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ajokeformur-ray · 5 months

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The breeze seems to whisper 'I love you' // Astarion x gn!reader / Tav

This is my first Astarion fic so I really hope I bring him justice; he deserves that and everything else which is good in life. It took me three days in total to fall head over heels for him, and this piece is dedicated to @ace-tarion for being such a sweetheart in this, as in everything. I love you, dude!❤️

I haven't played BG3, I know maybe 80% of the plot (tadpoles in brain = bad = travel to Baldur's Gate), I've watched a ton of Astarion clips, so apologies for any inaccuracies or inconsistencies. I'm just here for Astarion (though I'd love to play BG3, I don't have any technology capable of running it💔).

Content: You/Tav x Astarion (established relationship), canonical past for Astarion is hinted at and laced within narrative, cuddles, animals referred to as 'snacks' within mentions of Astarion (only a mention; no actual description of animal-feeding/mentions of anything pertaining to animals being fed on).

Summary: Night-time falls, your heart sinks into your stomach as surely as your body sinks into your bedroll, and you want cuddles from Astarion.

Word count: 1, 624.

I am accepting requests for Astarion ❤️ no smut and no pregnancy/birth/kids!!

You lay on the cold, hard ground. The earth is unforgiving, soaking up the day's sweat without offering any kind of reprieve. Stones and hard clumps of dirt dig into your back through the bedroll, the wind is slightly too cold and it penetrates your thin blanket, haphazardly thrown over you in an attempt to ward off the elements.

Everyone has a tent, except you, and you make it a point to lay as close to the fire as you can on the nights Astarion is out hunting; it wouldn't do to help yourself to his tent. He keeps his tent away from the others, though still adhering to the semi-circle layout chosen by the others around the campfire. He would not mind you letting yourself in to his tent, he would likely welcome returning to you there, and yet you cannot justify it even to yourself.

After two hundred years of shit, pure shit, he deserves every ounce of privacy and the security of knowing his tent is his own.

You sit up just enough to shuffle yourself closer to the fire, curling inwards as a shiver wracks your body. It isn't cold, necessarily, but your temperature is not conducive to a restful sleep. You lay on your back, gazing up at the stars which punctuate the sky, breaking up the inky black and blues with pinpricks of white, yellow, and some dull spots of grey from the stars which died many eons ago and are now fading from the sky.

You promise yourself you'll try to remember their placement in the sky.

Despite the best of intentions, you know that you won't.

Your vision goes blurry at the edges as you continue staring up at the night sky, looking for any constellations you recognise by way of finding yourself a bedtime story to recount as you try to fall asleep. The leaves on the trees sway gently in the breeze, and your mind wanders, as it so often does, to Astarion. Your sweet vampire, who simultaneously breaks your heart and put it back together in the same moment every time you uncover more of who he is, more of his past.

Oh, but you love him.

Of its own accord does your body take a long, deep breath in, your heart sinking into your stomach as surely as your body melts into the bedroll. All of your thoughts of Astarion and all of your feelings for him are safe inside yourself, and they serve you now in warming you from the inside out.

Your eyes slide closed, and if you press your forehead closer into your blanket, you can almost tell yourself that you can feel Astarion lying down beside you, you can smell bergamot and feel his silver hair tickle your cheeks, you can feel his fingers intertwined with yours, your legs tangled together, his crimson eyes upon your face so intently fixed like he's scared to blink in case you disappear before his eyes, leaving him clutching only the cold night air, his equally cold body pressed against every line of yours...

You smile to yourself and burrow deeper into your blanket, feeling sleepier, warmer and closer to your rest by the second. Thoughts of Astarion flood your mind and you curl up tighter, as if to keep all these thoughts right where they are. You know if you open your eyes that you'll be alone; you know not where Astarion is this night, but you know he is trying to sate his hunger with the snacks which live in the forest.

So you keep your eyes shut.

As you allow yourself to slip further into your threshold consciousness, you wonder what Astarion would say to you if he returned at this very moment...

"Hello, sweet. Gods, you are beautiful."

You smile again and squeeze your blanket ever tighter to you. Yes, he would probably say something like -

Wait.

Was that - ?

With great caution do you open your eyes, ready to slam them shut again once you see that Astarion isn't there, that he didn't just speak to you. But instead of the cold hard truth slamming into you, flowers bloom in your heart because Astarion is here, looming over you, his silver curls seeming to be glowing in the soft moonlight. His crimson eyes seem black, his charming smirk soft at the edges as he gazes down at you with obvious fondness, vulnerable such as it is.

Of all the stars above me, this one's the prettiest, you think to yourself, and you open your eyes wider to better enjoy the view.

Astarion's smirk melts until it becomes a smile as he kneels down beside you, one of his arms reaching out to brush a leaf away from your face. His fingers ghost across your skin, and you shiver. "Thank you, darling. I know I'm beautiful. Not enough people mention it." His joke fades into vulnerability, as it so often does around you.

But it is no matter. You always meet him where he is, and right now it is no exception.

You smile at Astarion, all of the love for him shining in your eyes until they look like molten galaxies, and he swears he feels his heart, which stopped working centuries ago, skip a beat. You are unguarded where you lay in your threshold consciousness, not embarrassed to have spoke aloud your thoughts, and Astarion wonders if the old saying, that love makes fools of people, is true. You lay at the foot of a vampire, at the foot of a predator, smiling at him, physically and emotionally vulnerable, completely unguarded. Most others at the camp are asleep, Astarion can hear, and yet here you are...

Wait. Why are you awake?

"Darling," Astarion's voice is a hush and you strain your ears to be able to hear him. He bends closer to you to accommodate, anticipating your needs before you fully register them yourself, "Why aren't you sleeping? No harm shall befall you when I'm here." Long ago, he had sought your protection, but now he wanted you both to be safe. If this is how the mighty fall, then Astarion must admit that he is happy he lost his balance. He quite likes the view from down here.

You shake your head and shuffle closer still, unable to get close enough to your most beloved vampire. "Can't sleep without you." I just want to be held.

Oh, help him, but this is devastating in its simplicity. His undead heart bleeds and words have brought Astarion to the point where they run dry. Instead, he stands, and reaches a hand out to you. The message is clear - he wants you to accompany him to his tent, he wants to carve a piece of heaven out with you amongst all the chaos unleashed, he wants to hold and to be held.

Astarion just wants you, and who are you to deny him?

One of your hands slips into his while the other pulls the blanket away from you and Astarion's smile widens as he effortlessly pulls you up to stand beside him. You bend to scoop up your bedroll, and follow Astarion into your tent. The door flap flutters in the wind as Astarion releases it, and it settles in place like a butterfly finding a flower.

You find yourselves easily, your bedroll dumped next to Astarion's, pushed up close until his bedroll becomes a double. It's a well established routine for the two of you, with you spending more nights here than you don't. You never enter his tent if he isn't here, and you certainly never come in without his permission. One day, Astarion will find the words to convey his appreciation for your concern, but until then, he will remind you at every chance he finds that you are always welcome. He finds it greatly ironic that you seek permission to enter space and he, a vampire, does not. He knows he is welcome, wanted, cherished, loved.

It took some work for the both of you to get here, but his months with you are the counterweight to the hell he escaped from.

He'll never be able to thank you enough, he has no idea what he is doing, but perhaps this is a start.

Somehow, through the fuzziness of denied sleep, you end up back in bed, your blanket around you and Astarion's still chest under your head. He lays beneath you like he is patiently waiting for you to make yourself comfortable, and you take the opportunity to wind both of your arms around his waist and squeeze, pulling yourself up just enough to be able to bury your face in his neck. One of your legs slips between his, anchoring the two of you together.

Slowly, like he's afraid to move too quickly in case you disappear within his grasp and leave Astarion holding nothing but the cold empty night air, his hands settle upon your back and a sigh which seems to come from deep within him spells peace for the both of you. "This is nice," Astarion's voice rumbles through your ear and you press yourself ever closer to him, unable to get close enough. Your arms constrict around him again and you feel yourself smile as all those sleepy dreams you were having earlier are now here, beneath you, wrapped around you. As you hold on tighter, so too does Astarion, until the two of you are so completely intertwined that the elements cannot reach you. He has no body temperature and yet you are the comfiest and the warmest you have ever been.

Safe.

This time, Astarion doesn't tell you that you accidentally spoke your thoughts aloud.

#astarion x reader #astarion #baldurs gate 3 astarion #baldurs gate 3 x reader #astarion x tav #astarion x you #astarion comfort #astarion fluff #bg3 x reader #bg3

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tteokdoroki · 11 months

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i’m sure i’ve said this before but my favourite personal headcanon is that bakugou kisses the insides of your wrists.

it’s the first thing he does every morning, brushing his lips over the softness of your skin— your warm hand delicately laying in his and he only stills once he feels your slow and steady pulse against the seams of his mouth.

he’ll let out a short exhale, eyes closed in relief and squeeze your hand tight. you always wake up shortly after, your fingers cascading through his mussed up morning hair and a smile as bright as the rising sun twitching up on your sleepy face. “good morning, lover boy,” you’ll say, voice gravelly but full of adoration.

you’re alive, katsuki thinks, you’re alive and you’re okay. “mornin’, beautiful,” he’ll whisper back and lean into your touch— his mismatched red and grey eyes falling to your chest to check the way that it rises and falls. “y’sleep good?”

the sheets shift as you move to sit up, holding balugou’s face between your hands as if you’re holding the entire world. “good. you had a nightmare though,” you press your forehead against his, concern flickering in your eyes. katsuki has seen both sides of life and death— he knows that if he’s not careful, he won’t be able to evade it any longer than he has. he knows that he’d be leaving you behind with the pieces of his mistakes and he can’t do that to you.

but sometimes it’s you who’s died in his dreams and not him. sometimes it’s him cradling your lifeless body, it’s your pulse that’s fading out and thready. it scares bakugou shitless. to know that he could lose you as easily as he’s lost himself in the past.

bakugou closes his eyes to ground himself, listens out for your steady breathing intertwining with his own — kissing your wrist again just to make sure that your heart is still strong and beating.

“it was nothin’, don’t worry your pretty head about it, sweetness.”

he doesn’t see you frown, but can feel your gaze on him. “it’s not nothing, katsuki. you were screaming my name in your sleep. you were scared.” you sit up this time, taking sharp edges of his face into your cushioned palms, the edges of your features softening out from frustration to worry as he looks up at you. “you don’t have to hide things from me when you’re scared.”

you sense when his breathing turns shaky and katsuki’s anxiety takes the reins on him — so you wrap your arms around his bulkier frame and pull his head to rest on your chest. “i get nightmares where i lose you,” he explains quietly. “‘m scared that one day i’ll just wake up ‘n you’ll be gone.”

you don’t like to think of katsuki bakugou’s death. you can’t imagine what thinking of yours would do to him.

“i’m right here,” you say barely above a whisper. “i’m alive, i’m breathing. i’m not going anywhere without you.”

with his ear pressed to your body, katsuki can hear the dull thump of your heart against your chest wall. it’s steady, rhythmic, like horse hooves on cobblestone. you’re alive and you’re strong. he needs to give you more credit, he thinks, tucking himself into you even more to hide from the world.

but you don’t let him, taking his large hand in yours and bringing his wrist up to your lips to feel his life essence pulse just beneath them.

“and you’re right here too.”

the gesture is so small and intimate, but it shows that you understand bakugou on levels that nobody else does. you love him, you live for him — in moments like this when the sun has just made its way into the sky and right down to the first star that twinkles at night.

bakugou shifts to brush his nose against yours, humming.

“and ‘m never goin’ anywhere without you, either.”

#bakugou x reader #bakugou x you #bakugou fluff #bakugou angst #bakugou drabble #bakugo x reader #bakugo x you #bakugo fluff #bakugo angst #bakugou katsuki x reader #bnha x reader #bnha x you #bnha drabble #bnha fluff #✧ ₊˚੭ — writing #tteokdoroki #✧ ₊˚💭੭ — aali just posted

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dustymeadows-if · 3 months

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Dust particles flow in the air, shimmering with golden light of the sun. They rise to the sky, equally golden and hazy. Your mind is empty. There is no single memory in your head. Only one thought is ringing in your brain.

You must walk forward. Walk until your feet begin to bleed. Walk until your shoes fall apart.

And for some reason you can't oppose this thought.

This is your road to Damascus.

Dusty Meadows is a short interactive story set in post-WW1 world. It's a small psychological adventure that will take you through the scarred European fields. Wander the abandoned trenches, scorched forests, poisonous valleys and silent, deadly no man's land.

You don't remember anything. The feelings, however, still linger. Feelings like pain, grief and bitter longing. Your body is mutilated, but you feel no physical pain. It's your soul that aches. It's as if an important piece of it was heartlessly ripped off. This pain urges you to go forward. The answers might lie just behind the next hill or river. Your life depends on returning. Returning your soul. Returning your memories. Returning your life. Returning home.

That is, if there's anything left for you to return to at all.

Customizable MC: choose your gender, appearance, personality and name (if you can remember it, of course).

Meet the cast of various charachters: you're not the only one wandering and seeking these desolate lands. Talk to other wayfaring souls, listen to their stories. Maybe even share the same road and experience strangely deep bond with some of them...

Return your memories: remove the shroud from your past. Remember how you got here. Remember what hides behind the scars on your body. But be wary: some memories are forgotten for a reason.

Explore different locations: travel through the remains of war, learn what happened there and remember what binds you to these places.

Maintain your sanity: nobody said that battlefields are safe even after the war. Your mind is as scarred as your body, and sometimes memories crash like tidal waves. Whether you'll hold the line or succumb to the dark depths - is up to you and you only.

Tired Infantryman - Basile (M)

This man could be a definition of word "apathy". Everything about him is grey: both literally and figuratively. Dressed in grey-bluish trenchcoat, covered in grey dust, he looks at you with dull grey eyes. Even in his dark brown hair you can see grey strands, although he's still pretty young. He doesn't seem to be interested in anything around him, except for his cigarettes. His left arm is missing, and you can't help but wonder what's the story behind this.

Frozen Operator - Johann (M)

He is... a weird man. Tall and muscular like someone working in the fields all day long. But at the same time his skin is the palest and the coldest you've ever seen, and his eyes are sunken as if he was spending many sleepless nights doing paperwork. He's also the only one without any visible wounds, which is very unusual to see in this place. Johann seems like a kind and outgoing man, but he hides something deep in his heart.

Blind Journalist - Gelsomina (F)

Upper half of her face is covered with bandages, but even so you can tell she's a very beautiful woman. Dark blood stains over the place where her eyes were never seem to fully dry. She is much alike that blood: restless almost to despair. This woman will either find peace or die, and the least seems to be most likely. Losing her eyes was a hard hit: she can't see, she can't write, she can't do her job which had always meant life for her. She lost every reason to live, but the fire of her stubbornness is blazing hard, keeping her alive and eating her from inside at the same time.

Wayward Nun - Jolan (F)

She is a strange sight. Dressed in nun robes which covers her whole body, she also wears a gas mask which she refuses to ever take off. This woman is like a walking fortress of her own, cutting off every direct contact with the outer world. She barely speaks, preferring simple gestures, or rather, not communicating at all. You don't know what she looks like, what she sounds like, but here's one thing you know for sure: guilt is seeping through every crack of her thick defense.

Demo - TBA

#interactive fiction #interactive novel #interact if #if wip #dashingdon #choice of games #hosted games #dusty meadows

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beatrix-quinn · 4 months

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hi @blongus64! thank you for your question. and no apologies necessary; Very Long Posts are kind of my specialty. :B

i really appreciated the comparison you drew between making visual art and making music, and i want to bring your attention first to that piece, because you gave some very interesting examples:

"i want a harsh… almost parasitic implication, so i'll use lurid, sickly colors and haphazard lines." "i'll use soft, dull blues, because that's what winter looks like."

the question i want you to ask yourself is this: "where did i learn the idea that This emotion looks That way?"

your art comparison reminded me of a conversation i recently had with someone dear to me who illustrates. they brought up an idea they've picked up from various art instructors over the years, which i'll paraphrase to the best of my recollection:

when you try to draw an apple, you're not just thinking about the object that's right in front of you. you're thinking about the idea of An Apple. that idea is shaped by every apple you've ever seen or eaten—the places and people and feelings attached to those experiences. so when you're drawing from a reference, you have to set all those associations aside and learn how to look at what's in front of you so you can recreate it accurately.

as you mention drawing still life in your ask, no doubt you've practiced this skill already. but what about when you draw a scene from your imagination, or paint something wholly abstract? when it comes to representing certain ideas in your art, the reality is that how you depict them is a choice formed by association. you choose soft, dull blues for a melancholy winter, because those are the colors you see when you look with your mind's eye.

but for me, i associate melancholy winter most with dark greys, and rusty pinks from light pollution in the night sky. someone else might picture the dizzying white reflection of sunlight on snow. these can all be "correct" ways of evoking this feeling you've given as an example, so long as it's true to the artist's subjective experience.

my point is this: just as you can choose to represent one idea visually in a myriad of ways depending on how you look, you can choose to represent an emotion through music in a myriad of ways as well. and that means this:

if representing an image requires learning how to look, then representing a sound requires learning how to listen.

the simplest and most immediate way you can start doing this is to critically listen to the music that evokes the feelings you are trying to capture.

say you have a favorite song that really captures the feeling of melancholy for you. listen to it very carefully. what choices does it make musically? consider this an incomplete list of questions you might explore while listening:

what are the tempo and rhythm like? how do they contribute to the song's feel?

is the arrangement sparse or layered, bombastic or subtle?

what kinds of instruments are being played, and when? which ones take the lead and which ones stay in the background?

how would you describe the music's texture and atmosphere? dark, bright? spacious, intimate? electric, acoustic, synthetic? what elements contribute to that?

how does this song relate back to music history and tradition? can you identify any of its musical and cultural influences? does it fit firmly into a genre, or does it blend different genre elements? does it attempt to defy convention altogether? (does it succeed?)

what is notably absent? how does excluding certain elements serve the song's intended feeling? (after all, landslide would be a very different song if it had drums and bass.)

you might notice these questions are generally not rooted in music theory. make no mistake: music theory analysis is useful, and if you wish to build your musical vocabulary, it's worth practicing it when you can. but that kind of practice only gives you colors for your palette. it will not teach you how to paint what you feel.

if you want to learn how to use those colors, first you must really think about the music that embodies the feeling you want your music to embody. what about This song makes you feel That emotion? think about the sounds around you in everyday life. what sounds make you smile? what sounds evoke boredom, fear, anger, sorrow?

idiophones sound tender to me, so i might reach for a kalimba or music box when scoring an emotionally intimate scene. a I major chord followed by a bVII dominant is dripping with wistfulness to me, so i like using it for bittersweet moments. jagged synths and metallic noises make me uneasy, so i employ them liberally when i want to elicit dread or panic.

these are just a few colors from my own palette. just like my idea of An Apple, they are informed by my experiences, my culture, and all the music i've ever heard. these are the associations that the body forms over a lifetime; you've lived a different life, so you may have different associations for these sounds. and that's okay! what matters is that you pay attention to what sounds make you feel, and stay true in your attempts to represent those feelings.

i should also mention that i didn't figure out how to use my palette overnight. i rarely get it right on the first try. music, like any creative endeavor, is equal parts work and play, and it's the lessons learned from play that serve the work later on. with exploration and practice, you will get better.

so listen carefully. figure out which sounds correspond to different emotional responses for you. this will become your palette. as you experiment, you will learn which sounds are your melancholy blues and which are your haphazard lines. it simply takes mindfulness, a careful ear, and time.

i realize this is only a first step, but i hope you find it helpful. if it isn't, let me know, and maybe i'll do better next time. i'm still learning too. :)

with care, bee 🐦

#asks #blongus64 #shop talk

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macaroonff · 1 month

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The boy in my dreams- Park Sunghoon

→Park Sunghoon x gn! reader

Comfort character/ supernatural au, where Sunghoon is a manifestation in reader's dreams

Angst! A lot of angst! You have been warned (>'-'<)

W.c: 1.5 k words

↳Warning: Mentions of depression, poor mental health, let me know if there's more

~~~

The wisp of navy blue magic that you envision every night, lying on your satin pillow transports you to your subconscious. Or what you assume to be, after all these days of hiding behind your jasmine incense that burned along with your memories of a certain person as you slept. The person being the director of your dreams, the one who controlled what you saw amidst the nightly journey you partake in.

The one who superficially catered to all your worldly desires, especially the unattainable ones. Ones you couldn’t hope for in the day.

Somewhere between the dicey border of reality and fantasy, he happened to be there to lead you to a world that was neither of those, a place that only seemed to exist without actually happening to be. A place so familiar that calling it a fantasy would appear to be a disservice to him, who brought you here.

You called him Sunghoon. Because that was how he introduced himself to you.

He appeared to you in flesh, his dark bangs long enough to cover his eyes, which appeared dull, yet happened to sparkle upon seeing you. His arms were outstretched, enticing you with a hug that helped most days.

“Sunghoon,” you whisper, “take me somewhere new please”

He smiles. “Of course, I’ll take you anywhere you’d like to go.”

You hold on to his sleeves tightly, hoping he would guide you out of today’s problem.

He does so, by leading you away from your arduous day, in through the iron door you were so used to by now. The grey bolts were cold, and every time you pushed through them, it was as though your entire life force was taken away from you, like you only existed in this weightless form.

The door looked the same everyday, but unlike it, the places you visited weren’t.

The places you’d visit were so different from the previous that you weren’t sure what to expect today.

Hesitantly, you take another step holding onto the handle. Immediately an invisible pressure which pushes against you makes you flinch, and it lasts for a while, until it is dispelled by a cold wind that blows against your lips.

You open your eyes and take in what’s in front of you. It was a grassland. One where the stars were clearer than the transparent waters of the pond that reflected the night sky. It was where the bright fireflies contrasted the cold winds that blew through your hair, as you took in what you could through your awestruck eyes. The koi danced in acknowledgement, although half asleep, while the crickets chirped their eager tunes, setting the backdrop for conversations to come.

“Sunghoon, how is it possible for a place like this to exist? It’s beautiful?” you ask, bewildered.

“You have no idea what enthralling spheres your mind can create, y/n.”

You hum in the enlightening of what you had already assumed, at least from what he had mentioned before, time and again. He was a magician, a person with the abilities to show you around the unexplored expanse of your mind, those of what you had never learnt of before; unravelling more secrets you half wished you had never come across. Especially the darker ones. Ones that occurred recurrently in the beginning, back when you felt destroyed, damaged, and controlled by the intensity of your thoughts. Thoughts that revealed death, mentally if not physically. The thoughts completely mislead you until you realised it had become an unconscious habit. This realisation emerged with the new figure you saw in your dreams, starting as a silent spectator but slowly opening up to your presence as the days went by. He’d take your hand and bring you to beautiful places until you were out of the shadows; the present dream being better than yesterday’s, a cycle that continued until you looked forward to tomorrow’s.

It had been a year since you found him. The boy came out of nowhere and introduced you to newfound peace. It was almost sacred, where you were now compared to when you first saw him, surrounded by a warm aura, sitting by the window in an empty room in your head. But now the empty room was a forest that nurtured and nourished. The progress was beautiful, just like the scene you saw in front of you.

“Really, how’d you find this place?” you ask bewildered

The boy laughs at your astonishment, finding it adorable.

“Like explained before y/n, I don’t find the place, I find you in the place. It just appears within your imagination although I’m sure you drew some inspiration from your enchanted forest pins on Pinterest.”

You let out a deeper laugh, seeing how your daytime fantasies of being in a magical place didn’t lose the opportunity to feature in your dreams.

You were glad. Content that you could find company in a space like this, even if it wasn’t real. You plop down onto your back next to him, gently placing your head on his shoulder, the vastness of the sky absorbing your vision. He too intertwines your hands, welcoming the known warmth. A warmth you’d gotten used to since the earliest night.

That night, you’d cried on his chest, soaking up his shirt as you saw the images of your cluttered soul, pent up with anger and lost in the midst of your worries. You never bothered to know where he came from, where he went when you were awake. All that mattered was that he was there when you were not, it was never important. He may as well be a figment of your imagination.

Yet, he seemed so real, even as he lay down you could feel the warmth that he emitted. You could see his pale cheeks burn crimson as well as the tears that slowly fell on them. Tears gathered at the corner of his lips while he sobbed softly, muffled, his body trembling slightly. All the vulnerability with which you regarded him was being returned to you, for reasons you were unsure of.

“Sunghoon is everything okay?” you ask now laying on your side while you wipe his tears that continued down.

He looks down and gives you a smile, one that was broken despite his attempt at reassurance. “I, I think it’s time for you to wake up Y/n.”

“Is that why you’re crying? You know I’ll see you later.”

To this, his sobs get louder as he cradles you in his arms, trying to hide behind the truth of tomorrow. Despite your puzzled pats and comforting embrace, he can’t seem to disclose how by the next dream, your bridge between fantasy and reality would disappear. He would disappear. A being that manifested itself and helped you through the year had finished what he had come to accomplish. From the idle times that he hated seeing you purge through the dark, he had vowed to be by your side until you could walk on your own. Y/n, his sole reason for his existence, was someone he didn’t want to lose, but he also knew he had to leave. It was contradictory in a sense, as though he was a tiny dose of medicine that was no longer useful.

In pity for himself, the tears that betrayed his calm demeanour ran into the grass, moistening it like the dew before dawn.

And dawn came faster than he hoped, barely time before he could tell you about his departure. “Can’t you oversleep today?” he whispers softly.

“Is this the same person who told me to fix my sleep schedule?” A gentle smile forms on his pale lips. “I don’t want to see you go.”

He was being unreasonably clingy today, and it almost worried you. It was the first time you’d seen the boy break away from his stoic demeanour, the first time you’d seen him express an emotion other than joy. It was a moment where he felt all too human.

“We’ll meet again tonight.” you try to assure him.

“We won’t,” he whispers. “I can’t stay any longer.”

Then it dawns on you, his conditions for keeping you company, and the predicament that you hadn’t foreshadowed in the delicate moments you shared. “Must you leave?” you hold him closer, hands running down his face.

The boy’s sobs became louder as the place started to fade into darkness as it usually would, at the end of most dreams. This time, however you couldn’t bear to let go. The tears that you never thought you’d shed in front of him returned as the memories spun around mocking you of your loss. Despite the force with which you held him, you couldn’t ignore the lack of beauty in the background as you started to feel the smell of the incense that you had lit, reminding you that you were bordering reality. In a last attempt to hold you back, he pulls you into a kiss, where his soft lips dissolve into thin air with his last words.

“This time, I’ll dream of you y/n, until we meet again.”

You wake up after the year-long dream of bliss consumed you while the reality with which you couldn’t ground yourself welcomed you, the rising sun had peaked through the curtains, your satin pillows were wet from the tears and the incense sticks had dissipated into its remaining ashes. Just as the boy in your dreams did.

#enhypen imagines #enhypen x reader #sunghoon imagines #sunghoon x reader #enhypen angst #enhypen au #enhypen fanfiction #enha x reader #enhypen fic #enhypen ff #park sunghoon x reader #park sunghoon x you

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puddingyun · 3 months

Text

lighthouse . ݁₊ ⊹ j.wy

wooyo x reader

: 1k words, roadtrip, "runaways", fluff, homesickness, getting together, alcohol :

requests open ♡

From where you sat on the pier you could see one star twinkling among the grey-blue clouds, far away in the navy blue blanket of the night sky. As a breeze blew against your face, smelling of sea water and coconutty suntan lotion, you kept your eyes on that one star; a lighthouse shining at the other end of the sky, signalling so that you wouldn't get lost in its vast expanse.

"Here you go."

Wooyoung's voice startled you, drawing your attention away from the star keeping your feet on the ground. In one hand he held a bottle of cheap flavoured vodka (Vanilla, the label read in swoopy, curly letters) and in the other he held two glass bottles of Pepsi, clinking against each other as he set them down on the pier before sitting down next to you. You smiled at him, his dangling feet brushing against yours, and picked up a Pepsi.

"Thanks, Woo."

The smell of cigarettes wafted off of Wooyoung from where he sat beside you, the way it had for months now. Specifically, the smell was that of L&M lights, which Wooyoung insisted didn't linger as much as other kinds. Your nose wasn't skilled enough to tell the difference though, and so the smell of Wooyoung merged with the vague smell of tobacco and burning.

"You think we'll be here long?" you asked, the fizz of Pepsi still fresh on your tongue.

Wooyoung glanced at you with a little turn of the head that you nearly didn't notice, and then looked out back to the sea with his bottle of Pepsi between his thighs while he screwed off the cap on the vodka.

"I don't know. I like the ocean," he paused to take a swig from the bottle and grimaced. He let out a sharp, hot hiss of breath. "We could stay for years or leave tomorrow. Whatever you want. Nobody even knows our names here."

You smiled, putting some Pepsi into your mouth before you took the bottle of vodka from his hands and poured it in alongside the sticky soda. You gulped the mixture down, pretending it didn't taste foul.

"I'm getting kind of tired of nobody knowing our names," you admitted quietly. You looked out into the sky and saw that one star gleaming in the sky still. "Even the stars have names."

"I never thought of it that way," Wooyoung sighed. He turned to look at you properly this time, a small smile appearing on his lips the longer he stared. "You know... We can stay a while if you want."

"Really?" you asked, meeting his eyes. He nodded, keeping eye contact with you while you swallowed a mouthful of vodka straight.

"We could find a room to rent instead of staying at the motel. I could get a job, and we'd meet on the beach every afternoon. Buy some swimsuits or swim in our underwear," he mused. You could picture him in his boxers, holding onto your hand and squealing as you both ran into the cold ocean. You pictured both of you drying beneath the sun, sand in your hair and between your toes. It looked a lot like a dream come true.

"I could buy herbs to grow on the windowsill, and we could eat ice cream everyday until we got sick of it," you said, giggling after.

"That'd take a while... You know what I've always wanted to try? Root beer floats," he said, voice trailing off into a wistful mumble. You could tell by the look on his face that he was thinking of the life you'd both left behind, full of dull but comforting constants. When you'd set off on this roadtrip you hadn't anticipated what it would be like not having anything to rely on except for each other. When Wooyoung's eyes turned soft and worried like they did now, you were the only one who could reassure him he hadn't made a mistake.

You reached over and laid a hand on top of his, stroking your thumb back and forth against his skin. Slowly, his eyes focused more, staring out at that lone star just like you had been while you waited for him.

"We could learn the names of all of the streets. Make friends with the neighbours," he murmured. "Rent movies and fall asleep watching them."

He glanced over at you, looking for your smile of approval. When he found it, he grinned.

"It's not what we planned but... I'd be happy if I could build a little life with you," he said, his shy expression illuminated by blue moonlight and the orange glow that came from the street that seemed so far away from the end of the pier. "Anywhere you want would be fine with me."

You felt your stomach squeeze anxiously and took a sip of your Pepsi to quell your nerves. Tentatively, you leaned your forehead against Wooyoung's shoulder. He smelled like cheap detergent from the last motel you'd stayed at, ocean spray and cigarettes. Beneath those things, though, he smelled like himself: a little sweat, cologne that had worn off throughout the day, and the soft smell of his bedroom that lingered no matter how much time had passed since you'd been on the road. You inhaled deeply. He smelled like home.

You lifted your head and admired his profile. He was your home.

"We could stay here a while," you whispered softly. He turned his face, your noses bumping together as he did so. You both giggled, soda and vodka breath in each other's faces. He was so close, you felt you could breathe him in if you inhaled deeply enough. Instead you leaned forward and sealed the space between you both with a kiss. He made a small noise of surprise but made no move to pull away.

He laced his fingers with yours and leaned into the kiss, deepening it so you could taste his last mouthful of vanilla vodka. Even miles away from where you'd grown up, you finally felt as though you were coming home, your heart slotting into place in your chest. Wooyoung's lips turned upward into a smile against yours, excited for the life you were going to build.

In the sky, that lone star continued to twinkle its lighthouse glow, guiding you to where you belonged.

#pirateeznet #jung wooyoung x reader #jung wooyoung fluff #ateez x reader #ateez fluff

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abiiors · 6 months

Text

hot chocolate ☕ // matty healy x reader

promptober '23 - day 19

a/n: for all my girlies with the big sad, the cold months approach :/ cw: discussions of mental health, mentions of depression wc: 1.1k

matty has a pit of worry in his stomach. he’s had it for about two days now, for as long as the house has been unusually quiet. he’s alone in their dimly lit kitchen, barely any sunlight streaming in. whatever manages to sneak in through the parting of the clouds, gets diluted by the sheets of rain falling from the sky.

it’s dull and grey. exactly the kind of weather she hates.

matty gives the brewing pot of coffee another look and decides on abandoning it.

he knows what he will see when he walks into the bedroom—she will be in bed, in the same three day old pyjamas, messy and unbrushed hair, “taking a nap”. not that he cares about how she looks. it’s just the niggling pit that doesn’t let him sit still.

“darling?” he calls from the door, watching for any signs of movement under the duvet. “you awake yet?”

she should be, he thinks to himself. it’s nearly noon. he wants to make them some lunch but she doesn’t move, doesn’t reply to his question. matty gnaws on his bottom lip and walks in.

“i’m making something for lunch…” he says again, sitting by her side of the bed and resting a hand on her back. matty knows she’s not asleep. her breaths are nowhere near deep and even.

“i know you’re awake,” he says softly, moving his hand to her forehead, checking for any signs of an illness just in case. but deep down he knows the illness is not physical.

when matty threads his fingers through her hair, it’s not the usual soft and smooth strands he’s met with. his fingers get caught up in the greasy knots, accidently pulling on some hair. she winces.

“go away, matty, ‘m not hungry,” she mumbles into the pillow, voice feeble and barely audible. “‘m sleepy.”

he tuts. it’s a lie—if he’s right, and he suspects he is, she hasn’t properly slept in days, tossing and turning at night. and yet she has left the bed only a handful of times in the last few days.

he’s tried giving her space, to let her sort things out on her own because that’s usually what she prefers. but he draws the line at skipping meals.

“sleep after lunch,” he counters, and goes to draw the duvet off her.

it’s not even a moment later that matty fliches, appalled when she slaps away his hand.

“i said i’m not hungry!” she snaps, turning away from him, cocooning herself further, shut off from him, from the world.

he stills and for a moment the only sound in the room is that of the rain hammering against the window. it’s haphazard, nowhere near a soothing beat. this rain sounds more like an anxious heartbeat—loud, odd and out of sync.

then he hears the sniffle and his heart breaks.

“baby…” he approaches again, trying to at least slide the duvet off her face. “hey, look at me please.”

he doesn’t care that she snapped at him or slapped his hand away. right now, he cares that something is deeply wrong, and he’s ready to beg if that means she’d tell him.

“g-go away, matty,” she tries again, tries so hard not to let her voice waver or crack and yet he hears it.

matty decides enough is enough, and pulls the duvet off her entirely.

her pyjama top is wrinkled and bunched up around her waist, and if he’s being honest, she smells a little bit but he can take care of that later. showers and perfumes and oils can wait. everything else in the world can wait.

“i won't,” he declares firmly. “now you can either keep fighting me or you can tell me what’s wrong. either way, i’m staying right here.”

she looks at him through dull eyes that widen slightly with every word, jaw clenched to keep her chin from wobbling even as her eyes turn pink first, then watery until the tears fall one by one. matty doesn’t shush her, he just quietly pulls her into his chest, letting her cry it out.

“i’m so cold…” she says after a few minutes. her voice is already hoarse, a whispery shadow of what it’s like on the good days. today it’s barely more than a squeak. “so cold. all the time. i just…i’m just so tired, i can’t. i don’t know what to do. and whatever i do, i can’t g-get, can’t get warm.”

she breaks into another round of tears by the time she’s done—loud, gut-wrenching sobs that break his heart but he lets her be. his only job is to be there and hold her. he just needs to be the sun.

“i know what will help,” matty mumbles into her hair, pressing a small kiss to her head. “give me two minutes?”

and he does return two minutes later as promised. matty practically makes a mad dash to and from the kitchen, balancing the mugs in his hands and his socks sliding on the wooden floors around the corner. but the liquid in them stays unscathed.

“there we go,” he announces as soon as he’s back in the bedroom. a tiny pang goes through his chest when he sees her sitting up in bed, arms hugging her middle. she looks small, smaller than he’s ever seen her. but there’s a miniscule spark of curiosity in her eyes.

he’ll take that spark. he’ll nurture and rekindle it.

“chef matty’s hot chocolate,” he presents it with a flourish smiling at her raised eyebrow.

“i know you said you weren’t hungry and you were cold. so i thought this would be a good compromise?”

for a moment she doesn’t say anything, only takes the mug from him and cradles it close, lets the steam waft over her face. hot chocolate won’t do anything for a cold that goes bone-deep. but it’s a start. he can do the rest of the work.

“take a sip?” he nudges, sitting back in the same spot as before. he brings his own mug up to his mouth, nudging her to mimic him. together they drink their first sip.

instant sweetness floods his mouth, comforting warmth creeping down his throat and settling into his stomach. he can only hope it does the same for her.

and he will be there for the rest of it. for all the cold days that come after this.

lemme know what you think <33

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anachilles · 19 days

Text

drive the dark clouds far away ☁

If anyone on Earth deserved tenderness, it was Gale Cleven. Throughout the years they’d known each other, he had dropped little morsels of his history into John’s lap, one piece at a time. It was almost off-hand, how he’d do it. Like he somehow hadn’t expected John to capture every one, savour them, commit them to memory and file them away in a special box in the back of his mind. To take them out as he did every so often and piece them together again, wondering about what young Gale had been before he was John’s ‘Buck’, so he had an entire landscape laid before him of what made Gale Cleven who he was. Or: Winter falls in Stalag Luft III, Gale's sick, and John has feelings about it all. -> read here on AO3 <-

A Nazi prisoner of war camp was hardly a place one would ever want to be, at any time or for any reason.

If Bucky had the choice, however, he sure as hell wouldn’t particularly choose to be in a Nazi prisoner of war camp in the middle of what was turning out to be a brutal Germanic winter.

It came on so suddenly, too, or at least that’s what it felt like. One day, the entire camp had been bathed in incandescent autumn sunshine. The kind that illuminated every leaf on every tree, lit the sky up so bright you could barely look at it, and sparkled off the surface of the puddles left behind from the early morning rain. The next day, and the next, and the next after that, it was like someone had gone and thrown a blanket over the sun itself. Everything was grey. Everything was dark. Everything around them started to wilt, to shed, to die.

For every degree the temperature dropped, for every shiver that raced up their spines in the dead of night, and for every dull, drizzly day that inched them through November and closer to Christmas, morale had started to plummet. It crept up on them and burrowed in like a degenerative disease, infiltrating their ranks one by one and slowly, gradually, started to break them down. Tired minds began to conjure bittersweet memories of good food, good music and the encompassing warmth of their families thousands of miles away, such imaginings only making their reality even starker. Anywhere at all outside the perimeter of the compound was beginning to feel like a whole other plane of existence.

At this point in the season, even the hours of daylight they were afforded were seemingly war-rationed. Dark moods, irritability and the icy tendrils of hopelessness had started to permeate the stalag as the sunsets came altogether too quick, and the daytimes were overwhelmingly bleak.

That night, Bucky shifted awkwardly in his bunk, trying to get comfortable in spite of the threadbare cushioning underneath him. It would have been pitch dark save for the slightest crack someone had left in the black-out curtains, letting moonlight spill in and make vague silhouettes out of the sleeping men around him. Several of them were snoring to various degrees of severity (God help them when Demarco properly got going), bed frames periodically creaking, someone even seemed to be humming slightly in their sleep.

The incessant background noise wasn’t the problem, though; the opposite, actually. From basic training, through flight school, then all the way to the war, Bucky had spent far too long now in shared quarters through every point in his military career to be able to sleep surrounded by absolute silence. In fact, if he closed his eyes and concentrated real hard he could probably have imagined himself being back in the barracks at Thorpe Abbotts right then, far, far away from this Kraut hell hole. Okay, the food wasn’t much better there, he’ll admit, but at least there was a stocked bar, actual showers, and no Nazi goons on a hairpin trigger when it came to pointing rifles at them for doing the sum total of jack shit too hard for their liking.

Bucky’s foot bounced in place as he stared a hole into the wooden slats of the bunk above him. Tension pulsed behind his eyes. When he exhaled, his breath materialised as a humid cloud, before dissipating again into the dark. Rain hammered against the window that was definitely draughty. His fingers were so cold they were starting to go white at the tips.

A sharp gasp suddenly pierced through the din, and in the same beat Bucky instinctively snapped towards it, the whirlpool in his brain suddenly stilling, sharpening down to a single point; like someone had ripped the plughole out of a bathtub. In the middle bunk directly across the way, in the shadows of the darkened cabin, the outline of Buck’s body jerked forward with a strangled little click… a pause… and then another. It was an oddly vulnerable sound, the action was chased by a heavy sniffle, and Bucky let out another long, visible breath.

With the insidious chill of deep winter now catching at their heels, illness was quickly becoming another looming problem with their fucked up sleep-away camp experience in the Glorious Third Reich. The often sub-zero temperatures, paired with a widespread lack of proper food, sleep, and provisions, as well as with them living on top of each other in such poorly built cabins (Bucky’d seen more insulation built into the damn backyard chicken coops he’d been roped into helping his neighbours build back home as a kid), meant that it was rife. Take a walk from one side of the camp to the other, and every third guy was coughing and spluttering with something.

It wasn’t even stuff that would necessarily be anything to worry about in any other time or place. Anywhere else in the modern age they lived in, it would be the usual winter crud that went around every year. Stuff that’d have them downing cough syrup, maybe a bit of hot whiskey, and being fussed over a bit by wives, girlfriends, or moms. Here, though? Despite how the men may joke about it to try and outrun the worry, lurking in a darkened corner of the room was an unavoidable reality that if the cold managed to sneak down into your chest and take root, lay you up with a fever you just can’t shake, in these conditions… well. Who knew what could happen?

There were some guys with a decent amount of medical training who acted as makeshift ‘doctors’ in a makeshift ‘hospital’ on site. Although, naturally as airmen, that leant more towards snapping back in dislocated shoulders, setting broken bones, and patching up bullet and/or shrapnel wounds well enough to get the victim to solid ground alive. There was little, if any, actual medicine to go around.

Before, it had been an abstract, underlying kind of concern, one he’d glance at every now and again before turning away, putting it out of his head again. Let himself be distracted by something else, not that there was much else to distract yourself with in here.

But then it was Buck.

Now, John’s body thrummed with a twitchy, nervous beat underneath his skin, some sort of momentum growing within him as his heart rate picked up and an internal debate played out in his head; one he’d been having with himself for several nights now. After only a handful of seconds from when he’d turned around in the first place though, there was another noise, something delicate and unplaceable. Whether it was the sound of teeth chattering or a stone rattling against the wall of the cabin, or whatever else it could be, it had John dropping down on his feet and gathering up his blanket, wincing as the chill of the room enveloped him all at once.

Crossing to Gale’s bedside, John wordlessly and unceremoniously chucked the blanket over the other man’s body, before leaning a hand against the wooden frame of the upper bunk above Gale’s own. He was curled up tight in on himself, arms stiff as they crossed over his chest, as if he was trying to gather any heat to be had around himself and keep it there by force.

John watched, and waited, as Gale sluggishly unfurled himself a little and turned around to face him, expression sleepy. His face caught the moonlight, something jarring in John’s chest at how pale he looked.

“Bucky?” he asked softly, his already rumbling voice now gravelly and shot to pieces. “Did I wake you?”

Unable to help himself, John heaved out a disbelieving huff of laughter, his voice dropping into a murmur “What, with your bizarre, near-perfectly silent sneezing? Yeah, you did, actually.” Gale rolled his eyes.

“Please, just try to be a bit more considerate to the other guests at this fine establishment.” Success curled fleeting warmth within John when he got a hint of a smile out of the other man. It was the first he’d seen from him in nearly two days, and the twitch of his mouth alleviated an increment of pressure in John’s chest he hadn’t even noticed he’d been holding. “God bless you, by the way.”

It would’ve sounded like a taunt if it wasn’t so fond.

“What do you want then, Bucky?”

In pursuit of cutting to the damn chase, because this was all fun and games but now John really was freezing his balls off, he replied “It’s too cold now for any of us to be sleeping by ourselves.”

At that, Gale’s rheumy gaze sharpened, his eyes scanning the room. John briefly followed them as they took in nearly every other man in the cabin having broken off into a pair to bunk down with for the winter.

“It’s okay, Buck,” John supplied, loosening the valve and letting sincerity bleed into his tone even as he lowered it. This is probably the most ‘okay’ we’ve ever been or ever will be to do this where people can see it.

Memories rise unbidden then; awkward, inexperienced fumbles and a hurried kiss in the barely-lit supply closet off an aircraft hangar in Texas while all the other cadets were asleep. Hidden away in Bucky’s short-lived Air Exec office while he still had it, a rare moment of stolen solitude behind a blessedly locked door with frosted windows. The one time they’d dared risk venturing into the woods at Thorpe Abbotts in the dead of night. They were more experienced by then, but somehow only more repressed and desperate for having now known the other’s touch, but having had to go without it for so long.

“Those RAF pricks were right about one thing for certain.”

“What’s that?”

“You were getting too handsy” Gale had said, voice edged in grit, grabbing John’s wrists and yanking them away behind his back.

In the next breath however, John shrugged, adding “And, well, you have my blanket now. So you either scoot over, or I go back to my bunk and freeze to death. Your choice.”

Gale levelled him with a withering look that only made John want to smile in return, but after a brief contemplative moment, a pregnant pause and a steely gaze edged in wary scrutiny, the caginess seemed to melt out of him, like he physically couldn’t hold onto it any longer. He acquiesced with no more fuss about it, shifting closer towards the wall and pulling up the blankets to invite John in. It was a bit of a tight squeeze, these bunks barely made to fit one fully grown man, never mind two, but suppose that was kind of the point of this, wasn’t it?

John hopped up onto the bunk, the wood groaning slightly under their combined weight, and took the liberty of adjusting Gale a little further onto his side so that he could bracket right in tightly to his back. The length of Gale’s body seemed to slot perfectly against the curve of his own. Back to chest, thigh to thigh, shin to calf. As if by muscle memory, underneath the blankets John’s hand traced a reverent trail down the length of his side, the feeling warm and honey-sweet with familiarity. As was the way he felt Gale relax into his touch, his head turning a tantalising fraction of an inch back towards his face. John’s next exhale came more comfortably than any had in weeks, despite how his heartbeat kicked a little bit harder against his ribcage. Tracing upwards from where his hand had wandered to Gale’s thigh, because he’s nothing if not a goddamn hedonist, John indulged himself with another handful of stolen seconds to touch, to rub and knead affectionately at the curve of Gale’s waist.

This place was hell. A labyrinth of endless days filled with grey, bleak, monotonous nothingness on top of a vague, torturous hope that one day will be the right one; that that day they’ll escape. Or be liberated. They’d been keeping up to date with the state of the war on their homemade contraband radio, listened to and dutifully recited by Gale every night as they forced down boiled garden scraps swimming in dishwater broth. They couldn’t be long now from the invasion of Europe, they tried to reassure each other. It proved enough to get the men out of bed every day and keep them going through the drudgery.

John, though; if he had this. If he had Buck solid and tangible and living and breathing before his eyes and underneath his fingertips, he’d find his way out. The embers that sparked to life in his chest with the feeling of just being near him would light his way out.

A shallow cough sounded from somewhere across the room, and John’s hand froze, even under the shroud of the blankets. Despite arguing the logic of this himself only minutes ago, of why it was ��okay’, the sudden reminder of the ambient presence of the other men in the room amplified then. John couldn’t help but be aware of it, a shred of unease fluttering to life in his chest.

Swallowing it down, and simply unable to truly pull himself away anyway, he retired his wandering touch and looped his arm around Gale’s middle. His broad hand splayed wide across his chest as he brought the other man impossibly closer. John could feel just how cold he was, even through the fabric of his clothes. That was worrying enough in and of itself, but shock jolted through him like lightning as Gale’s hand brushed his own.

“Jesus, Buck! You’re like ice,” John ground out, reaching to grab it before Gale could move it away again. He knew he likely wasn’t much better, all-too-aware of the pervasive and unshakable chill infecting his own fingers. Whatever last vestiges of warmth he may have had remaining within himself though, hidden away in some forgotten or unreachable nook or cranny, he’d give to Gale in a heartbeat if he could. Even if he couldn’t, he’d try regardless.

Gale’s fingers flexed around his own, joining them, before bringing them up to his mouth and huffing a breath of hot air over John’s hand. The breath caught a little in his throat though, triggering a bubbling of thick, stilted coughs. “You are too.”

John laughed, but there was no humour in it. “Yeah, no shit. We all are…” he said, his tone softening then, even as he prodded the back of Gale’s knee with his own “...but you’re sick. So I’d argue it’s definitely more important to make you not so.”

He felt Gale’s body squirm a little uncomfortably in place against him, shaking his head a little, tilting it down. “It’s just a cold, John.”

“Yeah, for now. But you don’t…” The whispered words fall between them with a heavy clang, echoes of meaning slipping through where maybe they hadn’t been intended. John’s eyes were trained on the back of Gale’s head in the dark, his forehead resting on the other man’s golden crown. Even then, John felt more than saw him stiffen, then pull away as much as he physically could from John’s vice-like hold. He pitched forward with two more clumsily pinched back sneezes, grumbling in annoyance as he then groped underneath the pillow, eyes teary and nose dripping, for the now-worn handkerchief he’d been holding there.

Yeah, it wasn’t exactly convenient, particularly at a time such as this, that they all tended to only have the one on them that they’d had when they went down.

Oh, it was so uncharacteristically inelegant it was actually endearing. A peek behind the curtain at Gale Cleven, the mere mortal. Happy to let himself be sidetracked from his worry for a moment, John dipped into one of the inner pockets of his long coat and pulled out his own handkerchief, gallantly offering it over.

Gale’s head swivelled back, his gaze questioning, and John shrugged. “It’s clean, I promise,” he said, though his eyebrows drew together in sudden contemplation. “Well… mostly. I might’ve washed up with it earlier today…” He made a show of trailing off, pulling the collar of his sweater up over his face and taking an experimental sniff down into it. “Ah, no, definitely not, actually. You’re all good.”

Thoroughly used to his antics, Gale didn’t even blink, though his chapped lips did pull up into a fleetingly small, slow, reluctant sort of smile, before eventually taking it from him. He let the fabric linger in his fingers for a mysterious extra beat, his thumb swiping once over it, before putting it to use. When he did speak, his voice was completely mangled with congestion. “Well, beggars can’t be choosers. Probably would have taken it anyway.”

John winced, the levity leaking back out of his countenance like a faulty fuel line. “You sound awful, Buck,” he mumbled seriously, “C’mon, lie back down.”

Though he dismissed the concern with a telling look, Gale complied and they fell into an easy sort of silence. Their breaths, underlined by the tangible rise and fall of John’s chest against the other man’s back, fell into the slow, steady rhythm held by the rest of the room. Even after a handful of minutes he could tell Gale wasn’t sleeping, though. Neither was he, evidently, feeling like a live wire despite how exhausted and perpetually bone-weary his body had become. He was tired, probably needed to sleep, but at the same time didn’t want to miss a second of their contact now that they had established it. He didn’t want to close his eyes, open them again, and it be morning time again so damn soon, that chasm of emptiness in the space between them returning all too quickly.

If only to give himself something to do, have somewhere to put that gnawing awareness, John gave into temptation. Ducking his head, he pressed his lips to the nape of Gale’s neck. Just once, at first. Experimental; his eyes flitting up briefly to catch Gale’s reaction. With the sight of his lips dropping further open around a sudden inhale he tried to conceal, John took the silent approval and continued in his work. One kiss here, another one there, he marked a languid trail down the column of Gale’s neck and back up again, an answering shiver racing up the length of his spine when John’s mouth teased that one little spot under the hinge of his jaw. It was addictive; and what was Bucky Egan if not an addict?

Having thoroughly surveyed all that he could reach, John’s hand slipped down and palmed at Gale’s hip, urging him to turn back over and face him. When he did, his cheeks were flushed. His eyes still heavy, but now with pupils blown and trained right on him. They pinned John in place, made the cabin, and the camp, and all of Germany, all of Europe itself disappear around him. As if pulled by magnets and with the weight of the last couple of months bearing down on him, John moved to kiss him properly. His eyes snapped open when his mouth met the soft pressure of cold, unyielding fingertips, mere centimetres from the IP.

There was something brittle now in Gale’s gaze when John looked again, that feeling scooped back up and the lid put back on the jar. It still shone through though, muted but simmering away under the surface. Behind the shield of darkness and John’s broad body, Gale’s hand twisted, cupping John’s jaw as his thumb delicately swiped across the seam of his lips. “You’re gonna end up getting sick with me lying here breathing in your face all night.”

John let out a huff of annoyance, exaggerated maybe just a little bit in the hopes of making Gale smile again. “No, I won’t.”

“Yes, you will.”

Despite his amusement at the childish back and forth, John relented, changing course. “Okay, well, if it’s doomed to happen anyway I’d rather it was from you than any of the rest of these clowns, so…” He peeled Gale’s hand from his jaw, his phantom touch lingering in a way he hoped remained corporeal right through until the morning at the very least. In the same fluid movement he turned it around and mouthed his knuckles, then with a heart so full it could’ve burst right out of him, leaned in, slowly, carefully, kissed him anyway.

Oh, he could feign all the long-suffering exasperation he wanted to, but John knew the truth of the matter in how the tense lines of the other man’s body loosened under his hold then, how he nudged himself closer in the new position to close out any hint of a gap and the biting chill that could and would find its way through.

God knew he needed it, too. John wasn’t sure if it was just him that noticed the trail of signs left in Gale’s wake wherever he went throughout the day, subtle or not, that gave away just how crappy he was feeling. Sitting in the same room as the rest of them but far enough away at any given point. The way he’d pinch the bridge of his nose, presumably against the pressure there and the ache behind his eyes. How his chest sometimes seized with the need to cough that had been swallowed back. How he’d been keeping it all held back behind a tight jaw and clenched teeth, a brave face on for the sake of their men and the general morale. Whether he’d choose it or not, Gale knew he was a symbol, much like John, much like any other group’s commanding officers. He had a responsibility.

Now, though, in whatever new strange semi-privacy they’d stumbled upon and could seemingly kid themselves for a few hours they were alone within, it started to crumble.

In the extended silence, with sleep still out of reach, John couldn’t help but reflect on all of that. Right down to the very position he’d found him in when he gathered the nerve to approach his bunk, Gale was so damn protective of himself. Fiercely so, at times, that stoic, guarded veneer serving as a concrete wall between himself and the sometimes inexplicable chaos of the world. When they first met, oh so many moons ago now, John had been tempted to simply assume he lived with a stick up his ass and leave it at that.

Maybe it was because he was pretty in a way that his teenage self didn’t quite have the vernacular to understand yet, maybe it was the quiet echo of his mom’s voice in the back of his head scolding him about not judging a book by its cover, maybe it was divine intuition. But whatever it was, Bucky would thank whatever may have been out there in the sky looking down on them that, for whatever reason, he’d chosen instead to throw all of his chips in on Gale Cleven and insist on knowing him anyway. To push and prod and tease and question and irritate and somehow charm his way into the other boy’s life, into the most genuine, heartfelt friendship he’d ever had, and then further into, well, this. One that allowed him to pull on the thread of the image of himself that Gale presented to the world, bit by bit, without reprisal.

Throughout the years they’d known each other, Gale had dropped little morsels of his history into John’s lap, one piece at a time. It was almost off-hand, how he’d do it. Like he somehow hadn’t expected John to capture every one, savour them, commit them to memory and file them away in a special box in the back of his mind. To take them out as he did every so often and piece them together again, wondering about what young Gale had been before he was John’s ‘Buck’ and how he wished he could’ve been there for him, so he had an entire landscape laid before him of what made Gale Cleven who he was.

If he was stubborn and headstrong and fiercely protective of himself, fine. He had every right to be; had made himself that way out of necessity. Thinking about the circumstances of how and why made John’s heart ache something stupid just to think about, so he made a point to try not to.

If anyone on Earth deserved tenderness, it was Gale Cleven. For having taken the shitty hand life had dealt him and still come out the other side so kind and compassionate, to have taken all the hurt and the loneliness, bottled it up, and somehow turned it into white-knuckled determination to do better with himself. For having made his life something, even if his ambition was originally rooted in defiance against what had been laid out for him. For having the hordes of men in the squadron he presides over look upon him with deferential reverence, for giving them hope by making himself look invincible. Truly uncatchable, even despite having been caught.

If it ever got to be too much, though, especially in here, where home seemed so far away, and the idea of safety such an abstract, unreachable concept, Bucky would shoulder it. Without a second thought, every time. Gale Cleven deserved tenderness, and by hell was John Egan going to do everything he could to give it to him.

John had his moments when he let the darkness in; indulged in thoughts of disillusionment, found himself questioning any number of aspects of what they were doing, how they were doing it, and for what. One thought always ended up shing through the murky din though, a guiding light that pretty much always managed to pull John back in its direction. Back on path.

So long as he and Gale Cleven were on the same side, he knew he was in the right spot.

“Bucky?” His voice reached out, barely there and so soft John could’ve denied even hearing it at all. “You still awake?”

John’s eyes fluttered open, readjusting to the dark again as he blinked away the cobwebs from the sort of half-sleep he’d drifted off into. He hummed in affirmation. “What d’ya want then, Buck?” he echoed from earlier, chucking the other man’s own words back at him with a teasing, heavy-lidded smirk.

The question hung still and charged in the air between them as Gale hesitated, teetering on the brink of losing the nerve to ask whatever it was he wanted. Surely he should know by now, with John being the blatant and irredeemable sucker that he is, could ask quite literally anything of him and he’d find a way to grant him it?

Gale looked like his mind was half somewhere else, eyes unable to fully meet John’s own, and still seemingly debating whether to continue or not right up until the moment the words left his lips. “Y’know what, um… what this needs right now?”

John’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

When it came, it came small and vulnerable. “...vocals,” he said, before catching himself, the word ghosting across John’s chin. “Very, very quiet vocals.” Gale’s hand wound around John’s back, before slipping up the back of his shirt to flatten against John’s freckled back.

John couldn’t help the smile unwinding across his face, eyes sparkling in the dark with sudden mirth. “From me?” he questioned, infused with faux-disbelief. He made a show of pressing the back of his hand up under his dirty blond bangs to Gale’s forehead, half-teasing about checking for fever, but breathing a very real sigh of relief when he found little evidence of one yet.

“I mean, I did always say you would all eventually come around and see me for the true musical talent that I am. I’m just glad it’s finally being acknowledged, so I won’t hold the delay against you.”

Gale rolled his eyes, though it drew a smile out of him at the same time, even so.

He may have had no hope of being privy to all that went on inside Gale’s head, despite knowing all the important coordinates and the routes to get there. But he could see the sickbed request for what it was, the reminder of where they’d come from. A tether to an old life that felt sickeningly distant now, lost in the soupy abyss of the camp. A yearning for something familiar; anything. He sees just a hint of Gale’s impatience, his growing frustration at their situation and the longing for home, and it fractionally lightens the loads bearing down on John’s own chest. That for all his calm, careful control on the surface, it was confirmation that he felt it too.

Catching them both by surprise, and with grumbled curse, Gale twisted away with another desperate sneeze, newly acquired handkerchief hastily raised. Newly, and sort of relievingly, unrestrained, the harsh sound echoing off the walls of the small cabin.

Uncharacteristically flustered and with an apology quick on his tongue, Gale immediately moved his entire body so they were chest to back again, and he was facing the wall. “Right, that’s it. I’m turning back around.”

“You do whatever you need to get comfortable, and I’ll ahem, warm up,” he replied through a smile, the dismissal of the apology silent but palpable.

Gale fell asleep that night to the soft, dulcet tones of Blue Skies butchered in his ear. Despite the cold, despite the illness, it was the easiest sleep since he’d arrived.

The next morning, Douglass and Hambone were the first to reluctantly extricate themselves out of bed, it being their turn to do the first water run of the day and collect the cabin’s assigned jugs. Once they were outside, confident in being completely out of earshot, the gossip flowed freely.

“Jesus, you’d think Cleven and Egan gab enough to each other during the day, now they’re going to be at it at night too?!”

#masters of the air #clegan #buck x bucky #gale buck cleven #john bucky egan #HOOOOO BOY #first fic for this fandom/pairing #we're really in it now boys x #my writing

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williamvapespeare · 7 months

Text

torturing myself with Astarion/durge heartbreak 2k23 (some comfort immediately after that scene)

“Anyway it’s a brand new day, I’m sure we’ll find lots of people for you to kill.”

He means it as a joke, he really does, the sort of thinly veiled thing he pulls out when a conversation gets too close to the endless darkness of a tomb or the trusting eyes of yet another victim, pain dragged down each of his limbs, screams caught in his throat, or, well - he figures he’s owed a bad joke or two for all of that.

And Tav humors him with a small huff of something that might have been laughter, only it catches on a sharp sounding inhale and all of a sudden he’s clapping a hand over his mouth and curling into himself and Astarion has done quite enough sitting back and watching that night already.

When he pushes himself closer, Tav turns away, his eyes squeezed shut, shoulders heaving. Astarion reaches out, slowly, with all same the caution he uses as he feels his way through the mechanisms of a trap, fits his fingers under a spring, eases it open. He’s good at this, Astarion knows, and now he gets his hand around Tav’s wrist, pries it gently away from his mouth. Tav’s skin is still raw, dried blood flaked around the wound. Astarion does his best to be gentle as he pulls Tav’s hand towards him, holding his fingers loosely in both of his own hands.

It reminds him of a night weeks ago, when Tav accepted Astarion’s terrified words with the most grace he’s ever known, warm arms around his waist, a soft smile on Tav’s face, gentle fingers curled around his own. I care about you.

“I’m sorry,” Tav says now, voice choked and raw. Like he’s been screaming all night. “You shouldn’t. I tried to, I fucking tried…”

“I’m here,” Astarion cuts him off. Tav’s hand tries to clench in his own, twisting into a fist where Astarion can see the bloody imprints of nails already etched into his palm. He tightens his grip. “Someone already beat you to the whole killing me thing, love, and look how that turned out. I’m still here, whole and beautiful.”

Tav’s shoulders hitch again, but he blinks his eyes open, and while Astarion doesn’t like what he sees there - dark circles like bruises above his cheekbones, fear still radiating from him like a pheromone - he sees Tav there in his eyes, nothing more, nothing less.

“That’s it,” he soothes, calming and utterly nonsensical. “I’ve got you.”

“I’m sorry,” Tav says again, but his voice is steadier this time.

Astarion reaches out, touches Tav’s cheek in what he hopes is a delicate caress, like he too is something gentle to be taken care of, even when his body and his brain are fighting it with everything they have.

The fire is long since dead, and Astarion lets his gaze wander up from the blackened logs to the dull grey sky, it looks this way just before sunrise, he’s learned. Sometimes, the subtle hints of pink blink into view on the edge of the horizon without warning, and he’s struck with awe at the sight of it, the light, the freedom, every useless cliche it’s come to represent.

He isn’t sure how long they sit there, but by the time he hears the first rustling of their companions around them - it’s Gale who always appears first, he knows, the man wakes ridiculously early for a human - the sun is high enough in the sky that it’s beginning to peek through the early morning clouds.

“I should probably, uh,” Tav motions vaguely to his hand where it still rests loosely in Astarion’s, “deal with this before anyone else freaks out.”

As much as Astarion agrees, he can’t quite bring himself to let Tav go yet.

“Of course,” he says, instead of any of the disgustingly possessive thoughts on the tip of his tongue. “Get yourself cleaned up, darling.”

He helps Tav to his feet, watches as Tav rubs his face on his sleeve, skims his own fingers over his bloody wrists, taking stock of the damage. Astarion recognizes the motions.

“Will you,” Tav starts to say something that tapers off into a tired sort of silence, but Astarion is already nodding.

“I’ll be right here,” he says. “Whenever you need me.”

#astarion #astarion x dark urge #astarion x tav #bg3 durge #durge spoilers #astarion x durge #astarion fic #h/c

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wandurrlust · 5 months

Text

each time you fall in love

pairing : osamu x y/n, suna x y/n

genre : angst

cw : established relationship, implied (emotional) cheating (?), mentions of cigarettes

words : 1.8k

a/n : i really hate the way tumblr drafts glitch

When you're in love, you see it everywhere — on the coffee stains engraved within your favourite mug and on the rain soaked windows in the middle of the night. You see it in your reflection through your tear soaked eyes and you see it in the text from Osamu that says can we talk about this tomorrow?

You blame love when you're unable to sleep, because it hurts — it feels like your heart is being ripped right out of your ribcage and your lungs are being set on fire. Love is war, they say. Love is war, you know.

You love Osamu — you love him like the rain loves the ocean, like summer loves pink and like roses love sunshine. You love Osamu when the days are bleak and blend together with the night, you love him when the stars grow dull and the sky gets grey.

You love Osamu, except for when you don't. Except for when he's loud — when it's a crisp October evening outside but ice cold inside his apartment. When you're walking away, tears on your skin with his scarf around your neck — a promise of you'll never see him again.

You love Osamu. But you hate him when Suna welcomes you home, when you catch a whiff of coffee beans that almost put out the lingering scent of half lit cigarettes.

And when the credits of your favourite movie start rolling past Rin's laptop, you stifle a groan. Debating if telling him all about everything that went down today was worth it.

Did you fight again?

And there it is, you're telling him everything there is to tell. Because the softness in Rin's voice lets you know he cares and you know he cares far more than he'll ever admit.

Suna listens. He listens as your fingernails begin to press against your palm and he listens through the tremble that falls past your lips. He doesn't comfort you, not once.

He doesn't pull you close or rake his fingers through your hair. He doesn't whisper sweet nothings till you fall asleep in his arms. Because that's a line he'd rather not cross.

And that's okay, because that's how it's always been.

Suna is the home you retire to every night after work, one you'd built all by yourself. Suna is your best friend. But sometimes you wonder if you're his.

Osamu doesn't like Suna.

When you hear him say this for the first time, you laugh it off.

Are you jealous, Samu?

It's asked between breathy kisses and conjoined limbs, with his nose nuzzling the skin under your neck. And truth to be told, you don't want to know the answer.

Me jealous? Of Suna?

He whispers through your hair, not quite liking the sour aftertaste that lingers in his mouth at having uttered Suna. You find it bemusing, how Osamu refers to Rin by his last name despite having played on the same team as him all throughout highschool. Aren't they supposed to be the best of friends?

Not a chance sweetheart.

The second time he tells you this, it's bitter. Venom drips through his heavy voice and almost spills onto his vanilla skin — his words feel like thorns against your bare stomach, you think you're about to cough up blood.

Why is it always him over me?

Osamu knows that you probably think he's gone mad. But he can't help himself, not when it comes to Suna.

Samu, are you being serious?

He has to brace himself before he can face you again, do you seriously think he's making all of this up?

No sweetheart, of course not.

It's accompanied by a humourless chuckle, and Osamu feels his feet buckling beneath his weight. He should calm down. But fuck.

You don't understand what he's trying to get at. And quite frankly, you think he's being fucking unreasonable.

Samu what the fuck. Rin is my best friend.

And you can't imagine a life without Rin in it. Because for as long as you can recall, he's been there — looking over you from the stands.

But Osamu can't stand him — he's never been able to. Because Suna has always been sweeter, calmer, better. He's everything Samu could never be.

Rin is your best friend, but Samu doesn't like how the two of you stay up and night, talking to eachother. He doesn't like how you're looking for Suna after a long day. He doesn't like how good the two of you look together.

Right now, Osamu wants to push you away. But he can tell there's a lump in your throat and isn't going to die out any time soon. Because when you're angry, you cry.

Rin is your best friend, but when you're falling apart that night, it's in Osamu's arms.

Samu is there for you in ways Rin isn't. He pulls you close and kisses your hair before lacing his fingers with yours. You pull them to your lips. You don't want to let go.

I'm sorry, he whispers against you. It's fine, you say. Because with Osamu, it's always fine.

Rin is there for you when Samu isn't, when he hasn't been answering your calls for a week and when you're losing your fucking brain.

You're sat beside him on his apartment balcony, the tiles shoot chills through your body it stings against your skin.

You scrunch your nose up in order to keep up with the grey puffs of smoke above your head. You watch Suna inhale one, two, three drags of the cigarette held between his fingers.

The air between the two of you is silent. Neither one makes an attempt to break it down, you think it's better this way. And you think that's why you like being by Suna so much — he doesn't talk too much.

You extend your hand towards him, and he lets you grab the cigar from within his fingertips. His eyes flick to your mouth as you bring the cigarette to your lips and for a moment, his world comes to a halt.

You take a long breath, allowing the nicotine to take over your body, it tightens your chest and you let out a cough — cold and deliberate. Still Suna makes no attempt to make you feel at ease.

I thought you didn't smoke anymore.

Your voice is hoarse, it's the first thing you've said in six hours. There's no answer and honestly, you don't expect one. You let your eyes wander to the city lights underneath you, it reminds you of home — of Osamu. Of how he would wrap his arms around you and promise you the world every time he could.

Oh, I don't.

Fuck, you miss Osamu. You hate how you've been trying to reach out to him for days at an end now, only to be met by silence. Is he okay?

When the chill wind hits your scalp, your stomach sinks in. What if Samu decided he was finally done with you. Your vision begins to blur and your head hurts. Love is hell.

Bullshit Rin, you're a liar.

It's said through your teeth and pierces him like a dagger. He takes a breath to steady himself because it feels like he's about to fall.

Sometimes you wonder if Osamu sees you everywhere, if he loves you as much as you love him — if he loves you at all. But when you weave your fingers through his hair to lull him to sleep, you know it's futile worrying about useless stuff like that.

You know Osamu loves you.

Suna watches as your phone lights up, he watches as your eyes graze over the screen and your lips curl upwards. You let out a breath of relief and put out the cigarette on one of the tiles sitting on his balcony.

It's going to leave a stain, but Rin knows he isn't going to have the heart to scrub it off, it's a piece of you after all. One that he hopes he'll get to keep with himself for a long, long time.

He says he got caught up in some family stuff.

The words startle Suna, because he'd almost forgotten that there were people in this world besides the two of you. That there was Osamu, someone he could never win against. He'd forgotten that you weren't his, that no matter how little the gap between the two of you was, you'd never be his.

You aren't going to give him hell?

And you wonder why you aren't. You wonder why you'll always let Osamu walk over your heart and crush it into a hundred pieces, why you'll always hold your arms wide open for him to bury himself into, why you'll forever mutter an I understand despite wanting to rip the hair off your head.

He's probably already going through hell, Rin.

Suna’s chest constricts as he watches you bid goodbye to him. He doesn't know why but something about you leaving tonight makes it all seem so permanent, like he'd never get a chance to witness your presence beside him ever again.

He thinks he might pass out as he watches you finally step into the elevator, because even though he'd made you promise to not get into any trouble on the way to Osamu’s apartment, he knows it's nearly impossible for you.

Suna is your best friend but you forget all about him when you're watching it pour outside through the windows of Osamu's apartment.

You're sitting on the couch, lost in the haze like lovers on a Sunday morning. With Osamu, it's coffee breath and starlit nights, it's listening to Matty healy curse through the speakers and dancing around the living room with your lips drawn together.

Osamu is a promise, you believe; one that you'd made to yourself when you were seven, one that you hope you'll never end up breaking. He's a poem you'd written on your seventeenth birthday, he's the fire that lights up your lungs on a cold winter evening.

When you're in love, it feels like you're about to die. It's too good, too much. It feels like you're falling but you let yourself slip — because you know you'll have your lover waiting for you on the other side.

You love Osamu, you love him like he's your last breath and you love him like a silent prayer.

But when you're wishing Rin a happy birthday, he goes dizzy. Because he thinks he'll love you forever.

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watercolorfreckles · 1 year

Text

All in Jest (princess x court jester)

The princess watched her jester the way one might watch the stars in the night sky. He struck her with the same wonder as the smear of a bleeding sunset, or the crest of a wave.

His eyes twinkled with mischief, two white diamonds painted on his cheeks. Doing a cartwheel, he straightened just in front of the princess's seat at the head of the table.

She sucked in a soft breath, silverware forgotten with a clatter against her plate.

The jester smiled, holding her gaze. With a twist of his hand, he snapped and revealed a white rose, missing from the table's centerpiece.

The dinner guests murmured their awe, sipping from glittering goblets of wine.

The jester deftly held the flower out to the princess, balancing its stem on the tip of one finger. "Your Highness."

The princess swallowed. She hoped there was no flush to her cheeks as she accepted the rose. When her fingers closed around it, the previously white petals bloomed into a blood red.

The crowd gasped in delight, some displaying their pleasure with dainty claps.

The princess studied the flower, turning it over in her hands, before looking at the jester again.

He tossed her a wink, so brief and privately for her, she could have convinced herself she'd imagined it. He spun away, continuing on with his act.

The jester moved with unmatched fluidity and ease, even as he feigned clumsiness here and there to coax laughs from his willing audience. The princess's eyes never left him for a moment, tracking his every twirl and flip; his every jest, and trick. He was silver-tongued and graceful. Drawing her eye with all the spectacle of a natural phenomenon.

The prince at her side rested a hand over hers, startling her attention away from the jester. The soon-to-be king of a kingdom neighboring her own looked down at her with a slated expression. "I grow bored of these antics, my dear, might we spend a quiet moment alone before retiring to our chambers for the night?"

The princess's excitement wilted, looking at her husband-to-be. She stole a last glance at her jester. Was it her mind playing tricks, or was he watching her even now, through the edge of his gaze, even as his performance carried on?

"Certainly," she answered finally.

The prince rose from his seat, offering her a hand. The princess's fingers closed around his palm as she stood, keeping hold of her rose in her other hand.

He led her away from the tumbling laughs and cheers of the dining hall and down the corridor. The quiet swept the night bare like a creeping tide.

Her heart ached to return to that dining table, to watch her jester dance and jest and tease. So much of her future was decided for her, and even now, the evening did not belong to her.

The two royals stepped out onto the dais, cool air rushing their skin in a velvet caress. The princess had always liked the cold more than most. The air smelled sharp with the promise of snow.

"I know that you are not satisfied with our arrangement," the future king spoke. His voice was different now than it was when he spoke in front of their subjects. It leveled into something a little less diplomatic; less cushion to the blunt teeth of him. "I am to be king and you will be my queen. My father and I have been more than gracious to offer you my hand. For your own kingdom's sake: you would be wise to drag your head down from the clouds and back to the earth where it is... best suited. Under my direction; by my side. You understand, don't you, dearest?"

The princess looked out over the kingdom that was not her own. The rolling hills and valleys twinkled with the village lights beneath a sleeping sky.

"I understand."

"Good. I trust that with time, you will grow to be content here with me." His voice sounded like the color grey. Steely and dull.

"I hope for the same," the princess said in answer.

The king-to-be nodded in her periphery, his fingers slipping from hers. "I bid you goodnight, my dear. Don't stay out too long. You'll catch a chill."

She listened to his footsteps fade.

She stayed on the balcony until the air numbed her face and fingertips. She watched the lazy clouds part, the moon slashing silver light over the world below.

Using its glow, she examined her white-turned-red rose once more.

"Aren't you cold, princess?"

The princess paused, lifting her head. The familiar voice, warm and lilting, seemed to fill the very cracks of her.

"I like the cold," she answered, turning around to face the speaker.

The jester shifted with leisure movements to lean against the rail beside her.

Something sparked in the pit of her belly, to have him so close. If anyone saw... their mere proximity could be considered scandalous.

Still, the princess turned back around, facing the same direction as her jester.

"How did you turn my rose red?" she asked, glancing at him.

The light of the moon highlighted the white diamonds painted over his cheeks as his mouth lifted into a smirk. "You know what they say about magicians and their secrets."

"You are a court jester," she reminded him, "not a magician. Though your tricks are... impressive."

"I impress you, princess?" His smile widened, sly and teasing.

Heat flooded her cheeks and she turned her head to hide it. "I believe that is what I said, yes."

"You didn't see the end of my performance."

Her gaze flicked back to him, eagerness betraying her. His eyes glittered beneath the dance of moonbeams, knowing and patient as he awaited her reply.

The princess's mouth felt slightly dry. "Alright, then."

"Alright?"

"You may... repeat the end of your performance for me."

He clasped his hands in front of him, attention still affixed to her. The amusement was clear on his face. "I may?"

The princess's cheeks burned further. "I only mean- If you should like to. I would... I wouldn't deny you."

The jester took a single step closer, and the princess felt as if all the air had vanished from her lungs. "Would you like to see it?" he pressed gently.

She swallowed. "I... Yes. Please."

"I could do more than that," he spoke softly. "I could get you out of here--for a little while, or for good."

The princess turned away. "Don't be foolish."

He reached out, brazen and delicate all at once, to catch her wrist, spinning her back around. His other hand raised to just barely brush a finger down the line of her jaw.

The world around them flickered in a kaleidoscope of color, then vanished all at once. The princess blinked and they were in her own kingdom's village, her castle towering within sight.

The princess spluttered, trembling, and looked at the jester, her jester. She was gripping his hand. "What-"

He grinned, something else--magic--sparking behind his eyes. "I am afraid being the fool is precisely my job, Princess. Now. Your Highness. Anywhere you'd like to go?"

Everywhere, her heart whispered.

The princess stepped close, looking up at the court jester. A million thoughts wanted to flee the confines of her mouth. She looked around at her kingdom; her home.

"Thank you."

This is unedited bc it's 2:49 am, but I'll probably (maybe) edit it tomorrow :) Yay for pushing through writer's block, are ya proud?

General Taglist: @pinned-to-the-wahl , @valiantlytransparentwhispers , @distance-does-not-matter , @redbircl , @lilaccatholic , @crazytwentythrees , @thelazywitchphotographer , @chibicelloking , @lolafaiy , @thinkwrite5 , @putridghost , @tobeornottobeateacher , @sunflower1000 , @bouncyartist , @feyriddle , @yet-another-heathen , @silverwhisperer1 , @distractedlydistracted , @pensivespacepirate , @appleejuicee , @deflated-bouncingball @maybe-a-cat42 , @m0chik0furan , @mercurymomentum , @fairysprinkles , @vuvulia , @amongtheonedaisy , @rose-pinkie , @trappedgoose-in-a-writblr-room , @scorpio-smiles , @inkygemuwu , @wolfeyedwitch , @thewhumpmeisterx3000 , @ikiiryo , @moonquires , @lem-hhn , @fanastywhump , @smallangryfish , @ladybookworm , @freefallingup13 , @acaiaforrest , @a-blue-comedy , @puppyaddict , @a-person-who-likes-musicals , @talkingsperm , @qualitychaoslover , @deckofaces ,@7eselt

#writeblr #my writing #writing snippet #writers of tumblr #heroes and villains #hero x villain #princess #royalty #princess x jester #hero x villain community #flash fiction #part 1 #i hope to continue this one!#fantasy romance

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fearandhatred · 7 days

Text

fic (and poetry) masterlist

figured i have enough written to make one so :) here are all the good omens fics and poetry stuff i have put out! show them some love please i am asking sooo normally. last updated 22/4/24

fics found on my ao3, everything related to them are tagged #fearandfics. poetry tagged #fearandpoetry

my main masterpost for my art and metas and edits and whatever else, and my previous pinned post because i can hardly bear to part with it

transitional heart taxidermy (15.9k words, 5/7 chapters)

Aziraphale comes back wrong. Crowley tries his damnedest to figure out what happened, until he doesn't. [It's a nice day, but he's not particularly happy. He's brushed against one too many people for his liking, his jacket sleeve chafes his forearm, and his face is cold with the light drizzle of rain he has no energy to miracle away. Not to mention why he'd gone to a bar to get drunk in the first place—but no matter. It doesn't matter anymore.]

main tags: angst, whump, abusive relationships, emotional manipulation

blood in my eyes (1.9k words, 1/1 chapters)

It starts and ends, as it had before, in the bookshop. [This is the first time in years he has stepped foot back into this place. It's a spontaneous decision, driven by a mellow melancholy and a soft wistful night. Muriel isn't in, so the bookshop is dark, and the streetlights cast an eerie, lonely glow on the ancient hardbacks. The rearing statue that once held his glasses every other day is coated in a thin layer of dust; he leaves them on.]

main tags: angst, temporary amnesia, unhappy ending

sunflower fingerprints (3.2k words, 1/1 chapters)

A fun little side perk of being a demon is that Crowley only gets to see the world in shades of grey. That is, until that world is touched by one particular angel. [But the fall had hurt, too. Because the wind had cut into his useless wings like knives, his skin and grace peeling away under the friction, and he had been looking right up at the multicoloured and unreachable expanse of sky just to see it fade from his eyes into dull greys.]

main tags: light (?) angst, colour blindness

via dolorosa (1.5k words, 1/1 chapters)

Crowley places her own crown on top of Jesus's head. [Crowley follows the mob all the way from Gethsemane to Golgotha, hidden in the shadows and carrying her basket full of flowers she doesn't actually sell. She sees Jesus's skin, welted and bleeding and bruised, no part left unmarred, but she doesn't interfere. She can't. She would miracle a lighter burden on his shoulders, healed cuts or softer soles, but she knows it wouldn't go unnoticed.]

main tags: angst, episode: s01e03 hard times

also here

untitled poem #1

some ship of theseus imagery for you because i am obsessed with the ship of theseus. idk how else to describe this one really

untitled poem #2

inspired by (but not based on!) the aforementioned excerpt of sunflower fingerprints

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humanpurposes · 8 months

Text

From Eden

Chapter 2: Some part of me came alive

Danes attack Wincombe Abbey and a young novice crosses paths with a group of mercenaries and their Baby Monk // Series Masterlist // Main Masterlist

Osferth x Original Female Character

Warnings: 18+, suggestive themes, religious guilt, pathetic yearning

Words: 3400

A/n: I did not spellcheck the names. Also available to read on AO3.

Since joining Lord Uhtred, Osferth had seen enough of the back of his horse’s head to make him sick. They moved constantly, never settling anywhere for long. So he savoured each stop, and every night he spent in a bed rather than a forest floor or a field, he made sure to express his gratitude in his prayers.

Only the ride from Wincombe was anything but dull. The girl from the abbey, Bridget, was rather impossible to ignore, pressed tightly against his back and shrouding his cloak around his shoulders to keep them both warm.

He slowed the horse once they had caught up with the rest of the group. She settled then, holding her hands on his shoulders, turning her head and resting her temple at the base of his neck through the thick material of his tunic. A thrill ran down his spine, one he hardly allowed himself to feel.

The snow was starting to settle now, crunching under the hooves of the horses. The sky was overcast with grey clouds, yet the world seemed so bright. Bridget marvelled at the sight of the land beyond the abbey, letting out breathless little gasps at hills and woodlands.

“When was the last time you were this far from the abbey?” Osferth asked, turning over his shoulder a little.

Her wide eyes glanced up at him before she lifted her head. He suddenly felt cold with the absence.

“I haven’t been beyond the woods in over a decade,” she said, her voice was light, finding its place between wonder and sadness.

He had much been the same, hardly venturing from the walls of the minster in Winchester, until he decided to seek out Lord Uhtred.

“Is that how long you have been at the abbey?” he asked.

“Yes,” is all she said. He had half expected a tale of her life, of her mother and father, but she simply sighed and looked ahead, peering over his shoulder to the others riding in front of them.

He told her of their company, of Lord Uhtred, a man born to a Northumbrian Lord and raised by Danes, hoping to reclaim his home. He told her how he had found himself tied to other matters. He was a warrior, a loyal servant and friend of King Alfred, but most recently he had become intent on his pursuit of the seer, Skade.

“What is his interest in her?” Bridget asked.

Osferth tutted to himself. Uhtred’s obsession with Skade had brought them nothing but misfortune and death thus far. “He believes himself to be cursed.”

“And do you believe that?”

“She is of the devil,” he said, “sent to tempt the hearts of men. That is all I care to know of it.”

And yet Uhtred remained intent on finding her.

As they rode on, he told her of the other men, Finan, the Irishman, and Shitric, the Dane, the greatest and the bravest warriors he had ever known– save for his Lord, of course.

“And what of you?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

She nodded ahead. “Uhtred of Bebbanburg, Finan the Irishman and Shitric the Dane. Where do you come from?”

He frowned and suddenly his cross felt heavier around his neck. He had been left to the monastery with no name, no title, just the weight of his father’s sins. “I am simply Osferth,” he said.

“That can’t be true,” Bridget said. “What was it Finan called you? Baby Monk?”

His body went rigid. God, he hated that name, even more so now that she had said it.

She chuckled softly. “That makes you something,” she said.

He doubted she would soon forget the topic. “I was born in Winchester,” he said with a reluctant sigh.

“And how did you come to serve Lord Uhtred?”

“My uncle said he was a great man. I sought him out, to join him.”

“So you do have a family?”

Hardly. He had few memories of Leofric, even less of his mother.

One of Bridget’s hands slipped from his shoulder, resting against his arm. “I can stay silent if you’d prefer, seeing as you’re so intent on remaining mysterious,” she said.

“No– no,” he insisted as he cleared the tight feeling in his throat. “My life is anything but mysterious, I assure you.”

“A simple man, formerly of the cloth,” she mused.

He sounded painfully dull with the way she put it, but what was the alternative? Bastard… coward… boy.

“I suppose so,” he muttered.

As the sun slipped below the hills and night crept into the sky, Lady Aethelflaed at last decided they would make camp for the night, despite Uhtred’s determination to press on to Saltwic.

They found cover under a grove of trees where they could tie the horses, gather firewood and seek some shelter from the snow.

Osferth dismounted first, swinging his leg over the horse’s head before he turned back to Bridget. She braced herself on his shoulders as he put his hands on her waist and guided her down. Perhaps the fall was further than she anticipated; her hands tightened their grip on his shoulders and she took a sharp breath before her feet touched the ground.

“Are you alright?” Osferth asked.

“Yes, of course,” she mumbled. Her eyes flittered between his face and the ground. He had an awful feeling he had done something wrong and quickly released his hands from her.

He made quick work of unloading the canvas, bedroll and furs from his horse before he went about his usual duties, building the fire, beginning on the broth to feed the men. Bridget stood restlessly, fiddling with her hands in front of her skirts, reaching for her hair to fix a habit she no longer wore. He watched her in the corner of his eye as he worked, and gestured for her to join him by the fire once the flames came alive.

She still had his cloak on her and when she moved to take it off he stopped her. She smiled in thanks and pulled it back over her shoulders.

Even then she was unsettled. Her head turned everywhere, watching Uhtred setting up a tent for himself and Lady Aethelflaed, Finan and Shitric as they sharpened their swords and poured themselves cups of ale.

“Your first night away from the abbey,” Osferth said and bit his tongue immediately after. It was a rather obvious thing to point out.

She cautiously eyed the other men around them, setting up their own beds and fires.

“You needn’t fear them,” Osferth said. “They will not harm you.”

As she turned towards him, her eyes and skin caught the light of the fire. In that moment she was golden and radiant, the very image of the angels he praised in his prayers. Suddenly his mouth felt dry– perhaps he needed a drink of ale.

She smiled softly. “I am not afraid, Osferth.”

His eyes were drawn to her lips and her teeth as she said it. He had never known his own name to sound so pleasant.

Lord Uhtred appeared from the tent to fetch a bowl of broth for Lady Aethelflaed, before he, Finan and Shitric joined them by the fire to eat and drink.

Finan handed Bridget a cup of ale. “The more you drink the easier it is to fall asleep,” he said, “you’ll need it with the cold.”

She winced at the first sip but laughed it off with the others. “Stronger than I’m used to,” she said.

“Does she have a bed?” said Uhtred.

“She’ll have mine,” Osferth said without hesitation.

Finan and Shitric shared an amused look. Bridget tilted her head at him. There was that strange feeling in his stomach again, like he’d done something wrong.

“I’ll just sleep on the ground,” he clarified.

The fire kept them warm enough for an hour or so, but as the night grew darker it brought heavier snow and wind, nipping at the bare bits of Osferth’s skin, his face and fingertips. Without his cloak he felt the cold seeping through to his very bones.

He was as quiet as usual, while Finan and Sihtric reminisced back on battles and nights spent in alehouses. Bridget watched them with wide eyes and wonder.

He hardly noticed Lord Uhtred’s departure and subsequent return with a bedroll, dropping it at his feet.

“Lord?”

“You’ll sleep better with it,” Uhtred said. “Now retire, all of you, we leave at first light.”

Osferth pointed Bridget towards the tent he had set up and told her to use as many furs as she needed.

Once he had taken the broth pot from the fire and gathered Lord Uhtred’s bedroll, he made towards the tent. Until a firm hand stopped him by his shoulder.

“You’re a better man than I, Baby Monk,” Finan muttered into his ear with an audible grin. “I’d have her sharing my bed.”

He brushed Finan’s hand away and clenched his jaw to stop himself smiling.

Was he truly being that obvious? He wanted to think that he wasn’t, but with every step he took towards the tent, the more he thought of her, lying on his bedroll, wrapped in his cloak and his furs to keep out the cold, the more he began to doubt himself.

She only caught his attention back at Wincombe when she approached him in the hall– the girl from the woods who had directed them towards the abbey. She seemed curious, fascinated at the prospect of him having left his order in Winchester, and when Haesten had attacked, she had acted courageously in spite of her fear. Heaven above, she had killed one of the men, which was one more than he could claim from his first battle.

He was acting by the guidance of the Lord, he told himself, in offering her his care and protection. He intended to honour his word.

He was glad to be out of the snowfall and under the canvas. His cloak had been left on the branch of a tree, hanging within the tent, and Bridget had settled on the bedroll, huddling in a single layer of fur. He could see her shivering.

He laid out Lord Uhtred’s bedroll, in what small space he had. He fastened the cloak around himself, leaving his boots and his gloves on as he settled. It was too cold for anything less.

Bridget was on her side and facing him, fur pulled up to her chin, eyes squeezed shut, teeth chattering and lips trembling as she let out shaky, icy breaths.

Even as the snores of the other men sounded from the other tents, she was still shivering.

He whispered her name, and she responded with a short “hmm.”

“You’re cold,” he said.

She opened her eyes. “Finan’s trick with the ale didn’t work,” she grumbled.

He smiled. “Don’t trust everything Finan tells you.”

She angled her brows in a helpless expression and smiled back.

An idea crossed his mind, one that would have Finan grinning like a devil, but he couldn’t just leave her to the cold. He adjusted the fur around him and held it out.

“May I?” he asked at the questioning frown on Bridget’s face.

She shuffled closer to him, dragging the fur with her as she settled herself under his arm and against his chest.

Osferth brought the fur around her, pulling her in a little closer, her head fitting perfectly under his chin. He felt the gentle force of her breath against the collar of his cloak, leaving his skin feeling deprived of her.

She fell asleep quickly. A subtle feeling of pride swelled in his chest, but sleep did not come as easily to him. He could hardly rest, he had to make sure the furs were wrapped around her, that his arm wasn’t pressing in too harshly to her body, but that his hold was firm enough to keep her warm.

And then there were her little hums and heavy breaths. They were soft sounds, unobtrusive, soothing in a way, and his heart leapt at each one.

He tried to think of the last time he had been this close to someone. He and Finan and Shitric had found themselves in uncomfortably close proximity, finding sleep where they could on their travels. Having Bridget by his side, nestled against him, her face delicately fallen and a picture of peace in his embrace, was entirely different.

He let his hand trace over the curve of her waist and settle against her back. He liked the feel of her under his touch, their breaths moving together, her body pressed against his.

But what was it the holy book preached? The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.

He clenched his jaw and tucked the edge of the fur under his hand so his palm would not touch her, not directly at least.

Bridget insisted she was used to rising early, especially after she had slept so well– a detail which had earnt Osferth a smug look from Finan, which he met with another frown.

The mind governed by the flesh is death.

He recited those words in his head over and over again, as he helped Bridget into the saddle, as she put her hands around his waist, as her hips gently rocked against him with the movement of the horse, but he kept his head high and his hands tight on the reins.

It took a matter of hours to reach Saltwic. The men were all glad to be under a roof with some more substantial food in their bellies; spit-roasted meat, bread and more than a few mouthfuls of ale.

Though before long, Osferth found himself being dragged out of the hall by his shoulders and Finan’s insistence that they should make use of their time to train.

Bridget was already waiting for them in the courtyard. She had shed her nun’s robes now, dressed in garments she must have been given by Lady Aethelflaed; a shirt, tunic and breeches. Modest, but he doubted her sisters at the abbey would approve. She wore them well.

By her side she held a sword, shorter and slimmer compared to the blades wielded by Lord Uhtred and his men. Osferth looked down at his own weapon, long and slight, made to match his body.

“Which would win in a fight, a Baby Monk or a Little Novice?” Finan said cherrily, striding between them.

Osferth and Bridget shared a look of confusion.

Finan held his arms out as though he were expecting an answer. “Let's find out, shall we?” Then he withdrew, leaving nothing but empty space and a few settled snowflakes between them.

Surely he did not mean for them to attack each other without even showing Bridget how to properly wield a sword. Not that Osferth was a well seasoned fighter himself. He had seen battle, but he often let himself fall into the background unless it was necessary.

Bridget had a fighter’s instincts at least. She had hardly hesitated to slay one of the attackers at Wincombe. He might have been dead if she hadn’t. With that he felt a little less guilt about taking a single step forward as he adjusted the grip on his sword.

She reacted sharply, like an animal to a hunter. In a heartbeat her posture had completely changed. She was poised, her eyes wide and alert, her feet in a fighting stance and her sword at her side.

It was easy to pick up on her movements, the little signs of instinct in every reaction. Finan had often told him this was a weak point of his, the inability to read his opponent, but with her, he was acutely aware of where she was putting her weight, where her eyes were looking, each little intake of breath as they stalked around each other.

When she moved first, he raised his blade to block her, then matched her again when she took a swing at his middle.

Their swords met with a ringing clash. The metal hissed as he drew his blade along hers until they fell apart.

His heart was racing and his breaths shallow. He was becoming impossibly warm under the weight of his robes and chainmail.

Bridget was poised again, a gleam in her eyes and a small smile playing in the corner of her mouth.

“The girl’s a natural,” Finan called, “she’s picking this up faster than you did, Baby Monk!”

Osferth meant to shoot his friend a glum glare until he saw a flash of movement, her hair and the wave of her sword. He looked back to Bridget in time to parry her strike, but not before she moved around him and delicately placed her blade on his shoulder, over his chainmail, close enough to his neck to affirm her victory.

She was close enough that he could feel her breath on his skin.

She smiled, proud of herself but without cruelty. It made his chest ache, not unpleasantly.

“Where did you learn to fight?” Finan asked.

A small part of Osferth died as she turned her eyes away from him. She lowered her sword and stepped away.

“I learnt a little from my brother,” she said.

“Good man himself,” Finan said, drawing his own blade and nodding for them to follow his lead as he brought them through a few stances.

“Yes,” she said softly, “yes he was.”

Osferth hardly let himself look upon her as they trained, unless Finan asked them to spar. They became less evenly matched each time they did so. He found himself slipping further and further into his own mind. Each time she smiled at him it awakened something bright and unnerving within him. He clasped at the memory of having her waist in his hand, her breath against his neck, her body pressed into his.

He excused himself once Finan decided they were done and decided to forgo the suggestion that they replenish themselves in the hall with more meat and ale.

He went to the chapel, tucked away in the corner of the estate within Lady Aethelflaed’s private apartments. It was far from the noise of the stables, the rowdiness of the hall, the heat creeping under his skin every time his eyes met Bridget’s.

The chapel was small, cold and dark, lit only by a collection of candles at the altar. He came to his knees on the stone floor before it, clutching his cross in his hands.

He asked for peace of mind, for clarity, for an answer.

Why her? Why had the Lord seen fit to guide them to Wincombe and urge her to join them? Why had his mind become so utterly consumed by her, not some lewd temptress of cruel intention or evil spirit, but a woman of beauty, warmth and courage? Perhaps it was a tempting of faith, a lure to sin and depravity.

“The mind governed by the flesh is death,” he whispered to himself, “but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.”

A breeze blew through the chapel, ceasing when the door was quietly closed.

Osferth froze, stroking his thumb over his cross.

Soft footsteps moved against the flagstones until a figure stood at the altar. She was still in her training clothes, her hair flowing freely down her back. Most of her face was obscured in shadow, save for the edges of her cheek and her nose. He watched her hands as she lit a taper and brought it to the wick of a new candle.

She bowed her head in a silent prayer, the flames lighting the curve of her lips. She whispered something to herself but the words eluded him. He wondered what she might be praying for, if she felt the same turmoil as he did.

The room remained silent, save for the hum of the flames. Ordinarily he found peace in silence, but now it felt unbearable.

Bridget turned around, still bathed in darkness, an intangible vision, like a ghost, untouchable. The colour of her eyes were lost to darkness but he felt them boring into his.

She took a step closer to where he knelt. He held his cross a little tighter as traced the shape of her slightly parted lips, and felt a restless urge rising in his gut.

“What are you praying for, Osferth,” she said.

Without thinking he flexed his hand to regain some feeling in it. He might as well have been a lifeless entity otherwise.

The mind governed by the flesh is death.

“Strength,” he uttered, desperately keeping his eyes on her face, not the curves of her body and the belt cinching in her waist. “And courage also.”

Bridget suddenly retreated into herself. She kept her hands clasped in front of her and smiled. “I pray for that too.”

Tags (comment to be added to either)

General taglist: @randomdragonfires @jamespotterismydaddy @theoneeyedprince @tsujifreya @dreamsofoldvalyria

From Eden taglist: @greenowlfactif @tinykryptonitewerewolf @bellaisasleep @brianochka @doomwhathouwilt @sarahkimtae

#my fics #osferth x reader #osferth fanfiction #osferth fanfic #osferth smut #the last kingdom #tlk #seven kings must die #baby monk #osferth x oc #osferth x y/n #osferth x ofc #ewan mitchell

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casuallyimagining · 1 day

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Doubt || kth.

Kim Taehyung x female!reader

Summary: Taehyung is an eccentric young musician working on a song that he believes will save him. Can it also save the woman he loves?

Genre: Greek Mythology AU, Orpheus AU, Fluff, Angst Word Count: 8,678 Rating: T Warnings: hunger and poverty; manipulation; major character death

Notes: Based on the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Thanks to @daechwitatamic for beta-ing. Banner by @itaeewon.

It’s so cold out that you can see your breath, a puff of pale steam that quickly disappears into the dull landscape around you. The clouds are starting to lighten, they’re less grey, less dense, and you can tell the sun’s still somewhere up there, at least. But gods, it’s almost mid-May and you can’t remember the last time you’d seen blue sky. Hell, you can’t remember the last time you’d seen the sun.

Growing up, you’d heard stories of the seasons changing on time. Tales of spring coming in late March, bringing rain and flowers and much-needed warmth; that fall would reliably start at the end of September, the land turning to shades of orange and red and yellow. Between that, days got warmer and longer, and then colder and shorter. It was a cycle, and it was predictable, and it was nice, and it was mundane.

That didn’t really happen anymore.

You tug your jacket closer around your body. It’s starting to wear thin and the zipper is broken. You’ll need to find a way to fix it when you get into the next town. There’s no way you’ll be able to afford a new one, but maybe you can trade for some lining and a new zipper. Though that means you’ll have to find something to trade…

Good-paying jobs are hard to find, especially with the world’s economy in flux the way that it is. Most everyone is more focused on finding food and shelter, and people are much more willing to migrate to find work during the good season if they can. You’d been doing odd-jobs up and down the eastern seaboard for years now, as long as you could take care of yourself. Some cleaning here, accompanying someone to a different town there. You’d even done some childcare near the gulf when you’d been down south.

Now, you’re following the railroad tracks north.

Eventually, you stumble upon a sleepy town somewhere south of the city you’re trying to get to. There aren’t that many buildings that you can really see, and most of them are still covered in snow. Snow’s piled up along the streets and under the windows–it’s almost touching the sills in some places. None of the buildings look to be taller than three stories. The town is small, but the square in the middle of town is surrounded by lit buildings. You’re freezing. First stop: find a bar or a hotel or an inn.

The bar isn’t hard to find, but it’s dark when you finally push through the door in a swirl of bitter wind and snow flurries. Every head in the bar turns to look as you enter. You slide into a table by the door, a little embarrassed but ultimately just happy to be out of the cold.

“You’re not from around here.” The man who approaches your table is tall and confident, and when he offers you a soft smile, you instantly feel more at ease. He pulls a small pad of paper out of his back pocket and slides into the booth across from you. “I’m Yoongi.”

You tell him your name, and he tells you what’s good on the menu before taking your order. Yoongi leaves you alone with a promise to check on you later to make sure you have a place to stay the night. You allow yourself to relax into the vinyl cushions of the booth, enjoying the atmosphere–significantly less tense now that Yoongi has welcomed you into the establishment–and the warmth of the fireplace across the room.

There’s a house band that sits in the corner playing some jazzy number that reminds you of one of the gulf cities you’d stayed in back when you were passing through the bayous of the south. The pianist is slight, a little too skinny, his dark hair falling into his eyes as he plays. He’s talented, remarkably so, and paired with the saxophone and the upright bass, the music they play is some of the best you’d heard in a very long time.

A plate clattering onto the table in front of you draws your attention from the band. A young man stands in front of you, honeyed eyes wide. He looks to be around your age, his dark hair pushed out of his eyes with a thick cloth headband. He has a kind energy, despite his sharp features, if not a little odd.

“Yoongi said you’re new in town,” he says finally, his voice a little deeper than you were expecting. “Do you have somewhere to stay? Are you going to be here long? You should stay with Yoongi and I.”

You sigh. The man is forward, that’s for sure. You’d been hoping to grab a hot meal here, rest a little, and move on. You’re close to the city–maybe a couple days of walking, less if you can hitch a ride with someone or sneak on the train. But you can tell that this place, and these people, is somewhere you could easily stay in.

You can’t let that happen.

Yoongi appears then, a glass of water in his hands. He places it on the table in front of you, nudging the man out of the way. “Don’t be a pest, Taehyung. Remember what I said about scaring away my customers?”

“Oh, so he’s like this with everyone?” You ask it playfully, but there’s a bit of real questioning in it. You get the sense that maybe this guy–this Taehyung–is a bit of an oddball. Not in a bad way, but you’d like to know what you’re dealing with.

The way Yoongi rolls his eyes tells you that yes, Taehyung is like this with everyone. “He tell you about his song yet?”

You raise your eyebrows. “Oh, he’s a singer.”

Taehyung blushes, a light dusting of pink blossoming across his cheeks. “There’s this contest, and I… The prize is a year’s supply of soup.”

You hum. Any more, money isn’t really a great prize. Bartering is more or less how the economy runs. But soup? Any kind of food in that amount would make someone richer than even the wealthiest city dwellers.

Taehyung is certainly an intriguing fellow.

You can’t say at what point in the night Yoongi slipped away, or when Taehyung slipped into the booth across from you. But you can’t deny that--despite his way too forward introduction--his presence is comfortable.

“What brings you into town?” he asks as you take a bite of your sandwich, watching you expectantly as you chew.

“Job hunting,” you say simply, glancing in the direction of the band as they start to play again.

“What did you do before? Where are you from?”

You shrug. “Bit of everything.”

Taehyung hums and rests his chin in his hand. If he notices that you ignore his second question, he doesn’t mention it. “Hey, maybe Yoongi could give you a job? He’s always saying about needing someone else to wait tables. Apparently I’m ‘unreliable’ and ‘flighty’.” He makes a face, eyes widening almost comically as he wiggles his head.

Then, he sighs dramatically and watches the band for a moment before bursting into a fit of giggles. It’s a little dopey, but it’s endearing how his face scrunches up and he covers his mouth with his hand.

When he calms down, he leans on his hand. “Yoongi really isn’t that bad to work for. He’s just busy is all. He runs the bar, but he’s also station master over at the train station, and he delivers mail sometimes when the post office is short-staffed.”

“That’s… a lot of jobs.”

Taehyung shrugs. “He likes to stay busy.”

Things quiet down, then, and you listen to the band play as you finish your meal. Sometimes, Taehyung speaks, telling you a bit about his life and about the bar, but for the most part, he sits with you in silence. He nods along with the band, and every once in a while, he pulls out a small notebook to jot something down. Even though he isn’t talking as much, he seems happy. You get the sense that he’s just excited you aren’t ignoring him or shooing him away.

When it’s time for the bar to close, Yoongi comes to collect Taehyung so they can get to work cleaning and closing the establishment.

“Wait for me?” Taehyung whispers to you as you stand from the booth. He tugs the scarf from around his neck and drapes it over yours. The striped fabric is a little thin, but you can feel his body heat radiating off it slightly. “I’ll meet you when we’re done. There’s a park down that way three blocks.” He points east. “It’s just across the street from my apartment. You can wait there if you want.”

He’s gone before you even confirm that you’d wait for him.

“He’s a good kid,” Yoongi’s voice from behind you makes you jump. “He’s a little naive, but he’s got a big heart.” He holds the door open for you as you leave the bar. He nods at you. “I’ll see you later.”

The night is cold, but nowhere near as bitter as it had been a few nights before. The seasons are starting to change. This year, if you’re lucky, maybe it'll last the correct amount of time.

You find the park easily, wandering around it for a few minutes before selecting a bench near the center fountain. It’s turned off to prevent the icy spray from getting whipped around in the wind, and you’re grateful. The last thing you need is to be cold and wet.

It’s a surprisingly nice night. The clouds have parted, if only slightly, and you can see stars in the breaks in the gloom. You tug your jacket around your body and wrap Taehyung’s scarf around your neck, closing your eyes and leaning back against the bench. It’s been so long since you’ve gotten to just relax.

You’d started out almost a month ago when the blizzard ended. The town you had been staying in had started to get too small, the people had started to get too friendly. It had all started to chafe at your brain. So you’d left and started walking, catching a ride where you could, always following the train tracks.

You don’t hear the footsteps behind you until a body sliding onto the bench beside you makes you jump.

“Sorry,” Taehyung apologizes, a soft, boxy smile on his lips. “We uh… we finished up early, and you looked so pretty just sitting here. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

It’s not a problem, and you tell him as much, placing a hand on his forearm as he leans sideways against the back of the bench. The flush springs to his cheeks almost immediately, his eyes flashing to where you’re touching him.

“So you’re a singer,” you ask, changing the subject. Taehyung nods sheepishly. “Sing something for me?”

“Oh! I uh… wouldn’t know what to sing.” Taehyung dismisses you with a wave of his hand.

You hum. “Oh come on. You can’t just say you’re working on this song and then not sing.”

He sighs. “I don’t know...”

“At least hum something for me?”

For a moment, he stays silent, and you think he’s going to tell you no again. Which would be fine. You would drop it. You’re curious, and you’re a little stubborn, but you know when to drop something. But when he opens his mouth, he sings.

The tune is beautiful and haunting, despite it being incredibly simple. It’s only a few notes that for the most part move up and down along the scale. You’re mesmerized, and you close your eyes, feeling a warmth spreading through your body. He stops suddenly, and the park grows eerily quiet.

“Taehyung, you’re amazing.”

His smile is brilliant, and he looks beautiful in what little moonlight there is. You don’t know why your stomach is doing flips.

“Oh hey you two,” Yoongi greets, suddenly in front of you. “Ready to go home?”

As it turns out, Taehyung and Yoongi live together. You walk across the street with the two men, pausing in front of a door between the two ground-floor businesses–a bookstore and an empty storefront.

Yoongi slumps into the sofa, seemingly exhausted, while Taehyung disappears deeper into the apartment. He returns a few minutes later, changed into more comfortable clothes, carrying some blankets and a change of clothes for you, too.

“You can use these,” he says, handing the bundle to you. Then, he turns to Yoongi. “It would be nice to be able to offer a job, you know…”

“It’s late. We’ll talk more later. It’s past my bedtime, and you kids have to be up early tomorrow. It’s a big day.”

“Wh-” Yoongi waves goodnight, and he’s gone before Taehyung can even finish his sentence.

A few moments pass in silence before Taehyung yawns, stretching his arms above his head. He encourages you to get comfortable and bids you goodnight then, apologizing for not having a proper bed for you to sleep in. His is small, he says, or he’d offer to share. But honestly, the couch doesn’t seem so bad. It looks soft, and it’s better than sleeping on a bench outside. He looks like he wants to leave, but he’s frozen in place.

“Thanks,” you tell him softly. “For everything. You’ve been nothing but kind to me. I appreciate it.”

“Of course.”

“Do you want your scarf back?” You unwind it from around your neck, holding it out slightly for him to take.

“Keep it.” He offers you a shy smile before leaning in and pressing a kiss to your forehead. “Goodnight!” He hurries away, turning off the light as he goes, leaving you standing in the middle of their living room alone and in the dark.

You hadn’t missed the bright blush on his cheeks, or the way your pulse had quickened at his touch.

-----

It’s a beautiful day. You were worried because the past few days, it had been sweltering hot. The kind of oppressive summer heat that saps your energy and makes you want to do nothing but lay in front of a fan all day. But it’s cooled off some, and there’s a nice breeze going.

You sit on the bank of the river, just close enough to the water where you can feel it lapping at your bare feet, but not close enough to actually get wet. It’s serene sitting there, listening to the birds chirp in the trees and the ducks splashing around in the water. Very different from the seemingly constant chaos that is Yoongi’s bar. Even when it isn’t busy, it’s loud. And while you enjoy the atmosphere, you’re not used to constantly being around that many people. It takes a lot out of you.

Which is why you took the opportunity to come to the river just on the other side of the train tracks to take a break on your day off. Taehyung had followed you, because of course he had. But you don’t mind. You don’t feel the need to entertain him, to constantly be talking with him. You barely have to focus on him. It seems to be enough for him to just exist in each other’s company. It’s nice.

He has his head in your lap, laying perpendicular to you. One of his knees is bent and he has the other one raised and resting against his bent knee, creating a little table for himself as he scribbles in his notebook.

“What are you thinking?” you ask him, reaching down and brushing his hair out of his eyes. It’s grown longer. You wish he would let you give him a haircut.

“Music,” Tae responds simply, his attention flicking to you for the briefest of moments. You can see the playfulness in his eyes, even as he turns his focus back to his notebook. He’s determined to finish that song. “And how I want to marry you.”

He’s been playfully asking you since the second day. At this point, he says it so nonchalantly that you aren’t even phased anymore. You roll your eyes and poke him right in the middle of his forehead.

You brought a book--one of Yoongi’s, he doesn’t mind that you borrow it--and you read while he works, stealing glances at him subtly every once in a while. His concentration face is truly a sight to behold, all focused eyes and set jaw and furrowed brow. Sometimes, he catches you looking and flashes you a confused, boxy grin, which you return. You’re pretty sure he has no idea what he does to you.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks softly. When you look down at him, his full attention is on you, his notebook resting face-down against his chest. He fiddles with his pen.

You hum and lean back against the hill, letting the book fall to the ground gently beside you. “Sing me something?”

So he does. He sits up only to fall to the ground again to lay beside you, his shoulder brushing against yours. He sings of longing, of love lost, and of love yet to be. It’s beautiful and haunting and sad, but there’s a kind of hope in the song, too. When he’s done, he reaches out, hand grasping your own, and the two of you sit in silence for a long while.

Eventually, he shifts beside you and grabs his notebook from where it fell to the ground when he sat up. Smiling, you reach out and brush his hair off his forehead. He glances up at you, eyes sparkling with the reflection of the smile on his lips. His smile is unlike anything you’d ever seen. It’s innocent, and warm, and so unabashedly joyous that it makes you feel like nothing bad can ever happen if he was there.

You’ve never felt like that before.

You’ve been alone for so long--it’s been just you since your parents had passed in your early teens--you barely even recognize how much it sucks. You’ve gotten so used to being alone, you no longer even recognize that you’re lonely. For so long, you’ve forced yourself not to get close to anyone, have focused on taking care of yourself for so long, that you hadn’t even recognized your heart had grown cold. All you’d ever known was how to take care of yourself and get to the next day. And the next one. And the one after that.

You like the warmth he brings you. You like how he makes you feel: as if maybe you don’t have to go it alone. You like that he makes you feel happy.

And you have no idea what to do with that information.

It terrifies you a little. You’ve only known him for a few months, but it feels like you’ve known him for your entire life.

“What are you thinking about?” Tae’s voice cuts through your thoughts. He reaches over and squeezes your hand, fingers slotting between yours. “You look like you're thinking hard about something.”

You hum. There’s no way you can tell him your exact thoughts, you can barely articulate them to yourself. It’s a lot, and you don’t want to scare him away. You want this--whatever this is--to last. So you sigh, and instead of telling him what you want to, you simply say, “Just thinking.”

“Ah.” He nods sagely. “Big thoughts. I get that.” For a moment, he’s quiet, toying with your fingers in the silence. “Can I tell you something?” All of a sudden, he seems nervous. You can feel the anxious energy practically radiating off him. He can’t seem to look you in the eye. His other hand clutches at his notebook.

“Yeah, of course.”

“I just…” Taehyung swallows hard before taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “I know I can be a lot. I know I daydream a lot, and I get too into my songs, and I have trouble paying attention sometimes when you tell me things. I know I’m weird. So, I guess, just… thank you for wanting to spend time with me.”

You smile gently, feeling your heart soften even more at his vulnerability. “I like spending time with you, Tae,” you say earnestly. And you do. You’ve never enjoyed someone’s company as much as you enjoy his.

“I really do want to marry you,” he confesses softly, his eyes darting out to the river. “I know that’s dumb, but it’s true.”

Two months ago, you would have dismissed him--you had dismissed him--as just being a man looking for one thing. But now that you know Taehyung, well… things are different. “Let’s get through this winter, then we’ll talk.”

“Really?”

“You would have to promise me things, Tae. We both know how rough the world can be. I need to know you’re willing to weather whatever storms come this way.”

He nods eagerly. “I will. You know I will.”

You wrap your arms around him then and pull him to you, his arms immediately slotting around your waist. He’s warm, and despite the fact that it’s sweltering hot out, you’re certain you could stay wrapped up in his arms until you both turn to dust and scatter to the wind.

“Tell me you’ll hold me forever. Tell me that things won’t change when the storms get bad. Promise we’ll stay with each other and it will always be like this.”

You feel him nod against you, feel him hold you tighter. “I will. All of it. More. I promise. It’ll always be like this. You and me.”

When you pull away, his dark eyes are warm and inviting, the small smile on his lips inviting, drawing you in until you’re connected. His kiss is soft, tender, and for a moment, he’s frozen, as if his brain short-circuited and he’s trying to reboot. But then he’s kissing you back, slow and measured. You want to memorize what he feels like in this moment, his hair tickling your face in the light breeze, his hands pressed into your lower back.

His nose brushes against yours as you part. There’s a dusting of pink across his cheeks, and he has the goofiest, most awestruck smile. It makes your stomach do a flip seeing him like that. And in that moment, you know that this adorable man will be the death of you.

-----

You cringe as the door to the apartment slams shut behind you. The wind had kicked up over the past half-hour, and while the door needed some extra force to shut it, you had overestimated just how much extra. Thus, the slam. Normally, Yoongi would have yelled at you, but he’s working double duty at the station because of the storm, making sure that travelers are getting where they want to go in a safe and relatively timely manner.

If Taehyung heard the door slam, he doesn’t seem to care. Though, you doubt that he had heard it at all. Tae had entered a self-imposed sabbatical almost two weeks ago, attempting to finish his song. He seems to have placed an arbitrary deadline on it, and he’s determined to meet that goal.

“How’s it going?” you ask softly, hanging up your coat and scarf on the hook by the door. They were gifts from Yoongi at the start of the winter. Something to help you to survive if you’re going to keep working for him at the bar.

Taehyung doesn’t even look up from his notebook at the sound of your voice. He sits at the small piano in the corner of the living room, brows furrowed, staring at the pages of scribbles he had been working on for the past few days. He’d been in the same place when you’d left for the bar.

You nod, walking into the kitchen and pulling a glass down from the cabinet over the sink. “It’s starting to get bad out there,” you say absently, watching out the window as you fill the glass with water. And it is. You can see the wind blowing snow flurries perpendicular to the ground. Snowing sideways, your mom had called it.

You glance at the cupboards as you walk back into the living room, briefly opening up the refrigerator to check out the situation. “We need food,” you tell Taehyung as you sit the glass of water down beside his piano. “And we’re starting to run low on firewood.” Luckily, Yoongi had stocked the apartment with wood for the fireplace before the storm had gotten too bad, but those supplies are starting to dwindle now that he hardly has time to come home.

“It’s right there,” he mumbles, and though you suspect he’s talking more to himself than to you, you can’t help but respond.

“What?”

“The melody. It’s right there. It’s like it’s just been… forgotten.” He scribbles something more down into his notebook. “That’s why the seasons are all messed up. But it’s right there, just out of reach. It won’t get better until we remember.”

“Then you’d better finish it quick.” You push his hair back and lean in, placing a delicate kiss to his forehead. He hums briefly and squeezes your hand. “I’m going to run out and get some firewood and maybe swing by the pantry to see if I can get some supplies to hold us over until Yoongi comes back.”

But he’s gone again, his attention back to his notebook and the 88 keys in front of him. You sigh and nod, returning to the hook by the door to grab your coat and scarf. You want to have faith in him. You want to believe he’s right, and that the song he’s working on can fix things.

“Okay, you finish it,” you tell him, knowing full well he isn’t paying attention. “I’ll be back soon.”

And so you step back out into the biting wind and freezing cold. You pull your coat tighter, flipping your collar up to attempt to shield your neck from the snow. The public pantry is further away, so you turn in that direction, going mostly on instinct because it’s nearly impossible to see with all the snow that’s falling.

You walk for about 20 minutes before stopping. You should have reached the pantry already. But there’s a large open lot beside it. Yoongi said it was an old field for playing sports--an old football field, he had said, and a baseball field beside it. You know the field is to the left of the pantry, so you turn to the right and begin to walk again, the snow getting tougher to trudge through, and the visibility continues to worsen as you go.

You’re confused. There’s no way you had gotten this far off-track. The town isn’t that difficult to navigate, and you should have come across some building by now, even if it isn’t the communal pantry. Instead, you’re still in the middle of a snow-covered field, the blizzard raging on around you. You turn around in an attempt to follow your steps back in the direction you came.

Unfortunately, your footprints are gone, already covered by the snow.

“You’re resourceful,” a voice behind you says, the howling of the wind calming as if commanded.

You spin around, coming face to face with a young man. He looks to be Taehyung’s age, maybe slightly older, his dark hair neatly styled and combed back off his forehead. He wears a white collared shirt under a smartly tailored suit jacket and a woollen double-breasted coat, a pair of lined leather gloves on his hands.

“Are you lost, little songbird?” His voice is deep and warm, and you find yourself drawn to him, taking a few steps forward. At your silence, he smirks, and you can see the stars dancing in his eyes as dimples press into his cheeks. “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

“I was trying to get to the pantry,” you manage, taking another step forward. And then another. Until you’re standing directly in front of him.

“You’re going to freeze to death out here.” He pouts, reaching out to rub your arms, creating some friction and heat. His touch isn’t even direct, but you can feel the warmth in him, like he’s made of fire. “You’re going to the pantry? Why?”

“We’re running low on food.”

He hums and nods sagely. “That’s no good. Pretty little songbirds like you don’t deserve to suffer.”

You feel your cheeks heat at his words and pray that if he notices you’re flushed, he assumes it’s from the cold. You have no idea why he’s affecting you like this. Normally, you would walk away by now. But something about this man’s aura draws you in.

“I’ve seen you around,” he says, adjusting the hat on your head. It’s Taehyung’s beanie. You borrowed it to keep your ears warm. “You have a good head on your shoulders. Smart. Resourceful. You’d do well as a manager. Have you ever thought of working in a factory or a warehouse?”

“No, I… I’ve never really been one to put down roots.” You have no idea why you’re telling him that.

“Shame. I think you’d be good at it. And it’s a good job, you know? Steady income. Guaranteed housing. Meal vouchers provided by the company.”

“Which company?”

“Mine.” He flashes you a wide smile, the corners of his eyes wrinkling. The sight of it warms you from the inside. “Think about it, okay? When you have nothing to lose, you’ll be welcome.” He digs into his pockets and pulls out a slip of paper. “Take the train to the end of the line. I’ll be waiting.”

With that, the snow and wind pick up so harshly you have to shield your face. When it calms down seconds later, you’re standing in front of the public pantry, and the man is gone.

-----

Two days pass, and you can’t get the beautiful man with the captivating aura out of your head. He hadn’t said much, but he was charismatic, and you couldn’t help but hang on his words. He had said you were smart and resourceful. No one had ever complimented you like that before. It threw you off, but you can’t help but admit that it had made your heart soar a little.

It was nice to feel wanted.

Taehyung is still working on his song when you walk into the living room in the morning. It seems like he never moved. He’s always sitting at the piano, staring at his notebook. Sometimes, he’ll move to the couch, but he never leaves the living room, never looks up from his notebook.

You know his song is important, know he has to finish it to send it off, and truly, you know that when he does, it could save you all, even Yoongi. But at the same time, you have concerns. Things were so different in the summertime. It was supposed to be the two of you: birds of a feather. You were supposed to weather the storms together.

And yet…

You sigh, looking into the cupboards to try to find something small. You’re starving. The pantry wasn’t able to help nearly as much as you hoped, and it’s hard trying to feed both you and Taehyung on the meagre leftovers in Yoongi’s cabinets. You hoped he would’ve been home by now to help--he always seemed to be able to help find food--but the storm hadn’t let up and he’s still out there making sure mail gets delivered and travelers arrive at their destinations safely.

“We’re going to need food again soon.” You say it loud enough that you know he can hear you, but whether it registers or not, you have no idea.

You watch him work, watch as he taps one of the piano keys repeatedly as he thinks, the sharp ‘tink tink tink’ of the note permeating the otherwise silent living room. After a moment, it becomes clear that he didn’t, in fact, heard you, and you feel the annoyance and hurt flare inside you.

You’re angry at yourself most of all. You could have left. You could have gone somewhere else, found a job--a good paying job where the owner wouldn’t forget to pay you because he’s out playing postmaster and barkeep and stationmaster all at the same time--found shelter and food and safety for the winter. But instead, you had followed your heart for once.

And look where that got you.

Your mind drifts once again to the mysterious stranger and his promises. You have no idea if he would keep them, but anything is better than starving to death. You want to stay--it almost physically hurts you to think of leaving--but you can’t ignore the ache in your stomach or the chill in your bones.

“Tae?” you try softly, walking into the living room and stopping in front of the piano. “Taehyung?” Your tone is sharp in an attempt to get his attention. But he doesn’t look up. He simply hums in a brief acknowledgement. “I’m going out.” The words leave your mouth before you even really know what you’re saying. “I don’t know when I’ll be back. Or if.”

He plays another note on the piano.

You turn away, not wanting him to see your heart breaking. As you grab your coat off the hook on the wall, the paper the mysterious stranger had given you flutters to the ground from your pocket. You pick it up and examine it one last time.

It’s gold, but it doesn’t glitter. The writing on it is neat, if a little smudged, as though placed there by an old-fashioned stamper and inkpad.

No charge.

One-way.

VIP.

Your fingers tremble as you stuff the ticket back into your pocket. With one last glance at Taehyung scribbling in his notebook, hair falling into his eyes despite his headband, eyes and jaw set in concentration, you’re gone.

-----

The factory floor is quiet. The only sounds come from the machines. You sit at your workstation, your eyes strained from watching the repetitiveness of the assembly line. You tried to talk to some of your coworkers the other day. Or was it yesterday? Last week? You can’t remember.

It doesn’t matter. None of them answered you, anyway.

Outside, the shift whistle blows, and you stretch your arms above your head, hearing your joints pop and crack from sitting still for the past however many hours. Your shifts always seem to fly, you can hardly remember what you do during them.

However, despite your fast shifts, you aren’t really sure what it is you make. The factory is huge, encompassing at least five huge buildings the lengths of city blocks. The parts you’re responsible for are small, unidentifiable, made out of metal and a bit of plastic. You don’t even know what they are, let alone what they’re used for. But thousands of them pass by you daily as you make sure they sit upright on the conveyor.

You find yourself wandering through the park just outside of your apartment complex. You aren’t quite sure why, but the park always seemed to draw you in. You love the view from the bench in front of the fountain. The way you can see the buildings peeking out over the tops of the trees makes you feel sentimental in the weirdest way, though you can’t quite put your finger on it.

Along the path through the park blooms flowers in the most brilliant shade of red you’ve ever seen. Sometimes, if you look at them too long, you’re overwhelmed by a sense of melancholy, but you have no idea why. You’ve never seen flowers like that in your life.

There are times where, if you close your eyes, you can almost see yourself somewhere warm and bright. Someone is always at your side. You can never quite make out their face, only how your heart speeds up when they look at you. You’d been in the city for months–you can’t remember how many exactly–and these daydreams don’t look like they happen in the city. Maybe they’re premonitions, or some sort of deja vu.

You hope so. Daydream you always seems so happy.

You’re sitting on your bench in the park after your shift one day when you hear someone speak far off behind you. It makes you jump slightly. You haven’t heard someone speak in… the factory foreman had said something recently, but you hadn’t really paid attention to what he said. So when the voice behind you speaks again and comes closer, you turn to investigate.

The man that approaches you is handsome, if not a little eccentric. His shirt is half-tucked into his pants, and the sweater he’s wearing is too big and very thin. His dark hair bounces as he lightly jogs in your direction. As he gets closer, his smile widens, his dark eyes sparkling with joy.

He speaks again, baritone voice soft and full of emotion. It’s a name he’s calling. Is that… your name? How does he know your name?

“I can’t believe I found you!” he says excitedly, his hands capturing your own as soon as he’s close enough. “Yoongi said it could take forever, but I’ve only been down here a few days. I… I can’t believe it’s you!”

He pulls you to him then, arms wrapping around your waist tightly. You’re confused, but you find yourself hugging him back. He feels skinny--too skinny--and his face is a little sunken-in and dirty, like he hasn’t eaten in weeks. There’s something about him that’s familiar, but…

“I’m sorry,” you say softly when he pulls away. His eyes dart around your face as he holds you at arm’s length. It’s almost like he’s inspecting you. “I… Do I know you?”

For a moment, his eyes light up and he laughs, a gentle guffaw that pulls at your heartstrings in a way that sets your mind–and pulse–racing. But then, it seems, he realizes you aren’t joking. You watch, unable to do anything as his heart breaks right in front of your eyes.

The way he whispers your name, halfway between a prayer and a plea, convinces you. Even if you don’t know him, he certainly knows you. No one sounds that broken over a complete stranger.

“Who…” you try tentatively. There’s no way this won’t be awkward. But you want to know more about him. You’re oddly drawn to him, like you’d known him in some other life. “Who are you?”

“Taehyung.” His voice is barely audible. His fingers twitch, and you get the sense that he wants to pull you in for a hug again and it’s taking a tremendous effort to not.

Why does his name sound so familiar? You’re certain you’ve never seen him before.

“I can’t leave without you.” He sounds determined, confident, like he’d walked halfway through hell to find you. And, well… perhaps he sort of had.

But that’s crazy. You don’t know him.

“Come home with me,” the man–Taehyung–pleads, reaching for your hand. You let him take it.

“I can’t.” For some reason, it makes you sad. You know it in your gut. Even if you do know him, there’s no way you can leave the city.

“You can, though. I know the way. We just have to go back the way I came down. Yoongi told me about it. I don’t know how he knew, but-”

“You’re not from around here, are you, boy?” You have no idea when the man in front of you appeared. The air smells of ash and sulfur, and all of a sudden, it’s hot.

Immediately, you freeze, and you find yourself squeezing Taehyung’s hand. You haven’t seen the man since you’d signed the contract, but down here, he had a reputation for being no-nonsense. When he’s in a good mood, Namjoon looks harmless. But when he’s angry, he’s downright terrifying. And judging by his set jaw and hard eyes, he’s pretty angry. Beside you, Taehyung stiffens, standing up straighter.

“I don’t know who the hell you are, but the little songbird is a law-abiding citizen. You should go back to where you belong.”

“Taehyung, you should go,” you whisper, dropping his hand and taking a step away.

He turns to you, dark eyes sad when they meet yours. “I’m not leaving without you.”

Namjoon laughs, loud and boisterous and dark. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?” he asks, taking a step forward. “Don’t you think she would have left already if she could? She signed on the dotted line. She’s here forever now.”

“What?” Taehyung’s attention darts back and forth between you and Namjoon. “That’s not true. Is it?”

You sigh, avoiding his eyes. “I did what I had to.”

Namjoon’s jaw clenches, and he motions for you to head back into the factory. “Heed my advice, boy. It would be in your best interest to leave. I won’t ask twice.”

A swirl of shadow. The smell of sulfur and ash. And Namjoon is gone.

It takes a few moments, but eventually, the tension leaves your body. Beside you, Taehyung visibly relaxes before he lowers himself to the ground in a defeated huff. For a second, you watch him, unsure of what to do. You still don’t remember him, but he’d come a long way, and for that, you feel bad.

“I’m sorry,” you apologize, voice soft.

“No, it’s… it’s not your fault.” For the briefest moments, he stares down at his hands, but then he looks at you, dark eyes big and sad. “What happened?”

You shrug, kick at a rock on the ground and watch it skitter across the pavement before you crouch next to him. “I don’t remember,” you admit sadly. “But there’s this contract. I signed it. I… He made such pretty promises.”

You don’t remember what they were, exactly, but you remember the way Namjoon’s eyes glistened as he spoke, the way his dimple pressed into his cheek as he promised you whatever it took to get you here.

Taehyung hums, his head hanging low. “This is my fault.”

Your heart breaks at the sadness in his voice, at how disappointed in himself he sounds. Part of you wants to comfort him, to tell him that no, it’s not his fault. He did his best. This is just a shitty situation and a powerful man chose you to manipulate and deceive. But you don’t. Because you don’t know how true any of that is.

Something inside of you says that it’s not as true as you’d like.

He grows quiet. All you hear is the factories around you. The next shift has started. You should be in there with them. You wonder if anyone has even noticed that you’re missing. Absently, Taehyung picks at the grass, and something stirs in the back of your mind. A memory, though it feels almost like it belongs to someone else. Taehyung and you laying in the grass on the bank of a river, the sound of a train in the distance.

“Can I show you something?” he asks, and silently, you nod.

He clears his throat and begins to quietly sing. His voice is beautiful, a delicate baritone that nimbly, delicately touches on each note. He’s in full control, eyes closed, hands folded in his lap, a master at work showing you the melody that lives in his mind.

You can’t deny that the song is beautiful, a haunting acapella that moves you the way a psalm might move a priest. You feel it in your heart more than you hear it, his voice so soft that you really aren’t even sure that you’re hearing it properly at all. It wraps you up, gentle cocoon around your broken heart, and you feel it trying to heal what it finds there. You find something swelling within you. Something akin to pride.

You have no idea why you react this way. But you want to. You want to remember.

“That’s beautiful,” you tell Taehyung when he’s finished. And for a second, he looks at you, a hardness in his eyes that you can only describe as determination.

He leans in, lips gently brushing your forehead, before he stands. “Come with me,” he says cryptically, offering you his hand.

You take it without question.

-----

You’re uneasy. The path is dark--you can barely see Taehyung walking in front of you. He’s just far enough that you can’t reach out and touch him, but close enough that you can easily follow behind. But the soft dirt below your feet muffles your steps as you go, so it’s too quiet. Thus, your unease.

The path is barely wide enough for a person to pass through, and it slopes upward fairly steeply. You have no idea how long you’ve been walking, only that the longer you walk, the lighter you feel. You hadn’t noticed it in the Underworld, but the fog that seems to surround your thoughts and memories parts more and more the closer to the surface you get. By now, you remember almost everything--Yoongi, the bar, your past, everything.

But most of all, you remember Taehyung. And you remember fully why you left.

You want to call him, to tell him that you forgive him, to tell him that you’re so proud of him for finally finishing his song. But you don’t dare. You refuse to do anything to jeopardize your future. Namjoon has given you one chance. You doubt he’d give you a second.

The stones on either side of the path are damp and oddly shaped, and they’re difficult to use as hand-holds when the path gets too steep. But you hang on anyway because the other option is to stumble and fall flat on your face.

In front of you, Taehyung trudges on. You can tell he isn’t happy about the situation just from the visible tension in his back, but there isn’t anything he can do about it. He walks quickly, but not too quick so as not to lose you. His hands are stuffed in the pockets of his jacket, his broad shoulders set against the chill of the underground path.

“Go. Before I change my mind,” Namjoon says, turning his back on you.

You have no idea what Taehyung said to change the man’s mind. Maybe it was his persistence. Maybe you caught Namjoon at a good time. Maybe he just liked Tae’s song. A combination of all of the above and more. None of it at all. But you can’t believe what you’re hearing.

“How?” Taehyung asks, his grip on your hand tightening.

Namjoon sighs. “You’ll walk. You know the way well enough to lead, don’t you?” He sounds exhausted. “You lead. She’ll follow. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your eyes on the road ahead. If you don’t, well… maybe it really was her time to go.”

“It’s a trick.” Taehyung sounds angry.

“It’s a trial. One you’ll do well to pass if you want to make it out of here alive.” Namjoon rubs his eyes. “You test my patience. Leave. Or regret it.”

You stumble as the path slopes upwards more steeply, your hand reaching out for the rock. You must have made some sort of noise, because Taehyung pauses. You can see him fighting himself, refusing to turn around.

“Are you okay?” he calls back. When you don’t answer, he grunts but continues walking. “I hope you’re still back there,” he mumbles.

That’s the hardest part about this trek. You can hear him talking to himself. Sometimes, he hums his song, and you can hear the soft echoes off the stones in the passage. But mostly, the long stretches of silence are interrupted by Taehyung’s whispers to himself.

“Only a little further.”

“I hope you’re still back there.”

“Gods, I’m so stupid.”

“Please still be back there.”

Suddenly up ahead, you can see a speck of something bright. It’s only a pin-prick in size, but it grows steadily the more you climb. You find yourself pushing yourself to walk faster, attempting to match Taehyung’s speed as he practically runs up the slope.

And then he stops, and you stop, almost walking straight into his back. The mouth of the cave is just a large hole in the ground, like some gaping maw prepared to swallow someone whole. You recognize the area vaguely as being along the railroad tracks just past the station.

You breathe deeply. The air is still a little frigid, but it has that smell to it, like it could turn warm at any moment. You try to remember what month it was. March? Maybe April? You had gotten on the train in early September. Has it really been six months?

Before you know it, Taehyung’s arms are around you, catching you mid-step and forcing you to take a step backward. You hold him, allowing yourself to get lost in him for a moment. He’s warm, and he smells like dirt and wood and lavender.

“I missed you,” he says, pulling you impossibly closer.

Pulling away slightly, your hands find his face, cupping his jaw tenderly. “I’m sorry,” you say earnestly.

Tae hums, offering you a wide, boxy smile. “You’re safe now.” His hands grip your shirt at your waist. “Plus, I’m the one that should be apologizing. I let you down. I got too focused on my song, I forgot why I was in a hurry to finish it in the first place.”

A tug on your ankle draws your attention, and you try to glance down subtly to see what’s happening. But Taehyung’s grip on you is tight, and he notices you shifting. His eyes fall to your feet, one of which is firmly planted on the frozen ground of the mortal world. Your other foot is still in the soft dirt of the path from the Underworld.

Shadows are already starting to creep up your ankle.

“No,” Taehyung says firmly, trying to tug you forward. “No we made it. That’s not fair.”

You shake your head, your foot not budging. “Apparently not.” The shadows slowly grow, engulfing more of your leg.

Taehyung pulls you to him, then, his arms wrapping tightly around your waist. “I’ll come find you again. I’ll sing my song for Namjoon. He’ll have to let you go.”

You sigh, your hands balling in the fabric of his jacket. “I love you,” you whisper. And you do. You realized it while climbing out of the Underworld. He’s the one who had been in your daydreams down below, he had been the happiness you had been missing.

He kisses you, then, tenderly but desperately. You let yourself melt into it, one hand finding purchase in his hair. You want to remember him, to commit this moment to your memory so that even when you do inevitably forget him, you’ll remember how he made you feel. The happiness, the joy, the love. Even the frustration. Because of course, that was part of it. You love him so much that you did get frustrated with him.

Your neck is cold, and you know it’s the shadows, swirling and trying to pull you back down. Taehyung’s eyes are wide when he pulls away, and they glisten in the midday sun. He blinks quickly, and you can tell he’s trying not to cry.

“Wait for me?” he asks softly, brushing your hair back and kissing you lightly on the forehead.

“I always will.”

Taehyung offers you a sad smile just before the shadows overtake you. In a second, he’s standing alone, the smell of ash and sulfur in the air.

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firsttimewriter92 · 10 months

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Hello! I'd love to request a fic with the reader being Sirius's wife after they're at Hogwarts but before Lily and James' deaths, shortly after they get the news about the Longbottoms being tortured. The reader wants to have sex but Sirius initially hesitates because his wife clearly is trying to distract them from the news (doesn't have to be graphic smut!) Thanks!

Hi there, anon :) Thank you for the ask. I´ve been in a writing slump lately because I get into my own way, making everything to complicated, too detailed. But this seemed like something I could do and it was lots of fun! :D It brought me back to my lovely Sirius. Maybe now I can finally finish my series "Everything Black".

It doesn´t get too steamy but there are some dirty passages, I hope you like it. Otherwise it´s pure fluff and angst. Thanks again and I kope you all enjoy <3

Title:

It hurts to look at you

words: 2.303

The moment the door closed behind Dumbledor´s swaying robes and a deafening silence covered the small kitchen in Godrics Hollow, two women and four men dissolved into either horrified sobs or heavy breathing, trying to control their own shock to the news.

Lilies flaming red hair covered one side of her face that was pressed into James´ neck. Little whispers of “No, no. Why them?” left her lips. James eyes were dull and unseeing as he stared at the bottle of elderflower wine on the table. One arm wrapped around his wife, his other hand covering the back of her head.

On the other side of the room, Peter sat on the table, covering his quivering lips with one hand. He was paler than usual and his knee had not stopped bobbing since Dumbledore brought the news of Franks´ and Alice´s horrific fate. He looked like the man standing behind him felt. Remus knew how to hide his emotions but this time he couldn’t quite manage. With wet eyes he held the look of one of his best friends across from him.

Holding you in his lap Sirius looked at Remus over your shoulder while you sobbed. His grey eyes reflected less sorrow than shock and all-consuming hatred. Of course he mourned the fate of his friends, the single tear that ran down his cheek proof enough. But it wasn´t enough to drown out the red hot edges that covered his vision. It wasn’t enough to stop whishing for another name, other relatives. He felt guilty. Guilty for sharing the blood with the person responsible for yet another tragedy. Yet another destroyed family, yet another two lives lost and so many more scarred.

He wrapped his arms closer around your waist and kissed your neck lovingly, trying to calm you down. You where whimpering right next to his ear, fear shaking your entire body while you clung to him like a life line. Again hate flared inside of him. How dare they!? How dare they inflict so much pain and strike terror into the one living being that made it all worth it for him?! He fought for many a reason these days. Most of them were present right now but you were his damn wife. His reason to breath and keep moving. The two of you had gotten married right after Lilly and James although you hadn’t been together for as long as they had.

Time and circumstance however made people fall in love quicker, more madly and desperately. That´s how it was for Sirius and you. You´d only gotten to know him in you last year at Hogwarts. For so long you had tried to avoid the boisterous teenager until he began noticing you. First, every time your house played Gryffindor and you hit a blutcher in his direction. He´d avoid them mostly, grinning at you wolfishly. Then he started noticing you in the hallway which you found incredibly annoying. He just couldn’t walk past you without some kind of comment. “Don´t swing at me, (y/l/n) we´re not on the pitch” “Hey,___ do you like sweets? There are some in our common room”.

One day he walked up to you, arms stretched out to the side as he proclaimed right smack in the middle of the courtyard “(Y/l/n), you are like the stars in the night sky, guiding me towards a brighter future!” You knew of course that he was fucking with you so you just turned to him and with an obvious fake smile, sweet as honey you said, “Sirius, my love. You are like the sun to me.” He looked shocked for a second, his grey eyes widening. “Hurts to look at ya.”

Sirius couldn’t remember the last time he´d laughed so hard. It was the moment he knew you were something special to him. He didn’t quite know that he´d fall arse over broomstick for you yet though. That happened later, in the order, under darker circumstances. Still, the gentle fondness he felt for you changed into a burning passion whenever he saw the bravery you showed despite your anxious demeanour. More than once he´d consoled your shaking form with a glass of fire whiskey the moment you got the message that everyone was safe at the end of the day. Seeing you battle through that and still be hilariously dry-humoured, incredibly kind and quite frankly a rock to him, his protective instincts kicked him the last bit of the way until he almost couldn’t stand not being in your presence.

And then one evening, he´d just come back from a mission that took way longer than it should have. He´d entered the Potters living room, heart beating out of his chest, worried about you. Within a second your body had slammed into his and without thinking twice about it he´d lifted your head with both palms and kissed you feverishly. And that was it. Eight months later you´d gotten married.

____________________________________

You lifted your head off of his shoulder and worriedly he looked up at you, both his hands stroking back your hair. Your eyes were bloodshot and puffy as you whispered with a raw voice. “Why?” Sirius had no answer and he hated himself for it. He shook his head slowly and stroked your cheeks. “I don’t know, my darling. I don’t know.” “They…They´re gone. Frank….Alice. Both…Oh Merlin, why like this!!??” Your forehead landed on his as fresh tears fell from your eyes and onto his skin. Sirius breathed heavily, stroking your sides slowly and soothingly.

“What…what happens to Neville now?” you heard Lilly ask. “He´s only a day older than Harry!” Again she started crying while James answered her. “I´m sure Frank´s mother has him now. He´s in good hands, Lils. Please don´t worry.”

“There´s going to be a hunt” Remus´ voice floated through the room. Everyone looked at him while trying to gather themselves again. “You´re right” Lilly said and wiped at her wet cheeks. The stoic look coming back into her eyes. “You´re right. There´s nothing…” she swallowed. “There´s nothing we can do for Frank or Alice anymore. What we can do, is go after… them.”

You admired Lilly for her rationality. She was right of course. You needed to snap out of it. There was work to be done. “But not tonight” Lilly said. “We need tonight for…” she lost her words and looked at her husband. Everyone got the hint and stood. Hugging your friends closer that usual you left the Potter´s house and stood outside for another moment. Sirius turned to Remus.

“You wanna crash on our couch again, mate? You´re welcome to” Sirius looked sternly at Remus, though he already knew what the answer would be. Remus gave a tight lipped smile, took a deep breath and shook his head. “Sorry, Pads. Not tonight. I´ll go see….my parents. I think.” Sirius nodded shortly and hugged his friend again. He whispered something you couldn’t make out to him and let go. Remus´ smile seemed more genuine this time around as he waved at you and disapparated.

“He´s not going to see his parents, is he?” you asked quietly and took Sirius´ hand. He was still staring at the spot were Remus disappeared. He sighed and shook his head. “He writes them occasionally but…it´s been ages since he saw them.” He squeezed your hand tightly. “He´s already on the hunt.”

Sirius looked down at you with a solemn look. “Let´s go home, yeah?” You nodded and braced yourself for disapparating.

Your feet hit the ground in front of your small flat. Without many words, Sirius and you got changed and ready for bed. You felt emotionally drained and yet, something inside you was boiling over. So after not being able to fall asleep, even with Sirius´ strong arms wrapped around you from behind you slightly stirred. “Sirius?” you whispered into the dark. “Hmm? What is it, my love?” he immediately answered. A small smile tucked at your lips. Huddling closer to him you kissed his forearm that was resting close to your face. “I love you more than words can say” you simply stated. You felt his chest stop moving for a second before you felt his lips on your shoulder. They moved slowly and gently over it and over your neck to your ear. Goosebumps erupted all over your body, heat creeping from your center up to your belly.

“You are my everything” Sirius´ deep voice penetrated your ear, vibrating through your every vein. “Love is not a strong enough word to describe what I feel for you, what you are to me, my darling.” Again you felt your eyes water. “I know, dove. You´re scared. I know” he whispered with a slight choked up voice. “We´re doing the right thing and it´s scary. Whatever happens, my love, please know that I´ll always be with you.”

“Please don’t talk like that” you whimpered and the tears fell silently. “It needs to be said,___. I´m sorry but please listen to me.” He kissed the shell of your ear. “Tomorrow is not promised. But as long as I have your love, I´ll fight until my last breath to return to you. Every day.”

You turned in his arms as quickly as you could and smashed your lips to his desperately. His arms pulled you in immediately. The kiss was not gentle or slow. Pure desperation guiding you in the way you grabbed at his ink black, luscious hair or how your tongue glided over his quicker than usual.

Sirius didn’t mind at all. He knew that you needed this right now and he would be damned not to give you anything you so desperately needed. He did worry a little bit though. His fingers dug into your side to try and slow you down just a little bit. That proved to be rather difficult though as you just decided to slightly bite his bottom lip. He always went feral whenever you did that and right now his head was swimming with desire. He felt your leg moving right between his and with a grunt he felt your knee slightly bump his erection.

“Want you, Sirius” you panted against his lips. “Want you so much.” Your lips descended onto his throat as you climbed on top of him. And so, with a long and strained groan Sirius grabbed your hips in a vice like grip. “Hold on. Stop, darling” he whispered desperately. You didn’t react and started to grind onto him. “Shit! Dove, please. It´s not…stop. Stop, stop, stop.” He didn’t sound angry but worried as his voice got louder until you finally registered what he´d asked of you.

Pure fire was rushing through your veins and through a thick cloud of pent up lust you tried to focus on his face. His beautiful features shone through the haze as you zeroed in on his pale grey eyes. Your chest heaving you looked at him bewildered.

“What is it?” you asked cautiously. “Little dove, you know I´d never say no to being inside you and absolutely rock your shit but…We both know…we´re not in the right headspace right now. We just lost two dear friends and we´re scared.” Your stomach dropped dangerously low and a little bit of shame overcame you quickly. Still laying on his chest you lay your head right above his heart while he stroked your back soothingly. “Just let me hold you for tonight, my love. Let me tell you how precious you are, how much you mean to me. Let my words lull you to sleep, where I want you to be at peace. Knowing that I´ll have your back always. That I´ll be here. And in the morning when you wake up, I´ll make sure my name is the only thing you´ll be able to mutter.” Nodding, sniffling but grinning into his Tshirt you got comfortable at his side again, your ear never leaving the steady rhythm of his heart.

As promised, he whispered sweet, sweet nothings into your ear until your body grew heavy.

You didn’t even make it until the first rays of sunshine before Sirius appeared above you with pure fire in his eyes. No words needed to be spoken, you knew that look way too intensely. And so he made good on his promise as he sank into your warm and wet heat and made you whimper and sigh his name as he nibbled on your neck. His hips moving sensually and powerfully. The feeling of slick skin on skin, his scent enveloping you and words of pure love being exchanged, the both of you moved in tandem, bringing you closer and closer to the sweet relief you needed.

“Cum for me, darling. Please, my perfect girl. Hggnn, I´m right there...with you” he whispered as his eyes bore into yours. As his hips sped up and his lips closed carefully around your nipple, you gripped him hard as the blinding, hot white feeling made you arch your back and cling to him for dear life. His name yelled into the darkness, he bit down on your neck hard and muffled his own grunts and sighs. Before long, Sirius was laying on top of you, breathing as heavily as you, kissing the spot he bit, licking it a little and just marvelling in the feeling of having you in this way.

“I´ll always love you, Sirius. With every fibre of my being, I am yours” you whispered. You heard his satisfied sigh as his canines scraped against the underside of your jaw. He lifted his head to look you in the eyes. Stroking your face gently he said “Wherever I am, whatever happens to me. Know that you are my saving grace. I am yours before anything.” He kissed you slowly. “I´ll be with you always.”

________________________________________________________

I hope you all enjoyed this little fic, thank you for reading <3 As always I appreciate every like, reblog or comment. In order to get better in my writing though, I absolutely love getting comments or reblogs that let me know what you liked or disliked ;) Only this way I can make my writing better or more inclusive.

Thank you very much again and have a lovely day :)

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