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bangtan-madi · 3 years

Text

noel on ice — kim namjoon

Pairing — Namjoon x Reader, feat. minor mention of Jungkook x OC

Genre — fluff, holiday, minor angst, mental health

Tags — strangers to lovers, figure skater!Namjoon, barista!MC, non-idol au, figure skater au, café au, holiday au

Word Count — 16k

Summary — After sustaining a crushing defeat at the World Figure Skating Championships, falling from his perfect gold standard to his long-time rival, Kim Namjoon returns to South Korea with an unsure heart and accompanying injury. At the same time, Y/N is as far from home as she has ever been due to a falling out with her family, working as a barista at a café in Seoul while trying to finish her degree. As if by fate, the two meet, and Namjoon makes it his goal to make Y/N see the magic of the holidays -- one Christmas adventure across Seoul at a time.

Warnings — minor language, brief anxiety attack, mentions of ptsd related symptoms

A/N — This year has been a very difficult one for us all. For my fic in this Christmas collab, I wanted to acknowledge all of that and give a little mental health break for everyone. All of our experiences have been different, but one thing we all have in common is that 2020 was unexpected, painful, and heavy. Please, no matter what holiday you celebrate, let yourself have as much rest and healing as you need. If this little, probably-needs-more-editing-than-I-had-time-for fic can help you get there — even just for the twenty minutes it takes to read — then my job is done ❤️ I love you all, and I know I speak for the others when I say I hope 2021 treats us all so much kinder, and I hope we learn to love ourselves in spite of our worlds around us.

Playlist — Link here.

Christmas Collaboration — this fic is a part of the Christmas Collab by @kooala (link coming soon!)

"Hey—Hey, are you even listening to me?"

Raising your head slightly, your eyes widening as you realize you've zoned out again, focusing on the snowfall outside instead of the next customer in line. The woman waving her hand in front of you is as foreign to South Korea as you are, but her expression is entirely that of an angry American. Her scowl has etched deep lines into her skin, where smile lines should be.

Unfortunately, her face is all too familiar. Usually it pays to be one of the only native English-speakers at your café; however, when Americans come in, you're the one pushes to take their orders and serve them.

Even the most difficult ones.

"S—Sorry, Ma'am," you mutter. Shaking your head, you force a customer-service smile. "I was just admiring the snowfall. Isn't it beautiful?"

"Oh, yeah," she retorts sarcastically. "So beautiful that it's making travel home nearly impossible. Can you please just make my drink so I can leave?"

"I—I didn't hear it, Ma'am. Can you repeat it please?"

While the woman rolls her eyes, she repeats her order swiftly, muttering something along the lines of, "Baristas these days, I swear to god," under her breath. "Make sure to get it right this time. Every time I come in and order a blended cappuccino, you guys end up giving me a latte, which is not what I ordered."

"And every time, we have to explain that all a latte is, is a blended cappuccin—"

"—I don't want to hear it!"

With a sigh, you ring up the total for the "blended cappuccino, not latte" and let the woman pay. From the sidelines, your co-worker Lisa stands with a glare and a tin of heated milk ready to go for your order.

"Ms. Blended cappuccino again?" she asks as you turn towards her with a note written in perfect Hangul.

You nod, running a hand over your hair in frustration. "I hate being the only native bi-lingual person here. Means I get to deal with her every damn time."

Sensing your downtrodden spirit, Lisa pushes you out of the way, giving you a gentle shove towards the back room. "I got this one. Go take a breather in the back, okay?"

"But—"

"—Ah! No buts. I know enough English to get by."

From the front desk, the woman pipes up again, demanding her drink be made faster. Lisa marches past your, arms herself with the imaginary drink, and says in perfect English, "You're in Seoul now. Speak Korean."

Knowing Lisa can handle the absolute hell-spawn that is an angry American Karen, you turn your back to the drama and shuffle to the break room behind the "employees only" door. An exasperated breath escapes as you revel in the silence, pushing away the muffled café sounds on the other side of the door. Being the only one in the break room, you spot your favorite white chocolate mocha on the side table, with a smiley face sticky note indicating it's from Lisa beside it.

You smile gently at the sweet gesture, and shove the sticky note into your pocket as a reminder to yourself to thank her later.

Taking the mug between your overworked hands, you settle down on the window seat and watch the December sky slowly shift from violet to navy. The mocha is just slightly sweet with a hint of peppermint, just like you like it. It's almost enough to illicit the Christmas spirit lying dormant inside you.

There's something incredibly painful about this particular holiday season, you think to yourself as the cars pass swiftly on the street outside. The glittering lights, the beautiful carols, the crystalline snow — none of it feels the same as last year. The holidays are supposed to be a time of comfort and renewal, but this year — after moving halfway around the world by yourself — your heart is starting to wonder if that part of you has died.

Maybe it's the loneliness you're feeling, or maybe it's the fact that you're so far away from home. Or maybe it's the fresh-in-your-mind arguments and falling out with your family over the summer. That bitter taste lingers still in the back of your throat, not unlike a dark espresso. A Christmas season without your parents and siblings; you never thought living your own life and following your happiness could hurt so much. For better or worse, that nostalgic feeling family and friends bring is long gone. And now you're nostalgic for nostalgia itself; what kind of messed up feeling is that?

You've had twenty-four wondrous, magical holiday seasons. Is it part of growing up that your allotment of joyful Christmas days is limited?

Is twenty-five the year that the magic just...stops?

When the night sky becomes unchanging, the door to the café kitchen opens. Lisa peeks her head inside, side-bangs falling in her face. "How's the mocha? Did I get it right?"

You take the last sip with a grateful smile, then place the mug onto the coffee table. "You nailed it. Thank you, I needed that."

Pride swells in Lisa's chest, and her shoulders straighten as she enters the room. "Well, good news. Karen's gone," she announces, "and your favorite customer is here!"

"Who?"

Lisa places her hand horizontally at her hip-level. "About this tall? Loves peppermint hot choco?

Bolting from your seat, all your concerns are momentarily gone. Your co-worker doesn't have to utter another word to get you to exit the back room and reenter the kitchen.

Across the counter, a mop of black hair is barely visible. Dark brown eyes peer over the granite surface; they twinkle and shine at the sight of you. Tiny hands splay on the surface in an attempt to make the small child taller. He's around seven to eight years, you estimate. Nine or ten at the very most. Definitely not out of primary school. And he's your very favorite customer, because unlike most, this child comes in with a toothy grin almost every single day with enough money for a peppermint hot chocolate. He's never late, and he's never unhappy. If the Sun were to bless the world with a ray of sunshine in human form, this kid would be it.

"Ahjumma!" the little boy shouts, a grin plastered on his face.

Instead of having him crane his neck, you walk around the counter, bend down on one knee, and ignore the other customers behind him. Pulling one of the tiny baked goods from your apron pocket, you offer the sweet to the child with a wink.

"You're here awfully late, Yeongu. You're usually here right after school lets out. It's already after dark."

Yeongu digs through his pocket and pulls out several crumpled won, enough for his beverage of choice. "Tomorrow is the last day before Christmas break, so dad picked me up and took me skating. I'm with mom and her boyfriend for the rest of the month 'cause Dad's going to Busan with his new wife. I don't like her that much. She frowns too much. And she smells like soju and taffy."

You exchange the won for the baked treat, laughing softly as you invite the boy onto the corner table nearest the hot chocolate machines. "You don't like taffy, do you?"

He makes a face and takes a big bite of the delicacy. "My teacher tells us that if we eat taffy, it will help us remember things. I ate too much of it last year, and now I hate it. Dad's new wife must always be forgetting things, because she always smells like it!"

After finishing the simple drink, you slide the mug across the table and plop down in the seat across from the small boy. "So does this mean I won't get to see you until after Christmas?"

Yeongu shakes his head. "I'll be by tomorrow after. Mom wanted to visit my cousin before we left. He's back in town for Christmas, and we haven't seen him in a long time."

"Oh? What does he do?"

"Sports."

At that, the boy changes the conversation. "What are you doing for Christmas, Ahjumma?"

"Yeah, Ahjumma," Lisa pipes up after serving the final to-go customer for the night. She flips the sign on the front door and turns back to the two of you, hand on her hip. "What are you doing for your first Christmas in Korea?"

Shrugging slightly, you turn your attention back to the small child across from you. "I'll probably spend the day with Mochi — my cat — probably studying so I'll be ahead in the new year for my next classes." Lisa gives an empathetic look at the mention of your kitten, which causes you to roll your eyes playfully. "Don't give me that look! I'll be fine. Probably best for me to have a relaxed, non-hectic couple of days. This year has been a rough one."

"That sounds sad," Yeongu states bluntly, earning a snicker from Lisa.

"Kid's right. Absolutely dreadful, [Y/n]. What a lame Christmas."

"What about you, then? Do you have any plans for Christmas?"

At the question, Lisa's smirk drops and she perks up. "Well, I'm sure you know, but Christmas in Korea is pretty different from America," Lisa reminds you, and you nod your acknowledgement. "It's more of a couple holiday, so my boyfriend Jungkook and I are planning to take the week off and do a ton of holiday activities together. Mostly outdoors stuff. Y'know, snowboarding, skiing, snowball fights — the usual."

"Sounds like a blast," you laugh.

"Oh, it will be." She gives a wink, then nods to Yeongu. "Are we about done here? I need to head out if you're okay with locking up for the night."

You give a wave of approval as the child nears the end of his glass. "I got this. Say hello to Jungkookie for me."

Lisa flashes a set of extravagant finger hearts before disappearing into the back, where she gathers her personal items and exits out the rear entrance. In her absence, Yeongu tugs on your sleeve and holds up an empty mug.

"Thank you for the hot choco, Ahjumma," he grins, showing the dark stain on his upper lip.

Taking the mug, you use the edge of your apron to clean the mess from his face. "If you come by tomorrow before you leave with your Eomma, I'll make you another with extra peppermint, okay?"

The boy's smile grows, and he hops up from the table with a swift bow. "I'll be here!" He heads for the door with a skip in his step.

"Will you get home all right?" you call after him.

Yeongu turns and grins. "I will, don't worry, Ahjumma!"

And then he's gone, out the door in a rush of energy and giggles towards his home nearby. You merely shake your head; there's no point in going after him now.

Soon after, you're following in his step. It doesn't take you long to clean up. By the time you lock up and exit out the back, snow has begun to fall. You brave the cold, tugging your coat tighter around you, burying your face into your scarf. The journey to the subway is short, and your feet take you quickly. Even still, you stare upward at the snowy clouds in hope that they might spark a semblance of Christmas joy in your heart.

Tonight, like every other night, nothing changes.

You heave a sigh, and the breath billows out as a visible fog as you enter the station. Going through the motions to get to your apartment is easy. A swipe of a card, a short ride to the edge of the neighborhood, and a trek up the set of stairs. Once through the door, you're greeted by a mewing shadow of a cat.

"Hi, my baby girl," you greet with a soft smile, bending down to scratch the tiny fur ball behind the ears. The black cat rubs her chin against your palm and follows you when you waltz to the kitchen. "You hungry?"

As if responding, "Yes!" Mochi speeds up and meows a bit louder than last time.

Her antics bring a smile to your face as you turn on the television for background noise. You find the nearest Korean news station, finding the program in the middle of a report on Korea's favorite rap duo and their upcoming tour: Suga and J-Hope. Your intention with the selection is two-fold — first, to continue to enhance your skills of the Korean language, and two, to continue learning about the culture and world of your new home. While you had extensive knowledge of both before moving to Seoul — despite the process being rather quick due to the fallout with your family — nothing compares to being immersed in the country itself.

As the musical entertainment section ends, you begin pulling ingredients out of the fridge and cupboard. "What do you think sounds good, Mochi? How about teokbokki?" The black cat perches her paws on your right leg, purring pleasantly. "I agree, sounds great after a long day."

You toss a bag of rice cakes onto the counter as the news changes to sports. Even as you prepare the sauce for the meal, you actively listen to the voices in the background.

"Unfortunately, RM Nam's ice skating season has been cut short due to an unforeseen injury he sustained during practice this summer. At the time, the damage to his shoulder seemed unnoticed by the athlete and his coach. However, as we saw earlier this October at the Grant Prix Series: Skate America, Mr. Nam's mishap on the ice turned out to be far more damaging than originally thought. Thus, the position representing South Korea at the next in the series, Skate Canada, was shifted to his rival, Kim Seokjin, and RM Nam returned home to Seoul to recover."

You can't but help a glance up at the screen. The skater in question has his back turned to the cameras as he heads into the airport. Behind his sunglasses, mask, and beanie, he offers a polite smile and wave to the reporters. Moments later, his coach guides him into the building, out of sight.

"That doesn't sound fun," you mutter to yourself as the report moves onto politics.

After you finish cooking, you plate yourself a portion and move into the living room. Besides the tiny tan sofa and the television propped up on a box, most of the room is bare. There are a handful of boxes strewn across the apartment of the few things you either had shipped from the States or that you bought in your six months since then, but for the most part, you've been putting off all of it. Most of your time is spent at work or at school; you haven't had the time, energy, or motivation to do any of it. Even at Christmas, despite Lisa gifting you with your very own tiny tree and twinkle lights to spread across the home, you've yet to unpack any of it. The tree remains in the slender box beside the TV, and you doubt it will go up this year at all.

Heaving a sigh at the thought, you turn the channel to VIKI put on your favorite drama. This particular one is a reincarnation plot with two male leads played by Korea's golden boys: Park Jimin and Kim Taehyung. Paired with the bowl of teokkboki in your lap and the kitten curled to your side, it's enough to drag you thoughts out of homesickness and back to the present.

This might just have to be the Christmas you forget and hope that the next year is a kinder one.

A lot changed in your life this year. In some ways, the changes were good. In others, not so much. Most of the turbulent times were in the heat of the summer, but things began slowing down once you moved to South Korea in September. You were now away from toxic family members, away from a life you never wanted, and looking ahead to an uncertain but certainly hopeful future.

In late October, the seasons began changing for the better — and not just in the physical sense of the falling leaves and cooler breeze. Lisa was right about your favorite customer; it truly was little Yeongu. However, there was another that you looked forward to seeing, just as much as the elementary school boy.

This person was older, around your age, with a deeply dimpled smile that made your stomach flutter. Eyes as slender as his body proportions, you'd be lying if you said he wasn't an attractive man. Hair the color of the snowflakes he walked through, eyes the color of the beverage he'd always order, skin the color of warmth in a cozy fireplace. Even his voice was warm and deep; at every conversation, while you are completely fluent in Korean, you find yourself just wanting to listen to the soft timbre.

Over time, this man — whose name you'd quickly learn was Kim Namjoon — became a regular at your little coffee shop. He'd come in at the oddest hours, either super early or super late. Hours you often worked alone, when there were fewer customers. Every time, he'd strike up a conversation as you took his order and crafted his beverage of choice (a heavy coffee brewed dark and bitter, with just a splash of cream and almond whip.) He was sweet, and eventually you opened up. He'd hang around the counter long after the transaction was completed, sometimes until another customer stole your attention away. It didn't take long for you to realize that he was far more than merely a pretty face.

In those weeks leading up to December, you found yourself smiling a bit more. Joking a bit more. Shoulders lightening a bit more. You looked forward to the increasingly insistent days where he'd waltz in — sometimes covered in raindrops, sometimes in crisp leaves, sometimes in snowflakes — always a crystal blue umbrella under his arm and a charcoal grey scarf around his neck.

It's the same person standing at the entrance now, the man currently shaking the rain from his umbrella and platinum locks. Lisa gives you a smirk as she nods her head towards the register and steps away from the counter, as if silently saying, "You're up, m'lady. Holler if you need me; I'll be doing an order in the back."

You brush your hair back into proper place, display a genuine smile, and take your stance behind the register. When Namjoon's eyes meet yours, his smile deepens and creates dimples on either side of his mouth.

After the customer in front of him pays and leaves with his order in hand, you greet him with a simple, "You haven't been in, in over a week. Finally trying to break your caffeine addiction?"

Namjoon gives a deep laugh and shakes his head. "Not in the slightest. I like being able to function as an adult in society, thank you very much." He pulls out several won from his wallet. "I'll have..."

"The usual?"

He cocks an eyebrow. "You remember?"

"Of course," you grin, and type his drink of choice into the register. Taking his money, you add, "How could I forget your order after the hilarious reaction when I suggested a mint mocha?"

The boy thinks back to the first day he walked into the café, and recalls that conversation with a groan. "Oh god, was I that bad?"

Handing him his change, you tap your chin and reply, "Well, maybe a bit. I'd never seen someone so horrified at the idea of mint chocolate."

Namjoon rubs the back of his neck with an awkward smile. "Sorry about that. Pretty terrible at hiding my disdain for that flavor combo."

"No worries! Made me laugh."

Seeing that there are no other customers behind him, you turn to the brewing station and usher Namjoon to take a seat on the bar stool across the counter. It's a position you've taken several times before. When the customers are low, as they are at this hour of evening, the platinum-haired man tends to linger and converse far after his drink is finished.

"What brings you in today? Just wanted a pick-me-up or?"

Namjoon heaves a sigh. He watches you closely but casually, silently admiring the skillful way you begin to brew the dark beverage. "I've had a lot on my mind lately, and coming here always helps me de-stress."

"Coffee helps you relax?" You can't help but chuckle at the sentiment.

"And the company."

Heat rushes to your face, and when you glance up to meet his gaze, the warmth only increases. "You're smooth, Kim Namjoon. Very smooth."

Brown eyes widen, and he bows his head so that his bangs cover his eyes. "That's not what I meant at all!"

"Calm down, you're fine. Wanna talk about what's on your mind, though?"

In all your conversations, the two of you have only ever talked on the shallow surface of various topics. You don't know much about Namjoon, and he doesn't know much about you — despite having shared extremely vague information about your year, your jobs, and your education. You feel very open with him, but most of the time, those conversations can't be had in a fifteen minute discussion at a café.

"It's a long, complicated story. I'm not sure you'd wanna hear it." He raises his hands defensively as he realizes how his words might be construed. "Not that you wouldn't understand! I just wouldn't want to be a downer."

You select the cold brew setting on the machine and let the device begin to whir to life. "Well, I've got at least the time it takes to make your drink. I'm all ears."

Namjoon shakes his head as he settles his elbows on the counter. "You're persistent."

"Honey, I've been called far worse."

Seeing your eagerness, your companion heaves a sigh and shifts his gaze from you to the window at his right. As be begins to speak, his demeanor falls a bit. He's not as happy-go-lucky; there's an err of anxiety about him that you can't quite nail down. "I've been thinking about a change in career recently. Things haven't been unfolding this year like I wanted...and I'm starting to think I'm not meant to do what I'm doing now. Maybe I need to retire — from this industry, I mean, and move on to another."

Even with that small confession, you can't help but mirror his emotions. "I hear you. I've felt similar feelings this year."

His gaze shifts back to yours, and he tilts his head in surprise. "Really? How so?"

"I told you I moved to Seoul in September, right?" Namjoon nods. "That's because I wanted a...a fresh start. I enrolled in Yonsei University, got a job here, and just...moved."

"That's pretty brave, and that's really awesome you're at Yonsei. They're a fantastic school."

"Thanks," you grin whilst popping the canister of cold brew out from under the brewing machine. "I needed to get away from certain people in my life that weren't letting me move forward, so moving was the best choice." You pour the dark beverage into a small mixer and pull out the vanilla creamer. "Sure you don't want mint this time? Last chance."

Namjoon cocks an eyebrow as a silent challenge; the expression makes you giggle to yourself as you pour the very non-mint add-ins. "Hilarious."

"Hey! Just offering." After giving the mixture a whisk, your smile falters.

Nothing gets by the observant person across the counter. "I feel like your story has a 'but' after what you ended with."

"You're good," you reply, gesturing to him with the handheld whisk. "I'm not talking too much, am I?"

Namjoon shakes his head adamantly and flourishes with his hand for you to continue. "I mean, we're practically friends now. Please, go on."

Reassured by both his calming nature and genuine interest, you continue talking. "But after getting here...let's just say it's hard to make friends and get out there in a country where you look so different, where your language isn't native, and where you know literally no one. So...ah, this year's been a pretty lonely one, and I know I still made the right choice, but now that the holidays are here..." You trail off and offer a small smile. "All that to say, I know what it's like to second-guess yourself and not have things go the way you thought."

"Seems we have a lot in common," he chuckles, leaning his chin on his hand.

The comment causes the mood to lighten, and you let a laugh slip out. "Yeah, seems so."

Before the conversation can continue, the front door opens. Yeongu enters, a couple of other customers behind him. As if on cue, Lisa enters from the back room and greets the adults with a smile and a swift, "Hi, welcome! What can I get you this evening?"

As the child approaches the adjacent counter where you stand, his grin widens. You perch your elbows on the counter and lean over. "How's my favorite customer?"

"I'm finally free from school, Ahjumma!" Yeongu cheers loudly.

"Congrats! I'm sure you're relieved." He nods affirmatively. "t's freezing outside. Are you okay?"

"I'm okay, I promise. But can I get a mint hot choco?" He holds up a crumpled bill with a toothy grin.

"Of course, you can. Extra mint, just like I promised." You nod towards the seat closest to the window. "Sit in your usual spot, okay? After I get this nice man his coffee, I'll get your hot chocolate."

As Namjoon turns to look at the child, Yeongu's eyes widen in surprise. "Namjoon-hyung! I didn't know you were here."

Much to your shock, Namjoon reciprocates the affection and hops down from his chair to bend down to Yeongu's level. "Yeon-ie!" He teases the boy by ruffling up his hair, which Yeongu scowls at him for.

"Um... You two know each other?"

"Yep!" Yeongu grins. "He's my cousin, the one I told you about yesterday."

"Oooh, that makes sense. Didn't realize my two favorite customers were related."

Yeongu laughs at the comment and hops into the chair beside Namjoon. "But I'm your favorite customer, right?"

"Of course," you tease, flashing him a playful wink.

"Oh! I almost forgot. Ahjumma, can I please have mine in a to-go cup? Mom told me to come right home so we can finish packing for our trip."

"Of course, give me just a second to get you a lid." You turn to your first customer with an apologetic smile. "Namjoon, I'm almost done with yours. Just give me a moment."

"Actually, do you mind putting mine in a to-go cup as well?" He jerks his thumb towards Yeongu. "I should probably walk him home. He lives just around the corner from me. I'd feel better if I did."

"Oh, sure, I can do that."

"Would you walk with us, Ahjumma? Pleeeease?"

Your gaze moves to Namjoon. "Do you mind?"

The elder cousin hops up from his chair, shaking his head adamantly. "Not at all! Can you?"

"Sure, I'm about at the end of my shift anyway! Let me grab my coat. I'll come with." You turn quickly to Lisa, murmuring, "Can you watch—?"

She cuts you off with a wave of her hand. "—Go! I can close up for the night. But if you don't come back with a date planned, the invitation to spend New Years with Jungkookie and me is rescinded."

With a playful eye-roll, you peck her on the cheek and run to the back for your coat. Once you return, you find Namjoon scuffling Yeongu's dark locks with a dimpled smile. Looking back up as you return, the expression doesn't falter.

"Ready?"

You nod and follow behind through the exit, trying to ignore the wink and dual thumbs-ups Lisa flashes you as you pass.

Once on the street, Yeongu walks ahead of you and Namjoon. The first few minutes are silent between you two. From ahead, you can hear the small child talking to himself, or perhaps his hot chocolate, and then occasionally to the adults.

As you cross the busy street, Namjoon clears his throat. "So...you have any plans for Christmas?"

You scoff under your breath and shake your head. "Why does this topic keep coming up?"

"Hope I didn't offend," he laughs. "Yeongu said something about a café girl not having plans last night. I figured it was you."

"Trust me, you're good. But yeaaah. Kinda new to Korea. I spent the fall settling in and trying to start over. Between work and school, didn't expect much. Holidays sneaked up on me, I guess."

There's a pause as the trio rounds the corner. Yeongu finishes his hot cocoa along the way and hands the empty cup to Namjoon. The elder doesn't even hesitate to take it, and the boy rushes ahead to what you assume is his home. Over his shoulder, he shouts, "Thank you for the choco, Ahjumma!"

You grin widely and wave. "You're welcome!"

Yeongu turns to Namjoon, sticks out his tongue in a playful manner, then disappears into his house.

"Aaand that's the thanks I get." Namjoon rolls his eyes and turns his body towards you, giving you his full attention as the sun sets behind Seoul Tower. "I have a crazy idea."

"Oh, really?" You cross your arms over your chest and cock an eyebrow. "Those are my favorite kind of ideas."

"Cheesy," he grins. "Well...I don't have any plans either. Maybe we spend it together?"

"No plans, huh? Do I look that pitiful?"

"No! No, it's not that at all, god." Namjoon's smirk falls from his face as a horrified expression drowns out any humor. "Sorry if that's how it came off. I just—You seem really nice, and it's been a while since either of us just enjoyed someone else's company. No strings. No pressure."

Tugging your lower lip between your teeth, you shuffle in your step. "I don't know, Namjoon..."

"Christmas has always been my favorite holiday. I hate to see anyone's shoulders so heavy in December. How about this — give me three days to prove the magic isn't lost."

"Three days? That's it?"

"That's it."

"Okay then, Mr. Kim." You offer a hand in his direction. "Three days."

Namjoon's eyes lock with yours, as does his hand. "It's a deal."

The following weekend you wake to a phone call coming in from your recently-added number. Rolling out from under the covers to grab the device from the nightstand, you answer with voice still groggy with sleep. "Hello?"

"Are you still sleeping?" the caller laughs in a deep timbre.

"Shuddup." Peaking an eye open, the time on the screen reads just after eleven a.m. "It's not that late."

"Really?"

"Did you call me just to make fun of my lack of healthy sleep schedule, or did you have a point?"

"Ouch!” Namjoon exclaims playfully. “I actually did call, and it's actually perfect because I don't need you ready to go until around three this afternoon. So you can totally just go back to sleep."

You curl back under your heated blanket and revel in the warmth it provides. Beside you, Mochi curls closer, nearly sitting on your head. "Mmm sounds perfect. Wait—what?"

"You heard me." There's a hint of teasing in Namjoon's words. "It's Day 1. Be ready for an outdoor adventure by three. I'll pick you up then, okay sleepyhead?"

The butterflies rumble in your stomach at the nickname, and you clear your throat before replying. "Yep, got it. Three p.m. Outdoor adventure. Can't you tell me what it is or where we're going?"

"And ruin the surprise? No way. Just trust me, Jagi."

A squeak slips out, and you throw your hand over your mouth to hide it. "Okay, see you there—I mean then!"

You can almost hear Namjoon shaking his head as he says his goodbyes and ends the call. Despite still being sleepy and warm and cozy in your nest, you lie wide awake in bed for the next half-hour, replaying his voice over and over in your head like a well-loved record.

The day flies by, and eventually it's approaching three. You've dressed to impress while still trying to keep it casual. Despite this being a date, it's still casual. You like Namjoon a lot, and you hope he likes you as well. However, outside of conversations at the café, you haven't spent a lot of time together yet. This is as good a second-first impression as any, and you intend to make the most of it.

Grabbing your winter coat and scarf, you scurry down the stairs and spot Namjoon lingering by the entrance with two cups in his hands. He's dressed in jeans and a sweater with a dark grey jacket over top, his usual scarf looped twice around his neck. A beanie covers his head, but bits of his platinum hair still stick out in places. Slung across his shoulder is a brown leather backpack. He always looks nice, that much you know, but the fact that today he looks nice for you makes you sickly happy.

He flashes a smile as you bound out the door. "You look rested," he teases, then offers you one of the cups.

Taking it with a nose scrunch, you look down at the order on the side, seeing that it's your usual order. "How did you know!"

He shrugs. "I have my ways."

"Was it Lisa?"

"Maybe..." He straightens up and nods his chin towards the nearby station. "Follow me for our first adventure!"

After boarding the train to Itaewon, you can't help but wonder where he might be taking you. Your mind goes through all of the things to do in Itaewon, but the list is lengthy. From his excited and proud expression, you know Namjoon has been looking forward to this all day, just as you have.

After exiting fifteen minutes down the line, Namjoon reaches for your free hand. "May I...?"

Your fingers close the distance, glove-covered palm clasping his. "Lead the way."

Namjoon grins, then tugs on your hand as you exit the station. Once outside in the frigid air, you see your breath come out in puffs of fog. You tighten your scarf around your neck and allow your companion to usher you down the sidewalk, towards a clearing in the colorful buildings of Itaewon-do.

Another block or so, and you see the direction in which he's heading. A large sign along the way reads, "Grant Hyatt Seoul Ice Rink" in bold Hangul. Your eyes widen as the realization hits you, and the excitement inside you grows. "How did you know I've wanted to go ice skating!"

Namjoon shuffles up to the ticket counter, replying over his shoulder, "Um...lucky guess?"

As he purchases your tickets, you take a moment to absorb your surroundings. The trees are glowing from the lights covering every branch and trunk. They surround the rink and give a glow from within that is so much softer and more intimate than the harsh lighting of the city. The Hyatt Hotel stands as a black silhouette against the horizon. In the opposite direction, you can see N. Seoul Tower already lit up as the afternoon lighting shifts to evening. Projectors shine shapes of glittering snowflakes across the ice, giving another layer of ambient lighting to the rink.

"I haven't been since I was a kid," you add, staring at the exterior of the open-air rink with awe. Namjoon hands you the ticket, which you use for entrance and skates before shoving it into your jacket pocket. "Have you ever been before?"

"Yeah, a...few times. Hey, what size shoe are you?" When you tell him, Namjoon grabs a pair of skates from the shelf beside the ticket booth and gestures for you to sit on the bench across from it. "It can be tricky to lace your skates properly," he commentates as he kneels down in front of you and begins to untie your boots. "It's really something you have to adjust yourself, so let me know when I'm close?"

Not having any words to respond at his sudden closeness, you nod the affirmative and watch in silence as he puts one boot to the side, slips the skate on with ease, and begins to adjust the laces like a professional. After repeating the movements with your other skate, he taps your knee and looks up at you.

"Too loose? You want them to be as tight as you can handle to keep your ankles steady."

Moving your feet, you shake your head from side to side. "A bit more. I'd hate to have Day 1 turn into a trip to the E.R."

"Definitely, nothing says ‘Christmas magic’ like an emergency room visit," he laughs, adjusting your laces as you requested. "How's that?"

"Much better, thank you."

After lacing up your skates as tight as you can handle, Namjoon stands and offers you an arm. He helps you waddle over to the entrance, gently sliding you onto the ice despite your shaky knees and flailing arms. You soon realize that it might be best to hold tight to the barrier and stick only to the periphery.

He doesn't follow you on at first. When you turn and look back for him, he waves you on. "You go ahead. I need to grab my skates first."

"Mmm fine, but if I break my neck trying to catch your ass, you're paying for ramen after. Got it?"

Namjoon gives you two thumbs ups as he lets you go onto the ice. "Loud and clear."

Eventually, you begin tugging yourself along, trying but failing to keep up with the traffic of more experienced skaters. Even compared to those half your age, or even less, you're the child on this rink.

About half-way around the rink, you spot Namjoon making his way towards the entrance. Waving your hand, your smile widens when he sees you. He waves back, nearly bumps into the person ahead of him at the gate, and you murmur to yourself, "This should be good."

Namjoon hits the ice. He's not like the barreling disaster you are, but like a graceful swan. It catches you off-guard; if anything, you expected him to fall flat on his face or tumble over a child on his way over to you on the opposite side. He needs no assistance from the railing, nor does he struggle to cross the center and come to a full stop in front of you. His skates make a graceful scraping sound, and his stance is one of a professional. Even his skates are different than yours; they're custom, and you realize that must've been what he was carrying in his backpack.

You assume the awestruck look on your face is the reason for his smirk and laughter. He does a spin for dramatic affect as he closes the distance between you. "Surprised?"

"For starters! How the hell are you so graceful? You're literally twirling around on one foot on a frictionless surface, and I can barely make a left turn!"

The platinum blond gives you a look like you're still missing the point, then extends his hand. "C'mon, I can help you more than the railing can."

"Promise not to sue me if I break your face by crashing into you?"

"Promise, now grab my hand and skate!"

Your hands in his, you take the leap of faith and separate from the barrier around the oblong rink. Namjoon slowly skates backwards, carrying you the whole way. Your eyes remain glued to your trembling feet, careful not to have the blades deviate too far out to one side or the other.

"Look at you!" he cheers, ever the positive one. "A whole two minutes on your feet."

"Shut up."

You won't deny that your progress surprises even you. Despite having to hold both his hands for the first ten minutes, then eventually one as you skate side-by-side for the following half-hour, you're more adept at skating than you thought you would be.

"You think you can try on your own for a lap?" he inquires.

Giving a hesitant nod, you let go of Namjoon's hand, saying, "Don't leave my side, okay?"

"Wouldn't dream of it."

Taking a deep breath in, you push one skate out in front of the other and move yourself forward. The other follows after, and you get about twenty feet before you stumble and nearly fall face-first. Luckily, Namjoon keeps his promise and wraps his arms around your waist before you crash.

"Good try!" he exclaims, keeping his arms around your middle even after you regain your balance. "You got pretty far, actually."

You give an awkward chuckle and lay your nervous hands over his at your hip. "Maybe I'm not quite ready for a free-skate yet."

"No worries." He lets his arms drop and retakes your hand to steady you. The dimples appear next to his smile as he adjusts your beanie on your head, which had nearly fallen off in your almost-fall. "But I gotta say, you didn't have to fall for me on Day 1."

"So smooth!" You roll your eyes and give his shoulder a playful shove, only to gasp and reach back for him when he naturally skates backwards at the push. "Nevermind, I take it back. Please don't leave me in the middle of the rink."

Namjoon lets out a loud laugh, nearly doubling over as you cling to him. "You're so cute."

As you skate together, you keep getting the feeling that Namjoon has spent far more time on the ice than you previously assumed. After you get the hang of it yourself and are able to wobble along beside him without a constant hand to hold, he smiles a proud, wide smile.

"See? I knew you could do it!"

You raise your eyebrows at him. "Still nowhere near close to you."

"That's what a lot of people say," he brushes it off.

"Way to brag there, Joon," you snort, then immediately freeze in place so suddenly that you nearly fall over again. "Wait—you don't mind if I call you that, do you?"

Namjoon's smile shows his dimples, and they deepen with his reply. "Not a bit." The song changes, playing the symphonic piece "Noel on Ice." Namjoon's face lights up, and he turns back to you with a wink. "Watch me?"

Nodding affirmatively, you release his hand and let him skate towards the center of the rink. His gaze remains on you as he spins to a stop in the middle, then turns his gaze downwards. Arms still at his sides, and his shoulders straighten. You await with bated breath for the next note.

The melody lifts, and Namjoon's arms follow suit. Piano notes drip across the chilled air, and the violin prompts an extension of his hands upwards. Then he moves, gracefully flowing from one movement to the next, as if this has been an ice dance built into his very being. The harp and cello urge him to move faster, spinning like a dancer across their stage.

Namjoon spins into the air, fully coming off the ice. Your hands fly up to cover your mouth out of fear, but he lands it with ease, shifting into his next series of steps like a professional. Flawless and practiced, he's caught the attention of everyone at the rink. As you look around, you see everyone else focused intently on the skater. Some even have their phones out to record. Not just one or two people, either; you see at least a half dozen with their cameras trained on Namjoon.

That in particular has you perplexed. Brows pulling together, you shift your eyes back to Namjoon. The piece is nearing its close, and he's moved back to the center of the ice. Twirling in place, he's moving like a spinning top. Always in a single place, so fast you can barely see, gracefully shaving ice under him so that snowflakes fall around him. He lowers, nearly sitting as he continues to twirl on one foot. The music grows to its crescendo. Slowly, he rises up and extends his hands towards the sky.

And then it hits you.

There's a reason why his face, his voice, and his presence is so familiar to you. You couldn't put your finger on it until just now, but the way he moves on the ice like he's the only one in the room — like it's a second home — brings you back to one of the first days you had in Seoul. That first day, at the Incheon Airport, the man you saw being bombarded with press and fans. Then again on the screens in the lobby of the immigration center. And again a few nights ago on the news.

RM Nam. South Korea's pride and joy, their greatest skater, the man bound for the Winter Olympics until a training injury earlier in the year put him out for the season. You're not into sports, but even you knew him by name and the tragedy that had occurred.

That legendary skater was the one in front of you now. He hadn't mentioned it, and you didn't suspect a thing until today. While definitely a shock, you can't help but be in awe of him even more. He isn't just good on the ice — he's like nothing you've ever seen.

As the music comes to a close, Namjoon skates to a halt. His spin finishes, and he ends with a ending pose bow. Clearly out of breath and shoulders heaving, his gaze shifts to you once again. Your smile widens, and you throw your hands up as you cheer. The others around you begin to clap, but you're by far the most enthusiastic one there.

Suddenly, Namjoon's persona returns to that of a shy and humble one. He bows again in the directions of the viewers, then scurries out from the center and back to you. Eventually, those around you begin to skate once more, ignoring the fact that one of the biggest sports icons in all of Korea is among them.

Namjoon runs a hand over his bleached hair, his smile sweet and his eyes a little nervous as he approaches. You shake your head in awe, letting a surprised laugh slip out.

"Okay, I see exactly what you're doing now. You suggested ice skating because you're Olympic-level! That's totally cheating, by the way."

Namjoon skids to a stop in front of you, as graceful as his takeoff. Without thinking, you reach your hand for his, which he gladly takes. "Figured it out finally, did you?"

"Call me stupid, but I honestly didn't see it until just now." You shove his shoulder with your free hand, only encouraging his teasing reaction. "RM: Guessing that's a stage name?"

He adjusts the beanie over his hair and gives an affirmative gesture. "Yeah, mainly to protect my privacy. Skating world can get pretty intense, sometimes."

You move your chin towards his shoulder, recalling that's where the injury occurred over the summer. "Are you okay?"

"Oh yeah, totally okay. I go to PT a couple times a week. Mostly healed up, just can't compete for another few months. My coach has made me swear off skating until the New Year, but I figured it was worth throwing a little extra into trying to impress a pretty girl." He tilts his head to the side, rubbing the back of his neck with a gloved hand. "Did it work?"

Instead of responding verbally, you curl your finger towards you, a mischievous smile on your face. Namjoon lowers his head and skates closer to you. When he's within arm's reach, you lean up and press a kiss to his cheek. A giggle slips out as his eyes widen and his cheeks flush.

"So... Is that a yes?"

"Yes!" you exclaim, throwing your arms in the air and nearly falling over for the hundredth time that night.

Namjoon returns the chaste gesture to your temple as he helps you recover your balance. "Skate with me some more then?" he murmurs, adjusting your scarf around your neck with gentle fingers.

Your face hot and your stomach fluttery, you nod your response and loop your arm around his. "Only if you show me how to do that fancy twirl there at the end."

The idea has Namjoon laughing loudly. "That's my variation on the basic Scratch Spin, which took me about three months to nail perfectly in a routine."

"Then you'd better prepare to be here 'til February!"

After skating for hours, until both of you are exhausted and ready for food, Namjoon takes you to a nearby ramen shop that's close to the train station. It's a hole-in-the-wall, with less than five tables, but with ramen you're able to find a park bench and settle down there with your backs to the city lights and your eyes on the stars overhead. You each mostly in silence, just enjoying each other's company and the delicious food. You make sure to tell your companion how great the choice was, and you insist on coming back again soon.

After wrapping up the meal and seeing the late hour on your phone, Namjoon suggests you both start heading home. "Hate to have to take a bus at this hour instead of the last train," he snickers.

Fully in agreement, you let him take your hand again as the pair of you begin to walk back home. First on the train, then on the sidewalk the short distance to your apartment building.

As you turn the corner onto your short street, your apartment in sight, you rest your head against Namjoon's shoulder and sigh happily. "Thank you for today. It was just...magical."

"Christmas magic?"

You nod against his jacket, wistful and content. "Definitely."

Stopping outside your apartment, you turn towards him, not letting go of his hand. Namjoon gives you a content smile as he looks at you, one where his eyes glisten at his coming words. "Then I have a chance."

"At what?"

He reaches yet again for your scarf, moving it from around your lower face so he can cradle it in his hands. "Restoring your hope in the holidays, and your hope in yourself and your choices."

"Ooof, that's getting ahead of it, I think." You bite the inside of your cheek as a small tug of anxiety and sense of being lost pulls at the back of your mind.

But Namjoon is relentless in his pursuit, and for that you're grateful. "That's why I have two more days planned."

"Already?" you laugh.

"You bet!" he exclaims. "In fact, I'll pick you up at nine on Saturday, but don't wear a dress or skirt. Are you free then?"

"For you, absolutely."

His teeth show through his grin, and he leans forward to press a kiss between your eyebrows. The gesture is gentle and sweet, made even more so by the warmth of his hands on your cheeks through his gloves. Nevertheless, it leaves you breathless.

After a moment of silence, he pulls away and lowers his grasp, but you crave the contact as soon as he relinquishes it. He nods towards your apartment, as if saying, "I'm not leaving until you're home safe."

You take the hint and give a tiny wave as you enter your building. "Have a great night, Joonie," you whisper through the cracked door. "And thanks again."

Namjoon waves back. "Goodnight, [Y/n]. Sleep well."

Saturday can't come quickly enough. You find yourself smiling more often, a joyful feeling in your heart as you go about your work shift and college classes. Even the smallest and insignificant things feel a little easier. The weather wasn't just cold anymore; it was full of beauty and hope and Christmas spirit.

Maybe Namjoon was right. Maybe he was helping you turn a corner.

Right before you're ready to head downstairs to meet Namjoon at the entrance, your phone begins to buzz. Lit up on the screen is an international number, but the area code is that of your old home. The butterflies of excitement die almost instantly, shriveling up into tiny balls of anxiety in your stomach.

Even though you ignore the call, you can't resist listening to the voicemail left behind. Putting your phone on speaker, you're shocked to hear your mother's voice wishing you a Merry Christmas, saying that she and the family miss you, and that they wished you would visit so you could clear up everything that went wrong over the summer. Your throat constricts at the sickly sweet tone; her voice always did drip in honey when she wanted something, she she was trying to manipulate her child. Between her conniving control and your father's lack of respect for privacy and personal boundaries, you remember all over again why you left.

You jump as your apartment bell rings, and the small screen by the door shows Namjoon at the entrance. "[Y/n], are you up there? I texted twice...not sure if you got those."

Looking down at your screen, you see that he's right. You have two unread texts from the last five minutes that you missed due to the unexpected caller. Shaking yourself out of it, you shoot him a quick response, close everything out, and head for the ground level.

"There you are!" Namjoon greets with a grin that almost makes you forget your mother's call.

Almost.

Forcing a smile and reply, "Sorry, I don't know why I didn't see your texts."

"No worries." He waves his hand as if to say it's nothing to worry about. "Are you okay? You seem bothered about something."

You glance up at him, unable to deny he looks slightly concerned. You mirror his laissez-faire attitude and brush it off. "Totally good. Heading to the station?"

"Not this time." Namjoon gestures towards the bike parked by the corner of the building. "You ready to go?"

"Both of us, on that? Are you sure that's safe?"

"Oh yeah! Trust me." He kicks the stand down and mounts the bike, patting the extended seat behind him. "I once rode up Namsan Mountain with Seokjin on the back of this thing, and let me tell you, he's a hell of a lot bigger than you."

Knowing he's probably right, you settle yourself on the seat behind him and wrap your arms tightly around his middle. It's probably not the most well-balanced thing in the world, but you trust Namjoon more than you buy into your fear of falling. "No skirts or dresses, huh?"

"Now you get it," he laughs, pulling out onto the bike lane on the street headed into towards the older side of the city. "Unless you'd like a wardrobe malfunction."

He picks up speed and gets to an easy pace down the street. It's fast enough to get to your location speedily but slow enough that you're able to stare at the beautiful buildings and wondrous landscape around you. Even the people have an aura of happiness caused by Christmas. Had it always been this stunning? Or had you been blind to it until just now?

"Seokjin, as in Kim Seokjin, your rival?"

"So you do watch the news," he sighs. "They aren’t portraying us as friends these days, are they?"

You shake your head and rest your chin on his shoulder. "Not really. I didn't know you were friends."

Namjoon shrugs his shoulders slightly, his voice monotone. "Yeah, well, we've known each other since we were seven, got into skating together around that time, and have been friends ever since. While I wish I didn't have to sit this one out, I couldn't be happier to have him representing South Korea at the Worlds — sorry, that's what we call the World Figure Skating Championships."

"Yeah, they're kind of painting you as opposites."

"That's just what the news does, I guess. Gossip and tabloids and fan-wars. I fell on the ice and hit my shoulder pretty hard; it had nothing to do with Seokjin. He and I talked before I left, too. We're on good terms. Most of us from South Korea are friends, actually. We only get represented as enemies because it's a competition. But a lot of times we're on the same flights, in the same hotels, in the same training areas, you get the idea."

Namjoon pulls up to a stoplight at a near empty intersection, waiting silently for it to shift colors. "Is that what you meant by change of career?" you inquire.

"You're observant," he chuckles.

You turn to rest your cheek on his back. "For what it's worth, and keep in mind that I don't know the first thing about figure skating or your injury or anything like that, but as someone on the outside looking in, you're still so talented. Last week, when you were skating alone, I couldn't tell at all you were injured, and you looked like you were really enjoying it. I don't know if that means anything to you coming from a novice, but if you're still in love with skating and want to get back out there, I think you should go for it. You're still spectacular to watch, Joonie."

There's a beat of silence, but then Namjoon glances over his shoulder and winks at you. "Would you come see me perform live if I did?"

Shrugging your shoulders, you state, "Why not?"

He laughs at your silly expression, then begins to move the bike again as the light finally shifts. "That actually means a lot, [Y/n]. Thank you."

The rest of the ride is quiet, at least until you begin to hear the sounds of a bustling outdoor market. Namjoon turns the final corner, and you're elated with the stone street in an older part of Seoul. Vendors in various booths stretch out in every direction. Some sell food or drink, some sell trinkets or clothing, some even sell vintage books or vinyls or movies. Every nook and cranny has something special to offer. The sights, smells and sounds bring an enormous smile to your face as Namjoon steadies the bike to a stop beside the bicycle rack.

You hop off with his help, nearly bouncing up and down from excitement as he parks and locks his bike on the stand. "This is amazing!" Turning to him, you catch him off-guard with a tight embrace, wrapping your arms tightly around his neck and pulling him down to you.

Namjoon seems amused by your eager reaction, and he pulls you closer to him. "I thought you would like it. There's nothing quite like Christmas than a market."

After letting him go, you press a kiss to his cheek as you lower back down to your level. Namjoon's hands tenderly cradle your face, just like last time, only today he's glancing away from your eyes and down to your lips. As your heartbeat quickens, you pull him back to you, fingers grasping at his winter jacket.

His voice is deep and soft as he asks, "May I...?"

Your cheeks flush as you nod your approval. Namjoon's dimples deepen as he lowers his face to yours, barely brushing his lips against yours in the gentlest kiss you've ever had. You close the distance, tugging at his jacket so he moves closer. He gives a tiny laugh against your mouth, then follows your guidance to deepen the kiss. One hand slips back to your hair; he gently plays with the strands.

A moment later, and you're sighing as he pulls away, both light-headed and light-hearted. Namjoon smiles down at you, gives you a surprising second peck, then pulls back with a chuckle. "You're a really cute kisser, y'know that?"

You drop your head and hide your face in the front of his coat. "Shut up."

Your companion's laughter echoes in the air around you as he wraps an arm around your shoulders and places his lips briefly on the top of your head. "Are you hungry? I know where we can get the absolute best Tteok-kkochi."

Eventually you lift your head and nod, feeling your stomach rumble at the thought of rice cake skewers. Namjoon moves his arm from around your shoulders, taking your hand instead, and ushers you into the first aisle of the Christmas market.

If it was magical from the outside, it's even more so from within. Somewhere in the distance, you hear holiday music playing. Not the commercial Christmas songs you're used to, but instrumental music that plays perfectly with the sounds of the market crowds. You're awestruck by every single booth you pass, and Namjoon promises to take you back to all of them after you grab a bite to eat.

Which are well worth the walk into the interior of the market. The Tteok-kkochi are cooked to perfection, drowned in a sauce, and by far the best you've ever had. Even after circling back to the booths you missed on the way, you beg Namjoon to lead you back to get another set.

"I've found heaven," you exclaim dramatically, taking the next two from the cook behind the counter and hanging one to your companion. "I'll never have rice cake skewers this good again."

After paying, you spot a section of the market decorated with lights and colorful orbs, much like the decorations you're used to seeing in the West. "Can we go over there next?"

Namjoon spots where you're pointing and eagerly agrees. The pair of you make your way towards the greenery and decor, amazed at the giant Christmas trees decorated to perfection on the periphery of the market.

"That's a massive tree," he gasps, staring upwards. "Are those normal in America?"

"Maybe at a mall or outside a hotel or something," you reply, equally as taken back. "I've never seen one that big in person in a long time."

As you peruse the Christmas section of the market, slipping from booth to booth as the clock strikes Noon, Namjoon asks, "Have you decorated your apartment at all? I know it can be kinda hard to find stuff in Korea like you're used to."

"Not really," you admit in passing. "Between work and school and, y'know, starting a new life in a foreign country, the holidays kinda fell on the back-burner."

Namjoon taps your shoulder, ushering your attention towards the old, American Christmas movies booth a few spots away. You gasp and rush over with renewed excitement, eyes scanning eagerly over the shelves. They have just about everything, from the classics like "It's A Wonderful Life" and "A Christmas Carol" to movies you grew up on like "Home Alone" and "Elf." The more you sort through the outdated DVDs, the bigger your smile gets.

"What's your favorite Christmas movie?" Namjoon asks, casually looking through the Christmas vinyls on the booth next to the movies.

"Without a doubt, Ron Howard's 'How The Grinch Stole Christmas.'"

"The one with Jim Carrey?"

"You know it!"

He laughs. "Yeah, my little sister and I watched it a lot when we were kids."

Your head perks up at the mention of a sister. "I didn't know you had siblings, either."

Namjoon nods. "Yeah, she's in college, too. Studying to be a psychologist."

"She sounds amazing."

"Yeah, the family is very proud. I know I am." He pulls out a vinyl for one of Frank Sinatra's Christmas records. "Do you have siblings?"

At the question, your gaze shifts back to the movies, hands preoccupied with finding the perfect one. "I do. A brother and a sister."

"Older?"

"Yeah..."

"What are they like?"

"A lot like my parents," you sigh, moving on to another shelf, turning your back to your companion. "Which is part of the reason I left, so..."

Namjoon senses your anxiety around the topic and rests a hand on your shoulder as he passes by. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize--"

You cut him off with a casual wave of your hand. "It's no worries, really." Spotting the record under his arm, you ask, "Find one you like?"

While he doesn't seem to buy your act, he lets the conversation go and holds up the vinyl for "Tales of Noel on Ice" by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, as performed by the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra.

"You don't already have that one?" you gawk in surprise.

"I don't actually," he admits bashfully. "The title composition is one of my best free skate performances, and I have a record player at home, so why not?" He gestures to the movies. "Did you find one?"

"Oh, I don't need one! I was just looking. I don't even have a DVD player anymore."

"I do, so pick one out and maybe we can watch it sometime."

You shake your head at him, trying to subdue a chuckle. "A record player and a DVD player? You're so odd."

"But to your benefit," he reminds you with a wink, pulling out a single movie nearest him. It happens to be your favorite with Jim Carrey in all his hilarious glory on the front.

Cocking an eyebrow, you give a tiny round of applause at the luck of pulling that film out of all the others. "Well, you're going to have to invite me over sometime then."

"You can count on it."

For the next couple hours, Namjoon and you make your way through the entire market, hitting all the shops that interest and intrigue you. All the while, you talk about a plethora of things and get to know each other letter. For instance, you find out that he was born in Ilsan, not too far from where you are now, and that he hates seafood just about as much as mint chocolate. You also find out that he looks like his mother, who was the one that got him into skating to begin with. And to no one's surprise, Namjoon is actually very funny. Not only is he smart, athletic, and good looking — which alone would have caught your attention — he's got a wicked sense of humor to top it all off.

Likewise, he learns more about you. You tell him about the city you grew up in, the friends you had in high school, what you studied before you came to Korea. You tell him that along with your studies, you're really invested in writing and try to make time for that as well. It hasn't been so easy since the move, but you're hoping to get back to it in the new year.

As you approach mid-afternoon, and the final leg of the market, your phone begins to buzz. Your screen lights up with the same foreign number as before. Instantly, both your feet and your heart stop. Your shoulders tense up, and you turn to a blissfully unaware Namjoon, saying, "Hey, I gotta take this. You go on ahead."

"Are you sure?" he asks, the person in front of him not the same happy-go-lucky one as before.

You give him a nod of reassurance. "I'll catch up."

Before he can reply, you've turned and moved towards the massive Christmas trees, where there's an opening and the crowds are quieter. Despite what you told him, you don't intend on answering. Whoever is on the other end of that line, be it your mother or father or siblings, you want nothing to do with them. You do, however, want this to be over. You promise yourself to hear the message, block them, and then go run an errand after the holidays to get a new number.

After the call drops, you wait with an anxious feeling building in your stomach. Maybe they didn't leave a message. Maybe it wasn't your family after all. Maybe —

A soft ping alerts you that you have a new message. Selecting it, you raise your phone to your ear and hear your father this time. He repeats all of what your mother said, only with a layer of frustration and authority that she didn't use. He's borderline cruel as he spouts the same old lies that you're trying to unlearn; it's your fault, it's because of you, you're the cause of it. What it is, depends on the day. This time is has to do with your family not being the same and their world falling to pieces. He uses colorful sentences, well-crafted insults, but all you hear is blame, blame, blame.

Tears prick your eyes as the voicemail ends, and you realize you should've just deleted the message when you had the chance. A small part of you still hoped they would change, even after all this time, but you see now that it's not possible.

They will never change, and neither will you.

The pit of depression weighs down in your stomach, and loneliness tingles at the back of your throat. Why now? Out of all the times, out of all the days, why are you feeling these things now? You're out having an adventure with a man who you really like, and who you know likes you, in a city you now call home. You're far from any sadness or trauma or family or friends that once brought you down. You've left your past behind. You'd started to feel like there was hope in the holidays and in the future again, like the last year was worth the pain, like everything was starting to turn around.

But suddenly, that snake is wrapped around you again, pulling you back into old habits and old ways of thinking. It's grabbed on tight and is pulling you back into the dark, away from people you care about, away from people who care about you.

Even as you glance up at Namjoon a few stalls away, completely naïve to the painful flickers going through your mind, you feel the need to draw back. Pull away. Stay away. Go back to the security of the known, of the sad, of the lonely. It's warm and comfy, even if it hurts.

Clenching your fists, you try to silence the noise in your brain by shaking your head. The thoughts only grow louder, and the pit in your stomach gets heavier. You haven't felt a depressive episode like this in a long time. You thought they were long gone, especially now, especially with him...

"[Y/n]? Are you okay?"

Looking up, you see Namjoon's approaching you in the clearing. One hand carries the movie and vinyl he purchased for you both, but the other is outstretched towards you. While you don't pull away from his touch, you taste bile in the back of your throat.

"I—I need to go home," you mutter. "I'm starting to feel sick."

"Oh, okay, hold up I'll go get my bike and I'll take you home."

Feeling your breath quicken, you pull your gaze from Namjoon and nod shakily. The walk back to the bike rack is silent, even the crowd outside fades to a low background murmur. Namjoon places the purchased items in his bicycle carrier, then mounts it.

You follow suit, regret beginning to pile up inside you. Running isn't going to help anything, and you know he must be hurt and confused. But to you, the only thing you can do right now to protect yourself is get away from it all and go back to the place where you feel safest.

Tears burn your eyes as you curl up against him. Namjoon pedals speedily to your apartment, making the trip faster than last time. When he pulls up to the curb, you hop off without a word.

"Do you need me to walk you up?" he offers, worry causing his brows to pull together.

You shake your head and put distance between you both. "No, I'm fine. I'll...text you later, okay?"

Without another word, you turn and enter through the front, leaving Namjoon behind on the other side. Trekking up the stairs, through the door, past a mewling Mochi, you curl up on your bed and let yourself finally feel all the sadness piled up inside.

Fifteen minutes later, the waterworks flow when your phone lights up from an incoming text. Knowing exactly who it is, you grab it and text a swift message to Namjoon.

"I'm so sorry I left so suddenly. And that I ruined our day. Not feeling like myself."

"That's okay. I just got home, so I wanted to check up on you. I'm sorry you're not feeling well. Do you need anything?"

"No, but thank you."

"Okay... Maybe we can try again some other time? I'd hate to let you down on Day 2."

Unable to reply, the phone turns black and you let it fall onto the duvet.

The days leading up until Christmas Eve were long and full of guilt. You closed the café for the final time the Monday before the holiday, and with no classes to attend, you mainly stayed inside and watched the snow fall outside your tiny apartment window. Mochi kept you company, but even the small fur ball could sense that something had changed for the worse. Even she had gotten used to you being happier this December; you'd taken two steps back while attempting to take a single step forward.

Every morning, you'd spot Namjoon riding his bike past your apartment on his way to the rink where he trains. Every day, he'd stop and gaze up at the building, never sure which frosty window you were behind but melancholy just the same. He'd call and text; the former, you would never answer, but the latter, you did sporadically. Mainly at night when you thought he wouldn't be up.

He usually was.

"Was it something I did?" he asked that Tuesday before Christmas. "Did I move too fast? Did I say something I shouldn't have?"

"No. It's not you."

"Then tell me what it is. I don't want to come across as pushy, but I thought we were getting closer...and then you pull back and hide from me. From everyone. I know I don't know everything about your past or what happened before you came to Seoul, but I promised you three adventures. I still have one to make good on before Christmas."

"Joonie..."

You couldn't bring yourself to write more. The tiny part of your brain that told you that maybe this can work, maybe it's worth trying, maybe things can be different now, it was silenced by the overwhelming majority of your mind. It remembered everything from your past, from the hurt and pain, from the loneliness and fear. Despite your wish to make things right again, it was drowned out by the pure terror of being wronged again.

"Don't shut me out. Please. Let me show you things can be different now. You don't have to go at this alone, [Y/n]. Not anymore."

Pushing down the urge to cry yet again, you move your fingers to type a swift and cold reply. "I'm so sorry I wasted your time, Namjoon. I really am. I thought I was ready, but it's clear that I'm not. Please, spend Christmas with your family. Don't waste any more time on me."

And that was the end of it. You muted his notifications, ignored his calls and texts, and eventually he went silent. The day before Christmas Eve was the first you didn't hear from him, and it was the first day you felt like you'd truly fucked things up for good.

On Christmas Eve, you got an unexpected call from Lisa. Deciding to take a break from staring at an empty Word document with ever-growing frustration, you answered the call, only to be bombarded by Lisa's rambling.

"Oh, thank god! I didn't think you'd answer! I need a huge favor, and I hate to bother on such short notice on Christmas Eve, but this really cannot wait and I'll love you forever if you—!"

"—Okay, okay," you chuckle, shaking your head at her antics.

"I need you to run back to the café and grab something for me. Jungkook is on his way there, but he doesn't have a key."

"What could you possibly have left that's this important?"

"My fucking credit card."

"You've been out of town for two weeks and only just now realized you left your card?"

She heaves a frustrated sigh. "Please, just, do me this favor?"

Rolling your eyes, you pull yourself from the sofa and grab your keys on the counter. "Fine, but you owe me."

"Yes, yes, I know."

You leave the apartment in a hurry, taking the next train to the café. In less than fifteen minutes, you're at the front door. Lisa assures you that Jungkook is on his way, only twenty minutes away. After unlocking it, you make yourself at home in the lobby with a fresh white chocolate mocha. It reminds you of Yeongu, and you smile at the thought.

After about a half hour, your phone begins to buzz in your pocket. Lisa's text has you halting in place.

"I'm sorry to do this. You didn't really give me another choice. I crossed a line, but I think you'll thank me in the end."

Your fingers are swift typing a response. "What did you do?"

"You remember how you gave me a spare key in case you ever got locked out? Or in case you were kept at school too long and needed someone to feed Mochi?" A pause, then she adds, "He came to Busan, [Y/n]. He asked me in person what to do. Do you know how out of the way that was for him? Give him another chance. Please."

"You didn't."

"I did. I'm sorry, but you've talked about how you pull away when you get close to people. It's gone on for almost a week. It's Christmas Eve. You can hate me all you want later, but please. Go home, kiss and make up, then try to salvage Christmas."

A huff of air exits your nostrils as it hits you. Lisa's given the spare to Namjoon. Jungkook was never on his way; this was all a rouse to get you out of your apartment long enough for him to get inside. But to what end?

"He's good for you; I can tell that much already. If you ever were to give someone the benefit of the doubt and place your broken pieces in someone's hands, he's the best you're gonna find."

A pang of truth rocks through you, and while you have still a semblance of willpower, you shoot her a swift text and rush back for the station. "I'm still mad at you, but we'll talk later. I need to get home."

"Go get him!"

The series of stairs up to your apartment never felt so long. Out of breath and winded from rushing home, you find the door unlocked. Pushing through, the place you left less than an hour ago isn't the same as it was before.

The entrance hallway is glittering, multi-colored strands of twinkle lights hanging along the periphery. Fake snow lines the trim, and paper snowflakes are tossed across the furniture. Each one is unique and hand-crafted.

As you venture further, a rainbow array aurora covers your living room and kitchen. There must be at least a dozen lengthy strands of Christmas lights hung across the few items you've unpacked, circled around the sealed boxes, and framing every window and door. Fake icicles hang on the windowsill, fake greenery lays where curtains should be, and a small Christmas tree stands at your height in the corner.

Jovial, English holiday music plays softly in the background. And humming along to the tune of The First Noel, Namjoon stands with bent-back facing you. He's finishing his final touches on the tree, ensuring that each sparkling orb and shimmering tinsel is perfect. He adjusts the star on the top with a smile to himself, oblivious still to your entrance.

For a moment, you stand in silence and watch him. Your heart is heavy but still beating. If anything, seeing him in the midst of such a sweet and selfless act makes it flutter. Even after cutting his well-planned adventure short, ignoring him for over a week, and telling him to stop speaking to you, he's still here. He came back, and he's trying to prove to you the truth he's been spouting all along.

Eventually, you blink out of your stupor and clear your throat to alert him to your presence. Namjoon turns on his heel, elbow grazing the tree just enough to send it toppling backward. He curses and lunges for it, grabbing it by the star just in time to keep it upright. His characteristic clumsiness prompts a snicker from you, one that you attempt to hide with your hand over your mouth.

Namjoon adjusts the tree and turns back to you with a bashful expression. His lips pull into a side-smile, a single dimple popping out in the process. "H—Hi..."

"Hi," you repeat back to him, letting your hand fall. Your eyes follow suit and drift to your damp, snow-covered shoes.

A beat of silence passes where neither of you knows what to say next. Then the both of you break it at once, words tumbling over each others several times in a row. You laugh to yourself and look back up at him; Namjoon smiles down at you, shaking his head at the awkward reunion.

He gestures silently to you. "Go ahead."

You clear your throat, then say, "I...I wanted to say that I owe you an apology."

He shakes his head firmly, extending his hands in a olive-branch manner. "No, you don't—"

Your feet move back, putting space between you both. "—Can I explain and finish, please? Just...hold your forgiveness until then." At your request, your companion falls silent, letting his hands fall respectfully at his side. Taking a deep breath and holding it for a moment, you re-calibrate your mind and prepare for your admission.

"There's a lot you don't know about me yet," you begin softly. "Ah, shit — That came out super mean. I mean, you know a lot about me. You kinda know why I moved to Korea, the situation with my family back in America, that whole thing. You know where I work and what I'm studying. You know my favorite drink of all time is a white chocolate mocha, and that my favorite customer is barely four feet tall. You know Lisa is my shield at work, and that we've become pretty close in less than a year. You know I'm a homebody and that my favorite thing to do by myself is play with Mochi and watch dramas."

You release a huff of air and raise your eyes to meet his, a wistful smile tugging the corners of your lips. "But there's a lot I haven't told you — or anyone for that matter. I've gone through...a lot of shit this year. When I moved to Seoul, my mental health was in the trash, and my self worth was in shambles. I'd just been shoved from everything I'd ever known into a foreign place."

When you pause for a moment, Namjoon's small and steady voice pipes up with a single inquiry. "I thought you left willingly?"

"I did," you state. "I've wanted to move to South Korea for a long, long time. Since I can remember. But I never thought I'd lose everything before then." Tears prick your eyes, and you lift your sleeve to wipe your nose. "Sorry."

"Don't be." Namjoon gestures towards the small sofa, and you follow his lead. You perch on a single cushion, legs folded underneath you. He takes the adjacent one, far enough to for personal space but still close enough to rest a hand on your knee. This time, you don't push him away as you catch your breath. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

"No, I do, but maybe not now." You take another breath in and focus your thoughts. "I didn't mean to start all that with the intention of being the victim and making you feel bad for me. I...I told you that because I wanted you to know that there are reasons why I push people away. I've been on a journey to heal that trauma all year, but it doesn't happen overnight. But even with that, I never should have just left like that. I never should have ignored your calls and texts. I shouldn't have made you feel like you were the bad guy, or that any of this was your fault, or that you did anything wrong. You were—"

You struggle to find a word that fits what you're truly feeling, one that doesn't feel overwhelming, but the only one that comes to mind is... "You are perfect, Joonie. You're sweet and kind. You treat me like a normal person that's worth something, and I think part of me was scared of that. Especially around the holidays, I feel very fragile, and I run from things I think might hurt me."

"I would never, ever hurt you." Namjoon flashes a soft and empathetic smile. "Can I ask why you got spooked so suddenly? You looked off when I picked you up, and I know you said it was nothing, but..."

You pull your phone from your pocket and play the message for him, the one from your mother. And when he remains silent, you play the second from your father. While he listens, you watch him. The hand on your knee turns to a fist, and his jaw clenches. Part of you is relieved that someone else is reacting negatively to the messages, yet another signal to you that your choice is validated.

"I got the first that morning, but the second right before I left," you murmur. "I didn't respond, and I've blocked the numbers, but I've felt unstable since then. That's why I shut down, and why I left."

He nods, then turns off the phone. "You don't have anything to be sorry for. That's emotional abuse and manipulation. No one should have to go through that."

"I know, but I was wrong. I'm sorry for doing that and for hurting you. It was wrong, and I don't deserve you coming back again and again...even if you concocted this up with Lisa."

At your light-hearted comment, he chuckles and bites the inside of his cheek. The fist on your knee loosens back, his fingers tapping gently against your skin. "She told you, did she?"

"Yep," you chirp. "I'll thank her later."

After a moment, Namjoon's eyes flicker back up to yours. For a moment, he almost looks worried. "Are you mad?"

"Meh." For a moment, you're able to hold your composure long enough for your companion's eyes to widen in horror. "I'm just kidding," you relent, and Namjoon looks visibly relieved. "How could I be mad? Look at all this!" You gesture to the magical space around you. "It looks like a wonderland in here."

A crimson hue fills his face, and he's all of a sudden very shy about the accomplishment. "I wanted you to feel like you had a Christmas, even if it was just for one night."

Leaning your head against the back cushion of the sofa, you stare at him with a bittersweet smile on your face. "Are you mad at me?"

He shakes his head, expression more adamant about that than anything he's said so far. "Not a bit. I was worried, yes, and maybe a little disappointed. I think most of that was tied to the fact that I thought we were on the up-and-up. I saw you slowly opening up and having a good time."

"Gahhh," you groan, eyes fluttering shut with frustration at your past self. "I really fucked it up, didn't I?"

"Not really." His hand slips up your knee, and he weaves his fingers through yours. The squeeze he gives and the gaze he locks gives emphasis to his next words. "I know I don't know everything about you, just like you don't know everything about me, but I'd be lying if I said you aren't the most joyful thing I've experienced in a while. Being around you makes me happy, and the fact that this has you so down makes me want to be there for you — if you want me to. I don't blame you for anything you've done, so you have nothing to be sorry for. Honestly, after hearing those messages and some of what you've been dealing with this year, I know I would've reacted the same way. But, if it helps your peace of mind, then I forgive it all."

"Thank you," you whisper, trying to blink away the tears pricking your eyes.

Namjoon's gaze softens, and he tugs on your hand. "C'mere." You scoot closer, and he pulls you the rest of the way onto his lap and into his arms. Your legs dangle off the side of his thighs, and your head nestles in the juncture between his neck and shoulder. One hand holds tightly to yours while the other circles your waist, dipping under your sweater to rub soothing circles on your skin. Your free arm wraps around his waist, pulling him even closer than before.

"Sometimes terrible, inexplicable things happen to us and it takes us months — even years — to process." Namjoon's timbre is quiet and deep, rumbling against your ear as he speaks. "Everyone goes through that, even me. But it's so much harder to face it alone. Sometimes it takes a lonely, awful Christmas to see just how out of sorts you are. I don't know everything, but if you'll have me, I'd like to stick around to find out."

"You'd still be willing to get to know me more, even after seeing me at my worst?"

"Jagi, if this is your worst, then I would hate to introduce you to sixteen-year-old Kim Namjoon. That boy was a train-wreck."

Letting a watery smile show as laughter escapes your lungs, you reach upward and wrap your arms around Namjoon's neck. He pulls you closer, hands splayed on your back and waist. A sense of relief, and something like home, floods through you. Burying your face in his neck, you allow yourself a moment to collect your thoughts. Ever patient, your companion just holds you close as you come back around.

"Enough with the heavy," he breaks the silence, pulling back and wiping his thumb across your cheeks. Nodding towards the front of the space, where your television is, you follow his line of sight. "I brought your movie and the player. If you're okay with me staying over, do you wanna watch it?"

Leaning forward, you bring your face closer to his, murmuring, "I'd love that."

Namjoon closes the final distance. Both your eyes and his flutter shut as your lips meet in the middle. You tug on the collar of his sweater, encouraging him closer as his arms tighten around your waist. In a burst of bravery, you run your hand through his platinum hair and nip at his bottom lip. He inhales abruptly, and you giggle in response.

"You're gonna be the death of me, [Y/n] [Y/l/n]," he laughs, eventually pulling back to catch his breath.

You grin mischievously at him, biting your lower lip. "Still sure you wanna stay?"

"Definitely. Oh! And I placed an order for takeout, which should be here any minute."

You burst into laughter, resting your forehead against his shoulder as joy fills your body. "You really put all your chips on me coming to my senses, didn't you?" When he shrugs, you add, "What if I had said no?"

"Then I would've been eating for two alone in my apartment," he groans.

You shake your head at his antics and playfully poke the dimple in his cheek. “Merry Christmas, Joonie.”

His smile deepens at your words and gesture. “Merry Christmas, [Y/n].”

Just as he promised, food arrives at the front of your apartment a few minutes later. Namjoon hops up and volunteers to get it from the entrance, and you pop the movie into the player. Silencing the music on his phone, you select the "Play" option from the menu, and the credits begin to play over Anthony Hopkins' narration as your companion returns.

He serves up the food and delivers it to you on the sofa. With a rumbling stomach, you take it gratefully. Just as the singing begins, Namjoon settles into the seat beside you, hooking your leg over his so you maintain closeness as you devour the takeout. Neither of you have seen it in so long, and thus both of you are laughing whole-heartedly at every joke and hilarious mannerism.

After the meal is finished and the dishes are on the makeshift box side-table, you find yourself slowly slipping closer to your companion. Namjoon gladly pulls you closer, and by the middle of the movie, you're back in his lap. With the blanket wrapped around you both, his chin on your head, his arms around you with one hand tracing absent-minded patterns on the skin above your pants, you know you've never been more at home in Seoul than you are right now.

"I'm sorry I ruined your grand plans for Day 3," you murmur after a while.

Namjoon's hand on your waist halts, then changes to a reassuring, tapping pattern. "Be glad you did; this is way better than anything I had planned."

"While I have to agree, what did you have planned?"

You can hear his smile in his voice. "Well, honestly I hadn't decided between Lotte World or Seoullo 7017. You said you hadn't been to either of those, and at Christmas, they're magical. All the lights, the music, it's an absolute winter wonderland."

"Well, if I get to see you skate live, then we can definitely go to those after the solar New Year. Maybe...Maybe even call it a date?"

Namjoon presses a kiss to your forehead, one that makes you grin to yourself and sigh peacefully. His reply is loud and clear, a promise reverberating through his chest. "I think that sounds perfect."

As the movie continues, you relax and think back on everything that's happened this year. All your concerns and worries you had a few weeks prior, at the beginning of December, they all seem so far away now. Even those anxieties brought up recently feel as if they're resolved. he sense is comparable to that of a chapter ending and a new one is being written. And this time, you're the one holding the pen.

At the resolution of the film, you realize that what Namjoon set out to do over a series of adventures truly did come to fruition. Be it luck or fate or whatever you want to call it, he really has given you that spark of hope in the Christmas season. It's something you thought you'd lost, or perhaps you'd left it in America along with many other things. He's brought it back to life, and so much more along with it.

All that magic, all that wonder, all that love and hope and joy — Namjoon is right. It hasn't disappeared from the world, and you haven't outgrown the things you used to feel during the holiday season. It's all still right here, in front of you and around you, waiting to be taken with grateful hands and heart. Maybe it's not in the form it used to be, nor is it in the place it used to be, but neither are you. Both you and your home have changed this year. But despite it all, you are still here, still striving to love yourself and your new life, still trying to let the magic find you.

And this year, because of a wonderful person named Kim Namjoon, you had all the love and magic you could ever need.

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hawkinshellfire · 3 years

Text

Right Where You Left Me

Chapter 9 - You Are In Love

One night he wakes

Strange look on his face

Pauses, then says

You're my best friend

And you knew what it was

He is in love

Saturday morning, Hopper wakes when the sun streaming in through his window forces his eyes open. He'd hardly slept an hour, tossing in turning for the majority of the night and he groans while burying his face beneath his pillow.

After attempting to fall back asleep for nearly an hour, he gives up and carries himself to the kitchen to fetch a cup of coffee. His parents are already enjoying breakfast at the table and wish him good morning while he pours coffee from the already brewed pot into a mug. His mother teases him about his bed head and jokes that he looks like he hasn't slept in weeks before he excuses himself to enjoy his drink in the privacy of his own bedroom.

He downs the coffee in four large gulps stretches his arms up over his head with a dramatic sigh and forces himself to put on a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and a flannel. He knew what he had to do this morning, he just wasn't sure how it was going to go.

He decides to walk, procrastinating while also enjoying the crispness of the morning air. What if she wouldn't listen to him? She would. Something in him just told him that she would. But, what if she wasn't there?

Hopper crosses the street and marches through the field behind Joyce's house, where he spots her sitting on the platform of their childhood hangout spot. A semi-tree house located in one of the trees that had been struck by lightning in Joyce's backyard during a massive storm years prior.

She's too focused on the novel she's reading to notice him enter the yard and he watches her with a smile. Dressed in a pair of jeans and a simple white tee, she had her hair pinned back and her glasses on while her feet dangled from the low platform and her back rested against the splintered trunk of the semi-fallen tree.

He knew that after their argument outside the diner last night, he would find her here. This had always been a safe place for Joyce. When things got heated at home or whenever she needed time to herself, this is where she came. Part of him feels bad that today, he's the reason she's seeking a safe place but he came here to apologize and he has no intention of ever abandoning their friendship or making her doubt him ever again.

As kids, he and Joyce would spend hours playing in this tree. It wasn't anything fancy, just a few wood planks nailed to the trunk to create a floor and walls, but they loved it. As teens, they stopped spending as much time out here, instead opting to hang out near the lake or go driving around town, but Hopper knew that Joyce came out here without him and that what was once their imaginary pirate ship had become her sanctuary. Once, when he came to pick her up for a movie and found her drawing in the very spot she was now sitting in, he joked that it looked like she was royalty sitting in her castle, just waiting for him to come by and rescue her. She replied by making it clear that she wasn't the type of girl that needed rescuing, but the "Castle" comment stuck and Hopper had been referring to it as Castle Joyce ever since.

As he crosses the yard, he steps on and snaps a twig which forces her to withdraw her nose from her book and look up at him. She watches as he crosses the yard and easily swings himself onto the platform but doesn't say a word.

Plopping himself down next to her, Hopper playfully nudges her shoulder and smiles, "truce?"

"Truce."

They sit in a comfortable silence, side-by-side, staring out over the yard. He hadn't expected her to welcome him up so easily and isn't sure how to proceed with his apology.

"Look-" he begins, "I'm sor-"

"I'm sorry," she says at the same time.

"Wait, what on earth are you sorry for?" he asks. He turns his body towards her and watches as she closes her book and folds her hands in her lap.

"Last night. Just everything," she sighs. "I should be more understanding of you spending time with Chrissy. Maybe I can try and be nicer to her."

"I don't think that's going to be necessary," he replies.

She stares at him quizzically.

"Chrissy and I broke up," he explains.

"Oh Hop. I'm so sorry."

"Are you really though?" he teases. He's desperate to keep the conversation light and push through to his apology.

"No," she admits. "But I want you to be happy."

"I am happy," he reassures her, reaching out to clasp her hand in his. "It wasn't right between us. She didn't make me happy."

"Look," he adds, "I'm so sorry that I let my relationship with Chrissy come between us. It was stupid of me and I will never, ever, let something like that happen again. You're so important to me Joyce and I need you to know that I feel horrible about everything that's happened. I was a total ass and I'll completely understand if you can't forgive me."

"Hopper," she says softly but he continues rambling.

"Our friendship is the most important thing in the world to me and I would love it if we could go back to being best friends?" he asks.

"You're an idiot," she giggles.

"Is that an 'I forgive you even though you're an idiot' smile, or a 'get out of here, you're an idiot' smile?"

"The first one," she nods. "I've missed you."

"I've missed you too."

He notices her shiver and wraps her arms around her torso and instinctively slips his flannel off and passes it to her. Wordlessly, she accepts and puts it on. She's swimming in it, the arms dangle on the other side of her wrists and the body encompasses her nearly to the knees. He's smitten. She looks adorable tiny in his shirt, sending a fleet of butterflies lose in his stomach. Doing his best to ignore the way seeing her in his shirt makes him feel, he stretches out and cracks his knuckles before folding his hands in his lap.

Wrapped in his shirt, Joyce breathes in and is instantly comforted. The shirt smells like him and while it keeps her physically warm, it brings back a sense of home that she hadn't felt in weeks. She felt safe with Hopper. He was the one person who remained still and calm as the world stormed around her and for a moment, she truly feared she'd lost him.

She'd done a lot of thinking last night. About her. Them. What she wanted. She'd decided long before Hopper entered the yard that she wanted to apologize to him. She knew she didn't need to, she'd done nothing outwardly wrong. But she cared for him and she hadn't exactly made it easy for him to date Chrissy.

As for what he said last night, she wasn't sure she believed he actually wanted her. Convinced that it was a conversation fuelled by lust and the desire to have what he couldn't have, she decides to let his words fall on deaf ears and pretend that the conversation never happened. Unless he brought it up, she was content to mend the bridges that bound their friendship and forget about the confessions and the daunting reality of what could-have-been.

Is she curious to know what a romantic relationship with Hopper would be like? Absolutely. But if the last few weeks taught her anything, it was that she needed him in her life and she wasn't willing to risk their friendship for something that wasn't a sure thing.

If he brought it up, she would discuss it with him. Tell him that despite the tingling feeling that skirted across her bare skin every time they touched, she thinks they're better off as friends, even if a large part of her knows they'd be better off as more. Lucky for her, he doesn't bring it up and she doesn't have to navigate the word mine and let him down easily without showing that it's her fear and insecurity causing her to have to do so.

For now, she was happy with this. Just them. Joyce and Hopper.

She slides closer to him and leans on his shoulder, drawing in a deep breath now that her world seemed whole again.

"Do you have plans today?" he asks.

"Not really," she admits, "I was just going to hang out here, avoid my dad."

"Joyce."

"It's fine. He was drinking last night so he wasn't in the greatest mood today."

"Where's your mom this weekend?"

"Visiting my uncle," she says.

"Let's go," he encourages, hopping down effortlessly from his seat on the plank. He didn't always know what to say when Joyce didn't want to talk about what was going on at home, but he knew he could do the next best thing and offer up a distraction.

"Where are we going?" she calls down to him. Slowly, she climbs down the platform until she reaches the lawn. She wasn't nearly as tall or coordinated as Hopper and never trusted herself to jump down.

"Celebratory milkshakes," he explains.

"What on earth are we celebrating?" she asks. He just broke up with Chrissy and in the past, he was notorious for pouting for days after a breakup. Today he seemed to be in an extremely chipper mood, leaving her to wonder if he cared for Chrissy as much as she thought he did.

"Life," he laughs, raising his arms in a dramatic shrug. He holds up his car keys and lets them dangle off his thumb while he waits for her to catch up.

"Can I drive?" she asks while they walk towards where his car is parked on the road.

"Absolutely not."

"Why not?!" she whines.

"Because we're celebrating life Joy, we need to be alive to celebrate life," he smirks.

"I'm a great driver!" she exclaims.

"Just get in," he tells her, "I promise you can drive later."

Joyce and Hopper settle down at their usual booth at the diner and immediately order two chocolate milkshakes. While they wait for their drinks, he notices Joyce staring at a table across the aisle. Two girls are huddled together, whispering and giggling in their direction. Chrissy's friends.

"Hey," he says, placing his hand down on the table beside hers. "Ignore them."

"We don't have to stay here?" she suggests, "we can go-"

"Nowhere. We're not going anywhere."

"But-"

"But nothing. Ignore them. Let them whisper. Who cares what they think anyway. You and I were friends, doing things like this, long before Chrissy came into the picture. If they have a problem with us spending time together, they can confront us directly and tell us." His voice carries and Joyce knows that the girls are aware they're talking about them and she blushes.

"Hop. I wouldn't want a rumour to ruin your reputation," she admits shyly.

"I know I may have been a little lost these past few weeks, but I'm back Joyce. It's me. I could care less about what anyone thinks, let alone Chrissy's minions. And I never want you to worry about what anyone thinks, all that matters is this," he gestures between them with his index finger, "me and you."

"Besides, what's happening here has nothing to do with what happened between Chrissy and me so let's just enjoy our shakes and pretend we're the only people here, alright?"

"Alright," she nods, reaching for his hand. She places her palm over it and gently squeezes his wrist and just like that, the tension slips from his jaw because he knows she's alright.

Joyce grabs the milkshake the waitress just placed on the table between them and plops a straw into the drink. She doesn't ask what he means when he says "what's happening here" for fear that he'll tell her she knows exactly what he means. Instead, she takes a sip of her drink and smiles across the table at him.

"You know I'll always be there for you, right?" he asks out of nowhere.

"Where is this coming from?"

"I just… need you to know. I'll always be here Joyce. Even if you think I'm not. I'm here."

His words strike a chord and her entire body stills. It was an unspoken agreement they had, but hearing him say the words out loud, it meant something to her. It was such a personal sentiment and she knew he meant it with his entire heart. Part of her knew that even when he strayed with Chrissy, he would have been there had she needed him. She thought she would - need him, but surprised herself and found that she was stronger than she once believed herself to be. Still, it was nice to know that despite everything he would always be in her corner.

Rather than let him see how much his words mean to her, she smirks over at him and says, "God, you're such a sap today."

"Maybe I'm just trying to be a nice guy," he laughs.

"You're always a nice guy," she reminds him.

"Now who's being a sap," he teases.

Beneath the table, her knee collides with his and she draws back in her seat. Once she's regained her posture and sits back up, he moves his knee to touch hers again. She studies his face but he doesn't acknowledge his action. Instead, he begins to tell her a story about Benny tripping over one of the drill cones at practice the week before and they end up talking about Benny's new love interest. Hopper fills Joyce in on how the pair met at her party, though he awkwardly stumbles through the part about the party, carefully selecting his words about the evening in an attempt to not ruffle any feathers.

They talk and laugh and as the afternoon sun dips down and streams in through the diner windows, their knees are pressed together beneath the table. They order dinner and Hopper whines when Joyce steals more than half the fries on his plate after insisting she didn't want to order any. To get her back, he takes a massive bite out of her burger when she isn't looking but immediately feels guilty and insists that she let him cover the bill and buy dessert.

"I guess we should get going," he says after the bill is paid and there is no longer any natural light outside.

"You go ahead," she says, "I might stick around a while longer."

"Joyce," he says softly, "you can come over if you want?"

"It's fine. Really," she insists.

"Tell you what, why don't we hang out a while longer and then I'll drive you home?"

"You don't have to stick around Hop. I'll be fine to walk home."

"Have to, don't you mean get to?"

"You're ridiculous," she laughs.

"That may be true, but it made you smile so I'm going to call this a win."

Nearly two hours and another round of milkshakes later, Hopper pulls into Joyce's driveway to drop her off at home.

He follows her out of the car and up onto the front steps.

"Are we good Joyce?"

Their day was exactly like it had been pre-Chrissy, but he needed to be sure that things were moving forward and today wasn't some twist of fate one-off.

"We're good, Hop."

"You know you're my best friend, right?" he asks as he pulls her in for a side hug. They stay like that for a moment, wrapped up in one another; a long-awaited reacquaintance after their feud.

"You're mine too," she smiles when she finally pulls away. He watches as she climbs the steps of her porch and waves, swallowing the lump in his throat as the realization that he was in love with his best friend washes over him.

He stammers back to his car and climbs into the front seat but doesn't put the keys in the ignition. Kicking his boots up onto the dashboard, he leans back and watches as the lights in Joyce's house slowly flicker to life as she makes her way to her bedroom. When the light in the front-facing window glows, he allows himself to sigh and close his eyes. He would wait out here for a while until he was certain that her father wasn't going to lose it on Joyce for being out all day. Sitting in his parked car was something he'd gotten in the habit of doing a few years prior, after receiving a call the moment he got home from dropping Joyce off asking him to come back and get her.

Now, on days when he knew her father was in a bad mood, he waited at least thirty minutes - just in case. He's not sure she knows that he does it, and there has never been a time when she needed him but doesn't need her to know; he does it because he cares too much to ever let anything happen to her.

Eyes pinched shut, feet kicked up, he replays the moment over and over in his mind. The moment where he watched her walk away and realized he was terribly in love with her. Unlike the last time this thought entered his mind, he doesn't need to process or overthink it. He just knows, he's in love with her.

Head-over-heels in love with his best friend. Perfect.

Inside, Joyce manages to make it to her bedroom without running into anyone else and changes into a pair of fresh pyjamas. She completely forgot she was wearing Hopper's flannel the entire time they were at the diner and suddenly the gossiping between Chrissy's friends makes more sense. It wasn't abnormal for Hopper to give her one of his shirts or jackets, just like it wasn't strange for one of them to grab the hand of the other, but she understood how it looked to everyone else.

Once in her pyjamas, she slips her arms back into the oversized sleeves of the flannel and crawls into bed. She pulls her arms around her chest and smiles as she closes her eyes and begins to fall asleep, surrounded by the warmth of her comforter and the familiar scent of her best friend's flannel.

Today was a good day. The first day in weeks that felt normal. The only problem was she wasn't sure she could just forget about everything that happened between her and Hopper. After discovering she was interested in him romantically, she wasn't sure that she could ever go back to looking at their relationship the same way. Especially after his lust-filled confession telling her he felt the same way.

She knows they don't have to forget about it all; that they could face the facts head-on and deal with the ramifications but still she isn't sure that she trusts his feelings are true. Plus, his friends idolized Hopper for dating someone like Chrissy, what would people think if he started dating someone like her?

In the eyes of their peers, she knew someone like her would never be good enough for someone like him and she knew that despite his desire not to be, Hopper was the type of person who cares about what other people thought. His entire relationship with Chrissy had proved that.

What she wants is to see what they can be, but she can't be selfish and in the long run she believes that what she wants doesn't matter.

In the end, she decides to do nothing because in the back of her mind there's a nagging feeling that Hopper will change his mind and leave her again. Everyone was always abandoning her, she just lived life assuming that Hopper wasn't everyone. She refused to be let down and didn't want to find out that the man she put on a pedestal above everyone else was no different from everyone else that walked in and out of her life.

Over the next few days everything seems to fall back to normal. Aside from the glares Joyce receives from Chrissy and her minions and the few classmates that stop to greet Joyce in the hall, it was as if the entire feud between her and Hopper never happened. Joyce still enjoyed her lunch with Josie and Eli, but she and Hopper walked to and from class together and he drove her home after school. She hadn't spoken to Lonnie since that night she bailed on him at the diner but assumed he'd

he'd given up on pursuing her after he heard the rumours that were circulating about Hopper leaving Chrissy for her.

The rumours weren't true, but that didn't make them less of a hot topic. Joyce was approached by several people she'd never spoken to before and asked if it was true that she was dating Hopper. She told each of them the same thing; she wasn't. They were just friends. Even Josie had asked her if something was going on between them. Unlike her other classmates, Josie was the only one who seemed to believe Joyce when she claimed that nothing was going on.

Everything was back to normal, with the only noticeable difference being the shift in energy between her and Hopper. She knows it has something to do with the unresolved feelings they both silently agreed to sweep under the rug and she isn't sure how to deal with it. Things between them seemed tense at times, like each of them was waiting for the other to make a move or mention the unmentionable. Neither broke.

She wasn't willing to risk their fragile relationship and he wasn't one to overstep when it came to Joyce. They were at an impasse and neither of them was ready to make the moves necessary to move forward, so instead, they sat in a stalemate, just friends.

On Friday afternoon after final period, Joyce finds Hopper waiting for her at her locker.

He leans on the locker next to hers and watches while she puts her books away with a massive grin.

"Okay, what?" she asks, slamming the locker door shut.

"What?" he shrugs innocently.

"You have a look on your face."

"A look?"

"Yes. It's like you're up to no good."

"I'm always up to no good," he boasts. "But I thought of the perfect thing for us to do tonight."

"Well," she waits for him to continue, "what is it?"

"You and I are going to that fair a couple of towns over," he beams.

"A fair?"

"Yeah! You know, the one that's on all the flyers outside the gym."

"I don't know…"

"Oh c'mon Joyce! It'll be fun. I hear that a lot of people are going. Plus, if you ask me really nicely, I might even let you drive."

"Fine. I'll go. But I'm not asking nicely and you're letting me drive."

"You drive a hard bargain, Horowitz," he smiles. "I've got to get to practice but I'll pick you up at 7. Be ready!" he calls out to her on his way towards the locker room.

True to his word, Hopper shows up to pick Joyce up at 7 o'clock on the dot. He notices her mom's car in the driveway, something he hadn't seen in weeks and Joyce uses the front door instead of the window when she jogs out to meet him in her leather jacket and a dark pair of jeans. She immediately walks around the car to the driver's side and waits for Hopper to remove the keys and climb out of the car. Reluctantly, he does, clucking his tongue while he passes her the keys and begins on his way to the passenger's side.

"Are you sure you don't want me to drive?" he asks. She tosses her hair into a messy low ponytail and adjusts his seat before climbing into the cabin and putting the keys in the ignition.

"I'm sure," she flashes him a smile.

"Alright, just… go slow while you back out."

"I wasn't planning on flooring it," she rolls her eyes.

The drive to the fair takes twice as long as it should but Hopper doesn't mind one bit. It's adorable how focused Joyce looks when she drives and he has a full view of the determined smirk plastered on her face since her hair is pinned back. He coaches her through the difficult turns and only panics once when she nearly runs a stop sign in a suburb near her house.

When they pull into the packed gravel parking lot on the fairgrounds, Joyce proudly shuts the car off and hands him the keys.

"Told you we'd make it here in one piece."

"You were right," he smiles.

"You can drive us home though," she tells him.

"How nice of you to let me drive my own car home," he jokes. "Seriously though, you're getting much better at driving."

"I have a good teacher," she tells him, making him blush.

The fairgrounds are composed of the largest fields Joyce has ever seen. On one side, the open space is filled with stalls and vendors selling produce and products, on the other, the night sky is being illuminated by a sea of colours flashing off of different temporary rides. She'd heard about this fair, it was a local thing that this town did yearly and something that the town of Hawkins was trying to start doing as an annual tradition; though she'd read in the papers that Hawkins planned on holding their fair in the summer instead of the spring.

The grounds are packed with people of all ages. Children tug on their parent's hands and giggle as they munch on large clouds of cotton candy while many of her classmates are in line for the rides and games. She and Hopper begin to make their way through the crowd as they look around.

Stride for stride, she walks next to him through the sea of unfamiliar faces. Hopper waves to a few people and asks Joyce what she wants to do first.

"Honestly, I have no idea. There's so much to do."

"Why don't we start with that?" his eyes light up when he looks in the direction of a giant bell. Joyce watches as the man standing next to it raises a comically large hammer and drops it down on a target, causing a small medallion to raise up the post and ring the bell.

"Yeah, right," she laughs. "Have you seen me? I'm not exactly the strongest person here," she informs him.

"Come on. I'll win you a prize," he tells her. He extends his palm and leads her through the crowd towards the game. She spots Lonnie with a group of his friends on the other side of it and considers waving, but he looks away when he notices her and Hopper.

Stupid rumours, Joyce thinks to herself.

Hopper pays the man at the booth and picks up the giant hammer with a massive grin. He manages to ring the bell on his second try and the booth attendant hands him a small brown bear with the tiniest green bow in its chest.

Joyce watches from the sidelines and pretends not to notice the bulge in his arms when he raises the hammer above his head and swings.

"Here," he says when he walks back over to her. "This is for you."

Joyce accepts the bear and hugs it against her chest. "Thank you," she blushes.

"What are you going to call him?" he asks her.

They begin to walk towards the rides and the back of their palms brush as he swings his arm between them, sending a jolt through him. He notices she withdrawals her hand and a deep red has settled in across her cheeks. She must have felt it too. Testing his theory, he walks closer to her and lets the back of his hand graze against hers, this time for a few seconds longer. She flinches but doesn't pull away and for a moment he considers taking her hand in his. He doesn't. It's too big of a risk and he doesn't want her to think he doesn't care about their friendship.

What he doesn't know is that a huge part of her wants him to take her hand and make the first move.

"Chester," she answers him. Holding up the bear, she nods, satisfied with her name choice.

"Chester?" he repeats back. "Why Chester?"

"I don't know, I just like the name. If I ever get a dog I think I'll name him Chester."

"It's a good choice then," he beams.

"So, where to next?" she asks. She puts Chester in her bag so that she doesn't lose him.

"You choose."

"Well, I know you hate rides so…"

"I don't hate them," he clarifies, "they just make me woozy."

"Hop, you've hated them since we were kids."

"Fine. I hate them. But I wouldn't hate that," he says, pointing to a funhouse with a neon sign that reads "Tunnel of Love."

"Oh god," she groans, "that is soooo cheesy."

"Doesn't make it any less fun. Come on," he waves for her to follow him.

"Maybe you'll change your mind and we can go on one ride after?"

"Doubtful."

"Please?"

"We'll see."

The tunnel of love was a two-story playground made out of pink and red plastic pieces. The ceiling of the first floor was covered in strange oval-shaped light bulbs in white and red that flashed in time with the music that played over the small speakers lining the floor.

Hopper purchases a handful of tickets and cashes two of them in exchange for hand stamps allowing both him and Joyce access to the attraction.

They begin with the mirror maze and Joyce nearly doubles over with laughter when Hopper walks face-first into a mirror and stumbles over. They take their time going through the rest, hands extended forward after Hopper complains that his coach will kill him if he gives himself a concussion in a funhouse mirror maze.

Joyce takes the lead and guides them to the second obstacle, swinging bean bags that are suspended from the ceiling.

"This is much more my thing," he brags. With a swift right hook, he swings the first bag out of the way for Joyce and then does the same for himself and trails after her.

Joyce bats at the second bag but it hardly moves and it remains in her path.

"Allow me," he says, smacking the thing clear out of the way.

"For the record, I only did that so you would feel better about the mirror thing," she lies.

"Sure," he winks.

The rest of the first floor is fun and simple, leaving Joyce and Hopper to joke around while they work through each of the mazes. As they approach the end, a large sign painted on the wall tells them that the Tunnel of Love is next. Up ahead, Joyce can see a large spinning tunnel that's been painted in a pale shade of pink.

"I don't get the whole tunnel of love thing, why not just call it a tunnel?" she asks.

"It's part of the theme. I guess some people buy into all that crap," he responds.

"Did you know that according to Greek mythology, soul mates are real?" she asks.

"You don't believe that, do you?"

"No. But I read a book on it once. According to the legend, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Apparently, Zeus feared their power and split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves."

"That's insane."

"I agree. Imagine thinking there's someone out there that's meant for you," she laughs. "People who believe in things like that are total suckers. I'm not even sure I believe in love."

"Yeah," Hopper says, studying her face. He swallows hard and nods, but says nothing else. Instead, he watches as she continues through the tunnel of love, completely oblivious to the way he's staring after her. Yeah, he thinks. I don't believe in it either.

"Come on!" Hopper insists, tugging Joyce towards a row of arcade games.

"What are we doing, aren't these kid's games?"

"No, they're just games," he insists. "I'll win you something. Which one do you want?"

He points into a claw machine that is filled with small plastic spheres, each containing a different prize. Joyce peers over and ducks beneath his shoulder so she can get a better look at the items inside the machine.

"You don't have to waste your money on this," she informs him.

"It's not a waste of money, I want to win something for you. Choose."

She scans across the lot of prizes and smiles, secretly she adored how adamant he was on winning something for her. She already had the bear, she didn't need anything else, but she knows how stubborn he is and tells him to aim for a small plastic ring. The ring was a cheap silver and had a small blue gemstone stuck in the center, but it struck Joyce as simple and beautiful.

Four coins and several frustrated sighs later, Hopper pounds on the machine with his fist and curses. "Damn it!"

"Hey," she smiles up at him, placing her palm on his arm reassuringly, "it's okay."

"It's not okay. The machine totally ripped us off!"

"There's always next time," she tells him. "Plus, it was just fun watching you play."

"I'm sorry Joyce. I really wanted to win that little ring for you."

"What the heck am I going to do with some silly little arcade ring anyways? Besides, you already won me a bear and I love it."

"You do?"

"Of course I do. You won it for me," she grins. "Now, what do you say we find some snacks?"

"I say lead the way."

Walking away from the arcade booth, Joyce and Hopper practically walk face-first into Chrissy and her friends who are hovered around the exit. In an absolute panic, Hopper grabs Joyce's hand and tugs her towards the nearest ride with no line; the Ferris wheel. She follows without question, knowing how awkward he must feel. The rumours at school still hadn't calmed down and despite the two of them knowing that Hopper didn't leave Chrissy for Joyce, everyone else believed it which further alienated Joyce. Somehow, it made Hopper even more popular amongst his classmates. Apparently, the only thing cooler than dating a senior was breaking up with a senior.

From what Joyce had seen, Hopper was doing what he always did and ignoring the rumours but she also noticed he'd been avoiding Chrissy. Whenever they saw her in the hall he quickly ducked and looked the other way. When she asked him why he was avoiding Chrissy, he told her that Chrissy was livid with him and he didn't want to cause a public scene.

The two of them step onto the next available ride car and are fastened in with a metal lap bar.

"You alright?" she says. It's a statement, not a question and Hopper purses his lips.

"Yup."

She doesn't ask what that means; mostly, for selfish reasons. If she knew he missed Chrissy, she'd feel guilty for the things she was thinking. But he didn't care and now here he was by her side and the thoughts plaguing her mind were within reach, making them far more frightening than they were when he was unavailable to her.

During the first rotation they sit in awkward yet comfortable silence. Joyce takes in the full view of the fair and is in awe. It was much prettier from above than from the ground. She can feel how tense Hopper is next to her and does her best to remain light.

"I thought you hated rides," Joyce remarks, trying to lighten the mood.

"I do."

"Then why…?"

"Go on one with you? You said you wanted to. I just wanted to make you happy, see you smile."

"You do?" she whispers.

Suddenly, she forgets that Chrissy was the catalyst for this adventure. There is no one else. It's just the two of them, sitting on a tiny metal bench and spinning around in circles.

"I like your smile," he blushes. He's aware that her hand is dangerously close to his on the safety bar, so he rocks the car forward and uses the motion as an excuse to brush his pinky against hers.

"Oh."

"If that's alright with you?" The words roll off his tongue in a whispered tone, and he's leaning in close enough that she can practically feel them. His eyes scan hers, his palm settles on top of hers and uses his thumb to angle her head up towards his. He locks eyes with her and leans in but the ride lurches forward and tugs Joyce back. She reaches for Hopper's hand out of fear and links their fingers.

When the ride steadies and resumes, she attempts to pull her hand away but Hopper clutches onto it.

He speaks in a hurry, the sound of his voice, gruff and hushed, "Joyce."

"I-" he whispers, he closes the distance between them, lips hovering just above her ear, his body pressed against hers as much as the tiny plastic seat will allow.

"Yes," she breathes.

"You consider us friends, don't you?"

"Obviously," she responds.

"But…"

"But," she whispers, her lips ghosting over his with extreme patience that requires all of her attention.

He's about to give in and allow his lips to capture hers in a searing kiss only to be interrupted by the older man running the ride who yells, "next."

He lifts the bar and allows Joyce and Hopper to step off the ride.

The moment she steps off the ride, she sees Josie excitedly waving at her. Her friend calls her over but Joyce only has eyes for Hopper and turns to him before she acknowledges Josie.

"To be continued?" he asks.

She swallows hard and nods.

"Go on," he tells her, "we'll find each other later."

Joyce watches as Hopper wanders off to find his football buddies and then joins Josie for a few more rides. The entire time, she replays their moment on the Ferris wheel over in her mind. He was going to kiss her and she was going to let him. No, she wasn't just going to let him, she wanted him to. She still wanted him to.

She thinks about the way he spoke in a low and purposeful voice before they parted ways. Did he mean what she thought he meant when he said to be continued?

You keep his shirt

He keeps his word

And for once, you let go

Of your fears and your ghosts

#Jopper #stranger things #au #highschool au #Multichapter

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wanderingcas · 5 years

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@bekindplsrewind prompt: Found the phone number of an old childhood friend in some box at the back of the closet and decided to call it to see if it still worked AU. in other words: dean is afraid of phones destiel. 1.7k. fluff & phone shenanigans.

“How did you accumulate all this junk?” Sam asks. He punctuates the point by throwing a pink crop top that says “Real Women Lift Weights” at Dean’s face.

“This isn’t junk,” Dean protests, “this was from my junior year in high school.” He carefully puts the crop top on the bed, letting out a sigh. “What a time of sexual discovery.”

“God, Dean. The fact remains—” Sam dives in deeper into Dean’s closet, on his hands in knees, pushing boxes and clothes across the floor at random, “—that Mom is showing this house on Wednesday, and no one is going to want to even consider buying it with all your cluttered crap all over the place.”

Dean snatches a Spock figurine off the floor before Sam’s knee collides with it. “Your room was worse.”

“Yeah, but I cleaned it.”

Making a face at the back of his brother’s head, Dean sits cross-legged on the ground. “Fine. But I’m the final say on what’s garbage or not.”

“We’re never getting out of here,” Sam sighs. But he reluctantly passes Dean a small shoebox anyway.

Dean opens it and sneezes. It clearly hadn’t been opened since before he had to start shaving on a regular basis. He rifles through the contents: colorful paperclips, a note that a cute girl had written to him in eighth grade, a small notebook that had SAM RULES written on the front that was crossed out and modified to SAM SMELLS. Dean chuckles and launches the notebook at Sam’s head.

Not stooping to Dean’s tactics to derail the cleaning situation, Sam calmly slides another Nike shoebox in Dean’s direction.

“You’re no fun,” Dean mutters, taking the top off of the shoebox. He pauses.

The polaroid picture staring at him from the bottom of the box all but slams into his brain, making him remember the moment like it was yesterday. Him and Cas had found a polaroid camera at a neighbor’s garage sale, but instead of buying it, they held it under their chins and took a picture with it, stealing the picture and running away with it. They giggled in Cas’ tree house as the photo slowly revealed their chins, stuck-out tongues, and wayward eyes drawn into obnoxious faces.

“Who’s that?” Sam asks over Dean’s shoulder. Dean jumps almost a foot in the air.

“Jesus, Sam, warn a guy.” Dean hastily shoves the picture back into the box. “And you remember Cas, you dumbass.”

“I was only four, Dean, give me a break,” Sam says. “That’s the kid you hung out with in Dad’s neighborhood before he sold the house, right?”

Dean softly scoffs. ‘Before Dad went off the alcoholic deep end and lost the house in a foreclosure,’ was more accurate. John had ghosted soon after that, leaving Mary with full custody of Sam and Dean. Her neighborhood was across town from Cas’.

“The last time I saw him was probably… I dunno…” Dean whistles through his teeth. “Probably when I was eight or nine.”

“I remember when you tried to run away to see him once,” Sam says. “You got a garbage bag full of your stuff and everything.”

Dean chuckles. “Yeah, and Mom just watched me drag that thing down the street until the bag ripped and I had to come home.”

“Overdramatic,” Sam says with a grin.

“Whatever, like you were an angel.” Dean rifles around in the box for more Cas-related stuff: broken, smoothed-over green glass they found by a creek that they were convinced were priceless jewels (they weren’t), an old broken ping pong ball they thought was a bird’s egg (again, it wasn’t), notes from Cas that were passed to Dean during class.

And a phone number.

Dean remembers the number as soon as he reads it: 555-9875. Cas had told Dean that if they ever get in trouble, or move away, they have to remember each other’s phone numbers so the other person can help. “Even when we’re adults!” Cas proclaimed from atop the slide, arms outstretched before he tumbled off the side (he did that a lot, climbing to high places, and making Dean’s too small heart already having premature attacks from fear).

“You should call it,” Sam says, again prying his big nose into Dean’s personal business.

“What? No way. It probably wouldn’t even work.”

“I dare you,” Sam offers.

“Jesus, Sam, how old are we?”

“Fine.” Sam crosses his arms. “If you call that number, I will clean out most of this closet myself, and you won’t have to lift a finger.”

Dean considers. He looks down at the frayed, yellowed paper. It’s been twenty years. It’s likely that the number is disconnected, or belongs to someone else.

“Deal,” he decides, whipping out his cell phone. “But you can’t throw away anything, okay? Not without my say.”

“I’ll get a box,” Sam sighs, rising to his feet.

Dean waits until Sam stomps out of the room before carefully dialing the number. He holds it to his ear and waits, hearing his own heartbeat vibrate the receiver.

One ring. Two. Three, until—

“Hello?” asks a voice.

Dean hesitates. It’s male, but couldn’t possibly be Cas, because the Cas he remembers had an obnoxiously pipsqueak voice, not this gravelly one that sounds like the guy just got finished chewing nails for breakfast. “Uh, hey,” he says.

There’s a beat too long of silence. “Can I help you?” the man asks again.

“Oh, yeah, well. Uh. I was just wondering—does Cas Novak still live there?”

“This is he.”

Dean’s face freezes. He gapes at Sam who has just walked back into the room. Sam’s mouth moves into a silent “What?” while Dean frantically gestures at the phone and yells silently “Cas! CAS!”

“Hello?” Cas asks over the receiver.

Sam, saving the day as usual, does a dive toward Dean and smacks him over the head with a box to stop his panic attack in its tracks.

“Oh, awesome.” Dean clears his throat. “It’s, uh—it’s Dean. Dean Winchester. I… yeah.”

The wariness in Cas’ voice is completely dropped when he repeats, “Dean? Oh my god.”

“You remember me?” Dean blurts out.

“Of course I remember you, I—” Cas laughs. Dean breathes in sharply. “This is so strange, I’m just here helping my mother move and the phone rings and—” He laughs again, more airy and bewildered. “It’s great to hear from you. What’s it been, twenty years?”

“Something like that,” Dean says. “You know, we’re moving my mom out of her house too. Must be a ‘moving your mother’ convention in town.”

Across the room, Sam groans and holds his head in his hands.

But Cas laughs, miraculously, and says, “Must be. Do you still live in town?”

“Uh, yeah. You?”

“Yes. I moved away for college, of course, but now I’m back.”

Dean smiles down at the floor. He picks at a thread of carpet. “Remember when we made a pact to go to the same college?”

“I do. In Australia, if I remember correctly.”

“Did you go to Australia?”

“No,” Cas chuckles. “Did you?”

Cheeks coloring, Dean stutters, “Uh, well, the college route—it wasn’t for me. So that’s a negative.”

“College is an ample waste of time, I don’t blame you,” Cas says. There’s a noise in the background that Dean can’t quite identify. “Dean, I’m sorry to cut this short, but my mother needs help dealing with the movers.”

“Oh, sure, Cas, no prob.” Dean looks up at Sam, who is gesticulating wildly, miming out a pen and paper like a crazy person. “Do you uh…”

“Dean—” Cas says at the same time. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“No, you go,” Dean says, smacking his forehead with a palm.

“I was just—I was wondering if you wanted to get coffee. Maybe catch up. I know it’s been a while, but—”

“Yes!” Dean blurts out. He gapes at Sam, who is giving him a very enthusiastic thumbs-up. “Yeah, uh—that’d be awesome, Cas.”

He can hear the smile in Cas’ voice when he says, “Wonderful. I’ll give you my number.”

Sam digs in his pocket and flicks a pencil at Dean’s head. Dean quickly scribbles down the number Cas gives him over the phone, on the yellowed paper just under Cas’ childhood one.

“So I’ll just text you some times and days, then?” Dean asks.

“That’d be wonderful.” Cas pauses. “Thank you for calling, Dean.”

“Uh, sure, Cas. Thank you for, uh. Answering, I guess.”

Cas laughs. Dean could listen to that laugh for days. “Goodbye, Dean.”

“Ciao, Cas.” Dean flips his phone shuts and yells at it, “CIAO? Who the fuck do I think I am!?”

“We’re looking him up on Facebook!” Sam declares, making a nose-dive for his backpack. He yanks out his turn-of-the-dark-ages laptop and begins to wildly type.

Dean lays on the ground and pulls the pink crop top over his face. “That was the fucking worst thing I’ve ever done,” Dean declares.

“What’s his last name?”

“Novak,” Dean groans into the fabric. “I’m gonna text him, but he won’t text me back, because who would text back a psychopath that just randomly calls your childhood best friend’s phone number—”

“Dean,” Sam says.

“—and what if he’s the psychopath, or worse, not even Cas and he was just pretending and I meet up with him and get killed or worse he steals Baby and—”

“Dean,” Sam barks.

“What,” Dean yells back, flinging the crop top off his head.

Sam turns the laptop around and taps, hard, on the screen. “Dean, your childhood best friend is hot.”

Squinting, Dean raises his head toward the Facebook page sprawled out on the screen. There’s a picture of a very blue-eyed, very chiseled, very dark-haired man smiling in his profile picture. Dean can immediately match the voice to the face—he even recognizes remnants of young, eight-year-old Cas in between those smile lines—and his soul leaves his body for a moment.

“I need to text him immediately,” Dean says, wide eyed, to Sam.

“You need to text him immediately,” Sam agrees.

(Dean does, of course, after many beers and a lot of texting with subsequent deleting. It’s a story that Sam loves to tell at Dean and Cas’ wedding, a few years later.)

#destiel #destiel drabble #inacatastrophicmind #starsmish #woefulcas #spncreatorsdaily #mowripro #wanderingwrites #anyway there it is #*flings it into the universe*

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drawlfoy · 5 years

Text

The Wonders of Ohio P.3

masterlist request guidelines

part 1 part 2

pairing: draco x muggle!reader

request: no, this was my idea from forever ago

summary: american high school student y/n’s senior year is interrupted when a british exchange student comes to live with her.

warnings: cursing

a/n: i’m being so unproductive since my ankle is hurting ughggghghghggh. also: if you like this muggle high school au please please check out @silversslytherin and @fallatyourfeet and @jhspuff as they all have fics that contain some element of this fic! i pulled a little inspiration from them so give them some love!! also second a/n because i worked on this about a month ag oand i’m back now: hey everyone! it’s been a while! it’s going to be a longgg time until i’m posting like i did over the summer, unfortunately, but i will do what i can to get some writing out in my free time.

word count: 2,350

tags: @eltanin-malfoy @accio-rogers @geeksareunique @fallatyourfeet @daintyyukhei @lunathepettuna @writerandee

music recs: cherry hearts rac remix by the shins, everyone but you by young veins

Y/N took a sip of tea, staring down her mother.

“No. There’s no way. He wants nothing to do with me.”

“Y/N, sweetie, you’ve got to,” Mrs. Y/L/N said. She had a plate of semi-buttered toast in front of her, but she was paying no mind to it. Instead, her coral nails were tapping the surface of the coffee table. “He’s just in a bad place. He’ll feel better once you two are more connected.”

“I don’t know if going out for a day on the town is going to fix this,” Y/N argued. “He’s got some major issues that he needs to resolve on his own. We’d probably be doing him more of a favor by taking him to a therap--”

“Good morning, Draco,” her mother cut in cheerily despite the death glare she sent Y/N. “How polite of you to wait by the doorway for us to finish our conversation.”

Y/N refused to turn around to face Draco. She knew her face was burning red, and besides, she wanted to pretend like he didn’t hear what he just said for as long as possible. Draco seemed compliant to this idea as he glowered by the toaster, waiting for his bread to be done.

“How did you sleep?” Y/N asked, noticing how dark his undereye circles were.

“I’m sure not very well,” her mother cut in. “Jet lag and--”

“Mom, I was asking him.”

Draco shifted his eyes onto Y/N’s face in an unrelenting stare. “Not very well.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. The tea didn’t help?”

He scowled and turned his back to her, suddenly waiting very attentatively for the toast to finish.

“I was just telling Y/N that she should take you with her into the city,” her mother said as she began to butter her toast again. “You’ll love Cincinnati. It’s unlike anywhere else.”

“No thank you,” said Draco simply. Y/N took note of how tensely he was gripping the counter, watching how the veins in his pale hands strain.

“Draco, I insist! It’ll do you some good to see the city before orientation tomorrow,” Mrs. Y/L/N pushed. “I’ll be out to see Y/D/N and pick him up at the airport for the majority of the day, and I don’t feel comfortable leaving you alone here after only one day. It’ll give me some peace of mind to know that my Y/N is with you. She doesn’t bite.”

Y/N snorted ungracefully at this, tearing off a piece of bread to dunk in her tea. He seemed unimpressed and ready to refuse again when the pop of the toaster rang out through the kitchen, making him jump nearly a foot in the air.

“Sorry, it’s a bit of a loud one,” Y/N offered. “You get used to it after a while.”

His cheeks were just turning a carnation pink when he spun back around to plate the bread and reach for a knife.

“You two can go whenever you’re ready, Draco,” Mrs. Y/L/N said, setting her bread down and getting up to clear her dishes. “And I won’t take no for an answer.”

With that, she turned and left the two with the kitchen to themselves. Y/N was still working on her toast and fruit and began to curse whatever it was inside that made her a slow eater as Draco settled down across from her, elegantly ripping open a tea bag and plopping it into a mug.

“So, uh...” Y/N scrambled to think of a conversation topic. This conquest was made harder by Draco’s intimidating tilt of the head. “How’s the British school system? I’ve always wanted to know. Britain seems like it has it together.”

“I went to a rather unorthodox school,” Draco answered, “so I don’t think my experience would be a good example of my country’s education.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Y/N busied herself by eating, attempting to do so without getting to many crumbs stuck on her lips. It had never been a problem before, but now that a very tall and broody boy was sitting across from her and looking like he might off her right then and there, it became much harder to eat normally. Draco ate almost robotically, only pausing to sip daintily from his tea.

Y/N finished before him, and she was up on her feet and clearing away her dishes in record time. “Draco, I’m going to go get my things ready,” she called as she began to make her way out of the door. Come find me when you’re ready to go.”

He sent her a tense, tight-lipped smile that was so forced it looked painful.

<^>

Y/N was in the middle of her physics homework when a light tapping on the door took her out of focus, prompting her to drop her pencil and shut her notebook. “Yes?”

“I’m ready.”

His voice, apart from the obvious muffle, was noticeably more reserved, like he was defeated or something. Y/N closed her eyes and readied herself before she opened the door to see a very well dressed boy waiting for her, clad in a very expensive looking silk suit. She couldn’t help but laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“You can’t wear that into the city!” she exclaimed. “You...you look like you’re about to walk the red carpet or something! Not the streets of Cincinnati on a Tuesday morning!”

He looked at her blankly, like he didn’t understand a word she had just said. “This is what I wear in England.”

“I mean, it suits you,” she said, leaning into the doorframe to look him up and down. It certainly did--black was a welcome contrast with his ivory features and gold-spun hair, and the expensive fabric seemed to match his elitist aura. His shoes were strangely unique, with a very exotic pointed toe.

He cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable with the intensity in which she was examining him.

“Uh, yeah, let’s get going then,” Y/N said, making her way down the stairs to the garage and suddenly feeling very self conscious about her fashion choices for the day.

<^>

The car ride downtown was exceedingly awkward, with only occasional breaks in the silence for light conversation. Y/N managed to pull out certain facts about Draco--he was an only child, he was born in June, and no, he hadn’t been able to contact his friends back home--but he was still frustratingly vague and secretive.

“So, what do you want to do?” Y/N asked, unlocking his door and getting out of her own side. “I have to get some last minute stationary, but other than that, the options are endless. I have a few special locations that I have in mind, if you want me to take you to them.”

He shrugged. Y/N suspected that he was beginning to regret his clothing choices as he saw that no one else in the city was dressed as formally as him.

“D’you like history?” she prompted, stepping a bit closer to him.

“Not particularly.” God, it was crazy how Draco could make anything he said sound regal and beautiful.

“Perfect. Follow me.” Y/N locked the car and grabbed him by the sleeve, ignoring his protests about the material or the tailoring that she was going to completely ruin. She pulled them through alleys and backstreets until the bustling city was almost completely behind them and all that stood in front of them was a small shop, with a sign that read “My Grandfather’s Attic”.

“This is the coolest antique store you’re ever going to find here,” Y/N told him, proudly standing tall in front of the entrance. “I know it’s probably not nearly as old as the stuff from England, but half the stuff in here is so obsolete that I can’t even identify them.”

Draco scowled at the ground.

“If you don’t like it, we can leave,” she said. “All I ask is that you come in and see it with me for a moment. Maybe you’ll be interested in it.”

Y/N boldly grabbed his arm again, noting just how stiff it was, like an iron rod. Draco scoffed, attempting to tug it out of her grasp, but she held fast.

“You are coming with me,” she commanded through gritted teeth, resorting to dragging him to the entrance. “Would it hurt you to be enthusiastic? Or manageable? Just once?”

“I don’t want to be here!”

“And you think I’m enjoying having to sacrifice my senior year for some rich kid with daddy issues? As if!”

Draco’s silver eyes were blazing as he jerked away to glare down at her. Y/N was once again reminded that he was substantially taller than her and began to feel uneasy.

“At least I have a father to speak of” His voice was cool, unfeeling, and deliciously savage.

“I have a father! What are you talking about?” This prat was really going to try that?

“In theory, sure,” he said. “But he spends more time traveling than he does with you, right?”

“That’s...no!”

He raised an eyebrow. “So the calendar that your mother has set up isn’t accurate?”

Y/N, flustered, curled and uncurled her fists. “It’s been a bad year. He just wants to make sure he can pay for my college tuition.”

Draco made a sound that was infuriatingly disinterested before striding into the store, tossing her a rather sour look.

“If you really wanted me to come in, all you had to do was ask. Nicely, mind you. No need to manhandle me.”

<^>

Y/N hadn’t been in the old antique shop for over a year, and she was stunned to see just how many items she’d never seen before. None of them looked like familiar household items--instead, they were strange looking contraptions, worn with age and marked with the writing of older generations.

The most surprising aspect of it all was Draco’s sudden turn of mood as he floated about, picking up strange items with a familiarity that confused Y/N.

“Draco,” she called. He snapped his head up from something strange that he was looking at...was that a broken piece of a twig? “Come over here, will you?”

He set down the weird looking ragged stick with an especially broken end and strode over to her, a rather annoyed expression on his face. “What is it?”

“Do you actually know what all of this stuff is?” Y/N asked. “I think it must’ve come under new management...I knew they sold it last summer. The new owners totally revamped it; I don’t recognize any of this.”

“I don’t know what any of this is.” He was suspiciously quick to answer.

“Now that I think about it,” she continued, “I’m surprised I even found this place. I’ve tried looking for it with my friends before, and maybe we got lost or something since we couldn’t find it. But I found it this time, with you, so obviously I must’ve... I don’t know.”

Draco suddenly seemed very uncomfortable.

“I think I’ve had enough. Do I have your permission to leave now?” His tone was snotty and not unusual, but there was an underlying sense of urgency.

“Yeah, let’s go,” Y/N agreed, visibly shuddering. “The energy in here just feels weird.”

He laughed at this, a real, genuine laugh, and Y/N was treated to the sight of shallow dimples in his cheeks. “I can’t imagine why.”

<^>

Y/N was holding that strange looking box she had picked up in the antique shop, only it was black and much heavier. Her head hurt the longer she held it, and the simple engraving of a symbol she couldn’t recognize burnt into the skin of her palm.

How had she gotten here? And how was a simple box glowing like...that?

She shot awake, nearly banging her head on the headboard. It was only then that she realized she was dripping in sweat, her brow frothy with perspiration.

Gross. What kind of dream was that?

One glance at the clock made her heart drop: it was 6:05, and time to get ready for orientation. Her senior summer was really, truly, and absolutely over.

Y/N wasted no time in getting up and ready, taking extra care to wash off the sweaty remains of her dream in the shower. It was quickly fading from her memory, and by the time she was heading down to the kitchen for breakfast, she had nearly forgotten the entire ordeal.

“Good morning,” she greeted her father, who was sitting at the head of the table and staring down at a crossword.

“Oh. Good morning,” he said, glancing up from his paper for a moment. “I haven’t seen you in a bit. Is it time for school already?”

“Orientation. I have to take Draco this morning.”

“Draco? Did your mother get a dog or something?”

Y/N laughed stiffly as she prepared her tea. “No, Dad, our exchange student this year from Britain. Don’t make fun of his name so loudly, I’m sure he can hear you.”

Mr. Y/L/N simply nodded and returned to his work, occasionally taking a sip from his half full cup of coffee. Y/N had never been close with him, but they had spent enough time around each other to feel comfortable in silence.

Y/ N had only just sat down to eat when she saw a flash of blonde hair out of the corner of her eye, prompting her to look up and see Draco, wearing slightly less dressy clothes and a matching scowl.

“Hi,” she said, faltering under his gaze. He simply sniffed and entered the kitchen, floating over to the kettle and looking inside of it. Unsatisfied with the contents, he changed the water and placed it on the stove.

“This is my father,” Y/N attempted again. “He just got back from Australia on business.”

The two made brief eye contact and her father grunted in acknowledgement. Draco seemed wholly unimpressed and sent Y/N a “I told you so” look that made her want to get up and slap him. She stood up and forcefully stacked her dishes in the sink, turning around before she completely left the room.

“I’ll be ready in 10,”

final a/n: i’m still kinda swamped with work tbh and i don’t think it’s very fair of me to expect to get out anymore work than what i had going at the beginning of the month, but i’m hoping that once january begins, i can start writing more often. i know i promised a dramione fic that’s based in the fall but i’m not sure if i’ll have the time to do that...maybe once i’m in university? i apologize for any of the typos i may have made in here, i don’t have the time to proofread and just wanted to get something out to prove to you all that i’m not dead. love youuuuuuuu

#draco x reader #draco imagine #draco x you #draco x oc #draco #draco malfoy #draco malfoy x reader #draco malfoy imagine #draco malfoy x oc #draco malfoy x you #harry potter imagine #draco x y/n #draco malfoy x y/n

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oskea93 · 5 years

Text

Think of You: Part Four

-A/N: Hey guys! So sorry it took so long to get this to you all. It’s been a bit rough since I got back from vacation. I broke a bone and I got sick. And, my internet kept messing up. I’m back now and hopefully there won’t be any long gaps in the updates. I also want to apologize for any grammar mistakes that are in this update. I’ll try to go back later on and fix those. Secondly, this update may seem a little boring but the story is gonna pick up in pace and start moving forward in time. All of that will happen in the 5th update and beyond. I just want to thank all of those that have read my story and are enjoying it! It really means a lot to me :) PS: If you want to be added to the tagged list, let me know!

“What do you mean you turned him down?”

I removed the phone away from my ear as Mac yelled into the receiver. “He fucking wants you, Caroline! He’s actually interested and you’re turning him down?” She questioned. “Don’t get mad or anything, but are you fucking stupid?” I let out a sigh. I was growing very tired of being yelled at for my dating choices. I’m sorry that I wasn’t like her and jumped into bed with every guy that looked my way. I was not raised to be some floosy on the Sunset Strip, pining for the attention of some wannabe rock star. “You have to give him a chance, Caroline. You need to see where it goes and break out of this funk you’re in.”

“I’m not in a funk.” I whispered. “I just don’t feel like being in a relationship right now.” I could hear Mac mutter a string of curse words on the other line. “I’m not like you, Mac. I can’t just go out there and expose myself for the world to see. I don’t have that type of attitude and I never will.” I sounded pathetic.

“First of all-”Mac started, clearing her throat. “I don’t expose myself to the world. You’re making me sound like some kind of whore on the Strip.” She expressed. “Secondly, you do have that type of attitude. Every girl has it in them somewhere, it’s just up to you to find it and set it free.” Her voice was now soft. “You know I would never push you into something if I didn’t think it would be worthwhile. Yeah, Nikki may be rough around the edges but he’s really into you. Tommy even told me that Nikki’s crazy for you, and he doesn’t even know you!”

My heart was telling me to trust her but my brain was on guard duty. Nikki Sixx was very handsome in his own way but he was too dangerous. He reeked of sex, drugs, and rock n roll. He was everything that my parents warned me about. They would have a heart attack if I were to bring him home for Easter Dinner or any occasion for that matter. I would no doubt be booted from the family, and I’m an only child! “Caroline!”

I snapped out of my thoughts, “I can’t.” I quickly stated. “ I can’t be with someone like him. I don’t care how good of a guy you think he is or if he’s the leader in the church choir, he’s just not for me.” I rambled. My brain was back in charge, pushing my poor heart into the shredder.

“Dammit, Caroline!” Mac seethed through the phone. I knew she was going to be mad but it was my life, not hers. I have to think about what’s best for me and me only. “I hate to say this but you need to grow the fuck up, Caroline.” I was a little taken back by her statement. I was the most mature out of the two of us. “You need to get your head out of your ass and actually live your fucking life. You’re twenty-fucking-one years old but you’re acting as if your five and still afraid of catching cooties on the playground. Grow the fuck up, suck some dick, and live a little!”

I stayed silent, not sure if she was done yelling at me or not. “This isn’t fucking Georgia. Your mom and dad aren’t here to reprimand your every move anymore. You’re a grown ass woman who has the world at her feet. You’re a grown ass woman who not only has brains but the looks of a fucking Hollywood starlet. You’re fucking beautiful, Caroline and a very sexy rock star wants you for you. He wants you because you’re real and that’s hard to find in this town.” I picked at my nails as her words seemed into my head. “Yeah, he may not be the young, outstanding man your parents want you to be with but he may just be what you needed in your life to get you out of this slump.”

I tried my best to take Mac’s suggestions to heart but I was still holding back. My heart was pleading with my mind, trying to convince it that Mac was right on every level. Nikki probably was a nice guy but his whole world was everything I disagreed with. I guess you could blame my parents for my ways of thinking. From a young age, they drilled into my head that I needed to meet and marry a boy with good Christian values. He needed to be a hard-working guy with a good head on his shoulders. God needed to come first in his life and then of course me. Basically, he needed to be just like my father and nothing less. The only problem with that was I had met a guy like that in the past. My very first boyfriend was similar to my father. He was a church going guy and your typical country boy. He loved the Lord first and those he surrounded himself around second. The only thing was that it was all an act. He played a role on Sundays and Wednesdays. He would act one way in front of the congregation and then turn into a different person on the other five days. He was a real piece of work!

My parents wanted me to marry him but I decided to pursue my dreams instead. To say they were disappointed would be an understatement but I didn’t want to be tied down like my mother was. When I was little, I would ask my mom what her dreams were when she was my age. She would tell me how she wanted to be a librarian since she loved to read. She would tell me different stories that she had memorized, acting them out as if we were right in the pages. The way her imagination worked was incredible. The only thing was that her imagination only came out when it was just her and I. Her love if fiction and books in general never showed up when my father was involved. My mom was your typical housewife. She was my very own June Cleaver. She committed herself to her husband and child, never taking time for herself. Now that I’m an adult, it’s very sad to think of my mother in that way. She deserved so much more…

“Earth to Caroline!”

“What?” I blurted out.

Mac let out an annoyed sigh, “Just get your ass dressed and meet me at the Rainbow.” Before I could interject, Mac ended the phone call. “Fabulous.” I muttered as I hung up the phone. I looked over at the clock and saw that it was far too late to be going to the Rainbow. Not only would it take me an hour to get ready but then it would take even longer to get there. It was Saturday night and everybody in Los Angeles would be on the Strip. Mac didn’t even like the Rainbow, so didn’t understand why she wanted to go there.

I sat in the same spot for another 10 minutes before I dragged myself to the bathroom to get ready. It was hotter than blazes outside today and the heat was still there as nighttime was nearing. I decided on a simple skater dress with flowers and a pair of strappy sandals. I pulled my hair off my neck and into a high ponytail and kept my makeup light. The last thing I needed was my makeup running down my face due to the heat. I grabbed my keys and purse and made my way out the door.

“Why the fuck am I even friends with her!” I yelled out loud as I sat in LA traffic. The drive was going okay for the first 15 minutes but as I delved deeper into the city, the cars were bumper-to-bumper. People were walking in between the cars to get to the other side of the street and people were laying on their car horns as if they were playing musical horns. The heat was not helping the situation either. I looked down at my watch and saw that it was 20 till nine. I had left my apartment at 7:55! I had been in traffic for almost an hour and for what reason I have no idea. If Mac isn’t there when I arrive, I might just kill her…

She wasn’t here.

At first I thought that she could have been caught in the same traffic jam as I was but I soon realized that it was all a setup when I saw Nikki Sixx walk through the door. As soon as I saw him, I placed my menu in front of my face, trying my best to hide as I watched him try to find who he was looking for. Unfortunately for me, I was the person he was looking for. A giant smile appeared on his face when he spotted me. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes as I laid the menu back onto the table. “Well, well, well-“ He smiled. “I figured it would just be Mac, Tommy, and I but I’m so happy you showed up.” I looked up at him unamused.

He slowly removed his leather jacket and took the seat in front of me. “What are you doing here?” I asked. A smirk appeared across his lips as he leaned forward. “I was invited.” He whispered. I rolled my eyes again. “You keep doing that, your eyes are gonna get stuck in the back of your head.” I narrowed my eyes at him as the waitress made her way over. I watched as she spoke to Nikki first. It was clear that she was flirting with him but he wasn’t paying her any mind. “I’ll have a Jack and Coke.” He simply told her. I was a bit shocked to say the least. I think the girl was even shocked. She didn’t seem to take it too well, especially when it was my turn to tell her what I wanted. She basically rushed me throughout my order and I would be surprised if I receive what I wanted.

“She digs me.” Nikki smiled as soon as the girl walked away. “Too bad the feeling isn’t mutual.” I couldn’t help but smile slightly as I leaned back into the booth. The girl quickly made her way back and dropped off our drinks, making sure to give Nikki a look before walking away. “She’s not really my type anyway.” Nikki spoke as he mixed the liquids together.

“Why’s that?” I questioned. He smirked as he continued to stir his drink. I don’t even know why I asked, I’m sure it was something superficial.

“She’s not you.” I could have sworn my heart stopped for a second. I may have also gone deaf during those seconds. I just stared at him. Was he being serious? “What?” I chocked. My mouth was suddenly dry as well.

He looked up from his drink, his expression suddenly serious. “She’s not you.” He spoke again. “In case you haven’t noticed, I really like you. Hell, I’ve liked you the moment I saw you walk out of our show.” His voice was softer, more intimate. “You intrigue me, Caroline.

I looked down at the table, unsure of what to say or do. I never had someone tell me that I “intrigued them.” He could have any girl he wanted. I’m sure there were girls all over the Strip that would do anything to get his attention, even the waitress was trying. “Why me?” I blurted out. “Why pick me?” My brain was in overdrive. “You could be with any girl on the Sunset Strip but you’re picking me. Why? I’m a second-grade teacher who goes to bed at eight o’ clock at night and spends her weekend either doing laundry or watching The Facts of Life. I don’t listen to the music you play or like. The only time I go to parties is when Mac drags me there and I usually end up leaving five minutes after I arrive. I’m a very boring person!” I rambled. “I don’t enjoy parties or hanging out with people I don’t know. I enjoy going to the grocery store or even the library. I don’t dress sexy or even own anything considered sexy. According to Mac, I dress like I’m a 50-year-old widow. I’m not like the other girls on the Strip or California for that matter.” I was talking so fast that I was out of breath.

Nikki had a giant smile spread across his face. “Why are you smiling like that?” I asked. He leaned forward in his seat, “You’re right-“ He began. “I could have any girl on the Strip but every girl on the Strip is exactly the same. Teased out hair, tight clothes, too much makeup, and a career that involves taking their clothes off. You may think that’s what I want but I want normalcy. I want boring. I want grocery shopping, library card owning, Facts of Life watching normalcy.”

I didn’t know what to say. Was he being serious? He didn’t strike me as the type that would sit around on a Saturday night and watch sitcoms. “I’ve rendered you speechless.” He chuckled. “I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or not.” Before I could respond, the waitress came back with our food. Nikki thanked her with a smile, causing her ego to grow even more. I couldn’t help but just stare at my food. I was suddenly not hungry anymore This guy was into me, at least that’s what he was leading me to believe. “Why aren’t you eating?”

I looked up at Nikki, a piece of spaghetti hanging out of his mouth. I couldn’t help giggle at the sight. “It’s really good, you know.” He smiled. He truly was an idiot, but he was a pretty cute idiot….

“So- Does this mean you’ll go out with me again?”

I rolled my eyes, a smirk also making its way across my lips. We had just finished a nice dinner and here he was asking the “important” question as he liked to call it. “You gonna answer me?” He placed his arm beside my body, partially trapping me against the car. I looked at his arm and then to his face. “I don’t know.” I stated. “Why should I?” It looked as if his eyes were going to bulge out of his skull. I usually wasn’t the type of girl to lead a guy on. If I was into him and he was into me, then I would totally agree on a second date. There was something different when it came to Nikki. I found it funny to lead him on and keep him wondering. It was almost like a game for me and I wanted to see how long it would take to win or even lose. In all honesty, I enjoyed our dinner together. He was not only devilishly handsome but also witty and smart. He may have the rock star looks but there was so much more. I liked it and I liked him.

“Tell you what-”He began. “If you want to see me again, Motley is playing our first huge gig on Friday. It’s our first mega show as a band and I would love to see you front row.” He expressed. “Hopefully this time you stay the whole show and don’t walk out.” His signature smirk danced across his face as he stared down at me.

I gave him a small smile, “Have a good night, Nikki.”

I slowly turned toward my car door and stepped into the driver’s seat. I looked at him once more before starting the engine and making my way out of the parking lot. I couldn’t help but look back in the rear-view mirror. He was just standing there but that damn smirk was still plastered on his face.

gif property of: @dramatique-moi

@triplehaitches @sighsophiia @divaanya @fandomshit6000

#nikki sixx x oc #nikki sixx #nikki sixx fanfiction #The Dirt #Douglas Booth #Holland Roden #mgk #Vince Neil #Daniel Webber #Tommy Lee #Mick Mars #iwan rheon

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littlemarvelfics · 6 years

Text

Come Back... Chapter Four

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Word Count: about 1,600

Warnings: none

A/N: Hello hello! My classes have switched over to a lighter load until the end of the year so maybe I’ll be able to post more soon! For those of you that aren’t into this story- fear not! I’m gonna get working on some oneshots for Steve or maybe Chris Evans. In the meantime, you can check out my masterlist here or this series masterlist here. Please feel free to ask for a tag here.

Previous Chapter

The next morning, you woke up before Josh so you quickly got into the shower. Peggy had texted you the night before with the details of your outing so you knew you had some time to get ready. You slipped into your chosen casual outfit for the day and you ventured out of the bathroom.

Josh was sitting on the bed, back propped against the headboard, smiling down at his phone.

“Hey, I’m going out with the girls for a bit and we’re probably gonna eat lunch while we’re out. And then we’re going to all go to that bonfire so I’ll text you when I’m on my way to get you?” you asked him gently.

“Oh right,” he said, not looking up from his phone. “I was thinking I’d stay here tonight and skip the bonfire. I’ve got some work to finish up.”

You sighed knowing this was going to be a fight.

“Can’t you do your work while I’m gone and then come with me tonight? I’d really like you to be there.”

“Why? I met them yesterday. Do I really need to spend another night with them as well?” he asked, clearly agitated.

“You don’t have to. I just thought it would be nice.”

“Is Borky gonna be there?” he asked, condescendingly.

“Bucky? I don’t know. Probably?” you responded, confused.

“Fine, I’ll go. Just let me know when you’re on your way back here.”

“Okay sounds good,” you said, crossing the room to give him a peck on the cheek.

He didn’t say anything else so you went about your routine, getting ready to leave. About 20 minutes before your scheduled appointment time, you kissed Josh goodbye and headed out to the parking lot.

You headed to the spot where Bucky’s Jeep was parked and slid into the driver’s seat. You turned the key and then started looking around the car. It was neat which wasn’t surprising considering how Bucky took care of cars but there seemed to be missing something. You poked around until you found the familiar worn leather booklet that was shoved under the passenger’s seat. In it, you found seemingly endless pages of CDs. You flipped through hoping to find what you were looking for. All you saw now were real CDs bought in stores and that wouldn’t cut it. A few more page flips and they appeared. The plain silver discs with Bucky’s messy scrawl titling the CD’s and listing the tracks. You went on instinct and picked one labeled “Ride or Die Tunes”. You slipped it out of the holder and into the CD player. As the first song began, you knew you had made a great choice. The sound filled the car as you turned the volume up and you were off.

Fifteen minutes and a few great songs later, you were pulling up to the nail salon.

Walking in, you immediately spotted Natasha, Wanda, and Peggy. You all greeted each other and settled in for the technicians to do their work while the girls started to catch you up on their lives.

Natasha worked at a gym a few towns over and she taught self-defense classes for women. You smiled knowing she had found her calling. Natasha was always trying to empower her female friends to be better versions of themselves.

Wanda told you about the coffee shop/bookstore that she and her twin brother Pietro had opened. Wanda had always believed in books as a means of healing and seemed to be able to tell when a person was in need of such a thing. Pietro was a guy that always seemed to be on the run and the coffee helped him do it. Opening The Tesseract had been the obvious choice.

Peggy shared stories of being a high school principal, which was how she and Steve met. You didn’t know much about her but you could tell she was made for the job. She had a no-nonsense attitude but she clearly had a caring side as well making her a perfect fit for the job.

As you listened to your friends share stories of their jobs and home lives, you couldn’t help but envy them. When you left this town all those years ago, you had more determination than you knew what to do with. All it took was a few months in the real world before you put your dreams on the backburner. Meanwhile, all your friends had found careers they were perfect for and it seemed that everyone had fallen in love as well. Natasha and Clint had ended up together to no one’s surprise, Peggy had Steve and Wanda had met someone she had called ‘Vision’. You just seemed to be passing time until you magically got where you wanted to be.

“Earth to Y/N.” Natasha’s voice pulled you from your thoughts.

“Sorry, sorry. What were you saying?”

“I said: What about you? What are you doing these days?” she said with a laugh.

“Oh. Um. I work for a website writing. Nothing exciting, mostly fluff pieces.”

“I thought you wanted to write novels?” Wanda asked, genuinely curious.

“Yeah, I still do. It just doesn’t exactly pay the bills so Josh suggested I get a job to support myself while I figured out some next steps.”

“Oh yeah, Josh! Tell us about him? How did you guys meet?” Peggy asked.

“We met through some mutual friends. He had graduated from another school in the city a year earlier than me. We starting dating like a year and a half ago and we moved in together about four months ago.”

“That’s nice, he seems like a nice guy,” Peggy replied.

“Yeah, he’s nice. We fight sometimes but that’s just how it goes I guess.”

You all fell into an uncomfortable silence for a few moments. It was Natasha who broke the silence as she usually did.

“I have to ask about Bucky.”

“What about him?” you asked coolly.

“You just disappeared and dropped off the face of the earth Y/N! We barely knew about it. Bucky wasn’t exactly chatty.”

“He bailed Nat!” you exclaimed getting frustrated. “He bailed. He promised we were gonna be together. He was gonna come with me to the city and then I go to his parent’s house a day before we were meant to leave and he was just gone! His mom handed me a two-line letter and that was it! He didn’t even tell me he was considering enlisting. And then he was just gone. How could I trust him after that?”

“He was just doing what he thought was right,” Wanda mumbled.

“What the hell does that even mean?!”

“I think that’s a question for Bucky,” Peggy interjected quietly.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” you replied with a sigh.

Peggy seemed to sense that you were done with the conversation as she quickly moved on to lighter subject matters such as the wedding.

Once you were all finished with your nails, Wanda suggested you all walk down the main stretch of town and pick up some coffee and snacks at her coffee shop. You had wanted to see what it was all about so you happily agreed. You all ambled down the street for a few blocks until Wanda took a turn inside an archway.

You entered the shop and the soft music playing from the speakers seemed to surround you as you took everything in. Your eyes traveled across long wooden tables with mismatched chairs surrounding them and floor to ceiling bookshelves that produced makeshift aisles with some new, some used books. As you looked over the menu, you couldn’t help but take in a deep inhale of the scent of strong coffee and the distinct smell of books.

Wanda led you all to the counter where a jumpy teen named Peter took your orders and started to prepare them. You tried pulling your card out to pay but Wanda swatted your hand away. She insisted it was on the house and told you to look around and she would come to get you when the order was ready.

You wandered around the aisles, running your fingers along the spines of the books as you went. People had often asked you which novel or writer had inspired you to become a writer yourself. The truth was, every book you had ever read had inspired you. The bad ones made you want to be better than them; the good ones inspired you to be like them.

Lost in your own world, you hadn’t realized you had made it back to the front of the shop where the tables were all scattered about. You looked around the fairly empty shop when your eyes landed on Bucky. Looking handsome as always in simple jeans, boots and white tee with his hair pulled back into a low messy bun. You smiled to yourself and walked in his direction to thank him for the car and to compliment his music taste.

You stopped short when a girl you had never seen before sat down across from him. She flipped her hair over her shoulder and held onto Bucky’s hand that had been lying on the table. She giggled at something he said with a laugh you found annoying but Bucky probably found endearing.

Why did you want to punch this girl in the face? You didn’t even know her. You had no claim to Bucky, he wasn’t your anything. You were in town with your own boyfriend, you shouldn’t be upset that he had a girlfriend.

“Y/N?” Wanda’s voice broke you out of your thoughts.

At the sound of your name, Bucky whipped his head around and met your eyes, dropping the girl’s hand in the process. You gave him a tight smile and then turned to follow Wanda to the table she and the girls had set up at. You sank down into your seat with a deep sigh. You couldn’t shake the feeling in the pit of your stomach. You didn’t know what to call the feeling until you heard her laugh again. You were jealous.

Next Chapter

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#come back fic #bucky x reader #bucky one shot #bucky fic #bucky barnes #bucky imagine #marvel #marvel fic #marvel fanfiction #marvel oneshot #marvel imagine

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eliniei · 5 years

Text

Those Hard Days - Chapter 38

Summary: Rae’s brother always made sure she was tough as nails. But when her father flips her world upside down, will she find that there’s a limit on how strong she can be?

Warnings: Rape/Non-con (non-graphic, fade-to-black), child abuse, underage drinking, underage smoking, drug use, violence, major character death

A/N: I’m so sorry for lack of updates. I’ve been busy and sick and its been awful. All subsequent chapters are going to be the beginning of the end->through to the end. Good luck.

AO3: here Fanfiction.net: here

Masterlist

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Chapter 38 - Wait

The school week was incredibly long. Rae couldn’t concentrate on her schoolwork. She felt like all she’d done the entire time was tap her pen on the wood surface of her desks.

It felt like an eternity to her, and the weekend wasn’t looking any better. She wanted to know what was going on and no one seemed to know anything. The newspapers and television just pissed her off- sayin’ Johnny and Ponyboy had done it for fun, that they were no-good-hoods. And her brother’s involvement worried her even further. She hissed and threw the daily paper back down onto the kitchen table.

"Rae?" Bryon's voice brought her out of the long, hazy daydream she'd been in for the past few days. She blinked and looked over at him. "Are you good at English at all?"

"Yeah, I’m alright," she said with a shrug. "Need help?" He nodded. She got up and followed him back to the room he shared with Mark. "Okay, let me take a look." She sat down at his desk and looked over his paper. She irony didn’t escape her. Just a few months ago, she was helping Ponyboy with his English homework too... Rae sighed and picked up his pencil, marking any grammatical or punctuation errors. "This looks pretty good, but there are few things. Like right here-"

Her sentence was interrupted by a loud knock on the door.

"Hang on a minute." Rae stood back up and went to the front room to open the door. A familiar face stood behind it. Her stomach did a flip. She’d been waiting.

"Tim," she said, greeting him with a nod.

"The kids were found," he said. She looked behind her to see Bryon peeking out from the hallway. She stepped outside, closing the door behind her.

"Where?"

"They were injured saving some kids in a rotting church down in Windrixville yesterday. Someone set it on fire," he responded. Rae's eyes widened.

"They're okay right?" Rae asked. Tim looked down at the ground, silent for a long moment. "They’re...they’re not-?"

"Johnny, I think? He's hurt real bad, Rae. The roof fell on top of him. They said his back was broke.”

"Why…?" She asked herself and dropped into a porch chair. "I leave for a while and everythin’ goes to hell."

"There’s somethin’ else," Tim said, leaning up against the porch pillar. "Dally was there, too.”

“What?” she cried.

“He’s fine,” he assured her. “Got burned up a bit, but nothin’ too serious. I visited him this mornin’.” She leaned forwards on her elbows, rubbing her temples with one hand.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”

“The rumble is tonight.” She paused and looked up at him. “Promised I’d spring ya.” She was on her feet in an instant.

"I'll go get a few things," Rae said and quickly made her way back inside. Bryon had moved back to his room, still mulling over his homework. "Sorry, kid. I gotta go. I marked the mistakes for you."

“Mom’s gonna be mad when-”

She ignored him and closed his door as she made for her own room. After grabbing her backpack and tossing plenty of clothes in it, she changed into a tight, long-sleeved shirt and slid her blue-handled blade into her back pocket. She threw her leather jacket onto her back and slung her backpack onto her shoulder.

"You can stay at my place ‘til the rumble," Tim said once she was back outside and they started walking down the street, towards his house. “You might even catch Curl’s weekly call.”

Sure enough, when they walked through the door, Angela had the telephone pressed to her ear. She turned at the sound of the screen slamming.

“Oh good, you’re here,” she said, then talked back in the phone. “Yeah, he just walked in. Rae’s with him.” She paused, listening. “Yeah, she looks good.” Another pause, followed by a smile. “No fuckin’ way you can talk to her!”

“Alright, alright,” Tim said, snatching the phone out of her perfectly manicured hand and holding it up to his ear. “It’s me.” Pause. “Yeah, you can talk to her but you gotta gimme an update first.” He nodded. “Alright. Good. Keep it up, kid. I need you home soon.” Rae swayed back and forth on her feet as they exchanged a few more words. Finally, Tim handed the phone over to her.

"Hey,” she greeted him, turning her back on the other two.

"Finally!" Curly's voice said. God, she could just hear his stupid cocky smile in his voice. It made her grin as well.

"How are you?"

"Ya know how it goes in these places. It’s shit, but I’m behavin’ myself this time ‘round. Maybe they’ll let me out early.”

"I guess Tim told you what’s been goin’ on ‘round here?” Curly’s sigh was heavy.

“Yeah. I wish I could be there for the rumble tonight.”

“Me too. I miss you.”

"I’ll be out of here soon, yeah? It’ll be in no time," he said.

"You’d better."

"Alright, Shepard," a man said on Curly’s end.

"Aw, come on, man. I’m talkin’ to my woman here.” There was silence for a few seconds. She imagined the guard giving him a look. “Alright, alright. Rae, I have to go. Good luck tonight." She opened her mouth to say something, but before she could get any words out, there was a click and he was gone. She put the phone back on the wall and went to find Tim in the kitchen, leaning on the refrigerator door, downing a bottle of beer.

“Want somethin’ to drink?” he asked once he’d emptied it. He set the glass down onto the counter and stood up straight.

“Nah, I’m good, but ya got anything to eat?”

“Not much. We should prob’ly go get somethin’ before tonight. Anything sound good? My treat.”

“I could really go for a burger and a shake.”

“Well, the best burger places are in your part of town…” He looked her up and down. “It’s cool. Let’s go to the Dingo.” He went back to his room and returned with the black baseball cap he’d had her use when they went to the county jail. She took it and fit it over her head.

“Angela comin’?”

“Nah, she ain’t a fighter,” Tim answered as they headed out the door. “She’s good at cleanin’ us up though. Got a strong stomach for blood.” An amused smile spread across his lips. “Not like you.”

“Hilarious,” Rae said with a roll of her eyes. She slid her hands into her jacket pockets. “Gettin’ cold, isn’t it?”

“What, ya can’t find anything else to talk about? You’re really gonna talk to me about the weather?” She huffed a laugh, a grin forming on her mouth.

When they reached the small burger joint, Tim went and ordered for the both of them while she found a booth, keeping the bill of her had down so no one recognized her. They ate in silence, and sat in the corner of the booth as Shepard fucked around with some of the other greasers hanging out there, also waiting for the rumble to start.

The closer the time got, the more her stomach did nervous flips. She was ready for this fight. She was ready to see her friends again. She was more than ready. But still, something was off.

Rae looked up when Tim came and stood over her.

“It’s time, kid. Let’s go see your friends.”

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bdfanfic · 5 years

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Oak in Grey Hollow - 3

Chapter 3 - A Day in the Life

As the cart rumbled along towards the next village, Mira continued her reflections on her initial meeting with Oak in Grey Hollow. Of course, by now she knew the import of her ‘dream’, but at the time she passed it off as caused by a bit of bad rabbit stew. But she’d had quite another surprise the next day…

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

The breakfast was perhaps a bit meager, but still better than anything she’d eaten as a beggar. Hollow then had her help set up a large tent in preparation for any visitors that might drop by. In essence, it was simply intended as a private meeting place where Hollow could converse with his customers without eavesdroppers. However, it had the right mystical aura when he had applied certain perfumes and incense within.

When that task had been completed, Hollow took down two outfits from the doors of the cart. One was a rather mundane set of breeches and blouse in a drab grey and tan, but the other was something else entirely! Jewels sparkled and the fabric was in various shades of translucent purple, the entire thing light as a feather.

“This,” Hollow explained as he laid the dress out on the table they’d set within the tent, “is yours. You will wear this here, as my servant. It may be, perhaps, a bit over the top - but the local citizens are impressed by such finery, and I expect will be somewhat more amenable to parting with their coin when they see you in this as my devoted servant!”

“Servant?”

“Oh,” he replied, a bit chagrined. “Assistant?”

“Let’s go with assistant,” she agreed, giving him a warning look. “Can I try it on?”

Hollow’s snout wrinkled. “Um… perhaps a little clean-up first? I need it pretty badly, and you even more than me!”

She nodded, and they headed to the stream, Mira carrying the mundane clothes that she would wear into town later, while Hollow brought a small basket containing towels and some vials and other odd objects that she didn’t recognize.

When they got to the stream, she eyed Hollow warily, not sure exactly what Hollow expected of her here.

“Now this,” he said, handing her a slippery yellow object, “is what we call ‘soap’. Rinse yourself first, then rub it all over vigorously. Then a final rinse should do. As for your hair, this vial contains another cleaning agent made specifically for cleaning hair. Do the same - rinse, rub it in, then rinse.. And… do it twice. I think you’ll need it. Finally, this white vial contains a finishing agent. After washing with the first, do one more round with this.”

She took the objects and examined them, sniffing at the ‘soap’. It smelled surprisingly good!

“So how do you know much about hair, Hollow? You haven’t got any!” she pointed out.

The enchanter surprised her by stripping naked while he responded, and she looked away reflexively.

“Ah, but Anabelle does!” he said as he splashed into the stream behind her. “Besides, you’d be surprised how many requests I get from humans regarding hair troubles! These cleaning agents were some of my first forays into the alchemical sciences. Took some experimentation, but I finally hit on an excellent combination of ingredients. Leaves your hair shiny and supple! And best of all, there’s no magic involved!”

“Experiments?” she asked, setting the vials and soap down. She heard splashing behind her and turned to see Hollow dunking himself under the water.

He rose out of the shallow stream, shaking himself and began applying the soap vigorously.

“Well,” he said as he bathed, apparently oblivious to any modesty issues, “we’d best not talk about that. I assure you there was no permanent damage! And one of the gentlemen actually preferred being bald anyway! Say, are you going to use that soap or not?”

Mira drew in a deep breath. “Um… Hollow. Do you expect me to bathe right here with you?”

He cocked his head to one side. “Well, yes. Why not?” he asked while washing his chest. She saw the blue symbol slowly begin to disappear from his chest. And then something extraordinary happened…

Mira shook her head to clear it, not at all sure if what she was seeing could be real. Meanwhile Hollow continued washing, now sitting in the stream and cleaning his feet.

No, she corrected herself mentally when rubbing at her eyes didn’t change what she was seeing. Hollow was cleaning HER feet. Hollow was now unmistakably a female Argonian.

“Well?” she asked Mira, her voice now significantly higher in pitch. “We haven’t got all day!”

MIra finally shrugged and did as she was bid, and soon she was in the stream bathing herself as well. The water wasn’t too cold, but it was a bit bracing. She sat and began washing her legs too, still debating exactly how she should ask Hollow about his… her?... transformation.

“Hey Mira,” the now-enchantress asked. “Do you think you could help me put my ward back on when you’re done? I can do it myself, but it’s a bit tricky. It’s just a circle and a five-pointed star, drawn in a special kind of soft blue magetallow wax. Doesn’t have to be perfect, and I’ll do the enchantment part.”

“Um… sure Hollow,” she agreed, “when I’m all done. But, I thought you said the ward was there to keep you sane?”

“Oh, for certain it is! Why, I couldn’t last an hour in this way. Even now I get the strangest feelings! Frankly I don’t know how you women manage it. But then, it’s all you’ve known I suppose.”

Mira debated if she should get mad about that comment or not - perhaps later, when she’d gotten to know her employer better. Instead she rinsed herself and went to the side of the stream, grabbing the first vial and pouring a bit out before rubbing it through her hair. It began to lather.

“That’s it!”, Hollow said, climbing out of the stream and laying on the grass sunning herself while she waited for Mira to finish her hair. “Work it in good and deep.”

Finally when she’d applied the second vial as well, she climbed out of the stream and took a towel to dry herself off, while Hollow took the other.

“Now, if you don’t mind…” Hollow said, handing her the blue wax.

“Let me get dressed first, Hollow,” she said, determined that - as bizarre as this morning had already been - she was at least going to be fully dressed when Hollow became male again.

“Please, can you hurry up?” Hollow said. “I’m feeling very weird already.”

“Only just now?” Mira thought as she pulled the blouse over her head.

She took the wax and began to draw a circle across Hollow’s no-longer-flat chest. It was surprisingly difficult! It didn’t help that Hollow began to laugh when she started on the star.

“Hold still! Jeeze!” Mira protested, and Hollow tried to get herself under control.

“Okay, I think that’s got it.”

“Thank you Mira!” Hollow said, then closed her eyes and began to murmur something. When the incantation was finished, Hollow was male again. The transmutation hadn’t been some slow change, but instantly Hollow’s chest was flat again, and other parts weren’t.

Mira’s blush was instantaneous as well. Her eyes shot skyward.

“Oh, that’s so much better!” Hollow said, his voice back to what she had come to consider normal.

He began to dress again in a new, duplicate set of clothes while Mira’s mind began to race.

“Hollow…” she began.

“Yes?”

“That ward… it… makes you male. But without it, you’re female. What were you originally?”

He stopped and turned towards her, tying his boots. “You know… I’m not really sure.”

“I mean,” she continued, “if you are female without the ward…”

“Sorry Mira, I really can’t remember. I’ve done a lot of experiments, some on myself. I think I remember coming up with the ward after one of those experiments, but… I’ve been a lot of things. I was a True Neutral once! It was… boring.”

“I imagine so,” she laughed.

Then she looked at her old pile of clothes. Hollow looked at them too. Then he looked at her and shook his head. She left them, the last of her old life now truly left behind.

When they got back to the cart, Hollow dug out about 10 smallish posters and handed them to Mira, instructing her to post them in the village about a mile farther up the road.

“Make sure the arrow is pointing back this way though,” he added as he untied Anabelle from the side of the cart. “Take it from me, you don’t get much business the other way! Then, when you’ve put them all up, hurry back here. We’ve got to get you ready before they start coming!”

“You’re letting me take Anabelle?”

“Oh, yes. A girl on a horse is a lot less likely to be hassled than one just walking into town on foot. Besides, Anabelle insists. Try not to talk to the locals though, if you can avoid it. Mystery is one of our biggest draws. These poor village folk don’t get much of that.”

“Got it,” Mira said. “No saddle?”

“Sorry, no. Anabelle doesn’t like them. But she’ll keep under you, won’t you Anabelle?”

In response, the horse looked at them dumbly, then went back to grazing.

Hollow helped Mira climb up, and before the sun had crossed noon, she was off down the road at a plodding pace, but faster than walking.

The village was a quaint little place. Most of the people were inside, though a couple were out on the main street, eyeing her suspiciously. However, as she began to hammer the posters into place, others began to emerge - the children first of all.

“An enchanter! Mom! A traveling enchanter! Can we go see him?” one waif called to his mother.

Mira didn’t hear the response. She was already off to post the last advertisement up. However, she did grant the village some respect after that. The kid could read at least!

And then she was done and heading back down the road where she’d come from.

“Wait here, Missy!” called a man from a doorway. “You can’t just nail up a sign on my gate post like that!”

Hastily she considered. She could just ride out of town and ignore him, but it wouldn’t do to have these people upset with her and Hollow already. She pulled in Anabelle and climbed down.

“Sorry sir,” she said, bowing low. “I’ll take it off right now…”

“Now hold on, missy, I didn’t say you had to take it down. I just want some compensation is all!”

“I’m sorry,” she said, keeping her head down. “I.. don’t have any money.”

“Oh, that’s alright,” he said, his voice softening. “Can I get a discount?”

At that, she brightened up considerably. “Oh yes sir! Certainly! I’ll see that Hollow gives you a 10 percent discount on any purchases!”

“That’s more like it then. Well, tell this…” he paused to squint at the poster, ‘“Oak in Grey Hollow’ I’ll be expecting it when I drop by tonight.”

“I will,” she assured him, then went back to Anabelle. But she soon found she couldn’t climb upon the horse by herself. There were some snickers from the villagers as she tried to jump, but the horse was simply too big and there was nothing to hold on to. She considered grabbing onto the horse’s mane, but something told her that would be a bad idea.

Then, amazingly, Anabelle lay down, allowing Mira to climb on her back easily. As soon as she was on board, the horse rose again and started trotting out of the village smartly, hooves prancing high in the air as the villagers looked on in wonder at the trained horse.

For her part, Mira was as surprised at the others in the change that had come over the old grey paint. Perhaps she’d underestimated the horse after all!

#argonian #the elder srolls #prequel adventure #fanfiction #enchanter

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angstymarshmallow · 6 years

Text

Fifty-fifty (Zig x MC)

[A little note: I was kind of annoyed with The Junior chapter this week; mostly because MC kind of abandoned her LI just to hang with a bunch of rich kids? In any case I wrote something different, an AU with a scenario where my MC goes home instead of helping with the prank from chapter 4].

[Summary: After leaving their apartment after their emotional fight, Dia (MC) finds herself hanging with a different crowd. It doesn’t take long for her to realize the only place she wanted to be is home with Zig].

The cool yet crispy midnight air did little to quell the boiling rage building inside her chest. It threatened to burst under the weight of their relationship, the strain that had lingered over the past several weeks since the fall quarter began.

It was rare for her to be this angry, and even rarer to feel this out of control after spending an entire year thinking things would be different. After being happier than she had ever been in a long time. Now that she was nearly a block outside of their apartment kicking pebbles underneath her boots; the only company she had was her own ears, pounding slightly against the sound of cars whizzing by. And she could feel a slight tremble that resonated from her hands as she shoved them angrily inside her suede jacket.

She grumbled as she stormed the sidewalk, boots clicking with undeterred impatience. She shoved people out of the way while she passed. Some swore at her – looking just as angry at the interruption, while others gave her a wide berth as though realizing she was in no mood for an apology. But none of it mattered. None of it mattered because all she could think about was his words, and as angry as they were – they had shaken her confidence. They terrified her when she thought of us with a big question mark.

Dia felt the corner of her eyes sting at just the thought. She wiped them hastily aside, still angry and mortified all at once that she had almost cried in front of him. She never cried in front of anyone. And she didn’t want to start now. It was all a matter of bottling back everything inside. And knowing she was so close to bursting the dam inside her chest, made it difficult for her to think about him without feeling choked up and afraid.

They yelled at each other, threw names around when she mentioned how upsetting it was for him to constantly be on the phone with his mom – at least seven times a day ; while she had trouble finding time to write in peace.

But she was the one that left.

After promising she would never again abandon him in the middle of an argument, all she had done was turn on her heels and ran at the first sign of trouble.

She was a mess.

A sobbing, emotional mess – the very last thing she had ever wanted to be.

What have you done to me Ortega?

She spent some time wandering on her own, lost inside her thoughts. She nearly stubbed her toe more than once until reality came sinking back in. She felt torn between wanting to go home to fix things and apologize, while the rest of her wanted to avoid him and their home at all costs.

She brushed a pale strand of hair from out of her face and sighed. She stared helplessly up to the bleak sky, leaning against the side of the building and wishing desperately for some sort of guidance to night.

Someone called her name.

She sat upright, straightening her shoulders her eyes darted towards the familiar voice.

She frowned slightly at the sight of Nathan; one of the seniors she met recently standing several paces away.

His hands were inside his pockets. “Hey.”

Not knowing what else to say or do, Dia blinked at him before wiping her eyes again. She felt self-conscious but didn’t know how to break the uncomfortable silence that had now fallen between them until he smiled. “Hey.”

“You look a little upset.”

She snorted. That was the understatement of the year.

“Are you doing okay, Dia?” She was surprised by the amount of concern in his voice, as though he actually cared what happened to her.

And despite how little they knew about each other, his expression still softened at the sight of her shrugging and avoiding his stare directly. Nathan was alright by all accounts, but sometimes – she felt something pricking her near the back of her mind that something wasn’t right about him. Still, she ignored it and decided that whether her intuition was wrong or not, it didn’t change the fact that he was here right now – glancing expectantly as he waited for an answer.

And what was she supposed to say? Did she look okay? Half-tired, half-shaken and ready to collapse at any given moment to the pavement beneath her feet. “No.” She replied shortly, running her fingers through her hair. “I feel like a giant mess.” She admitted slowly.

She didn’t want to talk about it – not to someone she barely knew. She had a hard time figuring her own whirlwind of feelings to begin with and settled with a vague answer instead. “It was just…a stupid fight with my boyfriend.” She exhaled harshly, nodding to herself more than to him.

“Oh,” he offered her a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry to hear that.” He cleared his throat, “I’m sure all you two need is to talk about it, I know communication is key for pretty much every relationship.”

She nodded mutely, not bothering to respond. He wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t heard before. Countless of people told her similar versions of the same thing – trust and communication went both ways, and for someone like her neither of those had ever come easy.

Except with Zig – it somehow worked. All of it. She was letting go of all her familiar notions of shutting people out when he was around her – he made her want to be better because with Zig it was always different. And it only took her storming out of their home and wandering the streets aimlessly to realize that.

“I’ll tell you what,” Nathan’s interruption drew her from out of her thoughts. He draped a friendly arm across her shoulders. “How about I take you back to the clubhouse and we drink a little to talk about what’s bothering you.”

Dia hesitated.

“And if anything else – you’d be in a safe space just to breathe for a little bit and we’ll even head out of town.” He added hopefully.

She bit her lower lip and searched his eyes for a moment.

Several Hours Later

She shouldn’t be here.

They weren’t her friends. They weren’t people that spent the last two years getting to know her. She didn’t know their little quirks, the little things that mattered and she couldn’t help but feel out of place as Beau chatted animatedly between them.

The drinks made it a little easier to keep up. Dia wasn’t made from money and didn’t care for it, but nevertheless she laughed at nearly every joke; and almost knocked over Kassidy’s drink when she offered to get new ones.

And yet the moment when she allowed her thoughts to drift, the second she wasn’t paying attention – all her thoughts lead back to Zig. What was doing at home without her? Was he still angry? Should she call him?

She glanced at her phone more than once; fingers hovering over her screen as she decided what to do. She had almost forgotten to listen to the rest of Beau’s story until he interrupted her quiet brooding with a question.

“I’m sorry what?” She frowned faintly, drawing her attention back to them.

“Earth to Dia?” Kassidy waved a hand in front of her. “We thought we lost you for a second.”

She shook her head, “no I’m fine. I – I just need a second.” She excused herself quickly, not bothering to explain once she caught sight of Claire again – another mild annoyance after the confrontation they all had with her earlier.

As soon as her feet hit the pavement from out of the club, she inhaled deeply. She glanced worriedly at her phone again; swiping through the last messages she sent to Zig – finding herself at odds with guilt and anger; yet realizing how much she missed him after their argument earlier.

“You sure you’re okay Dia?”

Dia glanced back, surprised to see the worried frown on Nathan’s face. She supposed she had forgotten to enjoy herself again. Shrugging wordlessly, she leaned near the door’s entrance; pressing her back into the wall as she thought of a suitable answer. “I don’t know…I guess I’m just still bummed about my argument.”

He nodded sympathetically, “that’s perfectly understandable.” He murmurs, “it only just happened – you’re still processing.”

“But that’s just it –” she lets out an aggravated breath, “I can’t get it out of my head.”

“Maybe talking about it is what you need, not drinking your problems away.” He offered quietly.

She stared off into the distance, not meeting his patient stare as she shrugged. “What’s there to say? I flew off the handle because I was angry at him for always…for always being the perfect kid,” she squeezed her eyes shut. “He’s constantly checking in with his mom, telling her about his day – about how Sophie’s doing,” she exhaled sharply. “And maybe apart of me is just so damn jealous because I’ve never had that, not in a long time at least with my own parents.”

She dropped her hands to her sides, digging her nails into her skin until they turned pink. “And maybe…maybe seeing and hearing it everyday made me fly off the handle.”

She glanced up at him then, her shoulders sagging by her own admission. “Maybe I wasn’t being there for him the way I’m supposed to be. I love him, and I want what’s best for him.” She continued shakily; now that she started – she couldn’t stop.

“He’s been so excited about college – ever since the beginning of last year. And all he wants is to succeed, and for his sister to succeed. He wants his mom to know everything about what’s going on because he wants to make her proud. How can I be mad at him for that just because –” she stopped short, biting her lower lip before she could finish her sentence. Just because my own relationship with my mom has gone to shit. “I should be happy for him…” She trailed off for a moment, “I am happy for him. He is making his mom proud. He’s making me proud.” She finished finally. Suddenly feeling overwhelmed by her own feelings for him, she blushed and cleared her throat – filling the sudden quiet space with an off-beat smile.

The answer was so clear now that she had the proper time to think about it. It wasn’t simple as black and white – as with everything, their relationship could be grey too. And finding greyer layers was the only way for compromise to work.

“Well what are you waiting for?” Nathan inclined his head at her, “shouldn’t you be telling him all this and not me?”

She nodded slowly, letting his words wash over her. Letting her own words sink in. They were bigger than a petty fight – bigger than the next one they’ll probably have; she couldn’t forget that and no matter what, she wasn’t going to let him down anymore.

No more running.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re good at listening?” She shook her head and continued before he could speak. “Thanks, I think I should just go – this prank thing wasn’t my cup of tea anyway.”

“Oh.” He seemed a little surprised but didn’t stop her once she swept past him.

“Dia! Dia what the hell?! Where are you going?”

She heard Beau’s voice angrily snapping her away from her phone as she logged into her uber app. “Yeah, I’m bailing on all of this.” She gestured at him.”

He scowled, “you really going to let Claire get away with talking so much shit?’

“Yup.” Dia responded without missing a beat, giving him and Kassidy a shrug. “I’m not a fan of stupid pranks and frankly I don’t really care enough to begin with.” She gave Nathan a small smile, “My uber’s on the way here – but thanks for the advice.” To the rest of them she jerked her chin, “and thanks for the invite out.”

Beau grumbled something hotly under his breath and turned away while Kassidy gave Dia an apologetic smile. “Sorry about that, he…gets that way sometimes.” She summarized lamely, “but get home safe okay? Let us know if you need anything.”

Still surprised by how genuinely kind they were,Dia only managed a nod before excusing herself to find the right street for her ride.

“Take care Dia!” Nathan called, “don’t be a stranger.”

Her response was lost to the sound of cars blaring as she jay-walked across the street; hoping to find herself home as quickly as possible.

On the ride home, Dia thought of several different scenarios, all in which her apologies to her boyfriend had sounded flat. Saying sorry had never been something she was good at and every attempt at saying an apology whether out loud or in her head fell flat. Uncomfortably so that she wanted to kick herself for having been in this situation to begin with.

Every word failed to carry any depth of real sincerity – it sounded too rehearsed and impractical until she had abandoned all hopes of convincing herself – let alone him that she was more than sorry; she was wrong.

She sunk lower inside her seat as she watched streets blur by her, and each road they turned into brought her closer to him – yet farther away from believing in herself.

What had happened to her quiet resilience and confidence half an hour ago? Where did it go?

By the time she left the car and had stared up at the impassive apartment building, her stomach knotted into nerves. Without thinking she checked her phone and traced her fingers fondly through messages they had sent to each other earlier.

They gave her the confidence booster she never thought she would have ever needed.

You can do this.

Nodding to herself, she released a sigh before entering the building and walking promptly towards the elevator.

The apartment was quiet.

As Dia closed the door softly behind her and flipped on the closest light switch, she was surprised to see Zig half naked; huddled with a blanket on the couch with his math texts sprawled out across the coffee table and his favourite T- shirt draped across the back of the couch.

Her heart nearly melted at the sight and every word she thought she had prepared herself for; braced herself for – was non-existent.

She walked over softly, careful not to wake him as she tucked the blankets around his lean body.

The moment her hands accidentally slid near his ribs, he squirmed and his eyes flew open. “Woops,” Dia mumbled; suddenly remembering how ticklish he was. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.” She added sheepishly, dragging her eyes back to his.

His dark eyes were sleepy, still tinged with fatigue as they rapidly blinked up at her.

It took only a minute for him to adjust and suddenly his whole posture changed. His jaw locked tight – a telltale sign that he was angry but there was no missing the relief in his eyes when he caught her hand. “You’re back.”

“Yes.” She said simply, squeezing his hand.

He moved to make room and she sat on the couch beside him. He hadn’t let go of her hand but he made no effort to cuddle with her either. She imagined there was still some bitterness left behind because she ran instead of meeting the problem head-on.

“I’m sorry Zig,” She said finally, interrupting the silence first. All the ideas inside her head of apologizing had disappeared and instead, she tried speaking from her heart. “I…I was angry at you, and you were angry at me. And somehow through it – we stopped listening to each other.” She stared at the floor in front of her. “I ran away, and I didn’t mean to make things worse –”

Zig leaned over then, wrapping her inside his arms and burying his face into her neck. “I was so worried about you.” He whispered against her skin.

She slammed her eyes shut and leaned into him. “I know, I’m sorry I worried you.”

“When you left like that – I didn’t know if you were coming back.” She could hear a slight tremor in his voice. “I was scared you wouldn’t come back.”

“Zig,” she wrapped her hands around his back. “I would never leave you,” and she meant it. The words had been etched inside her own heart; an unspoken promise she made to him – and herself when they moved in together, when she told him she loved him. “How could I when you’re the only person I’ve ever….” She bit her lower lip as he pulled away enough to search her eyes. “When you’re the only person I’ve ever loved.” She finished softly, brushing a hand across his cheek.

“I love you too,” his eyes were warm now and his jaw was finally laxed. “God, I love you so much, and that fight was so – so stupid.”

“Soooo stupid.” Dia agreed jokingly, then sobered up as he pressed his forehead against hers’. “But I shouldn’t have flied off the handle like that…that wasn’t fair.”

“Hey I flied off the handle too.” He reminded her. “I guess we both have some growing to do.”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “But I shouldn’t be so angry about you talking with your mom…it’s just you’re so close with your family, and I guess…” she trailed off for a moment, as he tucked a stray hair to behind her ear.

Zig was waiting for her to speak; knowing she needed to get this off her chest. He was always patiently waiting for her to open herself up to him.

“I guess…apart of me was jealous because I’ve never had that…or at least I haven’t in a long time.” She finished slowly, averting her eyes elsewhere until he spoke. “That thing that keeps your family together.” She blew out an irritated breath; struggling to find the right words to explain. “All I have are missed calls and empty promises.”

“Look at me, Dia.”

After a hesitant beat she did.

“That isn’t all you have.” He gave her hand a light squeeze. “You have me, you’ve always had me. And I know how hard it was for you to admit that. I didn’t realize –” he frowned faintly, concern making his brow wrinkle. “I didn’t realize it was so hard on you. Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me,” he squeezed her hand tighter. “And you don’t need to be jealous because my family is your family.”

Her breath caught, “Zig –”

“My mom loves you.” He interrupted.

“She does not.”

“No seriously, she does.” He insisted with a small smile. “And so does Sophie.” He added, running his thumb over her knuckles.

“Aw, shit.” Her cheeks grew warm and a shaky laugh escaped her throat. “Even with all my hard edges?”

“Even then.” He scooted closer. “You’re not the only one that has to work on compromising,” he said solemnly, his eyes boring into hers. “I guess it’s just with everything that’s going on with my dance team, Sophie and my own school stuff – I forget sometimes that every good relationship has compromise.”

“Maybe I’ll go to library more?” She offered.

“And I can always take fewer calls when we’re home together.”

She smiled. “I’d like that.”

“Yeah,” he exhaled slowly. “Yeah we can definitely work harder at compromising.”

“And at trust. And communication.” She mumbled.

“Yeah,” he chuckled lightly. “I’m working on it.”

“No,” she shook her head, pressing herself into him; shifting until their hips aligned perfectly to one another. She sought his lips, wanting to pour everything she had felt tonight into her kiss – her gratitude, her love, her pain. It was all a silent demand as her tongue darted inside his mouth. “We’re working on it.” She corrected softly, whispering against his mouth as she felt the corners of his lips turn into a smile.

Wordlessly, his taut arms encircled her waist and he lowered her into the couch, pressing his length against her center the second her legs shifted to capture his waist. He peppered anywhere he saw skin with warm kisses, kisses that tingled all the way to her spine.

She softly moaned, capturing his mouth whenever she could before his lips drifted lower. She ran her fingers through his dark hair, lightly pulling until he uttered a hiss. “Hey,” she waited until his heated expression met her cheeky grin from her down her cleavage. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” He whispered back and spent the next two hours showing exactly how much he loved her.

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classicalbughead · 6 years

Text

The Black and Gold

A Riverdale AU

Rating: M (might also get explicit)

Pairing: Bughead

Additions: Multiple chapters, Slow Burn, Enemies-to-Friends-to-Lovers

Summary: Jughead Jones, Prince of the Southside, transfers to Riverdale High and begins working at The Blue and Gold with Betty Cooper, the perfect girl next door.

They are completely different, but when the Serpents get framed for the abduction of a Northside girl, Jughead and Betty take matters into their own hands and begin investigating.

Are they doomed to end like Romeo and Juliet?

Huge thanks to @beanie-betty I couldn’t have done it without you :)

Read on AO3 here

Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3

The ponytail and the leather jacket

Jughead instantly regretted leaving her. Had it really been necessary to scream at her? She did offend him, though. Stupid Northside girl.

Today he had seen a completely new side of her. A not-so-perfect, girl-next-door Betty Cooper. She had surprised him.

“What is it, Jug?” asked Toni, who had texted him to meet her at the Whyte Wyrm.

“Nothing…” he answered, pushing his fries around on his plate.

“You’ve barely touched your burger.”

“I’m just worried about you,” he told her.

“You don’t have to be, Jug. We’ll be fine.” Jughead smiled sadly. He knew his friends were tough, but he could hear the fear in Toni’s’ voice.

“Just tell me if you need help.” Toni nodded as Sweet Pea and Fangs joined them.

“Why the long face, Jones?” Sweet Pea teased him.

“This whole Northside bullshit is getting on my nerves.”

“It’s a girl, isn’t it?” Fangs asked. Toni nearly choked on her coffee.

“What? Jughead Jones and a girl?”

“Well, we all know you and him wouldn’t work out…” Fangs explained.

“Yeah, that’s because Jug is like my brother. I’ve known him since he first got that goddamn beanie,” Toni stated.

Jughead had listened to their conversation in quiet amusement.

“Cut it out, Fangs,” he chipped in.

“As the prince commands,” Fangs said attempting a bow, which Jughead ignored.

“We came by to tell you something that is far less enjoyable,” Sweet Pea confessed. Jughead raised one of his eyebrows questioningly.

“FP just got arrested. He is accused of the abduction and murder of Polly Cooper.”

“What?” Jughead asked loudly as he stood up.

Suddenly the White Wyrm went silent. Everyone was looking up to the serpent prince, their new leader. Jughead adjusted his beanie, his hand slightly trembling. This couldn’t be happening.

“These goddamn Northsiders have clearly crossed a line,” he muttered silently to himself as tears of anger began to rise into his eyes. He threw his fist on the table furiously. The fries scattering on the floor. Toni looked at him, her face also enraged but she seemed concerned about him as well.

“Jug…” she started, but Jughead wasn’t paying attention to her. There was only one person, he wanted to talk to right now. The only one he believed could help him to get his father out if jail.

“I have some business to attend to,” he said loudly, his voice shaking with anger as he stormed out of the bar.

***

Jughead parked his motorcycle outside of the Chock’ lit Shoppe. The bright neon lights illuminated his sharp features.

He found the blond ponytail he had been looking for as soon as he entered Pop’s. She was sitting alone, sipping a strawberry milkshake and staring out of the window. She didn’t notice him until he sat down across from her.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she murmured, still not looking at him.

“I’m not here for personal reasons. I want to know what happened to your sister,” he explained calmly.

“And what makes you think I will tell you about it?” Jughead shook his head.

“My dad is held captive at the police station for a murder you and I both know he didn’t commit. Can you, for once, stop being so fucking stubborn and tell me the truth?”

Betty bit her lower lip. “Look, I don’t know what happened to my sister. I would really want to help you, but…”

“You are scared?” Jughead suggested, locking his blue eyes with her, “I promise that I won’t betray your trust, Cooper…But we have to work together here. You and I both want that maniac gone.”

“I don’t know, Jug. My mom will never allow it,” she admitted half-heartedly. Jughead shrugged.

“So, don’t tell her then.” Betty still seemed unconvinced.

“Betty Cooper, I will swear to protect you. No one will harm you as long as you are with me. You do know I have some authority on the Southside,” he vowed.

“Really?”, she asked. Jughead grinned.

“While my father is gone, I am the leader of the serpents…But I need you, Cooper. Don’t you want to find your sister?” Betty nodded slowly.

“Then it’s settled?” he wanted to know.

“I will help you in return for my guaranteed safety?” she concluded.

“I swear it, Betty Cooper,” Jughead said, shaking Betty’s hand.

“Then there’s no more time to waste, Jones. Let’s begin.”

***

“What do we have so far?” Jughead asked, beginning to adjust the cardboard Betty had brought into the Blue and Gold office.

“Well, we know that my sister was kidnapped and is probably held captive somewhere…God, what if she is hurt?”, Betty sobbed, her voice trembling.

“All the more reason to find her. Betty…do you have any memory of what happened that night?”

Betty tried to steady her breaths. She fought the urge to dig her nails into her palms. She needed to do this. For Polly.

“I remember a few fragments…Like I know there was lots of screaming coming from Polly and I recall seeing the lights of the police car. My mom cried, my dad yelled. I just sat there in the corner of the room watching my parents trying to find her…I’m sorry that I am such bad help. You want to get your father out of jail and I’m just sitting here crying,” Betty apologized.

“Hey,” Jughead said calmly as he approached her, “It was a traumatic experience. The memories will come back, but right now I think we have to look for other leads, okay?”

Betty nodded and Jughead softly smiled at her. “I didn’t want to make you cry, Cooper.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated and dried the tears with her sleeve.

“No need to apologize. Come, sit,” Jughead ordered, pulling out a chair for her. She sat down thankfully and began digging a map of Riverdale out of her drawer.

“And you are sure she hasn’t just run away?” he asked.

Betty shook her head. “Our parents are strict, and they can sometimes be a huge pain in the ass, but Polly would’ve never left home. At least not without telling me…Why are you giggling?”

Jugheads smirk disappeared from his lips. “I am sorry, Coop. I just didn’t think girls like you would use a word like ass.”

Bettys eyebrows raised in question. “Girls like me?”

“Yeah, you know… nice girl, straight A student, cheerleader, perfect-girl-next-doorish…girlfriend of the quarterback…”

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Betty interrupted him, “And if you keep on sitting over there doing absolutely nothing, I will stop being nice.”

“Excuse me, but what have you done in the last couple minutes, besides threatening me?”

“I located possible hiding places for the kidnapper. We have a few empty houses here in Riverdale. I marked them with a red X,” Betty replied, and showed Jughead the map she had been drawing on.

“God, Cooper. Is there anything you can’t do?” Jughead laughed.

“Make you do some work, apparently.”

Jughead grinned at her, but he got up from his chair and turned his computer on. “I’ll check out some of those places and see if I can find anything.”

“Good idea, Watson,” Betty remarked as she began searching for another pen.

“What makes you think you’re Sherlock, Cooper?”

“Well, I, for instance, have not only found hiding spots but I also have some possible witnesses,” Betty asserted. She took out the blue pen she had been looking for and marked some of the houses nearest to hers with a circle. “Some of my neighbors always have an eye on the streets, maybe they know something…”

“Interrogation? Sounds pretty detective-like for me, Nancy Drew.”

“I loved that book,” Betty admitted.

“Of course you did,” Jughead said and began browsing the internet. Some of the houses Betty had mentioned did look like excellent hiding spaces, others had been torn down over the last few years. But one caught his attention. A cabin in the woods, far away from the town. They should definitely check it out.

In the meantime, Betty had again focused on the map. Some of her blond locks had fallen out of her ponytail and framed her face. Her eyebrows were furrowed in concentration and she nervously bit her lip.

Jughead had to use all his willpower not to stare at her when he looked up. What was he doing? She was like he had said, way out of his league. He shook his head. Betty Cooper belonged to someone like Archie Andrews. This right here was just a temporary partnership. As soon as this mystery would be lifted, he and Betty would go separate ways.

***

“Elizabeth Cooper. Do you know what time it is?” Alice Cooper towered over her daughter as Betty closed the door behind her.

“I was working on an article for the Blue and Gold,” Betty admitted quietly.

Alice looked at her for signs that she was lying. “What are you working on?”

“An article about the football team. Jughead says there’s something up with them winning all the time,” she answered.

“Jughead? You are still working with that Serpent offspring?”

“So? He is an excellent writer and I don’t think the Blue and Gold would still exist without his help,” Betty stated truthfully, “And you wouldn’t want my 4.0 GPA dropping, would you Mom?

Alice shook her head. “I’m sure there are other bright minds at Riverdale High that don’t have a criminal record.”

“Well if there are, I haven’t heard of them. Please, Mom, trust me on this. Jughead isn’t his father.”

Alice Cooper sighed. “Fine, Betty, if you are so crazy about his writing, then perhaps you could me show some of it?”

Betty smiled. “Thanks, Mom,” she said grabbing a cup of tea and heading up to her room.

Alice returned to the kitchen and watched the raindrops falling onto the window. She thought about what her daughter had just told her. Maybe Jughead Jones wasn’t like his father, but she still wanted to make sure Betty wouldn’t be in any sort of trouble. After all, the Southside was a dangerous place and Betty shouldn’t repeat the same mistakes her mother had made.

“You will thank me for this, Betty,” Alice muttered as she picked up the phone and dialed the number to the Sheriff’s office.

#bughead #bughead fanfic #fanfiction #riverdale #slow burn #enemies to friends to lovers #tag: mel’s babbling

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queen-of-the-merry-men · 6 years

Text

The Choice

My entry for day 2 of @oqfixitweek. Fix the baby situation. I also adjusted the dark swan to my preferences.

Driving down the street Regina could feel her nails digging into her steering wheel. Her heart was pounding in her chest, her blood was boiling in her veins and she struggled to keep the tears from falling out of her eyes.

Her sister was dead.

She couldn’t believe it. After everything that’d happened, after all she’d done to try and save her she’d been unsuccessful. Zelena was gone… and so was her baby.

And there was only one person to blame.

She heard the rubber of her tiles squeal against the ground as she ran over the curb and parked in front of the house. Looking up at it she felt her rage grow even stronger.

She burst through the door, not even bothering to knock before she growled, “EMMA!! YOU GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE RIGHT NOW!!”

“No need to shout…”

She spun on her heel, turning to see Emma, no...the Dark One, sitting at the kitchen table, poised and relaxed as ever with a glass of red wine in hand. Her white hair glittered in the light as she tilted her head and sent Regina a blood red smirk.

“You know it’s customary to bring a housewarming gift when you visit an old friend.” She chuckles and takes another sip of her wine. “But I suppose we can just bottle up your rage and drink that instead.”

Regina seethed as she stepped toward her. “I can’t believe you did this!”

Emma rolled her eyes, clearly bored. “Is this about Zelena? Really?” Sighing she stood up from the table. “I was doing you a favor.”

“A favor?” Regina’s voice wavered with shock. “Emma she is dead! Her child, Robin’s child is dead!”

Emma’s eyes turned sympathetic as she took a deep breath and steadily whispered, “... and tell me you’re not just a little bit relieved about that.”

Regina’s breath caught in her throat. Staring at Emma her gut began to swirl and guilt rose up in her chest.

A hint of a smile tugged on Emma’s lips. “Your silence… speaks volumes.”

As she walked past her toward the living room Regina finally found her words. “You had no right…”

“I had every right!” snapped Emma, huffing as she shook her head. “You blamed me, for all of it. Over and over. Verbally and silently reminding me that if I hadn’t gone down that portal none of it wouldn’t have happened. Not New York, not the baby, none of it.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Congratulations Regina, your incessant bitching worked! I’ve finally cleaned up my mess just like you asked!”

“I never asked for this!” Regina shouted, her anger fueled by the memory of looking over Zelena’s body, watching as the black nightshade poison in her veins traveled further and further across her skin until it finally reached her heart. The sound of her voice as she pleaded for her baby’s life. Robin’s face, the devastation in his eyes when she’d had to tell him, her soulmate, that despite all her best efforts she hadn’t been able to save his child.

A tear ran down her face and she sniffed, “I tried to save her.”

Emma nodded understandingly. “Of course you did. I expected no less from you… which is why I had to step in.”

She stepped closer, her green eyes glistening with dark insanity. “Don’t you see? I’m only doing what I’ve always done! I’m protecting us. I’m protecting our family.”

“With murder?!”

“If need be yes!” Emma’s eyes went hard. “I’m doing what nobody else has the strength to do. If I’d allowed her to live it would’ve never stopped. She never would’ve stopped!”

“You don’t know that!”

“I don’t care,” Emma gritted out. “She hurt my family, Regina. She hurt you. And I wasn’t gonna stand by and let her do it for the rest of your life.”

She turned away from Regina to look out the window with a heavy sigh. “This is for the best Regina. You might not see it now but you will...one day.”

Regina glared at her, the anger still hot in her chest. She took in all that the Dark Swan was. All the leather, all the glitter and coldness. Of all the times they’d had run ins this was the first time she saw not one glimmer of Emma Swan at all.

“Robin… he’s devastated.”

She thought she saw a flicker of guilt pass over Emma’s face before she turned back and raised an eyebrow. “Is he?”

Regina narrows her eyes. What?

“I’d check on him if I were you,” says Emma. “You might be surprised at how well he’s handling things.”

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

She’s never driven faster in her life. Within minutes she’s back at the mansion, rushing through her front door to find him.

When she finally lays eyes on Robin, he’s in their bed, sleeping which she’s thankful for. She knows he could use the rest. He’d absolute wreck the last time she saw him, still sobbing over the loss of a child he’d never know, that he’d never hold. One he’d never wanted but loved all the same. Staring down at him as he sleeps she almost doesn’t want to wake him up. It seems cruel to bring him back to reality when he’s finally reached a temporary escape but she has to know if he’s okay.

She lightly brushes his cheek until he stirs. Once his eyes open she offers up a cautious smile. “Hey.”

He smiles up at her. “Hello.”

His blue eyes are light and unburdened. An easy smile makes its way across his face. He looks… fine.

Regina’s eyebrows knit together. “I just… wanted to check on you. Make sure you were okay after everything?”

Robin narrows his eyes, confused. “Yes,” he drawls. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Hesitating, Regina answers, “Well… because of… Zelena?”

Sitting up in bed Robin tilts his head curiously. “Your sister?” Concern rises in his eyes as he reaches out to stroke her cheek. “Are you thinking of her again?”

Regina’s lips part in shock. A surprised breath falls from her lips at Robin’s cavalier attitude.

“Regina, we’ve talked about this,” he says, trying to comfort her. “You can’t blame yourself for her death. I know seeing what she did in that jail cell after you saw her but her decision wasn’t your fault.”

Her heart clenches inside of her chest as she nods and realizes that Robin doesn’t remember the day he’d just been through. Or the devastating loss he just suffered.

She gently removes his hand from her face. “Excuse me… I just need a minute…”

Her back stiff and rigid she walks downstairs to find Emma waiting for her at the dining room. Her expression is blank as she raises an eyebrow in Regina’s direction. “Well?”

“He doesn’t remember a thing,” Regina whispers. “You stole his memories.”

Emma clicks her tongue. “More like altered.”

“Don’t twist words with me,” Regina grits out. “This is wrong.”

“Why?” Emma sounds genuinely distressed. “Why is it wrong to take away his pain and give him something better, something easier?”

“Because it is!” Tears well up in Regina’s eyes. “As painful as this moment is it’s not fair for you to take it from him!”

“Why not?” argues Emma. “You took away mine.”

“What?”

Emma bowed her head with a frown. “Last year at the town line. Pan’s curse was coming and Henry and I were about to lose everything we’d ever wanted. Losing you, losing my parents, our home… it would’ve destroyed us.”

She looked at Regina with grateful. “But you saved us. You gave us better memories, a better life. You took away my guilt over giving him up, you gave me so many memories of his childhood and it was good. It was the best year of my life… until it was stolen from me.”

She sighs, shaking her head. “That year taught me a lot of thing but the biggest lesson I learned was that sometimes… ignorance can be bliss.”

Emma’s smile was bright as she recalled how light and easy her year in New York had been. Not being a savior, just being a mom. She wishes she could go back.

Regina tearfully glares at her. “So what am I supposed to do? Lie to him? Look him in the face and never let him know what he’s loss?”

“If that’s what you choose,” said Emma shrugging her shoulders. “However, there is a simpler solution.”

She pulls a small bottle out of her pocket and Regina recognizes it on sight. A forgetting potion.

Regina shakes her head. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am,” says Emma, her voice eerily steady. She steps closer, dangerously invading Regina’s space. “Knowing the truth, carrying the guilt… it’ll destroy you. I know we’ve shared our differences in the past but I took on the curse to make sure you got the ending you deserve. I want you to be happy Regina. Why not make it a little easier on yourself?”

She presses the bottle into her reluctant hand.

“The choice… is yours.”

#oq fix it week #oq ff #regina mills #robin hood #outlaw queen #emma swan #the dark swan

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crossroadsdimension · 7 years

Text

Return

Man, what’s with all these one/two-word titles? Eh, it fits anyway.

So, this is a part of the “Brain Trauma AU” that @radioactivedelorean, @witete, @a-million-chromatic-dreams and others came up with a while back -- and one that I joined earlier this week to flood with fluff. Considering that I’ve been focusing on Ford’s recovery from being stuck in his own body as it shuts down around him, I think you can all guess what it is that this particular title means. :)

You can find all the other stuff we’ve written here!

The town of Gravity Falls was buzzing with excitement as people stood in the town square.

Fiddleford, who had come dancing down from the mansion an hour ago, wove through the crowd, offering confirmation from what he’d heard and letting people see the little card with the frilly lizard that he’d received as proof of it.

“I cannot believe Mabel got to go to another dimension and didn’t take us with her!” Candy scowled, then shook her head as the scowl softened. “But family is more important, and I understand that.”

Pacifica huffed and tossed her hair back with a hand. “I’m wondering about this giant alien woman everyone’s been talking about. Only McGucket’s seen her, and he’s shorter than the rest of us. I really doubt that anyone’d be able to carry Dr. Pines around, anyway.”

“I COULD CARRY HIM!”

Multiple heads turned. “Shhhh!”

Grenda ducked her head. “Sorry.”

“That’s just because you’re abnormally strong,” Pacifica responded with a shrug. “I doubt that any alien would be able to stand up against you in a test of strength.”

“Indeed!” Candy adjusted her glasses. “And--”

The air suddenly rippled in front of the crowd, causing all conversation to cut off suddenly as a rip in space appeared in front of them.

Bodacious T -- formerly known as Toby Determined -- started to bring up a bat covered in nails, but Fiddleford pushed it down and gave the reporter a look that caused him to stumble back.

“It’s okay. I know it looks dangerous, but this one doesn’t go anywhere bad,” Fiddleford said seriously. He paused. “At least, that’s what I think.”

The hole of space ripped a little, and then Dipper and Mabel stepped through, hand in hand, with bright grins on their faces.

“Dipper! Mabel!” Wendy started waving a hand wildly in order to get their attention.

“Wendy!” Dipper waved back as Stan came out of the portal behind them. “Long time no see!”

“Mr. Pines!” Soos’ voice wavered.

“Hey, hey, don’t you dare start crying on me.” Stan gave Soos a pointed look, and the man-child sniffled and rubbed at his nose. His expression softened. “It’s good ta see you too, Soos.”

“Where’s Dr. Pines?” Candy asked.

“He’s comin’, just give ‘em a second.”

The portal rippled again, and Jhessie stepped through, a rather disgruntled Ford in her arms.

“--can walk, Jhessie,” Ford was saying. “Put me d-down!”

Stan snickered, and Ford shot him an annoyed look as Jhessie carefully lowered Ford to the ground. As Ford’s sandaled feet settled on the ground, he leaned against a cane made of dark purple wood that shimmered, as though made of pure glitter. The grip at the top of it appeared to be made of silver, carved in the form of a little lizard-creature with frills on the sides of its head.

“I simply wanted to make sure that you had passed through my portal safely.” Jhessie patted Ford on the head kindly, making his disgruntled expression soften a little.

“...okay, I take back what I was saying before,” Pacifica said. “That is a really tall alien.”

“Ford!” Fiddleford scrambled out of the crowd and grabbed his friend in a hug. “Yer walkin’!”

Ford’s frown melted instantly into a grin as Stan burst out laughing.

“He’s been walkin’ fer a good two days now!” Stan said. “Took ‘im a bit, though.”

“Well, I’m just glad that yer able ta move around again.” Fiddleford smiled brightly.

“As am I,” Ford agreed.

“Cool cane, Stan Number Two.” Wendy slipped out of the crowd. “Did Mabel have a hand in making that?”

“Yup!” Mabel bounded over to the redhead. “Jhessie let me dunk it in glitter! Isn’t it awesome?”

“For sure!” Wendy held out a hand, which Mabel promptly high-fived.

“What’s with the little lizard thing?” Pacifica asked.

“I-it’s an axolotl,” Ford corrected.

“The Axolotl is an important deity in the multiverse,” Jhessie explained. “My temple is dedicated to him.”

“What, you mean the place where you took them?” Pacifica pointed at Ford and the other Pines.

“That is quite so. The technology I have available to me in my dimension was able to do far more to assist Ford rather than maintain the state he was in. I have done everything I can, and although he is capable of moving about on his own, he will not be without his scars.” Jhessie put a hand on Ford’s shoulder. “I would stay and answer more questions, but I am afraid that I must take my leave of you.”

“You mean you can’t stay a day?” Mabel asked, disappointed. “But -- but you have to meet everyone in Gravity Falls!”

“While that is true, I’m afraid I have other versions of your great-uncle to assist in recovery, so they may continue traveling and eventually find their own ways back to their dimensions.” Jhessie looked at Mabel kindly, then turned her attention to the townsfolk. “I will now take my leave of you.”

With a slight bow of her head and a small smile, Jhessie turned and stepped back through the portal, which winked out of existence.

There was only a short pause before the Pines were peppered with questions on all sides from the people of Gravity Falls.

“COOL IT!”

Mabel’s yell caused the questions to trickle to a halt.

“Thanks, pumpkin.” Stan ruffled her hair before looking at the townsfolk. “I know you guys are worried, but ya mind givin’ us a bit ta get settled back in the Shack an’ arrange fer a ride back ta Piedmont fer the kids? We’ve, uh..we’ve got a lot ta think about.”

“Don’t you mean get back to your boat, Mr. Pines?” Soos spoke up.

“Nah, Soos. Unfortunately, those days are behind us, short as they were.” Stan clapped a hand on Ford’s shoulder, being careful not to throw him off balance. “We can probably find other things ta do around here.”

Ford nodded, but his eyes had a bit of a melancholy expression in them now.

“What do you mean?” Wendy frowned. “That was your dream, wasn’t it?”

“Well, yeah, it was. With how Ford’s legs are he’d never adjust ta the sea too well, so we just figured we’d stay on land where it’s easier.” Stan frowned. “Sides, Jhessie shot down the idea pretty fast.”

“Sh-she’s j-just c-concerned for our w-w-wellbeing.” Ford made a slight face as his words stumbled over each other.

“Yeah, but we don’t need a second mom.”

“If you’re not gonna go out to sea, then what are ya gonna do?” Fiddleford asked.

“Hang around town.” Stan shrugged. “Ford’s got a couple things he can do yet.”

“P-papers to write,” Ford explained. “Sc-scientific dis-s-scoveries to record.”

“Ya ain’t doin’ more field work, though.”

Ford shook his head sadly at Fiddleford’s questioning stare. “Th-those days are behin-nd me.”

“Then you’re going to need help, old man. Right?”

Ford looked up as Pacifica folded her arms across her chest.

“Pacifica!” Gideon hissed from somewhere in the crowd. “Ya don’ talk to the Author that way!”

“Shut up, I can do what I want,” Pacifica called back. “Look, Dr. Pines, if you want to keep doing research on stuff here, you’re gonna need help. Candy and Grenda have already been running around bugging the gnomes and doing who knows what else -- they’ve probably managed to find some stuff that you haven’t.”

Ford’s eyes narrowed.

“Pacifica….” Candy adjusted her glasses nervously. “I really doubt that we have found things that Dr. Pines has not discovered yet.”

“I bet he hasn’t studied a Hawktopus before!” Grenda grinned widely.

Ford reeled back with a spluttering noise. Stan burst out laughing.

“He labeled that thing ‘too stupid to study’ in his journals, so you got him there!” Stan laughed as Ford shot him a sour look.

“YES!” Grenda threw a fist in the air. “We can fill you in on all its awesomeness!”

“I highly doubt it’s that ‘awesome,’” Ford muttered, scowling.

“You shall have to wait and see,” Candy said with a knowing wink. “We will come by when you are settled in.” She turned and walked out of the plaza, Grenda following after her.

“We’ll bring you the one that I’m keeping in my house!” Grenda called back.

Ford spluttered again.

“Guess I’ll see you around. Or something.” Pacifica shrugged and followed after them.

Ford stared after them with an incredulous expression as Stan burst out laughing.

“Those kids are a hoot,” Stan said as he recovered himself. “You’re gonna like ‘em, Poindexter; I guarantee it.”

Ford looked at him with a lidded stare that suggested he might think otherwise.

Stan chuckled and patted Ford on the shoulder. “Come on; let’s get back to the Shack and get things settled in. I’m gonna have to drive down to where I’ve got the boat to get our stuff, obviously, but I think I left a few things here to make do for a couple days.”

“We could call Mom and Dad and get them to bring the stuff up,” Dipper suggested. “I mean, they are gonna want to pick us up.”

“And they’re gonna wanna see you, too!” Mabel chirped. “So we could do that, right?”

Stan tapped his chin in thought. “Well, I don’t see why not. Would save money on two bus tickets. We’ll call ‘em when we get back to the Shack.”

“They’re gonna be so happy to know that Grunkle Ford’s okay!”

Ford smiled at Mabel’s exclamation as she started to dance down the street towards the Mystery Shack.

“We’ve got a car nearby if you guys need--”

“We’ll be fine walking, Soos.” Stan waved off Soos’ suggestion. “Ford’s been stuck in bed long enough.”

Ford smiled a little at Stan’s statement.

“We’ll come by the Shack and make sure you boys are settling in later.” Susan smiled at the two of them and winked her lazy eye. “Wink!”

Stan spluttered a little as the townsfolk scattered back to their homes. Gideon and his father remained there for a moment, but a look from Dipper and a raised eyebrow from Stan caused them to bolt.

“That kid’s got a few more things ta learn before he’s gettin’ anywhere near yer research,” Stan muttered.

Ford grunted in agreement. He turned and started moving down the street, cane clacking against the ground with every slight-unsteady step. Stan followed along next to him, Dipper staying ahead. Mabel was already a pink, sweater-y blob in the distance.

“It’s definitely gonna be different from here on out, huh?”

Ford gave a short hum and nodded in response to Stan’s question. The grip on the axolotl-handle of his cane tightened a little. “M-my research is g-g-going to be dif-f-ferent.”

“Yeah, since ya can’t be out there yourself.” Stan nodded. “Some of the time, anyway. Those kids’ll be a big help, though, I can guarantee that.�� He gained a sly look. “So, what was it about that ‘Hawktopus’ that made it too stupid to study?”

Ford groaned.

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brettanomycroft · 7 years

Text

Swamped [Kidge Cryptid Hunt Oneshot, VLD]

“Why else do you think I would insist we come here before we started on our Swamp Ape hunt?” she asks.

“Because we needed cookies?”

She flings her hands up, and the bag of cookies nearly flies off her arm.

“Because we needed to harness Publix's mystical force to aid us in our quest!” she exclaims. Her voice deepens, heightening her drama. “Dark Publix, show me the Cryptids!”

Author’s Note: This was completely self-indulgent. I’m a 3rd or 4th generation Florida native and have spent all but a few years of my life in this lovely, strange state. All but one thing written here about Florida is fact, which is that I don’t think there are two Publix across the street from one another in Cape Canaveral, but there sure are in the town I live in now. Thank @stardusted for the inspiration and planning. She started this. Not me.

Fandom: Voltron Legendary Defender Paring: Keith x Pidge Words: 6101 Tags: Swamp Ape, gratuitous Florida, barely edited, bonding, sass, snark, more Florida, mosquitoes, kissing, cute shit, rednecks.

Read on AO3 "Flashlights?"

"Check."

"Water bottles?"

"Check."

“Camera?”

Keith turns in his seat towards Pidge and presses the button on a boxy, plastic camera. A flash goes off. She pouts, but for once keeps both hands on the steering wheel, rather than trying to retaliate.

“Digital and disposable, check,” he says with a grin.

“I can't believe they still sell those. At least if that picture is terrible, I can physically burn it.”

“It won't be,” Keith says.

Pidge’s brows raise. It takes her a moment to resume going through her mental checklist. “Bug spray?”

“Like a gallon of it. Are you sure this isn't overkill?”

"Look, Toto, we're not in the desert anymore, so unless you want the mosquitoes to turn you into a prune so you can start planning your early retirement to Boca, then we're going to need alllllll that bug spray. You've gotta trust me, I'm the expert here. Now, do we have the cookies?”

He looks down at the disposable camera. Suddenly, the process of winding it to the next picture is the most important task in the world.

“Uh…”

The clicking sound as he winds the camera bridges the silence.

"You forgot to grab the cookies?" she asks in a low voice.

"My arms were full carrying all the bug spray!" Which is how Keith finds himself in the middle of an aisle at a grocery story that is surprisingly nice considering he lost cell service thirty minutes ago and still isn't sure if Pidge sneezed in the middle of telling him the name of the "town" they were stopping in.

For an intergalactic pilot, his Earth-side travel had been limited to the desert outskirts beyond The Garrison and a few big cities he visited with his dad, cities that seem more haze than memory now. The maze of palm trees and identical ranch homes the Holts lived in mystified him, and the rural, ramshackle spots he and Pidge had stopped off at when they needed gas were downright eerie. And while he really doesn't get how peanut butter cookies are crucial to the cryptid-hunting process, he's more than willing to give Pidge credit for taking them to what seems the likeliest place for downhome folklore to become fact.

Assuming they ever get out to the site. By the time Pidge decides which brand of cookie to get, the team’s “Voltron Spring Break 2020” will be well over. He wonders how the locals would take to the sight of a massive, glowing UFO appearing over their neighborhood Publix.

“Why don't you just get the ones from the bakery?” he asks.

She looks over her shoulder and rolls her eyes as if he’s asked the most obvious question in the world. Keith gets the sense that she’d wave a dismissive hand in his direction, if both weren’t occupied with two different boxes of cookies.

“The bakery cookies come in those child-proofed plastic containers,” she says, “meaning they’ll make way too much noise to open and close any time we want to eat during the hunt.” The follow up *duh* is unspoken.

Crossing his arms over his chest, Keith leans against the shelves opposite her, careful not to disturb the rows of crackers. “You’re the expert,” he replies, voice going flat so that she could tell just *how impressed* he was.

Pidge puts one of the packages of cookies back on the shelf. She must hear his sigh of relief, though, because a moment later she locks eyes with him and makes a slow reach for another type of cookie.

“Come *on* Pidge.”

A wicked grin stretches slow across her face. “Why don't you go grab another bottle of bug spray while I finish picking out the cookies?”

Keith shakes his head and crosses to Pidge’s side of the aisle. Stretching past her, he picks the box of cookies Pidge just set down, and another box of the ones she still has in hand.

“It's a conspiracy,” he says gravely. “No one needs that much bug spray unless they've got a vested financial stake in it. I refuse to to help you serve the secret interests of Big DEET, Pidge.”

“While in most cases I'd be inclined to agree with you,” she says, “This time, your theory neglects to take into account one important variable: we're in Florida, a state that is more bug than land.”

“Sounds like something a Big DEET lackey would say to cover up their connections.” He pauses to stick out his tongue in response to hers. “Forget the extra bug spray, let’s roll.”

With a dramatic, long-suffering sigh, she sets down the cookies in her hand and follows him towards checkout. When he glances back, he can see the tell-tale tight lips of one trying their best to hold back a smile.

The two of them ignore the strange looks they get from the cashier as they unwind the secret plottings of Big DEET and the significance of OFF™. They pay, and Keith hands the plastic bag filled with cookies to Pidge. She immediately tries to push it back to him, but he sidesteps and comes in with a “You know, we're standing in the most intriguing Florida conspiracy I’ve ever witnessed, but I haven't heard anyone question it.”

Already curious, she doesn't try to hand the bag off to him again. Success.

“What are you talking about?”

The cashier stares hard at them, face still fixed in a smile, but ready for them to clear out so she can finish with the customers behind them. Keith ignores her in favor of making a wide, sweeping gesture towards the grocery store around them.

“Publix. Ever since we landed, it's all I ever hear your mom and dad and Matt talk about. Even you've started doing it. 'Keith, you haven't lived until you've had a Pub Sub,’ and 'I know we stopped at Publix earlier, but let’s go pick up this other thing.’ It goes on.” Pidge nods along, glee filling her face.

“I'm pretty sure everything in your house is Publix brand,” he continues, “and three days ago, when your dad was driving us around town, I saw two Publix across the street from one another…And both were packed. Everyone here has an unnatural obsession with this store.”

The cashier finally shoos them towards the exit. They stop once they reach the parking lot, where Pidge reaches up to cup his cheek. She shakes her head.

“Oh, poor, naive Keith,” she says, doing her best to keep a straight face. “The Publix Phenomenon isn't a conspiracy if everyone knows about it and is willingly accepting. Every Florida child grows up learning of the strange contract made between the Jenkins family and a powerful, interdimensional entity. No one cares because Publix is the best.”

Her words pick up momentum, excitement and investment in the ridiculous story growing. Her eyes crinkle at the corners and he's not entirely sure if it's her pulse or his that he feels at the point where their skin meets.

Her hand drops. Keith exhales, letting go a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding.

“Why else do you think I would insist we come here before we started on our Swamp Ape hunt?” she asks.

“Because we needed cookies?”

She flings her hands up, and the bag of cookies nearly flies off her arm.

“Because we needed to harness Publix's mystical force to aid us in our quest!” she exclaims. Her voice deepens, heightening her drama. “Dark Publix, show me the Cryptids!”

She holds her pose for a few long ticks before they both dissolve into laughter. Clutching at his stomach, Keith doubles over, gasping as he tries to speak.

“And here this whole time I thought you were weird. Turns out you're just Floridian,” he manages.

“Hey! I resemble that remark!”

Pidge chases him all the way back to the car, both cackling as she tries to nail him with the wildly swinging bag of cookies.

…

It's another 30 minute’s drive out to the location Pidge has found for their Swamp Ape stakeout. The sun is low in the sky and right in their faces, but the car’s A/C is cold and conversation engaging. Pidge once again shares how she found the spot: a combination of digging through forums and coding a program that took location and environmental data from the various sightings and calculated the best possible area for spotting the cryptid. Keith's heard the story three or four times by now, but doesn't begrudge her excitement. Once she’s done, he retells his story of how his attempts at tracking down the Thunderbird ended up with him trespassing on Garrison property before he was even a cadet. Pidge always laughs at the part where he evaded Iverson by making terrible bird calls, so it’s worth the embarrassment of recreating the scene.

Between laughing at themselves and the dense forest that crowds the single lane highway they’re cruising down, Pidge misses the turn off. They’re alone on the straight, narrow road, so Pidge lets out her choicest of expletives and pulls a U-turn right in the middle of it. Both of their phones are without signal, but Keith had gone the old school route and printed out the map as well, so after a few miles going under the speed limit and another U-turn, they find their road.

Loose gravel crunches under car tires. A plume of dust rises up behind them. Keith stares out the windows, transfixed by the way the trees flit by. His eyes catch on shadows and shapes further back in the woods: trees, no doubt, but in the growing twilight he swears he sees something dart away.

Being a paladin of Voltron came with no shortage of action and excitement. They were constantly on guard, always ready for the next fight. But this is a different prickling in his stomach. This is a pick up in his pulse that he hasn’t felt since he was fourteen and scrambling under a break in the fence at The Garrison. He glances over at Pidge. Her attention is glued to the path ahead, but there’s the hint of a grin at her lips. Her hands flex and tighten on the steering wheel.

The road dead ends at a small clearing of grass. Pidge parks the car. At the far end of the clearing, a few knobbly fence posts do their best to hold back the forest. Pidge turns to him, vibrating in anticipation. Her eyes are bright, a hint of gold lit in the setting sun.

“Ready?” she asks.

“Beyond ready.”

Keith opens the passenger door, slides out, and shoulders his backpack. From the side pocket, he withdraws his knife and returns it to its proper place on his hip. Pidge had assured him that open carry was a thing in Florida, but he hadn’t wanted to take chances. The weight of his blade at his side kickstarts the pounding of his heart, sending it to his ears. He can see Pidge getting geared up on the other side. She bounces from foot to foot, tests the weight of her backpack, and consults the compass clipped to her shorts.

“Let’s roll. We’ve got an hour or so until sundown.”

They cross the clearing. Long grasses and weeds tickle and stick at Keith’s ankles. He regrets not wearing jeans, but Pidge had insisted that he’d die of heat stroke before they found the Swamp Ape if he did.

Pidge stops between two of the fence posts. Barbed wire coils between the posts, the “NO TRESPASSING” sign attached to it faded but sturdy. She doesn’t hesitate or turn towards the car. He can’t hold back a grin as she pulls a pair of thick work gloves and her bayard from the side pocket of her backpack and goes, “Care to do the honors?”

“Nah, go for it. I broke the law last time.”

She chuckles, tugs on the gloves, and dispatches the barbed wire with little effort.

“Remind me to fix that on the way out,” she says.

“Fix that on the way out,” he replies.

“You’re *so* helpful.”

With her gloves, she holds the barbed wire back, allowing him to pass. He reaches up and ruffles her hair once he’s safely past the sharp metal.

“I try,” he says.

He walks two or three yards into the forest, then turns when he doesn’t hear Pidge’s footsteps behind him. Rather than the expected look of disgust, she stares at him with an expression that falls somewhere between impish and downright devious.

“You’re forgetting something, Keith,” she says in a singsong voice.

“And what’s that?”

From the bottle holder of her backpack, she yanks out not a bottle of water, but a massive can of bug spray.

“Spray down time.”

Groaning, Keith trudges back to her.

“Repellent?” he asks. “I thought that’s why I had you and your personality here.”

And, as he deserves, Pidge hits him in the pants with a long shot of the wet, citrus-smelling stuff.

…

Their little camp is little more than a blanket laid out on the ground and their backpacks leaned up against the wide trunk of an oak. They’d walked maybe a mile or two from the clearing until Pidge had dubbed them sufficiently far enough from civilization for a Swamp Ape to appear. Settling in, they’d gotten out their individual field notebooks, water, and one of the boxes of cookies. And then, the wait began.

There’s desert hot, and then there’s *this*, and *this* is misery. Oftentimes when Pidge had talked about home, she’d referred to it as “the swamp”, but in the cool expanse of space, it had been hard to imagine. Keith ought to have figured it out as they were flying in, when he’d seen from Red’s viewscreen the long tracts of murky green, but Pidge had been chattering away over their private channel about how great it was going to be to see her family and take him out on a proper cryptid hunt, so it hadn’t really hit him.

The heat doesn’t just swelter, it clings. Walking through a wall of food goo would have been easier and more pleasant than what they’re sitting in now. The lowering sun provides as little relief from the heat as do the pines that stretch above them. If anything, the trees trap the humidity in. Pidge runs a can of soda along her forehead and cheek. The hair from her ponytail that isn’t plastered to her neck curls and frizzes.

A buzzing at his ears tells him that despite all the bug spray, he’s about to become dinner; he swats at the mosquito near his neck and lands a hit. When he pulls his hand away to look, its a mess of sweat, dirt, and a smear of blood. Keith decides then and there that the only good thing to come from Florida is Pidge, and even right now, she’s not earning many points. He should have gone to Disney with Lance, Hunk, and Allura, or stayed in Cape Canaveral and gone bar-hopping with Shiro, Matt, and Coran.

“Why did we have to choose to hunt the Swamp Ape?” he grumbles. “Why couldn’t it have been the Beach Ape, or better yet, the Indoor Air Conditioning Ape?”

“Because those aren’t legendary monsters, those are tourists,” she says. “I know the heat’s shitty, but shut it. All your complaining will scare off the Swamp Ape.”

He’s not sure if he should feel relieved to know from the sting of her words proved the heat was getting to her too, or offended by her jab. Pidge could get downright nasty when the mood struck - her sense of tact and social etiquette were about as refined as his - but most of the time he had the privilege of being the observer, not the recipient.

And maybe she realizes her harshness: a few ticks later, she pulls a chilled soda from her bag and waves it in front of him.

“Cool off?” she asks, as close to an apology as he can expect.

“Yeah, sure.”

She slides the can up his arm, giggling when he jumps at the cold contact on his skin. A trail of goosebumps follows the condensation the can leaves as she rolls it over his shoulder and up his neck.

The next two hours pass easier with Pidge recling on her backpack next to him. They split a beer Keith nicked from Lance; not because either of them were too young to buy their own, but because watching the confused look dawn on Lance's face the next morning as he counted the drinks left and tried to compare it to what he was sure he’d drunk the night before was one of their new favorite things. In low whispers they exchange what they know about their quarry, from the accounts they’d each read about to their own pet theories. There’s an undertone of hope, as if talking about the Swamp Ape might make it appear, but instead the sun sinks below the horizon and the mosquitoes come out in full force.

Keith had the foresight to bring a deck of cards, so they flip on the lantern Pidge packed and run through their options. Egyptian Rat Screw is out of the question - too loud - but they play a few good rounds of Rummy, Crazy Eights, and a game Coran had taught them called Yarbling Yellmore. Pidge then cajoles him into a game of Go Fish, which is unfair when they both know she’s the reigning Go Fish champion back on the Castle.

“Got any… threes?” she asks.

“Go Fish,” he says, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible.

In the fuzzy blue light of the lantern, Keith sees Pidge give him a *look*. Her eyes narrow and she purses her lips.

“You’d better not be lying,” she mutters.

“I’m not. Go Fish.”

“Keith, this isn’t Bullshit, give me your goddamned three.”

She leans in. He resists the impulse to lean back, doing everything in his power to maintain his semblance of innocence.

“I already told you, I don’t have one. Go Fish.”

As if this weren’t the first time this has happened, Keith scrambles back on his butt the moment before Pidge launches herself at him. He keeps his card hand high in the air, out of her reach as she practically crawls over him on all fours.

“You’re such a shit,” Pidge swears, trying to swipe at his cards.

“What happened to being quiet?” he teases. He stretches his arm up even higher.

Of all of the paladins, he’s the shortest second to Pidge, but every bit of extra height counts in carrying on the game of keep-away. Her knee digs into his thigh and her hand is planted on his shoulder as she continues her futile attempts to snatch his cards from him. He tilts his head up to avoid getting a mouthful of green tee-shirt, only to come to close to getting a mouthful of something else. Pidge seems not to have noticed the precarious nature of their position or the red that floods his face. She leans in closer as she tries to leverage all the height she can to reach his cards.

“What happened to h-” Pidge starts, but her voice cuts off with a sharp squeak the moment after a loud rustle comes from the dark forest.

Their heads snap towards the sound. Beyond the circle of the lantern the forest is a patchwork of black and blacker. They both jump as a deafening crack of a tree branch snapped in half echoes around them. Without looking away from the verge of light and shadow, Keith plants his hands on Pidge’s hips to keep her from tumbling on top of him. His cards hit the ground with the faintest flutter. Pidge is too occupied to notice the pair of threes.

“Swamp Ape?” Pidge breathes.

“Dunno.”

The sound of scattering leaves and shaking foliage continues. A chorus of pops and cracks surround them. Pidge tenses under his hands.

“Flashlight?”

“Closest one is in my backpack. Front pocket,” he whispers.

Pidge slides off of him and inches towards his backpack. With aching slowness she undoes the zipper, trying to make as little noise as possible. The unseen source of the rustling nears; Keith can practically taste the tang of his heart in his mouth. Whatever it is, it's almost at the edge of their makeshift camp.

“Gotcha,” Pidge hisses. She stands, Keith's flashlight in hand, and swings the beam of light towards the noise.

Three small, bulbous shapes give off a dull shine in the light. They freeze in the middle of their rooting around in the dirt. Black beady eyes peer out at them. Pidge lets out a long string of expletives that ends in “Quiznaking armadillos.”

Tension drains from Keith's body, and he falls back on the blanket. He needs a minute to get the painful pounding of his heart back to a healthy tempo. He hears Pidge stomp around and kick up leaves and twigs to chase the small creatures away; the rustling they make as they scamper back into the forest isn’t even as close to as loud as it had seemed before.

Pidge collapses on the blanket next to him with a huff. They look at one another, and burst into laughter.

...

“We’re goinna give it thirty more minutes,” Keith insists, “and then call it quits. If the Swamp Ape doesn’t show up before then, it gets to keep its ‘Elusive’ status.”

The protest Pidge offers is garbled, drowsy.

“Beg pardon?” he says.

She shifts a little to look up at him, but her head remains planted on his shoulder. Her eyelashes flutter as she fights oncoming sleep.

“But I wanted you to have the coolest cryptid hunt ever,” Pidge whines. “Instead all we’ve had swampy weather and some stupid armadillos.”

Keith eyes the watch on his wrist. After having gotten used to the ticker he wore while in space, it takes him a moment to interpret. It’s already past midnight, and they’ve got a two hour drive back to Pidge’s house that Keith suspects he’ll be in charge of. He runs a hand over her hair, consoling.

“I’m having fun,” he says. “Swamp Ape or no Swamp Ape. What else do you think I’d want to be doing? Spending my Spring Break keeping Coran and Matt from starting bar fights? Spinning around in some silly bowls at an overpriced circus until I puked?”

Pidge chuckles, and scoots closer. She adjusts until it seems she’s found a more comfortable position leaning against him.

“One,” she starts, “don’t pretend like you wouldn’t be the first to start a bar fight.” Keith shrugs the best he can without disturbing her. “And two, don’t knock the teacups ‘til you’ve tried them. Outside of the mindlessly long lines the Disney Corporation uses to optimize harnessing of human soul energy, the parks are pretty great.”

“The only way any of that could be more entertaining than what we’re doing is if the bar fight was at Disney.”

They continue chatting, doing their best to keep the other awake for the final half hour of their quest. While not as oppressive as earlier, the air is still on the warm side, and between that and the lullaby-strains of frog song and insect hum, Keith knows he’s fighting a losing battle. He can see a pocket of stars through a break in the trees above, and decides he likes how pleasantly surreal it feels to be with Pidge looking up at the stars instead of down. His fingers absently toy with the end of her ponytail as they talk.

Ten minutes remain in their hunt when it happens.

It starts with the frogs. Pidge is the first to notice. She sits up.

“Hear that?” she whispers.

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

The forest is cloaked in odd silence. Keith feels very, very awake.

They sit in absolute stillness, and are rewarded a few seconds later by a long, deep howling sound. It’s too far off for Keith to figure out what direction it’s coming from, but it won’t be that way for long: it’s getting louder.

When he’d imagined the Swamp Ape, he hadn’t imagined the terrible crush of underbrush like thunder rising from the earth, hadn’t imagined the inhuman, reverberating roar, unlike anything he’s ever heard before. Blurry images of a tall, loping figure flash through his mind. All reports indicated it was fast, powerful. His paladin armor would be a blessing right about now.

Pidge grabs his hand and squeezes hard. She’s gone pale, and it’s clear the same thoughts are crossing her mind. Blindly, she fumbles for her backpack and feels around until she finds her bayard.

“Keith, if we die here,” she says, voice low and serious, “I want you to know that there’s no one else in the world I’d want to go cryptid hunting with and that I’d been hoping we could do that kind of stuff together for the rest of our lives, Voltron or no.”

Something pings in his brain at her words, something some part of him feels like he would be paying a lot more attention to if the angry bellowing of a charging creature weren’t headed straight for them. He stands, muscles tensing.

“We’re not going to die, Pidge,” he snaps. “We’re both trained warriors with space weapons going up against a big monkey.”

“Okay, well, yeah,” she says as she stands up, “but the adrenaline’s talking now and I don’t have a good brain-to-mouth filter under normal circumstances and monkeys and apes aren’t the same thing.”

Whatever beast is out there isn’t slowing down. Keith estimates they have maybe another twenty seconds before it reaches their camp.

Pidge and Keith turn to each other as one. And maybe the adrenaline has hit his bloodstream, or maybe her words catch up with him, or maybe this was going to happen the entire time and both of them were too wrapped up in the hunt to even notice, but it happens now: Keith slings his free arm around her waist and Pidge grabs his shoulder and their teeth click painfully as their lips collide once, twice, three times. He tastes peanut butter and mint gum when his tongue slides into her mouth. A soft whine rises from the back of her throat when they part for air, a sound he mimics when she sucks his bottom lip between her teeth a moment later. The roaring in his ears is either his heart or the Swamp Ape less than ten feet away, probably both.

Hand on his blade, he pulls away from her and turns to the source of the roar. Every muscle tenses, each nerve fires off with the command to defend: now that he's kissed Pidge, he's not about to let either of them get mauled by Redneck Sasquatch. Next to him, Pidge crouches low. Her bayard sparks to life, glow illuminating flushed cheeks and kiss-plush lips.

They’re hit with a bright blast of light. Keith throws up his arm but it’s too late, and he’s blinded. He holds his defensive stance and tries to blink his vision back.

“What the hell are ya’ll doin’ out here? This is my private property!”

As his eyes adjust to the light, it clarifies into two points - headlights. A loud motor revs and growls. Keith can just make out the darker outline of what looks like a 4-wheeler with a man atop it. He can’t see the expression on the man’s face, but the anger in his shout and the slender shadow of a shotgun make his facial features pretty unnecessary.

Pidge gets her words back first, but he swears he hears a slight twang to her voice that, should they make it out of this alive, he was definitely going to tease her for.

“Sir, we are so sorry, we did not mean any harm, you see, it’s just that we were out here lookin’ for, ah, uh…”

The man gives a contemptuous snort. “Lookin’ for what? Ain’t nothin’ but pine and cattle for a’hunnerd acres.” He turns his head towards Keith. “Nah, the only thing ya’ll’re lookin’ for was a real private place. Thinkin’ you could get some all the way out in the woods, huh boy?”

Keith tries to stammer out some sort of response, but he’s completely blindsided. He looks from the rancher, to the wrinkled blanket below his feet, to Pidge, wild hair mussed from a long night of humidity. It does look a lot like what the rancher was suggesting.

“No, that’s not-” Keith starts. “We weren’t doing anything!” He clenches his fists to keep himself from reaching for his knife. He’s been launched from one potential fight into another, and his body is still ready to go. Reason tells him that the last thing he needs to do is beat up some stranger in the deep woods of Florida, but instinct doesn’t like the way the man is staring the two of them down.

“We were looking for the Swamp Ape!” Pidge shouts.

Just like before, the entire forest goes quiet. Even the thrum of the 4-wheeler’s motor seems muted.

“The what?”

“The Swamp Ape,” Pidge repeats, sounding defensive.

A bark of laughter echoes around them. The rancher lowers his gun.

“Where you two from?” he asks.

“Cape Canaveral,” she says.

“You two came all the way out here from Canaveral lookin’ for that damn ape?” The man hoots and dissolves into great gasping bouts of laughter.

Keith takes a breath, stance relaxing. They were going to be all right. He sees Pidge deactivate her bayard.

“Yes Sir, we did.”

It takes three or four more staggering breaths before the man can speak again. “Girl, there ain’t been a sightin’ this far north in years. You gotta go down to the Everglades if you wanna catch a whiff a’ him.”

Pidge visibly deflates, shoulders sagging. The expression on her face as she turns to Keith is pure apology. He shrugs.

The rancher lets them pack up their things and escorts them back to the property line. He watches with an appreciative eye as Pidge uses her bayard to mend the cut barbed wire, then issues about as stern of a warning as he can muster.

“I figure ya’ll wastin’ your time out here for nothin’ is punishment enough.”

…

The drive back is quiet. Despite the chug of the A/C, the air feels thick. Keith stares out the window, but sneaks glances at Pidge when he thinks her attention is fixed on the road. He’d kissed her. She’d kissed him. Somehow, that discovery feels more monumental than 1,000 confirmed conspiracy theories.

He takes another chance at a glance, and finds her looking at him.

“I’d understand if you don’t want to go on anymore cryptid hunts,” she says in a quiet voice. “This was a total bust.”

He swallows hard and reaches out to fiddle with the air vent. It’s suddenly hotter than an afternoon in July. He shakes his head.

“I thought you said you wanted to do this kind of stuff together forever. I was starting to get pretty set on the idea.”

Pidge’s smile is soft. Keith assembles every last bit of courage that hasn’t been drained from the night’s events, and leans over to take the hand resting in her lap. Her fingers curl around his.

“You’re by far the best thing to come out of Florida,” he says.

If she thinks she can cover up how wide her eyes get, or the color that rushes to her cheeks with a sarcastic sounding, “Keith Kogane, that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,” well, she’s wrong.

She holds his hand the rest of the drive home, not even letting go when she has to swerve around a pack of armadillos crossing the middle of the road.

…

3 AM has come and gone by the time Pidge navigates the car into the driveway. The Holt family home is dark but for a single stove top light in the kitchen, which allows Matt, the only one still awake, to give them a once-over. He sets aside the jar of peanut butter and spoon in hand and lets out a low whistle.

“No luck, huh?” he says.

Keith feels the mirth radiating from Matt as he takes in their matching sweat-drenched clothes and mud-flaked faces. He circles the kitchen island and plucks a small twig out of Pidge's hair.

“Three armadillos, an annoyed rancher, and a flock of mosquitoes,” Pidge mumbles.

“Not exactly the monsters you were looking for, then,” Matt says. “You’da had better luck coming out to the bar with me and Shiro and Coran. We ran into something inhuman tonight - dunno what it was, but Coran swore up and down that it wasn't an alien.”

Matt launches into a descriptive but somewhat slurred story about, from what Keith could gather in between the large clumps of peanut butter Matt starts eating again, Coran’s close encounter of the Texan kind. Keith's too tired to protest or be offended at Matt's descriptions of the tourist.

Keith and Pidge yawn in unison. He can feel sleep creeping up on him, and if he doesn’t go upstairs and shower soon, he’s going to fall asleep in the middle of the kitchen, coated in a thick layer of sweat and bug spray.

“Eh, well, you’ll have better luck next time,” Matt says. He tries to twirl his peanut butter spoon between his fingers, but it drops with a loud clunk. His eyes narrow as he shoots the spoon an accusing glare, then shrugs and scoops out some peanut butter with his finger instead.

“But just think,” Matt continues. “Maybe the real cryptid was the friends you made along the way”

Pidge glances at Keith. She bites her bottom lip, then looks away. Keith feels warm again. He, too, suddenly finds it hard to look at her.

Matt laughs. He looks like he’s about to pat Keith on the back, but reconsiders a moment later. Keith is pretty sure the stench coming from him and Pidge is potent enough to put the Swamp Ape to shame.

“I call first dibs on the shower,” Pidge announces.

She wraps his hand in hers and gives it a quick squeeze, then hurries upstairs before he can protest her shower dibs. He watches her climb up until she’s out of sight.

When Keith turns back, he meets Matt’s piercing stare. For all that Matt had been acting like he’d had a bit too much at the bars that night, the look he gives Keith now is both sober and sobering.

“Any theories on why you guys didn’t manage to find the Swamp Ape?” he asks. “Maybe a little too occupied with something else?”

After everything Keith has faced that night - mosquitoes, wild armadillos, unpredictable property owners - nothing chills his blood so much as the very Big Brother expression on Matt’s face.

“Apparently we were too far north for a good sighting,” Keith says quickly, “and if we wanted to actually track it down we’d have to go to the Everglades.”

“Next time, then,” Matt says. Keith shivers.

“Yeah, hopefully.”

“Maybe I’ll come along.”

“Yeah, sure thing, definitely,” Keith hedges. “Well, I’m exhausted soooo I’m just going to go upstairs now.”

Matt wishes him a ‘good night’ that sounds a lot like ‘I’d better not catch you doing anything with my sister’. Keith does his best to walk upstairs in a calm, collected manner. He’s so focused on avoiding a premature death that he nearly jumps out of his skin when Pidge swings up the door to her room and steps into the hallway.

She’s bundled in a towel, pajamas in hand, and her hair cascades down across her bare shoulders. All thoughts of Matt and dying vacate.

“I’m going to hop in the shower,” she says quietly.

“Don’t take too long. The only cryptid rarer than a Clean Pidge is a Pidge Shower that’s less than 45 minutes.”

Rolling her eyes, Pidge leans in and presses a light kiss on his lips.

“You’re lucky that Blushing Keith is my favorite cryptid,” she shoots back.

Stunned, he doesn’t manage his reply until she’s almost shut the bathroom door behind her.

“Well, you’re mine!” he says.

Keith counts it as a success when he hears a soft yelp and a drawn out “Stoooooop,” from the other side of the door.

#kidge #kidgefic #keith x pidge #keith kogane #pidge gunderson #Katie Holt #florida #vld #my fic #vld fic #kidge fic #fluff #cryptids #swamp ape #real florida #kissing #bonding #my writing

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