#or as he is known in aces and eights. buries my face in my hands. conrad drake | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sunflowerstache · 5 years

Text

Life Is A Highway

Day 1: While Taking a road trip, Harry looks back on fond memories with his love A/N: I am beyond proud of this piece because it’s completely different than my usual style of writing! I really hope you enjoy it! Please make sure to show some love to your favorite writers and their pieces during this event! Everyone participating is out of this world talented and I can’t wait for you all to read their pieces! Happy Summer!

Word Count: 3.7k 25 Days of Summer Masterlist Find the rest of my writing here!

There are certain moments in life that highlight every decision you’ve made, reminding you how lucky you are to be living the life you’re in. It’s almost like watching specific memories vividly play through your mind while doing the most mundane activity, and for Harry, that moment came while driving down the backroads of Tuscany.

For the last eight days, the region had been a breathtaking refuge for he and his little love; hiding out from any prying eyes or questioning glances. As those eight days came to a close, they were now moving on, heading south to Positano in hopes of finishing off their vacation surrounded by some of the most beautiful scenery the world had to offer. But, it was proving difficult for Harry to find anything more beautiful than the view to his right.

It seemed the vacation had been giving his girl’s skin a bit more of glow each day, because sitting next to him, with the Italian sun slowly setting behind her while delicately singing along to the music floating through the car, he swore he was looking at an angel. How someone could look so breathtaking doing absolutely nothing, and the fact that he got to wake up each morning and spend his days with his own angel on Earth, was beyond him. From the moment he first laid eyes on you, he knew he was done for, that everything else in life would pale in comparison to how he felt when he looked into her eyes that day in Going Underground Records.

Harry was on his way to lunch with a few friends in Malibu when he passed the record shop. The decision to stop inside was such a rash one that the cars behind him beeped multiple times when he abruptly turned his steering wheel and zoomed into the parking lot. It was a small place on Melrose Ave, the front of the store mostly glass so he could see there weren’t many people, which calmed him slightly. He had just come back from Jamaica, hiding away there for weeks to get as inspired as he could for his first album, but his fans were getting antsy. It had been two years since he had released any sort of music and he couldn’t blame them, he was getting anxious as well. But anytime he was seen out, the tabloids and fans would be speculating if new music was even coming at all, and he hated it. Music was coming, they just had to give him some time!

So, when he walked in and the two older men and one woman, who seemed to be looking for something for someone else - based on the constant glances between a piece of paper in her hand and the records in front of her - didn’t offer him a second of their time, he smiled gratefully. He wasn’t cocky and didn’t assume that they were going to know who he was, he just always aired on the side of caution when it came to going out in public alone.

A young, bald, man behind the counter gave him a solid nod as he walked past the register, taking in the hundreds of records all around the store. It wasn’t nearly as extravagant as some of the shops he’d been in over the years, and he had to admit, he had most of the vinyls he saw during his journey through the store, but he still loved to look. Always wanting to find new music and artists to inspire him.

“That’s a great album.” a tender voice spoke from beside him, startling Harry slightly.

A younger girl had appeared out of nowhere it seemed, hair filled with sparkly barrettes, a faint smile on her lips; wearing an oversized, white, Dolly Parton t-shirt tucked into a pair of denim shorts. She was paying him no mind, focusing on the stack of records tucked under her arm, like a schoolgirl with textbooks, and putting them back in the correct sections. From what Harry could only assume by how easily she could find certain genres and artists, she worked there, and he was immediately consumed by how her face would light up each time she came to a new album she liked as she was putting them away.

“Huh?”

During his time taking her in, she had moved from his side to standing directly across from him, now being separated by an island of records.

“Crosby, Stills, and Nash.” she said, looking up at him and nodding towards the album he didn’t even realize he had stopped at. “It’s an amazing album.”

“Oh, um, yeah. I suppose.” why was he finding it so difficult to string words together?

“You suppose?!” her exclamation was so loud that the two remaining customers in the store lifted their heads to look in their direction, “They’re one of the best bands of all time! Did you know each of them have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice? For each band they’ve been in? Or that Woodstock was only their third show together?”

She had set her own stack of records down on top of the shelf where she was standing, focusing on getting her point across rather than completing her job. Harry had known the girl, and saying he knew her was a stretch, for just under three minutes, but he was enthralled. The way her eyes lit up as soon as she started talking about the music she loved, how he could hear her humming an unknown tune while she was standing next to him, or how she obviously didn’t care about what people thought if she was okay with yelling at customers about her favorite band.

“I actually didn’t know that, no. Pretty sick.” he agreed, picking up the album and pretending to look at the list of songs on the back

“I suggest giving Helplessly Hoping a listen first. It’s my personal favorite. Especially with the windows down on a roadtrip” she smiled.

“I will. ‘S a good idea.” Harry nodded, picking the record up and deciding to buy it, despite having multiple copies of it in his homes across the world. He just couldn’t bare the thought of putting the record down and potentially seeing her face fall. So, he took his wallet out of his back pocket, and lifted the record up so the girl could see he was going to take her advice and purchase the album. But just as he was about to turn to pay, she spoke up.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Confusion covered his features. Was she saying you’re welcome to a ‘thank you’ he had never said? And she must have seen his questioning look, because she let out a small giggle, shaking her head.

“It’s on the house. Hope you enjoy some good, classic tunes.”

The movement of her hand shooting out of the window and a small, barely there squeak, brought Harry’s attention back to the present time, watching as she moved her hand like a wave in the wind as the car sped down the winding, rural roads. The beginnings of a soft hum of the familiar song made the smile on his face grow as he noticed that same love in her eyes that she had years ago while pushing him to buy the album.

It had become their song, one that could be found on each of their playlists, one that was hummed while making breakfast in the mornings, one that they had a bit of framed - the words “They are one person. They are two alone. They are three together. They are for each other” - hanging above their bed, and consistently heard playing through their home.

The home that they just celebrated their third holiday season together in, one that holds their new four legged fur baby, and is always being redecorated. It seemed like just yesterday that the two had been cuddled up in her apartment, talking about what they hoped the future would hold, when he accidentally took the plunge and inadvertently asked what he’d been thinking about for months.

Because of One Direction, Harry had spent more time than he can remember in California, soaking up the sun at all times of the year, enjoying it just a bit more than usual when it was snowing back home in England. But he had to admit, spending so much time in the Golden State had changed him, so much so that he was still cold, even with his jumper, throw blanket, and his love cuddled up to his side, two cuppas steaming in their hands and the thermostat reading 20°C. Who had he become? He used to bare the 7°C cold winters back home in England like they were nothing, and now he was shivering at the thought of leaving the warm bed.

“Can’t believe ‘m dating a girl who insists on sleeping with the AC on during the winter.” he mumbled, burying his face into her hair.

“I like to be chilly. Makes me sleep better.” she laughed, digging her nose deeper into his chest.

“It absolutely does not. What about waking up in the middle of the night to make sure my toes haven’t fallen off is better than a peaceful, warm sleep?”

“Toes won’t fall off, stupid! I don’t keep it Antartic in here! Just a little cool. So we don’t have to sweaty cuddle.” she lifted her head, now resting it on top of his chest so that she could stare at him with a smile that still blew him away every morning that he got to see it.

But he didn’t want to guess when the next morning he got to roll over and see her peaceful form sprawled out on the majority of the bed, hogging most of the massive duvet and ankles locked with his. He wanted to know that every single time he closed his eyes at night, she was laying next to him, permanently. And that train of thought is what caused his next words to easily fall from between his lips.

“Yeah, well, when we move into a new place, the bedroom’s gotta stay a bit warmer, doll.”

He realized what he had said no more than a second after he said it, and instantly began panicking on the inside. He knew what saying that could cause. They had only been together for a few weeks short of a year, just getting past the honeymoon phase and settling into the comfort and reality that is true love. And as much as the pair loved each other, a year didn’t seem like a lot of time to decide to move in together. Plenty of people were together for years before even considering taking that step, so he focused on keeping his breathing steady and internal panic to a minimum, so that she wouldn’t see how scared he was of what he just admitted.

But none of what he was expecting came. She just continued looking at him like he was the rising sun in her sky, the smallest smile playing on her lips, foot still rubbing up and down his calf. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Throughout their year long relationship, she never once acted the way he was so used to other girls acting; never making any accusations or jumping to conclusions, never getting upset for his busy schedule or amount of commitments, and never letting him forget why she loved him so much. So, this reaction shouldn’t have surprised him.

“Y’wanna live with me?” she asked, voice quiet like if she spoke too loud, she would wake the sleeping birds who had made a home right outside her bedroom window.

“Been thinking about it for months now.” Harry confessed, heartbeat finally slowing down a bit once he realized he had nothing to be so nervous about.

“What, had to wait it out a bit longer to make sure I wasn’t too insane? See if my hidden crazy 1D fan side came out?”

Harry’s head rolled to the other side of the pillow, snorting as he thought about his girlfriend secretly fangirling over him every night once he fell asleep.

“‘Cause I hate to break it to you babe, but I was a total Niall girl. If we met in like 2013, you wouldn’t have stood a chance.” her tone was completely serious, but that familiar joking fire was clear behind her eyes, daring him to think anything more of her comment.

“I think I have to agree. He really is quite the stud.”

Hearing his love laugh at his continuation of her joke was music to Harry’s ears, and he could bask in it all day, like the warm rays of the sun licking at one’s skin on the shore. And he would do anything he could to make sure he got to hear it every day for the rest of his life. His hand came up and rested on the back of her head, gently squeezing in a massage motion.

“Wanted to make sure I didn’t scare you off, saying it too soon.” he admitted finally, staring deep into her eyes.

And she just stared right back, like she always did, never afraid to hold her ground when talking to him. It was something he admired about her, how much she trusted her gut and knew when to speak her mind, and it taught him to make sure he was only doing things that made him truly happy, no matter what anyone else would think.

“We were on magazine covers two months into our relationship, not much you can do to scare me off at this point.”

“No?” he smiled, remembering how calm she acted when he burst through the door that Tuesday morning, frantically trying to explain to her how he and his team would take care of anything caused by those pap shots. While he was pacing in front of her, she continued to eat her cereal and read her book, like the world now knowing Harry Styles had a new girlfriend was the most mundane thing to ever grace her perfect little ears.

“Nah. As long as you let me keep the room a lil cold, gives us an excuse to cuddle every night… roomie.” she smiled brightly, abruptly flinging her body higher up on the bed so that she could attack his mouth with her own.

There was nothing Harry was more thankful for than that accidental slip up, because it brought them even closer and a beautiful two years in their home. Being with her was like living a fairytale, and he was mesmerized watching even the simplest things, like her skin care routine, how she had to keep the magazines on the coffee table in a certain order, and the subtle sway of her hips when it was her turn to fold laundry.

He had never felt any of these feelings when with other people, and he finally understood why people describe being in love as ‘falling’, because even getting the smallest glance of her from across a room made him feel like crumbling to his knees, at her mercy no matter what she asked of him. And as much as he loved that feeling, wanted to bottle it up and bathe in it, he was also scared. The idea of someone having so much power and control over his heart, being able to completely shatter his entire world in the blink of an eye, wasn’t something he liked to think about. Especially not involving her. But sometimes, the late nights and fears got the best of him, and thinking is all he could do. And most of the time, those thoughts were squished the second he stepped through their shared front door and he saw her waiting up for him on the couch, sleepy eyes but excitement to see him. Until they weren’t.

“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you Harry, I’m not going anywhere!” the vein in his sweetheart’s neck was becoming more and more prominent as the yelling continued.

He was thankful she no longer lived in a small apartment, surrounded by other renters, because the intense yelling at that late hour would have raised a few red flags. He wasn’t trying to create such a tense atmosphere, but he couldn’t help it. It had been a tough day figuring out the final details of his first world tour since One Direction splitting up, and the thought of coming home to his favorite girl and explaining what was in the works, only made him more anxious. How was he supposed to leave for nearly a year and expect his girl to still be waiting when he came back? Surely she would realize how much better she deserves and he would end up coming home to an empty house.

“I don’t think you understand how lon-”

She cut him off mid sentence, “No, Harry, I do understand! You think I don’t understand how long you’ll be gone? How many nights I’ll have to settle for a Facetime call instead of a goodnight kiss? How I have to explain to my friends that my boyfriend won’t be with me because he’s across the planet?”

All of the points she was making only made him feel worse about himself, and the fears he was harboring only seemed to expand as she continued to list her realizations.

“But if any of those fucking things mattered to me, Harry, I woudn’t be standing here arguing with you! I would have packed my shit up the second you told me about this tour and never looked back!”

“You say that now, but three months in and you’re still coming home to an empty house can change things real fucking quick!”

He never meant for things to escalate like this when he expelled his concerns the moment she stepped out of the bathroom, towel still wrapped around her body and water dripping from her hair. Hell, she hasn’t even made it halfway when it all started; the pair standing just the foot of the bed. But it was like the second his eyes met her figure, he was unable to keep anything to himself. His love had always exuded this aura that turned his insides to much, like he was under a spell and was unable to hold back anything from her. And in that moment, he cursed her ability to pull that out of him.

She let out a loud sigh, hanging her head and pinching her nose between two fingers, as if this conversation with her boyfriend was the most stressful thing she’s ever had to do. “Why is it so hard for you to understand that I don’t want anyone else? Why can’t you just accept that I’m going to love you through the worst of everything, no matter what?”

Harry had never really pinpointed the exact moment all of these fears were cast away in the darkest corners of his mind, it was like one day, he realized he had them, and they wouldn’t go away. There wasn’t a moment in time or harsh end that stunted his emotional growth; it was different parts of each failed relationship, cumulatively joining forces over time to knock him down, time and time again. And when he was finally able to stand back up and see just how perfect the girl he was planning to spend forever with was, they roared their ugly heads ten times stronger than ever before, scaring even himself.

“Because I’ve never known what that feels like.” he finally responded, eyes glossy and voice thick with the oncoming breakdown that was moments away..

Just as Harry blinked away his first round of tears, she moved to stand in front of him, hands cupping the sides of his face and wiping away the tears rolling down his cheeks with her thumb. “I’ll keep reminding you how much I love you until time runs out, baby.”

And she kept her promise, not only telling, but showing Harry how deep her love for him ran. Hearing any variation of those words slipping from between her perfect lips warmed him from the inside out, just as the Italian sun was doing to them both as they drove down the picture perfect roads. He never took for granted how accepting she was of every decision he made for his career, how easily welcomed into his family she was;better than he ever could have imagined, or how she never failed to make him belly laugh. Harry had always been a hopeless romantic, but never truly believing in only one person, in the entire world, being made specifically for him.

Until he met her.

Every moment since that day in Going Underground Records, had been building to this story arc, creating a tale that would be unbelievable unless experienced for oneself. Because how was he supposed to accurately put into words the feeling of seeing the love of his life laugh at the corniest joke he’s ever told? Were their words yet invented to describe how fast his heart beat when hearing her sing in the shower? What would he say to explain the hope coursing through his veins when watching her chase his toddler cousins around the yard? Who would believe him when he said his girl was the most beautiful angel to ever grace the planet? Could he articulate all of that.

“Hey.” her voice was loud during the song change, and her hand squeezed his on the center console, both grabbing his attention quickly. “You alright?”

“Yeah.” Harry sighed, more content with his life than he had ever been.”I love you until time runs out.”

He couldn’t, because no amount of words he could string together would be enough to show his love and gratitude for the girl sitting next to him. Nothing would do her justice. But he would spend his entire life trying his damnedest to show her.

He just hoped the four words and finger sized gift he had planned for the end of their vacation was enough to begin explaining it all.

#harry styles imagine #harry styles imagines #harry styles one shot #harry styles one shots #harry styles blurb #harry styles blurbs #harry styles angst #harry styles fluff #harry styles smut #harry styles ff #harry styles fanfic harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fan fiction #harry styles fan fic #harry styles x you #harry styles x reader

409 notes · View notes

dawnofdaybreak · 4 years

Text

Title: Another Cliche’ Love Story

Pairing: Jongho

Rating: NC-17

Summary: In which Minho and Jonghyun are best friends but things get complicated.

[aff link] [ao3 link]

[part one] [part two]

Part Three (Finished)

Minho isn’t quite sure how to describe the feeling he experiences when he wakes with Jonghyun’s naked body pressing back comfortably against his. The feeling is reminiscent of the feeling he gets when he scores the winning goal for a soccer game or aces a test he didn’t study for. It’s so much more self-satisfying than that though, the content emotions running through him right now are so intense, Minho’s sure he’s never experienced this before.

He watches Jonghyun’s flawless face as he sleeps, the way his chest moves up and down with tiny breaths. Minho brushes away a few silver strands of hair that were covering the other’s forehead. Jonghyun is so beautiful and Minho’s so unbelievably happy to be able to call Jonghyun his.

The elder male begins to stir a little, causing Minho to pull his hand back, but he doesn’t move away from Jonghyun’s warmth.

“Were you watching me sleep?” Jonghyun asks groggily.

Minho tries to suppress his smile. “No.”

“Liar.”

“Okay, you caught me.”

Jonghyun inches closer and presses a light kiss to Minho’s chest which is heaving a bit with laughter. “Minho-yah.” Jonghyun uses his index finger to trace small circles around Minho’s left nipple which is very distracting in the brunet’s opinion. “I’m hungry.”

Minho bursts out laughing at what Jonghyun is suggesting he do for him. “Fine hyung, I’ll make us something to eat.”

Jonghyun smiles in triumph as Minho gets out of bed, dressing himself in a pair of discarded boxers on the floor, completely unsure if they’re his or Jonghyun’s – not like it matters anyway.

It doesn’t take long for Minho to maneuver himself around Jonghyun’s kitchen and prepare sandwiches for them both. When he returns to the elder’s room with said sandwiches and a glass of orange juice, Jonghyun is nowhere to be found. Minho frowns until his ears pick up on the sound of water running. He smirks as he sets the food and beverage onto Jonghyun’s small bedside table.

The pair find themselves quenching their passion yet again, as lukewarm water cascades all around them. Jonghyun’s legs are wrapped tightly around Minho’s waist as the latter’s skin burns from the feel of the elder’s lips moving across his body.

“Oh God Minho.”

Their pace is slow, languid almost, but satisfying all the same. Minho moans out his hyung’s name as he feels that familiar twisting in his gut. He grunts as he climaxes into Jonghyun’s heat, ungracefully locking lips with the shorter male. Jonghyun comes right after, hand curled around his own member as the water begins to run cold.

After the intensity and shock of their first night spent together passes over, words that Minho dreaded hearing left Jonghyun’s lips.

“We need to talk about this Minho.”

Minho sighs, burying his face into Jonghyun’s shoulder. “Babe please, let’s not do this now.” He hopes that this conversation will be dropped, not really wanting to think about Taemin and the consequences of his and Jonghyun’s actions last night.

“Minho-“

The sudden sound of Minho’s ringtone cuts Jonghyun off much to Minho’s silent relief.

“Hello.”

“MINHO!” It’s Kibum and Minho cringes at the volume of the other’s voice. “You were supposed to be to the airport to pick me up 20 minutes ago. Where the hell are you!?” Minho drags his hand over his face in pure exasperation. Kibum’s return to Korea was remembered up until last night. Now, all he can think about is the little whine Jonghyun makes when he pushes into his-

“Well?! Minho, where the hell are you please tell me you’re on your way.”

“Give me 20 more minutes please, I’ll be there.” Minho ends the call before Kibum can reply.

“Taemin huh?”

Minho winces at the sadness lacing Jonghyun’s tone. “No. It was Kibum. I have to go.” Minho tries to press a kiss to Jonghyun’s lips but the elder shifts his head. Minho sighs, settling for Jonghyun’s cheek instead.

“I’ll come by later, we can talk then okay?”

Jonghyun doesn’t respond.

“I’m sorry Key, I went out last night and got a little drunk and woke up super late this morning.” Minho apologizes the minute he’s in speaking distance of Kibum. The other simply glares at Minho, shoving his suitcase into Minho’s hands and storms off – much like a spoiled child – to Minho’s car.

Minho sighs, knowing that Kibum’s not usually subject to having to wait on people.

“Seriously Kibum, I’m really sorry.” Minho apologizes for the 6th time once they’re making their way through the heart of Seoul. “Are you seriously not going to talk to me or even acknowledge my apology? Come on Bummie please…I can’t say I’m sorry enough.”

Kibum groans at the nickname. “Fine, Minho, I know you’re just gonna keep nagging me until I forgive you so fine! You’re forgiven.”

Minho gives a small smile of triumph, reaching with his right hand to pat Kibum’s cheek. Key swats Minho’s hand away, still looking somewhat annoyed.

“I’m just peeved because I had some things I had to get done today before Tae’s big dance recital tonight. Now I’m falling behind on my schedule.”

Minho’s mouth immediately relaxes. He pales. Oh shit! He totally forgot about that. His eyes lose their focus as he chastises himself. How could he forget?! Taemin’s been talking about this for months for Christ’s sake! Thousands of scouts from professional agencies would be looking for future dancers and choreographers tonight. This would be an important moment in Taemin’s future career as a dancer and it completely slipped Minho’s mind.

“You didn’t forget did you?” Kibum looks at him with narrowed eyes.

Minho forces himself to chuckle, looking at Kibum as if he’d just asked him something stupid. “No, of course not.”

The performing arts center of Taemin’s school is filled to the brim as Minho and Kibum settle into their seats. Kibum complains about how far they are from the stage, frowning when Minho doesn’t agree with him. The younger man is too absorbed with his cell phone to pay attention to his surroundings – checking for mixed calls or messages from Jonghyun. He’d texted the older man earlier to let him know he wasn’t sure he’d be able to come over tonight, but there’s still no response. Minho turns his phone on silent and sinks into his seat as the lights begin to dim.

There are about nine performances before Taemin along with his best friend Jongin, take the stage as the final act. They would be dancing to a mashup of songs, a piece Taemin choreographed himself. Minho’s seen this performance hundreds of times during Taemin’s practice sessions. However he feels a sense of pride watching his boyfriend perform the piece he’s been working on for months in front of hundreds of people.

“Wow, they’re really doing amazing. They haven’t missed a beat.”

Minho nods in silent agreement, watching with proud eyes as the music transitions from dubstep to a lighter less gritty sound. Minho knows the end is nearing. Instead of ending abruptly like most of the other performers tonight, Taemin and Jongin were ending their performance on a graceful note.

Minho smiles as he watches the two men spin on the tips of their toes and then collapse onto the stage as the chillstep song comes to an end. He knows that move was difficult for Taemin, especially since he doesn’t have the extensive history in ballet that Jongin has.

The crowd erupts into a standing ovation, cheers and hollers echoing all around the room. Minho and Kibum stand as well, with Kibum doing enough yelling to rival everyone else in the building.

“He’s gotta get recruited by at least 10 companies after that performance,” Kibum comments as he and Minho wait for Taemin to emerge from the dressing rooms.

“I’m sure he will be.” Minho takes his phone out of his pocket to check the time, and then grows worried as he sees one missed call and 7 text messages from Jonghyun.

Texts from Jonghyunnie♥♥♥, 2 hours ago:

Hey

are you still coming over so we can talk?

minho? it’s getting late and I still haven’t heard from u

…are u ignoring me?

im sorry, we don’t have to talk about taemin if u don’t want to

please don’t be mad at me

im sorry

“Are you okay?” Kibum asks as he takes in Minho’s expression.

“I’m fine,” Minho says a little too quickly to be true. He sighs and pockets his phone. “Really, I’m fine,” he rolls his eyes at Kibum’s disbelieving look.

Taemin joins them a minute later. He’s freshly showered and all smiles as Kibum reigns down the praises.

“Oh my God Tae that was fantastic! I’ve known you for almost eight years and I didn’t even know you could move like that!”

Minho gives a tight lipped smile when Taemin turns to him. “You knocked them dead babe,” he says as he places a kiss on Taemin’s cheek.

Taemin giggles in response while Minho wraps an arm around his waist.

“Thanks guys. We’re having a small get together at Jongin’s house. You guys are coming right.”

“Um I-“

“Of course we are,” Kibum cuts Minho off.

“Excuse me.”

The three men look to the older man who addresses them.

“Are you Mr. Lee Taemin?” The man looks at Taemin.

Taemin nods and slips out of Minho’s grasp.

“That performance you and your colleague gave tonight was amazing. If you don’t mind, can I speak to you in private?”

“Sure.”

“So, you wanna head straight to the party or you wanna go home and change first?”

Minho glances sideways at Kibum. “I think you should head to the party with Tae. I’ve got something to do first.”

Kibum narrows his eyes. “Does this have something to do with the text messages you were reading earlier.”

Minho sighs. “No. Something just came up that I need to take care of first.”

Taemin comes practically skipping to the pair, with a huge smile plastered on his face.

“Good news I presume…” Kibum murmurs.

“You guys, that man is the head of recruitment for a choreographing company and he wants me and Jongin to come and work with them!”

“Oh my God that’s amazing Tae,” Kibum squeezes the younger man tight. “Did you already accept?”

“No, he said to just think about it for now. Jongin and I are gonna go to his company later on this week and talk about all the details.”

Minho ruffles Taemin’s hair. “I’m so proud of you.”

Taemin blushes hotly. “Jongin’s bringing his car around front so we can get going.”

Minho frowns. “About that…there’s something I have to go and do first.”

“Oh.”

Guilt wells up in Minho as he sees Taemin’s smile replaced with sheer disappointment.

“I’ll be there don’t worry, I just gotta go take care of this thing. Kibum will ride with you guys.” Minho gives Taemin a kiss on the cheek for good measure, and nods to Kibum who gives him a scathing look.

He’s barely out of earshot when Kibum mumbles, “How dodgy.”

“Hyung, open up, it’s freezing out here.” Minho knocks on Jonghyun’s door for the fourth time. It’s just past ten, he didn’t expect Jonghyun to go to bed so early. He grabs his phone and opens up his chat log with Jonghyun just as the older man opens the door.

Jonghyun is dressed in only boxers with his hair dripping wet, which Minho assumes is from a recent shower.

“Minho?” Jonghyun pulls the younger man inside and wraps his arms tightly around him. “I thought you weren’t coming I-I thought you were mad at me. I’m sorry.”

Minho chuckles at how panicked Jonghyun sounds. He pulls away to kiss the shorter man. “It’s okay baby, I wasn’t mad.”

“Where were you tonight?”

“T-Tae had a dance recital…”

“Oh.” Jonghyun gives Minho that same disappointed look Taemin gave him earlier. But then Jonghyun kisses him with such passion that Minho forgets all about Taemin. His head feels light, like he might just float away. “Let’s not talk about him. Not now at least.”

Minho smiles as Jonghyun leads him to the couch in his living room and begins an assault on his neck.

“I missed you.”

“I m-missed you too baby, but I ahh…can’t stay.”

Jonghyun pouts as he untucks Minho’s dress shirt from his pants and begins unbuttoning it.

Minho groans as Jonghyun’s lips latch onto his chest. He feels Jonghyun’s finger toying with the button on his slacks and all his resolve disappears. He’s unable to tell Jonghyun to stop now.

“I’ve wanted to do this from last night,” Jonghyun breathes as he pulls Minho’s cock out into the warm air of his heated apartment.

Minho lets out the most unmanly whimper as Jonghyun takes him into his mouth, teasing at first, but growing more and more firm and enthusiastic as time draws on.

“Fuck hyung,” Minho moans as Jonghyun pumps him with his hand before taking him into his mouth again. He’s got his head tilted back, teeth digging into his lower lip as his fingers dig into the cushions.

Jonghyun lets him out of his mouth again with an obscene pop. “You can grab onto my hair, I know you want to.”

Minho bites his lip and grabs onto Jonghyun’s silver locks. He tugs lightly, helping guide the movements of Jonghyun’s head up and down his cock. “B-Baby, you’re s-so good,” Minho moans as Jonghyun’s tongue works wonders up and down his shaft.

Minho’s words spur Jonghyun to suck Minho harder until the younger man becomes a whimpering mess beneath him.

“B-Babe I-I’m gonna – f-fuck, I’m gonna cum,” Minho moans out before coming suddenly.

He half expected Jonghyun to gag and spit it out – but when Minho sees the bobbing of Jonghyun’s adam’s apple, he looks at him with blown pupils.

Jonghyun pulls off of Minho’s cock with a smile. “Was it good?”

All Minho can do is nod, unable to form words just yet.

“Good.” Jonghyun pecks Minho’s lips and pulls his underwear and pants back up for him. He sits down next to Minho and laces their fingers together. “I guess I understand if you have to leave…but can you stay with me for a bit, at least until I fall asleep?”

Minho can’t possibly say no – not to Jonghyun.

Minho ends up staying longer than a bit and much longer than after Jonghyun falls asleep. How could he leave with Jonghyun snuggled onto his chest and looking so damn peaceful in his embrace? Minho sighs when he hears his phone vibrate on the nightstand for what he thinks is the 10th time that night – the light from it casting a dim glow in the room. He reaches over and turns it off, before he pecks Jonghyun’s forehead and closes his eyes. He’ll just deal with everything tomorrow.

“Where were you last night?” Taemin asks as soon as Minho lets him into his apartment. “Key hyung and I called and texted you a bunch of times and you didn’t answer anything. We were worried Minho!”

Minho sighs. “Something came up Tae…”

“What do you mean something came up?! Something so important that you missed the after party of one of the most important nights in my life? It couldn’t wait?”

Minho runs a hand through his hair. “I’m not about to fight with you Taemin. Something important came up that I had to deal with. I’m sorry that it took so long and I missed the party and I’m sorry I didn’t call and let you know I was okay. M-My phone was on low battery and then it died,” Minho lies.

Taemin sighs. “I j-just really wanted you to be there Minho. I wanted to celebrate my achievements with you. And I hardly even talked to you last night. I saw you for two seconds and then you were gone.”

Minho feels guilt rise up in him. “I’m sorry baby. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

“O-Okay.” Taemin leans forward and presses a gentle kiss to Minho’s lips. Minho forces himself to kiss Taemin back – mind registering how wrong this is, considering that he just kissed Jonghyun goodbye this morning. When Taemin tries to deepen the kiss, Minho pulls away.

“What’s wrong?” Taemin looks at him confused.

“Nothing baby,” Minho forces a smile. “I’m just tired.”

“Oh.”

Minho pretends he doesn’t hear the feeling of rejection in Taemin’s voice.

On Thursday after his last final, Minho and a few of his soccer teammates decide to have a little scrimmage before they part ways for the break. Minho invites Jonghyun to come and watch, eager to show him how much he’s improved since the last time Jonghyun watched him play soccer.

Jonghyun gives Minho a big wave when he arrives and Minho gives him an even bigger one back. He smiles at how cute Jonghyun looks in his oversized jacket, along with a beanie on his head.

“Who’s that?” Jihan – one of Minho’s teammates – asks.

“He’s a close friend of mine,” Minho says as he stares at Jonghyun with a smile.

“He’s cute.”

The smile disappears off of Minho’s face as he looks at Jihan. “He’s taken,” Minho says with more force than he’d intended.

“Woah man, just saying he’s cute. Never said I wanted to date the guy.” Jihan pats him on the back. “You shouldn’t care anyway, aren’t you in a relationship with Taemin?”

Minho groans and grits his teeth. “Let’s just start the game.”

Minho’s team ends up beating the others 3-1 by the time it starts getting dark. He runs over to where Jonghyun’s sitting on the bleachers, clapping for him. “So Jonghyun hyung, what did you think?”

Jonghyun smiles at him. “You were really good. You’re like a pro now,” Jonghyun says honestly. “But I must say it was hard to focus watching you run up and down the field in those shorts of yours. It was pretty sexy.”

Minho blushes. “Oh really?”

“Yeah.”

Minho grins. “Let’s go back to your place.”

Minho takes a quick shower at Jonghyun’s apartment and borrows some of his clothes – they’re a little tight on him but he doesn’t mind that much.

“Hey Min…which one do you like more?” Jonghyun holds up two shirts, a red plaid one, and a cream coloured one.

Minho looks at both shirts and eyes Jonghyun. “The red one. Red is your colour hyung.”

Jonghyun smiles softly. “Okay, red it is,” he says before taking the shirts back to his room.

When he comes back and plops down next to Minho, Minho looks at him strangely. “Why are you asking for my opinion on clothes? You got a date?”

Jonghyun giggles. “Maybe.”

Minho frowns. “Don’t say things like that hyung, you’ll make me jealous.”

The grin falls off of Jonghyun’s face. He scoots away from Minho. “It was a joke Minho, and you’re not exactly in the position to be possessive don’t you think?”

Minho finds out on Saturday why Jonghyun had asked for his opinion on his clothes. It’s his 21st birthday and Kibum had somehow managed to plan an entire party without Minho knowing anything of it. It’s not a huge party but there are a nice number of Minho’s friends and family in attendance. The music is lively and whichever catering company Kibum hired did an amazing job. Jonghyun arrives about an hour into the party, dressed in the same plaid shirt he’d shown Minho the other night and a pair of ripped black jeans. Minho’s eyes don’t leave Jonghyun’s body the minute he spots him, even though Taemin’s body is pressed tightly against his as they dance in the middle of the living room of Kibum’s apartment.

He watches as Jonghyun converses with Kibum and then Jinki before sitting idly in a corner and watching everything going on around him. Their eyes lock suddenly and Minho freezes. He starts gently prying Taemin’s body away from his.

“I’m staying over at your place tonight…” Taemin whispers suggestively in Minho’s ear.

“Y-Yeah sure,” Minho says absentmindedly before completely letting go of Taemin. “I’m gonna go say hi to Jonghyun hyung okay.” He leaves before Taemin can respond and goes over to where Jonghyun’s sitting.

Jonghyun looks up at him with a small smile. “Happy Birthday Min.”

Minho smiles. “Thanks hyung.” He leans down to whisper in Jonghyun’s ear, “Come with me next door, to my apartment,” he says before leaving.

“This is the first time I’ve been in your place since I got back,” Jonghyun says as Minho closes the door behind them.

“Yeah…Do you like it?”

“It’s cozy,” Jonghyun says.

Minho smiles softly and sits next to Jonghyun on the couch. He brushes a few stray strands of hair away from Jonghyun’s forehead before leaning in for a kiss.

Jonghyun gently pushes Minho back by his chest. “Are you really going to try and kiss me, after you’ve been dancing with your boyfriend all night?” Jonghyun asks with a sense of bitterness lacing his words.

Minho sighs. “Jjong…you know…i-it…it’s complicated.”

Jonghyun shakes his head. “It’s not right Minho. Y-You can’t date me and him. You need to break up with him…”

Minho looks at Jonghyun with sullen eyes.

“O-Or stop seeing me.”

Minho’s eyes widen. “No. I’m not going to stop seeing you Jonghyun. I just got you. I-I’ve been in love with you for years…”

“Then you know what you need to do.”

Minho looks away from Jonghyun and bites his lower lip. “I feel like shit because of this hyung,” he whispers, to himself almost.

Jonghyun’s eyes soften. “I’m sorry Minho. It’s your birthday, you should be celebrating instead of talking about this.” Jonghyun reaches out to gently comb his fingers through Minho’s hair. “I got you something.”

Minho looks back at Jonghyun. “You did?”

He gives him a small smile and a nod. Jonghyun passes Minho a small gift bag he’d brought with him.

Minho takes it and can’t help the small smile that grows on his face, knowing that Jonghyun had bought him something. He opens the bag and pulls out a picture frame, encasing a drawing of his much younger self. “W-What’s this?”

“It’s a drawing I did of you back when we were teens. I think it was then I started realizing I had feelings for you,” Jonghyun says quietly. “I kept it with me all this time but I think you should have it.”

Minho rubs his thumb over the drawing, in awe at the amount of detail put into it. “I-It’s beautiful hyung. Thank you.”

“I have another gift for you too…”

Minho turns to face him and before he can ask what it is, Jonghyun’s pink plump lips are pressed softly against his. Minho closes his eyes and melts into the kiss. He rests the drawing down at his side and cups Jonghyun’s face.

Jonghyun pulls back briefly to whisper “I love you,” against Minho’s lips before kissing him deeply.

Minho kisses Jonghyun back just as deeply. He presses Jonghyun’s body close to his before sliding a wet tongue into Jonghyun’s warm mouth. Minho receives a low moan in response to his actions and it just spurs him on. He starts kissing Jonghyun more forcefully, trying to pour all his passion and desire for him into the kiss.

A sudden knock on the door forces them to separate.

Minho pulls back from Jonghyun’s lips and looks at his apartment door with a sigh. He reluctantly gets up to answer it.

“So this is where you snuck off to,” Kibum says when Minho cracks the doorway. “Are you seriously trying to ditch your own party?”

Minho chuckles. “I just needed a breather Bummie. I’ll be back over in a few minutes.”

“No no no breathing time is over, I’ve been looking everywhere for you. It’s time to cut your cake.”

Minho inwardly groans. “I’m coming over right now Kibum I promise. It can wait five more minutes.”

“Minho. Get your ass back over to YOUR birthday party right now. And have you seen Jonghyun? Taemin said that you were gonna go and say ‘Hi’ to him before you disappeared to here.”

“U-Uh,” Minho starts.

Jonghyun stands and moves towards the door. “I-I’m here. I w-wanted Minho to show me his apartment,” he says, voice still sounding a bit shaky after the kiss. “I haven’t gotten any chances to visit yet.”

Kibum’s eyes flicker from Minho to Jonghyun closely, before he smiles. “Well it’s nothing special, you can come back and check it out later” he says before pulling them both back along to his apartment. “Now come, cake time.”

Minho doesn’t get the chance to take Jonghyun back to his apartment later, nor does he get the chance to sneak in a kiss or even a friendly dance. Once he’d gone back to the party and cut and shared out his birthday cake, Taemin latched onto him like a parasite. Minho couldn’t even go to the bathroom without the younger man waiting on him by the door. In the end when the party dwindled down, Minho settled for a quick hug with Jonghyun – but made sure to whisper in his ear that he’d see him in the upcoming week and they could continue their kiss. Jonghyun left with a slight blush on his face and after seeing that Minho made peace with the fact that he didn’t get to kiss him goodbye.

“Minho, let’s go back to your place. Key hyung said not to worry about the mess,” Taemin says while clutching onto Minho’s arm.

“You’re sleeping over tonight?”

Taemin tilts his head and looks up at Minho. “I told you this…earlier.”

“O-Oh,” Minho says. “Y-Yeah, you did. Sorry. Let’s go.”

Minho feels awkward when he and Taemin get undressed together. Taemin takes his time, trying to be sexy. Birthday sex is obviously on his mind.

Minho wants to tell him to stop, to put his clothes back on but he can’t bring himself to, not when Taemin looks so determined.

It’s when Taemin gently pushes Minho onto the bed and starts straddling him that Minho realizes he can’t do this. He presses a hand to Taemin’s bare chest. “Stop…”

Taemin looks at him confused. “What do you mean ‘stop’?”

Minho looks away from him and sighs. “I mean stop. I don’t want to have sex. I don’t feel too up for it baby…”

“You’ve never refused sex before?”

Minho bites his lip. “I don’t feel well,” he lies.

Taemin tilts his head. “I don’t understand.” He looks down at Minho’s crotch and then looks back up at him with watery eyes. “O-Oh…you’re not even hard…?”

“It’s not you Tae,” Minho says. “It’s just I don’t feel well, I drank too much. You know alcohol makes me sleepy,” Minho lies again, knowing that he only had two cups tonight.

“Yeah…okay, sorry,” Taemin says as he gets off of Minho’s lap. He gets under the covers and lays down with his back facing Minho.

Minho sighs as he looks at Taemin’s back, feeling guilty.

He turns away from him, mind overflowing with various thought before he falls asleep.

The next morning is awkward as they eat breakfast together. Taemin does not make much eye contact with Minho.

“…So…” Minho clears his throat. “D-Do you wanna do anything today…baby?” Minho asks.

Taemin looks up at him and then shakes his head. “I can’t. I needa meet with Jongin to discuss some stuff about our choreography deal.”

“Oh okay,” Minho says quietly. He sips at his orange juice.

“I’m gonna get going,” Taemin says when he finishes eating. He puts his plate in the sink and grabs his things.

“Okay,” Minho says. “I’ll see you later?” Minho looks up at Taemin, expecting the man to give him a kiss before he departs.

“Yeah, later,” Taemin says before leaving.

“Oh fuck,” Jonghyun gasps as Minho strokes deep inside of him.

Minho’s got him bent over his work desk as they’d been too impatient to move to Jonghyun’s bedroom when Minho came over.

“A-Ah hyung…s-so tight,” Minho pants against Jonghyun’s neck. “I-I’m so close,” he groans.

“M-Me too,” Jonghyun whimpers as he pumps his dick in tune with Minho’s thrusts.

Minho cries out when he finally climaxes inside of Jonghyun, with the man following with his own cries not too long after.

“Oh shit,” Jonghyun says as he gets a good look at Minho’s neck in the shower. “I marked you.”

Minho touches the mark on his neck and then shrugs.

Jonghyun bites his lip nervously. “I’m sorry, it’s really visible Min. I c-can cover it for you with makeup.”

“Baby it’s fine, no need to cover it.”

“But what about Ta-“

“Shh, we’re not talking about him remember?” Minho gives Jonghyun a kiss on the cheek. “Now come on, let’s rinse off.”

Minho’s never been particularly religious, finding thoughts of a higher deity rather silly. But that doesn’t stop him from celebrating Christmas with his family. The holiday itself has loss much of its true intent, rather becoming capitalism’s grand finale every year. Despite being very aware of this fact, Minho finds himself in front of his childhood home with gifts for his parents and brother tucked under his arm.

He knocks on the front door while Taemin stands beside him.

“Hello boys,” Minho’s mother answers the door with a smile. She pulls Minho in for a hug and smiles warmly at Taemin.

“Taemin, it’s nice to see you again.” She’d met Taemin in Minho’s apartment early on in their relationship when she’d made an impromptu visit to surprise her son.

“It’s nice to see you again too Mrs. Choi,” Taemin says politely.

“Come on in boys, the Kims are already here.”

Minho follows behind his mother visibly confused. “The Kims? They’re having Christmas dinner with us?”

“Yes, it was a last-minute decision. Sodam just brought over their dishes.”

Minho inwardly sighs. Jonghyun had mentioned spending Christmas with his mother and sister but Minho had no idea that their parents would decide to have dinner together. He was hoping to avoid being around both Jonghyun and Taemin again.

“Taemin, you know Jonghyun don’t you? He’s Minho’s best friend,” Mrs. Choi says when they finally reach the dining room.

“We’ve met,” Taemin says. “Hey Jonghyun-hyung. Merry Christmas.”

Jonghyun looks at Minho and Taemin standing near the doorway wearing their matching sweaters and then looks down at the table. “Merry Christmas,” he says quietly.

Minho finds that he can look everywhere but Jonghyun’s eyes.

“Are you boys ready to eat?” Mrs. Choi asks happily.

They sit around the large dining table, Minho between his brother and Taemin. Jonghyun switched seats with his sister a few minutes after Minho and Taemin arrived. Minho would have to crane his neck if he wanted to catch a glimpse of him.

Minho feels but isn’t sure if he looks visibly uncomfortable throughout the entire dinner. With his parents asking questions about his relationship with Taemin while simultaneously reminiscing over how he and Jonghyun were attached to the hip growing up, Minho doesn’t know which one is worse.

“So, how long have you two been dating?” Mrs. Kim asks Minho and Taemin halfway throughout the dinner.

“O-Oh um around six months,” Minho says.

Taemin gently kicks him under the table. “It’s been eight hyung.”

Minho smiles sheepishly, slightly embarrassed. “Time flies. I forget sometimes.” The table takes pity on him as the elders laugh at his statement.

“It’s too early to be forgetting dates little brother,” Minseok says. “Save that for when you’re married,” he says with a nudge to Minho’s elbow.

Minho rolls his eyes, knowing his brother wanted to get a rise out of him.

“What about you Jonghyun?” Minseok directs his question down the table.

“What about me?” Jonghyun asks.

“You’re the only single young adult at this table.” Sodam had brought her boyfriend along and Minseok’s girlfriend was also gracing the Chois with her presence. “Any girlfriend back in Japan?”

Minho visibly stiffens.

Jonghyun snorts. “No. I haven’t had any luck dating since I’ve been back yet either.”

“Oh?” Minseok looks at Minho then back down at Jonghyun. “You’ve been looking?”

“Yeah,” Jonghyun says.

Minho’s face starts to feel hot. He knows he has no right to feel like this but Jonghyun’s words hurt.

Minseok rests a hand on Minho’s knee and smiles knowingly. “The least you could do is play wingman for Jjongie.”

Minho pushes his brother’s hand off and grits his teeth at him. “Stop it,” he whispers.

“Who wants dessert?” Minho’s mom asks.

Minho’s brother corners him outside the upstairs bathroom after everyone’s finished eating dinner.

“So. I’ll give you a chance to come clean,” Minseok says.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Minho says and pushes past him.

Minseok grabs onto his arm. “I know something is going on between you and Jonghyun,” Minseok says loudly.

“Shh!” Minho demands and pushes his brother into his old bedroom. “What the hell are you talking about hyung,” Minho says and closes the door behind them, a nervous feeling rising from the pit of his gut. “There’s nothing going on.”

“Oh, come off it Minho,” Minseok says. “I’ve known since you were kids that you had a crush on him. Now you show up here with your boyfriend and you can’t even look Jonghyun in the eye.”

Minho shakes his head. “That’s not true. You know nothing.”

Minseok folds his arms. “You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?”

Minho’s eyes widen. “W-What…N-No!”

“Fuck, Minho!” Minseok says. “Does Taemin know? Wait of course he doesn’t know, he’s fucking oblivious to it all isn’t he?”

Minho sighs heavily. “Y-You can’t say anything hyung. I’m going to tell him eventually.”

“E-Eventually?” Minseok asks, eyes wide in disbelief. “Minho what the fuck? That’s not right. None of this is right. Y-You’re cheating.”

“Lower your voice!” Minho shouts back at him. “I n-never meant for this to happen hyung,” he says in hushed tones. “J-Jonghyun came back home and all the feelings I thought were buried just rushed to the surface again. I don’t want to hurt him or Taemin. I promise I’m not a bad person,” Minho says as tears well in his eyes.

His older brother sighs heavily and rests an arm on Minho’s shoulder. “D-Don’t cry. But just…you know this is wrong. And you know what you need to do to fix it.”

Minseok pats Minho’s shoulder before exiting the bedroom.

When Minho and Taemin are on their way back to Minho’s apartment, Taemin asks him a question.

“Is something going on between you and Jonghyun-hyung?”

Minho’s hands grow rigid on the steering wheel. “W-What do you mean?” He asks nervously.

“I heard your hyung ask you that.”

“Oh? O-Oh…Um there’s nothing going on,” Minho rambles. “Hyung was just wondering why we weren’t talking much at dinner,” Minho lies.

The car grows quiet. Minho slowly relaxes his grip on the steering wheel.

“D-Did you hear anything else?” He asks softly.

“Oh no. That’s all I heard,” Taemin quickly replies.

“Okay.”

“Jonghyun-hyung is straight right?” the younger man asks. “You said he was dating a girl when you guys were younger?”

“…H-He’s,” Minho doesn’t really know. “I don’t t-think he has a preference. He’s mostly dated girls but he’s dated guys too…”

Taemin hums and turns to look out of the window.

“Why are you asking?”

“Oh no reason. I was thinking of setting him up with one of my friends. Her name is Soojung and she’s really pretty.”

“Oh,” Minho says. He’s seen pictures of Soojung before. She is indeed pretty. “Y-You think they’d b-be a good match?” Minho prays to that deity he barely believes in that Taemin doesn’t notice the quiver in his voice.

Taemin shrugs. “I think they’d be a great match. They’d look really good together. But you do know him better, so I figured you’d have an idea.”

Minho shakes his head, not liking the thought of that at all. “I don’t think she’s what hyung is looking for right now,” he says a bit firmer than necessary.

Taemin stares at him for a few seconds and then looks back out the window. “Well, it was only a suggestion.”

“What are you doing here?” Jonghyun asks as Minho stands on his doorstep two days later.

Minho frowns at him. “Is something wrong? I tried to call you and you didn’t answer.”

Jonghyun steps aside and lets him into the apartment. “Oh no, nothing’s wrong. Not thinking about the play by play I got of you and Taemin’s relationship the other day.” He shuts the door behind Minho louder than necessary.

Minho sighs. “H-Hyung…you know…it’s-“

“Complicated?” Jonghyun asks. “How long is it going to be complicated Minho?”

“Hyung…”

Jonghyun rubs his hand over his face in exasperation. “Why are you here Minho?”

Minho bites his lip. “I…I got you a present.”

“O-Oh,” Jonghyun says quietly. “I d-didn’t get you anything…”

Minho hands him the small box with a smile. “That’s okay. We’ve never really celebrated Christmas. Besides your birthday present was enough.”

“What is it?” The blonde asks curiously.

“Open it and see.”

Jonghyun unties the pink bow on the box and discards the wrapping. He opens it to find a small silver ring – not small enough to fit on his ring finger, but rather appearing to be the width of his thumb.

“Is this a thumb ring?” Jonghun inquires.

Minho raises his hand to show a matching one. “Yeah.”

Jonghyun’s mouth falls open in surprise. “M-Minho, I…I can’t wear this. Not if you’re wearing one too. It’s too obvious.”

Minho shakes his head. “No, these are really popular right now. People won’t notice it hyung. Besides, don’t you like it?”

“O-Of course I do.” Jonghyun slides the ring onto his thumb. “P-Perfect fit…”

“I thought it would be,” Minho says.

Jonghyun looks up at him with a wobbly smile. “T-Thank you Minho.” He gets on his tippy toes and presses a kiss to Minho’s lips.

Minho kisses him back deeply. “I love you,” he whispers against Jonghyun’s lips.

“I love you too,” Jonghyun replies after a slight pause.

Minho pulls Jonghyun into a tight hug. “I-I’m sorry hyung. Sorry that I haven’t addressed everything yet. I p-promise I will, soon.”

Minho feels Jonghyun sigh against his neck. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep Minho.”

Minho pulls back, looking slightly offended. “I will keep this promise hyung. I l-lo-“

Jonghyun shuts him up with a harsh kiss, teeth digging into Minho’s lip. Minho yelps in surprise but quickly recovers, kissing Jonghyun back just as passionately. He wraps his arms around Jonghyun’s tiny waist and lifts him up against the wall. Minho begins kissing Jonghyun’s neck, working on the spots he knows the other likes. The shorter man cries out as Minho leaves light marks along his collarbone. Minho carries Jonghyun to his bedroom and deposits him onto the bed, pulling off the elder’s shirt as soon as his back touches the mattress.

He pulls his own shirt over his head when a firm hand touches his chest.

“Can we just cuddle tonight,” Jonghyun says quietly, unable to make eye contact.

Minho pulls his shirt back on. “O-Of course baby. Of course. Do you want to be held?”

Jonghyun nods, pulling his own shirt back on and shifting onto his side.

Minho spoons him from behind, watching as the man twists the ring around his thumb but says nothing.

New Years Eve finds them at Jinki’s restaurant, sitting around a table filled with various dishes and lots of beer.

Kibum’s a bit tipsy, his tolerance for beer being very low. Minho rolls his eyes as Kibum entertains the group with his forced acts of cuteness – committed all out of spite because he knows Minho hates it. Taemin records key with an amused smile on his face. He had plopped down, right next to Jonghyun when they’d arrived, forcing Minho to sit to the left of him.

“This will be perfect blackmail material,” Taemin says with a wicked grin as he finishes recording.

Those words seem to sober Kibum up. “You wouldn’t dare! I have a public image.”

Taemin laughs at him. “Just be a good hyung and you’ll have nothing to worry about.”

“Any goals for the new year?” Jinki asks at quarter to twelve.

Kibum mumbles something about settling down, Taemin says he wants to work with foreign choreographers and Jonghyun plans to register more than ten songs.

Minho remains silent as the conversation quickly shifts to something else. He has no idea what the new year has in store for him especially with such a dark secret looming above his head.

“So Jonghyun-hyung,” Taemin says. “Are you still looking to date someone?”

Minho snaps out of his self-reflection.

“Oh um…kinda?” Jonghyun replies.

“Kinda?” Kibum chimes in. “Have you gotten laid since you moved back home?”

Jonghyun visibly squirms.

“Bum!” Minho shouts. “Don’t you think that’s a little personal.”

“What? We’re all friends here. We’re always talking about each other’s sex lives.”

Minho frowns. Kibum’s the one that does most of the talking in those conversations.

“Anyway,” Taemin practically shoves his phone in Jonghyun’s face. “This is my friend Soojung, she’s super nice and is into music too. I thought you two would be a good match.”

“O-Oh really?” Jonghyun nervously glances at Minho.

“Yeah. I could give her your number if you’d like. I think you’ll hit it off really well. She gives off a cold vibe at first but she’s really down to earth.”

Jonghyun stammers, “O-Oh um…”

Minho grits his teeth. “Tae…don’t you think you’re putting a bit of pressure on Jjong right now? He’s never even met her.”

Taemin looks back at Minho. “Jonghyun can answer for himself. Besides most people text before meeting each other these days anyway.” Taemin turns back to Jonghyun. “What do you say?”

Minho’s eyes burn at the back of Taemin’s head.

“Um sure,” Jonghyun relents. “You can give her my number.”

“Great. I think you’ll really hit it off, oh um,” Taemin looks down at Jonghyun’s hand. “Nice thumb ring.”

Jonghyun touches it instinctively. “Oh yeah thanks.”

“It looks just like the one Minho started wearing recently.”

Kibum perks up. “Lemme see.” He grabs Jonghyun’s hand and examines the ring. He looks back to Minho’s to compare but Minho’s fingers are bare.

“I’m not wearing my ring,” Minho says.

“But I have a picture,” Taemin adds in. He hands his phone to Kibum.

Kibum glances at the ring on Minho’s thumb in the photo and the one on Jonghyun’s actual thumb. “They look pretty identical to me.”

“O-Oh,” Jonghyun chuckles nervously. “What a coincidence.”

Taemin narrows his eyes. “Yeah…a coincidence. Where’d you get yours Jonghyun-hyung?”

“Huh?” Jonghyun looks up at Minho as if he’s asking for help.

“Where’d you buy the ring?” Taemin rewords his question.

“Oh, I have no idea. My sister bought it for me. It was a gift,” he lies with a chuckle.

“Hmm,” Taemin hums and looks back at his photo of Minho.

Minho doesn’t share a new year’s kiss with Taemin or Jonghyun that night.

Minho knows what he’s doing is selfish. Cheating is something he always frowned upon, hating when it was a plot point in a movie and shunning the topic whenever his friends brought it up. But now that he’s in this current predicament, he finds himself actually understanding why people do it.

It’s not right.

But is it wrong?

He loves Jonghyun with his entire being. But at some point, in his and Taemin’s now eight-month long relationship, he was sure that he was love with him too. He doesn’t want to hurt the younger man’s feelings.

He finds himself unable to do anything while Taemin and Jonghyun both begin pulling away from him. It’s as if there’s rope attached to both of his hands. But instead of being pulled in either direction he remains set in place while Jonghyun and Taemin pull farther and farther away.

It all comes to a head in the new year.

Kibum confronts him in his apartment early February – much like he’d done when Minho had forgotten his and Taemin’s six-month anniversary.

“I know what you’re doing Minho,” Kibum says, sounding very much like he knows something that Minho doesn’t.

Minho looks visibly perturbed. “What are you talking about Kibum?”

“I know you’ve been cheating on Taemin.”

“W-What?” Minho says all too quickly. “That’s not true.”

“Oh? So you haven’t been sneaking around with Jonghyun behind Taemin’s back?”

Minho opens his mouth and then closes it sharply. “…J-Jonghyun is my best friend Kibum. I can’t spend time with him now?”

“Oh please,” Kibum says. “Taemin told me you haven’t touched him in weeks. He’s seen the marks you know.”

“I don’t have any marks.”

“Yeah cause now Jonghyun’s caught a clue and has stopped fooling around with you too.”

Minho’s anger flares at the harsh truth behind that statement. “You need to leave,” Minho says, his tone matching the chill of the air outside.

Kibum heads towards the door. “Just for the record, we’re not friends anymore. I’m not going to be friends with a cheater! You broke Taemin’s heart Minho and I’ll never forgive you for that!” He slams the door as he exits.

Minho stares at the door for what feels like hours after Kibum leaves.

Hours later he finds himself at Orgel, in desperate need to see Jonghyun. The older man had ignored his texts and calls and when Minho had pulled up to his apartment complex, Jonghyun’s car was nowhere to be seen. The club was the only place Minho figured he would be.

But Jonghyun isn’t alone.

Minho watches as the man walks off the stage after his set and heads to a small table in front where a pretty blond claps enthusiastically for him.

Minho feels his heart crumble in his chest, the sight far too similar of an experience he’d repressed from his teenage years.

Before he can stop himself, he’s already crossed over to the table with fire in his eyes.

To say Jonghyun is startled to see him would be an understatement. The older man’s eyes practically bulge out of his sockets. “M-Minho, w-what are you doing here?”

“W-Who is she?” Minho asks bluntly.

Jonghyun looks at the girl apologetically, before grabbing Minho’s arm roughly and tugging him outside.

“What are you doing here Minho?” He asks in hushed tones.

A group of bystanders look at them suspiciously. Minho doesn’t care.

“Who’s the girl hyung?! Why’s she looking at you like that?”

Jonghyun looks away from him with guilt etched on his face.

“H-Hyung. Who is she?”

“She’s my date!” Jonghyun says. “And now she probably won’t go out with me again because you were so rude in there.”

Minho’s so focused on the word date that it takes him a few extra seconds to process the remainder of what Jonghyun had said.

“Hyung…w-what do you mean she’s your date?! G-Go out with you again? W-What about us?”

Jonghyun sighs heavily. “M-Minho. There’s no us! There can’t be a us! I can’t just be your side piece, your mistress. And Taemin deserves better. You know that.”

Minho feels his heart deflate in his chest. “S-So w-what? You’re giving up on me? Are you going to act like it’s all my fault! Like I was cheating on Taemin by myself?!” He says angrily.

Jonghyun looks visibly hurt by his words. “I will not be complicit in that anymore. I-I’m done Minho. I don’t feel good about myself knowing I’m ruining someone else’s relationship.”

“I-It’s not a relationship anymore. T-Taemin…h-he knows.”

Jonghyun raises an eyebrow. “He knows?”

“Y-Yeah. He knows…It’s not a thing anymore.”

“So, you came clean to him? You told him everything?”

Minho doesn’t answer.

Jonghyun scoffs. “…I…I can’t do this anymore Minho. Even if you had ended things with Taemin, I would’ve still felt like shit about it. I c-can’t have that on my conscience more than it already is. I-I’m going back to Taeyeon. At the very least, I deserve someone that’ll be with just me.” He wipes away the tears gathered in the corners of his eyes before heading back into the club.

Minho feels numb as his car drives him home. Cause surely, he isn’t driving, not when he feels like his heart’s been stepped on and his mind is playing a loop of Jonghyun’s retreating form. He makes the short trek from the parking lot to his apartment building and gets in the elevator. It takes severe willpower to not knock on Kibum’s door and go to him for comfort like he’s done so many times in the past. Instead he opens the door to his apartment and sees Taemin sitting on his couch.

“Hey,” Taemin says.

Minho wipes his hand over his face, trying to remove evidence of tear tracks and heartache.

“W-What are you doing here Tae. How’d you get in?”

Taemin shakes his head with a mirthless laugh. “You gave me a key, awhile ago.”

Minho crosses over to the kitchen to pour himself a much-needed drink. “Oh…yeah right.” He takes a swig of the amber liquid, feeling uncomfortable as the silence grows thick between them.

“So-“ Taemin starts.

“I-I’ve been cheating on you with Jonghyun,” Minho blurts in one breath.

Taemin closes his mouth.

He doesn’t know what he expects from Taemin. Shock? Sadness? Anger? Rather, Taemin looks as if he knows.

“I know,” Taemin says after a few minutes. “I’ve known since Christmas.”

Minho rests down his glass. “…Oh.”

“I eavesdropped on you and your hyung’s conversation. So, yeah I knew.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I wanted to pretend like it wasn’t true. But then it became too apparent to ignore. The way you’d disappear for hours on end, refuse to have sex with me, the marks I didn’t give you, the matching thumb rings,” Taemin scoffs. “Your face would light up every time you saw Jonghyun. It was obvious from the beginning that something was going on between you two and I didn’t want to believe it.”

Minho fidgets uncomfortably. “…Why tell me this now?”

“Because Jonghyun told me everything. Said he felt like such a huge asshole for getting between you and me.”

Minho swallows. No wonder Jonghyun knew he was lying when he said his relationship with Taemin was no more. “Are you upset with him? Please don’t be it’s not his fault.”

Taemin laughs. “Fuck, I just admitted that I know you’ve been cheating on me and still your only concern is Jonghyun. Wow Minho. I didn’t have a chance, did I?”

Minho frowns.

“The moment Jonghyun moved back here. I-It was all over for us wasn’t it?”

Minho can’t bring himself to answer that question. “I…I didn’t want to hurt you Taemin. I-“

“Bullshit. Don’t you think getting cheated on would hurt me more than you just being fucking upfront with me from the beginning?” Taemin asks. “You’re a selfish asshole. You only cared about what you wanted. You didn’t give a shit about my feelings and you got Jonghyun in the middle of it too. And you did hurt me, no matter how much you claim you didn’t want to, you hurt me. You hurt me so fucking much.”

“T-Tae I-I…”

“And I don’t think anything you say can erase that hurt.”

Minho swallows heavily, feeling like anything he says won’t have an effect. “I-I’m sorry,” he offers weakly.

Taemin shakes his head before exiting the apartment with a duffel bag filled with presumably his things.

Minho downs the rest of his alcohol and sinks to the floor.

Minho finds himself sinking into something akin to depression. He still manages to go to his classes, to put on his usually happy act while around his teammates – but when he’s home alone in his apartment he feels himself growing empty, looking at old pictures of him and Jonghyun and deleting the ones of Taemin out of pure guilt. His attempts to contact Jonghyun are futile. The man doesn’t reply to his texts or answers his calls – arriving to the point where Minho’s convinced his number is blocked. Minho doesn’t know what he could possibly say if he ever approached him in person. Kibum avoids him as well, effectively ignoring him whenever they wind up in the elevator together and by foregoing their previous spots.

He shows up to Jinki’s shop one day, attempting to find solace in one member of their squad not directly involved in the drama – but the man looks visibly pained talking to him.

“Kibum told me what happened. He told me not to be friends with you anymore.”

“So, you’re going to cut me off too?” Minho asks, sounding incredibly hurt.

Jinki gives him a look of pity. “I’m sorry Minho. Kibum and Taemin are two of my closest friends and what you did really hurt them both. I c-can’t hang out with you.”

Minho gets his food to go.

“What did I tell you,” Minseok says over a glass of beer.

Minho groans, not interested in being lectured by his older brother.

“I said, you needed to come clean before shit hit the fan. But you didn’t listen and now look. Shit hit the fan.”

Minho sighs heavily.

“How long has it been?” his brother asks.

“T-Three months,” Minho says under his breath.

“And you’re still this fucked up over it? Shit.”

Minho takes a sip of his drink. “It’s not that fucking easy to forget about hyung. J-Jonghyun, he…h-he was my everything,” Minho’s eyes grow misty.

Minseok sighs. “Maybe you should try talking to someone else. Go out there, get laid. Forget about it for a while.”

Minho shakes his head. “I don’t want to. I only want Jonghyun.” Minho stares down at his lock screen, a picture of him and Jonghyun sitting on the elder’s couch with their faces smushed together.

Minseok peers over Minho’s shoulder and groans. “Well you’re not going to get over him if you stare at his picture every day. Change your fucking lock screen and delete those pictures. Besides, you know it’s really fucked up how you don’t mention Taemin when he was the one you were actually dating.”

Minho pushes his phone back into his pocket, feeling the alcohol begin to catch up with him. “T-Tae hates me. S-Said I’m an asshole, w-which I am,” Minho slurs. “B-But Jjong and I…W-We were so r-real.”

“Woah there,” Minseok says. He takes Minho’s glass away from him. “Enough drinking for you.”

His brother drops him home, making sure he makes it safely into his apartment before leaving with the promise to check on him tomorrow.

Minho stares up at the ceiling of his apartment for the longest. The spin of the ceiling fan keeps his drunk mind entertained for the longest. After a while, he grabs his phone and opens up Taemin’s contact information. He starts typing a text but finds himself squinting at the keys, unable to type properly. He settles for a voice note instead.

“H-Hey Taemin. I-It’s me, Minho. I’m kinda d-drunk right now and yeah, I wanted to r-reach out to you for the l-longest but I didn’t k-know what to say. B-But maybe my t-thoughts will come to me e-easier right now. A-Are you doing well? I saw that y-you and Jongin went to L.A on your socials. I hope things are going great, I always believed in your potential.” Minho sighs. “I-I’m stalling cause I want to avoid talking about s-serious things. But I do really wish you all the best with your career. You’ve worked so hard. I’ve always liked that about you. N-No matter what you may think, I always genuinely cared about you Taemin. You were my first real relationship, y-you were literally my first and I’m glad that I was able to experience t-that with you. I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to love you as fully as you deserved. J-Jonghyun held a piece of my heart from we were kids and I didn’t realize that until it was too late to act on it. I-It was never my plan to start seeing him when he came back home. I-It just sort of happened. I k-know that’s not an excuse. But it was never my intention to hurt you as much as I did. But I understand that I did hurt you, I hurt you a lot. A-And I’m sorry Tae. So s-sorry. It tears me up inside knowing that I hurt you that much. I hope one day you c-can find it in your heart to forgive me. It doesn’t have to be now or even a year from now…b-but just someday.”

Minho sends the voice note and then hovers over Jonghyun’s number. He presses call but immediately ends it when the phone starts ringing. He sighs and chucks his phone elsewhere on the couch, not knowing what he could possibly say to Jonghyun at this point.

A few months later, Minho finds himself finally taking his brother’s advice. His phone background has been changed to a photo of a palm tree and he’s sitting across from Jihan on their third date.

“You know, I never thought you were interested.”

He isn’t – well not entirely. Jihan’s a handsome guy and they get along well, but Minho would be lying if he said he was truly vested.

He chuckles slightly. “Well. You’re handsome. You know that.”

“It’s different knowing that you find me handsome though,” Jihan says with a smirk.

Minho waves him off with a smile and finishes up his meal.

After their date Jihan asks if Minho would like to come over to his place and he reluctantly agrees.

Jihan’s apartment is a one-bedroom, very small and tidy – but Minho can’t help feeling uncomfortable as they sit on the loveseat with drinks in hand. After small talk about soccer and the conclusion of the semester, Jihan leans forward for a kiss. It’s not their first time kissing each other – Minho had given him a short peck on their second date – but it does feel strange. At this point, Minho is practically starved for human contact, but kissing Jihan doesn’t make him feel anything. When the other man presses a hand on Minho’s chest and attempts to deepen the kiss, Minho pulls away.

“F-Fuck, I’m sorry,” he says, knocking over one of their bottles in his haste to get as far away from the man as possible. “I c-can’t do this. I thought I could, I thought I was ready, but, I…fuck!” Minho grabs his wallet and keys and scrambles up. “I have to go,” he says before fleeing from the other’s apartment.

He gets in his car and drives straight to Jonghyun’s apartment, jolted by the realization that his love for the other has not ceased at all in the six months they’ve been apart.

Minho knocks on the door loudly, asking out loud for Jonghyun to answer it.

When he finally does answer the door, Minho meets pink hair where there had previously been silver.

“M-Minho?” Jonghyun says in surprise.

“P-Please don’t shut the door on me and hear m-me out please,” he begs. “I just went on a date,” Minho says. He inhales deeply. “I went on a d-date and I t-thought it’d been long enough. I thought I was ready. I mean we only spent two months together. Two g-glorious and unforgettable months and here I am six months later freaking out because someone t-tried to kiss me.”

Jonghyun looks at him with eyes of concern mixed with pity.

“B-But I can’t move on because I still love you. I love you so fucking much hyung. I-I’m sorry I didn’t do right by you. I wanted you s-so bad but I wasn’t even the boyfriend you deserved. I had you as my s-secret on the side and I’ll always regret that. I love you and I want to treat you like the boyfriend you deserve to be treated. I w-wanna scream your name from rooftops and let everyone know how much I adore you. B-But I ruined that chance and I-I’m sorry. You’ve probably moved on. I j-just, I h-hope you can forgive m-me. I hope you haven’t spent the last six months h-hating my guts.”

Jonghyun stares up at Minho for the longest. “M-Minho-“

“I-I’ll just go hyung,” Minho says softly. “Thanks for hearing me out.”

He scrambles away from Jonghyun’s apartment as quickly as he had arrived. He drives home, texts Jihan a lengthy apology and passes out on his couch.

When Minho finally wakes up the next morning, he sees a text from Jonghyun.

Text from Jonghyunnie♥♥♥, 9 hours ago:

Meet me at the café today, at 3.

Minho isn’t sure what to expect as he taps his foot anxiously under the table. He’s sitting in the same seat he’d sat in last year when he and Jonghyun had made promises to catch up and give being best friends another go. It feels odd, knowing that it’s almost a year since that happened. They’ve spent more time apart than they have together since Jonghyun’s return.

Jonghyun saunters in at just seven minutes past three and sits down across from Minho.

“H-Hi,” Minho says quietly.

“Hi,” Jonghyun says.

“Why did you ask me he-“

Jonghyun cuts Minho off by motioning a waiter over to their table. He orders a lemonade and a sandwich for himself. Minho orders a water, too nervous to consume anything else. The waiter writes down their orders, promising to be back shortly before leaving to tend to another table.

“So,” Jonghyun begins. “Taemin told me he got a voice message from you.”

Minho furrows his brows, utterly confused at the notion of Taemin keeping in contact with Jonghyun. “O-Oh. Um, yeah. That happened a few months back. I didn’t think he listened to it. He never responded.”

“He messaged me instead,” Jonghyun says. “He doesn’t hold any resentment towards you anymore and he gave me his blessing to date you.”

“Oh? Oh. Um…”

“I had to think about it for a while,” Jonghyun continues. “Actually, it made me feel even worse. That he could be so forgiving. Neither of us deserve that. I-“ Jonghyun pauses while their waiter rests down their drinks. He gives her a small smile after she promises to be back with his food soon.

“I dated too,” Jonghyun resumes. “Taeyeon and I went out a few times. We even fooled around once.”

Minho swallows in attempts to stifle the burning jealousy coursing through him.

“She was really pretty and such a sweet person. But my heart wasn’t in it either. I couldn’t give myself to her fully. I’ve spent the last few months writing sad songs about relationships that can’t seem to work out for whatever reason.” He sips at his lemonade. “I guess what I’m trying to say is I still feel like shit about what we did…but I still love you and despite all the time that’s passed it hasn’t gotten any easier not having you in my life.”

Minho takes a deep breath, feeling like it’s the first one he’s taken since he sat down in this café.

“I love you too. I l-love you so much hyung.” He reaches for Jonghyun’s hand across the table.

Jonghyun holds onto Minho’s hand tightly. “B-But I don’t think we can just go back to the way things were before.”

Minho frowns at him, slowly pulling his hand away. “Oh?”

Jonghyun snatches his hand back and laces their fingers together. “You could at least court me first.”

Courting Jonghyun proves to be an easy task. With his years of knowledge of the shorter man’s preferences, it’s not difficult to plan dates that the other will like or perform gestures that are guaranteed to make the other swoon.

With the older man’s advice, Minho manages to pick out an excellent gift for Kibum’s birthday. A pricey bracelet accompanied with a letter apologizing for all his wrongdoings.

It takes a while, but Kibum eventually returns to his post as Minho’s best friend.

“I mean I guess I should have known,” Kibum says over a glass of wine.

He’s currently sporting a buzzcut with patches dyed a bunch of different colours. Minho thinks it looks ridiculous but Kibum swears it’s the height of style.

“You were way too sad when Jonghyun-hyung wanted nothing to do with you and then way too excited when he came around. I had my suspicions all along.”

Minho snorts. “Yeah well-“

“And then the disappearing acts. So obvious. But you had to top it all off with the matching rings.”

Minho sighs heavily, not wanting this reminder of his wrongful actions – but unable to blame Kibum nonetheless.

“It’s a good thing Taemin has moved on, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now,” Kibum says as he takes another sip of his wine.

Minho hasn’t spoken to Taemin, it seems as though there was a silent agreement that they would keep their distance. However according to his Instagram and updates from Kibum, he’s currently dating a girl named Seulgi.

“I-I’m so sorry again Bum-“

“Yeah yeah, I know,” Kibum cuts him off. “So back to Jonghyun. Things back to what they were?”

Minho shakes his head. “We’re taking it a little slow. He doesn’t want to be called my boyfriend just yet. We haven’t been sleeping together either.”

“Oh? And you’re fine with that.”

Minho nods. “I’m just happy I get to be in his presence.”

Jonghyun does eventually come around.

Minho takes him on a trip to the Hallasan Mountain and Jonghyun agrees to be his boyfriend – properly this time – right before he dumps snow down Minho’s jacket.

The revelation of their relationship does not come as a surprise to either of their families. Mrs. Kim and Mrs. Choi look at each other knowingly when the two boys admit to their relationship, commenting that they’d had their suspicions all along but thought that they’d let them figure it out on their own without any pressure. Minho’s father doesn’t comment, but he does smile at the couple fondly a few times over the course of the shared dinner.

“Even though he doesn’t deserve it after the shit he pulled,” Minseok teases. “I’m glad you decided to give Minho another chance Jonghyun. He really cares about you.”

Jonghyun nods with a shy smile.

“But, if he ever pulls any shady business again, I’d be happy to kick his ass for you.”

Jonghyun laughs heartily at that. “I will definitely keep that in mind hyung.”

It’s amazing when you find true love and all your needs satisfied by merely being in their presence. Minho never thought it was possible, but he and Jonghyun have made it official for a month now and he hasn’t felt the urge to ask the man for sex. He misses it, he wants it, but he’s also perfectly content simply curled up on his couch together with the shorter man.

“Hey Minho,” Jonghyun looks up at Minho after noticing him drifting off into his own thoughts.

Minho looks down at him, smiling as he sees the ring fit snugly around Jonghyun’s thumb. “Yeah baby?”

Jonghyun presses a warm kiss to his mouth, before shifting on Minho’s lap so that he’s straddling Minho’s waist. He kisses Minho deeply, hands rubbing all over Minho’s warm skin.

“I-Is this okay?” Jonghyun asks breathlessly. “D-Do you want to?”

Minho nods, unable to find the words.

They move into Minho’s bed. The lights are off, making it difficult to see each other. But Minho finds that he doesn’t need to see the other man to know what expression he’s making. He doesn’t need to see him to please him.

They take things slow, thoroughly exploring each other’s bodies. Minho works his mouth over the entire expanse of Jonghyun’s skin, like it’s the first time he’s ever gotten a taste.

“Shit, you’re killing m-me,” Jonghyun whimpers as Minho’s tongue works over his most intimate spot. Minho doesn’t have much experience doing this but from the sounds Jonghyun’s making, he’s certain it’ll make its way into their routine.

Minho whimpers as he interlocks their fingers above Jonghyun’s head, rocking into him at a slow pace. It feels so good, being able to express his love in such a raw and passionate way. He peppers kisses all over Jonghyun’s face while he moves inside of him. “I l-love you,” he repeats over and over like a mantra.

Jonghyun cums first with his legs tightening around Minho’s waist while his voice reaches pitches Minho’s only ever heard in song. Minho follows soon after, unable to contain himself after feeling the way Jonghyun tightened around him.

Minho can’t see it, but he feels the love and adoration pouring into him from Jonghyun.

“G-God I love you. I wanna spend the rest of my days with you. I wanna write sappy love songs that I’m too embarrassed to play for you and be in the bleachers for every one of your soccer games. And I fucking hate sports. I-“

Minho lets out a breathless laugh before shutting Jonghyun up with a kiss. “I k-know hyung. I k-know. I-I’m sorry it took so long for us to be t-together like this. Y-You know I feel the same. I’ve felt this f-for such a long time. I w-would have waited years for you if I had to.”

Jonghyun kisses Minho deeply and Minho knows that now that he has him fully, he will never let him go.

“So,” Minho starts.

“So,” Jonghyun echoes.

“T-This is awkward,” Minho says apologetically.

“Only if you make it awkward hyung,” Taemin quips.

They’re gathered in a small restaurant – Minho and Jonghyun sitting across from Taemin and his girlfriend Seulgi. Seulgi is even more beautiful in person and has an addicting laugh. Minho can see why Taemin is attracted to her. She and Jonghyun seem to get along well, sharing conversations about books and music throughout the dinner. Minho finds it hard to talk to her, considering he doesn’t know just how much of his and Taemin’s past the girl actually knows.

Minho clears his throat. “I’m sorry. It’s hard for it not to be awkward?” His words come out sounding like a question rather than a statement.

“There’s no hard feelings hyung. You and Jonghyun-hyung are back together and I’ve moved on. I just wanted to meet up with you guys so it wouldn’t be uncomfortable in the future.”

“I’m really sorry again,” Jonghyun says. “Truly.”

“I know,” Taemin replies. “I was never upset with you Jonghyun-hyung. You, on the other hand,” he looks at Minho.

Minho looks away, embarrassed.

“Well…we can let a dead thing stay dead.”

Jonghyun rests a comforting hand on Minho’s knee. “So…Are you moving back to Seoul?” Jonghyun asks in attempts to change the conversation.

“Oh no, we’re only visiting,” Taemin says. “There’s still a lot more of the world I wanna see.”

Minho nods, knowing that Taemin had ambitions that could not be confined to South Korea.

“I know you’ll do well,” Minho says quietly.

Taemin gives him a small smile.

After dinner they decide to go to a karaoke bar. Jongin shows up halfway through the night along with his girlfriend. Jinki joins them later followed by Kibum and his new boyfriend Donghyun.

“Are you okay?” Jonghyun asks Minho when he sits down after belting out a TVXQ song. “You don’t look like you’re having a good time.”

Minho’s the only one who hasn’t sang tonight.

“I-It just feels…weird,” Minho confesses. “Being around everyone like this. It almost feels normal. But I still feel like an asshole for what I did. And everyone knows.”

Jonghyun rubs his hand gently. “Why don’t you talk to him…alone.”

Minho chews on his lip nervously. “You’d be okay with that? After everything?”

“Of course. I trust you Minho. I know you’re not that person.”

Spurred on by Jonghyun’s declaration of trust, Minho approaches Taemin and asks if he can talk to him alone.

“You look happy,” Minho tells him as they stand out on the balcony of the establishment. “Is it real or is it just for show?”

Taemin scoffs. “Over a year later and you expect me to still be crying over you?”

“N-No that’s not what I meant, it’s just-“

“Calm down. I’m just fucking with you,” Taemin says. “I am happy. Genuinely. I love Seulgi and entering a partnership with Jongin was the best decision I made career wise. I have lots to be happy about.”

Love. Minho can’t recall ever saying that word to Taemin and really meaning it. “You love her?”

Taemin nods. “Yeah, I do.”

He says it with so much conviction. “That’s good. I’m really happy for you Tae.”

Taemin hums. “I don’t have to ask if you’re happy. It’s so apparent with the way you look at Jonghyun. It’s almost disgusting.” He takes a sip of his beer.

“Does that bother you?”

“At first it did. I spent so many nights wondering why you would look at him like that, and not me. But it doesn’t bother me anymore. I can see now that the love we had for each other or at least thought we had doesn’t compare to the real thing. You know? I still care about you. I always will. But I’m not in love with you.”

Minho nods, not at all hurt by those words – rather feeling a sense of peace that Taemin has been able to move on.

“I’ll always care about you. I know I was drunk in the voice memo, but I meant everything I said. I know we probably won’t ever be friends again, but I just want you to be happy and to take good care of yourself.”

Taemin gives him a small smile. “I will.”

Minho pulls the younger man in for a hug. “Thank you Taemin.”

Taemin hugs him back. “For what?”

“For forgiving me. That means more to me than you know.”

Taemin pulls back. “I know you’re not a bad guy Minho. I never thought you were. You let your heart get the best of you. It also sucks cause Jonghyun-hyung is so hard to hate. He’s really sexy too-“

“Hey, are you trying to make the moves on my man?” Minho teases.

Taemin laughs with him.

“There you guys are,” Kibum says as he joins them on the balcony. “Come back to the room, we’ve only got 10 minutes left and Minho has yet to sing a song.”

Minho shakes his head as he and Taemin are both pulled along by Kibum.

He sings a song that he thinks both Jonghyun and Taemin will enjoy.

“Hey Min…”

“Hmm?”

They’re lying in their shared bed, huddled under the covers for warmth, with Jonghyun’s unbelievably cold toes tickling Minho’s ankles. It’s late December, with Christmas right around the corner. They both want to make the most of their first Christmas living together in their own home.

“What do you think about getting married?”

Minho pitches up at that, rolling over on top of Jonghyun so he can look at the other clearly.

“What did you just say?”

Jonghyun averts his eyes, suddenly feeling shy under Minho’s intense gaze. “I-I’m asking you to marry me.”

“N-no Jjong why…”

Jonghyun visibly deflates. “You don’t want to get married?” His eyes well up a little bit.

“No no Jonghyun, of course I do baby,” Minho chuckles at how easily emotional his boyfriend can get. He squishes Jonghyun’s cheeks together. “Idiot. Of course I do. But you ruined my surprise.” Minho sighs and rolls over to his original position.

Jonghyun sniffles. “Surprise?”

“I was gonna propose to you next spring. I had this big thing planned. I was gonna take you out to a nice hotel for the weekend, one with a view of the beach. And on our last night, I would lead you to the balcony of our room and you’d look down at the beach and there would be ‘Will you marry me Jjong’ in big letters in the sand.”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course I am hyung! I was gonna book the reservations this week.”

Jonghyun chuckles and then presses a kiss to Minho’s pouting lips. “You’re so cheesy.”

“Shut up, you would’ve cried if I did.”

He kisses Minho again. “Maybe…But still, will you though? Will you marry me?”

Minho grumbles. “Of course I will,” he pulls Jonghyun against his chest. The shorter man sighs in contentment as he wraps his arms around Minho’s waist.

“We should start planning the wedding. Maybe a beach wedding so your fantasy will be fulfilled.”

Minho smiles, and laces his fingers with Jonghyun’s. “Yeah? And after we’re married what are we gonna do next? Adopt some kids?”

“Ooh ooh, two boys and a girl. Or two girls and a boy. We can start a cute little family.”

“The cutest little family.”

Jonghyun grins and kisses Minho’s chin. The latter’s cheeks hurt from smiling at the idea of marrying his best friend and starting a family with him. And it would be the best family ever. They’d love and nurture their children just as much as they love and care for each other. And their lives will forever be filled with constant happiness.

Jonghyun yawns and snuggles more into Minho’s embrace.

“I love you Frogho.”

“I love you more Dinoboy.”

The End.

#im still alive...who would've thought #finishing a fic from 6 years ago...classic #jongho #shinee

4 notes · View notes

yellow-beacon · 5 years

Text

Had a sudden burst of insperation so here goes nothing, please tell me what you think,

*Felix Lee/fem!Reader

*Words: 1439

---

“Felix Lee. Dancer. Rapper. Singer. Owner of the sweetest smile in the entire world. Owner of the deepest voice in the entire world. Owner of-”

I doubled over and burst out in laughter. The A5 paper was crinkled up after being folded too many times and the look on Felix face when he started to read from it was just priceless.

“What’s this? You told me you were going to help me with my resumé”

The thick Aussie accent rolled off his tongue like smoke after you’ve put out a candle and I smiled softly while exhaling a slight snort through my nose in the chilly August wind. It had been raining all day and the humidity, which was usually still warm at this time a year, turned the air around us cold instead. It was close to 10:30 pm and the moon was up, joined by the stars that twinkled on the darkening sky. We were outside, sitting on a picnic table at an empty gas station, halfway between my day job and his campus. Best friends for eight years. Known each other for another 11 and now here we sat, with my scribbled notes on a paper I ripped out from a notebook that I’d found in a shoebox in the furthest part of my closet. The notebook was old, and the paper that now threatened to be folded up for probably the 8th time had a coffee spot on it but Felix didn’t seem to notice. He just looked so incredibly done that I stifled another giggle behind my hand. He tried, he really did but the smile he constantly wanted to chase away still tugged on his lips as I hit his arm playfully.

“Continue” I asked and hid my mouth behind a sweater paw when Felix eyes traced the next sentence and read it silently before he looked up and met my eyes again, lips pressed into a thin line.

“Owner of the best Aussie accent ever. Best friend. A baby” He gave me a look from underneath furrowed brows, “I’m not a baby” He added and though the dark voice of his was a sign that maybe it wasn’t as true as I tried to make it. It was the only sign. The rest of him, from the slight puffiness in his cheeks, the cute crooked teeth, the unstyled ruffled hair - all screamed baby. Even though said puffiness had started to disappear more and more the last few months since he had started to work out more and the unstyled hair was coloured a nice liliac that made him look older and more fashion forward than ever.

I reached out, still, and placed both my hands on each side of his cheeks, puffed them up and said in my cutest voice.

“Oh but you are, you’re the cutest baby ever”

He frowned, but didn’t try to escape the place between my open hands. He was taller than me, if only a few centimeters and constantly tried to use that against me but it didn’t stop the teasing or the way I played with the fact that he could grow until he was as tall as a giant and I would still be older.

“I’m not a child anymore noona. I'll go to university soon” He muttered, still frowning and still with his cheeks puffed up.

I let him go, frowning to myself when I was reminded of the fact that this had been our last summer.

In just a month, the sweet, cute boy that I’d never spend more than 2 miles away from, would travel across the world to pursue his dream. A professional, in more fields than one and I would be left were I was in the town we grew up in, surrounded by coffee beans and the heavy smell of sweets and pastries.

“I’ll be ok” He said, as if he read my thoughts, like countless other times. I must’ve frowned harder than I thought as I got lost in thought. He met my eyes and god damn… I was going to miss those eyes, and that cute little smile.

“I’ll be ok” He reassured again and the hand that suddenly held mine was warm, despite the cold wind biting through our way too light clothes.

“I know” I answered shortly and he squeezed my hand in response.

The smile on his lips as warm as his hand. Eyes turning into small cresends and I couldn’t help but smile back.

“Besides you have Chan to keep you company until I get back, right?” He said and I rolled my eyes.

Chan was my boyfriend since a few years back. We’d met through Felix when I came with him to one of his practises with the group he danced with and sorta clicked from the get go. Bonded with our passion for writing, expression and need for adventure, the thrill of life and what it could offer. I loved him. I really did. Even though Felix insisted that I only fell for him because Chan was a more polished and older version of himself. With the same passion for music, art and expression. Not to mention that same deep Aussie accent and I had insisted that it wasn’t the case because I did not even wanted to ever imagine someone like him being my boyfriend. Because I’d known him for his entire life. Known him even before he was born, with my tiny preschool hand pressed flat against his mother’s round belly. Looking up at her with surprised innocent eyes as the baby inside kicked against the palm of my hand at the same moment the church bells rang to collect everyone for sermon. Our parents were friends since long, long before they had children. Going to the same school when they were young and then the same church when they moved into the same neighbourhood. Inviting each other to celebrate the holidays and I couldn’t remember a Saturday where we didn’t eat dinner together, at my family home one day and his the next, rolling on a schedule that continued for years. I was the oldest of our siblings and though I was best friends with his older sister for the most parts of our childhood, I’d never denied him if he wanted to play with us. When he was rounding the age of nine, I often babysat him and his little sister and during the following years, even though almost half a decade separated us in age, I started to hang out with him more and more. His sister unfortunately decided to hang out with the wrong people and even though time had healed the wounds we inflicted upon each other back then since we’ve both become adults, I still prefer the company of her little brother. Call it his humor, or his boyish nature, or the fact that anything he touched seemed to turn into gold the older he got - from the way he seemingly learned to dance over a night, to the way the music came to him just as naturally and I felt left behind for the first time in our life. I knew how to make a perfect cup of coffee. I could make art with steamed milk and espresso that left most people impressed but what was that compared to have people turn their heads, not because you, yourself was impressive but because the person walking beside you looked god sent.

I huffed and buried my chin deeper into the hoodie I was wearing.

“Do you want to go back?” Felix asked and the sound of his voice brought me back.

I nodded, slightly flushed from embarrassment because I’d probably been starting out into the darkness that surrounded the gas station for a few minutes too long. We jumped into my old silver coloured Volkswagen Beetle and Felix placed his arms around himself in a self hug as I started the ignition and turned up the heat on the AC to full.

“You need to get a new car” He said, like he’d done pretty much every time we’d driven in it in the past one and a half year.

“Buy me a new one when you get famous and it’s a deal” I replied, like I’d done every time he stated those exact words.

He smiled again and I smiled back, his hand on mine as it rested on the manual gear and my heart broke in two again as I remember that I had to hold onto these kinds of memories because soon, the passenger seat next to me would be empty.

#stray kids #stray kids felix #felix lee #literally wrote this in 30 min #beta read once #sorry for the grammar mistakes #felix/reader

3 notes · View notes

kheta · 5 years

Text

The One Where Kuroko Died

Hiiii! So I have a ton of fics I’m probably never gonna finish and I’m sick of them taking up space in my notes/drafts/drive so I’m just gonna dump em here! Expect to see more if you care about my writing lol. Here’s the first one. Drug-use reference and semi-explicit depictions of death mentioned, jsyk.

Kagami was angry. Blind, hot anger spreading through his veins like venom injected into his body.

The ball he'd bounced in his fingers slipped from his grip as he looked at the new comer.

Blue hit his vision, the colours of the sky and all Kagami heard was a whispered "I'm going to fly, Kagami-kun."

The damningly sweet voice had plagued his life since that summer before the first year of high-school. Since that horrifying night Kagami's already iffy mental-stability had crashed and burned violently.

Before right now, Winter-Cup third round preliminaries, he'd been fortunate enough to have not met any of the Miracles. He'd skipped out on basketball last year, too damaged from that night on the Tokyo bridge; Midorima was sick during the second round preliminaries and they hadn't fought him. Kise and Akashi were in different brackets and Murasakibara's group already in the quarterfinals due to their first placing during the Interhigh. He hadn't known what was to happen as he'd met them, didn't know to expect the anger and guilt and blame and vindication he felt.

"I'm going to fly, Kagami-kun."

The voice had lessened in the past few months, with Ogiwara and Kiyoshi having managed to get him to play basketball again. But here, with one of them on the court the voice ravaged him.

Seirin didn't matter, Winter-Cup didn't matter, because all he wanted to do was punch Aomine. To his side, Ogiwara had tensed. Kagami wondered briefly how he managed to control himself from hurting these guys this past year and a half, since Kagami couldn't even last the five minutes since Aomine had entered the game.

"I'm going to fly, Kagami-kun."

Kuroko's voice was stuck in Kagami's head and he hated it. Even after all these months, Kagami was still traumatised by that horrible night. Kagami could still remember the wild glint in Kuroko's eye from some drug he'd been slipped, the hysterical note in his laughter and the look of his body sinking deeper into the ocean, Kagami's fingers feeling the ghost of his clothing.

Growling, Kagami kicked a chair over, body about to tear Touo's ace to pieces. Only Ogiwara held him in place, his eyes hateful and angry.

"You have no right to screw this up Kagami, you cost us this game and I will kill you. "

Everyone's eyes widened, Ogiwara spoke very rarely, his joyful expressions answering most questions. His lengthy and crude threat was a surprise to everyone, even the seniors who had long suspected the animosity Ogiwara felt towards the Generation of Miracles.

"How the fuck can you stand looking at the motherfucker when he didn't go? None of those fuckers cared about Kuroko, but you're letting them off scot free, when they get to live and he doesn't! That's bullshit."

Before them a referee stands, prepped to stop any argument, but the words of death left him unable to move. Feeling suddenly awkward, the ref allows the team to continue their talk, in spite of the rapidly approaching end to the third quarter break.

"Kagami you don't know them, I don't know them. And I'm not letting your teenage angst ruin this game, Kuroko wouldn't want a fight started for him, but he would have wanted us to fight for him, with basketball."

To emphasise his words, Ogiwara throws the practice ball to Kagami's unsteady palms. A whine leaves his throat and he can still only see blue. With tears biting his eyes, he throws the ball down and sits at the bench, he couldn't play their last quarter like this.

Twenty minutes in, 107-98, Kagami finally calms down and subs out Tsuchida-senpai. He fouls left, right and centre, his game wild and untamed and angry. He scores fifteen points in the last half of the last quarter and glares coldly down at Aomine when the buzzer sounds. Ogiwara lays a hand on his shoulder but with the game finished, Kagami can no longer hold his anger back, not when Aomine's intrigued smile made Kuroko's voice stream in his head endlessly.

Without really thinking Kagami slams Aomine against the court, both their teams rushing forward to placate the roaring teen. Ogiwara can't move, not when he didn't understand. Sure, Kuroko was his best friend, but Kagami was the one with him in his last moments. Kagami was the one who couldn't stop Kuroko in the end, he might not have known Kuroko from a bar of soap, but their one and only meeting had ripped Kagami's life apart. Ogiwara had no right to interfere now.

"What the hell? What is your problem?" Aomine's smile had morphed into rage.

"Where the fuck were you!?" Kagami screamed suddenly, his voice loud even with the cacophony behind them.

Aomine has no time to answer before Kagami lays a knuckle bruising punch to the floor beside his face.

"Weren't you his friend? His partner? Didn't you feel anything when he died!? Where the fuck were you Miracles that night? Why weren't you with him? Why couldn't you stop him? Why couldn't I? Why couldn't he have fucking flied?"

Kagami's questions are hollow, yet loud. Aomine continues to stare in growing confusion.

"Get the hell off me you psycho, I don't know what you're on about but you'll regret it if you don't let me go soon."

A scream, scary and shrill sounds from Kagami and this time he aims properly, fist meeting Aomine's flesh. Kiyoshi, Izuki and Hyuga rip him off Aomine before more damage could be done.

"I'm going to fly, Kagami-kun. I'm going to fly, Kagami-kun. I'm going to fly, Kagami-kun."

The words kept ringing until finally Ogiwara's voice broke through the hazy anger, leaving a torrent of confusion.

"They don't know Kagami," red eyes meet amber in disbelief, but his eyes are honest,"None of them know, I was in the exact same position with Kise last year, none of them even realised he's dead."

The crowd quiet somewhat as Kagami falls limp, processing this information and suddenly tears of frustration fall down his face.

"I've been having nightmares for a year and eight months, I've had anxiety attacks, I can't even cross a bridge or swim without panicking and- they don't even fucking know."

His voice is hushed and broken, angry and from behind the crowd Momoi steps forward. Not to help Aomine like expected, but to listen closely to what Kagami was saying because a very sickening picture was forming in her head.

She'd heard Miracles and dead and partners and friends. The chances were slim but she kept thinking it had been two years since Tetsu-kun had talked with her. Kept remembering that his name wasn't on any of the Japanese Basketball teams and that Ogiwara had started a fight with Kise last year and no one was sure why, just that he kept screaming "you have no right to say his name. "

Kagami looks up and confirms her worst fears.

"I've had Kuroko's dead figure haunting my dreams and these fuckers don't know!? Their supposed friend died right before my fucking eyes and the only ones in this whole goddamn tournament who know are me and you!?"

Momoi falls and even in his surprised stupor Aomine manages to catch her.

"Tetsu-kun...Is dead? You're lying. You have to be lying." She refuses to believe it, murmur low. Suddenly the pieces Aomine had been struggling to fit together connected.

"Is this some fucked up joke? We mess around with your teams scores in Middle School so you think saying Tetsu is dead is an appropriate joke!" Aomine looks to Ogiwara in unadulterated fury.

Kagami, unable to handle the overload of emotions scrambles to his teams bench, everyone's eyes on him. Touo and Seirin are left so utterly confused and the officials and spectators who'd jumped down to see the fuss look around awkwardly. None of this seemed appropriate right now.

Ogiwara clenches his fist and looks down with cold disregard at Aomine.

"You know, his parents tried ringing you guys before they buried him. They called your cells and your home phones, no one answered. All of twenty people were at his funeral, his family, Kagami and I, my family and two guys we knew as kids. Kuroko died and you bastards, people he told me were some of his favourite people, didn't even bother finding out whether or not he was okay, much less whether he was alive. So don't talk as if you care now, not when he's been dead for a year and none of you Kiseki no Sedai shitheads knew that. "

Aomine shakes- arms, legs, head all shaking vigorously. He wouldn't believe it. Kuroko was only seventeen, he couldn't just die. Not like that. Not now, not for atleast seventy more years.

Ogiwara looks at Aomine, eyes sad and desolate. It had been nearly two years, he'd long since given up his anger. He was still bitter and could not associate with the Miracles without being reminded that Kuroko was forever gone, but times had numbed the pain, made it more scar than wound.

#KNB #kuroko no basket #Kuroko no Basuke #fanfiction #prompt-ish #unfinished #trash fic #tw: death #tw: drugs #probably ooc #but do i curr?#nope #honestly don't know where this was going #only know that i couldnt actually kill kuroko off so...#trashed this story

3 notes · View notes

madefate-a · 6 years

Text

i will show you something different from your shadow.

a few moments, over a lifetime.

o1. she sits alone on a chair outside the office. Dad’s voice is muffled but she doesn’t need to know what he’s saying to the principal to understand the point of it all. her hands still throb, and little shadowy constellations of bruises are blooming across over over-small knuckles. she pointedly and determinedly watches her hands when the door opens and Dad comes out and tells her let’s go home. she watches them instead of looking up at the principal, instead of looking at dad in the car, instead of saying a word. dad doesn’t say anything either.

not until they’re back home and he stops in the living room. he could yell at her. he should yell at her. that would be okay -- she just hit someone. again. but then he turns to her and lowers himself to one knee and takes both of her small hands into both of his large ones.

please, Cami, he says. you can’t do this.

it’s so soft and so tired and in that moment she wishes with her whole, whole body that Mom was there to hug him. but she’s not and all Cami can do is give into the burning in the back of her throat. ( her willpower is strong, but she is still only six. ) she cries and it’s so scary and so confusing when she says,

I don’t know how.

o2. but you hate heights, Jaime says.

Cami doesn’t look up from her textbook. it’s not all about heights, she tells him.

literally it’s a school for going to space.

and who do you think gets people into space?

so you’re saying that if they told you to go to space, you’d just say no? and that’d be cool?

he’s starting to sound a little too smug. so Cami reaches over for a piece of her scrap paper, crumples it into a ball, and hits him square in the head without looking up from the page is on. when he squawks, she lets her lips curl into a grin.

they’ll have to listen to me, she says, lighting up when she finally arrives at the answer and scribbles it down. I’ll be the best.

or you can tell them about the time you climbed a tree and got stuck and cried, Jaime says, nursing his forehead.

o3. she hates it. everyone is so stiff and the jacket is so itchy and it’s all yessir, nosir, and she has to learn so much about flying even though she’s never going to really actually fly. every group drill is derailed when she loses altitude and freezes the simulation. one night she slams the door of her dormitory closed, grabs all the covers off her bed, and drags them into her closet. she shuts that door too, fumbles for a moment with her phone until it casts a shaky, strangely piercing light all over her face.

her thumb hovers over Jaime’s name but then she stops and thinks about what it would take to form the words. to say I can’t do this, to say everything sucks, to say I’m failing. Jaime is her friend -- Jaime won’t be mean. she knows this. but the words get stuck in the back of her throat like so much bile and she winds up throwing the phone onto the floor and burying her face in the blankets in her lap and pretending that because it muffles the sound, she’s not really crying.

o4. love, love, love, it’s love. spring is in the air, and it’s brought love. spring might be the death of her. Cami needs to watch the engine but how can she watch the engine when Moira is right there ? with her soft voice and her soft hair and the way she’s so quiet but so steady behind the wheel ? so much better than Cami ever accomplished even after she got herself together and passed her first semester. what a cosmic joke, to make Moira so pretty and nice and then confine Cami in an eight by eight fake cockpit with her.

but when Moira gives the order to fix the wiring, Cami does it. hormones are not going be the reason she’s not the best, thanks. they will, though, cause her to walk right into the door on the way out and play it off like she’d meant to do that -- ha, a paragon of physical comedy.

honestly, the endless void of space is less terrifying than this.

o5. they walk together like they’d been practicing it, even though it’s only been a few runs together, barely a few weeks. even though Iverson levels a look at them that holds the lecture he can’t rattle off when their scores are just that good. and it could sit under her skin, because she knows that it wasn’t just her that’s put them leagues in front of the rest of the class. she knows that in this case, she isn’t the best.

wow, Flyboy, she says, pressing her elbow against Shiro’s side as they make their way to the commissary. the grin at her lips is nothing more than the subtlest pulling to the side and the motion, perhaps, is a little sharper than it could be. I’ve never seen Iverson speechless before.

is that really the name you’re going with? the lilting whine in his voice almost startles a laugh out of her.

you can veto it, she replies diplomatically, but only once.

don’t do it, Lucas says from her other side, voice dry. good, Cami thinks. no matter how short a time it’s been, she’s never known Shiro to back down from a challenge.

and he doesn’t disappoint. veto, he says. Cami smiles, and watches the nerves flicker across his expression.

ok, Big Guy, she fires off. then laughs properly at the strangled sound Shiro makes. but he keeps pace with her all the way to the commissary and sits next to her and gesticulates enthusiastically when he talks. and he does the same every time he sees her -- the both of them do.

later, when she elbows him in the side, it’s gentle.

o6. the first time she sees Adam sitting with them at lunch, Cami spends most of the break watching him. she’s not nearly as stupid as the big guy seems to be -- there is nothing more painfully obvious than the infatuation in his gaze and his voice as he spends most of the hour filling every silence with stories, ideas, questions. anything, she supposes, to make things less -- awkward. or maybe he’s simply caught in the tide of his feelings. maybe he can’t see how stiff everyone is, now that their balance ( the balance the three of them have, easy as breathing, something she knows how to work with ) has been thrown off.

maybe he doesn’t see the way Adam looks wary and not nearly as fun, talented, awesome as Shiro has been describing him the past few weeks.

at one point, Adam makes some comment about the homework Cami has in front of her and she can’t help it. when she snorts she feels Lucas sigh next to her and sees Shiro glance at her with wide eyes.

oh please, she says, like I’d trust anyone else’s math.

--- then Adam snorts, too, and he says, you might change your mind when the numbers start disappearing.

she’s rising to the challenge before she notices the glint in his gaze, I never change my mind. I’m always right.

but then she recognizes it, the way his lips pull up a little at the side, when her own do the same.

o7. they don’t talk about it, but they come close. the three of them ( somewhere along the way they must have recalibrated for Adam -- the balance feels wrong, now, when it is only them ) curled up on the couch as they watch mindless television until dawn breaks. Shiro only ever says one thing, and even though she wants to cry at the doubt and the hurt she hears in his voice -- unmasked in a way she is unfamiliar with -- all she does is place her hand on the side of his face until he falls asleep. they don’t say anything more.

o8. she wants to be mad at him, but she never stands a chance. it only takes a single strike for her words to find a crack that she then watches spiderweb over Adam’s expression -- hurt and angry and frustrated, and that’s all it is. all it is is her friend in pain so she sits beside him -- a little bit of silence, a little bit of broken off conversation, a few impasses that they can’t clear because feelings are hard, dreams are hard, wanting is hard. everything is hard. she covers his hand with hers, and hopes that hers is warm enough.

months later they get the news and she’s numb enough that she doesn’t feel her tears. she only sees him that evening, and his voice is cracked all the way through when he tells her, I guess the universe doesn’t care what I want.

I’m sorry, Ace. she throws her arms around his neck. whether it’s for his sake or her own she can’t say. and even though she doesn’t regret any of the advice she’d ever given him, she says it again. I’m so sorry.

months after that, she shows up at his door at six hundred hours, red faced and crying and tells him that Keith slipped away again but he came back. what she doesn’t say is that it’s so confusing -- the elation of seeing him, the stabbing of her own failure to keep track of him slicing right through her gut. wrongs and rights and so much grief and relief she’s dizzy with it. but she doesn’t need to say it -- whether or not he understands, he lets her hang onto him.

o9. these fucking purple aliens are not going to be the death of her, thanks. they should have given up this particular tunnel system ages ago, she knows that. but neither she nor Reiner could bring themselves to agree -- not when they’d manage to pick up more people from this nearby camp than they had at any other. they can’t -- they can’t do nothing when they’re already doing something.

Reiner sees it first, and everything happens all at once. it’s: his arms around her, picking her up to throw her as far as he can across this length of the tunnel. it’s: the sound, first, that doesn’t actually sound like anything until it roars and rips through her bones and digs claws into her heart. it’s: then the fury, heat that chokes her, fire that sinks its fangs into her thigh and laces up and down her calf, her hip, like so much lightning. it’s: she’s slick with something, with blood probably, but for a delirious moment she imagines holding the sun in her hands like burning, liquid gold.

it’s: the smell of burning flesh and she knows, instantly, even as her ears ring what happens to a body that falls on a landmine. and she knows, instantly, that the choice is to go back for his remains or run.

something is embedded in her thigh and she is crawling more than anything, but she goes. with her heart in her throat, with ash in her mouth, with blood on her hands. deeper into the warren of offshoots, blindly searching out the turns, consumed with a pulse that seeps into her bones, her marrow, the soft flesh of her lips, go, go, go.

go, go, go, she tells the rest of the group when she gets there. I can’t -- I can’t walk. you need to go.

no, Angelique says, taking her by the arm. all of us. that’s the point.

they’re going to be coming! you need to run!

no.

please, Cami says. she doesn’t feel her tears. you won’t make it with me, just go.

let’s try.

in the end, none of them are doctors. they are whoever the fuck they are -- some ragtag crew running from purple aliens in a war they never signed up to fight in. they pull the -- whatever the shrapnel’s made of out of her thigh and they try to cauterize it, but it’s just one more burn on top of another on top of another. still, though, when they leave, they leave together.

and they make it to the end.

1o. what’s injured, she asks him, brokering no argument. but Shiro is Shiro, so he tries.

Cami, I’m fine.

I didn’t ask that.

he sighs, but his lips are set softly. chest and shoulder.

head’s good?

head’s good.

so she pulls him to bend down and knocks the flat of her palm against against the back of his skull. it’s harder than a gentle swipe, but he huffs a laugh. and then she throws her arm around his neck.

no note, cadets gone, she says roughly, and they both sort-of laugh.

I know, he says.

fuck, Big Guy, she says.

I know.

with Keith she is gentler, pressing his face between her hands, mourning how much taller he’s gotten. the biting, guilty, mourning voice of failure that has howled in the back of her mind for years quiets.

when she sees Adam, she marches over to him with no warning and no fanfare and wraps her arms around him.

god, Ace, she says, that was fuckin’ crazy.

in the days and weeks that come she sets up shop in one of the offices and throws herself into the refugee efforts, scanning through lists and lists and lists of the missing, trying to reunite any family members that the Garrison has registered. it is one drop in the midst of a vast and stormy ocean.

but she knows how to do it, one step at a time.

#( camila. )#( camila hc. )#( writing. )#death cw #injury cw #can yallmst believe ............#i did it .....

4 notes · View notes

wordsdrippinginink · 6 years

Text

@myladyday who requested marcoace high school sweethearts that reunite when they're like 40, because of the new pictures. Which ended up, after discussion as a Bones au (kind of)

“Why is Luffy asking me to convince you to go to your high school reunion,” Marco asks as he steps into Ace’s office, stepping immediately to the right, catching sight of the rubber band in Ace’s hands right before it went flying. He doesn’t laugh when Luffy whines, but he considers it. “I was just curious.”

Ace snorts as he turns back to his computer, “I haven’t gone back home in years, my parents were hoping if Luffy convinced me to go the reunion that I would come home for a few days. Not that they don’t come to visit me, but they’re retired now and they don’t like coming to D.C.”

“And they think Luffy can convince you?”

“Luffy’s my favorite cousin, I’ve been doing what he’s wanted since the day he was born. He’s the reason I was a pirate for Halloween until I was thirteen and decided to be a vampire because those were cool. Please say that you have a case so I can tell them work is keeping me?”

“No case sorry, just came to ask you if you wanted to have lunch.”

“Lunch sounds good,” Ace sighs, like he had actually been hoping for a case instead, saving his notes and locking his computer. “You would think that being a Forensic Anthropologist would leave me with less paperwork, but I swear I have more than I could have imagined when I decided this was what I wanted to do with my life,” he pauses over the cowboy hat before shoving it onto his head and grabbing the leather jacket over the back of his chair.

“I swear you dress like you’ve forgotten how old you are,” Marco says letting Ace lead the way out of his office, ignoring the gesture towards his tie..

“I’m forty, not dead Marco. So, the diner?” Ace asks waving to the rest of the people in the room.

Marco hums, “If you want. Honestly I just wanted to have lunch together, I could care less what we actually eat. Unless it’s that taco place that murdered us both three weeks ago. I put my foot down, we are never going back.”

“I called in the health inspector, they were closed down four days ago. And they weren’t even real tacos, culturally-”

“I love you, but if you give me one more cultural lesson on tacos, I will leave you here without lunch.”

“Fine, food now dumbass.”

Marco smiles, watching as Ace relaxed, no longer as tense as he had been when Marco had arrived. A smile playing across his face as he shoved his hands into his pockets and walked faster, heading right for the diner and smiling at the woman behind the counter before stealing their usual table. The one in the back corner that wasn’t easily visible from the windows.

“So why don’t you want to go home?” Marco asks, taking his seat.

Ace sighs, pushing his hat from his head, scrubbing a hand through his hair, “I don’t like seeing everyone from back then. I wasn’t the best student back in the day, not that I was dumb but you know how dumb high schoolers are.”

“I too was once in high school,” Marco agrees, resting his chin on his palm. “Did they not expect you to get this far?”

“A couple used to joke that I would be using my dad’s name to go places in life. Those ones weren’t my friends but it stuck with me, I use my mom’s maiden name academically. If I go back, I have to either correct everyone or deal with them using my dad’s name. And if I go back alone?”

Marco snorts, “That bad?”

Ace nods, smiling politely at the waitress and giving his order, “I had a boyfriend in high school and everyone thought that we would get married or something one day. He graduated two years before me and the distance and life caused us to break up. We were friendly about it, we still cared about each other, but,” he shrugs. “We were kids. They always ask if they should try and find him for me, like it’s a bad rom-com.”

“Instead of a good rom-com?”

“I love you and I know you’re a smart man, but shut your mouth before I gag you.”

“Kinky,”

Ace rolls his eyes and Marco hides a grin, “Won’t be if I go through with it. Which is the other reason I don’t want to go, the one person I would want to come with me-”

“When is it?”

“Three weeks,” Ace answers spinning his coffee cup in his hands.

Marco hums, “Might be able to get some time off, just to escort you to your reunion. Of course, I would expect to be compensated for it.”

“Compensated, huh? I don’t know, it’s only three days. Maybe I should just say that I’m not coming.”

“Well, I seem to remember my boyfriend asking me to do something for him and I said I wanted to think about it.”

“We aren’t having sex in my parents house. I haven’t done that since high school and it’s even more awkward now than it was back then, if only because they will know and you have that stupid grin.”

Marco laughs, “You have the stupid grin, but I suppose if you don’t want to have sex at your parents house, I can respect that. We’re adults, we’re not going to start fucking like teenagers.”

“Does the FBI let you walk around talking like that or is it just me that gets to hear you like this?”

“I’m not censoring myself.”

“Honestly, I think my mom swears worse than you. I should warn you,” Ace sighs. “I should warn you that dad is pretty famous in politics and mom owns a company.”

“No wonder they thought you would use his name,” Marco taps Ace’s hand, just brushing their fingers together. “I’m dating you for you, not because of your family. And I even listen to all those rants about bone fragments and the kinds of glue that you can and can’t use on them. I think if I was here for your parents, who I don’t even know yet, then I wouldn’t have listened to those.”

“Sap.”

Marco keeps his mouth shut as they drive, but he wants to say something. Has since they reached the limits of the town, because this is his hometown. There’s two high schools and barely enough students to fill both of them, but he remembers both of them well enough or least the versions of them from when he was there, since he had gone to one and his ex had gone to the other.

“Has it changed since the last time you were here?” Marco asks because it has since his last visit almost eight years ago.

Ace hums as he waits for the light to turn green, sunglasses sliding down his nose, “The pet shop is new. I came through five years ago to visit mom and it wasn’t there.”

“Huh,” Marco can agree, but Ace’s driving again and Marco isn’t really sure how to bring up anything as Ace moves towards a house that Marco had known quite well a very long time ago. “This is your parent’s place?”

“It’s obnoxious, I know,” Ace agrees pulling up into the driveway. “I told them my boyfriend was coming, but I don’t know if they set up seperate rooms. Dad use to think it was funny when I attended this more regularly.”

“I’m sure I can deal with it.”

Ace winces as he steps out, “Dad’s friend is over too. He lives down the street, but he and dad like to go golfing. Also,” Ace pauses pulling both their bags out the back seat. “My ex’s dad.”

“You dated the son of your dad’s best friend,” Marco says slowly because if he’s not wrong, he’s not sure if he wants to be wrong, he’s accidently started dating his high school boyfriend, for the second time, and that’s his dad inside there with Roger Gol. The same Roger Gol that had scared him horribly when he had arrived to take his ex out on their first date. “Takes some guts.”

“He wasn’t known for being a coward,” Ace agrees taking a deep breath. “Ready?”

Marco nods, even though he’s sure he left his sanity back in Ace’s D.C. apartment, following him to the front door and trying to remind himself to breathe. The front hall is empty, Marco is thankful for that, and Ace avoids the loud discussion in the living room, heading for the staircase instead.

“I don’t think anything in here has changed since high school,” Ace says pushing open his bedroom door and dropping his bag and collapsing on his bed.

“Yeah,” Marco agrees because it does look like his last memory of it. “Ace, I… I might need to tell you something.”

“I’m breaking up with you if you got a text from work and want to go back,” Ace warns him. “Unless we’re both needed, in which case we can sneak back out the house and never tell my parents we got here.”

Marco sighs, unlocking his phone and flipping through his pictures to the last one he had of his dad and the newest Stefan, “This is my pops.”

“Marco, what,” Ace goes quiet and Marco thinks that he’s actually looking at his phone because Marco can’t look at him. “Jesus fucking Christ, seriously Marco? You didn’t mention this before now?”

“I didn’t think it was important Ace, at least until we pulled into my home town and up to my ex boyfriend’s house.”

Ace makes a quiet sound before dropping his head down onto his pillow, “I’m gonna fucking die. I’m gonna die and I’m blaming you.”

“You always did blame me.”

“We don’t get to joke about this yet. There is no joking about this because I am not happy with you at all. Oh god, your dad is downstairs.”

Marco nods, “Thank you for not stopping downstairs, I did not want to do this with our parents in the room. It would probably be as bad as the time we got caught in the pool.”

“Dad redid the whole pool after we broke up, because he said I needed it to be ‘untainted’. Really I think he needed to know I had never had sex in the pool before he could use it again.”

“That is exactly something your dad would do,” Marco drops his bag and kicks off his shoes. “Scoot over or I will lay on you.” Ace wiggles to the side, face still buried into a pillow. “Thanks.”

Ace breathes out slowly, “I do not want to tell my parents we started dating again without realizing who the other was. Mom will think it’s hilarious and dad will complain about how he thought I had had finally stopped making his friendship with Mr. Newgate harder.”

“Pops will laugh himself sick and then tell my siblings, who will spread it through town before we even get the chance to go to your reunion.”

“Think we can hide up here until he goes home? Unless your dad shows off pictures of you, mom and dad might not realize for awhile,” Ace shifts to look at Marco. “We’re in our forties, who talks about what they did in high school at our age?”

Marco snorts, “Most people, Ace. Or they mention their hometown.”

“Shut up, you didn’t mention your dad either, Mr. Trust Fund kid.”

“Don’t point fingers, we both know you have one too,” Marco stops. “Do you think Luffy knew?”

Ace blinks slowly, “Jesus Fuck, if he knew. He better not have known, I will murder him if he did,” but he shifts and pulls out his phone to call Luffy, ignoring the text from his mother asking if he would be home in time for lunch. The phone rings almost too loud in the room.

“Ace, I thought you were gonna go home?” Luffy sounds tired. “Did you back out?”

“Luffy, do you remember my boyfriend from high school?” Ace demands.

There’s a long moment of silence, “I know he and Marco have the same name?” Luffy says slowly. “But I could look him up for you? Did he show up in town? I thought Mr. Mustache said his oldest never came to visit him anymore.”

“No it’s fine, thanks Luffy. I just couldn’t remember his name,” Ace answers and Marco drops his head back down because at least Luffy didn’t know before they had. “Why are you tired?”

“Because I let Coby convince the lab to go clubbing. I’m too old to be clubbing, Ace. I’m hungover and tired. I’m so glad to not have work today,” Luffy groans. “I have to go, my boyfriend’s brought back breakfast and medication and I need to go cry on him.”

“Go cry on him,” Ace laughs. “Thanks Luffy.”

Marco waits until Ace’s hung up before, “I’m so glad he didn’t know.”

“He encouraged me to date you, you’re glad? I’m glad. Do you know how funny he’s going to find this? He’ll think it’s better than when Coby realized that Robin was married to the professor of engineering from the college that we’re connected to.”

“Footsteps,” Marco hisses, throwing an arm over his face because he can’t.

Ace groans and Marco can hear him hiding his face in his pillow again as the door slams open and Roger, that’s Roger’s voice, shouts at them for not coming in to say hello.

“At least you are wearing clothes,” Roger ends his rant. “You should both come down for lunch, your mother made enough because you didn’t answer her text. And Ed’s staying over.”

Marco lifts his arm enough to glance over at Ace, who’s shoulders are shaking, “We going?”

“I’m going to murder you when we get home,” Ace hisses under his breath before smirking. “Yeah, Marco said he wanted to see his dad while we were here anyway.”

57 notes · View notes

kenbunshokus · 7 years

Text

it’s a long way forward

zoro/sanji | 5k words

Because the universe hates him, out of all the weird Devil Fruits out here, Sanji gets hit by one that’s absolutely laughable. Of course. A Devil Fruit powers that doesn’t allow you to smile? What kind of ridiculous power is that?

It’s funny, until it isn’t.

(ao3)

This work is commissioned by FenrirBass on twitter.

In Sanji’s experience, nothing good ever happened following the phrase, there’s good news and bad news.

It isn’t exactly the worst phrase in the world, but it’s definitely somewhere up there on the list. Right above, there’s a marine ship outside, and below the much dreaded, Luffy, no, get back here right no—oh shit, he just left. Most of the time it’s not even Good News and Bad News—it’s Bad News and Even Worse, Absolutely Terrible News, Fuck You.

Which is why when he wakes up in the infirmary bed and hears Chopper say, there’s good news and bad news, he dramatically announces, “I’m going to die, aren’t I.”

Chopper looks more amused than horrified by the theatrics, which is a good sign. “You’re not going to die, Sanji,” Chopper says with a smile on his face, though it quickly slips into a frown. “Unless you feel like dying. Oh my god, do you feel like dying, somebody call a doctor—”

“You’re the doctor,” he reminds the little doctor, giving him a calming pat in the head. “And don’t worry. I’ll be fine, Chopper.”

He tries to give Chopper a reassuring smile at that, but somehow finds himself unable to. It’s an odd feeling, like trying to flip a light switch at the back of his head, only to see it flip back off by itself. He brings a hand to his face, almost instinctively, and prods at it, but there’s nothing there except his skin; no bandage or weird wounds, or worse, an iron mask—

That’s one dangerous train of thoughts, so Sanji changes the subject. “Is Ace still around?”

Chopper shakes his head. “We parted ways right after the fight.”

It’s a little bit disappointing, but not surprising—the skirmish mostly involved the Whitebeard Pirates and a pirate crew who held a grudge towards them; the Straw Hats were just tagging along, having run into Ace again after they left the Sky Islands.

Sanji feels a certain kind of wistfulness at the thought of Ace. He likes Ace—the confident way the man carries himself, yes, but mostly the way he assumes the role of a doting, loving older brother so naturally, like a second skin. Luffy clearly looks up to him, and Sanji feels a tug at his chest when he remembers Ace affectionately ruffling Luffy’s hair.

Not that Sanji knows what a good older brother is truly like, though. Not when—

He balks at his own thought. Get yourself together, dumbass, he mentally scolds himself—it’s rare that he thinks of them these days, and rarer still that he’d do it twice in such a short time. The attack from the other pirate crew must’ve knocked him more than he thought.

Speaking of. “So, what’s the good news?”

Chopper nervously flips through his charts, avoiding Sanji’s gaze. “You only broke your left leg.”

Sanji groans. “That’s the good news?”

“There’s no apparent long-lasting damage,” Chopper quickly adds. “It’s a clean break, so everything will heal perfectly. It usually takes around six to eight weeks to heal a broken bone, but considering your constitution, I would put it at three weeks at worst.”

Sanji tries to shift his left leg. There’s a small jolt of pain at the movement, but it feels dulled, and doesn’t seem so bad. It’s still going to be a pain in the ass to cook with, though. “And the bad news is…?”

Chopper sighs, and seems to steel himself for Sanji’s reaction, before finally saying with a whisper. “It’s your face…”

Sanji feels his stomach sink. His face? What happened to his face? He looks at the way Chopper’s shoulders sag downwards, and expects the worst—a terrible gash on his face, maybe? What would the ladies think? Oh, shit, he would match with Zoro. Disgusting.

He scrambles towards the mirror, making sure he doesn’t put too much weight on his broken leg, and sees a haggard version of himself staring back from the mirror. It shouldn’t be a surprise—he just came out of a fight, after all—but he is, because there’s a tired edge on his expression that feels bone-deep, his mouth turning downwards. His eyebrows are knitted in a scowl, and he tries to smooth it away.

Except—he can’t.

He tries to smile, this time. His lips tilt up, in a way, but the smile still looks pained. He tries to laugh, and his face just forms a nasty grimace.

“Chopper—what exactly happened to me?”

“One more time! One more time!” Luffy cheers, launching himself towards Sanji, only to be met with a kick to the face.

Sanji kicks him towards Usopp, who’s already lying face down on the ground, and they fall on top of each other with a loud, oof. He stares threateningly towards the pile. “Anyone who pulls any other stupid shit will get kicked overboard.”

Luffy and Usopp give a reluctant, oooookay, and Zoro snickers at that, but thankfully nobody dares to say anything else.

When Chopper broke the news to the crew, they’ve mostly taken it in stride. Expression-altering fruit isn’t even in the top ten of the list of Weird Things the Straw Hats Have Come Across in the Grand Line, and Sanji doesn’t feel like telling them that it may have affected him more than just his face.

Usopp immediately tried to tell a joke, and when then failed, dove with Luffy towards Sanji to tickle him. They both earned zero laughs and two kicks to the face.

“This isn’t funny!” He scolds them.

“It’s a little funny,” Robin chimes in with a cruel, little smile on her beautiful face.

“Robin-chwan,” Sanji whines, and falls down dramatically in front of her.

“Oh!” Zoro says in mock surprise, “the face fits now.”

Sanji tries to glare, but only ends up looking sad. He feels sad too, and doesn’t know if the constant scowling makes him unhappy, or if the unhappiness forces him to permanently scowl. It’s like some kind of a fucked up vicious cycle that’s starting to wear him down.

Sanji pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to calm himself down. “Where’s the guy who did this?” he asks.

The crew shares looks among themselves, before Luffy speaking up, “Ace took him with the rest of the other pirates for punishment.”

Forget calm. Sanji is this close to throwing himself overboard. “What!? How can we fix whatever’s wrong with me then!?”

“Calm down, Cook,” Zoro cuts in. “We’ve interrogated him.”

“His power freezes the person’s expression in line with the memory and emotion felt when the power hits,” Chopper explains. “The devil fruit user doesn’t have control of the expression afterwards; the owner of the expression must resolve the feeling he had to release themselves from the control of the fruit. Sort of like finding a closure.”

Usopp slowly sits up from the floor and tilts his head. “Why did you look so sad?”

“Because my leg was fucking broken?” He grits out, and Usopp yelps and scrambles away. “I don’t know, it happened pretty quickly, and it’s not like I was conscious afterwards.”

That isn’t exactly true. Sanji remembers the moment the power hit—the familiar feeling of pain mixing with the unfamiliar sensation that must’ve been unique to the devil fruit’s power, like someone shoved their hands into his chest and squeezed, ribs and bones and heart altogether. Sanji prides himself on his high constitution and pain tolerance, but he remembers the flash of fear in that moment, the few seconds when he thought, this is it. I’m going to die.

And just like the starving kid on the rock years ago, the only thing on his mind when he was dying was—

“That’s easy, then!” Chopper says cheerfully, snapping Sanji out of his train of thoughts. “The expression stemmed from the pain from your broken leg, so as soon as your leg heals, the power will be gone, too!”

Everyone seems to agree with Chopper and considers the case closed. Sanji doesn’t want to concern them, so he plays along with it, even though he doesn’t buy that explanation even one bit.

Judging from the way Zoro’s eyes follow him throughout the exchange, neither does the swordsman.

When Zoro walks into the galley, Sanji has been expecting him.

“Hey,” he says by way of greeting. He’s balancing himself against the kitchen counter, his broken leg bent and away from the floorboard. His other hand is stirring the soup he’s boiling for dinner. “Dinner’s not ready.”

“I’m not here for dinner,” Zoro says, direct as always. That, too, Sanji has expected. They may’ve been together for only a couple of weeks, but Sanji has known Zoro—as a nakama, as a rival, as a person—longer than that, has learned and understood him better than he understands himself in the months they sailed together.

The arms around his middle is unexpected, though.

“In case you didn’t notice, I have a meal to cook,” he teases, trying to keep the tone light. He leans into Zoro’s embrace, back pressing against the swordsman’s chest.

Zoro is clearly buying none of his false cheer, because he just grunts and buries his face into the crook of Sanji’s neck.

Sanji sighs. He puts the lid on top of the pot. “All right, I’ll bite. What is it?”

“You look like shit,�� Zoro says into his shoulder.

Sanji scoffs at his boyfriend’s bluntness. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“No. I mean it. You—” He pauses, seemingly in deep thought. Sanji tilts his head back to catch Zoro’s expression; he rarely sees Zoro so distressed, and it’s starting to worry him. “I’ve seen you fight countless of times; I know how good you are at handling pain. This… look you have on your face—this isn’t just from the hit, is it?”

Sanji can hear his own heart thumping. Count on Zoro to notice all these little things, even in the midst of a fight. Sanji racks his brain to avoid the conversation he isn’t ready to have yet, and immediately thinks of a new distraction technique he recently learned to pull off. Quite well, if he may say so himself.

He turns his body and pulls Zoro into a kiss.

It’s sloppy and messy, all lips and tongues, but it’s a good enough distraction because Zoro returns the kiss with a delighted hum. Sanji bites Zoro’s lower lip playfully, hard enough to make Zoro’s hands tighten their grip on Sanji’s sides.

“I wasn’t done,” Zoro complains once Sanji releases his lips, but it’s a weak argument, if the way Zoro’s hands have slipped towards Sanji’s ass is any indication.

“Right,” Sanji says, and wishes he could give Zoro a cheeky smile right now. He makes it up with another kiss against the hollow of Zoro’s collarbone. “Can we just drop this for now?”

Zoro tips Sanji’s chin up with a touch of his hand, gentle, gentler than most would expect him to. The gesture makes Sanji’s heart stutter against his ribcage, and Sanji is glad when Zoro dives into another kiss, because he might have said something stupid. Like a cheesy confession or something.

“I’ll drop it,” Zoro says against his lips after a moment, but quickly adds, “for now. Only because you’re good with your mouth.”

Sanji really wishes he could make a cheeky smile. “Did Marimo just admit I was a good kisser?”

“Shut up,” Zoro says, but doesn’t disagree. Sanji counts it as a win.

As Zoro trails kisses along the nape of Sanji’s neck, Sanji thinks the brute is just being his overreacting, overprotective self. Sanji can handle himself—always does—and he can absolutely handle something as simple as this.

He can’t handle this.

He bites down on his cigarette and spits it on the sidewalk in frustration.

It’s been three weeks since the disaster with the shitty devil fruit, and while his leg is healing at a rate most people could only dream of, whatever mumbo-jumbo affecting his face doesn’t seem to show any signs of healing.

The pitying looks have been annoying enough—he has had strangers at the market tell him to go home and rest, as if a sad face had magically transformed him into a crippling old man. He usually tries to brush them off, but it’s not easy, considering he can’t even smile back at them. Supply runs take twice longer than usual, and by the time he gets back to the ship, he usually doesn’t have enough time to do anything else.

The random bar fights add to the nuisance—there are people who think that he’s weak just because he looks like he’s going to burst into tears at any given moment, which is, fine. That’s a fair assumption. He isn’t letting anyone alive after assuming that Black Leg Sanji, out of all people, is weak, and he’s been kicked out of bars more times in the past three weeks than he’d been in a lifetime.

But then, there are the ladies.

The ladies on the islands they dock at, of course. The ones who deserve his smiles and his utmost attention, who now only get creeped out by his presence. Flowery words and grand romantic gestures don’t exactly look welcoming when your face looks like you just killed your neighbor’s dog, after all.

But the worst of it all, is the reaction from the ladies on the ship.

“Surely you didn’t mean that, Nami-san?” he says, voice almost a squeak. He tries to smile, mentally begging his facial muscles to pull the ends of his lips upwards, but all he manages is a weak grimace.

“No, really, Sanji-kun,” she says, and at least looks a little bit guilty. “All the…” she gestures vaguely at Sanji, “swooning gets really weird with the face, so either you tone down on it or you just stay away from me and Robin for the time being.”

Preposterous. Impossible. That’s like telling him to choose between jumping into a sea of lava or sleeping on a bed of needles. He turns to Robin for support. “Robin-chan...”

”I’m sorry, Cook-san,” she says, clasping her hands together apologetically. “Maybe once your leg heals.”

”If that’s what you wish,” he concedes, and feels as miserable as he looks.

His leg heals, over time.

His face doesn’t.

Everyone starts throwing worried glances at him. Sanji tells them he’s fine, and ignores the way the grief against his heart seems to sharpen every time he fails to smile.

Sanji wakes up with a scream lodged on his throat.

He jerks upwards, the movement so sudden his hammock sways and almost tips him towards the ground. Zoro is immediately alert, thankfully, sitting up and putting his weight on the other side of the hammock, steadying it.

They’ve been sleeping in the same hammock more often than not these days. It’s a tight fit—Merry’s hammock wasn’t exactly built for two male young adults—but it’s the good kind of tight fit, the kind that allows Sanji to feel the warm press of Zoro’s body lulling him to sleep every night.

But now, with Zoro’s eyes boring into him with unnerving intensity, Sanji wishes he had slept alone just so he could hide this.

“Another dream?” Zoro asks, almost in a whisper, so as not to wake the others up.

Sanji doesn’t see a point in lying, so he nods. “Yeah,” he admits.

“That’s the third time this week,” Zoro points out. It’s getting worse, he doesn’t say, but Sanji can hear the words anyways, hanging heavy in the space between them.

Sanji presses a hand to his chest, feeling his heart pound loudly. He can barely remember his nightmare now, the memory quickly fading into blurred colors, but he can guess what it was about, and he hates it. Hates the way those bastards still have a hold on him even after all these years, hates the way his hands still shake at the thought of seeing his siblings again, hates the way he can still feel the phantom bruises along his torso—

“I’m fine,” he chokes out. It doesn’t sound convincing even to himself, but it’s the best Sanji can muster right now.

He jolts in surprise when he feels Zoro’s hand on his cheek.

“’Fine,’ huh,” Zoro says. The tips of his fingers are cold and wet, and Sanji suddenly realizes that he’s been crying.

“Shit,” he says, trying to wipe the tears away, but it’s like opening the floodgate of emotions. “Shit, shit, shit,” he curses. feeling all the dense, suffocating pain he has tried to tamp down around his chest burst open and spilling all over and he can’t stop crying, what the fuck.

He barely notices Zoro pulling him into a hug, and he sobs into Zoro’s chest as the other man rubs soothing circles at the small of his back.

He falls into a heavy, half-slumber while a part of him remains awake. The back of his eyelids burns and his ribs hurt like knives, and he thinks of Zoro, who’s never been anything but honest with him, and maybe sharing this part of his past with someone else doesn’t seem so bad.

“’I want to cook for my mother,’” Sanji says.

He waits for the words to sink in; watches Zoro slowly look up from his meal and blink. “What?”

They have just docked at another island. It’s just the two of them on the Merry, so it’s not like there’s anyone who can overhear their conversation, but Sanji still can’t bring himself to say the words out loud in more than a whisper. “When the power hit, I thought—I thought I was going to die. And that’s the only thing I always think of whenever things go to shit,” he explains. “You’re right, it was never about the broken leg. It was, ‘I want to cook for my mother.’”

Zoro stares at him, and Sanji squirms under his scrutiny. There’s a moment of silence before Zoro asks, “you remember your mother?”

“Not much, but I remember—enough,” he says. Zoro has told him everything about Kuina, about his past, and Sanji reminds himself that the man deserves at least this much from Sanji. “I was eight when she passed away. She used to try my cooking, back when I was still learning, and I—wonder, sometimes, what she’d think if she could eat my cooking this time.”

Zoro nods at that. Sanji is grateful that Zoro isn’t offering him some half-assed condolences, and realizes that Zoro probably knows, better than most, what it feels like to deal with the kind of grief that’s been dulled by time.

“You think this is what keeping the powers?” Zoro guesses.

“Couldn’t think of anything else,” Sanji shrugs. “And—look, I know this is stupid, but the fantasy kind of, uh, morphed over the time, so it kind of involves cooking for my mother with my lover,” he mumbles the last part.

It takes a moment for the words to register in Zoro’s brain, and Sanji can see the exact moment it does as Zoro face breaks into a stupid smirk.

“What was that? Couldn’t really hear the last part there, Cook,” Zoro says.

Sanji feels his face heat up. “Shut up.”

“You want me to meet your mother, huh?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Sanji half-yells. Zoro laughs, loud and free, and Sanji is secretly grateful that the swordsman didn’t freak out and break up with him or something. “Anyway,” he says loudly over the peals of laughter, “I was thinking of making her something simple, like a bento.”

The laughter finally dies down at the mention of food. Predictable, that brute. “Oh? Thought you would make one of your stupid fancy food.”

“My ‘fancy’ menus are not stupid, asshole,” Sanji retorts as he starts to gather the ingredients. “And I used to make her a lot of bento, so I thought it would be fitting if I make her one too, this time. So she has something to compare it with, you know.”

Zoro hums in agreement, and stands up to lend a hand. He usually only helps out with the dishes, but Sanji has seen him handle his swords—he can make use of that in many ways in the kitchen. “Cut this,” he hands Zoro a knife and a cutting board with a bunch of onions on them. “Just dice them into small pieces, and don’t cut through the cutting board.”

“Hn,” for once, Zoro doesn’t argue with him.

They fall into comfortable silence, Sanji speaking out only to give the occasional instructions. There was some incident involving a burnt plate, and Zoro did accidentally cut through the first (and second) cutting board, but all things considered, everything went by smoothly.

They both stare at the finished bento almost disbelievingly.

It’s Zoro who first speaks up. “Hey, uh, Sanji’s mom,” he says. “Your son is a pain in the ass, and he’s a shit cook.”

Sanji almost kicks him for joking about this before looking up and finding Zoro stare at the bento, completely serious. “But, uh, he makes good food sometimes, and he makes the crew happy. He makes me happy.” Zoro says, rubbing at the back of his neck in a rare sign of insecurity. “So I hope you are too, wherever you are.”

For the first time in what feels like the longest time, Sanji feels a brush of warmth beneath his ribcage. It takes a few seconds for him to realize that it’s happiness, and for a moment he is content, in the middle of his kitchen with Zoro’s shoulder pressed against his. He's free, far from the floating kingdom of his childhood, and thinks he can see his mother smile, somehow.

This is the part in the fairy tales where the book ends. The characters find their closure. The princess gets a kiss from the prince. Everyone lives happily ever after.

Sanji’s life is not a fairy tale.

He is content for that moment, and then he tries to smile. He can no longer ignore the sharp ache that almost chokes him when he realizes he still can’t.

Sanji trudges towards the ship with heavy steps.

It’s been almost a week since he cooked with Zoro, and he’s far from recovering—the suffocating feeling in his chest still drags him down, and the night attacks are becoming even more common, rearing its ugly head almost every night now.

It reminds him too much of the early days after his escape, when he was still a little kid with a too-empty stomach and phantom bruises along his limbs, and Sanji is suddenly hit with a visceral feeling of disgust towards his own weakness. Disgust towards himself.

He’s too preoccupied with his own thoughts that he doesn’t realize the eerie silence that’s blanketing around Merry, much to quiet for a crew like them, and the shadows behind the galley windows, as he swings the door open.

He’s greeted with a confetti to the face.

Literally.

It hit him right in the nose, and he’s rubbing his face as he hears Nami’s exasperated, “You’re supposed to aim it over his head, stupid!”

”Ow, sorry, Nami!” Luffy says in a tone that’s clearly a failed attempt of a whisper. “Stop yelling, I thought we were gonna surprise him!”

“I believe it’s too late for that,” Robin’s voice comes out, and at that, someone flips the ligth switch on.

There’s food on every available surface. A huge bowl of rice on the counter, surrounded by plates of vegetables and meat, and on the kitchen table is a towering, multi-layered cake that even Sanji admits looks pretty impressive. He's seen everyone's cooking at least once; knows that the meals are mostly Usopp and Robin's doing, and the cake has Nami written all over it.

There’s a large banner hanging over the ceiling with the words HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SANJI, lovingly hand-painted and decorated by Luffy’s familiar scrawls.

He realizes, with a start, that in the middle of all the mess with the stupid devil fruit, Sanji has forgotten his own birthday.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” The crew cheers. It’s barely in unison, Luffy’s drawl from having his mouth pulled by Nami clashing with Chopper’s over-excited applause, and it’s still the most perfect thing Sanji has ever heard.

”How did you—“ he sputters, flustered. He can't believe that the crew remembers. Hell, he can't believe they even knew—he never told them about his birthday, has long forgotten what it felt like to be grateful about the birthday he shares with those bastards. “I never...”

"Swordsman-san was generous enough to share the information with us," Robin says, ignoring Zoro's protest in the background that no, there's no way he bothered to memorize the Shit Cook's birthday, shut up.

And in that moment, with his crew bickering lightly around him, celebrating him, everything suddenly clicks into place.

He broke his leg, but he’d felt worse pain. He’d assumed he was thinking about his mother, but he was wrong—the dreams have clued him in on what this really was about.

As if sensing Sanji’s shift in mood, Luffy cranes his neck from the counter he’s perched on. The strawhat appears in Sanji’s vision before the owner does, but they both do, eventually, one side of the brim tipped low over Luffy’s right eye.

”Do you like it?” Luffy asks.

Sanji is chewing on Nami’s cake, but he thinks Luffy isn’t asking about that. Not exactly.

He doesn’t take more than a second to answer, “yes.”

”Are you still sad?”

Sanji takes a moment to consider that. There’s a steady ache around his heart, and maybe it’s always been there, now that he thinks about it. The devil fruit power may have intensified the feelings, but it couldn’t work on something that wasn’t there. “I think I always am,” he admits, voice low, remembering the lonely little kid with the iron mask and the prison bars. But then he thinks of the party set up just for him, of the Straw Hats, and adds, “but not right now, no.”

“Not right now,” Luffy repeats.

“I think you’ve made it better. All of you made it better.”

Luffy grins at that, sunny and wide. “You’re happy.” It’s a statement, not a question.

Sanji watches the cacophony around him. “I’m happy,” he agrees.

”You know what people do when they’re happy?” Luffy says, and he pulls his hat off his head and places it, steady, on Sanji’s head. “They smile. You should smile, Sanji.”

Sanji feels the way the strawhat fits around him, its warmth snug against his heart; and he does, finally, smile.

Sanji remembers being a little kid.

He remembers the dark prison cell, the pungent smell of the iron mask, the way the bruises on his skin left ugly marks like a brand on his heart even after they disappear. He remembers that sometimes they would dock at an island, and he would sneak away, watch the island’s locals from afar. He remembers seeing another little kid, playing with his siblings, and thinks, I want a family like this.

He also remembers the day the devil fruit power hit. That day there were two attacks—one directed at him, and another at Luffy. He remembers seeing Ace, stepping in front of Luffy, pulling him away. He remembers the way Ace protectively wrapped his arms around Luffy.

Sanji remembers being a little kid; he also remembers being an adult, years away from being a little kid, but still feeling like one—seeing Ace and Luffy and the way they don’t hurt each other, and thinking, I want a family like this.

“I have a bed time story.” He says as soon as he climbs into the crow’s nest.

Zoro continues to lift his weight. “I’m not sleeping anytime soon.”

“Once upon a time,” Sanji continues, ignoring him. “There was a little kid. He was young and small and lonely. His father was made of gold and his mother was a ghost; he had siblings, but they only learned how to hurt others.”

Zoro pauses at that. He slowly lowers his weight to the ground.

Sanji doesn’t meet his eyes. “When he was eight, his family had enough of him and threw him into a dark cell, hoping he would die and rot with the rats. He didn’t,” he says, and pauses, feeling his voice waver and pushes through, “but sometimes he thinks a little part of him did.”

He looks up to meet Zoro’s eyes. “The kid’s name was Vinsmoke Sanji.”

Zoro takes large strides across the crow’s nest and pulls him into a hug, steady hands wrapped around his shoulders. Sanji breathes into the nape of his neck.

“You know what’s the most messed up thing?” He laughs, but it’s the kind of that grates at the back of his throat. He swallows. “The kid thought he deserved it, for the longest time. He thought they were the family he deserved.”

He feels Zoro’s grip around him tighten. “They’re not—that doesn’t sound a lot like family.”

Sanji closes his eyes. “That doesn’t, yeah.”

He watches the rise and fall of Zoro’s chest—a steady, calming beat. And then Zoro says, “The kid found his family, though, in the end.” He pauses, before adding. "A real one."

Sanji thinks of Usopp’s nervous chuckle whenever someone calls out on his lies and Chopper’s little giggles whenever someone makes a stupid joke; of Robin’s barely-there smiles that mean a lot more than an insincere laughter ever would, of Nami’s grin whenever he makes her favorite drinks. He thinks of Luffy’s rubbery smile, stretched across his face, and Zoro, his partner, his rival, his equal—who holds him like he means something.

The ache around his heart remains. It’s been there, for a long time, and maybe it’ll always be there. But when he looks up now he can see the grinning faces of his crew, and when he tries to tilt his lips into a smile, it does.

“The kid found his family,” Sanji agrees, and leans into the embrace. It's not a happily ever after, but it's enough.

#zosan #roronoa zoro #sanji #one piece #my writing #//#zoro #op

181 notes · View notes

teardropsonrooftops · 7 years

Text

Making myself crazy- Dianetti

For @brown-aces

Rosa is angry. Okay, maybe not angry.But she is frustrated. At herself mostly, but a little at Gina.

Back to the problem at hand. Gina Linetti. The woman she has been in love with for as long as she has known her.

Pimento was a good guy, but she only dated him to get over the obnoxious redhead. Now Rosa has to stay with Gina for an hour. An hour of trying not to blush while Gina shamelessly flirts with her.

Rosa buries her head in her hand and groans. Gina pokes her forehead with her phone.

“What’s up Ro-Ro? Is my aura of beauty intimidating you?” She asks with a grin.

“Something like that.”

Gina frowns and sits up straighter. “Are you okay?” she asks with sincerity in her voice.

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Seriously? ‘I’m fine’? That sentence has never been true. What’s up?” She moves closer to Rosa and moves her hands off of her face.

Rosa looks Gina in her eyes and gives a small smile. “I,” she pauses, “I like someone. And I’m not sure how to tell them. So now I’m distracted 24/7.” She sighs and closes her eyes.

Gina looks at her face with a frown that she quickly hides. “Well, from your use of ‘they,’ I’m going to tell you to tell her how you feel.” Rosa snaps upright and her eyes get wide. “Don’t panic Ro-Ro. Nobody in this precinct is straight. Even Amy’s eyes linger too long on those bridal magazines.”

“So… you don’t think I’m disgusting because I’m bi?”

“Of course not,” she smile. “And fyi, I am also not straight. But I haven’t found a label for my greatness yet.”

They both smile at each other and Charles lets out a squeal from his desk.

Gina groans and throws her head back. “What do you want Charles?”

Jake quickly rolls Charles’ chair away before he could answer. He shoots a smile at their direction before moving them into the brief room.

“What just happened?” They both laugh and settle into silence.

Rosa looks down before saying something that will change her life for the better.

“You. I was talking about you.” Gina looks confused so Rosa clarifies. “I like you, Gina.”

Gina blinks a couple of times and Rosa gets up. “I never should have said anything.”

“No,” Gina says, “no, you can’t like me because I like you and then I would have lost my bet to Jake!”

“What?”

“I made a bet with Jake that you would never like me. I guess I just lost 500 dollars.”

“No, not that part. The other part. What was the other part?”

Gina looks at her incredulously, but then she softens. “I like you too.” She smiles at the shocked look on Rosa’s face. “So, for our first date. Pick me up at eight tonight.”

“Okay, yeah. Yeah, I’m in.” The smile on her face is blinding.

“It wasn’t a choice Ro-Ro. Eight o’clock sharp.” Gina grins. “Now, go home and get ready. You have two hours.”

Rosa nods. After a moment of hesitation, she kisses Gina’s cheek and walks out of the precinct. Gina is left there grinning like an idiot.

Charles runs out of the brief room and throws his hands in the air.

“It finally happened!”

#dianetti #my fanfiction gb

45 notes · View notes

fleetwoodmoth · 7 years

Text

//Debris

The sky is falling and where are you?

Ace/Daniel and Eight/Jacob belong to @jorgancrath

“We’re meeting up with the others, where are you?”

“Coming,” Nobody’s voice was even as they slipped down a short incline and back into the shadows of a lower street. Ace’s location pinged on the hud in their helmet like a beacon, a goal in all the chaos. Their head was spinning, their ears still ringing from a blast impacting a little too close for comfort.

They weren’t unused to combat, but they were Hidden and they were a sniper, they liked distance. They shook their head, ducking into an alleyway before slipping past a blown apart door of a small residential building.

“How are you holding up?”

“Fine.”

Their replies were clipped, short, not that they were known for speaking a lot; but if they spoke too much now they knew they wouldn’t be able to focus.

“One block off,” they said.

“Good, Eight and I are with—“

Again Nobody’s ears were blown out, the crash and subsequent explosion rocking the building above them. They clasped their hands over their ears, nearly dropping their rifle to the floor as they tried to steady themselves. It was then that the groaning began, they could nearly feel the deep bassy vibrations in their chest as the building began to crumble.

“Shit.”

“Nobody?”

They could barely hear Ace on the other end, their ears ringing too loudly and the crashing of building debris too much for them to process his words as they took off for an exit. They could see the dim light of the outside, the sweeping light of a Cabal ship as it flew by. It wasn’t far, they just needed to run. Run.

“Run!” Polaris’ voice erupted in their head as they dodged a large slab of the ceiling that had come down. They stumbled, the view of their escape going sideways, only a few feet now, they could touch the threshold when all they could hear was the rumbling of debris and their own screaming.

“Averi? Averi can you hear me?” Polaris’ voice was weak, trembling, the ghost nowhere to be seen, in fact nothing could be seen, it was all darkness. Nobody blinked heavily, an incessant pounding in their skull preventing them from finding focus. Next came the pain, it was numb at first, a strange coldness that traveled up the side of their abdomen when it started to unfurl across their ribs, a frigid stinging that took their dust filled breath away. They wanted to scream, to release the pain into the air like it would do something about it. They tried to look around, to locate the damage done to their side which they were slowly starting to realize traveled down their leg as well, but they were immobilize. They could feel their helmet bent in in places, seeming to be barely withstanding the pressure around them. The building. It was starting to come back, and it was starting to feel more like a nightmare than reality.

“Don’t try to move, we’re pinned, I can’t get you out I’m… we’re…”

Even as excruciating pain spread through their body there was a deeper ache, like the air had been ripped from their lungs, a coldness that seemed to be radiating from the inside out.

“The light, it’s gone.”

Their heart jumped into their throat, their mouth gaping wildly as they not only struggled to breathe between their cracked chest armor, but because of the overwhelming realization that they were stuck and they could die.

“I’m trying to heal you, but I don’t have much left in me, I need you to stay still.”

Nobody could feel the pounding in their ribs increase as the panic set in, the sound of their own breath heavy in their ears as they tried to keep from getting vertigo from lack of oxygen.

“Breathe, Averi, we need to call for help.”

Help. Right, there were still people out there. Ace. Eight. Ikora, Joker, Cayde. They were out there and they could help.

“Call. Call them.”

“Who?”

“Them,” their voice broke harshly, their tightly reined control over their breathing starting to slip.

“Sending out a signal to all available guardians. I don’t… I can’t receive a signal, only transmit, I won’t know if someone is coming.”

“Please.”

“Okay.”

“This is a distress signal to all available guardians, we’re stuck, buried, injured. We need help immediately. Repeat this is a distress signal to all available guardians…”

They weren’t sure how long they called, how long they laid there beneath the rubble, how many times they slipped out of consciousness only to wake up screaming again. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours, and maybe Nobody was dead, they wondered if this was hell, to be eternally trapped screaming for help only to have no one hear them. Finally they had grown dizzy from yelling, calling for help when Polaris’ distress signals ceased to calm their nerves, they felt their eyes roll back as they gasped for air, waiting for it to filter back in through the debris when they heard voices. At first they thought it was a hallucination, something their oxygen starved brain cooked up to ease them into the afterlife. But as their senses began to come back to them they realized they weren’t dreaming, there were voices, and not just any at that.

“Help!” Their voice cracked heavily, echoing into a harsh pitch.

“Help! I’m down here!” They screamed, tears that had dried momentarily starting to flow freely again.

They’re down there, help me move this.

They could hear them, they felt only feet apart yet miles away as they heard the shifting of stone.

Nobody?

The voice was still muffled and they needed a minute to breathe.

“Shit, no, no, hey buddy keep talking to me,” they could hear the desperation in Ace’s voice as it became clearer.

“I’m here, I’m here,” their voice faltered, their vocal cords having been thrashed from use.

“I need you to keep talking or I can’t find you, take the other side of this Jacob,” they could hear him closer now.

“I see a hand!” This time it was Eight’s voice, a little more worn than usual, but it was him none the less.

“It hurts, Traveler it hurts!” Light had started to trickle in above them, bouncing off the visor of their helmet.

“Shit.”

There was a dragging, grinding noise and suddenly pain shot up Nobody’s leg, a scream ripped from their throat as they heard Ace curse again.

“Stop stop! Not that one.”

The pressure subsided, and they felt their vision dim, the toll the lack of oxygen took on them easier to realize in the light.

“Please,” their voice was weak, barely a shaking whisper as darkness encroached on their vision. They had thought they had stayed conscious but it was obviously not true seeing as the next time they opened their eyes they were fully bathed in light, two figures overhead as they tried to orient themselves. They were wedged at an odd position, halfway facing down while their legs were curled upwards like they had tried to tuck themselves into a ball. The air stung wounds they hadn’t even gotten to see yet as a pair of hands started to maneuver them from their tomb.

“Get their legs,” Ace’s voice was quieter now, grave, as he started to pull upwards.

The motion made them stretch, opening wounds, a gagging noise leaving their throat as it took their breath away.

“Get the helmet off,” it was Eight who spoke next, two arms taking up Nobody’s legs in an attempt to get them out easier, finally they stopped moving and it took a moment for Nobody to come to full consciousness. They felt fingers at their throat, the action alarming, old dull memories kicking up panic in their stomach as they tried to grasp at whoever was assaulting them.

“Hey, hey, it’s us Nobody, it’s Danny, we’re not hurting you.”

Nobody blinked, eyes still blurry, and although they were no longer in the pitch black it was still hard to see. Their grip softened on Daniel’s wrist and he started to work again at the clasps of their helmet, obviously bent from being in such a wreck. Finally though there was a click and the helmet loosened before it was pulled from Nobody’s head.

“Averi,” they choked out as they blinked past tears, trying to get a good look and Ace.

“What? What is it?”

“They’re bleeding a lot,” Eight said quietly, somewhere off to the side, the act of turning their head to look difficult as Nobody tried to fight back the black blotches that swam in their vision.

“I’m Averi, please, don’t forget. My name, me, I’m Averi,” it all was muddled together, the only thing in their minds that seemed a constant was a need for them to know.

“Don’t forget. Don’t forget, I’m Averi,” they choked on a half sob half yelp as something was pressed to their side, a hand finding theirs.

“Averi.”

Their breath caught in their throat as he said it, heart pounding against their ribs and a throbbing in their head that blurred their vision. They saw a mess of white hair, and realized they had Eight’s hand in a vice grip.

“Averi...Averi, we won’t forget you. We won’t cause we're going to make it through this. You are going to make it through this or so help me God."

They tried to focus on Daniel’s words, tried to find his eyes, tried to find Jacob beside them but it was all mixing into a swirling mess of lights, colors and sounds. They squeezed their eyes shut, choking down another sob as they felt a hand on their side, pain shaking them to the core.

“They’re bleeding too heavily, we need… we need help.”

“They’re coming.”

“Danny…”

Their eyes slid open again, vision blurred but they could see the both of them.

“Please, don’t forget.”

“Stay with me Averi okay? Keep looking at me, keep those beautiful eyes on me yeah?” They weren’t sure if Daniel’s voice had wavered or if they had imagined it.

“I can’t stop the bleeding,” Jacob’s voice was barely above a whisper and Averi saw Daniel look over.

“Press harder.”

Nobody hissed as they felt the pressure increase, a steady throbbing that wouldn’t cease making them want to vomit. They let their eyes slide shut, they needed rest, just for a second; it was then they felt gloved hands pressed to their cheeks.

“Hey, can you open your eyes for me Averi?”

They forced themselves to look up, to meet Daniel’s eye again.

“Remember movie night a few weeks ago? Remember falling asleep between Jacob and I? You don’t sleep that soundly at home and yet you were snoring like a baby,” Daniel forced out a laugh and Nobody felt their head clear slightly as the memory popped up amongst the fog of pain and adrenaline.

“We’ll be like that again yeah? Just have to stick around, will you? Will you stick around Averi?”

It took all the energy they had to nod, their throat too dry to speak.

“Good, okay, I’m glad, I’m happy about that, what about you Jacob?”

“I’m happy, I’m happy,” Nobody felt a squeeze at their hand.

Nobody felt a smile tug at the edges of their cracked lips, trying to breathe deeply despite the pain in their chest. Their head was throbbing and everything felt like it was starting to slow down. It was hard to blink, or rather it was harder to open their eyes after closing them.

“Stay with me Averi, yeah? Stay with us?”

Nobody tried to nod, tried to respond but they were finding it too hard, everything, every minuet exertion that would have normally been easy was draining.

Stay with us Averi… Averi we love you stay with us… Stay, Averi. Stay.

#my writing #Nobody #Ace #Eight #I'm a shell of a human being

9 notes · View notes

komahinasecretexchange · 7 years

Text

Title: Candlelit

Author: @sagacitus

For: @toomanyfandomsgoddamnit

Rating/Warnings: G, microscopic amounts of conflict

Prompt: Domestic AU/Fluff in general

Author’s notes: Domestic/Non-Despair AU. A storm cuts out the city’s power, so Hinata and Komaeda have a date at home. ((THE CONFLICT ONLY LASTS LIKE 5 SECONDS I PROMISE I’M SO SORRY I COULDN’T MAKE IT PURE FLUFF))

Hinata was woken up by the sound of soft pattering on the roof above him. As he slowly blinked opened his eyes, a sense of heaviness washed over his body and made him want to pull the covers up over his head and go back to sleep.

Another summer storm hit. And thus ends a lovely day out with his boyfriend.

Right, his boyfriend… Hinata rolled onto his left side to see the sleeping back of the guy he cared so deeply about. Was he awake? Was he just pretending to be asleep so he wouldn’t have to get out of bed like Hinata wanted to? Regardless, Hinata scooted up behind Komaeda and wrapped one arm under his pillow and the other around his ribs, joining his hands in a soft embrace as he buried his nose in the fluffy hair that smelled faintly of fresh soap.

Komaeda softly groaned. “Five more minutes, Hinata-kun…” He rolled onto his back, eyes just barely peeking open.

“It’s raining out, Komaeda.” Hinata replied, burying his head into the newly formed nook between Komaeda’s head and shoulder, holding the boy a little tighter. “I don’t wanna go out today. Let’s just stay in here and cuddle all day.”

“Mmmm… that sounds rather nice actually. But we should get up eventually, I mean we gotta eat and go shopping…”

Hinata was already half asleep again, nestled warmly wrapped around Komaeda’s right half. “Yeah yeah we can do that later, now hold me.”

Komaeda softly chuckled. “You’re pretty affectionate this morning, Hinata-kun. What happened?”

“Rainy days just suck. I know we had plans and stuff but when was the last time we had a lazy day with just the two of us? Nobody else distracting us, nothing else to worry about. Just a quiet lazy day together.”

Komaeda rubbed his eyes. “I don’t think we’ve ever done that, Hinata-kun. I thought you’d get sick of me if we spent a whole day together. Don’t you need your space?”

Hinata raised his head to rest on Komaeda’s chest. “Maybe sometimes, but… what about you Komaeda? Have you ever wanted something like that?”

“Honestly? I’ve always hoped to have a day like that. I just thought it was a selfish thought and that I wasn’t good enough to spend so much time with Hinata-kun.” Komaeda looked away, slowly trying to wrap his right arm around Hinata’s waist. “I don’t want to be a bother…”

Hinata tightly wrapped his arms around the back of the other boy’s neck, resting his forehead against the other’s cheek. “You’re never a bother, Komaeda. Things might be confusing at times and maybe we have our moments, but I’m so glad I’ve gotten to meet you and fall so hard for you. You deserve to be loved.” Hinata pulled back and saw Komaeda’s eyes watering slightly. “A-Ah! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean for you to be so upset-”

Hinata was interrupted by Komaeda suddenly sitting upright and hugging Hinata’s shoulders tightly with a small smile on his face. “You’re so kind to me, Hinata-kun… I really am lucky after all.”

As if on cue, the soft whirring of the nearby air conditioner turned off and the lights in the bathroom went dark as well. With the sky outside so overcast, the lack of light brought the bedroom into a nearly pitch black void, save for the soft glow of Hinata’s cellphone on the nearby now-useless charger.

“…Did the power just go out?” Hinata softly asked, still being held tightly by his boyfriend.

Komaeda silently chuckled, the vibrations shaking Hinata slightly. “I should have known! Such wonderful sentiment could only mean something terrible would follow soon after! Seems like my luck curse has stricken once again”

“Hey, it’s not that bad. Just because we have no power doesn’t mean we still can’t enjoy ourselves.”

“What do you suggest then, Hinata-kun?” Komaeda could feel Hinata shuffling out of bed, his adjusted eyes noticing he was headed towards the kitchen.

“…Candles can be pretty romantic I guess.” Hinata softly spoke with just the slightest hint of flustering in his voice.

–

Seven of clubs.

King of clubs.

King of diamonds.

Draw two. Nine of diamonds.

Eight of diamonds.

“I choose hearts!” Komaeda announced to his boyfriend.

“Now that’s just adorable.” Hinata grinned as he placed a Five of hearts onto the pile.

“What do you mean?” Nine of hearts.

“Choosing hearts? Get it? Cause we like each other?” Hinata blushed slightly and placed down an Ace of hearts. “Maybe I’m just looking too much into it.”

“You’re so perceptive, Hinata-kun! You can read me like a book.” Ace of spades.

“Wait that was really your intention?” Hinata looked up in surprise, proceeding to draw 3 cards and placing a Queen of spades onto the pile.

“Not really, but maybe the idea was in the back of my head. I wouldn’t rule it out.” Queen of clubs.

“How do you keep getting cards to put down? You haven’t had to pull a single card yet!” Hinata groaned, pulling five cards to finally place a two of clubs down.

“I guess my luck is shining through on this rainy day.” Komaeda smiled and placed down a two of hearts, clearing his hand. “I win, Hinata-kun!”

Hinata snorted as he retrieved all the loose cards, shuffling them all into the deck. “I should have known better than to play cards games against you, Komaeda. I don’t think you’ve lost a single game the entire time I’ve known you.”

“I’m sorry if I’ve frustrated you, Hinata-kun.” Komaeda slumped over and grabbed his arms, suddenly looking sullen. “That was never my intention.”

Putting the deck of cards away, Hinata raised his eyebrows at what his boyfriend said. “Hey, Komaeda, it’s okay. I was just teasing. I like playing games with you, I don’t really care if I win or lose.”

The other looked up. “You…like playing with me? Even something as boring as a card game.”

“Well duh! I-I thought that was a given..” Hinata glanced away, blushing a little more. “I like spending time with you no matter what we do.”

“You don’t have to lie to me. I know there’s things you’d rather be doing right now.” Komaeda stood up.

“I’m not lying! Why is it so difficult for you to understand that I enjoy being around you?” Hinata ran a hand through his brown spiky hair, feeling a little frustrated.

“And now I’ve gone and upset Hinata-kun.” Komaeda walked towards the window, staring out at the downpour of rain outside.

“I’m not upset, Komaeda! I’m just confused. Why do you think so poorly of yourself?”

“I’m not that important. There’s billions of people in the world, and I’m just one of them. I’m nothing special, heck most people don��t even notice me. Aside from maybe my luck cycle, I’m not that distinct.” Komaeda slowly began to cast his eyes downwards. “I’m worthless.”

Hinata embraced Komaeda from behind. “You’re not any of those things. I’ve never met anyone like you in my life. Heck if anything I’M the one that feels so boring and ordinary.”

Komaeda quickly spun around and grabbed Hinata’s shoulders. “You’re anything BUT ordinary, Hinata-kun! From the moment I first met you I could feel the hope from within you radiating and bringing smiles to the people around you. You’re so sure of yourself and you know exactly what to say to lift someone’s mood. I wouldn’t be able to make someone so happy just by saying a few words.”

Hinata snorted. “Dummy…” He pulled Komaeda close to him and rested their foreheads together. “How do you explain me then?”

Komaeda’s widening eyes were the last thing Hinata saw before softly pulling their lips together, wrapping his arms around the others neck and burying a hand into the soft white hair he loved so much. The room grew silent as the only sounds that could be heard were the thunder rumbling outside, the patter of rain falling, and the occasional barely-audible smacks of the two boys stopping and starting anew in their kisses.

After what felt like an eternity, Komaeda was the one who slowly pulled back and opened his eyes first, admiring the blissful look on Hinatas face as the others eyes softly blinked open. “You’ve got me there, Hinata-kun.”

Hinata grinned and softly snorted, pulling Komaeda into a hug. “You think too much about making me happy, Komaeda. You do that all on your own without even trying. You give my life purpose and meaning and every day is a new exciting experience to share with you. Don’t ever think you’re not something wonderful.”

Komaeda blinked away small tears of happiness as he nuzzled into Hinata’s shoulder. “I promise.”

Hinata smiled just before a loud growl interrupted the silence. “Guess we should probably get something to eat.” the brunette chuckled, pulling back from the tender embrace.

“But we have no power to cook, Hinata-kun! The stove is electric and I don’t think opening the fridge would be a good idea either.”

“Hey, we’re not totally out of power you know.” Hinata walked over to the nightstand where his long-forgotten phone rested on standby. He picked it up and thumbed through his quick contacts. “Pizza sound okay?”

–

A half hour later, Komaeda grinned as he patted grease off of a slice of oozing pepperoni pizza. “They DO say the way to a guy’s heart is through his stomach.”

“Oh, does that imply I haven’t captured your heart yet?” Hinata teased, taking a bite of his own slice. “Guess I’ll have to work harder then.”

Komaeda snorted and gently elbowed the other’s arm, silently rolling his eyes. “Maybe you should, Hinata-kun. Sweep me off my feet.”

“Literally or metaphorically?”

“Surprise me.”

Hinata snorted in return and swiftly smooched the other’s cheek, earning him a quiet squeak from Komaeda. “Maybe when my hands aren’t covered in grease.”

The two boys continued to eat their food, stopping occasionally to rant on about some silly thing Hinata caught their landlord doing, or some interesting story Komaeda stumbled across on his many walks throughout the neighborhood.

“There’s this cute little black cat that likes to join me sometimes.” Komaeda recalled, bringing the empty pizza box and paper plates to the trash. “I think it’s a stray, it doesn’t wear a collar.”

“Do you have a name for it?” Hinata washed his hands and started digging through a nearby cabinet of junk.

“Midnight. Figured it’s fitting for her dark fur, and fitting how I usually take my walks after dark.”

“I should join you someday and see if we can find her. Hope she’s doing okay in this rain.” Hinata triumphantly pulled out a large radio stashed away in a closet. It was battery powered, so they could still listen to music and keep the apartment from growing quiet.

“That reminds me, what time is it getting to be Hinata-kun?” Komaeda looked around the living room, presumably looking for Hinata’s phone.

“Beats me. Feels like this rain has gone on for hours. And it’s so dark outside I can’t tell what’s night or day anymore.” Hinata switched the radio on and found a station playing classical music, turning the volume down to a comfortable background level.

“Your phone says it’s nearly 9pm.” Komaeda raised the cell phone over his head where he found it sitting on a side table.

“Wow, the day really flew by.”

“I wish we could have more days like this, Hinata-kun.” Komaeda sighed, walking over to Hinata and softly grabbing his left arm. “It was nice getting to spend so much intimate time with you.”

“H-hey now, do you really have to word it like that?” Hinata flustered, looking away. “But yeah I agree, this was really nice.”

“Hinata-kun?”

“Hm?” Hinata turned towards Komaeda who was staring at him lovingly with the purest of expressions on his faces, causing the brunette’s cheeks to burn even more.

“Will you dance with me?” Komaeda’s grip on Hinata’s arm grew ever-so-slightly tighter. “I think that would be a really lovely way to end such a wonderful day.”

Hinata smiled, unable to resist the innocent look coming from his boyfriend. “I’d like that, Komaeda. I really would.”

Komaeda silently wrapped his arms around Hinata’s neck, resting his face on the other’s shoulder nuzzling into his neck. Hinata carefully wrapped his own arms around Komaeda’s waist, burying his face into the soft white hair he loved so much that still smelled as fresh as it was this morning. The two said nothing as they silently swayed and rocked to the piano music in the background, the many candles flickering casting a tall shadow on the wall nearby of the two in such a tender embrace. Hinata smiled and closed his eyes, losing himself in the tranquility of the moment. Yeah, more days like this would be nice.

Suddenly the room grew almost blindingly light as the lights flickered back on and the air conditioner whirred back into motion, signalling that power had finally been restored to their apartment. The two boys quietly groaned as their eyes suddenly adjusted to the artificial light, a stark contrast from the soft glow of the candles littered throughout the room.

“Looks like the powers back on.” Hinata grumbled, eyes still squinting to adjust to the light.

“Indeed it does, Hinata-kun.” Komaeda softly replied, still holding onto his boyfriend. “Today was nice while it lasted.”

Noting the almost disappointed tone of Komaeda’s voice, Hinata gently pulled away from the tender embrace and walked towards the closet the radio was being kept in.

“Is something the matter, Hinata-kun?” Komaeda inquired, confused as to why he would suddenly pull away without some explanation.

“The night isn’t over yet, Komaeda.” Hinata called out from inside the closet. The white haired boy was about to ask what Hinata meant, when suddenly all the lights in the room went dark and the whirring I’m the background stopped. “Just because the city has power doesn’t mean we have to.”

“The circuit breaker?” Komaeda was still mildly confused.

Hinata walked back towards Komaeda, nodding and extending his hand. “Shall we continue?”

Komaeda grinned and grabbed the same outstretched hand, pulling the two close. “I think I’d like that, Hinata-kun.”

The brunette grinned, and with a determined look on his face, ducked under Komaeda and swiftly picked him up from the side, carrying the white haired boy in his arms bridal style. “Then I believe I have a promise to keep.

The two giggled and spun in circles for the rest of the night, eventually making their way back into the bedroom and collapsing on the bed, not bothering to change into pyjamas. The last thing Hinata heard, aside from the soft pattering of the rain outside, was the murmuring of the forgotten radio still playing a soft piano melody outside in the kitchen.

Another summer storm hit. And thus ends a lovely day in with his boyfriend.

#komahina secret exchange #komahina #fanfiction

54 notes · View notes

phthalology · 7 years

Note

Okay, if you want an Eris/Toland prompt: their first meeting in the class swap AU. Perhaps it's enough of a swap that Toland is Eriana's friend, and Eris is the Hive expert they call in to help defeat Crota?

When Eris Morn learned the eighth sigil, she sighed as loud as she dared in the close tunnel. Eight were too many to make up the chord-locks of the Hive’s patron beasts. Eight was easy. Eight signified nothing except she had not found enough characters to read their alphabet.

How reassuring.

It had been three days since her Fireteam had scattered. Eris had done strange cold work among her fellow Guardians on Earth, but the pits beneath the Moon were stranger and more cold. Warlocks tended to forget that they lived in a half-dead world, Eris realized after that. She had expected to have a place to return to after all her wandering.

Now she buried her chin against the collar of her cloak and kept reading the runes. Her vision was spotty, from hunger or strain. It became difficult to tell how far away the wall was, whether the light of the bond on her arm or the light from the runes on the gate was brighter. She had worked her way up through two locked doors so far. Many more and she would know the language well enough to speak it.

Hive-pidgen, she thought of it as. Some was understandable enough in context, but other words had gaps in them, filled by what she supposed was a cultural assumption about the Light.

The cloak on her back was weighted badly, bunched up around her collar. She adjusted it, abhorring the wet dust that had gathered. By now it all smelled like moon-dust and old rot and the colors of the cloak were camouflaged with blood and ichor. When she had been given it she had chuckled at how conspicuous the bright green was, scowled at how gaudy the pattern reminiscent of the gateway into the Hellmouth. The last-minute tactic had seemed ridiculous in the face of six healthy Guardians on their way to kill a prince.

“They’ll believe you are one of their own. And that is the only way.”

—

Toland the Vitreous, Eriana-3 thought, would have been much more dangerous if he had known how to be charming.

Maybe that was why he, unlike Osiris or Dredgen Yor, had never gathered a cult to himself. Instead, she thought that he gave the the impression of hardly believing his own ideas. They were fancies, and he loved them all the more for it.

“Lord Shaxx is right about one thing,” he said lightly, before the Crucible match started. “Win and loss are the only really fundamental states of matter.”

“Poetic,” Eriana had said. Maybe if he had inherited a bit more science from his cryptarch mentor, he would have made a heretic Warlock. As it was, he presented as a Hunter who ranged far enough to pull at the invisible, elastic strings of the wolfpack. His Vanguard had warned him.

And Eriana, who could see right through him, had befriended him.

He didn’t take her up on her offer of the Crucible often. There had been whispers while the team assembled - what was this lone buzzard, this particular strange Hunter, brought to the Crucible? Toland the Vitreous, they called him, burnt out by his own dark work until there was nothing left but glass.

As soon as the team started running - it was a match for kills in vine-covered ruins - he switched guns. The one he held was sleek and golden, and quickly caught fire as he called the Sun. An animal’s spine wrapped around the barrel, the beaked skull pointing at the front. She had thought she might start to teach him some of the more applicable aspects of the Praxic Fire, but the weapon he held was half Golden Gun, parts manifesting from the Light itself.

He shot one of his teammates in the head three times. The other Warlock slipped backwards, helmet burning, and their Ghost flared out before they hit the ground. They would wake up furious and confused, Eriana thought.

“Toland, no!” Eriana yelled. He was running an experiment - she had done enough of her own to know.

A few of the fighters stopped, presumably wondering why two Guardians on the same team were fighting with no objective in sight. Others ignored them, blasting across the Cosmodrome ruins they had drawn in the Crucible rotation lottery.

Toland had always been a bit Warlockish.

Eriana could sense the strange energies within the gun, the way it seemed to want to kill again. Toland seemed almost tugged as he knelt down beside the working Ghost, disinterested in the Guardians around him. He checked the clip, then turned to her.

“Ah, it works,“ he said, then leaned in to the urgeful light of that Sun and shot the Ghost.

—

Shaxx pulled him out of the match and gave him to Cayde, but Eriana kept watch.

“Why? Let go of that,” Eriana said, and took the gun from him. It fell in half, the Sun-stuff disappearing between her fingers and leaving her holding the precarious pieces of the hollow gun. Cayde had told them to wait on the Tower watch, above the Vanguard hall. The trickle of the water in the human-made streams seemed like a blaring distraction when Eriana was trying so hard to watch out for anyone who might walk in. Toland gave no impression of wanting to attack anyone again, but Eriana wanted to avoid any altercations. Toland’s experiment had been interesting, indeed. The gun had reacted to something, to its own mindless perception of having won a tiny part of the match. Win and lose are the only really fundamental states …

Cayde-6 and Andal Brask walked onto the Tower watch with one bowl of ramen and one neon-green drink between them.

“What have we here?” Cayde was the louder one, always at Andal’s elbow, but Andal was the Vanguard. Toland looked at him.

“Golden Gun draws from the Sun, and the Sun from the Light and the Light from the body,” Toland said. “That cycle can be picked apart and rearranged. I’ve made a golden gun that does not run out of shots.”

“It feeds on dead Guardians,” Eriana said, still holding the pieces of Bad Juju stacked between her hands. The interiors were alarmingly organic-looking, with stringy support structures like in a bird’s hollow bones.

Andal looked at Cayde, then back at Toland. “You brought that artifact back before, that strange cube. Is this related?”

Toland held his hands out in front of him as if ready to be shackled. He wore the close-fitting Hunter garb in a green that looked not martial but simply as if it was rotting off of him. Eriana looked down at her own Praxic uniform as if expecting some sort of stain.

“Don’t delay your sentence,” Toland said. “My experiment is done. We can threaten the very cage around our world with this.”

“The Vanguard have already covered your view of the Warminds,” Andal answered quickly. This surprised Eriana; she hadn’t known he held such a view.

“And your discussion will cease when the world falls down around your ears,” Toland said.

“You killed a Guardian,” Cayde enunciated slowly. The word he used indicated permanent death; it was beginning to be used in reference to Hive magic as well, sometimes ironically. It had been rare before the Hive incursion. Eriana was starting to miss those times. “Maybe we should get back to that?”

“Things are piling up,” Andal said. “You leave your teammates behind to go off looking for ruins - and you’ve pestered the Vanguard about Rasputin more than Cayde has.”

Cayde shrugged.

“This has gone on long enough,” Andal said. His voice turned stentorian; he could act when he wanted to. “I will bring you before the Vanguard.”

The silence stretched out, offering a hand and an ace up the sleeve; Toland could go politely or he could be removed in whatever unpleasant manner Andal thought fit.

Eriana interrupted.

“Let me talk to him first,” she said. She found authority in her voice by reminding herself that she was not under the Hunters’ jurisdiction. “I’m interested in the way he used Golden Gun. I study the Praxic Fire. This could be of use to us.”

Although Eriana was not a senior member of her order, the followers of the Praxic Creed were well known for being practical - for Warlocks. Hunters joked that this meant decisions required only two days of meditative contemplation. It helped that Eriana was known for being solidly personable. She watched Andal decide how much she knew about what was likely to happen if Toland saw all three Vanguard. Exile could be as formal as an appearance from the Speaker or as informal as a quick and impermanent death.

In the end, the expression Eriana saw in Andal’s eyes was a deep sympathy for her and Toland’s friendship.

“In ten minutes I’ll send Shaxx back up here,” Andal said, and left.

Eriana caught Cayde lifting the green drink in a salute to his mentor’s back as he followed.

Toland tried to slide away; Eriana caught him by the shoulders. “Don’t say a word,” she said, then shook her head. He wouldn’t manage it. “I’m going to hide you before they can exile you,” she said, and for a moment he looked surprised at her apparent clairvoyance.

She was right that he couldn’t manage to be quiet, but chattiness itself was not suspicious. They took the elevator down, and worked on a cover story.

—

When Eris heard Eriana’s name around the Tower more often, she felt a mix of jealousy and pride.

They had been friends early in their new lives, two Warlocks with the same wry sense of humor and a comfort with sitting beside one another and studying in silence for hours. Their own ascensions had helped drive them apart, though; as Eriana became more dedicated to the Praxic Creed and Eris to the more esoteric work favored by Ikora their missions took them to far-off places. When Eris was inducted into the Hidden after a particularly spectacular stealth mission against the Hive incursion, her friendship with Eris faded quietly like the colors on an old cloak. If they had skipped time and seen the change, it would have been shocking, but because time progressed the normal way the transition into almost complete silence was itself unnoticed.

The Hidden had offered prime opportunities for a Voidwalker, and so Eris had become used to conspiring and spying, to seeing in Ikora’s eyes the secrets that they shared.

Now, Ikora was keeping her comm open while Eris trailed a Hive commander in the Cosmodrome. There had been reports of an unusually organized swarm, of a towering Knight with a sword that made a name for itself among younger Guardians.

“Find out at least where they’re based. Maybe what they call themselves,” Ikora said.

“Their names are fascinating, actually. Did I mention to you that they seem to have no names distinguished by gender?” Eris always felt a bit hesitant talking to someone as accomplished and brilliant as the Vanguard, but she also knew that Ikora shared her interest in ephemera. Eris was not a magpie of a Warlock, the sort that coveted their own personal library; instead she gathered facts, ideas she could carry around without adding any weight to her blue robes.

“You hadn’t,” Ikora said.

Eris continued walking along the hillside, avoiding snowy patches that might be slippery. She had not tried to disguise herself and instead walked openly, passively monitoring the emanations of Darkness she could feel from the other side.

“I’m almost at the site,” Eris said.

“Good.”

Eris wanted to say something else, some formality or pleasantry for closure, but Ikora’s voice had closed off in that authoritative way that she had, and Eris knew that if she herself spoke now she would tend to babble. So instead she remained quiet as she walked around the sharp cliff of rock that made up the oceanward side of the hill. In front of her now the grassland sloped down to the sluggish water. To her left was the gash in the hill that lead to the cave.

Eris readied the gun in her hand as the Hive sniffed her out, but she didn’t expect to have to use it.

First the eyes appeared in threes and sixes in the cave, then the thralls lurched themselves out of the darkness with their sideways gait and screamed toward her. Eris Morn waited. Not exactly covert work, this, but there were more difficult ways to study them, and Osiris had suggested that she couldn’t capture an entire pack of Hive at once on her own, so she had just had to —

Ah, there, the traps. Eris had formed them out of the Hive’s own filaments, the metal pieces they tended to drive into the Earth. Ikora permitted this as long as it remained in the realms of linguistics and engineering and did not turn into magic, and Eris was equally committed to upholding that separation.

Thrall zig-zagged forward and the Knights followed, lumbering, and Eris ducked as blasts from energy weapons splashed past her. She knew though —

The traps snapped upward out of the ground, green fire burning on the edges of the metal ribs. The one holding the sword-bearer worked too well. The Hive commander dissolved into dust, shrieking. Eris could not tell whether it had dashed itself against the bars with its momentum or not. The Hive seemed to glory in killing others, but not necessarily in mindless loss; Eris thought for a moment that the Knight must have been disappointed in itself. Then she put one hand over the bottom of her helmet, wanting to cover her mouth. She still stood in front of a pack of trapped thrall, and the relief at her plan working was slowly draining away and leaving fear in its wake.

There were some garbled noises on the comm, and Eris felt her heart sink. “Are you okay?”

Quickly, the signal stabilized. “Thank you for trapping that brood, Eris,” Ikora said.

“It didn’t work. I’m sorry. The sword bearer …” Eris wrinkled her nose in embarrassed amusement at her own overkill. “Disintegrated.”

“No matter. It’s time to come back,” Ikora said kindly, and quickly enough that Eris only had time to open her mouth in shock. “It’s time to send our armies to the Moon.”

—

For a while, Toland’s most pressing concern was the war.

Eriana had gathered her troops in a small apartment in the City, kitted out for a short-term stay and taken by Toland for a longer one. The fireteam loved her, and gathered around her in a flock when she announced that their last team member would be coming soon. Eris Morn was a quietly competent Warlock known mostly for being a closed-mouthed confidante of Ikora Rey, Eriana had said. Later she had added that she and Eris had once been friends, but that their respective work with the Praxic Warlocks, and, supposedly, with Ikora’s Hidden had pulled them apart. Perhaps this was why she was nervous, or because the team hadn’t yet cohered. Vell Tarlowe, the Titan from the Pilgrim Guard, seemed to suffer from a mild claustrophobia in the City and so tended to puff up like a pigeon to show his strength.

“Don’t fret,” Toland whispered to Eriana. She was running hot, not the Sun but her servos heating up the edge of his sleeve. “Your pets won’t hurt the spy.”

“Between your fascination and her experience we have all the Hive expertise we need.” Eriana’s tone was strong, as if she were addressing the Vanguard. Later, Toland thought that she might regret such conviction. She had already framed him and Eris as complementary, as a likely pair of researchers.

Now, Eriana waited with the group for the Hidden Warlock to arrive. Toland began to feel impatient, standing in formation like this as if they were petitioners at the Vanguard’s beckon call instead of a rogue fireteam breaking the Lunar Interdict.

When Eris arrived there was no fanfare, no sneaking. She did not appear out of thin air or in a cloud of Voidlight. She walked in through the door, wearing bronze-plated Voidfang Vestments and with her helmet tucked under her arm. Perhaps there was a hint of clandestine energy in the way she edged over to Eriana, who quickly and unreservedly clasped her elbow.

“Thank you for coming,” Eriana said. Her lights blinked sincere acknowledgement, doubling the thanks for those who could read Exo expressions.

Eris surveyed the group, full lips slightly open. “The opportunity to study the Hive is incredible, but the, uh, cause is more worthy.”

Her voice hesitated a bit over the formal words, becoming more resonant as she faltered. Toland found himself wondering whether there was a pattern in that he could predict if he listened long enough.

Eriana continued the formality with a bow of her head, but when she started to introduce the group members individually she made it almost immediately clear that theirs was not a strict affect to go with the deadly serious mission. Omar joked that Eris had probably forgotten more about the Hive than he ever knew, and her response was gracious and wry. Eriana brought her to Toland last.

“Our other Hunter,” Eriana said softly. “Toland the Vitreous, the weaponsmith.” She looked at Eris to see her reaction. “He was exiled.”

Eris equally softly pulled a breath in.

Toland perceived the Darkness on Eris as a gauzy cloak over her clothing. Peel the surface away and you would have a sheet of Hive-stuff, likely to sprout signal towers and green crystals. It would come off clean, though. Eris was not herself corrupted.

“I hear you are exceptionally familiar with our enemy,” he said. It was an expression of curiosity, but, he admitted to himself, also a challenge. She too immersed herself in studies that could easily cause Guardians on her team to die, even if it was not on purpose.

“I study them.” She said, sharp eyes glinting in a sharp face. “That does not mean I love them.”

“We devote ourselves to what we will,” he said, and took her hand. He knew from the weight of the word that he felt for her - to say devote in front of her felt suddenly personal and dangerous. And that, of course, made his words to her a tender and fascinating lie. There was no willpower left to him, now that he had felt this.

Eris Morn shook Toland’s hand, and he filed his own interest away.

Later he would catch her while he was reading in their fireteam’s hideaway, the place Eriana had set up for him before Crota was even a storm on the horizon. She would wait by the edge of the bookshelf and extend her awareness to him, a wash of Voidlight filled with patterns and mathematics he could not fathom, and he would glow with the Sun and light one of the pages of the books for her. He thought that she must be surprised to see a Hunter flitting around the shelves. She explained to him some of the Hive sigils that she recognized, and he just listened.

Even later, he noticed that she would find excuses to stay after the rest of the team had gone, and she would tell him about the terrors of the Hive, and the way they believed in wins and losses. It was after agreeing with one of these statements that he touched her hands again, play-fighting in jabs and bait-and-switches. When they paused with their fingers tangled, he stooped to kiss both of their hands. She smirked when his lips brushed his own knuckles.

For a while, Toland’s most pressing concerns were her and the war.

—

Some of the runes must have been missing. Eris had worked out what the sequence should be, but there was no sigil for the ninth character. She could keep working on them, driving herself to distraction, or she could turn around and find a more defensible spot. Soon, she thought, she would not have a choice.

She turned and saw another glow.

How far away? What letter did that represent? What sound did it make?

She wondered whether she might see a trio of green eyes in the dark, and be unsure whether it was an enemy or a delusion borne from hope. Toland, the Vitreous, had been wearing that mask before he disappeared.

Eris had thought once that she could fight the Hive using their own tools without becoming as evil as they were. Funny, how she had not entirely been wrong. She could keep her pure intent. What the Hive worshipped wasn’t about intent, really; the swordlogic was a physical law, and all along Eris had been following it like the ocean followed the Moon.

Toland, though, had dived right in. The last she had seen him alive he was fleeing down a tunnel, crying nonsense words, making sounds like might have been Hive names if he had ever learned them properly. After that, there had been the body and the Deathsinger she and Eriana fought. Both of them had looked for some trace of Hive magic and found none. Toland had not found the words to unlock his gate either.

She could imagine, though, that those were his false eyes. She could imagine eyes all around her, his face ghosting through the rock between her hands where she had crouched over in the tunnel. The deaths of her teammates felt like dreams now, and she supposed she should be thankful for it. Her brain was shifting these things into the category of nightmare so that she could keep going, so that the guilt and terror would stay distant until they leaked out somehow. She could not weep, except for the messy, tar-colored ichor that bled from the cracked skin around her eyes.

The Hive had been an abstraction to her for a little while, and now they were just a gate.

She turned back to the door and started working on a new idea about how to bypass the ninth sigil.

—

Once Illumynare suggested that Eris and Toland’s backgrounds should be swapped along with their classes, I had to figure out how that happened - and so it became part of what was supposed to be a thousand-word story. Well. The resulting timeline becomes kinder to its characters at the beginning and crueler by the end, I suppose. Eris is more accomplished at the beginning of this story than I imagine she was in canon, forced as she was out from under Eriana’s wing. She has the Warlock penchant for study but an emotional distance from the Hive that Toland never managed. Toland has only half of his canon obsessions - he’s desperately fearful and sees other Guardians as potential subjects for experimentation, but never researched the Hive enough to speak convincingly to Ir Yût. Therefore he never became quite as infamous as he was in canon, and was never technically “shattered” - although still more than willing to abandon his team. I tried to keep these differences in mind.

#the longest prompt answer #Destiny #Eris/Toland #Fireteam Heartbreak #illumynare #Eris Morn #Toland #Cayde-6 #Andal Brask #Ikora Rey #Eriana-3

13 notes · View notes

onewfantaesy · 7 years

Text

so tarzan au

Taemin is a 15-year-old sophomore now, and he, like all his lil sophomore classmates, takes biology. In this biology class, the process of evolution comes up. Also in this class, the teacher likes to show the documentary about a little boy who was found living with gorillas when he was 5-years-old, and this boy becomes the main topic of the class for at least a month every year. Taemin wants to melt into the ground on that first day they start learning about “The Gorilla Boy,” especially when his teacher realizes that Taemin is, in fact, “The Gorilla Boy,” and promptly points this fact out to his entire third period class. Taemin can feel his ears and cheeks burning up when everyone in the class turns to look at where he’s sitting in between Jonghyun and Minho at their usual lab table, and he slouches a bit on the stool he’s sitting on.

“What are you looking at?” Minho hisses at the two girls who have turned their entire bodies around to stare at Taemin, and everyone else turns back to their teacher.

They start off the first lesson on “The Gorilla Boy” by watching the first documentary that was ever shown to the public about him. It involves the first footage Kibum and Jinki ever got of Taemin when he was living with the gorillas, their encounters with him, and the team of people it took to separate Taemin from the gorillas.

“Is that - is that a human child?” Jinki’s voice asks.

“It can’t be,” Kibum’s voice says.

“Holy - Holy shit, Kibum, it’s a little boy.”

The two of them start frantically whispering about how a child could have ended up with a family of gorillas, and whether or not he’s okay, but then the video zooms in on a tiny, five-year-old Taemin who plops himself down next to a female gorilla and looks up at her, trying to mimic the way she’s pulling leaves off a stem to eat. The female eventually just pulls Taemin close to her and starts giving him smaller leaves, and Taemin cuddles up next to her as the two of them eat.

“Amazing,” Kibum whispers.

“Does she think she’s his mother?”

“I think they both think she’s his mother.”

There’s other clips of Taemin playing with other baby gorillas, of Taemin pounding on his chest and then losing his footing and tumbling onto the ground with a smile on his face, and of him clinging to his gorilla mother’s back. There’s even clips of him playing with the silver-back, and of Taemin’s gorilla mother making a nest for the two of them to sleep to as close to the silver-back as they can.

“They’re protecting him,” Jinki whispers. “He’s the weakest - the silver-back is going to protect him the most.”

“But why?” Kibum asks. “How did he end up here? Why are they taking care of him?”

“Hell if I know.”

It then goes into how there’s the possibility that Taemin was the son of two scientists who went into the area when Taemin was two-years-old to observe the wildlife. They were only supposed to be there for a week, but they never came back, and they were all presumed dead - the husband, the wife, and their two-year-old son. It’s a theory that their camp was attacked by some of the wildlife, and the toddler survived and was most likely adopted by a female gorilla who’s own baby had probably died.

Eventually, after watching a few of the instances where Kibum and Jinki made themselves known to Taemin, when they taught him a couple words, after Taemin has pointed at his gorilla mother and proudly said, “Mommy!” the scene is shown where Taemin was separated from the gorillas.

It’s still hard for Taemin to watch, because he still remembers exactly how he felt when he was picked up by Jinki and rushed into a helicopter so that they could get away before the silver-back tried to kill anyone. He understands now why it had to be done, but that didn’t make it any less painful when it happened.

It especially doesn’t make it any less painful as he watches his own face as he cries out for the gorilla he believed was his mother for three years of his short life, as he screamed and cried and tried as best he could to escape from the creatures that were taking him away from his family.

He feels his ears burning again as his entire class watches his five-year-old-self pound on his chest once Jinki and Kibum got him back to their camp, trying to intimidate them the only way he knew how. He can’t watch as the little boy on screen scampers as far away from the people around him, crying and whimpering and looking around frantically for the family that they took him away from.

When the guy behind him throws a paper ball at his head right before the bell rings, Taemin turns around and chucks it right back when their teacher isn’t looking. The bell rings a moment later, and Taemin grabs his bag and hurries out to his next class.

That night, Taemin whines and complains to Kibum - who he lives with most of the time now - that his biology teacher is a complete whack job for spending so much time on Taemin’s story.

“It has nothing to do with evolution!” Taemin whines during dinner. “I wasn’t actually a fucking gorilla, I just lived with them!”

“Language,” Kibum warns him. “And look at the bright side: you’re going to ace whatever test he gives you at the end of all this.”

“That’s not the point,” Taemin mumbles.

By the end of dinner, Taemin’s face is hidden in his hands as he leans his elbows on the table.

“What’s wrong?” Kibum asks, going to sit down next to him.

Taemin lets out a shaky breath, and he cries to Kibum, “How’m I ever s’posed to get a girl to go to Homecoming with me when they all find out I lived in a fucking jungle until I was five, or that I couldn’t even really talk until I was six, or, or that I didn’t go to school until I was eight because I thought I was a fucking gorilla!”

“Because you’re so upset, I’m going to let the foul language slide this time,” Kibum tells him quietly. “But baby, this is not the end of the world. I know it sounds hard right now, but you are an amazing, fantastic boy, and anyone who doesn’t see that after watching all those documentaries about you isn’t worth your time.”

Jinki comes through the front door a few minutes later, and he walks into the kitchen to find Taemin crying into Kibum’s shoulder and Kibum rubbing his back and whispering that everything would be okay.

“What’s going on?” Jinki asks, rushing over. “What happened? Did you get hurt?”

Taemin only further buries his face in Kibum’s shirt, and Kibum sighs and looks up at Jinki.

“His biology teacher is fascinated with our work, did you know that?” Kibum asks. “With a particular fascination on Taemin’s story. His class his spending an entire month on the subject. They watched the first part of one of the documentaries about him, up until when we separated him.”

“Do - Do you miss your gorilla family? Is that why you’re upset?” Jinki asks softly as he kneels down and pats Taemin’s shoulder.

Taemin scoffs, pulling his face out of Kibum’s shirt and glaring at Jinki, “No, I’m upset because my entire class is gonna think I’m a freak!”

With that, Taemin gets up and stomps upstairs to his room, groaning the entire way.

“You are the most normal teenager I’ve ever met!” Jinki calls after him. “Like right now! You’re acting every bit the moody teenager!”

“Leave me alone!”

“I will personally testify that you are definitely a normal, brooding teenager!”

Taemin groans and slams his bedroom door.

Jinki turns to Kibum and laughs, “Has he always been that teengery, or is that a recent development?”

Kibum rolls his eyes and gets up to start clearing the table, “It’s a very normal occurrence nowadays - which you would know if you actually came to see him when you were supposed to.”

“You do know that I have a toddler at home, right? Things don’t always go as planned when you have a toddler,” Jinki says.

“I’m just saying that he misses you,” Kibum says quietly. “He pretends that he doesn’t, but he misses you.”

Jinki ends up staying a little later than planned, and he and Taemin watch the second Tarzan movie on the couch. Taemin denies it when Kibum tries to say that he saw them cuddling. Taemin is a manly-man, he does not cuddle.

Except the next day during biology, where his whole class gets to see five-year-old him cuddling on screen with Jinki while they sit on that very same couch and watch that very same Tarzan movie. They watch as tiny-Taemin runs up to the TV and points at a little Tarzan and says, “Me! Taemin!” and then points at himself with a proud grin on his face.

“That’s right, Tarzan is like you, isn’t he? Because he’s human, not a gorilla,” Kibum’s voice says from behind the camera.

“Me! Not a gorilla!” Taemin repeats, smiling and bouncing.

“That’s right, you’re a human. Taemin is a human,” Jinki says.

“Me! Taemin! Human!” Taemin repeats. “Not a gorilla.”

Taemin goes running up to the coffee table and takes one of the pictures of his gorilla mother.

“Mommy gorilla,” Taemin says, pointing at the picture. He then goes scampering over to Jinki on the couch and climbs up into his lap, jabbing a little finger into Jinki’s chest and saying, “Daddy Onew human.”

“Taemin?” Kibum asks, going over to them with the camera.

Taemin looks over at him and stays quiet for a moment, his eyebrows furrowing before he points at himself and says, “Hungry.”

Jinki and Kibum both laugh, along with Taemin’s entire class, and Jinki picks up Taemin and brings him into the kitchen.

But then there’s the not-so-cute parts, like Taemin going to physical therapy so he can walk correctly, and Taemin crying and getting frustrated every time they correct the way he stands or walks or sits or does anything that isn’t correct. They watch as Taemin gets frustrated and starts screaming and whining instead of talking because he can’t figure out the right words, or the grammar that they’re trying to teach him only confuses him.

His class thinks it’s cute when it’s shown that Kibum used gummy worms to get Taemin to do each problem on a math worksheet, but they don’t see how hard it was for Taemin to learn all the different numbers and to figure out what they all mean. They don’t see him struggling just to hold a pencil the right way, or the days, maybe weeks it took him to learn how to write. Forget reading altogether, because no one cares how many times Taemin would push away papers or books, crying and mumbling about how he couldn’t do it and how stupid he was, and how Jinki and Kibum to this day don’t know how he even found out about the word “stupid,” let alone what it meant.

But they see him by some miracle get caught up to second-grade work by the time he’s ready to start school when he’s eight-years-old. They see him with his first ever school backpack and lunchbox, holding his daddys’ hands and being led to a schoolyard where he actually went to school with a lot of his current classmates.

The next day, they actually get a worksheet for the videos they’ve been watching the last couple days. They’re supposed to fill it out as a class while their teacher talks with them about everything they watched, and it’s supposed to prepare them for the video they’re going to watch next week that was filmed when Taemin was eleven-years-old.

Taemin fills out the worksheet in two minutes before giving it to Minho and Jonghyun to copy, and he puts his head in his hands and tries to take a nap throughout the rest of the period.

At least, he was going to try to take a nap until his teacher called on him to answer one of the questions.

“No sleeping in class,” their teacher warns him. A few people giggle, but Taemin just sits up and rolls his eyes. “Now why don’t you tell us the answer to number six?”

“Um,” Taemin mumbles, grabbing his worksheet from Jonghyun and looking at number six, ‘What was Taemin’s favorite movie to watch with his caretakers?’

Taemin scoffs at the word ‘caretakers,’ but he answers, “Tarzan Two.”

“Actually, it was just Tarzan. Perhaps you should stop sleeping in class and start paying more attention,” his teacher says.

“Actually, it’s Tarzan Two,” Taemin tells him. “The first Tarzan is about a grown man being found by humans and also a poacher or something, which was scary as hell when I was little. Tarzan Two is about a little boy who lives with gorillas and has a little gorilla friend that he plays with and then yeah he gets separated from them and does some other weird shit, but it’s about a little boy. I was a little boy. I liked Tarzan Two better than Tarzan.”

Their teacher glares at Taemin, but everyone in the class starts laughing behind their hands when Taemin calls him out on how the answer wasn’t right. He ends up moving on to the next question and calling on a girl to answer. ‘What was Taemin’s favorite song from the Tarzan movie?’ When she answers with ‘Strangers Like Me’ and their teacher says that’s correct, Taemin scoffs loudly.

“That’s wrong too,” Taemin says. “It’s ‘Son of Man.’”

“I have used this same worksheet for years now,” their teacher starts to say.

“Well your worksheet is wrong,” Taemin says.

“Well then tell us why ‘Son of Man’ is the correct answer,” their teacher says.

“Because it was more fun to sing along to while jumping on the back of the couch,” Taemin says, a smirk on his face.

Everyone starts laughing when their teacher turns red, and Taemin just shrugs.

“You’re teaching a lesson about me, I think I’m entitled to correct some of your misinformation,” Taemin says, an overly polite smile on his lips.

He ends up correcting a few more answers, such as why he pounded on his chest when he was brought to Jinki and Kibum’s camp and what he called Jinki and Kibum once he started talking, and why.

“If you think it wasn’t just because I was lazy, you’re wrong,” Taemin says in a bored voice, squishing his cheek into his fist. “’Daddy Key’ was just less syllables than ‘Daddy Kibum.’”

“What about ‘Onew’? How did that come from ‘Jinki’?” their teacher asks, his face still red.

“Well I couldn’t have two ‘Daddy Key’s, that just would have confused the shit out me,” Taemin says. “So I gave him a new name.”

The bell rings just then, and they all get up to turn in their worksheets as their teacher says that the next day they’ll start the video about when Taemin was an adolescent.

As Taemin hands in his worksheet, he smirks at his teacher and says, “I think maybe you should update your answer key. All these answers are correct, so you can just go ahead and use mine.”

Taemin tilts his head and smirks even wider before leaving the classroom with Jonghyun and Minho.

“That was so badass,” Minho hisses to him. “Did you see how red his face got? I thought he was gonna explode.”

“I almost wish he did explode,” Jonghyun complains. “No offense or anything, but it’s been almost a whole week and your life got boring after Tuesday, my friend.”

“Shut up,” Taemin groans, shoving Jonghyun away from him as he laughs.

That Friday and then the next week they watch a video from when Taemin was eleven, and they focus on the way Taemin developed from the time he was taken away from the gorillas until that video was made. There’s so many worksheets on the studies that Taemin was part of that Taemin actually wants to hate his dads for how much of their study was boring as hell. When he takes one worksheet home to finish for homework and asks Kibum for help, Kibum stares at him funny.

“It seems like you have a bit of an unfair advantage, considering this is about a study I published,” Kibum tells him.

“It’s about my life, I should be allowed to have an unfair advantage!” Taemin complains. “People have started calling me Tarzan for shit’s sake, I should at least get an A for it!”

The next Monday as Taemin walks into his biology class with his friends, Minho asks him if it was this last summer that Taemin went back to see the gorillas that raised him.

“Yeah,” Taemin mumbles. “Why?”

“Do you think he��ll show it?” Minho asks. “Wasn’t it recorded?”

“It was recorded for my dads’ study, I doubt he has access to it,” Taemin scoffs.

“Wait, they’re still doing studies on you?” Jonghyun asks.

“I mean, it’s kind of like an on-going thing,” Taemin mumbles. “Can we not talk about it?”

“Sorry,” Jonghyun and Minho mutter.

During that class, their teacher says how tomorrow they’re going to have special visitors for their last video on Taemin. Taemin gets confused, though, and he raises his hand for his teacher to call on him.

“You already showed the most recent video, though,” Taemin says. “What more could you show?”

“We’ll all just have to wait and find out, won’t we?” their teacher says with a smirk.

Everyone can see how confused Taemin is, but no one says anything and continues taking notes on what their teacher talks about and writes on the board.

When Taemin walks into his third period biology class the next day, he wants to throw up when he sees Jinki and Kibum casually chatting with his teacher.

“Is that-”

“Oh my God,” Taemin groans, and he power-walks right over to them.

“Taemin,” Kibum smiles, turning to him.

“What are you two doing here?” Taemin hisses.

“We’re here to talk to your class,” Jinki tells him.

The bell rings, and Taemin’s teacher tells Taemin to take his seat. Everyone is staring at him, but Taemin can only keep looking at his parents.

“What are you doing?” Taemin whispers, but Minho comes and drags him to their usual lab table.

Kibum introduces the two of them as Dr. Kim and Dr. Lee, and how they’re the lead researches for a project that started when they found a young boy, Taemin, living with a family of gorillas in the wild. They mention some of the things they’ve already learned about in the class, but then they start talking about how they wanted to see if the gorillas would remember Taemin like how Taemin remembered them. They then talk about how this past summer they took a trip to find the gorillas, and how Taemin managed to actually get reacquainted with the animals that raised him.

“The video is still in the process of being edited,” Jinki says as he presses play. “So it’s more of a rough draft than a final copy, so to speak.”

The video starts with some of the stuff they’ve already seen, like Taemin being taken from the gorillas and being introduced to human society, but then it shows more of his adolescence and pre-teen years, and then it starts talking about his teenage years. One point mentions his grades from his freshman year of high school, and Taemin stands up, his stool screeching across the floor, and he stares at his parents.

“You put my grades in there?” Taemin asks.

“Taemin, you have very good grades,” Jinki starts.

“That’s not the point!” Taemin argues. “That’s private!”

“Taemin, it’s for the study,” Kibum says softly, and he goes to stand next to Taemin to try to calm him down.

“It’s for the study, it’s for the study, everything’s for the fucking study!” Taemin shouts at him. “I don’t wanna do it anymore! I don’t want to, I’m sick of it!”

“Taemin-”

“I’m not some science project,” Taemin says, his voice cracking.

Kibum tries to calm him down, and Jinki comes over to, but Taemin just avoids them and grabs his backpack off the table and rushes past them and out the door.

“I don’t wanna do this anymore,” Taemin says as he hurries out of the classroom.

Kibum and Jinki hurry after him, and the class huddles in the doorway even though their teacher tries to stop them so they can hear what Taemin’s talking about.

“Why are you so upset?” Kibum asks. “If you don’t want your grades in the video, we’ll edit them out.”

“It’s not about my grades,” Taemin says. “For weeks they’ve been watching videos about me and doing worksheets about me like I’m not even in there, like I’m some lab rat!”

“You are not a lab rat,” Jinki tells him firmly.

“Yes I am,” Taemin cries. “You wouldn’t give a shit about me if I wasn’t making you money from all your stupid papers and your stupid documentaries and your stupid studies.”

“That’s not true,” Jinki tells him.

“Yes it is!” Taemin shouts, pushing him away when Jinki tries to come closer to him. “You don’t care about me anymore, you only ever come see me if Dad makes you, or if it’s for the study, or, or-”

Taemin’s fingers tangle into his hair, and he squats down and lets out a frustrated, strangled-sounding groan - like how he used to when he was little and still learning how to talk and couldn’t find the right words. Jinki and Kibum are quick to bend down next to him, and Jinki takes him into his arms and holds him tight.

“I’m not a science experiment,” Taemin cries.

“No you’re not,” Jinki agrees.

“I’m not, I’m not,” Taemin repeats, crying into Jinki’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” Jinki mutters into Taemin’s hair, “I’m so sorry.”

“Why didn’t you just leave me with them?” Taemin asks in a strained voice.

“Leave you with who?” Kibum asks.

When Taemin doesn’t answer, Jinki pulls the boy’s face out of his shoulder and makes him look at them.

“Who? The gorillas?” Jinki asks. When Taemin only lets out a strangled sound, Jinki’s eyes go wide. “Taemin, are you crazy? Leave you with the gorillas, you really think we should have left you with them?”

“Imagine the papers you could have written,” Taemin says in a snarky voice.

“Taemin, that is not funny,” Kibum warns him. “You would have died if we left you with them. Is that what you would have wanted? For us to just leave you there to die?”

“I didn’t even know who you were,” Taemin says. “At least I was happy.”

“Are you saying you’re not happy here?” Kibum asks in a quiet voice.

“Do I look happy?” Taemin asks.

Kibum frowns, his eyes tearing up as he reaches out to cup Taemin’s cheek in his hands.

The three of them eventually stand back up, and Jinki takes Taemin to the office to sign him out for the rest of the day while Kibum goes back to the biology classroom to get their video and any other notes they brought for what they were going to say.

Taemin doesn’t go to school for the rest of the week, but Kibum and Jinki are there the next day to talk to an administrator about why they think there needs to be a new biology teacher.

#taemin #key #onew #shinee #tarzan au #anyways it 2:30 am and no one asked for this but i love tarzan au so here u go

22 notes · View notes