#like. the shittiest chipped nail polish you can imagine

[regicidal-defenestration]

If I was remaking Repo the first change I'd make would be to give Nathan chipped black nail polish

[outroshooky]

everything i wanted | ljh

⇢ genre: oneshot (fo4!au) (a touch of angst, mostly fluff)

⇢ pairing: lee jihoon x reader

⇢ word count: 2.4k

⇢ audio: everything i wanted / billie eilish

⇢ warnings: mentions of death, grief, guns, alcohol. this is a post-apocalyptic au even if the piece itself is fluffy; such themes are evident.

⇢ a/n: a huge thank you to @hereisleo​ for writing the fo4!au that inspired this lovely little mess. i love the concept so much and after sitting on it for a few months as well as drawing inspiration from recent life developments and a conversation with my therapist, i’m proud to present my first fic for seventeen! there’s a bit of my heart in this fic. enjoy!

“And how did you deal with that, all of the violence? All of the threats, the danger, all of it on a daily basis?”

“I mean, I’ve lived every day with the feeling like I was going to die anyway, so it wasn’t anything new, really. Just kind of like, oh well. I might die today. Not much I can do about it.”

When you were young, you dreamt of an apartment in the city. Not a big one or a fancy penthouse, just someplace to rest your head for the night, to dream and wonder and hope and even pray, best as your little heart could. An apartment, perhaps with a cat and a spare room with an easel and windows that sprawled from floor to ceiling. Like you saw in those magazines from so long ago, the ones with frayed edges and holes burned through every other letter. Easy to imagine a world with smooth monochrome, a polished Mr. Handy in the kitchen, a warm bed, a full heart.

No matter how much murky fog settled, rolling through the trees like a sickly ocean of green, it never diminished the glow of the stars up above. It was a story you told yourself, that the stars were little pinpricks poked in the soft blanket of cosmos, draped over the world like a celestial cathedral ceiling. Like so many stories you told yourself, in fact. The radroaches in the basement were just making friends, not eating away at the damp wood. The gunshots far-off weren’t territorial disputes between groups of Gunners, only fireworks sent up in unknown celebration. Celebrating life, maybe— one day more with dirt between your toes, one day less with food on your plate.

Yes the days marched on, one by one by one. No matter how hard you begged, pleaded, argued with the universe to stop the sun from rising just for a minute, an hour, a day, liquid light would unfailing seep into each corner of the world every morning, pausing just for a breath. One singular breath, a slice between pure gold and total black that bled pink and purple and orange and sometimes green, too. A cut into the side of reality as the stars glittered just over the edge of cold, cruel awakening.

You met awakening on a Tuesday morning, when voices hollered from the jagged remains of your shattered bedroom window. It was a one-house settlement; you stood no chance against the band of men and women with war paint on their faces and chipped pipe pistols. Not enough time to grab the shotgun, not enough time to grab the money. Your fingers twisted in the bedsheets, but you remembered the commands to stay quiet and still; if you didn’t move a muscle, didn’t move an inch, they wouldn’t look for more. If you screwed your little eyes shut and didn’t look, they couldn’t see you. If you wriggled your little body under the bed with a pillow crammed over your head, one ear to the floor, they couldn’t hear you. If you bit down hard on your lip, you wouldn’t cry. Not even when you heard the sullen thud of bodies echoing up the stairs, not even when the boots stopped inches from your face in all of their dusty leather glory.

In your childhood bedroom, a single lightbulb hung from a wire strung from the ceiling. Somewhat rustic, but what wasn’t on that little farm? A single light illuminated the moth-eaten rug stretched over the splintering floorboards, the corner desk dragged in from a local middle school abandoned years and years ago, the patchwork teddy bear with a loose eye but the softest paws. It wasn’t much, but it was yours. Your world. Yours, glowing by the light of a single burning filament, a lowly star dangling from on high. Even as the boots and jeers and howls faded, the red dwarf smoldered in its glass cradle. It kindled as you shook like a leaf in the wind, as night crumbled bleak and whistled through the open front door, banging in its frame. It spluttered as you finally, finally eased yourself out from under those rusted bedsprings, splinters pricking your palms in all of their painful glory. And finally, as you closed the top fold of your knapsack, slipping a 10mm into the holster on your belt, it fluttered once more and died. The generator had failed, choking without its daily dose of oil. The sky had fallen; the world had ended twice now, it seemed. Once before you had even been born, and once a mere ten years after.

Ten years after, and another ten. Twenty years since the day you came into the world squirming and screeching, and ten years since the day it had rotted at the seams. Nine since you raided abandoned house after abandoned house day after day, taking only what you could carry and bedding wherever you could. Six since you’d found yourself in a settlement of ghouls as you traversed the Commonwealth, a rifle slung over your back and your belly full of mulberries. Five since you’d bought a mutt off a trader you met by Concorde and named him Nate, because it was the name you’d always wanted to give a dog if you’d had one as a child. Four since you’d sold him to a family in Sanctuary Hills, to a child whose eyes shone with joy just as his joints grated with something a little less than human. Three since you’d gotten into a skirmish with a pack of Super Mutants, had both legs broken at the knees, and were dumped on a side road outside of Mass Bay Medical Center. 

Three years since you had calmly waited for death to creep up in all of his silent glory. Perhaps he would stride down the alley confident, courageous. Maybe he’d take a seat, invite himself to coffee and conversation. What you wouldn’t give for a cup of the shittiest coffee you’d ever tasted. Or maybe a swig of vodka.

Three years since it was not death who crept up on you, but a blonde-haired raider whose shaggy locks hung down past his jawline, cut cold as a knife. Three years since twelve others followed him to encircle a wanderer who had already given up. Raiders. A death sentence. This is where life ended, not all those years ago but here, now, in this shitty alley outnumbered thirteen to one.

Jeonghan told you later that you blacked out. A move you, for a long time, considered cowardly. You couldn’t face the end regardless of how painful it was. But this is when Seungkwan interjects to note how much blood you had lost and how you really couldn’t blame yourself at all. Soonyoung notes how carefully they had to move you, how they tied their jackets together to make a sling, fought tooth and nail for every half-mile gained to the so-called Jewel of the Commonwealth. Seungcheol and Hansol are quiet, remembering. Jihoon’s hand winds around yours, his fingers interlocking over your calloused knuckles.

A naked bulb hangs from the ceiling from a single wire. An apartment. Beyond spacious for Diamond City living, with a double loft and rooftop seating. There’s a barbecue grill that Chan wants to fix up sometime, if he can find the right parts for it. You can see the stars on the nights when the stadium lights aren’t too bright, buzzing in the stillness. As still as you can get in a world that is always in motion, flexing and burning and rebuilding over and over. 

Commitment in the Commonwealth was rare. Why commit with the threat of everything you care about being yanked away from you day by day by day? Why care for anything less than survival when even bare necessity is a privilege? Why build any sort of lasting commitment when in the end, it will all fall through as the sky collapses in on itself with nary a rush of breath to her name?

There was, however, something that the world neglected to tell you. The world, universe, whatever you want to call it— she has a sense of humor, that one. Because in the midst of the pain and anger and trauma, there was a boy out there who did not have to look heavenward to find the stars, for they nestled in the umber glint of his eyes. There was a boy with a heart bigger than the roar of the sea and quieter than the hiss of the foam, a heart that opened itself without question, with everything to lose. His lips curve more perfectly than the edges of any petal, his hands smaller and finer than any pre-war relic. Jihoon is rough, a gem uncut by the sands of time, the grains of struggle. He is beautiful.

Yours. His is yours. You are his. You haven’t been anybody’s in a long, long time. You were a daughter once. Your parents’. And then you weren’t. That too, torn away from you. But here you find yourself, blankets wrapped around your waist, head on his chest, your leg wrapped around his own. Again, somebody’s. His. Yours.

He’s always held you like this, not too tight, but not as if you are about to slip from his grasp. Secure. Security was a foreign concept until he taught it to you. Broke you down easily; once, you didn’t shatter under his gaze like you have for so long. He’d buy you a bottle and take you for a stroll through the narrow streets of Diamond City, silent in that special way of his. Very simply, he would listen. 

It had been so long since anybody listened. In the space he gave, you filled the gap with stories: stories of being young, of wandering too close to a Deathclaw den, of remembering the barest tendrils of compassion from a mother’s face blurred beyond recognition. It was late one night and you were rushing to get the words out, tripping over each other, recounting the boots and the gunshots and the thudding of bodies and—

He is there, everywhere, all around you. His arms snug against your back, your face in his neck as you wept and wept and wept. Ten years’ worth of trauma and terror and running from oneself, and yet you could not find a single ounce of rejection in Lee Jihoon. Not a meager scrap left out for the dogs. Just his hand in your hair and his lips at your temple, and his fingers trembling as he murmurs in your ear. He wishes he could take every jagged edge of pain away, pluck it from your soul and watch it whirl as it sinks to the bottom. He knows he can’t rip out every shard, but he swears to try his best. Your eyelids brush his neck as they flutter shut and squeeze him ever closer.

 Love is a word immense in nature and terrifying in practice, looming like a creaking skyscraper over the land of torment. But with him, it went without question: he loves you. You love him. He didn’t need to form or force out the syllables when he insisted on cradling you that night, staying awake to fend off any nightmares that might force their way into your shell of safety. A completed Xanadu as the devil’s puppet strings play a fearsome melody right outside the door.

When Jihoon sleeps, he exhales through his nose, breath tickling your scalp. His fingers somehow always find your own, even when he is in the sweet throes of dreaming. He cradles you every night, arm around your waist. He speaks in his sleep too, sometimes slurred syllables, sometimes a soft, drowsy sound. If he wakes to relieve himself, he’ll slip out from under the covers and return with the same gentleness he left with. You raise your arm and he snuggles underneath, your cheek to his back. Security. It is so much more with him.

Jihoon had asked you once how you settled in the midst of the dust, how you dealt with the echoes of your past. They crept up on you in the unbridled landscape of your dreams, twisted every hope into a malignant thing whose boots always found themselves mere inches from your face. It was hard to dial back the adrenaline, the pulsing undercurrent in every interaction that told you death was near, be careful, be careful. It was a world he straddled, but did not inhabit; he could not fathom setting up furniture, tidying up the corners. You were frank with him, perhaps too frank; it was all too easy when you lived with that threat every single day, the thought that you could die at any moment. It was comfortably numb, like nursing a bottle of Bobrov’s. How ironic, then, that the boy who straddled two worlds was the one to pull you out of your own by his sheer goodness, raw, unhinged.

Two worlds inhabited in one lifetime. Daughter, companion. Titles, meaningless until meaning is breathed into them by the power of a maker. Two naked lightbulbs hang from two rusted ceilings. An apartment in the city. Everything you wanted, in as much capacity as it could be given. The monochrome may be tarnished and it might get drafty in the winter, but there’s a warm bed inhabited by two bodies, not just one. Two. Two becoming one by unspoken word, and with that thought, Jihoon stirs.

He squirms. A sleepy groan. Your arm slips over his shoulder as he rolls onto his side to face you, gritty eyes cracking open. He whispers to you sweet things, gentle things. “Nightmare?”

“Nah.” You toy with the ends of his hair; his eyelids flutter. “Just thinking.”

He’s fighting consciousness for every word, drowsiness eminent in the way he shuffles closer to your warmth by his side. “Wan’ talk about it?”

“In the morning, baby.” He buries his head in your chest. You bury a smile in his hair. “Sleep.”

Jihoon is goodness and light and comfort. Understanding and tenderness and fondness, unadulterated, unfiltered. Everything you dreamt of in the rosy hues cast by a child’s single wish, stitched in the threads of the quilt of the universe.

His breathing slows. You press a kiss to his forehead, murmur a promise against the bridge of his nose.

The corner of his mouth pulls, just a hair. His fingers twitch. “I love you too.”

The bare bulb flickers, and with one careful movement, you tug on the string and extinguish the light.