#in what was really a huge blur of a week of grief

[danifandxm]

uh oh. feelings again

[marislittlestories]

Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter

Mature | Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Spy Draco Malfoy, Draco Malfoy in the Muggle World, Hogwarts Eighth Year

5/10 - one, two, three, four - read on ao3

july 1998 - december 1998

Harry’s eighteenth birthday passes in a blur of boxed wine and Fleetwood Mac. Dean, Luna, and Ginny all go back to London to celebrate, leaving Draco in the care of Claire and Arabella, who seem to be convinced that all of his problems can be solved with a night of drinking and dancing and giggling over decades-old village drama.

“Will you tell me how you met?” Draco asks, feeling sentimental and a bit self-destructive.

He hadn’t expected an invitation to Harry’s birthday, of course, but he hadn’t thought about how it would feel to be the only one left behind. The envy is entirely unfamiliar. The desire to be close to Harry isn’t new, but he hasn’t felt it with this kind of intensity in a while.

It seems to be a running theme.

He’s spent the last week and a half pulling himself further and further away from the horror of sixth year and everything that came after, and in most ways, it’s working. He read a couple more chapters of Wuthering Heights. Ella and Marcie came to Crawley Down for a day trip and they watched Pride & Prejudice. His strong opinions about the pond scene and Elizabeth Bennet’s facial expressions seemed to win him a few points with Ella. He started a letter to his mother, and then he tore up the parchment and threw the pieces in the trash.

There was a reckoning, a leveling, a natural disaster that swept through and against all odds, it feels like progress. There is a new landscape now, a verdant forest, one that he’ll never have to leave behind. The sudden rush of sensation had overwhelmed him, but he saw it for what it was: life, returning. It feels bigger, like he’s created room for it, a place for it to live. He welcomed it all, the melancholia and the ecstasy, the devotion and the grief, the petulance and the shame, the wistfulness and the euphoria and the prickling sensitivity. He feels everything, and he revels in it.

It’s settled somewhat, particularly in the last couple of days, and he feels safe enough in his own head and in his body to indulge with Claire and Arabella.

The two women exchange a quiet look, full of love and light.

“Well,” Arabella begins, “I was working at a bakery in London, this was back in… ‘71? ‘72? Anyways, Claire was a regular, and she liked to make my life hell.”

“I was a little obsessed with her, to be honest, and for some reason I thought it was a good idea to place convoluted orders so I could spend more time at the counter, staring at her,” Claire says.

“And then one day, she comes in with this huge order in the middle of the morning rush, and I’d had such a bad shift already, so I-”

Claire laughs, delighted, “She spit in my coffee!”

“No,” Draco is enthralled, on the edge of his seat.

He can’t really imagine Arabella that young. It’s not so much about actual age, he just has trouble picturing her with the kind of youth that makes you full of spite and reckless confidence. He can’t imagine her young in the way that would compel her to spit in someone’s drink.

“I did,” Arabella confirms sheepishly, “And then the next day, she came in and apologized for the inconvenience she caused. She was working this awful administrative assistant job at a corporate law firm and they’d made her go out and get this order last minute.”

Claire sighs, “I had cried on the bus home.”

“I felt so guilty, so I never charged her again and we slowly became friends. She thought she had finally cracked me but truthfully, I had no idea I was interested in women until the moment she kissed me.”

Draco’s smiling so wide that his cheeks hurt, and he can’t help thinking of his younger self, the boy who had poked at Harry’s bruises. The rest of the night is veiled with wine and laughter, wrapped up in an effervescent kind of happiness that he can feel like a physical force, skin tingling, heart pounding. It’s all he remembers, the story and then the sensation, when he wakes up with the worst hangover of his life the next morning.

He isn’t sick, but it’s a near thing. He’s almost proud of himself for getting so drunk, for letting go of his need for constant self-monitoring, and for getting through the rough day after. He feels like shit but it doesn’t pull him back in time.

Dean, Luna, and Ginny come home late in the afternoon, just as hungover as Draco, and Claire makes them all chocolate chip pancakes for dinner. It’s the first time Draco’s seen her use the stove for anything but putting water on for tea and coffee. They’re the best pancakes he’s ever had. Ginny is sitting beside him at the kitchen island, leaning heavily into his side, staring down at the counter.

“Hey,” he nudges her, “Have you decided about your birthday?”

She looks over at him with a miserable little smile, “No. I don’t know if I’m ready to go home, but I’d feel guilty if I didn’t.”

“It doesn’t have to be all or nothing,” he parrots her words from the other day back to her.

The next week, she goes to the Burrow for exactly two hours and then returns to Crawley Down for something like a party. Draco has spent the afternoon helping Claire string lights up outside while Luna watches on and talks to the flowers.

“They’re going to be on their best behavior tonight,” she says.

Draco and Claire exchange an amused, affectionate glance.

Back in the house, Arabella is baking an excessive amount of pastries and Dean is making hefty pitchers of sangria. Draco flits between the garden and the kitchen, fetching extra screws and the spare drill battery, and Dean hands him a glass each time, an inch of the fruity wine sitting at the bottom. He drinks just enough that his anxiety fades to a distant lull and his mouth pulls up into something lazy and joyful, but he’s careful not to overdo it.

He’s been cracked open so frequently, so recently, that he’s almost certain he’ll bleed his feelings all over the hydrangeas if given the chance.

He hears the tell-tale crack of apparition just before eight. The sunset is still doling out its last rays of light, and the crickets are starting to sing. He’s loose-limbed and comfortable, sprawled across the clover lawn. Luna’s hands are in his hair, weaving tiny braids.

Ginny steps out into the night, Ron, Harry, and Hermione trailing behind her.

“Draco,” she crows, “You’re pink!”

He sits up slowly, turning to face the group spilling out the back door. Ginny’s face is wide open, relieved. Happy. It makes Draco smile reflexively. He was a little worried, given how reluctant Ginny seemed when she left a couple hours ago. Hermione seems significantly less burdened than the last time Draco saw her, back before the trials, and Ron looks the same as ever, lingering at her elbow, except he’s grinning at Draco like they’re friendly. Harry is, as always, an unreachable thing.

Their eyes meet, for just a second, and…

Draco isn’t sure what’s happening. A heart attack, maybe. The sangria could finally be hitting him. All he knows is that, for the first time since he was fifteen, he doesn’t feel cold at all. His entire body, down to the marrow, is lit up with a gentle, shimmering warmth. It’s an aftershock, another reawakening, one more part of himself he thought was long dead but is now remaking its home deep in his chest.

“He’s had like three glasses of sangria,” Dean calls from the doorway, “You’ll have to catch up.”

Draco manages to pull himself together, just barely, just enough to notice the wariness emanating from Hermione. It’s more caution than suspicion, but either way, it’s not quite comfortable. He can’t know, not for sure, whether it’s directed at him, or if it’s something else, but he finds himself wanting to ease it all the same.

It’s a party, after all.

“You were in Australia, right?” Draco asks.

Based on her expression, the question is unexpected but not unwelcome, “Yes, we went to visit my parents. It was nice to get away for a while.”

“I get that,” he replies, “You look very relaxed, both of you.”

Ron tips an imaginary hat to him, and it’s so ridiculous that Draco is, against his will, charmed. There’s an earnestness about Ron that he can’t help but appreciate. He knows how rare it is, how valuable.

“So do you,” Hermione smiles.

Luna pulls everyone into a Muggle party game that Ella had left at the house after a visit. Well, almost everyone. Harry sits out, on the sidelines, scowling into the distance.

There was a time back in fourth year, after the stark violence of the World Cup but before he understood the horror that was coming, when he believed that his life could still be something he chose. Something good. He remembers moaning to Pansy about panicking every time Harry looked at him, slipping back into the familiar grooves of meanness. She laughed at him every time.

He remembers the Potter Stinks badges, about the original ones he can’t even think about with a straight face. He remembers being terrified, and seeing Harry’s fear like it was a smudge of ink on his face. He remembers how he imagined taking care of him, helping him with research for his tasks, bringing him extra food from the kitchens after Draco’s weekly visit.

He misses Pansy’s laugh, and he misses how simple his wanting seemed then, in comparison.

It’s different now, on the other side of the war, than it was before it. For a moment, he lets himself fantasize about Harry confiding in him and Draco finding some way to ease his burden.

It doesn’t last long. Luna drags him into a round of something called Twister. He ends the game in a pile of tangled limbs with Dean and Ginny, bruises already blooming on his ribs where Dean had accidentally dug his shoulder in.

He sits out the next round, which turns out to be an excellent idea when Ron finally convinces Harry to join them. On the sidelines, Hermione sits next to him.

“Are you going back to school next month?” she whispers, careful not to disturb the other conversations happening around them.

He shrugs, “I haven’t decided.”

The Death Eaters who had been running the school under Snape weren’t exactly paragons of academic excellence, so the year was pretty much a wash for every student. Draco had never even started his seventh year, but even those who did will need to either retake the year or test out of the necessary classes. Ginny and Luna have both taken the exams this summer that will put them in seventh year with Dean. He doesn’t want to go back to the castle, but he doesn’t want his friends to leave him, and he doesn’t want to waste away here, no matter how much he has grown to love Claire and Arabella or the village.

It’s not home, not really, and he will have to leave eventually. He just doesn’t know where to go yet.

Hermione smiles, not at him, but at Ron, whose back is arched in some impossible shape, “We’re all going. It’ll be weird to be back, after everything.”

“Oh,” Draco isn’t sure whether to be glad or afraid, “I don’t really know what I’d do, either way. I have nothing better to do, besides keeping this garden alive, but…”

“If you do go, I’d welcome the competition. I haven’t forgotten whose name was just below mine in all the rankings.”

Draco grins at that. Maybe school would be easier, actually enjoyable, without the weight of duty upon him.

She lowers her voice even further, “Between the two of us, I think Harry would feel better if you came.”

He blinks stupidly at her, “What?”

“Not that he’s said anything about it, because God forbid we have a conversation with any emotional depth, but I think he’s a little worried about you.”

Ron groans loud enough that it interrupts the conversation, “That’s Hermione’s problem face. Please, Draco, don’t get her started.”

Even in the midst of playing the ridiculous game that Luna is narrating like it’s a nature documentary, Ron has been looking over every do often, unable to keep his eyes off of Hermione for very long. It’s sweet. It makes Draco feel something enormous and unfathomable, something that stings.

Hermione rolls her eyes, “Mind your own business.”

She lets the subject drop, though, and Draco is overwhelmed by the idea, mortifying and more than a little painful, that Harry pities him.

The night stretches into early morning. He stops drinking, but everyone else is just getting started and the next few hours end up cast in the same golden film that the rest of the summer has been.

Draco and Luna end up in a mirror of their earlier position, Luna sprawling across the clover and Draco’s legs. He weaves tiny braids into her hair this time, and tugs at them affectionately every time she giggles, which is often. Ginny gets drunk, and they all discover that her sharp edges get smoothed out with wine. She gives Draco a messy kiss on the forehead.

Harry sips at a beer, which Draco privately thinks is some sort of self sabotage, and his eyes rarely leave Draco. It puts him on edge, makes him careful.

“Draco, do you remember in your second year, when you helped me sneak into the kitchens?”

He looks up at the dark expanse of sky above, velvet blue and glittering with thousands of stars, “Of course. You were crying.”

Luna pokes his arm, “And you were the first person who was kind to me. I didn’t properly meet Ginny until I was a second year, you know. I always wondered how you knew how to get there.”

It’s like she’s prodding at a bruise. He can’t tell Luna that when he came to Hogwarts, he had already spent more time around house elves than wizards, and the kitchens were the only place he felt close to home at all. He can’t tell her about Twila and Odie, not in front of everyone, not when he’s already so close to tears.

“It’s a secret.”

The conversation drifts, and so does the group, migrating to separate sides of the garden. Hermione starts asking questions about the plants, so Draco and Claire lead her through the flower beds and vegetable patch while Arabella and Luna drift behind them.

“And you did a lot of this?” Hermione asks Draco, impressed, “I can’t keep a cactus alive.”

Draco shakes his head, “No, I just help Claire out sometimes.”

“Sweetheart,” Arabella chuckles, “Claire has killed everything she’s ever planted out here by midsummer. You are a miracle worker.”

“He’s always been good with nature,” Luna says wisely, as if she knows.

She’s right, he supposes. Before first year, his accidental magic manifested itself in bursts of bright green vines and vibrant spreads of wildflowers blooming beneath his feet. He realizes, suddenly, that the plum tree has grown more than it really should have, that each strawberry plucked has been full and ruby red, like something out of a painting.

“Maybe,” he admits sheepishly.

They get closer to the other group chatting on the lawn, though they’re separated by rows of tomatoes and sweet peas. A lull in the conversation allows for Draco to catch a bit of what Ginny is saying.

“And we all love it here. Everyone in the village loves Draco and Luna, of course, and Draco says it reminds him of summers at Malfoy Manor.”

This, of course, is meant to be a ringing endorsement. Ron sees it with amusement, but Harry’s face is wiped completely blank, unreadable.

“That’s a compliment, is it?” he says wryly.

Ron reaches out to flick at Harry’s head, “Well, you only saw it that once.”

“I imagine it was quite nice, without the murderous dictator,” Ginny adds, giggling.

Draco smiles wistfully out at the garden and wishes he could show them what the Manor used to be, what it never will be again.

Ginny turns, sees him, waves, “Tell us something good!”

He weaves his way to her, ducking under the grape vines, and lowers himself onto the faded, worn-soft quilt next to her, “I wouldn’t necessarily call it nice.”

Harry nods, as if he’s been vindicated, and it makes Draco feel a little less self-conscious. The comment hadn’t been aimed at Draco, not really.

“When I was a kid,” he swallows past the lump in his throat, “My parents weren’t exactly the most hands-on.”

“Shocker,” Ginny mutters, glaring at nothing.

“The point is, I spent a lot of time outside. There were a lot of little pockets of magic, scattered throughout the woods behind the Manor.”

Harry looks away from him.

“Like the clearing?” Dean prompts.

“There’s this clearing, deep in the grounds, where the weather is always perfect. There’s some magical tree planted there, I think,” he clarifies, turning briefly to face Hermione.

Her gaze goes sharp, curious, but Draco continues. He doesn’t want to talk about the clearing, not when he’s been drinking, not when he feels so raw and exposed already, homesick and still reeling from the sight of Harry, the feeling it elicited in him.

“Anyways, one of the other pockets was a pond where the fish had some sort of premonitory gift-”

Ginny cackles, “I’m sorry, what?”

“Listen, I don’t know, okay? They could see the future, kind of. And they were really brightly colored, so you could always see them in the water. They’d make shapes, moving scenes, of things that were going to happen.”

“That’s so random, why did that just exist behind your house?”

He shrugs, “That’s why it was a good thing.”

“Not like the peacocks,” Dean jokes.

“Not at all,” he breathes, tender and bittersweet, “It wasn’t a weird display of wealth, it wasn’t useful, it was just there, hidden. For no reason.”

Ron scoffs, “Sounds like a weird display of wealth to me. I reckon one of your loony ancestors installed it and led nature hikes to show it off to all the other rich tossers.”

Dean buries his laugh in Luna’s hair, winding his long arms around her. She blushes a little, leaning back into him. Ginny’s smile flickers, almost drops, and then it’s replaced by a vacant imitation. Draco reaches out, grabs her hand on impulse.

“Gross,” Draco wrinkles his nose, though he doesn’t completely understand why he’s doing it. He only knows that it works. Ginny squeezes his fingers.

Dean rolls his eyes, raising his head from where it was resting, in the crook of Luna’s neck, “Shut up. Someday, you’re going to fall in love with someone and it’ll be worse.”

“Draco in love would be a terror,” Ginny says breezily and everyone laughs.

She isn’t wrong. He’s still concerned about her, about the hollowed-out expression on her face, about the creeping feeling of worry and dread, the feeling that he’s missing something big, important.

Claire tugs on a lock of his hair, “No, he’s really very sweet.”

The laughter dies. Dean looks at him, incredulous. He just keeps breathing. This is not the end of the world, despite the way that his heart is threatening to leap up his throat and past his teeth, and if he were feeling less vulnerable right now, he’d probably be able to laugh at it with the rest of them, send Claire and Arabella a warning look, mitigate the damage.

But he can’t act nonchalant about this, not after everything that’s happened in the past few weeks, after everything that’s happened tonight.

“What?”

Luna stares at him, in that strange way of hers. He shakes his head. He can’t even tell her not to ask. He can’t say anything. He’s more than a little afraid that if he opens his mouth, his heart will come leaping out of it, bearing the inscription this belongs to Harry Potter.

He’s been burying it since he was fourteen, but he’s done a lot of digging recently. He has the dirt under his fingernails to prove it.

Claire doesn’t offer any additional explanation, and the conversation eventually moves along, though he suspects that Dean and Ginny won’t let it go so easily. They’re at least willing to let it rest for now, while the others are here, and for that he’s grateful.

It’s another thunderclap, another warning, another crack in his tenuous control. This is precisely why he doesn’t drink. He’s going to shatter across the stepping stones that wind a path through the Thomas’s beautiful garden, and it’ll ruin Ginny’s birthday. He waits until he’s certain the attention has shifted off of him, and then he goes inside, imagining eyes on his back the whole way.

He just wants a moment to collect himself, a moment where he doesn’t have to monitor his expression or keep himself in line.

“Draco,” a voice calls after him, footsteps on the stairs, “Are you alright?”

Arabella steps into the room. He tries to steady his breathing, school his face again. He’s endured so much worse than this, all without crumbling, but in making himself back into the soft, ethereal thing of his childhood, he’s dismantled all his armor. He’s exposed.

“Yes, I’m alright.”

She smiles kindly at him, “I can go, if you’d like to be alone?”

“No, no, that’s okay. You can stay.”

“I’m sorry if Claire made you uncomfortable, she was just teasing.”

“I know,” he sighs, “I don’t remember what I told you, actually.”

Arabella pulls him closer, “Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize. You were talking about a boy, the other night, and I guess we assumed that the other kids would already know who it was, or at least suspect.”

“I didn’t tell you who it was?”

“No, nothing like that. You told us that he probably would have spit in your drink, that’s all.”

Draco laughs, and then he can’t stop laughing, “Oh my God. He would have. Maybe still would.”

“Surely not,” Arabella says with a frown, “Dean says you’re a war hero.”

He ducks his head. The only thing he can say in response is, “Don’t believe everything you hear.”

“You’re a good person, Draco,” Arabella pats his head.

They go back down together. The group has wandered back inside to loiter in the kitchen and start saying their goodbyes. Dean and Luna talk softly, trading kisses every few sentences in the corner, and Ginny glances at them surreptitiously. No one pays them any mind when they join them, except for Harry, who silently tracks Draco as he crosses the tiled floor.

“It was nice to see you guys,” he says, hoping that it’s enough to cover the paralysis he’s feeling.

He can’t manage speaking to Harry directly, which is a brand new symptom. It hadn’t been so hard, before, while they were at Hogwarts or when he was with Hestia or when Harry and Hermione came to his flat. Until tonight, he’d thought all of the embarrassing parts of it, everything but the enduring loyalty, had been calcified. He thought that his heart would never beat like this again.

But he was wrong. All he needed was room for the fluttering and the desire and the attentiveness.

“I look forward to seeing you at school,” Hermione says, and to Draco’s surprise, pulls him into a brief hug, “We can study together.”

Just like that, he’s decided. How is he supposed to deny Hermione, or watch as Ginny leaves when he knows now something is wrong? How is he supposed to resist the allure of being in the same place as Harry, getting to stare at him from across a crowded room, watch him on a broom?

Ron grimaces, “Oh no, you’re both going to get worse, aren’t you?”

“I hope so,” Draco says brightly.

***

Taking the Hogwarts Express is a surreal experience. It’s not difficult to find a free compartment, in fact, most of them are empty. They all cram together, Draco, Ella, Luna and Dean on one side, Ginny, Hermione, Ron and Harry on the other.

“Do you want to try and find your friends?” Draco asks Ella, voice low.

She shakes her head, “I don’t even know who’s coming back.”

He drops it. Ginny draws her into a conversation about Quidditch, and they both attempt to drag him right along with them. He answers questions when asked, but mostly he just stares out the window at the world they’re speeding through, a blur of green hills and blue skies. It reminds him of the summer holiday with Marcie, which feels so far away now, as if it happened in a dream.

At the Welcome Feast, McGonagall makes a speech about unity and healing and what comes after war, no corny tangents about the power of friendship in sight. Draco’s grateful for it.

She does, however, announce changes due to low enrollment.

“Classes and seating for meals will no longer be determined by Houses,” she says in her strong, tremulous voice, “Quidditch will resume in the spring term with an official Hogwarts team, which will be accepted into the Sorcery School World League and compete against other Wizarding schools in the spring. Small intramural games are welcomed during the fall term.”

There is an uproar at this. Draco finds that his interest in Quidditch is, for the most part, nonexistent now. The allure of competition has faded.

Dean catches him on the way out of the Great Hall, “Are you going to try for the school team?”

“Probably not,” he replies, leaning into the arm that Dean slings over his shoulders on instinct, “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, remember? Besides, in what world am I going to beat out Harry for a Seeker spot?”

“You could always try a different position. And with a school-wide team, they’ll probably want sub players, right?”

Draco wrinkles his nose.

“Okay, I get it,” Dean rolls his eyes, “You don’t want to be second best.”

“I’m used to that,” Draco says, “After all, Hermione does exist.”

He hears his name called distantly, through the clamor of first years trying to find their prefects, across the crowded corridor outside of the Great Hall. He turns and immediately locks eyes with Pansy Parkinson. She’s just as lovely as she’s always been, thick, dark lashes and a French bob that curls around her jaw, messier now than it used to be.

“Pansy!”

He weaves through the crowd, and it parts in front of him as people recognize his face. He doesn’t even think twice about sweeping Pansy into a hug, even though they haven’t held an actual conversation in years, even though he can’t recall the last time he embraced her.

Her nails are shorter, but they feel the same running through his hair, scratching over his scalp, “I see you’re finally embracing the waves.”

Draco chokes out a laugh that is at least half tears, “I missed you, Pans.”

She punches him in the bicep, harder than necessary, “What the actual fuck? I can’t believe I had to find out you were some sort of badass from Snape of all people.”

“What?” he pulls back from her, in response to the punch and her words.

She frowns, “The trials? I know you didn’t go, but surely you listened to the wireless broadcast?”

He winces, “Ah. No, I did not.”

“Seriously?” she narrows her eyes at him, “Okay, well, the greasy asshole went on a whole monologue about how no one did more to defeat Voldemort than you but Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore themselves, you were his star pupil, et-fucking-cetera.”

Draco feels the color drain from his face, “He said what?”

“Uh huh. The Prophet’s been writing constant stories about it. Did you really have no idea? Where the hell have you been?”

“A Muggle village?”

Pansy holds him at arm’s length and scans him, maybe for signs that he hasn’t been taking care of himself, maybe for wrinkles in his robes, “You’re screwing with me.”

“No, really.”

Pansy breaks into slightly hysterical giggles, and Draco follows suit. Dean catches up to them, touching Draco’s back right between his shoulder blades to announce his presence.

“Sorry,” Draco wipes at his eyes, “Sorry, I totally just ditched you.”

“It’s alright,” Dean says mildly, “Hello, Pansy.”

“Hello.”

“Is Blaise here?” Draco looks over Pansy’s shoulder, but he doesn’t see Blaise’s tall, willowy frame anywhere.

“No, he’s in France with his mum. Says he’s going to be a man of leisure, whatever the fuck that means. He promised to come for the first Hogsmeade weekend,” she squeezes Draco’s shoulder then lets her arm fall back to her side, “We can catch up later.”

Draco rolls his eyes and grabs her hand, “Come on. You can meet all of the other pests.”

“We have actually met before,” Dean points out, “We’ve been going to school together for seven years?”

That first night, everything seems possible, attainable. He feels the ghost of fourth year all around him, but for once he doesn’t mind it. It reminds him that he was happy here, once, and that it can happen again.

The feeling doesn’t last very long. Hogwarts feels as it always has, like a bad dream. He slides back into old habits, creeping silently through the halls, smoothing his face over before he steps into a corridor, spending too much time in his head.

He does most of his homework with a rotating cast of mostly Gryffindors, and he sits between Pansy and Ginny at every meal, and Luna drags him to the kitchens at least once a week. It’s not bad, not like it was in Crawley Down when he’d broken down completely, but he can feel himself drifting. He can feel the burning vitality, that bright spark of joy at finally being alive again, begin to fade. It’s slipping through his fingers.

Another storm isn’t far off.

Some things are the same as ever: the lightning bolt Pansy had carved into Draco’s bedpost in the dorms is still there, Harry is sending him intense, confusing glances, he’s still trying to keep his head down. Other things are different: he spends every Sunday afternoon writing a letter to Marcie and sends it along with Ella’s, he can’t bring himself to care much about Slytherin politics, and he doesn’t bother picking fights with Harry in response to those looks of his.

He finds himself standing in front of a blank wall one day, wishing for the Room of Hidden Things, but it doesn’t appear. He wonders if the castle has finally decided he is unworthy of its aid, if it can sense something in him that the people in his life seem to have missed.

Most of the time, Draco forgets that the Dark Mark is there, on his skin, faded but still recognizable. He’d grown so used to it tugging at him during the war that it was a relief when it became just ink. It doesn’t move anymore.

But sometimes, like today, he catches a glimpse of it and it makes him want to tear his skin off. On some level, he understands that it was a sacrifice, an act of love, getting the Mark. He did it to protect. Right now, it doesn’t make him hate the spiral of the snake’s tail any less. Right now, it’s just a reminder that the same magic that has eaten away at his home is in him too, lives on his body. He stares at the unmoving brick and scratches at the ugly black lines.

He thinks of sectumsempra, of his blood spilling out over gleaming white tile, just a couple floors below him. It still feels earned, the way all of his pain does. He couldn’t tell you what he did to deserve it, but his heart knows he did something. He loves and it hurts and it’s always his fault.

***

Pansy drags him around Hogsmeade, her fingers laced in his. The long red nails that have practically become a part of her dig into the back of his hand, leaving little red crescents behind.

“We’re already late,” she says, for the thousandth time, “Pick up the pace, babes.”

He knows better than to comment on the real reason they’d left the castle fifteen minutes after they really should have. Pansy had trimmed her bangs last night, and styling them this morning had nearly ended in tears and bloodshed. They look fine to Draco.

Blaise is meeting them at a cafe Draco’s never heard of, nestled on a relatively quiet street. It was Pansy’s choice, as she’d spent the summer living in Hogsmeade with her dad and half-brother. She knows which spots have mostly escaped the notice of the hordes of Hogwarts students that regularly descend on the town.

Blaise greets them both with kisses to their cheeks and exclamations over their hair and clothes. They settle into the cozy corner booth, trading pleasantries and barbs.

“How’s France?”

“French,” Blaise replies, an amused little grin on his face, “How’s England?”

Pansy sticks her bottom lip out, “Fucking awful.”

“It can’t be that bad.”

“It can,” she says darkly, “You have no idea what I’ve had to put up with. I didn’t know it was possible for Draco’s obsession with Potter to become more pathetic-”

“Could you keep your voice down?” he hisses.

To her credit, she does lean over the table a bit and lower both her volume and tone, “But it has. And Potter is somehow even weirder about Draco. I can’t actually tell if he’s plotting murder or marriage.”

Draco’s face burns.

“Well,” Blaise drawls, “I commend you on your patience.”

“Thank you.”

“I assume it’s more of the same? Besotted gazes across the room, waxing poetic about his hair and his eyes and everything?”

“Worse,” Pansy cries, “He’s somehow made friends with them! Not Harry of course, but the rest of the Gryffindors. Oh, and Luna.”

This revelation seems to actually crack Blaise’s disaffected exterior. He stares at Draco, jaw dropped.

“What the hell?”

“I know.”

“How’d you manage that?” Blaise asks.

Draco shrugs helplessly, “I think I tricked them.”

Pansy rolls her eyes, “Please. You couldn’t pull one over on a scarecrow.”

“Excuse me,” he says angrily, “I fooled Voldemort!”

“Congratulations,” Pansy replies, flat and unimpressed, “You managed to lie to a desiccated corpse with delusions of grandeur.”

He throws his hands up and retreats from the conversation. It’s pointless to argue with either of them, and Draco doesn’t actually want to. The relentless mocking, Pansy wielding her stiletto like a weapon under the table, Blaise smirking over the rim of a stemmed glass; it’s comforting. It’s easy to let them take the reins, to sit back and let their voices wash over him, to cede control.

When they’ve had their fill of overpriced salads and champagne, and it’s time for Draco’s second lunch of the day, he doesn’t want to leave.

“We’ll walk you over,” Pansy says, and they move arm in arm through the narrow, cobbled streets.

His friends, along with Ella, are waiting for him outside the restaurant. It doesn’t look like Marcie has arrived yet. Blaise pulls him in, and he’s enveloped in the familiar scent of vanilla and leather and black pepper, one he’d nearly forgotten, the cologne that Blaise has worn since he was thirteen years old. He lets himself fall into the embrace.

“You have my address,” Blaise murmurs, “Send me something.”

He leaves with a final goodbye, a kiss to each of Draco’s cheeks.

Pansy goes after him, waving at Draco as she does, “See you back at the castle.”

Ella elbows him, harder than strictly necessary, “What was that? Send me something.”

The impression she does of Blaise is obnoxiously flirty, and right on the mark. Draco groans. He is never going to live this down.

“That’s just how Blaise is,” he says firmly.

Ginny narrows her eyes at him, but doesn’t say anything. Ella doesn’t look convinced either.

“Really,” Draco says and drops his voice, “You want to know a secret?”

He is, admittedly, a little tipsy. It’s becoming something like a theme, the warm buzz of alcohol and him saying more than he should.

“Duh.”

“I’m pretty hung up on someone else. Blaise and Pansy were making fun of me for it earlier.”

He doesn’t think Ginny heard him. Ella is delighted to know something that other people don’t, and she seems to know that she won’t get anything else out of him while they’re surrounded like this, so she doesn’t push. He knows it’ll come back to bite him.

Donna and Leroy arrive with Marcie, handing her off to Draco and thanking him profusely for being such a good role model for the girls. It’s a little embarrassing, especially because he isn’t entirely sober and because Ella is in full view behind them, trying not to audibly cackle. It’ll become fuel for teasing later.

Inside the restaurant, he sips at his water and steals chips from Marcie’s plate. He walks around the shops afterwards, surrounded by all of his friends, hand clasped in Marcie’s. Ella and Ginny talk Quidditch to his left, Hermione and Luna talk politics to his right, Ron and Dean grumbling about the new Defense teacher in front of him.

“Are things better, with the Prices?” Draco asks, comfortable and well-insulated from the rest of the world.

Marcie nods, albeit reluctantly, “Yes. Especially now that I’m in school during the day. And I have friends, so I can go over to their houses and watch movies and be around other Muggles.”

“You know I would have taken care of you both forever, if I could?”

“Obviously. We’re awesome.”

“And you know I’m still here if you ever need anything?”

Marcie pinches him, “Yes. I know.”

“Alright.”

He lets go of her hand, but only to pull her into his side.

“So…” she grins up at him, “Do you want to hear about my friends?”

“Of course.”

She launches into a lengthy explanation of the politics of teenage girls, and Becca is a little sensitive, and Lauren is too scared to tell Rowan that she likes her ex-boyfriend, even though they all know already and Rowan has been trying to drop hints that she’s fine with it.

“Ex-boyfriend? How old are these children?” Draco exclaims, mostly to make Marcie giggle.

“Fourteen. Georgia said that Rowan started dating before anyone else in our year, when she was eleven.”

Draco shakes his head. That’s a first year.

“That is too little.”

“I think it’s a bit weird, but Becca says I’m just a late bloomer.”

“I think maybe they’re early bloomers.”

Marcie nods, “That’s what Donna said too.”

“So, you’re talking to Donna about school, and your friends?”

“You need to stop worrying about me,” Marcie says, “I’m fine.”

“I believe you, but I can’t just stop worrying about you. I probably always will, at least a little bit.”

But Draco is satisfied by Marcie’s wide smiles and her enthusiasm as she talks about school. She’s returned to Mr. Price and they all start the trek back to the castle, Ella taking up the spot that Marcie had left by Draco’s side.

“You know, you two don’t have to worry about me either,” he says once he realizes that they’ve essentially just traded shifts, “I’m okay.”

Ella stares him down, “Yeah, I don’t believe you.”

***

Draco wakes up to cold stone and an ache in his neck and a throat clearing loudly. He blinks his tired eyes open. He’s outside the Room again, though he’s mostly accepted that it has stopped appearing for him now, and Professor Islington, the History of Magic professor, is standing over him with a rueful smile on her face. Binns never reappeared after the battle, and Professor Islington is a good deal younger and a good deal more interesting.

“Draco, what are you doing out here?”

Draco rolls his shoulder, sending a stab of pain down his spine, “It was an accident.”

“You’re not supposed to be out of the dorms. It’s the middle of the night,” she doesn’t seem to be too upset, so he doesn’t bother to worry about detention.

He shrugs, “Habit, I suppose.”

“Go, sleep in an actual bed.”

Draco obeys, one foot in front of the other, staggering with exhaustion.

“Oh, and Draco?” Professor Islington calls down the hallway, “Would you stay after class this afternoon?”

He winces and waves his hand in a vague gesture of agreement, continuing through the corridor and back to the dungeons. He can’t fall back asleep once he’s burrowed under the duvet. Instead, he stares up at the canopy and wonders how much longer he can go on like this, standing on the edge of a cliff, before he topples over once again.

History of Magic is his last class of the day, and his favorite. Professor Islington knows it, too, and ruthlessly exploits both the timing and his preference. He often gets pulled into discussions with her after class is over. Last week, he’d left with an armful of books.

“I want to talk to you about your sleeping habits,” she begins once the room has emptied, “Specifically the location.”

He sighs, tired, “Can you just give me the detention and skip the lecture?”

“Nope.”

“Great,” he says under his breath and takes a seat in the front row, closest to her desk.

“Is there a reason you decided to take a late night excursion to the seventh floor?”

He frowns. He knows the existence of the Room is sparsely documented, to say the least, and he’s not sure how many people are currently aware of its existence. Dumbledore had acknowledged it once, after Draco had begun to work on the Vanishing Cabinet there, but Snape didn’t appear to know about it, and it’s never been spoken of in any classes.

“I used to study there,” he says carefully, “Under the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy.”

Professor Islington pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose, “I’m not an Auror, alright? You’re not under investigation for anything. I just wondered if you knew about the Room.”

“Oh. Yes, I do.”

“Then you’ve noticed that it hasn’t been quite right,” she reaches for a notebook, “Has it appeared for you?”

He blinks at her.

“Well?”

“Uh,” Draco’s mind races, “No, it hasn’t. I didn’t know if it was indicative of a larger problem…”

She raises an eyebrow, “And what else would it have been indicative of? You’re a historian in the making, Mr. Malfoy, you have to be more inquisitive.”

He chooses the lesser of two evils, accepting the reprimand instead of trying to explain that he thought the castle was turning against him. Now that he’s thinking about it, it sounds ridiculous. It’s a fucking castle.

“It hasn’t appeared to me either. If you don’t mind me asking, what do you call it?”

“The Room of Hidden Things. It’s what- Dumbledore called it that.”

“Ah,” she scribbles something in her notebook, “And it appears to you like that, as a cluttered room?”

“For the most part. I know it changes, depending on what is needed, but that’s what it looked like the first time, and I usually asked for it specifically.”

“Interesting. That version of the Room is very distinctive. And it’s the only recorded static iteration, you know. There is no other form that the Room takes that appears to different students, at different times, answering different requests. It’s malleable. I like to think that it’s the original form.”

Draco leans forward, “You think that it was once a normal room in the castle then?”

“Sort of,” she replies, reluctant, “I don’t want to unduly influence your research, so I’ll keep my opinions to myself for now.”

“My research?”

“There are quite a few students who are familiar with the Room, it was used quite extensively during the war, but as far as I can tell, none of them are quite as attached as you. Or as skilled in Charms.”

It’s certainly news to Draco. Maybe he should have gone to the trials.

“As you know, seventh year students are required to complete a capstone project in order to graduate. I think this should be yours.”

He stares at her in shock, “You want me to fix a magical room that obeys no apparent laws and has barely been documented?”

Her eyes go bright, “No, I want you to fix a magical room that obeys no apparent laws, has barely been documented, and has been recently damaged by one of the most under-researched curses in existence.”

She says it with such unshakable confidence that he doesn’t bother arguing the point.

He’s going to need to re-read A Comprehensive History of Curse Damage. And that book about permanent Charm work, if he can remember what the author’s name is, or what the book is called, or what the cover looks like. And figure out who the hell used the Room during the war.

The list grows and grows. Every bit of information he uncovers prompts ten more questions, tugs him deeper into an endless pit of fixation. Draco’s always been a little obsessive. He starts a puzzle and he can’t stop until he’s solved it. Any time he’s not in class or eating, he’s researching. He avoids the library, instead taking books up to the seventh floor so he can read across from the entrance to the Room. It provides him with a distraction-free environment. It means that he spends most of his time alone.

He misses meals frequently. It’s not that he’s isolating himself on purpose, it’s just that they’ll be worried. They are worried.

He didn’t expect it to bring back sixth year, but maybe he should have. Just because he’s relived the worst night of his life and made his peace with it doesn’t mean there aren’t still a veritable treasure trove of other horrifying experiences for his subconscious mind to choose from. He dreams of bleeding out in a flooded bathroom, of his feeble crucio actually connecting, of falling from the Astronomy Tower, of crawling into a dark cabinet and vanishing, forever.

That one isn’t bad, really. It’s worse when it’s real, when he dreams of Dumbledore contorted in pain, Bellatrix laughing, of watching the life fade from his eyes.

***

It all comes to a head just before Halloween. He slips back into the dungeons late one night, prepared to crash and wake up too soon from a nightmare, and then stops short when he sees Pansy waiting for him.

She’s standing in front of the fireplace, backlit by the orange flames, arms crossed over her chest.

“Hey,” he says quietly.

She takes a half-step forward, “Where the fuck have you been?”

“I was researching for my capstone-”

“I mean the past month, Draco. I’ve barely seen you for weeks. I know you’re not eating, Luna said the house elves haven’t seen you, and you skip almost every meal. You’re definitely not sleeping. It’s like sixth year all over again.”

Draco doesn’t even have the energy to get properly angry, “You don’t even know what sixth year was like.”

“And whose fault is that?”

Neither of them speak for a while, the only sound coming from the crackling fire.

Draco breaks first, “I just… I have to do this.”

“What are you even talking about? Some project? Is it really worth it, for a grade, for a scrap of some professor’s approval?”

“It’s not about the grade, Pans,” he sighs, scratching absentmindedly at his forearm, “There’s something I have to fix. I have to. If I can fix this, maybe I can fix…”

“What?” Pansy’s voice shakes.

He breathes, and then it all spills out, “Maybe I can fix whatever cursed thing is still inside me.”

“Draco,” she comes closer, reaching out, and he flinches away, even though she’s still all the way across the room.

“You don’t understand,” his breath comes faster, “You didn’t see it. The things I did, the way I was. You weren’t there. And I know I did it to myself, I know, I know it’s my fault. So I have to fix it.”

He’s hyperventilating now, gasping, struggling for air. He ignores Pansy’s broken pleas and goes up to bed, where he can cast a silencing charm and lose his mind in peace. The sobs take over his entire body. He heaves with the force of his panic.

Eventually, he cries himself into an uneasy but dreamless sleep.

***

He skips breakfast the next morning to sit out by the lake. Ella finds him by there, staring down at him with hands on her hips.

“Hello. You look a bit dead.”

“Thanks.”

She sits beside him, close enough that their elbows knock together, “Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?”

“I fought with Pansy.”

“Oh, believe me, everyone knows that,” Ella says, “She’s taking it out on the entire school. I want to know why you thought it was a good idea. And what it was about, I guess.”

“I didn’t start it,” he says petulantly.

Ella scoffs, “Are you four years old?”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Maybe start with why you can’t seem to take care of yourself properly?”

He can’t help it, can’t keep it in. He cries into Ella’s shoulder for a minute before he collects himself and pulls back to look at her.

“I don’t think I’m a very good person-”

She holds a hand up, “Yeah, I’ve heard enough of that. Spare me the rest of that self-deprecating monologue. You’re fine. A little embarrassing, yeah, but it’s not like you’re fucking Stalin.”

Draco frowns.

“Right. You definitely don’t know who that is. My point is that you’re just some random person. Maybe you’re not an extraordinarily good person, but not all of us can be Luna Lovegood. God, I can’t believe this is what you’ve been moping about for the past month.”

“That’s not really what happened.”

“So, what did?” she asks.

“I just… I got distracted, I guess, and then I stopped taking care of myself,” he explains, discovering it as he lays it out for Ella, “And when that happens, I tend to start thinking there’s something inherently wrong with me. It’s just a cause and effect thing.”

She flicks the center of his forehead, “Next time this happens, and you feel like shit about something, you’re going to find me immediately, got it? I’ll force feed you or something. This is ridiculous.”

“You’re a kid.”

“So are you? And Marcie would kill me if I let you continue on like this.”

“You’re going to get sick of me.”

Ella glares at him, “I already am. You think I wanted an annoying older brother? Marcie just adopted you and I had to deal with it.”

Draco, for the first time in weeks, feels light, happy, like he could float away on the autumn breeze. Ella could give him all the shit in the world but she couldn’t take back calling him her older brother.

“You know,” he says cautiously, “This is why I wanted you and Marcie to be somewhere more stable. I’m just not the most reliable person right now. I would have kept you forever if I thought I could take care of you, you know that, right?”

Ella blinks, and a tear escapes from her molten hazel eyes, “Oh.”

“You’ve done such a great job looking after Marcie,” Draco pushes the words out, because Ella needs to hear them, “No one, and I mean no one, could have done better. But you should be looked after too. You deserve that. It’s not something that you have to earn, but even if it was, you would have done it a thousand times over. I wanted you to be looked after, both of you, and I can’t even look after myself. I did what I did because I knew my limits, and because I love you.”

“Of course you do,” she says loftily, wiping at her cheeks, “Now, I demand payment for making me talk about feelings.”

“Name your price.”

“You have to play a Seeker’s game against me.”

Draco looks over at Ella in excitement, “You’re a Seeker?”

“I want to be. Ravenclaw’s always had someone older in the spot, but I think I could make the school team next year. I want to practice.”

“Of course I’ll play with you. Anytime.”

“Now you’re the one who’s going to get sick of me.”

“Impossible.”

***

He doesn’t seek Pansy out. Whatever else he may be, good or bad, he is fundamentally scared of her. He’s scared of how well she knows him, of how unafraid she is to rip him apart.

She finds him, on the seventh floor, books spread out in front of him.

“Draco Malfoy, you are a monumental idiot.”

He braces himself.

“You are not unknowable,” she says, furious, “You are petty, and sometimes you’re cruel, you’re proud, too proud to ask for help and too proud to see an easy way out. You care so much about other people, but you can be remarkably self-centered. You think everything is on your shoulders, like you could possibly carry it. If you think for a second that there was a part of you I did not know, a part of you I did not love, you’re an idiot.”

She turns and stomps away, leaving him to stare after her, eyes full of tears and heart full of love.

***

It’s easier, afterwards. Ella helps him come up with bare minimums: at least one meal a day where she can see him, a Seeker’s game on Sunday mornings, followed by at least three hours of social interaction that has nothing to do with school work, and five hours of rest each night even if it’s spent awake.

He knows there’s a larger conversation waiting for him with Pansy, but there are only so many things he can manage at once, and he’s not overwhelmingly concerned about it. They’ve come through worse things. They can see each other in group settings, and they can be alone together, even if it is stilted and awkward in a way their friendship has never been before.

It comes with the natural consequence of spending more time than ever with Ginny. He never manages to get much work done when she’s there, the natural consequence of her own apathy towards her education. She’s set on professional Quidditch, and eventually coaching, so she doesn’t see much point in worrying about classes. If not for her mother’s insistence, she might have gone straight to a minor league team and made it to the majors within a couple of seasons, and wouldn’t have finished at Hogwarts at all.

He’s in the Gryffindor common room, which still seems forbidden, though the separation between Houses has grown murky and the traditional divides haven’t been enforced at all this year.

“Are you really not going to try out for the school team?” Ginny asks, successfully drawing his attention away from studying.

He glances at her sideways, “I don’t understand why you want me to.”

“You’re the best Seeker we have, and if I’m going to have my pick of pro teams, we need to have a stellar season.”

“What makes you say that?” Draco asks, incredulous.

Ginny raises her eyebrows, “Because it’s true?”

“Aren’t you overlooking someone? Youngest Seeker in Hogwarts history?”

“What? Harry’s not playing Quidditch this year.”

Draco takes a moment to process this information. It doesn’t make him any less confused, any less indignant.

“Why the hell not?” Draco actually closes his textbook fully, turning to stare at her, “Quidditch is like 40% of his personality, what the fuck?”

Harry himself sits up straighter on the other side of the common room, “I can actually hear you, you know?”

“Sorry,” Draco says offhand, the usual nervousness that seems to manifest every time Harry is within a twenty foot radius vanishing in the face of his shock and genuine outrage, “I didn’t mean to say something nice about you out loud, I understand how that may be upsetting.”

“Fuck off.”

Ginny has a terrifying, calculating look on her face, “He’s too busy. Hero shit.”

“I’m sorry, was he not busy with hero shit the entire time he was at Hogwarts? Is there some other homicidal megalomaniac who’s strangely fixated on him that I’m not aware of?”

“Unlike some people, I don’t run the second the fighting is over,” Harry bites out.

Draco frowns, a little hurt, but mostly suspicious. He’s getting better at not taking things personally, at separating instinctual, emotional responses from malice, a bad mood from animosity. Harry isn’t usually one to guilt trip, not seriously, so Draco assumes that he’s trying to convince himself of something more than he’s actually still upset that Draco opted out of participating in the trials.

Ginny, however, doesn’t seem to reach the same conclusion. She scowls at Harry, and when she speaks, it’s vicious and protective.

“Don’t say that shit in front of me,” she snarls, “I will not be as polite as Draco.”

Draco hides a smile. He really does love Ginny, and there’s something nice about being defended. It’s not something he has a lot of experience with.

“So he can say whatever-”

“It’s not the same, and you know it. He’s just being bitchy, you’re being mean.”

Harry shuts up, and Draco lets the conversation lapse. He hadn’t known that he’d be pressing on an open wound, and he does not have the capacity to stitch anyone up, much less Harry, no matter how much he might want to.

It comes up again the next day, against his will. Ginny is putting on a dramatic reenactment of the exchange for Dean, mostly for the purpose of recruiting someone else for the crusade to get Draco to attend try outs in February. Hermione is paying more attention than he thinks is warranted, especially because she doesn’t really care about Quidditch, and then the entire thing is derailed by a discussion of Harry being an asshole.

“Does he think you should have done more?” Dean asks, horrified.

Draco tries to ignore the conversation entirely. He doesn’t want to talk about it, any of it. Not his reluctance to testify, and definitely not Harry’s disapproval. He knows that Harry isn’t having the best time- he can see the exhaustion, the desperation, on him like he’s looking in a mirror- but he’s apparently alone in that line of thinking. He never expected to be the only one who could see past their history of antagonism, and he’s wholly unprepared for it.

“Obviously no one can say that Draco didn’t do enough,” Hermione says diplomatically, “But I’ll admit, I was a little frustrated that he shut down the idea of the trials so quickly. I don’t know why Harry is still bringing it up though.”

“He wasn’t really in a position to-” Ginny starts, clearly remembering just how much of a mess Draco was last summer.

He cuts her off before she can get too far, “I told you when you asked, Hestia knew everything I did, and I didn’t think that personally recounting all of the bloody details was worth it. The war was different for me. I’m not saying it was harder or anything, but I wasn’t exactly going around breaking dragons out of Gringotts or sneaking supplies into Hogwarts. I did what I had to do, and I’ve made my peace with it, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit in front of a crowd and talk about it.”

Hermione nods. He hadn’t realized that there was still a lingering discomfort in their friendship until it’s gone, but she’s noticeably more open and relaxed around him over the next few days.

He doesn’t really know what to make of it.

“I just didn’t quite understand you,” she says when he asks, “I don’t like not knowing things.”

Ron chuckles, “And you get tunnel vision, love.”

“That’s true,” she admits sheepishly, “I kind of have to be forced to see things from a different perspective. Sorry.”

Draco shakes his head, “No apology necessary. I was probably more combative than necessary when you asked, which couldn’t have helped.”

“I get it, mate,” Ron says cheerfully, “It’s like I told Mione, we’ve been fighting this war since we were kids. We should let someone else fight the next one.”

Draco finds himself agreeing with Ron Weasley, and perhaps more alarmingly for his fourteen year old self, enjoying the conversation they have afterwards. As it turns out, Ron has a knack for sniffing out people in desperate need of a mother, and Draco has promised to come to the Burrow for New Years before he knows entirely what’s happening.

“Mum will probably make you a sweater if you’d like, even though you won’t be there on Christmas.”

Draco remembers the lumpy, uneven knit of the characteristic Weasley sweaters and he wants nothing more than to be bundled up in one.

“I wouldn’t want to make more work for her…” he says haltingly.

Ron tuts at him, “Oh, don’t be silly.”

***

Draco finishes Wuthering Heights on a lazy Sunday morning in December, just before exams. His Sundays have expanded past the bare minimum, and he spends a few hours each evening reading. Wuthering Heights usually just makes him feel frustrated and sad, so he’s taken several breaks to read other books, mostly Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope, which are far more light-hearted on the whole.

He only has a couple of chapters left now, and he’s determined to see the whole depressing story through. The dread builds and builds, until the inevitable release. Heathcliff dies. Draco feels sick and relieved and angry, a wash of emotions that he struggles to keep in line.

It’s just all so pointless, he thinks, all that time spent tormenting everyone around them and this is how it ends.

But. Hareton and Catherine are going to be married on New Year’s Day. There’s something poetic about that, something about beginnings.

Heathcliff and Cathy never find happiness or peace. They die miserable, separated but never left alone, and even then, they haunt each other. But Hareton and Catherine survive. They survive despite the grief, despite the suffering. In the end, there is hope because there is youth.

There is life, and time enough left to live it.

He turns the last page and heaves a huge, shuddering breath. It feels like the first bloom of spring at the end of a long winter, like the first sight of land after months at sea, like seeing Marcie’s smile when she glimpsed the ocean for the first time, like a grueling, bloody chapter finally coming to a close. He shrugs the last of the weight from his bowed shoulders.

It will get bad again, eventually, perhaps even frequently. But he knows what the very worst of it feels like now, and he knows what lies on the other side of it, and these are things he can never unknow.

***

It’s wintertime and Draco Malfoy is eighteen. He’s spent Christmas with Claire and Arabella and Dean and Luna, the family he’s trying to feel deserving of, and there’s a letter from his mother sitting unopened at the bottom of his trunk, and the cooling embers inside of him have ignited again, and he is eighteen.

His trunk is on the step beside him, in front of a house he’s never seen before. After this, he’ll go straight to the Burrow for New Year’s, and he’ll stay for the rest of the break. He’s looking forward to it, truly.

He’s not looking forward to this next bit, though. His hands are shaking. He is terrified, and he feels like a child, and for a moment before he knocks, he wants to be one again. Three raps on the door, and then he waits.

“Old age and war have made me reluctant to engage in small talk,” Andromeda says as soon as she opens the door, “You look so much like your mother.”

Draco is proud of himself when he takes it for the compliment it is, “Thank you for inviting me over.”

Andromeda is older than his mother, but not by much. She has a kind face, and wildly curly hair that shines silver in the porch light. She looks like Bellatrix. She looks like his mother. Somehow, she also looks nothing like them at all. There is a warmth and a softness to her that tells of hearty meals and a loving home. He wants nothing more than to belong to the family that produced her, and he realizes with a start that he does.

“Yes, yes, Teddy is at Harry’s. I wanted to speak with you before I introduced the two of you.”

Draco nods and straightens his back. He’d expected this, so it barely even brings his mood down. Of course Andromeda would want to vet him. She knows what grows from their family tree, better than perhaps anyone besides Draco. Andromeda leads him into a small, messy kitchen. Tea is prepared and sitting on the table against a wide window that looks out over the darkening street outside.

“Help yourself,” she gestures at the steaming tea pot and waits for him to prepare a cup before she does the same, looking up and smiling at Draco every so often.

They take their tea the same way.

“I wanted to reach out earlier, but I just never found the time to make it happen. We don’t have much family left. I want Teddy to have as much as possible.”

He nods.

“We’re the last of the Blacks, you and me and your mother. And Teddy, I suppose. I know what our family is, and I know how hard it is to leave. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to stay,” Andromeda sighs, “I always had some regret about leaving Cissy there alone, the year I ran away with Ted. It was after she’d left Hogwarts, but she was still living at home. I know the choice you had to make, and I made the opposite one.”

“Oh,” Draco traces over a scratch on the table.

Andromeda reaches out and takes his hand, “My daughter, Dora, we never agreed on very much. She was a little impulsive, like me I suppose, and I was so- I wanted her to be better than I was. I wanted her to have the space to figure things out slowly, to not jump into things the way I did, the way I had to. We fought a lot. I wish, more than anything, that I’d tried harder to understand her. If I had… I think I would have seen that she was. She was better than me, so much better. You know, one time during an argument, she told me that to choose to love another person was never a waste, no matter what came of it.”

It strikes right at the center of everything Draco is, and leaves him incapable of speech, or even tears. He’s so shocked that his hands start to shake again, the spoon in his tea clinking melodically against the china.

“I was too stubborn to really listen to her at the time, but it’s something I’m trying to do now. I’m trying to be better, for her, for her son. I guess what I’m trying to say is I know the choice you made, and I made a different choice, and it is one of my biggest regrets. Your love for your parents was not in vain, even if they couldn’t return in properly. And it means something to me, at the very least, that you stayed. That you tried to protect my baby sister when she should have been protecting you. I just… I needed to tell you that. I hope you don’t mind me poking my nose into all of this.”

Draco shakes his head furiously, “No, no, of course I don’t mind. Thank you.”

He’s still shaken, unsure of how to express to Andromeda what her words mean to him, when she gets up from the table to pull him into a hug. He folds himself into her, as small as he can get. He is still a child, and right now that doesn’t feel like such a bad thing.

“And because I know our family,” she murmurs into his hair, “I know you probably came here expecting some kind of test but the only thing you need to do is care, Draco, and I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with that at all.”

[phoebe-delia]

fate left scars upon his face with all the damage they had done

I'm having some writer's block at the moment, and when that happens I tend to sort of go one of three ways. 1. I don't write. 2. I write hurt/comfort. 3. I write about something kinda revenge/badass/dramatic.

And THEN the new MCR song came out, "The Foundations of Decay," and it sooo fit the fic and gave me intense Harry vibes, so it's now a songfic.

Also this is dedicated to @ihopeyoubothstaysafefromharm, the biggest MCR fan I know.

CW: brief smoking, CW: mentions/heavy discussions of and references to canonical child abuse, CW: mentions of and references to physical and emotional child abuse, CW: mentions of scars, Also Dumbledore bashing. Finally, a huge thank you to the lovely @crazybutgood for the very helpful beta! Enjoy some cathartic angst!

Harry’s robes clung to his skin, sodden and soaked with the rain. But despite the wand safely and conveniently stowed in its holster, Harry didn't cast a Warming Charm or an Impervius. He simply let himself shiver against the cold and the boots become muddied as he trudged through the forest, past rows of crumbling headstones to the large, ornate marble tomb.

He stopped several yards away, close enough to see the tomb in all its regal glory but far enough not to make out the name he knew was carved worshipfully into the stone.

Harry stared at the ornate display, so incongruous with the natural greenery of the surrounding trees. Silence hung thickly in the air, a sickly sweet kind of peace that spread over everything like molasses. The rain had slowed to a moderate drizzle, its rage beginning to quiet.

Fitting, really, since Harry's was just beginning.

“Did you know where I got the scar on my face?” he asked the tomb, letting the sound of his voice prod at the static stillness.

The marble had no reply, so Harry continued. “I wonder if you noticed it when you saw me again for the first time. I wonder if you saw my face and recognized my forehead and then looked at my cheek and did a double-take at the scar that ran across my tender skin.

“It was still pretty new, at that point. It wasn’t the first they’d given me, but the others were a bit more hidden. There’s a place on my back where he broke the skin with his belt, and when I snuck into the bathroom to clean it, I couldn’t reach. And there’s a burn mark on my leg, where she threw a pot of boiling water at me. Not to mention the fact that I still flinch when I hear the oven timer go off, and the smell of brandy makes my skin crawl. You don’t see those scars; no one does. That doesn't make them any less real.

“And I never knew what I did to deserve it. Never knew what my crime was, exactly. I tried to stay small and quiet. I tried to be as good as possible, to be of use to them, worth keeping around. Worthy of food, water. Worthy of life.”

Harry walked closer, watching raindrops slide down the smooth marble. He stared right at it, pretending he was looking straight into twinkling blue eyes. 

“And I don’t know why you never seemed to notice me tugging down the sleeves of my robes for the first weeks of each school year. I don’t know why no one, other than my closest friends, seemed to care that I would eat ravenously for the first few days and that I’d start tucking non-perishable food into my pockets at the end-of-the-year banquet.

“You know, when I look back at that time, the difference between you and them becomes more and more blurred. Sure, they made me feel like shit most of the time. But at least they were honest,” he spat. “You lied to me. You acted like you cared about me, and now I realize that all you ever cared about was keeping me alive. Not happy, not fulfilled, not loved—alive. 

“And now you’re gone, and I’m so full of grief. I’m grieving for Sirius—” Harry’s voice cracked, but he continued, “who you abandoned to rot in Azkaban. And for Remus. And my parents. And for myself, because you let me die, little by little, every day for 17 years until I was just broken enough to fix the world.  

“I don’t miss you, but I mourn the fact that I’m having this one-sided conversation with a slab of fucking rock instead of with the coward buried underneath. I wish you were here, not because I want you in my life, but because I want the satisfaction of cutting you out of it forever.

“This,” he said, gesturing to the tomb, “is an altar to a false god. You weren’t the infallible, wise elder everyone wanted you to be. You were just as fragile and weak and dumb as the rest of us; you were just better at faking it.” 

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He slipped a cigarette between his lips and held the lighter to the other end, revealing the flame with a soft click. He let it ignite the end of the cigarette and tucked the lighter back into his pocket before he sat down on the long marble slab, leaning back on a hand as he studied the engraved words in front of him. He used his free hand to take a drag of the cigarette, blowing smoke right over the headstone.

“You told me to pity the living, and not the dead, and that all sounds very poetic and profound, but I’ve done both,” Harry said, before pausing to take another drag. “And I know this…life, post-war, is still going to get harder before it gets easier. But I’ll prove you wrong. Because I don’t need you to tell me fortune cookie truths about life. I value my friends and my family. And Draco, who knows the scars on my body and mind nearly as well as I do, and who makes me happy and fulfilled and loved.” He glared at the headstone with defiance. “I will make my life into something you can’t pity me for.”

With that, Harry leaned over and tapped the ashes of his cigarette against the headstone, letting them spill a bit before he crushed it against the slab and let it drop there, the last bits of smoke still curling into the humid air. 

[babyboibucky]

Deserve Better

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Summary: Bucky disappeared and came back only to say goodbye.

Word Count: 2,887

Warnings: angsty angsty angsty angsty angsty

A/N: Post-endgame timeline with lotsa angst! Included Andy Barber here because why the fuck not but he’s really not a major character lol

Deserve Better || Undeserving || Deserve The Best

MAIN MASTERLIST

-

The day you got Bucky back was the same day he said goodbye. He left you— said it was for the best— just as when your fingertips touched him for the first time after five years of longing.

Your reunion with Bucky after the snap was nothing like the movies, far from it actually. A lot of things happened when he was snapped back, in between the battle with Thanos and Tony’s funeral. Besides, you weren’t an Avenger; you didn’t work for SHIELD nor the CIA. In fact, you remained oblivious of the battle that was going on until the moment of chaos caused by the sudden reappearances of half of the world’s population.

And then you received a message from Steve, about the tragedy and the sacrifice of Tony Stark. He was inviting you to the funeral and as much as you felt devastated from the loss of a hero, you couldn’t help but focus your attention on the last line of Steve’s message.

Bucky’s going to be there too. He’s back. He needs you to be there with him.

It wasn’t until the funeral was over that you finally got to have Bucky all to yourself. You had locked gazes when you arrived and staring back into his beautiful blue eyes again made your knees weak.

Bucky was really back.

“Hi.” He greeted you first, his voice remained the same— soft and gentle.

One word was enough to make you feel the warmth of his existence. Hearing him, seeing him again felt like finally coming home after a very long, tiring day.

“Hi, Buck.” You whispered.

Bucky’s smile was all it took for the dam to finally break. You’d burst into tears right then and there and you were more than ready to feel his arms around you after years of hugging yourself to sleep during his absence.

But the warmth never came. If any, Bucky stopped himself from doing so. You frowned when he took a step back from you, extending his metal arm to keep you at a certain length away from him.

“I’m sorry.” He uttered, refusing to meet your gaze.

“What do you mean?”

“I have to go.” He explained, gently squeezing your arm before rubbing circles on your skin using his thumb.

You didn’t understand why Bucky needed to go when he just got back. You just got him back. You had spent years crying over his disappearance only for him to come back and disappear again?

Bucky explained that he thought he got better but things have become so vastly different after the snap that it left him feeling broken and different again. He told you about Steve’s decision to go back in time, never to return again. How Tony’s death made him feel like it was too late to set things straight and how he would probably carry the guilt and regret from not being able to apologize for what he had done.

“I’ll help you, Buck. We’ll work through this together. I want to be by your side when things get better.” You insisted, tears blurring your vision as you tried to reach for Bucky, wanting to feel him again after such a long time.

But Bucky kept on moving away from you, he kept on pushing you away and you wanted to understand why he wouldn’t let you touch him.

“I’ll only hurt you, I don’t want that to happen. I want to get better because you deserve better. But I can’t do that with you because this...this is something that I gotta figure out by myself.” He further explained.

You shook your head, unable to accept his decision. “Buck...I don’t think I can lose you again. I just got you back...I can’t afford to lose you again, please?”

When you attempted to reach for Bucky’s hand, he finally let you. You quickly entwined your fingers through his metal ones and savored how they felt against your skin. They were cold as usual, but Bucky always oozed a certain warmth that made you feel safe.

But now they’re just that— cold and hard.

“I love you. I’ll wait, Bucky.” You murmured and tugged at his hand before he could even let you go.

Bucky smiled sadly at you, “You don’t have to, doll.”

You shook your head and brought Bucky’s hand to your lips as you cried, “I want to. And I will.”

Pressing one final kiss on his hard knuckles, you watched Bucky slip his hand away from yours before turning around to leave. You felt your chest tighten as if you lost all the oxygen in your lungs the same way you lost Bucky.

Losing him the second time around proved to be even more painful. Because this time, he didn’t just disappear.

He walked away.

-

You waited for Bucky to come home to you for days and weeks until they turned into months...and then years. Still, no Bucky walked through your doorstep but you never stopped hoping.

Sleep was such a rare occurrence to you since Bucky walked away. How do you honestly cope with the loss of someone when you haven’t even healed yet from his first disappearance? You wanted to get mad at him, curse him for suddenly deciding to leave you. But you felt selfish for even thinking about that, because Bucky left to better himself.

To be better for you. He said so himself.

So you kept waiting for him to come back. You made it your reason to keep going. You looked forward to the day you’d hear your door open followed by his heavy foot steps. You wondered, would he smell the same then? Would he still be using your favorite perfume on him? One that smelled like cedar wood and mint and well, Bucky. Would his hair still be of the same length? What about his beard? Would he shave them off before coming back home?

How about his gaze? Would his blue ones still look at you as if you were his moon?

As much as these thoughts made you miss him more, they were the ones that you held onto. They were like your glimmer of hope on nights you were the loneliest, on nights you cried and dreamt of his return only to wake up to an empty, cold space beside you.

You held onto these thoughts every single day in hopes of them becoming real soon enough.

People have told you to move on, to not waste your time waiting for someone who walked away just like that. But you trusted Bucky when he said he wanted to be better because you deserved better. You couldn’t move on, not from Bucky.

You love him with your entire being, so much that his absence caused you physical pain too. You couldn’t even find the right words to describe how much you love Bucky.

In the three years that you spent waiting, you’d met a lot of people too. People who showed interest but none of them really won you over.

You’d met a man named Andy through work. He was a lawyer and was dealing with his own divorce. The connection was there and you wouldn’t deny that.

Two people dealing with the grief from losing someone they love, it wasn’t that hard not to find a common ground. And you did find some solace in Andy and him in you. But it was just that, nothing more and nothing less.

“How has it been?” You asked Andy after he had settled into the booth across of you.

The restaurant was surprisingly scarce on a Sunday morning. Usually there were plenty of customers, their chatters overpowering the soft music playing in the background. Now, it was peaceful and the radio was turned off. There were only the clinks of plates of being set on tables and the footsteps of the staff walking around the place as they attended to the few customers around.

It was serene and peaceful, pretty much like Andy’s aura when he arrived.

“I wouldn’t say I’m fine but I guess I’m at a much better place now than before.” He said with a nod, as if he was finally agreeing with himself after questioning his emotions for the past few months.

You offered a kind smile and placed a hand on top of his, “It shows, Andy. I’m glad. I’m happy for you.” You said.

He had been going through a lot of emotions since he signed the divorce papers. He didn’t want to but knew it was for the best. Andy had a son, Jacob, and he didn’t want for his son to grow up in an environment where his parents no longer slept on the same bed. As much as he loved Laurie, the relationship was no longer working and was becoming toxic the more they stayed together.

“And you?” Andy asked back before calling the waiter.

You let out a deep breath, “Still waiting.” You chuckled as your stared at your hand that remained on top of Andy’s.

Andy spared you an apologetic glance but nodded, “I do hope he knows how lucky he is.” He said, turning his palm up so he could hold your hand.

To others, the gesture may seem romantic but it really wasn’t. You and Andy both knew that despite the similarities and the comfort you found in each other, the both of you were not meant to be together in that way.

Your heart still belonged to Bucky after all.

-

When you received an invitation from Sam Wilson, you felt confused and excited. There was going to be a huge gala at the compound to honor Steve Rogers’ legacy as Captain America.

You’d heard the news about Steve’s passing not long after he went back in time. He finally got to live the life he deserved and when he came back, it was as if everything had been corrected. He may no longer be the super soldier that many knew but he remained the same person— but he wasn’t the man out of time anymore. Despite his white hair and wrinkles, Steve looked the happiest he had ever been.

You wondered how Bucky coped up with such a huge loss, you always worried for him.

It sparked debate though, Steve’s decision to leave the Avengers. Some got angry, said that Steve was selfish for doing that. Others showed sympathy, that Steve didn’t owe the world anything. He’d spent a lifetime fighting for everyone. It was time that he fought for himself and what he deserved. And Sam fought just as hard for Steve’s legacy and finally, all his hard work finally paid off.

What confused you was whether Bucky was going to be there? Does he know about the gala? Was he finally back? If he was, why hasn’t he come home to you yet? You had so many questions that you wanted to ask.

The answers though, were literally in the palm of your hand— the invitation.

-

It was no surprise how big the gala was. Just on your way inside, you’d already come across a lot of big personalities. There were politicians and popular celebrities too. You felt intimidated given that you went by yourself and that you weren’t really part of their world.

You were just you, someone who had fallen in love with one Bucky Barnes who introduced you to the world of superheroes. The rest was history.

“I’m so glad you’re here!” You turned around and found Sam approaching you with a huge smile.

You embraced him and smiled as you pulled away, “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” You told him.

It was Steve and Sam that you’d met first and they were nothing but kind to you. Despite being well, ordinary, they welcomed you like their own when Bucky had introduced you.

Sam’s expression changed at your response, “I honestly thought that you wouldn’t show up after Bucky said—“

“Bucky?” You immediately cut him off upon hearing his name.

“Bucky’s back?” You asked and Sam had never looked more confused as ever.

He carefully nodded, brows knitting together as he frantically looked around. “I thought you knew about it.”

“How long? How long has it been since he came back, Sam?” You probed, feeling your throat constricting at the unexpected revelation.

Sam merely looked at you with what seemed to be pity. Why? Why was he looking at you like he was sorry? And why didn’t Bucky tell you when he came back? Was he simply not ready? Or was he waiting for the right time?

“Sam, how long?” You asked again, voice firmer this time around.

“A year ago. He decided to join the Avengers but wanted to undergo formal training before taking on the responsibility of one.” He responded.

You opened your mouth to say something but it’s as if your whole body was paralyzed. He had been back for an entire year now...and yet he kept you waiting?

A hand on your arm pulled you back to the surface, looking up at Sam you shook your head in utter confusion.

“I don’t understand why he didn’t tell me.”

Sam sighed, “I thought you knew. He said he saw you and—“

Sam’s words died on his tongue when he saw that your attention was no longer on him. Following the line of your sight, Sam turned around and saw that Bucky had walked into the venue. He swallowed and couldn’t hide the guilt he felt from assuming that you knew about his return. Before he could apologize, you’d brushed past him as you kept your gaze on Bucky.

Why he didn’t inform you of his return was beyond you and to be honest, you couldn’t bring yourself to care about it for now. Because Bucky was right in front of you and it felt like forever since you last saw him.

A lot has changed. He chopped off his hair but he still sported some scruff. Bucky looked closer to his younger self back in the 40’s. You remembered the conversation you had with him about cutting his hair.

“Should I cut it?” Bucky stood in your bathroom, observing his long locks in the mirror as he ran his fingers through them.

You walked over to him, hugging him from behind and pressing your lips on his back before moving to stand beside him.

“Do you want to?” you asked.

Bucky scrunched his nose, “Maybe in the future. I do miss my hair back then.” he smiled.

You chuckled, “Back when Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes used to sweep the ladies off of their feet?” you teased.

Bucky turned to you and wrapped an arm around your wait pulling you closer to kiss your lips, “Hmm, I wanna see if that hair will have the same effect on you.” he said and kissed your cheek.

You hummed as you caressed his face with your delicate hands, “I’d like to see that too, but maybe you should keep the scruff.”

But it wasn’t just his hair that changed. It was his entire demeanor— his aura seemed a lot lighter now, he seemed happier and confident. You knew it for a fact because he wasn’t wearing a glove to hide his metal hand. It was out on display for everyone to see and shake, apparently.

You watched in awe as Bucky interacted with the people around him. He used to avoid eye contact with strangers but now he seemed relaxed doing so. Although he would still open and close his metal hand, something he did whenever he was anxious. The crowd still made him uncomfortable but he’s shown a lot of improvement since then.

The question as to why he never told you about his return continued to linger in the back of your head. But you couldn’t stop yourself from smiling from ear to ear, eyes brimming with tears as you quickened your steps.

Your Bucky was finally back.

And then the world seemed to have stopped when a certain blonde walked over to Bucky, her hand sliding over to his cheek as she leaned up to press a quick peck on his lips.

You knew her of course, Sharon Carter; and you knew about her and Steve. It was Bucky himself who told you about them and how proud he was that Steve finally decided to try his luck at romance. Which is why you felt even more appalled at the scene playing before you.

The way Bucky slid an arm around her waist, pulling her closer to him and how he tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. How he was smiling down at her, whispering to her ear as they laughed.

Bucky was in love with Sharon. You didn’t have to ask him that anymore because he was looking at her like she was his moon, his source of light in the darkness.

You knew that because he looked at you the same way, back when you still had his heart.

Suddenly, the questions plaguing your mind found their answers. You understood now why he never came home to you.

He did get better, you could tell that by the way he smiled and laughed.

Bucky was better now, but not for you. At least, not anymore.

-

Everything Bucky Tag List:

@ddowii @jessou893 @stealapizzamyheart @bagelofthelord @mxnt @dontputyourfckingdrinkonmytable @jeeperky @ohladymacbeth @wildflowergubler @supraveng @twinerd14 @buckysmar  @bakugouswh0r3

[mimik-u]

Togetherness

Summary: The aftermath of Steven transforming into a huge reptilian monster brings back old memories for Pearl, who remembers another time Steven was scared so many years ago.

A/N: This piece was written for the Pearl-focused I am a Pearl! mini-zine a couple of months ago! It was a great opportunity to get to explore Pearl's mind space after the events of "I am My Monster" and how her friendship with Greg has evolved over the years. ;w; Thanks to the mods for a great zine experience! <3

AO3 Link / Zine Tumblr Link / @iamapearlzine

—

Steven is sixteen years old when he erupts into a scaly, pink monster—fifty-foot tall and inconsolable.

Everyone tells him that they love him, but because words are rarely ever enough, they show him that they do; they embrace him; they hold him; they press their fingertips into his reptilian skin. His scales are cold and sharp against Pearl’s palms, keratin hard and impenetrable. She tells him that he shouldn’t have to keep anything from her, all the while burning with shame that he’s kept so much from her.

He’s felt responsible for her fragility and loved her enough to tiptoe around the Diamond in the room.

His mother.

His mother and the complicated history between them.

The love.

The torture.

The grief.

The love.

(Because what is grief after all but a manifestation of love? A reminder, its echo, and its painful, lingering, lovely ghost.)

Connie kisses Steven, very lightly, very softly, and he falls from the sky, a boy again. 

Pearl wraps him in a blanket.

Garnet carries him into the wreckage of their home.

And approximately one hour later, they’re all standing on the deck, waiting for Priyanka Maheswaran to finish her professional assessment of him as the sun sinks into a honey-colored sea.

Pearl cradles her face in her hands, elbows sinking into the railing, trying to retrace every missed sign in the blackness of her own head. She sees his skin glowing pink in the darkness—at the Reef, in Little Homeworld, just moments ago in the living room…

So many flares in the night.

And Pearl had watched them all fizzle.

—

Steven is six years old when he moves into the newly minted beach house, and he tells Greg that he’s afraid of the silence. Nearly all of his life, he’s been surrounded by noise—the gentle rumble of the van’s motor, the susurrant murmur of the sea, wind, rain, buskers playing guitars on the Boardwalk, the whoosh of the rollercoasters at Funland. 

His dad’s snores echoing off the tin ceiling.

His dad’s laughter.

His softly-sung lullabies, too.

The beach house is really quiet at night, Steven tells Greg who tells the Gems, and he doesn’t like that…

He’s trying really hard to like it, though.

Maybe things’ll get better next week.

Pearl never looks at Greg as he delivers this news, tapping her fingers against the side of her leg as she sits at the kitchen table, ankles primly crossed. He stands in the doorway—right beneath Rose’s painted image—wringing his hands and looking too awkward to be allowed. She resents him for this—for his awkwardness, for his intrusion into their lives, and for everything else, too. 

(Namely for Rose.)

She inwardly knows that she’s being unfair. 

That loathing a person on the basis of his existence is morally suspect.

Wrong.

But what are rightness and wrongness to emotions? To the sheer primality of grief?

Grief is irrational, she rationalizes to herself—she self-justifies; it knows nothing of ethicality.

“Why didn’t Steman tell us this?” Amethyst asks, absently scratching her nose. “If it’s noise he wants, I got an old drum set he can knock himself out on.”

Pearl frowns, well-remembering the ten straight years Amethyst played the drums through the nineties. Rose loved it; Pearl spent many hours alone in her room to decompress. 

“He’s still intimidated by you three,” Greg shrugs kindly. “And shy. You just have to give him reason enough to trust ya with stuff like this. Tucking him in at bed at night, y’know. Checking under the bed for monsters.”

“There aren’t monsters under his bed,” Garnet says, practical as ever. “They wouldn’t fit.”

Greg chuckles, running a flat hand across the back of his neck as he peers between the three gems. When he and Pearl lock eyes, she meets his stare coldly, her mouth pressed into a thin line.

“But Steven doesn’t know that,” he mumbles, glancing away, his cheeks flushing. “You gotta shine a flashlight down there and show him there’s nothing there.”

“Doesn’t that seem patronizing to you?” Pearl asks, taking little care to disguise the condescension in her voice. Across the room, Garnet’s visored stare finds her—blank, inscrutable, and arcane—but Pearl knows her fellow gem well enough to understand that this is chastisement, silent and brutal.

Arching a thin brow, she ignores Garnet.

She demands an answer from Greg.

“Maybe,” the man concedes, but when he acknowledges her gaze again, there’s a little defiance in his eyes, an edge in his scratchy voice. “But maybe not. That’s what being a parent is sometimes. Patronizing the kid! Playing along. Showing him that you’re listening to what he needs. Letting him know that you’re there… haven’t you ever been afraid before, Pearl?”

“No,” she protests immediately, bristling.

“Pssh,” Amethyst snorts. “Last week, you jumped ten feet in the air ‘cuz you saw a snake.”

“You did,” Garnet smiles wryly. “I was there.”

Pearl scoffs, trying and failing to ignore that her cheeks are suffused with blue blush…

… and that Greg is staring at her with an almost distinguishable emotion in his eyes.

If she didn’t know better, she would say it was pity.

—

Dr. Maheswaran tells them that Steven is okay; he’s tired and sore—transforming expended a lot of his energy—but he’s ready to see everyone now. She tells them to be quiet and to maybe go in one by one, so he doesn’t get too overwhelmed.

Firmly, she warns them that it’ll take more than a good night’s sleep for him to heal .

And she doesn’t mean physically.

“Here’s a number of a good therapist I know,” she says, placing a card in Pearl’s hand. “Her office opens at nine.”

Pearl folds her fingertips over the edges of the glossy card stock but doesn’t quite glance down to look at the name—too fixated on watching Greg stand in front of the doorway, palming the screen door as he seemingly steels himself to go in. 

He’s aged so much in the twenty-something years that Pearl has known him—from his nearly bald head to the branching lines creasing the corners of his eyes—but for some reason, it is only now, in this ephemeral moment, that she realizes how old he is.

She doesn’t mean physically either.

As the others gather around Dr. Maheswaran, asking her questions, voicing their concerns, Pearl takes one deliberate step and then another.

—

Garnet tells Steven that it’s okay—there are no monsters under the bed—and when she shines a flashlight beneath the mattress, Amethyst is there, shapeshifted into a tiny kitten, purring at the child sweetly.

“See, dude?” She laughs, bounding out from beneath the bed. In an instant of blurred matter and color, she becomes herself again, her bangs sweeping inelegantly over her eye. “No monsters under the bed, only cute kittens.”

“Only kittens?” He repeats, grinning that famous gap-toothed smile that everyone adores. His legs are nearly swallowed by his oversized shirt.

“Kittens and dust bunnies,” Amethyst confirms, knuckling his curls playfully and smiling broadly when he laughs. “G’night, Steman.”

“Night, Amethyst!”

“Goodnight, Steven,” Garnet murmurs, lifting the six-year old into her arms and gently placing him onto the bed. She tucks him beneath the covers. She tenderly kisses him on the head.

“Nighty night, Garnet.”

And then it’s Pearl’s turn. Garnet and Amethyst head towards their temple rooms, and Pearl settles down on the edge of the comforter, balancing her left ankle on top of her right knee.

“Don’t forget about M.C. Bear Bear!” She teases softly, reaching over and placing the stuffed animal next to Steven’s arm. “He needs a snuggle buddy.”

Steven nods in agreement, his brow furrowed seriously over his eyes.

“Yep,” he says importantly. “I’ll be sure to hug him tight.”

“Excellent,” she says primly.

“Excellent,” he echoes playfully.

She lightly skims her knuckles across his soft cheek, smiling when he giggles a little, always ticklish…

… but then, when she withdraws her hand, letting it fall away from his face, the moment that immediately follows is quiet.

Too much so.

So quiet that Pearl can hear the softness of Steven’s breath, quiet enough that Greg’s words from earlier haunt her in the absence of noise.

Haven’t you ever been afraid before, Pearl?

Contrary to what Garnet and Amethyst may believe, she isn’t afraid of snakes —pestilent creatures though they are.

She’s surprised by snakes.

And afraid of much bigger things—five-thousand-year old secrets and equally ancient insecurities, for instance.

Six thousand years ago, after all, she was coded to believe that her highest order in life was to be a slave.

And sometimes—if only sometimes—she fears that her weaknesses were ingrained then, in the very moment she emerged from a shell and was called a pearl

One of so many.

Disposable.

Programmable.

Objectified.

Sometimes, she barely knows what it means to be herself, much less what it means to be a parent .

Indeed, Greg Universe of all people seems to have the idea down better than she ever could.

So, yes, Greg, she is afraid.

(Afraid of failing Steven.)

(Terrified that she’s already failed her. )

Patronize him, Greg suggested.

Play with him.

Show him that you’re listening.

Let him know that you’re there.

—

“Greg?”

Pearl places a light hand on Greg’s arm, startling him from his trance as he turns around to face her.

“Pearl!” He exhales, his breath coming in short bursts. “Y’scared me!”

“I’m sorry,” she says sincerely, not quite moving her hand away yet. His skin is warm beneath her fingertips, soft like wave-washed sand. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Yes,” he returns immediately, and then—taking one look at her imperiously raised brow—just as quickly rectifies himself. “No. I don’t know. I’m freakin’ terrified, Pearl. I feel like a failure of a parent. I don’t know what to tell him. But I gotta go in there anyway.”

He says it all very rapidly, as though he’s talking to himself.

Encouraging himself.

And putting himself down to do it.

“I’m his dad,” he concludes, his voice breaking, tears standing in his dark eyes. “I’m his dad, and I didn’t… I wasn’t there for him, and I should have—“

“ Shh, ” Pearl cuts across him gently, patting his arm as tears threaten to slide down her own face. “Shh. There are so many hypothetical should haves that we’ll all have to face soon when it comes to Steven. But not today, Greg .”

With her free hand, she conjures a tissue from her gem and hands it to him, unflinching and kind, even when he needs to wipe his nose.

“Today,” she murmurs, her voice inhibited, a hundred emotions thick, “we just let him know that we’re here.”

—

“Pearl?” Steven asks.

Pearl blinks rapidly, coming back to herself; she’d been lost in her own thoughts, nearly consumed.

“Hey,” she smiles, placing her hand on top of Steven’s own. His skin is so warm and soft; she absently wonders if her alienness feels sharp to him… hard… cold… “Here’s an idea—how about I sing you a lullaby before you go to sleep?”

“You know how to sing?” Steven’s eyes widen incredulously, his mouth shaping itself into a delighted smile.

“Don’t look so surprised,” she laughs playfully. “When we were younger, your mother and I used to sing all the time—hymns from our home planet and the like…”

A pause, infinitesimal, hesitant. 

“...I could sing one for you if you’d like?”

“You could?” The child dares to be hopeful; the very emotion shapes the pitch of his question, the light in his eyes.

He has his mother’s eyes.

Dark and full of stars.

“I could,” Pearl repeats. “I’d sing as long as you wanted me to.”

“How about fooooorever?” 

“Let’s just start with until you fall asleep,” Pearl laughs. “That’s a part of forever, yes? This moment?”

“If you say so, Pearl,” he wrinkles his nose skeptically.

“I know so, Steven.”

As she sings him to sleep in her mother tongue, Pearl admits that this must be something that Greg knows, too.

The importance of hereness to a child.

Togetherness on scary nights.

[thecarrieonokay]

Fluff and Angst Prompt #2

Happy Monday! Shall we start the week with some fluff and/or angst?

@hellishrose this one’s for you, dude! From THIS list.

Warnings for a bit of colourful language and (pretty much goes without saying) they’re pissed as farts. (Drink responsibly, guys. Or don’t. But don’t blame me!)

Riley smelled them before she saw them. The unmistakable scent of tequila was wafting towards her in waves.

She turned to see Bozer and Mac stumbling through the war room door, Desi behind them with a firm grip on both of their collars. 

“Found them,” she said just before releasing them.

Bozer stumbled forwards but managed to style it out with a little swagger before landing hard on one of the stools. Mac just hit the edge of the table with an ‘umf’, rested both of his palms on the surface and bowed his head. He shook it like there was a gnat in his ear. 

Desi rolled her eyes in Riley’s direction before spinning on her heel. “I’ll make a vat of coffee,” she called back over her shoulder as she marched in the direction of the break room.

The boys stank. Seriously. The sickly sweet smell hit the back of Riley’s throat and triggered a string of unwelcome memories. Ever since that unfortunate event in July, tequila had pretty much become Riley’s least favourite thing. She shuddered. The consequences had lasted a solid week. 

“Boze?” She clicked her fingers to get his attention. “Hey! Bro!” He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’ve been drinking tonight, haven’t you?” 

“M’ not dat drunk!” he slurred. “Immonna go get some coffee though. ‘Scuse me.” He launched to his feet and stumbled past her. 

Riley chuckled and shook her head as he swaggered in the same direction as Desi. “Matty is going to murder you!” she called after him. 

All she heard was a dismissive “yeah, yeah,” as he zigzagged down the hall. Riley chuckled to herself. There was no way they could sober him up in time for the briefing. There wasn’t enough coffee in the world if he was drunk enough to not take the threat of Matty seriously. 

When she turned to Mac, he was staring at her, a grim look on his face. Riley raised her eyebrows at him. “Mac? You okay?”

“We went for drinks.” 

“I can see that,” she smirked. 

“Bozer was sad.”

Riley’s smile faltered. “Bozer was sad?”

“Yeah,” Mac nodded. “I’m sad too. Not as sad as Boze, of course. But,” he sighed, “I’m sad too.”

Riley closed her eyes as Leanna’s smile flashed across her vision. A wave of pain followed in its wake. Leanna’s death was weighing on them all. But since that day, Riley could actually see Bozer physically carrying the burden of it with him. His feet seemed heavier and his shoulders inched towards his chest, as if there was a literal hole where his heart had been. 

In all the chaos of the last few months, there hadn’t been a beat to process the enormity of the loss. Matty was definitely keeping them on a hectic schedule on purpose. But Riley knew that distraction would only work for so long. Feelings that stayed buried tended to either fester until they were rotten or boil over at the worst possible moment. 

At this point, Riley was somewhat of an expert on the subject.

The object of her suppressed desire was frowning when she opened her eyes. “I don’t wanna have any regrets, Riles,” he said.

Riley puckered her brow. Mac’s drunk talk usually involved props or a slide-show of some kind. Typically, his Macspaining went into overdrive until his brain appeared to short-circuit and he passed out somewhere really uncomfortable (like the coffee table or a flight of stairs). This sombre tone was new. “What do you mean?” she asked, concerned. 

Mac sighed and stood mostly upright. He skirted around the table, using it for support as he worked his way towards her. “Bozer could have had more time with her,” he murmured and shook his head. “He regrets so much. I don’t wanna feel that way.”

He stumbled over his own feet and Riley leapt forward to grab his forearms before he hit his face on the edge of the table. His usual pine and petrol scent was so obscured by booze that she scrunched her nose. She ignored the rolling in her stomach and focused on trying to get Mac to plant his ass on the nearest stool.

“Tequila, Mac?” she asked as she guided him backwards until the backs of his legs hit the seat. He gripped both of her arms as he lowered himself onto it. He didn’t let go. “Why tequila? Have you forgotten what happened in July?”

He raised his head and narrowed his eyes. “Actually, it’s a bit of a blur to be honest.” His eyes brightened as he said, “Y’know what happens to the brain when alcohol triggers memory loss?” He gave her arms a little squeeze. 

That was more like it. Riley rolled her eyes. “I bet you’re gonna tell me.” 

He smirked. “Only if you want me to.” Then he leaned in and whispered a little too loudly, “I could tell you a lot of things.”

His breath may have smelled like booze, but it was also warm as it tickled Riley’s face. 

“You do tell me a lot of things, Mac. You never stop telling me things. It’s kind of your thing.” And she loved him for it. Not that he knew that, of course. 

He smirked. His voice dropped an octave as he said, “I could tell you other things. Things I know I’ve never told you before.”

Mac’s husky tone sent a shiver surging down Riley’s spine. Her heart involuntarily stuttered. He was drunk. He was… impaired. He was definitely not suggesting what she thought he was suggesting. 

For one thing, he and Desi had only just split. And it hadn’t been pretty.

Against her better judgement, Riley asked, “Oh yeah, like what?” as casually as she could manage. She ignored the alarm bells ringing in her head.

He trailed his long fingers down her arms and tickled her palms as he narrowed his eyes at the rings adorning her hands. “Like how you have the most beautiful skin.” He sighed. “I just want to touch your skin all the time, Riles.”

A heavy stone settled in the pit of Riley’s stomach as his nimble fingers wrapped around hers and held on tight. 

“Like how much I care about you,” his brow lifted and his eyes shone as they pierced her. “I’ve never told you how much you mean to me before. I’d die if anything ever happened to-” 

“Mac, stop.” Riley reacted on pure instinct when she ripped a hand from his grip and placed it firmly over his mouth. She couldn’t let him go on. Each word was like a dagger to her chest. “Please stop,” she whispered.

He was drunk. He was impaired.

She stood looking down at him with his knees brushing her thighs and her hand over his mouth. Mac’s eyes grew darker and darker. Inebriated though he was, his gaze was steady. She felt herself being drawn closer, unable to break her stare as he looked into her. The stone in her stomach turned to water. She felt unsteady on her feet as waves crashed against her insides. 

At least ten beats pounded in her chest as she stood caught in the steady beam of his gaze. It felt like an eternity. 

Still unblinking, Mac reached up, peeled her hand away from his face and placed it carefully over his heart.

Riley held her breath. What he said next shattered her, just not in the way she expected. 

“Riles. I don’t want to be sad,” he said.

Riley didn’t want him to be sad, either. His sadness was like a mirror. She could see her own pain reflected in his open and earnest expression. And it scared the shit out of her. 

Because if there was one thing Riley’s life experiences had taught her, it was that people always said things they didn’t mean when they were desperate or scared. Or sad. 

Emotion could be just as intoxicating as tequila. And just as destructive.

She closed her eyes and took a steadying breath through her mouth. The warmth of his skin was seeping through his shirt into the pads of her fingers. Though the urge to cradle his head to her chest was overwhelming, Riley fought against the crushing grief. She allowed herself to feel the thrum of only three more of his heartbeats before slipping her hand out from under his and taking a full step back. 

Riley opened her eyes. 

“Mac,” she sighed. “Your tolerance for alcohol sucks about as much as your skeeball game.” 

He stuttered something incoherent, like he was about to argue, when Bozer burst into the room shouting. “Ah HA!” 

Then Bozer froze, apparently distracted by his shoe. 

“Boze?” Riley asked. 

“Yeah?” He looked up at her and squinted. “I mean, yeah!” he shouted. “I caught you!” 

Riley lifted her eyebrows and waited for him to explain himself.

“I mean…” he looked between Mac and Riley like they were opponents in a tennis match. Riley was still confused. So was Mac, if his foggy expression was any indication. “Goddamn it!” Bozer exclaimed. He settled a furious gaze on his oldest friend. “Didn’t you kiss her yet?!”

Riley choked on air. She looked sideways at Mac to gauge his reaction to Bozer’s alcohol-induced hallucinations. His jaw was locked, his eyes were like saucers and his cheeks were as red as the fire extinguisher he kept on his desk. (After the last ‘incident’, Russ had insisted it stay there permanently.)

What in the holy hell was happening?! 

Bozer just waddled forwards and deposited himself onto the nearest stool with a dramatic sigh. “I knew you would chicken out. I just knew it,” he mumbled. “All that big talk about how you were finally gonna-”

Riley didn’t get a chance to hear exactly what ‘he was finally gonna’ because Mac launched himself off of his seat in Bozer’s direction and knocked him to the ground. They both landed in a heap in front of the door and began smacking each other like five year olds.

And that was the moment Matty chose to enter the room. 

“What part of ‘I might need you guys for an op tonight’ did you not understand?!” she boomed. Mac and Bozer both groaned as they craned around to look up into her furious face. 

Oh, this was going to be SO much worse than July.

Desi appeared in the hallway and froze like a rabbit in a snare when she saw who was standing in the doorway. There were two mugs dangling from one of her hands and a huge steaming coffee pot in the other. She mouthed “fuck” at Riley through the window. 

“Wait,” Matty’s expression turned murderous as she hollered, “IS THAT TEQUILA I SMELL?!”

Bozer frantically untangled his legs from Mac’s and stumbled to his feet. “Matty, I swear,” he pleaded. “This time we totally did NOT tipi your house.”

“No,” Mac chuckled from the floor. He proudly lifted his chin and declared: “We egged Taylor’s car instead.”

[sylvies-chen]

Prompt 89 for Brettsey 🙂

This fic is partially inspired by @katie-049's fic "Sprucing Up Chicago" (which is a very good thing because wow I'm obsessed with her AU seriously go check it out). Hope you enjoy this :)

89. "You're holding back."

Sylvie swears she isn't a violent or angry person.

It's three weeks after Julie's died. She'd cried in Matt's arms, been comforted by Stella-- hell, she's been comforted by her own damn parents. And it's helped, sure, but there's still residual pain left over. She's still processing the fact that she's gone. That after a lifetime of getting nothing, of always wondering who her birth parents were, Sylvie only got a month with her before she passed. It makes her angry.

People can't control when they die. Julie didn't mean to die, didn't choose to leave like this. But Sylvie deserved time from her, and she can't help but feel like Julie for dying before at least giving Sylvie a proper amount of time with all the answers she'd needed. It's not Julie's fault though. It truly isn't. So why is Sylvie still so heartbroken? And why is she mad?

Matt texts her on one of their days off though, tells her he wants to meet her somewhere. She agrees to it, not because he insists that it will help her, but because she really just wants to see Matt. He's always there for her when she needs it the most, to the point where she finds herself needing him a lot. Hell, who is she kidding? It's not just a need anymore. She wants him-- in every sense of the word, unfortunately.

But that's not the point of today. Today, according to Matt, is about helping her heal a little.

She pulls up to the address he'd texted her to meet him at and is a little surprised. It's some random, run of the mill house except it has tarps on its windows and the white picket fence is severely damaged.

"Hey," he greets her from the front porch of the house. He's in jeans an a t-shirt, which isn't out of the ordinary for Matt, but he's sweaty and there are subtle streaks of dirt on his arms and shirt. It makes him look rugged and messy-- and admittedly, very attractive.

"Hi," she replies in a mousy squeak. "What, uh. What are we doing here, exactly?"

"Right," he remembers, pointing back at the house while keeping his eyes on her. "Well, this is one of my projects for my contracting business."

"And you thought I'd like drilling things? Being a working man, sing a few Springsteen songs?" She guesses amusedly.

"No," he laughs breathily. "This house is being renovated completely. Come on, I'll show you."

What happens next is a terrifying, wonderful surprise. Matt motions toward the house with his head, then grabs her by the hand and leads her inside. His hand doesn't let go the entire time, even as he's opening the door. It's calloused and sweaty from the work she knows he must have been doing on the place, but it's warm. It fits perfectly into hers and it makes her heart skip a beat.

The moment's over before she can even register it though. He pulls his hand away when they walk inside the house and up to the series of bare walls and counters surrounded by tarps and sawdust.

What the hell is happening?

"It's demolition day," he explains to her with a slightly proud smile on his face. It makes her chuckle a little.

He picks up two sledgehammers and protective glasses off one of the counters. "I figured," he explains as he hands her one of the hammers. "This might help you blow off some steam. Normally, I take Severide on these kind of things but his life's not all that bad right now. You need this more than he does."

"Wow," she awes, looking around at the place. "I... I don't know, Matt. I'm not really one for smashing."

"It's a lot more fun than you think, I promise," he assures her. He hands her the second pair of goggles and she gives him a hesitant look for a minute. Eventually, she caves in. Who knows? Maybe this will be fun. She's trusted Matt before and has never once been disappointed, she doesn't see why this will be any different.

"Ok," she sighs amusedly. "Let's do this, Matt Casey."

Matt moves to inspect one of the walls they need to demolish and, when he finds the proper hollow spot through a series of knocks, he points at the spot and then backs away. "You can swing right there. Give it your best shot, Brett."

Sylvie giggles, moves to the wall, and whacks it with her hammer-- a little half-assed, if she's being honest. She's still adjusting to this lovably strange idea Matt had, so she isn't in the full swing of it yet.

"You're holding back," he points out, tilting his head to the side in mock disapproval. "Come on, hit it hard, Sylvie. I know you can do it. You're angry, right?"

"I'm not angry," she protests meekly, her eyes drifting off seriously. "You can't be mad at someone for dying, that doesn't make any sense."

"Of course it does," he counters supportively. "It's okay to be angry, that's part of the grief. Don't shy away from it. Own it."

"Right, okay." She nods, hyping herself mentally. "I can do this."

She stares at the wall intensely, until she locks eyes with the spot she needs to hit and sends the end of the sledgehammer through the wall with a loud, cathartic thwack!

It's a blur of rage. She whacks it once, then twice, three times. When she pulls away, there's a huge, gaping hole in the wall where a cluster of paint and drywall used to be. She stares at it in shock.

She hasn't done something like that since she was a teenager, helping her dad out with farm work in Fowlerton.

She hasn't done this whole "smash therapy" thing before. It's strange, but delightful. It helps the residual pain, anger, and grief flood away into the air along with the specks of dust. Eventually, she forgets the anger ever existed.

"Did I just do that?" She asks, pointing at the hole in the wall in bewilderment.

Sylvie turns to Matt and sees him staring at her with delightful surprise. "You did, yeah," he nods.

"I did that," she repeats, soaking it in. "I actually did that."

"How did it feel?"

"Ugh, so good!" She's ramped up on excitement and adrenaline and, before she knows it, she's practically slamming herself into Matt and wrapping her arms around him in a hug. He laughs, but it quickly becomes awkward so she pulls away. "Sorry," she apologizes after a while. "I got excited there."

"No need to be sorry," he replies bashfully, scratching at the back of his neck and clearing his throat. "I'm just-- I'm glad I could help."

"Yeah," she nods, smiling warmly at him. His gaze is intense and for a moment, she's reminded of just how much she truly cares for Matt. And, admittedly, just how much she wants to be with him-- even if she'll never admit it.

He really is just glad he could help. He means that. He always is.

[herstrayskies]

Matching Crowns

Yatori Week 2021 Day 4 - Moving Forward

Ao3 Link or read below~

Thanks to @asin-ka for being my beta <3

Matching Crowns

It had been four years since Hiyori was in the city inhabited by a wishful thinking God and his ever devoted shinki. She was only there to meet up with her childhood friends seeing that they had to beg her up and down for weeks to come and enjoy a weekend with them. The only thing that held her back was the possibility of running into him. So when she finally broke down and decided to come back home, the memories of her teenage years flooded back in like a tsunami the moment she stepped off that train. The temptation to visit her once favorite shrines tugged at the back of her mind like a fishing rod every time she passed them. The bait was ever so tempting but her pride was stronger.

That is until she heard his voice, smelled her favorite scent. Something that was a mix of cherry blossoms and honey.

-More under the cut-

The bustling of the city wasn’t enough to keep her eyes from finding him in a second. He was passing out business cards on the street to unkind people who passed him by without a hint of attention. But then again, she knew a lot of those people couldn’t see or hear him as he shouted his name into the unending crowd. She wanted to reach out and grab a card out of his hands for the sake of his happiness but she had to remind herself that they hadn’t talked to each other in years. Knowing well that he was the one that vanished from her life.

She readjusted the bag on her shoulder and turned away from her once friend; holding back the need to have her fate twined with his once again.

One Day Later

The bar was packed and Hiyori wasn’t much of a drinker but couldn’t resist her friends' smiling faces and pleading eyes when they asked her to go to their favorite hang out. It was dark and lit by colored ambient light like any other place. A mix of young and old people filled the booths and bar stools. It was loud but what bar wasn’t on a Saturday night? The three friends found an empty table in the middle of all the bustle and patiently waited to be served their first drink.

It wasn’t long before the round of drinks kept coming with each emptied glass. As the liquor started to calm her down, creating a light and bubbly atmosphere, Hiyori began to enjoy herself and forgot all about a certain boyish God.

The group of friends laughed over their high school adventures and talked about the new people they’ve come across in college. The two of them kept bugging her about any potential suitors but she waved them off each time, attempting to make them believe that school was more important to her. Which wasn’t entirely a lie but not entirely true either.  

Hiyori got up out of her seat to use the restroom and swayed her way down the dimly lit hall. She almost ran into a woman leaving the bathroom but was quickly able to avoid her only to tumble into someone close behind. She laughed and apologized without looking back and slipped into the restroom before the door closed. She could have sworn she heard her name whispered through the crack.

When she returned to the main part of the bar, she scouted out the area for her table. It was getting later into the evening which dissipated the huge crowds. What was left were the small groups of friends catching up, couples sharing secrets over drinks, businessmen being shaken awake by the bartenders, and the few regulars sipping their way through their favorite liquor. Eventually, people’s faces began to blur in with one another and the room started to spin. It wasn’t until a lock of dark violet hair passing her by that made her eyes go into focus again.

She really didn’t know he would be there. He wasn’t known to go to bars, not while she knew him. He was more into stealing beer out of her father’s or Daikoku’s fridge.

But the sight of him made the movement of everyone else stop. His name played on her tongue like the strong alcohol she had downed not even ten minutes ago. She wouldn’t let it spill but the temptation was a strong tug on her heart. Its beat sped up with each step she took towards him. It had been three years. Three years of silence and unanswered messages. Three years of desire and grief.

She grabbed onto his wrist without a care in the world and when his heavenly blue eyes met hers she felt that tight bond weaving through her fingertips again. She held on tightly to that feeling and spoke before he could even get a word out.

“I’m Hiyori Iki, and I was wondering if you’d like to have a drink with me.”

His laughter rang throughout the bar and into her heart. That was the smile she missed so much.

“Nice to meet you, Iki-san,” he wiped tears from the corners of his eyes, “Sorry about that but I’ve never had a girl, save for you, be so bold to flirt with me.”

She felt her face heat up and tried to convince herself that it was only the alcohol, “I’m very upfront about what I want.”

“Only when you’re drunk, right?

“Yes, ah wait,” what was she saying?

“As you should be,” he reached for her hand and pulled it up to his lips, leaving a brushed kiss on her knuckles, “please, call me Yato.”

Slightly annoyed that he knew how to appease her, with her lips quivering of the thought of those lips on hers instead, she smiled and took her hand away. Did he believe that she didn’t remember him or was he playing along?

“Nice to meet you, Yato.”

A blush crept across his face before turning away from her, “to the bar, shall we?”

She followed behind him and nodded towards her friends as she passed by their table. They seemed as shocked as she was that she was getting a drink with some random stranger. She noticed how he hadn’t changed at all, that none of her teenage years was a lie and she really was best friends with a God and his shinki. He asked her what she wanted to drink as they approached the bar. She told him to surprise her. He grinned that conniving grin and turned back to the bartender, ordering each of them a mixed drink she’d never heard of before.

“So what brings you here, Iki-san?” Yato passed her a glass and motioned for her to take a seat.

She shook her head, “call me Hiyori.” They sat down at a secluded booth near the back end of the bar. She watched as he stirred the contents with his finger before licking it clean. She tried her best not to stare but her eyes couldn’t help but gravitate towards his lips. She remembered them fleetingly, how soft and desperate they were the night before they last saw each other. She lowered her head, staring at her untouched drink. “I was meeting with my childhood friends. We happened to pass by this bar and decided to get a few drinks.”

Yato took a swig of his drink and grinned slyly, “happened to pass by, huh?”

The hairs on the back of her neck rose at his accusatory voice. It’s not like she knew he would be here but she could see how it would seem suspicious. She thought she hid it pretty well, acting like these past few years had wiped her memory clean of any evidence that he was real. She knew better than that, she could never get him off her mind. No matter how many boys glanced her way or tried to catch her after classes ended. She feared getting involved with anyone else would make her memory start to fade. And he was a memory she never wanted to forget.

“Ami and Yama said this is their favorite bar so they invited me to come check it out,” she admitted, taking a hesitant sip of her drink. It was a bit strong but nothing she couldn’t handle.

“Ah, and where are these friends of yours?”

Hiyori turned her head to find her friends sitting at the table she left not too long ago. They happened to both be staring at her, of course. They were always nosey when it came to Hiyori’s boy endeavors. She hesitantly waved at them as they returned more triumphant, attention-grabbing waves. Yama winked while Ami had a thumbs up. God, why were they like this?

She turned around to Yato’s big smile, a bit too overconfident for her liking.

“Looks like they’re cheering you on.”

Hiyori took another nervous sip of her drink, “they like to embarrass me.”

Yato laughed, making her wish more and more that she could just tell him the truth. That she in fact remembered him to the core. That she just wanted to reach across the table, grab the collar of his shirt and bring those idiotic lips to hers. She pushed the feeling deep down to the pit of her stomach.

“So what do you do, Hiyori?”

She set her drink down and continued with her facade, “well I’m studying medicine. My family has their own practice, a hospital actually, and I’ve always wanted to carry on the family trade.”

“Always?”

She stared at the ice slowly melting in her drink, diluting the alcohol. “I think at one point, when I was in high school, I didn’t really know what I wanted.” She noticed the silence between them carried on a little longer than she would have liked. She looked up from her drink and found a curious expression on his face. Almost hurt but uncertain.

“I guess most high school students are like that, huh?”

She couldn’t help but notice the wrinkles on his brow, the unspoken words on his lips.

“I guess so,” she was desperate to change the subject, “and you? What do you do.”

He shrugged and finished his drink, “I’m a man of many trades. I do what I can to make a living to support my family.”

“Sounds like your heart is in the right place,” she thought about Yukine and Nora and how well Yato got them accustomed to each other over the course of two years. How they slowly developed into this small, weird-found family. She took another sip, she hoped they were still happy.

“I wouldn’t be who I am without them, without-“

Hiyori raised her brows at him, wondering where his words were leading. He had covered his mouth to stop them from overflowing something not meant for her ears. She took a final long swig of her drink and tilted her head.

“What are they like? You’re family?”

Yato slowly dropped his hand from his mouth, a forced smile playing on his lips. He reached for his drink, “it’s gonna take a couple more of these to talk about my loved ones, Hiyori.”

For some reason that made her blush and she opted out to get up and order them more drinks from the bar. The rational thinking was completely wiped from her mind and she blamed the booze.

2 hours later

Her jaw started to hurt from the laughter and never-ending smile he continued to put on her face. She had missed his quirkiness and outright stupidity but she didn’t truly realize it until it hurt to smile. Over and over again.

He talked about his “kid” and how smart he was, how he studied every day even though he really didn’t need to. He praised his sister for overcoming her fears and guilt. He talked about the scuffles he’d get in with a certain glasses-wearing pervert and his long-haired skanky woman. He laughed about a certain clumsy girl with her rigid but loving partner. He talked about the family he found in them and how much he enjoyed their everyday adventures.

She couldn’t help but notice he never mentioned missing a certain girl who so terribly missed him. She put it to the back of her mind and continued to listen to his heartwarming and idiotic stories. It was as if she never left his side.

The snow was getting heavier as they trudged along the city's edge, walking over a bridge that seemed to be very familiar. He stumbled a bit due to a rock hidden among the blanketed snow or possibly the multiple drinks he downed before they left the bar and her friends behind. Luckily for her, the cold was able to sober her up just enough to keep an attentive eye on her friend.

“Be careful, Yato,” she said as she grabbed his arm to steady his balance. He turned his head and gave his usual silly lopsided grin. Oh, he was definitely drunk.

“Hiyori, you’re very kind, you know that?”

She felt a sudden feeling of dread course through her body. She didn’t feel kind, not at all. Not when she’d been lying to him this whole time. Until she reminded herself that without the lies, she wouldn’t be very kind to him at all. Not when he just up and left-

He slipped and fell to his back; sprawled out in the snow, he started laughing. She crouched next to him and wondered what could ever be so funny. Her eyes traveled to his lips, admiring his smile, brighter than a full moon on a clear night. To his eyes, bright pools of hope, joy, and love.

“Are you okay?” She asked as she reached out to help him back on his drunken feet.

He turned his head to the side to look at her, his blue eyes pleading for something she didn’t quite understand. His hand clasped around hers and he held onto it, making no sign of getting up from the snow-dusted bridge. He slowly brought her hand to his cheek and rested it there. Her hand rushed with heat along with her own cheeks. He chuckled and closed his eyes at her soft touch.

“I think this is the happiest I’ve been in years.”

“Years?” She played along, trying to not let her heart burst out of her chest for feeling the same way. “You just talked about how much you loved your friends and family.”

He slowly blinked at her, “I was a lot happier when my best friend was at my side.”

She tried her hardest not to reveal anything from her expression but she was sure she let a beat of sorrow slip, “What happened with them?”  

“How long are you staying in town?” He asked, dismissing her question.

She smiled softly and shook her head, “I’ll be returning to school tomorrow afternoon.”

His smile faltered for a split second, “Ever so fleeting, Hiyori Iki.”

“As is life.”

He laughed, deep from his chest and his heart, her hand still resting against his warming cheek. He closed his eyes and breathed out a heavy sigh, his breath visible in the cold, late-night air. “Will we meet again?”

Hiyori felt like a jolt of lightning struck her, she stood up quickly, ripping her hand from his, and began to walk away from the drunken God. Her mind was whirling with never-ending thoughts, his words from so long ago hammering her brain. We shall meet again.  

How horrible of him, she thought. The anger and sadness she felt that day when she realized he had stopped visiting her. Tears tried to break free but her desperate lie kept the mask on her face, hiding so desperately what she didn’t want him to find out.

She didn’t hear his steadfast footsteps and almost fell back onto him as he grabbed her wrist. She stopped, her feet almost crossing the line of the wooden bridge. She begged herself to keep on going, to forget this ever happened, forget the stupidity of her own decision of approaching him again tonight. She had let the alcohol get the best of her, after three years of forcing herself to stray from the person she loved most in this world.

But his hand was so warm, wrapped around her wrist, his fingers soft and tender as the night those very same hands caressed the back of her neck, kissing her with all the love he had stored away in his heart. She remembered the way he murmured I love you’s against her lips as she nervously chuckled, repeating it back to him.

“Please don’t go, Hiyori,” he pleaded.

She continued to stare down at her own two feet, wondering if he’d continue to come after her if she pulled away again. He said something under his breath, too low for her to hear and she forced herself to look back at him. His eyes sorrowful and lost, a look of desperation splayed across his face.

“What did you say?” She asked, scared to hear his answer.

“I’ve missed you.”

Four Years Ago

The party had quieted down by evening. Kofuku was passed out drunk under the table while Daikoku took care to clean up the leftover food and drinks without waking her. Yukine and Nora sat on the back porch in lightweight coats, watching the sunset behind the clouds. Hiyori sat at the table looking at her and Kofuku’s unfinished game of Onigiri roulette. She was happy for the small graduation party her friends had thrown for her and even happier that Yato was the one to organize it. After missing her birthday the first time around, he always made sure to never forget it or other important events again.

She reminisced a few hours back when she walked in and everyone cheered “Congratulations'' to her. Food was hot and ready to be eaten, a few graduation gifts in the corner of the room begging to be ripped open. They ate, played games, and re-lived events that had long come and gone.

She smiled as her fingertips brushed against the notebook Yukine had gotten for her. “Don’t Give Up,” was sprawled across the top. He told her that as long as she’d write her class notes in there, she would never fail a test. A blessing from a God’s Guidepost in the form of a lucky charm.

Hiyori looked up at Daikoku as he lifted Kofuku in his arms, staring lovingly at his Goddess before realizing he was being watched. She almost felt jealous, wishing she had someone to look at her like that.

He cleared his throat. “I’m gonna take the missus to bed, why don’t you go see what Yato is doing?”

She wondered if he could tell she was thinking about him, “where did he go?”

He shrugged, “he probably slunk back to his room after realizing he’s the only one who didn’t get you a present.”

Hiyori laughed, “I don’t need him sulking like he did when he found out about my birthday that first year,” she got up and dusted off her skirt, “guess I’ll go see what he’s up to.”

She watched as he took away Kofuku before heading up the stairs. Odd metallic noises could be heard from the hallway but she couldn’t quite figure out what it was. She made her way to the top and opened the doorway to his room.

She found him there, sitting at the small desk against the wall, working on something. She quietly made her way over to him, hoping not to alert him, and stopped as she was close enough to peer over his shoulder. She couldn’t see what he was working on.

“So this is where you disappeared to?”

Startled, Yato put his hands over something on the table and looked up at her, “H-hiyori! What are you doing here?”

She laughed, “Well I was wondering where the organizer of my party went and had to come looking,” she tilted her head, “what are you working on?”

He looked back to his hands, “um well, I’m kinda working on,” he paused before looking back to her, “a gift for you.”

“For me?” Her voice hitched up with anticipation, “what is it?”

“Well, it’s not done yet. I meant to finish it up last night but Yukine and I got a job and it was very tiring you know,” he looked at her with desperate eyes, “I got back home, immediately crashed on the floor and didn’t have time so I thought…” he trailed off. She could tell he felt bad for not getting her gift done in time for the party but it made her heart flutter knowing he was making something special for her. She sat down cross-legged and turned her back to his, slightly leaning against him.

“Can I keep you company while you finish it? I promise I won’t look.” She listened as he readjusted his position to uncover her unfinished gift.

“That would be nice,” he admitted. He started working away again, his back shifting against hers once in a while. It was warm, he felt warm. She brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, resting her head on top.

“Thank you for the party, Yato. I had a lot of fun.”

“O-of course. You graduated High School! It only happens once in life you know.”

She laughed, “I do have to say though, I can’t believe you left me to play Onigiri Roulette alone with Kofuku.”

“I’ve played way too many times, I don’t need a mouth full of toothpaste again, no thanks.”

Hiyori straightened up and turned just enough to see the side of his smiling face, “still, I expected you to be there but you crawled away without even a word.”

He bit his lip, his eye-catching hers, “I’m sorry,  I just really wanted to give you this.”

Hiyori ever so casually placed her chin on his shoulder, their faces mere inches apart, “this gift must be extra special then.” Without realizing it she took in his calming and sweet scent. How she wished it was her own.

His face flushed and he turned away from her eyes, “y-you promised you wouldn’t look.”

She peeled away and readjusted herself, pressing her back into his once again, “sorry, I couldn’t help myself.”

He mumbled something under his breath but continued to work. The silence pressed on and anticipation slowly scratched at her heart.

“Have you heard back from any colleges yet?”

Her heart sank with the deep weight of a folded-up letter in her skirt pocket. She had planned on telling him. She really did. But every day it seemed harder and harder. Being accepted to a prestigious medicine school that was hours away from her best friend was a hard pill to swallow. She had no idea when she’d find the time to visit him and she didn’t want him to forget his duties, put them on the sideline for her. With him on the way to becoming a God of Fortune, she couldn’t let him give that up for her. He also had his responsibility to be there for Yukine more than her. She could never deny that. Not after everything that they had been through.

She just had to tell him, grab the letter out of her pocket and show him the good news-

“Not yet, but I’m pretty positive I’ll get into the place I want,” she hated lying.

“Definitely! You’re so smart, I know you’ll do great.”

She smiled at his compliment. She kind of knew it herself but hearing it from the person you like is a completely different story.

“Okay, It’s all done,” his voice was chipper, “Hiyori, close your eyes, please.”

She did. She felt him shift behind her, felt the brush of his knees against her lower back as he knelt down behind her. Then, ever so cautiously, his hands collected her long hair to move over her right shoulder. His fingertips brushed against the nape of her neck and a small shiver ran through her back, more aware of his fleeting touch. She felt nothing for a few breaths until something light and small tapped the center of her upper chest. Instinctively she moved her hand to check it out but Yato’s own hand caught hers before she could.

“Not yet, just one more second,” he released her hand and she put it back into her lap while he went back to work. She tried her best to keep her mind off his timid and floating touches but every nerve in her body wanted to focus solely on where his hands were.

“Okay, you can open your eyes now,” he said as his hands disappeared from her senses, “Congrats on graduating, Hiyori.”

When she opened her eyes and looked down at the golden necklace hanging from her neck she almost gasped. She picked up the charm between two fingers and admired the handiwork made by the hands of a god. By her friend, Yato.

It was a crown, small and golden. One that matched his own. May our fates intertwine engraved neatly on the back. She fought the tears building up behind her eyes as she turned on him. His face was flushed, an embarrassed smile playing on his lips.

“I love it.” She said, still holding onto the small crown in her hand.

“I’m glad. I hope you don’t think it’s weird I just thought-“ he stopped as she rested her hand on his chest, her fingertips brushing against the crown embroidered on his tracksuit.

She smiled, earnestly as ever, “we match.” She kept her eyes level with the crown, too shy to make eye contact, too embarrassed to see what kind of expression he would make next.

To her surprise, he reached for the very hand placed on his chest and rested it on top of hers. She felt his heartbeat start to pick up a fast and steady tempo. What was this feeling that pulsated under her palm? What was his heart trying to say? Surely he didn’t feel the same...

She hesitantly looked up and met his burning eyes. Her own heart started to fluctuate as she noticed the heavy blush across his cheeks and at the tip of his ears.

Oh.

“Does it make you happy that it matches?”

“Y-yeah. It’s like I always have a part of you with me,” she bit her tongue from saying anything more.

She felt his hair brush against her cheek as he fell forward a bit. His breath inching closer to her ear.

“May I say something?” He asked, barely above a whisper.

She nodded her head, unable to get an unshaken word past her lips.

He rested his forehead on her shoulder, breathing an unsteady breath down her collarbone. His heart wasn’t letting up now nor anytime soon.

“I’ve been wanting to tell you this for a very long time but I just didn’t know when the right time would be.” With his head back up, he took her hand in his before bringing it to his lips, mimicking that first night at Capybara Land. The hair on the back of her neck rose with the certainty that her heart was in sync if not faster than his now. He smiled nervously but lovingly all the same behind their hands, “Forgive me if I’m out of line but, Hiyori...”

She sucked in a hesitant breath. No, he couldn’t, there’s no way he-

“I love you,” he let out a relieved sigh, “I love you and it's something I’ve been sure of for a long time now,” he briefly kissed her shaking fingers before letting the hold on her go, returning her hand to his chest where she once felt his heart's beating. It fluttered beneath her hand like a scared little bird.

She was scared too. She parted her lips to reply but closed them soon after. She wanted to say so many things with the first thing being I love you too . She wondered if it was okay to love him at all, a God.

He smiled nervously at her silence and chuckled. “You don’t need to reply now or even ever if you don’t want to. I’ll understand if you don’t want to-“ he stopped at the feeling of her hand trailing its way up past his heart, to the side of his neck to his cheek. She felt the heat beneath it, his true feelings. She met his eyes and returned a nervous smile.

“Actually, I uh,” she bit her bottom lip before parting them once more, “I feel the same.”

His mouth was agape and she had to suppress a laugh at his shocked expression.

“R-really? Are you sure you don’t mean something else?”

“Yato, be more confident in yourself. I’ve told you this multiple times.”

“Yeah but I just want to make sure it's the same way I feel,” he grumbled.

She sighed and swallowed her nervousness. “Yato, I love you,” she tilted her head, “I’ve known for quite a while myself.”

He smiled, “when was this?”

Hiyori pursed her lips, “when you left to find your father and I came after you. Kazuma stopped me and told me that a God can never love a human.”

It felt good to get it off her chest but she immediately had to talk Yato out of beating up his former shinki.

“It’s fine, right? He was wrong,” she reassured him.

He reached for both her hands and brought them towards his lips, he kissed them and looked at her with unwavering eyes. “He was very wrong. I’ve never loved anything more in my life than you.”

She swallowed hard as her whole body heated up at his words. She watched as he lowered her hands to fit in the space between them. He inched closer, his eyelashes fluttering.

“Hiyori, can I try something new?”

“W-what?” She had an idea as she saw him quickly lick his lips. Oh man was the room getting hotter or was it the verge of springtime flowing in from the window?

All of a sudden his hand was caressing her warm cheek, her embarrassment reflected upon them with a shade of pink.

“I think you know,” he chuckled nervously.

“I d-don’t unless you clearly s-say it.”

“May I kiss you?” It came out as a soft and careful question and it warmed her heart that he asked. He knew what heartbreak and suffering the last one caused her. She squeezed his other hand that was still holding onto hers. She couldn’t get any words out so instead she nodded.

First, she felt his hair tickle her forehead and the side of her cheek. Next was the warmth of his exhaled breath before taking one in. Last was his hesitant lips hovering over hers before she pushed herself to steal away the last remaining space between them.

She didn’t know the full extent of what a real kiss could feel like. She didn’t know it would make her stomach flutter, her fingertips tingle, her heart burst into a tiny flame. His lips were soft and warm and so gentle. He began to pull her in more and more with each sparing breath they took. When his hands took roost on her hips it felt like nothing she’s ever experienced before. It felt electrifying. It felt right.

She had to keep telling herself that this wasn’t sudden in the slightest. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t seen this coming. Not when soon after defeating his father they started to confide in each other more and more. It wasn’t as if after that first accidental handhold under the kotatsu, that his hands just so happened to entangle themselves with hers on occasion. He would never take a hold of her hand after walking her back to her house, kissing the inside of her palm before their goodnight farewells. She definitely didn’t find excuses to give him hug after hug. As if she wanted to feel the warmth and closeness of his body, to get a secret whiff of her favorite scent. She wouldn’t even admit the fact of him kissing her forehead a total of eight times.

And no she certainly was not keeping count, but she would admit that most of them were when their lips had almost met each other’s, but one would reel back in realization. He’d give her a kiss above her brow for forgiveness.

But now he was murmuring I love you over and over again against her heated lips. She had her shaky hands wrapped around his neck, pulling him in closer and closer like an uncontrollable need. She had wanted this for so long; since the moment he appeared to her with his broken shrine in hand but instead of looking at the damage her eyes couldn’t stray away from those lips.

The early spring was cold but Hiyori wasn’t lacking in warmth. Yato helped with that.

“Shouldn’t you be heading home soon?” He said in a soft, warm voice, his fingers brushing hair behind her ear.

“Probably,” was all that she could muster. He laughed as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders. He sat behind her now, with enough room between his legs for her to sit perfectly, her back against his chest. She liked the feeling of his heart pounding behind her, his breath tickling the side of her neck, his hand reaching for hers. She grabbed on and squeezed, realizing she really didn’t want to go home.

“I’ll walk you home if you want,” he suggested.

“Are you trying to get rid of me?” She teased.

“Believe me, Hiyori, I don’t want you to leave, not ever. But I also don’t want your family to panic when they realize you aren’t home.”

A hum escaped her lips. He was right but there was one thing she had to do before she left.

Yato seemed surprised as she turned around on her knees to fish something out of her skirt pocket. His eyes never left the rummaging of her hands even as they pulled out a folded piece of paper. He looked up at her and cocked his head as she tried to hand it to him.

“Go ahead, read it,” she said in a soft voice.

He did and it didn’t take him long to realize what it meant, well partly. He crashed into her, almost knocking her back onto the floor. He held onto her tightly and an excited laugh rang in her ear.

“I knew you’d make it in, Hiyori! I just knew!”

She hugged him back and buried her face in the crook of his neck. She was happy but the pit in her stomach was still there.

“You’re going to be amazing! Dr. Iki. Doesn’t that sound perfect?”

She pulled back and smiled lightly, “I’m excited,” she admitted, “but it’s far away, Yato.”

His happy face only faltered for a split second before he was able to put it back on. “I’ll come visit you every day.”

Hiyori laughed, “I’d love that, but please don’t forget about your first priority. Yukine will always need you.”

“Of course, I’ll be there whenever you want. I’m just a wish away.”

“Is that your new slogan?”

He placed a kiss on her forehead, “only for you, Hiyori.”

And he was right. He visited every day she wished him to. In between classes when quick kisses were stolen in empty hallways, on weekends when she had caught up on school work, and nights when the winter chill was just too much for her to bear alone. Some days they’d get lost in meaningless conversations or games while others they’d bask in silence and kisses.

On occasion Yukine would tag along, the three of them doing everything but also nothing in particular. It was like nothing really changed.

Not until he caught her with a failed test result.

“Are you sure you’re doing okay, Hiyori? Am I coming here too often?”

She jumped up at the question and stared down at him, lying next to her on her dorm room bed, “I’m doing fine! I just,” she paused trying to come up with an excuse, she sighed when she couldn’t, “forgot about it.”

He reached up and cupped her cheek, “remember when you said Yukine is my main priority? School is yours, don’t neglect it because of me.”

“I promise, I won’t.”

It was the only promise she managed to let slip from her hands. The last night they spent together was full of affection and words of love. He had gently taken her crown necklace that she wore every day between his two fingers and smiled at her.

“I’ll always love you, Hiyori.”

Present Day

Hiyori gripped onto the end of her sleeve like it was a lifeline. He had known all this time and hadn't said a word to her. He had known she was lying this whole time, acting as if she had forgotten him.

"You knew?"

"Of course I knew.”

“Did you follow me today, to the bar?”

His eyes flicked away and he shrugged.

“What was your plan? To avoid me the whole time I was there and hope I didn’t see you? Did you plan to approach me at all?”

“I don’t know I-“

"Why haven't you said anything? Why did you play along?  All these years..."

He scratched the back of his head. “You were failing your classes, Hiyori. I saw your scores on essays and exams. I was a distraction, I’m not that naive to realize it wasn’t good to have me around all the time.”

“You didn’t say a word to me. You just stopped responding to me. Do you know what I went through?”

He watched the snowfall melt into the pond below them, below the bridge. “I do. Do you think I could go years without checking up on you?”

She clenched her teeth, “of course you did, you’re a high-class stalker.”

He chuckled and she almost had the nerve to push him over the bridge into the cold water below.  

“Then why,” she pleaded, “if you knew how broken I was after you left without a single word, why did you never tell me why you left.”

“Because,” he paused, meeting her angry gaze,  “I knew if I went to see you again, I wouldn’t be able to leave a second time.”

She ripped her hand from his and walked off the bridge. She wanted to yell at him, to call him selfish for all that he has done. But she couldn’t deny that he was right. After he disappeared, her grades skyrocketed, her focus shifting back to schoolwork. It was something to keep her mind off him. She also knew if he did come back to visit her, she would have found a way to make him stay.

“Do you know how hard it was to keep away from you, Hiyori? Every day I had to convince myself to not approach you, no matter how desperate I was.” She heard him sigh. “It took all my willpower to not let you see me again after that night.”

She stopped and spun around on him. "That night…"

“I knew it would be the last, that’s why I told you-”

“Shut up.”

He reached out for her, “Hiyori-“

“I said shut up!” Her hands were balled into fists against her side, her eyes never straying from the snow-covered ground.

He dropped his outstretched hand, hiding them deep within his pockets. “I’m sorry. I realize now I probably should have approached the situation differently.”

“It was inconsiderate.”

“I know.”

“Selfish and so stupid.” She couldn’t hold back her tears any longer and she flinched when his hand touched her cheek. She looked at him timidly, letting his thumb wipe the tears from her eyes.

“I’m an ass, that’s for sure,” he admitted.

“Most idiotic God for a boyfriend.”  

“Hiyori, please-”

Her lips met his again, this time drowned by the saltiness of her tears. He accepted it with eagerness and pulled her in tight. There was sadness and desperateness behind her kiss. Something so raw and powerful that it almost made him falter at the knees.

She pulled away to only have him pull her in again. Keeping her lips and body hostage to his demand. She didn’t mind it but the longer this went on the harder it would be for her to walk away.

When they did, his arm lingered on her shoulder and down to her fingertips. They tingled and shook at the thought of not being able to see him again for God knows how long. They met eyes and she smiled first, her makeup running down her face.

“Will you come see me again?” She was almost afraid to ask.

He closed the distance once more, leaving a feathered kiss on her brow before tapping her forehead with his.

“Only if you keep your grades up. How many more years do you have until I start calling you Dr. Iki?”

She laughed and sniffled, her feelings all over the place. “Too many.” Looking up to his eyes she noticed he was staring down at her chest, at her necklace. “I wear it every day, you know.”

“I know, I’d sometimes watch you put it on.”

She shoved him playfully and he put up his hands in defense, “please forgive me my beautiful and ever so devoted girlfriend.”

“You’re gonna have to kiss up to me better than that for all the years you left me alone.”

He grinned, “Shall I start with your lips?”

“Hmm,” she hummed, “how about you start by walking me back to my hotel room?”

He grabbed her hand, “as you wish.”

[socialwriter]

If I Die Young

**gif by @somebodylikeaguardianangel​**

Pairing: John B Routledge x Female! Reader

TW: Angst (duh), death, hospitals, not eating, fainting/passing out, near death experience, grief, sadness

1.4k+

Based off of the song If I Die Young

Series masterlist

A/n: Here it is, the first chapter of my glee song fic sereis! A huge thank you to @girlsru1eboysdroo1​ for reading this through and encouraging me to post this, ily boo <3

The sharp knife of a short life,

Well, I've had just enough time

The pain was agonizing, all encompassing. It drowned out the sounds of the rain pounding down, drowns out the sounds of Kiara and Pope’s tears, JJ’s screams. He’s gone. John b’s gone, lost at sea because some stupid cops that didn’t care about him chased him out there for no good reason. He was innocent, but because he was just a pogue and just a teenager, no one believed him when it mattered. The hurt didn’t leave you. Not when you were taken away from what was now a crime scene. Not when you arrived at the chateau, glaringly empty. Not when you went to bed, enveloping yourself in sheets that still faintly smelled like him. You were too hurt, too broken, left behind by the only boy you had ever loved. 

And I'll be wearing white when I come into your kingdom

I'm as green as the ring on my little cold finger

You all had promised each other that you wouldn’t wear black to the funeral. The color was too dark, too real. It represented too much for the four of you to handle, so you had agreed to brighter and happier colors. Which is why you were in the bathroom of the chateau, smoothing out the wrinkles in the white dress you wore. It hung loosely on your body, making you look like even more of a shell of your former self. Your eyes were sunken in and red from all the crying and lack of sleep, unable to rest without the soothing lullaby of John B’s heartbeat. You looked much thinner than you remembered, probably from the lack of food the past week. You couldn’t bring yourself to eat anything or care for yourself. You did it for him before, not wanting to worry him, but now what was the point? You fiddled with the rings on your finger, stopping when you feel the cold metal on your ring finger. You hold your hand out in front of you, smiling sadly at the small green jewel.

It had been three weeks since you had had a proper date night, or really spent any time, with your boyfriend John B and you were completely and thoroughly pissed off. He’d been avoiding your calls, texts, and barely spoke a word to you when he got home after long days out. None of the other pogues would tell you what was up and frankly you were fed up with it. So, instead of getting dressed up for the date John B had told you about earlier in the day, you sat around moping in sweats and one of his old t-shirts. 

“Hey babe are you ready to g- why aren’t you getting ready?” John B’s voice rang out through the chateau, causing you to pull your knees up to your chest, staring at the ground. John B’s shoulders fall when he sees your demeanor, approaching you slowly. “What’s wrong?”

You shrug your shoulders at him, letting out a deep sigh. “You cheating on me or somethin’?” You mumble, tears filling your eyes as soon as you say the words out loud.

“W-what? No, I’m not why would you even think something like that,” John B says instantly, sitting next to you on the couch and placing a gentle hand on your cheek, forcing you to look at him.

“Well I mean, you’ve been avoiding me the past couple of weeks and no one’s telling me anything so what else am I supposed to think?” You ask him, your voice raising slightly in irritation.

John B makes an ‘o’ with his lips, suddenly connecting all the dots. “I’ve been working a lot of overtime, for the money.” 

You scoff, pulling away from him. “Cut the crap JB, we get by fine without you working so much.”

John B sighs, fishing something out of his back pocket. “Well I mean, I was hoping that I could give this to you in a more romantic way, but here.” He hands you a small box containing a small ring with a little green gem on top. You gasp as soon as you see the present, easily the most beautiful thing anyone had ever given you. “What is this?” You ask breathlessly.

“A promise ring, like a representation of our love. It sounded a lot better when Kie explained it to me..” John B trailed off, suddenly nervous that you wouldn’t like the present or think it was stupid. 

“JB I love it,” you whisper, a small smile gracing your lips. He instantly perks up, grinning at you. “Yea?”

You nod, slipping the ring on your finger. “Thank you JB,” you say, pressing a small kiss against his lips.

“Anything for you princess.”

I've never known the lovin' of a man

But it sure felt nice when he was holding my hand

There's a boy here in town says he'll love me forever

Who would have thought forever could be severed

Your home life wasn’t the best. You were a pogue, living alone after your mother had left you for some kook. You never knew your father, never got to experience that love. The only love you experienced was what you had with John b. And now that too had been taken away from you, the world playing yet another cruel trick on you. That promise ring meant that the two of you would love each other for the rest of your lives, what felt like forever. Apparently forever isn’t very long at all. Love wasn’t as strong as you had once thought it was, because it was able to be completely shattered by life, or rather the ending of one. You had never known what love was before John B came into your life, and now that he was gone, you feared that you would never experience love again. 

So put on your best boys and I'll wear my pearls

What I never did is done

The four of you all stood looking over the marsh, grieving the one person that had kept you all together. None of you knew how to handle this, how to cope. You couldn’t look out for one another because each of you were falling apart on your own. Your mind wandered to what could have been. The kisses you never gave him, too shy or fearful of rejection. The words you never said, emotions getting in the way. It all felt silly and stupid. Why hadn’t you simply done everything you wanted with John B while you still had the chance? All the what ifs crushed you, made you feel like you couldn’t breathe and your vision blur, until eventually everything just went dark.

The ballad of a dove

Go with peace and love

Gather up your tears, keep 'em in your pocket

Save 'em for a time when your really gonna need 'em oh

Pope caught you before you hit the ground, instantly in a frenzy. “Guys she’s barely breathing.”

Both Kie and JJ turned to look at your all but lifeless form, panic in their eyes. “Shit she- what do we do?” JJ’s frantic voice echoed throughout the marsh, only increasing the tension and worry in the environment. Eventually, despite the money it would cost, the three of them were speeding off to the hospital, trying their best to keep you breathing and comfortable. As soon as Kie pulled into the hospital, JJ slammed the car door open, picking you up and running inside with your limp body in his arms, Kie and Pope not far behind him. Doctors and nurses were all over you in a matter of seconds, pushing the three pogues away whenever they tried to see what exactly was happening to their best friend. The situation felt eerily similar, the painful events that lead to John B’s death still fresh in their minds. All they could do was stand there, wondering if they were going to lose yet another friend. There were no more tears left to cry, all of them already spent on John B. 

The ringing of a phone pulls them out of their stupor. “Who’s damn phone is that?” Kie questions aloud, prompting JJ to pull the buzzing device out of his pocket. 

“Mine.” He mumbles before answering the call. His eyes widen as soon as he hears the voice on the other end, earning questioning glances from both Pope and Kie. 

“John B?”

Taglist:  @thelocalpogue​ @rae131415​ @goldenhanna​ @scandalousfemale​ @obx-direction-sos​ @rafecameron​ @paradigmax​ @anonymous0writer​ @x-lulu​ @futuretaxcheat​ @olsenholic​ @jjaybank​ @starlightstarkey​ @girlsru1eboysdroo1​ @Theyrealldruggy @pit-zuh​ @tomfreakinghollandneedsaoscar​ @simonsbluee​ @outerbongs​ @stfukie​ @yxseminx​ @ilovejjmaybank​ @abbiesthings​ @captain-molls-of-the-small-world @kikinuke2​ @maddymfperez​ @pogue-writings​ @rudths​ @i-love-scott-mccall​ @strangerthanfanfiction713​ @jj-iz-bae​ @sguymon21​ @kookkyra​ @wallflowercal​ @maybanksbaby​ @jiaraendgame​ @copper-boom​ @sunwardsss​ @starksweasley​ @trashmouthpogues​ @allielozoya​ @vindictive-hearts​ @kaitieskidmore1​ @teenwaywardasgardian​ @diverrdown​ @lynniep @apoguecalledjj​ @dancer0614 @jjtheangel​ @deathcompass​ @dpaccione​  @canibeoneofthepogues​ @arianabrashierstuff​  @bolaurel​  @outerbanksbro​  @beth-winchester21​  @ifilwtmfc​

Frenz: @sortagaysortahigh​ @bluesiderudy​ @ad-infinitums​ @midnightmagicmusings​ @spideymyluv​ @diverdcwn​ @softstarkey​

[iamwhoami]

Down the Rabbit Hole (One Chicago)

One Chicago

   When Justin gets killed, his sister Y/N Voight starts going down the rabbit hole and forgets that there’s a whole other family there for her.

Warnings: Alcohol and drug abuse, depression

Requested = Yes

Y/L/N = Your Last Name

   So the request asked for a “One Chicago” and I tried to include all three of them but ended up only being able to include Chicago Fire and Chicago PD so sorry about that.

Also.

   This was really tough to write. Please, if anyone if struggling their mental health, please please please reach out for help. 

It all seemed like a blur.

   From the phone call to now, you felt like you were floating, like you were watching all this happen from a third person view.

   Your immediate reaction was denial. Denial that something like that could happen to Justin. He was getting his life back together, he had a son for crying out loud!

   Then came the pure grief that your brother was dead with a bullet through the back of his neck.

   You worked as a firefighter at Firehouse 51 and when the news came in that Justin was found dead, Boden instantly gave you time off without you even really having to ask.

   The thing was though, your father as well as Erin, whom you had grown up with, were working on finding out who killed Justin. This meant that while you had time off, you were alone with only your mind as company.

~~~

“Hey,” Sylvie came up to you and wrapped her arms around you, “How have you been?”

   The truth would have been terrible. You weren’t getting any sleep, and even though your dad and his team had found Justin’s killer, there was now a speculation going around that your dad killed him, seeking revenge.

“Fine,” was your reply though and Sylvie left it at that, knowing you wouldn’t have said any more even if she asked. 

   You didn’t listen to a word of Boden’s morning briefing. You completely tuned him out, still swimming in your own thoughts. You didn’t even notice that he was done talking until the people around you started getting up.

“Y/N,” Boden pulled you aside as you were exiting the room, “Are you sure you’re ready to come back to work?”

   You nodded, “Absolutely, Chief.”

   If you were being honest though, you only returned to work so that you wouldn’t be left alone with your thoughts of what you could have done. How you could have spent more time with your brother before he was killed. How you should have made more of an effort to be with him more often.

“Alright then...” Boden replied but you could tell he was skeptical about you being back so soon.

   You forced a smile onto you face, “I’m fine Chief. I think working will be good for me.”

   Boden nodded, “You tell me if you need more time off though.”

“Of course,” You responded, “Thanks again.”

   You started to walk away but Boden wasn’t finished yet.

“Y/N?”

   You stopped and turned around to face him.

“If you ever need to talk, my door is always open,” Boden told you and you nodded again.

“Sure thing Chief,” You said and this time walked away before he could say anything else.

   The rest of the shift went well. As long as your mind was distracted by other things, you were fine. 

It was when shift ended that things got tough.

   You figured you should start getting out again so you accepted Stella’s invite to join everyone at Molly’s later on and promised you’d be there. You went back to your apartment and took a long shower before making a fast dinner and changing into something nicer.

   It was about now that you started feeling less and less up to going out to Molly’s and began to debate staying home for the night. However, the thought of how you would be left with your mind gave you the little boost to keep getting ready and head out to Molly’s.

   It was a little chilly outside but you didn’t bring a jacket with you so you quickened your pace and walked faster. You wondered now if you should have driven instead but your apartment was relatively close to Molly’s so it wasn’t a huge deal.

“Ehhhh, there she is!” You heard as soon as you walked through the doors of the bar.

   You smiled at Herrmann and went to take a seat at the counter.

“Hey Herrmann,” You greeted, “How’s it going?”

“Pretty good, but it just got better now that you’re hear,” Herrmann winked, making you laugh a little, “So what are you drinking tonight?”

   You looked at the menu pinned up above on the wall and sucked in your breath in a low hiss as you tried to decide, “A beer please.”

“Sure thing kiddo,” Herrmann tapped the counter before going to get you a beer.

~~~

   The next thing you knew, you were in your bed with the sun shining through and onto your bed.

   Your head was pounding with an awful ache and you groaned as you reached over to grab your phone in order to check the time. 

   You had a strong feeling you didn’t have just that one beer last night.

   The more you tried to remember what happened the previous night, the more you seemed to forget. 

   How did you get back? How many drinks did you have? How much of a fool did you make of yourself?

   Thank god you didn’t have shift today because you weren’t sure how you would handle that.

   Since it was almost noon, you dragged yourself out of bed and fumbled around for some aspirin.

   When you found it, you popped two tablets into your mouth and swallowed it with some water before collapsing on the couch. You really didn’t want to do anything today but sleep, sleep, and sleep some more.

   The day went on and you found yourself still laying on the couch, having done nothing productive. Sure, your head was no longer throbbing as much as it was but you were feeling a different kind of pain now.

   A pain worse than a headache or any other kind of pain. That was the only way to put it and yet still, it didn’t even seem to make dent in how it actually was.

You just wanted it to stop.

   You laid there for about another hour before you couldn’t take it anymore. You got up and shakily made your way to the bathroom where the medicine cabinet was and started going through it. 

   You had some leftover pain killers from when you hurt your shoulder a while back. They did a really good job at numbing the shoulder pain, you figured it should do a good numbing this pain as well. 

   Shaking a couple into the palm of your hand, you then tilted your head back and popped them into your mouth before washing it all down with some tap water.

Groaning, you then went back to the couch and hoped that the pain killers would kick in soon.

~~~

   About a week later, it had turned into a habit. You ended up having to bring the pain killers to work, popping a few in between calls. As the days passed, you started drinking a lot when you were home alone too and before you knew it, you didn’t want to stop.

   Something about the way it kind of numbed you, protected you from the truth of reality, just made you keep doing it and even though you knew what you were doing was bad, you didn’t make an effort to stop.

“Hey Y/L/N,” Dawson stopped you as you were walking down the hallway, “Can you help me with inventory? Brett’s doing some sort of paperwork thing, she didn’t really specify.”

   You shrugged, “Why not?”

   You followed Dawson back to Ambo 61 and hopped into the back with her and started doing inventory.

“So how are you?” Dawson asked and you nodded.

“Good...you know...I guess as good as things can be right now,” That couldn’t have been further from the truth which would have been that you were drowning on land.

   Dawson nodded as well, “That’s good.”

“Yeah,” You then made the mistake of looking up and meeting Dawson’s eyes. 

   You watched as Dawson’s eyebrows furrowed with concern as she watched your face.

“Did you take something?” She asked, clearly observing your pupils.

   You feigned confusion, “What?”

“Did you take something?” Dawson repeated and you laughed.

“No, of course not,” You replied but looked away, going back to doing what you were doing.

   Dawson didn’t say anything else but you knew she wouldn’t just leave it at that. She was far to stubborn.

   You quickly finished your task and hurried away from Gabby before she could ask you any more questions or get any more ideas about how you really were.

~~~

   That night, you were sitting on the couch, getting drunk as usual when something unusual happened.

Someone knocked on your door.

   Groaning to yourself, you heaved your intoxicated self onto your feet and stumbled over to the door before flinging it open.

“Erin?”

   Erin smiled softly, “Yeah, it’s me. Can I come in?”

   You didn’t want her to see all the empty cans of beers that you had drowned down so you tried to avoid the subject.

“What’s wrong?” You asked, not opening the door any wider or making any move to let her in.

   Erin nodded, picking up that you weren’t going to let her come in, “I just wanted to check in on you...you know...”

“Yeah well, I’m fine,” You forced a smile onto your face and started to close the door.

“Wait,” Erin put her hand out, preventing you from closing the door any further, “Y/N, you know you’re not in this alone right? You’re not the only one in this.”

   Erin was practically your sister, practically Justin’s sister, and you knew she was hurting too.

   You nodded, “Yeah, I know. Look, Erin, I appreciate you coming over but I just want to be alone right now.”

   Before she could say anything else, you shut the door and locked it before returning to the couch with your beer.

~~~

   If you weren’t sure that Dawson was worried about you before, you were sure now. You had called Boden and asked him for another few shifts off which he quickly assented and when you didn’t show up to the next shift, your phone was soon bombarded with texts from Dawson.

   You didn’t feel like answering them or even looking at them so you turned your phone fully off and tossed it aside, turning your attention back to the beers sprawled out everywhere in your living room.

~~~

   The next morning, you were starting to regret some of your actions from yesterday. Your head hurt so bad you thought it was going to blow up at any given time. 

   You had turned off your phone and left it off yesterday so when you turned it on this morning, you weren’t surprised to see that Dawson had texted you over fifty text messages.

   Sighing, you tossed your phone aside and got up to get some aspirin for your head.

   As usual, one you had taken some aspirin, you settled on your couch and turned on the TV while you tried to numb some of the pain before you went full out with the beers and painkillers. 

   You weren’t sure how long you had been sitting on the couch before you heard your phone ring from the bedroom. You don’t why but for some reason, you gathered enough motivation to get up and answer it.

It was Erin.

“Hello?” You were shocked by how different your voice sounded.

“Hey,” Erin’s voice came back, “Can you meet me at the firehouse in ten minutes?”

   You looked at the clock, “Look, Erin, I’m not really up for anything. I just want to be alone, I told you.”

“I know, I know,” Erin replied, “But please, Y/N, I just want to see you face to face. We don’t have to talk or do anything but just please...be at Firehouse 51 in ten minutes.”

   You took a deep breath and clicked your tongue against the roof of your mouth.

“I’ll try,” You sighed and then hung up.

   You tossed your phone onto your bed and let out a big breath before running your hand through your hair. 

   You weren’t sure why Erin wanted to meet at the firehouse. If she wanted to talk, why would she pick the firehouse to do so? Why not a coffee shop or something?

   Despite not actually wanting to go, you decided that you may as well. Maybe it’ll prove to them that you were fine. 

Perfectly fine.

   You forced yourself to change out of your “home clothes” and tried to make an effort to look like you haven’t been drunk for days.

~~~

   When you pulled up in front of the firehouse, you noticed that the trucks were parked inside the apparatus floor with the doors closed. At first you thought everyone was on a call but then you saw the shiny red truck through the window.

   You weren’t sure if Erin meant she’d meet you inside the firehouse or outside but you got out of your car anyways and started up the driveway.

“You came!” 

   You looked up to see Erin coming out of the firehouse and towards you.

“Yeah,” You nodded and shoved your hands into your pockets, “I did.”

“Come on,” Erin beckoned you towards her and led you into the firehouse.

   You were confused but followed her through the door that led into the apparatus floor.

“What’s going on?” You asked but Erin didn’t reply. Instead, she kept walking and led you deeper into the firehouse.

   Erin stopped and you looked up to see everyone either sitting or standing in the common room. 

“Okay, what’s going on?” You repeated your previous question.

“You need help Y/N,” Dawson said, “We can help you.”

   You absentmindedly took a step back, “Look, I appreciate it but I’m fine.” 

“Y/N,” Stella got up and started walking towards you, “It’s okay to need help. We all need it at times.”

   You looked over at Erin, “Why did you do this?”

“Y/N,” Erin started but you shook your head.

“No, I told you, I don’t need help, I’m fine,” You started walking backwards towards the door, “Why can’t you guys just understand that?”

   You started to leave but a familiar voice called your name, making you stop on the spot.

“Y/N.”

   You turned back around and saw your dad standing in the middle of the common room.

“Dad...” You whispered before running over into his outstretched arms.

“Y/N, you’re not fine,” He told you as you started sobbing into his chest. “Let them help you.”

   You started sobbing even harder, keeping a tight embrace around him as he rocked you back and forth, just like he did when you were a little girl.

“What do you think Justin would want you to do?” 

   You couldn’t reply. The tears were coming in buckets and you body shook with every sob.

   Finally, you nodded and sniffed before wiping your sleeve against your nose.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah what?” Your dad looked down at you and you nodded again.

“Please help me.”

[didsomeonesaydaddydraco]

Secrets | d.m imagine

Hermione and I are on our way to the Great Hall to have breakfast with Ron and Harry. We accidentally overslept this morning because we were up late last night studying for our upcoming DADA test. She tries to hide her yawing, but I can tell by the dark circles under her eyes, that she is as tired as I am.

- You know what I don’t understand? – She looks at me confused – How on Merlin were you sorted into Gryffindor with that attitude of yours? Don’t get me wrong, you know I love you, you’re my best friend, but the amount of sass you have and how determined you can get, you’d be better off at Slytherin, but you still ended up at Gryffindor.

I freeze for a second, memories flashing right before my eyes from a couple of years ago.

*4 years ago*

I’m aimlessly wandering around the caste with my fellow schoolmates around me. A bunch of 11 years old, who are very much eager to start their school year at the famous Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The endless corridors amaze us, and the living pictures scare most of us as they welcome the new students with a few nice words. We’re waiting by a huge old wooden door for Professor McGonogall to let us in so we can be sorted into our Houses. I know a lot about this School. My brother was a student here, along with my parents, their parents and basically my whole family.

- Follow me, please – an elder student comes up to us to lead the way. We’re called to a chair and the Sorting Hat is placed on our heads. For some student he doesn’t have to think much which House he should put them, but for a boy, named Harry Potter, he thinks a lot. It looks like he cannot make a decision, but suddenly he yells out Gryffindor.

- Next is, Miss Y/F/N – as Professor McGonogall calls my name, my knees start to shake, and my palms get sweaty. Without any shown emotion, I sit on the stall, my legs not being long enough to reach the ground. My breathing is getting heavier second by second as the Hat is getting put on me.

Please, not Slytherin. Please, do NOT put me in Slytherin.

- Hmm, what do we have here – the loud voice of the Hat starts and I feel like I’m going to faint soon – Oh, wow… - he hums – Very interesting mind. A huge knowledge, and bravery – for a second I feel a slight relief as he’s listing the Gryffindor characteristics – But I see creativity, with a very strong determination and ability to be a great leader…just like a true Slytherin.

Please, I’m begging. Do NOT put me in the Slytherin House…

- Exciting thoughts you have here, young Y/Fam/N – the Hat chuckles but yells out my house finally – Gryffindor!

 *Present*

- Hey, are you OK? – Hermione asks me. I zoned out after the flashback. All these years, nobody asked be why it was so hard for the Sorting Hat to choose my House. They still think I’m just a rather complicated person with quite a twisted personality.

- Yeah, sure – I smile weakly at her – I’m just tired, hungry and nervous about our DADA test, that’s all – I shrug and fasten my walking to the Great Hall. Never in my years at Hogwarts have I thought that maybe my secrets will be exposed one day. And that day was closer than I imagined.

Two weeks have passed since Hermione’s question, and ever since than I’ve tried everything to avoid that specific topic, but she doesn’t seem to want to. Every chance she has, she would ask about my family and why in Merlin’s love I’m not talking about them or about my life outside of Hogwarts. Last night we even had a fight about it in front of half of the School, when she pushed her questions on me during dinner. I got enough of her obsession with my family tree and rushed out of the Hall. But on my way out, I saw Draco Malfoy looking at me with a knowing smirk and some foreign flame in his eyes. Something, that looked very close to sympathy.

- Hermione, I think you should drop it – I hear Harry trying to convince her – I bet those are just rumours. You know how bad they can be.

I walk up to them but before I can sit down on my usual spot next to Hermione, she jumps up and looks at me fumingly. I immediately know that she knows. Of course she does.

- Could you tell me when you wanted to tell us everything? – Her voice is louder than usual and it attracts the attentions of the students at Great Hall. They loved a great drama during dinner time, so they could talk about something after it at their Common Rooms.

- Hermione – I warn her that neither the place, nor time is right for this conversation. But when I try to ask her to talk about this somewhere more private, she cuts me off.

- Do not Hermione me, Y/N – she screams at me with pain in her eyes – A couple of weeks ago I asked you how you were sorted into Gryffindor, when you clearly have the characteristics of a Slytherin. You zoned out and didn’t give me an answer – she starts her story – Silly me thought, it must be a misunderstanding, or you were just going through this weird faze when you act like a total jackass. I tried to talk with you about this, but you changed the subject every single time – she is playing with her wand like she was some kind of teacher, trying to teach us the lesson – So you gave me no other choice than to do some research…

- Hermione, I think we should – Harry stands beside her, tugging on her robe to pull her away from me. Ron stands up too and looks worried. At least he is worried. People are gathering around us, eager to find out what this whole drama is really about. I spot a platinum blond head in the crowd, Draco’s eyes burning my face as he is trying to read in my mind.

- We should do what, Harry? Hmm? – Hermione pushes off his hand from her shoulder and looks back at me – We should just live with the fact that one of our oh so called best friend is actually supposed to be a Slytherin, being the descendent of one of the most ancient pureblood wizard families? Or you just want to avoid the fact that her father was sentenced to death by a Dementor’s kiss, and her brother is probably die in one of the most guarded cells of Azkaban because they were loyal to Who He Shall Not Be Named and served him? Almost everyone in her family was, or still a Death Eater.

Everyone around us gasps. Silence fills the Great Hall as Hermione yells out the last words. Everyone is surprised, except Malfoy. He looks like he knew about this the whole time, and he probably did. His parents being Death Eaters as well, they might had known my father.

- Your mother changed your name, used her middle name as your last name so it might confuse the Sorting Hat – she takes a step closer to me, her wand still in her hand as she was afraid I might hex her. And in this moment, I really want to do that, but I won’t – That’s why the Hat was confused. That’s why the Professors acted like they had no idea who you were, but they all knew.

- You couldn’t keep your nose out of my business, right? – I scoff and look at her. The girl, who I thought was a friend. Whom I thought would never judge me – Are you happy now? You know this too. Does it make you a better person? Do you think you can use this against me?

- I… - she opens her mouth, but this time I’m the one who cuts her off.

- I hope you are finally satisfied. But for your information, private life is called private for a reason. And if you don’t want to cause any trouble for yourself in the future, I suggest you to stay out of other people’s business. Not everyone is as nice as I am – I say to her with ice cold voice and leave the room in a rush.

I’m literally running all the way up to the Astronomy Tower. My tears blur my vision, and I almost fall a couple of times, but all I want is to be as far from Hermione as I can. My knees give up, and they can no longer hold me on my feet. I collapse to the ground and let myself cry. My father was indeed a Death Eater, but he was a good man. He never meant to hurt anyone, he just made all the wrong choices, along with my brother. They loved their family endlessly, and would have done everything to protect Mom and me. And they did. That’s why they were both locked up at Azkaban for years. Than the Ministry made their decision about Dad, who refused to give names to the judges. So he got a Dementor Kiss. Elvin, my brother, was only sentenced to spend the rest of his life at Azkaban.

I hear footsteps from behind me, but I refuse to turn around. I don’t want to face anyone now, I just want to be alone with my shame, grief and thoughts.

- I don’t care who you are, but I don’t want to speak, nor I want company – my voice is filled with sorrow, and the cold November weather makes me shiver. I just started to feel cold. I must have been too angry to feel anything but the fire burning inside of me which wanted to hex Hermione for being so nosy.

- The Towers tends to be quite cold around this time of the year – I’m shocked by the voice. I thought Hermione ran after me to finish her story about my own damn life, or if it wasn’t her, I thought it was going to be Harry or Ron coming after me, to make sure I’m okay, and to ask me if she was right about all those things she had said in the Great Hall. But for my surprise, it was no other, than the Prince of Slytherin, who had been watching me for the last couple of weeks, and who couldn’t look away from my face during Hermione’s “attack”.

- Here you go – he says softly as he wraps his Slytherin robe on my shoulders. I look up at him, just to see his facial expressions. All I can see is sympathy and kindness on his every cold and emotionless face. His pale skin looks like it’s glowing in the moonlight, and his eyes are sparkling just like the stars on the jet black night sky – I come here often. When I want to be alone and need to think or just let out everything that I’ve been hiding in my mind.

I follow his movements, as he sits down beside me. So close our arms are brushing to each other, a sudden warm feeling going through my whole body. Draco was a jerk. He was full of himself, and lived for terrorizing everyone who wasn’t a Slytherin or a pureblood witch or wizard. Somehow, he never had anything bad to say to me; he never called me Gryffindork, or any other insulting names. But at the same time, he never really talked to me – only when we were paired to work together for essays or at Potions class a couple of times.

- You knew, didn’t you? – I ask him after a rather long silence – That’s why you left me alone, not calling me names and picking on me. You knew who I was, and who my parents were…and that’s why you were around me these couple of days. You knew she was going to figure out, right?

He only answers with a small nod. He doesn’t look at me. I turn my gaze away from his side profile, and stare at the sky. We sit there is silence, the only noise our slow breathing, and the sound of the wind dancing through the columns of the Tower. Out of nowhere, Draco grabs my hand, and holds it in his. His thumb is drawing little circles on my wrist and my quite sobs start to calm down and fade.

- I’m not them – I sigh – I’m not my parents or my brother. I would never be a Death Eater. I wouldn’t be able to kill someone, even if they deserved to die. My father and Elvin never killed anyone. They were only…

- Shhh – Draco pulls me closer and lets me to rest my head on his shoulder – You don’t have to explain anything to me. I know how hard your life must have been. And it still is. To be honest, it’s never gonna change. You can only learn to live with this, keep it as a secret and pretend it won’t affect your future – he plays with my fingers, and I know, this time, he’s not referring to me only, but to himself and his future as well – But the truth, it will. We just have to be strong and smart enough, to bare it.

- I don’t know if I can do this alone – I whisper, a single tear rolling down my cheek, dropping on Draco’s hand. He turns to me, and places his free hand on my cheek. I watch his light pink lip running along his bottom lip, his lips curving into a small, but genuine smile.

- Who said you have to do it alone? – he asks me – I’m pretty good at keeping dirty little secrets.

- I bet you have tones of those – I finally laugh a bit. At the sound of my laughter, his smile grows wider, and a cheeky little fame appears in his almost grey eyes.

- Oh, trust me darling, I do – he laughs as well – One of them being having a crush on you…

From that night, Draco did everything in his power to protect me, and I did the same with him. It took me a while, to be comfortable again inside the walls of Hogwarts. I lost a few friends, but at the same time, I gained a few more. People, who were on my side, no matter what. After summer break, Hermione and I apologised to each other. She finally accepting that fact that she might be way too nosy, and wanted to grow as a person, and learn to stay out of other people’s business for her own good. And I told her everything about my family, friends, childhood, fears and dreams. Of course we had a fight about me dating Draco, but when I explained her, that he would never ever hurt me, she finally accepted him at our and in the Gryffindor’s common room as well. As for Draco, it took me a couple of months to get used to the idea, that that arrogant asshole really had a soft side and he loved to show it to me. We never told the whole school that we were, in fact, a couple. Some people knew, some had no clue. We loved the idea of being each other’s dirty little secret.

[imagineclaireandjamie]

Shielded. Chapter Four

Happy Sunday all, back to the usually scheduling this week. I hope you enjoy the next week of lockdown with Jamie and Claire <3 Mod MBD.

Anonymous said to imagineclaireandjamie: 

It does not matter what you bear, but how you bear it. [Seneca]

CHAPTER FOUR: WEEK TWO - Home and Away.

As Monday rolled around again, the weekend having passed by in a blur, Claire sat at the breakfast table with a fresh cup of coffee in her hands. Having ventured down during the day on both Saturday and Sunday, she had hoped to bump into Jamie and pass on her thanks to his generosity but he had been out before sunrise each day and she had been asleep before he’d returned home.

Resolute, however, she chose to spend her day downstairs and hopefully get something on for dinner before he came back so she could at least start the week off right.

Fate, however, wasn’t on her side. By 10pm, with the lasagne tucked away, wrapped in foil, in the fridge, she covered her mouth with a yawn and pulled herself up the stairs to bed.

The crash and smashing of a glass bought her out of her sleep as the clock beside her bed clicked over to 3am. Pulling herself from beneath the sheets, she crept downstairs, eager not to scare him as she approached the kitchen.

“Couldn’t sleep?” She asked, knowing full well he had only just returned home.

He was stood by the sink, cold lasagna on the countertop and his mucky boots still on his feet. With the fork held to his mouth, he smiled as he took another bite of the pasta, chewed and then shook his head. “I havena ever been the best sleeper but it’s lambing season, aye? One of them got into bother and I couldna leave her until I knew she was safe.”

“And she made it?”

“Aye. I was luckier tonight than I was at the weekend.”

“Oh, dear...that doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s the job, I’m afraid. If I didna lose at least a handful a year I’d be shocked.”

It was the first real (and longest) conversation they’d had since she’d arrived and she was suddenly grateful for the company. He was calm, grounded and relaxed in the way a lot of city dwellers weren’t. She could tell in the slump of his shoulders that it didn’t matter how long and awkward his day was, how messy or how little sleep he had gotten the night before, he was still weightless almost, free of the constraint modern living brought to most.

“I wanted to say thank you,” she broke in, remembering the reason she’d half-blindly stumbled down in the middle of the night, “you’ve been so amazing - to get me materials for a garden, that’s...above and beyond the call of duty.”

“Ach,” shaking his head, he finished the last of his supper, balled the tin foil up and placed it in the bin, “dinna fash yersel’ about that. It’s no’ a problem.”

He was embarrassed, she could tell. Abashed, his accent had become incredibly thick and almost impossible to understand. But it was quiet enough here that there was no background noise to blot out his sentence and luckily she didn’t have to ask him to repeat himself.

“Well, nonetheless,” ignoring the slight reddening of his cheeks she continued, “I am very grateful to you. For everything.”

With nothing more to say between them, she waved, smiled and backed off, feeling strangely pleased with herself for breaking the silence between them. Hopefully, she thought as she climbed the stairs back to her room, there would be some evenings in the future when they could eat together and she could show her appreciation by making him something warm and fresh.

-- --

By mid-week, she had yet to see Jamie again. His work was intense, and yet, despite that, he had still managed to begin construction of her tiny garden.

In her haste she had forgotten that she wasn’t allowed outside the house and, as she’d watched the greenhouse foundations being laid, she had become almost inconsolable about the fact that she probably wouldn’t get the chance to tend to any of the produce grown in it.

She knew, however, that safety was more important than new hobbies and she chose, instead, to make detailed lists of the daily needs of each of the seeds and plants Jamie had procured for her.

She started with the tomatoes and grapes, which needed to be contained within the glass walls in order to collect enough light and heat to survive. She noted water levels, soil PH and balance and daily rituals which would need to be abided by in order for the best crop to be formed. It filled most of her days and when the sun went down, she’d swap her notepad for the computer as she researched all the differences she might see in her fruit and veg determined all by the way they were treated as they grew.

Though she had never been an artist, she started to search for youtube videos on how botanical art could be created. Having no coloured pencil crayons or watercolours, she stuck to pencil sketches and began to leave more post-it’s, this time with future predictions on what the garden might produce for the household.

Once again Jamie enjoyed coming home. There had only been a few days lapse in her communications but when he didn’t see her for days, it was the one thing he could rely on to buoy his spirits.

They were different, in so many ways, but on a subconscious level, he pondered to himself at night as he held the drawing of some rare cabbage in his hands, Jamie felt as if they had very many similar quirks. He’d been pleased that his idea to leave her be for as long as she needed had been a success and was grateful she felt at home enough to reform her life around his. Her asking for the garden made him realise how easy it might be for someone else to fit into his own life without causing him much grief.

It was only a small thing, but to him it had made a huge difference. Having lived alone for so long, he had almost forgotten how malleable people could be. Though, he thought as he rifled around in the fridge for more pre-made meals, he had probably just gotten lucky with Claire.

The thought also occurred to him that she had been inadvertently raised more suited to this life than her old one, but he didn’t know enough about her to advance on the notion.

It wasn’t until late on Thursday when they came face to face together. After another heavy day and late night, Jamie finally toe-ed off his work boots at nearly midnight and made his way, quietly, through to the kitchen.

He had not expected to nearly bump straight into Claire has she dished up what looked like a very tasty stir fry.

“I thought you might be sick of reheating pasta dishes, so I thought I’d try and wait for you this time.”

“Ye didna have to, it’s very late.” He scratched the back of his neck bashfully, even she couldn;t find the truth in his words and she smiled as she placed a fresh bottle of soy sauce in the centre of the table. “But this does smell delicious.”

“It’s taken me a few attempts to hone it, but I’ve been practicing most evenings this week to try and get it perfect, flavour as well as how long I need to cook the veg for.”

“What’s the meat?” He asked, watching as his stomach rumbled audibly.”

“I used the duck, I hope you don’t mind. I used chicken earlier in the week but I couldn’t seem to get it as tender as I wanted it and a few forums online suggested that duck might be a better substitute if I wanted meat with a bit more moisture.”

“Perfect. Use any meat you want from the freeze, for anything. Honestly, I forget most of the time what I’ve got in there.”

Placing several bowls filled with various meats, vegetables and sides, she went back to the sink to wash the remaining stickiness of her hands before beckoning him to start without her. “I had hoped you weren’t saving anything for a special occasion.”

“Ach, I think the virus has put pay to anything like that for a while,” he began, filling his plate with noodles, duck and beansprouts, “my sister - she lives in Canada now - had planned a summer visit, but we’re no’ sure of anything at the moment.”

“Is she the one in the photo,” Claire enquired, taking a mouthful of her own concoction and swallowing back the relief when it tasted nice - a mixture of sweet and savory that wasn’t as overpowering or as dry as it had been earlier on in the day when she’d made the first of the final tests. “The one with brown hair?”

“Aye, she is. Her partner, Ian, got a job out there a few years ago and they emigrated. We talk as often as we can on Skype and FaceTime but it’s become sporadic recently wi’ my erratic work hours. She’s a nurse, ya see, and works odd shift patterns too. But we try and keep in touch at least once a month.”

“Do you miss her?”

“I didna really think about it, we were close....until we werena. Then they moved away and I fell into a new routine.”

He had begun to speak without thinking, filling up the silence with answers to her questions as they ate in between conversation. He had, though, had the forethought to stop before giving too much away. The thought hurt his heart and he had to inhale between a bite of his dinner to gather himself back up. He knew, given time, that he would be alright with sharing his past (as he hoped she would be with hers) but tonight wasn’t the night for revelations.

Sensing his reluctance to continue, she moved on, understanding that she herself wasn’t in a place to open up about her own family life.

“I can imagine Skype is about the only way most are communicating at the moment.” Sighing, she started to collect the empty dishes and load the dishwasher. “I’m quite grateful, actually, that I don’t have anyone to keep in touch with. It’s all...quite scary.”

It was the first time Jamie had consciously thought about the pandemic, being cut off from the outside world had its benefits and he felt relieved that he could separate himself from the constant barrage of news that he supposed others would be exposed to. He realised that both he and Claire were unique now, part of a smaller section of society where being remote was almost a blessing rather than a curse.

“If you ever need to talk, lass,” standing, he helped to clean up the remaining mess from dinner, his hand almost brushing against hers as he wiped the countertop down, breaking only to hover for a second before returning to his job, “ye know where I am. Please dinna think you have nobody...if yer concerned, aye?”

“Thank you Jamie.” Pulling her fleece cardigan across her chest she walked slowly to the kitchen door, pausing for a second in the doorway just to make sure she’d left nothing out to go cold and mouldy overnight. “The same to you. I’m a good listener, I promise, if you ever need to talk, or if you need any help.”

She’d been thinking about his life on the farm for a few days now, watching the rolling hills out of her window, seeing the sheep and cattle on the horizon and -very occasionally- seeing the silhouette of him roaming his land. There was little she could do from indoors, she knew, but there had been chores around the house that she could potentially complete. Putting herself to task, she had learned new basic kitchen skills but only this morning she’d noticed the beginnings of a hole on the seam of his trousers as they dried on the rail in the courtyard and she thought it might be something she could tend to...should he be alright with it.

Leaving with the quiet settling calmly between them, she noted the relaxing of the muscles in his face as he smiled and nodded as she turned and carried herself to bed.

Resting against the faux-marble worktop, Jamie closed his eyes as he waited for the soft slam of her bedroom door before he followed her up. She just might, he thought to himself as he undressed himself, taking a towel from his radiator and making his way to the shower, be better equipped for this life than I am.

[aerynwrites]

Words Unspoken - Din Djarin x Reader

Author’s Note: Good morning everyone! I finally completed another One shot from my never shrinking list of requets 🤣. I’m planning on having at least one more out this week along with a couple other things, but I’ll make a separate post about that later today at somepoint. Any who, I hope you all enjoy it and as always i love to hear your feedback! Also! Thank you to my lovely beta readers @anniebombannie and @amberthefiredemon! They have been such a blessing to me an helped me out a ton!

Request: Can you do a Din x Armorers apprentice!Reader where they kind of have an unspoken thing going on, and in ep 8 where din comes upon the pile of armor in the tunnels, he finds readers helmet in the pile and assumes the worst, but she comes around the corner with the armorer in snazzy new armor and Din is all *heart eyes*. And Din is all “I thought I lost you” and they have this really intimate moment amongst all the chaos and they do the thing where they rest their foreheads together.? Tysm!  (requested by @emma-frxst)

Word Count: 1.8k   

Warnings: angst, fluff, death.

-----------

You and Din had known each other your entire lives. Having grown up together as neighbors, it was inevitable that you would form a friendship as children. However, this also meant that you were together the day your village was attacked. Your parents had immediately scooped you up from your bedroom and ran frantically from the house to meet up with Din’s parents and tried to escape the droid attack in vain. Your parents had died that day, and the Mandalorians had taken both you and Din in as foundlings. 

You both began your journey to become Mandalorians together. You ate together, trained together, took the creed together, and even cried together when the nightmares plagued your sleep. And as the years went on, this bond turned into more, and you both found yourselves falling hard for one another. Although you never outwardly told one another how you felt, you both knew. And even though you had not physically seen one another in decades, you could still feel the connection you had. However, when it came time to choose your paths in the covert, fate pulled you each in different directions. 

You knew Din was a fighter. A warrior. And while you could fight well, you felt a calling to work with your hands and help in other ways. So, you chose the path of becoming the Armorer’s apprentice. 

She had taken you on happily, stating “It’s nice to have someone who understands they can help in other ways than brute force.”

However, these different paths meant that you and Din rarely saw each other, and when you did it was in fleeting touches and soft words spoken in the few moments you had together. It killed you two. And that’s how you ended up standing in front of Din in your small quarters within the covert six months ago, as he told you of his plan to rescue the asset he had turned over earlier that day.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, gloved hands rubbing together anxiously, avoiding the unmoving gaze of the beskar helmet in front of you, “I’m sorry I can’t be there to help you.”

Din shook his head taking your hands in his own, “We can’t change the path that we’re destined for,” he reassures.

You just shrug your shoulders, “I know but-“ you pause steadying your shaking voice before continuing, “I’m just scared of what will happen to you. I never know if you’re okay until you walk back through that door,” you whimper.

You hear the man in front of you let out a quiet scoff, “Don’t be stupid. You can’t get rid of me that easily,” he jokes.

You let out a quiet laugh before looking over his new beskar armor, a reward for the very bounty he was going to take back, a reward you helped create, and you lean your head forward, relishing in the soft clink of metal against metal as Din lets his forehead meet yours. A Mandalorian kiss. 

“Just be safe, okay?” you ask quietly, hands squeezing his softly, “I don’t know what I’d do if you don’t come back.”

Din lets out  soft sigh before pulling away from you reluctantly, hands coming to rest on the sides of your helmet, “I’ll come back as soon as I can. I promise.”

But that memory felt like years ago as Din lies dying on the destroyed floor of the Nevarro cantina. That had been the last time he had seen you before he had saved the child and was forced to leave Nevarro, forced to leave you and break the promise he had given you all those months ago. He hadn’t heard your voice or seen you since that last conversation…hell, he didn’t even know if you were alive. That thought alone stirred fears and regrets inside of Din that he hadn’t even realized were there. He was full of regrets as him and his small team of friends laid pinned down in the destroyed cantina. He had told them to flee, sure that he was going to die. Cara and Greef reluctantly agreed, taking the child and leaving him with the reprogrammed droid and his own regrets. 

Those regrets being unspoken words and abandoned touches. He had never told you how much he loved you. He had planned to when they made it back to the covert, but now he didn’t know if that would happen. The next few moments pass in a blur. Him threatening the droid, removing his helmet, the droid healing him instead of hurting him -  It was all too much for his injury muddled brain to handle. Too many emotions and too many things happening all at once. He felt his heart pund against his ribcage as they finally caught up with Cara a Greef and began naviagting the damp, dingy tunnels leading to the covert

Would anyone still be here? Would you still be here? How would you react, did you think he was dead?

Even as his head began to clear of physical pain, it was still clouded by an emotional fog. He hadn’t seen you in so long and his heart clenched at the idea of finally being with you again. When the small group round a corner however, he almost stopped in his tracks at the sight before him. 

Mandalorian helmets.

A huge pile of them, all discarded and broken as they had been tossed aside after their owners were no doubt slain by the very people hunting him down. He continued to approach slowly, turning the light on his helmet off as he finally came within reach of the eldritch pile. His comrades were silent, no doubt feeling great sympathy for their friend. But as he scanned over the empty visors in front of him, he felt his breath being sucked from his lungs as his eyes  landed on an all too familiar gold colored helmet. 

Your helmet.

He knelt down, more because his knees collapsed beneath him at the weight of the situation more than anything, and he grasped your empty helmet in his hands, gripping desperately at the sides as tears of anger and confusion burned at his eyes. 

You were gone. Wiped out with the rest of the clan like roaches under the imperial boot. Snuffed out as easily as a candle, like you didn’t exist at all. 

But you did exist.

You existed in a happy and joyful life despite everything you had been through. You existed in Din’s bleak world as a light guiding him to shore to keep him from being sucked under the dark and dismal waves of his everyday life. You existed to him, and now, you were gone…taking a piece of the Mandalorian with you, and in that newly emptied space, Din’s entire soul was flooded with rage as he stared into your shattered and empty visor.

Cara took a cautious step forward, “We should go,” she says quietly.

“You go,” Din said firmly, “Take the ship. I can’t leave it-“ he had to stop himself, swallowing past the lump in his throat, “I can’t leave it like this.”

He pauses for a moment, before standing up abruptly turning on Greef with your helmet still held firmly in his hand, “Did you know about this?” he ignores Greef’s look of surprise and continues, “Was this the work of your bounty hunters?” he seethes, anger and grief lacing his words as he held onto your helmet like a lifeline.

Greef splutters, “No. When you left the system and took the prize, the fighting ended and the hunters just melted away,” he defended, “You know how it is. They’re mercenaries. They’re not Zealots!”

Din took several threatening steps forwards, and he felt the tears leaking from his eyes now as he still gripped the metal helmet in his hand with such force he worried he might break it.

“Did you do this?” he demanded, “Did you?” he was yelling now, his emotions getting the better of him for once.

“It was not his fault.” An all too familiar voice speaks through the darkness and causes a brief flicker of relief to flash through Din’s heart as the Armorer speaks.

“We revealed ourselves,” she says walking out of a nearby door to fiddle with a few discarded metal pieces, “We knew what could happen if we left the covert.”

Din watches her every move, not because he is afraid of her, but simply because he is waiting for you to come out behind her, a hope he knows is in vain. 

She continues, “The imperials arrived shortly thereafter…this is what resulted,” she states, a certain sadness in her voice. 

Din glances from your helmet in his hand then back to the armorer, “Did…any survive?”

The armorer seemed to understand the hidden meaning behind Din’s question, and he saw her move to answer but a set of approaching footsteps from the door she came from interrupted her.

“Who are you talking too?�� 

Din feels the blood in his veins turn to stone as he hears a familiar and sweet voice meet his ears and you emerge into the tunnels. He noticed that a new set of armor replaced your old set as you stopped in your tracks and your gaze fell onto the group in front of you. You dropped the tools in your hands as your eyes fell onto Din’s form, the all to familiar beskar glinting in the low light. 

“Din?” you whisper, not believing that he was here, in front of you, after all these months. 

A loud metallic thunk is followed shortly after as Din drops your old helmet onto the concrete floor and runs to you, arms wrapping around you so tightly the air is pulled from your lungs. You feel tears fill your vision and fall down your cheeks under the helmet as you return his embrace, all your subdued fears and anxieties melting away as he held you in his arms once more.

“I saw your helmet and I thought-“ his voice cracked slightly as he spoke but he continued, “I thought I had lost you cyar'ika,” his voice was low and wet with his own tears as he spoke. 

You let out a soft chuckle past your tears as you pull away from the embrace, opting instead to rest your forehead gently against his own in a familiar gesture. 

“You can’t get rid of me that easy,” you say quietly, moving to intertwine your gloved fingers with his own, “Plus you had a promise to keep.”

Din smiled under his helmet and relaxed into you, his helmet leaning more heavily on yours as his hands squeezed yours firmly, “Yes, I did, and I came back, just like I said I would.”

You saw the other members of his group and the armorer move into the room behind you to give you some privacy, and you took this moment to pull away from Din minutely, hands still intertwined as you looked into his visor through your own. 

“I love you Din Djarin.”

Din doesn’t reply, he just pulls you into another tight embrace and leans his forehead against yours once more, letting out a quiet and relieved sigh. 

And even though he doesn’t say the words back, you know he loves you more than words could ever express.

---------

Mando Tag: @tryn25 @igotmadskills @dizzydazed @theforceofdisney @jeepangel @maryan028 @mandalorian-theway

Pedro Character’s Tag: @fleurdemiel145 @sargesbestgirl @lustriix @yeah-boiiiiiiiiiii @longitud-de-onda

Permanent: @lord-wolfgen @petalduck @sebastianstanslefteyebrow @stillreadingfantasy

[recurring-polynya]

For the AU request, whichever one(s) you prefer (for RenRuki of course):

the X-Men universe

the Mafia/criminal underworld

the circus

as FBI agents (the X-Files world perhaps)

So, I got this ask, and I immediately wanted to go for X-Files, because I was hugely into X-Files when I was a tween/teen, and I think that my actual first published work of fanfic on the internet might actually be X-Files. (I didn’t even post it myself, I was like 12 and I didn’t have the internet at home, but a friend of mine posted it on Usenet for me, I have no idea whatever became of it). Anyway, I was going back and forth in my head who I wanted to be Mulder and who I wanted to be Scully, and then I got this ask:

@ulkoilla​ said:

I though the 10 would be full in about 1 microsecond so I didn’t even try :D This is maybe not AU enough for the purpose but I'd love to see your take on Bleach world where the shinigami work among humans as if they were in gigai -> they'll have to balance the supernatural, perhaps violent elements of their life with the modern day laws and such (like in Supernatural). Renji and Rukia have ofc gotten in trouble with the non-supernatural law (meet: Detective!Aizen?) and are on the run…

It suddenly occurred to me, What If: X-Files World, but Renruki are the cryptids. And it suddenly popped into my head exactly who I wanted to be Mulder. Anyway, I am sorry missrambler, if I messed it all up, I hope you like it anyway.

Also, I somehow thought that I would save myself some trouble by combining two prompts, but then it ended up… really long. (Forty! Eight! Hundred! Words! Go to Talks-Too-Much-Jail, Polynya!!)

PS: This takes place in D.C. because it’s X-Files and also because I am familiar with D.C. and I never get to write about places I know about. A half-smoke is a local delicacy that’s halfway between a hot dog and an Italian sausage. They are delicious.

Read on ao3 or ff.net

👻     👻     👻

Ichigo Kurosaki had known that an office with a view of the Smithsonian might be too much to ask, but he had not expected to take have to take two separate elevators down to sub-basement C, and walk past a storage room, two broom closets and a weird old vending machine full of brands of snacks he swore he hadn’t seen since he was a child.

Maybe Agent Inoue has a huge lab, he told himself. Maybe it needs to be 50 meters below ground because she collides large hadrons down here or so that her work can’t be picked up by spy satellites.

He had to turn sideways to get past a rack of wire shelves full of banker’s boxes, but there, on the other side was a door sporting a handwritten cardboard nameplate reading “Special Agent Orihime Inoue.”

“Come in!” a voice called inside, just as he raised his hand to knock on the door.

Ichigo blinked twice, and then went in.

The office was cluttered, mostly with more cardboard boxes, but books were also stacked precariously on top of boxes on top of books. The walls were plastered with maps and graphs and photographs of hazy blurs in front of staircases. There was a large poster showing a UFO, with the words “I WANT TO BELIEVE” in block caps below it.

A woman with long chestnut hair twisted up into a bun and held in place with three pencils was hunched over a metal box full of diodes and transistors and other things you would buy at Radio Shack. Or rather, that other people would buy at a Radio Shack. Ichigo had never set foot in a Radio Shack in his life.

“Er, good morning,” Ichigo said, as the woman looked up and blinked at him owlishly. “Agent Inoue? I’m Ichigo Kurosaki. I’ve been assigned to work with you.”

“To spy on me, you mean,” Agent Inoue corrected, cheerfully shaking his hand with great vigor.

Ichigo bristled. Yes, he had been directed to ‘provide additional documentation on Agent Inoue’s activities,’ but that hardly counted as spying. She was known to be somewhat scatterbrained, and having an organized person around would probably be a great benefit to her. “If you have any doubts about my qualifications or motivations--”

“Oh, don’t take it personally!” Inoue replied, slotting a lid onto her electronics project, and attacking it vigorously with a jeweler’s screwdriver. “Just because you’re a spy doesn’t mean you aren’t a nice person. Also, I read your file, you have a very interesting background! Degree in literature with a focus on folk legends. Teaching at the academy for the last few years while working on your book.” She took a momentary break from her screwing to fix him with her big, soft brown eyes. “Tell me, Agent Kurosaki, what do you think happens after you die?”

Ichigo froze. “I would be buried? Maybe there would be a funeral first?”

Inoue started laughing so hard that Ichigo was sure he caught a tiny, adorable snort. “Sorry, sorry! I wasn’t clear!” She sniffed, and wiped a tear from her eye. “Do you believe in continued existence after the death of the body? An afterlife, religion-based or otherwise? The existence of ectoplasm, cold spots, spirit photographs, EVP?”

“Are you talking about… ghosts?” Ichigo asked hesitantly.

“Yes!” Orihime replied with a nod. “Ghosts.”

“We-elll…” Ichigo drew out. “I believe that people believe they observe certain phenomena, as part of the cycle of grief and--”

“Just say ‘no’ if you don’t,” Inoue interrupted him.

“Er, no. I don’t.”

“That’s okay. Are you good at carrying heavy things?”

“Am I... I guess?”

“Perfect!” She shoved the box into his arms, and Ichigo’s knees almost buckled under the weight. “Let’s walk and talk, I want to go get a reading over near Franklin Square before 9 am. We’re gonna pass a really good half-smoke cart on the way, do you like half-smokes?”

  👻     👻     👻

“Take a look at this,” Inoue said, her cheek half stuffed with sausage, jabbing a finger at the LED read-out of her mysterious box.

It was rather hard for Ichigo to see, because he was holding the box and the readout was on the other side, but he did his best to crane his neck around. “What am I looking at? The squiggles? I’m sorry, it looks like nothing to me.”

“Exactly right!” Inoue announced, waving her half smoke in the air. “Not a sniff of spiritual residue!”

Ichigo pressed his lips together. “Um… is that good?”

“It is interesting,” Inoue corrected. “Five days ago, a sixty-four year old woman had a heart attack while sitting in that bus shelter.” On every day since, I have been able to record EMF fluctuations, and on Sunday, I was able to get a voice recording that sounded like a woman reciting a grocery list. But this morning, nothing! Nada!”

“Well, uh, ghosts gotta move on eventually, right? Otherwise, just about everywhere would be haunted, right?” It’s not that Ichigo had suddenly started believing ghosts or anything, but there was something about Agent Inoue that just made you want to go along with her and see where all this panned out.

Inoue shot him a finger gun. “Or, they get moved along.” She shoved a folded paper map at him. “You can put that thing down.”

Ichigo eased the Spirit Detect-O 9000, or whatever it was called, to the grass and accepted her map. It was a street map of DC, meant for tourists, emphasizing all the local transit routes and popular attractions. There was also a great loop marked on it in orange highlighter, zig-zagging back and forth through the city. There was a little ‘x’ marked on Franklin Park, with “Tuesday, early morning” written in a bubbly hand.

“What is this?” Ichigo frowned. It didn’t seem to match up with any of the metro or bus lines. It didn’t even match with the sidewalks, it appeared to cut straight through large buildings like the convention center.

“As far as I can tell,” Inoue said, her brown eyes very solemn, “that is the patrol route of our local grim reaper.”

  👻     👻     👻

“So I actually got interested in grim reapers,” Inoue explained, once they were back in the office, “while I was investigating violent ghost phenomena.” She was eating a bag of corn chips that she had gotten from that ancient vending machine by punching it and then shoving her own arm up the chute. (She’d gotten Ichigo a bag, too, but he was too afraid to eat them.)

Ichigo was sitting at a cluttered table that Inoue had told him “could be his desk.” Half of it was taken up by a large aquarium full of rocks and a water bowl, but no life forms that Ichigo could detect. The other half was covered with back issues of “Ghost Hunter Technology” magazine. “You mean like poltergeists?” he asked.

“Not exactly. Poltergeists are noisy, but they aren’t usually able to kill their targets.”

“Kill? Ghosts can’t kill people, aside from, like scaring them to death,” Ichigo scoffed. “I mean, folklorically speaking. As we established earlier, I am not a ghost-believer.”

Inoue tipped her head to the side. “They do, actually, it just tends to get blamed on something else.”

“By ghost-non-believers.”

“By everyone, really, and that’s what’s so strange.” Inoue pulled a fat binder from a stack of seemingly identical ones, and tossed it open in front of Ichigo. “Edison, New Jersey, 2014. An elderly woman dies ‘of a broken heart’ a week after her husband dies of cancer. Coincidentally, a telephone pole falls on her house the same night and rips a hole in her house.” She turned a page. “Norfolk, Virginia, 2017. A young woman dies in what the police rule as a suicide, despite the fact that she made a 911 call 48 hours previous, expressing fear of her ex-boyfriend. Three days later, the boyfriend is dead of mysterious causes. Coincidentally, his apartment complex suffered significant damages from ‘a wild cougar.’”

Ichigo squinted at the pictures. The walls of the building were scored with what did appear to be scratch marks. “Hell of a cougar.”

“Exactly! And I’ve got dozens of these historic cases. But about four months ago, I was able to investigate one myself-- a young man named Joe Wallace. He lives here in the city, over near Dupont Circle. Wallace had cut off his toxic dad years ago, and refused to visit him in the hospital as he was dying. Four days after his father’s death, a truck crashes into his house in the middle of the night and then drives away before the police can arrive.”

“And he died.”

“No!” Inoue held up one finger. “Scratches and bruises, but he doesn’t die!”

“Okay, great. So what does he remember?”

“He remembers a truck crashing into his house.”

Ichigo scratched his chin. “I am confused.”

“Look at this!” Inoue stabbed a finger at the pictures. “These are claw marks, not vehicular wreckage! There’s damage on the second story window! Wallace had scratches and defensive wounds, as if he had been fending off an animal! And look here, at the damage to the walls of the bedroom!”

“What am I looking at?” Ichigo asked, squinting at a photograph that looked like it had been blown up past the point of recognition.

“There were cuts and slashes in the walls and bedding as though someone had been fighting with a sword.”

“Like a Medieval Times sword? Was the guy a Medieval Times enthusiast?”

“More consistent with a katana. Do you like Medieval Times?”

“No one likes Medieval Times.”

“I like Medieval Times. You’ve probably never even been. But back to the ghost! Why would Wallace remember a truck crashing into his house, when nothing about the scene is consistent with that story?”

“He was...lying?”

“His memories were replaced.”

“His memories were replaced,” Ichigo echoed.

“Yes.”

“By… aliens?”

Orihime heaved a deep sigh. “By a grim reaper.”

“A grim reaper with a samurai sword.”

“How on earth did you come to this conclusion?”

Inoue raised one eyebrow. “Because when I placed him under hypnosis, Wallace didn’t remember anything about a truck. He did remember a monster with batwings and a mask made of bone and his dead father’s voice who tried to kill him, except that he was saved by a tall man dressed in black. The man had bright red hair and fought the monster with a sword that was also a whip and then he wiped Wallace’s memories.”

Ichigo stared at her. “You can hypnotize people?”

Inoue gave him a long-suffering face. Ichigo had the sudden flash that he was going to be seeing that face a lot in the days to come. “Yes, I am a certified hypnotist.” Inoue’s phone suddenly started playing “Tubular Bells”. “Oops, that’s an alarm. Come on, we have a meeting with some important people. Do you like diners?”

  👻     👻     👻

Agent Inoue apparently did not care for public transit, but she walked very quickly. Ichigo was concentrating so hard on keeping up with her that he nearly collided with her back when she stopped very suddenly.

“You don’t mind if we make a quick stop, do we?” Inoue asked.

“You said the meeting was with important people.”

“Oh, don’t worry about them!” Inoue pursed her lips. “You see that bodega right there?”

They were in a part of downtown that was mostly mid-to-upscale restaurants and government buildings and FedExes. But sure enough, there was a dingy little bodega nestled between a Mexican-Indian fusion place and an Au Bon Pain, the windows stuffed with t-shirts from the last administration and a variety of cell phone chargers. The overhead sign read “Urahara Shop.”

“Y...eah…” Ichigo replied.

“That place is a hotbed of supernatural activity.”

“Is it?” Ichigo asked.

“I am almost positive that it is a supply point and meeting place for grim reapers, monster slayers, cryptids, alien hunters, and lycanthropes, but the owner is on to me.”

“I see,” Ichigo said levelly.

“Can you go in and pretend to be a customer? They have lots of good candy you can look through. Inoue dug in her purse and came up with a fiver. “Here. Buy a scratch ticket or something.”

“I’m not buying a scratch ticket, they’re a scam.”

“If the big guy is working the counter, he’ll glare at you until you buy something, so be prepared.”

As Ichigo pushed open the door, he realized he’d never actually agreed to any of this. Agent Inoue’s secret hypnosis powers, once again. Whatever. It was a bodega, there were a thousand of them in DC. They all had the same Nats t-shirts and coffee mugs with pictures of the Washington Monument on them. Ichigo pretended to be interested in a rack of comics. He tended to prefer indy comics over the big publishers himself, but even so, he didn’t recognize any of the books. Maybe they were by local authors.

Up at the front of the shop, a tiny, dark-haired woman was giving whatfor to the man behind the counter, a tall fellow with pale, straw-colored hair sticking out in tufts from under the saddest hat Ichigo had ever seen, a shapeless, battered bucket, striped green and white.

“Well, I can sell you a new battery for your phone, Miss Kuchiki, maybe that would help.”

“Not if it only lasts as long as the last one you sold me! I really need to get in touch with my partner, except that even if I could get my phone working again, his battery is probably dead because everything you sell is the same crap!”

“Ah, that’s too bad! You know, I think Mr. Abarai was in here a few days ago… I wasn’t in at the time, but Jinta said he came in, asking about…”

The man trailed off, and Ichigo glanced up to see the shopkeeper looking directly at him.

“...metrocards. But as you know, we don’t sell metrocards anymore.”

The woman made an aggravated noise. “You’re so useless! If I write him a damned note, will you give it to him if he comes in?”

“Oh, of course! Anything for you, Miss Kuchiki!”

The conversation trailed off as the woman hunched over the counter to angrily scratch out a note.

Ichigo stuffed the comic he was flipping through back on its rack. He skipped the enormous display of bedazzled flip-flops and started perusing the surprisingly extensive selection of gum.

“Here!” the woman finished and shoved her note at the shopkeeper. “You’re the worst, you know that?”

“Have a wonderful day!” the shopkeeper tootled, giving her a little finger wave.

Ichigo felt bad for the woman. “Er, excuse me?” he said as she passed.

She turned to scowl at him. For such a tiny person, she seemed to contain a remarkable amount of rage.

“Do you need to call someone? You can use my phone, if you’d like.” He held it out like an offering.

The woman blinked at him for a moment.

“I didn’t mean to be nosy! You were just kind of loud and you sounded worried about your, um, partner.”

“I’m not worried about him, I just need to find him.” Her face softened. “Thanks, Mister, but I can’t reach him on a regular phone. Don’t worry, I’ll track him down eventually.” She turned to leave, then stopped to jab an accusatory finger at Ichigo. “And that’s professional partner, not… you know! Whatever!” She stomped out.

What a strange, tiny person.

Ichigo selected a gum and walked up to the counter.

“Oooh, dragonberry lime, good choice!” the man trilled. “Anything else I can get you? Bottled water? Fanny pack? Spare phone battery?”

“I’ll pass,” Ichigo replied dryly.

“I imagine it’s against FBI policy to let a stranger use your cell phone,” the shopkeeper said sweetly.

Ichigo’s brows furrowed. “This is my personal phone. And how did you…?”

The man gave a chortling laugh that sent shivers down Ichigo’s spine. “Because headquarters is three blocks away and only an FBI agent would wear a suit that square.”

Ichigo took his change and his gum and shoved them both in his pocket. “Yeah, well, your hat sucks.”

The man laughed harder. “Doesn’t it, though?”

Once he was outside again, Ichigo handed Inoue the gum and her change. “The owner of that place is a creep.”

“The guy in the green and white hat?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s Urahara. You’re right, he’s the owner. Were there any other customers?”

“Just the short lady. You must have seen her come out. She was ripping Urahara a new one for some dodgy cell phone battery he sold her. I think she must have been NSA or something. She said she was trying to get ahold of her partner, but she needed a special phone.” As he said it, Ichigo realized it would be pretty odd for an NSA agent to be buying cell phone batteries from some shady bodega.

“No one came out,” Inoue replied.

“She definitely did! I heard the bell over the door ring.”

Inoue regarded Ichigo very seriously. “Agent Kurosaki. I was standing here the whole time. You were the only person who went in or out.” She looked at the gum. “Ooh! Dragonfruit lime! Do you want some?”

  👻     👻     👻

They were late to the meeting.

Two men were waiting for them in the back corner booth. One of them had pinched, pointy features and piercing blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. His chin-length haircut was pretty dramatic, but not as dramatic as his pure white trench coat. A cup of black coffee sat on the faded Formica table in front of him, but it didn’t look like it had been touched.

His companion was an enormous, good-looking Latino who was shoveling pancakes into his face.

“Inoue,” the dramatic guy said. “Who’s this?”

“This is my new partner, Kurosaki,” Inoue replied. “Kurosaki, this is Uryuu Ishida,” she indicated the white trenchcoat guy, “and Chad,” Mr. Pancakes.

“Also known as the ‘Lone Archers,’” Ishida specified. “We are apolitical actors who are interested in revealing the truths that are regularly hidden from the general populace by secret forces that conspire within the machinery of the American government.”

“You can just call me Chad,” said Chad.

“Good morning!” the waitress said. “Can I get you folks anything?”

“Oh, yes! I’m getting mozzarella sticks! Do you like mozzarella sticks, Kurosaki? They’re so good here!”

“So’re the pancakes,” added Chad.

“I’ll just have a coffee,” Ichigo announced. He glanced at Ishida’s cup. “Black.”

“Double mozzarella sticks, please!” Inoue chorused. “And a cherry coke!” She leaned over to Ichigo and spoke out of the side of her mouth. “I’ll give you a mozzarella stick.”

“Do you want some pancake?” Chad offered to Ishida. “I never think to offer.”

Ishida waved him off with a hand. “Agent Inoue. At great personal peril, I was able to obtain a sample of the item we discussed.” He slid a small paper packet across the table. “There are two tablets inside, but one should be sufficient for your purposes.” Ishida leaned forward, his mouth set in a firm line. “I was cautioned very strongly against using this, unless one had a firm plan for handling the… consequences.”

“I understand,” Inoue replied, stuffing the envelope into her purse.

Ichigo wanted to ask more questions, but the conversation shifted very quickly to some USGS floodplain maps that Ishida wanted Inoue to obtain for him that were apparently not available from the public webportals, allegedly because of filesize. Ichigo could practically hear the air quotes around the word “filesize.”

“We’re going to look for Jersey Devils next weekend,” Chad explained, sounding pretty excited about it.

“There’s only one, Chad,” Ishida corrected. “It’s just ‘Jersey Devil.’”

“There could be more than one,” Chad shrugged.

Thirty minutes later, they departed. Inoue had an order of mozzarella sticks in her purse. Ichigo had an armload of backissues of the Lone Archers’ ‘zine, which was, conveniently enough, titled The Lone Archer. There was no doubt in his mind that at least Ishida was completely off his rocker. The jury was still out on Chad… he struck Ichigo as the sort of guy who just went along with Ishida’s nonsense because he was a good friend and also liked taking camping trips and doing layout for ‘zines.

“So what was that thing they gave you?” Ichigo pestered. The idea of that little paper packet had been burning a hole in his brain the entire time.

“You busy tonight?” Inoue asked, raising an eyebrow slyly. “Between 10 and 11?”

“What are we doing?” Ichigo asked cautiously, wondering if he would be able to charge his time.

“We’re going to try and attract an angry ghost.”

  👻     👻     👻

“Are you… sure this is… a good idea?” Ichigo asked for the sixteenth time, as Inoue focused the thermal camera on him.

They were in an old, abandoned lot that had formerly served as a Metro service facility. It was pretty spooky all on its own, filled with train cars too dilapidated for salvage.

It was 10:25pm. Inoue had set up no less than 17 different pieces of ghost detection equipment. Ichigo was questioning his life choices.

“You told me you don’t believe in ghosts. If ghosts don’t exist, then what could possibly go wrong?” Inoue posed.

“Well… that’s true,” Ichigo granted. “And, for the record, I still do not believe in ghosts. But in the Pascal’s wager sense of things, I am considering the ramifications of what happens if there are ghosts that exist, regardless of my belief in them.”

“And?” Inoue asked.

“Well, you said that these ghosts have hurt and killed people before. It seems like trying to attract one without having any method of, um, fighting it, seems kind of… irresponsible?”

“Ah, but you see, I’ve specifically picked this time and location to coincide with the grim reaper patrol routes I’ve been mapping out. Our friendly neighborhood psychopomp ought to show up just on schedule to fight the angry ghost for us. We’re doing them a favor, as I see it.”

“How so?” Ichigo exclaimed.

“It’s not like we’re creating an angry ghost out of nowhere. We’re just attracting an existing one to our location. We’re saving the grim reaper the trouble of having to hunt it down.”

Ichigo pinched the bridge of his nose. Why was it so difficult to argue with Inoue? Possibly because she was so incredibly earnest in all her beliefs, and all her arguments were in completely good faith, it’s just that her logic came from some other dimension. This woman has solved multiple, high-profile murders, including several that were ice cold, Ichigo reminded himself. So she’s quirky. I am sure I can learn a lot from her.

“Okay, everything is in place!” Inoue announced, placing her hand on her hips. “Go hide behind that pile of moldy seats!”

Inoue took Ichigo’s place at the center of her recording equipment. “Agent Orihime Inoue speaking,” she said, for posterity. “It is 10:28pm. I am crushing one tablet of a substance called ‘Hollow Bait.’” She crunched the little white tablet, which looked an awful lot like an Alka-Seltzer, between her fingers, and then made a flying leap for the rotting pile of damp, orange upholstery that Ichigo was crouched behind.

“So, just out of curiosity,” Ichigo started. “How long would we have to wait, theoretically, with nothing happening, before we would declare this a bust?”

Inoue pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Usually, I would give it about two hours, but if you’ve got somewhere to be, I don’t mind if you leave early. It is nice to have company for a change.”

“No, I don’t have anywhere else to be,” Ichigo replied. “I mean… sleeping, I guess.”

Inoue gave a charming little laugh. “I don’t sleep very well. And hunting for ghosts is more interesting than most of the stuff on Hulu.”

The way that she said it gave Ichigo the distinct impression that Inoue was, well, lonely. But that didn’t seem correct. She was weird, sure, but she was also friendly and talkative, and, er, well, she was extremely cute. Surely she had tons of friends.

“How’d you get into ghost hunting, anyway?” he tried to be conversational.

“Hmm,” Inoue hummed noncommittally. “Let’s just say there was an incident in my teen years, where my memories don’t match up to the property damage.”

Oh. Ichigo wondered if he should apologize, when suddenly, a cold chill ran down his spine and a sound like a roar echoed in his ears, except he didn’t actually hear anything. “Did you hear that?” he gasped.

“It’s the EMF detector,” Inoue nodded, scrambling for the reader and Ichigo realized he could hear a faint beeping.

“No, not the beeping, it was like a… a… scream…”

“You heard a scream?”

“I didn’t exactly…” Ichigo trailed off as he heard two more, coming from different directions. “There’s more than one. Monster screams. Not human screams.”

Inoue stared at him, eyes wide. “I don’t hear anything. Have you ever been tested for latent psychic ability?”

There was a sudden change in the air pressure, and a fetid, rotting smell, even worse than the Metro seats. Ichigo grabbed Inoue by the shoulders and rolled out of the way, just as the pile of junk they had been crouched behind compacted like it had been through a car crusher. Or smashed by a giant foot.

“Whoa!” Inoue exclaimed, trying to push Ichigo off of her so she could see what was going on.

Ichigo blinked through the night. He couldn’t see anything, but there was an area of space that looked thick and hazy, like it wasn’t refracting the harsh glow of the sodium street lights quite correctly.

“We have to get out of here,” Ichigo gasped.

“Can you see it?” Inoue asked, her eyes wide and excited.

“Not-- not really,” Ichigo replied, pulling at her arm. The air blurred, and Ichigo had the sense the thing was jumping at them. He could tell it was fast, but he couldn’t see it, he didn’t know what to--

“Howl, Zabimaru!”

It was both there and not quite there, a liquid blade made of glass and starlight, that snapped through the air at the invisible thing. The monster bellowed, and whipped around, charging at a dark figure standing atop one of the old Metro cars.

“Pick on someone your own size, ugly!” the man bellowed, and as Ichigo squinted, he realized that their savior was dressed all in black. He was tall, and his hair was pulled back in a spiky ponytail. It was bright red. He was also wearing sunglasses, even though it was the middle of the night. They were pushed up on top of his head, to be fair, but Ichigo had a feeling this detail would stick with him.

“You can see that guy, right?” Ichigo asked Inoue desperately. “The guy who’s fighting the ghost? The guy that looks just like the guy in your report?”

“There’s a guy?” Inoue asked. “No. Where is he? Can you usually see ghosts?”

“I don’t even believe in ghosts!”

“Well, maybe you don’t believe in them because you can see them and you don’t want to, did you ever think of that?”

“I don’t think now is the time to interrogate my personal traumas!”

Suddenly, there was another drop in pressure, and Ichigo had the sense of heavy breathing and sharp teeth. “Inoue. I think there’s another one.”

“Well, can you get the guy to come fight this one, too?”

“He seems busy,” Ichigo squeaked.

Something black flashed by his vision, and there was a loud crack and a sound of something screeching in pain. A second dark-clad person had arrived, landing softly on sandaled feet. There was the same unreality to her, a sense that she wasn’t entirely there, as well as a certain familiarity that Ichigo couldn’t place. Her sword was bright in the darkness, like moonlight reflecting on snow.

“Oi, there you are, you big dummy!” she shouted at the first man and Ichigo realized with a jolt that it was the angry woman from the bodega. “I’ve been looking for you for four days!”

“I had a problem with my gigai and maybe you should check your texts once in a while!” the tall guy shouted back. Ichigo refused to think of him as a grim reaper. A grim reaper would not wear sunglasses.

“My phone died!”

“Can we-- ow! -- discuss this later? I’m glad you’re okay, I missed you. Why are there so many Hollows in this train yard?”

“You’re such a sap! And the Hollows are here because some stupid humans got ahold of some Hollow bait.” The woman turned, and glared at Ichigo. Her eyes burned with blue flame, like the burner of a gas stove.

That would have been the last thing Ichigo remembered, if he had actually remembered it, or any of the things that came before it.

  👻     👻     👻

Ichigo was sitting at his desk.

Inoue was sitting at her desk.

The sun was streaming in the window. The clock on Ichigo’s phone read 7:12am.

Inoue frowned. She examined a coffee cup on her desk. She took a hesitant sip, and then made a face. “Why are we here?” she wondered softly.

“I hate to pull an all-nighter,” Ichigo said, stretching, “but it sure does feel good to be caught up on paperwork!”

Inoue regarded him. “Kurosaki,” she said, “how long have you worked here?”

Ichigo frowned. “Well, I guess this is my second day.”

“Right. So… how much paperwork did you have to catch up on?”

Ichigo blinked. He very distinctively recalled working through the night-- his hand cramping, the incredibly spicy Thai food they’d ordered, Inoue’s seemingly infinite Boy Bands of the 90’s playlist. “I… was helping you, I guess?” Come to think of it, why was he filling out paperwork by hand, anyway? His laptop sat next to him, the lid closed. It wasn’t even plugged in.

Inoue’s fist slammed down onto her desk. “Gosh darnit! They wiped my memories again!!”

[avatraang]

Summary: Every once in a while, when they’re out late, the moon will catch her in just the right way. Sokka thinks Yue is trying to tell him something. Yet as Toph sends him a beckoning smile over her shoulder, moonlight glinting against her skin, Sokka pushes the message away.                  

[Tokka, told through lenses of jealousy. Mentions of Lin and Suyin. Written for Tokka Week 2020: Day 1, Jealousy. Oneshot.]

Notes: It's Tokka Week 2020! Here's my entry for Day One. The prompts for today were Jealousy and Grief, but I decided to stick with just jealousy.A HUGE (!!!) thank you to @cats-and-metersticks for beta'ing this fic for me! She was an absolute badass and has kindly beta'd pretty much every fic that I'm posting this week. I could NOT have done this without her; thank you so much! This fic is inspired by labrinth's "jealous". the title is taken DIRECTLY from one of the lyrics in the song. I haven't seen LOK but I made it as canon-compliant as I possibly could (with my beta’s awesome help, ofc). It takes place throughout a number of years, but not any too crazy time jumps. As per usual, I hope you enjoy.

Preview: It’s raining outside when he notices it for the first time. Well, not it. Her. He’s new in Republic City, so she took a day off to show him around. Katara had expressed her mild surprise that Toph, the Chief of Police, had taken a day off to show Sokka, of all people, around… Toph didn’t even take days off when Zuko came into town, and that was rarer than Sokka’s appearances. Plus, it’s not like he’s leaving any time soon. If all goes well, he’ll win his position on the council and move to Republic City, permanently. 

Lin is at school, probably tormenting Tenzin. Katara can’t tag along because she has a patient who is due to give birth any minute now. Aang is at the Northern Water Tribe. And everyone else, is, well… everywhere else. So it’s just him, and Toph, and neither of them can sense when it’s about to rain, so they had been caught, quite suddenly, in a downpour.

“Mother-” Toph swears, gathering the food they’d been eating and wrapping it up, quickly. “Why didn’t you fucking warn me that it was getting dark outside?”

“Hey!” Sokka cries, grabbing their drinks and stuffing it under his shirt, knowing damn well his actions will prove to be useless. “It’s not even dark out; the sun is still shining. Plus, how did you miss the change in the wind? Or the smell? You always catch that!”

“It came out of nowhere,” Toph retorts. If she wasn’t blind, the look she sends his way could kill.

“Earthbend us a little shelter,” Sokka whines. He can feel the drinks sloshing around under his tunic. Deciding he no longer cares about their tea, Sokka pours it out on the ground and keeps walking.

Toph sends him another withering glare. “If I could, don’t you think I would? We’re on city property; If I earthbend I’ll mess up the grass and then I’ll have to pay a fine.”

“Can’t you just… police it away?” Even as Sokka says it, he cringes. “Shut up, I know how it-”

Regardless, Toph goes on a rant about how she’s supposed to exemplify justice, leaving Sokka wet and bothered. They move quickly through the rain, towards the direction of Toph’s apartment. Funnily enough, it’s still sunny outside. Sokka ventures a look upwards and sees a faint rainbow gracing the sky. It gives him a feeling of hope, as if the Spirits have blessed his new journey in the big city.

“Oh, cool!” he cries, “a rainbow!”

“Wow!” Toph’s voice is quiet, reverent. “It’s beautiful.”

“Isn’t it?”

A beat.

“Fuck you, Toph.”

“You wish, Snoozles.”

The retort slips out of her mouth easily; crude and thoughtless. She keeps it moving, a testament to just how dirty her sense of humor is and how accustomed she is to the atmosphere at the precinct. Sokka, however, stops. The rain blurs his vision slightly, but he stares. He stares after her, and for the first time since the war ended (over twenty years ago, now), Sokka looks at Toph. Really looks.

The clothes she is wearing are glued to her skin, slick and unyielding. Her hair is heavy with rain, the bun lowering by the second as she moves, already well ahead of him, with a grace that most Earthbenders cannot claim. Sokka’s never paid it much mind before, but now, he can’t help but wonder how her hips would feel between his hands. He wonders if her hair is coarse, or silky. If her skin is soft and supple, or calloused and hard. Or maybe a mixture? She turns towards him, many feet away, and he can see, through squinted eyes (he curses the rain), her figure. She’s… well, she’s beautifully proportioned, to say the least.

Sokka gulps, fidgeting uncomfortably in his sticky pants. He suddenly feels awkward, as if he’s doing something illegal. Sokka toys with the empty to-go cups in his hand, watching as Toph gets further away from him.

“Sokka?” Toph calls. She sounds confused. “Don’t fucking play, you know the rain messes with my Sense. The food’s getting ruined, hurry up! I had way more of the city to show you, but it’ll have to wait til after.”

Her voice carries through the rain, loud and unyielding. It is what snaps him out of his daze and grounds him back in reality. This is… this is Toph. And he’s here thinking of her like she’s a… a potential partner.

Sokka grimaces. Yuck.

Still, as he runs after her, Sokka feels irrationally jealous of the rain. It’s closer than his hands will probably ever be.

Soaking wet, Sokka pushes the thought away, the flare of jealousy settling in his gut but for some reason, not completely disappearing.

He’s jealous of the rain.

Click Here To Keep Reading.

[blursed-ninjago-ideas]

*sips my soda* i want,,, kairro oneshot/drabble of the others finding kai and morro completely fused into kairro.

*gasps for breath as I crawl out of the pit*

I struggled with this, hence the WEEK it took. The plot just wasn’t coming and I didn't have the free time and energy to force it. Finally I did what always gives me story ideas, I search for a song to give me good vibes I could follow. It’s not super related to the actual song, I just ripped the vibes, not the meaning.

anyways, here! After so long of mental anguish, I have completed it.

--

It was him taking a shower that really nailed the coffin closed.

Kai…no, Kairro came out smiling, but Nya felt something deep inside shatter.

She bit her lip and shoved the pain down. It would do nothing for her, or him. She had to be strong for him and everyone else, or they’d never adjust.

He wasn’t dead. She repeated the mantra to herself. He didn’t die, she had nothing to grieve. She could shoulder it and push on.

Even as she choked on sobs she wouldn’t let out while he drank a cup of coffee. Her brother hated the taste since they were little.

She forced herself to stay still when he went to bed with wet hair. He used to refuse to sleep if he wasn’t completely dry.

Her heart lurched when he started to pick at his nails. It wasn’t his habit and she knew.

All the tiny pieces of her brother she took for granted were gone; replaced by the quirks of a stranger. She lost him all the little ways she never knew she knew him. Overnight she lost all the small details she had spent a life memorizing. It was death by a thousand cuts.

She didn’t let herself feel it during the day. She pushed it down into a dark quiet place inside and kept smiling. He smiled at her too, far too excited about everything.

She cried at night though. All the things she pushed down found a way to crawl back out and she wailed into Jay’s shoulder while he stroked her back.

She wanted to be stronger. She didn’t want to cry for her brother who was still alive. It hurt so much, but she couldn’t mourn. She kept it all in that bedroom, Jay as the only witness to her tears.

-

Zane was tired. He didn’t sleep and he was tired.

Cole stared at him with equally weary eyes from across the table.

The nights had become a refuge for them. With everyone asleep, they could pretend it was alright, if only for a few hours.

Kairro would sometimes wonder in, unable to sleep. Kai’s insomniac nature still present. They smiled when they watched him grab his jasmine tea and put too much sweetener in it like he always would.

Sometimes he’d sit and talk with them while he drank his tea. He’d relate to Cole with memories of being a lonely ghost. After Cole numbed the sting of hearing his friend call on those memories in the first person, he found solace in it. It helped him to hear from someone that knew what he was dealing with and could give him tips. Pixal started to ask questions, which Zane had to relay. It wasn’t long until he had a few of his own. The three found a comfortable banter with each other.

It hurt that it wasn’t quite the Kai they had known, but it wasn’t impossible to see themselves becoming just as close with Kairro.

--

Jay couldn’t contain his rage. He was never one to keep his emotions to himself.

His brother, Nya’s brother, his friend was….

Morro had finally taken Kai away from them, and Jay would never be ok with it.

Kai was gone.

The boy that had threatened him when he hit on his kidnapped sister, (Jay doesn’t know if he should laugh or cringe about that) was gone.

The boy that pulled Lloyd and all the answers out of a volcano, was gone.

The boy who had tricked Chen, was gone.

Jay could scream himself raw about how unfair it was. How much he wanted it to be undone. There was a heavy part of him that wished Kai had never taken the call. That Lloyd had been there, and Morro had gone through with his original plan. He would’ve hurt Lloyd, but he would’ve never taken such and interested in Kai, and he wouldn’t be gone.

So, when Cole and Zane actually defended that….thing. Jay lost it on them. He gave in and screamed. He ranted at them until his face matched his gi. They didn’t take to it well and there was a huge fight.

They yelled at him about how he had to accept things and accept Kairro as he was now. They didn’t see anything wrong with it.

Jay screeched at them. Couldn’t they see what a betrayal it was? Their friend was taken from them! How could they accept that?

They didn’t talk for two weeks.

--

Lloyd couldn’t take it. He couldn’t even look at him. His big brother, but not. He wanted to scream and grieve, but what good would it do? Kai was gone and Lloyd would never get another hug from him.

It hurt and all he wanted was Kai. It hurt so much he couldn’t even look at him without feeling sick.

Morro had taken the light that kept the dark away and fought the cold grief that tried to consume Lloyd so often. Morro had taken and changed him.

“Lloyd.” He said.

Lloyd stopped in the hallway, mid-stride.

“Lloyd, please stop avoiding me.” he begged “I know you’re upset, but please. Don’t shut me out.”

Lloyd spun in his heels, tears already spilling from his angry eyes.

“I can’t look at you! You took him away from me!” Lloyd screamed.

It hurt to see his wounded expression in response.

“I’m sorry Lloyd.” He said “I never wanted to hurt you. Please, I love you. I just….I want to help you.”

“This isn’t helping!” Lloyd shouted; he couldn’t even see through his crying. “This hurt me! It hurt me so much!”

“I’m sorry. I wish I could make things alright for you. Lloyd, I’d do anything to make it ok. I can’t make everything go back, but please. You’re hurting, let me be there for you.” He was approaching.

“I DON’T WANT YOU! I WANT KAI!” he screamed “I WANT MY BROTHER BACK! YOU TOOK HIM FROM ME!”

There was silence, Lloyd could still only see blurs through his wet eyes.

“Don’t try to act like this is ok. It’s not. You stole Kai away from me! He promised he’d protect me and- and I can’t take- I just- I need him!“ Lloyd’s voice started to crack, broken by sobs.

There was suddenly a warmth around him. He hiccuped and leaned into it. He knew it wasn’t Kai hugging him, but it felt close enough, at least for the moment.

“It’s ok, little brother. I’m right here.”

Lloyd wanted to flinch away from the soothing tone, but it wrapped around him like a warm blanket on a frozen day. He couldn’t stop himself from sinking into Kai’s warmth like he always had when he was scared. Kai was there, that was all that mattered. Lloyd missed his big brother enough to ignore the rest.

“I promise, I’m right here. I’m not going to ever leave.” Kairro quietly cooed, while caressing Lloyd’s hair.

Lloyd sobbed into his chest, soaking in the bitter comfort.

--

Does this satisfy you? I hope it does.

-Ivy