#the first time I heard that song it was like a gut punch… several gut punches actually | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kashimos-hajime · 3 years

Text

twenty questions (7/8) | r.b.

summary: No, he refuses to lose someone else. Not again, not you. Never fucking you. Or, after four years, Reiner meets you once more.

WARNINGS: angst, just conversation, a bit of violence, mentions of trauma, children ummmmm yeee, jean also appears <3 true king pairing: reiner braun x fem!reader word count: 8.3k

a/n: reiner returns!! welcome to the penultimate chapter and thank you for being on this journey with me :) again, song is not mine! it’s the wellerman sea shanty hehe

masterlist

crossposted on ao3 x

Morning streams through the curtains.

You part the billowy white fabric, pushing open the window breathing in the late morning air. As always, it’s warm and ripe with the aroma of the fresh bread from the bakery you live above, and as you lean on the windowsill, you hear the door below you chiming with new patrons. You smile to yourself, resting your chin on your hand.

Even still, you can’t help but admire how beautiful it is, especially in the streets here, far away from a industrial zone. The Liberio interment zone is small, yes, but it’s no less beautiful. The architecture of brick and glass all hold an austere beauty, and when the sunset is upon you, the shadows they cast and the warmth that embraces the stone is something you’ve never quite seen before. There’s a church, and you’ve sat inside day a few days before, watching the light stream through the stained glass in amazement.

A knock at the door takes you from your thoughts and you let out a sharp noise of surprise, gaze ripping away from the busy streets. A tremor shoots through you and you swallow harshly, waiting in bated breath.

“The shop’s busy as bees, today!” your landlord admonishes on the other side. You let out a relieved sigh, relaxing a bit. “If you want, I can still save you a loaf!”

“No, thank you!” you shout over your shoulder, reaching to close the window and get ready for the day. Sliding a warm vest onto your shoulders, you adjust the hat on your head and grab your bag from the counter, your bare fingers a bit cold and numb.

You burn at the thought of Reiner. You don’t want to see him, even if you live in the same city now, but all the same, it’s hard to avoid him. After all, it’ll only be so long before you’re forced to confront your past, push yourself into his way because how long, really, can you stay away from him? As you slide the white armband onto your bicep, your heart tightens. You’ve seen the man he’s grown into—handsome, tired, lonely. That only reflects in you.

Pulling your arms through your jacket, you stare at the woodgrain beneath your feet emptily.

Why am I even here?

Coming to Marley, of all places. Some days, you can’t wrap your head around it, before you’re reminded of the reason. It all has a purpose. You just have to keep going—keep moving forward.

Continuing through your loft, you shove your feet into boots and head out for the day. The festival’s tonight—you have lots to do before then.

Night slips in.

Reiner frowns when he realizes he’s walking back to the stage. He’s been trailing after the sound for a good half-hour, but considering they stay relatively nearby his final destination, he’s never felt the urge to detract.

He still can’t place the tune that’s been hummed, whistled, sang gently and leading him on, and as the sky darkens and the crowd noise grows louder, he realizes that his trail is slowly growing colder and colder.

“Hey, Reiner!” His head swivels to find Gabi waving at him and he meanders over, frowning a bit. “Where’d you go? The others said you wandered off.”

“I took a walk to clear my head,” he says dismissively, ignoring her frown deepening. “I see you’ve recovered from your food coma.” Immediately, Gabi’s frown turns into a pout and she rolls her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. “How are you feeling?”

“I feel fine.” He snorts, turning to survey the area. The others are milling about. Zeke and Colt are talking by the bench, and Pieck and Porco are off together, as usual. They’re not half as inconspicuous as they think they are. Finding Udo and Zofia, his brow wrinkles when he can’t catch sight of a certain blond boy.

“Where’s Falco?”

“He ran off earlier, saying he saw someone he knew,” Gabi says, waving it away. “He’s always being so weird. Who else could he know besides us?”

“What, are you jealous?” he teases, ruffling Gabi’s hair and she lets out a squawk, smacking at his hand. Chuckling gently, he surveys the area again as they walk towards their seats. Zeke and Colt give him a nod in greeting, one he returns.

“Why would I be jealous?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?” he replies distantly. His eyes keep searching, a ticklish feeling at the nape of his neck. He doesn’t know if he’s imagining it or if he can really hear that tune still at the edge of his hearing, nagging for his attention. Sighing, he crosses his arms over his chest. “What Falco does during his free time isn’t on your need-to-know basis, Gabi.”

“I know. I’m just saying—he doesn’t even have any friends besides us,” she says pointedly just as someone calls his name.

“Mister Braun!” Falco skids to a stop in front of him, his forehead gleaming with sweat, even in the cooler night air. Panting, he leans forward on his knees, meeting Reiner’s eyes, and Gabi tilts her head, confused and agitated and betraying her previous aloof words.

“Where the hell did you go?”

Ignoring her, Falco continues to try and catch his breath, barely punching out, “Can you come with me?” before looking down at the floor again, his shoulders rising and falling so quickly Reiner almost feels bad for him.

He frowns. “Right now?”

“You’ll be fine,” Zeke assures. The two look at the older man who glances at his watch. “It shouldn’t start for a few more minutes.”

Reiner debates it for a moment. Then again, it’s not like he’s the number one fan of this show. His presence is for appearance’s sake at this point, and if Falco insists, then it must be something important. Sighing, he nods and Falco takes off again. Telling Gabi to explain his absence to his mom should he not return in time, he walks after the sprinting boy, his mind a whirlwind on the possibilites of why he’s in such a hurry.

Falco stops past a blue curtain that’s near a residential building and points at the arch, smiling. His entire face is flushed and Reiner cocks an eyebrow, approaching closer before hearing a soft voice singing. It only grows as he passes by the blue partition, and his heart picks up as his eyes widen.

“…The Captain's mind was not on greed… But he belonged to the whaleman's creed… She took that ship in tow… Soon may the Wellerman come to bring us sugar and tea and rum. One day, when the tonguin' is done, we’ll take our leave and go…”

He knows that tune. The sailors sang it in the port city after Fort Slava. It’s one of their sea shanties—it’s rare to hear them anywhere except by the water, and when he reaches Falco, searching for that voice, his eyes fix on a figure leaning against the archway underneath the building.

The woman in purple.

Falco runs up to her. A hand is on her bicep when she shifts to look at the boy, and Reiner’s throat swells as his legs move on their own accord. Time seems to slow as Falco turns around, mouth open in words that go in through one ear, and out the other.

The woman says something, and Falco twists back, frowning a bit, but she only nods encouragingly, and off he goes, running on ahead, down to the end of the pathway out of Reiner’s sight.

A strangled noise leaves his mouth as the blond slips from his view.

The woman in purple’s head snaps up at the sound, and Reiner’s entire body locks when he finally recognizes the face that searches his impassively. The white armband is covered still by her fingers, but when she pushes off the wall, it’s almost as if she bewitches him to come even closer.

And he does, his hand lifting up to reach for her. Reach for what has to be a ghost. No…

No, it can’t be. No. No, I’m seeing things, I am, I—

You lift your hand off your armband, and when his fingers meet your palm, he feels your warmth, the way your skin slides against his as he interlaces their fingers, and he chokes, entire body burning from the inside out as you fold your fingers over his palm, yank him into the shadow with enough force to unbalance him. You side-step and fling his hand off, let him crash to his hands and knees. Pain shoots up his joints and his eyes widen when he realizes his skin has scraped off on the stone.

“Hello, Reiner,” you murmur. He draws himself up, and there’s a strange lifelessness as he looks up to a face barely illuminated by light. You unbutton your jacket and crouch before him, arms on your knees. His skin steams and stitches itself back together and he swallows through a dry throat as your eyes flutter to the white wisps. There’s a raw damage lingering on your face, haunting like ghosts that should be long dead, before you blink.

Your long coat brushing the floor covers black armour, harnesses criss-crossing your legs and body. Your expression is severe, lips pressed in an impassive line, dark shadows under your eyes. The armband around your bicep is slathered in dark red, staining the symbol.

So that’s what you were hiding from Falco.

Reiner half-wonders who’s blood it is. If it’s the owner of the clothes you wear, or someone else’s entirely.

You lift your head, staring at Reiner properly for the first time in years. Clenching your jaw, you only look. You do not speak, you do not move. It’s terrifying. It reminds Reiner eerily of Captain Levi, with the same chillingly placidity, and he remembers how you used to smile so wide you’d complain your cheeks ached, how you would lean against him, clutching your gut ‘cause he made you laugh, and he had never heard a sound so perfect—

The words tumble out of his mouth before he can stop himself. “What are you doing here? Are you insane?”

You barely move. Only tilt your head mockingly. “Probably.”

Four years has changed you into a taller, leaner, stronger soldier—and he can only soak that in. You’re…

His breath catches in his throat.

You’re beautiful.

But you’re crouching right in front of him, and you’re in danger. If Marleyans were to approach now, he’s not sure if he could lie his way out and that blood. How can he explain the blood on your sleeve?

You’d be left for dead, hanged for the crows.

The image flashes through his mind like cold dread, a trickling drip of an icicle hanging in his mind and freezing his spine.

No, he refuses to lose someone else. Not again, not you. Never fucking you.

It is why he demands again through a hissed breath,“What are you doing here?” Why he stands up quick enough that their heads nearly collide, and you straighten up as well, smoothly running your hands over your coat.

You only look at him deftly as if he is as inconsequential to you as a roach. You don’t even twitch as his hand reaches forward, fighting through the searing ache in his chest. “You need to leave. You shouldn’t be here. I can smuggle you back to the port and take you home, I—.”

Your stare paralyzes him and his hand falters. “I don’t take orders from you. You are not my commanding officer, and I do not need you to tell me what I need.” Your fingers dig into the bloody armband at your bicep and Reiner’s eyes widen as you tear it off, planting it on his chest hard enough his lungs spasm and he lets out a sharp breath. Your fingers spread out over his chest, you step closer. “I don’t need you to save me. Not from Marley. Not from myself. And not from you.”

His hand comes to cover yours, but you slip out before he can touch you, and he’s left with an armband in his palm. Clutching it in a tight fist, he stares down at it for a moment before shoving it in his pocket and turning around.

Your name comes out of him without even thinking as you walk past him, and it must still hold something because you pause, head turning slightly to look at him. “I want to explain myself,” he chokes out, and the corner of your mouth curls into a hollow smile. “Please.”

“Follow me, Reiner,” you order softly, and without question, he falls half a step behind you, eyes trained on the ground. His head is swimming at your presence, and his knees are gummy, stomach convulsing as he tries to come up with what to say. Or maybe, what to say first. He’s had four years to come up with a proper way to say it, and he reaches for his breast pocket, where the letters he’s folded away rest, with shaking hands.

“Please…”

“I don’t know what you think begging will get you.” Something stony falls upon your face. “I’ve had four years to get over the fact that you used me. Now, I think I just don’t care anymore. I’m sure you have your reasons, but I don’t know if it’ll be the truth. You’ve had no problem lying to me before in the past.”

“That’s not true.” He doesn’t know to which part of what you said he means. The last part, every part. “I never lied about how I felt about you.”

“Right. Like I wasn’t just some pawn on your chessboard. Some lonely girl you could use to entertain yourself.” Your pace doesn’t slow, but your tone is laced with anguish you try so hard to cover. “At least Bertholdt had the courage to look me in the face and tell me he was going to kill me.” You stop by a crate, labelled as supplies for the play. Maybe they contain masks, or costumes, and Reiner stops, his shoes skidding against the stone as you reach into your coat.

Pulling out a knife, you wedge it into the crate and pry the lid off and Reiner’s entire body numbs when ODM gear gleams in the straw. It looks refashioned, sleeker, and in two parts, and he catches your hand reaching for the harness.

Weapons, here.

You aren’t stupid enough to take on Marley on your own, which can only mean—

Shit, shit, shit.

Dread trickles through his body.

“What are you two doing—Oh, Vice Chief Braun!” You slam the lid shut and press your left arm flush against Reiner’s body, covering it up as someone on their right approaches. Your hand tightens around the knife still wedged between the lid, and Reiner sets a hand on your shoulder, dragging you so he can cover you up better and as a warning.

Don’t do it. You’re stiff against him despite the easy expression on your face, and he sets a harsh glare on the intruder. Let go of that blade. Your entire body is rigid with a hot energy he doesn’t recognize as your fingers only tighten around the hilt. Don’t do it—

“Sorry to interrupt, but those are one of the crates we need for the play. It contains some costumes—“

The performer looks stricken as you flash him an easy smile and Reiner’s blood freezes when the stranger seems to blush, voice fading.

“I actually work with Lord Tybur,” you explain easily with a tiny laugh, betraying the strength in your fist. “He wants to inspect it briefly before I return it. I think it contains the Helos costume? Gotta make sure every detail’s to his liking!” Your tone, innocent and cheery, floats through the distant sound of the crowd, and Reiner only stares at the performer who seems to shrink in his skin. Your fingers twitch when he hesitates.

“Oh, of course.” He scratches the back of his head, and you give him a gracious nod before he’s walking away.

You watch him go, and Reiner feels the way the air shifts when your smile fades away as soon as it came. You step away from him, loosening the knife from the crate. His hands burn as he reaches for your shoulder again, but you jerk back.

“You know,” you begin quietly, staring at the lid, “all this time, I thought I had actually found people again, you know. I thought you actually cared about me, but really, I realized all you’ve ever done is lie. Even after everything. Even after Marco died, and I told you how I felt about you, you just kept lying. Lying and painting yourself to be a knight in shining armour.”

“I tried—I tried to stop myself from caring about you,” he whispers raggedly, hands rolling into fists tight enough that his nails dig into his flesh, “but it happened anyway. That part of who I was was never a lie.”

“So you never saw me as someone you needed to protect? As this poor, lonely girl who loved you? Who fed your ego and—”

“Of course I wanted to protect you! I loved you, too!” he snaps and distantly, he recognizes this is the first time they’ve ever confessed that what they had… that it was somehow real and too good for him. It nearly makes him shatter. “How could I—“ He closes his eyes, teeth gritting as the flames inside him roar, consuming his heart. “How could I just stand back and watch you get hurt by the consequences of my actions? It’s because of me you were forced to leave the farm, leave that girl. Because of me you knew Marco and Mina and Thomas. You could have been so much happier if you never met any of us—I knew that—I just thought I could somehow—”

“Happier if I never met you,” you echo blankly before nodding to yourself. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds about right.” He flinches but you continue on, “In the end, it doesn’t matter, though. I’ve learned to not let the what ifs haunt me, because my time with you… it still means everything to me.” You shake your head. “That’s the truth. You dropped a building on me and broke my bones. Truth. You left me alone in those walls with Bertholdt dead and Annie comatose, and you did so knowing you are the last damn person I’ve got that I’d kill for. Truth.”

Reiner’s eyes widen as your words sink into his skin like a vicious poison.

So that’s it then. Bertholdt is dead and Annie… Annie’s still alive?

You don’t give him a moment’s breath to ask as you take a step forward. On reflex, he steps back, hands raising, and your eyes flash to his palms. One wrong move, and a Titan will overtake the square. He’s sure he can read the thought in your eyes, but when you look at him again, he only sees cold indifference.

“You nearly killed me, Reiner. So tell me…”

Metal flashes and a breath stalls in his throat as a cold knifepoint digs into the bump along his throat. It bobs when he swallows, lips parted, and you meet his eyes, every inch of agony he’s forced upon you glaring back at him reforged.

“Why shouldn’t I repay the favour?”

His breath stalls, and he looks down at your fingers, wrapped tight around the hilt, nearly shaking. He doesn’t know if it’s because you hold the weapon that tightly, or if you’re just as afraid as he is.

Either way, it doesn’t matter.

“Do it, then,” he whispers. “I’m the reason this all happened.”

Your eyes, wide, search his beseechingly and his heart crumbles to dust. Even after all this time, you still hesitate. Why? Because you think he’ll come back? That he’s… redeemable somehow?

Reiner envies that—he wants to believe that there is still good. But there isn’t. He knows it.

“I have a thousand questions,” you murmur achingly, as if the words are wrenched from your throat. “Over the years, I’ve tried to come up with some incomprehensible list. I couldn’t decide which was the one I wanted answered the most, but I thought why did it matter? After all, it wasn’t like I’d ever see you again. But here I am, now.”

As you lower the knife, the tip of the blade scratches his skin, light enough only to leave a white trail until it falls away, just like when he held you at blade-point four years ago, the tip of a sword digging into your sternum.

How poetic that he finds himself here, his life in your hands. This is your retribution, he supposes, and your mercy, fighting for control of your arm, but you sheathe your knife again with a sharp, smooth thrust at your hip. There’s a soft scrape before you set your hands atop the lid, sighing softly.

A terrifying glint lives in your eyes as you smile at him faintly, and hoist the crate into your arms.

“So, Reiner.” You tilt your head, gesturing for him to follow you down the pathway to a set of stairs that must lead to a deeper cellar. Somewhere he can’t transform in. Smart. You always were, but he doesn’t have the heart to tell you he’d never hurt you again, especially when he’s already done so much to prove that his words are empty. Yet, nothing is more important than protecting you, and Gabi, and Falco, but— “What do you say to a game of twenty questions?”

You flip a page. The day’s labour has you sweating into your harness, but all you want to do is just finish this damn chapter. Pulling carts out of mud like a damn mule wasn’t fun, but at least it had you busy. But, God, did you just want to relax for an eternity now.

Even after four years, you’d think your body would grow accustom, but every day, something new tests you.

“Hello?” a voice by your door calls and you look up from your book, smiling automatically at the kid peering into your room. He’s one of the younger orphans who didn’t come from the immediate wreckage of the fall of Trost but rather just a few months ago, you had found him in the woods, walking away from one of the smaller settlements.

You don’t ask, let him come and tell you more, and although you know his name, you know it’s hard for him to talk about anything else.

What you do know is that he is one that still climbs into your bed when there’s a thunderstorm, and that he’s a sweet, yet studious child with a knack for trouble when the girls invite him to hang out with them.

That doesn’t mean he’s any less attached. He’s probably the one who clings to you the most, and you get up, closing your book. Setting it down on the nightstand, you crouch in front of him and pat his head.

“Hi,” he says again.

“What’s going on, Xavier?” His red hair is still damp. He must’ve just taken his bath and he shrinks under your hand, probably to protect the clean smell clinging to his skin and locks. Lifting your hand amusedly, you tap his nose. He breaks out into a gap smile.

He lost his tooth just three days ago, and you remember how proud he was, bursting into the fields during study period to show you as you untied the horses from the plow.

“There’s a man who wants to see you.”

“A man?” You frown, looking over his shoulder. Placing a heavy hand on his shoulder, you pull him into your room, out of the way of the door. “Did he say what his name was? Or if he was military?” The kids know the military insignias. Praying silently to yourself, you glance uneasily at your nightstand where a gun is hidden in the drawer. You could probably arm yourself in time. Xavier tugs at your ear. You look back at him, eyebrows creasing as you glance over his shoulder.

“He said his name was Jean and that you would know who he was. He’s waiting outside.”

“Jean?” you repeat sharply, standing. Xavier flinches, looking up at you, and you scoop him up before heading to the nightstand, yanking open the drawer and grabbing the gun. Arms worm around your neck, and you squeeze the child closer to yourself as you quietly slip out into the hallway, towards where the other kids’ room is.

“Girls, close the door and lock it,” you order quietly, as you walk into the . The two sisters—Alina and Anya who share the room—look up from whatever they’re doing, and Anya gets up from her bed, but you merely send her a warning look as you “Everything’s okay. Anya’s in charge until I get back.”

She nods, and you set Xavier down but he doesn’t let go of your neck, hugging you tight to him. Letting out a strangled sigh, you slowly pull him away, cupping his face. Your heart is slow, steady, and you take a measured breath as Alina glances out the window that is right over their desk.

“I’ll be okay. I want to make sure we’re safe.” His eyes flicker over your face and you nod reassuringly. “You know what to do. Listen to Anya, alright? Try to get some sleep.” The redheaded boy nods and you stroke his cheek with a thumb before he scampers towards Anya’s bed. You stand.

You leave the room, shut it behind you as Alina draws the curtains shut, and your mind is thrumming with ideas of who it could be.

Entering the kitchen, you head to the porch with a quick glance at the window. There’s a figure leaning against the fence, back to you, and your fingers around your gun tighten. Draped in dark fabric and ash-brown hair shining in the oil lamps hanging on the porch, you can’t make out a face as you step into the bracing night.

“What do you want?”

The figure jolts to his feet, turning around. Edges dulled by the night, you can barely make out his features until he steps into the light, and your finger pad taps the trigger when brown eyes meet yours. Heart lurching, everything rushes back to you and you manage to control the sharp inhale, tempering it into a slow and steady breath that swells up in your lungs.

“It’s been a while,” he comments idly, and you swallow through the hard knot in your throat. Eyes flicking to the gun in your hand, the small smile that had been curving his lips drops away. “You’re a hard person to track.”

“How’d you find me?”

“It wasn’t easy, but Captain Levi saw that some of us were getting desperate.”

Four years.

Four years since you’ve seen any of them except Captain Levi, who only visits to make sure you haven’t been raided by bandits and killed in the months between his check-ins.

In that time, seasons have changed, you’ve sprained your shoulder, it healed; you’ve been thrown off a horse, and gotten back up. You had a period where you would write letters every waking second you were left alone in your room, debating whether or not you should destroy them or send them just for the sake of feeling like you had someone again.

All those letters are still wedged in a box under your bed, so there’s that answer.

Jean stands at the bottom of your porch and you nod, gesturing for him to come in. Your heart plummets as you do so. You don’t know why Jean even bothered.

He closes the door behind you, and you set the gun on the dining table before moving towards the stove, and you ask him if he wants any tea, gracious host that you are. He shrugs and you begin to boil some water. It’ll give you time to look him over as he sits down.

He’s grown the beginnings of a beard since you last saw him. And he’s taller. Way taller than you remember. He’s gotten more muscle, holds himself differently, he’s… still Jean, in all respects, but he’s…

Tired.

You’re sure that’s one word you’re looking for.

Migrating to the hearth, you wonder if he’s doing the same to you. Studying you like you’re a stranger.

You start a fire, feeding it freshly chopped firewood from the day before and stoking it before letting it feast.

You never liked doing that before. Swinging an axe down on wood, watching it split. Now, it’s the only time you get alone to your thoughts. You don’t have to focus on chopping wood. All you have to do is swing an axe until it’s nothing more than muscle memory. You can just… be.

Maybe it isn’t so bad. Maybe it’s why Reiner liked doing it.

You sigh, and grab the iron poker, keeping an eye on the stove. You don’t know if Jean wants to skip the small talk. You do, but mostly because you don’t like it when your old life comes into your new one. You can make yourself believe you can’t go back when no one’s here to remind you, and that the guilt won’t gnaw you until you’re only bones.

Absently, you remember Bertholdt used to like small talk—Jean seems less so.

“I have news. I don’t know if you want to hear it, but you’re still military.”

“Not labelled a deserter, yet?” you inquire dryly. Everything is moving so slowly around you, yet so quickly. It’s a terrible sensation. “I feel honoured.”

“Let’s cut the shit, alright. What the hell are you doing here?”

“No idea.”

“You disappeared! No one had seen you in weeks—we thought you were dead until the captain came back with strict orders not to look for you, but do you know how ominous that sounds?” Something bites at your gut as you stare into the flames, and Jean shoots to his feet, chair scraping against the wooden floor. “You were our friend!”

His words sink into your shoulders, but you only blink, staring into the growing hearth.

“Don’t you care? You left!”

“I don’t regret it. It’s not like I’m begging to become a Scout again,” you murmur, looking over your shoulder at him. A sort of tiredness pulls at your eyes, and you stand up again, walking around the table. “I don’t know what you want from me, Jean. You came to me first.”

“I want you to care. I want you to come back and fight. Aren’t you remotely interested in what’s going on?”

“I know we have a train, now.” The pot begins to boil and you move towards it, taking out a tin and small metal spoon. “Historia is doing well as queen. At least, that’s what people are saying. She’s expecting. If you ever see her, tell her I’m happy for her.” Scooping leaves into the teapot, you pour the boiling water into the porcelain and let it steep.

Turning back around, your eyebrows rise when you see Jean has walked around the table. There’s not even a metre between them as he tosses something at you. Catching it, you realize it’s a rolled up newspaper and your heart drops. At his nod, you pry it open and read the contents, fingertips brushing over two rectangular slips of paper within stating a time and terminal.

“What is this?”

“Eren’s gone to Marley by himself. Probably to do something stupid. I have two tickets to go and rescue his scrawny ass.”

“And?” Dread knots at your stomach as Jean closes his eyes, exhaling softly. Pleading, then: “Jean, don’t.”

“You’re the least compromised out of all of us. None of the volunteers would recognize you or would have been able to relay information about you if they have allies back in Marley, and despite everything, I still trust you. Which is more than I can say for Yelena and the others.” You snap the paper shut and toss it onto the table. Shaking your head to yourself, you walk away from him, but Jean only grabs your arm. “You still have a duty to our nation.”

“Don’t try to plead to my sense of national pride,” you shoot back coolly. “I have other responsibilities.”

“What, like tending to wheat?”

“Everyone wants to kill us, so yes, tending to wheat.”

“If we don’t find Eren, they will kill us. He’s our one chance of getting out of this mess alive. As crazy as he is, he’s our one ticket to freedom and we need to find him.”

Turning around to face him, you pull your arm free of his grasp. The lantern hanging is glaringly bright, and something knots in your throat at Jean’s somber expression.

“I fought for our freedom and you know what I realized? There will always be more people out there who want to take that away from us.” You wish you could sound passionate, but you just sound rough and tired. The bite tastes different. “First, it was Titans, then, it was the people we called our friends. Do you think that we’ll ever be free? That we’ll be able to live without a sword above our necks. Levi told me we’re devils in everyone else’s eyes. What’s it matter?”

“Because we aren’t what they say we are. If you lay down and show your belly, why did you become a soldier in the first place?” You jerk back and Jean leans against the table, crossing his arms. “I thought you fought for a dream. Something. Anything.”

“I thought I did, too. I’m just…” A hissing breath, and you pinch the bridge of your nose, turning away. Images of the lake back from their cadet years flash in your head. “I’m just tired, I guess.”

“Tired?” he repeats icily. “You think the rest of us aren’t tired? We all haven’t had the luxury to sit down on a farm and escape all our responsibilities.”

Head snapping up, your eyes find cold brown chips staring back. Bitterly, you grit out, “Excuse me?”

“Do you think there’s a day that goes by where I think about Marco and how I wasn’t there for him? We all lost someone. You’re not the only person who’s had to go through it. We’re all guilty of something, but at least, I didn’t give up! At least, some of us decided to do something about it!”

“Shut up!” A hand flies through the air but he catches your wrist and twists, pinning you down to the table. Another hand slams your other hand into the wood and you grunt as Jean wedges himself between your legs to stop you from kicking him. Eyes burning, you stare up into the face of your friend and in that moment, the sorrow overflowing spills into your chest as if you are a well and he is the flood.

He sinks, elbows clacking against the table as he bows his head. His breath is rushed, cool against your face, and you search his features before uttering out a quiet, “Why did you really come here, Jean?”

His eyes widening, his hands loosen. You try to suck your tears back in, but your eyes are burning so intensely you have to let them fall anyway just as there’s a sharp gasp. Jean looks up before he jerks back as if you’ve really slapped him. Sitting up, you twist to look at the doorframe, and your heart drops into your gut when you see a redheaded boy, eyes shining with tears.

“What are you doing?” he cries, and you immediately launch yourself off the table, crossing the distance towards him as Anya appears over his shoulder, helpless. The brunette girl’s guilt punches through you and you lift Xavier up into your arms, hugging him tight before wrapping another arm around the girl and poking your head into the hall.

Alina’s figure is a mere shadow at the end of the hall, and you sigh, gesturing for her to come. Taking off at a sprint, she charges down the hall and you bury your nose in Anya’s hair just as another body slams into you, latching onto your waist. You close your eyes as Xavier tries to snuggle even deeper into your neck.

“I’m okay,” you keep repeating. “Just a heat of the moment thing. I promise, he’s not here to hurt us. I promise.”

“Are you okay?” Anya murmurs, and you look down. The eldest girl’s pulled her head back to look at you. Her eyes are narrowed, perceptive as always, and her lips are upturned into a faint scowl. You smile faintly, running a hand over her head.

“I will be. Why don’t you take them back to your room?” you advise, and her eyes wander from you to Jean again. Catching it, you brush your thumb along her temple soothingly. “Go.” Reluctantly, she lets go of you and turns to Alina who still latches onto you like a parasite, but you rest a palm atop her head. “Alina.”

A sniff, and then she steps back, rubbing at her face. Her older sister takes her shoulders, easing her away and you crouch down as Xavier silently grabs onto your shirt tighter in his tiny fists.

“Xavier,” you soothe. “I’ll be back in just a moment, okay?” You tilt your head. “I promise.” Wiping at his tears, you wait for him to let go of your shirt on his own accord, and when he does, you brush his hair back from his brow and plant a kiss on his forehead. Anya calls his name softly down the hall, and he lingers for a moment more before walking away, head still over his shoulder so he can watch.

You stay crouched until he’s gone and then you let out a soft exhale, head dropping, eyes closing.

“We need you more than you probably need us,” Jean acknowledges quietly, and your eyes open again to look at him. He’s straightened himself up, watching you with softer eyes. He visibly swallows, and you wonder if it’s pity or jealousy in his eyes. “But, we’re outnumbered in trusted senior officers in the Survey Corps. You’re one of them.”

Quietly: “I shouldn’t be.”

He falters for a moment. “Yeah. Yeah, I suppose not.” He grabs the newspaper again. “But somehow, you are. If Captain Levi trusts you, then so do I. Bertholdt is dead. Annie’s a frozen log in a basement somewhere, and Reiner’s still alive. So are you.” He extends the paper to you. “This is what guilt got us. So what are you going to do about it?”

“Then, how about we go back to my hometown? There’s water nearby. We can go in the afternoons, eat all this food you’ve never had before.”

You haven’t seen a lake in who knows how long. Not since your cadet years, it feels like. Your heart yearns for the blue expanses, to plunge into the cold depths and gasp at how cold it is. You thought you’d given that up, but just there mere thought of it sends your mind spiralling into the images you’ve dreamed of since you were a child.

“Regret begets regret—don’t have any when you go, and maybe you’ll live a life happier than most.”

You know you’ll never forgive yourself if you never take the chance to see him again. Heart peeling in your chest, you grab the newspaper from him.

“They call it the sea, don’t they?” you finally ask. Jean nods. “A lot of water and there’s… there’s animals in there.”

“Yeah. They live in this salty water and… they eat seafood a lot in Marley. I don’t know if you know.”

“Reiner might’ve mentioned it before,” you say. You look down at the newspaper in your tight fist and swallow. All at once, one door closes and another opens, and you look at Jean, the date and time of the ship already burned into your memory. “He said he thought I’d like it. I guess I’ll keep that in mind when we go.”

Jean’s eyes widen as you hand the paper back to him, your palm scalding as you shove the ticket into your pocket. He says your name softly, but you only hold your hand up, eyes fixed on the floor.

“I’ll meet you there, I promise.” You turn towards the shadows of the hall. In the silence of the night, you hear the hushed whispers of the children you’ve dedicated your life to and your heart disintegrates in your chest. “I just… I need some time to figure everything out.”

“Of course. Whatever you need.” Jean’s feet shift along the floor. You look over your shoulder for a moment to find his eyes on you. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” you reply. “Feel free to stay the night. It’s already late.” He nods, and you flash him the weakest smile.

Then, you walk down the hall to your children. You have a lot of explaining to do.

You stubbornly try to ignore the tears tracing down your face as you reach into the compartment on your pants containing the letters. Reaching for it, you pull it out and crack it open, wondering if it’s even possible to bring yourself to read it.

“It’s not your last question,” Reiner had noted warily as they stood at the top of the stairs.

“Yeah. I guess we have to put a rain check this time.” You had set the box down, looking at him. You couldn’t recall feeling so warm, so empty. So convinced that there was something wrong with how much you still felt for him. “One more question, then?”

A nod, almost hungry for it. “Please.”

“Did you really, really love me?”

The gentlest of sighs, his warm yellow eyes. He had reached out for you, then second guessed, and reached for his breast pocket instead, extending the tin to you.

“I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving you.”

The entire cabin is quiet as you stare at the ring nestled at the bottom, atop the stack of letters that are wrinkled and must’ve been refolded so many times it’s begun to permanently crease in multiple lines.

No one’s dared to speak since Sasha died and you look up at the others before back down at the ring again before pinching it between your fingers and lifting it to eye level. You’re not sure what it means to hold it, but you gently close the tin with your other hand, feeling it click shut, and slide it back into your pocket.

The band is silver, rather simple, but it’s pretty, too, in a refined sort of way. There aren’t any gems, but there are simple engravings, lines that curve the metal, causing ripples along the surface and, without thinking, you stretch out your left hand in front of you, trying to gauge which one it’ll fit the best.

Sombrely, you slide it down your ring finger, and let it sit there, lowering your hands and curling them into fists and raising your shoulder, hearing a bone crack.

You’re exhausted.

The ODM gear feels strange on your body. It’d been a crash course to get you familiarized with the updates, and you hook a thumb on the strap on your rib cage before glancing at the others. Connie sits with Mikasa and Armin, and Jean is at the back by himself, rubbing at his face hard enough that his skin is beginning to turn red.

You don’t know what to say.

What is there to say? Four years have left you strangely numb.

Jean’s lips pull back into a vicious snarl and his head snaps up to find you looking. Then, everything seems to soften, and he looks away sharply, almost as if to hide his tears.

So you don’t say a thing. Instead, you walk on to the back of the ship, past him, where the prisoners are being held, and you open the door without a noise, first noticing the blond boy. Falco. He looks up at your entrance, eyes wide, and you give him a slight smile as you close the door.

You wish you could hate children for the part they played in killing your friend, but in this moment, you just feel nothing. Not even sadness. You had seen what Marley’s done in the friends you’ve lost.

“Hello, Falco.”

“You lied to me,” he whispers. “You and Mister Kruger—Eren,” he corrects himself. “You used me.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” you tell him, looking at the walls. It seems like a supply area, and you grab the bucket and rag that’s been left by whoever checked in on them last. There’s a few clean rags and you walk up to them, crouching before the blond first. He seems to flinch back and the brown-haired girl lunges at you.

You have no problem pushing her aside and pinning her down.

“Don’t touch him!” she yells. “You don’t get to touch him!”

“Calm down,” you tell her calmly. “I’m not going to hurt him, and you are in no position to be making demands at me after you killed my friend.”

Her eyes widen. “You’re a devil. So was she!” she spits as you slowly wet the rag and dab at the blood cracking underneath Falco’s nose. It’s clear whoever was here before only used the bucket and rag as a taunt. Probably telling them they could piss in here if they wanted. A coy coil of disgust wraps around your gut. “Don’t touch him. You’re tainted! You give all of us a bad name!”

Your nose wrinkles as the girl squirms under your hand and you let go of her. Cupping Falco’s face, you continue to wipe at his cheek. The water is cold. You hope it soothes what must be a flaring face.

“I don’t understand,” he murmurs dully. Exhausted eyes find yours. “Why?”

“I’m sorry. I have no idea why kids are suddenly soldiers in an adult’s war.” You reach to rinse the rag. Dipping it in water, you begin to wring it out when suddenly, there’s a sharp gasp, and you turn to look at the other child—Gabi. She stares at your hands, eyes wide enough a ring of white is around her irises and you frown. “What?”

“Where did you get that ring?” she asks, voice shaking, and you look down at your hands. “That’s… that’s Reiner’s ring. Where did you get it?” You don’t answer, simply stare at her for a moment, and her breath comes out quivering. “He doesn’t let anyone know he has it. It’s for someone special. That’s—he wouldn’t even tell me. He doesn’t know I saw him with it. He… he —it’s supposed to be for someone!”

“Gabi—“ Falco grabs her arms as you regard her softly, and you have just an idea of what’s going in her head as she points at you. “Gabi, calm down—“

“Why do you have it?” she demands ferociously. “It’s not yours! Give it back!” You drop the rag back into the water, and sit back, drawing your knees up to your chest and resting your arms atop of them lazily as tears begin to trace down the child’s face. “It didn’t even cost that much! You won’t be able to sell it to, you know! Give it!”

“Gabi!”

“You have no idea what that means to him!“

“Stop—“

“You spawn! You devil woman!”

“Are you done?” you ask her quietly, fingers twisting the ring and Gabi inhales raggedly as you look at her flatly. Her eyes widen even more if possible, and she allows Falco to pull her back. Her wet gasps fill the silence and you swallow, tilting your head at your hands. “If you really want to know, I don’t really have an idea why I’m wearing it.” You sigh, dropping your hands and letting your head fall forward. “As for how I got it, if you ever see Reiner again, why don’t you ask him?”

Falco’s eyes widen as you look up and finding him staring at you with a strange scrutiny, and your eyebrows furrow as he lets go of Gabi and straightens up from where he’s sitting.

“Mister Braun didn’t even hear what I said when he saw you,” he murmurs, brow furrowing. “Like he’d just seen a ghost. You and…” He struggles for words, voice unsteady. “Eren said you guys were all old friends. But… but, if he gave you the ring—“

“Shut up, Falco!” Gabi beseeches, grabbing his arm, but Falco only stares at you. “Are you even hearing what you’re saying? You’re accusing my cousin of treason! He wouldn’t!”

“He stayed with you for so long,” he continues, as if in a trance. “Even Eren wondered what was taking so long. He… called it a lover’s quarrel. You…”

“I think you two should get some rest,” you interrupt, pushing yourself to your feet and ignoring the smokey feeling clogging up your chest as tears slip down Gabi’s face and Falco’s face pales at your blatant dismissal. “It’s going to be a few hours until we land, roughly. You’ll want to get used to being somewhere warm before they transfer you to some sort of prison. It’ll be a lot colder there.”

Taking the bucket and the rag, you return it back to its spot before walking out the room and closing the door shut behind you.

You find the spot you once were standing at now occupied with Floch and his comrades, and then you turn your head to see Jean still leaning against the wall, arms crossed, expression burning the metal floor.

You amble over to him without a word and lean in beside him, sinking to the floor.

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clandonnachaidh · 3 years

Text

Light Across The Seas That Severed

Read on AO3

It always surprised Jamie Fraser, the things that made him think of Claire Beauchamp. Along with the usual triggers—the gut punch when he caught a whiff of someone wearing her signature perfume, the seizing of his heart when his eyes were automatically drawn to messy brown curls on a stranger walking down the high street, the ache in his chest when someone walked past who had the same cadence as her laugh—it was the small, unexpected ones that hurt the most.

He could be walking into the village and see her hair in the colours of the water as it ruffled over the rocks in the burn, so real to him that it felt as though he could reach out and tangle it through his fingers. His carefully curated playlist would end and Spotify would betray him, blasting a song that he had kept at bay, conjuring memories of the two of them dancing like fools on the nights that they laughed so loud that it seemed even the walls shook as they brushed their teeth in the cramped bathroom of their dorm.

It was torture. A delicious kind, but torture nonetheless. One that he had thought to turn into prose—at the recommendation of his therapist. It had been explained to him that grief and loss were themes that could be explored in ourselves if we attempted to write them from another’s perspective. And so here he was now, years after she had left him, sitting at his late father’s desk with a whisky in one hand and a pen in the other, trying to make sense of what had happened and how he had ever been stupid enough to watch silently as her light, his Sorcha, slipped from his life.

On yet another night spent in the same position—the room dark with only a lamp beside him to illuminate the black moleskin notebook—he reclined, the chair creaking under his weight. His father’s old office chair, with it’s worn leather and rusty hinges, wasn’t built to accommodate a man of his size but he’d found that it actually helped to coax the words from his brain, as though the physical discomfort made his emotional pain easier to access. He seemed to need a little nudge to allow himself to sink deeper into parts of his past that he had spent so long trying to keep locked away.

When the whisky finally made him brave enough to open the door, the memories flooded out onto the paper: the sight of her pink lips pouted in frustration as she struggled to lift her belongings from the boot of the taxi on the first day of university, the first time she laughed at one of his terrible jokes (why do the French only use one egg to make an omelette, Sassenach? Because one is an oeuf!), the first time he helped her into her coat and his fingertips brushed the skin behind her ear (their maiden voyage to the on campus coffee house, faces taut in disgust as they realised that their unrelenting back and forth had caused their coffees to go cold). He wrote about falling in love with his best friend and why he had wasted so much time worrying about how to tell her.

Jamie had spent hours, days, months, sitting in his father’s chair, consumed by the fruitless pursuit of trying to plot the points of their relationship. Although he could vividly picture the scenes, he didn’t recognise the people anymore. He had been young, too young by half to know what he wanted out of life and she had been more than he could have dreamed of. He had fallen in love with her instantly, as he was sure most people did at the sight of one Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp. But that was years ago and they had both changed, she was living her life in Boston as a brilliant surgeon while Jamie languished in Lallybroch, living in his old bedroom while his sister and her family had the run of the house.

The burn of the whisky slipping down his throat was a pleasant distraction but the batch still made his eyes water slightly and he made a mental note to tell Ian that the recipe could still do with some tweaking before it could be sold under the Mac Dubh name. He had made a modest success of himself, that was true, now the creator of the fourth highest selling whisky in Scotland. Broch Tuarach had changed from a small farming village that nobody really knew of to the home of one of Scotland’s largest and most successful distilleries, and Jamie was often credited with bringing jobs and tourists to the village in numbers that hadn’t been seen before. There had been a boom in the local economy allowing the village to thrive and he was seen as a pillar of the community, people jokingly referring to him as Laird, or the more familiar Himself, when he passed them in the street although the official title was held by some landowner that lived down south somewhere and had only stepped foot in the area once.

Still, he thought, this batch wasn’t ready for marketing just yet. Jamie put the glass down, rubbed his tired eyes with his even more tired fingers and decided to call it a night, making his way down the hall to his bedroom. His limbs felt heavy as he went through the motions of getting ready for bed. Finally stripping off his shirt and jeans and crawling under the covers, he cast a cursory glance at the phone he had left charging on the bedside table.

Sassenach

Missed call 23.02

He screwed his eyes shut before opening them again as if to knock some sense into them but the notification was still there. The rough pad of his thumb hovered over it, almost afraid that if he attempted to open it, it would cease to exist. He pressed the lock button once to blacken the screen, paused, and then pressed it again to bring it into view and still it remained.

It must have been an accident, a slip of the hand while she was trying to call someone else. He reminded himself of the time difference, it would be the early evening where she was and she could be tired after a long day or maybe even rushing between surgeries. She probably hadn’t even noticed that she had called him. He had to fight his inflating ego when he considered the fact that she still had his number, but blushed in shame as he recalled the frightened face of the poor spotty teenage lad in the phone shop who he had made swear that he wouldn’t lose any contacts or photos when he upgraded to his new handset.

Realising that he was now sat straight up in his bed, his heart beating a slightly faster staccato than usual, he opened the notification. Just seeing her name (or rather, his name for her) on his screen again did things to his body that he wasn’t in control of. His hands felt clammy while his mouth was dry. This was different than just scanning her Facebook page in the dark, looking at her perfectly posed pictures that she chose to share, and lamenting the absence of candids that he had so loved taking when they were friends. She found one of them once, one he had snapped of her the day that they had taken the ferry over to the Isle of Arran for a few nights. Knowing that she didn’t have any remaining family, he had insisted that she spend the summer break from university at Lallybroch with his family and she had happily accepted. However, after a few nights in Jamie’s massive ancestral home, filled with more Fraser bodies than they could count, he promised to take her away for a few days of peace and had driven her to the ferry terminal at Claonaig without divulging their destination. They had been blessed with a beautiful summer’s day for the crossing to Lochranza and he’d thanked God that he managed to keep his breakfast in his stomach. Or rather, that he almost had until they were in sight of the island. Jamie had burst from his seat and had made it to the toilet just in time for his stomach to erupt, sweat dampening his brow until his wame was empty. Shivering and definitely worse for wear but at least grateful in the knowledge that there was nothing else to come up, he had returned to the deck of the ferry to see Claire out in the sun, her forearms resting on the railing as she looked out over the water. The way that her hair whipped up in the wind made Jamie’s chest tighten and before he knew it, he had taken out his phone and snapped a picture.

Months later, Claire had snagged his phone from the table of the bar that they were sat in, too quick for Jamie. She quipped an eyebrow at him in victory, chastising him that he had yet to show her pictures of his latest niece when she stumbled across the photo. He watched as her throat bobbed, swallowing emotion that he wished he could taste before looking at him straight in the eye. Without being asked, he told her that he couldn’t help himself. And she smiled shyly before cooing about Jenny’s new daughter.

The memory flooded his senses and Jamie closed his eyes, filling his lungs with a deep breath for a count of four, holding it for a count of four and then letting it out for six in a vain attempt at calming his racing mind. His whole body felt as though it was vibrating, alive for the first time in what he could remember at the mere <em>thought</em> of Claire Beauchamp.

It took Jamie a second to realise that the vibration wasn’t coming from his body. Or rather, it was, but from a specific part of his body. His hand, the one that was holding his phone, was shaking rhythmically, the screen bright against the darkness of the rest of the room.

Sassenach calling…

The breath jittered from his lungs as he tried to take a steady breath. Watching, almost as though someone else was moving his body as he thumb accepted the call and he slowly raised the phone to his ear.

“Claire?”

On the other end of the phone, he heard her let out a heavy breath. His heart seized as he listened to her break, all too familiar with the sound of her crying.

“Claire, are ye hurt? Tell me what’s—“

“Frank is dead.”

Ice fell heavy in his chest at the sound of her voice before he even took stock of the words that she had uttered. To hear her voice again.

“Oh, lass… Mo chridhe, I am so sorry,” he whispered the words, truly meaning them as he wished for nothing but her happiness. Anything to bring her from the pain that she was feeling.

“He— oh God, he’s dead. He’s really dead.”

He knew in that moment that he would cross oceans for her simply to bring her peace. He had always known the truth of what they shared, how he responded to her call but nothing had prepared him for the tsunami of pure need that he would experience when he heard her cry down the phone about her dead husband.

“I’m sorry, mo chridhe, I’m so sorry,” he repeated at the sound of her hyperventilating, his shoulders creeping up around his ears as he wished he could bear the pain for her, “What do you need, Claire? Anything.”

“He’s in the ground,” she whispered as though saying it out loud would make it more true, “God, Jamie, I don’t know what to do.”

Hearing his name fall from her lips was a balm that he didn’t know his soul needed. The hairs on his arms stood to attention as a shiver rippled through him, clenching his jaw to steady himself and give her his full attention.

“Do ye have people around ye, Claire? Have ye folk in Boston?”

#light across the seas that severed #clandonnachaidh #ao3 #outlander fanfic #jamie fraser #Claire beauchamp #outlander #modern au

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aftgandotherbooks · 3 years

Text

Father-Son Bonding

Kevin only knew about his mum from what he heard about Tetsuji telling him (which is almost nothing really) and barely remembers her himself. What’s worse is that he knows nothing about Wymack and his past. A few years after Kevin graduated, he decided to visit his dad for the Christmas holidays. Wymack was a man of habit and still lived in that one room apartment near Palmetto university, which meant that Kevin unfortunately had to sleep on the couch for the week. One night of an especially bad nightmare of Riko, Kevin moved to the kitchen to make coffee since he wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep again. Coincidentally it was also around the time Wymack usually wakes up to go out for his morning smoke. After a short and gruff “‘morning” *nod* “‘morning” *nod* exchange, both men headed out to the front porch. It was the long stretches of quiet that Kevin appreciated the most from being around his father. After spending years around people who always had something to gossip or complain about, the comfortable silences he shared with his father were a blessing. After an hour of bliss, Wymack looked over at Kevin and saw deep dark purple bags under his eyes and a surge of concern welled up in his gut. He cleared his throat and nudged his son’s shoulder, asking “couldn’t sleep?” Kevin, transfixed by the quiet morning air jumped at the sound of his father’s voice. “Yeah, um. Nightmare” he muttered, looking down at his hands that were fidgeting with the string of his pyjama pants. Wymack sighed and looked out onto the grass and birds singing their wake-up songs to the rest of the world. He nodded his head and looked back to his son. “That’s one thing that never seems to leave you alone. I had a bad one before you came. I could barely leave my bed for two days.” Wymack huffed. Kevin looked up to his father in shock. He always knew Wymack had a troublesome upbringing, but he never mentioned it. Of course, he knew something must have happened, otherwise the foxes and their reputation of ‘second-chances’ would have never even existed. However, Kevin would have never known his father was still affected by it to this day. As morbid as it sounded, it was comforting knowing that his father was struggling the same as him. Kevin had never asked about his dad’s past. Mostly because Wymack made an active effort to stay out of Kevin’s personal business after he graduated because the other Foxes had a tendency to go too far whenever Riko or the nest were mentioned. Kevin respected the fact that Wymack refused to be like that. But before that morning, Wymack never spoke of his own burdens. He barely spoke about Kevin’s mum, the pain of her absence too painful most of time for Kevin. That’s why Kevin asked “you don’t have to answer me but… what happened? Does it have something to do with mum?” Wymack was quiet for a few minutes. Kevin started to think that his dad would ignore the question altogether. But then with a quiet sigh, Wymack put out his cigarette and turned to face Kevin. “Look kid, I know you’ve been through too much shit in your life, and I wish there was a way that I could have known and stopped it. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t wish I knew you before Riko got his hands on you. The point is, I didn’t want to put more shit on you that you don’t need. But... I guess it’s only fair you know more about me. I am your dad afterall.” Kevin nodded, hearing the solemn tone Kevin was too familiar with. The same tone was used whenever Wymack was faced with another kid with a messed up childhood. Wymack then closed his eyes, breathed slowly and methodically and squeezed his hands into fists for a minute or two. It reminded Kevin of the breathing exercises Betsy taught him when he was plagued with the anxiety attacks that came with his sobriety. With a neutral and emotionless tone, Wymack started speaking. “I was in prison for a year before I met your mother.” Kevin’s face snapped to Wymack’s. He opened his mouth to say something when Wymack held up his finger to shut him up. Wymack continued speaking. “I had just turned 18 and thought it was a good idea to get in a car with my drunk best friend after we left a graduation party one of our other friends held t their house. I only had one drink that night, I didn’t see the point of drinking. My old man was in a shit mood that morning and would have punched and kicked me to hell and back if I came home 10 at night, drunk. I kept going on about how I should drive since I barely had anything to drink, but he was too stubborn and I just wanted to get home early enough. So, my friend ended up driving, and we were blasting music, all that typical stuff teens do when they’re young and too stupid to care. It only took a second of us not paying attention that a kid crossed the road to fetch a ball. What sane kid plays with a ball at ten at night?” Wymack rolled his eyes. “anyway, I saw the kid before my friend did and grabbed the wheel to swerve it to the opposite side the kid was on. It just so happened that the car swerved too far and the road was still slippery from the storm we had a few hours before. And can I just say kid, the moment the car swerved and smashed into the light pole I knew we were screwed.” Kevin’s eyes were starting to water. It wasn’t at all what he was expecting. His father went to prison? “My friend, Alex, he died on impact. He was on the side the pole smashed into. I only got away with a bruised right leg, a broken arm and severe whiplash. The kid was fine. It was actually his mom that called an ambulance for us. When I told the cops what happened, they said that even though I saved the kid, what I did was technically manslaughter. That’s why I was sent to prison. My sentence was way shorter though ‘cause I barely had alcohol in my system, and Alex was way over the limit, so he was at fault for the reckless driving. Plus, the fact that my intentions were to save the kid, not to kill-” Wymack took a shuddering breath. “Not to kill Alex.” Kevin grabbed his dads tight fist and squeezed it. “Dad, you don’t have to keep going”. Kevin said, he could see his father’s defences slowly crumbling. But Wymack, the stubborn and persistent old man he was, shook his head and kept going. “Prison was… prison. Not a fun place, and there were things that I would rather never think or talk about. And when I got out of prison, I had nowhere to go. My old man used my sentence as an excuse to stop speaking to me again. Useless pig he was probably celebrated the day I left. My mom, well she’s been dead since I was 13, breast cancer. I’ve always wondered what she would have done about it all. So, I had nowhere to go, and no one to run to. I was working at a run-down diner because that was the only place that would take in a fresh out of prison convict. It was just a few yards off from where your mom lived. Her and Tetsuji would meet up every Saturday at my diner to grab lunch and work on the specifics of how Exy should be played. I always tried to be the one who would serve her, and then we traded numbers and started talking. We got real close for a few years until she asked me to join her first trial team for Exy. She’s the one who got me a job at Palmetto when I told her I wanted to expand the sport to other universities. She gave me the chance to move forward in my life when no one else would.” Wymack opened his eyes and looked at Kevin again. “She reminds me so much of you kid. Every time I look at you I see her commitment and passion.” Kevin looked down to their hands again, and smiled a watery smile. “Thanks dad. All I ever wanted to do was make her proud of me.” Wymack huffed again and said “I’m sure she is… I know cause I sure am.”

A.N: I have no idea how the criminal system works. Nor do I know how long, or even if Wymack would have been charged. I also haven’t read the books since last year so my knowledge of Wymack’s history is limited to other fanfics, so if I got anything wrong, I’m sorry. This is just my interpretation of how Wymack’s character and his personality were formed :)

#aftg #aftg fic #aftg headcanon #aftg headcannons #aftg headcanons #david wymack #coach wymack #Wymack #kevin day #kevin & wymack #bonding #riko moriyama #neil josten #andrew minyard #the foxes #taans headcannons

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stars-trash-18 · 3 years

Note

Hi boo!! I just saw your Paz request and I was wondering if I could sort of get a continuation of that.... like maybe after that Paz has started to call the reader “mesh’la” and the reader was gone longer than usual from a supply run but they’re back now and it’s just pure softness between Paz and them - @remmysbounty

I never wrote something so fast, because I found a bumping playlist that gave me the wind I needed to ACTUALLY finish it.

Ever since the training incident Paz continued to call you mesh’la, simply because it distracted you and Paz never misses a chance to mess with people. Even if his face secretly burns under that bucket every time you scrunch your face up in a blush, Paz adored that look on your face. You knew it meant beautiful, the only time you were called it was from the other pilots who wanted a short fling and creepy drunks at the cantina. So when the giant blue tin can who once held a blaster to your head called you beautiful with the softest voice you’ve ever heard the only thing you could do was let your face catch on fire from how quickly the blood raced to your face.

But every time you wanted to talk to him about the training incident, he somehow weaseled away from you in what your friend told you was a , “Ba'slan shev'la,” a strategic disappearance. You tried for weeks to talk to him but every time he’d get away, he’s like the legends you heard about mandalorians, you don’t find them they find you. Even though he actively avoided you when you sought him out, he’d always pass you with a quick “morning mesh’la” and “be careful out there mesh’la”, the last one happening in front of most of the covert as they sent you off for one of your bigger supply runs. You never heard the end of it from your friends and the Armorer dragged you into an interrogation, the woman was worse than the gossiping aunties on Alderaan as she drilled you for any info and you could hear the gears turn in her head as she sized you up for a proposal dagger.

But nonetheless your heart continued to skip a beat everytime the tin bucket called you that little pet name, the tone of voice changing with every meeting. You had conversations more frequently, even after Paz finished your training, and so long as you avoided the burning questions you wanted to ask you could enjoy his company. This went on for months, and you would hear the nickname in your sleep.

You hoped you’d hear it again as you landed on some backwater planet crawling with ex-imps and spice dealers. The only reason you were here was to look for a hermit healer (ha say that 3x fast) who was the only one willing to sell a year long asthma treatment. One of the foundlings had severe asthma from living in the filthy Coruscant air, and even though medicine was advanced it was still expensive to get a long lasting treatment, and you were gonna be damned if a foundling went without.

You breathed in deeply and stepped out into the hangar, tossing a stack of credits to a nearby droid to care for your ship as you began trekking into the forest, following the coordinates of the healer’s last known location.

=====>>> POV CHANGE AND TIME SKIP OF 3 WEEKS<<<======

Paz was sweating as he paced the Karyai, you had gone to get medicine for a foundling, a trip that normally took a week. But it’s been three weeks and not a single word from you. At first when you didn’t show they thought maybe you had gotten lost (you were good navigating the stars, but put you on foot and you’d get lost in a paper bag), by the second week those that had doubted your commitment to the covert spoke their scathing remarks about you (that was shut down after Paz punched one of them out cold). By the third week Paz wasn’t seen too far from the hangar, he was always pacing the length of it or working at his weapons bench at all hours, Paz simply couldn’t sleep worrying over you. The Armorer said if you were still gone after the fourth week mark then they could organize a search part, but because they were in hiding they needed to wait to make sure.

Just when Paz was about to say screw it and go after you himself or send Din the proximity alarms went off. He immediately booked it to the hangar, the feeling in his gut telling him it was you, he could feel how his heart sang the only way it would when you were near him singing like when beskar hits beskar. The sweet song carrying him the 80 feet to the hangar, the volume increasing with every step he took towards you.

=======> POV CHANGE<========

When he entered the hangar he saw your ship touching down, and when the ramp finally opened he was already running to reach you in the cockpit. You nearly had a heart attack when you saw the blur of blue heading straight for you, but the moment you felt warm muscular arms encircle you as you were lifted off the ground you felt at peace. Paz rested his helmet onto your shoulder and you could feel his breath puffing out from under the lip of it, and you could feel him truly relax as he slowly lowered you back onto the ground, where he rested his helmet onto your forehead so that he could look at you.

“You scared the hell out of me Mesh’la, thought I lost you,” he said as he rested a hand on the back of your neck so he could pull you closer into his embrace. You rested your hands on either side of his helmet, if it were anyone else Paz would have shot them, but it was you and he let you pull his head so that you could place a kiss onto his neck. To many it was a kiss that is sexual but to you and him it was the only place you could place a kiss onto his skin, and it caused Paz to practically purr

“Paz you never would have lost me, I never told you I love you yet,” you said, after the ordeal you went through you weren’t going to hesitate anymore. You weren’t going to let these feelings and words go unspoken, you had suffered enough in life that if there was a chance you can put something good into it you were going to jump. That good thing just so happened to be covered in blue beskar and had the greatest hugs you had ever felt.

Paz went rigid, at first you panicked thinking he was going to reject you before you could hear the words whispered into your hair, “Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum,”. He pulled away from you to look into your face before he pressed the button to close the ramp and moved his hands to either side of his helmet. It was almost an instinct for you to squeeze your eyes shut and look away, but when you heard the clang of his helmet hitting the floor you felt his hands rest on either side of your face.

“If you don’t want this mesh’la tell me now and I will back away, but if you do when I kiss you open your eyes,” He said, his words causing you to gasp and latch your hands onto his wrists.

“Paz are you sure?” You asked, your breathing picking up at the anxiety building on this life changing decision. You felt his thumb brush your cheeks to soothe you before you felt his forehead lean against your’s, finally relaxing at the contact to his skin on your’s in the familiar Keldabe Kiss.

“I want you mesh’la, and only you so when you open your eyes I will marry you here and now because for three weeks I only thought of you and the thought of spending another moment without you sounds unbearable,” he said before hesitantly brushing his lips onto yours, to give you time to pull away.

But you didn’t, and with a final sigh you leaned fully into the kiss and fluttered your eyes open to look upon the face of the only man who made you sing with happiness. In that moment both of your hearts sang the song of beskar, you both finally finding the only person the other’s heart would ever sing to.

#love this giant blue mountain #he totally gives 10/10 hugs #paz vizsla x reader #paz vizla x reader #paz vizla imagine #Request imagine #imagine request #paz vizla

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de-profundis-ad-astra · 3 years

Text

One, Two Punch

Pairing: Ben Miller x Reader, kinda. Flirtationship more than a relationship Rating: Somewhere between T and M? Summary: After knowing Ben for barely two months, you’re invited to attend one of his fights. Length: ~2k words Warnings: Swearing, mentions of alcohol, vague descriptions of legally sanctioned violence, vague mentions of masturbation. Taglist: @firefeatherx @goldenhour-goldenboy @mandoplease @mylifeliterally @phoenixhalliwell @havenforafrazzledmind @living-reminder @beatriz-silva-00 @pascalz @worldominatorx @givemethatgold @agirllovespancakes @lilacyennefer @dignityneeded @veuliee @briskywalker @the-bird-suit @mapache-lector @skylyknightly (let me know if you want to be +/-) Note: For the anon from yesterday. If you see this, I love you and if you want me to keep posting old fics, please let me know.

The day you’re invited to watch one of Ben Miller’s fights, it feels like a rite of passage.

The boys go quiet when he drops the question. So quiet, in fact, you wonder if you mistook the invitation for a marriage proposal. Suddenly extremely interested in their respective drinks, they sneak glances in your direction in the moments following. Ben’s eyes, clear and bright and… have they always been that blue? They root you to the spot, pinning you without him needing to lift a finger.

“Sure,” you say, shrugging off the odd looks and your own uncertainty. “Sounds fun.”

The fight isn’t for another three weeks, but Will practically has to drag Ben out of the bar by the collar whilst claiming that prep starts now. Once the door is soundly closed behind the Millers, Santiago and Frankie take turns explaining that Ben has never invited anyone to his fights. Well, not for a while, at least. They run you through what you’re sure is an abbreviated version of their last experience with this.

Long story short: he invited one of his previous flings to a fight, she left before the match ended with nothing more than a text letting him know that she didn’t think it would work, and they never heard from her again.

You swipe a finger down the glass–it’s started sweating condensation since they started talking. You rub the moisture between your fingertips, then take a sip, welcoming the burn as the tequila warms its way down your throat. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because it’s a big deal,” Santiago says. “A big fucking deal.”

You get it, they’re more than friends to Ben. They’re his teammates, the people he trusts more than anyone in the world to watch his back. You suppose that’s precisely what they’re doing, now. You suspect that if you were to bail out like the previous girl did, they wouldn’t let you off so easy.

Not that you would. It’s just… a lot to take in.

“I get it,” you say with a smile. “I break his heart, you break my neck, right?”

Frankie lifts his glass in a toast. “I knew you were a fast learner.”

–

The following Tuesday evening finds you knocking on Ben’s door for your usual burger run. It’s probably too early to call it a tradition, but you’re relationship with Ben, thus far, is comprised primarily of spontaneous adventures such as this. Every Tuesday for the past three weeks you’ve gotten together to eat greasy foods and talk and laugh together. So it’s worth a shot, right?

Except when Will opens the door.

“Hey, Y/N,” he says cordially, if not a bit bewildered.

“Y/N!” you hear Ben’s unmistakable voice call from further within. “Come in!”

Will steps aside, vacating enough space for you to pass. You step over the threshold, your eyes immediately landing on the small dining table to your right. And the… grain bowl he’s eating?

“I see you’ve already got dinner taken care of,” you note with a small laugh. You’re more entertained by the sight than you are upset by the fact that burger night will have to wait.

Ben’s face falls, and his fork clatters to the table. “Shit,” he scrambles to pull his phone from his pocket. “Shit.” He unlocks it, hits a few buttons, then slides it back into his jeans.

A few seconds later, your own phone’s screen lights up with an unread text. You open it and read:

have 2 take a rain check on burgers 2nite. wills got me on this ‘clean eating’ diet before the fight.

You hold up the phone for him to see, “Got it.”

Ben says a bit sheepishly, “Forgot to send it. Selective memory. Sorry.”

As much as you want to be sad that your night out has been postponed, you’re more touched by the fact that of all the things on his mind, that was one of them.

“He needs to get into work mode,” Will fills the silence as Ben shovels a heap of quinoa and chicken into his mouth and makes a show of gagging on it. “Gotta keep him focused on eating better and training.”

You think about the pack of beers you’d bought and stored in your fridge. “I take it that means no alcohol, either.”

“Nope,” the brothers answer in unison–Ben with notably more disdain than Will.

“I was winning fights before you put me on this diet, you know,” Ben grumbles around his food.

“Doesn’t mean you still shouldn’t be taking care of yourself when your putting that much wear and tear on your body.” Will points at his younger brother. “Eat.”

“You’re worse than mom.”

“Eat.”

Ben groans and heaps some more food into his mouth. “I’m not worried,” he says half to himself.

You see it then. In his eyes, he’s focused and somewhere that isn’t quite here. You look at the hard lines around his mouth and suddenly wish you could take your thumb and run it across his lower lip, card your fingers through the unruly hair he dutifully keeps under the protection of his hat. One look at his face, and you know his mind has wandered somewhere similar.

Want, need, desire, call it what you will. All that and more churns in your gut.

Will clears his throat, pulling you two back from where you teeter on the edge of the gutter and back to the present. “We’ll worry about it when it’s time to worry about it. There’s nothing we can do right now except prepare. It’ll turn out how it turns out. And if Ben does what he’s supposed to, it’ll turn out well.”

“Win that fight, Benjamin,” you tease, turning back towards the door. “And we’ll get those burgers.”

You feel his eyes burning into your back long after the door shuts behind you.

–

You don’t feel ashamed of the moment you and Ben shared. That nagging in your chest is a far cry from shame. You’d outgrown that long ago. The look you’d shared, the thoughts you had and knew he had were mild in comparison to what you knew you wanted.

You knew the look in his eyes, that unspoken promise for something more–something you completely, unabashedly craved–and your carefully placed tethers would fray and fray and fray until there was nothing to hold you back. He didn’t need distractions right now, you wanted to respect that.

That didn’t make it any less miserable.

It only takes three days before it grows so unbearable that you take matters into your own hands.

Overheated and nearly frantic, you toss and turn in bed that night until your tank top and short clink and chafe against your slightly sweaty body. You try counting the minutes until sleep takes you. But minutes turn to hours with no sign of relief.

Need crawls over you, slithering under your skin. It doesn’t take much to imagine his face, that it’s his hands on your skin, inside–

But that release only leaves you hollow–unsatisfied.

You make a point to keep your distance for the remainder of that week. Until the day of the fight, actually. By then, the tether is pulled so tight that you fear it might snap at one wrong move.

Later, you remind yourself. That unfinished business will come later.

–

The air is thick with the mingled scents of liquor, body odor, and several variants of cheap cologne. And it’s so hot. People move around you in groups, and the floor beneath your feet is sticky from some spilled drink that hadn’t been properly cleaned. The heavy beat of a rock song slam against your chest, and as you look around you think you see more tattoos than skin, more leather than jeans, and more filled cups than empty hands.

You’re not scared. Far from it, actually. The energy of the crowd feeds your own, the music heightening your excitement as you follow Frankie and Santiago through the crowd and squeeze yourselves into an open spot right in front of the cage. One of them, you can’t tell who, shoves a drink into your hand and tells you its on them.

You hold the beverage, but don’t partake as the referee begins to announce the next fighter. The first thing you see is a flash of red shorts.

Perhaps it’s for show, watching Ben make his way from the door to the cage, swaying his shoulders with each step, his eyes locked on it and nothing else as heavy metal blasts around you. You don’t exist to him. Not right now. Regardless, heat pools in your stomach.

He takes is sweet time peeling off his shirt and stretching his shoulders. He turns away from you so Will can help him into his gloves, allowing you a full view of that gloriously muscled back. You admire each line of muscle, each movement he makes as he turns and enters the ring. To hell with all the people around you. You want that. You want that over you, under you, all around you. You could touch him everywhere at once and it still wouldn’t be enough to satisfy you–

His eyes find you in the crowd, and he winks.

If it was socially acceptable to swoon, you might have.

Maybe you did, anyway.

–

The fight itself doesn’t last long. At one point you set your untouched drink down, then promptly kick it over when you leap to your feet to cheer.

Even then, you can’t help but clinch every time someone lands a hit, skin reddening and bruising, breathing labored and shallow until a hand is being lifted in the air in victory. It’s Ben’s.

–

You wait outside the lockers with the guys. Santiago is weaving a tale from his days in Brazil that you’re only half paying attention to. You remain standing off to the side, sipping a lukewarm water, watching.

It takes a while for Ben to come out. The blood has been cleaned from his face and, remarkably, the only lasting mark is a purple-blue bruise above his cheekbone. But he’s grinning ear to ear, and he pulls first Santiago, then Frankie into a bear of a hug. You see his face over their shoulders, how hie eyes still veritably glow with the same energy you’d seen in the ring.

You push yourself from the wall you’re leaning against, and step up to them. Ben’s eyes meet yours as if by gravitational pull.

You’d felt drawn to him since the day you’d met. But this is like meeting him for the first time. A dim hallway. The crowd slowly draining out from the gymnasium. You, holding a cup of piss-poor excuse for water, and him.

The boys quietly let Ben know that they’ll catch up with him later, and melt into the meandering crowd.

The shift in his expression makes it achingly clear what Ben wants. His gaze lingers, now. His shoulders seem broader as he steps towards you, his gym bag over one shoulder, his other arm extended for you.

“Let’s go.” His voice is different in the aftermath of the fight. You can see the adrenaline still pumping in the way his eyes lock on you.

You find your way to his body, and let him guide you outside. His hand sneaks around your waist and under your shirt, his fingers digging into the skin above your hipbone. He guides your steps with a fierceness, and as soon as you make it back to his car, his hand wanders lower, lower.

He tosses his bag into his car, refusing to let you go. Another swift motion has you pinned between the heat of his body and the side of the car.

He’s in front of you, caging you in, his fingers lingering at the waistband of your leggings, his shirt damp from the shower he just took, hair dangling over his forehead. You clamp your hands down on his biceps, digging your fingers into skin and muscle and him.

You barely have time to register it all before his lips crash into yours, and the empire of your longing comes crashing down.

Yes, you could stand to be with this for a little longer.

#triple frontier #triple frontier fanfiction #ben miller #benny miller #ben miller x reader #garrett hedlund #garrett hedlund fanfiction

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dangerouscommiesubversive · 3 years

Text

because i was a fool for loving her over you (and if i call i really hope you’ll call me ‘cause i’m not over you)

Fandom: Choujin Sentai Jetman

Characters: Tendou Ryuu, Yuki Gai, Rokumeikan Kaori, Hayasaka Ako

Song: “Empress,” Morningsiders (playlist here)

Note: Alternate title for this story is “The Jetman Trap (1992) starring Hayasaka Ako”

Directly following the defeat of the Vyram there are several days of frantic, exhausted reports and debriefings and meetings, some of which take place in hospital rooms where the various team members are receiving medical care, and then once those are done there is a month total, blissful peace. The Jetmen return to their homes to rest and recuperate. Raita is able to begin the spring planting, Ako to consider and then reject university entrance exams, Ryuu to mourn the second death of his first love, Gai to brush up on his saxophone in preparation for going back to his usual occupation, and Kaori to spend a day with her parents for the first time in ages. Perhaps they’ll be called upon to save the world again, but hopefully not.

At the end of that month, though, comes a strange moment of confluence as in a sumptuous mansion, in a mediocre bar, in a sparsely-decorated military apartment, three people find themselves staring into space and sighing heavily as they murmur, “Well, I screwed that up.”

---

Gai is there when Ryuu finally asks Kaori to dinner, and he’s mature enough by now to admit that it stings somewhat to hear, just as he’s still immature enough to find Ryuu’s gut-punched expression when she turns him down a little bit funny.

“Why?” Ryuu manages to stammer out after a moment, and then he visibly backpedals—“which is to say, of course if you don’t want to I respect that.”

She folds her arms across her chest. “Why now?”

“Well, I, I…I just realized that I’ve wasted so much time on obsessing over the past that I never actually gave…other options…any fair consideration. And because I like you, Kaori, you’re a dear friend, and I’d like to have dinner with you.”

“Well, I’m not interested in being your runner-up.” And that haughty little chin tilt, the one she doesn’t actually pull out too often, and Gai is trying not to eavesdrop, really he is, but she’s just so wonderful to watch when she decides to put the rich blood on. “Ask me again when you want me and aren’t just ‘giving me fair consideration,’” with a hand gesture that manages to indicate quotation marks while concealing how hurt she actually looks.

Then she leaves, and Ryuu stares after her until she’s out of sight before turning to Gai and saying, sounding bewildered, “I did something wrong there, didn’t I. You heard all that, right? Did I do something wrong there?”

Gai takes a sip of his drink—a soda water, he’s trying to drink less alcohol. “I think you might have messed up a little, yeah. Nobody likes to feel like they’re a fallback option.”

---

Ryuu is there when Kaori asks Gai to try meeting her parents again, and it’s a little painful to hear, but not as much as the hissing argument that it devolves into. Nothing that either of them says is untrue, but all of it is put unkindly, two injured people cutting further pieces out of each other in the hopes that it might make everything more even. He’s unexpectedly hurt by the realization that they slept together, probably more than once, even though they’re both mature adults and certainly didn’t need to consult him about it.

Of course, in the end, Gai is the one who stalks off, mouth tight and brow furrowed, and Ryuu almost chases after him—but that would mean leaving Kaori by herself. She stares after Gai for a moment, looking forlorn, and then turns and buries her face in Ryuu’s chest and bursts into tears. “I don’t know what I did wrong,” she sobs, and he pats her shoulder awkwardly and offers reassurances that he’s not sure he means.

“It’s all right,” he says, staring over her head in the direction Gai went and trying not to focus too much on the warmth of her body pressed up against his. “I’m sure you’ll get another chance to talk things out with him.”

---

Things are still very busy on the farm, so Raita’s not with them, but the other four meet up at a park as the weather starts to warm up. Ako and Kaori are sitting together sharing a thermos of tea and a basket of cookies while Ryuu and Gai play catch when Ako says, “So how are things with you guys?”

Kaori blinks down into her cup and says, carefully, “It’s a bit lonely without the team all together, but I’ve been doing well, thank you. How is school? You’re graduating soon, right?”

“I am, but you know that’s not what I was asking. How are things with you three. You and Ryuu and Gai.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, don’t give me that, you totally know what I mean.” Ako shoves an entire cookie into her mouth, chews, swallows, and continues with her mouth still partially full. “Honestly if I didn’t already like girls better I think watching you three would have made me prefer them, guys just seem like a hassle.”

Kaori does not choke on her tea, but only through main force. “You like girls?”

“Don’t you? I mean, have you seen girls?”

“I…I suppose I’ve never considered it.”

“Huh. Well, anyway, girls are amazing, not the point, I’m worried about you guys. Which one of them do you actually like?”

Kaori doesn’t answer, she just stares down at her hands.

Ako’s eyes go wide. “Ohhh. It’s like that.”

“What, what do you mean, it’s like what?”

“Have Ryuu and Gai figured out that they’re in love yet or are they still being dumb boys about it?”

“Have—Ryuu and Gai are what?”

“Come on, you have to have noticed.”

Kaori looks over at where Ryuu and Gai have abandoned their game and are sprawled on the ground side by side, catching their breath. Their hands just barely touch, there in the grass, and. She knows. She does know. She’s known for ages now. She’s just been pretending not to, because it hurts to be certain that in the end she won’t ever be the one. But all she says is, “Oh.”

Ako nods, looking unwholesomely knowing for someone who’s not even out of high school, and eats another cookie.

---

“Hey,” Ako says over the phone, “can I introduce you to a friend of mine?”

Kaori thinks about it for a long, long moment, and then says, “Yes, I would like that.”

---

Ryuu says, “I don’t really think I’m ready to try to meet someone new yet, but…sure.”

---

Gai says, “My number isn’t listed, how did you even get it? Don’t answer that, I don’t want to know what you get up to. Yeah, why not.”

---

None of them quite process what she’s done to them until they’re all seated at the restaurant and a waiter is approaching with a telephone to inform them that they’ve received a call. Ryuu is the one who answers, and he doesn’t even start with a greeting, he just says, “Ako, I hope you can understand that I’m a little upset with you right now.”

“You’ll get over it,” she says cheerfully, her voice tinny through the phone receiver. “I hear that restaurant’s really nice, anyway, I hope you three have a good dinner!”

“Don’t hang up, Gai wants to speak to you.”

Gai takes the phone and says, in the most affectionate, big-brotherly voice he can summon, “Ako, you’re a horrible brat and the next time I see you I’m going to spank you because clearly your parents never did it enough.”

“I love you too, and you’ll have to catch me first. Is it Kaori’s turn to be mad at me now?”

Kaori does take the phone, but all does is say, stiffly, “Goodbye, Ako,” and then hang up, turning as she does to smile at the waiter (who is doing his best to not look interested) and say, “If we could have ice water, please, we’ll need a few minutes before we’re ready to order.”

An uncomfortable beat after the waiter leaves, in which they all keep glancing at each other and then looking away, before Ryuu said, “So are we ordering? Or are we all just leaving? Because I want to say we leave, but honestly I’m hungry.”

Gai pinches the bridge of his nose. “Lady’s choice, I guess. I need a drink, but I can get that anywhere.”

They turn to her, and she looks between the two of them, how they incline ever so slightly towards each other even as they’re also inclining towards her, and how could she choose? Even if she did want to separate them when they were clearly so perfect for each other, how could she pick one and leave the other?

Ako’s knowing voice echoes in her head. “Ohhh. It’s like that.”

Oh, says her heart. It’s like that.

She covers her face with her hands, not crying, because everything makes sense in a way that she’s not entirely prepared for and if she starts crying now then she may never stop. “I think,” she says into her palms, breath not hitching, she is speaking so evenly that they certainly won’t be able to tell how overwhelmed she is, “I think, I think we should order dinner, and I think we all need to talk.”

Ryuu and Gai both speak at the same time, and what they both say is, “Whatever you say, Kaori.”

---

“So that sounds like it went well,” Kyoko says, not looking up from where she’s hunting through her box of nail polish. “Which one of them threatened to spank you? Was it the hot one with the motorcycle? He seems like he’d be into that.”

“Kyoko!” Ako throws a pillow at her. “Don’t be gross, he didn’t even mean it like that.”

“What? I’m not saying I want him to spank me, I’m just saying he seems like that kind of guy. There we go.” She lifts a bottle of deep blue polish out of the box. “You want your fingers and toes to match, or do I need to find another color too?”

---

The next morning the phone in Ako’s little apartment rings, and when she picks it up, Gai just starts in with, “Look, threat rescinded, but don’t do that to me ever again.”

She giggles. “So did you have a nice time? I hope you were safe.”

Sputtering on the other end of the line. “You’ve got a dirty mind for a kid. Nothing happened. We talked.”

“All night? I can hear Kaori’s voice. And Ryuu’s. Who was in the middle?”

“Threat unrescinded, you’re going to catch it the next time I see you.” And in the background, Kaori’s joyful laughter, Ryuu asking where the coffee is, something muffled from Gai as he definitely covers the receiver for a moment, and then, “Thank you. Stay out of my love life from now on, you’re a nightmare.”

Ako says, “Love you too, Gai. Tell the other two I say hi,” and then drops the phone back onto its cradle. A moment to just grin smugly at nothing, and then she whirls around to shout, gleefully, “Kyoko! I didn’t screw it up!”

#tendou ryuu #yuki gai #rokumeikan kaori #hayasaka ako #fanfiction #30 day shuffle challenge

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everafterkeiji · 3 years

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Song: This Love by Camila Cabello

Summary: Love has so many definitions yet Oikawa never gave you the right ones.

Pairings: Tooru Oikawa x gn!reader

Word count: 4.5k

Tags,Genre: toxic relationships, angst, dozens of cuss words, manipulation

A/N: i promise i love oikawa- pls reblog & comment if u enjoyed!

Was it one of those nights again? The nights where everything is crumbling apart and you're holding onto someone who is broken as well.

Still, you find yourselves testing what it means to be in love.

"I can't keep watching you destroy yourself, Tooru!" You shout as he stands up from the bed then standing in front of you, his power towering over you.

"I'm doing completely fine, Y/N! What part of that don't you understand?!" He shouts back, with a tone stronger and louder one fighting yours.

I'm tired of meeting in the middle.

"Tooru- I support you but if I have to see you fucking lose yourself over a game then I can't handle it anymore!" He lets out a bitter laugh, backing away from you to stare you down. Each part of your body was trembling and his did the same. His body was drained from exhaustion and yours reeked of pain.

"Support me? Then fucking stop already! You said you'd always be there for me and now you're switching shit up?" He says, the drug in your veins fading while your hand trembles at the peak of his voice.

"I stuck to my promise Oikawa! What about you? Didn't you promise you'd always make time for me?" You asked- a slight crack in your voice remembering how tender he used to say these pretty promises.

"Well isn't that just so fucking selfish of you to assume I could make that happen."

He turns his back to you while your jaw was down to the floor, your eyes wide with tears streaming down every second and a heart snapped in half.

"You don't get to call me selfish when I was never a priority to you in the first place!"

Oikawa hesitates to look at you.

He knows what he'll see. A sight of you he's seen multiple times yet it always punches him in the gut with how he's aware that it was because of him.

How many broken pieces of your heart did you have to walk on for you to admit that he never puts you first?

If it was a battle on whose selfish, the king knows he's at the top.

"What the fuck? I tried Y/N! I'm always coming to your fucking rescue and it makes me hate the way you need me." He pities himself. He knew how low it was for him to say, your emotions are always valid to him- he treasures them because you hid them from him when you met, how hard it was to be open to these emotions with one person.

He was that person that you regretted ever being vulnerable to knowing he turns them like knives, striking you in each body part.

"Do you know how many times I had to ask myself if I needed you? God- you were so busy all the time I had to push away my own feelings for you, Tooru!" Your knees felt weak when you remembered how many times you've broken down without a shoulder to lean on. He should've been there- a call away whenever your tears came to you but knowing how he'd never let the game go, you threw away your sorrows to make sure his smile stays on.

"If you needed space, then just walk away!" He shouts, he runs a hand through his locks as he takes a seat back onto the mattress.

I did and each mile I went, I returned to you.

"Go on then- cause it's obvious we need it both!" You closed your eyes as you gripped the strap or your bag, ready to turn your heel on him.

But the flow of love in your veins insisted you to stay, to fix the relationship that was never complete.

"Tooru." You called out for him, desperate to touch him and forget everything.

But he pulls away.

"Just go, Y/N." He whispers, finally the soreness of his throat was growing on him. He still couldn't dare to look at you, he knows that his eyes would give away that he wasn't man that you wished him to be.

For the first time, loving him wasn't something you could endure anymore.

The next day comes in and Mattsukawa finds you in the corner of the empty classroom, with your sobs resonating in his ears.

"Y/N?" He calls out for you while he immediately rushes to your side, gripping both your arms, fearful that something happened to you on your way to school.

"I-Issei- hi." You stuttered in finding a way to replace the sadness in your voice.

"Did something happen? It's just me, Y/N." He says softly, caressing your arm as you wipe your tears with the sleeve of your uniform.

Oikawa wasn't there to walk with you in the morning.

What makes it better is that you couldn't sleep last night.

Now, you were scared. When somebody finally shows you concern, you want to cower away thinking that it'd be a waste of their time.

Selfish, is the first word that comes into your head.

"Nothing happened. I didn't get any sleep last night- I'm just really stressed out I'm so sorry." You said looking down, while Mattsukawa sighs sadly, taking you in his arms and patting your head.

"That's fine, Y/N. I can always help you with your studies if you really can't do them anymore."

What help is there for a heart covered in thorns?

"Thanks, Issei." You whispered while he pulls away from the hug, to rest his hand on your shoulder.

How easy it was to mask your feelings.

"It's nothing, I'll walk you to class." You nodded as he protectively walks in front of you knowing no one would want people to see how they broke down.

Oikawa sees you and Mattsukawa as he walks with Iwaizumi. He notices the way your orbs looked lifeless with heavy bags underneath, the paleness of your lips and how you constantly look down.

He's in it for it again.

"Did you two fight?" Iwaizumi asks, Oikawas eyes met with yours and you look away instinctively while he feels a sting to his heart because your eyes held fear.

Iwaizumi let's out a sigh, the silence was enough to give him an answer. Hanamaki meets with you and Mattsukawa while Oikawa wondered if he should even approach you.

He's reached the line of boundaries where everything was just filled with pain. Exhaustion never mixes well with insecurities. A hard working person like him makes unchangeable decisions, like last night and maybe several weeks before that.

There was just a massive difference between his love for volleyball and his love for you.

But the amount that he gives to volleyball, should be the same amount that he gives to you.

This is what he struggles with the most.

How can he juggle all the things he love to meet at one point? He can't just expect you to be on the court while his passion drives the ball, and he can't have the ball in his hands when you're in class with him.

It's possible to meet in the middle, but he chooses not to.

As classes went on, the gap between you and Oikawa grows bigger. During lunch, where were you? With Hanamaki and Mattsukawa. Even a glance from him would hurt you and now he can see a clear view of how perfection turned into wreckage.

By the time, practice was about to start he jogs up to you in hopes of talking things out, even a way to just get a response from you.

It was completely unfair. He'd call you so many names without reason while you fought and never even named him a single ugly thing. It's all his fault. For being up in the gym too late, for loosing his appetite and his energy to the point where he drowned you in his challenges.

"Y/N hey-"

"I'm gonna go, Oikawa." You cut him off before he can even say anything else. He feels his the way his breath gets caught in his throat. You didn't even spare another second before turning your back on him with the intention of walking away.

His eyes widen before grabbing your arm softly as he tries to pull you to his embrace you stood your weight to the floor.

"Y/N- c'mon love.. talk to me." He whispers, his hand shaking as it held onto you. You tried to rip him off but instead he surrounds his arms around you, his head leaning on your shoulder, tears forming as he feels the cold atmosphere of your body.

"I can't keep waiting for the time where loving you doesn't hurt me, Tooru." You said quietly while he harshly closes his eyes and holds onto you even more.

"I'm so sorry- I promise I'll be here and you don't even need to question yourself- I- just come back to me..please." He pleaded, desperation in his voice while his tears streamed down on your clothes. You too looked away as a pool of your own tears were resurfacing.

"Tooru-"

"I'll be better- no I'll be the best for you. Everything Y/N- you're not selfish, never- I'm so fucking sorry." He digs his head into your neck even more while you tried your best to not let out a sob.

"You promise?" It was so little, like you didn't even want to say it because your expectations of love never met with reality. Sadly, Oikawa heard it yet there was a second where he hesitates and you took notice of that. How tiny of a detail makes you hold back on everything you wanted to say.

He removes his arms from behind you while he stands in front of you, now opposite to the power he had last night. It seems like it was your turn to have him this intimidated by the tension.

He takes your hands, caressing them, then holding them up to his face as he places sweet kisses on them. Some of his tears fell on your hand and he let them stay, while you hated how it was a genuine sign that he could be honest.

"I do, Y/N." You stared at him while he begs with his eyes. A single tear escapes your eye as it cascades down your cheek and wipes it away with his finger leaving traces on it.

You give him a nod and this sets his heart on fire.

His lips tug into a sad smile while he gently meets his forehead with yours, closing his eyes. He was more than thankful for another chance.

"I love you." He says, still with eyes closed, only focused on the beat of his heart syncing with yours.

Once again, the drug of love leaves a reaction in your body.

"I love you too."

Then the next few days, there was an ounce of hope.

Oikawa's nights were full of sleepless hours and what makes him stay awake is you, or at least how broken you were.

He couldn't help but imagine how you were in deep helplessness and you couldn't even gather the courage to call him because you thought he was more important than your own emotions. He imagines how you'd rather push your screams onto the pillow instead of voicing them out or even how you chose to smile for him after heavy hours of being accompanied by stress and insecurity.

It haunts him how he called you selfish, how he made you think that it was your fault for even being his- supporting him even. He needed you- he did but this thought is always surpassed by the fact that he always wanted to be number 1, to beat his own demons and the ever mocking Shiratorizawa.

He couldn't even remember where he took off practice to stay with you. He often visits your room to rest for a while but he barely gets to do that nowadays. During the mornings was his opportunity to give you a fraction of his time but something so simple he still forgets.

So, he makes up for it.

Even with the help of Iwaizumi, Oikawa goes home by 6pm so he spends the night with you even if it's for a few hours only. If he was going to prove himself to you, he'd do with a 100% of his body.

He was on the brim of losing you and he wasn't going to let himself be the reason for you to walk out of his life.

"What's wrong?" You asked as he laid in your lap, stroking his hair.

"I'm just happy that's all." You leaned your head on the pillow as he takes your hand, intertwining it with his kissing it once again.

There it was, the bad kind of butterflies that swarmed around you.

You wished you didn't forgive him that fast, it was nearly a day when you forgave him. The space that he mentioned basically meant nothing as he also gave in to it. He struck a nerve that day yet you went and took his apology like you've begged for it.

You did wanted to avoid him at all costs because there was never a moment where his insults didn't replay in your mind. You needed for him to realize that he had caused another split to your heart, what you didn't expect is for it to happen within hours.

You thought that Oikawa would've argued with his ego before he could talk it out but it happened so instantly that it didn't give you enough time to rethink your decision of forgiving him.

Oikawa held onto his ego but he had to remember his heart or else he would've dropped yours instead.

"It's getting late, Tooru. You should go." You said sighing before planting a kiss on his forehead. He smiles before sitting up and embracing you tight like you could slip any moment now. You had your arms wrapped around him as his slow breaths rested on your neck.

"I love you, Y/N." He says, holding on to you longer.

"You need to go Tooru-"

"Why don't we go on a date on Friday?" He asks pulling away from you. You raised an eyebrow at him as he chuckles.

"I need to spend more time with you." That's when it was your turn to smile, it felt so good to lift the heavy feeling off your chest, seeing that he's genuinely trying to be the best for you.

Your hand reaches for his cheek, your heart swelling with joy as you look at him while he leans in to your touch.

"I'd love that." He grins as he pampers your face with kisses at how excited he was to see the smile on your lips return. You let out fits of giggles as he continues to cover your faces with delicate pecks.

"Tooru- baby!" You shout as he laughs before placing both hands on either side of your face.

"Good night love, hopefully you don't dream of me this time?" He teases making you roll your eyes as you sneakily land a peck on his lips.

"That isn't too bad." You said chuckling as he kisses your lips while you smiled before allowing your lips to move with his. You pull away, flicking his forehead with your finger.

"Go." You said laughing, he gives you a pout before sighing and taking his bag from the floor.

"I'll see you on Friday then?"

"You'll see me tomorrow, Tooru."

"That's even better." He leaves with a smile on his face while what remains on yours were heated cheeks.

It was good to feel how love flowed in your bloodstream again, it wasn't bad to take in some of it's harshness from time to time.

"Really? Oikawa hasn't brought that up." You pout as Iwaizumi shrugs beside you, it was Friday and your boyfriend decided to miss it for some odd reason.

Iwaizumi brought up the topic of an upcoming match and that Oikawa saw an article of how Ushijima takes the crowd by storm again. He's never mentioned it to you but you did notice how he'd walk you home and instead of staying, he'd leave for some specific reasons.

"Anyway, will you be there?" Hanamaki asks, biting into his apple. You nodded of course. You couldn't miss the opportunity to see him outwit the opposite team again.

"I just hope he doesn't go crazy with training again, Wakatoshi taunts him even through a photo. I don't wanna see him- forget about his health." You wanted to say how you wanted to avoid arguments but the boys seem to agree to what you said knowing Oikawa oversteps his strength all the time.

"I'll watch over him." Iwaizumi says looking at you while you smile at him, grateful that if you weren't always there- it was Iwaizumi that you can count on.

"Thanks, Haji."

"Are you not worried about my health, Y/N?" Hanamaki says pouting making you laugh while Mattsukawa flicks his forehead with a straw.

After classes, home was calling your name for you to get ready on your date. There was the familiar feeling that kicks in, how you got excited when his name on your phone lights up the dark room, or when you see his jacket on your bed- it was back. The love bug has returned, how the first bite felt like love was overwhelming but you wanted to handle it.

God, you felt so silly- acting like one of his fan girls who got noticed by him. You were lucky enough to even obtain the title of being his so of course your heart nearly leaped out of your chest when he admitted his feelings to you. Though, it felt good. After the whole argument, you were scared if that feeling can ever come back now that it did- you were more than relieved.

The clock goes on as you wait for him to arrive.

Sure, it had been a good 20 minutes that passed but you were assuming that there'd be a meeting since there was a match coming up so you let your patience take over for a while.

But 20 minutes grew into an hour, and an hour turned into 2 more.

You couldn't even cry because you knew, it was too good to be true. Storming out your house changing out of the outfit you initially planned, you chose to dress into something more comfortable knowing it wasn't going to happen anyway.

You knew where to go.

As your feet lead you to the Seijoh gym, your heart was growing darker with each step.

Hearing the sound of volleyballs impacting on the floor, you already knew.

"Oikawa! Go home!" Iwaizumi shouts while the stubborn setter shakes his head, spiking another ball, out of breath as he do so.

You heard Iwaizumi loud and clear, that was enough for you to run back home, to never face his lies again.

Maybe you were a fool for lovebugs- but the bite wasn't to make you fall in love.

It was for you to stop.

"Go home, Oikawa. C'mon." Mattsukawa says sighing while the first years were already bidding them goodbye. Iwaizumi waves them off and tells them to rest well while Oikawa was still spiking to no end.

"I can't- I need to beat them." He says panting while the other third years share a look, remembering your words.

"What about Y/N?" Iwaizumi asks and it seems like this doesn't hit Oikawa like it's supposed to.

"Yeah, isn't it Friday? Aren't you guys supposed to be on a date?" The moment it leaves Hanamakis mouth, Oikawa stops. Iwaizumi sighs in annoyance when he sees the way his best friends expression drop with shock.

"You forgot didn't you?" Mattsukawa asks and suddenly he's brought back to the moment where he found you crying, now realizing that it was to put up the fact that Oikawa was the only reason.

Suddenly, the silence of the gym surrounded him like a tight space while his mind went at war for his mistake.

"Fuck! I- I have to go." Oikawa stutters as he immediately grabs his bag but before he leaves, he sees how disappointed his teammates looked at him. He looks away as he runs to cut the distance between you and him.

"This isn't going to be good for the both of them." Iwaizumi says sighing before picking up a few stray balls. The other two agree sadly but they hope that you two would be able to withstand the issue.

But Mattsukawa feels like you were at the tip of the cliff already.

After a few minutes, dozens of knocks awoke you from your corner as you knew who was at the other end.

"Y/N? Let me in please.." He begs through the door as you felt the tears continue to drip down your cheeks. You closed your eyes as Oikawa leans his head on the door, praying you'd open it.

And you did.

Your heart was numb, your eyes were giving out but watching him stand there made you feel alive, because you knew this was the last time you'll ever let the drug of love fool you again.

"Y/N- I'm so sorry I just we had a project and-"

"I didn't think you'd still lie to me." You said with a dry voice as his heart was pinned by your words.

"I didn't even know there'd be a match." You added, chuckling bitterly as Oikawa bites his lip looking down. You let out another laugh, the red hue of love was fading in your system turning into a deeper shade of how you've let the toxicity slip from your notice.

"I'm so fucking sorry-"

"Tell me then, can beating Ushijima bring you everything you've ever wanted?"

He was quiet. You put him in a spot where he shows too much hesitation that you wished you didn't even ask in the first place.

"And if you won, I guess that's when you can realize to put your health first." You continued stepping forward as his eyes looked at your exhausted ones.

You surprised him by tugging onto his shirt, gripping it with every might left in your body. You held him because there was nothing else for you to hold onto.

You tried to grab the last thread of love strapped in your body but it seems to have been cut when you saw him at the gym.

He didn't know if he could hold you because this a whole other side of you he prays to never see again. He just wanted the warmth of your skin on him but why was it that you felt the coldest to him?

"So please tell me, what do I have to do for you to stop choosing me?"

You said this with every timbre of your voice trembling as you land a firm punch to his chest then turning your back to him, letting out a sob.

"I understand, Tooru. God- I always have and it fucking sucks that I know I can't do anything about it." Oikawa looks at you, adrenaline rushing to his heart when it sinks in.

"I can't choose, Y/N. You're making this hard for me because I love both." His voice cracks at the idea of choosing between you and a sport he's loved since he was a kid. His dreams that he wants nothing more then to happen, while he visualizes a possible future with you.

"I've always known what you'd choose, I just wish I fucking knew when I needed to stop believing that it could be me." You were defeated and naïve, you should've known that it would bring you to this conversation over and over again. You tilt your head, harshly gasping for air as you sniffle, the heaviness of your eyes taunting you to sleep the pain away in hopes it'd be a dream instead.

"Y/N stop fucking saying that- you're acting like I didn't try and give you everything that I could!" He yells, his own eyes brimming up tears. You were surprised to hear this but seeing how his cheeks and ears were painted red, you knew that he's been trying to release all the things he wanted to say.

"And I did the same yet you always turn it on me, Tooru! All I've been saying is that I just wanted you to make me feel like I could be at the top of your list- even for a second but I just keep getting played over and over again." You rambled on and what makes you crack under the pain was a scoff.

"You knew what game you were playing, why didn't you stop?" He didn't attempt to stare at you since his question felt like it was mocking you.

You should've left. The moment where the crowd cheers for him while your shouts became the weakest, you should've known.

Oikawa did too.

He thought you would've gone and walked away when you had the chance but what shocks him is that you stayed. There's a voice in his head that tells him that what you two had can never remain permanent but he held onto his beliefs that he could make you stay no matter how difficult the game was.

"Because I fucking love you too much Tooru! God if I could just- get it out of my fucking veins then maybe I could realize how I've gone into a trap instead." You shouted, walking towards him with both your eyes wishing for it to be over.

"What trap are you talking about Y/N! I love you just as much as you did and I tried to make things work but it- isn't working anymore." His voice fades with his ending sentence while you've gone to a corner, sobbing and sliding off the wall, sitting on the floor as every ounce of love dies on you when you hear him.

"I don't know- it's a word that I can never know what it means- I can admit that it is scary." You said looking at the night sky, with your knees to your chest as Oikawa smiles fondly at your words.

"What's so scary about falling in love?"

You look at him before answering.

"Everything."

"Maybe I can show you that it can be beautiful." He says, staring into your orbs. You smiled at his words before resting your hand on top of his while he blushes before intertwining them.

"What if it hurts?" You ask him, adjusting your position as you listened to his convincing words.

"Love always hurts." He says sadly, chuckling in order to ease how bitter it was. He sees how your reaction didn't falter because you knew it was true, so with his hand lifting your chin to meet his eyes, he speaks.

"But that doesn't mean I can't take some of the pain away."

You felt Oikawas presence beside you as he leans his head on your shoulder closing his eyes as two people were tired of ripping each others heart.

"Maybe you should set me free." You whispered, your voice gave out, like your last words. Oikawa sucks in a harsh breath as you close your own eyes and he sees the final tear fall from your cheek.

"But I really don't want to."

#haikyu x reader #haikyuu!!#oikawa x you #oikawa tooru #oikawa x reader #oikawa imagine #oikawa x y/n #hq oikawa #iwaizumi x you #hq iwaizumi #hajime iwaizumi #mattsukawa issei #hanamaki takahiro #aoba jōsai

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mandakatt · 3 years

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DMC Fic - Feeling of Familiarity - Dante Sparda & Nero Sparda

A/N: Here's the piece I did for the @jackpot-dantezine and since bundles are being shipped, I get the chance to share this one with you!

Characters: Dante Sparda, Nero Sparda, Trish, Credo, Vergil (Mention) Word Count: 2474 Warnings: Blood and Injury, Canon Compliant (I guess that's a warning? XD) Summary: Dante had come to Fortuna to 'check' into the collectors he'd heard about, and while he's taking care of that problem, he finds himself face to face with a young man that makes him think of Vergil.

Why though?

Why does this young cocky kid get his blood to sing with the feeling of familiarity?

And why does he want to protect him so badly?

“‘See you there’, she said. ‘This will be fun,’ she said...”

Dante grumbled softly to himself as he perched himself over one of the many stained glass windows of the opera house to look down at the congregation below, and he couldn’t help but huff out a little laugh.

"The Order of the Sword huh? Well...so much for hoping you were just a bunch of collectors.”

With a sigh he crouched himself down to listen for a moment, and he couldn’t help but cringe as he wiggled a finger into his ear. The Vicar, or whatever this demon wanted to call himself, was rambling on about a Savior, and it was totally getting on his nerves.

“Geeze, this guy can talk…”

He can feel the call of the Yamato nearby but it’s very distant and dulled, almost as if it was buried underground. It reminded him of how one felt when waking up from an all night bender, and he sort of huffed at the irony of the thought, considering the way the shop looked when he left.

With a sigh he stood up, and rolled his shoulders. “Well, no time like the present…” with a smirk he decided that a grand entrance; like always, is the way he should get things started.

Crashing into the opera house like a damned vigilante, he manages to shut up the Vicar himself with one very well-placed and up-close shot to the head. With that out of the way, Dante stands slowly, feeling his blood singing again as he turns his head to look around at what could be calling to him only to go wide-eyed as his gaze falls on a young man with stark white hair and the first thing that comes to mind is the word family.

But before he can figure out who or what he’s really looking at, he gets swarmed with demons, and with humans scrambling around and screaming to flee that makes this a bit more difficult. Immediately he considers how best to keep these things distracted long enough for the humans to escape, but then that familiar scent of fear fills his nostrils. His head snaps down to look at the woman at his feet, to tell her to not be afraid but the next thing he knows he’s got a pair of boots in his face. It takes all of his self control to not burst out laughing as he rights himself and draws his guns, giving off a soft huff he smirks as he stares this kid down, only to feel like he’s looking at a much younger version of his brother.

Well now...

It isn’t long before he finds himself clashing swords and once again he’s hit by a sudden rush of familiarity, as if there’s something about this cocky, loud, hot-tempered kid that makes his blood sing with the memory of Vergil, and he finds himself pushing this kid to the brink just to truly see what he’s capable of.

Suddenly the overwhelming need to protect this kid slaps him in the face.

He wants to help him redirect that anger into something more powerful. Guide him and teach him things that he was positive he didn’t know he could do already. Things that no one ever taught him when he was his age, and alone.

Yet those rambling thoughts are what distracts him enough that he’s suddenly taking several punches to the face. The devil in him grows angry at the situation and he feels the want to shift, and actually partly does so.

Alright Kid, you’ve made your point. Seems—

Suddenly, he’s weightless, and right after the wind gets knocked out of him, the Rebellion rips through his chest and he slams against the statue of Sparda. He stares down at it in disbelief for a moment before he lets his arms droop down to his sides with a soft sigh.

—Heh. Well that’s a case of some serious deja vu. And with my own sword no less!

Okay. So he might have just underestimated this kid just a little bit.

With a grunt he pushes himself free of the statue and lands on his feet to slowly pull the Rebellion free from his chest. He finds himself sort of encouraging this kid, explaining that he’s sure that he and this kid are the same, yet different from the demons that litter the floor around them, and when the kid turns to look he leaves the same way he got into the opera house, giving the kid a cheeky salute on his way out.

When he meets the kid again he can feel the anger radiating off him in waves, see it in the way this kid’s arm glows with power, and he knows that the Yamato is feeding from that anger. In the short time he’s followed this kid around, he’s never seen him be this sloppy, and it irritates him at how easily he knocks this kid off balance by preventing him from pulling his arm away.

They clash swords and Dante doesn’t feel the same adrenaline rush as when they met, he knows there’s too much anger running through this kid’s head.

“You cooled off yet kid?” he pants softly as he looms over him. “What’s the matter? Why the glare?”

“You look as if you’ve just been playing me from the beginning.”

And Dante swears that hurts almost as much as when this kid pinned him to the stature in the opera house. He immediately backs off, resting the Rebellion on his shoulder as he tells him about the Yamato.

How it needs to stay in the family.

And when this kid desperately says that he needs it...

Well shit, you’re not making this easy on me are ya Kid?

“Then keep it,” Dante tells him with a smirk. “Now that you’re calm and cool you can get goin’...”

The kid stands there for a moment before moving past him, but before he gets too far he calls out to him.

“Hey! What’s your name?”

“Nero…You’re Dante right?”

With a light nod of his head he knows this kid—Nero—doesn’t see he watches him stalk off before he’s met by Trish, and he can’t help but tease her on how she’s dressed.

“Are you sure you wanna let him go?”

“Yeah...I figure he can bear the burden.”

His father could handle that blade without a problem.

“Well, if the kid screws up, then I’ll just have to kick his ass.”

Though the next time they cross paths his heart leaps up into his throat when he hears Nero’s desperate anguished cry for Credo. It’s a familiar sound as he knows he made a similar sound when he lost Vergil, and he finds himself catching Credo out of the air as gently as he’s able.

The Vicar rambles on about how ‘Gloria’ didn’t anticipate a descendant of Sparda’s blood, and his own sings with anger, and now he’s going to distract the Vicar just enough to give Nero a fighting chance.

“Hey Kid! You giving up so soon?”

“My options...are limited…”

Dante scoffs. “So melodramatic.” C’mon, don’t give up Kid... “Besides, if you die without giving my sword back, I’m gonna be pissed!” You’re not beaten yet!

He finds himself taking several steps forward with the want to save him only to blink as Nero gives him the bird and tells him to come and get it. Blinking in disbelief, he stares at the Savior where Nero was, before a smirk pulls at his lips.

“Heh, what a punk…” and a moment later the statue rises into the sky and he finds himself huffing out a laugh at the size of the Savior. “Check it out, it’s got wings!”

The groan and cough behind him causes him to turn to look at Credo, and he knows sadly that there is no coming back from a wound like that, but first, he’s hoping to get some answers.

“Hey. Where’s that thing going? It’s not complete yet is it?” he crouches down near him.

“It is in his heart to save the world from chaos...He will begin by driving it out.”

I see this is another familiar song and dance…

“Now he has what he needs. Yamato.”

Dante sighs as he looks from Trish back to Credo as he tells him what they want to use the sword for. How the Vicar wants to use the Yamato to open the Hell Gate, the real Hell Gate that lies dormant beneath the city, and Dante finds himself looking up at Trish.

“I think you...the son of the Dark Knight Sparda...are the only one that can stop the Savior now…Dante...”

Sighing a little through his nose as Trish starts to tease him about his reputation, he looks up at the Savior with his hands on his hips and huffs.

“Looks that way…” and he turns to look as Credo struggles to get to his feet, pain and loss all over his face and Dante’s heart goes out to the guy. He understands that he never wanted his sibling involved in any of this. He understands what it feels like to lose your family.

“Please… honor one last request…” Credo pants softly, groanings between words. “Save them. Kyrie and…Nero…” he moves to step forward as if he means to chase them when his body gives out.

Dante gently reaches out to place his hand on his chest to stop him, only to sigh and slowly sink down to his knee as Credo’s body dissipates. Instead of it being an energy that he’s used to, that colorless sort of dark matter, this glows warm and floats up into the sky. He feels a sudden sense of loss, and a twist of anger in his gut as he stares at his hand.

“I’ll do it…” he growls as he takes a deep breath and his tone changes as he gets to his feet. “I wouldn’t want to deny anyone their dying request.”

“I’ll sweep the city and evacuate the people.”

“Hey! Is this your way of ditching and dumping this mess on—”

“You wanna switch?”

When Trish rounds on him he stands there, his mouth agape at the look she gives him and he lifts his hands in submission. He knows that she really can tell how angry he is at this whole thing. Because no one else, family or not, should have to go through what he and his brother had.

“It’s cool!” Dante finally relents as he turns to leave. “Let’s stick to the plan.”

He goes after Devil Arms, and hell gates, and when he uses the Yamato to split a hell gate in two he knows it won’t be long before the Savior is focused on him.

“You get it back?”

Dante lifts the Yamato up, showing Trish the blade.

“That’s one sword....” he sighs and sounds almost weary.

“And one to go.”

With the Savior now looming closer he scowls, he knows that Nero is still in there somewhere, he can feel him, but he can’t tell exactly where the kid is and despite wanting to use the Yamato to destroy it he knows if he does, he’ll lose Nero in the process.

He can’t lose him too.

He can’t.

He has Trish go after the others, asking her to make sure they are safe as he starts off after the Savior, and he loses himself in the fight. It isn’t long before he sinks the Yamato deep into its chest, then calls for Nero.

“Time to wake up Kid! You’re missing out on all the fun!” and when he can’t feel him for a brief moment, his heart stops.

“Nero!”

Ah! There you are. Shit. Don’t scare a guy like that.

“Do what you gotta do kid, cause I’m about to send this guy on a one way trip to Hell!”

A fight with something so large is more annoying than anything, and he can feel Nero growing stronger with each swing of the Rebellion, almost as if he is empowering each step that Kid is making. He finds himself smirking a moment later when he realizes that the fight is over as he watches Nero land on his feet, with Kyrie in his arms.

“Took your time.”

“What, you looking for an apology?”

With a smirk he turns to face him and gestures with a flourish. “Well, how long am I going to have to wait for it?”

Only to scowl when the Savior moves again.

Dante turns to finish it off when Nero prevents him from doing so by passing him the sword of Sparda. With a smirk he stands there, keeping a simple vigil over Kyrie as his blood sings again with familiarity as Nero’s devil side awakens further and he watches with amusement as this kid crushes the Savior’s skull.

“I guess I should thank you…”

When Nero walks up to him again with the Yamato in hand he feels the want to protect ebb a little as he turns to face him.

“But that would be out of character,” Dante smirks. “Maybe you should just throw an insult my way instead.”

“Yeah, that sounds better, but still, I owe ya.”

Dante finds himself wanting to tell him about his Father, his family, of how damned proud of him they all would be, but the words die in his throat, and with a bit of a smile, he tries to act nonchalant.

“Ah, don’t sweat it, I had my reasons for helping.” with a gentle pat on Nero’s shoulder he starts to leave. “Take care of yourself.”

“Wait, you forgot this.”

He pauses and turns to face him with a slight smile. “Keep it.”

“What? I thought this meant a lot to you..?”

“Well, that’s the only type of gift worth giving.” Dante’s voice grows soft and fond. “I want to entrust it to you, so I am.”

Your father would want you to have it.

Before he gets too emotional he becomes aloof and takes a step back from him with a grin.“What you do from here, is your call.” He turns to leave.

There’s still demons on the loose in Fortuna; he can’t just leave them to run amok after all.

“Hey Dante? Will we meet again…?”

With a gentle wave over his shoulder as he heads back toward the city to catch up with Trish, he knows that he won’t be letting Nero out of his sight for too long. Not just because he knows he has a thing or three to teach this kid about hunting devils, but because you stick with family, no matter what.

“Don’t worry, Kid,” he mumbles under his breath. “Your Uncle Dante will watch out for ya...”

#Meraki #Dante Sparda #DMC Dante #Nero Sparda #DMC Nero #TW Blood #TW Injury #Dante Zine #DMC Fanzine #Jackpot a Dante Fanzine #Uncle Dante

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villainousshakespeare · 3 years

Text

Learning a Lesson Chapter 1

Young Actor Tom Hiddleston/OFC

Rated E - Eventual Smut, Angst, Complicated Relationship - Teacher/Actor Posing as Student, Feels, Flirting, Fluff

Summary: It's your first day as a teacher and things are going well. That is, until a tall, gorgeous boy with blond curls and dramatic ways saunters into your last class. When he ignores all the swooning girls to flirt outrageously with you, it is secretly thrilling. Even more so is when he tries to steal a kiss after class ends. How long will you be able to keep your defenses up?

Up and Coming actor Tom is under cover in high school for research for a movie, but the pretty drama teacher is making the long assignment so much more enjoyable!

This was inspired by a dream I had. I opted to turn the main character into a young teacher instead of a student, just due to my own neurosis. Will probably be in a bout 4 parts... we shall see...

@arch-venus25, @caffiend-queen @ciaodarknessmyheart @frostbitten-written @just-the-hiddles @kellatron55 @myoxisbroken @nonsensicalobsessions @poetic-fiasco @shiningloki @shae-annelore @thecutestlittlebunbunfairy @hiddlesholic @yespolkadotkitty @vodka-and-some-sass @wolfsmom1 @tom-hlover @toozmanykids

The day had been going surprisingly well, if Emily did say so herself. All of her classes had seemed engaged in the material to some extent, and no one jumped out at her as an obvious juvenile delinquent bent on disrupting things. Of course, it was the first day of the school year and things could change, but with just one class to go she was feeling pretty satisfied with herself.

That was all about to change.

It was her first official day as a teacher. She had student taught, of course, but this was different. These kids were hers to mold and teach. It helped that most of the morning classes had been freshmen and sophomores. She had always looked young for her age, and she had already been asked once for a hall pass that afternoon between classes. It was embarrassing, but hardly unexpected. Soon she hoped that everyone would realize that she was faculty and not, in fact, attending herself.

Her last class was the one she had been both dreading and excited about all day. Senior Elective - Drama. It was her one chance to teach the subject that she loved the most. American and World literature were fine, of course, but she was a theater geek at heart. Teaching students who chose to study some of the most important plays in history, what could be better? She just hoped that they didn't all tower over her and decide that she couldn't possibly be the boss of them at her age.

The first few students to enter gave her hope. Three girls, giggling together in hushed voices, entered the room. She sized them up instantly - smart, a bit nerdy, and certain to turn into stunners in a few years' time. They smiled shyly at her as one, and Emily grinned in return, instructing them to sit anywhere they liked. As the others trickled in, began to breath easy. A few of the honor society kids, a couple who bore the stamp of musical theater unmistakably, and one or two who obviously were there simply because it sounded like an easy A that they could sleep through. Well, they would learn soon enough. Theater was a participatory activity in her mind. Still, the ten girls and three boys seated before her were hardly the type to strike fear into her heart, even if some of them did have several inches on her. She could do this!

The bell was still ringing when the door opened again and a tall, lanky boy backed in, calling jovially to some person still in the hallway. His voice was surprisingly deep, and contained a laughter that sounded infectious. Emily waited impatiently for him to conclude his conversation, foot tapping and lips pursed. When he finally turned around, she felt as though she had been punched in the gut.

He was certainly tall, easily topping 6 feet as he slouched against the door frame, insouciant smile on his face. A halo of wild, noodle like blonde curls framed his face, artlessly falling across his forehead in a manner designed to make one want to reach out and brush them back. His eyes, a stunning blue that ought to be illegal, were framed by obscenely long eyelashes and, if she were not mistaken, a light touch of eyeliner to make them all the worse. Cheekbones sharp enough to cut were hidden beneath just the right amount of residual baby fat to make him appear mischievous rather than outright dangerous, but she was not certain she should trust that assumption. A black t shirt and baggy black pants draped over his long, lean lines, accessorized with black and silver jewelry at his his wrist, waist, and neck, and a silver bar through the top of one ear.

Good lord above, her high school fantasy had just sauntered into the class she was supposed to be teaching! And Emily was not entirely sure that she had surrendered that fantasy as completely as she had hoped! Certainly her confidence, riding high just seconds before, was suddenly plummeting as the young stud slowly surveyed the class, enjoying the obvious attention his late entrance and stunning looks had provoked.

"Take a seat please, you're late," Emily said stridently, hating how forced her voice sounded.

"Apologies, I got turned around. Luckily some girls were nice enough to show me the way."

No doubt, she thought as he loped to the front of the class and sat in the desk immediately in front of her. And god almighty, was that an English accent? From the way most of the girls and two of the three boys in the class were twittering behind him she was certain she had heard correctly. He looked up at her with a cocksure smile on his face and she felt an absurd wave of embarrassment, as though he could read exactly what she had been thinking about him.

"So," he asked, extending his long legs out from under the desk until the toe of one booted foot almost touched hers, "when does the teacher get here?"

"I am the teacher," Emily tried to keep the consternation from her voice as she retreated behind her desk, hoping for some sort of barrier between her and the living temptation seated before her. Blindly she pointed to where "Miss Temple" was written on the chalk board, as though that would prove something.

"Impossible. You're far too young and attractive to be the teacher," he pronounced, openly giving her a once over as the rest of the class snickered.

Emily clenched her hands to keep from tugging down her skirt to make it longer. It hit a respectable length at just above her knee, but the way he looked speculatively at her legs she wished it hit the floor. Still, she was not about to let this smug little (or, well, not so little) popinjay rattle her.

"I am old enough. And you will find that there are no rules about a teacher's appearance," she told him. "But thank you all the same Mr -"

"Martinsson," he told you. "But you can call me Tom. And you are?"

"Very well, Tom," she sighed, ignoring the question. "Now, if I may begin the class?"

He waved his hand in a magnanimous gesture that left her unsure whether to laugh or roll her eyes or smack his smug, pretty face. She settled for turning on her heal and pulling her copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare out of her tote bag, wishing she couldn't feel his eyes on her backside as she bent over. Pants. She would definitely be wearing pants from now on.

"Shakespeare?" one of the musical theater kids groaned. "I thought this class was going to be fun!"

"Kiss me Kate is Shakespeare," the aptly named Kate, one of the honors girls, shot back, "and so is West Side Story!"

"It's less boring with songs," the boy muttered, making most of the others laugh in agreement.

"Dude, Shakespeare isn't boring!" Emily's heretofore nemesis said, turning to look disgustedly at the poor boy behind him. "Not if you have a thought in your head, at any rate!"

"See," Kate preened, trying to catch Tom's eye as the other boy squirmed.

"It's just stuffy old men shouting made up words at each other," one of the suspected lazy kids argued.

"Not if you do it right!" Tom insisted.

Before Emily could think to move, he unfolded his body from beneath the little wooden desk and dropped to his knees on the floor directly in front of her and began speaking with dramatic flourish.

"Teach not thy lips such scorn, for they were made For kissing, lady, not for such contempt. If thy revengeful heart cannot forgive, Lo, here I lend thee this sharp-pointed sword; Which if thou please to hide in this true bosom."

As a gasp went through the class, Tom yanked up his shirt to bare a chest more well defined than she would have imagined. Not, of course, that she had any business imagining anything at all. He thrust a pencil into her hand and held it against the naked skin, continuing his soliloquy:

"And let the soul forth that adoreth thee, I lay it naked to the deadly stroke, And humbly beg the death upon my knee. Nay, do not pause; for I did kill King Henry, But 'twas thy beauty that provoked me. Nay, now dispatch; 'twas I that stabb'd young Edward, But 'twas thy heavenly face that set me on. Take up the sword again, or take up me."

Emily stared, mouth gaping at the young man on his knees before her, pressing her hand to his flesh, and felt a wild urge to pull him up and kiss him senseless. The raw passion that he had infused his words with echoed in the room, impossible to miss. The lines had been rushed, and he stumbled once over the wording, but there was no faulting the fervor with which they were delivered.

After a moment of silent awe, the class erupted in spontaneous applause as he smirked and pulled himself to his feet, bringing Emily's hand to his mouth to kiss it in a ridiculous show of stage chivalry that made the class giggle but sent electricity coursing through her body. She snatched her hand back took a step away from him as he turned to bow to his cheering classmates.

"Was that Romeo?" one of the girls asked fatuously.

"No," he said disdainfully. "Romeo was a twat too stupid to think through a plan or trust his woman. That was Richard the Third."

"And does she take him?" the girl asked giggling.

"Oh, she does alright," he said with a wink. "Then he uses her to secure his kingdom, kills her, and moves on the next princess. But still, you can feel his seduction in the words."

Emily watched the girl struggle to come to terms with that information and felt a pang of sympathy for her. She had the sense that this was a man, a boy she reminded herself, who often had that effect on people.

"That was, er, quite the performance Mr. Martinsson," she attempted to wrench the class back. "And I agree, Shakespeare is far from boring. We will not, however, be reading Richard III right now. I thought we would start with something a bit more light. Much Ado About Nothing. Now, if you would all take out your books, I will assign parts."

"I'm afraid I don't have a book," it was Tom, of course. "We didn't move here in time for me to pick one up from the library."

"Very well, you can use mine," she sighed, glad she knew all the characters from memory.

Tom got up again, Emily wondered if he was capable of sitting still, and walked around her desk. He towered over her as he crossed behind her, and his arm casually and quite inappropriately draped around her shoulders as he passed. She twitched to dislodge him, and he shot her a guilty but hardly repentant grin in response.

"The book, Mr. Martinsson," Emily all but hissed.

"Thanks," he said, hand grazing over hers as he lifted the big tome and walked back to the desk.

"Now," she said, struggling to push down the effect he had had on her when standing so close in her space, "who wants to be Beatrice, the female lead?"

All of the female hands shot up instantly. She could hardly blame them. There was only one choice to read Benedick, and everyone knew it. Briefly she considered casting him as Claudio, or better yet, Dogberry, just to spite them all. For some reason the thought of him flirting in verse with one of these cloying little girls made her irritable. For better or worse though, her love of the play won out over her misplaced jealousy. Tom was Benedick, and Jamie, a quiet, studious girl Emily liked on sight was Beatrice. A ripple of resentment made Jamie shrink back a bit, but Emily still thought she was pleased with being cast. Who wouldn't be?

"Mr. Martinsson," Emily said as the closing bell rang, signaling the end of the class and the day, "please stay behind. I would like a word with you."

Rather than looking at all put out, Tom's face broke into that smug smile she were beginning to realize was a habitual look for him. She waited for the mob of loitering girls to finally take the hint and reluctantly leave before shutting the door behind him and turning to see him perched on the edge of her desk.

"I was hoping you'd keep me," he said confidently. "I thought you might."

"Yes well," Emily found her mouth was dry and suddenly regretted closing the door. It would look foolish to open it again though, so she tried to pull herself together. "I think we need to talk about your behavior."

"My behavior?" he asked, looking amused.

"Yes, it was highly inappropriate for class," she scolded.

"What was? My pointing out that you were attractive?"

"Among other things. Flirting with me, kissing my hand," somehow when she listed his crimes they didn't sound nearly as bad as they had seemed at the time. If any other student had acted in such a way, she realized, she would have laughed it off and set them in their place. It was only because it was him, so attractive and utterly beyond her touch, that it was a problem.

"I apologize if I embarrassed you," he said, which wasn't really the point. "But you must know that you are very attractive. Very desirable. I would have to be blind not to notice it."

"Tom - I just said -"

"That it was inappropriate for class. We're not in class now. And you can't tell me you're not attracted to me as well. I can tell."

"That's not the point. You are a student. A child."

"I'm 18 last week," he corrected, sounding offended. "And you can't be older than 25. That's hardly enough of a difference to matter."

"There are plenty of attractive girls your own age," she said, hating them all.

"Stupid, vapid girls," he muttered.

"I'm your teacher," she said again, wondering who she was trying to convince.

"Then you don't want me to kiss you?" he asked, hopping off the desk and suddenly standing very close and towering over her.

"It's not appropriate," Emily gulped out, repeating herself.

"You didn't answer my question."

"Look, I'm not saying you're not attractive," she licked her lips and struggled to keep her thoughts together as he took another step towards he.

"You think I'm attractive?"

"You know you are, that is not the point."

"And what is the point?"

"The point is, it's wrong!"

"The point is, you want me to kiss you."

"Tom. Mr. Martinsson -"

"Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me, and I'll stop."

His hand had circled around her and was somehow at the back of her neck, forcing her to look up at him. He was enveloping her. His scent, his body heat, his bright, accented eyes, all clouded her mind and made it hard to think. His head was moving towards hers, and she knew it would be a kiss to make her toes curl.

"You're wrong," Emily gasped, closing her eyes and waiting for his lips to meet hers.

"Liar," he whispered, a mere breath away from her lips.

Dropping his hand, Tom stepped away and smiled down at her with something close to scorn in his eyes.

"I expected more from you," he told her. "I hope next time you can be honest with us both."

As she struggled to return her breathing to normal, he turned and walked out of the classroom, leaving Emily reeling.

***

"How'd it go?" his director Jonesy asked him again, making his teeth clench.

"As I said," he repeated. "Just the never ending tedium of high school. God, the U.S. version is even worse than ours was!"

"Beginning to regret asking for this?" Jonesy chuckled.

Tom considered it. He had been excited when he was cast in the new film being directed by an up and coming indie director. He was young, and what few jobs he had been given had been in period pieces of the waistcoat and ascot variety. Playing a troubled teenager in a gritty coming of age story was not something he wanted to let pass him by.

Still, considering that his own education had been at the posh British public school of Eton, proverbial School of Kings, he had been feeling ill prepared for the role. To rectify the problem, he had asked to be placed in an American school for a month. The first day had certainly been an eyeopener, that was certain.

"No," he said. "Regretting the homework though."

"I thought you were supposed to be a troubled kid," Jonesy laughed. "Blow it off!"

He agreed with a laugh, but knew it wasn't quite true. There was one assignment he planned to do to the best of his ability. Shakespeare deserved no less, and neither did she. Miss Temple of the lovely legs and expressive eyes.

He had thought her a student at first, and was disgusted with himself for how attracted he was to her. The pretty skirt was just short enough to show her knee, and the blouse hinted at enticing curves that he couldn't help noticing. When he realized she was in fact the teacher, and a Shakespeare teacher at that, he couldn't resist. He was supposed to be a dramatic kid, very well. He would use it to his advantage. It had almost killed him to flub the line near the end, but he didn't want to show his hand as an actor on the first day and ruin all the work the studio had done to arrange this for him.

He hadn't really expected her to respond to him. When she did, even though she tried to fight it, he could feel the electricity. He had not been so drawn to a woman in ages. Damn the stupid disguise!

He had wanted to kiss her desperately. Added a year to the age he was meant to be playing in an attempt to convince her it was not the worst idea in the world. He knew she had wanted it too. It was only his strict code that had made him pull back at the last minute. She said no, even if they both knew she didn't mean it. Very well, he would just have to try harder next time. It would lend some excitement to what had so far been a less than thrilling assignment. He would learn about American high school life, and she would be his sweet reward. It was only a matter of time.

#Tom Hiddleston #Tom Hiddleston fic #tom hiddleston rpf #Young!Tom Hiddleston #YoungActor!Tom #teacher/student #but not really #he is in disguise for a role #eventual smut #fluff #angst #forbidden relationship #shameless flirting #Tom does not play fair #dream inspired

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oftenderweapons · 4 years

Text

The Studio — Hoseok

Pairing: Hoseok x reader (nicknamed Giggles)

Wordcount: 9.6k words

Genre: (lots of) smut, angst, final fluff

Rating: 18+

Hello cuties! Welcome back! I had assumed I would be done with Hobi’s piece in the studio quite soon, however it took me some extra hours. Writing it was extremely difficult! Let me remind you that this is NSFW, so minors, please do not read or interact.

PSA — If you’re interested, I was thinking of making a taglist, so you’ll receive a note on your activity feed whenever I publish a new piece (since I know sometimes app notifications do not work). Also, in the next two or three weeks I’ll be busy with university, so I don’t think I’ll be able to write full one-shots. This means I’ll be posting small drabbles that will help me lay the groundwork for all the filth I’ve been storing away from you (and that I’ve hinted in the masterlist). The polls will stay open and you’ll be able to vote for next prompt, however it will take me a while before I start writing again according to your requests.

This piece is a one shot and it takes place in some indefinite future in the official timeline, shortly after him and Giggles have moved in together (quick reminder, Giggles is the nickname he has given the reader, however if you want to know how I imagined her, you can find her headcanons here).

Synopsis: Giggles has been a little uncomfortable after she has moved into his apartment, mostly because his job has kept him from going back home. After a week of struggle, she heads to Hoseok’s studio to grab her man with the help of special weapons.

DESCRIPTION AND TRIGGER WARNINGS: angst at the beginning, reader is upset and cries. Other than that, this is filthy. NSFW, contains several BDSM themes, such as domination (Dom!reader, Switch!Hoseok and a fluffy dose of vanilla sex because I needed to cleanse my soul), rope bondage (wrists), blindfold, sensation play and mild impact play (flogger, hinted riding crop and tickler), pretty intense edging, teasing, oral sex and masturbation (both male and female receiving), squirting, MULTIPLE ROUNDS (it’s Hoseok, come on!). Emotionally challenging: Hoseok feels guilty as hell, reader is quite angry, but they’re both lovesick puppies by the end of it. Special warning: one bratty Jimin appears at the end of the piece.

Word count: 9.6k

Here is my masterlist! Enjoy!!!

——————————————————

A lowfi mix came from behind Hoseok’s door. He was probably just chilling as he worked on something else. It wasn’t uncommon for him to listen to random stuff as he looked for inspiration, especially since he was currently trying to work with a more old school R’n’B vibe. He had a new artist he wanted to collaborate with and this new genre was becoming increasingly challenging, especially since he wanted it to have that early Two-thousand flow, reminding him of that time he had started venturing into Western hip hop, thinking about dates and girls and teenage crushes.

The bag felt a bit heavier on your shoulder now that the music showed you his mindset. This could turn into a very one-of-a-kind type of night.

You knocked at the door. The music turned down a notch, as if he wasn’t quite sure he had heard right.

Hesitantly, shutting your eyes tight, you knocked harder before pressing your hand to your chest, curling around it in fear. Hoseok could be harsh when interrupted: though he usually realised and apologised, seeing him mildly disappointed always gave you a chill down your spine, and not the good one.

His shadow appeared from behind the opaque glass door.

The door unlocked and opened. “Hey, hello there.” His expression was blank for a second before he realised you were quite neutral, as if trying to square yourself before seeing him.

Something caved in your chest. He had deep, dark circles under his eyes. “Hi.”

“Are you coming in?” He asked.

“I only wanted to ask when you’re coming back home.” You said, your lip slightly trembling.

He blinked.

“I’ve texted you and called you, but you didn’t reply.”

He blinked twice. “What time is it?”

You exhaled and made to turn around and walk away.

“Giggles.” He called, chasing after you and catching you in his arms, backhugging you. “Baby.”

“No. I’m done with baby and all of that. I’m fucking done.” Tears started falling. Your plan had gone to hell. All your mental briefings and getting yourself in the right mindset were useless by now. The bag made you feel twice as frustrated. “I am tired, Hoseok.”

That made him feel like a scolded puppy. You had never uses that tone with him, never used his full name while scolding him.

“I am tired.” Now that your first tear was spilled, all the others came out without any control. “I am exhausted.”

He pressed you harder into him. “I promise it will end soon.” He smiled as he saw you turn and hide into him.

“I am tired of your promises. You made me move in and then disappeared for a week straight. I don’t know where I can put my stuff, I had to handle transport, to talk with my landlord, to do everything by myself. And I’ve been doing double shifts all week. I am raw with exhaustion and I’ve had absolutely zero support.” You sobbed, pressing your pointer finger into his chest, before laying your punch against his breastbone, angry and tired and accusing. “You were supposed to be my certainty but you gave me fucking nothing.” He flinched when he heard you swore. You never swear at him. The fact that you’ve done it twice in the same argument spoke volumes about how angry you were. “You were supposed to give me certainties. But you don’t even answer to my texts.” You punched him weakly. “I hate you so much.”

Now he was worried. Heavily worried. Anxious. “Let’s get in the studio, ____. Come on, love.”

“I don’t want to come in.”

He shook his head, tipping your chin back. “I said, come in.”

“You don’t get to order me around, Hoseok. Not like this. I’ve been doing everything you’ve asked me. I’ve been saying ‘yes, sir’ to every single one of your requests and look where that brought me.” You shoved your face away, out of his grasp.

He cupped your face with both hands. “Look at me.” He ordered. He tried again, softening his voice, panicking as you strongly opposed. “Look at me, little bird.”

You obeyed. It was the fucking nickname’s fault.

“Come in with me. I want to talk about this, make up for my mistakes.” He dried your tears with his thumbs. “I want you to tell me how to fix this. What you want me to do.” He combed your hair back with gentle fingers. “You say I keep ordering you around, and that has made you unhappy. I want to turn the tables. Let you order me what to do.” He started taking tiny steps backwards, toward his door, waddling with you in your arms. “This is the last time I beg you to do what I’ve asked you, for tonight. After this you’re absolutely free, Giggles. It’s all up to you, but please, let’s talk it out in my studio.”

You sniffled. “Okay.”

“Thank you.” He smiled weakly.

You followed him.

The studio was clad in soft lights, the bass of the song making the air in the room feel like a warm, inviting, sultry cocoon. He moved to the desk, making the music nothing but a quiet whisper. “Let’s sit on the sofa over there, yeah?” He sat down and patted the cushion beside him.

Reluctantly, you sat down, removing your jacket and placing the bag beside you, on the floor.

“I made a mistake. I didn’t support you. I am sorry. I’ve been busy with my job but that is not an excuse, nor a good reason to disappear while you’re struggling.” He admitted.

“I’ve been sleeping in that bed alone for a week. It was heartbreaking.” You said with a furrowed brow and a pout. “It hurt so much that sadness became anger.”

He combed his hair with his hands. “I fucked up.”

“You did.” You confirmed. “I can handle a bit of loneliness. I’ve been alone for a long time. But that hurts inside your house.”

“It’s our house now.” He argued, deeply unhappy.

“Is it now?” You accused.

You saw his expression turn hurtful. “Are you going to leave?” He said, afraid that that would be his punishment. He knew there would be a price to pay, he just hoped it wouldn’t cost him his whole happiness with you.

“I can’t handle it now. Plus I don’t have much choice. It’s either there or my parents but I can’t move out of the city and do double shifts at work.” You said. “I’m stuck here because I trusted you. Because I gave up all my alternatives for you. You told me to trust you, that I could count on you. What am I going to do now?”

You looked so broken. He felt his eyes well with tears. His voice came out shaky. “Tell me what to do. Anything.”

“You’re gonna do what you want anyways.” You said, a bit hostile.

“No. Please, can you tell me what to do?” He tried to hold your hand. You let him.

“I want you home tonight.” You said, naming your price.

“Okay.” He felt ready to do anything. If you asked him to fly all the way to Paris and bring a box of macarons, champagne and fresh red roses, he would simply whip his phone out and look for the next flight. Fuck, he would teach himself how to fly a plane if need be.

“I want you home every night for the next week. I want dinner together.” You said, punching your index finger into your thigh. “You can use your home studio after dinner, I don’t care, you can stay up all night, but I swear if I have to fall asleep one more night alone in that damn bed, I’m going to gut you.”

“Okay.” He hadn’t come back home because he knew that having you around would mean getting no work done, as he much preferred giving you attention and laying down with you, watching a movie or putting to good use that big bed of his.

“And I want cuddles.”

“Yes, love.”

“Daily cuddles.”

He smiled as you contested like a child. “Yes, little bird.”

“And I want sex at least once a week for the next month.” You said, knowing that you could have much better than that, but you were aiming at the bare minimum.

“Once a week?” He asked, a bit dumbfounded.

“At least.”

That had him nodding. “Can do.”

“Pinkie promise.”

He smiled wider, hooking his pinkie with yours. “Pinkie promise.” As you pressed your thumbs together, sealing the deal, he brought your hand to his lips, kissing your knuckles. “What now? Can I hug you?”

“No. Go lock the door.” He looked at you dubious.

“Lock it.” You repeated.

He stood up and obeyed. “Now what?”

The negotiation had set you back into your original path. You had come for revenge and you were ready to execute it. “On your chair.” He was going to see how it feels to be powerless. Lost. Alone.

His heartbeat started increasing. He wanted to see where your plan was going to take him. He sat on his chair. “Here.”

“Close your eyes.” Your voice shook a little. You cleared it and said again: “Close your eyes, now.”

He bit his lip. He was getting turned on. A part of himself asked him how sick he must be for this, but he followed your lead, closing his eyes and laying his hands on the armrests. “Are you going to punish me?”

You shook your head before realising that he couldn’t see your movements. “I am going to do as I please.”

He snickered.

“Quiet.” You warned quietly.

He licked his lips and regained his composure. “Sorry.”

You bent and opened the bag. You found your first bundle and started unraveling it, walking back and forth in front of the sofa, stopping with your back to him.

“Take off your clothes.”

“Really?” He asked, incredulous.

“Do I look like I am joking?” You replied from over your shoulder.

“Okay.” He undressed quickly, letting his clothes fall to the floor. “Do you want me to...”

“Quiet.” You repeated.

He closed his eyes and bent his head down. He was naked on the chair, unsurprised by his own erection.

You took a few steps towards him. As soon as you reached him, you gave him further instructions. “Do not open your eyes. I am going to touch you but if you open your eyes, you won’t like the consequences.”

“Wait.” Hoseok murmured. “How are you feeling now?”

You stopped. “What do you mean?”

“Are you angry at me?” Hoseok asked, his voice meek, hesitant, unhappy. “I’ve never seen you like this. I’m worried.”

You couldn’t do this to him. You couldn’t tie him up and torture him to tears, break him like that. Even though you really wanted to.

“I’m angry a bit, yes.” You replied. You exhaled, waiting in silence.

“I don’t think we should be doing this, then.” He suggested quietly. “I’ll be honest. You’re scaring me a little.��

You placed the rope on top of the desk, out of his angle of vision. “Open your eyes”, you said, placing your hands on his cheeks. His stare met yours. “What if I tell you my plans and you tell me if you’re okay with it?”

He pressed his face against your belly, kissing it. “I’m so sorry.” He nuzzled into your shirt. “I feel so bad.”

You moved your hands from his cheeks to his hair. “This is how I’m helping you with your guilt.” You massaged his shoulders. “I want to take care of you. You must have been so stressed here.”

“I’m the one at fault. I should be the one taking care of you.” He said with big puppy eyes. He looked up at you with his chin propped against your stomach.

“You can take care of me by letting me take the lead. Right now I need to feel like I can control something.” You traced his lips with your thumb, your index finger tracing the ridge of his nose with its lovely curve.

“Then control me.” He said, puckering his lips around your thumb.

“Are you still scared of me?” You asked.

“I’m scared of you going too far or pushing myself too far to please you.” He confessed. “But it’s something unconscious. I know I can trust you.”

“Still, I could tell you my plans.” You suggested sweetly.

“I trust you.”

“You don’t have to do stuff you don’t feel like doing just to please me.” You reminded him politely.

“That’s why we have safewords. When I don’t feel good I’ll use them.” He said, matter-of-factly. “They’re not there only for you.” He smiled.

You were quite curious about how his nakedness seemed to unfaze him. But then again, after more than a year together, at this point nakedness in front of each other felt natural.

“Don’t push yourself just to please me.” You scolded him.

“I won’t. If I don’t feel good, we stop and I’ll make love to you.” He stated plainly.

You thought about it. After all this time you knew Hoseok’s limits and insecurities. “Okay.”

“Okay.” He settled back into his chair, his hands gripping the armrests. He closed his eyes. “I’m ready.”

His chest was so skinny. It felt like staring at a hummingbird. “Are you keeping your eyes closed or would you like a blindfold?”

He smiled. “Kinky.” He breathed out. He paused. “Blindfold.”

You smirked and grabbed it from your backpocket. You already knew he would have chosen to wear it. “I will touch you now Hoseok. Let’s see if you can recognise it.” You stretched towards the rope on his table, keeping it rolled up and brushing it gently against his face.

“Oh.” He rubbed his cheek against it, pressing his lips and then parting them to use his tongue. “I’m getting tied up, aren’t I?” He asked.

“Would you like to?” You asked. Blindfolded and tied up was always a daring combination. You had first done it for his birthday, but back then you hadn’t intended to overstimulate him to tears. That time you had simply used your advantage to give him the ride of his life, physically restraining him from taking control and straining himself to please you. The bondage technique had helped you keep him still long enough to relax. After almost literally sucking him dry, you had managed to ride him, watch him come apart for the fourth time and see him fall asleep like a kid at your side, not a care in the world. It had been a wildly satisfying experience.

“Are you going to use me like last time?” He asked, eyes still closed but his hands reaching out for you.

“Not really.” You commented. “I was thinking of something… softer? So to say.” You bit your lip. He couldn’t see your devious smile anyway.

“I’m interested.” He said, blindly running his hands down your thighs. “Tell me what to do.”

Clutching the rope between your thighs, you used one hand to comb his hair and trace the lovely lines of his face. “I’ll put the blindfold on you now, Hoseok. Is that okay, handsome?”

“Yes.” He said, his cheeks twitching with a small smile.

Putting a blindfold on someone else is a lot more difficult than it seems, however you managed to press the wide silken mask against his eyes, hooking the elastic band with your fingers and slipping it behind his head. “Is it safe?”

“Yes, Giggles.” He replied, turning his head in an attempt to kiss your wrist. You noticed the gesture and offered him your hand, brushing the back of it against his cheek. He managed to press his lips to your knuckles. “I love you.”

You bent down and let your lips hover over his. “Can you feel me?”

“So close.” He whispered. Sometimes he had this sixth sense, like his body — so used to perceive himself in time and space while dancing — had this special sensibility to closeness. Depriving him of sight made it look even more supernatural. It made you feel like he could perceive you spiritually. It felt religious. Metaphysical. You had missed this connection and you had been craving it for a while.

“Can you kiss me, Hoseok?”

He licked your lips in reply, his mouth hanging open, his lower lip brushing against yours so sensually that you envelopped it in yours, sucking.

He moaned, your eyes closing as you felt your body reach another level of arousal. It felt extraordinary. It felt like you were making love to your own body through his nakedness and arousal. Feeling this wanted, exploiting this bond between the two of you, the way your body mirrored his sensations, it was stronger than anything you had ever experienced.

You let go of his lip. “I’m gonna start tying you up now. This is the right moment to stop me, bub.”

“Keep going.” He said, his voice slightly gravelly.

“Okay.” You moved around the chair, studying how to use your prop smartly.

You noticed two thin metal tubes connecting the headrest to the back of the chair. Interesting. You unravelled your bundle of rope and found the middle quickly thanks to the mark placed there.

You remembered Hoseok coming back home with a big box, placing it on top of the coffee table as you were chilling on the sofa. “I want it cut, marked and hemmed by nine o’ clock.” He had said, voice dark, as he offered you a sewing kit and a fabric meter. “You’ll find instructions in the box.” He kissed your head as you sat on the floor and opened the box, dumbfounded. “I can’t use it tonight, but I’ll reward you if you do a good job.” Inside there was one entire spool of rope: the tag read “a hundred meters - pure cotton”. You spent the rest of the evening attending to your chore. Once you were done, you went knocking at Hoseok’s door. He spent the rest of the night repaying you for your fine accomplishment.

“Can you place your hands on your nape” You asked, noticing that he did so immediately.

“Thank you.” You chirped as you started tying him up, placing two fingers between his skin and the rope to make sure you didn't tighten too much. The position was delicate since his blood circulation could be affected by his forearms being upside down, tying the knot too tight would inevitably mean worsening the situation.

Once his wrists were safely secured to the small steel tube, you checked on him. “Is it good, bubs? Too tight?”

“I'm good, thank you, Giggles.” He replied.

“I’m going to grab my bag quickly. I’ll be a few steps away for a couple seconds, bubs.” You said, making sure that he didn’t panic as you stepped away.

A sultry, suggestive song came on, a slow Nineties hip hop track. It was inspirational, especially as you picked up your bag and placed it on top of his desk, near you and his chair, making sure that you wouldn’t need to leave him alone for longer than a couple seconds. Any person with a sliver of common sense would understand it is an awfully bad idea to leave someone bound, blindfolded and unguarded.

You stood in front of him with your hands behind your back and bent to his ear. “I’m here.” You murmured before standing up and dragging your nails down his neck and chest, stopping right at his stomach without neglecting his nipples, circling around them a couple times. He looked delicious, his cock hard and leaking on his lower abs. You observed the twitching of his slim shaft, the lovely curve of it, the taunting pink of his tip glimmering with wetness.

Teasingly, biting your lip, you gathered some of his precum on your fingertip, his lips parting with a purring sound.

“Giggles, please.” He whined.

You smiled as he exhaled, his mouth hanging open, and you deviously slipped your fingertip past his lips.

“Can you taste how turned on you are, Hobi?” You murmured, pressing your digit against his tongue.

He bit down playfully before twirling the tip of his tongue around your finger.

Giggling, you removed it.

“Does it tickle?” He asked.

You licked your lip. “Maybe.”

He shook his head just as you punished his disrespect with a gentle slap on his cheek. “You’re in no position to play games, Hoseok.”

He regained his composure. “Sorry.”

You shook your head yourself, standing up and moving behind him. His sides were vulnerable with his hands tied up and behind his head. You started thinking how you could use this against him. For now you simply decided that his inner forearms were normally sensitive enough to be a good starting point. He always started from your inner forearms. Drawing lines and twirls with your nails, you saw him shiver, his mouth gaping.

“You’ve moved.” He murmured, his fingers wiggling as he searched for contact, giving up once he noticed there was no chance. Daring and playful, you tickled his palms, moving so quickly that he didn’t manage to grab you.

His inner upper arm was even more sensitive, however touching it would mean that he would probably be able to touch you back. You could use something to reach out. You stood back, circling around the chair. It was a lot more complicated now. You had thought that seeing him like this would immediately tell you what you wanted to do to him. You had packed a variety of supplies in case sudden inspiration struck you, but now your lack of planning and your excess of toys confused you even more.

You had him naked and tied up to a quite limiting armchair. You knew your goal was to stimulate him as much as possible, listen to his pretty whines and watch him grow more and more desperate. Get him turned on out of his mind. Surprise him.

Kneeling, you patted his knees with your palms. “Open up.”

He inched his hips forward, his torso slouching against the back of the chair, his thighs parting further. “More?” He asked.

“Perfect.” You said, kissing his knees.

“Oh, you’re gonna do it like the other time?” He asked, bucking his hips up and slouching further. “You wanna blow me?”

You smiled, sending a cold breath running up his inner thigh.

His moan followed like a tide, like sunlight chasing the horizon at sunset.

You mirrored the gesture on the other leg, satisfied with the effect you had just elicited. “Do you want me to?” You asked, referring to his proposition.

“Your choice, Giggles.” He murmured, his reply melting into a ‘fuck, yeah’ as you licked up his thigh.

He could imagine your bubblegum pink tongue against the pale skin of his inner leg, your eyelids fluttering closed as you brought your tongue closer to his cock.

He had the softest baby hair on his inner leg. You wondered how it could be so thin and soft. Once you reached his crotch, you parted your mouth from his skin, your hot breath fanning on the sensitive head of his cock. Making sure that your hair was out of the way, you kissed the skin of his abdomen following the shadow that his sex projected on his belly. The point was that of being that close but not touching him.

It turned a bit more difficult when his hips jerked in an attempt to connect his cock with your lips while you sucked a love bite right on top of where his tip was laying. You moved back. “Stay still, Hoseok. Don’t make me tie up your legs too.” You warned. He huffed out a strained breath and shivered as you continued your trip down the other side with small kisses, finally licking down the other thigh, sitting back on your heels and placing a sweet peck on his knee. Now that his whole crotch area, thighs and abs were wet, blowing cold air all over him was even more fun, your lips directing your breath on different parts, making him try to escape your evil attentions.

“Giggles, you’re so bad.” He mewled, a tiny, desperate laugh underlining his sentence.

Your hands reached the base of his feet, your nails dragging against the natural crease at the center of his foot.

“It tickles.” He said, his legs jumping up as he tried to escape that sensorial torture.

“No touching you there?” You asked, eyebrows curving upwards in wonder. “Okay.”

He planted his feet firmly on the base of his office chair. “Please.” He said.

“It’s okay, Hobi.” You replied sweetly. His dancer feet were too sensitive for that and you’d rather avoid him moving too much and possibly falling from the chair. “How are you feeling?” You asked, standing up. You were at a crossroad. From his answer depended the rest of the evening.

“I’m doing great. This feels incredible, Giggles.” He smiled, complimenting you.

“Are you down for a level up?” You asked.

He nodded. “I’m curious.”

“Choose a number from one to three.” You asked him, your voice bubbly.

“What is it?” He asked. He was afraid of the consequences. Was it going to be the number of times he was allowed to cum? Or maybe something else?

“Just a game, Hobi. Choose a number.” You repeated.

A bit hesitant he said: “Two.” He said. Like us, he thought. He kept the idea to himself, thinking it cheesy. Plus two was halfway. Nothing bad can happen if you stay halfway, right?

You raised your eyebrows and considered cheating. He would never know. You had really prepared three toys and numbered them, however, out of the three objects you had prepared, number two was the one that scared you the most, convincing yourself to pack it just in case he flipped and took the lead. Hoseok could be extremely powerful with that tool in hand and it was probably your favourite accessory for him to use on you.

Unfortunately — or maybe very fortunately — it was you who had to control it tonight.

With quite some courage, you pushed your hand into the bag, finding the handle and gripping it tight as you extracted the black leather device from the bag. The tails of the flogger met your skin gently, caressing it with their delicate, velvety touch. Each tail was made of suede, giving a special feel to the touch. He had never openly admitted how expensive it was, but you knew it was a lot.

As your dominant hand held the handle, the other toyed with the tails, gripping them and wrapping them around your fist; looking at Hoseok, you started thinking where to start.

Easy.

His inner arms were there, pale, slender and so sensitive. “Can you feel me?” You asked, bending down, your breath tickling the free skin of his wrists.

“Yes.” He commented. “Behind my back. You’re so close but I can’t reach you.” He whined, struggling a little against the rope.

“Are your hands okay? Is the knot too tight?” You checked.

He breathed out. “Yes, I’m okay. Thank you.” He stilled on the chair since he realised he couldn’t touch you.

“My pleasure, Hoseok.” You replied, spurring him on a little. “Would you like me to tell you what’s the number you chose?”

He thought about it, but he realised that most of the arousal he was experiencing was because of the complete unexpectedness of each sensation. “Surprise me.”

You smiled, running the butt of the handle against his upper arm, teasing the top of his armpit. He shivered adorably, the sensation making his arm tingle with goosebumps.

“How does it feel?” You asked, curious.

“Wicked. But also interesting.” He replied, shivering again as you repeated the gesture on the other side. “Very sensitive.”

“Can you guess what it is?” You asked, gripping the flogger from where the tails met the handle, leaving the underside of the shaft free to press against his lips. He sniffed it. “Leather.” He sniffed some more. “Your hand lotion. Is it the handle of something?” He asked, dragging his cheek against it.

In the meanwhile you made sure that the tails were wrapped tight around your fist so that they wouldn’t give you away. “Maybe.” You replied, removing the object from his face and unwrapping the suede straps from your other palm, keeping the toy away from him. You trapped all the tails back, leaving only one out. That’s how to start.

Hoseok, momentarily blinded, kept thinking of what the object could possibly be. “Is the number connected to what you’re using now?”

“Yes. Each number meant a toy. I’m using number two right now.” You said, letting that single string drag from the small hollow between his collarbones down to his belly button. Your small hand struggled around the instrument, however your nerves helped you keep a tight grip.

“You have more than one?” He asked, moaning as the tail tickled the base of his cock. “What the hell is it?” He said, thrusting his hips upward. “Fuck, please.” He murmured, as you teased his balls. You grinned. “It’s the riding crop, uh? You love that one.” He murmured, just as you moved your hand far from his body, letting the tails fall free before snapping your wrist, making the strings swish.

Hoseok listened to the noise attentively, however the background music kept him from properly identifying the sound. “Is it something we have used before?”

You hit your palm again, softly, knowing that the hip hop track was going to make the toy unrecognisable. As you stood in front of his face, you leaned down and snapped it once more, making sure that he would feel the air move as the tails slapped your hand. Doing it this delicately made it feel almost pleasurable against your skin.

“Yes, we’ve used it before.”

You stood up again, letting the tails hang low. Noticing his length dripping in wetness, you snapped the toy once more against your palm, still far from his skin, simply producing an air current.

“Dammit, please, I just wanna cum.” He cried out.

“Guess my toy and I’ll reward you.” You teased.

He whimpered. “Come on, we’ve tried at least twenty together.” He lamented. “And you’ve given me so little.”

“Then let me give you more.” You giggled, This time you took a deep breath. Courage. You wanted him to hear it for real, not the caressing sweeps, but the harsh, punishing ones he usually delivered. Maybe those would sound more familiar. Exhaling, you hit your clothed thigh. You moaned: it could feel so sweet in your own hand, when you could control it and with the barrier of your jeans.

“It’s leather, I’m sure.” He commented.

You snapped once more, your cunt clenching, wetness making you feel uncomfortable between your thighs as you noticed him flinch at the sound. “Are you sure it’s leather, Hoseok?”

When he heard the third smack, he went insane. It felt unreal to be there, to wait for a hit that wouldn’t come, or even worse to be deep in thought, so close to the answer, but to be brought back to reality with the swishing and clicking sound of whatever it was you were holding. “If you say it like that, I’m not sure.”

Grinning, you let the tails hover over his skin, tickling the air around them, charging his skin with goosebumps. He felt electric. “Is this helping you?” You asked, letting the suede skim his skin.

“Oh. So you’re using my weapons against me...” He wondered just as your free hand cupped his balls, squeezing them gently. He was being too cocky anyway. His following moan decisively toned down his arrogance.

“Sorry.” He whined. “Please.” He moaned while your hand pushed the flogger away, your torso bending forward as you stretched to lick the tip of his cock, collecting the hot droplet of cum he had just spilled. “____, I’m begging, please.”

“Please what?” You murmured against his abdomen.

As he began talking you sucked the smooth head of his dick into your mouth, listening to him stammering and moaning in an attempt to speak. With a sweet stutter he cried out. “Wanna cum. Please.”

You released his sex. “You know the rules. Guess the toy and I’ll let you cum. Don’t make me say it again.” You stood straight and moved the flogger back between his legs, the tails teasing his inner thighs. “How come you haven’t recognised it yet?” You teased.

“It’s a tickler.” He moaned. “The one with the feathers.” He huffed out, just as you caught once more the tails in your palm, wrapping them around your hand and moving your grip, freeing the butt of the handle.

“No, love. I’m sorry.” You said, feigning discontent, but secretly grinning.

He cried out. “Oh, come on, what is it!” He growled, his voice sliding into a whimper as you sucked one of his balls into your mouth.

“Fuck it, Giggles. Please.”

He had said ‘please’ at least four times tonight, that you remembered. Maybe even more. You sucked harder.

“Love your mouth, baby,” he rambled, his sanity long forgotten in the unpredictable events of the evening. He felt his guts tightening, his abs clenching. “So good. Shit.”

As you spotted the telltale pulsing in your mouth, you let go of him.

“No, please. Please.” He begged. It was your favourite word on your lips. When he begged. When he begged to lick you, to let him make you squirt, to slap your delicate breasts, to fuck your mouth, to change position ‘just one more time’, to let him ram into you for the third, fourth ride even if you were tired and overstimulated, your brains only capable of telling him yes because you were too fucked out, too greedy, too in love with him to ever deny him.

“You made a dumb guess, Hobi. How can a tickler make that sound? You heard the smack, before, didn’t you.” You pressed the butt of the toy against his shaft, delicately, dragging it up and down in a very upsetting imitation of a handjob.

He keened as several drops of cum bubbled up from his slit and dribbled down his cock.

“You’re so turned on, uh?” You snickered, teasing him ruthlessly. “You’re barely coherent.”

He couldn’t wrap his head around how his sweet, sparkly, submissive Giggles, the love of his life, the apple of his eye, his precious jewel could turn into such a sadistic, cruel creature.

He had probably ruined you.

He was almost glad. Proud of you.

“Giggles, love. Please, have mercy, baby. You can’t hurt me. You love me.” He murmured, trying to convince himself.

You let him breathe, moving the handle away from his sensitive sex.

“I love you. That’s why I need you to recognise the toy.” You cooed. “You’ve heard how it sounds, and felt how it feels. You can do it, bubs.” You bent to his mouth, letting your lips linger over his.

“It swishes and smashes, but it’s a dry, light smash. Not a paddle. Not a tickler, and not a riding crop either. It’s either a cat-o-nine-tales or a flogger.” He murmured.

“Good boy.” You praised him. “What is it, then Hoseok?”

He felt insane. The moment he realised it was one of the two, he started imagining you holding one, getting even more turned on at the thought. “Use it on me.” He asked. “Please.” He could almost see you, your small figure, your tiny hands wrapped around the thick leather base, the cute flinch on your face as you whipped the tails against your thigh. “Use it on me.” He wished he could see you for real. He just needed you to do it once, to be comfortable to eventually do it again, someday — possibly within the next month — to see you actually use the flogger on him. He felt like going insane.

You frowned. You weren’t skilled enough for using it like that.

Whipping yourself over your clothes was one thing, but hitting him? Naked? Tied up? No. You told him.

“I can’t, Hoseok.”

“Please.” He cried out. “I trust you.” He said, quietly reassuring you. “Place me so that the front of my thigh is free, and direct the blow across my thigh, towards the outer side.”

You breathed a couple times. “Okay.”

“Thank you.” He cried out in relief.

Following his directions, you placed him correctly on the chair, his thigh hanging midair. With your back to him, you murmured quietly “Ready?”

He simply breathed out a ‘yes’.

His cry was immediate. “Oh god, Giggles. Fuck.” You had been heavy handed, still he hadn’t perceived the bite of the small silver balls that his cat-o-nine-tales sported. “Flogger.” He moaned. “Wanna cum, please.”

You immediately dropped the flogger on top of his table. “That’s right, bubs. You’ve been a very good boy.”

He pushed his hips upward. “Your mouth, please.” He begged. “Inside.” He sobbed.

You undressed quickly, your shirt coming off in a second and your jeans following right after. With only your panties on, you kneeled on the floor, not quite making yourself noticed.

“Where are you?” He cried out. “Giggles?”

“Here.” You called. “Between your legs.” You kissed his knee. “You look beautiful, Hoseok. So damn beautiful.” Your mouth climbed up towards his lap, quick and practical, your tongue drawing a line of saliva up his thigh. “I’ll give you thirty seconds. If you don’t cum at that, I’ll stand up, take off your blindfold and touch myself while your hands are tied. Got it?”

He whimpered.

“Got it?” You asked again.

“Yes, Giggles.” He replied, as composedly as possible.

“Good.” You said, before swallowing him.

He groaned, pushing his hips up towards your face. His chair rolled back a bit, but thankfully you grabbed the armrests and managed to secure it.

With wicked intentions you pulled him out, rolling the chair away so that the back sticked to the edge of his desk, keeping it from moving. “Count to thirty for me, Hoseok.”

You didn’t give him time to reply, sinking back onto him.

“One,” he whimpered as you used your hands to stroke the parts you couldn’t take into your mouth.

“Oh, two.” He groaned, pushing some more. You pinched his thigh, reprimanding him for his thrust.

He jumped at that before he cried out a three, panting heavily. “I’m gonna cum.”

Again you pinched.

“Three.” He said with a shrill.

By the count of nine, his hips got impatient, thrusting into you some more, but — lucky him — you felt merciful and disregarded his disobedience as you started to bob your head, before hearing him breathe louder and faster. “That’s it. Giggles, fuck. Love it. So good. Love you.” He managed to babble before he came apart.

You simply stayed there, eyes rimmed with tears, holding your breath as his cum kept spilling inside you. It took him five or six shots before he stilled, empty and spent. Oxygen felt like a blessing once you pulled him out, his tip resting on your tongue. Both your and his breathing were heavy and rushed as you removed your head from his lap and tested it against his thigh.

“Wanna see you, Giggles.” He murmured, his voice hoarse after all the moaning and growling and panting. “Take off the blindfold, baby.” He asked, ready to take control. You were the one who needed attention right now.

“Just a minute.” You murmured, nuzzling your cheek against his leg and closing your eyes.

“Now, Giggles.” He ordered with some urgency.

With a deep sigh, you stood on your knees, stretching towards his face to take off the silk band from his eyes. It took a couple attempts because you couldn't reach perfectly, however you finally managed to uncover him, his eyes immediately focusing on you.

“Hello, little bird.” He said, his tone already sporting that sardonic, telltale undertone. He was going for revenge.

A fearful wave rolled down your spine.

“Hi, Hoseok.” You replied, a bit hazed.

“Can you untie me, little bird? Please?” He asked, but his plea didn't hold the previous submission. This was simply a polite request. “I know you’re tired, pretty thing. Just untie me, I’ll take care of you, I promise, angel.” He said, spotting the way you looked at him like a scared wild animal. “I can’t even cuddle you right now.” He wiggled his wrists. “It hurts like hell to see you this vulnerable and not being allowed to cuddle you, little bird.” His voice expressed affection now, his mood completely changed after he had seen you: the discomfort of your treatment was still fresh but he couldn’t bring himself to torture you back after seeing you curled up between his legs.

You kissed his thigh a little helplessly before whining as you stood up.

“That’s my good girl.” He praised you with a quiet voice.

Undoing the knot was extremely easy. You liked using knots that were simple to undo once you released the safety hook — a reasonable amount of rope strategically tucked into the knot that once tugged simply makes the rope fall to the ground. Hoseok was usually reasonable enough not to untie himself, which meant you could still untie him easily even when your body was tired and your mind felt fuzzy.

When the rope fell to the ground, Hoseok stood still, holding position. Once he jammed a knot because he moved too early and you sulked at him for a week because he made you cut the rope into three unusable lengths. “May I?” He asked.

“Yes.” You confirmed.

He immediately turned the chair so that he was facing you. His arms wrapped around your middle, hugging you tight as you stood between his legs.

“You’ve been so good, Giggles. You’ve been perfect, little bird.” He pulled you into him, making you sit on his lap. “How are you feeling, dove?”

“A bit unsettled.” You admitted. “Strange.”

“What got into you?” He asked, smiling as he stroked your cheek. “You were devilish, pretty thing.”

“I don’t know. I think I was inspired.” You admitted, sinking into his neck, nuzzling into the curve below his ear.

“How did you feel with the flogger?” He asked, caressing your spine gently. He felt soft for you. To hell with revenge, he’d much rather make love to you. Show you all his appreciation for the scene you had staged, your spirit of initiative and the courage you had displayed in taking the lead with the flogger.

“I liked it. It felt new and strange.” You admitted, your arms connecting behind his neck, your hand combing the hair at his nape. “It felt different from when you do it.”

He chuckled. “Yes.”

“It’s not just the role reversal. I felt more confident because I called the shots. I manoeuvred it, so it didn’t feel like I was waiting for it to hurt. The excitement was different.” You kissed his jaw.

Hoseok turned, using his bangs to tickle your cheek. You giggled meekly. “It’s all about having the power to do the unexpected. See how far the other person allows you to go.” He kissed your neck. “I like using it on you because you’re always so soft afterwards. You’re super needy and cuddly and I like assisting you like that.” His hand moved to your side, caressing you reassuringly before his hand ventured under the waistband of your panties, rubbing your ass. “And seeing how far you let me go with the scene makes me see how much you trust me and love me. It’s hot but also cute and affectionate.” He pulled his hand out, dragging it up, skimming your side and cupping your breast, his skilled fingers toying with your nipple. “Do you want me to take care of you?” He asked, his index finger hooking under your chin and pushing your face up, to look at him.

You looked up at him from under your lashes, pouting and giving him the best impression of puppy eyes.

He smiled at you. “What?” He said, with a small chuckle, booping your nose.

“I want your mouth.” You said, biting your lip.

“Where.” He asked, rubbing your tummy, his fingertips toying with the waistband of your panties.

You looked down at your crotch, licking your lip and rolling your eyes coquettishly. “Down there, sir?”

He laughed and bent to your ear, nibbling on your earlobe. “Want me to eat you out, little bird?” He snarled and bit your round, fluffy cheek. “Eat you alive?” He asked, holding you tight as he repeatedly sunk his teeth on the fat covering your cheekbone. “Such a naughty girl!” He said, tickling your sides.

Your laugh bubbled up your throat, exploding in a fit of giggles.

“That’s it. The most beautiful sound on the face of earth.” He calmed down once he noticed your short breath. “I love you, ____.” He reminded you.

You smiled so wide your eyes closed. “I love you too.” You stretched your neck to reach his mouth. His lips parted for you, the tip of his tongue drawing the seam of your lips as you disclosed them for him. The kiss was demanding, as usual. The hard, teasing strokes he delivered with the tip of his tongue gave way to a tango of thrusts and twirls, a mind blowing game of flight and chase, small clashing of teeth and sucking bruises onto each other’s lips. You didn’t even know how much time had passed before he gripped your waist, pushing you up. “Stand, little bird.” He murmured softly.

Carefully, you rose to your feet, making sure that your knees didn’t give out below you. His fingers hooked into the sides of your panties. He immediately spotted the wet patch on your grey cotton. “Cute penguin print.” He commented. “Very cute.” He said, his finger moving to toy with the drenched fabric, exposing you. He slid down the chair, kneeling. You took half a step back, only to meet the hard edge of his desk. He had cornered you. You only managed to press your palms into the desk, making sure not to knock anything over or accidentally ruin any equipment.

“Right leg on my shoulder, little dove.” He ordered, his eyes zeroing in on you with a predatory gleam.

You obeyed. Not that you had much choice.

“You’re so wet, Giggles. You enjoyed torturing me this much?” He asked, licking the gusset of your panties. “So nasty.”

“You sounded so good.” You commented, one hand combing his hair back and subtly pushing his mouth against you. “And you tasted even better.”

“These are too cute to rip.” He said, looking at your panties. “I need them off, dove.”

He helped your leg down, immediately dragging the garment down your legs. “Fuck, you’re so drenched.” He growled, noticing the tendrils of arousal sticking your labia together as he placed your leg back on his shoulder. His right arm, free to move, immediately bent so that his hand could spread your wetness all along your slit, before his index and middle finger sank into you, immediately meeting your sweet spot.

“Oh God! Hoseok, please!” One of your hands parted from the table, grabbing his hair.

“Does it feel good?” He asked, crooking his fingers in a come-hither motion. You knew what he wanted to do.

“I’m gonna make a mess, Hobi.” You warned him before a wanton mewl left your lips, betraying you.

“So, do you like it?” He asked again, rubbing his fingers and stretching you out.

“Yes, sir.” You moaned, trying to meet his mouth with your hips. Oh, how the tables have turned.

“You’re about to like it even more, little bird. Hold on tight.” He warned before latching his mouth onto your clit and beginning to torture it with the hard flicks of his tongue. His eyes met yours and you knew he was really going for it. He had that look that meant challenge. You abandoned yourself to your fate.

“Hoseok. Dammit.” You hoped your leg would hold you up because both your hands rushed to his head, pressing it against your cunt. The arm holding your leg moved upwards, sustaining your lower back.

The shift was immediate, the inner sense of burning and the distinct sensations of your inner walls clenching out of your control warning you of what was about to happen. “Hoseok.” You called simply as that overwhelming tide took you under. Your eyes clenched tight, your lower leg quivering dangerously as your orgasm invested him. You knew you had likely squirted over him, especially for the wetness running down your leg. You just hoped there wasn’t a small pool of liquid on his floor.

“That’s it, Giggles. Fucking phenomenal.” He praised you as you gently pulled his mouth away from your clit. He kissed your mound chastely before helping your leg down.

“Did I mess up?” You asked, immediately checking for damage.

“Nothing that a few tissues can’t fix.” He said, standing in front of you, stretching behind you to grab a roll of paper, tearing some and kneeling again, drying up the small puddle. Next he dried your inner thigh. “Are you freaking out?” He asked, knowing that squirting always unsettled you a little.

“The normal amount.” You replied, combing his hair as he looked up at you, collecting all the paper towels and throwing them in the bin.

As he stood again, you felt his hard on against your tummy. “Can you do it standing or do you wanna sit?” He asked, hugging you.

“Your choice. I can handle it.” You replied, still a bit hazy with your previous orgasm.

“Turn.” He murmured, spinning you around with his hands on your waist, your hand moving to press his palm against the small of your back, bending you forward a little. “Like this?” He asked.

“Yes, sir.” You replied.

He bent to your ear. “No need to call me ‘sir’, dove. I’m making love to you.” He said, gently dragging the head of his cock against your folds before slipping in. Once he was halfway in, your mouth open in a silent cry, he pulled out, only to move back in all the way with one smooth stroke.

“Hobi, sweet lord.” You purred, leaning on your elbows, as he started pounding into you. He simply grabbed you under your armpits, pressing his palms against your breasts and pushing you back up, making the angle so right and so intense you thought you would explode again there and then.

However, after a few minutes he simply growled and exited you, pushing you up and turning you around, again. Facing him, you could now see the dark lines forming on his thigh from the flogger, and right on top of that the slim indentation of his abdomen, adorned by his glistening, wet, hard cock.

He let you drink him in with your hungry eyes before tipping your chin up, to make your gazes connect. With his eyes on yours, scorching and demanding, he slipped back inside you, enjoying how your eyelids fluttered at the sense of fullness you were experimenting. The hammering restarted immediately, your hand gripping his shoulders, your nails sinking in. In reply, his strong, veiny palm curled around your outer thigh, pushing your leg up and around his waist.

“Touch yourself. I need you to cum.” He said, making small effort into ordering you, keeping his focus on his ramming.

And you made an even smaller effort into obeying, the hard, filling sensation of him inside you was so satisfying that a few circles on your clit was all it took for your head to crash into his shoulder, suppressing a loud moan by biting into his neck. Still, the bite, the vibrations of your whimpers against his throat, your nails sinking into him and your kegels squeezing him brought him to a mind-blowing orgasm. And he went on, even as you called his name like a litany, a sob interrupting you every now and then as you panted.

He took himself half a minute of stillness. “Can you do another?” He asked, both his hands gripping your ass as he picked you up. “Missionary on the sofa. Just one, I promise.” He said, already walking you to his black leather couch.

You nodded, wordless and brainless, simply hissing when the cold material met your back. “Sorry. I know, cold.” He said, caressing your face. “Ready?” He asked.

Again you nodded, looking at him with a pout. He bent down to kiss your lips. “I love you.” He said.

He said it so often. It was his favourite thing to say, mostly because you would offer him your sweetest smile and your eyes would sparkle with surprise and arousal, just like the first time he had confessed to you. Just like the first time he had bound your wrists on top of your head, kissing all the way down your body, showing you how much adoration his body and his mind could muster.

As he sank into you, you cried out his name tenderly.

“I’ve got you, little dove.” He said, cradling your head in the crook of his arm. “My pretty little bird.” He stroked your cheek with his thumb, drawing the shape of your lips. “I’ll be home, in our bed tonight.” He slipped his thumb into your mouth, wetting it. “I’ll make you so happy, Giggles.” He removed it, bringing it to your clit, delicately rubbing circles into your skin. “It’s all I wanna do.” He pressed his lips restlessly to your mouth and chest, your eyes following his movements in slow motion. You were so far gone you even doubted the sensation between your legs when you felt a new tightness ready to snap.

“Close.” You mouthed somewhere on his chest or neck or shoulder. It felt like slow dancing in a dark room. Except he was inside you and the rocking motion relaxed you so completely that you simply let go, not even listening to him saying to hold on, to make it last a second more, to focus on him.

You simply smiled as pleasure took over, Hoseok himself falling on top of you as his hips lost their pattern and let go of any semblance of control and tempo. His mouth pressed into your nipple as he moaned in release.

You both felt like dead bodies afterwards, laying there empty, spent, completely lost. You could have died without a bother. You could have kept existing without a bother, your bodies resting and waking in an endless cycle, the same way day and night follow each other. You were one thing, one entity, not even one body — any relation to material substance was momentarily suspended.

“Giggles.” He checked in on you. “Baby, we should go home, uh? I don’t have stuff to spoil you here, dove.” He said with a worried note.

Your eyelids fluttered open.

“There she is. Hello, sunshine.” He said, trying to fix your hair. “Let me fix the room before we go, yes?”

You smiled. “Let me help.” You said, only half convinced.

He tutted. “No, sweetie. You lay there and I fix this.” He slipped out of you, standing up slowly, a little clumsily. He immediately went to his desk grabbing his cup of water and sinking a corner of his t-shirt, dabbing at his face and chest, then down at his crotch. Next, he walked towards you, using another wet corner to clean you up. “There.” He said, kissing your knee once he was done. Next he dressed you, manoeuvring your body to slip your clothes on. With a bottle of generic cleanser randomly laying on his drawer, he made sure that no stain remained on the floor where he had eaten you out. Standing in his boxers, he rolled the rope back in a tight coil, placing it back into the bag, together with the flogger, making a mental note to clean it once he arrived home. He didn’t even check what you had packed. He was impatient to shower and cuddle with you at home. Your shared home.

Slipping on his sweater, he looked around, checking for potential hints of what had happened. He shrugged once he saw none. He shut down his computer, checking for the other devices to be off too. Finally, he spritzed some of his cologne on himself and the room. “Okay. We’re good, Giggles. Let’s go.”

You groaned before sitting up and waiting for him to offer you his hand to help you up. “That playlist was pretty bomb.” You said. “We should keep it for our wild nights.”

“I’m using it for my next collab.” He replied, closing down the studio and slipping his shoes on. You did the same at his side. “Maybe you will enjoy my song.” He said, winking at you.

“Oh, hi guys! What are you doing here?” Jimin chirped behind you.

Hoseok raised his eyebrows. “Hi. You’re here late.”

“Just passing by.” Jimin said. “Forgot my laptop.” He shook his head. “Hello, Giggles!” He said to you.

It felt ridiculous how all the boys used the nicknames for you and the other girlfriends. Still, it didn’t bother you, since it reminded you of your bond with Hoseok, but also of that familiarity within the group. “Hi Jimin!” You chirped, a little nervous at the possibility of him knowing what had happened in Hoseok’s studio.

“Well, goodnight!” Jimin said sweetly. “I assume you won’t be at the dorms tonight.”

Hoseok tutted. “I’ll be staying with Giggles. She moved in.” He said with a happy tone.

“I’m happy for you. However I hope you won’t be walking out with that tickler hanging out of the bag.” He winked with a teasing remark. “Enjoy it.” He trotted off.

Standing beside Hoseok, you blushed all the way to the tip of your ears.

Hoseok snickered. “Brat.”

Well, he was Princess’ problem now, anyway.

#bts smut #bangtan smut #bts fic #bts scenario #jung hoseok #jhope #hoseok smut #hoseok one shot #hoseok scenario #hoseok x reader #hoseok fan fiction

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samstree · 3 years

Text

You are too well tangled in my soul (4/5)

In which Geralt tries to apologize, Jaskier has some unexpected encounters and Roach is the best.

(love confession, kaer morhen, 6.1k, no warnings)

read on AO3.

War breaks out.

Nilfgaard mercilessly scorches the continent, and Jaskier survives. The next time he sees Geralt, there’s a lost princess in tow.

The girl has pale blonde hair, just as Jaskier remembers from when he performed at her birthdays. Her green eyes are big and wary, staring at the bard from behind Geralt’s armored bulk.

Jaskier wouldn’t blame her, from what he learned from his encounters with Nilfgaard the girl must have been through hell. And from what he heard about Cintra, well, she has more demons to run from other than the evil army. She looks exhausted too, hair dirty and eyes alert, studying Jaskier intensely.

“You were at my birthday. You sang the songs.” The princess’s crisp voice breaks the silence.

“Yes, Princess Cirilla. I was at three of your birthdays, though you were too young to remember the first two.” he bows. “Jaskier the bard, at your service.”

She softens, nodding at Jaskier’s gesture. Her lips tug upward.

“Just Ciri.”

“Ciri, then.” Jaskier smiles at her.

“I loved your singing. It was beautiful.” she bites her lips, pausing, before putting her arm around the witcher’s. “Geralt only said we were looking for a friend. I didn’t know it was you.”

The mention of the name snaps Jaskier’s attention back to the witcher, who remains motionless and silent. This entire time, Geralt has been staring at Jaskier’s face, like he could blink and the bard would disappear. Jaskier stares back, and the bruise in his chest throbs anew.

“A friend, uh?” he feigns nonchalance and fails, suddenly his throat feeling dry. “Now you use the word, after all these years. Thought you’d keep insisting on not being my friend until the end of time. Thought I gave you life’s blessing –”

“Jaskier,” Geralt exhales. The word is barely a whisper, but it’s enough to stop the bard from landing a blow. The witcher doesn’t seem to have more words, despite continuing to look at Jaskier with remorseful sorrow.

Good. The pettiest part of Jaskier thrills at his regret, after all he’s the one who spewed all the venom on top of that mountain.

But one look at Geralt, Jaskier realized that he is just as tired and disheveled as the girl, if not more so. Being on the run from Nilfgaard is no fun, he learned that from personal experience.

Knowing Geralt, he is going to neglect his needs in favor of Ciri’s, gritting his teeth through everything. Jaskier finds himself searching all over him for injuries, familiar worry bubbling of its own volition.

Jaskier cannot even stay mad at him for long. Damn him.

“Why are you looking for me then?” he asks.

“I –” Geralt pauses. “Nilfgaard is looking for us. Hunting us. They want something, and they are willing to raise armies to chase us across the Continent.”

He tightens his hold on Ciri. The young princess looks away with a haunted expression.

“And they are also trying to hunt down whoever might know your location. They’ll torture them for the information.” Jaskier adds. His two near escapes are too vivid in his mind. The first time he only got away by the skin of his teeth. It turns out he’s not so bad with a dagger when faced with two Nilfgaardian footsoldiers.

As for the second time, he may have had help from an old friend. Not that Yennefer would be thrilled if he ever called her that. The story of his life, he thinks, it seems to be.

Realization dawns in Geralt’s eyes. “You already know they are looking for you. Are you – did they get to you, Jaskier?”

“Get to me? No,” Jaskier chuckles tightly. “I wouldn’t be standing here, would I? Your secrets are safe, Geralt. Not that I knew your whereabouts for the past year. They didn’t get anything from me, if that’s your worry.”

“No. Fuck –” Geralt curses under his breath, frustrated. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

Jaskier challenges him, raising an eyebrow. Geralt struggles for words and starts to look like his usual brooding self again. It is Ciri who speaks up.

“Come to Kaer Morhen with us. It’s the safest place on the Continent,” the girl says.

Jaskier breathes, stunned. Of course, it makes sense for them to go. It is a home for Geralt. He remembers the first time Geralt told him about the witcher keep, in that greenhouse, a lifetime ago. To him, it is as much of a myth now as it was back then.

“You are sweet, Ciri. But I don’t think Geralt would want that.”

There’s a bitter tang in those words. Ciri scrunches up her brows, confused. “But he’s the one who wanted –”

“What Ciri meant,” Geralt interrupts, “was that Nilfgaard is still out there looking for us. When they can’t, they’ll come for you again.” Desperation bleeds into his tone. Or is it annoyance? “Come with us, Jask. You’ll be safe in Kaer Morhen.”

“I can take care of myself.” Jaskier’s resolution is swaying despite his pride.

“Jaskier…”

“Geralt.” He stays emotionless, waiting for the Witcher’s reasoning, but it doesn’t come.

It is the lost Cintran princess who decides for Jaskier.

“Can you just come with us?” her voice is uncertain, and it tugs at Jaskier’s heart. “Please?”

Jaskier looks into her green eyes and only sees the loss she endured. The fall of Cintra reached Jaskier like a punch in the gut. He thought Geralt’s Child Surprise – the bright-eyed little girl who danced to his songs – was lost with it, so when those soldiers started questioning him about her escape, Jaskier only felt relief. Now, the lone wolf stands protectively next to the lost lion cub.

Jaskier is glad Geralt went to find her, truly.

He finds himself nodding, and Ciri brightens up ever so slightly.

“So, you are the boy?”

The dark-haired witcher says upon meeting Jaskier for the first time at the gate of Kaer Morhen when Geralt and Ciri have gone to stable the horse. He’s the same height and build as Geralt, only his shoulders are just a bit wider. Unlike Geralt, his hair is a muddy brown, and three nasty scars run down the right side of his cheek, making him look almost grotesque.

“Pardon?”

“The boy Geralt kept seeing.” His eyes fix on Jaskier with amusement, the golden color eerily identical to Geralt’s.

“Oh, I didn’t know anyone else –” Jaskier is rather surprised that another witcher knows about Geralt’s condition. “Yes, that’s me. But I’m hardly a boy anymore.” He extends a hand. “Jaskier.”

“Eskel.” The Witcher takes it with a friendly smile. Huh, not all of them are broody and rude.

“So you know about our…” Jaskier trails off for lack of a descriptor. Their bond? Their relationship? They certainly are not in one.

“Not much. If you’ve known my brother for this long, you’d know how little he talks.” Eskel offers an understanding pat on Jaskier’s back. “He just came back here one year and couldn’t shut up about an annoying bard. Then he came back another year. Disappeared in the middle of the day, and scared the shit out of us. We’d thought he was cursed out of existence by some angry mage. When he came back, out of thin air too, he looked like he’d seen a ghost.”

“Not a ghost.”

“Not a ghost, only the same bard. As a boy.”

It makes sense, according to however little they know about the mechanism of it. Wintering at the witcher keep is the longest Geralt is away from the bard, so destiny has to drag him to Lettenhove. It would be hard to sail away from your anchor.

“Guess I’m too much of a nuisance. He can’t escape me even here, in his own home.”

“He never –” Eskel seems surprised at Jaskier’s remark. “I might need to have words with my brother, bard. And he was only upset because he worried for your safety.”

He smiles tightly. “It’s kind of you to say, Eskel. Though you don’t need to protect my feelings. I understand now. I would take myself off of his hands if I could.”

Too bad he can’t. Even if the invasion blows over, destiny would still work against Geralt’s attempt at free will at every opportunity.

He ignores Eskel’s inquisitive eyes as they stroll into the stone castle when Geralt and Ciri rejoin them.

Geralt is trying to apologize.

He knows by the way Geralt follows him outside, and onto the trail behind the keep, somehow with guilt written all over his posture. It’s a nice place for a walk and for Jaskier to clear his head and compose under the pine trees.

Geralt has tried several times in the past few days. Every time they are left alone, the witcher assumes an expectant look on his face and begins to find words. Every time Jaskier interrupts him before it starts, making up whatever poor excuses he can find. Every time Geralt swallows and lets him go. He puts on a stoic face but Jaskier always sees the disappointed droop in those amber eyes that anyone else would have missed.

Jaskier can’t avoid it anymore, between the fresh smell of pine – his favorite scent in the world – and the sky, there’s nowhere to hide, so he stops to face it.

“Just say whatever you want to say,” he lets out a sigh.

“I’m sorry,” Geralt blurts out without a beat. “I never should have said what I said. I didn’t mean any of it, Jask. I was upset and I took it out on you. It wasn’t fair.”

Jaskier blinks.

“No, it wasn’t.”

“You’ve followed me for twenty years. You’ve known me for even longer. Fuck, Jaskier. Your whole life, you’ve known me, and yet you chose to stay.”

“I did,” he whispers, “but you tried to push me away, like everything else destiny forced upon you.”

The hurt in those golden eyes is unbearable to watch, so Jaskier averts the burn of his gaze to take a deep breath. The smell of pine fills his lungs, crisp and soothing.

“It was a mistake. I know that now, Jaskier.” The contrite is unmistakable. Geralt’s gravelly voice is as pained as Jaskier feels. From the corner of his eyes, Jaskier notices Geralt reach into his pocket for something. It is a small notebook, leather-bound and abused at the edges.

It’s his notebook.

It’s their notebook.

“I’ve kept records of everything, just like you did.” he holds out the book for Jaskier to take. “I’ve seen the future, you –”

“No!” Jaskier steps away as if the book might burn him. “You can’t use it against me, Geralt. You think I’ve never seen the future? I know where we are going. I know I’ll still choose you, because how can I not?” his voice breaks at the possibility of him leaving Geralt by choice. “But it doesn’t make it alright. I can’t just forgive you and pretend we are fine, just because the future says we should be.”

Geralt lowers his hand and the book with it. “I meant that…I understand you now. Why you would stand by me when no one else does, when it’s so much easier to just leave.”

“And how exactly did you arrive at this grand revelation?”

Geralt softens, his lips quick upward ever so slightly. “I saw you. In a little cottage by the sea, years from now, happy.”

Jaskier’s breath hitches. He’s so used to knowing all different versions of Geralt, so used to having the upper hand in this little dance, that the idea of his own future laid out like this makes him queasy.

“You told me – or will tell me, rather – why you spent your entire life choosing me when I’ve done nothing but push you away.” Geralt’s voice breaks at the obvious regret in it.

Because I love you, Jaskier thinks. I’ve loved you for too long.

He’s become so familiar with the notion it’s as easy as breathing.

“What do you want, then?”

“A chance. To prove myself again,” Geralt pleads. “To prove myself a worthy companion to you. Because you are my friend, my best friend. You have been since you were so young and I was just blind to it. Jaskier, I –”

I love you.

“– I choose you too. If you’ll let me show you. For the rest of my life, I’ll prove it to you every day, because I –”

I love you.

“– I love you.”

The words come out soft and reverent, the whisper so careful as if to avoid the birds overhearing him. Geralt stills after the confession, his eyes fixed on Jaskier in earnest.

For a moment Jaskier believes the declaration an echo of his imagination, conjured up from years of longing and heartbreak. But when he holds his breath and looks into Geralt’s resolved eyes, the truth washes over him like a cool shower on an autumn morning.

Deep in those ember eyes is the same affection he’s seen many times, during those too-short visits from his older Geralt, in the teasing smirks he carried at the corner of his mouth, or in the sweetness hidden behind his kiss, under a cold Cintran sky and addled by too much ale. It’s in the way Geralt takes him apart with deft fingers and gentle touches, over and over again throughout the years.

It’s the same love that propelled Geralt to ask for his trust and his faith when this moment comes.

“You love me.” Jaskier muses.

“I do. I have… for a while now.” Geralt’s breath forms in the crisp mountain air. “I understand if you don’t feel the same way, Jask. But please believe me when I say it. I love you. It’s the truest feeling I’ve ever felt in my life. Without any djinn magic, or destiny deciding what’s best. Please, at least have this much faith in me.”

After all this time Geralt still thinks it’s possible for Jaskier to not love him back.

I’m going to make mistakes, the older Geralt once said, don’t lose faith in me.

He made a promise after all.

“Okay,” Jaskeir exhales.

“Okay?”

When he looks into the amber glow again Geralt looks expectant.

“Okay,” Jaskier repeats, “You have it. A chance for us to try again, if you want it to go back to… before.”

Geralt exhales like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. “It won’t be like before. I’ll do better, I give you my word.”

The sincerity is palpable in Geralt’s expression. The words come out so solemn and he’s clenched his jaw tightly. It looks like he just might break something if Jaskier doesn’t give him an out.

A smiles tugs at the corner of Jaskier’s mouth. And they say he’s the dramatic one.

“Oh, relax, you big oaf, before you hurt yourself. Of course I believe in you. It might be the most words I’ve ever heard from you. Didn’t think it was possible.”

He pats Geralt on the arm, before resting his hand there and squeezes. If Geralt leans into the touch, he doesn’t mention it.

“You,” Jaskeir continues, “You are forgiven, Geralt. I’ve always known I’d forgive you. You are not the only one who’s seen the future. Even if fate didn’t tell me to, I would still know you to be the best man I’ve ever laid eyes on, and I would choose to stay by your side every time.”

The shuddering breath that chokes out Geralt’s throat is almost like a sob. Rumors say witchers can’t cry, but Jaskier learned it not to be true long ago, and he can see how much Geralt is affected right now.

He reaches out to tuck a loose strand of hair behind Geralt’s ear before resting his hand on the spill of silver on his shoulder, and revels in the familiar feeling of silky hair against his palm.

“As for the other thing.” Jaskier thinks back on Geralt’s heartfelt confession, not sure if he has truly wrapped his head around it. “I think… I’ll need some time before we can do something about it.”

Geralt nods, his warm hand coming up to capture Jaskier’s wrist in a loose grip, the pad of his thumb stroking slightly again. Jaskier’s chest warms at the motion.

“Take all the time you need, Jask. I’ll be right here.”

They spend the winter in the keep, in this safe bubble they created.

Ciri’s progress is obvious even to Jaskier’s untrained eyes. Her stance becomes more confident every day, her moves faster. The clanking of blunt swords echoes above the training ground as Jaskier watches from a bench in the corner, plucking his lute absent-mindedly.

The lion cub is starting to look like her grandmother, with her hair tied back and the sword cutting through the air with force.

The rise in confidence is doing her wonders. Her smile is becoming more often as winter settles in. The first time Ciri laughed out loud at the usual tomfoolery Lambert starts at dinner table, all four witchers and Jaskier stopped to stare at her for a brief moment before joining in.

Later that night, Geralt got emotional when it was just him and Jaskier, cleaning up in the kitchen.

“It’s just… it’s the first time I’ve heard her laugh.” Geralt’s throat bobbles when he says, and Jaskier’s heart breaks for them both, so he takes the plates from the Witcher’s hands and pulls him in for a hug, one that’s a little too tight.

In the courtyard, flurries of snow fall steadily as Ciri disarms Geralt with a twist of her wrist, the heavier sword flying off to the side. She squeaks in excitement.

“Take that, old man!”

Geralt goes to collect his blunt weapon, his chuckle rumbling deep in his chest. “You only did it because I let you, Ciri. Your enemies are not gonna let you disarm them for practice.”

Her pride morphs into a slight pout before it’s tucked away by her regal stance. They’ll make a warrior princess out of her after all.

“You just can’t let me have this one, can you?”

“Yeah, old man,” Jaskier chimes in. “Just admit your loss. I’m sure the White Wolf should know when he’s beaten.”

From Geralt’s glare, Jaskier knows he’s enjoying this too much, but he just can’t get the proud grin off of his face. Ciri sends him a smug smile when she puts away her weapon and gears.

From a distance, Lambert and Eskel are sheathing their training swords as well when Jaskier notices the snow falling harder by the minute, sending a shiver through his body despite the heavy coat wrapped around him. Ugh, his fingers are numb now.

“All right?” Geralt is all packed up, cheeks flushed from the exercise. He’s only wearing a simple tunic and yet it looks like the cold does not affect him at all. Ridiculous witcher biology.

Mischief lights up in Jaskier’s mind when he puts down the lute and walks towards Geralt, before putting his freezing palms flush against the Witcher’s neck.

“Jaskier, what – Fuck!”

He expects Geralt’s usual grunts and retaliation at the blatant offense. Roughhousing has never been a stranger to them, especially now that they are at ease in their friendship again.

What he does not expect is the concern that appears in Geralt’s eyes after a moment of shock and the warm hands that gently cover his.

“Oh Jask, you are freezing.” Geralt’s brows furrow in seriousness, calloused fingers starting to rub the back of Jaskier’s hands in a slow rhythm. Now that he notices, the heat radiating off of Geralt’s skin is lovely, tingling the numbness in his rigid hands and sending a different kind of shiver down his spine. “Gods, you might get frostbite like this. Don’t you have gloves?”

“Er – that’s not…” Jaskier stammers, suddenly aware of their closeness and the lack of everyone else on the training ground. Thank fuck they’ve all gone inside before his foolish prank. “I – I lost them…?”

Now Jaskier is the one blushing, but Geralt pays no mind to his embarrassment and continues to rub heat back into his exposed skin.

“I’ll make you new ones then. Can’t let a lutist lose his fingers,” Geralt murmurs.

The urge to kiss this sweet man is overwhelming, Jaskier has to look away from the beautiful golden yellow to calm his fluttering heart. It’d be too soon. He’s still raw from what went down in the past year.

Thankfully Ciri calls for them to get inside before they freeze over. Jaskier pulls away to answer her, immediately feeling empty without the warm touch. Now he’ll settle for walking to the great hall where a hearth is lit with Geralt by his side.

A week later, Jaskier finds a pair of newly knitted gloves on his bed. They are made with Geralt’s favorite wool – a thick, soft material – and fingerless so he can play. When he slips them on, the urge to track Geralt down in the keep and kiss him all over fills him again.

Roach bites down on the second apple Jaskier offers her and munches gracelessly.

Jaskier pats her mane while she tries to chew off the fringe on his doublet. Now that he’s reunited with her master, Jaskier can spoil the mare as much as he wants. Not that anyone objected before. The mare clearly has a soft spot for the bard, Geralt is just too stubborn to admit it.

He is just saying goodbye to Roach when the familiar swoosh of magic startles him.

Destiny’s pull rarely works when they are together, so much so that Jaskier has almost forgotten about it for the months he’s within Kaer Morhen’s walls. On top of that, what greets him is not the bulk of a witcher.

Standing by the stalls is a scared little boy.

Jaskier is terrible with guessing children’s age, but this boy is definitely no more than six or seven, wearing plain summer clothes and holding a small bucket for dear life. The boy has a head full of dark curly hair and tears streaking down his cheeks. His brown eyes are wide and full of terror.

“Ma? Where are you?” he calls out, voice horse from crying.

Jaskier is stuck where he stands, too shocked to react. Somewhere next to him, Roach snorts nervously at the volume of the child’s cry.

Geralt once told him how he ended up in Vesemir’s care, when both of them had too much to drink on the eve of Belleteyn many years ago. They only meant to celebrate a hunt well done and Jaskier’s successful performance at the festival, but the drinks kept coming on the courtesy of the pub owner. Before Jaskier knew it, the Witcher was too gone and started to get melancholic in his inebriation.

For once in their lives, Jaskier was the one with some sanity left and promptly put Geralt back to their shared bed.

With the sound of people singing and dancing around bonfires in the distance, Geralt curled into himself, looking uncharacteristically small, and told Jaskier the last time he saw his mother.

“I stood there for so long, by the road. But she was gone,” Geralt slurred the words. “I kept waiting for her…”

Those words, combined with too much ale, broke Jaskier into a million pieces.

“It was so long ago. I don’t even remember what she looks like, the color of her eyes. Or my eyes, before…What was the color of my eyes?”

Jaskier had no answer.

That night, he listened as Geralt drifted off, thinking the witcher would forget about the confession come morning. Or was it Geralt who thought Jaskier never remembered? No matter what reason, Geralt never talked about it again and Jaskier respected that.

And here Geralt is, no more than seven, on what is probably the worst day of his life – having just been abandoned by his mother by the side of the road. He looks confused and cried-out, still clinging to the bucket so hard that his tiny knuckles are turning white.

His eyes are brown.

That’s all Jaskier can think.

The boy’s tears keep falling, and whatever heartbreak Jaskier felt on the night of Belleteyn, it’s not a match for now.

“Hey, it’s all right,” Jaskier shushes as gently as possible. He lowers himself in front of the boy, keeping the movement slow just to not upset him further. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Where is my ma?” young Geralt sniffles, and Jaskier doesn’t know how to answer that. The layers he’s wearing clearly cannot hold out the cold in the dead of winter. The boy is shivering.

“I’m sorry I don’t know where she is. But, here, put this on.” Jaskier shrugs off his coat and wraps it around the boy’s small frame, half of it pooling on the ground. He tries to coax the bucket out of the boy’s hands but he grips tighter.

“Where is she? Where did you take me?” the boy demands in panic.

“I promise I haven’t taken you anywhere, okay? Ger –” Jaskier catches himself. He’s a complete stranger to the child. He shouldn’t know him. “It’s too cold out here. We can go inside and wait for her there. Is that all right?”

The boy shakes his head. “Ma’s coming back to find me. I need to stay.”

“Okay, okay.” Jaskier tries not to panic, but he feels so helpless. He doesn’t even know where to put his hands so he tightens the coat around the boy’s shoulders. “How about this, I’ll find some help for us. Maybe someone from that castle can help. I don’t even know what would happen if they see you like this but…what other option do we have, eh?”

Before he can even get up, Jaskier finds the boy dropping the bucket and clinging to the sleeve of his doublet, the water spilling everywhere.

“No, don’t leave,” the boy says weakly, “Please.”

The boy’s chubby cheeks are streaked with tears, turning red in the mountain air. Jaskier wipes the wetness away with the pad of his thumb, his other arm still in the boy’s grip.

“All right. I won’t leave then, I promise.” Jaskier does his best to smile reassuringly. The ache in his chest makes it difficult but against all odds, it works. The young boy calms down just a little.

“I’ll stay with you, all right? But for now… do you want to make some new friends?”

Jaskier introduces the child to Roach, and he gets less afraid as soon as he sees the horse and reaches out to pet her. With their ridiculous height difference, it looks almost comical. The mare, ever the sweetheart, lowers her head as if she senses something familiar in the boy. She nuzzles his little hand and his eyes light up.

No matter how young, it seems Geralt will always enjoy Roach’s company above anyone else’s. Jaskier watches in wonder at the exchange before him. The boy’s distress dissipates gradually as the mare licks him and showers him in affection.

“Can I keep her?” the child giggles as Roach chews on his hair.

Jaskier smiles, “Sadly no, but maybe you’ll see her again. Who knows.”

All his life, Jaskier has known Geralt as the powerful witcher, his friend and protector. But right here, he’s just another ordinary child who loves giant animals. Only his future holds something no child should ever have to endure.

Jaskier wishes life wouldn’t have to burden this gentle boy, harden him into the warrior that he is now. This moment could last forever for all he cares, so this young boy wouldn’t need to go back to face the path ahead.

He doesn’t know how long they have here, undisturbed by the four witchers inside the keep, or the magic pulling them apart.

“Can I tell you something?” Jaskier says as the child runs his fingers through Roach’s mane. He turns around to look at the bard curiously with his beautiful brown eyes. “Do you know you’re a very good boy? And when you grow up, you’ll become a very good person.”

“Ma says I should do good.”

“She’s right.”

“And doing good is hard… sometimes.”

Jaskier swallows the lump in his throat. “That too. Life is difficult, unfair even. But you are strong, stronger than you’ll ever believe. Remember this, and you’ll find a way.”

“I’m strong?” the boy looks at Jaskier expectantly. His tiny frame is drowned in Jaskier’s coat.

“The strongest.” the bard nods.

“Like a knight?”

“Better than a knight.”

The smile that lights up the boy’s rosy cheeks is the most wonderful thing Jaskier has ever seen, better than the northern lights on these mountains. But their moment seems to have come to an end.

The swoosh of magic Jaskier knows by heart brushes by his ear, and Roach suddenly brays anxiously in her stall.

“I feel weird.” The panic returns to the boy’s voice.

“It’s okay. It means we have to say goodbye.”

“Are you leaving?”

“Never.”

“But why do we have to say goodbye?” his tiny voice gets tight and scared once more. Jaskier shushes him gently.

“Because we’ll see each other again.”

“And horsie too?”

“Her too.” Jaskier nods solemnly.

The boy waves nervously at Jaskier, and then the mare. His big brown eyes bore into Jaskier’s with hope and trust, a trust that will be returned decades from now, for him at least.

“Goodbye.”

Once again, Jaskier is left alone. Snow falls silently in the courtyard like it has been for days.

The rest of the day passes in a blur. Jaskier goes through dinner without a word, no matter how the four witchers try to engage with him.

Eskel is his usual self, nice and respectful, not prodding after noticing Jaskier in a weird mood. It’s something Lambert physically cannot do, because he constantly asks Jaskier what is wrong, trying to get a response out of him.

“You smell miserable, buttercup, like you are about to pass out.”

Jaskier imagines the tight smile he offers is not the most convincing, since everyone only gets more concerned. Ciri puts her hand on his arm as a silent question, and when she can’t get an answer she starts brooding just like Geralt.

Jaskier would laugh at their likeness if not for his mind racing so fast.

Geralt must have noticed the moment he came back from the stables. He has not let Jaskier out of his sight since, his worry silent but not pushing. After dinner, Jaskier can still feel the weighted gaze on his back, following him all the way back to the bedroom.

He leads Geralt into his room at the end of the hallway and shuts the door. With a soft click of the door, Jaskier turns to throw himself at the witcher with a force that would have knocked over any other man, but Geralt only catches his momentum, solid and steady. He buries his nose into Geralt’s shoulder and lets the familiar smell of pine and soap fill his senses.

“What’s wrong, Jaskier?” Geralt’s voice rumbles out of his chest, deep and patient. “You know, Lambert was right. You smell so…sad.”

“I made you a promise.” Jaskier’s voice is muffled by Geralt’s shoulder.

“What?”

“I made you a promise. Years ago for me, and years from now for you. To always have faith in you, even when you make mistakes.” Jaskier extracts his limbs and looks into the confusion in the flowing amber. He presses their lips together, sweet and lingering, like they have all the time in the world. The kiss tastes like the lost years between them, all the laughter and heartaches, the lust and yearning, and the dust and smoke from war. He pulls away.

The last time he kissed Geralt, it was by the side of a road, full of rage and hurt. This time, it’s hope that rises like a winter sun, cozy but not sweltering.

“This is me keeping that promise.”

“Jaskier,” Geralt swallows, composing himself, “You know I won’t hold it against you. It’s not fair for you to be pressured into this just for something I haven’t asked of you yet. I meant it when I said you can take all the time you need, because I did fuck up, and I’m so –”

“Don’t apologize again,” Jaskier interrupts, “I know how sorry you feel, how you’ll still feel even years from now. Just – don’t.”

He presses his forehead to Geralt’s and they breathe in tandem. Maybe he’s still affected by the memory of Geralt as a child, scared and alone, unaware of the hurt he’s about to receive. The trials, growing up away from home, training to become a weapon, the glares people cast at him. Jaskier shudders to think, desperately needing to shield his witcher from the world, but he was powerless in the stable this afternoon. He is not powerless now.

“How about a promise you did hear from me?” he asks.

Geralt frowns in confusion, waiting for him to explain, so Jaskier cups Geralt’s jaw to study him again, his thumb resting exactly where he wiped tears off of the boy hours ago.

“They were brown.”

The confusion in the amber eyes only grows.

“Your eyes, before the trials. They used to be brown.”

Geralt still looks at him incredulously. When it comes out like that, Jaskier probably sounds crazy.

“Your mother left you by the side of the road. She told you to get water, and when you got back she was gone,” he swallows, “You waited, holding a bucket of water. You waited until you went somewhere else. Somewhere cold, there’s a horse and snow and –”

“Oh.”

Realization dawns on Geralt like a lightning strike. He stares at Jaskier in disbelief.

“All these years –” he whispers, “How is it possible? I thought it was a dream. Vesemir told me it was a dream, that I was in so much shock that I conjured it up in my mind. A horse in the snow, chestnut brown, and…”

“And me,” Jaskier almost chokes out, “It wasn’t a dream.”

Geralt looks pained. All this talk about that day must be dredging up terrible memories and Jaskier never wants to hurt him on top of that.

“Do you remember what I said before you went back?”

To which Geralt chuckles tightly.

“That whole day was a bit hazy in my memory, Jask. Vesemir was right in that I was in shock. And I’ve tried so hard to forget about that day, to bury it so I don’t have to think about it.” he holds on to Jaskier, studying him in a new light. “I just remember that you made me feel so warm, Jask. You were the only good thing on the worst day of my life.”

The ache in Jaskier’s chest lessens somehow at those words. For whatever reason destiny decided to weave their fates together, he’s grateful for it just for that moment’s solace alone.

“You knew you were leaving.”

“I did. Now that I know, it was the first time I ever got pulled through time. To you.”

“I did promise we would see each other again.” Jaskier smiles.

Geralt pauses for a moment. Gradually, the golden yellow lights up like the most beautiful constellation in the night sky.

“You promised to never leave me.”

This time when their lips come together, it’s quiet and natural, like a piece of puzzle falling into place. Jaskier backs Geralt towards the bed, and they almost fall over onto the mattress, breaking the contact.

Geralt chases him with heated fervor, to which Jaskier gladly returns with a soft moan. He’s missed his witcher after all. Any space separating them at this moment needs to be closed like it personally offends him.

Tomorrow morning, Jaskier will wake Geralt with fingers through his hair and lips pressed to his forehead. Tomorrow Jaskier will tell him how much he loves him, over and over again. It won’t be the first time Jaskier has uttered the words, but it will be the first affirmation Geralt receives. Tomorrow Geralt will crinkle his eyes and return the words sleepily while dragging Jaskier back under the covers.

Tomorrow they’ll start a new chapter, together.

For now, they fall into each other under the night sky of the Blue Mountains, in a small room with a roaring fire burning in the hearth, tucked away from war and heartbreak.

#geraskier #geralt of rivia #time travel #jaskier #geralt x jaskier #the witcher fic #geraskier fic #geralt apologizes

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