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bonvoyagenoona · 2 years

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Shirt | MYG

Pairings: Yoongi x Reader

Rating: 18+ / Mature / Explicit

Word Count: 9.9k | read on ao3 | Part of the Yoongi 3(0) for 30 series!

Synopsis: You’re just returning Yoongi’s shirt. That’s all you’re doing. And that will finally be the end of it. That’s what you tell yourself. Every time you see him.

Genres | Content Warnings | Themes: Aaaaaaangst, idol!AU, exes but still lovers, one-night stand, implied cheating/infidelity, smut (hair pulling, breast play, oral [f receiving/m giving], unprotected sex). Fic idea inspired by Caretaker by Shelley ft. SZA, fana hues’ beautiful album flora + fana (these tracks specifically when they’re in bed toward the end), and the track known as Shirt by SZA. Check these tracks out and more on the Yoongi 3(0) for 30 series playlist (Spotify | YouTube). If you’re curious, couple’s backstory based on this song shuffle game.

Author’s Note: It’s an angsty fic, but it was written to celebrate some milestones! Thank you so, so much for reading with me! I’ve loved hearing from all of you, and even getting to know some of you quite well. Hanging with y’all has been super fun, and surprisingly, delightfully meaningful. As always, thanks for stopping by. 💜

It won’t change anything. Staring at the lock. Fiddling with your key card. Looking up and down the hallway. Tapping your toes. It won’t change anything because you can’t change. Whenever you catch wind of the next tour, and you get the series of texts leading you to a door like this one, you always, always walk through it.

For as certain as you are that you are going to walk through this one, there’s a sneaking suspicion that this shirt isn’t the real reason why you’re here.

But you brought it anyway.

You squeeze it. You didn’t even bring a bag for it. And just as your fingers constrict around the familiar, damp, worn, cotton roll, you feel your throat muscles cushioning your wind pipe as you swallow an uncomfortable mass of saliva, nerves, anger, guilt, and intrigue as best as you can.

The door beeps before you’re ready. The card reader is a sensor, not a slot.

You push.

Yoongi looks about the same. That’s probably the weirdest thing. There are dozens of music videos, fashion shoots, and film clips playing on some of the tallest skyscrapers in the world. So, it makes sense that to most people, seeing him in person is akin to ascent, an experience unreal and rare. He likes to leave people with things, stickers and sketches on sticky notes, evidential artifacts that later become tools of transubstantiation.

Whenever you see Yoongi, though, you see him like you see your reflection. Real, and you, but not really you, and somehow, only you.

“Hi.”

You can’t even tell who says it first.

When you teeter back a little on your feet, he jumps up from the edge of the bed. It seems the door caught him off-guard, too.

He strides over to you and holds the door open with his right hand. You can tell he’s just showered. Hair blow-dried, but casual. Already wrapped in his soft flannel.

“Come in.”

The door falls freely behind you. There’s hissing from the hydraulic closer. It sounds like someone shushing. Like the room wants to hear you better.

“I’m always late,” you sigh quietly.

Unnecessarily.

He shoves his hands into his jeans pockets. His eyes slowly travel down from yours, to your chin, to your curves, to your legs, to your feet. His eyes linger on your soggy Jordans.

“Damn,” he mutters at the devastating loss.

“It’s OK,” you reassure him.

“I’ll get you another pair,” he says, raising his eyebrows.

“I can easily get another pair,” you remind him as gently as you can.

He clicks his teeth. “I didn’t even know it was raining.”

There’s nothing heavier than a knowing, locked gaze.

You try to shrug off some of the weight. “Brought you something,” you say, striding over in your soggy sneakers to the desk just in front of him. “Managed to keep it dry.”

The FG logo is clearly visible through the cage that your fingers make around the shirt.

His eyes brighten and follow your hand as you gently place it, logo up, on the desk.

“Still have that thing?” he chuckles.

You shrug.

He tilts his head and smiles. “You could’ve just thrown it out.”

“Didn’t know if you’d still want it,” you tell him.

He takes a deep breath, and then he lets out a decisive grunt.

“You know what I want? Dinner.”

You smile and reach for the zipper of your coat. The tab sticks, but you get it down in a series of jagged motions. It’s frustrating when a zipper snags. It’s even more frustrating that zippers snag mostly on themselves.

He walks over to join you at the desk. At first, you think he’s going for the phone. But his fingers reach for your zipper near the bottom of the track, and he slides it down in one, easy motion.

You twirl as he helps remove your coat.

Like memorized choreography.

He stares at you for a moment, eyes lingering at your stomach, unhidden by your tight, black crop top.

He licks his lips.

“You were saying something about dinner?” you joke.

“What do you want, like, a white pizza?” Yoongi asks, draping your coat over the chair before picking up the hotel room phone. “Something with mushrooms or figs or hot honey, whatever bougie shit you’re so in love with?”

You roll your eyes, starting to kick off your ruined sneakers, and nudging them so that their toes tap the far wall. “Don’t pretend you hate it,” you say, catching his pointed glance back at you. “Let’s not forget that I was the original taste-maker out of the two of us.”

“Mmhmm.”

That signature grumble. Teasing, but relenting.

You’ve missed hearing it.

“Can I get one of the fig and arugula pizzas with the bacon and— yeah, that one.”

He looks over at you.

“Yes, a large. To share.”

You grin proudly.

“And steaks,” he continues.

Like you always do, you walk over to the window to get a glimpse of his view.

When you’re forty floors up, everything looks incredible. But it also seems unnecessary. Yoongi used to love making music underground, in graffiti-soaked tunnels long abandoned by the city. It’s weird to see him being lifted so high by the same people who always threatened to shut him down.

And it’s weird to hear him talking now. Saying these things.

“The truffle ones, yeah. Can you add lobster to that, too? And what are your desserts? Anything with that edible gold stuff? Yeah. Or wait, back up? The other one? Yeah, that one. The fancier, the better.” There’s a pause as he listens. And then— “Sorry, no, double it. All of that’s for two.”

Your heart aches when he says “two”.

You wonder how often he orders for “two” nowadays.

He mumbles a thanks and hangs up. Plastic hits plastic as you see a taxi nearly miss a pedestrian trying to catch a street car.

Yoongi looks up from the desk and over at you as you peer down at the city streets, still bustling, having no time even to acknowledge the tempest swirling around it.

“Sit down,” Yoongi offers softly, leaning on the chair where he has draped your coat. He frowns at the sofa and chairs in the corner. They look cool, but they’re uncomfortable. “Sit on the bed.”

You shrug, and you speak without turning. “My pants are wet.”

“Hyung’s the one who cares about that kind of stuff,” Yoongi says, grinning playfully. “C’mon. I want you to be comfortable.”

You turn around to face him. And you smirk.

“Fine.”

You unbutton your jeans and wiggle your hips out. Yoongi’s eyes widen as he watches the way your fingers curl around your thigh to help you smooth the denim down your legs.

The socks come off too.

Yoongi follows as you straighten back up, body on display, doing some teasing of your own, still wearing that crop top and, apparently, a pair of cherry red, silk panties. A high cut. Showing off your gorgeous, curvy thighs. Your natural waist. Your competingly soft skin. He sighs as you drop your socks on top of your crumpled jeans. He wonders what else you’ll drop.

Your playful smile is still so, so cute.

But he unfortunately has also seen the tattoo at your ankle.

And it doesn’t hit you until he clears his throat.

“How is…”

Yoongi’s eyes flick up to check your reaction before burying themselves back in the sand. He knows his name. You scream it in bed when Yoongi’s not around. Yoongi can hear it in his dreams.

Nightmares.

You tuck your tattooed ankle behind your naked one.

“Good.”

And you leave it at that.

Yes, you concede. You usually scream when it comes to good things. But this, especially now, with Yoongi, you whisper.

Yoongi nods once, glad. Glad that you still understand each other. Glad that you’ve gotten this part out of the way. Glad that guilt is so quick to disappear. Glad that, as his eyes land again on the too familiar letters on the front of that shirt, he realizes that he never really feels guilty. Nor do you. There won’t be a need to confess. Even if God is watching, there’s no Fear of him here.

He walks over to you and wraps you up in his arms.

“Been going crazy all day,” he whispers, as your bodies reconnect. Remember. Re-live, and relieve. “Where were you sitting?”

“Nosebleeds,” you tell him, moaning a little when his hand creeps up your thigh, hooking through one of the leg holes and into the panel at the bottom before running up the front. “I kept out of sight.” His hand flattens at your hip and slides around, grabbing for your ass and pulling you even closer into him. “You looked so good on stage.”

“Thought about you the whole time,” he mumbles, lips finding your neck. Hands finding your still-covered breasts. “Fuck, when am I not thinking about you?”

“I know,” you admit. “Me too.”

He secures his grip on your hips, both hands squeezing. And then tugging. Pulling you toward the king-sized bed.

You don’t budge.

“C’mon,” Yoongi whispers.

When you brush back his hair and see how deep, and dark, and wanting his eyes are, you follow.

There was a time when sharing a bed with Yoongi wasn’t something you had to be coaxed into. It was just the end, or the start, of another day. Bodies groaning when the world called you back to it.

You’d say something like, “Why did I agree to this?”

And he’d say something like, “Maybe we just cancel.”

You’d play out the whole day that you would have if you did cancel. The food you’d share. The songs he’d write. The chapter you’d finish.

But on this particular day, you’d made a promise to a friend to go out for a change. To leave your shell of domestic bliss and reintroduce yourselves to the world. Sure, it was her birthday, and the more people who came out, the more food and drinks and presents there’d be. But it was your presence that she really wanted.

You tugged on Yoongi’s arm gently.

“We’ve gotta get ready,” you told him.

“It’s still morning.”

“Knowing us,” you pointed out, “we’ve gotta start getting ready now.”

“Five more minutes,” he mumbled, trying to roll away.

“We’ll be late,” you warned.

“We won’t be late,” he murmured into the pillow.

You let go of his arm, but he grabbed your wrist before you could leave him completely. Your body rebounded back to him, your heels slamming the floor.

“Yoongi,” you chuckled. “Seriously!”

“Seriously.”

He pulled you back into the bed with him. Made you straddle him. Squeezed your naked thighs.

“We’ll be late,” you repeated.

He looked up at you, sleepy, and smiling.

“We won’t…”

Yoongi walked his fingers up your thigh and to the hem of your shirt.

“Be late,” he smirked.

He gave your shirt a little tug.

You were an hour and 47 minutes late.

You weren’t particularly missed. Your friend knew you’d show, and Yoongi’s six friends were proving to be delightful entertainment.

“This one’s cute,” you heard your friend’s sister sigh, taking Jungkook’s jaw in her hand and shaking it back and forth.

He squeezed his eyes shut and giggled as she pressed a kiss onto his cheek.

“You mean we’re not all cute?” Jin demanded, placing his fists on his waist, his beer bottle tilting a little in his grasp.

“My fault we were late,” Yoongi apologized, walking over to your friend and giving her a hug. He was careful not to step on her skirt.“Happy birthday.”

“Aw, thanks, Yoongles!” she squealed. And then she reached out for you, wiggling her fingers in excitement and hopping eagerly over to you.

She smelled like honeysuckle.

“Happy birthday,” you breathed, relaxing into her arms. “You look great!”

As she raked her fingers through your hair and tucked your hair behind your ear, your three small studs up from your lobe and your double-helix gleaming in a bit of light, she let out a long, “Thaaaaank youuuu.” She laughed when she did it, slightly uncomfortable with the compliment. Just happy to see you.

She wrapped an arm around your shoulders and came to your side. You hung your arm on her hip.

You watched as Yoongi stepped over legs and bodies to clasp Namjoon’s outstretched hand in greeting, before finding himself being swallowed into the couch, Jimin and Taehyung dog-piling and laughing at Yoongi’s protests.

As you watched, you laughed as Taehyung tugged at Yoongi’s ear, and Yoongi grumbled about him disturbing the matching double-helix piercing that matches yours.

And, as you watched, your friend told you, “Yoongi’s looking… good,” sounding somewhat surprised.

Not because Yoongi never looked good.

Yoongi always looked good.

But there was something particularly good about this good.

You couldn’t help the smirk that popped out.

Your friend turned to you, and upon catching that smirk, realized.

“Is that why you were late?”

“Is Hobi not here?” you asked, looking around.

“Don’t change the—!”

“Didn’t see him when we walked in.”

Your friend huffed. “He’s over in the corner, talking to one of my friend’s co-workers.”

You turn and see Hobi sharing the cushions in the corner with a cute girl. She speaks incessantly, eyes widening with whatever exciting story she’s telling him, upper body bouncing as the story gets more thrilling, chest heaving as she takes gulps of air to keep going.

“That’s the quietest I think Hobi’s ever been,” you mentioned.

Your friend squinted at you. “Don’t hold out on me. It’s my birthday. I want every detail.”

“Fine, I’ll tell you when we’re done,” you said, as Yoongi’s gaze met yours again.

Eye-fucking is an art form that not a lot of people are comfortable with. In some ways, it’s more intimate than regular fucking. Your body, to some extent, can lie. Or, rather, what you learn about someone else’s body is up for interpretation, buried in context both personal and social, tangled with intuition, and assumption, and escape.

But a person’s eyes?

They always tell the truth.

Eyes are clear. Eyes have no defense. Eyes offer the kind of way in that you aren’t sure you can get out of.

Yoongi’s eyes knew how to get inside of you. They held you. Stroked you. A tilt of his head, and a quick lick of his lips, and you knew that he was imagining eating you out, quick to lap up every bit you give him, and always hungry for more.

Jungkook sang a ballad. Taehyung sang a theme song. Jimin sang one of the songs that you’d heard on the radio over and over again.

Yoongi kept eating.

People crossed your lens, but you and Yoongi always found each other. Didn’t matter if you were across the room or literally sitting on his lap. You always knew exactly what you were doing in his mind. When he shared it with you, it became the truth.

While Jin told a story about his most recent, somewhat unsuccessful fishing trip, you and Yoongi happened to be on opposite ends of the couch.

“No bass, but lots of trout,” Jin shared. “And the sea was pretty rough. Right Yoongi?”

He smacked him on the shoulder, and Yoongi nodded. “Rough.”

A quick blink and smirk meant that Yoongi was thinking about fucking you from behind.

He liked the way his skin slapped against your skin. The way it felt and looked, sure, but moreso the way it sounded. He might’ve come right there if he thought about it too much, in that way that apparently only few others could, able to play it back with extreme precision. The way your skin hit his, that sharp, crisp sound, loud, and resonant, and high, getting higher as he pumped harder, mimicking how tight you felt around him.

And the way your bodies sounded as you came apart.

Loud, ridiculous squelches. Obscene. How wet you got. How wet he got. How much wetter you made each other. Sometimes, with just yourselves. Sometimes, with oils, or lube.

Or soap.

Or candle wax.

Or melted chocolate.

Or paint.

“You OK?” Hobi asked him.

Yoongi finally blinked, and upon release, you urgently had to reach for your drink.

“Huh?”

“You seemed concerned?” Hobi asked. “Is something wrong?”

“Oh,” Yoongi answered, watching you fan yourself, “no, just thinking.”

Hobi smiled. “About?”

Yoongi mumbled, “Just about painting our accent wall thing.”

“Ooh, yeah, that came out great,” Hobi nodded along.

“Yeah.” Yoongi grinned. “Came great.”

The best was when you were sitting on his lap, though. When the eye-fucking got intense enough, you could feel him. He’d get so hard when you were looking down at him in the middle of a crowded room. One steely glance from him, and you knew that he was imagining you both, at home, in bed, your body on top of him, wrecked, gladly taking his cock as he pumped up and into you, grunting past your ear and fisting your hair as he cradled the back of your neck.

When you started to shift your body in tiny ways, just to get a taste, Yoongi gripped your thigh so tightly.

You asked him to do it again when you got home.

“I like when you grab me there,” you whined, wriggling around in your bed as he pulled off your pants.

“You dooo?” Yoongi purred playfully, tossing your pants away and crawling on top of you.

“I like when it hurts a little,” you pout.

“Yeah?” he kneels by your side, and you laugh when he slaps your thigh.

“Yoongi,” you whispered, looking up at him and biting your lip.

His hand rested against your still clothed pussy, your panties already drenched, but your pussy still too sensitive to touch with full force.

All he did was press his fingers against you, and you hissed, turning to your side and looking up at him with need. A tricky situation you always found yourself in with him. Hours and hours of eye-fucking Yoongi got you so pent up that you had to start off slower than usual. But hours and hours of eye-fucking Yoongi also meant that you needed it more than ever.

“Fuck, I want it so bad,” you confessed.

“Let me give it to you, then,” he told you, his fingers starting to swirl.

Slow. Not much pressure to start.

When your legs straightened out in surprise, he knew to ramp up the speed.

Pressure came back into the equation when you started to moan, your body stretching longer and longer across his lap, longer and longer shadows into night.

Your next, huge gulp of air, pushed out in breaths meant to steady your heart, tells him that you’re close.

He pressed his palm against your front and starts to milk your clit, massaging it between his index and middle fingers like you showed him once, and then swimming through your folds, fabric getting caught between your lips, as he circles, unyielding.

He pushed his mouth onto yours to collect your screams.

You came like only Yoongi could make you. You felt like you were losing your mind.

You didn’t need your mind for much longer.

The night was just getting started.

You stare up at the hotel room ceiling, fingers twirling your hair, chest rising and falling, your cherry red panties stained with your sweat and cum.

Yoongi walks his fingers up your body and places them against your lips.

You lock eyes with him.

And you suck his finger clean.

He bends down to you and kisses you, stroking your hair back, fingers clearing strays as he goes. Soothing. Calming.

You close your eyes.

You could fall asleep.

But when his palm rests at your hairline, you open them back up again.

He tilts his head.

“What does he tell you after?”

You sigh.

You bend your legs, dig your heels into the mattress, and push yourself up, resting your back against the pillows by the headboard.

Yoongi leans back, his elbow propping him up

“You really wanna know?” you ask.

“No,” Yoongi admits.

You cross your arms. “Because, y’know. We said.”

He reaches for your foot. Strokes it. Runs his thumb over your tattoo.

“I know.”

Three knocks at the door mean that two steaks, two lobsters, two fancy desserts, and one large white bougie pizza are ready for you.

You get out of the bed and go into the bathroom to take the immaculate robe that you know is hanging behind its door, and Yoongi gets up to get the food.

You hear him mumble more “thank you”s.

You don’t come out of the bathroom until you hear the second lock latch, and Yoongi sigh in appreciation.

He wheels the cart of food over to the uncomfortable seating area.

The judgmental, disapproving grimace on his face tells you everything you need to know, but you chuckle and ruffle his hair anyway.

“It’s fine!”

“But, it’s like, the bed is so, so great?” he complains. “Why is every other piece of hotel furniture so terrible? And obnoxiously so?”

He gestures to the seating area. There’s a set of blue chairs. Three of them. Circular, with low half-circles for backs. Velvet seats. Metal body. No arms.

“Like, what the fuck is this, right?”

You laugh. “The sofa, then?”

“Only marginally better,” Yoongi grumbles, plopping two pieces of white pizza onto two plates.

He hands you one, and you both make yourselves comfortable on opposite ends of the couch, legs sprawling inward. Toes tickling each other.

You make sure to pick the end that lets you press your tattoo against the sofa’s back cushion.

But no matter how hard you try, Yoongi always has his questions.

“You’re happy?” he asks.

“Yes,” you say, grinning, “including, and very much so, in this particular moment.”

He smiles.

You chew.

“And you have everything you could ever want?” he asks.

You soften. “Well, obviously not everything.”

Yoongi reaches for your left hand.

You move your plate to your right hand and sit up, extending it to him.

He kisses it. You run your thumb over his.

And then you both lean back, picking up your slices of pizza.

“I think I’m getting different things,” you remark through your bite. A bougie statement from the upper crust.

Yoongi knows how to navigate the double-talk, too. You learned together.

He lets your words simmer. You only think that you’re getting different things? Are you getting different things, but giving the same things? The things that were meant only for him? What do you mean by different?

“Like?” he asks.

It’s overwhelming to descend from this cloud when you get a chance to ride it, but you try to imagine your condo about five miles from here. The more you try to force its image, the foggier it gets. You can’t really see it from the ground, and you don’t really see it from the sky either. So you try to think of how you usually get home.

You can access it from either the red or brown lines. Purple, sometimes. Like the express train. But always the red and brown, without fail.

“Consistency,” you say. “I don’t think I understood how much I lacked that.” You almost hear the chime of train doors closing. “How much I need that?”

Yeah, you think. Consistency. Like a train chugging along.

“Wish I could give you that,” Yoongi mumbles.

“You also give me something different,” you mumble back, eyes not meeting, but that familiar fire in your voice encouraging.

But you and Yoongi know that the problem is that someone who lives the kind of life that you live often needs more Same. A person who has the Same schedule every day. The Same commute. Goes to work at the Same place. Wears the Same clothes, which you take equal turns fluffing and folding and put in the Same closet on the Same day every week. Tells the Same jokes at the Same dinner parties at the Same time every month with your friends so increasingly Same that at this point, even you can’t tell them apart from one another. Fucks you the Same. Kisses you the Same. Loves you the Same.

Yoongi gives you Same in other ways. You were thinking similar things as you reached for the last copy of a prized vinyl in your favorite record store. You shared nearly identical notes to the ones in your own heads for early drafts of his music, and your writing. And when you shared those notes, you had twin flames burning within your bellies, flames that combusted when your bodies met in ever-changing flickers. Even now, you’re in his room, but his room could be anywhere. Everywhere. You show it on your faces with separate smiles and sneers, but you both see life, existence itself, as one big, confusing, wonderful, out-of-control fireball.

And you both still think that, though it is ultimately necessary…

Same is boring.

“Yoongi, write me a rap!” you’d call out.

And he would. Right there and then. Tongue twisting like it would inside of you later. Rhythms as playful as the giggles he’d save for only you. Pull from only you. Placement slightly ahead of the beat. Eager. Joking. Not full of shit, even when he’s talking it.

Your first piece was published in a local. It was a call to action, stanzas bursting with bravado, as well as disdain for the kind of people who spend their lives deciding rather than making things happen.

“Yoongi, give me a beat!” you’d call out.

And he would. Right there and then. Hi-hats and bass and snare, through his voice in beatbox, or through MIDI tracks from his speakers. Always thoughtful. Layered. Diverse. Unexpected.

Your eighth piece was published in a small literary magazine still getting its legs. It was an ode to your vibrant city. The one that brought you Yoongi. Where you’d built a life together, buzzing with a never-ending supply of electricity. The same kind that shook the bridges and tunnels that would deign to let him and his friends showcase their growing craft.

“Yoongi,” you called out that day, “play me a ballad!”

From the next room came a mash of discordant piano notes. But it wasn’t a cause for concern. They were actually the first notes of finality that you’d heard after thirty or forty minutes of dispirited wandering.

And then.

A melody started to make itself known. Lower in pitch, and fuller as a result.

The timbre changed from piano to vibraphone.

The same melody started to play.

Something inside of you shifted.

When Yoongi joked around, he could show off his impressive dexterity. But when Yoongi played with more intention, he could make people cry. Fall in love. Stay in love.

You knew from experience.

His legato, flowing notes hugged you like his arms would around the back of your computer chair.

The melody kept repeating, never quite resolving.

“And why are there so many minor 7th chords?” you vocalized, furrowing your brow as you typed the last of your sentence. “It sounds so tortured?”

The word came to you so quickly.

Yoongi laughed and called back, “You’re such a sad girl, so I’m writing you a sad, rolling ballad!”

“Who says I’m a sad girl?”

“You do!” he cried out. “All the time!”

You huffed. “Well, I’m not!”

“Read me the last line you typed!” he challenged you.

Your eyes sunk when your brain caught up with what you were reading.

“But can anyone ever really know the parts of you that are so heavy with ugliness and rejection and resentment that you worry what you might do if you make them known to yourself for any longer than minutes at at time—”

Yoongi’s music admittedly fit extremely well.

“Wow,” you sighed, “OK, damn, Yoongles. Talk about a read.”

“Ha!”

“You’re right,” you admitted, laughing, “I clearly need to take a break.” You locked your computer and got up from your creaky desk in the just-a-foot-too-small bedroom.

You stopped just short of crossing fully into the living room, caught off-guard by a shirtless Yoongi making overdramatic faces at you to go along with his heartache of a melody.

You leaned in the doorway.

“Yoongi?”

He slowed to a fermata and squinted as he held the chord.

“What do you want to eat?” you asked, crossing your arms.

He sprinkled in a G7 chord, and his eyes lightened as he hung his jaw open in a smile, gazing happily.

Hungrily.

At you.

“Yoongi!” you laughed, his thought crossing your mind.

Yoongi giggled and switched off his keyboard. “Anything,” he told you, honestly. Genuinely. Like everything he’d ever said to you. “Whatever you want.”

“Actually, we should probably wait a while to eat,” you realized. “Your show’s kinda late.”

“You’re still coming though, right?”

“Of course,” you said, smiling. “I love when you guys perform at that venue. You always end up meeting cool people. Finding new inspiration.”

“So what if it’s in a landfill?” Yoongi laughed, picking up whatever shirt he left hanging on the edge of his keyboard the day before, his taut arms rising, and his shoulders and neck so easily sliding back into their homes.

“A renovated landfill,” you said, following him into the kitchen, “that now sells chai lattes for $10 a pop.” Your eyes followed as he opened the pantry door. “Hang on, I thought we might wait?”

“Just a snack,” Yoongi said.

He pulled a box of biscuits from the pantry. Simple, buttery, toasted biscuits with pretty, delicate, embedded almond slices from a nearby bakery that you loved. If that night’s show went well, Yoongi could get you something else from the bakery next time. Your birthday was coming up. Something chocolate, and something unexpected, but that you liked. Maybe with lavender.

Before he took a snack for himself, he pointed the box to you.

You grabbed a biscuit and started to munch.

“What were you thinking of?” you asked.

Yoongi reached into the box. “What?”

“When you wrote that piece for me, just a second ago,” you said, smiling softly. “Like, what were you actually thinking about?”

He bit into his biscuit and started to chew.

“I don’t know. I was just thinking about what we sound like.”

You blinked. “We?”

“You,” Yoongi said.

“You said, ‘what we sound like’,” you pointed out.

Yoongi waited before swallowing the last of his biscuit.

“Well… then… maybe it is what we sound like.”

Even when Yoongi wore the same shirt all weekend, he still looked immaculate. Like everything that was on his body was put there on purpose. He looked how people were supposed to look. He was a walking Warhol Campbell’s soup can, and everybody else was dull, dented metal being sold at a discount.

You tugged uncomfortably at your sleeve, itchy at your elbow.

“They’re killing it tonight!” someone next to you cheered.

You turned to see a group of friends excitedly chatting and pointing to the makeshift stage. One of them singled out Yoongi, jumping up and down and turning their friends with a lustful sigh.

You laughed to yourself and turned back to Yoongi on the stage. As he was hitting his verses and choreography perfectly, he still found the wherewithal to send you a tilt of the head and a lick of his lips.

Something inside tightened, and the rest of the crowd started to fall away.

The only thing that you could see clearly was Yoongi’s body, his favorite FG logo just barely hidden under the red bomber jacket that he borrowed from Hobi.

You’d seen Yoongi in his most private moments, lucky enough to be the one he shared them with, and taking you on thrilling journeys in search of them.

But even you had to admit that there was nothing like seeing Yoongi come alive on stage. It always stung to think, but you could tell by the shadow in his eyes that he always wanted more.

Wanted it more.

Still.

It felt good to know that maybe you got as close to that as someone ever could.

The group of friends to your left suddenly exploded into screams, which caught your attention. One swore that Yoongi was tilting his head and licking his lips while gazing right at them.

You wondered if he was.

“And Namjoon said that when he called the number on the business card, he got an answering machine! With muzak and everything!” Yoongi exclaimed, unlocking the door and leading the way in. “He’s so charming when he’s talking about our music. Our goals. He’s a leader for a reason.”

You giggled and turned behind you, locking the door back up for the night. “What label was this again?”

“I don’t even remember, but this is a great first step!” Yoongi exclaimed.

He scooped you up into his arms, planting kiss after kiss all over your face.

You’d never seen him so excited.

You’d never seen the afterglow of a show permeate this deeply.

“I’m so proud of you,” you laughed happily, as you nestle into his chest.

The FG logo stared back at you.

“But I can’t believe you wore this shirt to the show,” you laughed. “You’ve been living in it all weekend. If you’re going to be meeting important record label people, you have to be more intentional.” You roll your eyes. “Cleaner.”

Yoongi pulled away from you and laughed.

“I’ll get there eventually. The person who gave us the card was honestly just some rando,” Yoongi said, walking back toward his keyboard. “We’ve got a loooong time before we’re meeting record label people for real.”

He sat down and stripped off his shirt, letting it fall on the floor, next to his feet.

The steaks and pizza have disappeared. The lobsters are just shells.

You’re still in your robe, swiveling around in one of the horrid blue chairs, as Yoongi watches you from the sofa, both of you balancing chocolate, lavender, and gold-flake sundaes in your hands.

“What stood out to you?” Yoongi asks.

You frown.

He’s so glad that you frown. Everyone usually showers him with affection when he asks people about the show. He knows they’re just so excited that they don’t realize that they haven’t actually answered his question.

“Was Taehyung injured?” As you turn, your ear facing Yoongi, you eat another spoonful of ice cream. “I noticed that he wasn’t moving his hips as much while he was dancing.”

“Yeah, he’s been sore,” Yoongi says, watching as the back of your head comes into view. “He said it felt like he pulled something early, so he toned it down for the entire show to keep it from getting worse.”

“Ugh, I know it kills him when he doesn’t get to ham it up,” you lament, digging into your sundae for more hot fudge.

Yoongi scoffs. “Jungkook is getting more daring, too,” he points out.

You face him head-on, smile wide. “I saw! The button?”

Yoongi just shakes his head.

“He played it really well,” you say, shrugging. “It seemed completely accidental. But I’ve seen the schemes. Know how the sausage gets made.”

“Sausage,” Yoongi laughs naughtily. “Hmm.”

He looks down at his empty pizza plate.

“Sau-sage!” he says again, but in realization. While nodding and raising his eyebrows. Adding it to his insatiable list of cravings.

And then he turns toward you.

Yoongi watches as your ear faces him again. You start to slow, so you kick at the floor to keep spinning.

“Tell Tae that I hope he gets better,” you say, chuckling, “and tell Jungkook that I hope that whoever found his button is a loving and merciful soul, and doesn’t go too hard on the voodoo sex doll they make with it.”

But then your spoon clinks against your glass as you plant your feet on the ground. You look slightly to the side to glance at Yoongi.

“Or, well… you don’t have to tell them I said that, but… I hope they… I hope they’re—”

“They’ll be glad to hear from you,” Yoongi says with a kind smile. “They miss you.”

He leans forward and places his empty sundae glass on the coffee table.

“They all do,” he adds, softly.

You dig a little into your glass, chasing an almond.

“They’re asking for another couple hours.”

Rehearsal usually carried on without your permission. Dancing always turned into drinks, which turned into more drinks, which turned into the guys dropping a drunk, sleepy Yoongi off on your doorstep and happily cheering for you through the lock at 3 AM.

The fact that Yoongi called, before midnight, on video, and looked so deeply apologetic, meant that he was sorry about something else.

“That’s OK,” you said. “I’ll eat our leftovers from yesterday.” You smiled a bit. “Not going out to dinner means that I can probably power through another chapter.”

“That scratch on your sneakers,” he reminded you. “I still haven’t gotten around to buffing it out.”

“It’s fine.”

“And the squeaky keyboard drawer at your desk.”

“Not a big deal—”

“There’s gotta be a screw loose, which means—”

“Yoongi.”

“—that the drawer isn’t properly sliding on the track—”

“Yoongi.”

Yoongi puffed his cheeks out and frowned.

“How about I save both things for when you’re back home with me?” you asked, swiping on your most charming smile.

Yoongi opened his mouth to say something.

But someone called him back to rehearsal.

“They’re extending the tour.”

You weren’t surprised. Tickets sold out much faster than anticipated, and the resale value was starting to skyrocket. Though Yoongi asked daily, the now dozens-thick management team just barely remembered to keep a comp ticket for you.

Your name was misspelled.

“More cities?” you asked, as excitedly as you could. “Multiple dates?”

“Both,” Yoongi admitted.

It struck you strange that it sounded like an admission.

“Well, that’s great!”

You started to pace, staring at your too-full hamper of laundry, and your laptop angled slightly on the coffee table, your charger just barely long enough to reach the closest end to the couch.

“How much longer?” you asked.

“I don’t know,” Yoongi admitted, again.

You weren’t talking about the tour.

“They’re asking me to move.”

You knew this day was coming. Jungkook’s hand-drawn fliers were quickly replaced with printed copies of volunteer-designed social media banners, which were quickly replaced with a new, bright, agency-designed logo.

Brand consolidation.

Jungkook pouted at the term.

So did you.

“Where?” you asked.

When Yoongi handed you his phone, you were anticipating a list of neighborhoods, or at most, some kind of map. You weren’t expecting a password—protected listing for a gleaming, state-of-the-art condo, the last remaining unit on a floor where six identical others had already been taken off the market.

This one was already off the market as well.

You had seen the new black key card in Yoongi’s wallet weeks ago.

There was only one.

You didn’t cry when you moved out of your shared apartment.

You didn’t cry when you spent the first night in your best friend’s spare twin bed.

But as you unpacked the last of Yoongi’s shirts into his new dresser, in his new bedroom, in his new condo, you knew it was only a matter of time.

Not days. Not hours. Not minutes.

Seconds.

A shame.

You were holding it together pretty well.

“Alright, all done,” you muttered quickly, zipping out of the bedroom and making a beeline for the front door that you didn’t have a key for.

“Wait! Where are you going!”

Yoongi darted after you, catching you near the elevators.

“Hyung’s making dinner at his, and we were thinking about going out to…”

When you turned around to face him, fat tears streaming down your cheeks, dropping from your chin like rain off the roof of a forgotten shed, he broke instantly.

“W-we were,” he tried again, sniffling even before the tears came, “t-thinking about going… going out to the c-club and…”

“Celebrating?” you asked weakly.

Yoongi shook his head.

He pulled you into him, desperate.

“I can’t come with you,” you whispered.

At the time, you didn’t know why you whispered. It wasn’t a secret. It was much later that you realized that you whispered because of how hard it was to get out. It wasn’t going to be a declaration. Certainly not a willing one. You needed to get it out on a technicality.

Yoongi nodded.

Wrapped you up in his arms.

Kissed you.

Wrapped you up in his arms again.

Kissed you again.

You wish you hadn’t been crying so hard.

Maybe then, you could remember what it felt like.

And you could spend your life holding onto the precious memory of the lowest you’d ever felt, instead of constantly trying to chase the high.

The hotel bed is amazing.

The mattress conforms to your shape as you lie back, stretching every fold within you into a straight line.

You start to yawn.

“Saw your latest piece,” he tells you, from the couch.

Your yawn disappears, the vapors of it trailing outward through your nose, tears less relief from exhaustion and satiation, and more stinging. The smell of acetone during a manicure. A too-cold soda drunk too quickly.

You sit up. Jostled. Body leaving wrinkles in the sheets.

“You did?”

“I better have,” Yoongi replies, checking the publication date on, yes, your most recent work. “I’m subscribed to all your sites.”

You blink quickly. He’s never brought up your writing before.

“You are not.”

“Am too.”

He pulls out his phone, or whatever phone he’s been given to use that month, and begins to read.

Your words don’t sound weird in his voice.

You notice that his thumb didn’t have to reach far to pull up your work. It didn’t even swipe the screen after he pressed his thumb to the sensor.

In some ways, you are still home to him.

You close your eyes to remember as much of it as you can. You pretend that he is reading from just over your shoulder. The image that your mind conjures is so vivid that you know immediately that the memory will keep. You will pretend he is reading proudly from his phone during brunch. You will pretend he is reading to you in bed from the physical copy that the magazine will send you. You will pretend he is reciting his favorite, memorized lines while you’re both in his car, on the way to meet his friends, at the next show.

Yoongi smiles at you.

“What?” he asks.

Your eyes slowly open, giving way to your blissful smile.

“Your voice,” you say.

He stands and walks toward you.

“What about it?”

“Sounds good.” You smile as he slowly crawls onto the bed with you. “Sounds even better when it’s saying my words.”

“The words even look pretty,” he tells you, showing you his phone screen. “From the font that you went with to the order that you put them in.”

You notice a bright, golden star in the upper right corner.

The page is bookmarked.

Your page is bookmarked.

“And they mean things.”

Yoongi gazes into your eyes, his nose an inch away from yours. It stays an inch away from yours, as the rest of the room slides back, walls growing to your left and right, the backdrop behind Yoongi shifting from a navy blue wainscotting to a blush pink swirled ceiling.

“That’s what I love most about them,” he murmurs, as he hovers over you. “How full they are.”

You sigh when his lips hover over yours.

And then he crawls down your body, tugging at the belt of your robe.

You sit up a little to remove it. Shed your cocoon. The same way he coaxed you out when you first met. Just with his touch.

All you needed was his touch.

His touch told you that he loved your body. Didn’t see what you were so worried about. What was there to be worried about? Skin as brown as the almond biscuits you so loved. Body full with them, and only them, even when he was able to afford more. And just like those biscuits, as he had more, he wanted more.

“I don’t seem to say as many words when I’m around you,” you say.

Yoongi nods, eyes following your naked, shifting legs as you roll left and right to get the robe completely off of you. He knows too well the freakish way you just happen to understand each other. No matter where he is, he feels like, is completely convinced, that he can hear every single one of your thoughts.

But he’d never tell you that.

He wouldn’t want you to worry.

“I can appreciate them all the same,” Yoongi points out.

“They don’t get drowned out?” you ask, tilting your head and smiling with amusement. “The fan chants? The squeals?” You giggle. “The demands for marriage?”

Yoongi runs his finger along your inner thigh. He dips it into your panties, still moist.

Yoongi tastes you first, on his finger.

You think about how many people want him. How many people he’s fucked.

How you count them as wins, too.

“Speaking of drowning,” he mumbles, making you blush.

You know that he’s wondering. Wondering whether you melt this much for… him.

He pulls your panties down your legs, and you take two unnaturally steady breaths, trying to get ready.

His tongue still knows you so well. Snaking through all the folds that you usually keep so hidden and closed, in an effort to be and stay “perfect”.

How? you wonder silently. How does he still know?

“Could never forget,” Yoongi tells you, knowing the folds in your brain just as well. He feels those folds pushing back at first, and then relenting, walls flexing back with monstrous surprise, and then rushing back in to fill the gaps. Like when a crowd slowly parts for him. When that crowd transforms into an audience. All of those eyes slowly turning to see him. Realizing who he is. Making way for him. Immediately longing for him when he passes by. Seams coming together again in his wake, as he makes his way through. It’s an everyday occurrence at this point. He secretly loves it. But he has to admit that it still always feels best when his audience is just you.

And you feel his magnanimous presence. Sliding around. Caressing every square inch of you. Telling you it’s OK. Better than OK. Enjoy it. Let go. If you ever need him to remind you how, he’s here. He’s always, always here.

“Jesus,” you sigh, shaking your head from side to side.

The corner of Yoongi’s mouth points into your right lip with sharp satisfaction.

You squint at him. “Eyes?”

“Mmm?” he rumbles into your depths.

You tug at the roots of his hair. “Look in my eyes while you eat it.”

He chuckles and moans against you, neck straining as he readjusts, head angling up and showing you his pupils as

The ends of his hair brush against your hands like overgrown stalks ripe for harvest.

He eats you, eats at you, ripe for the same.

His fingers at first like thin stems rustling in the autumn breeze, helping to give way and let the fruit drop. His fingers then turn into shovels in the soil to uncover what is good and sacred and nourishing.

Tongue like baskets to be balanced on hips and heads later to furnish the dinner table.

Lips savoring you like the last sticky bits of sundae.

Sundaes.

Sundays.

How many have there been now?

“Want you,” you whisper, your hand relaxing in his hair, letting the rest of the crops that you can’t take with you fall back to the ground.

“But…” Yoongi looks at you questioningly.

You shake your head again, and he knows to crawl up your body, placing gentle kisses at your exposed stomach, your still-covered breasts, lips teasing at your scooped neckline as he unzips his jeans and kicks them off in alternating shuffles that sound like a sail whipping in the wind, lips knocking on the door just under your chin as your head tilts back, and then lips finding home when your head tilts toward him again, being met with your grunt as he lines up and pushes slowly, slowly, slowly into you, while he pulls you into a sticky, hungrier-than-ever kiss.

Sundaes.

Sundays.

How many has he had?

Your legs tighten around him. Unfamiliar eyes might think you’re trying to lock him in.

But Yoongi knows better.

You’re freezing.

Yoongi slows, understanding that he doesn’t need to fight the frost with brute force, and knowing that letting it happen will let grow the thaw.

“What happened?” Yoongi asks.

You like the way he asks this question. Not, “What are you thinking?”, or “What’s wrong?”. You hate “What’s wrong?” He already believes that whatever you say is real and important and devoid of any fault.

This simple, black, long-sleeved crop top is ribbed, and you like the feel of running your fingers up and down the columns of cotton. It’s soothing. Helps you figure out how you wanna say it.

“I counted the minutes.”

He pouts at you.

“I counted the minutes, and then I counted the minutes I spent counting the minutes…”

“I’m right here,” Yoongi says. “We’re together.” He reaches up for your face, his thumb gently grazing your cheekbone, swooping back into your hairline. “Right now.”

You smile uneasily. The most difficult part of seeing him is feeling just how much time has thrown you out of sync. It’s torturous to misstep and be forced to recalibrate your footing with someone who once made you feel like you were flying.

But Yoongi’s gentle, massaging fingers at your temple help ease the pain.

You close your eyes and get lost in it. His hand on your cheek. His other hand running up and down your thigh, to help you turn. To help you get out of your head. By giving you something to do, rather than think. His torso, which you’re about to, and then, with a gentle, caring squeeze and lift of your thigh, are, straddling. His thick cock still inside you, and still throbbing with want.

Always throbbing with want for you.

You press your palms on Yoongi’s chest and bend to him, lips nuzzling and feeling before opening and joining. Tongue swims against tongue and teeth. Bites just spur you on.

He wants to give you more of them.

He claws at your top, making you laugh a little at how eager he is to keep going. To keep you going. To keep you on track. To keep you chugging along.

You somehow feel warmer when the fabric leaves your skin.

Even warmer when your bra disappears.

Warmest when his hands cradle the swells of your breasts, nipping and wringing and fondling and cherishing.

His hands slide down your body to your hips, and he shows you how to move them. Not because you don’t know how to move them. But to remind you to move. That you can get what you want, what you both want, when you trust your own movements.

When you trust him, and when you trust yourself.

Winding, slow. Clenching. Moaning.

Now, you’re tight not with anxiety but excitement.

Now, your face is pulled in all sorts of directions not because of too many errant thoughts, but because of this layered heat, growing from a simmer to a steam. It floods you. Makes you sweat. Fills the spaces that your thoughts have been chased out of.

That you’re continuing to chase out.

With more and more fervor.

You lift with the steam.

You melt and drip back down.

You lift again.

You melt and drip back down.

With each lift, the cloud grows bigger.

Drips become raindrops, falling heavier.

Faster.

Each drop of your clenched, gripping, strong, knowing muscle onto his hard body showers Yoongi’s sturdy, turgid cock with more and more of your desire, coating him, lathering him, cleansing him. Telling him that it’s OK to feel. That he can be overly-passionate. That it doesn’t always lead to a burn out, though, when it does, that there is always a way out. You will always be here to give one to him.

Your hips roll forward and back, body sighing and stretching, showing him all the ways he can take you.

As you ride, his left hand touches your navel. Squeezes your folds of skin there. It feels like fresh, soft pillows and blankets unevenly stacked in the closet. He moans and runs his hand up those blankets, grabbing every so often as his hand slides up your body and rests, palm flat, between your breasts. His index, middle, and ring fingers spread and separate. His index and ring fingers stroke up and down at the border of each of your breasts. His middle finger strokes the center of your chest.

His cock starts to twitch inside of you.

As you shiver and grunt with pleasure, he moves his hand left, and then right, to each of your breasts. His fingers do the same with your nipples, which run rough and smooth in alternating stretches along the marble column of his middle finger.

Your moans are better than any song he will ever write.

Do you know?

Yoongi looks up at you, his left hand reaching out and brushing your hair behind your ear.

“Fuck,” he sighs. His face changes. Tenses. Lips rake under teeth. Mouth corners pull back as he takes a celebratory breath. “Fuck.”

His thumb rests alone on the tragus of your ear, his eyes instead focusing on the bright gold double helix rings at the middle lobe.

In the same place where he only has two faint scars.

No matter what, ink will always fade.

Kept long enough in the beginning, a piercing will last forever.

His eyes snap to yours.

You slide your fingers between the backs of his fingers, cradling his hand in yours, clutching his forearm with your free hand as you ride, squeezing him tight, pressing the pulp of his palm against your flushed cheek, and curving your lips to press a kiss at his wrist.

Eyes locked to his, you nod.

He grunts and quickly brings his other arm to nestle at your other temple, holding your head in his palms. You grasp both of his forearms and whine as he starts to bounce you, bodies meeting harder, faster, your cunt and his grip so tight that your brain might cave in.

You cry out and snap in half, collapsing on top of him. His hands curve around your body, running over your breasts in their journey across your back and to opposite ends of the beautiful landscape that is your torso, forearms pinning you down, against him.

Funny.

For how well you know each other, you always seem to be against him one way or the other.

Yoongi’s thrusts knock you forward. The vacuum of your joint seal pulls you back.

You can feel how full he is.

So full that he’s close to exploding.

When you realize that you’ve closed your eyes, you pry them open again, and you see the soft, brown leather of the headboard, tiny, sand brown lines etched into a deeper mahogany, growing near, then far, as if zooming in and out on a map meant to help you navigate this.

You feel a soft bite surround the point of your chin. It brings your head down, and you see Yoongi gaze at you before opening his mouth back up again to trace your jaw with his tongue. To part your lips. To kiss you.

The world that you were supposed to navigate goes dark.

This is where you and Yoongi belong. Where you make sense. In the dark, in the dark. Undercover, under covers. Bound by the lines of linens.

How many times have you met here? How many times does it take an ordinary person to memorize a body? And just how extraordinary is Yoongi?

You whimper, lips still locked, and Yoongi nods for you both. His kiss becomes softer, yet, somehow, more distracting. The way a whisper draws you in. Brings you closer. Carries the weight of a secret. The gentler he kisses you, the more he’s able to convince you that your sex is not a cacophony but a lullaby. You’ll forget until you see the bruises in the morning.

Which is drawing nearer, and nearer, he thinks, as he grunts and sucks on your lips before opening his mouth to gasp at you.

The first of your tears fall.

He catches them, like snowflakes, once frozen but now melting on his tongue. Licks up your cheek to lap them up.

His head tilts into the corner of his pillow, and you chuckle a little sheepishly before moaning Yoongi’s name. Your eyebrows gather and tent. Does he know what he does to you? Does he care?

“Yoongi?” you sigh desperately.

Neither of you need an answer before you fall apart.

You’ve shifted in your sleep.

You don’t know how many minutes have gone by when you wake, and you try to stop yourself from counting them now.

Yoongi’s lips are buried in your navel, his nose hidden. Only his eyes greet you, wide and blinking. So graceful. That slight curve of his lids, quick to plump and rise before taking their time to descend to meet his cheeks. His eyes are wings that always loft to a soft landing.

They let him take flight now, his head rising, hands folding, and then his chin resting on his knuckles on your stomach.

“You cried,” he says.

You smile fondly. “I always cry.” You bite your lip, and your eyes narrow. “And you always point that out.”

He turns onto his side, his lipstick-kissed wrist propping up his bedhead. “Why do you think you do that?” he asks with a small grin.

“And you always ask me that,” you laugh, looking back at the TV screen and flipping the channel.

Yoongi smirks as you proceed to tell him what else he always does. What else you always do. What else always ends up happening.

The slow transition from bodies talking, to you talking, to the TV talking. The progression from pure bliss, to comfortable nostalgia, to complete silence.

The criss-crossing of bodies during the gathering of clothes.

How you always reach for the shirt that you brought to return.

How you always put it on.

The fond gazes. The soft kisses. The ones on your lips. Then your cheeks. Then your forehead.

You always linger. As each second passes, you always hope that his lips will stay on you for a second more.

After Yoongi zips up your jacket to the top in one smooth moment, and then closes the door behind you, it occurs to him that there are a couple things to add to the list of what he always does. Things that you don’t know.

That the minutes that you’d left uncounted aren’t uncounted at all.

That he has kept a running total of every single minute spent gazing at you as you sleep.

That you’re not the only one who always cries.

Read the rest of the 3(0) for 30 series here!

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oonajaeadira · 3 years

Text

Branded: Chapter 1: He Will Mark You Black and Blue

Fandom: The Great Wall

Pairing: Pero Tovar x f!reader (child of the universe/prognosticator. NAMED: Gabriella)

Rating: T for now. That will probably change.

Warnings: Aaaaaaangst. Mentions of hanging and burning. Being in a house fire. Mention of child death. Mention of past domestic hurt, both mental and physical. Mention of actual branding. Hunting and skinning a rabbit, preparing it for roasting. Acting badly and being a dick. Self-pity. Kissing. Love beyond understanding.

A/N: Oof. So many things. If you follow me, you might be aware that I’ve been wanting to write this for a while. I worried and wrote a bunch of stuff for the note, but that’s just me being a nervous ding dong. (Nervous is good, it means I’m taking risks.<3) Tell you what. I’m going to put it all AFTER the story and just trust you to enjoy or not enjoy this without my blathering. <3 Thank you for taking a chance on my little fic.

Summary: William and Pero save you from becoming the victim of rampant superstition. Pero succumbs to his own latent fear; he doesn’t understand what love is and blames you for it.

TAGLIST: you can always request to be on the taglist for this or any of my work. If you’d like to be on taglists for upcoming fic, please sign up here –> TAGLIST

MASTERLIST - BRANDED MASTERLIST

YOUR PAST

You have never been afraid of fire.

But you’ve always been aware of what it can do. How it can destroy and transform, how it can carry away both life and death. It gives warmth and light when respected. Chaos when it is not.

This is the way of things.

One of your first memories is standing far from a crowd of people, on the edge of a village that had been your home for as long as you had lived your little life. Your Nonna held you by the hand as you watched the woman’s body burn, lashed to a pole in the middle of a bonfire, surrounded by scared and angry people.

She knew you must watch. You must know. This is what people do when they are frightened of the mysteries of the heavens and the earth. When people start to look out from the sides of their eyes and whisper behind closed doors, it is time to move on, find another place to call home.

That night as you bedded down in the woods and Nonna built a fire for warmth, you were not afraid, your mind lingered on the blood-red face of the woman’s body--hung first and then burned--as it turned to ash and was returned to the timeless tide.

They thought they were purifying her soul.

Fools. You cannot purify that which cannot be tarnished. Even when a soul is touched by sin and sorrow, it is pure and beautiful in the eyes of creation.

Even at this tiny age, your Nonna had taught you this.

As Nonna pushed a pine branch into the fire--its pitch adding longevity to the flames--she smiled softly at you. “Your heart has questions, little Gabby mine.”

It did.

“Will I die in fire, Nonna? Will my body be burned?”

The flames made her dark eyes glitter and her silver braids glow. “No, my dove. I don’t believe the flames are for you. They will one day take the man you love, but not you. He will be as a dragon and he will brand you like his kind. Like a dragon he will die in fire just as he comes from fire.”

This was the first night of many that Nonna spoke so candidly about your future. You’d been through much in the previous days and came out the other side scarred only in your heart but not your mind, so perhaps she believed it was time to tell you anything you asked. You pushed your advantage that night, and several nights after, but only sitting by a fire, only with the reminder that it was fire that brought you to a deeper understanding of the world you could handle now.

“Tell me about the man, Nonnie. Will he love me too?”

She reached into her kirtle to pull out her bloodstone--a flat green stone flecked with red, large enough to cover her palm, but small enough to fit in her fist. Rubbing her thumb over an indentation in the stone, her gaze traveled to the in-between place, that realm she had been training you to see but which held nothing for you yet.

“He will mark you black and blue. He will force the cross upon you.”

This brought anger into your brave little heart. If you were destined to blindly fall in love with a violent man....then let the fire take him.

You have never been afraid of fire.

But perhaps now it would be your friend. __________________

YOUR PRESENT

When you finally come to, coughing and sputtering, your little cottage is filled with black smoke and flames are licking their way under the roof at one side. Dropping to the floor and crawling in the direction of the door, you can hear your friend Anna screaming out in the henyard, her voice full of terror and tears, but not on your behalf.

“This is your fault, witch! You brought this upon yourself! You traffic with the Devil and may the purifying flames take your soul to God where it can be judged! Only he can save you now, baby-killer!”

The is door not only wedged shut, it’s hot. There is fire on the other side.

The shutters on the windows are likewise pinned from the outside and hot to the touch.

“Anna!” You call out to your friend through the roar of the flames, coughing through the smoke in your lungs as you hug the floor. “Anna, my friend! Please! You know me! Why would I kill your boy?”

There are snarls and shouts of dissent from outside the cottage, half the town must be here.

It all happened so fast. A flaming stick had come through a window and then all the shutters clapped closed at once. There was clattering and hammering that you only partially registered in your haste to throw a freshly-fetched pail of water on the flame before it caused the rushes on the floor to burn. By the time you’d attended to that, the cottage was dark, cut off from the light. Then the smoke began pouring in and after a minute of panic, you’d passed out.

Being below the smoke allowed you to revive in the midst of Anna’s screams.

“You knew he would die--!” She sobs out. “You knew because it was your plan! You knew because you traffic with the Devil and he told you and this is the price I have paid for trusting you, for letting you walk among us when all along I knew you were wretched!”

“Anna, please! He was ill! I only told you what I saw so you could prepare yourself! I trusted you! I loved little Gregory! Please!”

But this only fans the flames in Anna’s heart and you hear her agony ripping through her throat into the summer sky.

You are afraid. But only because you are witnessing the loss of Anna’s mind to fear. A girl you love as you would a sister, who often asked for you to see to the in-between place so her husband could prepare the fields or she would know the best time to plant her onion bulbs. Grief has bubbled up inside her and is looking for an escape, breaking through at the point of your friendship.

But the fire...the fire you do not fear.

No, my dove. I don’t believe the flames are for you.

This is not your day to die. But you might still be hurt. How do you find your way out?

The chimney. The stone chimney might be wide enough to climb, the rocks are rough enough to get a foothold. You tuck your skirts up in your leather belt and crawl into the soot of the fireplace to look up to blue sky drifted over in black smoke. It’s a tight squeeze for you, but maybe…

You haven’t truly been listening to what’s happening outside, but you’ve noticed the shouting getting louder and rowdier. Before you’ve even got a foot up on the first stone, there’s a crashing outside, there’s screaming and a man’s voice howling about Christian souls. A thud lands on the door. And another. As you squat down into the fireplace ash, you can see a shaft of light piercing the smoke. It’s momentarily dimmed as another thud and a cracking of wood permeate the cottage, you can just see through the smog enough to see the edge of a broad axe. When it’s gone, the light streams through the hole left behind for a second before it returns again, this time twisting and splintering the wood around it.

After a few more hits, the door has a weak enough seam that the thuds coming now are no longer from an axe but a boot until the whole thing breaks in half, and a man covered in a dark cloak bursts in, trailing flames behind him.

All you see coming out from the cloak are two thick hands gesturing for you to hurry, to come to him, and in moments you are wrapped up with him in the woolen cape--soaking wet as a deterrent from the flames--and rushing through the fire to the clean air outside.

Here, everything’s a blur. The man’s hands hold you steady as you sink to the grass of the henyard, coughing the smoke from your body, but safe from the heat of the flames. He unwraps you both from the cloak and seems to be checking you over quickly for harm. When you finally look up to see a rough man with dark wet hair and a scarred face, his focus is thrown over your shoulder to another stranger yelling at the crowd.

Framed against the background of your burning cottage, this second man is tall and noble-looking, his hair in a neat tawny ponytail, his leather armor making him immediately recognizable as a mercenary if his drawn bow did not.

“I have seen the unholy and I have seen the supernatural, and I don’t believe it walks among you here!” His right arm crooks farther back, his bicep curving, holding the bowstring effortlessly taught as he looks down the arrow shaft with angry blue eyes, targeting and challenging each one of your neighbors in turn. “What I have seen is disease that takes the weak ones, the old and the young, and nobody can control that or take blame! What you do here is an affront to your God.”

Anna’s husband steps toward you, eager to claim you and bring you to justice another way. But one step is all he’s able to achieve--the other calf suddenly has an arrow in it and he drops, screaming in agony. Anna runs to his side, wailing, helping him to his feet and assisting him pitifully away from the scene.

“Leave this place. All of you.” The blue-eyed sellsword’s heavy brows lower as a new arrow takes its place on the bowstring. “All. Of you.”

The only sounds are Anna’s diminishing sobs, the rush and crackle of your tiny cottage being engulfed in fire, and the shuffling of feet through the henyard grass making their way back to their fields and stalls.

Shaded eyes tilt their way toward you as they go, tightening lips and hardening jaws.

You cross your fingers, hoping to ward off whatever evil they are wishing your way until they are obscured by the man crouching closely by your side, the man with the scarred eye and the heavy brow. You see now that he’s another mercenary, covered in battered chainmail and leather. He drops the arm he’d thrown to shield you when Anna’s husband started toward you.

“You needed to shoot him?” His accent is light, lyrical. A foreigner.

The heroic figure with the bow stands steady, looking past the arrowhead, eyes following the people as they go. “Have to let them know we’re serious.”

“I broke down the door with an axe, that is not serious?” The scarred man huffs, looking to you as if you’re in on some irritating joke. “Waste of a good arrow.” He takes your hand in his larger rougher ones to lift you to your feet. “You are safe now, sister.” He glances back at the burning house as his friend lowers his bow and comes to meet you. “Your house, not so much.”

The men stand near you as you watch the place burn, your chicken coop an ash heap with probably every bird dead inside. Poor things.

All you can do is stare. You can’t run, you can’t cry, you can’t go back in time. This morning you had a house and a loom. You had hens and ducks. You’d finally collected enough down for a feather tick. The three dresses you spent so much time and care to weave and cut and sew--your three best--all gone. Everything gone. You had thought that this would be your final home, the one that you’d never have to leave, your quiet haven.

Stupid to get so comfortable.

You have never been afraid of fire.

But it does have a way of changing your life when you least expect it to.

“Thank you,” you mumble softly, remembering your manners to the men who kept you from death this time. The flaming roof crashes down, finally, truly burning everything you own. “Why did you help me?”

Your tall defender steps up behind you, his faint, flat Irish accent rumbling deep. “Because. I’ve seen this before. It’s senseless and wrong and wicked. We heard some of the men talking about you at the tavern and you were so kind yesterday…”

An accented baritone pipes up behind him. “William has a soft spot for women who know how to smile.”

When you turn to look at the bowman, his blue eyes are tired and a little sad. And then they’re familiar. He wasn’t wearing this leather armor the other day. “You bought some of my eggs and turnips. And mushrooms. And a blanket.”

“Well, we didn’t buy. You were kind enough to let us trade. I see you like the belt. It was Tovar’s.” He jerks his head toward his companion whose eyes flick to your belt before scowling a nod at you.

They’re light on coin. Good.

You try to be the kind woman they met yesterday, but your voice comes out flat, weary, cold. “You’ll be leaving town today then. You can’t stay here after what you’ve done. I’m coming with you.”

The two men check in with each other before William gives you a frown. “Unfortunately, we’re on our way to war. I don’t think you want to go there.”

You meet his gaze in a calm challenge before walking past him and his friend to a large oak tree with gnarled roots.

There’s some spirited whispering after you pass, a hissing argument that is quickly resolved with a shush.

With a little bit of grunting and clawing you’re able to pry a stone away from the base of the tree revealing a hollow and you knock on the trunk three times before laying your hand on the ancient wood.

“Snakes and badgers, I beg your pardon. Please don’t take offense or violence to my hand.”

Reaching in up to your elbow, you retrieve one, two, three fist-sized pouches heavy with coins, slipping them through the side opening in your skirt and tying them to your underskirt strings to hang there like big pockets.

One more hand to the trunk of the tree, this time you let your heart do the talking.

Thank you for keeping my secrets and my treasures. Thank you for protecting my future. Live long, die well. I don’t think I will see you again.

An oak leaf falls from above, lands in your hair, and you leave it there, a parting kiss from an old friend.

“Here.” You stack a number of coins in William’s hand. “There are most likely towns and villages between here and your war. One of them will be my new home and you can deliver me to it. I buy your protection.” And another stack. “And that’s for services rendered.” He begins to object, but his somber companion hisses at him before catching your eye and then looking pointedly away. “Your friend is smarter than you. Take it. I’m grateful.”

And another small stack.

“And what’s this for?” He asks.

“That’s for waiting. I can’t go just yet. There’s something in the house I need.”

The mercenaries look over their shoulders at the smoldering wreck of your house, then back to you in unison, both of them wearing incredulous looks.

William is the one to speak. “I...don’t think there’s going to be anything left.”

“There will be one thing,” you insist. “I’m waiting.” _________________

It’s almost midday before the fire has had its say and the cottage is mostly ash before you pick your way through the rubble over to the structure of the stone chimney still standing. There, right where you left it on the hearth, is a green stone, flecked with red, large enough to cover your palm but small enough to fit clenched in your fist, flat and smooth with an indentation where it has been worn down by decades of your grandmother’s thumb and then your own.

You lovingly wipe the soot away from it with your apron--it’s otherwise unharmed--and put it into your kirtle where it rides against your heart.

When you leave, you don’t look back.

You’ll cry later tonight, but not now. You won’t let this place have your tears. ________________

“Your friend is silent and sour.”

William chuckles dryly at this as you ride astide before him on his horse, his arms resting in a wide arc so as not to touch you any more than he has to, even though you are tucked up against his chest.

Tovar rides ahead a few lengths, sighing every few minutes, seemingly bored of the old-wood forest you’re passing through to avoid the main road. He looks back every now and then, scowling at the two of you, most likely because you seem to be enjoying more entertainment than himself.

“Yes, that is exactly what he is a lot of the time.”

“His tongue is twisted. Where is his homeland?”

“South. Castille.”

“He’s a Spaniard.”

He seems surprised. “You know your maps.”

“I know of his people. Their blood runs hot.”

William laughs easily now. “That sounds about right.”

The forest dampens the horses hooves as they pick through the undergrowth, trees spread far enough apart to ride through comfortably, the breeze shifting the leaves to dance the dappled sunlight across your path.

The two soldiers are rough, but seemingly abiding men of faith, both of them not unhandsome, both equally tall. William is a kind man, and as gentlemanly as a mercenary can be, if not dry. But past this morning’s action, Tovar is even drier still. There’s something mean in his eye. Not...mean...perhaps just...consistently irritated. Impatient. Surly. His armor is cold mail while William’s is warm leather. He has bladed weapons slung to his saddle--two heavy-looking swords and a broad axe--while William carries smaller, elegant knives and a willowy bow. His shoulders sag with attitude while William carries his squarely, honorably. You’re happy to be sharing a saddle with the merrier one.

“I trust him with my life,” he says, his voice low. “He’s saved it more times than I have kept count. I’m forfeit to him. Do me a favor and don’t ever tell him I said that.”

“You’re telling me to trust him.”

“You’d be a fool of a woman if you didn’t.”

“Well, I’ll believe you’re both men of honor if I wake up tomorrow without a knife in my belly and my pockets untouched.”

The corner of his mouth curls. “I look forward to your pleased face.”

The majority of the afternoon is spent in fits of oscillating silence and conversation, distracting stories set against the background of war and battle while you ride through greenery and birdsong, stories full of harrowing close-shaves and brotherly cooperation as the horses pick over rocks and thorns.

When the kind one speaks, you listen to his pleasant lilting voice as you watch the trees slowly pass by and the bobbing head of the brown horse before you. When he is silent, you watch the ground--thinking of what has been lost--or the sky--doing your best to hold tears at bay.

You’re able to stop and water the horses whenever you wish as you follow the river through the forest, and on one such stop, William shoots a healthy rabbit, hanging it off the back of his saddle alongside the clumps of beets and radishes you pulled out of your garden on the way out, whatever wasn’t singed or buried by the fire.

With these ingredients--plus a little alliaria and blackberries found growing wild--you’re able to put together a decent supper over a fire that Tovar whips up before he settles in to whittle a roasting pick. His mustache quirks up when you take your own small knife out of your boot and snatch the rabbit away from William, horrified at the mess he’s making of skinning it. You show him a cleaner, more efficient way, essentially taking the job of cook onto yourself.

In the meantime, William takes himself down to the river to wash off the rabbit blood and fire soot before supper.

Tovar merely sits across the fire, leaning back against a tree, sullenly watching you work, fiddling with a dagger as he idly stands it on its point in the earth and twirls it around with his fingers.

You can feel his eyes on you. You’d be lying if you said it wasn’t a bit unsettling. You’re not sure why; something about it raises the hairs on your arms. After spending the majority of the day in friendly companionate talk with William, it’s a sudden odd switch to be alone with this one. How can someone so sour be so beloved by someone so equitable? If only he’d speak. Or at least stop staring. He seemed kinder this morning. Perhaps he’s jealous that you’re taking up so much of his friend’s attention. Perhaps he’s angry that William agreed to drag you along.

“You’re covered with ash,” you point out, keeping your eyes on your task. “William has the right idea. You should go join him and wash.”

“You paid for protection. One of us will stay. I will bathe when he is finished.”

“I don’t think anything’s going to attack me here in these woods.”

A sneer rides in his voice. “Perhaps you do not know the forest so well. It is not all chirpy birds and fluffy rabbits.”

“I know,” you smile slyly, “It has at least one Spaniard in it.”

Half a huff of sarcastic amusement. “You fear me, sister.”

Your eyes raise slowly to dark ones, challenging him to watch his tone. “My name is Ella and I’m not your sister.”

“You speak bravely. The scar does not scare you, eh?” His smirk deepens, as does his brow. “Perhaps because you have some of your own.”

His eyes dip to your chest and when you look down you can see what he sees--not only the cleft of your breasts, but some of your bare shoulder where your kirtle has fallen loose as you’ve worked the rabbit.

Now you understand what he’s been staring at. Not wanting to snatch the tunic and pull it tight with your game-bloodied hands, you instead twist away from him, away from the fire, away from the corpse of the rabbit, hunching your shoulders in as if it could erase what he’s seen.

“This is not the first time you have been burned, no? You have been run out of town before. Perhaps we rescued the monster instead of the victim this time, eh?”

This is...not good. He’s seen it, the brand upon your shoulder, the sign of hatred seared into your skin. He’s right, it’s just one of many, representing one of your varied escapes over the years.

“Scars do not make a person a monster,” you spit back over your shoulder, trying for all the world not to sound like a cornered animal. “Or are you claiming to be one yourself?”

“Ah, hermana. No. Scars themselves do not make monsters,” he purrs. “But that is not just any scar. You have been on trial. You have been stripped naked and held down to take the cross. It has burned your unholy flesh.”

Unholy? So this is what he’s been glowering about? This is the assumption he’s carrying. “Oh. Is that how you’re picturing then, me? Naked and screaming for mercy?” This is where you lose your fear. He’s mistaken. Not completely, but enough so that you turn fully to meet his dangerous gaze. He’s still twirling the knife in the ground, picking it up after every few spins to find it fresh earth to pierce, head thrown back against the tree, grinning and satisfied to have seemingly hit a target.

After a moment your heartbeat slows and you stand and make your way around the fire to him. He shrinks back just the tiniest amount as you kneel beside him, just the slightest hint of apprehension. Good. His gaze follows your fingers as you slowly push back the shoulder of your dress, trailing blood across your neck and over the wound. You speak softly to him, plainly, watching his brow pull together and arch as you tell him your tale.

“It’s not a cross, although it has one imbedded in the design. Look. It’s the seal of a baron. A man who thought to marry me and make me his property. Instead he presumed--wrongly, like you--that I was some kind of devil and used his branding seal on me, the same brand he put on his horses and any stags found on his land. Because the branding seal was made of iron, you see? And iron burns witches. But you know what?” Standing and going back to your work, you pull the last of the skin from the rabbit. “Iron burns everyone if it’s been heated in a fire.” You finish with the little beast and run it through with the pick, propping it over the fire to roast. “There are more marks like it. He made sure to put most of them where they wouldn’t be seen.”

It’s a time in your life you don’t think much about. A horrid month of a forgotten year. You’re only glad that your Nonna lived long enough to help you escape.

The Spaniard is quiet for a long moment, but you can still feel his eyes on you.

“And this baron,” he finally croaks. “You ran away from him?”

“I did.” When you look for his expression, it’s less fierce than before, but still wary. “You’re wondering if I magiced him to death. Murdered him in is sleep to escape. No. I just...left. As far as I know, the bastard still lives.”

“Why did he think you were a devil.”

You smile at this, a little sadly. Being a man himself, you doubt he’ll understand. “When men are afraid of women, they try to make excuses for it. And when women are gifted and strong, that is when men feel the deepest fear.”

There is a moment of nothing but crackling fire and lingering birdsong. When he answers, it is quiet, his dagger still. “I believe you.”

You give him a nod and a little grateful smile. Perhaps he isn’t so hopeless after all.

But he’s far from finished.

Rocking forward onto one knee and kneeling into your personal space, he whispers gruffly, his purr a menace in your face. “But you seem to have a history of making people believe you are capable of ungodly acts, so maybe they are not wrong, hmm? I have seen things, little bruja, and know that devilry is possible, I know evil can come into this world in unbelievable packages.” His deep sable eyes search yours and you cannot hide the fear he’s raised in you.

But he’s also raised a spark of something else. There’s a sudden tug behind your heart you don’t have time to understand before a flash--a vision--wracks you.

Sharp jaws in an angry green face. A beast. A vibrating membrane. a terrible shriek. Blood, so much blood--

It’s quick and loud and violent. Like nothing you’ve ever seen in life or the in-between.

You can’t hold back a gasp, involuntarily clutching his arm, safer in his real company than in the vision of the creatures you’ve just seen so clearly.

“I believe you,” you whisper.

He throws a confused look to your hand on him and then back to you. His opens his mouth to ask a question but--

“Tovar, you’re supposed to be keeping her from nuisances, not becoming one yourself. What’s going on here?” William comes through the brush in his breeches and tunic, throwing his armor and boots down to air while he dries.

Caught, the Spaniard slowly rocks back to his seat against the tree, glaring, although a little less darkly than before. He returns to his dagger, this time stabbing it into the ground only to wiggle it free and stab again. It’s not a threatening motion as much as it’s just petulant, something to do with something sharp.

“Your Southern friend here isn’t very--,” Tovar’s eyes flash to your own, waiting, “--happy with me.” You sigh as you watch the dagger plunge back into the ground. “He is unconvinced that I’m not a witch.”

Sitting near the fire and wringing his hair out with his hands, William huffs out half a laugh. “Well? Are you?”

“No. That’s not what I am.” It’s time to stop giving Tovar attention and you clean your hands on your apron enough to rake through the blackberries for the purpose of extracting stems and leaves. “But I don’t think he’s going to take my word for it.”

The Irishman’s lip twists into a smug expression. “Then why don’t you test her, Tovar?”

“What.” Dark eyes dart to his friend in dismay.

You look to William in matching dismay. What was that supposed to mean? Were they going to hold you in the river? Put your hand to the fire? Strip you down and look you over for devil’s marks? You’ve been through all of it and found none of it pleasant. But. You don’t have to worry for long.

“Go on. You don’t mind, do you Ella? She’s been riding on my saddle all afternoon and it has studs made of iron. Didn’t seem to bother her. But go on, friend. You’ve got a crucifix on you somewhere. Put it to her forehead.”

Tovar spits his words. “No, my God, I don’t have a crucifix.”

“Well then, go fill a cup with water. Or, you know what? Here.” William takes the tankard of blackberries you’re picking through and hands them to his friend. “Paint her up.”

The Spaniard just glares at him. Then at you. Then at the berries. Then back at him. “No.”

William’s blue eyes bore into Tovar’s brown ones with a message you cannot hear. There is a challenge here, a threat, a brotherly demand to get it over with, knock it off, and put it to rest. You’ve seen this look between two dogs fighting over the right to beg on one part of the street.

With a huff and a snarl, Tovar snatches the cup, retrieving a couple of berries and mashing them in his hand, mumbling in Latin, words you know but barely catch, a blessing, an incantation, an ask for the right to act in the name of a higher power.

When he approaches you, kneels next to you, you watch the tiny movements of his brow, as he tries to keep an air of determination, teetering on the edge of regret. Even though you willingly turn your face to him, keeping a sarcastic mask of sweetness, your eyes flash defiance at him. Seeing it, but pushing past it, he takes your chin between thumb and forefinger to hold you steady but--you notice with an odd pulse of the heart--gently. With the other hand he takes the juice of the crushed berries and paints on your forehead with his thumb, a vertical stripe from top to bottom, “In nomine Patris et Filii,” and one horizontally across, “et Spiritus Sanсti.”

By the end, his gaze has locked to yours and what you see there is not fear. Or hate. Or pride. Here, inches from your own, there is an opening in his countenance, an acceptance, something more like an apology and less than trust but still, an invitation forward.

Your body begins to shake and convulse. Your lips part to gasp, pant, to eek out the tiniest squeaks of pain. You reach out to him, grasping at his shoulder for help, as his face contorts in panic. You expect him to push you away, but he instead grips the slides of your face, his fingers smearing berry juice on your cheeks as he desperately searches your eyes, your body, your hands and back again, trying to understand what he’s done, how he can help---

--and then. You just...stop.

And smirk up at him. “Not a witch. Sorry. Try again tomorrow.”

Now he does let you go with a shove, irritated, scowling, swearing in a language you don’t know, spitting into the fire as William laughs full-throated, his head tilted back, up and braying into the twilight sky.

“You’ve met your match, friend! If she is a witch, best to let her win. You may lose your dignity but you’ll leave with your life!”

As your heroic companion continues to roar, the Spaniard throws the dagger, sinking it into the ground by his friend’s foot, which does nothing but fan the merriment. Tovar then turns back to you, grasping at the hem of your apron in an attempt to wipe his offense from your face, but you push at his hands, twisting your head away, which he angrily counters, trying to stop you, stop your hands, ridiculously engaging in a battle of strength and determination you know you can’t win until you halt him with a word.

“Please.” He halts, his hands clutching your wrists, hard breath coming out from flared nostrils, the fire reflected in his wild eyes. You give him a small smile, trying not to laugh. “Please. Tovar. You’ve made me so pretty. I’d like to wear it a while for you.”

You’ve gone too far.

He’s been acting like a beast, but now he almost whimpers with his eyes, a hard slap of shame flashes through them for an instant. Just...an instant. Then the grumpiness returns as he drops your hands, stands and stalks off toward the river, letting his friend ride out his laughter behind him.

Watching him go--hunched shoulders, stomping gait--you realize you may have lost your best chance at gaining his trust. He looks like a beaten dog.

Well. He’s the one that threatened you. Insulted you. You refuse to feel sorry for him. You tell yourself not to feel sorry for him.

Why do you feel sorry for him?

Finally coming back to an easy smile, William begins picking through the blackberries, popping a few in his mouth. “I’m not going to apologize for him, but I will say he’s going to be insufferable to you for the next few days. He’s stubborn and doesn’t take humiliation lightly.”

“Hmm. I said it before, but I think your friend is smarter than you.”

William chuckles, digging for another blackberry. “Oh, it’s entirely possible.” He turns his eyes to you with a mischievous glint as he throws back a few berries. “So you really are a witch, huh.”

“No,” you groan, looking through the broken underbrush that your mutual companion recently departed through. “But your sort lump us all together anyway. Doesn’t matter where the knack comes from--nature, devils, gods--it’s all the same to you.” ________________

YOUR FUTURE

Pero’s never been afraid of fire.

But neither has he ever been so drawn to it before.

He stands naked in the river as he washes fitfully, thoroughly, trying to understand exactly what’s going on inside him, his thoughts banging around his thick skull, trying to make sense.

Even before William drew his bow, before either of them threatened any of the villagers, Pero immediately jumped off his horse, submerged his cloak in a standing rainbucket, grabbed the axe off his saddle and strode up to the burning house, pushing people out of his way.

A door boarded up that thick should have taken twenty blows. He crushed it in less than half. Then your hands were safe in his--the pretty girl from the day before who now wore his belt. When you said you wanted to come with them, every instinct in his warrior’s body jumped at the chance to protect you.

It terrified him.

He did not know you. Didn’t want to know you. The only women he had any time for were whores and food vendors. His whole life has been a string of battles and quests with a varying chance of starvation in between. What need was there for a woman when he could not stay to breed her or take her with him for his own needs? He wouldn’t know how to treat one if he had one and wasn’t paying her for her bed. Hasn’t had much practice in caring for someone past that.

He had several hours to think about it, alone on his horse, listening to the two of you chatter like old friends, hearing you laugh at William’s non-existent humor, turning to find you staring up to the sky with something like a dumb look of love on your face.

He’d seen the brand on your shoulder when he took the wet cloak away as it dragged a little at your dress. That had to be it. He could see this wasn’t new for you. You didn’t seem dismayed that your house was gone and you were ousted from your society. You even hid your coins outside of your dwelling as if you expected something like this.

When you’d walked off to retrieve them, he’d hissed at William. “What are you saying, ‘on our way to war?’ The poor girl has nothing. Bring her along. We’ll find her a better place.”

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for a good Samaritan.”

“You will do well to shut your mouth, amigo.”

“We can’t afford it and you know it. You’re out of belts.”

“If the woman can afford to trade wares for a piece of leather, she can afford to have surprises. We shall see.”

Why had he fought so hard to save you? What were you to him?

The belt.

That is final piece of this puzzle. You had something belonging to him. That is what it took, yes? To bewitch a man?

He has never met a witch, never seen a woman accused and proved to be one. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. He would never have believed in the existence of something like the Tao Tei a year ago and yet, there they were. Why not witches?

Why not you?

This could be the only good explanation for his shifting heart.

The marks on you and all the other signs supported his theory, but it was his abominable pull to you that was the ultimate proof.

But why him? Why did you choose to lay a spell upon him? Pero looks down at his reflection in the lazy river. His angry mouth. His rough-chopped hair. That scar--so frightning that whores often tried to pass him off to another girl…

He scoffs and turns away from himself, makes his way back onto the shore to his clothes.

It was William gave you the belt. You probably thought it was his.

So here he is, the heartsick victim of a wayward curse.

Dripping, despondent, Tovar returns to the fire. There’s half a rabbit waiting for him. William is devouring the other.

“What is this.”

You smile at him, murdering his soul with your pleasantness through your stained face, “It’s a rabbit. You know. Fluffy thing? Big ears?”

“Yes I know! Why half. Why aren’t you eating.”

You shrug, removing yourself and taking the path toward the river he’d just emerged from. “I did. I’m fine with turnips tonight. I ate chicken yesterday and eggs this morning. It’s you boys could use some good meat.”

If his thin logic is correct, he shouldn’t eat the rabbit. God knows what you’ve poisoned it with, God knows how you might use it to put him further under your spell. But he looks to William devouring a leg and Pero’s stomach wins out. It always wins out.

The rabbit is delicious. He could eat rabbit like this every day for the rest of his life.

Damn it. ________________

AND THEN, ALL AT ONCE.

This is when you cry. Huge, wracking tears, arms squeezed around yourself as you sit half-submerged in the gentle river in your under shifts. You give your tears to the river, asking it to take them away with your pain, with your utter terror and complete unknowing of what the immediate future holds.

You’ve been in this predicament before; Nonna prepared you for this. All your life. This shouldn’t be hard anymore.

But... foolishly you thought this time might be different. Anna was like a sister to you, her little boy like your own. You were happy and settled with a found family...and all it took was one ill traveler to contaminate your village and give them a reason to turn on you. You’d been too easy with your predictions. To good with your loom. You were successful without a husband to support you. It was only a matter of time.

You will the tears to stop, breathe slowly through your mouth, forcing yourself to be quiet, not wanting the men to hear.

These men are good. You can feel it. Even the grouchy one. Even if they literally kill for coin. This William Garin and Tovar... Tovar What? You haven’t learned his surname. Or maybe Tovar was his surname? Did it matter? Maybe not. You’d most likely be out of their company in a few days.

It doesn’t mean you aren’t curious about him. And not just about his name.

As you stand to move further to the center of the stream so you can submerge yourself fully, the bloodstone falls out of your shift and plops into the water. Even though the light is leaving, it’s not hard to pick it out on the bottom of the stream among the riverstones--deep green with flecks of red, flecks said to be the blood that fell from the crucified savior. Holy. Mystical. The suggestion of suffering and blood is a power all its own.

But as you bend over to retrieve it, you catch a reflection of your face in the water.

And the world.

Shifts.

Everything drops out--the sounds of the forest, the surrounding canopy of trees, the last light of the sun.

You’re in a void of black, standing waist deep in the river, but it’s smooth and unbothered by current.

There are stars here in the black, but they’re moving, seeping through the void of sky, leaving trails of silvered light behind them, their paths swirling but never crossing. This pattern is picked up in the reflection of the river’s surface, creating a cage of starlight, of glowing strings.

You are in the in-between. A place you have seen into often but never been so fully immersed.

The air around you vibrates--it is time standing still and it creates a stagnation, a stopping that longs to start up again, a halt like a horse that desperately wants to charge forward but must be restrained for its own good.

When you look back to your reflection, you see the disarray of your face--the rabbit blood on your neck, the soot, and the berry juice both smeared across your cheek and as a cross on your forehead.

This cross begins to glow.

You hear no voices in your ears, yet you feel Nonna’s in your heart, echoing back through time.

He will mark you black and blue. He will force the cross upon you.

This? This is...this is not what you expected. Nonna’s prophecies were always so poetic, but you had no idea that this was what was meant...you’d expected violence…not...berries...

She did this on purpose. So you wouldn’t anticipate it but you would be in awe when it happened.

“Nonna.”

Invoking her name causes a fierce wind to pick up. It is not an earthly wind, not air, but truth. Destiny. Message. It blows straight through you, pushing the stars in their tracks around so that they all slide in one direction, moving behind you, urging you to turn.

And when you do, Tovar is standing on the shore of this strange void river.

And he is bathed in fire.

Not a fire he feels, not a fire that destroys. It is a manifestation of his soul, an aura, his heart. He stands in its center, staring at you in deep concern.

Like a dragon he will die in fire just as he comes from fire.

Him???

Just as he comes from fire.

The first time you saw him. Coming through the fire.

Oh God. Him.

Now the void behind you is closing in, the horizon where the stars meet the river is shrinking behind your feet, the river coursing toward the shore and pushing you along with it.

As you near him, the stars stop in place, soaking up their trails. The blackness of the void lightens slowly to soft magentas and twilight blues. The last of the birdsong and the babble of the water sucks back into the air.

And the flames fade from view.

But somehow, you know they’re still there.

“How long have you been watching me, Spaniard?” It’s not a challenge. You’re still a little in shock. “How much have you seen?”

His eyes flick to your wet shifts, dripping on the stones, then back to yours. “Enough.”

You look down and realize your shift is almost transparent. Almost. It certainly clings to your features when it’s wet. You could admonish him for that. But there’s no bite in him, no insinuation. His face says he saw you crying and that is more than you can take right now.

You need to make sense of what you just saw. You need to make peace.

Turning away to your clothes, you dig through for the heavy leather belt--tipped in steel ornamentation with a simple brass buckle--before returning to him. “Here. This is yours.”

He doesn’t move, doesn’t take it from you, his face just shifts, sorrowing, settling somewhere near kicked puppy. When he won’t take it, you warily step in close, weave your arms through his and string it around him yourself.

He doesn’t stop you.

But neither does he look away.

“I never thanked you for pulling me out of the fire.”

“You thanked us. You paid us.”

“I never thanked you. Tovar. You personally.” You pull the buckle tight and step back.

But he reaches out to keep you close, taking your face in his hands, looking over the damage he’s caused, the painted marks he’s put on you.

He’s sorry. You can see he’s sorry.

And you soften toward him. Something in you wills him to understand you forgive him.

He reacts to this, his eyes searching yours before he plunges forward, capturing your mouth with his own.

The force of his want takes you by surprise and he stumbles you back a few steps before reaching for your waist to steady you against him. His lips are greedy against your own, hot with the fever of his Spanish blood, his mustache and stubble prick your skin, assuring you that this is not a dream or vision; you have fully exited the in-between.

This...this kiss.... You have badly neglected this part of your heart, left it unwatered and overgrown. No wonder it so easily catches fire now, rubbed up so close to his flame.

Just as quickly as he took your lips, now he lets them go, crushing his forehead to yours for a few communal breaths before stepping back.

The scowl has returned. The confused one. The cornered hound.

His grip on your wrist is rough as he yanks you to the water.

His hands are large and wet as they wash at the stains on your face.

Finally, looking you over, content that the cross is gone, that nothing lingers, neither does he, and--jaw clenched tight, shoulders hunched--he trudges angrily back through the underbrush to the camp.

You’re left standing in the river, dripping, breathless, soul cracked open and burning free.

Oh God. Not him.

Not him.

Why?

________________

Chapter 2: You Will Bear His Name and He Yours -->

More A/N: Hi, nervous rambling. Aren’t you glad I didn’t stuff all this at the beginning? 1. This isn’t as fluffy as my usual stuff. I mean, ultimately it is, but it’s set on a darker background. 2. We like William in this house. If you have a problem with Will--and I’ve heard some do--this may not be for you here and forward. 3. “If you’re doing a named reader and she has such a heavy background, why don’t you make her an OC?” The answer is, because it’s my story and I don’t want to. The name is important later. But the character is a costume for the reader to put on and walk around in the fic for a while. I don’t like to leave people on the outside looking in if I can help it. A name can be part of that costume. 4. So the setting of the film is really confusing because the Dynasty puts it in the 1000’s but they talk about Spain (and other countries) which wasn’t a thing until the 1400s… I’m just taking it as ambiguous “middle ages Europe” and trying not to think too hard about it (even though I’m a period-appropriateness nerd). I suggest you do the same. 5. Jumping off of some things that grabbed my ear in the movie and some prop and costuming cues, I assume that Pero at least is religious, or religious enough to be superstitious and doubting. 6. The structure--Your Past/Your Present/Your Future/And Then, All At Once--and its POVs will remain consistent throughout the series.

Okay. That’s enough of me trying to make excuses and being nervous. Really, I just hope you enjoy this beginning. Lemme know if you want more.

Taglist: @yespolkadotkitty you asked me about this long ago in an ask game and asked me in a DM to tag you if I ever write it. Here it is. Hope the tag is not a bother!!! <3 <3 <3

@14mcmd1122 @cannedsoupsucks @extraterrestrialdork @goblinsimp @grogusmum @pedro4ever @thisshipwillsail316 @adriiibell @feralhotmess @kotemorons @kirsteng42 @princessxkenobi @justreadingthings @ohlawdthebirds @javierpinme @heavenseed76 @blackmarketmummy @writeforfandoms @janebby @grumpymuffinmama @c-a-v-a-l-r-y @toomanystoriessolittletime @neonvagabond @thirstworldproblemss @jediknight122 @mando-amandk @pbeatriz @red-velvet-panda @luthientinu @midnightartemis @Prostitute-robot-from-the-future @hypnoash @fromthedeskoftheraven @green-socks @hb8301 @kiizhikehn-cedar @maydayfigment @the-feckless-wonder @im-like-reallythirsty

#pero x reader #tovar x reader #pero tovar x reader #great wall fanfic #great wall fanfiction #soft tovar #soft pero #visions

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mrskodzuken · 3 years

Text

Longing

pairing: Kozume Kenma x fem!reader

genre: angst to fluff (with crack bits)

wc: 2.3k

tw/cw: post-timeskip characters, some swearing, aaaaaaangst (wdym lol), alcohol + food, product ad placements /j, lovers to (one-sided fake) enemies to lovers again AU, set in the "Kenma with a f!Filo!reader as s/o" AU, mild? depression.

a/n: this is my entry for both @rosesandtoshi's "Enemies to Lovers" and @sunarent's "Because I Love You" collabs, and currently my lengthiest fic I've written in this blog alone (second overall). I hate to make the loml cry before his birthday (October 16th) but siiiiiiiigh I have no choice but to do the do (sorry Kenma). Special thanks for my ever-supportive wifey @atsuminthe, and both @melsun and @krystalgaia from The Cosmic Void server for beta-reading this *headpats* <3 //More notes below~// also please help me reblog this (if y’all want) coz Tumblr won’t show this in the tags 😭 thank you 🙇🏻‍♀️

tagging @anime-central =^ uwu ^= <3

taglist form link <3

[15th October, 20xx.]

[Tokyo. Kozume Residence. 08:25]

The loud and shrilling sound of the digital alarm clock on the bedside table annoyed Kozume Kenma and ruined his peaceful sleep. So much that he’d slammed his hand on the button… hard, which resulted in a painful yelp and a throbbing palm.

“Fuck…,” he cursed under his breath, rubbing the pain on his hand away, and groaned, stretching his arms upward and yawning. He rolled over to the side and reached for your side of the bed you’re sharing with him, blindly feeling around for your figure with his hand... but you weren’t there. He sat up and looked over, puzzled.

“Y/N? Y/N~?” Where are you?”

He looked at his phone to check if you were online on your SNS—last activity was a few hours ago, during his game stream. No new messages, no new voice calls… “Kitten, where are you?” He started to panic.

He walked towards your shared cabinet and opened it. Your side of the cabinet was somewhat near-empty, save for a few hanging shirts and dresses.

“Y/N?” Kenma went inside his streaming room next and didn’t find you. Also in the kitchen, the backyard, your study room, bathroom—none. There were no notes left on the fridge’s door as to your whereabouts. Then he returned to your shared bedroom to retrieve his phone and try tried texting you.

This is absurd. Maybe… maybe we should just separate for now, Kenma—

Oh. His thumbs stopped just as he was going to press Send, cursing at himself. Yeah, how come Kenma forgot about it in such a small period of time? You two had a petty misunderstanding that escalated into a fight last night. And you decided to go out in the middle of the night—an overnight bag on your shoulder—and stay at a friend’s house for the meantime, leaving him all alone feeling angry and hurt. After that, he was forced to cancel a scheduled stream later that night (‘due to some technical issues’, but in reality, Kenma didn’t want to reflect his current mood on the game he was supposed to play) and slept fitfully.

Several thoughts ran through the former Nekoma setter’s mind, worry etched across his sullen features. Are you still mad at him? Kenma really didn’t mean to yell at you that night, and he was sorry about it. Are you fine all alone, walking in the almost-deserted street at night? Did you reach your friend’s house safely? Have you eaten your dinner yet? Did you cry to yourself again about what happened last night?—wWhat if you hurt yourself while your friend isn’t around you? He’d blame himself totally if that’s the case. But, do you still want him? Do you still love him—

A tear dropped and hit his phone screen. Kenma slowly sat on the floor in a fetal position and leaned his back at the edge of the bed, head hidden between his arms and knees. Soft sniffles were heard as he gripped his hands on his arms, crying his frustrations out.

“I’m so sorry, Y/N…”

[At a Starbucks cafe near the JVA HQ. 12:23.]

“Here’s your order, sir! Venti half-and-half, ten pumps vanilla, extra whip. Enjoy your coffee!”

Kuroo Tetsurou thanked the barista and grabbed his cup from the counter when he spotted his gamer best friend enter the cafe and walk towards him, dressed in his usual black hoodie and tattered skinny jeans and rubber shoes, a glum aura emitting around him. The sports promoter raised an eyebrow in confusion, observing his friend’s body language: Kenma’s shoulders hunched over, his back slouched a bit more than before, and his head hung down, with black Ray-Bans covering his eyes.

“Oi, Kenma, are you okay? You seem a little… off,” Kuroo said, stepping aside, away from the counter to let the next customer in. “And what’s with the black glasses? Take them off, please, it’s kinda distracting to look at.” He carefully sipped from his cup and a spot under his eye twitched like a tic, mumbling, “Ugh… that’s why I fucking hate whole-day corporate meetings, forcing myself to drink this ultra-sweet concoction to get through the day. I miss my black coffee with a teaspoon of sugar.”

Kuroo then fished out his phone from his coat pocket and took another long swig of the cup, before he accidentally sprayed the screen, brown eyes widening at Kenma’s face. “KYANMAAAAA!!!”

“Ew, Kuro, gross…,” the gamer winced and grumbled, his puffy eyes averting his childhood friend’s questioning gaze. He put his Ray-Bans back on and stuffed both hands inside his hoodie front pocket. “And, can you please lower your fucking voice down? It’s embarrassing…”

“Ah, sorry… But, your eyes though? Did you cry or something? Is something wrong with you and Y/N? What happene—“ Kenma interrupted him by raising his hand in front of his face in annoyance.

“Let’s talk about it somewhere else, not here,” he whispered lowly and turned to walk outside the cafe. Kuroo nodded and followed suit, dabbing the coffee off his phone screen with some tissues.

[At a nearby park. 12:47.]

“Ohoho… So that's what it is, huh?” Kuroo said coolly, his head looking up at the blue sky. “A cool off.” A few minutes prior, after settling themselves on one of the benches, a bag of snacks and some beer that Kenma bought inside a konbini store on the way there in hand, the former Nekoma setter started telling him about the previous night’s events that led to your leaving the house and Kenma’s sudden depression and crying earlier that morning.

Kenma curtly nodded, emptying another can of beer before getting up and throwing it away inside a nearby trash bin. He didn’t move and became silent for a moment, his slouching back facing Kuroo, before opening his mouth again to speak.

“I don’t know how to face her after what happened, Kuro. What if she doesn’t love me anymore because of me being jealous over such a trivial misunderstanding?” he said softly, a tone of guilt laced on each word that escaped his lips. “I really cannot forgive myself if that happens. I just can’t see myself loving another person the same way that I do with Y/N.” He removed his glasses and faced Kuroo, new tears threatening to leave from his reddened eyes.

“Kenma—“

“I… I love her, Kuro. I really love her. So, so much.” He roughly wiped his teary-eyed face with the sleeve of his hoodie, his broad shoulders trembling as he cried. “I miss her, even if it’s just for a few hours when we aren’t together. I wanna see her again, I wanna hug and kiss her again! Just like before…” Kenma let out a tiny chuckle and sniffled. “I fucking love her… I wanna spend the rest of my life loving Y/N, until the day I die…”

Kuroo stared at him and sighed helplessly. He stood up and walked towards his crying friend, bringing his hand to gently pat his head. “I’m sure she still loves you, Kenma, no matter what. Because it’s Y/N we’re talking about! Of course she’ll love you unconditionally. Okay? She’ll come back home to you, don’t worry!” He smiled sheepishly. “Now, now… I know you really love her to bits, so stop crying—Y/N would not like seeing your pretty face go ugly from crying too much! Chin up, man~ here!”

“S-shut up, Kuro,” he mumbled before grabbing the tissue that Kuroo offered and used it to wipe the snot from his reddening nose, his cheeks a bright red from both embarrassment and the alcohol.

[Outside the Kozume Residence. 23:39.]

Kenma quietly walked down the street near his house, one or two lamp posts illuminating it. He got back from playing games at an arcade the rest of the afternoon until closing time, a thing he really missed doing ever since graduating from high school and getting to uni, carrying a big paper bag full of cute cat plushies… for his kitten, Y/N, of course. He also brought two cake boxes, one chocolate cake and one chiffon cake that Kuroo bought for him, “‘cause it’s your birthday tomorrow, and you need something to cheer you up!” he told him.

“The icing probably melted, I guess,” he mumbled and sighed as he reached through the front gate of the house. “Oh, well… not that it matters anyway—?” Kenma stopped in his tracks and stared straight into the dimly lit doorway outside. He stared at your sleeping figure perched in front of the doorway, arms wrapped around your knees. Your overnight bag was placed between your chest and knees, used as a makeshift pillow for your head.

He quietly headed towards your figure and crouched beside you. “Y/N…?” How… How long did you wait for him to get home? Kenma quickly put down both the paper bag and cake boxes on the ground before he grabbed his phone out of his hoodie’s front pocket to check his notifications from you; there were none.

He suddenly jumped and accidentally fell on the ground on his butt when he felt a cold hand caressing his cheek, and saw you looking sleepy and dazed at him, your overstretched arm brought toward.

“Kenma… a-are you crying…?” you whispered softly, prompting your boyfriend to bring his fingers onto his cheeks. His golden eyes widened. Wait. Wait a fucking second. When did I start crying?

“Y/N, I—what are you doing, sleeping out in the cold in the middle of the night?!” The former Nekoma setter then scurried closer to you, flinching when he felt your hand freezing; even with the poor lighting of the bulb above them, Kenma noticed a slight redness in your cheeks due to the cold evening weather.

“Huh? I… I’m waiting for you, Kenma. Tetsu told me earlier about what happened, so I got home a few hours ago, but you were still out and…”

“I’m sure she still loves you, Kenma, no matter what. Because it’s Y/N we’re talking about! Of course she’ll love you unconditionally. Okay? She’ll come back home to you, don’t worry!”

He sighed, bringing both his hands to his face. “But, Y/N, you could’ve got inside the house using your duplicate house key—“

You sniffled quietly, mumbling, “I didn’t bring it with me last night when I left the house…”

“Then why didn’t you text or call me instead?!” he asked you, his voice getting a bit louder. Kenma froze. He did it again, yelling at you. Turning his head away from you, he mumbled a soft ‘I’m sorry’ and quickly pulled both of you up from your sitting positions. “C-come on, you’re freezing… let’s get you inside, Y/N—“

“I’m really sorry. For what happened last night,” you whispered, trying to swallow the lump in your throat. “I… we didn’t know it would come down to this, and I feel guilty about it—“

Huh? ‘We’? And Y/N feeling guilty about last night? Kenma looked at you, confused. “What do you mean—“

Achoo! You interrupted his question with a sneeze, your hands rubbing to and fro your arms to gain some warmth. “C-cold…,” you sniffled.

“Ah, sorry! Let’s continue this conversation inside, okay? Wait a second.” He hastily unlocked the front door and opened it when he felt something warm and soft touch his cheek.

[16th October 20xx.]

[Kozume Residence. 00:00.]

You pulled away, smiling sheepishly while wiping a faint kiss mark on Kenma’s cheek. “Happy birthday, kitten.”

Bonus:

[16th October 20xx.]

[Tokyo. Kozume Residence. 09:02.]

The shrill sound of the doorbell ringing annoyed the fuck out of Kozume Kenma, suddenly waking up from his peaceful sleep on the living room couch. He glanced at your sleeping figure atop him, soft snores escaping your lips and hands formed into fists on his chest, and smiled. He then gently maneuvered you to the back of the couch and slipped away, placing a small kiss on your head.

“Coming…,” the gamer hollered, stretching his arms up and grunting and cursing under his breath as he headed towards the entryway, the constant ringing of the doorbell getting on his nerves.

“Ye—“

POP! “Happy birthday, Kenma!” He jumped at the sound of party pops ringing on his ears, his face shocked as a scaredy-cat. Colorful strings and confetti covered the top of his head and shoulders. In front of him, two creepily smiling faces and two pairs of eyes—one brown and one golden-colored—were looking expectantly at him.

Kuroo and Bokuto greeted the annoyed birthday boy in unison for the second time, now-used party poppers still in their hands. “Happy birthday, Kenma!”

“Kuro, what are you doing?” Kenma asked the tall man with the black bedhead hair, his eyebrow twitching in annoyance. He spotted his manager Akaashi coming in from behind, carrying a large cream-colored cake box. He looked stressed like always. “Ah, Akaashi, good morning.”

“Kozume, good morning to you, too, and on behalf of these two grown-ass men who act like children and woke you up, I’m sorry,” Akaashi bowed to him in apology.

“It’s fine, I can still tolerate them, Kuro mostly.”

“What do you mean—“

“Tetsu! Kou-kun! Keiji-san! G’morning!” you happily greeted them as you wrapped your arms around your boyfriend’s waist from behind. “And good morning to my birthday boy~!” You leaned a bit to give Kenma a sweet kiss on the lips, which the other three men didn’t fail to notice, their cheeks red from embarrassment (Kenma also).

“O-oi, cut the PDA, will you? Respect the singles,” Bokuto said in a scolding manner.

“Sorry!”

“Anyways, since you’re both here,” Kenma started off, smiling while playing with your fingers; his icy cold stare not leaving both Kuroo and Bokuto, sending a chill down their spines.

“...mind telling me which one of you two convinced Y/N to pull a prank on me two days ago?”

Notes:

Y/N created a secret GC named "Operation: Kenma Birthday Plan?", and added Kuroo, Bokuto, Akaashi, and Hinata (since "best friend privileges" lol) into it, without Kenma knowing.

The one who initiated the plan to prank Kenma is... *drum rolls* ...Y/N.

The night after Y/N left the house, she sent a message to Akaashi saying she'll come over to his shared apartment with Bokuto for an overnight stay.

Thanks @meiansmistress for Kuroo's "weird coffee drinks" headcanon; I'm sorry if my coffee knowledge is low /gen

Kuroo kept his face straight (no wheezing) for more than an hour while being with Kenma that afternoon. But he really didn't know his friend would get depressed so suddenly after what happened that night.

Actually, Y/N really forgot to bring her duplicate house key with her before leaving quickly. Yeah smh

Kitties too tired to sleep in their shared bedroom, they ended up in the living room couch cuddling themselves to sleep.

Hinata came in two hours after AkaBoKuroo arrived at the house, and saw the two bros kneeling on a tray full of green monggo seeds as punishment (Akaashi is an exception); as for him though... Kenma's character killed Hinata's on a game they're playing a few hours later.

Likes are okay, reblogs are better, reposts and plagiarism stuff are frowned upon 🥰

My Masterlist

#kozume kenma #haikyuu angst #haikyuu x reader #kozume kenma x reader #kenma x reader #kenma angst #tht.sinta #tahonet #enemiestoloverscollab❀#—because i love you #cosmic literature;#🐱saku.fic

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