#they feel haunting in the same way a silent foggy morning does...

[wildflowercryptid]

this liminal playlist that i'm listening to rn is making me get all introspective about liminal spaces and how captivating i find them...

[samplingmoonsters]

What if Techno is like a walking heater cause he's from the Nether and Dream who's naturally cold??

Snow crunches under their feet, warm clouds of fog escaping frozen lips, evaporating quickly in the icy air like ghosts. Endless whiteness surrounds the pair, an empty canvas yearning for a splash of color. But there are no colors for miles, nothing but an abyss of white, except for the red cloak fluttering in the wind like the wings of a newborn bird. Not for the first time, olive green eyes find themself staring at the only interesting color since they started their never-ending journey through the north.

He stares at the broad back of the warrior, well aware of the muscles hidden behind the thick fabric. A hog-like snort escapes his companion as the tall warrior lets out a hot gust of wind. Dream’s tired, freezing body jerks at the loud noise. They haven’t spoken to each other for hours, only Dream’s exhausted breath and the snow crunching under their feet filling the silence around them.

Olive-green eyes widen and he stumbles back, almost falling into the snow, as Techno rams the end of his ax into the snow next to him. They stop in their tracks, finally giving the ex-prisoner’s body a precious second to rest after hours and hours of non-stop walking. Dream’s chest rises and falls in a mix of exhaustion and fear as he stares at Techno’s back. Even after spending weeks in a tiny cell together, building a relationship that doesn’t fit into any category but runs far deeper than simple friendship, Dream’s still gets nervous when he’s confronted with the view of a sharp object. A spike of anxiety settles into his chest, his fear rising the longer he has to look at the damn netherite ax sticking out of the snow.

He trusts Techno more than anyone else on the SMP but it is still hard to let go of old fears even after months of recovering in the Piglin's small cottage. Swallowing, Dream forces his body to relax and instead moves his eyes towards Techno’s face. Anything to distract himself from the weapon still glinting in the corner of his vision like a poisonous snake ready to strike.

At one point, Technoblade has turned towards him, ember eyes staring at the lanky blond, “We should search for a place to rest for tonight.” Techno murmurs before picking his ax back up, swinging it over his shoulder before walking straight towards the line of woods surrounding the snow-covered trail.

“Ah- wait for me!” Dream calls after the other man, small feet stamping through the snow like a newborn fawn who is just learning how to walk from their mother.

Away from the trail, the snow is even higher, reaching Dream’s knees and causing the blond to get stuck on multiple occasions. He has a hard time keeping up with the pink-haired man who doesn’t seem to have any problems navigating through the snowy landscape, his thick leather boots keeping him from sinking into the snow unlike Dream’s pathetic excuse of footwear which can’t even keep his feet decently warm. He can already feel his toes starting to freeze off. If this goes on he won’t have any feet to complain about coming tomorrow morning.

If it weren't for Techno's strong hands pulling him out every now and then Dream would be forever stuck in the middle of the woods.

"Be careful where you are stepping." Techno grunts after pulling Dream out of the snow for what must be the tenth time.

Dream grumbles a curse under his breath, patting the snow from the pants before throwing a dark glare at his companion, "I do! It's not my fault the snow is, like-- ten feet high!" He stomps his feet into the snow, his childish tantrum only resulting in him soaking his pants even more.

Dream could practically hear the other roll his eyes, "Don't be dramatic...it's not that deep." As if to prove his point Techno stomps one foot into the snow. The appendage barely sinks into the snow. But all too soon Techno’s attention is stolen away once more by the distant howls of wolves. The warrior grips his ax tightly, red eyes jumping around the trees, searching for any potential danger while he waits for Dream to stop sulking around so they could start moving forward again.

Dream lets out a huff, seemingly indifferent about the continuing howls. He knows that Techno will keep him safe, so he doesn’t even bother taking out the dagger hidden inside his dark-green coat. It’s not like he would be any good in a fight. Ever since they escaped the prison, Dream quickly realized that his hands would never be able to truly hold weapons of any kind anymore, not with how much they trembled and shook. He’s happy that he could hold a cup of tea without spilling hot liquid everywhere, and hey, he can even hold a spoon without too much of a hitch.

Small progress as Techno would say.

And maybe, with a lot of training and patience, he would even be able to hold an ax again one day.

Though, that dream is rather blurry for now. Let’s rather focus on re-learning how to use a knife and fork for the moment....or Techno would have to help him cut his steak forever and that’s just fucking embarrassing. He already feels like a helpless child 75% of the time when it comes to holding anything.

Which also includes not being able to walk on snow like his companion.

Fucking piglin hybrids and their natural ability to walk over loose ground.

"...that doesn't prove anything. You-you're used to walking through snow." Crossing his arms, Dream glares at a random patch of snow near Techno's left foot. Now that they have stopped moving, Dream can feel the unbearable coldness sinking into his already half-frozen skin. Dream hates to admit it, but he does have a low tolerance when it comes to low temperatures. All his life, he has lived in hotter regions, places where the sun never stops shining all year round, and where hurricanes and heavy storms are a monthly concurrence. But now, he's forced to live in a snowy biome, far away from the sun, where it never stops snowing and the nights are long.

Dream couldn't remember when he last felt truly warm. Even in the safety of Techno's beloved cottage, there's still something cold lingering in his chest, freezing his body from the inside...

Maybe that's just his trauma showing his ugly head... Nevertheless, Dream really missed lying among the flowers, grass tickling his cheeks while he let the sun heat up his body.

And while the prison had been warm, unbearable so, the warmth wasn't the same as the feeling of sun rays on his freckled skin.

Ender, when was the last time he had worn a crop top? Felt like a billion years ago. He couldn't even wear cute outfits in this shitty weather. Fucking Antarctica...

Yearning for an outlet for his building frustration, Dream angrily kicks a small pile of snow, accidentally spraying Techno's face with the powdery substance.

For a second the woods go deathly silent as if the trees themselves could feel the tension rising between the rivals. The two men stare at each other, a silent battle taking place. Techno's narrowed red eyes promise unbearable pain, causing Dream to fidget nervously.

If there is one thing Dream hates more than raw potatoes it's complete silence. He remembers a time when silence didn't bother him. A time when he could linger in his base far underground unbothered by the pure quietness surrounding him, even enjoying it. He was used to being alone, doing his own thing, a lone wolf some would call him, but after the whole prison thing...Dream began to hate the sound of his own voice, the silence that would linger after he screamed his lungs out either from hours of torture or talking nonstop to his own reflection in the lava.

Yeah, he would much rather listen to Techno's monotone voice for hours, all day long, if it means he wouldn't have to listen to his own scrambled thoughts.

"Uh...Tech--"

Before Dream could finish his sentence his feet suddenly left the ground as his tall, lanky body was raised from the snow. The blond squeezed his eyes tightly, expecting to be body slammed into the cold abyss for revenge but instead, he felt a pleasant warmth surrounding him from all sides.

Fluttering his eyes open he's met with the sight of Techno's broad chest. Jerking his head up he stares at the piglin but the other is ignoring him, red eyes stubbornly looking forward as they continue their way through the foggy woods. Green eyes focus on the warm puffs of air escaping Techno's pink lips, the way his sharp tusks glint in the faint light like hidden daggers, and how his red eyes seem to sparkle brighter than the ice crystals littering the ground. This close, Techno's beauty is almost otherworldly.

Truly the God of Bones and Blood.

And now the God is carrying him. Carrying him bridal style while curling his precious red cape around them both.

Dream's cheeks quickly catch on fire at the unexpected turn of events.

Forcing himself to relax, he leans his cheek against Techno's armored chest, almost jerking back in surprise at how warm the other feel even through the thick layer of metal.

Oh Gods, Techno is burning, a steady warmth spilling from him in waves like a dying star. With the cape curled around them, keeping the cold air away and trapping Techno's body heat, Dream feels like he's sitting in a furnace.

A very soft, grumpy furnace.

He almost forgot how warm Techno is. When they were still in prison Dream didn’t really notice Techno’s abnormal body heat. Back then everything, the air, the water, the obsidian blocks, was hot to the touch. Soon Techno’s body heat just turned into another source of heat in the already stuffy cell.

Now, Dream welcomed the warmth.

For what feels like the first time in months, Dream feels the coldness leaves his body.

Letting out a sound that comes close to a purr, Dream leans back against Techno's chest. With his cheek pressed against the other’s armored chest, he can clearly hear Techno's strong heartbeat. The steady sound pulls him into a placid state where each one of his problems and haunting memories leaves his mind for a little while until all he can feel is the vibration of Techno's heart and the strong hands holding him up.

Protecting him.

"Just so you know, if the wolves decide to attack us, I'm throwing you into the snow." Technoblade's monotone voice drifts through the blurry edges of his mind, almost throwing him out of his serene bubble.

Not wanting to leave the peaceful corner of his mind just yet, Dream cuddles deeper into Techno's chest, successfully ignoring the Piglin's warning.

Above him Techno let out a long, tired sigh, yet, the hands around his waist are pressing him closer, a silent promise to shield him from any upcoming danger.

With a small smile on his lips, Dream lets himself sink into the peaceful abyss, the sound of Techno's heartbeat guiding him. He falls asleep to the familiar lullaby of Techno’s heartbeat.

And so, far up in the north where the sun rarely shines and the snow never stops falling, the blond warrior found his own sun to warm up his broken soul.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This ask has been sitting in my inbox for weeks! Sorry that it took me so long, dear anon! I hope you like it!

[batfoonery]

No Matter the Weather....

Doing this on my phone whilst my chrome book gets repaired..... fingers crossed the formatting isn’t too funky!

Anywho. Here’s my thoughts on the Batfam’s weather preferences. Stupid? Possibly. But we all have them.

Bruce

Likes clear nights. Easier to patrol, bc visibility.

Wont admit it, but prefers spring nights. Not too cold, but cool enough that he isn’t overheating in his armor. And the few trees in Gotham don’t trigger his allergies until autumn so....

Abhors smoggy/foggy nights because Trauma. He is always extra vigilant on nights with lower visibility—refuses to let his Robin (whichever one it may be, even if he’s on patrol with a no-longer-Robin like Steph or Tim) go more than an arm’s length away. Everyone is irritable by the end of patrol because of it.

Dick

Also prefers spring nights, but of the lightly misty variety. Not full on rain, and he’d rather not patrol in the mist (the dampness brings oil to the surface of cements and pavements, and makes it tricky to get a good grip, making it a dangerous patrol).

Likes it best in evenings or early mornings, when the sun would be hazy anyways. It reminds him of being a kid, when they’d had a few high altitude venues and he’d wake up, walk out of the trailer into a literal cloud.

Not fond of thunderstorms. As a kid they wouldn’t ever perform in storms, because they risked the poles being struck by lightning. He’s still wary of it as an adult, because it was one of those safety rules drilled into him so heavily (childhood swim team people—you know what I mean?). Has adjusted his patrol routes so that he has a safer route on storm nights—he goes by the streets rather than rooftops those nights.

Jason

Likes storms—they provide good cover and all that. But also, there’s something innately soothing about the storms outside reflecting the general chaos of his mind/emotions. Likes to sit and just. Watch.

Probably a summer child. Likes the way that sitting in front of a window lets the sun seep into his bones and soothe old aches.

Not fond of the muggy weather before or after a storm. The humidity messes with his hair and his helmets get all sweaty, which is really really gross tbh.

Cass

Likes crisp, clear autumn nights. She doesn’t seem to have any allergens in Gotham, so she enjoys the full benefits of autumn.

Gotham has a few autumn celebrations and street festivals, so clear nights filled with the lights and smells of fried festival foods bring her joy. Watching from the shadows as kids shriek on the tilt-a-whirl and parents take pictures and eat funnel cake... everyone knows Black Bat is watching their backs. Batman is scary, but Black Bat is a nightmare when crossed, so major villains steer clear of these smaller festivities, and the rogues that do intrude quickly learn why it is a bad idea.

Doesn’t like snow. It makes her joints stiff.

Tim

Winter baby. He’s allergic to everything, so in winter when everything is dead or sleeping and he doesn’t have to worry about his eyes itching while on patrol he’s happiest to be on patrol.

Likes snowy nights. When it’s dead outside, everyone tucked away unwilling to embrace the cold. If things time out just right, in the wee hours of the morning Gotham looks like something out of a fairy tale, snow undisturbed and air quiet. He’s gotten some of the best shots of the city at these times and looking at them makes him nostalgic.

Doesn’t like sunny summer days. He thinks he’s melting in his suit, and there’s always something making him sneeze. Probably has to carry around a parasol.

Steph

Likes winter nights too. Likes the clear nights when the air just feels clean (even if all the pollution means it isn’t ever clean anymore). It feels like she could be anyone on these kinds of nights—go anywhere and start over, be someone new. But then morning comes and she remembers that she doesn’t know how to be anyone else, deep down.

Not crazy about spring. It’s a different muggy than summer, and all the bugs come out.

Hates fog. Scary things lurk in the thick mist, and B gets even more annoying and controlling than usual. They aren’t allowed to patrol together on foggy nights anymore, as per Alfred.

Duke

Likes early late spring/early summer mornings. The air is still cool and crisp, and the morning dew clings to the grass as he heads out for patrol. There’s no worry about overheating and the world is still sleepy and silent enough for him to have space to think.

Probably lowkey terrified of hurricanes. Has a stockpile in the house specifically built up for hurricane season. Every year it is dutifully checked and batteries refreshed etc etc. Gotham doesn’t get them often, but it still haunts him.

If one does hit, all the kids stay in from patrol (and Bruce too, if he isn’t away on JLA business) and they let him herd them into his designated safe room and they ride it out together. They don’t get much flooding because of where the manor is situated, but sometimes Batcow’s pen gets a bit soggy.

Damian

Likes misty weather, especially in the fall or spring. Weather is nicest then anyways, and he likes the way that the city looks when it is overcast out. The lights seem brighter and the shadows darker and the buildings both stand out and blend into the sky..... a place full of adventure. A siren song for a little boy.

Hates hail with a burning passion. Hadn’t experienced it much before moving to Gotham. It makes no sense! Ice from the sky?! In summer spring and fall but NOT winter?! He knows the science of it but it’s still annoying as heck and he hates it.

Clear nights make him sad. It’s one thing when he’s out in the Midwest with Jon, and the corn fields stretch out for forever and they can spend the evening pointing out stars and he can recall all the stories about them from his childhood (secret whispers, his mother’s voice hushed so no one else would hear as she told him about sailors and heroes and gods, whispered promises about how he would be the greatest among them someday.....). But in Gotham, there are no stars even when the sky is completely cloud-free. There is too much light pollution and it makes his heart heavy.

Babs

Likes when it just starts to snow. She’s got all these cozy afghans all over the clock tower, and it’s kind of nice to curl up with one and a mug of coffee or cocoa in the windows and just watch the little flurries flutter down.

Rain is the same, she likes watching the drops race down her windows, leaving little paths behind.

Probably doesn’t have a season or type of weather she doesn’t like. She just prefers ones that give her an excuse to get cozy at home. And ones that provide white noise that help her sleep.

[daaedoodles]

Building walls (just to tear them down) | 2, Memories

A/N, TRIGGER WARNING for semi-graphic descriptions of self harm and anxiety.

Cloaked in the darkness of night, the urges come again.

She knows she shouldn’t do it.

She knows she shouldn’t hurt herself anymore than she already has.

She knows she shouldn’t throw away all of that progress, all of the good in her life.

But she does.

That feeling is intoxicating, the quietness and the sense of calm that passes over her - a promise for a release in the pain she causes herself, a way to escape, to feel better - Sarah Reese can’t find the strength in herself to refuse.

It tempts her with every birthday that comes and goes, with every time she's taken the backseat, watching a past version of herself wandering through the endless halls of her childhood home.

She’s suddenly 18 again, standing in the kitchen staring down at a stove she once remembers being so much taller that despite her 10 year old self’s best efforts at tippy-toeing could hardly see the top of. Dragging the pads of her fingers against every wall of the house and memorizing each and every bump and dent beneath her fingertips. Sitting at the foot of the tiny bubblegum pink bed that was hers once upon a time.

The image of a little girl, a shiny rainbow party hat sitting on top of her lion's mane of curls that frames her chubby cheeks, catches her eye from across her bedroom. She’s sitting before a massive cake that’s at least twice the size of her head with the biggest smile on her face, flashing a missing tooth. Carefully piped clouds of white cream surround the words ‘Happy Birthday Sarah!’ piped in a pink, messy scrawl she recognizes as her own mother’s, atop the cake. Tentatively reaching out, she picks up the photo frame. A lump rises in her throat as she studies the photo with intent, feeling the grime of the dust that’s collected on it over years of never being even looked at. Thumbs sweep across the glass thoughtfully, hot breath shuddering against her cupid’s bow.  Her father is grinning too, bending down to the left of the young girl as he reaches out with a flickering flame in his hands to light the number ‘5’ candle that’s stuck haphazardly by tiny hands into the chiffon. Her mother is at her other side, an arm slung around her shoulders as she draws her close to her chest. It’s the only memory Sarah can begin to place as the last time she or her family were genuinely happy.

Because come her sixth birthday, her father is gone. 

He’d simply packed his things and left without a word. 

She remembers her mother’s voice, screaming and shouting protests through broken sobs. They paint the walls of a home she once loved in the dark blues and purples of the pain in her every cry. She remembers her father, his silhouette through the cracks of her bedroom door, grabbing fistfuls of her mother’s shirt. She can’t tell whether it’s the floor beneath her feet or her that trembles with every thud that reverberates through her home. 

Then, silence.

The next morning, his study has been cleared of every book that lined his walls, his half of the closet is suddenly empty and the photos of her family that hung in the living room are on the ground- cherished memories, now shattered beneath the glass of broken picture frames. 

Even then, aged five and three-quarters, she knew things would never be the same again.

Sarah Reese isn’t a sentimental person. There isn’t much sentiment to spare for the things in her life. They’re empty and hollow, she tells herself, nothing but painful reminders of the memories she could have made if things were different.

Despite every rational thought in her head pleading with her not to, she’s removing the backing of the photo frame and removing the photo that was affectionately placed for display all those years ago. She holds onto the foolish hope that after being let down so many times, she’d be ready to let go. But she stuffs the image in her pocket and packs her memories hastily into cardboard boxes. They’re crammed and shoved desperately into the back of a U-Haul, a last minute addition to a boot packed to the brim crisp, white boxes, full of more brand new things that could ever use.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be there Sarah.” Her mother’s voice crackles through the speaker, the cold screen of her phone pressed against her ear. This time, she doesn’t feel her heart sink into her stomach.

Although, she can’t help but hope - that her mother might still come home and scoop her up in her arms like she’s five again, tears tracing down her cheeks as she places lipstick-stained lips against Sarah’s forehead in a goodbye. She knows better now than ever that it’s nothing but wishful thinking.

“I want to make sure you have everything you need.”

She’d convinced herself months ago where she’d go.

Chicago, thousands of miles away from Amsterdam. Thousands of miles away from all of it, maybe she’d finally be free of all of the haunting memories, of all of the silly hopes and pain.

But it isn’t so different after she leaves home and the dread that she’ll never escape begins to close in on her.

Sarah was alone on her 19th birthday, like the year before and the one prior and pretty much every birthday she could remember; left only with her thoughts that easily filled every inch of her apartment. They hang thick, full of grief as she mourns the loss of hope in the way the whiskey seems to coat every inch of her mouth and burn as it makes its way down her throat. Grief, a bitter companion in her isolation that refuses so adamantly never to leave her side.

She can’t tell how much she’s had to drink, too out of her mind to even think straight because suddenly the air is too thick to breathe and she feels like she’s choking, her chest tightening as she feels her heart begin to race. Her skull feels like moments away from exploding, the thoughts in her head too loud and too quiet all at once. Sarah can’t stop herself as her hands scramble, clawing desperately at her skin and pressing her face into her knees as the scraping of her fingernails cuts through the noise, a scalding heat spreading across her entire scalp. It’s the only thing she can focus on at that moment. The sensation of her fingernails digging into her skin, the strange dampness that begins to stick to her fingers and the harsh smell of metal that hits her nose. It doesn’t even register in her brain what she’s done to herself until she’s scrubbing her hands and fingernails of her own gore.

When it happens again, she finds herself subconsciously beginning to scrape at her skin, sending shocks of pain throughout her body under her touch.

It became a crutch that she found herself relying on more and more over time as things grew hectic with the turn of 20.

As the competition between her classmates grew tighter at 21, it wasn’t enough anymore.

So completely blind and oblivious to it - the way her entire life tears away at what was left of Sarah Reese by 22.

At 23, she was nothing but a terrified girl who’d learned to pin every last hope on her own self-destruction.

She’s 24 now. Sarah grew to appreciate the brief moments when that crushing feeling she’s lived with all of her life releases it’s relentless grip on her, where she smiles and laughs and then the weight on her shoulders suddenly lifts, in the memories of quiet comfort she holds close to the heart that she’d collected over the years in Chicago. It’s an absolute relief while it lasts.

But just as quickly as they come, they leave. It becomes easier to hate the good because those fleeting moments of freedom only begin to hang over her head, pointing at her, taunting, mocking, laughing at her.

25 and she finally feels like for once in her life, things might turn out okay. It’s still hard, every single day is a struggle because that hurt never truly goes away, no matter how badly she wants it to. She falls into the cycle of throwing her feet over the edge of her single bed in the cold winter mornings, wandering through her apartment with her mind still cloudy with sleep, slipping her flannel pajamas off her feet and into her work clothes then catching the bus to Gaffney Chicago Medical. In the ED, that girl realizes a warmth, a genuine sense of comfort and belonging in her colleagues and the companionship. Sarah Reese is exhausted and she can’t help but feel like she’s found a home, even a family, in these people. There’s a part of her that wants so badly to push them away so she can never get hurt again but she’s too comforted by the way her heart swells in their company, with what she can only discern in joy, to listen to it. Now, there’s a reason to fight and she doesn’t know if she wants to give up anymore.

Near 26, her pale skin.once a blank canvas was left brutally scarred and damaged in hues of purples, reds and whites. Scars layered on top of one another as she’d run out of space in places easy to conceal, easy to hide from people. There’s a sickening feeling of guilt that fills her each time she sees the damage she’s done to herself.

In the moment, she's too far gone to care. She’s lost count of just how many there are, just how many times she's found herself frantically trying to patch herself up, just how many times she's woken up to blood on her sheets and scabs under her fingernails.

Her thoughts barely come back into focus only as she’s shakily pressing the adhesive of the bandages around her wounds. It’s absolutely silent, her mind foggy and clouded with pain - the panic, fear and anger have passed - and she’s focused on nothing but the heat of the blood pooling at her skin and the darkness seeping and spreading across the white gauze. Sarah’s vision flickers in and out of focus, eyes hazy and heavy, begging for rest. As the adrenaline too begins to fade, just how exhausted she is becomes apparent as she falls back onto her bed, greeted by a pitch black when her eyes fall closed despite her willing them to stay open.

Sarah's jolted awake when her phone buzzes on her bedside table. Through her foggy vision, it's lit up with a brand new notification.

She groans, reaching for her phone and pressing fingers blood encrusted onto the power button. It flashes on, the time displayed in bold in the foreground of an image of herself caught mid laugh as she's surrounded by the people in the ED who are donning cheap Christmas hats and silly expressions, the ward around them decorated with paper ornaments on the glass of each bay in some attempts to brighten the place against hospital policies. Beside her is Dr Charles who has a hand raised and stroking the fake Santa beard strapped onto his chin. Halstead is directly behind her with sparkling red tinsel wrapped around his neck that extends its way down the row of Dr Manning, Connor and Choi.

The memory of the banter and laughs shared that Christmas Eve rises in her head and she feels lighter already.

She's staring blankly at her superiors and the tinsel that hangs off their shoulders with enough left over on either end to fall to a heap on the ground, brows furrowed and lips pursed. "Found it at Party City," Maggie announces nonchalantly, motioning from her spot where she's kneeling with the rest of the nurses, April on her left turning to face the younger girl with a tinge of concern in her eyes.

Sarah blinks, shaking herself out of her thoughts, eyes wide as she looks at the Head Nurse. "They sell Christmas decorations?"

Maggie laughs, "Never been Reese?" She queries, earning a shaking head in response. "They sell just about damn near everything."

She's dismissing the memories from her mind as she taps the text notification that pops into her vision.

It's from Dr Charles.

As her eyes scan the words, Sarah feels her lips begin to tremble as they turn upwards in the tiniest of grins.

‘Happy Birthday Reese :).’

It's funny how just three words could mean so much to her - how just a simple text could make her heart shatter into a million pieces and so carefully piece it back together again.

It’s a bittersweet feeling.

For the first time in years, she's not alone anymore.

[dreamiesdotcom]

of inked pages and adventures | n.jm

Summary: Jaemin plays rock-paper-scissors, loses, ends up being dared to spend one boring hour every day in a boring library, and finds love in a person who's spent more time behind a book than under the Sun.

Word Count: 1975

a/n: so I tried to give y'all a fic with a happy ending bc some people yelled at me after slow akshdjdj

Of course, as to most of Jaemin's life-changing decisions, it starts with losing rock-paper-scissors, a dare, and Lee Donghyuck.

The second rule to life is to never listen to Donghyuck sober. Renjun kinds of disagrees with that, but in his defense, listening to sober Hyuck got him a boyfriend, after all — but in Jaemin's case, it's only given him headaches and careless adrenaline. Jaemin stands true to his words: the second rule to life is to never listen to Donghyuck sober. The first rule is to never listen to him drunk.

Everybody knows how terrible some people are at following such rules, and unfortunately, Jaemin is one of those people. Right now, he momentarily hates that.

It's nothing wild, per se, just strange �� normally, the dares are either risking your life, reputation, or morals. Today, they've chosen for him to suffer; "Go and read books for at least an hour in the library. You can't fall asleep."

So here he is, standing in this dimly lit room full of books. He takes one of them blindly, dragging himself to a table in the farthest corner, and doesn't realize it yet that someone is already sitting there. You looked at him with an exhausted gaze, but as your eyes catch at the book's cover, they quickly brim with life.

"Psychology? Interesting."

"What?" he says, pouting a little, used to talking to people. Normally, it would make most people melt — your still expression doesn't change, so he tries a joke. "A handsome guy can't read psychology now?"

It doesn't work, but the barest hints of a smirk tugs at the sides of your lips, and you shake your head as if to say no.

"It's not everyday a cute boy reads the same books as I do."

Red stains his cheeks and in his panic, he keeps his eyes on his book. He feels distracted, kind of heady, a little lost; butterflies seem to soar in his stomach, a feeling he's only ever caused, not experienced. It sucks for him that he doesn't know what to do about it — because what do you do when you've met someone for the first time, and they told you such things like that, and your stupid heart won't calm the fuck down?

What kind of first meeting, right?

#

The first week was nothing compared to the first day. He learned to stay comfortable with this kind of silence, the type that's somber and kind of lonely; the one that makes whispers reverberate inside the room, almost haunted. He's grown familiar with some books, be it the ones that smell like fresh paper and ink or the musky ones with sweet undertones, both scents lingering around the room.

He learned how to exist in silence. For days, surely, he missed the noise even if the loss was just for an hour, being used to Donghyuck chattering the time away and Renjun calling him out on it. The quarrels were always there, and as much as back then, all he wanted was for it to stop, right now he wants nothing but for someone to speak.

But as days pass by, he starts to see its charm. He starts to grow fond of the small talks. More specifically, he starts to get used to the way all the words that needed to be said are laid out like exposed cards, no guessing of intentions or games. They're just words that mean exactly as they should, and that's all that Jaemin needs. Certainty. Assurance. Truth.

He looks up from his books, scanning the cover of yours. "You got a classic now?"

"Exams," you say, shoulders rising slightly. Your eyes don't lift from the sentences, but he's certain you've stopped reading. Only then does he notice the heaviness in your eyes, the invisible wall you've put up around yourself against everybody else.

"Shouldn't you be reviewing by this time?"

"No."

Amusement fills his gut, and he shakes his head a little. You go back to reading and he tries to do the same as well, but for a reason or two, he couldn't focus — under the warm library lights and beside the strange person he's shared counted words with, he flourishes like a rose in a full-blown spring.

#

To be true, Jaemin no longer has to spend an hour in the library. It was a silly dare, and it's over, and he can go back to going to parties or hanging out with his best friends. He doesn't even really like reading; to be fair, they're interesting. He just doesn't feel them as hard as people like Renjun does.

He can go back to his old ways now, to the lively nights and tiring thrills. In fact, he could've done so weeks ago — but these days, as if a habit, his feet take him back to the street he spent a month getting to know, walking to a place he spent hours trying to understand. There was a dull something about the library that makes him breathe.

It's not the books. It was never the books — he's heard of these magical things, the way they bring you to different places and timelines, each time a different person with a different story. He's heard of the spark they have and the addicting scent of ink on paper. He's heard it all, and that's pretty much it — he never got to experience the entertainment they seemed to hold for a special kind of people. He's seen a glimpse of it, though, in the reflection of your eyes; the way they gloom when something bad happens, the way they shine when something good does. He finds bits of magic there, alongside the wanderlust glittering behind your lids.

And if the books couldn't take him to an adventure, your eyes do.

"Why're you staring?"

Why was he staring?

"Poetry, huh?" he hides his nervousness with a grin. He rests his chin on his palms, staring at you as if he was in a reverie because he is. "Cute."

You run your fingers at the spine of the book, tracing the delicate covers with equally as delicate fingers, a heavy sigh hanging on your lips. "They're mostly free verses about world tragedies."

He couldn't help but grimace, "Oh, damn. That's hardcore."

Something in the proud smirk on your smile screams rebelliously regal, and he somewhat struggles to look away.

#

The first time you two meet outside the library, it's at a convenience store and you were pretty much half-awake. Jaemin points an accusing finger at you, "What're you doing here?"

"Buying coffee."

"At 4am?"

"Dude, you're doing the same thing?" you ask, amused. "Just let me pass."

And just like everything with Jaemin, it begins with a straightforward question: "Wanna walk together?" You can't really pinpoint who asked first, just that you both wanted it, and that you both spent minutes walking in circles until you decided on going to the park. It's a silent trip, something he's not used to, but either way, it's something he liked. The emptiness of the streets, the gloaming of midnight.

By the time you've reached the park, it's already five a.m and what's left to the darkness is the lingering scent of nighttime, fleeting around the breeze and cold touches. The shiver this phantom gives you is shortlived, the sun starting to make itself known through first warm rays. The foggy image of the street ahead stains golden, and to watch the town rouse awake stirs in your gut something oddly specific yet unnamed.

You let out a dreamy sigh.

"I just want melodrama, is that too much to ask?" you kick at a rock. "Can't a person just run in an empty hallway looking fancy as hell? Can't a person just scream angrily at the world as they hold their dying lover in their arms?"

Jaemin momentarily chokes on his coffee, eyes widening in horror. "Can't a person just what?!"

You laugh, a pleasant sound comparable to tinkling bells you'd probably hear when you enter a fantasy land. It's not a delicate laugh, nor is it a careless one; it's just a laugh, beautiful even if it's obvious that you didn't let your guards down. His heart swells in adoration.

###

Jaemin doesn't go to the library after that morning.

He's heard of the different ways some people fall in love; his friends didn't do it much, but whenever they do, it had been interesting. Donghyuck only experienced it once before he declares he's given up on it; it was young love, the kind of love that's what you knew it to be at the moment. Jaemin calls it the first kind of love, the one that's hard to forget.

Renjun's was a difficult kind. It longed for people who didn't want to love anymore, hearts that had been closed to the world after it tried to break it. Jaemin understood it as the kind that waits — through the pain, after most everything.

Jeno's was the most simple. He didn't understand a single bit of what he tried to say, but Jaemin called it the most simple because it's the hardest to understand; the in denial kind, the complicated kind, the thing most people feel.

This one, he hasn't heard of. He hasn't been warned about it, either; it came without notice, no alarms. It came blindly, and it looked nothing like what he thought love should look like. Every wall he's built crumbles down, and he ignores the fact that you've known each other for short months and barely even knew each other's names. This one, he calls a tunnel. To him who's quite confused, it's as if a deep, dark, and chilly tunnel; maybe a museum of realizations and you come out of it feeling like something's not quite right of yourself.

Once he accepts it, he finds himself here again, in that same table. After his long absence, he expected some anger, he expected coldness. Instead what he gets is softness, an empty seat directly in front of yours, and a very emotional string of words: "It's been lonely without you."

Jaemin doesn't think much before he speaks and it's one of the flaws that he didn't really mind because all he's said are nice words. He kind of rethinks that thought as he lays both arms on the table, resting his cheek on one and them dreamily staring at you; "You're gonna be the death of me."

There's no books this time. Instead, papers scatter uselessly, notebooks opened and pens of different colors rest wherever. Somewhere inside his brain, he almost hears Renjun scoff at how he's blatantly not studying despite having everything he needs to review, but he doesn't mind that. He sets his eyes on you, focused on jotting down important terms and their meanings. Under a trick of the light, he sees angel wings spread behind you.

Your stare shifts to him, and he basks in the sunshine it never fails to make him feel. You glow like fantasy and the admiration surges straight to his head, skipping his logic and rushing for his feelings; he thinks of you as a person who was never meant to be human — such etherealness simply couldn't be meant to be mortal.

"Huh?"

"I kind of fell in love with you and I just won't stop falling," he mutters, eyes closed. "You're gonna be the death of me."

"Are you trying to ask me out on a date?" you laugh, and he shoots up, sitting straight. Red flushes his cheeks again, much like the first day, but this time he couldn't look away — your hand rests atop of his, warm against each other. "If so, then yes."

"What?"

"Take me on a date first." you say, slower this time. "and then hopefully, many more."

[slightlymore]

Pride | Part 7

Pairing: Doyoung, Y/N, new character, Johnny cameo Genre: Series | Smut | Angst | Crack | Fluff Warnings: as usual, language, little hand cut, same issues around mental health and unhealthy coping mechanisms, angsty, smutty scenario Words: 5.8K

Just one part to go peeps, Part 8 is going to be the last whoop whoop (I can create conflict and drama every chapter but after a while it’s kinda boring, so let’s end it soon lmao) 

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 |  Part 8 THE END

The rain was pouring heavily on the roof as if a thousand fingers were tapping on it. You could see it slide down the little cabin’s windows, dragging down tree branches, frightening and beautiful at the same time. It was a cold night but you were feeling so cozy, skin bathed in the yellow hue of the fireplace. 

It was loud and scary outside, but you couldn't hear it. Not really. Your mind was foggy and occupied with so many things. It was difficult to express what those things were. But you knew what they formed altogether. Pleasure. 

Intense, breathtaking pleasure, traveling from the tip of your curled toes, up to your knees, bringing lust and passion all the way to your head, as a slow caress. 

The culprit was Doyoung. Or better, Doyoung’s tongue, while he was holding your thighs so tightly that you were seeing the bruises underneath his fingers. You wanted to see his eyes as well, you wanted to bath in that darkness full of desire, but they were closed. His eyebrows were furrowed as if concentrating and you ruffled the hair on his forehead, to drink in his every expression. When he let go of your clit, a little string of saliva connecting it to his tongue, you whined and arched your back, showing him everything that you wanted. His eyes pierced finally through yours and he smiled. Then those lips, still curved up teasingly, kissed your stomach, painfully slow, rising in a single line, going between your breasts, on your collar bones, on your neck and chin. He brought his hand up to cup your cheeks and rubbed your lower lip with his thumb. You opened your mouth, ready to fall into him, but a little sparkle at the corner of your eye got your attention elsewhere. Looking at his hand you felt your head a little less foggy. You blinked as if hallucinating. Was that a ring? He had no rings, you were sure about it. Why was a ring adorning his finger, but also, why was that fact making you feel so confused and uneasy? "Where did you get that from?", you asked grabbing his hand and analyzing the piece of jewelry. Doyoung looked at the ring first, then at your face with a chuckle. "What are you talking about?", he asked as well. "This is a wedding ring", you explained. Doyoung grinned. "Yes, I can't believe this either, my love". An unpleasant shiver caressed your spine and you already knew before looking. You could feel it. It was cold and secure around your finger as well. Near the other one, with a big stone on it. Your engagement and marriage rings. You gasped as if falling underwater. The corners of your vision started to get dark as blurry stains made it difficult to see. No, no, no, no. You swallowed. The air from your lungs disappeared and even if you tried hard to breathe, nothing came in as your focus shifted. Doyoung wasn’t on top of you anymore. You looked at him and his fiancé from above, the way her hand caressed his back, listening to their whispers and you found yourself panting. Again. No, please, no, stop. Let me alone. Please. I don’t want this. I don’t want it. Your legs kicked the covers and you sat up, hands restless, chin trembling and communicating that you were about to cry. Again. From a stupid dream haunting your nights. _____

You were the first thought that would wake Doyoung up in the morning. The last desire that lulled him to sleep at night. And in that split uncountable moment between consciousness and unconsciousness, he let himself flow. He promised to do it only in those circumstances when his rational side couldn't hold him in his grip. Even if lately he felt himself slowly slipping its hold every second more. Dreaming is only causing you pain, the Rational side would say. Not doing it is going to cause pain anyways, Doyoung would reply. Yes, but the first type of pain is going to end soon, it insisted. How do you know that? Doyoung would ask. I just know, it would get irritated. What if I don't care? Doyoung would inquire again. The Rational side wouldn’t reply as if tired to argue yet again.   What if I don't care about anything? Legit nothing in life matters. What if I just do whatever the fuck I want? Future me doesn't exist, does it? Only I do, right now. And right now I just want to fucking dream, alright? The Rational side was judging silently while Doyoung would get worked up by himself, in a pathetic fight. Let me, please, please, just let me dream for a second more. I beg of you. Okay? I beg. Just one second. Then I’ll stop. I promise. Just this time. Please. Please. Please. Doyoung would mumble to himself until finally forced to open his eyes and stare soullessly at the first rays of sun entering his room. Breathless. Ashamed. Defeated. Time’s up. No more dreaming, the Rational side’s little voice would wake up as well. ________ Jealousy was something you didn't want to think about. When Johnny was seeing other people, it felt like a sting in the heart, a little oh forming on your lips. You've made an effort to not let it be a selfish sentiment. I'm not a jealous person, you would say with a proud smile. But the truth was that you were. And after waking up, drenched in your own sweat after being so sure that your dreams were a reality before they could become nightmares, and even worse, fantasy, your chest would boil in pain. In pain and rage. You were so angry. You were so jealous. It was no more a sting, or a little oh, it was a hit in the stomach and a soundless scream. You would walk around to class, taking your exams, eating, talking, and laughing with your friends, but never alone, always with this ugly feeling on your shoulders. You felt jealous, possessive, selfish, hateful. You would alternate thoughts of I have to stop, I can’t change it, I can't be a bad person, with I'm a bad person, so what, I am like that, I feel that, that’s me, until feeling like you were driving yourself into madness. When you shook your rector’s hand, while the other was holding your degree, a few months had already passed after seeing Doyoung’s face for the last time. It felt like decades and a few days at the same time. “This is a new beginning, huh?”, Johnny’s face light up in a bright smile. You looked up at him and a soft fuzzy feeling flooded your chest. If Doyoung’s experience was helpful in some ways, one of it was the fact that you finally sorted out your feelings for your best friend. And he did as well, you could see it in the way his eyes looked free and calm, in the way his voice called your name, in the way he felt sorry for you after you told him everything that happened with Doyoung. It took you both some time, but you did it, and you started to breathe more easily after you saw Johnny’s understanding eyes instead of his previous jealous ones. He also realized that your romantic relationship wasn’t a healthy one and he felt better about himself for a long while giving the fault of your fights to Doyoung, when in reality, deep down, he knew you would have behaved like that towards each other anyways. Smiling back at him, you both linked arms and walked away to where your seats were. “I have good news”, you interrupted the silence, whispering to his ear after you sat down. “You know that company you said were hiring?”, you asked, building tension but unable to hide your smile. Johnny looked down at you with wide eyes. A few days before graduation, Johnny came up to you with the most euphoric expression. “Y/N, please apply to this job”, he slammed a piece of printed paper on your desk. You looked at it, confused, then up at him. “Why?”, you asked. Johnny breathed in as if preparing for the longest monologue of his life. “You must”, he just said though. He was so on the edge, sprinkling happiness like a child, that you found yourself chuckling. “Why don’t you apply to it? We’re graduating the same day. You also need a job”, you commented. Johnny crossed his arms on his chest. “You know I want to take a year off and travel the world. I won’t sit my ass in an office chair from 9 till 5, thank you very much. But you,” he shoved his finger into your face, “you love that kind of job, and this,” he slammed the paper again making you jolt, “it’s the perfect opportunity for you. Trust me. You’ll see. You’ll thank me”, he finished. You laughed and shrugged putting the paper inside your books. “Wait, they accepted you?”, now Johnny asked loudly, several heads in the graduation hall turning to hush you. You waved your hand in front of him as to indicate to keep his voice down. But then you nodded while a little smile forming on your lips. “Fuck!”, Johnny exclaimed. “I am- fuck!”, he just cursed again and hug you tightly. _______ Doyoung never realized it before how you were the reason for his every gesture. Not until you weren't there to hold him up anymore. He wasn't as melodramatic as to say that what he did now was pointless, but it had no real meaning either. Like it didn't have before meeting you. He was getting overwhelmed by everything now, he had no patience, every sound and image and person were unbearable. His thoughts were out of control. “You’re under great stress right now, Doyoung”. Doyoung sighed. Yeah, I know, old man. "It's just", he finally spoke slowly, staring out of that window yet again, "I'm always waiting for something", he added, trying hard to explain his thoughts. The therapist nodded. "It's always-", Doyoung paused again, recollecting himself, "-I always think like, it's going to be over soon, just a little bit. I’m assuring myself that this won’t last long, that it’s going to end. While my hands are itching and I can’t stay still. I am waiting and waiting and looking around for something. But what am I waiting for? Death?", he chuckled bitterly. The man in front of him shook his head with a sigh. He put his notes down and rested his elbows on his knees, eyes piercing over the eyeglasses frames. "The answer is - life, Doyoung”. Doyoung jerked his head towards the man as if someone punched him in the face. “You're not waiting for things to be over. You're waiting for things to start". ________ Your limbs were shaking and your throat was completely closed off not letting you even to swallow, as you clasped your hands together, playing with your fingernails. You had to explain to the guards why you had no pass to enter the building yet, then to explain what were you doing there, then you had to wait for a young girl, the HR director’s secretary, to take you to her boss - a woman with a dry smile on her face. “You have arrived at the right moment”, the young secretary smiled at you kindly while taking you through the company corridors, giving you a short tour. The place wasn’t just big. It was humongous. You were in the marketing wing at that moment, with an open mouth, in shock while passing near the windows seeing how tall the building actually was, while the secretary was about to tell you at which desk you will be spending the next few years of your life. This, if they don’t fire you sooner. “Really? What does that mean?”, you asked politely, entering the office. A few people raised their eyes from the computer, most didn’t, some of them were discussing between themselves, some of them were yelling into their phones before slamming it on the desk. Great, you sighed. Looks inviting.  “Tonight there’s a company party. It’s going to be a great occasion to get to know your colleagues. When there are alcohol and music, they all loosen up a lot”, she winked at you as if telling a secret. You smiled back grateful for her being the first person you had the pleasure to meet and not some random rude one. Then you sat down after she introduced you to the department manager, who promptly left you alone talking about being very busy in the same second the secretary left as well.  The evening approached fast as you spent the whole day trying to understand how the phone line worked, how to use the computer efficiently, what your first tasks were. You had to learn most of those things alone as the people you had to shadow were “too busy to babysit someone right now”. You sighed. You kinda knew it was going to be like this so you weren’t that surprised. Getting into such a big company right after graduating university was a big deal and you weren’t about to whine but you still hoped that after that night you’d have at least one new friend. At least someone to talk to you and that would want to answer your questions.  It took you a lot of effort to go back to your new small apartment after the exhausting day, to shower, to try to find something appropriate to wear to a party, but a classy one, but still, a party, to put on makeup again, to do your hair, then to come back to the company building, all before 9 pm. When you got out of the taxi, you were already sweating, heels pierced by the high heels, spirit crushed and mind absolutely ready to go to bed already. You didn’t really like parties in the first place, even during your university days, but you still had the energy to dance at least until 4 am and get completely hammered when in the mood. It definitely wasn’t the case anymore. Entering the hall you stopped to breathe in and out and just awkwardly looked around. All types of people were standing in small groups, smiling fakely, and chatting about boring stuff, probably work. Your outfit wasn’t too off, thankfully and you felt lowkey grateful that no one gave you any attention. You were the type of person to want to socialize but at your terms and being shoved in the middle of a group full of strangers didn’t sound very appealing at that moment. For how intimidating, it was still a pretty gathering. The high windows were letting people admire the little city lights against the dark night. Some waiters were walking around with tall glasses of champagne and finger food. It was alright, you reassured yourself. You could do it. Come on. You closed your eyes as if gathering courage, still standing in the frame of the tall door, and opening them again after a moment you made the first step inside. A waiter walked right in front of you so you awkwardly grabbed a glass to look occupied while strolling the place alone. Your feet took you towards the windows. Sipping on a drink and looking at the night view? Great plan when you have no idea what to do to yourself. So, you picked up the pace, as if physically needing to get to those windows as soon as possible. But you probably shouldn’t have as you suddenly felt a cold liquid all over your chest followed by a deep swear. “I apologize. I didn’t see you coming-”, the man spoke but soon his voice flattered, becoming a tiny sound then nothingness. You blinked a few times looking down your dripping dress, then at the hand holding the glass that just got the champagne all over you, then up at the man’s face. Two fiery eyes were wide enough for you to see yourself in them. "What are you doing here?", Doyoung asked with a breathy voice. You had no idea what a heart attack felt like but somehow, in that exact moment, you thought that you probably were about to die. Yes, definitely. This feels like dying. Your muscles were like paralyzed and your fingers couldn’t keep the grip around your glass anymore, letting it fall, making you close your eyes when it shattered all over the floor. Angry heys surrounded you as some fragments probably went flying to their faces but they sounded so far away. You weren’t able to understand anything that was happening so you just looked at the man in front of you moving in slow-motion. "I got this", his lips formed to someone, probably a waiter, while he knel. You imitated him, crouching down like an automaton, your limbs moving without your brain telling them what to do. Doyoung carefully gathered all the biggest pieces of glass and for some reason grabbed your hand afterward, calling you stupid all of a sudden.  "What?", you asked with a tiny voice, looking down. The party sounds started to return slowly, infiltrating in your brain and shaking your nerves just like the sting on your finger. "It's alright", you said, putting it inside your mouth and sucking on it. "It's just a little cut". Doyoung didn't comment on that and you knew that you probably could have understood what he was thinking by looking at his eyes, but you were too much of a coward to look up. He was still holding your wrist and all your brain cells were concentrated on that spot, trying to memorize the way his cool skin felt on yours. God, you missed it, you missed it so much that you were about to let yourself fall in an agonizing cry. Then you realized what you were doing and felt like running away. You can’t. Don’t feel. No. Stop. "Come", he spoke suddenly leaving all the mess behind and you couldn’t do anything else but to let yourself be dragged like a lifeless puppet. You looked at his back as he was walking in front of you, then at his styled black hair, you listened to the sound his dress shoes made on the marbled floor, then he let your hand go entering a small room. "There should be something here…", he mumbled by himself, opening and closing all the cabinets in the bathroom. It was a pretty one, not like the public ones on your floor. It looked luxurious and almost intimate as if it was private. Doyoung was standing in front of the sink, eyebrows furrowed as if trying to see better. You were left in the frame of the door, holding your wrist, finger raised up, weight shifting from one foot to another. The déjà-vu was so strong to leave you breathless. You wondered if Doyoung remembered as well. Or if he cared at all. You couldn't stop yourself from letting your eyes fall to his hands, afraid, trying to see the ring. God, oh God. No, please, no.  You felt all your blood abandon your brain. You felt like falling. It was there, shiny, adorning his pretty hands. So he did it. He actually did it. So quickly? It felt like years but only months passed from the last time you saw him. How was that possible? Wasn’t that a dream? You couldn’t believe it was actually reality. His number has been on your phone screen multiple times a day for the past months, fingers hovering over it, to call or not to call, to text or not to text. Then his voice had bounced on the walls of your mind every time. Let me go. Let me go. If you’re not giving anything to me, just let me go. Then his last kiss had ghosted your lips as if he had just kissed you one minute before that, and you would have gently caressed the thin skin with your fingertips. Was it your fault? Should you have just called, just once? Would that have helped you, him, both of you? Or did you do the right choice? Not contacting him at all, leaving him, letting him go? God. After all of this time. Your breath was still going missing. "Here". he turned around and getting closer, he handed you the wet cotton. You stared at it as if not understanding what he was saying. Right. It’s not like he was about to hold your hand again, taking care of you, making the scenario intimate, medicating the cut for you. This was no Tumblr fanfiction. This was reality. You took it with a trembling hand and placed it on your finger. It burnt like hell but the pain somehow helped you feel better. "I'm sorry", Doyoung then said. You looked up. "For spilling my drink on you", he explained quickly. You nodded. "It's alright", you answered with a tiny voice. And just when you thought that he would go away and leave you there just the way he did months ago, he spoke again. "There's no Johnny to lend us clothes this time, huh?", he joked with an uneasy little smile.  His eyes were curved in a warm half moon and you thought you could drown in that sweetness. "Yeah", you managed to say after a moment of silence, a little smile intruding on your lips as well. He remembered. He was thinking about the same thing. Your knees were feeling even weaker than before. Then you both bounced on the silence wall between you. "Why are you here?", he finally spoke after a little while, finally about what you both were dying to talk about. His voice was cautious and polite while you put a bandaid on your cut. He looked like speaking to a scared kitty and you were feeling like one indeed. “What are you doing here?”, you asked but as the words left your mouth you already knew. That was his company. Of course. You felt so stupid. You closed your eyes. Dammit, Johnny Suh. Doyoung sighed silently, as if a little uncomfortable, noticing how you knew the answer to that already. You suddenly panicked, realizing how that looked like to his eyes.  “No! I am not here because of you!”, you spluttered out quickly, feeling your eyes widen. “I didn’t know this was your father’s company. I really just thought about it. I had no idea. I swear-”, but he interrupted you by placing his hands on your shoulders. “Hey, hey, Y/N”, he spoke softly, “it’s alright”. You shook your head. “But it’s true. I don’t want you to think that I am here…” you added but drifting off, unsure what words to use. Doyoung let his arms fall slowly. “It’s fine. I believe you”, he assured you. “There’s no need to explain yourself”. You sighed, still frustrated but didn’t add anything else, not wanting to embarrass yourself even further. “Are you alone?”, he looked behind you as if expecting to see someone. “N-no”, you shook your head. “I am- with a man”. The last word sounding way too high to be considered normal conversational pitch. Doyoung looked down at you again, not saying anything for a few instances. “Let me take you to him, then”, he simply said and walked out of the bathroom. “Doyoung!”, you called before realizing how much you’ve missed having his name roll on your tongue. “Please, don’t bother. It’s alright”, you added when reaching him. He stopped, waiting for you to catch up. “I insist”, he replied sternly. “This is the least I can do to make it up to you for destroying your dress”. You knew how stubborn he could get and if you weren’t feeling so many different things altogether, you would have rolled your eyes at him. You sighed and followed him. Entering the hall again, you gulped and lifted yourself on the tiptoes, staring around the room as if effectively looking for your man. “Uhm-”, you murmured unsurely. Doyoung crossed his arms on his chest and looked around as well. “Uh…”, you were about to get a panic attack. What should you do? Be honest? Yes, be honest then go outside and dig a fucking hole to bury yourself in, you fucking loser. What were you thinking? Why was it necessary to tell him that you were over him? Why was it necessary to invent a stupid ass story? “There!”, you exclaimed after a minute and just walked hurriedly towards a random guy, praying that he would play along. Please, please, please. Doyoung followed you and as you reached the man’s shoulders you just slid your arm underneath his. The man turned around, reasonably surprised, and just looked at your wide eyes, telling him to just shut up and do what you were about to tell him to do. “I’m sorry for being away for so long. What a bad date I am, right?”, then you opened your mouth in a sequence of loud “ha ha ha”, making the guy feel even more uncomfortable. He furrowed his eyebrows at your almost desperate expression, not missing the way you were tilting your head towards Doyoung, standing with hands in his pockets behind you. “Oh”, the guy finally said as if finally understating. Then his eyes light up amused and he tugged at your arm, making you come closer. “It’s alright, darling. I hope you’re fine?”, he put on a worried expression eyeing your bandaged finger and holding your hand to look at it closely.   You looked at him, surprised that he was able to catch up on that so effortlessly but pleased at the same time. Thank God. “It’s just a little cut. I dropped my glass”, you explained and inhaled sharply as the guy brought your hand to his lips and kissed your knuckles. It was so sudden that you definitely felt your heart flutter. “To make the boo-boo go away faster”, the guy explained as if obvious. Doyoung was still standing there like a big and dark shadow, so you turned around to face him when he cleared his throat. “Oh, Doyoung, hi, didn’t see you there”, the guy looked up as if suddenly aware of the other’s presence. “Yeah, sure. Then I’ll be going now. Take care”, Doyoung spoke directing the last phrases to you. “Wait, you guys know each other?”, you asked surprised, staring at one first then at the other. You were already preparing yourself for the embarrassing moment of having to introduce them to each other, not knowing what to say about Doyoung and not even knowing the guy’s name. The fact that you didn’t have to do that made the air feel slightly easier to breathe in but at the same time, a weird shiver of worry caressed your spine. The guy, indeed, pressed his hand on the small of your waist as a warning. You looked at him and saw the way he smiled, showing all of his teeth, speaking through them. “This is a company party, darling. We all work together. Did you forget?”, he asked with a tight smile. You swallowed nothing feeling your throat suddenly dry. “Oh yeah, haha, wow, I must be very tired”, you chuckled bringing one hand to your head as if suddenly exhausted. “Haha indeed”, the guy replied with a big smile but it was almost obvious that it was fake.  Doyoung looked at both of you, unamused as if watching a terrible play. You were about to say something else since the embarrassment was crawling on your skin, but you didn’t need to as Doyoung spared you of further awkwardness. “See you on Monday then, and please, for the love of God, help me finish that assignment, alright?”, he spoke. The guy put his hand on his hip with a daring face. “I’m too good to be your helper”, he smiled. You gasped. That guy was speaking like that to the CEO himself? Was he doing that to help you out? You tugged at his hand trying to tell him to stop, that there was no need for him to act like that. But Doyoung just sighed as if already used to that behavior and rolling his eyes he just walked away. You couldn’t help but look at his back and legs as they were drifting away every step more, as if praying for him to not go, not again. “What are you doing?”, you finally whispered concerned to the guy after taking your eyes off Doyoung. “Are you insane?” The guy looked at you as if you were the insane one between the two. And maybe he was right. “Aren’t you afraid he’s going to fire you?”, you asked again, explaining your shock. The guy furrowed his eyebrows at you as if not understanding, then he laughed. “Who? Doyoung?”, he laughed even harder. You looked at him confused. “He’s the CEO of this company. What are you laughing about?”, you were getting a little irritated. The guy swiped an imaginary tear out of his eye. “That loser wishes to be the CEO”, he commented. “What are you talking about?”. You felt your head hurting. He breathed in and out, suddenly bored, looking at you from head to toe, as if finally asking himself what the fuck do you want from him. “Who are you anyway?”, he asked. You puffed your cheeks. “Later! What do you mean he’s not the CEO?”, you asked urgently. “I mean”, he started, finally sliding his arm away from yours, “that he’s not the fucking CEO”, he finished. “We’re just co-workers. We work in the same department”. You unfocused your gaze as if thinking about what he has just said. The guy shook his head as if dealing with a weirdo and grabbed a glass of champagne from a passing waiter. “I just don’t understand”, you finally spoke again. The guy didn’t reply and just drank, but his face was screaming “because you’re fucking stupid”. Then you tugged at his arm, making him lean down towards you, closer to your face, and whispered to his ear. “He is the former CEO's son”, you shared the secret, wondering if Doyoung was working in a lower position to hide his origins. The guy listened with wide eyes then looked at you and gasped when you finished. “No. fucking. way”, he articulated theatrically.   “Hey”, he then stopped a random dude by slapping the back of his hand on his chest. “Did you know that Kim Doyoung from the IT department is - the CEO's son?”, he asked. You jolted and squeezed his arm as to stop him from talking. What the fuck was he doing? But the dude looked at him with no particular reaction besides pure confusion. “Yeah?”. The guy turned around to you with a fake surprised face. “Oh no! Did you hear that? Everyone knows!”, he exclaimed putting his hand on his cheek.  You stared at him for a few seconds, breathing in slowly, then you just hit his arm. The guy giggled at your reaction and sprinted one step away. “You’re a fucking asshole”, you accused him. “It’s just”, he laughed, “your face was priceless. You thought you were sharing a top-notch state secret. I can’t believe I’m having so much fun at a company party. I’m glad I came”, he said. You were shocked and angry. How dare this guy to mock you and laugh at you like that? You were already out of your own fucking mind because it was the first working day of your whole life, you’ve just met Doyoung after being sure to not see him again, you’ve discovered that he is indeed married after struggling with the most excruciating pain for months because of that, you acted in a full-on rom-com just now, and you still had to be the subject of this guy’s jokes? “Well, then why is he working such a low position as you when he can be the CEO?”, you tried to insult him, but the guy looked unbothered. “What is this? A Korean drama?”, he chuckled. “He can’t just climb the ladder with blood alone. He has to work his ass off just like everybody else. From the bottom”. You really had no idea what to do with all of the information roaming your head. What the fuck was that? Did he marry a random girl just to have a normal position in his own company? Did he sacrifice his life for something that anyone could have?  The guy looked at your expressionless face. “What’s up with this situation anyway? Was Doyoung bothering you before?”, he asked suddenly. You jerked your head towards him surprised. “What? No, why would he?”, you shook your head. “I mean, why wouldn’t he?”, the guy replied, staring you down with a little smirk. You rolled your eyes at his flirt.  “Well”, you crossed your arms on your chest, “maybe because he’s married?”, you said confidently and hoped he didn’t see the way your lower lip trembled while saying that. The guy choked on his drink. “He’s married?”, he asked shocked. “You didn’t know?”, you eyed him, secretly pleased that you were one step ahead of him but at the same time worried dead that you’ve just made a huge mistake by saying that. “He also has the ring”. The guy tilted his head to the side as if thinking. “That doesn’t look like a wedding ring to me”, he commented. “Not that I look at men’s hands or anything”, he added quickly, going back to sipping from his glass. “Well, he is married. Trust me. But don’t say that to anyone else”, you spoke, your eyes drifting to where Doyoung was talking to some people. Even from afar, you could see the way his lips curved in a fake smile. You sighed. You couldn’t believe he was there, in the same room, and you talked, and you saw his face again. God. You were feeling so much as so intensely that you were under the impression of not being able to feel anything at all. “Ohhh”, the guy suddenly exclaimed giving you a mild shock for how close and loud he was, “so, he’s your ex-boyfriend. And now you discover that he’s married!”, he added even louder with wide eyes as if finally understating everything. “God, I fucking love this party”, he chuckled to himself. You grabbed a drink as well, finishing it all in one go. “He’s not my ex-boyfriend”, you replied not giving him any other explanations. “And be quiet. Maybe he doesn’t want people to know”. The guy clicked his tongue as if not believing you but not wanting to be seen as rude by asking other questions. He sighed and you sighed as well, both looking at the way people were moving around, forming groups and changing them up, laughing, chatting, having a good time. You felt like they were on another planet, their energy so different from the one you had inside. It was inevitable. You knew it. It was about to come. You would end up crashing down in the taxi going home, or randomly as you were pouring down cereal for breakfast. You were feeling them crawling under your skin, the feelings, but at that moment, you decided to still bath in the bliss all of the shocking experiences gifted you. “Thank you, for, you know, before...”, you added vaguely after a few moments. “No problem. I was getting bored anyway”, he shrugged. “I’m Y/N, by the way”, you extended your hand. He took it. “Nice to meet you”, he smiled. “I’m Haechan”. 

[michaelbogild]

Quotes by Mehmet Murat ildan

A beautiful mind is like a beautiful path! The more you travel with it, the more you find peace and happiness!

A beautiful smile without any reason is the smile of the existence!

A bird without wings and a man without art are both condemned to wander in low places; they can never soar up to those unrivalled heights.

A cat’s New Year dream is mostly a bird! Don’t be like a cat; in New Year, dream something that you have never dreamed! Target for new things!

A good book is a lighthouse; a wise man is a lighthouse; conscience is a lighthouse; compassion is a lighthouse; science is a lighthouse! They all show us the true path! Keep them in your life to remain safe in the rocky and dark waters of life!

A little happy house is the strongest castle in this whole universe!

A long walk in a long beach shortens every kind of sorrow!

A romantic person will know from the bottom of his heart that no source of light can ever replace the mysterious beauty of a candle!

A street full of shadows will teach you what life is much better than the street full of lights!

A waterfall cannot be silent, just as the wisdom! When they speak, the voice of power speaks!

An uneducated society will eventually turn into something lower than a herd of animals!

Are you a stupid sheep in the flock or a free eagle in the sky? Look at the mirror, what are you? Are you some dullish cattle in the herd or a wise owl in the forest? Look at the mirror, what are you?

Autumn is the greatest reminder: It reminds us how dreamlike beauties our earth has and it reminds us how all these beautiful dreams can easily vanish!

Carry your bag by yourself; carry your umbrella by yourself; open your door by yourself; light your own candle! Do your job by yourself! Don’t use others! Don’t behave like a king, don’t behave like a queen! Be humble!

Clouds in the sky very much resembles the thoughts in our minds! Both changes perpetually from one second to another!

Cowards cannot pass beyond the walls or beyond the wire fences! For them, frontiers are always the end of the road!

Disappointment means that things haven’t worked out the way you wanted! And now what to do? Very simple: Stand up and walk! Cut the tragedy because our limited time must always be used for the forward movements!

Don’t follow any leader; don’t obey to anyone; crowds are slaves; take an independent stance; take orders only from your own mind!

Don’t say deep things to shallow people and don’t talk about shallow things with the deep people!

Elephants don’t know anything about the world of ants; the peaks of mountains are oblivious of what is happening on the plains!

Enlarge your windows till you get a window where you can see the whole universe with one look!

Every long separation is a test: A test to see how powerful or how weak the will of reuniting is!

Every morning is a revolution against the darkness!

Every New Year must be celebrated at the heart of nature - in the middle of a forest or by the side of a lake under billions of stars - because it is nature who has made our existence possible!

Every season has its own art and the art of autumn is to bewitch the people!

Every time it rains, the soil counts every drop to know exactly how many times to thank to God!

Farewell is a beautiful and a soft word and yet it is a horrible and a heavy thing too!

Flowers are the Romeos and the Juliets of the nature!

Flowers have the greatest talent in converting an ordinary place into a magical palace!

For a dark street, sunshine is most welcome; for a wounded soul, love is most welcome!

For a new year to bring you something new, make a move, like a butterfly tearing its cocoon! Make a move!

For the cowards, all doors are locked; for the daring, all doors are open!

For the land, the sea is beautiful; for the sea, the land is beautiful!

Forest is a dream where you may find yourself and dream is a forest where you may lose yourself!

Full moon is a good fisherman; every eyes are easily caught in his net!

Genius tries to conquer the world with art, with songs, with words; stupid tries to conquer it with sword, with guns, with arrows!

Give freedom to colours and then you shall meet the rainbow everywhere!

Great artists come and go; they are born and they die; but there is one exception who has been living for thousands of years and still continues creating new works, new beauties every year: The Autumn!

Happiness has only one colour: The Bright! The bright of red, the bright of green, the bright of any colour! Happiness is bright! It shines, it sparkles, it glints!

He who does not walk against the arrows cannot talk about the strength of his shield!

If the storm underestimates your power, nothing happens to him; but if you underestimate the power of the storm, you sink!

If we had known everything in this universe, we would have had to find another universe to feed our curiosity, because what keeps alive man is the curiosity!

If you are good at building bridges, you will never fall into the abyss!

If you are sure of tomorrow, there is no fool greater than you!

If you close your eyes, no lighthouse can help you!

If you do not have the concept of distance, you may reach an unreachable place!

If you feel you have to open a particular door, open it, otherwise all your life that door will haunt your mind!

If you have carefully examined hundred people you met in your life journey, it means that you have read hundred different books! Every person you know is a book; world is full of walking books; some are boring, some are marvellous, some are weak, some are powerful, but they are all useful because they all carry different experiences of different paths!

If you have ever walked in Paris, you will see that Paris will ever walk in your memoires!

If you love yourself first, you will find your Valentine much quicker!

If you move faster than the music, it will look strange; if you move slower than the music, it will look strange! Be like autumn leaves which follow exactly the rhythm of the wind!

If you open your eyes very wide and look around you carefully, you will always see a lighthouse which will lead you to the right path! Just watch around you carefully!

If you see a castle under fog, you must walk there to meet the extraordinary dreams!

In a society where everyman is fox-minded, you need to be foxier than the fox!

In autumn, don’t go to jewelers to see gold; go to the parks!

In deep waters, you encounter only the wise and the brave; in shallow waters, the ignorant and the coward!

In defeat, look at the stars; in victory, look at the ground! From the stars, you get hope; from the ground, you get caution.

In the middle of nowhere, an old wooden bridge is a golden bridge!

Instead of politicians, let the monkeys govern the countries; at least they will steal only the bananas!

Leave city, leave reality; enter forest, enter fantasy!

Let me tell you something big: Give importance to little things!

Let the people discover you! You might have the key of the locked doors in their lives! Open yourself to the world; you might be the magic the world needs!

Let yourself disappear in the darkness; if you are loved, people will come and find you with torches in their hands! Love is a great searcher; it always searches the loved one! To see who really love you, just disappear!

Lighten your life with a simple life!

Magic of the nights is always much impressive than the magic of the days!

Man must be able to think freely and he must be able to express his thoughts freely! He who is against this is not only fascist and primitive but at the same time is a very great coward also! Only the brave and the honourable men are never afraid of freedom of thought and freedom of expression of ideas! Just like the cockroaches do not like the light, evil minds also do not like the freedom of thoughts!

Man must behave like a lighthouse; he must shine day and night for the goodness of everyman.

Max Lucado says that ‘A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.’ That is true and a man who wants to find out the truth must also do the same thing!

New Year’s most glorious light is sweet hope!

No flower is happy in a vase, because vase is nothing but an ornate coffin for the flower.

No king has a throne more beautiful than a bench covered with the autumn leaves!

No matter how right or how beautiful your path is, never try to impose your path on others! Remember that flowers by no means pull bees by force to their world! Your path is your poem; if people like your poem, they will fondly join you in your path!

No season appeals to the eyes as much as autumn; no season touches the souls as powerfully as autumn and no season invites us to the world of mournful thoughts as intensely as autumn!

Not every lake dreams to be an ocean. Blessed are the ones who are happy with whom they are.

Nothing is more mysterious than watching a lonely man who is taking for a night walk in a foggy street!

Photography is an art of teleporting the past into the future.

Pigs are dirty, but I will tell you something dirtier: Liars! Untruth always smells like rotten garbage!

Rain is nature’s art; umbrella is man’s art.

Real love and Sun have something in common; they are so bright that they don't have shadows, they are free of darkness!

Rumi says love turns thorns into flowers. This means that hate turns flowers into thorns!

Searching for the real faces of every face we met! This is what our life is!

Silent streets have many things to say.

Similar souls wander in the similar places! They may not know each other, but often they touch the same winds, they step on the same leaves, their looks are lost in the same horizons!

Simple life and peaceful mind are very close friends!

Smile is a good reply to the dark world.

Some looks are heavier than the thickest books because they carry the saddest stories of life!

Something reduces the speed of the world and that something is stupidity! Stupidity is a boring friction!

Sometimes you must do crazy things to discover the life beyond your life, to enter the unknown zone beyond your known zone!

Strong winds create giant waves; strong wills create giant men!

Sun gives light; torch gives light, candle gives light; smiling gives light.

Sunset is so marvellous that even the sun itself watches it every day in the reflections of the infinite oceans!

Sunset is the opening music of the night.

The best thing you can give to a child is to create an environment where the child can develop an independent mind so that he will be the man of no one and the instrument of no system!

The fate of the bridges is to be lonely; because bridges are to cross not to stay!

The first step to be a good man is this: You must deeply feel the burden of the stones someone else carrying.

The greatest storms on our Earth break not in nature but in our minds!

The Moon always finds an opportunity to turn our attention from the ground beneath our feet to the sky above our head!

The most beautiful springs are those that come after the most horrible winters!

The most beautiful sunset is the one which suddenly appears in front of you while you are walking pensively!

The most precious light is the one that visits you in your darkest hour!

The scent of the morning is prepared by the night; the scent of the night is prepared by the day; everything helps everything!

The trains always arrive at your station. The question is which one to take?

The wisdom of bridges comes from the fact that they know the both sides, they know the both shores!

There is a hidden message in every waterfall. It says, if you are flexible, falling will not hurt you!

There is no real silence for the sensitive ears and there is no real tranquility for the sensitive hearts!

There is nothing more beautiful than living a simple life in this complex universe!

There is so much beauty in autumn and so much wisdom; so much separation and so much sorrow!

There is so much hope in a little flower and so many flowers in a little hope!

Those who mastered in the art of falling have no fear of rising!

To get inspiration, go to the nature; for silence, go to the nature; to question the meaning of life, go to the nature; to feel the existence, go to the nature; to protect your mind, to reach the truth, to think about the universe go to the nature!

To speak with the shadow, you must know the language of the darkness!

To think is sacred; let every person think freely! To express what you think is sacred; let every person express his thought freely! If you do this, you prove that you are a conscientious and a moral human being! If you don’t do this, you just declare yourself being fascist!

Tradition kills originality; you keep repeating the same things in tradition! Behave like the sky; always create new and different things; be original!

Umbrella is comfort, rain is life! You must often leave comfort to touch the life!

Watching the infinite horizons gives you infinite dreams, infinite ideas, infinite paths! Choose a great target and then you will see that great instruments will appear for you to reach that target!

Water is the most perfect traveller because when it travels it becomes the path itself!

We are all on the stairs, my friend; some of us are going down, some us are going up!

We see what we are only through reflection and thus the more our reflections occur, the less our mistakes will be!

What do you need in the New Year? You need a dream; your dream needs an action; and your action needs right thinking! Without right thinking, you can have only unrealised dreams!

What is the name of your dream? A lovely wooden cottage in the middle of a forest? Or walking in an endless autumn path? What is the name of your dream? Don’t give a name, always give a list! Fill yourself with dreams because dream is the path to reality!

What you do when nobody is there is your true you!

When everything looks like a magical oil painting, you know you are in Autumn!

When the moonlight and the waterfall come together, all other things fade from the scene!

When the spirit of nature touches us, our hearts turn into a butterfly!

When the sun is setting, leave whatever you are doing and watch it.

When you are happy, you feel the sunshine even inside the fog; when you are unhappy, you feel the fog even in the sunshine.

When you are on the bright side of life, do not forget the people who are on the dark side and remember that man can easily slip from one side to the other!

When you increase the number of gardens, you increase the number of heavens too!

When you lose your path, you get an opportunity to discover a world you have never known! And better worlds are often found this way! Darkness and uncertainty hide presents in itself!

When you read a book, book also reads you! The book will know who you are from the sentences you underline!

Winter invites white; white invites silence; silence invites peace. You see, there is so much peace in walking on the snow!

Winter is dead; spring is crazy; summer is cheerful and autumn is wise!

Wise man is the rooster of the universe: He awakens the unawake!

Without the stairs of the past, you cannot arrive at the future!

You can never leave a place unless you leave that place in your mind!

You can walk in a dream while you are awake: Just walk in the misty morning of a forest!

You either keep your childhood innocence or you rot!

You need a temple to feel good spiritually? Go to a beautiful garden!

You need new roads to discover new places!

[clairecolemanoriginals]

Prologue

Rain pelted hard against the windowpane, melding with the sound of gunfire. A battle raged on the doorsteps of the small town. The women were forced to stay behind, as usual, to tend to the children while their sons, husbands, and fathers fought for their homes. Screams of the wounded could be heard on the wind haunted the worried. For days, the women sat in their homes with the crying children waiting for silence to come. All she could do was stand there and look out the window at the chaos that insured. Even as she waited for silence, she dreaded it. There was no way to tell which side was winning, to her, all dying men sound the same.

A loud crack echoed in the winds of the storm startling the dreamer awake.

Yellow streetlights shone through the translucent curtains. The pale lighting proved enough light to see around the room. Clothes, video games, and junk food packages littered the floor. On the bed, two figures could be seen. The first a young man, dead asleep the sheets pooled around his narrow hips. The other was a young woman who eyed the room wide-eyed, the sheets clutched tightly to her chest. A thin layer of sweat glistened on her skin in the mood light and her heavy breathes broke the silence.

She sighed heavily; another night went to waste with the consumption of alcohol.

Dessera barely remembered where she was or who she was with for that matter, but the pounding in her head suggested that she wasn't at her apartment like she had hoped. Swinging her feet off the side of the bed and glanced around the room. What she saw disgusted her. At the center of the room was a gaming chair with open packages of all types of food. A soda bottle lay on its side, its contents having been spilled on the floor and never taken care of. The urge to puke washed over her at the sight and she took a deep breath as she looked for her clothes. She quickly found her discarded clothing next to the bed where the man had tossed them, and she pulled them over her body. The tight dress was a nuisance as she danced around trying to get the zipper up her back. As she stumbled around, she stepped on an empty package of chips and she froze at the sound. She glanced over her shoulder at the man on the bed, scared she had brought him out of his sleep but to her relief he simply shifted around in his sleep to hug his pillow.

"Typical." She muttered as she searched around his room for her clutch. She found it slightly tucked under the bed next to her thigh holster. Her eyes widened, remembering that she had been carrying. A cloudy memory crossed her mind of the man seeing the gun on her inner thing and calling her a badass. He had been way too drunk to even care about the fact that she'd had a rather small 9mm strapped to her throughout the night. She strapped the gun back to her leg, this time with the weapon on the outside and her dress over the top of it, not caring if it was covered or not.

She left the house as silently as she could, being careful to lock the bottom handle before she left to be courteous. Just like her dream, the weather seemed to be unforgiving in its downpour on her. Not that she minded. She loved the rain, preferred it to the hot days of summer. She did not like to be too warm and it was easier to layer up than cool down. Before she stepped off the porch, she checked her phone for the time and saw that it was three in the morning. And that she had 18 missed calls, 30 unread text messages, 3 voicemails. Panic bubbled in her chest as she brought the phone to her ear to listen to the message.

'Serra! I need help. I just got done with a hunt but I'm severely injured. Your place is the closest. I am headed there now, hopefully, I don't bleed out before you get this. Hurry! Please!' The answering box beeped and asked her what she wanted to do with the message, and she starred at the phone. The message had come through over thirty minutes ago and it was quite possible she was too late.

"Fuck!" She exclaimed. A chill ran through her body and she desperately wished she had a coat, but she couldn't think of that. Her little sister was very possibly bleeding out on her porch, and she needed to get to her as soon as possible. Luckily, there wouldn't be anyone on the roads at this time of the day and no one to question why she was running through the street.

As she ran, her heels dangling from her fingertips, she thought about where she was. Looking at all the signs she passed her foggy brain was able to tell her she was not too far from her apartment and her sister whom she hoped was still alive. She smelled like the guy she had woken up next to and it was suffocating her. Her friends had convinced her to go to the club last night and she had gotten very drunk on scotch. She danced the night away, and some of the mornings, the rest was a blur in her mind. She knew exactly what had happened after her fourth round. Her flirtation skills must have come out because she vaguely remembered catching the eye of some other highly intoxicated guy in glasses. He had been attractive, so she went for it. Next thing she knew she was waking up in a dark room from an extremely weird dream. Just a typical Sunday morning for her.

A loud honk brought her out of her thoughts, and she looked up to see a very expensive looking car inches from her legs. She looked around and realized she had run into the middle of an intersection in her haze. Stumbling out of the way, she yelled her apology and continued on her way. The pounding in her head still had not ceased and it was beginning to make her nauseous. "Fuck this hangover." She grumbled to herself shielding her eyes as the car she had almost run into pulled up in front of her.

"Miss?" A car door slammed, followed by the opening of an umbrella, and she stopped her feet where they were. "Miss? Are you alright?"

"Stop. Stop right there." Before the man could get any closer to her, she brandished her heels at him threateningly. All her running had tossed everything in her stomach and while she had been ignoring nausea for the last 5 minutes, she couldn't hold it in any longer. Without hesitation, she leaned over and, let the contents of her stomach hit the pavement. The man stopped where he was and held up his empty hand to show her, he meant no harm. She stood straight, eyes squinting as she wiped her mouth with her free hand and eyed him up and down looking for any signs of a supernatural being.

"Um... are you ok?" He asked her, tentatively taking a step closer. She lowered her 'weapon' after a moment, satisfied that he wasn't anything dangerous, and nodded. She met him in the middle and dropped her hand to her side, letting her heels dangle again.

"I apologize. I'm a hunter and not feeling the best. Can't be too careful." She stated in a rush and looked up at the man.

"That's alright, but is it normal for you to hold someone at heel point at 3 in the morning? Especially since you have a gun on your hip?" He inquired amused. She took a moment to really take a look at him and she realized that he was in a suit and tie. His features were hard to see in the low-lit street but assumed he had a mischievous look on his face from his tone of voice. She could see that he had dirty blonde hair, high cheekbones, and piercing blue eyes.

"What can I say, strangers bring out the best in me and I wouldn't need my gun to take you down" She finally answered.

Surprised by her blunt response he asked "Well, are you ok? Would you like a ride?"

"No, I'm alright. My home is close to here, I can walk just fine. Thank you for your concern." She gave him a small smile and made to go around him. A gentle hand shot out and caught her by the arm, stopping her. She looked up at him with wide eyes, a small flicker of fear started to grow in the pit of her stomach. Just because he was in a suit and showed no supernatural signs didn't mean he wasn't a threat. However, he knew she had a gun and that she was a hunter. He would be stupid to try anything. She let her fear simmer back down and turned it into a cautious awareness.

"Are you sure? You seem upset. I promise I mean well and you clearly can handle yourself." He was trying to look her in the eyes, but something told her he could see right through her attempts to hide her miserable state of mind. She was annoyed with herself for getting into the situation that had led to this. She knew better. On top of which her so-called "friends" had left her there.

"I live a ten-minute walk from here. I'll be alright." Her reply seemed to be lost in the pouring rain, but his ears seemed to pick up on her words.

"It's pouring and you're soaked. Allow me to get you to some heat before you get sick." His grip on her arm tightened for a second before falling to his side. She looked him dead in the eyes. There was no lie in his eyes, and she could tell by the tone of his voice that he held no ill will towards her.

"Alright. But if you pull any funny business, I will use my gun." She threatened, pointing at him with one hand and patting her gun with the other.

"I believe you." The man chuckled, seemingly unfazed but her threat. With a nod, she allowed him to help her into the car. He turned the heater up the moment he got in and she eagerly placed her hands against the vent. She was still on her guard but with her gun on her thigh, she figured she would probably be alright with this man.

"Thank you."

"My pleasure. Do you mind me asking why you seem so upset that you run into the street?" He asked her as he set off in the direction she pointed to. She glanced over at him, wondering how the man didn't question why she was barely dressed and out so early this morning. He glanced at her, a look of pure innocence on his face and she raised an eyebrow at him in suspicion. Does this man live under a rock? She thought to herself before she responded.

"I...went home with a man earlier this evening and decided not to stay the night." She told him as she stared out the window, completely missing the knowing smile on his face. This was all the information she was comfortable sharing with him. They lapsed into silence aside from the directions she gave him.

In reality, the car ride was only maybe three minutes long, but it felt like an eternity. She had her hand on her weapon the entire time as a precaution, but he made no move towards her. As they pulled into the apartment complex, she directed him in the opposite direction of her apartment. There was no way she was going to let him see which apartment she was in, especially since her sister was there injured. He pulled into a vacant spot and she turned taking the seatbelt off. He put the car in park and looked over at her.

"Thank you for the ride." She said as she put her hand on the door handle.

"Of course. I assume you would like me to leave the parking lot before you go to your apartment." He stated and she laughed. That is exactly what she had planned on asking him.

"How did you know?" She chuckled, shaking her head.

"Lucky guess. Here," He reached behind him into the backseat and grabbed the umbrella he had placed on the floor. "take this. No need to get any more soaked than you already are."

"...thank you." This time she was shocked by his genuine kindness and took the umbrella from him. She smiled and opened the door. As she stepped out of the car, she opened the umbrella and held it over her head. Before the man could say anything more to her or ask her name, she gently closed the door and made her way over to the walkway. He gave her a small nod and a smile before he turned around and pulled out of the spot. As he turned back around to face her again, she saw a flash of dark hair and horns and a chill ran down her spine. The moment she registered what she had seen though it was gone, and the handsome young man's face was back smiling at her. He waved goodbye at her and she stiffly waved back.

Was she just seeing things or had that man been a demon?

[crypticalwitch]

Violet Eyed Curse

I (still) blame the awesome hermitcraft Mag pirate Au for my ideas. So enjoy how Xerxes met the first member of his crew

Part 1:

Lost to Greed, Violet Eyed Curse, Dead Woman Walking

Warnings- Pirates, Main Character Death, Ghosts, Ambiguous death.

It was one of the first towns Xerxes ventured to. A town he had been told was successful and strong, yet when he entered the city with haunting fog that followed him, it was desolate, and empty. The few who wandered the streets were sallow and pale.

Xerxes was sure he lucky was already dead, else he might catch whatever plague fell the village. He quickly did the shopping, drinks, food, ropes, whatever his ship of one may need, asking his question, the one he had done even in life,

"Has anyone with the name Void been here recently?" A desperate search for his brother even on the other side of the veil. Typically ment with a no, or at worst, a "You just missed him."

All this he had done, before slipping into the silent tavern.

Xerxes was a sailor and a Pirate, he had been in many a tavern before his death, and even after. Taverns typically were full of happy chatter or drinking songs, often both. The tavern was eerily quiet, the little chatter there was of other sailors who wondered what had happened, and then an elderly man wandered in.

The man was silver haired with a long beard, twisted over a cane, with a sorrowful look. Xerxes could tell he had been either a sailor or minor in his younger days, but he had stayed here. He ordered a drink, took a swig and grabbed the attention of everyone around him with a loud, sharp whistle.

"The town was not always like this." the man's voice was deep and gravely. "Once it was thriving, a bustle of life and harmony, until the first man died. And then another, and another. when the bodys were eventually found, they were strung up in ritual curealty, tied to elm trees hands and legs bound tight." Xerxes took a drink, and rubbed his wrists, even after death he could feel the sharp hempen rope his old crew used. "They panicked, superstition and suspicion ran rampant in the town, then he came into town. A young man, a traveler with more than his share of scars and vibrant eyes as purple as morning glories came into town. He had hardly asked the tavern keep his questions before a mob came and took him away."

The man sighed. "Us elders and Sea men tried to warn them. "Thoughts give power" we said, "If you kill him with the idea that he has wronged the town, and he is innocent, he may not know mercy" we said "you have no PROOF," we said. They did not listen. The man was kept for a year and a day, before going to the gallows." he shook his head, "They hardly buried him in a grave. The elders and more superstitious of us held a ceremony to apologise, and yet its done nothing to help."

The man looked out the window to the setting sun. "We are cursed now. Illness spreads like fire, and none can leave. A fire broke out the other day at the courthouse, burnt everything to the ground 'cept the prisoners themselves, and the noose used to hang the traveler. Some seem to be immune to the illness and can leave the city, us elders, the seafolk, the few who did the ceremony, but the rest...the rest are dying."

The man smiled, his eyes dark and damp, before taking another swig. "You'd best not stay longer than needed, lest you be unable to leave, and if you see a man walking out around playing with cards, do not speak to him and most of all do not play his game. for now with this fog, the veil is thin, and you don't want to be on the other side."

A drunken man scoft, "Why should we be so worried about a bit of fog, no big deal."

"ugh," One of the man's fellows said, punching the drunkard in the arm, "Have you no memory of The Grand Sea? Fog when none should be is a sign of a ghost ship!"

Xerxes sipped his drink feeling very awkward at the mention of ghost ships. but then his mind slipped to the story. Perhaps he could find this mysterious spirit, he rose and payed for his drink, before slipping out into the night.

It took him too long of strolling the street to find the mysterious ghost. He strode through the streets, the thick fog that followed him swirling with a faint red glow.  It wasn't til he sat down on the steps, that he saw the man.  

He wore a thin leather coat, pulled tight over a ripped and torn shirt. His hair was long and unkempt, gold curls shining in the few lamps and candles whos light reached the foggy streets. He seemed to cast his own glow in the swirling cloud, a soft purple, that same hue his eyes glowed, that seemed to flickr as he shuffled the deck of cards. It wasn't any set of playing cards Xerxes had seen before, but the design was familiar, an old set a fortune cards he had seen in a novelty shop once.

He had always through Fortune cards were silly. Tarot cards, maybe, but fortune cards made no sense. Fortune cards were always blank, and they were said to fill in images when important things happened to you or people close to you. Xerxes had heard stories of sailors cards depicting their first ship or storm, others depicting deaths in families before they even knew. But they were always tales, and Xerxes never put much stock into tales of board sailors.

The man nearly passed Xerxes by as he inspected the cards. Xerxes had to leap up and float-run toward the strange spirit.

"Lovely night, isn't it?" The man said, his accent very different from the man's in the Tavern, much more similar to Xerxes accent. He was hardly looking at Xerxes.

"Any night it's not pouring hell is nice to me." Xerxes said, falling in step with the man, who was a decent way shorter than him.

"Your a Sailor then?" The man said, his voice peaking slightly, before calming down, "Must be nice to be on land again then, even if it's here."

 "I'll admit," Xerxes laughed slightly, "Being off the sea for a time is nice,"

Silence passed as the pair walked soundlessly. Xerxes wonder if his strange companion realised they made no noise as they walked.

"There's a good one about that..." Xerxes said, hoping to fill the silence, "Though it's quite hard to sing alone i suppose."

"A good what?" the man said, looking at Xerxes for the first time since they began walking.

"A good sea shanty," Xerxes said, looking to the stars, "those are fairly difficult to sing alone."

"How does it go?" childlike Excitement flooding into the spirits voice, and Xerxes's memories of NP slipped into his mind.

Xerxes took a deep breath,

"Come me boys and heave with me, Let's get off this curs-ed sea, Let's be home to lovers and wives,And leave behind these four hour lives.." Xerxes sang, his spirit companion followed along, repeating where it felt right, but let Xerxes lead.

A comfortable silence hung between the two as they stalked down the pathways. and that how it went. For almost a week straight,Xerxes would muddle around town, let the sun go down, and meet with his mysterious friend. He would tell stories of far off places he traveled when his was alive, and Xerxes would teach him Songs. and when the sun came up, they would go their separate ways.

and that's how it went on, until the last day.

"Zedaph..." the spirit suddenly said as they walked past the ships, all covered in thick fog.

"what?"

"My name, its Zedaph," the man relaxed, his deck of cards placed away in a case. "no one here asked or cared about my name, so someone should know, even after im dead."

Xerxes placed a hand on Zedaphs shoulder. "Xerxes Void. It's nice to meet you, from one spirit, to another."

"...YOUR DEAD TOO?!"

Xerxes laughed, "yup!!"

"Oh my god I didn't notice!" Zedaph laughed, a wide grin on his face. "wow...so how are you here? aren't you stuck somewhere?"

"....you're not stuck here?" Xerxes said, "You know that right?"

"wat?"

"Yeah, we can just...go...places." Xerxes smiled.

"I thought I was stuck here and would never..."Zedaph trailed off.

"do you want to come with me, Zedaph?"

"huh?"

"The Void Seeker only has me on it, would you like to join me?"

"REALLY!" Zedaphs purple eyes shone brighter.

"I wouldnt ask if I wasn't serious."

[thejollyroger-writer]

To Serve and Protect - Chapter 4

y’all, this is just about my favorite chapter ever. enjoy. please don’t yell too much. 

SUMMARY: Detective Killian Jones has been investigating a stalker-turned-murderer for months by the time he goes home from the bar with Emma Swan. But when he thinks he sees the very man in question outside her apartment, can he separate his feelings for her and his need to keep her safe?

TRIGGERS: well, this is a fic about a serial killer. mentions of violence and death, with some physical violence/whump coming in this chapter. as always, if you need me to discuss this further for you to be comfortable, message me. – rated teen for later chapters

Prologue // Ch. 1 // Ch. 2 // Ch. 3 // Ch. 4 on AO3

-- -- -- -- 

She feels like she’s moving in water. Something’s not right — in fact, something is terribly wrong. She shouldn’t — she shouldn’t be here. She knows where here is, knows that she’s been here before, but she can’t place it. 

Everything is wrong. 

Everything is… hazy. Foggy. It’s hot. It’s — dear god, it’s way too hot. Is that why she can’t see? 

Breathe, Emma, she thinks. She thinks it, but that doesn’t help much. It’s like there’s something pressing on her lungs, something holding her down. She has to get a hold of herself, she has to, because if she doesn’t… 

It’s like she’s been here before. Not just in this situation, but in this… She tries to look around, to figure out where she is, because she knows she’s been here before. 

That’s when she hears it. It chills her to the bone, hearing it again after so long, but it’s a sound that she will never forget. A sound that’s haunted her nightmares for years. Because a laugh like that is something that she will never forget. 

“What did you do?” she says, but her voice is wrong — it’s not coming from her, but from somewhere else. 

He laughs again, a laugh that she feels in her spine. Pulls the cigarette out from between his teeth and passes it down the line, to Felix, who uncrosses his arms and takes it from him. His eyes never leave hers. None of them do, the whole semi-circle standing around her watching her from the chair. 

“Oh, Ems,” he says finally, barking out a laugh as he crosses his arms over his chest. “You have to know that it has nothing to do with you, right?” 

“What does that even mean?” It’s her voice, she feels the words in her throat, but she’s still not the one saying them. 

In place of an answer, Neal checks his wrist, a smile spreading across his lips. No, no, not — not a smile. A smirk? He looks back at her, silent. 

“Neal, what is going on?” Her voice gets caught in her throat, choking back a sob. “Please, baby, tell me what’s happening.” 

“Oh, baby ,” he says, an obvious air of humor in his voice. 

Emma finds none of this funny. 

“You fell for it,” he says, leaning closer to her. She can smell the cigarettes on his breath, which he knows she hates but never stopped doing anyway. “All of it, like the scared little girl you are,” he whispers. He smiles. 

“Neal,” she sobs, feeling it in her throat even though it’s still not where the sound is coming from. 

There’s a knock on the basement door — that’s where she is, in the basement of the big house — and Rufio opens it, revealing two police officers. 

“Mr. Gold?” one of them calls, and everyone turns towards Neal. 

His aura changes immediately, turning from the criminal Emma now knows him to be and back to the ambassador’s son. He straightens his shoulders, pushes his hair back into a more proper style. “Yes, thank you for coming out so quickly, officers.” His voice is less harsh, more serious. He smiles at them, but something is off. 

One of the officers returns his smile, obviously taken by his charm . Emma feels the words he’s going to say before he says them, like ice running through her veins: “Well, when we get a call for a citizen’s arrest from the ambassador’s house, it’s a bit of a priority.” 

Citizen’s arrest. 

“You fell for it.” 

Suddenly, she fears she may lose the contents of her stomach. 

No, no , not quite. She… knows she’s going to lose the contents of her stomach. 

“You’ll find the stolen watches in the truck of her car,” Neal tells them. “The yellow bug just out these doors. And I think —” he turns to her, as if he wasn’t already totally sure of the answer. “I think she’s also wearing one, too.” 

The bastard . The total, absolute, god damned bastard. He knows full well she’s wearing one because he put it there himself just the night before, sitting next to her in the park overlooking the harbor. “Just one more day,” he had told her, tightening the band around her wrist. “Tomorrow I’m getting my affairs in order and then we can go wherever you want.” 

Bastard. 

“No, no, please,” she says, her sobs getting caught in her-throat-but-not- her -throat again. “You don’t understand.” She doesn’t even try to fight them, knows there’s no use trying to fight with the officers. 

If Neal stole those watches — which wouldn’t surprise her anymore — they are in the back of her car. It was part of their getaway plan, selling the watches, though he told her they were gifts . Just like the one he gave her — a gift . 

“I’ll - I’ll tell you everything.” It’s the truth. She is going to tell them everything, all she knows about Neal, but whether they’ll believe her or not is a different story. She’s 17, a minor, an orphan. She has no one, no ambassador father to pay for a big shot lawyer. All she has is the truth , and it’s useless. 

“Please, no, no,” she says, but it’s — wrong. Suddenly everything is wrong, This isn’t — Neal’s laughter, the cigarette smoke, the laughs from the police officers — the laughs from the police officers? “Please, please, no.” 

She screams, bolts upright, wipes the sweat from her forehead. 

Takes a deep breath. 

A nightmare . 

“Christ, Emma,” she whispers, her heart pounding in her throat.

She lays back down, trying to steady her breath as she kicks the comforter off of her legs. 

The comforter? She doesn’t own a comforter. What the—

Killian. She remembers it all at once, the detective, the apartment, the almost-pseudo-dating. The stalker. Is that why she’s had a nightmare about Neal? The first she’s had in… years, really, she realizes, running her fingers through her hair. 

She can’t steady her breath, she can’t regulate her heartbeat. She can’t — she squeezes her eyes shut — she can’t breathe. 

Would it be insane to — She shakes her head, sets it back down against the pillow, and tries to close her eyes again. 

But it’s like her senses are on high alert. Every movement, every creak of the foundation, the wind outside the windows, everything restarts the pounding of her heart. 

She knows what she has to do. When she opens the door to Killian’s bedroom, she’s surprised to see light shining from the lamp on the table behind him, though the book that he was obviously reading when he fell asleep has fallen on the floor. As quietly as she can, she moves across the living room before reaching to pick the book up off the floor. The cover is worn, obviously both aged and well-loved, but she can make out the words on the cover: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea . It pulls a smile to her face, thinking about a young Killian reading this very novel, packing it in his bag for every move she knows he’s gone through. 

And then he moves on the couch, a groan slipping either from his lips or from the springs beneath him, and Emma remembers what brought her out here in the first place, sitting on the arm of the couch by his head.

“Killian,” she whispers, running her fingers through his hair, startling him awake and calming him all at the same time. “Killian, I can’t sleep.” 

It takes him a moment to wake up entirely, but when his eyes meet hers, a soft smile crosses his face. “Aye, love, I’ve been graced with the same affliction. How do you think I can help you?” 

She pauses for a moment, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth before whispering, “Come sleep with me? Please?” 

It was the answer he’s been waiting for, but he is able to hold himself back from jumping off the couch. Instead, he just smiles before slowly standing up. “Of course.” 

Yes, it’s everything he’s wanted over the past few days, the chance to wrap his arms around her and tell her that everything is going to be okay, but when granted the opportunity, he finds himself unable to do anything, curling up on the edge of the bed as far from her as he can. Sure, she asked him to join her, but he in no way believes that to mean she wants the same. Just because they spent the first night together, just because she asked her to join him tonight, doesn’t make him assume that she is comfortable continuing their relationship the same way. She stays on her side for a few minutes, the room as silent as it is dark, until he hears her turn towards him, resting her cheek against his back. 

“You are allowed to touch me, you know.” The words are soft, whispered against the fabric of his tee-shirt, and all that he needs. He turns to her, wrapping her in a hug, her face pressed into his chest.

“I’m scared, Killian,” she whispers after a few minutes of silence, almost hoping that he has fallen asleep and doesn’t hear the confession. 

Instead, he moves his lips against her hair, inhaling her warm, inviting scent before responding, “I know, love. You have more than enough right to be. And I am, too, but I’m here for you.”

Though both of them move a few times to get comfortable, it is still the first night in what feels like weeks that Killian finds sleep quickly, finally a night when the visions that haunt his nightmares stay buried, peaceful until the light of the morning sun shines through the shades. 

(He has all intention of making her breakfast in the morning, but she has other plans, waking him up before his alarm with her lips against his neck and her hand slowly trailing down his stomach. He settles for a cup of coffee from Granny’s — again — but he’s certainly not complaining.)

“H—hey,  Jacinda,” Henry stutters, leaning up against the counter where she’s focused on the crossword puzzle in front of her, only half-paying attention to her dinner in front of her and the few customers in the diner. 

She hums, not turning towards him right away, before: “Do you know anything about basketball?” 

It’s just about the last thing he expects, and he snaps his mouth shut, any of his follow-up questions disappearing. “What?” 

“Basketball. There’s — I’m stuck on this clue, and I can’t figure it out, or anything around it.” 

“Well, what’s the clue?” he asks, pulling his cell phone from his back pocket. “I can—” 

“No!” she practically yells, almost smacking the device out of his hand, and he gawks up at her until a smile grows across her features. “That’s — you can’t do that, Henry, that’s cheating.”

He returns her smile, a soft blush rising to his cheeks. “Well, I don’t know anything about basketball, but maybe Killian can help? If you’d like to join us?”

She smiles, and he feels his heart rise up his throat. He’s had a crush on her for a while, almost for as long as he’s been back in Storybrooke, but he’s never done anything about it. 

Apparently the push that he needs to ask a girl out is a serial stalker. Great. 

“That would be great.” She takes the crossword and her glass of water, with Henry grabbing her plate of pasta before she has the chance to ask for help. He slides into the seat first, thankful that Emma and Killian have chosen to sit beside each other the past few days, and gives Jacinda the outside in case her dinner break ends early, though doubtful with how few patrons are in the diner. 

“I hope you don’t mind if I join you,” she says, though Emma is already smiling at her. 

“Of course, Miss Vidrio,” Killian says with a smile of his own. “You’re always welcome to join us.” 

“She was wondering if you know anything about basketball,” Henry says, which makes one of Killian’s eyebrows rise high on his forehead. 

“Not much, I’m afraid,” he says with a shrug. “But I’ll give it a shot.” 

Jacinda nods, turning her attention back down to the newspaper in front of her. “Okay, uh,” she mumbles, running her finger down the list of clues until she finds the one she’s looking for, then nods again. “ The NBA’s ‘Round Mound of Rebound ,” she reads. “Second letter is an a .” She turns her attention back to Killian, who shakes his head, so she turns to Henry. 

He just shrugs. 

And then Emma laughs, and every eye at the table turns to her. 

“Charles Barkley.” 

“What?” Jacinda says, trying to hold back a smile, but she turns her attention back down to the crossword puzzle. “I never took you for a sports fan.” 

Henry and Killian both laugh, and Emma leans back against the seat. 

“I’m not, really,” she says with a shrug, but that obviously doesn’t answer any of their questions — though she makes no move to explain, turning her attention instead towards Jacinda’s crossword puzzle. They’re still waiting on her to elaborate when Ruby steps in front of their table with a huff, seemingly frazzled even though the restaurant only has a handful of patrons. 

“Do you guys know what you want?”

With a laugh, Killian says, “I want to know why Emma knows so much about the NBA.” 

Ruby does not look impressed by Killian’s joke, but when she glances at Emma, the smirk on her face draws a smile on her own. 

Shaking her head, Emma sighs. “David is a huge basketball fan. And James likes football. But David used to have a poster of Barkley in his room, and it had that nickname as the caption. We used to make jokes about it all the time. Now, if you’re done interrogating me about my childhood, I think Ruby wants to take our dinner order.” 

If it weren’t for the stalker, Killian would go so far to say the next week and a half pass rather blissfully , with he and Emma able to develop a somewhat… normal relationship. On days when he has the time, he meets her somewhere for lunch — and even on days when he can’t take a formal lunch break, she sometimes shows up at the precinct with sandwiches for him and Henry. 

His life is almost normal. His favorite nights are nights like tonight, when he is able to cook for her. It’s something that he’d forgotten how much he enjoys, and between the beautiful mid-morning sun lighting up the farmers’ market set up in the park and the soft grey sundress that Emma found in the back of her closet that morning, it’s the best Saturday afternoon he’s had in a while, just spending time with her and gathering everything they need to make his mother’s chicken florentine recipe for dinner that night, joined by David and Mary Margaret and Henry and Jacinda; and even though, every once in a while, he catches a movement at the edge of his vision that makes his heart skip a beat and his stomach rise to this throat, he is able to convince himself that they’re nothing, that he has nothing to worry about — and that the stalker would never dare to attack them in such a public place. 

And he’s right. They make it through the afternoon without a problem — burgers for lunch, ice cream enjoyed under the shade of the park trees, plus stopping for a bottle of wine to share later, after the rest of their guests have left. The whole afternoon around Storybrooke, and no problems. 

When they get back to his apartment, however, it’s another story altogether. The door is open, Killian’s first sign that there’s a problem, and he hands the grocery bags to Emma so he can pull his pistol out from underneath his tee-shirt. 

“Call Graham,” he says, also handing her his phone. “Tell him it’s you and that we need backup.” 

Trying — and failing — to swallow the lump in her throat, she nods, setting the bags on the hallway floor to take his phone out of his hand. “Please be careful. We can — we can wait for them to get here.”

“No,” he says, his voice stern, but she doesn’t fail to notice the slight tremble in his hands as he holds this pistol out in front of him. “Just call.” 

The ice cream was a mistake, she tells herself, trying to keep it down as she finds Graham’s name on his contact list. 

“Sheriff Humbert.” 

“Graham, it’s me — it’s Emma,” she stutters, managing to keep down her lunch as Killian slowly pushes the door to the apartment open. “We need backup at Killian’s apartment, he thinks — someone’s here, he thinks it’s the stalker.” 

“Of course. Right away.” Graham sighs. “But why are you calling me? Where’s Jones?” 

“He’s in the apartment.”

This time, the noise he makes is less of a sigh and more of a groan. “Bloody hell,” he mumbles, which, in any other circumstance, would probably make Emma smile. 

But now, it just chills her. 

“We’ll be there right away.” 

“Thank you, Graham,” she replies, then hangs up the phone. 

Her heart pounds, slowly making its way up her throat with each moment that silence alone comes from the apartment. But it’s nothing compared to how she feels when instead, there’s the sound of two gunshots.

tagging: @shireness-says​​​ @kmomof4​​ @thisonesatellite​​ @let-it-raines​​ @wellhellotragic​​ @darkcolinodonorgasm​​ @profdanglaisstuff​​ @stahlop​​ @teamhook​​ @snowbellewells​​ @carpedzem​​ @pepperspotts​​ @imlaxdris71​​ @gingerchangeling​​ @lfh1226-linda​​ @kday426​​ @scientificapricot​​ @resident-of-storybrooke​​ @ultraluckycatnd​​ @itsfabianadocarmo​​ @galadriel26​ @jennjenn615​ @therealstartraveller776​ @nightskylover​ @xarandomdreamx​ @kristi555 @nikkiemms​ @vvbooklady1256​ @withheartfulloflove​ -- if you want to be added or removed, please let me know

[seeaddywrite]

the miracle of us || advent day 4 for @roswellprompts

i think this qualifies as actual fluff?? someone tell me if i wrote real fluff?! i was procrastinating on some homework today & wanted to write something & happened to see someone reblog the advent post from roswellprompts, sooo i picked this one & wrote some echo. i hope someone enjoys it; i did! :) unbeta-ed & i didn’t even proofread, so i’m sure typos abound. sorry!

the prompt i chose was max + miracles, & i am like two hours early, oops?

“So you’re really not even going to put up a Christmas tree?” Liz asks, her fingers tangling with Max’s as they lounge on his couch. She’s reclining back against him, legs stretched out along his much longer ones, and the warmth of her skin is bleeding through the thin cotton of her tank top straight into his bare chest. It’s late, late enough that they should both be asleep or risk a long, exhausted next day, but Max can’t bring himself to move and break the bubble of quiet intimacy they’ve created.

Max sighs, a little dramatic, and tilts his head. “Have you been talking to my sister?” he asks suspiciously, enough of a twist to his lips for Liz to know that he’s teasing. Isobel had been over that morning -- and every morning, at least, since his return from the foggy, grey place he still isn’t quite willing to call death two weeks prior. As usual, she’d made a point of reminding Max that the holidays are only a few weeks out, and his living room is practically made for hosting the perfect Christmas meal. Whatever that means.

Liz chuckles quietly, seeming just as loathe to shatter the peaceful moment as Max. “She’s pretty disappointed she couldn’t pout and convince you to have a big party here,” she answers, turning so that she can nuzzle her cheek against his shoulder. “But putting up a tree doesn’t mean that you have to do that.” 

“I’ve never decorated this place for the holidays,” Max admits, shifting in the sofa so that Liz’s back aligns more comfortably against him. “I’ve always spent Christmas with my parents, at their place, so I never needed to. Mom and Isobel go crazy enough with the holly and tinsel for all of us.” 

It’s the truth, though not the whole of why Max isn’t particularly keen on celebrating this year. Not that Liz gives him a chance to try to hide that from her; he’s not sure whether there’s still some residual connection between them from his handprint, or if she’s just somehow able to read him that well, but she sits up and turns to face him, one eyebrow raised in askance. 

“And?” she prompts, certainty that Max had more to say coloring the word. “Come on, Max, you don’t expect me to believe Isobel’s upset because you’re planning on celebrating the same way you have for the last decade, do you?” 

The words hit in one of the tender spots left behind by Max’s absence for the last several months, and he drops Liz’s gaze, focusing on keeping his breath and countenance even. He’s mended most of the fences destroyed by the unwelcome sacrifice he made -- Isobel and Michael still watch him warily when they think he’s not looking, but they’ve both finally begun to accept that Max has no plans of going anywhere anytime soon and don’t seem quite as panicked when he goes for a walk on his own. Alex Manes and Maria both still look a little stunned when he walks into the room, like he’s a miracle made flesh, but thankfully, it never lasts more than a moment or two before they’re back to normal. Valenti is, mercifully, more concerned with the miracles Max can work with his hands, and Rosa is singularly unimpressed with anything he does, so there’s some normalcy to be found if he’s willing to look for it. 

Then, of course, there’s Liz. Liz, who’d been so incandescently furious with him when she dragged him back from the grey place that she had kissed him hard enough to draw blood, then only spoken to him in sharp, Spanish curses for at least three days before her barriers finally crumbled. Since then, Liz has spent every night in Max’s arms, no matter what her days brought, and Max won’t pretend that her steady presence hasn’t been keeping him sane as he stays hidden and secluded in the house. 

And that, the fact that he’s essentially a prisoner in his own home, is the crux of the holiday issue. 

“Max?” 

He looks back up at Liz, sighing at himself when he realizes he’d gone silent for too long again. Max knows he’s developed a tendency to get lost in thought since his return, and isn’t naive enough to think that the habit isn’t worrying the people who care about him. “Sorry,” he says quickly, reaching out to drag his fingertips across Liz’s cheek in a brief caress. “And you’re right. It’s not quite that simple.” He frowns, trying to choose the right words to explain without making it obvious that he’s feeling sorry for himself. “Obviously, I can’t go spend the holiday with my family this year, since they think I’m --” 

“Dead?” Liz supplies, and Max winces. 

He’s avoided using that word in relation to himself whenever possible, and it’s still strange to hear others use it, even though Isobel and Michael had thrown at him like a weapon after Liz’s serums somehow managed to bring him back. “You were fucking dead, Max! We all moved on without you!” from Michael’s lips is one that still haunts his nightmares, despite the apology he’d gotten a few days later. Because the truth is that Michael was right. The world had moved forward with Max for nearly a year. His family, his loved ones -- they’d all grieved and moved on, and now, no matter how happy they are to have him back, Max is stuck in limbo while they all live their lives. 

“Right,” he agrees quietly. “The town, my parents -- almost everyone thinks that I’m gone, and that doesn’t feel like something to celebrate.” Isobel disagrees, of course, which is why Max is even having this conversation with Liz in the first place. It scares her, he thinks, that Max is still so withdrawn from the rest of the world -- he can feel her frustration, her worry, that he’s still got one foot in the grave. But until they find a plausible lie for how he’s returned to Roswell, they can’t risk everyone knowing, and Max has to stay hidden. Stay stagnant.

Quiet descends on them for a moment, the peace from earlier destroyed by Max’s own frustration. He wishes he knew what to say to bring it back, but before he can open his mouth to try, Liz is leaning forward on her knees to take both of Max’s hands between her own. 

“I think you’re looking at it the wrong way,” she says earnestly, squeezing his fingers until Max looks up and catches her determined gaze. “Maybe everyone doesn’t know it yet, but you’re alive, Max. And I know that this is going to sound crazy, since you’re supposed to be the optimist in this relationship and I’m supposed to stick to the science -- but the fact that you’re here right now, holding my hand? Talking to me, after bringing Rosa back and dying yourself?”

Liz’s voice is soft, and full of wonder as she speaks. As if her brain and determination weren’t at least ninety percent of the reason that Max had made it back. “That’s a miracle, Max,” she continues, bringing his knuckles to her lips and kissing them once, tenderly. “You’re a miracle. And that’s something to celebrate.”

Heat suffuses Max’s cheeks and ears, and he shakes his head vehemently. “You made that happen, Liz,” he tells her, tugging her in against his chest and wrapping his arms around her waist. “The only miracle in my life is you.” His lips press against the crown of her head, and Max ignores the way the soft strands tickle his nose in favor of breathing in her familiar rose-scented shampoo. 

Max knows that most people on the outside looking in at his life might argue what he’d said. They’d see his powers, his superhuman healing hands and his supposedly god-like abilities, the fact that he’d brought a girl back to life and somehow defeated death himself, as evidence that he can work miracles. But the fact of the matter is that Max isn’t a god. He’s not a miracle, or a miracle worker. He’s an alien, one who’s going to have to fight the desire to heighten his powers by killing for the rest of his life. Everything remarkable that he’s done is tainted by that truth. 

At heart, Max is just a man, in love with a woman who’s more miraculous than anything he could ever do. 

“You are such a sap,” Liz teases, relaxing into his embrace with a contented sigh. “But I’ll let you get away with it because it’s late, I’m tired, and you’re comfortable.” There’s the flutter of lips at the base of his neck, and Liz shifts until Max is all but cradling her against him, supporting most of her weight. “But just -- think about it, okay? A tree? It’d be nice for us to be able to celebrate together, even if it’s just the two of us after I see Papa and Rosa. I won’t even tell Isobel, if you don’t want me to.” 

Max huffs a laugh and gives into the impulse to stroke her hair with his fingertips. “I think she’ll notice when stops by to visit,” he points out pragmatically. “And I’ve never been very good at keeping secrets from her. We can do dinner here for Christmas, if anyone wants to come. It’d be nice, to have everyone here at once.” Less lonely, at least for a night. And Max had to admit that some lights and decorations might make the house feel more like his again, after so long elsewhere. 

Liz smiles sleepily up at him and presses a clumsy kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Christmas with the family we chose,” she murmurs. “And maybe Christmas Eve with just the two of us, to celebrate the miracle of us.” 

This time, it’s Max that snorts. “And you say I’m a sap!” he teases, tugging at a long strand of hair near where it fell onto her back. 

Liz hums contentedly, nuzzling back into his chest and finally allowing her eyes to close. “You love me anyway,” she says on a yawn, and Max is hard-pressed to feel any of the disconnection or isolation that seemed so all-encompassing earlier in the evening. 

“I do,” Max agrees in a whisper, and reaches out with his power to turn out the lights. As he drags a blanket from the back of the couch to cover them both for the night, he spares a glance to the empty space in the living room where Isobel had stood, insisting it was perfect for a tree. 

Maybe this Christmas wouldn’t be what he was used to, and maybe the sting of missing his parents and his freedom would hurt, but Liz is right. Max has plenty to celebrate, this year.

[thepartyresponsible]

this fill is for @plantgrapes, who asked for frank castle and matt murdock as “ghost hunters a la buzzfeed unsolved.”

i have seen about...sixty-five collected seconds of buzzfeed unsolved. so this fic is actually about frank, who used to be haunted, and matt, who fixes hauntings, going around pretending to be ghost hunters while actually being ghost killers.

it’s frank, so warnings for violence and ptsd.

It works because it has to. The restless dead may be rich in misery, but they are almost universally poor in material goods. Foggy edits the videos together, and Karen does the research, and Matt looks affable and earnest on camera while Frank, at his best, sometimes earns the title of long-suffering skeptic instead of surly killjoy.

Ghost hunting can be reasonably profitable, but they aren’t hunting so much as they’re mercy killing. And there’s never any cash in mercy kills. Frank spent enough time in the murder business to know there’s never any money in mercy at all.

“Oh, yikes,” Matt says, as the EMF reader beeps and bips an insistent staccato beat. “We’ve got a live one.”

Frank holds his face perfectly still. He does not react to the terrible pun.

Foggy giggles off-camera, and Frank thinks, with less longing than he used to, that he could’ve died in Kandahar.

Matt curls his hand around Frank’s elbow, shuffles closer than he needs to, and makes an interested noise in the back of his throat. “What’s it say, Frank?” he asks, nodding at the reader in Frank’s hands.

Frank doesn’t really understand the damn thing. They bought it online because all the other ghost hunters had them. It has something to do with electromagnetic fields, and, as things get spookier, it sometimes obligingly lights up its little line of LEDs like a tiny, handheld rave for ghosts.

They had to alter it for Matt, because viewers kept asking inconvenient questions about Matt’s constant awareness of the silent EMF reader. So now it beeps and bops with increasing intensity as the reading climbs higher.

Foggy claims all the noise adds drama, which is what Foggy usually says about any annoying bullshit that’s going to ruin Frank’s whole damn day.

“Frank,” Matt repeats, fingers tightening around Frank’s arm. “What does it say?”

Frank should’ve worn long sleeves. Matt always gets handsy on the creepier jobs. Frank knows that. He knew that when he picked this shirt out this morning.

He really needs to stop all this self-sabotage. He suffers enough as it is.

“It says,” Frank reports, dutifully, “that this hundred-year-old building has some real shitty wiring.”

“Ah.” Matt smiles that sweet, secretive smile he uses on reporters and fans and attractive cops who show up halfway through a job with unhelpful questions. Frank has no idea why he’s using it on him. There’s nothing Matt needs from him that he couldn’t get just by asking.

“It’s a good thing you’re here, Frank,” Matt says, as they start navigating their way down the dark hallway, toward the rooms where the ghost children are supposed to walk. “Without you to ground me, who knows where I’d end up?”

Matt found Frank in crisis, walking the streets of NYC in the middle of the night, three months after the divorce, hauling sixteen dead men in his wake. The ghosts chattered and whispered and wailed, and he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t breathe without feeling their hands wrapped jealously around his throat. He walked with deep, festering wounds in his soul that ripped open again and again, leaked blood and hope and life right out of him.

Without Matt, he’d be dead. And there’d be seventeen dead men following Russo around, and Russo wouldn’t ever know or care, because Russo welded his soul shut, made his heart impregnable and cold.

Ghosts don’t haunt places. Memories haunt places. Walls can hold echoes of fear and pain and joy and hate, but they can’t hold souls. Ghosts only ever haunt people.

But the process of ripping a ghost away from its focal point is ugly and brutal and hideous to watch. It’s a second death. It’s not something that sells well. They’d lose their sponsors over it. So they sneak around places with troubled pasts, hunting safe scares for their subscribers, and they do their real work with the cameras turned off.

A door slams shut in front of them. It’s a draft, or maybe the hospital remembers a patient with a temper.

Matt flinches hard and leans into him, laughing in the tight, anxious way he laughs when he’s pretending to be startled. Frank can feel the warmth of him, all along his right side.

He really, really should’ve worn longer sleeves.

  Matt senses ghosts, the same way he senses people. It caused all sorts of problems for him when he was younger, because he couldn’t always tell the difference.

“It’s the heartbeat,” he tells Frank, once, when he’s drunk after a particularly grim night. “They can get the heat and the shape and the smell of a person right, but they mess up the heartbeat. They do it out of habit, like breathing, but they’ll forget for a while, or they’ll get a song stuck in their heads, beat to that instead. I once caught a ghost cuz his heart was beating ‘Highway to Hell.’”

Frank never asks about his ghosts. He doesn’t want to know. He killed them once, or he got them killed, and they attached to him because they could smell their blood on his hands.

He went to war, and he killed them. And then, when he could, as soon as he found someone who could do it for him, he killed them all over again.

He felt each one ripped out of him, like getting a tooth pulled from his heart instead of his skull. A long, building scream of pressure and then a sharp, bone-deep crack as they lost their hold. Every nerve in his body sent up static signals, like getting electrocuted all over, like getting plugged into something strong, and boundless, and starving.

He felt hollow afterwards, and he slept for two days straight.

“They’re not always malevolent,” Matt says, another time. “It’s a 60/40 split, maybe. The warmer ones mean well, help out sometimes.  People think they have angels.”

“Angels,” Frank says. That sounds nice. Sounds like not feeling alone every Goddamn second of his life. Sounds like not calling his kids from hotel rooms and roadside diners, sending postcards when he remembers, trying like hell not to forget their faces but knowing, when he sees them, that they won’t look the same anyway.

“They’re parasites, Frank,” Matt tells him, tone so gentle that Frank wants to punch him right in the mouth. “It’s in their nature. They can’t help it. They feed from the living. All of them.”

“Everyone’s a fucking parasite,” Frank says. And he leaves, because he has to. Because if he sticks around any longer, he’s going to tell Matt that the 60/40 split is bullshit, and he knows, just like Matt knows, just like everyone knows, that there’s no good or bad, no warm or cold, no malevolent or benevolent.

There is no or. With people, living or dead, it’s always an and.

Frank earned every one of his ghosts by killing someone who was a mix of saint and sinner, just the same as Matt murders ghosts who are a blend of angel and demon.

They’re killers. For whatever cause, they’re killers. Sometimes Frank can’t get the taste of blood out of his mouth.

  The video of the abandoned mental hospital goes viral overnight, because Frank is exceptionally surly, and Matt is especially charming, and Foggy catches the doors slamming on camera, and the machines designed to light up and beep manage to light up and beep in particularly theatrical ways.

They get thousands of views, then tens of thousands. It climbs higher. Karen makes a lot of enthusiastic noises at her phone.

Before they leave town, they pull the ghost of a boy who died in that hospital out of the grandniece he’s haunted her whole life, passed from mother to daughter like a family heirloom for three generations.

The woman’s still crying when they leave two hours later. Frank doesn’t blame her. She’s never lived alone, never been without him, and, even now, three years on, he still sometimes misses the souls that huddled and shook in his overcrowded ribcage.

Sometimes harvesting ghosts breaks the host. It’s like resetting a bone or amputating a limb. People are never the same afterwards. But carrying a ghost is always eventually fatal.

They steal life. They have to.

The haunted grandniece’s mother died at forty-five of a heart attack. Her grandmother ate a bullet at fifty-two. The grandniece is thirty and exhausted, but, if she recovers from the shock, her life expectancy should go up by decades.

They saved what was left of her life. It’s a good thing. Good work.

Matt’s quiet on the drive back to New York. He saves the amiable charm for fans and viewers, and Foggy, Karen, and Frank are the only ones who see him like this, blank-faced and grim, worn down by the work that they do.

“Hey,” Frank says, because Foggy and Karen are in the other car, and so it’s his job to keep Matt steady. “It was the right thing to do.”

Matt laughs, soundless and eerie. He tips his head back against the headrest. “I can hear lies, you know.”

If it’s a lie, it’s only because Frank stopped believing in the right thing the moment after his first messy headshot knocked a soul out of its body. “You did what you had to do,” he tries, instead.

“There we go,” Matt says. He smiles. It’s small, and sad, and so transparently fond that Frank can’t look at it, not even in the reflection on the windshield. “Thanks, Frank.”

“She deserves a life,” Frank says. He’s gone off-script. He doesn’t know where he’s heading. With everyone else, he just keeps his damn mouth shut, but, with Matt, he’s always saying things before he has a plan. “She didn’t—that boy deserved one, too, but he lost it. And it’s her turn. She deserves a life.”

Matt tips his head Frank’s direction. He’s not wearing his glasses, and his eyes aren’t aimed the right direction. He does this sometimes. He means to look someone in the face, and he ends up staring straight at their hearts.

He only ever does it with people who know what he can do, so Frank thinks, maybe, it’s not an accident. Maybe it’s intentional. Maybe Matt reads hearts the way everyone else reads faces. Maybe this is his way of warning people he’s listening.

“You’re right.” Matt’s voice is quiet and scratchy, the way Maria used to sound, years ago, when she’d wake up in the morning affectionate and soft instead of cold and hurt and walled-off. “Everyone deserves a life.”

Frank swallows and focuses on the road. He doesn’t want to know what his heart is doing right now. He doesn’t want to see the expression on Matt’s face as he listens.

  Between episodes, Matt freelances around the city. He goes to a lot of churches. He got kicked out of seminary school for fucking men or killing ghosts or both, so he has a sort of complicated relationship with most of the priests in town, but people will grab hold of any rope they see, when they’re drowning.

“Why don’t you tell these old bastards to fuck off?” Frank asks one evening, when he and Matt are sitting on the steps outside a church, eating cold sandwiches, waiting for Father Whoever to deign to speak to them.

“People trust them, Frank,” Matt says. He has mustard smeared on his chin. It’s adorable. “If you’re haunted, you go to a priest.”

“I hate these places.” Frank glares at the stained glass, gets a gunfire flash of memory, thinks about sacred places and penitents and how everything holy burns just as fast as everything profane.

“Hm,” Matt says. He licks at his mouth, maybe hunting for the mustard. He doesn’t get it. “Is it the guilt or the shame?”

“Go fuck yourself,” Frank advises. He takes a mulish bite of his sandwich and chews until he can speak like a sane, normal person. “It’s the lies.”

“Ah.” Matt seems perfectly at ease with that comment, like it doesn’t bother him at all, even with that cross hanging around his neck.

He prays for every one of the ghosts. He prays for the hosts. Frank once caught him praying for a raccoon they almost hit with the car.  

Matt’s got so much mercy in his heart that Frank doesn’t understand how the damn thing doesn’t shatter apart every single day.

“It doesn’t change anything,” Frank says, finally. Matt didn’t ask, but Frank doesn’t care. “It’s bullshit. It’s just words. They promise you shit they can’t give, and then you just—these guys make a whole fucking life out of lying to people. At least we elect politicians.”

“Not sure that’s fair, Frank.” Matt’s voice is mild. His body language is loose and calm and so trusting it’s almost sleepy. “I don’t hear any lies from some of them. If they believe in it--”

“And you weren’t good enough for them,” Frank says, which isn’t what anyone asked, and isn’t relevant, and isn’t what he meant to say.

Matt’s quiet for a moment and then a delighted smile breaks across his face. “Are you holding a grudge against all of Catholicism for my sake, Frank?”

“You have mustard on your chin,” Frank says, because he probably can’t tell him to go fuck himself twice in two minutes, not right in front of a church. “You asshole,” he says, instead, as a compromise.

  Half their fans think they’re fucking. Frank pretends not to notice. Matt knows, of course, because he’s the one people overshare with the most, but he doesn’t seem bothered by it. He keeps grabbing onto Frank’s arm, and leaning in close to murmur perfectly benign shit right into his ear, and sitting slouched into him at panels and interviews, so Frank thinks maybe he plays it up, to get more views or make a point.

Frank doesn’t care. Maria sends him a screencap and a shitty, passive aggressive text about accepting himself that she apologizes for later.

“Look,” she says, because she calls him, because she’s the kind of brave that looks right at the heart of things that hurt her. “That was cruel, and uncalled for, and I’m sorry.”

“Hey, Maria,” he says, “how’re the kids?”

“Fine,” she says. “You should visit more. That’s not why I called.”

“I don’t care,” Frank tells her. “It’s all over the fucking internet. You think I don’t know? I don’t care what people say. I don’t care what you think. It’s fine.”

“That’s a lot of not caring,” Maria says, and it’s like a live wire straight to his chest, the way she says it. Sad and gentle and serious, like a goodbye kiss. “It just hurts to see you happy without me, Frank. That’s shitty, and I’m sorry. You don’t deserve that.”

Things rotted and fell apart between them, and that’s always going to be Frank’s fault. Because Frank went to war and came back someone else, and it’s not Maria’s fault she didn’t love the stranger who came home. It’s not Maria’s fault she started flinching away from him.

He never, ever would have hurt her, but he scared her anyway. And some things don’t ever get better, so you cut your losses, and you run.

“I’m sorry,” Frank says, because he is. Because he probably always will be. That black well of hurt inside him doesn’t belong to anybody. He thought for a while that it was something she did to him, some pain she inflicted on him when she cut herself free, but Frank knows now that she cut herself just as deep. They were stitched together, after all.

If she hadn’t left him, he wouldn’t have found Matt. And if he hadn’t found Matt, those ghosts would’ve eaten him alive.

“Christ, Frank,” Maria says, “don’t be sorry. Just be happy. And visit sometimes. Your kids miss you.”

  They do a whole episode at a graveyard in the middle of the night, and Matt’s smug the entire time, because he’s the only one who doesn’t trip over any gravestones. “You should be more respectful to the dead,” Matt tells him, as Frank’s nursing a badly stubbed toe and offering a litany of crude suggestions to Leticia B. Vaughn, 1819-1836.

“Also,” Foggy says, off-camera, “Leticia’s a minor, so maybe watch your language.”

“She’s two-fucking-hundred years old,” Frank snarls back.

“What was the age of consent in the 1800s?” Matt asks, sounding genuinely curious.

“Not high enough,” Karen says. “She died in childbirth. Sorry, Frank. She probably hates men with good reason.”

Frank cannot believe that this is his life. He used to murder people, professionally. Back then, people took him seriously. His own wife divorced him because she looked at him and saw a monster looking back.

These idiots are needling him like they’ve never been scared of him in their lives.

It hurts like something cracking open, like blood coming back to fingers nearly lost to frostbite. He throws in one last, final, “Fuck you, Letty,” and then clears his throat before anyone notices the way his hands are shaking.

“Hey,” Matt says, hooking his arm through Frank’s. “Protect me from the angry Letty’s of the world.”

Frank is so much worse than a dead 1800s woman. He breaks every nice thing he touches.

The thing about Matt, though, is that he isn’t very breakable. And his kindness is almost saintly, but he isn’t, on the whole, very nice.

He takes two malignant spirits from the overnight groundskeeper, and the man is so grateful afterwards that he cries on Matt’s shoulder and blesses him six separate times.

Those spirits, when they go, aren’t anything like grateful. But Matt never flinches, not once.

  They go to Josie’s when they’re back in town. It’s a tradition they probably can’t keep for very much longer. “People keep asking for you,” Josie tells them, like they’ve brought syphilis into her bar instead of paying customers. “They say they’re from the internet.”

“They’re not from the internet,” Foggy says. “They use the internet. They find outstanding bars like this one on the internet.”

“They asked me,” Josie says, visibly outraged, “for a pineapple mojito.”

“Jesus,” Frank says, picturing the subsequent bloodshed.

“And may God have mercy on their souls,” Matt intones beside him.

They stay for a couple of hours, drink their way through at least half a bottle of uniquely terrible tequila, and play pool until their fine motor skills degrade past the point of entertainment. A small crowd comes sneaking in behind them, and Frank wonders if this is why Karen and Foggy have been so gleeful about their phones recently.

He stopped checking the view counts on their videos a month or so back. As long as they’re getting paid enough to live, he doesn’t need to know more.

Someone sends them a tray full of shots, and Foggy wades off, charming smile in place, to thank their admirers, and it’s all fine, really, until someone gets weird with Karen, and she drops him to the ground before Frank can even pass his drink to Matt.

“Whoops,” Karen says, Bambi-blinking with a look of practiced innocence. “Time to go.”

“Take your groupies with you!” Josie yells, and Frank honestly doesn’t know how she stays in business with a temperament like that unless she’s running an absolute mess of drugs through this place.

They empty out into the night. Foggy peels off to walk Karen home, and Frank ends up taking Matt all the way to his place, even though Matt’s not that drunk, and Frank’s not that sober, and it’s honestly a little hard to tell which one of them is holding up the other.

“I’m gonna go see Maria,” Frank tells him, when they get to Matt’s door, and Matt’s waiting, expectantly, like there’s something Frank forgot to tell him. “To see the kids,” he clarifies. “I can’t avoid her forever. And I miss her. You know? She was my best friend for years.”

“I know,” Matt says. He’s good with things that like. Painful things.

The dangerous thing about Matt Murdock is that he makes you feel like you can hand him every bit of pain you’ve got, like he’s some kind of Atlas. Like he’ll hold up your whole world while you find your place within it.

Frank’s never thought of pain as something you could share. It’s always been something he lived with or destroyed or evaded. It’s something he ate, piece by piece, until it poisoned him or disappeared.

Frank doesn’t know how the hell those priests could turn Matt away. He’s the holiest thing Frank’s ever found.

“I don’t love her anymore,” Frank says. But it’s a lie. “I’m not in love with her anymore.” And that’s true.

“Frank,” Matt says, slow and careful, voice curling up like there’s a question he won’t ask.

That’s the trouble with Matt. That’s what Frank’s learned. From the day they met, Matt’s been taking other people’s nightmares, swallowing pain, banishing demons. He takes bad out of the world, but he can’t ever seem to ask for anything good. Not for himself. Not ever.

“I wanted you to know that,” Frank says.

Matt’s turned his direction, head cocked, mouth slightly open, when Frank kisses him. He makes a soft, surprised noise into Frank’s mouth, and Frank’s been letting himself think about this for weeks, but he still not ready for it.

It’s not that different, really, from kissing a woman. He’s not sure why he thought it would be.

Matt’s warm and familiar and friendly, and it’s not until Frank’s got him pressed fully back against the door that he realizes things are getting a bit out of hand.

“Okay,” Frank says, stepping back, licking his lips and tasting Matt’s. “I wanted you to know that, too.”

Matt smiles at him, and there’s an echo of that very first smile Matt gave him, when Frank was stretched to the point of splitting right in half, hauling dead men behind him with every step, waking up to the taste of blood and gunpowder every damn morning.

Frank’s spent years being grateful to Matt for sensing all those ghosts, when all Frank could feel was the war. He’s just now realizing that maybe the most miraculous thing about Matt Murdock isn’t that he can see ghosts. It’s that he could see Frank beyond them.

“If you come by in the morning,” Matt says, “I’ll take you to breakfast.”

Frank’s heart is doing something stupid in his chest, beating out a rhythm he’s reasonably sure isn’t meant to sustain life. It’d be embarrassing, except Matt’s smile is wide and dopey and getting sweeter by the second.

“Yeah,” Frank says. He takes a step back. He knows, in the morning, that Matt will be waiting for him. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll be here.”

[writingmaniacnerdart]

Resurrected Repartee: A Hallowed Shapes AU Chapter 7 - Mind and Body

These are alternative scenes and/or snippets of a developing relationship between my OC and Loki from my original fiction, Hallowed Shapes, for any shippers out there.

Basic Concept: Terra Barloc is a member of Damage Control, an organization that cleans up super messes, and frankly, all of them are kind of tired of cliches and super bulls***t. She has abilities to see “life energy” as she calls it, in the forms of symbols, and through lies and facades. That means shape-shifting and tricking her can be well, tricky. Plus, she’s addicted to caffeine, painkillers don’t have much of an affect on her, and she can’t get drunk.

What happens the first time when she meets Loki, Prince of Asgard? Well, he was invading Earth and…She tackled him, insulted him, and uh, it’s best just to read. Let’s just say these two have issues, massive issues.

So getting them into a romance, is going to be a bit of an adventure.

Terra knew her head was nodding off at some point, but had forgotten when until her head hit the desk and she sat up, shouting, whilst falling out of her chair, “En garde vegemite!”

Finding herself on the floor face first, she groaned, “Ow.”

Yep, it really had been a typical week at Damage Control.

“Terra? Why are you still here?”

Oh great, it was Loki. Wait, why was Loki here? “Could ask...Same, you.”

There was a pause. “...Terra, when was the last time you slept?”

Er, “Sleep, for weak?”

“I can’t tell if you’re trying to say if ‘sleep is for the weak’, or if you haven’t slept for a week.”

She hesitated. “Both? I think?” Moaning she slapped her face and dumped some more ice-cold water on her head, yelping and ignoring Loki’s frantic cry. Shivering and blowing a raspberry, she checked her watch, her vision was still slightly blurry. “Huh, make that eight days. Got paperwork to do.”

Terr got up then, wobbling as her knee hit the desk with a heavy, loud, thud.

“Ow.”

With that, she took another swig of her overly caffeinated Death Wish coffee and feeling more awake, began working again. To her surprise, she found Loki promptly taking away her pen, setting it on the desk, then picking her up, and carrying her away. Before she could utter a word, her took her phone from her pocket, and was talking to her boss.

“Ms. Chapel, are you aware that Ms. Barloc is still at work?”

“WHAT?!” Oh crap. “SHE’S STILL SUPPOSED TO BE ON SICK LEAVE!”

Huh, she was? “Whoops?”

“Mr. Friggason, you have my express permission, and on behalf of Lenny Ballinger, also known as her father, to get her home, and send her to bed! Please keep in mind what will happen if you push any boundaries though.”

“Yes, I understand completely and-” he paused. “Did you just call me Friggason?”

A new voice came on the line. “We understand that you dislike both of your...Supposed fathers’ names, but that you at least respect and care for your adoptive mother. Should we choose something else?”

The prince shook his head although only Terra could see him, “No, Friggason is, acceptable.”

“Treat her well. And Terr Bear, get rest.”

“Yeah Lenny,” she yawned, leaning her head against Loki’s shoulder, her vision too blurry to see his expression. “See you in the morning.”

“Try afternoon, it’s already morning.”

Her brain was too foggy to think. Or speak. Or…

When she woke again, they were outside her apartment, and Loki was talking to someone. It was Raoul. They sounded, concerned? She was too tired to open her eyes though, and she couldn’t move even if she tried. Utterly paralyzed, she tried not to listen, but she ended up hearing anyways.

“...She saved my life you know. There was a vampire hunter after me. She was scared, terrified. A strange man in her newly bought apartment and all, and with her past? But, she still confronted me, tried to give me the benefit of the doubt and, she was kind even when afraid. She was a kid then, this scrawny thing. She didn’t ask for anything, she didn’t want anything from me, so the most I can do is guard her home,” Raoul said.

Terra felt a hair pushed back.

“But even nowadays she doesn’t sleep, nor does she...I’m worried that someday, she’s going to break, and in more ways than we’ll ever understand, that she won’t come back from,” Raoul admitted. “I know she’s mortal, that they all fall, but...There are some you can’t help but want to keep safe.”

Loki was quiet, “What was she like as a child?”

There was a chuckle, “This kid was one hell of a trickster. She pranked everyone. She was rebellious, and merciless. She cursed a lot too, unless Lenny was around. Even then she found ways to curse in other languages. She was clever, but severely anti-social. Not to mention a bit of a daredevil...Sometimes we wondered if she was suicidal honestly. But, she was also really caring. Do you know what tsundere is? She was one of those. She acted tough, but had a soft heart.”

His tone turned remorseful, “But, there were also moments that she seemed, far older than she should have been. I don’t mean her eyes, you know how they glow and have that ancient feel to them? I mean, like she has experiences that made her older than she should be. She was only a teen but, she felt so much older, even to a vampire like me, and I’m centuries old. I can’t recall how many times she’s given me advice.”

“So, she has always been brazen?”

“Oh, she’s fairly humble...Yet I think she’s outward and speaks when she knows there’s something that needs to be said,” Raoul stated. “She’s not afraid to speak her mind because, she does her best to be honest, even when she’s afraid.” He suddenly burst in silent, hiccuping laughter. “You should’ve seen it, the short girl bossing around three giant men wielding weapons covered in blood and leather...Somehow she was still frightening enough that we listened though and lowered our weapons, and she didn’t have to use her powers. I swear, nobody, and I mean nobody, was going to question that little girl’s authority in that moment, even when she was wearing frilly pink pajamas.”

There was a sigh, “Anyways, you should get her to bed. I’m just surprised she’s slept for this long. Normally she’s up and screaming by now.”

“...Up and screaming?”

Terra didn’t have to see to know her friend was frowning, “She has nightmares. Her past haunts her, and the ones who hurt her...I don’t know how much has been divulged to you and it’s not my place even if she doesn’t keep it a secret, but Terra’s powers? She’s a mutate, and those abilities were forced onto her without her consent when she was a child through unnatural means. The trauma from it follows her, as do the death and scars from it. Ask if you want, but keep in mind what such questions may do.”

Wait, were they all hiding her past from other people. No wonder everyone was so bloody confused! But, it wasn’t as if she could just tell everyone. Just imagining telling everyone she knew made her stomach growl, making her feel ill. The men became quiet then, both groaning.

“When was the last time she ate?” Oh right, she was also hungry. And for some reason, her consciousness was separate from her body as the latter began acting on its own. She instinctively began mumbling while nibbling Loki’s ear and part of his neck. Raoul began laughing, clapping his hands. “And I thought I was supposed to be the vampire!”

“Help me,” Loki grumbled, yelping a little as Terra bit him, leaving more than a hickey mark. Inside, her mind was screaming in mortification. Gently prying her off, there was a movement and Raoul let out a cry of pain. Terra guessed that the prince stomped on Raoul’s foot. “You, make food. And I’ll, put her in bed.”

“I’m a vampire, you think I remember how to make mortal food?”

“I’m a god and royalty, do you think I know how to make food?”

At a standstill, Raoul sighed, “Okay, she has several cookbooks in there. Some are way too advanced for either one of us, but if needed, she has a laptop in there. I have a password to one of the spare accounts. I can find the recipe to something simple...Like broth or soup. I think she’s mentioned that’s good for people with weakened immune systems or stuff like that.”

“Fine, just don’t poison her.” Terra was screwed. So very screwed. She could sense the prince looking at her apartment as they entered with Raoul’s spare key. “It’s...Very spacious in here.”

“Yep, she spends most of her time at the office and isn’t much of someone to keep personal stuff. Well, besides movies or reading maybe. I’ve been in her room a couple of times. The first time was when she caught the flu. Ballinger, her dad, had to be called in for an emergency shift and asked me to watch her. The second time she had been stabbed in the eyes at the Xavier Institute and needed to recover. She learned how to live being blind for a few good months, but it wasn’t easy at first.”

Terry found herself feeling the atmosphere of her room, and heard Loki inhale. “She’s...Got glow-in-the-dark stars in here?”

“...She hates the dark. She’s, claustrophobic and-”

“Haphephobic,” Loki finished, as though recalling a memory, his grip loosening on her sightly as he laid her onto the bed. “Everything about her home is, spacious.”

She heard his footsteps as he glanced around, fingering her books carefully. Raoul spoke then, “She wouldn’t mind if you borrowed them you know. She lets kids, and me, read them. Heck, some een stole them. She was disappointed, but...I think she’s happier when someone reads them.”

“There’s no dust,” Loki commented. “She takes good care of them.”

Raoul was probably shrugging even as she heard clattering from the kitchen, though he struggled to muffle it. “I think, she finds sanctuary in them. They’re a safe place. So if others find safe places in them, even if it hurts her, she doesn’t want anyone else to feel as she once had.”

The prince stopped moving. “...What happened to her?”

Terr could hear Raoul swallow. “That’s not my story to tell. But, I’ll just say for now that some bad people got to her, and people like her when she was younger.”

She fought her body to wake up, but her stomach only growled louder. There were sudden clattering noises in the kitchen and she heard the clicking noises of her oven combined with water from the sink being turned on. Something akin to vegetables to being cooked.

“How is this mortal even alive?” Loki grumbled.

“To quote a famous sorceress, ‘Sheer dumb luck’,” Raoul remarked.

Terry finally found strength in her body to move. Well, kind of. “Why does my head hurt?”

“You nearly impaled upon your work desk,” Loki explained.

Her body reacted before her mind did, leaping into the air. What the hell was wrong with her?! Loki caught her then, and her body tensed, she screeched, kicking him and punching him in the nose as her vision came back. He groaned in pain as Raoul laughed, getting an ice pack from the freezer and handing it to the prince.

Terra moved quickly to aid him, quickly stuttering out apologies as her senses tried to put everything together, but then her limbs and abdomen her, causing her to pull into a fetal position on the ground as her eyes flickered, burning green flames as she cried out in pain. Suddenly, both men reached for her, Raoul touching her forehead.

“Shit Terra, you have a fever. Prince Loki, can you grab some more ice packs from the freezer? We need to cool her body down,” the vampire exclaimed. The prince moved without hesitating and Raoul picked her up, placing her on the bed once more, “Child, why do you do this?”

As she fell back into slumber, memories of the past plagued her and Terr couldn’t help but think of how much she truly hated her mind and body.

This is NOT a canon scene from my fanfiction, but if it was, it would likely take place in Hallowed Shapes: Wednesday, between Chapter 21:Piece of Mind and Chapter 22: Moon Child.

Terra Barloc + sleep deprivation = bad.

The Beta Reader asked for something kinky...Lo and behold, Loki, vampires, and nom noms. Happy?

PS  One of my Beta Readers really liked the idea of shipping Loki with my OC even though they’re not canon in my fanfiction, Hallowed Shapes.We’re friends and while I didn’t get it at first, I’m not against anyone shipping said character with other fictional characters as long as everything’s consensual and/or healthy relationship-wise. Heck, I’m a little supportive because Loki’s literally gender-fluid and both characters are LGBT (neither are straight) even if I don’t directly ship them.So, that being said, I originally wrote these alternative scenes of my story for their birthday.