#it was unclear why he had to but he was just that much of a dissapointment ig

[magniloquent-raven]

Day 4: Supportive Boyfriends

and for my next (LATE, SO LATE) @bucktommypositivityweek contribution. KITTEN FIC.

(read on ao3)

**

The 118 doesn't have a baby box.

In fact there aren't any in the state of California at all. Buck looked it up, after Maddie's postpartum episode. When half his family was missing and there wasn't much he could do besides wait and... think about things.

So he thought about safe haven laws. Read up on the training seminars for first responders who want to be better equipped to deal with hand-offs. Read a bunch of other stuff he sort of wishes he hadn't. Spent the next week haunted by articles about abandoned children.

He considered talking to Bobby about it. Only partly to ask him if they should get a box for the firehouse. Partly because Buck wasn't sure how he felt about the whole thing, and Bobby always seemed to have answers. But he never worked up the nerve to broach the subject.

And now. Bobby's not captain anymore, and Buck really can't imagine Gerrard giving a shit about any of this.

So, they don't have a box. But.

Well, this isn't a human baby. It's not like the same rules apply.

Buck has to wonder if wires got crossed somewhere, because. Someone left a kitten. Outside the firehouse.

Buck was just going to grab something—he can't remember what—from his Jeep, when he spotted an unlabelled cardboard box on the pavement, up against the side of the building. His first thought was bomb.

Until it meowed at him. A tiny, high-pitched peep of a meow.

Kind of scared the shit out of him, if he's being honest.

There's only one. All alone in the box. A poofy grey thing wriggling around half buried in an off-white towel. Like a very ambitious dust bunny with big round blue eyes and skinny legs. It wobbles slowly over a fold in the towel with all the effort of someone scaling a mountain.

Buck crouches next to the box, and pokes a finger inside.

"Hey, buddy," he murmurs, holding very still while the kitten inches towards his hand and squeaks. It's unclear whether there are teeth in that little maw. That means it's really young, right? Too young to be left alone for very long.

Shit, how is he going to explain this to Gerrard? He's still got, like, 12 hours left on his shift, but someone has to feed this thing. How long can kittens go without food?

Oh, it does have teeth. Really teeny ones. They're ineffectively poking his knuckle.

Buck fishes his phone out of his jacket—with the hand that isn't currently being drooled on—intending to go to Google for answers. How to figure out how old a kitten is. How often do kittens need to be fed. Do cats get separation anxiety. He has a million questions.

Only he doesn't pull up his browser. He calls Tommy.

It's a whim. Barely a seed of an idea. But when he unlocked his phone the first thing he saw was their text history (he'd been complaining about Gerrard off-and-on all morning, and Tommy had been sending random updates about all the chores he'd been getting done—his last message was a picture of a mop with no context) and he just thought... Tommy will know what to do. Not in so many words, more a feeling. Comfort and certainty, just from seeing Tommy's picture in a little bubble at the top of his screen.

"Evan?" Tommy answers almost immediately, and there's a subtle undercurrent of worry in his tone. Buck winces. Right, calling out of the blue while he's at work would look. Bad.

"I'm okay!" He says quickly, all in one breath. Then pauses. The kitten squints up at him, meowing again, long and loud. Its whole fluffy face scrunches with the effort.

"...What was that?"

"Uh. That would be why I called, actually."

—

Gerrard is less of an obstacle than Buck feared he'd be. Because he's holed up in his office doing paperwork when Buck sneaks in with the kitten, and Buck's decided he has no intention of letting him know the cat was ever here.

Tommy promised he'd come get her.

Buck didn't even really ask, and wasn't planning on asking. Didn't have any plan whatsoever, in fact. He just wanted to know if Tommy knew anything about taking care of kittens, and suddenly Tommy's voluntarily sacrificing the rest of his day off to scope out vets and pet supply stores and whatever else Buck's helpless little friend might need.

He hung up hours ago and his insides still feel warm and goopy about it. He can't stop thinking about the gentle fondness that softened Tommy's voice after Buck explained the situation. Buck would wrap himself up in it like a blanket if he could.

Tommy's getting so kissed when he shows up.

In the meantime, Buck's sitting upstairs, working his way through the dozen or so tabs he opened up after googling kitten care.

He thinks the one he found might be around three weeks old (ears not quite unfurled, can't sheathe claws yet, legs unsteady but mobile). And possibly a girl. She did not care for being picked up and turned over, and the indignant squirming made it difficult to tell what's going on down there. But he's almost certain he's right.

She was shrieking up a storm about it, and he was worried if he took any longer she'd alert Gerrard. (She didn't. She did, however, draw the attention of about half the firehouse.)

"You are disgustingly cute," Chimney coos, scratching under her chin with the tip of one finger. She's lifted her head as high as she can and her eyes are squinted happily. Buck can hear her purring from across the room. "Yes you are. Hen, can you get a picture of this?"

Hen pulls out her phone. "Sure... why?" She asks, leaning over his shoulder to snap a picture and eye him with mild suspicion.

"Jee. She'll wanna see when I tell her about my day."

Her expression softens to a smile. "I'll text it to you." She taps her screen a couple times. "Just had to make sure you weren't planning on calendar campaigning again."

Chimney grins. "Nah, my calendar days are behind me. The only person who gets shirtless pictures of me now is my wife."

"Gross," Buck says without conviction. He narrows his eyes at the site he's scrolling through, swiping away a Join Our Mailing List! popup. "You guys don't think she's cold do you? Are her ears warm? It's only, like, 70 today and we don't know how long she was out there."

Hen and Chim exchange glances, and then, disturbingly in sync, look from the cat to Buck. Chim gives her ear a perfunctory poke, which she does not appreciate as much as chin scritches, "She's fine, man."

Hen waves a hand at Buck when he opens his mouth again, "We're medical professionals. And in my medically professional opinion. She's fine."

"Okay, but—"

"Hey guys, look who stopped b—uhhh. Is that a cat?" Eddie slows to a stop at the top of the stairs, blinking at the kitten on the couch. "When did we get a cat?"

"Couple hours ago," Buck says, still frowning at Hen and Chimney. "Where have you been?"

"I found him polishing the engine."

Buck shoots out of his seat. "Tommy!"

He only half-hears Eddie muttering, "Favouritism," as he scuttles around the chair to meet Tommy halfway between the stairs and the sitting area. Tommy has just enough time to smile—and it warms Buck, like it always does, with a spark caught in his chest for safekeeping—and say hi before Buck's on him, palms clapped on either side of his face, smushing their lips together.

He makes a bit of a show of it, dramatically swooping in, because he knows the big smacking MWAH will make Tommy laugh, and he likes the way that feels rumbling against his chest.

Buck taps their noses together. "Hey," he says, savouring the mirth sparkling in Tommy's eyes for a second before kissing him again, properly this time.

His brain goes sort of fuzzy when Tommy's palm cups the back of his neck.

Someone in the distance wolf-whistles.

When they finally come up for air Tommy asks, "What was that for?" a little breathlessly, which is doing things to Buck.

"Mmn...y'know. For being you."

Tommy raises his eyebrows, kiss-reddened lips curling fondly. "Okay."

"Hey, Tommy. Good to see you," Chim calls in a very pointed way.

Right, public setting. Workplace. Friends watching. Buck exhales slowly, and tries to think about anything other than how much he wants to bite that bit of clavicle peeking out of the collar of Tommy's shirt. Like the fact that Tommy's hands are warm, and he's sort of rubbing his fingertips over the short stubbly bits of hair on the back of Buck's head, and Buck's lips are still tingling a little, and—no wait, not that either.

Tommy pulls away first, which is probably for the best, but also very sad. The corner of his mouth twitches like he can see Buck thinking it. He curls his index finger and gently taps Buck's chin with the knuckle before he turns to the group.

"Howie," he says, not even pretending to be contrite in the face of Chim's mock-judgement. "Hen."

"Tommy." Hen fails to contain her smirk.

Some time during all the kissing, Eddie moved over to the couch. He's sat next to the kitten, watching her attempt to groom her paw with all the grace of a toddler who's only a little bit sure they know how to hold a brush. She keeps starting and stopping at random intervals, sometimes licking the cushion beside her, sometimes sticking her tongue out at thin air.

She's so cute it makes Buck's chest hurt. It's a little much while he's still loopy from making out with his boyfriend.

Then Tommy goes and crouches next to the couch so he can get eye-level with the kitten while she sniffs his hand, talking to her all calm and soft with smile-lines crinkling his cheeks, and. Buck might need to lie down for a bit. Like, on top of Tommy, preferably.

The kitten seems to like him too, and he really can't blame her when she crawls up Tommy's sleeve to perch on his shoulder.

She looks so much smaller cuddled up on Tommy. He reaches up to steady her, and she's almost entirely obscured by his hand.

God, is it wrong that he's getting a little hot under the collar about that? He just looks so strong and competent and at the same time, like, gentle. Buck knows how it feels to be touched tenderly by those hands, and apparently just seeing it happen does not affect him any less. In fact it's only added dimensions to his desires.

"I should probably get going," Tommy says, bringing Buck back down to Earth with a resounding splat.

He opens his mouth to protest, then closes it. He's right. The last thing Buck wants is for Tommy to have another run-in with Gerrard, and they don't know how long the old bastard's gonna be occupied.

"Mhm, run while you still can," Chimney pipes up. "Before our dear old captain smells an opportunity to ruin someone's day."

"He does seem to have a sixth sense for that," Eddie adds sullenly. Buck makes a note to ask him what that was about. Later.

"I'll walk you out," Buck says, trying not to sound like a pouting child. He's fairly certain he fails, because Tommy laces their fingers together and gives his hand a comforting squeeze.

He says his goodbyes, the whole time being careful not to dislodge the kitten while she crawls across his shoulders.

Buck goes through the list of kitten care basics he memorized as they make their way to the parking lot. It's...more than he thought it was, honestly. It starts to feel overwhelming as he goes on, and on, and on. He's running out of time to get it all out, and he feels like it's just now sinking in his huge this responsibility that he's dumping in Tommy's lap is.

"You're sure you don't mind taking her?" The question bursts out of Buck before they make it to Tommy's car. "W-we didn't really, I mean. We talked about it over the phone, but..."

"Yeah, now that I've seen her she does seem like a real handful."

The kitten yawns, and curls up into a tiny grey ball in the crook of Tommy's neck.

Well. Alright.

"It's just, t-they need a lot of attention when they're that young, and I kinda just, just dropped this on you."

"Evan." Tommy gives him a look. "Are you worried that you baby-trapped me?"

Okay, when he puts it like that. Maybe a little bit. But also now he's having complicated yearning feelings that he really should not be having this early in the relationship.

Buck's pretty sure he looks like a deer in the headlights right now, because Tommy's doing his damnedest to pretend he isn't laughing at him.

He tugs Buck's hand, leading him the rest of the way to his car.

The backseat is full of cat stuff. Containers of milk-replacement powders, and a shiny plastic litter box, and toys, so many toys, baggies of fake mice and feathery things, just. So much stuff. Piles of it.

"I called up a friend who used to foster kittens. She had a lot of advice. And then I got a little carried away."

"I, uh. See that," Buck laughs breathlessly.

"Over the phone, you sounded like this meant a lot to you? And I think I got really attached to the idea of...this. Taking care of her for you. With you." He sounds hesitant, like he's trying not to say too much, and Buck can't stand it—

"I love you so much," he says in a rush.

"Well, good," Tommy purses his lips around a smile, eyes bright and crinkled at the corners. He reaches up to his shoulder, like he's absent-mindedly checking to see if the kitten's still there. "Wouldn't want her to grow up in a broken home."

Buck huffs a laugh.

"And I love you too."

[demigod-jack-hearth]

Hey this is the mods boyfriend (call me Freddie or Fred)

(Tw, mental breakdowns, SH, idk what else)

Idk if this sounds rude, but I was woken up by my boyfriend at 6:30am when he was on the edge of another breakdown

Basically, he was crying/breaking down and I didn't really understand much. Once he calmed down, he sort of explained what's happened. But I don't really understand

He gave me his Tumblr account and told me he "couldn't handle this anymore" and he's done "everything he could"

I've looked at old posts that he's made to try to understand, but some of it seems one sided I'm just becoming really confused

Like on one hand I've seen him apologising and people saying he's horrible for what he's done, I'm still not sure what he did.

But I've also seen he's received messages from people saying he's perfectly fine and whatever he did was justified

I just want to know why my boyfriend has had 4 breakdowns in the past week and why I've caught him about to cut himself twice

So could someone try to explain what's going on. I might be able to add context at some points if certain parts are unclear

Idk who can help me, but I've looked around and he's got something in his drafts called a tag list, so I'm assuming you people know what's happening. I'm sorry if I wasn't supposed to add you.

Also, a lot of the tags (is that what they're called?) didn't work, I'm not sure why or if i did something wrong

Also don't feel like you have to respond to this, I just really want to be able to understand and help him

@zariahthewitch @thegroovydaughterofhestia @if-chaos-was-a-boy @the-gods-strange-children @silena-daughterofaphrodite @fabulousdaughterofhecate @weakest-son-of-sun @chaos-pers0nified @neoptolemus-achilles-son @bast-the-best26 @goddess-of-bubblegum @gaygirldoodles @luck-is-crucial @reyna4ever @vicious-daughter-of-zeus @feral-hermes-child @oopsies-i-did-a-thing @unfortunate-daughter-of-hestia @that-girl-cupid @ariathemortal @love-lightning-forethought @emdabitchass @kaiaalwayswins @champion-of-revenge @i-was-never-sane @clown-energy-skyrocketing @zoe-aura-of-d3ath @itsyourboyezra @lunar-eklipso-r @pink-koi-lovejoy @that-daughter-of-athena @sleepy-as-a-song @smileyalater @thedaughter-of-death @gellyhelio @daughter-ofthe-moontitan @demeters-daughter-is-done @the-smart-and-the-dumb-one @trinket-snatcher @southerndaughterofeos @creature-under-ur-bed @burnt-out-bitxhes

[fkinkindagauche]

The Most Gourd-geous Pumpkin in the Patch

I did, in fact, start a fic based on this Wiggly Wednesday. The first chapter is up on AO3 - read it here, tags/content warnings over there. Brief description - No Upside Down Omegaverse AU, explicit, Steve and Eddie meet in their mid-to-late thirties over some pumpkins.

Here's a little excerpt.

“Hello?” a man’s voice said. Steve could hear loud music playing in the background. 

“Um, hi,” Steve said. He hadn’t prepared a spiel like he usually did when calling someone, and he froze. Amos meowed loudly.

“Are you a cat?” the man asked, laughter in his voice. “Is a cat calling me? This is wild.”

“N-no,” Steve stammered. “I mean, yes, there is a cat here, but there’s also a person. Me. Steve.”

“Ooooh,” the man said. “The plot thickens. A Steve and a cat. What’s the cat’s name?”

“Amos,” Steve replied automatically. How had this conversation gone off the rails so quickly? Amos lifted up his head at the sound of his name and meowed again.

“Anus? You named your cat anus?” the man asked, incredulous.

Steve rolled his eyes. He hadn’t anticipated how common this response would be when he chose Amos’s name, but a surprising number of people did mishear it as “anus”. “No, no. Amos. With an M as in major. Amos, like the Famous Amos cookies. Or the minor prophet in the Old Testament.”

“That makes a lot more sense,” the man said. “So, Steve and minor prophet slash cookie cat, to what do I owe the pleasure of your call?” 

“Um. I got a card. In my door today. From Munson’s Curiosities. About selling pumpkins.”

“You’re the pumpkin magician!” 

“Well, I don’t know about that. It’s my first time growing them.”

“Even more magical. Those have got to be the most perfect pumpkins I’ve ever seen.”

Steve felt himself blushing. Over praise of his pumpkins. What was going on? “Um, thanks?” he said. “Anyway, I wasn’t sure what you meant, by your message. Did you want to buy my pumpkins, or did you want to sell me some pumpkins?”

“Why would I need to sell you pumpkins when you’re a pumpkin magician?” the man asked. 

“The lack of punctuation on the note made the situation unclear,” Steve explained. 

“Well I feel like the context clues made it very clear,” the man interjected, though he just sounded amused, not annoyed.

“What do you want the pumpkins for?” Steve asked. 

“Need to make sure they’re going to a good home? I get it. I’m doing this Halloween-themed event in a few weeks, and I just thought they would be perfect for decorating.” 

“Hmm. Alright. You can have six,” Steve said. 

“Awesome!” the man replied, seeming genuinely enthused. “How much do you want for them?” 

“Oh, you don’t need to pay me,” Steve said awkwardly. “I just grew them for fun, and wasn’t expecting them to all survive. I don’t actually need eight pumpkins.”

“Let me at least buy you a drink or something, man.” 

Steve thought about it for a second. Did he really want to agree to getting a drink with this rather unconventional stranger? He had grown more introverted in recent years, and generally avoided potentially awkward social situations, preferring to stick with people he knew well. But he had actually been enjoying this odd conversation. “Alright, fine. I can bring the pumpkins with me, and we can meet somewhere for a drink.”

“Fantastic! You doing anything Friday night?” 

“No,” Steve was slightly embarrassed to admit. “I’m free.”

“Great. Meet me at Bobby’s at 8? I have a lot of hair, I’m hard to miss.”

Steve laughed. “Alright. Wait, what’s your name? I never asked.”

“Eddie,” the man said. “Eddie Munson.” Again, Steve felt a vague sense of recognition, like he’d heard the name before, but he couldn’t quite place where.

[rqg179]

holy shit did kipperlilly kill buddy so that if kristen died no one would be able to bring her back and the only member of the church of cassandra would be gone

[clotpolesonly]

Mister Impossible ch 19 // Greywaren ch 25

[wychelm]

they were sick for this. i think

[trans-leek-cookie]

reading Disco Elysium analysis posts is giving me fun new ways to conceptualize the ways society especially in regards to sorcery in JJK can be horribly flawed and traumatic. To the point I upset Myself. Anyway haha

[marsbotz]

rewatching nature i dont want to make one billion posts abt it so heres alllllll my nature thoughts as we go lets go wheeeeeee

[reasonsforhope]

Article | Paywall Free

"The Food and Drug Administration approved new mRNA coronavirus vaccines Thursday [August 22, 2024], clearing the way for shots manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to start hitting pharmacy shelves and doctor’s offices within a week.

Health officials encourage annual vaccination against the coronavirus, similar to yearly flu shots. Everyone 6 months and older should receive a new vaccine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends.

The FDA has yet to approve an updated vaccine from Novavax, which uses a more conventional vaccine development method but has faced financial challenges.

Our scientific understanding of coronavirus vaccines has evolved since they debuted in late 2020. Here’s what to know about the new vaccines.

Why are there new vaccines?

The coronavirus keeps evolving to overcome our immune defenses, and the shield offered by vaccines weakens over time. That’s why federal health officials want people to get an annual updated coronavirus vaccine designed to target the latest variants. They approve them for release in late summer or early fall to coincide with flu shots that Americans are already used to getting.

The underlying vaccine technology and manufacturing process are the same, but components change to account for how the virus morphs. The new vaccines target the KP.2 variant because most recent covid cases are caused by that strain or closely related ones...

Do the vaccines prevent infection?

You probably know by now that vaccinated people can still get covid. But the shots do offer some protection against infection, just not the kind of protection you get from highly effective vaccines for other diseases such as measles.

The 2023-2024 vaccine provided 54 percent increased protection against symptomatic covid infections, according to a CDC study of people who tested for the coronavirus at pharmacies during the first four months after that year’s shot was released...

A nasal vaccine could be better at stopping infections outright by increasing immunity where they take hold, and one is being studied in a trial sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

If you really want to dodge covid, don’t rely on the vaccine alone and take other precautions such as masking or avoiding crowds...

Do the vaccines help prevent transmission?

You may remember from early coverage of coronavirus vaccines that it was unclear whether shots would reduce transmission. Now, scientists say the answer is yes — even if you’re actively shedding virus.

That’s because the vaccine creates antibodies that reduce the amount of virus entering your cells, limiting how much the virus can replicate and make you even sicker. When vaccination prevents symptoms such as coughing and sneezing, people expel fewer respiratory droplets carrying the virus. When it reduces the viral load in an infected person, people become less contagious.

That’s why Peter Hotez, a physician and co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, said he feels more comfortable in a crowded medical conference, where attendees are probably up to date on their vaccines, than in a crowded airport.

“By having so many vaccinated people, it’s decreasing the number of days you are shedding virus if you get a breakthrough infection, and it decreases the amount of virus you are shedding,” Hotez said.

Do vaccines prevent long covid?

While the threat of acute serious respiratory covid disease has faded, developing the lingering symptoms of “long covid” remains a concern for people who have had even mild cases. The CDC says vaccination is the “best available tool” to reduce the risk of long covid in children and adults. The exact mechanism is unclear, but experts theorize that vaccines help by reducing the severity of illness, which is a major risk factor for long covid.

When is the best time to get a new coronavirus vaccine?

It depends on your circumstances, including risk factors for severe disease, when you were last infected or vaccinated, and plans for the months ahead. It’s best to talk these issues through with a doctor.

If you are at high risk and have not recently been vaccinated or infected, you may want to get a shot as soon as possible while cases remain high. The summer wave has shown signs of peaking, but cases can still be elevated and take weeks to return to low levels. It’s hard to predict when a winter wave will begin....

Where do I find vaccines?

CVS said its expects to start administering them within days, and Walgreens said that it would start scheduling appointments to receive shots after Sept. 6 and that customers can walk in before then.

Availability at doctor’s offices might take longer. Finding shots for infants and toddlers could be more difficult because many pharmacies do not administer them and not every pediatrician’s office will stock them given low demand and limited storage space.

This year’s updated coronavirus vaccines are supposed to have a longer shelf life, which eases the financial pressures of stocking them.

The CDC plans to relaunch its vaccine locator when the new vaccines are widely available, and similar services are offered by Moderna and Pfizer."

-via The Washington Post, August 22, 2024

[anotherlongstoryshort]

Things about the Wisdom Saga that have plagued me all damn day

Legendary

Whether intentional or not, Miguel's Telemachus really sounds like a younger version of Jorge's Odysseus. And that hurts.

"If I fight those monsters, is it you I'll find?" The layers. Could he go out and hunt for his father? Could he find his 'legendary' strength within himself? Or will Odysseus be the 'monster' he finds?

"Somebody help me, come and give me the strength" And his call is answered T_T

20 years.

Antinous fully interrupts this bop. Rude.

Ayron sounds legitimately scary and Telemachus taking a stand is so O.O

Little Wolf

I wanna fight this guy. Love that Athena agrees. (The beat of the song and sharp bursts of vocals really emulate blows.)

The quaver on "I don't know how".

Athena is immediately charmed by Telemachus' enthusiasm. She sounds so fond.

The fact she sees heart in him as an advantage when it was Odysseus choosing heart over mind that drove them apart. Guh.

Did she tell him to bite Antinous? XD

"Oh, maybe I pushed you a bit too hard." The change in her perspective is already so apparent - she wouldn't have admitted a mistake or miscalculation to Odysseus.

We'll Be Fine

"I had a friend before..." A FRIEND? FRIEND?!?!

An admission that she didn't fully appreciate what Odysseus was going through, that she feels guilty for having "missed it all".

It's unclear to begin with if she's come to Telemachus for Odysseus, or to try and replace him. Both are equally heart-breaking.

"I don't know who your friend is, I don't know what he's like" UNKNOWINGLY ECHOING HIS OWN THOUGHTS IN 'LEGENDARY'. NO IT'S FINE I'M FINE.

"The best day of my life because I got in a fight and I didn't die! :D" Telemachus, child, please.

"We'll be fine" using the same run as "this is my goodbye" T_T

Him immediately offering up friendship to Athena, like Odysseus once did, must hit her so hard. "You're a good kid." Yes he is - because he's more like his dad than he knows.

Love in Paradise

"Old friend..." FRRRRRIIIIEEEENNNNNDDDDD!!!!!

10 years.

The memory fragments sounding so fraught and chaotic together, hitting harder because they're hitting Athena all at once. She missed a lot.

"She's my wife." "Anyways..." Calypso, girl, please.

Love that they're singing completely different melodies through the first half of this song for two reasons: because Odysseus is revisiting previous motifs, once more trying to hold onto the man he was, and also because it shows Calypso is not willing to compromise on what she wants.

"Last I checked goddesses can't die." We'll come back to this later.

Then Odysseus realises he is truly trapped and he sings along to Calypso's melody in muted horror.

POLITIES OUT HERE STILL HAUNTING THE NARRATIVE.

Just the words "open arms" are enough to confront Odysseus (again) with all he's lost. All he hears are screams.

And the one he screams out for is Athena.

"He needs my help." NO KIDDING GO GET YOUR BOY.

God Games

"Father, God, King..." There's a lot to unpack in that fun family dynamic.

"To untie apprehensions that were placed on that Greek?" Zeus is like, nobody likes that guy, why do you care?

The gods being called out like X Factor finalists is everything.

So there's a great contrast against the previous song - unlike Calypso, Athena is matching each of her singing partners with their tone and beat as she convinces them. She isn't winning by 'imposing her will', she's meeting them where they are.

Rational arguments work until Aphrodite, where Athena says "please" for the first time. She softens to appeal to Aphrodite, which is why Ares has to step in.

The way she says his name XD

Ares' lines sound like as much of a fighting chant as 'Little Wolf' did, which makes it all the better that the mention of Telemachus is what gets her to 'fight back'.

"His son's my friend!" YES HE IS. And Athena of all people declaring "a broken heart can mend" is fascinating. Can't help but wonder if she's talking about herself coming around to forgiving Odysseus.

"Never once has he cheated on his wife." Handwaving the source material is worth it for this line ALONE.

Zeus is so pressed by everyone openly knowing he cheats on Hera. Stop doing it then my dude.

Ares sounding genuinely concerned for Athena is doing things to me. Goddesses can't die, huh?

Her time motif flitting in and out like a weak heartbeat.

The soft piano of 'Warrior of the Mind', touching on a whisper of 'Legendary', then rising to a triumphant crescendo as Athena regains herself. I will be forever haunted by visions of Odysseus and Telemachus helping her to her feet.

And then, finally, she faces her own father and begs. Because Odysseus and Telemachus deserve a chance to be father and child.

The parallel, by the way, of Athena entering this saga to help an outnumbered Telemachus, and now closing it with him/Odysseus unknowingly helping her win her own battle too. JORGE HOW DARE YOU T_T

[tremendouscreationperson]

Logan x Reader pt.1

Again spoilers for Deadpool and Wolverine

Many of y'all liked my little DP/W idea so here is more, I tried to keep it GN so there isn't smut but it does sorta allude to it

Part 2 >> Masterlist

Wade has just woke up, he yet again sees Logan drinking and asks 'where they are and how they got here'. Logan vaguely points to the door and three people walk through. It's Elektra, Blade and Gambit. There are some not-so-pleasantries and eventually Laura makes herself known.

"We're missing Johnny and Y/N." Gambit drawls.

Wade makes a joke and turns back to Logan who looks like he's shat himself. "Peanut?"

"You said Y/N?" Logan settles his drink onto the first available surface and runs a hand through his hair. "We saw Johnny but not Y/N."

~~

Later on he had slumped down and made a fire. He didn't want to be part of the heroics, he couldn't be. He wasn't worth it. Laura had tried to convince him in her unique way. He could see himself in her, see why he'd fight for her.

Logan took another swig and stared off into the treeline. It was unclear how long he just sat but eventually he noticed movement.

Wolverine stood, ready to protect the others. Why was he ready to protect the others?

Then he saw you.

You were wide eyed. Your suit was practically undamaged except for a little cut on your thigh. Not a hair out of place. There was dirt on your face and body but you were beautiful.

"Y/N." He involuntarily took a step towards you.

You stayed completely still. Wary. Why were you wary of him? “Logan.” Your voice was barely above a whisper but he heard it. Would always hear you. You were the main voice rattling around his adamantium skull.

“Y/N.” He took another step forward and tried to erase his frown, tried to ease his expression into something you wouldn't be wary of. “I'm not going to hurt you.”

Your eyes scanned him and the trees behind before you gave a nod and slowly approached, favouring your right leg.

“It's been a while.” The fire light bounced gloriously off your skin, illuminating your very being as though you were an angel. Well you were. You were perfect. Are perfect.

“For me as well.” He nodded too enthusiastically, too eager to be speaking to you. He didn't deserve this.

You lowered yourself onto a patch of grass, crossing your legs to the best of your ability, pupils glued to the flames. They danced along and lit up your eyes. Surely, you couldn't be more beautiful. Logan hadn't even realised but he had sat himself back down on his perch across from you. “I’m sorry.”

He couldn't help it, his frown was back in full force. What could you possibly have to apologise for? “I don-”

“You're not the first Wolverine to come sniffing me out.” You explained. “There's been others and they've- they've not all been friendly.”

What the fuck had he done? “I swear, I am not here to hurt you.” He placed a hand over his heart. “I promise.”

“I know. I just- it's not often you see your husband's-” Husband? “- face and he doesn't know you or is feral or-” You took a deep breath, finally meeting his gaze. “You at least recognise me.”

“Of course I do.”

“Okay, that's good.” You nod mostly to yourself before asking, “what happened in your world?”

“My world?”

You nod again.

“We're X-Men. I'm shitty. You're perfect. Scott nags me. Storm married a king and moved away, visits every so often. Jean was in the process of taking over from Charles…” If he didn't tell you they all died, maybe they didn't. Maybe they could live in your head. Maybe he wasn't a monster. “Yours?”

“Much the same really.” One shoulder lifted in a half shrug. “‘cept you weren't shitty. You were just you. Sabertooth was the shitty Howlett.”

Logan chuckled at that.

“Did you have a Laura? Or a Gabby?”

He shook his head. “Uh, no. But I've met Laura. She's nice. Fierce.”

“She's your DNA spliced with some poor unfortunate ladies. Essentially your offspring.” You informed. “Gabby is a clone of a clone. She's lovely though. Friends with Wa-Deadpool.”

“He's here.” Logan scratched his chin. “He's the reason I am.”

“Oh, you're friends as well?”

“God, no.” He shook his head. “Kinda just thrust together.”

“He always wanted to hang with you but usually just ended up with Spidey.”

Logan had heard of Spidey -Spiderman- but he hadn't met the guy, yet. If he hung out with Wade he was probably just as mad.

You both fell into a fairly comfortable silence but he didn't like that. You were here. He could actually talk to you. Actually be around you. “What happened to your leg?” He motioned to it as you carefully repositioned yourself.

“Angel.” You whispered darkly.

“Warren?”

“Yeah. Sometimes your friends aren't your friends. He had metal wings and weird tattoos. I called out to him and he just attacked. He was so quick I couldn't put up a forcefield in time.”

“I'm sorry.” It was a lame response but he had nothing else. You merely sat there, watching him, scanning his reactions. “I don't know how to convince you I am your friend. But I am. I won't harm you.”

You gave him a small lopsided smile. And he remembered.

“Wait. I do know how.” Logan rummaged around his very tiny suit pockets. He knew it was somewhere. He made sure it was always on him. Hidden away where no one would find it. Tucked into a sleeve that he kept safe by his ankle, usually people hit his torso, they don't always go for feet so he felt secure in it's position. Well, he did until he fought Wade in that fucking Honda.

Logan found it. It was scrappy and definitely worse for wear but the picture was clear. He stood and slowly walked around the fire to your side. You didn't back away but he caught your involuntary shoulder flinch.

“Here.”

You delicately took the piece of paper from his hands. It felt glossy, like magazine print. It was folded and on the visible side was a photo of you smiling wide, proud, in front of the X mansion. You unfolded it to see Logan standing next to you with a barely-there smirk. He looked almost bored but you knew him. Knew he was smiling, it was in his eyes, the softness in his face.

You were confused because he was smiling yet it was clear that he folded it to hide himself.

“Why have you folded it like that?”

Because I look awful. Because you are perfect and happy and brilliant and I pretended I didn't want the photo. Because it's the only faculty photo of me they ever took. Because they all knew I was sweet on you when you stopped me for a photo and I agreed. Because I had to take this from a yearbook after the school was raided. Because it's the only photo of us that I have and I hate that I'm in it. “Easier to fit the little pocket.”

“I have a similar one.” You confessed, knowing he was lying but that's okay. You all had secrets. “It's with my other bits, in the base.”

He felt his cheeks warm so looked away to the base. “Speaking of, it's late and you're hurt. They were planning on leaving at sun up, but I'm not sure that's still happening.”

“Why are we leaving?”

“We're storming Cassandra Nova’s lair.”

You let out a full body laugh. The noise was heavenly. “Fuck off, you come here and suddenly talk them into a full frontal assault? Brilliant.”

He rolled his eyes at you but extended a hand. “Come on, bub, let's get you updated and checked out.”

It wasn't much really, not to a bystander, but you actually accepting his hand meant the world to him and you. Both for similar and completely different reasons.

He definitely didn't need to but insisted on helping you to the base. It was hardly worth it but being back in his arms was lovely. It felt like home. He was maybe a few inches taller and definitely a little older looking than you recalled but he was your Logan. And a helpful one. He wasn't chasing you like a wild dog because you smelt nice. He was helping you limp back.

“Y/N.” Elektra spoke as soon as you entered the threshold.

“El.” You smiled widely.

She gave you a subtle look - raising her eyebrows a fraction and flickering her eyes at Logan - before taking your hand and leading you out of his arms. “We were worried.”

“You shouldn't have worried.” Rolling your eyes. “You know me.”

“That is why I was worried.”

She gave you a quick hug and assessed your leg. You had known her for five years. She had been here longer than you, travelling with Blade, and quickly intervened when she saw a Ghost Rider trying to lasso you. You three had met Johnny, who had been here a while too, and eventually met Laura. She was the only familiar face to you, it was a breath of fresh air to see her. It was a shame she didn't know you but you explained who you were and where she was and she slowly came around to trusting you. Gambit was the newest addition to your ragtag gang. He, bless him, tried to be as useful as possible and you're sure he was but there were times when you had no idea what went on in his mind. He was his own enigma.

The cut wasn't awful, a fact you had said multiple times, but Elektra still insisted on using alcohol to clean and one of the rags you recycled from an old duvet to wrap it, explaining the idiotic plan that you were all taking part of as she went.

“Oh!” Wade loudly exclaimed as Elektra tightened the makeshift bandage. “The self insert! I can't believe it, the movie’s been out like three days!”

You exchanged a glance with El and gave him an odd look as you greeted the man. “Hiya Wade.”

“Y/N.” He bowed. “I'm a little star struck.”

“Why?” Elektra stood to her full height and quickly made an exit, this wasn't the first Deadpool she had seen but this was one of the high energy ones.

“Well, you're Logan's thing.” The man behind perked up, his shoulders tense. He had been watching you the whole time and clearly wasn't a fan of DP rambling. “You're his reason to keep on. One of the reasons my Logan saved Laura. To keep his promise to you or something like that, I don't know the writing is a bit clunky.”

“Right.” You nodded, not quite understanding. But it was funny to see the mortified expression Logan was wearing. “So I'm Logan's ‘thing’.”

“Well, duh-”

“Will you shut the fuck up?” Logan ordered.

“Gosh, was he always this snappy?” Wade chirped.

“I dunno, Lo always had a soft spot for me so..”

“Awwwww.” He clasped his hands and held them at his heart. “Did you hear that she said ‘Lo’?” Wade had just turned to see the man in question but Wolverine was behind him and quickly dragging the Merc away, not quite whispering another ‘shut your fucking mouth’.

Blade, who was one to skulk hidden in corners before making himself known, had watched the interaction and gave you a fright as he stepped from the shadows. “So that's him, huh?”

“Jesus!” You whisper-yelled. “How many times have I asked you to not do that?”

“Daywalker, can't help it.” He shrugged and sat next to you on the sofa. It was old and ugly but so so comfortable.

You gave a sigh, holding your hammering heart. “Yes. He's Logan. A version of him. That actually doesn't wanna kill me.”

“Maybe you should let it play out.”

“And maybe I shouldn't.” You counter. “We'll all be dead tomorrow anyway.”

“All the more reason to."

He was correct of course. You had missed Logan so much and this one clearly had missed you. It would be folly to not spend the last night you may be alive together. In whatever way you were both comfortable with. But you didnt want to give him the satisfaction of being right, so merely huffed in response.

"Elektra told you the plan?”

“Well, Laura hardly speaks and I can't understand Gambit.”

Blade let out a low laugh. He was one of the coolest people you'd ever met, even his chuckle was cool. You were so envious.

Logan came back with red cheeks and quickly apologised. “I'm sorry, he talks so much and I don't think he actually hears himself.”

You waved him off. “It's fine.”

“No, he embarrassed you.” Logan sighed, his jaw set like he was biting the inside of his cheek.

“Logan, really. Don't worry.” You could see that he wasn't going to 'not worry' so decided to just remove yourself from the situation. Clapping Blade’s leg you stood. “Right, bed time. Big day tomorrow.”

“You aren't coming.” Logan replied immediately.

“Uhm. Pretty sure I am.”

“No, you're injured.” He stated as though that was obvious.

“This is literally the smallest injury I've had out here.”

“But you are hurt.”

“Logan.”

“Y/N.”

Blade watched the back and forth with a smirk, you were both clearly a married couple.

“I think you two should take this to Y/N’s room.” Your eyes widened dramatically. “You can argue all night when the door is shut and no one else can hear you.” The sly bastard.

“Okay.” Logan agreed. “I'll convince you to stay, where's your room?”

You let out a few noises, dying arguments, and then the biggest sigh. “Fuck my life. This way.”

The base was an old temple. You had wondered who it belonged to. The statues of her were beautiful. You had yet to see a variant of whoever this was, maybe that was a good thing. She might not take lightly to you guys using her sacred temple as a hotel. There were a few corridors you had to walk down to get to your room. You'd dragged an old mattress into it and made sure to keep the room dust free. There weren't a lot of luxuries in this world but you had an orb that when touched lit up delicately. There were a few sets of clothes you'd scavenged so you kept yourself clean and had a set of ‘pjs’. Your room was covered in marks where you had flung a knife or practised a forcefield. He assumed there weren't that many guns here, or if there were ammo was rare.

“You can't fight.” Logan started.

Oh. You were actually going to argue. “Logan, I could fight you right now.”

“Go on then.” He called your bluff.

You gave him a playful smirk. “You really wanna fight? It could be our last day alive and you wanna spend it fighting?”

“I know you can't fight with that leg.” He was so sure of himself. You couldn't wait to prove him wrong.

With a twitch of your hand you flung him towards you with a forcefield, side stepping out of his way. It took him by surprise how strong you had gotten and he had to catch himself before he hit the wall.

Logan twisted around to find you at his throat with a small blade in your hand. Your chest pressed into his, causing his back to hit the wall. “That was over pretty quick, Lo.”

Logan was in awe of your swift moves. You were tenfold who he knew. God could you get more attractive? He felt himself get warm and not from embarrassment. You were making him hot, you holding a knife to his throat was making him horny. What did that say about him?

Your eyebrows pinched minutely as you observed him swallow. “You like this, don't you?”

Was there a point in lying? “Maybe.”

“Well... Maybe I do, too.”

God he was ruined.

You were literally amazing.

How could he be so lucky? He really didn't deserve this.

Logan glanced down to your lips and you smirked. "Go on." He didn't need any other invitations. He captured your lips and kissed you with the full force of his years of loneliness.

He loved you, by god, he did.

Logan's left hand found your nape whilst his right landed on your ass. He growled as you pushed into him a fraction more.

Your leg moved by itself, wrapping around his waist as you took advantage of his growl. Kissing the exposed areas of his neck. You'd missed this. You'd missed him.

Logan hoisted you the rest of the way up and gazed into your eyes. You were looking down at him, lips plump and cheeks hot, you panted a little and fuck. He was going to fuck you. He wasn't sure he could actually pull himself away from you. You both should be sleeping, preparing for the fight tomorrow. No, you shouldn't be fighting. You should be safe. Somewhere safe and warm, waiting for him to return.

"Come with me." He begged.

"I'm sure I will." You winked.

"No, tomorrow, after the fight. Come with me, wherever I end up." He didn't want to go back but he would if you followed. If you came with him he could do it. Go anywhere. Be anyone.

"So you agree I'm fighting fit." You pecked his nose, playfully.

He huffed but found your lips again, leading you both to the mattress you called a bed.

He'd buy you a bed, a grand one. One worthy of you. He hated that you only had this. He needed to provide for you. Keep you warm, safe, loved, full. Keep you.

Logan was going to keep you and he didn't care how.

.

.

Part 2

[peachpitfics]

Don't Blame Me

Fandom: Bridgerton

Summary: Daphne Bridgerton is your closest childhood friend, her eldest brother, Anthony, is the love of your life. After avoiding each other for years, you both finally lose control.

Length: 3.2k

Pairing: Anthony Bridgerton x fem!reader

Content Warnings: Unprotected sex, sex in public, penetrative vaginal sex, orgasm, 'caught in the act' vibes, best friends brother.

Bridgerton master list (tag list)

Like many other close family friends of the Bridgerton’s, their home was always a beacon of safety and comfort, especially for you. You were Daphne Bridgerton’s first friend, and you had remained close well into adulthood, she wrote to you still from her new life with the Duke. Unfortunately, Daphne would not be able to meet you in Mayfair this season, the Bridgerton’s playing host while your mother and father were out of the country. It was your third year out; you had a few hopeful matches in mind, not realizing how difficult the season might be with unobtainable love staring you in the face.

“We are so glad to have you this year, y/n. It has been so long since we have seen you around the Ton” Violet Bridgerton was as much your mother as your own.

“Father’s responsibilities have been consuming these past few years. Mother and I hardly made it to the season last year. I am glad to be here, spending some time in familiar places” You smiled, linking arms with her as she escorted you to the ballroom. Your parents had entrusted your match to you, however, had requested the viscountess to keep a watchful eye.

Waltzing into the drawing room, just like old times, Benedict and Colin, discarding their playing cards, exclaimed with joy, rushing to greet you as if a long-lost sibling had returned. There was nothing as lonely as being an only child, deep in the countryside. Eloise was fretting in the corner, fingers agitated, tapping the outside of a book. This was to be her coming out year.

Anthony entered from the far side door, his feet skidding to a halt at the sight of you.

“You arrived” Anthony said flatly, turning on the ball of his foot, and exiting as quickly as he had come in. Embarrassed, you frowned, smiling chastely praying no one would notice his strange behaviour. It had been a year since you had last seen each other.

“I apologise, he is so bizarre in the mornings lately” Violet squeezed your shoulders, leading you over to a table laden with treats. Sitting on the settee with Hyacinth and Eloise, eating small cakes and discussing the books being read amongst you were some of the precious things you missed about living in the city.

In an unsuspicious amount of time, you excused yourself from company to find the washroom. Anthony stood outside the drawing room, leaning against the wall, unblinking and mind drifting elsewhere. You ignored each other walking past, which felt a lot like tiny shards of glass embedding into your heart. Locking yourself in the washroom, trying desperately to keep tears at bay, you looked into the mirror and told yourself it did not matter. You were going to find love this year, somewhere else. 

When you opened the door, Anthony had moved, he was nearly pressed against the door, waiting for you to come out. He stuffed himself into the washroom with you, closing the door as silently as he could.

“Why are you here?” He asked. He looked different from a year ago, he had changed quite a lot more than you were expecting. He had shortened his hair and filled out into his body. His hands looked the same, the same ring on that damned finger, flexing in distress and awkward guilt.

“It is the beginning of the social season. I am here to find a husband.” You stated plainly.

“A husband?” He scoffed, charming disdain painted across his face.

“Yes, it is what young ladies do in polite society. Was that unclear?” You asked. Your lack of facial expression and tone seemed to startle him, he had no idea what you were thinking.

“Why are you acting this way?” Anthony stuttered forward, getting uncomfortably close.

With the melancholic drop of your shoulders, and a heavy exhale, you pushed past Anthony and made your way back to the drawing room. It was so like him to put the narrative back on you. Anthony should have asked himself why he was acting this way – after all, it was he who decided not to court you. It was he who decided to kiss you beside the carriage that night. It was he who decided the two of you should not speak any longer. It was he who broke your heart.

The remainder of the evening was free of Anthony, filled with laughter at the dining room table over a delectable dinner. The Bridgerton’s sense of family was everything to you – even if Gregory and Hyacinth were bickering for most of the meal, it still felt as it was meant to. Violet showed you to the guest room, it had not changed much over the years, it smelled the very same.

“I am sorry Anthony could not join us for dinner” Violet’s voice echoed with somber searching. Perhaps she had heard the two of you in the washroom?

“Do not be,” You said quickly, “His time is his own, he does not owe me anything” Violet bowed her head, words fighting against her lips. She instead pursed them into a smile and closed the door behind her. Those shards of glass moved again, every second in this house, nausea held you hostage, terrified of running into him in the halls.

Daphne was the only other person alive who knew what had happened between Anthony and yourself. She had been disappointed in him, angry with the way he had handled everything. While she promised there would never be a change to your friendship, it had never really been the same. You tossed and turned far longer than normal; your mind flooded with images of the past. Thrusting yourself out of bed, it was clear you were not going to be sleeping tonight, you decided that a distraction may be best. In your nightgown, candle in hand, you remembered your way to the study.

The study was clear of any inhabitants, it was tidy, and the few cases of books loomed high over you, reaching the ceiling. Nothing in the Bridgerton house seemed to change, except Anthony, and it was perpetually for the worse in your opinion. You selected a book randomly from the nearest shelf and perched yourself on the seat closest to the window, looking out over the square. Lounging sleepily, you read in the low candlelight, only disturbed by the creaking of the door, an unexpected sound, making you jolt.

“I knew you’d be in here” Anthony said softly, entering the room with caution as your emotionless face watched him. “You were always in here when we were children. No one could ever find you” His smile was humorless.

“You did” You waited before responding, wondering why he was here, speaking with you, “Why are you here, right now, Anthony?” You demanded.

Anthony moved to the seat across from yours, sitting gingerly, holding eye contact in the hopes you would not tell him to leave. You allowed him to sit, his hands folded in front of him.

“I don’t know” Anthony rubbed desperately at his forehead, “I just got up, and felt myself pulled here, some unknown force, dragging me to you” Anthony admitted. You had always been attracted to each other, always gravitating towards one another.

“I did not choose to come here; my mother asked a favor of yours. I would never have chosen to be this close to you. You destroyed me, Anthony” Tears welled to your eyes, “We cannot be near each other – you made that it very clear, you took what you wanted of me, and cast me aside” Hands pressed down on your knees, you pushed off, making for the closest exit. Anthony dashed around in front of you, placing his body between you and the door for the second time today.

“Goodnight, Viscount Bridgerton” You curtsied formally, hoping the rules of social engagement were enough for this man to understand the dangerous position he was putting both of you in, yet again.

Anthony’s hand trembled, reaching out, taking yours into his. His fingers tangled between yours, his grip strengthening when he realized you were not pulling away. His thumb affectionately circling the skin on wrist, the sound of his swallowing resounding across the empty room, his anxious tongue flicking over his lips. If anything was clear, it was the internal battle that seemed to be always happening inside Anthony’s mind.

His touch, the supreme legacy of your existence. His unsteady breath, captivating your common sense. The thrilling space between you slowly closing, heads bobbing forward as if intoxicated and unable to control oneself, meeting together in the middle in an exhilarating kiss, just like you had remembered it.

His lips were shamelessly enthusiastic, as if made for this very purpose, just for you. His forceful hands weaved into your loose hair, pulling you deeper into every kiss. You were overcome, that old bold, need for him to find its way out of the labyrinth you had designed for it. Anthony’s fingers pressed to your hips, his teeth nipped eagerly at the skin on your neck, softs sighs of delight followed.

It was when his hand moved sensually to your breast that you broke free of the enchanting dance you had found yourself in so many times before with him. Your body did not reflect the same pleasures, you took his hands from your body and laid them at his sides, and stood tall and stepped back.

“I am here to secure a husband, for my future” Tears found their way back to you.

“Y/n…” Anthony shook his head, stepping forward, trying to hold onto you again.

“If you cannot give me what I seek, please, stop hunting me down. I want a life with you, Anthony. I will love you until my dying breath… But you, you will never grow up” You said finitely, again, pushing your way past him and fleeing back to your room.

~

Most of the next day was spent in tired indifference, you remained in your room, preparing for the first ball of the season. Tears had stained your pillow the remainder of the night, each knock at the door struck a chord of hope in your heart, wishing for Anthony.

Eloise and Violet helped you into your gown, the ladies’ maids fixing your hair and face. Violet ran a motherly thumb under your puffy eye, her compassionate heart shining through her eyes and tender smile. You gave a little nod, knowing there was never anything you could hide from her – she knew everyone in the Bridgerton house better than she let on.

The Viscounts escorted Eloise into Lady Danbury’s estate, greeting the Queen and Lady Danbury ahead of you. Violet linked arms with you in solidarity, following Anthonys actions and proceeding into the ball.

“Who will you be accepting dances from this evening?” The Viscountess asked quietly.

“I am not restricting myself to names, I will dance with any eligible man who asks” You answered politely.

Violet gave your forearm a squeeze, “That is very sensible” She nodded, releasing you, sending you off into the lion’s den. You met up with Eloise, taking a short turn about the room to appear social, greeting the other young ladies who you’d met years previous. There were several older men who seemed to take an interest in you as you moved about the room with your friend. No one really stood out to you, no true love at first sight, much to your dismay.

Retiring to the wall with a glass of lemonade in hand, you watched the gorgeous young women excited to dance with suitors and recalled how that was never an experience you had.

Soon enough, one of the suitors who had shown interest in a season previous approached, positioning himself next to you. Lord Harlan Grahame was intelligent, considerate, and not entirely horrible to look at.

“Lord Grahame” You curtsied, a familiar smile finding its way back onto your face.

“Miss y/n, I do hope your mother and father are quite well” He remarked, having known them for many years now, he had noticed their absence.

“They are in abroad, my father has business to conduct in Greece and my mother only saw fit to tend to him during this time” You explained, “I am being hosted by the Bridgerton family. How is your family?” You asked in politeness.

“Fantastic, Mother has moved herself to the country and hopes to get yet another dog soon” He laughed, clearly happy to be free of her in his home. Laughing along with him, you spied Anthony, discreetly looking on from across the ballroom. The conversation between yourself and Lord Grahame was easy and hardly uncomfortable. He was charismatic enough that you could see yourself becoming quite fond of each other in no time at all. He made small jokes at no one’s expense, he offered refreshments frequently and complimented you in kindness. You could see and accept a perfectly happy future with the Lord.

Across the ballroom, sheer asperity brewed live in Anthonys eyes for all to see. He was known to have a temper amongst society. With a final twitch of his left eye, Anthony’s feet picked up under him, carrying him in your direction. Violet watched on, fear and embarrassment ready and willing in her chest.

“I apologise” You mumbled preemptively to Lord Grahame as Anthony arrived to interrupt your conversation.

“Miss y/n, may I have this dance?” Anthonys eyes were terrifying, filled with rage and jealousy. You paused, contemplating antagonizing him, forcing his hand, backing him into a corner. But relinquished, excusing yourself from Lord Grahames company, taking Anthony’s hand as he swept you off to the dancefloor.

You did not meet his eye, your nails dug into the skin on his hand in resentment. You said nothing to each other for the first several minutes of the dance.

“You cannot marry him” Anthony muttered in quiet, helpless indignation.

Giving him a great look of disbelief, “Who are you to tell me who I can marry? I do not answer to you, Viscount” You growled into his ear as he pulled you in tighter.

Anthony finished the dance, bowing to you, holding onto one of your hands with unbelievable force. He walked swiftly from the dance floor, conspicuously pulling you along behind him, and into a room down the hall.

“You cannot blame me for acting this way!” He yelled, “If I have to see you speak to another man this season, if I have to witness another man watch as you walk by – You have driven me to the brink of insanity” He heaved, frantic energy filling his body.

“What would you have me do? Spend my life in loneliness, a Spinster? Would that be convenient to you, Anthony?” You parried.

His hands ran through his hair stressfully, at a loss for words, unable to express himself in the way he wanted. His intention had not been to yell when he sequestered you away to this side room.

“I was fine! You left Mayfair, and I was well. Now, here you are – and God help me, I am intoxicated every second we are in the same room. Your presence is the most decadent drug, forcibly hypnotizing me. I am powerless to you” Anthonys words were like honey, carried on the end of a bee sting.

“You made your choice!” You yelled back at him, hoping the music was loud enough outside.

“I was young, y/n! I made the wrong choice!” He retorted, his words shaking, and unfiltered for the first time in a long time.

There was a second of unblinking silence between you before magnetic energy pulled you into each other, deranged nipping at each other’s lips ensued. Hands grabbed and grasped at skin and hair, trying to force your beings into one person. There was a white-hot craze that seemed to come over the both of you, and you had felt it before, a few times.

Anthony sucked your bottom lip into his mouth, biting and kissing in a spontaneous fire.

“Someone will hear” You moaned into his ear, as his teeth moved their way down your neck. Anthony did not seem to care, his mouth on your chest, fondling and sucking on your breasts, still sitting pertly in your dress. He was simply uncontrollable, his behaviour now inherently superior compared to when he had been speaking.

Anthony maneuvered your body across the room, hands comfortably held in places of control, his left on your lower back, his right splayed across your throat like the prettiest necklace. You reached the door, his hands twisting your hips to face it. Your palms met the wood, bracing as Anthony bent you slightly, kicking your feet apart with his. Anthony hiked up your gown, undoing his pants in the same instant and buried himself inside of you.

You mouth gaped silently, aghast at the entire situation, but thanking God above for the opportunity.

“Oh my god,” Anthony gnarled into your ear from behind, “Just like I remember it” He moaned, sinking deeper and deeper it felt like. Every thrust led with intense and vicious primality, his hands wrapped around each of your upper arms, for leverage. He was right, it was just how you remembered – overwhelming, devastating, unforgettable. You had thought about your secret affair with Anthony every day since you had moved away. The pleasure Anthony elicited from you sent you into a familiar haze, deep and indefensible. Every movement, every sound from him made you feel greedy, always wanting just a little more.

The way he pounded into your smaller frame rattled the wooden door you were leaning on. “Anthony! They are going to hear!” You squealed in a whisper back to him.

“Let them” He panted, “If anyone asks, I’ll tell them I’m fucking my future wife” Anthony’s hand found its way into your hair, pulling your back sharply for a profound, wet kiss. Anthonys fingers sunk into the flesh of your hip, painfully pleasant as his nails clambered for an anchor. Your body arched back involuntarily, Anthony powering through fast, harsh thrusts as he found his inevitable end, placing sloppy kisses on your shoulder as he slowly finished moving inside of you.

You both leaned on the door in exhaustion, bodies heaving in unison. Anthony placed a gentle hand on your shoulder, stepping backwards and rebuttoning his breeches, fixing your dress behind you. You turned to face him slowly, knowing he could very well go back on every word he had said not moments before.

The softest smile enriched his face, his eyes lit in such a way that you had never seen them. His arm dashed out, pulling you into a grinning embrace, smooching dear kisses upon your lips.

“Loving you causes me delirium, y/n” He nipped at your nose, your foreheads planted together, eyes closed in tranquility.

As you stood, the doorknob gently turned and Violet Bridgerton slid her head through the gap, assumingly checking on the both of you; you had been in here for a little while longer than societally acceptable for two young single people.

Her hand flew over her heart, “Oh thank God!” She exclaimed, smiling ear to ear, a sense of pride glistened in her eyes.

“I cannot wait to write Daphne” The viscountess cheered quietly, finding it hard to contain her excitement. “I knew that you would find each other” She chuffed, slipping out, closing the door. Your foreheads knocked together again, never having a minutes peace in such a large family – you stood there a moment longer, relishing such a long awaited and monumental confession of your love.

-------------------------------

tag list: @cringycat24 // @blckbarbiedoll // @freyagallileaevans // @junkie05 // @rosabeetroot // @flamewriterr //

If you would like to be tagged in Bridgerton fics, please let me know!

[kyeomkuppie]

Damn it!

Pairing: Seungcheol x gn!reader

Genre: fluff, hurt/comfort, a little angsty

Synopsis: In which he cried in front of you for the first time.

"Cheol?"

Your boyfriend always yelled out "I'm home!" Whenever he was back from work, but today you just heard the sound of the door being slammed shut.

You go outside of your shared bedroom to check on him, only to find him sitting alone in the corner of the living room, crouched down and knees to his chest. His head rested on both of his knees and he didn't make a single sound which automatically sent a signal to your brain. Something is wrong.

"Cheol? Why are you there love?" He raised his head at the sound of your voice. You rushed to him and crouched down to meet his eye level.

He shook his head and exhaled sharply "jus' feeling under the weather." he murmured.

Now this was strange, no matter how upset he was he always came to you for cuddles and kisses to sooth his worries, but now he was all alone in a corner.

"What happened baby?" You carress his hair gently waiting for an answer.

"I had an argument with the members and I..." He sighed "Things got too heated and I said things I didn't mean." You could see the pain all over his face. His eyebrows were furrowed and his lips were poutier and strangely enough, his eyes were glossy.

"I screwed up and I-"

"I won't allow you to finish that sentence. Yes, you may have made a mistake, everyone makes them," you grabbed his face with both of your hands, forcing him to look you in the eyes "But even if you've made a thousand, I'm sure they'd know you didn't mean it, okay?"

His eyes kept getting glossier and his vision was becoming more unclear. "You're not only a great leader Cheollie, you're a great friend and I'm sure they know that and— I know you're stressed and everything is too much at the moment but I'm here for you. Always."

You wrapped your arms around his shoulders, bringing him closer to your chest. It was hard, really hard to try to hold it in especially when you warmly embraced him at a time he thought he was all alone.

"Don't you ever think of carrying your burdens alone again, hm?" Your eyes widenened as you felt hot tears staining your shirt.

It was the first time he has ever cried in front of you. Silence engulfed the room as you patted his back.

"Damn it!"

Hm? You didn't know why he was suddenly frustrated but all you wanted was to provide him the comfort you felt when you were with him every single moment.

"God this is so embarrassing." He sniffled "I didn't want to cry, especially in front of you."

"Let it all out love, it's never embarrassing to cry, hm?"

"God I love you too damn much." He hugged you even tighter, burying his head into the crook of your neck.

Reblogs and comments are appreciated!

[literaryavenger]

Thoughtful

Summary: You find something of Bucky's.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Avengers!Reader

Warnings: My poor attempts at being funny. No use of Y/N. Just a whole lot of fluff.

Word Count: 1.1K

A/N: This is a dream I had and I couldn't get it out of my head so I decided to write it down. Hope somebody enjoys it!

Masterlist

“Good morning.” you say casually to Bucky sitting at the island as you enter the kitchen.

He merely nods back to acknowledge your presence while sipping his coffee. It’s not like Bucky doesn’t like you, he’s just not a morning person. But the whole team is used to his morning grumpiness.

Also, you and the brunette supersoldier aren’t particularly close, so you don’t really expect bells and whistles when he sees you.

You pour some coffee for yourself and then sit on the kitchen island in front of Bucky. A light jingle coming from under your shirt gets Bucky’s attention and he raises an eyebrow at you.

“What was that?” He asks you, his curiosity getting the better of him.

You frown at his question before following his eyeline and seeing him looking at your chest. But he’s not staring at your boobs through your admittedly thin tank top, he’s looking under them where he can see something resting between the fabric and your skin.

You’re honestly confused at what that is for a moment before you remember and your eyes widen a little as your cheeks start reddening in embarrassment.

Bucky’s confused at your reaction as he watches you take the chain around your neck to bring out the set of dog tags around your neck and Bucky frowns even more.

“I didn’t know you were in the military…” He comments while looking at the tags and then at you, unclear as to why you’d be embarrassed about it.

“I wasn’t…” You say quietly while glancing down at the tags. “They’re kinda… yours.”

Bucky’s even more dumbfounded by your answer. But, after letting your words sink in and deciding he indeed heard you correctly, he couldn’t help the grin that started to grow on his face, much to your surprise.

You thought maybe he’d be mad, although it’s not like you stole them, you simply found them. But still, you were worried what he might think about you wearing them.

“Oh good, I thought I lost them!” He says relieved. “I looked for them everywhere.”

“Well, can I have them back now?” He asks you after a moment of silence and you realize you haven’t even taken them off yet this whole time.

So you quickly do, leaning over the kitchen island and setting them down carefully on his outstretched hand. You watch him put them on, your eyes lingering on the metal on his chest a minute longer than necessary before going back up to his. 

“And why exactly are you wearing my dog tags?” He asks, and right now you wish he’d get mad at you instead. Anything is better than the amusement that’s all over his face at watching you squirm in your seat.

“I found them at the gym… But it’s not like I was planning to keep them.” You quickly justify yourself, your tone entirely too defensive even to your own ears as you blush more. “But you had just left for your mission with Steve and I thought I would just keep them safe until you came back, so I put them on… But I had every intention to give them back, I swear!”

“That’s very thoughtful of you, doll...” He says, his grin turning into a full grown smirk as he points out the obvious. “But I’ve been back for a week, and you were still wearing them.”

“Yeah, I-I guess I got so used to them that I forgot to give them back…” You say quietly, your face turning impossibly red as Bucky seems to be having the time of his life right now.

You groan internally when you see his smirk still going strong at your embarrassment and you decide to cut your losses and not give him more fuel to add to the fire before 9am.

You get up and put your empty cup in the sink. As you turn around you’re startled to find the Sergeant much closer to you than he was before, the kitchen island no longer between you. He doesn’t give you a chance to say anything or even pull away before he’s talking.

“On the other hand…” He takes his dog tags off and reaches out to put them around your neck, making sure to keep his eyes on the metal and not glance at your boobs no matter how much he wants to. “Maybe you could hold onto them for me.”

He looks at the tags on your chest then up to your face before he pulls away completely with a quiet “Beautiful.” and takes a step back, leaving you a flustered mess.

After a minute you remember how to breathe and you glance down at the tags. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. We wouldn’t want me to lose them again now, would we?” He says with a smile, reaching out to lift your chin gently and making you look at him. “But you’ll keep them safe for me, right doll?”

You nod almost without thinking about it, his eyes putting you in a trance. You’re sure you’d agree to anything right about now, all you can really hear is your own heart pounding anyway.

“Plus, now I can do this…” He lets go of your chin and wraps his hand around the chain of the dog tags. 

He uses his hold on them to pull you closer and your heart skips a beat as he leaves you a soft kiss on your lips. You barely realize what’s happening before he’s pulling away again and you merely look at him with your mouth agape in shock.

Before you can say anything, though, you hear snickers from the door of the kitchen and you both turn towards it just to see the whole team there. All of them have smirks, grins and smiles, everyone delighted at the situation as your face starts getting redder than Tony’s Iron-man suit.

You look back at Bucky and the cheeky bastard is also smirking, clearly much more amused than you at being caught like this.

“Okay, well,” You say while clearing your throat awkwardly and stepping away from Bucky to escape from this situation altogether. “I’m gonna go research the tallest building in New York so I can throw myself off of it.”

Your deadpan reaction leaves everyone laughing as they get away from the door so you can pass.

“Oh, come on, sweetheart, it wasn’t that bad!” Tony yells after you between laughs, obviously sarcastic and you roll your eyes.

“Bite me, Stark!” you yell back, not even tempted to look back as you try to hide a smile of your own while hearing the team’s amusement in the kitchen.

You’re still a little in shock that Bucky kissed you but, once the embarrassment at the team having witnessed it washes away, you can’t wait to follow up on this with Sergeant Grumpy.

Part 2

[il-miele-che-scrive]

the one where Y/n and Charles had different priorities

this is maybe a bit chaotic because I had one idea and unclear vision, but I like how it turned out eventually

view all comments

username1 How do you know? HOW DO YOU KNOW?!

username2 They have WHAT

username3 nah I don't believe in love anymore

username4 But they were together since even before Charles was in formula 1🥺

↳username2 Right? I thought they'll be together forever

username5 And there goes my hope for them to announce an engagement soon

↳username6 Sameeee except I thought someday they'll just have a secret wedding and not tell the media until weeks/months after

username5 Ngl that sounds like a them thing to do

username6 Well, not anymore

username7 My only question is why? 😭

↳username1 Literally because they seemed like a perfect couple. What could go wrong?

username8 Shit, that hurts more than my parents' divorce

username9 THEY BROKE UP AFTER 8 YEARS??

↳username10 what 😳

username9 They were together since 2016, I remember Charles saying this in some interview

username6 Yup that's right, he mentioned it many times, he was so in love with Y/n. I swear even recently he said after so many years he still falls in love more and more each day

username9 She was there for him when his dad passed, when Charles joined F1, when he signed up with Ferrari, when he won his first F1 race, I wonder what happened that made them break up so suddenly

username10 Oh so she was there for basically a huge part of his life

username5 I remember when Charles said "she's not a part of my life. She IS my life" about Y/n😭my standards for men have been high up in space ever since

username11 Wow just like Sainz broke up with his long term girlfriend last season. Let's just hope Leclerc won't pop up with a new girl weeks after that

↳username12 Charles and Y/n could be broken up for a long time now, we can only speculate when they broke up

username5 Imagine if Charles posted the Vegas vlog after their breakup 🥹 I'm not okay

username12 That was so unnecessary to say, I'm crying now

yourusername One for the money, two for the show, I never was ready so I watch you go

view all comments

username1 The caption guys...

↳username2 Does that mean what I think it means?

username3 What do you think it means?

username2 "I never was ready" he wanted to take things to the next level, but she didn't. "So I watch you go" means she had to let him go because they didn't want the same thing

username3 How could she not be ready after whole 8 years?

username2 Every person matures in their own time and that's okay, they'll both find someone else

username4 That's a Swiftie going through a breakup

username5 Noooo it's confirmed now 😭 as long as neither of them confirmed it I could stay delulu and think the rumours are just rumours

oldersister Thank you for babysitting Snow White 🐈‍⬛ (I wish there was a white cat emoji)

↳yourusername It was my pleasure! She's an angel (and a professional model)

oldersister Feel free to come over anytime you want, Snow White loves her aunt 🤍

youngersister HEY how dare you steal Y/n like that!! I wanted to take her out for milkshakes sometime

oldersister Chill, you can do that whenever you want I'm not stealing anyone

yourusername I'd love to go out for milkshakes!!

lilymhe No more Y/nLily in the paddock?

↳yourusername The paddock isn't the only place where we can hang out 😂

landonorris what are you up to on the 2nd pic? 🤨📸

↳username2 LANDO, DON'T

↳username4 LANDO IT'S TOO EARLY

↳username1 DONT RUIN OUR CHANCES TO HAVE Y/NCHARLES BACK

↳username1 Fuckboy Lando been doing too much fuckboying lately

username6 Didn't know she's a smoker

↳username7 Yeah, she was very secretive about it

username2 It's not like she was hiding it from y'all

username7 She was, probably because she would be canceled for being a wag who smokes cigarettes

username2 A grown woman can do what she wants

username6 It's better that they broke up, way healthier for Charles to not be around a smoker

username2 Wtf she was with him through bad and good times, supporting him no matter what, loving him, making beautiful memories together and you say it's good that they broke up because she smokes?

username4 May I add we never saw her smoking throughout the 8 years, she probably started after the breakup

username5 after the breakup or BECAUSE of the breakup?

charles_leclerc Leaving Bahrain with a good result despite some difficulties. Pretty good weekend if you ignore the braking problem, now onto Jeddah next 🏎

view all comments

username1 brAking problem or brEAking problem?

username2 How is that the start of the season and there's already something wrong with his car?

yourusername Congratulations on finishing P4🏁given the issues your car had, you did a spectacular job

↳charles_leclerc Thank you 😇 I tried my best, but felt like something is missing

yourusername I'm sorry :(

↳username3 WHAT IS Y/N DOING HERE? ARE THEY BACK TOGETHER?

username4 I wish I could believe they are, but I guess some people break up on good terms

username3 How could anyone end a 8yrs old relationship and be friends? 😭

↳username5 Jail for miss Y/n for leading fans on

username6 He looked so sad the whole time, during interviews and all that 😔

↳username7 Yeah he's either done with the car already or he misses Y/n that much

username8 DID Y'ALL SEE THAT ONE INTERVIEW WHERE HE GOT ASKED ABOUT Y/N NOT BEING IN BAHRAIN??

↳username6 WHAT INTERVIEW??

username8 A lady asked him why Y/n isn't here because she never missed the first race of the season before so it's surprising. He officially said that over the winter break they've decided to part ways due to focusing on different aspects of life🥲

username9 How do you figure something like this out after 8 fucking years? They wasted each other's time

username7 Calm down lol they grew and matured with each other, experienced how their love evolved throughout the years, no time you put into this is a wasted time

username10 I need to know what are the aspects of life they focus on and if they really are that different

↳username11 From what I figured from Y/n's post and Charles' interview - he wanted to get married, maybe even start a family and she wasn't ready

username10 Ahhh I remember how a few years ago Charles said he wants to have three kids. Such a shame Y/n doesn't want the same thing, but it's understandable they figured it now. They were kids themselves when they started dating lol

username11 Not really, they were both over 18 years old

username10 I know, but still that's a pretty young age and you might not know yet what do you really want in life

username12 Plus your brain develops until you're 25, they both turn 27 this year so it explains a lot

username13 I'm telling you, there would be no problems if Y/n was there, @/yourusername get your lazy ass on a plane to Jeddah

oldersister Amazing performance this weekend👏

youngersister Goodluck for Jeddah 🍀

username14 The way Y/n AND her sisters still interact with Charles on social media...

↳username15 Yeah like are they actually broken up??

3 weeks later

yourusername You'd be surprised if I told you why kangaroos are called kangaroos

view all comments

username1 What is miss doing in Australia during the race week?

oldersister I told you this story is fake 🙄

↳yourusername But it's funny so I'm gonna believe it

oldersister Kangaroo DOESN'T mean "I don't know" jesus christ

username2 I thought it does 😭

username3 Too much Tiktok I guess lmao

youngersister Glad I could have milkshakes with you in Australia 😌

↳yourusername Back at you although that was a strange excuse to go to Australia in the first place

youngersister It's just not the same in Europe

arthur_leclerc Y/n in her natural habitat🦘

↳yourusername I swear I was a kangaroo in a past life

↳username4 What is going on? Y/n and Charles broke up but they keep interacting with each other and each other's families

username5 I NEED to know which city it is

username6 Is that true all announcements on public transport are made with Oscar Piastri's voice??

↳yourusername Yup, I wonder how much convincing it took to get Oscar to do the voiceover

landonorris not a lot to be honest

username5 AHA so she is in Melbourne! Also, what are you doing here Lando?

landonorris do you wanna hear another aussie fun fact?

↳yourusername I'm scared but yes (as long as it's not about thongs)

landonorris do you know what an australian kiss is?

yourusername @/oscarpiastri please put Lando back in his cage

username7 HELP I'M GASPING FOR AIR, LANDO ALWAYS TAKES THE CHANCE TO SHOOT HIS SHOT

username8 Not gonna lie it pisses me off how Lando tries to "flirt" with Y/n in her comments

↳username2 Me too, it's not ethical

username9 I'm afraid Lando doesn't care lol and I don't think Y/n would ever consider going out with another driver considering Charles and her broke up on good terms

username10 I'm just wondering if norris ever tried funny business back when Y/n would come to races

↳username11 prolly not but hey now he's free to do it

username5 Just because he's free to do it doesn't mean he should do it

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username2 OH 😃

username3 So that's what she's doing in Australia

username4 Wait why is Jacob Elordi in Australia?

↳username2 Well, Jacob is Australian, why wouldn't he be there?

username4 HE'S AUSTRALIAN?!

username5 One thing Charles can't beat is the height 😩

↳username6 Is it worth it tho? Jacob treated his exes pretty badly, he's a cheater

username5 And? People change

username6 Bro, he cheated on Zendaya

username5 Chill out, maybe Y/n isn't even on a date with him, maybe they're just hanging out

username7 If I were Y/n I would enter my hoe phase now and Jacob is a good choice to start with

username8 THIS CAN'T BE TRUE

username9 Charles where are you? 😭 Y/n is a sweetheart, she shouldn't be with Jacob

username10 Sometimes I regret opening this app

username11 Didn't Jacob attend a few races? Is that were he met Y/n?

↳username12 Keep saying things like this and watch gossip unfold about how Y/n was waiting to leave Charles for Jacob

username13 Miss girl did a downgrade

↳username14 Is it a downgrade though if he's that tall?

username13 He can be as tall as he wants, but Charles was Y/n's soulmate and I'll always stand by that

username9 Plus the height doesn't make up for the personality

username14 What personality? 💀 Girl you don't even know him

username9 Someone who cheats on their partner clearly isn't a very pleasant person to date

username5 CALM DOWN GUYS we can't be sure they were on a date, it could be just two friends catching up

username9 what friends? I've never even seen them talk before and there were opportunities

yourusername Don't panic guys, I've been spending most of the time with @/youngersister and her aussie friends

view all comments

youngersister Yeah, I clearly didn't set you up for a date with a certain actor...

↳username1 SHE SET Y/N UP WITH HIM?!

username2 Evil mastermind

username3 How did that even happen lmao

↳yourusername Thankfully it didn't go as good as you'd wish it would 😌

youngersister No worries, I have other options up my sleeve

yourusername Keep them up there 🤺

↳username4 I'm confused is [younger sisters name] team Charles or not?

username5 She's just a menace it seems

username6 What's up with Y/n? She didn't wanna be with Charles, but she doesn't wanna move on. That's not normal

youngersister Don't make me set you up with Lando

↳yourusername You'd never, I know you think he's annoying

youngersister Yeah, but he gives me that vibe of a guy who can make you forget about your ex

yourusername That's called a fuckboy

youngersister You deserve a bit of fun don't you 🥳 I'm not saying you have to go straight back to being in a relationship

yourusername NO THANK YOU

username5 Lmao I love how they're having this convo here instead of on dms

username6 OR FACE TO FACE??

username7 Why does Y/n's lil sis support the idea of Y/n having a hoe phase? 😭

landonorris I was hoping you'd come see the race;)

↳yourusername Better luck next time I guess :)

a few months later

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username1 YEAH I WAS LIKE WHAT THE HELL???

username3 I can't defend Charles anymore

username4 Apparently her name is Angeliqué and she's a daughter of some French entrepreneur (a/n: I made her up)

username5 I didn't want Charles to move on, I wanted him to be back with Y/n 😭

↳username6 Worse thing is, Charles moved on but Y/n didn't. She went on this weird staged date with Jacob Elordi a few months ago and that's it

username7 NOOO 😭😭

username8 Charles better say sike now 🔫

username9 Please tell me it's a joke

username10 It truly feels like some part of me being torn apart knowing that Y/n and Charles broke up for good and he moved on

username11 Do we really know nothing about what's going on with Y/n? She must feel terrible now, I'm sure she saw that Angeliqué girl on TV

↳username9 What makes you think she would still watch races?

username11 It seemed like her and Charles are on friendly terms, so why wouldn't she still watch his races?

↳username12 She hasn't posted anything since Australia, went hella private, she ISN'T okay, I think she even stopped hanging out with Lily M

username13 I did some more research and that Angeliqué girl is 20 years old

↳username12 So we're supposed to believe that Y/n who is Charles' age wasn't ready to start a family, but a 20 year old Charles met weeks ago is? Charles, explain yourself

username9 Honestly the new girl seems just like a distraction from Y/n or a PR relationship

username12 You might be right, maybe Charles can't forget about Y/n so he went with "wanna get over, get under someone new"

username14 Nahhhh cuz she was all over Charles whenever she could and he looked so done 💀 that's definitely a stunt

↳username1 Literally, she was always hugging him, touching, holding hands, she barely let him interact with fans, Y/n was so much better AND she always respected Charles' fans

username15 imagine not being able to move on for MONTHS so your pr team finds you a fake gf

yourusername Excuse the inactivity, I've been watching Gilmore Girls

view all comments

username1 Very understandable in this case

username2 Our Rory Gilmore finally watching the og Rory Gilmore 🙏

oldersister I'm afraid Snow White might like you more than she likes me 😂

↳yourusername I'm the cool aunt 🤭

youngersister Excuse me???

yourusername I said what I said

youngersister And I don't agree with what you said

yourusername Would you watch Gilmore Girls with Snow White? Nope. I do. So I win the cool aunt competition

username3 Guys... When did Charles unfollow Y/n?

↳username2 He unfollowed?

username3 Yeah... He didn't comment nor even like, so I went to check and he doesn't follow Y/n anymore but she still follows him

username2 Ouch that hurts

username4 I don't care that Charles doesn't follow Y/n anymore, what counts is that she is happy 😊 look at the last pic, she's so adorable with Snow White

↳username5 True, she looks happy and healthy while Charles is out there having to put up with a fake girlfriend

username6 What's funny is that Charles doesn't follow Y/n anymore, but both his brothers and majority of F1 drivers do

↳username7 including the ones who followed her after the breakup 😏

username8 Don't try to make up new rumours, Y/n is single and happy

username9 Not to be mean but... It says something about Charles that he had to unfollow

↳username6 He either thought it'll help him forget or the new girlfriend made him unfollow

username9 Either way it tells us he's still thinking about Y/n

landonorris been a while since I last saw you

↳yourusername Let's see how long we can keep the streak up

username6 SLAAAAAY QUEEN

username10 I'll never be over the Y/nCharles breakup, I'm still going through it months after

↳username11 That's okay because so is Charles

username12 Tbh in Y/n's place I would just take the chance and go for Lando, just to prove that Charles' PR relationship is in vain

↳username2 That's not something Y/n would do, but if she ever did that I would support her

Username13 dating men is so much stress, why bother while you can sit at home with a cat watching Gilmore Girls instead?

[daechwitatamic]

cherrybomb || csc

(banner by @sailorrhansol)

cherrybomb seungcheol x afab reader || angst smut fluff || exes2lovers, pacific rim universe NSFW - minors DNI

Summary: Piloting a jaeger requires a rare ability called drifting - a neural connection with your co-pilot. You and Seungcheol are masters of the drift... until you have something in your head that you don't want him to see.

wc: 19.5k

warnings: language, heavy angst with happy ending, fight scenes, fight scenes written by an author with zero fighting or martial arts knowledge lmfao thus they are vague as possible, feelings heavy plot light and smut light, kissing and pretty generic (and brief) p in v smut

Author's note: thank you for @sailorrhansol for 1) accidentally sparking this idea, 2) agreeing to collab with me, 3) reading this along the way and hyping me up, and 4) beta-ing my mistakes, a million smooches for you ily

This fic takes place in the Pacific Rim universe but I honestly don't think you need to know the lore, everything you need to know should be explained. If you think something is unclear without prior pacific rim knowledge, shoot me a message privately and I'll make some edits and credit you for the insight!

Also in this universe: storm breaker by @/sailorhansol

Teaser:

“Marshall, with all due respect, I don’t know why you’re calling me,” you admit. “You were there. You saw what happened. Seungcheol and I can’t drift anymore.”

“You couldn’t then,” he points out. “That was three years ago. Things that were once too painful to carry into the drift… they’ve had time to mellow.”

He’s wrong, and you want to tell him so. Nothing has mellowed. You love Seungcheol just as much today as you did then.

“Have you talked to him about this?” You’re afraid of the answer. 

The Marshall’s voice hardens, and you can just picture his eyes narrowing. “Mr. Choi will follow orders,” he says evenly, “and so will you. Asking is really just a courtesy.”

“You can’t order us into being able to drift again,” you snap, pulse suddenly pounding in your arms, your hands, your face, your chest. 

“No,” the Marshall says, and any previous friendliness is gone from his voice now, “but I can - and will - order you to try.”

Playlist: you're the smoke in my gun, blowin' like cherry bombs...

The first time you ever saw Choi Seungcheol, he was flipping a man four years his senior over his shoulder and slamming him into the ground. Satisfied, he staggered backwards, chest heaving from exertion, eyes narrowed in preparation for the next move.

That’s what Seungcheol did - he leveled whatever was in front of him, and he started watching for what was coming next before the body could even hit the ground.

That’s what made him a great jaeger pilot. Not the brute strength - strong men are dime a dozen, always have been - but the watching.

You’d marked him as your first choice.

You were both nineteen. You’d grown up in the Shatterdome, the only child to a couple who piloted a neon green jaeger named Charron’s Revenge. You knew everything about how jaegers and their teams worked by the time you were nine. You started training to fight years before that. There was never a question that you would follow in your parents’ giant, mechanical footsteps one day. You just needed the right partner.

You needed Seungcheol.

The jaeger program didn’t turn away recruits - everyone could do something - but there was an organized process to match up compatible pilots. Applying recruits would fight before an audience of previously-accepted but currently-unmatched potential pilots. The pilots would rank the fighters, choosing their top five based on perceived potential for compatibility.

Then, the roles would switch. The applicants became the audience. The audience became the show.

When it was your turn to fight, you silently pleaded with the universe that Seungcheol would mark you high as well. This was the only guarantee that you’d get a chance to spar with him, to test it out before the Marshall, who would make the final call.

Let him see, you begged. Let him see how perfectly we’d work together.

And, by some miracle, he did. In fact, he rated you first, as well.

Your sparring match went exactly how you expected - he barreled at you, and you dodged every move. He could easily take you out with a single blow, but he couldn’t get his hands on you, not when you used his own inertia against him at every turn. What you didn’t expect was your own inability to land a shot. For the whole fight, you were unable to move out of the defensive - keeping out of his reach took all of your effort.

It was a draw - the first sign of strong compatibility.

You didn’t talk after the match - your father whisked you away to recover before your second-rated match, and you didn’t see Seungcheol for the rest of the day.

The second-rated match was a dud. But you already knew, even then, that it didn’t matter.

You’d met your co-pilot. You’d found your partner.

—

He found you in the mess hall that night, dropping into an empty spot on the other side of the table, his tray in his hands. His black hair was loose and wavy, and his right arm sported a sizeable bruise that he definitely didn’t get from you.

“I know who you are,” he said by way of greeting. You raised a brow at him, waiting. “Your parents piloted Charron’s Revenge.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “That better not be why you picked me.”

He gave his head an annoyed little flick. “Of course not. I picked you because you’re fluid - and I’m not.”

Appeased, you felt your hackles settle back down. “That’s true,” you allowed. “You’re not fluid. But you’re purposeful, and-”

You were interrupted when Yoon Jeonghan dropped into the seat to your left, chuckling under his breath as he fixed his long, dark hair into a spiky ponytail at the back of his head.

“Cherry, did you hear?” he asked you, ignoring the new-comer. “The crew for Fatal Rapids got called back in for misconduct.”

“Choi Seungcheol, Yoon Jeonghan,” you said, introducing the two young men. “Hannie does more than gossip, I promise. He’s one of the pilots for Devil’s Advocates. Their drop stats are insane.”

“In practice only,” Jeonghan demurred. “For now.”

“Cherry?” Seungcheol parroted, raising a dark brow. “That’s not what I wrote on my paper earlier.”

“Just a nickname,” you explained. When you were very small, you’d struggled with the name of your parents’ jaeger, calling it Cherry’s Revenge instead of Charron’s, and the crew - who doted on you like their own - started the habit of calling you Cherry. Somehow, it had spread, and stuck. “Only my parents use my real name. But you can call me whatever you’re comfortable with.”

“No,” he said, frowning as if deeply considering his options. “I like it.”

You folded your arms on the table, leaning in to peer at Seungcheol. “So, what’s your story? You’ve heard of me. I haven’t heard of you.”

He shrugged, glanced around, then decided he could talk freely. There’s something about being in a room that’s positively teeming with people and conversation - it gives you privacy without feeling too intimate. You’re not alone.

“Not much of a story, not like you,” he admitted. “I grew up thinking I’d take over my dad’s business. We lost my dad… then, we lost the business. I have no marketable skillset, and university was out of the question. But…” He trailed off, then met your gaze firmly. Something in his look demanded you forgo any pity or sympathy, demanded you take him seriously. “I’m strong. So I came here. I came to fight.”

You sidestepped the bruises he’d bared. “Not like me,” you repeated with a bit of a scoff. “I hate to disappoint you, but my parents are the pilots - the story is theirs. I don’t have one, not yet.”

Something playful glinted in his eyes, the first true sign of personality you’d seen. “So all the rumors about the Princess of the Shatterdome aren’t true?”

Your jaw dropped. You’d heard the nickname before - it was never meant nicely. You tried to ignore it as best you could - people could think what they wanted. When you had a crew, when you had a jaeger, you’d be able to prove them wrong. “What rumors?”

“You’re spoiled,” Jeonghan supplied, having decided he was part of the conversation after all. “Entitled.”

You spluttered as Jeonghan stood, giving you a cheerful pat on the shoulder. “And bitchy! That’s just what I’ve heard. Of course I know better. Anyway, I’ve got to go. Love ya!”

You stared incredulously after him as he disappeared, your face burning with embarrassment and your heart hammering with adrenaline. Fight, your systems told you.

If only you could.

Seungcheol bit back a smile, reaching out to pat your arm placatingly.

“I don’t…” you started to say, but your voice caught in your throat. You cleared it, tried again. “I don’t think I really deserve all that.”

He nodded, lips pushed into a semblance of a thoughtful pout. “What I’d heard,” he said calmly, “is that you’re a hell of a fighter, scary smart, and that you take no shit. Unless it’s from your friends, apparently.”

This made a bitter little laugh bubble from you. You still simmered with humiliation, feared that maybe he’d decide he didn’t want to co-pilot with you after all.

“I think it’s up to you which story gets told,” he said finally.

“Yeah,” you said, nodding. “That’s what I always said. So… let’s get started.”

—

You and Seungcheol lucked out - the team that had been recalled for misconduct were terminated from their posts in the weeks following the sparring trials, and their jaeger Fatal Rapids had been disassembled, the parts up for grabs.

You and Seungcheol repurposed Rapids’s main frame, your crew working to individualize the bot to your needs as best they could. You splurged on quad-processors for her legs to allow your jaeger to keep up with how you move - quick and lithe. Seungcheol lobbied for (and won) some extra power in the top half, and you compromised and chose a mix of red and blue sections for her paintjob.

Duellona Fury, you named her. Duellona for you, the destroyer. Fury for Seungcheol, because that was where his fight came from.

You got to know Seungcheol’s fury very well. Especially when you started trying to drift.

None of it happened fast - not the building of your machine, nor your neural handshake. In fact, you didn’t pilot Duellona Fury together for a whole calendar year.

You started with physical compatibility - you sparred almost all day, every day. You fought - with each other and against each other - until all you could do was lay on the ground and pant, blinking to make the ceiling stay in focus.

Seungcheol may not have grown up training in the Shatterdome the way you did, but he kept up without complaint. You learned his way - force and strength - and he learned the way you favored - to weave and dodge.

The fighting was the easy part.

You had never drifted with someone you had true drift compatibility with. Seungcheol had never drifted at all. The Marshall wouldn’t even consider hooking the two of you up to the machine until you went through the proper training.

On the day you and Seungcheol were officially declared as co-pilots-in-training, you both stood below the half-built shell of your towering jaeger, sparks flying and drills screaming as the crew worked on her.

Your Marshall looked seriously at his new team-in-training. “Starting tomorrow, you’ll meditate together. Talk to each other. Get deep about it. If you’ve talked about it out here-” he swept an arm across the deck, “-it won’t take hold so strongly in there.” He’d jabbed a finger in the upward direction of Duellona Fury.

Seungcheol didn’t look at you, nor the Marshall. Instead, he kept his eyes on Duellona's unfinished frame, stories above you. “Yes, Sir,” he said steadily.

Your parents weren’t technically retired yet, the year you and Seungcheol started training together. Charron’s Revenge still sat in the well below the Shatterdome. They still lived on the base, still took part in daily training. They hadn’t been called into a fight in years, though; the assignments went to the younger crews.

You took dinner in their quarters instead of the mess hall, that night.

“Congratulations,” your father said warmly from across the table. “You worked hard to get here.”

“Thank you,” you said, feeling shy beneath the praise. “I hope the drift will work for me and Choi Seungcheol.”

“What do you think of him?” your mother had asked, her sharp eyes honing in on you, watching your reactions.

“I think he’s a great fighter,” you said. “The rest… I guess I’ll have to learn.”

“Do you trust him? Can you trust him out there, when the sea and the wind are trying to knock you down, and hell itself rises up from the depths?”

You swallowed. She’s right for her intensity - they will be putting their daughter’s life in her co-pilot’s hands, every time there’s a fight. You knew firsthand how terrifying it was to stand in the tech bay and wait, not knowing if your loved ones will make it back.

You thought about how you and Seungcheol fight together in the sparring rooms. You thought about how you weaved and your opponent followed your movement, only to be knocked sideways. You thought of how Seungcheol followed your motion backwards, ducked in tandem with you to avoid a hit, and how you followed his momentum forward and up to attack. Your bodies followed each other like they were magnetized. And Seungcheol was always watching for the next hit.

“Yes,” you said, so quietly that you cleared your throat and said it again. “Yes, I trust him.”

“Then we wish you luck,” your father said, and raised his glass. “To Duellona Fury.”

“To Duellona Fury,” you echoed.

On your way out of the quarters, later, you slowed as you passed the wall where they hung their accolades and awards, the newspaper clippings, photos, and medals. Before your eyes they aged - the photographs changing through the years, no longer showing a bright, fiery couple, instead displaying proof of passing time: a baby bump, then a toddler, then a child beaming alongside them as if she’d done what they had done; greying hairs, softening bodies, deepening of wrinkles. Then the pictures stopped.

You never asked them if they missed it.

—

You and Seungcheol started meditating together the next morning; it seemed logical to begin at the easiest step. In an empty sparring room, you sat facing each other, knees touching.

“Have you done this before?” you asked, as you both settled in, shifting weight and adjusting ankles.

“Not with someone else,” he admitted, lips protruding in a bit of a pout. “Only alone.”

You nodded. You’d grown up learning all of this - the right way to fight as a team member, how to be in tune for a neural connection. It led to you teaching Seungcheol often - yet when you fought together, any leadership fell away.

“Normally,” you explained, “you focus on your breath, keeping your mind clear. But for our practice, you want to focus on our breath. We breathe together. And when your mind wanders, your awareness should be coming to peace with my presence there. Like, making a path for the neural connection - for later. So there’s no resistance.”

“Have you done this before?” Seungcheol asked.

You wobbled your head around - not yes, but not no. “I’ve practiced it - I’ve done the meditation with partners. But I’ve never moved forward to an actual drift with anyone.”

This seemed to appease him, and he settled his weight backwards, letting his hands rest near his knees.

You let your eyes float closed and inhaled, listening and feeling for Seungcheol’s inhale to end, letting your breath out when he did. It took no time to match your breaths, to let your mind go blissfully quiet. You focused on feeling open, readable - any thought that floated through your mind, you pretended he could hear, too. You tried to feel and release any defensiveness, any urge to close off.

When the timer went off, it surprised you. You opened your eyes, and the feeling that struck you was this -

It was surprising to see Seungcheol before you. It hadn’t felt like he was beside you. It had felt like he was you.

You meditated, you fought, and finally, you talked.

Laying on the sparring room floor, your head somewhere near Seungcheol’s shins, he asked you, “Where do you wish you were right now? If you weren’t here.”

You laughed at yourself before answering, knowing how silly you would sound. “In a tree.”

A disbelieving smile played on his lips, almost as if he wasn’t sure you weren’t making fun of him somehow. “A tree?”

“No, really,” you insisted, still smiling a little. “There’s not a lot of nature here, in case you didn’t notice. I grew up in the Dome - never got to leave, much.”

Seungcheol didn’t respond to this, just nodded like he understood, his small smile going a bit tight around the edges.

You frowned, reading him exactly. “You think I’m sheltered,” you observed. It wasn’t a question. He couldn’t say no.

He looked at you, then. “You were sheltered,” he said, voice low. “But when I say it, I don’t mean naive. I just think… there’s a lot of world out there. A lot of things to see. You won’t see any of it if you spend your entire life under the Dome.”

You nod, accepting this. “I won’t see any of it if it gets destroyed, either. There’s a lot of world out there - that we’re trying to keep safe.”

Seungcheol watched you intently for a moment, lips downturned and gaze heavy. Then, he asked, “Have you ever seen a kaiju? I mean - in person?”

“Sort of,” you mumbled.

He’d rolled from his back to his front, closer to you, putting you shoulder to shoulder. “Kind of seems like a yes-or-no question.”

Your lips twisted. “Then, no. But I’ve stood in the bay and listened to Mission Control talk my mom and dad through a fight dozens of times, watched Charron’s Revenge on the screens and prayed I wouldn’t see her get sawed in half.”

You stopped, trailed a finger through the thin layer of dirt on the floor. “I know it’s not the same as looking one in the face myself,” you whispered. “But the fear… shouldn’t that fear count, shouldn’t it feel the same?”

Seungcheol swallowed, trailed his own finger through the dirt until his fingertip just barely touched yours. It felt like energy sizzled in the centimeter between your pointer and his.

“When Menaceclaw attacked,” he said, “he missed my home by one block. We watched him go by from the sidewalk. I wasn’t even as tall as his foot. But even with him towering over the buildings, taking them down without even trying, I don’t think what I felt was afraid. I think I just felt resigned. Like I knew, at seven, that even though we survived this one… nothing was going to be… the same, or okay. I don’t know.”

“You knew what you lost,” you said quietly. “Part of you did.”

He looked up at you, nudged his finger into yours. “You never knew anything different. It wasn’t a loss. The fear was just always part of the deal.”

You rolled sideways, laying your head on your bicep for a pillow, regarding the dark-eyed, dark-haired young man across from you. His face scrunched in a laugh, brows furrowing and lips pouting.

“What?” he asked through the quiet laugh. “Why are you looking at me?”

“What else?” you mused. “What else am I going to find when we go tiptoeing through your memories?”

He smiled faintly and then mirrored you, laying his head on his arm, his eyes swimming as he thought.

“A lot of my family, probably,” he said. “A lot of fighting. Menaceclaw. Probably some very mid sex.”

You laughed without meaning to. “My condolences?”

He grinned at you, pleased. “Eh, what can you do? I try to treat everything like a learning experience.”

You laughed again, and his smile grew, gums showing. “What about you?” he asked off-handedly.

“Mid sex?” you asked, eyebrows raising. “I hate to inform you, Choi Seungcheol, but I don’t do anything mid.”

“No,” he protested, laughing, reaching out to gently shake your shoulder. “I meant - what will we see when it’s your turn?”

“The Dome,” you said, half-joking - but it was true. “Training. My parents. Their fights, their accomplishments.”

And, as a true drift partner should, he understood what you weren’t saying.

“We’ll have our turn,” he promised, pushing himself to sit up, then stand, reaching down to help you up. “We’re gonna be fucking unstoppable. Let’s go again.”

Fire sparking behind your ribs, you nodded seriously, then reached up to take his hand.

—

Weeks of sparring melded into months of meditation and talking. The next phase of training co-pilots was learning to drift in one of the simulators - but not in a jaeger. Not yet.

You and Seungcheol finished training in one of the sparring rooms shortly before dinner would be served in the mess hall.

“Meet you there?” you asked, still half-breathless, your body starting to ache as the adrenaline from a fight melted away.

“Sure,” he agreed, and you disappeared into the changing rooms, scrubbing the sweat and dirt away as quickly as you could. You changed into something clean and made your way to the mess hall.

You scanned for familiar faces, frowning when your normal table seemed to be occupied by a team of new recruits that you didn’t know.

Seungcheol appeared at your elbow, frowning dramatically. “Our table,” he whined.

“There’s Chan and Wylie,” you said, nodding to another corner where your friends sat practically on top of each other. Chan and Wylie had never understood personal space, not when it came to one another. They barely noticed when you and Seungcheol plopped onto the benches next to them, but Seungkwan did.

“You’re bleeding, Cherry,” he said, before inhaling an entire mouthful of rice.

You started to scan your arms - you didn’t feel pain anywhere - but Seungcheol found it first, gingerly swiping his thumb along your cheekbone.

“Sorry, Cherry,” he murmured. “I should’ve pulled that punch.”

“No you shouldn’t have,” you grumbled, swatting at his hand and wiping roughly at the spot, your hand coming away with a small smear of red - nothing to be alarmed about. It would stop on its own. “You pull shots in practice, you’ll hesitate in the field.”

“She’s right,” Chan said from his physical tangle with Wylie. “What you practice will show up in your muscle memory. You’ve got to mean it, every time.”

Wylie reached across his arms and took a bite from his plate, then asked, “Did you guys see the new jaeger?”

“I did,” Seungkwan said eagerly. “Chaser Supernova, or something like that? She’s smaller, but she’s supposed to be fast.”

“Is that her team at our normal table?” you asked dryly, shooting the rookies a dark look over your shoulder. Seungcheol jostled you playfully, sending you a smile that brought you back.

The bench dipped to your left, and you turned to see Soonyoung - one of Seungkwan’s two co-pilots - settle in.

“Talking about Supernova?” he asked, hands busy opening his drink. “They seem okay - they’re a trio, like us.”

“Where is Seokmin?” Seungkwan asked, scanning the room. “I haven’t seen him in like two hours.”

“Talking to Jihoon, I think,” Soonyoung answered absently, focused on his meal. “He lost another co-pilot today.”

“Not again,” you and Seungcheol both blurted, matching levels of exasperation.

“That was freaky,” Wylie said, just as Chan told you, “You two are acting like us, now.”

“We do not need another Chan-and-Wylie,” Seungkwan said seriously, shaking his head.

Seungcheol sent you a sideways, sheepish grin.

“We won’t be,” he promised the group, but his eyes were still on you.

—

The simulators were built to be exact replicas of the conn-pod, so that trainees could get used to the feeling of being strapped in, of moving with the gear. But the real purpose was to practice the neural handshake without risking damage - to the jaeger, to the tech bay, to each other.

“Don’t be nervous,” you told Seungcheol as the tech team worked around you both like a choreographed dance.

“I’m never nervous,” he said, suddenly cocky.

If you could reach his hand from where you were strapped in, you would have. If you understood anything about Seungcheol - if any part of him mirrored you - it was the way he showcased bravado, the way he used it as his most-familiar mask.

“It’s only practice,” you reminded him. “And it’s only me.”

He licked his lips quickly, eyes darting to the side and then back to you. Then, he gave you a small nod.

“Normally,” your chief tech - a beautiful woman with jet-black hair named Nainsi - told you, “right now, you would be ready for the drop. In the simulator, we skip that step because we aren’t dropping onto a jaeger. Instead, we’ll engage the pilot to pilot connection protocol sequence.”

You and Seungcheol nod in tandem.

“You’re all good?” Nainsi checks. “Then I’m going back into the tech bay - you’ll hear me through the intercom.”

Alone in the simulator, you met Seungcheol’s gaze and couldn’t help the excited grin that spread across your face. Finally, finally you were here. Once you could do this successfully, the next step was to fight in your own jaeger - to drop into Duellona Fury and walk into the sea.

He didn’t return your smile, instead giving you a tight nod, expression serious.

Over the intercom, you said clearly, “Ready and aligned.”

Nainsi answered, “Prepare for neural handshake.”

You took a deep breath and steeled yourself as the artificial voice of the simulator’s tech system spoke around you, 3… 2… 1… neural handshake initiating…

At first, you thought something went wrong. Everything went red behind your eyelids, and you blinked, instinctively trying to clear it away.

The red faded, and you found yourself in Seungcheol’s childhood home. You didn’t know how you knew that - you just knew. It was as familiar to you, inside the drift, as your own. You knew that to your left was a small kitchen with two broken floor tiles; you knew - without having ever seen it - that to your right was a narrow hallway that led to a bathroom and two small bedrooms.

Two small boys played on the carpet; rather, the smaller one played with some toy cars while the other watched the television with rapture. Behind them, at the kitchen table, a woman typed busily on an outdated laptop, bags heavy under her eyes.

Somewhere around you, a voice floated by, telling you, neural handshake strong and holding.

You could see Seungcheol in your periphery - the adult Seungcheol, the Seungcheol of now - as he looked at his mother, his brother, himself.

“It’s not real,” you reminded him gently. “It’s just a memory.”

“I know,” he said back, voice hushed, as if he might scare them away. “It’s just… good to see them.”

The house evaporated as gently as morning dew under a mid-morning sun; you stood in a schoolyard. Seungcheol, the small one, had a bloody lip and a mean swing.

You felt a rush of affection for him - him, the child, face contorting with misplaced anger, using strength as a bandage. You wanted to stand in front of him, between him and the anger, him and the other kids, and let him take a breath. You wanted to tell him to step with his punch to get more power. You wanted to put a hand on his shoulder and tell him, you’re going to be fine.

And he knew all of it, because he was in your mind.

Seungcheol - your Seungcheol - walked away from the swarm of children egging on the fight and opened a door. You followed.

Inside was not the school, but a hospital room. Your body jolted forward, distracting and alarming. You heard, faintly, a series of beeps, that robotic voice needling in your ears, saying, calibration failure… recalibrating in 3… 2… 1…

“It’s only a memory,” you said again, but the warning beeps were coming stronger, louder, more clearly. The hospital room looked opaque, and Seungcheol walked backwards towards you, away from it, herding you both out of the room. The room - a bed, a pulled curtain, a lot of white - flickered, like a glitch, and then vanished, leaving you standing in the simulator.

Neural handshake disengaged…

“Seungcheol!” you yelled, pulling your helmet off and wheeling on him as best you could with most of your body still strapped in. “What the hell was that? You pushed me out!”

He was breathing hard, eyes a little wild. “Not that,” he said, a little ragged. “I’ll let you in but - not that.”

“You don’t get to choose!” you snapped. Part of you knew this was just growing pains, he’d never drifted before, he was learning. But the rest of you smarted and stung - both from his rejection and from your failure to train, to succeed, to check off this final step before you could get inside your jaeger. “It’s kind of an all-or-nothing thing!”

He let out a billow of air, reaching a hand up to rub at his face. “Sorry. I’ll… let’s try again.”

You didn’t answer, fuming silently instead.

“I’m sorry, Cherry,” he said. “The stuff with my dad…”

“You can’t cherry-pick what we see and what we don’t,” you fired back. His eyes shot to yours and his mouth quirked and you read the joke all over his face. “Don’t you laugh, Seungcheol, it’s not funny!”

But you were laughing through the scolding.

“Stop,” you whined.

Your anger defused, he looked at you again, taking a bracing breath. “It’s not about you,” he tried to explain. “I’m not keeping you out. I’m keeping me out.”

“Don’t chase the rabbit,” you told him, shaking your head. “See what it wants you to see and move on. Find the next door. If you stand there and let your hurt - or your, I don’t know… grief - rise up… that’s when we’re going to have trouble.”

“Find the next door,” he repeated, eyes on the floor. “Got it.”

“You can’t push it away,” you reminded him, “but you don’t have to stay in it, either.”

He nodded, eyes already lighting up, ready to go again.

The second time, you saw him steel himself before opening that same door, watching carefully as he shuffled inside, only looking sideways at the hospital room that materialized around you.

“Seungcheol.”

He turned to look at you, wide-eyed, but you hadn’t called him. The voice, weak and hoarse, had come from the other side of the fluttering curtain.

The glitching started almost immediately - the image around you flickering like a bad wall projection. Something rocked beneath your feet, an earthquake only inside your minds.

You opened your mouth, started to tell him, you don’t have to stay, to remind him that he could move forward. Instead, you heard yourself say, “I’m here.”

The tremors under your feet quivered to a stop. You watched with trepidation and Seungcheol closed his eyes and took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. Then, he held his hand out, waiting.

You slipped your hand into his, and then he turned and continued walking, ignoring his father’s memory calling out to him. The flickering stopped, the picture you were part of brightening again as you found the next door, stepped through, left his pain behind.

—

It got easier quickly. Seungcheol’s ability to press on, to maintain focus, strengthened.

The strolls through your mind went easier - you’d had years to practice maintaining focus, waiting until after to let the emotions hit you.

Seungcheol learned to be ready for you, after. He’d sit with you, silent, and breathe in tandem as you worked to let go, to release the images of Charron’s Revenge on the tech bay screen, the sounds of your parents’ frantic communication as they fought together, the fear crawling its way up your legs every time until someone in the bay said, “Charron’s Revenge, cleared to return.” The loneliness of being the only kid in the Dome, having no outlet except fighting. Everything that threatened your mind while you piloted, everything that you had to save for later - save for him.

You were both freshly turned twenty when you got green-lit to drive.

“Seungcheol!” you called across the mess hall, practically racing to your table. He turned, eyebrows raised, as you crossed the large room.

“We’re approved to drop!” you told him excitedly. It churned in you - finally, finally you could fight, you could prove what you could do, you could help. “We’re on the drop schedule for tomorrow!”

His grin was unfettered, unfiltered, just for you. He reached up a fist and you bumped it enthusiastically. You were too excited to eat, too excited to sleep. You tossed and turned, imagining experiencing a drop for the first time, imagining striding through the mighty sea like it was nothing, imagining staring down hell itself and bringing it to its knees.

You were still awake when you heard the alarms down the hall. Yours didn’t go off, because you weren’t on duty, weren’t approved to fight.

Down the hall, there was a flurry of commotion - shouting, rushing, people pushing past you as they pulled on boots and jackets.

“Cat-3 in the west bay,” someone shouted.

“Deploying Devil’s Advocate!”

You reached the tech bay, trying to stay out of the way but not unseen. When the Marshall strode by, you stepped sideways.

“Let us drop,” you said quickly, knowing time was precious. “It’ll be like practice. We can be back-up. We’ll hang back.”

“Absolutely not,” the Marshall said, already moving to work past you. “You’re not approved yet. We don’t need a liability right now.”

“We’re scheduled for tomorrow!” you protested, and then you felt a hand on your shoulder.

“We’ll get our turn,” Seungcheol told you quietly. Of course he’d come out, of course he found you.

You deflated. “It could have been us. We are hours from approval.”

He gave your shoulder a tiny shake. “We’ll get our turn,” he repeated. “Don’t make trouble.”

You glowered, but you knew he was right. “Fine,” you grumbled as Joshua and Jeonghan slinked past you in matching jackets and matching shit-eating grins. You stayed out of the way as they prepared to drop.

You stayed through the fight, listened to the control room buzz and chatter, until you heard, “Devil’s Advocate, cleared to return.”

Only then did you try to go back to sleep. Seungcheol gave your shoulder one more squeeze.

“Tomorrow,” he promised.

“Tomorrow,” you repeated.

—

Some people feel God at church. The history of tradition and the sanctity of ritual speak to them, help them feel part of something, help them feel that unnameable swell of something spiritual.

Some people feel God in nature. The patterns of the universe, the way math exists without human touch, the harmonies and patterns that seem too intricate for coincidence help them believe in a planner’s touch. The beauty of the outdoors allows them to wonder, to feel like they belong as a piece of this clockwork.

But you - you felt God when you stood before your jaeger, marveling at the power, the beauty, how it feels like yours, how it feels like Seungcheol before you’re even inside it. Duellona Fury promises you power, promises you purpose.

That hand was on your shoulder again, and it slid down to the center of your back before removing itself.

Beside you, Seungcheol stared up at your glorious machine.

“She looks sick,” he said, the grin taking over his face.

“I can’t wait to fuck shit up,” you murmured, your reverent tone at odds with the flippancy of your words.

“Ready?” the Marshall asked you, coming up to your left. “We’ll get you calibrated and dropped, and then you’ll do a lap of the bay. We’re sending out Pretty Savage just in case you run into trouble.”

The defensiveness rose in you quick, like a snakebite.

“We don’t need a babysitter,” Seungcheol said, voice hard. You reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze - a reminder to watch it, just as his hand on your shoulder frequently did for you.

“It’s just safety protocol.” The Marshall was unphased by the outburst. “Have fun, you two. Enjoy your first joy-ride.”

You screamed when you dropped, the exhilaration rushing out of you as Duellona Fury fell story after story before slowing and attaching to your jaeger’s mainframe.

Goosebumps raised along your arms when the Shatterdome’s sea-doors slid open, shudders traveling your body as you and Seungcheol stepped together, Duellona Fury stepping with you, her gigantic, metal form following every movement.

For the first time in your whole, careful life, you felt powerful. Your jaeger cut through the ocean waves like they were nothing, making an easy perimeter of the bay. In your head, you could somehow both hear and feel Seungcheol’s delight, his low-simmering desire to fight, to do something a perfect mirror of your own.

“How is it?” Soonyoung’s voice crackled in your ears, reminding you that Pretty Savage wasn’t far behind you.

“Incredible,” Seungcheol answered him, at the same time that you said, “It’s everything.”

It didn’t matter that you came from a family of pilots. It didn’t matter that you were raised in the Dome, training since you were young. None of that mattered. You were born for this - born to fight for your planet, born for Duellona Fury, born for Choi Seungcheol.

—

The west bay became Duellona’s playground; you and Seungcheol were often assigned to patrol there.

It was only a few months in that you faced a kaiju for the first time.

“Come in, Duellona Fury,” Nainsi’s voice came through. “We have a reading just a few miles north of you. Cat-2. Approaching at -”

Duellona Fury was turning due north before the command was even given.

“Are you ready for this?” you shouted to Seungcheol as Duellona slid through the water, the adrenaline singing in your system already.

“You know I am,” he answered, something hard in it, and the thrill in your stomach sparked.

When the sea split in half, the kaiju rising from the depths with an unearthly roar, you sank into a defensive stance, feeling Seungcheol move beside you, doing the same.

“Let’s fucking go,” Seungcheol said darkly, and launched forward, your arms rearing back for momentum before the first swing. The punch landed solidly, your whole body shaking once as the kaiju faltered backwards a few steps.

It opened its mouth and you glimpsed three rows of teeth bigger than a cow before it was lunging at you; Duellona Fury lurched. You tried to duck sideways as Seungcheol tried to move towards your opponent.

The moment of indecision cost you - the kaiju got its teeth on Duellona’s shoulder, knocking you back several steps. Beside you, Seungcheol roared as sparks flew near the bite.

“Are we breached?” you yelled, trying to steady your balance again.

“Not yet!” he yelled back, and you swung again, a hit landing hard enough to knock the kaiju loose, spitting it back into the sea.

You tried to move into a defensive crouch again; again, the jaeger faltered.

“Cherry!” Seungcheol yelled, desperation laced in his voice. “Cherry, don’t fight me!”

“Move with me!” you answered, and he did, miraculously, Duellona dodging left before an incoming attack.

Don’t fight me.

You rocked forward with Seungcheol as soon as you were clear of the kaiju’s trajectory, just as you’d done in practice thousands of times. Back in sync, Duellona Fury landed a kick to the kaiju’s middle that sent it stumbling.

“We’ve got him,” you said, feeling a win.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Seungcheol warned you. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the kaiju exploded from the dark ocean, limbs flailing as it flew towards you.

Duellona’s arms came up and locked it in battle, the impact shaking you so hard that your teeth chattered against each other. You groaned with exertion as you tried to match its strength.

“I don’t think we can hold it,” you managed through grit teeth.

“We’ve got this,” your partner promised, and with a mighty shove, you managed to flip the beast over your shoulder and beneath the waves.

“Drop the bombs and head for the east side,” you said quickly, already moving. Duellona Fury followed your command, turning and starting an easy run through the bay’s churning waters, away from where the kaiju was struggling to its feet, furious and vengeful. As she ran, she dropped three small explosives, about sixty feet apart. The explosives slipped into the ocean depths.

“Ready?” Seungcheol asked, a little breathless. “Are we far enough away?”

“Light him up,” you replied. Seungcheol reached up and tapped the button; somewhere behind you, the ocean exploded.

—

“How’s your shoulder?” you asked, later, in the med bay.

“Not that bad,” Seungcheol said, but you could see the blood-stains on the bandaging.

“It won’t happen again,” you promised. “I think I just… practiced alone for so long. I forgot to listen. I’m sorry.”

Seungcheol shook his hand, eyes finding yours. “There’s nothing to forgive, Cherry. Forget about it.” Then, he brightened. “You know what I want to do?”

“What?” you asked, not entirely past feeling guilty.

His smile was devilish. “I want to go celebrate our first fucking kill.”

– 

You marked the passing of two years in statistics.

Three hundred and forty-six explosives detonated.

Two hundred and eighty-three drops. Two hundred and eight-three kills. 

Seventy-two mainframe repairs.

Twenty-eight achievement awards.

Nine television interviews.

Six upgrades.

One ill-informed “vacation” during which you both itched with anxiety, spending the whole time messaging your friends back in the Shatterdome desperately, praying you wouldn’t miss a fight in which you were needed.

Seven hundred and thirty days of living in and around Seungcheol’s mind and heart. But that stat should’ve gone first.

It was a good high. Your team had a good run.

It wasn’t a kaiju that reduced it to ash, not an attack that took your team out of the rotation of main fighters and sent your jaeger to gather rust and dust below the Dome. It was your own stupid heart.

There were a lot of moments that could have been it. Each time you walked into a fight knowing the danger, each time he ended up in the med bay reeking of antibacterial ointment and resentment. Each time you slid into your place beside him - space he saved only for you. Each time his voice bidding you goodnight from the bottom bunk was the last thing you heard at the end of the day. Any of these moments might have been the one to make you stop, gasp, suddenly slammed with understanding. That you loved him, that he was everything you couldn’t bear to be without, that he was part of you. But they weren’t.

There was no moment of realization at all.

Instead, it slowly seeped into your consciousness, as gently and naturally as morning dew collecting on pre-dawn petals. The knowledge clung to you, as impossible to ignore as damp feet after running barefoot through the yard just after sunrise.

If you knew something, that meant your co-pilot would know it, too.

Unless you tucked it away, pushed it down deep and cast his attention elsewhere, a mental sleight-of-hand. Look here instead. 

You were twenty-three, on a routine patrol, when Mission Control radioed Duellona that there was a reading in the bay.

“Looks like it’s only a Cat-1,” Mission Control told you.

“On it,” you told them, feeling your body already mirroring Seungcheol’s as Duellona picked up her pace, striding through the waves. 

You glanced sideways at him, and immediately wished you hadn’t. He was already zoned in, eyes focused and jaw sharp as he concentrated. 

He caught your gaze for only a second. “Focus, Cherry,” he cautioned. “Don’t get cocky.”

“I would never,” you retorted, and he laughed. You were both cocky; you both knew it.

For a second, things felt better. 

The fight was almost easy, when the ocean seemed to split in two and the waves fell away like wrapping paper to reveal the kaiju you’d been sent for. 

You swung and ducked, dropping explosives strategically, Seungcheol moving in unison with you. There was something graceful about it - something beautiful in the sync, something holy in the way your muscles mimicked each other’s. 

This is what happens when sunlight hits morning dew: it warms, lifts, makes the air humid and sticky until it burns away. 

It rose up in you, your love for him, infusing the air around you, infusing the neural handshake that he was deeply imbedded in.

No. 

You panicked, tried to do several things at once - tried to shove the feeling down, tried to think of something else, tried to push Seungcheol’s consciousness out of yours.

Duellona Fury lurched around you, shuddering. 

“Cherry!” Seungcheol screamed to your left, and then the kaiju hit, its full weight slamming into Duellona’s mainframe.

You both staggered, trying to right yourselves, as the machines around you blinked and beeped and rebooted. 

Seungcheol grunted under the neural weight of driving alone as you gasped and closed your eyes, trying desperately to fix it. Around you, you heard the floating words - recalibrating.

“Recalibrate faster!” you shouted, glancing sideways to see your co-pilot struggling to hold the monster in place, his face contorting with effort, arms straining against the machinery. He bared his gritted teeth, exhaling in a hiss between them. 

You gave yourself a shake, bouncing on the balls of your feet, desperate for the connection to take again so you could pick up your half, take the literal weight from him. As soon as you felt the neural handshake, you gave a mighty shove and Duellona flipped the monster backwards, the ocean receding and then coming back to slam her shins, swallowing the monster whole.

You both sank into a defensive stance, ready for the beast to rise again.

“What was that?” Seungcheol demanded, later, as he sat in the med bay, waiting for his nosebleed to stop. The nosebleed you’d caused by letting him carry a neural load meant for two.

“I don’t know,” you lied, still panicked and desperate. 

“Bullshit,” Seungcheol countered, eyes narrowed. He reached up and pulled the cotton away from his face, examining it. “I’m fine now,” he announced, and tossed the wad into a nearby trash bin, standing.

You fought the urge to cower, knowing he’d never let it go if you did. You followed him silently out of the med bay and back towards your dormitories. Halfway there, he slowed, then stopped.

Then, more calmly this time, he asked, “What happened, Cherry? You pushed me out.”

There was a slight pout to it, a sliver of hurt, and it sliced through you like something tangible, like you were actually wounded from it, like it might actually bleed.

“I don’t know,” you repeated. Guilt poked at you until you relented, gave him something that was at least partly true.  “I got scared.” 

“That can’t happen, and you know it,” he said seriously, his large frame casting a long shadow to your left as he leaned into your space. “You can’t keep secrets - that’s piloting 101. We’ve got to handle it. You know what’s at stake here.”

You did; you did, and that was entirely the problem. It wasn’t just feelings, it wasn’t just your relationship with Seungcheol at stake. It was your relationship with your co-pilot - your ability to fight was at stake, your ability to keep others safe. Your legacy.

Your parents’ wall of pictures flashed in your mind.

“I’m going to my mom and dad’s for a while,” you said quietly. 

He nodded, let you run away - trusted you to come back to him when you were ready, trusted you to let him in.

You weren’t sure if he was right or wrong, as you walked away and left him behind.

You didn’t go to your parents’, though. Instead, you went to the tech bay and sat, watching Duellona undergo simple repairs from her fight. You stayed there, the metal cold beneath your thighs, watching the tech team buff over a scratch on your jaeger’s torso, until someone dropped into the spot next to you, bumping their shoulder roughly into yours.

“Where’s Seungcheol?” Wylie, who co-piloted Fury Striker with Chan, was your closest friend in the Dome besides Seungcheol. 

“He’s pissed at me,” you answered, looking sideways, because the question had really meant, why isn’t Seungcheol with you? 

You weren’t sure she’d understand what you were going through - she and Chan had been obsessed with each other since they were kids. Neither of them had ever had to fear that their love for each other would mess anything up. It had been part of their deal from the start.

“What’d you do?” Wylie demanded, turning her full, unfettered attention on you. You wanted to shrink from the intensity of it - but that was always how Wylie worked: full wattage, all the time.

“Almost got us killed by a fucking Cat-1 tonight,” you muttered, angry at yourself, angry at your heart.

Wylie smacked your arm hard enough to send you sideways. “Cherry!” she scolded. 

“There was something I didn’t want him to see.” You said it in your head first, weighed the words, then forced them through your teeth. You hoped she’d just know what it was, hoped you wouldn’t have to force those words past muscle and bone, too.

Wylie’s face dropped into irritation. “Cherry,” she repeated, disappointment dripping from the two syllables.

You looked up at Duellona Fury again. 

“You can’t do that,” she told you, giving your ankle a little kick for emphasis. “You know you can’t do that.”

You can’t love him? Or, you can’t keep secrets from him?

You didn’t ask. You didn’t want to know the answer.

Seungcheol was waiting up for you when you finally returned to the dorm. You opened the door to find the first room - an entryway and kitchen, both - dimly lit. Beyond it, in the small sitting space, Seungcheol sat facing the door, his chin in his hand.

You knew the look on his face. You knew it so well that you almost ran from it, almost turned right around and went back out to the hallway.

Brows slightly furrowed, mouth a straight line, jaw tight. Eyes focused, locked in. It was the face he made in training before he bodied someone. It was the face he made in the field before an offensive strike. It meant he had his sights on a target, a problem, and he was about to throw everything he had at it.

And right now, you were the problem.

“Hey?” you tried meekly.

He nodded. Licked his lips. Stood. 

He’s pissed at me, you’d told Wylie. The energy radiating from your co-pilot was much more complex than that, the air around you palpably tense and teetering.

“How was it at your parents’?” he asked, voice low. 

You took one tentative step closer. “I didn’t go,” you admitted. One lie between you was already more than you wanted. “I watched them patch up Duellona instead. Talked to Wylie a little.”

He nodded, eyes still on you. Nervousness coursed through you, but it would be a lie - another one - to say it wasn’t laced with a little excitement. He was stunning, always, but like this - it almost took your breath away.

If he was in your mind right now, there’d be no question. He’d know all of it. The attraction, the desire, the fear, the affection, the love, the need. All of it. 

His eyes caught on a bruise peeking out from the short sleeve of your top. “You should’ve had them look at that,” he said, reaching out like he wanted to run his fingers over the dark splotch, but he was just too far away, fingertips closing around the air just an inch or two away. 

You shook your head. “You needed attention first. You carried the neural load alone.” Because of me.

“Only for a minute.”

“A minute too long. I’m… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

It hung between you. You don’t know if you’d inched forward or he had, or both, but you were close enough to touch now when you hadn’t been just seconds ago.

He lifted his eyes, his gaze locking on yours. In the dim room, his eyes shone black. “You pushed me out.”

It was an accusation, but it was also a question.

“I’m sorry,” you repeated, barely able to say it, your voice coming out in a hoarse whisper. “Seungcheol, I was scared.”

Maybe he was in your head. Maybe he did know all of it.

“Don’t be,” he told you. “Don’t be scared.”

His arms were around you though you didn’t see him move. It wasn’t the first time you’d let him embrace you - after a fight, in relief, or in victorious delight, or sometimes just in sleepy affection at the end of a long day. It was far from the first time that you’d found comfort in the space between his arms, strong and capable around your frame, your forehead pressed against his sternum as his heart beat directly into your bones. 

But it was the first time that his fingers, confident and sure, tipped under your chin, guiding you to look up at him, guiding your mouth to meet his.

You don’t know if you melted or exploded - it was somehow both at once. You gripped his back, feeling the muscles move beneath his t-shirt, relaxing into his hold and focusing on the feel of his full lips firm and hungry against your own. This was everything - everything you’d wanted, everything you were afraid of, everything you needed, everything that could rip your life apart.

You didn’t mean to whine, but it slipped up your throat and into the gasped space between your lips and his as you tried to pull in a desperate breath. He responded with a grunt, walking you backwards until the edge of the kitchen counter jutted into your lower back. His hands traveled, up to the back of your neck, back down to the slight curve of your waist, around to the back of your ass. He tugged your hips against his roughly, and you let your head fall back, panting, head spinning.

“Cherry,” he breathed against the newly bared stretch of your neck, his lips close enough to drag against your skin as he spoke.

Your hands found the back of his neck, gave the slightest tug upwards, and he followed, bringing his mouth back to yours. His tongue pressed yours briefly, your moan muffled entirely by his mouth as you tried to press him closer, closer, as if you wanted your rib-cages to meld, to slip together like fitting puzzle pieces. 

His hand slipped lower from your ass and wrapped around your thighs, taking only a second to lift you onto the counter behind you. You wrapped yourself around him immediately, pulling him into the space between your legs, arms around his neck, pulling him in, wanting to feel every bit of him against you. 

His hands found the hem of your shirt and lifted; you raised your arms in compliance and felt the cotton slip over your head and your hands.

“Yours,” you murmured, but he had already reached back between his shoulder blades, his own top joining yours on the floor.

Your hands found him on their own, sliding over his skin, fingers dipping between muscles, thumbs sweeping over shadows.

You kissed until you turned liquid, molten, your fingers wrapped in his hair. His fingers mapped every inch of your skin, as if his job was to report back on every previously unknown dip, every rough circle, every beauty mark or blemish. His fingers traced them all, his hands passing over you reverently.

The brush of his bare chest against your own was torturous; delicious until you were full, until you couldn’t take it anymore, until the electric-sharp thrill became uncomfortable. You tilted backwards, creating more space between your torsos but pushing your hips firmly into his.

You both groaned at the contact. You could feel the heat and weight of him now, and everything instinctual within you urged you to shift further, to bring that heat and heaviness closer to the part of you that ached for it. 

He pressed his hips into you without reservation, your core clenching in response to the movement and the friction. 

Then he leaned back, his hands gripping the edge of the counter, his arms bracketing you on either side, his chest heaving as he struggled to control his breathing. He drank you in, his eyes as molten as you felt. You leaned back on your elbows and met his gaze.

The moment expanded; nothing existed but his eyes and the pant of his breath and the way he smelled like he’d just finished a fight and the way he felt between your thighs, unmovable and steady.

Neither of you was connected to jaeger machinery, but you may as well have been, because you knew without a shadow of a doubt that your minds were connected, the drift be damned. Your eyes locked, you knew he felt everything you felt - the gravity of what you were doing, the love that drove you, the fire coursing through you. If there was going to be hesitation or questioning, this was the moment, this was the pause. But you were one, your minds were one, and there was none of that. 

His unvoiced question definitively answered by the certainty that flowed between you, Seungcheol moved to lift you again, taking you easily from the countertop into the dark of the room you share, settling you on your back on his bottom bunk.

Above you, mostly shadowed, was your other half, the only person who knew and understood every cobwebbed corner of your consciousness, the only person who had walked through your mind and found himself mirrored in every way that mattered. He was beautiful in the fractured light, his expression serious and gaze intense. 

You reached up to slide your thumb along his jaw and his eyes fluttered closed, his breath leaving him as in relief, as if you’d made some kind of admission. 

Making love to Seungcheol felt like drifting. His eyes on you as his fingers pulled you apart felt the same as the careful way he’d watch you when your memories got emotional, like he was watching for any sign that you weren’t okay, that you needed more or less or him. 

The way his breath and shoulders shuddered when he pressed into you for the first time felt the same as when he faltered in face of his father’s memory; both times, his fingers laced through yours and held tight until you could both breathe again.

He felt how you’d always known he would. Perfect - a perfect fit for you, a physical compatibility you had never tested but had always trusted would be there. He took you apart without even trying, and all you could do was hold onto him, feel all of him, feel all of it, and try to remember to breathe.

You didn’t speak as you moved together in the dark; the only sounds in the tight room were muted gasps, tiny moans muffled against necks, skin on skin, the obscene squelching sounds that accompanied each snap of his hips. You didn’t say the words that your lips tried to form - it’s so much, go slow for a little, Seungcheol, I love you, more - please, don’t stop. Maybe he heard them. Maybe this was a different way to drift, one that didn’t need wires.

You did your best to hold his gaze, losing sight of him only when you strained up to kiss him, when you nuzzled your face into the warmth between his neck and shoulder and gasped against a wave of sensation, when you couldn’t help but close them as they rolled back, your toes curling. 

He pressed his forehead to yours when he finished, your name slipping out of him, as if it had been literally squeezed from his lungs. “Cherry… Cherry…”

You lay together in silence for a long time, feeling your hearts slow, your skin cool. Your thumb traced his jaw again and again, slow, worshipful. “Cheol,” you whispered. My Cheol. My everything. You didn’t say the rest as you lay together in the quiet, in the dark, your heartbeats competing. 

You didn’t know that you’d drifted together for the last time. You didn’t know that your ability to neural connect could be broken.

–

The wind whips around you, stinging your face. You barely flinch. When you’d first relocated here, three years ago, the cold had made you literally cry during your first month. Just from having to walk from the door of the dormitory across the yard to the mess hall dorm, the intensity of it had sent you spiraling into misery - damning the circumstances that had sent you here, away from everyone and everything you knew and loved, to a place where the air hurt. 

You were sure it would hurt, this intensely, forever.

But time eased the sting, and despite your doubts you did adjust. Now the early morning wind feels bracing and refreshing rather than painful. You’ve adjusted to a lot of things since relocating to a small training center in Alakanuk, Alaska: the climate, the food, the no-frills campus you lived and worked on. Being away from your parents, from Wylie and Chan and Seungkwan and Jeonghan and all the other pilots you were friends with at the Shatterdome.

Being away from Seungcheol. Being partnerless, a half instead of a whole. 

Being unable to pilot, unable to fight. 

Being brokenhearted.

Just like the cold, the pain of your losses was the same - the sting of heartbreak and loneliness and homesickness faded to something ignorable, something you could keep tucked tight in the back of your mind. 

You can hear the noise from inside the mess hall before you even cross the courtyard. There are short of fifty girls ranging from ages seven to eighteen being housed here, but from the noise you’d swear it was at least a hundred. 

The buildings are single-storied, painted with a heavily-chipping grey-blue that sometimes seems to belong to the mist you often get rolling in from the ocean. When you’d first come, you’d legitimately thought they were painted that way as camouflage, meant to blend in with the sea. The other trainers had a good laugh about that. 

As you cross the courtyard between the trainers’ dorms and the mess hall, you breathe deeply, eyes on the birds alight above you. After a lifetime in the Shatterdome, you don’t take for granted the fresh air you’re afforded as you pass between buildings, outside, the sky open and changing above. You don’t take for granted the rhythm of the ocean, the cries of the gulls, nor the distant treeline.

It was Seungcheol who had noted that you were sheltered, having never lived outside of the Dome. 

It was Seungcheol you could blame - at least halfway - for your relocation here, where there wasn’t a jaeger or even a city for hundreds of miles. 

When you pull open the flimsy door to the mess hall, the noise triples. Several of the girls call out to greet you, and you give them a quick wave as you head to the table where the staff eats.

“You’re later than normal,” one of the other instructors notes as you reach for a piece of bread.

You shrug lightly, unbothered. “Still have plenty of time before the first class. What day is today, Thursday? I’ve got the little ones first, right?”

The all-girls training center is meant to teach fighting and the groundworks for drifting, but no jaegers are housed here, no teams launch into the icy bay. The girls here will grow up to pilot - if they get selected, if they get paired with a partner. 

You’re mostly here to teach them to fight, the way you trained in the Dome, but you do plenty more. Help brush hair in the mornings, console tearful faces, teach games and sports, mediate arguments. You also got sucked into running one literacy class a week, though you still haven’t figured out how that happened. 

It would be a lie to say this wasn’t fulfilling, that you didn’t love the girls you cared for, that you weren’t happy here with the ocean and birds and trees and laughter. In many ways, the seclusion of this training center is exactly what you needed to get back on your feet, to find strength in yourself, to heal with distance and time.

But, god, what you would give for a real fight. What you would give to feel both loved and threatened by Wylie, to rib at the guys, to hug your mom. What you would give to hear Seungcheol’s teasing pout, to catch his gaze across the span of your jaeger and know what his body and yours will do, to feel his fingers just barely graze your back when he knows you need to be reminded to focus.

The final time you’d tried, the neural connection never took. It was like trying to connect with a stranger. It had simply been still, a thing that was never alive.

“Don’t do this,” Seungcheol had begged, and that had been the nail in the coffin.

Don’t do this, he’d said. It had landed like blame. Like everything was your fault, and only yours. Like you had broken the connection on purpose, were keeping him out, barricading your mind from his when you desperately wanted everything to go right back to normal.

After that failure, you didn’t tell him you were asking to be reassigned. You didn’t want to give him the chance to say don’t do this a second time.

You’ve just ended a class, the girls starting to filter out through the training room’s side door towards the mess hall for lunch, when the center’s Administrator calls your name from the door.

“There’s a call for you on my line. I have them holding.”

A call? 

Adrenaline races through you; it has to be an emergency. Your parents and friends can reach you on your own device, which is tucked into your back pocket. To call the mainline here at the center means this is a base-to-base call, not a personal one.

You’ve only been in this office a handful of times in your few years here, and you shuffle awkwardly around the desk and pick up the receiver that sits abandoned on the chipped, wooden desktop. 

You greet the person on the line with your real name. 

“Cherry?”

Your Marshall - your old Marshall, from the Dome - sounds unsure if he has the right person on the line. No one has called you Cherry in three years. Even your parents have used your given name the few times they’ve said it on your weekly calls home.

“It’s me,” you affirm. “Is everything okay? My parents?”

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says, and you heave a relieved breath. “Everyone is fine. This is official business. I want to call you in.”

You shake your head, frowning, well aware that he can’t see your reaction. Your body has said no, but you force yourself to ask, “Me? Why?”

“We’re down a few teams,” the Marshall says. “And -”

“You’ve got more recruits than places to put them,” you counter before he can finish. “Call one of the new teams up. Call three new teams up. You don’t need me.”

“We do - we need teams with experience, teams that are ready. Not rookies bumbling around looking for mistakes. We need precision. We need Duellona Fury.”

Your Marshall lays out the situation: the teams that are out, the problems they’re having at the breach - less time between attacks, more monsters at once. You’ve seen this before, you all have, and there’s protocol in place - protocol that starts with all hands on deck. 

You shake your head again. From the door, the Administrator of the center watches you seriously, like she knows you’re being taken away. 

“Marshall, with all due respect, I don’t know why you’re calling me,” you admit. “What can I give you? I can’t pilot Duellona.”

Not anymore. 

The Marshall sighs, like he knew this argument was coming and didn’t have a good response. 

“I think you can,” he says finally. “I’m not saying it will be easy, and I’m not saying it will happen quickly or without effort. But I think you can.”

“No,” you say, the first time you’ve voiced it. “You were there. You saw what happened. We can’t drift anymore.”

“You couldn’t then,” he points out. “That was three years ago. You’ve both had a lot of time to…. You’ve both had a lot of time since then. Things that were once too painful to carry into the drift… they’ve had time to mellow.”

This blow knocks you into silence. You sink your teeth into your bottom lip, eyes steadfastly on the warped wood of the desk, fingers toying absently with the Administrator’s pen. 

He’s wrong, and you want to tell him so. Nothing had mellowed. You love Seungcheol just as much today as you did three years ago. The splitting ache in your chest that you’ve felt every day since you became aware of loving him has only worked its way deeper with time. 

And Seungcheol’s anger? The anger and betrayal he’d leveled at you, when he was sure you were keeping him out of your head on purpose? You couldn’t speak for him, but if you had to guess, there weren’t enough years in a human life to let that hurt mellow into something safe enough to drift with.

“Have you talked to him about this?” You’re afraid of the answer. 

The Marshall hesitates. “Not yet.”

“You might want to do that first,” you point out. “Before flying me back only to have him refuse.” 

The Marshall’s voice hardens, and you can just picture his eyes narrowing. “Mr. Choi will follow orders,” he says evenly, “and so will you. Asking is really just a courtesy.”

“You can’t order us into being able to drift again,” you snap, pulse suddenly pounding in your arms, your hands, your face, your chest. 

“No,” the Marshall says, and any previous friendliness is gone from his voice now, “but I can - and will - order you to try.”

The girls cry when you tell them you’re leaving, and it makes you want to cry, too. You hold it together as you give them hugs, hold it together as you pack your single bag of belongings. You hold it together in the passenger seat of the center’s only beat-up van, waving out the back window as the training center fades away.

It’s standing on the deck of the ferry, the coast receding and the sea wind clawing at your face, that you let it go. You bury your face behind your hands and feel it release behind your ribs. You cry for all of it - for leaving the girls behind, for leaving a place that had sheltered you like a sanctuary. For the time you’d lost at the Dome, for the fights you’d sat out, for the years with your parents and friends that had slipped away like sand between your fingers. For your fear that Seungcheol will turn you away, just as hurt and angry as he was one thousand and ninety-five days ago. 

You’d been so determined to keep him from walking through the depths of your love for him, in the drift. You were so scared it would be too much, too intense, too much emotion for the drift. You’d been scared it would be too much for him - that the weight of it would inherently ask for more than he could give you in return. You’d been scared it would ruin your partnership, your compatibility, your capability to co-pilot.

But that had happened anyway. You almost have to laugh. 

As furiously as your tears begin, they peter out quickly. You take a few deep gulps of salty air, use the backs of your hands to wipe at your cheeks and beneath your nose. As you calm down, you keep your eyes on the horizon, your hands tight on the ship’s railing, and you let your mind wander back to Seungcheol. Here, thousands of miles away, you let yourself think back to those last weeks before you left the Shatterdome. You let yourself wonder, for the first time, what exactly caused everything to crumble.

You’d been so afraid to let Seungcheol into your head once the loving him had taken over. Why had it scared you so badly? As you keep your eyes on the grey of the horizon, you puzzle it out in your mind.

Had it been the uncertainty? That had certainly played a part. Did Seungcheol love you, back then? If he didn’t, everything between you could have changed - your friendship, your partnership, your ability to drift. It hadn’t seemed worth the risk to lose it all - his presence in your life, your ability to fight together. 

But maybe he had. If he did love you, back then… that would have changed things, too. What if starting something romantic affected your drift? There were too many maybes, too many variables. It had seemed safe to push it all down, to try and keep him away from it. To try and keep things the same.

Of course, you’d lost it all anyway.

Even if he did love you three years ago, you think as the sea air whips around you, did he love you the way you loved him? What if it had been too much - the way you could breathe once he was with you, the way you kept each other in check - what if he had loved you, but not that much?

Had it been a mistake to keep him out? Maybe. But it could have been just as catastrophic to let him in. There was no way to know, now.

You turn away from the ship’s railing, away from the horizon and the sea, away from your mistakes. There’s no use looking back like this. You can’t change it. You aren’t even sure you can fix it.

You were hoping to sleep on the plane, but you’re woefully awake well after take-off. Determined not to keep ruminating on what had happened before you left, instead you wonder what awaits you now.

The most-likely scenario, you think, professional and polite - but cold. Like you, he takes duty and responsibility seriously. The airplane bumps, a pocket of air jostling the small craft, and your hands find the armrests and cling tight until it stops.

The best case scenario, of course, would be that enough time has passed that Seungcheol’s hurt has faded. Maybe, you think, maybe he’s moved on from harboring that anger. Maybe he’ll greet you warmly, maybe you’ll pick up right where you left off.

This hope, this day-dream, aches, so much that you blink it away and turn to watch the clouds through the window, a desperate distraction. You crave Seungcheol - you crave feeling safe with his arms around you, you crave the elation you’d feel when he entered the room you were in, you crave the peace that comes with two minds engaged in neural handshake - the peace of someone’s mind interlaced with your own, understanding you, operating with you, picking up half of your mental lift.

You crave his giggle when you say something stupid in the dark of the dorm before bed, his pout when he feels like he isn’t getting enough attention, you crave his voice echoing in your head long after he’s gone asleep because you heard him talk to you all day long. 

You crave his lips on yours, his teeth on your neck, his hands on your body, even if you only had it once. You’ve craved it ever since.

You crave closing your eyes and pressing your forehead to his sternum, feeling safe and quiet and like you belong. You miss the sanctuary of that space, chest to chest with him, something sacred in the way it exists only for you.

You know you can’t have it - any of it. The daydream isn’t real. Your curse will be to crave it forever, alone.

When you arrive at the Shatterdome, it’s your parents who greet you just inside. For a moment, you’re happy to be back, overcome with emotion as you hug them tight. They’ve aged in these three years. You’ve missed them awfully. You only tell them the latter. 

They walk with you to the Marshall’s office, where you’re meant to report upon arrival. 

You hesitate, covering the moment by tugging your duffle’s strap higher on your shoulder. Your mother reads you anyway, reaching out and giving your shoulder a squeeze. 

“It will be okay,” she whispers. 

Your father catches on. “You’ve faced down worse,” he reasons. 

You disagree. There’s no monster in the sea bigger than your love for Seungcheol, no wounding possible that could hurt more than losing him has. But you appreciate the sentiment, so you give them each a grateful nod, tell them you’ll visit after dinner, and turn to knock on the door.

“Come in,” the Marshall’s voice carries through the door, and you turn the knob and step inside. 

All you see is Seungcheol; the Marshall, the office furniture, the flickering screens on the walls all snap into nonexistence in the presence of your former lover. He’s the only thing in the room that comes into focus. Everything else is just fuzzy noise.

His face wavers for a moment when your eyes meet his, the muscles rippling as he fights to get them under control. 

You don’t know what reaction he’s fighting. You don’t know if he’s feeling happiness or hatred. You don’t know if he’s fighting a smile or a scowl.

You give him a quick bow in greeting, and he returns it. His face is stone, now, his mouth tight and eyes flat. 

He turns to face the Marshall, to receive orders, so you do the same.

“I trust your travel went well?” the Marshall begins.

You nod, not trusting yourself to speak. Even the single syllable of yes will come out of your mouth like gravel and dirt and sand, getting everywhere, leaving a trail.

“Your orders,” he says then, a bit of a sigh on his tone - as if he knows the uphill battle this will be, “are to reconnect as best you can. You’ll follow your old schedule. You’ll spar, you’ll meditate, and you’ll talk. After some time, we’ll try the drift again, see if the connection has recovered any.”

Seungcheol’s voice startles you when he speaks. “How long do you imagine it will be before we try?” he asks, just cold enough to have a sliver of sarcasm in it. 

The Marshall’s eyes narrow, just slightly, as if he’d caught it. “That’s entirely up to you two,” he says evenly. “When you were young and hungry to fight, you trained yourselves into exhaustion. You spent every waking second trying to cultivate the bond that would carry you into your jaeger. With the same intention and drive, I imagine you could be piloting Duellona within the week.”

You fight to keep your chin up, your eyes on the Marshall, instead of ducking your head and watching the floor. The Marshall lifts his arm and glances at his watch. 

“Your allotted time in Sparring Room 7 begins on the hour,” he says. This is his way of dismissing you.

In the hallway, you pause. “I’m just going to drop my bag in the dorm,” you say quietly, not looking at Seungcheol. 

He gives a tight nod. “Fine,” he says, and turns to go the other way, towards the sparring and training rooms. Clearly he intends to meet you there. You heave a deep breath, and turn back towards the wing with the dorms.

Stepping into the dorm you used to share with Seungcheol hits you harder than you thought it would. You’re not sure what you expected - to feel like coming home, maybe, or perhaps to be slapped with the memories of you and Seungcheol together, dancing around each other as you hurried to get dressed for a drop, lazing around in the sitting area after a full day of training. And, of course, the single night you’d spent together.

Neither thing happens. You aren’t overcome by a feeling of nostalgia and love, nor are you inundated by memories of what you’ve lost. Instead, the room feels exactly as it is: empty and still.

Your footsteps’ echoes taunt you as you walk through the kitchen, the sitting area, and into the bedroom. It’s pristine to the point of detriment; it feels like no one lives there. You set your bag on the floor near the foot of the bed - you can unpack later, after training - and turn to go.

Strangely, it’s stepping into the training room that slams you with memory and nostalgia. The wood cool beneath your feet, the vague smell of sweat and citrus-y cleaner, the sounds of punches landing and grunts of effort from the training rooms on either side - they all cocoon you in history, making goosebumps rise on your arms as the emotions surround you.

It makes sense, you think, as Seungcheol glances over his shoulder at the sound of your arrival. He doesn’t speak to you, just swaggers to the center of the room and takes a stance you recognize from Form One. Your body leads you opposite him, muscle memory guiding you into the first form you ever learned with him. It makes sense that this would be what felt like home - your minds going empty together, your bodies following the steps in unison. The sparring forms are the closest you can get to drifting without an actual neural connection.

Well, that and sleeping together, but you don’t see that on your agenda.

You stare at him across the invisible circle between you and try to read him. His face is cold and empty, but that already tells you so much about what he’s feeling. Seungcheol was never cold with you. When you fought together he slipped into that mode you loved so much - ready to level anything, chin lifted, eyes narrowed, confident and so very strong. But it was when you were together outside the fights that you had loved him best - often pouting, lips protruding, voice lifting into a whine. And the best of all - that smile, dimples creating shadows that beg for your thumb to press them, eyes squeezing shut with happiness or laughter.

Something must show on your face, because you watch the muscles in Seungcheol’s upper body untense, as if he’d been ready to fight and recognized that you weren’t.

“I’m good,” you mutter quickly, before he can ask. It feels better to lie to him before he actually asks you, like that’s somehow less dishonest. “Let’s go.”

Form One is basic - no hits, no fancy moves. At the training center, you’d teach it to the littlest ones until they had it memorized. It was really about control and communication - precision and alignment with your partner. You had to breathe together as your feet traced opposite circles across the knots in the wooden floor. You had to rise and bend in unison. It was about watching and listening.

You and Seungcheol could - literally, you’d tried more than once - do it blindfolded in perfect step with one another. Before. You don’t know if you still can. But, now, unblindfolded, it’s too easy.

You move through forms one through six without incident - both of you flowing as easily as water.

Form Seven is the first form that incorporates actual hits and blocks. You’ll have to touch for the first time, even if it’s forearm to forearm or ankle to shoulder. You move right as he moves left, crouch and circle as his right foot flies over your head, stand and punch where you know his open hand will be waiting to stop you.

It is, and you press your fist against it for just a second before spinning away to continue the form. You ache, even as your body continues following the steps, to have him entirely again - to meet his eyes and smile the way you both used to, because you were pleased with what your bodies could do. Because you had each other, completely.

After the tenth form, you bow, turn, and walk out of the ring. You drink some water, your back to him. Years ago you’d have used this break to chat, but you don’t know what to say to him. You’re scared that he’ll shut down anything you say, whether you choose small talk or go straight for the heart of the problem, and you honestly don’t think you can shoulder his rejection right now. So you stay quiet.

After a few short minutes of rest, you return to the center of the room. This is when you’ll spar for real.

You and Seungcheol had done this for years before things went wrong. You’d long ago adjusted to how hard you should hit, how to dodge his moves, how to make this a dance as much as a fight. Now, you feel like it’s your first time again.

Seungcheol attacks as you’d expect - all offensive, pushy, succeeding in herding you backwards even as you dodge each blow. You know his goal is to flip you, and normally you can avoid that by forcing him to go on the defensive as he avoids your own hits. Simply dodging won’t be enough - eventually he’ll cage you in unless you distract him.

You throw yourself into a summersault and manage to get behind him - an opportune moment to strike. You shift your weight to follow the blow as you twist your hips to send a kick towards his unprotected head. He turns just too late - the blow will land.

You can’t do it. You freeze, your core working to keep you upright as you fight your own momentum, halting the kick inches from his temple.

You know immediately that pulling the hit was a mistake. His eyes narrow, and he sweeps his foot at the ankle you’re balancing on. You crash to the ground, heaving a breath and taking quick inventory.

You aren’t hurt. Not this time.

“Get up, Cherry,” he says darkly, moving back to the center to start again. “And don’t do that shit again.”

He comes at you full force in the next match, too. You dodge and weave, but you don’t try to strike. You know he knows it; this isn’t how it used to work. You can almost feel him get angrier as you fight, but you can’t make yourself hit back. You want him to knock you down, you deserve to take some shots.

You take two blows to the back and one to a shoulder; you fall back unsteadily but manage to find your footing and roll away from his next kick.

The match continues - you taking a handful of blows, though none with the force to level you, and Seungcheol with his lip curled in fury.

“If you’re not going to fight, then leave,” he spits.

“Would if I could,” you retort without thinking. You mean that you don’t want to be here like this - not talking, cold, at odds. But you know it reads as not wanting to be here at all.

It seems like everything you say and do only hurts him more.

“I didn’t mean -” you start, and Seungcheol takes your arms and flips you over his shoulders.

“Don’t waste my fucking time,” he says, brushing his hands together and stepping back to give you room to pick yourself up.

“Don’t curse at me,” you answer, pushing yourself to your hands and knees, pausing to catch your breath before rising fully again.

He shakes his head, rolls his eyes a little.

You hate this side of him.

You know you deserve it. For pushing him out. For leaving him here. For loving him, messing everything up, when he never asked for that.

“Seungcheol,” you say, but he ignores you, pacing a few steps and then turning to face you, lowering himself into a defensive stance, ready to spar again.

“Cheol,” you try again. “Listen to me.”

“Marshall scheduled us time to talk later,” he says flatly. “Right now we’re scheduled to fight. So fight me, Cherry. Let’s go.”

The rest of the hour continues the same. By the time it’s over, Seungcheol storms out without speaking to you, furious over every single pulled punch.

You don’t know what to do to make it all better.

You shower quickly, dressing in dry linens, and then re-emerge for the hours you’re scheduled to meditate together. You hope that maybe this will help the situation - maybe not talking will be good for you, give you a chance to feel your connection without the chance to fuck it up with words.

You’re wrong; trying to meditate together is just as desperately fruitless as sparring had been.

You can’t focus at all - can’t shift your attention to your breath, to your body, to the earth beneath you, to the energy of your partner.

Your partner is the distraction, though he sits perfectly still, eyes closed. He might as well be yelling. His shoulders are tight, his jaw still clenched. Anger radiates off him so strongly that it makes your stomach hurt, makes you want to cower from it. You can’t stop watching him, hoping you’ll see him relax, hoping you’ll see the moment that he lets go.

He doesn’t.

“Your eyes are supposed to be closed,” he murmurs, and you feel your face heat, embarrassed that he knew you were watching him.

“I can’t,” you admit. Maybe, you think, you should just be brutally honest, starting now. It’s not like you could make this worse. “I can’t stop noticing how angry -”

“Then stop pissing me off,” he snaps, eyes opening. “Just a suggestion.”

“Don’t talk to me like that!” you cry, and push yourself to stand. You’re not sure why - maybe just to pace. “You never used to talk to me like this. Who are you?”

He looks at the floor, the first sign of guilt you’ve seen since you came home.

“Fine,” he finally bites back, and you know it’s as close to sorry as you’ll get. “I’ll reign it in. Sit back down.”

You shift your weight, arms crossed defensively across your chest, and close your eyes, deciding.

“Sit down, Cherry,” he repeats, and it’s gentler now. That’s what makes you cave, and you settle back across from him.

He’s less tense this time, so you eventually manage to close your eyes and count your breaths. But you’re still feeling for him, reaching for him in your mind, and coming up with nothing between you fingers. Touching him is as possible as touching the fog that used to blanket the training center, thick enough to blind you but impossible to grasp.

The pain feels like a cramp, except it’s behind your ribs instead of in your muscles. The pain grips and tightens, takes over. You want him, you want to be his again, you want to be inside these walls - where you used to fit comfortably. The fact that you’re out here, without him, aches so badly it makes you nauseated.

You want to beg him - let me in again, let me back in, let me be close to you again.

It won’t do any good, and you know it.

He was yours - you had him, you knew him, you could reach out to him and he’d pick you up. You’d taken it for granted, and you’d run away from it. You’d chosen to let it go, and now all you get is this: Seungcheol, cold and closed. Seungcheol, hating you for everything that happened.

—

Dinner is just as bad.

You go to the mess hall eager to see Wylie and Jeonghan and Seungkwan and all the other friends you haven’t seen in years. Wylie screeches like a banshee when she spots you, crossing the mess hall in a blur and hugging you so tightly that you both stagger, off balance, until Seungkwan joins the hug and rights you again.

“I missed you both so much,” you whisper, the only vulnerability anyone’s going to get out of you today.

“Then don’t leave again!” Wylie snaps, but you know the admonishment is full of love.

“I can’t promise,” you admit. Honestly, you’ve already made up your mind - you want to go back to Alaska. You’re not wanted here, not by the person who matters. What good are you, taking up a bed, if you can’t drift?

You’ve already given up hope that he’ll come around.

Seated at the table, you listen while your friends fill you in on what you’ve missed in three years - the fights in the bay, the new teams of pilots, the illnesses and injuries. You almost don’t notice Seungcheol silently takes a seat on Jeonghan’s other side, but something in you prickles, like you’ve sensed him.

The tension around the table heightens; the conversation goes a little stilted. When it’s apparent that he’s going to ignore you two seats down from him, Wylie slaps her hand flat on the tabletop.

“Come on, Seungcheol,” she scolds, and you’re sure no one wonders what she means.

His face goes dark so quickly it’s alarming. “Don’t,” he tells her darkly, one finger coming up to point at her in warning.

Her own eyes narrow and dart to her fork. Beside her, Chan’s eyes pingpong between them. He’s probably wondering if he should hold her back or join her.

“It’s fine,” you mutter, grabbing your tray and making to rise. “I’ll go.”

“Cherry, no,” Wylie protests, and then turns a glower onto your ex-co-pilot as if to say see what you did?

“It’s fine,” you repeat, standing. “I told my mom and dad I’d come by.”

You slink out before anyone else can argue.

You can’t even be mad at him - you did this by pushing him away. You hammered every last nail in the coffin by requesting to transfer. You pushed him out and you left him behind and now you have to face the reality that you can’t have him anymore. He isn’t yours, not anymore.

When you return to your dorm, he’s already in bed, the lights out. He’s facing the wall so you can only see his back, can only see the angry, tight shoulder poking out the top of the sheets. It tells you everything you need to know.

You don’t try to talk to him. You just go to bed.

—

You spend four days identically - fighting while sparring, not meditating, and avoiding Seungcheol’s ice-out. On the fifth day, your Marshall loses patience and changes your schedule. Your entire day is blocked to working on Duellona’s mainframe - buffing, repainting, greasing, and anything else you’re able to handle on your own.

“Since you can’t do anything else useful,” he adds, and you avoid Seungcheol’s eyes, ashamed.

Standing under Duellona’s unlit frame fills you with guilt. It feels like you’re letting her down, disappointing her by letting her rust here, failing your half of the bargain. You run your hands gently over the metal, finding the rough spots that need attention. Somewhere to your left, you can hear the telltale sounds of Seungcheol tightening bolts.

You work in silence for hours.

Eventually, you crack. You’re not sure if it’s the monotony of the task, the tension woven into the silence between you too, or being so close to your jaeger but unable to fight in it - maybe a combination. Something pushes at you from the inside, like a balloon trying to inflate under your skin and running out of room.

You flop backwards on the metal walkway, the grooves digging into your back. “What are we doing?” you ask, and you hear the tool Seungcheol had been using cling loudly as he sets it down.

“Following orders?” he says, stepping around Duellona’s side to look at you. “Fixing up the jaeger?”

“Fixing up the jaeger we don’t get to pilot?” you ask, sitting back up to look at him better.

“Is that what you’re here for?” he asks, the sudden ferocity of it surprising you. “To fight? Is that why you came back?”

You reach up to the walkway’s railing and pull yourself up. You feel yourself frowning at his question, at the heat behind it. 

“I’m back because the Marshall gave me an order,” you say slowly. 

“And that’s it?” he demands. 

You stare at him. You feel sure there’s more to the question, more that he’s asking. You feel sure, after knowing Choi Seungcheol down to the last molecule, that he’s really asking, you didn’t come back for me?

And it confuses you. You try to think about your split from his perspective: you’d shut him out, then slept with him, and then vanished. You’d made a lot of assumptions about his anger since then. You assumed he was angry at you for pushing him out of your head. You assumed he was angry at you for sleeping with him and then leaving. You assumed he was angry with you for ruining your drift, for ripping him away from the ability to fight. You assumed he was angry because he never knew why - never knew what it was that you were so desperate to hide, never knew why sleeping together had made things so much worse that the neural connection had fizzled into nothing altogether.

Is there more to it, his anger?

Should you call him on it, should you ask?

You take too long deciding. Seungcheol scoffs, like he’s disgusted with you. “I should have known,” he says coldly. “Princess of the Shatterdome, I should have known you only cared about piloting - about your legacy.”

This is something you’ve never said to him - that your desire to shine as brightly as your parents has weighed on you. This is something he’d pulled from the drift, something he only knew from tiptoeing around your mind before a fight. 

“That isn’t fair,” you say, your voice hard. “Is there another reason I should have come back? I’d love to hear it.”

He hears the challenge as it is - you didn’t ask me to come back, the Marshall did. You let me go.

He has nothing to say for himself, just stares back at you, eyes narrowed in anger, chest moving too quickly as he battles with his temper.

“Exactly,” you say curtly. The victory stings. It doesn’t feel like a win at all. “The bottom line is I’m here now, and we can pilot again if we can get our shit together.”

He shakes his head. “You left,” he says finally. “That’s the bottom line. You decided you were out, you decided you didn’t want me in your head, and then you left.”

He watches you, waits for you to say something. When you don’t, he lets out a derisive little laugh. “We’re both wasting our time here. The drift won’t work. We aren’t going to fix it.”

For the first time, fear slices through you like steel. “You can’t know that,” you say. You hear the fear in the way your voice comes out low and rounded, barely sounding like you at all.

“I can,” he retorts. “You know how I know? Because I don’t want to. You wanted me out of your head so badly? You got it. Can’t turn back now.”

He heads for the ladder, swings around and finds the third rung down with ease.

“So that’s it?” you ask his retreating form. Your heart is hammering and you’re starting to get tunnel vision. 

The only answer he gives you are his feet hitting each new rung with a clunk and a vibration that rattles up your legs.

—

You go to the training rooms alone and run through the forms just to do something; your mind turns the problem over and over as your body goes through the motions. After, you take a longer shower than normal, letting the water run hotter than you normally would.

After, you go to the Marshall’s office, determined. Or maybe resigned.

When he opens the door, he already looks irritated, like he knew exactly who would be on the other side.

“Requesting an audience,” you say flatly, fighting the instinct to cross your arms defensively.

He glances at his watch. “Five minutes.”

You step inside but leave the door open.

“I’m requesting transfer back to Alakanuk,” you tell him as evenly as you can manage. You’re sure he’s not surprised. “Seungcheol has made it very clear that we won’t be fighting together again. If that’s the case, then I can’t do anything useful here. But in Alakanuk I can.”

You pause, looking to see if you can read anything on the Marshall’s face - any hint that he’s considering what you’re saying, or that it’s a lost cause. He gives you nothing.

“Please,” you say. “Those girls need me. If I can’t help here, I can help them.”

The Marshall tilts his head just slightly. “Surely anyone can teach little girls the forms.”

You shake your head. “It’s more than that, and you know it. It’s not about the forms. I love those girls. I came back here to follow orders, and I tried. But if it isn’t going to happen… Please, don’t make me waste time here if I can be with them instead.”

The silence when you stop speaking seems to last for hours. Your heart pounds, and you work on keeping your breathing even. If he tells you no, you might just lose it, just give up entirely.

Finally, he takes a breath and seems to consider you. “If,” he says, and your eyes widen with hope, “your co-pilot agrees, then I will reassign you back to Alaska. But only if he will agree.”

“No problem,” you say quickly. Seungcheol was the one who said it was over. He should have no problem letting you leave.

When you step out of the Marshall’s office, Seungcheol steps out of the shadows. You should be surprised to see him, but in the Shatterdome it feels right that he just is wherever you are. That’s always how it was, before.

You look at him disdainfully. “I assume you heard that conversation?”

He nods, once.

“So?” you ask. “Will you tell him you approve, so I can go?”

For the first time since you returned, Seungcheol smiles, tight and sarcastic.

“No,” he says easily, like it’s kind of funny.

Fury erupts inside you; you can’t even pinpoint where in your body it stems from. “Why?” you demand. “Because you feel like I took something from you, so you want to take something from me?”

He doesn’t respond to this. You know you’re right. You know him. You know his mind.

“I hate to fuck up your narrative,” you spit at him, “but I’ve lost out here just as much as you have. You’re not the only one who lost the ability to fight. You’re not the only one who lost their partner.”

You wish you could tell him the rest - you’re not the one who spent three years with a broken heart on top of it. He had lost you as a partner and a friend - you had lost him in the same ways, and you’d had to harbor your broken heart.

He shakes his head. “Poor baby,” he bites sarcastically, and then takes off down the hallway, into the dark.

—

You stop sleeping at the dorm. Sometimes you sleep at your parents’, sometimes on Wylie and Chan’s tiny couch, sometimes in bed with Seungkwan, who kicks at you and whines that you take up too much space. Sometimes you sleep inside Duellona Fury, sitting up, your back against her metal frame.

The Marshall seems to have taken some pity on you. He schedules your mornings training the Dome’s recruits, and lets Seungcheol get back to what he was doing in your absence - which seems to be on track to move up in rank, to maybe become a Marshall himself, someday. It isn’t quite the same as being back with your girls, but training recruits feels at least somewhat fulfilling. And it keeps you and Seungcheol busy - separately - until afternoon.

Then, he schedules you to spar.

In your first week, you’d been unwilling to hit Seungcheol. You’d been feeling guilty for hurting him, sad for your time apart, hopeful that if you were soft to him, then he’d be soft back to you.

Now, you’re fucking furious.

For the first time, when the match begins, you hit him first. He’s surprised for only a second, eyebrows shooting up as he stumbles for balance, and then you watch something delighted and devilish fall over his face. Like he knows exactly what dance this is, and he’s been learning the steps in secret.

The match is brutal, reminiscent of your very first one, when you were both nineteen. You throw hit after hit his way; he blocks or dodges all of them. But he can’t get a hit on you either - you’re too quick, spurred on by fury. You’ve been angry in a fight before. But you’ve never been angry at him.

You spin and throw up a kick, expecting his forearm to rise and block it. Instead, you knock him in the jaw.

He grunts, hand flying up to cover his mouth, and you drop your stance with a gasp.

“Shit!” you cry, hurrying closer. “I’m so sorry! Are you bleeding? Let me look.”

“‘M fine,” he mutters thickly from behind his hand, but you ignore him. For a second, things are how they used to be between you. He lets you peel his hand away, lets you gingerly turn his head this way and that, even opens up so you can check his teeth.

“You’re gonna have a fat lip,” you tell him regretfully. “But nothing’s bleeding. Teeth look okay. Anything loose in there?”

He pokes around his teeth with his pinky. “Nope.”

You take a step back, cowed. “I’m really sorry.”

He laughs a little, wryly. “I bet you feel better, though.”

You bite back a smile. “Actually…” you say, and he laughs again. You both do.

Somehow, this seems to be the thing that cracks the anger you’ve both been encased in, unable to move forward or backward. You feel melted, and you wonder if he feels freer now, too.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” you say. You mean the kick, but the words land heavy.

He avoids your gaze. “I need some water,” he says, turning and heading to the side of the room.

You do the same, sitting heavily on the bench where your water waits for you.

“Hey,” he says, and you look over, brows raised in anticipation. “Tell me about Alaska.”

You can’t help but smile.

“It’s so beautiful,” you tell him. “God, Cheol, the ocean there. And the birds, and the snow…”

He’s watching you, listening, but while he listens he stands and heads to the center of the ring, settling into a starting form. With a small smile, you follow, standing opposite him. He starts an easy match that’s mostly just following the eighth form. It includes some hits and blocks, but you both do them gently, easily, circling each other slowly.

“So you liked it?” he asks. You can hear how hard he’s working to make it sound casual.

“It was so beautiful,” you admit before ducking below a kick. “But it was also… really hard.”

“What was the best part?” he asks.

You smile, block a hit. He almost gets his hands on you for a flip, but you dodge around behind him. He turns to follow you. “Weirdly, it was taking care of them outside of class. We - the instructors - we kind of their moms, away from home, you know? I’m the one who knew Yejin won’t sleep unless someone sits by her bed for a while. I’m the one that knew that Farrah and Salome only argue because they’re competitive. I’m the one that knew that Maria and Anjali don’t know their times-tables, that Ximena can’t brush her own hair, or that Iseul is allergic to fish. I loved them. I loved knowing them.”

He looks at you for a long time. “Maybe you should go back,” he says finally.

It feels like a trap. 

You look at the floor, at the wall, then finally back at him. “If you’ll do this for real,” you say carefully, “then I’d rather be here. If we’re actually trying, then I don’t want to go.”

He’s quiet for a long time. Finally, he swallows hard, not looking at you.

“What was the worst part?”

There’s only one answer.

“Missing you,” you say. “Losing you.”

He manages to get both of your arms and hauls you over his shoulders. You land on your back so hard that the air is knocked out of your lungs and your eyes close protectively. For a second, you lay there panting, waiting for the pain in your back to settle down, waiting for the stars behind your eyelids to calm.

When you open them again, the ceiling coming into focus above you, the room is empty.

–

You have a hunch on where you can find him, and you head to the jaeger bay. Sure enough, he’s sitting below Duellona, knees to his chest, staring up at her.

You sit next to him and he doesn’t get up and leave, which you take as a good sign.

“I can’t do this if you’re not all in,” he tells you without looking at you. “You walked away from me once. I can’t let you back in my head if there’s any possibility you’ll walk away again. If you’re with me, I need you to be with me.”

Something prickles in the back of your head. You feel like you’re starting to realize something - the seed of an understanding is pushing delicately through the dirt, but hasn’t yet spread out its leaves under the warmth of the sun yet.

Something about his hurt. Something about why.

“I think we should try to drift,” you tell him.

This seems to startle him - he forgets to be cold, turns to look at you, eyebrows raised in surprise.

“I can tell you how much I missed you,” you reason, “and tell you about how I spent every minute just… steeped in regret. Or we can walk through it - you can see for yourself.”

You know what you’re risking. If he gets into your head now, he’ll see it all - he’ll know everything, he’ll be able to feel for himself the depth of your loss, the height of your love. 

But what’s the harm, now? You can’t lose him twice. Maybe it’ll be enough for him to realize you hadn’t left him because you didn’t care about him. Maybe it’ll be enough for his forgiveness. 

Maybe then, he’ll tell the Marshall to let you go back to Alakanuk. 

It’s Seungkwan you bother, since he’d been in mission control before finding his team of co-pilots. The sideways look he gives you as he walks to your conn pod is withering, but you know better than to take it personally.

You buzz with nerves. The last time you’d tried this, the neural handshake hadn’t even connected. There had just been nothing.

The second you hear neural handshake initiating, you almost sob with relief. You can’t even pay attention to the memories - Seungcheol’s memories - floating around you; you want to collapse, to press your palms to the ground and thank the universe for letting you back in.

His first memories are a breeze - the ones you’ve jogged through together hundreds of times: his first home, his school, his father’s hospital room, the Dome. Then you slow your pace, because this is new.

You’re facing the landing dock on the Shatterdome’s roof. Seungcheol stands with his back to you, watching through the glass walls as a helicopter waits, the pilot talking into his headset.

You watch yourself walk towards the chopper’s open door. You watch yourself leave, remember how hard it was to not look back.

You hadn’t known that Seungcheol had been there, that he had seen you go.

The pain that accompanies the memory hits you like you’re drowning, like it’s too deep and you can’t feel the bottom, and you feel the machinery falter around you.

“Hey,” you say quietly. “I’m with you.”

He nods, still doesn’t look at you. But the beeping stops, the connection holding. 

There’s knowledge in this memory, knowledge in this pain. Seungcheol’s thoughts in this moment read in your head as clearly as if he said them aloud - I did this. I pushed her too far; I made her run.

You can’t stay here, can’t let him wallow in the memory of pain. You had to move forward - that’s how the drift works. Reluctantly you step towards the door, glancing over your shoulder to see if he’s following. 

He is. His jaw is tight and fists are clenched, but he is.

When the next memory - not in order of chronology, clearly - appears before you, you want to vanish into the floor. You’re watching yourselves in Seungcheol’s bed. Thankfully, you’re sleeping - this was after. But in the memory, Seungcheol is awake, laying on his side, his eyes drinking in your sleeping form.

The emotions and the knowledge come with it in an instant. The tenderness and the love he felt in that moment surround you now in the memory, unignorable, impossible to mistake. 

He had loved you. He had known you loved him, and he was showing you how he felt. The understanding slams you so hard that you think you stop breathing.

“Seungcheol,” you whisper. Around you, the scene begins to flicker, the connection starting to react to the oversaturation of emotion.

“We can talk about it after,” he says, voice hard. “Don’t stay in it. Find the next door.”

Your eyes find the door, but you feel frozen. You want the connection to drop, you want to unlock yourself from the stupid drive-suit and throw yourself into his arms, you want to apologize for leaving him thinking he’d pushed you away, thinking that he scared you into running.

“Cherry,” he warns. “The drift can’t -”

You know. 

And you owe him your side of the story.

You take a steeling breath and head for the door. You don’t take his hand. You don’t know if you deserve to, if he’d want you to.

When you step through the doors, you’re confused - you’re still in your dorm. Your bodies are both in the bed.

Now, though, Seungcheol sleeps, and you - the memory of you - sits on the edge of the bed, your head in your hands. 

You feel the emotion the memory holds, which means Seungcheol does, too.

Fear. It’s still fear - fear that he’ll know, fear that what you just did together will make it worse, make it harder to hide. 

Beside you, Seungcheol’s eyes go wide. 

“We have to move on,” you tell him. He looks at you, then back at the memory. 

“You -?” he starts to ask.

“After,” you tell him firmly. “We’ll talk after.”

You open the door, and you’re suddenly outside, surrounded by white.

Alaska.

The emotion knocks you over with the fury of an ocean wave - even though you know you’re not supposed to let it. This was how you had felt every day that you were gone, and it screams at you now, determined to be heart, determined to be felt. The loneliness, the regret, the despair and heartbreak all rise up in you, overtaking you, as snow falls gently and silently around you.

And the love. That never went away. That never mellowed, as the Marshall had put it.

If he didn’t know before, he has to know now. There’s no way he couldn’t.

Seungcheol squeezes your hand, and you almost jump. You look down at your linked fingers in shock, then up at him, eyes wide.

“We should go back and talk about this,” he tells you, but his grip on you is firm, assuring.

“Okay. It’s this way,” you tell him, trying to breathe, and you lead him by the hand through the snow. The fog strengthens as you walk, until you can’t see anything but grey, can’t see anything but Seungcheol’s hand in yours.

You continue on. You know where to go. When you step through, the fog vanishes as if it was never there, nothing gradual about it. With the fog gone, you can see clearly where you are - inside Duellona Fury’s conn-pod.

As you begin to work on the straps, you call through the intercom, “Kwan? We… need some privacy. We’ve got to talk - alone.”

His voice crackles back at you. “Yes, I’m leaving, I’m already gone. If you hear popcorn crunching, no you don’t.”

Seungcheol gives you a flat look. “Let’s go home and talk,” he suggests.

Home.

You are so afraid and so hopeful. You don’t know how to juggle both.

Back in your small living space, you sit like you’re meditating.

“Let’s figure this out,” he says. “No lies.”

“No lies,” you agree. Your knees touch, and you reach to take his hands. He lets you, giving your fingers a squeeze.

“You knew,” you say first, bordering on accusation. “I was trying so hard to hide how I felt about you… but you knew.”

He nods, his eyes on you. “And you,” he says slowly, “didn’t… know? That I knew?”

You shake your head, confirming. “I didn’t know. I thought I hid it.”

He smiles at you, a little placating. “Not as well as you would have liked.”

“And you…” You chicken out, swallow, force yourself to be brave. “You… loved me, too?”

He nods. “I did.” 

The air leaves your lungs so forcefully that you bend over, pressing your forehead to the tops of your hands. He pulls his hands from yours and you feel his touch, firm and reassuring, cupping your shoulders and rubbing his thumbs along them.

“We felt the same,” you echo into your shins. “You loved me.”

“Cherry,” he says above you, his voice like a plea. “I don’t understand why - when we… when I… I felt like once I forced you to look at it, it was too much. You ran.”

You sit with this for a minute, stunned and processing. His hands are back in yours, which you take as a good sign. 

“You thought… wait. You thought, after that night, that I knew how you felt, too?”

He nods. “I thought you knew,” he says, confusion still present in his tone. “I thought we both knew. I thought if it was out in the open, the glitch in the drift would be fixed.”

You wipe at your face, trying to breathe. “And instead,” you realize, “we couldn’t even connect, because I was still trying to hide it from you, and then you were hurt. I thought it was broken. I thought we really broke it forever.”

He looks at you in wonder. “That’s why you left,” he breathes, and you know he’s understanding this for the first time. “You thought we made the problem worse.”

It’s your turn to nod. “After we…I mean, I knew if I couldn’t hide it from you before that night, there was no chance I’d be able to hide it after. I kept you out in the first place because I… was afraid. I was afraid for you to see how much I loved you. It seemed… hopeless to keep trying.”

The words lay bloody between you, but his grip on your hands is strong, and you take another breath.

You push on, adding, “I was afraid it would be too much. I was afraid everything would change.”

Which it did, you think. He nods, like he hears this, like he agrees.

He releases you and leans back, blowing out a loud breath. “We’re so fucking stupid,” he says, and you splutter out a laugh.

“We really are.”

“I can’t believe we lost three years over that,” he says.

“I can’t believe you thought it was your fault that I left.”

“I can’t believe you left in the first place.”

This makes you smile, guilty. “That’s fair.”

You push yourself to stand; Seungcheol mirrors you, as if you’re already in the neural handshake, bodies working in tandem. 

“Cherry,” he says quietly, stepping closer. “It could never be too much. I love you. I’m crazy about you. I’m only me when I’m with you.”

You remember him, the night you’d slept together, telling you, don’t be afraid. He’d told you, after all, and you’d missed it entirely.

You close the distance between your bodies and kiss him hard. His arms circle your waist immediately, like they were waiting for you. He kisses you back hungrily. His mouth meets yours eagerly, his tongue stroking yours confidently before he shifts his attention to your jaw, your neck, then your mouth again. His hands don’t wander this time - instead he holds you so firmly it almost hurts, like he won’t let you move an inch, won’t let you out of his grasp ever again.

You cradle his face between your hands, let your teeth gently scrape along his bottom lip. “Cheol,” you whisper, then kiss him again. “You’re everything.” It’s what you should have said aloud the night you’d slept with him.

When the kiss breaks, he presses his lips to the top of your head and holds them there, melting around you a little. You give his middle a squeeze, revel in his heartbeat surrounding you like music.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry I didn’t just say it.”

“Me too,” you tell him, holding him just a little tighter. “I should never have tried to hide it from you in the first place.”

He kisses your temple, and you hold each other, silently, each grappling with the time you’d wasted apart. 

You’re interrupted by a knock. You break apart, puzzled. You’re even more puzzled to see your Marshall at the door, and Seungkwan literally bouncing on the balls of his feet in excitement.

“I’ve heard your drift is working again,” the Marshall says dryly. 

You look over your shoulder at Seungcheol, grinning. “Seems like it.”

“There’s a Cat-1 reading in the bay. I was about to alarm for Pretty Savage to drop, but Savage’s team insisted I give you the opportunity first. They can follow as backup. How do you feel?”

Seungcheol is at your side. He looks at you, his face open and raw. “Well?” he asks you. “Are you in, or are you out?”

“I’m in,” you tell him seriously. “I’m with you.”

You thrum with excitement as a tech team helps strap you into the drive-suits, and you can’t help but shoot Seungcheol a wild grin, your happiness alive and unbounded. 

You tell mission control - Nainsi, probably, just like the old days - “Ready and aligned.”

Mission Control - definitely Nainsi - responds, “Prepare for neural handshake.”

The artificial voice bounces around you - 3… 2… 1… neural handshake initiating…

Around you, the machines flicker busily. Neural handshake strong and holding. Now calibrating…

You’re crying, but you ignore it. You beam through tears, looking sideways at your co-pilot. His eyes dance as he smiles back at you. You want to unstrap yourself to the drivesuit and go kiss his dimples, the dimples you hadn’t seen in years. You resist the urge.

“Ready to drop?”  He looks sideways at you, sly. 

You scoff at him, your own grin cocky and sure, like you’re twenty again, like nothing had ever been broken between you. “Been ready. Let’s light ‘em up.”

– end

thank you so much for reading!!!!

stay tuned for more fics in this universe! Wylie and Chan will get their own fic written by @sailorrhansol, as will Woozi! I'm also planning a Vernon x Reader in this universe, too! Should be a fun time!!