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writing-gifts · 4 years

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datura (moth!bruno x butterfly!reader)

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A/N: this fics 30k+ words now and im happy that ive stayed with it this long, but yea thats it lol

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Reader is gender neutral!

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[Late Fall]

You didn't think you'd be meeting Abbacchio so soon--perhaps sometime after Winter. But one day you're taking shelter from the cold when Bruno comes to visit.

These days you never really know for sure when he'll show but this was definitely earlier than usual. Nevertheless, you're glad to have someone to cure your boredom...until you see there's someone else very familiar with him.

You hide partially behind your door trying to slow your racing heart. Was this excitement or fear? Maybe both?

“Er, you’re Abbacchio right?”

When the wasp nods but doesn’t further speak you look at Bruno, but he simply gives you an encouraging smile. You wanted to scold the moth for the nonexistent forewarning, but at the same time with a surprise visit you didn't have time to fret before the actual meeting.

You’ll have to go along with this either way so you put on a polite smile. “You guys want to come in?”

“No, I'd rather stay out here,” Abbacchio replies.

Your brows furrow and your smile becomes more forced. “Uh…”

But it's cold! What the hell, do you two not get cold or something!?

It takes you a moment but then you realize that the wasp was being sarcastic. Probably. But you’re not sure if it’s because he’s trying to be funny or if he doesn’t like you. Or maybe he was messing with you?

Bruno throws him a bemused look. "It would be more comfortable inside don't you think?”

The wasp stares at you in a way that makes you feel like you're being sized up but eventually relents. “Alright.”

You move so Abbacchio can walk in, but Bruno stops next to you.

"Don't be intimidated. He can be like that toward new people and he’s a little grumpy that he had to walk all the way over here," he whispers.

You look over at the wasp already sitting on the daybed remembering his lack of flight and nod. But you weren’t sure if you wanted to deal with a bitchy bug right now.

Bruno goes to sit, but you scuttle to your room with some quickly mumbled excuse so you can collect your thoughts.

What were you supposed to do? Entertain them both? You were far removed from having to actively entertain Bruno when he came over so you felt out of your element.

This meeting should have happened in Spring instead.

You must have been in your room for too long because Bruno shows up.

When he sees you sitting on your bed he raises a brow. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing really. I’m just unsure what to do so I'm hiding. Are we like hanging out?”

Bruno shakes his head. "I don't understand. You don't need to do anything."

"But I feel like I have to since Abbacchio is here though. And he really doesn't look like he wants to be here."

"Well, we aren't going to stay too long if that makes things better. He just wanted to see you. Of course he's too prideful to admit that though."

"Well…He could just be more polite though," you grumble.

"Then he wouldn't be Abbacchio…" Bruno sighs. "Don't worry I talked to him so it'll all work out."

You purse your lips. "...Hey next time just give me a heads up if you're bringing someone over, okay?"

If your unexpected guest was just a little amiable then you wouldn't have cared but that wasn't the case.

Bruno looks a bit surprised that you seem genuinely annoyed, but he gives you the affirmation you want. So even though you're still reluctant, you move off the bed.

“Okay we can go back.”

You walk ahead of Bruno and when you get to the main room you try to talk to the wasp again.

“Uh...Do you want anything to drink?”

"No thanks."

"...Okay."

Instead of sitting down you stand there. Bruno wouldn't lie to you but the wasp's behavior said otherwise. Your friend gently grabs your arm and leads you to the daybed to sit.

"Do you want me to get you something to drink ____?"

"...Sure? It can be whatever."

You realize too late that if he's getting drinks, he’s going to leave you alone with Abbacchio. You squint at Bruno as he exits the room. It shouldn't take long but you're sure Bruno's going to take as long as he sees fit.

So while he’s gone, you sit there quietly sneaking peeks at the wasp trying to figure out how to move things along. He sits, leg spread, looking at nothing in particular.

You had seen the occasional albino insect but this was the first wasp. Which isn’t surprising since you kept clear of any. Until now.

“What?”

You flinch from the sudden break in silence. “W-What?”

“You keep looking at me.”

You try to smile but it definitely comes off more as a grimace from the weird look you get in return.

Sighing, you frown. “I’m sorry. I’m going to be straight forward and say that I feel super awkward right now, and I don’t know what to say or do.”

The wasp crosses his arms. “...You don’t need to say anything. I actually prefer the silence.”

"Oh."

You continue to sit in silence that's slightly less awkward, but again the wasp breaks it.

“How’s your leg?”

Your eyes widen a bit from him trying to start a conversation. “Oh, it’s okay.”

You stretch out your leg, bending it a few times. There was no more pain but a bunch of scars were left behind around your thigh and calf.

“That's good.”

Since he was here you could show your gratitude in person. You hesitate for a moment but remember what Bruno had told you at the forest clearing. And you didn't want to let this possible conversation die.

“Hey, thank you for helping me that day. You really saved my life. And the fact you managed to open that lizard's mouth was pretty amazing!"

You see the stern expression on the wasps face slightly fall, and he gives you a nod. “It wasn't anything--I mean….You're welcome.”

You give your first genuine smile today and Abbacchio looks away looking a bit flushed.

A moment later and the moth finally returns.

"I’m back with your drink ____."

You turn towards Bruno as he walks towards the daybed.

“What the hell were exactly doing in there Bucciarati?” Abbacchio looks over, sounding unimpressed with Bruno's little plan.

"You're not slick Bruno," you add.

He raises a hand in surrender. “Okay you got me. But it worked didn't it?”

You look at Abbacchio.

“...I guess it’s a start,” Abbacchio says.

"I saw you blushing from the kitchen," Bruno says.

“I--Leave me alone.”

You hold back your laugh lest you want to be scowled at by the wasp next.

Bruno hands over your drink and you thank him and relax back into the daybed. Maybe it's okay if they decide to stay longer.

----

For the first time this season, you can't fly. Even after trying to warm yourself up with all your blankets, you'd only be able to stay off the ground for a short time before your wings would give up. And unless you were planning on climbing up the stems of the flowers near your home there was no way you were getting any nectar.

So over the next couple days, whenever you couldn’t fly, you were content with spending most of your time sewing, knitting or sleeping. Even the days where you could fly you'd find yourself spending most of the day inside anyways.

But after a while you start to feel confined in your home, and you suppose you need to do something different. So you finally gather the courage to venture a good distance from your home by yourself.

You decide to use this opportunity to visit a neighbor--a self-proclaimed “vegetarian” spider--so you can get started on Bruno's 2nd gift.

Before you were hesitant to go, even with the gift on the line, but after everything that's happened with Abbacchio you were more at ease with the idea.

Once you actually see the spider's small home, you notice there's no webs for you to get stuck in.

With the spider's help, you hope to learn how to create sheer cloth or lace as he called it. In return, you're willing to part with the rest of the honey you had sitting around.

There was the option to trade for already made lace but you were hellbent on making this gift all on your own. When you tell the spider, Ilyas, this he seems even more excited to share his passion.

“Rarely anyone likes to visit me!”

You smile feeling a bit sad for him. Now that you actually had met him properly you can tell the "rumors" about him being completely harmless were true. He only seemed to use his webs to make lace. How it wasn't sticky was a mystery to you though.

After trying for the first time, Ilyas tells you that you're a natural but that feels like an over-exaggeration. You decide to visit more often though because of his enthusiasm.

He encourages you to practice with small squares first before doing any complicated shapes, and to also experiment with different lace patterns.

When you try to practice on your own, you struggle with making the lace without the spider's help, and the strange tool they had to speed up the process. All you had was your needles, threads, and your inexperienced hands.

There were many times where you would miss a stitch and not notice until you had finished the square. It was frustrating but you would keep at it, trying to finish at least one square a day.

You stare at your most recent square. You didn’t miss a stitch this time so that was good, but you didn't really like the pattern the threads were forming.

You rest your head in your hand, absentmindedly tracing your scars as you study the intricate web-like lace.

The sleep schedule you had somewhat managed to fix at Abilene’s house had slowly drifted back to the way it was before. Along with the days becoming shorter, you felt like you spent a good chunk of the night wide awake. So even though it was pretty late, you weren’t tired at all.

You guess you could start another square with a new pattern but even with your lantern, making lace in the night was a strain on your eyes.

You pull the covers sitting around you on the ground over your shoulders and rest your head on the table.

I wonder if Bruno will show….

While you stare at the lace, you somehow manage to fall asleep. You're not sure how long, but you're woken up by a knock at the door.

Knowing it's Bruno, you quickly get up to answer.

He greets you with a smile. “Did you just wake up?”

“Yea, I didn’t even feel like going to bed at all so I don’t know how that happened."

“Too bad I woke you up then.” He pulls out 3 canisters. “I brought you nectar though.”

“I don't have any to trade though? I stayed in today."

"Don't you think we are past that point in our relationship? I’m just giving it to you as a friend."

"I guess you're right. I’m so used to trading...” you trail off and take the canisters.

"Are you okay?"

"Huh?"

"You just seem down."

You open one of the canisters to see what's inside and avoid Bruno's analyzing gaze.

"Honestly, I guess I do feel strange? I want to go back to sleep but I don’t really want to at the same time. Maybe I slept weird…"

"I know you probably don't want to hear this right now but maybe you should go out. It might make you feel better."

You shrug. Other than walking to Ilyas's and sometimes getting nectar close by, you spend most of your day inside. Maybe your body wasn’t used to being inside this much. Even during Winter you'd try to go out when you really shouldn't.

“Maybe you're right.”

"Do you want to go to the lake, obviously not near it of course."

Bruno seemed to be trying to tread carefully with you. It was appreciated but at the same time you want him to treat you like usual.

You huff out a laugh. “I know that, but sure let's go.”

You were already dressed in a sweater but invite Bruno in so you can go find a scarf.

While wrapping one around your neck you remember the moth's sweater and see no better time to give it to him.

You grab it off the chair you left it on and walk into the main room.

"Bruno, I finished your sweater!"

You hold the off white sweater out to the moth and he gently takes it from you.

"You finished it that fast?"

You nod.

The moth unfolds it and holds it out. You made it so it would be on the baggier side so he wouldn't feel constricted.

You watch as he turns it around and pulls it over his head. Once he puts his arms through the sleeves he pats down his hair.

You watch as he fiddles with the buttons on one of his sleeves until it comes off allowing his forearm to be free.

"Feels comfortable?"

He nods as he rebuttons the sleeve. "Yes, thank you! I don't even want to take off the sleeves either."

You grin, pleased that he likes it that much. "That's great! Honestly this looks quite good on you..."

"You think so?" The moth strikes a subtle pose.

"O-Obviously! Honestly I think you'd be able to pull anything off."

This gives you even more motivation to make that lacy top for him.

"Okay, let's go before I say anything else embarrassing," you say.

You both head outside, but you find yourself struggling to get off the ground. Apparently the temperature had dropped slightly too low.

"Do you need help?"

"No, no I got it."

You flap your wings a couple times hoping for the blood to finish circulating and with a little more struggling you're off the ground.

“Oh this sucks!”

You couldn’t help being jealous that Bruno could still fly so easily.

"You really don't need to push yourself."

“It's fine. I just needed to stretch out my wings. You do the vibrating thing to warm up and fly right?"

"Yeah."

"So lucky,” you say with a sigh.

"Have you ever tried doing it yourself? It'll get you in the air quicker."

"Hmmm…"

You momentarily stop flying. Clenching your fists, you tense your whole body and try to vibrate, but it’s literally impossible for you to reach the speed Bruno is capable of.

You notice Bruno is covering his mouth as he watches your sorry attempt.

"Are you laughing at me?"

"I’m sorry, the look on your face was cute."

You open your mouth but actual words struggle to come out.

"You--! Don't….Let’s just go already."

While the two of you make the flight to the lake, the moth insists on holding your hand 'just in case your wings give out'. Even though flying so close to someone can be a pain, his hand kept yours quite warm so you don't complain.

The lake feels so much different when you arrive. Without all the insects around, singing, dancing and playing, it felt somewhat lifeless. Even the lilies from before were shut.

“It’s so quiet…”

“Yea but it can be nice like this too. Sometimes I prefer it.

You both sit at the same place you did last time. Even though the rock's surface is cold, you already feel better. You had been nervous stepping out to places that weren’t busy, but with Bruno that nervousness was almost nonexistent.

You wish you had taken the time to come out more often like this with the moth, because once Winter came you wouldn’t be able to see him. You look over at Bruno. He seems lost in his own thoughts.

“Are you ready for Winter?”

He glances at you. “I suppose so…I won’t be able to visit you anymore though. It’s going to feel quieter.”

You hum in agreement. "Why does Winter have to exist? It's like Fall's terrible older sibling."

That gets a chuckle out of the moth. "That's the first time I've heard some describe the season like that."

"Well it is…"

"I guess you could say that."

Silence settles between the both of you but you move slightly in your spot from the restlessness you were beginning to feel. An idea had come into your mind and you were nervous to try it.

Holding your breath, you lean against the moth, but keep your eyes focused on the lake too afraid to make eye contact. If your time with him was going to be limited then maybe you should send even more hints.

A tense moment passes before you feel him shift against you. Your heart jumps when you feel a hand brush against your hip.

"Is this okay?" Bruno’s voice is low and it makes the action feel more intimate.

Don’t panic. This is a good thing!

“Y-Yes.”

You take a moment to calm down and continue speaking. “Is the sweater still comfortable?”

"Definitely. I think you’ll be happy to hear that I don't want to take it off.”

There was a weird sense of pride within you from getting the moth to willingly wear clothes.

"Then my work here is done. Well I'm going to make you more stuff though.”

You cross your arms and snuggle more into Bruno’s side when a particularly cool wind blows through. The moth's hold on you becomes more secure as he brings another arm to your side.

“Too cold?”

“Definitely underestimated it.”

As much as you wanted to stay in this position, you didn't want to stay out here any longer.

“Let’s go back,” you say.

Bruno gives your side a gentle squeeze before removing his arms. He helps you to your feet, but he doesn’t let go of your hand.

With that you're ready to go. But when you try to take flight, you can’t, no matter how hard you try.

You look at Bruno unsure what to do.

"I can carry you, if that’s okay with you?”

You didn't exactly have another choice so you agree.

He places his arms on your back before he bends down to lift you behind your legs.

You immediately wrap your arms loosely around his neck as soon as he’s off the ground. This was the first time you had been in a situation like this before so you're kind of nervous.

The air passing by as he flys gives you chills. When you shove your face into the fur on his neck to protect your face, you feel him pull you just a little closer.

"You okay?"

"Cold!" The word comes out muffled. Your tolerance to the cold was almost nonexistent.

"Don't worry, it shouldn't be much longer."

You pull your face away just an inch to peak up at the moth “I'm not making you uncomfortable am I?”

"Of course not. We should actually do this more often."

“Flying together?” you ask confused.

"No. Me holding you."

That has you sputtering and you shove your face back in his fur.

Was that...flirting?

It couldn't be anything else but you still try to convince yourself otherwise.

You try to think of other things but just end up thinking about Winter again. Soon you wouldn't be able to spend time with him like this so casually. You wouldn't get to see him for a whole season!

You frown and your arms tighten around his neck.

When you reach back home you feel reluctant to let go of Bruno. Partially because he's so warm.

"____? We’re back.”

The moth lowers your feet to the ground so you can stand but you still hold on.

"____?"

You finally pull away and look at him.

"It’s--Don't you think It’s gonna suck not being able to see each other everyday?” Your voice wobbles. “I don’t want to wait that long...”

Your only option during Winter was to walk but you’d be dead before you even reached Bruno’s home.

It wasn't forever but if you ever messed Abilene she was a short walk away. Maybe you just weren't used to this.

“What if you forget about me?”

“You’re exaggerating. I wouldn't forget you that easily and Winter will pass before you know it.”

"You say that but you’re frowning! What...What if I stayed with you?"

Any shame you had in your body was dwindling away the longer you stayed up apparently.

"I mean...Isn't it weird that you’ve visited me so many times and I’ve never been over to your home once?"

Bruno seems surprised by your sudden suggestion but not displeased.

"I'm not against this but are you sure you’ll be comfortable staying there all Winter? You won’t be able to come back for some time."

You haven't been away from your home for that long ever, but you can’t think of any heavy cons to being away other than not getting to see Abilene.

You sigh, Winter really was cruel.

“...I’m actually already looking forward to it. The next time the temperature increases I'd better fly over there! Or you could just carry me if that doesn't happen soon enough.”

Bruno is unconvinced though. "You don't look completely sure."

"Because I don't want to be seperated from Abby for that long either..."

You look at the moth hoping for him to solve your predicament for you. "What should I do?"

"I have no problem taking you with me, even if it might upset Abilene, so I don't feel right making this decision for you."

You groan. It was definitely a commendable answer but it still left you with a tough decision. But after some pacing you come to a conclusion.

If you're struggling this hard to just stay at home then it would be best to go….Right? And Bruno wants you there too...

You nod to yourself. "I'm going. I don't want to regret staying here. Even if I have to say goodbye to Abby for some time."

"Okay. I know it's selfish of me but I was actually hoping you would still want to come."

At least someone here wasn't conflicted.

You immediately start mentally making a list of the stuff you need to take over. The biggest hill would be your necta.

“Um Bruno…”

After you explain the situation and show him how many jars you have stored up Bruno looks a bit perplexed, but you both accept that you'll have to just start moving things now. So that night Bruno takes bags of your jars home with him.

The next time you’re able to fly, you make sure to head over to Abilene's to tell them where you plan to spend the Winter.

You expect them to be disappointed, and they are, but they mostly end up teasing you.

"What if you guys are dating by the end of Winter?" they ask with a smirk.

You shake your head at the ridiculous statement, but was it really that improbable? A hopeful part of you said no. Bruno obviously didn’t mind being close to you so maybe...

Abilene touches your arm taking you out of your thoughts. “But seriously, I’m happy for you.”

“But will you be okay by yourself?"

They put their hands on their hips. "It will definitely be more quiet but I'll be okay."

You purse your lips but nod. You wish that the distance between here and Bruno’s home wasn’t so far.

"Do you have your stuff already packed?"

"Actually I kind of need your help, if that’s okay. I need to move a good chunk of my nectar over to his home and it’s a lot."

Abilene shrugs. “Yea, sure.”

"I’ll definitely make it up to you!"

"You don't need to make it up, I want you to get to spend time with your little boyfriend."

You almost deny it but know that you’d be reacting just how they want. “Whatever, let’s just go and start moving everything!"

You, Abilene, and Bruno spend the next several days making multiple trips between you and the moth’s homes. With the help of Abilene, the work doesn’t take as long and helps make up for the days you can't fly.

However with Winter getting closer and closer you decide to leave some of your stash behind. You would just have to be extra careful with how much you drink. Bruno reassures you that he has extra nectar just in case though.

You also make sure to bring all your sewing, knitting and lace equipment, AND all your blankets and pillows!

By the time you finish your last day of moving, it's already night and you and Abilene had said goodbye way before the sun set. You were already planning on making them an extra sweater for all their help. Or maybe a hat?

When you finally get to properly take in Brunos home you already feel at home. It was embedded in a tree stump. And the surrounding area had way more trees than your own home. You could tell sunlight struggled to get through even on the hottest of days.

The thing that amazes you the most is that the inside of his home is lit with multiple lanterns.

Bruno drops the last of your blankets on his bed. "Since you’re diurnal we can just switch out sleeping here--well until it gets too cold."

“Where are you going to stay then?” You had already been reluctant to take up his bedroom but he insisted. Not sleeping in a proper place would start to affect you negatively so it was probably for the best.

"There’s space in Narancia’s room."

You nod before yawning, today was a long day and you wanted to put everything away quickly so you could get into bed.

“You're still up?”

At first you think that Bruno’s talking to you but then you see he’s looking behind you. You turn and see a very young insect walk into the room from behind the wall at the entrance.

Your eyes widen slightly. You had expected to see a squishy baby caterpillar when you first met Narancia but what you see instead is a bumblebee already growing out of grub stage. He was a long way from growing out his wings though.

He wasn’t the same as Bruno?

Still you see the messy, random tufts of yellow and black fur on his small body and can't deny how adorable he is.

“I was but ____,” he says.

The youngling then runs towards you and stops in front of you shifting from foot to foot. You smile down at the energetic little bee.

“Hello, Narancia!” His energy was almost infectious.

“Hi! Papa talks 'bout you. A lot!” His small hands raise out and above him.

You grin at the slightly embarrassed look on the moth's face. He was doing his best to hide it though.

So this whole time I wasn’t the only one.

"Narancia--"

“What type of stuff does he say?”

Bruno deadpans at your interruption.

The bee tries to explain but part of it comes off unintelligible. You nod along though to the stuff you can understand like 'nice' and 'flowers'. You think you catch something about your wings too.

“Narancia, it’s bedtime,” Bruno says after his son seems to run out of words.

“Why? I’m not sleepy."

“I know, but we need to fix your sleep schedule.”

Looks like you weren’t the only one struggling to sleep at the “proper” times either.

The bee huffs. "I wanna stay here..."

Bruno holds out a hand to him, which Narancia pouts at but grabs.

“I’m going to go put Narancia back to bed and I’ll come back to help.”

“Goodnigh’,” Narancia says to you.

“Night. We can play later, okay?”

The bee nods obviously still not wanting to leave.

Once he and Narancia leave you use this chance to properly look around his room. Other than the bed and the small table next to it, there's a small dresser (where he probably kept some of the clothes he never wore) a floor length mirror, and a shelf.

This room was also lacking in lanterns compared to the others. You take notice of one of the lanterns sitting on the shelf in between some books and get the feeling the moth put them in here for you.

Other than that, the room was quite neat and the furniture looked elegant and costly. It was definitely a bedroom that said ‘Bruno Bucciarati’.

You decide that's enough investigating and go back to organizing, and soon after Bruno returns to help.

The both of you work, talking about small unimportant things but you finally ask what has been at the back of your mind since you saw Narancia.

“Um...why is Narancia living with you?”

A bee usually lives within a community of other bees of their type their whole lives--kind of like ants or wasps--so you were curious, but almost not surprised since Bruno seemed to have a penchant for gathering deviant insects.

“...I found him alone in a dead hive and I took him in.”

Bruno seemed reluctant to go into it and honestly you didn’t think it was your place to intrude, so you accept that answer with an “Oh”.

Bruno stops stacking jars in his closet to look at you. "I should have told you he was a bee sooner, yea?"

"Hmm, not really. Does it really matter?"

"...I guess you're right,” Bruno says but he doesn’t sound too sure.

Maybe some insects told him it was weird.

“Well it’s great that you found and took in Narancia. Nature isn’t exactly patient with larvae.”

The moth nods. “That’s true. The only problem is our different sleep schedules and the feeding. Well it was until you told me about how honey can be watered down."

“So you gave the honey I gave you to Narancia?”

“Well I might have eaten some too.” He smiles a bit. “But I got more ‘straight from the source’ so it’s fine. And Narancia doesn't go through the supply as quickly anymore now that it's better quality.”

You feel pleased that you had managed to help the moth, even if it was unintentional.

By the time you, Bruno, and Narancia--who wouldn’t stay in bed--finish finding spots to put all your jars, it’s well into the night.

You lay in Bruno’s bed under numerous covers and among all your pillows. It smelt faintly of flowers, ones you would usually smell on the moth. It’s almost like you're shoving your face into his fluffy fur.

For once you’re ready to go to sleep the moment you’re in bed. You shut all the other lanterns in the room but kept yours open. At this point, sleeping with it was necessary for you.

As you feel yourself drifting off, a knock on the door pulls you back.

“Come in…” you say through a yawn.

Bruno slowly opens the door and walks in.

“Did I wake you up?”

“Not this time but you tend to show up when I am.”

“Sorry, I’m not doing it on purpose I swear.” Bruno comes over to sit on the edge of the bed.

You smile at him feeling even more relaxed under your covers.

“It’s okay, seeing you is better than sleeping, “ you say through a yawn. “Thanks again for letting me say. I’m really happy I'll get to see you everyday.”

"Me too. I know I tried to act like the Winter would go by quickly but...I was actually dreading it.”

You feel relief and almost happy that Bruno felt the same way.

"Why'd you come?" you ask.

"I...I just wanted to see you."

The both of you stare at each other in the dim light for a moment, you mostly confused. Then for some reason Bruno leans over closer to you, but you don’t move away.

"Can I kiss you?"

Maybe you're too tired to overthink but you feel surprisingly calm. You don't trust your voice though so you nod instead.

When he closes the space and his lips press against yours you’re unsure if you’re dreaming or not.

You feel his tongue brush against your bottom lip and you think he'll deepen it, but his hand caresses your cheek and he pulls back.

You stare into his faintly glowing eyes as you struggle to speak. "Was...was that a goodnight kiss?"

Bruno’s finger traces your bottom lip. “Do you want it to be?”

"I um--Maybe it can be more?"

His stare feels so intense and you struggle to keep eye contact but you don't want to look away either.

Fortunately (or unfortunately), the moth presses a soft kiss to your cheek before standing up.

“Goodnight ____."

“N-Night Bruno.”

Even though your body feels warmer, you pull the covers close. The fatigue you had was practically whooshed away. So you stare wide-eyed at the lantern--the only thing keeping you company.

-----

A/N: I made art for narancia! anyways im gonna make the next 3 chapters as fluffy/domestic as i possibly can (the next updates might be a little slow tho, kind of stressed with real life stuff so please bear with me)

#bruno buccellati x reader #bruno bucciarati x reader #bruno x reader #reader insert #jjba x reader #my writing

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beca-mitchell · 5 years

Text

life as we know it (1/1)

Summary: After Beca's miscarriage, the road to healing is a long one. Their first night out together in a while proves to be more difficult than expected.

Word count: 2.7k

continuation from this. Part of now i see daylight—an au series that explores beca and chloe’s lives together as if they had been childhood friends.

A/N: this universe is the work-product of hours of hc'ing with @asimplefavors, so just assume all ideas are things we've discussed. <3 in this universe, beca and chloe are high school sweethearts.

Warning for angst and mention/reference to a miscarriage.

read below or on AO3.

——————————

“I never want to be without you again.”

“I never left.”

“I know, but it felt like you did and that’s what hurt the most.”

Blinking at her reflection, Beca murmurs a quiet thanks at both her stylist and her make-up artist as they quietly mill about behind her packing up their things.

It feels odd, as it has for the past while, to be preparing to go out when it still feels like she ought to be grieving. The aches and pains—the physical ones—have long faded and she has been spending more time in the studio, slowly getting her bearings again. Though she is technically on a break from the album she had been working on before and during her pregnancy, she still thinks about the music she had been creating—the music she had anticipated being read just in time for their baby, but—

She inhales deeply.

Music has never felt more soothing or poignant.

Though she still shares her music with Chloe from time to time, there has been a very specific solitude she has received from simply immersing herself in music again.

But more than that—losing herself in the love she feels for Chloe, their life together, and their baby who didn’t make it, but who will forever be so, so loved and cherished. All of that, translated into music and memories to be cherished forever.

Beca attempts a smile at herself in the mirror.

Chloe’s quiet gasp draws Beca out of her musings.

“You look beautiful,” Chloe murmurs, pulling Beca towards her for a quick kiss. Beca finds it amusing that for how much Chloe hadn’t given a second thought about PDA in high school, Chloe is now the more reserved one between the two of them.

It’s charming.

“Wait,” Beca pleads, wanting to feel Chloe’s warmth against her for just a few seconds more. Her stylist can wait a few measly seconds. “There,” she mumbles against Chloe’s mouth, purposefully sliding her hand up Chloe’s back to send a shiver down Chloe’s spine. Pleased with her own ministrations, Beca pulls back, taking care to ensure that Chloe’s lipstick is as pristine as it was before.

“You two,” Beca’s make-up artist says lightly from where she’s packing up her things. “I’m not fixing anything,” she sing-songs.

Beca smiles up at her girifriend who returns the smile with equal energy. “There’s nothing to fix,” she promises, speaking directly to Chloe. “I’m going to have the best-looking woman on my arm.”

Chloe’s smile threatens to turn into a smirk, but she maintains innocence long enough. “Flatterer.”

Though Beca feels light at the moment, an undercurrent of nervous anticipation rushes through her. This is the first event she and Chloe are attending together ever since the miscarriage and though their relationship is pretty much back at where it was before everything nearly fell apart, it wasn’t without hard work and pain. One month after Chloe finally broke down in her arms, clutching at Beca with the desperation of somebody on the brink of total collapse--one month and eight joint therapy sessions later--Beca finally feels like she’s close to whole.

So while flirting with Chloe openly is only a mask to hide her nerves, she still thinks Chloe is the most beautiful woman she has ever laid eyes on. She softens her gaze, allowing herself to sink into the sensation of being so in love with the woman standing in front of her; it is gratefulness and happiness and passion all at once--Chloe, who has been there for everything, will continue to be there (so long as you let me, Chloe had said with tears in her eyes).

“What?” Chloe finally asks when she senses the change in Beca’s demeanor.

“Nothing,” Beca responds. She reaches out to hold Chloe’s hand. “I’m just happy.”

She’s telling the truth.

“Me too,” Chloe says.

Beca knows Chloe is telling the truth as well.

——————————

The event is close-knit enough that Beca doesn’t feel any of the usual anxiety she feels whenever she goes to industry events. She can tell Chloe also feels a small measure of comfort having met many of the attendees as well. It is still surreal to both of them—Chloe more so than Beca—that this is their life now. By virtue of Beca's status as a celebrity and recording artist with a major label, they mingle regularly with celebrities. This event in particular is a moderately-sized event—honouring some of the older, well-respected music industry executives. It means the flashy celebrity turn-out is low to medium at best, which seemed like a fitting way to make a public appearance. Beca barely knows the honorees, but she supposes showing her face can’t hurt every now and then.

Her label’s president immediately swoops in front of her for a quick conversation. Chloe smiles and kisses her cheek, murmuring that she’ll come back with drinks.

In the past few weeks, Beca realizes then that she and Chloe hadn’t really spent too much time apart. It’s the only explanation for the loss she feels so keenly even though Chloe is just across the room.

“—Beca?”

Beca startles back to the present, flicking her eyes guiltily back to Tom who smiles at her knowingly. “Sorry,” she says quickly. “What, um—?”

“Never gets old, huh?” he asks, tipping his wine glass in her direction.

“What doesn’t?”

“Being in love.”

Beca feels the blush spread across her cheeks and down her neck all at once. “Oh, well, I don’t know if—” At his raised eyebrow, she shrugs helplessly and cuts herself off. “I don’t know where I’d be without her.”

“Well, behind every great artist,” he says lightly.

Chloe appears by Beca’s side again. “Is an even greater woman?” she asks with a pleasant lilt to her voice.

Beca grins, accepting the glass. “Took you long enough.”

“Well, I was going to say a great partner,” Tom corrects. He holds his hand out to shake Chloe’s hand. “Tom Mackay. A pleasure to meet you formally. Beca never shuts up about you.”

“He’s the big guy up there,” Beca clarifies for Chloe, talking over Tom.

“Chloe,” Chloe says after nudging Beca lightly with her shoulder. “Nice to meet you, Tom.”

They are soon joined by a couple, Dan Freeman and his wife Robin.

"So, Chloe," Dan begins in a tone that already has Beca rolling her eyes. She’s never particularly enjoyed his company, but he’s such a solid sound engineer that she begrudgingly admires his talent and tolerates him at least half of the time. "This one is always spending time in the studio, especially recently.” He tilts his head towards Beca. “I bet you’ll be glad when she’s finally done with this album.”

Beca clears her throat. “I’m actually taking a break,” she reminds him stiffly. “Remember?” Chloe, for her part, has not tensed up uncomfortably next to Beca, but instead tucks her hand neatly into the crook of Beca’s elbow. A quick glance shows a gentle smile on Chloe’s face as her eyes flicker to Beca’s.

“I’m grateful for Beca all the time,” Chloe says simply.

Robin coos at them and leans into Dan. “Look at them, why can’t we be more like them?”

Beca tries not to smile too smugly at her coworker, but a small measure of self-satisfaction seeps through nonetheless.

“How long have you two been together again?”

“It’ll be seven years next month,” Beca replies, unable to resist smiling at Chloe again who beams back at her.

“I envy you,” Dan says, shaking his head. “You’re so young and you have so many opportunities to attend events like this. Don’t have to worry about staying out too late or finding a sitter for the little ones,” he jokes, nudging his wife with a playful smile.

Tom laughs at that. “I agree. It was impossible for me and Emily to find somebody to look after our rascals, but we did. I’m sure they would have enjoyed this thrilling event though,” he jokes. “Well, the joys of being a recording artist...at least your schedule is king and you can set up whatever you need with no super strict deadlines,” Tom directs at Beca with a wink. “As long as we still get those albums.”

“Stop pressuring them both of you,” Robin chides. “I’m sure you’ll make lovely parents,” Robin says graciously, directing an apologetic smile at both Chloe and Beca. “But I know that’s not always in everybody’s agenda—at least not really early on.”

For a moment, she struggles to breathe. Beca feels some of the air around her grow thick and stagnant. The shift happens in an instant. She tightens her grip around the stem of her glass and wills herself not to crush the fragile material in her fist. Chloe tenses next to her as well and Beca feels the brief tightening of Chloe’s fingers in the crook of her elbow.

——————————

“I think...with our history and everything that we’ve been through together...part of me is afraid that one day I’ll wake up and she won’t be there,” Chloe whispers. She can barely look at Beca while she says so, taking the brief silence as an opportunity to quickly swipe at the tears welling quickly in her eyes.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Beca murmurs, trying to keep her voice steady despite the sharp pain that spreads through her chest. “I would never leave you.”

“But you almost did. We almost broke because of what happened.”

“I felt so guilty,” Beca explains even though the words are increasingly meaningless. So much of the misplaced guilt had been alleviated over the past few weeks. “I still do sometimes, but—”

“Beca, don’t,” Chloe pleads.

“But,” Beca continues, reaching out to hold Chloe’s hands. “It’s mostly because I know that I hurt you and I know that things still hurt, but I can’t imagine doing this whole life thing without you and I can’t believe that it feels like I almost threw it all away.”

“You didn’t,” Chloe promises. “We’re both working on it now and I know you’re trying. I’m trying, too.” Chloe twists her hands so she can hold Beca’s hands properly. “I love you so much.”

Beca sniffles, surprising herself. Laughing hollowly, she reaches up to quickly swipe away a few stray tears before immediately holding Chloe’s hands again. “I love you, too, Chlo.”

For a moment, they both forget that their therapist is sitting across from them.

They’ll get through it. "We'll get through this," Beca promises. "I'm sorry for ever making you think otherwise. Too lost in my own head."

"Don't apologize for feeling things, Bec. I only ever wished I could take some of that worry away from you."

"We're going to get through this," Bece repeats, with conviction.

Chloe has no choice but to believe the love of her life.

——————————

There is a quiet pain in Chloe’s entire posture as she sits silently next to Beca at their designated table. The lights feel increasingly hot and jarring as they bear down on her. Though Chloe never shied away from the spotlight figuratively or literally, she somehow feels more put on the spot than ever.

The sudden reminder of what had happened such a short period of time ago—and the fact that she and Beca hadn’t even had the opportunity to tell anybody about Beca’s pregnancy before the miscarriage—sticks in her chest like a dagger through her heart.

She tries to focus on the food in front of her and the sound of the MC’s voice amid bursts of laughter, but none of that makes sense—it shouldn’t make sense, not when the flash of grief that rushes through her is immediately struck down by other warring emotions all threatening to burst free.

The fear she had felt when she had received the call from Beca—how Beca’s voice had trembled and hitched and wavered. The drive to the hospital and the energy it had taken to not tremble too badly so as to not get into an accident. Tears. Beca profusely apologizing for nothing and everything all at once, like she had any hand in what had happened.

And the distance—the distance that had stretched between them afterwards.

Apologies and declarations of love.

“Chlo,” Beca says softly. “Are you okay?”

Dragged back into the present moment, a rush of noise hits her as Chloe turns to Beca and quickly swipes at the tears that had formed. “Yeah,” she replies. “I think I’m just…” she trails off.

“Yeah, me too,” Beca murmurs. Her eyes reflect a similar pain. She glances around. “Want to...go?”

“Go? Go where?”

“Go home,” Beca says simply with a half shrug.

“Don’t you need to...be here?”

“I’d rather be at home with you.”

Chloe watches her for any trace of emotion that might indicate otherwise before she nods her head.

Together, they leave.

——————————

“I’m pregnant,” Beca whispers, tears springing to her eyes. “I’m pregnant, oh my God.”

Chloe drops her plate into the sink, hastily wiping her hands off on the closest dishtowel. “Beca, what? What did you just say?”

Beca smiles through a hiccup or a sob. She can’t tell. “It worked,” she tries to explain with a shaky voice. “I’m pregnant.”

“Oh my God,” Chloe exclaims, immediately reaching out to hold Beca’s waist. Beca immediately notices the careful grip Chloe has on her already. “Oh my God, Bec, I—” Poor Chloe, completely overwhelmed, simply begins to cry.

Beca looks incredibly alarmed at the display. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Chloe promises. “I’m just so happy.”

——————————

“Chlo,” Beca murmurs as they lie together in bed, showered and refreshed.

Chloe hums, tucking her face further against Beca’s neck and holding her close. “What is it?”

“You know what I see in our future?”

Chloe shakes her head, ruffling her hair as it sticks to Beca’s shirt and skin.

“I think I can see us with two kids. A beautiful house with a backyard. Maybe close to the ocean. And every day when we wake up, it’ll be to the sound of them laughing and giggling as they jump on our bed. You get the side of the bed closer to the door because I’m not getting my spleen ruptured by them every morning.” Beca inhales. “And God, I know they’re going to be beautiful. Whether we adopt or whether we figure out another way, they’re going to be such beautiful, beautiful children to call our own and that’ll be because they have you to model themselves after. I am so lucky to have you by my side. I was so sad earlier, thinking about everything and how unfair life can be sometimes, but Chlo, I can’t imagine what life would be like without you and I want you to know how much I love you.”

Chloe thinks she’s crying and laughing by the time Beca finishes, but she doesn’t care because she is pulling Beca in for a slow, deep kiss that quickly becomes messy because Beca is whispering words of love into her mouth and tightly weaving her arms around Chloe’s back to hold her close. It is surreal how this feels—how incredibly close to Beca she feels then. It is then that the memory of their entire shared history (littered with all kinds of memories, both happy and sad) doesn’t feel quite so daunting anymore. Like clouds parting to reveal an incomparable warmth, Chloe envisions such a clear and probable future with Beca. As clearly as Beca has seen it, evidently.

They share the same future.

They’re in this together.

“I know that we’re going to be good parents,” Beca whispers, voice thick with emotion. "Like...the best." She rests her forehead against Chloe’s. “I know I’m going to be a good mom despite my own parents.”

“You are,” Chloe breathes out with the little air she has left in her lungs. “You are so, so—” Beca kisses her, interrupting her. Chloe huffs, placing her hand loosely on Beca's chest. “I wasn’t finished."

“I know. I just had to tell you that you’re going to be an incredible mother too. I’ve known this forever. Ever since we were kids even when I didn’t even understand what I was feeling. I just know because you’re Chloe Beale. Our kids are going to be beautiful because of you,” Beca repeats. “I know it.”

“And you.”

Beca closes her eyes. The silence that follows is heavy, rife with all the emotion shared between them in the past few minutes. “I believe you,” she says finally.

Chloe knows she’s telling the truth.

fin.

#bechloe #my fanfic #pitch perfect #text #fanfiction #beca mitchell #chloe beale #angst #mine #now i see daylight

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surveys-at-your-service · 5 years

Text

Survey #220

“as long as god in heaven dwell, your soul, your soul shall scream in hell.”

Would people consider you more immature or mature? It depends on the context. Emotionally, I think I'm considerably mature. As far as eligibility to be a proper adult goes, yeah. No. Would people consider you more funny or serious? I personally don't think I'm very funny, but I'm not super serious, either. Are you currently in love with someone? Who is this person? So... I'm quietly pondering over whether or not I'm just biromantic, not bisexual. I genuinely think I'm in love with my girlfriend, I do, but we have so, so little actually sexual experience that I don't know if "bisexual" fits me. I totally adore her romantically, I know that, but maybe sexually, I'm not into her? I don't know. It's hard for me to say because when I picture doing certain "things," I can't really tell what I feel. I don't take that as an "I'm not into it" though, considering I've wound up liking things with a guy I didn't think I would with anyone, something I only discovered by doing it. This whole situation was driving me insane a few days ago to the point I felt sick, but I've calmed myself out of it to where I've accepted I just have to wait and learn, being long-distance. I'm still entirely invested in us and am going to be honest learning about myself. I haven't actually talked to Sara about it and don't want to unless I come to learn this hunch has credibility. Which room in your house are you in? What color are the walls? My bedroom; light puke green, Why God. What is your absolute favorite hobby? Who got you interested in it? I don't really know about my "absolute favorite." It depends on my mood, really. I think maybe watching my favorite YouTubers tops the list, something Jason actually started with PewDiePie; or RPing, which I got into myself thanks to Meerkat Manor. Would the people you know say you have a nice singing voice? Barely anyone ever hears me sing, so idk. I personally feel my voice suits only few songs. Would you say most of your friends are older/younger than you? Ummm, good question. All but two are very close in age range, but most of my friends/closer acquaintances are kinda split around either side. Were you named after anyone famous or anyone on television? Nope. Are you listening to music right now? If so, who’s singing the song? Yeah, I'm listening to Khemmis' cover of "A Conversation With Death." It's the intro song to that new game Man of Medan and is so badass. All the comments are like "came here from so-and-so's LP because this is epic" and same. What is your dream career? What inspired you to pursue this career? Probably meerkat biologist if I could handle the heat and was okay with moving, or paleontologist if I wasn't opposed to heavy travel. I love meerkats and dinosaurs v v much. If you have a significant other, do you get jealous of people a lot? No. What would you say is your favorite holiday? Why did you choose this? Halloween bc spooks and costumes and candy. Does it feel odd being around your friend’s parents? Why or why not? If I'm alone with them and don't know them very well, sure? What is your favorite fast food restaurant? Is there one in your city? Sonic, probably. And no, but in our neighboring city. What is your favorite sit-down restaurant? Is there one in your city? Olive Garden. See above. Do you ever take pictures with family members around the holidays? Mom pretty much forces it, lol... Have you ever thought you were adopted because of opposing interests? Y'ALL not kidding I legit asked my fucking mom if I was adopted in elementary school bc I thought she hated me one day versus my little sister lmfao. I went through a phase of feeling like she couldn't be "this mean" to her legitimate child. Are you more interested in indoor activities or outdoor things? Hm, that depends on the activities available. Most outdoor things are more fun, though. When is the next time you’ll see someone you’re crushing on? We were just talking a couple days ago about our next visit, actually. If I can financially, I'm probably coming up to see her for her birthday again, as that's when I have a decent break from school. Speaking of which, how many people are you crushing on right now? Lol I mean it's been just shy of two years, a "crush" doesn't cut it. Have you ever played Super Mario Bros. for Nintendo DS? Was it fun? No, actually. I didn't grow up playing Mario games. What exactly is your favorite gaming system? Do you have this system? The PS2. It had a giant graphical leap, contains SOOOOO many goodies, and you can still play PS1 games on it. How often do you talk on the phone? Who do you talk with the most? Very very rarely, pretty much only ever with my mom or dad. I hate talking on the phone. Do you normally do what other people around you want you to do? Depends. What does your trick-or-treat bag or pail look like? I don't have one anymore, but it used to be an orange, plastic jack-o-lantern. How old will you turn on your next birthday? 24... wow. What are your plans to celebrate? Probably just go out to dinner with family. What floor do you live on? I only have one floor. Do you have a balcony? No. What is your favorite fall drink, if you had to pick just one? None. Which X Factor audition(s) was/were your favorite? I've never watched it. Were you a straight A student in spelling and grammar? I'm pretty sure I was in my entire school career... Damn dude, proud. Were you a straight A student in math? HA hell no. I could get a C sometimes. Were you abused or do you know anyone who was abused? I wasn't, but I know people. Are you a Democrat or Republican, or neither? Neither. Independent. Who would take care of you if you needed surgery? My mom and dad, as far as bills go. Do you think you have an accent? Not really. Sometimes you can hear it, though. Have you been told you have an accent? Only when I was younger. I had a SERIOUS one. My family in NY couldn't even understand me sometimes, lmao. Where do you live (country or state)? North Carolina. If you could start a church, what would it be like? I wouldn't. Are there any shades of blue that you don’t like? If so, which ones? Nah. What is something you want to accomplish before you turn 30? Get a goddamn stable job. Do you know what your purpose in life is? Spreading the love and respect of animals and conservation. If you live in an apartment, what is the maintenance man’s name? N/A What are some fall activities you would do with your kids? Hypothetically, if I had/wanted kids, I'd enjoy carving pumpkins with them, obviously taking them trick-or-treating, autumnal crafts would be fun together, and watching Halloween/scary films appropriate to their age would be a nice experience. I'd decorate the house with them. Oh, a hayride would be cool together, I love those. AND DON'T FORGET JUMPING INTO LEAF PILES! I have a lot of ideas for someone who doesn't want to be a mom. Have you ever seen a fox? Yeah. At least one alive, a handful as roadkill. What color are the squirrels where you live? Brown. What do the trees look like where you live? Pine trees. Pine trees. What was the best vacation you’ve been on so far? Disney World as a kid. What is the best class trip you’ve been on? I really enjoyed the trip to Beaufort to an island of wild horses. The water was rough that day, and goddamn... watching the ocean in its aggression was unbelievable. Did you like field trips when you were a kid? UM, DID ANY KID NOT????? Do you find museums boring or interesting? Very interesting! Gimme a science museum and I'm SOLD. What are three issues you are passionate about? GAY RIGHTS, wildlife and nature conservation, women's rights and the pro-choice argument. What are three countries you have no desire to visit? North Korea, Iraq, and... uh... idk. I guess the Middle East in general. That shit's rough. Do you like your country’s flag? Sure? Stars r dope? Would you ever wear a shirt with your country’s flag on it? NO. What’s a medicine that makes you sleepy? Oh. My. God. When I was on three Klonopin a day (I'm now on just one and don't even take it every day), I literally could not function. There was one day in particular (I was on three very briefly bc of this) where I just slept until evening. I physically could not stay awake. I remember I was in the middle of watching a Game Grumps' Mario playthrough, and I'd only last like, ten minutes before I HAD to lie back down, and I'd fall back asleep in like, a minute. That was one of the most awful days ever, I was miserable. Do you like bath bombs? Sure, they're pretty. Who is your favorite neighbor? I don't actually know any. Who are your favorite small YouTubers? He's not very small, I think he's at about a million and a half subs, but Timmy Timato is so fucking iconic. He is an Actual Mood. I have no interest in what he actually posts; I just watch for him. As well, Johnny Paranormal is cool; he's a fuckin awesome guy and is chill and relaxing to watch. I don't watch him religiously, though. Rarely, actually. Who are your favorite big YouTubers? HAVE U HEARD OF????? THE MARKIPLIER GUY??????? What was your favorite girl group when you were growing up? I think it was the Pussycat Dolls, fuck off, don't say shit 2 me "Buttons" is still dope. Do you like Disney movies? Blocked & reported if you don't. What’s your favorite superhero movie? Man idk, I enjoy a lot. I enjoyed The Avengers, and Logan REALLY tugged at my heart. Do you have any credit card debt? I don't have a credit card. Have you ever been really late for work because you slept past your alarm? No. What was your favorite way to spend a summer day as a kid? Swimming. What’s the longest you’ve worked without a day off? Probably like... two days, lmao. It's not like I have a lot of experience. Have you ever been scammed? I don't think so. Where were you the last time you kissed someone? The airport. How’s your mental health? Are you feeling well? It's fine. Do you struggle with acne? No, not anymore. Do you have any uncommon interests or hobbies? RP is definitely the "strangest." Have you ever fostered an animal? No. Are you the clubbing type? Definitely not. Never been, not interested. Bar goer? No. I don't trust strangers + alcohol, and I'd be really scared of being hit on. Song you can’t stand? I don't think there's a song I've heard that I hate more than "Welcome To The Machine" by Pink Floyd. Well, correction, "Friday" by Rebecca Black. That autotuned to all fuck voice is just... major ew. Is your ex sexually attractive to you still? Jason is. Well, if he looks the same as last time I saw him, which was in 2017. Juan doesn't look half bad. Aaron's cute. What is unattractive about them? Jason: fucking communication skills. Juan: his reckless streak. Aaron: nothing that I know of, he's a sweetie and on a great path. Your hottest ex’s name starts with the letter what? J. Pick two highlighter colors: Yellow, Pink, Blue, Purple, Orange. Pink and orange. Has anyone ever written on you? Who hasn't been written on by friends with markers as a kid? Have you ever dated a fat person? Yes. Have you ever dated someone with a fine ass body? I mean this with total respect and love towards her: Sara's body is genuinely sexy. Her figure is amazing. Have you ever had any article of clothing tailored? What for? Yeah, for prom, as well as my sister's wedding. Do you welcome people back when they say they have returned? Yes. What are two foods you think taste good with whipped cream? I fucking hate whipped cream. How long would it take you to walk to the nearest fire hydrant? I've never paid attention, actually... Do you own anything that has the words or picture of ‘mustache’? Well my Mark tribute tat has the Iconic pink mustache on it, and the texting screen background on my phone is also a pink mustache collage-y thing lmao. When you see a feather on the ground, do you ever pick it up? Yeah, sometimes. If you eat it, what is your favorite way to eat beef? On a burger. How would you feel marrying the man you love who has already a son? I don't love a man, and I wouldn't marry anyone with a kid. Have you ever played Roller Coaster Tycoon? What did you think of it? No, but I had SeaWorld Tycoon or whatever it was called. I loved that game. When you are chopping onions, does it really affect your eyes personally? I've never cut an onion myself, but when I'm in the proximity of someone doing it, I feel mild irritation. How long can you hold your breath for? Is there anyone who is better? Idk, I don't feel like testing it. When was the last time you had a pet goldfish? What was its name? I couldn't even try to guess. Are you insecure about your height? What made you think this way? No. Do you enjoy mayonnaise with French fries? Why or why not? Um that sounds disgusting. Did your last significant other have a huge temper? Actually, he warned me that he can and he was nervous about me ever seeing it. I, thank Christ, never witnessed it, though. I would've broken the fuck down, I can't handle angry men. What was the topic discussed in the last meeting you attended? I don't know the last time I went to a "meeting." Honestly, when’s the last time you genuinely liked someone? Now. Are you Team Jacob, Team Edward, or you just don’t care? I've never been into Twilight, but I find Jacob way more attractive. Do you like it when questions are long and make you think? Yes. Have you ever had love at first sight happen to you? No. Do you think Avatar is really all that great? I'm assuming you mean the movie and not TLA? I never saw the full thing, but I would love it. Love or trust? Trust, I think. You can't love someone in a healthy fashion if you don't trust them. What do you think about sexting? Not about that personally. That'd be so awkward. Have you ever done it? Those days where RP mating scenes on YouTube were over private message, timeskipping wasn't a thing... oh boy. It WAS uncomfortable. Would you ever swim with dolphins? Yeah! Have you ever believed a stereotype? Probably at some point. Have you ever tried marijuana? No, though tbh I probably would (but not through smoking it) for anxiety and panic attacks if it was legal in my state. Is there any reason you should be in jail right now? Can you go to jail for illegally downloading, or it is just a fine? Idk. Did the house you grew up in have a big yard? I mean, it was decent. What has been the most difficult class you’ve ever taken? Latin. That shit was so hard. Do you have any medication that you keep with you at all times? Yes, for panic attacks. What’s something that’s much more difficult than a lot of people realize? Heartbreak. Were you raised by both of your parents? If not, then who raised you? Yes, but Mom played a larger role. Did any of the classes you took in high school count towards uni credit? No. First thing you wash in the shower? My hair. Do you plan outfits? "Not unless it’s a special occasion." <<< Are your parents strict? No. Would you go sky diving? Probably not. I'm afraid of heights, and I'd be really scared the parachute wouldn't deploy. Who sits behind you in your math class? Quite honestly, a bitch. She always has shit to say under her breath. Do you have good vision? No, it's awful. When was the last time you watched a show for people younger than you? Last I was with Sara. We're watching Avatar: The Last Airbender together. Have you ever snuck someone into your house before? No. Is there something your significant other does that bothers you completely? She's competitive and admits to it. A lot, particularly in writing, is a "mine needs to be better" thing. When was the last time you kissed someone on the cheek? When I saw my niece and nephew at my nephew's birthday party. How many best friends do you have? One. Did you ever get bullied as a child or were you the bully? Neither. Would you rather eat grape or strawberry jelly or jam? GRAPE. I hate strawberry jam/jelly. Do your parents ever send you to do their grocery shopping for them? No. Do you know anyone who has a speech impediment? I don't think I do personally. If you have your ears pierced, when did you get them pierced? When I was like... 11-12 or so, maybe? Possibly younger? Have you ever had a significant other who hit you? Fuck no. Do you own any exercise machines? No. Do you still leave/receive voicemails? If I need to, sure. School leaves me voicemails sometimes if I miss a call. Do you live in your hometown? No. Are you a festive person? Do you enjoy holidays? Not very festive, but I mean, I enjoy 'em. Did you/Will you attend college? I'm back in college now!! You’re feeling down - do you listen to sad music or happy? Sad. Listening to music fitting my mood helps me feel related to and not alone. You’re looking for some new music - what’s your preferred way to discover? YouTube recommendations. Do you watch the news? No. What hooks you to a television show? The most important thing is A GOOD PLOT!!! It needs to be really interesting to me, bc I do NOT get into shows easily. As for funny shows, they need to be fuuuuunny. I don't think I could ever get "hooked" on a show again, though. I just don't watch TV. Have you ever received anesthesia or morphine? Yes. On the morphine occasion, it didn't do jackshit. I don't think they gave me nearly enough. Is there anyone that makes your skin crawl? The #1 thing that most fits the definition of "skin crawling" to me is seeing a fetus move from outside the stomach, especially the further the mother is along. It's fucking alien-esque and actually makes me scream and panic. Are people more likely to tell you to tone it down or to speak up? It can be either. Do you have a dining room in your house? No. Do you know the alphabet in any other languages? Very close to all of German's. I blank and aren't sure on a couple. How many people have you had sex with? One. Have you ever been surfing? No.

#survey #quiz #questions #random #bored

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fanfictionconnectionwordpress · 6 years

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ok, umm... how about the RFA+ trio and a MC that takes care of street childeren (?) that are unwanted or lost everything and are hurt (like some don't have legs or hands). how would the boys and jeahee react (?) to that? (also, one of the kids called the RFA +trio guy 'daddy' and the kids used to call the Mc 'mommy') can your write that? if no then it's ok too! you don't have to if you don't want to!

***I really love this concept of this MC. It’s super sweet and I just T_T ~Let’s Connect! FFC***

* Character Personality Breakdown - Good Ending Route Characters, my version of Vanderwood from my Vanderwood Backstory fanfiction *

Yoosung:

He is so super ready to be a daddy!

Well, not an actual daddy, but being a daddy to the kids you help is a okay with him!

Yoosung probably won’t realize the full implication of them calling him daddy and you mommy until he makes eye contact with you, and you can bet his face will turn bright red.

He refuses to make eye contact again until you’re alone - at which point you’ll get yourself a passionate kiss.

He’s really good at helping the children, too and enjoys spending time with them.

Jumin:

He’s surprisingly good with children.

Of course, he’s stand-offish for the most part with any child he doesn’t consider his to care for, but since these are your charges, that makes them his charges by extension.

They’ll be able to get whatever advanced medical care they need now thanks to his overabundance of funds.

That’s not the only thing he’ll give, though - bed time stories, baths, playing games. He’s a very well-rounded papa

Speaking of papa, he responds to it as though it is the most natural thing in the world.

When asked if it bothers him to be called daddy by your charges, his answer is very simple, “Why should it? They’re my children now, too.”

Zen:

He’s gotta stifle some emotion when he actually gets to meet the children you take care of.

Zen tends to be pretty dramatic and that includes his emotions - just good at keeping them in check.

The albino will perform little songs and mini routines for the kiddos’ entertainment.

The first time he gets called daddy, it’s like a double take before he laughs it off and responds, “Yes, what can daddy do for you and mommy?”

He is no stranger to volunteer work in the slightest - as he used to help a certain person with volunteer work as well.

It’s a little different, since you’re practically parenting these children, but V wastes no time in getting acquainted with them.

He even tries to help one of the children without hands to learn to paint with her feet - which goes surprisingly well.

V doesn’t really react to being called daddy other than to get a little dusting of pink in his cheeks.

Saeran:

He is so awkward around the children at first - frequently stepping outside to calm a headache and staying mostly in the corner.

That is, until he is approached by a sweet little darling while you’re in the bathroom.

This particular child is very shy, but she quietly hands him a jar to ask him, “Would you please open this daddy?” -Since she has but one hand.

Daddy is completely shocked - his face turns red and he looks away for a moment before asking, (kindly, mind you) “Can’t you ask someone else to do it for you?”

Seeing the sad look on her face as she is about to walk away, he stops her and does it for her after all.

From then on, he’s a little more conversational with the children - it just takes him a while to warm up to new people, regardless of age.

Vanderwood:

He doesn’t want anything to do with children - he’s scared of fucking them up.

At first, he won’t go with you to see them, “For their own good.”

When he finally does, he observes them from the corner - learning about each of them in his quiet and perceptive way.

It isn’t until one of the smaller children is getting pushed around by an older one to climb the monkey bars at the park that he gets close.

Vanderwood knew the younger child wasn’t strong enough, and he put himself in place to catch her when she inevitably fell - giving the elder a long look, “And that’s why we don’t force people to try things they don’t want to do.”

From then on, he’s slowly inserting himself more into their confrontations and conversations - teaching and guiding their behaviors.

Vanderwood is actually amazing papa material, and it isn’t long before he starts cooking with the kiddos - letting them help out with different kitchen tasks.

Yes, their messes set off his OCD and make him clean incredibly often.

Yes, being called ‘daddy’ makes him blush like a maniac, but he just pushes through trying to function.

Seven:

Calls himself, ‘Daddy Seven’ by the end of the first day.

He actually is amazing with kids! Not so much the whole teaching them to tidy up after themselves, but he does know a lot of games.

Seven will need supervision - gotta keep him from teaching them to build fire-breathing robots and stick to the more gentle kitten robots if anything.

The thing you might find surprising is how well he connects with the kids emotionally when they’re upset about any limitations they might have.

If you think about it, though, he was trapped with his own limitations for a long time and knows what it’s like to have been abused. Plus he’s probs seen some things as an agent.

Since he’s not socially awkward, it’s easier for him to offer encouraging words and get the kids back to having fun again.

All he wants to see are smiles~

Jaehee:

She’s never had to take care of children before. Although caring for her former boss’ cat basically felt like the same thing.

At first, she’s very nervous and needs a lot of assurances that she’s doing great.

Jaehee can teach the kids to bake!

They end up inspiring some children themed beverages at the café as well.

Her first reaction to being called ‘mommy’ is to say that you were in the other room before the child replies, “I was talking to you.” getting back a stuttered and startled, “Oh!”

It’s pretty cute seeing her blushing face as she looks towards you as you enter the room and then towards the child before she asks, “Okay, yes? What do you need?”

* MasterList / Patreon / Fanfictions / Commissions* Send me an ask!* Current unanswered asks (This post was scheduled - 07/28/2018): 53* Please buy me a ko-fi! If you’d like your ask to be placed on the top of the list. Make a comment about which ask it is when you donate. Or you could become a patron. They get their asks answered first~

#mystic messenger #mysmes #mystic messenger headcanon #yoosung kim #jumin han #zen hyun ryu #v jihyun kim #saeran choi #vanderwood #saeyoung choi #jaehee kang #askffc

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alexskylar · 7 years

Text

My Ex-wife’s New Boyfriend

An erotic cuckolding tale by Alex Skylar

May 1st

It all started on a warm Spring afternoon. Before that night, my ex-wife Sarah and I had a fairly normal relationship.

We had met almost seven years ago at a concert, where we were introduced by a mutual friend. From there, it was a whirlwind relationship filled with passionate sex and crazy adventures. We traveled to Paris, spent a week on the beaches of St. John, and did a few cross country trips. Within a year, we were married, and a year after that, our son was born. Things seemed to be going along decently, until that initial fire started to fade. Once that happened, we both realized that, despite a mutual respect for each other, we were two very different people.

The divorce was quick and painless, and in the end, it really was the best thing for both of us. It had been a year since everything was finalized, and while I still missed being with her, we remained friends and occasionally did things together with our son, Jackson.

More than anything, the one thing I really missed was the sex. Sarah was a beautiful blonde with a slender frame and full breasts. She was one of the most beautiful women I had ever met, and that alone was enough to draw me to her sexually. Our hobbies and interests may have been wildly different, but when we were naked between the sheets, we always moved well together.

Part of the reason for our impressive sexual chemistry was our different backgrounds. I grew up in a very liberal household and went through a phase in college where I experimented with a lot of alternative sexual activities. As a result, I am very open-minded to new and different ideas. Sarah comes from a more traditional family where vanilla sex was the norm. When I began sharing the dirty ideas that went through my mind with her, it seemed to bring out another side of her; a deep, dark side that she was almost afraid to admit existed. The ideas always turned her on, but she hesitated when it came to actually trying something out of the ordinary. I struggled to convince her to let go and follow her desires, because when she did, she became a sexual demon.

We had enjoyed a healthy sex life for most of our relationship, although things did taper off in the months before the topic of divorce came up. There was one fantasy that I had never been able to convince her to try, though.

I had always wanted to watch Sarah with another guy. Ideally I would have wanted to watch her fuck him, but I would have been perfectly content to hear about her exploits afterward. Maybe it was the timing, but I had never been able to catch her in just the right mood to go through with it.

That all changed on that night.

It was a Tuesday night. Sarah had to be at work early the next day, and Wednesdays are one of my days off, so every week she would drop him off at my place so he could sleep in. On that particular night, Sarah’s family had been out to dinner celebrating her sister’s birthday, so she had warned me that she would be dropping him off late. I knew he would likely be asleep by the time she got there.

I was sitting at the dining room table, going through some paperwork. It was almost nine when I heard a quiet knock on the door, followed by the sound of the door handle turning. Sarah let herself in, just as she usually did, and made her way to Jackson’s bedroom with his limp body passed out on her shoulder. The kid always slept like a rock once he was asleep.

I watched her make her way down the hallway to his room and tuck him in before coming back to the living room. Usually she dropped him off and left, but this time she came over to the dining room table and took a seat.

“Hey, you,” she said affably.

“Hey,” I said, putting down my pen and looking up. “How is everything?”

“Everything is going well,” she said. “Things are busy at work, so that's good. Jackson’s teachers said he’s being doing great in class, and he's super friendly with the other kids. How about you? How have you been?”

“I’ve been doing alright. I’m in line for a promotion at work, so if that goes through, I think I might be able to buy my own place instead of renting this one.”

“That's great,” Sarah replied with a smile. “Have you been dating at all?”

“Not really,” I shrugged. “I’m focusing on myself and trying to get my head into a better place. I really need that before I can jump into a relationship of any sort.”

“That makes sense,” she said quietly.

Sarah averted her eyes from me, looking down at the papers on the table. I knew that look. It was the look she got every time she was nervous about discussing something. It was the same look she had given me the night she told me she wanted a divorce.

“I don't like that face,” I said, closing my eyes. “What’s wrong?”

Sarah looked up at me sheepishly and faked a half-hearted smile.

“I need to tell you something, but I don't want you to hate me,” she said. “I really want to be upfront and honest about this, but I know you aren't going to want to hear it.”

“Just say it.”

“Do you remember Jacob?”

As soon as she said his name, I felt my stomach drop. Jacob had been in Sarah’s life for several years by the time we had met. She would always tell me about the special connection between the two of them, and how something always seemed to get in the way. I had always been nervous that someday he would come back for her and I would lose her. When I proposed, I even brought it up. She assured me that she loved me and she would never let him ruin our marriage. Now our marriage was no more though, and she was free to do what she wanted.

I nodded.

“Well, we started talking again a few weeks ago. I don't know if it will lead to anything, but I don't want to hide anything to you, either. You and I have been working so well together, and I felt I at least owed it to you to be honest.”

The thought wrenched my mind, but in the end, I came back to the same place that had helped me get through the divorce. Getting mad or jealous or angry wouldn't change the fact that we were better off not being in a relationship together. If she didn't want to be there, then getting angry wouldn't change that. In the long run, it was better for Jackson if I could put aside my petty emotions and work together with her for his benefit.

“Well, if that's what you want, then I hope it works out for the best. I really hope he steps up this time and doesn't hurt you the way he did before.”

Sarah looked down at the table again and pursed her lips. I could tell from her expression that I had just hit a sore spot, and that she likely had the same concerns about Jacob not standing up for her. There was something inside her that drew her to him though, and she couldn't ignore that. She had to face it head on once and for all and see what would come if it.

I had always known that I saw the world differently than other men, but on that day, I truly realized how different I was. As we sat there silently at the table, something interesting happened. I imagined my ex-wife with her beautiful naked body wrapped around an anonymous male figure. I had never seen this guy except for maybe a fleeting glance in some old picture, but I found myself getting aroused rather than jealous. I began wondering if he was better than me in bed. I wondered if his manhood was bigger than my average size.

That's when I found myself asking questions that I knew I shouldn't be asking, questions that I probably didn't want to know the answer. There was a part of my mind that did want to know, though.

“If I ask you a question, will you promise to answer me honestly?” I started, unsure of how far I was going to take this. “I mean, we’ve come this far. I won't be upset if you tell me the truth.”

“Of course,” Sarah replied, looking up at me hopefully. I could see how important it was to her for me to be okay with this.

“Did you ever sleep with him while we were together?”

“No!” she exclaimed sharply. “I swear I never did. We talked here and there, but I never met up with him.”

“What about since the divorce? Has anything happened recently?”

Sarah looked away again, her face riddled with guilt. That was enough to tell me the answer, but for some reason I wanted to hear her say it.

“Just tell me,” I pushed.

Sarah sighed deeply, then started.

“I ran into him about six months ago. We started talking and decided to head somewhere to grab a drink. We spent a few hours catching up, and when he invited me back to his place, I said yes. We ended up spending the night together.”

My soul howled inside. The jealousy was definitely there, but it was just a small part of my inner turmoil. My mind began actively constructing a picture, imaging the two of them at a bar. Jacob would say something to her, and she would begin laughing uncontrollably until tears spilled out of her eyes. I imagined him asking her to come over, and Sarah biting her lip excitedly and nodding, knowing that she was about to embark on a crazy night of great sex. I imagined them going back to some anonymous house where he lived, stepping through the door and ripping each other’s clothes off as they struggled to make it to the bedroom.

All of those images flooded through my head, and my cock stirred. I pushed them away and tried to think of something better, but I couldn't get rid of them.

“Was it good?” I asked bluntly, no longer filtering my words.

“What do you mean?” she asked with a puzzled look.

“Was the sex good that night?” I continued.

Sarah’s brow furrowed angrily. The question almost seemed to annoy her.

“Why would you ask me something like that? I’m trying to be nice about this, not trying to hurt you more. Please don’t be like that.”

“I didn't mean it like that,” I said with a chuckle.

My pants had grown tighter as I felt my erection swelling. I reached down and adjusted my crotch a little to relieve the pressure. Sarah noticed, and her eyes grew wider.

“Wait, are you getting turned on by this?” she asked incredulously.

My cheeks suddenly burned red with embarrassment, like she had just discovered some deep, dark secret. It really wasn't much of a secret though, since she knew a lot of the twisted sexual ideas that went through my brain.

“Don't act surprised,” I said. “I’ve asked you to sleep with other men before. I just never expected it to be after we were divorced.”

Sarah opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out. She stared at me coolly while her mind processed what was going on.

“So that really does turn you on?” she asked, still a little taken back. “I always thought that was some sort of test to see if I would stay loyal to you.”

“Not at all,” I replied. “I use to fantasize about it all the time, in fact.”

“Oh, really?” she said as a smile crept across her lips. “Who did you think about when you imagined it? Who did you picture in bed with me?”

“It changed over the years. When we took our honeymoon in St. John, I thought about bringing back one of the islanders to our apartment for a fun night. One time I imagined you inviting the neighbor over while I was at work. It really depended on what guys I saw you hanging around with at the time”

“I can't believe you,” she said, burying her face in her hands. “This is just crazy.”

“Of course it is,” I said. “You know how my mind works, and you know how kinky I get. We may not have had a lot in common, but we always had the most incredible sex when you went along with my twisted ideas. How is this any different?”

“I guess it really isn't,” she said with a disbelieving shrug. “I mean, you’re right. The sex was always great with you, and I loved the things you would come up with to turn me on.”

“You still haven't answered my question, though,” I said, not giving up that easily.

Sarah stared at me, the wheels in her mind turning as she tried to decide if she wanted to play along or push it away. I met her eyes with an unblinking gaze, daring her to take the first step. She was never one to back down from a challenge, and today was no different.

“Yes, it was good,” she said, never breaking eye contact. “The whole time we were talking at the bar, I kept thinking of how good he always made me feel. I wanted to fuck him the moment we sat down, but I tried to be good. By the time he invited me back to his place, I was already wet thinking about sleeping with him again. The second we stepped inside his place, we started kissing. We managed to make it upstairs, and we spent the rest of the night fucking. He made me cum at least ten times that night. My whole body was sore the next day.”

As she spoke, her faint smile turned into a devilish grin. I could she was still holding back, testing the waters to see what I liked and what was too much. Every word she said fueled my arousal and made me want to feel her incredible pussy wrapped around my own cock. I was jealous, but I wasn't angry or upset. This was even hotter than I had ever imagined it would be.

“Does he have a big cock?” I asked, pushing her further. “Bigger than mine?”

Sarah laughed again and rubbed her face. When she looked up again, her face was beaming with confidence.

“He is. A lot bigger, actually. I mean, I was always happy with the size of yours, but there is something incredible about feeling a cock that fills me up completely. I never felt that with you.”

Her words were demeaning, but they were honest. That made it even better. I was confident in my own sexual prowess, but knowing that he could offer her something that I never could made it even more thrilling to imagine.

“Do you have a picture of him?” I asked, trying to put a face to the name I had heard so many times before.

Sarah picked up her phone and moved around the table so that she was standing next to me. She flipped through some pictures until she found one of him from one of his social media accounts, then turned the screen toward me.

Jacob was tall and built, with broad shoulders and firm muscles that showed through the t-shirt he was wearing. I’m a pretty average-looking guy, so it was clear that the size of his cock wasn't the only thing that he had going for him in Sarah’s eyes.

I turned my head to look at Sarah, but because I was sitting and she was standing, my eyes found her beautiful body instead. She was dressed in a pair of short little shorts and a white tank top with a plain white bra poking out from under it. When I finally looked up at her face, I realized that she had just been watching me while I was staring at her body.

Without saying a word, Sarah reached down with her free hand and cupped my growing erection. Her touch made my cock twitch and swell even more. She squeezed tightly, then leaned down and kissed me.

I slipped my hand around her head and met her lips with equal fervor. There was a fire in that kiss, just like the first kiss we had ever shared. When she pulled away, she lingered for a moment and stared into my eyes.

Sarah glanced down the hall toward Jackson’s bedroom, then looked toward the door to my room. They were on opposite sides of the living room, giving me some privacy when I wanted time to myself. Jackson was already a deep sleeper, but he would never be able to hear anything going on in my room.

“Come in the bedroom,” Sarah said, then pulled me by the hand.

I followed behind her, wondering where she was going. Usually I was the one to take the initiative with the kink, but she clearly had her own agenda for how this was going to go down.

As soon as the bedroom door closed, we resumed our kiss. Sarah pulled me toward the bed, pulling my shirt off as we went. She pushed me down onto the edge of the bed, then dropped to her knees in front of me and started unfastening my shorts frantically. I lifted my hips and she slid them off, freeing my cock. It was already harder than I had felt in a long time.

Sarah grabbed the shaft and slipped her lips around the tip, while my mind floated off into Neverland. For a moment, I forgot all about Jacob, until her words brought me right back to it.

“Yeah, he’s at least twice as big as you,” she said as she paused her oral ministrations to give me an evil grin.

Her words aroused me to the point that my cock was throbbing. Sarah was clearly please when she saw the strain on my face, and she sank her lips around my cock again without another word. Sucking my cock while thinking of the guy she had always wanted seemed to turn her on as much as it did for me. She took me into her mouth and ran her tongue along the underside until my balls were aching for release.

Just when I didn't think I could take it anymore, Sarah let go and stood up, then peeled her shorts and panties off. She left the tank top on and bent over the bed right next to me. Her eyes looked at me and practically begged me to fuck her. There was no way I could say no.

I stood up and moved behind her, rubbing the tip of my cock back and forth across her wet slit. Sarah moaned longingly and pushed back, trying to take me, but I pulled back to tease her a little more.

“Please fuck me,” she pleaded, her fingers gripping the sheets.

The tone of her voice as she said those words destroyed my resistance. I pushed forward and my cock slipped inside her. She had never felt this wet before, and I knew that once again my depraved ideas had found their way into the most primal parts of her mind.

My hands gripped her hips and I began driving my cock into her waiting pussy. Sarah cried out as her entire body grew tense. Within minutes of filling her with my manhood, her entire body erupted in an intense orgasm. Jacob may have had the advantage of size, but I knew her body and I knew how to touch her to make her cum quickly.

I pulled out and Sarah rolled over onto her back. She lifted her legs and spread them wide, opening her pussy up before me. I smiled and slid inside her again, but now it was time for her to tease me.

“Don't you wish you could watch him fuck me?” she purred as our bodies collided. “You could see how hard I cum when he fills me with that thick cock.”

“Yes,” I grunted, “but I would want to feel you after. I want to fuck your pussy after he’s done with you. Do you want that?”

“Maybe,” she replied with a wry grin. “Maybe I’ll just make you jerk off all over yourself while you sit and watch how a real man fucks me. And when he’s done, you can clean up my freshly fucked pussy with your tongue.”

My mind swirled with thoughts and emotions. I was jealous that she wanted him. I was angry that she was going to be his from now on. More than anything, though, I wanted to show her that I could make her cum just as hard as he could.

I grabbed her waist and started driving my length into her with all the force I could muster. Another orgasm spread through her body, and she pulled away from me. I wanted to take her even higher though, and when I took hold of her and continued to drive myself into her pussy, she arched her back and her entire body lifted off of the bed. I finally pulled free and she went limp on top of the comforter.

“Fuck!” she cried. “Oh my god, I don't remember the last time I came that hard.”

There was a permanent grin plastered on her face, but we still weren't done. Sarah grabbed my hand and pulled me down on top of her, kissing me hungrily. She rolled me to the side and straddled me, then lowered her pussy down onto my length. All I could feel was the warm wetness that enveloped my cock, and I felt like I was in heaven.

“Do you think he’ll like it when I ride him like this?” Sarah purred in my ear, driving me crazy with jealousy again.

I grabbed her and rolled her over onto her back, taking control once again. I grabbed her hands and held them over her head, pinning them to the bed.

“Next time you fuck him,” I whispered as I drove my length into her, “I want you to come here so I can clean your pussy and feel his sloppy seconds. Do you understand?”

Sarah opened her eyes and looked up at me with a mischievous grin, then nodded slowly. She was letting me control her, but we both knew exactly who was in charge. All of the power was in her hands.

Her hips swiveled up to meet me, and I felt my orgasm drawing closer. I imagined Jacob fucking her like this, his body hovering over her as he pounded her with his big cock. There was one last question in my mind, one last thing I needed to know.

“Did he cum inside you when he was done?” I muttered through my clenched teeth.

“Yes,” she said with that same evil smile on her lips, “but you can't. I want you to pull out when you cum for me.”

With those words, Sarah told me very clearly what my role in this game would be. Jacob was her alpha male, her primary lover. If she allowed me, the beta male, to touch her, it would be under her rules, as a submissive to both her and Jacob. That meant that he would be the only man allowed to fill her pussy from now on. If I wanted to stay a part of the game, I would have to follow her rules.

My cock grew harder, and I felt the orgasm blossom in my belly and spread down into my groin. Every muscle grew tense, and I pulled my cock free and aimed it at her pussy. White fluid shot from the tip, landing on her naked mound. Sarah reached down and ran her fingers through it, then moved lower and began rubbing the lubricant over her swollen clitoris. I watched in awe as she once again brought herself to orgasm with the help of my cum.

As her climax subsided, I climbed off the bed and grabbed a towel. Sarah cleaned herself up, then slipped her shorts back on. When she was done, she approached me and slipped her arms around me for one last kiss.

“Next time, I think I’ll bring you a present,” Sarah said, then gave me a final peck on the lips. “I should get home now, though. Good night.”

She ducked out the bedroom door and was gone. I knew this wouldn't be our last encounter, and I was excited to see how our new game would progress. One thing was evident: Sarah and I were far from done with each other.

May 4th

The next step in the game came very shortly after that. I received a text from Sarah that was blunt and straightforward.

“Jacob and I are going out to dinner tonight. I think I may ask him if we can go back to his place afterward. Would you like me to stop by on my way home?”

My heart raced as I read the text. My fantasy was on the brink of becoming a reality. She would be coming to me freshly used by another man. I had no idea how this would pan out, but I was excited by the possibilities.

“Absolutely,” I replied once I had gotten ahold of myself.

“Great. I will let you know when I’m on my way over. I hope you're ready for me.”

The rest of the day seemed to tick by at a snail’s pace. I kept myself busy at work, and once I had picked up Jackson, he was enough to distract me. We had just finished dinner when I heard my phone beep. I picked it up and found a message from Sarah.

“Do you think he’ll like this outfit?” the message read.

There was a picture as well, showing Sarah dressed in a sexy black dress. It hugged her body perfectly, and once again my cock stirred. She wasn't wearing that for me, she was wearing it for him. She had chosen it to get his attention, but she seemed to get a rise out of teasing me with it as well. I almost wondered if she had tried even harder knowing that she would be pleasing both of us.

Jackson and I sat down for a movie. and once it was done, I put him to bed a little early. I returned to the living room and dropped myself onto the couch.

As I waited, my mind refused to settle down. It had been several hours since she had sent me the picture. Were they back at his place yet? We're the two of them in bed, fucking like rabbits? Did Sarah have her lips wrapped around his thick cock at that exact moment? I had no way of knowing or finding out, but that didn't stop my mind from constantly imagining it.

At first, I found myself absently touching myself, rubbing my cock through my shorts to relieve the tension. As I grew more aroused, I began rubbing myself for longer periods of time. I didn't want to cum before she got there, but I decided it wouldn't hurt anything to play a little. It only took a few strokes to bring me close to orgasm, so I slowed down whenever I felt myself getting close to the point of no return. It wouldn't take much to send me over the edge.

It was starting to get late when I finally received the text I had been waiting for.

“I’ll be there in a few minutes. I have a present for you, as promised.”

My heart began racing again, and my cock stiffened. It was about to happen. Sarah was about to make me a real cuckold for the first time in my life.

Ten minutes later, there was a light knock on the door, followed by the sound of the doorknob turning. I jumped off the couch and hurried toward the entryway. By the time I got there, Sarah was standing just inside the door waiting for me.

She was still wearing her little black dress, looking exquisitely sexy. When her eyes met mine, I could see a hint of both guilt and nervousness. She had clearly had a few drinks. She stood before me, freshly fucked, her hair a mess, and her dress slightly askew. Our eyes met and the guilt disappeared, replaced with a lustful and mischievous gaze. Without saying a word, I walked up to her and kissed her hard on the lips.

I could smell her perfume, mixed with an unfamiliar odor. It was a masculine scent, like a man’s cologne, and I knew that it was his scent. Her lips tasted salty. These were the same lips that had been sucking another man’s cock a short time ago. She stood there in my arms, kissing me back lustfully. I wanted to take her right there, but she had other plans.

Sarah pulled away from me, then grabbed my hand and dragged me to the bedroom. Once we were inside with the door closed, she pulled her dress up and off, then slid her panties off. She hadn't been wearing a bra, so she now stood before me naked. Her eyes met mine again, and she beckoned to me to come closer as she climbed on the bed and laid down. Her legs parted and her pussy opened up before me. I knew exactly what she wanted, even without her saying a single word.

I crawled onto the bed and moved between her thighs, preparing myself for what I was about to do. As I got closer, I could smell the scent of his cum and I hesitated, but Sarah wasn’t going to allow me to back out.

“He came inside me,” she said calmly and confidently. “I want you to lick me clean until it's all gone. I want you to taste the man who fucked me. My body belongs to him, but you will always be my useless cumrag. Now get to work.”

I ran my tongue across the outside of her labia. The taste of his seed was faint, mixed with the sweat of their physical interaction. I pressed my tongue deeper inside her and tasted the salty sweetness that I had never tasted between her legs before. I knew right away that it was him I was tasting, his cum dripping from my ex-wife. I drew it into my mouth and swallowed, eating another man’s cum for the first time.

My hormones fired violently, and suddenly I wanted more. I wanted to be her submissive, to do anything she asked of me, no matter how taboo or perverted. I wanted to satisfy her every wish, to submit to her and worship her like a goddess.

“Tell me,” I pleaded, wanting to know the details as my tongue explored the folds of her sex.

“He took me to dinner again. After a few drinks, we left to go to his place. When we got into his car, he started kissing me. It felt so good, so amazing. He makes me feel so sexy. I asked him to take me home, but before he could pull out of the parking space, I had him help me pull his cock free. He started driving, and I sucked him off the whole time. I think a few people even saw my head bobbing up and down in his lap while we were waiting at stoplights.

“As soon as we got back to his house, we hurried inside. He led me upstairs to his bedroom, then he started to undress me. While he was looking me up and down with his eyes, I found myself imagining you in the corner, watching me show off for him. He told me how beautiful I looked, then pulled me into his arms and started kissing me. I fell back onto the bed, and he slipped down between my legs to taste how wet I was. His tongue explored me just like you are right now, touching those same exact places.

“It felt good, but his cock was what I really wanted. I grabbed him and pulled him up onto me, and he slid inside me. I cried out so loud, I think his roommate heard me screaming his name. He fucked me so good, tossing me around and taking me in so many different ways. He made me cum at least five times. And when he was ready to cum, I told him I wanted it inside me. He loved that. He grabbed me and pumped me until I felt him explode inside me. Can you taste him?”

I mumbled in agreement as I buried my tongue deeper inside her, digging for more of his cum. I licked hungrily, and Sarah squirmed under the probing tip. Her hands grabbed my head and pulled me deeper until my face was buried in her slit. I kept going, licking her until I could no longer taste his semen, until I had cleaned every drop from her used pussy.

As I savored her sex, my cock throbbed and ached for release. I wanted to fuck her, to show her I could please her just as well as he could. I crawled up over her body until I was face to face with her, then kissed her while my cock hovered above her pussy.

“Fuck me,” she whispered hoarsely in my ear.

My manhood slid inside her easily. She was dripping wet from me licking the cum out of her pussy, and when she felt my cock fill her, she let out a languid moan. I pressed my body down into hers, coming together in a passionate embrace. Thrust after thrust, her cries grew louder, until she erupted below me in an intense orgasm.

As her climax passed, she looked up at me with a devilish glint in her eye.

“Mmm, I wish your cock was as big as his,” she cooed. “When he fucks me, I cum so much harder than I do with you.”

I gripped her tighter, slamming myself into her with even more force. I wanted to show her I could please her as well as he could. I wanted to make her beg for me to cum inside her, even though she had told me I wouldn't be allowed.

“Oh, look at you trying though,” she giggled, taunting me. “It doesn't matter how hard you fuck me. Your little cock will never be able to do what his does.”

I pulled my cock free and rolled her over onto her stomach. I jumped behind her and slammed my cock down inside her, pressing her head down into the bed as I put everything I had into making her cum. That did the trick, and I felt her body growing more tense below me. Her pussy tightened around my cock, massaging my member as I rode her hard from behind.

“Oh, fuck,” she cried as she reached another orgasm.

Her muscles tightened even more and suddenly I felt myself soaring past the edge of control. I could feel my body preparing to fill her with my seed, and she sensed it, too.

“Not inside me,” she growled. “That's only for him.”

Sarah’s words drove me even further, but I knew better than to ignore her command. I pulled my length out and pressed it along the crack of her ass. Warm cum shot across her lower back.

I felt like my body was trying to exude every drop of semen in one single blast. It was the hardest I had cum since she first told me about Jacob. When I was finally done, I collapsed onto the bed next to her, both of us panting to catch our breath.

“Well that was a lot better than using my hand earlier,” I muttered jokingly, still riding my sexual high.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sarah’s brow furrow suddenly as she turned and looked at me. I didn't realize it at the time, but that one statement changed everything.

“You were touching yourself earlier?” she asked.

“Well, yeah,” I stammered. “I kept imagining you and Jacob together and getting turned on. I didn't cum or anything.”

Sarah scooted up next to me so that she was inches from my face. She leaned in like he wanted to kiss me, giving off an aura that drew me closer. Just before our lips met, she stopped.

“If you want to continue this game we have going, then you are going to have to follow a few rules for me.”

Her tone seemed so innocent, but her words quickly revealed a much more sinister endgame. She took my cock in her hand and began stroking it slowly as she spoke.

“From now on, you are not allowed to touch yourself unless I am present, or I give you permission in advance. Your orgasms are now under my control and whim. I promise I won't torture you too much, and I’ll make sure you are allowed to feel some release every few days, but if I find out that you aren't following my rules, you won't be allowed to touch me ever again. Do you understand?”

I nodded silently, but that wasn't enough for her.

“Say it,” she said sternly.

Sarah’s hand suddenly tightened around my cock, squeezing it until it was almost painful. I gasped, but she kept her grip. My shaft had been shrinking after my orgasm, and somehow the sudden surge of pain had the opposite effect that had expected. It slowly grew harder in her hand, and she smiled when she realized I was enjoying her torture.

Sarah released her grip slightly and began stroking my length. It only took a few minutes before I was completely hard again. I closed my eyes and lost myself in the sensation.

Sarah’s hand disappeared, and I felt the sudden searing pain as she smacked my balls. I flinched reflexively, but somehow my cock stiffened at her touch. She resumed her stroking motion, stopping every few minutes to deliver another slap.

After several minutes of torture, Sarah grabbed the shaft a little harder and started pumping it rapidly. Another orgasm swelled inside me and my fingers dug into the sheets. When I opened my eyes and saw her beautiful naked body lying against me, it was enough to finish me. My muscles contracted, sending my second load flying into the air and all over my belly. Sarah’s hand slowed down as she milked the last few drops out. When she knew I was done, she took her hand and rubbed it on my chest like a dirty rag.

Sarah leaned in and gave me one final kiss, a slow, sensual kiss, then climbed off the bed and grabbed her dress.

“That was fun,” she said with an eager smile. It was clear that she loved this game as much as I did.

She slipped her dress on and grabbed her purse, then turned back to me with a frank expression on her face.

“I was serious when I said that you aren't allowed to touch yourself. I’m in control of your orgasms now, and if I find out you’ve been lying to me, then your fun will be over.”

“I will,” I replied, “but just make sure you let me get off every few days. Any more than that and you know I get cranky.”

Sarah giggled and nodded agreeably. She grabbed the last of her things, leaving her cum soaked panties behind as she exited.

Over the next month, Sarah ended up visiting me at least two to three times a week. Sometimes she would show up fresh from visiting Jacob, while other times she would linger after dropping Jackson off, just long enough to tease me and make me jerk off for her.

The game was fun, but it also grew repetitive after a while. We fell into a routine, until that one night when Sarah stepped up and took it to a whole new level.

For more of this story, check out My Ex-wife’s New Boyfriend by Alex Skylar, available exclusively on Amazon!

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artificialqueens · 7 years

Text

The Ballad of Violet and Pearl (Chapter 10 - Final) - Scarlet

A/N - set mostly in the 1950’s, the idea came from Jinkx’s song ‘The Ballad of Johnny and Jack’ and influenced the story. Also influenced by Thelma and Louise. ‘Ballad’ in the 50’s was a term used for a love letter.

Thank you guys so much for coming on this crazy ride with me! Hope you all enjoyed it! I have deliberately made this ending kind of up to the readers interpretation but if anyone is interested in knowing what the ending is in my head please feel free to message me @fortheloveofpearlet.

TW - some angst, violence, homophobic language character death(s), but fluff too!

Chapter 10 - Final

September 1939 - Florida

The shy blonde sat in the back corner of the room alone on his very first day of school. He didn’t look up from the desk, afraid he might catch someone’s eye. Instead he stared down at the pieces of paper in front of him and kept drawing. He didn’t like to attract attention to himself. He was happy enough on his own, with his drawings.

The outgoing brunette bounded into the room giggling, his long hair flowing behind him on his very first day of school. He looked around the classroom, always ready to make new friends. He spotted the blonde in the corner on his own and his curiosity was piqued. He skipped over to him and sat in the chair next to him. The blonde was so enthralled with his drawings he didn’t even notice he had company.

‘Whatcha drawing?’ The brunette spoke up, startling the other boy a little. He scrambled to hide his drawings, a deep blush spreading on his cheeks.

‘Noth-nothing.’ He stuttered a little.

‘Aw c'mon let me see!’ The brunette smiled at him, trying to grab the paper. The blonde wouldn’t say boo to a goose so he let the other boy take his drawings. The brunette studied them for some time, all the while the blonde felt extremely uneasy. After a little while the brunette looked back at him with a large smile on his face.

‘These are neat!’ He beamed. 'What are they?'

'New��New York.’ The shy boy stuttered again, his voice quiet. The drawings ranged from the New York skyline, to individual buildings, to Central Park and Times Square.

'Cool! Have you been there?’ The brunette’s eyes lit up in excitement.

'No.’ The blonde shook his head shyly. 'But…my mom’s from there and she shows me…she shows me pictures. She says it’s the greatest place in the world. I want to live there someday.’ He’d become a little animated as he talked about it but he soon retired back into his shell. The brunette was enraptured.

'Wow that’s so cool!’ The brunette looked down at the drawings again. 'What’s this building?’ He pointed at one in particular.

'The Empire State Building. When I live in New York I’m going to go there every day.’ The blonde smiled shyly.

'Maybe I can come with you!’ The brunette beamed excitedly.

'Maybe.’ The blonde blushed again.

'I’m Jason by the way.’ The brunette, Jason, put down the drawings and held his hand out to shake the other boys. The other boy tentatively reached out his shaking hand.

'Matthew.'

Jason shook his hand vigorously before letting it go.

'Well Matthew, how do you wanna be my best friend?’ Jason grinned widely at him. Matt bit his lip shyly and nodded his head a little. There’s nothing in the world I’d rather do.

————————————

July 1957 - New York

Matt hadn’t spent every day of the last nine months at The Empire State Building; sometimes Pearl went instead of him. He’d held out coming here all these years because he’d always wanted New York to be the place he settled down. He didn’t want to bring danger and violence to this city. But after that night with Jason in Colorado it was the only place he could think to go. Pearl had retired from her old ways but she still came out to peruse New York from time to time, just to shake things up a little. Over the last nine months Matt had gotten his life together. He hadn’t pulled any scams or done any robberies. He was on the straight and narrow now. He had a small apartment in Brooklyn and a job as a graphic designer. The thought that he had a job was still alien to him to be honest. But New York called for it; his new life called for it. Every day after work he would come up to the viewing platform of The Empire State Building and he would sit sketching the skyline for hours until he was kicked out. Sometimes he came as Matt and sometimes he came as Pearl, depending on his mood, who he felt more like. Today was a Matt day.

He hadn’t see Jason since he’d run away that night. He hadn’t even come back to the motel to get his things. Matt still kept them, Jason and Violet’s belongings, in the suitcase at the back of his closet. Skeletons belonged in closets. He missed both of them a great deal but he knew Jason had done the right thing. Matt’s behaviour that night had been inexcusable, he didn’t blame Jason for finally giving up on him. He blamed himself for a long time but he’d come to the decision a little while ago that he wasn’t going to dwell on it anymore. He couldn’t change the past; what’s done was done. He just had to live with that.

Today for some reason Matt wasn’t drawing the skyline. He didn’t know if he’d gotten bored of it or if it was thoughts of his previous life clouding his memory but the skyline wasn’t what he drew. Instead, looking up at him from the page were two beautiful brunettes. The first one had her hair in victory curls and was pouting her red lips. She wore a floor length gown with a fur wrapped her around her shoulders. The second was a guy who sensible slacks and a white shirt. His long ebony hair was tied back into a neat bun. His large brown eyes felt as though they were staring up at Matt. God he missed those eyes, so much so the drawing was making him feel all kinds of things. In frustration he screwed it up. He stood up to go and toss the drawing in the bin and as he turned around those big brown eyes were staring at him. Matt’s heart skipped several beats as he stared at him. Surely he couldn’t be real? Maybe Matt had just been staring at the drawing too long and now he was imagining things?

'Don’t throw that away! I looked great!’ Jason smiled at him as though he could have been for the last nine months and not as though he’d just appeared out of nowhere.

'I uhm…how are you here?’ Matt croaked.

'There’s this super invention called an aeroplane. Maybe you’ve heard of it?’ Jason replied sarcastically. Matt rolled his eyes.

'I mean…why? Why are you here?'

'I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said this was just a coincidence?’ Jason half-smiled.

'Nope.’ Matt shook his head. Jason took the balled up paper from Matt’s hands and unscrewed it, flattening it out a little.

'I’m keeping this.’ He told Matt. Matt was just staring at him.

'Don’t change the subject. How did you know I’d be here?'

Jason folded the drawing neatly and put it in his breast pocket. He pulled his cigarettes out and lit one.

'Do you remember the first time we met?’

'Vaguely.’ Matt frowned. 'What does that have to with anything?’

'You had loads of drawings of New York. You said you wanted to live here one day. And you told me that when you did live here, you’d spend every day at The Empire State Building.’ Jason sucked on the cigarette.

'How do you remember that?’ Matt’s frown deepened. They’d never talked about that again, how had Jason remembered?

'I don’t know.’

'That was almost twenty years ago Jason. I barely remember telling you that.'

'I remembered because you told me. I remember everything you tell me. Including all the times you called me a whore.’ He bit his lip.

'I called Violet a whore.’ Matt reminded him.

'Except that one time you included Jason in that too.’ He sighed, he didn’t want to think about that night. 'Anyway I’m not here to harp on that.’ He dragged on the cigarette while Matt continued to stare at him.

'Why are you here?’ Matt asked quietly. Jason sighed again and used his free hand to run through his hair.

'I was mad for a really long time. Like a really long time. I couldn’t stop thinking about that night and how scared of you I was.’ Jason paused to drag on the cigarette once more. 'But one day I woke up and I wasn’t mad anymore. And I wanted you to know I forgive you.’

'You came all this way to tell me that?’ Matt raised his eyebrow.

'Yeah I guess.’ Jason shrugged dropping the cigarette to the floor and stubbing it out.

'Well thank you. I’m glad you did.’ Matt half-smiled. Jason looked over Matt’s shoulder briefly, his mind whirring. He hadn’t just come all this way for that.

'I mean I can hang around for a little while I suppose. You could show me around, take me for coffee or something?’ He shrugged once more as though he couldn’t care less either way. A large smile broke out on Matt’s face.

'There’s nothing in the world I would rather do.’

————————————

They didn’t go and get coffee. They ended up back at Matt’s apartment on the bed, naked. Matt was straddling Jason and kissing him harder than he’d ever kissed anyone before. It felt like it had been a whole lifetime since they’d been here together and they didn’t want to waste a second. Matt had already opened Jason up and was now rolling the condom over his throbbing cock. Jason wrapped his legs around Matt’s waist as Matt edged his way in. It was soft and passionate and they made love like it could be the first time but like it could also be the last time too. They came together and Matt got rid of the condom and laid down next to Jason. He pulled Jason close and Jason rested his head on Matt’s chest. Matt wrapped his arm tightly around the brunette and placed soft kisses in his hair. Jason was so overwhelmed with emotions he thought he could cry. Matt was never so caring with him afterwards.

'So, how was Florida?’ Matt asked placing one last kiss on Jason’s head before reaching for a blunt. Jason rolled over onto the pillow so he could look at Matt.

'Same old.’ Jason shrugged.

'Have you seen Courtney? I mean I’m guessing you haven’t because I’m sure you wouldn’t be alive if you had.’ Matt smirked lighting the blunt.

'No I got lucky. Her grandpa’s sick so she’s been back in Oz looking after him for ages apparently.'

'Who told you that?’ Matt narrowed his eyes on Jason. Jason bit his lip.

'Naomi.’ He knew saying her name around Matt wasn’t going to go down well. He saw Matt take a few deep breaths and briefly clench his jaw.

'Naomi.’ He spat, as if her name were poison.

'Yeah, I bumped into her.'

'How is she?’

'You really want to know?’ Jason took the blunt from Matt’s hand and dragged on it.

Matt scratched his bare chest and nodded.

'Kind of.'

'Well she’s married.’ Jason dragged on the blunt, not really wanting to tell Matt anymore. But he knew there was more.

'And?'

'And she has a son.'

Matt felt like his whole world collapsed in that moment. He felt the anger bubbling in his stomach but he tried to control it. If he lost his temper, if he got violent again, he would lose Jason for good. 'He’s two.'

'She had a son.’ Matt repeated and Jason saw the tears spring to his eyes.

'Yeah.’

'Did you see him?'

'Yeah, he was cute. I guess.’ Jason was concerned with how well Matt was taking this. Maybe he’d managed to work on his anger issues while Jason was gone.

'Did you meet her husband?’

'Briefly. We didn’t get introduced, he was in a hurry. Not a bad looking guy, I mean not you but not bad.’ Jason shrugged and handed Matt back the blunt.

'What did he look like?’

'Why does that matter? You’re just torturing yourself.’

'I want to know.’ Matt sniffed back his tears. Jason swallowed and sighed.

'Uhm well I didn’t really get a good look at him. He was a big guy, muscly as heck. Tattooed, bearded, nice smile but also kind of scary looking.’

If Matt thought his world had collapsed before, it had nothing on this. He surprised Jason when he leapt up from the bed.

'No fucking way.’ He got his boxers on and started pacing.

'What?’ Jason stood up and put his underwear on too. Matt dragged on the blunt really heavily but Jason took it from his hand and tossed it in the ashtray. The weed wasn’t going to help Matt’s anger.

'She gets to abort my fucking baby but she keeps Boomer’s?’ He yelled ramming his fist into the wall of his bedroom. Jason bit his lip. This wasn’t ending the way it did in Colorado.

'Boomer?’ He gently touched Matt’s arm. 'Isn’t that the guy that tried to kill you?’

'Yes!’ Matt yelled again. 'That fucking asshole! He runs me out of my hometown and gets my ex-girlfriend pregnant? How is this fair? That should have been my baby! Why does he get to have a kid! Why did she keep it?’ Suddenly Matt started crying. Jason put his arm around Matt’s shoulders and led him back to the bed where they sat on the edge.

'Matt, you were in high school, you were young and broke. Bringing a baby into the world wouldn’t have worked.’

'But I should have had the choice! She stole that from me.’ He put his head in his hands and he sobbed. Jason held him tightly and stroked his back. He’d never seen Matt like this before.

'I know she did, and that was a horrible thing to do to someone. But you can’t do anything about that now sweetie.’ Jason felt tears in his own eyes. Was Matt ever going to get that life? If he was with Jason kids weren’t an option. Maybe Matt wanted kids more than he wanted Jason? Maybe Jason should at least give Matt the option.

'Matt?’ Jason whispered after Matt’s tears started to subside.

'Yeah?'

'This isn’t going to work is it?’

'What do you mean?’

'You and me. This isn’t going to work.’

'Why not?’ Matt pouted his lip.

'Because we’re never going to have a normal life. We can only be together behind closed doors. We can’t go out together unless one of us is in drag. I can’t give you kids.’ Jason let go of Matt and shuffled away from him a little.

'So what? We just give up? We give up before we ever really had a chance to begin?’ Matt frowned at him.

'Isn’t that for the best?’

'Maybe.’ Matt shrugged. 'But when have we ever done what’s best?’ He cupped Jason’s face. 'This scares me Jason, don’t get me wrong. I never wanted to feel this way about another man but I guess I was just born this way. Of course I would love to get married and have kids but maybe that’s just not in my future. But I know what is.’

'What’s that?’ Jason sniffed again.

'You pumpkin. You’re all the future I need.’ Matt kissed him tenderly and Jason didn’t think he’d ever been happier in his entire life.

'You want to be with me?’ Jason asked him softly.

'Always have.’ Matt smiled. 'I was just too much of a coward to admit it.’

Jason smiled and kissed Matt again. They fell back to the bed and crawled under the covers. Matt pulled Jason close so his head was on his chest once more. He wrapped his strong arm around Jason.

'You mean more to me than anything in the entire world.’ Matt whispered into Jason’s hair. Jason’s heart soared. This was all he’d ever wanted. 'It’s going to be hard, I’m not going to lie. But I think it’s worth it. I’ve been miserable without you. And I never want to be without you again.'

Jason felt tears in his eyes again but this time happy ones. He draped his arm around Matt’s waist and gently kissed his chest.

'Well you never have to worry about that Matty, because I am never, ever, going anywhere. I belong to you.'

'Who else would you belong to?’ Matt stroked his cheek and kissed his head. 'You’ll always be mine Jason.'

————————————

September 1958 - Florida

Jason was surprised to see Pearl staring in the mirror over the dresser. She slicked her lips with a pink hue, puckered them and smiled at her reflection. She saw Jason looking at her in the mirror but chose to ignore it. She fluffed up her wig and pulled up her padded bra. Jason watched her tuck the gun in the waistband her trousers and pull her shirt down so it was covering it. She finally turned to look at him.

'Get up, we’ve got a long day ahead of us.’ She smiled in that dangerous way Jason knew all too well.

'Why? What are we doing?'

She sat down on the bed next to him and stroked his messy hair back from his face.

'We’re going to Florida.’

'Why?’ Jason frowned. Pearl kissed him gently before standing back up.

'This ends today. No more running, no more hiding.’

'What do you mean?’ Jason’s heart was beating hard in his chest. She turned back to him, danger dancing in her eyes.

'I’m going to kill Boomer Banks.’

That had been several hours ago back in New York and now Pearl and Violet were sat in the Buick outside Boomer and Naomi’s home. Pearl lit a cigarette and if Violet wasn’t mistaken, she was sure her hands were shaking.

'You don’t have to do this you know.’ Violet told her.

'Yes, I do.’ Pearl didn’t look her, she kept her eyes on the house.

'I know what it’s like to shoot someone Pearl and trust me, that image never leaves you.'

Pearl turned to look at her.

'If I don’t do this we’ll be running forever. I’m doing this for us. With Boomer gone we can come back here and visit people without having to worry. I’ll kill Boomer and then we’ll kill Violet and Pearl off once and for all. Then we don’t have to worry about coming back, you can see Ru and Katya and Kasha and we don’t need to be scared anymore.’ She cupped Violet’s face gently. 'This is for us pumpkin.’ She gently kissed Violet before she took a final drag on the cigarette and tossed it out the car. She shut off the engine and took a deep breath. 'Let’s do this. Let’s put an end to this once and for all.’

The house was quiet. Really quiet. Maybe too quiet? Pearl had brought a second gun which was tucked away in Violet’s knee high boot. They exchanged a look.

'Maybe no one’s here?’ Violet whispered.

'He has to be here.’ And if he wasn’t Pearl would wait until he returned. She was ending this today no matter what. Pearl crept to the bottom of the staircase and that’s when she heard the noise. She frowned and motioned Violet over to her. The two girls stood at the bottom of the stairs in silence. They heard creaking and soft moans. Violet grimaced.

'Oh good god.’ She whispered. 'They’re having sex.’

'I didn’t think Naomi was supposed to be here?’ Pearl’s face paled a little.

'Well if she is maybe you can finally give her a piece of your mind for what she did to you.’

'What about the kid? If they’re both here the kid probably is too?’ Pearl suddenly looked like she’d had a change of heart. Violet took to the stairs.

'We’re ending this. Whatever the cost.’ She took a few deep breaths as she tiptoed upstairs, Pearl following somewhat reluctantly behind her. They reached the bedroom door and the moans were louder now. Pearl was frowning.

'What?’ Violet whispered seeing the look on her face.

'I don’t think that’s Naomi.’

'How do you know?’

Pearl pulled a face.

'How many times do you think I’ve heard her moan like that?’ Pearl rolled her eyes. 'That’s not her.’

Violet frowned now and leant closer to the door. Her face fell.

'Oh my god.’ She turned back to Pearl. 'I think I know who it is.’ Before Pearl could respond Violet swung open the door. Her suspicions were confirmed when she saw the long blonde hair attached to the woman that was bouncing up and down on Boomer’s dick.

'Courtney?’ Pearl couldn’t hold back her gasp. Courtney turned to look over her shoulder wide eyed in shock seeing the two girls behind her. She immediately got off Boomer and fell to the bed covering her naked body with the sheet.

'Who the heck are you? What do you want?’ Her already pale complexion paled further.

'Yeah what the fuck are you doing in my house?’ Boomer slipped his boxers on and stood up from the bed angrily. Violet hated to admit this but she could totally see the appeal of Boomer for both Courtney and Pearl.

'What the fuck are you doing cheating on your wife?’ Pearl spat. She didn’t know why she cared. For the most part she hated Naomi after what she’d done but it enraged her that Boomer was cheating on her. Boomer scrutinised Pearl’s face for a while before the realisation hit him.

'You!’ He yelled. 'You’re that fucking con artist bitch that tried to trick me into bed!'

Also I’m a man, Pearl rolled her eyes. Clearly Boomer didn’t want people to know that part of the story.

'It’s true I am.’ Pearl smiled at him.

'I thought you were in Oz?’ Violet suddenly spoke up looking at Courtney. Courtney frowned.

'Do I know you?’ She raised an eyebrow.

'You should do. We fucked-’

'Not now Vi.’ Pearl hit her in the arm. Boomer’s face was bright red in anger and he was staring right at Pearl.

'Didn’t I tell you I would kill you if I saw you again?'

'Yeah you did.’ Pearl shrugged. 'But there’s been a change of plans.’ She quickly drew her gun and pointed it at Boomer. He just laughed.

'Am I supposed to be scared?’ He folded his arms over his bare chest and raised his eyebrow at Pearl.

'Seriously, what kind of whore are you?’ Violet was clearly completely ignoring what was going on. 'I thought Naomi was your friend?’

'Who the heck are you? Why do you know all this about me?’ Courtney looked confused and scared all at once.

'Oh come on Court, I know I make a convincing woman but I thought you’d recognise than man you were engaged to.’ Violet smirked at Courtney. He saw the recognition set in and her face paled further.

'Jason?’ She gasped.

'You’re a dude too?’ Boomer looked between Pearl and Violet. Pearl still had the gun pointed at him.

'Ya huh.’ Violet smirked at him. 'Confused? I know you want to fuck us both.’ She winked at Boomer.

'This is dumb, I’m calling the cops.’ Courtney reached over to the phone on the bedside table. Violet chuckled and bent over, pulling the gun from her boot.

'Oh sweetie, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’ He pointed the gun right at her face. She raised her eyebrow again.

'You wouldn’t dare.’

'Wouldn’t I?’ Violet cocked the gun.

'You don’t have it in you. I know you Jason, you’re not capable of shooting someone.’

'Maybe not Jason.’ Violet shrugged. 'But it wouldn’t be the first time Violet had shot someone.'

Courtney looked at Boomer now as she let Violet’s words sink in.

'That guy in Texas.’ She whispered as if the girls couldn’t hear her from a few feet away. 'It was all over the papers, their faces. It was them!'

'Bravo.’ Violet chuckled. 'I’ve killed before, I’m not afraid to do it again.'

'Ok Vi seriously can it.’ Pearl was getting frustrated now. She didn’t want to stand here all day having a catch up. She was here to do a job. 'I’m going to finish this Boomer. I’m not running scared of you anymore.’

'Oh and what are you going to do about it, fag?'

Pearl’s blood boiled. She could have just shot him but for some reason instead she lunged at him. He punched her in the gut, she punched him in the jaw. Violet kept the gun trained on Courtney but she couldn’t take her eyes off the fight. Boomer managed to wrestle Pearl to the ground, he was much stronger. He got the gun out of her hand and kicked her in the ribs.

'This wasn’t how you expected it to end did you fag? You should have shot me when you had the chance.’ He smiled menacingly as he stood over Pearl, pointing her own gun at her. Pearl felt tears behind her eyes. No, this wasn’t how she expected it to end. She managed to catch Violet’s eye. Violet saw the tears in her eyes and she saw Pearl’s lips pucker as she blew Violet one last kiss. This ain’t ending like this, Violet thought. We’ve come too far, gone through too much. I’ll be damned if I am losing her like this. She didn’t think anymore. She needed to just act.

'Hey asshole!’ Violet yelled to get Boomer’s attention. He looked up at her. 'You are not taking her away from me. I love her too much to let you do that.'

Pearl’s heart hammered in her chest, partly through fear but partly due to Violet’s words. With the exception on the night at the cabin they had never said the L word to each other.

'Fags, the pair of you.’ Boomer scoffed as he looked back down at Pearl. He cocked the gun, his finger tightening on the trigger. Pearl whimpered and her first tear fell. She heard gun fire, she screamed. But there was no pain. She watched the gun fall from Boomer’s hand and she saw him take his last breath. He fell on top of her, his sticky blood covering her in seconds.

'Urgh.’ Pearl groaned trying to push the man off her. Violet was at her side to help her. They rolled him off her and Violet helped her up. She picked her gun up.

'Thank you.’ Pearl panted. 'You saved my life.’ A few more tears fell from her eyes and completely forgetting about Courtney she grabbed Violet’s face and kissed her hard.

'Urgh you really are fags.’ Courtney’s voice snapped them back around. Pearl looked at her and then back at Violet.

'Can I?’ Pearl smiled dangerously at her. Violet smiled back.

'Please, be my guest.’ She kissed Pearl softly and then Pearl raised her gun and aimed at Courtney. Country screamed but seconds later she was silent, blood rolling down her face and a bullet between her eyes.

'Shall we?’ Violet held her arm out and Pearl linked hers through it.

'Let’s go pumpkin.’

They descended the stairs together and made it outside. As they reached the front gate Naomi rounded the corner carrying a small child in her arms. She saw them leaving her house, Pearl covered in blood.

'You’re welcome.’ Violet smirked at her and then she grabbed Pearl’s hand and dragged her to the car. They jumped in as Naomi was running into the house.

'That poor kids about to get traumatised.’ Pearl chuckled started the engine. 'Where to?'

'Take me home Pearl. Take me home.'

Pearl lit a cigarette and handed it to Violet before lighting one for herself. Pearl gave Violet a sidelong glance and a small smile as she put the car in drive. And Violet swore she felt her insides flutter.

————————————

They didn’t make it out of town before the fuzz were after them. Pearl drove to the only place she could think of for shelter, the diner. Ru hurried them in the back, kicked everyone out and locked the front door. He didn’t ask about their getups, he didn’t ask why Pearl was covered in blood or why the cops were after them. That was just one of the reasons Pearl had decided to come to him. The three of them were ducked behind the counter in the diner, the two girls shaking.

'This is bad isn’t it?’ Ru asked them.

'Yeah.’ Pearl swallowed.

'Much more than the petty theft we used to get in trouble for.’ Violet added. 'When they catch us,' when not if because they knew it was inevitable. 'It’ll all be over.'

Pearl reached for Violet and held her hand tightly as if trying to calm her.

'This is all my fault.’ Tears welled in Pearl’s eyes.

'Don’t say that.’ Violet shuffled closer to her and used her free hand to stroke Pearl’s cheek. 'We’re in this together. We always have been. To die by your side would be a heavenly way to die.’ Violet sniffed back her own tears. They fell into silence after that but not for long. Minutes later they heard the sirens. Ru poked his head above the counter a little and sighed.

'They’ve got the place surrounded.’ He sat back down.

'Violet Chachki! Pearl Liaison! We know you’re in there. We have you surrounded. Give yourselves up.’ A voice boomed from outside. Pearl let go of Violet’s hand and got her gun out.

'Fuck that.’ Pearl shook her head. 'I’m not going down without a fight.'

'Are you crazy? They’ll kill you!’

'Maybe.’ Pearl bit her lip. 'But I might get to take a few of them down with me.’

'I’m coming with you then.’ Violet unsheathed her own gun but Pearl was shaking her head.

'No way.’ Pearl told her. 'This is my mess. I’m not putting you in danger anymore.’ She went to take Violet’s gun from her hand but Ru beat her to it. Both girls turned to look at him.

'I’ll come with you.’ He told them.

'No!’ Violet shook her head frantically.

'Ru no, please. Let me handle this.’ Pearl added.

'Boys,’ he paused and shook his head. 'Or should I say girls. I’m dying, the doctors only give me a matter of months. I don’t want to die an old frail man in a hospital bed. I would rather go out fighting for my two babies.’ He put the gun down and used one hand to stroke Violet’s cheek and the other to stroke Pearl’s. 'Let’s go take down some pigs.’ Ru picked the gun back up. Pearl went to stand up but Violet grabbed her hand. She had tears behind her eyes.

'Pearl, if you don’t come back I need you to know something.’ She sniffed and the first tear fell. Pearl cupped her face and gently stroked the tear away with her thumb.

'What is it baby?'

'I should have told you sooner.’ Violet choked a little. 'I love you. I love you so fucking much. I love Pearl and Jason loves Matt.’ more tears fell. Pearl felt her own come back.

'Every part of me, loves every part of you. Always have, always will pumpkin.’ Pearl kissed her passionately, probably more passionately than she’d ever kissed anyone before. When they pulled back they were both crying. 'I’ll see you on the other side.’ Pearl smiled at Violet and then looked at Ru. 'Let’s do this.’

Pearl and Ru stood up and looked out the window at the cops surrounding the place. They hid their guns. Pearl took a few deep breaths and then she stepped out from behind the counter with Ru following behind. They heard Violet sobbing as they headed to the door.

'I’m going to hold my hands up, pretend I’m surrendering. Then you’re going to open fire.’ Pearl whispered to Ru.

'Got it.’ Ru nodded. 'Matthew?’ He put his hand on Pearl’s shoulder.

'Yeah?'

'If you make it out, promise me you’ll look after Jason.'

Pearl bit her lip and nodded.

'Same goes for you old man.’ She kissed his cheek. She took a few more deep breaths and opened the door of the diner. Ru hid round the corner and watched her step outside.

'Don’t shoot. Here I am.’ Pearl held her hands above her head.

'Where’s Violet?’ The cop called over the megaphone.

'She’s not here. It’s me you want. It was me who carried out all the robberies including the one in Vegas. I killed Billy Ray. I killed Boomer Banks and Courtney Act. Violet just got caught up in my mess.’ She took a few steps forward and subtly to the side so she was out of the way of the door and then Ru stepped out and began to open fire. Pearl grabbed her own gun and started shooting too. The cops started shooting back, in the haze of gun fire Pearl couldn’t even see where she was shooting. She just knew she couldn’t stop. She heard a loud groan from her right and briefly looked around to see Ru go down. She kept shooting, she had more of a reason to kill now.

Violet poked her head around the counter just in time to see Ru hit the floor. She let out a small pained moan. She could just about see Pearl still shooting. She couldn’t let Pearl die. She didn’t know what she would do if anything happened to Pearl. She jumped to her feet and made her way to the door. As she looked around the door she saw the bullet heading right at the blonde. Violet’s body went numb.

'Pearl!’ She screamed but it was already too late. The bullet hit Pearl in her left shoulder and sent the blonde falling back to the floor. The gun fell from her hand as she hit the tarmac. Violet ran to her, she couldn’t stop herself. She fell to the floor next to her love and cradled her.

'Pearl! Baby please tell me you’re ok?’ She was getting covered in Pearl’s blood but she didn’t care. Pearl’s eyes fluttered and she struggled to focus on Violet. She reached her hand up and stroked the brunette’s cheek. Her hand was as cold as ice.

'Everything I’ve ever done, I’ve done for you.’ Pearl croaked. 'Even death won’t stop me loving you pumpkin.’

Violet was crying as she bowed her head and kissed Pearl’s cold lips.

'I love you so fucking much.’ Violet sobbed. 'Please don’t leave me! I can’t live without you!’ Just then she felt a strong set of hands on her shoulders tugging her away from Pearl. 'Get off me! Let me go! I have to know if she’s going to be ok!’ She yelled and kicked and screamed but it didn’t help. Her hands were pulled behind her back and the cuffs were slapped on her wrists.

'Violet Chachki, you’re under arrest.’ The cop told her.

'Pearl!’ She screamed as the cop started dragging her away. She watched Pearl’s head roll to the side on the concrete and her eyes close. She looked over at Ru who was also bleeding and just as lifeless. Violet was thrown in the back of a police car. Her tears were cascading down her face, her mascara running heavily. She'd ruined everything, just like she did best. She could have prevented this, she should have prevented this. But things were never going to be the same again, and it was all Violet’s fault.

But she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she wouldn’t forget Pearl for as long as she lived. And Jason would never forget Matt.

————————————

August 2016 - Florida

The sunlight seemed brighter, the air fresher and the birds louder. As he stepped outside he had an overwhelming urge to go running straight back in. God it had been such a long time. The world was a foreign place to him now. He’d been staring at the same four walls with barely any outside stimuli for so many years and now he was being let loose in the world again. It felt like an alien planet. Where did he fit into this world? He didn’t have anyone or anywhere to go. They couldn’t just turf him out could they? He wanted to go back inside. He was scared and not a lot scared him; it never used to anyway. But he’d been young back then, barely twenty-four years old when his whole world had crumbled. If he closed his eyes he could still hear the gunshots ringing out, he could still hear the screams. He could still see the blood. But that didn’t scare him half as much as stepping out of that building and being tossed back into the real world on his ass, much older and much more fearful than he was back then. He wasn’t angry about what happened, not anymore. After spending years with nothing but your own company he’d had a lot of time to think. It had been inevitable; he’d done some terrible things in his life and he’d deserved to pay for his sins. Maybe he’d been the lucky one, his partner hadn’t been so lucky. He heard the gates close behind him. This was it, he was really out, and there was no going back. All he had in this world was one small bag of belongings and his memories. He’d packed a lot into his twenty-four years, he’d seen and done things most people wouldn’t in a whole lifetime. They’d been just eighteen when they’d decided to pack up and leave everything. Over the next six years they would have the adventure of a lifetime. And he would always hold those memories close to his heart. Memories of him. He would always treasure those years they spent together. Inside, when he was having a particularly bad day, he would think of him and it never failed to put a smile on his face. Sure they had their ups and downs but he wouldn’t change a second of it. They’d made history. They’d left behind a legacy. Their ballad would always live on.

————————————

Jason didn’t know where he was supposed to go; he had nowhere to go. But somehow he’d ended up here. He wasn’t surprised he’d ended up here, the place where it had all ended. The place where they were finally brought down. Ru’s diner, although not Ru’s anymore. Charlie’s, whoever the hell Charlie was. Jason took a deep breath and stepped inside. The bell didn’t chime as he entered. The diner didn’t look a lot different to be honest, it had just had an upgrade. Maybe the 1950’s were back in style. The old red seats that had been falling apart were now blue. The old checked linoleum that had been stained with god knows what since Ru had opened it was now black and spotty. He made his way to his old booth which was still in the same place as it had been but it wasn’t as old and battered. The napkin dispenser was metal instead of the old red plastic ones. The old ashtrays were gone and he noticed the diner suspiciously didn’t smell like stale smoke anymore. Jason lit a cigarette anyway and sat back in his chair. He watched the waitresses scurrying about but no one came over to him. Rude, he thought. Maybe you order at the counter now? The waitresses wore black pants and white shirts instead of the checked dresses Katya and Kasha used to wear. He waited a little while longer but still no one came.

Prison admittedly hadn’t been as bad as Jason thought it would be. It had been rather entertaining when he’d been taken back to the station and asked to strip and they discovered he was a man. He’d been kept pretty secluded which he’d like but he never had many visitors, just Katya and Kasha. Kasha’s visits had stopped about twenty years ago or so and he’d found out from Katya that she’d passed away. And then about ten years ago Katya stopped visiting and he assumed the same had happened to her. That was the last visitor he had.

A young couple entered the diner and Jason heard the bell over the door chime. He frowned to himself. How strange.

It was going to be difficult trying to navigate the world after so many years away. He sucked on his cigarette and briefly closed his eyes. When he opened them she was sat opposite him in the booth, also smoking. She lowered her sunglasses down her nose and raised an eyebrow at Jason.

'Who the fuck is Charlie?’ She asked him in disgust. Jason couldn’t help but laugh.

'Who the fuck knows?’ He watched her drag on the cigarette between her pink painted nails. She had that old movie star look about her, her hair tied back under a scarf.

'This place sucks dick.’ Pearl scoffed looking around. 'And look at the young bimbos they have working here! Ru never would have stood for this.’ She shook her head.

'How do you still look so young?’ Jason raised his eyebrow at her. He felt so old as he sat there and he bet he probably looked it too. But Pearl still looked as though she could be in her twenties.

'Maybe I got better at make-up?’ She shrugged and finished her cigarette before stubbing it out. 'Or maybe…’ she leant forward on the table and bit her lip. 'Or maybe none of this real.'

Jason nodded, he’d had his suspicions of that.

'Are you really here?’ Jason whispered stubbing his own cigarette out.

'Are any of us really here?’ Pearl shrugged. 'What do you want to believe?’ Pearl half-smiled at him. Jason sighed and ran his fingers through his hair.

'I was to believe you’re really here.’

'Ok then pumpkin. You believe what you need to believe.’ Pearl smiled at him and reached across the table and put her hand on top of his. Her skin was freezing, just like it had been that day. 'Wanna blow this popsicle stand?'

'Yes.’ Jason smiled and they stood up. Pearl linked her arm through Jason’s. They walked passed a table with a couple of kids and they did so, one of the kids shivered.

'Oh man I just got super cold!’ He frowned looking around. Jason gave Pearl a sidelong glance and she smiled.

'Oopsies.’ She smirked. She led Jason outside, once again the bell didn’t chime and then she led him around the corner. Jason shook his head in disbelief as he saw the 1950’s Buick Roadmaster staring at him. He let go of Pearl’s arm.

'No way.’ He shook his head.

'Way.’ Pearl grinned. 'How do you fancy driving?’ She fished the keys out of her clutch and tossed them to Jason.

'You never let me drive.'

'I’m sure you can’t do any damage to it anymore.’ Pearl told him. She slid in the passenger’s seat and Jason in the driver’s seat.

'What’s going on Pearl?’ He turned to her in confusion. 'Is any of this real?'

'Maybe. Maybe not.’ She stroked his cheek. 'Does it really matter?'

'I guess not.’ Jason shrugged. As long as Pearl was here he didn’t much care if it was real or not. He needed her and she was here, that’s all that mattered.

'Where am I going?’

'Wherever you want.’ Pearl smiled. She lit a cigarette and handed it to Jason and then lit one for herself. 'We’ve got the whole world at our feet Jason. We can go wherever, do whatever. This is our legacy. This is our ballad.'

Jason kissed Pearl softly making the blonde smile brightly.

'I love you Pearl.’

'I love you too. Vi.’ She smirked. Jason frowned. He adjusted the rear-view mirror and looked at his reflection. Winged eyeliner. Blue eye shadow. A red lip and a little beauty mark right above them. Not his reflection; Violet’s reflection. And not only Violet’s reflection but a twenty something Violet. She turned to look at Pearl with confusion in her eyes. Pearl smirked at her around the cigarette.

'You look as beautiful as ever Ms Chachki.’ She took Violet’s hand and squeezed it. 'Now come on, the open road is calling our names pumpkin.'

Violet started the engine, put the Buick in drive and floored it. She glanced over at Pearl who had her arm hanging out the window and the wind blowing her head scarf a little. She used her free hand to take hold of Violet’s that wasn’t on the wheel. Violet’s heart felt as though it was on fire. She had no idea where she was going but she didn’t care. She’d let Pearl lead her anywhere. Because Violet had always belonged to Pearl and she always would. And she was ready to write the next chapter of their legacy. This was their ballad and only they knew the words.

#pearlet #violet chachki #pearl liaison #tw violence #angst #tw character death #rpdr fanfiction #submission #scarlet #tbovap #queen au #1950s au #historical au

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bananannabeth · 7 years

Text

Colorblind

19k words

Amazing art by @hoalysmoaks and an incredible video by @proudstydiot!! Betad by @seren-mercury, to whom I owe a huge thank you, you have been so patient and kind and I am endlessly appreciative of your feedback. This fic was written for the Stydia Big Bang: shout out to the lovely admins @stydiamonth, thanks so much for organising this event, and to @songof-light for creating the beautiful title card! You can also read this fic on Ao3!! Inspired by a lot of songs, but mainly Leona Lewis’s cover of Colorblind. I also need to thank @hamabee and @imnotsureyetactually for reading over the fic and helping to keep me motivated, you guys are greater than I deserve.

Stiles Stilinski is in third grade when he falls in love with Lydia Martin.

And he knows it’s love, he really does, because when she briefly meets his eye across the playground one innocuous Tuesday the world around him blossoms into color.

He sees the shade of her hair for the first time, not quite red in the way that he’d imagined from his parent’s descriptions, but definitely red-ish. Maybe it’s closer to orange, or maybe even blonde, he thinks, but he won’t know for sure until he gets to see yellow, too, and it’s super rare to get more than one color at once. Red is enough for now, though.

The new color layers over his previously grayscale world and Stiles can see Lydia’s red hair, the light pink blush of her cheeks and the deeper pink of her lips. Stiles looks at Lydia and sees color, and it is beautiful.

His best friend Scott frowns when he tells him, like he doesn’t understand. “What do you mean you see color? Aren’t we too young for that?”

Stiles waves off his concerns and goes back to rifling through the classroom crayon supply, which suddenly holds a whole new world of possibilities. Some of them are still in black and white, and most are just sort of shades of gray, but some are vibrant colors and Stiles knows that’s more than most of the other kids can see so he’s happy.

He picks out the ones that look closest to Lydia’s colors, labelled red and pink and orange (that one’s a bit of a guess, but he has a good feeling about it) and sketches a rough drawing of her. He’s not the best artist, but just seeing the colors on the page makes his heart race.

He catches her just before the end of the day. “Lydia!” he calls as she neatly tucks her pencils into their case. He can see that she’s got a red one and a pink one, and another color he can’t think of the name of, and he wonders if she sees them too.

She blinks up at him as he skids to a stop in front of her desk. “Yes?”

“I drew this for you.”

She takes the drawing and he waits with baited breath for her response. She glances over it before rolling her eyes back to Stiles’s face. “What is it?”

“It’s… uh…” Now that he’s here in front of her, admitting that he’s drawn her seems like a creepy thing to do. He can see Scott wincing sympathetically across the room. Stiles finally settles on, “It’s in color. Don’t you see?”

Lydia scowls, pink lips pressing together. “No, I don’t see.”

His heart drops, because this is not how the stories go.

In the stories, when you meet your soulmate your whole world suddenly changes, and you start to see color. Because they’re your soulmate, they see color too. You look at each other, and you see color, and it’s beautiful. That’s what happened with Stiles’s parents, that’s what happens in all the stories of true love Stiles has ever heard.

But Stiles sees color, and Lydia doesn’t.

This doesn’t make sense.

Stiles is very lost when he asks, “You don’t?”

“No, I don’t.” Lydia eyes him warily, glancing from the drawing to his face and back again. “Why, do you?”

“Uh… I… um…”

When he doesn’t give her a straight answer, she pins him under a very scrutinising stare. For a second Stiles swears that she’s seeing it too, that she knows exactly what he’s talking about, but then she silently pushes the paper back towards him.

Stiles feels like he might cry. “Keep it,” he says quietly.

He turns to head back to Scott before she can reply, and his friend offers him a consolatory pat on the back.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Stiles shrugs and tries to play it off. “Eh. At least I can see color now.”

Scott nods. “And at least she kept the drawing.”

Stiles spins so fast he almost falls over. He turns just in time to see Lydia tucking the paper into her bag behind her pencil case. Both are pink.

Stiles grins. It might take a little bit longer, but he knows that one day Lydia is going to look at him and see something more than gray.

Lydia Martin doesn’t know if she believes in the concept of color bonding.

Even though she’s only ten, she’s read all about it; about how it’s really just a hormonal reaction, when you break it down, and about how people generally only get one primary color at a time, as their bodies and minds adjust to the change. Scientists still aren’t sure why people get different colors at different times, or even exactly what it is that bonds people together in the first place, but they’ve documented it well and they’re always doing more research on it.

Lydia’s grandmother doesn’t describe it in a scientific way at all. She makes it sound like a fairytale, like another one of the storybooks she and Lydia read together. She tells Lydia about her soulmate Maddy in a soft voice that she saves just for this particular story, and when she gets to the part where they meet for the first time and she describes how it looks, her eyes sparkle.

“I saw red, first,” Lorraine explains, looking far away.

Lydia is enthralled, because even if this is just a make believe fairy tale, it’s a good one. And she’s curious, too, always hungering for new knowledge. The idea that her grandmother can see things that Lydia can’t is both fascinating and frustrating.

She whispers, “What did it look like?”

Lorraine’s eyes stay focused on something Lydia can’t see, and her words come slowly, as if she’s thinking very hard about them before saying them out loud. “Like... passion. Loud and bright and demanding. Very attention grabbing. Very exciting, but also a little dangerous. A warning as well as an invitation.”

Lydia frowns, trying to picture it, but it’s hard to imagine something that you have no context for. Her mind keeps giving her blacks and whites, gray, gray, gray. She thinks she might understand the feeling, a little bit, though, abstract as it is.

Lorraine must mistake her thoughtfulness for confusion, because she pats Lydia’s head affectionately and offers a more concrete example. “Like your hair.”

“Like Ariel’s hair,” Lydia counters, and Lorraine smiles indulgently.

Lydia likes the fairytale of The Little Mermaid the best because Ariel went after what she wanted. After spending her whole life dreaming of being on land, she color bonds with the Prince, and Ariel doesn’t wait around for someone else to make things happen for her - she chases her own dreams, she fights for what she wants, and she isn’t afraid to sacrifice things along the way. Ariel is definitely red, and Lydia would like to be red, too.

Lydia’s dad doesn’t approve of Lorraine’s stories. He scoffs and rolls his eyes and tells his mother to stop putting stupid ideas of soulmates in Lydia’s head.

Ariel and Prince Eric color bonded. Lorraine and Maddy color bonded. Lydia’s parents did not.

She thinks about this as she listens to them scream at each other downstairs later that night. She wonders if they would fight like this if they had color bonded, if they were soulmates. She wonders if they have soulmates out there somewhere, fighting with someone else because they never found each other.

That’s another thing that bothers Lydia about the whole concept. Does everyone even have a soulmate? She’s read about people finding colors on their own, about people getting one color from one person and another color from a different person, and about people who found their soulmate and then broke up anyway. There are too many variables for her liking.

She could sort of understand why her parents gave up on the concept of soulmates and married each other, instead, if they liked each other. Maybe they used to like each other, but they don’t anymore.

“I can’t believe you’re not going to come!” Lydia’s mother yells, voice ragged enough at the edges to catch Lydia’s full attention.

“I can’t just take time off work whenever I feel like it -” her dad starts to argue, but Natalie cuts him off.

Lydia imagines her mother’s expression; all shock and indignation, lips parted and perfectly sculpted eyebrows furrowed. “Whenever you feel like it? I’m not asking you to come out for lunch, Ken, I’m asking you to come to Claudia’s funeral, for Christ’s sake!”

Lydia sits up straight at the top of the stairs, rifling through memories in search of a face to put to the name Claudia as her dad offers weak excuses and her mother gets increasingly hysterical.

Natalie is clearly crying as she says, “I’ve just lost a friend, Noah’s just lost his soulmate, Stiles has just lost his mother, and you can’t even take an afternoon off work to -”

Lydia inhales. Stiles. Stiles Stilinski. The small, dorky boy who wears oversized t-shirts and bags under his eyes, always with Scott McCall. He wasn’t at school today, although Lydia didn’t notice his absence until now.

Her stomach twists uncomfortably and she chews on her thumbnail. She knew that his mom was sick, had overheard the teachers talking about it in hushed voices in the hall, had seen the worried way all the parents looked at him as he walked out of school, hunched over with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

She never thought she’d die, though. People don’t just disappear like that, moms don’t just die like that.

Downstairs, Natalie screams, “You are an asshole!”

Lydia jumps to her feet and runs down the hall to her room. She feels unsettled, for some reason, and she wants to slam the door behind her, but she closes it quietly so that her parents don’t know she was eavesdropping.

She crawls into the middle of her bed and stares at the copy of The Little Mermaid on her bookshelf until her vision goes blurry. She wonders what happens to you when your soulmate dies - she wonders if they take the colors with them.

When Stiles returns to school a week later he looks like there’s no light left in the world, let alone any color.

Lydia wants to say something to him, but sorry sounds contrite and anything else sounds fake, because it’s not like Lydia and Stiles are friends. So instead she watches Scott pat him on the shoulder as he wipes away his tears on the sleeve of his hoodie, and she feels bad in silence.

Stiles doesn’t get another color. The red doesn’t fade, and it doesn’t get any stronger. It just stays, patches of bright red and muted pink visible amongst the rest of the world’s shades of ruddy-gray-brown.

“Red’s a good one to have,” his dad says, nodding knowingly. “Red’s a warning colour. Stay away. Might keep you safe.”

Stiles looks at the red label on the old bottle of whiskey on the shelf, the tired, red rim around his dad’s eyes. Stay away.

Noah follows his gaze and sighs, rubbing a tired hand over his face before brightening up and saying, “And, hey - Lydia, her hair is red, isn’t it?”

Stiles barks out a laugh. “So you’re saying the forces of nature have conspired to tell me to stay away from Lydia Martin?”

“Hey, no, that’s not what I -”

“Don’t worry, Dad, I get it,” he says gently.

Stiles knows that talking about colors has been tough for his dad ever since his mom died.

He asked what had happened, once, terrified that his dad had lost the colors when he lost his soulmate. He’d smiled sadly and assured him the colors were still there, just different, now. A little bit darker, a little bit duller.

It makes a sad amount of sense. Without your soulmate there to provoke or sustain the chemical reaction, of course the colors would fade a little. Stiles’s looked it up, and apparently they won’t ever go away completely, but they’ll never be the same again, either. They’ll never be quite as bright as before.

His research also reveals that sometimes people don’t get all the colours, presumably for the same reason, which is a bit disconcerting. Because Stiles still goes to school with Lydia, still sees her almost every day (how could he miss her, with her curled hair and painted lips and beautiful blush, a walking personification of red hot desire) but they never interact. And it’s probably, almost certainly, definitely, the interaction that makes all the difference. The extended time together, that’s what gives you the other colors.

As far as Stiles knows - which, to be fair, is not very far, considering that he and Lydia have barely spoken in the last seven years and he’s pretty sure she might have even forgotten his name - Lydia still hasn’t seen any colors. She’s started dating Jackson Whittemore, Captain of the lacrosse team and the worst person Stiles has ever met, but she still sees nothing but shades of gray, and Stiles counts that as a win.

All he has to do is get himself back on Lydia’s radar, give her the chance to get to know him, and it’ll happen. He knows it will.

“Hey,” his dad says, drawing him back to the present. His eyes are soft, like he knows exactly what Stiles was thinking about. “I’ve got something for you. To say congratulations for making it to Freshman year.”

“Gee, no need to sound so surprised, Dad.”

The Sheriff laughs and stands up, draping an arm over Stiles’s shoulders and guiding him into the lounge. There’s a black bag sitting on top of the coffee table, and when Stiles gives him a questioning look he nods and gestures to it with a smile. “Go on.”

Stiles scoops it up and pulls the contents out immediately, taking no time for ceremony. It’s a heavy, hardcover book, and the first thing he notices is the gradient at the top of the cover. He can see pure, bright red, and maroon like his lacrosse gear, and shades of pink and even a bit that looks like it’s verging into orange territory. After that the image is gray, the only differences he can see distinguished by shades of light and dark rather than hue.

Stiles gapes at his father, fingers moving reverentially over the cover. “Dad, is this -?”

“The Complete Guide to Spectral Color,” his dad says, like he’s announcing it for a crowd. And then, much more bashfully, “My, uh, mine and your mother’s is sort of… out of date, so I thought you might like your own. Updated.”

Stiles’s throat feels tight and he can’t stop drumming his fingers against the cover. “Dad, this is. Wow. I can’t believe you got me the Spec Guide, that’s… thank you.”

And then, still holding the book, he throws his arms around his dad in a hug.

He returns the embrace just as fiercely. “You’re welcome, kid. I’m proud of you, I hope you know that.”

Stiles pulls back and stares down at the book, feeling a little overwhelmed. Because he is holding, in his hands, a swatch of every single named color there is. Not just red and blue and yellow, or even purple and green and orange, but things like vermillion, sapphire, chartreuse, plum and mint and tangerine. Inside this book is an entirely new world, just waiting for Stiles’s brain to catch up with it.

“Do you think I’ll be able to see them all, one day?” he asks without thinking.

It takes a moment for his dad to answer, but when he does he’s smiling, small but sincere. “Your mother used to write down notes about the colors, when she was - when she was in the hospital. She got a bit confused about which shade was which, towards the...”

He cuts off, but Stiles knows exactly what he was going to say. His mom had gotten confused about a lot of things, towards the end.

“Anyway,” the Sheriff says, obviously making an effort to refocus on Stiles. “Our copy has some notes about the colors, what they reminded your mom of, what they felt like. Do you wanna get a head start by copying them into your book?”

“Hell yeah I do!” Stiles exclaims, grinning wide, pushing aside everything that this conversation has brought up except for the prospect of learning more about colors. He can deal with the rest later, when his dad’s on night shift and Stiles has the house to himself and can feel guilty without worrying about making him feel bad.

For now, he lets himself be distracted by two words written in his mom’s loopy script beneath a swatch of color that is all too familiar.

Strawberry blonde, Claudia’s written.

Stiles picks up a pen and writes beside it, Lydia.

Sometimes Lydia thinks she might love Jackson, and sometimes she thinks she can’t, because she still hasn’t gotten any colors, and sometimes she thinks soulmates are the stupidest thing in the world and what does it matter if Jackson can’t make her see colors when he can make her see stars, anyway?

Colors or no colors, as Captain of a winning lacrosse team, Jackson is the perfect boyfriend for Lydia’s plan.

Her plan involves ruling the social circles of Beacon Hills High School with a perfectly manicured fist, getting top grades in each and every one of her classes, and then getting into Stanford and asserting her dominance in the Mathematics faculty until her research wins her a Fields Medal. That is Lydia’s plan.

Having a soulmate does not factor in, so when she outgrows fairytales Lydia takes no more than a passing interest in the science of it, following the rare new developments with a detached sort of intrigue.

Until she becomes friends with Allison Argent.

The day Allison arrives at Beacon Hills High School, Lydia claims her as her own and invites her to watch lacrosse practice. Allison knows nothing about lacrosse, and she’s quite obviously a little overwhelmed, but she comes along anyway, which Lydia finds genuinely endearing.

“Who’s he?” Allison asks, nodding towards a player that Lydia doesn’t recognise.

“Him? I’m not sure who he is.” She throws her new friend a curious glance. “Why?”

“He’s in my English class,” Allison says, and that should be the end of it, but something about her tone has Lydia intrigued.

“And?” she prompts.

Allison looks surprised, all doe eyed innocence. She winces when a ball hits the guy right in the helmet, bouncing into the goal and making the rest of the team laugh. Lydia resists the urge to roll her eyes.

“And what?” Allison asks.

“And what did he do in English to catch your attention?”

The goalie catches the next shot, and Lydia’s interest is piqued.

“It’s probably nothing,” Allison says modestly.

“Probably nothing means definitely something,” Lydia replies.

Allison sighs and twists her fingers together in her lap. She’s saved from answering by the goalie catching the next shot, and the next, and the next, and Lydia momentarily lets it drop because how does she not know this boy?

“He seems like he’s pretty good,” Allison says beside her, leaning just as far forward in her seat as Lydia is, clearly impressed.

Lydia arches her eyebrows and nods. “Yeah, very good.”

Good enough to stop Jackson’s throw, which earns him an impressed cheer from a boy on the bench and Lydia herself, who gets to her feet and claps enthusiastically. On the field Jackson shoots her an unimpressed glare and she sends a sly smile back, a warning to lift his game.

“I thought maybe I saw a color when I met him,” Allison says quickly from down on the bench seat, the words all coming out so fast they sort of blur together.

Lydia blinks down at her before dropping gracefully back to the seat, eyes wide. “Excuse me?”

Allison looks extremely embarrassed, ducking her head and trying to hide behind her dark hair. “I told you it was stupid, I don’t even know his name -”

“But you thought you saw color when you met him,” Lydia repeats, trying to keep all the skepticism she’s feeling out of her tone.

She must do at least a passable job, because Allison lifts her head and meets Lydia’s eye hopefully. “Maybe, yeah.”

“Which one?” Lydia asks, glancing out to the field where the mystery boy is talking animatedly to the boy off the bench.

“Blue,” Allison mumbles. And then, a little louder. “When he let me borrow a pen.”

“How romantic,” Lydia says before she can stop herself. She immediately regrets it as Allison folds her arms and turns away, frowning. “Okay, I’m sorry, that was rude. He let you borrow a pen, that’s… sweet.”

“Yeah,” Allison says, clearly still hesitant. She looks towards the boy rather than Lydia, now, and her expression softens. “He passed it to me and it was like… like a firework went off, and there was a shower of blue, so much richer than the gray everywhere. I could see it on my scarf, on his shirt, the sky outside…”

Despite herself, Lydia feels a pang of jealousy, sharp and straight through her heart. “And then what?”

“And then he turned back around and I blinked and everything was normal again,” Allison says. How anticlimactic. “Can it happen like that? Can you get a little bit of a color but not all of it?”

It’s uncommon, but Lydia’s definitely heard of it happening - A flicker of color followed by a gradual reveal. It’s something about the way the different cones in your eyes react to the light spectrum, and something else that so far they haven’t been able to explain, one of the inexplicable, magical things about the way you connect with your soulmate.

Lydia doesn’t say any of this to Allison, though. She just shrugs and says, “I don’t know.”

Allison bites her bottom lip before declaring, “I think I should talk to him and see if it happens again.”

“Good idea,” Lydia says, because in order to call it a success every experiment must have repeatable results, and any boy who saves every single shot is worth experimenting with.

She watches the goalie and the boy from the bench head for the locker room, walking behind an extremely pissed off Jackson. For just a second, she lets herself wish that she could see the colour of their uniforms, could make out the contrast of the deep maroon against the yellow-green grass.

And then she remembers the plan, and she flips her hair over her shoulder and offers Allison a dazzling smile. “Let’s go.”

A lot of weird shit happens in very quick succession after Scott gets the bite, but one of the weirdest is when he declares that he’s met his soulmate.

Stiles doesn’t want to kill his post-makeout glow, but he doesn’t want him to get his hopes up, either. “Whoa, buddy, hang on - what if it’s an effect of the bite? You said you can see some color when you start to shift, right, what if it’s -”

“No, man, it’s definitely Allison!” Scott is beaming, his smile stretched wide and his eyes crinkled in the corners as he stands opposite Stiles in the locker room, practically buzzing with excitement. He just won the game, he just kissed his crush, and he might have just started to see color, so Stiles isn’t all that surprised by his dazed expression. “It’s Allison, it literally just happened, I can see color, I can - I kissed her, and now I can see color!”

Stiles runs a hand over his hair, mouth hanging open in shock. “Which one?”

“Yellow,” Scott says in a way that makes it sound like the happiest word in the world.

That’s one of the things written under the Yellow section in Stiles’s Spec Guide - happiness, alongside sunshine and hope and light. All of those concepts are embodied in Scott’s smile.

Stiles smiles back, because, “Holy shit, dude. You’ve found your soulmate.”

“I can’t believe you’ve had this since third grade,” Scott breathes, holding his hands out in front of himself and turning them over, blinking at the new perception.

“Well, not this, exactly, you know, because I’ve got red and you’ve got yellow, but -”

“This is amazing!” Scott crows, curling his hands into fists and punching the air.

Stiles laughs and claps him on the shoulder in congratulations, letting his best friend’s enthusiasm catch. Because Allison is Scott’s soulmate, and she’s Lydia’s friend, and things should be easy for Stiles from here on out, right?

Well, they’re not exactly easy, but it sort of works out okay, because despite all of the messed up shit that’s happening, Stiles gets to take Lydia to Prom, which is honestly something that, up until a few days ago, seemed more impossible than werewolves existing.

He wonders if it’s fate, that she wears a dress in one of the few colors he can actually see. She looks beautiful in pink and black, with her hair curling around her shoulders, her lips perfectly painted and her eyes bright, and he wants this to be a good night, he really, truly wants her to have a good time.

It’s just a shame that she seems determined not to.

“Lydia, get off your cute little ass and dance with me, now,” he snaps.

She purses her lips and tilts her head, saying lightly, “Interesting tactic. I’m gonna stick with no.”

“Lydia, get up! Okay, you're gonna dance with me,” Stiles insists, as she slumps back in her seat and rolls her eyes. God, she’s the most infuriating person he’s ever met but he is determined to get through to her. “I don't care that you made out with my best friend for some weird power thing. I don't -”

He flails, and she stares at him, eyebrows furrowing slightly as he powers on.

“Lydia, I've had a crush on you since the third grade. And I know that somewhere inside that cold, lifeless exterior, there's an actual human soul,” he says, pointing to her for emphasis. “And I'm also pretty sure I'm the only one who knows just how smart you really are, uh-huh, and that once you're done pretending to be a nitwit, you'll eventually go off and write some insane mathematical theorem that wins you the Nobel Prize.”

She turns her head and closes her eyes, as if she’s gathering her thoughts and picking which insult to fling back at him for his impudence. There’s no going back now, though.

Her response is not what he’s expecting. “Field's Medal.”

“What?” Stiles asks, unable to hide his shock, which only grows as Lydia gets to her feet and comes to stand in front of him.

“Nobel doesn't have a prize for mathematics,” she explains. “The Field's Medal is the one I'll be winning.”

And then she takes his hand and leads him onto the dance floor, and Stiles is honestly surprised that he doesn’t get another color right then and there.

But of course things couldn’t be that easy; Of course Jackson fucking Whittemore has to screw everything up.

He interferes with Scott and Allison, just like he’s been interfering with Stiles and Lydia for years, and he stupidly tries to get involved with the werewolf stuff, and he’s the one Lydia’s looking for when she gets attacked by Peter Hale, and he’s the one who doesn’t seem to really care all that much when Lydia goes missing, while Stiles spends hours panicking and trying to help with the search and freaking out because she’s his soulmate, damn it, and he needs her to be okay.

And then, after all that, Jackson’s still the one she goes back to.

And Stiles wants to just come out and say it, thinks about it every time they’re together, just casually dropping into the conversation, “Oh, Lydia, by the way, do you remember that day I gave you a drawing in third grade and said it was in color? That’s because, surprise, we’re actually soulmates and I’ve color bonded with you! Isn’t that awesome?”

But then he thinks about the horror stories of people who color bond with someone who doesn’t color bond back with them, and he honestly doesn’t think he could take it if that was what was happening here. He’d rather live in ignorant hope.

So Stiles doesn’t bring it up, and he watches as Scott falls for Allison and gains another color (red, for passion, danger, lust and love), and he becomes tentative friends with Lydia, and he tries to convince himself that it’s enough, for now.

They’re sitting side by side on the bleachers at the ice rink, lacing up their skates, and Stiles is trying very hard to think about anything other than the fact that their legs are almost touching when Lydia shivers and complains, “Could it be any colder in here?”

And lucky day, he just so happens to have a spare shirt in his bag. He grabs it and holds it out to her. “Here.”

Lydia frowns at the shirt and then at him. “What color is it?”

“Uh…” Stiles recognises the distinctive lightness of the soft material, but he flips the tag over to double check it anyway. “Orange.”

“I’m wearing blue,” she informs him, and it sounds an awful lot like a no, but Stiles has no idea why. She reads his silence correctly and explains, complete with pointed finger for emphasis, “Orange and blue, not a good combination.”

“But it’s the colors of the Mets!” he counters, offended. “And the Spec Guide called them complementary colors -”

“That’s an outdated and misleading term. ‘Opposite colors’ is more accurate, because the whole point of it is that they don’t complement each other, they clash.” Lydia gives him an extremely unimpressed look, pink lips pressed together.

He holds his hands up in surrender, because she’s clearly not going to hear his arguments, and she turns back to her boots.

“I thought you couldn’t see colors, anyway,” Stiles says as he shoves the shirt back into his bag.

Her fingers still for just a second before she goes back to lacing up. “I can’t.”

“Then what does it matter what color the scarf is?”

“Because other people can see color, and I don’t want to look like an idiot in front of them,” Lydia snaps, as though this is the most obvious thing in the world.

Stiles gapes at her. She’s frowning, but not at him; her attention is focused on Allison and Scott, who are making disgusting heart eyes at each other and whispering together. And he gets it immediately, because it’s pretty much the only thing he and Lydia have in common - they both know how awful it feels when your best friend is with their soulmate and you’re not with yours.

He says softly, “Lydia, you could never look like an idiot, no matter what colors you were wearing.”

She tilts her head, looking at him the same way she did when he told her she was going to win a Nobel Prize for mathematics. He wants to shy away from that scrutinising look, but he forces himself to hold her gaze.

“Do you see any colors?” she asks carefully.

Shit.

“Oh, uh, I…” Stiles fumbles for something to say, anything that can distract her long enough for him to remember how to form an actual sentence.

His eyes land on something inside his bag, a shade ever so slightly closer to red than his spare shirt, and he snatches it up. A Reese’s chocolate. Without another word, he offers it to Lydia.

She eyes it warily for a second, and he panics that she’s going to call him out on the blatant change of topic. But then she shrugs and takes it from him, methodically and ruthlessly ripping the wrapper off, and Stiles allows himself a small smile.

This is going okay. Lydia’s obviously open to the idea of discussing soulmates, at least in terms of color theory, and they’ve been sitting together, alone, for multiple minutes without Stiles doing anything (majorly) embarrassing. Maybe he’s better at this than he thought.

He takes a deep breath, gathering his courage, and says, “Okay, um, maybe orange and blue’s not the best. But, you know, sometimes there’s other things you wouldn’t think would be a good combination that end up turning out to be, like, a perfect combination. You know, like… two people, together.”

This is ridiculous. Even by Stiles’s standards, this is verging into saying way too much. Beside him, Lydia’s paused her destruction of the Reese’s wrapper, and he can feel her watching him.

It takes every ounce of what little self control he has to shrug casually and keep his voice relatively level as he adds, “Who nobody ever thought would be together. Ever.”

“No, I can see that.” Lydia’s voice is surprisingly soft, and she’s nodding like she completely understands.

Stiles feels like he may spontaneously combust, right here in this ice rink. “You can?”

“Yeah.” Lydia nods seriously. “They’re cute together.”

And he takes it all back, this is a disaster.

Stiles turns his head to see Scott helping Allison to her feet, both of them grinning like they’re having the time of their lives.

“Oh,” he says flatly. “Yeah, them.”

“Cute,” Lydia repeats, popping the rest of the chocolate into her mouth and smiling coquettishly.

“Cute,” Stiles mimics, scowling and lacing his boots up with far more force than is necessary. “Adorable.”

As soon as Lydia admits that she loves Jackson, colors or no colors, kanima be damned, he leaves for London.

And Lydia is thrust into a parallel universe where werewolves and monsters are real and she is friends with Scott McCall and Stiles Stilinski, and things are simultaneously the worst and best they’ve ever been.

For the first time in her life, Lydia feels like she is on par with someone, and to her unending shock (and mild horror) that someone is Stiles.

She’s so wrapped up in all the rest of it - the screaming, the sacrifices, the school work - that she doesn’t have time to consider anything new about color bonding, and she’s so distracted trying to figure out what the hell she is that she doesn’t really notice Stiles has wormed his way into every facet of her life until he’s sitting across from her at her kitchen table one innocuous Thursday.

He’s eating a handful of curly fries he picked up from a burger place on the way here, and there are a few grains of salt sticking to his top lip. He’s frowning, drumming his absurdly long fingers against the tabletop, staring at the list they’ve made of potential clues regarding who could be behind the sacrifices, and Lydia realises with a jolt that this feels natural.

Their homework may have been pushed to the side in favour of facts about murder victims and ancient myths, and Stiles’s oversized flannel and jeans may clash with the upscale furniture, but Lydia wouldn’t change it even if she could. Having him here, like this, feels right.

Her eyes are just drifting from the freckles and moles on the side of his face to the small constellation of them peeking out from under his shirt collar when it happens. Something flares in the centre of Lydia’s vision, and suddenly everything is warmer and brighter, sharper and crisper and yellow.

And then Prada barks, and Lydia reflexively looks towards the sound, and the color fades as suddenly as it had appeared. It lasted maybe a few seconds, maximum, but Lydia feels as though her entire world has been tilted on its axis.

Stiles has started talking, mouth moving at a million miles per hour as he tries to piece things together, but Lydia can’t hear what he’s saying.

It must have been a hallucination, brought on by stress. A trick of the light. Something, anything other than what Lydia thinks it was.

She’s so lost in her own head she doesn’t even notice he’s stopped babbling until he says her name for probably the third time. “Lydia. Hey, you okay?

She blinks, but Stiles doesn’t change. He’s still just sitting there, with spiked up hair and salt on his lips and shades of gray everywhere, but Lydia’s heart still won’t settle in her chest. She can’t get rid of the memory of him all lit up like that. She can’t stop thinking about the way the hue completely changed her perception of him, adding a whole new dimension that she’d never even imagined before.

His expression shifts, eyebrows knitting together and lips parting, and she knows before he even moves that he’s going to get up and come around the table. (How does she know that? Just how much time has she been spending with him, to be able to read him like that?)

“I’m -” She’s fine, so why can’t she say it?

Stiles stops in front of her chair and drops to his knees, so that he’s looking up at her, and Lydia can’t tear her gaze away from him. His lips quirk up into a crooked smile as he says, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

She laughs a little breathlessly. “I’m fine. I just… thought I saw something.”

All brevity disappears from his expression. “Something supernatural?”

“No.” Lydia licks her lips, and Stiles watches the motion as though mesmerised.

He’s so close to her now, and she can’t stop thinking about how he’d looked in that flare of color, with the rays of late afternoon light shining in through the window behind him. Her eyes flicker down to his lips and then back to his eyes, and the way he’s looking at her makes her feel warm all over.

“Stiles, I -”

Prada barks, and both of them almost jump out of their skin.

Lydia loses her courage. When Prada continues barking, she tears her eyes away from Stiles and snaps, “What, Prada?”

The dog keeps barking, and Lydia is so on edge that she just about falls out of her seat when Aiden appears at her back door. Her expression is horrified enough to compel Stiles to whip his head around to see what she’s looking at, and his shoulders sag.

“Oh,” he says quietly, slowly standing.

Aiden slides open the back door and Lydia shoots to her feet, pushing her chair back with an awful scraping sound. Prada finally stops barking.

Aiden is good looking. He treats Lydia well enough. He’s amazing in bed. But he’s not her boyfriend, and so Lydia doesn’t understand why she feels like she’s been caught doing something forbidden and intimate.

He looks between her and Stiles and says, “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“We’re just going over clues. About the sacrifices,” she says, far too quickly.

Both boys look at her like they know she’s lying, but where Aiden is smug, Stiles is definitely hurt. Her heart sinks.

“Mind if I take a look?” Aiden asks, stepping inside.

Stiles replies before Lydia can even open her mouth. “Actually I have to head out,” he says, eyes darting over Lydia’s shoes, the papers spread out over the table, the empty fry packet threatening to fall off the edge - everywhere but at her.

He walks around the table and gathers his stuff, and Aiden comes to stand beside Lydia. She doesn’t move.

Stiles is halfway out the door before she says, “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

His smile is small and he still doesn’t quite meet her eye, but he does glance at her over his shoulder and say, “Yeah. See you tomorrow.”

And then he leaves, and Lydia lets out a shaky breath.

Aiden gives her a look. “Enjoy your little study date?”

She rolls her eyes and scoffs, but her heart’s still racing. She only had it for a few seconds, maximum, but Lydia already misses the yellow she saw when she looked at Stiles.

She thinks back to that day with Allison at lacrosse practice, so long ago now, and she wants to ask her best friend about it. She wants Allison’s opinion on what it’s like to see a splash of color and then have it taken away, wants to know how to bear it. Because it seems cruel, to give you a taste of what the world can be, and then to take it away just as quickly.

And she can’t stop picturing it. For days and days later, it’s all she sees every time she closes her eyes. Lydia is going to go mad with images of a sun kissed Stiles burned onto the backs of her eyelids.

But she can’t put it into words, because she’s terrified, absolutely terrified, of what this might mean. And besides, she doesn’t have any proof, yet. Despite all of her instincts screaming at her that this is it, he’s the one, she’s finally figured it out - Lydia is still mistrustful.

Every experiment must have repeatable results in order to be deemed a success. So she takes Allison’s advice from all those months ago and waits for it to happen again.

God knows she’s spending enough time with Stiles lately anyway. Figuring out that Jennifer’s behind the sacrifices is just one part of the puzzle, and things get infinitely more dire when she kidnaps Melissa McCall and the Sheriff.

Lydia’s with Stiles, standing in the middle of the Beacon Hills High School hallway, when the news they’ve been dreading comes through in a text message.

“It’s from Isaac,” Stiles says, eyes flicking to hers before he looks away again. “Jennifer, she took - She has Allison’s father, she took him. She’s got all three now.”

Lydia can see the hope draining out of Stiles’s eyes as his hands begin to shake, and her chest constricts. She forces herself to remain calm, to keep her voice even as she says, “There’s still time. We still have time, right?”

That wasn’t meant to be a question, but Stiles’s breathing has gotten way too shallow and he’s turning away from her and she’s not sure what to do to fix this.

“Stiles? You okay?” When he doesn’t answer, panic pitches her voice higher. “What is it? What’s wrong? Stiles -”

Finally, he meets her eye. “I think I’m having a panic attack.”

Lydia’s gotten used to monster attacks, fugue states, and finding dead bodies. She’s not frightened of much anymore. But the look on Stiles’s face as he says that - the sheer helplessness - that frightens her.

“Come with me,” she says, grabbing his arm and steering him towards the locker room.

He follows with no complaints, no wise cracks, no smart ass comments at all, and Lydia pushes the door open with far more force than usual. He sounds like he’s about to cry, like he genuinely can’t breathe, and as she leads him to the middle of the room all Lydia can say is, “Okay, come on, come on.”

He falls to the floor and she follows him down, kneeling across from him as he struggles to catch his breath.

“Just try and think about something else, anything else,” she says, desperately trying to recall anything she’s ever read about panic attacks.

“Like what?” Stiles asks, staring straight down and sounding very unappreciative of her efforts.

She doesn’t remember ever feeling this tongue tied before in her life. “Um, happy things! Good things! Friends, family -”

Stiles lifts his head, disbelieving, and she winces.

“Urgh, I mean, not family, oh god.” Shit, she was not prepared for this.

Lydia is good at a lot of things. She is smart and brilliant, but she isn’t exactly known for being caring. Looking after others is not one of her strong suits, but here, kneeling in front of Stiles, she’d give anything to make him feel better.

Something flashes to the front of her mind, a passage she read once about panic attack symptoms, but she can’t recall any of the details when Stiles is doubled over in front of her like it’s life or death.

“Okay, just… try and slow your breathing,” she says, deciding to go on what she can see. If she can get him to slow his breathing he’ll get more oxygen and everything will calm down.

Except.

“I can’t,” Stiles says, hand coming up to his chest like he’s choking. “I can’t.”

She moves forward and cups his face in her hands, trying to sound both commanding and comforting as she says, “Shh, Stiles, look at me.”

He’s still trapped in panic, and even as she strokes his cheek and says his name he can’t break free from it. His eyes dart from hers to her lips and back again, and something settles inside Lydia. She remembers this boy sitting opposite her the other day, when just the sight of him gave her a glimpse into a whole new world, and she lets her instincts take over.

“Stiles…” she breathes.

Lydia leans forward and kisses him.

She pours everything she has into that kiss; all of the unsaid longing, all of the comfort Stiles gives her, all of the security she feels when he’s around, she tries to give it all back to him. She keeps her hands on his face, and she feels him tense and then soften at her touch. His lips are soft and pliant beneath hers, and when he kisses her back her heart soars.

She knows that it’s happened again before she even opens her eyes.

She keeps them closed as she pulls back, lips still parted and hands curling in front of her trembling heart. There’s no going back from this, she knows.

Lydia opens her eyes slowly, and she’s greeted by a Stiles she’s only glimpsed once before. She can’t take it all in; the new pallor of his skin, the multitude of new shades visible in his hair, the way that the hue seems to add so much more depth than light and shadows alone ever could. And then he looks straight at her, and Lydia’s breath catches in her throat because, oh, his eyes.

Yellow might be the only color Lydia has right now, but she thinks it might be the most beautiful of them all.

Lydia’s wearing blue. A few seconds ago, her dress looked gray, but now Stiles can see that it’s actually light blue.

It takes a moment for his brain to process what’s just happened. Quite a few moments, actually.

When he got red, all those years ago, Stiles had blinked to check that it was real. This time, he’s scared to blink at all. He keeps his eyes open and locked on Lydia, frightened that if he looks away for even a second she’s going to disappear and take the new color with her.

But Lydia is right in front of him, striking in shades of red and blue - strawberry blonde hair, pink lips, powder blue dress. She’s staring right back at him, eyes wide and intense and a slightly different shade to how he’s always seen them before.

He wonders if this changed it for her, too - if she finally got a color.

His voice shakes as he asks, “How’d you do that?”

Lydia takes longer to answer him than she ever has before, like she’s contemplating what exactly he’s asking her. She sounds slightly hoarse when she says, “I, uh… I read once that holding your breath could stop a panic attack. So, when I kissed you… you held your breath.”

Stiles still feels dizzy, overwhelmed by the lingering effects of the panic attack and his brain trying to adjust to the sudden onslaught of new color. Hearing Lydia say the words ‘I kissed you’ isn’t helping things.

“I did?” he asks, slightly dazed.

She nods, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Yeah, you did.”

And something about the way she says it - the crack in her voice, the way she won’t stop looking at him with those wide eyes which are an entirely new shade, the fact that she’s still close enough for him to kiss - sets Stiles off.

He blinks back tears and strains to say, “Thanks. That was really smart.”

Lydia makes a small noise of disbelief, and then the moment vanishes. She shifts, and Stiles follows her lead and lets himself sit back in a slightly more comfortable position. He still feels unsteady, his heart pounding wildly in his chest, but it’s for an entirely different reason now.

Lydia’s hair is still strawberry blonde, but now she’s wearing blue, and Stiles knows now more than ever that he is a lost cause.

When he gets home that night, after making sure that his dad is safe asleep and checking in with Scott and Allison, too, Stiles pulls out his Spec Guide. The words calm, peaceful and intelligent are fittingly already written in the Blue section, transferred over from the notes that his mom made in her copy.

Stiles runs his fingertips over the words and tries to recall exactly how Lydia’s lips felt against his, how she was smart enough to break through the panic attack and calm him down when he felt like his whole world was imploding.

He picks up a blue pen and writes next to the powder blue swatch, Holding your breath.

Lydia stares at her reflection in the mirror and twirls individual strands of hair around her finger, marvelling at the blonde color. Her skin looks warmer and her eyes look brighter, like she’s shining from the inside out.

She goes through all of her old photos and takes approximately four dozen new selfies, smiling wider in each consecutive one.

Everything is yellow and gold, champagne and lemon, cream and canary and light itself given a hue.

Theoretically, she knows what this means. Stiles Stilinski is her soulmate. They have a connection, as Deaton put it.

(She replays the veterinarian's words from earlier that day over in her head; “It’s not just someone to hold you under. It needs to be someone who can pull you back. Someone who has a strong connection to you.” And then; “Lydia, you go with Stiles.”)

She wonders if it’s really that obvious; if everyone else’s perception of her has changed, too.

Lydia frowns at her reflection.

Having a soulmate was not part of her plan. It seems improbable, really, that there is someone out there so intrinsically perfect for you that they literally trigger a chemical reaction in your brain, sparking new connections to the optic nerve and changing your entire perception of reality.

It seems even more improbable that the person so intrinsically perfect for Lydia would be Stiles Stilinski.

She’s starting to understand that there is a big difference between improbable and impossible, however.

And she likes Stiles, obviously. Maybe she more than likes him. But Lydia Martin will not have the course of her life dictated by such an abstract concept as fate. And this tentative thing, this connection between them, whatever it is, she isn’t going to put the weight of ideas like soulmates and destiny on it when it’s still so fragile.

So she decides that she’s not going to tell Stiles. She’s going to approach this scientifically, rather than emotionally. She’s going to see whether they come together without any influence of color bonding.

Maybe it’s this reluctance to give in to her own feelings that causes Lydia to get blue gradually. It’s not like yellow, where it sparked only once in a furious flare and then vanished before appearing for good. Instead, blue just sort of seeps into the grays.

Sometimes she looks at Stiles and the black and white lines of his shirt will brighten, very, very slightly, to a color that’s close to gray but has more feeling to it. She’ll stare, waiting for the color to solidify, but it always remains just out of her grasp.

She thinks that it gets stronger when she holds his hand, or when he looks at her with those wide, amber eyes, but the change in her perception of him is so gradual that when blue finally solidifies itself in Lydia’s vision it takes her a few moments to notice.

Her foot is pressed to a steel trap and Stiles is the only thing standing between her and losing a limb.

“You don’t need the instructions. When is the last time you have ever used instructions, am I right?” she says, and her voice barely shakes. “You don’t need them, because you are too smart. Don’t waste your time with them, okay? You can figure it out.”

And she’d started talking to boost his confidence, to convince him that he could do this, but Lydia’s surprised to find that the more she talks the more sure she becomes. He can do this. It’s Stiles, and if she had to put her life in anyone’s hands, she’d choose him.

He glances up at her and he looks different, somehow, and everything seems to slow down.

Lydia takes a deep breath. “Stiles, you’re the one who always figures it out. So you can do it. Figure. It. Out.”

And he does. He gives her enough time to get her foot away, jumping up and catching her in his arms just as she makes the leap. Her heart’s racing at a million miles an hour, and his is too, she can feel it where his chest is pressed up against hers. They’re both breathing heavily, her arms tight around his neck and his hand rubbing her back, when she glances down at his shirt and realises that it is very distinctly no longer gray.

It’s two shades of blue, light and dark, both of them so much more vibrant than the grey-ish, livid tone she’d been able to see before she’d stepped on the trap.

Stiles has saved her, and given her another color, and all Lydia can do is press her forehead to his cheek and thank him for pulling her back.

“What do the different colored strings mean?”

Stiles turns around to see Lydia lying on her stomach on his bed, bare feet crossed at the ankles and chin propped in her hands. She’s wearing possibly the brightest shade of red lipstick he’s ever seen and watching him intently as he pins more evidence to his board.

“Uh, they’re just different stages of the investigation,” he explains. He has a whole code system, outlined in the notes section at the back of his Spec Guide for posterity's sake. “So, like, green is solved. Yellow is to be determined. Blue’s just… pretty.”

He swallows, thinking about the first time he saw blue. Pretty, indeed.

Lydia tilts her head at him like she always does when he mentions colors. He’s long given up on hiding the fact that he can see them, and he knows that she’s figured it out, too. Neither of them explicitly mention it, though. Like the kiss in the locker room, they hedge around it with lingering glances and loaded words in their near-endless stream of back and forth banter, but never manage to just flat out say what’s on their minds.

Stiles is pretty sure that Lydia can see colors now, too; or at least a color. He doesn’t know which one. He wants to ask, but that’s sort of socially taboo.

He’d thought that getting closer to her would make talking about this type of stuff easier, but it’s actually made it more difficult, because she’s no longer Lydia Martin, untouchable and incomparable goddess who is his soulmate - she’s Lydia, a real, multifaceted person, one of his best friends, and the fact that she might be his soulmate is no longer the most important thing about her in Stiles’s eyes.

“What does red mean?” she asks, drawing him out of his thoughts.

He turns back to the board, surveying the lines of string. “Uh, unsolved.”

“You only have red on the board.”

“Yes, I’m aware, thank you,” he says drily, shaking his head at her.

He goes to turn back to the board but pauses halfway as her words register. He blinks at her and she blinks back, red lips pressed firmly together. She looks panicked, like she’s slipped up and revealed something she wasn’t ready to, which is all the confirmation Stiles needs.

He can see the red string on the board, slashes of bright color across the cool monochrome and blue background. He can also see balls of red and blue string beside Lydia on the bed, and two bundles in different shades of gray that he only knows are yellow and green because that’s how they were labelled when he bought them. He’d wanted purple, because he can actually see that color, but it was sold out.

He wonders which ones Lydia can see in color.

He wants to press it, wants to ask if it’s just the red string she can see, or if she can see all the other colors and so deduced that all the string on the board must be red. That’d mean she can see both yellow and blue, and hence green, and it’d mean that… well, it’d mean that she must know that he’s her soulmate.

Lydia looks away first, tilting her chin down and twisting the red thread around her finger. “Did you get detention for pulling the alarm?”

Stiles swallows. He debates calling her out on the blatant subject change, but she looks so sad that he can’t quite do it. Not now, not when there’s a murderer on the loose and they have so many other things to deal with.

So he turns back to the board and says, “Yep, every day this week. It’s okay though, we were on to something.”

“Even though we couldn’t find any proof of Barrow being there?” she says flatly.

He turns, marker still in hand, to look at her. Her eyes are still downcast, her expression one of disappointment. He knows how much she hates losing composure in front of people, and his heart squeezes as he realises how much she must trust him, and how awful she must be feeling, to let her guard down like this.

“Hey, Lydia.” He kneels in front of her so they’re at eye level. “You’ve been right every time something like this has happened, okay? So don’t start doubting yourself now.”

“No scent. No bomb.” She looks down at the thread tied around her finger and lowers her voice. “And I got you in trouble.”

Stiles recognises the olive branch she’s offering, the apology just underneath those words, and he accepts it implicitly. He carefully unwinds the string from her finger, his hand brushing hers with every movement.

“Okay, look. Barrow was there, all right? You knew it. You felt it. Okay?” His gaze is steady as he looks up at her, each of them holding one end of the red string. “And look, if you wanted to, I’d go back to that school right now and search all night just to prove it.”

She smiles, but it’s not the usual blinding smile she shares with the world. It’s close lipped, small and sincere, strikingly similar to the way she’d smiled at him when he’d won the lacrosse game for Beacon Hills. It’s a smile that’s gentle and perfect, and reserved only for Stiles.

He holds her gaze and smiles back, and he thinks that this is enough, for now.

She tries to keep things scientific and logical, tries to stop herself from getting caught up in her emotions, but whatever the Nemeton is doing to Stiles breaks Lydia almost as badly as it breaks him.

Her frustration bubbles over as the Nogitsune runs rings around them, as she struggles to understand her own Banshee abilities, as her connection with Stiles leads her to make mistake after mistake. (An empty basement at Eichen House, his crumpled body in a parking lot, getting herself kidnapped.)

Lydia feels gravely out of her depth. She hasn’t felt this inadequate since Peter Hale used her to get himself resurrected, and she hates every second of it.

She cowers against a cold, stone wall as a monster wearing Stiles’s face looms over her, and she tries not to cry. The hard brick digs into her back and she can smell the disgusting scent of the Nogitsune’s breath as he brings his arms up on either side of her head and boxes her in.

“Are the voices getting louder, Lydia? Are they still telling you that Stiles is dying?” he taunts. “I think we can both feel it.”

She fights back the urge to shudder. He doesn’t look like Stiles, not really, not when he’s this close to her and she can see the darkness in his eyes. He’s all shadow, this monster crowding against her, all sharp edges and smooth movements, speaking in a low, rough voice that sounds like a permanent growl. He doesn’t have any of the real Stiles’s warmth.

His lips move in an eerie imitation of a smile. “And you, Lydia, you can see it, too, can’t you?”

Lydia forces herself to meet his gaze. His eyes are sunken, rimmed with dark gray bags. His skin is pale, making him look sickly. But his expression is victorious.

She shakes with rage. “I can see that you’re exhausted and weak. You’re the one who’s dying.”

He laughs, a horrible, sinister sound that makes her skin crawl. “You haven’t noticed yet, have you?”

She wants to ask what the hell he’s talking about, but her pride stops her. She won’t give him the satisfaction, she won’t play his mind games.

But he surprises her, then, by stepping back. She instinctively breathes in, relishing the small amount of space between them. He smirks at her and holds his arms out wide, taking up most of the small stairwell they’re crammed into.

“I can’t blame you, really. It must be so loud at the moment, all those different voices yelling at you, all that pain and suffering echoing in your head. I understand if you’ve been a little preoccupied,” the Nogitsune says, feigning reason. “But, Lydia, come on now. You’re a clever girl. That’s one of the things he likes most about you. Surely you’ve noticed.”

Her hands are shaking. She clenches them into fists at her side and tries to block out her throbbing pain, the voices in her head, the smug satisfaction on this face that isn’t Stiles’s. “Noticed what?”

“Aren’t things looking a little gray down here?”

Lydia stops breathing for a second. The voices dull, just for a moment, as she’s overwhelmed with panic. She sways on her feet. “We’re in tunnels. Of course everything looks gray.”

“Ah, but you know that’s not completely true,” he says, sounding positively joyful. “This isn’t the type of gray that comes from a lack of sunlight. This is the type of gray that seeps back in when your soulmate dies.”

She inhales sharply. Her traitorous eyes flicker around the tunnel, taking in the muted blues and grays, the black shadows looming in every corner. She tries to remember what true blue really looks like, tries to find a single speck of yellow in this scene. There is none.

“You’re wrong,” she bites out.

“Oh, you see it now, don’t you?” the monster taunts, in a voice Stiles would never use. “Look at you, you’re terrified.”

She squeezes her eyes shut. Tears roll down her cheeks. “You’re wrong. He’s not dying.”

“You can feel it, Lydia. You can hear it, you can see it. Stiles is dying, and you’re going to be left without a soulmate.”

A fresh wave of fear forces Lydia to open her eyes, to see the threat. The Nogitsune has retreated back to the top of the stairs, however, and is just sitting and watching her, lips drawn into a smug smirk.

“You’re wrong,” she says again.

He doesn’t react at all.

And as night falls, the colors continue to dim. Even when Stiles is back in her arms - the real Stiles, her Stiles - the world is full of grays and blacks and the voices are still so loud.

They’re not saying Stiles’s name now though.

They lose Allison.

They lose Aiden.

They almost lose Stiles.

And Lydia almost loses herself in her grief. The pain clamps around her heart, fills her chest until it feels like her ribcage is too small, like she is too small to contain all of it.

Every time Stiles looks at her it’s with guilt and sorrow, and she remembers him lying still and unresponsive on the hallway floor, and she thinks that she can’t do this.

Sheriff Stilinski looks mildly surprised to see her there when she knocks on his door early on a Friday morning.

“Lydia,” he says, swinging the door all the way open. “Stiles isn’t here, he’s with Scott.”

“I know,” she says, because she does. That’s specifically why she chose this time to come to the Stilinski house. I’m actually here to see you, is what she’s meant to say next. It’s what she rehearsed in her head, over and over and over, the entire drive here. But now that she’s here, standing on the porch and actually looking at the Sheriff, she finds herself tongue tied.

He looks her up and down and sighs, but not like he’s annoyed. More like he’s sorry. “Do you wanna come in?”

Lydia nods, and he steps aside as she enters the house. She follows him to the lounge, settling on an armchair he gestures to as he takes a seat on the couch.

She wonders if he knows that she’s Stiles’s soulmate. The appraising look he gives her suggests he does.

“What can I help you with, Lydia?” he asks gently.

She holds her hands very still in her lap. “I -” Her throat constricts and she’s forced to pause.

I have to ask you something. It’s uncomfortable, and rude, and I’m extremely sorry for bringing it up, but I have to know. Did the colors change when your wife died? How did you cope with it? How did you keep on living after losing your soulmate? Because I don’t think I can do it. I’m not as strong as you, or Scott. I don’t think I can risk it.

The Sheriff leans forward, elbows on his knees and eyebrows creased with worry. “Are you okay?”

There’s a photo of Stiles and his mom on the wall behind the Sheriff. Stiles is grinning cheekily, probably around seven or eight, and Claudia is smiling brightly as she hugs him tight.

The grief in Lydia’s chest climbs higher up her throat. She swallows thickly and licks her lips. “Fine,” she says quietly, and then with more conviction. “I’m fine. I just -”

The Sheriff nods encouragingly.

She can’t do it.

She exhales. “I think that I left my biology book in Stiles’s room and I need it for a test on Monday.”

“Oh.” He nods slowly. “Well. You’re more than welcome to go and get it, I’m sure he won’t mind.”

Lydia nods and stands on autopilot. She follows the familiar path to Stiles’s room, but she isn’t greeted by a familiar sight. The walls are bare; no pictures, no news articles, no evidence connected by different colored strings.

The framed picture she drew of the Nemeton is still sitting on his desk, though. She steps towards it, hand outstretched, longing to see the note he’s attached to the back; ‘For Lydia’ written in his familiar script. But she stops short when she sees what else is on his desk.

There’s a stack of paperwork sitting right in the centre, all with the Beacon Hills High School logo and the name Malia Tate stamped on it.

Lydia turns and flees. If the Sheriff notices that she leaves empty handed, he doesn’t say anything.

Lydia pulls away. Stiles doesn’t blame her. He doesn’t completely understand, but he doesn’t blame her. He pulls back, too. After what happened with the Nogitsune, with Allison, they’re both fragile.

And they’re both busy, too. With school, with figuring out where Derek’s gone, with working out how to end the Dead Pool. Lydia’s trying to get a better grasp on her abilities, and Stiles is trying to settle back into his own skin.

Malia helps him with that. She’s not his soulmate, but he really likes her, and she really likes him, and it’s nice to be absolutely certain of the reciprocity, for once. So he helps her remember how to live like a human, and she helps him figure out how to start to forgive himself for the things his hands did without his control, and Lydia makes herself emotionally distant, and it’s fine.

Stiles still has red and blue, and all the shades in between, and he knows that Lydia still has at least one color, too. That hasn’t changed.

He’s surprised to discover that Malia already has all the colors.

“I don’t get it,” she says, staring at Stiles blankly as he debates which highlighter is yellow and which is green. They’re lying on his bed, her hands are curled over their labels, and he’s pretty sure the one on the right is green but he can’t be certain. “Can you really not see what color these are?”

“They’re slightly different shades of gray,” he repeats, frowning. “If you had, say, a red highlighter, or a blue highlighter -”

“I have a blue highlighter. And a red one.”

“I know you do, I’ve seen them.”

“How do you know you’ve seen them if you can’t see color?”

“No, I -” He sighs and rubs his hand down his face. “I can see some colors, just not all of them.”

Malia narrows her eyes. “Just not yellow and green.”

“Or orange, really… technically,” he adds.

Her eyes widen again and she thrusts the highlighters towards him. “So you’re guessing.”

“Yeah, pretty much.” He points to the left one. “That one’s yellow.”

She nods and passes it to him. “Good guess.”

“Have you always been able to see colors?” he asks as he puts the highlighter back on the bed.

She shrugs and rolls onto her back, stretching her arms out above her head and kicking one of his pillows with her feet. “Not as many, when I was a coyote. Everything’s a bit closer to gray and blue, when I shift. But yeah, as long as I’ve been human, I’ve had all the colors.”

He hesitates just a second before asking, “Even when you were little?”

He knows that this is dangerous territory. Malia tenses, bringing her arms down by her sides. She keeps her eyes locked on his ceiling as she answers, “Yeah, even when I was little.”

“Huh.” He waits for her to roll back over before saying, “So what’s with all the highlighters, anyway?”

Malia picks up each respective color as she explains, “Green is for the things I understand. Yellow is for ‘I’m working on it’. Red means I have no clue.” She shrugs. “I’m mostly using red.”

Stiles feels content in a way he hasn’t for a long time. He leans over and kisses her, smiling against her lips, because Malia may not be his soulmate, but, in some ways, she’s perfect for him.

And it’s not like dating Malia means that he loses Lydia. They’re still friends, they still work together to solve all the puzzles the rest of the pack can’t, and she’s still one of the most important people in Stiles’s life.

Scott asks him about it, once. Stiles has arrived at the McCall house just as Kira’s leaving, and she awkwardly shuffles around him on the porch.

“Oh, hi, Stiles! I was just - I came over to study, with Scott. But we’re finished, now. So you can go right on in!” she says chirpily. And then her face falls. “Not that you couldn’t have gone right on in if we weren’t finished, because we were just studying, it’s not like you couldn’t have… oh, god. Sorry, I’ll stop rambling.”

“Hi, Kira,” Stiles says with a smile.

“Right,” she says, swinging her arm across her torso and turning to the curb. “I will just be leaving now, then. Oh, do you want me to, like… knock, or something, to let Scott know -?”

“I’ve got a key,” Stiles says, holding it up.

Kira blinks. “Oh. Right. Of course you do. That’s cool. Well, I’ll leave you to it then. Bye!”

“I’ll see you at school tomorrow!” he calls after her as she dashes down the front path, blushing furiously.

Stiles lets himself in, calling out to Scott as he goes.

“Hey, man,” Scott greets from the kitchen, where he’s making himself a sandwich wearing nothing but a pair of grey sweatpants, which is definitely not his usual studying attire.

Stiles smirks. “I heard you and Kira got some studying done tonight.”

“Oh.” Scott blushes a little, ducking his head and smiling. “Ha. Yeah.”

Stiles leans against the counter and steals a piece of bread from the loaf, tearing off the crust and eating it separately. “So…” he leads.

Scott gives him a completely innocent, clueless look. “What?”

“It’s going good then, I guess? You two?”

“Oh! Oh, yeah, it’s… nice. She’s nice.” His soft smile returns. “I like her a lot.”

“Well I can see that,” Stiles says. Scott looks down at his pants, panicked, and Stiles flinches and throws a piece of crust at him. It hits his chest and bounces off onto the counter. “Oh, gross, dude! I meant because you’re walking around shirtless, not - Jesus, I don’t wanna think about that.”

It’s Scott’s turn to smirk, now. He picks up the piece Stiles threw and eats it, talking through the mouthful. “Like you can talk.”

Stiles feigns offence. “Excuse you? I have no idea what you mean, I am totally innocent -”

“I’ve seen those scratches on your back, dude.”

Stiles clamps his mouth shut and tries to think of a comeback. “I can’t help it if Malia’s got long nails,” is all he eventually says.

Scott smirks and picks up his sandwich, heading up the stairs for his room. Stiles follows, taking the time to seal up the bread bag beforehand. Scott settles himself on his bed and Stiles takes his desk chair, absentmindedly drumming his fingers against the arms.

“So things are going good with you two then, I guess?” Scott asks.

“Yeah, things are - things are good,” Stiles answers, but he’s frowning.

Scott catches it immediately. “But…?”

“I dunno, man.” Stiles swipes a hand up the back of his head, flinging his other arm out to the side. “I feel sorta bad, sometimes. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Malia’s great, I really, really like her, I do. But, like…”

He trails off, and Scott fills in, “But she’s not Lydia.”

“She’s not my soulmate,” Stiles corrects, because it’s an important distinction. “And I just feel… I feel like I’m not being fair to her, you know?”

Scott chews thoughtfully. “Have you talked to her about it?”

“Yeah, I mean, kind of.” Stiles shrugs. “She’s always been able to see colors, so it took a bit for her to get her head around the concept. I’ve told her that I have a soulmate, but I haven’t told her that it’s Lydia.”

Scott winces. “Dude. That’s rough.”

“How am I meant to say that to her, Scott? Can you imagine how awkward that’d make things? Lydia hasn’t warmed up to her at all -”

“I wonder why,” Scott mutters.

“- I don’t wanna make things even more awkward than they already are.”

There’s a long pause, where Scott finishes his sandwich and brushes the crumbs off his hands. He sounds like he’s trying very hard to sound unaffected when he says, “Kira and I haven’t really spoken about Allison.”

Stiles looks up sharply, reading his face to see whether or not they’re going to continue this conversation. He waits for Scott to talk again, not wanting to butt in.

“I mean, she knew her, obviously. And she heard what she said when she…” Scott swallows thickly.

Stiles looks down.

He wasn’t there, he was passed out and useless in the tunnels when it actually happened, but Scott had told him, afterwards, what Allison had said with her dying breaths. (“I’m in the arms of my first love. The first person I ever loved. The person I’ll always love… My soulmate. I love you, Scott McCall.”)

Stiles blinks away tears at the thought of it. “It’s okay, man, you really don’t have to -”

“No, I’m good,” Scott insists, sniffling slightly. He wipes his face with the back of his arm. “Anyway, so Kira knows. She knows that Allison is my - was my soulmate. And she’s okay with it, I think.”

Stiles nods, because what do you say to that?

Scott takes a deep breath and says, “My mom told me that sometimes people have more than one soulmate. And that sometimes you can get in a relationship with someone and think that they’re not your soulmate, but then later on you start to get the colors. Kira doesn’t have any colors, now, and mine have… changed... but maybe…”

Stiles nods slowly. “I get it.”

When Scott looks at Stiles he smiles, and Stiles thinks that he doesn’t deserve a friend like this.

“Things’ll work out eventually,” Scott says.

“Yeah.” Stiles nods and licks his lips. “Yeah. Thanks, man.”

“No problem.” Scott smiles wider, and Stiles is reminded of the one color he’s missing: Yellow (happiness, joy).

He forces himself to smile back, despite the guilt sitting heavy on his chest; guilt for Allison, for Scott, for Malia.

He adds guilt for Lydia when he sees her bleeding out on the floor of the Sheriff’s Station.

She’s so pale, and she looks so small, drowning in an oversized pink shirt and lying in a pool of dark red blood. Her blood.

Stiles shuts down.

He watches on, horrified, as Kira applies pressure to the wound, as Theo tries to tourniquet it with his belt, as Mrs Martin rushes in and collapses by her daughter’s side. His stomach churns. His limbs feel like they’re made of lead. He can’t look away, no matter how much he can’t stand the sight of her like this.

“Stiles,” Scott repeats his name, over and over, trying to drag him away, but he can’t, he can’t leave her like this. “Stiles, come on.”

Red and pink were the first colors he saw on Lydia, and now they might be the last, and he can’t do a thing to stop it. Stiles’s hands shake at his sides, pressure pounding in his head as he looks from Scott back to Lydia.

Hold your breath.

He wonders if she’d look any less like she was dying if he could see her in full color.

What if this is it? What if Lydia dies here, taken out by a fucking chimera-kanima and left to bleed on the floor of the Sheriff’s department, wearing the first color Stiles ever saw her in, like some sort of sick irony. What if he never gets the third color, what if he never gets to tell her that she’s his soulmate, what if -

Lydia smiles at him, but it looks more like a grimace. “Tracy,” she grits out. “Stiles, I’m fine.”

She’s not fine, she’s so far from fine that her saying so would be ridiculous if he didn’t know that she was doing it purely to get him to move. Smart as always, she’s telling him the one thing that might kick his nervous system out of freeze and into fight.

“Help Tracy. Find Tracy.” Lydia gasps. “Go.”

And because he could never say no to Lydia, he does. Stiles leaves her there and runs after Scott, and he never forgives himself for it.

He makes the same mistake when she gets locked in Eichen.

He finds her lying in a hospital bed, pale, clammy and weak but conscious, breathing and fighting. Stiles is hit by a wave of relief so strong that it nearly knocks him off his feet, that he has to close his eyes for a second just to get his bearings, because he’s found her and she’s alive.

And when he opens his eyes again, the world shimmers for a second, the sheets on the bed flashing to yellow, Lydia’s eyes brightening and her skin warming. Because of course it would be now, of course it would be when he's thinking he might lose her for real, of course he would finally be able to see the full spectrum of her skin and her eyes and her hair (god, so this is strawberry blonde) right when she’s about to be taken from him again.

“Stiles, you can’t be here,” she says desperately. “You’re going to die if you stay. All of you.”

Stiles ignores her pleas, clenching his jaw and trying to stop his hands from shaking so he can undo her restraints.

“Stiles, he’s coming,” she says, and the terror in her voice makes him want to scream.

“Lydia, I’m not leaving you here,” he insists.

“You have to,” she pleads, staring up at him with glassy eyes.

The yellow has faded back into gray, and Stiles prays that it’s just because of his own stress and anxiety and has nothing to do with Lydia’s health.

She gasps as alarms blare. “Stiles, go!”

Her restraints are still on and he hesitates, feeling like he’s back in the Sheriff Station watching her bleed out on the floor, frozen and running out of time. Logically, he knows that he should go. If he stays he’s definitely going to be attacked, and if he gets hurt - or killed - he can’t save Lydia. If he hides now, he’ll have another chance to free her later, either by taking Valack by surprise or by sneaking her out when he’s not around. But emotionally, he can’t leave her. Not again.

Lydia sounds like her life depends on it when she says, “Please.”

Stiles listens to her.

His rescue plan has gone horrifically wrong; The whole of Eichen is in lockdown, Theo and his pack of chimeras are here, and the thought of what Valack’s going to do to Lydia has Stiles so on edge he feels like he’s going out of his freaking mind.

But he’s not giving up. He’s not leaving her, he’s not going to lose her. Valack drags her away, and Stiles goes after her.

Lydia gets red all in a rush.

Stiles comes back for her, and as he runs through the door the entire world changes. Suddenly his cheeks are flushed in a way Lydia’s never seen before, and he's pulling red wires from her head, bright, bright red wires, and his lips are pink, so pink and so close and she watches him say the words, “We’re getting you out of here, okay?”

Her head is still pounding with voices yelling in her ears, her throat is raw from her last scream and every muscle in her body is aching from disuse, but Stiles’s hands are so gentle that she feels herself melting into his touch.

She remembers what her grandmother told her about red: Red is a warning. Stiles is in danger.

“You can’t,” she murmurs, too tired for anything stronger. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Lydia.” He says, voice firm and familiar and enough to break through the noise in her mind. “Shut up and let me save your life.”

If she had the energy she'd tell him, right now, that she sees it. She sees all of the colours, and it’s all because of him. But she doesn’t think she can find the words. So Lydia just smiles at him, small and sincere and gentle, and lets Stiles help her off the bed and out of the room.

The screams are still clawing their way up her throat, and the red is still there, still caked through her hair and down her temple, warning her that they’re not safe, even as Parrish carries her out of Eichen, even as Stiles holds her in the back seat of his Jeep and Scott races them to the clinic.

She tries to hold it in, tries to clamp down the screams and the panic, but she can’t hold back the shriek that forces its way out. It’s enough to crack the mirrors of the car, and she doesn’t feel any better afterwards.

“Hey, Lydia, Lydia, hey. You’re going to get through this, okay?” Stiles says, cupping her face in his hands. “Lydia, look at me, you’re going to make it.”

Even in the dark, shadowy blues of the backseat of the Jeep, she sees the red blood leaking out of his ear.

She doesn’t understand how fate could be so cruel, giving her the final color just so she can see herself and Stiles stained with it, bloodied and beaten and about to expire.

She can’t stop looking at him. “But you’re not.”

His blood stained fingertips brushing the side of her face is the last thing she registers before the pain becomes too much, and every ounce of energy Lydia has left is spent on staying alive.

The next thing she’s aware of hearing isn’t a scream.

It’s Stiles.

Just Stiles, telling her to open her eyes.

She tries, but everything’s so heavy.

“Come on, listen to me, Lydia. Show me your eyes, okay?” He sounds so close. She wishes she could see him. “Lydia, come on, just… I got a new color, Lyds. When I found you, I got yellow, for a few seconds, and I think I’ll get it back if you open your eyes. And that’s all of them, then, that’s all the colors, because blue, I got that when we - when we kissed, and red, I got that when we were just kids, and I - I drew you a picture, but you couldn’t see any colors, back then. I know you see colors now, Lydia, I know you do. I need you to open your eyes so you can see them again.”

Lydia thinks about colors.

Yellow, all warmth and joy and seeing true sunlight for the very first time when she pressed her lips against Stiles’s.

Blue, security and calm and understanding, Stiles figuring out the trap and holding her until they could both breathe normally again.

And red, the type of danger where you risk your life for someone else’s, like Lydia throwing herself at Stiles to get him away from a lit flare rolling into gasoline, or Stiles breaking her out of Eichen and almost getting himself killed in the process. Red, for the things you do for the people you love.

“Lydia,” Stiles says, “You have to open your eyes.”

She listens to him.

He should have told her sooner.

He should have told her the second she opened her eyes at the clinic and Stiles saw, really saw, for the first time, Lydia Martin in full color, every tone and shade on the spectrum, more beautiful than he ever could have imagined.

He should have said it in the mornings, when they met up at school, or in the afternoons, when they studied with Scott and Malia, or at night, when he dragged her out of bed to go hunting supernatural occurrences, or whenever she looked at him and smiled, gentle and perfect and just for him.

But Stiles always thought that they’d have more time.

It’s been all too easy, after everything, to fall back into their old pattern of bickering and flirting around their feelings, exchanging loaded glances and lingering touches but never taking that next step. Like the kiss in the locker room, like the red string, like the way Lydia looked at him when he saved her, they dance around it with clever little hints.

(Lydia preens in the mirror of a smashed up car, delicately admiring her eyeshadow. “This is the perfect shade for me. I forget the name…”

Stiles rolls his eyes in the backseat, exasperated. “Can we please stay on topic here?”)

But neither of them have the courage to just come out and say it.

And now they’re here, trapped in the Jeep and surrounded by Ghost Riders, and Lydia is staring at him like her heart is breaking and he knows, he knows that they’re out of time.

“Lydia, I’m going to be erased, okay?” He tries to keep his voice calm and level, tries to find the exact words he needs to say, because this could be his last chance. “Just like Alex. You’re gonna forget me.”

“I won’t.” Lydia shakes her head vehemently. “No, I won’t, I won’t.”

“Lydia, you will,” he insists, because this is important, she has to accept it and she has to understand - “Just try to find some way to remember me, okay?”

She nods, and Stiles keeps his eyes locked on hers, trying to memorize every single individual shade of green in them. He reaches out to take her hand, anchoring himself to her.

“Remember how you were the first girl I ever danced with? Or how I had a crush on you freshman year, sophomore year, junior year?”

Her smile is shaky, lips pressed together and eyes watering, but it’s still the same perfect smile she saves purely for Stiles, and the sight of it, one bright spot in the darkness of the car, gives him the courage to keep going.

His voice is steady as he says, “Remember how you saved my life?”

“You saved my life, too.” There’s something gentle about the way Lydia says it, something serious and sincere in her expression that Stiles can’t find the words to describe.

He squeezes her hand. “Remember the colors, Lydia. I don’t know if you’ll still see them when I’m gone, but try to remember how you got them.”

She blinks and a single tear rolls down her cheek.

“Just remember…” He steels himself. It’s time for the truth. “Remember I love you.”

The last thing Stiles sees as he’s taken is Lydia, sitting stunned in the passenger seat of the Jeep, looking more lost than he’s ever seen her before.

Lydia can see colors, and she doesn’t know how.

When she insists that this is important, Malia and Scott share a look that quite clearly says they think she’s crazy. Their faith in the existence of Stiles is wavering, whereas Lydia’s conviction is only growing stronger.

She curls her hands into fists on the top of Scott’s dining table. “He’s real. I know he’s real, and he has something to do with why I can see colors.”

“I’ve always been able to see colors,” Malia says, shrugging.

Scott nods encouragingly. “Maybe you’re the same?”

Lydia shakes her head. “No, I’m not the same. I used to see in grayscale. And…” She trails off, struggling to remember.

“And what?” Scott asks after a moment, looking at her earnestly.

“It’s right there,” she growls, frustrated. “I know that I’m missing something, and I just can’t - I just can’t remember… Pensée civage.”

Scott and Malia frown.

“Pensive what?” Malia asks.

“It’s French,” Lydia explains, feeling strangely reminiscent. “A lingering thought you can’t reach.”

There’s a pause, and then Scott says slowly, “Lydia, the only way Stiles could have anything to do with you seeing color is if he’s your soulmate.”

Lydia focuses on Scott, trying to convey how serious she’s being. “I think he is.”

Because she can see colors, but she thinks they’re different now, somehow. She can’t remember what they were like before, but she knows they weren’t exactly like this. They’re muted now, maybe. Not quite as crisp, not quite as bright, not quite as much.

In her nightmares Lydia dreams of a shadowy figure in a tattered flannel with a face she can’t see pinning her against a wall, growling into her ear, “He’s dying, and you’re going to be left with no colors and no soulmate.”

She wakes up screaming, cradled in her mother’s arms and feeling overwhelmed with grief.

“Lydia.” Her mom runs a hand soothingly through her hair. “Lydia, honey, you’re okay. It was just another nightmare. You’re safe.”

“Stiles is gone, mom,” she sobs, clutching at her covers. “He’s not safe, we need to find him, we need to -”

“Shhh, Lydia, shh, calm down,” Natalie coos. “It was just a nightmare.”

Lydia clutches at her mom’s arm. She’s hit by a sudden memory, of the two of them sitting exactly like this, and Lydia looking up at someone whom she can’t remember now with stars in her eyes.

“Mom,” she whispers, “Do you ever think about your soulmate?”

Natalie tenses, obviously thrown by the question. It’s a long time before she answers, “Sometimes… Sometimes I wonder if things would have been different, with them.”

Lydia pulls back to look at her mom, tears tracking down her cheeks. “Do you miss them?”

Natalie smiles sadly and brushes Lydia’s hair back from her face. “You can’t miss someone you’ve never met.”

“I miss Stiles,” Lydia says, voice cracking. “And it wasn’t a nightmare - I think it was a memory.”

One of the creepiest things about this limbo/prison/train station the Ghost Riders have trapped them in is the fact that it’s so grey. Colors are still there, sort of, but they’re all muted, and when Stiles tries to focus on them for too long he gets a headache.

He wonders if this is anything like how his dad and Scott see the world, without their soulmates.

He wonders if this is how Lydia sees the world, with him trapped here.

The thought of his friends and family back in Beacon Hills makes Stiles feel anxious. Do they remember him at all? Do they have any niggling feelings at the back of their minds that they’re missing something? He remembers Lydia saying that there was a French phrase for that sensation, but he can’t recall the wording, which is ironic.

Peter elbows the door to the radio control room open and looks back over his shoulder at Stiles. “Are we doing this?”

Stiles sets his jaw and follows him in. None of the other people even glance at them as they go. “Correction, I’m doing this,” he says to Peter, “and you’re keeping watch.”

“Fine by me,” Peter snaps back, folding his arms over his chest and glancing out the door. “Just be quick.”

After spending so much time around police scanners, the radio on the table isn’t completely foreign to Stiles. He thinks he can get it working, and he hopes he can get through to someone back in Beacon Hills.

“So what makes you think they’re going to hear this?” Peter asks while Stiles rearranges some wiring.

“Because they have super hearing,” Stiles replies shortly.

Peter laughs. “Great idea. Rely on their werewolf and werecoyote hearing to break through the Ghost Rider’s defences. Because the whole werewolf thing worked so well for me.”

Stiles lifts up on his knees to glare at Peter over the top of the table. “Lydia’s a banshee.”

“Ah, yes, Lydia. How could I forget her abilities?”

“Yeah, you were so instrumental in activating them.” Stiles wrenches a wire free and almost punches himself in the face in the process. He can’t tell if Peter’s smirk is because he saw that, or if he’s just enjoying the conversation.

“Nice to see you’re as protective of her as always.”

Stiles makes a noncommittal noise and gets to his feet to lean over the radio.

Peter hums thoughtfully, and then his expression becomes much more serious. “You said her name first, when you were talking about who’d remember you.”

Stiles bites his bottom lip and counts to three. “Did I?”

“Isn’t Scott your oldest and bestest friend?” Peter sounds far too interested in the answer for this to be leading anywhere good. “Why wasn’t he the first to come to mind?”

“Drop it,” Stiles warns.

“Ah, no, this could be important, Stiles. Why did you say Lydia’s name first?” Peter presses, gaze locked on Stiles.

“Would you keep an eye out for them, please? I said her name first because she was with me when I was taken, okay.”

“She hadn’t forgotten you?” Peter asks, genuinely curious.

Stiles’s throat feels tight. He flicks a row of switches with more force than is strictly necessary. “No, she was the only person left who remembered me.”

There’s a long pause, where Peter goes back to keeping watch and Stiles continues to work on re-wiring the radio.

“That’s good, Stiles,” he says eventually, and all traces of teasing have vanished from his tone. “If she’s your soulmate, it’s good for us. She’s more likely to hear you. More likely to remember you.”

Stiles freezes with his hand on a dial. He wants to ask so many questions, but all that comes out of his mouth is, “How’d you know she was my soulmate?”

Peter’s lips twitch up in a smile, and he looks a bit more like the smug prick Stiles is used to. “I didn’t, but thanks for the confirmation.”

“Unbelievable.” Stiles rolls his eyes and goes back to work. He waits a few seconds before asking, “Is it true that could help her remember me, or help her hear me?”

Peter nods. “It actually is. Now hurry up and fix the radio, I don’t think we have much time.”

Buoyed by the thought of Lydia remembering him, Stiles gets back to work.

Lydia is sure, surer than she’s ever been of anything before, that they need to get Stiles back. To do that she needs concrete evidence, though, and when she visits the Stilinski house she finds no trace of his existence - nothing more than a small, unhelpful tear in the lime wallpaper.

But he’s her soulmate, right, so surely she must have something of his. He must have given her something, at some point, there has to be something of his left behind. Lydia collapses to her knees at the bottom of her closet and pulls out boxes of mementos, things she doesn’t remember looking at since Allison died.

Her heart squeezes painfully as she pulls out a top she borrowed from her and never got the chance to give back; a string of photobooth photos of the two of them, Allison squealing with delight as Lydia kisses her cheek; a ticket stub from some movie they went to see together, the title half smudged away.

She tells herself to focus when she comes across a stack of birthday cards, rifling through them and looking for one from Stiles. There’s one from Allison (+ Scott, signed hastily down the bottom, the only thing on the whole card in his handwriting), one from Danny, one that’s been ripped in half and then taped back together from Jackson, but there’s no card from Stiles.

Lydia keeps looking.

And, right down the very bottom of the box, tucked beneath an extremely old, extremely generic and unsentimental Christmas card from her father, she finds a drawing. It’s in crayon, featuring a stick figure person in a pink triangle dress with overlapping spirals of red and orange for hair. There’s no name, no date, nothing to give her any context.

“What is it?” Lydia asks aloud, hearing her own, much younger voice overlapping with the sound.

No one answers. Lydia glances up at the mirror on her dresser, where she can see herself reflected, and then back to the drawing. She doesn’t understand why, but this feels important.

Lydia carefully folds the drawing in half and tucks it into her bag.

And the next day, she sees the blue Jeep in the parking lot at school, and she knows that that’s important, too. (“Scott? Lydia? Is that you?” Stiles asks through the radio, and the colors flare, and Lydia feels like she’s been holding her breath for weeks.)

And after that she finds the maroon lacrosse jersey, and she convinces Sheriff Stilinski, and she’s so close to getting him back, she can feel it.

But it’s not until Scott looks at her and says, “I don’t think anyone had a connection like you guys” that Lydia realizes the full extent of it. If she wants to see Stiles again, she’s going to have to bring him back herself.

The memories don’t come back slowly. As soon as Scott hypnotizes her they flood in, so eager to be recalled that they overlap and bleed together, cutting each other off and jumping from scene to scene as Lydia skips through them, like fast-forwarding through a tv show.

(There’s a small boy handing her a piece of paper, the stick figure drawing she found in her closet. “I drew this for you... It’s in color, don’t you see?”

Lydia doesn’t see. The entire memory is in black and white, uninspired grayscale.)

And so is the next, and the next

(A boy with a buzzcut and a suit that’s too big, asking her to dance. “...pretty sure I'm the only one who knows just how smart you really are…”

“Fields Medal,” she says.)

and the next

(An ice rink, Allison and Scott smiling below her, a Reese’s wrapper crinkling between her fingers. “...turning out to be, like, a perfect combination…”)

The next one starts out the same, too.

(Lydia’s in the locker room, surrounded by gray steel and concrete, and she watches herself fall to the floor with Stiles, who’s struggling to breathe. She feels all of the panic she felt in that moment, reliving it all over again -

And then she feels the calm certainty that settles over her as she leans forward and kisses Stiles.

Light radiates out until the entire memory is washed in yellow, the first color Lydia ever got, the color of sunlight, of happiness, of Stiles’s eyes.)

“That’s when it happened,” she says out loud, feeling just as overwhelmed as the first time she lived through it.

“When what happened?” Scott asks.

(A wave of blue rolls over the next memory.

She jumps from a steel trap and presses herself against Stiles’s chest, pulled back from the brink and breathing heavily.)

(Stiles kneels in front of her in his colorful bedroom, and carefully, purposefully, unwinds a gray string from around her finger as Lydia stares, so obviously in love that she can’t believe she didn’t kiss him again right then and there.)

Scott speaks again, trying to bring her back to the present, but she’s still lost in memories. “Lydia, what do you mean? When what happened?”

(Stiles’s arm is curled protectively around her, his determination to keep her safe palpable in the air.)

“When I kissed him,” she explains to Scott and Malia.

(And finally, the memories get red.

Stiles pulls the bright red wires away from her head, and she can’t believe how pink his lips are or how dark her hair is. He’s saving her life.)

She tries to speak around the lump in her throat. “That’s when it all changed.”

(“Lydia, look at me,” he says in the backseat of his Jeep, cradling her head in his hands, and she doesn’t want to hurt him like this.

“Look at me,” he says, and the memory shifts and blends into a different one, the same Stiles and the same Jeep but a different night - )

“I saw him,” Lydia says through tears. “I was there, I was the last person to see him.”

“Where? When did you see him?” Scott asks urgently.

“The Ghost Riders, they - they took him.”

(She’s back in the Jeep, Stiles sitting across from her, and god she’s so scared, she’s missed him so much and she doesn’t want to see this again, she doesn’t -

“You’re gonna forget me.”

“I won’t. No, I won’t, I won’t.”

She doesn’t want to relive this, she doesn’t want to go through this again.

“Just remember…” Stiles is holding her hand and he looks so serious, so absolutely sure of himself. “Remember I love you.”)

“I never said it back.” Lydia’s voice doesn’t shake, even as tears fall from her eyes. “I never said it back.”

The air shifts, colors warping and changing right before her eyes. The whole room starts to shake, everything in it rattling dangerously.

There’s a bright white light outside the door.

Their plan’s working. They’re getting Stiles back.

Stiles Stilinski is in his senior year when Lydia Martin shows him that she’s in love with him.

And he knows it’s love, he really does, because when he sees her again the whole world gets brighter. The colors that had been muted in the Ghost Riders’ limbo come back full force, a technicolor storm that’s so bright he has to blink a few times every time he looks at her.

She’s standing there, breathless and beautiful and so bright, even in the shadows of the locker room, and she’s just saved his life and she’s staring at him like she’s never wanted anything quite this bad before.

“I didn’t say it back,” she says.

But Stiles already knows.

He’s known since he heard her voice calling to him through the rift, “When I kissed you!” He’s known since she came back from the brink and said, “Stiles saved me.” He’s known since she kissed him in this very locker room and looked at him like he’d handed her the sun. Maybe he’s known since before that, even, since he won the lacrosse game and she smiled just for him.

Or maybe a part of him has always known that it was going to end up like this. Since that day in third grade when he looked at her across the playground and the world blossomed into color, Stiles has known that, eventually, somehow, someway, Lydia Martin was going to look at him and see more than gray.

“You don’t have to,” he says, because he’s never been surer of anything than he is of the fact that he loves Lydia and she loves him, too.

One second he’s moving towards her and the next she’s in his arms, pressed up against him with her hands on his face, holding him to her, and he’s kissing her like his life depends on it, which at this point maybe it does.

And when they finally break apart Stiles swears that he’s never seen the colors quite so vivid before.

They’re curled up on his bed, Lydia’s strawberry blonde hair splayed out over his blue pillows and her pink lips set in the sweetest smile he’s ever seen, when she says, “I have something for you.”

He rests his hand on her hip, holding her steady as she leans back to grab something from her bag. His thumb moves in small circles over the smooth skin between her shorts and the jersey of his she’s wearing, and she kicks a foot out to keep her balance as she struggles to reach the floor.

“You got me a present? That’s sweet of you,” he says lightly.

When she swings herself back onto the bed, she’s waving a folded up piece of paper in the air triumphantly. “Actually, you got me a present.”

He raises an eyebrow at her and props himself up on one elbow. “Did I? Gee, I am just so thoughtful.”

“You are though.” Lydia’s sort of laughing, little breaths of laughter escaping with her words, like she can’t contain all of her happiness; but then she meets his gaze, and she grows suddenly serious. She sits up and holds the piece of paper out to him. “I found this, when you were gone.”

Stiles sits up and takes the paper from her, but he doesn’t unfold it. He runs his fingers over the crease reverentially and waits for her to say something, because this feels important.

“Stiles,” she says softly, ducking her head so that he’s looking at her.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Open it.”

With shaking hands, he unfolds the paper. A crudely drawn person stares up at him - a stick figure with a pink smile and a pink triangle dress, and a mess of red and orange hair.

Stiles’s throat feels tight all of a sudden. “Is this…?”

“The drawing you gave me in third grade,” Lydia says, smiling. “The day you color bonded with me.”

He’s definitely crying when he looks up at her, but it’s okay because she’s crying, too. He holds the paper to his chest, not wanting to risk having his tears make the crayon run. “You remembered that? You kept this?”

Lydia nods. “Yeah, I did.”

Stiles knows what this means. He knows exactly what she’s admitting, in handing over this old drawing, and he knows exactly what’s coming next, and he feels a fresh onslaught of tears threatening at the thought of it.

She must be able to tell, because she shuffles closer to him on the bed and splays one of her hands over his, where he’s pressing the drawing right above his heart. Her other hand comes up to cup his face, her thumb stroking his cheekbone, and when she takes a deep breath and then exhales he feels it hit his lips.

“Lydia,” he breathes, bringing his spare hand up to rest at the back of her neck.

There are a thousand things he wants to say, a million thoughts racing through his mind. He’s dreamed about this before, spent years panicking over every possible way this conversation could go.

But he never planned for the heart wrenching way Lydia looks at him now, like she’s literally putting her life in his hands. He didn’t anticipate just how overwhelming it would be, to feel this cosmic sort of love for someone and then have it reflected right back at you.

He never imagined that her eyes would be quite so green, or her hair quite so vibrant, or her smile so gentle and perfect and reserved just for him; finally, honestly, for him. Her soulmate.

“Stiles,” Lydia whispers. “I see every color there is, all of them, because of you. I look at you, and I see color.”

#stydia #stydia fic #teen wolf #teen wolf fic #stiles x lydia #stydia big bang #canon compliant #(apart from the whole color bonding bit)#set from Pre-Season 1 to Post-Season 6A #so beware of SPOILERS #mine #why do you write like you're running out of time?#yo just in case none of you are following me on ao3 or you missed the earlier links #here's my entire stydia big bang fic on tumblr for your enjoyment

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