toccata and Fugue in D minor playing in the background.

He’s imagined his death so many times. Stupid not to in this line of work. Violent, quick and painless, in his sleep, drawn out and gory, a message. And in all of those scenarios, it’s either jarringly silent or there’s someone screaming. Usually him, sounding much like he is now, two fingers stuck in his gut. In all of those scenarios, Min Yoongi is never playing Bach as everything fades to black.

You sigh. “Shut the fuck up, Yoongi,” you say, your tone as blasé and inconvenienced as ever.

Shocked at your audacity, one of Yoongi’s fingers slips and hits the wrong key, something dissonant and metallic as it rings out. But the music stops all the same, the silence nearly giving Jimin whiplash. Now he can hear the clinkof Hoseok’s tools, the squelching of his wound, Jungkook’s desperate pleading for him to just be alright, please God, just hang on. He wants the music back. He doesn’t want Jungkook’s crying to be the last thing he hears. Doesn’t want the sound of his own organs imprinted into his memory.

“What’d you say?” Yoongi asks, because no one talks to him that way. They wouldn’t dare. Most people try not to talk to him at all.

But you do.

And, inexplicably, Yoongi listens.

You roll your eyes. “You go deaf in your old age? I said shut the fuck up. Hoseok’s two knuckles deep in Jimin’s fucking stomach and you’re over there having your little Amadeus moment.”

He bristles. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” Yoongi repeats, and Jimin can’t see him, but he knows his eyes are narrowed, lips pulled back in a snarl, fists clenched at his side.

“Oh, princess,” you coo, and Yoongi’s fury is palpable, permeates every inch of this place, overrides all the fear and anguish. “I’m talking to you, baby. I know Jiminie’s busy trying not to die and that’s stressful for all of us, but please do try to keep up.”

Jimin hears the flick of Yoongi’s switchblade. Then he hears him say, “Please let me fucking kill her,” in that lazy Daegu drawl of his, like forming full words are beneath him. Not worth the effort when they’re directed at you.

Still seated, you uncross your legs and, through blurred vision, Jimin watches you grab Yoongi by his belt loops to tug him closer, grab the wrist that holds his knife and press it to your own throat. “Don’t threaten me with a good time, Yoongi. Be a good boy and make it hurt.”

Jungkook’s near hysterics at Jimin’s side. “What the fuck is wrong with you two? He’s dying!”

Jimin tries to say I’m not, Kookie, I’m okay but the pressure on his abdomen is too intense. He can barely breathe, and Hoseok’s still digging around, still looking for that stupid fucking bullet, had to do something and do it quick so there’d been very little anesthetic and finesse, and he’s silently screaming for someone to just comfort Jungkook, tell him everything’s going to be okay, but instead—

“Serves him right for being a fucking idiot,” you say, words muffled by the knife still pressed to your throat. “What a painful, permanentlesson in not forgetting your fucking vest.”

“Stop it!” Jungkook sobs, fingers ghosting along Jimin’s matted fringe.

Yoongi’s still scowling. “Just say the word, Joon-ah. I’ll make it quick.”

You actually laugh at that. The kind of full-belly laugh Jimin would kill to be able to produce. “You wanna fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid.”

Someone snarls. Probably Yoongi. “You’d look so good gutted on the floor like a fish,” he replies, and if Jimin knows him at all, he knows he’s got that dreamy, faraway look in his eyes. The one he always gets when he’s about to kill—the one that makes him so unhinged and dangerous. “Left there to bleed out and die all alone like the trash you are.”

No one’s survived that look before, but you just grin, as if being on the receiving end of it is nothing more than another simple inconvenience. “Do it, then,” you prompt. “You’re so big and bad, yet here you are, waiting for Namjoon’s permission like some kind of pathetic fucking dog.”

“I’m no one’s dog.”

Your eyes slowly flick over to Namjoon. “No?” you ask, smile widening as Jimin watches you drag your heeled foot up the inside of Yoongi’s calf, his thigh, stiletto coming to rest in the center of his sternum. “That’s a shame, princess. That pretty neck of yours was just made for a collar.”

There’s no doubt in Jimin’s mind now that he actually died back in that penthouse and is now residing in whatever level of hell is watching you give his associate a semi despite him being a millisecond away from murdering you.

Yoongi would do it, too. No hesitation. You’ve been on his shit list for as long as Jimin can remember, and you’ve been daring him to put his money where his mouth is and just kill you already for just as long.

Taehyung groans. “Can you two just fuck already so the rest of us can be spared of this?”

You click your tongue, tone melting like butter. You’re fond of Taehyung, soft on him. “No can do, angel. Yoongi here knows I only have eyes for our Jiminie, and god does that hurt his little feelings.”

Your wicked smile gives away nothing—whether you’re telling a bold truth or just unnecessarily needling Yoongi further—but Jimin’s caught off guard and chokes on your words nonetheless.

Hoseok’s forceps still digging around in his stomach, there’s a quiet hurrah of triumph as he finally locates the bullet. Jimin feels nothing as he retrieves it and plucks it out, a reverberated clank! as he drops it into a kidney dish, your words the anesthetic he’s needed as they play on a loop in his head.

When he finally blacks out, either from the pain or the adrenaline or both, it’s your face that greets him. He never gets the chance to tell you why he forgot his vest.

[64.1466° N, 21.9426° W | Reykjavík, ICELAND]

Jimin’s hair is blue when it happens the first time.

It’s November. Namjoon has sent the two of you to Reykjavik and it’s dark all the time, the midnight hue of his hair blending into the impenetrable nighttime that surrounds you. Jimin works best like this—out of sight, part of the shadows. He’s light on his feet, lithe in ways no one else is, not even you, and he’s impossible to anticipate under the cover of darkness.

That’s why Jimin always takes care of the appetizers.

It’s your job to clean up the main course.

The two of you are two halves of the same lethal coin, working together flawlessly after years of carefully honed practice. Jimin slams an unsuspecting man’s head into a wall and you’re right behind him to put a bullet in it.

It’s just how it goes.

And he trusts you. He has to, otherwise he would’ve gotten taken out years ago. You’re not always in his line of sight, but he always feels you, senses your movements before you’re even on your feet. The times it’s gone wrong—and it’s gone wrong so many fucking times, despite how cautious and skilled the two of you are—you’re always right there to catch him before he even hits the ground. Just like a ghost, as if your only purpose in life is keeping Jimin safe and alive.

(It isn’t, but it sure feels that way.)

Tonight it’s another hit carried out in an overpriced penthouse overlooking the northern shore. You’re in and out, don’t waste a second more than you need to. Jimin doesn’t spare a glance at the carnage left behind. Nothing he hasn’t seen a hundred times before. All blood bleeds the same, but he still wonders, foolishly, if his looks different to you. If it feels wrong when it stains your hands and seeps into your clothes.

Jimin has never been covered in your blood before, but he likes to think it would.

The two of you don’t speak until you’re in the quiet safety of yet another hotel room, chain lock thrown across the door, deadbolt secured. A small arsenal of weapons is retrieved from ankles and waistbands and cleaned and packed away meticulously. Jimin’s the one who makes the call to Namjoon, tells him in code that the job’s done. You’ve barely broken a sweat, but under the fluorescent light of the bathroom, Jimin can see a small smattering of blood just along your temple when he closes the distance between you.

Someone else’s, of course.

Anyone who made you bleed your own blood wouldn’t be a quick, clean kill. Jimin would make sure of that.

There’s less to be done about the half-inch scar in the hollow of your throat—a pearlescent reminder of the twin scar he has just below his navel; a callback to the day your devilish mouth said the words Jimin can’t stop thinking about.

“No can do, angel. Yoongi here knows I only have eyes for our Jiminie.”

Maybe it’s stupidity. Maybe it’s the feral, years-long build up that’s been simmering between the two of you—low enough to keep warm, contained enough to never evolve into a rapid boil. Maybe Jimin’s just finally desperate enough to go seeking out answers to questions he’s far too scared to put a voice to.

(Really, Jimin knows it’s adrenaline. Nothing more than chemicals. The two of you high on it, heads floating above the clouds. Powerless; or, at the very least, indifferent to stop the very clear path that’s unfolding on the ground below.)

But, god, he needs to know.

Needs answers.

Needs to know if there’s even a chance you feel it, too: the magnetic ebb and flow the two of you have been dancing around for years. If you see how fondly he looks at you. If you have any idea how easy it is for him to get lost in you. If you know he’d let someone put a bullet between his eyes before he placed his life in the hands of anyone else.

Jimin knows he loves you. He’s known it for a long time, just like he knows all those other things that are second nature to him. Loving you is easy and instinctual as much as it is painful and self-destructive.

At least that’s what he’d thought. Until your devilish mouth said those devilish words and sent him into a tailspin he’s yet to recover from.

You have to feel it. God, can’t you? The way the air crackles between you. The way his skin ignites with a simple look from you. The trembling of his fingers at his sides, desperate to just reach out and touch you—fingers that have been bathed in blood, that have taken life. Fingers that now just want to graze softly across your cheekbones, catch on your bottom lip. Fingers that want to hand you the world on a silver platter. Jimin would do anything for you, give you whatever you wanted. You wouldn’t even have to ask.

Can’t you feel that?

He needs to know.

Jimin is composed, elegant. He kills with grace and still maintains as much of his softness as he can. Isn’t ruled by emotion the way Yoongi and Jungkook are. But now, as he teeters on the edge of the unknown, all he wants to do is jump. Wants to buck all his training, all his resolve and forethought, and jump.

“Did you mean it?” he asks, voice thick. Fingers curl into the expensive silk of his shirt just so they have something to do—something to keep them from reaching out and touching you. “Back in Seoul.”

You’re the smartest person Jimin knows. When you ask, “Did I mean what, Chim?” he knows you’re fucking with him. Dragging this out. You know exactly what he’s asking and he knows you’ll never give anything away so easily.

“What you said to Taehyung,” he answers.

You tsk, eyebrows raising in intrigue. As much as Jimin trusts you, as well as you know him, know all those dirty, dirty secrets he’d never tell anyone else, he’s never been so bold with you. “That those long fingers of his would look good wrapped around my throat? Yeah, I meant that.”

Jimin’s jaw clenches at your taunt. “Don’t play games with me.”

A smirk graces your lips. “Trust me, sweetheart,” you say, voice sickly-sweet as the affection starts popping at the last seams holding him together, “if I wanted to play with you, there’s nothing you could do to stop it.”

With Jimin pressed into the wall behind you, you turn to meet his eye in the mirror. Another smile, teeth bared as you run your tongue across your lips, and this one is his undoing. Makes his cock twitch in his dress pants. Makes him bold. “Do you want to, then?” He takes a step forward—close enough to smell the gunpowder stuck to your clothes, your hair. Close enough for the sulfur and metal to sting his nostrils each time he breathes you in. “Do you want to play with me?”

You love Jimin. Maybe it’s a trauma bond or the implicit, unwavering trust the two of you have in one another, but you know you love him limitlessly. But you also know you can’t love him the way he loves you, the way he deserves to be loved by someone, which is why your mask slips as you say, “I can’t give you what you want, Jimin.”

You try to make him understand that. Really, you do—because Jimin is the smartest person you know, and you know he’s thought about every possible consequence down to the most minute detail and has decided this is worth it anyway. You want to believe in something the way Jimin believes in you, even though he’s wrong. You want something worth throwing all of this away for.

Maybe it’s Jimin, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just been so fucking long since someone has looked at you with any gentleness in their eyes at all that when Jimin meets your gaze and says, “I don’t want anything more than you’re willing to give,” you take his hand and jump, too.

And there’s nothing gentle about the first time.

It’s all raw, urgent need, Jimin trying desperately to convince himself it’s more than it is while you convince yourself it’s less.

It’s the two of you finally giving up and giving in, letting yourselves be pulled taut by that invisible string tying you together.

It’s Jimin’s sharp intake of breath when you fully step out of your clothes, the sight rendering him immobile. Whatever plans he’d had before seeing the curves of your body, all the scars from years of working by his side, the mottled yellow-greens and purples from the bruises lining your skin—he has no plans now. Can barely think. Wouldn’t be able to tear his eyes away from you with a gun to his head.

It’s the final bricks of the wall he’d built around himself—around his heart, around all those words and feelings he’d never put a voice to—crumbling into ash at his feet. Now he knows he can’t go back. Can’t return to a reality where this isn’t his truth. Where there’s no you and him, him and you. Where it’s just a physical exchange, a give-and-take, tit for tat.

And god, he knows he shouldn’t think like this; knows he’s keeping the truth buried somewhere deep behind lock and key.

…But now that he knows how it feels to move inside you, what else is he supposed to do?

You’re everywhere. Clenched around him. Your taste on his tongue. The feel of you on the pads of his fingers. The smell of you making a mockery of all logical thought. No—no, he can’t do a goddamn thing to stop the avalanche now it’s started.

“Fuck,” he whines, fingers digging into your hips. The soft skin he finds purchase in such a contrast from your hardened exterior, but Jimin knows. He knows you, knows the person behind the mask, sees straight through you each time it slips.

What stared back at him had always been just out of reach.

Taunting him.

Screaming come and get me, come make me yours, come and fucking take what you want.

Until now.

Now it’s tangible. Now it’s breathy, fractured moans that echo off tile walls. Now it’s the sound of his name thatleaves your lips like a prayer. Now it’s the sheen of sweat that covers both of you. Now it’s nails scraping down his back, tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck.

(And Jimin won’t tell you this, but those red welts are proof that this is real, this happened, and later on when he’s alone, when his mind is working overtime, he’ll look at them and he’ll smile. Because they’re real. Because this happened.)

Now, it’s the way blue becomes his favorite color. Because he can see his reflection in the mirror as he unravels and comes to his own demise as he spills inside of you; can see the fluorescent lights reflecting off the hue of his hair.

Jimin’s hair is blue when he realizes he’s in love with you.

[34.6037° S, 58.3816° W | Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA]

Jimin is blond when Namjoon sends you to South America.

The details had been scarce: a diplomatic advisor with a rap sheet of human rights violations that have been continuously swept under the rug and his equally-corrupt lawyer. A candid photograph paperclipped to another manila folder, Namjoon a fan of all those old cliches. Likes being a little cheeky that way when he can get away with it, because god knows he can’t get away with much, doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.

It’s a simple job. You and Jimin will have it dealt with in a matter of hours. Less if you’re lucky and the universe is agreeable. But the humidity sticks to your skin, has sweat seeping into your clothes and rolling down your temples, and if there’s one thing you can’t stand it’s the heat. Makes it hard to think. And Namjoon—Namjoon, who makes sure all of his agents want for nothing—is a cheap bastard. Rarely approves nice lodging, says it’s too risky despite your arguments to the contrary, that people don’t care what you do when you have money, so you’re stuck in some shithole motel room with an aircon unit that keeps blowing out stale, warm air.

And maybe you shouldn’t, maybe you should be more cognizant of Jimin and all his feelings, but it’s fucking hot, so you peel your shirt over your head and undo the button of your pants. Sit on the edge of the bed and try to think about anything other than the temperature, how it’s starting to prick uncomfortably at your skin.

Jimin clears his throat, keeps his eyes glued to the disgusting carpet. “Got a text from Seokjin-ssi,” he says, words strained. “Looks like they’ll be solo jobs.”

You groan. Leave it to Seokjin to change the plan at the last minute. “Tell Kim Seokjin he’s a useless piece of shit.”

“Done. Anything else?”

“Tell Kim Namjoon if he ever sends us to South America in the summer again I’ll kill him myself.”

Jimin has a laugh like an anodyne. A laugh that takes all those broken, bleeding parts of you and soothes over them like a balm. “Seokjin-ssi says he’s not passing along that particular message.”

“Tell him he’s a bitch, then.”

“He’ll kill me if I say that.”

“He hasn’t done field work in years and he’s probably too vitamin D deficient to leave the basement. He couldn’t even kill a fucking rat.”

There’s another laugh. More forced, less tinkling. You recognize it right away, the sound of anxiety. Solo jobs aren’t common for the two of you. For Yoongi and Taehyung, sure, but not you and Jimin. You’re a team for a reason, and though you’re more than capable of getting this done and out of the way, it doesn’t feel right. Settles in your gut like something rotten, knowing you’ll be without Jimin.

And you know he’s thinking it, too. How he turns the burner over and over in his hands, as if there’s some combination of words he can send back to Seoul to get Seokjin and Namjoon to reconsider. Plans don’t change often; not like this, anyway. These have been declared solos for a reason, and that’s a thought you can’t linger on too long.

“Are they leaving it up to us?” Jimin nods, still not meeting your eye. “Do you have a preference?”

He shrugs, tossing the phone on the small table in the corner. Nothing else to be done. “Not really. What do you think?”

“Nah, don’t care, either. Just toss me one.”

Santiago Aguirre… 47 years old… Resides in a high-rise luxury apartment in Retiro…

Your eyes skim the file, study the black and white photograph of the lawyer. Read over the list of all his high-profile, degenerate clients and all their high-profile crimes. You read about the previous attempts on his life, the seemingly never-ending list of people who want him dead. Your eyes go back to his photograph, frowning at the smug look on his face. What stares back at you is a man who thinks he’s invincible, who thinks a penthouse apartment on the top floor and a security team in the lobby means he’s impervious to harm. A man who has made money off people just like him: dirty, corrupt, hands stained red.

“Okay?” Jimin asks, looking up from his own file.

He’s so striking. So safe. And you know what he’s done, giving you the hit he thinks is easier, willing to risk himself on a solo mission to ensure you make it out. There’s no guarantees in this line of work, in life in general, but Jimin’s brand of selfless love is certainly one.

So you just nod, knowing someone slimy like this can quickly go sideways, and decide you can do the same.

“I’m gonna get ready,” you say. “The plan is the same as all the other solo jobs. Get in, get it done, get out as quickly as possible. Lay low. Don’t come straight back here.”

Jimin rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Anything else?”

You exhale. Try to quiet the nerves roiling in your stomach. Barely resist the urge to press a lingering kiss to Jimin’s forehead before you swallow hard and say, “Yeah. Stay alive.”

It comes out more like a plea.

—

You’re good at your job.

Rarely feel much guilt over it, either, which—well, you’re not sure what that means. That something is permanently broken in your psyche, probably. Being able to take life so easily and without remorse. It’s not natural.

Kim Namjoon is a man who plays God, is the one who decides who gets to live and who has to die. His word is the only law you adhere to. And that’s… that’s something. Makes it less burdensome, takes some weight off, because Kim Namjoon wouldn’t accept a morally-ambiguous job. He wouldn’t ask you to put your life on the line for some petty bullshit.

This is how you’ve lived for the last four years. Four years of blindly following Namjoon’s word, of being a good little soldier and doing whatever is asked of you. Four years of being responsible for not only your own life, but Jimin’s as well, just as he is for yours. Four years that have served you well, all things considered.

Until now.

Something about this job hits you hard. Doesn’t settle quite as quickly as the ones that have come before. For the first time, you’d looked down at the lifeless body at your feet and couldn’t stop the trembling, could barely quell the nausea. Thought what the fuck am I doing, what kind of life is this for the first time. Thought back to that day four years ago when Kim Namjoon saved your life and offered you a job and wondered, for the first time, what would’ve happened if you’d said no.

Now, as you suck on a cigarette, legs dangling off the roof of a building looking not far from collapse, a new thought:

Would Namjoon let you go if you asked?

He’s taken care of you. For four years you’ve wanted for nothing. Have socked away more money than you’ll ever be able to spend, even if you live to a thousand. You could go anywhere, become anyone, and no one would suspect a thing. There’d just be you and a million lifetimes’ worth of transgressions, alone under the weight of all that burden; alone, except for all the ghosts that come to greet you every time you close your eyes.

Doesn’t matter. Namjoon might be willing to let you go, give you the chance to salvage something from this life in the name of normalcy, but Yoongi would gladly put a bullet in your head before he let you disappear with all his secrets.

Doesn’t matter.

You stub out the cigarette and put the butt in your pocket. Make your way down to the street. Stay under the shadows—just visible enough to redirect any suspicion shot your way. You pretend to take a call, flawless Argentinian Spanish falling from your lips as you tell the imaginary person on the other end all about your fucked up day at work. How your manager never gets off your ass, doesn’t trust you, thinks you’re too fucking stupid to run a simple executable.

No one spares you a second glance.

Not here, on this nondescript street in a nondescript Argentinian neighborhood, and not when you stumble into the tiny lobby of your shithole motel. The poor kid behind the desk doesn’t even glance up, just mutters a good evening, miss under his breath that you return in a voice far too high-pitched to be your own.

Better to be seen and be unremarkable than draw attention to yourself trying to stay invisible, you figure.

The cameras in the stairwell are broken so you take the steps two at a time. Pull the room key from its place inside your boot, happy to no longer have it digging into your skin. Pause just long enough to make sure you don’t hear anything on the other side of the door before you’re unlocking it with your free hand wrapped around the trigger of your gun.

It’s empty.

Of course it is.

Jimin stashed the burner in a place no one but you would think to look. You text one simple word to Seokjin—Hey!—and you get two in return: Who’s this?

You know who it is, you fucking dickhead.

It takes a few seconds, but the reply is a simple—

Sorry.

Then you toss aside the phone and float in the darkness of the room. There’s nothing to do but wait, because you don’t dare to do anything alone. There’s sweat and blood and fuck knows what else stuck to your skin, your hair, but you can’t risk taking a shower. Can’t risk the water dampening your senses. Can’t risk being cornered in a moldy bathroom, only one way out. Can’t risk doing anything alone. Can’t take a fucking shower.

It’s this thought, more than anything else, that has your body flushing with rage.

What kind of life is this?

Namjoon had never mentioned repaying your debt. He’d never insinuated you owed him anything at all for saving your life, but you know something like that never comes for free. Namjoon doesn’t do anything just because. Has no goodness in his heart to do anything in the name of it. Watching Jimin nearly die in front of him had been the exception to his usual nature; a rare slip-up by an otherwise detached, uncaring man.

Still, whatever you owe him has surely been repaid by now. Tenfold, if the bloodstains along your collar are anything to go by.

It’s time for Namjoon to let you go.

—

Something is wrong.

Two hours have ticked by and there’s no word from Jimin. No word from Namjoon or Seokjin, either, which is the only reason you’re still in this nauseating motel room and not out on the streets searching for him. Solo jobs don’t go like this. The two of you are always in and out, tragically efficient. Back to where you started and then back on a plane, nothing left behind except a singular bullet hole and another fragmented piece of your conscience.

You’ve had a lot of jobs go wrong, but never two hours.

You’re about three minutes from coming out of your skin. Sick to your stomach with worry, anxiety weighing you down like an anchor. You wouldn’t be able to go out searching for Jimin like this even if you could, and there’s no point in dwelling on that, examining it further. All you can do is wait.

It’s another hour before you hear the click of the lock. You’re nearly on your knees in relief, but you stay rooted to the flimsy mattress. Try not to think about how you’ll have to sleep on it, even though you’ll be up half the night with residual worry. All those lingering ghosts.

Jimin doesn’t say anything, so neither do you.

[55.6761° N, 12.5683° E | Copenhagen, DENMARK]

Jimin’s hair is orange when you go to Copenhagen.

Not for a job, just to breathe. You wanted to see the city at Christmastime; Jimin’s never been.

You crack a joke. Point out buildings of similar color, have him stand in front of one as you take a picture. Everyone smiles when they pass the two of you on the street, Jimin’s eyes fond even though he rolls them as you pose him how you want. Still stands against an apricot-colored wall and flashes a smile and a peace sign, cheeks pink from the cold. Does a good job of pretending the two of you aren’t here just for fun, that this is something more.

It’s not.

The two of you fucked in a hotel room in Reykjavik and haven’t spoken a word of it since.

You nearly lost your mind over him in Buenos Aires and haven’t spoken a word of that, either.

Instead, his hand finds yours as the two of you walk around Tivoli Gardens. You marvel at the lights and Jimin marvels at you. You share mulled wine and spiced doughnuts. Jimin tries to drag you on the swings but you plant your feet and refuse, laughing through your refusals. As dangerous as your lives are, motion sickness might be the most. He gets his revenge and poses you in front of a giant nutcracker, then again in front of one of the endless Christmas trees.

Jimin pays for the two of you to decorate honey cakes. You’re surrounded by families with shrieking children and palpable adoration, and it’s all you can do not to wonder if anyone you’ve taken out had ever had something like this. Something that makes your soul warm; something that still lingers in your bones years later.

The two of you take a selfie when it starts to snow. It stings when you have no one to send it to, so it just lives in your phone. Maybe it’s enough.

On another day, Jimin holds your hand through Torvehallerne. This time you marvel at him while he marvels at all the food, eyes wide each time he turns to ask if he should buy something. You always say yes and he always shares, and it’s all you can do not to think about why you don’t have to budget yourselves. Why you’re able to walk through the market and buy whatever you want; how you could buy every item for sale and it wouldn’t make a dent.

(You pick up small trinkets for Taehyung and Jungkook. Not because you want to, but because it feels nicer than remembering that you have no one to buy gifts for. Not really. Not anymore.)

Jimin wants to ice skate, so you do. He holds your hand then, too. More out of necessity than anything else, and he has none of his usual grace. Someone hands you a free cup of hot chocolate, just because. Jimin pouts and then it’s his hot chocolate. It’s all you can do not to kiss away the whipped cream on the corner of his mouth.

Back in your lavish hotel, after countless days have blurred together and Jimin’s fresh from a shower, skin flushed, you finally ask yourself if it’s worth putting up such a fight. If it’s really all that bad to care for Jimin and be cared for in return. If it’s all that bad to be someone else, just for a little while: someone with a normal life who makes a normal living and has a normal capability to love. Someone who isn’t damaged beyond repair.

That will never be you. Not fully, and certainly not in this lifetime, but maybe it could be, a little.

“Jimin,” you say, because you need to try. Jimin loves you in ways you’ll never understand, and you want to be better for him. “We should talk.”

Your voice is small and hesitant, and Jimin hates it. Sees trouble where there’s only vulnerability, so he misreads. Shakes his head. Takes a risk and stands between your legs at the edge of the bed—yours, because there’s two—as he tilts your head back, thumbs pressing into the contours of your cheeks. The scar still sits in the hollow of your throat, and that version of you feels so far away. That life feels so far away.

There’s no violence here. There’s no blood, no fugues. There’s just you and Jimin, whose voice is small like yours when he shakes his head and says, “You should kiss me instead.”

The second time is nothing like the first.

Jimin moves delicately. Feels like silk lace, tastes like spun sugar. Moves both his mouth and his body fluidly, no hesitation, yet he still takes his time. Still pauses to look at you with endless devotion; with awed reverence. Makes a map of your body and marks all his favorite places with his lips.

“Tell me what you want,” he says. Speaks the words against the skin just beneath your ear. “Anything. I’ll give you whatever you want, just have to ask.”

What you want isn’t tangible, isn’t possible, so you stay quiet. Thread your fingers through Jimin’s hair, gasp when he mouths along the column of your throat. Jimin reserves all his softness for you. Bathes you in it. Would kill anyone to keep it that way.

So you say, “Want your mouth,” and let slip a quiet moan when he gives you what you’ve asked for. When he situates himself between your thighs and sucks and licks until you’re writhing, making a mess, grasping fruitlessly at the sheets, his hair, his shoulders, only calming when his hands find yours and your fingers interlock.

Jimin mouths at you until you’re trembling. Until you’re needy and desperate, hips moving on their own, fucking yourself against his face. Until nothing exists except the heat in your belly, the stars behind your eyelids, the heady, fucked-out sound of Jimin’s voice as he talks you through it, murmurs praise against your cunt.

Jimin mouths at you until you forget.

This isn’t your life. This is not something you can have.

But, in the grand scheme of things, what does it matter? You’ve made peace with death, and there’s only one of two ways it’s going to come for you in the end: by Namjoon’s hand or someone else’s. So what does it matter?

This time, Jimin fucks you slow. Kisses you with your taste still in his mouth. Thumbs over a hardened nipple just to see what earns him a reaction, and what you truly want is more time—something else that’s impossible.

Jimin’s hair is orange when you think you might be in love with him.

[ 48.8566° N, 2.3522° E | Paris, FRANCE ]

Jimin’s hair is pink when—

“Sit,” he says, gesturing to the toilet.

Soaks a washcloth in warm water. Wrings it out. Stands in front of you, and there’s water dripping onto the floor and Jimin doesn’t care, doesn’t seem to see anything in this moment except for you, your hands covered in someone else’s blood, and he reaches out, gently grabs your wrist. Palm up. Someone else’s blood. Everything smells like copper and iron. Looks too surreal beneath the fluorescent lights of this hotel bathroom for your mind to make sense of it.

There is care in the way Jimin cleans your hands. There is tenderness in the way he both refuses to see what you really are and the way he’s the only one to ever see you so entirely, when you look down at the blood he’s washing away and all you can see is stigmata. When all you see is sin.

“I know you don’t love me,” he says, and there is a conviction in his words that stuns you into silence. “Not the way I love you, anyway.”

That tenderness is still there as he says this. As he presses the wet fabric into the meat of your palm, wipes the stains away, and the warmth is as calming as it is undeserved. It feels like something forbidden. It feels like salvation and condemnation all at once, like whatever sick depravity permeates you is contagious, will take over Jimin, too, just from touching you.

Jimin is close enough to reach out and touch. Close enough to see the violence that he exists in alongside you: the rips in his clothes, the scars that decorate his skin. Close enough to know he smells sickly-sweet, just like death. Your hand shakes as it reaches for him and never follows through. Doesn’t want to contaminate him.

“I do,” you finally say. Whatever is in your voice is not conviction. “I can’t.” You suck in a breath, try to steady your breathing. This is where it all comes crashing down, you think, because in all the years you’ve done Namjoon’s bidding, you’ve never cried. You can take life so freely and without thought, but you cannot love Jimin. “Someone like me isn’t capable of it.”

Jimin pauses, the washcloth stuck in the space between your ring and middle fingers. “And who is someone like you?”

Water is still dripping to the floor. Serosanguineous: blood tainting something untouched. Not something one thing or another but both, watery-pink. Looks like Jimin’s hair. “I’ve killed a lot of people,” you answer. “More than I can count. More than I can name. More than the ones that come to haunt me at night.” Your free hand moves to your chest, covers your heart. “There’s nothing here, Jimin. I’m not sure there ever was.”

The washcloth drops to the floor, and all that blood belonging to a man whose name you never bothered to learn before you put a bullet between his eyes finds a new place to rest. “I think,” he begins, clasping your unclean hand in his own, voice dropping to a whisper, “you forget, sometimes.” You gasp as he places your palm to his cheek, drags it across his face, smears a stranger’s blood across his skin. “That we’re the same.”

Jimin is always overwhelming, but the love he has for you is even more so. It consumes you entirely, embeds itself beneath your skin, makes a home, would tear you apart, body and soul, to return to him.

[ 47.4979° N, 19.0402° E | Budapest, HUNGARY ]

Jimin’s hair is lavender when it all goes to shit.

“You’re being followed.”

Seokjin’s voice is garbled through the earpiece, tinny and metallic, and you roll your eyes. Some things don’t need to be said, because you’ve known someone was following you for the last three blocks. Average height, black peacoat, close-cropped haircut. Not the kind of person that’d stand out here, and that’s exactly why you’d sent Jimin in the other direction.

“No shit,” you respond in Hungarian, because you already know the man following you doesn’t speak or understand it. “Give me somewhere to go.”

It takes Seokjin a few moments to run the translation. “There’s a side street up on your right,” he answers. “It’s tight, but there’s an alleyway at the end. You can buy some time if you’re quick.”

“Where’s Jimin?”

You pass a vendor selling lángos and duck into the street behind the stall. Just as Seokjin had said, there’s a small alleyway up on the left, and your footfall is near-silent as you break into a sprint to reach it. “Safe,” is all Seokjin says.

You take a second to steady your breathing, knowing you’re good on time—the man following you was close enough to know where you’d turned, but, if you’re lucky, not much after that. That plays on a loop: if you’re lucky, if you’re lucky, if you’re lucky. What is luck, what does it look like, in a life left entirely to chance? In a life with no guarantees?

You tuck yourself away, focus on Seokjin’s metallic breaths. Think about his basement in Seoul, why he’s in it. Ask, “What happened in Addis Ababa?” because it feels important to know.

There’s not much you know about Seokjin’s life. Whatever happened in Ethiopia had been before your time, reduced to hushed whispers and gossip fodder after your arrival. No one spoke of it, Seokjin especially, but every now and then something would slip in the same way weeds grow in sidewalk cracks.

A job gone wrong. A bombing at the consulate with Seokjin inside.

His reply is simple, words spoken carefully: “I loved someone once, too.”

He can’t see it, but you nod nonetheless; an answer that doesn’t require a response, because you know. It’s enough to fill in the rest. What Seokjin’s trauma looks like. Why he doesn’t do field work anymore. Why he prefers the solitude of the basement, rarely a sound beyond the electric thrum of the server racks.

Who had gone in to retrieve him, and why Yoongi has the scar over his eye.

“You loved someone,” you conclude, “and he would’ve been willing to die for you.”

“Yes,” Seokjin says, and it’s like the word’s been punched out of him. Sounds like something repressed, something left to rot in the darkest corner of the world.

Love, to Seokjin, looks and sounds the same as death.

“I think most people spend their entire lives searching for a love like that,” he continues, and if you could see him you think he might look dazed, off-kilter. You think he might be an avatar. Seokjin is prying his ribcage apart, unwrapping the barbed wire from his heart, saying I once was in love and this is all I know of it. “But, to me, in this life, it’s a prison. Once someone is willing to die for you, how do you keep them alive? How do you—I kissed that skin. I worshiped it. I pressed my lips to it with whatever softness was left in me. How do you look at that same skin and know you’re the reason it’s mangled?” He exhales, all tremor. “You can’t. You can’t.”

You know this all too well. You know what it feels like to look at Jimin and know, intrinsically and subconsciously, that you wouldn’t even hesitate. You’d take and give life to keep him alive and safe. You know that when you exit this world at someone else’s hand his face is the last thing you want to see.

You know it’s a liability.

You know it’s a target painted on your back. Between your eyes.

You know there’s nothing left to say, that this particular conversation has run its course. The two of you sit in an amicable silence, and you hope Seokjin can hear the life that surrounds you, however mundane. Hope he can hear the lángos vendor trying to hawk his goods; hope he can hear a city 8,000 kilometers away; hope he can hear these regular, everyday people going about their lives and remember there’s hope beyond his four walls.

I think you’d like it here, you think, but you don’t dare to say it aloud.

Time passes in a meaningless blur. Could be minutes, could be hours. No one’s come to kill you, so you reckon you’ve long since been in the clear. And maybe it speaks to Seokjin’s idea that love is a prison, because you know something’s happened to Jimin long before Seokjin speaks it into existence.

You’re up and out of the alleyway before you’re told to move. Have no idea where you’re going, but you’re racing through the streets of Budapest with a panic you haven’t ever felt in your life. Feels like quicksand; feels like molasses; feels like you have to wade through all the blood you’ve spilled, now congealed, to get to him.

“Where am I going?” you demand. Your lungs are on fire. In the split-second of silence it becomes a desperate scream. “Seokjin, tell me where the fuck I’m going!”

“The—fuck, the wa-warehouse up on your right.” You can’t think about why he’s crying. “I don’t—I don’t know wha-what’s there, you need to be careful. Please, you have to—”

Twenty seconds and you’ll be there, you’ll be with Jimin, you just need to keep running. You need to keep your head on straight. Remember your training. Remember you’ve built a life in a viper pit.

A man in a uniform is unloading a shipment around the back of the building. Faces away from you, bent at the waist. Takes very little effort to smash his head into the stone exterior and knock him unconscious, pocket his badge. You can’t get stupid now. Tell Seokjin to make sure all the cameras are cut, ask what floor when you shut yourself inside the freight elevator, unwilling to take the stairs and run into anyone who might be waiting. All the way to the top, he says, so all the way to the top you go.

—

Over the course of your life, you’ve made peace with death. Have stared it in the eye more times than you can count. Have dealt it out, evaded it, shook its hand.

You are wholly unprepared for the sight that greets you.

Red. Everything is red—the walls, the floor, what used to be a beautiful parquet pattern in the wood. In the center of the room: two bodies, maybe three. Not much that’d be able to identify them beyond a pile of teeth, no saying whose is whose. Slaughterhouse scraps.

And this is not—Jimin doesn’t work this way. Isn’t his MO. Jimin’s kills are elegant and neat, topped with a bow. What you see before you is ultraviolence. It is unhinged, it is fury, it is a complete loss of control. It’s what love looks like to Jimin, because he sits at the very edge of a rotted chair, legs crossed. Face streaked with blood, clothes covered in it.

“Jimin,” you say, because what else is there?

He tilts his head to the side, smirks a little, looks at you beneath his lashes. Eyes that used to find you across a room and calm you. Eyes that have locked onto you in the throes of pleasure. Eyes you’ve seen yourself reflected in, bathed in love and adoration.

Eyes that now contain nothing.

“Jimin, what the fuck happened?”

He removes his gloves with his teeth and doesn’t flinch away from the taste of iron. “They said they hurt you,” he states simply, “so I did what needed to be done.”

“What—” Nausea claws at your throat; for the first time, it’s all too much. This isn’t Jimin. This isn’t your Jimin, who smiled as you posed him against apricot walls in Copenhagen, who took a bullet to the stomach to protect you and never, ever told you. This is not the Jimin who wasted the last of his goodwill on loving you. “What did you do?” you whisper.

He rises to full height and it makes you flinch. You are scared of Jimin for the first time in your life: scared of who he is in this moment, what he’s capable of. And he sees it, lets that brand of anguish overtake him. Reaches for you before he decides against it and lets his hand drop to his side. Says, “I would never hurt you,” as if the words could brand themselves into your skin so you’d never forget.

“No, you’d just—” You squeeze your eyes shut. Don’t think about how one of the men nearly embedded into the floor was the one trailing you earlier.

Instead, you think about Seokjin: Once someone is willing to die for you, how do you keep them alive? You think about: How do you look at that same skin and know you’re the reason it’s mangled? You think about: In this life, it’s a prison.

You drop to your knees. Let the blood seep through your clothes and into your skin, undeserving of shying away from it.

Namjoon should’ve let you go.

You think about the men in front of you. Who they were, who they loved. The grief all of this is going to leave behind, and it becomes impossible to breathe. You grasp at your throat, think about all the times you’ve been strangled and who’d been there to cut the rope. There is no limit to Jimin’s devotion, and you understand now, how it drove Yoongi to madness. How he loved someone so much he would’ve retrieved their corpse from a building and how that same person can no longer bear to look at the damage they’d caused.

“This isn’t love, Jimin,” you choke out.

He stands in front of you. Stigmata. You’re worshiping at the altar of some kind of devil. At least his hands are clean when he places his fingers beneath your chin, forces you to look up at him. “What is it, then?”

“Destruction.”

A quiet huff of cruel laughter. “See, this is the difference between me and you, darling.” He takes back his hand, runs it through his blood-streaked hair, and your chin sags to your chest without his support. “Because I already knew that. Because I have destroyed myself every single day loving you.” He squats down, eye-level, and he says, “I need you to listen to me when I say this, sweetheart: you do not love me the way I love you, because I would do worse. When it comes to you, there is nothing on this earth I would not destroy to keep you safe.”

He clears his throat. Collects whatever’s in his mouth and spits onto one of the bodies. “If this is enough to have you tucking your fucking tail between your legs, then go, because this doesn’t even scratch the fucking surface.”

You can’t bring yourself to say anything, and sometimes that says it all.

Jimin presses a kiss to the top of your head. Makes a call. Cleaners will be here soon, he says, better get going.

You watch him go.

[ 37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA ]

Jimin’s hair is black when Namjoon calls the meeting.

He takes the seat across from Namjoon’s desk because they don’t meet like this often. Assignments are usually manila folders slipped under doors, hushed whispers in hallways confirmed with a nod or a text on a burner phone. Assignments are not last-minute assemblies in conference rooms and offices.

But the way Namjoon is looking at him, with his clenched jaw and a gaze that’s meant to look barbed to anyone who doesn’t actually know him—Jimin doesn’t need to ask what this is about.

Had he bothered to look, he would’ve known by the way you stood in the far corner of the room, face obscured by the mid-afternoon shadows. Yoongi’s close to you, for some reason: dressed head to toe in black, perched on a lateral file cabinet, using a metal corner to sharpen his switchblade. Just like a harbinger of death. Some sort of fucked up omen, a warning that’s come too late.

Didn’t I tell you this would end badly, he hears Yoongi taunt in his head. This is what happens when you lay with trash.

Easy for Yoongi to say when he doesn’t know what it means to be cared for by you. Doesn’t know how it feels to give in to the freefall and plummet at your feet, stripped back and laid bare. Doesn’t know how it feels to kiss secrets into your skin like constellations, to map his tongue along every unspoken confession.

Easy for Yoongi to say, because he doesn’t have to survive the aftermath. Doesn’t have to feel the heartbreak, the agony of having you and watching as you slip through his fingers. Yoongi doesn’t have to struggle just to breathe, doesn’t have to endure the nights staring at the ceiling, watching as the daylight creeps into the corners of his vision. Doesn’t have to watch you looking so unaffected.

“Jimin.” Namjoon’s tone is flat, needlelike.

Behind him, Yoongi chuckles lowly. “What?” Jimin asks, his gaze trained on the painting behind Namjoon’s head. Looks like one he’d seen in Berlin, the time the two of you had gone just because and spent an afternoon ducking in and out of museums to escape the rain.

When he closes his eyes, he still sees the raindrops stuck to your eyelashes. The beads of water rolling off the sleeves of your leather jacket. How blinding your smile had been. The laughter in your voice as you ordered beer after beer after beer for the two of you in flawless Berlinisch. A brief, fleeting glimpse at normalcy. At the kind of life the two of you could have if you were just… different. Lived different lives. Were different people.

“You’ve gotten sloppy.”

Namjoon’s words are a cold bucket of water. Snap him back to reality, yank him back to the present where he’s forced to leave those river-lined streets behind. You’re silent and Yoongi’s still snorting laughter. “Okay,” is all Jimin can bring himself to say.

Jin had gotten sloppy once, too, and Namjoon stuck him down in the basement to work logistics. Might not be so bad, Jimin reckons. He’d be away from you, spared of this fucking misery. “So you know that’s unacceptable.”

Jimin just shrugs, resigned to his fate, whatever it may be. “I’m reassigning the both of you,” Namjoon continues. “You’ll both have new partners for your next assignments, since you clearly can no longer be trusted together.”

“Who?” Jimin manages to choke out.

Namjoon raises an eyebrow, clearly having expected an argument. “You’re being sent to Shanghai with Jungkook. You,” he says, turning his attention to you, “are going to Moscow with Taehyung.”

She’s fond of Taehyung, Jimin wants to say. But you’d been fond of him too, once upon a time, and that’d only ended in heartbreak, so who fucking cares.

They’re cruel, the tricks Jimin’s mind plays on him. How he convinces himself you look pained. How his fingers wring together at the thought of entrusting his life in the hands of someone else, someone new. At your life being just as at stake; at Taehyung being tasked with keeping you alive. Would you die for him, too, the way you’d always told Jimin you would for him? Would Taehyung take a bullet to the stomach to keep you safe the way Jimin had?

Even more cruel is the way you scoff, pushing yourself off of the wall as you fold your arms across your chest and say, “That’s bullshit, Kim Namjoon.”

No one talks to Namjoon that way except you.

Yoongi’s knife stops twirling. Just like a bird sensing a storm, senses on high-alert as he flicks his gaze over to you. “I’m sorry?” Namjoon says. “What part of Jimin losing his mind and nearly outing all of us seems like bullshit to you?”

“Hm, let me think,” you retort, a manicured finger tapping against the hollow of your cheek. “The part where you’re reassigning me for someone else’s mistake?”

Which part was the mistake? Jimin wants to ask. Needs to know how much you regret. Was sleeping with you the mistake? Falling in love with you? Getting too caught up in all these daydreams and letting reality get away from him?

“This organization is more important than Park Jimin getting his goddamn dick wet,” Namjoon snaps. “Keeping all of you safe—keeping you alive—is more—”

You scoff. Take an entire container of gasoline and pour it right on top of Namjoon’s flammable ire. “Then perhaps you’d be so kind as to explain to me why Min fucking Yoongi can fuck damn near everyone in this establishment, yet I have to sit here and listen to your goddamn mouth—”

Jimin doesn’t think Yoongi even knows his arm is moving.

There’d just been the trading of barbed words. His own name being spoken into the ether. Yoongi’s arm moving away from his body, switchblade clasped tightly between his fingers as he plunges it into your flesh.

Jimin watches it puncture your arm in slow motion. Feels the bile in his throat, the heat in his belly. Looks first at Namjoon whose jaw has gone slack, skin pale, as he stammers over words that won’t come. Then he looks at Yoongi—expects to find shock or guilt but finds only a muted disinterest and flared nostrils.

Finally, he looks at you. Watches the white cotton sleeve of your shirt slowly turn red and sticky-wet. Watches as your lips move around syllables and vowels and consonants Jimin can’t decipher.

“—fucking piece of shit, this is my favorite shirt! I’ll never get all this goddamn blood out of it—”

Jimin thinks he hears Yoongi say you deserve it. But Jimin isn’t really thinking much as he clambers out of his chair and moves in Yoongi’s direction. Doesn’t think at all as he lets instinct take over, lets adrenaline steer him headfirst into yet another bad idea.

He’s always known there’d come a day he’d be face-to-face with the sight of your blood. Had always known it’d come from someone else’s hand. Had always promised himself that hurting you would be the last thing anyone ever did.

Jimin has his fingers wrapped around Yoongi’s throat and he finally understands it—the joy Yoongi finds in taking life.

“What’s the matter, Jimin-ah?” Yoongi taunts. Jimin tightens his grip. Suddenly hates that fucking scar across Yoongi’s eye. “You’re never on clean-up duty. Always make your girlfriend do the dirty work. Finally grew some fucking balls, huh?”

“Fuck you,” Jimin says stupidly. Can’t think of anything more to say. Not that he needs to. Wrapping your hands around someone’s throat sends enough of a message, he thinks.

Namjoon’s still tongue-tied as you yank Yoongi’s blade from your arm, immediately pressing your other hand over the wound to stem the bleeding. The sight of your blood is making Jimin dizzy; the smell of the iron hanging in the air. All he wants to do is choke the life out of the man in front of him, but more than that, he just wants to hold your hand. Wants to comfort you, even though he knows you don’t need it. Not from him, not from anyone, but he still wants to. Wants to press his lips to the sweat at your brow.

And Yoongi can see it, too, because he starts laughing. It’s an odd, fractured noise. Jimin isn’t sure if he’s ever heard him laugh before, decides he also hates the way it sounds. Feels all wrong watching it leave his crooked smirk. Makes Jimin’s stomach plummet to the ground.

“Oh, you’re fucked, aren’t you?” Yoongi teases around Jimin’s slackened grip. “You weren’t just fucking her, you’re in love with her.”

Weird how Jimin is the one with his hands around someone’s neck and feels like he’s the one suffocating.

[ 31.2304° N, 121.4737° E | Shanghai, CHINA ]

Jimin watches the life drain from an innocent woman’s face and feels nothing.

Jimin watches Jungkook cut a man down and feels even less.

When it’s over, he cleans up wordlessly and doesn’t eat for three days.

[ 37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA ]

Jimin’s hair has faded to brown by the time he returns from Shanghai.

The more complicated job had gone to you and Taehyung. Jimin had tried not to take it personally. The Russian hits are always unnecessarily violent and Jungkook still isn’t fully trained. There’s still a phantom pain in Jimin’s stomach that warns him of the consequences of taking on more than he can chew. So, sure, Shanghai had gone fine, but his mind had been nearly 7,000 kilometers away the entire time.

Good thing he’d returned to Seoul unscathed, too, because he’s sure Namjoon would’ve eliminated him without a moment’s hesitation if he’d fucked up again.

But Shanghai had only served to prove the leader right. Jimin can’t work with you anymore. Can’t focus, can’t stomach the violence, can’t keep his goddamn head on straight.

He sighs as he glances at Jungkook to his right. Jimin had watched him murder two men in cold blood not even thirty-six hours ago and now he’s doe-eyed and sucking down his third banana milk of the morning. It really makes his head spin, being paired with this grown-up infant of a man now instead of you, but for all of Jungkook’s apparent shortcomings, he’d kept Jimin alive. He isn’t dead.

And then you walk in with Taehyung and he wishes he was.

Because you’re laughing and Taehyung’s got his arm slung around your shoulder and you look happy. It’s the kind of happiness that should be contagious, bloom warmth in his chest, but it doesn’t. It just takes the last frayed strand of hope he has and sets flame to it.

You don’t look like you miss Jimin at all. Don’t look like you’ve lost sleep or skipped meals.

“Didn’t take you long, did it?” Jimin says, because he’s wounded and lashing out. Not because he means it.

You must know he doesn’t, too, because you don’t react. “Watch your mouth, Park Jimin,” Taehyung warns, because he doesn’t know, and this only sets Jimin off more. You don’t need defending. Or had you, and Jimin had simply thought it wasn’t his place to provide it? That you wouldn’t want it?

“Or what, Kim Taehyung?”

Taehyung is cherubic. It’s part of his charm, one of many reasons why he’s so effective. If you’re looking to die, you look for the guy who looks like Yoongi, not the one who smiles wide and warm like Taehyung. So when he sets his jaw and pokes his tongue into his cheek and says, “Or I’ll cut your fucking head off, you stupid fuck,” your attention is finally piqued.

“I’m so sick of this,” Jungkook wails, banana milk tossed carelessly in the trash. “All of you need to get your fucking shit together!”

Taehyung rolls his eyes at the same time you pretend to inspect your nails. “Is that why you’re so temperamental, Chim?” Taehyung prods, looking every bit the pretentious, murderous angel he is. “Because you got sent to China on a babysitting mission while the grownups did real work?”

“Fuck you,” Jungkook snaps, rising to full height. “I’m not a fucking child.”

“Oh? Could’ve fooled me.” Taehyung’s words are razor-sharp and smell like kerosene. “Tell me, then: were you on babysitting duty? Had to look after our precious little Jiminie while he nursed his broken heart?”

You sigh, full of faux-exasperation, and place a gentle hand on Taehyung’s forearm. Dig your nails in just enough to be a warning, and if Jimin hadn’t been looking he’d miss it: the way Taehyung deflates instantly, anger dissipating like smoke, back in control. Just because you’d touched him. Just because you were there. Jimin knows that touch, how it feels to be under your control, and it makes his chest ache. Makes everything feel like it’s sitting wrong in his stomach, and he’s either going to be sick all over Namjoon’s overpriced fucking rug or wrap his hands around Taehyung’s throat the way he’d done to Yoongi.

He’s out of his goddamned mind; he feels untethered. Helpless. Like it was always going to end like this, and maybe Jimin knew that and had just ignored it. Maybe now he’s paying the price—maybe he’s finally found something he can’t afford.

Jungkook’s still going off, nasty gaze set on Taehyung because he’s the only one playing along. They’re exchanging words Jimin can’t make heads nor tails of. Words he doesn’t care about. Words that ring empty and hollow because they sound nothing like the way you say his name. Shapeless, unlike the way your lips move around those syllables.

“Jimin,” you say, the sound finally registering and bringing him back down to earth. All he can do is stare. “Can we talk?” Taehyung and Jungkook are still trading barbs.

Wonders how he got here. Looks around the room and wonders if each and every one of them is destined for this same fate, this madness. Wants to tell you why he forgot his vest, why he was three hours late in Argentina. Wants to grovel and beg and leave this place and never look back.

More than anything, he wants to know what it feels like to actually be human.

So he shakes his head. Tries not to be haunted by the way your face falls at the rejection.

There is a scar on his abdomen and a scar on your arm that both tell the same story. There is a man in the basement who is in love with a man above ground and is too weighed down by guilt to do anything about it. There is a man here who plays god, has soldiers to do his bidding, and there is very little here that Jimin has only for himself.

The two of you will have that conversation, but he needs to be human, first.

[ 34.6901° N, 135.1956° E | Kobe, JAPAN ]

This is a waste of your fucking time.

Whatever Namjoon had thought would be here doesn’t seem to exist. Yoongi can barely tolerate you on a good day, threatens to stick a dagger in your neck at least twice an hour, but the more time the two of you waste chasing ghosts, the closer he comes to unraveling entirely.

“Stop fucking staring at me,” he snaps, blowing the smoke of his cigarette right in your face.

You tut. “But you’re so beautiful, Yoongi, I just can’t help it.”

He digs his switchblade from his boot. Makes a show of flipping it open. “I can cut your fuckin’ eyes out of your skull,” he intones. “Maybe that’ll help.”

In your ear, Jimin’s laughter rings like crystal.

Ricochets off of all the corners of Seokjin’s basement, makes the echo sound warped through the earpiece. “Please tell Yoongi-ssi to keep an eye on the man with the shaved head. In front of him, roughly sixty degrees to his right.”

You relay the message. Watch as Yoongi transforms—sharpened gaze, rigid posture, disappears into the shadows. More apex predator than man. “And me?” you ask.

“Backup,” comes Seokjin’s voice. “We haven’t found your mark yet.”

You hum. Pick up the cigarette Yoongi left behind and stick it between your lips. Smoke it nearly to the filter. “You got it, boss,” you tease, just because it flusters him.

“I’m—that’s not—knock it off.”

Exhale. Stub out the cigarette. Butt in your pocket. “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Jimin says, and his voice is soft, sounds like spun sugar. “Stay alive, all right?”

Jimin’s hair isn’t dyed at all.

if you've read this far: thank you so, so much! i am more appreciative than i can put into words. this is very different from what i typically write, but i hope you enjoyed it nonetheless.

i would love to hear your thoughts if you have any. &lt;3

[feroluce]

On Sampo's name (ALL of his names!)

I feel like everyone who's a fan knows the meaning of Sampo's full name by now- the sampo was a legendary item that could magically make endless supplies of gold, flour, and salt, all priceless items at the time! So it works perfectly for a scammer businessman like Sampo. ☆

"Koski" is the Finnish word for "water rapids" which might seem kinda random but actually makes sense for him, since Aha and the Masked Fools are also referred to with water terms:

This kind of analogy isn't specific to only Aha and the Masked Fools, but it does still tie them together. So water rapids fits perfectly! Sampo wants to stir the pot! He likes to shake things around and spice things up! He's taking that stagnant pool and turning it into water rapids! It would actually explain his ridiculous hair color, too; a dark blue wave tipped with white foam haha

EDIT: an amazing contribution from @ricochetlovebombs, who heard it from hoyolab user Rattaboy. If you interpret his first and last name together, instead of separately like I did, you would get something like "money river."

In other words, Sampo's name literally means CASH FLOW SKXJMDMDMD

What I really wanted to talk about is his drag alias name, though, Brughel Poisson, because to me that's where it gets really interesting.

So like in the English version, Sampo goes by Brughel Poisson when he's in disguise. Searching for just "Brughel" itself doesn't seem to get you much at first: a Flemish and Dutch Renaissance painter named Pieter Brueghel the Elder, who was famous for his landscapes and peasant scenery, especially Hunters in the Snow and The Blue Cloak.

He's referred to as "the Elder" because he had a son also named Pieter Brueghel (the Younger), and he began a long line of painters, all named Brueghel. Some of them did original work, and many of them created reproductions of the Elder's art to sell. The Elder was also famous as a printmaker. All of this is hilarious when you remember that Sampo is an infamous counterfeiter and has sold a relic called the Parallel Universe Printer JSKZJSMD

There is also something called Brueghel's Syndrome, named after one of Brueghel's paintings called De Gaper, which pictured a man yawning widely. It's a condition that causes the mouth to open and gape uncontrollably, twisting a person's countenance into a distorted mask of their usual face.

Tumblr doesn't have a way of censoring pics like twitter, so for the sake of the medically squeamish, I'm just showing De Gaper here. But if you look up Brueghel's Syndrome, you can find pictures of actual patients, some of whom really do make faces resembling Aha's comedy and tragedy masks!

In the Chinese and Japanese versions, his alias last name is a lot more silly- In those, "Sampo" is phonetically written as "san-bo" and "san-po." And in disguise, his last names are phonetically written as... "Bo-san" and "Po-san." The Chinese version uses different tones, but still. This smug asshole seriously just decided to write his own name backwards and called it a day NDMKXMDMD

In the English version, Poisson itself is kind of a reused Hoyo asset- it's also the name of Navia's fishing village in Genshin Impact. Which is a really silly name for a village, because it literally just means "fish" in French smzjxkdkdk but!

Again, more water imagery. And in English, if something is suspicious, we say that it's "fishy," which is perhaps the most fitting association yet for someone as shady as Sampo ☆

And for a good while I thought that was the only connection. But then. My beloved @hydrachea, who is an actual native French speaker, dropped this on me right after April Fool's Day:

Poisson is literally the word you use to pull an April Fool's prank.

[steddielations]

“Evening, sir.”

It’s the Harrington boy. Again.

“I told you, son, it’s Wayne,” he manages a smile, harder to do these days, like chipping it out of cement and dusting it off. But he gets it done.

Steve doesn’t have the Henderson boy with him today, that’s a first.

“Where’s the curly one?” He steps aside, letting Steve into the trailer door, more rickety than before. No money left to fix it after repairing the bulk of the earthquake damage.

“Dustin? He doesn’t wanna watch the game, and trust me, you don’t wanna listen to that kid complaining the whole time,” Steve walks by, sorta chuckling to himself, “I always miss the replay ‘cause he makes me change the channel to those D&D cartoons during the commercials, just like—”

He stops in front of the couch, looking over his shoulder at Wayne like he’s afraid he messed up somehow. Wayne noticed that look often from him, less and less, but still often. All that confidence he carries can drop on a dime, sorta reminded him of—

“Like Ed?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“S’alright. I don’t mind talking about him if you want,” Wayne manages another concrete smile, but he means it. Steve always waits for him to bring up Eddie first, like he doesn’t want to remind him if it ain’t on his mind, but Wayne likes to be reminded. It’s nice to feel like he’s not the only one missing him. “But the game was yesterday and y’know the cable’s out.”

“Yep, got it covered. I uh, I taped it,” Steve fishes a VHS tape from his back pocket. Fancy. Wayne would worry about him using that for his sake, but he has a feeling Steve’s folks aren’t around enough to notice.

“The Colts win?”

Steve flips the tape around, “Haven’t watched it, so we can bet on it if you’re feeling lucky.”

It doesn’t feel so dry and heavy when Wayne laughs a bit then, waving Steve to go ahead and start up the TV. He already caught the game on the radio, but he bets on the Colts anyway. Loser’s supposed to do the dishes after they scrounge together some soup, but Steve does them anyway.

Wayne would make a stink about it but he can tell Steve just wants to help, to feel like he’s helping. Same thing when the Henderson boy comes around to see him, wanting to hear all the stories, even the scary ones. So Wayne doesn’t mind letting Eddie’s friends feel like they’re helping him.

His nephew didn’t have many friends. Real, cover-your-six kinda friends. The boys he played his music with, they’ve come by a couple times, Wayne always liked Jeff despite the racket. That older fella that’s doing time now, Wayne wasn’t too fond of. And some of Eddie’s dungeon buddies he talked about were the only few.

Now, casual acquaintances? Anybody who didn’t have anywhere else to sit when he had an empty spot at his table? Sure, Eddie had those in spades.

His boy was good at that, putting on a good old show for his crowd, on a stage to keep his distance. That damn Al did him in good, never could trust easily, having his old man pop up and drag him into his mess before he took off again. And Eddie’s poor momma would’ve done right by him, if she hadn’t gotten sick so young.

Took Wayne a long time to get Eddie to depend on him, to trust this was his place to stay and he didn’t have to earn it, Wayne wasn’t just filling his head to scheme something out of him.

Love ain’t a transaction that way. He wasn’t ever any good at saying it, but he tried to show Eddie the best he could.

His boy though, always carried a debt with him. Like he owed Wayne something for taking him in, had to graduate quick and make it outta here, do something with the better life he gave him. Al dug him in so deep, Eddie stayed roped into whatever his latest scheme was (the cars, the dealing, the gambling, thank God Eddie wasn’t there when the goddamn robbery went wrong, 25 to life) like maybe it’d be enough to keep him from running off again.

The odds have never been in favor of people like them, poor folk in a town that’s stuck in its ways, where everybody’s just like their old man, but Al made his choices and Wayne made his. Rest their mother’s soul, she did her best. Part of Wayne was relieved when Al got locked up, at least Wayne had a better chance of keeping Eddie from going down the same path, try to raise him right.

Being a Munson wasn’t a crime. He didn’t owe a darn thing to anybody. Eddie could graduate at his own pace, play whatever games and music he wanted, dress however, that didn’t mean he was up to no good. And a lot of boys get into dealing for a little easy extra money around here, he was gonna grow out of that just like Wayne did.

It worked until all this mess.

That’s why Eddie ran off after what happened to the poor Cunningham girl. He gets spooked when something goes wrong, like it’ll be the last straw he can’t make up for so he runs off. Like the first time he didn’t make senior year, went and hid out with that Rick fella that Wayne never did like, got Eddie deep into that business he tried to keep a secret.

‘Course Wayne knew. He knows exactly what and where his boy hides. If those damn cops weren’t tailing him, he would’ve gone straight to get him.

That was before he knew it would turn into all of this. Now he wishes he would’ve done it anyway. Gone right to Eddie, told him it wasn’t his fault that everything got all turned upside down. Told him he knew he was innocent right from the get-go, and got him away from this rotten old town.

But he didn’t.

He didn’t go get his boy.

So now he’s just trying to be there for Eddie’s boys, since he can’t.

“You have a night shift tonight right? Gonna put on a pot of coffee,” Steve says once he’s finished up the dishes.

Wayne hums. There’s usually more noise going on during these visits. Steve’s still alright at carrying on, even without the Henderson boy’s chatter to fill any gaps.

It was strange, the first time the two of them showed up. Wayne knew Eddie was close with Dustin, but he didn’t have a clue that he was chumming it up with the Harrington boy. Just don’t seem like the same type of company. He might not believe it if it weren’t so obvious that Steve cared about his boy. He suspected before, but now with Steve showing up here alone, he knows.

Steve misses Eddie in a different sorta way than Dustin.

“No cream or sugar, right?” Steve looks humored by that as he passes the mug of black coffee to him, “How are you related to Eddie again?”

Wayne’s mouth turns upward, remembering his nephew’s god awful sweet tooth. He picked up a box of Honeycombs the other day in the store out of habit. “Just happened to be standin’ there when they beamed him down.”

That gets a good chuckle out of Steve. Nothing wistful weighing it down and Wayne’s glad, watching Steve pour himself a cup of coffee too.

Then bitter-sweetness swirls in his chest, seeing the mug that Steve chose for himself. Must’ve dug it out from one of the boxes Wayne hadn’t hung back on the walls yet. The earthquake did a number on his collection. That Garfield one was the only one he’d gotten around to gluing back together.

“What is it?” Steve asks, cup paused at his mouth.

“Ah nothin’ just,” Wayne waves it off, “That’s the mug Ed always used.”

“Oh, I can use a diff—”

“Nah, nah go ‘head. It’s fine.”

Unconvinced, Steve takes a wary sip.

Mostly these days, Wayne just feels like a watch without a ticker, a chest with nothing beating inside it. He can’t name the feeling he has at seeing Eddie’s old mug being used by someone else, but at least it’s something.

“Y’know, he used to put everything in that sucker. Soda pop, soup, cereal, you name it,” Wayne shakes his head, mouth twitching into a smile, “I’d have to wrestle it away from him just to give it a good washing. It’s well loved, alright. Leaks now.”

As if on cue, Steve has to grab a napkin to sit underneath it.

Wayne lets out an amused hum, “He uh— Didn’t have much stability ‘fore he came to live with me, so he’d get real attached to things like that.”

Carried around a stuffed dragon they picked up at a garage sale ‘til Wayne couldn’t sew the wings back on anymore. Never wanted to throw anything away. Got real anxious about Wayne going to work sometimes, even when he was too old for a sitter. Held onto him saying “Stay home just today, Dad, please.” Which, he didn’t mind Eddie calling him that. It always softened him up, made him give in. Wishes now that he’d told Eddie upfront. Maybe he never would’ve stopped.

“Thought for sure he’d marry that damn guitar one day.”

Steve nearly sputters his coffee, laughing at that, “Yeah, those two are made for each other.”

It’s nice, seeing the way that story lit Steve up. Sorta like his boy can still make someone happy. Hurts like hell that he ain’t here to do it himself, but Wayne was always good at telling stories. That’s where Eddie learned it from.

“I’m uh,” Steve deflates after a minute, looking down at the mug, “God, I’m just really sorry, Wayne.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry too, Steve,” he says, because, well.

Wayne gets the feeling that his boy was Steve’s boy too.

Read the rest on Ao3