#the sink becomes unusable for everything except washing hands

[cal-kestis]

You’ve Been Lonely Too Long | Din Djarin x Fem!Reader

(Part I of The Aftermath of Losing Everything) 

moodboard/sketch/gifs made by me, please don’t repost :)

Summary: After parting with Grogu, losing his ship, and battling with the tenets of his Creed — Din is plagued by memories he fears will only ever exist in his past. But when he meets you, he’s surprised to see a bit of himself reflected in your eyes... and the family he still longs for. (Set after S2) Rating: M (for reasons that will happen eventually)      Word Count: 6572 Warnings/Tags: Soft!Din, Fluff, Angst, Eventual Smut (non graphic), Action/Violence, Mentions of Blood, Hurt Comfort, Slow Burn, no use of ‘Y/N’, Din is wistful while talking about Grogu :’), he misses him A/N: Here it is! I've done a lot of research when it comes to lore, planets, etc. But I've taken a few creative liberties. Replies/comments are very welcome!

[Read on AO3] // [Series Masterlist]

Memories keep him awake more than he cares to admit.

They conjure themselves unbidden, slithering through the iron bars of his mind. And just before they burrow, just before they brand his brain, just before they emerge from the shadows and he can recognize them — images of bright eyes and petal ears, sound bites of gentle coos, memories he wants to keep locked like a treasure — they vanish like vapor.

Sometimes he tries to chase them, like a valuable quarry. But even illustrious bounty hunters like Din Djarin know what it’s like to lose. Especially at night, when memories morph into vicious nightmares... and he becomes the prey.

If he ever does sleep, he sure as hell never rests.

And no one would catch wise. That’s the beauty of beskar. Because — despite the deep purple rings circling his wrinkled eyes, the constant dry and chapped state of his lips, and the uncharacteristically unkempt stubble on his jaw — when he walks into a room, everyone only sees the harsh glint of metal armor, the precise swagger in his gait, the loaded blaster at his belt. A Mandalorian: legend coming to life. And everyone quakes in their boots.

Everyone except you.

After he had left Gideon’s light cruiser, helmet replaced on his head — an imposter’s crown — he’d expected to say his goodbyes and carry on the way he always did before everything changed, before the kid. Alone.

He hadn’t known his next move. But picking up another stray? Not part of the non-existent plan.

Yet here he is, coasting in hyperspace aboard his cold, newly bargained light freighter, watching his crewmate modify the jammers.

“Hand me that driver, will you?” You huff, wiping sweat off your brow.

He had found you on Tatooine almost three months ago, fighting off some spice-high lowlife in a dark adobe alley. He remembers seeing you throw a heavy punch to the man’s jaw, extending your other trembling hand toward his throat before softly shutting your eyes, brows pinched in gentle focus.

Something about you had felt familiar, something he couldn’t shake. Your outstretched arm had sparked a memory of tiny green claws. And it had all happened so quickly. You had your eyes closed, the man had reached for his blaster, but Din had always been the faster shot.

Smoke had wafted from the man’s chest, your eyes had opened in shock, and Din had disappeared before you could thank him.

Instead, you had managed to stow away on his ship that same night and hire yourself as his new crewmate.

“I have nowhere to go. No home, no family,” you had explained, eyes glistening. When he’d scrutinized you, he only found a small bag slung over your shoulder and a short, chewed-on pencil tucked behind your ear. “I’m a good worker. I can cook and I’m a decent pilot, a better mechanic. And I’m… crafty?”

“I work alone.” He’d said it so surely, but a cloud of sadness had hovered over the words as he’d forced saliva down his dry throat.

“You don’t have to. I can be a valuable asset to you. Take some weight off your shoulders. Be someone to talk to.”

You had glanced at his stoic frame, his silence filling the room like a smoke grenade.

“Well, you don’t have to talk. But I can be helpful.”

There had been something in your eyes, or maybe even beyond them… something in you, something so achingly familiar. He’d felt it floating around the ship, radiating off your skin, seeping through his beskar armor. And he’d sighed because he couldn’t have stopped his next words from tumbling off his tongue if he wanted to.

“Just don’t touch anything.”

He remembers how you’d gasped, your arms wrapping tightly around his torso without a second thought. And he’d just stiffened like solid carbonite, not allowing himself to dwell on how warm and soft you felt, and he’d gently pushed you off, disappearing into the cockpit.

You’re still chatting away as you continue tinkering with the jammers. You’re definitely a talker. But to him, everyone seems that way when silence is his chosen weapon of survival.

Below that primary qualification of ‘someone to talk to,’ he’d realized almost right after you joined his crew of two that your resume checked out. You’d been invaluable on this new, unfamiliar ship — helping him modify it until it had some of the Razor Crest’s best qualities. Some.

When small memories like that start flooding in and try to take him under headfirst, he thinks it’s better to be alone. At least then, he can decide whether to sink or swim. So, he excuses himself to the cockpit and you hum in acknowledgment, continuing your chatter despite being your own audience. 

He spends a lot of time here in solitary silence, staring at the stars as they reflect off the tiny metal ball that hangs from a string on an unused lever. It’s the only token he has from that life — the days of flying the Crest system to system with a giggling child in the backseat.

More often than not, you find him here exactly like this: helmet hung low, a silver sphere pinched between two gloved fingers, millions of confined thoughts racing through his mind faster than hyperspace and clawing at his skull.

When you find him like this, you try not to speak. Just sit in the co-pilot’s seat and watch the stars with him.

And as he studies the little gear knob from his past life, the one question that passes through his mind the most is:

What can you do when the reason you’re hurting is likely the only thing that can heal you?

 —

ii.

After many months on the freighter, you’re sure of two things when it comes to your new crewmate:

First, the Mandalorian doesn’t talk much. Or ever, really.

But you quickly get used to your questions — and there are many — being answered with a curt “yes” or “no,” sometimes a grunt or sigh thrown in when the question is just right. You don’t mind too much, it’s enough to get you familiar with the way the ship works and you always know what to expect from him. 

When he’s not outside hunting a quarry on some Maker-forsaken outer rim dustball, leaving you inside to tamper with the ship’s outdated systems, he’s usually on one side of the freighter and you’re on the other. If he seems busy, you leave his food outside his quarters, and later, you find his dish empty and washed in the storage cupboard. And when you’re fighting for sleep in your bed, you hear his footsteps echoing all night long. But there are times when you both find yourselves in the small, shared space of the cockpit, when your desire to see the corners of space beyond Tatooine becomes too great to stay away. In those moments under the domed viewport — faced with a myriad of vibrant hues and tremendous textures and infinite stars — he doesn’t speak and you can’t find the words, giving way to a tranquil, transfixing silence neither of you wants to escape.

The second thing you’re sure of is: the Mandalorian gets hurt, a lot.

You can’t count the number of times you’ve watched him drag himself and an unconscious body onto his ship or holed himself up in the fresher, hissing in pain as he tended to his own wounds.

But this time, he comes back and collapses outside of the ship, unable to even pull himself up the ramp, much less the dead weight of the quarry. There’s hardly a thought in your mind as your feet scurry to his side, sprawled across the ground beside his target. You don’t wait for permission before you’re reaching for the gloved hand pressed firmly to the side of his stomach. 

“No,” he grits out between his teeth, groaning when the tiny word seems to tear him apart where he’s already been gashed. “The quarry.”

You frown, almost rolling your eyes at his stubbornness. Always the job first.

Still, no arguments pass your lips when you turn to pull the heavy, unconscious Trandoshan by his bound wrists. It takes all of your strength to drag him up the steep incline of the freighter’s ramp, through the main corridor, and into the supply closet, Mando’s makeshift prison. You’d asked him about it before, one of your many questions, wondering if he should consider more secure holding quarters. And he’d responded with a surprisingly long (for him) statement, “Not as good as a mobile carbonite freezing system, but it does the job.”

After chaining up the quarry’s hands and ankles and locking the closet, you nearly trip over yourself while sprinting back to the groaning Mandalorian. You kneel beside him, pulling the hand pressed against his stomach over your shoulder to lift him on his feet. A harsh, metallic scent suddenly fills your lungs, drawing your gaze to the blood-stained palm of his glove dangling over your shoulder. You do your best to ignore it, refocusing your energy on lugging him into the ship. As soon as you reach the top of the ramp, your strength gives out, sending both your bodies collapsing to the floor with a dull thud. It’s a challenge disentangling yourself from his heavy limbs but once you manage, you quickly turn to examine him before his hand stops you again.

“Gang on our tail,” he rasps, coughing then groaning in pain. “Get us out of here.”

Your lips press into a straight line, a war waging behind your furrowed brow as you decide whether or not it’s smart to leave him alone, bleeding on the floor of the main hold. But his hand shakes as he squeezes your wrist in what you think is meant to feel comforting. You release a deep sigh before getting up to close the ramp and set coordinates in the cockpit.

When you return minutes later with a medpac, you find him stretched out on his back, his neck arching with a groan, and his glove clutching his stomach once more. You kneel beside him to assess the damage, reaching your hand to his waist before he grabs you again.

“You don’t have to,” he grunts. “I can do it.”

“I know you can,” you say, gently removing the glove trapping your wrist. “But so can I. And I can actually move my limbs at a normal, painless speed, get the job done quicker. So, please, let me.”

He sighs, giving a quick nod of his helmet before allowing you to partially remove his armor.

You start with the breastplate, remove the thick padding over his stomach, then grab the ever-present pencil behind your ear and use the dull end to lift the edge of his brown undershirt, just enough to reveal the knife wound in his side.

“What happened?” You gasp, quickly gathering antiseptic, a laser cauterizer, and bacta patches from the medpac.

“Ambushed,” he grunts, wincing as you clean the cut, your breath sliding across his skin as you lean in close.

“I’ve sustained some pretty bad knicks myself. Nothing as bad as this,” you joke lightly, switching the antiseptic for the cauterizer. When the laser touches his skin, he gasps and curls in on himself as you burn the wound closed. Instinctively, you grab his hand, the one not stained with blood, and interlace your fingers with his on the ship’s floor, letting him squeeze your palm as a distraction. “Nothing I couldn’t fix up. When you’re surviving on your own, you have to learn how to take care of yourself.”

“I know,” he says quietly. I work alone, he’d said when you met. 

Even through the shadowy visor of his helmet, you feel his eyes on yours and stare back openly. But as always, you only see your own warped reflection in the silver gleam of his beskar.

“It helps to have the proper supplies,” you chuckle, tearing your eyes away from his helmet to finish closing up his wound. “This bacta patch should fix you up real good.”

After smoothing the gel bandage against his skin, your fingertips linger only a second too long on the exposed warmth of his tanned stomach. You pull down the hem of his shirt, starting to reach for the pieces of iron covering his arm but feel him stop you by squeezing your joined hands.

“They only got one jab in,” he says, his voice sounding more relaxed, almost cocky. But when he sees the worry on your face, his thumb sweeps lightly across your hand and he squeezes once more. “I promise. I’m fine.”

“You’d better be,” you warn, shaking your joined hands in front of your face like a cranky geezer. “Because I’m not carrying two unconscious bodies off this ship when we land.”

He huffs out a short breath, only wincing slightly at the movement. Without another word, you pull his arm around your shoulder once more, limping him toward his sleeping quarters to rest. But you stop just outside the door, not wanting to encroach on his privacy.

“Thank you,” he whispers, leaning his hand against the doorway.

“Your gloves,” you say, his helmet tilting in confusion when you stare at his hand pointedly. “Let me clean them for you.”

He tries to argue but you won’t have any of it, simply extending your palm out toward him until he reluctantly pulls at the yellow leather tips on his fingers and hands them over.

“You can leave your shirt outside your quarters, too. I don’t want you stinking up the ship with your bloody clothes. Wash up. Get some rest. And be more careful next time,” you say, smiling and walking backward as you talk.

“I’ll do my best,” he says, and you swear you hear a ghost of a smile in his voice.

Before you can question him on it, he presses the button to his quarters and slips inside.

 —

iii.

Time seems to pass quicker on the Mandalorian’s ship since the Trandoshan incident. And this man of few words quickly becomes a man of… just slightly more than a few words. Nevertheless, as his crewmate, you’ve learned quite a lot more about him.

One, he never stays in one place for long. He’s a bounty hunter, of course, and he takes multiple jobs at once. That means, together, you visit at least four different planets in the span of a few weeks, expertly flying around New Republic and Imperial scanners without a hitch. Two, he likes your cooking, a lot. You can tell because, by the end of the night, after a soft “thank you” buzzed from his helmet, his dish would always be licked clean — two dishes when you’d made his favorite. Sometimes, he’d even surprise you and try to recreate your recipes, generously leaving bowls of delicious food at your door. But he never eats where you can watch, enjoying the meals in secret and quietly washing up for you when you’re on the other side of the ship and can’t argue with him about it. Three, he doesn’t remove his helmet when you’re around, maybe even when he’s alone. “This is the way,” he’d mumble on occasion, a Creed that sounds like a foreign language even falling from his lips. Four, although he says he works alone, you see the way his helmet leans toward you when you speak and notice how his knees point in your direction when you sit side by side in the cockpit, gravitating toward you yet deeply cautious of drawing too close. And five, he’s lonely. You know because you’ve carried the same sadness in your chest almost all your life.

Several months on his ship have opened him up to giving more detailed answers to your numerous questions, and you take each opportunity where you can, desperate to unveil new pieces of his mind.

Tonight, Mando is particularly relaxed after capturing the last of four bounties, coordinates already set to turn them in. An empty bowl of bone broth sits beside his first helping. He leans back comfortably in his pilot seat as the stars shine off his chest plate and you ask about his past adventures.

“Has it always been just you?” Your voice comes out as a whisper, not wanting to disturb this content stillness, but thinking of all the times you’ve found him sitting alone in the cockpit clutching onto a silver ball.

He’s silent for a moment, thinking over his words. He doesn’t turn to face you when he answers, “No. There was... a child. Not long ago.”

You think back to when you had first met him, how he’d said, “I work alone,” how those words had seemed devastatingly true — in the way only a person who’s lost everything could say them so honestly.

“Yours?”

A beat. “Yeah,” he answers, a small crackling sound coming from his helmet. “Yes, a foundling. But he was as my own.”

“What happened?”

The cockpit stays silent save for the dull tones of the control board’s beeps and ticks. Mando reaches for that silver sphere, leans forward in his seat, and he holds it to the crown of his helmet.

“I... had to let him go.”

His voice breaks over the vowels, just slightly but you hear it: the familiar shattered sound of loss. It radiates off of him in waves, penetrating your skin and crawling through your bloodstream until your own heart aches for the ghost this child left behind.

“What was he like?” 

He’s quiet again and you wonder if you’ve crossed a line. But suddenly, Mando swivels his chair to face you, the silver ball clutched tight against his chest, and he chuckles. It’s fleeting but it’s a sound you’ve never heard in all your months aboard his ship. A lovely sound you’ll never forget.

“This was his favorite toy,” the Mandalorian says, lifting the ball in the air for you to see. “He was a stubborn kid. Always getting into trouble.”

You smile, begging him to continue.

“He could do things I couldn’t even imagine. He saved me, in more ways than one. We were a clan of two.”

“A family,” you agree.

He stills for a moment, ponders your words, and hangs his head. “Yeah, a family.”

“What’s his name?”

“Grogu.” You can almost hear the smile in his voice. “His name is Grogu.”

“Grogu,” you whisper, testing the name on your tongue. “Can you describe him for me?”

You pull out a small, worn booklet of parchment from your pouch and the short pencil from behind your ear. His helmet tilts toward you curiously and you can almost imagine his eyes squinting behind the visor.

“Remember when I said I was crafty? Not a load of bantha crap,” you chuckle, waving the pencil at him. “I made a trade with some stingy Jawas to get these relics.”

He nods, quietly examining the antiquated drawing pad.

“Tell me,” you plead.

His helmet’s gaze drops back to the silver ball and he sighs a wistful sound.

“Grogu was — is special. A green, wrinkly, big-eared... very special little kid.”

“A green, wrinkly child?” You ask, looking up from the paper.

Mando laughs again and you can’t help but smile too. He describes Grogu like he’s a father mooning over his son’s first steps. You’ve never heard him talk so much, so joyfully yet sorrowfully all at once. There’s a wistfulness in his voice, a rasp that tells you he’s not used to putting it into words, at least not out loud, but he still wants to honor Grogu with every word he has. As he speaks, you can feel — almost see the image of Grogu in your mind. It’s crystal clear like your brain is reaching out and can somehow access every archive in Mando’s memories. It’s like a trance and you have to physically shake your head to release yourself.

“He means a lot to you,” you say, a matter of fact, tearing off the weathered page and giving him your quick sketch, your hand resting on one of his pauldrons. “I’m sure you mean a lot to him.”

Mando silently turns back to the controls, his fingers still clutching the little ball as he grips the page in the other hand.

He’s especially glad to have his helmet at this moment because he feels water pooling behind his eyelids as he stares at the uncanny drawing.

“That’s him,” he whispers, looking upon his boy. It’s almost an exact likeness, although in grayscale (he’ll have to find you other colors somehow). But it means everything to see Grogu again, even on a page, after months of only seeing him in fleeting dreams and distorted nightmares. 

“Thank you,” he says, his hand with the drawing joining your hand on his pauldron.

You smile as he neatly, delicately folds the paper and tucks it into the small pouch on his shoulder harness, keeping the drawing close to his heart. You sit together in comfortable silence as the ship drops out of hyperspace.

“I guess you weren’t lying when we met,” he finally says.

“What do you mean?”

“You are… crafty,” he chuckles, his fingers tenderly stroking the leather pouch on his shoulder. “And you’re a good person to talk to.”

 —

iv.

The Mandalorian doesn’t ask you to stay on the freighter while he works anymore.

He doesn’t want you with him while he hunts, can’t afford the distraction. But he doesn’t want you to feel trapped either. So, he tells you to explore villages and draw landscapes of forested planets with the set of pigmented chalks he’d sweetly gifted you after finishing a job one day. (“I saw them at some backwater trading post. Thought you might like them,” he’d shrugged.) 

He doesn’t say it out loud but you know he trusts you even more now, trusts you won’t get into trouble, trusts you can take care of yourself if it finds you anyway. And he knows you appreciate it after being stranded on Tatooine your entire life. Each time he lands on a new planet, he sees entire galaxies reflected in your awestruck eyes and he gains a new page of artwork to add to his growing collection.

His latest quarry leads the pair of you to Felucia, on the hunt for some scum who — according to the Mandalorian — is probably hoping to harvest the planet’s Nysillin, a valuable healing herb, to trade for hefty credits. 

Felucia is a beautiful world you could never have even conjured in your dreams. A dense jungle of flora extends toward the upper atmosphere, kissing the yellow-tinted clouds and glowing orange and teal when night falls. Vibrant purple fungi tower high above the ferns, providing shade that did little to combat the damp heat.

You felt a strange energy running through your veins the moment you stepped off the ship, blaming it on the humidity instantly sticking to your skin like honey, a welcome discomfort compared to the sands of Tatooine.

On Tat, the sand made a habit of blowing and whipping around your ankles, scraping slashes and slivers into your skin. You’d hardly ever felt it, soft skin having evolved into a numb armor over many years on the desolate planet. Even as crystal particles would fly into your eyes, fill your lungs, nestle into your hair — you’d hardly felt it.

Sand is nothing compared to the sinister shudder that would run down your spine as you’d make haste through dark alleyways. The hairs on the back of your neck would rise and stiffen. You’d feel it more than you’d see it: the mass of darkness constantly looming over your shoulder, disfigured shadows merging with yours on the sand. And a voice would ask you each time: are you willing to do what you must to survive?

You almost had that night you met the Mandalorian. You remember your attacker’s voice like you just woke up from a nightmare, coarse and rough, burying itself under your skin like the Tatooine sands. His hands had felt slimy and sticky like the Felucian air as he’d gripped your waist. That same question of will had rung in your ears and your soul had urged you with a whisper: “Survive.” Your hand had quaked as you’d lifted it and focused your thoughts on your attacker’s throat. 

Then, before you could save yourself, you’d heard blaster fire and exhaled a staggered breath, gazing upon the Mandalorian as your hand had dropped limp at your side. You never turned back.

Now, you explore more systems than you knew existed, a Mandalorian warrior at your side, filling your weathered drawing pad with sketches of worlds beyond imagination.

Felucia would be a quick job, he’d assured you when he’d left. Easy and clean. Besides, no matter how beautiful the planet seemed — you couldn’t afford to stay longer than one rotation.

The Mandalorian had warned you of carnivorous plants and mysterious beasts. He hadn’t asked you to stay on the ship, but you knew he’d feel better if you kept close by. In the low shrubs and behind sky-scraping stalks, a deep grumble echoed through the jungle — something hungry and menacing. You stayed far from the sounds, choosing to explore the other colorful flowers that lived nearer to the ruddy soil, not straying too far into the mystifying wilds. You scribble away in your booklet, airways filled with a fresh petrichor that reminds you of a watery star system the Mandalorian brought you to a couple of months back. Your chalks fly across the tiny page as you capture this planet’s inimitable beauty as best you can.

Hardly four hours pass before you hear the Mandalorian’s heavy footsteps returning. Behind him trudges a stout man, wrists in binders behind him as he follows the bounty hunter in defeat.

“You’re getting slow, Mando,” you say, grinning when he comes to a stop in front of you, hands on his hips, a slight tilt to his helmet.

“What are you drawing?” He asks, ignoring your previous comment. He kneels beside you, silently studying the chalk-smudged red flower on the page as you stroke the final flourishes of your sketch. You hand him your booklet, noticing how the quarry leans over Mando’s shoulder to sneak a peek as well.

“Beautiful,” Mando says, tone even, as if speaking a fact instead of opinion.

“Well, it’s easy to see beauty when it’s all around,” you answer, cheeks heated as you gesture to the plant life surrounding you.

“It is,” he agrees, tenderness seeping into his modulated voice. When you look up at him, his visor is already trained on your face, unwavering as you crouch eye to eye with each other.

“Hate to break it to ya,” the quarry says, coughing dramatically behind you. “But all this ‘beauty’ wants to eat us alive, so I suggest we get off this hellhole before we all become dinner.”

The Mandalorian sighs, tearing his gaze to probably glare daggers at the quarry. 

“Makes you wonder what you were doing on this ‘hellhole’ in the first place,” he says, sarcastic to a fault.

“It wasn’t my choice,” the quarry argues, lifting his hands in defense. “I’m here to do a job, just like y—”

A shrill, deafening screech cuts through the jungle like a blade and the group of you shrink at the violent sound. 

“Let’s go,” Mando says immediately, helping you on your feet and pushing the quarry into the freighter.

You watch from the ground behind him as Mando runs in to lock the quarry inside the storage closet, turning only when the screeching sound suddenly stops. Your eyes squint as you try to find a sign of movement in the dense jungle.

“Watch out!”

Before you can register the anxiety in the Mandalorian’s voice, you’re knocked on your back into the red soil by a hulking creature.

It towers over you, casting you completely in its shadow as it slowly stalks forward. Your vision blurs as the horrifying monster draws closer — wrinkled white skin stretching the expanse of its belly and blue spine-covered leather painting its face and shell-armored back. 

“I’m guessing this is the rancor you were telling me about?” You grit through your teeth, inching away like a pathetic crab along the shoreline. Drool leaks from the rancor’s jagged teeth in dangling strands as it reaches long, webbed claws toward you. 

Before they can reach your body, you see the Mandalorian’s whipcord wrap around its arm. On the other end of the cord, Mando yanks the rancor away from you, rapid blaster fire whizzing through the air, hitting the beast with deadly precision. But the blasts bounce off its thick, impenetrable skin as it continues prowling toward you with renewed anger.

“Good guess,” Mando grunts, flying above the rancor with his jetpack, shooting at it in quick succession.

The rancor turns its attention away from you to the shiny flying pest blasting at its leathery skin. It’s at least six times the Mandalorian’s height but seems worlds larger from your view on the ground. 

“Stars, I thought you said these things were peaceful!” You shout.

“The Felucians don’t mind them. You must have scared it with your aggressive craftiness,” he quips, and you imagine what his smirk might look like under his helmet, even as the rancor approaches closer.

Mando launches miniature whistling explosives at the beast, but they do little to deter it. He throws grenades but the rancor swats them away like insects. It stomps toward the Mandalorian, its maw gaping wide as it releases a petrifying roar.

“Mando!” You scream when the rancor’s claws grab him by his jetpack, plowing his body into the ground with brute force.

The Mandalorian groans as he tries to stand back up, falling on his back when his bones prove too weary to support his weight.

“Get to the ship,” he rasps, voice crackling through the helmet with static. He raises his arm, flamethrower igniting at the rancor’s face, making it fumble backward with another roar. Only seconds later, the fire sputters and dies out. “Dank farrik!” He curses, reaching for his hopeless blaster once more before the monster’s claws slap it from his hand. “Get to the ship!” He yells.

Rooted to the ground like the surrounding plants, you’re helpless bantha fodder as you watch the rancor slowly creep forward, stretching to its full height above the Mandalorian. It feels like you’re sinking in quicksand — your feet and your mind hopelessly going under.

Then, you hear a soft voice ask a familiar yet distorted question:

Are you willing to do what you must so he survives?

You don’t hesitate. Anything, your soul resolves.

Steadily braced on two feet, you throw out your hand like a whip, focusing all your energy and emotions toward the blue beast. It sends the rancor flying backward like a ragdoll, wailing as it crashes through the thick jungle, loud cracks echoing from the mist as its body breaks every plant in its path. It lands far away with a heavy thud, but you feel it in your veins when it immediately gets on its feet, vengefully sprinting back toward you.

“Can’t say it isn’t persistent,” you mutter.

“How? You—” Mando grunts, a thousand questions on his tongue that will have to wait.

“I’ll explain later,” you huff, yanking his arm over your shoulder and pulling him to the ship. “We need to get out of here.”

“What’s happening?” The quarry yells from inside the locked compartment when he hears footsteps boarding the ship. You drop the Mandalorian onto the floor of the main hold rather unceremoniously, a metallic clanging sound ringing through the freighter. You punch in his code to retract the ship’s ramp before running to the cockpit. Outside the freighter, the rancor’s screeching grows louder and your fingers flit across the control panel to get the ship in the air. The engines whir to life and you swear it’s the second most beautiful sound you’ve ever heard.

With one final glance at the glowing jungle outside the viewport, thunderous roars softening into a low rumble, the ship finally launches out of Felucia’s atmosphere. Sinking back in the pilot’s seat, you let out a breath you’ve been holding for what feels like years. A labored dragging sound echoes behind you and you snap your head back, instinctively on defense.

But your shoulders relax when you see the Mandalorian gripping the walls of the ship as he attempts to limp closer. You run to his side, carrying his weight as you lead him to sit in the co-pilot’s chair.

“You need to rest,” you whisper, standing in front of him to quickly scan his body for signs of a major injury. “Looks like you got away with just a few shallow cuts and bruises. Nothing a bit of bacta can’t soothe.”

Your words come out like the rapid firing of his blaster before a gloved hand on your wrist stops you from speeding off. 

“What happened back there? How did you...” He asks, his visor lifted at an uncomfortable angle to meet your eyes.

Your lips press into a straight line, brows pinched in worry as you turn away from him to rummage through the medpac.

“I don’t...” you start, letting out a long exhale as you gather your words. “I don’t know. Since I was a kid, I’ve been able to do things I can’t explain — move things without touching them.”

You turn back to him, bacta in hand as you study expressionless beskar.

“Sometimes, it frightens me. I have no idea where it comes from or why it happens or how to control it. I never do it around other people. I didn’t want them to know,” you admit quietly, dropping your gaze to his vambrace, wordlessly asking if he still trusts you to remove it. He nods, visor watching you with masked curiosity as you roll back his sleeves and expose bruised, tan skin. “I’m afraid of what could happen if people knew.”

You don’t tell him how you don’t sleep well most nights, your thoughts eating away at your mind as you wonder if your abilities are the reason why you’ve always been alone… if they drove your family away before you could understand and just explain.

It stays silent while you tend to his wounds, applying bacta wherever your hands coax sharp hissing sounds from his helmet. His armor lies on the floor of the cockpit, sleeves pulled up to his elbows and the hem of his shirt lifted just enough to reveal a shallow cut and smattering of bruises on his abdomen. It’s not the worst you’ve seen and the bacta seems to already be easing most of the discomfort, allowing him to sit up straighter.

You leave him for a moment to allow him to tend to the bruises on his legs himself, walking to the supply closet to make sure the quarry is secure in his makeshift prison. When you return, you sit in the pilot’s seat, facing the zooming stars as if they hold the answers to every terrifying question you’ve held inside for so long.

You almost don’t hear the soft way the Mandalorian calls your name. It takes all your strength to pivot your seat in his direction.

“Do you remember when I told you about the mudhorn?” He asks.

You nod. The story of the mudhorn, of course you remember. After he’d first told you about his child, he seemed eager to tell you even more tales of their adventures across the galaxy. The mudhorn felt like their origin story, the birthplace of his connection to Grogu. 

“I didn’t tell you the whole story,” he says quietly, piquing your attention. “Grogu saved me. Not the other way around.”

You stare at him dumbfounded. “But how? He’s just a baby.”

Mando stands from the co-pilot’s seat, testing his leg’s stability before walking to the control board, leaning back on it, his knees brushing against yours.

“Grogu had powers too. He could heal people. And he could move things without touching them,” he mirrors your words, making your jaw drop as you take them in. “Just like you. I was quested to bring him to others of his kind.”

“You mean?” you ask, and he doesn’t miss the flash of hope in your eyes.

“Yes. There are others like him — like you.”

You listen with rapt attention as he unravels the legend of the Jedi — a fierce warrior he’d met named Ahsoka Tano and the hooded figure who had single-handedly defeated a platoon of Dark Troopers and became Grogu’s new mentor. He tells you the few fragments of what he knows about laser swords — lightsabers — the bright colors he’s seen them radiate. But he leaves out the heavy weight of the darksaber locked away in his weapons cabinet. Besides that, he tells you everything he knows, which he regrets isn’t much.

“The Force?” You ask in confusion.

“The Force is what gives you your powers,” he says, reciting the words like folklore passed down through generations. “It is an energy field created by all living things. To wield it takes a great deal of training and discipline.”

Ahsoka’s words have been imprinted on his brain since she first spoke them.

“I can take you to a place where you can communicate with them,” he whispers. Truly, he doesn’t want to do as he says, doesn’t want to repeat the heartache he’s still not fully recovered from. He wishes he could snatch the righteous words out of the air before you hear them. But he knows what it would mean to you to find others, a family when you’ve had none your whole life. “The… Jedi, I mean. On a planet called Tython. If you want to be trained.”

He imagines a familiar hooded figure leading you by your hand, leaving him behind.

“I… I’d like to hear what they have to say. Get some answers,” you say. “If you’ll take me.”

“Of course.”

You stand up, allowing him to take his place in the pilot’s chair.

“After we drop off the quarry, I’ll bring you to Tython.”

His breath stops when he sees your hand reach out to cradle the side of his helmet. His eyes screw shut, imagining the plush warmth of your palm caressing the skin on his cheek instead.

“Thank you, Mando,” you say, a gentle smile on your lips.

“Din,” he offers, grinning beneath his helmet when your chin tilts in silent questioning. “My name is Din Djarin,” he clarifies. “But you can still call me Mando if you want.”

You smile, so wide and so bright it could blind him.

“Thank you, Din,” you say, unexplored galaxies sparkling in your irises. For the first time, he lets himself daydream what it’d be like to discover each one of them with you, for as many years as you’ll give him. Even as he fears his time with you is ending. “Thank you for doing this for me.”

As you walk to your sleeping quarters, the soft sound of controls beeping and ticking in the ship, you don’t hear when he whispers:

“Anything.” [READ PART II HERE]

[maleficarfic]

A Battlefield Between Them

Pairing: The Darkling/Alina Starkov

Fandom: Shadow & Bone | The GrishaVerse

Rating: Explicit

Additional Tags: Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot

Summary: How easy it would be to sink backwards into him, to let a man made of shadows and dreams embrace her.

On AO3: Link

He followed her from the Bone Road to Os Alta, always on the edge of reality. He appeared on the roads, at the end of long hallways, on the edges of a room, a nightmare only she could ese and no one else would believe.

Alina grew used to his haunting presence. He lingered in the war room and her bedroom. She sometimes woke to find him sitting at the end of the bed, and she wondered if she wasn’t losing her mind from the pressure of everything.

Dragging her hand down her face, she rested her hands against the spines of the library books and let her head come to rest against a shelf. Eyes closed, tears burning against her eyelids, she took a shuddering breath.

Hard, this was so hard, and Mal couldn’t—wouldn’t—give her the support she needed.

She felt his presence.

He was silent when he appeared, but he took up so much space, had so much presence, that he was impossible to ignore.

“He doesn’t understand the weight. The burden.”

“A burden you’re putting on me,” she said, unmoving. Maybe if she kept her eyes closed, if she refused to see him, he could become nothing more than a dream.

He made a soft grunting sound, and she couldn’t tell if it was agreement or censure or something else entirely. How had she ever thought she understood this man?

Silence stretched between them. She was so unused to silence even as the loneliness of the Little Palace smothered her.

“It’s not a burden you need shoulder alone.” His words whispered against her ear; she felt him at her back. Warmth from his body reached through the thin fabric of her tunic, sinking beneath her skin.

For a man made of darkness, he felt so much like the sun.

Alina spun about.

His forearms hit the shelves, bracing him mere inches from her face.

Intense, dark eyes met hers. Ravenous eyes. Dark crescents marred his skin, giving him a wan, gaunt appearance. Haggard. But, Saints, he was still so beautiful. The most beautiful man she’d ever seen.

A thrill went through her, a visceral hunger rising inside her to match the greedy interest she saw in him.

She hated that thrill because she didn’t want to feel it. Shouldn’t feel it. He’d lied to her (except that he hadn’t, he’d merely mislead her, and her anger was at her own stupidity, at how she fell to his deceptions) and manipulated her. She shouldn’t want someone who had done those things.

But in the darkness, under the heavy blanket of hot summer nights, she imagined he didn’t just sit at the end of the bed. He came to sit beside her. He stroked his fingers through her hair. He bent down to brush his lips against hers, only once because he was still a gentleman, and that kiss would wake her, rouse her, and they—

“How dare you?” she hissed. “How dare you say that when you hide with your armies, preparing to strike against the country you claim you love.”

An equal fury flashed in his eyes. “I love all of Ravka, not just the parts of it that aren’t Grisha.” The fury faded, and his gaze softened. “He doesn’t understand, does he? Your tracker?”

She bristled. “Leave Mal out of this.”

“He doesn’t listen to you because he can’t understand this. Does he think you’ve abandoned him?”

The question lanced her, tearing open a fragile wound that never quite healed.

Gently, he brought the tips of his fingers to her jaw. He didn’t hold her, didn’t cradle her jaw. He simply stood there, his touch the lightest caress.

She ducked under his arms, striding away from him. He’d never done this before, never lingered or spoken to her at length. The time she’d spent with Nikolai taught her to question people’s changing behaviors, taught her to be much more suspicious.

“Would someone who truly cared about you leave you to suffer the weight of a war on your own?” he asked softly, and the softness of his words cut worse than anything ever had before.

She went still, shoulders hunched, head bowed, hands clenched into fists. She trembled, overwhelmed by too many emotions. Sorrow for whatever she and Mal had that was dying, anger that he couldn’t understand the importance of the war, of the firebird, of any of it. She’d spent her whole life waiting for him, and now that she’d found something to walk toward, now that he had to wait for her to complete a journey, he wielded that waiting like a knife against her heart.

“Can you not talk with him at all?”

“Aleksander,” she whispered. “Stop.”

He fell silent, at her back once more.

She thought he’d vanish like he had all the other times. Thought he’d disappear into the ether and leave her alone.

Instead, he brushed her hair over one shoulder, baring her neck. Just as lightly as he’d touched her face, his brushed his fingers down her arm. Back up. They lingered on the curve of her shoulder.

“Being alone is unbearable.”

She didn’t know if he meant for her or for him—or for them both.

“To stand at the head of an army is to be alone. The only one who understands is the one who stands opposite you.” His lips brushed against the naked line of her throat, and she sucked in a sharp breath.

That thrill inside her became a burn, blotting out her anger toward him, toward Mal.

“There’s comfort in another’s arms. He doesn’t come to you?”

She swallowed hard. “No.”

“Doesn’t let you rest in his arms?”

How easy it would be to sink backwards into him, to let a man made of shadows and dreams embrace her. He was a fantasy, and he offered her the illusion of empathy.

She tensed, and his hands ran down her arms, a comforting a caress.

“What’s wrong?”

“You… Mal and I… we aren’t…”

Now, she felt his surprise in the momentary pause of his hands, in the shifting of his body behind her as if he drew back.

“The boarding house in Novyi Zem?”

She shook her head and stared down the aisle of bookshelves without seeing any of them. “We’ve never more than kissed.”

“Foolish boy.” There was no arrogance in his words, just truth.

Beside a man who had lived for hundreds of years, of course Mal would seem like a child.

Again, his lips brushed against her throat, a soft caress. His hands stayed loose on her arms, and she realized he was making a deliberate choice not to hold her tight. She could step away. He would likely let her go—he’d never needed something as crass as force to convince her to come to him. She’d kissed him first, after all, and she wanted to again.

Even though a battlefield stood between them, he was the only one who saw it the way she did. Who understood it the way she did.

With a shaky breath, Alina let herself sink back. She half expected to pass through him. Instead, she found his form solid at her back. His hands closed around her arms. He still didn’t trap her in place, but now he held her with more strength. With certainty. Not the certainty of a man who’d won some kind of victory, but the certainty of a man who knew he was welcome.

He kissed her neck. His hands stroked down her arms, over her wrists. He laced their fingers together and pressed another kiss to her neck.

Heat kindled to life inside her, a soft simmer low in her belly and between her legs.

Taking a deep breath, she gathered her courage. “Would you—” Catching her lower lip in her teeth, she paused. Reconsidered her words. Felt the tension in him. When she spoke again, her words were so quiet, they were lost in the ocean of print that surrounded them. “Would you do more than kiss me?”

He lifted one of their twined hands. She watched it rise, watched him bring it to her shoulder. He turned their hands, facing her palm and curled fingers toward them both, and he kissed her knuckles. With a gentle tug, he bent her wrist back and kissed the heel of her palm. Let his teeth drag over her skin. Flicked his tongue against the sensitive skin of her wrist.

With three touches, he made her want more than any of Mal’s kisses ever had. With three touches, he made her ache.

“Go to our room, solnishko.”

Their room?

Her room. Except all she did was sleep there. She’d planned to redecorate his room, but she hadn’t.

Their room.

Their room.

A giddy excitement washed through her. Her lips turned up in a smile, and she felt him press closer in defiance of his gentle command.

“That makes you happy,” he said. “Calling it our room.”

“Maybe. Maybe I just like what you’re implying.”

His fingers squeezed around hers. A sound that might have been a chuckle rumbled against her neck. “Go,” he told her, and he released her.

She turned, but he’d finally vanished.

Nervous anticipation made her grin. Without a second thought, she hurried from the library. Tolya peeled away from the door, but she paid him no mind. Her attention was focused elsewhere, was focused on the next turn, the turn after that, the hallway that led to her room—his room—their room and the promise of what happened behind closed doors.

All the nobles thought she tumbled Mal. Half of them probably thought she was with Nikolai or Vasily when Mal wasn’t there.

So why not embrace those rumors, at least in some small way? Why not take a man to her bed who didn’t hate her for her power or her birth or her command?

At her door, she glanced back at Tolya, but he’d already made his way to the guard quarters adjacent to her room. Their room.

Alina stepped into their room, shutting the door behind her. After a moment’s pause, she locked it.

Aleksander materialized out of the darkness the moment the deadbolt slid into place. He took three steps into her space, drove his fingers into her hair, and kissed her.

He kissed her like a starving man, a dying man, a drowning man in desperate need of air he could get only from her lungs, and she surged against him. He kissed her without hesitation or fear or even artifice; there was nothing hidden in his intentions, just open desire for her, and that delighted her.

Wrapping her arms around him, she clung to him as he drew back, gazed at her mouth with ravenous intent, and then kissed her again.

Her own hunger churned in her belly, a heat that spread through her. Every limb tingled with awareness of all the places they touched—his chest against her breasts, his stomach against hers, their hips pressed together, his fingers in her hair as he turned her head to kiss her again and again.

A delighted laugh bubbled out of her, and he drew back once more, studying her.

Slowly, as if he were fighting the expression, a faint smile curved over his lips. “You smiled like this the night of the party,” he murmured, brushing his thumb against her lower lip.

“I was happy then.” She licked her lips, catching the pad of his thumb with her tongue. The look that shot across his face, a savage need she’d never seen on a man’s face before, made her body arch into his.

“Are you happy now?”

Her fingers caught his wrist as the smoldering embers between her legs grew to a delicious ache. She drew his hand down, her eyes never leaving his.

She’d kissed him first. She’d surprised him then. She wanted to surprise him now. Even though she’d never done more than kissing, she wasn’t a fool. She knew—in theory if not in practice—what people did when no one else was watching.

She pressed his hand low on her belly, his fingertips resting against her pubic bone over her pants.

His dark eyes grew even darker.

“Miss Starkov,” he murmured. The way he said her name made her gasp, made her arch against him. His fingers slipped just a bit lower, and that was a wickeder tease than what she’d given him. “Not many people surprise me.”

“I seem to be rather good at it.”

“You do.” Instead of sliding his hand even lower, he slid his hand to the small of her back and drew her with him as he stepped toward the bed.

Without his mouth on hers, with the reality of what they might do a handful of steps away, anxiety rose like a sudden wave inside her. Her fingers caught on his sleeves, grasping the fabric.

He stopped and bent his mouth to hers again. When they’d kissed before—in her room, at the party, just now—he’d been all hunger and desire. Now, he offered reassurance in the way his mouth moved against hers. And in the space of a breath, he whispered, “At your command, Miss Starkov.”

A shiver wound down her spine. She saw the moment he felt that shiver, saw the comprehension in his gaze and felt compassion in the brush of his thumb along her jaw.

“You like that.”

“Like what?”

The corner of his mouth ticked upward. “Miss Starkov,” he murmured against her lips, and she pressed against him, her kisses demanding instead of comforting.

“Aleksander,” she whispered back, almost in challenge.

He spun them around, pinning her body between his and one of the bed’s thick posts. She gasped, her fingers curling in his hair, and she kissed him again as his hands settled on her waist to hold her tight to his body.

Against her belly, she felt the press of his half-hard cock. Between her legs, she felt the wet heat of her own desire alongside an ache she couldn’t entirely understand. Was this, she wondered, what women meant when they talked about needing a man inside them? If it was, it felt incredible. She wanted to drown in this needy sensation, to bask in the warmth of it until she could no longer breathe.

His hands left her hips. His body bowed and curved around hers, the backs of his hands brushing against her breasts as he pulled at the buttons on his tunic.

Knocking his hands aside, she replaced them with her own. She wanted this; she wouldn’t let him take one moment of the experience from her.

He nipped her lip as her fingers made short work of his tunic, pushing it off his shoulders. “Demanding.”

Maybe, but this was her choice, her moment, her desire.

Before he could take her mouth in another kiss, she did something she’d dreamed of doing for months now. She licked into his mouth, curving one hand behind his head to hold him in place.

The broken, hungry sound he made as his hips rocked hard against hers made her purr with delight.

Her free hand ran down his chest, slipping beneath his undershirt.

At the brush of her fingers against his stomach, he jerked away from her mouth and let out a curse.

“Do you—you like my touch that much?” she asked, feeling strangely powerful. It was so much like that moment before the king that he’d taken her hand and she’d called the sun, but different still.

“I’ve imagined what your hands would feel like on my skin since the party, solnishko.”

Her other hand joined the first. Eyes on his, she slid her palms up his chest, and watched her touch unmake him. He shuddered, his lips parted on a silent gasp, his cock hard against her hip. And she burned, the heat of the sun licking beneath her skin as she realized a new kind of power.

Catching his shirt behind his neck, he yanked it off and tossed it aside. It joined his tunic on the floor, and his hands swept up her sides, trailing fire beneath her skin, as if he called the sunlight inside her with every caress.

“You’re overdressed,” he whispered against her mouth.

His lips ran down her throat, and she arched against him with a soft moan. Between them, his fingers freed the clasps of her own tunic. He drew back only to help her lift the shirt over her head and discard it, leaving her in her stays.

Instead of immediately taking her out of those, he bent his mouth to the swell of her breast and pressed more kisses against her skin.

She shivered beneath his touch, lifting her fingers to his hair to hold his mouth against her as he kissed and licked his way across her skin. Every touch made her burn, made her ache, made the wetness between her legs grow. Her body arched against his, and he pressed against her in turn, fitting his hips between her legs. One of her own legs lifted, wrapping around his hip, and he let out a soft, satisfied noise against her skin.

Dragging his hands down her sides as if he couldn’t get enough of touching her, he caught a bit of skin between his teeth. She sucked in a sharp gasp as he worried her skin, as he slipped his hands beneath her ass and lifted her up with a casual strength that left her reeling in the wake of a wash of heat and desire.

Now, he pinned her against the post with his hips tight against hers, the line of his cock a brand between her legs.

She shifted restlessly against him, but he seemed in no great hurry.

Two of his fingers hooked in front of her stays, pulling to create just enough room that he could urge her breast from the fabric.

Cool air kissed her nipple just before his mouth wrapped around it. A harsh gasp escaped her as wet heat pulled all the air from her lungs. She keened, her nails scratching against his scalp as her eyes fluttered shut.

His teeth dragged against her nipple, worrying it to a hard peak. When he bit down, he applied a pressure that built and built, and just when she thought the pressure might turn to pain, he released her nipple. The tingling pleasure of it made her gasp.

“Again,” she demanded.

Obliging her, he freed her other breast, sucking the hardened peak of her nipple between his lips as his hips flexed against hers.

He bathed her in sensation, holding her against the post with his body as his fingers found the laces of her stays and pulled them free. The fabric fell away from her, and he released her breast, straightening and catching her lips in another kiss.

His hands swept up her sides, and she expected him to fill his palms with her breasts. Instead, he held her tight against him, no space between their bodies as he licked into her mouth and let their tongues tangle together. The crush of his chest against her breasts felt almost as decadent as the line of his cock between her legs, and she moaned into their kiss as her fingers tugged at his hair.

“More?” he asked against her mouth.

“More,” she agreed.

Palming her ass, he smiled. She felt the curve of his lips, delighted that she could make him smile. He pulled her away from the post and, turning, fell onto the bed with her over him.

She followed him down, bending over him to press hungry kisses against his neck as his hands swept over her back.

“Boots, Miss Starkov.”

“Can’t we ignore them?” They could just get their pants out of the way and finish this without taking their shoes off. She knew that.

He slid his fingers into her hair, carding it out of her face as he urged her to look at him.

The expression he wore took her breath away. “I will have you naked in this bed, Alina,” he said, and her body reacted to that with such profound heat that she gasped. The hunger in his eyes sharpened. Saints, he was a predator who was clearly pleased to have caught his prey.

Except she wasn’t prey. She hadn’t been since that moment in the tent when he’d pierced her skin and let out the light, even though she hadn’t known it at the time. As much as he’d manipulated her at first, they were equals now. Their powers existed in a balance, and he could no more consume her completely than she could consume him.

That thrilled her. That excited her.

And his eyes reflected that same feeling.

Bracing her hands on his chest, she pushed herself back. Mindful of his body, she slipped between his legs, going to her knees at the foot of the bed.

He followed her, followed every inch of her progress, pushing himself up. When her knees hit the floor, his shaky exhalation filled the room like a physical thing.

A smile curved her lips. The way he looked at her filled her with more of that new power. With that intense, dark-eyed gaze devouring her, she felt like she could conquer the world.

Her fingers pulled free the laces on his boots, and she tugged them off his feet.

With her hands braced on his knees, she rose over him. Again, he whispered a ragged oath. His eyes raked from her waist up her stomach, over her breasts, up to her face.

“You have enchanted me, solnishko.” His hand cupped her jaw, drawing her close for a lingering kiss. “Take off your shoes.”

She did him one better.

After kicking off her own boots, as she stood at the foot of the bed with his hungry eyes fixed on hers, she smoothed her hands down her breasts. His eyes followed her hands, lingered on her nipples, and then jumped back to her hands as they caught on the fly of her pants.

His breath hitched in his chest.

She tugged the laces open.

He leaned toward her, naked want sharpening his features.

She could do anything, she realized. If he weren’t just a vision—a vision that had substance and weight for her and her alone—she could take this moment to destroy him. The most powerful man in the world was vulnerable in her room. In their room.

She could end the war.

She could kill him.

She could snuff out his power and have all the time in the world to solve the problem of the Shadow Fold without his armies bearing down on hers.

Instead, she swished her hips from one side to the other and let her pants whisper down her legs. She didn’t even hesitate—how could she when the desire in his gaze filled her with confidence and power—to let her small clothes follow.

Naked before him, just as vulnerable as he, she felt more power than she ever had in her life.

“You’re a vision,” Aleksander told her, holding out a hand to her.

She placed her hand in his and climbed onto the bed. When he tugged, she fell into his arms, and he rolled her under him, his hands sweeping down her ribs, her hips, her thighs as he settled beside her.

His lips brushed against her breast. His tongue curled around her nipple. “I want to kiss every inch of you.” He spoke the words against the underside of her breast, his fingers circling around her knee and sliding up the inside of her thigh.

A little gasp from her stopped his hand. He glanced up at her, and she let out a shuddering breath—not of fear or anxiety but of anticipation.

No one had ever touched her like this. She’d fantasized about it, first with Mal between her legs and then with him, with Aleksander. Even as she fled him from Ravka to Novyi Zem, she’d imagined what his hands might feel like on her.

Rough calluses. Warm. Strong.

“Alina?”

Licking her lips, she shifted beneath him, drawing one leg up so that she was open to him.

His breathing sped up, matching hers. His fingers stroked a featherlight caress down the back of her thigh as she caught her lip between her teeth. “Please,” she whispered.

Two of his fingers parted the lips of her cunt and caressed her from entrance to clit—and sunlight shimmered beneath her skin.

He froze. The shadows in the recesses of the room darkened, a gathering gloom that should have been a threat. Instead, desire spiked through her, a wicked snap of electric heat.

“More,” she told him, her eyes on his. “Please.”

“Why did you call the light?”

She took a moment to consider his question even though all her brain wanted was to shut off and let her body enjoy more of his touch. “I didn’t,” she finally said. “You—your touch did.”

He studied her in silence, considering her words. His fingers stayed where they were, resting against warm, wet skin just above her clit. The persistent weight of his touch built anticipation beneath her skin, and she trembled ever so slightly.

Almost experimentally, he circled one finger around her clit.

Light followed his touch, a glimmer of noon in the darkness of their room.

His eyes widened with wonder, with desire, with an avalanche of hunger. He pushed himself up the length of her body, his mouth crashing against hers in a wild kiss.

Wrapping her arms around him, she let herself drown in that kiss as her body twisted toward his.

His fingers moved against her. Long, languorous strokes that matched the drag of his tongue against hers.

He explored every inch of her, his fingers running back and forth between her legs and spreading her slick arousal over her skin. Each caress ended with his fingers flicking against her clit as his tongue flicked against hers.

When she started to moan into his mouth, he drew back. Propped on one arm above her, he watched her. Watched her face as she arched and gasped, rocking her hips into his hands in search of more. But he seemed content to play with her, to make her burn with more of that heat as his touch drew light across her flesh.

His fingers circled her entrance, and she keened for him.

One finger pressed against her, and she raked her nails down his back.

A pleased laugh rumbled out of him, and he eased one finger into her. Now, he gasped. His hips jerked against hers, and that lack of control from him thrilled her. “Tight. You’re so tight.”

He dropped his forehead against hers, and Alina let her eyes meet his. “More,” she demanded.

His finger sank inside her, and the light that he called inside her with his touch glittered beneath her belly, her chest. She felt the warmth of it as it spread through her, felt the warmth of the pleasure created by his finger slowly thrusting into her.

“Should I tell you how I’ve touched myself to the thought of having you like this?” he asked her.

A moan spilled past her lips, and her hips arched. “Yes.”

“I wondered if you’d burn with the heat of the sun.” His lips brushed against her forehead, the length of her nose, her cheek.

A keening whine caught in her throat. One of her hands fisted in the sheets beneath him, the other clutched at his shoulder. She burned—surely he felt how hot she burned.

“I never expected you to glow, too.”

His finger drew out of her, and she made a plaintive little noise. “Don’t stop.”

Two fingers ran over her entrance, and she gasped. His thumb dragged over her clit, and she shook beneath him. Slowly, he pushed those fingers into her, his cheek resting against hers. “You’re the sun itself, light and heat poured into flesh.” His fingers curled inside her, and she keened again for him. “Move with me, solnishko. Rock your hips in time with my fingers.”

His words rumbled against her ear, as much a physical caress as the fingers inside her.

“That’s it.” He drew back, and she forced her eyes open, watching him watch her.

Light shimmered beneath her skin, a prismatic array of silvers and golds that grew brighter as she grew hotter. Beyond the frame of the bed, the shadows grew darker still until she couldn’t see the ceiling, the door. Not that she cared to.

He slipped his hand beneath her head, still braced on that same arm above her, and urged her head to turn toward his. “Close your eyes, Alina.”

After a second of hesitation—she didn’t want to lose his face, the expressions he wore—she let her eyes close.

“Keep moving with me.” His thumb brushed over her clit, and her hips jumped. For a moment, she lost the rhythm of his fingers inside her, but he kept going. Kept stroking her. “You burn me.” His mouth brushed the corner of her lips. “I’d always imagined you would.” His fingers curled inside her, and she let out a strangled moan. “In winter, I’d lay before the fireplace to imagine the heat of you as I stroked my cock.”

She couldn’t quite picture it—not him naked with his cock in his hand, but the rest of it? Oh, yes, she could easily imagine him in front of the fire, that dark-eyed look of desire on his face.

“I’d wrap my hand around my cock and pretend it was yours, that you were beside me, that the heat of the flames was the heat of your body. And when I came, I’d whisper your name and imagine the crackle of the fire was your laughter.”

His fingers curled, and she keened. The fire consumed her, burning her from the inside out. She was lost in the heat except for the weight of his body at her side, the easy warmth of his fingers inside her.

“I’d wonder what your cunt would feel like around my cock.”

Her cunt clenched around his fingers, a sharp contraction that had her gasping. Tension lined her entire body. Her nails dug deeper into his shoulder, her other hand twisting the coverlet beneath them as her body strained against him, chasing a pleasure she craved more than the air in her lungs.

His lips brushed her ear. “I’m going to be inside you tonight, Miss Starkov.”

She came with a broken little cry, her back bowed. Pleasure washed through her in waves of heat. Light burned against her closed eyelids for just a moment before heavy shadow plunged them into darkness.

She was still shaking when his mouth brushed her belly. She hadn’t quite made sense of what he was doing when his tongue laved over her clit and his fingers began moving inside her again.

Her eyes flew open, and she let out a sobbing moan. Her hips arched, her back bowed again, and he laughed against her. The sound was full of pleasure, of dark satisfaction.

Tendrils of shadow whispered down her body. They curled against her breasts and played over her nipples like the bow of a violin as he sucked her clit between his lips and worked his fingers inside her.

When she tried to thrust her fingers into his hair to hold his mouth against her, silky shadows drew her hands above her head.

“Just feel,” he commanded.

The fact that she was helpless to do anything but obey made her tremble with pleasure.

The closer he worked her to orgasm, the brighter the light beneath her skin became. If not for the streaks of darkness between the light, she would have been afraid one of her guards would see the light and come running. But his shadows contained the light, twined around it until sun and night braided together.

She broke for him a second time, whimpering as her legs dragged along his sides, as she rocked against his mouth. He licked her through her orgasm, the stroking of his fingers prolonging the pleasure until she thought she might come a third time.

He worked her to that edge, and then he drew back. His fingers slowed but didn’t leave her, and he leaned over her body.

The shadows holding her arms released her, and now she did drive her fingers into his hair to pull his mouth to hers for a long, needy kiss. The sharp taste of her desire on his lips only served to reignite the desperate fire inside her and remind her of that aching, empty feeling. Even with his fingers inside her, she didn’t feel the way she wanted, needed to feel.

“Please,” she whispered, hating the feel of his pants against her legs.

“Do you need me to fuck you?” he asked, and the rough language drew a ripple of sunlight down her body and sharp heat between her legs. “Do you want me inside you?”

“You promised,” she reminded him, and her fingers dropped from his hair to his back, sweeping down his skin to wiggle beneath his pants. She grasped his ass and yanked him against her.

His groan of pleasure made her shiver with delight. “You’re better than any of my fantasies.” His tongue flicked against her lips. She sucked it into her mouth. “Wicked girl. And they call you a saint.”

Instead of cooling her ardor, that made her burn hotter. “I never wanted to be a saint.”

He drew his fingers from her cunt and caught her chin between his slick index finger and thumb. She had no idea why that made her cunt throb, but it did, and she shifted restlessly against him.

The intense look in his eyes only made her ache more. The fact that he wasn’t between her legs, guiding his cock into her left her frustrated—and desperate.

“Must I beg?” she asked.

Heat flared in his eyes—and that delicious power spread through her.

“Do I need to beg for you to take me, Aleksander?”

He drew back so fast, a cool breeze washed over her skin. She watched him yank his pants open, his eyes dragging down the shimmering length of her body. As he shoved his pants down, her eyes slid over his muscled torso to the arching line of his cock.

Need pulsed inside her. Her mouth felt suddenly dry. She’d seen animals mate, and it wasn’t easy to maintain privacy in the army. None of those things prepared her for him. Or, perhaps, didn’t prepare her for the sight of him when he’d already given her two orgasms. Soft with pleasure and hungry for more, the sight of his cock thrilled her.

He tossed his pants aside and laid himself over her. His hands framed her face as he kissed her, as she shifted beneath him to bring his cock against her slick cunt.

He gasped into their kiss, and she raked her nails down his back as she arched. His cock dragged against her clit, and the pleasure of it left her breathless.

“I want to know what you feel like inside me,” she whispered against his mouth. “And I want you to tell me if I’m as hot as you imagined.”

He swore, rolling to his back and taking her with him. His hands swept down her body with an urgency she’d never seen from him before. Long, fine-boned fingers curved over her hips, and he showed her where to settle over him.

“On your knees for me, solnishko,” he told her, his voice rough.

This was where her knowledge dried up. She’d heard soldiers brag about their conquests, so she understood there were a variety of ways two people could come together, but all that knowledge was theoretical. She followed the guidance of his hands, rising above him.

One of his hands slipped between them, and she understood what he wanted.

As his cock nudged against her, he braced his free hand against her chest, between her breasts. “Sometimes, this hurts the first time.” His voice was ragged. His hand shook. The starved hunger in his eyes made heat roll through her. “I can’t promise—”

She bent forward, her lips against his. “Fuck me, Aleksander,” she said, delighted by her own daring, by the way his eyes widened, by how the tendons in his neck suddenly stood out sharp with tension.

He arched beneath her, and his cock slid into her.

She eased down, and his cock pressed deeper, filling her, stretching her, and her head fell back as pleasure burned through her. Shimmering shafts of light spilled speckling patterns against his skin as his hand settled on her hip and drew her down his length, and the only thing she felt was the exquisite pleasure of it.

Fire. Maddening ecstasy.

“How?” she gasped, her head lolling forward. Her lips found his. “How did you only fantasize about this?”

Ragged laughter warmed her lips. His hands smoothed over her hips, a gentle pressure showing her how to move now that he was seated deep inside her. “No pain?”

Her hips rolled forward, and she moaned. His cock felt so good in her. She felt incredible. Full. Here at last was the feeling she’d been chasing since the first brush of his lips on her neck in the library.

She moved against him again, unable to answer his question when the pleasure consumed all her focus. Her eyes met his, glittering in the darkness, and she let out a soft, stuttering gasp. “Aleksander.”

“Incredible,” he murmured in reply, his hips rolling in a soft counterpoint against hers. When they came together, she felt him slide deep, felt him fill her until there was no space between them, no room for light—no room for darkness. There was only them in the center of a glittering halo of light ensconced in the solid, protective weight of his midnight.

“Again, Alina.” His words were rough, broken by the staccato rhythm of his breathing. “My name—say it again.”

She had a moment of shocking clarity. No one called him by his name. He was General Kirigan or the Darkling, but never Aleksander. Not even Baghra used his name.

Carefully, she lowered herself against him. Her breasts brushed against his chest, and that made his breath stutter. Her arms braced on either side of his head. Her hands cradled his jaw. “Aleksander,” she whispered against his lips. “Tell me how I feel, Aleksander.”

His fingers dug into her hips, but the faint pain only made the pleasure of his cock moving inside her sweeter. “Like summer.”

“Do I burn, Aleksander?”

He thrust deep into her, and pleasure seared her. Light spilled from her skin everywhere they touched, flinging glittering light into the darkness surrounding them. “Like the sun.”

“Am I as good as you imagined, Aleksander?”

The laugh that spilled from his was incredulous, and the disbelief in it flattered her. “You are so much more than hundreds of years of imagining,” he told her. “So much better than any fantasy.”

His words made her ache, made her cunt ripple and clench around him. When he groaned, arching under her to drive deeper, she whispered his name.

One of his hands stayed on her hip. The other dipped between their bodies. His fingers played against her clit as they moved against each other, losing themselves in the hard pounding of their hearts and the harsh panting of their breath.

She tucked her face against his neck as he petted her, as he stroked her, as he helped her come apart around him. The feel of her body clenching around him was indescribable. It sated some itch inside of her she’d never quite understood before; coming from her own hand felt good, but there was a visceral satisfaction in coming with him inside her.

“More?” he asked against her lips.

Her pleasure drunk brain took a long moment to comprehend that little word. “There’s more?”

He wrapped his arms around her and rolled them over. Urging her legs high on his waist, he tangled his fingers in her hair and gripped her waist hard. “Move with me, solnishko.”

When he started fucking her, it was rough and hard and fast. She lost herself in the rhythm, in the punishing pace of his thrusts. Beneath him, she twisted against the bed and arched to get him as deep into her as possible.

Just as good, this was just as good, but for completely different reasons. She dragged her hands over her body, pinching her own nipples to the sound of his hungry growls.

“Touch yourself,” he told her, and she did.

She played with her clit, her eyes fixed on his as he drove into her—at least until the light from her skin grew to be too much. Her back arched, and he surged hard against her, kissing her with a savagery she felt down to her toes.

His tongue slid into her mouth, muffling her sobbing moan of his name as she came again.

He seemed to lose his rhythm, his thrusts coming harder, until he went still against her and the shadows surged around their bodies. For a moment, the darkness was so intense she could see only the glimmer of his eyes.

Slowly, he relaxed against her. The tension eased out of him, and he rolled them both to their sides.

As her breathing steadied and both light and shadow receded, Alina found herself a little uncertain. None of the books—none of the soldiers’ stories—told her what she was supposed to do now.

“How do you feel?” he asked her, his hand settling on the curve of her waist.

She studied him in the dim light, his face mere inches from hers, and realized she didn’t know how to answer that.

“Any pain?”

“No.” That answer came immediately. Her body felt heavy, her limbs leaden. She only now felt how slick with sweat her skin was. “Lethargic, I guess.”

“Then you’ll rest well tonight,” he said, his knuckles brushing against her cheek.

“After you disappear, will we be enemies again?”

Now he looked thoughtful. His gaze fixed over her shoulder for a long moment, and then he turned back to her. His eyes drifted shut and his lips pressed full against hers, not to arouse but to offer something else. Simple intimacy, maybe.

He lifted his lips from hers, his eyes still closed. “We are what you make us.”

[occasionalfics]

after the end

main masterlist | thor masterlist | taglist | ko-fi | ao3

For: Me because I was not pleased with the treatment of My Boy™ in Endgame. So I decided to give him a story I did like.

Pairing: Fat!Thor x Asgardian!Reader

A/N: My Fat Boy™ deserved so much better. So I’m giving it to him. All the love. Also I’ve been working on this since I saw Endgame and that was like...two months ago? I’m only a little sorry I took so long. This became a lot more than it was originally meant to be.

Warnings: SMUTTY SMUT (just one section, but still), NSFW/18+ CONTENT AHEAD. Also a healthy helping of angst and depression. But also. Fluff. This is me we’re talking about. Hi, welcome if you’re new. This warning is indicative of everything I write.

Words: 9,502

The thing about rebuilding a civilization with less than half the population is that no one feels as though they can grieve what they’ve lost because everyone is grieving. No one speaks of the dead - a very un-Asgardian thing to do - and no one speaks to the King.

New Asgard is a very different place from the one in which you grew up. You know why - you blame no one person save Thanos for that, but even he is not the only one to blame. Hela had a part in this, too. No one blames the King except for the King himself.

That’s not made clear to you until the Valkyrie approaches you, about a year into the new settlement. She asks what your position in Asgard had been because you work much more slowly than the other women.

“I was one of Queen Frigga’s Ladies,” you tell her. But Queen Frigga died before the Convergence, and that was almost a decade ago. “And, in her absence, Loki kept me in the palace as a maid.”

The Valkyrie nods. “And you...liked that lifestyle?”

You shrug as a horn blasts from out on the ocean. The briny smell of the water fills the small town, permeating every sweater and pair of jeans you now own. “It was a living.”

The Valkyrie turns to a wooden shack, high on the hill behind town. The King’s shack. The place he’s hidden himself away with only the company of the rock fellow and the smaller, jelly-looking friend. Somehow, even the Valkyrie has not been to the shack often, though that may have much more to do with her work than her relation to the King.

She asks if you’d like to resume your old position. She must know, as everyone does, that some semblance of normalcy is imperative to the survival of whoever is left.

The thought of being in a palace makes you almost swoon, until you remember that there is no palace. There is no place for the King to be above all others, except that his shack is higher than the rest of the town. He has insisted on being seen as the same as all others, that there are no true Kings on Midgard anymore, and he intends to not uproot the common traditions of the place they now all occupy.

So why, then, would his advisor ask you to be his maid?

Still, you accept. It is familiar to serve the royal family, no matter what form it’s taken. It’s a kindness on the part of the Valkyrie to seek you out for this honor.

At least, you think so until you are brought into the shack.

It wreaks of spoiled food and days-old warm mead. Sweaters and hats, boxes and crates are all piled in the narrow walkways. There’s shouting from another room. The Valkyrie just brings you through it all into a den, where the rock and the squishy one are playing a game on the television. The King sits in a rocking chair in the corner, nodding mindlessly as he grips an aluminium can in one hand. He’s bare on top, soft and round where you know he was once hard and sculpted. The dark, unflattering pants he wears do nothing to hide the sadness he must be feeling.

The Valkyrie explains the situation; that you’re staying to clean up, that the King has very little say in the matter, and that he should at least be nice to you. You’re doing him a favor.

You bow when she leaves because the King stares at you.

“I recognize you,” he says, his words soft on their edges, like his body is.

“I was one of your mother’s ladies, your Majesty.” You stand straight as the rock man yells out at something on the television.

The King lingers on you for a second, then turns to the game. He doesn’t look back.

You get to work.

--

Weeks go by. You silently work, scrubbing floors when no one is in a room, doing laundry whenever it piles up, cleaning dishes three times a day. The King grows softer and rounder, quieter than you remember him ever having been. Korg, the rock man, and Miek, the squishy one, try to get him to engage in their game playing, but mostly, he sleeps, drinks, eats, and repeats.

You try not to show how much you pity him. But you plan what you’ll say, should he notice.

You do not pity him for his physical state. Everyone in New Asgard has changed physically - most have grown softer than they were. The Mighty Volstaag, were he still alive, might be proud.

You are sad for the King because, clearly, he feels a heavy failure weighing him down. There is guilt that lines his face. Darkness in the one natural eye of his and the quiet he keeps when he looks out the window beside his rocking chair.

But he never really notices you. Most days, he sits and drinks and eats and sleeps while you clean, and then you leave for the night before starting over again the next morning.

--

On a morning about two months in, the King sends Korg and Miek into the nearest town with the Valkyrie. You’re not sure how he’s going to disguise them, since you’re sure the Midgardians won’t appreciate their alien appearances, but the King insists disguises aren’t necessary.

Once they’re gone, you’re alone with the King for the first time.

His hair is dirty and mangled. His beard is unkempt, too long, unbraided. His fingernails look as if he hasn’t washed his hands in weeks. And yet, he simply sits in his rocking chair and stares out the window, watching small boats as they pass through the harbor below.

You throw away a third pizza box, and when you come back into the room, he actually turns and notices you.

“Do you like it here?” he asks.

You stand a little taller, just like you would if his mother had asked you a question. “Yes, your Majesty,” you respond, tipping your head down.

He sighs, traps his lips behind a hand. Then he asks, “What’s your name?”

When you tell him, he nods.

“Well, (Y/N). Please call me Thor. I’m…”

You wait for him to finish, but he doesn’t. Eventually, he turns back to the window and goes into a world where you no longer exist once more.

--

Sometime the next week, you bring in groceries. Fish from the market, vegetables from your own garden. Korg and Miek don’t notice, but Thor does.

He only says anything about it while you cook. “What’re you doing?” he asks.

You don’t even look at him. “When your mother was sick, on the rare occasion that happened, I would cook for her,” you tell him. As you stir a pan of peppers, you smile softly to yourself. “Some of the vegetables in my garden were ready to be picked, so I thought I’d prepare dinner.”

“But that’s not part of your duties,” he says.

You shrug, purposefully ignoring the fact that no one had ever given you a strict set of duties to look after. “I don’t mind.”

The only sound for some time is the oil frying vegetables and fish. And the little tune you hum to yourself as you go, but you hardly register it at all.

Thor does, though. He sits at his unused kitchen table and watches you carefully, wondering what in the world could make you want to cook for him. You’ve seen the things he heats. You’ve seen how he’s been eating, and how he’s left his waste to rot.

He’s embarrassed. He sits back in the chair, which creaks beneath him, and immediately tenses.

But you don’t notice. You’re in your own little world, chopping and preparing and plating everything in due time. It’s nice to make something for once, rather than just clean up clutter.

You turn to the small kitchen table and stop short. Thor is still sitting there, looking right at you. It’s hard to tell if his gaze is as empty as you think it is - there’s something in the way his eyes drift from yours that signifies guilt or shame.

But you smile. You bring two plates to the table, put one in front of him and another across from him, then turn to find silverware.

He only has plastic forks in a box beside the sink. It’ll do, for now.

“I made enough for your guests,” you tell him. “Do Kronans eat fish?” You laugh to yourself at the thought, returning to the table with one of the forks outstretched to Thor.

He takes it gently. Shrugs. “I haven’t seen him eat much, actually,” he says, his tone a little...lost, if you had to guess.

It barely crosses your mind that he might be put-off by you joining him at his table. You, a Lady in Waiting, nothing more than a fancy servant, sitting with anyone in the Royal family outside of your direct charge.

Only he is your charge now. And...you’re both well aware of how easily the standards of Old Asgard’s society have been broken since Ragnarok.

Still, he doesn’t eat at first. He just watches you, and you pretend not to notice. You nod after your first bite, then raise a napkin to your lips before you’re comfortable telling him, “Tastes quite good, if I do say so myself.”

That earns you the tiniest smile you’ve ever seen from Thor, but at least it’s something.

He digs into the food after you’ve gone back in.

--

Cooking becomes a weekly occurrence. Once a week, you bring whatever vegetables you’ve got that are ready to eat and whatever meat or fish you’re able to get in the market and make a nice lunch. You always make enough for Miek and Korg, too, but they never join you and Thor, so he keeps all of the leftovers for the rest of the week.

He seems to genuinely enjoy the food you make. You don’t know if it’s actually that good, or if it’s...because you are cooking for him.

But you don’t let that idea flatter you too much. Thor doesn’t talk about himself much, so you really don’t know him as well as you might think.

Every day, you realize there’s less and less clutter for you to straighten. On the one hand, you’re pleased to see that the Valkyrie’s worries are being taken care of. But on the other...you very much like this position you’ve been given.

It only takes a few days for you to realize it’s because you like being around Thor. You tell yourself that’s due to the fact that it’s an honor to care for a member of the Royal family, but another few days go by and you know that’s not true.

He still isn’t the Prince you remember. He might never be that person again, and you think you’re the only person that feels that way. Maybe the Valkyrie does, too, but you haven’t really spoken to her since she asked you to take this job.

She’s busy leading the people that search for a leader. You’re tending to the man who inherited that position but doesn’t want it.

--

One morning, you start your day with a load of laundry. There might be electricity and wireless internet and cable television in New Asgard, but everyone was already used to doing laundry by hand anyway, so very few people opted for automatic machines in their homes. Thor was one of those.

You bring out his laundry into the backyard and fill a wide metal bucket with water and soap. You go to separate the different pairs of sweatpants and large jackets and jumpers when you notice something.

In the distance is a man. He stands facing a line of trees that border a forest. There’s one trail in and out of that patch of trees, but this man isn’t anywhere near it. He just...looks in, head bowed, feet slightly apart. The wind shakes the long tendrils of his light hair, and you realize that the man is Thor.

Before you know you’re doing it, you head off in his direction, laundry all but forgotten. The briny smell of the water reaches even this far into town, follows you up the hill to the edge of trees. Your sweater is soft and warm, which you’re grateful for as the wind picks up again.

Neither of you say anything at first. You approach him, gaze into the forest, and wonder what, exactly, he’s looking for. You think, maybe, you see a rabbit hop along somewhere, but there’s nothing else. Just darkness and trees and...wind.

“Is everything alright, your-” You clear your throat. “Thor?”

Looking up at him, you can tell he’s been crying - his eyes are rimmed with red and streaks of shiny liquid are left running down his cheeks. You don’t say anything about it, though. You let him have that.

And you let him have the silence. Clearly, he wants it. You don’t know how long it goes on, or for how long you look at him. You just do. And it’s odd that he doesn’t shy away, doesn’t even acknowledge that he’s being looked at. You’re so used to him turning away, but you hadn’t even realized it until now.

The silence stretches for so long that you start to worry if he’s been bewitched. Magic is hard to come by these days, but still, you know it’s possible.

Then he finally sighs and turns your way. “Thought I saw a ghost, is all,” he says. He tries to smile. Really, truly tries. But it falters immediately, and the stringy, oily strands of his hair fall forward and remind you that you’re here to do a job.

--

“What’s this?” he asks when you bring him a tiny, dainty little hand picked bouquet of wildflowers. It’s really nothing special, but it is a splash of color in his otherwise dark shack.

You shrug. “I’ve been coming here for a year,” you tell him.

“So you’re giving me flowers?”

You hold them out to him, shaking your hand to emphasize that he should take them. The smile on your face is true - you’re happy to give him something that might make his day. This anniversary may not be anything huge, but it’s still something to celebrate, in your own humble opinion.

“I-” he starts. He sighs, takes the flowers, and doesn’t look back up at you again. “I don’t have anything for you.”

You know he can see your shrug even if he stares at the flowers. “That’s alright,” you say. “I just wanted to do something nice, that might bring good tidings to a day like this.”

He sits with that for a bit. You almost turn away to get ready and start on chores, but he finally sits up a little at just the right time. He clears his throat, runs his fingers over the flowers, and nods.

“Thank you,” he gets out.

You nod. It’s enough.

--

A few days later, the shack is spotless. Not a cup out of place, not a dust mite to be found. Korg and Miek aren’t even around, either. The television is off, but soft music is playing from somewhere inside.

You find Thor in the kitchen. He has a contraption he’s told you is called a boombox nestled onto the spice rack by the stove; the music is flowing from it, and Thor is tapping along to it. Not dancing, not even really moving in time with its rhythm. The toes of one foot, which are covered in athletic sneakers for once, tap just out of sync, and every few beats, he taps the spatula in his hand against the rim of the pan below it.

“You’re cooking?” you ask, hanging your sweater up on the hook by the doorway.

Thor looks over his shoulder and nods. “Just wanted to do something nice, that might bring good tidings to the day.”

You pause and admit to yourself that whatever he’s got going does smell wonderful. And his smile seems genuine - it’s larger than most of the ones he’s sent your way since you’d started working around him, and it fills  you with a certain kind of comfortable warmth you can’t put a name to.

And he’s returning your gesture from the other day.

You know he’s not a selfish person - you saw what being banished to Midgard that first time had done to him. You know this isn’t a gesture meant just to make himself feel better.

Which means, since you’re the only other person around, he’s doing this for you, too.

All he lets you do is set the table, but then he insists you sit and wait. And honestly, what else is there for you to do? He’s kept the place clean all night, even going so far as to put his clothes away in a place you can’t immediately see. Whether or not they’re folded correctly is another story, but apparently, you can’t worry about that right now.

He brings the food over when it’s ready, scooping out a hunk of whatever he’s made straight from the pan to put on your plate. He puts some on his plate, too, then returns to the stove for the side dishes.

“Where’d you learn to do all this?” you ask when he settles in across the table from you. He’s even put a pitcher of water on the table, so you pour out two glasses before digging in.

Thor shrugs. “A friend sent an electronic letter with a recipe. Anything I didn’t know about, another friend named Google helped me figure out.”

You laugh lightly at that, but almost immediately after, your attention is taken by the rather exquisite flavors that surprise your tongue. You can’t not moan as you chew, and Thor can’t help but laugh back at you.

“I take it you like the chicken?” he asks.

You nod. “This is so good!”

At that, he lights up. You’ve been subtly trying to get him to smile for almost a year, and this is what works?

It makes sense, though. You know that his sadness was caused by his failure to keep the remaining Asgardians together. Whatever happened while the Valkyrie was keeping you safe had sent him into a spiral.

So the fact that praise over something as simple as lunch makes him happy shouldn’t surprise you.

You finish chewing, then reach across the table and take his large hand in one of yours. He’s warm, and he freezes the second your skin touches. “Thank you,” you say. “This is...a lovely surprise.”

--

He never tells you when he’s heading toward the forest’s edge, but when you see him go, you go with him. You don’t like him chasing after ghosts on his own.

Why you’re so protective, you don’t dare analyze. You simply go after him, stand in silence for a while, then slowly reach out to hold his hand.

And he lets you. Most of the time. When he doesn’t, you respect his space, but you don’t leave him.

One night, right before you’re about to leave him, he calls you back into the living room. Korg carried Miek off half an hour ago, so you quickly wonder if Thor just doesn’t want to be alone tonight.

He looks right at you when you come back into the room. “Why do you go out to the trees with me every time?” he asks, dark circles taking up space beneath his eyes again. That’s how you know this week isn’t one of his better ones.

“I don’t like the idea of you being so alone,” you tell him honestly. “We’ve all got people haunting us these days.”

Thor doesn’t respond. You take one step closer to his chair, his eyes never leaving yours.

“My father was the only member of my family left when we boarded that ship. He didn’t make it to the escape pods when Thanos found us.” And just so that Thor knows you aren’t telling him to blame him, because genuinely, you don’t, you reach for his wrist.

He doesn’t pull away.

“I see him sometimes, mostly when I sleep. And now I know I’m not alone in that struggle.” You squeeze his wrist, then let go.

And he lets you.

--

You find that touch is sacred to him. He only lets you close enough to touch when he is at his best, or when he desperately needs to remember that he is still a being that feels.

You start staying later into the night. Thor walks you home when you stay too late, because he has no room for you in his shack. Not really.

It’s comforting to know that, through it all, he’s still a gentleman. His mother would be proud.

But one night, after he’s sent his friends home for the night, he sits on the floor of the living room and turns off the game. He puts on a movie, the one about the young girl lost in a foreign land after a tornado blows her house into another dimension. Just as the small people begin singing to her, he looks at you from over his shoulder as you come in from the kitchen.

“Would you mind braiding my hair?” he asks.

He washed yesterday. The strands are clean and long and begging to have fingers running through them.

You nod and smile, coming to kneel behind him. You notice a small container beside him; he takes the top off to reveal tons of tiny plastic hair ties.

He’d been planning on asking you to do this. You don’t know for how long, but that doesn’t matter.

Your smile grows, as does the warm feeling in your chest. A feeling which, after Thanos, you had thought you’d never feel again.

You section off thin strands on the left side of his head, gathering a few extra sections for the first few crosses. His hair is long enough that, when the braid is complete, it reaches to the center of the back of his head. You tie that one off, then do the same from the right side, fastening them together in the back in one braided tail.

You’ve missed this. Frigga had you do her hair all the time - she, much like her son, loved having her hair touched. She might never say so, as it wasn’t quite dignified for a Queen to be so frank.

Thor is not like that, though. He lets out sighs throughout, even a little groan once in a while. And when you finish the two braids, he gasps before reaching up to feel them for himself.

“I can do more,” you tell him, one hand on his shoulder.

He takes a second, then chuckles. “Only if you don’t mind.”

--

The first time you stay over, it’s by accident.

You’re used to watching Miek and Korg go home before you now, so you settle on the couch and pull one of Thor’s many blankets around your shoulders as he finds a program on television to watch.

Instead of sitting in his rocking chair, he joins you on the couch.

You feel brave enough to scoot closer to him. He looks down at you and smiles encouragingly. His arm goes across the blanket over your shoulders, holding you to his side as if you’ve known one another intimately all your lives.

It’s getting cold outside again. You think that, perhaps, he’s being nice and helping you keep warm.

But you’ve watched a few movies the humans call RomComs. You know this move. If he says anything about the weather, it’s just a cover. You know Thor, and you know that, if he didn’t want to be holding you like this, he wouldn’t be.

He doesn’t say anything for a while. He seems content, for once. You definitely know the feeling. Between his warmth and the comedy he’s put on, you feel...right at home.

You’re so comfortable that you fall asleep right there, tucked up against Thor’s side. He doesn’t wake you to take you home; when he’s ready to head to bed, he gently maneuvers so you lay out across the couch, then he finds three more blankets to place over you.

--

The Valkyrie drags Thor into the nearest town a few times a year. You start going with them the closer to Thor you get. You barely even spare a thought for his wanting you to be there with him.

The situation is complicated, you admit, and only getting more so as time goes on.

The fact that he asked you to come along to town, and then spent most of the day holding your hand and showing you places he likes and foods he loves… It makes you so, so happy. To see him happy, enjoying this new life, really (maybe) understanding that, though the reasons for building New Asgard aren’t the happiest, everyone’s been given a second chance at life.

Those things make your job complicated, at least in title. But when Thor smiles at you, you easily forget all about anything that isn’t directly related to him.

Even the Valkyrie, who watches the two of you closely all day.

Thor steps into a butcher’s shop at the end of the day. You and the Valkyrie stay by the truck she drives now. She puts her hands in her jacket pockets and raises her brows.

“I see you’ve gotten close to the King,” she says. Her tone isn’t accusatory or jealous, you note, but...protective is a good word. Curious is another.

You feel your face heat. “I care very much for him,” you tell her, only realizing after that you’ve said much more than you meant to. Not that you don’t feel as many things as that response leads one to think - you do - just that… It’s really the first time you’ve mentioned, to anyone, that you hold Thor very close to your heart.

She studies you for a moment, but eventually, her mouth turns up into a small smirk. “He seems happy. You do, too.”

You can’t stop smiling, even as your eyes divert to your feet.

“Hey,” she says, nudging you with one of her elbows. “Own it. Let him know. Clearly, it’s already working.”

“Working?” you ask, looking up again.

She nods. “It was time someone around us got to be happy. Really happy. Keep it up.”

--

When warmer weather settles in, Thor decides to rent a boat. He takes you and the Valkyrie into town so you can buy what the humans call “bathing suits,” which turn out to be tiny pieces of fabric that cover only extremities, meant for swimming rather than bathing. The name confuses you, but the Valkyrie helps you pick something out before it’s time to head back to New Asgard.

You make sandwiches. The Valkyrie brings booze. Good stuff, she says. Thor reads up on how to operate a motorboat.

And then, at midday, the three of you board the small speedboat and head out into the ocean. You’ve picked one of the sunniest days of the year, so the Valkyrie rubs a lotion into your skin that’s supposed to protect you from the sun’s rays.

You question whether or not it’s actually a potion, but she insists it’s not. “No magical properties whatsoever,” she says. “Just science.”

Earth rules are bizarre, but you just accept it and offer to help Thor out with the lotion, too. He hesitates, but eventually nods and removes his shirt.

For the first time in a long time, you’re reminded that he’s not as he used to be. That his soft body, the belly he carries in front of him now, it’s all new to him.

All you do about it is cock your head to one side and gesture for him to turn around. And when he does, you simply squeeze out a handful of the cool lotion and spread it across his shoulders, down his back, and along his arms. He laughs and jumps a bit when your fingers ghost over his hips, and you bite your lip at how absolutely adorable he is.

You wipe your hands on a towel to remove excess lotion before Thor sits beside you and asks, “Would you mind braiding my hair?”

The Valkyrie watches you closely. She sips on a bottle of beer as you tell thor, “Not at all.”

And then you part his hair down the center, then French braid one section, and then the other. Despite the healthy layer of oil lining his hair, which makes the strands stay in place better, stubborn little strands fall out around his face.

His smile is unbelievably bright. Genuine. It makes you beam right back at him until the Valkyrie jokingly scoffs and teases, “You two are disgusting.”

She finishes off her beer, puts the glass bottle in a garbage bag you’ve brought along - one for recycling and one for actual garbage - then quickly steps up onto the side of the boat and dives into the water.

Thor laughs at her.

For just a second, you remember everything behind you and wonder how you can celebrate when everything else seems so bleak.

But then Thor laughs louder at something you’ve missed - the Valkyrie spitting out salt water as she resurfaces - and you remember. Just being alive is reason enough to celebrate. Being here, with Thor, is enough.

You reach forward and kiss his cheek boldly, then only hesitate a second to watch for his reaction. His laughter dies, and he looks rather surprised, but the light in his eyes stays lit. You smile at him, then turn and launch yourself into the water, too.

--

A few nights later, you clear the dishes from the dinner table once the two of you are done talking over the food that’s chilled. You’ve sat for so long, just eating and talking, that your back and legs hurt a little, but you wouldn’t change a thing.

You turn the sink on to wash the dishes, but his huge arms come around you and take the plate from your hands before you can even get the sponge soapy. “You already do so much for me, (Y/N),” he says. “I’ll get this.”

And then he kisses your cheek, just like you’d done on the boat. His beard tickles your neck, so you can’t help but laugh and try to pull away from him, but you’re trapped between his arms. He just laughs with you, then lifts one arm to let you out so he can actually get the cleaning done.

Afterwards, he joins you in the living room on the couch. You’ve turned on the local news, even though neither of you tend to watch the news. Sometimes there are segments about the Avengers, and you know they upset Thor, so you avoid them.

And neither of you prefer watching segments about orphans left behind by the Snap. Or, really, anything having to do with the Snap at all.

But tonight, neither of you even notice the television. You see it, sure, but you’re tucked up against Thor and you feel so comfortable and at home that whatever the news anchor is saying doesn’t matter.

“Can I ask you something?” Thor pipes out of nowhere.

“You just did,” you tease, but then he pokes your side and you flinch. You turn on your side and throw an arm across him, and for a second, he goes stock still beneath you. But then you tell him, “But go on,” and he relaxes.

He clears his throat before asking, “Why did you kiss me the other day?”

That, you had not been expecting.

But like you do with everything, you give him honesty in this. “I was just...grateful to see you happy.” You tilt your head back to look up at him, your hand across him coming up to his jaw. He lets you touch him there, run your fingers along the beard he hasn’t been bothered to trim. You like it like this, actually. “Why did you kiss me tonight?” you ask him.

He’s not nervous or guarded at your retort. His eyes crinkle with his smile, just the way you’ve come to adore.

“I’m just grateful to have someone reminding me that I’m not defined by my failure.”

There’s a palpable shift between you. The next step you take, whatever it is, puts you on one path or another, but you won’t be able to back track if you make the wrong decision.

It’s pretty clear which path you decide to take. If you cared to, you might wonder how long you’ve known you’d go down this way.

Your hand moves up into the hair at the base of his neck. His skin is warmest there, and he ignites in gooseflesh at your touch. One of his arms cradles you, pulls you in, as you bring his face down toward yours.

This time, neither of you worry about cheeks. His lips find yours so easily. He tastes like dinner - garlic and paprika, more than anything else - but you must, too. His kiss is so comforting, so...utterly right that you press in even more until there isn’t any room left between you.

--

Every night gets a little more intimate. Every day, you wait patiently for Korg and Miek to leave before tucking yourself under Thor’s arm, snuggling up against him, letting him hold you and touch you like he lets you do for him.

You still don’t know why you get to have this happiness when more than half of Asgard is gone. When the unspeakable has happened to the entire Universe.

But you have the happiness you didn’t know you’d been craving since….well, before Ragnarok. Thor has something to make him feel worthy again, and it’s you.

He says as much, at least once a week. It’s sappy and maybe a little dramatic, but if it’s how he’s feeling, you let him feel it. At least he’s letting emotion and life in again. At least he’s not wasting away anymore.

--

The second anniversary of your “time together” (as you’ve been referring to it) comes quickly. This time, you and Thor cook together. You play soft music and flirt over the meal you’ve prepared, then split the dishes and skip television.

It’s the first time you’ve been in his bedroom. There are a few articles of clothing strewn haphazardly about, but overall, it’s a simple room and rather clean. No pictures, no private television. Just a bed, a closet, a dresser, and Thor.

When he places you back on his mattress, a puff of detergent-scented air wafts up at you. He must’ve cleaned his sheets recently, you think. It’s a nice thought.

You scoot yourself back on the bed and take your t-shirt off, dropping it off the side of the bed and onto the floor. Thor stares at you, unmoving for a moment. You both knew things were coming to this - another step in your relationship - and somehow, he seems unprepared.

Or just nervous.

He gets that way sometimes, like right after dinner, when you snuggle up to him and touch his belly. He’s not entirely proud of how he looks, despite you never having said anything to make him think you didn’t like him just as he was.

You unbutton your pants and slip them off, letting them fall where your shirt’s gone. Thor stops breathing. He hasn’t even stood up from where he’d been before, hovering over your body. You sneak back below him, sitting up this time, and slide your lips against his.

“I want you, Thor,” you tell him in a whisper, pushing on the hood of his sweater.

That, he allows you to pull off. His tongue laves at your bottom lip until your fingers find the hem of his shirt. Then he’s frozen again.

You pull back and ask, “Do you want to?”

Fresh peppermint wafts over you as he sighs. You try to figure out when he had time to chew on a mint, but it’s not important. What is is the small, almost saddened smile he gives you.

“I do,” he says. “I really, really do. It’s just…”

He can’t meet your eyes. His shut, and he lets his head hang. You’re close enough that his forehead collides with your shoulder, and you can’t help but chuckle and run a hand through his hair.

“I’m not what I once was,” he whispers, his beard dragging across your collarbone.

“That’s okay,” you whisper back, gently scratching along his scalp the way you know he likes. “You’re exactly how I like you, no matter what.”

Another heavy breath blows across your skin. You shiver and smile and tilt your head down until your lips almost reach his ear. “I have seen you without your shirt on before, you know,” you tease him.

It has the effect you wish; he laughs and shakes his head, then moves back enough to look at you again. His brow is creased as he nods. “You’re right,” he says. “I’m being ridiculous.”

You don’t stop smiling, but you do shake your head. “No, I think you’re being perfectly rational. I’m just reminding you that you’re not your failures, and that I wouldn’t be right where I am if I didn’t want to be.” You shrug, then slowly lower yourself so you lay back on the bed again. With your hand still in his hair, you tug gently and bring him down with you.

Thor is soft and warm and so comfortable. You’re sure you’d have liked him like he used to be, but he’s not like that anymore. You like him just as much now.

Because, though now’s not the time to say so, you don’t just like him for his looks. You like that he has never treated you as anything other than a person. Then a friend and now...more. You like that his presence is enough to remind you that you deserve happiness - that you both deserve happiness, despite everything.

“You’re amazing, (Y/N),” he sighs against your lips.

“Oh, don’t I know it,” you tease. “I’ve got to be some kind of awesome to have been looking after you all this time.” You wiggle your eyebrows at him, just to make sure he knows you’re absolutely joking.

His fingers pinching your sides confirm it. His lips swallow your whining laughter, and before long, you resume the attempt to remove his shirt. This time, he lets it happen - slowly. He’s unwilling to remove his lips from yours, but the second you get the chance as he breaks away for breath, you throw his shirt off the end of the bed.

“You are worthy, Thor. Worthy and wonderful,” you tell him as you trace your nails down his arms and back.

He pauses again, but this time, his eyes positively shine. His kisses that follow are electric, igniting little steps of a path down your body while his hands drag what’s left of your clothing off. His teeth drag along your skin, lips and tongue soothing each little bite he leaves as he explores.

Being caressed like this by a King, despite having thought of him as anything else in the last almost two years, is exquisite. Maybe Thor isn’t who he once was - is anyone? - but he certainly knows what he’s doing.

Kisses litter your thighs as he lifts one leg to brace it over his shoulder, then he does the same with the other. You’d swear the one look he gives you before diving in is full of lightning; just the thought spreads heat all through your body.

One, two, three little licks. One long swipe, from the bottom up. A long, deep groan at your taste before settles and circles your clit. Hands massage your bum, tongue laps at your wetness. His beard tickles and scratches and it all feels simply divine. Your hand in his hair tightens into a fist; he winces, but simply reaches up and pulls your fingers away to hold onto them with his own.

You push against him, want him deeper, need more of him. Pressure’s already building in your chest and lower abdomen. You call his name in rushed, haphazard whispers, chanting for him partially because you can’t think to do anything else, partially because he’s earned the praise.

He slips one finger inside of you, smirks against your core, then pushes in a second. The digits are thick and long, reaching places that haven’t been touched in years. Disaster after disaster prevented this; Thor must feel the same, because suddenly, he’s taking his time. He pumps his fingers, but slowly. Only adds a third when he is positive it’ll fit comfortably - you moan so loudly he laughs.

All you can respond with is, “Fuck me,” and that makes him laugh harder.

“Already on it,” he taunts, but he can’t get anything else out when you use your free hand to shove him back down. One last laugh before he gets back to work.

He’s deeper inside of you than anything you’ve felt before. Just his fingers - he reaches your spot easily, presses into it while his tongue speeds its circles around your clit. You bring his hand in yours up to your breasts for him to play; the pebbled buds there are so tense they ache. Thor twists and pinches, and little pangs of pleasure pulsate all the way down your body to your core.

Words won’t come anymore. Just moans and groans, heavy sighs as the pressure peaks and your back arches off the bed. Your inner walls clench tight around his fingers, then release waves of intense bliss throughout your whole body. Every limb shakes, your eyes shut tight, your thighs trap his head against your heat - Thor takes it all in stride.

He strokes you through your climax, slowing as you do, reading your body nearly as well as you do. He only pulls back when you’ve stilled, though your breathing is still labored.

You don’t notice the sting his beard has left until after he’s started dragging kisses up your body again. It all feels...indescribable. You’re floating, and you refuse to come down from your perch. You want Thor to join you.

When you’ve got enough control over your breathing to speak again, you manage to get out a short, “Turn over.”

Thor stops, stares at you for a moment, then does as you’ve said. He lays out on his back, and you turn to straddle his hips.

His beard shines with your release. His eyes sparkle with something else, but something close. You haven’t seen him like this, maybe ever. Your whole body heats up knowing only you have something to do with that look of euphoria on his face.

You lean forward and crash your lips against his. The taste of you on his tongue exhilarates you, floods heat directly to your core. Without moving you, he reaches forward to remove his jeans and briefs, and then you’re truly, possibly for the first time, on equal footing.

His hands on your hips help guide you over him. You reach for his cock, already hard and thick and leaking, and coat it in your wetness. Open mouth against open mouth - both caught as you gasp while he pushes into you. In an unspoken agreement, you go slowly until you’re fully seated on him.

Your eyes roll back at how deep he is. Further than his fingers reached; further than anyone you’ve had before. He gives you time to adjust around him while you throw your arms around his shoulders and cling to him.

“You okay?” he asks, one hand caressing your breasts, the other massaging your back.

After a moment, you nod. Smile. Tell him, “I’ve never been better.”

He smiles at that. Then asks, “Ready?”

Another moment, another nod. His lips close around yours again, and his hands both return to your hips. You push up, and he helps. In tandem, you’re nearly lifted off of him before you come back down. Your walls drag over every inch of him, his lips cover every inch of your skin he can reach. Slowly, speed builds, as does the familiar, glorious pressure within you.

Your hands explore the gentle slopes and curves of his body, and for once, he doesn’t pull away or freeze. You exalt him, and he brings you to new heights with each thrust. You feel him shiver when your palm grazes a nipple, so you backtrack and play like he had with yours. The moans you earn in gratitude thrill you, take you higher, bring him closer.

He takes the lead, pumping madly up into you as he chases his bliss. You throw your head back and drop your free hand to your clit, yelling out whenever his teeth nip at your throat and shoulders. It’s all so much, and before long, you hear yourself whimpering, “I’m so close, my love.”

You’ve never called him that before. Neither of you seem to notice, though.

“Come with me,” he whispers back.

And somehow, his timing is just right. You feel him tense below you, and as if on command, your walls grip his cock in a vice. One or both of you curse - you’ve lost the ability to decipher who’s saying what - as you rock against one another, relenting to the pleasure that takes you both.

His warmth engulfs you as you both calm. You’re so grateful for that constant.

After a while, he turns you over and slowly, gently releases himself from you. You can feel yourself smile, but your eyes begin to shut. You think he might be slipping off the bed, but can’t do anything about it.

What feels like an eternity later, a cool, damp cloth is pressed to your skin in little squares and increments. Warm lips go back and forth across your forehead. Thor asks various questions - “Do you feel okay?” “Did I tire you out?” “What did you mean by that nickname?” - and at first, you grunt positive responses because that’s all you can manage.

The last one forces you to breathe deeper, to turn toward him and open your eyes again. You smile up at him, wipe hair away from his face, and tell him, “Exactly what you think.”

--

It rains for weeks at a time over the summer. It’s almost funny how light storms don’t make him happy. You watch him sit in the rocker by the window, gazing out to sea with few words on his tongue.

On days like those, when he has nothing to say because everything in his head is getting the best of him, you try one thing: you make him breakfast. If he eats most or all of the food you’ve brought, then you invite yourself to sit in his lap and watch the water with him.

If he doesn’t touch it, you clear the plate, ask him if there’s anything you can do for him, and ultimately sigh when he says there isn’t. It’s not that you’re disappointed, and you hope he knows that. It’s just that you wish there was something you could do.

On days like that, there isn’t a single thing you wouldn’t give to make him smile. You’ve tried movies, music, dancing, crafting… The only thing that satisfies him is beer after beer, despite never getting drunk off of them. You can’t understand how he drinks it for the taste, but he insists that’s why he likes it.

So you do chores on those days. Laundry gets done in the kitchen, and cleaning is pursued throughout the shack. You spend the day pretending not to hover over him, and he spends it lost in memories he’s too tired to share.

You make a smaller dinner on those days. He picks at the food, eating little bits here and there. He thanks you, at least, and holds your hand when you go to clear the table.

“I’m sorry I’m not being...myself today,” he says, nearly every time without fail.

Today, you put the plates you’re carrying back on the table and kneel in front of him, never letting go of his hand in yours. “You don’t have to apologize for this,” you tell him. “Not to me.” You bring his hand to your lips and kiss his center knuckle.

His voice is merely a whisper when he says, “It’s just… I know it hurts you.”

You shake your head. “Your feelings don’t hurt me. I wish I could keep you from being so sad, of course, but I won’t deny you that right.” With a squeeze to his hand, you push yourself up and bring your lips to his forehead. “You, more than any of us, deserve to feel. So feel.”

He shakes a bit, but his free arm wraps around you and pulls you close. You hold his head to your stomach, just let him lean against you like that. This moment isn’t about you, and you know that, but you don’t keep yourself from thinking that it is so nice to be wanted and needed like this. If this is the only thing you can do for Thor when he feels down, then so be it.

It’s enough.

--

He finally tells you about the ghosts three years in.

“At first, it was just Loki. And he’s come back from the dead before, so I followed him...out to the edge of the forest.” His eyes go to the window at the back of the kitchen where, sure enough, you can see the exact spot he stands in by the trees. “I thought it was another one of his tricks, but he never spoke, never came near. Never told me why he was being so...cruel as to tease me like that.”

You wrap your hand around his. He only acknowledges with a squeeze of his fingers over yours.

“My mother came soon after. But, just like Loki, she never approached. That was when I knew they weren’t real. Or, at least, they weren’t really here.”

“Her magic was always great,” you tell him, your thumb stroking across his knuckles. You nod at one another, as you both seem to remember parts of the past. It’s funny, you think, how close you’d been all the time. So close, and so far.

And now you’re closer to him than you’ve ever been to anyone.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if some of their magic still exists in the universe,” you tell him softly.

He tries - oh does he try - to smile at you then. But it doesn’t quite reach.

You want him to know it’s okay, so you let him go just to get up from your seat and put yourself in his lap. You pull his head to your shoulder, run your fingers through his hair that needs to be washed soon. You breathe him in - the faintest hint of ozone fills your senses - and you settle there because you just know that somehow, everything will be okay.

Eventually.

One day, the ghosts of the past will leave Thor be.

--

The fifth year is far from the best.

There are good days, of course. Good weeks, whole months were Thor is happy and thriving. Those are the times when you stay longer, whole days in a row before ever going back to your own home. You’ve never had a house to yourself before, and since neither of you are in a hurry to change the living situations you’re in, you keep your home even if you spend more time in Thor’s.

But then, for what feels like longer stretches, he grows quiet again. He yells at people over the game Korg and Miek play. He talks to the ghosts at the edge of the forest now, and you wonder if there’s anything you can do to get them to leave him alone. Short of a seance, you don’t think there is.

One day, one of his darker streaks, a truck comes across the only bridge into New Asgard. From the shack, you can see the Hulk in the bed of the truck. He seems to be talking to someone, but from your vantage point, you see no other body. It’s odd to see someone so large, someone who’d used brute strength to attempt to save the old Asgard, perched so in the bed of a truck.

When the truck comes around, there’s a small rodent sitting beside the huge green body. You watch as the Valkyrie greets them like old friends. Well, you think, she is old friends with the Hulk.

She brings them up to the shack while you’re folding laundry. You listen in, not wanting to move, not wanting to scare off the visitors or something else that’s just as irrational.

The Hulk - though his voice is not the same, and his speech pattern is eloquent in a way it wasn’t the last time you’d seen him - tells Thor that the Avengers may have a way to reverse all that’s been done since the Snap. Since Ragnarok, even.

Your eyes widen. Your heart quickens.

A selfish side of yourself you haven’t indulged or shown in some time rears its ugly head.

You don’t want Thor to go back.

You love him just the way he is. He loves you, even when he can’t bring himself to smile. Something in his eyes still shines for you, even on those days. Going back means losing all of that, losing the affection and adoration you’ve both desperately earned and craved since your homeworld was blown to smithereens by a fire demon. The fire demon.

But you are not a selfish person. Your love for Thor has never been selfish, and his love for you has never been either.

So when he comes to you, not five minutes later, and takes your hands before he kneels on the hard kitchen floor in front of you, you know you won’t deny him this chance to make things right.

He smells of beer and soap - not the soap you like, just the hand soap he keeps by his sink. He looks you in the eye for the first time all day and says, “I have to go. If there’s even the slightest chance of saving them, I have to take it.”

It takes you a second, because you can feel your heart breaking, but you nod. In some way, you think you’ve known something like this would happen all along. The Avengers weren’t a team of people that rested when the world had lost all its hope. Thor wasn’t that person, for sure, and if he worked with and trusted the rest of that team, you knew they all had to operate similarly.

The breath you let out is shaky at best. You bring your forehead down to Thor’s, kiss his nose as lightly as you can, and shut your eyes.

“Come back to me. That’s all I ask.”

You can feel him shiver as your lips graze over his.

“I will. I promise.”

--

He’s gone for two weeks. You keep his shack clean. You pick up after Korg and Miek and enjoy their company because all you have left is the two of them and the Valkyrie.

She disappears the evening before Thor returns, in full regalia. With both of them gone, you can’t sleep. You pace the living room, fighting with yourself about whether or not to tune into a news channel.

Ultimately, you don’t do it.

The sun comes up. You curled into Thor’s rocker hours ago, and have since somehow nodded off - not fully asleep, but not aware of your surroundings anymore.

The front door opens. You rub your eyes and groan.

Thor calls your name.

You sit up immediately, look over the back of the chair, and feel yourself breathe deeply. There he is - in his scaled armor, his huge axe named Stormbreaker aloft in one hand. He places it against the far wall of the living room gently, then comes over to you.

For the second time, he kneels at your side. Takes your hand and smiles up at you.

You can hear revelry in the town below the hill. Music blasts, people cheer, you even think fireworks go off.

“I told you I’d come back,” he says, kissing the knuckles of your left hand. He pushes himself up until you’re face-to-face, and then he looks out past you, out the window next to you. “And now, so are they,” he says with a nod.

When you look, your breath is stolen right out of your lungs.

Because there, in the center of New Asgard, is...everyone.

[cozycryptidcorner]

The Unlikely Alliance, Chapter 2

Hey, everyone! A donor who wishes to remain anonymous has paid for a continuation of Sally and Ronan’s story! Please enjoy. I’d like to thank both the original commissioner and the anonymous donor for  their support!

You can read the first chapter here, if you haven’t already!

The watercolor wash of yellow and orange begins to dry as Sally starts mixing the perfect shade for the bright red foliage of the surrounding trees, the large window on the side of the living room giving her the perfect view without her having to go outside in the cold. Three mugs sprawl out in front of her, one for cleaning the paintbrush off, one for untainted mixing water, and one for her tea that she might have accidentally placed her brush in once or twice. Gently blowing on the first layer of paint to get it to dry quicker, Sally glances up at the old clock, mentally calculating how long Ronan has gone. About… two hours at this point.

She can’t look at her phone to call or text him; it’s been turned off and placed in the safe that Ronan has in the basement. There is a single, ancient-looking landline with Ronan’s phone number scribbled on a notecard to the side, and when Sally had lifted the receiver, she heard the telltale hum of the connection. Even though she had debated calling him, she didn’t want to come off as clingy. Hanging out by yourself in a cabin that’s so far away from civilization with only a single ratty old dirt road to get to and from it can give anyone an extra dose of nervousness, so it’s not like she’s irrational with wanting company. While she could just hang out in the room Ronan had presented as hers earlier in the day, with the gorgeous cross-stitch piece hanging in a frame on the wall, she feels strange sitting on the bed as if she’s invading someone else’s space.

Instead of spiraling down with her insecurities and fears, though, she begins to paint a beautiful maple tree. A part of her wishes she could have her phone to play some of the music she wants to hear, but at least there’s a little portable radio that she has tuned to a station with a decent array of music. The only downside is, of course, the advertisements that she can’t just skip after five seconds or pay for premium access, leaving her to suffer through it. By the time Ronan gets back, she’s already shouting alongside the ’BIG MAC is BAC’ commercial with great success.

“I leave you for what, a few hours, and you’ve already been brainwashed by corporate propaganda.”

She hadn’t heard him come in since the radio had been turned up to the maximum volume to try and drown out her anxiety. In fact, Sally has been so wound up that she is one hundred percent prepared to stab him in the eye with the back of her paintbrush, knuckles white against the wooden handle as she spins around. At the sight of him, hands full of grocery bags in the posture of someone who will only make one trip from the car to the fridge even if it kills him, she lets out a sigh of relief, setting the makeshift weapon back down on the kitchen table. Maybe she should turn down the radio, even if it’s just a little bit.

Ronan sets the reusable (reusable!) bags down on the counter, the plastic-like material crinkling slightly as he does so. As he unloads the different groceries down- bread, eggs, bacon, and so on- he’s already separating some of the items away from the others, putting almost everything away except a select few. Within moments, he’s got a cast iron skillet on the old gas stove, lighting a match to ignite one of the burners. Oil, then vegetables, stirred with a wooden spoon, the smell almost becoming too much for Sally’s empty stomach to sit quietly. She tries to distract herself from the hunger by clearing away her art supplies out from the center of the table, setting everything carefully to the side.

After just a moment of mixing on heat, he adds eggs, waiting just a moment before lifting the panhandle with a cloth, shaking it back and forth for a moment, flipping the omelet with nothing more than the help of physics. Sally almost bursts into laughter, but she’s too shocked to do anything more than stare as it finishes cooking. Ronan slides the food onto a plate he had quickly rinsed and dried, placing it just in front of her as if he’s a professional chef. After the moment of shock wears off, Sally picks up the fork and takes a bite, and, okay, she won’t lie. She was expected it not to taste anywhere near as good as it does.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you can cook?” She asks, incredulously, as she shovels an unladylike amount of food into her mouth. “I wouldn’t have ordered all the takeout if I had known!”

“You never asked.” Ronan’s mouth curves in a slight smirk. “And besides, I never turn down free food. Or the opportunity to not work as hard.”

Sally lets out a puff of exacerbated breath because of course, but doesn’t feel the need to complain as she eats the rest of the food. Of course, she volunteers to do the dishes, might as well offer up some productivity, so while she starts filling the sink with sudsy water, she watches Ronan’s movements like a hawk. There’s something about the awkwardness of invading someone’s house that feels like it’s increased by threefold because… well, it’s Ronan, and she doesn’t know anything about it. The fact that she is in his cabin with a hypothetical window into his life, it feels strange.

Once the dishes are done, Sally realized how little there is to do. Yes, she can finish this painting today, and another one tomorrow, and another one after that. But with the limited amount of things to use as subject pieces, ohhhhh noooo, she’s going to get so restless. Pulling all her supplies back from the corner of the table and spreading everything out again, she tries to distract herself with the inevitability of cabin fever as she continues painting each and every leaf that she can see. The few hours before dinner fly by quickly, as they tend to do when she’s engrossed in her work, and Ronan is soon back in the kitchen, working on whatever recipe he has up his sleeve.

“Question,” Sally starts as Ronan sits across from her, “and feel free to shut me down if you think I’m acting xenophobic, I’ll knock it off. I know that werewolves feel the urge to change during the full moon, but I don’t think you’ve disappeared in the couple of months you’ve been with me.” Inwardly, she cringes at her choice of words. Sounds almost like they’re a couple.

Ronan cocks his head to the side slightly, eyes flickering in thought. “Well, you know how people who are violently allergic to things have epipens, right?” At her nod, he continues, reaching into his pocket and pulling out something about the size of a thick pencil. “Werewolves have something similar. If we feel the need to turn, we’ll slam this into our thigh, and that should stave off anything for a good couple of hours, which normally is enough time to get away from whatever the trigger is.”

Oh, it suddenly makes sense now. “That’s convenient,” she says, unable to think of any other words to describe having to stab yourself whenever you felt on the edge of a frenzy. Good isn’t quite the term she is looking for since this isn’t really a situation that could be construed as positive.

Ronan shrugs as though it’s nothing. “It’s easier than being locked up in the slum camps.”

Sally bites down her tongue and doesn’t say anything else. Once a were ends up in the slum camps, whether it was for petty crime or a fully fledged change in a populated area, it is very, very difficult for them to get back out. Even if they do, they need to have a human sponsor, an upcoming job with on the book wages, and those are the only two qualifications that she, a person who has lived a somewhat sheltered life, knows about. She has little doubt that there are so much more hoops those poor people have to jump through simply to be able to walk around unchained again.

Silently, she pokes at the food on her plate, scrambling for a way to turn this conversation somewhat positive, but the first thing that pops into her head is, “I’m glad that you’re the one protecting me.”

There is a pause, during which she is mentally kicking herself before Ronan responds. “This is the best job I could ask for given the circumstances.”

Which isn’t really an affirmation of any kind, more of a double-edged sword. They finished their food in silence, and Sally immediately started clearing the table. There’s no dishwasher, which she is only momentarily grateful for since that’s thirty minutes she doesn’t have to think about how she should be productive. Instead of hanging out in the living area with Ronan as he begins to clean and oil a wickedly sharp looking hunting knife, Sally finally decides to retreat to the room she’ll be staying in.

While it might not even be close to the most luxurious place she has ever been to, it most definitely is the homiest. And, as Sally thinks about it, homey is something she favors much more than whatever money can buy. Home is someplace that someone works to get, their emotions bleed through the surface, their love and hard work pouring into every crevice of the log walls and wooden floor. At the same time, Sally feels almost like she shouldn’t be there, that she is intruding on someone else’s life, and that she doesn’t deserve to catch glimpses of what Ronan is like outside of his job.

In any case, she lays down, the sheets stiff from years of unuse, pillow so saggy beneath her neck that she has to fold it in half for any kind of support. While the curtains have been drawn shut from whenever Ronan was last here, Sally eyes them suspiciously, as though someone might be on the other side, biding their time. With the tossing and turning she does, it’s a miracle she can even get a wink of sleep in the night, her heart thumping at any kind of creak the house sounds as it settles. That’s the thing about different buildings, they make unique noises in the night. It’s funny how little it took for Sally to forget that just from living a single year in an apartment.

Just as she had predicted; the next days of monotony begin to drive her mad. Sally tries her best to stay busy, she does, but she can only do so much homework without her professor’s instructions before she begins to lose it. She’s painted almost every interesting position out of the windows, and then gathered up some random objects from the cabin and tried making a still life. That painting only partially developed before she got bored of the subject material and abandoned it, still taped to a random piece of wood board she found for stability. Ronan walks with her outside, but only in short, quick bursts, not nearly enough to make Sally feel less isolated from the rest of the world.

Even though Sally would rather very much prefer that Ronan doesn’t leave her side, he still has to go out and buy food, without her. She watches him leave in another motorcycle he had stashed away in the adjacent shed (apparently he has more than just one), since taking her car might catch the attention from the wrong person. The moment he leaves from view, she begins to feel nervous once more, and even while she tries to rationalize it, you really can’t logic anxiety away.

Before she has a chance to spiral, the door knocks.

Her mouth goes dry.

Ronan always just strolls through the door like he owns the place, because, you know, so someone knocking would mean that this is someone else; theoretically, she thinks, trying to calm herself. Ronan might have just forgotten his keys, the ones he used to… leave… on the motorcycle. There’s a hunting knife that hangs on the wall like some antique trophy, so Sally stands on the tips of her toes to snag it before approaching the door. Biting her lower lip from nervousness, her fingers close around the cold doorknob as she tries calming her breath. Then, slowly, she opens it.

It’s a little girl, only about as tall as her waist, clothes filthy, puffy hair full of dirt, leaves, and twigs. The side of her quivering mouth is dripping with blood, her faded jeans ripped around her left knee. The eyes, though, are what catch Sally’s attention the most; bright, ruby-red, the color vivid enough to feel like it glows against her dull, earthy skin. In a small, mousy voice, she asks, “are you Ronan?”

“I- um, Ronan isn’t here right now, can I help you with anything?”

Wrong thing to say, apparently, because the little girl sticks out her lower lip, tears filling her eyes, and begins to bawl as if Sally had just straight slapped her instead.

Immediately panicking, she bends over, trying to get to the little child’s level, and begins to let out a hasty bit of comfort. “It’s- it’s alright. Ronan should be back any minute, really, he just went out to get food.” She realizes that she still has a machete the size of her forearm in hand, and not only is it probably terrifying the kid, but it’s also too late to do anything about it. Camly, robotically, she places it up on the coat hanger shelf that sits on the wall, directly to the side of the door while the girl goes hysterical.

Sally has never really needed to deal with a screaming child, and as the girl’s breath comes out in uneven gasps and chokes, tears clearing away the dirt from her cheeks and chin, she just sort of stands there, watching for a moment in complete befuddlement. Without any other idea of what to do, Sally ushers her in, setting the girl on one of the couches while she searches for something to wipe the grime with, going through the drawers frantically as she temporarily forgets where anything is with the impending stress. Finally, Sally is victorious, lifting up a small washcloth before running it under warm water from the tap.

The little girl doesn’t protest as Sally begins to gently scrub the mud off her face, her sobs slowing down to quiet, miserable hiccups as she gradually gets cleaner. Now, Sally doesn’t exactly have anything that could possibly fit this girl’s skinny, tiny frame, but there is no way she is going to let this poor creature stay in those dirty clothes a minute longer. One of her painting shirts should do the trick, and since it exists merely for the express purpose of getting dirty, Sally doesn’t mind its fate too terribly. Sally helps the girl change after she locates the shirt, slipping the oversized thing over her dusty hair, the stick-like arms popping out of the sleeves after Sally reaches through the holes to help guide her hands.

Soon enough, Sally has a much calmer child sitting at the table, pouring glass after glass of water for her to drink as if the poor thing has gone days without. There are billions of questions circling inside Sally’s head, what is a child doing out in the forest, why does she look like she just clawed her way out of hell, and how exactly is Ronan involved with this, but she starts with something small, something easily given up. “My name is Sally, what’s yours?”

The girl looks up at her, like a deer in headlights.

Sally feels almost guilty, the poor thing looks like she’s ready to be punched in the gut at any moment. “It’s alright if you don’t want to tell me, that’s you’re choice to make.”

It takes only a moment of silence. Quietly, as though the girl fears some kind of reprimand, she speaks. “Bernadette.”

Sally tries not to revel too hard at this step in the right direction. “Bernadette? That’s your name?” At the girl’s nod, Sally tries offering some encouragement for the show of trust. “That’s such a beautiful name! Not quite as fancy and pretty as plain old Sally, huh?”

Bernadette’s mouth twitches upward in a way that reminds Sally of Ronan, the hesitancy for showing any positive emotion was so on par that she gets an overwhelming sense of deja vu. Just as she’s about to start wheedling the story of why a kid that can’t be more than eight years old is out and about in the deep wilderness, more knocking comes from the door. It’s not like the girl’s knocking, which had been quiet and timid, but loud, demanding. Bernadette’s eyes glance up to drawn curtains as if they would suddenly disappear to reveal her worst nightmare lurking on the porch.

As Sally approaches the door, she feels her heart lurching in her stomach as she hears thick, dull sounding footsteps just outside on the porch. If this were a few months ago, Sally would automatically assume it’s Ronan, clomping on the wooden porch and waiting to be let in. But something is off about the rhythm of the steps, the sound of the boots, ticks and shows that someone would only catch if they are just shy of being intimately familiar with a person.

Carefully, she retrieves the machete back from the top of the coat rack, gripping it so tightly that her knuckles turn white. There is no peephole to look through, so Sally just opens the door quickly in the hopes of throwing whoever it is off their game, giant knife hidden behind her back in a not so subtle manner. “Can I help you?”

The sight of this man makes her skin crawl.

For one, his smile is far too wide for her comfort. It reminds her of that one man her dad still does business with, one that watched her with eyes a little too hawk-like when she was younger, showering Sally with strange compliments that made both her and her dad uncomfortable. Second, while his uniform is of a police force, it isn’t exactly one that Sally is intimately familiar with, but she is confident that Ronan must be. CCU is embroidered on his uniform, just above the left pocket, and she knows that he isn’t here for any humans.

“Can I help you?” She asks, hoping her dull green eyes will help put him off.

“Pardon the intrusion, ma’am, but I’m here to do a scheduled checkup to the were resident listed in the lease.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Sally doesn’t know where Ronan is or when he’ll be back. “Um, I’m sorry, my bod- er, boyfriend, will be back from the grocery store shortly. Can you come back in a few hours?”

The officer waits for a beat, blinking his icy eyes only once. “I didn’t realize that Ronan had a girlfriend, nor one so… human, as you seem.”

Sally forces a smile and begins to shut the door. “I’ll let him know that you stopped by, nice meeting you!”

He sticks his foot in the threshold, stopping the door just as Sally thought it was all over. Calmly, she opens the door again, throwing up a poker face so quickly that even trained detectives don’t even notice.

“Will that be all?” She asks, her tone an unfriendly an echo from when she first opened the door.

“Mmm, we’ll see.” He digs through his pockets, retrieving a folded piece of paper. Unfolding it carefully with his pale hands, he flips it around and shows a picture of a little girl, hair in careful, precise braids. When the officer shoves it towards her, she takes it reluctantly, not wanting any part of this in the slightest, needing to play along only until he leaves. “Have you seen this girl? She’s been missing from her family, her poor mother is absolutely frantic.”

Even though she tries to only pretend to look over the picture with no real intention of memorizing it, she realizes that the sparkly red eyes look familiar. Too familiar. Something in her face must have given it away because the officer snatches the picture back victoriously.

“Where is she?” He asks, voice no longer holding up a facade of friendliness.

Lie. “Oh, her,” Sally waves her hand nonchalantly. “I don’t know. She came looking for money and scraps, so I sent her to the nearest poor house. Don’t know what a were kid was doing all the way out in the forest, but it can’t be anything good.”

Out in the distance, Sally can hear the steady putter of an oncoming motorcycle. She does her best to not show any shred of excitement as the officer’s face twitches, ever so slightly. “And where would that be?”

Sally offers a shrug. “I don’t know, aren’t there ones in every city? She’ll find it.”

Then, miracle of all miracles, Ronan pulls up. Sally can already see that his muscles are tense, ready to fight, but still cautious about having to go toe to toe with this man.

“Ah, Mr. Kazimir! How nice of you to join us. I was just chatting with your girlfriend!”

Ronan didn’t even give much of a reaction to the last bit, just as Sally had hoped. Two grocery bags in each hand, he walks over, calmly standing to the officer’s side. “Did you need anything, sir?”

“No, no, just doing a wellness check. You didn’t come in for your annual appointment, as promised, and haven’t answered any of your cell calls. The only reason you haven’t been arrested yet is that your boss has been vouching for you.”

Ronan looks exasperated, but he does his best to keep his cool. “That was yesterday, wasn’t it?”

The officer chuckles, giving Ronan a not-so-friendly pat on the shoulder. “Well, if I had a girl with a body like that, I might forget a few things here and there, too.”

Neither Sally nor Ronan laughs along.

“Is that all, sir?” Ronan asks, voice tense.

The officer sighs, “well, there is a kid on the run from the institution, but your girl says that she sent that runt away. Now I have to go look all over town, maybe even out in the next.” He looks at Sally, almost petrifying her with the murder in his eyes. “Next time,” he says, voice no longer holding a shred of faux friendliness, “just invite the child in and wait for me to show up, eh?”

“Sure,” Sally says, trying to keep it together.

Ronan waits until the officer gets into his sleek, fancy car, driving off with the roar of an engine before coming in. Sally steps away to the side as he does so, letting the machete hang limply by her leg as she closes the door, locking the deadbolt. For a moment, everything is completely silent, then Ronan turns towards her, eyes livid.

“You turned away a- a- child? What is wrong-”

“Will you shut up for a second?!” Sally surprises herself by her tone and how much his words hurt. “Do you honestly think I’m that- that malicious? That I’m stupid? Is that what you really believe about me?”

Ronan blinks, half shaking his head, and is about forming another sentence when Sally beats him to the punch.

“I thought you would know me better than that.”

One of the bedroom doors creeks open behind her, and by the look in Ronan’s eyes, Bernadette must have stepped out. Without another word, Sally stares him down as the little girl takes a step into the short hallway, the floor creaking against her slight weight.

“I was hiding,” Bernadette says, her voice timid and airy.

Sally immediately spins around, dropping the anger so Bernadette won’t have to witness the ugliness of it all. “And that was a very, very smart thing to do, honey. If that man had come in, I wouldn’t have been able to stop him.”

Bernadette nods, and actually smiles at her for the first time, showing off a gap where her front teeth should be. Without another word to Ronan, Sally takes the bags from his hands, then sets them on the kitchen counter to take stock of what they have to use for dinner. Bernadette is probably starving, after all, and Sally wants this little girl’s first meal to be a good one.

“Thay man is going to be back with a search warrant,” Ronan says, “once he realizes there is no sign of the girl out in town.”

“Then, I guess,” Sally pulls out a loaf of bread, “we should think about moving on, huh?”

“Running would look suspicious.”

“And staying for him to find her is a better alternative?”

Ronan closes his mouth tightly, knowing that she’s right. “Not only did that CCU guy see your face, he probably is going to figure out that there’s a hefty price on your head once he starts asking around. There’s no way I can transport you anywhere, anymore, at least nowhere with federal were regulators.”

Sally presses her hands against the counter, hoping the pressure against her palms will help steel her nerves. “Give me my cell phone, I’ll call in a favor.”

“Sally-”

“I said to give me my godda-” she lets the curse word sizzle out as he glances over to Bernadette, “- just get me my phone.”

Ronan stares at her, just for a second, but doesn’t utter another word of argument as he spins around, retreating back to the safe. As he does so, Sally taps her fingers against the fake granite, and asks Bernadette, “what are you feeling for dinner? Grilled cheese? Pasta?”

Her ruby eyes sparkle, if she were any hungrier, she might start drooling on the floor.

Well, Sally doesn’t want the kid to eat herself sick, so she can’t just slam down a feast of unprecedented carbs, no matter how much she wants to spoil her. “Why don’t we start with some grilled cheese and soup? It’s warm you right up.”

Ronan comes up, just in time for Sally to relay the dinner plan to him, handing her the phone.

Calmly, despite the butterflies ramming up and down in her stomach, she walks over to her room. After shutting and locking the door, she flops onto her bed, watching the cell phone’s screen light up as she turns it on for the first time in what feels like years. After typing in her password, her thumb hovers over the phone app for a minute, listening to the muted voices of Ronan and Bernadette on the other side of her door.

Breathing in and out, trying to get a hold of herself, she types in the phone number she’s had memorized by heart.

It only rings once.

“Sally?”

Deep breath. “Hey, dad. I need a favor.”

[boymeetsweevil]

For Science 5/7

Grouping: Reader x Nerd!JK 

Word Count: 17.5k haha wtf (NSFW)

Warnings/Themes: omg okay swearing, Boobies, graphic-ish Cunnilingus, endangement of Hoseok’s chin, Spit :/, Masturbation, mentions of porn haha, Making out, (Hoseok’s) male gaze??? Idiot!Kook, Jealous!Kook, Violence? (lmao it was very mild violence and mention of blood but not graphic), gratuitous use of soap-opera level drama

Summary: Jungkook asks you to let him watch you get off. For science.

A/N: I’m tagging  @m-icdrop , @jiminslye , @ephemeral-mindset, @sugarandpoppy, @monstar95, @sweetestkth, @limitlesxxsxx, @simplyfinessin, @park-geemin to let you know that this is here! If any of you would like to stop being tagged with each FS update, let me know. And if anyone would like to be added to the tag list, also let me know :)

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 6, part 7

Being a good friend, as you’re realizing now, is so terribly hard and you wish someone had told you earlier in life so you could make the informed choice of becoming a nun. Or maybe just a plain old hermit.

Either way, waking up in the middle of Yoori’s bedroom finds you feeling less rested than you would have liked. Probably because you dreamt that you had been transfigured into a dog by Hoseok wearing a witch’s costume and forced to be the family pet to Yoori and Jungkook’s 16 children. You end up waking with a jolt, still in Yoori’s bed and covered in cold sweat, wanting nothing more than to go home and leave everything at school behind. 

Still, you soldier through the rest of the night, staring at your laptop instead of doing work, only eating half of the pizza she ordered for you and numbly carrying a large Tupperware container that held the leftovers back to your apartment.

You end up eating the pizza for breakfast the following morning in some meagre effort to comfort yourself. Nothing helps, though. Not using the special body wash that you usually reserved for special occasions. Not putting on the velvet joggers you wore when you needed a pick-me-up. So, you try going in the opposite direction. Instead of putting in extra effort, you put in zero. You don’t bother stressing about putting your hair into an intricate style so you’ll look more put together. You don’t bother trying to buff your skin to a shining, baby glow. Instead you slather your face in moisturizer and throw your hair into a bun, which seems to do the trick. Giving up on some of the tinier details that would often gnaw at the edges of your collectedness improves your mood slightly. So does taking the rest of the pizza in with you for lunch.

The universe takes pity on you and the day goes by quickly. On Friday, It feels almost as though you only blinked but now the sun was setting around 4:30, as had become habit.

You wipe the drool that was pooling at the corner of your mouth while you tried some old number theory problem sets from a class you took freshman year. It had been difficult because you’d forgotten how shitty proofs can be, but it had also been just the time sink you needed.

Coming to the usual study spot you and Yoori established a few hours prior was bittersweet. Normally she would be there, perhaps with a steaming mug of something calming waiting for you, ready to work in companionable silence with gossip breaks sprinkled in between. Today, she wasn’t there, so you had the whole table to yourself. You sit in her chair to throw some novelty into the mix. And because you miss her. But now that your momentum is broken, you decide to turn to the window instead of people watching. Even though there’s none of the softly falling snow Yoori always raves about, the view is still nice.

The last few rays of the winter sun are stretching out, leaving the campus bathed in blood orange light and catching the reflective parts of the packed snow on the ground. There’s something picturesque about the way the campus pond, now frozen, sits in the center of the landscape and frames the sheet of mountains running in the distance. But it feels very lonely as well.  

You check your phone and find no text messages from Jungkook and only one from Yoori asking if you have plans for Saturday night. You tell her no and begin packing up.

Normally, you’re not a big going out person, but you find your lack of plans for this weekend a little bothersome. You know Jungkook and Yoori will obviously be busy that evening, and perhaps even the whole weekend. But that leaves you with Taehyung and Hoseok to have a good time and the prospects for that seem weak. You try sending a text to the two of them asking if a bar sounded like a fun idea but Hoseok messages back that he already bought drinks for tonight. You suppose you’ll have to try again next weekend.

Taehyung’s words of assurance about how Jungkook suddenly getting a girlfriend wouldn’t change the group dynamic float into you’re head. But you’re not so sure you believe them in this moment. Things don’t seem as fun and you’re not sure if it’s just because you’ve spent the whole day moping or if it’s because Jungkook has been carrying the group dynamic on his back the whole time and you never even noticed until now.

It’s a frightening thought and it’s also a little unfair to Hoseok and Taehyung. Although you’re not as close to them as you are to Jungkook, it’s not like they’re strangers. You’ve spent a great deal of time on your own with both of them, and even though you fight with Hoseok from time to time, you have made some nice memories with the both of them.

As you walk to Taehyung’s apartment for game night, you’re reminded of the times you’ve spent with the both of them. Like when you needed to fulfill your PE requirement for the year, so you and Hoseok took a snowboarding class together. You can admit, albeit reluctantly, that you bonded over many nights of numb toes and icing each other’s injuries. There’s also the time that you and Taehyung thought learning Russian would be a fun idea. You ended up leaving the Russian club after the first weekly meeting, but Taehyung still goes and is now the club Treasurer. It had been a fun hour of your life, though.

“Hey,” Taehyung chirps when you finally arrive at his apartment.

“Hey!” You fling yourself at him, full of emotion from the walk down memory lane you just took. He’s stiff in your arms for a moment, but settles into the hug after a beat.

“What’s this all about?” He chuckles, patting your back affectionately.

You extricate yourself from him and drop your things at the doorway before turning to Hoseok with a determined look. He snorts at you but doesn’t try to hide from your grabby hands, much to your surprise.

“I just wanted to let you guys know that I’m really glad we’re all friends. You mean a lot to me,” you mumble into the collar of Hoseok’s shirt as you press wrap him in a sincere hug.

“Are you not wearing a bra?”

“Except you,” you push him off you roughly. “Not you. I don’t like you.”

“Aw, come on!” He grins wryly at you from the floor. “You know you like me.”

You make a show of brushing the residue of your hug off the thin and oversized sweater you’re wearing. “No, sorry. I was a different person 20 seconds ago. I’ve changed. I’m better now.”

Hoseok hops up and chases you around Taehyung’s tiny dining room table until he manages to trap you in a corner by the kitchen entrance and wrangle you into a bear hug. You play dead to deter him, but instead he just laughs at the limp way your feet drag on the floor and waddles with you still in his grasp to the living room. Taehyung looks for the right game to play.

He chooses Wii Resort, which is not even remotely close to being your favorite, so you sit out and let the third controller lay unused on the ground. Instead you find yourself seated with your back against Hoseok’s chest in the La-Z boy, feet stretched out to rest in Taehyung’s lap as he sits on the matching ottoman.

“It’s fucking freezing in here,” you whine.

“I told you to wear layers. I’m trying to lower my utility bill,” is all Taehyung says as he moves his mii into yet another jungle setting for a mini game.

You pout. “This sucks.”

“It really doesn’t,” Hoseok interjects, “This is one of the better game nights we’ve had in a while.”

“You’re just saying that because this is the only time you’ve been able to win at a game.”

“Be nice to Hobi.” One of Taehyung’s hands drop down to dig into the arch of your foot as a warning. You squeal, knee kicking out wildly and without your permission, forcing your head to crack back against Hoseok’s chin.

“Ow! Fuck! What the hell is wrong with you, Tae?” Hoseok reaches up to clutch at his face, controller falling into your lap.

“Dude, I was defending you! How is this my fault?”

“You know it’s against the rules to tickle her when another person’s nearby unless it’s a tag-team.” He whines and taps you on the shoulder. You turn to face him sheepishly, knowing it’s partially your fault too. “Am I bleeding?”

“Thankfully, no,” you coo after a careful inspection. “But if that were any higher up on my leg, I don’t think you’d still have a face.”

“I know.” 

You pat his hair soothingly, but turn back around soon after Hoseok stops cradling his face. “Maybe we should call it a night.”

“We can’t! I’m not even buzzed yet. And we haven’t gone all the way around the board.”

“Tae, this game is trash. I don’t want to just sit and watch.”

He waves a hand dismissively, unpausing the game without even looking at you. “It’s not my fault you’re a fake Nintendo fan.”

“Ooh, are you gonna take that,” Hoseok’s eyes widen at Taehyung’s comment.

“I’m not even gonna dignify that with a response,” you sniff. Reaching out, you grab at the closest, non-empty beer bottle you can reach and take a swig. “But I am gonna get going so you can enjoy your shitty game by yourselves.”

“Come on!” Hoseok whines again from above you and from your vantage point it looks like his face is starting to swell. You silently hope that it doesn’t get bad until after you leave. “You can’t leave. Then it’ll just be two guys playing Wii resort.”

“Arriving in 13 minutes.” You burrow further into his chest to steal some warmth for a minute. You vow that the first thing you’re doing once you get home is taking a hot shower.

“Let her go, Hob. She’s not cool like us.”

Taehyung’s Mii reaches the top of the mountain at that moment. The victory cry he releases is entirely too loud and definitely not appropriate for someone only playing Wii Resort. He gets up from his chair and starts gyrating at the TV where Hoseok’s mii is crying large blue tears.

“Congrats on your victory. I’m out.”

The ride home turns out to be less relieving and more depressing as you get closer and closer to your apartment. Jungkook and Yoori are probably somewhere having an amazing date and will probably then go have amazing virginal sex in the backseat of Hoseok’s frat brothers’ car that Jungkook borrowed for the occasion. Taehyung and Hoseok actually like Wii Resort and will probably spend the rest of the night getting drunk off their asses playing that and having more fun than is objectively reasonable. Meanwhile you will probably stand naked and shivering in your bathroom for, like, 8 whole minutes waiting for hot water to make it through your plumbing.

Nothing like depressing thoughts to start your weekend off well.

Perhaps the universe decided to take pity on you once again because when you get home and disrobe, you only have to wait 6 minutes for the hot water. And it doesn’t run out after another 5. You also let yourself sing loudly to your Spotify ballad playlist titled ‘lady heartbreak’. Normally, you only cry to that playlist, so you think of it as personal growth.

Once you’re out the shower and your voice is hoarse from the ‘singing’, you change into light pajamas. Despite the fact that your heater is fixed, you still keep it firing at almost full blast because you prefer the heat to the cold.

Before you can flip back the covers on your bed when you hear a loud knock on your door. You figure its either Taehyung or Hoseok, or both of them, looking for something to do now that the game has lost its charm after a million rounds. But a quick glance at your phone shows no text messages from them saying that they’d be stopping by, which they usually do. The door thumps like someone’s body is slamming against it and you pray that its one of your stupid friends just being inconsiderate and disorderly.

You’re about to leave your room to see who’s at your door when another loud sound startles you. Its as if someone is carefully trying to rattle the window leading to your fire escape. All the while the loud knocking at your front door continues to ring through the apartment. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you’re certain you saw a news special about something like this. Pairs of burglars come to innocent women’s houses after they’ve stalked them long enough to learn their schedule and see if they live alone. Then they both show up to the house at different spots to distract the victim and break in more efficiently.

In this scenario, you’re certain they’re expecting you to go to the front door. But you’re smart, dammit. You decide to give them a surprise and approach the window first instead, phone clutched in your hand with the police a button-press away. You yank back the curtains and quickly activate your flashlight mode to see who is trying to break into your house. The pair of wide eyes that greet you back almost make your drop your phone.

“Jungkook,” you hiss incredulously.

Carefully, you unlock your window and slide it up so he can climb off the fire escape and collapse face first into your room. Clearly, he is slightly inebriated.

“What are you doing here?”

“Shh,” he sticks a finger into your face, “She’ll hear you.”

“Who’ll hear me?”

The apartment is eerily quiet when you realize that the loud knocking is replaced by jingling of keys and the sound of the front door being pushed open.

“Jeon Jungkook, who the hell is that in my house?”

“It’s Yoori,” he whispers with genuine fear in his eyes. “Crap!”

You can’t do much besides react on auto-pilot and pull back the many blankets and comforters lining your bed for him to dive under. The sound of Yoori’s slow, stumbling footsteps as they make their way into the heart of the apartment are better than any horror movie soundtrack. You find yourself diving into bed too, knees bent, hoping that you look casual and can hide Jungkook’s shape. He pokes his head out and grins at you from the shadows between your bare knees.

“Is anyone home,” Yoori calls from somewhere in the living room.

“I’m in my bedroom,” you respond. “It’s the last door on the right in the hallway.

A few moments later, Yoori is peering curiously from behind your door. You realize she still hasn’t seen your room despite the fact that she’s been to your apartment in passing a couple of times now.

“Hey, Yoori.”

“Hey. Wow,” she hiccups, “This is very you. I like the tapestries.” She turns in a circle to take in all of your room’s décor.

“Yep. So, uh, what brings you here?”

“I asked Jungkookie to drop me off here.”

“Oh, you did? Where is Jungkookie now,” you ask neutrally before casting a brief but discrete annoyed look down at Jungkook’s semi-visible face under the covers.

“I think he’s probably filling up the car’s tank. He has to return it to the fraternity before it gets too late.”

“He didn’t want to come in with you?”

“No. I told him I wanted to have some girl time with you to talk about the date. But then I got to your door and remembered that you don’t like to talk about romantic stuff like that.”

You shove your hands down into your lap and over his face so he can’t see the way yours heats up in embarrassment.

“W-well that’s just because he’s my good friend, you know. I didn’t mean much by that.”

“It’s okay, I understand.” She smiles down at you sleepily before walking over and moving like she’s going to sit with you in bed.

“Um, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” you shoot your hands out to keep her sitting.

“Why not?”

She pouts softly down at you. You wince knowing that her feet probably hurt from a night in heels and all she wants to do is sit to rest. But your loyalty lies elsewhere at the moment.

“Because…I have no pants on.”

“Really?” She grins and peeks down like she hopes to see through the blanket covering your lap. “That’s okay with me. You probably don’t have anything I haven’t seen before. And if you did, who cares?”

You decide that you won’t probe her about that and instead redirect the conversation.

“Yeah, but I’m kind of shy when it comes to that stuff.”

“That’s right. I forgot.” Yoori sighs sadly. “Maybe one day we’ll get there. That should be our next friendship goal. Getting you to feel less shy around me.”

“Y-yeah, okay.”

You watch as she swings her heels tiredly in her hand and searches for a nearby cab. She finds one relatively quickly and gives you a one-armed hug around your shoulders before scooping heading out. You wait a few more minutes, just in case she magically returns for something she left behind despite the fact that she left the spare key on your bedside desk and the front door locks from the inside automatically. Once you’re certain you won’t be found out, you rip the sheets back angrily.

“Explain yourself quickly, Jeon.”

Jungkook squints up at you now that the dark cover of your blankets isn’t shielding his eyes anymore. He’s lying on his stomach between your bent legs, propped up on his elbows. It’s a compromising position that you’re glad Yoori didn’t catch you in.

“I told her I needed to fill the tank, but I told her I was doing it at the gas station on 5th street instead of the one across the street from here.” He grins up at your cheekily like he’s done something extra clever.

“Yeah, I figured as much. But why did you do that? And then why did you risk falling 20 feet to climb up the fire escape and come in through the window.”

“I wanted to hang out. I feel like we haven’t seen each other in a while.” His hand reaches out to stroke at the expanse of your bare thigh.

“Jungkook, you’re dating Yoori,” you sigh and move your leg away. “The weekend stays are over now.”

“We’re taking it slow, though.”

“Not slow enough for this to still be a thing.”

“It is slow enough.” At your raised eyebrows, he stammers. “We-we haven’t even held hands yet.”

“Really,” you can’t help but ask. The pang of satisfaction you feel knowing that Jungkook still hasn’t taken things further with Yoori makes you feel a bit guilty. But you can’t help it.

“Really. So we can still do this, right?”

“I don’t know, Kook.” Your lip ends up tucked between your teeth in indecisiveness.

“Please? I missed you,” he whispers quietly. It’s all you’ve ever wanted to hear from him and you give a quick nod lest you start shrieking from joy if you open your mouth.

He shuffles until he can pull you closer by the hips. When you’re on a slight incline, your multiple pillows holding you up, Jungkook removes his glasses. You watch silently as he places them next to the spare keys before leaning into your space, eyes dropping closed.

You let your jaw relax in anticipation of his mouth. But you’re surprised when the first thing you feel is the dry press of his lips to your cheek. It’s sweeter than you were expecting, but you’re not complaining. Eventually he makes his way over to your mouth and begins kissing you in earnest. Small pecks transform into languid caresses of his lips over yours. Your tongue comes out to swipe at the seam of his lips and he immediately opens up to let you in, groaning at the feeling of you in his mouth.

He lets a sharp breath leave his nose and surges forward, pressing himself to you as close as he can after having shuffled you even closer so he could lean over you. When you suck on his bottom lip, he lets out a low snarling sound. His hands come down to clamp onto your waist like a warm vice. Carefully, you entangle the fingers of one hand in his hair, while the other smooths down the curve of his broad shoulders. The feeling of the muscles in his back flexing under your hand is a feeling you didn’t realize you could take for granted. But somehow you have because its amazing to have it back.

The two of you make out for a while. Jungkook tastes of dessert wine and cheesecake. Its not necessarily a combination that you find unpleasant, but it reminds you that he just came back from a date. And while he left that date and came straight to you, you still don’t like it. You kiss him harder with the hopes that it’ll take away the remnants of his time out with another girl. A girl who is your friend. He whines and lets you ravage his mouth. Little do you know that each swipe of your tongue against his own has his growing harder in his slacks.

“Wait a minute,” he gasps against your mouth before slowing down a bit by planting small kisses on the hinge of your jaw and the soft skin of your throat.

“Too fast?”

“Yeah.” He chuckles bashfully.

You’re content to let him come back down from his fast-approaching high by sucking lightly on the skin near the collar of your white tshirt. There will probably be some light bruising that you’ll have to cover up if you’re still going out with Yoori tomorrow, but you don’t care about that right now. Instead you’d rather revel in the sensation of Jungkook’s traveling kisses. Though they started at the hollow of your throat, they’ve collected on your clavicle and he’s now trailing them over the fabric of your shirt by your sternum. It’s sweet.

And then its suddenly not so sweet as you feel his heated breaths puff over your nipple.

Obviously, you’re turned on and you’re not wearing a bra because you thought you were going straight to sleep. So its completely understandable why your nipples would be hard, then. What you’re not certain of is what Jungkook is planning. He’s no longer continuously pressing kisses into the shirt and is now sporadically planting them around the stiff peak that is raising your shirt material slightly, just breathing heavily over it. The heat you feel doesn’t do anything to calm you down and instead it has you squirming in his hold.

One of his hands comes up to rest some of his weight on your shoulder, effectively keeping you flat to the bed. A quick glance at him has your breath hitching loudly in your throat. He’s staring intently down at your breast, like he’s trying to make a tough choice. The moment is so thick that you don’t dare move. Not to encourage him nor to inquire what he plans. Instead you lay with bated breath, watching him slowly descend the last few inches. You squeeze your eyes shut milliseconds before his mouth envelopes your covered nipple.

“Oh shit,” you curse quietly.

Despite the thin cotton barrier, you can feel very clearly the hot, wet pressure of his tongue swirling around your nipple. All of the movements so far are experimental, hesitant in their rhythm. He hollows his cheeks softly and sucks and all of the sudden a long, drawn out moan leaves you. It gives him the confidence he needs to take his free hand and pinch at the other side, fingers mimicking the rhythm his mouth is setting over you.

Quickly, though, the shirt becomes unbearable and you get annoyed at the thought that such a stupid barrier exists between you and Jungkook’s mouth. You wriggle resolutely under him until he huffs in annoyance and pulls away to see why you’re interrupting him. When he sees that you’re merely hiking the shirt’s hem up to your armpits and exposing your breasts to him, he hums contentedly. He swoops back in, this time to the other side, and begins laving at the tightened bud. Your hands scrabble for purchase and eventually make their way back to his neck again.

“Jungkook,” you breathe raggedly into the crown of his head.

“Hmm?”

“What’s the—mmh fuck—the occasion for all this?”

He comes up with a slick popping sound, looking up at you with dark and hooded eyes. The sight sends a bolt of arousal to your core.

“Just been wanting to.” With that, he returns to making a mess of your chest.

Somehow, in the series of achingly long minutes that follow, you manage to get his button down and undershirt off. The sight of the smooth planes of his skin make your hands itch to feel him. You try to pull him up so you can have better access, but he won’t budge as he begins to kiss lower once both of your breasts have been thoroughly marked. You give up and try to predict what he’ll do next as he digs his fingers into your waist appreciatively and kisses a ring around your belly button.

He proceeds lower, his destination becoming increasingly obvious as he playfully flicks at the tiny ribbon decorating the front of your panties before halting. Tentatively, he pushes an index finger underneath the elastic lining where your thigh meets groin. You can feel what you suppose is the puff of his breath across the crotch of your panties.

“Can I—”

“No,” you blurt, legs snapping closed. Jungkook scoots back just at the right time to save his head from being crushed. “S-sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.” He runs a hand through his hair nervously. “Do you just…not like it?”

“I’ve actually, uh, never…” you trail off until the words are lost in the mounds of pillows surrounding your head.

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s just that I’ve never really had anyone go down on me before.”

“Really?” His eyebrows shoot up behind his slightly damp bangs. “Not even with Yugyeom?”

You wince at the mention of your ex. Yugyeom had been your first and only boyfriend and you had a good run and even what most would call an amicable breakup. But one of the more bitter moments was the one time you’d attempted to get him to go down on you only for him to wrinkle his nose and tell you ‘he wasn’t into that sort of thing’.

“He just wasn’t interested.”

Jungkook nods understandingly for a minute before his gaze is drawn to the space at the apex of your clenched thighs again.

“Are you? Interested?” His tone is heavy with implication and the way he casually hovers over you while sitting back on his heels just makes you feel tiny.

“I-I mean, I guess I am,” you stutter.

“Okay.” He gets back onto his stomach, hands gently prying your knees apart until there’s enough room to accommodate his broad shoulders. “So can I?”

“Go for it.” Your words come out in a squeak.

“Thanks,” he smiles softly.

You can’t see anything because you’ve thrown an arm over your eyes self-consciously. Normally, these moments between the two of you have your stomach in knots for a different reason, but now you’re just plain nervous. You’re diligent about hygiene and you remind yourself that you just took a shower. But it had just been a normal shower and not a booty-call shower. What if he thought you smelled weird? Or that you tasted weird? For some reason, this felt more intimate than all the times before this where he was merely watching and you were the one doing the work down there.

Jungkook hooks his fingers into the waist band of your underwear, pulling it down with your help when you lift your butt. You bite your lip nervously and lift your arm slightly so you can watch his reaction.

He doesn’t have any sort of adverse reaction once you’re completely bare in front of him, though you suppose he’s familiar enough not to act surprised by anything. But you’re not expecting him to dive in suddenly until he’s less than an inch away from your sticky folds. You shouldn’t be embarrassed that you got turned on from making out, but it’s like everything has flipped and suddenly you know how he felt during those first few times together.

You can’t take the silence anymore. “What is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re so quiet.”

“I’m just trying to decide what to do first.”

“Oh. Sorry I can’t be of service.”

He smiles at how awkward you’re being before moving a tiny bit closer and taking a large inhale. Your eyes widen and you move to clamp your legs closed to shut him out, but he’s ready this time. One hand presses down on your pelvis while the other one presses on your hip, effectively pinning you to the bed.

“Calm down. It’s just me,” he whispers before inhaling deeply once. Twice. Three times more. All the while you can’t help but squirm. But he only increases the pressure of his hands with each antsy wiggle of your hips.

As soon as you decide to be still again, he releases your hip to spread you open with two fingers and presses a gentle kiss to your clit. You nearly jump off the bed at the foreign sensation.

“Jungkook, wait, I—” but you don’t manage to get the words out before he kisses you again.

This time his tongue flicks out to collect some of arousal that’s been steadily collecting despite your nerves. As soon as the flavor spreads on his tongue, he freezes. You wonder for a moment if he’s going to pull back and say he’s made a mistake. But then he surges forward again and begins licking broad stripes across you, catching your clit every so often.

He watches you carefully to gauge your reactions to what he’s doing. Taking in your heated face and dewy skin, he deduces he’s going in the right direction. And when he drags the flat of his tongue over your entrance as if to drink from you, your lip automatically gets stuck between your teeth and your eyes flutter shut. It’s a good series of reactions, but he wants more from you. He wants to get you to do that thing where your back curves up off the mattress or get your hands to scrabble at his arms to ground you while you shake under him.

“Oh god. Right there,” you gasp when he wraps his lips around your clit randomly and sucks.

Jungkook nods resolutely before re-wetting his lips and repeating the action. You moan loudly when his tongue brushes against you in the midst of the suction. Your hand finds its way to the back of his head and presses until the lower half of his face is almost entirely flush with you. You remove your hand almost immediately once you realize what you’re doing.

“Sorry,” you mumble, “I got carried away.”

He pulls back with a wide grin and shining cheeks. “It’s okay. It’s good to know its going well.”

Your hand falls back down to rest tentatively near his head. You watch the shining brown mop of his hair return to bobbing between your legs and feel another rush of arousal gush forth. Even if you couldn’t feel it, Jungkook’s following groan of pleasant surprise and the wet sounds that follow have your eyes rolling to the ceiling partly out of acute pleasure and partly out of disbelief. Why couldn’t your life always be this nice and worry-free?

Jungkook’s gently circling fingers around your entrance have you snapping back to the present. You wonder if tonight is going to continue being a night of firsts when you remember that Jungkook probably hasn’t done much ‘internal’ work.

“Would it be too much?” Even though he doesn’t specify, you know what he’s asking.

“Just go slow.”

You’re already quickly approaching an orgasm, but hopefully this will get you there quicker. You feel almost sluggish with the fiery heat that’s seemingly been spreading from your core to the rest of your body in time with each pulse of his tongue. But when he inserts the first finger, you feel impossibly warmer.

His jaw drops open as your warm heat envelopes his digit immediately in a wet, vice-like grip. He can only imagine what it would feel like if he could be inside you the way he wanted to be, but even that pale phantom grip in the back of his mind is enough to have him bucking into the mattress. He leans in to press lingering kisses to your lower lips while twisting his wrist in matching time. Soon you’re clutching at his shoulders, gripping his hair, kicking your feet anxiously as your high approaches. You can almost taste it and stars are collecting in the corners of your vision as Jungkook continues to lap at your center messily. As if he can read your mind, he withdraws only to enter again with two fingers this time. It’s just enough thickness to stretch you the way you want, but the angle is off.

“Jungkook.”

“Hmm?”

“Bend your fingers back and press up.”

“Like this,” he asks while making some motion, concentration creasing his brows.

You quickly reach down and re-orient his wrist. With great care, he reproduces the motions at the new angle and delights in the fact that you’re now quaking above him. Broken variations of his name tumble from your lips as the waves of your orgasm take over. Your legs kicks out as they characteristically do and so he positions them to hang more safely over his shoulders, despite the fact that your ankles tickle at his sides. He presses a chaste kiss against the skin of your inner thigh and hopes you don’t notice the way he nuzzles into the skin to wipe his face off a bit.

When you’re limp and your breathing has returned back to normal, he crawls over your legs to lay beside you.

“Was that good?”

You turn to face him and take in his sweaty face and pleased expression. You roll your eyes and shove at his chest, but he just grabs your hand and squeezes it before releasing it.

“It was good. But don’t get a big head, you still have to climb back out the window later.”

“Am I banned from the door?”

“I’m still mad you decided it would be a good idea to climb the fire escape when you’d clearly been drinking.”

“Not a lot, though. I was still able to drive.”

“That’s not something you should advertise,” you laugh.

He shifts a little awkwardly next to you and you realize he might not have gotten the same thing you did from eating you out. He notices where your gaze travels and grins shyly, shoving a spare throw pillow over the tent in his slacks.

“Ah, sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. I just wish I wasn’t so tired. Otherwise, I could—”

“Don’t feel like you have to. I was just gonna take care of it myself.”

“Oh. Like, right now?”

“Yeah? If that’s okay.”

“Okay.”

You sit back and watch as he slowly shirks off his dress pants and briefs in one go. His erection springs forward and from the almost angry red flush across the shaft, you figure he must have been pretty uncomfortable. He strokes it absent-mindedly and realizes that he doesn’t have any lube before turning to you.

“You wanna do the honors,” he asks with his palm out. It takes you a while to understand what he’s asking.

“Like, you want me to…?”

“Yeah.”

With all your remaining energy, you attempt to spit into his palm in an attractive manner. You’re not sure if you succeed, because as soon as you’re done he gets to business. The way he moves his hand over his length is rough and fast. Almost as if he’s trying to play catch up; not necessarily with you, but maybe with himself. With whatever thoughts had been plaguing him earlier while you came on his fingers and tongue. His breath leaves him in little punched gasps and the sounds are so pleasing that you lean forward and capture his lips with your own.

You wouldn’t quite call what you’re doing kissing. It’s more like a series of brushes of lips as his erratic hand movements cause him to move in and out of your space. Though he occasionally stops to steal a few kisses, they only seem to egg him on further until he can only touch his forehead to yours while he brings himself over the edge, spilling into his hand.

“Better?” You pull away to grab some wet wipes out of the side table drawer.

“Definitely,” he sighs. “I can put these sheets in the wash before I go, if you want.”

“Oh,” you blink up at him. “You’re leaving?”

“Yeah, I have to get some sleep. I promised Yoori I’d take her to breakfast at Dreamies.”

“Wow. You’re taking her to Dreamies? Are you sure you’re not more serious than you’ve been letting on?”

“It’s not like that,” he laughs stiffly as he tugs on his clothes. “We’re getting food to-go and then going to a butterfly garden.”

“Well, that sounds fun too.”

You can’t help but let out a sigh of relief. Dreamies is the diner you and the rest of the group frequent when you’ve all done too much drinking the night before and need good hangover food. It’s also open 24 hours, so sometimes it’s where you all go when you have nothing better to do or when you just want to have a wholesome time. A lot of good memories have been made in Dreamies, but its always been with the whole group. The idea of Jungkook bringing Yoori there for a private date doesn’t exactly sit well with you. Though it’s not like you can say anything because no one ever did establish that Dreamies was a group space exclusively. And even if someone had, who are you to make demands about where Jungkook and Yoori go out on dates?

Jungkook makes good on his promise and puts your sheets in the wash and even makes your bed while you wait for the washer to stop. He leaves when the dryer cycle finishes, pulling you in by the waist and kissing you deeply before strutting out the door with a flourish.

“I come bearing clothes,” you say as soon as Yoori opens the door.

She’d told you over the phone to bring some things to go out in after bugging you about firming up weekend plans. It still isn’t clear where you’re going, so you have brought a variety of outfits to cover the spectrum of possible events. You figured that you would get ready at her place as soon as you found out where you were going. But when she opens the door with makeup already done and her hair already curled, you’re a bit confused.

“Hello! How are you, my lovely?” She envelopes you tightly in a hug before taking the clothes out of your hands.

“I’m great. I got all excited on the way over because I thought we were gonna glam up together here, but it looks like you already did that.”

“I know,” she grimaces. “It’s just that Jungkook asked me if I wanted to go to the arcade out of the blue after we got brunch and I didn’t know what type of atmosphere that might be, so I just got as ready as possible. And then we went on a drive. We didn’t actually interact with any other humans. I could have worn my PJs.”

“That’s Jungkook for you,” you snort dryly. “So, uh, how was that drive?”

“You don’t have to ask me how our date went. I know it’s awkward to talk about dating your best friend. I’ll spare you.”

“Thank you.”

Yoori hands you a glass of your favorite wine, something she’s been keeping regularly stocked in her wine fridge since you became friends. You toe off your shoes before heading into the living room with her.

“Do you want tonight to be a surprise or do you want me to tell you where we’re going?” She reaches out to play with a loose string on the throw blanket adorning the couch, watching you with wide eyes as you drain your glass.

“Tell me. So I can pick out my outfit accordingly.”

“Okay. Just…promise me you won’t knock it before you try it.”

“I wouldn’t do that unless you said we were going somewhere ridiculous.” You tilt your head with a no nonsense stare. “And we wouldn’t do that, right? We’re not doing anything ridiculous?”

All she does is beam at you before pulling her phone out and scrolling through her photo album until she comes to the right image. She hands you the phone silently, lip bitten in anticipation.

“Hell no,” you say as soon as you see the flyer she’s taken a screenshot of. It’s advertising a Lady’s Night at a club with an open dance floor and drinks at a discounted rate. Immediately you hand the phone back and wish for more wine to magically appear in your glass.

“Please? I feel like it would be so fun, and it’s supposed to be a really great place. Pretty please?”

“Why can’t we just stay in and order Thai? I like your place, you don’t have to take me anywhere.”

“You make us sound like an old married couple. Besides, you never spend your weekends anywhere other than with those boys.” When you give her an unamused stare, she backpedals. “Charming as they are. Don’t get me wrong, I love them all. But don’t you think it would be fun to switch things up? Neither of us go out enough. We’re wasting our youth and beauty.”

“Excuse me. You’re dating my best friend, remember?”

“And by ‘we’, I meant not me.”

You roll your eyes and opt into searching for the wine bottle she used to pour your first drink. It catches your eye across the room where it sits at the long cherry dining table. You move to get up, but Yoori clamps down on your wrist with a pleading expression.

“Please?”

“I don’t want to spend the money.”

“I’ll pay for both our cover charges. Please?”

“The drinks will be shitty and I’ll need to be drunk to enjoy it.”

“We can drink here first and call a cab. Please?”

“I didn’t bring any makeup.”

“You left some over here from last time. Pleeease?”

“But the guys there will—“

“I’ll protect you,” you frown, unconvinced. “Please? I’ll even stay sober the whole night so nothing gets by me.”

“Fine. But only for an hour.”

“What? That’s too short, nothing good can happen in an hour. That’s too unrealistic. Two hours.”

“I’ll give you an hour and a half. After that, we’re coming back here and I’m sleeping over. Deal?”

She considers your conditions for a brief second before finally letting you get up. “You have to let me do your makeup and let me put pictures on my Instagram story.”

“Sure, but that will cost you another 15 minutes.”

Your back is turned to her as you fill up your glass, but you can practically see her writhing with indecision. Schooling your features into neutrality, you turn back to face her, and she straightens up.

“Deal.”

It takes much longer than it should have to get ready, but in the end, that’s a good thing because Yoori had originally wanted to show up to the event on time. Though you don’t get out much, even you know that arriving fashionably late means a better chance at getting there when everything is in full swing. Much better than getting there when there are 10 people in the whole club and no one is having any fun yet.

You let her apply your makeup, but you don’t let her pick your outfit much to Yoori’s chagrin. It doesn’t matter though because you’re no less miserable as she drags you into the bathroom to take a series of selfies.

That’s not to say that you hate selfies or that you never take them. You take them when you’re bored, when you’re texting the group chat, when you’re talking to your mom, when you’re home alone and feeling yourself. Next to Yoori, though, you can’t help but feel a little intimidated. Yoori doesn’t know your angles, Yoori doesn’t know your favorite filters and it’s not something you can just ask someone to change. Specific filters and angles are the bread and butter of anyone’s best selfies, and they’re not easily interchanged for someone else’s. As an engineering student, you can appreciate the complex science that is selfie-taking. And as much as you love Yoori, you don’t want to be the eyesore on her Instagram and cost her followers. Part of you hopes she gets drunk so you can take her phone and delete them later.

But she stays true to her word and doesn’t drink any more after leaving the apartment to go to the club. You stay true to your word as well and toss back another drink as soon as you get there, hoping that it will calm your nerves. In all honesty, you know there’s nothing to be nervous about, but you still order a second drink at the bar immediately after so you have something to do with your hands. You look good and you most likely won’t see any of the people at the club ever again, but you still feel out of place.

“You look terrified,” Yoori whispers in your ear. She’s been watching your expression carefully the whole time and has started to regret bugging you about coming.

“I am.”

“If you want, we can just go home now. I didn’t realize you hated going out this much.”

“It’s not that I hate going out,” you shout over the music. “It’s just that I can never let go off what other people might be thinking about me. And if I can’t do that, I can’t have fun.”

Yoori nods in sympathy. Although, she also doesn’t like the feeling of being scrutinized, she knows you’re coming from a different place. You’ve spoken candidly to her a few times about you feel like the two of you make an odd pairing. She remembers the way you spoke about her, all laudatory words, and then how you spoke about yourself. Yoori wants to compliment you the way you do her, but she knows that certain kind words only act as cold comfort for you.

“What can I do?”

You ponder the question for a bit. You figure, if you can manage to fake having the time of your life for 10 minutes, you can trick yourself into actually having fun for the rest of the night. With that thought, you finish your drink in a few large swallows before grabbing Yoori’s hand.

“Do you wanna dance with me?”

Yoori blinks down at you with wide eyes but nods somewhat shyly. You let her guide you into the throng of dancing bodies. As the song washes over you, you do a simple two-step while you decide what type of vibe to go for. Quickly the song grows on you, and you begin to put more energy into your dancing. At the sight of you enthusiastically swiveling your hips to the beat of the song with a smile on your face, Yoori beams.

The night unfolds like that. You manage to throw away your inhibitions in favor of dancing for hours. Yoori takes a couple videos of you when the right song comes on and puts you into a sexy musical trance. You take turns shooing random guys away who thinking they can casually fist pump their way into your sacred space. A few girls much drunker than you wander over to you and you welcome them with open arms and dance with them for a few songs, but they always float away after a while. Not without Yoori inquiring where their friends are and waiting until said friends come to collect them first, though. All in all, it’s more fun than almost all of your game nights combined. The thought makes you guilty for all of .3 seconds before you remember that none of the guys would ever go out dancing unless it was a means to an end of getting laid.

When the clock strikes 1:30—much later than you had originally promised to stay out—you collect your things and let Yoori guide you once more. This time she leads you outside to get a ride back to her place. She lays her pristine white leather jacket on your sweaty shoulders when she sees you shivering from the drastic temperature change that comes with leaving the balmy dance-floor.

“Tonight was so fun,” you drawl on the way over. Your head lolls onto her shoulder and she smooths the stray strands of hair off your forehead.

“It was. I was worried for a minute that you wouldn’t like it.”

“Mmm, me too. Yoori, this was great.”

“You never say my name.” She gets out of the car first before paying the driver and then goes back in to get you, slinging your arm over her slender shoulders.

“I know. Feels weird if I do.”

“I like it.”

“M’kay.”

As soon as the door opens, you race for the bathroom. One of the prices to pay for a good night out is dealing with a wine bladder and a hangover. The peeing, you could handle. The hangover, though, dwells in the back of your mind ominously as you brush your teeth and hastily remove your makeup. You’re pretty sure you haven’t taken all of it off when your face hits the cushion of the couch, but the couch is leather so you don’t care. Yoori, however, does care.

“Oh, no you don’t. Come here,” she grabs at you until she gets a hold and can walk you the remainder of the way to her room.

“I don’t wanna walk.”

“You don’t want to sleep on the couch either.”

“Where we goin’?”

“To bed, silly.”

You nod and let her escort you there. Immediately, you slide your skirt down and scramble to take off your crop top. As you fumble with your sleep shirt, Yoori respectfully turns away to change into her own pajamas, cheeks burning.

The covers feel pleasantly cool under your hands as you wait for her to finish changing. “Which side d’you want?”

“I usually sleep in the middle, actually. But I can sleep on whichever side you don’t pick tonight.”

“I sleep on this side.”

“Okay,” she nods agreeably.

“Tomorrow, do you wanna get Dream—oh wait. You went already. You probably don’t want it a second time. I’ll just go to Starbucks or something on my way back.”

“N-no! I’d love to go tomorrow. I was hoping to try their waffles at some point, anyway.”

“Okay, great. Goodnight, Yoori.”

“Goodnight,” she says quietly after the lights have been turned off.

Emotionally, the following week is fine, but it’s hard on your body. 

Your hangover takes over your whole Sunday, leaving you to slightly behind on work Monday. It creates a spiral of catching up on work that has you staying up further and further past your bedtime and unable to be as social as you’d like. Yoori lets you know via Snapchat that she misses you but that Jungkook has taken your spot at your usual study table. The two of them look adorable in the little puppy ear filter Yoori’s put over the short video. You watch with mixed feelings as Yoori blows a kiss and then remembers that Jungkook is there and ushers him into blowing a kiss as well. It’s not nearly as enthusiastic and stiffer than the one Yoori sent you but it still sends your heart into a fluttering tizzy.

Friday couldn’t come soon enough. But as soon as you wake up that morning, you feel jittery and off. All your warm clothes are in the hamper, none of them salvageable for one last wear. And all your motivation has been zapped after the week of constant working you just had. Classes prove to be no better despite the fact that they give you time to get out of your head. 

The rest of the day is syrupy, leaving you struggling through it even as you try to go with the flow of the sluggishly passing hours. Normally you aim for productivity, but as soon as your final lecture for the day ends, you find yourself unable to pass time with work. You take a walk through campus and even venture all the way over to the theatre department, on the other side of the common grounds. You try to sit on the frosted benches looking out over the man-made pond students often frequent, but your joggers aren’t prepared for the extreme cold and you realize maybe familiarity, instead of novelty, is what will make the time pass by quicker.

You decide to text Taehyung. His schedule is something that you’ve come to passively memorize after weeks of the information casually floating through past conversations.

You: Im bored

BigBoi: Where r u I’ll pick u up

You: @ Seemond’s pond…

BigBoi: ???

Taehyung arrives not ten minutes later, cheeks flushed with exertion from hustling over. He’s also not at all dressed for the weather, but doesn’t look bothered by it either in his university hoodie and thick knitted scarf. His beaten sneakers crunch loudly on the thin layer of white that’s collected since the last snowfall a few days ago.

“Oh my god, Tae, aren’t you freezing?”

Immediately you approach him and pull the hood laying limply along his shoulder blades over his colored hair. The roots have since started growing in and the color has faded enough to give him more of a coppery rose gold look. It’s a color so many Instagram influencers would have shit themselves over last summer trying to perfect at a professional salon, and here Taehyung stands with it after a bleach-happy accident in his dorm’s communal bathroom sink.

“Not really. I was actually nearby looking for a printer in BPD hall.”

“What for?”

“Financial aid forms,” he sighs. You grimace in sympathy before shirking your oversized black mittens.

“At least put these on if you’re not even going to pretend you checked the weather this morning.”

“What about you?” He gestures to the parts of your bare hands that he can see poking out from the sleeves of your own large puffy jacket.

“I’ll be fine. This has fleece-lined pockets. Meanwhile,” bending over, you peer into the front tummy pocket of his hoodie. “You only have a tootsie roll lining.” You dig your fist into the pocket and pull out the scraps of trash he’d been hiding in there with only mild disgust marring your features. “How do you live like that?”

“Dunno, just do. Maybe it’s because people like you can’t help but throw it out before I get the chance to get sick of it and do it myself.”

“Fair enough.”

“What should we do?”

“I don’t know. I’m cold and I don’t wanna do work.”

“How about a movie marathon?”

“Sure.”

* * *

“This isn’t what I thought you meant when you said movie,” you huff as the black opening credit scene dissolves and a French couple in a black and white colorscape whisper to one another in a moonlit alley.

“You said you didn’t care what we watched.”

“That was under the assumption that I would be able to understand it. There’s not even subtitles.”

“You don’t need them.”

“Yes, I do, because I don’t speak French. And neither do you.”

“That doesn’t really matter. You can read their body language and get all you need to from that.”

You try to fix your stare on the couple who is now running from the police with a pair of bloodied knives in their hands and smiles on their faces.

“This isn’t a horror movie, is it?”

“No,” he trails off suspiciously. When you whip your head to the side to glare at him, he cracks. “What? It’s not! It’s a thriller.”

“Anything that could give me nightmares is a horror movie, Taehyung.”

“It’s not even that scary,” he says right at the moment when the couple is seen carving into a police man’s face with the previously shown knives.

The cinematic effects are gross but clearly dated and if you were a reasonable person, you would find it laughable. But instead the dyed corn syrup dripping off the actor’s face just makes your stomach clench and you grab onto Taehyung’s arm out of disgust and anger.

“Why would you put me through this?”

“To get your mind off of Jungkook,” he says matter-of-factly.

Your mouth drops open when you realize partly that he’s right and partly you haven’t had a single moping thought about Jungkook and Yoori in the near hour it took to pick up snacks from the convenience store and walk over to Taehyung’s place from the pond while avoiding ice patches. It’s honestly a brilliant plan, but you hate him for it at the same time.

“You’re a dick.” You punctuate the statement with a sharp punch to the meat of his shoulder and revel in the bashful look he gives you while rubbing at the spot. “But thank you. If you wanted to get my mind off it, you didn’t have to use horror to do it.”

“True, but my options were limited since, one, I don’t have cable, and two, I don’t want to watch reality tv.”

“We could make fun of shitty rom-coms. That’s a good compromise.”

And that is how you end up watching a slightly watered down knock off of Fifty Shades with the TV remote in hand, rewinding, so you can point out where you can see the camera person’s reflection in the female lead’s pendant necklace.

“That’s a huge oversight. I can’t believe these people walk around like they’ve dedicated their lives to a certain level of craft only to do this”

“I mean, the fact that they used Papyrus font in their online movie poster should have clued you in,” you snort.

Both of you watch as the male lead swims up to his co-star where she stands at the foot of the pool he’s in. The grin he flashes her is blindingly white and his teeth resemble pearls in an unattractively artificial way.

“Why do people think veneers like that look good,” you sigh and shift so you can reach over and play with the faded pink strands of Taehyung’s hair. He leans in unconsciously and shrugs.

“I don’t know. Maybe they think people won’t be able to tell the difference.”

“I suppose that’s fair. But with everything being filmed in high definition these days, there’s less wiggle room for that sort of thing.”

Male lead reaches for the slender ankle of his co-star and tugs her into the pool, soaking her dainty white eyelet dress. When she comes up for air, she pouts for a second before swiping at him and missing. She nearly falls face first back into the water but he reaches out with a condescending laugh and catches her with ease despite what physics would predict to be possible. The moment turns serious quickly as the pair stare into each other’s eyes. You don’t understand how she’s supposed to be the homely girl next door when she’s got what you know are the most expensive mink lash extensions on the market and the most symmetrical, albeit oddly familiar, face you’ve ever seen.

“Wow,” Taehyung scoffs as the actor pulls her in for a heated kiss. “They really think that’s what buildup looks like. It’s fifteen minutes in and we still don’t know his name. And didn’t they just meet for the first time the day before this?”

“Keep up, Tae. Don’t you know all women want in life is to get rawed in the pool of the mystery guy who cut them off in the supermarket 24 hours prior?”

“Ah. That must be why my sex life is so grim.”

“Look at that,” you gesture to the couple that is now stumbling out of the pool and into the man’s perfectly lit mansion in a race to get to the bedroom. “That could be you if you had decided to take your dad’s car this year and cut some random girl off in the parking lot of the Price Chopper.”

“Damn. Would I have his mansion too?” You nod gravely.

“Probably.” You finish plaiting the hair of his sideburns and leave him with a little inflexible pink braid poking out from his temple.

“How’s it look?” He gestures to the side of his head with your handiwork on it.

“You look really great. You might not even need to break the rules of parking etiquette to snag a hot date.”

You both return your attention to the TV only to find the movie couple in a fairly compromising position. The lead actress is bent over the arm of a sofa as the camera ‘artistically’ captures the rapid way the actor drills into her from behind. It catches both of you off guard and a nervous laugh bubbles its way out of you.

“This is ridiculous.” Taehyung rolls his eyes and turns to laugh at the display with you.

“Yeah,” you say half-heartedly.

Even though the movie is horribly done and nothing in its execution per se turns you on, it is Friday. And your body has gotten pretty used to your weekend schedule. Which, up until recently, would have meant that at this hour Taehyung and Hoseok would be out somewhere looking for a place to vape while you helped Jungkook out of his pants at his apartment.

But that’s not what’s happening right now because Jungkook is probably on his way in a rental car to pick Yoori up for their third official date. To the movies. Still, that doesn’t stop your body from revving up more than it should after watching such a stupid romance movie. If you close your eyes, you’re sure you could remember with scary accuracy the feel of Jungkook’s hands on you.

“Hey.” At your awkward silence, Taehyung’s voice lowers and he leans in to tease you, “You’re not actually enjoying this, are you?”

“N-no, of course not.”

He lets out an incredulous laugh. “Holy crap, you are. You’re into this.”

“No, I’m not! Stop!”

“This is hilarious. I can’t believe you like this.” He stares at the screen with a baffled smile on his face, trying to see what could be so appealing about the affected look of arousal on the male lead’s face as he bites his lip with zero finesse. “Is it him?”

“It’s not him,” you scrabble for an answer, “I-it’s the actress.” At that his eyes widen and he looks at you like he’s seeing you for the first time. “I mean, I recognize her from a porno, that’s all.”

“No way,” he says before studying the woman’s face. When the actor pulls tightly on her ponytail and forces a whining moan out of her, his eyes light up with recognition. “Wait, yeah, you’re right.”

“Told you.”

“Hold on. You watch porn?” You roll your eyes.

“Yeah, I watch porn. Sometimes I need some visual stimuli too. And she’s been in a few of them.”

“Hmm,” he says finally, “Never would have thought you’d like her stuff.”

“You say that like you’ve thought about what I’d watch.”

“Well, you’re just so—“

A sharp sound comes from near the front door as Hoseok barges in hurriedly, nearly falling and spilling the grocery bags in his hands. He places them on the small table outside the entrance to the tiny kitchenette.

“Tae, I tried calling you like 5 different times about getting the door. Why didn’t you pick up your...phone,” Hoseok trails off as he takes in the fact that you’re in Taehyung’s apartment, very early to the Friday game night, seated very close to Taehyung with a flaming cheeks on the couch while what looks like soft-core porn plays in the background.

“My phone must have died from the cold. Bro, I’m really sor—“

“What the hell are you two doing,” he sneers.

“We were just watching a movie,” you pipe in when you sense a weird shift in the mood.

Obviously, you’re closer to Jungkook than you are to Taehyung or Hoseok, but you really don’t understand the strange energy in the room. Hoseok looks angrier than he should about Taehyung not helping him with carrying some snacks and Taehyung looks overly imploring. Perhaps this is just how they are when they’re annoyed, but it still strikes you as odd even from a slightly distant perspective. When no one says anything you get up slowly, like you would around wild animals in a territory death match, and move towards Hoseok to help him with the food.

“Here, I’ll help you put these away,” you say quietly with a soft hand on his back to get him to break his cold glare. “Don’t be mad at Tae, he didn’t do anything.”

The glare is only slightly softened as he turns to you, jaw clenched. “Well, what about you?”

“What are you talking about?”

The genuine confusion on your face seems to dissolve whatever’s left of the sudden rage that filled him, and he breaks down and lets you take the bags he’s still holding from him. While your back is turned, Hoseok looks suspiciously over at Taehyung, who is still staring back with large, nervous eyes.

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly when you finish unpacking the first bag of chips and come over to him to take the next one.

“Whatever,” you huff good-naturedly. “As long as you leave me out of your little lovers’ quarrel, I’m fine. Go make up, I’ll finish with these.”

You watch Hoseok amble over to Taehyung and begin whispering frantically before they finally come to some sort of agreement and hug it out.

When you come back to the couch, Hoseok has taken your spot next to Taehyung and has man-spread all over the rest of the free space. Even the back of the couch is claimed by his outstretched arms. Both of them stop their whispered conversation and turn to see why you’re hovering.

“What’s up,” Hoseok inquires suspiciously.

“Are we gonna do anything tonight? I could be in bed right now, but instead I’m here.”

“We have to pick the game first. My vote is for poker.”

“No poker. You still owe me like 80 bucks from last time you thought you could bluff,” Taehyung crosses his arms in a huff.

“That’s in the past, I’m a new man now. This Hoseok doesn’t owe you anything.”

“You’re an ass.” Taehyung springs to the side and quickly locks Hoseok in a sloppy headlock.

You watch them struggle on the couch in mild interest until Taehyung loses his footing and Hoseok’s wiggling underneath him pitches them both onto the floor. Someone’s head hits the coffee table on the way down, and you wince in sympathy, but they carry on like nothing happened.

The idea of letting them tire themselves out seems appealing at first but when Hoseok sinks his teeth into Taehyung’s hoodie-clad bicep and draws out a yelp, you intervene as neutrally as possible.

“Why don’t we just start with Gin Rummy?”

“Okay.” Hoseok drops Taehyung’s arm from his mouth, suddenly content.

You give him a wide berth and wait until after he goes into the kitchen to hunt for a deck of cards to offer Taehyung a helping hand up off the ground. He doesn’t make eye contact with you as you make your way over to the table, so you can’t silently grill him.

“How many is it? 5 per person,” Hoseok asks while shuffling the cards.

Small Styrofoam bowls are neatly laid out across the center of the table, each one filled with the chips from earlier. You perch in the chair next to Hoseok so you’re close to the Cheetos.

“It’s 7, I think.”

“Cool,” is all he says before handing you your cards.

You go around the table for a few rounds, placing cards down that you don’t need, picking up cards that you do and the occasional chip. Halfway through the first round, Taehyung gets up to turn off the fluorescents and turn on the fairy lights Hoseok won’t stop teasing him for having. You sync your phone up to his speaker and play music in the background and revel in the fact that you’re getting back into the swing of having fun with them. Without Jungkook.

“You still got beer, right?” Hoseok doesn’t look up from his cards since he’s very close to winning the round and he needs only 1 more card.

“Yeah,” you say, slapping down another card. “We picked some up at the convenience store. I’ll go get a pack for the table.”

“Thanks. I think I’m gonna call out for food too. What do you guys want?”

“I want pancakes,” Taehyung smiles brightly at the prospect of something other than the sad deli meats in his fridge.

Opening the door to his fridge leaves you confused. “You have stuff for pancakes.”

“Yeah, but I have to cook it,” he pouts at you through the window in the kitchen wall.

“It’s your turn,” Hosoek informs you.

You load up with supplies for making pancakes and head over to the table to distribute the ingredients amongst yourselves. Taehyung cracks eggs when it’s not his turn, Hoseok levels out the dry ingredients. You’re pouring milk into a bowl when one of your favorite songs from high school starts blaring through the speakers.

“Oh shit! Do you guys remember when this came out?”

“They played it at my homecoming dance,” Hoseok grimaces at the memory while you gyrate and mix the ingredients in a large bowl. “And then they played it on the radio for, like, 3 months straight afterwards. It was fucking annoying.”

“Yeah, but it’s been so long now. It’s good again. Come on, get up.” You pass Taehyung the bowl and creep towards Hoseok.

“What are you doing?” He smiles up at you like you’re crazy. You lace your fingers together and pull him out of his chair.

“What does it look like? I’m making you dance with me.”

“But you can’t dance, though.”

“Don’t ruin the fun,” you whine.

At first he doesn’t dance with you. He just continues to stand and lets you mouth the words at him and occasionally wave your hands in his face or pinch his cheeks when the lyrics get good. He even lets you bump hips with him and pretend to grind on him from behind.

Despite himself, your good mood is infectious and when you scamper back in front of him for the chorus, he surprises you by taking you into waltz position. It doesn’t fit the song, but it’s funny because you end up doing a bouncy-looking two step that resembles a sped-up prom dance. Taehyung hoots supportively from where he stands in the kitchen, melting butter on the stove.

Hoseok bends you over into a theatrical dip, causing you to let out a shrieking laugh and clutch at him so he doesn’t drop you. The song ends, but he jokingly holds the pose until your thighs are burning and you’re yelling for him to pull you back up. The front door clicks open while you bicker lightly.

“Look who decided to show up,” Hoseok drawls and finally brings you back up slowly, so you don’t get a head rush.

You blink away the stars that were starting to form in the corners of your eyes and realize Jungkook is, in fact, back from his date. At 9:43, no less. With Yoori in tow.

In your opinion, it’s much too early for someone to be back from date night with the long-time love of their life, but you can’t bring yourself to say anything. Instead you fiddle with the hem of your sweater nervously. Something about Yoori and Jungkook being present in the same room makes you a bit anxious. Perhaps its because it makes your policy about stopping your weekly rendezvous until things get physically serious between the two of them seem very flimsy.

Yoori and Jungkook are both clearly tipsy. You can tell from the way Jungkook hangs himself off her petite frame like he’s looking for support. You roll your eyes and go over to wrestle him from her and waddle him over to the dining room table where he can sit.

“How was your date,” you turn to Yoori who is hovering behind you with sleepy eyes.

“It was alright. The movie was a little boring,” she stage-whispers into your ear. “Don’t tell Kook.”

“You didn’t like the movie?” His head lolls back so he can look up at Yoori with doe eyes. Disappointment makes them look extra round and shiny.

She raises her brows guiltily. “I thought the new superhero movie would have been more your speed. I didn’t mind the idea of seeing it. I like action films.”

“Oh.”

You scamper out of the dining area as fast as you can to join Hoseok and Taehyung in the kitchen. The awkward couple moment they’re having isn’t something you think you should be privy to anyway.

Taehyung chuckles at the mortified expression on your face while Hoseok’s considers you stoically.

“Are they being too mushy in there?”

“No, not really.” You sigh. “It’s just weird realizing that I’ve never really been around them when they’re together. I don’t like the idea that I can’t get a read on the situation when they’re both good friends, you know?”

Hoseok snorts dryly. “Well, you know what they say. Dating changes people.”

“Yeah, but this is Kook we’re talking about,” Taehyung murmurs while stirring the hidden flour patches at the bottom of the bowl back into the batter. “Do you really think he’s changed that much?”

You shrug. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe you’ve changed,” Hoseok suggests.

And maybe you have. Not in the normal way, where you outgrow people. But maybe something about you has changed since you started being intimate with Jungkook in such a way where you can’t be just his gaming buddy or his companionable silence partner. Gone are the days where you could push down your infatuation long enough to sit pressed close to each other on the couch when the Iron Man movie series is marathoning on TV. You’re not sure if that’s made things easier or harder on you. Perhaps its been a little bit of both.

“What are you guys up to?”

Jungkook has managed to amble over to the kitchen while staying upright thanks to Yoori’s guiding hands. Now he’s peering into the entrance of the kitchen after the way you, Taehyung, and Hoseok whispering to one another piqued his interest. Yoori lays on the sofa, recovering from too many glasses of complimentary movie chardonnay.

You keep your head down and pretend watching Taehyung ladle batter onto the griddle is fascinating enough not to reply. Thoughts of whether or not something crucial has shifted occupy your mind too much for you to speak.

“Just playing cards and making pancakes,” Taehyung shouts over the crackling sound of the first pancake hitting the hot skillet.

“The usual,” Hoseok jokes before pitching his voice into a slyer register. “How was the date?”

“It was fine,” Jungkook answers shyly, eyes glued to your silent form. The button down he’s wearing suddenly feels too tight and he undoes the top button to give himself some air. “How was your night?”

“Here, I’ll take over,” you mumble.

You take the spatula from Taehyung’s hand and motion for the guys to leave  the kitchen while you flip the pancakes. It’ll give you something to do, and Taehyung’s thoughtful enough to go without asking questions. They don’t move far and instead Hosoek and Taehyung crowd Jungkook just outside the kitchen doorframe. Hopefully none of them notice how you turn the heat down so you can listen better. A masochistic part of you is curious to know how the date went even if you’re not sure if you can face him without combusting.

“Come on, tell us what happened. It’s just us guys,” Hoseok hisses before remembering that you’re you and you’re probably listening. Suddenly he feels like a douche. “We’re all friends,” he corrects himself. Jungkook, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be aware of your eavesdropping and complies.

“I…what do you wanna know?”

“Where’d you go?”

“To the movies. To see Cloud Break.”

Taehyung whistles lowly. “That’s supposed to be the number one date movie of the year.”

“It was very romantic,” Jungkook cracks a small, shy smile. “But I don’t think she really liked it.”

“Stil. Sounds like our boy is a real Casanova, huh?” Hoseok pats him roughly on the back with a wide grin. “The movies, though. Did you make it to third base?”

“Jeez, don’t sound so excited when you ask that,” Taehyung says with a cringe.

“What? I just wanna know if he’s any closer to swiping that V card. So,” Hoseok turns to stare, “Did you?”

“We’re taking it slow,” is all Jungkook says, eyes shifting behind the guys, towards you.

“Pancakes are ready,” you call from the kitchen. You figure it’s safe for you go back out, so you load a plate up with a tall stack and turn the stove off. Yoori’s head pops up at the sound of fresh food and hops up to come join you.

After you put the plate down, you wait until everyone is seated. Oddly enough, Jungkook and Yoori both sit on either side of the head of the table, leaving you to sit in between them.

“Thanks for cooking,” Jungkook mutters as soon as you sit down.

“No need to thank me. I’m just doing my part to have a fun Friday,” you answer awkwardly.

“These look better than the ones at Dreamies,” Yoori beams over at you. She cuts her pancakes happily before shoving a large, syrup-laden bite in her mouth. She gives you a cute thumbs up that breaks your serious mood for a moment.

You give her a warm squeeze on the shoulder. “Thanks for the high praise.”

“So, uh, what else have you guys been doing,” Jungkook inquires politely.

“Well,” Hoseok mentions nonchalantly through a full mouth, gesturing towards you. “I caught these two watching porn earlier when I came in with groceries. And this one couldn’t keep her hands off me after that.”

“Oh.” Jungkook’s cheeks start to heat as he looks between you and Hoseok and then you and Taehyung.

You almost choke on your own food as Hoseok’s words register. “That is so inaccurate. How are you so comfortable lying like that?”

“Is it not the truth? Kook, you even saw her when you came in. Seems like she’s a real minx when she gets going. Who knew all it took was Fifty Shades.”

Taehyung tries to come to your rescue. “We weren’t even watching Fifty Shades—”

“So, it was actual porn,” Hoseok’s eyes narrow at him suspiciously.

“Oh my god,” you raise your hands in surrender and then push your plate back. “I can’t do this. I’m freezing and you’re annoying. Tae, I’m stealing some clothes. Yoori, you look cold. I’ll bring you something too.” You storm out of the dining room and make a beeline for Taehyung’s room. 

While you were used to Hoseok’s ribbing, today you were extra sensitive to it and you needed some air. But you are actually cold, so you do spend a few minutes rummaging through Taehyung’s immaculate wardrobe until you find a sweater that has you smiling widely at the memories it evokes.

“I can’t believe you still have this,” you remark with arms out to showcase the sweater when you come back. The four of them all turn to see the sweater you’re wearing.

It’s a run-of-the-mill sweater until you look at the picture that’s been screen-printed onto the front. It’s a picture of you and Taehyung in your freshman year that was taken minutes after the annual Mud Run. It had been a split-second decision the two of you made after a terrible set of midterms, but the smiles on both of your slightly rounder and muddied faces don’t indicate any inkling of regret. You give Yoori the only cashmere you could find that wasn’t on the floor.

“Of course he still has it,” Hoseok smiles proudly, “I put my blood, sweat, and tears into making it. And I was there to take the fricking picture at the end of the race at 9 am on a Saturday. Do you not still have yours?”

“Sadly no. I lost mine when I moved into the sophomore dorms.”

“I wish I had been there to watch the race. I should have stayed on campus,” Jungkook chimes in, cheeks full of pancake.

“Yeah,” Hoseok counters, “But if you had stayed, you wouldn’t have ever gotten Yoori’s number in the first place. So, it all worked out in the end, right?”

Suddenly, you’re not hungry and the lively mood that the night started with has disappeared. Taehyung must sense the subtle downward shift in your shoulders and runs to get the bottle of wine Hoseok bought for you that’s been chilling in the fridge.

“Why don’t we play another game,” he suggests once he’s back at the table and filling your glass.

Yoori perks up. “That’s a great idea! Let’s play something old-school. Do you have any board games?”

“I don’t think either of us has played a board game since before 2010. Much less owned one,” Jungkook winces.

“Really? Well, it doesn’t have to be a board game. Why don’t we do another old-fashioned one. Like Charades.”

Hoseok places his head in his hands elegantly, face the picture of innocence. But you know better.

“Yoori, how do you feel about Truth or Dare?” You squeeze your eyes shut and hope she says she’s never heard of it. Or that she hates it.

“I love Truth or Dare! Let’s play once everyone’s done eating.”

You curse under your breath, but return her excited smile when she turns to you and fills your cup once more. As a safety precaution, you finish the single pancake you’d served yourself earlier before taking another sip. Its not that you’re hungry, but you’d rather not be drinking on a completely empty stomach.

When everyone has had their fill of food, new bottles of booze get taken with you to the living room. There, you all rearrange the couch and the various upholstered chairs that Taehyung has collected until everyone is seated comfortably. Taehyung sits down last because he was in his room searching for his trusted 20 sided die.

“Okay, who’s who?”

“I call 3’s,” Hoseok calls with a hand raised straight in the air.

“No way,” you huff, “You’ll have way too many chances to be It. Pick multiples of at least four or I’m banning you from playing.”

“You can’t ban me from playing. Tae, can she ban me from playing?”

“I’m gonna go ahead and say yeah,” Taehyung says casually. You smile at Hosoek smugly.

“Fine. I pick 5’s.”

“I’ll take 3’s,” Yoori says once she understands the rules you all are operating under. No one goes to argue against her.

“I call even primes,” you say. You’re really not interested in playing this game.

Hoseok rolls his eyes at you. “Why even play if you’re gonna be like that?”

“You’re both wrong,” Taehyun grins. “Odd primes is where it’s at.”

“I guess I’ll take leftovers,” Jungkook sighs. He’s equally unenthused to be playing, but mainly because every previous time he’s played the game, Taehyung has dared him to smack Hoseok’s ass as hard as possible. It never ends well. “What is that? 3, 4, 5, 8 and what else?”

“14 through 16,” you supply automatically.

“Wow,” Yoori coos and latches onto your arm. “You’re so smart.”

“Alright! If everyone has a number, let’s play,” Hoseok shouts.

In the first few rolls, Taehyung and Yoori get the majority of the turns. Yoori is kind and sticks with truths for the most part, forcing Taehyung to bring up the strawberry shaped birthmark on his ass and Jungkook to talk about how he still doesn’t know how to ride a bike. Things pick up a bit when Hoseok manages a roll and Taehyung makes the mistake of choosing Dare. In response, Hoseok tells Taehyung to pull down his pants and show everyone the birthmark. You and Yoori exchange wide glances and giggle quietly as Taehyung downs the rest of his drink for some liquid courage.

“Taehyung,” Yoori giggles behind your hand as you attempt to cover her eyes. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t feel comfortable.”

“I don’t think I have much of a choice,” he grumbles before turning to face away from the group. He tugs his pants and boxers down a few inches before the pert curve of his butt. There, just south of the equator on the globe of his ass lies a very strawberry-shaped birthmark.

Immediately, Yoori chokes on her drink trying, and failing, to stifle her laughter at the pure ridiculousness of the mark. Meanwhile, you aren’t doing much better.

You pull your lip between your teeth as you hold back the cackle you desperately wish to let out. Instead, you opt for reaching out and pinching at the nearest cheek. The way he jumps slightly out of your reach while cupping his junk and glaring weakly at you sends you over the edge.

“Not bad,” Yoori snorts out between giggles.

“Yeah, wait a minute.” You gasp. “You have a cute little ass, Tae. I thought you said you didn’t have time for the gym.”

Taehyung’s face flushes, but he still smiles a self-depricating smile as he pulls up his pants finally. “I don’t. This baby is 100% homegrown.”

“I see. Must be all the tater tots,” you say with tears nearly rolling down your cheeks.

“And all the La-Z boy sitting.”

“Nice.”

Jungkook huffs audibly. He crosses his arms as he watches the game unfold, suddenly infinitely less interested in playing than he was a few minutes ago. “This is stupid.”

“Are you not having fun?”

He turns to Yoori quickly while remembering that he’s seated next to her. His own cheeks color with a bit of shame that he’d been caught being petulant.

“It’s not that. I mean…I just thought this would be a bit more mature.”

Yoori cocks her head to the side to appraise him and takes a sip of wine. “Is Truth or Dare known for its sophisticated gameplay?” A reserved and unreadable smile tugs at the corner of her lips.

“Not really,” he stammers. “I just figured you wouldn’t be interested in immature stuff like this.”

“Hmm. I’m actually having quite a lot of fun. Don’t worry about me and loosen up.”

Jungkook swallows roughly and mentally chides himself for being weird. Even he’s not sure where the pouting spell came from. Regardless, he smothers down the party pooper vibes and tries to enjoy the game as best he can.

Taehyung rolls a 10 and pouts at not be able to get back at Yoori. After all the laughter and the handful of swipes she’d made at his birthmark, he’s eager to pay her back somehow. But all he can do is turn to Hoseok with a bored expression.

“Truth or dare?”

“Dare. Do you worst!” Hoseok sits excitedly at the edge of his seat while waiting for Taehyung to come up with a juicy truth or dare.

“Uh, I don’t know, bro. I dare you to do, like, 30 pushups or something.”

“That’s such a shitty dare.”

“I couldn’t think of anything. I was hoping Yoori would roll so I could give her a taste of her own medicine,” he says while locking eyes with Yoori. The two engage in a semi-serious staring competition for a while before they break into laughter.

“This is bullshit,” Hoseok mumbles as he rises from his chair and gets into position to do the pushups.

The room is quiet while everyone waits for him to finish. Sound of his exertion floats over from his section of the circle and you swipe through your twitter feed in the meantime. But you become so engrossed in a recipe for spinach dip that you don’t realize Hoseok has rolled a 2 and is calling out to you.

“What,” you say, distracted by the amount of leafy greens going into the dip.

“Put your phone away,” Hoseok whines, “It’s game night rules.”

You don’t look up from your screen. “Doesn’t count when we’re not playing video games.”

“You suck.”

“So do you.”

“Truth or dare.”

“Dare,” you say on autopilot before realizing the mistake you’ve made.

You let your phone clatter to the ground and prepare to take back what you said, but you can see that its too late from the smirk Hoseok is wearing. It’s the worst kind, too. The smarmy one that lets you know he’s thinking about doing something greasy. You’re willing to bet all the money left in your student account balance that he’s going to dare you to show him your boobs.

“Dare you to kiss Yoori,” he says smugly, like he’s got you cornered.

You’re only slightly surprised and let out a breath of relief. The idea that he might dare you to shed your layers to sit in Taehyung’s freezing living room in just your bra and bottoms was really worrying you.

“Really, Hoseok? What are we, 13?”

Taehyung chimes in with concern. “Yeah. They might not be comfortable with that.”

“I’m fine with it,” Yoori perks up slightly in her seat.

“Okay,” Taehyung hesitates, “But Jungkook—”

“Might not approve of it? Why don’t we ask him,” she supplies before turning to Jungkook. “Kook, what do you think?”

“Well, I—”

“Why the hell would he care,” Hoseok cuts him off. “Dude, you don’t care, right? It’s harmless and its 2018.”

“Y-yeah, I guess.” He pushes his glasses up with his ring finger, a nervous tick you’re familiar with. Your first instinct is to go over and see what’s wrong, but you quell the urge. 

“Holy shit,” Hoseok mumbles to himself when he realizes this is really happening. You get up to join Yoori in the love seat she’s occupying. Before you can change your minds he speaks up. “No pecks. It has to be real.”

“Figured as much,” you roll your eyes and gesture for Yoori to scooch closer to you. She sends you a smile that’s hidden from the others by the shiny curtain of her hair. You mirror it back automatically.

“For 60 seconds,” Hoseok shouts. Yoori’s eyes widen at the time condition but she doesn’t say anything.

“That’s too much.”

“30 seconds, but you have to use tongue.”

“Hoseok!” You and Taehyung yell simultaneously.

“Fine,” he says before thinking for a beat. “45 seconds but no lame stuff. Final offer.”

You check in with Yoori to see if she objects, but she merely rests her cheek on your shoulder and gives you a thumbs up.

“Deal, you damn pervert.”

Hoseok scrambles to get his phone timer launched while you and Yoori arrange yourselves accordingly once and then a second time when Hoseok says he can’t see. You whisper an apology on his behalf, but Yoori waves it off and pulls you in with a gentle hand resting at the base of your neck. You can’t help but notice that even from a few inches away, her skin is flawless. Its almost unfair.

“Alright. Start.”

Yoori swoops in and immediately parts your lips with her own. They’re soft and taste like the moscato she’s been drinking, and it’s honestly a very tantalizing sensory experience. You let her take over, let her press you closer until her nose brushes your cheek and she sucks your lip into her mouth. It takes you by surprise and when you gasp softly, she teases the border of your lips with her tongue ever so lightly. You let out an appreciative hum, surprising yourself. She smiles, nearly breaking the kiss, before nipping at you once. Tentatively, you brush your tongue against hers. She surges forward and works over your mouth until the soft chiming of Hoseok’s alarm alerts you that the dare has been completed.

You pull away first with hot cheeks and a slightly swollen mouth. Yoori looks pleased with herself as she looks over your flustered state. Neither of you see any of the guys’ shocked, wistful expressions. Yoori moves to smooth down the flyaways she created when she pressed you into the seat’s upholstery.

“You kiss just like Jungkook,” she laughs before pulling away slightly. The others murmur in the background as they strain to listen in.

“Wait, what?” Her words are slow to register at first. “You guys have kissed?”

“Yeah. Loads of times,” she snickers, “On the way to the restaurant, in the parking lot of Dreamies, in the back of his car. My apartment. We’ve even—” She takes in the mortified look on your face and grimaces. “Oh gosh, I’m sorry. I know you don’t like to hear about this stuff. I’ll stop.”

You make mental note of all the occasions she’s mentioned. One of which was their first date. But just yesterday Jungkook had told you that they hadn’t even started holding hands as a couple. And while he hadn’t made a comment about anything else, the implication behind the statement was that they definitely hadn’t done anything more than that. Something about his more daring behavior struck you as unusual. But if he’d been getting other practice elsewhere, it wouldn’t be odd at all.

He had lied to you. And you wonder what else he’d been lying about.

When you turn around to face Jungkook, he looks pale and scared. You’ve only ever seen him look like that a handful of times and it was when he was in deep shit and it was his own fault. During those times, you’d somehow managed to show him why he was wrong while also making him feel supported. This time, though, there was no way you could do that. Not without throwing away what little dignity you have left from getting into this heinous arrangement in the first place.

Taehyung, Yoori, and Hoseok look on silently as you and Jungkook exchange the long look. Jungkook’s chest rises and falls rapidly as adrenaline runs through his system. When you stand up, he stands up at the same time, a hand instinctively reaching out.

You ignore him in favor of grabbing your things without a word and pulling up the bus schedule app on your phone. You’re not going to force yourself to wait around for an uber to pick you up, but you’re also not going to subject yourself to further torture by walking home in the middle of winter. Once you see that the next bus is coming in 20 minutes, you put on your jacket.

“I’m heading out. I’ll see you guys around.” You wince as your voice cracks a little bit, but don’t bother lingering to see if people noticed. You hurry out with the hopes that you can find a place to hide and wait for the bus before Jungkook can follow you out. He calls your name, softly at first, but you don’t acknowledge him.

But you don’t get any further than a few meters away down Taehyung’s hallway before Jungkook’s catching up after having sprinted out after you.

“Jungkook, stop,” is all you can trust yourself to say as you stare at your shoes.

“I can explain.”

“Fine.” You look up at him, gaze sharp. “Explain.”

He seems taken aback like he didn’t think you’d let him speak. His demeanor turns sheepish. “I didn’t mean to lie to you. It just...happened.”

“Do you think I’m stupid enough to believe that? You made a choice, Jungkook. It didn’t just happen. I want to know why you chose to lie.”

“I just…wasn’t ready for the weekends to stop.”

“Look, I get it. You got used to getting your rocks off. But we had a deal. It shouldn’t have mattered that you didn’t want it to end. As soon as you and Yoori got physical, we were supposed to go back to normal.”

“That’s not why I decided to lie,” he hisses.

“Then why did you?”

“Because!”

“Because?” You scoff. “That’s not an answer.”

“Because I,” he stammers, not sure of what to  to say. “I didn’t feel comfortable detailing mine and Yoori’s intimacy to you.”

“You didn’t feel comfortable?” Your voice is carefully low, but raises as you continue. “You didn’t feel comfortable telling me, the girl who has been your best friend since we were kids, about you and your new girlfriend? The girl who you had spit into your palm yesterday so you could jerk off in her bed yesterday? You didn’t feel fucking uncomfortable then, Jungkook!”

“Well, you’re always talking about my comfort. Shouldn’t it matter when I’m uncomfortable? Even if its at a weird time?”

“Fine. Let’s say you were uncomfortable. You still should have told me.”

“Why is it your business?”

Your jaw drops open. “Maybe because yours and Yoori’s relationship is the reason this whole thing started? And maybe because if you’re going to be running between the two of us and swapping bodily fluids, I should know? For my own fucking health?”

He stammers when he realizes that reason never came to mind once. Its a losing argument, he knows. As a last ditch effort, he turns things around.

“Is that the only reason why you’re mad? Because you think I would have given you an STD?”

“Are you serious,” your voice cracks again as tears take hold of you. “You think that’s all I care about?”

“You haven’t made any other points,” Jungkook sniffs like he’s indifferent to your shimmering eyes. “What else am I supposed to think? Is there something else?”

“I can’t believe someone so smart can be so stupid. You really don’t get it? I can’t keep sneaking around with you like this because you’re dating a girl who’s my friend now. But even if she weren’t, I can’t keep doing this because I have feelings—”

The front door opens and Hoseok slides through and closes it softly. He takes in your bowed shoulders, watery eyes, and shaking hands before pinning Jungkook with a glare that’s so potent he steps back a bit.

“You okay,” he nods his chin at you subtly.

“Y-yeah, Hobi. I’m fine. Me and Kook were just talking.”

“Just talking, huh?”

“Hoseok,” Jungkook grits through clenched teeth, anxious for you to continue what you were about to say. “Go back inside. This doesn’t concern you.”

“Oh, I think it does. I mean, she’s my friend and you’ve been screwing her over figuratively and literally for the past month now, haven’t you?”

Your eyes widen and tears of embarrassment slip over your waterline. “You knew?”

“Of fucking course, I knew. You were walking around like you were suddenly getting laid and Kook was showing up to TA sessions with hickies on his neck the week after we made a joke about you taking his V card off his hands. All at the same time that you magically have to start staying over after game night at his place for tutoring,” he spits the word out. “You’re the smartest girl I know. There’s no way you actually have that much to learn from Kook of all people.”

“Oh, come on,” Jungkook drawls and steps in between you and Hosoek. “Don’t pretend to care about her now.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You’re always picking fights with her. You don’t care what’s going here, you’re just trying to feed the flames.”

“Kook, stop,” you rasp from behind him, but he ignores you and shoves a hand into the center of Hoseok’s chest.

“Say more,” Hoseok smiles darkly, egging him on. The two of them stand inches apart, each one poised to attack the other at a moment’s notice.

“You’ve been itching to see things fall apart for me because you can’t handle being the oldest and the least accomplished in the group.” You try not to gasp but it’s hard because you’ve never heard him say something so nasty to anyone, let alone to someone you would both call a friend. “You’re just mad that your…your indifferent stoner, beta cool guy act hasn’t paid off and you’re still alone with your hand on the weekends. I can tell when someone wants what I have. You’re like every other stupid bully from high school, but with none of the popularity.”

Your mouth drops open, but you can’t find any words to stop the situation from escalating any further. Jungkook smirks at his silence. But Hoseok merely raises a casual eyebrow before turning to look down at you from over Jungkook’s shoulder.

“If you wanted sex that badly, you could have just come to me, you know. Offer still stands now, too.”

Before you can counter anything either of them has said, Jungkook’s fist collides with Hoseok’s jaw. The sound resonates in the empty hallway with a loud crunching sound followed by Hoseok tumbling to the floor and Jungkook yowling in pain at his damaged knuckles. Jungkook automatically turns to you, grimacing and cradling his hand, but you swerve past him to check on Hoseok.

He’s still very much conscious, but the blow took him by surprise and he lost his balance. There’s a little bit of blood when Jungkook’s fist split the skin on the side of Hoseok’s jawline and you can tell already that there will be swelling and bruising. But he should be fine and he doesn’t show any of the signs of concussion that you remember reading about a while ago.

You pull him up by the hand and sling his arm over your shoulder when he stumbles once upright. Together you hobble back into the apartment. Taehyung and Yoori are sitting stiffly at the dining room table when you come in and both rush forward to help you. Jungkook shuffles in after, at a loss for what’s going on.

Wrapping a bag of frozen vegetables from Taehyung’s freezer in a dish towel, you tend to Hoseok’s minor wounds. Taehyung looks tired and frantic as he looks at his friend in pain.

“I don’t get it. What happened out there?”

You hang your head in shame and to avoid both Taehyung and Hoseok’s watchful gazes. Thankfully Hoseok doesn’t say anything, but you’re so embarrassed and disoriented that nothing satisfying comes out.

“They were fighting. And Jungkook punched him.”

“But why would he do that? Hoseok, did you say something?”

“Don’t blame Hobi, he was trying to help me,” you whisper so Yoori can’t hear. You’re not sure you can handle breaking the news to everyone just yet. “Tae, I haven’t been honest with you a while now. Things have been going on between me and Kook and it hasn’t been right. All I can say is that I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t fix anything, but its been eating me up.” 

Jungkook watches as Yoori stands off to the side, looking lost and a little out of place as she tries to parse out where the boundaries for her are. She looks between you and him with uncertainty in her eyes before she finally comes over to check in with him first. He waves her off and watches her naturally gravitate towards you.

When Yoori comes asking you what’s happened with worry in her eyes, you look back at Jungkook for a moment before bawling your eyes out in the middle of the kitchen. Yoori envelopes you in a hug immediately, and you let her comfort you despite the fact that you’ve been secretly highjacking her relationship. Sobs wrack your body for a moment before your phone chimes to let you know your bus is coming soon.

You whisper in her ear that you’re sorry and you’ll explain when it’s the right time. You squeeze her soft hands to your cheek and stutter out that you don’t deserve a friend like her, but that you hope you can remedy that sooner rather than later. With that, you whisper a goodbye and head out, giving Jungkook a wide berth.

He turns around just in time for him to catch one last glimpse of you before the door swings shut behind you.

[whumping-every-day]

Part 5

“What’s the plan?”

“We heal it. We open a dialogue if possible. We make sure it doesn’t kill us.”

“How big of a danger is that last one?”

Callum remembered the demon’s lashing. Its attempted flight. He rubbed a hand on the spot it headbutted him. It could’ve snapped him in two with that lunge, but no.

“I’m not sure.” Hunters told tales of the demons they’d vanquished. Creatures of untold evil and unimaginable might. Neither description fitted the frail, flighty creature in cell two. Callum pursed his lips.

Hunters had been wrong before. Perhaps now was a time. Perhaps the creature was an exception. Perhaps it was merely biding its time.

 He would observe, he would test. He wasn’t about to trust the creature, but he would pass his own judgments. Before any accurate research could occur, the demon needed to gain strength. As it stood, a strong wind would send it to the floor.

It wasn’t going to happen overnight. In the meantime, he’d take some base readings. Comparison with its later state wouldn’t hurt. And communication… communication would be-

A scramble and Thwap! sounded from the other room, followed by snarling.

… key. Communication would be key.

Cut Out snapped at the white thing pinning their wings. The demon couldn’t feel them, they were so tight! Cut Out couldn’t see them, but they had to be there!

Bright! They couldn’t see! The side of their head blossomed in pain. Their eyes darted about in a blind daze. The frenzy had yet to die despite the ringing in their skull. Which way was up? Which way was down? Human hands held their head firm against the stone floor. 

They screamed. Rage, pain, frustration, despair. All wrapped in one cry. Nowhere close to encompassing the full depth of their emotion, but a clawful of the surface. They thrashed. Against what, they didn’t know. They only knew they had to change. To not be what they were.

Their wrists hit the floor, energy spent. Exhaustion crept up their spine. They shut their eyes against the light.

“Now look at what you’ve done.” The wrap was in shreds, rendered (and rended) unusable. The wound beneath didn’t look too bad upon first glance, but it would need to be examined in better light.

“Why did you go and do that?” The human asked. Cut Out groaned. To bring their wings back, what else? But that wouldn’t work. They knew that. Would… would anything work? Shame ran hot through their neck, mixing with deep fear. Deep, endless fear of a certainty.

They were grounded. Mutilated, maimed, disfigured and stranded beyond anyone who could understand them. Would their old friends be able to recognize them if Cut Out somehow managed to return? Would they want to be recognized?

“Don’t do it again, understand?” The demon opened a slit of an eye to the hunter. “The bandages are there to help.”

The demon let out a short ‘Erm-ph!’ and a dip of its head. Callum gave it a considering look.

“Can you speak?” He asked the big question. The answer determining how all further interactions played out.

*“Yes…”* Cut Out hissed, trailing the word. Their vocal chords had been one of the only things not injured since arriving on The Middle. Turmoil pulled their mind and body down, down, down. Sinking into something they didn’t bother trying to climb out of.

Callum pursed his lips. “Ash,” he said, not taking his eyes off the demon, “did you get any of that?”

“N-No. No. No- … No.”

“Alright, alright. I heard you the third time.” He heaved another sigh, removing his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose, “Of course it couldn’t be that easy.” He muttered.

“May I try?” Ash said. Callum nodded and the vampire continued, “Can you speak english? Or any human language for that matter?”

The demon tilted its head, visible eye narrowed to a slit and dull. It chuffed, then made a noise somewhere between a growl and cough. The slit eye shut. Then a low rumble. It fell silent and slowly drew a claw to its neck, behind its horns and before its shoulders. A single tired pupil to him, questioning.

“If that’s a ‘no’ then shake your head.” Said Ash. Callum shifted their grip a little lower. The demon shook. Then it’s body racked in a shudder.

Ash had become a bit of an expert at recognizing his human’s facial expressions. He knew the hunter’s set jaw wasn’t about to let setbacks, no matter the size, stop them. “We’re going to the lab. You’re not going to struggle, understand?”

Cut Out’s head dipped, the conformation unfinished but present. The realization of what they’d done hit them. The demon grit their teeth in shame. Their wings… the things on their sides weren’t the problem. In their grogginess they must have forgotten… or something. It felt so real.

How could their own body lie to them?

Both demon and hunter frowned, albeit for different reasons.

The demon was promptly restrained in the lab once more. Callum unwrapped its torso. The demon had gotten a bite in. Its side was a mess once more. 

Callum huffed. Ash went to get the water boiling. The hunter retrieved his tools. It took easily another hour to treat the bite. First washing. Then more skin had to be cut away. The edges were too ragged to be saved. The demon barely flinched. Then more water. The antiseptic was applied and reapplied to old wounds. Finally the wounds had to be wrapped.

Procedure done, he slumped to a seat. Ash looked between the exhausted entities. “I had some questions.” The hunter grumbled. The demon twitched. “It seems like most aren’t going to be easy to answer though. We’re gonna start with a few easy ones today.” The hunter sank into his seat.

“Ash, you ready?” He said, not looking up.

“Y-yes.” The vampire shifted his grip on the pen.

“Now,” Callum shifted, bringing his head up to stare at the creature on his table, “are you a demon?”

Cut Out nodded.

“Good. Wanted to be sure. Do you want to inflict pain?”

Cut Out cocked their head. What kind of question was that? They shook their head vigorously.

Callum stood up with a groan. “We’re done for now.” He grabbed the demon’s muzzle, forcing it to look at him once more.

“I don’t know if I trust you, but until you can prove you’re not going to bite everything that moves, this,” he jerked the muzzle strap, “isn’t coming off.”

The creature was set back in its cell. It curled its tail over its claws.

Cut Out looked to the human. How were they supposed to prove their self-mutilation was an accident? They didn’t want to hurt. To inflict it or feel it. They kept being shoved into situations they couldn’t help. Things they couldn’t control.

Their question must’ve shown. The human’s expression softened a touch.

“Keep your claws to yourself over the next few days and you’ll earn a little trust.” He nodded to Ash. “I’m going to wash off.”

The vampire watched his human leave. He considered the demon. It lifted a claw, seemingly considering something.

“It’s really not bad here. It’s actually nice. Really nice. You- you just need to show us we can trust you.” Ash didn’t know if the reassurance meant anything. He hesitated a moment, but he had tasks to do. The vampire shot the creature in the cell another look before he left.

[ecstatic-chrononaut]

Grey. So many shades of grey, seeming to dim the bright light that is Mikalya Tayag's soul. From the moment her and her companions stepped on the train, she felt the monotony pressing down on her individualism, and her vibrant personality. She felt as if she might become one of the many women in white that all move with the same sad, deliberate motions over and over again. She watched as her companions drifted off, she tried so hard to keep watch over them for as long as she could before eventually even she too felt the pull of slumber.

It was the monotonous motions of the women, the landscape outside, and everything in shades of grey tugging at her like counting sheep slowly puts a person to sleep. It felt soothing, but she also felt a sadness wash over her when her eyes closed. Her dad said this would be a conversation with her subconscious...perhaps the meditative sadness was giving her an idea of what was to come.

Before long her eyes slipped closed, the final bits of wakefulness sucked out of her as she drifted off into a deep, still sleep.

When she wakes again, she is sitting in the little kitchen of her bachelor apartment so very close to Seattle Center. There is colour here, but even that seemed dulled out in a way very unlike real life. There was that hint of grey from the train reflecting through in every surface. She glanced around her apartment at the chaos: bed unmade, a half-empty glass of water sitting on the nightstand, some clothes spilling from her overstuffed laundry basket, and her violin and laptop sitting closed and clearly unused on her tiny sofa. The lights in the bathroom are on, but even they seem very dim. Her kitchen could use a wipe-down, and a large pile of dirty dishes sat in the sink. Even on the table, where she found herself drinking tea, there sat a pile of scattered papers and unopened mail, plus multiple scores of music she was working on at school that are buried far under everything else.

"You have too much on your mind."

The voice that speaks caught her attention for the first time. How did she not notice the person sitting directly across from her? Was it because it was her perfect mirror image? Except...this image of her seemed dressed differently, to fit the room. Her blue and pink streaked hair was faded, dirty and pulled into a messy bun and she wore the clothes of someone who was too disinterested with everything else to give a shit about her image. This is not the colourful, carefully put-together Mika that presents herself to the world.

Mika's eyes moved to the two teacups that sat on the table between them, both steaming hot with something slightly too pale. The cups themselves looked slightly dirty, like they were given a hap-hazard wipe-down before the tea was made.

"What?" She asked aloud. "What's...what's wrong?"

"You have too much on your mind," her duplicate repeated. Her voice is dull, disinterested. "Or maybe it's that you are too intently focused on one particular thing."

Mika felt her cheeks burn up as the duplicate spoke. "That makes no sense. I have a lot of things on my mind."

The duplicate snorted, and looked around the dusty and dirty room. "Bullshit. Look at this place. You haven't tended to anything in here in so long."

"That's not true. I tend to everything in here. I don't know why you've decided to keep everything in this state, but I tend to everything." She felt defensive, like how dare she accuse herself of such a blatant lie.

"Fine. Whatever. You tend to things on the surface. You put on a happy face and make sure no one knows any better. Jesus Christ, you are more like him than you know."

A small light flickered in her eyes, a light of desperation and yearning. She wanted to know more. She wanted to ask more. She wanted to...

"Hah! See. I told you. You are only focused so intently on one thing. As soon as I bring him up, you get that look in your eyes."

"I do not. Shut up!"

"You're obsessed with him."

"I said shut up."

"You always want the forbidden fruit."

"Shut up or I will make you shut up."

"You just can't accept the fact that you cannot have everything you want."

"Shut up shut up shut up."

"He's not going to love you."

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

There was a burst in her mind, of bright hot anger and indignation that she would ever say such truly awful things to herself. Her anger caused a blast of magick, papers flying, tea spilling over, and the chair of her duplicate flying backward.

"WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?" She was on her feet now, standing over the fallen chair. She felt the fury building in her belly. "WHY WON'T YOU LET ME JUST FEEL WHAT I WANT? WHY ARE YOU TREATING ME LIKE THIS? WHY CAN'T YOU JUST, FOR ONCE, SHUT UP?"

Her duplicate stared up at her, unaffected by the shouting and screaming, or by the further mess Mika was causing in her own mind. "Why do you keep treating yourself like this?" She asked, gesturing around the room with a hand.

It seemed like that question was enough to put the young mage in her place. All of the fire and anger and rage building in her want out with such a simple question. She stopped and stared around the chaotic mess, which was now even further of a mess than it was.

"You were starting to make progress," the duplicate calmly picked herself up off the floor, even as Mika sunk back into her seat. "Your trip to Cincinnati seemed to help, healing from the Marauder bubble made you think a little more clearly...but then you went and did this."

Mika swallowed, eyes moving down to stare at the table. She didn't speak.

"You went and made a mess again. You thought you could have what you want on a big silver platter, even when the mages on the moon told you there would always been two prices."

Still so quiet, Mika moved her hands up to sit palms down on the table.

"One you know, and one you don't. What's the price you don't know, Mikalya? For what? The eventual promise that you will get to meet him again?"

Slowly her eyes moved up to stare herself in the eyes.

"He's never going to be the person everyone remembers. He is never going to be someone who can love you the way Aaron already does."

"I know."

"Then why do you do this to yourself?"

A span of silence followed. Of course Mika didn't have an answer for that. There was no justification or reason she could think of that sounded good enough.

And yet...and yet the opportunity presented itself, and some ridiculous lick of hope made her take it.

"Please. Just...think about this. If you want to pursue him, fine. But remember that you are more than that. He is the reason you hid your whole life, he is the reason you died. I don't want him to be the reason why you... why we wither away as well."

Her head bobbed, and tears sprung forth from her eyes. "Okay. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry to me. You are affecting us both in the end. I love you, and I just want what's best for you."

"Okay."

"Good."

She swallowed and nodded again. "I love you too."

"I want to believe you...but you need to show me that." She gestured around the room. "Show me, okay?"

"I will. I promise I will. I...I will."

"Good. You should go now. Chev and Quinita are waking now, and the others won't be far behind."

Mika didn't get another word in as her apartment faded away. She had too much to think about now. Not long after the dream faded, she found herself waking up and crying in the windowsill of the Verbena chantry.

[opepin]

january: week four

23: i felt pretty meh in the morning. i stayed in bed until i had to get up and eat a small breakfast before heading out to get lunch with my fidelity team. i wore my bomber and didn't dress appropriately for the wind and the flurries x__x it was oddly not that cold though. azilah treated me to chicken and rice guys and i got to talk with her, leah, and david during lunch. apparently, vlad got some work and ben was going to be back next week or so. i'm happy that the original team got back together before february (: it was nice to see most of them again. then i told them that i accepted a full-time job offer at tandemseven and then basically said goodbye to them. it was bittersweet to me because i felt like i was letting go of possibly deeper friendships. i'm not one to become bffs with people on the spot so it made me a bit sad. i did get to hug everyone before i dropped off my laptop and badge. the leaving process was super easy. azilah was also surprised when she asked ann about it too. well, i'm no longer a fidelity employee.

i walked over to flour bakery in the cold anyway because i really wanted chocolate cake. i got their vegan chocolate muffin and their triple layered mousse. i saved the latter to eat with kevin when he got back home. the muffin was so good <3 i would definitely get it again. i stayed longer than i thought i would and bought a large white peony tea. i just sat in front of the window listening to music and chilling for an hour or so. i commuted back and had a list of errands to do before the day was over. i responded to tandemseven's office manager (i accepted the job offer in the morning!) and then i set up our awesome new ring floor light. i love it. then i did my daily things and then did cardio. kevin got back late, which irked me a bit and then he cooked while i finished exercising and showering. we watched supernatural together while eating a late af dinner and then we brushed together and went to sleep together before 1:30 am. tomorrow is my first day of work @_@; i kind of wish it wasn't because the weather is going to be wet and windy...

24: the rain and wind basically spat on me when i walked to work in the morning. i do miss running out of south station and into the fidelity building, but i like walking...not in this weather though...haha. i got a bit lost too, but i got there in time. everyone is super nice and yeah. i literally started working right when i got there. well, i got a tour from noelle, our office manager, tried to get my badge (will need to get it tomorrow), and then i got a  side project to do. i worked on a think pad for a bit until my stuff came in. omg, it was like christmas. sam, one of our IT guys, came into the office with apple bags full of NEW products for me. i got a new 15" macbook pro retina, 9.7" ipad with a case, magic mouse, magic keyboard, t7 swag: battery pack with charging adapters, notepad, pen, and lanyard, and a ton of adapters for my laptop. i also have my own office space with a 27" apple monitor. it was really overwhelming and i was giggling on the inside when i got all of these things. the best part was the t7 swag from noelle and that i got everything before 12 pm on my first day. yo, this company has their shit together LOL. i accepted the offer monday and i was in the office a day later. it's crazy! i love it.

it took me a while to clean up my area and move all the pc stuff around. then i ate lunch in the business cafe room. it's not as nice as fidelity's but it's cozy and nice. i'll need to bring my own tea, but i'm not really bothered. i got to connect with some of the dev team and they're soo nice. oh, when people came into the office, i got some hello's and introductions every now and then. i don't know everyone's names but i hope i will x__x; i finished my lunch alone because i took a pretty late lunch and then i went back and got into real work for the rest of the day. i had a meeting with phil and dave, who guided me through the start of a project, a team meeting, and then reconnected with phil to continue my walkthrough. our internet died for a bit and i took this chance to finish some employee paperwork and stuff. it was a busy but fulfilling day. i was one of the last to leave and i got to talk with dave and frank. i'm really happy here. dave gifted me a book about journey mapping and organizing user research for my first day of working there. i have no words. this is possibly the best first day of work i've ever had. actually, it is the best first day of work i've ever had.

i met kevin at south station to go home. we talked about our days and then talked when we got back home. he told me to tell him how i feel more often. it's true. i should. he is only a simple bear LOL. <3 i'm so grateful for having someone so caring and understanding by my side. often times i think he's going to give up on me but when i finally do talk to him, he never wavers...what a rock...what a brick wall, haha. i'm thankful for him. we played with my new apple products and we made omurice for dinner. we ate while watching supernatural and then i went to exercise while he showered and played some skyrim. i caught up some daily things and then showered, packed things for my desk, drank some tea while updating my job status, and tried reading the book before going to sleep. p.s. my tumblr is still deactivated.

25: lol the entire dev team was gone today. it was just me, dave, frank, and the marketing/sales team. i watched more videos in the morning and kept dozing. it's the videos and kinda my lack of sleep. i went from 9 hours to 6 hours. x__x i wasn't ready for the first day (it was sprung on me a bit), but i was excited to go anyway! i brought in my own cup, tea, notebook, and rock friend for my desk :3 i'm so happy to have one of my own! the rest of the afternoon was dedicated to learning more about ux360 with hands on practice. it's really fun. i love that i'm learning how to use a new software while having some knowledge of visual and ui design too so that i can make the best journey map layouts for our clients~ i took the project for myself in the last couple hours of work and it turned out alright. i think i need to show more initiative and just go with my gut. i'm scared of messing up our progress and not being able to undo it haha. my work schedule so far is 9 am to 5:15 pm. it's not bad because i get to go home with kevin (: i work a bit later because phil is in california. kevin went climbing today so i went home in a packed af train cart. i almost missed it too haha.

oh, my earrings slid down the sink drain this morning...i woke up kevin but didn't stress about it too much after sending an emergency email and a maintenance request to help get it out. kevin woke up early just for me hahahaha. awww. he went back to sleep after ofc. the maintenance guy, josh, got it out for me T^T i'm so thankful. so when i got back home, i cleaned it and moved my jewelry sack to the closet so it'll never happen again. i remember why i kept my jewelry on my desk instead of the bathroom for a while... i also separated my chicago keys from my keys here because i don't want to carry all of that. then i watched the latest episodes of 'jane the virgin' while prepping pork katsu. it took longer than expected, but i did it and then kevin came back and cooked while i washed dishes. we got our air mattress in and we tested it out! air mattresses are so cool! we ate dinner while watching supernatural and then kevin washed the dishes while i deflated the mattress, packed it up, and then i went to shower and wash my hair (finally). i forgot when was the last time i washed my hair. i really dislike my hair right now btw. i've just been using dry shampoo because i feel like it's always oily T_T or just heavy and my part wants to be in the middle again. bleh. i did some cardio after showering because i wanted to move at least a little before the day was over. i watched some youtube videos before hitting the sack at 1 am. my tumblr is STILL deactivated... 

26: i tried getting on a later train today and i got to work like 15 minutes late T__T i mean, it would be on time for me technically, but i felt bad. i got my badge today but they misspelled my name so i went back later and asked if i could replace it. so i'll be getting my badge probably next week. i spent a lot of time walking in and out of the office today because of that and just using the bathroom. i had to pee a lot o__O haah. i got on a call on noon and then had lunch late so when i got back, it was already time for our standup meeting. that lasted longer than expected but after, i had a lot of work to do. i made adjustments and then did bigger edits. i left work at 5:30 pm LOL. i made it up anyway. :x there was something i wanted to finish but it was late so i left, but when i got home, i did it! yay! i actually got to south station before kevin did and he had to run to south station to catch the train. gg him. we watched supernatural while we waited for our rice to cook and then caught up on pokemon sun and moon episodes too. then he went to wash the dishes and game while i kicked my own ass while exercising. i did chloe ting's hiit workout and her leg and butt video and i nearly died. i also fit in some hip hop cardio. after, i did some daily things and showered and went to sleep. i didn't doze off quite as much today! i also got to organize my space better. i moved all of my apple boxes into the unused drawer next to me lol. it's been a tiring, but good week. tomorrow will be my 4th day of work and first week!

27: the office was empty except for me, dave, and jim, which is basically the product team here in boston, lol. i got on a train at 8:30 am and made it to work at a reasonable time. i also got my badge with my name spelled correctly. what a good morning! jim and i were the first ones at the office and we realized that we needed keys to open the door. the front had keys and dave told us that they're on order and we'll get ours next week. umm, it was a pretty busy friday! in the morning, i joined dave and jim for a ux360 demo so i could get more acquainted with the product. jim and i got our iphones today. omg it came in a new box and it was glorious when i got it. then i had to do a few fixes to the project i'm working on before a trial with another client with phil. after the call, phil pointed out a few things that needed fixing or addressing so i did that and ended up not eating until 2 pm LOL. i was really into it. we didn't have our standup today but i remained busy after lunch. we found a kind of big problem and i tried solving it with photoshop instead of working around the product limitations and i failed haha. it's okay though because apparently, it's being addressed and hopefully, it will be changed by next week. after fixing everything up, i exported them into pdfs and sent them into phil. i really like my job. it's pretty challenging and i love being busy. i got out of the office at 5 pm just before jim left and locked the office.

i took the train home and then spent time personalizing my iphone and ipad and macbook for work. i know it's for work, but this laptop isn't like fidelity's contractor laptop -- i can download whatever and it's meant to be used lovingly. i'm a little bit uncomfortable putting some apps and using messengers and stuff on them but i downloaded them anyway just in case i get comfortable? haha. i had some youtube videos going on in the background. kevin went climbing and came back and showered. it was already 8:30 pm by the time he started cooking?! we also found out that the tofu is supposed to be marinaded too T__T so i got a little hangry. i was still really out of it -- i think it was because of the challenges i faced at work, so my head felt funny. i'm tired. LOL. i stayed up watching some youtube videos and eventually fell asleep after showering at like 2:30 am?

28: i woke up in time to pick up vivian from the train station! well, i woke up just in time to miss the train to get vivian T_T so she had to train to deco alone. i went back to the apartment after calling her and then i made rice and ate some cereal. then i went to cuddle with kevin some more and talk. woo! vivian just knocked on our door and we had a "bum" day. all of us ate lunch together and then vivian and i just caught up and talked. whenever i see her, it's super chill and we never have to do anything in particular together. so we talked, watched youtube videos, etc. then vivian cut my hair! omg i was not prepared. i had to cut up one of our nice febreeze-scented garbage bags and then i use one of our blanket sheets for the floor because i didn't want to use another bag. the deco girls didn't have anything i could use :( so then we watched hip hop cardio videos while vivian cut my hair. she's really good at it! there was so much hair left afterwards. i really like my haircut (((: she thinned it out nicely and cut it to the length i wanted. kevin went climbing during this so he came back to a bunch of hair and our "salon" hahaha. vivian curled my hair and completed the salon appointment ;D then she got super hungry and we spent a good amount of time figuring out what to eat.

i washed dishes and cleaned the area and then we all settled on picking up food from 'fat cat' and getting bubble tea from a place nearby called, 'oh my tea.'vivian drove bb and we got bubble tea first. i'm in love with this bubble tea shop. i got a honey green tea with boba and the boba is the best i've ever had. the drink was just right in sugar level too. vivian enjoyed her hot red bean matcha as well. i actually bought another drink along with kevin's taro milk tea. i got the 3-bubble milk tea with pudding and grass jelly. again, it was delicious. the pudding was so yummy at the end! i'm definitely coming back again! interestingly, this lady wanted our spot and boxed us in our parking spot -__-" she was cray. i told her we were leaving and she just stayed there? and then another car came and they kind of fought over the spot? i have no idea. vivian got us out though. then we drove a block down to pick up the food and it smelled so good. we drove back and maxed out on our food.

vivian got the red sauce seafood pasta and kevin got he lobster mac and cheese and i got the turkey blta. vivian says this pasta is the best pasta she's ever had! woot! she also liked kevin's mac and cheese. kevin tried eating all of it but failed and ended up overeating. vivian also really liked the fries, which i ate and only took like two bites of my turkey blta. ahha. everything tasted amazing. apparently, the fat cat and hakata ramen have really good ratings on grubhub and that's where we usually order from in quincy. anyway, we ate and then talked and watched more videos haha. we went to work out at 9:30 pm and someone was in there but he was finishing up. i felt bad like we were kicking him out T__T but vivian was so excited to do hip hop cardio with me! i don't know how long we spent, but we had so much fun and we just kept going. i killed vivian ahahaha. we recorded ourselves for jackson and then we called it quits maybe after one or two hours. x__x 

when we looked back on the recording, we realized we looked bad and couldn't screenshot any so we went back to the yoga studio and recorded ourselves doing one more song and then "staged" some photos. they came out ridiculous. then vivian wanted to do the couple's yoga challenge and we did that. it was LOL and i'm not flexible and we kept pulling things in our body. we did that for like another hour or so. we were in the yoga studio until 1 am or something ridiculous.we got back, vivian showered, and went to sleep. i showered and washed my hair and then dried it and got into bed too. i think it was like 2 am when all of us ko'd. zzzz. it was such a great day. also, it was lunar new year! happy lunar new year! i cut and washed my hair today (not supposed to if you are superstitious), but i look fab and feel really happy thanks to my lo gong <3

29: vivian knocked on our bedroom door and called my name and i woke up instantly. it was 7:30 am and she had to leave for her flight to georgia. she was going to stay with das and dami for her interview! hehe. i hugged her goodbye and she gave me a kiss on the cheek. hehe i love spending time with her. she's the best <333 i'll see her again soon enough. it never feels like a long time apart; especially, now because i've seen her so many more times ever since i moved to boston. (: it makes me happy. she left and then i went back to sleep. i woke up at around 10 am and then stayed in bed until 11 am. i emailed tumblr again in a panic because it's been 10 days since i emailed them about my account. i don't know why they aren't responding... kevin and i had leftovers for our first meal of the day and watched 2 episodes of supernatural. in between episodes we took a break so i could watch jenn im's proposal video and i was bawling. it was so beautiful. i walked into the bedroom and kevin asked me if i was sick and realized that i was crying because of the video and poked fun at me. LOL. 

then we cleaned up and meal prepped for this week. i spent some time organizing bookmarks and just downloading all the apps i use on my personal phone to my work phone. i think i'm going to use my work phone monday through friday for everything, and my personal phone on the weekends for everything. i'm going to carry both to work but only have my work phone out and check my personal one every so often. kevin and i went to kam man and bj's. it was a pretty quick trip. we stopped by 'oh my tea' to get bubble tea because i really wanted some :P i got the passionfruit green tea and he got the lychee green tea. both were delicious. the cashier remembered me and i told her that i really like this place i wanted more hahaha. we got back to the apartment and kevin sorted out a garbage situation with deco (the trash chute was jammed) while i organized our jacket closet and switched out the hangers with our new black hangers so that everything was uniform. we ordered 50 hangers because we needed more and the 50-pack was the cheapest. then i monitored kevin's vacuuming and swiffering while i dusted and made a pile of things to bring to the storage room. then i started laundry and put away the dishes and moved the stuff to the storage room. 

i took a break to set up imessage on my work devices and to download all the apps i need for my ipad and iphone. kevin cooked stir fried noodles for dinner while i cleaned the bathroom and some of the kitchen area. then i dealt with some tax things and budgeting. i paid off $3k more of my student loans. i'm getting there slowly but surely! i also got to video chat with das and vivian a bit. haha they're both so cute. dami said hello too and complimented my hair teehee. i look like a beauty thanks to vivian's hair cutting skillz. kevin and i ate dinner while watching supernatural. we're on season 11 now and the premise of the season is kinda ridiculous. then kevin went to wash the dishes, i folded laundry, and then i cleaned the rest of the kitchen and washed a few leftover dishes. then i found three shirts that i wanted to iron (finally using the board and the iron we bought on amazon) and did just that. the shirt i really wanted to iron had twisted af sleeves T_T i got some of it out but the vertical wrinkles are still there. i gotta work on that. it got pretty late pretty early in my mind so then i showered and went to sleep. i felt bad for not working out but i was also a bit sore from working out with vivian yesterday. i should have done another short exercise session today but chores and errands take priority. oh well, tomorrow is the start of a new week and more time for me to get fit (: