#it's about buffy figuring out how to fold this into her life and make it explicable and understandable to herself!!!!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

specialagentlokitty · 6 months

Text

Giles x reader - don’t go

Part three:

Giles was marking off the days you had been gone, keeping track of them.

He had tried reaching out to your through spell Willow had used to contact you the last time, but you weren’t in one spot.

He would appear just in time to see your wolf form running through the trees.

Weeks were turning into months, and there was no word from you.

“I’m sure she’s okay Giles.” Tara smiled.

“Yes, I’m sure she hasn’t been hunted and killed yet.”

Everybody glared at Anya before turning back to Giles who was stood behind the counter of his shop reading your letter again.

“I feel she should have been back by now.” He said.

“I mean she said she needed time to think… maybe she’s just somewhere.. you know.. thinking..” willow smiled.

Giles smiled a little back, and folded the letter up, putting it back in his pocket and walked over to help them with their new demon problem.

Your paws slammed though the water, and you slid to a halt as you looked around the forest.

You had dealt with the e rouges over a month ago, now you were wondering, trying to figure out what you were doing.

You were near the town you had left, when you dealt with the wolves you had found your way back there just wondering the edges.

You carried on wondering again, making your way to a deeper part of the stream and you crouched down to look at the reflection of yourself.

Your amber eyes beamed back and you huffed a little as you stretched.

You wanted a peaceful life, one where you didn’t have to keep running from everything, where you weren’t scared.

You wanted to be human, things were easier for them, less worry about hunters and werewolves and all that sort of stuff.

But at the same time, you loved this. The wolf, the wild, the power you had and everything that made your stand out.

Maybe that’s why you were running.

You began your wondering once more, you made your way towards the town, turning back to your human form.

You wondered through the streets, hands in your pockets and you paused, not really sure where to go.

Your feet seemed to lead the way, and you to where they wanted to go, and you stood outside of the magic box looking in.

They all seemed to be having fun, and you smiled a little bit.

You turned around and began to wonder once more, going to find somewhere to get some actual good food and a hot drink, something you had missed.

Sitting down, you nibbles on your fries as you stared at the table deep in thought.

You felt somebody tackle you and you yelled in surprise, punching them in the face.

“Ow! (Y/N)!”

“Oh shit, sorry Xander!”

He laughed a little, sitting opposite you, Anya, Tara, Willow and Buffy all crowded you with their own food.

“How long have you been back? Where did you go?” Anya asked.

“Yeah why did you come see us?!” Willow pouted.

You laughed, shaking your head at them and picked up another couple of fries to eat.

“I just got back today, I was just wondering I suppose.”

They carried on barraging you with questions, and you answered them, sometimes avoiding telling them the real answer.

After a few hours they all left aside from Buffy, she wondered the streets with you.

“Shouldn’t you be heading home?” You asked.

“I’ve got to patrol soon, but can I uh.. can I ask you something? And get like a real answer?”

You glanced at her.

“Of course.”

Buffy stopped walking, sitting down on a bench so you did the same thing.

“How long have you really been back?”

You sighed, looking down at your hands.

“About a month if I had to guess, I’m not too sure. I’ve been at the edge of town.”

She nodded her head.

“Why didn’t you come back?”

You leant back, tilting your head back to look at the stars that were barely visible.

“I.. I’m not sure really… I just..”

Sitting yourself up you turned your head to her.

“This may seem weird, coming from well, someone who’s in their 30s, but have you ever felt so conflicted about something all you want to do is runway?”

“Well, I actually did runaway once, so yeah. I do.”

You went quiet.

“You know he waits for you, right?”

You looked down at your hands again.

“Buffy.. what if I.. what if I’m not the right person for Rupert. I mean he’s a human, I’m a werewolf, what if he gets hurt or realises that I’m a threat or something?”

“Are you like having a midlife crisis? Because vampires and demons I can deal with but not this.”

You laughed, grinning a little at her.

“No! I’m not having a midlife crisis! I just.. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”

She jumped up and pointed at you.

“Oh my god you’re having a midlife crisis!”

You swatted her hand away, and stood up.

“No I’m not!”

“You totally are! Oh my god! And Giles is the reason!”

She seemed to think about what she had said and gave you a disgusted look.

“Ew that’s gross, he’s old.”

“What the hell does that make me?”

“Not as old?” She grinned sheepishly.

You laughed softly, shaking your head at her and you smiled, putting your hands into your pockets.

Buffy smiled back, and she crossed her arms.

“Just go and see him. Talk to him.”

“I don’t think I can that’s the point, I get all nervous and scared and I’ve never really thought about anything other than you know? Werewolf stuff.”

“(Y/N), he keeps a stupid little calendar book and he marks off the days you’ve been gone, he carries that latter you gave him everywhere and when he hears a dog howl he gets all excited hoping it’s you.”

You furrowed your brows a little.

“He is madly in love with you, just go see him. Go talk to him, I mean he’s Giles, he’s nothing but understanding.”

“He has to be since he’s the watcher of a heathen like you.”

“Hey! I’m trying to be helpful here!”

You grinned a little.

“Get your werewolf ass out of here and find him.”

You raised your hands.

“Alright, okay I’m going. I’m going. Safe hunting.”

“Good luck!”

You left, and wondered the streets again, thinking about the conversation you had just had.

It had given you some perspective at least, but you were still slightly conflicted.

Then you stopped, looking at the sweater you wearing and smiled a little to yourself.

The little reminder of Giles you had stolen when you had run off.

You made your way back to the shop to see it was closed, and you knocked on the door, waiting for a response.

When one didn’t come, you began to wonder away, and you made your way towards his house.

You had missed this, the weird town teeming with supernatural. The people. Your weird band of misfits that you seemed to have adopted as your own family.

But most importantly you missed Giles.

While you were running around in the wild hunting down the people who had hurt him.

It made you realise you couldn’t picture a future without the man in it, he had just stumbled unto your life literally with him walking into you while he was reading.

Since then he was stuck on your mind, and your fates intertwined together, getting all tangled and twisted.

You didn’t want a life without him, no amount of running around freely, no amount of werewolf perks or anything would change that.

Everything was clear now.

Your walk started slow, then turned into a jog which turned into an all out sprint.

You jumped on to cars to cross the street, jumping on to someone’s roof, you began using that as a way to get there faster.

And it was.

You jumped down at his door and you knocked a few times, bouncing on the balls of your feet.

He didn’t answer fast enough so you tried the handle, finding it unlocked you walked in and he poked his was walking down the stairs.

“You know leaving your door unlocked isn’t safe, any werewolf could just walk in.”

Giles stopped at the bottom of the stairs and stared at you, and you smiled sheepishly.

“(Y/N)… you.. when..?”

Giles walked over, taking your face between his hands and he crashed his lips on to yours,

You grabbed his shirt, leaning up into the kiss, pulling him closer.

Pulled yourself away and he smiled softly as you.

“You came back…”

“I said I would, right?” You asked softly.

Laughing slightly, Giles nodded his head, pressing a quick kiss to your lips before he moved away.

“Though word of advise, you do have a smell.”

You slapped his arm and moved away.

“Sorry Rupert showers aren’t actually common in the forests. Though I really want a shower so I’m taking yours then we can talk.”

“I’ll get you some clothes.”

You followed Giles upstairs and he got your sweater for you and some sweatpants, handing them over and you wondered to the shower.

You got out and made your way back down the stairs, dropping yourself on to the couch.

“I’ve missed couches and showers.”

Giles chuckled, and you turned around to look at him in the kitchen.

“Well, it’s good to see you’ve missed the important things.”

You grinned at him.

Giles looked at you, offering you a small smile before he looked away and his smile fell.

You jumped over the couch, walking into the kitchen, leaning against the doorway.

“Rupert?”

“Why did you run away…?”

You sighed, turning your gaze away to the floor instead.

“To be completely honest, I was scared, I was confused.”

Giles turned to look at you.

“About what?”

“About everything.. a.. about us..”

You walked over to the counter and jumped on it, swinging looking at your hands.

“My whole life I’ve always been taught that my whole life was to run a pack, rule over them, and I didn’t want that, so I passed the role on. Because I did that people got hurt, then hunters came here and they hurt you all, then there’s.. there’s you..”

“Me?”

“You make me feel normal, cared for. I’ve never had something… someone like you I guess.”

Giles turned fully around to look at you, crossing his arms over his chest.

“You are my everything, you’re my light in the dark, you’re the hand that guides me. I left and all I could think about was running back here, running back to you. I was scared about the future, my future, but I realised I can’t tell what it’ll hold, but I know I want you in it.”

You sighed again.

“It’s clear, I am meant to be wherever you are, I want to be wherever you are Rupert. And I promise I’ll always come running back to you. I want a future with you… if you want that…”

Giles took your hands in his and you looked up at him.

He wore a gentle smile, and he gave your hands a gentle squeeze.

“I want you in it, every hour and every minute.” He whispered.

“Really?”

“You gave me no choice but to love you my dear…”

He leant down, pressing his forehead against yours, you could feel his breath on your lips.

You leant up, connecting them and he smiled into it.

It was a gentle kiss, soft, and warm, pouring everything from the months you were gone into it.

When he pulled away you frowned, resting your head in his chest instead making him chuckle.

He placed his hand on the back of your head, gently messaging your scalp, and you wrapped your arms around his torso.

“So, is there anything werewolf wise I should know?”

You looked up at him a little confused.

“Like what?”

“Well, how tall are you like that? Triggers? Do you control it? That sort of stuff.”

You hummed a little, patting his chest to him him move back and you jumped down, walking into the living room.

“This might be easier outside.”

So you took him out there and you stood on the steps, with a leap you jumped and changed, paws hitting the ground and Giles took a step back.

You stretched, and stood up, wondering over to him, eyes connecting with his.

“Well.. I uh.. I would safely say large..”

He reached out and hesitated.

“May I?”

You sat down, letting him place his hand on your head, smoothing his hand over your hair and you locked eyes with him.

He saw your tail swish a little bit which made him chuckle.

“May you turn back?”

You moved away, changing back and you walked over to him, wrapping your arms around his shoulders.

“Well I can’t say I have ever uh.. ever had a relationship with a werewolf before.”

“There’s always a first try?” You grinned.

“Well I’m glad, now come inside it’s cold and I.. I understand you may not get cold but well.. it’s cold.”

Giles lead you back inside and you sat down on the couch with him next to you, turning on the tv and he picked up a book while you flicked through the channels.

You noticed him shiver and you shuffled over, moving his arm so you could tuck yourself into his side and he wrapped his arm around your waist.

He looked away from his book at you.

“Are you cold?” He asked.

You looked up.

“No, but you are.”

“What..? How did you know?”

“I just know these things.”

You yawned, and stretched yourself out, and he adjusted himself so you could lay on his chest, and he covered the pair of you with a blanket.

Giles set his book aside, placing a hand on your back.

“(Y/N)?”

You hummed a little.

“You.. you won’t just runaway again will you?”

“No, unfortunately for you.”

He chuckled, running a hand up and down your back.

“Well, I suppose I consider myself rather fortunate then.”

He tightened his hold on you and you smiled, closing your eyes as you listened to the sound of his heartbeat.

This was all you had ever wanted, something exactly like this and you didn’t want to run away from it again.

You felt safe, and loved, and for once you had somebody to call your own, somebody who really loved you for you.

And when he planted a gentle kiss to your head all you could do was beam a little bit more.

You tucked your head under his chin, and you closed your eyes while he kicked his legs on to the couch, resting his chin on your head as he did the same thing.

Right now was all that mattered, you in his arms, not going anywhere anytime soon

#buffy the vampire slayer x reader #buffy the vampire slayer x you #buffy the vampire slayer imagine #buffy the vampire slayer #Rupert Giles #Rupert Giles x reader #Rupert Giles x you #Rupert Giles imagine

19 notes · View notes

oveliagirlhaditright · 2 years

Text

Buffy Book Review: Prime Evil

The main plot of this book is this super powerful witch--who's been reincarnated throughout the ages, and has power over the elements almost like the Avatar, with deadly lightning power in particular--wants to complete this spell to combine with, like, the natural powers imbued in this stream on the Hellmouth and become all-powerful.

She needs twelve people to form a cult to help her complete the spell (Anya and Michael being two of them), and of course she tries to get Willow to be one of them.

Willow is actually=the MVP of this book. As she's the only person who turns this witch down (the witch promises everyone their wildest dreams to get them to join her--even though she doesn't intend to follow through on helping them at at all--instead she plans to destroy a number of them once the spell is done, or to have their will be drawn into her own), so that the plan is delayed for a while and she has to find a weaker back-up to take Willow's place, that she hadn't counted on. And then at the end, Willow's the one who comes up with the plan to defeat the witch when all seems hopeless.

But because Willow refused the witch's offer, and the witch couldn't have her run around being a threat to her, she puts a spell on her so that Willow can't do any spells of her own. And she can't talk about any of the witch's plans at all. They find out that sometimes Willow can type them out, and it'll come out in anagrams that the Scoobies can then figure out, but that isn't always effective when you're on a time crunch, of course.

To defeat the witch, the Scoobies realize that they have to use three spells at once. Willow is still unable to use them, though, so they come up with the idea of Giles, of course, Angel, and Buffy doing the spells. And they use this spell where Willow's power can be temporarily passed to Buffy.

But even then, things aren't perfect and Buffy's super nervous about doing this spell (her overcoming that sort of feeling is sort of a theme of the book). And there's a good line where Willow wishes that she could just do the spell, and she realizes then that this must be how Buffy feels all the time when she sees the Slayerettes in action. Because as much as they try and are getting better, they're still not Buffy, of course. Likewise, spell casting comes easily to Willow, but Buffy was definitely struggling with it here.

I also enjoyed Joyce being a part of the action at the end in this one, as the Scoobies decided to use this blood spell to give their strength to Buffy as they had in "The Gatekeeper Trilogy" (and Joyce did that there, too). And I also liked how Buffy was worried about Joyce being part of things, after she had temporarily got kidnapped in that saga (these were good callbacks), but our Giles made sure no one laid a finger on her here:)

The book actually starts out with the witch messing with Buffy's mind, and giving her panic attacks--and Buffy worrying that she's going crazy--and that's how they first realize that there's something wrong with this teacher in Sunnydale high school: the witch's alias.

This is a really good book, imo. Another one that I couldn't put down, and that I'd say is at the top of my list of Buffy books. The parts where the witch makes the woods come to life into this deadly maze that the Scoobies can just barely survive is particularly exciting.

I feel like the only thing I really have to complain about with this story, is I feel the villain was a little too one-dimensional. She was basically just Pure Evil. That was it. But at the same time... sometimes it's nice to have a villain who just wants to see the world burn. And when the Scoobies did the spell where everything she had ever done came back to her three-fold, I definitely enjoyed seeing that (especially since there are flashbacks with a lot of people she screwed over in this novel).

Another cool part was Cordelia working on the Slayer Archive that Willow and Giles created in the book "Return to Chaos." This is after Cordelia's family having lost everything, because of her dad having cheated on his taxes for years. Willow is too busy with her normal life to work on it at first (and then kidnapped for a little bit, and then really unable to use it because of the spell put on her). So Cordy and Giles work out the deal that Cordelia will work with it, and Giles will pay her for doing so, which is definitely an interesting little detail that fits into canon quite nicely, in my opinion... Except that lightning strikes the computer at the end, destroying the archive. And so Cordelia loses this job and must go get her canon one at the dress shop.

At the end of the novel, Buffy finds out that Giles had been paying Cordy to work on the Slayer Archive (he had been keeping it a secret at Cordy's wish). And Buffy says, "What other secrets are you keeping from me?" And he replies with something like, "Secrets? Me? None." But it reads as ominous, since these are the last lines of the book. So I feel this is either before "Helpless" and Buffy's Cruciamentum or before "Earshot" and Buffy finding out that Giles slept with her mother in "Band Candy." So this means that Cordy's money issues go back that far.

The Anya stuff here was also a joy. I didn't think that any of the season three tie-in novels would have her in them, since she shows up so late in season three, but I love how they handled her (and her feelings for Xander, and the slight start of their relationship; heck, even her wanting to befriend Willow and Buffy), without stealing the thunder from "The Prom," which hasn't happened yet.

There were also some really great Buffy and Angel moments here, like when the forest is coming alive.

...Heck, there are even some really great Angel and Xander moments in this story when the forest is coming alive.

All-in-all, a lovely book to definitely write home about:)

#long post #buffy the vampire slayer #buffy book #buffy tie-in book #prime evil #oh. the thing the witch promised willow was a cure for oz's lycanthropy. and willow was tempted for a moment. but was strong and refused

1 note · View note

mypoisonedvine · 4 years

Text

Hunt (dark!Slayer!Bucky x vampire!Reader)

a.k.a. Bucky the Vampire Slayer

a.a.k.a. Bucky the Vampire Layer

full credit for this idea goes to @deceitfuldevout who shared her genius with us for the concept of witch/witch-hunter, which morphed over time into vampire/vampire-hunter, which I eventually adapted into a weird amalgam of a Buffy AU and a Supernatural AU

@giorno-plays-piano asked to be tagged if I ever did it!

Warnings: smut, blood play (just a lil tho, but lots of talking about blood bc she’s...literally a vampire), degradation kink, sex that turns dub con/non con, kidnapping

(we are sadly deprived of any gifs of Bucky in the new jacket but please know the pic below is the Bucky we’re working with here)

Bucky clenched his jaw in frustration as his head fell back against the headrest. His grip on the steering wheel tightened with a squeaking noise as his skin skidded along the leather.

He was irritated because he knew what was waiting for him at the end of this road. The headlights only illuminated a little of what was ahead, but the predictive power of past experience told him everything he needed to know.

You were going to be waiting for him, and he never looked forward to that.

Memories resurfaced of the last time he had seen you. He’d found you in the forest and though he couldn’t prove it, he was pretty sure he’d interrupted you feeding on a deer. It was disgusting. Yet, you moved with this grace he couldn’t ignore and spoke with a smile that he couldn’t forget. You greeted him with a familiarity that he wished wasn’t merited. He was a Slayer, you were a vampire; there shouldn’t ever be a second meeting. He should’ve killed you the first time, however many months ago it was. He couldn’t even remember why he didn’t, but you slipped away that night and he swore to track you down.

He did, but he didn’t kill you that time either, because you’d proven useful. You’d sold out a vampire who pissed you off and Bucky got to put another kill under his belt. That was definitely the only reason he’d left you alive.

Then the forest. You were more feral that time, and he saw more of your monstrous side than he had before. So why was that the time he thought about when he tossed and turned at night, when he was too pent up from years of solitude, when he forced his eyes shut and slipped his hand into his boxers under the sheets--

Destination is on the right, the GPS alerted with a robotic voice. Thank god.

Bucky pulled the car into the driveway of the dilapidated mansion, shifting into park and turning off the engine; the metal blasting from the radio halted unceremoniously.

He didn’t hear the commotion inside the house until he was quite a ways from the car and halfway to the door. Of course he considered that it was a bad idea to just walk in the front door of a suspected vampire coven as a Slayer, but he wasn’t here on a hunt. At least, not the normal kind.

Before he was even on the porch, the door opened with an outpouring of pink light. He shielded his face with his arm as his eyes adjusted, but put it down when he saw it was your silhouette in the doorway.

“Slayer,” you hissed with a smile that blended pleasure and disgust. He knew the feeling.

“You could call me Bucky,” he offered.

“It doesn’t suit you,” you explained, leaning against the splintered wood of the frame. “I wasn’t sure you were going to come.”

“Neither was I,” he admitted with a shrug, “but how could I resist a chance to jump into the lion’s den?”

“You’re here to take on a coven? By yourself?” you laughed.

“I’m not looking for a fight,” he denied. “I’m looking for information.”

You raised a brow as if to say go ahead.

“A girl in the city,” he continued. “Mysterious death. Coroner is stumped, thinks it could be anything from an animal attack to a blood disorder to a ritualistic murder. Has your name all over it.”

“‘Girl’?” you repeated, as if you’d never heard the word before. “Girl, no, I don’t remember any girl.”

“White, blonde, 5’2”, 26 years old,” he listed.

“Oh!” you stopped him. “26! You mean a woman. Yes, I remember feeding on a woman.”

“So you’re confessing?”

“To what crime? She was going to die in less than a year, easily,” you shrugged. “She did have a blood disorder. Leukemia. She didn’t know it yet.”

“And do I want to know how you knew it?” he shuddered.

“It’s a unique taste,” you grinned. He felt a little unwell hearing you say that.

“I’m not sure if you’re familiar with human law,” he frowned, “but it’s still murder even if they were going to die soon. It’s murder if they were actively dying.”

“I was human once,” you deflected.

“In 1447,” he growled. You would’ve blushed if you could; you were flattered that he remembered.

“Yeah, murder investigation at that time was… very surface-level,” you admitted. “Is your plan to arrest me, then?”

“I’m a Slayer. Not a cop.”

“What you are is a wet blanket,” you grimaced. “We’re busy in here, you know. Big party.”

“I was hoping so,” he smirked. “That’s what you promised.”

“Then why don’t you come in?” you asked coyly. You hadn’t really expected him to do it.

Everyone inside jumped and scurried away the second he set foot in the door. “It’s cool,” you told them, “he’s with me.”

That didn’t seem to comfort them that much, because what business would you have with a Slayer?

They must have figured it out when you slipped away to a secluded room and dragged him along with you. He didn’t seem to figure it out until you were pushing him back against the wall, running your hands over his body through his clothes.

“What I would give to feed on you,” you whispered, running your lips over his neck. You took in a deep breath and felt a little light-headed at the overwhelming smell of his blood. He, unfortunately, reeked of Slayer, and you pushed back your instinct of fear to appreciate the man underneath. AB positive-- your favorite. “Wanted you ever since I first saw you,” you admitted. “You looked so fucking delicious.”

You pulled back to look up at him and you didn’t need vampiric hearing to know that his heart was racing: just the way his eyes darted across your face and down to your lips was proof enough.

“Why did you come here today, Bucky?” you asked quietly.

“I’m on a hunt,” he answered in a low growl.

“For me?”

“For you.”

“You have me alone,” you noticed. “You could get out your wooden stake and end this for good.”

He nodded, but didn’t move. Instead you felt his hands trail along your sides; he jumped when he brushed the skin of your arm. “You’re so cold,” he realized.

Meanwhile you thought you could burn up from the heat of him, radiating out of his body and through the thick layers of clothing. He was so alive, so awake, so present.

You pushed off his leather jacket and he didn’t even think to stop you, letting it fall to the floor. You never cared for it. He looked as good as sin in it, yes, but it smelled of death and dead things, the skin of something you wouldn’t have eaten when it was alive 40 years ago, and you wanted only to experience the life of this particular being.

And what is life but wanting? Fuck, you wanted him so goddamn bad.

He wrapped a hand around your neck and pulled you into him, kissing you with instant need and dizzying aggression.

Even now you weren’t sure if he would let you live to see the end of the night. But you couldn’t see the sunrise anyway, so what difference would it make?

He made embarrassingly quick work of your dress, tearing it straight down the front. Downside of wearing something you’d had for nearly 100 years is that it’s flimsy.

His hands were back on you the second your skin was exposed. His touch was so hot that it almost hurt; his hands were so rough and strong that your heart almost clenched.

You clawed at his shirt and gasped with delight when you accidentally nicked him with a sharp fingernail and broke the skin. The flavor hit the air hard and fast; you grabbed his shoulders and pulled him forward so you could lean down and lick the thin red stripe you’d left on his chest. Just a taste, but the best taste you’d had in… you couldn’t remember anything tasting this good.

“I won’t kill you if you don’t kill me,” he offered breathlessly.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” you agreed quickly as you began to work open his belt because the last thing on your mind right now was survival.

You groaned when you felt his cock in your hand. There was a lot of blood in that thing and you could feel it pulsing in your palm. You knew better than to put it in your mouth; you didn’t have the restraint for that.

You were thankful you hadn’t drank any more of his blood because clearly he had a better use for it. It was so big you wondered how he hadn’t passed out from it getting so hard because seriously, this man’s cock was a monster; takes one to know one, eh?

“Fuck me,” you demanded, “I want you to fuck me, oh my god.”

He nodded as a low groan echoed out of his chest. His grip moved to your hips as he pulled you up and put you on the table, pushing you down and bending over you with another bruising kiss that trailed down your body.

“Don’t fucking tease me,” you whined, “I need your cock.”

“Wait,” he instructed, kneeling before you and licking through your exposed folds. You gasped, unprepared for how strange it would feel; your hand grabbed his hair and pulled harder than you meant to, but thankfully, he didn’t slow down.

Little moans and grunts were lost against your skin as he tasted you eagerly. You were so overwhelmed with the sensation that he had to hold your hips down to keep you from squirming away. You’d been feasting on humans for 600 years, and now it seemed like he was attempting to even the score. Even you never ate with this enthusiasm. But you’d never thought about a meal so much before consuming it as he had thought about you before this moment.

You were already embarrassingly close to orgasm, and it was apparent from the way you moaned and writhed and begged.

“I’m so fucking close, just like that, please don’t stop, yes, yes, oh fuck, yes,” you yelped.

It all came to a screeching halt as he stood up and grabbed your face with his hand. You looked at him with wide eyes, confused but still appreciating how good he looked with wet lips and dark eyes and his hair all fucked up.

“You aren’t gonna come,” he explained between raspy breaths, “until I’m inside you.”

You nodded in agreement, again arching your back as if you could will him to fuck you.

He slid his cock through your folds, coating himself in your arousal which was embarrassingly plentiful.

Finally, he pressed his cock into you all at once and you gasped, head falling back against the wooden table. He groaned as he gripped your hips, steadying you so he could piston into you with brutal force.

And to think you thought he was going to stab you through the chest with a wooden stake. To be fair, he still could.

He scooped you into his arms, pulling you up until your face was right against his. “You’re warm here,” he informed you with bared teeth, “did you know that? So hot and tight around my fuckin’ cock.”

You could only moan, your eyes darting to his parted lips, and then his neck. You were thoroughly tempted, but didn’t want to do anything that might stop him from fucking you so perfectly like this. His hand came up to wrap around your throat-- the metal one, specifically. You were pretty sure he’d lost the arm to a monster fight of some kind but that didn’t matter now. All you knew was that this one was strong enough to crush you and it was making your head dizzy and your pussy wet.

Your moans were lost to his grip as he choked you, and you could hear the ragged sounds of his breathing as he fucked you deeper and harder. “You like getting fucked by a Slayer, huh? You’re such a whore. My whore.”

You gasped when he released your throat and you could breathe again. “Yes,” you agreed with a sob, “yours, baby.”

He chuckled a little at that, slipping a hand between your bodies to rub your clit with his thumb; you yelped and grabbed his shoulders tightly.

“You’re gonna come already aren’t you?” he mocked. “Dumb fucking slut.”

You hissed at his harsh words but you were too lost in pleasure to complain. Your eyes shot open when you felt two of his fingers slam into your open mouth and hit the back of your throat. “Choke on my fingers while you come, bitch,” he growled. “And I swear if you fucking bite me, you’ll regret it.”

It was like asking you to take a sip of sweet wine but not swallow it. His skin tasted fucking delicious on your tongue, which you swirled around the digits eagerly. He laughed: “such a fucking slut, sucking on my fingers like that. You want it so bad.”

You nodded breathlessly, whimpering as you took his fingertips down your throat. He groaned and slammed into you harder, which only served to bring you that much closer to the edge.

“Come on my cock, right now,” he demanded, and you liked to believe it was just lucky timing and not his command that struck you at that moment. Your nails dug into his shoulders as you felt yourself flexing and clenching around his length, another gush of arousal easing his way as he relentlessly pounded you.

“Good girl,” he praised, pulling his fingers from your throat to hear you pant with exhaustion. He stopped to lift your legs onto his shoulders, pushing you back but leaning over you. When he slammed into you again that time, you nearly screamed-- he was hitting something so deep in you that it was actually painful.

“Stop, it’s-- it’s too deep,” you moaned.

You tried to move back but he held you down firmly, a dark glimmer in his eye. He thrust in again, even harder, and you cried out as you tried to grab onto the table for dear life. He grabbed your wrists with each hand and pinned them beside you, laughing as you tried to fight him off.

Any normal human you could overpower in an instant. But you were no match for a Slayer. Both of you knew that.

“Let me go,” you begged, “you’re hurting me.”

“I could do a lot worse to you if I wanted. You should be thankful I’ve let you live.”

“I could say the same,” you snarled. He pulled back and rammed his cock into you so hard that you instantly screamed, tears sliding down your temple.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” he ordered. “Just be a good little whore and take my cock.”

He started to move inside you, hard and fast, and you couldn’t help but struggle against him as he hovered above you.

“Apologize,” he demanded, and just as he sensed you were about to tell him to fuck off, he accentuated it by holding his hips to yours a little longer than normal, reminding you that he could hurt you so easily if you didn’t obey.

“I’m sorry,” you sobbed, “I’m sorry, Bucky, please don’t… please don’t hurt me.”

He grinned as he watched you cry. “This is what you fuckin’ get for teasing me. You killed that girl to get my attention. You wanted me to find you and fuck you the way you’ve been missin’ out on for the past few centuries.”

You shook your head to deny it but he suddenly let your arms go to slap you across the face. You tried to use your free arm but in an instant he had your wrists pinned to your chest, putting all his weight on you until you could barely breathe.

“Just admit it, baby,” he said in an oddly sensitive way, like he was taking pity on you. “Just admit you need me.”

“Please,” you sobbed, near-silent from the lack of air, “please…”

“Aw, look at you,” he cooed, “begging for more.”

He trapped your wrists under his left hand and used his right to roughly grab your jaw until your mouth was forced open.

“Show me your teeth, gorgeous,” he purred. You hissed as your fangs glistened in the candlelight. “Mmm, you wanna bite me, don’t you?”

You tried to nod but couldn’t move your face much.

“The feeling’s mutual,” he grinned. “Fuck, I’m gonna come. Gonna fill that tight little cunt.”

Your fight was renewed as you tried to kick and squirm away but it was useless. You grunted as his thrusts became erratic but even more painful, somehow.

“Beg for it,” he growled through his teeth. “Beg for my fuckin’ come.”

You tried to fight but only got another slap to the face, the sting making your eyes water instantly.

“Beg, whore,” he repeated, yelling. “I won’t come until I fucking hear it.”

“Please!” you yelped, and in a sense it was genuine, because once he came this would all be over, and maybe-- just maybe-- he would let his guard down long enough for you to feed on this evil son of a bitch. “Please come, Bucky, come in me, I need it!”

“Yeah, I know you do,” he laughed confidently, holding you down by your throat as he pumped into you one last time with a shattered moan. “Fuck!” he sighed, savoring the feeling of your unwilling body forced to accept his seed. The truth was, you were tighter when you struggled.

He only let you breathe once he was done, and you choked and spluttered for air as he pulled out. The second you thought you had your bearings together, you were sitting up to lunge at him. You felt something press against your chest and even before you looked down you knew it was over.

A wooden stake. He’d had it the whole time. You looked back at him and he was smiling, the bastard, even as he was still catching his breath from fucking you. The sight made you shudder.

“I was gonna fuck you, and then kill you,” he admitted, “but now I think I’ll keep you.”

You hissed with a grimace, flashing your fangs, but knew you had no recourse, no options, no way out.

“You look so cute when you’re scared,” he smiled. “Can’t wait to take you back to mine, trap you in a little salt pentagram, and fuck you senseless whenever I want.”

You whined, closing your eyes as you realized how well and truly fucked you were.

“It won’t always hurt so bad. You’ll get used to me. And I’ll feed you enough to keep you alive.”

Sounded like a cruel existence, but you weren’t ready to get the business end of your stake, so you swallowed dryly and nodded in acceptance of your fate.

He laughed and placed a chaste kiss on your cheek before guiding you to stand on weak knees. “C’mon baby, let’s get you home.”

#dark!bucky x reader #dark!bucky barnes #dark!bucky smut #dark!bucky x y/n #bucky barnes non con #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #bucky barnes smut #sebastian stan x reader #sebastian stan smut #sebastian stan x y/n #dark!sebastian stan

1K notes · View notes

haloud · 3 years

Text

things we could burn in one go (eminence) - chapter 7

also on ao3

Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Isabel Evans & Max Evans & Michael Guerin, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes, Forrest Long/Alex Manes Additional Tags: post-s2, Canon Compliant, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, starts forlex ends malex, other characters may appear - Freeform, tags subject to update

Chapter Summary: Alive but weak, Michael wanders Alex’s house as he tries to come to terms with the past few days.

Excerpt:

At night, Alex slept in his bed, and Michael slept in the guest room, but the sheets were Alex’s, the pillows were Alex’s, the walls and floor were built to hold him, he picked out the curtains. Alex was inescapable. And now, neither could Michael escape knowing that he still slept in old band shirts worn soft and peeling, that he composed music with his eyes closed and hid his written notations in books around his house, that he kept all his condiments room temperature and screwed up his nose at the thought of cold sauce on hot food. All these domestic details he’d lived and loved without, stuffed inside the empty spaces in his skull after only a few days.

What was he supposed to do, knowing this? The little details made up friendships, too, for certainly Michael knew plenty of his siblings’ idiosyncrasies, even kept shelves in his heart for lovely little scraps old one or two-night lovers had left him as parting gifts.

But things would never, ever be so simple and nostalgic and normal with Alex. Too many years had passed for Michael to even attempt to fool himself. His ribs sung like a tuning fork struck pure, and Michael longed, with the oldest, basest longing, to be anything so useful for Alex to set the music of his life to. And here he was, sharing Alex’s house with Alex and Alex’s boyfriend’s dog and Alex’s boyfriend’s toothbrush on the sink and Alex’s boyfriend’s clothes in the laundry.

So he’d live with it.

“Fuck!”

Michael’s water glass flew to his hand but bumped the edge of the table and skidded the last few feet, spilling water across its surface. Still cursing, Michael shoved his chair back and got to his feet to clean shit up the old-fashioned way, on weak and shaky legs, with weaker and shakier lungs.

Max kept healing him, checking for any possible little injury, but it seemed that Michael was just weakened by the enormous strain Jones’s “teaching” had put on his body, and he’d have to build back his strength.

So there it was. All his fears about not being to protect anyone, all the needy clamor in his head, all of them led him here, by nothing but his own recklessness and desperation. Weak as a kitten. More a burden on Alex, quite literally, in his life, taking up his space, invading his home, leaning on him to get from point A to point B.

Fuck.

He was, at least, too tired to wallow in much, in between long jags of ragged sleep, torn apart by vivid dreams of light and letters and scraps of knowledge just out of reach. But despite the awful aftertaste of near-death those dreams represented, they were almost better than his waking hours, hovered over by a furious Isobel and a Max worried half to death, Valenti inspecting him head to toe the normal way, Maria trying to cheer him up, and Alex .

They hadn’t spoken much since Michael awoke. Alex had to work, and when he didn’t, they, well. Cohabitating was a lot to get used to. But no matter how awkward things got, he offered a perfect porcelain protection, and Michael studied him obsessively for flaw, for the true Alex underneath the façade brought on by Michael’s own foolishness.

“Everything going okay?” Max asked, emerging from the guest bedroom, Buffy at his heels. She’d become his shadow in the days since Michael’s near-death; it was almost endearing enough to keep Michael from snapping at him, but only almost.

“Fine,” he snarled, but far from driving Max off, his tone brought Max forward, to sit across the table from him and fold his arms.

If snapping wasn’t gonna keep people away, why had he been working so hard to not be a total asshole for the past few days, through every well-meaning coddle and condescension from any one of their friends, from everyone but Isobel, who wasn’t talking to him.

Max sighed and rubbed his hands over his face, and a twinge of guilt disturbed Michael’s surly mood.

“Go ahead,” he said a little too loudly, before those thoughts could get to him. “Tell me what a hypocrite I am. One of you has to, and it might as well be you. I was fucking stupid after getting on your case constantly, and it almost killed me. Go ahead!”

“You seem to have gotten a head start, so I don’t see the need,” Max said wryly.

Michael scoffed.

Picking up Michael’s abandoned glass, Max ran his finger around the rim as he spoke. “You know, I know what it’s like to lose this. When my heart was still so weak…I pushed myself too hard and almost…well. You know. So I understand. Give yourself time. Let your system settle and see where you are.”

The words were too kind and too logical for Michael to bear, so he let out another bratty huff and didn’t respond.

Max just sighed again. “Well. Anyway. Kyle’s going to be here soon. I know you hate him, but he’s—”

“I don’t.”

“Huh?”

“Hate him. Kinda hard to hate the guy after what he did for you. I don’t like the doctor shit, but…”

That brought out a small smile on Max’s face, and the knot in Michael’s stomach unclenched. “That’s good,” he said.

A knock on the door saved Michael from having to find a dignified answer, and he stood hastily to answer it—a little too hastily, it turned out, because the world tipped and took Michael with it.

“How ‘bout you let me,” Max said as Michael dropped heavy back into his chair before falling. He clapped him on the shoulder as he passed. “Alex’d kill me anyway if it was trouble and I let you answer it.”

Alex. The too-casual reminder that he might have some kind of stake in Michael’s well-being sent him reeling. What was he supposed to do with that information, that perspective? How did he earn it, how was he worthy of it, and how did he keep it from flying away? All questions that were too much to answer—questions he’d asked his ceiling and his eyelids and his stars every night for a decade and was farther than ever from answers even now that he was coming to accept the core truth of the problem’s existence.

Of course, there was no trouble at the door; it was just Kyle, as expected, and he pet Buffy with one hand while waving at Michael with the other.

“Hey, Guerin. How’s it going?”

Michael marshalled himself to answer.

“How do you think it’s going, Doc? A newborn deer’s got fancier footwork than me right now. But I’m alive, so…”

“Can’t complain,” Kyle finished the sentence with an amused shake of his head. “That’s one way to look at it.”

His exam was quick and efficient, something Michael was grateful enough for that he’d die before he ever let Valenti see it, and when he was done he took a seat across from Michael.

“It’s not exactly a clean bill of health, but your condition seems stable and improving. The condition of your body, at least. It’s hard for me to give any diagnosis about what might be impacting the use of your powers.”

“Yeah, yeah, wouldn’t expect you to. I’ll figure it out. You’ve done enough,” Michael said, scratching idly at his temple where Max’s handprint lay, thankfully hidden by his hair. “Tell me this, Doc.” He glanced around to make sure Max wasn’t in earshot, and when he spied him through a window throwing a ball for Buffy, he continued, “Have you had a chance to check out Max yet? The healing he did, with his heart—”

Kyle smiled, and Michael glanced away from his knowing face, shifting in his seat.

“I did, and you have nothing to worry about. He’s fine. It was a significant strain, but considering the alternative, the outcome could have been much worse.”

“But what about his condition otherwise?” Michael powered through. “He’s been dealing with depression and exhaustion for months since—"

The back door swung open and Buffy bounded in for her water bowl, Max following. “How’s it going?” he asked them both, but mostly Kyle, voice full of false cheer.

“All good,” Kyle said easily, getting to his feet. “It’s going to be fine,” he tacked on the firm reassurance to Michael. “I should get going so I can get ready for work. Catch you later, Max.”

“Thanks again, man.”

“Free drinks at the Pony for life, you know my price.”

As little as Michael cared to socialize with Valenti even now, awkward silence descended when he was gone and it was just the brothers again. What did you say to the guy who saved your life—again—when you had nothing but your own stupidity to blame?

It didn’t help that Max’s ability to make Michael feel small and stupid and guilty as hell without even trying was still unparalleled, or that he was still too weak to pace it out, or that he was hyperaware of how everyone would perceive him if he sampled some of Alex’s liquor cabinet to take the edge off.

“I’m going out to the back to get some light exercise,” he said eventually.

“Okay,” Max said, not arguing or inviting himself along.

“Thanks,” Michael replied, not elaborating on what for as he passed him at the fastest shuffle he could manage.

Outside, under the sun, Michael’s head was no clearer, his muscles no stronger. Alex’s backyard was featureless, incomplete, clearly not somewhere he spent much time, unlike the front patio, which at least had some furniture, some lived-in rested energy. And, Michael thought, of course: Alex would spend his leisure somewhere he could anticipate most attempts to accost him.

Letting out a heavy sigh, Michael ambled from one end of the fence to the other. As he went, Alex’s cameras followed him, and Michael tried not to feel weird about that, weirdly paranoid despite it being Alex, weirdly comforted to know Alex could watch him. The whole thing was weird. Living in Alex’s home was…weird.

So he’d live with it.

His pocket buzzed frantically, and he swore loudly, startled, before he realized it was just his phone ringing.

“Fuckin’ spam calls,” he muttered as he fished it out. “Why the hell does anyone carry this shit around all the—”

But it wasn’t a spam call at all. Ortecho sat dead center on the screen, and, not knowing what ring it was on, Michael answered immediately.

“Mikey!” Liz’s breathless voice shouted before he could say a word.

“Well it’s about damn—”

“Thank god, are you okay, why am I hearing from Maria that you almost died, what the hell?”

“Glad to know that’s what it takes to get a hold of you,” Michael snarked back.

“Listen, I—”

Michael just sighed. “I know. I get it. But we’ve been calling you a damn lot, Ortecho.”

“…I know.”

Despite what he said, he didn’t understand. He’d never understand the running, not as someone so stuck in the ground he’d been planted in that he’d die if he tried to rip himself away. But he couldn’t love Alex after ten years without accepting what he’d never understand and knowing how to survive it.

He hadn’t thought, until now, that maybe he and Max could talk about this shit. But maybe it’d be worth a try. If there was one thing that Michael did know, it was that Liz and Alex wouldn’t talk about how the situations made them similar until they’d exhausted all possible escapes from that conversation.

“Well…” Michael said into the silence. “How’s California been? How’s the Genoryx lab; they better be letting you do all the mad science shit, or else what good’s a shady government drug company…”

“Don’t change the subject! You haven’t even answered me. Are you okay? ”

“I…”

What was the harm in being honest? Liz wasn’t even here, wasn’t even talking to anyone who wasn’t dying, so who would she tell? Maybe Maria, but Maria could read it from him like an open book.

“Gotta tell you, I’ve been better,” he admitted.

Liz let out a soft, sympathetic noise. “What happened? You can…you can talk to me, if you want. I know I haven’t been the most reliable, but we’re friends. We are. Okay?”

Shaking his head, Michael paced the length of the fence again, one hand on it to steady himself. He reached the house and kept walking to the front, leaving the barren back garden behind.

“There’s not that much to say. Maria probably told you already. I made a bad gamble on Hyde, and Jekyll had to haul my ass out of the fire. That’s it.”

That version of the story left out the part Isobel played, but Michael didn’t have the words to describe walking his own head as it melted around him, images flying past bright enough to sear his eyes, snatches of conversation, aphasia in every sense, and how empty and cavernous and bereft he felt now, knowing what Jones had stuffed inside him—the knowledge of his entire people—knowing he wasn’t enough to contain it, weak, corrupted, and now he might never get it back. And knowing Jones did that to him on purpose, gave him more than his body and mind could handle to make him feel this way, didn’t make the feeling it any damn easier.

Liz went silent on the other end. There was a question she wasn’t asking, but Michael let it ride, gave her the space.

But finally, he answered it for her. “Max is okay. His heart held up, and so did the pacemaker. And I’ve got a handprint six inches from my nose, so I can call him on it if he tries to bullshit me.”

“I—okay. Thank you, Mikey.”

“Don’t thank me. Seriously, don’t. I, uh, said a lot of shit I probably shouldn’t have in your voicemail, about Max. But it’s up to you if you want him in your life at all, so, uh. Yeah.”

“No, no, it’s fine.”

There was a thunk on the other line like she’d dropped or hit something.

“Look, I should go,” she said.

“Okay,” Michael replied.

“I’m—really glad you’re okay.”

“And, uh, it was nice to hear from you.”

“Okay.” Her final reply was soft and hesitant and awkward as Michael felt making an earnest overture a friend might make. “Bye, Mikey.”

“Don’t be a stranger.”

She hung up.

Michael dropped his arm and let his phone dangle at his side for a little while. His legs shook a little, so he held onto the back of one of the patio chairs to steady himself, but he wasn’t ready to sit just yet.

Friends or not, clearly he and Liz had plenty to work on if they were that fucking awkward without a project between them.

Still, this was something. Something unexpected. Michael was too tired to sort through feelings right now.

But he should have—

Before he could second guess himself, he pulled his phone back up and dashed a text off to her.

We all get together on Thursday nights. Open invitation. -G

Then he dropped his phone face-down on the seat and sat down several feet away so he wouldn’t be tempted to look at it if she texted him back.

All the chairs on Alex’s patio were tilted subtly to watch different angles of the approach to the house, so Michael settled in the one that was shadiest. It was too fucking hot to be relaxing outdoors without water or sunscreen, but the air indoors with Max hovering and Alex…everywhere…was just as stifling.

Max hadn’t asked him why, yet, even though the question itched at Michael’s head, even through the careful distance they were keeping from the handprint bond between them. Which was good, because, in the sunlight, on the other side of the storm, his arms wrapped around his own stomach, holding himself, Michael couldn’t have answered it himself.

Eventually, though, people would ask. And what would he tell them—should he admit he thought that the pollen would be enough to keep himself from harm, should he confess that he’d been willing—or thought he was willing—to accept the risks if it meant no one would have to take a blow for him?

The street stretched long and quiet as far as Michael could see. Every now and then, a car would pass from one point on the line to the next, disappearing down some other driveway or just continuing until the heat haze swallowed it whole. The sun hurt his tired eyes, so he blinked slow, and let minutes trickle past, waiting for something to happen.

Maybe his phone would ring again; maybe Max would come looking for him. Maybe Flint Manes would leap out of the bushes and shoot him. Maybe Alex would come home from work and smile when he saw him. Maybe Forrest would come home early and try and fight him for shacking up while he was gone. Maybe Jones did something to him that was lying in wait and would detonate his heart any second.

Thinking of possibilities was an endless sort of entertainment for a man who never knew what to do with having a future and who just nearly lost his lease on it.

As Michael watched the road, a truck appeared on one side of the horizon, moving faster than most would on a residential street like this. It whipped up dust as it went, and Michael rolled his eyes and slouched deeper into the chair. Fucking assholes in their screaming steel overcompensators almost universally considered themselves above getting work done in a junkyard, and that didn’t exactly give Michael a better opinion of them.

And this piece of shit in particular, Michael recognized. What the hell was Wyatt fuckin’ Long doing on this side of town? Michael tensed as he roared by, just waiting for him to slow or stop—did he drive by often, harassing Alex for dating his cousin? Or looking for his cousin to harass somewhere off the farm where a real adult might stop him?

He didn’t do either, though, and in seconds he was gone, cowgirl mudflaps dangling behind him.

Asshole.

What time was it anyway? Narrowing his eyes, Michael focused on his phone where he dropped it in the other chair and, slowly, tried to pull it toward him. It took seconds and enough strain his head hurt before it moved, but move it did, wobbling slowly towards him. Halfway there, it changed velocity and came shooting toward him, and he only barely managed to catch it before it overshot and slammed against the wall behind him.

Still, progress.

It was later than he thought. Shouldn’t Alex be home from work by now? Should he be worried?

He was just hovering his thumb over Alex’s contact, deciding whether or not to call, when another car hissed along the drive and slowed. This one, though, turned into Alex’s driveway, and Michael relaxed.

Alex pulled the car to a stop, and Michael stood up to greet him, stretching as he did. Unexpectedly, Maria was also in the front seat, but her presence answered the question of why Alex was late. If he wasn’t talking to Michael, at least he was talking to someone.

“Hey,” Michael greeted them.

“Hey, Guerin,” Maria replied.

“Is everything alright?” Alex demanded.

“Yeah, it’s fine. Kyle was by earlier. Seems like I’m still on the mend.”

“That’s good to hear,” Maria said, as Alex said nothing.

Michael gave her a smile. “Yeah, it is. So…are you staying for dinner? Maybe I can cook something…”

Side-eying Alex, who stood as stiff and stoic as Michael had ever seen him, shoulders and back soldier-straight, Maria returned Michael’s smile and said, “Oh, Alex just asked me to take Buffy out for her walk for the next few days, so I’m here to see her.”

“I didn’t want to impose on you for that,” Alex added.

Michael rocked on his heels, hands shoved in his pockets, chewing on his tongue to hold back any indication of how desperate he was to be imposed upon. The weakness in his legs kept him from making a real argument; despite her age, Buffy was a hell of a walker.

Was that the reason Alex was asking Maria to step in? Was his leg okay? Michael rocked forward again, swaying toward Alex and tugging himself back, an old, familiar dance.

“You could’ve. You’re puttin’ me up, I oughtta work for room and board,” Michael joked.

It didn’t exactly land. If possible, Alex shut down harder, face cold and hard, though his voice was soft.

“You don’t have to work for me to take care of you when you’re in need,” he said, every syllable clipped and careful.

Michael should have known something was up then and there, seen it, seen Maria’s downcast eyes and crossed arms, the way she hovered close between them and kept to herself; he should have expected it, Alex to pull some kind of bullshit, but his head didn’t go there. Not yet.

“So…you going somewhere?” he asked, licking his lips. The thought might have sent a bolt of panic through him, but now that Alex had a life here, a house and a job and roots, the threat was less immediate.

That didn’t stop Liz, his mind whispered, but he shook it off.

Alex wasn’t answering, so Michael continued, “You heading out to meet Forrest in DC? You should have gone with him in the first place, man, take some time off.”

Maria shot Alex a loaded look, but Alex’s face just hardened.

“And been across the country when you almost died on my doorstep?” he demanded so fervently Michael took a step back, and Alex closed his eyes, chest rising and falling with a deep breath. “Sorry. Sorry.”

“No, uh, it’s fine. You’re right. I’m glad you were here.”

Somewhere deep in his heart, Michael thought that it wouldn’t have mattered where in the universe Alex was when he lifted his foot and stepped across space to get to his door. His thoughts were inside out, tripled and rearranged with pieces missing, he couldn’t have said what he did or the powers he used or how he could do it again, but he could say this: for a brief moment, he’d possessed the ability to reorder the universe to put himself at Alex’s side, and no technicalities of time or distance would have stopped him.

He didn’t have that power anymore, though, and neither did he have the ability to read Alex’s mind.

“Seriously, though, are you going somewhere?” he asked again.

“…I should get inside. My phone’s dead, I need to charge it,” Alex said.

“ Alex, ” Maria said in a scalded voice.

Michael, though, was cold. Frozen. It barely registered when Maria reached out and squeezed his wrist to reassure him; he wasn’t reassured, though he was pathetically grateful to her for trying. She was a good friend—better now than she was or he was when they were two isolated points on a severed line, ten years as two stars on an unintelligible constellation, half its lights gone out.

But that friendship, as cherished as it was—could it hold him up if the new foundation he’d built for his life was ripped away again? Again, he’d built it up around Alex without expectation or intention. It was reflexive, habitual, migratory. He followed a pattern etched into his bones. He didn’t know any other way to build.

“Alex, I told you,” Maria said.

“I know. But—”

“No! No buts. If you can’t even be honest about what you’re doing, you shouldn’t be doing it.”

“It’s fine,” Michael said. His voice was distant inside his own skull. “I get it. You don’t have to tell—you don’t owe me anything.”

For some reason, Alex turned back around to face them, then, his face so openly wracked with pain and indecision that Michael had to close his eyes.

Even less than he could stand to watch Alex walk away again, he couldn’t stand to watch it hurt so bad and him choose it all the same.

“I’m not leaving you, Guerin. Michael. I’m—not. I’m not!”

He said it again and again, like he was arguing with someone who wasn’t Michael or Maria, both of whom were silent. Maria pressed closer to Michael, leaning her weight against him, wordless but telling him: I’m here.

“I’m not leaving,” Alex said again.

Michael forced himself to open his eyes. A few feet in front of him, Alex took up the same amount of space he always did, posture helplessly perfect, hands helplessly flat at his sides.

Through a tight throat, Michael said, “Okay. Then why…”

Alex struggled for the words. At his side, Michael felt Maria breathe in and release a heavy sigh.

“Talk to us, Alex. Please,” she said.

Dropping his eyes, Alex replied, “I’m just going to be busy and out of the house a lot for the next few days and won’t have time to give Buffy the attention she deserves.”

“Really? That’s it?” her voice was close to tears, and Michael unlocked himself to wrap his arm around her. She continued, “I asked you to talk to us, not just repeat what you told me before. What business, Alex? You’re scaring me.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Alex cried, spreading his arms wide. Then he dropped his arms just as suddenly, head snapping back and forth looking for anyone who might have heard the outburst, then he dragged a hand over his face. He continued, quieter, flatter, “I get so wound up about one threat, and another one starts swinging from my blind side. I’m not waiting for Fields to come calling while Michael is here. And Jones—” That awful blankness crossed his face again. “—What am I supposed to do, let what he did to you go without doing something about it? Wait until he tries again? Absolutely not.”

Every word stung Michael’s senses; he had no response, mouth parted but silent, eyes wide.

Maria let out a frustrated growl. “And would you have told anyone these plans if I hadn’t forced you? Oh my god, of course not, you both suck so bad! What part of this one,” she jerked her thumb at Michael, “getting his gray matter pureed forty-eight hours ago makes you think now is the time to run off with some lone wolf Rambo act? What’s the point of being able to see the future if no one ever asks or listens?”

“Did you? See something?” Michael asked.

“Well. No. But I might have,” Maria replied.

“Wait, nothing at all? It’s been how long now?”

“Too long,” she admitted. “It’s not nothing, I just keep seeing our bearded friend standing in a field. I can’t even tell if it’s now or if it’s from before or even if it’s from the home planet. He doesn’t look at me, just…stands there.” She shivered.

Alex’s eyebrows drew down. “Can he…block your sight? Is that possible?”

Shrugging helplessly, Maria said, “I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure we can’t just ask him. What are we going to do?”

We. Part of Michael wanted to protest, in the face of the danger that alliance would pose to two of the people he loved most in the entire world. Standing alone already almost got him killed, left him weaker than he’d ever been, but still part of him would try again, and again, until he was out of second chances, if it meant sparing Alex and Maria anything.

But that wasn’t in question, was it. They’d made their choice. It was time for Michael to learn to live with it.

“Thursday’s coming up,” he said. Maria and Alex turned to look at him, and he lifted and dropped his shoulders, curling in on himself. “If you guys are still available. We can talk about a game plan.”

“ Guerin, ” Maria sighed. But she smiled when she reached out and gave his hand a squeeze. “Of course we’re available.”

Alex didn’t reply. Silence fell between the three of them, until Maria sighed again and headed toward the front door.

“I already came all this way, I might as well spend a little time with Buffy. Since I won’t be walking her after all.”

As she passed Alex, he made a soft noise, and whatever it was, she understood perfectly, because she turned to meet Alex’s raising arms, and the two of them hugged tightly.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “You were right. I’m sorry I didn’t--I shouldn’t have made you--”

“Stop with the ‘shouldn’ts’,” Maria replied. “Just...don’t make us watch you destroy yourself alone when we’re here for you, okay?”

Michael flinched. Neither of them looked at him, but her words hit home anyway. He was part of that grief, too.

Alex nodded against her shoulder. “I won’t.”

Then she gave him one last squeeze, he let her go, and she went inside, leaving Michael and Alex alone.

And alone, what was there to say? They hadn’t found it so far.

Michael’s heart still beat uncomfortably fast in his chest, a frantic effort to keep him standing and sane while his brain and body figured out that Alex wasn’t going to disappear from before his eyes, and it only pulsed harder when—he blinked to clear his eyes and—Alex got closer, closing the space between them in a few long, uneven strides.

On instinct, Michael took a step back, but Alex stopped six inches away, just staring at him with his dark eyes. They scanned from his feet to his hair, taking in every minute tremble of his damaged muscles.

Jittery, Michael licked his lips and said, “Take a picture, it’ll last longer--”

Alex took Michael’s shirt in his fist and pulled him in. They hit, chest to chest, Alex’s arm trapped between them until he pulled it away, down and out, clamped it around Michael’s back and held on, held on for dear life. He didn’t need to hold on so tight; Michael froze with the shock of Alex around him and couldn’t have budged for love or money, not until his mind caught up with his body and he slumped in Alex’s safe arms.

“I’m so mad at you,” Alex said in his ear, close enough that his hitching breaths stirred Michael’s ear.

“I know. I know,” Michael spoke back, lips moving against his shoulder. He let his eyes fall shut again. Like this, he didn’t need them, dropped every sense that wasn’t touch, anything that didn’t tell him the only thing he needed to know. Alex was here. Michael was here. They were alive. They were together.

“How could you? What did I do wrong?” His breathing hitched harder, enough for Michael to feel it in Alex’s entire body.

Gripping him tighter, one arm around his lower back, one arm around his broad shoulders, Michael murmured, “Nothing, God, nothing. I was stupid. I just wanted—I just had to—”

“I wanted to protect you. That’s all I wanted—did I push too hard?” Hot, wet heat hit Michael’s neck. “I’m so shit at this, Michael, every time I try, I just make everything worse!”

“No! No, hey, hey.”

They were too tightly entwined for Michael to do much, but he maneuvered them enough to press their foreheads together.

“I just wanted to protect you, ” Michael rasped. If he looked at Alex this second, this close, he wouldn’t be able to stand it, so he squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t know how to—be protected. You making that sacrifice for me, I don’t know how to be worth it. It’s not your fault.”

“You don’t have to do anything. Ever. I’m so fucking—sorry, for all the times I made you feel like you had to—earn...”

They swayed slightly back and forth, half because Michael had pushed himself too far on his weak legs, half because it was an old self-soothing motion one or both of them fell back on, completely alone in the universe as children. They did it together, now.

“We’ll figure it out,” Michael swore, clasping Alex’s sweaty hand in his own sweaty hand, in the nonspace between their chests, knuckle to sternum, palm to palm, sternum to knuckle. The words tasted like hope on his tongue.

They opened their eyes, Alex first, then Michael, and they stood like that for a long time. Alex’s eyes were red from crying, but beautiful. Always beautiful.

We’ll figure it out. Neither of them believed it fully, but if both of them held a half, maybe they’d manage to make it work.

“We should get back inside,” Michael said eventually, dropping Alex’s hand, stiffening his own to keep the shape of it held to his side as they parted.

“Actually, could we, um.” Alex cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe we could sit out here a while longer. It’s a nice sunset? And maybe we could catch up on normal stuff.”

Michael looked over his shoulder at the sky. It really was stunning, broad beyond comprehension, all alien with pinks and purples and golds.

“Normal stuff sounds great,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

#malex fic #malex #michael guerin #alex manes #my fic #roswell new mexico

17 notes · View notes

make-me-imagine · 4 years

Text

Headcanons: Spike having a crush on the reader + first kiss & dating

Requested by: @youngcroissantturkeyworribler & A seperate anon (for dating headcanons)

Pairing: Spike x Reader

Gender: Neutral Triggers: Brief mentions of injuries

Note: I may have made Spikes character a bit more soft than normal, but come on, soft Spike is the best; this also came out a lot longer than I originally thought it would lol.

Crushing

† Spike is the type to deny he has feelings for someone, especially when it comes to you

† You were just another one of the slayers friends, at least at first

† It wasn’t long before he realized that he got on better with you than the others

† You had a good sense of humour, you were brave, and strong, and smarter than the average person, not to mention attractive

† He didn’t mind you after all

† Then one day he noticed that when he saw you his stomach fluttered

† That had never happened before, he tried to think nothing of it, just claiming to himself that he must just be hungry

† Yeah, that was it, it wasn’t caused by anything else, nope, nada.

† And then it happened again, and again, and eventually he found himself somewhat avoiding you for fear of feeling something for you

† When he would think of why he might be feeling this way he scoffed at himself, chastising himself for being such a wimp

† You didn’t really mean anything to him...right?

† Then suddenly he couldn’t stop himself from constantly being around you

† He would not admit to himself that it was because he liked you

† But then one day, you got hurt during a hunt

† And he was furious

† He yelled you for getting yourself hurt, and you yelled at him for being a jerk before stomping off

† As he watched you leave, he had the strongest urge to follow you, to apologize, to tell you that he was just scared.

† That was when it clicked in his brain

† He couldn’t avoid his feelings anymore, they were real

† “Shit”

† Then it was over for him

† He finally gave into it, knowing that no matter how much he tried to deny it, it didn’t make his feelings just disappear

† You noticed all of the changes in him

† Him suddenly disappearing, and then him being around you all the time, and now he was being protective?

† You hoped, deep down that it was because he liked you, because you couldn’t stop the feelings that formed in your own heart

† But he was a soulless vampire right? He couldn’t possibly fall for you

† Wrong

† He fell hard for you

† The second he finally admitted it and accepted it, it was like a waterfall of feelings for you. He still kept them to himself though

† But he hated being away from you for too long, always worried that you might get into trouble and get hurt

† He also tried to play off the fact that he scared away every person that seemed to flirt with you because it was ‘fun’ to annoy you

† You believed him, sort of

First Kiss

† One day, after knowing each other for quite a while, you and the others had a fight with a pretty powerful demon

† Both of you got hurt, but Spike took the brunt of it when he pushed you aside when you were about to be attacked

† He saved you

† So, sitting in your living room, dabbing a large cut on his shoulder with a damp cloth, he couldn’t help but stare at you

† Your brows knit in concentration as you tried your best not to hurt him

† The annoyance evident in your frown for him getting himself hurt to save you

† “Are you ever going to say something?”

† “Wasn’t planning on it” you retort

† “You could at least say thank you”

† He could barely hold back the grin on his face when you looked up at him, glare evident on your face

† There was a hint of amused annoyance behind your eyes though

† He audibly chuckled before he gently took your hand in his as he tugged the cloth from your hand

† He dabbed the cloth on the cut on your face

† You had already cleaned it

† But he was using this as an excuse to be close, to look into your eyes

† “You know I wouldn’t have gotten hurt if you’d just stay out of the slayers problems right?”

† Your glare faded a bit, replaced by a hint of guilt

† But it quickly changed to pride when you met his eyes “You know I can’t. They’re my friends”

† A small smile crossed his face as his hand fell away

† Looking down towards the ground “Why’d it have to be you” he muttered, so quiet you almost missed it

† “What?” your heart was beating heavily, and Spike could hear it

† He looked back at you, raising his hand again and taking your chin into his palm as he gently looked into your eyes

† “I said, why did it have to be you” he paused, noticing the confusion in your eyes “If only I could have fallen for someone who wasn’t constantly in danger”

† “Fallen for?”

† You had barely finished the question when Spike pressed a quick yet deep kiss to your lips

† You stared at him, shocked and silent as he smirked at you

† “Well there’s that then”

† You opened your mouth to speak, but found no words, so you just closed your mouth, small pout evident, a blush on your cheeks

† Spike stared at you, amused at your speechlessness before leaning forward and kissing you again

Dating

† Spike never officially asked you out after he kissed you

† It was just kind of obvious to him that you were together now, but not to you

† The others slowly figured it out, or asked you in private

† “Are you and Spike dating?” Willow asked, confusion and awe enveloping her words as Buffy watched on

† “Umm, maybe? I don’t know, it’s hard to tell”

† You honestly had no idea what Spike considered your ‘status’ to be

† Not until one day when Xander saw him flirting with you, and getting a bit to close for comfort

† He noticed that the others weren’t alarmed to he was obviously missing something

† “Hold on a second!” he called out, gaining your attention

† “You two are dating aren’t you?!”

† “Uhh” you hesitated, not sure how to answer. You looked over at Spike, who seemed less than affected by Xanders sudden outburst

† “Took you long enough to figure it out” he calmly responded before turning away to continue what he had been doing previously

† Willow and Buffy chuckled at Xanders obliviousness

† Dating Spike was a mixture of emotions

† He got jealous easy, but usually used it to amuse himself

† Scaring off the intended target, often embarrassing you in the process

† And of course, he was protective a.f.

† You never went on a hunt alone

† Whether than meant, he went with you (which was his preference), or you were with the others

† When you get hurt, he is angry and scared

† He doesn’t want to lose you, not now, and not like that

† Sometimes this leads to a fight

† But it always ended with him holding you tightly against him, apologizing, as he explained his fears of losing you

† Other times, he liked to tease you and bicker with you over trivial things

† Sometimes he was distant

† But more often than not, he was very soft with you

† Not necessarily around others though, he only what you to see his soft side

† Spike loved to watch you, clean, cook, read, talk, anything

† You were comforting, and so, human.

† You’d be cooking or working on something and suddenly feel his arms wrap around you

† Pressing a kiss to the back of your neck

† He was a bit more domestic than you’d imagine he’d be, he didn’t really mind washing dishes, or cleaning, or even folding laundry

† It was comforting seeing him be so normal

† Spike would joke that you brought out the ‘human’ in him

† But he wasn’t really joking, you made him want a somewhat normal and domestic life

† Spike knew that you brought a new form of life to him, a new form of soul

† And he would forever be grateful to you

† Spike wasn’t necessarily a verbal person when it came to love, unless you count flirting, which he did a lot

† He wouldn’t really say ‘I love you’ except on important occasions, when he felt it was really needed.

† No words of affection really left his mouth

† He was a more physically affectionate person, even if they were subtle

† But you grew to notice them, and understood the meaning behind them

† The comforting hand on your lower back, the brush of his hand against yours to remind you that he’s there, the quick squeeze of your side as he walks past you meaning he will be right back.

† And when you’re alone, the gentle kisses he places on your head, neck, shoulder, hands, etc..

† Sometimes you’ll wake up to find a single bloom of your favorite flower on the pillow next to yours

† Or he’ll show up late at night with your favorite take-out and a smirk on his face

† All of these show his affection for you

† He knows he doesn’t just need to use words or kisses to show you he cares, that actions really do speak louder than words

403 notes · View notes

liquor-and-intellect · 4 years

Text

Clouded- Part 1

In which Jules might or might not have feelings for her best friend, Harry, who is getting engaged to another girl and everything just becomes... more complicated.

friends to lovers to enemies to lovers- it’s complicated

“Where are you even at right now, Harry? I don't see you,” I laughed into the phone, scanning the train station for the familiar broad shoulders and soft brown hair.

“Uh... I'm by a big sign...”

I plugged my other ear from the excess chatter around me. “Yeah, because that narrows it down,” I scolded and rolled my eyes.

Maneuvering my way through the crowd I felt a hand grab my wrist, spinning me around to the wide smile I grew up loving.

“There you are,” he laughed into my hair, pulling me into his chest for a tight hug.

Wrapping my arms around his waist, I breathed in the smell of his favorite cologne.

It had been one long month since I had last seen Harry. One long month of hardcore English papers, late night studying sessions and the occasional all-nighter for an early exam. Even though we both lived in London, it felt like we never saw one another anymore. Between my new semester at uni and Harry's rising fame with his solo career, it was hard to sit down with the familiarity of a childhood face even for one moment.

I had been in the middle of closing my apartment door and wrestling the keys out of the lock when I answered Harry's call last week. He had been in the states working with the band on the new album and had just received the news that he had a week off.

“And I felt that we have a lot of catching up to do,” he had chuckled through the phone and my heart had ached with longing for our hour long conversations. It had been too long since I had sat down with my best friend.

“We do,” I had sighed into the phone.

Harry and I had grown up next to each, our birthdays only being months apart. Every memory I had was branded with a piece of him in it. First day of year one, first stitches, first prom... All of it lived with him by my side. I didn't know a life without him until I moved away for uni and he became famous, spending months away from me in different countries. The invisible cord that kept us connected was pulled so taut it hurt.

But the aching was subsiding as I leaned into his chest right now in the train station, the cord snapping us back together as I hugged him like I did when I was younger.

“When did you get so buff?” I laughed, squeezing his bicep. “it hasn't been that long, has it?”

He pulled away to examine his arm with thoughtful eyes. With a humble shrug he gave a simple, “Eh.”

I rolled my eyes. He was still the same Harry I had always known, the one that rarely thought of himself and refused to believe he was nothing but the lanky, over-looked teenager he had once been.

He gave me a gentle nudge. “Let's go before people realize I'm here. I'd rather pictures of me not get out before I’ve had the chance to see my mum”

He put his hand at the bottom of my spine, guiding me out of the crowd toward the waiting taxi. A warm London breeze slipped its way between us, blowing my dark hair out of it's braid and around my face.

“How does an ever-waiting Buffy the Vampire marathon sound?” I asked, settling in the seat beside him and taking note of the new stubble contagiously making its way around his jawline.

An eyebrow raised and a boyish smirk lifting the corner of his mouth, he replied, “I assume that implies pizza rolls?”

“When have you ever been over to my apartment and not been graced with pizza rolls?” It was somewhat of a tradition of ours to eat pizza rolls together. Neither one of us being graced with the ability to cook well— and a tendency to always overcook things when we did try—our parents gave up and started buying us the only thing that couldn't be ruined with an oven timer. The late nights in my basement watching Friday the 13th—or any scary movie we could get our hands on from my dad's secret collection— and the smell of pizza rolls dancing through the air had been our favorite thing to do.

The taxi wove its way across the busy street towards the corner by the university where my apartment was located. A tiny brick complex with ivy running up the side and a rack of bikes chained out front. It was small and my neighbors were ultimately quiet—although their cigarette smell would sometimes drift up to my tiny balcony— I was content. It was the quietest part of London that I could find.

Harry followed me up the metal stairs to my door, his tall figure looking strange against my lame potted plants and worn out “welcome” mat in the entrance. Turning the key into the lock, I pushed it open, the familiar melody of creaking hinges inviting us in.

“Remind me to fix that for you,” he hummed, running his hand across the dry bolts that held it to the frame.

I rolled my eyes at his worry, closing the door behind us.

My place was small and cozy. A one-bedroom brick walled apartment with dark wooded floor and a simply tiled I'm-not-a-chef kitchen. Harry waltzed straight into my living room, kicking his boots off and tossing himself onto my brown leather couch.

“How's Elaine?” I asked while walking into the kitchen to dig out the pizza rolls, thinking of the pictures of Harry and his girlfriend of two years that he had posted lately. She was a big- time traveling dancer, hitting the Hollywood spotlight with him all the time. Although I had met her on plenty of occasions, we never really clicked besides the one mutual subject of Harry. I wasn't sure if she liked me or not or just finally accepted my occurring appearance in Harry's life, but she was pretty quiet when Harry and I wanted to hang out- no longer the original reaction when she was completely jealous.

“She's good,” he called back from my couch, the noise of the television surrounding his voice. “she's actually in New York right now for Justin Timberlake's tour that just started. I saw her last week.”

I nodded, slipping the tray into the oven. Sliding Harry's legs out of the way, I joined him on the couch where he had started a sitcom. He laid his feet back into my lap without skipping a beat, keeping his eyes glued to the TV.

“You never told me if you went on a second date with that Will bloke,” he said.

I grimaced. Will had been a guy I had met at the student center a couple of weeks back. He was… okay, a Nike wearing, gel-haired and ready-to-party kind of guy. With nothing to do for a Friday night, I had agreed to let him take me to a restaurant down the street. He had been pretty nice, opening the door for me and laughing at my lame jokes. We had even had a pretty heavy make-out session back at his place, a well-deserved orgasm and a cordial “see you around” when I made a hasty exit.

“Because I didn't,” I mumbled, playing with the hem of Harry's pants by his ankles.

“Why don't you ever date, Jules?” he asked with pure curiosity. “I see the way guys look at you, you know you're gorgeous, right?”

I rolled my eyes, ignoring his last statement. “We didn't really hit it off, he wasn't that great. After I left his place… I just wasn’t feeling excited to see him again, y’know?”

“Left his place?” he inquired. “You went to his place.”

Shame settled in my eyes as I glanced down. While Harry was my best friend, I didn’t really disclose my sex life with him. I knew he had one and I’m sure he assumed I did as well. It just wasn’t something I ever felt was needed to be shared. I sighed, “Like I said… he wasn’t that great.”

His eyes glared into the side of my head until he used his foot to push my eyes to his, giving me a stare that was hard to place.

Swatting his foot away, I gave him an annoyed look.

He cleared his throat. “You say that about every guy,” he accused.

Trying to lighten the conversation, I poked him in the side. “I don't say that about you,” I added playfully.

He rolled his eyes and gave into our comfortable banter. “You're a mess.”

“You don't know how to true that is.”

….

“This was my favorite episode,” Harry said, nodding toward the TV and grabbing another steaming pizza roll off of the plate in front of us.

I watched as Buffy staked yet another vampire, not a hair out of place. “Mine too,” I agreed. “American television is just better in general.”

We had pushed my glass coffee table to the side of the room, dragging the comforter off my bed along with every one of the blankets I had in my closet onto the hardwood floor in front of the TV. Harry and I had huddled up with our backs against the couch, his long legs stretched in front of him and my ankles folded beneath me. I had a plate heaping with hot pizza rolls for us, Harry pushing one after another into his mouth.

“Do you remember in Grade 10 when you wore that hideous plaid skirt that went to your knees and no one talked to you for the rest of the day?” he asked, smirking at me over a pizza roll that had paused in front of his lips.

“Do you remember when you used to straighten your hair and would sing opera for every school talent show?” I rose an eyebrow at him.

He squinted his eyes at me, furrowing his brow.

I laughed, playfully hitting him in the arm. “It's okay because we were both losers together.”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “We are quite the pair.”

He went to sink his teeth into the pizza roll, when it split in half and flung sauce across his face. His chin and cheeks tainted with the reddish sauce.

I laughed at the dumfounded look he gave me, my eyes watering and my side cramping. Harry's tongue flicked out to reach the sauce at the corner of his mouth, his eyes crinkling with concentration.

“Did I get it?” he asked, looking at me innocently.

I giggled and shook my head, scooting closer to him. “No, Harry... it's all over your face, bub.” I looked down as my laughter bubbled up again.

Crinkles around his eyes formed as he smiled at my laughing. “Well?” he asked. “Are you going to get it off of me?”

I licked my thumb and rubbed at the corner of his jaw. I knew Harry's face like the back of my hand, but looking this close at him within this moment he seemed different. I guess I never realized just how much he had actually matured. His jaw was structured, the valley of it dipping down to his chin and holding two full, pink lips. Lips that were slightly naturally pouted right now, parted and surrounded by pizza sauce. And the stubble he had let grow out below his nose and scattering itself back around his chin was something else entirely different— Harry wasn't that little boy anymore.

I knew he wasn’t a boy. There would be times he’d release new pictures from magazines, hair slicked back, shirtless, tattoos on display… but I tried not to linger too long on them. It was Harry. My Harry.

It made me think of the countless times we had gone places where people had mistaken us as a couple and our quiet denying, “No, no, we're just friends.” And I never questioned it. I never even thought differently until this moment.

Thoughtlessly, I ran my thumb across the valley of his bottom lip even though no pizza sauce resided there. His light green eyes watched me intently, but didn’t make any move to stop me.

This— this fluttery feeling erupted in my the pit of my stomach taking flight into my ribcage where my heart did this strange thing that didn't exactly feel like beating, but skipping or dancing or maybe even spinning.

With my thumb resting in the middle of his bottom lip, his mouth closed around me, framing my finger with a small kiss and it did strange things to my heart.

But he was my best friend and even though we technically weren't doing anything it was wrong to feel this way about Harry. He had Elaine and I... this wasn't supposed to be happening.

I removed my thumb from between his lips, brushing hurriedly on his chin for the rest of the remaining sauce.

“Um-” I stuttered, feeling shaky and almost way too light. “I- uh- I.” I cleared my throat and looked down as red rose to my cheeks- I have never blushed in front of Harry before.

He released a long breath that he must have been holding, not letting his eyes leave my face.

Wiping my hands on my leggings, I shakily said, “I think I got it all off.”

“Jules, I-”

“I'm sorry, I just... you know. Spaced out for a second... there.” I nodded with myself.

He sat up straighter, holding his chin an inch higher. “Jules, I need to tell you something,” he stated, his voice rough.

I put my hands between my knees to prohibit them from doing anything else without my knowledge and nodded for him to continue, he looked so distressed.

“I um-” he cleared his throat. “The reason I wanted to see you this week was...” His eyes flicked away from mine to anything else in the room.

I narrowed my eyes at him, confused by what he was about to say. Usually I could read him so well but after what just happened... I didn't know.

“I'm going to propose to Elaine,” he said, looking at his hands resting in his lap.

My heart chipped at the edges, but I wasn't sure why. He was my best friend... shouldn't I be happy for him?

“Harry-” my voice cracked, but I couldn't let it. I couldn't let whatever I was feeling get in the way for Harry to have everything he had ever wanted out of life. And nothing even happened, it wasn't like we kissed or anything. It was just a stupid thing that I got carried away with because I didn't realize how incredibly attractive he was. That was it, that's all.

I pushed a pained smile onto my face, refusing to let it crack any piece of me. “Harry... That's... Great- lovely. I'm so happy for you.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him close to me, letting his arms slip around my waist and his warm breath to brush my neck.

“I'm glad, Jules... Because if you wouldn't be okay with it, I don't know what I would have done,” he murmured, his prickly cheek brushing against mine.

“Why wouldn't I be okay with it, Harry?” I asked, trying to push the aching away into a far corner of my mind where it would never be invited over again. “You're my best friend. I want you to be happy… no matter what.” Even if my confused feelings suffered.

“I don't know... I didn't want you to think that if I married Elaine she would be the only woman in my life,” he said. “I wanted you to understand that you could still be there, you know. Even if we couldn't hang out all the time.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, pushing out my next words. “Harry. You're like my brother, there's no way I can be pushed completely out of the picture.”

I wasn't sure if I felt him pull me tighter or if I wanted him too.

…

I laid with my back to Harry on my living room floor, a warm blanket tucked tightly around me and my ears heightened to hear his soft snores. We had both talked a little while longer about me wanting to be a psychologist and him wondering if fame had completely altered his personality. And after a few pizza rolls later, I agreed with him that I was tired and rolled over when I saw his eyes were officially closed. I wasn't tired though, rather awake and alert and buzzing with electricity. Here was my best friend who was in love with his soon to be fiance' and here I was hoping silently that maybe he would chang his mind. Maybe he realized that... I don't know- I don't know what I wanted.

I wanted him to be happy, I was one hundred percent certain with every cell in my body that I wanted Harry Styles to receive all of the love he himself gave into the world. I wanted Elaine— or any girl— to wake up next to him every morning thinking of different ways to love him that day. He deserved all the goodness you could find in the earth's heart multiplied by ten. He needed someone to assure him when he doubted himself- because he usually did- someone to rub his muscled shoulder and tell him he didn't need to worry about things out of his control.

I sighed, hoping and praying to God that Elaine realized this. That she realized he wore his heart on his sleeve and was perfectly fine with it being torn into shreds.

Harry stirred in his sleep, turning onto his side facing me and mumbling something incoherent. I rolled over, taking in his peaceful sleeping face and wondering if this was the last time we could ever sleep next to each other without Elaine getting in the way.

Harry moved closer to me, resting his chin on the top of my head, my ear pressed to his chest where the melody of a steady beat rang through. And that's where I fell asleep, listening to the only thumping of anyone's blood I cared to hear.

***

“Want eggs? I know how to make those now,” I asked Harry who was just starting to open his eyes from sleep, stretching his large arms out around him.

I had woken up with my head on his chest and his arms wrapped tightly around me. Quickly, without waking him, I had slid out and went to my room to sit on my bed and think of the cold absence from where I had been folded around him. I had been awake thinking for a while now when he finally started opening his eyes.

He nodded. “Yeah,” he mumbled, his voice nicely groggy from sleep, a silky melodious sound that I lived for. “yeah that sounds nice.”

I gave him a smile, loving the messiness of his hair and the droop of his eyes.

Harry shoveled plenty of my poor eggs into his mouth, he had always had an appetite and being a man didn't lessen that one bit. We lightly talked over coffee, Harry saying he wanted to look at some of the jewelry stores in town and wanted my input on rings for Elaine. I politely agreed and gave him a smile, even though it physically pained me.

Later, I tossed my hair up into a high ponytail, pulling my feet into a pair of chunky sneakers and a warm gray oversized sweater. The temperature had dropped in London and small drizzle was falling over the sidewalks.

I followed Harry down my apartment steps to the waiting taxi on the side of the street. He said he knew of a jewelry store on the edge of town where no paparazzi would bother us.

The small rain was still falling when we got out and I glanced through the glass windows to sparkling rings sitting on velvet cushions. Harry's eyes brightened as I walked in behind him into the immediate blast of the warm heater from the store.

“I don't know what kind of a ring to get her... There's so many,” he sighed, eyes passing over the diamonds in the cases.

As much as I didn't want to give my honest input, I knew he needed my help. I rubbed his arm thoughtfully, sliding my hand into the crook of his elbow to glance over his shoulder. The butterflies erupted again in my stomach, but I pushed them away. “What does she like?” I asked. “Does she want something flashy...? Thoughtful...?” I dusted my eyes over the yellow diamonds. “Unique?”

Harry looked nervous, eyes skipping from one ring to the next and before eventually shrugging.

“Looking for a wedding ring, loves?” said a balding man in a blazer walking from behind the counter. Leaning on the case in front of us, he looked between Harry and I with expectant eyes.

“Uh, yeah,” Harry told him, giving a slight chuckle. “and already failing.”

I sighed. “You're overthinking it. Don't worry too much,” I said, giving him an encouraging smile.

The man gazed over at us, a soft grin on his face. “Well, let's start with what you like, love,” he said, looking at me.

I stared at him for a second, slightly confused. Then, when it registered, I detached myself from Harry, shaking my head. “No, no, no, we aren't... together,” I said through a shaky laugh.

“She's my friend,” Harry told him, wringing his hands together.

The man nodded. “Yes, lad, so sorry. You lot just seem as if you were already married.” Gesturing to the two of us before moving on to a selection of rings. “If you see we have...”

I didn't hear what he said after that, because the thought of Harry here for me made my heartbeat impossibly fast.

It was a strange thing. Having a single moment that changed the way you looked at a person. Here I was, walking down the street with someone I've known my entire life—and here I was hoping that I would walk too close and our arms would brush just a little, just so I could feel him for a small moment.

I didn't want to feel this way. Even as his fingertips brushed mine, I knew it was wrong, but why did everything feel so natural?

Harry led us to a cafe behind a few business buildings where the rain had finally died down. He had been quiet since we had left the store empty handed. I told him if nothing immediately reminded him of her, just to sleep a night and go back tomorrow, eventually he nodded and let me drag him out for lunch.

We sat at a table outside, the slick wind slipping up and around us, raising goosebumps across my arms.

“Why didn't you wear a coat?” Harry asked, looking away from the dreary sky to my awaiting eyes.

“I didn't realize hell was freezing over,” I mumbled, crossing my arms.

He sighed and slid off his coat. “And yet, this isn't the first time I've scolded you for not bringing a coat,” he said, giving me a little smile that warmed my heart after his previous sad attitude. “Here.” He nodded toward his leather jacket.

I've lost too many arguments on this subject before, so I greedily took it and wrapped it tightly around my shoulders, breathing in his cologne.

The waiter brought out our food and I didn't hesitate to hungrily pour sauce across my fries, listening to my stomach growl in response.

A loose piece of hair glided across my face from the gentle breeze, sliding across my plate and succeeding in smearing sauce across my cheek.

I gasped. “How did that even happen?” I mumbled under my breath, grimacing as I attempted to clean my hair of the food.

Harry chuckled, taking in my disheveled appearance before leaning across the table and removing the hair from my eyes and tucking it gently away. The tips of his fingers lingered behind my ear for a second too long before he removed it to wipe away the ketchup at the corner of my mouth. His thumb gliding across my cheek.

His eyes met mine and this strange unsaid feeling drifted in the space between us like someone I've never met. The pad of his thumb resting below the corner of my lips.

He swallowed. “Why do we keep ending up in these kind of situations,” he murmured, his voice low and unlike the Harry I was used to interacting with.

I grabbed his hand, turning slightly to lay a kiss into his palm and watched for his reaction. His eyes stayed on me and flickered with something that I've never seen in him before. “I don't know,” I replied back, my voice as soft as the inside of his hand.

He sighed. “Jules, I don't know what you're doing to me.”

I furrowed my brow. “I'm not doing anything.” I didn't know what was happening between us either these past few days, but if it caused Harry to look at me like that then the confusion was worth it.

He chuckled softly. “You're so clueless,” he murmured, but then dropped his hand to continue eating, leaving me feeling electrified and wanting to know what he meant.

The day went on like that. We would talk for a bit—never about the engagement— then we would brush hands or Harry would lean into me, everything taunting me and pulling this thought out of the far corner of my mind.

We had been walking down the sidewalk towards my apartment, our boots splashing in the puddles and my hands in the pockets of Harry's coat when he looked up suddenly, nodding towards the sky.

“Look, it's a rainbow,” he smiled.

I stopped and turned towards it, the colors skyrocketing from behind a building.

“Aren't they the strangest thing?” I asked him, not taking my eyes off of it. “They are just so beautiful.”

He didn't answer and I glanced back over my shoulder to see if he was still standing beside me. He was. His eyes glued to my face as if I held every answer in the world.

“Harry, why are you staring at me?” I whispered, pink painting my cheeks.

A bright smile immediately hit his lips. “Did I just make you, Julia Rebecca Lovewick, blush?” He looked back up, a smile of pure pride beaming on his face.

“You were staring at me like there was something on my face,” I replied. “and I was just embarrassed because the waiter was really cute and I couldn’t have that.” I gave him a smirk to hide the fading blush.

Crinkles appeared onto his forehead. “You're such a quick thinker.” He shook his head, beginning to walk again.

“You think I'm lying.”

“I know you're lying,” he said.

“Besides the fact that our waiter was totally checking me out,” I replied, his eyes rolling. “Why were you even staring at me?”

It was his turn for the tips of his ears to turn rosy.

“Oh my goodness!” I yelled, covering my mouth with my hand. “Did I just make Harry Edward Styles blush?” I shrieked, mocking him and stopping to stare at his annoyed expression.

He rolled his eyes yet again and continued to walk, trying to ignore me.

“You were looking at me because I'm beautiful, weren't you?” I said, jogging to catch up with him and giving him a wink.

“I thought we established I was looking at you because you have something on your face.” He still refused to make eye contact with me.

I grabbed his arm and spun him around to face me. “Just admit it, Harry. You've been caught,” I said, giving him a smirk. “You think I'm pretty.”

“I think you're a lot of things, Jules.” He popped an eyebrow, crossing his arms.

I tilted my head, silently asking him to go on.

He threw his arms into the air. “You act like you don't know you're absolutely gorgeous!”

I smiled. “I do know,” I told him, starting to walk again. “It's just always nice to hear it.”

We climbed the steps and stopped in front of my door. Turning around to face him, I said, “You know, you are pretty fit yourself.” I gave him an eye-up sarcastically, sliding my keys into the lock to hear him fall into a fit of laughter.

We walked into my apartment, both still laughing, where I immediately pulled the ponytail from my hair and shook out my dark waves. “That feels fantastic,” I laughed throwing the rubber band across the room.

Harry walked up behind me, taking me by surprise by running his hand through the ends of my hair, the laughter still visible around his eyes. “You should really wear it down more often, I like it better this way,” he murmured, looking up to meet my eyes.

I wasn't sure, but I think Harry was flirting with me.

“And I like it when you don't shave for a couple of days,” I told him, running the back of my fingers across the line of his jaw.

He wrinkled his nose. “Really? I like it but Elaine hates it,” he said and I dropped my hand, shamefully thinking of his girlfriend.

Harry and I were just friends, that was it. So why was I walking such a thin line?

My heart was pounding as I walked into my bedroom, the ringing in my ears increasing. I could feel it. Plain as day and cutting my heart into two, I had a crush on Harry. Maybe it was because he was about to be officially taken or because of the way his hair parted gracefully down the middle. This feeling that has been passing between us today couldn't have been one sided. If I knew Harry, I knew that he was acting completely different around me as well.

I didn't want Harry to leave me. I didn't want him to marry someone and absolutely disappear out of my life. What would I do without him? I had friends that I casually talked to or caught coffee with but Harry was the only one who I shared my thoughts. The only one who cared enough to know if I disliked the smell of cinnamon or the artificial taste of bananas in candy.

My heart was sounding in my ears and an unusual discomfort eating its way through my chest. I couldn't breathe, my lungs weren't collecting air.

He couldn't marry someone, not when I've just developed this crush on him. Not when I've realized that falling in love with your best friend could be the most natural thing in the entire world.

I felt like the world was closing in on me. The walls shrinking in and molding themselves around my neck and chest cutting my oxygen off.

I heard a voice, muddled and underwater, lift to my ears. I couldn't make out the words or syllables, but he was here. I could feel it.

There was something I was clutching, a corner of a desk or maybe a bed frame... I didn't know. Everything was blurry and running together like colors on a canvas. My hand gripped into the fabric in front of my heart, almost as if to catch it if it decided to jump out.

There were hands on me, clutching and pulling me up. Pulling me through the surface of suffocation and closing walls to the fresh air of my bedroom. Back to the present.

All I could hear were the repeating words, “I've got you. You're okay. You are right here, Jules. Do you feel this? That's me. I'm real and I've got you.”

I was closed in Harry's arms, the opposite of claustrophobia taking place and the choking fear subsiding in my throat. The warm skin of his forearms pressing me to his chest where his heartbeat was pulsing.

“Listen to my voice, Jules,” he murmured, brushing his fingers through my hair. “Match your breathing to mine. Just like that.”

And I did, I focused on his words and exhaled with him before taking a deep breath. We did that for a couple of minutes, standing there in the middle of my floor wrapped tightly in his arms both of us rising and falling together.

“Are you okay?” he mumbled, his thumb brushing underneath my eyes where I felt the moisture of uninvited tears.

I nodded, shaking from the incident and because I was slightly embarrassed. “I- I don't know what happened.”

His large hand brushed up and down my back, combing his fingers through the hair near my spine. “I think you had a panic attack,” he said and let out a long breath. “Jules, you scared me to death... I didn't know what to do.”

“Whatever you did worked,” I muttered, working around the shakiness of my voice. I closed my eyes tight into his chest. “it brought me back.”

He wrapped his arms tighter around me, pressing his lips to the top of my head. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I shook my head quickly, I didn't want to feel that way again.

“Okay...” He held my cheeks gently, pulling me back to look me over. His thumbs brushed the edges of my face, his fingers following suit and caressing across the length of my cheekbone. He used his other hand to tuck my hair behind my ear.

I leaned into his open palm, taking note of the warm feeling of home it left me with.

“Jules, I...” He didn't finish what he was about to say because I was looking into his eyes and suddenly realized he was leaning towards me.

His lips pressing flush against mine, my heart fluttering towards the sky. Parting my mouth with his and fireworks taking place behind my closed eyes. Harry kissed me softly, his hands cradling my face and the strangest feeling being built inside of me.

My heart was beating too fast and I pulled gently back to catch my breath. Eyelashes fluttering open, I made contact with the dark eyes that were staring down at me, waiting for a reaction.

“Harry...” I didn't know what to say. I had just been shaking over the idea that this feeling was one-sided, that I was alone. Then he goes and does something like this...

“Don't, it's okay. I didn't mean—” he broke off and let go of my face, his hands falling limply at his side. “I was just too caught up in the moment and still shaken up over what just happened.” He took a step away from me.

I couldn't stop myself. “So you kissed me?” I didn't mean for it to sound so ungrateful, because I was still floating from the memory of his lips on mine.

He wrung his hands out, a nervous gesture he tended to do. “I'm so sorry...”

“Harry-” my voice cracked. “don't be sorry-”

“I'm going to go,” he said, and rushed out of my room.

No. I wasn't going to let him walk away thinking that I thought it was a mistake. I quickly followed him down the hallway where he was pushing his boots onto his feet in the living room.

“Let's just forget about it, okay?” he said, his back to me as he laced the strings.

“No-”

“It was a mistake, I just wasn't thinking-”

“Harry!” I yelled loud enough for him to turn around and see my angered expression. “Shut the fuck up!”

He stood across from me, the distance maybe ten feet or so but the electricity buzzing quickly through as if we were pressed together. His clouded eyes stayed on me, waiting for some kind of answer that I could provide that could solve the way we were feeling, something that could ease his pain from being with Elaine but still being able to look at me the way he is now.

But I didn't have an answer like he thought I always did, because I was new here too. So, I stood there like an idiot- just staring at him, thumping my brain for some form of words.

He sighed and gave a single nod, before grabbing his coat and turning towards the door.

It was then that everything happened in slow motion.

His hand, resting on the doorknob. My feet, walking quickly across the floor to him. Because I had realized then that I had no words to say— none at all.

I grabbed his face in my hands, turning him around to look at me. Not giving him a split second before I pushed my lips against his.

I wrote this on Wattpad when I was FIFTEEN YEARS OLD! I’m 21 now and thought this story deserved a fair chance. I tried my best to edit some, but it’s still a bit rough. Let me know what you think and if I should post the second part- HINT, the second part is already written, I just have to upload it ;)

#harry styles #harry styles imagine #friends to lovers #complicated relationship #harry styles fanfiction #imagines #one direction imagines #harry styles imagines #fanfiction #fanfic #harry ff #harry au #feedback pls

137 notes · View notes

plethoraurora · 3 years

Text

“lie to me” and morality in btvs

today on help! i wrote an essay in the discord chat. since i happen to do that a lot i figured i’d dump them onto my blog for posterity, and so i don’t have to dig through archives/search to find them if i wanna express those points again.

so without further ado, please have a very stream-of-consciousness response to a conversation the buffyverse discord had about “lie to me” and its relevance to the series, specifically in terms of overarching themes and morality. this is entirely unedited and solely the result of my absolutely unhinged brain being allowed to run free:

prelude

re: the convo we were having about "lie to me": not to mention, the implications of buffy's conversation with giles in regard to the idea of moral ambiguity. which really hasn't been a conversation piece at all up to this point: it has been exactly that -- we know the enemies, we know the good guys, and that line is cleanly drawn. this totally foreshadows SO many things that will unfold through the rest of the series

pt. 1

obviously, angel losing his soul and reverting to angelus which is nearing in, at that point -- the ambiguity of one's personhood, the idea of the soul as the physical guiding force for morality, and the lack of it. what separates angel from angelus -- what separates the actions he committed as angelus from his ensouled state? what makes up his personhood?

pt. 2

then there's faith, who comes up next, chronologically -- she's buffy's foil in so many ways i don't even know where to begin -- but especially in her views of morality and what's "right" -- you can see that in her understanding of buffy's morality (ex. "because it's wrong"), and her actions throughout season 3 -- from her recklessness from the time she's introduced through her betrayal and incarceration/redemption, she walks a very thin, undefined line, between the inherent "good" of the nature of being a slayer, and "bad" of her own nature/nurture, and personal view of herself.

through her stint as buffy, we see that she feels the need to view herself as "bad", to demonize her actions, in direct contrast to buffy's "goodness" -- she sees them as complete opposites, polar extremes of a spectrum of morality -- when they're both closer to the middle. and that's something that will be explored when faith returns to sunnydale in s7, changed immensely by her self-imposed penance in prison, as well as buffy's own actions after her resurrection -- completely changed in her own demeanor through the effects of her feeling a disconnect from humanity and pursuing a self-harming relationship with spike -- who's been seen as "bad" this entire time.

the dynamic between faith and buffy is also explored in the context of the conflict regarding who the potentials want to lead them, and choosing faith -- while faith's changed her tune to do more good, buffy's gone from more the more optimistic of the two, to almost on par with faith's pessimism -- she sees the harsh reality of the past seven years clearly, and while her morals haven't changed -- how she sees them has -- buffy's always seen herself as inherent good, and faith as bad -- just as faith sees them -- when they meet again in s7, they both recognize they're neither.

pt. 3

and then we have willow -- who i think is the clearest example of this dichotomy -- just look at the change in her demeanor from season 1 to season 7. like buffy, she starts out optimistic to a fault -- they'll always win. and when they don't -- it affects her. willow isn't on the same moral high ground that early season buffy puts herself on -- but she is highly logical. she's book smart, studious, applies herself, and is generally just insanely intelligent. but as she starts to get into magic -- that logistics-focused approach starts to crumble -- because magic isn't logical, is it? she can easily apply logics to the functions of magical objects and ingredients, but the how and why is much more spiritual, connected to emotions -- which is exactly what we get when she pursues higher levels of magic upon meeting tara.

her morals aren't as clearly defined on the spectrum as buffy or faith's, or as questioned as angel or spike's, and her change is much more gradual than incited by one event (e.g. buffy's death/resurrection, angel losing his soul, spike getting his soul, etc.). i find her more similar to faith in this way -- though like faith and buffy, they're less traveling the same path than meeting each other in the middle.

it would be easy to argue tara's death as the inciting event in what seems like a change in willow's morality -- but i think of it as inherently connected to her disposition and how she sees the world, which is a gradual change. i think, then, that losing tara is more of an expression of this change -- a display of massive proportions of just how much she's changed since the first season. and we love willow. she's portrayed as an insanely sympathetic character -- she's shy, awkward, and loved by all the other characters she's an invaluable member of the team, both with her book smarts and later, her magic.

i actually think willow's morals are the most stagnant out of nearly every character -- perhaps besides giles. i think she's very similar to giles in that regard -- we see a similar arc with them, and at the same time. they have a strong understanding that what's moral isn't always right, and what's right isn't always moral. strong examples being when giles kills ben, and when he comes back, prepared to stop willow even if it costs either or both of their lives.

what changes is the way she expresses them -- again, inherently connected to her understanding of the world, going from purely logic based to more focused on feelings and connection to the world/other people. we see this expressed both in her demeanor, the focus on her magic, and most importantly, her appearance -- in seasons 4 and 5, she seems to take on a lot of tara's style choices, all invoking very hippie-ish vibes: long skirts, earthy tones and patterns -- which i think shows a lot about how tara influences her both personally (in terms of figuring out her sexuality) and magically; as she takes on more of a quote unquote stereotypical witch persona, pretty reminiscent of lots of early 2000s weird/magical girl tropes.

sidebar

i think a lot about the weird girl trope in regards to her, too. especially in the way that other similarly themed characters of the era were treated, in the way of sexual autonomy and femininity, and desirability. she definitely falls into the basics of the trope -- unsexualized costume, with a more seemingly "modest" demeanor and appearance. most importantly, some way of defying the norm. which willow does ten-fold: she doesn't fall to social heirarchy/popularity like buffy and cordelia do, initially; she's actually very low on the social pedestal. she doesn't follow fashion trends, she wears what she wants, doesnt fall to peer pressure to do otherwise. and most importantly, her sexuality, which could be considered the ultimate derivation from the norm in terms of how her character archetype was presented as well as the climate of the time.

two things i find really interesting in terms of her diverting the trope, however, is 1) the fact that unlike most girls that fall under the "weird girl" designation, she doesn't profess to not care what people think -- and we see directly the opposite, getting into her head in "helpless". and 2) she isn't seen as undesirable by romantic/sexual interests -- infact, she's got two pretty strong love interests. normally the women under this trope aren't given love interests, or if they are, they're equally matched to them in terms of demeanor. this couldn't be more false for willow's love interests.

i think the order oz and tara are portrayed in regards to willow's arc is also really important there -- oz, when they first get together, is seemingly a much stronger mentally and emotionally person than her; more bold and concretely himself -- but this is all a facade, as he isn't nearly sure of his identity as he navigates what being a werewolf is.

likewise, when willow and tara first enter their relationship, tara seems to be the less headstrong and in control of the two -- completely reversed in late s5/early s6 when willow isn't in control of her magic.

anyways. just an interesting sidebar.

pt. 3 cont

the fundamental function of willow's brain is logic: but logic can't justify tara's death. she can't find warren's motivation; can't process it as an accident. she doesn't believe that getting revenge is the moral thing to do. but she does believe it's right -- to find balance, a life for a life -- the way she'd learned to balance equivalent exchanges in her magic.

#my post #btvs meta #my meta

2 notes · View notes

seraph-novak · 5 years

Text

Talk to Me

Summary ~ TJ confides in his mom about Cyrus (based on the recent texts where Cyrus talks about meeting TJ’s mom).

As always, all likes/comments/reblogs are very much appreciated. Thanks for reading! ♥

~~~~~

Coming home is like slipping into his own skin again. As soon as he steps through the front door, he’s greeted by a cloud of chicken-scented steam wafting from the kitchen, where his mom is busy dicing onions and humming to an old jazz song playing on the radio. Just the sight of her is enough to put him at ease; he can already feel his anxiety-riddled thoughts retreating to the back of his mind as he joins her at the kitchen counter, instinctively picking up a clean knife and starting to slice the carrots she’s laid out for him.

“You’re home late,” his mom muses, flicking him a brief, questioning smile. “Hanging out with friends again?”

TJ shrugs. He isn’t exactly sure where Kira falls on the friend spectrum, given the fact that all they really have in common is basketball, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s been hanging out with her a lot lately. That’s what Cyrus seems to think, anyway. Ever since their conversation in the park a few days ago, he hasn’t been able to shake off the feeling that something has changed between him and Cyrus, and just thinking about it is enough to give him a stomachache.

“Alright,” his mom says, thankfully taking the hint. She tucks a strand of dirty-blonde hair behind her ear and passes him a bowl of potatoes to peel. “There was a boy here to see you, by the way. Didn’t give me his name though.”

All at once, TJ’s brain short-circuits, his fingers almost snagging on the peeler as he slams it down on the counter. His hands are shaking as he turns to his mom, a bright blush staining his cheeks. Just the mere possibility of Cyrus coming to his house to see him is enough to make him giddy with newfound hope for the future of their relationship.

“What did he look like?” he asks, not even trying to mask the eagerness in his voice.

His mom huffs a bemused laugh. “Um… Dark hair, dark eyes? A little on the awkward side, but in a sweet way.” She chuckles. “He accidentally told me to ‘get home safe’. Poor kid turned redder than a tomato.”

TJ grins, absently rubbing the back of his neck as the scenes plays perfectly in his mind. “That definitely sounds like Cyrus,” he says dreamily.

“Wait a second!” His mom throws her hands in the air. “I didn’t realise I’d been talking to the famous Cyrus Goodman.”

“Mom…”

“How does he know where we live, pray tell?”

She’s got her hands on her hips, a knowing smirk playing on her lips as she waits for him to explain. It’s such a typical, motherly sight, and TJ can feel his chest flooding with warmth, despite the blush creeping up his neck. His mom is such a dork, and he loves her for it.

“He might’ve come over a couple times,” he mumbles.

“Might’ve, or has?”

“Has, okay?”

“And why wasn’t I made aware of this?”

“Because I didn’t want you to attack him with a bunch of weird, overly-personal questions?”

His mom gasps, feigning offense as she slaps a hand over her heart. “I would never!”

“Sure.” TJ rolls his eyes.

“And what is that supposed to mean, young man?”

“It means I know you. And I know that you love to wiggle your way into my friends’ lives and make it your personal mission to not let them get bored of me and ditch me, like everyone else does.”

At that, his mom winces slightly, her features softening with a thin layer of guilt. “Oh, baby… That’s not true.”

“No point pretending otherwise.”

“You have friends.”

“I have Cyrus.”

“Is that who you were hanging out with today?”

TJ grits his teeth, those anxiety-riddled thoughts burrowing their way back to the surface of his mind. If he could have it his way, he’d hang out with Cyrus every day for the rest of his life. But lately, there seems to be an invisible wedge between them, keeping them apart at all times. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think they’d had some kind of argument. But, other than the awkward mishap on costume day, which Cyrus has insisted he’s fine about, TJ can’t recall any recent bumps in their relationship.

“No,” he says, pointedly focussing on the potato in his hand. “That was Kira. She’s just some girl I met a few weeks ago.”

His mom pauses, her interest freshly perked. “A girl, huh?”

“Don’t even go there.”

“What? I was just –”

“It isn’t like that, okay? We’re just friends!” He tosses the peeler back into the bowl, tearing a hand through his hair with a grunt of frustration. “Why does everyone automatically assume we’re a couple or something? Like a guy and a girl can’t be friends without there being some weird, ulterior motive…”

“Woah, there,” his mom says, raising her hands in mock surrender. “Can I have my head back, please?”

TJ deflates. “Sorry.”

“Who else assumed you were a couple, anyway?”

“Cyrus.”

“Ah…”

“He keeps telling me he’s happy for me and stuff, like Kira and I are in a serious relationship or something.” He shudders. “It’s like he’s not hearing me when I tell him we’re just friends.”

His mom nods, her hands neatly folded on the counter. She’s regarding him with narrowed eyes, her lips slightly pursed, and TJ can tell she’s about to say something deep and profound. His mom always gets this strange, faraway look on her face whenever they’re about to have a ‘big talk’.

“Why do you not want Cyrus to think you’re a couple so badly?” she asks, sounding genuinely intrigued.

TJ shrugs impatiently. “Because we’re not?”

“Is that really the only reason?”

“I dunno…”

“C’mon, baby. Don’t think I can’t read you like a book.”

It’s the look in her eyes that finally breaks him, the gentle, imploring look that’s begging him to open up and be honest with her. No one can chip away at his walls like his mom can. Not even Cyrus, and that’s saying something.

“Everything’s so confusing,” he says, relenting with a sigh. He pushes the bowl of potatoes away and turns to face his mom, letting her know he’s about to dive into some pretty big stuff. “Ever since I started hanging out with Kira, things with Cyrus have been… off. At first I thought it had something to do with the bad blood between Kira and Buffy – that’s Cyrus’ best friend – but now I’m thinking maybe it’s something different.”

“How do you figure?”

“Well, the stuff with Buffy and Kira happened a while ago. And Cyrus isn’t the kind to hold a grudge.” He presses his lips together, recalling the sight of Cyrus walking away from him and Kira without so much as a second glance. “But if there’s something going on, why would he come to my house?”

His mom lifts a shoulder. “Maybe he wanted to hang out, just the two of you?”

“But I text him to meet me in the park the other day, and he completely ignored me! How am I supposed to keep up with all these mixed signals?”

“Were you alone in the park?”

“I –” He freezes, an image of him and Kira laughing on the swings flashing before his eyes. For some reason, it makes him feel dirty, like he’d somehow cheated on Cyrus by going on the swings with anyone but him. “I was with Kira.”

His mom tilts her head forward, shooting him a withering look. “Well, there you go.”

“But… I don’t understand what he has against her?”

“Have you considered the possibility that he might be a little bit jealous?”

TJ wrinkles his nose, practically giving his mom a double take. “Why would Cyrus be jealous of Kira? He’s my best friend. She’s just some girl I hang out with sometimes. They don’t even compare!” He huffs, feeling his frustration quickly rising. “He has absolutely nothing to be jealous of.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know that?”

“What? How could he not know that?” He scoffs, his thoughts turning cloudy with confusion. He’s stuck on the insane idea that Cyrus possibly doesn’t understand how important he is to him, or how he cares about him more than anyone (besides his mom, of course) on the entire planet. “Cyrus is… I mean, he’s… God, mom, he’s the most amazing person I’ve ever met! He’s kind and funny and a total nerd and –” He cuts himself off, a furious blush burning his cheeks as he realises what he’s saying. Out loud. To his mom.

“He’s my best friend,” he concludes quietly, turning away from his mom’s penetrating smile.

A moment of silence passes, the ghost of his words still fluttering in the air. TJ deliberately clears his throat and goes back to peeling potatoes. He can feel his mom’s eyes on the side of his face, quietly studying his profile with that wise, all-knowing expression she wears sometimes, usually when she’s sussing him out. She really was right about the whole ‘reading him like a book’ thing; he’s never been able to keep stuff from her for too long.

“He sounds like a very good friend,” she says eventually, her words incredibly soft.

TJ exhales a long, shaky breath, letting a potato roll out of his hand as he slumps against the counter. “Yeah, he is,” he whispers numbly. It feels like a confession. “He’s the best.”

“Have you ever told him that?”

“Huh?”

“Have you ever told him how you feel?” At his responding flinch, she rewords the question. “Have you ever told him how important he is to you?”

TJ stares down at his hands, absently picking at a loose piece of skin on the pad of his thumb. He must’ve caught it on the peeler after all. He squeezes it until it stings, watching a bead of blood roll down his wrist, then drops his forehead against his arm. When did his life become so messy? He doesn’t feel equipped to deal with all of these perplexing emotions.

“I thought he already knew,” he says, lifting his head to meet his mom’s eyes. “How could he not?”

His mom reaches across the counter and grabs both of his hands in her own. Her messy ponytail is spraying wisps of straw-coloured hair all over her face, clinging to the corners of her mouth and falling across her ocean-green eyes. When it comes to his looks, TJ takes after his mom in every regard. From their soft colours, to their gangly limbs, to their lightly-freckled skin; there isn’t a speck of his absent father to be seen in him, and TJ wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Maybe he needs a little persuasion,” his mom suggests, giving his hands a quick squeeze. “It wouldn’t hurt to put your feelings into words, would it? Let him know how special he is to you.”

TJ swallows roughly. “Mom, I…”

“It’s okay, baby.”

“I’m scared.”

“Of course you are.”

“I feel stupid,” he says, laughing wetly as he wipes an arm across his eyes. “I don’t even know what’s wrong with me.”

“Nothing,” his mom says, not an ounce of reluctance in her words. She sounds exactly like Cyrus, which makes his heart clench with longing. “There is nothing wrong with you, do you hear me?”

He nods. “Yeah, mom. I hear you.”

“Good.”

“There’s stuff I wanna tell you, I just…” He trails off, his stomach doing that weird drop-in-the-elevator thing as he stares down at their joined hands. He knows his mom will love and support him no matter what, but now doesn’t feel like the right time for that particular conversation just yet. Maybe he needs to figure things out for himself first.

“Hey.” His mom taps the bottom of his chin, motioning for him to look back up at her. As soon as their eyes meet, he relaxes. “I know, baby. And when you’re ready, you can tell me all about it.”

TJ smiles. “Thanks, mom.”

“You’re very welcome.”

“But, what about Cyrus? How do I fix things?”

“You want my honest opinion?” she asks, quirking an eyebrow. “Talk to him. It may seem amateur, but that’s what you’ve gotta do. Talk to him, and tell him the truth. As much as you’re willing to give, at least.”

TJ considers this for a moment, mulling the possible outcomes over in his head. On the one hand, Cyrus could turn him down. He’d be undoubtedly nice about it; things would be awkward for a few weeks, then TJ would slowly start to move on, and they could go back to being friends again. Things could certainly be worse. But on the other hand…

“I don’t wanna lose him,” he says, giving his mom’s hands a desperate squeeze as a wave of raw panic washes over him. “I can’t, mom.”

“You won’t,” she tells him, sounding unshakeably sure of the fact.

“How do you know?”

“You care about each other. That much is clear. And as long as you stop running from those feelings, and start being open with each other, that’s never gonna change.” She leans forward and pinches the bridge of his nose, just like she always used to do when he was little. “Now… Go call him.”

TJ hesitates. “But, the cooking –”

“I’m giving you the night off.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.” She shakes her head fondly, her hands returned to their usual position on her hips. When she reaches up to kiss his cheek, TJ remembers how much taller he is than her now, and his heart pinches with a sad kind of nostalgia. It’s been just him and her for so long, but now things are slowly starting to change… And here she is, telling him it’s okay. Always putting him first.

“I love you, mom,” he says, not even caring how lame he sounds.

His mom beams up at him with wide, glistening eyes. “I love you too, baby. Now go make that damn call.”

TJ grins. “Okay.”

He’s halfway up the stairs when he hears the radio being turned up again, more of that tinny jazz music drifting down the hallway, carrying the soft hum of his mom’s voice all the way to his bedroom. Even when he’s sitting on his bed, his thumb hovering over Cyrus’ number on his phone, he can hear the staticky sound of Frank Sinatra gushing about the stars. He takes a deep breath, grounded by the sounds of normalcy slipping beneath his bedroom door, and makes the call.

Cyrus answers on the first ring.

The End.

#tyrus #tj kippen #cyrus goodman #andi mack #tyrus fics

307 notes · View notes

parisian-nicole · 4 years

Text

Amends Pt 4 (Bamon Fic)

Previous Chapter: https://parisian-nicole.tumblr.com/post/615052652035850240/amends-pt-3-bamon-fic

*****

Author's Note: True BTVS fans will notice some ideas from Buffy. Well, Buffy did it first and in my humble opinion did it better. Also, no doubt in my mind the folks doing TVD got a lot of their ideas from BTVS ;) I am just paying homage is all :)

*****

Bonnie had first been shocked and then very flattered by Damon's outburst regarding her. When he had stormed off afterward she had to fight a nearly overwhelming urge to follow him and placate him in some way. A voice in her head reminded her that Damon was the enemy, but that voice grew fainter and fainter with each passing second until finally, she decided to ignore it. So, the rest of the day had consisted of Damon sulking and avoiding everyone, with Bonnie playing an uneventful game of hide and seek to find him. With a little guidance from Stefan who had told her where he and Damon used to go when they were young to hide from their father, she was finally able to find Damon in the garden maze on the back of the property.

"You shouldn't be out here, Bonnie," He spoke out to her even though she was still a few feet behind him and he hadn't bothered to turn to look at her.

"It's fine, I'm safe. Grams said she's beefed up the protection spell so Kai can't step one foot on the grounds, and it's a really beautiful and warm night. I like to take strolls on nights like this," She spoke out as she finally reached his side and began to walk along with him.

"Just go back inside," He sighed out as he threw her a quick look and when she looked up at him, his eyes held some semblance of the 'dangerous' Damon she was more familiar with. It chilled her a little but still, she continued to walk with him.

"You're not the boss of me, so, no," She finally replied as she smiled up at him and batted her lashes playfully. Damon couldn't stop the smile that spread across his lips. He reached out and grasped her hand and quickly looped it around his arm before she could protest or recoil from his touch. To both their surprise Bonnie hadn't yanked her hand away and they walked on for a few moments in silence before Bonnie spoke again. "Why did you and Stefan used to hide here?" She questioned but Damon didn't readily reply and after a few more seconds of silence she spoke again. "I'm sorry Stefan just mentioned something about it ... I know ... it's none of my business and I didn't mean to pry."

"No, it's all right. It's just not a memory I like bringing to mind. Let's just say our father was not a very nice man," Damon finally revealed. "Most of the time I could get my father to focus his anger onto me and away from my mother and my brother. But after our mother left us it wasn't always so easy to protect Stefan from my father's belt or his fists, depending on his mood," He spoke as the cruelty inflicted by his father's hands lashed out at him from his memories. He shook his head slightly to push the memories away. For Bonnie, she felt a part of herself wanting to reach into the past and shield Damon from the abuse he suffered at his father's hands. Instead, she found herself gripping his arm a little firmer in support, "On those days I would bring Stefan here to hide," He continued his tale. "My mother designed this maze and she created some secret places just to protect us from our father, like this one," They had stopped in front of small section cut into the foliage wall of the maze, which housed a statue of what looked to be some Roman figure to Bonnie.

"I don't see anything except that statue," She said pointing to the stone-made man. "Oh, do you move it some way and it opens some secret door?" She asked excitedly and Damon chuckled a bit as he shook his head.

"No, the door is already there but hidden," He replied as he walked her closer. "You just have to know where to look," He then moved to the left side of the statue which appeared to just be more of the foliage, but was, in fact, a secret opening to an enclosed area. Damon entered first and pulled Bonnie in behind him. The space was tighter than he had remembered it now that he was a man, but it still was large enough that they both could stand side-by-side.

"Wow, this is amazing," Bonnie said in awe.

"There are 11 more areas just like this hidden throughout the maze," Damon stated as he stepped out from the hiding spot and back onto the main path of the maze with Bonnie following behind him. Without coaxing she reached up and looped her hand back around his arms as they continued their walk.

"Did your father ever find you in any of those secret spots?"

"No, but he never bothered to look for us either," Damon replied. "He knew eventually we'd return home tired and hungry. And he'd be waiting for us, but by then his focus would just be on me because I was the oldest and had been the defiant one. So, I would get the punishment, which was what I had wanted anyway."

"To protect your little brother," Bonnie spoke her thoughts out loud and he simply nodded. "I'm sorry that happened to you, Damon."

"It's all right, that was a long time ago," He said as he reached his other hand up and patted her hand that rested on his arm. Both pretended to not notice when he kept his hand there.

"But it was still amazing how you stood up to your father to protect your mother and your brother," Bonnie said genuinely impressed.

"Well, you're not the only sacrificial lamb in town Ms. Bennett."

"You keep calling me that but I have never made any grand sacrifices like that."

"No, because you're not at that chapter in the book yet, and now that I am rewriting the book you won't ever have to make them," He replied.

"But what if you can't rewrite every single part of the book and someone's life depends on me?"

"Depends on you giving your life for theirs? No, that's just not an option," Damon declared as he shook his head to the idea. "We'll just have to come up with another solution."

"And if there is no other solution?" She countered curiously though she was quite relieved to hear him defending her life the way he was. The idea of dying was not at all appealing to her.

"Then 'they' die and 'you' live, simple."

"And it doesn't matter who 'they' may be?"

"No, and I'm pretty sure I've said this already."

"Yeah you did and quite loudly too," She replied with a giggle to try to lighten his mood which she could see was souring again. "But what if it's-"

"I don't care who it is, Bonnie," He cut off her words which annoyed her a little as she squinted up at him a bit.

"Fine, but what if I'm not sacrificing myself for someone but for something. Like, what if it's an end of days type of thing, like when I destroyed hell?"

"That didn't actually kill you and you had help from all your witchy ancestors. But if it meant you dying to prevent some kind of hell on Earth, I'd still choose for you to live."

"And you'd want me to live and suffer in a hell on Earth? What kind of BFF are you?" She laughed out jokingly at the absurdity of it all.

"You'd have your mojo and me to protect you, you wouldn't suffer, you'd survive it all just fine."

"Wow, you seem to have my life all figured out for me," She tossed out sarcastically as she rolled her eyes a bit.

"Just the part where you stay alive."

"Yeah well, I won't live forever Damon," Bonnie said with a smile as she looked up at the stars in the sky, but when he said nothing in reply, she shot her eyes up to his face. "And I don't want to live forever either," She quickly added. "Oh my God, are you planning to turn me into a vampire?" This time she stopped and did abruptly pull her hand from his arm.

"What?" Damon looked over at her as if she were daft. "No, Bonnie, I am not planning to turn you into a vampire. Doing that would require me, first, giving you my blood and then killing you. Which would go against my 'Bonnie must not die' rule. And just for the record being a vampire isn't all that bad, you know. Some of the perks being that you'd get to stay drop-dead gorgeous, young, and sexy forever."

"Yeah, but by killing human beings and drinking their blood," She spat at him completely ignoring his complementary words. "So, as appealing as all those perks may be, I could never purposefully take a human life just to survive."

"What have I told you about reading weepy vampire romance novels?" Damon admonished and she blinked at him and looked as if he had caught her red-handed doing something unseemly. "Yeah, I know you read them and they're full of bullshit," He countered. "I did drink a couple of pints of human blood today, but I got it from my fridge, not from the veins of some virgin I killed," He rolled his eyes dramatically. "And there are a lot of places in the world, in Mystic Falls even, where humans and vampires meet up and the humans willingly offer their necks to vampires, and in the end both walk away very satisfied and alive," Bonnie's eyes widened and her mouth fell open slightly as she looked at him in shock and disbelief.

"You really expect me to believe that people offer themselves as a Big Mac to vampires, the vampires just take what they need, and everybody walks away happy?"

"Why not, it's not like we have to kill you, we just need some of your blood to not desiccate. We don't need to drain you dry. A couple of gulps would suffice," Bonnie thought on this surprising and rational piece of information for a second before she spoke again.

"Then why the hell do you vampires hunt and kill us for our blood, just for sport?" She questioned as she folded her arms across her chest.

"Yes, for some vampires that would be the reason, and I used to be that type. All vampires are like that when they are firstborn. It's all instinctual really never a necessity to do," He admitted freely and Bonnie didn't react negatively by the news. In fact, she was very intrigued by what she was learning. "But mostly it's because when we show our true selves humans tend to run, and scream, and bring attention to us."

"Oh, so it's our own fault for being scared and not wanting to be a vampire's dinner?" She tsked out as she rolled her eyes a bit at him.

"God, I forgot how annoyingly judgmental you used to be at this age," Damon said around a heavy sigh as he frowned up and his words made her feel slight shame. "I'm not trying to place blame or defend anything. I'm just trying to honestly answer your questions. Bonnie, there are supernatural beings in this world like werewolves, vampires, and witches who all have to survive the best way we know how. Do some vampires kill for blood? Yes, but many of us don't. Do some witches use their magic for evil and carnage? Yes, case in point Kai, but many like yourself don't. And the same can be said for humans, many of them do some sick and evil things too. They kill. So, in the end, it comes down to the individual being and where their moral compass leads them. And for the record, I haven't 'killed' a human for their blood in over 80 years now," With that said he walked on ahead and left Bonnie standing there silently watching him go. After a moment she had caught up to him and again walked along beside him. She kept her arms crossed at her chest to keep him from trying to grab her hand again. But also, to keep herself from subconsciously reaching for his arm again.

"So, why would a human willingly let a vampire bite them?" She asked in a meeker tone.

"Because we can make it feel very good for them," Damon answered but gave no further details. He honestly wanted to end this line of questioning because he felt any kind of vampire talk would just fuel Bonnie's bigotry towards him. When his goal was to win her over not push her further away.

"How … good?" She probed further coyly but sincerely curious to know more.

"Do you really want to know?" Damon asked as he stopped and turned to face her. In their other life, he would never have considered what he was thinking, but in this redo world, he planned to take advantage of every opportunity given him to get any and everything he wanted. So, he silently waited for a response from Bonnie and she stood quietly contemplating it for a few seconds and then gave a nod of her head. "Okay, and has Sheila taught you that neat little spell where you can burst the blood vessels in someone's head?"

"Yes," She answered as she eyed him warily and took a step back from him. "But why do I need that spell?"

"You don't," Damon stated as he shook his head. "But it might put your mind more at ease to know that it can put a vampire down quick. I know because you used to use it on me a lot. If you ever feel threatened by me or any other vampire use that spell. You'll never have to use it to defend harm from me because I promise you, I would never purposely cause you harm. I know you don't believe that yet…"

"I believe you," She interjected.

"You do?" Damon's face lit up at hearing this and he smiled a little.

"Yeah, I do," She admitted begrudgingly. "At first I thought you were full of shit and was just messing with me. But Grams, she believes you're who you say you are and that we have a close relationship in some future I'll likely never know now. She says I need to trust you. I trust her and I always do as she tells me to, so. Also, I can see it when I look at you. It's all there in the way you talk, the way you move, and especially the way you look at me. It's so different than the way you were a week ago. You've changed, softened even?"

"Softened? Ouch," He repeated as he clutched his hand to his chest in jest. "Now, there's no need for insults, Bon-Bon," Damon huffed out as he scowled up a bit at her description of him even though he wasn't at all offended by it. Bonnie giggled a little in response.

"What I'm trying to say is that I do believe you when you say that you wouldn't hurt me, here?" She placed a hand over her chest. "But here," She then tapped her temple. "It's still a struggle and my brain has full control over my magical fingers," She wiggled her fingers for effect. "So, I may react without really meaning to and hurt you."

"I'm the blood-sucking monster who could rip out your throat but you're more concerned that you might hurt me. You know, that's something you never stop doing. That insane habit you have of always putting everyone else's well-being before your own," He stated and the way he smiled when he said it told Bonnie she should take his words as a compliment. "And remember what I told you before, always trust those instincts. If your brain tells you to fry me, you fry me, and make apologies later if necessary."

"All right, but why do I need that spell right now? Since we've just established that you'd never harm me," Bonnie said and then Damon took a couple of steps closer to her.

"Because you said you wanted to know how good a vampire's bite can feel. I'm willing to show you but I'd have to bite you," Bonnie let out a whisper of a gasp but spoke no protests to what he had said. "You can use the spell to physically stop me if you were to feel threatened by me in any way," He answered in a lowered, slowed, and calmer voice as he locked his eyes onto hers. Her eyes bulged in fear and the pace of her heartbeat doubled.

"I meant for you to describe it to me, Damon, not actually show me."

"It's a hard feeling to describe though I could try, you and I both know that it wouldn't sate your curious mind, now would it?" Her silence spoke volumes and was a testament to his words. "It will not hurt at all and I'll only do this if you really want me to. Only if you give me your consent," He continued to speak as he moved closer and somehow his voice soothed her some and she stood her ground and didn't bolt like her legs were urging her to do. "If you don't really want to know how it feels," He leaned his face down until they were almost touching cheek to cheek. "If you want me to stop just say so, Bon-Bon," Damon went on with his words and his movements. Bonnie spoke no words in reply but she still welcomed his advances by tilting her head to the side to give him full access to her throat.

"I cannot believe I am letting you this close to my neck again," She mumbled out as she squeezed her eyes shut and fisted her hands at her side, readying her magic in case she needed it.

"You're in complete control this time," Damon stated as he let his eyes trace over the contour of her face and waited for her next move. "Do you want me to show you how good a vampire's bite can be, Bonnie?" He whispered these words seductively into her ear and his breath touching her flesh made her shivered a bit as her mouth fell open in surprise at the twinge of pleasure that tickled her belly. She only nodded and he shook his head. "No, if you want this you have to say so, tell me to bite you," He instructed and she swallowed the lump in her throat, lifted her head a bit, and stared right at him. Green locked onto blue as she spoke.

"I want to know what a vampire's bite feels like, Damon. Please show me," Bonnie spoke confidently although softly and Damon moved swiftly before she could change her mind and he gently slid his fangs into her neck.

Bonnie had mentally braced herself for what she was expecting to be a bit of pain at first and she steeled her body to take on Damon's assault. But she had not been prepared for the feeling that instantly struck her as her eyes snapped open and she gasped out for the fresh air her body suddenly craved and couldn't seem to get enough of, "Oh My God!" She panted out as she now turned her body into his and gripped at his arms to steady herself but also to hold him to her. She had never before experienced such a euphoric feeling that seemed to bounce throughout her body. She was still innocent and naive in the ways of sex and until this very moment had never allowed any boy this close. Yet still, she had started practicing masturbation at the age of 13 after hearing stories during a sleepover at Caroline's house. So, she knew that the titillating pressure that had rooted itself in her center and swiftly branched out to every fiber of her being was an electrifying orgasm. And it felt more intense than any feeling she had ever been able to evoke with just her fingers or the vibrator Caroline had gifted her last Christmas. This feeling she didn't think she would ever get enough of and certainly didn't want to ever end. "Damon," She nearly sobbed out as her knees buckled a little and her body grew lethargic just as it became filled once more with the tingles of yet another mind-altering orgasm. Damon welcomed her weight and held her up securely against him.

He had willed himself not to react to the sweet and satisfying flavor of Bonnie's blood, and to ignore the heat and softness of her body now pressed against him. He had lived long enough to make his body stave off the baser instincts born from his pubescent years as a human. But his body temperature quickly warmed and his cock became engorged to the point of pain, as he drank in every minuscule sip of Bonnie's blood. Yet, he stood as still as the statue in the corner of the maze watching them. But when the sound of Bonnie moaning out his name in a delirious manner flicked his ears, he quickly released her but held onto her at arm's length so she wouldn't crumble to the ground.

He saw the frown of frustration and disappointment mar her face, as she shook the haziness from her head and the glaze cleared in her eyes which now stared up at him. When she started to steady in where she stood, Damon moved his right hand from her arm, lifted his wrist to his mouth, and bit just enough to draw a little blood.

"Here, drink," He then offered his wrist to her and her frown morphed into one of disgust. "Or don't, but it's going to be very hard to explain my bite on your neck."

"Not really," Bonnie replied when she finally found her voice again. "I could just say you attacked me," She teased around a tiny smirk and he matched it.

"You could, but you wouldn't. You are many wonderous things Ms. Bennett, but a liar and manipulator you are not and have never been. Now, please drink. You just need a little sip to heal the bite mark," He nudged his wrist closer to her, and she scrunched up her face as she pressed her mouth against his wrist and suckled a little. He tried not to let on more to just how aroused he was but the feeling grew with the pressure of her hot, moist mouth upon his skin. Thankfully, Bonnie didn't linger long and she pulled back after just a sip, otherwise, Damon was sure he would have cum in his pants. He reached up, gently touched her chin with his fingertips, tilted her head to inspect her neck and she obliged him. "Good, you're already mostly healed. By the time you get back up to the house, my bite will be completely gone," He said with a hint of sadness in his tone that Bonnie took notice of. It touched her to know that he was bereaved as she was at that moment.

"Thanks," Bonnie said as she fidgeted where she stood and tried to look at anything except Damon, which he took note of. "And thanks for showing me and ... Uhm ... for," She was suddenly at a loss for words.

"The tiny orgasm?" He finished for her and her large eyes snapped up to his.

"That was 'tiny'?" She questioned though she had only meant to say it in her head.

"Yes, I didn't want to spoil it for you when you decide to make love for the first time. And I must insist that you don't waste my kind gesture on Jeremy Gilbert, please," He spat out the name as his face held true disgust. "I honestly never understood why you lowered your standards like that when you could have literally any guy you want," He ranted on never noticing the shocked look Bonnie was sending him.

"Wait, what!? Are you telling me that Jeremy and I…" Bonnie couldn't find the words as it seemed too ridiculous. She had always thought of Jeremy as her little brother. Though she could admit that over the last year she had noticed he had sprouted up and out and had gone from awkward looking to quite handsome. She quickly shook the thought away.

"Yep, you and the more annoying Gilbert do the, do. You told me once upon a time that he was your very first, and that it was 'nice'," And again the disgusted look fell on his face.

"And what's wrong with nice?" Bonnie questioned as she felt she had to defend a choice she hadn't even made yet even though the choice didn't sit right with her either.

"Nothing but why settle for nice when you can have it so good it'll literally take your breath away? Something so intense it would cause a ripple effect that a simple touch could trigger more and more orgasms," Damon described as Bonnie stared up entranced by what he was saying. "So, take my advice and don't waste your first time on Jeremy Gilbert."

"Okay," Bonnie pushed out in a slightly pitchy voice. She had almost asked him who he thought she should waste her time on but she gulped it down, nodded her head, and turned back to the way they have come. "I…I'm going to head back in now. It's been an exhausting day, you know, working on my magic and all, and tomorrow's a school day," She stated.

"Wait, you can't go to school tomorrow, Bon-Bon, it's too dangerous," Damon said as he scowled a little at the thought.

"Yeah, I know," She replied. "Stefan says he'll go in tomorrow and do some compulsion thingy that I still don't quite understand. He says he'll make it so Elena and I can home school until this danger is over," She said and Damon nodded in agreement to that idea.

"Compulsion is another one of those vampire perks," He began to explain. "We can compel others to do what we want just by telling them to. Even wipe out or alter their memories."

"Have you ever done that to me?" She asked truly concerned at the idea that she may have been manipulated like that.

"No, we can't do it on other supernatural beings like witches or vampires. Oh, well the Original vampires can use compulsion on other vampires…"

"Original vampires?" Bonnie cut in with a question.

"Another 'Big Bad' we'll talk about once this current danger is over," Damon promised. "But right now, it is getting late and all good little witches should be getting ready for bed. So, you head on up put on your jammies and make sure you brush your teeth," He said playfully. "I'll be up in a bit to tuck you in and read you more of Wuthering Heights," He continued his teasing and got the smile he was hoping for, but not the snide remark back. Instead, Bonnie's reply left him dumbstruck.

"Okay," She said with a gentle smile and nod as she tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. She then walked off and cast one look back at him over her shoulder before disappearing around a corner of the maze. Damon's face lit up with a smile that was interrupted by the hooting of an owl perched on the head of the statue across from him. It sat watching him and Damon would have sworn it was studying him. Then suddenly the owl took to the air in flight and seemed to disappear into the darkness and it also instantly left Damon's thoughts. Instead, Damon's mind returned to thoughts of a certain witch. He counted to 100 before he too moved to exit the maze and head back to the house to follow through with what he had said to Bonnie. He had stopped by the library and grabbed the first edition of Wuthering Heights before heading up to Bonnie's room. Like nearly all the books they had in their library, he knew every word on the pages by heart. But he thought it might make Bonnie more comfortable seeing the book in hand as he read her the story. Damon was sure that he could feel a shift in his relationship with Bonnie and it was a positive one. It seemed his plans to change things were actually working and in his favor.

Elsewhere

The owl appeared at the open window and was welcomed with an outstretched arm that it quickly hopped upon.

"Well, hello Mr. Owl, glad to see you have returned safely from the reconnaissance mission I sent you on. So, what did you see this lovely night? And please don't leave a thing out," Kai said as he smiled devilishly at the bird seconds before he gripped at the squawking owl's neck and gouged out its eyes with his fingers. He then tossed the wounded bird back out he window and placed the eyes into the bowl he had prepped for a spell. He had been furious to discover he had been magically blocked from getting anywhere near the Salvatore boarding house. But he had still found a way to get intel from inside thanks to the animals he had enchanted to spy for him. His plans to get to this younger Bonnie were not going as smoothly as he had envisioned, but they hadn't been completely derailed either. He was determined more than ever to get her one way or another.

*****

More to come soon...

Read all Chapters on FF.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13488758/1/Amends

#Bamon #bamonators #bamon shippers club #bamon fanfic #bamon fic #bonnie and damon #damon and bonnie #Bonnie x Damon #Damon x Bonnie #bonnie bennett #damon salvatore #TVD #tvd fanfiction #tvd fic #the vampire diaries

16 notes · View notes

jcforsapphics · 5 years

Text

Fake our way to love- chapter 1

TJ was nervous.

Well, of course he was nervous, what he was about to do was incredibly dangerous. And incredibly stupid. Honestly, he was kind of afraid for his life.

He should be afraid for his life, because Buffy Driscoll could kill him -and everyone else she hates- if she wanted to. And oh, she definitely wanted to kill him.

Since the moment they met, TJ has been nothing but a jerk to Buffy.

Constantly bullying her just for being a girl, never giving her the balls in games. She had every right to hate him.

TJ never really had anything against Buffy, he just did what people expected him to do. He actually thought Buffy seemed rather nice, and that she was a really good basketball player- something he could definitely use, because if he was being honest, the basketball team was a complete disaster.

But of course he ruined any chance he had at being friends with her the moment he told her she'll never be his teammate. Which of course, she end up being- but still, it doesn't really feel like it because he never pass her the ball.

But it was all (hopefully) about to change. If Buffy agree to his deal, he'll pass her the ball anytime she wants. She could be the new team captain, for all he cares. All that matters is that she'll say yes.

Which she probably won't. But it's worth a shot, right?

Buffy walked into the basketball court and TJ made his way to her hesitantly.

"Ummm... Hey, Buffy, can we talk?" He asked nervously

Buffy eyed him suspiciously before she shrugged

"So uh... Ok, this is kind of hard for me to say. Please at least consider it, ok? And don't tell anyone!" TJ warned

"What is it about, Kippen?" Buffy seemed annoyed

"I need you to be my girlfriend." He blurted

Buffy's eyes widened and TJ hurried up to explain

"Not actually my girlfriend! Just... Pretend to be my girlfriend."

Buffy snapped out of her shock quickly and folded her arms "and why the hell would I do that?"

"Because I'll pass you the ball in every game and tell the other teammates to do the same." TJ said without missing a beat

Buffy blinked. "Why do you need a fake girlfriend, anyways?"

"I'll only tell you if you'll agree." TJ folded his arm

Buffy thought about it for a few seconds, and than sighed and rolled her eyes. "Fine. But if the reason isn't good enough, I'm cutting off the deal. But I won't tell anyone you asked me, or the reason. Maybe I'll tell the reason if it's some dirty funny secret about you, but I won't tell them how I found out about it."

TJ blinked. That was a way better compromise than he thought he'll get.

He nodded. "Ok. I'll tell you why after practice, I just don't want anyone to hear."

Buffy looked suspicious again "is it like something really bad? Or are you just tricking me?"

TJ's eyes widened "no!" Buffy raised an eyebrow at how squeaky hus voice sound, and he cleared his throat. "I mean, no, it's not a trick and it's not anything really bad. At least, I hope it doesn't count bad." God, he really hoped it doesn't count bad.

Buffy still looked suspicious but mumbled a 'fine' and went to the middle of the court.

Just then, one of his teammates, Jason, has arrived.

"Dude, what were you doing talking to this Buffy chick? Holy shit, do you have a thing for her or something?" Jason asked with wide eyes

TJ took a deep breath. Well, I guess it starts now, was the last thought going through his head before he spoke: "yeah, man. I mean, she's pretty hot. And I think she's up for it."

Jason eyes widened even more, but he grinned as he said: "dude, that's awesome! We all wondered when you'll finally get a girlfriend! I guess that's mean we should pass her the ball now?"

TJ shrugged "depends on how it goes. We're going to talk after practice, so I'll tell you after if it works out."

Jason nodded, still grinning "yeah, ok, totally. Is it ok if I tell the other guys? I mean, I know Leo though about asking her out, so we should probably tell him so he'll know she's yours. I mean, even if she'll say no, he can't ask her since you did first."

TJ internally cringed when Jason said Buffy was his. Even if we were really dating she wouldn't be my property, he thought, but he just smiled and nodded.

----------

After practice, TJ fidgeted while he was waiting for Buffy.

He was so nervous, both from telling Buffy, and from actually saying this words out loud.

Yes, TJ admitted it to himself a while ago, but it really wasn't that long ago (although deep down he always kinda knew) and he never said this words out loud. He never even told his sister.

To be honest, he found it quite funny that the girl he was bullying was the first person he come out to. And kinda sad, too. But he really hoped she'll react well and won't make him regard telling her.

Buffy narrowed her eyes as she walked towards TJ.

"Well, Kippen, what is it? I don't have all day. Unlike you, I actually have friends to hang out with."

TJ couldn't deny hearing this words hurted him, because he knew they were the truth. But he shrugged it off.

"Driscoll- urgh, Buffy, I need you to pretend to be my girlfriend because-" TJ took a deep breath "I need you to pretend to be my girlfriend because I'm gay."

That's it. He said the words out loud for the first time.

He looked up to Buffy to see her reaction, and his eyes met her wide eyes.

He waited a few seconds for her to speak but she didn't say anything.

"So, uh-" TJ stumbled awkwardly "I kind of have to go- you know, to get food. Before people eat all the good stuff, so uh- yeah. Bye." He finished lamely

Just as TJ turned around, he heard Buffy calling for him.

"TJ, wait!"

He couldn't hide his suprise as he turned to look at her, and saw she was still a bit shocked, but her look softened. He couldn't hide his suprise about how soft her eyes were, too.

"Are you serious? Like, are you really gay or is this some type of weird joke?" She asked

TJ shook his head "no. It's real. I'm really... It's real."

"And you need a girlfriend so people won't find out?" Buffy asked softly

TJ nodded, still shocked about how soft her eyes were, and about the fact she figured it out so quickly.

"Yeah. The guys on the team... They always ask me when am I finally going to get a girlfriend, you know, since I'm the captain of the basketball team and I'm popular and all that and of course hot girls will like to go out with the basketball team captain- and anyone on the team. But especially the captain. And they know that some girls asked me out, but that I always turn them down. And you know, some of those girls are really nice, and I sometimes wonder if I should say yes, but I know it won't be fair for them, since I'll never feel the same way."

TJ didn't know why he was telling her all that. Maybe it was from relief, that he can finally talk to someone about this. About him being gay. Because he never talked to anyone about this. Or maybe, it was because Buffy was looking at him so softly. And maybe it was both.

And maybe it was just because he needed to convince her to play along. But something inside of him told him it was more than just that. He wouldn't have told her all of this just to convince her.

Buffy looked at him, like she was encouraging him to keep talking. So he did.

"Some of the guys already joked about me being gay, and I know its a joke, but I just want them to stop before they realise I'm actually gay. And of course I'll tell them one day. It's just... Not my time."

It's only when he said that TJ know he was right. It's not his time. Not yet. But one day it will be. Something inside of him told him that and he felt like it was the truth.

Buffy took a deep breath and then look at him straight in the eye.

"Ok. Let's do this."

TJ's eyes widened. He was not expecting that.

"W- what?" What are you talking about? Why would you agree?

"Yeah, I'll do it. I get it. It's a good reason. I might don't like you, but nobody should feel afraid about their sexuality. If it'll help you coming out in the future, I guess I owe you that. So, let's meet tomorrow at lunch and talk about it?" Buffy answered, her expression unreadable.

TJ blinked, and then nodded like an idiot.

He waited until Buffy walked away to bang his head against the wall. He couldn't be so lucky. He just couldn't. He never was.

And he couldn't believe Buffy actually agreed.

He honestly didn't thought about an option where Buffy agree, and he didn't know what to do now. He only thought about an option where she said no, and didn't tell anyone, and an option where she said no and told everyone and he was completely humiliated.

But Buffy seemed to have some sort of soft spot for that kind of stuff. And he was lucky she did.

Well, he thought, tomorrow will be a life changing day.

Tag list: @abg-blah @extrairwin @luzawithoutu @buffysoftie @herculesthedemigod @tyrusstan06 @purplefacey @ravencremisi @tjkxppen @tyrusxmuffins @hellolancemcclain @tyrus-is-godtier

108 notes · View notes

pomegranate-belle · 5 years

Note

Fic or treat - Matt and Foggy during that one Halloween ep of Spiderman where people turn into the monsters they dress up as for the night (doctor strange helps sort everything out if I recall correctly)

I guess this is a recurring Halloween Thing (Buffy, Halloweentown, and now apparently Ultimate Spider-Man) and honestly I love it with all my heart and soul. So this got... Long. Also I just sidestepped the actual plot of the episode because Baron Mordo sucks eggs and I don’t care about him, lol

—

Foggy’s still adding the last touches to his costume and hasn’t put it on yet — that’s the only thing that saves him. But the second a blast of orange light radiates across the city, he knows something fucked-up freaky is going down.

“Oh jeez,” he mutters to himself, watching through the window as the energy continues to spread like ripples on a pond. “Matty, you might wanna go get your other Halloween costume.”

There’s a groan of pain from behind him. Foggy whirls around.

“Matt, what—”

But Matt doesn’t answer. Can’t answer, more like. He’s staggering around, hands clutched to his head. Foggy has no idea if it’s a direct effect of the freaky magic flooding the city or if whatever that magic is doing is overloading Matt’s supersenses, but either way he can’t just stand by and let his boyfriend suffer. He rushes over and wraps Matt in a hug — takes as much of Matt’s weight as he can, tries to cocoon him so his senses have time to settle or acclimate or whatever they need to do.

“I got you,” he murmurs nonsensically. “I got you, Matty, it’s ok, it’s gonna be ok, just breathe with me, buddy, just breathe—”

All Foggy’s reassurances are choked off when a clawed hand closes around his throat. He’s shoved backwards, into the wall, and Matt’s...

Matt’s gone.

In his place, the figure Foggy had been holding — that not a minute ago had been the love of his life — is otherworldly and terrifying. Its skin is cold to the touch, and flecks of gold freckle its face, creep down from its ears to the familiar arch of its cheekbones. It has Matt’s messy, dark hair but his eyes, still unseeing based on the way they don’t track, glow ice blue. It still wears the white tunic Matt had put on, but the cloth is clearly of finer quality. What was once a sparkly golden pipe-cleaner halo is now an aura of radiance so bright it makes Foggy’s eyes water. Oh yeah, and this thing’s got a pair of fuck-off enormous white wings instead of the tiny, goofy-looking faux-feather ones Matt had strapped on like a backpack not five minutes ago.

When it opens its mouth — Matt’s mouth — and speaks, the words are unintelligible and so powerful that Foggy instinctively stops trying to remove the hand from around his throat and claps his palms to his ears instead. He has an alarming thought — that he’s going to die here — and the very distant realization that Matt would be completely enraged about him giving up. But even if this... Angel. Thing. Even if it’s not Matt anymore, it was him. And Foggy has to believe the magic that changed him is going to be undone. There’s like a hundred fucking superheroes in Manhattan alone so like, it had god damn better be undone. And when it is, who knows if any injuries sustained will carry over? Foggy could never risk hurting Matt like that. He just couldn’t.

Jessica Jones does not have this problem.

Foggy learns that the second she comes bursting through the door of the apartment and discus-throws her unconscious vampire boyfriend right at Angel Matt’s unprotected back. Not that Foggy actually sees any of this — because, again, fuck-off big swan wings — but once he’s able to breathe again he’s also able to put the series of events together thanks to context clues. Flattened angel plus unconscious Hero of Harlem with an open, snoring mouth and especially pointy canines plus panting, disheveled Jess? The math’s not hard. He and Jess stare at each other in silence for a few seconds.

“You ok there, Nelson?” she asks at last, gruffly, before stepping forward to sling her enormous boyfriend into a fireman’s carry.

“Yeah? I’m good, I think. Mostly. Um...” Foggy points at the knocked out form of Luke draped over Jess’s shoulder. “How did you...?”

“Vulcan nerve pinch,” she says flatly, but doesn’t give Foggy the necessary space to determine if it’s a joke or not. “Now come on, you’re the one who knows every-fucking-body, who do we need to stomp to fix this?”

Good to know you saved me because you were concerned for my safety or something, Foggy thinks but is smart enough not to say.

“I don’t know who did it,” he admits, now that he has the time to think, “but that guy Strange who lives in the Village is supposed to be a wizard or something. Maybe it’s one of his baddies.”

Jess slams a fist into her open palm, murder in her eyes, then immediately has to break the pose to stop Luke from slumping onto the floor.

“Well he better fix it or I’m gonna kick his ass,” she insists, clearing her throat and straightening up again.

Foggy does not dignify this with an answer, and to further pretend he didn’t just witness Jess fumble Luke like a football he crouches down to check on Matt. He doesn’t seem to be unconscious, although at first it’s a little hard to tell based on the ethereal, retina-searing glow around his head. But upon inspection, the prone angel is in a pose Foggy knows well — Matt’s ‘I’m suffering and I refuse to move’ pose. Often adopted whilst sick or otherwise mildly inconvenienced, and never done while seriously injured. Which is good, Foggy supposes.

“Up and at ‘em, Matty,” he mutters, slowly and gently closing his hands around the angel’s and noting that Matt’s newly clawed nails are tipped in gold.

Matt gets to his feet without a fuss, just tilting his head to the side curiously. He sniffs. Once. Twice. Then flips their handhold so his fingers are circling Foggy’s wrists and pins him to the wall again. This time, though, instead of strangling him, he buries his nose in Foggy’s throat, sniffling at his pulse point like a weirdo.

“Hey! Murdock! Don’t make me come over there!” Jess snaps.

“It’s good, we’re good!” insists Foggy shrilly. “He’s um. He’s just. Sniffing me.”

“Fucking weirdo.”

But there’s no thud of Luke being used as a blunt weapon again, so at least she’s listening to him. After another ten uncomfortable seconds, Angel Matt pulls back. Slowly and gently, he lets go of Foggy’s wrists before combing the fingers of one clawed hand through Foggy’s hair. Then he smiles and speaks.

The expression, combined with the musical but incomprehensible words, is so beautiful that tears begin to streak down Foggy’s face. Angel Matt brushes them away with the side of his thumb.

Jess ruins the moment by groaning in frustration.

“Ok, we get it, gay love conquers all, can we get a move on before my boyfriend wakes up and tries to tear out my throat again?” she demands.

Which, to be fair to her, doesn’t sound like a great time. Matt’s wings flare angrily and he spits more crazy angel language at Jess that sounds like a threat, but Foggy is able to soothe him easily enough. After that, he tows Matt along by the hand like a particularly docile six-year-old and they set out without further incident.

—

The problem with having a huge city-wide curse fucking up everyone’s night is that getting a cab is impossible. On the bright side, Jess is one of the few people Foggy knows who actually owns a car. Then again, it’s usually hard enough fitting everyone inside that car without a potentially-murderous vampire and an angel with a fifteen foot wingspan to consider. They’re still trying to figure out the logistics when a horde of monsters descends upon them. Foggy counts two zombies — and there’s a frightening thought, are those guys contagious? — a werewolf, a ninja, and some kind of terrifying... Fish person. There’s lots of snarling, howling, and gnashing of teeth. Foggy really wishes he hadn’t been so preoccupied with Matt and had the foresight to grab his baseball bat on the way out the door.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got like, a tire iron in there or something?” he asks Jess as they’re backed up against her car.

“What do I look like, a mechanic? I’ve barely got gas in this piece of shit car.”

“Cool, great,” Foggy says, too strained to be as sarcastic as he wants since this is about as far from cool and great as it’s possible to get.

Then Matt squeezes his hand and lets go. Foggy scrambles to try and pull him back to safety, but his strides are long — too long for any normal human, like he’s gliding instead of walking. He doesn’t stop until he’s standing squarely between them and the monsters, and then he flares his wings wide enough to block them all from view. Foggy can still hear snarling, but he has to squeeze his eyes shut as the luminance around Matt ramps up about a thousand percent. There’s hissing, yelping, and the slap of feet on concrete, and the light turning the back of Foggy’s eyelids orange only fades after the sounds of retreat abate into silence.

“Holy shit, Murdock,” Jess mutters. “Maybe we oughta keep you like this.”

“Jones,” Foggy scolds. “Rude.”

He opens his eyes to find Matt now facing him as though waiting for something.

“What, Matty?”

“Fuck’s sake, Nelson,” says Jess, “he just saved our bacon — you gonna thank him or what?”

Matt continues to stare — for a certain value of stare, Foggy supposes — in his general direction expectantly.

“Um. Yes, thank you,” Foggy says, and probably because he’s gone completely insane, reaches up to pat Matt on the head. “You, um... Did good? Yes. Good job.”

Matt leans into the touch, beaming, and honest to god the expression is almost brighter than the glow of his halo. Jess makes a very rude gagging noise as she stuffs her still-snoring boyfriend into the trunk. Matt and his wings, even folded up, take up the whole back seat, so Foggy rides shotgun. With monsters of all shapes and sizes roaming the city streets, what would otherwise be a pretty boring car ride ends up feeling like a chase scene in Jurassic Park, but at last they make it. Foggy wasn’t a hundred percent on the address but Strange’s place is pretty hard to miss. It’s enormous and scary-looking and it’s got a big skylight in the shape of some round symbol that probably has magical significance.

There’s no answer when they knock on the door, except for a “doctor is out” sign that flickers into existence, along with a huge padlock — you know, just in case they weren’t getting the message. Foggy’s torn between being weirded out and being amused that the creepy mansion has a sense of humor.

“He’s not even home?!” Jess kicks the door, hard. “This is bullshit!”

She lets out a wordless, frustrated shout, and Luke startles awake. He’s on his feet almost immediately, eyes glowing blood red. Matt wraps his arms around Foggy from behind, casting huge shadows with his flared wings. But Luke? There’s no recognition of Jess there, except as food. None of the half-domesticated sentience Matt’s been showing, just snarling animal hunger. Luke’s such a chill, reasonable guy that the contrast is shocking and even if he hadn’t been held back Foggy wouldn’t have been able to do more than freeze in terror as Luke pinned Jess to the wall of Strange’s mansion and lunged for her throat. Jess, thankfully, is more of a fight instinct person than a freeze instinct one. Also she’s got superstrength. She catches Luke’s wrist and flips him like a pancake. Once he’s on the ground and winded, she really, genuinely does Vulcan nerve pinch him back to sleep, which is wild. Foggy had been leaning sixty-forty towards her being joking about that.

“Well,” he says awkwardly. “That was impressive.”

“Impressive? Impressive?!” Jess is laughing, but the sound is sharp and bitter. “It should’ve been me,” she growls, stomping back down to the sidewalk and kicking a stray soda can so hard it embeds itself in the wall of a building across the street. “Fuck. I hate seeing him like this. I’m already— half fucking feral, and he’s got that unbreakable skin. It should have been me! He’d probably just sit there calmly and let me try to bite him while he worked out how to fix everything, and all I can do is be a, a panicked fuck-up!”

“Jess!” Foggy scolds sharply, extricating himself from Matt’s arms to confront her. “You’re not a fuck-up. You kept Luke safe. You didn’t let him hurt anyone. You got us here. Look, if Strange isn’t home then maybe that means he’s out fixing this. That’s a good thing. You just need to take a deep breath. We‘ll rest here a little bit, then we’ll start driving back — dollars to donuts whatever big fight is probably going down right now is in, like, Times Square or something, because it literally always is with you super-people.”

Jess makes another frustrated noise that Foggy hopes isn’t going to end with him going through a wall, and then plops down on Dr. Strange’s porch. He settles in beside her, and Matt perches beside him. Luke’s still sprawled in front of them, snoring again. They wait quietly for a good ten minutes, and the tension fades from the air.

Foggy’s just about to suggest they get up and start heading back the way they came when there’s another blast of orange magic — this time running in reverse, moving in towards an epicenter instead of out from it. It washes through them with a disorienting whoosh and leaves behind two dazed boyfriends in simple, cobbled-together costumes.

Foggy’s never been so happy to see a lopsided pipe cleaner halo in his life. He kisses Matt full on the mouth. Matt kisses back eagerly but is also the first to pull away.

“Not that, not that I’m, um, complaining but... What was that for?” he asks, baffled but clearly amused. “And... Where are we?”

So then Foggy has to explain, while watching Jess rip the cheap plastic fangs out of Luke’s mouth and stomp on them repeatedly, exactly how the four of them ended up in front of Dr. Strange’s creepy magic mansion.

“So anyway,” he finishes lamely, “I guess somebody saved the day or something, but we didn’t do much.”

Matt shakes his head.

“You did wonderfully.” He takes a deep breath, the way he always does when he’s gathering himself to say something emotional. “I love you.”

“Love you too, angel,” Foggy says, and the flush of embarrassed pleasure that colors Matt’s cheeks in response is sweeter than any candy.

#fic or treat #mattfoggy #writing #letsgetthisblog

37 notes · View notes

lgbtyrus · 5 years

Text

Two Exes on Mars

Part 3/3

Part 1 - Part 2

Cyrus wasn’t sure if he was hearing correctly. If TJ had just told him he still loved him, he had no idea what to do with himself or his body at this point. His soul on the other hand, was halfway to space and it was not coming the fuck back.

“What?” was all Cyrus could say. He scratched the inside of the palm of his hands with his finger nails to make sure he was real. This was not going as planned. He had come to get a little closure and instead, he got another door to walk through.

“I still love you,” TJ said softly, “Cyrus.”

“TJ,” Cyrus whispered, running his fingers through his hair. He didn’t know what to say.

“It’s okay if you’ve gotten over me, Cyrus,” TJ said, looking him straight in the eye, “you just asked if it was worth it and,” TJ sighed, a fake chuckle caught in between his teeth, “no. It wasn’t.” Cyrus wanted to think the whole situation was funny, justifying that almost laugh, but his heart knew he was in for some deep shit. The two sat there in silence, Cyrus sat with his hands folded staring at TJ who was now looking out the window. Was he looked for a shooting star to wish them out of this awkward situation? Because Cyrus was going to have to steal it to wish for some truth juice. He had no idea what he felt or what he wanted to say.

“Here is the food,” the waitress came, dropping off the waffles and pancakes in front of them.

“Thank you,” Cyrus told her before she walked away. TJ hadn’t moved a muscle. Cyrus felt hungry for the first time that night, and he was sure it was because he had developed the habit of stress eating in California. Not the best way to channel stress and anxiety, but it was better than him sleeping the days away in his dorm. Only right now, he couldn’t dig a hole in his waffle while his ex confessed his love for him in front of him. What would that even mean for the both of them?

“I don’t what else to say,” TJ admitted, breaking the silence.

“Me either,” Cyrus quickly sighed. His stomach was rumbling out of nowhere. “I just,” Cyrus gave up and reached for the syrup, “I don’t know how I feel about you, TJ. I spent so long crying every single night for you because I felt like I did something wrong, and I had so many other people tell me constantly that I didn’t do anything wrong.”

TJ butt in, “Because you didn’t. I just couldn’t handle the idea of doing a long distance relationship with someone I’ve basically seen every day for five years.”

“We didn’t have to see each other every day to talk to each other, TJ,” Cyrus frowned. It was starting to hurt. He took a bite of his waffle. It was definitely an inappropriate time to tell TJ how delicious it was and that he was thankful he took him there. He had no idea how words were going to come out his mouth. “I think what hurt the most was that. Not being able to talk to you. Not knowing if you were okay,” Cyrus slowly brought his fork down and realized he was starting to cry, “I couldn’t even call you after you won your first college basketball game. After you made your first point. I couldn’t know how your math class was going or if you were taking one. I couldn’t tell you about all the friends I made and their Californian accents. I couldn’t tell you the Buffy and Marty drama. I couldn’t go over what stupid thing Jonah said to Amber. You were my best friend, TJ, and I lost you when I loved you the most- when I was making one of the hardest choices of my life.” TJ now had his face in his hand, propping his head up as he stared out the window also with watery eyes. Cyrus didn’t know how he kept rambling for so long without taking a bite from the waffle. He dug his fork back in and started to eat again.

“I’ve made a lot of stupid choices, Cyrus-”

“Yeah,” Cyrus agreed, making TJ laugh a little.

“But letting you go was definitely the worst.”

They pulled up to the Goodman’s driveway in silence, Cyrus’ playlist filling the space of TJ’s car. It wasn’t weird, really. They continued the rest of dinner talking about school and friends like TJ had never said anything about love. They were good, Cyrus thought.

“I have something for you,” TJ said. “It’s in the back seat.” TJ started getting out of the car.

“Hanukah isn’t until next week,” Cyrus told him, amused.

“It’s nothing new,” TJ told him, shutting the driver’s seat. Cyrus got off and walked to the other side of the car where TJ was. “Ugh,” TJ said, moving duffel bags to the side, “it was back here.” TJ pushed everything from that seat to the side and sat down, leaning down to look on the floor. “Found it,” he said, pulling up a familiar shirt. Cyrus smiled and TJ held it out to him.

“My T-Rex shirt,” Cyrus said softly, taking it. “I thought you burned it.”

TJ laughed, “I didn’t burn anything.”

“How many of my things do you have?”

“Everything you ever left at my place. Any pictures. I have all of it,” TJ told him honestly. TJ reached out his hand to Cyrus, and Cyrus looked at it, not knowing what to do. His mind couldn’t think correctly anymore, and his heart seemed to be failing him. He didn’t know how to trust his gut at that moment. “I really do love you, Cyrus. Always will.” Cyrus took the hand and TJ pulled him in the car, scooting over so he could sit next to him. They were squished together with all the random things in the backseat of TJ’s cars, and Cyrus could feel TJ’s breath on his cheek as he squeezed the shirt tightly in one hand and felt TJ’s thumb caress the other. Cyrus knew what was going to happen if he turned his head to look at TJ. But he shut the door himself and leaned in to kiss TJ, melting into his lips.

Two days had gone by of seeing TJ everyday behind everyone’s back. If Buffy and Andi wanted to hang out, he said he was with family. If his family asked where he was going, he said with Buffy and Andi. Two days wasn’t enough for them to get suspicious, but he didn’t know what was going on with TJ and needed to figure that out first. Of course, either way, Buffy would be so disappointed in him. He didn’t even know if he was disappointed with himself anymore.

Being with TJ didn’t feel different. It’s like they were picking up where they left off. Only Cyrus couldn’t say I love you to him. He hadn’t found the moment to know if he still loved him. He loved being with him. He loved stealing another one of his hoodies for the first time in forever. He loved his scent of fancy cologne. He loved making out with him in hidden places like when they were sophomores in high school. Everything felt familiar, but it didn’t mean it was boring. He hadn’t felt this excitement since the breakup. Thinking about TJ used to hurt. Now, it brightens him up.

Cyrus and TJ laid on the floor of Cyrus’ room, letting the TV screen play random episodes of Friends as they talked about their friends from school.

“You got yourself in a big friend group, didn’t you,” TJ told Cyrus, running his fingers through Cyrus’ hair. Cyrus missed that feeling.

“I’m honestly surprised I did,” Cyrus said. “Well, my roommate knew like two of them and then people just starting hopping in during class and then there was a group chat.”

“Once there’s a group chat, there’s no going back, huh,” TJ laughed. When TJ and Cyrus had first started dating, TJ got added in a group chat with the rest of them and that’s how they all became friends.

“Nope,” Cyrus said. “I hope I get to hang out with them more this semester. I ditched them a lot before we had a come to Earth moment before Thanksgiving.”

“Cyrus,” TJ’s mouth fell open, speaking in a genuinely concerned voice, “did you get high?” Cyrus snorted immediately and laughed at TJ’s face as it fell down into a smile. “Cyrus, I’m serious.”

“I didn’t,” Cyrus laughed hard, holding his stomach. “But you,” Cyrus cackled, “thinking that about me is just so funny.” TJ laughed with him, holding him tightly in his arms as if he’d roll away.

“Well you said come to Earth moment, and I wouldn’t know what that means,” TJ said as Cyrus’ laugh got quieter.

“Well I mean that we sat around a bonfire and spilled our life to each other.”

“Mmm, I see,” TJ said going back to running his fingers through Cyrus’ hair as the show’s laugh track played in the background. Cyrus hadn’t felt at ease like this in a while. He reached his hand up and placed is on TJ’s cheek about his head, feeling his cheek. “I’m sorry, Cyrus.”

“For what?” Cyrus asked him. He had been saying sorry for two days, but he didn’t know for what exactly.

“For not even giving long distance a try. For being a coward about it.”

“It’s fine, TJ.”

“I don’t think it is,” TJ said, putting his hand over Cyrus’ as it rest on his face. “You’re over here telling me you’ve been falling apart still because of the breakup that happened months ago and honestly, me, too.”

“Break ups happen, TJ,” Cyrus said softly, “and they hurt. Who knows? Maybe we would’ve broke up in college either way.” Cyrus’ heart hurt. He had TJ right here, but he still didn’t have him. It was at that moment that Cyrus realized that it was temporary and that he was going to go back to missing him again. The moment of peace disappeared.

“I just miss you so much,” TJ said, lacing his fingers with Cyrus’. “I want to be with you.” TJ whispered, “I love you.” Cyrus pulled his hand away from TJ and sat up, turning to look at the boy on the floor. His green eyes were glossy with sentiment. He really turned a stone hearted jock with 50 walls into a sentimental jock who knew how to express his feelings. It was his biggest accomplishment. He scanned TJ’s face. His nose, his lips, his eyebrows. The tiny freckles weren’t as present in the Winter, but he knew they were under his skin. He loved them. He loved TJ.

“I think I still love you, too, TJ,” Cyrus said, TJ sitting up and pressing his forehead against the other boy’s. “And I want to be with you again,” he whispered into his lips, “but right now, it’s weird. I think I need a few days.”

“I understand,” TJ said, kissing Cyrus’ cheek softly. His voice was shaking, and Cyrus just wanted to hold him close to him. “As long as you need.”

“January 8th?”

TJ smiled and nodded, “January 8th.” Cyrus leaned in to kiss him.

Buffy and Andi both stared at a nervous Cyrus as he paced around Andi’s bedroom. He was going to tell them about TJ and what happened the day before and that he now had until the day that was supposed to be their anniversary to tell him if they could get back together again or not. It was a lot considering a few weeks ago he burned a book TJ had given him once.

“What is it, Cyrus?” Buffy asked, leaning back on Andi’s headboard. “You might as well tell us to get it over with.” Cyrus stopped moving and looked directly at his best friends.

“Yeah,” Andi looked up from the sweater she was knitting, “you seem really stressed out.”

“Also, you’ve been avoiding us,” Buffy said, Andi nodding along to what she said. “What mess did you get yourself into, Cyrus?”

“TJ and I have been hanging out,” Cyrus blurted out, closing his eyes shut. He opened them slowly after a few seconds of silence and saw that Buffy was staring blankly in disbelief while Andi’s mouth fell open.

“You’ve what!?” Andi yelled. Cyrus regretted everything he’s ever done immediately when he saw Buffy roll her eyes.

“Please don’t be mad at me,” Cyrus said, going over to sit on the bed with them, “we met up a few days ago and things happened.”

“Things happened?” Buffy scoffed, her arms crossed and eyes nowhere near looking at Cyrus. She was angry and her disapproval really hurt Cyrus. He looked at Andi for any type of reassurance, but she also looked disappointed.

“We just kissed and we’ve been hanging out everyday, doing stuff like we would when we were dating.”

“You do know it’s only until you guys go back to school, right?” Andi asked him.

Cyrus shook his head, “He still loves me.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Buffy said with no hesitation.

“He does, Buffy,” Cyrus said before whispering, “and I think I love him, too.” The three stayed silent for a solid minute. Buffy didn’t blink, Andi just stared at Cyrus’ face as if looking for a real answer. But he gave it to him.

“Would you guys do long distance if you guys get back together, then?” Andi finally asked. Cyrus was grateful for Andi. He knew he’d have her support back first.

“Yeah,” Cyrus said. “But all this time, I would rather have that then not have him at all.”

“Is he willing to do long distance this time around?” Andi asked him. Cyrus nodded. “Do you trust him, Cyrus?” Andi asked, getting Buffy to look at him for once.

“Yeah,” Cyrus told them, “I do.”

Buffy sighed, “Well, Cyrus. If you trust him, I do, too.” Cyrus smiled at her until she gave in and smiled back. “But next time, I will beat him up. You won’t be at school with us to stop me.”

Cyrus and TJ sat down on TJ’s bed as Cyrus looked around the room. Nothing had really changed in there. All the same posters of singers and basketball players were up, this lone jersey hung up, some medals and trophies were thrown around. He was no stranger to TJ’s world even if it had been months. It was now January 8th.

“Is it weird being in here?” TJ asked him.

“Very,” Cyrus admitted, squeezing TJ’s hand. “Are all the photos of us under your bed?”

“Yeah,” TJ said, leaning his head on Cyrus’. “I couldn’t get rid of them.” Cyrus smiled and turned his head to give TJ and kiss on the cheek before snuggling close to him. Everything about the situation felt safe. He felt safe with TJ. He knew that he wouldn’t hurt him again. Neither of them would be able to handle that. “So,” TJ said softly, “is there anything you want to tell me?”

“Yeah,” Cyrus whispered before turning to look him in the eyes, “I love you.”

Here’s the end of it! Thank you guys for liking my angst and reading it :) I love angst a lot tbh. The ending is slightly open but not too much. Not my most satisfying ending. I’m too tired to actually show how they work things out but yeah, this little universe is done for.

@istillwearyourdenimjacket @moonlightrush @luna–min @tj-looked-back-kippen @fromtheparty @bambikippen @homosexualearthworm @keylla-dunspeh @marvelous-me-always @tomohisa61896 @yeeterparkerbio @way-too-many-fandomss

#stars writing #andi mack #tyrus #tj kippen #cyrus goodman

48 notes · View notes

impalementation · 5 years

Text

conversations with dead people is such a great episode. i used to think it was overrated, but i rewatched it recently and it really isn’t. it takes its core idea of “aloneness” and then nuances it with the experiences of the different characters. leaving you with this rich, complicated sense of how people end up isolated from each other in different ways.

1. in buffy’s case, her aloneness is a matter of disconnection. as she discusses with holden, she is isolated by a calling that (a) means she has more power than her friends, which puts her in the position of leading, protecting and sometimes even punishing them, and (b) means she experiences things that no one else in her life can relate to. moreover, the pain and disappointment she’s experienced at the hands of other people has made her hesitant to reach out and connect.

the episode literalizes the way being a slayer isolates her in some pretty clever ways. she’s out in a graveyard alone solely because she’s there to slay. and she loses track of her phone because she’s fighting. then the fact that she can barely remember holden is a reminder of the way that slaying has been keeping her apart from people for years. holden: “clearly, you were in your own little world in high school.” then, even after she and holden do build something of a connection (buffy: “you’re not a stranger”), she still ends up having to kill him. and is left with possibility that spike is now someone she’ll have to kill too. in other words, slaying puts her in the position of having to literally destroy her personal connections.

the buffy scenes capture the way it can be hard to tell whether your aloneness is because of who you are, or because of what your circumstances are, or something else entirely. the way it can be hard to tell how much of some situation is your “fault”. does buffy need to get better at “reaching out” or is she doomed no matter what simply because she’s the slayer? or is it neither? or is it both? it’s a relatable kind of confusion whether or not one is isolated by a circumstance as extraordinary as buffy’s.

2. in dawn’s case, aloneness is actually something sort of exciting. in seasons 5 and 6, dawn regularly played the role of the damsel. she was someone buffy had to care for and protect, and this meant that she was almost never left by herself. so the fact that dawn is at home alone is a sign that she’s grown up.

i see dawn’s scenes as being about her ambivalence regarding this increasing adulthood. she begins the episode reveling in her aloneness, in a charming but nonetheless juvenile way. but slowly her aloneness becomes more sinister. she is haunted (literally) by her mother’s presence, much as anyone is haunted (figuratively) by the way they were raised. she has to work by herself to figure out what’s happening, and thinks she is even in the position of needing to help or protect her mother in some way. in other words, dawn is forced to confront the idea that “being alone” in an adult sense actually means “having sole responsibility for something” and “going without parental guidance” and things like that. which is actually quite scary.

the twist of the dawn bits is that although over the course of the episode, dawn learns that she can handle things by herself, the first was also attempting to manipulate her to take that too far. just as dawn discovers she can be independent in a positive sense, the first attempts to convince her that she must be independent, in a negative sense, because her sister will not be looking out for her. the sequence does a great job of capturing the difference between the healthy kinds of aloneness that come with growing up (which can be both fun and scary), and the more insidious idea that self-reliance requires isolation.

3. the willow scenes are tricky. one the one hand, willow’s aloneness is a matter of concrete loss. she is romantically alone because tara is dead, not because she has difficulty “connecting”.

but that loss is wrapped up a bigger problem, which is that willow has often had trouble understanding her value to people. she’s always acted vaguely (or not-so-vaguely) surprised that people want her in their lives. it’s a trait that goes back as early as welcome to the hellmouth, when she was surprised that buffy would befriend her, and continues as late as this season, when she’s surprised that kennedy pursues her. to deal with this insecurity, she tries to be useful, to make her value concrete. in season 6, she regularly frames her abuses of magic as being about helping people or fixing something, and she is adrift after giving it up. in two to go, she despairs that the only thing she was “ever good for” was tara’s love, and is only brought back from the brink in grave by xander reminding her that he loves her for herself. in other words, much of willow’s season 6 destructiveness sprang from her belief that she had nothing to offer the world and the world had nothing to offer her, because her only connection that wasn’t oriented around her usefulness or skill…was tara. it made sense to me that despite the fact that buffy and willow love each other, buffy was completely unable to talk willow down during the dark willow arc, because so much of buffy and willow’s relationship has to do with willow helping her with slaying.

so the first’s manipulation of willow is two-fold. firstly, it reminds her of what she’s lost. it tempts her with the connection that made her feel that she truly mattered. it tempts her with the thing that was once more important to her than the entire world (perhaps even more important to her than tara herself, given that willow once freely violated tara in order to preserve the feeling of being loved). it then attacks willow’s sense of usefulness by emphasizing that she’s a killer, and telling her that she’ll hurt people. basically, it tries to replicate her season 6 mindset by making her think that she has no way to be worthwhile or not-alone except through her relationship with tara. it tries to make her see having love, having friends, and having power as fundamentally irreconcilable things.

in other words, willow’s scenes are about the way that one can isolate oneself by (a) hiding within the feeling of being loved, (b) yearning for things that no longer exist, and (c) thinking of oneself as fundamentally unloveable or relationships as a matter of “worth”.

4. in andrew’s case, the tragedy is that he wants the love and respect of someone who doesn’t really exist more than the life of someone who does. he feels left alone by warren’s death (andrew: “you keep leaving me. i hate it when you leave me.”), but ends up actually alone. in jonathan’s case, the tragedy is that he is alone, but doesn’t know it. jonathan thinks that he and andrew are friends, and that they’re seeking atonement and belonging (jonathan: “do you think they’ll really let us join their gang?”). but in reality, andrew’s secret agenda is keeping them isolated from each other, and from the connections that atonement might bring them. the first-as-warren is the most obvious “dead person” that someone in the jonathan/andrew scenes is having a conversation with, but by the end of the episode we realize that in some sense jonathan was too. to andrew, he may have been dead long before the episode even began.

the trio has always existed to play with ideas of fantasy and delusion, and that continues in these scenes. andrew is deluded about warren’s motivations and reinforces jonathan’s fantasy about joining buffy’s gang, etc. they speak constantly in their usual exaggerated language about redemption, and being “outlaws with hearts of gold” and what have you. the difference between jonathan and andrew is that jonathan actually wants to escape the cycle. there’s a sad push-and-pull between fantasy and reality in the final conversation between the two of them. jonathan is truly sincere in his desire to connect with the people that ca. earshot, he once felt so apart from. he wants to know their reality, whether or not they ever wanted to know his. but andrew dismisses this as deluded and naive. the sad part is that for once, the fantastical nature of jonathan’s optimism throughout the episode was actually maybe a good thing. but andrew was so tempted by his own fantasy, an even more ephemeral connection, that he could not, or could not let himself, recognize this.

so both andrew and jonathan are alone either because they’re willfully not living in reality, or because they’re not simply not aware of what the reality of a situation is in the first place.

there’s a lot more you could analyze about all of these scenes, but i’ll leave it at that. i’ve come to think of conversations with dead people as something like the dead things or once more with feeling of season 7. in that it’s one of the few episodes of a season with big ambitions but confused execution, that actually addresses all of the season’s themes with the complexity and skill they deserved.

#btvs #season 7 apologist blogging #s7

130 notes · View notes