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danses-with-dogmeat · 3 years

Note

Romanced companions (fo4) react to a distressed female soul telling them she found out she's turning into a ghoul (she's known it for a while but she's been too afraid to tell them, worrying about how they'd react)

Romanced! FO4 Companions React to F!Sole Turning into a Ghoul

Thank you so much for the ask anon! (and for your patience, I know you sent this one in forever ago 😅)

I always kind of wondered how the companions would react to this if it was a function of the game 🤔 So I'm glad I got to explore it a bit! I hope you enjoy!

Cait:

No. Not her. Not her Sole. Cait thought, unable to grasp the news Sole had just revealed to her. Her partner was too strong, she was too careful. She was from before the bombs, before the radiation! How could this have happened?

In her mind, it would have made a lot more sense for Cait to turn into a ghoul long before Sole. Her arse actually deserved the pain of watching her physical self peel away day by day, but not Sole. Her companion, her partner, the one damn person she actually loved... No, Sole was too good for this. But the two of them, they could beat it, they could reverse it somehow. One of those vaults could hold the answer, like it did for her, even after she had thought it was too late.

Cait didn't want to stop the change because she had anything against ghouls, really, because she doesn't. But she couldn't stand the sight of her luv's face when, at the light brush of her fingers through her once silky locks, she felt them fall to the ground in webbed clumps, Cait couldn't stand the pain in Sole's expression as her skin began to shrivel and peel off, she couldn’t witness one more instance of Sole glancing in a mirror with such immense sadness in her eyes. And Cait became very troubled when she realized that Sole would be here long after she was dead. Cait couldn't stand to face reality without her partner after all that she's done for her, and now Sole was staring that reality in the face. The poor lass had already outlived everyone she's known and loved once, and now she had to do it all over again, who knows how many times? It just wasn't fuckin' fair.

Well, once Cait had accepted Sole's change as permanent, she would do everything in her power to ensure the pair made the most of their years together, giving absolutely no fucks about Sole's new appearance. And should anyone else decide to look at her the wrong way, or, God forbid, say something to her about it, Cait's fist would be unholstered and swinging before the offensive words could even leave their worthless lips.

Curie:

She would feel sorry for Sole, and constantly be there for her as a source of support. When her love had told her what was happening, Curie had been shocked. Sure, she had noticed a few changes in her partner’s body, but she had hoped it wouldn’t be anything too serious. Still, this wasn't the worst that could happen, Curie would know, after all of the diseases and viruses she had worked with in the vault. Yet... the synth still found her chest throbbing at the thought of watching her love deteriorate before her eyes.

Throughout Sole’s change, Curie would do what she could to lessen the symptoms. There was no “cure” for being a ghoul, but Curie would feel awful if she didn’t at least try.

As Sole’s condition became more and more obvious, she would do everything in her power to make sure her partner knew that she still loved her. Curie had been a reprogrammed Miss Nanny when Sole had found her, she'd been nothing more than a metal machine when Sole had selflessly saved her, and yet, she had found a way to love her for who she was, despite what she was, and she had been there every step of the way as she made the change to her synth body. Curie would be happy to return the favor tenfold.

Also, throughout the process of Sole's change, if anyone was rude to her love, about anything, Curie would be at them with harsh words and a firm teacher’s voice as she gave the ill-mannered stranger a quick ghouls-101 education session.

Danse (Post BB):

Oh… Oh God. Not this. Not her, not his beautiful Sole. The ex-paladin’s stomach would drop as she quietly forced out her confession, refusing to meet his wide, despairing gaze.

He didn’t know what to do. Danse was horrified. Not for the first time in his life, he felt like his world was crashing down all around him. Everything good in his life seemed to revolve around the person in front of him, but all of his love, his devotion, all of the effort he put into protecting this one person he had left, that he valued above all else in his life, it was all in vain. Because now… she was turning into something that he had always feared. Something that he had been taught and trained to despise, to think of as vermin that needed to be extinguished. It was the way he felt about himself when he found out what he truly was. He never wanted to feel that way towards her, never thought he would have been able to, and even now… he found that he couldn’t.

It didn’t matter what she was turning into, what she’d become, she was still Sole. And he was committed to her, he was loyal to her. Godammit, he loved her for Christ's sake. He wasn’t about to let this calamitous development change any of that. She certainly hadn’t when it had been him in her place.

Danse would still often have trouble with his internalized prejudices left over from his time with the Brotherhood, but he would try his heart out for her. Every passing day brought more changes to the woman he loved, each one serving as a reminder to what the end result would be, and witnessing it would break his heart into pieces.

It was strange though, it wasn’t as devastating as he had thought it would be, in the beginning. Sole was still herself, even underneath all of the physical changes, she was still here beside him, and in the end, that’s all Danse really needed.

Deacon:

For once, Deacon remained silent. His brows furrowed low beneath his sunglasses and his hand came up to rub at his mouth, as though he were trying to physically pull out a response. He cleared his throat, and his hand went up to remove his glasses so he could look Sole in the eye. A rare sight, one that made her pulse quicken further as the apprehension of her confession really set in.

Deacon had already known, or… suspected, rather, but he hadn’t wanted to believe it. It wouldn’t be the first time the Railroad agent's experienced this kind of dread. When he had found out his wife was a synth, he had felt this same crippling pressure in his chest. But he didn’t say that, Sole didn’t need to hear about his problems, no, not again. Now she needed him to help with hers.

So, the spy would nod at her, and ask her what she needed from him. He's a knowledgeable guy, everyone knows that, Sole most of all, so if she needed anything as far as information on what she was about to go through, he would be able to provide it. Better yet, he could bring her to quite a few folks he knew who had gone through the same sorta hell themselves.

Beyond that, not much else would change. Deacon isn't one to put much stock in a person's physicality, what kinda daft and inconsiderate hypocrite would he be if he did? Hell, he may even speak to a surgeon about altering his appearance to become more ghoul-like if that was something Sole cared about. But honestly? He just would want his partner to know that it didn't matter to him.

"Thought you could get rid of lil old me just by going ghoul? Heh, sorry, cuddle muffin, but it looks like you're still stuck with me."

Sole had been able to forgive him for everything he's done, she hadn't judged or ridiculed him for being a bigoted assface for the first half of his life, and she'd accepted him for the compulsive liar and emotion-dodging, sarcastic smart-ass that he was now; sooooooo, yeah. This whole ghoul thing? Not a problem. Just another glorious and compelling chapter in this wacky book called life.

Hancock:

Hancock becomes the literal epitome of empathy. He knows what this shit's like, he's gone through the motions. He remembers the nightmarish sight of his flesh falling from his body in shriveled tatters, he recalls his once silken voice dissolving to his current raspy timbre, he knows what it's like to see the bright vibrance of his irises vanish over the course of a couple weeks, slowly dissolving to the blackness that he now saw the world through.

But with Hancock, it had been his choice. Okay, so he didn't know for certain that he'd become a ghoul, but he had been ready for it, had known it was at least a possibility. With Sole though, she didn't sign up for this shit. She didn't deserve to go through the same kinda hell he did. He wanted to go through hell, felt like he deserved it. But his gorgeous sunshine? The light of his life, the kindest, most selfless person he'd ever met? Nah. She didn't deserve to watch herself develop the likeness of a certain sorta dehydrated fruit.

Hancock would be sure to tell her every day just how incredible she was, how brave, and strong, and how she was still beautiful beyond belief, no matter what. He would show her how he felt. Showering her in gifts and affection, taking her out to prove to her that he could never even think to be embarrassed by her in any capacity whatsoever. He loved this woman, he cherished her. Every irradiated bit of her.

And now… now the best part. Hancock would try not to seem too overexcited, knowing that this whole process was traumatic and painful for his love, but now he could spend the rest of their lives making her see just how much one person-- one ghoul-- could love another. He'd been terrified out of his mind when he thought he would outlive Sole, by who knows how long. But now… now they had an eternity to spend together, or, however long it is ghouls live for. Whatever, no matter how much time they had, Hancock would never be convinced it would be enough. He just supposes the rest of their long lives will simply have to do.

MacCready:

He'd try not to give away his heartbreak as he gazed back at her, his face draining of all it's color as those fateful words escaped her with a sob. This was a nightmare of MacCready's. He hadn't ever told Sole what he saw that night he had woken up screaming, he had told her he couldn't remember the dream, and she had said "maybe that was for the best." If only he'd been telling the truth. In reality, what he saw was the immensely frightening sight of Sole taking his late wife's place in that horrific memory that was forever burned into his brain. Her body engulfed by a throng of writhing ferals as she shrieked out his name. As with all of his dreams like this, MacCready was rooted to the place he stood, forever imprisoned as a bystander to the brutality taking place before him. The agony only ceased when the pack of feral ghouls dispersed, revealing Sole, now as one of them. She had raced towards him, hunger and madness glinting in the opaque depths of her dark, iris-less eyes. The mercenary couldn't get the image out of his head as he watched the color in Sole's eyes fade away over time, her skin losing its divine smoothness, her soft hair drifting to the ground in wisps of somber defeat.

The couple had cried a lot in those weeks of her change. The process was heart wrenching for the both of them to witness; but MacCready stuck by her side. He could be stronger than his nightmares, than his fears, when it came to Sole.

When the day finally did come when she was referred to as a ghoul by a perfect stranger, MacCready had almost been surprised. It had taken time for her to look this way, to sound this way, and he had hardly noticed the extent to which his partner changed until looking at old renderings and pictures of her from before the bombs. This was just who she was now.

She wasn't a monster, a ravenous zombie that he feared and despised. She was Sole. She still acted like his love, her voice still resembled that of his partner's, her eyes had lightened to a blue that outshone his own, which he was clearly not bitter about, and she still was just utterly his Sole. The same woman he had fallen for in the first place, the one he thought he'd never be lucky enough to be loved by in return. But now, even behind all the changes, he could still see her there, and he could certainly still love her.

The nightmares became much less common after her transformation, oddly enough. And when he finally introduced Sole to Duncan, he was terribly worried that the boy would hate her, that he would remember that traumatic night when the pair had lost a mother and a wife, and that he would be afraid of her. But his son hardly seemed to notice Sole's condition, as he shook her hand and introduced himself with enthusiastic giddiness. Later, Duncan might voice some questions to her about being a ghoul, but they were always out of genuine curiosity.

MacCready couldn't have been more proud of his child than he was then, or more touched than when Duncan expressed his relief at Sole having a skin condition like this, and yet, she was still able to be loved by someone as great as his dad. The boy himself remembered the way people would look at him before he had been cured of his blue boils, and he didn't wish that on anybody, he'd assured both Sole and MacCready of that one day.

No, MacCready couldn't have been more proud. Of his son, sometimes even of himself as he learned to outgrow his fears, how to muscle through his trauma and be the best father and partner he could possibly be; and certainly, he couldn't have been prouder of Sole.

Nick:

Nick would be remarkably sympathetic, taking Sole's hand in his good one comfortingly as she struggled to get out the confession, and having not even a glimpse of a negative reaction in response to her heart-wrenching words.

“Oh, doll… I’m so sorry.” His fingers would stroke over her hand in an effort to comfort her. He had been surprised by the news, but it wouldn’t change anything. He’d assure her of that. No matter what physical changes Sole underwent; the memories of a certain synth, all metal, and fiberglass, and plastic, and the damn near perfect woman who somehow fell for him would fill his mind, and he wouldn’t be able to keep from telling her just how much she meant to him every single day.

Life would go on, they would go out on cases together, and help the people of the commonwealth as they have nearly since the day they met, but if anyone decided to utter a comment as to Sole’s physical state, they would certainly be faced with a stern talking to from one sassy synth.

He tried to not mention it too early on, but Nick wouldn't be unable to keep the thought buried forever. One day, when Sole was feeling especially despondent about her current state, he’d remind her that he’d always be there for her. Always. Now he didn’t have to worry so much about that dreadful and inevitable fast-approaching day that he would have to bid Sole goodbye as she passed away from her old age, leaving him alone on this ruined earth. He’d just have to hope that she would be as comforted by the thought as he was.

Piper:

The news would be hard to grasp at first, and even after she understood what Sole was telling her, she wouldn't know what to do. How can you fix something like this? This was her Blue they were talking about! She could do anything, she'd survived the bombs, had found the Institute, she had found her son after so many years, had done all of that, just to now have to go through this too? Hasn't Sole been through enough?!

Piper would be angry, and she'd feel horrible watching Sole go through the changes, as she was forced to witness her love's physical form deteriorate before her in just a couple short months. Piper would try to tell Sole to keep her chin up, remind her who she was, of everything she's been through, how much she's overcome; and if anyone wanted to bug her partner about being a ghoul, Piper would tear them to shreds with her words, not caring if she made a scene as she made the stranger realize what horrible mistake they had made speaking to Sole like that. She'd rip ‘em a new one for sure, and spend a good portion of the day making sure her love was alright after the ordeal. The reporter knew how much words could hurt.

She would be utterly supportive, and even, if Sole was comfortable with it, might see if she’s interested in being a sort of poster child for a campaign to allow ghouls back into Diamond City (and God help anyone who tries to keep Sole out of the city before Piper has a chance to change the law officially.)

Preston:

Preston tried to swallow through the lump in his throat, but to no avail. The Minuteman didn’t cry often, or, he hadn’t since meeting Sole. But this… He couldn’t stop the tears from spilling as he drew her into his embrace. His voice surely would have failed him if he had tried to comfort her with his words, so his arms wrapped tightly around her, her head pressed firmly to his chest. That would have to do for the time being.

“Sole, I can’t tell you how sorry I am.” He managed to whisper to her as his hand came up to stroke gently at her soft hair, trying desperately not to imagine the way it would fall from her head soon enough. He took a deep breath.

“But… I want you to know something. Something really important.” Preston pulled away so he could look into her eyes, hands coming to rest on either of her tear-stained cheeks “This won’t change anything between us. No matter what, you’re still my General, and… and I love you so much. What’s happening to you won’t ever change the way I feel about you.” They’d both be sniveling messes through the night.

But each morning that passed in the coming days, each change Sole underwent, they would take as it came. Preston is a bit of a workaholic, he knows this, and so does Sole, but he’d take a day off if ever her symptoms became unbearable enough. The Minutemen were stronger now than they had been in years, because of her, and so he would try not to feel so guilty about stepping away from his duties to help her.

But he would keep his promise, and, through everything, Sole would remain the General of the Minutemen, with everyone still paying her the respect that the title was due. She would remain the love of his life, he would tell her every day the way that he admired her, tell her how gorgeous he found her, no matter how much her physicality changed, he would remind her of her boundless strength. He just hoped it’d be enough to make her happy, to save her back, in the way she had saved him.

X6-88:

When Sole hesitantly told him about what was happening to her, it had only been after he asked. It was clear to the synth that something was wrong with his partner, but waiting for her to explain on her own had him only becoming more impatient. When she did tell him, he was furious. Certainly not at her, and not necessarily at the Institute’s inability to prevent it from happening, but at the Commonwealth, at the world for doing this to the one he loved. X6 couldn't stand the thought of it, the pain she had to go through. A part of him blamed himself for it. He was meant to protect her, from anything that could possibly harm her, and he had failed. Her changing appearance would be a testament to that failure every day of his life.

In an effort to make it up to her, X6 offered everything he possibly could to his partner, walking her though each and every symptom that came with her change, and ensuring she was utilizing every resource the Institute had at its disposal. Treatments, and skin creams, and supplements, and enough radaway to douse the glowing sea were used in an effort to slow the process of ghoulification, or perhaps even to halt it.

When it inevitably didn’t work, X6 would feel useless, like he had failed in his mission to keep his beloved safe all over again. However, something strange happened to the courser when the one he loves began to physically fall apart in response to the radiation. He didn’t want to leave her. He could stand to look at her, to still love her in the way that he never thought he would be able to, even when she was human. Despite what she had become, she was still his Sole.

After he came to this realization, X6 would take it as a personal mission for himself to ensure that anyone who made Sole feel bad for the way she looked or the way she now spoke would pay dearly for the carelessness of their commentary. X6 would work endlessly to guard his love from insults and dangers alike, from outsiders as well as those within the Institute. That was what he could do for her, what he had to do, if he ever wanted to make it up to Sole. The way he had carelessly let this happen to her... He would never forgive himself, and wonder every day how Sole could, but he will make it up to her. Mark his words.

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melo-yello · 4 years

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✨Self-Care Day✨w/ 💥🪨KiriBaku HeadCanons💥🪨

Off Day

💥🪨 You’re hanging upside down on the couch in your shared apartment with a boyfriend on either side of you. Kiri’s hand in yours while Baku’s had one hand on your thigh and the other scrolling on his phone as some cartoon drones on the tv

💥🪨 This is not how you envisioned your first free weekend into the last two weeks going

💥🪨 You sigh loudly before poking out your bottom lip “Suki? Eiji? I’m bored.” you pout dramatically as you throw a hand onto your forehead before you continue “Can we do a self-care day?”

💥🪨 Baku just grunts in affirmation as he stretches before standing. Kiri just smiles “Of course, Pebble. Whatever you want.”

💥🪨 You pop up pecking both guys on the cheek as you bounce off to the kitchen with Kiri’s hand still in yours “Thanks you two are the best!I’ll make tea!!!”

💥🪨 “And don’t you forget it!” Bakugou smiles popping your soft ass as he follows behind most likely to micromanage

💥🪨 You three chat about your week not having much time outside of courses to really talk. Between studying, training, and hero work you guys just didn’t have a lot going of free time.

💥🪨Per usual you and Kiri really carry the conversation Baku only chiming in ever so often to offer up things that he hates

💥🪨 You pop up remembering one of for favorite parts of a good ole fashioned treat yo self day. The cute headbands for you and Kiri to push your hair out of your faces. You return with a pink bunny one, a brown Teddy Bear one, and a plain black headband. Baku takes the black and Kiri takes the bunny.

💥🪨 “How do I look, Peb?” Kiri smirks flexing to show his broad ass built ass frame after putting on his bunny headband. “Ridiculous.” “-ly Hawt!” You laugh correcting Baku

💥🪨 You film in absolute awe as your Manly bf’s pierce Suki’s ear with ease after the off handed joke you made sipping tea. Cue Baku voguing it up with pride and a freshly pierced ear. Bakugou is slightly leaner and a couple inches shorter but just as toned

💥🪨 “Suki, Eiji, you are too manly!” You hype your man up as you post the video to your IG story

💥🪨 It’s your turn now!! Kiri easily pierces your ears with a red stud in your right and an orange in your left. Adding a second set of holes right above your first ones

💥🪨 Next comes high quality and novelty animal face masks Bakugou buys online to compliment his vigorous skin care routine. It rivals half of the YouTube Beauty community’s

💥🪨 Niether of you have any idea of where he buys them or where he hides them for that matter. He stores them away so you guys can’t steal them when he’s not around. Bakugou allows you and Kiri to use his masks on special occasions tho

💥🪨 “Mr. and Mrs. Dumbass.” He smirks handing you a frog and Kiri a tiger. Earning him a playful jab from you and “A Thanks, Babe.” from the red head

💥🪨 You suggest nail 💅🏾 polish next and Kiri is automatically on board. “Oooooo can you make them Red, Babygirl? Because they’d be so manly!” Kiri beams bouncing up and down. Baku will only allow his middle fingers painted. “I want white with bombs or just F U. Whichever is easier for you, Teddy Bear.” Bakugou nods scrunching up his nose from behind his own red panda face mask.

💥🪨 Kirishima’s nails are a simple sparkly red that say 🤍BITE MANLY in white while Bakugou’s middle fingers are white with black bombs with an orange F U on each one respectively

💥🪨 After you peel off your masks, you and Kirishima squeal in nearly perfect sync “Oooooooooooo! Sooooo Soft! Aren’t we hawt, Bakubro! Seeeeeeeeeee!” Both of you placing his hand on your faces

💥🪨Bakugou will just roll his red eyes into the back of his head as you two wrap him in a tight embrace “I’ve told you idiots a thousand times the importance of regular skin care with quality products.” He shrugs nonchalantly even thought he loves when you two are touchie with him. He hates to admit it

💥🪨 As you begin to search you nail kit for your preferred color, Kiri grabs your hand and presses it to his cheek “Can we do yours, Pebble?” He pouts. Bakugou follows suit grabbing your other hand “Pretty please, Teddy?” He whines firmly pressing your hand to his heart.

💥🪨 You buckle so fast it’s not even funny. “Bbbbbbbut...😤😖😞fine.” You concede

💥🪨These two really know how to put on the charm. Especially if Bakugou Kasuki is calling you Teddy instead of Dumbass.

💥🪨 “Great! Y/n, pick out a show to watch before we start.” Baku barks handing you the remote. “Why?” You question snatching it and putting on Criminal Minds. Simply thrilled you were getting to pick (Typically there were mini competitions for such a privilege)

💥🪨 “You’re judging, Bighead. You can’t look til we’re done.” Kiri hums thoughtfully trying to pick a good color combination. Baku already had his colors hidden in his lap before scouting so his hip was against yours sure to obscure your view of your own hand from you.

💥🪨 “Yea, no bias. When I win it’ll because I’m the best! Isn’t that right, Shitty Hair!” The ash blonde smiles cockily at the red head across from him. “In your fucking dreams, Spark plug!” Kiri spits backs just taking all the colors and copying Bakugou’s positioning

💥🪨 “If either of you fuckers, get those polishes on my favorite jeans there’ll be hell to pay.” You warn with a sinister tone to rival even Katsuki’s and the widest smile. The boys shiver at the seriousness behind your smile. Your threat is far from empty

💥🪨 You pretty much figured your nails would probably look terrible with each of your vividly different boyfriends competing with each other. “What do you, dorks, even get for winning?” You muse leaning into Kiri’s broad ass shoulder

💥🪨 “The next date plans and solo cuddles with Teddy Bear for the rest of the night seems fair to me. Huh, Eijirou?” Baku looks up from his work with a self assured grin blowing one of your nails. Vermilion irises float from you to Kiri.

💥🪨 Knowing damn well niether of them could keep you their hands off you. “Deal.” Kiri nods without giving Baku the satisfaction of meeting his gaze.

💥🪨 “Oh and I get shitly painted nails.” You sigh rolling your eyes. You’d be lying if you didn’t find it kinda hawt when they got like this

💥🪨 “There.” Halfway through the 2nd episode Kiri says and finally caps his last polish. Blowing gently across the surface of your nails.

💥🪨 By this time Baku has placed your arm on his lower back and his head in your lap. A firm grip on your wrist so you couldn’t checkout his work until Kiri finished. Your fingers make light circles there despite being held hostage. “Bout time, slow poke.” Baku huffs releasing your arm as you brought both hands side by side.

💥🪨 They had somehow managed to pick colors that didn’t totally clash. Kiri’s hand were mix match rose gold and pink with the teeniest (not to mention even) little white hearts in the middle of each nail.

💥🪨 Baku’s hand was very simple and clean. Black French tips with one red to orange nail with a black X on top as an accent.

💥🪨 You weren’t expecting anything this good. You could barely speak. You hadn’t been this lost for words since they had asked you out. You sniffle a lil bit. Your eyes glass up a little too.

💥🪨 God your partners are so great sometimes. The fact that they genuinely gave a fuck still manages to catch you off guard at times. After so many terrible relationships, effort, in and of itself, is kinda baffling

💥🪨 “Damn Pebs, it’s not that bad if you squint.” Kiri laughs nervously squeezing your shoulders. “Woah there, Teddy Bear, I’ll get the remover.” Baku stands ruffling your curls before you grab his wrist stopping him in his tracks.

💥🪨 “Suki. Eiji. Don’t be mad but I can’t pick! You guys both did really good! Fuck! I couldn’t ask for better lovers. You assholes are so much better than I deserve!” You gush before hiding your face in your hands. A little ashamed you let your boyfriends doing something as simple as your nails make you emotional.

💥🪨 “But Baby you deserve the world.” Kirishima immediately scoops you into a bear hug as he stands spinning you with ease and peppering you in kisses. Kiri places you back down even more gently than picked you up

💥🪨 “Princess, you’re a bad bitch! Don’t you dare forget it!” The shorter ash blonde says unwaveringly lifting your chin so you’d meet his eyes. He softly bops your forehead before kissing it and both cheeks. He pulls you close right as he yanks you up to straddle his waist

💥🪨 “Eijirou, I think our Babygirl needs a reminder of who she is and who she’s with.” His already deep ruby eyes darken lustfully. With no hesitation Kiri is right behind you in seconds

💥🪨 “I know just thing to jog our Pebble’s memory, Katsuki.” He whispers licking the side of your neck just as moves to capture Katsuki’s lips with his own

💥🪨 “Promise?” You moan softly lacing fingers into Kiri’s loose kitchens and trailing a cool hand across Baku’s abdomen stopping only at his joggers waist band

💥🪨 With that the three head to the bed room for some much needed group physical therapy

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justice4canyonmoon · 3 years

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An Evening Off

Summary: Both Y/n and Harry have a rare night off. Y/n has relaxing plans for how they should spend it.

Notes: Howdy! This is probably the last fic I’m going to post for the next two weeks; I have finals for college next week, and I have a fuck ton of work this week because professors love to give students everything at once 🙃 Anyway, I came up with the very fluffy concept because I crave emotional intimacy, so I hope you like it!!!!

Warnings: cursing ig. otherwise just a lot of fluff and taking a bath together 🥰

WC: 1.9k

Y/n was feeling lonely.

Her boring ass office job didn’t produce too many friends for her. While the people she worked with weren’t the absolute worst, they were just, well, bland. Their lives were cookie-cutter. The closest thing any of them had experienced to a true adventure was a trip to IKEA. Her two best friends, Maria and José, were across the country, since she had moved from one coast to another to live with her boyfriend. Sure, she could FaceTime them, but it just wasn’t the same. And after the call, she knew she’d just be more lonely than before.

Harry wasn’t an option either. He was working, far too hard for her liking. She understood, of course; it was album crunch time. He had to make all of the last minute decisions: finalizing the tracklist, photoshoots, and touch-ups on the chosen tracks in the studio. But she missed him. The only times she saw him anymore was right before bed, when he would stumble into the room sleepily and kiss her forehead before going right to sleep. So yeah, she was a bit lonely. And being alone on her day off wasn’t exactly the plans she wanted to have.

Luckily, the universe decided to answer her pleas. At around 1:00, after she had finished up a late shower, her phone buzzed with a text from her beloved.

H: Hi, baby! The only thing we have left on the agenda today is touching up a couple of the album tracks, so I should be home a bit earlier :D If you’d like, I can pick up some dinner on the way home.

She couldn’t help the huge grin that spread across her face. For the first time in ages, the two of them could finally have some time together! Maybe she could do something nice for him! He had been working so hard lately, he deserved it. And honestly, she did, too. An idea popped into her head, and she threw open the bathroom closet, taking a look through her bath supplies. She grinned triumphantly as she pulled out a citrus bath bomb, knowing that Harry enjoyed the calming scent of orange and lemon. A nice bath would not only help Harry destress, but it would also be the perfect cure to the loneliness that was settling in her heart. She quickly texted Harry a reply as she set the bath bomb aside.

Y/n: Sorry about the wait, babe, was just taking a shower. Forgot to this morning lol

He answered pretty much right away, making her smile.

H: It’s okay, baby! No need for apologies :)

Y/n: Okay! I’m excited to actually get to spend some time with you! I could really go for curry, if you’re up for Indian takeout.

H: Curry sounds good to me! I’ll probably be home between 6 or 7! I have to go now, but I can’t wait to see you :) I love you so much!!!!

Y/n: Can’t wait to see you, either, Har!!! I love you, too 💕💕

“Baby, ‘m home!”

Y/n looked at the clock. It was 7:30, a bit later than what Harry had said through text, but still much earlier than usual. She leapt up from the couch and sprinted to the front door, tackling Harry in a hug. He laughed loudly and wound his free arm around her waist, not fully able to hug her back because of the takeout bag in his arms.

“Let me put the food down so I can give y’ a proper hug.”

She let go with a small pout on her face, which Harry promptly kissed off while setting the bag down. He then wrapped her in a tight, two-armed embrace. She melted at the contact, resting her head on his chest and hugging him back just as tightly. He leaned down and kissed the top of her head, then rested his head on top of hers.

“Miss you, Har,” she said, her speech slightly muffled from talking into his t-shirt.

She could feel him frown against her hair, “I miss y’ too, Y/n. The album should be done by the end of the month, and then ‘m all yours until tour starts.”

“Good. I was gonna break into the studio and steal you back myself if you weren’t done soon.”

He chuckled, “I don’ think Jeff would like that very much.”

“Fuck Jeff! I need you back here,” she scoffed.

“I certainly hope y’ don’ want t’ fuck Jeff.”

She rolled her eyes, “You’re annoying.”

He grinned cheekily, “But yet y’ still here.”

“Lord only knows why,” Y/n grumbled, though there was a smile on her face.

They pulled away reluctantly, both realizing how hungry they were. The two chowed down on chicken curry and naan while chatting about their day. Y/n spent most of her day off watching The Great British Bake-Off and snuggling with Daiquiri, their black lab. Harry had been putting the finishing touches on three of the album songs (“I can’ wait to play them f’ y’, baby”), and ranted about the traffic coming home (“I would’ve gotten home 45 minutes earlier, but the freeway was ridiculously clogged up!”). It was domestic in a way that Y/n never thought she would have, and she loved every second of it.

When everything from dinner was cleaned up, Y/n figured now was as good a time as any to reveal her plans for the rest of their evening.

“Hey, Har,” she paused, then continued when she heard his hum of acknowledgment, “would you want to take a bath with me?”

He raised an eyebrow, “Is this a ploy t’ get me naked?”

“No,” Y/n said bashfully, “I just thought it would be nice to take a bath together. I found a citrus bath bomb at the back of the closet, and I thought it would be relaxing for us.”

Harry’s eyes softened and he smiled gently at her, “That sounds perfect, love. Y’ too sweet.”

The two made their way to the bathroom, hand in hand. Y/n plucked the bath bomb from the closet and laid it in the tub, turning on the warm water. The water became a pastel shade of yellow, reflecting the lemony scent of the bath bomb. As she was checking the temperature, a pair of tattooed arms wrapped around her waist, and a kiss was pressed to her cheek. The heat radiating off of his body led her to believe that Harry had already rid himself of his clothes. When she turned around, her suspicions were confirmed.

“You work fast,” she commented, making a humming sound when the temperature was to her satisfaction.

“A bit,” he confirmed, leaning over to turn off the nozzle “just wanna take a bath with y’, love. Speaking of, let’s get those pesky clothes off of y’, shall we?”

Y/n nodded and Harry reached forward, almost reverently lifting her (his) sweatshirt over her head. She shimmied out of her leggings and removed her undergarments. She stepped into the bath first, gesturing for him to follow. He obeyed, and sat between her legs, resting his head on her shoulder. The two sat in silence for a while, basking in each other’s company. Y/n couldn’t remember a time where she had felt this at peace. But she also knew that Harry had forgotten to shower that morning since he was nearly late to the studio, so she reached over and grabbed some soap and a washcloth. She looked down at him and giggled softly when she realized he was almost asleep

“Wake up, baby,” she crooned, “let me wash you.”

“‘M awake,” he muttered, “promise.”

“Sure you are, that’s why your eyes are closed,” Y/n teased.

He only hummed in response, making her giggle again. She kissed his forehead and began washing him gently. The soft circles she was rubbing into his skin with the washcloth were soothing, and a sleepy smile made its way onto his face.

“‘Y always take such good care of me. Dunno how I got s’ lucky.”

Y/n felt her face grow warm as she reached for the shampoo, “I think I’m the lucky one. You always take care of me, too.”

She began rubbing the shampoo into his silky locks. Breathy gasps fell from his lips as she tugged lightly as his hair, working the shampoo into his curls.

“Feels s’ good,” he murmured.

“Glad you’re feeling good, Har,” Y/n replied in a hushed tone.

She rinsed his hair and repeated the process with the conditioner. By the time she had finished, Harry had fully fallen asleep on her shoulder. She cooed softly at how adorable he looked. He was like an angel; his long lashes were speckled with little water drops, his wet hair stuck to his forehead in an oddly endearing way, and a small smile was spread across his lips. He looked so relaxed in a way that Y/n hadn’t seen in a while. The bath helped her feel more at ease too; the monotonous motions of washing Harry made the stress from her job melt away, and the loneliness that had plagued her earlier in the day was washed away by the warm water. But she knew she had to wake Harry. She wasn’t quite strong enough to carry all six feet of him back to their bedroom.

Y/n gently jostled his shoulder and whispered, “Harry. Need you to wake up, baby.”

He groaned softly, making her giggle softly once more. His eyes slowly blinked open to reveal his jade irises, and he stumbled his way out of the tub, making her laugh a little harder as she followed. Y/n got out two towels and dried them both off, knowing that Harry was much too tired to do it on his own. She took his hand and walked toward their bedroom.

When they reached the bedroom, Y/n guided Harry to sit on the bed while she picked out sweats for both of them to wear to sleep (she knew that Harry had a particular fondness for when she wore his clothes to bed, so she got out his clothes for both of them). Harry pliantly moved his limbs as she clothed him, and watched her with moony eyes as she pulled on her own sleepwear.

“Look s’ pretty in m’ clothes, love,” he complimented, relishing in the shy smile that appeared on her face.

“Thank you, Har. Let’s get you to bed, okay?” she replied.

Y/n turned off the light and joined Harry on the bed. He was already lying on his side, so she wound her arms around his waist, resting her head between his shoulder blades. Usually, he was the big spoon, but with the whole mood they had set all night, it just felt right for her to be the one cuddling him. Y/n barely heard Harry mumble a “g’night. Love you,” before his breathing evened out. She smiled and closed her eyes, reflecting on the day. Just spending one evening with her boyfriend made her feel right as rain, and the loneliness that had once threatened to overtake her was totally gone. Though she had been taking care of him that night, he was also taking care of her. And sure, they were both going back to work tomorrow, but in two weeks, Harry would be done with the album and would be all hers. When sleep finally overtook her, all she had were the most pleasant of dreams.

#harry styles #harry styles x reader #harry styles x you #harry styles fluff #harry styles fic #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles blurb #harry styles imagine

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snivystudies-blog · 7 years

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“I’m not gonna pull an all-nighter this year,” you say as you set up your study space for the new semester. “No, sir, new year, new me. There will be no all-nighters this time around.” You remember the way your eyes burned and mind went into an emergency fog to preserve what little functions you had remaining as you churned out your closing argument around 5:30 AM. This year will be different, you affirm as you scribble down important dates on your calendar, set up phone reminders, sticky tab your bujo, and plan out how you’re gonna break down major papers on a weekly basis.

You eventually start ignoring notifications, and those weekly paper to-do’s become devoted to more urgent assignments. Hey, it happens. You have time, you’ve got a month to go, this is doable in a month. A month turns into a week, and then suddenly you’ve got a little over 24 hours left before it’s due and you’re stuck wondering how this happened.

Let’s be real, no matter how much you preemptively plan this out, you will likely pull an all-nighter for one class. The key is to not freak out. You got this, and I’m gonna show you how.

Step 1: Getting Ready

i) Spend a few minutes panicking. Get it all out of your system before you get started. You’re gonna wanna go totally zen for this, so make sure to do what you need to do to get there. Cry for a bit, scream into a pillow, do a couple dozen pushups, plank for a few minutes, start a liveblogging chain on your studyblr...you do you.

ii) Get comfortable. If comfortable for you is a chair and desk, get some cushions for the chair. If comfortable is your bed, pile a bunch of pillows in the corner and lean back. If comfortable is sitting in the lotus in the common room...do that.

iii) Get all your supplies: plug in your laptop, charge your phone, grab your textbook, get the assignment sheet out...you’re not moving for a while.

Step 2: The Hype

i) No coffee, no tea. Not yet. Go get one of the biggest containers of coke/pepsi you possibly can. Like. 30 oz. Make sure it’s cold, throw in some ice cubes, and chug that shit like you’re a frat boy doing a keg stand. You’re gonna need as much caffeine as possible.

Step 3: The Body Building

i) You all likely know what your paper is about and you probably already have a couple sources lined up from when you had to hand in your approval forms. This is good. You have your thesis, you have a few starting sources.

ii) Don’t do the intro first. Why introduce something that doesn’t exist yet? Plug in your thesis up top and move on to your first paragraph. You can do your intro at the end.

iii) PPE isn’t going to work here. Your paragraph should be more or less focused around one topic and should do the following: bring up the proof, discuss it for a bit, link it to another study (professor’s love it when you mention two studies together) and point out commonalities between them. It makes your argument stronger. Discuss why these studies are important, what’s the impact...why should we care, basically? How do these studies prove your thesis? Keep this up for all your body paragraphs. If you can link topics between paragraphs, even better.

iv) On the topic of linking studies, if you can find a disparity, even better. Explain why, despite them both proving your point, one has a hole in it. For example, I did a paper on depression once and I found two articles: one that discussed the rates of depression between African-American and Caucasian students, and males and females within those two ethnicities. This paper mostly focused on the socioeconomic factors surrounding the school community and how that affected them. I found another paper that mentioned that one gender was more predisposed to experiencing depression than the other, and linked that to the first paper to help explain why it seemed like one of the genders, despite them being of different ethnicities, seemed to experience depression at a higher rate. Build on this stuff.

v) If you’re allowed to...use some stuff out of your class lectures. This shows that you’re really understanding what you’re learning and you’re making real life connections. Cite it, obviously, but...you get the point.

Step 4: The Sources

i) You’re pulling an all-nighter; you don’t have time to plow through twenty pages of academic jargon to see if it fits. Time for you to employ the rush method: read the intro, the thesis, skip all the procedural stuff and the charts, and jump to the discussion bit. This is the part that contains the ‘does this information help prove my point’ chunk of your paper. If it does, scroll up and check out those charts. Numbers will definitely help strengthen your argument. Cite, and move on. Repeat until you meet your minimum amount of sources. I’d suggest grabbing an extra two or three sources so it makes it look like you spent a while researching.

ii) Generally speaking, avoid using papers older than you are. Unless you really, really need it.

Step 5: The Conclusion

i) This is the easiest part. Restate your thesis (differently, obviously) and mention the importance of this research.

ii) MENTION FURTHER RESEARCH. Explain what else kind of research can be done in this field.

iii) I always like to call this bit the mic-drop moment: this is the moment you’re completing everything. You’ve been up 18 hours. You’re exhausted. This is your magnum opus. Your clapback. Your shutdown. The line that has your professor waking up at 4 AM going ‘godDAMN that was so good’. Write your concluding sentence.

iv) lmao syke, you have to go back and write your intro. This should be easier. Explain your topic, toss in your thesis, and tell the reader why you’re even doing this. What’s the point. Why this topic of all topics. Again - why should we care?

Step 6: The Stuff You Should Be Doing In-between

i) Finish that coke before you touch the coffee. No tea, that makes you sleepy. Make sure your coffee is black and as bitter as possible. You’re staying awake, not watching raindrops fall on a Sunday afternoon.

ii) Take a break every half hour. Do some walking around. Drink water. Spend ten minutes watching a short vine compilation about school. Don’t think about your paper for these few minutes.

iii) SNACKS. Snacks are important, you need energy. Eat some bananas, or cereal, or yoghurt. Something filling and that’s likely gonna give you energy. Crunchy is also good, but crunchy starts getting annoying around 4 AM when even your heartbeat is driving you nuts.

iv) Music. No classical music, no studying music, nothing soft. Hit up some EDM. This should be loud and annoying enough to keep you from sleeping.

v) Close your eyes for five minutes every hour or so. Set an alarm.

vi) Get up and stretch when your back starts hurting.

vii) Give yourself a reward for every paragraph finished. Eat candy. Watch a short video. You wanna motivate yourself.

Step 7: The Recovery

i) Hand in your paper and forget it ever existed. Now it’s you time.

ii) If you’re anything like me, it will be close to lunchtime when you’re done. Go get something to eat. Treat yourself. You can drink tea now. Come back to your dorm and eat.

iii) Clean up your dorm, it’ll be a mess from the night before. Make sure your bed has new sheets.

iv) Go take a hot bath. Wash your hair. Shave. Brush your teeth. Twice, cause that caffeine will have dried your mouth out. This is self-care time.

v) Come back to your room. Draw the drapes, shut off the lights, and sleep. Sleep for 15 hours. You earned it.

Step 8: Get Your Paper Back

i) Yikes, it’s a month later. You’re panicking. Go zen again.

ii) Open up blackboard. Exhale. Open that result.

iii) Oh shit, you got a 95, nice going!

Step 9: Promise to Never do that Again.

Step 10: Do It Again Next Year.

And this is the 10 step process that has continually given me high nineties and put me, bare minim, 20% over the class average. This is more geared towards university and college students and research/academic papers, but I can do one for high school students and physical projects, if you guys want.

#studyblr #studyspo #new studyblr #studyblr masterpost #research paper #all-nighter #engblr #uniblr #collegeblr #gradblr #snivy speaks #I figured it would be a nice way to get myself out there y'know by making a how-to guide #you do not know how many f bombs I had to remove from this because I wanted it to look more studyblrish #that edit was fun to make tbh I used the centaurus constellation #anyways uh enjoy I guess

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duuhrayliegh · 4 years

Text

watch your six - part four

pairing: eventual bucky x reader (still a slow burn but it’s getting closer)

warnings: some violence but not really, men being creepy, language (one f bomb), also badly written speaking while crying, aaand i think that’s it

word count: a little over 2300

a/n: aaaah it’s part four babes!!!! the response to this has been so positive i’m in love with y’all!!! <3 <3 <3 i’m still way behind on my classwork and going through a terrible break up but we’re pushing through here

p.s.: my requests are still open if y’all want me to write yall something! aaalso, there’s a bucky short coming tomorrow ;)) <3

series m.list

ray’s m.list

**********************************

This strange man’s hand was still caressing my hair as he smirked down at me. Running has hands up to the root and then yanking my head upwards to face him directly. “When I speak to you, you look me in the eye, little one.” Not one to show my fear, at least not to men like him, I scoffed. Thick brows shot towards his hairline and a twitch in his jaw as he clenched it. The hold he had in my hair gave him leverage over me. I winced as he lifted his arm to bring my face closer to his. A small whimper escaped the back of my throat, saliva gathering in my mouth. “Don’t test me, little one.” I sneered then spat in his face, the wet substance sticking to his face across his nose and cheek.

Bringing a hand up to his face to swipe the thick liquid from his skin, he glowered as he pulled his palm away. Then several things happened at once. The man forced a harsh breath out and then I was facing the ground with a sting on my left cheek. A gasp left my lips, he just slapped me. Who the hell does he think he is? I shook my head and then leveled my gaze with the man’s. I’m almost positive that my cheek is sporting a bright red handprint that does nothing for my complexion.

“What the hell man? What was that for?” I groaned while attempting to soothe my throbbing cheek on my shoulder. I mean, was it kind of justified? I did just spit in this man's face. No, he totally deserved that. After releasing his grip on my hair, he transferred his hands to the sides of the chair I was chained to. The metal scraping along the concrete floor caused a loud screech to reverberate through the small room.

“I said not to test me, bitch.” the man growled out as he pushed my chair onto the back two legs. I’m starting to think that this is a bit more serious than I originally thought. “Now, you’re going to sit here like a good little bitch and tell me what I want to know.” He retreated only to grab the chair that Suits used. Slamming against the pavement he straddled the chair with his forearms resting on the back.

“How many missions did you participate in?” I released a groan and rotated my head, leaning my head back.

“I already told your friend,” I tilted my head to speak directly to the absolute jerk-wad of a man in front of me, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The man quirked an eyebrow and clenched his jaw. He rolled his neck, causing the bones in it to crack and then stood. He walked to the other side of the metal table that sat in the middle of the room. The sound of a zipper caused me to snap my head to where he was standing. The tactical vest he was wearing dropped to the metal surface allowing for a loud thunk to flow through the room. He stretched out his shoulders and swung his arms out in front as if he was trying to increase the blood flow. I’m the one who’s literally tied to a freaking chair, what does he need blood flow for? My breathing quickened, calm down, don’t show any fear. He popped the knuckles of his hands and approached me.

“I’m not a patient man.” He bent at the knees and leaned his face closer to mine. Exhaling into my face, he maintained eye contact with me. “And you’re not acting like the good little girl we both know you oh-so-desperately want to be.” I rolled my eyes at that, apparently that was the wrong thing to do in this man’s face. His left eye twitched as he stared at me.

“Do you think you could back up? Your breath reeks, man.” I have no concern for my own well-being do I? The man’s head tilted to the side and then he wolfed out a gruff laugh. He shifted his weight to land on the heels of his feet and threw his body into the laugh. It was a bit disconcerting to see this man laughing so wholeheartedly in a situation that didn’t feel funny to me. Another blow to the side of my face was issued, however this time he didn’t stop. Several open handed hits were delivered, all the while he was resetting my head back by grasping my chin. My breathing was becoming labored, my chest heaving up and down in a frenzy. He gripped my chin and jerked it upwards so he could stand at his full height to tower over me.

“How many missions did they send you on?” He demanded, increasing his hold on my face surely leaving sickening bruises that would match his fingers perfectly. At some point, tears began running down my red cheeks.

“I don’t kno-ow what you’re talking ab-about!” Tears streaming down my swollen face, “I s-swear to god, I don’t know wh-what you mean!” Choked sobs were preventing me from breathing correctly. The man grabbed my shoulders and shook my body.

“Calm the fuck down and speak clearly.” Small hiccups were escaping my mouth without permission. Why am I letting this guy get to me? What the hell is happening? “How many missions did they send you on?” I broke down again, fat tears leaking out of my eyes.

“I ju-just want to go h-h-home. I s-swear I don’t kno-ow anything!” I shouted in his face. He glowered at me and lifted his hand from my shoulder. My whole body tensed as I readied myself to the impact.

“Johnson.” The door burst open, stopping Johnson from landing another hit. “This is not what you were supposed to be doing.” Suits walked back in the room. Johnson backed down, lowering his hand and turning to the new member in the room. “Sir, I was told to interrogate the prisoner.”

“Yes, Johnson, interrogate her. Not beat her to a pulp.” He gestured wildly with his hand. “If the boss found out you were doing this, he’d have your head on a platter.” Suits took steps closer toward us and Johnson shrunk into himself. “Get out of here before I call him about this.” Johnson nodded quickly and left the room quickly, leaving his tactical vest on the table.

I was still quietly crying while strapped to the metal frame of the chair. Suits approached me while pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket. He raised it to my face and I jolted backwards away from his touch. “Easy now, I’m only here to help.” Is he seriously pulling a good cop, bad cop routine on me right now? He wiped my cheeks of the salty remnants, “Now, how can I help you besides that?”

“You co-could let me go h-home.” I tried to say without stuttering, clearly unsuccessful. I didn’t want to show my emotions but really at this point, could it get worse?

“Awe, girly. You know I can’t do that until you tell me what I want to know.” He began to drag the chair next to me, back to the opposite side of the table. This created an obstacle between the two of us, which made me slightly more comfortable knowing he wouldn’t be able to reach me as quickly.

I heaved a sigh, “but I don’t know anything.” My weeping had come to a definite end, making way for frustration. My face heated for a different reason than being struck several times.

“See, this is where we disagree because I know that you’re lying to me.” He shook his finger in my face and I scrunched my brows together, flicking my eyes between his finger and face.

“You’re kidding me. I told you I don’t know about any missions.”

“Oh really? Then who’s Gemini?” He reclined in his chair, looking smug. “Actually, you know more importantly, who is Libra? The whole thing is just fascinating to me.”

“I don’t know what any of that is. I swear to whatever you want me to.”

“Then why do I have this that says you do.” He held up the manila folder that he first walked in with. I shrugged my shoulders.

“Whatever is in there is lying to you.” He cocked his head to the side and flipped the folder open. He removed a photograph from the folder and placed it on the table in front of me. Staring back at me, was a slightly younger version of myself with shorter hair. A large X was drawn across the whole picture and underneath it read the words ‘Agent Libra.’

My eyes widened, “I have never seen that before, in my life.” Suits sighed heavily and then began flipping through the rest of the papers.

“So what is the Svengali?” He threw out another paper and I glanced down at it. It looked like a typed report of some kind. Much of it redacted by thick black lines. The words Libra, Gemini, and Svengali were visible amidst the sea of dark ink.

*****************************

A ping sounded throughout the room causing the screen of the phone to illuminate. A metal hand reached for the thin device.

New mission alert. You’re needed. Meet at the compound.

Great, this is just what Bucky needed to keep him distracted. Sleep never came easy to him so he was spending copious amounts of time trying to catch up on what he missed out on. Steve told him to make a list and Sam kept rambling on about some gay Marvin man? Bucky much prefered to do things on his own. He hasn’t had help for over ninety years, why should he need it now?

Throwing on his leather jacket as he began to leave his apartment, he checked the pockets for the keys to his motorcycle. He also made sure to grab his gloves. Even though T’Challa and Shuri were good enough to give him a new vibranium arm, Bucky still wasn’t too keen on being stared at in public. It was better for everyone if he just kept the arm tucked away as much as he could while around strangers.

He did one last once over of his apartment before locking the door behind him. He jogged down the stairs towards his bike. It definitely was his pride and joy, it was the first thing that he bought with his own money since 1943. His apartment was courtesy of Pepper Potts, no thanks to Tony’s complaining. Tony and Bucky had eventually worked out their differences, to say the least. Tony still hadn’t fully forgiven the Winter Soldier for killing his parents, and neither had Bucky so they were agreeing to disagree.

The ride to the compound from Brooklyn wasn’t a hard one. It gave Bucky time to appreciate the scenery around him. Slowing to a stop at a four way stop just outside of the compound, Bucky dropped his feet to the tarmac below, stabilizing the bike between his legs. He tilted his head back and felt the warm rays of the sun on his face. Warm was something that Bucky was still getting used to, it was easier in Wakanda. He had his own hut, voluntary therapy sessions, and easy-going check ups with Shuri in her lab.

Everything was simpler in Wakanda, but what Bucky missed most from Wakanda was the stability. He didn’t have to worry about missions, or keeping up with Steve, or the crushing guilt that he felt whenever he saw Tony. After parking his bike at the facility, Bucky made his way to the meeting room. Dark wooden tables in an L-shape appeared in his view. Steve and Sam were standing in front of the large monitor that was displaying images of an unknown, yet familiar looking woman.

“Tony, we don’t know if she knows anything.” Natasha said, apparently trying to rationalize with someone else in the room.

“Natasha, we don’t know that she doesn’t not know anything.” Tony shot back, Sam turned slowly and opened his mouth with a confused expression on his face.

“Tony, we aren’t in an episode of FRIENDS. This is serious. We need to decide if this is worth pursuing or not.”

“Wilson, that’s all well and good but we have to acknowledge that this woman could get us our first real break in our search.” Tony explained while taking deep breaths.

“What are we deciding?” Bucky interrupted as he plopped into one of the chairs. Now that Bucky has been given his freedom back, he’s able to display a difference between his mission self and his regular self.

“This woman here,” Steve gestured to the woman on the screen, “is a member of the Virago. It’s an international branch of SHIELD that was believed to be infiltrated by HYRDA years ago.”

“This is the agent code named Libra. Her last mission was with another agent code named Gemini. The mission report has since been lost to us. All we know is that Libra and Gemini were instructed to watch a Svengali safehouse. Apparently something went wrong and only Libra made it out alive.” Tony added, “Which is why we need to find her and see what she knows.” “Tony! There’s no guarantee that she has any knowledge of this mission.” The redhead stressed as she leaned over the table towards the man she was speaking to.

“I think we should find her.” The words left Bucky’s mouth before he could stop them. All motion in the room stopped.

“Um, did the Manchurian Candidate just agree with me?” Tony questioned as the rest of the room remained quiet.

“Look, I’m not necessarily agreeing with you.” Bucky started.

“Nope, can’t take it back.” Tony mused, “Already said it.” Bucky sighed and shook his head.

“Why do you think we should go after her Buck?” Steve inquired. Bucky’s brows furrowed and he shrugged his shoulders.

“I think I know her from somewhere.”

#watch your six #bucky fanfic #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader #james buchanan barnes #bucky x you #eventual bucky x reader #female reader insert #Sebastian stan #bucky barnes #bucky x y/n

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legionofpotatoes · 3 years

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we decided to watch all story cutscenes from the new resident evil village videogame on a whim, since it’s not really our cup of tea gameplay-wise but seems to be this massive zeitgeist moment that made us morbidly curious. And I know how much everyone cares about my thoughts on things I know very little about, so. let’s get into it huh gamers. and yeah spoilers?

for context, I’ve only played resident evil 4 and a small portion of 5. I also read the wikipedia entry for 7’s plot recently. all this to say I was only vaguely aware of how tonally wacky the series was going in

I also completely gave up following the plot of the mutagens’ soap opera, so that paid off in spades here as you might imagine

anyway so that baby in the intro. that baby’s head is just massive. humongous toddlerdome. when ethan finds the baby’s head in a jar later on. there is no way that head would fit into that jar. bad game design. no not even game design. basic stuff. one hundred years in prison for jar modeler

if I see a single functional hetero marriage in video games I will cry tears of joy. I understand their misery is kind of The Point irt them badly working through the hillbilly romp trauma but like. sheesh. at least set that up as an emotional story goal the plot will help resolve. but nope they start off miserable and it goes nowhere

I know I know the mia thing has a huge wrinkle in it but like. not really in terms of dramatic function?? set up a happy end to the re7 nightmare (miranda can keep up appearances for all she cares) and then take that all away from angry griffin mcelroy for manpain. it will still absolutely work to set up the dramatic forward momentum. why throw in this cliche Hollywood Tension in their marriage if you’re not going to address it oh maybe because it’s normalized as automatically interesting because nuclear families are a self-propagating pit of a very narrow chance at emotional happiness relying on social stigma to preserve their empty function oops my baggage slipped in yikes abort mission

I called him griffin mcelroy because I saw his face on twitter and. yeah. I will continue to do this occasionally. my house my rules

... fuck the reason I’m hung up on this is specifically because the rest of the game is so tonally dexterous (which is a shining point to me! more on that later!), and yet they felt weirdly compelled to create the aesthetic trapping of a family-at-odds trope without following it through too well. a sign of both the good and the bad stuff to come

but listen the real reason why I wanted to talk about any of this is to nitpick the fascinating backwards-engineered nucleus of the entire thing; in that this game essentially creates a melting pot of just SO many disparate horror tropes and then makes a no-holds-barred unhinged effort at weaving thick lore to piece them all together. it is truly a sight to behold. like straight up you got your backwoods fright night situation, your gothic castle vampires, your rural-industrial werewolves, and don’t forget your bloated swamp monsters over there, with then a hard left turn into robotic body horror, and the entire ass subgenre of Creepy Doll writ large, and the bloodborne tentacle monsters, and a hellboy angel bossfight, which rides on the coattails of a mech-on-mech pacific rim bonanza, and just jesus henry christ slow down

almost all of these are textural hijack jobs that don’t really get into the metaphor plain of any of those settings but the game sort-of makes an argument that the texture IS the point and revels in it. It is kind of admirable almost. The same reason why the intro felt boxed in and unmotivated is also why the rest of the game just blasts off of its hinges to the point of complete and self-indulgent tonal abandon. I kinda loved that about it. lady dimitrescu made sure to hold her hat down as she bent forward in mahogany doorways and then suddenly she’s a giant gore dragon and you settle in your temp role as dark souls man with Gun to take her ass down. Excellent??

this rhino rampage impulse to gobble up every horror aesthetic known to man comes to head when the game wrestles with its FPS trappings in what is the most hilarious solution in creating visceral player damage moments. Since most cinematics and the entire game is in first person, that leaves precious little real estate for the devs to work with if they really want to sell griffin’s physical crucible. To wit. This dude’s forearms. Specifically just the forearms. They are MASSACRED throughout the story. The poor man lives out the silent hill dimension of a hand model. by the end cutscene he looks like a neatly dressed desk clerk who had decided to stick both his grabbers into garbage disposal grinders just a few hours prior. like in addition to everything else it manages to rope in that tinge of slapstick violence into its general grievous genre collection except this time it IS for a lack of trying! truly incredible

but wait his miracle clawbacks from everything his poor paws go through are retroactively explained away, yes, but far too vaguely and far too late to console me as I sat and watched everyone’s favorite baby brother reattach an entirely severed hand to his wrist stump by just. placing it on there. and giving it a lil twist ‘n pop terminator-style. and then willing his fingers back into motion right in front of my bulging eyes. this game just does not care. it does not give a shit. and boy howdy will it work to make that into one of its strongest suits

cause generally speaking resident evil was THE premiere vanilla zombie content destinaysh for like a decade, right? and as the rest of the world and mainstream media started encroaching and bloodying its blue ocean it went and just exploded in every single conceivable horror trope direction like a smilodon on catnip. truly, genuinely fascinating franchise moves

yeah the big vampire milf is hot. other news; grass... green. although I do love the implication that her closet is just identical white dresses on a rack. cartoon network-level queen shit

apropos of nothing I’ve said there’s also this hobo dante-devimaycry-magneto man, and I can’t believe this sentence makes sense. anyway he made that “boulder-punching asshole” joke referring to chris redfield and it was probably the only easter egg that really landed for me and boy did it land hard. I have not seen him punch the boulder in re5, mind. I had only heard about how funny it is from friends. and here this dude was, probably in the same exact mindset as me, trying to grapple with that insane mental image. with you on that ian mckellen, loud and clear

I advocate vehemently against the shallow pursuit of hyper photorealism in art direction but I gotta admit it works really in favor of immersive horror like this. the european village shacks especially gave me super unchill flashbacks to my rural countryside retreat in western georgia. I could smell the linoleum dude. not cool

faces are weird in this game. can’t place it. nice textures, good animation, but the modeling template is... uuh strange? and the hair. it has that clustered-flat-clumpy look that harkens to something very specific and unpleasant but I just don’t know what. sue me

griffin’s mental aptitude to take all this shit in stride and end every seemingly traumatizing bossfight involving some fucking eldritch being yet unseen through mortal eyes by essentially throwing out an MCU quip is just. What the fuck dude? I mean that was funny how you casually yelled the f-word at a god damn werewolf that you considered a fairy tale an hour ago but are you like, all right?? it was swinging a sledgehammer the size of a bus at you, ethan

oh oh the vampires are afraid of cold and your last name is winters. I get it haha

Pro Gamer Nitpick: boss fights seemed a bit unnecessarily long?? idk why the youtuber we picked decided the ENTIRE propeller man fight counted towards the vital story scenes he was stitching together, but man mr big daddy lite there really had some get up and go huh??

why are they saying dimitrescu.. like that. is it really how you say that word or is the english language relapsing into its fetish for ending every single word with a consonant at all costs

I’m not saying it’s a dramatic miss of a twist in context of all that’s going on, but the “you died in the last game actually and have been DC’s clayface ever since” revelation is low-key. it’s. it’s just funny to me, I dont know what to say. century-old god-witch fails her evil plan after she mistakenly removes heart from what was definitely NOT just some white guy with eight fingers after all

chris realizing he’s about to become the player character and immediately swapping out his tsundere trenchcoat for the muscletight sex haver sweater

the little bluetooth speaker-sized pipe bomb he taped to his knife was nuclear?? really??? I must have missed something because that is just too good. I buy it though I totally buy it. chris just got them fun-sized nukes in his car trunk for, you guessed it, Situations

anyway this is all for now just wanted to briefly touch on how unexpectedly funny and tonally irreverent this seemingly serious game turned out to be. did not articulate any cathartic story beats whatsoever but my god it had fun connecting those plot points. he just fucking put his severed hand back on his stump and it Just Worked todd howard get in here

#text #another one in my bulleted review series with no rhyme or reason #sorry resident evil fans this could be a painful read pls turn away #i know almost nothing about it but i am gonna be super fake familiar and critical of this one hey ho

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stubbychaos · 4 years

Text

The First Time He Sees Her

A one-shot for Saviin’ika

This goes hand-in-hand with chapter 1 of Saviin’ika, for those who might not have read it yet

Pairing: Paz Vizsla x Nurse!Reader

Summary: Paz sees his nurse before he meets her for the first time and is stunned by her selflessness and beauty.

Rating: T for language (there are a couple F-bombs bc Paz has a sailor’s mouth tbh) and the tiniest bit of violence since Paz is injured.

Word Count: 3,000ish

Warnings: Unless you count tooth-rotting fluff and Paz absolutely crushing on his little nurse, there are no warnings!! There’s mentions of Paz’s injury from the first chapter, but nothing too descriptive!

A/N: Thank you to the anon who sent that super sweet ask about me writing from Paz’s POV. I’m not sure if this will meet your expectations, but I hope you enjoy it regardless!! I actually had a lot of fun writing this much fluff after writing all the angst for the newest chapter. I might do some more of these if you guys are interested in certain parts of the story?? <3

The first time Paz sees you, you’re smiling so brightly and it’s enough to make him freeze him from across the street where he’s found himself cemented to, his visor instantly fixated on your plush pink lips and the whites of your teeth.

You're not the one he's smiling at and for some reason that feels like the biggest crime in the galaxy--and Paz has witnessed many crimes and atrocities in his lifetime.

He’s clutching a canvas bag filled with several supplies and fresh food for his tribe as he watches you crouch down in front of a crying little boy who must have tripped and fallen, his little palms bleeding as you carefully inspect them with furrowed brows.

Unintentionally, Paz finds himself cocking his head to the side as you shuffle through a small cross-body bag, seeming to search for something in particular and your smile widens as you pull out a little glass jar with some sort of soft purple substance in it.

A smile stretches across Paz’s lips as he watches you completely drop to your bare knees on the cracked pavement so you’re more eye-level with the child and you begin the tender task of rubbing the ointment into his minor wounds, all while reassuring him with a bright smile that everything is going to be alright. Your smile is a soft, comforting one, Paz notices as you easily cheer up the little boy with warm words, the skin at the corners of your eyes crinkling and a part of him is tempted to get a little closer to you so he can hear your voice better. It’s a breathy, lilting melody that barely reaches his ears underneath his helmet, but the sound of it comforts him and he’s not even the one who’s injured.

You’re asking the child innocent little questions to distract him--“What’s your name, sweetheart? Where are your parents? Do you have siblings or pets? What’s your favorite color? Yellow? Mine is purple but I like blue as well!”--and Paz finds your dedication to this child that you don’t even know so sweet and honorable when he’s only ever dealt with scumbags in the village.

You’re a breath of fresh air, Paz realizes with a soft grin, watching as you do everything possible to comfort the tiny boy who seems to be warming up to you, growing shy when you tenderly ruffle his messy curls before you pull some gauze out of your bag to bandage his hands. You tend to his little wounds with the utmost care, as though you’re nursing graver wounds and Paz nearly chuckles when you inform the boy he is far stronger than any soldier that you’ve ever met.

Then he notices your long, shiny mane and he melts.

Paz thinks he’s never seen such a beautiful head of hair in his entire life. The long waves tumble down the length of your spine with a healthy shine, the locks curled at the ends and he’s in absolute awe, knowing that you must have spent years growing out your beautiful mane. Then he spots little bundles of violets tucked behind each of your ears and his smile grows tenfold, not used to seeing such vibrancy in the little village that resides above the covert.

Paz thinks you must be some sort of beacon of hope and purity in a place filled with criminals and greedy bounty hunters and his breath hitches in his throat and his heart stops beating as you remove one of the little bundles of flowers from their home behind your ear. His eyes follow your tiny hand as you pluck a flower from the bouquet and offer it to the blushing child who’s no longer crying, but instead smiling shyly at you as he happily accepts it.

The Mandalorian tenses a little when a man steps out of the building that you’re kneeling in front of on the sidewalk and he watches as the man roughly grabs you by the elbow and pulls you to your feet with no regard for your own comfort. Even with the soft smile you give the little boy as he waves goodbye to you, it no longer meets your eyes and Paz notices the way you drop your head as the aggressive man tugs you back into the building.

Paz spots the sign on the outside of the building and realizes it’s an infirmary, and that you must be some sort of doctor or medic and everything suddenly makes sense--your kindness towards the child and how you hadn’t hesitated to step outside to tend to his minor wounds.

Paz isn’t even aware there’s an infirmary in the village and he’s grateful for this new information, especially since him and so many others in the tribe are always getting injured during training and sparring. As he makes his way back to the enclave a smile still stretched along his concealed features, he hopes he will soon again see you--the pretty medic that wears bright violets in your hair.

It happens sooner than he wishes for, to be honest.

Two weeks later, Paz is storming into the infirmary that he had never known to exist before you, gripping his bloody side as he searches specifically for you and immediately, his eyes zone in on the small figure that’s hunched over in a chair at the front desk.

At first, you don’t even notice him, utterly focused on finishing whatever the hell it is you’re writing down in a big white binder, your bottom lip tucked between your teeth and your brows furrowed in concentration.

“You.”

Immediately, your head whips up and it takes Paz a moment to remember how to speak when your wide, expressive eyes somehow meet his; a part of him actually worries that you can somehow see him, despite his helmet. Almost instantly, your gaze lowers to his chest and he knows the look of fear all too well and dread settles deep in Paz’s chest when he realizes that you’re afraid of him.

His voice is strained as he tries to ignore the intense pain flaring like hot coals in both sides of his ribs, “I need medical attention... please.”

“Oh! Okay,” You quickly stand up, still refusing to look at his helmet and you tuck a non-existent lock of hair behind your ear--it must be a nervous habit, Paz realizes and manages to smile a little at your awkwardness, actually forgetting that you can’t even see him, “I think there might be someone who can--”

“No!” Paz hisses through clenched teeth, his ribs aching fiercely and he has to force himself to lower his voice to something softer so he won’t frighten you when he notices how badly you flinch at the sound of his deep voice, “I want you to tend to my wounds.”

Paz watches the way your nostrils flare a little, the muscles in your jaw slightly shifting as you force yourself to nod and immediately, he dislikes how frightened you are of him as he stalks past you and into the slim hallway and he realizes he’s already ruined your first impression of him. Angrily, he struggles to remove his heavy equipment as you quietly usher him into your little office. He’s a little surprised to find your desk and the window sill decorated with well-cared for flowers and plants, the vibrant flora seeming so out of place in such a bleak village, though it still comforts him for some reason.

“W-Would you like some help sir?”

Your voice--so quiet and so fucking sweet--is filled with such hesitation and is still just as much of a melody as he remembers it to be from the first time he’d seen you tending to that child.

Immediately, he turns to you and curses the Maker because you look so frightened by his appearance, your tiny hands wringing together nervously and he forces himself to relax and drop his guarded facade when you offer to help him remove his armor. Paz is grateful when you bravely step forward to remove his cuirass, taking great care and caution as you fiddle with the latches with small, skilled hands. He’s surprised that you somehow manage to figure out how to remove his chest plate and he nearly laughs through the pain when you fumble with the weight of his Beskar cradled in your small arms as you carry it to your desk.

He remains complacent as you return to help him remove all of his extra armor and padding, though he has to force himself not to grunt when you help him untuck his tunics from the waistband of his pants. You’re asking him questions about his injuries and what he was stabbed with--your voice that same soft melody--and he wants to apologize for being an asshole after rudely answering your gentle questions, but all he can focus on are your small hands and how cold they are against his warm skin and how he’s not fucking used to being treated so delicately.

He’s being an absolute asshole towards you and he loathes that you’re clearly growing more frustrated with him with every sarcastic sentence he offers you, but all he can focus on is how he can feel your tepid puffs of breath hitting his bare skin as you stitch his wounds, your pretty face only inches away from his stomach. You’re mumbling something about how lucky he is that the stab wound isn’t deep and the thought of him being stabbed and body-slammed by another Mandalorian makes him ‘lucky’ nearly has him laughing.

He decides not to mention that he had initially been distracted by the pretty village nurse and your pretty flowers during the middle of an intense sparring match and he makes some sort of sardonic remark before he can stop himself. He’s muttering some nonsense of how you should be used to violence and gore, what with being a doctor, but you’re quick to correct him and Paz admires the irritation in your small voice.

He thinks that he must not be the first to judge you and what you must have been through.

“I’m a nurse, actually. The infirmary only has one doctor and he barely works here since he’s always traveling,” You correct him, eyes trained on the way the curved hook of the needle pierces his skin, nylon thread bringing the torn flesh back together, and Paz feels sorry when he notices the exhaustion evident in your hushed voice, “Sorry if you expected to be treated by an actual doctor when you stormed into the the infirmary asking for my help. There’s not really a huge need for medical professionals in the village–most people are dead before they even make it here.”

Paz is surprised by the bleakness in your soft voice and how you almost seem to put yourself down for only being a nurse, as if your job is somehow not important and he remembers how kindly you had treated the little boy’s extremely minor wounds with such tender care. It seems unfair that someone with such a kind, tender heart could feel such insecurities, but he thinks you must not be used to being treated with respect.

“Why did you ask for me?”

The question throws Paz off guard and he struggles to form a coherent response when he feels the curved hook of a sterile needle piercing his bloody flesh. Paz wants to tell you that he’d seen you comforting that distraught child just a couple weeks ago--that he’d witnessed you tending to the tiniest of scrapes on the boy’s hands that really didn’t even require medical attention. He wants to tell you that he wants one of the little violets that’s tucked behind your ear, but he knows it would sound ridiculous and perhaps childish, so he responds with:

“You were the only one that actually looked competent.”

You still wear an intense expression of confliction, but you nod slowly and Paz is grateful when you continue to stitch up his wounds with great precision and grace, your fingers moving so fluidly like water against his bloodied flesh. He knows he’s only making everything worse for himself when you kindly and nervously ask him to stop fidgeting around so much, but the soft feeling of your fingers brushing against his skin every now and then is too much and he--

“Fine. Just hurry up.”

The way he says it is so fucking rude and he knows it and cringes the second he sees the expression of disappointment and distaste among your lovely features, you eyes barely glancing up at him through the lenses of your big glasses. You must be so used to cruelty from others and he sees it in the way you shake your head a little as you finish his stitches, or how your eyes momentarily dart up to his helmet and hands, as if confirming you’re not going to be struck or beaten by him.

Then your hands are on Paz’s tender ribs and he nearly jumps right off the cot at how soft and delicately you are pressing your hand against his damaged torso, like he’s made of the most fragile glass and not of impenetrable Beskar. Suddenly, you’re standing up, rambling something about a bacta salve that you made yourself and Paz is quick in his attempts to stop you, feeling utterly undeserving of such medical care after he already antagonized you enough, though you don’t pay attention and he watches as you makes your way to your desk.

He sits up a little higher when he notices you struggling to reach the top shelf that’s connected to your desk and how you have to stand on your tippy toes to reach for a big jar that’s filled with a bright blue substance. He’s nearly halfway off the cot to help you, but your fingers gently curl around the glass jar before you’re approaching him once again. There’s a tiny smile tugging at your lips from the mere thought of relieving the ache in his ribs and Paz is quick to catch your wrist before your bacta-clad fingers can touch the side of his stomach.

“I don’t want your pity.”

Your voice is more confident when you speak and Paz grows warm at how willing you are to argue with him, “It is not pity, Mandalorian.”

You smile sweetly at him, a gentle expression that immediately has him loosening his grip around your tiny wrist, “Then what is it?”

“Kindness.”

Paz stares at you, absolutely stunned as he drops your wrist and lets you tend to his bruised ribs with the softest pressure possible. He tilts his helmet to stare up at you and wonders how something so sweet and soft has lasted this long in such a cruel village. He feels the soft pressure of your cold fingers against his ribs and smiles underneath his helmet, though it’s a sad one as he thinks of all the ungrateful patients you must get on a daily-basis and he longs to tell you that he’s grateful for your tender touch,

Instead, his mouth grows dry and he remains silent as you finish tending to his wounds and it’s not until you silently offer him the little jar of bacta salve that he shows his gratitude with a sharp nod and a tiny ‘thank you’. Paz feels awful for not having credits to give the sweet nurse, but he figures that money is something you do not care much for and simply accepts the precious gift without another word. He thinks of your selflessness with the little boy from the other day as you kindly escort him out of your office and briefly wonders if you’re just this genuinely sweet with everyone you meet.

As Paz leaves your office, utterly aware of you sheepishly following him, he’s half attempted to give you some sort of payment for your hard work and dedication to your job, but before he can even reach into his pouch, an angry voice is calling out your name.

“I thought I told you to have those reports done today by sundown and it’s almost kriffing midnight. I’m tired of telling you how to do your job! Am I not punishing you hard enough? Is that why you’re too stupid to understand how to do something as fucking basic as filing reports?”

Paz instantly sees the way your head lowers in shame as the same man who had forced you back into the infirmary weeks ago antagonizes you and before he even realizes what he’s doing, his fingers are wrapped around the handle of his vibroblade, ready to kill the man if he chooses to harm you severely. The Mandalorian doesn’t like the way this man berates you--how he refers to the sweet nurse as pathetic and incompetent and his heart aches in his chest when he hears how defeated and broken you suddenly sound as you attempt to apologize.

After being told to leave the infirmary, you quickly turn around and Paz is just as surprised as you are as the two of you face each other. Your eyes are fixated on the firm grip he has on his vibroblade and it takes Paz a moment to realize that the poor nurse is not only afraid of that cruel man, but him as well. Slowly, Paz removes his hand from the handle of his blade and watches sadly as you quickly skitter past him, clearly terrified of what cruel men were capable of and he feels it deep within his chest as he watches you quickly make your way down the rocky sidewalk.

“Nurse.”

Paz barely speaks, but it’s enough for you to freeze in your tracks, not uttering a single word as he slowly approaches you. Your shoulders are practically touching your earlobes with how tense you are and shame fills his entire being when he realizes just how terrified you are of him--just how much pain you must have endured if you’re this afraid.

A tear slowly slides down your cheek and...

Maker, what have you been through to feel such intense fear? Could they really beat down someone so precious and innocent to the point where you fear that everyone wishes to harm you?

“It’s too late and dangerous to be walking alone. I’m going to walk you home.”

Paz reaches out to grab your small elbow, but you quickly back away with an intense flinch and he fears that you’ve somehow decided to mistrust everyone you meet. Against his better judgment, he offers you his beloved vibroblade, giving you the option to stab him if you start to feel threatened at any point during the walk home and finally, your beautiful eyes meet his through the protection of his visor.

Paz stares at the beautiful flowers tucked behind your ears with reverence as you question him in a small, timid voice, “Haven’t you uh, been stabbed enough for one day?”

Before he can even attempt to stop himself, the Mandalorian finds himself laughing at your innocent question and nods a little, “Yes, I think I have. Now, let’s get going.”

You offer him the tiniest smile, something only slightly similar to what you’d given the little boy from weeks ago, but Paz is willing to accept anything at this point, even if it’s a ghost of a smile from his tiny nurse.

His heart swells when your fingers eventually curl into the crook of his elbow and he can feel the soft pressure against his skin as you allow him to walk you home.

Paz quickly decides that your company is just as lovely as your warm smile.

Taglist: @parabatai-winchester @auty-ren @theocatkov @oloreaa @talesfromtheguild @blindedbyyourgrace17 @datmando @dartheldur @miscellaneous-mando @karpasia @ben-is-a-hoe @the-feckless-wonder @whatababeleia @maybege @aeryntheofficial @corrupt-fvcker @lackofhonor @phoenixhalliwell @crazy-kat-in-the-hat @roxypeanut @mandolovian @honestlystop @teaofpeach @macabrefaerie @acynicalcat @spaghetti-666 @readsalot73 @lanatheawesome @absurdthirst @anakinsittinginsand @yes-music-is-my-religion @tangledlove27 @justrunamok @haloangel391

#THIS WAS SO MUCH FUN TO WRITE #I hope y'all enjoy it too <33 #my writing #if u guys want more of Paz's POV pls let me know #THIS DUMB BITCH LOVES HIS NURSE #AND IS OVERWHELMED BY HER THAT HE MAKES A FOOL OF HIMSELF

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noonachronicles · 4 years

Text

The End of the F**king World Pt. 4

Byun Baekhyun X Reader

Word Count: 10.8k

Warnings: Language. Some violence.

Genre: Apocalyptic/Alien Invasion AU. Slow Burn (ish?). One pining pup and one idiot in denial to eventual lovers.

A/N: No real notes for this one except enjoy?!

When you woke up the next morning you knew the two of you had overslept. From under the door you could see there was a bright glow growing against the walls of the dressing room as the department store filled with sunlight. However, you couldn’t move. Apparently, sometime in the night, you and Baekhyun had made some adjustments. The two of you were spooning, and he was the big one. One of his arms cradled your head and the other was tucked under your arm as he held you, his chest was warm against your back. You had your fingers wrapped around his soft hand, holding it close to your chest.

You thought about what you should do. The most ‘you’ way to handle the situation would probably be to overreact and make a big scene. Tear his arm from you and jump out of the embrace. Yell at him for doing absolutely nothing wrong. Truthfully though it felt nice. More than nice. It felt absolutely amazing. With the exception of hugs from Seulgi and Irene and the occasional pat on the back from Chanyeol for doing a good job you were severely lacking in the human contact department.

Baekhyun had been really excellent at providing you comfort and contact lately. The way held you after Baddies first attack, the night before when he’d hugged all the sadness out of you. Being tucked into him, squished like sardines, on your tiny bed back at Cordially. You’d gotten a real taste for it. It felt nice just to be close to someone and you guessed there was no real harm in it. So you didn’t do the ‘you’ thing. Instead you didn’t move at all, you just stayed put and watched the wall grow brighter with daylight as you waited for him to wake up.

After a while you could feel him stirring behind you. Adjusting to get comfortable and pulling you closer. His nose was pressed against the nape of your neck and he breathed you in with a sigh of content. In his arrested state of awareness he pressed a few soft kisses against the skin between your neck and shoulder. Though your eyes went wide and your mouth dropped open you tried not to get too tense. He was mostly asleep, you’d reminded yourself, he didn’t know. Seconds passed as he started to really wake and he seemed to have finally processed as he inhaled sharply in realization.

“Oh shit…” he muttered under his breath.

You stayed still, silent, as he slowly tried to remove himself from you. It made you want to laugh more than anything so you bit your lip. He was so panicked and cautious. There was something about the way he squirmed that brought you joy, it always did. He was just so cute when he was nervous. And he was so often nervous around you. When he finally got free he sighed in relief and then tried to settle back down on the ground beside you. It was then you finally stretched out and pretended to stir from your own sleep.

“Morning.” You said through a fake yawn as you turned towards him.

“Good morning.”

“Have you been up long?” You asked sitting up and reaching for your pack.

“No, I just barely woke up.” His face was flush as he sat up and started to pull his boots back on.

After taking a drink from your water bottle you gave a small huff of a laugh, “I’m surprised you could sleep through all my snoring.”

“It was rough, but the music helped.” He grinned over at you.

As you pulled your own boots on Baekhyun sat quietly and watched you. He looked nervous at first, but the longer you went on without mentioning him kissing you the more he seemed to ease.

“What time is it?”

Looking down at his wrist he groaned, “Shit, my watch broke.”

You eyed him as you zipped up your backpack, “So, we go downstairs and find you a watch. Then go through quads Six, Three and Two. Rendezvous is in One, right? Or is it Four?”

“Four technically, but I think it’s right on the line.” He grunted as he stood up and offered you his hand. You hummed in agreement as he helped you to your feet. “We can try to go through Five.”

“That’s City Center.” You shook your head, “it doesn’t even go all the way through because of the bombs. The old bank building destroyed like three blocks when it collapsed.”

Both of you eyed your surroundings cautiously as you left the dressing room. It seemed that there weren’t any Lurkers. The sunlight bursting through the glass building deterring them from sticking around.

“Yeah, I know, but it would still be shorter. We could skip quad Three all together.” He justified, “We’d clear Six, cut through City Center to the blockage and it’ll curve us up to Two. Then it’s just a quick sprint through one and we’re back with everyone else. They blasted that huge hole into the side of the art museum. It's always flooded with sunlight. I’m sure we could just walk right through without even seeing a single Lurker.”

“I don’t know.” You eyed the steps of the escalator as you made your way down to the first floor, Baekhyun following behind you.

He sighed, “If we just do it, that makes the whole trip one day. If we go all the way around it’s two and everyone is already ahead of us. I know you don’t want them waiting on you, you’d hate that.”

“One day, sure, but we’d be cutting it really fucking close.” You looked around the bottom floor for what you were looking for, the jewelry section, “If we hit any snags, that means we don’t make it to rendezvous by dark. So it’s two days anyway and we’ve needlessly risked our lives going through City Center.”

Picking up the first watch you saw you turned and tossed it to him. He looked down at the watch but he wasn’t as happy as you thought he’d be. He frowned slightly as he looked at the watch but you knew it wasn’t the watch he was upset with. It was pretty clear he just wanted you to consider his opinion. You thought about the other day when he’d yelled at you. What he wanted was for you to see him as an equal. That’s probably all he’d ever wanted from you.

With a sigh you thought about his plan. It wasn’t the worst idea, and it would severely cut down travel time. Depending on what route the others took you could catch up or maybe even make it to rendezvous before them. He was right, the thought of people sitting around waiting for you felt like bugs under your skin.

“Okay.”

Surprised, he looked up from where he’d been perusing the watches. “What?”

“Okay, we go through City Center.” you smiled over at him, “It’s a good idea, Baek.”

“Seriously?” He asked, an adorable smile blooming across his face.

“Seriously.” You nodded, “Take the lead today.”

His joyous face turned quickly to suspicion. “Who are you and what did you do with my favorite control freak?”

You rolled your eyes, “You have one minute to tell me exactly what your plan is or I take control back.”

“Well obviously, first things first.” He snagged a nice silver watch from a shattered display case and nodded toward the exit, “It’s time for breakfast. The most important meal of the day.”

The two of you made your way outside to the now empty street. Baekhyun waited for you as you ran across to where your knife was still lying on the ground from the night before and then led you a couple blocks away to a building that was half destroyed. An army tank had driven into the side and the roof was collapsing around it. The wood looked rotted and the metal rusted over the years. The windows around the rest of the building were all boarded up with plywood, you couldn’t tell what the building used to be or why Baekhyun was bringing you to it. He knocked loudly on the plywood as he made his way around to what was apparently the front of the building and then paused to listen for any Lurkers.

“What is this place?” You asked as you looked for a door. You knew there had to be one but there was so much rubble and debris you weren’t sure how to get to it.

“Hidden gem.” He said simply, and once he was sure that it was clear he pushed a half-full trash can and a car door to the side before grabbing onto a piece of plywood and pulling it forward, creating an opening, “Go on. Trust me, it’s clear...most likely.”

You looked skeptically at Baekhyun and then back to the dark opening he’d revealed and took your backpack off. You pushed the bag in before you and then ducked inside. It was dark inside with the exception of a few beams of light in the corner where the roof had fallen in. It was too dark to really tell what it was, your eyes hadn’t adjusted yet, but before worrying too much about it you turned and pushed the wood forward so Baekhyun could duck inside with you. Once he straightened out in front of you, you both reached for your flashlights. Your eyes widened as you realized where you were.

“A convenience store?” You asked, walking over to a counter of candies and grabbing every lollipop you saw. Thinking about Jongin you also grabbed the whole container of jolly ranchers. “I have so many questions.”

“Ask away.” He said looking over at you. You handed him a sucker and he accepted it, popping the candy into his cheek.

“This is Quad Six. How did you know this was here?”

He laughed and pulled his knife from its sheath at his hip, just in case, before making his way down one of the aisles, “I’m a little insulted you’d pretend like you’ve never scavenged outside of our quad.”

He was right. You both should have stayed in Nine, that was the rule that the community had agreed on, but you rarely did. Baekhyun was spinning his hunting knife casually at his side as he made his way down the aisle, sucker in his cheek, eyeing the food on the shelves like he was looking for something specific. You moved down the aisle in front of you to see what you could find.

“Why is it still so full? Shouldn’t someone have cleared it out by now?” You asked, finding some packages of trail mix and tossing them into your bag.

“I will answer your question by asking a question. Do you know who scavenges for Quad Six?” his voice came from the next aisle over.

After a moment of thought you hummed, “Joy.”

“And who scavenges for Three?” He asked, meeting back up with you at the end of the aisles with his blade back at his hip and two jars in his arms.

You grinned as you realized where he was going with it, “Taeil.”

Baekhyun nodded, “Her boyfriend, who gives her half of everything he finds so she doesn’t have to scavenge and they can spend all day together.”

“Lucky for us.” You laughed.

“Exactly.”

He grabbed a bag of beef jerky off a hook and had you grab a couple jugs of water before making it back to the counter in the front. You watched as he angled his flashlight into one of the jugs to create a makeshift lantern. Along with the jerky he’d grabbed there was a jar of peanut butter and one of jelly.

He put down a package of what was surely stale crackers on the counter as well. “Breakfast is served. You don’t have to use the crackers, they're probably gross.”

Deciding to forgo the crackers you dipped your finger straight into the jar of peanut butter. Humming with pure delight at the taste as you scooped some into your mouth. Baekhyun just laughed as he shoved beef jerky between his teeth. There wasn’t much noise between the two of you as you ate. You wished you could call it a bad meal but it wasn’t, not considering some of the meals you’d gotten used to at this point.

“What do you miss the most?” You asked once the bag of jerky neared its end.

“What do I miss about what?”

“Before.” You thought about that a lot. The people, the things, small comforts, things you took for granted every day.

He thought about it for a minute. He had Chanyeol, he had you, and he had air in his lungs. He didn't like to remind himself of the people he’d lost so he just hadn’t really thought about it. “I don’t know. Nothing?”

“Nothing?” You asked incredulously. “There has to be something.”

“What do you miss?” He asked.

“Pizza.” You sighed. “Cheese in general.”

“Oh.” He laughed realizing the question wasn’t as deep as he imagined. “Yeah, I guess I miss pizza too. Oh, ice cream! What else do you miss?”

“It’s stupid.” You blushed a little, embarrassed for missing it.

“Tell me.”

“I miss date nights.”

“Date night?” He was both surprised and confused. Even before the invasion you didn’t seem like the type to get excited over something like that.

“Not just like with Siwon.” You shrugged, somehow knowing exactly where his perplexity came from, “I mean I miss that too. Wearing something cute, eating somewhere expensive. Mostly I miss bestie dates with Seul. We’d get dressed up and go to a club downtown and just dance and blow off guys that would buy us drinks. I miss taking myself out on dates. Eating just dessert for dinner and seeing a movie. Taking a day off work in the middle of the week to see a matinee of a play. I miss people watching on the subway and meeting strangers in coffee shops who have the same band shirt I have because we were both at the same concert the night before. I don’t know. Stupid shit.”

“It’s not stupid.” He shook his head. “Sounds like you just miss being human.”

“What did you used to do?”

“You’re not just going to assume I spent all my free time with Chanyeol?” He grinned.

“I am definitely assuming that.” You laughed, “Just thought I’d give you a chance to rebut it.”

“For a really long time, yeah, I spent like all my free time with him. Playing video games, building computers.” He shrugged, “But uh, that last half a year or so before the invasion he was really trying to get Seulgi to like him.”

“Thought so.” You smiled. They were cute and you really were happy for them. “So what did you do then?”

“I don’t know. Read some books. Binged a lot of Netflix. Got really into Legos for a while. I tried dating here and there but I just couldn’t get into anyone.”

“You went on dates?” You asked slowly, you could feel your jaw tighten, a little gremlin of jealousy stirring awake in your gut. “We spent all of our lunches together and you never mentioned anyone.”

“Like I said, never really worked out. Why bring it up?” He asked closing the lid on the empty peanut butter jar.

“I don’t know you could have told me. We were friends before this, right? Sort of? You could have talked to me about it, I could have offered you advice as a member of the opposite sex or something.”

“Yeah of course we were friends but it wasn’t a big deal. I was too hung up on someone else anyway so it didn’t matter. I think I just did it to have something to do. It didn’t work because I didn’t really want it to.”

“Oh…” you hummed curiously, “Hung up on someone. Someone I knew?”

Baekhyun smirked, “You sound jealous.”

“I’m not jealous.” You scowled, “I’m curious.”

“Well it doesn’t matter now, right?”

“Exactly, so just tell me who it was.” You offered up your biggest, sweetest smile.

He smiled back in his amusement, his mouth opened just slightly and you felt on the edge of your metaphorical seat waiting to hear the name. You tried to rack your memory for people you used to know, girls you’d met at parties or here and there.

Baekhyun took a deep breath and said, “It’s getting late we should get going.”

Your shoulders fell in disappointment as he filled his water bottle up from the jug you’d been sharing. “Baek… come on.”

He put his hand out and you handed him your water bottle as well. “Maybe I’ll tell you later.”

With a pout you huffed out a breath of annoyed air. “Maybe I won’t want to know then.”

Looking up at you with raised eyebrows and a grin he said, “Please. You’ll want to know. It’s killing you.”

“I. Hate. You.” You growled as you snatched your full bottle from him and followed him over to your exit.

Pushing the plywood forward he just smiled, enjoying for the moment his power over you, no matter how miniscule. With a glare you ducked through the opening.

“I love you too.”

It was quiet as you walked down the street, looking out for signs of movement. Not just worried about Lurkers in the dark any longer but now having to keep an eye out for Baddie. The path Baekhyun took you down wasn’t a straight shot to City Center, but a sort of zigzag through the blocks. There were no complaints from you, you would have made the same choice. You spent most of the walk just thinking. About how the rest of the afternoon would go, how preparations tomorrow would go for the attack, what it would actually look like, who would get hurt, who would possibly die. Just your normal train of thought filled with anxiety and panic.

Baekhyun did not seem to be on the same wavelength as you at all. He’d pulled out both of his cameras. The nicer one slung around his neck as he kept the other one in hand. Going through City Center was rare so you could see why he might want to shoot a couple pictures, for ‘posterity's sake’ as he’d said.

“Y/n.” he called behind you and you turned.

Looking up at the building he was standing in front of you froze. It was an old skyscraper. Or it used to be. It had been the tallest building in the city before the invasion. Rented out to dozens of elite businesses, so elite that you’d never had to go inside of it, so you weren’t sure why you were so shaken by the sight of it. It had been a hundred floors before but had been knocked down to about thirty. The windows, the ones that were left at least, were mirrored and reflected the city around it. The front doors were smashed and you could see inside to the foyer where the old marble floors were covered in dirt and trash that had been blown in by the wind and collected over the years. For the life of you, you couldn’t figure out what seemed so familiar about it.

“Y/n…” Baekhyun tried again, this time really gaining your attention. “Come here.”

“What?” you asked, stepping towards him and the building.

“Stand here,” He grabbed your shoulders and moved you in front of one of the reflective windows. When he stepped back he grabbed the camera around his neck and your shoulders slumped.

“Baek, no. Come on.” you whined.

“Please? It’s going to look so cool, I swear.” he smiled hopefully, “Do something cute.”

“Something cute?” you chuckled. “I don’t even know how...”

Baekhyun rolled his eyes. “Just smile, you dork.”

You gave him a grumpy pouty look that you had probably given your mother some point as a teenager which he loved. Then you kicked your foot out and threw up a peace sign which he lost his mind over. You kept going, giving him over the top poses that you probably would have used for Instagram a lifetime ago, until both of you were laughing too much to keep going.

“Are you done?” you asked feeling the ache grow in your cheeks.

“One more.” he chuckled and moved to stand next to you.

He placed the nice camera he’d been holding against his chest. Grabbing your shoulders he turned you around so you were facing the mirrored window and lifted up his instant camera. You watched him for a second as he messed with the settings and took a test shot. Then you looked back at yourself in the mirrored window and fixed the loose pieces of your hair as you waited.

“Okay.” he held the camera facing the window and leaned his head on your shoulder. “Smile.”

This time you gave him a genuine smile and he snapped the picture. You stood together, shoulder to shoulder, as the picture came into view. It wasn’t something you would have liked to admit, but it was cute. Your happy reflections without an ounce of worry, you could see the sky reflected behind the two of you. Cumulus clouds that looked like fluffy cotton balls and the rest a bright blue. The two of you looked incredibly cute together. For just a second it allowed you to imagine yourself being in a different universe. One where aliens had never invaded. One where you and Baek were headed to some nerdy comic book convention at the convention center down the street in a zombie apocalypse cosplay and stopped to take a picture together.

“It’s good right?”

He went to pocket the picture with all the others he’d taken and you grabbed his arm, “Can I keep that one?”

“Really?” he asked with genuine surprise. You nodded and he handed it over with a smile. “Sure.”

With a small hum you tucked the picture into the inside pocket of your own jacket and the two of you continued on your walk. You had almost reached the museum which was a few blocks away from where several bombs had been deployed and destroyed several buildings including the bank building which had been a huge skyscraper of a building. It’s collapse created a barrier of destruction diagonally through City Center. It kept several quadrants from being able to access each other easily. What Baekhyun had said was true though, what you had all assumed was a bomb had tore through part of the art museum, opening an entire side to be drenched in sunlight.

Feeling lucky about not having seen anyone or anything so far on your trip the two of you had gotten a little reckless. Still quiet but strolling a little too casually down the sidewalk. Paying very little attention as you got closer and closer to your next destination. You were practically in the middle of the road when you dropped your gaze from where it had been, trying to decipher the shapes of the clouds. When you did you could see movement down the street ahead of you and paused. Your hand reached out and wrapped around Baekhyun’s wrist, stopping him as well.

He looked back at you concerned, “Something wrong?”

“Baek.” You whispered, “What are the chances anyone else was stupid enough to take a shortcut through City Center.”

“I think you mean what are the chances anyone else would have the genius idea to cut through City Center.” He scoffed.

“Shhh.” You hissed and pointed ahead to the figure that was moving casually from one side of the street to the other. Whoever or whatever it was seemed to be looking into the buildings before moving back across the street. It was looking for something, but with ease like it had all the time in the world to find it.

“What, you think that’s him?”

Your heart was racing in your chest. You weren’t sure how you knew it was him, you just did. Even if he was only a blip, a dark shape a handful of streets away, you knew it was Baddie. Looking around you realized the best bet was to try and make it to the museum and pray he passed you by. You only hoped Baekhyun was right, that because of the huge gaping hole in the roof, it wasn’t a den for Lurkers.

“The museum.” You said quietly and pushed him towards the building.

The glass doors in front had been smashed to dust so you ducked inside without too much of a hassle. The lobby was brightly lit with sunlight, no Lurkers in sight, and you tried to find somewhere you could hide while still having access to view the street.

“Desk!” You whispered hurriedly and Baekhyun followed you behind the long front desk where they used to sell entrance tickets.

“You really think that’s him? Did you get a good look? I could barely make out if it was even a human.” Baekhyun asked, peeking out over the desk and then ducking back down.

“I didn’t have to get a good look.” you muttered, “Just...I can’t explain it. I could feel him.”

“Jesus,” He put a hand on your shoulder, “You’re shaking, are you okay?”

You kept your eyes on the window and willed yourself not to cry from the terror tearing through your chest. “I’m fine.”

“What do you think he’s looking for?”

“I don’t know. More people to kill? Who cares?”

Baekhyun sighed behind you, “Maybe we should do something.”

“Yeah!” You snapped and turned around to hiss out a vicious, “We should shut the fuck up!”

His eyes went wide and he threw his hands up in surrender. Almost ten minutes passed. You were shaking with anxiety, your eyes glued to the window just ahead of you. It reflected another window in a way that allowed you to see part of the sidewalk in front of the next building over. Baekhyun sat beside you with a completely opposite demeanor. He almost looked bored. Over the wait he’d unpacked his entire backpack and repacked it. When he was done with that he started to spin his hefty hunting knife around his hand. There was almost a sense of relief that hit you when you could see Baddies reflection in the window. The anxiety of not knowing where he’d gone or where he was dispersed. Seeing him meant he was still a little ways away. You watched as he crossed the street, the faint sound of whistling made its way through the air.

“Do you hear that?” Baekhyun asked from where he was sitting next to your overly tense body.

You turned to him in complete disbelief and grabbed his face between your hands before mouthing, “Please. Shut. Up. You’re going to get us killed.”

“Okay!” He mouthed back, he looked genuinely scared of you.

You couldn’t help yourself. He didn’t understand. He hadn’t seen what you’d seen. He didn’t watch someone he knew get executed. He was going to get the two of you caught and if he did you only hoped that you got taken out first because you couldn’t stand to watch Baddie take someone else like that. Just the thought of him dragging Baekhyun out into the middle of the street made your stomach turn and your eyes rim with tears. You shook the thought from your head as the whistling got closer.

Goosebumps lined every inch of your skin as you recognized the song he was whistling. Tonight You Belong to Me. If you were a more optimistic individual you might assume that he was whistling the same tune because it’s the only one he’d known. Something dark inside you told you that wasn’t the case. It told you that he knew you were there and he was going to continue to torment you until the bitter end. The sound of glass under heels had you thinking that maybe that end would be coming sooner than later. He was in the building, he hadn’t gone into any of the others as far as you could tell. Why else would he wander in if not to kill you. Looking over you watched as Baekhyun’s fist tightened around the handle of his knife. He looked calm and steady, as if he was ready to attack if it was needed. There were much bigger things at hand to think about but you couldn’t help but feel impressed by how prepared he seemed, how unafraid. It surprised you in a weirdly pleasant way.

As the footsteps grew closer you reached over and grabbed Baekhyun’s empty hand. He looked over at you a little surprised and then just gave your fingers a reassuring squeeze. You were quiet, barely breathing, as the sound of fingers tapping lightly against the countertop above your head joined the sound of Baddies eerie whistling. It stopped for a moment, the whistling, and he hummed thoughtfully before it started up again. Then the footsteps retreated and the sound of the song started to fade as well.

“I think he’s gone.” Baekhyun said after several minutes of silence.

You shook your head, still trembling. “He’s out there. He’s waiting for us to come out. I know he is.”

“Okay, stay here, I’ll just go check. I’ll go around the side and check out the window to see if the street’s clear.” He said calmly and got to his feet.

“No.” You said sternly, dropping his hand and grabbing the collar of his jacket before pulling him back down. “You don’t understand. He is out there and he will take you from me. Please, just trust me, we can’t go out there.”

With a tiny gulp he lifted his hand, brushing his fingers over your cheek as he pushed back the loose hair on your face. He kept his eyes locked with yours for a moment, his forehead creasing as he looked at you.

“You’re really scared aren’t you?” He asked, “I’m not used to seeing you so shaken.”

“I told you, I can’t explain it.” you whispered, your stomach already turning at just the idea of Baddie, the memory of how he looked at you. “I don’t know how I know. I know it sounds crazy. I just need you to believe me, we can’t go that way.”

“Okay.” He agreed and looked around the room you were in. “We can’t stay here though, we have to keep moving.”

Standing up for just a second he snatched a map of the building from the plastic holder on the desk and ducked back down. There was a hallway to the right side of the room that led into the gallery. Using that he found a path that would work in getting you out to 1st street which would take you straight out of City Center and into Quad Two.

“Y/n,” he said quietly and you looked back at him from where you’d been staring through the window. “I need you to trust me now. If we run into Lurkers, are you good to fight?”

“Yeah.” You nodded.

“We’re going to go through, like we planned.” he said and showed you the map, his finger tracing the path he wanted to take, “I’m almost a hundred percent sure that there is only a hallway right here that would have any darkness. It’s not enough space to hold too many Lurkers, but there might be some.”

You nodded again, this time a little more steady, “Okay.”

“Are you ready or do you want a minute?”

“I’m ready.” you whispered, and you were almost sure that you actually were.

Even if Baddie wasn’t in view the two of you still stayed low to the ground and close to the wall as you made your way to a hallway to the left. This part was still sunlit, a corridor made of windows that looked out to a large garden that housed different statues, a display of art all on it’s own. Just being down the hallway made you feel more at ease, and every step you took away from the main street calmed you further. As you walked together quietly you grabbed a quick blade as well as the hunting knife you kept attached to your backpack just in case. Reaching the end of the corridor you found a dark room. It looked pitch black in comparison to the brightly lit walkway. You could already hear the hissing from the Lurkers that waited in the darkness.

Baekhyun reached into the side pocket of his bag and grabbed two plastic packets and handed one to you. They were earplugs. Which would prove helpful if or when they started their piercing shrieking. Once the two of you were set you aimed your flashlight into the room. You signaled to him that there were two to the left and three to the right. You motioned for him to take the left and he rolled his eyes but ultimately agreed. Flashlight and hunting knife in one hand and blade in the other you made your way into the room. Baekhyun was close behind, flashlight in one hand and knife in the other.

You didn't have the time to watch him as you threw your blade quickly into the throat of one of your three, but you also weren’t worried about him either. The second and third of your Lurkers were a little harder as they attempted to come at you at the same time. Luckily you’d been quick enough. Jabbing one in the between the eyes with your knife before ducking away from the one left over as it reached out for you. Their screams sounded soft, softer than they should have, even padded by the earplugs. Still you hoped that they didn’t attract Baddie as you threw your arm across your last Lurker, slashing the blade of your knife across it’s throat.

“Baek!” you shouted as he cut down his last Lurker.

He looked over to you and you pointed across the room where seven more Lurkers were making their way inside through a dark hall. Your heartbeat quickened as you steadied yourself once more. Only two of them came in your direction, the rest towards Baekhyun. You tried not to worry too much, there wasn’t anything you could do about it anyway except deal with what was in front of you and then help him as soon as you could. In an effort to get to him faster you rushed the pair of Lurkers that were coming to you. You had them on the ground quicker than the last ones and you hurried back to where Baekhyun was. He still had four on him, most of his energy getting spent on trying to avoid attacks. You were able to catch one off guard, attacking it from the behind, which left three more. You could tell Baekhyun was tired and you started to worry as you caught the attention of one of the three.

It felt strange as you stood there, one of the Lurkers standing in front of you. It didn’t move, it didn’t go for the attack. It almost seemed like it was hesitating but you didn’t want to wait and find out why so you crossed your arm over your body, slicing it across the neck before turning back to Baekhyun who had taken down another Lurker as well. There was one left and he had his back to it as he tugged his blade from the skull of the monster at his feet. It had its arm above it’s head, sharp claws spread out for the attack. Without a second thought you threw yourself in front of Baekhyun, arms spread out to protect him from any blow. The Lurker stopped its attack for a moment, just like the other one, just long enough for Baekhyun to lift his arm out from under yours, piercing the beast through its throat with his blade. His other arm wrapped around your waist and pulled you back as the body fell forward at your feet.

The two of you stood there for a long moment. Your back pressed against his chest, his arm around your waist. You could feel his heart pounding in his chest against your back. That's how hard it was beating. After a minute he inhaled deeply and let you step away.

“Why would you do that?” He asked angrily, tearing the earplugs from his ears. “You could have died.”

“You would have done the same for me.” You said, shaking it off as you pulled your earplugs out as well.

“It’s different.”

You looked over at him confused as to why he was so upset that you’d just saved his life instead of thanking you. “It would be okay if you died saving me, but it’s not okay for me to die saving you?”

“Exactly.” He wiped down his blade and put it back in its sheath while you picked up your backpack from where you’d dropped it and retrieved your blade from the first Lurker you’d taken down.

“Why?”

“Because. I would hate that.” He said simply, he grabbed his own bag and made his way down the next hallway.

The hallway was clear, likely any Lurkers that had been down there were the ones that showed up in the room. You didn’t say anything to Baekhyun about the Lurkers not attacking you. You weren’t sure what it meant or if it really even happened. Part of you thought maybe you’d just made it up. No matter what, you were sure the phenomenon wouldn’t last so you weren’t about to get comfortable with the idea anyway. Plus he was already mad at you and you wanted to give him a chance to calm down. So baffled by his attitude you weren’t even thinking about Baddie anymore.

Once down the hallway you were relieved to find that you’d made it to the main part of the museum. This was the part of the building that had been completely destroyed. The museum had been massive in size, taking up about half of an entire block on its own between the gardens and the actual building. The wing you found yourself in used to be four different areas separated by the types of art they kept. It had probably been during the military attack, but half of the roof had fallen in and the walls had collapsed as well turning it into one giant room and leaving the whole thing flooded in sunlight. It was a little sad, you could admit, seeing all of the art that had once been so well preserved fading from the sun, covered in dirt, or ruined with water damage.

You’d made it nearly all the way through the part that held the contemporary art pieces in complete silence. It was uncommon for him to be so quiet but Baekhyun walked steadily ahead of you without a single word. He looked like a man on a mission.

“You’re seriously mad at me for saving your life?” You called ahead.

“Nope.” He responded without even looking back at you. “Not anymore.”

“Then you’re just not going to talk to me for fun?”

“I’m busy.”

“With what?” You asked as you continued to hurry behind him towards a larger open area that held more, larger, modern and contemporary art pieces like sculptures and big installations.

He sighed, “I just have important business to take care of.”

“Business? What business?” you asked, confused.

Finally he stopped his hurried pace and looked back at you with a grin, “I have a date with a horse.”

“What...the fuck?” you muttered as he turned back around and continued forward. Peeking over his shoulder at you with an amused look on his face he nodded ahead.

There you noticed a life size sculpture of a Clydesdale horse made out of old melted down silverware. It was a staple of the museum, you couldn’t believe you’d forgotten about it. It had been there for as long as you could remember, since before the first time you’d visited on an elementary school field trip. You watched Baekhyun as he dug his boot into the side of the horse and pulled himself up into the saddle.

“I’ve waited my whole life for this moment.” He said, chest puffed out proudly, “I didn’t think I’d ever get the chance.”

“What are you doing? Get down from there!” You scolded, “What if you break it?”

He laughed, “So what if I do, Y/n? What happens if I break it?”

“Then…” you hesitated.

What would happen if he broke a horse constructed out of old forks and knives? If it was just you and a handful of others at the end of the world did you really have to be so respectful of everything? Would it hurt to have a little fun instead of always sounding like some child's mother? In fact, you realized, it had been awhile since you’d truly had fun. And if the Community was really about to risk it all on this attack on Baddie shouldn’t you spend your last days enjoying what little time you had left? You looked up at Baekhyun who was sitting atop the horse with a gigantic smile, like he’d never been happier in his whole life.

He laughed again as he looked down at you, “You want to get on the horse, don’t you?”

“No…” you said quietly. He looked at you skeptically and you pointed across the vast room to a chair that was five times the size of a normal chair, “I want to sit in the chair.”

Baekhyun’s smile would have spread well past his face if it was possible and he slammed his fist against his thigh in excitement, “Yes! That’s what I want to see!”

With a laugh you hurried across the floor. You tossed your backpack up onto the seat and then climbed up the side of the chair. Easily twenty feet up, you could see almost everything in this part of the museum.

“How is it?” Baekhyun called out from his horse.

“I feel tiny.” You beamed, “I feel like Thumbelina. You should come up! It’s amazing.”

He climbed down from his silverware steed and made his way over to the chair slowly. You had him toss his bag up to you so he could climb up the side, and when he did he plopped next to you with a sigh.

“Cool.” He grinned, looking out across the room.

“Don’t you feel tiny?” You asked, crossing your legs in front of you as he nodded. “Do you think we can stay for a few minutes?”

He nodded again, “I think we can do whatever we want.”

Making yourself comfortable on the seat of the chair you opened up your backpack and pulled out your tape player. After a second of thought you switched out The Smiths tape with a tape of the Pixies and shoved one of the earbuds in your ear as you pushed play.

“Here,” you said, offering him the other earbud.

He accepted it with a small smile and tucked it into his ear so he could listen along with you. After a minute you reached into one of the pockets of your bag and pulled out a sucker and then a second one to offer Baekhyun as well. It was almost peaceful, sitting there together just listening to music and eating candy. You’d even let him get away with taking a couple pictures of you without much complaint. It wasn’t even until the first side of the tape had played in full and you had to turn it over that either of you said anything.

“I know it’s selfish but please don’t ever risk your life like that for mine again.” Baekhyun requested quietly, almost shamefully.

“Why?” you joked, “You can’t live without me or something?”

He just shrugged, “Something like that.”

“You make a pact with Seul too?” he shook his head and you grew quiet as you thought about it. You thought about a dozen situations you might find yourself in where Baekhyun might be in trouble. Each and every time you knew you would jump in front of him. “Well, you know I can’t promise you that, right?”

Looking over at you finally, he grinned, “What? You can’t live without me or something?”

“Maybe…” you laughed, “Something like that.”

Once the second side of the tape had played through and each of you had sucked down a second piece of candy you climbed down from the chair. You offered to take a picture of Baekhyun on his horse and he looked out of his mind with excitement. Before he would let you take it he dragged you through to the part of the museum where they kept the classic art and artifacts. You watched, half shocked and half excited, as he broke the glass on several of the protective cases.

He grabbed a tricorn hat that had been worn by some military sergeant, a long tailed coat, and a sword with a gilded handle. He looked ridiculous and you couldn’t have expected anything less from him. Just as you were ready to head back to the horse, he surprised you once more by slamming the handle of his sword into one last case and pulling out a victorian era coronation crown and dropping it on your head. He said you weren’t allowed to laugh at him if you looked silly too.

You took several pictures of him, each one a little more ridiculous than the last, but he was happy. Then the pair of you strolled around the empty museum in your priceless costumes a little bit longer. It was the most fun you’d had in a very long while. For most of it you hadn’t even thought about Baddie or Lurkers or the end of the world. Mostly you thought about the thrill of touching the art. The oil paintings, the sculptures, you had your hands on almost everything you walked passed. You also thought about jokes you could make about any weird or creepy art you saw so you could one up the stupid jokes Baekhyun was making. Even if he was making you laugh more than you could remember having laughed in years.

“Where do you think they are?” you asked after a stretch of comfortable silence between the two of you.

Baekhyun just shrugged, “Rendezvous, I hope. On the way at least.”

“They probably just took the long way around like Yeol had planned and that’s why we haven’t seen them.” You chewed on your lip anxiously. You hoped that everyone was okay, you prayed you’d see Seulgi again.

“That’s probably it.” He said quietly, “Listen, it’s getting a little late. I’m sorry, I don’t think we’re going to make it to Rendezvous until tomorrow. Maybe we should go though? Find a good place to bunker down for the night.”

“Sure. Can’t hide here forever, right?” You asked with a sigh. “Like a coward.”

“No,” he laughed, “because you’re not a coward...like at all.”

“Sometimes I wish I was.”

“No you don’t.” he scoffed. “If you weren’t fearless you wouldn’t be able to prove everyone wrong all the time and that’s your favorite thing to do.”

You grinned as the two of you continued your private tour through the museum. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Yeah, definitely. I know because it’s usually me you’re trying to prove wrong.”

“It’s not my fault you’re easy to prove wrong.”

“Hey!” He exclaimed and hurried a little bit ahead of you, “Hey, who am I?”

You looked over to see him standing with his chest puffed out, a stern look on his face, and his hand in a fist against his chest. He was also standing in front of a portrait of a man in a matching military uniform in the same pose.

You stepped up beside the ancient looking oil painting and said, “Holy Roman Emperor Joseph the second, Archduke of Austria. King of the Romans, Hungary, Croatia, and Bohemia. 1780, oil on canvas.”

“No. That’s wrong.” Baekhyun frowned and shook his head in disappointment. Pointing his thumb to the portrait he said, “I was this guy.”

“That’s who that guy is.”

“Ehhh.” He shrugged, “You’re just making things up so you don’t feel stupid.”

With a groan you grabbed the sleeve of his jacket and pulled him along. “Come on, dummy. We’re losing daylight.”

“Yes, your highness.” He followed with a snort of laughter. He always thought he was so funny.

“What?” You turned to say something snarky and then remembered the crown on your head. “Oh.”

Exiting the museum brought you into another garden. You watched as Baekhyun peeled off the pieces of his borrowed costume and placed them on statues that you passed on your way out. As you reached the end of the garden and stood in a now overgrown courtyard you found a steel statue of a little girl jumping rope and placed the crown on her pigtailed head.

“The kingdom is yours, Princess.” you sighed, “Take care of her.”

“I’m keeping the sword.” Baekhyun declared as he opened the gate that led out to the street that bordered quadrant Two and you stepped out onto the sidewalk.

“As long as you carry what you keep.” You shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me.”

The two of you went up several blocks wanting to get as far away from City Center as you possibly could, still under the belief that Baddie was hanging around there. The sun hadn’t quite started to set but Baekhyun had been right, there was no way you were making it to Rendezvous. Your best bet was to find somewhere to stay the night and Baekhyun seemed to think he knew the perfect place. He wouldn’t tell you where he was thinking just that he’d stayed there before. As you walked you tried to think of different places uptown but it had been awhile since you’d visited. You knew the jewelry store was in Quad One, but you couldn’t think of what he might have in mind until you actually saw it in front of you.

“The galleria, Baek?” you asked as you followed him to the building that had barely been standing even before the invasion. “How very ‘Dawn of the Dead’ of you… We’re definitely never getting out of here alive.”

He pulled one of the doors open for you, though the glass was completely removed from the frame and you could have easily walked straight through. “A little faith please, my lady.”

Tugging the straps of your backpack tight, you walked through the door. The door led you through to the main entrance of the shopping plaza. It was built in the eighties and everything about it’s interior reflected that to this very day. The walls were aquablue and the tiles on the floor were a pastel pink. Even though it was visually ancient, before the invasion it was a hub of social activity. You used to spend entire summers under its glorious glass roof when you were a teenager. Slurping down smoothies and flirting with boys that were way too old for you. Or going to the movie theatre and skipping from one movie to the next with a backpack full of snacks until you’d seen every summer blockbuster it had to offer for the price of one.

Now the glass roof was mostly shattered, almost every single panel smashed to bits like it had been through one of those superhero movie fight scenes you would have watched. This just meant that the entire place was filled with sunlight. The food court and the first floor shops all sat a few feet below ground level. There was a set of stairs and a ramp that would lead you down to it or there had been anyway. The first floor was now completely flooded after years of rain and no proper drainage system. It made for a disgusting, cesspool looking lake of stagnant water. To the left standing bolt upright out of the water was the old elevator. A tube of tempered glass wrapped around with a golden rail. To the right, accessible by a small platform that overlooked the food court was the staircase. Unfortunately it had been destroyed between the first and second floors. A whole chunk of it smashed into pieces on the ground below making the upper floors seemingly inaccessible.

“What are we doing here again?” you asked. The first floor was completely flooded, the second and third inaccessible. You felt you should probably start looking to an actual place to stay for the night.

“She is not what she appears.” he said and grabbed your hand.

He walked you over to the platform that led to the busted staircase and stood in front of the glass railing that overlooked the mass of stagnant water.

“Don’t know if you noticed, but there’s nowhere to go from here.”

Turning he placed a finger over your lips. “Shhhh. Just follow me. Step exactly where I step.”

He threw one of his legs over the railing that circled the platform and balanced himself on the narrow edge on the other side of the glass. Bringing his other leg over as well left him hanging precariously over the water below. Scooting down a bit so you could do the same he looked up at you expectantly.

“If I fall in and get like a staph infection and die. That’s on you.”

“Then step where I step.” He smiled, and nodded towards the railing, “Clocks ticking. Sun’s setting.”

With genuine uncertainty coursing through you, you threw your leg over the railing. Once you were also hanging over the water, Baekhyun began to shuffle along the railing until he was behind the staircase and was able to leap over to a massive, long planter that acted as a wall between the food court and the first floor shops. Once it was your turn you froze. Looking behind you at the distant planter and down at the disgusting black water you shook your head.

“I can’t. I won’t make it.”

“You’ll make it.” he assured you.

“I won’t..I don’t want to. I can’t.” you said as your arms started to shake and you worried you were going to fall right into the water anyway.

“Wow.” he said surprised, “Never heard you say ‘I can’t’ before.”

Tightening your grip on the rail you looked at him with a glare. You took a deep breath and looked again between where you were and the planter. Darting your arm out you said, “Give me your hand.”

“Alright.” he grinned and reached out his hand with his long soft fingers, and wrapped it tightly around yours and you squeezed back just as tight. “What now?”

“Now if I fall, you fall too.” you smiled, “So you better help me get across.”

With a small laugh and a shake of his head he leveraged his foot against the inner edge of the planter and looked up at you, “Ready when you are.”

Without much thought you leapt backwards, turning your body as you moved over the water. As you jumped Baekhyun tugged your hand towards him. It was a blinks worth of time before you were crashing into his chest and he was falling backwards. His eyes grew wide as he felt himself lose his footing, nervous he was going to fall into the water on the other side of the narrow planter. Stabling yourself you pulled him back until he was chest to chest with you.

“You saved me. My hero.”

You groaned and pushed him away lightly, “I hate you.”

“Love you too.” he winked and made his way through the soft soil of the planter.

You followed along, still not entirely sure where the hell he was taking you. The planter ended after the length of the food court but it was surrounded by water on all sides. It was an island and you had hopped on from the only spot that was relatively reachable. As you continued behind him you realized you’d always assumed the plants in the planter had been fake, plastic or fabric. Synthetic in one way or another. However it was clear from the overgrowth that they were very real, and also thriving with the water from the flooding. Walking down the narrow planter, pushing your way passed whatever long branched and thick leafed plants these were felt like making your way through the thick of a rainforest.

Baekhyun took you about two-thirds of the way down until, immediately across from you, was the elevator. He looked over the water like he was looking for something specific. You had no idea what he could possibly hope to see through the murky darkness, you hoped it wasn’t for anything alive. Without a word to you he stepped forward into the water. You gasped, watching wide-eyed. He didn’t crash through like you thought he would, he just stood there on top of the surface of the water.

“Jesus?” you whispered.

Turning back to you he held out his hand, “Come with me child.”

“Baek...really, I don’t possess your holy abilities.”

With a hefty laugh he tapped his foot against the water, “It’s a table. Seriously though, step exactly where I step, nowhere else. I can’t promise what will happen otherwise.”

Reaching forward you grabbed his hand. As he stepped forward you stepped where he had been. The table wobbled beneath your feet and you let out a whimper of unease. In an instant you felt queasy. You groaned as he kept pulling you forward, one wobbly table to the next.

“Oh no, I do not like this.” you mumbled, squeezing his fingers until he thought he might lose a few due to lack of blood flow.

He just chuckled, “I swear to you it’s fine. I’ve done this a dozen times.”

“When?” you asked skeptically. Then, unable to cage your unexpected jealousy you asked, “With who?”

A smile tugged at his lips as he kept his eyes on the water at his feet. “I wasn’t with anyone.”

“You just came and explored the abandoned galleria on your own? Enough times to find some weird Hidden Temple path to...where are we going?” you asked so distracted you’d stopped paying attention to the unstable tables you were using as stepping stones.

“On an adventure, Y/n! Can’t you appreciate the thrill of adventure?” he asked enthusiastically.

You scoffed, “The thrill of trying to survive an alien occupation not enough for you, Baek? Actually… that’s not that surprising.”

“Yeah well it worked out for me. Watch your step here, the bar is unstable for a bit but she’ll hold.” he said as you reached the elevator and the gold metal piping decor that surrounded the glass that housed the deceased machine.

You stood behind him on the last table and watched as he stepped onto the part of the pipe that was lower, near your feet. His hands reached up and grabbed the part of the pipe that was above his head, He was just barely able to get his fingers around the curve of the pipe.

“If you can barely reach that, I definitely can’t reach that high.”

He paused and hummed. You could see the moment the idea clicked in his head. Reaching one hand down to his waist, he started to unbuckle his belt.

“Uh...Baek.”

“Y/n, try and remain professional please.” he bit his lip as he tugged the belt from the loops on his pants. Then he hooked the belt over the top bar and handed you the straps to use as a handle.

“Truly an innovator,” you said genuinely impressed as you were able to comfortably pull yourself up next to him.

The two of you circled around the elevator twice and had already gotten pretty high. Looking down to where you’d come from froze you in place. Your stomach grew woozy and your head started to spin. Not realizing you’d stopped Baekhyun had to slide back down the railing to get you. He grabbed your chin, turning your face back up to his.

“Yeah, protip, don’t look down.” he smiled and you nodded, still a little dazed, before continuing to follow him.

“You said this worked out for you before. What does that mean?” you asked in an effort to distract yourself.

“What? Oh right!” He exclaimed. “Remember like three months ago when I didn’t come back to camp for almost a week?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course you do. You were heartbroken at the thought of losing me. Inconsolable. Crying constantly through the nights, ‘Oh Baekhyun, please come home! I never got to tell you how much I love you! How much I need you! Oh, Baekhyun’.”

“I never cried. We’ve lost too many people to keep crying every time we lose someone else. I only did for Hyunwoo because...because I had to watch it.” you muttered. Baekhyun stopped and looked at you dead in the eye and straight faced.

“You could lose a hundred more people and never shed a tear but if you ever lost me it would break your heart. I know this because I never cry over anyone anymore either but if I lost you, it would destroy me.” he paused and then smiled, “Well, you and Chanyeol.”

“Oh god.” you rolled your eyes as he laughed and moved on but you took an extra moment. Something about what he’d said had you shook. A feeling in your gut agreed with him. If you didn’t have Baekhyun you wouldn’t have anything to keep going for.

“...But you’ll never have to worry about that because I’m not going anywhere.” he was saying a little struggled as he reached an opening to the third floor landing and stretched out his leg and then pulled himself over. “Anyway, this is where I stayed that whole week.”

He helped you to the landing and you looked around eyeing all the dark shops, suspicious of Lurkers. “And it’s safe?”

“Lurkers can’t get up here. A ton of them followed me into the building that first night. They won’t touch the water and they don’t have the patience or the ability to do it the way we did. YOU CAN BE AS LOUD AS YOU WANT!” he screamed, his voice echoing through the entire galleria. “Even at night. Surprisingly the water still runs up here and it’s clean. Only on the third floor though not the second, must be running through different pipes I guess. The food situation is pretty meh. Mostly just snacks.”

“You’ve impressed me today.” you said eyeing the different shops.

“Actually, I’m really glad I got to bring you here. I’ve wanted to take you for awhile...I think you’d really like...here I’ll just show you.” he grabbed your hand and dragged you around the entire third floor until you were practically on the opposite side of where you were and stood you in front of a darkened store.

You looked at him curiously and then grabbed your flashlight, turning it on as you stepped inside. Tears of joy sprung into your eyes at the sight before you. Face masks, chapsticks, soaps, and lotions.

“You’ve been here a thousand times and never thought to tell me?” you asked walking over to one of the displays and grabbing one of the masks.

“Okay, so in fairness to me…” he began, “There is a toy store that we passed on the way here, not sure if you noticed. I don’t usually make it past there. I only found this place for the first time the very last time I was here. I did want to bring you something back but I also didn’t want you to think I was trying to hint that you needed a better skin care routine, you know? You’re already so beautiful.”

You barely heard him as you applied, probably too much, chapstick to your lips and pocketed several other tubes.

“And look! I know we can’t get you a real bathtub but,” he moved quickly to the display window and bent down. When he came back he was holding a quarter sized bathtub filled with loofahs which he dumped on the ground, “foot bath!”

“Baek..” you said quietly, dropping the face mask you’d been holding onto one of the shelves and moved towards him.

“Please don’t be mad at me.” he begged.

“Baekhyun,” you said again and wrapped your arms around him, resting your head on his shoulder, “thank you.”

“Oh.” he wrapped his arms around you, surprised by the reaction. “You’re welcome. You should know though, it comes at a cost.”

You leaned out of the embrace and looked up at him, “A cost?”

“There are lightsabers in the toy store. They make noise and light up. I’m going to need you to battle me later.”

You laughed and his eyes lit up at the sight, “How could I expect anything less?”

#byun baekhyun scenario #exo scenarios #baekhyun scenario #exo x reader #baekhyun x reader #baekhyun x you #kpop scenario #TEOTFW #Byun Baekhyun

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stuckinapatriarchalbullshitland · 4 years

Note

for the f anon. do you have a time line when camren broke up and then made up again? have you got any information on what really happened to camila in 2015/16? did she have a mental brake down? did her anxiety ocd take over? like we know it was bad because her mom was with her everywhere. and she had to be separated from ot4. but privately surely the girls especially lauren and dinah was there for her? how many times was she in hospital. because after every visit the side effects are visible.

I know I took ages to answer this, anon but here’s F answer: (Long ass post coming)

Hello, dear Anon.

I’m gonna answer your questions in order.

1) 2012-2016. This is the timeline that I’m gonna explain just because so you can go check based on the concerts, interviews, etc. Compared to the first years, the timeline from 2017 to today is much simpler because they’ve broken up very few times. This one here that I’m gonna explain (2012-2016), is based on what I know and also my theories. You can, as usual, disagree with me.

In January 2017, Camila talked about the evolution of her music during Lena Dunham’s Women of the Hour podcast, by explaining how she created her life story through the songs she wrote. Starting precisely from the age of 15, when she had her first kiss. She practically and inadvertently exposed the lie she has always been forced to tell regarding the famous first kiss she had when she was ‘17’. [The entire podcast has been removed, unfortunately. But you can go listen to the audio posted by 5HxCC News on Youtube, called ‘CAMILA CABELLO TALK FIRST KISS ON PODCAST’.]

According to the calculations, the kiss must have occurred between December 20, 2012, that is when X-Factor ended, and January 17, 2013, that is when they signed the contract with Syco/Epic in Los Angeles. My guess? It happened that same New Year’s Eve when the Cabellos spent it over at the Jaureguis.

Throughout 2013 until the beginning of April 2014, L and C had a strange relationship. They were friends, but they behaved and did things you wouldn’t do with a friend. Doesn’t that ring a bell? Oh, hello ‘Like Friends Do’!

2014: Become official in early April and broke up in late November. Small parenthesis. They were both 17 years old in April 2014. Oh, hello to you too ‘Used to This’!

2015: From the end of December 2014/the very first days of January 2015, to the beginning of April. From mid-July to mid-October. From the beginning of November to almost mid-December, they did a continuous on-again, off-again that lasted throughout 2016.

2016: from almost mid-January to mid-February. From early March to early April. From mid-May to early June. This makes me laugh. Only the first few days of August, then from mid-August to the end of August, and again, in hops the first days of September, and from after those hops, until almost the end of September. From early October to almost mid-October (broke up only for a few days), and then until mid-November. And lastly, only a few days in mid-December.

2) Camila suffers from one of the variants of OCD since she was 8, and despite seeing a therapist since 2013, her OCD was diagnosed at the end of 2015. C also suffers from anxiety, panic attacks, mood disorders, and depression (all linked to her OCD). These are things that we’ve been able to witness with our own eyes on more than one occasion. She’s always tried to bottle everything up and not show herself 'weak’ in front of people, in front of us fans. The last thing she wanted was to let people know how much she was really struggling, and therefore, she always tried to disguise it as best she could. Many times, even using her humor as a shield. Picture certain events like a time bomb. Picture her depression as a progression ready to explode:

March 2015, mild. October, November, December 2015, and January 2016, medium. From June to August 2016, high, + explosion in early September, which consequently led to the permanent presence of mama Sinu.

Everything has been derived and therefore worsened by: 1) The rhythms that have always been crazy. 2) Having to deal with many people every day. 3) Having grown up in the spotlight and being constantly observed. 4) Labels that told them what to do (through management) even when they just had to breathe. 5) The expectations and the pressure they’d put on her for being chosen as the chosen one. 6) Having her relationship secretly because they’d rather pass her off as a killer rather than queer/bisexual/gay or in any case associate her romantically with a girl. 7) All the hatred constantly received.

And the list goes on… Anxiety consumed her life for a long time. Now comes and goes.

3) Yes, of course Laurinah were there for her. As were Ashlee, Normani, Ally, Hoko, Michel'Le, Lauren (Fuller), Roger, and a few other crew members who were with them on the tour. As were her family, Jenny, Sandra, Marielle, Mariana, Brooke, Megan, Tica, Rebecca, Guido, Steven, Javi, and her other Miami friends.

Guys, Camila is a private person. The fact that she’s private, however, doesn’t mean that at the time or now, she doesn’t have other friends. It wasn’t just Lauren, Dinah, and Ashlee. And as for 5H, of course Mani and Ally were there for her too, contrary to what they want us to believe. Just think about it. And don’t think that only Dinah was their captain. Who was the one who went to Taylor’s ‘1989 Tour’ concert with Camila? Who was the one who went with them to the famous 1975 concert in Los Angeles on April 16, 2014? Who was the one who tried to protect them from the paparazzi in London in 2015? And instead, who was the one who always helped them lie during interviews? Who was the one who could never manage to control her expressions at first glance in questions that caught them off guard?

Ally and Mani were captains as much as Dinah. There are billions of interviews that prove it. In their own way, they always helped and teased them. Think of the video where Ally fakes a laugh as Lauren loudly slaps C’s ass, who screams “Lauren!” Think about the performances of specific songs. One, for example, is ‘They Don’t Know About Us’, and Norminah always teased them especially during that song. Think about when fans asked Ally if Camren was real and she ran away, laughing and not answering. Think of Mani during the ‘BOSS or TOSS’ game. There are millions of other examples.

4) 3 times. But, as we saw with Dinah in that 2017 video, they may have given her intravenous therapies when she needed it. It’s common, especially for overworked artists.

Oh and, guys. I saw that the audio of the uncut interview with Hitz FM station that the girls did in Malaysia on July 6, 2016, which was released on August 5, has returned to spread. I don’t know why it’s back to spreading now since I heard it already, if I’m not mistaken, in 2017, and saved it a couple of years ago. But anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, I saw that they wrote what Camila says, and it’s wrong. Listen to the audio even at full volume if you want, but C doesn’t say ‘False’. This is what happens:

I (Interviewer): “This one an interesting one. Are Camila and Lauren dating?”

L: “No”

C: “Ugh, Jesus Christ”

I: “Yeah, I know” at the same time as what he says, C laughs awkwardly as a result of her comment “It comes down on Google 'cause people are googling it!”

L: “No! It’s amazing how people continue to do that”

I don’t know if whoever wrote that heard wrong or what. If it’s one of those “which name do you hear, Yanny or Laurel?” cases, you know? But I just wanted to point this out to you. That’s all.

Okay. Love u, guys. Stay safe, please. With love, Faby.

#f anon

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the-scooby-gang · 4 years

Text

Finally watched the Scoob!movie

Here we are in the future! As you guys know I was REALLY EXCITED to see the new movie. Well, here we are, so I will share my thoughts.

This one is a long one, so buck up!

Let’s break the movie down and see its high and low points, shall we?

One thing that I noticed right out of bat is that the movie is following the typical Hanna-Barbera crossover logic: “Hey audience, you already know these characters and their dynamics, so we will not really focus on them (unless is a plot point on the narrative) and focus more on the adventure”

Which worked for me. But I also know that I’m a 20 years old woman that was a child when Wacky Races, Dastardly and Muttley in their Flying Machines, Scooby-Doo and Captain Caveman was on every day at morning before I went to school.

What I mean is, I already know these characters, so watching the movie was just like watching the crossover episodes. It was fun, not because of the plot, but because the characters that I grew loving were sharing a screen.

But now I think of a new audience that may have NO IDEA who these other characters are and are kinda mislead by the title of the movie because, and lets be honest here, the movie should have being called something like:

Scooby gang and the Falcon Team!

or more precisely

Scooby, Shaggy and the Falcon Team!

That’s the first low point: The opening minutes leads you to believe that, even if Shaggy and Scooby have most of the screen time, after all the plot of the movie is clearly about their bond as best friends, you expect that the whole Scooby Gang are going to have equal screen time. But that is not the case.

They have nice moments of course! One of the first high points is that the gang is really wholesome when they are together! They are good friends that care about each other! What breaks them apart is not some forced antagonism between them, but an outside force (MOTHERFUCKING SIMON COWELL) and, by the way things went, if the plot had not kicked in on the bowling alley, the gang would unite again, hug, call Simon Cowell an idiot, reassure Shaggy and Scooby that they are valid and find a new person to sponsor the expansion of Mystery INC.

In fact, now that I think about it, the plot could have gone WAAAAAAY different, but that is a talk for another post.

High point one and a half: The movie was funny and cute. Self aware jokes, Muttley and Dick antics, Dick’s disguises, the F-Bomb, Shaggy is a Potterhead, Scooby was animated with “This dog deserves hugs” mentality and I approve.

High point number two: Dick Dastardly. His entire personality, his disguises , his motivation. God his motivation. I too would open the gates of hell to get my dog back (and also some treasure, this is Dastardly we are talking about)

In fact his interactions with Muttley are high point number three. THEY ARE SUCK ASSHOLES BUT THEY CLEARLY LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH I LOVE THAT!

But that also opens the gates for Low point number two: Where Dick arc is finished in a satisfactory way (being an asshole that cares for one (1) asshole dog) , Brian’s a.k.a Blue Falcon doesn’t.

You see, in the movie Shaggy clearly sees that Brian acts the way he does because he is NOT Blue Falcon. He is his son. He has the weight of a legacy on his shoulders and he is not coping well with that. This is highlighted by how Dynomutt sees him and his childish ways. (in fact, Dynomutt just being done with Brian shit 95% of the movie is high point number four) And you think “They are going to make a scene were he and Dynomutt are more open with each other. Where Brian says how scared he is and how the pressure of the legacy is maybe too much for him and that he is no hero, and them Dynomutt is going to reassure him that, No. You are a hero. I’m sorry for expecting you to be like your father, instead of doing to you what did for him: guiding you” and we got that! .....Really rushed in the middle of the final action scene with no emotional punch at all as a side effect from the “we expect you to know who these people are” crossover logic. Because I never watched Dynomutt and the Blue Falcon

I don’t how their dynamic was supposed to go. Even more by being the original Dynomutt with a new Falcon. I have no bases of how things used to be to feel anything. Especially because I don't know how the OG blue falcon acted in comparison to his son to see were he was falling short. I don't know how Dynomutt acted with the OG Falcon to see were he was setting the bar for Brian. Without that information, even if Dynomutt being done is entertaining and fun, it leaves the emotional impacts hollow.

Low point number three is also to blame here: the movie fells INCREDIBLY RUSHED. And I think I know the reason. Hanna-Barbera is no stranger to crossovers, but they never did more them one property + another before, three properties at most. It was always Scooby Doo and The Wacky Race or Scooby Doo and Captain Caveman or Scooby Doo and The Blue Falcon but never Scooby Doo and All of them together.

Even in the episode of Mystery incorporated “Mystery Solvers Club State Finals” were ALL THE HANNA-BARBERA MYSTERY SOLVER TEAMS WERE TOGETHER UNDER ONE ROOF , they made the mystery about the disappearing of all the mystery solvers except the mascots, which left the cast of characters of the episode more manageable them having all the gangs fighting for screen time, and even them some of the mascots have more dialog and character beats them others.

With so many characters, they had to pic which ones got a full arc or important plot beats, which left all the other character lacking as a side effect.

That brings us to low point number four: THE MYSTERY IS WEAK. It’s weak even for Scooby Doo levels and that is saying something. I saw episodes of Be Cool (that is a really good incarnation character design aside, you should check it out) that had a more well rounded mystery them this. The focus of the movie was divided in so many places that the mystery had no room to breath (Dick, Shaggy and Scooby, Shaggy and Scooby and the Falcon team, Dee Dee and Dynomutt backs aching by having to carry the plot forward, Shaggy and Brian have a heart to heart moments, Captain Caveman fight scene, and finally the mystery gang and the, you know, mystery)

The mystery is about “why the fuck Dick wants Scoob so bad” and the answer is “Because Scooby is descended from Peritas, Alexanders the Great Dog, and he needs him to open the gate to the underworld that Alex and Perry created to protect their treasure, plus save Mutley that is stuck there”

That could have being such a strong mystery!!! They would think that he only has greed in mind by opening the gates, not giving a flying fuck about the giant Cerberus that is going to eat Athens while he fills his pockets, only to discover that, yes there was greed in his actions but there was also a man looking for his best friend stuck on the other side, with would have made such a strong emotional parallel to Shaggy and Scooby final challenge. Missed opportunity.

Back to the high points to balance thing out, the high point number five: Fred is a himbo that loves his friends and his van. The moment were they hear that Shaggy and Scooby are in danger and he immediately turns the van around nearly launching Velma and Daphne though the window was really good, plus the “Leave Shaggy Alone” and the fact that when the Fake!Fred appears (Dastardly in one of his ultra-realistic disguises) in the island and Shaggy calls his name and they hug in the most wholesome way, the fact that Shaggy doest think that the wholesomeness is out of character implies that the Real Freddie is just as sweet.

High point number six: Daphne gains first an Allie and then an entire robot army for her friends though the power of compassion. This is a nice take on Daphne. They say that Fred is the Brawn, Velma is the Brain and Daphne is the People person, which I take is the fact that she can make fast friends and easy contacts to solve the mysteries + think about why someone would do something, like, Velma sees the logic behind the mystery while Daphne sees the emotion that lead to the mystery in the first place.

Which, unfortunately leads to low point number five: even if I can make all that character analyses from one phrase and this specific moment and its outcome, thanks to Low point number three and four a.e. Lack of character focus and lack of mystery I can't truly see if I’m right or not about Velma's logic and Daphne’s emotional knowledge... BECAUSE I CAN BARELY REMEMBER VELMA AT ALL. Velma is the one that suffered the most by the lack of mystery because there is where she thrives. The moments were Velma piece the clues together is so overshadowed by everything that is going down that you barely notices it. Same thing for Dee Dee. She and Dynomutt are, thanks to the way the plot was build, the only ones that are actually making moves to compel the plot forward, but outside of being the one flying the ship and trying to find were the skulls macguffings are, I can barely remember her besides a moment were she and Dyno are baffled about Brian thinking that Anonymous was an actual name.

Dee Dee is from Captain Caveman, she was the brains of the group, which we kinda see, but she is apparently in a point in time where she and Cavey don't even know each other. I think if they had removed the Caveman fight scene and instead added dialog of her talking about how she and her friends discovered a caveman on ice and they are planing on defrosting him, you know, THE PLOT OF THE ORIGINAL CAPTAIN CAVEMAN AND THE TEEN ANGELS would have being better. Or maybe just say that she is just here because she promised the OG Blue Falcon that she would help train his son to replace him and when her work is done she is going back to her team. You know, actually stabilising a more connected world without inflating your cast and making things difficult for yourself and the script writers.

Low point number five and a half : Captain Caveman is completely superfluous. He was a funny beat, but outside of that, the time that they expended getting to his island, finding him, fighting him and losing the skull macguffing anyway could have being expended on character moments either between the falcon team, or better yet, the Mystery gang. Or put more time on the mystery itself.

Now to high point number seven and the most important of them all, after all it is the plot were the entire movie is set upon: When Shaggy is speaking with Brian about how the pressure of his father shadow over him is beyond overwhelming, Shaggy is so insightful in that scene that it heavily implies that he feels in part in a similar way in the gang and that is one of the reasons he felt offended when Simon Cowell, and later on Dick Dastardly, say that he is virtually insignificant to the group and them gets jealous of Scoob when he starts to spend more time with the Falcon Team.

Is one thing to be the scary cat with your best friend, is another thing entirely to be the scary cat alone. AND I LOVE THAT

Shaggy and Scooby bond has being highlighted from the opening scene (high point number eight) and Shaggy’s felling of loneliness. That before Scooby came into his life, he had no one. And even after the gang was united, Scooby remains his first and best friend. The slight idea of losing his friend to something that he can never compare (What is a Shaggy in face of a Blue Falcon Team membership) makes him lash out. We joke about Scooby being Shaggy service dog, but for all effects, Scooby is his emotional support, his light on the end of the tunnel that was his loneliness. The gang are his friends, but they are really different from him. Meanwhile he and Scoob are almost always in the same wave lane. And them suddenly Scoob appears to be changing. Moving away.

The entire movie is Shaggy dealing with the idea of losing Scooby. Of losing his first friend and scared cat companion. What he ultimately learns is that the power of his friendship with Scoob is way too strong to let simple thing as “going away” or “changing” diminished what they created through the years. That’s why he says he has changed in the final. That he has grow. Because he has come to realise that even if Scoob changes and becomes more brave or something, he has nothing to fear. Because being friends is to know that, even miles apart, dimensions apart, your friendship lives on.

By acknowledging that Scoob can change, or even leave but never truly abandon him, Shaggy himself grows.

That’s why he chooses to be the one stuck on the other side.

Because he knows that he is not alone, not really.

So the final count is: HIGH points = 7,5 LOW points = 5,5

I liked the film. I was giggling like an idiot the entire time. My inner child was happy, even if my adult brain was not as pleased in many moments after further thought. However both my child heart and my adult brain agree that the movie is far from perfect. Many interesting ideas but poor execution of many of them. With is fine. We all know that the Scooby movies have already peaked *cough* Legend of the Phantosaur *cough*

This was a long ass review of the Scoob! Movie.

#Scoob!#Scoob review #Gih Writes #Scooby Gang #scooby doo #Shaggy Rogers #Velma Dinkley #daphne blake #Fred Jones #dick dastardly #muttley #dee dee sykes #captain caveman #blue falcon #dynomutt #i will later on make a WHAT IF about the Scoob plot #what I would have changed on the movie trajectory and what I wold have explored more #long post

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