#my posting schedule was so regular over the last year that i really lost any sort of idea of what was popular at all | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thoughts-on-bangtan · 3 years

Text

Let’s Talk: Jimin’s & Tae’s confessions (RUN Episode 141)

by Admin 1

Originally, I planned on writing a summary or vmin cut of the RUN episode but then I transcribed Jimin’s and Tae’s confessions and it got me thinking, and now here we are. Instead of a summary here are some of my musings and thoughts about their confessions and how they are right in line with things they’ve said in the past, and even quite recently, as well as how it fits with something Namjoon said in 2020 about them as well. I hope this will at least be somewhat interesting.

So, first, let’s look at Jimin’s confession, since this is longer and was first in the episode:

Jimin’s Confession

Jimin: Sometimes I am blunt. I’m like that at times.

Na PD: Taehyung, has Jimin ever said anything bluntly to you?

Tae: Nowadays, he's really putting in effort to fix that to the point where it rarely happens anymore. Jimin tends to be very hard on himself, which also broke our hearts to see.

Na PD: So, he gets stressed from himself, then gets mad at himself...

Tae: Then gets mad at himself.

Na PD: ...and then he blurts remarks.

(here it was a bit unclear (for me at least) which of the two said which line so I’m sorry if I mixed them up)

Jimin: It’s something I want to be forgiven for.

Tae: But Jiminie being blunt and me being blunt is completely different. Jimin has a kind hearted nature on the regular.

Na PD: Right.

Jimin: Are you usually not like that?

Tae: I’m, well...

The other members stop Tae, since it’s not time for his confession, and instead the question is posed by JK if they forgive Jimin to which everyone says yes.

Tae: You’re innately kind at heart. stretches out hand for handshake.

Jimin: Thank you. Jimin thinks (?) Tae might be going for a fist bump since he gives him his fist instead, which Tae still takes and shakes.

The first thing about this that caught my attention, as well as one of our anons, was the fact that instead of choosing literally any of the other members, Na PD turned to Tae and asked him to verify if something like that (as in Jimin being blunt) ever happened toward him. You could say we’re thinking too much here, interpreting too much into it, and yet it doesn’t change the fact that he chose to ask Tae. Of course it could be because he said at the start of the program that he feels closest to Tae since he heard about him from two of his Wooga squad friends, but it might’ve just as well been because he watched the members for a while already at that point (since they’d already been filming a few hours) and perhaps he did notice how Tae and Jimin naturally gravitate toward each other, have this special bond? Other people who worked with them in the past noticed it, so why wouldn’t he?

There’s actually moment where Jimin turns and says Taehyungie like he wants to ask him something or say something to him which isn’t in the subs and the members don’t notice it either so Jimin never got to actually say whatever he wanted to say. Also, we’ve all seen how Tae and Jimin behaved during the game in the previous episode, how happy, smiley and giggly they were while being silly together.

Then the actual confession itself, Jimin saying that he can be blunt at times, toward others but also especially toward himself. We’ve heard many times from Jimin about how much of a perfectionist he is, how he can get mad at himself for mistakes, how he sometimes speaks without thinking which can end up a bit mean/blunt, and now he’d like to be forgiven for it.

This actually reminded me of something he said to Tae before:

FESTA 2020 from 42:56 min onward (context - the question was: have you felt disappointed in or sorry to the member to your right?):

Jimin: For Taehyung I should say if I compare those two feelings to him I was more hurt than sorry. Over time, it was reversed. Now I don’t feel slighted. I’m more sorry about things. Back then we were buddies so we had a lot of disagreements or didn’t admit that we were wrong. So I felt disappointed about little things. Now he listens to me well so I feel sorry that I talked to him harshly and every little thing.

The last line especially sticks out to me. I know there’s some language nuance here that got lost in translation which wisha mentioned when the FESTA 2020 video was posted (but is now gone since her twt was suspended), and yet it doesn’t change that fact that it fits with Jimin’s confession, how he was harsh to Tae in the past but now feels sorry for it, and with what Tae said, that Jimin is now making an effort to fix that behavior, to not be so blunt/harsh anymore.

It’s so interesting to me to see these mentions of what could be seen as character flaws over the years, things that make them inherently human. Also it fits with what we know about the evolution of vmin, how they used to have disagreements, have issues with proper communication but over time worked on it, got better at it to the point where they can now understand each other by just looking into each other’s eyes, and Tae’s words about Jimin, how he’s an angel, the warmest person he ever met, and now how he has a kind hearted nature, therefore the bluntness is not taking away from it in any way.

There was also something about this in Jimin’s solo RollingStone interview which caught my attention:

(btw, if you haven’t yet, I highly recommend reading the main and solo RollingStone interviews because they are really, really good!)

Taehyung’s confession

Tae: Compared to the other members, I’m very lazy. Once I’ve set my mind on something, to get that into action, it takes me up to 2 months. I’m start working out, then quit. I’ve quit projects midway too. I’m the type where if I’m not feeling it, I don’t do it. There are times when I feel sorry to the members.

Someone (I can’t pinpoint the voice): How would be summarize this?

Jimin: You’d usually call this as “irresponsible”. He lacks responsibility,

Tae: I’m still an amateur.

Na PD: “I lack responsibility and am lazy”. Is that how we can understand it?

Tae: Yes.

Jimin: To be honest, we don’t think it’s to that extent, but if that’s what he feels... we forgive him.

Something I love about what Jimin said (in far fewer words than I will use because you know me, I can’t keep myself short) is that he essentially did two things at once, being: he assured Tae (and the viewers) that him and the members think differently, don’t see it as severely as Tae does himself, and then he also acknowledged the validity of Tae’s words, that even if Jimin doesn’t agree with him, Jimin knows that those feelings are still valid, that that’s what Tae feels and that, at the end of the day, even if the members don’t agree, they can’t change Tae’s mind, can’t force him into seeing things differently. The only person who can do that is Tae himself, and that’s okay. Jimin and the other members will still quietly support and reassure him when needed until he’ll “fix” this weakness, if that is something he wants to do.

This really shows how in tune with Tae Jimin is, but also how emotionally intelligent he is. Beautiful. Also, notice how Jimin said that without being asked to do so, which will come into play again a little later in this post and why I point it out specifically again.

Listening (or rather reading along) as Tae said that, it reminded me of something he said a few months ago:

Taehyung BE-hind Story Interview from 5:49 min onward:

Q: How do you cope when it’s hard to work/with these situations?

Tae: I’m very true to my emotions so uh...if I can’t write the songs or can’t come up with a title I just don’t. Like now!

Yoongi: That’s actually the best way.

Tae: I just don’t write it like how I’m doing it now, and I don’t want to be pressured to create something against my will.

Yoongi: It’s not like you have to finish a song within a day or two?

Tae: Right! So I’ve been taking some rest for about four months now. Now that I’m resting for four months...

Yoongi: Wasn’t your mixtape supposed to be out last year?

Tae: The mixtape that was supposed to happen last year was postponed. I should be in a state full of emotions right now, but I haven’t reached it yet. It’s like...my first mixtape so I want to feel that satisfaction when I release it whenever that time will be.

Yoongi: That’s why you have to finish the whole thing while you’re at it...

Tae: Yes.

Yoongi: ...or else it takes too long to finish it. So, you have to finish it within that period.

Tae: Right.

Yoongi: I’m guessing you might’ve missed the time.

The thing though is that what Tae said, that if he doesn’t feel it, he won’t do it/finish it, that just shows how much of an artist he is, how much his art truly matters to him, and how important it is to him that his art, in this case his music, turns out just the way he wants it to or else he won’t finish it or release it. And while Tae might call this “irresponsible”, I don’t think it’s that in this case, or that it’s a sign of laziness either, though just like Jimin, I don’t want to invalidate his feelings either. All I want to bring across is how in the context of his music, this isn’t a weakness or flaw, even if it might seem like it, especially in their line of work with deadlines, schedules and plans made weeks and months in advance where, usually, you can’t just take a four month break.

So, in that regard, I can understand how it can feel like a flaw to him, make him feel guilty about it and sorry to the members who in this case might rely on him to get something done on time and he might not do it, or not without forcing himself to do it or being dissatisfied, you know what I mean?

Earlier today Tae was on weverse and answered a few questions about his mixtape (though I have a feeling it really is time for ARMY to stop asking him about it and just let him breath) where he said that even though he got a song from someone and made ten himself, even with that break he took according to his BE interview, the songs just aren’t what he wanted them to be and thus he decided to start again.

Some could say it’s again a case of him being irresponsible the way he characterized it during the RUN episode, that even though he said last year he was almost done and would release it soon it ended up being postponed and now he started over again, but once again I think it just shows how very important his music is to him, and therefore I’d actually call it a strength. It shows how valuable his artistic expression is to him, to create music the way he wants to, at his own pace, and only release it once he feels it’s right.

One more thing, just like I said in the intro of this post, Jimin and Tae jumping in to assure the other, reminded me of something Namjoon said during his Map of the Soul : 7 vlive last year:

The context is a little different, but I think it’s still valid here as well, how Tae and Jimin made excuses for each other, how Tae immediately softened how harsh Jimin’s own words about himself might come across, assured both us and Jimin that really he has a kind heart despite this weakness, and then also Jimin by saying that things aren’t as bad as Tae makes them seem either. It’s interesting to really see something play out in a manner similar to what another member said about them based on having been with Jimin and Tae for the last nearly ten years.

Whoever claims that BTS just play out concepts or “plots” and characters given to them by the company really should just take a seat and stop. I mean, sure they all have a sort of persona they embody in front of the camera, at least to a certain degree, they’ve spoken about that numerous times, but they are still humans with flaws and their own dynamics between each other away from the cameras which, logically, also come across on camera as well, not always but enough for us to pick up on it. And in this case, with these confessions during RUN, we saw something that we previously only really heard about happen right in front of us proving (not that they have to prove anything to us, of course, we should simply trust them and what they tell us) that it really is that way.

Here’s the anon I mentioned earlier:

From anon: It might just be me lol but I think rather than Jimin forgetting he's being filmed for a show (with all those members of staff as onlookers as well) and blowing a kiss at Tae / blowing on Tae's chest, he probably just noticed a tiny bit of lint or fluff on Tae's cardigan or mic and decided to blow it off... Of course, if that was the case, that still reveals their high level of intimacy and the fact that even when interacting infront of strangers they seem to be unable to stop showing exactly how tuned into each other they are... I don't think it's a coincidence that Na PD chose to ask Tae, of all the members, to verify Jimin's statement about his flaw. He was probably observing them all day and noticed how particularly close they were, even amongst all the extremely close members.

#vmin #Jimin #Taehyung #BTS #BTS RUN episode 141

94 notes · View notes

vostokovasmelina · 3 years

Text

— 𝐀𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝟑𝐂. (𝐬.𝐰.)

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐢 | 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐢 | 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

characters: fem!reader; sam wilson; archibald the tabby cat; sarah wilson

word count: 3.1k+

warning: mentions and descriptions of alcohol, death, grief, trauma, therapy, depression – i call this post-snap realism

series summary: after the blip, sam wilson gets home to an unpleasant surprise - his key doesn’t fit the lock anymore and his apartment is now inhabited by a stranger and a grumpy feline. however, the unusual encounter is only the beginning of their post-blip lives and the reader soon learns that what life takes away, it can give back in the most particular ways.

a/n: the ending is a dark unedited mess, so proceed with caution

Taking a cautious sip of your hot beverage, you watched this absolute gatecrasher of a man trying to make up his mind about whatever he was so confused about – Sam kept looking all around your apartment as if searching for something he had left there, his slightly lost and disoriented expression sending a sudden wave of guilt rushing over you. Now that you thought about it, it really must have sucked absolute cheese for him to come home hoping he could finally have that huge cup of strong black coffee he had been anticipating ever since having defeated that enormous purple bastard from Outer Space, only to find that his coffee machine was long gone and now this random lady with a philodendron problem and a judgmental cat were inhabiting the place with absolutely no room left for him whatsoever. It did sound tragic when you put it that way.

However, it really wasn’t your fault that you had needed to find a brand new residence approximately five years before. He really should have checked in with someone to make sure he still had somewhere to go home to. You were quite clearly the real victim here. And Lord only knew how poor Archie was going to process all the excitement of the day.

For a few seconds, you contemplated whether or not to put your thoughts into words, and eventually decided against it for the time being. The man had just helped save the world a few days before, after all, and out of what? Good conscience? Personally not for you, but you could appreciate it in others. And it would have been a real shame to die right when your fan-favourite succulents and killer new posting schedule had been attracting more Instagram followers than ever before. Thanks to the savior complex flaming inside of the gentleman standing before you though, the regular civilian had luckily escaped such terrible hardships. And special thanks to approximately a thousand and one other superheroes. Oh, and to an African country filled with similarly public-spirited people.

For a few awkwardly long seconds neither of you said a word. Sam kept looking around and you watched him look around, slowly lowering your mug onto the table and tilting your head slightly to the left. Weird how Sarah had never mentioned the brother believed to be dead for the last five years was this handsome. It is unfair, really. Some people are just naturally gorgeous no matter the shitty kitchen lighting, that tiny confused frown that had been sitting on their face for the last half hour, or those shiny black bugs for eyes tearing up ever so slightly to snitch on a long repressed yawn.

“Now that the drama is over and the Avengers as such are non-existent – have you considered a career in modeling yet?”

Sam snapped his head towards you with such force and speed that for a moment you were afraid you’d have to spend the rest of the afternoon sewing it back on his neck. You grabbed your mug still pretty much filled to the brim with tea and raised it back up to your mouth to hide your lingering half-smile behind a faded portrait of baby Archie on the ivory porcelain.

“Just saying, I would buy anything for this face on the package alone,” you continued with the confidence of a woman who hasn’t got a single drop of shame left in her body. But it was fine ‘cos you didn’t actually mean it, right? It was all just a joke, an attempt at lightening the mood and snapping him out of his puzzled melancholy. And that tiny flutter of your heart upon hearing Sam’s perfect little chuckle was but a momentary malfunction of the organ. The incident was purely physiological. No contribution from any emotional factors. It was simply an innocent coincidence that these two, completely unrelated things had co-occured.

So when your gazes met, you didn’t tear yours away in embarrassment – you stood your ground, completely unaffected and unbothered, ignoring the increasingly hot sensation in your cheeks when you saw Sam raise a cheeky eyebrow at you. Before even more damage could have been done, however, you decided to cut the party short.

“Oh, no. Don’t get your hopes up, Birdman. I simply couldn’t keep watching you in your deeply disturbed state.”

Very, very smooth. Cleared of all suspicion. Good job.

“Wow. Okay. That was cruel,” Sam scoffed and gave emphasis to his words by bringing up his right palm dramatically to his chest, right above his now most definitely broken heart. The overall effect got ruined by an annoyingly goofy grin in the end and before you even realised, you had already reached out for your massive mug again to drown your own erupting smile in the hot liquid.

In the silence that followed, however, you saw Sam’s smile fall ever so slightly, as if exhaustion or worry were holding onto the corners of his lips, physically tugging them down, and you shifted slightly uncomfortably in your seat. It was time you had stopped messing around with the poor guy.

“Look, I know this is weird but I’m sure we can find a solution. Just call Sarah so she can stop worrying now,” you suggested, finishing your tea and pushing the now empty mug to the middle of the table before leaning back in your seat.

“Ugh, yeah,” Sam started slowly, squatting down to get his mobile and the charger out of his massive sports bag. “Can I plug this in somewhere?”

You blinked at him a couple of times while he waited patiently for your answer. You could only imagine the number of missed calls and unread texts waiting for Sam on his phone, but you decided you didn’t know him enough to give him a lecture on behalf of his sister. So you just gave him a tired nod and gestured lazily towards your battered kitchen counter, Sam following your direction with his gaze.

“Above the microwave. Oh, and the socket farthest to the left–”

“–doesn’t work. I remember.” Sam flashed another exhausted but friendly smirk at you above his shoulder, and you allowed yourself to return the gesture to his back once he wasn’t watching.

“Right, sorry. Forgot I was the intruder here,” you joked, delighted to earn another one of those irritatingly lively chuckles of this man’s.

You seriously needed to get your shit together.

“Okay, while your phone is doing its thing, let’s call Sarah from mine, I guess” you continued, jumping up from your chair the moment Sam returned to the table and you headed towards your worn little couch where you scratched Archie gently behind his right ear. “Where have you put my phone, you dirty old man?” You cooed, smiling softly while sliding your hands under the cheap cushions and booping your irritated cat’s tiny nose when your fingers finally touched the cold metal you had been looking for.

Once seated again, you caught Sam staring at Archie, his eyes slightly narrowed in what appeared to be deep concentration. You furrowed your eyebrows and tilted your head, waiting for your uninvited guest to notice you.

“I don’t think your cat likes me too much,” he finally said, slowly tearing his gaze away from the pet feline’s and looking into your slightly more welcoming human eyes instead.

You chuckled dryly, turning around to see Archie in all his glory on the couch. He simply gave you an unbothered look before completely losing interest in the two of you, and he hopped of the couch, slowly making his way towards your bedroom where you knew he would bundle up under your bed on the cosy carpet. He had apparently decided it was time for his beauty sleep.

“Yeah, he’s like that with everyone. Nothing personal,” you assured Sam, who offered a tired half-smile in return. You cleared your throat gently, eyes fixed on your phone’s screen and fingers already searching for Sarah’s number. Once you had found it, you handed it to Sam whose only job left was to press the call button. You raised your eyebrows at him expectantly and he let out a sigh while reaching out for your mobile.

* * *

It wasn’t like he didn’t want to talk to Sarah. Quite the opposite, actually. But he was embarrassed. Sam knew full well how furious his sister was going to be. And honestly, rightfully so. He couldn’t argue with that. After all, she did say there had been something she wanted to talk to him about. And Sam did hang up on her without a passable excuse. And he did let his phone die on his way back home to Louisiana.

Yeah, he most probably wasn't going to be nominated for this year's Brother of the Year award.

Their last call had happened two days before. Two days is a long time without any news from a brother who had just returned after having been believed to be dead for the past five years. And if you had been to ask him, Sam wouldn’t have been able to tell you what had gotten into him either but ever since the Blip, something had not been exactly right. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what was going on, so he hadn’t brought it up to anyone, but his brain felt slow and foggy as if it hadn't had time to catch up yet.

Sometimes, Sam worried that the molecules in his brain had been mixed up and hadn't been put back into their original places in the process of the whole turning-into-dust-and-back-into-human-form-again thing.

It was a silly thought, yes, but with everything going on in the world, would it really be that hard to believe?

"Hey hon! What's up?" Sam's thought process was cut off by the endearing voice of his sister, and though he was aware all this affection was not directed towards him – given that he had called Sarah on your phone – his heart did swell upon hearing her again.

And then he said hi and it all went south from there.

Sarah was obviously pissed.

She asked Sam if he had any idea how many texts and missed calls she had left him, and no, he had no clue but if he had to guess, the number would have been way high up in the double digits.

Then she started going off on Sam, using different kinds of actually very creative euphemisms – which was a problem because Sam got so distracted by his sister's choice of words that her short, well-thought out rant had very little effect on him, but at least he had enough self-respect left to get his sister off speaker at this point.

"Look, Sarah, I know I messed up but I'm fine! I swear," he started, cutting his sister short while subconsciously picking at the skin around the nail on his index finger with his thumb. "What if I stop by Andy's and tell him to give me their best apple pie?" Sam added, hoping this promise would serve as an ice-breaker. Sarah did love her desserts. A lot. And Andy always gave a discount to the Wilson family, too.

When he heard his sister's tired sigh, Sam's heart gave a hopeful flutter, but he was rudely dragged back onto the ground on his way to cloud nine the very next second.

"I'm doing the shopping at the moment. Just got here and it's gonna take long," Sarah replied, annoyance poking through all her words. Then, the tension that had been dominating the pair's call suddenly seemed to evaporate as Sam sensed a weak shadow of a smile in her following sentence. "But that apple pie does sound good."

Sam couldn't help the grin that creeped its way onto his face and he didn't even care about Sarah's semi-serious threat, saying how they were nowhere near finished yet. He muttered out a quick sorry again, promised Sarah to give her regards to you and finished the call with a charming 'I love you' to which his sister replied with a snarky 'I bet' before hanging up with a promise that she would call again when she got home.

Sam let out a relieved chuckle before handing you back your phone and taking the final sip of his slightly lukewarm coffee, watching your bright red-nailed fingers tap away on the device, and he swallowed harder and probably louder than he had meant to. You just happened to put your phone down the very next second, so he tried to cover up the gulp by clearing his throat and shifting his gaze from your nails to your eyes.

Beautiful eyes.

Well shit.

"So, I guess you're staying," you started hesitantly, raising your eyebrows at Sam in a slightly impatient manner, which snapped him out of his blissful thoughts and thrust him back into reality.

Was he staying? He certainly had nowhere to go now that he was practically homeless and his sister was unable to welcome him in her own home for the next two hours, at least. But then again, you were a complete stranger whose afternoon he had just disrupted, and it didn't matter how weird it felt seeing you be so at home in his apartment because it wasn't his anymore. It was yours and you had all the right to kick Sam out and he had absolutely zero right to argue.

But, thankfully, he didn't have to.

"Which is fine, by the way. I did promise you an explanation, after all." Sam couldn't quite ignore the hint of dread behind your words and he was ready to object, to leave you alone and spend the rest of his afternoon doing God-knows-what, but then you offered him another cup of coffee followed by a tiny but honest smile, and Sam just couldn't bring himself to say no.

* * *

Sam Wilson was ridiculously easy to open up to.

It made you want to commit a crime.

His gaze was so intensely warm that after a while, you were looking at everything in your apartment but him just to avoid accidentally trauma dumping on him, especially when you got to the part about group therapy.

Because you had met Sarah at a group therapy session approximately four and a half years before.

It had been clear from the very first minute that neither of you had actually wanted to be there and that both of you had been forced into this situation. Sarah had been dragged to group by an overly enthusiastic co-worker of hers whose crush on the counselor had been probably more intense than the trauma she had suffered – she had lost a dog and her neighbor to the right whom she had always talked shit about behind his back. She was a nice enough woman, but considering that people had lost actual family in the Snap, her presence had always been mostly aggravating, to say the least.

In your case, it had been your grandmother who had bullied you into going to one of the sessions because 'she had the same rotten mentality when Miss Taylor told her to go but then she found it life-changing'. At this point, you had become so indifferent to everything in the world that you hadn't needed much convincing to go. You had told yourself it would be one session anyway after which you would have told Grandma Ethel that 'therapy was simply not for you' and could have been back to your usual Thursday evening routine consisting of a cheap bottle of red wine and depressing reruns of trashy British reality shows from the late 2000s.

The actual sessions had never worked for you. They might have if you had actually spoken up at any of them but you had never become quite ready to talk about your loss in front of a dozen other people, most of whom you had already known. But then you had met Sarah and something about her had made you feel secure, secure enough to talk about them for the first time, so you had started hanging out at a café not too far from the community center and it had become the best thing in your life.

"And the rest is history," you finished, getting up from your chair to put both yours and Sam's mug in the sink and watered your nearby plants while at it.

"I'm really glad Sarah had someone by her side," Sam commented and you could hear a hint of guilt in his words but you decided to ignore it. You simply nodded and muttered out a weak 'yeah', saying you were just as happy to have found a friend like Sarah.

Then Sam said something that made all the muscles in your body tense up and you froze completely for the next couple of seconds.

"And have you seen your family yet? Now that they've come back?"

It was an innocent question. He doesn't know the whole story. So calm down.

You slowly put down the glass you had used earlier to water your plants and tried with every particle in your body to put on the best toothpaste commercial-worthy smile you could force out of yourself before turning back towards Sam and answering his absolutely understandable question.

"Yeah!" No. "They're doing well, actually!" They're fucking dead.

Sam's genuinely happy smile was way too much to handle and if it hadn't been for a call from Sarah, you would have broken down in tears right in front of him the very next moment.

So instead of all that, you decided to turn right back around, pour yourself a huge glass of cold tapwater and down it in one breath while Sam finished his brief conversation with his sister. The stinging pain in your chest that followed was enough to distract your thoughts until he was finally at the door, saying goodbye and thanking your for the coffee and saying sorry for intruding and taking absolutely way too fucking long to finally leave.

"Hey, um... I could give you my number? If you ever need anything or..."

He can't be serious.

"Sure! You can, ugh, put it in my phone," you replied, your hands shaking dangerously as you reached into your back pocket for your mobile and handed it to Sam, who knew better than to comment on it.

Once finished, he returned your phone with one of those irritatingly joyful smiles of his and with a final 'see you around' Sam Wilson was off and you proudly patted yourself on the back for successfully holding it together until you finally reached your couch.

* * *

mini-series taglist – let me know if you want to be added

@softieyn

@mahvericks

@amirahiddleston

@fireghost-x

@samuelthomaswillson

@itsnottilly

@loveyhoneydovey

@songofcosplay

@titaniumstark

@falcons-wings

@claudiaatje

@srodulvroux

@annathesillyfriend

@lokiandbuckylove

mcu taglist – join here

@babymango-writes

@softieyn

@spencereidisabicon

@whutisthus

@katethecrazy

@swanimagines

@amirahiddleston

@remusflirts

@musicallisto

@skinny-bitch-juice

@teti-menchon0604

@anon-2837282

@sarai-ibn-la-ahad

@heart-eyes-horan

@lxncelot

@amortensie

@claudiaatje

@gimmelovepls

@raven-emxralds

@whovianayesha

@the-jess-life

#sam wilson #sam wilson x reader #sam wilson imagine #sam wilson headcanon #the falcon #the falcon x reader #captain america #captain america x reader #the falcon and the winter soldier #tfatws #tfatws imagine #mcu #mcu imagine #mcu mini series #mcu reader insert #marvel #marvel imagine #marvel reader insert #sarah wilson

49 notes · View notes

bedlamsbard · 3 years

Text

Part two of the reluctant roommates AU concept! A reminder that my concept writing is deliberately not titled, chaptered, or betaed and is generally low pressure writing. (I think to some extent I burned myself out on the titled stuff, but that’s for another post.)

Previous: Part 1

About 8.2K below the break.

Please note that while I don’t generally do content advisories, this contains discussion of fairly severe (unnamed) depression and anxiety, as well as physical abuse (about the same as other Inquisitor!Kanan concepts).

Agent Syndulla’s fear made Kanan’s back teeth ache, leeching into his dreams and giving him a flurry of nightmares that he knew had to come from her, not from within himself. He woke with a start and lay in the unfamiliar bunk with one arm thrown up over his eyes, feeling like a voyeur despite the fact that he hadn’t done it on purpose. Dreams weren’t a reflection of reality by any means, but they often had more to do with it than most people wanted to believe. From what he had seen in Agent Syndulla’s dreams, most of them had been drawn from her memory. He wished he didn’t know that.

At least it made a change of pace from his usual nightmares.

Eventually he made himself get up, wincing as his recently broken ribs twinged with the movement. They were mostly healed now, but were still fragile and painful, liable to get broken again if he wasn’t careful for the next week or so. With any luck, this particular assignment wouldn’t involve getting shot or stabbed or thrown off in any cliffs, though given the way the past decade had gone Kanan wasn’t sure he really believed in luck anymore. He still felt as though he had used up whatever he had remaining to him getting away from the Hunter for however long that lasted.

He dressed slowly, careful of the ribs as well as the rest of his assortment of healing bruises, cuts, and other miscellaneous injuries. Some were from the assignment where he had gotten his broken; some were the Hunter’s parting gift, since his master had been extremely displeased by the order that split them up for the foreseeable future and Kanan had taken the brunt of his ire. He touched his tongue to what he thought was a loose tooth and winced at the confirmation, feeding the Force through it to reseat it in the gum.

He could sense the Agent Syndulla was awake now, her attention focused on something other than her fear. Kanan delayed leaving his cabin again as long as he could, not wanting to disturb her, but eventually had to answer the call of the refresher. He was washing his hands when he sensed her sudden realization that he was awake and the spike of terror that followed, and winced. He was used to people being afraid of Inquisitors, but usually his master got the bulk of that kind of attention; when it was aimed at Kanan it tended to be mixed with an odd kind of pity and relief. People in the Imperial service expected nonhuman Inquisitors; they didn’t expect human Inquisitors, especially one with the right accent and one who was so obviously subordinate – as well as other things – to a Pau’an. Service members looked at the Hunter and felt fear; they looked at Kanan and thought, thank the gods that isn’t me. It shouldn’t have surprised him that a nonhuman officer would feel differently.

He splashed water on his face, running a finger along the line of his jaw and the new growth of beard there; he eyed it in the mirror and decided to leave it for now. It was something he hadn’t had at the Crucible, anyway, and at the moment he felt rather desperate for anything to remind him he wasn’t just the Hunter’s Hound.

He ran his damp fingers through his hair, finger-combing it, then drew it back into a short tail at the back of his skull. When he couldn’t think of anything else he could do to delay, he went back out into the corridor, and then up to the cockpit where he could sense her presence.

She jumped as the door slid open, having obviously not heard his approach, and Kanan flinched back, startled by her reaction. They stared at each other for a few moments as her astromech grumbled threateningly at him, then Agent Syndulla dropped her gaze back to the datapad she was holding.

She was a beautiful woman, the kind of woman he would have tried to seduce back before the Hunter had dragged him to the Crucible and beaten the spirit out of him, and he thought he probably could have succeeded, too. He was hardly about to try now; for one thing, she was clearly terrified of him, and for another, the idea of letting anyone else touch him after the past few years was agonizing. Even a pretty girl.

He said, “Can I get you some caf, while I’m up?”

She gave him a wary look, then said hesitantly, “All right.”

“How do you take it?”

“Milk and sugar,” she said after a moment. “A lot of both.”

Kanan nodded to her in what he hoped was a friendly fashion – he wasn’t sure he knew how to do that anymore – and let the door slide shut between them as he stepped back. He took his time making the caf, pouring equal amounts of milk and sugar into her cup, and enough sugar into his that the spoon nearly stood up. He had started drinking caf while he was in the field with the Grand Army of the Republic a decade ago, and after the first time he had spat out his mouthful – to the uproarious laughter of Styles and Gray and Depa Billaba’s barely concealed amusement – any clone who had made it for him had sweetened it enough to be tolerable for his palate. He’d never lost the taste for it that way.

He took both mugs back to the cockpit. Agent Syndulla didn’t jump when he came in this time, but she had clearly been braced for his return. She took the mug from him with polite murmured thanks but didn’t sit back in her chair, sitting with the balls of her feet pressed against the deck, as if bracing herself against the need to suddenly flee. Kanan prudently took the seat furthest from her and only belatedly realized it was the one nearest both exits. He could tell from her fast, sideways glance towards the door to the living quarters and the hatch to the hold that she knew it too. The droid grumbled again, rolling so that he was placed defiantly between the two of them, then swiveled his dome to glare at Kanan.

Agent Syndulla took a sip of her caf, looking a little wary at first, then surprised. “I didn’t know it could taste like this,” she blurted out.

“I worked in a tapcaf once,” Kanan offered. “Some of it stuck.”

She looked badly startled by that response.

He could have told her that he hadn’t always been an Inquisitor, but he wasn’t in the mood for the kinds of questions that might inspire. He sat back and drank his own caf instead; neither the caffeine nor the sugar would do much for him, since Force-users processed most kinds of stimulants too fast for them to have any meaningful effect, but the taste helped wake him up.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, drinking their caf, until Agent Syndulla finally settled herself, as if bracing for a fight, and said, “I’ve been looking at the files you sent me.”

Kanan raised his gaze to her. She was, if nothing else, lovely to look at, but she wouldn’t have made it to the ISB or lasted this long if she was just a pretty face. She clearly didn’t enjoy being under his scrutiny, though – most people weren’t when it came to Inquisitors – so after a moment he flicked his gaze slightly away from her.

“There’s an auction the day after we’re scheduled to arrive,” she went on, after a moment’s brief hesitation. “We could call in the local Imperial garrison for backup, but if the regulars could deal with this, then they would have done so by now.”

“This isn’t the sort of thing they’re really equipped to handle,” Kanan said. If it had been, no one would have bothered to send an Inquisitor and an ISB agent to deal with it. Though he had his suspicions about why the Whip had assigned it to him as his first solo assignment. He was less certain about what it had to do with Agent Syndulla and didn’t have enough of an idea about the ISB’s internal politics to even begin to guess.

She nodded in response to his comment. “Depending what the situation is like, we might want them later, but Barzhun doesn’t have a large Imperial presence. As far off the beaten path as it is, it’s not impossible that the local garrison has some sort of relationship with the black market there. It isn’t unheard of.”

And was usually the job of the ISB to deal with, though on occasion the Inquisition dealt with corrupt officials instead. Kanan nodded. “What do you want to do?”

She looked a little surprised that he hadn’t just tried to give her an order. Kanan said in explanation, “Most of my assignments have either interfaced directly with the local garrisons or been – ah, more direct. And my ma – I wasn’t the one who did any of the planning.”

He saw her lekku twitch slightly at the slip, but she didn’t ask about it. Instead she braced her shoulders again and said, “Can you pass as a civilian?”

Kanan glanced down, giving the question due consideration because it had been a long time since he had been in a position where that was even an option and he wasn’t immediately certain of the answer. “Yes,” he said eventually, “but I don’t have any civilian clothes.”

When she looked a little worried, he added, “I’ve got clothes that don’t have the Imperial seal on them.” And there were plenty of civilians who only wore black or gray. “You’ll have to lend me a blaster, though.”

She met his gaze for an instant. “Can you use one?”

“I wasn’t always an Inquisitor.” He looked her over, this time with a more a critical eye than he had done before; past her prettiness she was muscled under her gray ISB field uniform, her holstered blaster a natural extension of both uniform and self. He had also noticed earlier that her lekku signals were erratic, not quite explicable to anyone familiar with Twi’leks “Can you pass as a civilian?”

“I’ve done it before.” She glanced down, clearly uncomfortable under his inspection. “Chopper too.”

“That I can believe,” Kanan said.

That startled something that was nearly a smile out of her, a quick flash of amusement that warmed the Force for no more than an instant as the astromech grumbled at them both. Then she dropped her gaze again. “The HoloNet posting on the darknet said that there would be a reception the night before the auction for potential bidders to review the items up for auction. I assume that you’ll recognize what we’re looking for?”

Kanan nodded. “I’ll know.” And a Twi’lek and a human together wouldn’t make anyone look twice at them, no matter how they played it. Both were common species and common in company with each other.

Agent Syndulla looked at the chrono, then said, “We should be making planetfall in two hours and the reception is in six.”

“All right.” He started to stand up, putting his hand out for her empty caf cup.

She handed it to him once she realized what the gesture meant, then hesitated, looking up at him. Kanan stopped rather than leave the way he had intended to. “What is it?”

“I can’t call you ‘Inquisitor’ in the field,” she said, sounding uncomfortable. “Do you – do you have a name? That I can use, I mean?”

Kanan bit his lip. She didn’t know how loaded that question was, and he wasn’t about to answer her with “the Hound.” Still, it took him a surprising amount of effort to say, “It’s Kanan.”

No one had called him that in almost four years. Sometimes he was surprised that he could remember it at all.

Something about either his face or his voice must have made her realize the gravity of the confession. She said, her voice suddenly very shy, “Thank you.” She hesitated, then said, “My name is Hera.”

He hadn’t been expecting that, and the surprise must have showed on his face. She shifted uneasily in her seat, then looked away, embarrassed. “I’ve sent you the ISB files on the local garrison and government,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if you had them.”

“I don’t. Thank you.” He looked back at her for a moment, putting personal name and surname together, and blurted out, “Syndulla is a clan name.”

Her eyes went wide. He felt her low-grade anxiety snap into sudden fear, jolted from its previous course onto a new path. “Yes,” she said eventually, small-voiced, and then, with a defensive edge, “There are thousands of Syndullas.”

“I’m sorry,” Kanan said; he could tell he had said something that he should have avoided.

She dropped her gaze, but it didn’t do anything to hide the unease juddering along the Force.

“I’m sorry,” Kanan said again, then fled before he said anything else stupid.

Hera knew from personal experience that she mostly just looked uncomfortable in civilian clothes, which wasn’t exactly something she could do anything about. She suspected that if she had been human she could have attended the black market auction in an Imperial uniform, if not an ISB one, and not had anyone look twice at her, but a Twi’lek in uniform always got attention. At the moment she felt even more obvious in her plain dark spacer’s trousers and jacket, as if she was wearing a beacon or a sign that said “I’m an Imperial agent, ask me how.”

She snuck a sideways look at the Inquisitor, who was slouching in the co-pilot’s chair next to her. Hera didn’t like having him that close, but since they were working together she couldn’t exactly justify not letting him be there as long as he didn’t touch anything. She supposed that he had to be able to fly, though she doubted he had ever flown a freighter like the Ghost before. Basic piloting was required for officer candidates at the Imperial academy, but unless you were tapped for pilot training, the Naval Academy, or the ISB Academy, most officers never actually had to fly anything larger than a landspeeder or anything faster than a speeder bike. She had no idea what Inquisitors learned or how they were trained.

Without his armor or his lightsaber he looked less like an Inquisitor than she had been worried about – less so than she still felt she looked like an Imperial agent, even dressed in all black. He wore the DL-18 blaster pistol she had found for him – its grip was too big to be comfortable in her own hand, so she had thought it might work for him – and somehow managed to look as if he had been carrying a blaster for most of his life, not a lightsaber.

He straightened up as they entered atmosphere and entered one of the flight lanes on approach to the planet’s capital city. If any of the other ships in the flight lane happened to glance into the Ghost’s cockpit, they would see a pilot and a copilot both apparently doing their jobs, though Hera hoped the Inquisitor didn’t actually touch anything.

“You can fly, can’t you?” she asked him reluctantly.

He flicked a glance at her. “Yes.”

“Freighters or just starfighters?”

“I’ve flown freighters,” he said after a moment. “Not recently, but I’ve done it. Cargo freighters, mostly, short-haul – longer haul sometimes, but not as a regular thing.”

Hera turned to look at him in surprise, trusting Chopper not to let the Ghost veer off course. The Inquisitor was stubbornly not looking at her, his gaze fixed on the viewport in front of him. I wasn’t always an Inquisitor, he had said a few hours ago. She had assumed that that meant he had been elsewhere in the Imperial service before he had been recruited by the Inquisition, though he wasn’t that much older than she was. Well, people came to the Academy from all walks of life, especially those recruited by the flight academies, who could sometimes skip normal Academy training. Presumably the Inquisition operated similarly.

She didn’t have anything to say in response to him and he didn’t seem to expect one, so she turned her attention back to their flight path. She set down in one of the spaceports in Kethun City, the planet’s capital, and had the Inquisitor transmit the docking fee while she and Chopper shut down the ship’s engines.

Hera eyed him again once they were outside the ship, standing in the small docking bay and trying not to frown at the drift of wind-blown dirt and yellowish pollen that coated the floor. She sneezed involuntarily, her eyes watering, and dug into her pocket for the allergy tablets she had grabbed when she realized what season it was here. She dry-swallowed them and hoped that on this occasion they wouldn’t make her sleepy, which they seemed to do at entirely random intervals rather than consistently.

In the thin light of the overcast sky that filtered down through the open hatch doors above them, the Inquisitor’s dark garments looked pale, nearly washed out. Black didn’t suit him, especially in daylight. Hera looked at him, sneezed again, then wiped at her streaming eyes and said, “We should probably get you more clothes.”

He flicked a wary glance at her, then relaxed slightly at whatever he saw on her face. “Is it that bad?”

“If we’re going to several days of receptions and auctions,” Hera said. On some of her ops he would be unremarkable, but he would stand out amongst the kind of people who attended black market auctions, and not in a good way.

“All right,” he said, sounding more weary than anything else. “Let’s go find the market.”

Hera was startled at how much the addition of colors to his garments changed the Inquisitor’s appearance. He looked deeply uncomfortable, as though he knew he wasn’t supposed to be wearing anything other than black and gray, but his green shirt brought out color in his face and pale eyes and eased some of the hollows in his scarred cheeks. Hera thought that he wouldn’t raise eyebrows or twitch tentacles in company now, or at least not for the reasons he would have done before. He also looked younger, more vulnerable, less dangerous; she wasn’t sure whether or not that was a good thing, but there was nothing she could do about it.

Hera hated paying any attention to her appearance other than making sure that her uniform was neat and that none of her caste markings were showing, but for this particular occasion she made sure that she was wearing something that at least suggested she had more money than the average spacer. She didn’t even own any clothes that could pass muster as something a high-caste Twi’lek would wear, not that that was a distinction that would make much sense off Ryloth or outside the enclaves. Maybe not even the enclaves, but Hera avoided them whenever possible and had no idea what went on there. Being among other Twi’leks made her so nervous that it was often debilitating; she had almost failed her ISB Academy field trials for just that reason.

She left Chopper with the Ghost; even though this wasn’t her usual kind of op, she knew that in this setting an astromech droid might stand out – Chopper certainly had no talent for being unobtrusive. She and the Inquisitor got their cloaks and the speeder bikes from the Ghost’s hold – while the city was small enough they could have walked, there was always the chance that they would need to make a quick getaway. Hera felt a little better with the handles under her hands, anyway.

She watched the Inquisitor out of the corner of her eye as they sped down the road towards the site of the reception. He handled his speeder with a light, delicate touch, less heavy-handed than a scout trooper – more like a starfighter pilot than anything else, but not a TIE pilot, she decided after a few minutes of silent observation. That puzzled her, since privately owned starfighters were illegal except under very rare circumstances – not that you couldn’t make those circumstances come about with enough credits – and the vast majority of those available were TIE-variants. He must have learned on one of the others, since she knew Inquisitors flew TIEs. If he was aware of her attention, he didn’t show it.

They pulled up in front of a neon-lit nightclub, where they handed their speeder bikes over to a parking droid and received a claim token in exchange. Hera tucked it away, bemused, and fell into step with the Inquisitor as they made their way to join the queue at the door. The sound of pounding music from inside made her wince; she hated clubs and crowds alike.

The bouncer let both of them in after relieving them of their blasters, for which they both received claim tokens. If the Inquisitor had his lightsaber on him, the scanner didn’t turn it up; Hera wasn’t certain whether he had brought it or not, and hadn’t been about to ask. Hopefully he wasn’t so trigger-happy as to pull it out without absolute necessity, but having never seen him in action Hera had absolutely no idea.

Once they were inside and past the initial crush of people at the door, Hera surveyed the wide dark room beyond with distaste; it was full of beings of various species dancing, drinking, and eating, with a stage set up at the far end and a band playing something that she supposed technically counted as music, assuming you had no taste.

She glanced at the Inquisitor to make sure he followed her, then edged around the dance floor, past several shadowed – and definitely occupied – nooks. Hera fixed the instructions from the darknet posting in the front of her mind and hoped that the Inquisitor remembered them too.

After several minutes and a handful of propositions – to both of them, not just her, which was a refreshing change – they made it to the back of the club. A back hallway led to the kitchens and some refreshers that Hera suspected were intended for the staff rather than the patrons, as well as a door with a keypad on the control next to it. Hera punched in the code from the darknet, holding her breath until the door slid open, revealing descending stairs. It slid shut again as the Inquisitor stepped in after her and the pounding music from the club vanished as cleanly as if it had been cut by a knife. Hera let out her breath in relief.

She went down the stairs with the Inquisitor at her back and emerged into another room. It was a little smaller than the dancefloor above them, but more brightly lit and with far fewer people. There were still a good number of beings, but they were older than the club-goers and mostly more finely dressed. A pair of Togruta lounge singers draped themselves over the top of some kind of big instrument being played by a Nautolan who struck keys with a number of small hammers held expertly between his fingers.

A serving droid came up to Hera and offered a tray with a selection of stemmed and un-stemmed glasses holding a variety of colored liquid. “Drinks, madam, sir? I have alcoholic or non-alcoholic as you prefer –”

“Non-alcoholic,” Hera said; she could tell she was in the mood where alcohol would make her paranoid and angry, even if she drank on the job, which she didn’t unless there was no choice.

“The same.” The Inquisitor’s voice was soft.

The droid obligingly rotated the tray for Hera. “I have fruit juices, carbonated beverages, flavored waters from a variety of worlds –”

Hera accepted a glass of what she hoped was meiloorun juice – it was about the right color – and was gratified to find she was right when she tasted it. The Inquisitor chose a glass apparently at random and took a perfunctory sip; she suspected he had taken it mostly to have something to do with his hands.

Once the droid had gone, she sipped her drink and looked around the room. Another look revealed that there were a number of tall display cases placed at regular intervals; the beings gathered around them had obscured them from Hera’s initial observation. She flicked a look at the Inquisitor to make sure that he had seen them too, then moved towards the nearest one.

The beings already there – a trio of Rodian males, an Ithorian couple, and a human of indeterminate gender – all glanced up at their approach, briefly registered their appearance, then went back to their conversation. The male Ithorian moved aside so that Hera and the Inquisitor had a better look at the contents of the display case.

She heard the Inquisitor hiss softly through clenched teeth. The sound made the Rodians twitch, looking over at him before apparently deciding it was an expression of interest rather than – whatever it was. Hera glanced up at him worriedly, decided it was unlikely that he was going to snap and go on a murder spree – at least not in the next thirty seconds – and looked back at the case.

The contents were unremarkable, at least to her eyes – a set of four small sculptures of various near-human beings in long robes holding upraised lightsabers in different poses. They were made of some pale gray stone she didn’t recognize.

Hera was trying to figure out a discreet way to ask if this was what they were looking for when she realized that under the current circumstances, there was no real point in being discreet. She looked at the Inquisitor and said, “Is that it?”

He nodded without saying anything, his expression grim.

They moved onto the next display case, which held more statues and a stained glass window propped up with a light behind it. Hera glanced at the Inquisitor again and saw the tightness in his jaw; she didn’t bother asking this time, since his face was answer enough.

They rotated through several more display cases, all of which got the Inquisitor’s nod. Now and then someone new would come down the stairs, but by and large the occupants ignored each other, except for a handful who all obviously knew and liked each other well enough to speak to one another. Hera supposed that there weren’t too many people in the galaxy who traded in Jedi relics and most of them were probably in this room with her; she wished she had dared come down with a recording device so that the ISB could match known names to faces.

The serving droid came up to them again to take their empty glasses – well, to take Hera’s empty glass; the Inquisitor had barely touched his, but handed it over anyway. Hera accepted another glass of fruit juice and drifted over to the nearest case that they hadn’t inspected yet.

She felt the air change as the Inquisitor went absolutely still beside her.

Because she knew what he was, she looked at him first, not the contents of the case; some of the other occupants of the room had felt the shift as well and were looking around warily at each other or at the cases.

He was shaking so badly that she could hear his teeth chattering together, his stillness transmuted into fury that she could feel like a weight in the air. Hera shot a look at the case to see what it was that had upset him so badly and saw a collection of innocuous-looking thin braids and strings of mismatched beads; they struck something in her memory, but she couldn’t remember what at the moment. She set that aside to worry about later, hesitated for an instant, and grabbed the Inquisitor’s arm.

He flinched violently at her touch, his eyes gone suddenly wild with shock. She could feel muscle beneath her palm, stiff as steel cording; as much as she wanted to she didn’t release him. “Calm down,” she said to him, pitching her voice low but not whispering. “Do you need some air?”

He didn’t look around, but she saw awareness bleed into his panicked eyes. He shook his head slightly and Hera felt the pressure in the air lifting as he forced himself to something resembling calm, pulling his furious response back inside his own skin. She could still feel him trembling beneath her hand.

She pushed her half-full glass of fruit juice into his other hand. “Drink that,” she said.

He hesitated, and she snapped, furious and embarrassed, “It’s not tainted just because a tailhead drank from it.”

He shot her a startled look and said, sounding genuinely baffled, “Why would you think I thought that?”

Hera stared back at him, so surprised by that reaction that she briefly forgot why she had handed him her drink. “Humans –” she started to say, then shook her head. “Just drink it.”

He drank it.

She kept her hand on his arm until he had stopped shaking, then released him, tucking her hands awkwardly into her pockets to have something to do with them. When he had finished the glass, he stared at the display case again, then dragged his gaze away and went off to the next one, handing the empty glass off to the serving droid as he did. Hera followed, hoping her fury wasn’t plain on her face. The other guests veered away from him, though something about the way they did so made Hera think they didn’t know or understand why they were doing it.

The next case only held more art, to Hera’s relief. The Inquisitor stared blankly at the delicately figured tiles as if he didn’t really see them, though Hera suspected he knew exactly what was on them and – going by his reactions so far – what they meant.

“I suppose some of these still have some juice in them,” a passing Quarren woman said in her watery voice, and laughed. Hera saw the Inquisitor’s shoulders tense in response.

She stepped tentatively up beside him. “We’ve seen most of it,” she said. “We’ll be back for the auction tomorrow.”

He shook his head. “I need to see all of it.” He shut his eyes tightly, clearly trying to calm himself down even though he was still badly upset.

Hera eyed him doubtfully. Looking at him now, it was hard to remember that he was in all likelihood one of the most dangerous beings Hera had ever met; all of that coiled threat that had been there only a few moments before was gone, replaced by real distress.

She recognized the expression abruptly. She had seen it in the mirror, on one of the occasions when she had been back at the Academy and invited to some event or another at the home of a local potentate on Naboo. He had been a collector – “of everything,” he had said while showing cadets around his estate. He had looked at Hera as if he was considering collecting her too, but she had managed to avoid being in any proximity to him for most of the evening, and once the other cadets began drinking heavily she had made her excuses and left early, for which rudeness she had been roundly rebuked the next day. She had been looking at his displays – arranged in order of what he thought was most attractive, not in anything that made sense – when she had turned a corner and found herself looking at a kalikori.

It wasn’t a Syndulla one, not her family’s and not from any of the patrician Syndulla families; she had known that immediately. She hadn’t recognized the clan, but kalikori were intimately personal to each family; no one would ever let it pass out of a family line except through marriage or adoption. But there had been a lot of looting done during the Clone Wars, and more during the Imperial occupation.

Searching further through the collection and trying not to make it look as though she was doing so, Hera had found a lararium, the household shrine each family kept, and the little figures that represented the protective spirits of a Twi’lek family, the ancestral genius and the patron lares, both separated from the lararium and the kalikori alike and jumbled together on a shelf of other small statues that Hera hadn’t recognized. She hadn’t thought, at that point, that she had much Twi’lek feeling left after four years in the Academy. Apparently she had been wrong about that.

It was the same expression on the Inquisitor’s face now.

She raised her gaze to the Inquisitor again, keeping her voice low as she said, “Those braids in that case – they aren’t from the High Republic, are they?”

He shook his head a little, his face a mask of grief and fury fighting for calm. Then he looked at her sharply, some of that starting to bleed into alarm. Hera could guess why; she didn’t know much about Jedi, but she had known enough to ask. She met his pale gaze, resisting the urge to look away; she hated making eye contact with other people and there was something disorienting about him.

It was the Inquisitor who looked away. He swallowed, his throat working, and looked back at the tiles in the case in front of him. “I’m sorry,” he said eventually, then swallowed again. “I need to see the rest of the items up for auction.”

Hera bit her lip. “I want to get a feel for the crowd,” she said to him. “Will you be all right on your own for a few minutes? I don’t think we need to stay long.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said a little distantly. “I was surprised. It won’t happen again.”

“All right,” Hera said. She stepped away from him, hoping that he actually could behave himself if left to his own devices. It was balanced against her own nervousness about interacting with other people; she wasn’t particularly worried about being recognized as an Imperial agent, since in her experience no one ever looked at a young Twi’lek woman and came to the conclusion she was an ISB officer, usually including other members of the service, often including times when she was in uniform. Hera was a decent field agent, but she knew that she hadn’t exactly lived up to Agent Beneke’s desires for her, which was how she had gotten this assignment with the Inquisitor in the first place.

She got another drink from the serving droid, this one a fermented fruit juice with some bubbles in it that looked alcoholic at a glance but wasn’t, and settled her shoulders before she went back to the case with the figurines in it, which had a small group of people gathered around it. She lingered on the edge of the group, drinking her juice and listening in on the conversation – a trio of scholars debating the authenticity of the figurines, apparently. After a few minutes of that she drifted away to another case, which held what looked like ornaments. She glanced up to track the Inquisitor’s location in the room and saw him steadily working his way through the remaining cases, his mood like a thundercloud keeping people away from him.

“Lovely, aren’t they?”

Hera turned, pasting a polite smile on her lips, and saw a thin, white-bearded Pantoran male standing beside her. “It’s very intricate work,” she said.

He smiled with as much appreciation as if he had been the creator rather than some long-dead Jedi. “Mirialan,” he said, indicating a pair of round belt buckles propped up on display. “Do you see the floral work around the rims and the eclipsed suns at the centers? Variations on those themes have recurred amongst Mirialan Jedi for centuries – millennia, perhaps, though the older examples are disputed. They stem from an old Force cult on Mirial, one that hasn’t been active since before Mirial joined the Republic. We know nothing about that cult, not even its name; it no longer has any worshipers on Mirial, but until a decade ago there were still elements of it amongst the Jedi.”

He gestured to a collection of small coppery rings, each about the length of a knuckle and inscribed with knot-like decorations. “Weequay hair ornaments – for their braids, yes? You still see some Weequay wearing them today, but if you ever have the occasion to examine them closely, you’ll see that the finework is all different. That’s because Weequay Jedi had their own patterns that were used back on Sriluur before the Hutts conquered the world more than eight thousand years ago. Another Force cult, perhaps. When Weequay were first recruited into the Jedi Order, they took the symbols with them; you won’t see them on Sriluur or the other Weequay worlds today.”

“Eight thousand years is a long time,” Hera said, since she couldn’t think of anything else to say and it seemed like the point in which he expected a response.

“Perhaps longer. The Hutts – especially in the days of the old Hutt Empire – prefer to destroy the records of their conquered worlds, so that those worlds might seem to begin with their coming. It’s hard on historians.” He sighed wistfully, then looked at her more closely.

Hera resisted the urge to double-check that her markings were covered, since he seemed like the sort of person who might know that caste markings were more than just decorative tattoos the way most non-Twi’leks thought.

When she didn’t say anything one way or another, he seemed to decide that she was interested and pointed at a quartet of ivory bangles inside the case. Each one was a double-curve, small enough to fit around a near-human’s wrist, and incised with intricate patterns, some of which had been filled in with black, red, or gold, others of which were bare. The ivory was yellowing with age. Something about them was familiar and Hera frowned, trying to place them.

The Pantoran saw her expression and smiled, open and pleased rather than malicious. “Ryloth river hog tusks,” he said. “I can’t pronounce the name in Twi’leki –”

“Ruti’ara,” Hera said after a moment of thought. “From a region in the equatorial jungle. They’re extinct now.” She didn’t say that there was a set of similar bangles in her mother’s jewelry case back on Ryloth, a gift from Cham’s grandmother – then the clan head – when they had married; they had been passed down among the women of the family for a thousand years.

She looked back at the bangles in the case, now seeing the pattern of half-familiar clan markings amongst the carvings. “Fenn,” she said slowly. When the Pantoran blinked, she said, “The geometric patterns, there – in black. Those are Fenn clan markings. They’re a curial clan on Ryloth –” And had been in vendettas with the Syndullas no less than three dozen times over the past thousand years, including after the Curia’s ban two centuries earlier (which everyone on Ryloth had just taken as a strong recommendation for the first few decades), but who was counting.

“The clan is still extant?” the Pantoran asked, sounding a little disappointed.

Hera fought back family feeling she didn’t know she still had and resisted the urge to reply unfortunately. Instead she said, “Last I heard, yes. There was some scandal a few years ago, but they’re still around.”

“There is a clan that has died out, though, yes?”

Hera bit her lip. “There are a few, mostly smaller patrician clans. You’re probably thinking about the Indahs. They were a curial clan like the Fenns and the Sy – the Securas. They were in a –” She had to search for the word in Basic before going on. “– a vendetta, a blood feud, with the Fortunas. That’s another curial clan. The Fortunas tricked the curial family – the Indah Hid Indah – into agreeing to peace talks. When the Indah Hid Indah and the heads of the patrician families in the clan were all at table for the banquet, the Fortunas slaughtered them. Then they hunted down all of the other Indah patricians and killed them too, not to mention most of the plebeians. When news got out, the Republic Senate wanted the Jedi to come in and arbitrate it, but the Curia – that’s the governing body on Ryloth – wouldn’t let their ships land. They sent the Fortuna – the clan head, I mean – into the Bright Lands and ostracized most of the patrician family heads, and banned the Fortunas from being able to vote in the Curia for twenty years. They also banned the vendetta, so there aren’t supposed to be blood feuds anymore. The only Indah patricians who survived were the ones who had married into other clans cum manu, and when you do that you give up your clan rights – they weren’t legally Indahs anymore, I mean, they were legally members of their spouse’s clans. I know at least one petitioned to revoke her marriage, but there weren’t enough Indahs left for there to still be a clan. And the Fortunas had destroyed their lararia and kalikori, burned the shrines. That’s supposed to destroy the clan’s connection to their ancestors and the genii – the – the earth-gods, I suppose is the closest thing you can say in Basic. Since the Indah Hid Indah were a curial clan, they traced their line in direct descent from one of the gods – I think it might have been the –” She fumbled for the Basic again, aware that her Ryloth accent was starting to come out very strongly, and if anyone knew enough to recognize it, that it was the purest high-caste Twi’leki. “The Son of Sands. There are other curial clans descended from the Son of Sands too but the Indah Hid Indah were very, very old, as old as – the Fenns.”

She had almost said “as old as the Syndulla Tann Syndulla.” One of the surviving Indahs had actually been married to the Syndulla prime heir at the time, and had almost succeeded in convincing her and her twin brother to declare vendetta against the Fortunas themselves before the Syndulla clan head had gotten wind of it and stopped them.

“This was a long time ago?” asked the Pantoran.

“Not really,” Hera admitted. “About two hundred years.” She tensed in expectation of a comment about how barbaric Twi’leks were, never mind that there were humans on plenty of worlds who still practiced various forms of blood feud, but none came.

“An old custom?” the Pantoran said instead.

“Um, yes,” Hera said. She was too embarrassed about having given a speech about the Hid Indah Massacre to offer up that the vendetta went back to the days of the gods, when the children of the Mother of Mountains had torn Ryloth apart in war with each other after the Son of Sands had murdered his sister’s lover. It was why so much of the planet was desert, except for the equatorial jungle; their oldest records showed that millennia earlier much more of the planet had been jungle and there had still been enough ocean to separate the continents. “What does that have to do with the ruti’ara tusks?”

“Ah. Nothing.” The Pantoran beamed at the case again.

Hera let out her breath through her teeth, annoyed. She could feel heat in her cheeks, traveling up to her ear-cones and the base of her lekku.

“The marvelous thing about the Jedi is that they were so very, very old and had members from all over the galaxy, all kinds of species, so customs, traditions, peoples – animals, even – were preserved within them like insects in amber, passed down from master to apprentice over so many generations few sentient minds can really comprehend them. They provide a window into a past where there are no other windows – no holograms, no texts, no oral memories. And yet that past was preserved amongst the Jedi – it was still a living thing. The Empire might have you believe that the Jedi stole children from thousands of worlds, stripped them of their identities, their cultures, their species, and made them all Jedi and nothing else, but if that was true, then how would there be any of this?” He swept an arm around at the room and its display cases. “When I was a very young, there were pirates preying on my family’s station, and a Jedi came to deal with them – a Togruta woman, very beautiful. She wore the akul teeth headdress of a Togruta warrior, an animal which those among the Togruta who wish to prove their strength hunt and kill. Why would she do that if she was not Togruta as much as Jedi?”

He looked back at the case and sighed. “Many of those here are here for the money, or are enthusiasts for the forbidden – some for the Jedi. Others enjoy beautiful things, the rarer the better.” He flicked a glance at the Quarren who had passed Hera earlier, his expression disapproving. “When they were destroyed, it was not merely the Jedi who were lost, but a thousand others who were preserved only amongst the Jedi.”

“Most of the people on those worlds pay attention to their own history,” Hera said hesitantly.

“Ah. Yes. Some do. Others would, but their histories were stripped from them – the Hutts, as I said. The Empire, more recently. Even the Republic, in its way, as you said yourself.”

Hera blinked. “Did I?”

“When you said that your people would not allow the Republic to take over the punishment of its wrongdoers,” the Pantoran explained patiently. “Others were not so stubborn; at other points, the Republic would not have cared about their wishes.”

“They’re not –” my people, she wanted to finish, but she couldn’t get the words out.

“But sometimes history is just lost,” he went on sadly. “Not maliciously or in war or natural disaster, it just…falls out of use, and then out of memory, and if there are traces at all, then they are traces we cannot recognize. By the time one realizes it is gone, it is just not there to find.”

Hera bit her lip.

“You make it sound as if the Jedi are only the composite of others, with nothing of o – of their own,” the Inquisitor said quietly from behind Hera.

She almost jumped out of her skin. She hadn’t heard him approach, and from the way the Pantoran flinched he hadn’t noted the Inquisitor’s arrival either.

“No – no, of course not,” he said, when he had gotten control of himself. “But my – my interests have always lain elsewhere. There are so many who are interested in the Jedi and only the Jedi for what they themselves are, and not all that they represent.”

“I see,” the Inquisitor said gravely. He sounded more amused than anything else, which Hera decided to cautiously take as a good sign.

Hera half turned so that she could watch him and the Pantoran at the same time. He was looking at the case, not at the Pantoran, his gaze moving over the beautiful objects inside. She realized abruptly that he had used the present tense, not the past. And that he had started to say “our,” not “their.”

“You are an enthusiast of the Jedi, perhaps?” the Pantoran said, recovering.

Hera tensed again, but the Inquisitor just raised an eyebrow. “I have an interest.”

The Pantoran turned to Hera again. “And you, you are a student of history, I see?”

The Imperial Academy’s version of history was “things were terrible until the Emperor took control” but she wasn’t about to tell him that. “Just a few things,” she said instead. “But I enjoyed our conversation,” she added, because she did know how to be polite; not something she had learned from the Empire. She took a chance and laid her hand on the Inquisitor’s arm, suspecting that he was probably aware of her brief hesitation before she made contact. “I think we’ve seen what we came here to see,” she told him.

He was tense under her palm, giving her the impression that he didn’t like to be touched any more than she did. None of it showed in his face as he glanced down towards her and nodded.

“I will see you tomorrow evening, perhaps,” the Pantoran said.

“Perhaps,” Hera agreed, and hoped a little vaguely that she wouldn’t have to arrest him.

She released the Inquisitor as soon as they turned to walk away. They were silent all the way up the stairs into the noisy, crowded club, as they retrieved their speeder bikes, and on the ride back to the Ghost, the wind from their passage whipping Hera’s lekku back behind her.

Hera was stowing her bike and trying to decide whether the appropriate thing to do in this situation would be to debrief the evening when the Inquisitor said, very tiredly, “I’ll see you in the morning,” and vanished up the ladder. A few moments later she heard his cabin door slide open and shut again.

“Well,” she said to Chopper, who had come down to make sure she was all right. “That was interesting.”

#cut scenes and concept writing #reluctant roommates au tag #as always comments are appreciated #I'm trying for a bit more plottiness with this concept

32 notes · View notes

thestrangeprophet-blog · 3 years

Text

The Muse and the Soldier

· f/reader x Levi Ackerman

· No NSFW

· HC storyline

· I do not own the rights to any of the characters

· PLS support the actual Attack on Titan anime

You open your eyes and take pleasure in the feel of the morning breeze coming from the window. Breathing in the air which carried the aroma of those special blue flowers potted downstairs in front of your tea shop. Seems you have left all your pencils across the desk and the drawings plastered to the walls from the night before had fallen again. You pick up the drawings and admire the one yet to be finished. It is of a regular customer you normally see when they come back from a scouting mission. Piercing grey eyes in contrast to his fancy dark undercut. Levi Ackerman. You always wonder how he has the time and will to keep up with his hair. After laying his portrait neatly on your desk, you ready yourself for another day brewing the finest tea you can in hopes of seeing Levi for another bout of his favorite tea.

The Captain and Commander Erwin were frequent visitors to your tea shop because Levi had always recommended it. For one reason or another, the tea you brewed satisfied him beyond what he would brew himself with what he had. Erwin had thought the same as well and it brought you enjoy your tea could be held to such standards. As a fellow tea lover, the subject of tea was never a boring conversation with Levi, no matter how short or blunt it was with him. Sure, most people see it as something more along the lines of hot leaf juice. It’s more than that and Levi understood it though it went unspoken.

Captain Levi came alone today and took his usual seat. It was rather unusual but you carry on and bring his favorite. The teapot whistles and steams like Titan smoke with the lingering scent of black tea that trails through the wind. As you set his cup in front of him and pour his tea, you notice he seems lost further in thought than normal. You finish pouring his tea and hesitantly ask if there is anything else you can do for him. He takes a second to come back to this moment and raises his head ever so slightly. His hair still covering those captivating grey eyes. Releasing an exhausted breath, he asks of one thing of you.

Levi: I- If it’s no trouble to you… will you sit with me Y/N? Even just for a moment?

Y/N: That’s a bit of an odd request, Captain. I’m surprised you even remembered my name. But sure! Anything for my best customer.

Levi: You don’t have to address me as Captain. J-just Levi will do… and thank you.

You sit in the chair across from Levi where Erwin is normally seated discussing the next expedition and plans you have for Eren and the cadets of the 104th Cadet Corps. As of in this moment, this is simply two human beings sitting together enjoying tea. Just sounds of the breeze against your ears and the softened sips coming from across the table at the lips of the man before you. Levi’s cheeks are flushed with a gorgeous rosy blush. It seems he wants to start a conversation but has no idea where to start. Its adorable how a man with a reputation for being such stone cold badass could be flustered over tea. You strike a smile in his direction and find your own way to start a conversation he could initiate. Call it encouragement if you will. The sketchpad and pencil you keep handy finally get put to use. The pencil scratching against the paper caught Levi’s attention though he kept to his tea. He watched as he appeared on the paper before him in awe.

Levi: Hey Y/N, is that supposed to be me?

Y/N: Oh, uh yeah haha! I figured you weren’t much in the mood to talk so I didn’t want to bother you while you were enjoying your tea.

Levi: You are a woman of many talents I see.

Y/N: I wouldn’t say that much.

Levi: N-nonsense. I come here to enjoy the tea you brew perfectly and the singing you think I can’t hear. Didn’t know you were so skilled with a pencil as well.

Y/N: I usually never have the time to draw during the day Levi.

Levi: Can I request something? I’ll pay for it.

Y/N: No need to pay me. What can I do for you?

Levi: I need you to draw someone for me. I don’t really know them too well, but they have a face I could never forget.

Y/N: Oh I wonder who this special person is! Could you describe them for me?

Levi: Well, they’re around the same height as me maybe a bit taller. They have long black curly hair that glistened as though it was a fire at sunset. Brown eyes like fresh honey in the morning and glistened with a hopeful shine I envy. They wear some rather dark clothing year round even when its hot outside. Their nose is slightly hooked and cheeks soft and red. Their lips glistened and they look soft to the touch. And even though they don’t think it looks very nice, they have a scar across their left eyebrow. I’m not exactly sure how they got, but they always try to cover it behind their hair yet it still finds a way to see the light. Their jawline is soft and looks like it could rest perfectly in the cups of your hands.

Y/N: Wow Levi, I didn’t realize you had a way with words.

As the form you forge is refined from guidelines to distinctive features, the person he is describing truly is a sight to behold. You may not have the colors to use but you understand the value of what those colors are which are just as powerful. Levi sits across from you amazed at your skill for a second time until you’ve finished your work. You hand him the final sketch and you already know he just asked you to draw yourself but play it off. He takes the drawing into his hand and holds it up so you and the drawing are in view with each other.

Levi: As beautiful on paper as you are in person. Tsk, your hands are even a work of art on their own.

Y/N: If I may say I’m rather flattered you’d ask me to draw myself just for you but you aren’t very good at making your flirtations subtle. Unless you weren’t trying to be subtle in the first place.

Levi: Oi its not my fault you decided to pull a journal out of nowhere while we’re drinking tea together!

Y/N: You are one hundred percent correct Levi. Really for a man who exudes such confidence, I’ve never seen you even stutter let alone get flustered over tea. Its cute.

Levi blushes even more and looks away trying to play it off. He already knows you’ve got at least one finger wrapped around him. No one really talks to him like that besides this Hange person he mentions. They sound like an interesting character from the way he describes them. You would love to meet them one day when they aren’t experimenting on Titans. For now, your gaze remains fixed on Levi’s profile as he tries to regain his composure. You would not have assumed he was even interested in such trivial things other than being a clean freak.

You are aware of Levi’s reputation but just getting to sit with him in such an intimate setting gives you a next level view of him. The clean undercut and soft flowing hair was just asking to have someone’s fingers run through it and embrace the feeling of each strand even if it meant making his hair just a little messy. Each group of strands followed the path of the wind as leaves blew from the vines. His jawline was as sharp as the blades he carried to cut down titans like butter. His hands, though they bore the weight his fallen comrades and the destined purpose to eliminate and survive, seemed delicate under the rough calluses of combat. But his eyes. Those damn grey eyes. They pierced right through me whenever you got the chance to see them yourself. All of the things they saw, and the feelings kept behind them like a locked door. There is so much pain rage behind those you wonder when the last time Levi got to see something outside the realm of horror outside and within the walls.

Y/N: Levi?

Levi: Yeah Y/N?

Y/N: When was the last time you’ve ever had a chance to relax and just lay low for awhile?

Levi: Can’t say. I don’t think I’ve given myself a damn break but I can’t afford to. I don’t exactly have anything else to do.

Y/N: Hmmm. Let’s change that. Make sure you make yourself available tomorrow at sundown. Come back to the shop and dress casual. I know somewhere we can go. I’ll even grab an extra book so you can out those hands to work other than killing Titans and jotting down whatever it is you do write for your paperwork.

Levi: B-but I c-can’t just abandon my po-

Y/N: Shush. In case you haven’t noticed you don’t have any missions scheduled for at least another week. Plus business around here is slow. We could both use a little time for ourselves. Even if its just a moment.

Levi: *blushing even more* uh- ok. I guess it wouldn’t hurt. You didn’t have to act like such a brat about it.

Y/N: If you weren’t Levi I would throw this lukewarm teapot of tea all over you

Levi: *Smiling ever so slightly* hmp I uh… I guess I could see you doing something like that. Okay, I’ll be back tomorrow to pick you up. I’m curious as to where this place is anyway.

Y/N: Alrighty then it’s a date! No ifs ands or buts. You got that Levi?

Levi: Loud and clear.

You’re leaning over the table to make sure Levi knows where he needs to be. You’re close enough to him you can smell the scent of the tea you made him mixed with just the scent of him. You’d kiss him right then and there if you really wanted to. Looks like he had the same idea but you pull away because you weren’t in that much of a rush. His lips were parted as they awaited your lips to meet his. It was thrilling seeing him even a little desperate for you but making him wait was even better. As much as Levi felt he couldn’t abandon his post, he couldn’t say no to you. He’d been working up the courage to talk to you for as long as he has been coming to your shop. Though he wasn’t the one to ask, Levi appreciated that you were the one to take the lead in making plans to accompany each other on a date. You’d been waiting for the opportunity to even be in this position. Now that it’s here, you make plans to make the date an enjoyable one that Levi would also like. Good first impressions are still pretty important. Especially if you want to make a good impression for Levi.

Levi: Tsk, its almost sundown. Id better get back to the brats at HQ.

You grab his hands and ask him to wait just a little while longer.

Y/N: Well if you’re going to be leaving, at least let me give you some extra tea and a meal to take back with you. It’s the least I can do for agreeing to going on a date with me on such short notice.

Levi: Tsk make it quick please.

Y/N: Don’t rush me. I’m being nice to you. I usually don’t just give out free tea and meals to anyone you know.

Levi: I’m sorry. Thank you. I- I uh really appreciate your generosity.

You hand Levi the tea and meal you made just for him. You touch hands for a moment and get goosebumps for the first time in a long time. You blush just enough that Levi notices as well and gives a small smirk. You exchange that smirk with one of your own.

Levi: Thank you again Y/N. I guess I’ll see you soon.

Y/N: You guess?

Levi: I will see you soon.

Y/N: Much better. And by the way, you have a very charming smile. I wish I could see it more often. It suits you almost as much as that cold gaze you’ve always got equipped.

Levi: I never really gave it much thought what that looked like. I’ll pick you tomorrow. I promise.

Y/N: You’d better if you know what’s good for ya hahaha! I’ll see you tomorrow, Captain.

END

Comment if you’d like a Pt. 2!

#levi ackerman x reader #aot #aot headcanons #attack on titan #levi #aot x y/n #levi headcanons #levi fluff #aot imagines #attack on titan x reader #aot x reader #levi hc #levi ackerman headcanons #levi fanfiction

57 notes · View notes

michaelmilligan · 3 years

Text

Destiel fix-it fic (post 15x19)

Okay so this is 1,8k of fix-it for that horrible shit we call an 'ending'. Yes, I am still not over the finale. No, I will not take criticism at this time. (I meant to work on a genderfluid Dean(na) fic which will likely have several parts, but this wouldn't leave my brain so here you go. No beta, just pure rage against the machine that churned out the finale.) (Also my first time adding a cut so if it doesn't work please tell me.)

Dean hadn't taken it well. Not that Sam could blame him. He himself was still struggling with everything that had happened. Chuck snapping everyone away, the fear and the desperation... But they won, and everyone was back. Well, everyone except Cas.

Dean had said “just us” and Sam had said the same and they had driven for a while and it had been good to be on the road, to finally be free. But at the end of the day, it wasn't just them, and that was good too. Great even. There were Jody and the girls. Eileen. Donna. Charlie and Stevie. Garth and his family. All these people they knew and loved, everyone they cared about. Everyone was safe. Everything was good.

Except for Cas.

It had taken a few days for it to really sink in for Sam that he was gone. After all, he hadn't been there when it had happened. Hell, Dean had never even really told him how it went down. But Dean's grief was undeniable, the way he drunk himself into oblivion, much like the last time they had lost Cas, when they had also lost their mom. Both losses had been temporary, but they hadn't known that at the time.

Now their mom was gone for good, up in Heaven and apparently happy. And Cas was gone too, probably in the Empty if he was dead. Sam missed him, of course he did. He was their best friend, the other father in their trio, however weird that sounded. Also Sam also missed Jack, not knowing if they would ever see him again, now that he was almighty and all that. But Sam handled it, he always handled it, and he had Eileen to keep him company, to hold him when he needed to cry.

Dean had noone, hadn't had anyone in years. Maybe he had never had anyone who would do that for him, and Sam was starting to worry about Dean's liver as well as his mental health. Not that any of them could be great in that department, but so far they had always been able to keep it together. Now Sam wasn't so sure.

As he walked into the kitchen, he half expected to find Dean slumped over, drooling onto the kitchen table with a half-full bottle of whiskey in his hand. Instead, the room was empty, no empty bottles in sight. Huh.

Sam set out in search for his brother, trying his room first but finding it just as empty. It took him several minutes before he ducked his head into the library, and finally saw Dean sitting at a table, several books open in front of him.

“Dean? What are you doing?”

Dean's shoulders tensed for a moment, but he didn't turn around.

“Research,” he said gruffly, sounding like he had woken up less than an hour ago.

“On what? You got a case?” Sam came into the room, looking over the books. He saw Enochian, an angel summoning spell, a dictionary... “What's this for?”

Dean pressed his lips into a thin line. “Cas,” he croaked out. “We've got to... there has to be a way.”

“Dean. I thought you said he was dead. You know we can't... There's no way to get him from the Empty.”

Dean gritted his teeth, looking like he was about to snap. “That dude almost got Lucifer out, but we can't get Cas back?” He sprang up, walking towards the nearest shelf just to stare at it.

“Dean. What even happened? How did... you never told me what happened,” Sam tried, hoping against hope that his brother wouldn't just clam up like every other goddamn time he tried to talk about something difficult.

“He... he just. Goddamnit, he said- He- he made a deal with the Empty and then-”

“Wait, what? The Empty was there? Why the hell would he make a-”

“No, I mean. Before. He made the deal to save Jack, back when... It agreed to take him instead of Jack, but only... only if... and he said...” Dean's shoulders were shaking as he leaned his forehead against the shelf. “He... he summoned it. The Empty. To take him away so it would take Billie too. And I... I couldn't do anything. There was... we had no weapons, nothing to fight the Empty, nothing to fight Billie and he...” Sam couldn't see his face, but he could hear the tears in his voice.

“Okay. Okay.” Sam let out a deep breath. It wasn't the first time one of them had sacrificed himself for the others. And like any other time, Dean couldn't let it go. Well, not that Sam had always been able to. “So you want to get him back. You think that's wise?”

Dean whirled to him, his eyes hard and full of tears. “What?”

“I'm just saying... Cas sacrificed himself to save you. And now you're going to endanger yourself to get him back, do you think that's really what he wants? And even if we had a way of getting to the Empty, who says that we're gonna be able to get Cas out, or that the Empty won't just snatch him again as soon as we're back on Earth?”

But Dean's face had completely shuttered closed. This was one of the times were no logical arguments would get through to him.

“I'll find a way,” he said, turning back to the shelf to sort through the books.

Sam sighed, and after watching his brother for a while, he left him to it, deciding to let him grieve in his own way.

It was about three days later when Sam heard a noise from the entrance. Frowning, he walked towards it, wondering if Dean had invited anyone. Eileen wasn't scheduled to come over, but maybe she had wanted to surprise him? He had told her not to come, didn't want her to see Dean like that, but then again when did she ever listen to him?

When he saw who was coming down the stairs from the entrance, Sam felt his eyes widen.

“Jack!”

The boy – God, whatever – smiled and raised his hand.

“Dean! Dean, Jack is here,” Sam called in the direction of the corrdor, then hurried over to him. He hesitated, not sure if you were supposed to hug the newly appointed God. But Jack was his son and he had missed him, so in the end he pulled him into a tight hug. Jack returned it, squeezing him and still smiling when they pulled apart.

Which was when Sam noticed the other figure coming down the stairs and he gasped. “Cas?” He looked at Jack, who just kept smiling, and Sam laughed and pulled Cas into a hug, too. Cas returned it, though a little more carefully than Jack, and his smile wasn't as bright. Maybe a little... shy? Embarrassed?

“Dean? Dean! It's- Dean, get your ass over here!” Sam called again, hardly believing their luck.

Dean jerked awake to a stiff neck and an aching back, hunched over on the library table, drool on a three-hundred year old book. He thought he'd heard Sam, calling for him, and he got up to walk out of the library in spite of his protesting body. “Sam?” he called as walked along the corridor, anxiety forming in his gut. What if something was wrong? What if they were under attack? What if the next big villain – whoever that might be after thee actual God – was here to get them? Or maybe just some regular monster, ready to tear them apart, taking them by surprise?

Dean pulled his gun and tread carefully, peering around each corner before rounding it. He heard voices from the entrance, and by the time he was almost at the door, he heard a laugh. It sounded like Sam... He still peeked around the door frame before getting in and saw Jack, just standing there, looking comfortable.

“Jack?” Dean made his way over to him quickly, not believing his eyes. “What are you- I thought you-”

“Dean!” Jack beamed at him and Dean couldn't not pull him into a hug.

“Hey, kiddo.”

“Hi.” Jack squeezed him tight.

When Dean looked towards Sam, he also saw... no. This wasn't possible, was it? Dean pulled back, eyes wide, just staring for a moment before he turned towards Jack. “You- how-”

“I know I said I'd be hands-off, but...” Jack shrugged, looking apologetic. “I didn't want to be.”

Dean let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding, his eyes going back to Cas. His eyes were prickling, and he suddenly noticed how Cas evaded his eyes, peering up at him from beneath his eyelashes almost shyly.

“Thank you,” Dean said to Jack, aware of the tremor in his voice, and then he rushed towards Cas.

“You goddamn- fucking moron,” he hissed as he wrapped him in the tightest hug he might have ever given anyone. “Stupid fucking dumbass.”

“Uh,” Cas made, sounding insecure. “Hello, Dean.”

Dean gripped him the shoulders when he pulled back, then put his hands on Cas' face. “You fucking- what does that even mean, huh? 'It's in the just saying it'. What the fuck. What the actual fuck!”

Cas squinted at him, opened his mouth, closed it again.

“You-” Dean cut himself off, running out of words, so he kissed Cas instead. It was a rough kiss, and long, and Cas seemed to have trouble keeping up, his hands coming up to claw at the flannel on Dean's back.

Dean was vaguely aware of a gasp behind him, but he was still laser-focused on Cas, glaring daggers at him.

“You maybe wanna re-think that?” He shoved him.

“Uh, I- I do?” Cas said, still looking terribly confused, and Dean couldn't help but kiss him again, just as roughly at first but getting softer over time until they were just breathing each other's air.

“You fucking asshole. You could have said something sooner! Before you got your ass dragged to the-” Dean stopped, feeling his face going through several emotions at once.

Cas squinted at him. “So could you.”

Dean stared at him, hearing Jack say “What's wrong, Sam?”, and yet he still couldn't have cared less.

“Goddamnit, you're right, we're both dumbasses.” When Cas opened his mouth, he added: “No, Cas, 'trusting' really doesn't cut it here.”

Cas huffed out a laugh – and wasn't that a sight for sore eyes. Dean kissed him again, hearing Jack in the background: “Wait, is this something new? I always thought they were just not very public about it.”

Dean grinned against Cas' lips, and Cas smiled back as Dean pulled him into another hug.

Meanwhile, Jack was still talking: “You know what, I think they need a minute. And I want to eat Crunch Cookie Crunch. Do you still have any?”

#Destiel #Supernatural fanfiction #Destiel fanfic #How do you even tag #Deancas #deancas fanfiction #Finale fix-it #After this Jack tells them that he doesn't want to be God #'I'm three Dean. Three! I'm not even legally allowed to drive yet'#And Dean goes 'You're also not allowed to drive because you legally don't exist... but yeah okay I get it'#They find a way for Jack to give up his God mojo to power Heaven directly #And Jack comes back home #They live happily ever after #Noone dies or fucks off into the sunset #The End #Except of course it's not an end it's just the beginning of the rest of their lives #Quiet domestic lives #Occasional hunts or helping younger/less experienced hunters #But all in all just two guys being gay married raising a son together with their brother and his wife #Eileen is awesome and teaches Jack all manner of dangerous shit #Claire and Eileen hang out and she becomes a cool aunt #Jack and Claire are siblings (TM)#Anyway this is already too many tags you get the gist

29 notes · View notes

killted · 3 years

Text

andreil thought I can’t get out of my mind

instead of saying “I love you” or “I want this forever” or “this isn’t nothing” Neil says “marry me” and Andrew says “can’t I have an essay to write”

After Andrew gets hopitalized in Neil’s third year, the first thing Neil says to Andrew is “marry me” and Andrew says “I can’t, I’m concussed”

They get married after Andrew gets discharged from the hospital, but the phrase is bit left behind, and the foxes are in the dark.

1. Wymack and Abby

Andrew’s lot are having dinner at Abby’s and Wymack is there, because of course he is. Aaron, Kevin, and Nicky are watching some idiotic reality TV show.

Neil and Andrew are pretending to help Abby and Wymack clean, but really they are just staring their enjoying having the people they care about close. Neil is staring, the way Andrew dehemently dislikes, the stare that means “I want you forever and I can’t believe forever means gray hair”.

“Staring”

“Marry me.”

“Can’t, I don’t know how to be an ‘Exy Wife’”

Andrew is staring at the TV, where “Wives of Exy” is playing.

This startes a laugh out of Neil.

Later Abby and Wymack share a look that means, ‘they are stupid in love.’

A few months later, Abby is looking at their medical records and sees an email about updating martial records in their database, Abby follows it curiously and then calls Wymack into her office.

“I think congratulations are in order.”

2. Upperclassmen

Their schedule match up so few times during their hectic year after the girls and Matt have graduated that Andrew doesn’t resist Neil’s request for a lunch out. They are going to meet half way for everyone, in D.C.

It really was just a though away comment from Matt that ignited the conversation about the new racing car, but suddenly Matt and Andrew were having a full fledged conversation with out any outside prodding. After wards Andrew bodily turns Neil’s face away.

After being released for ‘no looking at Andrew timeout’ Neil turns and says “marry me” as he usually does when he wants to kiss Andrew but they are in public, when he wants to nuzzle into Andrew’s neck. Neil is so lost in Andrew’s eyes that he doesn’t notice the entire table become quiet, intent on them.

Andrew looks over at him with a long suffering look and stabs a fork into his stack of pancakes.

“Can’t, I’m not finished with my pancakes.”

Andrew undermines his tough exterior by leaning over to kiss Neil’s cheek.

Neil reached up and presses his finger tips to the place and draws them back to look at them and then Andrew.

“Syrup?” Neil looks both amused and disgusted.

“It is what you deserved.”

Neil returns his focus to Renee, and tries to get the conversation back on tacks, enquiring about the peace corps.

Allison looks at Dan and then Renee.

“We don’t have a bet on when will they get married.”

Matt shoots Andrew and Neil a significant look before glancing back to the girls.

“So, what are your thoughts on the instation of marriage?”

Neil chocked out a laugh.

“I think it’s archaic and barbariac,” Andrew said.

“I would only do it for tax benefits,” Neil piped up.

“So you two aren’t going to get married?” Renee asked, softly.

“What?” Neil looked taken aback. “Andrew and I got married at the end of last year.”

3. The monsters

At Nicky’s bachelor party, Aaron is drowning, his attempts to censor his still lingering homophobia having worn thin about two male strippers ago. Aaron turns his sighting on Neil, who is talking about Exy with Kevin, predictable, and also staring at Andrew, also predictable.

“If you have something like this when you marry my brother, I am not going,” Aaron shouts over. It’s supposed to come off mean, but it in truth is just sounds like he is giving Neil permission to marry his brother. Neil is smiling.

“Or better yet don’t marry him at all!”

“Sorry brother-in-law Andrew and I eloped after he was hospitalized in your 4th year.”

Kevin and Nicky both whip their heads to Neil , having been mostly ignoring the confrontation up until that point.

“You did what?!” That was Kevin.

“You didn’t invite me?” And that was Nicky.

“Yeah that’s kind of the point of eloping,” Andrew’s says, looking sharply at Aaron.

4. The world

“Fans of the Former Foxes already are keen on this ongoing rivalry, but John, for the regular joe of Exy, why don’t you give us a run down?” A well polished sports news lady says from the TV.

“Thanks Margret, yes the infamous Josten-Minyard Rivalry might be coming to a close.”

“Photos have emerged from a closed practice, from the NY Jets, and Marget you’re not going to believe this. There is clear audio of Josten asking Minyard to marry him. After some super fans did some digging it wasn’t long before they found the public record of their marriage, and Margret, when I tell you it shocked us all that the pair have been married for the past 7 years.”

“Thanks Josh, we now go live to a post game press conference with Neil Josten.”

“Josten!”

“Neil, care to comment on your marriage with former teammate and know enemy.”

“Well I wouldn’t say enemy, but what kind of comment do you want?”

“Can you confirm wheither or not it is true?”

“Yes, I can confirm or deny.”

#andreil #the foxhole court #fanfiction #drabble #andrew minyard #neil josten #Josten minyard rivalry

97 notes · View notes

wienerbarnes · 3 years

Text

Necessary Evil

Pairing: Bucky x Reader (Cheek to Cheek)

Word Count: 1,816

Warnings: nothing crazy, typical canon violence type stuff, special character appearance👀

A/N: so sorry for not posting this like two days ago when i said i was going to🥴 ive had a ton going on and ive been a busy bee but hopefully ill get myself organized for next week :) question for yall! should i keep the friday posting schedule or do thursdays instead bc of fatws on fridays? lmk!

MAIN MASTERLIST | CHEEK TO CHEEK MASTERLIST

It’s been a confusing couple of weeks. You’ve been placed on a temporary leave while you finish your recovery after the last mission.

You’ve been trying to learn as much about your new powers as you can, not really understanding what they are or how they work considering that most of the time they’ve shown themselves it’s been accidental.

Making Bucky drop food, slamming doors shut, sending stuff flying across the room. At this point you’ll tape your hands at your sides if it means you’ll stop making such a mess everywhere.

Everything has been put on halt. You don’t cook, in fear of starting a fire or making a mess in your kitchen, you don’t spar with anyone or workout unless it’s in a closed off and sealed training room used for when the Hulk was at the tower, in fear of hurting people around you, and unfortunately, you haven’t let Bucky be around you much in fear of hurting him.

He tells you that you’re not going to hurt him and that even if you did he wouldn’t take it personally, but you just can’t bring yourself to do it. The two of you got into a heated argument a few days ago when he offered to let you use him as a practice dummy for your new powers.

“How dare you suggest something like that to me?!”

“Well, I just meant that -”

“Meant what? How would you feel if I asked you to slap me around like a ragdoll with your metal arm? Make you go Winter Soldier on me?”

“That’s not the same thing, and you know it.”

“Isn’t it though?”

It wasn’t pretty.

It also didn’t help that Bucky was sent on a solo mission recently. He couldn’t tell you much about it, and you didn’t push it, knowing the two of you were still a bit rocky with each other, and knowing that it would only put more stress on you constantly thinking about his mission.

Boy, did you miss him though. You’re glad you put aside your pride to hug and kiss him goodbye, taking in his warmth, his love, his smell, savoring his arms around you and his lips on yours before he left. With the way he held and kissed you, you think he felt the same.

That was two days ago. Alpine has been the one to keep you the most company. She’s gotten big, and it’s a lot more fun to play around with her now. You trail a feather attached to the end of a string around the ground while she tries to pounce after it. A knock at the door doesn’t even pull her attention away from the toy as you let her win and catch it, standing up from your sitting position on the floor.

You open it to reveal Sam in more casual clothes than his regular tactical pants and shirt, and you return the smile he gives you.

“You busy?” He asks.

You look over your shoulder to see Alpine still pawing at the feather on the ground.

“No, I’m not busy, what’s up?”

“Just wanted to hang out, we both got the day off, figured I’d show you the best danishes in New York.”

You’re not sure if Bucky put him up to this or if this is a way to keep you from going batshit being stuck in your room not being able to do anything, but you accept the offer anyway. It’ll be nice to get some air.

“Do you, uhm,” You begin, feeling a bit embarrassed.

“What’s up?” Sam asks, the guy from the VA coming out, encouraging you to tell him.

“Do you know if Bucky’s okay? I haven’t heard from him, is all.” You ask, slipping on some shoes and heading back out into the hallway with Sam.

“I mean, I’m sure he’s fine, why wouldn’t he be?”

“Just that I know these solo missions can be anywhere and he could be doing anything, but I still worry. I didn’t know if you knew where he was or anything.”

He doesn’t. He doesn’t know, because Bucky told him Steve asked him for a few favors and he needed some off time for a couple of days. He thought Bucky was in rural New York. There’s no mission. But he supposes he’s not supposed to tell you that.

“Yeah, I don’t know much about it. Fury’s probably the one behind it.” Fury’s in Florida for his niece’s sixth birthday. He doesn’t tell you that either.

Luckily you accept it and enter the elevator to leave the private floor and go to the common area, able to leave out the backway of the tower.

“Avenger in the building, Captain.”

Sam doesn’t understand. Avenger? Who’s even around anymore?

“Uh, huh? Bucky?”

“No, Captain.”

“Clint?”

“No.”

“Who’s here?”

“Underoos.”

Underoos? Where has he heard that? Isn’t that -

The elevator doors open to the common room, a teenage boy stands with his back towards the two of you. His head whips around in typical teenage fashion and your eyebrows shoot up, unaware that the Avengers recruited teenagers.

“Is that a fucking kid?”

“Peter?” Sam asks, clearly surprised at the boy being in front of him. He hasn’t seen him in years. He wasn’t even sure where he was all this time, assuming he was in school, with his Aunt, but now he’s here.

“Sam! And his lady... friend. How are you?!”

“The lady friend has a name.” You chirp.

“What are you doing here?”

You and Sam speak at the same time. Peter addresses you first, “And your name is…?”

“Uh, Agent 51.” You didn’t think that through.

“Weird name, but alright.”

“Peter.” Sam brings his attention back to his question.

“Who is this guy?” You ask, clearly lost on who this person is and how he’s an Avenger.

“This is Spider-Man.” Sam tells you nonchalantly.

“Uh- Sam?!” Peter exclaims.

“What, she works with us, now. She doesn’t have anyone to tell anyway.”

“Sam?!” You elbow him.

“Why are you here, Peter.” Sam asks again.

“Well, you know, I was in school, doing some stuff here and there for Hill and Fury, and I figured I’d stop by.” He smiles.

You and Sam stare in silent confusion.

“Okay, look. I feel… lost. Like I feel like I’ve come to terms with Tony dying and stuff, but, I don’t know...” Peter finally cuts to the point.

You know very little about Spider-Man. You definitely didn’t know he was a kid, but you also didn’t know that he had some sort of a close relationship with Tony Stark. You’re becoming more and more like Bucky everyday; not knowing who any of these people are, not remembering seemingly important events, hell, not even knowing have these things happened because you were under Hydra.

“Peter, we don’t -”

“I’m not asking for help. More so asking if you have anything for me to do, or something.” His smile falls. You’re definitely confused, but you feel for the guy. You remember feeling lost as a teenager, losing the people you looked up to. And that lost feeling landed you in the Marines and the Marines landed you with a terrorist organization. We should help him, you immediately think.

“I’m sorry, man.” Sam offers. He wants to help Peter, as annoying as he finds him. Being a teenager is hard, and being Spider-Man is harder. But, Sam can’t forget that he’s still a kid in school with only his aunt and a few friends around him. He doesn’t want to put a person like that in the immense danger they throw themselves into, even if he knows he can handle it.

“No worries, I’ll be on my way, then.” Peter nervously scratches at his eyebrow.

“Sure you don’t want to stick around here for a bit? I know the Avengers aren’t much of a thing anymore, but, you always got a room here; a place to stay.” Sam tells him, assuming Peter’s on the verge of having a sort of coming-of-age moment.

“No, no, I need to be with May. I’ll see if I can, uh, maybe stop by more often. Maybe. If that’s alright. Nice to meet you, uh, Miss 51!” He bids farewell before walking away awkwardly, leaving Sam with a sort of sullen look on his face and you still very confused.

“What was that whole thing about?” You finally break the silence as you two make your way towards the private garage elevators.

“I’ll tell you over danishes.”

Bucky plants his fist into the HYDRA soldier’s face for the sixth time, the sound of metal hitting flesh making a slushy sound with little clanks, signifying teeth hitting the floor.

“This is the last time I ask you before I kill you. Where is Bychkov, Morozov, and that fuck with metal arms?” He pants beneath the black mask and goggles, an outfit he hadn’t dawned in so long.

Your list is heavy in his pocket, he thinks about the names he’s already crossed off and few he has left. He’s not going to stop until he finds the handlers that captured you and the supposed soldier with metal arms that shot you, details you only mentioned to him once after a nightmare that he refused to ever forget.

“They… went back… to base… in Kiev. Just… north of it.” He struggles out.

One step closer. Bucky stands taller, letting the man slump on the ground, and he reaches for the knife at his thigh.

“Wait! I - I told you… where they went!”

“I was going to kill you whether you told me or not, you Nazi fuck.” Is all he says before he slashes the knife, ending the bastard’s life.

Leaving the man’s home, he rounds a corner into the night and replaces his knife, taking out a pen in one of his many pockets as well as your list.

He crosses off Antonov, looking down at the four remaining names, two of which were the men that did this to you.

He takes a breath, the layers of leather and kevlar straining over his muscles as he sighs. He never thought he’d be hunting people down like this, Nazi or not. He never thought he’d have this black mask and these goggles over his eyes. But he also never thought HYDRA would touch the love of his life the way they did; never thought they’d put you in that chair.

So, now, he’s only getting revenge. It’s the least he can do after this organization has stolen his life, kept him from seeing his family forever, took his arm, gave him PTSD, gave his girlfriend PTSD and injected her with who knows what only to put her in that goddamn chair.

While he never thought he’d be in this position, they asked for it, and he’s not sorry.

On to the next name.

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fanfictions #marvel #bucky barnes series #idk if yall know this but i love spiderman #my fav marvel character #love him more than bucky i just don't read or write for him for some reason idk i just never got into that #and the new spiderman is coming out in december !#i slowly want to incorporate characters into c2c #like i added wanda and plan to write a oneshot or two delving into her and reader meeting and getting to know each other #and then the loki series comes out in june so maybe ill play w that #im just not sure if ill adapt c2c to fatws #depends where it goes and how it ends #we'll see #anyway #yall know u can always send ideas or requests for me to play around with #thanks for reading if you made it this far

36 notes · View notes

snelbz · 4 years

Text

broken.

{rowaelin angst}

A/N: So this has been sitting in my drafts for uh. 8 months, and I legit forgot it existed sooo. Enjoy!

The little black box that sat on his dresser haunted him.

Rowan had been staring at it for what seemed like hours without any hope of falling asleep. He glanced at the alarm clock on his dresser. 2:16. His eyes drifted back to the box. He wondered if the diamond inside would gleam in the moonlight streaming through his thin curtained window.

He wondered if she would have liked the ring.

He supposed he would never know.

He didn’t understand how they had gotten here. How he had ended up in bed - in their bed - alone. He reached out ran his hand down the unoccupied pillow next to him.

Just yesterday, she woken up beside him. Just yesterday, she’d slipped out of bed before he was awake to make him a cup of coffee. It was still steaming on his bedside table when he’d woken up, though she was long gone, hoping to beat the morning traffic heading into Orynth.

He’d gone back through their texts from the day over a hundred times already, looking for some clue or sign of what was to come. There was none. They’d talked about nothing out of the ordinary, but that had been his goal. For her to suspect nothing and assume that it was any normal day.

At lunch, he’d called her. He’d suggested they go somewhere nice for dinner, rather than the regular take out one of them picked up on the way home, the one element crucial to his plan. If there was no fancy dinner, there was no proposal.

But he didn’t expect her to say no.

“I’m swamped with work,” she’d said. “I really just need to go to my apartment tonight and focus on these files.”

He’d offered, “I’ll come over then. Pick up dinner on the way.”

“Not tonight, Rowan.”

The tones of her voice made him hesitate before he pushed her.

Rowan’s eyes fluttered shut.

He missed her.

It had only been a day and the absence of her in their bed was agonizing.

Rowan picked up his phone and went to her contact page. He pressed the call button. It went straight to voicemail.

Hey, it’s Aelin. I’m busy. Call later or leave a message. Actually, text me. Why are you calling me in the first place?

The recorded lady told him to leave a message after the beep.

The beep came.

Rowan said nothing. What was there to say?

I miss you. I love you. Come back to me. Please.

Rowan hung up and let his phone fall into her pillow.

He had thought about going to her apartment, but he knew it was pointless. He’d never get inside. Instead he’d paced around his house today. He’d smashed things and broken them. He’d screamed until he was sure his neighbors had heard and was surprised when no police had shown up. He’d punched the wall so hard there was a fist-sized hole in the drywall. As he looked up at it, he clenched his stiff fingers.

Useless.

It was useless.

Pointless.

They had been together since high school. Seven years. Everyone said high school sweethearts don’t end up together. But they were wrong. She was his forever.

Seven years.

And now there was nothing.

Nothing but pain and emptiness and an agonizing hole in his chest that could not be filled.

He called her number again, knowing that it would go straight to her voicemail as it did before.

He did it again.

And again.

Until he finally got the nerve to leave a message after the beep.

“I love you,” he said, quietly, into the phone. “I miss you. I’m so sorry, Fireheart.”

He hung up and stared at the white ceiling.

He knew she wouldn’t be calling back, knew she wouldn’t answer the phone, no matter how many times he called.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Life wasn’t supposed to laugh at you like this.

You weren’t supposed to get a taste of happiness, to see everything you’ve ever wanted in front of you, and all you had to do was reach out and take it.

Only to have it ripped from your grasp at the last second.

He picked up his phone, to do what, he didn’t know. Probably to call again, but he paused. His eyes landed on the blue app in the upper corner of his screen and he tapped on it.

Before his feed could even load, he’d clicked on the small magnifying glass in the corner and began to type. Her name appeared after only typing “A”.

He selected her profile, and a photo of her, beaming at the person behind the camera, was displayed front and center. He’d taken the photo, on the ride home from her recent college graduation. The pride displayed on her face was obvious. As was the love in her turquoise and gold eyes.

He quickly closed the app, not allowing himself to scroll through her feed. To see if anything had been posted.

His phone rang in his hand, and even though he knew it wasn’t going to be her despite the late hour, he still hoped. But when he focused on the name on the display, he saw that it was Lorcan, and he declined the call.

He wasn’t in the mood for one of his oldest friend’s particular brand of bad mood tonight.

He had his own to contend with.

He didn’t want to talk to anyone.

No one but her.

Giving up on the idea of sleep, Rowan crawled out of bed as the clock hit three.

He went into the kitchen and turned on the light above the stove.

He turned around.

Her gray cardigan was tossed over the back of one of the chairs pushed up to his crappy, yard sale kitchen table.

They had picked out that table together, after Aelin had convinced him that a kitchen table was necessary and made an offer to the seller. The offer included the kitchen table and the hideous floral chair Rowan had sitting in the corner of his living room.

He hated that chair, had only put it in his apartment because Aelin found it charming.

Rowan poured himself a glass of whiskey and sat in that ugly chair. He grabbed her sweater as he passed and clutched it in his bruised and sore hand. He closed his eyes and raised it to his face. He breathed in deeply, breathing her in, breathing in the firey, crisp scent of her.

The sob the burst out of him on his exhale surprised even him. He didn’t expect the full body tremors that shook he as the tears finally spilled.

Gods, he missed her. He wanted her. He wanted to talk to her. He needed her to tell him everything was going to be okay.

So he tried to call her again.

“Aes, baby, I love you. I need you.” His voice was a gravelly rasp, barely intelligible into the phone’s microphone. “Please, baby. Please.”

He wasn’t above begging. Hell, he’d done it before. Practically had to do it to get her to go out with him in the first place, the beautiful, sophomore cheerleader, being approached by the boy, covered in tattoos at only seventeen, that everyone said was bad news.

And maybe he was bad news.

Maybe it was karma that had led him to lose her.

Maybe it was all his fault.

She was too good for him. Even the gods knew it. But she had loved him, he knew she did. A deep, all consuming love. That is what they shared.

But Rowan didn’t deserve such a love.

So it had to be taken from him.

Rowan screamed, his glass of whiskey falling from his grasp onto the rug beneath.

He didn’t care.

Let it soak in, let it stain. Let it be a reminder of what he had lost.

His phone chimed on the counter, a signal of an incoming text message, and again, he sprang for it. He unlocked it and read the message, his heart falling when he read the words.

I’m outside of your place, Whitethorn. I can see that the light is on. Just give me some sort of sign that you’re alive in there and I’ll leave you be. Elide is worried about you and it’s cutting into my sleep schedule.

Elide, gods bless her. The sweetest soul that he’d ever had the pleasure of meeting. How Lorcan had charmed her, he’d never know.

Instead of replying, he slowly turned around, shuffled to the corner by the window, where the lamp stood, illuminating his small apartment. With a quick twist of his wrist, he turned the lamp off, plunging the room into darkness.

He just stood there, letting the darkness in his heart match that of his home, and after a minute, his phone chimed again, another text from Lorcan.

Thank you, that’s all I needed.

Rowan closed his eyes and listened to the sounds around him. He could hear the A/C unit, humming quietly. He could hear someone on the floor above’s washing machine as it spun. He could hear a tv on down the hall. But he couldn’t hear the quiet snore that left her when she was deeply and completely asleep. Because that snore was gone. His phone chimed one last time and his eyes snapped open and he looked at it.

And Rowan, I’m sorry about Aelin. I really am.

Rowan read the words over and over, letting them process, but never quite taking them in. His breathing quickened, his heart felt like it was about to beat out of his chest.

With a yell of rage, he launched his phone at the wall across the room. It was like a small explosion when it made impact, tiny pieces of glass and plastic and metal ricocheting across the room.

He dropped to his knees and wept.

He couldn’t get over this.

There was no getting over this, getting over her.

It didn’t make sense.

None of it made sense.

Rowan sat on his knees until all of the tears left his body and he eventually fell into a steady numbness.

Was this how it would be?

Living, but wishing he weren’t?

Rowan laid down on the rug, next to the stain from his whiskey.

He had laid her down nights before on that rug and made love to her until late in the night that turned into early morning.

Everywhere he looked there was a memory.

She was everywhere.

So he closed his eyes and tried not to think.

The next thing Rowan knew, there was a banging on his front door and a pain in his neck and back.

The banging continued, but it was accompanied by a lilting voice. “Rowan Whitethorn, I swear to the gods, if you’re in there and don’t open this door right now, I will personally kick your ass.”

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t face the couple he knew was on the other side. Specifically, he couldn’t face him.

He couldn’t look at him and see her.

He couldn’t see the golden hair and the remarkable, identical eyes. Eyes no one but the two of them shared.

He couldn’t take the pity that would be in them.

“Go away,” he said. He wanted to yell it, but his voice came out broken and raspy.

The knock came once more.

“Please, Rowan,” she said.

If it was just Aedion, Rowan would’ve ignored it. But Lysandra’s plea broke him.

Rowan pushed himself off the floor and stumbled to the door. He knew he looked like shit, smelled like shit, but he didn’t care.

He cracked open the door and peeked through the slit. “What.”

He didn’t meet their gazes.

He knew they would be loaded with pity, and he couldn’t take it.

“May we come in?” Lysandra asked, gently.

That gentleness only made him more agitated.

“It’s not a good time.”

He knew he was being rude. He knew he was being an ass to the people who’d been his family for so many years.

“You think you’re the only one who’s hurting?”

“Aedion,” Lysandra said, a hand pressed to his chest. “We’re here to check on Rowan.”

It was then that Rowan glanced up at Aedion, at the eyes he’d loved so fiercely.

“You don’t need to check on me,” Rowan said, quietly. “I’m perfectly fine being alone right now.”

Aedion’s gaze did not falter from Rowan’s. Rowan wondered if Aedion knew the thoughts that were running through his mind. He wondered if Aedion knew that when Rowan looked at him, all he saw was Aelin.

Seeing Aedion did more hurt than good.

“If you need anything-.” Lysandra began, but was cut off.

“I’ll call,” Rowan interrupted, attempting to sound as if he meant it.

He shut the door without another word, leaning against it after it clicked shut. Rowan slid down the cold, wooden board as Aedion and Lysandra’s footsteps faded away into the distance.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, his back against the door, his feet planted on the floor. Long enough that his legs slid out from under him of their own accord. Long enough that somehow, he ended up laying on the cheap flooring meant to look like wood all day and then all night.

Around 6:30 the next morning, the sun reached the remnants of his phone, the shards of glass reflecting the light directly into his eyes.

He’d promised Lysandra he’d call if he needed something. His phone was in pieces and besides, there was only phone number he had memorized and he knew that one would go unanswered.

His stomach growled, but he never got up, even when the rumbles became empty aches. He just laid there, wondering if it was a good thing or a bad thing that he hadn’t needed to use the bathroom in days.

There was a knock on the door twice, but neither time did Rowan do more than blink at the startling noise.

He’d lost track of the days when footsteps approached his door, a key was fit into the door and the lock clicked as it was released. Rowan was up before the door could be swung open, his hopes high regardless of knowing there was no way she’d be on the other side of the door. Even though no one had a spare but her.

It wasn’t her.

Elide stepped through the door, and Rowan’s breathing quickened. It was as if every emotion he had ignored in the past twenty-four hours came flooding.

A quiet, broken sob fell out of him, and Elide was quickly moving toward him. She took Rowan, who was a foot taller than she, into her arms and held him tightly.

When Rowan’s breathing finally evened out, Elide whispered, “We hadn’t heard anything in a few days, so I got Aelin’s key. I just wanted to make sure that you… I just wanted to make sure that you were okay.”

Rowan said nothing. He didn’t move. He didn’t say a word. He just stood there, letting Elide hold onto him. Minutes passed before Rowan even realized that he was clutching her sweater so hard that his fingers were turning white at the tips.

“Rowan, you-.” Elide began, but paused to clear her throat. “You know you need to go see her.”

The room was silent. The only sound in the entire house was the rain pattering against the windows.

Rowan wasn’t sure when it had started to rain.

“She would-.”

“I know, Elide,” he whispered, sharply, but not unkindly. It had the desired effect though, and the dark haired girl stayed quiet. He rested his cheek on Elide’s head.

There was nothing remotely romantic in the gesture. Elide had become almost a little sister of sorts in the past few years. At first, she was just Aelin’s younger friend, and he’d loved her then. But now that she’d also become his best friend’s wife, that sense of protection he felt over was even stronger. There were many nights he’d stayed over at the Salvaterre/Lochan household, drinking and talking too late into the night, but not just with Lorcan. There were things he couldn’t talk to his Captain and best friend about, things that needed the delicate nature of a female.

“I just can’t yet, El,” he whispered. “I can’t just go over there and-.”

“And what?” She asked, pulling back and gripping his forearms. “After everything you’ve been through, after how long you loved her, you aren’t even going to say goodbye?”

Rowan stayed quiet, a million thoughts running through his mind. He shook his head. “I don’t want it to be goodbye. Not yet.”

Elide’s gaze softened, her palm resting against Rowan’s stubbled cheek. “Then don’t say goodbye. Just...go talk to her.”

Rowan said nothing for a long while. Then, at last, he nodded.

Elide gave him one more quick hug and began to back away. “Don’t go today. It’s rainy and gross and you know how she feels about rain. Go tomorrow, it’s going to be sunny and pretty and-.”

“A new day,” Rowan completed for her. The closest thing to a smile he’d felt in days tugged on the corner of his lip. “Thank you for coming to check on me.”

She paused by the door. “We love you, Ro. We miss you. Things aren’t the same without you. We know that things will probably never be the same but…” She blinked a few times and closed her eyes. “We’re all going to the Stag after work on Friday, like we used to. Should I save your usual seat?”

A real smile, though still sad, spread across his face. “I’ll do my best.”

She smiled and said, “That’s all we’re asking for,” and slipped out the door.

That night, Rowan went upstairs and slept in their bed, clutching her pillow to his chest. Her scent felt like coming home.

Gods, how many days had it been since he’d seen her? How many nights had he slept without her by his side? How many mornings had he gone without feeling her curl into his side, just before his alarm would go off?

How many days had she been gone?

After a night of fitful, but actual sleep, Rowan got up early, earlier than should have been acceptable, once he discovered it was a Saturday, and showered and shaved. He had to look his best for her. He had to impress.

He shrugged on a pair of jeans and a tee shirt before grabbing his jacket off the bedpost and shrugging it on. He looked in the mirror and decided it was good enough.

She had bought him that jacket. She loved that jacket.

He slipped on his boots and headed out the door. The sun was rising, and Rowan almost got lightheaded from the fresh air. It had been a while since he had gone outside.

Rowan headed east once he reached the sidewalk outside of his apartment building. He reached the corner store about five minutes later. They had just opened as he went inside, the bell ringing above the door as he made his entrance. After paying for a small bouquet of red roses, Rowan continued his walk through town.

Not many people were out, just those heading to work or on the walk of shame back to their own homesteads.

Rowan didn’t pay attention to any of them. His mind was on her. He was almost there.

And when he finally arrived, he panicked.

He wasn’t ready.

But he had to be.

The iron gates were open.

He walked through them, the autumn leaves rustling and crunching beneath his boots as he walked the winding path.

Elide had told him where she’d be.

The closer he got, though, the slower he moved, the heavier he breathed, the blurrier his vision became.

He found her.

And when he reached her, he fell to the ground, his knees landing in the damp grass.

It was real.

He didn’t want it to be real.

Real. It was real.

“Fireheart,” he whispered, voice trembling.

Rowan laid the roses down in front of the stone that read Aelin Ashryver Galathynius. Daughter and Friend, and wept.

#snelbz #snelbz fanfic #rowaelin angst #rowaelin #throne of glass #tog #rowan whitethorn #aelin galythinius

284 notes · View notes

princessvicky01 · 4 years

Text

Hot Apple Cider

As part of @cozy-autumn-prompts here’s a little cosy fluffy fic.

Cullen Rutherford x Annabel Trevelyan, early romance, short and sweet.

I’ve not posted anything for a looong time so please be kind! Also on AO3 here

“It’ll be fun, you do remember that word, right, fun?” Annabel cocks her brow at Cullen but doesn’t wait for an answer, already swinging herself up into the saddle.

She’s not wrong, he thinks, any time alone with her was always enjoyable. It’s just that he has a stack of reports waiting in his office almost as tall as he is. Yet when he spies the tartan rug and tin canteen tied to her mare’s side, the paperwork is almost forgotten. Would it really hurt to spend an hour enjoying the autumnal colours with her?

“I had cook make some hot apple cider,” she carries on, tapping the bottle by her side.

How did she know that was his favourite tipple on cold winter nights? Cullen watches her carefully for a moment, beyond tempted by the lady and her offering.

“I can always make accompanying me an order if you prefer?” Annabel gives the hint of a knowing smile. “You can be my escort?”

Grabbing his horse's reins, Cullen mounts up, spinning his gelding away purely so he can smirk over his shoulder as he trots away. “Only if you can keep up, my lady!”

Annabel quickly kicks at her horse to catch up the lost ground and they ride slowly side by side out Skyhold’s gates. The clop hooves on cobblestone soon gives way to crisp rustles as they exit the path. They weave through ankle-deep leaves that make a blanket of intricate colours ranging from pale yellow, to russet brown, through to merlot red which all crinkle pleasantly under their mounts' meandering pace.

Of course, Annabel had been right, although Cullen won’t say that out loud. The bitterness of the wind that stirs the falling leaves is refreshing against the constant fever his lyrium withdrawal brought with it, and it clears lingering concerns from his mind. Even his headache has eased into the background. Had she known? Cullen wonders as he glances over to see her gazing up at the blue sky through bare branches. Had she known today had been a bad day? That he’d awoken with a terrible headache that refused to leave him be? That he’d had to leave his office door open to stay comfortable? That he’d spent the last hour clutching a quill far too tight with nothing to show for it? She seems to sense his gaze, and twists in the saddle to smile brightly at him as if the simple sight of him brought her joy. He can’t help but notice how he returns the expression.

Soon the trees thin, and the ground turns muddier, but the splatter of mud on his boots is worth it as he dismounts and takes in the view. A lake stretches out in front of them, he remembers finding it early on when scouting Skyhold’s surroundings but had thought little of it since. It’s a perfect reflection of the sky; its surface only rippling at rocks around its edges and at the flutter of falling leaves.

Closing his eyes, Cullen breathes deeply through his nostrils, enjoying the tingle and the purity of the crisp scent. He’d spent far too many years patrolling stuffy towers and living his life to a schedule not his own. This makes for a pleasant change.

The plop of a stone in the water opens his eyes, and he finds Annabel at the lake edge attempting to skip a rock across its surface and failing miserably.

“You need a smoother pebble,” he interjects, and she frowns at the one in her hand before rummaging around her feet once more.

“Like this?” Annabel holds one up, and with his nod of approval, tosses it straight out into the water with a sinking plonk. The expression of disapproval on her face makes him chuckle, and the look is quickly turned on him. “I suppose you can do better?”

Smirking, Cullen wanders to her side, sharp amber eyes picking out a suitable pebble from the dozens scattered around his feet. “We didn’t all spend our youth attending grand soirees, Lady Annabel,” he inspects his find, then looks to her, noting how a small leaf has somehow landed unnoticed in her hair. “Some of us had fun.” With that, he flicks his wrist and sends the stone skittering over the surface. It bounces with ease, the only evidence of its journey the pattern of ripples in its wake as it makes its way out over the water.

“So I see,” there is a lithe playfulness to Annabel’s tone as she snuggles up against his side. “Although I can think of something much more fun,” one tiptoe, she reaches up and pecks a kiss against his jaw. Thankfully, Cullen is beyond blushing every time she teased or played coy with him, but he still feels her closeness heat his veins.

“I bet you can,” he rumbles, leaning in for a deep, lingering, kiss. Her smile rests against his lips for a moment before they part, and for once his mind is as clear as the water before him.

A tug on his arm breaks his peaceful trance, and he finds himself being dragged over to the thick blanket she must’ve set up when he wasn’t looking. As he settles, she pours a steaming mug of cider and he's hit by the scent of sweet apples spiced with cinnamon. The hot scented steam fills his lungs and warms him right down to his frozen toes. The aroma conjures up images of the little farmstead kitchen where his mother had made great batches of it. For a moment he sees her, hair tied back, ladle in hand, stirring a great big pot while he’d struggled to peer eagerly inside. Cullen takes the mug, wraps both hands around it and studies the drift of steam for a long heartbeat. “How did you know?” He asks quietly.

Annabel frowns, blowing on her own drink. “Know what?”

“About the hot apple cider,” his gaze wanders to her, then back down to it and the comforting memories it stirs.

“I do listen when you talk,” Annabel shuffles a little closer until her hip bumps against his and she can lean her head on his shoulder. “You told me it was your favourite, one night after a few too many regular ciders. And it just so happens to be my favourite too.”

Cullen can’t recall the conversation, but she’s already distracted him by clinking her tin mug against his.

“To enjoying the changing seasons together,” she offers up her toast with a smile that spreads from her ruddy cheeks right into the glimmer of her eyes. He agrees and watches her take her first sip. One which is clearly far too hot, and he’s left chuckling once more at her disapproving frown as she sets it aside.

“Or maybe to just enjoying each other?” Annabel looks hopeful, her every emotion playing across her face as it always did, and Cullen finds the cider is forgotten.

“To both,” he counters, reaching up to pluck a near-perfect crimson leaf from her hair and present it to her as if it were the finest rose. "My lady."

Thank you for reading! Hope your enjoyed it 🍂🍃🍁

#cullen rutherford #annabel trevelyan #cullen fanfic #da fanfic #cullen x annabel #hot apple cider #cozy autumn prompts #my writing #fluff

97 notes · View notes

tsuumu · 4 years

Text

hq boys and their part time jobs.

yet another unseries headcanon post made by yours truly! unlike my last one which you can find here, i won’t be involving every single major hq character so that’s just a heads up!! i can’t always envision stuff fully with every single person...

kageyama tobio: this boy thought that applying to work part-time at a sports shop would be fitting ‘cause of his love for volleyball, completely unaware that this would involve way too much social interaction and tolerance???? like he thought he’d just have to look like someone who does sports and occasionally restock yoga mats but these loud ass kids are coming up to him asking for this that and the other for sports he’s never heard of. suddenly he regrets the entire thing. plus, he has no idea how to use the cash register and it’s his worse nightmare to ring up items without wanting to stomp a hole into it to get the customer’s change.

hinata shoyo: shoyo went straight for the pet shelter because he’s in love with playing with the little puppies. this boy will full on roll around with them, stuff them under his shirt so their heads poke out and just.. intergrate and become one of them... the doggies love him so much n always clamber to sit on his lap because hinata treats them with so much love and kindness!! customers looking for pets often joke about taking him home bc he’s just as excitable and friendly as the actual dogs. he’s also really good at convincing people on the fence to get a pet and explaining their individual personalities because he knows them so well :(

nishinoya yuu: he said: supermarket assistant so he could ride around on the carts, intimidates literally every customer with his ungodly enthusiasm but is determined to help EVERYONE, he’ll run around the store taking people where they need to go but only if he actually remembers where they’re situated. otherwise this boy is like “yeah they’re just... that way.” and bolts in the other direction. gets along with all his colleagues and tells them all about his tournaments with karasuno. he’s not the star employee but it wouldn’t be the same w out him.. often asks the manager if he can taste test the market’s pastry section to which he is rejected every single time.

tanaka ryuu: he’s convinced working in his local gym was him in his element, he wears that tag thing like a badge of honour and just walks around showing people he works there instead of actually doing his job??? he’s also overly enthusiastic and will sometimes cheer on the people working out as if he’s some kind of zealous personal trainer and everybody is like “literally how old is this guy??” he’s surprisingly awesome at reception duty because he’s always chatting to regulars about how they’re doing... the practical side like schedules and paperwork he leaves for someone else, everyone just puts up with him bc he’s a mood setter.

sugawara koushi: don’t get me started on this boy as a teacher’s assistant, like he helps little kids out with their work, tidies up the class during their break times and reads them stories?? he’s THAT senior boy who’s the biggest sweetheart and seeing him handle kids so well is like ... does he want some of his own ?? i’d like to offer my expertise he’s always got a smile on his face, gets along with all the staff much older than him, he’s like this perfect boy they all dote on and he gets super flustered saying he just really likes helping out the children and making them smile. often brings them little snacks too and they all call him big brother BYE.

tsukkishima kei: he does some low-key shit that’s kinda wholesome like working with the eldery or tutoring kids but prefers for literally nobody to know about it because anything he does outside of school is his business. he does it because it’s good pay, there’s not much else to it. if anybody found out he’d be super irritated tbh it’s just an invasion of privacy to him but eventually wouldn’t care because every kid is getting part-time jobs these days.

oikawa tooru: bye he’s THAT guy who got his job at a retail store because he’s pretty. like he has no real interest in clothes or anything but he takes the job as a place to validate himself when girls come up to him purposefully to flirt. he’s winking and laughing with them and also NOT actually doing his job but he brings in customers so at least he’s somewhat useful. doesn’t know how to fold clothes or hang stuff on hangers properly for shit and everyone lowkey wants to kick his ass but he’s actually very friendly and outgoing even if he has no clue what he’s doing. keeps asking if bra sizes come in small, medium and large and everyone just tells him to shut up.

iwaizumi hajime: when picking a job he was like “well what am i good at?” and went from there. he ended up as the local pool’s weekend lifeguard because he had the qualifications and time. again, everyone his age just tries to hit on him and he’s annoyed because it distracts him from the actual purpose of his job. he takes it seriously and impresses his colleagues with his swimming talent and knowledge on first aid. iwaizumi lowkey scares the little kids and they’re kind of afraid to ask him for help so he’s been working on looking a little more friendly.

kuroo tetsurou: kuroo as a tennis instructor assistant or just something sporty other than volleyball because he’s a multi-talented king?? like he’s not a professional by any means but he helps out the youth club and gets along with kids a few years younger than him. fills in for refs at tournaments, makes sure equipment is safe to use and is SUPER good at cheering club goers up when they lose or fail or can’t seem to do it correctly. he often refers to his experiences as nekoma’s captain to relate to them and they really admire his resilience and ask him to tell them more stories!!

kenma kozume: had to be dragged out to do a part-time job. was absolutely against the thought of it until hinata mentioned a friend of his who’d moved to the prefecture near kenma got a job at this new game shop. he was like fine and applied. he just kinda sat and people asked him questions about the games but he refused to do any further socialisation or actual grunt work like shelving, he quit pretty soon after, he just wanted the money to buy a game he ended up purchasing on his way out lmaoo

bokuto koutarou: he was dead set on having a volleyball related job, fukurodani have a club for junior players from all over the city to come and practice together. he was like?!? “and nobody told me??” he’s perfect for it as the captain and ends up as a secondary coach. he shows off A LOT and like kuroo, encourages the kids when they’re down. except kuroo is a more sit down, hand on shoulder, casual talk kind of guy. bokuto gets ridiculously sentimental and tells them dramatically about his lowest memories as captain when fukurodani lost and the kids are genuinely as emotional because of he way he tells it??? idk but they love him and he’s a ball of passion that keeps them going.

akaashi keiji: we are talking pretty waiter at a local gormet restaurant that gets tipped SO MUCH for his true professionalism. knows how to handle every situation with ease and is super calm, doesn’t care at all if someone from his school is there. he’s really just chasing that bag and he’s doing it well. bokuto often picks him up after his shifts so they can do stuff together but akaashi requests it be something calming since he’s tired after work... bokuto is like,, “so no to rock-climbing? alright i’ll reschedule..” the other waiters lowkey HATE the fact he gets tipped so well and they try and figure out his secrets. he has none. he’s just good at his job. i could see kiyoko working a similar job or somewhere lowkey like a flourist or bakery. she’s equally as professional and admired.

ushijima wakatoshi: ANY JOB. give this man any job and he’ll be able to carry it out like he’s been doing it since he popped out the womb. often mistaken for a grown adult so he gets jobs pretty easily? very very professional and aims to do everything perfectly. i think he’d also prefer a vb related job just like bokuto but something that could really get him somewhere big, smth to do with olympics like a paid internship for them .. can you even intern for the olympics lmao?? maybe something for the japanese team. it’s a lot of work to balance school & intern life but he’s very comitted and knows it’ll benefit him in the future. (kageyama was fuming when he found out he could have done that instead of his current gig).

tendou satori: has a job he’s very under-qualified for but somehow pulls off. he’s chilling at the hospital or law firm three times a week after classes or somewhere ridiculous but he’s doing just fine!! doesn’t actually do professional work n helps with small things but it impresses the hell out of everybody he tells, has no interest in persuing those careers but it’s fun for him, he gets paid VERY well for a boy his age and his personality creates a nice, talkative atmosphere in these seemingly tense environments.

miya atsumu / osamu: they both work at a café for novelty because they’re these handsome, athletic twins and it’s a thing that brings people in. they do a lot of fan service stuff and osamu is EXCELLENT like he was made for this job but atsumu is awful at keeping his cool. osamu will be chatting up customers, trying to persuade them to order more and atsumu is having a heated tustle with the coffee machine that’s broken down for the third time that day and it really ruins the magic osamu is trying to create. atsumu has probably sworn loudly. has probably almost been fired. he’s bad at playing along and flirting because he literally just wants them to leave so he can sit down lmao. osamu uses the pastries in the café as inspiration for his own at-home baking fiascos because it’s a stress-reliving hobby.

terushima yuji: he’s that boy in shoe shops that tries to sell you sneakers and he knows literally everything about them even when you really didn’t ask... looking to hit on girls that come in because shoe knowledge is obviously very sexy! alternatively you might catch him in a tattoo shop or sumn real appearance based and he definitely remembers all the regulars and greets them like they’re close friends, we’re talking inside jokes. always seems to know what tattoo people are looking to get purely based on their appearance and initial impression...

the list of unemployed:

yachi: too scared to do ANY job that requires interaction, she’s plagued by it.

hoshiumi: fired for picking too many fights with customers.

kyotani: EVEN WORSE THAN HOSHIUMI though he was strangely very efficient at paperwork.

suna: quit on the first day because it wasn’t what he expected and he doesn’t care about money that much.

lev: his family are like.... rich?? n nobody really expected it but he’s like yeah i really do not need one of those lmao.

yamaguchi: broke things, spilt things, smashed things. he really was trying his best..

aone: intimidated customers too much so they let him go (he was just STANDING THERE.. he deserved better).

sakusa: local venues are filthy, ushijima got the internship spot, no other job interests him enough to persue.

#haikyuu headcanons #haikyuu imagines #haikyuu scenarios #haikyuu #haikyuu fics #haikyuu x reader #akaashi headcanons #haikyuu headcanon #kageyama headcanons #hinata headcanons #oikawa headcanons #kuroo headcanons #hq #i’m lazy with tags lol #bokuto headcanons #ushijima headcanons #kenma headcanons #good enough

149 notes · View notes

ask-eddiekasp · 3 years

Text

ooc post://

Hello everyone! Long time no see! A little personal post coming up, so feel free to skip to the end.

As you’ve already noticed, this blog went dark for a whiiiiileee, but I left it up and never claimed for it to be over because I always wanted to come back to it. The fandom has dwindled (I believe) and honestly, I feel like it’s the perfect time to cha cha my way back here. I don’t expect this blog to generate the same enthusiasm and excitement it once did, but I liked doing it. I liked drawing for you all and drawing for this blog. I liked drawing for me.

Besides the millions of things going on in my life that were completely unrelated to this blog, I was letting too much get to me in the fandom. I was getting nasty messages, I was receiving very little positive feedback, and people were questioning my character due to my style. But here’s the thing, I should have been focusing on doing what I love, the positive feedback I was getting, appreciating all of you for being here and being supportive, and really, I know who I am. The negative just overpowered me and my little pea brain snapped and couldn’t handle it.

But I had huge changes that occurred in my life after I started this blog and I was just not capable of managing this blog like I once had while trying to adjust to my new life. Many of you know what happened to my sister (and holy shit you guys were so good to me ilu) and that I had taken a new job, only 4 months after my family’s world was turned upside down, and I was miserable there for 2 years straight. Still miserable there, but less miserable?

Naturally, the blog and the drama that accompanied it, had to be set aside.

My sister is still trying to work on her recovery and things are still unclear about how much she’ll recover, but she’s here amazing us every day by coming further than anyone had anticipated, and work has been getting a little better, despite it being a very very agonizingly slow process.

I want to get back to doing something I like now that the chaos has sort of settled down. I want to draw stupid chibis and I want to do it even if only 4 people like it or ask questions. I lost so much over the last two years and things changed for the worse in ways I had never imagined, but I’m slowly trying to piece back my life. I don’t want to lose my love of drawing too.

So I’m still here. I’m here to focus on the positives this time. I’m here to hopefully make somebody’s day a little better with my little doodles. I’m here to reclaim my life. I’m here to draw our favorite dumbasses again.

I don’t have a lot of time to offer you. I work Monday-Friday, go to PT 3 days a week, and on my off days, I have my regular therapy sessions (which I had to cut back from to squeeze PT into my schedule). My weekends are my only available time and I cannot promise that I will get to draw every weekend or even post every weekend. But I’m willing to post sporadically if you’re all still willing to join me again!

I will keep my personal posts to a minimum besides miscellaneous updates or answering any messages. My personal is @ayyyymichele if you’d care to chitty chat there.

Long story short, the ask box is open.

Let’s do this.

Love,

Michele

#ask kasp #mod note #ooc post

33 notes · View notes

random-mha-thoughts · 4 years

Text

Bad Boy (Todoroki x Reader)

Pairing: Todoroki x Reader

Genre: Angst to fluff, and a lil spice ;), No quirk!AU

Summary: You finally get to see your childhood friend Shouto after years of being separated only to find out he’s completely changed.

BGM: “Younger” by Ruel

Word count: 2,781

Tags: @yuki-osaki @liviitehe @iamsoftsodonttoucheume-blog @bunnythepipsqueak

a/n: God this photo fucked me up good when I first saw it.

I saw this picture on my search for images for my last Todo post aaaaand yeah, pretty self explanatory. I got to thinking, what if this poor baby finally snapped one day and was like "FUCK ENDEAVOR AND HIS ENTIRE PROGRAM, IM NOBODY'S MASTERPIECE" and he went the complete opposite direction. So enjoy a little bit of OOC Todoroki and a bit of a longer post than my usual stuff!

I’m really really sorry about not updating in the past few days. I was really swamped by college work and studying, and I was mentally exhausted and physically tired every day. Today wasn’t my day and I almost had a breakdown because a lot of things piled up in me, but I had to pull myself together somehow. Hopefully, after this week, I’ll go back to a somewhat regular posting schedule. Thanks for being patient with me guys, I really appreciate it :)

When my mom told me Shouto will be going to the same high school as me, I was expecting the same buttoned-up, shy, good boy from elementary school. Oh boy, was I wrong.

The boy I bump into in the hallway definitely looks like Shouto, but the only thing that's the same is his mismatched hair and eyes. Everything else about him was much different. His entire energy was different, even from the fraction of a second I focused on his face.

"Shouto?" I call when he's about to brush past me.

I don't think he's expecting someone to know him on the first day, pausing and looking down curiously.

The most shocking feature of all is the scar on his left side, a red blotch that covers the left side of his face, starkly contrasting his brilliant turquoise eye; a single ray of light in a scarlet sky.

As I'm gaping at the puckered skin, his eyebrows furrowing at my face as recognition slowly dawns on him. "(Y/n)?"

I'm relieved that he at least remembers me. "Yeah, hey." I don't really know what to do now. My first instinct is to hug him, but something tells me he isn't a fan of that sort of thing anymore. There's a coldness between us that's thick as a knife. "How have you been?"

"Fine," he answers curtly. His hands are stuffed into his pockets, leaning back in a way that seems uncharacteristic of him and more like a ruffian.

Does his not want to talk to me? I don't blame him, I haven't been in his life for a good eight years. "How are your parents?"

His jaw clenches. "Fine."

Oh. I struck a nerve. "Do you wanna catch up at lunch? What class are you in?"

"1-A." Overjoyed that we share the same class, I'm about to open my mouth, but he interjects, "But I don't think we should talk." That was the last thing he said before he strolls past me.

I'm stunned, following his receding back through the sea of students. I guess I shouldn't have brought up his parents when I know it's a sensitive topic, but I didn't know what else to say. And it's probably awkward to see someone you used to be close to talk to you again, but the least he could've been is polite. That's saying something, because Shouto was always the polite child.

Something is terribly wrong here.

Shouto has definitely changed since we were younger. He's become a delinquent.

He never even shows up to class. After our little encounter, he was slumped in his seat until the teacher finished role call, then he just got up and walked out in the middle of class and never came back. In all the days after that, his seat remained empty even at the beginning of the day.

At first, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. What if he happened to get sick and had to stay home? Then I saw his signature mismatched tuft of hair walking back home in the school yard, and I knew he was skipping.

After a whole two weeks passed of him skipping, I had enough. The Shouto I know would never cut class even if his life depended on it. During lunch, I went looking for him in the group of other delinquent kids in the back of the school.

"Todoroki?" the ash-blond ringleader ruffles his hair and scoffs, "Idiot must be off somewhere by himself like the damn loner he is. He picked a fight with me and I almost beat his ass into oblivion!"

I ball my fists up, more angry at Shouto than the group of boys eyeing me like a pack of wolves. "You guys are useless," I mumble, about to turn away from them.

"Aww, is he your boyfriend, sweetie?" the honey blond with a black streak in his hair smoothly wraps an arm around me. "He probably doesn't care about you, you deserve someone else who'll give you his time."

"Fuck off, who said you can touch me?" I shove his arm away and step back.

"Calm down there," the red head with sharp teeth taunts with a smirk, "You're getting a bit defensive. You sure you don't need help looking for your little prince?"

"I'm fine on my own, thanks," I huff, turning around to go look for Shouto elsewhere.

"Maybe I'll come with you," the overly-friendly boy blocks my way again. "If he's not your boyfriend, maybe we can get together sometime?"

"Not interested. Out of my way, Pikachu reject." I try to side-step him, but the leader grabs the back of my collar and whips me around so I'm face to face with his bared teeth.

"You're a bit rude, aren't you? Should I pull your head out your ass for you?" His crimson eyes glare his murderous intent into me.

I hold my ground, the anger against my irresponsible friend more powerful than any fear of this hothead possibly hurting me. "Don't act so tough if your talk is cheap."

He cracks his knuckles without breaking eye contact with me. "I'll show you cheap talk. Try waking up next week after I'm done with you!" he snarls.

I mirror his expression. I don't mind throwing hands at this guy if I have to, blood rushing through me to prepare for the fist fight. "I dare you-!"

"Enough, (Y/n)."

I can feel his presence right behind me even though he doesn't physically touch me.

Scarlet eyes shift behind me. "Took you long enough, hot shot. Your friend has just as much spunk as you, I'll kick both your asses!"

"I'd like to see you try, Bakugou," Shouto responds coldly. "We both know who'd win." Keeping his gaze locked on the aggressive male, he harshly grabs my arm and hauls me away. "Let's go."

I'm fuming with anger when we're back inside the building. I turn on him when he finally releases me, but he's already starting down the hall. "Don't walk away from me! We need to talk!" I stomp over, following him to an abandoned classroom. "What the hell is wrong with you?! First of all, you were a real ass when I talked to you last week. Second of all, you're not even coming to class like you should. And now you're already picking fights with that idiot out there? What's gotten into you Shouto?!"

"You were about to get into a fight as well. You should thank me," he comments coldly, slipping into a desk with books open on top.

"I could've handled it just fine without you! The only reason I was even there talking to them was because I was looking for you!" I hover over him, glaring down so he can tell how angry I am. "You'e skipped class all week, this isn't like you at all! How are you supposed to catch-?"

One glance down the the open books shows all the material we've been going over in class. He's already caught up to today's lesson, writing notes in his book and ignoring my presence. The entire setup makes me angrier. "I don't understand you, Shouto. What kind of act are you trying to pull? You're not a delinquent, why are you trying to act like one for everyone else? Or is this all because you're just trying to ignore me?"

His pencil stops moving and it slams down onto the desk. "A lot happened since you left, (Y/n)," the boy responds. His quivering voice indicates restriction of intense emotion.

The hurt is apparent across his entire face, calming me down. My gaze lingers on the left side of his features, over the eye that somehow looks perpetually sad. "How did you get that scar, Shouto?"

The boy's eyebrows furrow. "My father never let up on me after you left, and he got worse. My mother couldn't handle fighting him on her own anymore. One day, she snapped, told me how unsightly my left side was, and pouring boiling water over my face." His large hand gingerly covers his reddened skin. "And my bastard father put her in a mental institution after that. He did this."

My heart aches for my childhood friend, the boy I took care of and listened to all his problems. I can't imagine how much pain Rei was going through. For her to have lost it, she must've held such a heavy burden. When I had to move away, I felt so guilty about leaving him with all his troubles. He had no one else to reach out to and it was snatched from him. There wasn't a day I stopped thinking and worrying over him. I reach to take his hand and offer comfort. "Shou-"

Shouto bolts up from his seat, his taller figure hunching over mine, features screwed up in distaste. "You weren't there when I needed you most."

I'm taken back, hurt more than anything. "It's not my fault, we were so much younger, I didn't have a choice but to go with my parents."

A dark chuckle erupts from his lips, dismissing my excuses. "It's fine. It happened, I've learned to deal with it."

I'm about to blow my top with this kid. "Yeah, you've dealt really well, haven't you?" I roll my eyes.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

My mouth gapes, letting out a sputtered scoff. "You're kidding. Just look at you! You're pretending to be someone you're not! You and I both know you were never the bad boy type when we were kids. You're the slightly awkward, naturally smart, driven, hardworking-"

"I was only those things because my father forced them on me," he passes by me, crossing his arms. "I don't want to be anything that bastard wants anymore. And if you can't see that, then we were never friends in the first place."

That's a stab in the chest. How can he say that we were never friends when we used to do everything together? A surge of fury rushing through me, I grab his arm to keep him from moving any farther. "You love watching superhero cartoons, your favorite was All Might. Sometimes, you're so damn lazy that instead of doing homework when you came home, you would sneak in a nap before your dad came home to see you slacking off. Your favorite food in the entire world is cold soba. You don't like extremely sweet desserts. You've always been insecure about how strange your mismatched hair and eyes look, but I always had to assure you that you're still the most handsome guy in our class."

Shouto halfway turns around to look at me.

"If we weren't friends, why do I know so much about you?" I take another bold step towards him, softening at the underlying pain etched into his features. "I know you always hated the way your dad expects so much from you. The only thing you ever wanted in your childhood was to be normal. The pressure finally crumbled down on you and your mom, and I'm sorry I wasn't there to help you through it. But you shouldn't abandon everything that you are. You took after your mom more than your dad; you're sometimes a sassy son of a bitch, but you're kind and have a deep respect for people you admire. You have a natural sense of humor that you don't even know you have. You care about the people you're close to, you only struggle with communicating how you feel sometimes."

His lips part slightly, processing everything I just showered onto him. Guilt eventually creeps up on him, choosing to rub the back of his neck. "You...always did know just what to say."

I smirk and engulf him into my long-awaited hug. "Who else would put you back in your place?"

His arms hesitantly wrap around my body, the act of sharing body warmth strange yet familiar to him. It's a small victory, but I'm relieved that we're back on speaking terms. I'm ready to resume protecting him as I should.

Shouto shifts in our embrace. "You said...I struggle with telling people how I feel...?" he mumbles sheepishly near my ear.

My boy perks with confusion. "Yeah, even when we first-"

"Would it suffice if..."

Before I can turn to search his face for what he could be implying, his grip around me loosens as he pulls back to look at me, one of his warm hands resting against my cheek. His face looms right in front of me, my breath catching in surprise, before he presses his lips to mine softly. The weightlessness in my stomach is unmistakable.

As quick and unexpected as it came, it also left, Shouto's half lidded gaze resting on me from a small distance away. All I can do is stare off dazed, still trying to process what just happened.

He leans back against the nearest desk in the front row. "I guess I should've asked first." I can see his cheeks and his ears turn almost as flushed as the color of his hair despite his hand covering half his face to hide it. "But it was the only way I can think to get my point across without stumbling over words."

My heart still flutters trying to recover back to normal, my knees shaking as I lean against the teacher's desk for stability. I resist the urge to touch my lips like a shocked schoolgirl, but I'm still trying to process the whole thing. "You know," I cough, "We did already kiss when we were like...five, so this wasn't really our first. But I don't usually count that-"

The intense color fades from his face almost at once, a darkness creeping into his gaze. "Then," he pins me back into the desk, hands on both sides of the wood to trap me, "I shouldn't have any qualms about doing it again."

Contrasting from his strong setup, his next kiss is still shy and hesitant. After exchanging a couple more tentative lip-caresses that still make my head spin, he's gotten his feet wet enough to go harder, establishing a rhythm between us. As his kisses intensify, his hands reach up to cup both sides of my nape, fingers tangling in my hair desperately and tilting my head up for a better angle. My own hands grasp the collar of his uniform, pulling him closer into the heat of the moment.

His body pushes me practically into sitting on top of the desk, moving one of his knees between my legs as he lets ones of his hands roam down to grip my waist. The sudden tug elicits a minute gasp, allowing Shouto to nip at my bottom lip before tugging my head back to trail soft kisses down my jaw. My fingers thread through his soft locks, letting him massage my neck with his mouth.

"W-Where did you learn all this?" I breathe out unsteadily, my breath refusing to return.

He straightens up and captures my lips in another slow kiss. "You'll never know." Another one. "I've admittedly imagined this for a while." The next kiss is much deeper, a hum vibrating from his chest as his fingers dig into my side again. "You're special, so dear." His mumbles between kisses become more incoherent as his kisses become messy.

"Shouto." I finally manage to push him away for me to breathe and calm my dizzy head. Both of us are panting. His half-lidded eyes and flushed face tempt me, but the fear of someone walking by suddenly alerts in my mind. "Someone might see us. Besides, isn't there something you need to say?"

His brow lifts. "I'm...sorry for being rude to you last week."

"That was needed, too," I chuckle, "But there's something else."

Confusion crosses his features. "Have I done something else wrong?"

My hands slide down to grip his hands. "Don't you need to ask me to date you officially?"

The tint of rose on his cheeks intensifies a shade. "I thought it was clear already..."

Another chuckle bubbles from my lips and I lean up to kiss his warm cheek. "I'll let it pass because I want to date you too." His face begins to light up in joy, but I push off from the desk and tow him out of the room. "But you have to start coming to class again."

Shouto catches up to keep pace with me and presses a kiss to my forehead. "Done."

"And you need to see a therapist, Mr. Bad Boy."

He breaks out into a smile at that nickname. "I'll think about it."

#todoroki x reader #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #todoroki shouto #shouto todoroki #no quirks au #todoroki angst #angst to fluff #gender neutral reader #todoroki imagine #todoroki scenario #mha todoroki #bnha todoroki #mha x reader #bnha x reader #mha fanfiction #bnha fanfiction

651 notes · View notes