#i was making this on my laptop when it was on seven percent and it DID die in the middle but it came back <3 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

yikesitskennawrites · 2 years

Text

Transitions- Chapter Twenty-Five: Coffee From Lauren

Series Masterlist

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

Pairings: Steven Grant x (platonic) Reader, Marc Spector x (platonic) Reader, Jake Lockley x (platonic) Reader, Layla El-Faouly x (platonic) Reader

---

“Thank you so much for the coffee,” You tell Lauren. She sat on the metal cart next to the counter top that you were currently sitting on. Her legs swung back and forth as she adjusted her bun on top of her head. It was a slow morning so far, one that you were grateful for due to your exhaustion, yet, you also hated it because sitting still made you more aware of how tired you were.

“You rarely ask for these types of things, the least I could do is buy you a coffee as a thanks for picking up my shift this Friday.” She smiles, her own coffee cup filled with lemon tea sat on the counter you perched on. You sip on your warm beverage as she speaks. Right, you have a double shift in a couple of days from now. Seven in the morning to six in the evening, fun. You roll your eyes at that. It was a day you would make a lot of money though, hopefully you’ll be well rested enough to not be too tired throughout that day. You already knew what you were doing tonight after work, eat dinner with Steven and Marc and go right to bed. You had to get a new laptop this weekend too, school was on Monday and that was less than a week away.

You were stressed about that. You really needed that laptop for your senior year otherwise you would have to drop out and re-enroll next year or try and get your GED. It would be difficult trying to apply once more since they would try to contact you for your whereabouts and why you weren’t doing any school work within the first two weeks of the term. So, you would have to create a new identity and that would be even harder this time around since the American government has finally got most of their shit together. It was pure chaos when everyone came back, the government was backed up on files since the sudden appearance of everyone who was gone for five years came back. It took awhile for them to get ninety percent of the blipped back on file and confirm their status of life.

The cheapest option for you to buy a laptop is if you could find one at a yard sale like you did for your previous one, but that might not happen. You haven’t seen any flyers for a garage or yard sale. You know for a fact you don’t have five hundred euros saved to buy a brand new computer, you had enough for small items like the strawberry waffles you keep internally promising to buy for Marc and Steven, and maybe the pyramid paperweight you saw at that glass shop a couple of months ago.

“What are you thinking about?” Lauren asks as she sips her tea. You could see the lemon flavored tea paper attached to the tea bag string in her cup from where you sat. You blink tiredly at her and smile.

“Just the amount of sleep I didn’t have last night.”

“You haven’t slept?”

“I’ve been up for-” You pause and place your coffee next to you before you count off the amount of hours you have been up since. You worked yesterday and didn’t get any shut eye last night. Your shift yesterday was at eight am, but you woke up at six thirty and right now it's nearing ten, so you’ve been up for almost twenty-eight hours and you don’t get off until three.

“I’ve been up for almost twenty eight hours.” You tell her and her mouth drops open.

“Are you serious?”

“Deadass.” You say as you pick up your coffee and sip on it. You didn’t want to drink it too quickly and have a caffeine crash mid-shift or on the bus ride back to the apartments and miss your stop. You were falling asleep on your feet this morning, the passenger you almost fell asleep on moved several feet away from where you stood so you couldn’t drool on their backpack.

“That’s not healthy.” Lauren says with a frown. “Is there something keeping you up?” You let the caffeinated liquid sit in your mouth as you think of what to say. You couldn’t tell her the whole truth. It would sound insane if you did. You can’t tell her about Khonshu and his declaration of not being the god that held you out a window Saturday. You also have to keep quiet about your neighbor who you began to trust and his lies that made you take a couple steps back and think of who he is. Could you trust him completely? You don’t know and that thought alone hurts you. You can’t tell her about your friend, Layla, and her weird absence on Saturday, what was up with that? Maybe she was doing some black market shit? That would be a huge can of worms to open with Lauren. And finally, you can’t talk to her about Jake and how he threatened to kill you and yet, he saved your ass and made sure you were breathing for a month and a half; and now his absence and zero want to communicate with anyone, including you, kind of, surprisingly, hurts.

You don’t like that he threatened to kill you, but for a while, he was the only person you had. You can’t tell Lauren that because she would absolutely call the police.

“I’m just anxious,” You tell her a slice of the truth. Saying that this weekend was terrible would be an understatement.

“Do you want to talk about it?” She asks. You knew that she truly meant her promise about how you could talk to her about anything. But, you can’t take her up on this. Maybe in the future you can tell her about any normal problem such as how you mixed colors in your wash and now all your white shirts are pink and the amount of frustration you feel for yourself for that mistake. But, this anxiety issue needs to be kept away from her. You don’t know what you will do if Lauren ever finds out the truth about what you know. You will admit that you would feel relieved that you had someone normal to talk to about the existence of deities, your neighbors and how one works for a god and took down a cult, and also your friend's occupation as an illegal seller for the black market. You can’t let her in on the truth about yourself, though. If Lauren ever finds out about your real age and your fraud, she will never trust you again. Straight to the police station you go.

“I don’t know why I’m anxious,” You lie and shrug to make it more believable as you bore your tired gaze onto her. “I need to start taking melatonin if this becomes a habit.”

“You’ll need to go to the doctor if this becomes a habit.” She corrects. “When was the last time you went to the doctor?”

“When I lived in New York, I think I was…” You squint in thought. “Thirteen.” It was true that the last time you visited the healthcare clinic was for a bone you thought you broke but turned out you sprained it. That was- for you- nearly four years ago. But as far as Lauren knew that was-

“Five years ago?” She says. “Ten years actually! The healthcare here is free, you need to go get some check-ups done.”

“I know, I know.” You groan. “It’s just that it costs so much in America without the insurance and even if you did have insurance it would cost like five hundred dollars for it.”

“Well, it’s free here.”

“I know.” You repeat. “It was a habit to not go to the doctor or the hospital unless you absolutely needed it.”

“A habit that is free to break.” She says. You nod in agreement. “Molly needs to go to the doctors soon for her yearly check up.”

“Oh yeah?”

“She needs to go on the scale and the measurement scale and get her knees tapped at with those hammers.”

“Any shots?”

“I don’t think so.” She says. “Jamie needs to get his four year shots next year. He needs to get his polio and mumps and measles. When Molly got hers, she was crying and we had to reward her with ice cream for being so brave.” You smile at the thought of little Molly crying as she ate her ice cream. It was a comedic sight to imagine. The last time you received any vaccinations was for your annual flu shots in your local pharmacy, you were fifteen and still underneath your parents insurance plan. You should make an appointment for the flu shots this year so it wouldn’t hit you as hard as it did last year, but you weren’t sure if you needed to be insurance to receive the vaccinations.

“Well, it’s Jamie's turn to get ice cream for his reward.” You smile. “Are you packed for your trip?”

“No,” She groans. “We’re doing that tomorrow. We still have to pack the kids bags since they’re staying at Kris’s parents house this weekend.”

“Are they excited to be staying at their grandparents house?”

“They are! They don’t seem to realize that it’s more than one night though.”

“It’s going to be a surprise when they realize that you aren’t picking them up until Sunday night.” You laugh. “They’re going to miss their mom’s.”

“Every time I think about that I almost begin to cry.” She says. You glance at her and sure enough there were tears forming in her eyes.

“It’s just for the weekend, they’ll be fine.”

“Their grandfather is going to feed them a lot of sugar and send them home with us.” She says, you laugh.

“That’s the rules though.” You say. “They’ll eat the sugar and be hyperactive before inevitably crashing.” “Just like you are?” She asks and gestures to the coffee next to you.

“You’re the one who ordered it to be sugary.”

“Well, having pure black coffee is a crime.”

“My dad used to drink it straight from the pot without adding any milk or sugar to it. He should have gone to jail for it.” You joke and she grins at that. “I don’t know how he did it, but he drank it every morning.” A ping of sadness hits you as you finish the statement. Your dad will never drink coffee again and you will never have the opportunity to make fun of him for it with him standing next to you.

“What’s your favorite coffee so I know what to order for you the next time around.” She asks and you swallow around the lump forming in your throat.

“You don’t have to-” “I know I don’t,” She cuts you off. “So spill, what is it?”

“Caramel Frappuccino.”

“You basic bitch.”

“You can’t just ask me for my favorite drink and bully me for it.”

“I just did.”

“You have no room to speak because you are drinking lemon tea.” You gesture to her paper cup.

“At least I have taste.”

“Yeah, weak ass taste.” You scoff. “You didn’t even get raspberry and mint or some other tea with more than one flavor. You paid a coffee shop to make you tea, something you could have made at your own place.”

“I could say the same for your coffee.”

“Actually you can’t because I don’t have a Keurig.” You say before you pick up your cup and sip on the liquid.

“This is why us English people don’t like you Americans.”

“We don’t even like ourselves.” You laugh and she chimes in with you. The noise hurts your ears in the small space but the sound was melodic. A light feeling spreads through your chest as you both giggle at your teasing of each other. You missed this, the feeling of being relaxed and carefree enough to crack some jokes. It’s been awhile since you haven’t been obsessed with whatever new drama was happening in your life. It was nice to have a normal friend who wasn’t tied to deities or cults. Once the laughter dies out, a comfortable silence settles between you. The bell above the entrance rings and Lauren pushes herself off of the cart and briefly pats your thigh as she passes you.

You could hear her greet the customer from where you sat on the counter. You listen to her talk about the specials of the day and if there were any coupons underneath the desk that the customer could use for their meal. You only tuned out when you began staring blankly at the box of spices on the shelf across from you. Saying you were ready for bed would be an understatement. The caffeinated beverage was helping a little but not as much as you wish that it would. The word of the black pepper on the side of the cardboard box you burn your gaze into became indistinct the longer you stared at it. You knew what the word was and what it meant, but there was an odd disconnect from it. Your brain was not quite clicking it together in your mind.

This only happened one other time when you were at your lowest a couple of weeks after moving to London. Everything that was words whether it was on the back of a granola box or sentences of articles on your phone became a blur of unknown words and phrases that you could not comprehend for the life of you. Staring at the two bolded words in front of you now, an odd feeling settles in your chest. You couldn’t describe the feeling, it was hard to put a finger on what it felt like. You force yourself to blink and look away from the box. You could hear Lauren tell the customer to have a good day before you hear her footsteps on the tile floor and see her near you out of the corner of your eye.

“I was joking about your taste,” She says as she hops back onto the cart and grins at you. “If that wasn’t clear and you feel insulted about your terrible choice in coffee.” She adds. You don’t say anything for a moment as you muddle your way to form a proper sentence in your mind and make it roll off of your tongue so she wouldn’t get concerned and send you back to your apartment early.

“I know and I was joking about your poor taste in tea.” You say, it doesn’t sound like it came from you despite the vibration in your throat. You rapidly blink as she parts her mouth in fake irritation. You breathe in through your mouth and hold your breath for a moment before letting go.

“It’s decent taste actually.” She defends herself. The words on the box in front of you made much more better sense in your mind as you forced out a laugh. This time the noise sounded like it belonged to you.

You trail your tired gaze back to her as you say, “Hmm. Sure.” Whatever has just happened to you scared you a little. Maybe it was caused by the lack of sleep you had, whatever it was you didn’t want to experience again.

Lauren didn’t seem to notice you as she says, “That customer wanted me to put crisps on their sandwich.”

“Did you?”

“No! That would be cross contamination if I did.”

“Good.” You say. “Emily told me that someone asked her if she could put cookies on their sandwich.” She wrinkles her nose at that.

“Cookies?” She says, “Like the ones in the cookie cabinet?”

“Those exact ones. Chocolate chip onto of their ham sandwich.” You reply. You watch as a look of disgust forms on her face and you agree with her. When you first heard the story, you had the same expression as she has now. You pick up your coffee and sip on it.

“That's disgusting.”

“I can get potato chips on top of a sandwich, but cookies?” You shake your head. “That's a crime in itself. They need to be jailed.”

“Agreed.�� She says. The bell above the entrance rings and you both share a look before looking at the monitor. It was just a single customer, you couldn’t tell who they were from the glare of the lighting but that didn’t matter. You trail your gaze away from the monitor and to Lauren.

“Your turn.” She says before she picks up her own cup and sips on her tea. It was only fair if you were to take turns until lunch rush came. You blink tiredly and yawn as you place your cup onto the counter and hop off of it. You raise your arms above your head to stretch your muscles as you begin to walk to the front. Another yawn escapes you as you greet your first customer of the day.

You don’t care how many orders you messed up today, you were just glad to be ten minutes away from your neighbors apartment. Usually, you would be beating yourself up for putting ranch on a customer's sandwich when they clearly asked for mayonnaise; but you were way past the point of caring by the end of your shift. Your coffee was long gone and your bladder was empty from the endless amount of peeing you seemed to go through today. Caffeine makes you pee more often and you weren’t used to having so much caffeine in a day. You could feel yourself crashing with every step you took towards your apartment complex. Your feet ache and your back hurts a little.

Maybe you’ll change the plans of you passing out after dinner to taking a nap on Stevens couch before eating instead. You don’t know if that would make you more cranky if Steven or Marc wake you for the meal, but you don’t care enough about it. If you’re lucky, maybe Steven has some snacks you could eat instead of waiting for dinner. Or you could just go to your own apartment and sleep on the couch, you could put your phone on silent and shoot Steven a text message stating that you won’t make it to dinner. Perhaps you’ll pop into his apartment and show him that you’re alive and breathing before heading over to your own and passing out for the remainder of the afternoon and night.

You would like to sleep in his bed since it wouldn’t hurt your back as badly as your couch does, and his place brings you comfort, but you just want to sleep in peace more than anything. Marc or Steven might make too much noise for you to fall asleep and you weren’t going to ask them to be quiet in their own flat. If Khonshu or whatever deity decides to fuck with you when you’re trying to sleep in your apartment, damn them. You’re tired and cranky enough to beat a bitches ass if they decide to pull some shit like that. Maybe they’ll be willing to show their face and you can pop them in their jaws. You’ll like to think that you’re pissed off enough to throw hands with them. Either way, sleep was your main priority and nothing was going to-

Suddenly, the feeling of something or someone grabbing the back of your shirt and dragging you into the open end of the alley you were just passing causes you to lose your train of thought. You yelp as you get slammed into the brick wall, knocking your head against it and you let out a groan at the contact. Holy fucking shit. You snap your eyes in the direction of the open end of the alley and see someone standing there. They wore a cloth mask on the lower half of their face and a beanie covering their hair. The jacket they wore was zipped up to their neck and a turtle neck shirt hid any identification on their body, the black pants were baggy on their legs. The only visible thing was their brown eyes and the white skin surrounding it. They held onto a knife with glove-covered hands and you can feel their eyes glaring onto your body. You can not catch a fucking break this week, can you?

“Give me all your money,” They said, their voice deep and gruff. Your stance tenses as you stare at him. Just three months ago you were in almost the exact same situation, why does this bullshit seem to only happen to you? Well, you don’t want it to happen to anyone but it was weird that it happened twice to you.

“I’m flattered that you think I have any.” You say. You know that you shouldn’t be rude to this man and you should hand over any cash you have on you, which you don’t since tips were terrible today. You were more awake than you have been all day thanks to the adrenaline rushing through you. The heaviness in your limbs and the baggy feeling around your eyes was gone. You were slowly planning on how to escape this situation. You could pretend to give him some cash or punch him in his dumb face and run for it; or you could throw your apron at him as a distraction and run- wait where the fuck is your apron? You rack your brain for where you left it and your heart nearly drops to your stomach as you realize that you left it in your locker after you grabbed your phone, keys and the Eye of Horus paper.

Fucking fuck. Okay, scratch that, go with plan number one and if you get shanked, you have to leave the knife in and go get help. God, you just wanted to go nap and this fucker decides to choose you to mug. Life really just stopped holding back their punches, huh? What did you do to upset the universe?

“I know you.” He says after a long pause. You squint at him. Maybe he was a customer you served today and that’s why he says that he knows you? You sure as hell don’t know anybody that would rob teenagers for their tip money. Well, maybe Jake would though? Where the fuck is he when you need him anyways? Man, it would be the perfect time for him to swoop down from the buildings and do his Moon Knight thing. Kick some ass, take some names. Beat the absolute shit out of this guy so you could go take a nap. Do you have to call for him to come appear and save you or does Khonshus job only happen at night? You doubt that Khonshu would warn Jake about the situation that you’re in. The little bird-bitch.

“I don’t know you.” You say. Man, you really should have brought your taser. What’s the point of having a taser if you don’t carry it around on you? You just didn’t want to get arrested for having one on you because it’s illegal in the United Kingdom. But, it would be really fucking handy to have it now. You could feel your phone pressing against your thigh. The emergency number for the U.K is 999, all you have to do is be able to call them if you need to. You should actually dial them and report a mugging but you don’t want to get involved with the police because of what you did to move countries. You only need to call them if you get a stab wound or any other major injuries.

You tuck your fingers inward to make a fist as you prepare yourself to throw hands. You did this last time and you only got away because of your neighbors. They aren’t here now, so you’re on your own. Maybe you’ll call Marc's number if you get stabbed, he was in the marines and a mercenary, he has to have knowledge on stab wounds. He told you not to call his number unless it was a emergency and if this isn’t one than you don’t know what the fuck is.

“You don’t remember me?” He says. You almost snort at how pretentious he sounds.

“Yeah, I don’t remember every brown eyed bitch that is willing to rob a kid.” You say. Why is he so surprised that you don’t know who the fuck he is?

“We met before.” He supplies and you stare blankly at him. You obviously were familiar to him unless he was mistaking you for another person.

“June.” He hints and your mouth parts open in surprise. This man is the same god damn mugger from before! Holy fucking shit. You almost laugh at that. Even after Marc beat his ass, he still is working the same nine to five job and he’s boasting about it. You stare at the eye slits across his face, any bruises that he might have had were healed. He sure as hell didn’t learn his lesson. What were you supposed to say to him now that he confirmed who he is? Hey man, how have you been? Still mugging teens huh? Or: How’s the kids and partner? Are y’all still a family or married? Going through a divorce huh? Yeah, I would divorce you too if I found out you were mugging children.

“Oh,” You say instead. “I thought you were dead for a while.” His eyes narrow at you. You did hope that he wasn’t dead because it would have meant you were a acquaintance to murder; but if he did kick the bucket, it means that you would be safe from this and you would be going up the stairwell and napping sooner than later.

“Still alive and well.” He snarls at you. You glance at the knife he held. It was the size of a bodice dagger, the blade was about five inches long. If you get stabbed, that’s going to cause some damage. Of course, it depends how bad it will be for where he aims and lands on. You just need to throw a punch and push past him. You need to run for your apartment. Wait, should you lead him to where you live? That sounds like a terrible idea. Okay, well, maybe you should book it for the bus stop? There has to be people there. There’s no fucking way that this man would be willing to stab a kid in front of a group of bystanders.

“I still don’t have any-” You start but get cut off by his fist connecting with your face. Your head whips to your right as all your breath seems to stop and freeze in your chest. The pounding in your head covers any noise that could have warned you that he was taking a step forward before you feel his hand wrap the cloth of your shirt into his fist. He smelled like cigarettes and axe body spray. The left side of your face stung from the impact and you knew that a bruise would be forming on your face by tomorrow if you make it out of this situation alive.

You reach up and grasp his wrist, your fingernails digging into the cloth of his gloves. If you’re going to die at the hands of this fucker, you’re going to get his DNA underneath your damn nails for the police. He pulls you forward and slams your back into the wall, whatever breath you had is gone as soon as you felt the impact. Your head stung and your chest aches. You let go of his wrist and form your hand into a fist before swinging. His head whips to the side and he groans at the impact of your fist against his cheek. Slowly, he turns his head and glares angrily at you. Did he seriously not expect you to fight back?

He lets go of your shirt and steps back a little before his fist makes contact with your stomach. You wheeze at the feeling and bend forward, clutching your torso with both hands before he grabs you by the back of your collar and throws you down to the ground. You roll a couple of feet, your skin gets torn apart due to the road burn. You slow to a complete stop and groan as you lay on your side. The gravel of the alley digs into your skin and crunches underneath his feet as he walks towards you. Fucking hell your body hurts. Your palms sting as you roll onto your back and try to catch your breath from being punched in the gut. You need to get up before he kicks the ever-loving shit out of you and gives you a concussion or breaks your ribs or arms.

You need to get up before he makes sure that this is the last bit of daylight you’ll ever see. Through half lidded eyes, you stare at the bright blue sky above you, and watch a bird fly over you with its wings spread wide. You couldn’t tell what type it was and you didn’t care much at the moment to think about it. You just need to get up. You need to get the fuck up. Your palms press into the gravel as you bend your torso to sit up. The muscles in your torso ache in protest as a shadow blocks your view of the sky above you. You bend your neck back and glare at the man before you. You could feel trickles of blood run down your forehead and you saw the drip of blood drop from the arch of your right brow and hit your cheek before continuing on trailing a path down your face.

He swipes the knife across your cheek and narrowly misses your eye. You jerk backwards from him as a sting of pain spikes across the fresh wound and warm blood runs down your face. A gasp leaves you and a scream begins to build up in your throat. This is the moment that you understood that he wanted more than money or any belongings that he could pawn, he wanted revenge; and even though you weren’t the one who beat his ass until he was unconscious, you were there as your neighbor did so and you didn’t stop him.

You saw his leg swing back before you felt his foot make contact with your ribs. You fall back, your head hitting against the ground and once again, all air gets knocked out of your lungs. He steps forward, placing his foot on your chest and putting all his body weight onto the joint as he leans downward a bit and stares at you. The sunlight glints off of the blade he grasps in his hand and momentarily blinds you. This was going to be difficult to run away from since he’s already beating your ass. You need to scream for help, surely there’s someone nearby and willing to check in on you or call the police. Your hands wrap around his calf as you try to push him off of you so you could inhale some air but alas your attempts are futile.

You kick your feet against the ground, scrambling for some leverage. Maybe if you use the force of your torso against him he will stumble away from you. Your shoes slide against the gravel as you struggle to plant your feet onto the ground and force your torso into the yoga bridge pose. He presses his foot down harder and you swore that you felt your sternum crack under the pressure. You let your legs slide down and lay flat against the ground as you stare with anger at the man. You could feel panic begin to settle in your bones as you open and close your mouth like a fish out of water. You need to scream for help but you had no air in your lungs to do so. You try to force away the panic so you would have a clear brain to think with.

Okay, you need to get him off. How do you get this fucking man off of you? Your eyes land on the one sight that all of your male classmates would protect the most during a game of dodgeball at recess in middle-school. He’s a man with a weak spot that happens to be right at arm's length. You should have realized it before, you would have gotten him off of you sooner. You let go of his calf and ball your hand into a fist before harshly slamming it against the area where the sun doesn’t shine. He lets out a gasp of air and stumbles back a few steps. You take a deep breath of air as you waste zero time to push yourself off of the ground.

You spare a glance down at your palms and frown at the sight of blood seeping from the wounds that were made from when you scraped along the pavement when he threw you down. You pat your pockets for your belongings as you walk towards him. He was bent over and clutching his privates as he blocked the only exit to the alley. You need to run past him and book it for either your apartment or the bus stop. You pick up your pace into a jog before pushing your legs to move faster past him. He reaches out on his right side and grabs onto the cloth of your shirt and tugs you towards him. He stands up straight as you call for help, screaming it like you were a getting murdered and it was your last chance of survival, and it sure as hell felt exactly like that. Your back hits his chest as his left arm wraps around your throat and his knife pokes into your throat.

“Call for fucking help one more time and I’ll slit your god damn throat.” He threatens. Huh, this sounds awfully familiar. Your nose began to sting from the tears forming in your eyes. You could only hope that anyone that was nearby would be willing to check on your pleas. Maybe you’ll get really lucky and someone would pass the alleyway and see this. He kicks at the back of your knees, letting go of you temporarily as your knees give out underneath you and hit the gravel. He bends down, wrapping his arm once more around your throat and digging the tip of his blade back into your skin. You feel the blade digging into your throat as he bends down and begins to pat your torso for anything to take from you.

With each hard pat, you know that the spots will be red from his hits. His hands trail down to your jean pockets and he pulls out the Ziploc bag that contains the Eye of Horus paper, your lanyard falls out of the same pocket and lands on the ground.

“What is this?” He says behind your ear. His breath was hot on your ear and you wince at how close he is to you. He keeps your head tucked to his body as he removes the knife from your throat so both of his hands are available to open the baggy. You know that the piece of paper was just that: a piece of paper. But you don’t want him to damage it. It brought you comfort like it was a teddy bear and you don’t want to lose that. He takes out the paper and drops the bag as he unfolds the parchment. You swallow as you look down your nose and at the eye that stares back at you. Your blood drips off of your jawline and onto the paper, a small splat could be heard as it hits the parchment.

“Horus.” He grumbles, “What is that? An anime character or some shit?” You don’t answer, you weren’t going to explain to this prick what this symbol means. He doesn’t add anything but scoffs, you think the sound meant that he finished skimming through the description of the god and the protection symbol. He grips the edge of the paper and you nearly cry out when he tears it in half. Your wide eyes watch as he layers the paper over each other and he tears it once again. He lets the paper drop to the gravel, you swallow around the lump forming in your throat and try to ignore the sting of your nose and tears begin to make your eyesight blurry.

More of your blood soaks the torn paper as his hand travels to your other pocket and pulls out your phone, the lock-screen picture of your parents lighting up on the device with the movement before he clicks the button on the side and the screen goes black. In the reflection, you could see your injured face and the desperation behind your eyes.

“Please don’t take that.” You plead. “That’s the only thing I have left of my parents.” Every photo of the life you had before was on that phone since you don’t visit your old social media accounts in fear of it stating that you were active online. The SD card was still in the phone and any image saved to the device was more valuable than gold to you. You don’t see him pocket the phone but you can hear him do so. This time the tears roll down your cheeks and the sob you were holding back leaves your throat. His grip tightens around your windpipe, making you choke on your own sob and quiet down from anyone who might be nearby. All of this for zero money and just to get some revenge on a teenager for being in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Fuck this dude. You felt the tip of the blade poking into your neck before you saw his right arm was up and pointing the knife at your throat. The tip drags from the right side of your neck and to the back of your neck. Another choked sob escapes you as tears blur your vision and mix with the trail of blood and sting the cut on your cheek.

You felt his boot hit your back before you registered that you were face down on the pavement. The smell of metal, dirt, and paper fill your nostrils before you roll over onto your back with a groan and a half moan for help. He marches a couple of steps to your left and he pulls back his leg, the toe of his boot hitting the side of your head, once, twice, three times before he directs his kicks to your side. He had what he wanted, your phone. He could wipe the memory off of it and reset the device before trading it into a pawn shop for some cash. But, this was the cherry on top of the cake for him. He’s getting his revenge nearly three months later and you were nothing to him but a punching bag.

You don’t know when your eyes closed and darkness took you from the beating you were receiving. But you do know that when your eyes peel open, your lashes stick to your cheeks from the dried blood on your skin, that the world is spinning and it isn't going to stop any time soon. You lay still, your body past the point of it aching and hurting and more into the territory of it feeling like you got hit by a bus and you were in absolute pain. You could feel a puddle of blood surrounding your head and the damp collar of your work shirt didn’t help the suffocating feeling you were experiencing by how it clung to your skin and around your bruising neck.

The sky above you was covered in gray and white clouds that were slowly darkening with patches of blue poking through. It was going to rain soon and you didn’t want to risk walking back to your apartment injured and bloody on wet pavement. You need to get up; and still, despite that realization, you lay there and watch as the clouds roll by and cover the patches of blue. You don’t know what time it is, but you do know that there’s a chance that Steven may knock on your apartment door or call your phone if the bitch hasn’t shut it off yet. He’ll figure something went wrong and he might look for you if you don’t head over for dinner. A selfish part of you didn’t want him to find you bleeding out in an alley and save you from whatever potential internal bleeding you have. Not because it would cause him trauma and self blame for not looking for you sooner; But because, you hope that you will die in this alley due to everything you lost.

Your old life was on that phone. You lost the memories of the life you had before you were blipped. You lost the pictures and videos of your parents and friends; of homecoming dance pictures, trips to Coney Island, and bookstores. You lost the audio of you and your best friend laughing together over some dumb joke and how both of your eyes shined in the video with wrinkled corners and wide smiles. You lost the video of your mother and father speaking your name as they urged you to cut the video and to set it up to a timer for a photo instead. You will never get to look back on how they sounded and spoke your name with love and affection. Your parents lay six feet underground in the same Earth that you walk on every day; and you laying in your own pool of blood was the closest that you have ever been to them since.

Everything was gone simply because a man chose you as his victim and you couldn’t defend yourself well. You don’t notice that it began to rain until you felt the first few drops land on your face. You need to get up and go take care of your injuries so Steven and Marc won’t find you dead in an alley. They will blame themselves for your death and you know that they will also do so for how beaten up you are. You need to get up and you don’t want to. You want to die. You want to give up and go to whatever or wherever it is that you’ll go to after you pass. You want to just call it quits and leave this Earth or roam this planet like a ghost. You just don’t want to exist anymore.

Everything about existence hurts. You hurt; and it’s more than just the physical pain that you were currently going through. You have wounds that you have yet to heal after years of neglect. You want to die. You want to die. You want to die. You want to die, but you still painstakingly push yourself up into a sitting position.

Your sides scream in protest and your breath gets caught in your throat. The buildings around you sway as if you were on a boat and blood mixed with rain ran down your forehead and made you close your right eye to prevent any blinding you. Your palms are wet and sticky with blood, your jeans and shirt cling to your skin with the liquid of the body fluid and rain. Saying that you are uncomfortable would be an understatement. You slowly inhale a breath of air through your mouth, the taste of metal was gross on your tongue. Your sides expands slowly and you only hiss out in pain when a shock floods your torso. You bend forward a bit, the movement causing you to cry out and clutch your bruising side as you squeeze your eyes shut.

Dying is an easy choice, getting up is going to be a bitch. A mumble of string together curse words leaves your lips as you wait for the pain to die out enough that you could focus on opening your eyes and taking in how bad your injuries are. You sure as hell felt like your ribs on your left side were cracked and perhaps broken. You had to have a concussion and the blood loss was making you woozy. The cut on your hands and cheek probably had to have some form of infection beginning to fester in the wounds from the dirty ground; and they definitely will get infected if you don’t clean them properly in a couple of hours. Slowly, you open your eyes and tilt your head down to your damp shirt. You carefully pull back your shirt from your torso and lift it enough just see some of the damage below your belly button on your side.

Blood and rain ran down the visible patch of your torso as you stared at the darkening of your skin, it was slowly turning purple and black. You lower your shirt, you don’t need to raise it up any higher to know that it was matching the bit that you saw. You glance at your right hand, your knuckles are a little swollen and the sight of it makes you a tad bit more numb inside. You did fight back, you did punch him, it just wasn’t enough. You look away from it and to the entrance of the alley way, cars pass with their windshield wipers sliding back and forth across the glass. The windows were rolled up and people were tucked warmly inside with the heater blasting on high. You wonder if anyone saw you knocked out in an alley and thought that you were just a knocked over trash bag with your work uniform being a black shirt and black pants. Did they not notice? Were they too busy paying attention to the road or listening to whatever was happening on the radio? Or did they see you and just not care to check on you?

There were a lot of people like that in New York. Some of the people who were homeless were often doing drugs or drinking their problems away with alcohol. There were several stories of people pushing others onto the subway tracks when the train was visible and about to make its stop. New York was not kind and maybe you thought London would more likely be kind enough to check on a person who was injured. You don’t know if you're grateful or not that nobody seemed to notice you. Your gaze trails to the ground in front of you. There lay the damp and shredded pieces of paper of the Eye of Horus, the ink was running from the rain and your blood; and not far from it was the wet plastic bag you carried it in and the orange lanyard that holds your keys. You bend forward, reaching for the plastic baggy and crying in pain and despair as your fingers wrap around it.

Carefully, you pick up the pieces of paper, most of it falls apart as you pinch the parchment between your fingers and place it into the baggy. You don’t know if the liquid running down your cheeks was the rain, tears, or your blood, but either way you try to collect and save as much as the paper as you could, just so one less thing could get taken away from you. Sobs begin to build up in your chest and you try to hold them in as you focus on picking up the paper Steven gave to you. Your shoulders start to shake as you pick up the final piece and pinch the baggy shut. You hold the bag to your chest as a sob escapes you and soon another one follows. You try to hold in your cries but all that causes is more pain in your body. It wasn’t fair. None of this was fucking fair. Why does this bullshit happen to you?

A choked out sob leaves you and just like that, the water-gates were open and you were completely crying. Nothing was fair, why do you have to have a shitty week? Why did you have to be the one chosen to be this asshole's victim? Why did your parents have to die and why weren’t you in their shoes? You let everything out in your cries and sharp pains of breath. You just wanted a damn nap and you sure as hell got one because you went unconscious for who-knows-how-long. Everything hurts and sucks and here you are: crying in an alley during a rain storm while shivering and drenched in blood and rain water. This was a terrible Tuesday, the worst one you think you ever had. By the time that you calm down enough to think rather than to feel, the rain seemed to become heavier and you were sure that you were getting hyperthermia. You were cold, especially your hands and nose. Your teeth clatter together and your face aches. You need to get up. You let the emotional numbness take over, you feel drained and exhausted.

With the state that you’re in, you’re going to need support on getting up, there is no way that you would be able to push yourself off of the ground without help. You look around the alley, trying to focus enough that you could clearly see your surroundings through the rocking of the world. There wasn’t anything but trash cans and bags of garbage that you could use. Through your hazy thoughts, you consider that you could knock them over and injure yourself more if you did try to use them. Your eyes trail away from the bins and to the brick wall next to you. There was about an inch between each brick that you could use as a ledge to help pull yourself up. It might damage your fingers some but it’s your only chance to get up. You didn’t move to London after committing fraud, get scared by a deity multiple times, and have a knife held to your throat twice just to die in an alley.

You stuff the plastic baggy into your jean pockets and scoop up your lanyard off of the ground and place it into your other front pocket. You cry out as you rotate your body so you’re on your hands and knees before crawling slowly over to the wall. Your body screams as you lift your upper body and grasp the wall with your hands. It took what felt like forever to stand and lean against the brick to help stabilize yourself. The world seems to spin faster as you’re standing and you close your eyes and try to calmly take a breath and do some breathing exercises. Inhale slowly, try to ignore the sharp fucking pain in your side, hold for five, four, three, two, one; and slowly exhale and repeat. You go through the cycle several times until you feel nauseous. Your stomach churns and you don’t have a chance to hold back your vomit. You throw up directly onto your shoes, almost in the same spot you did all those months ago. The taste of bile was gross and your throat burns a bit from it. You keep your eyes closed as you wait for your stomach to settle.

You let out a shuddered breath, the smell of vomit, rain, and metal floods your nostrils as you inhale and prepare yourself to continue to fight. Your eyes flutter open and you stand up straight. With every exhausting step you take, you lean your hand against the wall and move; and you keep moving despite the stumbling of your feet and spinning of the environment around you. You keep moving despite your head pounding and the brightness of the world becoming too much for you; and when you fall due to slipping on a mixture of your blood and rain water on the sidewalk's pavement, you get up and continue. You push forward and persevere just like you always have.

—

Taglist:

@letugulus , @only-roaches , @jvdethirlwall , @xennityxen , @astrobees , @nub-the-stub , @em-asian , @yawn0-0 , @80pairsofcrocs, @itsjusspele, @anonymousewrites, @in-between-the-cafes, @sj-draws00

Want to be added to the taglist? Don’t be afraid to ask! :)

76 notes · View notes

booksandchainmail · 2 years

Text

Pale 4.6

Practice, my dears, is about repetition, rhythm, and presentation. We take some form of power, often something Others have to offer, or a bit of our Self, and we use our inviolable word to push that power into the ruts that the past has carved into existence. Those ruts are the circuits in the computer of reality, the currents in the aether of unreality.

oh I love this. What a great description of how magic works in the Otherverse

This was my difficulty, because I was raised with what I would term craft, rather than by practice. The word ‘practice’ implies rote repetition, with aim of perfection. Craft, on the other hand, is skill. Something that comes from the honing of the self.

this is an interesting philosophy. Makes me wonder about other completely different approaches to magic

It is possible for an Other to step into humanity and assume nearly everything about a human life, including the ability to practice

Blake... :|

“No,” Dreg rasped, speaking with an adult’s voice. “A good familiar is a partner, something you can control, or something you’re willing to be controlled by.

depressing but true. I feel like most practitioners fall into the second category

“Meh. If you asked around you’d probably hear something like how my family’s a bunch of magic janitors.” “Janitors? What do you do?” “I’m a knight of seals."

cool name though

If I got kicked out, no high school education or anything, then I’d probably end up a goblin exterminator.

ok. so. 1) teach your children enough to get a GED and 2) MAYBE NOT WITH THE EXTERMINATING OF SAPIENT BEINGS? Like, I can see how you might need to deal violently with some goblins, but "extermination" is a hell of a loaded word

Like… boy band attractive, but without the attached annoyance of the boy band.

I think the band is supposed to be part of the appeal?

“I find,” Jessica said, “the proportion of bad people remains roughly the same. If ten percent of people are assholes, they’re going to be assholes whether you’re in a big school or here, or in the city or a town like mine.” “The proportions may remain the same, but the smaller the group, the harder it is to find the necessary number of people to surround yourself with, and the harder it is to avoid the monsters who are not Other.”

even leaving aside actual assholes, its so much harder to find people you genuinely like if the pool of total people is small

I think you have to find a family, found family or blood, and I don’t think Zed, I, Eloise, Ulysse, or Amine can be yours.

... yeah. I think Zed is a good ally, at least so far. But I think longterm the difference in goals is always going to be a divider. But the Kennet Trio have each other.

“Younger students, move closer to the front. Don’t be scared,” he said, as he placed his laptop beside him. “I byte with a y, but I don’t bite.”

oh, bad cs jokes

Not entirely sure what's going on with Ray here, if he's being racist or if he's seeing how Lucy responds to provocation

“That,” Ray said, after a short while, “was the Faerie. Seven courts.

oh! going back over those descriptions: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, dark Autumn, dark Summer, dark Spring?

She struggled to. All she remembered was how upset she felt as her emotions had gotten away from her. Like Ray had hit a button and made her feel something.

this makes me think Ray is deliberately pushing at her emotions. Maybe something to do with trying to figure out what was up with the Hungry Choir binding?

Are these categories from the Pactdice practices list? I think some names have been changed, but I remember Divine being a column header, and I think goblins and abyss were in the same column

“You’re agitated. Please relax. I would like to explain and move on to a practical lesson, but I can’t do that like this.” You’ve been telling me to shush, you’ve been keeping me from raising my hand… She bit her tongue. “Would you step out, please? I am doing my best to include you in the class when I don’t have data on you. I will include you more after I have a better idea of where you stand, skillwise. For right now you’re being disruptive.”

literally not doing anything!

So. From what Zed's saying, this seems mainly to be that at practitioner school, the professors all might have issues or unreasonable pet peeves and students just kind of have to roll with it. Sucks and is unfair, but that's how life goes.

But. If Ray's issue is people being angry, it is deeply unfair to hook someone up to an emotion detector and then react to the emotions being shown by the detector, even if the person controls them.

And also, out of all the students there, including other new students, including other students who didn't fill out the forms. The student he singles out for being overemotional and angry is the one Black girl.

She found them, not that far from the school or that deep into the paths. The Dollmaker, Graubard, and the ex-headmaster, Bristow, talking.

hmm. Don't like that!

Verona turned a book so it was at an angle both she and Lucy could read, and she beamed, excited and happy.

I wouldn't be surprised if Verona wants to consider staying at school for the school year rather than returning home.

It isn’t nothing, answered that other part of her, that had just been lit up with simulations of karma and divinity, colored with spirit and seven shades of Faerie, and shaded with darknesses both visceral and ruined.

this is a hell of a closing line

#booksandchainmail reads pale #pale #wildbow #pact spoilers

11 notes · View notes

temp-check · 5 months

Text

Wednesday's temperature check (procès-verbaux of 5-8)

Friends, Romans, lend me your deers! This is one of the infinite outcomes of the infinite monkey problem. If you’re unfamiliar with the process by which I produce my daily blog, let me explain. The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, including the complete works of William Shakespeare. Am I comparing myself to Shakespeare? Your words, not mine. Of course I’m no Shakespeare, he was English. My grasp of our common language struggles especially when it comes to such Shakespearian words as “sluggardiz’d” or “noddle”. These words don’t normally come up in everyday conversation. For example, ‘I rather would entreat thy company To see the wonders of the world abroad. Than, living dully sluggardize’d at home.’(a line from The Two Gentlemen of Verona) You can tell from the context that coming up with a daily “temperature check” makes you sluggardiz’d (lazy). Noddle is the back of your head, as in ‘I smacked the writer in the noddle to stop him from being so sluggardiz’d’. Anyway, back to the monkeys. In 2002, researchers gave six crested macaques at England’s Paignton Zoo a keyboard. From May 1 to June 22, 2002, the monkeys let off steam by banging at the keys. After more than seven weeks, the macaques produced only one five-page document, consisting almost entirely of the letter “S.” I don’t have infinity or even seven weeks to crank this out, so I’m stuck goosing the number of monkeys. How likely is it that I would will get the word “banana” completely by chance by randomly pressing a series of letter keys for a given number of times? By pressing six keys consecutively, each chosen at random, the probability is (1⁄52)6 = 1⁄19770609664, which is about five billionths of 1 percent. In other words, the probability of not typing banana is 1 – (1⁄52)^6, which is almost a certainty. Therefore, it is very unlikely to get the word “banana” by pressing six keys at random. But what if I hit the keys for longer? By randomly pressing a key on a keyboard 10 billion times, the probability of the word appearing somewhere is suddenly around 40 percent. Expanding on this, a researcher in Brazil programmed a computer to randomly generate characters. In his monkey simulation, it showed that it would take an extreme amount of patience for “To be, or not to be, that is the Question” to appear: about 2.68 x 10^69 keystrokes, which would take about 9.35 x 10^58 years (that’s 9,350 + 55 zeroes). It’s not the best number (which is googol), but it’s a chunk of time. So, with your infinite patience, stand by while I crank out the Great American Novel.

Stay safe!

Tom

This is an approximation of this writer cranking out today’s temperature check. Editor’s note: I use a laptop

#temperature check #infinite monkey theorem #shakespeare

0 notes

kingdompressnews · 1 year

Text

Dependability is often the No. 1 quality people look for in the business world

You may have dazzling talents and valuable skills, but if you’re not dependable, you won’t be successful in the long run. Following are seven ways to show people you’re dependable.

1. Do what you say you will do.

If you make a commitment, live up to it. These days word gets around quickly. One broken promise to a customer can turn into a public shellacking when a bad Internet review goes viral. The reverse is true as well: When Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos delivered on his promise to get packages to 99.9 percent of customers before Christmas, his feat made headline news.

2. Be timely.

Showing up on time shows people you care. One of the most touching movies I’ve ever seen is about a dog named Hachi who followed his master to the train every morning at 9 a.m. and returned to greet him every afternoon at five. Even after his master died, Hachi continued to go to the train at nine and wait for his master at five, for nine years. A statue commemorates the original dog at Japan’s Shibuya train station. That’s a legendary example of the powerful relationship between timeliness and dependability.

3. Be responsive.

When you’re dependable, you respond to requests. While this may seem like common sense, it’s unfortunately not common practice. The Ritz-Carlton set the gold standard for responding to requests; it gives employees a $2,000 discretionary fund to satisfy guests.

Consider the businessman who left his laptop at the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta. He noticed it was missing on his way to Hawaii, where he had to make a presentation the next morning. Because all his PowerPoints were in his laptop, he called the Ritz-Carlton to have it overnighted to Hawaii for his 10 a.m. presentation.

The next day the Ritz-Carlton CEO was wandering around the hotel, as he often did. When he got to housekeeping he said, “Where’s Mary?” Her co-workers said, “She’s in Hawaii.” The CEO said, “Hawaii? What’s she doing in Hawaii?” He was told about the guest who left the laptop in his room. “Mary didn’t trust that the overnight carrier could get the laptop to the gentleman in time,” the CEO was told. Now you might think Mary went for a vacation, but she came back on the next plane and was greeted by high fives and the CEO’s letter of commendation for her responsiveness.

4. Be organized.

Creating order — establishing systems and developing project plans — alleviates problems like misplaced files, missed meetings, lost opportunities and overdue bills. It’s far easier to be dependable when you live an organized life. If you don’t have these skills, find someone to set up systems that work for you and to coach you on how to maintain them.

5. Be accountable.

Your actions, good or bad, have an effect on others. If you want to be somebody others trust, you need to take responsibility for what you say and do. For example, I’ve learned to be more accountable about my habit of saying yes too easily. These days, rather than automatically saying yes, I pass out my assistant’s business card so she can see if I have the time and resources to get involved before I say yes.

6. Follow up.

Woody Allen famously said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” When you follow up, you complete the other 20 percent. Sending your team notes from a meeting, sending a gift card to a special client and coming through with information your colleague needed are ways you earn a reputation for being dependable.

7. Be consistent.

When I say consistent I’m not talking about the narrow-minded focus Ralph Waldo Emerson denounced in his famous quote, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” I’m talking about things like not letting your moods dictate your behavior and not putting people out by changing plans at the last minute. When you speak and behave with consistency, you become someone others can depend upon.

Address - Florida

Phone - (239) 280-5554

Email - [email protected]

Website - The Kingdom Press

Blog - Dependability is often the No. 1 quality people look for in the business world

#dependability

0 notes

bumblesimagines · 3 years

Text

Green Thumb (ALTERNATIVE ENDING)

Part 2

Request: Yes or No

Oh it feels so good to be writing on a laptop again omg

“Can you sign this?” Kate asked, holding up her bow. “Both of you.” She added, glancing between you and Clint with a hopeful smile. You hummed softly, walking towards her and Clint.

“We’re not done yet.”

“Well, when you are, could you sign my bow?” Kate asked again. “You’re kind of like.. my favourtie avenger.”

“You didn’t get hurt, did you?” You tilted you head, gaze sweeping over her for any visible injuries. Kate shook her head.

“No, no, I’m fine! You should see the other guys.” She chuckled. You tilted your head, snorting softly. An odd girl, that’s for sure.

“We did. Tracksuit mafia.”

“Tracksuit mafia?” You repeated with furrowed brows. Kate laughed, clearing her throat when Clint glanced at her.

“A little on the nose, don’t you think?” Kate chuckled awkaqrdly. Silence filled the air before she spoke again, gaze flickering between you and Clint.

“You think they’re the ones who killed my moms fiances uncle?” Kate asked softly.

“Moms fiances uncle?”

“Armond the third.. Of at least seven.”

“Who names their kid that?” You asked quietly. Kate nodded in agreement, huffing softly.

“It’s such a weird name, right?”

“Back on topic.” Clint interuppted, shooting you a look. You cleared your throat, giving him a nod before looking back at Kate.

“We don’t know but, we do need to know if anyone has seen your face or if anyone knows you were the one running around with the outfit.” You tilted your head. Kate shook her head.

“Nope, I kept the mask on like a pro.” She responded proudly. You and Clint slowly nodded.

“That’s... That’s good.” You offered a smile, watching her straighten up as her smile widened. Clint glanced down at the suit in his hands.

“The person who wore this suit made a lot of enemies. The Tracksuits are just one of them.”

“That doesn’t sound good.” Kate said quietly, gaze flickering elsewhere for a moment.

“I need you to think for a moment. Are you a hundred percent sure nobody knows you have or wore this suit?” Clint asked, brows raising as he watched Kate.

“No.”

“I need you to be sure.”

“I am.”

“Certain?”

“Yes.” Kate nodded, glancing at you with a deep frown. Her safety as a citizen was still Clints pirotity, even if he had retired as an Avenger. Kate seemed like she could handle herself but she was young and if outnumbered, she could easily get hurt.

“The Tracksuit Mafia followed you to where I found you. You stop anywhere before that?”

Another shake. “I just dropped off the dog.” She shrugged lightly. You shut your eyes, sighing softly as someone called her name from outside.

“And my name’s on the buzzer.”

“Get down!” Clint reached over, one arm wrapping around you and Kate. You ducked as the window shattered from a molotov being tossed inside.

“(Y/N), fire!”

“On it!” You stood up, hands raising. The fire rose up, wrapping into a fire ball. You brought the fireball closer to your body, hearing Kate whisper something about you being awesome. Another molotov flew in so you gathered the fire as well, quickly moving up the stairs. Clint joined you, breaking a window just in time to catch another one. You threw the fireball at the mens’ feet, watching some of them catch on fire as Clint threw the molotov.

“Could be considered friendly fire, right?”

“No time for jokes.” Clint breathed out. An arrow flew by his head, breaking one molotov before it could be thrown. You turned your head, looking at Kate. She gave a smile.

“Told ya.” You flinched when the window broke again, the last molotov breaking and spreading rapidly. You glanced at Clint, watching him shake his head.

“It’ll take too long. You haven’t had enough practice with fire.”

“Shit.” You raised your hands, clenching your fish and making the sprinklers go off.

“My stuff!”

“Grab the dog and go!” Clint shouted at Kate. Kate sighed, rushing up the stairs to fetch the dog. Clint grabbed your arm, pulling you along to the fire escape. You stepped out, making sure Kate and the dog went first before following them down to the alleyway.

“Come on.” Clint quickly went down the alleyway, spotting a subway station. You looked back at Kate.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine!” She nodded. “Y-You were amazing though! Like, you just took that fire and woosh!” Kate moved her arms simiarly to how you did it, smiling widely. You chuckled, going down the steps of the subway station.

“So, where are we going?”

“Getting further away from the people trying to kill you.” Clint responded, glancing at the subway as it arrvied.

“Right.. and after that?”

“Gonna need some supplies.” Clint faced Kate, sliding his hands in his pockets. You hoped he wasn’t gonna leave her alone. After all, half of it was his fault.

“Oh, hell yeah. Avengers supplies?”

~~~

“You want a donut?”

“Is this really it?” Kate asked, looking at Clint as he grabbed some things. You nodded, taking a bite out of your donut. A convience store wasn’t exactly what you were expecting either but it was close and had food.

“Yep. Donut?” You tilted your head. Kate silently nodded, pointing to the one she wanted. You grabbed a napkin, leaning down and grabbing the donut for her. Kate mumbled a thanks, taking a bite out of the donut.

“So... Are you single?” Kate asked quietly. You slowly chewed, staring at her before glancing at Clint. Clint snorted, continuing to grab things from the shelves.

“Uhm.. Yeah.” You nodded, looking back at Kate. “I am, yes.”

“Cool, cool.” Kate nodded slowly. You licked your lips, deciding to change the topic.

“So, Clint, need anything?”

“Yeah, could one of you grab the rubbing alcohol?” Clint motioned to the shelf it was on. You nodded, walking towards the shelf and grabbing it, shoving the last bit of your donut into your mouth. You tossed the napkin away after cleaning your fingers, walking back towards Clint and setting the two bottles down.

“So, what’s the plan? Go to your secret hideout?”

“There’s no secret hideout, Kate. Clint sold it after he retired.” You shrugged, following Clint to the checkout line. You glanced down at the dog, giving it a few pets after hearing whines.

“I’ve gotta find a place to stash you. I’ll have to clean up the mess.”

“Stash me?” Kate quirked a brow.

“He’s old.” You told her with a grin. “Don’t mind him.”

“If I hear you call me old one more time, (Y/N).” Clint glanced back at you, brows raised. Kate giggled, smiling as she looked forward. Clint stepped forward, setting it basket on the counter.

“And two donuts.” You gave the cashier a smile.

“I actually do know a place like ten blocks away with a bag of money .” Kate said, glancing at you. Clint sighed, paying for everything. You took some of the bags, walking out and letting Kate lead the way to the ‘secret hideout’.

“So much for vacation, huh?” You heard Clint let out a heavy sigh at your words. You reached the building, watching as Kate looked for a name before pressing all the buttons below. When someone answered, she blabbered until the door buzzed open.

“Impressive.”

“Don’t encourage her.” Clint mumbled, following her inside. You looked around the building as you headed up the stairs. Kate headed down a hallway, handing you her bow to hold as she got her keys out.

“It’s my aunts place. She’s in Florida for the winter.” Kate explained, unlocking the door and stepping inside. She turned on the lights, releasing the leash and letting the dog explore. You entered the kitchen, looking at all the things on the fridge door. You hummed, setting the bags down and listening to Clint give Kate a rundown on things.

“We’re gonna head back to your apartment-”

“We?”

“Yes, I’m not speaking french, (Y/N).” Clint finished taking everything out of the bags.

“We’re getting that suit and going back to our family.” Clint said. You nodded, looking at Kate. Hopefully, she’d be okay by herself.

206 notes · View notes

yoyomarules · 3 years

Text

Thinking a lot about this post and Eliot Spencer and the tough conversations, the arguments, about his limitations.

Eliot waking up in a room he takes too long to identify as one of their safe houses, head pounding. There’s a gauze dressing on his forehead, a bandage expertly wound around his right arm, his left in a sling. Hardison at his side, laptop open on his knees but with that slow pulsing dot of light on the back that means it’s in sleep mode. Parker in the window seat, knees pulled to her chest, the tension coming off her in waves even though she’s perfectly still.

‘You’re awake,’ Hardison says, closing the laptop. ‘How’re you feeling?’

‘Like I got kicked in the head a few times,’ Eliot grumbles. His throat is parched.

‘Yeah,’ Hardison says. ‘Getting kicked in the head’ll do that to you.’

He reaches for a glass of water, helps Eliot sit upright a little so he can sip at it.

‘Where we at with the job?’ Eliot asks.

‘Don’t worry about that,’ Hardison tells him. ‘You oughta rest.’

‘But did you get the patent?’ Eliot pushes.

‘Eliot, it’s fine.’

‘But we only have today to—we need to get back in there.’ He tries to sit up further but Hardison’s gentle hands guide him back down again.

‘You ain’t going anywhere; you look like you walked off the set of The Mummy; lie down.’

‘Fine, then you two need to—’

Hardison’s hands still rest on his shoulders, though he’s being careful not to apply any pressure. ‘It’s done, okay?’

‘You got it?’

Parker and Hardison glance at each other.

‘No,’ Hardison says, after a moment. ‘I mean the con’s done. I blew my cover when I came in after you.’

There’s a silence.

‘You came in after me,’ Eliot repeats.

‘Yeah.’

‘What the hell were you thinking?’ he demands.

‘I was thinking I’d save your life,’ Hardison replies, and his voice doesn’t rise but it’s cut through with frustration all the same. ‘You’re welcome, by the way.’

‘That guy Meyer hired as security’s a stone-cold murderer, Hardison!’ Eliot says, and his voice does rise. ‘He could’ve killed you!’

‘Yeah, and he would’ve killed you!’ Hardison snaps. ‘He’d’ve killed you ’cause he recognised you and “put down the Eliot Spencer” looks good on a hired gun’s résumé! And don’t tell me you had it handled,’ he continues, as Eliot opens his mouth to speak, ‘’cause you didn’t have shit handled. Why didn’t you say your shoulder’s still acting up, huh?’

‘Shoulder’s fine,’ Eliot says automatically.

‘That’s crap, man, and you know it.’

‘Okay, sure,’ Eliot says. ‘So I was a little slower than normal. That don’t mean you blow the whole con.’

‘I’d make the same choice again,’ Hardison says. He jerks his chin toward Parker. ‘We both would, every time. Wouldn’t even hesitate.’

‘Hardison,’ Eliot growls. ‘We made a promise to that family.’

Hardison shakes his head. ‘We didn’t promise you’d die for it.’

‘So that’s it?’ Eliot asks. ‘We make even more of a mess of their lives and then fuck off, is that how this goes?’

‘We got options,’ Hardison says. ‘We already spoke to Tara; we’ll let things settle down, try again in a few months with new faces—’

‘He’s gonna be on the lookout for a scam, and in the meantime he could—’

‘I don’t care.’

Eliot glances across at Parker. She’s still got her arms wrapped around her knees, but she’s turned her face toward them for the first time since he woke up, and her eyes are red, her words raw.

‘Parker, this is our job,’ Eliot says.

‘I don’t care!’ she repeats. ‘I don’t care how many people lose their money or their home or—or—’

‘You do,’ Eliot protests. ‘You do care.’

‘—I’ll steal it myself if it means we don’t have to lose you!’ And then she’s on her feet and shaking herself and heading toward the door. ‘I need a minute,’ she says.

Eliot watches her go, stunned, and then turns to Hardison. ’You gotta talk to her.’

‘No,’ Hardison says. ‘You gotta listen to her. You know she’s blaming herself for this? ’Cause she didn’t plan for your shoulder and she was so focused on cracking the safe she didn’t realise you were in trouble.’

‘Well, it ain’t Parker’s job to get me outta trouble.’

‘It’s her job to try to stop you getting into it in the first place,’ Hardison says. ‘And this was way too close.’

‘I’m telling you, I woulda been okay—’

‘You would not have been okay.’

‘You saying I don’t know my own limits?’

‘No, I think you know your limits just fine,’ Hardison says. ‘I just don’t know that you’re telling us your limits.’

Eliot stares at him for a long moment and then takes a sip of water. Then another.

Hardison watches him. ‘There something you wanna tell me right now?’

Eliot sighs and rubs a hand over his eyes, kind of hoping Hardison might forget he asked. But he’s sitting there expectantly, watching, watching, and Eliot squirms under his gentle scrutiny until he can’t help but admit, ‘It ain’t just the shoulder.’

‘What else?’ Hardison asks, voice carefully neutral.

‘It’s…lately I’ve been…’ He sighs again. ‘It’s like I still know how a fight should go, right? How I can beat ’em, easy. Long as I’m at a hundred percent.’

‘How often are you at a hundred percent?’ Hardison asks quietly.

Maybe it’s the head wound, but it feels like hours pass before Eliot confesses, ‘Less often, these days.’

The words hangs in the air between them. Hardison’s face shifts between devastated and scared and maybe just the smallest bit relieved, and he says, ‘Okay. So we gotta… we just gotta figure out around that, okay? More time between jobs, more cons where you’re just grifting—’

‘Hardison, c’mon; we can’t—’

‘And we have to know when to pull the plug. And look, you’re right—no one knows your body better than you do. So you have to tell us if something’s too much, ’cause I’m with Parker. We can’t lose you, man. We won’t.’

And it’s not like Eliot’s not aware of that fact, after seven years working together and two of those together-together, but he still swallows hard before answering. ‘If I agree to tell you when I need you to come in, are you gonna listen to me when I tell you to stay put?’

‘I mean, yeah,’ Hardison says. ‘Unless you’re obviously being stupid or some Estonian merc is actively at this moment attempting to bash your brains in. Or both.’

‘He was Latvian,’ Eliot mutters.

‘Okay, well, let’s say any Baltic state,’ Hardison suggests.

He rolls his eyes. ‘Fine.’

Hardison seems, if not satisfied, then at least willing to let the conversation drop for now. Eliot pulls at a loose thread on the bedspread. ‘I think I gotta apologise to Parker,’ he says.

‘Yeah, you should.’

‘And I guess I gotta thank you, huh?’

‘I know,’ Hardison says. ‘This must be awful for you.’

Eliot looks him in the eye and says it with a little more force than necessary. ‘Thank you.’

Hardison grins. ‘No problem.’ He leans over and kisses the bit of Eliot’s forehead that isn’t covered in dressings. ‘Get some rest, all right? We’ll be here when you wake up.’

‘Yeah,’ Eliot says, letting his eyes drift shut. ‘Yeah, I know you will.’

#eliot spencer #parker x hardison x eliot #leverage #you know when you have an idle thought and then 90 minutes later you've pretty much written a full-on fic #and it's absolutely none of the fics you were planning on writing #might expand on this because i also want the conversation after the too many rembrandts job fight #my fic #leverage fic

404 notes · View notes

gukyi · 4 years

Text

the love project | jjk

summary: from running to mcdonald’s at 3am after a halloween party where the two of you dressed up as the teletubbies to timing how long it takes for him to drink a cup of monster mixed with mountain dew and iced coffee and then do fifty push-ups, you’re used to your best friend jungkook asking you to do all sorts of crazy things. but, of all the shit the two of you do, letting him follow you around for a week with a camera and take candid photos of you for a photography assignment might just be the craziest of them all.

{college!au, friends to lovers!au}

pairing: jeon jungkook x female reader genre: fluff, comedy word count: 12k warnings: college antics, hopeless pining, slow burn a/n: me: this fic will be 10k max! also me: actually nevermind on par for the course of this blog, i hope you enjoy this fic! it was so much fun to write and it definitely got me back into the ~writing mood~. more fics coming soon!

These days, the weeks pass you by like trains on a platform. They whiz past you, the only discernible features being the beginning and the end of them, with the middle nothing but a blur.

At least, that’s how it feels when you’re in college, and the days bleed into weeks bleed into months, and suddenly you’re one year closer to graduating, one year closer to figuring out what next to do with your life, even if you’re still missing that one general education requirement you forgot to take in your first year so now you’re trying to cram it into your schedule at the last minute.

Okay, you’ll admit it. Introduction to Astronomy is kicking your ass. That’s what you get for putting it off until junior year, when you’re supposed to have reached the point in your History major career where you don’t have to look at numbers anymore and the idea of doing basic math is absolutely unfathomable. History majors don’t do math. They just don’t. It vanished from your academic arsenal long before now, alongside your ability to interpret word problems and understand science textbooks.

Perhaps in another universe, you would have actually retained those skills past high school, but that universe is not this one, and so your problem sets can solve themselves or not be solved at all.

Your best friend would have to disagree.

“It’s not even calculus!” Jungkook exclaims over a mouthful of a Starbucks tomato and pesto panini, pointing to your laptop in exasperation, as if the answer has been staring you in the face for the past fifteen minutes. “It’s just algebra! All you’re doing is plugging the numbers into the formula and finding the missing variable!”

“Easy for you to say,” you huff, furiously erasing at the notebook in front of you as you get yet another incorrect answer. Who knew math could be so difficult? Oh, that’s right. You did. “You took that advanced differential equations class for fun last year. It’s not even required for your major. You’re just a masochist.”

“Says the person who convinced their advisor to let them take seven classes because they, and I quote, ‘all seemed so interesting’ and you ‘didn’t want to miss out.’” Jungkook rebukes pointedly. “Because your life would be so terrible if you didn’t take Economic History of Pre-Industrialized Europe.”

He’s got you there. Seven classes is a lot. In your defense, Economic History of Pre-Industrialized Europe was very interesting and you got a 4.0 that semester. So who is he to judge? Jungkook’s favorite pastime is pretending that taking three different computer science classes in a single semester isn’t going to single-handedly kill him.

Jungkook watches you struggle for a few moments more before he sighs, like he can’t take looking at someone so mathematically incompetent any longer. He stuffs the remaining third of his Starbucks panini into his mouth all at once like the ravenous beast he is before he reaches over the tiny table you’re sat at to look at your problem set himself. He turns your laptop towards him and grabs hold of your notebook, furrowing his eyebrows as he enters Work Jungkook Mode.

Work Jungkook Mode is the mode of him you see most often during finals week or the rare occasions where you meet up to actually try and get work done. Work Jungkook has tunnel vision for whatever assignment is currently in front of him, which he will do either in one sitting or die trying. Work Jungkook lets his coffee get cold and forgets to answer your text messages, even when you’re sat right across from him and you know that he can see the notification on his laptop. Work Jungkook refuses to turn in anything that he hasn’t devoted his entire being to, even if it’s something as simple as a discussion board post. Some of his other friends say that when Jungkook is in Work Jungkook Mode, they won’t even try to contact him, lest their messages get lost in the flurry of his coding assignments.

But you are not “some of his other friends.” You are his best friend. So rules do not apply to you. And Jungkook has long accepted that fact.

“Hey, don’t mess up my work—” You exclaim defensively, grabby hands reaching over the table to retrieve your notebook. “Wait, how did you do that?”

Jungkook scribbles something down in nearly-illegible font, determined to solve the problem in front of him. He thinks for a few more seconds before eventually jotting down an answer, circling it with his pencil. Holding the notebook out so both of you can see, he scoots his chair over to your side of the table, your shoulders pressed together in this tiny corner of the Starbucks, right by the bathroom, and explains, step by step, what he did.

He does that for the following two problems in your set, walking you through the kind of math he was doing in freshman year of high school like it’s nothing, answering all of your stupid questions and giving you tips on how to finesse the system by taking as many shortcuts as possible. Teaching you things you never learned, or possibly had just forgotten. Things that a professor would think is idiotic to re-teach to a junior in university. Things that Jungkook wants you to know because he just wants you to have a little more faith in yourself.

“Does that help?” He asks when he’s finished, still doubting his fantastic teaching abilities despite the fact that he just taught you more in the last thirty minutes than your professor has managed in a month and a half.

“It actually does,” you tell him, pleasantly surprised. Looking back down at your notebook, what was once a shapeless blur of numbers, letters, and formulas is suddenly a clear and organized outline of each and every step to follow. “I didn’t know it was that easy.”

“Anything can be easy if you just commit yourself to learning how to do it,” Jungkook says, one of those random sentences that are too wise for a college student surviving off of RedBull and Starbucks food, the ones that always make you think Jungkook is secretly an immortal sage with life experiences far beyond your own. “Except coding. Which is hard no matter how good you are at it.”

“Aw, you can do it,” you rally, reaching up to pinch his chin in between your fingers and squeeze it tight. “It’s also too late to change your major now, so you’re stuck.”

“Wow, thanks for the encouragement,” Jungkook chides, hand coming up to rub at where you held his jaw, rolling his eyes. “You should let me help you with your Astronomy work more often. Gives me a break from Python.”

“I would have made you help me whether you liked it or not,” you tell him pointedly, because he is your best friend and he doesn’t get out of things as easily as he thinks he can. “But thanks. I’ll definitely take you up on that.”

“Of course,” Jungkook says with a good-natured grin, always so selfless and kind and giving. He practically signed himself up for a semester’s worth of TA-ing for Introduction to Astronomy despite the constant mountain of work he has himself. Just because it’s you.

“My very own personal genius,” you muse, wrapping your hands around his arm and snuggling into his body, a whisper of a language only the two of you share. It’s something the two of you have long gotten used to, pressing your fingers all over each other’s bodies like it’s second nature. One of the things that makes you feel so certain about having Jungkook in your life. About wanting him to stay with you for the rest of time. “I’m never letting you go.”

Jungkook smiles, a warm hand coming to rest atop of your own. He breathes, in and out, chest rising beneath your touch. “Like I’d ever let you,” he says.

There is no question about it. Jungkook is one hundred percent, absolutely, undoubtedly, positively, indisputably smarter than you are. It’s something that the two of you used to jokingly fight about (because Jungkook claims that he’s a bad essay writer, even though he’s not), but at this point it’s cemented in stone—he’s a damn genius. A genius who is inexplicably good at everything. A double threat. Triple, if you count the fact that he’s built beyond belief and could probably chuck you into next week if you really, really ticked him off.

The truth is that, ninety percent of the time it is you who is going to Jungkook for help. Whether it be an assignment you need assistance on (namely Astronomy, because Jungkook probably couldn’t help you on your Mesopotamian artifact and primary source analyses despite his best intentions), a date that was a lot worse than you were hoping it would be, or even just the right coffee to order from that expensive place on the corner. Jungkook knows how to fix everything.

So when Jungkook slides into the seat across from you in the food court after his Mastering Photography class with that I’m in trouble look on his face, you know something is horribly wrong.

“Are you alright?” You ask, concerned as you watch him devour the sushi takeout in front of him, stuffing the spicy tuna rolls into his mouth like they’re Skittles. His camera hangs haphazardly out of his open backpack, like he barely had enough time to stuff it into the pocket while he was making his way here. There’s a worried expression written all over his face as he fumbles with the chopsticks in his hand, losing his grip on them every ten seconds.

It’s not until Jungkook has finished the container of spicy tuna rolls in front of them that he finally seems to work up the courage to answer you.

“My Photography class is gonna be the death of me,” Jungkook exclaims, exasperated.

“I thought you liked it,” you comment unhelpfully. Jungkook had been so excited to be enrolled in it, because you needed a recommendation from a different professor and you had to submit a portfolio in order to join the class, making it one of those exclusive (and thus, much better) courses. Not to mention the fact that Jungkook is basically already a professional photographer if his Instagram is anything to go by. He’s going to walk out of university with a Photography minor whether he realizes it or not.

“I do,” Jungkook insists, even if right now it sounds like the two of you both need convincing of that fact. “But this project is ridiculous. I don’t even know how my professor expects us to have the time to finish it.”

“What do you have to do?”

Jungkook sighs. Just thinking about it seems to stress him out. “I mean, it’s only really a week long. So I guess it’s not too bad. But we’re supposed to compile a portfolio of the same subject, taken over the course of the week, with them in all sorts of different poses and lighting and locations, to express a personal theme.”

You scrunch your nose up in confusion. “I might be wrong, but isn’t that what photography… is?” You ask cluelessly.

“Yes,” Jungkook argues, “but also no. Photography is taking pictures of things just for the hell of it. Not because they necessarily speak to a part of your soul. You just like the look of it. You want to capture the scene. That’s it.”

“Oh,” You say dumbly.

“And our subject can be whoever or whatever we want, but he recommended choosing a person because taking pictures of our water bottles in different places is boring,” Jungkook huffs, though his professor does have a point there. Modern history wasn’t made out of photographs of store windows and miscellaneous items. It was made out of people, out of events in their lives that shaped the rest of the world, out of personal experiences that changed their point of view. “But I don’t even know anybody who would be willing to let me photograph them for a whole week! I’d basically have to follow them around like paparazzi!”

“I’ll do it,” you suggest casually, because it seems like the most obvious choice to you. There’s no one Jungkook spends as much time with as you.

Jungkook’s eyes pop out of his head. “What?”

“I’m serious,” you insist. “Think about it. You need a subject for your project that you can photograph in a wide variety of places and over the course of a week. Who else do you spend that much time with, other than me?”

“Well..” Jungkook begins, trying to fight your reasons with his own. “Would you even be comfortable with something like that? I mean, I’m literally going to constantly be taking photos of you.”

“Like we don’t already do that on our phones,” you tease, having amassed quite the album of terrible Jungkook pictures over the years.

“A camera is different from a phone,” Jungkook protests weakly.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But I’m just saying. It won’t bother me,” you say with a shrug. Why is Jungkook being so… weird about your suggestion? You thought he would be jumping at the offer, especially considering it means he won’t have to go out of his way to find and photograph someone else for this assignment. But he’s being rather hesitant. You watch as he glares down at his empty sushi takeout box, eyebrows furrowed in that thick, nervous way. “But you don’t have to,” you backtrack. “It was just a suggestion.”

He breathes in and breathes out, expression solid. Even from here you can see the cogs whirring in his brain, placing each and every potential result into a pro and con list inside his mind, trying to work out whether the benefits will be greater than the cost.

Quite frankly, you don’t know what all the holdup is about.

“You’re… sure about this?” He asks, looking up at you, determined to ensure your comfort. As if that’s even an issue. “You’re cool with being photographed and everything?”

“Only because it’s you,” you tease lightheartedly, expecting some sort of equally cheesy response. Instead, it makes Jungkook do something weird. He freezes in place, darting his eyes away from your gaze for a split second, collecting thoughts you can’t see. “Yeah,” you say loudly, trying to bring him back. “I’m fine with it.”

He inhales, exhales, closes his eyes, and opens them. “Okay then. I guess it’s settled. You’ll be my subject,” he declares, an almost unnoticeable wobble to his voice. It’s probably nothing, so you don’t think too hard about it.

“Can you at least pretend to be a little more excited about this?” You ask, jabbing him in the chest with a wooden chopstick. “It’s the first time we’ve ever gotten to be part of a project together!”

“Yay,” Jungkook says, lifeless.

“How about a photo to commemorate it?” You suggest, reaching over to pull the camera out of his backpack, pushing it into his hands. “This can be the start of your portfolio.”

“Fine,” he eventually caves, bringing it up to his eye as he turns it on, twisting the lens to perfect the focus. Even caught off guard like this, he looks like a professional, like someone who was born to be behind the camera. He’s a computer science major but you know that photography will always be something special to him.

You strike a dramatic pose, holding your chopsticks out, one in each hand, with a wide, excited smile on your face. “How do I look?” You ask, scrunching your eyes together.

Jungkook’s finger hovers over the silver button. “Perfect,” he tells you, voice soft and honest.

Click.

“So, how many photos are you supposed to take for this portfolio?” You ask as you flop around on Jungkook’s bed, pretending that the open tab on your laptop with your fifty-page reading doesn’t exist. You don’t even know why professors assign readings that long. Do they really expect you to read all of it?

From across his room, you can make out the top of Jungkook’s fluffy brown hair over his sleek gaming chair, one of the ones that look like high-tech airplane seats. “I don’t know,” he says. “He said at least twenty. And no more than fifty. Which really makes me wonder if someone once submitted like, one hundred photos for this project that he had to grade them on. But yeah.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” you say. When you’re around a cute animal, you can easily take twenty photographs. Granted, they aren’t exactly award-worthy photographs, but it’s not a physically demanding task.

“Yeah,” Jungkook says. “Hypothetically you could finish it in a day. But it looks really obvious.”

“Well, how many do you have now?”

It’s been a day and a half since Jungkook agreed to let you be his so-called muse, but already you’ve lost track of how many photos he’s taken of you. He loves his camera, you know that, but you didn’t realize exactly how much he loves his camera. And with you as the sole subject for his project, he’s practically letting it hang from his neck all day long, just waiting for the right time to snap a photo of you standing in line at the food court, frowning at your textbook, or waiting to meet up with him. Every time he sees you he snaps a picture, even if the lighting’s bad, even if you haven’t had your morning coffee yet, even if it’s midnight and you look like a zombie. In his mind, there are no bad pictures. Just memories.

You wonder what the hell he sees in you.

“A lot,” Jungkook answers unhelpfully, making no effort to elaborate on that statement.

“Have you counted?” You ask, getting off of his bed to join him at his desk.

Jungkook doesn’t seem to realize what you’re doing until you’re standing right next to him, placing a hand over his shoulders as you lean down next to him. He fumbles around for a second, the mouse slipping through his grip, and you catch a glimpse of one of the photos he’s taken of you, a sliver of your pursed lips, the wrinkles between your eyebrows.

It’s from the library yesterday. You didn’t even know Jungkook had taken a picture of you there. You had a stupid reading to complete last night, one that made no sense and was terribly-written, and you spent an hour just trying to figure out what the damn argument was, and Jungkook captured it. You were there for an hour and Jungkook was there too, watching you like it was nothing, waiting for the perfect moment. He was there, sitting across from you, camera at the ready. You didn’t even hear it click.

He closes it before you get a closer look at the photo, frantically hitting the little red dot at the top corner of the window before you have a chance to ask why.

“What, I’m not allowed to see?” You chide, a little bit hurt but more confused than anything else. Why is Jungkook being so secretive?

“No,” Jungkook spits quickly. making you raise an eyebrow in alarm. “I mean, it’s a surprise. You get to see when it’s finished. I still have to… uh, edit. And stuff.”

“Edit? You think I’m that ugly?” You tease, knowing that he probably means color correction but enjoying the way that he gets all flustered when he hears your voice.

Jungkook’s eyes widen at that, like he just realized he made a wrong turn and is desperately backtracking. “What, no! I don’t—I don’t think you’re ugly.”

You laugh, letting the sound of your voice ease the tension in his shoulders, reveling in the way his big doe eyes seem to soften when he realizes you were just teasing. He looks like a kid caught stealing a candy bar from a gas station, looks like one of those boyfriends in the viral videos where the girl reveals that she got him a present or something instead, all nervous and full of explanations.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” you assure him, rubbing up and down his arm to soothe him, calm his heart down. “You don’t have to show me. I’m just excited. No one’s ever taken photos of me like this before.”

“I would,” Jungkook speaks up softly. “If you asked. I would.”

“I know,” You say. You’re not sure if there’s a thing in this world Jungkook wouldn’t do for you, and you, him. If he asked, you would pluck the stars from the sky for him. Bring him back a piece of the moon. Stop time. Anything. Everything. Just for him. “I know.”

“What are you doing?” Jungkook asks, changing the topic as he whirls around in his gaming chair.

“Just another reading, like always,” you dismiss, because you’re positive the last thing Jungkook wants to hear about right now is your primary source reading on irrigation techniques in agrarian Europe. You don’t even want to hear about it. “But I could use some help on Astronomy.”

Without another word, Jungkook gets up from his desk and the two of you head over to his bed, where an untouched problem set waits on your computer. He grabs a notebook from his backpack along the way before sitting down next to you on the edge of his bed, bodies pressed together. Slowly, he begins to coach you through each problem, step by step, drawing pictures and diagrams if he has to, until you finish all ten problems.

The truth is, you didn’t really need help with this unit. Astronomy’s gotten a lot easier now that Jungkook has taught you the strategies to tackle it. But Jungkook sometimes feels like a ghost when he works, especially when he’s sitting at his desk, quiet and focused and almost invisible. And call you clingy, but you like it when you can look up and see his face instead of the back of a chair, a little tuft of wavy brown hair. You like it when he’s right beside you, in a place where you know you won’t lose him, where you can hold on if things get rough. Where you can see his stupid brown eyes and his goofy smile and know that he’ll always be there for you.

When he’s finished, Jungkook doesn’t get back up to sit at his desk. He flops down on his back, staring up at the white ceiling of his room, eyes tracing the cracks. You join him, side by side, pretending that there’s something there. Looking up at the sky would be nicer, but it doesn’t really matter, so long as you’re with him.

“I didn’t know you took so many photos,” you say.

“I never want to miss anything.”

“You should give me more warnings, next time. I feel like I look so ugly in some of them.”

“No, you don’t. Don’t say stuff like that.”

“You don’t think I’m ugly?” You ask him, for real this time. It’s not that you think he’s going to say that he does, it’s that you want to know what he really thinks. How he really sees you. You turn your head to him, back pressed against his comforter, barely a foot apart. And he turns back to you, and he’s right there, right there in front of you, big brown eyes wide and blinking. He’s right there, how could you miss him?

“No,” Jungkook says, honest and true. He looks at you, looks right at you, right into you, and he muses to himself, chuckling. “Why would I ever think that?”

At the end of the day, you can’t really be bothered to put on real pants in anticipation of Jungkook’s trigger-happy camera-taking tendencies. He’s seen you spill a boiling hot bowl of tomato soup all over yourself in the dining hall. He’s seen you at four in the morning in the library the night before finals begin, eyebags down to your knees and mismatched shoes on your feet. He’s seen you in the middle of a frat house, sweat dripping down your forehead and smelling of nothing but straight alcohol. Getting dressed up just for him would be antithetical to the very foundation of your friendship.

You have, however, become keenly more cognizant in the last few days of when Jungkook is about to take a photo of you. Mostly because you glance up at your surroundings every three seconds to make sure you aren’t getting sniped from across the food court. Nobody else needs to see a picture of you picking up three pieces of sushi with your chopsticks and stuffing them all into your mouth at once. And, from what you can tell, you’ve been pretty successful, which either means you’ve gotten better at telling when Jungkook might be taking a photo of you, or Jungkook’s gotten better at hiding it.

Either way, he’s got a lot more pictures of you reflexively flashing a peace-sign in his direction when you hear the telltale sound of his camera lens focusing, so you’re not really sure what that means for the fate of his portfolio.

Besides your newfound hyper-awareness of the sound of a camera lens adjusting, the strangest part of you and Jungkook’s little project is how quickly the rest of your friends adjusted to this brand new dynamic.

This is not to say this assignment is the weirdest thing you and Jungkook have done together, because there was once one week where you and Jungkook challenged each other to only eat bananas for every meal to see if anything would happen to either of you. Nothing did, but after that week you swore off bananas for the rest of your life and have had little appetite for them since.

It’s more that your other friends have just accepted the fact that ridiculous, extravagant shenanigans are a necessary part of you and Jungkook’s relationship and have simply chosen not to question them anymore. At least, most of them have.

“So, how’s you and Jungkook’s little photography fling going?” Maisie asks, and even through the phone you can hear the way she’s wiggling her eyebrows.

“It’s not a fling, and it’s fine,” you hiss back, trying to keep your voice down as you pack up your belongings, phone pressed between your ear and your shoulder. “Stop speaking so loudly, everyone else in the library can probably hear you.”

“Good, because they’ve all probably noticed the way Jungkook’s been following you around like an unrestrained fanboy for the past four days taking pictures of you,” Maisie says pointedly, voice so sharp it causes you to look around at the other tables to make sure no one’s listening in.

You frown, hoping your deadpan expression is audible through the phone. “It’s not like that and you know it.”

“Don’t you think it’s even a little strange that you’ve given Jungkook full permission to take photos of you like you’re a model and he’s some sort of weird, professional paparazzi?” You can practically see Maisie’s face in front of you, all wide eyes and raised eyebrows as she makes her point.

“No, it’s what we agreed on,” you remind her for the umpteenth time. There’s nothing weird about this. You’re helping him with a project, what more could it be? “Jungkook needed someone to take pictures of for his photography project and I thought it would be a good idea if I was that someone.”

“Hmm… wonder why…” Maisie trails off, deliberately vague and suggestive all at once.

“You’ve been going on about this ever since Jungkook and I met, Maise,” you say with a roll of your eyes, tossing your backpack over your shoulder. “You know that Jungkook and I are just friends. Like we have always been.”

“Friends that take candid photos of each other under the guise of a project,” Maisie adds, and you can see the air quotes around the word “project” right in front of you.

“Friends that help each other out because that’s what friends do,” you correct. “You’re just going to have to accept the fact that Jungkook and I are always going to be just friends and nothing more. No matter how much money you’ve bet on us getting together.”

Maisie gasps. “I have not bet money on such a thing! This is slander!”

“Don’t think I don’t see you and Jimin’s damn Venmo history.” You pull up to the front desk of the library to check out a primary source book needed for one of your classes. It’s the first edition, and it’s battered beyond belief, but it’s better than paying for it. “Just this, thanks.”

“The only way you could convince me that you and Jungkook are just friends is if you go on a date or something,” Maisie comments snidely. “I don’t think I’ve seen either of you romantically interested in someone else the entire time you’ve known each other. Isn’t that proof enough?”

“You want me to go on a date with someone?” You demand, determined to get Maisie to hop off your ass about this.

You and Jungkook are just friends. If swiping right with someone on Tinder and getting dinner and a movie with them is what will convince Maisie of that, then that is what you will do. It’s not as if being friends with Jungkook is mutually exclusive with you going out with other people. Should be easy, right?

The boy behind the counter tells you your book is due back at the end of the semester, and you nod your thanks before heading out of the library.

“Fine, I’ll go on a date with someone. If it’ll get you to stop trying to convince me that Jungkook and I are gonna get married and have babies,” you declare, pushing your body against the door handles as you leave, five minutes to spare before your next class begins.

“You guys would have really cute babies, I’m just saying,” Maisie points out like it’s nothing.

You roll your eyes, taking the phone away from your ear as your finger hovers over the red button. “See you, Maise.”

You’re barely three steps out of the library, still rolling your eyes at the Call Ended screen on your phone when a voice catches your attention.

“Y/N!”

You turn your head just in time to see Jungkook’s devilish grin disappear behind his camera, and you don’t even have time to blink before he begins snapping away, finger mashing the silver button at the top as your expression morphs from surprise to defeat, unable to counter his sniping abilities with a signature peace sign. Even from twenty feet away, you can hear Jungkook laughing as you take the opportunity to pose for a few moments, like you really are a model and he really is your personal photographer. The sound of his giggles fills the air, music to your ears, lingering between you like dandelion wisps, blown by the wind.

Another voice breaks you from your trance.

“And here we have our resident celebrity and her paparazzi,” Jimin says, motioning to the two of you as he speaks to an enormous tour group of potential applicants and their parents. Caught in front of them, the heat suddenly rushes to your cheeks as you instinctively cover your face, embarrassed to have been pointed out by Jimin, whose amicable, lovable personality is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to his part-time job as a tour guide.

The worst part is how some of the parents and students seem to believe him for a second, that you really are famous and that Jungkook really is your photographer, looking at the two of you inquisitively as you shrink beneath their gazes.

“I’m kidding,” Jimin quickly continues as Jungkook joins you where you stand, laughing at the way you look like a deer caught in headlights. “They’re just some friends of mine who we happened to catch outside the library, which is our next stop. But don’t they look so cute together?”

“Are you guys dating?” One of the students pipes up, asking what no one else dared to.

Your eyes widen at the notion, wondering if you and Jungkook really are cursed to always be mistaken for a couple when you two have never been, and most likely will never be one. Shaking your head, you force out a laugh, “No, we’re just friends.” Beside you, Jungkook is noticeably silent. You suppose he’s gotten just as sick of explaining as you.

“Bummer, right?” Jimin asks his group, earning a couple of disappointed nods from innocent high-schoolers that still believe in love. “But I’m working on that, so don’t worry. Anyway, this library will be your main destination for studying, book-reading, and everything in between, and is conveniently located two minutes away from the freshman dorms…”

The conversation finally drawn away from you and Jungkook, you let out a breath you hadn’t even realized you had been holding in. “Weird, right? Even high-schoolers think we’re together.”

Jungkook doesn’t meet your eyes, fiddling with the settings on his camera just to keep his hands busy. The quiet makes you wonder what is going on up inside his head, makes you wonder what it is he’s thinking about, what it is you’re not seeing. Lately, it’s felt like there’s something on Jungkook’s mind you wish he felt comfortable telling you.

“Hey, you alright?” You ask, giving him a little nudge with your side. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No,” Jungkook says, voice soft, barely audible. It doesn’t make you feel any better. “No, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Don’t you have class soon?”

“Oh, shit, you’re right, fuck,” you say, checking your phone only to find you have barely a minute to get to your next class. Guess you’ll be using one of your allotted absences today. “Thanks for reminding me. Dinner tonight?”

“I’ll text you,” Jungkook promises, and you nod your agreement as you dash off, determined to turn a five-minute walk into a one-minute one with the power of exercise. As you leave, you watch as Jungkook flounders outside the library, staring down at his camera and scrolling through his photos, and you still find yourself feeling like you’re missing something. What is Jungkook not telling you?

What do you not know?

By the time you reach your class, two minutes late and completely out of breath, tardiness is the last thing on your mind.

This project was just meant to be a friend helping out a friend. So why does it feel like you and Jungkook are losing each other?

Using Tinder is easy. Dangerously so.

You’re no expert in app design, but its simplified “yes or no” mechanic has you swiping through people like it’s an extreme sport, barely giving some of them a second glance if their Tinder profile description doesn’t make you laugh within the first sentence.

Tinder was, admittedly, not your first choice of potential date-finding methods. Call you old-fashioned, but whatever happened to asking someone in person if they wanted to get a meal with you? To showing up at their doorstep with a rose bouquet and a toothy white grin? Perhaps all of those old-timey movies you and Jungkook always watched have given you unrealistic expectations. But can you blame them?

Even if Tinder wasn’t your first choice, it was certainly the fastest. It takes a second to look at someone’s designated Tinder thumbnail, two to read their description, and three to decide if they’re worth a swipe right. Compare that to actively meeting up with someone, getting their contact information, and then continuing to dance around each other until you finally decide to get dinner together. That’s the sort of thing that could take weeks. Maybe months. And in some cases, years.

Besides, it’s not like you had very many options at your disposal. You don’t trust Maisie to set you up with someone because she’ll probably just choose one of the many boys from her management class and call it a day. Asking someone yourself is absolutely out of the question. And, for some strange, unknown reason, the idea of getting Jungkook to hook you up with one of his friends just doesn’t sit right with you.

So, Tinder it is. And as it turns out, chivalry isn’t dead. It’s just archaic.

An hour into your mindless swiping, you get a message notification. Two hours after that, you’ve got plans with a nice senior boy whom you’ve never met.

And for the first time in a very long time, there’s something to mark on your calendar for Saturday night.

The little blue block on your Google Calendar tab stares back at you from where your open laptop sits on your desk, the red line that signifies your current time slowly inching towards it as you fumble around in front of your mirror, more dressed up than you have been in weeks. Maisie was right. It’s been so long since you’ve gone out with someone that you’ve completely forgotten what the dress code is for something like this. A dress? Heels? Makeup?

You don’t want to overshoot it, but part of you thinks you will anyway. What if he’s wearing a hoodie and sweats while you look like you’re about to attend the goddamn Academy Awards? Maybe the eyeshadow was a little too much.

You don’t want to overshoot it, but part of you thinks it’s inevitable that you do. The door to your apartment swings open, and you can hear heavy footsteps making their way to your bedroom, that easy gait of his familiar as always.

“Hey, do you think we can just get some take-out and watch a stupid old noir movie, or something? I’ve had a day,” he shouts out, the sigh audible in his voice.

You don’t want to overshoot it, but part of you thinks you definitely have when you turn around to see Jungkook standing right outside your bedroom in the floppiest sweater you’ve ever seen and jeans with holes in the knees, mouth agape as he stares straight at you. It’s impossible not to notice the way his eyes are blown wide at the sight of you, at the way they rake up and down your figure, like he can’t even believe what he’s seeing. It’s impossible not to notice how he seems to flounder at the sight of you.

The only thing that breaks the both of you out of your stupors, frozen in place like two criminals caught red-handed, is the sound of his hulking black backpack thudding to the floor.

“Whoa.”

“Do you think it’s too much?” You ask, voice wobbly. God, why are you so nervous? It’s just Jungkook.

“Too much for what?” Jungkook blinks, deliberate and slow, as if he’s determined to make sure his eyes aren’t deceiving him. “Where are you going?”

“I think we’ll have to do a raincheck for the noir movie and takeout,” you say sheepishly, pursing your lips together in fright as you force out a small, tense smile. “I’m… going out. With someone.”

“Like,” Jungkook begins, and even from here you can hear the way he stops himself, hear him breathe out every word, thick on his tongue. “On a date?”

“Yeah.”

It’s a one-syllable word and yet it takes nearly all of your willpower just to say it. Just to confirm what Jungkook’s already thinking. Just to tell him, your best friend, your ride or die, your number one, that you’re going out on a date.

“Oh.” Jungkook’s voice is lifeless. “Do I know them?”

“No, uh, it’s just some guy I met on Tinder. I don’t know, I just wanted to see what all the hype was about, I guess. And I haven’t really been on a date in a while, so I figured I might just take up the opportunity, so we’re probably just going to go out to a restaurant and maybe go to a club afterwards if we’re still in the mood, and—” You cut yourself off, so nervous that you’ve resorted to your terrible habit of rambling to try and ease the tension. “Why? Do you think it’s too much?”

“You use Tinder?” Jungkook asks instead. It sounds like he’s shocked to hear this.

“Yeah…” you trail off. “Why?”

Jungkook freezes at the question, but it’s not because it seems like he doesn’t have an answer. It’s because it seems like he does. Only it’s an answer he doesn’t want to share.

“Nothing, it’s nothing,” he eventually settles on, shaking his head. “You, uh, you look good.”

“You think? I feel like it’s a lot. I don’t know how to dress appropriately for stuff like this anymore,” you ask, palms sweaty as you furiously straighten out the skirt of your dress. “Should I change into pants, or anything?”

“No, no, I think that’s fine,” Jungkook says with an honest smile. “You look nice like this.”

“It’s probably been like, a year since you last saw me in a dress,” you comment mindlessly, turning back to face the mirror as you fiddle with your makeup, finger wiping away a bit of smudged lipstick or a stray bit of mascara. “I miss my sweats. Hey, whoa, wait, what are you doing—?”

You whip around to find Jungkook slowly fishing out the camera from his backpack, hand gripping it tightly as he brandishes it in front of you.

“I, um, I just wanted to see if I could maybe take a photo of you,” Jungkook says, a small, little grin decorating his features. “Since you’re all dressed up.”

“Seriously?” You ask in disbelief.

Jungkook nods, holding the camera out in front of him. “Just one.”

He looks so small, standing across your bedroom. He looks so small and delicate and intimate, body curled in on itself ever so slightly as he looks at you, the yellow glow of your ceiling light reflected in his hazelnut eyes, drowning beneath his clothes. He looks like he has never seen a moment more perfect, never seen an opportunity as clear, looks like he thinks that if he blinks he’ll miss it.

Looks as if a photo will be the only way to remember it.

And you nod. Because he is your best friend, and who are you to deny him of something so simple? Of a press of a button? It doesn’t feel like a project anymore. It just feels like a memory.

Jungkook brings the camera to his eye, and you smile at him, soft and gentle and warm. He grins back, focusing the camera lens before snapping away.

You wonder what he sees.

(You wonder if it’s as beautiful as what you see.)

“Have fun tonight, okay?” Jungkook asks of you as your Google Calendar notification sounds, letting you know you have approximately two minutes before he’s supposed to pick you up outside your apartment.

You nod. “I will. And if I don’t, then I’ll come over afterwards. And we can watch that stupid noir film.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Jungkook says with a roll of his eyes, a shrug of his shoulders.

“But I want to. So I will. Okay? I’ll text you,” you promise. “Don’t think I’ll forget about you.”

Jungkook smiles at your little tease, at the way you cup the side of his jaw with your hand as you head towards your front door.

“Wait, Y/N,” Jungkook sputters out, running after you. He reaches you right as you get to the door, hand grasping the doorknob. You turn to look at him, blinking. “I hope tonight is everything you dreamed of.”

There is something so distinctly sad in his voice. It makes you wonder who has broken his heart. Makes you wonder what you can do to fix it.

“Even if it’s not,” you say to him, taking his hand in your own and squeezing it tight, reminding him that, no matter what, you’re still here. “I know you’ll always be there to take care of me afterwards.”

Your phone buzzes with a message from your date, and you scurry out the door.

For some reason, there’s a part of you that wishes you never even left.

The date is okay. Not bad, but nothing to write home about. By the time you finished eating, it was obvious neither of you had any interest in continuing the night elsewhere, whether it be a club or a karaoke bar. He pays for your meal despite your insistence that you can handle the check perfectly fine on your own, thanks you for a nice night, and drops you right back at your apartment. And so goes your one and only Tinder experience, blowing away like a leaf in the wind.

You look down at your phone. It isn’t even nine o’clock yet.

[November 7th, 8:48PM]

You: you still game for that movie?

[November 7th, 8:50PM]

Jungkook: you finished your date already?

You: is that a yes or a no

Jungkook: my door is always open, you know that

You: you’re gonna get robbed one day and it’s gonna be by me You: i’m coming over

The walk from your apartment to Jungkook’s is six minutes and thirty seconds on a good day, and seven minutes and fifteen seconds on a bad day, which is usually dependent on if the traffic light over the main road has decided to be extra slow or not. You could walk the damn route in your sleep if you really wanted, having done it so many times in the last year and a half, ever since he moved out of on-campus housing and into his own place.

Tonight, it takes you nearly eight minutes to get to his apartment, but you mostly chalk that up to the heels you’re wearing. If you cared any less about your dignity, you’d probably take them off and walk barefoot like a defeated heroine in a romance movie, shoes dangling from your fingers as they hang low by your side.

But you aren’t defeated. You didn’t have the world’s most spectacular date, but the night isn’t over just yet.

Jungkook’s waiting at his front door by the time you arrive.

“Eight minutes, huh? You’re getting old,” he asks snidely, looking down at the invisible watch on his wrist.

“Your counting is just off,” you retort easily, falling into that same friendly rhythm, that familiar little beat that the two of you share. You push past him and into his apartment, instantly feeling more at home, shoulders sinking and heartbeat soothing as you soak in the scent of his room, of his home, of him.

“How’d it go?” Jungkook asks, eyes hopeful as they watch you tug off your heels. They were hardly three inches tall and yet you still want nothing to do with them.

You shrug. “Eh. It was okay.”

“Just okay?” Jungkook asks, sounding seriously upset for you. Upset that you didn’t have a good night even after you promised him that you would. Upset that it didn’t turn out to be everything you wanted.

“I don’t know,” you admit, looking over at him, dejected. “It just—I just had this feeling that it wasn’t going to work out.”

Jungkook scowls to himself, eyebrows furrowing like he’s trying to figure out what exactly you mean by that. And the truth is, you’re not sure either. The date was fine, and he was nice, but even when you first met it felt like you weren’t going to get what you wanted from him. Like you were just going on the date to go on the date. Like you already knew that it would mean nothing.

Jungkook was going to be waiting for you at the end of the night whether it went amazingly well or terribly bad. And knowing that, strangely enough, almost made you want the date to be horrible. Like it would make seeing Jungkook afterwards that much sweeter.

“Oh,” Jungkook says lamely. “Well, I’m sorry. It seemed like you were really looking forward to it.”

“It’s alright,” you assure him. “Can we just watch this movie now and make fun of how sexist it is? Please?”

To that, Jungkook easily agrees. As he’s queueing up the movie, you raid his closet for a hoodie and sweatpants, desperate to strip yourself of your dress and tights and cozy up in clothes that are much more appropriate for your comfort level. At this point in your friendship, Jungkook doesn’t even question it when he sees you march into his room, fishing through his closet and drawers for your favorite matching set of his, this grey pair that he’s worn so much it still smells like him even after it’s come right out of the wash.

He only stares back in awe when he sees you emerge from his bedroom wearing them.

“Ready?” You ask, breaking him from his resolve.

Jungkook blinks wildly from where he’s seated on his dinky old couch, as if to clear his vision. “What? Oh, yeah, I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Then hurry it up, Mister,” you demand, sitting down next to him and curling into his body. It’s instinctual, at this point, wanting to be close to him. To feel the warmth of his body radiate upon your own. To feel his chest beneath the palm of your hands, his arm wrapped around your side. “All good?” You ask, looking up at him.

Jungkook looks down at you, and you swear, you’ve never seen him more at home. “Always, when I’m with you.”

The movie is predictably good and predictably sexist, but your favorite part by far is when Jungkook reaches around on the coffee table in front of you for his camera, holding it up to his eye and snatching a picture of the television, the film grainy like an old polaroid, faded like an antique photograph. He clicks away at the scene in front of him before turning on you, the lens so close to your face you’re almost certain all he’ll manage to capture is your nose. You laugh, pushing yourself away from him as he snaps, and snaps, and snaps, image after image after image, until his camera battery has died and there’s no more room left on his card.

“Guess I’ll have to charge this thing, then,” Jungkook sighs as he declares his camera dead, screen black.

“You aren’t going to include any of those, are you?” You ask, an eyebrow raised.

Jungkook shrugs. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Don’t you have enough?” You deadpan, thinking back to the hundreds of photos Jungkook must have taken of you over the past week, and even more that you don’t know about. There’s certainly no shortage of them in his current camera inventory. That’s for sure.

“Never,” Jungkook says wickedly. He stretches out an open arm, and you don’t have to think twice about falling into it, letting him wrap you up in his hold, curling into his body.

The black television screen crackles before you, DVD player waiting for Jungkook to turn it off. There’s no need for either of you to look up at each other. Not when you’re strung together like this. Not when you already know exactly where he is.

“It’s due on Monday, right?” You inquire softly, fatigue slowly overtaking you.

“Yeah. I’m almost finished, just have to do some curating and editing.”

“I want to see it.”

“What? My project?”

“What else?”

“It’s just a project, it’s not that exciting.”

You pull away from him at that, looking up at him with furrowed brows and scrunched-up nose. “What do you mean ‘it’s not that exciting’? It’s your photography project. You’ve spent a whole week working on it.”

“Yeah, but it’s just you, you know?” Jungkook objects. “Like, you know what you look like. It’s just going to be a bunch of photos of you, like I said it’d be.”

“That’s exactly why I want to see it,” you say like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You took pictures of me for a whole week. Don’t you want to share them with me?”

“If you really want some of the photos, I’ll send you some, but you don’t need to see the whole portfolio, you know? It’s just for my professor,” Jungkook says stiffly, surprisingly resistant. What’s the big deal? It’s not like there will suddenly be new information about you that you didn’t know before. You want to see what Jungkook has been working tirelessly on this entire week. Where’s the harm in that?

“Why are you getting so hung up on this? It’s just photos,” you say with a frown.

“Why are you getting so hung up on this?” Jungkook challenges back.

You sigh, sinking back into him, defeated. Even a little disagreement like that is enough to knock the wind out of the both of you, so you decide not to push it much further.

“Do you promise to show me eventually?” You ask, hopeful.

Jungkook pauses for a moment, and you almost expect him to say no, considering how protective of his work he’s being. “One day,” he declares. “One day, I will.”

And that’s good enough for you.

You lose track of how much time passes after that, feeling your eyelids getting heavy as the warmth of his body envelopes you, drowsiness settling in. There’s just something about this moment, right here, right now, that makes you want to fall asleep.

You’re on the verge of slumber when Jungkook’s voice breaks through.

“Why didn’t you think your date would work out?”

“I don’t know,” you respond sleepily, barely even opening your eyes. “It just felt wrong.”

“How do you know what feels right?”

Good question. Perhaps if you had the energy, you’d answer it. But right now, all you can think about is how cozy you feel in Jungkook’s hoodie and sweatpants, how the scent of him surrounds you, that indescribable, boyish aroma that can’t be replicated. Right now, all you can think about is how easily your body molds into his, like two pieces of a puzzle meant to fit together. Right now, all you can think about is him.

The worst part about each and every week is when it ends. Because the end of one week signifies the beginning of the next, and when you’re in university, the beginning of the next week means a whole new batch of assignments that you have to complete and a whole new batch of due dates to meet.

So, yeah. The weeks have been blurring together for you lately. But what else could you expect?

Sunday evening, as per usual, finds you right back where you always are: Jungkook’s apartment.

The two of you have been regularly getting together on Sundays to study, ever since you both realized you work significantly harder when motivated by the other, determined to finish all of your work on time so you can spend the rest of the night fooling around by mixing Monster with as many unhealthy drinks that you can possibly think of. And it’s been working out well for the both of you so far. Jungkook powers through his coding assignments and you whiz through your readings, intent on keeping up to date with your tasks so they don’t all come crashing down on you at the end of the semester.

Studying with Jungkook has always been easy, largely due to the fact that it’s the one allotted time during your friendship where the both of you deem it best to not speak to each other for the sake of your work. The moment one of you opens your mouth it’s over, so you sit on opposite ends of the room and pretend that the other person isn’t even there.

Jungkook told you earlier today that he had already finished his photography portfolio, so there would unfortunately be no sneaky glances over his shoulder to see if you can catch a glimpse of one of the pictures. Which is fine by you, you’re just a little embarrassed that Jungkook had told you this outright. Not that you were planning to do exactly that, but you were planning to do exactly that.

Part of you. more than anything, wants to know why Jungkook won’t just show you himself. Why he’s being so secretive, so protective of his photography project when you both know already exactly what’s in it. For God’s sake, he just spent the entire week taking photos of you non-stop. It’s like not as if any part of this is a mystery to either of you. What more could he have done?

Whatever. You aren’t going to force it if he doesn’t want you to. You suppose that maybe one day, far into the future, he’ll finally decide that the time is right.

“I’m so fucking tired,” Jungkook declares lifelessly as he gets up from where he’s sitting on your bed, dead inside. “I need a break.”

“Are you going to the kitchen? Can you make me some tea, please?” You ask him, looking up from the laptop on your desk.

Jungkook nods wordlessly before disappearing out of the room.

You and Jungkook’s best study practice to maximize productivity is the taking of each other’s cell phones so that the other cannot be tempted to look at it. It’s worked plenty of times before and will probably work plenty of times again, because as they say, out of sight, out of mind.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to pretend that your phone is out of sight when it’s been buzzing on your bedside table for the past five minutes, and your fingers have been itching to get over there and answer your damn notifications. So, while Jungkook is out of the room, you decide to cheat a little by dashing over there just to see what the heck is going on in the rest of the world.

As it turns out, nothing much. Just Maisie texting you as she binges yet another television show, giving spoiler-free updates anytime anything remotely dramatic happens. You have a couple of new emails as well.

The thing that actually catches your attention the most, is Jungkook’s laptop screen.

There’s just a Word document open on it, but a Word document is a far cry from his usual coding program or Photoshop. Because you can’t help yourself, you peer over to see what he’s written.

What did you learn about yourself through this assignment? How do you think you’ve changed?

Hard to say that I have. I don’t think I learned something about myself so much as I confirmed what I already knew, cementing it as a real thought in my brain, rather than just a daydream. Nothing changed in the way that my best friend and I interacted, and I can almost confirm that nothing changed in the way that she feels about me, just as nothing changed in the way I feel about her. I guess you could say I learned that I don’t think anything could ever change the way I feel about her.

What?

Do you think you’ll ever look back on this project, whether it be as a reference or a memory?

Yes. Not as a reference but to remind myself of this very moment in my life—a single week over the course of my life that I felt was worth saving. I imagine that there will come a time, far in the future, where my best friend and I have separated a little bit, found our own lives and created our own families with our own people. And when that happens, I will look back on this project to remind myself of who we used to be. How we used to feel about each other. Maybe, by that point in time, it won’t hurt as much as it does now.

This feels personal. Maybe you should stop reading. But there’s just one more question left on the page…

This assignment forced you to create an entire portfolio, from scratch, using a subject you would have to regularly schedule time with. It was demanding. But, that said, would you ever do this again?

Yes. If it meant getting to spend more time with her, take more photos of her, see her smile once more, I would do it a thousand times over.

“Y/N?”

You hadn’t even heard the kettle whistling.

“Jungkook,” you say, breathless, caught red-handed.

“What are you doing?” He asks, placing your steaming cup of tea down on the desk as he stares back at you in horror, in surprise, in worry, in something. Something that gives you this imminent sense of impending doom.

“Uh—”

“Were you reading my computer screen?”

It’s not like you could say you were doing anything else.

“I couldn’t help myself, I came over here to check my phone since it’s been buzzing like crazy and your computer was right there and I just…” you sputter out, thoughts swirling inside your head.

(I will look back on this project to remind myself of who we used to be. How we used to feel about each other. Maybe, by that point in time, it won’t hurt as much as it does now.

If it meant getting to see her smile once more, I would do it a thousand times over.

I guess you could say I learned that I don’t think anything could ever change the way I feel about her.)

“What do you mean, how you feel about me?” You ask, because you can’t help yourself. Because the sound of his voices echoes in your head like the beat of a drum, over and over and over. Because you’re staring back at him and even if he just caught you snooping through his computer you can never be worried when it comes to him. Because everything he has ever done puts you at ease.

“Y/N, that is private, why would you read something like that?” He asks, each word a sucker punch into your heart.

“Because I just had to know, okay?” You shout back. “I had to know what you were hiding from me.”

“So you decided to snoop through my computer to see if you could figure it out yourself?” He demands, storming over to you.

“So you are hiding something?”

“That’s not the point, the point is that—”

“What are you not telling me, Jungkook?” You cry out, watching as he approaches you, dark eyes piercing your gaze. “Why won’t you show me your goddamn portfolio? If there’s really nothing to be afraid of, why are you keeping it from me? I’m your best friend, I’m the fucking subject of your project? Don’t I deserve to see it? Why won’t you show me?”

“Because then you’d know!” Jungkook shouts back, leaving deafening silence in his wake. You look up at him, blinking. In front of you, Jungkook is out of breath, chest heaving.

He looks so strained. So tired. Like he’s been carrying around this secret for months now, maybe even years, and this is the final straw. This is what has sent the both of you crashing down upon each other. This stupid fucking project. You’ve known Jungkook ever since the beginning of your freshman year, and never before have you seen him so hopeless.

“Jungkook—?”

“You’d know, goddamnit,” Jungkook says, hand coming up to rub at his forehead, dragging down his cheek. “And I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that.”

“Know what? What would I know?”

Jungkook closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. Opens them again. “That I’m in love with you.”

The words drift in between the two of you, hovering in the air like feathers. You see them, clear as day, in front of you, hear them echoing in your head, over and over and over again. Feel the way your blood is pumping, the way your heart is beating.

“You’re in love with me?” You ask him.

“I didn’t want you to find out this way,” Jungkook admits. “Or at all, really. But I have been, for a while now.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was afraid that I’d lose you.”

You chuckle, a small, little thing from the back of your throat. “You must have known I’d never let that happen, hmm?”

Jungkook smiles softly. “I was scared. Can you blame me? You’re my best friend.”

“And you are mine,” you remind him.

“It’s just—” Jungkook begins, like the gates of a dam are opening up. “We’d known each other for so long, and we have such a good thing going as is, always texting and calling and hanging out together, studying together on Sunday nights and seeing each other during the week, and I didn’t want to ruin anything. And then my professor assigned this project, and the only person I could think of to take photos was you, but I didn’t want to ask that of you in case you thought it was weird, but you suggested it anyway so I said yes, but I knew. I knew then that the moment I took one goddamn photo of you it would be obvious, and that if you ever saw you would just know. Stuff like that is easy to pick up in pictures, because a camera is like, tunnel vision for whatever it is you want to focus on most, and that’s you, that’s always been you, so I—”

“Jungkook,” you interrupt, reaching out to him, pressing a soft hand to his cheek. “Just, shut up, okay?”

And then you cup his head in both of your hands, and press a kiss to his lips. A small one, if nothing else, but a kiss nonetheless. You press your lips against his own and immediately you feel the sparks rush through you, this flash of heat that settles into something softer, something sweeter. It ignites and soothes you all at once, like a stray lightning bolt out on the open ocean. Like a single clap of thunder and the pitter patter of rain.

You press a kiss to his lips and when you pull away, Jungkook’s eyes are closed, lips parted ever so slightly. And for a moment there, you almost think you did the wrong thing.

But barely a second more passes before he’s scooping you up in his arms and pulling you in close to him, his lips finding yours like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do. He holds you tight, hands pressed against the small of your back as he kisses you, warm and fiery and full, as if he can’t get enough, as if this is his only chance. You gasp into it before relaxing in his hold, cold hands on his warm cheeks, body melting at the feeling of him, of him all over you, of his hands and his mouth and his chest, this perfect, solid figure.

He kisses you and it sends heat shooting through your body, filling you up from the inside out, like your heart has burst and filled your bloodstream with fire, with sparks of warmth that tingle all over. He kisses you, and everywhere his hands press is another sizzle to your skin, an electric shock that makes you giggle into his mouth.

He kisses you and it feels like a storm has settled, feels like gentle rain after a hurricane, feels like waves crashing against the shore. He kisses you and it is the only thing you can think about.

By the time you part once more, you don’t think you’ve ever seen Jungkook so blissed out.

“See?” You point out softly. “Nothing to be afraid of.”

Jungkook looks positively dazed. “I think I need to lie down.”

“Ooh, was I that good?” You tease.

“I’m dreaming.” He shakes his head. “I’m definitely fucking dreaming.”

Jungkook sinks onto your bed, hitting the mattress with a thud. He stares mindlessly in front of him, like his brain needs time to process.

You smile to yourself. He can have all the time in the world.

“Is this real?” He mumbles when you sit down next to him, press another kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Are you real?”

“Just like you,” you promise him. “I didn’t know this is what we had been missing, all this time.”

“It wasn’t missing,” Jungkook assures you. “It was just hidden.”

“I love you,” you whisper, watching him swallow the words like a glass of wine. “I think I always have. You just needed to say it first.”

“Oblivious as always.” Jungkook grins, smiling against your lips. “But I’m glad. If this is what it would take, then I’m glad.”

“You wouldn’t change anything?” You ask him, eyes wide and curious.

It’s hard to know how long you and Jungkook have been secretly pining over each other. Hard to know how long Jungkook has known that he’s loved you, how long it’s been since you started to feel the same, even if subconsciously. It’s hard to know how long you would have kept going if not for this project. It might have been months. Years. Years that Jungkook was willing to spend holding back, if only it meant keeping you by his side.

“No,” Jungkook says like it’s the easiest answer in the world. “I have you now. Why would I?”

What did you learn about yourself through this assignment? How do you think you’ve changed?

Previously, I had responded to this question by saying that I hadn’t learned anything, and felt that nothing changed in my life. Then, some things happened. And after those things, I learned that I am the luckiest man alive. To know my best friend is one thing. To love her is a privilege. To have her love me back is nothing less than a miracle.

Do you think you’ll ever look back on this project, whether it be as a reference or a memory?

Yes. Every day for the rest of my life. I don’t think I’ve ever been as thankful to receive a homework assignment as I am, right now. I owe everything to this project. It is the reason I have her.

This assignment forced you to create an entire portfolio, from scratch, using a subject you would have to regularly schedule time with. It was demanding. But, that said, would you ever do this again?

Yes. I want to take photos of her for the rest of my life. I want to save every memory we ever share together. So that far into the future, we can look back on them together and say, “Remember that?”

↳ links are broken, but don’t forget to message me with any thoughts or feedback!

#jungkook fluff #jungkook angst #bts fluff #bts angst #bts scenario #jungkook scenario #bts imagine #jungkook imagine #bts au #jungkook au #jungkook x reader #bts x reader #w: the love project #yes i am finishing this at 6am on the day its meant to be posted... MIND UR OWN BUSINESS

4K notes · View notes

vampireapple · 2 years

Text

Phycology Paper

Finals can be rough

. . .

Trash was everywhere.

Food wrappers and containers littered the floor. Plates, cups and eating utensils looked as if they had been catapulted at the walls and furniture. Questionable substances were laying haphazardly across the floor. One brownish green mass might have moved.

Meshell hovered at the apartment door, wondering if her mission was doomed to fail. Her blonde hair was styled perfectly, her tight top and short skirt matched impeccably, her sandals were glamorous, and her make-up was flawless. It was possible none of it would survive if she continued on. Meshell bit her lip, stealing herself, then took a careful step in.

In the kitchen the microwave door was open. What looked like Spaghettio’s had exploded inside. A whistling kettle was on the stove, the gas flames leaving black marks on the side and bottom. The sink was plugged up and the faucet was leaking. Water pooled on the floor and surrounding counters. Energy drink liquid and cans covered the linoleum floor.

Meshell took a wary step into the ruined room. She winced as she felt sticky goo try to keep her sandal stuck to the floor. She tried to avoid the messes on the floor. She failed for the most part. Finally, going at a snail’s pace, she reached the burner and turned it off. Meshell was quicker returning to the dubious safety of the living room.

She stood, contemplating her next course of action. The only other room to be searched was the bedroom. Meshell stared at the closed door. The ominously closed door. She really didn’t want to go in the bedroom. She glanced at the front door, then back at the bedroom door. Meshell squared her shoulders. She had a purpose. She could do this!

She took half a step forward. Then another half step. Slowly, slowly she moved closer and closer to the ominous door. Finally, she reached it.

Then stared at the doorknob.

Degree by degree Meshell moved her hand nearer to the doorknob. She grabbed the knob. A deep breath to steady the nerves, then a flick of the wrist followed by a click. She slowly pushed the door open and took half a step in.

The room was almost entirely black. Dark blankets covered the window. The only source of light was a half-covered laptop screen.

“Jazz?” Meshell whispered.

Something in the dark moved.

“Jazz?”

Whatever was blocking the screen was moved. Meshell stifled a scream as a ghostly pale face was revealed. Meshell blinked and realized the face belong to Jasmine.

“Jazz? Is that you?” Meshell’s voice was a horrified whisper. Her friends long black hair was all tangled. Her gray eyes were slightly crazed and her clothes looked stiff and wrinkled.

“Yes.” Jazz’s voice was unusually high. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”

“Jazz, what happened to you? I haven’t seen you in almost two weeks.”

A hysterical giggle. “I’m done. Done, done, done!”

Meshell moved closer to the pale face. “With your paper?”

“All done!” hysterical giggle. “Eighty percent of my final grade. Eighty percent! Then I get my doctorate!”

Meshell crept closer. She was almost halfway to her friend. “When was the last time you ate something?”

“My psychology doctorate! Do you know how long I’ve worked for this?” Jazz jumped up and started to walk in a tight circle. “Eighty percent! If I don’t get Eighty-three point four seven percent on this paper I don’t get my doctorate.”

“Jazz, you need to stop pacing, or you’ll get dizzy. Did you send your paper in?”

“Sent it in. Don’t know how long. Need to know.” The pacing got faster until Jazz crumpled down on herself.

Meshell moved to sand next to Jazz. “Jasmine, you need to go take a shower, change your clothes, then you need to eat something.”

“’on’t ‘na,” come Jazz’s muffled voice.

“Too bad. Come on, ups-a-daisy,” Meshell hulled her friend onto her feet. She half dragged half carried Jazz into the small bathroom. Meshell sat Jazz down on the toilet, then turned on the shower. She made sure the water was the right temperature, then Meshell helped Jazz topple into the shower-tub, clothes and all.

“There. I’ll toss in some clothes that look clean. When you’re done come into the kitchen and I might have something eatable for you.”

Jazz felt like a creature akin to human under the hot spray of water

When Meshell had tossed her in the tub with the water running it had taken Jazz a few minutes to process what had happened. The wetness had finally penetrated her slightly melted brain and she had struggled out of her clothes, tossing them out of the shower. Then Jazz had set to the task of cleaning herself.

She realized she hadn’t showered or changed her clothes in almost six days. She didn’t remember that last time she ate, or even what she ate. The feeling of becoming clean did wonders for her mental health. She dried off and put on her clean clothes.

Looking in the bathroom mirror Jazz winced. She looked like death warmed over. She applied some light make-up. Then she set about untangling her hair, semidrying it and braiding it.

Too lazy to care about her wet dirty clothes becoming clean Jazz threw them over the shower rod so they could drip dry.

Jazz stepped out of the bathroom and turned her bedroom light on. A surprised “Oh” left her lips as she surveyed the damage of her room.

The mattress was across the room from the bed frame. Blankets were everywhere. Jazz swore she had never seen half of them. All her knick-knacks were in a pile in a corner. Her closet was open and all her cloths were gone. There were none in the room and Jazz wondered where Meshell had found the ones she was wearing.

She walked to the door and winced when she saw her living room. Jazz went into the kitchen. This room was slightly clean, as Meshell had started to work her magic.

The water and cans had been cleaned up. The floor had been wiped, but was still slightly sticky. Meshell was frying two hamburgers on the stove.

“Thanks. I think I snapped a bit,” Jazz said. She walked over to the counter and hopped up.

“No biggie. I remember when I was finishing my paper for my doctorate. I threatened to drown myself in the pool and take anyone who tried to stop me with me. Nearly did too, although I don’t think many people were worried, as I was trying to do it in the hot tub.” Meshell laughed and flipped the two burgers.

“You can still drown in a hot tub.”

“I know, but they could get me out easily enough.”

“Point.”

Meshell put the burger on a plate. “Besides, everyone gets a bit crazy around this time. My first year here there was a woman who shaved her boyfriend’s hair after tying him to a chair because it was his idea that she go here.”

The two eat in silence for moment.

“So, when you get your doctorate, what are you going to do?”

Jazz swallowed her mouthful. “A Psyche doctorate from Princeton is a big deal, and I also have a masters in anthropology as well. My cousin pulled some strings so I’ll be a consult at the Smithsonian. I’m also toying with the idea of opening my own practice for kids.”

“All good idea,” Meshell allowed. “Do you have the money to open a practice right now?”

“No,” Jazz allowed, “but as consult with the Smithsonian I should be able to get a job somewhere, then start small.”

Meshell smiled. “So what was you paper about anyways?”

“How writing research papers under extreme conditions can have psychological repercussions.”

. . .

AN: This was inspired by an episode of Boy Meets World and my own personal experiences. So, I don’t have a doctorates, but I do have two bachelors. All the information about getting a doctorate is total made up.

#college #student #college is stressful #final paper #college story #university story #final papers are the devil #finals as tests are the worst and I hate them

9 notes · View notes

sirthisisa-wendys · 3 years

Text

Lemonade (Part 2): Toji Fushiguro x Fem!Reader

synopsis: The part where Toji makes it clear who's his and what he's been doing. For five. Long. Years. (This is also the finale.)

wc: 1.8k

tw: none

masterlist

You're incredibly sore.

Your thighs chafe painfully as you walk into the ballroom, eyes slowly roving toward you in your emerald sequin dress. But you hide your discomfort well, taking a glass of champagne and floating through the masses with a disinterested smile.

Just three hours of this and you'll be done.

You see the eyes of your lover from across the room, and your stomach clenches, remembering the way they looked at you just hours before.

I have to get my bed frame fixed. You think, but the feeling of your thighs rubbing together is more pressing than that. Toji rolls his bottom lips between his teeth and you falter a little. This man will literally be the death of you, you note, placing the glass down on the nearest tray beside you.

"Ms. L/N," the new head of inter-clan relations appears, holding her delicate hand out for you to shake. "It's a pleasure to see you again."

"Are we going to receive the clan heads in the Grand Hall, or--"

"No, we'll be in the conference room this evening." Odd. But you nod, letting her disappear into the crowd once more as you weave around unimportant people on your way to the conference room. You feel a presence behind you, and quirk your lips as you climb the stairs, praying Fushiguro wouldn't corner you and blow your back out for the third time today.

"Walking a little stiff, aren't we?" The sound of Satoru behind you makes you turn, eyes alight.

"Gojo," you smile, taking stock of the white-haired, blue-eyed man who grins at you lazily. "You're looking incredibly..." You frown. "Drunk."

"Suguru and I hate these things. I got drunk before I got here. But it looks like you got your cheeks clapped before you arrived."

"Satoru," you warn, flushing a little.

"Oh, you really got your back blown out, didn't you?" Gojo wonders, dragging a finger across your exposed chest. "Your chest gets especially red when you're embarrassed."

"Watch your mouth, Gojo," you hear behind you, and Toji appears out of nowhere, touching your hip briefly before he stands in front of you. Gojo's eyes light up and a smile cracks his face in two again, elbows resting against the railing of the balcony as he huffs a breath in disbelief. Suguru chooses this moment to appear, his black eyes taking stock of the situation he's walked into with interest.

"You owe me a thousand," Suguru finally mutters, and Satoru laughs.

"Put it on my tab. Never in a million years would I have thought you would've gotten the nerve up, Fushiguro." Toji doesn't answer. Instead, he looks at you over his shoulder and murmurs,

"You good?" You nod, but you begin to feel fatigued as if this whole interaction is taking too much out of you. As the other clan heads begin to climb the stairs to the conference room, you walk behind Toji, his stern expression unrelenting. But you've seen the other side of it. Nothing about Toji scares you anymore.

Well... almost.

The fervor with which he plowed into you week after week was mind-blowing. For a whole month, Toji rendered you close to crippled as he made it very clear that he's ready for you to become a mother. But you laid there every single time and took it, because secretly? You want to get pregnant. Just imagining yourself carrying his child is enough to make you endure the discomfort of sore thighs and a stiff lower back.

You take your seat around the circular table, right next to Satoru and another older man of the Okkotsu clan. The head of inter-clan relations appears and dims the lights, presenting figures about each clan, and successes before issues that need to be solved. You listen with minimal interest, eyes flicking to Toji every so often and catching his gaze every time.

Food is brought out in the middle of her presentation, and normally, you would enjoy the smell of the grilled salmon and poached goose eggs. But your stomach lurches as the dinner is presented to you, and you push it away instantly, shaking your head.

"Not hungry," you assert, and the server takes the food away quietly.

"Not feeling well?" Satoru wonders, cutting into his salmon. "Maybe you're too full of Fushig-- ow!" You press your shoe onto his toes, trying your best to silence him in the presence of others. Once the presentation is over and the lights come back up, you look around the table and see Toji standing up, dusting off his slacks.

"So, as all of you are aware," he begins, walking around carefully. "I've recently acquired a very nice piece of real estate on the east coast." Your eyes flick to Toji, frowning. What is he going on about? "I'm expanding my reach to the east for a little while, maybe even California, if at all possible. But," he stops right behind your chair, placing his hands on your shoulders. "That also means I will need a sizable backing from the majority of you to ensure profits and imports go untouched. Any major player can earn up to fifty percent of their share back within the first year, and I'll personally invest a large portion of my capital to make this a successful venture." You relax, thanking the heavens that Toji didn't say what you thought he would--

"Oh, and one more thing," he mutters. "I know some of you think that Ms. L/n remains completely and utterly unoccupied. But I want to make it very clear that she and I are partners. Beyond the business sense." Your skin prickles at this, and you look over at the other heads, who look somewhat unamused. "None of your sons have any claim to her."

"Fushiguro," Suguru mutters. "You really think we didn't already know? You're looking for a fucking seven-bedroom residence in Cali." Geto laces his fingers together behind his head and leans back in his chair, utterly unbothered. "We all know the tell-tale sign of a man wanting to start a family. Congrats."

_____________________________________________________________

As you unlace your dress, you look at Toji, who is taking his shoes off slowly and sitting on the bed, obviously deep in thought.

"What can I help you with?" you wonder, coming up behind him and lacing your arms around his neck. "You're thinking a lot."

"Nothing," Toji whispers, rubbing your arm slowly. When he leans back a little, you hiss, feeling a sharp pain in your tender breasts. "Did I hurt you?" he wonders, turning around to look at your expression.

"No," you mumble, rubbing your chest carefully. "My boobs have been really sore lately."

"Is it your period?" Toji wonders, getting up and undoing his dress shirt. "Should I get the heating pad in case--"

"No. I haven't had it in a while," you admit. "I'm just super stressed out. Haven't really had a moment of rest with all the business I've been--"

"But you're always on time," Toji bites his lip, opening his phone and looking at his calendar. "Yeah, the second or third week of the month, like clockwork."

"I'm just stressed," you urge him, but Toji goes toward the bathroom, grabbing something out of the cabinet before coming back.

"Here," he tosses a cardboard box at you, and you pick it up, looking at the words carefully.

"A pregnancy test?"

"Just do it," he mutters, sitting on the edge of the bed again. "You've had a lot of symptoms lately so we just have to be sure." You begrudgingly walk to the bathroom, murmuring,

"You really want to have a family, huh?" You sit on the toilet and pee on the stick, absolutely bored to death, but also unconvinced that you could be pregnant.

Until you remember just how much sex you'd been having with Toji for the past month.

Unprotected sex.

You lay the test face-down on the counter and shakily stand then wash your hands. But it seems like you're stuck in the middle of it - hands just sitting under the water - when Toji peeks his head inside.

"What's going on? Anything?"

"I--" You look over at Toji slowly. "I'm scared to look at it." As expected, Toji opens the door and presses his hands to your bare waist before littering kisses along your shoulders.

"What are you afraid of?"

"I want to be a good mom," you begin, looking down at your stomach. "I don't know if I'm going to be able to do that with everything going on."

"Hey, look at me," Toji whispers, turning your chin toward him. "You're going to be an amazing mother. I think you need to be more worried about me being a deadbeat dad."

"Toji!" you exclaim and he laughs, his signature scar splitting in two.

"Don't worry," he replies, kissing your lips once. "I'm not going anywhere." You nod, and he reaches over to grab the test, flipping it over in his hands.

"Oh, I can't look," you murmur, covering your face with your palms.

"Okay, but..." Toji grunts. "What the fuck does two lines mean? That we're having twins?"

_____________________________________________________________

"It's seven bedrooms, ten bathrooms, and two half-baths." You're walking behind the real-estate agent as you examine the home, rubbing your stomach absentmindedly. "Fully furnished."

"Can you tell me about the neighborhood?" you wonder, and Toji looks over at the realtor, who nervously looks between you.

"Um... It's in Brentwood Park..." she murmurs.

"People mind their business here?" Toji wonders, hand caressing your belly for a moment. "Good schools?"

"Of course, sir."

"Good. We'll take it."

_____________________________________________________________

"Hey!" Toji cries out, waving his spatula in the air. "Your mom said stop runnin' around the pool, so stop fuckin' runnin'!" The two young children slow their movements, the older daughter instead choosing to push her brother into the pool. "Tsumiki, apologize!"

"Sorry, Mangomi..."

You waddle out in the backyard, groaning as you carry a cell phone and your lemonade in one hand and a laptop in the other. When Toji sees you, he huffs a breath and sets the spatula down next to the grill.

"Baby, you gotta be careful," he grumbles, taking the open laptop as you sit in the lounge chair in your bikini and coverup. "Don't want you hurting yourself."

"I'm fine, Toji," you mutter, leaning over to remove your sandals. Well, it's not as much of a lean as it's bringing your leg up far enough so your sandal can slip off. The twins between you and the sandal won't let you bend at all. "They're finally resting and I want to sunbathe for a bit."

"With the laptop?" You point at the banking website, and Toji squints at the screen, eyes widening at the numbers on the screen. "This... this is how much we--"

"Your little plan worked. Turns out marrying me was more profitable than you first imagined," you answer, scrolling on your phone and taking a sip of lemonade.

"Holy shit," he breathes, smoothing his hair back. "Need to make sure I keep you incredibly happy, huh?"

"That shouldn't be too hard," you smile and Toji presses his lips to yours, holding you close.

#toji fushiguro x reader #jjk toji #toji x reader #jujutsu kaisen toji #jujutsu kaisen #jjk

123 notes · View notes

beyoncesdragon · 3 years

Text

𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮

fluff², Haechan x Reader,

Hyuck comes home to you and only granola bars. Or something of that sort

My praise kink jumped there once, woopsie

warnings: reader forgets to eat (unintentionally!!) some suggestive jokes and minor swearing.

hope u enjoy!

“Well hello to you too baby.” Haechan hummed, squatting down next to your collapsed frame on the couch.

Your laptop was still open, a half-finished draft of an assignment - an overview of Uruguay’s Economy and Trade Policy you had to hand in in about thirty hours - an empty water bottle right next to the hot device.

Haechan carefully pressed a feathery kiss to your forehead, causing you to open your eyes and blink tiredly against the light.

“Hyuck?” He just hummed, watching you push your upper body up just to collapse against him. With a soft laugh he wrapped his arms around you, preventing the both of you from falling back.

“How was your day?” The question was mumbled against the skin of his neck but Haechan didn’t mind it. He just hoisted you and himself up on the couch, letting you climb into his lap fully without you having to give up your spot in his neck.

“Stuffed. Lots of choreography slash repetition for the recordings later. And we did a VLIVE...” you nodded tiredly. That VLIVE you had witnessed, forty-five minutes of you staring at the screen with a dopey smile.

“I watched.” Haechan snorted surprised. “You did? Oh wow.” You lifted your head off his shoulders to look at him properly.

“Why so surprised, I always watch your guys’ livestreams. Besides it’s lots of fun.” He said nothing, just smiled. “You looked comfy.”

“Oh you think so? Missed having you there.” You just smirked agains his neck.

“Ah you had Jeno, no?” His response was to pinch your hips softly, causing you to squeak against his skin.

“I’m joking, I’m JOKING!”

Haechan clicked with his tongue, resting his hand on your hips again. “Have you eaten anything already?”

The silence that followed afterwards was answer enough. Haechan sighed deeply before making an attempt to get up.

“Noo stay here I’m good.” Haechan just shook his head.

“You have anything home? I can order...” before he could continue you pressed you lips against his.

“I’m not that hungry Hyuckie. Relax. I was working on my deadlines and other things for work I just didn’t feel like breaking my flow...” Haechan scoffed angrily.

“You need to eat. Don’t forget about your body amongst all the work, don’t forget about yourself! Baby!” You whined at his scolding, quickly pressing a trail of kisses against his jaw.

“I’m not doing it intentionally Hyuck. I’m just busy. But look I drank lots of water today!” You pointed at the - almost - empty bottle next to your improvised working station, doe-eyeing Haechan expectantly.

“Well...good. At least. Now let me find you some food, even if it’s just a granola bar or something...” Haechan mumbled after pressing a rewarding kiss to your lips.

“No objections! Let me take care of you now.”

You nodded, carefully slipping off his lap, not missing out on the chance to smack his butt when he got up.

Haechan just narrowed his eyes back at you, pointing two v-sign fingers first at his and then at your eyes.

“I’m watching you!” You just giggled.

“You know I was joking with the granola bars before. Now please tell me how thats actually the only edible thing in your flat is, babe. Are you good?”

“Listen up buddy, just because you make millions by making girls scream doesn’t mean I do that too. You know taxes and life expenses and bills and...” Haechan rolled his eyes.

“First of all, that’s not my job description. Second...”

“could however be in it. I’m not saying you don’t deserve it by the way. Get that bag, big boy.”

You were silenced with a granola bar before you boyfriend continued.

“Second, I know. But how can someone live without ramen?! And third, you know I pay for you okay? You would tell me if you needed anything, right?” You just hummed, drawing up your knees to your chest.

“I know Hyuckie, but I’m okay. I just have to remind myself to go grocery shopping once in a while and that takes so much effort...” Haechan flopped down beside you, leaning against your shoulders with a pout.

“I come and help you okay? I’ll get you a good snack bar or something, those five granola bars are a sad sight.

You just huffed, bringing one hand up to his hair to softly run your fingers through messy curls.

“Mhm.”

“Come to bed?” Haechan asked, right before took the empty wrapper of the granola bar from you hands and tossed it in the trash like the attentive boyfriend he could be. At times. Most of the times. When he wasn’t a cocky little shit-times.

Your yawn was again all he needed to hear before pulling you up and nudging you towards the bathroom where he insisted on taking care of your skin before hoping in the shower himself.

“Don’t peak yeah?” You just laughed.

“Nothing I haven’t seen before.” Haechan’s head appeared from between your shower curtains, nose scrunched up and lips curled into a smug smirk.

“Nothing you haven’t screamed about you mean. Since that’s apparently part of my job-description...” You flipped him off with a huff before exiting the bathroom.

“I knew it would get to your head.” You could hear Haechan laugh through the walls and couldn’t help but smile to yourself.

“Thanks for coming tonight.” You mumbled before you snuggled closer into his embrace. He smelled good, like himself and bit like your body wash even tho he always denied using it.

“All day, your highness granola, I hope you are satisfied with my service.”

You nuzzled you face closer into his chest. “Very much so Sir. Five stars on your Google review for sure.” Haechan’s chuckle vibrated through his whole chest. “Glad to hear that. That would be about seven grand in cash. Gotta get that bag, you know.” This time it was your turn to pinch his sides, eliciting a squeal to come out of his mouth.

“You can fulfil your Callboy-fantasies elsewhere Lee Donghyuck, because as long as you have a key to my door and your shampoo on my rack this is considered a relationship.” Haechan tightened his arms around you with a small but happy sigh.

“Alright alright. I make a special offer then. I give you thirty percent off and a discount code...”

“Donghyuck I swear to god...”

“To keep that 37.5% viewer rating...”

“Oh shut up.”

“I love you too.”

✰- nct127 masterlist

#lee donghyuck #haechan x reader #haechan x you #haechan x y/n #nct haechan #haechan fanfiction #haechan fluff #nct x reader #nct127 x reader #nct dream donghyuck #nct dream x y/n #nct dream #fluff #my writing #kpop fanfic #fullsun #nct hyuck #hyuck x reader #hyuck scenarios

116 notes · View notes

thran-duils · 3 years

Text

Lost In Zero Gravity (P.8)

Title: Lost In Zero Gravity (Part Eight) Summary: Fem!Reader x Mob Boss!Tony Stark x Mob Boss!Steve Rogers. Reader is a call girl who runs high end parties. She catches the attention of Tony Stark who invites her back to his room with his friend. She might have performed too well because she becomes their new favorite play toy and they don’t like to share. Words: 2,685 Warnings (for the fic in entirety): Smut, prostitution, infidelity, angst, domestic violence, stalking, possessive behavior

Author’s Note: **MUCH ANGST**

Part Seven || Part Nine || Masterpost (mobile) || Fanfic masterpost

Instead of going to his office, Tony marched straight to Steve’s without so much as a fleeting greeting for anyone who he passed on the way. He barged in and closed the door loudly behind him.

Steve looked up from his laptop, pausing for a moment. He saw the look on Tony’s face, “Something wrong?”

Stopping in front of his desk, Tony glowered down at him. “I don’t know. You tell me after I tell you about the interesting question Y/N had for me today.”

“What was that?” Steve asked, looking back at his laptop, clicking away on the keyboard. He seemed to relax when he heard it was about Y/N.

“She asked who Cecile was,” Tony stated. Steve stopped then, his fingers hovering over the keys, suddenly interested again. Tony gave a wry chuckle. “Oh, that got your attention, did it? You suddenly give a shit now, don’t you?”

Steve’s hands left his keyboard, his face screwed up in confusion. “How did she—”

“You slipped up,” Tony pointed at him accusingly, running his tongue over his bottom lip. He came to sit in the chair across from Steve’s desk, sitting back, staring at him. “You called her Cecile in bed.” Steve looked like he had been slapped. “Do you have no recollection of this?”

“No,” Steve admitted reluctantly.

“Hmm… well, it apparently happened.”

“Did you—”

“No. No, I didn’t tell her,” Tony interrupted forcibly. “I left her at the apartment. She’s busy with the cat.” Tony exhaled sharply, running his hand over his face, distressed. “Did… did I not tell you to keep your marriage shit out of it? Didn’t I?” Steve threw his hands out and started to defend himself and Tony pressed on, “I did! I distinctly remember it! I know things are not great right now with her but if you can’t keep a lid on it, what are we even doing messing around? And yeah, I say we because I’m tied in with this if you haven’t noticed!”

Steve clicked his jaw, pushing back from his desk, hands planted on the arms of his chair, silent.

As the silence stretched on, Tony relented in his anger slightly. His voice was less harsh, “I mean, come on, man. That’s a rookie mistake.”

“We’re trying to work on it,” Steve finally said. His voice was sad when he said, “I haven’t told you she’s pregnant.” That piqued Tony’s interest. “Yeah. A couple months along.” He gave a humorless laugh and said, “But you know the bitch of it is I don’t know if it’s mine. Or… if it’s that… little fuck.”

“I’m not sure what she sees in him,” Tony offered up, trying to be comforting.

“She’s always had a thing for younger guys. Plus, he doesn’t come with all the strings of marriage,” Steve said sourly.

“What are you going to do?”

“What can I do other than let it play out and then get a DNA test?”

“And… if it’s not yours?”

Steve sighed loudly, throwing his hands out again. He looked defeated. “I don’t know, Tony. I… I don’t want to divorce her. There’s still something to salvage, I know it. And I’m not gonna kick her ass to the curb.”

“I didn’t expect you to.”

“I just… I’m trying to take it day by day. I’m sorry I fucked up with Y/N. I really don’t even remember it. I was high as hell the last time we had sex. It must have just… slipped out,” Steve said. He chewed on his bottom lip, staring off into nothing, Tony silent as well. When Steve looked back at him he said, “I’ll do better.”

Tony apologized immediately, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to just come in here and ream you. I mean, I did. But I should have asked first.”

“I haven’t been exactly forthcoming about it.”

“No, no you haven’t. You could do better at that too.”

Steve nodded in agreement and asked seriously, his hand running over his beard, “Y/N was really bothered by it?”

“I don’t think so. She brushed it off when she saw my reaction to the question. I think she was just curious more than anything. It was an innocent question I think.”

“Well, it won’t happen again,” Steve said firmly. “I’ll make sure of it.”

<><><>

Something was tugging on the other end of the lights that you were trying to hang up. You already knew who it was, and you turned, scolding immediately, “Luna!”

Luna was batting at the end of the orange Halloween lights and when you said her name, she immediately stopped, booking it away towards the couch. She got up on it and sat down, her tail swishing.

“Don’t glare at me! You’re the one being naughty! You have so many damn toys and you are trying to sabotage me!”

She laid down then, turning away from you. Rolling your eyes, you resumed decorating. You loved that cat but you also wanted to strangle her sometimes.

In the middle of hanging up little bats, you heard the key in the lock. You stilled, seeing Steve walk into the apartment. He was carrying a small bag and his eyes ran over the living room seeing all the decorations you had hung up. A small smirk appeared on his face as he closed the door behind him, locking it.

“What?” you asked.

“Looks like you’re going all out. Halloween isn’t until next month.”

“It’s September 30th,” you pointed out. “Who decorates for a holiday days beforehand?”

“Touche, ma’am,” Steve joked coming over towards you. He stopped to reach out and scratch Luna behind the ears.

“Can you put some up higher?” you asked him, gesturing to continue the swarm of bats you had put on the wall.

Steve placed the bag down and came over to you, taking the rest of the small stack of them. You rolled the tape handing each piece to him and he worked in tandem to place them on the wall, continuing your pattern.

“I’ve almost finished my 31 days of Halloween list too,” you told him.

He cocked an eyebrow and asked, “And what exactly is that?”

“You must never have fun,” you jested, handing him another piece of rolled tape. “It’s a list of horror or Halloween related movies for every day in October. I’ll send you guys the list so you can plan visits around it because I will not be missing a day. And if you don’t like a movie, well, then just don’t come on that day.”

“Wowww,” Steve drew out, chuckling.

Shrugging, you told him, “I’m serious. One hundred percent.”

He still laughed as he finished putting up the last couple bats. “Noted, dear.”

Stepping back, you nodded in approval at the wall. “It looks good. That was the last part! I can’t wait to see all the lights I hung up at nighttime! It’ll set a really nice ambience.”

“I can see that,” Steve responded, looking around at all the strings of lights. He looked amused by the sight of it. His eyes met yours again and he said, “Way to be festive.”

“Always. Just wait until Christmas.”

That drew a laugh out of him and then he said, “I did come here for a reason though.”

Moving past you, Steve went for the bag and picked it up, holding it out to you.

“What’s this?” you asked him, taking it from him cautiously.

“A gift,” Steve told you.

“Christmas isn’t for months.”

Steve chuckled, “Consider it an early one.”

You opened it, taking out a small box. Upon opening the box, you found a key and realized immediately what it was. It was the key to the apartment. Only took them a month and a half.

“Trust me enough now, I suspect,” you commented, looking up at him.

Steve nodded, “That was the stipulation wasn’t it?”

“Sure was…” you said, trailing off. You walked past him with the box and went to the door to grab your keyring that was hanging there. You slipped the key onto it and replaced it. Turning back, you said, “Glad I was impressive enough to earn it.”

Steve came up to you, a tickled look on his face at your wisecrack. He leaned down, kissing you on the forehead.

“Good job.”

“Thanks,” you returned. “Tony too busy to be here for the ceremony?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Well, you get some brownie points. Speaking of brownies, I did make some. Want one?”

You moved out from around Steve, not waiting for him to answer. You smiled to yourself, your back to him feeling the weight of being locked in one place taken from you now that you had a key. You could not wait to be able to go out without an escort. Freedom was at your fingertips.

<><><>

Tony was gripping your waist and hip tightly as you rode him on your bed. They had come over late in the night and it was early, 4:30am. Steve had gotten out of bed to get showered and clean himself up. Tony had elected to stay in bed and have another go at it, which you were not complaining about. They had not come over for a week having been away on a trip and you had missed them.

You barely heard the door open, thinking it was Steve coming back from the shower. But, you noticed Tony freeze, his eyes drawn to the door, widening alarmingly. His hands tightened dangerously, and you stared down at him confused, stalling.

“No, do—” Tony started to say loudly.

You barely turned your head before someone grabbed your hair, dragging you off of him across the bed. You tumbled to the ground, looking up terrified seeing a dark-haired woman looking wild, her eyes filled with hatred.

“Alessia!” you heard Tony shout from near the bed as the woman dove at you.

Your vision was obstructed by a fist hitting your face. You cried out in pain, trying to curl up into yourself.

“Bitch!” you heard her yell.

Another hit landed but with less force, and you heard her being drug away, her shouting incomprehensively. Nervously, you uncovered your face, shaking like a leaf.

Eyesight clearing, you saw Tony dragging her away.

“Alessia!” He shouted again as she fought ferociously against his iron grip around her arms, his hands locked together against her chest.

“You fucking absolute bastard!” she shrieked, trying to get away from his grasp. “Is this where you were last Monday night? You missed your daughter’s preschool Thanksgiving play to fuck a whore? And one of the first things you do when you get back from a week long trip is come here? Let me go! Let me GO, Tony! Get your fucking hands off of me!”

She tore away from his grip when he loosened up and shoved him into the doorway, before slapping him with all the force she could muster across the face. Tony ate the hit, turning back with his jaw clenched but he did little to respond beyond glaring daggers at her.

Steve was there outside in the hall looking stricken, his hair wet from his shower but dressed. Aleissa let out a disgusted laugh seeing him.

“You too?” she spat at him. She pointed dangerously at him and said, “You both can fucking rot for all I care! Cecelia will fucking know about this, you piece of shit!”

Alessia’s rage was directed towards Tony again as she spat, “I can put up with the running around on me because god knows I’m not a saint. But you cannot start neglecting your family! I won’t fucking put up with it!”

She took off down the hall and Tony swore loudly, turning back to the room going towards the ground for his pants. His eyes ran around the room, discombobulated. His eyes landed on you and his mouth fell open, like he wanted to say something, but he could not form the words.

“Go! I got it!” Steve exclaimed at Tony quickly, gesturing him out the door.

Tony only hesitated for a moment before throwing his pants on and taking off out of the room after her.

Steve came to you quickly, his fingers brushing your cheek. You winced and he retracted his hand. “Fuck,” he hissed.

“What the hell?” you demanded, tears spilling over. The shock was wearing off, you feeling the pain in your jaw and cheek now.

Steve sighed heavily, telling you in explanation, “The wife.”

Terrence was in the doorway then and Steve grabbed the throw blanket from the end of the bed, tossing it around you to cover you.

“What the fuck?” Steve shouted at Terrence, over his shoulder as he tucked the blanket around you. “Why did you let her in here?”

“She had a goddamn gun pointed at me, boss! I didn’t want to cause a scene!”

“You don’t think this a scene?” Steve exclaimed, gesturing wildly at you.

“I meant in the hall. And I also didn’t wanna get shot! She’s psychotic!”

“Get the fuck out,” Steve snapped at him. “Go get Tony. Alessia is probably causing another scene down in the lobby and I don’t trust Tony and Daryl to be able to handle it by themselves! Especially with Tony half fucking dressed.”

Terrence did as he was ordered.

“Come on. Come up here,” Steve encouraged you, helping you stand and sitting you on the edge of the bed. He was trying to be calm, but you could pick up on the edge in his voice. “Sit tight.”

He left the room too. You sat on the bed, grasping the blanket tightly around you. Your breath was shuddering, trying to process what had just happened. Steve came back with a towel. Sitting on the bed next to you, he raised it and pressed it to your jaw softly. You realized he had put some ice cubes in the towel tied off with a rubber band to make a makeshift ice pack.

You should not need an ice pack because you got punched in the face, you thought, your shock of the situation melting away to anger.

You jerked away from him and he gave you a confused look. Tears came again then and you took the ice pack from him.

“Y/N, I’m sorry,” Steve said sincerely. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“You know where this wouldn’t have happened? Back home!” you spat at him, meeting his eyes. His expression hardened and you frankly did not care. “But no, you two forced me to come to this stupid apartment! I would’ve been safe back at the brothel!”

“Now, Y/N—” Steve started to say, sounding very much like he was going to try to talk you down, but you cut him off.

“No! You know I’m right!”

“Y/N—”

“Just get out!” you shouted at him, losing your temper. Steve was staring at you in disbelief, and he was not moving. You repeated with more force, standing up in a fury, holding the blanket tightly around you. “Leave me be! Get out!” You tossed the icepack onto your bedside table. You dove for Tony’s clothes, wallet, and his cell phone, storming towards the door and tossing them out into the hallway. You could not lock them completely out of the apartment since they had keys but goddamnit you were going to have your space in your bedroom.

You whipped back around to find Steve still sitting on the bed, stunned. You were openly crying now, and you hysterically told him, pointing out the door, “Are you fucking deaf, Steve? Get the hell out! I don’t want to fucking see either of you!”

He stood then finally, controlled, masking the shock he had displayed moments before. He walked towards you and the door, his eyes boring into you. You met him with the same ferocious gaze he was giving you as he passed, his eye contact not breaking with yours. As soon as he was clear of the door, you moved, and slammed it close behind him.

The lock fell into place.

~~~

Forever tags: @coconutqueen21 @undecidedsworld

Fic tags: @icant-hangout-imdrumming @oceaniamaddness @multifandom-superlover @imsonick @holl2712 @here4thefanfics

#tony stark x reader #steve rogers x reader #dark tony stark #dark steve rogers #dark marvel #mob tony stark #mob steve rogers #dark marvel fic #my shit

116 notes · View notes