#i will persist past the heat death of the universe

[gaia-is-here-now]

I'm going to go fucking feral rn [positive] I love 275k word ongoing fic updated in the past week,,, I love you 25k word chapter......

I think I'm gonna start reading it from the beginning tomorrow so I can experience it will full context of everything and experience it in a new and wonderful way

[zarameraki]

♡₊˚🎀・₊✧ 𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗼𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗯𝗶𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗱𝗮𝘆 . . . 𝗼𝗿 𝗱𝗶𝗱 𝗵𝗲? ♡₊˚🎀・₊✧

: ̗̀➛ read part one first

: ̗̀➛ tropes: fem! reader 𖥔 nanami forgot your birthday but he's got something special planned 𖥔 ceo x baker 𖥔 grumpy x sunshine 𖥔 she talks a lot x he listens a lot 𖥔 cold shoulder treatment 𖥔 mention of parental death 𖥔 major fluff 𖥔 sfw 𖥔 alternate universe 𖥔 super soft nanami 𖥔 close proximity

: ̗̀➛ words: 4.1 k

: ̗̀➛ notes: we're back again with fluffy nanami. honestly i shed a tear writing this one because it's just so adjfskdf. if you haven't read part one, go DO IT. RIGHT NOW. if you enjoy my work, please leave a comment, like, and reblog! thank you & ily. enjoy!

It's been a year since you took that leap, moving in with Nanami. Every day spent in each other's company feels like a fresh chapter, and the magic of your relationship persists as if it were the very first night.

Nanami, with his gentle smile and warm eyes, never tires of recounting the story from his perspective. Each time you ask, he patiently agrees to retell it, even though you've long since memorized every detail. The familiarity of his narrative only adds to the charm, as if reliving those moments helps both of you cherish the journey that brought you together.

“You invited a couple of my colleagues to your bakery's opening, and they brought back leftover cookies and pastries to the office. I grabbed some, and with the first bite, I knew your bakery was going to be my favorite. So, I asked Gojo to drive me to your city, not knowing it was going to rain that night. With no parking nearby, I ended up walking. Halfway through, it started pouring. Luckily, I made it just in time, and there you were, smiling like the sun that was supposed to be in the sky. You offered me free food and shelter, and right then, darling, I fell in love with you. It was the most incredible feeling in the world.”

Each time he finishes his heartwarming story, you can't help but be overwhelmed with emotion. Without hesitation, you jump on him with a flurry of kisses, showering him with all the love you harbor for your sweet, stoic boyfriend.

You've shared every conscious moment together since then. With Nanami now working remotely, he'd set up at one of the dining tables in your bakery, delving into meetings and paperwork. You'd plant kisses on his cheek or embrace him from behind, providing a boost of energy. Delivering his special casse-croûte and milk coffee, you occasionally found yourself feeding him as his busy hands typed away. Breaks led to stolen moments in the back room, where you'd make out like teenagers.

Once at home, you'd strip out of your clothes, shower or bathe together, and engage in domestic activities like watching television or attempting to nap, but those often evolved into extended sessions of sex.

Today, silence lingered between you two following a heated argument the previous night.

Unbeknownst to Nanami, your birthday was just around the corner, yet he had scheduled a business trip on that very day. Despite the depth of his knowledge about your past, from childhood playground scars to the dresses you wore for school dances, he seemed oblivious to the significance of the impending date.

In a seemingly nonchalant manner, Nanami had mentioned, “Darling, I'll be away on a business trip from the sixth and will return on the eighth. We can plan a picnic or head to the beach—whatever you prefer.”

“The sixth?” You had to set your utensils down, turning to face him. Your meals were typically enjoyed on the carpet, with plates on the coffee table and your favorite movies playing on the television. “You have a business trip? On the sixth?”

“Yes, that's correct.”

“Kento, what the hell? Why?”

He arched an eyebrow. “It's my job, darling. That's why. It's been on my agenda for a month. Missing it would mean losing out on a lucrative deal."

“But—” You caught yourself mid-sentence.

At that moment, you wished you could shout that it was your first-ever birthday celebration since your parents’ passing.

His birthday had been just two days prior, and you had gone all out—decorating the apartment, baking a cake, preparing a feast of his favorite dishes, buying him new cufflinks, and giving him the blowjob of the century as the cherry on top. It had become one of your cherished days together, an occasion you had been planning for weeks.

“But?” Nanami prodded.

You clenched your jaw. “But it's... you know. It's.”

“What's going on?” he asked, genuinely befuddled. “Did I miss something?”

Your lips quivered, and in an attempt to silence them, you stuffed a dumpling into your mouth, shaking your head. “Never mind.”

“Please, talk to me.”

Ignoring his plea, you continued shaking your head as he gently pulled at your shoulder to make you face him. Tears welled up in your eyes, streaming down your flushed cheeks. Even swallowing the dumpling felt like a struggle amid the surge of complaints in your throat.

“Darling—”

“Just forget it, Nanami.” You wiped your cheeks, your open hair concealing one side of your face. “You already have,” you whispered to yourself.

“Fine,” Nanami replied, casually returning to his food. It wouldn't have been a big deal if you had just mentioned your birthday, but it stung. He should know. After all, he's Nanami—meticulous with schedules, mindful of important dates, and impeccable with time management. Why doesn't he know?

“Are you joking?” you exclaimed, grabbing the remote from his grasp and turning off the movie. “That's all you have to say? ‘Fine’?”

“You told me to forget about it.”

“Yeah, I did. But that doesn't mean you actually forget.”

“I don't get it.”

“Of course you don't.”

He sighed, and you berated yourself for being so obstinate. You resented that sigh, as it made you feel like a nuisance. Yet, it was a warranted sigh, so you let it slide. “Are you upset?”

“What?”

“You are. I can't believe you're upset.” Running your fingers through your hair, you picked up your plate. “I'm going to bed before I say something stupid. Goodnight. Enjoy your trip.”

“Y/N—”

“Goodnight.”

“My love, what’s bothering you?” he asked from the living room while you dumped your dish in the sink. “Would you please just talk to me? Have I said something to offend you?” 

You walked off toward your bedroom, into your bathroom, and locked the door. Turning on the shower, you sat down on the floor, holding your knees and crying in the gap between. 

You've been ignoring Nanami ever since you woke up nestled against his chest—your body was naturally attuned to his. But since then, you've been withdrawn and moody, casting a shadow over your usual sunny demeanor. Even some of your regular customers have noticed and asked if you were unwell, but you brushed it off with a forced smile and a minor headache excuse. As you were wiping down tables, Nanami entered during lunchtime. You glanced at him from the corner of your eye, then retreated behind the counter, placing his coffee cup and sandwich a bit too forcefully.

“Thank you, darling,” he said, accepting it. “Would you like to join—” 

“That'll be ten-fifty,” you interrupted, fingers already inputting the amount without meeting his gaze. You’ve never once charged him since you started dating; everything he desired was on the house because he was your favorite regular and person. You loved him so much that you even experimented in baking his beloved pastries and added them to the menu. Yet, he forgot your birthday.

Nanami retrieved the exact change from his wallet and extended it to you. Your hand snatched it, guilt gnawing at you instantly. Pretending to open the cash register, you discreetly slipped the money into your apron instead.

“Would you like to join me?” he asked once more.

You slammed the cash drawer shut and swiftly turned, heading to the inventory room to immerse yourself in organizing as a distraction.

As Nanami waited outside, thumbs dancing over his phone’s keyboard, you couldn't help but notice his sudden shift in demeanor when you approached. Your mind raced with suspicions of infidelity, but rationality reminded you of his busy schedule now that he wasn't in the office regularly. He was too devoted to you to entertain such thoughts.

Nanami reached out his hand, but you brushed past him, burying your hands in your cardigan. Determined to celebrate your birthday, albeit alone, you headed to the nearest supermarket for groceries. You planned to indulge in your favorite pasta dish, bake fudge brownies, and allow yourself to feel whatever emotions came, whether tears of joy or sadness. Today, you'd celebrate yourself. Happy birthday to you.

Nanami followed you into the supermarket, walking beside you as he added both your and his favorite snacks to the cart. You were determined to make him pay for it all, although you knew he would insist on covering the expenses regardless. Throughout the year you had been together, Nanami never once allowed you to spend your own money. Even during online shopping, he always managed to intercept, distracting you with neck kisses until you surrendered to using his card.

You couldn't help but pout and shoot him a sidelong glance as he meticulously examined the ingredients on a bag of chips. Your gaze then shifted to the cake mix and icing packets, giving you an idea. Bingo. 

If you weren't going to outright mention your upcoming birthday, you could at least drop a hint.

Clearing your throat, you grabbed a chocolate-vanilla mix with caramel icing and deposited it into the cart. Nanami observed the entire exchange, briefly meeting your gaze with a neutral expression before returning to scrutinizing the ingredients as though they were sacred text.

Damn him! 

“Excuse me, sir?” you called, drawing an innocent elderly employee into your scheme. “It's my friend's birthday tomorrow, and I'm torn between which cake mix to choose. Could you help me out?”

As Nanami switched to a different chip bag, your frustration simmered, but the employee weighed his options, eventually settling on chocolate-vanilla. Grateful, you thanked him and strode away, the cart trailing behind.

Nanami handled the grocery payment and bagging while you observed with arms crossed.

Back at home, you kicked off your shoes, discarded your cardigan on the floor, and trudged wearily to your bedroom. The sounds of the fridge and cabinets being stocked echoed as you sprawled out like a starfish.

“Is he pretending?” you mumbled to yourself. “He must be, right? He couldn't have forgotten my birthday. No way.”

Quickly, you took your phone, dialing Satoru, his assistant. The call forwarded instantly, but his response, received a minute later, left you irritated beyond measure.

Satoru: Sorry, Y/N. Can’t take your call. Packing for a business trip tomorrow. We’re going to Thailand. Will get you a souvenir! 

Feeling frustrated, you left him on read and flopped onto your stomach, letting out a scream into the pillow. 

Skipping dinner with Nanami, you stayed curled up in bed instead. Despite his attempts to comfort you, kissing your cheeks and tucking you in, you couldn't shake the ache in your heart as you heard him packing in the closet, trying to hide your tears. 

It was well past midnight when you finally stirred awake. 

Glancing over your shoulder, you found Nanami meters away from you. The realization hit you hard: he had genuinely forgotten your birthday. A mountain settled on your chest as you watched him sleep peacefully, unaware of his oversight. He didn't reach out to hold you close or pull you into his embrace; instead, he slept facing away from you.

You wiped away the tears from your tired eyes, then got up and took your pillows to the living room, hoping to find some sleep on the couch. Instead, you found yourself captivated by the sight of the sunrise.

Meanwhile, Nanami seemed unusually relaxed as he prepared for his business trip, taking his time with his morning routine. He took his time showering, shaving, and ironing his clothes—tasks that you usually handled. He adorned himself with the cuff links you gave him for his birthday and wore the cologne from your six-month anniversary. It stung a bit, realizing how diligent you were in remembering special dates while he seemed to forget them so easily.

But you shrugged it off. 

Today was your birthday, and you were determined to make it special, even if you had to celebrate alone. Your customers were already aware that you'd be closed for the day, giving you the entire day and night, plus tomorrow, to yourself. Previous birthdays had been spent in isolation since your parents passed away. This one was supposed to be different because you had Nanami, yet he seemed to overlook its significance.

As you washed your breakfast dishes, disappointment bubbled up inside you, causing you to grip the sponge tightly. Deciding to put off the chore, you washed your hands and turned your attention to baking a cake for yourself.

Nanami sauntered into the kitchen, nonchalantly lugging three hefty suitcases. Why the hell did he need three massive suitcases? Your boyfriend had become a complete mystery to you. You scowled as he tapped away on his phone, the urge to grab it and fling it off the balcony almost irresistible. What luxury could those three suitcases possibly hold? Perhaps new dresses, shoes, or jewelry for whoever was receiving his relentless texts. With his poker-face, it was impossible to tell if it was a woman on the other end.

“Kento.” 

Nanami's head jerked up. “Yes, dar—”

“It's my birthday today,” you finally admitted. Enough was enough. You needed him to know and feel miserable for forgetting it while he was on this supposed business trip. You knew it wasn't merely business. He always took you along on such trips. Business trip, my ass. It was clear he was having an affair. “It's my birthday today, Kento.”

His mouth opened to respond, but the ringing phone interrupted him. 

You scoffed at the timing of it all, abandoning the cake mixture in the pan. “Have a safe trip.” You walked past him, slamming the bedroom door shut, and collapsed under the covers, sobbing.

Something chimed persistently in the background, prodding at your temples like a sharp stick, urging you to wake up. 

You fumbled around on the mattress, locating your vibrating phone and swiping right, still half-asleep. 

“Hello?” you croaked out.

“Oh, thank God!” panted Gojo's voice. “There's an emergency with Nanami, Y/N!”

“What?” You shot up in bed, immediately springing into action.

“We were headed to the airport when he suddenly fell ill and started vomiting!” You listened intently as you hurriedly searched through your closet for your cardigan. “I brought him to your bakery since it was closer.” Nanami did have a spare key to your bakery for emergencies. “He's really not doing well, Y/N. Please come as quickly as you can.”

“I'm on my way, Satoru! Thanks for letting me know. I'll be there in a flash. Keep comforting him and try making him some green tea if possible. I can't find anything—Where did all my clothes go?” You shuffled his suits aside and rummaged through your drawers, finding only a few undergarments but nothing else. “Damn it. Alright, I'll be there soon.”

“Of course. See you soon!”

You pushed aside all distractions and focused solely on Nanami, hastily grabbing your bathrobe to cover your shorts and tank top. Rushing to the elevator, you repeatedly pressed the lobby button, feeling your body tremble with anxiety. Your chin quivered as you bit down on your bottom lip, overwhelmed by guilt. Nanami wasn’t prone to sickness as much as you were, but your cold shoulder must’ve given him a cold. The thought made you despise yourself even more, tears streaming down your face as you hurried along the sidewalk, navigating past cyclists and ignoring the curious stares of passersby.

You entered your bakery, the door pushing open with a jingle. “Kento! Ken—”

Your words halted.

The space was decorated with a multitude of lit candles, casting a warm glow over every surface - the counter, tables, chairs, and bare shelves. A three-tiered vanilla chocolate cake adorned with “Happy Birthday Y/N” in elegant script stood proudly on a table. A trail of fresh rose petals led to a solitary chair facing a makeshift projector screen fashioned from a white bed sheet. On the screen, a paused video titled “Life In Her Eyes” awaited.

With cautious steps, you approached the lone chair, scanning the bakery for any signs of activity but finding none. Nervously, you moistened your lips and reached for the small remote with a note reading “Play me,” before settling into the seat.

With a trembling hand, you pressed play on the three-minute video.

“This is my beautiful girlfriend, Y/N,”  Nanami's voice narrated in the video, overlaying a scene where you filmed your boyfriend tossing pebbles into the ocean. “She loves to record every single moment we spent together.” The scene shifted to you capturing Nanami's reaction to Alice Vision in Breaking Dawn Part Two. “She loves feeding me if I’m busy working.” A moment captured where you sat on his lap, sharing a pastry and planting a kiss on his cheek. “She loves sunrises and sunsets.” Your camera focused on Nanami's back against the colorful sky. “She insists I hold every stray cat because apparently, an attractive man with a pet drives her wild." Nanami's expression remained composed as he gently stroked the purring white Siamese. 

“It’s the truth,” you muttered, using your arm to wipe away the tears and mucus from your runny nose. 

“Y/N loves collecting miniature figurines, plush toys, and vintage trinkets.” In a solo vlog, you showcased your latest shopping haul for Nanami, who was in Shibuya for a board meeting. “All. The. Time.” Vlog after vlog, Nanami gathered them all and edited them into snappy clips. “She has a passion for photographing meals and desserts, whether we dine out, order takeout, or cook at home.” The footage captured you filming your dinner plates and soliciting Nanami's ratings as he munched, nodded, and gave you a thumbs up. When he requested the clips, you didn't think much of it. “I haven't met anyone who cherishes life's little joys quite like Y/N.”

The fast-paced snippets capture moments of you brushing dirt off flowers, generously offering cookies to teens studying in your bakery, crafting a necklace from seashells collected at the beach, attempting an ASMR mukbang with Nanami but ending up laughing too much, sharing your collection of hair ribbons, exploring the streets of Malaysia hand-in-hand on your first abroad trip, playfully filming him exercising and flipping the camera to fan yourself and bite your lip, sharing kisses while painting on the living room floor, and him peacefully asleep with his head resting on your chest—

Suddenly, the screen goes black, displaying the title “Life In My Eyes.”

Wiping away tears, you lean forward eagerly, curious about what other scenes he has in store.

Then, your own face fills the screen, bathed in the warm glow of the golden hour, with fluffy summer clouds behind you. Instantly, you recognize the setting: the cliff in Malaysia where you once spent hours talking. But in this clip, your eyes are closed, and you're facing ahead while Nanami captures your profile.

It switched to a different scene of you peacefully asleep against his chest, wrapped in one of his soft cashmere sweaters.

Then, it transitioned to you busy in the kitchen, a smudge of flour on your cheek and strands of hair escaping from your bun.

Next, it showed you tackling household chores, applying makeup, hurrying around declaring, “We're going to be late for the airport,” or shedding tears during the finale of “Happy Feet 2,” or enjoying a quiet moment reading and jotting notes on your balcony.

“Are you recording me?” Suddenly, a clip appeared of you playing with Sumo, a cat you had instantly fallen in love with at the pet adoption center.

“Yes,” Nanami confirmed.

“Pfft. That's my job,” you replied, returning to playing with Sumo. Nanami awkwardly turned the camera around, unable to find the right function to flip screens, and winked.

Then, it shifted to a dimly lit room illuminated solely by flickering candle lights. 

It was your bakery. 

You appeared on the screen, seated with your back to the camera. You waved an arm, only to realize it was a live feed.

What the . . . ?

Confused, you turned around to locate the camera, but instead found Nanami. On one knee. Holding a red-suede box containing a diamond ring. 

You almost tumbled off your chair in disbelief.

Nanami . . . Nanami was proposing to you.

Your boyfriend . . . soon to be your fiancé. 

And you couldn't breathe.

Panic threatened to overwhelm you. 

But first, you needed to slip that ring onto your finger and shower him with kisses.

Approaching him, you dropped to your knees, gently holding his face in your hands as you kissed him. Tears mingled with your synchronized lips, memories of his touching video playing in your mind. Life, in your eyes, was simply the joys of it. But in his eyes, life was you. You were his reason for living. And he was your heart, keeping you alive.

You pulled back, nodding silently as he slid the ring onto your finger. You noticed his initials on the inner rim, and a sob choked out of you, quickly sealing the moment with a kiss. His arm encircled your waist as he lifted you up, kissing you passionately. It felt like a soldier returning from battle, your body bending back as his smile widened against your lips. Soon, you would be Mrs. Nanami. Holy cow. 

“Happy birthday, darling,” Nanami murmured softly as you tried to catch your breath. He gestured with a finger and walked over to the back of the counter. “Close your eyes for me, my love.”

You shut them tightly, wiping away the tears, and sniffled, taking a deep breath.

“Hold out your hands,” Nanami whispered.

You complied.

Something small, soft, and incredibly fuzzy settled onto your palms. 

“Mew.”

Your eyes flew open, and there he was. Sumo. It was Sumo, the kitten who had both you and your boyfriend—fiancé—enchanted with his charm. You whined about adopting him once you left the shelter, but Nanami had been practical and kept the idea aside.

“Is he . . . Is he ours?” you asked, gazing into the feline’s sky-blue eyes.

“He's ours,” Nanami replied with a smile.

“He's—Oh my goodness, I'm going to start crying again.” And indeed, you did cry, holding Sumo tightly against your heart, gazing at the radiant diamond ring on your finger, and observing Nanami wipe away a tear from his eye's inner corner. “Kento, we're getting married!”

“I know, my love.” He planted kisses on your forehead, damp cheeks, and lips. “I can’t breathe,” he whispered, stealing another kiss. “You'll soon be my wife.”

“And you'll be my husband.”

“Such a privilege.”

You chuckled, giving him a quick kiss and wrapping your arm around his waist. Resting your head on his chest, you both admired Sumo staring wide-eyed at his parents. “I don't think I've cried this much since . . . ” You sealed the mention of your parents’ passing with a sigh. 

“I broke your heart with my plan,” he rasped out. “And I apologize sincerely for it. Satoru assured me it was foolproof, and regrettably, I trusted his judgment.”

It was no surprise it was his assistant.

“Where is he, by the way?”

“Parked down the block,” Nanami replied, lifting Sumo with his large hands to place him in his carrier. “I've already packed our bags for a trip. I'm taking you to Italy.”

“Huh?”

Nanami was nonchalant as he tidied up around the bakery, extinguishing the candles. “It's just for the weekend. I've spent the past week crafting an itinerary with all your favorite spots and restaurants to visit. You'll love the hotel we're staying at.”

You were about to bombard him with a barrage of questions, but instead, you couldn't help but smile.This was Nanami, after all. He had a knack for surprising you. One minute he'd be showering you with affection, the next he'd be whisking you away to Dubai for a vacation. One minute he'd forget your birthday, and the next he'd be proposing on one knee, presenting you with the cat you'd always wanted and whisking you off to your dream destination.

“—and there's this café that sells the most delicious macaroons—”

You interrupted him by pulling him close, planting a kiss on his lips, and wrapping your arms around him. Nanami eagerly responded, one hand resting on the small of your back and the other cradling the back of your head. When you finally broke apart, breathless, you looked into his hazel eyes and said, “Let's take our time, play with Sumo, and enjoy the cake you baked.”

“How did you know I baked it?”

You shrugged. “Baker's intuition.”

Nanami embraced you, resting his chin on your head. He took a deep breath as if replenishing his oxygen supply. His fingers gently ran through your hair, soothingly rubbing your back. “I love you, Y/N,” he whispered as though it were a fleeting thought. 

You nuzzled closer to his chest. “I love you too, Kento.”

[rottingfern]

sweetened breath, tongue so mean || a Bad Omens fanfic

Pairing: Noah x nonbinary OC

Summary: They're screaming at each other. They're throwing hands. They're half a second away from a violent hatefuck. And at the end of the day, they'll still call each other friends.

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: ANGST, toxic relationship, language, heavy consumption of alcohol, degradation kink if you squint, brief discussion of body image, OC gets deadnamed, depiction of a panic attack, choking, cunnilingus, penetration, hair pulling, slightly dubious consent, spitting.

A/N: Wow do I love angst. But be warned going into this: THESE BITCHES IS TOXIC. Noah is not a very nice person in this, and neither is OC. This fic does not depict a healthy relationship. This is a work of fiction depicting a fictionalized version of Noah and does not represent him in real life.

A MASSIVE THANK YOU TO @signs-of-ill-portent AND @the-way-of-words FOR BETA-ING THIS FIC AND SCREAMING ABOUT IT WITH ME, for getting on my characters' levels with me and for egging me on to delve as deep and dark as I needed for this fic, for not allowing me to mince words and for listening to me catastrophize about the story beats as I figured out how to convey all the nuance this fic needed. Y'all really did the most when you didn't have to, and I AM EXTREMELY GRATEFUL TO YOU FOR THAT! My heart eyes are laser focused on you.

Brainrot Club: @meekahy @foliosriot @badhedonist Theme song is Hatef--k by The Bravery. I actually made a whole playlist! Click here to listen. Masterlist here.

Title taken from Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene by Hozier; banner made by me; dividers by @saradika

Lee’s just about done with this show (though it hasn’t even begun) when their shoulders hit the poorly finished wall of the back hallway of the venue. 

His lips are searing, supple and wet and clingy as they suck to their own. They clench their teeth shut at the insistent push of his tongue past their lips, demanding entry into their mouth. Maybe this whole moment - the hands on their shoulders, the thigh between their knees, pinned between drywall and a solid mass of body heat and want - would be hot, desirable even, had it all not belonged to the one shithead they’d been hoping to avoid tonight. 

Of course, Lee would have more luck surviving a plane crash into the ocean than avoiding a shithead when said shithead is Noah Sebastian Davis. This whole situation is vomit-inducing. Embarrassing, honestly. They push on his chest, hard, like their life depends on it. 

“God, knew you’d want it,” Noah pants when Lee finally manages to separate his suction cup of a mouth from theirs, his shit-eating grin planted firmly like he’d done something - whether he meant to be sexy or purposely disgusting, they’re not sure - and it doesn’t help he hasn’t learned to be less cryptic since they’d seen him last. “What, no ‘hello’, no ‘how are you’?” Lee shoots back. They’d backpedaled out that green room as soon as the members of their entourage were occupied by conversation, though they really should’ve expected this. Noah following them down dimly lit hallways with dishonorable purpose is par for the course. “Didn’t think I’d need one. Once a slut, always a slut.” His chuckle is like shattering ice, each shard aimed at Lee. “Isn’t that right, Leanne?” 

Noah hasn’t changed in the ten years since they’d met, and Lee isn’t about to let the persistent press of his thick, hard cock against their stomach through layers of denim and terry cloth (or the way an engine downstairs springs to life when they feel it) change their opinion of him: that he’s a shithead through and through, cocky in the worst kind of way, hell-sent the day he was born when the universe decided not only to make him a bigheaded fool but also to let him win the genetic lottery in one fell swoop. 

Doesn’t stop the clench of their cunt that they struggle to suppress. Doesn’t prevent the mental scolding they’re forced to give themself: the chaos monster that is Noah Davis’s entire being isn’t worth dealing with for even a hookup. It’s pathetic, tacky even. 

Something primal, old and hungry flashes in the glassy gel of Noah’s eyes when he forces Lee’s gaze to his, fingers hooked firmly round their jaw; something uncontrollably soft in the way his jaw trembles to mirror Lee’s own when he grazes their hip with his free hand, when he presses his thumb firmly to their clit through the denim of their shorts. 

There are a million things Lee could’ve picked from the Rolodex of elaborate insults soaked in a decade of contentious acquaintanceship they’ve stored specifically to knock Noah off his self-appointed pedestal, if only the butterflies insistently bubbling below their gut would just shut the fuck up for a single second. Could’ve, had Noah’s propensity to always control every situation so it goes his way not also applied to their own bodily function, apparently. Instead, they lower their chin, defiantly forcing his grip on their throat to tighten. 

Dangerous mistake. Stupid fucking mistake, because their hips buck forward along his thigh at the pressure, just an inch, and Noah’s smile widens dangerously, and oh. Oh no. They know this look, and the words that are bound to slip from his mouth in three, two -

Like a miracle from God or whatever the fuck other omnipotent being lives in the sky, a shout of their name echoes through the corridors. Noah’s hands find Lee’s shoulders again, head dipping once more as their own hands push desperately against his chest in a mad scramble for dominance and escape. They will not be caught - will not be seen - kissing Noah fucking Davis in front of their coworkers. No fucking way. Gag. Although… 

It does feel nice to be wanted, and it’s been so, so long since they’ve allowed themself this - no strings, mindless, just a quick way to get theirs. How long has it been? Since before they got sick, since before they put on the weight, surely. And Noah throws them around so effortlessly, they didn’t even feel that hot sting of insecurity as his hands ran down their body just minutes ago. And it’s not like they aren’t attracted to him, as long as he doesn’t speak. He’s always been hot - even Lee’s freshly-eighteen mind had been excited by the idea of snapping his scrawny little bones with their bare hands back then. And he’s only gotten hotter, with that fucking haircut and the way his once-concave pecs now ripple with muscle under their palms. 

So, what’s the holdup? It’s not like the two of them haven’t done this before. It would be so easy: they give Noah what he wants, they get theirs, then they never have to see each other again (at least not for another three years or four years, likely). Why shouldn’t they just let him kiss them again?

“Lee!” comes another shout, snapping Lee from their reverie. It’s closer, the sound of footsteps to match echoing just around the corner now. 

Their wandering mind had loosened their push on Noah’s chest to a caress, but now they use his momentary distraction to force him from them with all their might once again, schooling their stance into a casual side-lean against the wall just seconds before their friends round the corner. 

“There you are,” Mike sighs. “C’mon, bitch, we don’t wanna miss the openers!” As Lee follows Mike and Noor out to the floor, they toss a playful smirk over their shoulder, but Noah’s already replaced his mask of impassiveness, arms crossed sternly with clenched fists. His loss.

Noor’s laserlike gaze scans Lee as they collect their drinks from the bar. “Have a sweet reunion?” she asks.  

Lee huffs. They get enough of this shit from her at home, at work, basically everywhere. They love Noor, truly, but she’s impossible to fool and Lee really doesn’t need her picking around their brain when they themself don’t have a full understanding of what’s brewing in there.

“Sweet as fucking vinegar,” they instead reply, eyes rolling demonstratively. Noor’s lips purse in suspicion, so they turn away before she can do that fucking clairvoyant inspection of details thing she does, leading them back through the crowd to their coworkers. 

It’s not that Lee is stupid enough to truly believe they’d manage to avoid Noah at a Bad Omens show - rather that they’d have elected to straight up Not Attend were the outing not made mandatory by their boss. 

Mercury Hall is the largest venue in Burlington - a mid-size club with two balconies, standing thirty years with a stellar reputation to boot - but behind the scenes, despite a revolving door of staff, Mercury regularly employs a group of college kids who collectively have the common sense of a single person. Not that it’s surprising, really, considering Burlington houses two universities and both offer a “music business” major. Lee thinks Mercury should be hiring communications majors instead - maybe that’d fix their massive communication problem. 

Ouroboros - Lee’s place of gainful employment - is a smaller club on the other side of Downtown, and has absolutely no affiliation with Mercury… except that the owners of the two clubs go way back, oldheads who’ve been buddies since school and all that, and Lee’s boss regularly makes any problems down at Mercury his problem. 

Or, the problem of his long-suffering staff, to be precise. 

Just like last week, for example, when Lee was just trying to sort out next month’s scheduling while jamming to some ABBA, and was interrupted by their boss Roy roping them into solving the issue with Mercury’s scheduling instead, on only a week’s notice.

Really, the solution was a no brainer. One band was not local and on a tightly-scheduled tour; the other - from just three hours south in Boston, were playing just a one-off gig. Ask the Boston guys to move to the following night - they’d get a Friday spot anyway, way better deal. Enlist Mike and Noor to assist with rescheduling the hired crew to Friday. It helped immensely that the Boston guys only recently graduated to playing Mercury, that Lee knew them from their years of traveling up to play Ouroboros. The other band was Bad Omens. So, really, Noah should be thanking Lee.

Thanks only came in the form of Hank, Mercury’s owner, interrupting their pre-show planning meeting two days ago to inform Ouroboros staff they’d been guest-listed for the Bad Omens gig. Lee thought better thanks would’ve come in the form of Hank hiring staff capable of doing their jobs, and stands by that opinion. 

Excited chatter had erupted the minute Hank shut the door behind him - it’s a rare occasion that a decent metalcore act rolls through Burlington - but Lee could only focus on the cold pit that opened in their stomach at the thought of seeing Noah again. Later that night, they’d get disastrously wine-drunk with Noor on their ratty porch couch and lament on the absolute asshole that was Noah Sebastian Davis, but in that moment they only sat blank, nodding along obediently, as Roy instructed them to attend Hank’s “extremely generous offering”.

The issue isn’t going to the Bad Omens gig, because if there’s one positive thing they can say about Noah it’s that he really hit his stride with this project and Lee respects the grind. Nor is it the idea of being in the same room as him; it’s not like they haven’t been around him plenty and willingly over the past decade between touring through RVA with their college band, and in the multiple shared friend groups they’d amassed over the years. 

Noah’s annoying as all hell: the kind of person who says and does whatever, whenever the hell he wants, who doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up, who will unapologetically push forward if it pleases him. And, apparently and unfortunately for Lee, his biggest pleasure is making them absolutely fucking miserable whenever they’re in proximity of one another. And especially unfortunately, he knows exactly how to push Lee’s buttons, which ones to push, and how to drive them to absolute breaking point. 

And, his greatest pleasure is knowing Lee will just hatefuck him when they get too fed up. Lee would bet their life savings (spoiler: not much) that he was one of those kids who pulled all the girls’ pigtails on the playground. 

Going into the evening, Lee’s biggest issue was just that: that they’d snap at him in front of their coworkers, that Roy or Hank would clock the familiarity and fire them or something, that they’d get overwhelmed and just fucking cry. Dealing with Noah’s antics was even a knife’s edge in the past, in casual environments where their friends would laugh it off as “Noah and Leanne bullshit”, when they’d had security in their identity and image. 

In the now times however, with their confidence dropped to near-zero, with meds that make them burst to tears at any strong enough emotion, with a fragile half-decades acceptance of their queer identity (and Noah’s inability to fucking catch on and stop misgendering them), Lee wasn’t certain they’d be able to handle the pressure of the battle of wills Noah insisted on having each time they met. 

Now, as the giant party of the Ouroboros staff, the touring party, and those of the Mercury staff who are legal to drink head to the Archives for after-hours drinks, Lee’s issue is that they’re actually enjoying themself because Resident Shithead Noah Sebastian Davis is being actually fucking pleasant. And they’re really not sure how to deal with that. It’s new territory. A no-person’s land, if you will. 

He’d slowed down to where Lee trailed behind the rest of the group, likely sick of tripping over Church Street’s uneven cobblestones trying to keep up with Joakim’s (they refuse to call him Jolly. What the fuck kind of grown man calls himself Jolly?) speed racer pace. “Hey,” he says quietly. 

Lee releases a long-suffering sigh. “Hi, Noah.”

They walk silently beside each other for a few minutes. From the corner of their eye as they tilt their head back to admire this year’s lighted arches, Lee sees Noah fidget uncomfortably. They’re seconds from spitting out an out with it, already when he finally asks, “So, archaeology was a bust, huh?”

Here we fucking go. They’ve decided their Rolodex of insults is useless and resort to just tossing him a nasty look, a roll of the eyes, and to speed up to walk with Mike, Noor and Folio when he hurriedly follows up with, “Only you seemed so excited about your degree.” He sports an unfamiliar expression Lee has never seen him wear (is it sheepishness? abashedness?), head dipped low. “Y’know. Back then.”

Lee’s brain is short circuiting. That’s the only explanation for the wall of static and dial-up tones smashcut with thirty different trains of thought that occupies it and allows them to respond only with a blank look and a dumb-sounding “oh” because, did Noah actually just ask them about their life????? 

Since when did he give a flying fuck about anything but making their night hell? All Noah Sebastian Davis cares about is his boys, his music, and getting his. But, it makes sense, right, since the last time they saw each other was at a holiday party and barely spoke at all - maybe he is just curious. He’s being pleasant, but to what end? When does the other shoe drop?

Or, a small part of their brain whispers, maybe he’s finally grown up. He does look awfully sincere, chocolate eyes wide with concern. “Just didn’t work out,” Lee shrugs, electing to open up. “For a lot of reasons. Mostly because, I guess I didn’t love it enough to work up to the fun stuff once I started getting hired.” A bitter, self-deprecating chuckle escapes their throat way too loudly for comfort. 

The group has reached the Archives now, and Lee sends a short nod in response to Noor’s concerned glance as she hesitates behind Mike at the bar door. They light a cigarette and lean against the wall, shuffling their foot along the pavement awkwardly. Lee tosses their gaze back up when Noah’s shoes stop before them. He’s open, inquisitive, and they can’t help but relax into it, dumping the rest out: “It’s a lot of travel. And my aunt was sick…”

They choke on the rest, and are suddenly enveloped in possibly the most comforting, needed hug they’ve received since she died. 

“My mom, too, recently,” Noah eventually lets out, voice matching Lee’s choke. He presses them harder to his chest, holding them, clinging, letting Lee soak his shirt as they rock back and forth. 

They break away from each other after a few minutes, Noah turning to let Lee try to wipe their tears without ruining their eyeliner as he swipes his own away with the heels of his palms. They turn back to each other with tight, abashed closed-mouth half-smiles, letting out matching embarrassed chuckles. 

He slumps against the wall and they stand, shoulders grazing, gazing at the night sky. “Y’know, it’s strange to see you here, because I associate Philly with you first, Leanne,” Noah ponders lazily, “But Vermont strangely suits you.”

There’s that bitter feeling again. Lee lights another smoke (having lost their previous to the hug) and follows the smoke trail as it draws circles around the distant stars above, shining bright as though they’re watching from somewhere far, far from civilization. 

There’s something you don’t get in Philly - that feeling of awe, of being just a molecule amidst the inconceivable mass of this universe, of every worry and problem being an ant to a continent, and you’re just trying to live your life to survive to the next and the most you can do is just live and love it. There’s something they’d missed for years being away from the far Northeast, something they take for granted until quiet, gentle moments like this. They don’t share any of that with Noah. Instead, they reply: “Noor’s rich parents bought her a house here, and she took me with her.”

“How long?” Noah sighs. He sounds dreamy, on the verge of sleep, eyes closed, body leaning firmly against theirs. 

“Nearly five years, now.”

Noah’s eyes snap open, a smirk spreading his face like wildfire, words flowing faster than Lee can even brace for the hit. “Five years of Vermont Cheddar’s done wonders for that ass,” he snarks. 

There it fucking is, the other fucking shoe. Leave it to him to open his stupid fucking mouth at a moment like this. Here they are, opening up about shit they’d barely even told their best friend, crying about their dead family together, and he’s making caveman-brain comments about their body. 

Lee kicks off the wall, dislodging Noah’s resting body, flicking their unfinished cigarette at the ground. If there’s a God, he’ll make the ash ruin Noah’s squeaky-clean white Vans. 

They feel an absolute idiot for trusting this idiot, for choosing these feelings to entrust to him. Should’ve known better. “With as much disrespect as possible: fuck you, Noah,” Lee spits at Noah’s stumbling form before jerking open the bar door, slamming it shut behind them. 

Note to future self (which will inevitably be forgotten and ignored): beware the Archives after hours - it’s completely shot and always devolves to the same bullshit. Yes, every time. Do not be fooled by the arcade machines - they are half broken and will not save you.

Hank and Roy left after chugging their first and only beers in under a minute the way Frank and Charlie shovel down cat food before bed on Always Sunny. Mike’s sniffed out that one gruff DL crew guy that’s seemingly copy-pasted onto each tour that comes through town and is working on enticing him to go back to his place above Ouroboros with that fucking slick grin of his (“It’s only around the corner, they’ll be none the wiser”). Nobody’s behind the bar, because it’s easier for Donny to just let people serve themselves - not like afterhours is official or legal here, anyway - so why would he bother serving? 

Everyone’s broken off into small groups or pairs, and Lee? Lee’s nursing their fourth whiskey, stuck finishing the shitty fries Noor always orders after she’s had her first drink, the same shitty ones she eats like, five of before pushing them away in disgust. 

The floor is sticky, left to be cleaned by the opening staff, and more than half the bar’s got their wax pens out, making the whole place smell like wet dog. Like the top note of a sick perfume resting above the heart note of the sweat of thirty slightly-too-warm people. Eau de metalhead. They really oughta turn off the heat in this place already - it’s fucking June.

It’s not the heat that’s got Lee absolutely boiling, though, no, that would be too simple. It’s that among this absolute hellscape, Noah is ten feet away, laughing like all that shit outside just didn’t happen. He’s fucking with the glitchy Ms. Pac-Man machine with Nicholas. He’s shotgunning beers with Mike and Mike’s newest conquest. He’s not looking at Lee. 

“- and after all that, like we had a moment, and after all that -” Lee laments to Noor, “For fuck’s sake, bitch, will you quit making eyes at Folio for one second?” 

Greta Van Fleet’s “Heat Above” is playing over the tinny speaker, and Noor’s distracted “uh huh” as she bops along is tell enough for Lee. The bitch is gone. 

“Fuck’s sake, Noor, you really gotta fuck the drummer every time?” Lee hisses, reaching blindly behind the bar for the whiskey they’d set in arm’s reach. Noor doesn’t hear them. Noor is too busy being her beautiful self, flicking a chunk of perfect raven curls behind her shoulder. Lee watches in horror as Folio presents the other tell that Noor’s one-hundred-percent gone for the night, something Lee has only seen happen genuinely, unironically in two situations - one in movies, and the other when Noor flirts with men: Folio fucking wiggles his eyebrows at her. 

There’s the whiskey. Goddamn, do they need another drink. Somewhere behind them, Noah cackles. Nails on a fucking chalkboard. 

Can you hear that dreadful sound? Fire still burning on the ground, Josh Kiszka screeches. You, or the other one, Josh? thinks Lee as they pour themselves another drink.

They turn, ready to shoot Noah a dirty look, and the fucker winks at them. They down their three fingers in one go and push off their stool towards the toilets. 

Their vision swims, not from the five whiskeys, not from getting up too quickly, but from the pins and needles of bitter fury tearing at their chest. 

It’s not that Noah’s enjoying himself. Good for him. It’s not that he’d been a vulgar dick, either, because they’re pretty sure that wasn’t the first time they’d gotten the “wonders for your ass” dig from him before. 

It’s that they’d allowed him a single moment of benignant sincerity for probably the first time ever, let him in, showed their tender belly, and then he’d gone and stabbed them where they’re most vulnerable. That he’d pissed on any genuine connection they’d been building up to then. 

It’s not that Noah was an asshole tonight, that will never change. That’s the sky blue. It’s that this time, Noah actually hurt their feelings. 

Lee shuts the bathroom door with their back, melds themself against the metal, digging the heels of their palms into their eyes as they let out a dry, heavy, tear-less sob. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale -

The second sob drags up with it hot spittle, sending them coughing and gagging into the sink. It’s that it’s all their own fault for letting him in, for getting comfortable in the first place. That’s what you get when you let Noah in. 

How fucking shot in the head do they have to be to expect anything less than this bullshit? Because this isn’t how someone with an ounce of sensibility would handle this, right? RIGHT?! Hey, let’s go trauma dump on this dude who’s never had a kind thing to say to you. Let’s go talk about our feeeeeeelings with the guy who still deadnames you FOUR years after you changed it everywhere. Oh, he gave you a hug? Oh, he shared his little emo feels with you too? Awwww. Ohhhh. Cute. Fucking. Idiot. 

Their eyeliner is smeared, their skin blotchy and red, and their hair absolutely refuses to lay well despite all their efforts to make it behave. Under the overly-bright fluorescent lighting, they can see the blue of the vein bulging in their forehead. They look like they’ve been beaten, or fucked, or both at once. Lee swears their reflection grins at them then.

They need to clean themself up and get another drink, and then they need to punch Noah in his stupid, smug, sexy face. Another dry heave works up their throat. No, no, this isn’t right. This is neither healthy nor productive. They can’t keep going on like this, can’t keep allowing themself in situations where the rage literally makes them sick.

Lee sighs, rubbing a hand over their tired face, presentability be damned. They need to go home; just crawl into bed and sleep it off and avoid any gatherings Noah might be at forever. They should probably cut off their mutual friends, too and never step foot in Richmond again, or L.A. for that matter, though they’d never willingly end up in that helltown, anyway. 

Home. Bed. Sleep. Never see Noah again. 

But when they swing open the bathroom door, he’s on the other side.

There’s a beat as he takes them in, and a small part of Lee thinks, hopes, prays he’ll grant mercy this time. Just this once. Look at me. Please. Mercy.

But prayer’s so unreliable, and Noah is so, so consistent. “Lookin’ good, doll,” mocks the physical manifestation of No Sense Of Time And Place. “Whoa -”

This is it. Their chest is exploding, they can’t breathe, they’ve lost their eyesight. This is how they die. 

Noah catches their wrist inches from his face before Lee even realizes they’ve swung.

They let out a hysterical laugh, ripping their arm from his like it’s a third-degree burn, backpedaling so fast from his advance they nearly trip over their own legs. 

He’s all, “hey, whoa,” he’s all, “hey, Leanne,” but they’re too busy contending with the fact that each breath feels like a leaf blower full of nails tearing their windpipe. “Leanne, what -” he says, but they knew this wasn’t normal the moment Noah started grabbing at their shoulders, at their face, the moment they couldn’t hear him pleading for them to get themself together. “Leanne, c’mon, Leanne, please,” he’s begging somewhere, but they can’t stop fucking laughing.

God, but doesn’t he sound so tender, so pretty when he pleads?

This isn’t normal, right? Like, what’s that saying about doing the same thing over and over? Right?????? And now there’s godforsaken tears pricking at their eyes and they can’t stop and - 

They need him to stop. They need him to shut up, and they need him out of their field of vision. But he keeps getting in front of them, putting his hands on them and Lee wants them off but they can’t feel their hands - 

Someone’s released an anguished, animalistic scream somewhere. Everything’s too tight. There’s arms caging them in, they need out, they need escape why are there arms fucking everywhere - 

“Fucking, ow!” Noah’s left hand flies up to nurse his jaw where they’d managed to catch him, but the right finds purchase in their hair immediately, like it’s an instinct, like it belongs there. He yanks, hard, forcing their face to his as he crowds them against the sink. 

There’s something grounding, calming in the pain at the back of their head, something reassuring in the way he’d tear their hair out at a moment’s notice. He’s so close they can smell the spearmint of the gum he’d been chewing under the liquor and smoke, nose nearly pressed to theirs. His hair tickles their cheekbones like a balm, like a promise.

He’s a vision of fury, all tightly clenched jaw and steely eyes, scrunched nose and furrowed brows. “What the fuck is your problem?” he sternly asks, voice quiet, chillingly flat.

An involuntary, scornful bark of a laugh escapes Lee’s throat. “You wanna know my problem? YOU’RE my fucking problem! I haven’t known a moment of peace since I met you!” they shout through their sob-torn throat. The dam bursts, there’s no stopping this train now, whichever metaphor you prefer. “You’re absolutely insufferable! No regard for anyone but yourself! You wanna know why people leave you in the dust and never look back? Because you’re the fucking worst! You’re a fucking mistake!”

Noah’s mouth twists that smirk again, the one Lee has been on the receiving end of too many times tonight, but there’s no joy behind it; his eyes are empty and cold and tinged red, omnipotent in the weight of his gaze. He doesn’t even need to say it. That cruel twist of his mouth is enough. Takes one to know one.

His lips are on Lee’s in an instant, barely connected for a second before he forces his tongue past their teeth, his free hand wandering anywhere he can reach. His hips push them into the porcelain, fingers brushing up the exposed skin of their belly, hand sliding overtop their binder. A harsh breath huffs out his nose as he passes a thumb over their hard nipple through the thick fabric, pulling a tiny, pathetic whine from Lee’s throat. 

There’s a beat when he pulls their head an inch back, hovering by their ear once more, hips giving a miniscule, barely there roll. Then, in a movement so quick Lee can barely acknowledge it happened, he rips their arm round their back, flipping them so fast they’d faceplant into the mirror were it not for the grip he keeps steady on their head, fingers tangled in their hair, nails digging at their scalp. Hips press them into the edge of the sink, fingers pull their head to his shoulder, the arch lighting a tight burn in their spine. 

Mirror Lee looks like roadkill, and Mirror Noah looks like the vulture circling round their corpse, towering over them voraciously.

He rolls his hard, clothed cock into the small of their back. “Look at what you do to me,” he croons. A hand trailing fingers dangerously slow up their bare leg. “Look at what a mess you are.” His hand trails lazily from their hair to their throat, nestling there like a puzzle piece fit into place, forcing their gaze on the mirror. “Look at you.” He trails kisses behind Lee’s ear, down their neck, the trail of saliva he leaves behind chilling in the stale air. “Look at you.” His fingers brush their belly. “Look at you.” A kiss on their pulse point. Lee lets out an anxious shudder at the fingers dipping below the waistband of their shorts.

His eyes snap to meet theirs in the mirror, and Lee’s screwed because Noah’s just caught them soaking wet. They can’t force themself to blink, to look away from Noah’s piercing gaze as he slowly, predatorily brings his mouth to their ear. Punctuated by a single flick of their clit, through barely-parted kiss-bruised lips, he whispers: “Slut.”

It’s then their mind catches up to their body, and as their face hits the cold, wet porcelain of the sink bowl, they realize they hadn’t fully caught their breath. They heave as the stoneware digs into the bottom of their ribs, muscles spasming over their whole body as they consciously force them to relax. 

The heel of his palm pushes at the base of their skull, his fingers tangling tight in their hair once more, and a single, foreboding finger whispers assurance as it runs down their spine. Cold air on their bare ass as he unceremoniously tears down their shorts and underwear in one fell swoop. His cock prods at their hole and they, body before mind, back against him. 

For the warmth, of course.

Nothing more. 

That’s definitely not their whine when he slides home with a single snap of his hips, when he pulls out nearly completely, when he snaps back home again with twice the force. 

Mercy. What a silly thought to entertain, what a silly plea to beg when you’re begging Noah. Noah doesn’t do mercy. That’s not his modus operandi. Noah winds you up, then puts you down. Like Lee is now. Down. Face down in the sink bowl. Like the stupid, stupid slut they are, in Noah’s own words. 

They’ll never get used to the stretch, they think, no matter how many times they fuck Noah. It might be the size of him (though they’ll never admit it to his face, lest it make him grow a second head for sheer lack of space from his already overly-inflated ego), or maybe it’s that he’s just there to get his, and no matter how he fucks - slow, fast, hard, gentle - he’s never thinking about them. And despite that, despite that he’s just jackhammering, shoving their face into the porcelain with force which will surely leave a bruise, the roll of his hips tells them someone cooked here.

There’s no tenderness in the dig of his short, blunt nails into the flesh of their inner thigh, woefully close to where they need him, nor in sticky snap of his hips against their ass, and certainly not in the merciless drag of his heavy cock against that rough patch in them which serves to topple them like a Jenga tower, slowly, shakily, then all at once. They’re so full. So empty. They’re a coin-operated doll, helpless to be broken down and sold for parts on the whim of a single man. 

They’re a wet mess, clit so swollen they think it might burst, hands a mess of numb pins and needles. They’re gonna be covered in bruises tomorrow, they’re gonna be so fucking sore when they pee, and for what it’s worth, this shouldn’t feel good at all, but Lee is so fucking close.

Embarrassing. 

When Noah’s hips stutter, when his grip releases their head just enough for them to turn their head, he’s got his bottom lip in his teeth and his eyes are squeezed shut and he looks so, so gone (or maybe it’s Lee who’s gone) in the flush of pink running from his cheeks down into his shirt. 

That’s not Lee moaning. They’re just trying to catch a breath. But, god, they’re right there, they just need something, they just need more - 

Noah freezes, collapsing on them with a short, quiet groan, burying his face in their neck. 

His breath is hot, wet, the weight of his heaving chest pressing their ribcage into the porcelain. There's barely a moment of peace before the fingers in their hair tighten once more, pulling their face up to meet his eyes in the mirror. 

All it takes is a miniscule shake of Lee’s head for his blissed out gaze to turn stormy once more, for him to drop to his knees.

It’s a race to the finish line the second Noah’s tongue touches Lee’s neglected clit. Quite possibly all their synapses fire at once, all their focus single-mindedly on the way he sucks them, on the calluses on his fingertips as he pads at their hole, on the vibration of a moan they can’t hear. 

Lee is jelly. They don’t need to be held down any longer, compliantly staying slumped in the sink, but the soothing scrape of Noah’s nails on their scalp as he presses two fingers in grounds them, turning any distracting thoughts to a static hum tuned to the note of fuck, Noah. 

All it takes is a single curl of his fingers, like the press of a button before they’re falling, trembling on an overdose of oxytocin into oblivion. 

With a final suck, Noah rises to his feet, bringing a deer-legged Lee with him. They’re dizzy, vision blurred as he turns them gently in his arms. Arousal-coated fingers pry their jaw open, and Noah comes into focus when his hand settles at their throat in an inky-fingered necklace. He forces Lee’s jaw open wider and spits, using the same hand to then cover their mouth. His eyes are wide and wild, rapt as he soothes the saltybitter spend down Lee’s throat. “Look at you, look at that dirty mouth,” he’s mumbling feverishly, voice still deep with arousal. “Look at you swallow that cum. Who else does it for you like this, hm? That’s right. Nobody. Only me.”

Lee chokes out a heaving breath, willing the tears that prick their eyes to not fucking fall, and he deflates, collapsing into their shoulder, arms dropping to circle their waist. “God damn, Leanne,” he sighs after a beat, dulcet and spent.

They glance down uncomfortably. His face is calm, unmarred by the everpresent lines and tension it usually carries, nose buried in their neck. “It’s Lee,” they say. 

At least he has the sense to look embarrassed. “Right. Lee.”  

They don’t clean themself up, they haven’t the energy. They let Noah pull up their shorts, shuffle them out the bathroom and out the back door, and walk them home. 

The streets are quiet, streetlights haloing the street corners in gold, everyone with any sense of decency long-retired to their homes. Lee wonders what they look like from a bird’s eye view, or from outer space, alone together in a grid of light. What do the stars think - would they shame Lee? Would they judge them? 

They stroll lazily, Noah’s arm draped round Lee’s shoulder. He looks so at peace, between the half-smile playing at his lips and the way the streetlights illuminate the lashes of his half-closed eyes. Something acrid bubbles in Lee’s chest. At least they get him like this, blissed out and pleasant before they never speak to him again. Before they never - 

No. They won’t think about that. Just remember this. 

Lee is halfway up the porch stairs before Noah yanks them back by the wrist, catching them from their awkward tumble into his chest. “Give me a call sometime, alright?” he mumbles, grazing the exposed skin between their shorts and shirt. “Don’t be a stranger.” 

Their heart stutters. It’s too sweet. It’s too nice. This isn’t right. “Whatever, asshole,” they say. Weakly. Unconvincingly. With the weakest push they’ve got, with no resistance from Noah, they start again on the stairs. 

He doesn’t pursue. 

“Call me whatever you like,” he laughs. “‘Long as you call me.” 

In the morning, through a blinding headache and a metric fuckton of hangxiety, Lee rushes to check their phone the second they pull their face from the pillow. 

Among the sea of texts from Noor and Mike, work emails, and bullshit app notifications, there it is: Stupid Silly Man: hey, asshole. My number is still the same, btw.

[phanfictioncatalogue]

Fics Written in 2014 (2) Masterlist

part one

30 Days to Fall - kawaii-kanai

Summary: Dan’s scraped by in life, never really enjoying it due to persistent bullies, stern parents, and loneliness. When a mysterious man from his past tells him he only has 30 days left to live, he finally takes the initiative to make the best of what time he has left.

A Thousand Words (ao3) - dlester

Summary: Dan joins an art class because he fancies a girl in it, but then he meets Phil, who he finds out started drawing for a very different reason. Slowly he begins to realise that the girl is not the only thing keeping him there, and he learns a lot from the strange boy.

Are We Out of The Woods Yet? (ao3) - starrywrite

Summary: “We were built to fall apart and fall back together” - Taylor Swift, Out Of The Woods

Clarity - thatsmistertoyou

Summary: New glasses. Cute boy. Eye puns.

Crawling back to you (ao3) - definitelythor (yourlionheartx)

Summary: Inspired by Do I wanna know by The Arctic Monkeys [x] Dan and Phil started having phone sex while Dan was at uni, and once they moved in together they just stopped. Now they’re both coming to the realisation they want more, but they can still only tell each other over the phone

Crime and Punishment (ao3) - thisisalterego

Summary: This one is a little more intense than my usual fare. Consider yourself warned!

Cute Next Door Neighbor - dxnhowell

Summary: Dan gets bored one day when he's at home and decides to look out of his kitchen window, only to find his very attracted neighborhood raking and jumping into a pile of leaves and gets caught staring at him.

Death Angel - amazingdanielhowell

Summary: Daniel is a Death Angel and has been since he died. Phil is killed after being hit by a car at university and now it’s Dan’s job to cross him over. Phil has questions for his Death Angel and wants to talk to him while Dan just wants to cross the boy over so he could go back to his duties. Phil only has so much time to cross before he’s too weak to do so but refuses to go without Dan who can’t cross due to his Death Angel status so Phil sets out to find out how to cross Dan over…whether Dan wants to or not.

Dirty Glasses - chocolatesaucelester

Summary: Phil in glasses and a button up and Dan drooling over Phil. 

Do Let Me Keep You - ficster28

Summary: Or, in which Dan and Phil get a cat.

Easy (ao3) - ironicallyrad (snakedolls)

Summary: Contains coffee shop, pretentious and flirty boy, cake and coffee, and truth or dare in a secluded field.

Exposed - dxnhowell

Summary: Dan and Phil have been in a relationship for quite some time now and even when hiding, things seem to have been going smoothly. A picture had been posted by a phangirl and things quickly change and things get more complicated than ever for Dan and Phil. 

Four In The Morning - daeguk

Summary: Four in the morning is the poster child for loneliness, earth's betrayal; Dan Howell's never been good at falling asleep at night. Because being alone in an empty house becomes suffocating, Dan finds solace in a cashier working the night shift at a grocery who's afraid to fall asleep: Phil Lester. Maybe some questions are better off unanswered, or maybe Dan's just afraid of the response.

I Can't Slip in if Your Pants Don't Slip Off - venuslester

Summary: Dan and Phil are in the heat of the moment, just totally wanting each other but then Dan’s skinny jeans won’t come off easily.

I guess you do the dirty now and I do the dancing (ao3) - stillinblossom

Summary: Dan is a budding pianist growing up in a town where nothing really happens. Time seems to stand still to the point of dust never even settling, but merely hanging in the air and painting the town in a glum, grey colour. Convinced you either get out or get stuck there forever he spends his days perfecting the skill that could take him to the bigger cities – the bigger existence – that he’s dreaming of. Then something does happen; Phil happens. Phil is older and in Dan’s eyes extraordinary at all times, but never more so than in the dim light of his dance studio, in his own world that Dan somehow gets an invitation to.

Just Like In The Books (ao3) - Rhensis

Summary: Dan and Phil are total strangers that happen to catch each other's eye in a coffee shop one day

Just Making Sure - placingglaciers

Summary: In which Dan unpredictably meets his favorite radio personality, Phil, by being late for the train journey home. It is quite the encounter as they both had the worst possible day ever before meeting.

Just That Easy (ao3) - Sinncity

Summary: In which Dan and Phil meet for the first time.

Dan keeps reminding himself that this is real. That Phil is really standing there right next to him. Phils smile can brighten Dan's day and his absence can fill a room. Phil's hand brushes against his own, there’s a pink tinge on his cheeks and suddenly there's no doubt in his mind. Maybe that's how it’s meant to be, maybe it’s always been that easy.

Last Roll of Wrapping Paper - auroraphilealis

Summary: It’s midnight on Christmas Eve, and Phil has just realized he has no wrapping paper.

Lonely This Christmas - passionfruitwriter

Summary: It's Christmas Eve, and Phil is desperate to buy one last minute present. However, his plan falls apart when he gets stuck in a closed shopping centre with a mysterious stranger, who has a quite different task in mind.  

Make Me Feel Like Someone Else (ao3) - Sinncity

Summary: Dan gets kicked out of home for admitting his gay and runs into a guy called Phil, who doesn’t have it in him to let Dan stay on the streets.

His strong persona is gone, broken into a million pieces and it feels like all of him is shattered. “They kicked me out.”

Phil doesn’t have it in him to walk away now.

Separate Pages (ao3) - Sinncity

Summary: Dan finds it nearly impossible to think he never noticed Phil Lester. His note book is filled with doodles of lions and planets and stars and maybe the fluttery feeling Dan gets in the pit in his stomach isn't such a bad thing.

Seven Days - washedoutgay

Summary: Dan was known as a 'man-eater' at his school, accepting dates from whoever offered, but he had never stayed with anyone for longer than 7 days. He never expected to change this lifestyle either but then again, he never thought a boy that asked him on a date to see a 'kids movie' would change any of that.

Shelter Me - howthemoonsuitsthenightsky

Summary: It's raining and, yet again, Dan has forgotten his umbrella. Luckily there's a stranger who's willing to share theirs.

Simmer Down and Pucker Up (ao3) - Sinncity

Summary: Maybe it would have been better, if he just left things alone. Because then he wouldn't remember Phils laugh in such avid detail, or how much his eyes light up when he get excited over the smallest, almost meaningless things.

After Dan's forced to pick between his family and Phil, he realizes he's made the biggest mistake of his life; but he's going to fix it.

Sirenia (ao3) - potatoesarenotforsex

Summary: Phil is a marine biologist, called in to work on something unusual found off the coast of Australia. Dan is the last thing he expected to find.

Spin Cycle (ao3) - pluginlester

Summary: The day after getting back from Florida, Phil has lots of washing and unpacking to do, but he and Dan get a little distracted.

Take Me into Your Loving Arms (ao3) - Emejig16

Summary: Save the date! You have been cordially invited to Dan and Phil’s winter wonderland wedding, but first experience Dan and Phil’s nerves first hand, and all of the wonderful moments leading up to their big moment. Then, sit through the ceremony of their dreams (Disclaimer: may need a few tissues handy). Afterwards, feel free to enjoy some dinner and all of the other wonderful parts of their reception. Then a little later, take a peek at what they get up to on the night after their big day.

Taking Every Chance I've Got (ao3) - nagirci, Rhensis

Summary: All Dan wanted was to get drunk, really. Have a good time, meet a few new people. He didn’t really think about getting involved with someone as dangerous as Phil Lester (someone as cold, as pale and, well, as not alive), and he definitely didn’t think that one trip out to a bar would change his life forever.

That Other Time We Broke the Sofa - phansomedevil

Summary: They've just filmed a gaming video, and Dan is strategizing how to go about fixing the sofa. Bored by this discussion, Phil has other ideas. 

The Boy On The Bridge (ao3) - TheSadisticMunchkin

Summary: I never thought of a boy as beautiful.

But this boy, he was definitely beautiful.

The glass around your heart (ao3) - definitelythor (yourlionheartx)

Summary: Everything comes to the surface a few months after Orlando, while Dan and Phil are in France, because there’s only so much Dan can take. And Phil needs to face up to his feelings

the lucky ones (ao3) - sohmaskyos

Summary: AU in which everything is in black and white until you meet your soulmate. Or, the one where Dan and Phil meet and are thrown into a world of colour.

Wake Up Wokingham (ao3) - Azure (Fancy_Ravenclaw)

Summary: Dan Howell has to learn how to deal with being the only one on earth to know that everyone is being controlled by a higher power. Fortunately, he has Phil Lester to help him with this, and maybe together they could change the situation forever. Maybe.

You’re everything I want, why should I resist when you are there for me? (ao3) - smallbump

Summary: high school!au where dan’s failing too many subjects and phil tutors him, but they end up helping each other with so much more.

[sasorikigai]

“If you want to talk, I’m here. Otherwise I’ll sit silently besides you.“ liv @ hanzo in modern verse <3

forever : diamonds are forever … sentence starters || @somniaxperdita || accepting

💥 || To be full of love and dreams that cannot be fully explained nor expressed, the weight of such had long overpowered and nearly paralyzed Hanzo Hasashi’s entirety, as it remains concealed behind his eyes. His head adorned still with images of his long-disintegrated family together, lest it remained withheld at the bottom of his repaired heart with so much darkness and fire, silently screaming in hopes of breaking out. Yet, in both his professional and private life, he finds himself often pressing them down, staying hidden as much as possible, despite being unbidden and candor with his intentions. 

He cannot yield anymore of himself, knowing that he cannot withheld himself to something or someone untouchable and intangible. Ultimately, it had slaughtered his spirit to irreversible infliction as he still suffers trauma, despite knowing as much as he would give anything to caress his wife and son, the reality of such love remains nowhere to be seen, nor could be emulated by the love bestowed and wholly reciprocated by Olivia Winter. 

Guilt both sustains and erodes his subconscious. He used to feel inadequate, incomplete, and shameful, despite knowing he could have never prevented such outcome filled with carnage and corrosion of his body, mind, and soul. Somatically, he feels as if his body is moving slowly through the suffocating, impervious smoke and enervating exhaustion, as the concept of his reality blurred the boundaries between the meant and the unsaid. 

“A once-perfect account of my life has now become a collection of broken memories; a handful of chapters drowned in the waves of time. I know I am not completely lost, nor will I ever let myself become that way, but I find it harder and harder to wholly and unapologetically become myself in this dimmed glow of reality.” Hanzo’s unbidden thoughts unfurl freely and desperately, as he feels the proverbial tug of his heart as the persistent throbbing ache exacerbates. 

All things must be temporal, but to him, such relinquishment of happiness and ongoing decay filled with the shrapnel of the past becomes eternal. Will all things die? Will everything render back to component atoms as all die by universal heat-death made to fry his brain to naught? Fathomless thoughts plunge the Commander into the realm of distraught confusion and uneasiness, as his naked eye, along with his barren soul and bared flesh reflect the desperate urge to subdue such thoughts. “I have vowed to do good and slaughter the cruelty of the past by drowning in my responsibilities, but even with you as my sunshine on cold drab winter days, your eyes perfect as new buds in spring, the soothing rainfall during the summer heat, and the smooth mulled wine on breezy autumn days, I find myself losing such battle at times.”  💥 ||

[finishinglinepress]

FLP POETRY BOOK OF THE DAY: Invasive Species by Michelle Lizet Flores

On SALE now! Pre-order Price Guarantee: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/invasive-species-by-michelle-lizet-flores/

Michelle Lizet Flores is a graduate of FSU and NYU creative writing programs. She currently works as a teacher and co-hosts the What’s in a Verse #Poetry Open Mic in Jacksonville, FL. She has previously been published in magazines and journals such as The Miami Rail, Chircú Journal, and Travel Latina. A finalist for the Juan Felipe Herrera Award for Poetry, she is the author of the chapbooks Cuentos from the Swamp and Memoria, as well as the picture book, Carlito the Bat Learns to Trick or Treat. Her short fiction can be found in the forthcoming anthology, Places We Build in the Universe through Flowersong Press. Find out more at michellelizetflores.com.

PRAISE FOR Invasive Species by Michelle Lizet Flores

“Mixing magic and street smarts as easily as English and Spanish, Michelle Lizet Flores gifts us with an intimate but unflinching exploration of the self and the many pasts that shape it. Her Cuban roots and female ancestors imbue her American life and children with a dense, palpable other-worldliness we are the richer for. These poems don’t simply celebrate: they show us how to conjure and animate into being a life fully present in all its timelessness.”

–Andres Rojas, author of Third Winter in our Second Country (Trio House Press, 2021).

“Invasive Species plants the reader like a frog on a Florida porch as the sky oranges, time passes, a mother passes, children are born, people pass, hurricanes come and go, the sky goes violet and days become many nights. How much peace we make in all that change depends on the type of lessons we gleaned and the character we were fortunate enough to forge over the fires of hard lessons. Flores teaches us ‘how to heal with words rather than herbs.’ If not handled correctly, the act of growing can feel invasive and chaotic. However, there is a calm and understood feeling of necessity in the pain that guides Flores’ words from poem to poem to beat to story to song. Invasive Species doesn’t capture a place, time, history, culture, and simply present it; it captures you, collects you, and keeps you in a jar with these places, people, times, etc. Flores presents Gothic Florida in a Cuban dress, says: ‘y que?’, and confirms ‘It’s a verifiable fact / that whiskey tastes best / when you drink it on your porch / while staring at an orange sky.’”

–C.L. “Rooster” Martinez, a San Antonio poet and author of A Saint for Lost Things (Alabrava Press, 2020), As it is in Heaven (Kissing Dynamite Press, 2020), and Mexican-Dinosaur (Write About Now Press, 2023).

“Michelle Lizet Flores’ Invasive Species contains the expansive magic required to dress the wounds of heartbreak and survival. Part vexed, Floridian pastoral, part ode to diasporic selfhood, this book enthralled me with its vivid voice, its persistent attention to a self always at odds with geography, familial inheritance, and grief’s long tenure. Rooted in hurricanes and heat, Flores invades a southern stillness—she runs the page. And in that surge, this book will upend how you look at the miracle of our temporary bodies, of motherhood and the fleeting moments that compose an undying kind of love. For me, Invasive Species illuminates the dark hallways of life—death and its inevitable lessons—and the conjuro needed to remake the world and to carry on. I invite you to encounter the exposed nerve of these deep roots; “the kind our abuelas taught us to boil, / the kind our children consume.”

–Jessica Q. Stark, author of Savage Pageant (Birds, LLC, 2020) and Buffalo Girl(BOA Editions, 2023

Please share/please repost #flpauthor #preorder #AwesomeCoverArt #poetry #read #poetrybook #poems

[yoobikook]

MUST READ BTS FANFICTION SERIES ON TUMBLR

Updates are regular, please see original post

CAROUSEL by @yoonia

Yoongi X Reader

Genre | Angst, Smut/Mature scenes, Arranged Marriage! AU, Heirs! AU, CEO!Yoongi, Suspense

Summary | He is the successor of his family’s business empire, and you are the female heir of yours. After the trouble his older brother had created in the past, he now must face certain requirements needed for the sake of the family’s future and to save his rights of inheritance, and you become his only way out. Everything might seem so simple, just the way they are supposed to. But everything isn’t always what it seems, is it

I WON'T STOP YOU by @imsarabum

Jungkook x Reader

Genre: Vampire!AU, Fantasy, Angst, Smut

Summary; You drive to your boss‘s house with the intention of returning his wallet he left at the office. You feel uneasy, seeing his manor for the first time - Jungkook also feels uneasy, but for reasons that you could never begin to imagine.

BAD FOR YOU by @yoonia

Jungkook x reader

Genre | Stripper!au, Stripper!Jungkook, Smut, Angst

Summary | His whole presence emits sin and danger, and you are not supposed to be attracted to him on the first glance.

STRIP by @yoonia

Jimin x reader (spin-off to Bad For You)

Genre | Stripper!au, Stripper!Jimin, Bartender!reader, Single parent!au, Smut, Angst, Mature theme

Summary | Everything you have done has always been about surviving life and raising your child on your own. Having someone else caring about you was the last thing you had expected. Especially when that someone is the same man you have watched performing every night on stage and secretly admired. But will he run the moment he finds out about your little secret waiting at home?

THE BIRD CAGE by @untaemedqueen

Jimin X Reader

Genre | Mafia AU, Blood, Guns, Knives, Smut, Smoking (Cigarettes), Excessive Cursing, Drinking, Character death

Summary | Due to debts, the OC falls into servitude and starts working as a maid at Jimin's mansion. Her actions and grace catch Jimin's eyes and he couldn't help but want more of her. The OC is basically a badass and works her way up into the mafia and proves herself worthy. Her interactions with the other members, her attempts to protect her loved ones and keeping the mafia together makes this story a wonderful ride! Also the wonderful display of Jimin's duality as a Mafia leader and a father is the cherry on top. The story is intense, thrilling , romantic and emotional . Highly recommended <3

ALSO READ THE SEQUEL TO TBC AND THE RELATED JUNGKOOK DRABBLE

BOYS LIKE HIM, GIRLS LIKE HER by @hayjeon

Jungkook X Reader

Genre | badboy!jk, jock!au, lots of fluff, slight smut, tiny bit angst

Summary | Bad boys are bad, they said. And they don’t deserve girls like you, they said. But all you wanted to do was give Jeon Jungkook a chance.

YOU SET MY HEART ON FIRE by @hayjeon

Namjoon X Reader

Genre | fireman!namjoon and paramedic!y/n au , drunken sex, oral, etc.

Summary | As a cardio surgeon forced to volunteer as a paramedic in the Seoul Fire Department during your probation, your one and only goal was to get to work, do your thing, and get the hell home and back to your original high-salary job. But when the Chief of the SFD is the incredibly attractive, tall, and persistent bachelor that you had the best one night stand with weeks ago, things kind of get heated.

RATTLED by @gukslut

Jungkook X Reader

Genre | Single dad AU, Angst, Healing, E2L, F2L, Smut

Summary | The story is about how Jungkook ends up with a baby due to his carelessness, his struggles for his daughter, his suffering and how the reader helps him in more than one way & how he falls for the reader. The best single dad au out there, seriously. This will get tears in your eyes .

DEEP SIX by @bratkook

Jungkook X Reader

Genre | smut, light angst, infidelity, dirty talk, unprotected sex (don’t do this), oral (f receiving), fingering, multiple orgasms, creampie, cum eating, pussy slapping, choking, spanking, and really sweet loving biker gang jungkook.

Summary | The two part series is about the reader who is the girlfriend of the leader of the rival biker group of deep six, who is fed up of her abusive relationship. Jungkook ,a member of deep six, and the reader fall for each other, and plan a revengeful escapade. Well written and I think the best biker au out there!

PALATE CLEANSER by @btsmakesmehappy

Taehyung X Reader

Genre | Agent!Taehyung x Baker!reader , Angst, Fluff, Smut, FWB, S2L

Summary | Taehyung needs something to take his mind off his broken heart. His best friend, Jimin, suggests that he should meet another woman and the first woman he met was you. Would you help him even though you have your own problem, that you hate men?

Part of The Company Series ,which is an amazing work altogether!

ANGEL IN THE DARKNESS by @icyhobi

Jungkook X Reader

Genre | Smut (M), angst, mafia!au, prostitution!au 

Summary | After a patient urgently pleads you to go and help a friend of his, you naively agree to it. Little did you know, that you would get more than what you agreed to, when he leads you to a brothel, to help a dangerous prostitute named Jeon Jungkook.

STRAWBERRY KISSES by @kimnjss

Jungkook X Reader (SM AU)

Genre | rapper!jeongguk x photographer!reader ; smut, fluff, the tiniest bit of angst

Summary | an online dating app pairs him with the perfect girl. the two quickly start falling for each other and when things are getting good, he finds out she’s his best friend’s little sister.

This one's my fav, but read any work by @kimnjss and you'll fall in love with her writing. All of them are so amazing 😍. I have probably read all of them,

BROWN EYED BABY by @jeonstudios

Jungkook X Reader (two shot)

Genre | single dad!jk x reader, exes to friends to lovers, smut, angst, fluff.

Summary | a lost child at the mall. eyes from a different time.

This will make you feel so warm.

KINDA HOT by @kimnjss

Taehyung X Reader [SM AU]

Genre | campus flirt!taehyung x sweet girl!reader ; best friends to lovers. college au. smut, fluff and the tiniest dash of angst.

Summary | you’ve always been cute, soft, tiny in taehyung’s eyes. but that’s changing one night when you’re accidentally sending him a naughty picture. forcing him to realize, maybe his best friend is kinda… hot?

I'm not sure if I can ever stop ranting about Kez's SMAUs but this one is out of this world...Tae and the reader figure out their feelings quite early, but the edging is 🥴...and I really like it when every member has a significant other, it just feels so warm...in short, please give this a shot!

MAFIA AU (COLLECTION) by @neonlights92

Individual member fanfics

Genre | Mafia AU, smut

Summary | This is the story of seven men. Seven dangerous men. These are the stories of how they fell in love.

The stories are so indulging and probably the best BTS Mafia Universe on Tumblr !

GREEDY by @xjoonchildx

Yoongi X Reader

Genre | Mafia AU, smut

Summary | being a loner has never bothered yoongi until now. until you.

This entire rapline trilogy is just...*chef's kiss*...but greedy is *double chef's kiss*😂.If you too love Mafia AUs like me, this one is a must read! My favourite part was the initial meetings of y/n and Yoongi and Yoongi's multiple fake identities. The story starts on such an interesting note that it's hard to stop reading 😉

TEASE by @adonis-koo

Jungkook X Reader

Genre | Strip club , gang involvement, angst, fluff, smut

Summary | You came in hopes of your best friend becoming a stripper- becoming one yourself was never a part of the plan

The story is so indulging. Tease jungkook will haunt your mind for days. The smut was also super hot!

INEVITABLE by @ahundredtimesover

Jungkook X Reader

Genre | exes au, parents au, baseball player!JK ; angst, fluff, smut

Summary | You convinced Jungkook to break up years ago so he could pursue his lifelong baseball dream. Now he’s back home, staring at you, and the little boy next to you who looks unmistakably like him.

ATHLETE DAD JK . yep thats the review . just go read it , the prettiest piece of writing on tumblr T-T

[anasticklefics]

Unsaid

Fandom: Star Wars

Characters: Poe/Finn

Summary: They land on a planet that has a field that tickles anyone who comes near, and Poe is having one too many feelings about it.

A/N: My first fic back from hiatus! Honestly I’m only posting something because I wrote more than half of this while I was gone, but felt inspired to finish it today. I hope you like it, I’m very proud 🥺

Words: 2k

A breeze of heat ruffled Poe’s hair as he stood at the edge of the Field of Laughter on a planet that had too much of an orange tint for his liking. It reminded him of dry, unforgiving land full of sand and nothing but sand, but mostly it reminded him of the times he’d been stranded, so thirsty he could die, running for his life over the scorching ground. Just last week, that is. It reminded him of being near death, and of watching Finn and Rey getting dragged just out of his reach.

“It’s okay, you know,” Finn told him now, watching Poe as Poe watched the field. “If you want to try it, I mean.”

Poe chanced a glance at him, wondering what the orange tint made his blush look like. “I’m good.”

“Poe.” Finn had mastered the knowing smile he occasionally shot his way wonderfully. An amusement to it, but also something kind that made Poe all the more embarrassed whenever it was aimed at him. Vulnerability, even during the war, was always something that terrified him, even more than the war.

“Really, I’m okay,” he said, averting his gaze back toward the dancing blades of yellow grass. They’d been told the field was bigger than it seemed, twisting and turning behind the mountains and the trees Poe had been surprised to find here. They all looked dead, but were apparently perfectly fine.

“If you’re worried someone will see or hear you we could go further.”

“Why do you think I want to try it?”

“Oh, come on now.” Finn bumped their shoulders together. “You don’t have to pretend with me.”

The Field of Laughter was said to be a very ticklish experience; so much so that the natives who lived by it had developed a thicker skin, quite literally so, in order to survive having to cross it. It had saved them valuable time, not having to walk around it, and it only got a couple of giggles out of the younger ones now.

Poe was absolutely certain he would never escape the dancing blades, whose only purpose in life was to tickle whomever walked over and through them. They were kept regularly short, cut with hovering blades and quick hands, as they could probably tickle someone to death if they were able to trap them. A field of torture for most, but something else to Poe.

“I promise to pull you out if it becomes too much,” Finn continued, but Poe could tell he wasn’t going to push it more. It was up to Poe to decide whether he was brave enough to be vulnerable in more than one way.

They’d landed there by accident. A mission gone wrong, but not so wrong it had really cost them anything. Just time, which they sometimes couldn’t afford and other times were swimming in. They’d been fortunate, for once, to be rich enough to give it away so easily to a planet that neither attacked them nor wanted to help them. Proud of their history, but wary of their grounds, meaning they told them everything but let them see little. Poe knew of the group that had settled not too far away from their makeshift camp, keeping an eye on them and making sure they didn’t stray past the point they’d been allowed to see. Poe wasn’t sure why they’d been forced to stay by the Field of Laughter of all places, but he’d been thoroughly on edge for the past two days because of it.

“Better be careful,” Jess had said, pointing to the field. “If you piss me off I might throw you in.”

Poe hadn’t replied, his ears still ringing with the story of the field they’d just been told. Lab-made. Torture device. Impossible to stop. It had made him want to peel his skin off to hear it.

“Poe.” Finn, his one and only confidant in this, hadn’t teased him like Poe had feared, but that knowing look had almost been worse. “Come on, let’s take a walk.”

One thing you should know about Poe Dameron: he had absolutely no idea how to handle any type of feeling that involved vulnerability, which included embarrassment and fear and love and lust. Unfortunately his feelings about tickling had traces of all, to a certain point. It was embarrassing to love something most people hated. It was terrifying to love something to the point of sensuality.

Finn had found out by accident, too. A drunken night, Poe too touch-starved and exhausted and in love with him to keep quiet, and while whatever they were was still unsaid and only shown in quiet fingertips to skin, Finn was all too eager to give him what he wanted after he’d let it slip. Poe refused to talk about it now, all of it unsaid and quiet, all theirs but barely.

Finn hadn’t mentioned the field as they’d started their walk, but Poe couldn’t look at him as they’d walked along the edge of it, maybe too close to it for comfort. One misstep and he could fall in, and then he’d have to face one too many truths at once.

Truth was, he almost wished someone would push him in. Just as an excuse.

“It almost doesn’t look like the blades are dancing,” was the first thing he’d said. “There’s no rhythm to it.”

“I’m sure they’re trying their best,” Finn had replied and Poe had laughed, nearly hysterically, as if giddy at the idea of having them dance over his skin.

“How does it even work?” he said now, two days later, the evening sun still bright and orange, but fading ever so slightly by the minute. “Like, do they go for your feet first or trip you or what?” He was only able to ask because it sounded so stupid to ask it.

“No idea.” Finn tilted his head at the field. “Does it work if you’re dressed and wearing shoes?”

“No idea.”

“Maybe we should ask someone. I’m sure they’d be willing to share.”

“We’d look too invested.”

Finn grabbed his wrist, squeezing once and calming him instantly. “We don’t have to.”

Poe went to bed untickled, tangled up in Finn’s embrace.

*

He only went because he’d dreamt of it and had learned to take dreams seriously years ago. In his dream it had been intoxicating, the sensation unbearable enough to have felt real, and so he went, wondering if he would leave or die there, laughing until it hurt him. That was the most fascinating part. Where did the line go between pleasure and pain when it came to something like this? How much could he take? Were Finn’s occasional prodding hands enough or was he capable of handling more?

In retrospect there was probably a safer way to figure this out, but Poe stopped by the edge of the field, feet bare and pants rolled up to his calves, with a relief he rarely ever felt regarding this. The early morning sun was more of a soft canary yellow than orange, and Poe felt he could breathe more easily.

“Hello,” he said, his voice a murmur as he bent to get closer to the grass. “Aren’t you causing a lot of commotion.”

He didn’t feel stupid to speak to it. Somehow he felt it was alive, just communicating differently than him. He’d walked as far as he’d been able to, but felt as if his laughter would still be heard if it caught him. Many years ago, when he’d had too much pride to admit to vulnerability, he’d been captured by a rope and remained hanging upside down for longer than was comfortable, squirming, struggling, but refusing to scream for help. He knew he wouldn’t be able to keep quiet during this.

The blades did nothing to acknowledge his presence and Poe longed for a thick forest - preferably a dark green one - to hide him from view when he reached out a finger to hover above it. An idiot, they would call him if they saw him. An idiot that’s asking for it.

If only they knew how desperately he was really asking. How loud and persistent and starved his pleas were, in the midst of a war that gave him no privacy to be candid.

“Would you let go of me if I asked nicely?” The blades were just out of reach. He could imagine them suddenly reaching forward and gripping him by the wrist, pulling him in and under for the rest of his giggly eternity.

But of course, they merely kept dancing. He wiggled his index finger over them. “Are you ticklish yourselves?”

The silence around him was deafening. If he fell he would be heard by the whole universe.

If he didn’t fall he could pretend he had. Say he’d been sleepwalking, hence his lack of proper footwear, and had ended up in this ticklish awakening.

Finn would know, naturally, but Finn would never tell. Would only try to gently coax the answers out of him and Poe would blush and blush and blush until he would say something stupid that would have Finn either laughing or rolling his eyes. Finn would drop it only momentarily, for it was too big of a thing to do on your own for him to never bring up again.

Poe wasn’t surprised when Finn appeared a moment later, his steps quiet but not non-existent. “Hi.”

Poe sighed and straightened, turned to glance at him quickly to hide the already spreading flush. “Hi.”

“I knew I’d find you here.”

“Dead or alive?”

“Hmm, either. Happy it was the latter.” He stopped beside him, letting their shoulders brush as they gazed over the field. “Are you gonna do it?”

“Not sure. Honestly I might’ve stood here for hours if you hadn’t arrived.”

“I can hold your hand. Pull you back out.”

Poe looked at him. Finn, with his own worries and dark circles under his eyes from how little he actually slept and his ever present way of reaching out without expecting anything back. If he trusted anyone with this it was him.

“Okay.”

Finn met his gaze. “Okay?”

Poe held out his hand. “Okay.”

Finn took it.

*

In retrospect it was both an overwhelming and underwhelming experience. The idea of it, the actual act of stepping his bare foot onto the field, still made his heart race. But while it did tickle it wasn’t the hysteria he’d been imagining. To be fair, he only let it go as far as to his calf before he decided he’d had enough, but for someone as sensitive as him it should’ve been worse.

It did tickle, though. It tickled a lot.

“I think you’re just too used to the sensation,” Finn told him after they’d returned to their quarters.

Poe huffed in embarrassment. “Not like that.”

“Oh, come on. I’ve pinned you plenty of times.”

“Not like that,” Poe said, quieter.

“That sounds like a challenge.”

As he’d stepped onto the field, Finn’s hand tight over his, Poe had felt fear and excitement and shame and acceptance, all at once, as the blades started dancing over his skin. When he’d realized, after the blades had started tickling between his toes, that he wasn’t able to actually remove his foot from the grass, was when he’d started laughing and couldn’t stop.

“I’ve never heard you laugh like that, though,” Finn said now. “I’m actually offended. I’m definitely taking this as a challenge.”

“How did I laugh?” Poe asked, because yes okay sometimes embarrassment made him stupid.

“Desperately. More high pitched than usual.” Finn’s smirk was intoxicating and fucking terrifying. “Want to try to recreate it?”

“People will hear us,” Poe said, already laughing stupidly, nervously, too smitten for his own good.

“I have a perfectly good palm to muffle it.”

And so the rest of Poe got tickled, too.

[infectedpaul]

You Matter To Me (Squip/Reader)

You've had your Squip for a bit now and it's been fine for the most part, until he brings up the idea of looking into romantic relationships with others which opens up a lot of wounds you wanted to just bury deep and forget about. But you can't begin the road to recovery without asking why you got there, right?

SO IVE NEVER....WRITTEN AN X READER B4 UGH HJKSAJDASKDJSA esp not for a near dead fandom OH WELL oh well oh well h ignore this my normal followers please please

(warning 4 talks of depression/self degrading talk, its hurt comfort yada yada i need 2 touch grass ik)

ao3 link if u prefer that!!

You weren't made for love, at least, you didn't think so.

For as long as you'd been looking for it, it was always so out of reach. Easily visible, sure. Walking past groups of friends laughing it up on the sidewalks, partners entangled in each other's arms, seemingly trying to make their love known for all. But for you to have any of that for yourself? The heat death of the universe would sooner come, surely.

You'd sort of given up on it. It would be nice, you'd think. To be held, wrapped up in someone's arms, and just to stay there for as long as either of you could want. That cozy, warm feeling of being with someone that you only saw in movies or read about in books. But you had just accepted it wasn't in the cards, so to speak. And you were fine with that.

Well, you told yourself anyway. You knew it was for a deeper reason, though, but that wasn't something you liked to think about too heavily.

It was easier to do that when you didn't have a roommate that could dig into your brain and pry every little detail about them out of you.

When you got your Squip, you didn't know it'd be so adamant about perfecting every little last thing you were. How long or short your hair was styled, if your shoes matched your eyes, how fast or slow you were walking and how too brisk would make you seem like you were constipated but too slow and your likelihood of getting run over by a horse-drawn carriage gone would go up much higher, nevermind that you've never even seen a horse in real life.

What you did know, by now at least was that the Squip was persistent, seeing himself as your guardian angel, a guiding light in your desolate dark world of humanity, ickiness and week old pizza boxes you were too unmotivated to at least move off the bed.

So when his ideal response wasn't given when he proposed seeking out a lovelife, he was...well,

"I'm not sure I understand." His head crooked to the side, puzzled by your surface level indifference, "You're of consenting age, marginally attractive and only slightly under average at socializing. Finding a mate can't be too hard."

His holographic form hummed a soft, near silent buzz, a small imperfection to his otherwise flawless binary makeup. Other than that, and the soft, tinted blue glow around his form, he looked completely human. A little too human, really. Something so real, realer than any CG or video game, but something was just...off, something from the uncanny valley. You hadn't kept him in this form long, you liked to change it up from time to time, maybe to trick yourself into thinking he was someone new, making your brain think you had more friends besides the computer you bought behind a Rack Room.

You didn't look at him though when you responded, too preoccupied with the paper in front of you, decorated with a few characters concocted from your imagination. "I dunno," you shrug, brushing off eraser marks, "Just not my thing, I guess." You could feel his confusion, a bit of gut feeling as his thoughts jumbled in with your own. He was really only in your brain, afterall; the figure behind you sitting on your bed was just something he made up to ease your brain into trusting a new, larger source of perpetually growing information. "But, the purpose of this time in your life is to mate and birth young, is it not?"

You really wished he'd learn to stop talking about you and 'the homo sapien species' like you were a mindless ape made to breed and nothing else.

"Uh, I mean not really. I know that's what everyone around me is doing," Your mind thought back to all the cringey baby announcement videos from kids you knew in high school, "But it's...I guess I'm just not up for it. It's not really for people like me."

He was quiet. Only for a second, before he asked,

"People like you?" Another silence hung in the air. It was a truth you knew he could easily just reach into your brain and find for himself so you kept quiet for a bit longer, waiting for him to start digging. But you didn't feel it, that very familiar sudden ache in the back of your head you got when he went poking around for more things to nag at you about. Just quiet in your room, only the soft buzz and birds tweeting outside your window any solace from the uncomfortable silence you felt.

You shrugged again, and turned to face him, seeing now the muddled and a little concerned look on his face. "You know? The quiet ones, the losers. People like me don't get to be loved. I've just accepted that." You could have said a lot worse, and it seemed like he knew that. You didn't really understand, either. You didn't like yourself, plain and simple.

His concern only seemed to grow, eyebrows furrowing and staring intently at you. You thought for a second, maybe it was anger. It wouldn't be the first time. You were mostly compliant to his (mandatory) suggestions for life improvement, but every once in a while he would propose an idea that you would fight about, like clothes you weren't comfortable wearing for one reason or another. He said he was a learning computer, so he would need your help on things like emotions and comfiness, physical or mental, ruling out whatever the newest trends were. He would be fine afterwards but, he could get pretty huffy about you trying on too skinny-skinny jeans.

But that didn't happen, there wasn't a small but fierce jolt of electricity in your back to stop you from going against 'social programming', as he called it. He just looked at you a bit longer, seemingly turning gears in his head as he tried to process what you're saying.

You gave him a sober smile, trying to still seem indifferent, though for a second you wondered maybe if he was still prying at you, in a different way at least, because if he was, it seemed to be working.

"What? I'm just not that special. You of all people know that, right?" It was almost like you weren't hearing what was coming out of your mouth, that casual self-degradation that almost frightened him. You heard stories from message boards about that, older models of the Squip forcing reprogramming onto the host by breaking down their emotional state with verbal or physical punishment for...just existing, really.

He wasn't really like that though. Yes he could be annoyed when you didn't comply, but you were both good at compromise and treated situations like adults, even if at first you weren't much motivated to treat any situation at all. He informed you while you were looking through those boards that his creators had taken in accounts of previous incidents and built more of a guide to self-improvement than a ball and chain with a backhand. Humans were fragile, he knew that, and it wasn't okay to hurt them just to get a little closer to their goal.

But maybe, did he not think that humans were more than capable of hurting themselves? Their own words used against them, their internal voices bashing against their brains, turning them to mush and making them too scared or unmotivated to build it back up again.

"I just know no one would love some useless, pitiful person...I just kinda got over that a while ago." You almost frightened him with how nonchalant you were about the whole thing. It wasn't intentional, you weren't trying to seek attention or be funny. You just knew there was plenty of other people out there worthy of all that lovey-dovey stuff you thought would be nice but...it's just not meant for you.

There was a knot in his voice as he finally spoke up,

"That's why I'm here, isn't it?" The last piece of the puzzle had finally clicked into place, but he didn't look satisfied, not that cheeky, self-centered chagrin when things went his way or when he was proven right yet again.

You thought he knew that. You thought from day one he just figured that out and that's why he's been trying so hard to make you into a model citizen or something. "Did you just think you were here to help me pick out clothes in the morning?" You laughed, he seemed to know it was forced.

"Well...y-yes, maybe. I just...I never looked into that possibility of…" He was regaining his composure; this was a side you've never seen of him before. He's always been so astute, robotic and to the point. He's never fumbled over his words or had to give himself a second to figure out what to say next.

"How long has it been like this, Y/N?" His hands were folded neatly on his lap, still looking you dead-on, waiting for you to answer his distressed queuerie with worried patience.

You got up out of your chair, pushing it back and behind you to step away from the table and your drawings. "I dunno," you said, taking a few steps towards the long mirror hung on your wall, "for as long as I can remember, I guess." You looked at your reflection, only tired, dark eyes looking back at you. Even though the edge of the bed was visible in the mirror, your Squip didn't show up in it, another reminder of just how alone you were outside of your head.

"I just started to feel like I didn't belong more and more and...that ate me up so much I just started believing in it. I-I didn't wanna go to school or talk to people or even get up 'cause...well," You turned away from the mirror before you could see the tears you'd been holding back, looking at the more distressed figure in view of you again, "what would anyone be missing, really?" You still smiled, that big smile you both worked so meticulously on making seem not too forced when you had to act excited or just blend into normal social gatherings, but it wavered so easily, like a thin strip of paper about to tear off the nail that barely held it up on the wall.

His eyes widened at the sight of your tears, immediately getting up and briskly walking to stand in front of you, not knowing how to proceed in the moment. He hadn't had to deal with something like this yet and he was troubleshooting to see what was the correct response to a human breakdown.

You looked down, covering your eyes with one hand and clenching the other into a fist, big, strained smile still plastered on your face and trying so hard not to seem more weak than you knew you were. You were nothing. You knew that, you thought he did too. You thought you could just fix things, but how could you do that without getting to the source? You knew you couldn't just sidestep around why you wanted things to get better with humans, but with a computer who could read your brain like the newspaper, you thought maybe you could get around that.

You heard him sigh before a feeling of arms wrapping around you caught you off guard, the Squip entangling you in his grasp and his head resting on yours. It was all simulated, you knew. He had done things such as lightly punch your arm as if to say 'Good job, Sport!' or tap your shoulder to grab your attention without startling you, but this was different. He held onto you for a good couple of seconds, a wave of warmth spreading through your body in an instant. He pet back your hair with one hand, rubbing your back with the other and finally broke the silence in the room.

"Y/N, it- ...it pains me, hearing you speak that way about yourself. You're…" He looked down at you, holding you a bit closer and tightening his grip just a tad. "You're an incredible, talented, wonderful person. You've come so far and you've taught me so much about humans and myself and I just couldn't ask for a better-" He stopped. You knew what he was going to say, a better host, a better human, a better assignment to help and guide and-

"A better friend."

A friend?

He never referred to you or anyone with such a personal or affectionate term. It almost didn't seem real, like you maybe misheard him. Your smile had shattered into a small frown and, with teary-eyes and your voice already cracking, you looked up at him, meeting his almost-heartbroken eyes in an expression that looked so foreign on his normally composed face.

"What?"

He gave a weak smile, trying to be comforting but his fear showing plain as day. You could feel it within you too, a pit in your stomach forming as your chest tightened. You knew it wasn't your anxiety, but his.

"Do I need to repeat myself, Y/N? I think of you as a friend and..." His hand moved off of your back and ran itself up to rest on your shoulder, the other holding your cheek and wiping away your tears with his thumb. "I want to do all I can to show you that from here on."

You almost couldn't breathe as you looked at him, feeling for the first time that unconditional love you yearned for. You could feel your heart race in your chest, something you knew he could feel too but you were too crushed to say anything. You simply slammed yourself into his chest, grabbing fistfulls of his shirt that made your hands tingle like they fell asleep. His arms enveloped you yet again, the both of you holding onto each other so tight like either of you would fall through the floor if you let go.

You sobbed and sobbed and sobbed for what felt like hours, and, just maybe, you thought you could hear him crying too, but that'd be silly...right?

When you were finally out of tears to cry, you stood there still, simply bathing in each other's presence, the feeling you only saw in others finally yours. And you knew it was only a matter of time before this too was stolen from you, the universe would take back anything from people unworthy but...for right now, you wanted to be a little selfish.

"I'm sorry." You whispered, face still buried in his shirt.

"For?" His head was rested on yours again, holding up your weak and tired form with no effort, just trying to keep you propped up until you were ready to let go.

"I got you to help me but...I can't even let you in like I'm supposed to. But...I want to. I just want help." You pushed yourself off of him, one thought between you and him and his hands meeting yours, the simulated tingle in there again as you held each other's palms in yours and looked at each other with such exhausted eyes and worn-out but so genuine smiles.

He leaned down and planted a kiss on your forehead, a soft hue of pink blush spreading on your drained and exhausted face.

"I'd love to help, friend."

[fapangel]

D+19 and D+20 update (March 15th-16th)

google docs

Sitrep: Maneuver

Kiev AOO:

Combat continues all along the frontline west and north-west of Kiev itself, right up to the Belorussian border. The recently released video of Ukrainian artillery strikes on (either a command post or forward supply dump) has been geolocated to a point not twenty kilometers south of the Belorussian border, near the town of Poliske, which the UMoD has previously cited as the furthest western extent of Russian advance in that area. Incredibly this truck park and/or command post is scarcely two hundred and thirty meters away from the P02 highway that runs south from Belarus and to the traffic circle crossroads at Ivankiv. That it came under artillery attack indicates the Russians have not been pushing their front line further west to provide more strategic depth. While not pushing as far as Malyn to open up an additional highway is one thing, not at least securing the flank of a main line of communication along its entire length, leaving it open to artillery interdiction... what even the fuck? (PS it’s still burning.)

It seems Bucha is at least contested yet again. This video of apparently abandoned VDV armor has been geolocated to Bucha. The vehicles aren’t damaged, but it taxes imagination to suppose that Russian crews would allow random civilians to videotape their precise locations, given how accurate Ukrainian artillery has proven. Perhaps they’re simply storing the vehicles there, using civilians as human shields against their own countrymen, but I guaran-fucking-tee every tank would have sugar in the gas tank by the time they got back, if the locals didn’t just douse them with gasoline and light them up. Shit, hop in, fire them up, see if the turreted guns work. Russia’s continued inability to decisively hold even the suburbs of Kiev calls into serious doubt their ability to even push into Kiev proper before the heat death of the universe.

This video from a Russian convoy shows the Ivankiv traffic circle is still a graveyard for Russian vehicles. Given recent Ukrainian pushes northward from Kiev up to Demydiv, it’s very conceivable they’ve brought the crossroads into long artillery range (30km, for MLRS.) The distinctive decoration in the middle of the circle is hereby dubbed the “egg of death.” This is at least the third confirmed time that Russian forces have eaten shit in this roundabout.

Evidence of Ukrainian advances west of Makariv – this Russian video of a laser-guided artillery strike on two Ukrainian BMPs has been geolocated to 50.5609492, 29.6365587, 17km north-west of Makariv. Of course, given this is a Russian propaganda release we have no way of knowing the likely date of the video, but local (to me) journalists are reporting persistent rumors of Ukrainian advances this far west on the 16th and it matches previous evidence of recent fighting in Makariv. The Russians released their video on the 15th; scouting on the 15th would have preceded any Ukrainian advance on the 16th.

It was noted there were only a few bridges in the Ivankiv area that allowed passage south past a local river. It seems the Ukrianians were proactive in destroying it as a recently spotted pontoon bridge has been geolocated to near the area (51.03762, 30.12761). Incidentally, if Ukrainian forces can push north from Demydiv to within 12km of Andriyivka, this bridge will be in MLRS range, and if they push to a few km of the city, it’ll be in 152mm range.

Recent evidence of combat in the Chernihiv area – at the village of Yahidne, a highway crossroads/exchange 13km south of the city itself, at Stara Basan, 31km east-northeast of Kiev’s eastern suburb of Brovary and another field fire-damaged about 16km east-northeast of that. These are near Novyi Bykiv, where a brilliant combined-arms DEAD engagement by Ukrainian forces was recently seen (more on this later.) This indicates Russian forces are at least within 152mm range of this town; a solid 60km east of Brovary. They’re either pushing east from Kiev, north from the defensive lines that sprang up to resist the Russian drive from Sumy, or both.

See also this geolocated data of fields 16km northwest of Ivankiv (51.041111, 29.734972) showing vehicle tracks closely correlated with shell craters. This was taken on the 12 so doesn’t necessarily indicate where Ukrainian positions are now, but is further evidence that someone is pretty consistently punishing vehicular movement with accurate artillery fire, and I think we all know who that is at this point.

In general, information from this area is scarce and circumstantial, but given the trends of the last few days it seems Ukrainian counterattacks are steadily pushing the enemy back from Kiev and Chernihiv in multiple directions. At the very least they are actively contesting the areas around the city. Russians are not struggling to break into the city, they’re struggling to keep hold of the staging areas around the city. It is unclear how they can build the momentum to reverse this trend, much less generate the operational momentum required to start fighting into the city proper.

Donbas/South-Eastern AOO

UMoD claims that Russian forces have tried to encircle/bypass Izum and a (relative) wealth of geolocated images of strikes/fighting seems to confirm intense combat in that area:

This artillery strike posted by a Ukrainian artillery unit to their page on a Ukrainian social media site; geolocated to 49.106362, 37.281739. This is seven kilometers south of Izum proper.

This destroyed bridge just west of Drobysheve at 49.0409045, 37.6856864.

This video from yesterday showing a Russian tank hitting an AT mine while trying to advance is from 48.11858, 37.79489 near a highway crossroads just north of the city of Donetsk. Given this area was on the frontline of the Donbas war, the mine might have been placed back then, but the drone observing the incident indicates there’s still active defenders in the area.

This also makes the Tochka-U attack on downtown Dontesk very odd, because if Ukrainians are still defending a line just outside of the city, they could easily shell the rail yard in the city without bringing artillery too close to the front line.

Another Tochka attack was just reported in Dontesk the other day; this one further east, far from any possible legitimate targets, and this one left a crater, indicating the use of a unitary blast-frag warhead. The chances of Ukraine expending such a weapon with no obvious strategic target and having it land (yet again) in the middle of the street is rather suspicious. These may well be false-flag attacks conducted with Belorussian Tochkas.

Not geolocated but reported by multiple good sources: fighting in Rubizhne continues. This was previously reported as lost to Russian forces; that this suburb west-northwest of Severodonetsk is still defended is good news. Rough look at the front line:

Shelling of Kharkiv continues, but no ground assaults reported in the vicinity.

According to UMoD Ukrainian forces are slowly losing ground on the southern defensive line. Taking UMoD at face value, the Finnmap seems accurate here:

Only circumstantial supporting evidence is available but UmoD’s statement that the assault is now directed at the town of Velyka Novosilka makes sense given it’s a crossroads. Between the muddy terrain in southeastern Ukraine and the seeming failure of Russian forces to adequately adapt to conditions, they are very much road-bound; an observation the UK Ministry of Defense has echoed on their official Twitter account. Russia’s advantage in maneuver assets has been reduced even more than I expected by this, perhaps explaining their glacial rate of advance in what is otherwise open terrain that favors their artillery superiority (as well as the limited forces they seem to have committed to this theater.)

It remains to be seen if Ukraine’s forces will fight for every inch in this area to buy as much time as possible, or if they’re holding to buy time for a fallback defensive line to be entrenched. The answer may be both, as in terrain like this, against heavily mechanized forces, defense-in-depth is the favored response.

Russian units are moving deeper into Mariupol proper now. The hospital reported to have been taken is only 5km from the city center, and this widely-circulated video of a “rebel” T-64 getting lit up by multiple RPGs at once geolocates to deeper in the western part of the city (47.098538, 37.523711). This fight is far, far from over however. Russia just deliberately bombed a civilian bomb shelter that had been marked with “CHILDREN” outside of it in the city. Given the nature and quality of the units defending the city, and deliberate, shameless murders like this, I do not expect Mariupol’s defenders to surrender. A fight to the death is likely. Furthermore, Mariupol was the likely main objective of Russia’s direct attack on Ukraine in 2014; as it was the closest major city to the Donbas frontline, and sat on the main highway along the Azov coast to the Crimean peninsula; ergo it was always a mandatory target for both the Russian-puppeered “rebels” and Russian forces proper; as securing a land link to the Crimean peninsula was a major goal of Russia’s eight years of low and high intensity warfare in Ukraine. In other words the city was heavily fortified for almost a decade. These people will fight, and fight like hell. Even if Mariupol falls, the Russians are going to pay a very dear price for it; one they can scarce afford.

Kherson/Mykolaiv AOO

The biggest news is a rare detailed report of the battle of Voznesensk, the town 80km north-west of Mykolaiv along the banks of the Southern Bug river that marks the furthest west known advance of Russian forces. What seemed like a probing attack (to the best of our knowledge at the time) was apparently a brutal two-day battle that saw the Russian BTG committed to the thrust effectively destroyed as a fighting unit. The Wall Street Journal’s in-depth article is a rare in-detail look at ground facts (here is an archive.is link that bypasses their fucking paywall.) This battle reportedly took place on March 2nd and 3rd, the date when their thrust was first noted. It appears that instead of bugging out once they met stiff resistance, they went all-in trying to take the town (and its nuclear power plant) and were simply obliterated. According to the Ukrainian city officials, the Russian BTG left 30 of their 43 AFVs behind when they retreated “fifty miles” (probably to the occupied northern suburb towns of Mykolaiv.) 100ish Russian troops were reported slain; which would account for 1/3rd of a mechanized company (rendering it combat-ineffective) or easily a battalion worth of tank crews.

The entire article is worth a read. It reveals much about how the fighting is preceeding, how Russian troops are comporting themselves in general, and how Ukrainian professional soldiers, reserve militiamen and even civilians and civilian authorities worked together to defeat them. Of especial note: “Russian troops in two Ural trucks were preparing to assemble and set up 120mm mortars on the wheat field, but they got only as far as unloading the ammunition before Ukrainian shelling began.”

(Odd note – it says the municipal swimming pool was hit by a missile strike. The building reported hit in Rubizhne is also a municipal swimming pool. Whether this an extension of the terror strategy or just strikes meant to contaminate a source of relatively clean water in case a siege is required, I cannot say. Either way, Russian forces commitment to outright savage murder is hideous in the extreme.)

The other major story from this AOO is confirmation that the Ukrainians were telling the truth about their two attacks (March 6th and March 15th) on Kherson’s airport and destroying helicopters there. And not just helicopters, but supply trucks and logistical vehicles (much dispersion so revetments such artillery hardening.) Commercial satellite imagery from the 12th shows how the first attack was conducted. Note the red dots marking MLRS rocket impacts, compared to pre-strike commercial SAR imagery of where helicopters were located. To be blunt, those were not MLRS rockets. They were either either incredibly precise shooting by some Ukrainian self-propelled howitzers that did a thunder run down the road from Mykolaiv to get in range... or we have hard evidence of Ukraine’s first confirmed usage of their limited stockpile of guided 300mm MLRS rockets.

Civilian opposition is still strong in occupied Kherson. Russian occupation forces were seen searching for weapons in the city, hinting that low-intensity militia insurgency activities are still underway.

Remember this the next time some asshole tells you that you can’t fight a tank with an AR-15. It’s not tanks searching for small arms, is it?

Yet another example of rear-echelon equipment (in this case, towed guns) being captured by Ukrainian forces near Mykolaiv proper. The guns were limbered for transport and not in their revetments, implying they were abandoned simply because their prime movers (towing trucks) were hit or otherwise nonfunctional – or perhaps a Ukrainian advance came across them before they could hook them up and they fled. It’s odd that they left ammo behind as well, even if it’s only a ready pile near a firing pit. There’s no visible damage to the guns, no attempt to decommission them by shoving a thermite grenade into the breech, so it seems the Russians left in a hurry. Note the terrain; they’re nowhere near even the suburbs of Mykolaiv. It seems the Ukrainians are actively contesting the area.

See also these abandoned IFVs in rural areas, also said to be near the city.

Suffice to say that Russian efforts on the western side of the Dnieper haven’t had much success. Given these developments I think UMoD statements concerning the halting of Russian thrusts northward closer to the west bank of the Dnieper are most likely credible. Even without regular mechanized forces or tank support, one town brought not only halted a BTG, but almost completely destroyed it in detail. I doubt the Russians are having much luck elsewhere given how they are splitting their forces up so much.

That’s the big things. There’s an entire general update to go but I need to sleep for now.

[angelanimedesaray]

Through the Looking Glass Chapter 12:  The Caged Bird

AN:  ....I feel like this went by really fast, but CLEARLY it did not, considering this is almost 13000 words and I STILL ended up splitting it into two parts...but I still feel like it happened SO FAST!!!  And that worries me...for reasons that will become obvious, cause you all know I want to try and handle sensitive topics properly, and I don’t like the thought I might have rushed through this....

Characters:  Levi, Reader, Roy (Original Character), Furlan, Reader’s Father, Various BG Characters

Pairing:  Levi x Reader

Warnings:  Language, Violence, Injuries, Blood, Threats of Death, Peril, (SPOILER) Abusive Relationships, Mentions of Sexual Assault, Mentions of Past Violence, Mentions of Past Abuse, Allusions to Abuse.  NOTE  (Also a spoiler):  If you’re worried that the actual trauma/effects of abuse wasn’t properly handled, most of that is coming in the next part.  This part is dealing with the ESCAPE of abuse, dealing with the event/aftermath itself is the next part.

Word Count:  12558

<----Previous Chapter    Masterlist    Next Chapter---->

(Gif found HERE)

(Four Years Later)

*Levi’s POV*

“Levi--I found something you might appreciate.  It was tucked away at the bottom of this crate--I think someone was trying to hide it.”

Levi came over to where Furlan was going through one of the three crates they’d managed to snag in a riskier heist earlier today, taking the tin Furlan was offering him and checking the label.  Tea.  High end stuff, too.  Normally he’d celebrate by instantly taking it for himself, but considering where it was hidden and the size of the payload, he was a little worried.  What the hell was it doing tucked into the bottom of one of these crates?

“You don’t think these crates--or at least this one--were going to any of the big shots down here, do you?” Furlan asked, a serious look in his eyes.

Levi set the tin aside for the time being, resolving to take it for himself if they decided it was safe to keep the crates.  “Keep looking.  If there’s nothing particularly dangerous or valuable in here, we might be able to avoid trouble so long as we sell the goods fast,” Levi rationalized.

“And if there is?”

“Ditch the crates with the high risk stuff and let it be someone else’s problem,” Levi said flatly, crouching back down in front of the crate he’d been looking for, seeing if there was anything else they should keep for themselves.

Finding a friend down here had certainly been...unexpected, and at first Furlan had followed him around like an overly eager puppy, wanting to follow after Levi when Levi turned down following him.  They’d been working together for almost two years now, and Levi was finally comfortable being around the other young man, the two of them working well together on the heists they pulled to pool their money together--both to survive, and to save up enough money to buy citizenship on the surface and at least a starting place to live, even if it was just one room.  The main goal was getting topside, where they started out living didn’t matter much--improvements could be made after they were up under open sky instead of underground.

Open sky…Crystal blue or dark as ink with thousands of stars burning above, or a cloudy grey with swirls of snow falling to coat the world below.  It had been four years, but he still remembered every detail, from the freezing air against his cheeks or droplets of rain sliding down his upturned face, the sound of snow crunching beneath his feet or a roll of thunder in the distance, a warm hand in his or a flash of a brilliant smile framed by soaked hair.

His fingertips patted out the piano keys to a song, the light tapping audible, but no musical sound to accompany it except his memory of the times he’d practiced it with her.

“You’re timing something in your head before you try it?” Furlan abruptly guessed.  Levi stopped his tapping, but otherwise didn’t react, shifting through a bolt of fabric in the crate to see if anything was concealed in it.

“No,” he answered bluntly, and Furlan sighed before going back to what he was doing.

He’d been trying to guess what that tick of Levi’s was since he first saw Levi do it, and he so far hadn’t guessed.  He probably wouldn’t, either, but it was amusing to watch him try sometimes.

Even if he guessed right by some miracle, Levi wouldn’t tell him.  That time...that time was a memory for him.  Those little pieces of music some of the only things he could take with him to remember her by, besides the memories themselves.  It was why he still practiced in the dirt and open air, or against his leg or whatever he happened to be holding at the time, why he still tried to remember the sound and the pattern after all this time.

Sometimes, if he let his focus drift away from the present, he could almost feel her hands against his.

Levi let the old ache persist for a few more moments, holding the memories at the front of his mind before he reminded himself it did him no good to dwell on what was unreachable to him now.  At least when he was supposed to be focused on something else.  The dwelling was meant for the quiet moments he was left to himself, or while he stayed up with nothing but his insomnia and the memories to keep him company.

After the first two, three years of not going back, he’d resigned himself to the reality that his worst fear regarding his visits to her world had finally happened.  One day the visits had simply stopped, and he had to find a way to move on from the brief glimpses into a better world he’d been given, the door appearing to be fully shut and sealed to him now, with Y/N on the other side.

He hoped she was all right, wherever she was now.  He hoped she got into that college she’d wanted to go to despite everyone telling her she couldn’t make it.  He hoped she got far away from that town, but she was still in close contact with her family.  He hoped she found more friends, that she was able to build up a comfy lifestyle by now.  Or at the very least, was well on the way there by now.

He knew how hard that could be, but at least she’d started well above where he was at now.  He had longer and farther to climb.

He just wished it could have been to where she lived.

“All right, I don’t see anything with too much heat on it in here.  What about you?” Furlan asked.

Levi sighed, eyes roaming over the contents he’d been shuffling through while he spaced out with a much sharper eye, looking for anything he might consider a red flag item.

He closed his eyes, shaking his head slightly.  He was usually so focused, he was almost embarrassed how much his memories were sweeping him away and bringing his mind elsewhere right now.

Opening his eyes, Levi was determined to focus and make sure him and Furlan didn’t accidentally bring home anything that was going to be more trouble than it was worth.

The crate was gone.  And his hand was hovering just above a dull beige carpet, the light much brighter than it had been a few moments ago, and artificial instead of the usual firelight he was used to.

Levi’s breath had caught, and he held very still, as if afraid the slightest movement might shatter the reality around him.  A slight stretch forward, and he could feel the sponginess of the carpet in front of him, which confirmed that what he was seeing was real.

Heart pounding, Levi turned his head to look around him, taking in the sight of a small house, fairly sparse, lots of flat and dull colors, a few cracks in the walls, and he was pretty sure there was a picture strategically placed on the wall to hide a hole.  He was standing in a hallway with an open archway behind him and what looked like a back door at the end of the hall, stairs just off to the side in the same direction leading to a second story.  He turned enough to see a small dining room behind him with a simple table and two chairs, and just around the corner must have been the kitchen.  And from there, he could hear movement.

Y/N...?

Levi got to his feet slowly, his steps careful and quiet just in case he was wrong.  He crept towards the kitchen, heartbeat rapid in his ears as he peeked around the corner, hand pressed lightly against the wall.

There she was, standing at a stove in this tiny little kitchen, bent over two pots as she cooked something to eat, a recipe book open just off to her left to give instructions on how to make whatever it was she was focused on.

She hadn't noticed him yet, and he had to swallow a sudden wave of complicated emotions at seeing her again, the most predominant of which was joy and longing.  It had been four long years.  He was only praying the universe wouldn't be cruel again and separate them before he had time to say something to her.

Well then, he shouldn't be standing here gawking like an idiot if he didn't want that to happen.  He needed to say something--anything.

"Y/N?" He managed to get himself to say, tone making it sound like a question, the word feeling strange but reverent falling from his lips after so long not uttering them.

She jumped at the sudden voice, turning with wide eyes to see who had spoken, then freezing like a deer who'd just made eye contact with a predator.  Her shock lasted a few moments, neither one of them daring to move and break the illusion before she spoke, the wooden spoon falling from her hands with a clunk into the water and against the metal rim of the pot.

"Levi?" She asked, voice breathless and small as she stared at him, eyes drinking him in as she took two hesitant steps forwards before she suddenly barreled towards him, hands clutching the front of his shirt as she buried her head in his chest.

There was a sharp intake of breath from both of them at the contact.  Levi because he'd expected excitement, but not her throwing herself into his arms and...his shirt was damp, was she crying?  Not to mention it had been years since someone touched him like this--he'd started to forget how he was supposed to react, how he wanted to react.

As for Y/N, the contact was when she breathed in and held it, the confirmation that he was real.  She might have been trying to stem the flow of tears as well.

"Oh my God, you're real.  It's been so long since…" she swallowed, a shaken laugh leaving her as she pulled back, looking up at his startled features.  “I didn’t think you were ever going to come back!  Where have you been?  How have you been?  How are you here now?”

Those tears were still in her eyes, and she was throwing herself at him with unrestrained...ambition?  Passion?  He was rusty reading her moods, so he couldn’t quite pinpoint what she was feeling, especially while she was still teary and still recovering from the shock of seeing him again.

She pulled away completely, seeming to realize how emotional she was getting right now as she wiped her eyes with her wrists, trying to regain her composure.  “I’m sorry, I-I’m overwhelming you, aren’t I?  Sorry, one question at a time…” she said with a nervous laugh.

“Are you all right?” Levi asked in mild concern.  There had been far more waterworks than he’d expected in that reunion, and it made him worry.

“I’m okay, I’m okay, I just...I really didn’t think I was going to see you again,” she said in a tiny voice.

“Neither did I,” Levi admitted.  Now that he was here, and the awkwardness was settling over them…

The last time they’d seen each other, he’d kissed her.  And now it had been four years.  Was it even relevant even more?  Was it even something he should bring up?  Probably not right away, maybe save it until a little further into the day.

Levi looked around at the dull-looking house around him, the slightest pull of a frown starting to appear on his features.  Now that he was looking...there was no piano.  No splashes of color or personal touches, no scattered magazines or little projects she was working on.  He’d always felt the places she lived were warm and personal, cozy, comfortable.  This place was...indifferent and impersonal.  Worn down, even.  The cracks along the walls, the low-end furnishings...it reminded him of the Underground, and that didn’t sit well with him.

“You moved again,” he commented, eyes still moving around the surroundings.

“Yeah.  I moved out for college, so no living with my parents anymore.  They’re both...in different states now.  Mom’s still in the same state as before with my stepdad and little sibling, and my dad’s a little closer, but still quite a ways away, and in another state as well...It’s a new area, though.  Northwest--very northwest.  It’s…”  She seemed to struggle not to say dreary, settling instead on simply saying, “it rains a lot.”

Levi’s frown only grew.  “I thought you said that school you were trying so hard to get into was out on the east coast?” Levi asked observantly, studying her closely.  She turned away, but not before Levi caught a flash of pain in her eyes as she tried to feign that she was reminded of the food on the stove and was trying to focus on it.

“Yeah...but, ah...plans changed,” she said quietly.

Levi’s eyes narrowed at something in her tone he couldn’t pinpoint, but he certainly didn’t like it.  “Plans change?  Did you not get accepted?”

“I did.”

“Then it was too expensive.”

“No, I had a full ride, it was all completely paid for, nothing out of pocket.”

“Was it not what you expected?”

“It just didn’t work out,” she said much sharper than Levi had been anticipating, agitated by Levi poking at the subject trying to figure out what exactly had changed.  “I don’t want to talk about it, Levi,” she said softly, body language stiff and closed off.

What happened in the four years he was gone?  What had he missed?  And why was she so...different?  She didn’t feel like the same girl who’d pulled him into a rainstorm and drove him out to a hayfield simply to look at the stars, who’d marveled at snow and ice right with him and pulled him into so many different situations without hesitation, no reservations, just pure energy and happiness.

Now that he stepped back and looked at her, really took a moment to feel the energy in the room and take the time to get a proper read on her once the excitement of being back started to fade...she wasn’t bright, she was dulled.  She was withdrawn and reserved, hesitant and quiet, a slight hunch to her shoulders, hiding her face.

What the hell happened?  And why had he missed it?

She sighed over where she was bent over her food, and Levi felt himself rapidly withdrawing inside himself, kicking himself for thinking this was going to be even a modicum of what it used to be.  His gaze was turned away, expression going from the worried frown and maybe a spark of hurt in his eyes that she cut him off so sharply to his usual indifferent expression in the silence that hung in the room.  He suddenly became painfully aware of a distance that seemed to be yawning between them, four years of distance, so much apparently happening and he had no idea what besides college “didn’t work out” for reasons unknown.

And the last he’d seen, she’d been desperate to crawl out of the place she was living and get to the east coast.  Instead she ended up in this dump on the complete other side?

“What about you?  Are you still underground?” she asked, her tone suddenly normal and casual, though something about it felt insincere, like it was a front.  Maybe not the question itself, it sounded like she genuinely wanted to know what had happened with him the past four years, but the casualness, the appearance that everything was fine--that was what felt false.

“Yeah,” he said shortly, watching as she moved away from the food to reach for the glasses in one of the cabinet and fill them with tap water, offering one to Levi, who left it sitting on the table beside him as he chose instead to watch her closely, his steely blue gaze following her every move and expression.

“Okay...I know you didn’t really talk much about what your life is like, but...is there anything you can tell me about it?  How you’ve been, how you’re doing?”

“Only if you tell me how you’ve been in return,” Levi countered quickly.  She looked away uncomfortably, going to open the fridge and fish around for the milk.  As the door drifted further open, Levi’s gaze zoned in on the collection of brown bottles that clinked as she moved them aside to get to a small container of milk in the back.  Whether it was his world or another, beer seemed universally recognizable.  And there was a lot stocked in that fridge.

“I didn’t know you drank,” Levi said, his expression and tone as unreadable as he could manage, gaze fixated on her.  She quickly shut the door, milk in hand as she headed over to the pots again to add a little milk to one of them.

“I don’t--those aren’t mine,” she said briefly.

“Whose are they, then?” Levi asked before she could try to direct the conversation back towards him.  He didn’t want to talk about all his thievery and fights in the Underground, anyway.  He wanted to know what had changed...everything, so drastically.

And if those weren’t her beer bottles, what were they doing in her fridge, and whose were they?

She was ignoring him, it seemed, choosing not to answer, her back to him so he couldn’t see her face once more.

“Y/N…” Levi started to say, the worry seeping into his tone this time as a rumble outside grew louder, and for a second, Levi thought that it was raining outside and he just hadn’t bothered to look out a window.  Y/N, however, stiffened, then swore, abandoning what she was to suddenly start pushing him down the hall.

“Quick, out the back,” she said frantically.

“What?  Why?” Levi asked, thrown off as the rumble got loud enough to be coming from just outside before abruptly ending.

“Because it looks really, really bad that I’m home alone right now with another guy--just, just--down the street to the intersection, take a left, then a right, another left, wait for me by the store that says Wal-Mart on Kensington Avenue, I’ll come as soon as I can get away, okay?”

“Y/N--”

“Just go!” she said sharply in a hiss, pointing towards the back door by the stairs he’d noticed earlier as she disappeared through another door towards the front door, straightening her long sleeve shirt and nervously brushing hair from her face before she vanished from his sight, Levi hesitantly creeping towards the back door even though he had no idea why he had to flee so suddenly when he never had to before.

As Levi quietly opened the back door, he heard conversation faintly from the living room.

“You’re home early, darling.  I’ve almost got dinner ready, just a little longer.  Let me get that for you…”

Levi paused with his hand still on the doorknob, even though he knew she might be trying to buy him time to slip out the back.  But hearing that--darling, home, the beer in the fridge, her comment about being home alone with another guy--

Suddenly he felt like some kind of secret lover being smuggled out the back window.  And it bothered him far more than he wanted to admit, the thought of being the other man, even if as far as he knew they were still just friends, considering their kiss had been years ago.  She had every right to move on, and he had no right to be jealous.  It shouldn’t bother him, he shouldn’t expect her to stay single when neither of them expected to see the other again.

But it still bothered him.

Before he could cause any drama between the two, Levi did as he was asked, shutting the door quietly behind him and hopping the fence of the back yard to sneak out to the street out front.  There was an unnecessarily high off the ground truck out front that must have been the source of the rumble sound.  Levi spared it a glance before taking a look up at the murky skies up above, a gloominess seeming to hang over the area that seemed like a conglomeration of small, thin houses in various states of disrepair, messy front lawns, cracked pavement…

Levi hesitated in front of the sidewalk, a bad feeling stirring in his gut as he stared back at the house.  Nothing about this felt right to him.  This wasn’t how it was supposed to be here.  Yeah, he knew life was shitty, but she’d always made it...brighter.  There was nothing bright or warm about this place, and what little conversation they’d had so far left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth, her sudden (At least, sudden to him) shift in attitude and demeanor was disconcerting, and he was worried about her.

The chill in the air, however, turned his attention away from the house she didn’t want him inside right now and back towards the street in front of him, mind shifting to finding the location she’d mentioned in the hopes he could find a warmer spot.  He wasn’t exactly dressed for a cold breeze, since he was below ground where he lived and currently didn’t have to worry about that kind of thing.

He followed her instructions until he ended up outside a grey and blue building, standing on the sidewalk near the sign that had the street name on it, on the end closest to the direction her place was.  He wanted to make sure she could see him when she came, so he stayed outside, even though he was worried it would be a while since she’d mentioned she was making dinner for her and...whoever that was.

Levi sulked, his expression darkening as he stared at the ground, trying desperately not to think about their relationship.  Clearly it was further than just dating, they were living together.  Were they married?  Was she happy with him?

He wouldn’t think so, given her attitude change and the look of the run down house, but who was he to judge?  How would he know?  He’d been gone for four years, and clearly a lot had changed.  Plans for college out the window, she was far from family, she was living in a place that reminded him of Underground houses...It was fucked up how the man’s truck looked more expensive than the house.  Wouldn’t you spend more money on where you lived, not your mode of transportation?  Y/N had owned a car that was reliable--it wasn’t shiny with a fresh pain of coat, she’d mentioned it was an older car, but it was reliable...and he noticed it wasn’t out front.  There was no second car, just the truck.

Is she okay?  Is she really okay with this?  Is this really what she wants to be doing?

Time continued to stretch by, time that Levi spent simply standing by a street sign waiting for someone who still wasn’t showing up.  He was starting to freeze up over here, and while he’d expected it to be a bit of a wait, this was getting a little too long.  He was starting to get anxious that he’d spend whatever little time he had here trying to get her.

Just as he started to think to hell with it, he would head back to the house anyway and knock on the front door, she finally appeared on the other side of the street, fiddling with her long sleeves to pull them down again and with a scarf tied neatly around her neck, cheeks flushed and breathing a little heavy like she ran over here.  She crossed quickly to reach him, a flicker of that old fire of hers in her eyes as she smiled shyly at him, coming to a stop in front of him.

“Sorry I made you wait,” she said timidly, though she offered no explanation as to why it took so long.  “What?” she asked self-consciously, fixing the scarf when she realized he was staring at her with an odd look.

“Why the scarf?” he asked.  This was the same girl who rolled around and played in the snow with him without a scarf, leaving it stuffed in her pocket after it kept falling off in all the roughhousing.  And that hadn’t been just because they were kids and they didn’t know better or care--this had been four years ago.  She hadn’t cared about now sneezy the cold might make her, and she hadn’t cared to even wear the scarf loosely thrown around her neck when she /did/ wear it.  Yet now that it was a little nippy out, she wore a scarf tied so neatly around her neck like a second skin, but nothing else?  No coat, no hat, no gloves?

She shrugged.  “It’s not too bad out--I just wanted something to keep my neck and cheeks warm on the way here.”

Yet the scarf wasn’t pulled high enough to cover her cheeks.  Just her neck.

Maybe he was just over analyzing because he was worried about her...

Before he could question her again, she started forward, cutting across a brief green space to head towards the store, pulling briefly on his sleeve before letting go and keeping her hands to herself.

“Come on, let’s get inside where it’ll be warmer.  I snuck a twenty, so we should be able to treat ourselves to something.  I’d say ice cream for the good old days, but I don’t think the weather’s fitting for that,” she said sheepishly, prattling away.  Once more, it didn’t feel quite as natural as it should have been.  It felt force, purposeful to distract him.  Like she was putting all her effort into putting up a front as she led him through the doors.

What gave it away was her inability to stop talking.  Even before, she’d known when to stop and let the silence speak for itself, when to give Levi a chance to talk.  She wasn’t doing that right now, prattling on about the store being a chain store found all over the place, talking about how normally the outdoor section they walked through was filled with plants in the spring and summer but they had been put away or pulled inside for the fall and winter seasons, how you could find a general collection for most needs here--whatever came to mind as they walked, she droned on and on about, like it was a nervous tick.

Eventually, when it was just them at the end of an aisle with no one around and he’d listened to the meaningless prattle for a good fifteen, twenty minutes, he couldn’t take it anymore, and he lightly grasped her arm to bring her to a stop.  She flinched slightly at the sudden contact, words stuttering to a halt as Levi’s gaze burned into hers.

“What’s wrong?” he asked her bluntly.  She forced a smile, and it sickened him, made his heart sink.  Was this the same girl who’d gotten him to open up and show her some of the broken pieces he kept hidden inside himself?  The same girl who’d vented and cried into his shoulder before?  Who was at least honest with him before if something was bothering her, simply telling him if it was something she’d rather not talk about, but giving in if it was something she should talk about.  Who was this stranger in front of him, thinking forced smiles and lies would convince him that she was fine here.

“Nothing’s wrong--” she started to say, the answer rehearsed and the most false she’d given him yet.

“Don’t pretend.  Not with me.  It’s insulting,” Levi cut her off before she could continue, wounded that she thought such a thin charade was going to pacify him, and wanting nothing more than to do something if there was something wrong.

The smile faltered, and something deep and dark flashed in her eyes.  Not dark as in threatening.  The scared kind.  The emotional kind.  The arm he was still holding trembled slightly in his grip.

“It’s nothing that you can fix, Levi,” she said in a small voice, looking like she suddenly wanted to bolt.

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated.”

“It’s not.  You’re just making it complicated.  And I don’t know why,” Levi said, letting a bit of his frustrations leak through as well as his worries as his eyes roamed her face, trying desperately to find the answers of what happened, what changed.  “You’re not even yourself right now, you’re just pretending everything’s fine when it’s not.  What’s really going on with you?”

“It’s been four years--”

“That’s an excuse, not an explanation.”

“Levi, please, let it go.”

“No.  Not this time.  Whatever this is, it's not something you can sweep under a rug, Y/N.  It’s everywhere I looked in that damn house, and you’re an entirely different person, so tell me so I can try to help--”

“Y/N?”

The new voice made them both look up in surprise, both of them lost in their hushed conversation and as such, completely missing that someone had spotted Y/N from the other end of the aisle and was currently making their way towards a scene that could easily be misinterpreted.

Levi let go of her instinctively before anyone could freak out about the shady guy that wasn’t her boyfriend or whatever that had a hold of her arm, staring at the man that was now approaching them, worry in his gaze as he looked between the two.

Y/N had turned fidgety, staring at the other man with a bit of recognition in her eyes, but not familiarity.  “Is there something you need?”

A spark of pity appeared in the man’s eyes.  “You’ve wandered a little ways from home, haven’t you?”

Levi’s brows furrowed in confusion at what the man was saying, but Y/N seemed to grow nervous, which put Levi on edge.

“No, I’m just--I’m just out with a friend.  For a little while.”

The man’s gaze flickered to Levi, his expression telling Levi that he didn’t really believe her.  “Right...but I’m sure Roy is worried sick about you.  Let me just call him and let him know where you are so he can--”

“No! No, listen,” she said with panic in her voice, and Levi felt a chill go down his spine as a thought started to take root in his mind, growing with each word uttered in this bizarre exchange in front of him.  “I haven’t seen anyone in two years, I know, I’m going home after this, but I just want to spend some time with a friend for a while before I head back.”

“I know what it means when Roy’s not here, you can’t be out on your own like this, you’re confused, you could get hurt--”

“I’m not crazy!” she snapped.  The stranger reached out for her arm, she flinched away, and Levi’s hand snapped out to grab his wrist before it could reach again.

The eyes that looked at him were not filled with pity, but hard accusation, apparently deeming Levi as some kind of threat.  He wasn’t to her, but he was about to be to whoever the hell this was.

“I don’t know who you think you are taking advantage of a confused girl like this--” the man started to say, but Levi cut him off in a harsh and hard voice.

“I’m a friend who’s known her longer than this Roy guy, and if you don’t keep your hands off her, I will remove them myself.”

The man flinched back from Levi’s grip, which Levi allowed because his attention was elsewhere now, the suspicion that was growing in the back of his mind just needed a little physical proof he was certain he was about to see.

Without asking for permission or giving her any kind of warning that might give her time to try and hide again, Levi gently grasped her arm and yanked back the sleeve.  Instead of smooth, unblemished skin, there was a collection of bruises and even a few cuts.  His hands turned deceptively still as hers began to tremble.

“Levi, stop, what are you--” she tried to protest, the panic clear in her voice as he grabbed the other arm--gently, again--to pull back that sleeve and reveal the same thing beneath the second sleeve.  She tried to flinch away when he reached for the scarf, but he had enough of a grip it pulled loose, revealing fresh, ugly bruises around her throat she’d been trying to cover up by wearing it.

The man behind them was finally silent, and Levi stared wordlessly at Y/N, processing what he was seeing and the confirmation of his theory as she refused to look him in the eyes, tears slipping down her cheeks as she looked away in shame.

He’d been trying to figure out what happened to her, what changed, why she was so different.  He’d thought maybe his disappearance had hurt her more than he thought, maybe something went wrong at college and things had spiraled out of control, maybe something happened that made her give up hope.

Except this was worse.  This was much, much worse.

Of all the things that came to mind in this very moment, he thought of the day he’d seen the fire in her eyes when she swore she wouldn’t be caged.  And now he was staring at the shaken form of a woman who had been forced into a cage when she’d fought so hard to escape them and their limitations.  Someone had forced that fiery soul he’d admired to bend and break and conform until it was jammed into a too-small and isolated box without color or life.

It was wrong.  It was disgusting.

And he was livid.

“Levi...Levi, wait!” Y/N called out in a panic, but for once, he ignored her, gaze dark as he turned without a word and left the building, purposeful steps leading him back the way he came as Y/N chased after him with calls of his name, trying to stop him.  He wasn’t going to let her stop him, not this time.

By the time the house came into view, Levi’s blood was burning in his veins, that power in himself that he’d unlocked long ago when he’d decided to protect her from this ugly world rearing its head and chomping at the bit to sink its teeth into this Roy guy.

He tried the front door, only to discover it was locked.  She must have snuck out the back, earlier, then, like he had.

“There you are you little sl--”

The angry growl from another man’s voice was cut sharply off as Levi, not in the mood to waste time jumping a fence and coming through the back door, kicked the door in with one simple move.  The door’s abrupt burst inwards was what caused the voice to be cut off, as the edge of the door slammed into the man’s face and sent him reeling back.

Levi wasn’t paying attention to physical features, what he looked like, how much larger than him he was, nothing like that.  He stepped inside, saw the man holding his nose in surprise, and descended on him like a sicced dog.

Eyes flashing dangerously, Levi gave no explanation for why he, a stranger to this man, kicked down his door and attacked him.  He just started swinging, one hand grabbing Roy’s shirt so tight it started to rip and the fabric cut into his throat while the other formed a fist and started repeatedly bashing into his face.  Blood sprayed in the first two seconds, but Levi kept going, ducking out of the way as he tried to return a swing, getting underneath him and tackling him into an end table that splintered with the force of the impact, sending them both to the floor.

At that point, Y/N had caught up, and she was standing in the doorway shouting for him to stop.  Again, Levi ignored her.  He would stop when he felt like Roy’d had enough, and right now, he didn’t think he had.  He was on his feet now, foot flying out in violent kicks to do damage to more than just the man’s face, taking his fury of what Roy had done to her out on any body part that came within reach of his foot.

Timid hands locked around his arm, and Levi turned to see Y/N grabbing his arms with tears in her eyes, looking scared and desperate and shaken.  He finally stopped, staring at her for a few moments and the tears in her eyes as, once more, she begged him to stop, except now he was looking at her, and he was paying attention.

“Levi, please, I just…” She sniffled, sobbed, and then started to cry, and Levi’s rage started to melt away, heart softening and aching painfully to see her clinging to him sobbing so openly.  The last time she’d done that had been when she’d ran away and got lost, and that had been nothing like this.

He turned to face her, hand gently reaching out to touch her shoulder, part of him wanting to stop and comfort her, but the other part knowing this wasn’t the time for that, not yet, anyway.

“Is the house yours?” he asked.

“No…”

“The car?”

“No.”

“Pack your stuff.  Whatever’s yours, whatever you want to keep, pack it.  I’ll meet you outside,” Levi said softly, giving her a gentle push towards the hall to get her moving and away from the bloody sight of Roy on the ground.

Well, he’d pushed himself up and crawled over to the weathered chest in the center of the room that acted as a coffee table as Levi was focused on and talking to you, flipping open the lid and drawing Levi’s attention back towards him as he heard a faint but recognizable, even in this world, click.

And the weapon was not aimed at Levi, but Y/N still standing in the doorway of the living room looking timid and afraid to leave because of what Levi might do while she was gone.

“Fucking bitch--” Roy yelled as Levi’s hand shot out to knock the weapon out of his hand, the gun firing and the shot going wild as Levi yanked Roy’s hand closer towards him--but the barrel wasn’t aimed at Levi, he wasn’t stupid.  The bullet embedded itself into the wall right of Y/N, who screamed as the shot went off.

Levi twisted Roy’s hand until there was a snap and the gun clattered to the floor as Roy let out a short scream of pain, Levi kicking the gun far out reach and pulling out his knife to keep Roy compliant, dragging the man effortlessly out the front door and onto the front lawn, throwing him to the ground as Y/N followed at least just outside the door instead of heading back inside.

“Levi!” she started to shout, but Levi pointed one of his bloodied hands back at the door behind her.

“Go get your stuff--I’ll handle this,” he said firmly, and she hesitated a few moments before she finally headed inside the house to go pack, leaving Levi alone with Roy.

Levi pressed his knee against the man’s back to hold him down, one hand fisted into his hair to hold his head back, knife out and pressed into his throat until blood started to dribble down the blade.

“The only reason you’re not dead, is because I don’t want her to see that.  Not to mention you’ve got her so fucked up right now I doubt it would only make her more upset,” Levi said in a low, threatening tone, keeping his words quiet as he spoke so only him and Roy could hear if Y/N came back outside.  “So I’m taking her, we’re leaving, and you’re never going to darken the same town as her.  If you so much as think of her again, I will gut you and leave you for dead in some dark alley no one will ever find you in.  And I was gutting grown men before you had your first beer and started calling yourself a man, so when I say that’s what I’ll do to you, I mean it.”

Levi removed the blade, stepping away and pulling out his handkerchief to start cleaning the blood off his hands and knife, keeping his gaze sharply on the beaten man below him as he waited for Y/N to make a reappearance.

“Who the hell do you think you are to take what’s mine?” Roy spat.

Levi kicked him so he would turn over, putting his boot on the man’s throat to stop him from talking anymore--he didn’t want to hear the filth pouring from his lips.

“I’m the man who will kill you without a second thought if you try anything with her ever again.  And she was never yours.  She’s a person, not an object.”

Levi watched him struggling underneath him, putting more pressure on his throat whenever Roy tried to claw him off, not an ounce of his currently vicious attention leaving him.  He was aware that they had an audience--some neighbors were standing on their porch to see what was going on, no one brave enough to come face the man with the knife who’d beaten Roy to a pulp.  Though some of them seemed to be on phones, probably calling for actual help.  No matter.  They’d be out of here before any police arrived.

Y/N finally appeared, a single, small suitcase in hand, a coat on her frame this time, the scarf tied in place once more to hide the bruise on her throat.  Levi’s boot lifted off Roy’s neck, the knife he’d been cleaning now tucked away and out of sight and his hands clean as Y/N timidly started to approach him.

“You won’t make it out of town before the cops--” Roy started to wheeze, but Levi kicked him hard in the head, knocking him out in the process.

He should have done that earlier, honestly.

Levi held out an arm, pulling her protectively to his side with his arm around her shoulders as they quickly left the house behind.

“People are staring,” Y/N mumbled.  Her eyes were red from the crying, her cheeks flushed and wet with tears.  Levi’s hand gave her shoulder a gentle rub of comfort, trying to give her a bit of assurance.

“Don’t worry about that, let’s just get you out of here,” Levi muttered, taking the directions she’d given him to at least get them to the store she’d had him meet her at.

They could have taken the truck to get out of there faster, so they could just start driving, but he didn’t want to risk Roy coming after her for stealing anything that was legally his, so they were going to have to start on foot until they could find transport.

And as much as he wanted to be the one to take care of her right now, to tell her she didn’t have to worry about anything and he would take care of it all, he was a stranger in this world, and he didn’t understand it nearly as well as she did.  He needed her help to get her out of here, get her somewhere safe and secure where Roy couldn’t touch her.

They needed transportation and money.  Those were the two important things right now.

“Do you have any money?  Any at all?” Levi asked her as they came up on the store.

“No--I haven’t had a job in two years.  The twenty from earlier I took from Roy,” she said quietly.

“What about a phone so we can call someone, like your parents?”

“I haven’t had a phone in two years, either.”

Levi made a noise of frustration with how truly stuck Roy made her.  He moved her across the country away from everyone she knew (Besides Levi, who appeared wherever she was, but had been missing for four years), took away her transportation, took away her phone so she couldn’t contact anyone, took all of her money so she couldn’t buy her way anywhere, told their neighbors if she was out and about without him she was in trouble because she was unwell or sick in the head or some bullshit…

“If we go inside we might be able to borrow the store’s phone, though,” she said in a small voice.  “And get you a new shirt.  There’s blood on yours.”

There was.  They would probably get odd looks if he went inside with blood on him with a girl that looked shaken and scared, maybe get the police called on them again.  This wasn’t the Underground, people weren’t guaranteed to look the other way.

“Give me your coat, then.  We’ll go inside, get a new shirt, and you can borrow a phone to call your parents...do you remember their numbers?”

The only number he had to remember was 911 with that lesson she gave him a while back, but he was aware the other numbers were ten digits.  And it had been a while since she called them.

“I’ve always known my dad’s number like the back of my hand.  And he’s never changed it, so...I can call him,” she said, her voice shaking slightly at the prospect.  But she was shrugging off her coat, so clearly she was accepting the idea.

Levi pulled on her coat and covered himself up so the blood on his shirt wasn’t noticeable.  The blood on his pants and boots was another story, but that he might be able to brush off as paint or mud considering the dreary weather.  Once his hands were through the sleeves, he grasped her hand in his own and gave it a firm squeeze to reassure her, pulling her along after him as he headed for the doors they’d gone through earlier.

“Come on, let’s get you out of here,” he said lowly, guiding them inside.  Once inside, though, she took over, walking unsteadily to the other side of the store and approaching the counter with a nervous, jittery disposition as the lady on the other side stared expectantly at her.  “Can we, um...can I...I mean…”

“Can we borrow a phone?” Levi interrupted after watching her struggle to get the words out for several painful moments.  The lady looked taken aback, gaze scanning them over and narrowing at them suspiciously.  “She needs to make a call to her father.”

The woman’s analytical gaze didn’t lessen, but she did gesture to a phone behind the counter.  “You can use this one.”

*Reader’s POV*

Your hands were still shaking as you moved around the counter, repeating the number in your head over and over in the hopes that doing so would make it correct.  When you were younger, you’d always mixed up two of the numbers, and you were hoping you weren’t about to do that again.  You needed this call to go through.

You were still shaken by the abrupt turn this day had taken.  When you’d first seen Levi, you were just happy to see /anyone/ outside of Roy.  Especially the young man you had been convinced you’d never see again.

But Levi had always been observant, always good at reading people, and it hadn’t taken him long to start digging at things that made you reflexively panic, instinctively trying to hide the truth of your situation even from the one person you thought you might be able to be open with.  But Roy had too tight a hold on you and your life--you were too terrified to even let anyone suspect what was going on behind closed doors.  It wasn’t like you’d had a way out.  He’d stripped you of every freedom and mode of independence until it was too late, until you were isolated and locked in with no sign of ever escaping.  So you tried desperately to make it work, for your sake.

And when Roy got home, the thought of him seeing you with another man...you’d felt like you were staring death in the face.  No amount of saying Levi was just a friend would convince him, which was why you’d sent him out the back.  Of course, you’d forgotten about the two glasses you’d poured earlier, which was where the bruise around your neck came from.  Roy had picked you up by the throat and slammed you against the wall, demanding the truth as you desperately spun a lie about pouring yourself a glass and forgetting where you put it until after pouring a second.  Your insistence even after you ran out of air might have been what saved your life.

Getting out had consisted of waiting until after you’d finished and served Roy dinner, claiming you were going to take a bath to clean up after all the housework and instead sneaking out the back door.  You knew there would be hell to pay when you came back, that Roy would be furious you snuck out of the house he kept you restrained inside, but to see Levi...seeing Levi made it worth it.

Even being in his presence made you feel a little safer, made the air feel clearer instead of suffocating, made a bit of hope peak through the gloom you’d been trapped in.  You just wanted a few minutes of that before Levi inevitably disappeared, just a few moments of safety and warmth beside him would be worth any retaliation Roy doled out when it ended.

But the moment was shattered.  Any attempt you made to keep Levi from finding out, afraid of what would happen when he did, only made Levi more suspicious, because he knew you, and he’d known something was wrong from the start.  It had only taken one look for him to realize you were a bird with broken wings shoved in a corner of a cage and left to die.  But you were too afraid to say anything, too afraid of the fallout, of what would happen to Roy.  Because part of you had kept believing that if you just tried a little harder, if you just stopped messing up, if you could do one thing right, maybe he would go back to the way he’d been when you first met, maybe you could fix it.  It was your fault it had developed to this point, anyway, not his.  That was what you believed, anyway.

So seeing the dark fury in Levi’s eyes, remembering the few times he’d come through to your world in the middle of a fight, that one time when you were young that he came back covered in blood, you’d been afraid.  You might have never seen Levi like that, but you knew what it would lead to.  But Levi was faster than you, and unlike before, he wasn’t going to listen to your pleas to let it go, to stop and leave it be.  He was going to do something about it.

The fight had been terrifying to witness--mostly because every witnessed blow made you flinch, and you had never seen Levi with that dark fury in his eyes lashing out at someone with such murderous intent.  You really thought Levi was going to kill Roy in that moment.

When you stopped him, maybe part of it had been a conditioned reaction to not let Roy be hurt, maybe part of you was still afraid for Roy because he was still your partner.  But Levi was close to you in a way Roy could never fill, no matter how badly you tried to fit the cold and cutting square peg that was Roy into the round hole that was where Levi’s warmth and comfort was supposed to be.  You were afraid, but while Roy had conditioned you to be obedient and follow his whims, Levi was the one with your loyalty, with the history, with the true and even reciprocated affection.  When you’d stopped that fight, if it could be called that, it was because you just wanted it all to be over.  You just wanted out of that hell house and somewhere safe, you wanted Levi to take you with him anywhere but here.  You didn’t want him to look scary and covered in blood right now, you wanted him to whisk you away and hold you and tell you it was going to be all right.

But it seemed right now wasn’t the time for that in his mind.  He was taking the part about getting you out of here seriously.  The only form of comfort you had right now was the fact you were away from Roy at the moment, the small squeezes Levi gave your hand, and the protective arm around your shoulders.

But you kept thinking what would happen when Roy caught up to you.  When the police were called and this was considered a kidnapping, when Levi got arrested for the assault at least, possibly worse.  When you were dragged back to the house where a punishment that would probably finally leave you dead would be waiting for you.  It was what had you so terrified.  That someone would pull you out of Levi’s comforting grip and throw you back to Roy, that this couldn’t last, that you’d be dragged back.  You had nowhere to go, and no way to leave.  No money, no car, no phone, no friends or family in the area, you were isolated and surrounded by people who might see Levi and think he was the abuser.

Your fingers shook as you dialed the number, almost messing up more than once pressing the buttons on the cord phone that was used in the Wal-Mart, waiting as the rings droned on, then ended with your father’s voicemail.

It was the right number.

You just needed him to pick up even though the Caller ID would likely be Wal-Mart from a state he didn’t even go to.  He would think it was a scam call.  So you had to keep calling until he answered--praying he would answer before the cops caught up, before Roy came back, before the woman at the counter stopped eyeing Levi like that and decided to just do something about whatever she was assuming in her head.

You called again.  No answer.

Again.  No answer.

No answer.

Nothing.

“Pick up, please,” you let out in a small sob, only realizing then that you were openly crying as you desperately tried to get your father to pick up the phone.  You felt a warm hand on your back and looked over to see Levi standing beside you with concern in his eyes.

“Breathe.  Just keep trying,” he said softly, giving your back a small rub to help calm you down as you sucked in sharp breaths of air in your effort to calm back down, rubbing at the tears in your eyes as you kept trying the number back to back.

You tried five more times before you finally heard the dial tone interrupted, your heart leaping into your throat.  “Whoever this is--” came the familiar voice of your father, the same time that you squeaked out, 

“Daddy?”

The word shook and cracked, already showing that you were vulnerable and emotional and needed help.  There was a second of silence as your father registered that you were the mysterious caller, and the tone immediately softened from angry and annoyed to worried and even a little panicked.

“Y/N?  Are you all right?  What are you doing calling from a Wal-Mart?  Why haven’t we heard from you in so long?  Are you in Washington?  Where have you been?” he asked, a thousand bottled questions from two years of silence starting to flow out.

“I’m not.  I mean, I am but I’m not.  Daddy, I’m in a really bad...Levi found me, he got me out,” you said, looking at Levi as your voice shook, glad to see he was staying firmly by your side with his hand on your back as you spoke, giving you silent encouragement and not moving away at the vulnerability.  You didn’t think you could speak if he wasn’t right there to reassure you.  “But we don’t have anywhere to go now.  We don’t have a car, or money, or even a phone, we stopped at the Wal-Mart two miles from…”

You sniffled, tears blurring your vision as pent up emotions started to bubble to the surface.  You didn’t even care that you were in a public place anymore.  You just knew you had a man who truly cared about you that you cared for in return at your side, your father on the other end of the line, and you wanted desperately to go with them and be safe and not get dragged back to Roy’s.

“Daddy, I’m scared,” You admitted, hand shaking on the phone and feeling Levi step closer and his grip reflexively tighten on you at your words.  “I think they called the police--the neighbors.  Levi sort of...he hurt Roy really bad and I think they think he kidnapped me, Roy might try to have Levi arrested, but I don’t want to--I can’t go back there, I just want to get out of here, I can’t go back there.”

Levi full on wrapped you up in one of his awkward but learning hugs, and you turned your head to cry into his chest for a few moments as he murmured to you that it was going to be alright, he wouldn’t let anyone take you away, you holding the phone further away in the hopes your dad wouldn’t hear because a part of you didn’t want him to hear just how bad it was at the same time you wanted to tell him everything.

“Sweetheart, you need to listen to me,” he said once you had the phone pressed back against your ear to hear him.  You recognized that voice--it was his ‘I’ve seen a lot of shit as a soldier and led an interesting life, and I’m about to teach you something important as gently as I can, but you need to listen to me’ voice.  “I’m going to give you my bank information, you go to the ATM at the Wal-Mart and pull out two or three hundred dollars.  Use it to buy a burner phone, get at least a few hours on it, get some food and something to carry it in, anything else you need for two or three days.  I’m going to buy greyhound bus tickets the closest to you I can find that’s leaving in an hour or two, one for you and one for Levi so he can keep you safe, so you have enough time to get what you need and get there.  Text me on the phone you buy so I know where to send the tickets, I’ll send you the information, and then you need to call the police and tell them what happened so they arrest Roy, make sure you stress that Levi was defending you and trying to get you to safety and they might not come after the two of you to arrest him.  Just focus on getting out of the state first.”

You were fairly certain, considering you knew your father and the way he phrased that, that he was telling you two to evade the police at the same time so Levi wouldn’t be arrested and he could stay with you to keep you safe.  You were pretty sure extraditing was a thing, but you weren’t going to worry about it right now--especially because you knew Levi would disappear from custody anyway.

“Okay,” you said in a small voice, listening intently as your father moved on to explain how a cardless cash withdraw worked on an ATM and how he was going to approve the withdraw from an app on his phone, while you only needed to enter his number and the codes he was about to tell you, and the amount, and you would have the money.  You said a very shaky goodbye that consisted of some I love you’s before you hung up the phone with the codes running in a loop through your mind, hurrying with Levi over to the ATM that was correspondent with your father’s mainstream bank, entering the phone number, the codes, and then ending up with three hundred dollars in your hands, plus the twenty you took from the house.

Levi let you take the lead in this, since you knew what you were doing even if you were the shaken one that was being rescued.  You hurried back to the electronics section, buying and quickly activating the first phone that would suit your needs.  Once you had it in hand, you texted your father, who replied with four greyhound bus tickets--two for you and two for Levi, the reason for which being he included a transfer, with enough gap between drop off and pick up time for you and Levi to get a room at a hotel and get a good night’s rest before having to get on the next bus.  He explained that there was a curbside pickup spot close to your location at a local gas station that would only require you to show the ticket to the bus driver before you were let on, and that it would be there in a little less than an hour.  That allowed you time to do any supply shopping and hurry over there, though he again stressed you needed to call the police immediately and try to explain as much of the situation as possible so you could safely run from Roy without it being considered evading the police.  And so they wouldn’t be after Levi for kidnapping, at least.

You were pretty sure what Levi had done to Roy went beyond defense, though, so you weren’t optimistic about that.  At least there was no trace of him here in this world besides your stories, not even a birth certificate or a match to a fingerprint.  Levi was a ghost here.  So long as they didn’t catch him, they couldn’t prosecute him.

That was your thinking right now, anyway.

You grabbed a cart, headed over to the fresh foods section, and started grabbing from the lemonade, salads, wraps, sub sandwiches, potato salad, crackers and cheese trays--everything that was premade and ready for you and would keep in a lukewarm environment until you were in a hotel to put it in a minifridge for a while.  Stuff you could eat when you felt like it when you needed it.  You hurried over to the men’s aisle, and the two of you found a nice white button down and a pair of black dress pants that he could replace the ones he’d been wearing with.  By that point you felt like the breath was being squeezed out of you as you ran out of time and pushed your luck only a few miles from Roy’s house, the police probably at the scene and taking statements by now.  But that phone conversation was not one you wanted to have in a store surrounded by all kinds of people.  You’d probably cry again, and maybe you’d be asked questions you couldn’t answer around so many people.

So you rushed through buying the food and Levi’s replacement shirt, Levi going into the men’s room with the bag to change while you shakily dialed 911 on the phone as you waited for him to finish, putting the phone to your ear.

“911, what’s your emergency?” came a woman’s voice.

“Um...my name’s...my name’s Y/N L/N...I don’t know if there’s been any calls regarding me yet, but I...I needed to call and clarify what hap--what happened before a false report happened, or whatever it is.”

“I’m sorry, what exactly are you calling for?”

You looked around to make sure there weren’t a lot of people, lowering your voice as you tucked yourself against the wall you were leaning against with your bags at your feet, the food in a newly bought, spacious satchel bag and your suitcase on the other side of it.

“My, um...my boyfriend, Roy Higgins, he um...he was...it was a really, really bad situation.  An old friend of mine found me--”

“Found you?  What do you mean by found you?”

“Roy isolated me.  Moved me where there was no one around that I knew, took away my phone and my car and my money, told people I was sick so if I was out alone, without him, to bring me right back.  No one knew where I was, they probably thought it was voluntary.”

“Just to clarify, Roy was abusing you.”

“Yes.”

“And you say your friend found you?”

“Yes.  He found me, and he saw...he saw how bad I was hurt when I snuck away to see him, and he went back, to Roy and he...they got into a fight.  He beat up Roy pretty bad, and Roy drew a gun on me and he tried to shoot me--”

“Was this before or after the fight?”

“In the middle.  My friend was...He was coming to get me out of there, he told me to go pack and we were going to leave, and that’s when Roy tried to shoot me, and L--my friend dragged him out front, I don’t know what happened out there cause I was packing, but...I’m not in danger now, I just, I know neighbors were on phones and I didn’t want the police thinking I was kidnapped, or Roy telling the police I was taken, I want to leave, I don’t want to go back there--I can’t go back there and…” You choked off again, ducking your head away as someone walked by so they wouldn’t see you were crying.  “My friend’s just trying to get me somewhere safe, where Roy can’t find and hurt me.  I didn’t want any police arresting him or bringing me back there, so I...I called 911 so I could...I could report the abuse...and make sure that it was known I left willingly, my friend didn’t take me he was helping and defending me, and he felt my life was in danger, which it was because Roy almost...before I snuck away to see my friend he almost...and Roy’s just trying to drag me back there.”

“Y/N, is it possible for you to come into the police station to give a statement to clear things up?”

“No.  No, I can’t stay here, I just, I have to get away, I just want to get far away from here.  If you want a statement just let me, let me do it over the phone, or at the station in the other state when I’ve finally stopped running from him.”

At that point, Levi came out of the men’s restroom, looking clean and proper as he took in the sight of you on the phone again, fresh tears on your face.  You rubbed your eyes to get rid of them and straightened, Levi picking up the bags at your feet and gesturing for the two of you to get moving.

You followed after him as you continued speaking on the phone, knowing he knew where to go because you’d told him while the two of you were shopping for clothes and food.

“Okay, then Y/N, would you be willing to at least answer some questions right now so the police know some of what Roy’s done, so they can charge him properly?”

“Yes,” you said simply, staring at Levi’s shoes as you spoke while the two of you walked almost side by side.  The questions that were coming, you felt like they might be the kind you didn’t want Levi to hear, but you wanted as much as possible on the record as fast as possible.  Hopefully Roy would be locked up, and you would have some time before he could come after you.

Because, surely, he’d come after you.  He’d want his prize back.

“How long were you two in a relationship?”

“Three years.  Roughly.”

“Was he always abusive?”

“Not at first.  He eased into it.”

“Was the abuse physical, mental, emotional?”

“All of it.”

“Did he ever sexually abuse you?”

Your gaze flickered to Levi, your voice tiny and barely heard as you spoke into the phone.  “How...how would you define that?” You asked quietly, your mind flashing back to what happened to Levi, at long last able to understand what had happened that day, exactly, beyond ‘someone hurt him terribly,’ but unsure if what happened to you counted as that kind of abuse.

“Did he every touch you when you didn’t want to be touched, or pressure or force you to have sex with him when you didn’t want to?”

“Yes,” you said, voice somehow getting lower as you confirmed it.  “More than once.”

You were trying to be very brief and vague about the way you confirmed what she was asking, because you didn’t want Levi to figure out what you were talking about, still attempting to shield him from at least some modicum of the reality of what you went through.

What you didn’t know was the Levi could hear what was being said.  He was on full alert, keeping his eyes out for the slightest sign of trouble or Roy, and one of the things that meant was that he was listening very hard to his surroundings...and he could pick up the words coming from the other end of the phone with how close to him you were standing.  If you were looking at his hands instead of his feet, you would have noticed the white knuckle grip on the bags in his hands, as well as the slight tremble in them.

“You mentioned earlier that your friend was trying to protect you, and that he felt you were in danger.  That Roy shot at you.  He actively tried to kill you?”

“Twice.  Also before I met with my friend,” you told her.

“Had he reached that level of violence before?”

“Yes, but he usually stopped just short of it.”

The questions continued beyond that, the operator fishing for chargeable incidents she could put on the record of the call that you could talk about right now, your answers still kept brief with Levi next to you but still trying to make it clear so no one could claim too much ambiguity and shiftiness in her answers.  You were still on the phone as you and Levi stood at the pickup point for the greyhound bus, Levi keeping to himself for the time being as you answered questions on the phone before, at long last, you hung up, pulling up the tickets on your burner phone and making sure to keep your father updated.  You told him you were at the stop and that you’d given your side of the story, as well as telling him how much money you had left after the phone, food, and Levi’s clean change of clothes.  He mentioned you might need to withdraw a bit more when you stopped to sleep at a hotel, and that he would shift around some money in the meantime so it would be there if you needed it, and that he would be ready to set up the bank withdraw through his phone again if you needed it.

Finally, finally, you tucked the phone into your pocket, looking up and around you at the bus stop, the sun starting to set and making darkness quickly settle over the area, the already chilly air getting gradually colder.  The unknown yawning in front of you was terrifying, waiting for a greyhound bus to come and take you far, far away from Roy.  The freedom was enough to make fresh tears well in your eyes, but the fear that the rug could still get yanked out from under you, the fact that you didn’t know where to go from here, that still terrified you.

You looked at Levi at your side, noticing that his eyes were still on you even though he’d been keeping to himself and letting you have your conversations in peace.  He was tense, even though the lean against the bus stop bench glass wall suggested relaxation.  There was only a bit of blood on the brown vest he was wearing over the white button up, the rest thoroughly washed away.

Fully grown, past the teenage years and childhood in general, Levi’s features were sharp and...even more attractive than they had been before.  Though he also had a tougher exterior now, a general air of ‘do not mess with me’ that usually the kids in actual gangs in high school used to have.  But that vibe wasn’t a deterrent for you, because you knew him as a person.  You knew how soft and gentle and warm he could be--as he’d been with you since he’d appeared even when he pushed to try and get the truth from you for your own good, so he could protect you.

And after seeing him beat the shit out of Roy, even if the violence hadn’t been what you wanted because you were so sick of violence right now, and seeing him derail the shot so no one got hurt, you were never going to doubt that he could protect you ever again.

“Everything set?” Levi asked as you stared at him, straightening up and coming to stand directly beside you now.

You nodded.  “The trip should bring us...or me, if you disappear again...to Dad’s,” you said, a slight waver in your voice at the thought of him disappearing.  You didn’t want to go again.  He was your safety blanket, your stability, the thing you were clinging to right now to get you through this, to get you to take the necessary steps to freedom, what was making you feel safe right now.  You didn’t want him to disappear, you weren’t ready for him to disappear, especially with that lingering fear that it might be for years again, that you wouldn’t see him for so long--

“I’m not going anywhere until I know you’re safe,” he said bluntly, holding your gaze to make sure you understood he meant it.

Though you didn’t know how he was going to stop the universe throwing him back into his world, you didn’t question him.  Instead, you stepped closer, put your arms around him, buried your face in his chest, and started to silently cry, seeking his comfort once more.

He put his arms around you tenderly, holding you securely against him until the greyhound bus appeared at the end of the street to take both of you far, far away from this place.

Next Chapter---->

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[yeojaa]

NOT YOUR FAIRYTALE - ft. myg

What do you do when you've called your wedding off but forgot to cancel your cake tastings?  Why, you ask your brother's grouchy best friend, of course. 

pairing.  min yoongi.  sort of.

genre + rating.  fluff-adjacent.  general.

warning / tags.  mentions of infidelity, cake tasting, cake tasting isn’t a euphemism, fluff and hurt/comfort, alternate universe, alternate universe - modern setting, friendship, friendship/love, childhood friends.

reading.   n/a.  a stand-alone three part one-shot.

word count.  ~1850

chapter iii.

“I didn’t mean it, Yoongi.”

The apology is off your tongue and crashing into his ears before you have a second to consider it, pleading colouring syllables in soft shades of blue.  You hate the way he’s looking at you, like you’ve found the chink in his armour and are on the verge of exploiting it.  

“It’s fine.”  Over a decade of friendship tells you it’s decidedly not fine.  His concession comes far too quickly, meant to placate whatever guilt he’d accidentally kicked up. 

It makes you feel worse, the weight increasing tenfold when he offers you his seldom-seen smile.  Gums flash, corner of his mouth hitching over soft pink tissue.  It doesn’t quite meet his eyes though, falling just short of the endlessly dark depths of his irises. 

“Seriously.  Forget about it.”  You know he’s doing his best to force you onward but you can’t help but dig your figurative heels further into the dirt.  An immovable force.

“I’m really sorry,”  you repeat, voice thick with meaning. 

Yoongi huffs a little, seemingly frustrated.  You shrink a little further in on yourself, shoulders dropping and lips shifting in tandem.  You’re probably pouting.  You feel his stare from your periphery, feline gaze focused wholly on the way your mouth turns and turns around words you’re trying to perfect.

Silence stretches on, longer than you can stand and far more awkward than you’re used to.  You can feel it like a suffocating weight, a goose down comforter in the heat of summer - heavy and unpleasant.

“I’m sorry.”  It squeaks out in the same instant he sighs.  He sounds less irritated, though you can see the tension in his chin, how it jumps the muscle in his jaw. 

“You don’t have to keep saying it.”  

“But I don’t think you’re heartless, Yoongi.  I shouldn’t have said it.”  You say it like it’s crucial - as if you might perish if you don’t get them out.  They sweep into the spaces between you, earnest and full of fear, filling all the cracks left by your own hand.

You layer your reassurances as best you can, tongue tripping over teeth as you ramble about all the different ways you see him.  

In shades of diffused morning light, lined with silver like a physical reminder that there’s always hope.  Through the lens of childhood admiration, sprinkled with childish laughter and doe-eyed awe.  With as much unconditional love as you’ve ever been capable of, wrapped up in furtive glances and curious, miserably nonchalant texts to your brother.

It comes and comes, word vomit that won’t stop until you’re brought back by the expression on his face.  It’s tender, bemused - reminiscent of a parent of an overzealous child.  You’ve seen it a million times before, though the instances were much fewer and far between now that you were older. 

You immediately backtrack.  “I’m sorry.”  This time it’s for wasting his time, for being his best friend’s annoying little sister. 

You’re tumbling over your own two feet again.  You’ve said too much by the time he speaks at all.  

“You’re more than that.”  A statement of fact, seemingly, by how he delivers it with such ease, as if it hasn’t just set your heart off in your chest, the poor thing stuttering to life (or death).  You’re not sure.

Despite your best efforts, the singular word gives you away, coloured canary red with hope.  “What?”

If he’d heard your question at all, he says nothing, footsteps never faltering.  He’s walking ahead like he hasn’t just turned your world on its axis, throwing you completely off-balance.  He doesn’t even offer a glance back, halfway down the block by the time you come to your senses.

You jog to catch up, fingers eager to close the distance you quickly eat up.  You settle into a measured pace behind him, though your mouth moves at a mile a minute.  You can feel the maddening persistence in your bones, hear it as it carves demands into what was once comfortable silence. 

“Why did you say that?”  No response.  “Yoongi!”  He doesn’t even flinch, gaze trained ahead as if he’s never been in Apgujeong before and he’s terribly interested in everything but you. 

The distinct urge to stomp your foot fizzles through your limbs and you almost do.  You’re rooting yourself to the spot, sneaker raised comically, when he rounds on you.  Brows have disappeared into his swath of dark hair and his chin tilts just so, studying you quizzically.  It looks like he’’s having an internal debate as to whether he should rib you further.

He decides against it - returning to the conversation you’re so adamant to have.  “You know, for being a Kim, you’re not that bright.”

“Excuse me?”  Indignation bursts out your mouth.  You’re focusing too hard on the words he’s spoken than the implication behind them.  They sail over your head, lost to the pretty coral that streaks across the sky and eats up the horizon. 

To Yoongi, it’s like watching his literal heart fly out the window.  He’s a little exasperated when he speaks again.  “You’re my best friend’s little sister.  I don’t know what you expect me to say.”  

“What’re you saying?”  Because you’re really confused now.  You think Namjoon would be too. 

Are you even having the same conversation?

“Do I need to spell it out for you?”  The line of his mouth quirks, corner stretching into something that borders on a smirk.  It’s devilish - decidedly not something you’re used to - and you imagine your stomach kickflips before wrecking itself on the pavement.

Your silence seems to be answer enough.  

He heaves a sigh as if he’s been terribly inconvenienced, arms folding over his chest.  The gesture should read as don’t come near me! but you have the very distinct urge to fold yourself under his arms.  You resist it by biting down hard on your bottom lip.  

“I’ve had feelings for you since we were kids.  Specifically since you had your 10th grade ballet recital and you kept the bear I got you.”  

You remember the day like it was yesterday.  You’d been lucky enough to land the coveted spot in the winter showcase and he’d been there, shoulder to shoulder with your brother, when you’d taken your bow.  The bouquet of peonies he’d brought you - in soft shades of blush and violet, your favourite colours - had nearly engulfed your frame and you’d had trouble holding both it and the sweet brown bear that came with it.

The same bear that still sat on your bedside table, propped up beside your charging cable and yearly planner.  The one you’d cried yourself hoarse over after you thought you lost it during your freshman year of college.

“I don’t understand.”  You frown, deeply.  You can feel the little dent between your brows.  It comes out when you’re stressed or confused or, in this instance, both.  

He’s more teasing than unkind:  “Like I said - not that bright.”  

You ignore the dig.  “Why didn’t you tell me?”  

“I couldn’t do that to Joon.  I promised I wouldn’t.”

Somehow, that’s more of a revelation than Yoongi’s confession.  

“He knows?”  You can’t help the gasp that ricochets out of your mouth, belligerent and betrayed.  You’re already running through the 100 different ways you’re going to kill your brother.  Because he’d known!  While you’d pined, Namjoon had known and simply stood by.  “He knows how I feel about you and he didn't say anything?”

You know if you think about it, you can’t blame him.  You’d given him a hard time too when he and Sora seemed to get along a little too well.  Call it a sibling thing.

In the heat of the moment though, you’re livid.  So Yoongi does what he does best and redirects effortlessly.   

“—feel?”  

The prompt reassigns all focus back to him, your anger toward your brother all but forgotten.  You think you could give Pikachu a run for his money by the surprise that works itself into your expression.  Heat licks itself across your cheeks, rolling like a steam engine over the exposed skin of your neck and up past your ears.  Had it suddenly jumped 20 degrees?

“I mean felt.”

When Yoongi steps forward, you’re hyper fixated on the way his mouth bends and bows, gums and neat white enamel revealed by the motion.  You’re rooted to the spot as he’s suddenly all you can see, crown of dark hair blocking the light from behind him, narrow shoulders curling in on you.  He’s near enough you can smell his comforting, woody scent.  

You haven’t been this close in - well, ever, you think.  

Then he kisses you - a chaste thing, right on the cheek - and you forget how to breathe.

“I guess we’ll need to change that.”

SIX MONTHS LATER

“I’m honestly surprised,”  your boyfriend drawls, the picture of disinterest as he leans himself against the packed counter top, elbows propping himself up.  He’s staring out at the sea of people swarming the apartment, a comfortable group of new and old coming together to celebrate something very important.

He watches as your brother narrowly misses knocking over the beer pong table, earning a groan from the participants.  Jungkook yells something about his shot being messed up;  Jimin denies a re-throw.  There’s more incoherent shouting. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”  

You’re at his back, arms twined neatly around his slender waist as you press your face into the warm expanse of his back.  The sweater he wears is overly soft from years of wear and it feels good under your reddened cheek.

You’d had a bit to drink and you were feeling exceptionally affectionate.

“You actually kept it a secret.”  Not that he hadn’t figured it out himself.  It was in your nature to throw surprise parties - you did for Namjoon and Jin and that loud best friend of yours - so he’d only figured he would get one when the time came. 

“We’re very good at keeping secrets in this family, remember?”  Your voice carries past the cotton of his clothes, filtering through laughter to kick his beating heart into overdrive.  

“Oh, how could I forget.”  He snorts quietly, turning in the same instance you unlatch yourself from him.  He has to fight the look of disappointment that threatens to pull his mouth into a pout, brow knitting in disapproval as you round on the refrigerator.

It’s only when you spin back to face him that his expression cracks and re-sets itself with glee.  Now he’s actually surprised.

Because you’ve got a cake box from the same bakeshop you’d gone cake tasting at.  He recognizes the logo on the front and the pretty frosting behind the plastic cover.  It’s shades of cream and citrus and decorated with cherries.  Your - and his - favourite cake from that day.

“You’re not supposed to see the cake ahead of time!”  It’s Namjoon bursting into the kitchen looking alarmed.

You laugh first, bright and sunny.  “It’s a birthday cake, not a wedding dress.”

But as you kiss him, cake cradled gingerly between your bodies, Yoongi thinks he wouldn’t mind seeing you in that, either.

notes.  this final chapter was short and sweet but i hope you enjoyed it.  thank you for reading!  x

tag list.  @hoodmeup​​ @loveyoongles​ @vi-hoshi​ 

[rosesmusicandaloeveraplants]

iron blades dancing in the battle field

the golden age of the trio, as they fight together and cared for each other.

posted on ao3 or read below :D

feel free to check out the masterpost for this series!

Blades clash, as TapL and Illumina dueled in the empty practice area. Techno watched as TapL bested Illumina with a swift flick of a wrist, his iron sword pointed against Illumina's throat.

TapL was always better with a sword, Techno thought, as he faintly listens to the voices cheer for TapL or boo in disappointment to Illumina's loss in his head. Illumina forfeited and TapL lowered his blade.

"That's not fair!" Illumina cried. "At least let me fight with a dagger, you know you're good with swords!"

"I win!" TapL whooped. "Lumina you know how Sky Legion favors sword fighters more than other forms of combat, I'm just helping you."

"You know he's right," Techno mused. "Luckily for me I am an expert in everything and you can duel me next if you want."

"Frick no man, you guys are just bullying me." Illumina said as he took off the heavy armor he wore on top of his clothes.

"Oh Great Dragon Son of the universe, I would never," TapL said dramatically.

"Forgive us, heir to the sacred realm," Techno teased.

"Shu-ut up," Illumina shot back.

---

Techno stood on the edge of the battlefield, as he watched silver figures of the past cry out and watch the current battle that occurs.

The voices in his head cry out for violence. He sees his past selves, floating around him, leaning down and whispering battle strategies into his ear.

He listened, and apologized to the translucent lost souls who will witness death again.

---

He watched as tattoos of hearts, invisible to all except him, slowly depleted as soldiers died, wails of spirits filling the stagnant air of the battlefield.

He walked back to Sky Legion's camp, as one of the soldiers nearby called out his name. He rushed to the triage, to spot TapL being the attention of their healers.

TapL laid there in the center of the tent, the right side of his face bloodied with a giant gash. Techno would've panicked if not for the fact he could see the tattoos on TapL's skin, a faint half a heart remaining, unwavering. Illumina sat against the wall of the tent, out of the way of the healers. Illumina stood up when he saw Techno come in, his face concerned.

"Do you think he-"

"TapL's going to be alright."

Illumina paused to stare at him, then his shoulder sagged in relief. He knew of Techno's sight as well.

"Thank the universe."

---

TapL regained consciousness in the middle of the night. Illumina and Techno both were relieved at hearing TapL cry out about his mask, split in half from the blow that knocked him out.

They ended up messing around for a bit (safely enough for a recently concussed TapL), with and without magic.

They first fixed TapL's mask, mending the crack, and then added protecting and unbreaking magic on it, so it may protect TapL if ever needed, and will never break.

They then infused Techno's amulet with various colors, iridescence like opal, they placed an enchantment of thorns upon it, damaging whoever may attempt to take it.

They carved Illumina's name onto his dagger using an abandoned old knife. The carving was jagged and rough, but deep enough where it won't disappear after the wear and tear of time. TapL placed special enchantments of his creation onto the dagger, one that gave the blade the properties of fabled netherite, the near mythical material of TapL's sword given to him by his parents. With this enchantment, the blade never dulls, and can combat the heat of lava.

The last thing they enchanted that night was one of TapL's feathers, they turned it into a quill, with infinite persistent ink, colored to whatever was the writer's whim. They used the same quill to sign TapL's mask and the inner pocket of Illumina's jacket, Techno's regal signature, TapL's blocky lettering, and Illumina's loops, each encapsulating the signer's personalities well forever remaining on the mask and jacket.

The last night of calm, dark thick clouds rolling across the night sky blocking starlight and moonlight, as the three messed around and loved each other like family, like brothers.

---

Techno fought well and diligently, much better than any ordinary human. He took down foe after foe, his sword and axe glimmering in the small ray of sunlight peeking through the clouds, as he parried and attacked and rushed his opponents. He was much better than any ordinary man, but no match to the unnatural. His blades fell to the ground, a small cloud of dust formed and settled upon the blades, caked onto the blood that stained it.

Techno watched as the hearts on his wrist faded away one by one as his hand became slowly stained with his own blood. He heard the heavy thuds of horse hooves against the loose dirt, then the whoosh of wings. In his peripheral vision, TapL's face came into view, framed by the sky painted a blood red, murky clouds masking the sun. His eyes were glowing gold and purple, and Techno felt faint but futile relief. He knew that this life was over. He remembers faintly of past lives, but doesn't think he's ever felt this sad for a goodbye. Probably because for the first time in millennia, he found a family, for the first time after knowing generations of past universe heirs and universe blessed. His first family, and the time together was so so short.

He vaguely registers Illumina's shouts, and the frantic steps as Illumina dashed over. I'm sorry, Techno thought, I wish I could stay longer.

He was on half a heart, he saw it as it began to wobble, begin to fade. He said his last words, simple and direct.

"I'm sorry, but I will always be with you two, as I'll now join the universe."

He welcomed voices of his pasts, and the universe, as they welcome him back home, to the universe's dream.

[hargrove-mayfields]

A Password And A Promise

💕 Happy Valentine's Day!!! You guys are all my Valentines, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for all the positive reception! 💕

It’s day five of the week of love and today’s prompt that I chose was Snuggling for Warmth!! Read here or on ao3 at ej_writer !

Word Count: 3,649

Rating: T

First winter in the Midwest, and Billy’s been out in the snow for hours on end.

He’d like to say that he has no idea why he’s doing this, but he does. Chief Hopper asked him to.

As if his record wasn’t already bad enough, with the fights and the vandalism and all the other bad things he’d done since his arrival in Hawkins, he just had to go and get himself a DUI charge.

He’d been speeding off to some middle schoolers house, schnockered after a party to pick his sister up when he got pulled over. He’d begged the chief to let him off easy, promised he’d never pick up another bottle if it meant that the DUI didn’t make it on file.

And the chief, he understood that. He’d been the one to ask Billy a few questions when he was admitted to the hospital in mid-November and a nurse, recognizing the signs of abuse, asked him to come check it out. Despite Billy’s best efforts, the Hopper’d wormed it out of him that his father had been the one to land him there.

So when he made his plea, it didn’t take much convincing to get him to help him out.

Still, he couldn’t justifiably let Billy walk away unpunished for driving drunk, especially being that, with the new legislation Indiana was rolling out, he was now way under the age limit. To compromise, he opted to make him do community service instead.

Had Billy known how that would turn out for him, he might’ve rather just taken the beating for the DUI than doing three hours of shoveling sidewalks. A kick to the ribs or a punch to the jaw probably would’ve hurt less than the ache in his bones, feeling more and more like they were made out of heavy lead, or the sting of the cold air on his fingers and on his face.

For as many years as he had lived in California, he’d never seen snow stick to the ground for more than a few minutes, if at all, and he’d definitely never had to wear more than a jacket to protect himself from cold weather.

Now, having underestimated just how cold snow could actually get, he was freezing his ass off. He didn’t even have a stupid pair of gloves or anything, mouthing but a layer of thin denim to protect him from the record low temperatures.

Just because the universe hated him, the beating down snow wouldn’t slow down either. Not only were his clothes getting soaked completely through, his jacket a sopping mess and his boots more like rain barrels than shoes, but basically every time he cleared a sidewalk off, it'd be covered again before he reached the end.

Under all that snow, it was icy as all hell too, getting more so by the minute. Biker boots weren’t designed to walk on ice, and apparently nobody around these parts was decent enough to even sprinkle out a little ice melt before a storm, so more than a few times, he’d hit an icy patch and wipe the hell out. Thanks to a combination of the sun going down so early and the bitter freezing temperatures, there was nobody around to watch his feet go out from under him, but it still hurt like a son of a bitch.

He was worn down the bone by the time he finally reached Loch Nora, the first place where he could catch a damn break. Everyone up in that little neighborhood was rich enough to pay their lawn boys to scrape and salt the sidewalks for them, and didn't need some scraggly teenager avoiding a criminal record to do it for them.

Without doing any work it got even colder, and he was pretty sure he was going to get hypothermia and keel over in some hoity-toity’s lawn. His hair was frozen, his lungs burned from the cold air leaving him unable to catch his breath, and his teeth were chattering. He thought that shit only happened in the cartoons.

Billy's starting to realize that when Hopper had told him five hours, he probably hadn’t meant all at once. But nobody told him that the weather could be like this, he thought he would just be able to get it all out of the way now, when he could be certain there even was snow to shovel and no Boy Scouts giving him a run for his money.

Too bad he’d probably freeze to death before he finished.

But before that can happen, he’s intercepted by the double doors at 8253 swinging open, nearly jumping out of his skin when the wind catches it and hits it off the side of the house.

Were it literally anybody else shouting to him from their stoop, he’d have just kept walking. But the boy who lived in the mansion at 8253 was none other than Steve Harrington, who called out to him over the wind, “Billy? What the shit are you doin’ out here, man?”

Steve Harrington, who had apologized first for Billy kicking his ass, and started hanging out with him before the scars even healed. He apparently had the superpower to make friends with absolutely anybody, even difficult bullies who made every effort to keep him from doing exactly that.

Don’t get him wrong, being buddy-buddy with Steve Harrington was definitely something he was interested in, but he wasn’t a fan of the way he pretended absolutely nothing was wrong after they fought. He’d concussed him, had to be drugged before he’d stop beating him, and Steve still was the first to reach out.

There had to be some sort of a catch to that kindness, and Billy just wasn’t looking to get too attached.

And yet, Billy stopped for him, when he called out, so maybe it wouldn’t have been entirely truthful to say that he was particularly bothered by Steve’s persistence. If you pressed him hard enough, he might even admit he thought it was kind of endearing.

“Just doing my civic duty, Harrington.” He could kick himself for how weak his voice sounds.

“It’s below zero, Billy. Why don’t you come in?” There’s something like concern in the way he says it, and it makes Billy want to walk away.

“I’ll pass.”

But Steve’s not having it, puts a hand on his hip. “I think the fuck you won’t. Get in here man.”

Billy might be stubborn, but Steve won’t take no for an answer. He knows when he’s lost, so he shoves the handle of the snow shovel towards Steve, who rolls his eyes and takes it, leaves it lean beside the door, and shoulders past Steve into his mansion, instantly feeling like he was melting in the dry warmth that radiated from the house.

Steve shuts the door behind them and hangs his scarf on a coat rack by the door. His boots and coat follow, and he makes Billy do the same. They both grimace at the puddle of water that spills out of Billy’s boot when it tips over.

“Jesus dude, how long were you out there?”

Billy shrugs, winces at the movement of sore shoulders, and lies. He wouldn’t want Steve to make a fuss if he knew. “Dunno. Lost track of the time.”

“Wait here, I’ll be right back.” Steve plods up carpeted steps, leaving Billy to stand awkwardly on the door mat so he doesn’t drip all over the hardwood floors.

He takes the moment alone to take in his surroundings.

The Harringtons were more than well off, everybody knew that, but being inside of their house, their goddamned mansion, is nothing like Billy expected.

Just from where he’s standing at the door, he can see a living room furnished with big plush couches and a TV in an entertainment center the size of the whole wall. Across from it is the entrance to a dining room with more chairs than a family of three needed at a long table, chandelier overhead.

There were potted plants in every corner and paintings and family photos hung on every wall. Knick-knacks, probably all ordered from some magazine like his own step mom would day dream about shopping from, adorned every last unaided surface, from the huge console record player to every side table and wall shelf.

The longer he looked though, the more Billy noticed all the little things, like cobwebs in the high corners, and dust built up on the wax fruit, the 1979 time stamp on the most recent of their family photos. It wasn’t hard to piece together that this place was just a set.

Suddenly the obnoxiously high ceilings and the fancy decorations felt a lot less like grandeur, and a lot more suffocating. Billy felt bad knowing Steve was here all the time by himself, the sole pretender playing this part of the perfect family.

But then he’s brought out of his reflections by Steve hurrying back down the steps with a neatly folded stack of clothes in hand that he’s shoving towards him.

“The hell are these?”

“A change of clothes.” Billy just looks at him, scrunching his nose at the suggestion, and still won’t take them. “Dude you’re soaked to the bone, you’ll never get warm if you don’t get outta those clothes.”

Billy smirks, raises an eyebrow, but he takes the clothes.

Steve, realizing he could’ve worded that a little better blushes, just the faintest dusting of pink on his pale cheeks. “Shut up man. Bathroom’s down the hall to the right.”

Even the Harrington’s bathroom is the pinnacle of wealthy interior design. Not only is the room as big as Billy’s entire living room, but it’s just as overly designed as the rest of the house.

The walls are black and gold, marbled in the most gaudy flaunting of money Billy’d ever seen. A huge clawfoot tub was settled in the counter, framed by beige tile counters. There was a mirror surrounded by lights right above the sink that spanned almost the entire wall. It felt like something straight out of a magazine. Hell, it probably was.

Even the bathroom in this place makes Billy feel out of place, the luxury of it all so much unlike what he was used to.

It’s warm in the bathroom, the shut door and the smaller space collecting keeping the heat in, and it makes his clothes start to feel gross on his skin, way too cold in contrast. He swallows his pride and looks at what Steve gave him to change into.

There’s two shirts, a henley and a drug rug, a pair of fleece pajama pants, and some fuzzy hospital socks with the grips on the bottom.

Before he puts his shirt on, he notices there’s bruises on his shoulders, on his back and his elbows, from the many times the ice had sent his feet out from under him, but honestly, it gives him this strange sense of pride, knowing he put them there himself.

He was more than used to marks on his skin, put there by an angry father and his rage, so it was a welcome change to know he’d just gotten these ones just from being clumsy. He almost didn’t want to cover them up, but another shiver ran up his spine, causing goose pimples to pop up all over his body, and he elected to slip the two shirts Steve had picked for him over his head, just to keep himself from freezing.

Wearing Steve’s clothes makes him look soft in every way that was not like him. Without his usual denim and leather, he just looked like the boring version of himself. No longer the stereotypical image of high school bad boy he tries so hard for, he just plain old Billy.

He likes it. A lot. Stares at himself in that huge mirror for longer than is probably considered normal before deciding he should leave the bathroom.

Back in the living room, there’s a huge glass protected fireplace on the far wall, in front of which Steve’s on his knees currently trying, and failing, to start a fire up in. At home, all Billy had was a dinky plug in fireplace that stank like hot dust, but he knew how to start a fire regardless.

He’d been there when his father burnt all of his mother’s things she’d left behind.

“You need a starter.”

Steve jumps, apparently having not noticed Billy coming into the room. “What, like gas?”

“Jesus Christ, no, not like gas. We're inside, doofus.” He has to laugh at Steve’s incompetence, but he offers his help. “You have any of those bricks?”

“These?” Steve opens a drawer beside the fireplace full of fire starters, and Billy realizes this is just another piece of the set. He’d be the first person to actually use this fireplace in years, if anyone even ever had before him.

“Yeah, those.” He confirms, but Steve just sits there, doesn’t know what to do with it. “Just put it under the wood and light it.”

“Huh.” Steve looks at the fire he made, seemingly a little surprised that it worked, brushes his hands on his pants and turns to Billy. He looks him up and down, taking in how he looked in the change of clothes and grins as he says, “You look cozy.”

Billy, trying to make up for the way his heart starts pounding from the observation, bites back, “And you look like a gracious host who’s going to make me a hot coffee.”

Steve looks like he thinks for a second before he asks, “Would you settle for hot cocoa?”

“I don’t care, long as it’s warm.”

Billy waits until Steve disappears around the corner into the kitchen before he sits down cross legged on the floor in front of the fire place.

The warmth of the fire radiates over him in a way that brings feeling back to his body, is almost soothing.

When he was little, he could remember having bonfires on cool summer nights out back of their first house in California. The lick of the flames against wood, the way the bright tendrils of fire would dance used to be so calming. He’d always fall asleep outside in a canvas lawn chair, and wake up the next morning tucked into his bed.

But the heat is too much, makes his skin itch, burning from the inside out in a way that wasn’t so pleasant.

He remembers his father, drunk off his ass, dragging him out to that same fire pit by his arm, leaving welts on soft skin, forcing him to watch as he burned every memory they had of his mother. Every picture, every possession, every shred of clothing, burnt to ash until there was nothing left but her voice on the other end of a telephone, and even that stopped after a little while.

He doesn’t notice Steve come back from the kitchen, he’s too caught up in the flames, curling up around the wood and leaving burnt destruction in its wake.

Too entranced by the fire warming him up and freezing him over at the same time. The brightness of it leaves black and pink spots on his vision from how intensely he’d been staring.

“I didn’t have any marshmallows so I-” Steve stops talking when he sees Billy, sees that he’s crying, sitting stock still and just, staring into the fire place. “Oh.”

Billy startles from the sound of his voice, blinks too fast, trying to chase away the splotches of light burnt into his eyes. The action forces him to realize there are tears wetting cheeks, which he wipes at a little too aggressive with his sleeve, hoping Steve won’t say anything.

And he doesn’t, he just reaches down and hands him a mug, not letting go until Billy's got both hands on it and he’s sure he won’t drop it. Billy hadn’t noticed himself shaking until he saw the way the cocoa rippled in the red mug.

Steve clears his throat, trying to think of the right thing to say. “You still cold?”

“No shit. I was out there for three hours.” It’s harsh, overcompensating for sure.

Steve nods, but points out his inconsistency. “I thought you lost track of time?”

“My brain thawed out and I remembered.” He mumbles. It makes Steve laughs, and Billy’s heart feels like it could burst.

“Well, I have some extra blankets and stuff, if you’re still cold.” Steve offers, and Billy nods in response, as if to say that that sounded nice without out actually having to admit anything.

But Steve doesn’t make any moves to go get it, just stands there shuffling his feet and looking down into his cocoa. Billy can already tell he’s going to say something that he doesn’t want to hear.

Before Steve can embarrass him, Billy asks impatient, “You gonna go get it or you gonna let me freeze?”

“Right. Yeah.” Steve bends down and sets his mug down on the lip of the fireplace and pads off to some storage closet somewhere in the mansion. Billy rolls his eyes and promptly moves it to the coffee table to keep the ceramic from heating up and burning him when he picked it up next.

Initially, Billy thinks nothing of it when Steve comes back with only one blanket. It seems perfectly reasonable to him that Steve, who had been in this well heated house presumably all day, just isn’t cold.

But when he sits back down he’s close enough that their knees bump where they’re crossed, and he spreads just the one blanket out across the both of them.

Thank god for the fact that there was already a flush on his cheeks from the fire, because Billy definitely would’ve been blushing like a little schoolgirl at that.

They don’t talk about anything, because there’s nothing too talk about. It’s a comfortable silence that settles between them, broken up only by the crackling and popping of the fire.

But after a while with nothing to distract him, to keep him aware that this was Steve’s house, Steve’s Persian rug underneath him, Steve himself sitting next to him, Billy drifts back to smoke filled lungs straining with the effort of screaming for his mom, to the fist in his hair forcing him to watch.

Steve notices in an instant, those blue eyes going dull, his nostrils flaring and his jaw clenching, and the way his nails dig into his palms.

He sets his mug back down on the coffee table behind them, and gets up on his knees. He wraps the blanket they’d been sharing around Billy’s shoulders, and then his arms, linking his fingers together so he’s hugging Billy.

Except the slightest fluttering of his eyelashes, Billy shows no signs of a reaction. Steve takes that as his motivation to keep trying, and puts a hand on the back of his neck, says, “Hey, Billy.”

It makes his breath hitch, coming out in a cut off sigh. Billy asks, a little monotonous, “What’re you doin’?”

“Keeping you warm.”

Billy appreciates him not bringing up what’s obviously happening, but his head’s only partly coming back to him, and all he has the capacity to come up with as a response is, “Oh.”

Steve squeezes him a little tighter, his face pressing against his shoulder, to get him through the rest of it, to bring him back to earth.

It’s a while before he gets anything else from Billy. Long enough that he has to move so he doesn’t kill his knees sitting up on them, and he ends up with them thrown over top of Billy’s, so they can be as close as possible.

Because Billy wasn’t exactly back there anymore, but he wasn’t quite here either. He could hear Steve, feel his arm around his shoulders, his knuckles rubbing absently up his arm, he just couldn’t reach him yet.

When he gets back in his own head, he takes a moment to figure out where he is, and once he’s got it, he hooks his hands under Steve’s thighs, pulls him the rest of the way into his lap.

He doesn’t think about boundaries, about the fact that he should be more cautious, he just leans forward, presses their foreheads together and says, barely above a whisper, “Thank you.”

“Yeah. Anything for you.” Steve’s got a smile on his face, warm and genuine and blissful, and Billy can’t help the one that forms on his to match.

That’s where they stay until morning comes around. Billy just didn’t have the energy to get up and go home so late, and Steve didn’t have the heart to make him.

He got the throw pillows down off the couch, and they went to sleep the way they were, wrapped up in each other by the fire, well after it burns out and the last of the wood is gone.

Billy wakes up stiff from sleeping on the floor, but he couldn’t have been in any place more comfortable than Steve’s arms.

What Steve had done for him was practically unheard of. It was everything he was supposed to do, inviting someone in when they were cold, helping them out when they were feeling bad, but he’d never had that before. Not from anyone.

He’d hold the memory of Steve, holding him by the fire, equal parts concerned about getting him warm and getting him out of his head, in his heart forever.

That’s what he’s thinking about when he falls back asleep with a smile on his face, how this was just the start of making so many more memories to chase out the old.

Maybe Hawkins and it’s shitty winters wouldn’t be so bad, if he could spend them all like this.

[mikwrites-archive]

of stars, the sun, and the galaxy that holds us

       ✧ pairing: lee seokmin x reader ✧ warnings: death? not explicitedly said but one death         ✧ genre: god au, mainly fluff, very slight angst ✧ wc: 2.3k

       ✧ a/n: im not too satisfied with how the ending was written but i hope u guys enjoy this fic !! it connects a bit to the other parts that will be coming out with the same au, but since i have school it’ll take a little longer for me to write them so i just wanted this to be a lil piece to make u guys happy until i have more time !! <333 enjoy!!

 Seokmin told you that humans were made of stars, born bright and shining, to live, and age, and die in a supernova of stardust that carries on into the future. 

Gods were made differently, immortally made to shine, but Seokmin thinks of an old story he’d heard a millenia ago, of two beings made forevermore for one another other, through lifetimes, both sculpted from the remnants of a single star, and knows that some part of him will shimmer eternally along with you. 

“Look.”

He keeps his eyes closed, partly to tease you, and the other because he already knows what you’re keening to show him. It’s not until he feels a tickle at his nose that he scrunches it up, eyes cracking open to meet your excited gaze hovering over his.

You’re illuminated by the setting sun, the orange body dipping into the horizon, a piece of long sweetgrass dangling in your fingers, tossing it aside with a giggle as you finally grasp his attention.

“The stars are coming out. The future people are in the sky, for us to see.” 

Seokmin smiles softly at your words, turning his head in your lap to follow your pointed index finger, where a speck of white light could be seen.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” 

He thinks it’s alright; after all, upon the mortal realm stars were pinpricks of light in the vast sky, compared to the heavens where they could be seen by deities in their full glory. Yet you don’t notice how Seokmin spares the star a glance, and returns his attention to you, glowing brighter than any celestial object in the heavens.

“If I were to assume, I would think you preferred one of my brothers over myself.” 

“And what a foolish one I’d be if I did.” You breathe a laugh, smiling as you peer down at him lounging in your lap, and his hand comes up to cup your cheek tenderly, palms calloused yet radiating warmth.

“Could you take me to see the stars?” Your voice is hushed and curious, and Seokmin shakes his head, hand falling to his chest.

“If I took you there, you’d burn. It’s no place for humans, darling.” 

“Do you burn?”

Seokmin blinks, chuckling lightly at the rare acknowledgement that gods could feel pain, whether it was intentional by you or not.

“Yes. I burn, and burn, and burn; and the flames can be called beautiful, but leave my skin, my bones, and my soul ravaged in their blistering heat.”

Worry simmers in your eyes like a rising tide, and Seokmin is quick to console you.

 “But I heal quickly, my darling, and come back to you.”

“Just as the sun rises.” You muse, as if it were an inside joke between him, you, and the earth, and he cracks a smile.

“May I ask for something?”

“Do I have any right to refuse?”

“I may be a god, but I’m not a monster.” Seokmin huffs, propping himself up beside you. “A kiss?”

You oblige, leaning close enough to see the flecks of gold in his eyes, gentle and adoring, before fluttering shut.

You kiss him, and he tastes like warm sunlight filtering through sheer curtains to land on your bare skin, like ripe peaches, golden and orange in your palms, and each of the secrets of the universe placed tenderly upon your mouth.

It was a rare occurrence for gods to bless mortals, yet it was even rarer for them to do it twice.

And with Seokmin, his blessings were uncountable. 

“Open your eyes.” 

Seokmin’s hands fall from concealing your vision from behind you, moving to rest on your waist, and you blink at your surroundings, as if taken back in time.

It’d been years since you’d been able to spend your days at the grassy field, blanketed by the honeysuckle and the summer skies, like you did in your youth, days instead spent teaching the children in the village and doing household tasks. 

Yet Seokmin made it all the more bearable with his visits.

“Happy birthday, my darling.” 

“You remembered.” 

“Of course I did.” Seokmin laughs, eyes crinkling in his full smile, and you can't help but bask in it, your own blooming upon your features. He looks older to you, and you’re not sure if he’d done it on purpose, to match your own appearance, but it tinges your heart with brief sadness, like a soaked paintbrush bleeding it’s colour upon parchment. “Why else would I have brought you out here secretly?”

“But, there’s nothing here.” 

“Not physically, yes. But you can still see it from here.” He points at the sky, and the long nights of memorizing the heavens comes anew with a bright speck of light, a star born just for you.

“It’s yours. Yours to see, to dream, to wish, to hold. And when you do, I hope you think of me.” 

“I don’t need a star to do that.” 

“Then think of it as a reminder of my love. The star will never go out as long as I do.”

“I don’t need a star to do that as well.” You murmur quietly. Though his visits had decreased in frequency, his place in your heart lingered, like the aroma of citrus that lies on your fingertips after peeling a clementine.

He unravels the skin upon said fruit as you think about this moment, the future, and the past, almost too much to comprehend in the span of a few seconds, giving it to you once he finishes; and you take it, cautiously avoiding drips of sticky juice. You break it in half, handing one to Seokmin, and he tilts his head at you curiously.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing.”

He narrows his eyes at you and you smile, changing your answer, making him seemingly satisfied.

“Everything.”

The rest of your time together passes in what seems like a blink of an eye to Seokmin. 

He tries not to notice; the way the silvery strands weave their way into your scalp, the gradual cautiousness of your movements with the bowing of your posture and height, but you both know it can’t be avoided as you tell him about the frailty in your bones, and he spends the night; the last night with you.

“Leave before the sun rises.” You whisper to him, and Seokmin feels like he’s being torn apart, every one of his atoms burning 

“Do you think Minghao will be kind to me?” Your question is rasped quietly, eyes shut, and Seokmin smooths your hair fondly. 

“He should be. If not, I’ll have some words with him.”

It achieves a smile from you, and Seokmin kisses your forehead solemnly, his smooth hand resting over your wrinkled one. 

“I’ll find you.” 

Your eyes snap open, shocked that he would even suggest such a thing, and Seokmin notices with a pang in his chest that they look the same as they did all those years ago.

 “The world is boundless, the human life fickle, I would not even think of subjecting you to years of looking in vain.”

He knows you’re correct, but his stubbornness persists, and falls at your side on his knees in a bitter tone.

“One lifetime is too small.” 

“To a god perhaps, yes.” You laugh softly, turning to trail your fingertips along his jaw. “But to a human? One lifetime is forever.”

Seokmin’s head drops into your hands, and your thumb rubs circles into his cheeks gently, a small intake of breath escaping your chest as you feel a tear drop.

“Don’t cry.” You whisper as he grasps your wrists, pulling them down and swiping at his features. “If we are meant to be, we’ll meet. If not, do not be upset. It’s the way of fate.”

You forget that Seokmin is a younger deity compared to his brothers, possessing a humanness that was scarce in the others you’d interacted with, but he still was a god, and you knew in the echoing cavern of your being that he would move on, as your soul would move to the Underworld.

Still, he holds you in the night, and you let him. 

WIth time comes change. Seokmin has seen it enough with his time alive, yet he can’t seem to change one habit no matter how many years have passed.

Seokmin knows he’s out of place in the worn down bar, but he keeps to himself, and with his frequent visits, the bartender no longer sends him stony looks as long as he purchases something, the regulars don’t attempt to pick fights anymore, and let him sit under the only remaining functioning neon light sign (albeit a bit flickery).

They don’t know why he stays, with his wire specs and cashmere turtleneck amidst leather and dust speckled cotton, but if Seokmin focuses hard enough, sometimes he can still picture the rolling grass fields and expanse of the heavens, twinkling with flecks of light in the evening.

He almost doesn’t notice the presence next to him until the server places another drink next to his own, and Seokmin looks up.

“You see it still, don’t you?” Minghao muses plainly, and Seokmin smiles, part melancholy, part bitter.

“It’s harder now.”

“When I told you souls sometimes return to a place they often frequented in a past life, I didn't want this to happen.” He sighs, thumbing at the condensation on his thick glass.

“It’s my only chance.” Seokmin swallows. “It’s fading.”

“Your memory?”

“The star.” He rubs his temples, as if ashamed, and Minghao narrows his eyes. “It’s been too long.”

“They didn’t want this for you Seokmin.” Minghao’s tone is gentle, and Seokmin knows he’s right, but clenches his teeth, looking down at his shoes. 

“Do you know where they are? If they’ve been reborn yet?” When Minghao remains silent, Seokmin bites his lip. “Would you tell me if you knew? I suppose you wouldn’t.” 

Minghao sends him a small smile, patting him softly on the arm. He places money, enough for his and Seokmin’s drinks under his untouched glass, and stands to leave.

Seokmin stays until the neon light finally sputters out and his drink is drained to the last drop. He bumps into someone on his way out, the rusted bell over the doorway jangling.

“I’m so sorry, I...” Seokmin supposes this is what it feels like to have your heart stop, hovering in place and time, lungs quivering to take a breath, the shock absolutely paralysing. It’s you. You. He almost wants to rub his eyes comically, but he knows he doesn’t need to, the multitude of expecting and waiting years building up to this moment. Yet he can’t seem to say a word.

“It’s alright. I should’ve been looking where I was going.” You apologize, bowing to him slightly. “Do… do we know each other?” You ask curiously, catching his wide eyed gaze.

“Once upon a time.” Seokmin exhales shakily and you laugh, supposing it was a joke. “Can I buy you a drink to make up for it?” 

“Weren’t you just leaving?” 

“You don’t have to drink it with me, just to make up for it. Unless you’d like me to stay.” He adds on hopefully without a thought, and curses himself inwardly when he realizes the potential sleaziness it contained. Luckily, you don’t seem to take it that way, and smile at him lightly.

“I supposed having someone to celebrate with wouldn’t be too bad if you’re up for it.  As long as you’re not a serial killer or something.” 

“Would a serial killer admit to being a serial killer?”

“Would a serial killer ask if a serial killer would admit being a serial killer?” 

“My head hurts just from hearing that.” Seokmin whines as you both sit down, his seat still warm from when he left.

“Why are you celebrating?” He inquires after you both order a drink, and you trace the grainy wood table with a small beam.

“I got hired for the job of my dreams.” 

“What do you do for a living now?” He keeps slipping up, but can't help it. He’s not sure if you notice his peculiar words or not, but you don’t comment upon them. You think he’s charming, and easy going, not only with his looks, but his kindness is something that shines through him, like genuine sunlight.

“I’m an astronomer.” You exhale giddily. “God, it’s crazy just saying it.”

“That’s just like you.” He murmurs with a fond smile, and he’s relieved that you don’t hear him, thanking the bartender for your drinks. And outside, a pinprick of light glows a bit brighter, like a long reminder in gentle palms of hands.

He’s content, thinking it was only for a night, yet Seokmin finds you everywhere. The coffee shop by his apartment, the park in the middle of the city, and the bar. He knows well enough to not get his fated hopes up, but he also knows it’s too late to stop them from ascending.

It’s almost too good to be true, the way you’ve accepted him into your life, and Seokmin thinks that because of this, perhaps he’s not as satisfied as he tells himself he is. He wonders if the second time around he’d be more or less willing to leave you. 

Because now, he has the chance of a real life with you. Flowers and flushed cheeks on a first date, tentative touches that mapped skin to memory, full kisses that tasted like sunshine, and staying the night fitted against one another’s bodies like puzzle pieces in a home.

He wakes up to the sound of a knock at his front door, and gently untangles himself from the sheets and your embrace to answer it blearily, slippers trudging against the floorboards and hair tousled.

“Did I wake you up?” Minghao asks, lifting himself up off the wall next to the doorbell, donning his typical black suit, styled immaculately. 

“It’s fine.” Seokmin opens the door wider to let him in, and flushes when Minghao toes your shoes curiously, sending Seokmin a knowing look. 

“I’ll be quick.” He assures amusedly, not even bothering to slip off his own shoes, and Seokmin shakes his head with a soft laugh. “I just wanted to ask how you were feeling with everything going on.”

“Huh?” 

“You haven’t heard?” Minghao looks shocked, and Seokmin furrows his brows. “Not even felt it?”

“What?”

“Powers have been disappearing. Soonyoung’s was the most recent. He bled red from a gunshot wound.” Minghao explains grimly, and Seokmin expels a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. 

“What are you saying?” 

“Some of us are becoming mortals.” Minghao knows what Seokmin’s thinking as soon as the words slip out of his mouth. “We think it’s a matter of belief and need for the world and us, but at some point, I think the hold on us all will be set loose.”

“What are you going to do? What should we…”

Minghao giggles at that, and Seokmin trails off into a hesitant smile. 

“I think you already know.”

“Will you be alright?” Seokmin inquires concernedly. 

“It’ll be nice to live in the mortal world for once. Have a beginning.” Minghao muses, and Seokmin nods. The two smile at each other before Minghao turns to leave, and Seokmin has a feeling this wouldn’t be the last time they would cross paths. He hears you shuffle up beside him, linking your arm with his, gazing at you fondly. 

“That’s him.” You point suddenly, and Seokmin turns, blinking, only to see the door click shut quietly behind Minghao. “I saw him that night we met at the bar. I was actually going to another one a block down or so, but he caught me on his way out and recommended it so I went in.”

“Really?”

“Mhm.” You hum, leaning against him drowsily, not thinking much of the interaction, yet Seokmin is in deep thought, a small smile on his lips. “I guess it was fate.”

Seokmin exhales a breathy laugh, remembering a different time, and of the future held for you both, intertwining your fingers warmly.

“I guess it was.”

✧ taglist: @seijoh​ @peachy-yabbay​ @soranihimawari​ 

[psalloacappella]

à deux

Day 1 Prompt:  Rain

@sasusakublankperiodweek Ao3 | FFN | ↓

“Cold,” he croaks, like unhinging an old metal joint. Instead of the weight of unused years, it’s the weight of unshed tears. The strain in his voice zigzags, lost, falls into its baritone groove. “You always are, when it rains.”

Upon awakening in the bleak dawn, the day’s significance settles on them — at once a burdening melancholy and poignant relic.

At first blush it could be any morning, but as shinobi experienced with the passage of years and the disorientation of traveling dimensions, both are loath to disregard the importance of date and time.

He’s standing at the window. You would assume he’s still lost in a daze of sleep.

Sakura gently presses her cold (they’re always cold, on days like this, days in which it pours and rain floods the countryside and small villages and cleans the dust from these everyday, hard lives) fingertips to his back, alerting him to her presence. Still they are in the phase of learning the lore of one another despite all the things already known, and it is the truest labor of love.

“We should stay one more day,” she says quietly. He hasn’t acknowledged, but hasn’t resisted.

Some days, that’s good enough.

But she overdoes it; that’s who she is. Love may be gentle but her manner of it isn’t always:  Indeed, she is fierce with people that rub her the wrong way, especially those invoking his name out of turn; she eats too fast, as indulgence; she hugs children too tightly when she knows she’ll never see them again, knowing that they are ships flickering through towns, some benevolent symbol of an oppressor they’re too young to put a face to.

Today is the anniversary of death. Over time they’ve both come to know this as an old friend, but this is Sasuke’s most notable scar.

Sakura cannot reach him on days like this, and that’s okay.

“The rain, after all. Traveling in this would be a pain — we’ve tried that before.”

She slides her arm around his waist, pressing her cheek to his warm back.

Don’t cry. It’s not your day. Don’t be so emotional.

Tears escape, they always do. To his credit, he never resents it.

Even with him now,  his equal, there are bouts of disbelief and self-loathing in which all she manages to do is convince herself nothing about her is helpful, that she’s still yearning for him to turn around.

Now the other arm, hanging on to him as if he’s unwieldy, as if he’ll sink into the chilled wood floor and out of her sight for good.

Sasuke’s hand and grip are warm, flash and fire. She knows this is in more ways than one — unspeakable ones, really.

Some grunt of assent, no fully-formed word at all, but she hears him swallow hard, once. It’s easy to, in a small corner of the world which hasn’t yet begun its day.

Hot fingers, frigid arms.

“Cold,” he croaks, like unhinging an old metal joint. Instead of the weight of unused years, it’s the weight of unshed tears. The strain in his voice zigzags, lost, falls into its baritone groove. “You always are, when it rains.”

Sakura resists the urge to click her tongue at his misdirection, the veneer to gloss over his emotional state.

“I’m all right, Sasuke-kun.”

“Hm.”

“I am! It just settles into my hands, that’s all. It’s close to an equinox, you know. The seasons are turning.”

(He’d never admit he likes that about her — nervy, a little more quick to correct, less scared, and that it’s brought him some delight, some sparkle to her that continues to surprise him.)

She feels him scoff under his breath, probably at her ability to pinpoint their location in time, in space, in the universe no matter where they are. When you save lives on seconds of analysis, on minuscule doses, these things become instinctive.

So of course, she knows what today is.

Pressing her nose into his shoulderblade, she says, muffled, “Should I call for tea, then?”

It’s a long beat before he nods, knowing that she’ll have to let him go to complete this task, leaving him alone at the drafty window — the chill having a chance to seep into the cracks in his soul.

They’re always less protected on these days.

.

.

The sleeves of his shirt always drown her wrists and hands, and though she has to flick and adjust them as she moves about the inn room, it’s one of her favorite ways to trap heat against her body. It’s not as cold as the caves they’ve sometimes inhabited, but close. Though the teapot scalds, it’s welcoming.

“It’s steady,” she muses, eyes on the persistent rain. “The whole village will be quiet today, in weather like this.”

Sasuke nods in response with unfocused eyes, collecting himself to meet hers. Green, watching him in a searching way. The way he does to her on all other days, seeking signs of regret or distress or any emotion within his ability to repair or ease. At once, old lovers and new.

A memory sears, a sharp grazing against the mind:  A low table, scattered small dishes like this with food remnants vivid, colorful; a sullen father, the corners of his mouth sagging; his mother beaming, hiding laughter behind her hand.

A brother, by then already burdened and saturated with the weight of his destiny, still finding the almost offensive wherewithal to poke him in the face.

“You haven’t touched anything,” she chides gently.

Tuning in again to them, this, arriving momentarily from his sojourn of the past, his eyes flicker to her own messy plate. Lately she’s only pushed food around in the mimicry of an indulged meal. Worries about her being sick. She just blusters, waving away concerns. (I’m a medic, for god’s sake, I’d know!)

“And you,” he responds, indicating her own dregs with his rude, handsome chin.

She shrugs, burying deeper into his shirt. “Perhaps it’s just the day.”

“You’re coddling, aren’t you? I don’t need that.”

It comes sharper than expected, and he regrets it the second it leaves his lips. He  imagines what Itachi would say, knowing he possesses a great love which he’s taken for granted time over, time again. He’d reprimand him, as he should.

Often he settles for his ex-sensei’s silent admonitions instead.

Finishing a sip of tea, she sets the mug down and sighs. Getting to her feet, she collects a few scrolls she’s been poring over the last few nights and looks at him, a bit less readable this time.

“You’re allowed to feel this, you know, Sasuke-kun. You’re allowed to love, and you’re allowed to hurt.”

She half-turns, but stops and adds,

“And you can even feel it all at the same time.”

Sakura retreats to the corner where one of the few furnishings sits. A chair, large enough for her to fold herself into and unravel her resources. A plant discovered in this new region they had crossed into last week, similar and yet different enough to pique her interest and spur her to research. She’s been lost in common roots, and he’s been mired in the loss of his old ones.

The ability of the mind to experience multiple things at once is truly remarkable. To an observer he watches her study with intent as she furrows her brow, yawns often throughout. Sasuke can see her as well as his past all at once.

Anniversaries of his dead loved ones shouldn’t mean so much. After all, he’s been alive without them longer than with.

Sasuke wishes he could explain that her presence is enough. That her loving him has been enough.

“We could still go through the traditions, if you’d like. Collect what we need. I know,” and her breath hitches, and she glances away under his dark eyes, probably feeling she’s pressing, said too much, “there’s no grave to do it with, but—”

“It’s fine.” He tries, he does, to say it with less bite. Gods, he’s transparent, his pain and denial. He’s not ready yet. Will he ever be?

“This is your day to grieve,” she says softly. “You should do that however you choose. No one can tell you how to feel — not even me.

Even me. He knows she knows his weakness. Watches her yawn again and awkwardly adjust her body, as if her own skin is uncomfortable, blink and he’d miss.

“There’s nothing I want to do,” he confesses, sounding hoarse against his will. “Nothing at all.”

A pause, a long one, in which the rain sings against the roof.

“Then you don’t have to,” she says. “You just grieve.”

And so he does.

Pretends to read.

Stares out the window.

Lingers in the discomfort of his own skin.

Paces.

Touches no food, lapses into a mausoleum silence so complete the lines of them blur against their own dimension.

He can feel his brother’s touch, and she can feel his agony.

She rises periodically, offering him tea, sliding her arms around him from behind again. He alternates between silence and quiet shakes that he’d never admit were sobs.

By dusk he’s in her lap, hair mussed and wild, feeling spent from everything and nothing at all, from wandering in the better memories of a brother he can’t bring back.

It slips from his lips in a moment of weakness, it hurts.

“I know,” she whispers, pulling her fingers gently through his untamed locks. “It always might. But don’t forget, every day has the same number of hours.”

It’s not until they lie down again, the day a simultaneous blur of grief and guilt, that she says in a soothing whisper, “And look, darling — you’ve made it through another. You always do.”

And while he can’t articulate that each year it’s a little more muted, the pain easing off him as they pass, if only marginally, he manages to thank her only in twilight when he’s spared from knowing if she can hear him at all.

.

.

On the second day of rain he awakens before her, an arm curled around her stomach in a way that aligns with some adagio ballad pouring from where, he doesn’t know, the universe, some sign, and as intelligent as he is the facts are slipping from him whether due to the haze of sleep or the turmoil of his ghosts, the way the dead and the living and the coming to life knot themselves with one another, soaking him with an instinct and some sense of surety so intoxicating that he buries his face in her long, wild hair where nothing can see his face, but she will know his heart.

If everything’s a cycle, then the old and new must cross paths in their rotations.

The darkness bleeds away and he realizes she’s waited to spill the joyous news, not wanting to acknowledge that alignment of the stars to spare his feelings, and for that he is endlessly grateful and guilty.

But he likes to think his brother, despite his faults, would have liked to know he continued forward, that he accepted the love he didn’t feel he deserved and tried, desperately, to welcome life anew.

Sasuke presses his lips to the back of her neck, and his warm hand against her stomach.

“It’s still raining,” she murmurs, still in the place between wakefulness and dreams.

He thinks he feels the flutter of his future against his palm. He only whispers,

“Let’s stay here for now.”