#By keeping the spiral entirely internal or at worst in front of people who are not them | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gleamglows · 3 years

Note

How about Sirius finding out the reader has a crush on him...and gives her her first kiss? 😘

cigarettes and firewhisky

pairing: sirius/reader

word count: 2.4k

summary: amortentia is no fun to make when you’re partnered up with the person you know it’s going to end up smelling like.

content: fluff, me being bad at writing slughorn, very brief mention of sirius’s family issues, confessions in an empty classroom, kissing but nothing spicy (edit: rereading this i realized i made the reader pretty gender neutral! no pronouns or anything like that :)

you know i had to pull the amortentia trope. this was a cute request, thank you so much! also thank you to my anons who sent in what they thought sirius smelled like, you guys were a lot of help! (except the person who suggested that sirius smells like wet dog. you know who you are.)

This was the worst thing that could possibly happen to you. Surely some higher power was laughing at you from above, taunting you and your dreadful luck.

Your heart was beating a million miles a minute. How on earth did you end up being paired up with Sirius Black of all people?! And - even worse - making the worst potion ever concocted?!

If you weren’t in public you’re sure you’d be letting out a crazed laugh out of pure mania.

So far you’ve been able to dodge all of his attempts at conversation, quickly sending him off to find another ingredient as soon as he got too chatty. You’d hardly made any eye contact at all, and any time he handed you something you were careful not to have his fingertips even slightly graze your own.

In truth, you’ve had an enormous crush on Sirius Black since third year, and it had only gotten worse as the years went by. This meant that by now, you had become a bit of an expert at avoiding him at all costs.

But now it was all ruined. Years of hard work spiraling down the drain all because of fucking Amortentia.

Why couldn’t it have been a simple calming draught? Or a shrinking solution? Hell, you would’ve even preferred to make Slughorn his lunch!

And it’s not as if you can sabotage the potion, either! That would mean Sirius’s grade suffering too. You just couldn’t bring yourself to do it.

There was no way out but to lie about what the potion smells of if he asks. Simple! That way no one finds out - more importantly, that way Sirius doesn’t find out - about your silly little crush. Foolproof. Genius. Inspired-!

“Do you like me?”

“What?!” You jolt as panic overtakes you, snapping your head up to meet Sirius’s eyes.

“Do you like me?” he repeats, smiling slightly. “I can’t help but feel like you hate me, seeing as you haven’t looked at me or talked to me at all.”

Internally, you breathe out a sigh of relief, glad you had misinterpreted the question.

“No! I-” Your voice is much too high, you stop to clear your throat. “I do! I do like you, I um... Sorry! I promise I don’t hate you, I guess I’m just... shy.” You finish your blabbering by looking away, pretending to inspect the fire below your cauldron.

When you raise your gaze again Sirius is still looking at you - observing you as if you’re an interesting puzzle that he can’t quite figure out.

“Um!” you quickly turn your attention to the potion, hoping he does the same. “Nearly done, right? Here.” You hold out the wooden spoon for him to take. “Five more clockwise stirs.”

He looks at the spoon but then folds his hands behind his back. “You do it,” he offers instead.

You purse your lips but nod anyway, bringing the wood up to the cauldron’s opening. The pearlescent liquid shifts under the spoon as it touches the surface, and once it’s fully submerged you take a deep breath and start stirring.

One... Two... Three... Four...

As soon as you finish the fifth stir your nose is assaulted by a suffocating aroma of cigarettes and firewhisky. You quickly step back, coughing and tossing the spoon on the table, but the scent follows you.

That doesn’t smell very appealing! Had you done something wrong? You could have sworn you’d followed the recipe exactly!

But then suddenly the scent changes, rapidly becoming much more welcoming. Cigarettes and firewhisky quickly turns into the undertone to something different... Cinnamon shampoo? But also... cologne, and... You could also catch the faint whiff of a brand new leather jacket.

“I think...” you start, eyes trained on the potion that now has delicate tendrils of steam coming off its surface. “I think we did it.” You laugh a bit in astonishment, proud of the fact that you’d managed to make such an advanced potion.

When you turn your head Sirius is looking at you again, in that infuriating way with his gorgeous eyes and stupid grin. You desperately want to look away but just can’t bring yourself to do so.

“How can you tell?” he asks quietly, and you suddenly feel everything else in the room slip away until it’s just him in front of you.

“I... It-”

“What’s it smell like?”

His low voice puts you in such a trance that for a moment you think you’re about to tell him the truth, but you quickly remember what you’d decided on earlier. Lie.

“Ban-” Bananas? No! “Bal-” Balloons? What would that even mean?! “Bu... bblegum. Bubblegum.” You finally land on, and then give a minuscule wince.

Bubblegum?! Although, you suppose it’s better than balloons...

“Bubblegum?” Sirius repeats, brows furrowed.

“Yep! And is that...? Oh! Firewood!” you continue, pulling lies out of thin air. Sirius’s furrowed brows fade away, and an amused smile starts to form on his features instead.

“And, um... And sun cream! Huh, weird.”

“Bubblegum, firewood, and sun cream?” Sirius lists, as if needing clarification from you.

“Well, I-”

“And look what we have here!” Professor Slughorn’s booming voice is suddenly feet away from the two of you, standing right beside your cauldron. “I do believe we have our first finished brew of Amortentia! Although I can’t say I’m surprised, Mr. Black,” Slughorn beams, giving Sirius a knowing look.

Sirius just shuffles awkwardly.

If Slughorn notices Sirius’s discomfort, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he continues, “You know, your father was an exceptional potion maker. Very talented indeed, and you and your brother seem to be following in his footsteps! Although I must say, young Regulus has been a bit unfocused lately, he-”

“Uh, professor?” you speak up when Sirius flinches at his brother’s name.

Slughorn blinks and then looks at you as if he’s just noticed you were there. “Oh- Yes?”

“So... The potion? Did we do it right?”

“Oh, yes, yes, of course! Full marks!” He waves you off, as if you were being silly for even asking. “And ten points for each of you!” he adds for good measure before strolling off, most likely to go torment some other student with a famous surname.

After that, Sirius doesn’t much seem to be up for talking anymore. He focuses all his attention on cleaning up your station, closing up jars of rose petals and pearl dust. You follow his lead, albeit a bit sluggishly.

A few minutes ago you would’ve been okay with Sirius’s silence - happy, even, if it meant you didn’t have to deal with your little crush. But now you would give anything to have him cheerful and smiling again - even if he looked at you with those annoyingly pretty eyes.

Once class is over you’re quick to duck out of the room, desperately wanting to leave Slughorn and Amortentia and the smell of cigarettes and firewhisky behind you.

It’s all over now, everything went according to plan and you can finally go back to doing what you do best. Secretly pining after Sirius Black from a distance.

It’s safe. It’s what you’re good at.

You’re just about ready to forget about this day entirely when you hear a familiar voice calling your name.

...Maybe you were hearing things.

You speed up your steps but then he calls your name again and you’re forced to slow down, waiting for him to catch up. When he does he gives you another winning smile and your heart does a flip.

“Hey, listen,” he starts, and you listen intently. “Sorry about uh... Just... Thanks.”

You’re a bit taken aback. You’re not sure what you were expecting, but it certainly wasn’t a ‘thank you’.

“I... For what?” you ask, genuinely perplexed, but trying not to sound rude.

“Getting Slughorn to leave,” he clarifies with a grin. “He’s always been the same... I’ve been dealing with that for seven years now.”

There’s laughter in his voice but you can tell it’s a bit frayed at the edges. He’s clearly trying - and failing - to play it off as no big deal.

“Sorry,” you offer lamely. “That doesn’t sound fun.”

It really doesn’t.

You don’t know much about Sirius’s family, but you know enough to understand that he probably doesn’t like to be constantly reminded of them. Sharing their last name and seeing his brother in the halls was probably more than enough.

“It’s fine. And, I didn’t just want to thank you,” he says quickly, realizing that the conversation had gotten gloomy.

“Oh?” you voice with a bit of a nervous smile.

“I wanted to ask what it smelled like. The Amortentia.”

There goes your heart again. A million miles a minute.

“What do you mean?” you ask, laughing a bit. “I told you. Bubblegum and um...”

Shoot! What were the other two?!

“Firewood and sun cream?” Sirius prompts, and you nod frantically.

“Yep! That was it!” you’re quick to blurt out. Unconsciously, you pick up your pace, now traveling at a slight speed walk.

Sirius keeps up easily. “But you’re lying,” he accuses, pointing a finger at you, and you swear you start to sweat. “You started coughing when you finished stirring. What did you smell then?”

“I-! Well-! The bubblegum was very pungent, and I-”

“And it looked to me like you were just naming anything that came to your head. Were you about to say balloons at one point?”

“You know, I don’t appreciate being interrogated like this, and quite frankly I- woah!”

You suddenly find that you’re being pulled somewhere by the elbow, and only when you hear a door close behind you do you realize that Sirius has dragged you into an empty classroom. You don’t even have time to take in your surroundings, because Sirius is asking you again:

“So what did you smell?”

You consider lying again, but he’s staring at you with his big, pretty eyes, just waiting for you to tell the truth and all of a sudden you really, really want to.

You thought - you really thought - that you would be content to just go back to crushing on him from a safe distance, but then the Amortentia had happened and he had looked at you different. He was looking at you differently even now - eyes glittering, listening attentively for your answer. And suddenly pining from a distance doesn’t seem so appealing.

You groan in frustration, bringing both of your hands up to cover your face. You just can’t believe what this boy is doing to you.

“It’s so stupid,” you admit, feeling your cheeks head up beneath your palms.

“It’s not,” he assures you, gently wrapping both his hands around each of your wrists, silently asking you to stop covering your face.

You shake you head. “It is, and if you’re asking then you already know.”

“So humor me.”

You abruptly drop your hands to look up at him and, woah - had he always been that close? He’d definitely gotten a bit closer since you’d closed your eyes.

You let out a shaky breath. “Cigarette smoke... Firewhisky...” you trail off. You mean to keep going, but decide to wait for Sirius’s initial reaction first.

Sirius blinks. “Gross,” he says after a beat, and it startles a laugh out of you.

“Yeah, a bit. I thought we messed it up, but then... Um, it changed.”

You search his features for any signs of discomfort, but find none. In fact, Sirius seems to be basking in every word you tell him.

So you keep going, very quietly, “Cologne and...” Without thinking you bring a hand up to rest delicately on his shoulder. “Leather and... Cinnamon...”

You hand moves of it’s own volition, resting on the junction of Sirius’s shoulder and neck and you stare dazedly at it for a moment. You blink and then realize what you’re doing.

You pull your hand away as if you’ve been burned. “Sorry, I-”

But then Sirius is leaning forward fast and - Merlin, was he about to kiss you?!

You panic for a moment, knowing you have to think quick. Your hand darts up again, this time landing on his collarbone, putting your palm flat up against him and pressing firmly, willing him to stop.

He gets the message and quickly pulls back. “I’m sorry-”

“No!” you blurt out so fast that it sounds more like a squeak. “No, no, it’s not that I don’t... I mean I want to, I do I just...” You screw your eyes shut. “I’ve never kissed anyone.”

“Fuck,” Sirius lets out a laugh.

Your heart sinks as you open your eyes. Was he laughing at you?

“Sorry, I’m not laughing at you,” he clarifies quick, as if reading your mind. “For a second I thought the Amortentia was a big coincidence and you didn’t like me at all.” he smiles, and you realize his laugh was a laugh of relief.

“No! I-!” You groan again and lean against the closed door. Was it confession day or something?! “No, I’ve... I’ve liked you since third year.”

“What about first and second?” he fires back quick, grinning stupidly.

You don’t miss a beat. “I was scared of you, then. You were too loud.”

He barks out a laugh and you suddenly feel the urge to look away, feeling as if you’re intruding. And then you remember you’re not. It’s just you and Sirius here. So many times you’d seen that laugh from a distance, across a crowded Great Hall but now it was just for you.

Sirius speaks up once his laughter dies down. “Look, you don’t have to-”

“No, I want to-”

“I don’t wanna make you uncomfortable-”

“You haven’t! I just-”

“We can just go to class-”

“Sirius!” you say sharply, and he looks at you with wide eyes. “Kiss me. Please,” you say with a laugh, wanting him to shut up already.

He grins and then wastes no time in leaning forward, taking your face in his hands and pressing his lips to yours. You smell it again - cinnamon shampoo, cologne, new leather, and - very faintly - cigarettes and firewhisky.

You melt into the kiss, bringing you hands up to rest at the nape of his neck, idly playing with the strands of hair you find. It’s awkward at first, but you try your best to relax into it, following Sirius’s lead and just doing whatever comes naturally.

He pulls away and you slowly blink your eyes back open, willing yourself out of the trance Sirius’s lips had just put you in.

“Fast learner,” he whispers, smiling, and you laugh.

“We should get to class...” you suggest halfheartedly, not stepping away or making any move to leave.

“Yeah,” Sirius agrees, tucking a strand of your hair behind your ear. “Probably...”

You both look at each other for a few beats, but then you each break into a smile.

And he kisses you again.

taglist <3 // @isxfisticated @l-adysansa @tomshollandz

#requests #sirius black fluff #sirius black x reader #sirius black

358 notes · View notes

assemble-revengers · 3 years

Text

Nexus Split

**Contains spoilers for Loki**

Pairing: Loki x Reader

Word Count: 2203

Prompt: “Why does it sound like you’re saying goodbye?”

Author’s Note: I woke up and chose violence today.

Time was hard to grasp before this whole mess began, but it at least had some structure regardless of how ethereal it seemed. There was structure and a time and place and you just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time so it seemed when you also made a move to snatch up the Tesseract the second you saw Loki move in New York. That’s how you got into this mess and honestly there were many things you had regretted initially. For instance, why couldn’t you have minded your own business?

Well, if you had you wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet Loki, and at the moment? That felt worth more than anything. It hadn’t started that way -- the two of you were practically at each other’s throats and when you weren’t bickering between each other you were being confused by the politics of the TVA and time in general.

In a wild turn of events you became an unpaid intern all over again. You supposed it was better than dying or “being pruned”. You still were confused as ever by the lingo and even though you had tried your best to pay attention to the onboarding process, but frankly you were still wrapping your head around the prospect of the TVA in general. How had no one even considered this being a possibility? Where did these people come from? It seemed that it just...was? But if that was the case, why was there an onboarding process?

Miss Minutes was terrifying -- she was just so...eerie and popped up randomly and honestly you just wanted a nap. Or to wake up from this bizarre dream.

The worst part was the notion of running into other variants, namely the fact that a variant that had been targeting members of the TVA happened to be a Loki-variant.

“Wonderful,” you retorted, interrupting Mobius with disdain, “There’s another one of him.”

The aforementioned god was sitting across a table from you and you weren’t entirely sure how he was taking the whole thing. According to him, the tesseract was useless here. A paper weight. Another beyond weird thing that the TVA brought.

“We should team up,” a voice interrupted your spacing out and it took you a moment to realize that the voice belonged to Loki. And he was talking to you.

You blinked a few times incredulously, “You have been nothing but cruel to me since we met. Why would I ever help you?” Honestly, the audacity of men.

“I am sorry about that, by the way,” he answered, “I was going through something.”

You couldn’t help the laugh you let out, covering your mouth immediately to try to mute the sound and avoid any more attention. “Aw, that makes it all better.”

There was no reason to hide your sarcasm, and he knew that. You could tell from the way he blanched for a moment before resuming his composure, obviously trying to turn on some godly charm or something onto you, “I was. I truly am sorry.”

“Loki, you stole the Tesseract, tried to take over the world and brought a bunch of crazy alien things into New York City,” you listed, counting off the things on your fingers, “And now because you went after the stupid Tesseract again, with a room full of Avengers I might add, I cannot return to my life which wasn’t that impressive, but at this moment? I kind of miss it. So, no, I don’t accept your apology.” He was silent after that and you went back to your mind palace spiraling about the logistics of what was happening to you.

It was not a great day for you. Week? Hour? Time was weird. It was even more weird when you were suddenly having to do research into the Loki-variant-assassin. Going through files and files of different instances in time was tedious. It was interesting in that some of the things had already happened, were going to happen, and were happening in places you had never even heard of. It was during this that you and Loki had begun to work more collaboratively.

In fact, the moment you guys had made the connection that it was apocalypses? You taught the god of mischief the importance of a high five. Or rather, never leaving someone hanging because you chased him down, yelling at him until he returned the high five before you even allowed him to present your findings to Mobius. The bond continued when you both were treated like unhinged criminals or starved, ravenous animals by pretty much everyone other than Mobius who was...friendly as ever.

You did not have a lot of options in terms of trust. While Mobius seemed genuine, there was no way you could possibly know. The issue was that the only thing that was any level of normal in your eyes was Loki which was...laughable, but he was from your timeline. The two of you were in this together sort of because at this point you wanted to go home and it seemed he did too after the whole semantics of this whole thing. Or maybe he wanted to take over the TVA. Regardless, it gave you some hope that he might be kind and put you into your timeline where you belong.

The feelings came out of nowhere. In fact, you hadn’t even realized it happened until there was a chance for you both to chase after the Loki-variant (or Sylvie as you would learn later) and before Loki went through the portal, he reached a hand out for you, Mobius yelling and you found your feet moving on their own accord, turning to mouth ‘Sorry’ to Mobius before grabbing Loki’s hand and rushing through the portal.

Sylvie was interesting and endearing and was someone you instantly found yourself drawn to. You felt sympathetic to her story, and maybe that was dangerous. Dangerous, but gave you another sliver of hope despite the fact things were bleak. Very bleak. Being on Lamentis-1 about to explode and everyone die bleak. Despite this, the two of you sat and chatted in your booth at the bar while Loki got absolutely hammered and even began to softly serenade you in what you assumed was Asgardian (this was after he sung to the whole room) and you found yourself pulling him back down to the chairs and pulling him into a hug while you laughed.

“Loki, I have no idea what you’re saying,” you giggled, pulling away from him, “But I think you’ve had enough.”

“Darling, I think I’m just getting started,” he answered with the smoothness of butter on a hot pancake. You couldn’t help the burning of your ears and the rest of the blush that began to dance across your features. Sylvie coughed. Moment interrupted (Thankfully? You don’t know). Back to the business of the world ending and no way out. Maybe that’s what let all of you decide to unload tales of the past. Yours was boring and...uneventful comparatively which led you to remain relatively quiet as both Loki and Sylvie talked.

Hearing all of Sylvie’s plight and what brought her to that moment had both you and Loki feeling empathetic. You felt anger that this whole this was allowed and deemed ‘okay’ by the TVA. An entity that really had no checks and balances as far as you could see. You pretended to ignore Sylvie and Loki bonding. You felt your stomach tighten. Envy was ugly and green really was never your color.

But that triggered the TVA rolling up and taking the three of you back. You weren’t sure what you were expecting. You weren’t expecting yourself to start fighting. Your restraints, the situation, the fact you were separated from Sylvie and more importantly Loki. You were utterly alone in your cell, screaming for them to let you out. The person interrogating you entered, tried asking you questions that you just couldn’t hear. Your head was swimming and it was almost as if you were hearing things like you were underwater. Fight or flight and apparently your entire being chose to fight.

Per someone’s orders you were moved, you lit up the moment you saw Loki and soon you were joined by Sylvie. Your restraints were removed and your eyes began watering as you rushed to Loki’s side, grabbing his hand as he gave yours a reassuring squeeze, moving so that he was shielding you from the front. The next thing you knew and before you had a moment to process, Mobius was pruned in front of you and Loki moved to shield you further.

Surprisingly, you were not entirely useless in the fight that ensued, but couldn’t help but feel entirely out of your element. The closest you had ever been to being in a fight in the past was when you were five and some girl stole your crayons and had the nerve to try to eat them.

Your adrenaline was pumping when you turned to Loki a feeling like being shocked by a plug while also being burned by a pan that had been on the stove. You were confused, Loki was yelling something. You couldn’t hear. You reach for him, desperate to calm him down or maybe it was because you subconsciously knew what was happening and you were terrified. The hot, electric feeling spread across your body before what felt like you were dropped in ice cold water and suddenly...your eyes blinked awake. You weren’t at the TVA.

Instead, you found yourself on the run (you hated yourself for missing out on all that gym time because your cardio could use some work) from a cloud that ate things. You would learn that you were in The Void, the evil vacuum of the cloud was called Alioth, and that there were even more Loki variants. One was an alligator. He was your favorite.

Your Loki also turned up and you practically threw yourself into his arms in relief, “I thought I lost you, you idiot.”

“I could say the same to you, pet,” he responded, murmuring into the crook of your shoulder. Reunions had to be cut short after you introduced the other variants, (“And this Loki is an alligator! How cool is that! He’s my favorite of all of you, no offense.”) and now you were seeking shelter to hide from Alioth and...well survive you supposed.

President Loki and the other Lokis were...a lot. In fact, there were so many Lokis that you were beginning to get a tension headache trying to keep up with everything that was going on. Some of them seemed to recognize you, including President Loki that informed you that you were late and with the wrong people (“No? I don’t even know who you are?” “You will.”)

Reuniting with Sylvie and Mobius brought even more relief. Sylvie seemed to think she could enchant the Alioth. You protested quite a bit before she was able to convince you otherwise. There was a way out. You had a chance to go back to the TVA and sort things with Mobius. Maybe go back to where you belong. Maybe stay. You weren’t sure, but it seemed Loki, your-Loki was hesitating.

Mobius was opening the portal behind you to the TVA. You stood with your hand firmly within Loki’s, fingers interlaced as you bid Sylvie a small, quiet ‘good luck, you’ve got this’. You and Loki were right by the portal, a sliver from stepping in before Loki stops, pulling you so that you two were facing each other, your back to the portal.

“What’s wrong?” you ask concerned.

“I’m staying,” Loki affirms, “To help Sylvie, to...do this.”

“Okay,” you lament. You were staying too. You tried to move to leave the portal Loki gave Mobius a heartfelt hug, which ended up being a group hug since Loki wouldn’t let go of you. In fact, as soon as Mobius was released from the hug, you were engulfed into Loki’s arms where you practically melted. The hug ended far too soon, but Loki didn’t release you, holding your face in his hands as he pressed his forehead to yours. It made your heart warm and peace washed over you.

“Loki…” you sigh, feeling an entire lifetime of emotions flooding your system, “I…”

“Shh,” he cuts you off, “I know. I feel the same...but I can’t bear to hear it.”

“Why does it sound like you’re saying goodbye?” You inquire, voice cracking. You felt frozen in place as panic began to bubble up under your skin.

“Because you’re not staying with me,” he murmurs weakly, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead, “I love you, Y/N. Remember that, please.”

Before you could respond, you were shoved by a great force. You couldn’t even react as your grip was easily broken, your sense of balance knocked out from under you. Mobius had already stepped through the portal...surely it wasn’t still up? You landed on the ground, having been knocked off your feet, but you were no longer in the void.

You felt your heart shattering. You couldn’t even cry. He was gone.

#loki x you #mcu loki #loki x reader #loki x y/n #mcu x you #mcu imagine #mcu x reader

51 notes · View notes

astaroth1357 · 4 years

Text

Catharsis (A Satan x GN MC Fanfic)

As it would turn out, moving is hell, and tensions are high in my house for the moment... I can't work up enough of a playful mood to look at my other WIPs right now, so here's another episode of "I'm Moody and Need to Work Through Some Stuff... w/ Jazzy." Funny enough, I wrote this while listening to Kartharsis (yes with a K) by TK from Ling tosite sigure (yes the Unravel guy).

Warning: Angst, Verbal Abuse

Catharsis: the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions

Satan could never claim to have the healthiest anger management strategies… To some extent, it's not exactly his fault. He's a being born from rage itself and for most of his life, it's tinted his every thought… Even after cooling down some, his temper remained exceedingly short. And worst of all, his wrath could burn looong… If given a chance, he could stay mad for days unless given some kind of release…

His brothers usually knew to steer clear if getting Satan that pissed. The only surefire way they had of calming him down was to let him destroy something and that wasn't doing all that great for the House's walls… But brothers do what brothers do. There will probably always be a day where they're bickering or fighting with each other… which means that Satan could never be off the hook entirely...

The person who actually got his nerves this time was Belphie. The co-members of the Formerly Anti-Lucifer League don't butt heads very often, but it's bound to happen occasionally… Particularly when Lucifer was concerned. Belphie had promised to get Satan a book he needed for a curse the two of them had been scheming for months. It was supposed to be so intricate and difficult to undo that it'd have the eldest struggling for weeks… Unfortunately, Belphegor had decided to sleep in on the day he was supposed to bring it... This made Satan miss a crucial time window to put the finishing touch on their curse. They'd have to wait another century for the planets to align again…

To say that Satan was irritated would only be the start… truthfully, he was furious. Days of effort and planning went to waste because his lazy brother couldn't be bothered to get out of bed! Perhaps even more unfortunate, though, was that Belphie wasn't one to take someone else's anger lying down… He may be lazy, but he had wit far beyond his rank and venom to match it in equal measure... All fights between these two were like verbal pit matches, a vicious dance of jabs and insults until one of them finally throws a punch or someone else steps in to break it up...

Today's unlucky contestant was Beel, who hollered at them loud enough to shake the walls... Satan knew that Belphie was more than happy to leave the situation as it was… The lazy bastard could always hide in the attic and sleep away his problems… but it wasn't that easy for Satan. His anger doesn't just "go away" like everyone else’s... Sure, he may appear to simmer down.. but it lingers. It festers. And he hates it…

He hates being mad… There's nothing pleasant about anger. Breaking people under your feet in righteous fury? Well, there's some fun in that. But just being angry with nothing to do about it...? Whoever asks for that…?

Which is why he was trying to indulge a suggestion the MC gave him some time back to take his mind off it… Stress cleaning. Apparently, it wasn't unheard of for humans to use cleaning to vent emotional frustration through physical activity... The concept didn't sound unreasonable to him at the time. So when he passed by the kitchen and saw the dishes from Beel's last meal stacked up high, he decided to roll up his sleeves and give it a try.

… He should have known that a little bit of cleaning wouldn't have been enough for him, though. With each dish that he scrubbed clean, his sponge's pressure against the porcelain increased ever so slightly… Building and building until he was very nearly cracking the plates beneath his fingers…

No… the rage wasn't leaving him. He kept replaying the fight again and again in his mind… always producing new comebacks to words that were never said and spiraling farther down into his own resentment… Hadn't the human said this would work? Why wasn't it helping…?? If anything, he just felt more worked up than before! Why was he listening to them anyway? What would they know about helping him, Wrath made flash, control his anger?? What kind of idiot was he for even considering-!

"Satan…? Are you okay…?" The tentative, yet familiar, sound of said human's voice called to him from the kitchen entrance. He didn't bother turning back to face them and just kept his eyes trained on the filth in front of him...

"No." There wasn't any point in lying, was there? They could see him practically slamming the plates down on the drying rack by this point…

"Ah…" He heard them shift their weight as an awkward beat passed. They no doubt knew it wasn't a good idea to approach Satan when he was angry… but that meddlesome streak of theirs must have been begging for them to intervene in some way. Typical human… sticking their nose in places it didn't belong…

"Well… Beel told me about what happened… You and Belphegor, right…?" He heard their footsteps finally enter the room and stop somewhere close to the kitchen island. Trying to keep some space between him and them, perhaps? Oddly reasonable coming from such a reckless creature… But it didn't stop his shoulders from tensing up at the meer sound of Belphie's name.

"Don't bring him up." His words snapped out like the crack of a whip, menacing and sharp. Though he couldn't see them, he was sure the MC flinched, and he felt a perverse sort of satisfaction in that thought… There was a pause before the MC continued, clearly considering their next words carefully...

"Satan… I just wanted to tell you that it's my fault Belphie slept in… I kept him up last night, and you know how he gets when he can't sleep." Their words were slow and careful like they were trying not to startle a wild animal. He still didn't turn back as he waited for them to continue.

"... Okay. I just thought I'd let you know, I guess… It wasn't really his fault…" There it was. His simmering temper had been wanting, no begging, for him to find something, anything, to let it go on... And this was just what he had been looking for… an opening.

"Oh. So you're taking his side then?" Pausing, he stopped abusing the glass in his hand and let an eerie calm build from his lack of motion... He knew just what he needed to do to scare them. He's done it to other people hundreds of times...

"W-what? No-I never said that…!" It didn't matter that they were right. He wasn't in the mood to be reasonable right now.

"You may as well have. You're already down here coming to his defense, aren't you? Did he put you up to it? Holding that precious 'cuddle time' you two like so much hostage, I bet..." He threw them a sidelong glare from over his shoulder and felt yet another wave of satisfaction from seeing their confused face. It was like he just swept a rug out from under them, and they were failing to catch their balance.

"That's not what I…!" They stopped themselves mid-sentence as it seemed to dawn on them just what they had gotten themselves into… Satan wasn't looking for a reasonable conversation right now. He was looking for a punching bag... But they weren't looking to be one.

"You know what… No. I don't appreciate your tone." He could see their eyes narrow as they found their resolve once more, stronger this time. He hissed softly at the loss of his easy mark...

"What does it matter? You're the one who started this in the first place. You just said as much a bit ago. Don't you know to leave me alone when I'm pissed off anyway, or are you really just this stupid?" That one must have hurt because he saw them flinch this time…

"I'm only here because I knew you were upset-"

He cut them off sharply. "And you didn't think I needed the space?" Again, they flinched at the growing volume of his voice, but they didn't appear to back down either. They only responded in a tone much softer than his own, patient but strained from invisible wounds...

"It passed my mind… But I just wanted to help…"

Help? Oh… Right. He must have forgotten who he was speaking to… Help was all the MC ever did. Even when they had no idea how or when their ideas were so crazy, they'd put Mammon to shame… He always knew they meant well… Did his anger really just blind him to why he was even washing dishes in the first place…?

The two stared at each other for a few moments while Satan battled over what to say next... Their earnest answer had re-awoken a bit of sense in him, yet he could tell his temper still wasn't satisfied… An overwhelming part of him, one he loathed to acknowledge, was calling for more vitriol… It just wanted to fight and be petty for satisfaction's sake… to have an enemy to stomp over, no matter who it was…

But just looking into the MC's eyes was keeping those hateful words down his throat… He could see that they were hurt and worse, he was well aware that he caused it… Sure, he may not have raised his fist, but he had still done plenty of damage with his voice alone… They didn't deserve his rage, and even now, he hated to have released it on them in the first place…

His internal struggle must have reached a peak without his knowledge because he hadn't noticed his grip was tightening around the glass in his hand. At least, not until it suddenly shattered all over him. The MC jumped back with a yelp at the unexpected explosion, and even he shouted a swear or two as he felt the shards lodge into his palm.

"Shit!" It didn't take a doctor to know that having glass embedded in your skin isn't ideal, and he could claim to at least have a little first aid know-how. As he used that knowledge to inspect his hand, he almost completely forgot that the MC was in the room until they made a noise.

"Um… Satan?" They were hesitant to speak, which he didn't blame them for. He did have a habit of breaking things for intimation value, but he guessed that they noticed he was as shocked as they were for once. "Need this?" In their hands was the first aid box the family kept in the kitchen. Though it was really only intended to bandage up the occasional knifed finger... it would do for the moment.

"Yes, that would help… thank you…" Though his appreciation was genuine, his words were stilted and hollow… He couldn't even meet their eyes considering how this whole exchange started… He felt terrible before, but now it was more than enough to finally overpower the wrath within him… He hates knowing when he's been a total asshole too…

He gestured the MC to put the box on the counter then began treating his wounds. They helped him as he worked nimbly, but he could feel an awkward tension between them… Not undue, but still uncomfortable. He knew he had to remedy it quickly...

"MC… I'm sorry… That was wrong of me…" They glanced away from his hand for only a moment before responding with a strained smile.

"It's alright…"

"No. It wasn't…" He paused only to grunt as he removed the largest glass shard from his palm. "...I was looking to let off some steam and targeted you unfairly… I didn't mean what I said; I was only searching for a reason to be mad… None of this was your fault… I hope you can forgive me…"

The MC shook their head as they searched the box for bandages. "No, I have some fault here too… I really should've given you space to cool off before talking to you… I just saw that you were doing the dishes and thought you were simmered down already…" He stopped what he was doing a moment and glanced back at the sink's drying rack, now half full of still soapy and partially cracked dishes.

"... Well, I don't know how vigorously you wash those, but I don't think I'm ever going to find that to be a relaxing activity." Their soft chuckle relieved a bit of the weight in the air, much to his solace.

"Fair enough… Though I'm not sure what I was thinking telling you to try cleaning in the first place. I should have just asked you to break every vacuum in the House instead." They both snickered over the image of him ripping the handles off of their hoovers by accident, and, slowly, Satan could finally feel the anger in his chest fading away... Of course, it'd be the MC to do it… It always was. Why hadn't he found them to start with…?

"And just so you know, I'm not taking sides with Belphie or anything. I'm sure he turned off his alarm or something." He snorted slightly as he finished the bandaging. Were they really still on that?

"I know, don't worry about it. It doesn't matter what side you're on to me anyway." He took his newly bandaged hand back just in time to see their puzzled expression.

"What? Why not…?" He chuckled some as he let his undamaged hand come to rest on top of their head, stroking back any bangs in an affectionate pet of sorts. He then caught the back of their head to tilt it up towards his, meeting their wide eyes with a devilish grin.

"Because you'll always be mine, kitten…"

#this story will live and die on how well i can write apologies #no pressure #i hope i didn't make satan an asshole #obey me #Obey me shall we date #obey me satan #obey me fanfic #shall-we-date-obey-me

257 notes · View notes

specterchasing-a · 3 years

Text

People Like Us || Morgan & Eddie

TIMING: Current

LOCATION: Morgan’s House

PARTIES: @mor-beck-more-problems & @specterchasing

SUMMARY: Eddie needs help accepting the truth about who he is, and who better to lend a hand than Morgan Beck?

CONTAINS: Internalized homophobia tw, domestic abuse mention tw (section is tagged)

Eddie learned Morgan didn’t pull punches the day he came across her picnicking among the headstones of Jericho Hill. She took one look at him and effortlessly seemed to understand what made him tick. At the time, he didn’t realize she went easy on him. He knew better now. After their last conversation, he doubted she wanted anything to do with him, or that she ever would again. Unfortunately, that didn’t change how badly he needed her help.

He pulled his car into her driveway and put it in park. Unsteady breaths staggered the rise and fall of his chest. “In through the nose, out through the mouth,” Eddie quietly instructed himself as he exited the car, flinching when the car door slammed shut upon its release from his hand. Moonlight assisted the mansion’s porchlight in illuminating the path to her front door. If it weren’t for the sound of his heart pounding in his ears, he might have appreciated the sleepy suburban ambience.

Eddie reached the door and raised his fist, hesitating at the last second. If he turned around now, he could probably still make it to his car before Morgan noticed it in her driveway. He swallowed hard, past the lump in his throat, and felt his eyes begin to sting with budding tears. Leaving now would only prove her right for calling him a coward. “Shit,” he sighed before finally knocking.

Morgan couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard someone knock on the front door. When Bex and Mina stayed, they had keys. Urk rang the bell or called out, blubbering, through the window. An unexpected knock on the door was the wrong kind of normal. Even the cats complained with tense ears and whiny meows. Make it go away.

“Yeah, I’m working on it,” Morgan mumbled. She hesitated before approaching the door, bracing herself for the worst, then decided that maybe there was no such thing in White Crest and flung it open only to find… “Eddie?” She was too surprised to keep the incredulity out of her voice. As far as she was aware they had nothing left to say to each other. She frowned, struggling to process. “Uh….can I help you?”

The sight of Morgan instantly inflamed Eddie’s precarious emotional state. He blinked as the budding tears started to blossom. More people had seen him cry in the past few weeks than he cared to admit, and Eddie wasn’t eager to add another name to the list. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like he had a say in the matter once a stray tear fled down his cheek.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted. “God, Morgan, I’m so sorry.” Eddie bled as much sincerity into his apology as he could muster, she needed to believe him. “I can’t do this.” He shrugged helplessly before his arms crossed tightly over his chest. “You were right about everything, and I want to set things right. With Bex, with you, with myself.” His teeth dug into the inside of his cheek momentarily. “But I’m scared and I don’t know what I’m doing, and I don’t have anyone else I can go to about this. Only one other person knows about me, and he doesn’t know Bex the way you do.”

Whatever hostility Morgan had been holding onto against Eddie melted as soon as she saw his tears. And then his arms over his chest, the way he seemed desperate to hold himself together when the truth was he couldn’t, his guilt, his hurt. Morgan had seen it dozens of times, almost half of them in the mirror when she was even younger than Eddie. She didn’t know what else to do but come out and wrap him up as best she could.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. You’re gonna be okay, Eddie. It doesn’t feel like it, but you will be.” She pulled away, searching his face to find his comfort levels, and gave him a little tug. “Come inside, tell me what you’re worried about, and we’ll come up with something, okay?” She gave him the softest smile she could; nothing was so bad if you could smile a little about it.

Morgan didn’t yell at him, or slam the door in his face like Eddie thought she would. Instead, she hugged him, and that wasn’t something he prepared himself for on the drive over. His throat tightened as he returned the gesture, arms wrapping around her as he grounded himself within the moment. Eddie didn’t receive much physical affection. Usually, he was the one dishing it out, but he appreciated the role reversal more than he could say.

She spoke to him in words of affirmation so kind he almost believed them. As far as he could tell, ‘okay’ was officially out of his reach and would be for the foreseeable future, but he decided not to argue. He caught her eye when she pulled back and he made an effort to smile, but the best he could do was purse his lips together. Eddie followed her inside, nodding along with everything she said.

“Thank you,” he said softly now that they were surrounded by the mansion’s walls. “Sorry, I didn’t get this far in my head,” Eddie admitted after a beat of silence. He wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand and nervously ran his fingers through his hair. “What I’m worried about is essentially everything.” He didn’t intend to sound so dramatic, but his entire world was changing around him, and he didn’t know how to talk about that nonchalantly. “But, uhm, we can start with Bex. I have to tell her. I don’t want to, but I have to, and she’s going to hate me. I don’t have a lot of friends, Morgan, so losing her is gonna suck for me.”

Morgan led Eddie into the kitchen and started on some tea. The last thing he needed was to dehydrate while he was this tense. She smirked to herself, remembering that everything went wrong between them around a teapot last time. Maybe this could be a good do-over for both of them. While the water boiled, she put her hands on his shoulders and guided him to sit.

“Eddie,” she began, warm and gentle. “You’re getting a little ahead of yourself. Why, exactly, do you think Bex is going to hate you? For that matter, why do you think anyone who really cares about you will?” She brushed back his messy hair, sighing. After all these years, not much had changed, not for the kids she knew, at least. “Eddie Carridine, there is nothing wrong with being the person you are. There is nothing bad or ugly or inferior about the person you were made to be. Who told you that there was?”

Eddie didn’t take in much of his surroundings. Morgan’s interior design choices passed by in a blur on their way to the kitchen. He watched as she prepared a pot of tea, the parallel between tonight and their last meeting not being lost on him either. He hoped to actually stick around long enough to try it this time.

Morgan encouraged him to sit down, and Eddie obliged. His eyes, a little wider than usual, locked onto hers as she kept him from continuing on his downward spiral. The tone she used, the way she pushed his hair out of his face, it all felt so foreign. After Eddie learned to walk and talk, his parents never soothed him with gentle voices or gestures of affection. They preferred to let Eddie work through emotional distress on his own. They told him it would build character, but all it ever did was make him feel desperately alone. Having Morgan, someone he barely knew, do what they refused to without prompting left him feeling conflicted, but mostly grateful.

“Bex is going to hate me because I don’t think we can work through these kinds of differences,” Eddie announced, wishing he could keep the tone light. If he could, maybe the weight pressing down on his chest would start to let up. “Our relationships will be over and, I dunno, I feel like that might upset her.” Bex genuinely seemed to like him, which remained an overwhelming source of guilt.

As far as who told Eddie that being himself was a punishable offense, the list went on and on. “Do you have all day?” he asked dryly. Deflecting didn’t make him feel any better. A sigh slipped past his lips and he decided to take the question more seriously. “My parents, for starters,” he said as the lump in his throat returned. “They, uh, had expectations for me, still do, actually. And I really think this would be the final straw for them. Right now, the only reason I’m still on their insurance and why they pay my car-note is that they’re holding onto hope that I might still grow up to be a normal boy, with a normal wife, and normal kids.”

“Oh, Eddie…” Morgan sighed, brushing through the rest of his hair. “Normal isn’t a real thing. It’s an aspirational lie. No one’s normal. And, sure, you spend your time on YouTube and you can see dead people, but isn’t that also kind of what makes you amazing? Why shouldn’t this also be something that makes you amazing?” She focused on his eyes, willing him to unclench just a little more, to make this easier for both of them. “Also, not every breakup has to end in anyone hating anyone. There’s even a proud tradition in certain circles of staying friends with exes.” Also, Bex had the same secret as Eddie. But that wasn’t hers to tell.

The kettle raddled on the stove and Morgan went to attend to it. She reached for a jar of something ready-made and dipped a heaping spoonful into the infuser and started preparing their cups. “I want to get to the heart of this with you, I do, but I need to know what level of ‘last straw’ you’re talking about here. I mean, are your parents going to hurt you, if you tell them this? Do you need to secure some resources for yourself or have someone pseudo-indestructible around? Also--” She brought the tea to the kitchen island and slid it toward Eddie before climbing onto the stool next to him. “You still haven’t told me yet. What we’re talking around, what you’re trying to accept about yourself. It might help, if you can name it.”

Eddie wanted so badly to see normality the way Morgan did, but the idea of it seemed incontestably desirable to him in this case. All his life, his parents barely acknowledged his existence and he knew he should resent them for it, but he still craved their approval in spite of everything; in spite of himself. Just once, he wanted them to recognize him as something to be proud of instead of branding him a failure with every step he took.

“Amazing?” Eddie echoed quietly. The sudden commendation shooed away all thoughts of his parents. He looked up at Morgan like he expected her to take it back. “Most people just think the ghost thing is kind of weird.” His shoulders raised in a soft shrug. Ghosts gave his life meaning, but his dedication to them also made it more difficult to navigate. “Or fake.” Amazing. The word hung stubbornly in his mind as if daring him to believe what Morgan said could be true. “How can something that keeps me up at night be amazing?” he asked genuinely. Before he could take a leap of faith and try to celebrate instead of hide, he needed more answers.

“I’d like that,” Eddie said about staying friends with Bex. “I really do care about her, that part wasn’t a lie.” The calming way Morgan familiarized herself with his hair and seemed to know exactly what to say slowly encouraged him to take refuge in the safety of his time with her. He sniffled, but the tears in his eyes were drying. Breathing came a little easier now, which felt like a miraculous turn of events.

[DOMESTIC ABUSE MENTION]

“Not physically, I don’t think,” he answered honestly, his eyes following her as she tended to the tea. “Dad’s only ever lost his temper with me like that once.” Not a fond memory, but enough time spanned between now and then that Eddie could discuss it without unravelling. “I think they’d disown me though,” he added softly. He caught the cup of tea she slid his way and focused on the steam rising to meet his face instead of his parents. “I make good enough money, but I won’t turn down the other offer, if only for moral support.” He turned his head to face her as she sat down and made another attempt at a smile, this time with marginally more success.

[END OF DOMESTIC ABUSE MENTION]

The hint of a smile diminished when she probed for a label. Saying it out loud to Alfie hadn’t been easy, and maybe he’d been naïve for thinking it wouldn’t be hard the second time around. “I’m—” His eyes closed tightly as his head tilted to the side. He hated this, the way a three letter word felt like Mt. fucking Everest. “This is such bullshit,” Eddie announced with suddenly reopening eyes. He straightened up and took a breath. Try again. “I—I like guys, I guess.” The words shot out of his mouth faster than his usual speech, but he said it. And he didn’t feel sick. In fact, he felt kind of relieved. “One guy in particular, but yeah. I’m gay, probably. I dunno, something like that.” He winced at his convoluted confession, but he guessed it could have been worse. It could have been like the last time she tried to goad him into honesty.

Morgan ached to see how much Eddie craved comfort, like he’d been starved for it his whole life. He had the kind of hurt that didn’t show up on the body, the kind that she carried, that was so easy to delude yourself about. And how many times had her throat closed up when she’d tried to tell her mother, Sorry, everything’s my fault because I can only like girls! I’m a lesbian! It had been years before the words came easy to her. Eddie was only just getting started.

“Hey,” she said softly, reaching for a clean towel and leaning over to wipe his cheeks with all the care she wished for him. “It’s not bullshit. It’s hard, I know it’s hard. But you are one of the dreamiest gay boys that ever popped out of the rainbow, and we are all so lucky that you exist. Maybe even especially the boy you like. I want to hear all about him, but first, new plan: we’re moving somewhere comfy. You’re not a part of the family until you’ve had an emotional moment in the great room, so let’s get moving.”

She hopped off her stool and took Eddie’s mug and led him further into the house, toward the large plushy couch she and everyone she loved spent so much time on. “Also, I hope this goes without saying, but I will be there for support if that’s what you want. Just tell me when and where to show up. But, back to the main point: you’re amazing, and whatever happens, there’s no good reason for anyone to think differently. Especially because you’re gay. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we make the world go round in the most fabulous ways. But, conditioning, parents, society--there’s a lot of bullshit that keeps people like us from understanding that. When I came out to my mother, I was crying and apologizing because I thought I was literally cursing our family with my gayness. So as much as I believe in you, as much as I’m making this sound like some obvious truth--because it is--I can imagine why you might have a hard time believing it. But I don’t want to guess or project too much of myself.” At last, she settled down in her usual spot among the cushions, floating around them for how little she felt their presence. “So, can I ask you? Other people aside, because we can’t control other people’s choices, what about being gay scares you, or worries you or makes you feel...weird?”

Being called ‘one of the dreamiest gay boys to ever pop out of the rainbow’ managed to inspire Eddie’s first genuine smile of the night. Traces of sadness still lingered on his face, but he appreciated the break in tension more than he knew how to say. He didn’t know how to grapple with her saying people were lucky to know him, especially within the current context, it felt surreal. He wanted to thank Morgan in a way that showcased how much everything she said meant to him, but everything he thought to say fell short.

In the great room, he made himself comfortable next to her on the couch. A family of people like Morgan sounded too good to be true like most of what she said. Thinking about it reminded him of what she told him about the importance of hope, and Eddie decided there must have been some truth to it. As scary as it was to picture a brighter future for himself, it began to seem less like a lost cause.

“You apologized?” He didn’t mean to sound so shocked. Even though he knew better, it often seemed like self-acceptance came easier to everyone else. Hearing that even Morgan struggled to come to terms with her sexuality made him feel substantially less alone. Eddie considered her next question carefully by turning his attention inward, it wasn’t something he often did. Pleasing the people around him automatically took precedence over making himself happy.

“Thinking about it now, I guess most of what scares me has to do with other people,” he admitted. “Rejection, ridicule, judgment, harassment. Those are the big ones and, like you said, all of that’s out of my control.” Eddie took his first sip of tea now that enough time had passed for it to cool. His hands shook a little. “If all I had to worry about was myself, I…” he trailed off in contemplation. “When I’m alone with Alfie, he’s the guy I mentioned, everything else falls away. When I touch him or manage to make him laugh—that’s it. That’s all that matters; just us. And it feels… amazing until I ask myself how people might react if they saw us. Then I start to feel dirty or-or like I’m doing something wrong, kind of like I’m going to be punished for being happy because…. because that’s always how it’s been.” Eddie realized how true what he said was as he said it. “Being gay scares me because it makes me happy.”

Had Morgan apologized to her mother? “Oh, profusely. I actually thought, if I just kept apologizing, maybe I wouldn’t ever have to actually say it and potentially break what little good there was between my mother and me. But she gave me this impatient look, and I had to, so I did. And it was--” She paused, smiling sadly. “It was maybe the only time she was really sorry for anything she’d done. She uh...she took care of me for a little bit. And that was nice. But this was in 1999, and we had an implicit understanding to keep that part of me on a need-to-know basis. But, things are different, in some ways. Maybe not for your parents, maybe not everywhere, but here? So different. So much better.” She ruffled his hair again and tried to look ahead into something better, lighter than the world he was currently living in. What would he even look like if he was really happy?

“Eddie, I really, really mean what I’m about to say. And I am saying it as someone who was literally cursed with eternal suffering during her life. As a lesbian born in ‘81. As someone who knows all kinds of logic-mazes for explaining why happiness equals bad. Okay?” She took a deep breath and turned his face gently to make sure he was looking at her face. “Love itself is never wrong. And so any happiness that comes from love can never be wrong. And you, Eddie, are so worthy of love. The last thing you need to carry is shame for discovering love, which is one of the best parts of being alive. And the last thing you should do is starve your humanity from love because of other people. The people who are happy for you and your love are the ones you should build community with anyway.”

1999 sounded like a lifetime ago. For Eddie, it nearly was. With the current state of the world and the issues its inhabitants faced, he couldn’t imagine what it must have been like back then. A need-to-know basis, that’s how Morgan described the experience. Eddie shook his head sadly. Living like that must have been so draining. Even now, for all his fear and uncertainty, he knew how lucky he was to be alive now instead of then. If he’d been born alongside Morgan in the ‘80s, this conversation likely wouldn’t have been possible. Not with her, and not with anyone else, for that matter.

Looking to the past and acknowledging the hard-won fights of those who came before him, especially while sitting next to one of the veterans, an unexpected feeling came over Eddie. His journey, although he would be the one most affected by it, wasn’t only about him.

“It’s different because of people like you,” he said. “I—” Eddie felt a knot form in his throat. “Morgan, if it wasn’t for you, I don’t know how long it would have taken me to reach this point. Years, maybe? And that’s if it ever happened at all.” Harsh as she’d been, her words resonated with him and carried him through confessing to Alfie. “You saw me, really saw me, and refused to tolerate the bullshit. I think I understand why now.” He shifted to face her more fully. “I want to be more like you, Morgan. Someone who makes the world a better place by existing as is, not someone who hides for the comfort of people who don’t love them.”

Love, happiness, community. Morgan said the words and Eddie latched onto them for dear life. He knew better than to think this would be easy, or that his budding bravery would never again waver in the face of adversity, but he felt better equipped to face the future. “I think you’re right,” he ventured as a look of determination shone in his bleary eyes. “I mean, I want to, anyway, and that’s a start. It’s more than I had before.”

Morgan went still, completely bewildered. “I didn’t do much,” she admitted quietly. “I was too scared. I told myself I’d just make things worse all around. But, you know, everyone was kind of scared back then. It was never about some people magically not being scared. It was about not letting your fear trap you into a life so much smaller than what you should have. You--don’t need to be like me, Eddie. Especially not the me I was at your age. I--maybe it’s not fair of me, but I really just want to spare you some of the suffering I carried with me for so long, and the suffering of people I knew. I saw tiny maneuvers that I used to make when we were talking and I saw your hurt and I just wanted to make it stop for you.” She shrugged. “Don’t wait to find the love of your life until you’re at the ass-end of your thirties. I mean, if it takes that long, who cares, because it’s exactly as cheesy and gratifying as every song you’ve ever heard makes it sound and that is worth every star in the universe. But don’t wait that long to try! You are so young, and it is over so fast. What a waste to spend it hiding when you can be testing your capacity for joy?”

She beamed at Eddie and gave his arm a squeeze. “Deciding to is a really good start. All that’s next is doing it. Do you want to figure out what you want to say? To Bex? To your parents?”

Even with Morgan telling him he didn’t need to be like her, Eddie didn’t let her convince him. He wouldn’t argue and insist she accept his purview, that didn’t seem like it would do much good. Instead, he decided to show her his appreciation with his actions moving forward. She thought she didn’t do much, and he imagined it really did feel that way, but it got her to where she was now; teaching him how to love himself in a way no one had done before. Whether she knew it or not, he owed her immensely.

He grinned when she mentioned finding the love of her life. Eddie was grateful she did, and wondered if he might have too. He knew it was too soon to tell even if he and Alfie had known each other for years, but it didn’t hurt to play with the thought.

Eddie took a deep breath when she asked where he’d like to begin. “Bex, definitely,” he said with a confident nod. “I don’t want whatever my mom and dad have to say about it to throw me off before I have a chance to enjoy myself, y’know? With Bex, at least she won’t hold it against me for just… being who I am.”

“No, she won’t,” Morgan agreed. “She won’t appreciate being lied to, but she’s not a closed minded girl. I think being honest about why you did what you did and why you’re doing this now is a good step alongside, you know, ‘guess what babe, I’m gay’. It’s kind of awful, but coming clean is usually the fastest way to fix something when you’ve made a mess. Even if it also feels like the hardest.” And maybe Bex would have some relief and tell Eddie about all those ‘I love you’s she’d exchanged with Mina by the pool. But as much as that would give Eddie some comfort, it wasn’t hers to tell. And maybe he’d feel braver, going in prepared for the worst and finding his world still intact. “Although, maybe don’t be that casual and literally say that. Unless it helps you say it easier! Once the words have come out, you sort of have to keep going with them, and that can actually be as great as it is scary.”

Eddie’s head bobbed in agreement as Morgan offered advice. He wouldn’t let doubt trickle in and throw him off course, not yet. If she said Bex would understand, he trusted her. They lived together once, made art together, they had to have been close. Eddie momentarily wondered why that all came to an end, but now wasn’t the time to ask questions like that. In any case, it wasn’t his business what went on between Bex and Morgan even if he cared about both of them a great deal.

He breathed a soft laugh through his nose when she advised him against being as casual as her example. “I have… no idea what the easiest way to say it will be,” he admitted. “I try to plan it out in my mind and a wall goes up.” He made a sharp gesture with his hand to mimic the wall being built. “Maybe…” Eddie trailed off as an idea began forming. “Okay, what if you pretend to be Bex and we play out what might happen? I think I’ll do better with a trial run.”

Morgan snorted with laughter. “We, uh--” Could, but there’s no way I can prepare you for her not-girlfriend in the pool. “Yeah! Why not. Bex is not the most predictable girl, but I will do my best.” She took a deep breath and adjusted herself on the couch. “Hey, Eddie,” she said, doing her best imitation of Bex’s speech cadence. “You said you wanted to talk to me about something?”

Eddie straightened up and mentally prepared himself, but the second Morgan imitated Bex, he burst out in unexpected laughter. “Is that really what you think Mainers sound like?” he asked in a bubbly tone. “Maybe, just use your normal accent and I’ll rely on my imagination. I cannot take you seriously when you sound like that.”

“What? That was totally spot-on!” Morgan said, laughing in spite of herself. She shook out her hair and tossed it into Bex’s usual middle part. “Is this not the spitting image? I don’t have the height, but I’ve got the nervous puppy eyes.” Morgan demonstrated, and not too badly, but only because she already had that face in her arsenal long before she met Bex. “But, okay, okay. I am me and you are imagining me as Bex: Hey, Eddie. What did you want to talk to me about?”

When Morgan insisted her Bex impersonation had been spot-on, Eddie immediately shook his head defiantly. “You have natural puppy dog eyes, doing that doesn’t count towards your score. Let me show you a real Bex impersonation.” He took a moment to get into character. His hands clasped in his lap, his shoulders jutted forward slightly to give the impression of timidity, and his eyes widened with brightness.

“Oh, um, hi, Morgan,” he said, altering his voice to convey Bex’s signature nervous excitement. “You said—You said you wanted to talk to me, right? I was busy studying, y’know, about anthropology—” Eddie nearly made himself break character by laughing, but quickly centered himself. “But I… I want to hear what you have to say.”

Eddie raised both hands palm-side up and leaned back with a satisfied expression on his face. “And that’s how it’s done.”

When Morgan was herself as Bex and Eddie returned to being Eddie, the seriousness of the situation crept back up on him. “What I want to talk to you about is… well, us,” he started slowly. His heart picked up speed within his chest even though he wasn’t actually talking to Bex. “I haven’t been completely honest with you about… about who I am. I haven’t been honest with myself, either, but I want to change that, starting now. Bex, I care about you very much and losing you as a friend would wreck me, but I can’t be your boyfriend anymore.” The words flowed from him with surprising ease. When he talked instead of obsessively thinking about what he wanted to say, it came naturally to him.

“I’m gay, and I need to stop hurting both of us by pretending that I’m not.”

Morgan thought carefully, trying to think of Bex’s worst case scenario and some response that wouldn’t crush Eddie’s spirit. Empathy wasn’t always her strong suit, and this had been going on for a little while… “Oh. When you say that, do you mean, did you know that you were when you asked me out? And when we kissed?”

“Yes,” Eddie responded hesitantly. He needed to be as honest as possible and not allow himself to hide behind excuses. Even if he did, he knew Morgan would call him out. “At the time, I thought it might be something I could change or, at least, conceal by being in a relationship with you. I understand if you’re upset with me, but I… I really do care about you. I never should’ve wrapped you up in my self-loathing. You deserve better than that.”

“I...can’t believe you used me like that. I think...I’m going to need a little bit of time with this. All this time, I was sort of hoping you’d be one of the few people who wasn’t lying to me,” Morgan said, choosing her words carefully. “But I don’t hate you Eddie. I could never hate you. And I don’t want to stop being your friend. Are you--gonna be okay and all?”

Eddie appreciated Morgan’s commitment to letting things play out honestly even though it stung. “I’m sorry for being so selfish. I will try my best to make it up to you in the future, if you’ll let me. Once… once you’ve had time, of course.” At the very least, Morgan elected to have her version of Bex not cut him out of her life completely. It gave him a little hope. “Yeah, yeah, I’m gonna be okay,” he said softly, slipping out of the scene as he struggled a little under the weight of it. He knew he could do this, or hoped he could anyway, but it was hard. And it would be even harder when it really happened. “How was that?” he asked Morgan, not Bex, hoping she would accept that he’d reached his limit. After the past 24 hours and all they entailed, he was starting to feel the gravity of emotional exhaustion take its toll.

fadaMorgan beamed and drew Eddie tight into her arms. “That was good. That was so, so good. And you were so brave. And I need to tell you now, I don’t think it’ll be that bad. But I did think that you might feel better if you’ve practiced the worst-case scenario with her I could think of, and know it’ll be okay. And it will be. One way or another, I know it will be okay with you and Bex. Alright?”

Eddie melted into the embrace immediately. He appreciated how well Morgan already knew to take care of him. After years spent being touch-starved, moments like this were life-savers. “I’m glad you played it that way,” he said as he wrapped his arms around her. “Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.” Everything felt heavy, but he only needed to carry it a little further. “I trust you,” he said, meaning it with his entire heart. “I think I’m gonna be okay.”

#c: morgan #wickedswriting #people like us #internalized homophobia tw #domest abuse tw #// KAT AND MORGAN GIFTS #SPREAD THE WORD

8 notes · View notes

burnedbyshoto · 5 years

Text

Bravado

part two to happiness

pairing: todoroki shouto x reader

warning: cussing. soulmate!au

word count: 4,060

a/n: here’s part one ~ part three

✩✶✩❇✩✶✩

bravado: (n) a bold manner or a show of boldness intended to impress or intimidate.

✩✶✩❇✩✶✩

“Can we talk?”

You drove ahead ignoring the voice that seemed to be a constant nag in your life. Your eyes focused straight ahead as you gripped your case in your hands.

Cold. Unmoving. Stubborn.

You refused to give Todoroki your time of day as the both of you were called in for what would be the last time as Hero Work students.

“Y/n, come on,” His voice pleads slightly. It was a tone that you would never have expected to hear from Todoroki of all people, but you didn’t care. You didn’t want to hear it from him. “You can’t ignore me forever you know.”

You’re fed up.

Turning on your heel, you glare at your soulmate who had been walking at your heels. His eyes widening as your eyes locked with him.

“I told you not to fucking talk to me.” You seethe lowly. Todoroki didn’t speak as you licked your lips, your mouth feeling dry. “You agreed that night not to talk to me. I am letting you and Yaomomo live the rest of your lives fucking happy together, and you’re telling me that you want to talk?” You shake your head in disbelief as a cold chuckle escapes your lips. “Should I make my name turn gold on your wrist and forever hold your name in black? Is that what you fucking want Todoroki?!”

Your tone becomes too hurt, your true emotions bubbling to the surface. “I get it I’m not Yaoyorozu Momo! I don’t have money, status, and I don’t fucking have your heart! Stop trying to make yourself feel less guilty because guess fucking what! If you feel guilty? If you feel sorry for me?!”

Your chest is flying in a horrible rhythm as Todoroki just stares at you. His voice fails him, but you’re not quite done yet. You step closer to him, your finger jabbing against his chest as your eyes squint, your voice an almost growl, “I don’t want you to fucking apologize! I want the guilt to eat you alive. I want you to drown in your thoughts like I drowned in mine.” Angry and bitter tears welled in your eyes, and yet they refused to fall. “I deserve so much better than some shitty soulmate the universe chose for me. I hope you’re happy.” You smile.

Your cheeks are stiff, your lips are too tight.

“Just forget I exist.”

Even though you were searching for happiness, you still didn’t have it.

✩✶✩❇✩✶✩

Seven Months Later

✩✶✩❇✩✶✩

Morning routines were now a must for you.

First, you wake up and remove any ice packs and heat pads from any sore muscles. Second, you climb out of bed, your arms stretching well above your head as moans leave your mouth. Third, you removed the wristband that lay permanently on your left wrist at home. You walked into the bathroom, closing the door behind you as you turned on the light. Your eyes focusing on your reflection as you get ready for the day. Hair up, wash your face, brush your teeth, and use the restroom. You stepped back out as you grabbed a tube of foundation, and you looked down at your wrist.

Seven months after finding the person you were meant to be with, and the ink was still black. Except for Momo and whoever it was who had rejected her, it seemed that you and Todoroki were the only soulmates in the world to still have black ink after five months.

Seven months of routinely applying foundation onto your wrist. Forever obscuring the black letters that reminded you of your failed love. A promise to keep Todoroki happy.

The person that should have been yours but who decided that someone else was better.

Next, you changed into your hero outfit. Your costume fits perfectly, and the new addition of forearm guards helped to keep your secret hidden. Then, you stared at yourself in the mirror, a smile coming onto your face because you were happy. After seven months you were now a Pro-Hero who made people feel safe. You were happier now; happiness had somewhat found you after weeks of feeling broken.

Finally, you left.

Your bare feet hit the wood of the floor almost silently. Your body making it’s way over to your bed as you pressed a soft kiss to the still sleeping man.

“I’ll be back later tonight.” You whisper even though you don’t expect an answer.

Arms, however, wrap around you tightly. They yank you into the bed, and you squeal in surprise. Your protests are silenced as his body envelopes you, keeping you locked into place as chapped lips press softly against your temple.

“I don’t think I’m going to let you go,” He whispers to you. “I’m perfectly okay with you in my arms like this.”

“I have to go to work!” You laugh as you put on a weak attempt to squirm out of his arms.

“But I want to have you in my arms.”

“If I get in trouble, you’re so getting the blame for it!” You laugh as you look up at his smiling face.

Blond, bright, and sunny.

Kaminari’s bedhead made your heart squeeze a bit as you grinned at him.

“I just want my beautiful girlfriend to love me with all her heart before her soulmate steals her away from me any day!”

“And your soulmate?” You giggle as he presses a sweet and soft kiss against your lips.

“My soulmate is probably not in existence.” Kaminari sighs as his lips leave yours.

“Who says mine is!” You tease as you stroke your fingers through his tangled mess. “What if my soulmate doesn’t want me and I can stay with you?”

“You’re entirely too amazing to not have a soulmate, first of all. Second of all, whoever is your soulmate would be an actual idiot to deny someone like you.” Kaminari explains as his mouth grazes yours softy.

“What if I want to stay with you?”

“I’d probably piss my pants.”

“Gross.”

“You are too, but here I am loving you.” Kaminari chuckles as you roll your eyes. His mouth moving to press kisses against your face in a lovingly way.

“I love you, Denki, but I really need to go to work now.” You say against his peppering lips. “I just need to…” His lips press against your soft neck and your mind goes blank.

A small electrical shock shoots through your body. The sensation stirring you from your haze.

“I think it’s cute you’re so responsive and all, but you should get going.”

“You’re a fucking tease.” You pout but nonetheless roll out of bed.

You stare at your boyfriend, the lopsided grin on his face endearing as he stretches. Your eyes trail down his body. Staring at the muscles you wanted to ravish at this moment before he clicked his tongue.

“Down horny girl, go to work!” Kaminari smirks as he points at the door. “I’m going back to sleep!”

Your eyes roll as you walk away, finally leaving to work.

“Have a good day!” Kaminari shouts after you. “I love you, y/n!”

“I love you too, dumbass.”

✩✶✩❇✩✶✩

mina: hey, are you and kaminari coming to kiri’s bday dinner tonight?

you: we are! why?

mina: kami never confirmed, smh. okay! see you guys here then, everyones coming!

You stared at the word everyone, the word making you go numb.

While you held no more feelings towards your soulmate, you didn’t want to see him. You didn’t want to have to face him. After graduating, you had gone to Miruko to ask about when you two would no longer be working in junction with Endeavor.

Miruko had been all for it thankfully. She had thrown a strong guy pose as she exclaimed about you being tough enough to fight without help. Thus the working relationship with Endeavors agency had concluded.

Twisting your mouth you placed down your phone as you sighed softly. Your fingers sweat at the thought of not being able to avoid Todoroki. Could you really stand a full night of being amicable to a man you didn’t want to be pleasant to? The few days of school you had following the grand reveal had been hard, the two of you were entirely too strained and unfriendly with each other. You couldn’t act that way tonight, you knew that… but could you manage to do it?

A strong hand came slamming down on your shoulder, interrupting your spiraling thoughts as you whipped your head around.

“Are ya okay?” Miruko asked with a raised eyebrow. “You’re being weird and depressed. We need to head out soon though and I can’t have you on the field if you’re gonna be weird.”

You laugh softly as you rub your neck, your chest tight despite the easy-going smile on your face.

“I’ll be okay, I promise!” You say, patting her arm softly as if she was the one who wasn’t okay. “Just going to be meeting up with all of my old classmates tonight. It’ll be the first time since graduation night we’re all able to make it.”

“You’re gonna go see all those squirts?” Miruko laughed as she crossed her arms above her chest. “Well, as long as you still show up tomorrow on time I could care less.”

The resulting snort from your nose makes you groan, “You’re the worst.”

“Oh hush, you do better when I bully you anyway!”

✩✶✩❇✩✶✩

“I don’t think we’ve ever been here before.” You whistle as you look at the house where Kirishima’s party was being held.

It was going to be the twenty of you at this celebration. Your eyes glanced back at Kaminari who was currently pulling into the driveway. His hand holding yours as you looked around. The house was extremely nice; too nice for someone who had just turned nineteen.

“It’s Yaomomo’s,” Kaminari spoke, responding to your internal thoughts as he glanced at you. His yellow eyes glowing with joy as you nodded your head. “We were here the other day for Iida’s birthday.”

You nodded your head in realization. You had missed Iida’s birthday dinner because you had been held up at work that night.

“Do you think everyone’s here yet?” You ask as you see the different cars parked in the entrance. “Are we really always the last ones to arrive?” You laugh as Kaminari parks the car.

“We could be the first ones to arrive, but you’re never ready to leave on time!” Kaminari teases you as you both climb out of the car. You held onto the birthday gift the two of you had bought for Kirishima.

“I’m never on time because you take forever getting out of the bathroom!” You complain as the both of you walk hand in hand to the front door. The doorbell chiming as Kaminari pressed it.

Anxiety shot through you again as you tensed in his hold. Kaminari pressed a gentle kiss to your temple, the contact gratifying as your eyes close. Every worry is temporarily forgotten. As the door opens, your eyes fall back open. Your grin returning to your face as it’s Mina who opens the door.

“You guys finally decided to show up!” Mina exclaims as she launches herself into your arms.

“Sorry Mina, y/n took forever as always!” Kaminari apologizes as he gives the pink hero a hug before walking into the house.

“Alright, so a lot has happened since we last saw each other,” Mina exclaimed with a dreamy look in her eyes.

“I know you’re engaged, Mina.” You laugh as the two of you enter the house.

“But you haven’t seen the ring in person yet!”

You talked with your best friend as you went around the house greeting and hugging everyone. Your nerves made your skin crawl, but you still hadn’t seen Todoroki.

Momo was the last person you saw, her smile kind and warm as she embraced you.

Momo is your friend, you repeated over and over again as the creation hero chatted with you about what was happening in her life. Your smile felt fake again as you nodded about all the good that she had been able to achieve so far. Three minutes into the conversation, it felt as if it were eight months before. When you weren’t bitter towards your friend. When you were hopeful for whoever your soulmate was. You knew that Momo had no idea that you were Todoroki’s soulmate, or at the very least, she was doing an extremely good job at hiding it.

Her left-hand trailed to scratch her cheek as you and Mina stood before her listening to her stories with awe. Then something caught your attention. A simple yet elegant band sitting on her ring finger.

“Y-You’re engaged.” You stammer unintentionally as you stare at her hand.

Momo’s eyes look almost confused before her eyes snap to the ring on her finger, a pink blush overcoming her. Mina’s mouth dropped as she began screaming, but you fell silent. It seems that they had noticed yet, and suddenly your entire class was surrounding the three of you. Several hands stretching to take a glimpse of the ring on her finger.

Your world spun as you stumbled back into Kaminari who held your shoulder. You watched as his jaw dropped in his joy for Momo. The love and excitement in everyone’s eyes were so obvious, and it was so evident you felt as if you were an intruder.

It felt ghastly, could that have been you?

You push away from the crowd, but they don’t seem to notice you walking away.

His name burns against your skin as you walk out of the house and sit onto the porch.

It’s cold, chilly and quiet, yet you feel hot as you attempt to still your beating heart.

You thought were happy.

You believed you had found happiness.

So why were you feeling like this?

You deserved someone who wanted you as you were.

You needed someone who wanted you. They shouldn’t care about the universe’s influence like how Todoroki chose Momo without being fated. Guiltily, stubbornly, and pathetically, you wanted to be needed like that.

Yet despite your dumb wallowing, no tears came to your eyes as you stare blankly at the cars.

“You okay?” A voice asks from behind you.

“Just… overwhelmed.” You admit as you look behind you to see Kaminari who looks very concerned.

“Why’s that?” He asks you, sitting down beside you. He puts an arm around you and you sigh as you lean your head against his shoulder.

“Pretty soon all the girls will be engaged and I won’t be.” You lie and sigh. “It’s just weird.”

It’s silent for a while as the two of you sit there, staring at the scenery before you. Neither one of you knowing what to say. Despite everything, you craved to tell Kaminari about Todoroki and Momo being faux soulmates. Something inside you wished for them to no longer be happy, but you knew that it was petty and childish of you to think so.

“This entire soulmate thing is bullshit though,” Kaminari whispers to you, pulling you from your thoughts. “Some universal being decides that a single person in our life is supposed to be the person meant for us? Based on what exactly? Am I supposed to believe that my soulmate when they’re eighteen is going to be the same person when they’re eighty? Will I love them that entire time? Would I love them? Or is it because this dumb thing told us so? Do we really fall in love with our soulmates organically? I believe some people fall in love with theirs because of the dumb tattoo, which makes knowing who your soulmate worthless.”

Your eyes flutter towards Kaminari as you grin softly. Your boyfriend really surprised you at times. “That’s very insightful of you, Denki. Where’d you steal it from?” you tease as you press a kiss to his cheek.

“It was on a t-shirt I found at Hot Topic.” Kaminari chuckled as he nuzzled his nose into your cheek. Your resulting giggles lightening the mood.

“I knew it.” You sigh as Kaminari presses a kiss to your lips.

It’s gentle, sweet, and soft.

Your eyes closed as his lips dance with yours, your heart fluttering as you press closer.

Kaminari cups your face, his head tilting against yours as your mouths share secrets with each other.

You pull away as soon as his tongue pokes against your lower lip, your eyes rolling as you laugh. “Easy there, horny boy.” You say as your fingers tangle into his hair. “We’re in public, and it’s not our place.”

“You think I won’t fuck you in front of all of them?”

Your face twists as you shove him, “I would never let you do that, nasty.”

Kaminari’s sweet laughter makes you grin as he pulls you back into a gentle embrace.

There you two sit, enjoying each other embrace as his hands take yours into his.

Everything’s calm, peaceful and serene.

Your fingers tracing against his palm as everything feels okay again.

That is until Kaminari suddenly tensed, and a bright white light overcame the two of you.

Kaminari trembled in your hold as your eyes widen, soft gasps escaping his mouth as he crumbled against you. Your eyes looked immediately at his left wrist and the weirdest sense of elation and nausea hit you.

There was a name.

It was just a name, and yet you found yourself peeling away from his touch and shifting away from him. Your right hand unconsciously rubbing your right wrist.

“Y-Y/n…” Kaminari whispers as his eyes look so at peace. “Was that—”

You nod your head, a small and happy smile on your face as you point at his left wrist before continuing to rub. “Who’s the lucky person?” You ask as Kaminari stares at the black ink.

“It doesn’t matter,” He says as he drops his hand. “I’m with you right now. What I said about soulmates doesn’t change just because I have one now.”

“It’s not going to hurt my feelings, you know?” You laugh as you nudge your maybe-ex-boyfriend. “I know you better than you think Denki! Even if you don’t agree with soulmates, you want yours.”

Kaminari stares at you, his eyes are obviously full of sorrow for you.

“Y/n…”

“Their name, dork.” You press as you smile broader. If there was anyone in this world who deserved a soulmate, it was Kaminari Denki.

His yellow eyes glance down towards his wrist, and he sighs, “Her name is Jia.”

Your eyebrows raise, “I don’t know a Jia.”

“I don’t either.” He pauses. “Should we try to find her?”

“Let’s wait for her to finish high school first,” you say. “If she’s Japanese at least.”

“I don’t know how to pronounce her last name…”

“Oh, an international soulmate!” You gasp, and your hands cutely press against your cheeks.

“I knew I was meant to—,” Kaminari paused as he stared at your wrists. Your hands dropped as you looked at your flesh as well, your eyes widening as the black ink shone through the foundation. “Was that—?”

“No,” you interrupt, hiding your hands behind you. You shove the sleeves of your shirt further down your hands. Kaminari’s eyes search your face, his finger pointing at you.

“That was your soulmate’s name…” Kaminari blinks as his eyebrows furrow. “You have a soulmate?! Why have you been lying?!”

Kaminari’s voice wasn’t angry; it’s confused. His eyes searching yours for answers, for a clue that you had left behind. But you feel your throat thick with emotion as you shake your head. The tears are back in your eyes, and yet they still won’t fall.

“It doesn’t matter.” You whisper.

“Of course it does!” Kaminari insists. “Is it Mineta? Because if it is, I will personally make sure he never does you dirty!”

“I-It’s not Mineta!” You laugh, your fingers raking through your hair. “You know he wouldn’t have been quiet about it if it had been me.”

“Okay, true, but come on!” Kaminari leans in close, his eyes glued on yours. “Who is it, y/n?”

“No one you know,” You lie.

“Come on, you wouldn’t be hiding if I didn’t know!”

His hand snatches yours and you’re helpless as he drags your wrist into his line of view.

“Todoroki Shouto!” Kaminari cooes as he glances at the name and looks at you, his eyebrows wiggling. “Wait, what?!” He just about screams.

“Denki!” you hiss as you cover his mouth. “Shut up!”

“What about me?” A voice asks from in front of you.

It’s then that you truly feel at a loss. Your body stiffens as Kaminari is mid-lick.

Todoroki stands a few strides from the entrance, his hands holding a present as he looks at the two of you. His face is almost emotionless. It’s neutral, yet curious, as to what’s happening.

“Nothing.” You say immediately as you drop your hand. Your eyes glaring at Kaminari as you wipe his slobber onto his jeans. “You clearly misheard Denki say ‘Moroki Koto’, he's a new idol.”

“I know what my name sounds like.” Todoroki remarks as he stares at you. You can’t read the emotions in his eyes, but you don’t like being stared at by him of all people.

“Can you please explain what’s going on?” Kaminari asks as his eyes shift between the two of you. “I thought Todoroki was soulmates with Yaomomo? You can have more than one soulmate? What the hell?”

“You only have one romantic soulmate.” You whisper as you refuse to tear your gaze away from Todoroki.

“Did the universe make a mistake?” he mumbles and you shove him as you stand up.

“It did,” you say, standing up and brushing off the wrinkles in your outfit. “Right, Todoroki?”

“Y/n, that’s not—”

“NO!” You yell. You glare at him, Todoroki’s eyes widening as he looks at you. “Don’t speak unless you’re agreeing with me.”

“We can’t act like adults here?” Todoroki’s eyes roll as he steps closer to you, his eyebrows furrowed, and frown set on his lips. “I really can’t speak to you ever again? Is that how it is?”

“I don’t want to hear anything coming out of you, to be frank,” you snark as Kaminari shoots to his feet. Kaminari's hands flail as he tries to run interference.

“What’s going on?!”

“Nothing!” Todoroki and you shout in unison.

“Seven months?” you say taking a step towards him. “That’s all it took?”

“I could say the same about you.” Todoroki snaps.

“Yet here I am without a ring,” you hiss as your upper lip curls. “You really went and proposed and had the fucking balls to try and confess everything to Denki right now?”

“You don’t even know what you’re talking about!” Todoroki insists as the two of you face off. You’re so close that your noses almost brush. Despite how your heart longs for the man in front of you it's your anger that prevails.

“Is everything okay?” Momo’s voice asks.

Your head whips around for a second. You see not only the engaged woman who captured your soulmate’s heart before you had a fighting chance but everyone else. But you’re exhausted, and you’ve long given up.

You just wanted to be happy and in love, and you weren’t going to have that choice with him even with his name inked into your skin. You deserved happiness and you knew that.

It’s almost as if Todoroki is able to read your thoughts. His jaw drops to speak as you turn around, presenting his name on your wrist.

“On my birthday seven months ago, I found out that Todoroki Shouto was my soulmate. He rejected me, and now seven months later I’ve been adhering to what makes him happy. So while I do wish you, Momo, happiness and love with Todoroki, I can’t keep being unhappy for your two sakes.”

Everyone’s eyes shot over towards the engaged girl as you turn on your heel and walk away. The tears in your eyes finally drop, and yet they don’t bother you.

You’re uncaring about the shouts and clamors of the truth that was presented. Despite the guilt that bubbles in your throat because of the petty reveal you gave, you feel light.

For the first time since that night seven months ago you feel truly and completely happy.

#todoroki shouto #todoroki shoto x reader #todoroki x reader #todoroki shouto x reader #todoroki angst #todoroki scenario #bnha writing blog #bnha #bnha x reader #bnha todoroki #bnha imagines #mha #mha x reader #mha imagines #mha todoroki

1K notes · View notes

baby-grayson · 4 years

Text

Kind Stranger|GBD|Part 13

Parts 1-12 Word Count: 3,000 Tag list: @not-gbd @styles-dolan @evergreendolan @someonetogray @vintagedolan @prettyboydolan @dolansficsandpics @graysavant @baby-turtles

A/N: Next part will be the “finale” and part 15 will be the epilogue to the series (omg we made it guys)

Summary: Grayson decides to confront Kate about their situation but is interrupted by her unlucky morning.

Grayson grew tireless of waiting for Ethan to wake up. He sat in an armchair in their rental home and tapped his foot against the floor. He looked down at his phone, noting that a whole ten minutes had passed since he last checked.

“C’mon E,” Grayson groaned under breath. He liked his lips. He gazed to the side; his eyes found a bowl of fruit on his island counter. He couldn’t eat. His internal organs felt like they were being slowly twisted around a spool. He couldn’t even think about eating.

He rubbed his eyes, which stung from his lack of sleep. If he wanted to lie to himself, Grayson would say he got about two hours of sleep last night. But Grayson was an honest man who knew he had barely closed his eyes last night.

Every time he closed his eyes, she was there. When he rested his eyelids, he was faced with visons of luscious dark hair, pink pouty lips, and wide brown eyes speckled with gold trails. When he tried to shake those mental images, his body would enchant his mind with a faint sweet, citrus scent; a silvery, velvet voice; and the feeling of iridescent, silky skin. When his body and mind worked together to torture him, he could almost feel the parting of two plush, perfect lips finding their way to his. Grayson exhaled in a rough tone. He bit down on his bottom lip, causing the blister that had formed in the night before to release a drop of blood.

Grayson had been living in this cycle since late last night. His entire being would become consumed by the idea of Kate, and the thoughts would only fade into the pain of slamming his incisor onto the corner of his bottom lip. His mental mutiny did not reserve much room for him to develop actual thoughts about what he wanted to say to her. In truth, he had barely decided about what he wanted to do.

Grayson’s eyes dug holes into Ethan’s bedroom door. His foot tapped furiously against the ground. As much as Grayson dearly loved Ethan’s girlfriend, he sat there and wished Ethan hadn’t been on Facetime until 1AM last night.

Grayson hadn’t looked in a mirror that morning. If he did, he would have been faced with the blood shot eyes, swollen mouth, and stubble that greeted Ethan when he slumped out of his room for his morning pee. Ethan’s door opened with a low rasping sound coming from its hinges. Grayson’s head immediately bounced up at the sign of his brother. Ethan furrowed his bro, confused as to why his brother’s face looked so worn, and why Grayson’s posture looked like he was both a man ready to cry and a man ready to start a fight.

Ethan opened his mouth to comment but was quickly interrupted by Gray, “—Were you going to see Kate today?” Ethan blinked a few times, the question ricocheted off him like his mind was made of rubber. He met his tongue to the top of his mouth a few times, eyes still glazed with sleep.

Grayson became louder, more forceful, “Were you going to see Kate today?” He enunciated each letter in perfect form.

Ethan shook his, caught completely off guard. “Um no—wait actually yeah,” he ran a hand through his hair, “I was going stop by at like 3 maybe and drop off some groceries—” Grayson interrupted for the second time that morning, “But she’s not going anywhere right? Not the doctor again?”

Ethan fixed his posture, wondering why his brother was interrogating him so early in the morning, “No not for another two weeks I think—” “Thanks” Grayson did not waste time rushing to his Porsche and backing out of their driveway.

Kate grunted from her position on the floor. The tiles felt painfully cold against her wet skin. She whined audibly as her body ached underneath her. Her stitches pulled at her flesh, creating an anguish at the end of the dead weight that was her left leg.

She tossed a handful of soaking wet hair over her shoulder. Her breath became hastier as she reached her arms behind her and tried to lift herself off the tile floor with all her mind. Her voice transformed into an indiscernible amalgamation of strained wails. Just as her elbows opened slightly, her fingers collapsed under her tense wrists and her body was launched back into her original position.

She stopped struggling for a moment. She inhaled a few deep breaths and closed her eyes. With a layer of anxiety washing away from her tense being, she collected her thoughts. Her phone? It was in her purse, which was in her bedroom, which was through the bathroom door—no good. Knocking on the wall she shared with her next-door neighbor? They were never home— it wouldn’t be any use. Yelling for help? She was in the inside of her apartment, which was four stories off of the ground in an apartment complex—she would need to scream very loud for anyone to notice.

She was stuck. Kate had fallen from her shower stool, which she used to prop herself up and her post-op foot on the side of the tub. She landed in a naked ball on her bathroom floor, legs in the hair and head in the corner between the wall and tub.

Kate felt helpless; an emotion that grew like a malignant tumor in an independent woman like her.

Her mind began to spiral into terrible scenarios of distress. Her heart pounded in her chest, making sounds that mimicking Big Ben striking midnight over London on a mid-world war 2 night.

She yelped in shock. There was a knock at her front door. At first, she gaped in anxiety. After a few breaths and a second knock, her mind reminded her that a person at her front door would offer her refuge from her current predicament. “Ethan! Is that you!” she hoped she was screaming loud enough for him to hear her all the way from the bathroom.

Grayson could have identified Kate’s voice in a crowd of one million people. He was so anxious that his brain didn’t process how faint her voice sounded from behind her front door. “No,” his voice was gruff, “It’s Gray—” his voice faltered, “Grayson. Can I come in?”

Kate exhaled. She swore that she had pissed off some higher deity, who chose to give her one of the worst mornings of her life. How else would she end up naked, soaking wet, in a helpless mess on her bathroom floor with her gorgeous ex-boyfriend standing outside her front door? “Now’s not the best time!” Grayson huffed. She was okay with Ethan but not with him. He groaned and ran his hands through his hair, stopping to pull at the strands in the front. His jaw tensed up before he knocked on the door, with more conviction this time. “Please! I really need to talk to you!” His voice was hoarse and husky, fraught with masculine energy and scattered emotions.

“shit,” Kate mumbled under her breath. She loved that Grayson was persistent and dedicated but asked herself why he couldn’t take a hint. She wondered what she could say that wouldn’t hurt his feelings, when her shower curtain fell from the rod and hit the bathroom floor with a clatter. In her tension, she hadn’t realized that her good leg had been wound around the edge of the curtain in her fall, and that the stress on the material slipped it from the hooks in a swift motion.

Grayson’s brow furrowed as he heard the snapping sounds from the other side of her front door. He knocked again, more dubiously this time, “Everything alright in there?”Kate took too long to answer. Grayson started again, “Do you need any help?” Kate closed her eyes and leaned the back of her head against the corner of her wall and tub. She recognized the irony of his question: it was the same question she asked him the day they met on the beach when he hurt himself.

Kate picked her head and scanned her surroundings. She noted the shower curtain that was strewn over the floor and toilet. She wiggled her toes from where her feet hung in the air. She eyed the pool of water in the middle of the bathroom. She sighed. She reached as far as she could with her left arm. The tips of her fingers touched the shower curtain, she grabbed it quickly and tried to cover herself as best she could in her position.

She looked down and wondered if it was worth bringing her complex emotions toward Grayson into this mess. She decided she had no choice, “There’s a spare key taped to the bottom of the mail slot!” Grayson ran a single, large finger across the bottom edge of her mailbox. He reached the bulge of a small, metal object secured by a piece of masking tape. He ripped it off quickly and harshly inserted it into her front door. He tried to focus on turning the lock, silently asking that the alarming thoughts in his head to leave.

He shoved the door open the second that the lock clicked. He stepped through the threshold and looked around. Her apartment looked the same way it had when he had last been here: when he made the idiot mistake of asking her to keep their relationship private from her own mother. Grayson had left the apartment with the deflated spirit of a freshly broken heart; that morning, he was returning with the invigoration of a man trying to help the woman he loved. He looked around, not seeing her. “Kate?” he asked, he was terrified of not hearing an answer.

He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding when she replied, “I’m in the bathroom!”. Her high-pitched voice sounded exhausted, and her voices left her lips with a twinge of fear.

Grayson’s long legs bounded him in extensive strides as he reached her bathroom door. He took in a breath. His hand was almost dainty when it rapped on the door, “Can I come in?” His voice wavered no less than three times as he asked.

“Yeah” she sounded drained.

Grayson pushed the door open. His eyes went wide when he didn’t see her at first. He felt like his mind was playing a trick on him. It wasn’t until he peered down at the bright blue shower curtain on the floor that he found her. She looked like a broken doll. Her hair dripped onto the bathmat beneath her, her skin was dewy from her shower, but her limbs were contorted. Her post-op foot was swinging in the air, above all her other limbs. Her shower curtain didn’t do much to veil her naked curves.

Grayson swallowed: confused and aghast at the scene in front of him. His cheeks faded into a light shade of pink. His breaths became shaky as he failed to find words.

“Can you help me up?” her voice sounded so small to him.

Grayson nodded; his mouth went dry when he tried to respond audibly. He took in a loud breath and kneeled. Kate held out her arms, like a small child asking for a hug, but Grayson did not take them. Instead, he placed one arm firmly under the small of her back and the other one under her knee. He scooped her from the floor and stood up. Kate’s arms latched around his neck as he delicately walked her out of the bathroom, into her bedroom, and laid her on her bed.

Grayson licked his lips before biting down on his blister again. He felt the top of her ass against one of his arms. The feeling of having her so close to his being flooded his treacherous mind with memories of waking up next to her. His nostrils nearly seized at the attack of her sweet, citrus scent. His mouth went dry. When she wrapped her arms around his neck, his heart started shaking.

Kate set her head back on a pillow and closed her eyes. She exhaled, grateful to be from the floor but anxious to now interact with Grayson in front of her. When she opened her eyes, found Grayson at her closet. “What are you doing?” her tone sounded more accusatory and less appreciative than she would have wanted.

“Getting you something to wear,” Grayson was grateful for any distraction that peeled his eyes from his naked ex-girlfriend. Well, naked except for a shower curtain. Grayson’s heart heaved at the sight of the t-shirt he had left here their first night. He remembered walking to his car shirtless, not wanting to lose the precious sight of her wrapped up in his clothes. His emotions got the better of him as he picked up the shirt and tossed it at the end of her bed, “Here you go.” “Thanks,” Kate mumbled. If Grayson had been looking at her, he would have seen the tension hit her face when she realized what shirt he had offered her. Trying to be polite, Grayson had found a place to stand in front of the window while she put on some clothes. “Why were you in a shower curtain anyway?” Grayson’s voice was lower than usual, trying to disguise the myriad of emotions dancing in his head. “Modesty,” Kate stuck her head through the hole of the shirt, “I didn’t want you to see me naked.” She patted the fabric down, “You can turn around now.” Grayson raised an eyebrow in a way that questioned her desire for modest, even though he just gave her that without asking. “Silly, I know,” Kate commented before laying back on the bed. She closed her eyes, as if she was trying to reset the moment, they were in.

Grayson’s eyes searched the scene in front of him. A part of him melted at this scene: the woman he loved, dressed in his shirt, with her wet hair laying across her pillow, her angelic face in a peaceful state. Another part of him wanted to run away, to forever avoid the feelings that she stirred in him. She catalyzed such an emotional reaction in him: it was nearly dangerous with how fiercely his body responded for her.

If Kate was aware of Grayson’s internal struggle, she didn’t show it. She was calm, or at least calm compared to the scared, helpless mess of a person she had been a few minutes earlier. She picked her head up from the pillow, opening her eyes and meeting Grayson’s gaze, “Thanks for that, I really appreciate it.” Her voice was soft and sincere.

“No problem,” Grayson’s mouth fell in a flat line, “Just being a kind stranger.”

Kate laughed. She didn’t think before her mouth let out a sound, triggering a proud smirk on Grayson’s face. He loved her laugh; it was sweet and right; just like everything else about her. Every time he saw her smile, it was like the first time. Her eyes held solace for him, a kind and peaceful place to escape to when the terrors of LA contorted his heart. He looked at her and saw a guilty pleasure: his own personal paradise in a harsh, cruel world.

She ignited his most romantic fantasies. He wanted to dance around her kitchen on a Sunday morning, making pancakes and decorating each other in kisses. He wanted to be washed over by nerves as he carried her engagement ring in his pocket, frantically planning how to ask for her forever. He wanted to know what she would look like pregnant with their first child, was it possible for her to be even more beautiful than she was now?

Sitting on her bed in front of him, Grayson couldn’t take his eyes off him. There was something so inherently feminine about her; sure, she was a girl, but she was more. Her lips were perfectly blossomed. Her eyes were kind and sure. Her body was like a flower, curved and edged in a way that asked the question how that kind of natural beauty was possible.

And yet, there was something fragile about her. There was something like a newborn baby. She was untouched by the evils of his world: one where people would gladly tear him down to build themselves up. She was physically delicate, as he had just experienced by finding her on the bathroom floor unable to get up. Grayson’s heart wanted so badly to protect her from world with all his being.

And even so, there was a toughness about her. She was strong: she could handle any emotional situation a thousand times better than Grayson could. She was brave: facing a new life in LA with no support but never complaining. She was courageous: never fearing to speak her mind, no matter the audience. Grayson wanted to be like her, as much as he wanted to be with her.

Standing in her bedroom, faced with all these realities, Grayson’s mouth went dry. His eyes found the floor. His blood pumped into his brain with too much vigor. The blister in his mouth spasmed in pain. He swallowed with a heavy tongue. His eyes looked back at her, meeting her gaze. He recognized the concern in her eyes. His chest rose and fell quickly. “No- “Grayson started, realizing that he was almost dizzy, “I can’t do this.” His legs used wide strides to fly him out of her apartment while she called out after him. The outside air felt cold on his skin as he closed the front door, making him realize he was sweating profusely. Kate had just grabbed her crutches and hopped across her apartment to look down from her porch, hear Grayson’s car door close, and watch him zip away into the LA traffic.

#grayson dolan #grayson dolan x oc #dolan twins #fanfic #story #youtuber #ethan #ethan dolan #grayson

62 notes · View notes

scenarios-prefrences · 4 years

Text

You Hold Both Our Hearts (Part 1)

What you need to know: You and Bruce have been dating ever since you found out you were soulmates. It happened after the battle of New York. You were on your way to visit your sister Natasha Romanoff. You just got back from a three month long mission and you missed her. When she introduced you to the team your eyes locked with Bruce’s and that was it. The other Avengers saw you as their sister or best friend after a short time. You are at Avengers Tower when an intern at the lab takes things too far with you in front of Bruce and Tony.

Jacob was getting on my last nerve. For the past month and a half it has been non stop teasing and flirting in the lab. The worst part is that he knows that my soulmate is Bruce who also happens to be working in the same lab as us and Tony. Countless times there were close calls where James would say some comment about “me needing a real man to hold me down. Both in life and in bed.” These would piss Bruce off but not enough to Hulk out. It was when he started to get a little physical that the real struggle began. He would stroke my hair or try to hold my hand or try to wrap his arm around my waist with Bruce right there. Many times I had to excuse us so I could take Bruce away and calm him down before he lost control. It got to the point that Tony was starting to get upset. He didn’t appreciate some guy hacking on his Best Friends soulmate and a close friend of his. He talked to James but nothing was working. I was actually planing on kicking him out when shit hit the fan. It was Tuesday which meant I had to work on the enhancements to the Avengers suits, weapons, coms, and basically everything they use out on the field to keep them running smoothly. When I enter the lab I already knew that today was off to a bad start. The atmosphere was tense. James was sitting at his desk flipping mindlessly through some files while Tony was working on his suit and Bruce was looking at some samples.

Although, I could see Bruce’s hands clenched in fists and Tony’s jaw clenched tightly, telling me all I need to know. I walk in and set Clints bow on an open counter as I set my stuff down on my desk. The second I put that bow down James sits up and looks at me with a cocky and flirty smile. I hide the gag that I involuntarily did at that look. Everything about this man repulsed me to my very core. “Hello sexy, how’d you sleep last night?” I immediately look over at Bruce and see his jaw clench as he writes down his findings. “Fine,” was all I muttered as I set up my tools in order to tune up the bow. As I settled down James sits next to me. There wasn’t much I could say about this seeing as he is my intern and has to watch what I do and try to help me. Although, that doesn’t mean I was comfortable with how close he was to me at the moment. I went to work immediately, zoning him and everything else out as I fixed the bow. James kept sneaking little touches here and there but nothing wildly inappropriate. It was about an hour after I started that everything starts to go sideways. I had moved on to Natashas spider bites when I felt a hand rest on my knee. I tensed knowing it was James. I didn’t want to alert Tony or Bruce so I simply took a deep breath and continued working.

However, it was starting to get increasingly difficult to concentrate with his hand slowly sliding its way up my thigh. It was only when he slid his hand to my inner thigh and squeezed me did I react. I yelped as I shot out of my chair so fast that it falls back on the floor. At this point my breathing was erratic and my hands were shaking slightly. I look down at the ground as tears well up in my eyes. At the sound of the chair both Tony and Bruce look up from their work. When their eyes land on me they stop what they are doing and rush to my side. “Y/N! What happened? Are you okay?” Bruce asked, his face and voice showed concern as he looked at me. Tony was standing at my side rubbing soft circles on my back trying to calm me down like I do for him when he has a panic attack. I freeze not knowing what to say. I knew that if I said the truth it would not end well. “It’s nothing Bruce I’m fine. My mind just kinda wandered for a bit and you both know how that ends.” I say softly as I look away from them. I’m not entirely lying since this does happen. When my thoughts just start spiraling back to things I’d rather forget but can’t. Although that’s not what happened here and I feel horrible for lying to them. “Why don’t you take a break for a bit. Regroup and get yourself back to where you need to be okay sweets?” I look up at Tony, my gratitude probably showing on my face. Tony could be a real pain in the ass almost all the time but behind that facade is a man who cares deeply about the people he calls his friends and family. I nod with a soft smile muttering a thanks before I give him a quick hug. I turn to Bruce and kiss his cheek before I make my way toward the exit. This moment right here is when things got worse. That any sense of relief was lost. As I walked by James he smirked and said, “Damn! Even when you freak out you’re sexy as hell! If I knew you’d have a reaction like that I would’ve touched your thigh a lot sooner.” Then before I could rip him apart for the comment, or for the boys to register what he just said, his hand makes contact with my ass at full force. I jump and yell out as the pain settled in. I was so focused on the pain I forgot where I was. Or more importantly who was here with me. My eyes widened as I whip around to face the boys. The only thing I see was Tony looking enraged and Bruce’s green eyes sending a murderous glare his way. Before I could even take a step in their direction Bruce changes before my eyes into his alter ego, the Hulk. James looked like he was about to shit himself as the Hulk roared angrily at him from across the lab. I look over at Tony with a frantic expression about to ask him how we get Bruce back when I see he wasn’t focused on him. He was focused on James.

#avengers #preferences #reader insert #bruce banner #hulk x reader #tony stark #steve rogers #bucky barnes #natasha romanoff #clint barton #thor #loki laufeyson #wanda maximoff #peitro maximoff #vision #t’challa #nick fury

38 notes · View notes

chicagocityofclans · 4 years

Photo

Shannon Harris → Emmy Rossum → Jackal Shifter

→ Basic Information

Age: 30

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Straight

Birthday: January 23rd

Zodiac Sign: Aquarius

Religion: Christian

→ Her Personality Shannon has followed in her mother, Sarah Harris, footsteps through and through. She has grown to become a charming and confident liaison in training, ready and eager to take Sarah’s place and improve their already thriving pack. Like most Chicago jackals, Shannon attended DePaul, graduated Summa Cum Laude with her Undergrad in communications, and continued to excel in the communications Graduate program with a multicultural communication concentration. Thanks to her grades, neighborhood connections and known presences in the community, it was easy for Shannon to score a job of a lifetime; the media consultant for the Fischer Mayor Campaign. While everything seems to be going exceptionally well on the outside, Shannon is not entirely happy on the inside. She struggles with internal insecurities and feels like she is simply keeping up a charade; that she could never measure up to her mother or sister, Zelda. This internal battle often causes Shannon anxiety which in turn causes her to ramble and assume the worst of situations. This shows especially around people she finds attractive or intimidating.

Despite these self-sabotaging thoughts, Shannon does not let them control her life or let them show in public and in front of her family and friends. Typically, she still gives off a very outward appearance of confidence and competence. She is a very approachable person and can deftly put people around her at ease. Shannon has a way with words and her earnestness has greatly helped in her with the media surrounding the Fischer campaign. No matter how much she takes after her mother she is also as understanding as her father, Zack. They can both forgive and forget, keeping it moving another day. Just like both of her parents, Shannon has a mission to accomplish great things for the supernatural community before following the jackal way; settling down, getting married and eventually kids. Her parents waited until they were nearing a century together to have Shannon and Zelda. Shannon was not as fortunate to find ‘the one’ at a young age like her parents but she is not opposed to dating or even getting serious as long as she keeps her freedom to do what she loves.

→ Her Personal Facts

Occupation: Pack Liaison (Training) and Media Consultant for Fischer Campaign

Scars: None

Tattoos: None

Two Likes: Coffee and Sweets

Two Dislikes: Daisies and Chaos

Two Fears: Being Unimportant and Wasting Time

Two Hobbies: Learning and Fashion

Three Positive Traits: Approachable, Forgiving, Liberal

Three Negative Traits: Insecure, Garrulous, Fatalistic

→ His/Her Connections

Parent Names:

Zekharyah Harris (Father): Zack and Shannon often have to play referees to the epic fights of Sarah and Zelda. She has inherited his ability to placate people and situations. Zack is also the one who best knows how to get Shannon out of her head. She can’t count the number of times that he’s grabbed her coat and pulled her out to go for a drive or take a walk down to the local diner. He can pull her out of a spiral before it gets too far and grounds her to herself and the situation at hand.

Sarah Harris (Mother): Sarah and Shannon are very close. Her mom was her idol growing up and she wanted to be just like her. She has followed in her footsteps from going into the same program at DePaul to graduating top of her class and choosing to become a liaison. Sarah has been stepping back and having Shannon go to meetings on her own, even letting her go with Ellis to deal with the cats on one occasion. Her mom’s faith in her means everything to Shannon.

Sibling Names:

Zelda Harris (Sister): Everything comes naturally to Zelda: the wit, the intelligence (that she wasted), a committed boyfriend. She just is who she is, while all Shannon does is try to be someone or achieve something she isn’t. They often don’t get along, especially in situations where Shannon feels pitted against her sister in some way. However, they always have each other's back and have covered for one another too many times to count.

Children Names:

None

Romantic Connections:

None

Platonic Connections:

Vanessa Armstrong (Best Friend): Shannon has known Vee her whole life. They have long surpassed best friends, and consider each other sisters. They’re almost the perfect balance of one another; Vee gives Shannon a push when she needs the confidence and Shannon helps keep her grounded. She was the sister that Shannon always wanted, who got along with her and shared similar interests. The campaign is the most time she’s gotten to spend with Vanessa since she began training to be liaison

Robert J. Fischer (Boss/Friend): Shannon really believes in the work Robert is doing. She has seen him listen to the concerns and issues that everyone has and thinks he is a good representative for the supernatural community. Part of her is kept up all night with the nightmares of what will happen if anyone finds out, but they’ve gotten a lot better recently.

Odell Rella (Friend): She was not surprised when Odell and Zelda announced they were dating. He was over almost every night for dinner, and when he wasn’t there, she wasn’t either. They make sense though, and she is glad Zelda found her person.

Isla Johns (Friend): Isla has been around Shannon and the other jackals more because of Seth and Anton’s relationship. The timing couldn’t be any better because of the Fischer campaign and Isla being part of the local news cast.

Ellis Watts (Respects): Ellis has been around her whole life and was closer to family than any of her actual uncles. As she’s gotten older, and has seen the disaster that a lot of the other packs are, her respect for Ellis has grown more and more.

Anton Kowalski (Friendly): Seth introduced Anton to their entire pack. Anton’s the first nimble and wolf hybrid that Shannon has met; coywolf. She finds him interesting and has been keeping in contact with him. Shannon has done her part as in introducing Anton to the local hyenas, human shifters and rats.

Milo Vasu (Friendly): Milo is interning in the Media office for the campaign. She has him working with social media to bring awareness to the Gen Z and Millennial crowd. They are banking on them, as well as the supernatural community to get Robert into office.

Seth Allen (Unsure): Seth is kind of like Zelda if she were feral. Standoffish, blunt, and a little mean, still she’s seen some of his redeeming features and knows there’s good in him. He just doesn’t care to show it to her.

Maxine Vane (Liaison): Max has been a major inspiration when it comes to being a liaison. Max is the easiest to deal with and drops suggestions whenever Shannon finds herself flustered. Lately, they’ve been meeting outside of pack business for lunch. Shannon has been finding it hard to keep the campaign from Max.

Ray Hamelin (Liaison): Ray dealt with Sarah on liaison business while Shannon was training but as of lately Shannon has been dealing one on one with Max only. Shannon doesn’t know if she turned Ray away or if Ray deliberately sent Max since they were a better match. Shannon got the idea of two liaison from the rats.

Emmett Wilhelm (Liaison): There is usually no need for animal shifter and the immortals to communicate but one day Emmett extended a hand out to Shannon and she quickly took it. Their conversations are still in that awkward phase.

Vincent Kane (Liaison): Vincent is the person Shannon goes to when she needs to talk to the higher ups about the campaign and the relationship between the Jackals and Human Shifters. Sarah has said her contact with them has been stronger than anything she had previously accomplished, which made Shannon’s week.

Greer Finley (Acquaintance): Despite Sarah having a difficult time dealing with Greer, Shannon gets along with the cat shifter. She has to change her approach slightly, but they’re able to say what needs to be said and move on.

Hostile Connections:

None

Pets:

None

→ History (paragraph(s) on background)

→ The Present (paragraph(s) on how the character connects to the plot)

→ Available Gif Hunts (we do not own these)

[1][2]

#Shannon Harris #Open #OF #OFAS #OFJ #Emmy Rossum

1 note · View note

vloggerparker · 5 years

Text

worst days || s.h

*this story is gender neutral!

↬ pairing(s): Steve Harrington x reader

↬ genre/warnings: light angst, fluff/comfort fic. it’s implied reader is depressed. S3 SPOILERS!

↬ word count: 1.4k

↬ synopsis: (y/n) had a rough day and needs their best friend Steve to make it all better

↬ a/n: for @melxoxo23 who commented “ANGST 17 PLEASE” w the prompt “if you don’t hug me right now I think I might fall apart” enjoy! <3 I really liked writing this!

Everybody had great days, good days, bad days, but it felt like only you got the worst days. Worst days classified as times when bad luck came on so strongly that it seemed the universe had passed on the populations bad karma to you to hold onto. On bad days you would wait and see what good you could make out of something so awful, but on worst days it was impossible to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Recently all the universe has given you was worst days, starting the day after Dustin’s returned from camp. From there, things spiraled. Between being held hostage in an underground, secret Russian base, to losing Jim Hopper, there was only worst days.

And today was no exception. Working at the police station as the Hawkins’ new Chief of Police meant everyday you would be compared to Hop for whatever you did. That morning in particular, it was coming into work late due to over sleeping, then taking you best friend Steve to work, and that damn alarm clock with the dead batteries.

You walked through the doors of Hawkin’s Police Station with sweat along your hairline and bags under your eyes. Flo gave you a pitying stare as she handed you a case file. “Ms. Duley wants to speak with you about her neighbor’s boy that keeps stealing from her garden.”

“I’ll deal with it in a minute,” you tell the secretary, tucking the folder under your arm as you made way to your office.

An older woman sat opposite to your desk when you walked in, and you internally sighed at the sight. “Finally decide to come into work today?”

All you wanted was a quick five minutes to regulate your breathing and cool yourself off before handling anything that morning. It was the price you had to pay for showing up late for work, you supposed.

“Can you step out for just a sec? I have some… classified information I need to take care of first.” you gave the sorry excuse, hoping the woman would take the bait, but by the scowl on her face, she wasn’t budging. “I promise I will listen to your story, but I really do need to take care of this.”

Ms. Duley stood from her seat to leave, griping the entire way out of your office. “I thought having a new person in charge things would change around here… you’re no better than Hopper.”

That struck a nerve in you, and you’re yelling before you could comprehend what’s coming out. “Fine, take your stupid old lady problems somewhere else than! Because I don’t care!”

You plopped down into your office chair, and not even ten minutes passed before the office door flung open again. It was Officer Powell, and it’s hard to read the expression on his face, but you knew he was coming to deliver some news. He sat where Ms. Duley sat across from your desk, eyeing you carefully.

You covered your face with your hands, rubbing the tired from your eyes. “I- I’ll apologize to her, Cal. Just… in a minute.”

“Don’t worry about it.” he shrugged it off. “I'll talk to her for you, Chief, but right now we gotta respond to a call about a robbery.”

“This early?” you groaned, but followed behind Powell out of the office. “Who robs somebody in the morning in broad daylight?”

Powell offered to drive, but you declined, and in the next few minutes you find you should’ve just let him drive. Leaving the station, mind too preoccupied, you backed into an unseen light post.

You slapped the steering wheel with relentless strength as Powell just watched, eyebrow quirked. Once you settled, he asked, “feel better?”

“Never better.”

At the residence that called, there was nothing special that caught you eyes upon initially arriving other than the few people crowded outside the house. You figured they were the people who lived in the home, but then a black mask in one of their hands caught your eye. Your eyes swiveled to Powell now in the driver’s seat, sharing a look that tells you he’s seeing it all too, and you sigh dramatically and sink into your seat.

“It’s all a part of the job.” he says to comfort you, but you can hear the bitterness in his tone.

After finding that yes, the home invasion was a prank on the family by their teen son’s friends, you and Officer Powell headed back to the station. Ms. Duley had left by then, and so you went to your office and gave her a call to apologize. Despite her constant comparison of you to Hopper through the entire conversation, she loosened up enough to forgive you with the assurance she would be back the next morning if more of her flowers went missing.

Florence came into your office, a pitying expression she always wore around you on her face and a foot high stack of papers in her hand that she dropped off on your desk to read, document, and file. Crying felt like an immature response, but it was the only response you had.

“Thank you, Flo.” you kept your voice level and blinked away the tears welling in your eyes.

“Are you okay, dear?” she worried over you, and though she knew you were lying when you gave her a nod, she disappeared from your office as soon as she had arrived.

You took in a deep, shaky breath before diving in to your paperwork. It took all day, and even then you didn’t finish, and rather than taking it home to finish, you opted on leaving it for tomorrow. You wanted nothing more than to go home, but you had to pick up Steve from work because you dropped him off that morning.

When you pulled up outside of the video store, you didn’t bother going inside to meet with Steve how you normally did. From the second he got into the car, he automatically knew you had another worst day, and he couldn’t help but frown at your constant misery.

His hand comes to your thigh, giving it a squeeze. “You wanna talk about it?” when you shook your head and avoided all eye contact, Steve took the hint. “That’s okay. I, uh, can I bunk at your place?”

“Yeah.”

That single word response was the only thing you said the entire ride.

It wasn’t until you got home and pulled your keys out to unlock the front door when you really thought you were going to lose your cool. As you went to stick the key in the lock, the damned things slipped out your hand, rattling against the ground.

Steve stood behind you in confusion as you just stood there, and he peeked around your shoulder just in time to see a tear roll down your cheek. “Hey, are you okay?” he panicked, spinning you around by your shoulders so your front faced his.

You looked towards the sky in an effort to stop the tears from streaming down your face, a quivering sigh escaping your slightly parted lips as you said, “if you don’t hug me right now I think I might fall apart.”

“Okay, okay.” he whispered, crouching down to retrieve the keys and unlock the door, an arm around your shoulders as you both stepped through the door.

He guided you to the living room, free falling backwards into the couch, pulling you down with him by the waist. His hands readjusted, creating abstract shapes on your back with his fingers soothingly. Your hands made purchase on his shoulders, head rested on his chest as you cried softly, releasing the pent up tears from weeks of emotional exhaustion.

In Steve’s arms there was no fear, no loneliness, and only the beauty of being together. His arms wrapped around you brought a peace you never knew possible, the calm of a raging storm, each touch a taste of heaven. Steve’s embrace was the medicine you couldn’t buy in the store or get prescriptions for. It was the light in the darkness and the lone star in an otherwise empty sky.

“Thank you.” you said, barely audible.

Even on worst days the universe always seemed to prove you wrong. On bad days you would wait and see what good you could make out of something so awful, but on worst days, on all days, Steve was always the good.

↬ a/n: if you liked this, you should check out my other Steve fics on my masterlist!

146 notes · View notes

bitsandbobsandstuff · 5 years

Text

A love that never leaves (2)

Summary: Sometimes when you go looking for the past, you find things you never expected. When an accident brings him face to face with something he never knew he lost, Bucky Barnes begins to understand an age old truth – it’s so easy, sometimes, to love the things that destroy us.

Characters: Bucky Barnes x Reader Warnings: Bad language. Sad Bucky.

A/N: The plot thickens. Bucky recovers from a shit situation and learns more about the person who found him. Remembering is really hard and memories do not cooperate.

I’m planning to post a chapter a week, on either Saturday or Sunday. I tried to tag everyone who reached out, but if I missed you, it was unintentional, so please send me a DM or ASK, it’s easier for me to track. Otherwise you can find the new updates each weekend!

MASTERLIST ALTNL MASTERLIST

PREVIOUS CHAPTER

Previously...

The figure halts. A gloved hand reaches to pull back the hood of the white coat and a woman’s face appears. Even through the howling wind, Bucky hears her question clearly and he doesn’t understand why the two syllables feel like a knife ripping through skin and bone and thick sinew, straight to his heart.

“Soldier?”

She speaks hesitantly, her voice tinged with a peculiar hint of hope. Bucky wants to ruminate further, but his fingers are rubbing the slippery edges of his gunshot wounds and the snow around him is greedy, lusting for the hot blood he spills.

He wants to answer. He tries to answer, he really does.

Instead, he falls face first into the soft snow.

*****

MISSION REPORT

CONTACT MADE BUT RESPONDENT ELIMINATED. BASE DID NOT REVEAL INFORMATION REQUIRED TO PROCEED TO NEXT RENDEZVOUS POINT. HOLD AND WAIT.

WITHOUT ADDITIONAL SUPPORT MISSION FAILURE IS IMMINENT. REQUESTING BACK UP FOR –

For what? The words evaporate. Smoke in the wind. The pencil clatters to the floor and rolls away and his notebook follows. He goes to his knees in front of the brick wall and he slams his fist against it again and again, until his knuckles are shredded.

He screams.

****

Bucky’s entire body is on fire.

Burning hot, scorching him from the inside out. This can’t be right, he’s done. He’s supposed to be done with this shit, what are they doing now? Bleary eyes open and he tries to speak. To tell them no, to leave him alone, to please just fucking stop. Heat races through his veins, suffocating him and he feels rivers of sweat coursing down his face, down his chest, down his arms.

Above him, floats a blurry face, both intensely familiar and completely foreign. She wipes a cold cloth over his face and Bucky sighs in relief.

Darkness comes again.

*****

We’ll meet again…don’t know where…don’t know when…but I know we’ll meet again, some sunny day…

The melody flows like water inside his head and Bucky follows it slowly, swimming languidly into consciousness. When he breaks the surface, his brain comes to life, but his eyes stay closed.

It’s a trait he perfected over the years, waking up without anyone realizing. Back then, he’d quickly discovered if you’re flat on your back and don’t know where you are, your safest bet is certainly not to show them you’re awake. Once they know, you lose your advantage.

That’s usually when the pain starts.

Instead, he starts his internal assessment. Ears straining for any hint of sound, he waits, listening for anything. The intake of breath, a quiet sniffle, the whisper of fabric, a footfall. Anything. The silence stretches and he’s finally forced to conclude – either his captor is just that good, or he’s alone.

Cracking an eye, he draws a soundless breath, taking stock of his surroundings.

This is – interesting.

The room he’s in is dim, suffused with swaths of muted daylight streaming in through the massive window in front of the bed. His eyes track the expanse of clear glass, stretching from the floor, extending up the vaulted ceiling and ending in a wide skylight. A small fireplace is tucked into the corner, a basket of logs piled next to the dark slate tiles, and the soothing pop and crackle of wood lulls him toward a sense of false security.

Snow still falls outside, but it’s no longer the wailing blizzard; instead, fat, wet flakes drift quietly by, piling onto the tall evergreens hugging the window.

Feeling the silky sheen of satin against his skin, he peeks under the sheets to find himself nearly naked, wearing nothing more than a crisp white bandage and skin-tight boxers.

“What the sweet fuck is this shit?” he mutters, dropping the sheets and struggling to sit up. The bed is wide and covered in all shades of blue – a dusty blue duvet, sky blue sheets, a midnight blue quilt – and suddenly it all mixes into a watery blur when his vision goes sideways. Pain rips through him and he flops back, whining softly. Pressing gently against the bandage, the pain flares so fast, he digs his heels into the bed, spine arching unconsciously. He can feel it, actually feel it, the tugging sensation of his skin knitting itself back together. Sweat instantly pours down his face.

“Don’t scream,” he hisses through gritted teeth, “don’t scream you fuckin’ baby, don’t.”

Clamping his lips together, he swallows the sounds he’d desperately love to howl, focusing on counting the snowflakes drifting past the window. He loses count of the deep, calming breaths he takes and long minutes later, the worst appears to pass. For now. Bucky’s rigid muscles begin to relax.

He appreciates the whole healing fast thing, he really does, but the process is just fucking unpleasant.

Swinging his legs over the bed, toes curling into a plush rug, he wobbles to his feet. Looking around, he searches for his clothes, but he comes up empty handed. He doesn’t actually mind the lack of clothing, it’s more the lack of pockets for weapons that irritate him.

But a good solider can make a weapon from anything, so he snatches a log from the basket next to the fireplace, rotates his arm until the plates shift smoothly, and creeps from the bedroom.

Tiptoeing down the steps to the first level, he stops short.

The small town he’d infiltrated was derelict, gritty, downtrodden.

The home he finds himself inhabiting is the polar opposite.

Wooden steps lead down into a cosy stone and log cabin. The small kitchen has an island with a couple hand-hewn stools and an oak butcher block in the middle, burnished copper pots hanging from a rack above. The floor is a deep russet red, the wide-planked floorboards containing a myriad of knots and whorls. Above him, thick beams stretch the expanse of the room, with dark iron lighting fixtures casting a rosy glow through the room. In the centre wall of the living room, flanked with tall vertical windows, stands a fireplace, the uneven shapes of grey river rock fitting together seamlessly. From the tall windows, he has a clear view of a foggy mountain range. Another fire crackles and pops merrily in the calm silence.

A cracked white pitcher filled with pine boughs gives off a sharp, clean scent and Bucky finds himself struggling to remain overly vigilant, because it’s beautiful. It’s a home.

Beauty means nothing though. A lesson he learned the hard way through the years.

Slinking into the kitchen, he rummages through the silverware, turning up three finely sharpened knives. Two, he tucks into the elastic band of his boxers, feeling instant relief at the feel of the blades hugging his hip. The third, a large butcher knife, he flips around and holds outward, ready to swing.

Switching into stealth mode, he goes to work.

Rifling through kitchen cupboards and drawers. Lifting throw pillows and blankets from the sofa. Scanning rows of books arranged in alphabetical order. Searching a small linen closet. Ears perked for the sound of footsteps outside.

And yeah, he finds a few things.

A few weird things.

It starts in the small closet. Buried under a pile of quilts, he finds a heavy metal box. Pulling a bobby pin from the perpetual tangle of colorful hair-ties he keeps around his wrist, it takes a few tries before he has the lock picked. Lifting the lid reveals a perfectly folded pile of worn t-shirts. Shaking each out, he scans the logos – emblazoned across each one is a different city from Bon Jovi’s 1986 Slippery When Wet European tour.

They’re just old t-shirts, the kinds you find people hawking at concert venues or in the bargain bin at a thrift store. Nothing special or expensive. Yet here they are, folded into neat squares and tucked into a box that could probably withstand an explosion.

His confusion spirals, but Bucky fights a small smile. It seems odd, but hey, he really likes Bon Jovi too. Maybe he would do the same.

Re-folding the tissue thin cloth, he locks the box and stuffs it back in place.

Trying the bookcase next, he pulls books out, feeling behind them. Knuckles rap at random, tap, tap, tap, until he hears an unexpected thunk. The hollow sound gives it away and with a shove, he shifts the back panel and finds another small locked box. Holding it under his arm, he fiddles with the bobby pin again and the lid cracks. Two items appear.

A crushed red velvet jewelry bag.

A handful of cheap vintage postcards in a clear plastic bag.

Crouching to the floor, he shakes the contents of the jewelry bag free. A handful of silvery-blue pebbles clatter out and in the middle of the pile, a necklace. Bucky holds the worn chain up to the light. Spinning slowly on the end is a round disc, a little dingy and rubbed smooth, but he can see the outline.

Bucky wasn’t exactly a good little Catholic growing up, and yeah, religion wasn’t the sort of personal expression Hydra encouraged for the Soldier. His knowledge of saints was spotty as a kid and is extensively worse now, but he recognizes the medal – he knows Steve had one, wore it during the war and was wearing it when his plane went down. He donated it to the Smithsonian when he returned. Most of the military seemed to have one back then and Bucky assumes he had one as well, although he has no clue.

On the little medal, is the image of Saint Michael. The patron saint of Soldiers.

Fingering the medal pensively, he tries to summon a memory, any memory. He figures he must have something in there that could build off this particular war-related trinket.

But no. Just like always.

Setting it gently aside, he opens the clear bag instead. Pulling out the postcards, he lines them carefully up in front of him, internally translating the languages.

Covered with palm trees, an exuberant statement in French: Welcome to sunny Nice!

A colorful boulevard linked with green trees in Spanish stating: The Beauty of Barcelona

A laughing cartoon caricature of a man holding skis in Swiss German: Enjoy your Winter in Zurich

The solemn announcement in Italian, written over an image of the Coliseum: Hello from Rome: The Eternal City

Orange and red leaves, covering a giant beer stein in German: Oktoberfest in Munich!

And the dogged mantra of the stoic English, tall white letters against a soft pink backdrop: Keep Calm and Carry On

But the one that piques his interest the most, is last in the pile. A hand-painted postcard, the paint chipped and faded through time, of the Brooklyn Bridge at night. The title above in carefully printed letters reads: Brooklyn, New York – Thank God It’s Not Jersey. Bucky feels his heart stutter at the words, because he’s pretty god damn sure he and Steve used to throw out that same phrase.

On the back of the Brooklyn postcard, he finds the inked shapes of two hearts tangled together.

Bucky stares hard at the image, so simple but vibrating with some unknown meaning. Flipping through all the other cards, he finds them blank, nothing more than a pretty collection. Bewildered and careening toward frustrated anger, he gathers them together and slips them into the bag. He bangs the box shut and hides it away again.

He finds three more locked boxes in his search, each containing innocuous items. One with a thin, moth-eaten baby blanket. One with a random assortment of old Life magazines.

After stowing away the final box, housing an envelope with three sepia toned photos of a tall man and a small girl, he spends another ten minutes searching for clues. Finally, he’s convinced the room has shared all its secrets - until he notices the crease in the rug below the coffee table.

Shoving the table aside, Bucky flips up the rug. In the middle of the floor, he finds a plank of wood slightly thinner than the others, with a small chink in the edge. Crouching down, he runs his thumb around it and nudges it up, finding a hidden space below.

There he finds one more box. His beleaguered bobby pin gives a final brave attempt and with a quiet snick, the lock pops open.

Inside are three dusty books. Peeling gold letters line the spine of each, showing a single word, followed by three different numbers.

Journal, 1967 Journal, 1968 Journal, 1969

From the pages of 1969, a ticket stub flutters to the floor.

*****

Under the fall of lacy snowflakes, she walks. Circling the small cabin for hours, her toes are damn near frozen, but she finds herself unwilling to go back inside. He has to be waking soon and the thought of facing him makes her chest ache. Instead, she walks the narrow path along the bank of the rushing stream bordering her home and argues with herself.

Go inside. Ask him. Talk to him. See if he remembers. Tell him the truth! He deserves to know. Maybe he doesn’t want to hear it. Maybe he’ll just kill you and be done. Probably not though, you’re not that lucky.

Hysterical laughter bubbles up and she digs the puffy gloved heels of her palms into her eyes. She really needs to get out more. This constant talking to herself thing will get her institutionalized someday.

But she literally has no one else to talk to. And that right there, has always been the problem.

Brushing the snow from a giant boulder, she gingerly sits. Bending forward, she drops her head to her knees and wraps her arms around her legs, trying desperately not to give in to the panic attack threatening to drive its anxious fingers into her brain. Memories begin to swirl and even after all this time, the sound of his voice rises so easily to the surface, a sweet, drawling Brooklyn twang that turns her stomach to knots.

“Je vais avoir de la chance ce soir. Il y a de belles femmes en France qui ne m'aiment pas?”

“Can I walk you home?”

“Wait for me darlin’, okay? Will you? I’ll come back for you. I promise I will.”

“You’re what I want. You’re what I’m always gonna want.”

“You and me, this kind of love, it lasts forever, okay? It’s never gonna leave.”

“Dammit. Shit shit shit,” she chants to herself. Thick and heavy, the memories press down until she buckles under the burden of remembering. Tears begin to fall, hot trails down her face and she wipes them away, her hands shaking.

She stays on the frozen rock, letting time pass while the cold seeps through her clothes. The air is so icy, it makes her lungs seize.

*****

The butcher knife lays beside him, within easy reach. Bucky sits cross-legged on the floor, flicking through the pages at random. He pauses now and then, digging deeper, losing himself in the faded ink of another’s life.

19 May, 1967

America is strange. I arrived in Los Angeles with no goal, just rented a car and drove. First to the coast and saw the ocean. It was different than the first time Papa took me – I’ve never seen anything so blue. I tried not to think about it, but it was in my head. It’s always there. Blue everywhere. The water, the sky, his eyes. I can never leave it behind.

The songs on the radio here, they’re different too. It feels like the heart of this country is screaming and I see why. Vietnam is different. This war, it’s unexplainable maybe, but there’s a frustrated weariness in the words.

But then again, is it really that different? No matter the fight, Soldiers still give their lives and leave their sweethearts crying in the streets. They promise to come home, that ridiculously naive optimism of youth, and instead they die in a battle they never wanted to join. It’s the universal truth of every fight, since the beginning of time. The tears should be enough to stop this all from happening, but no. War keeps coming, one after another, and soldiers answer the call.

I still remember what he said that night. It’s stayed with me more than anything else. They’ll run out of soldiers eventually, he said, like he was nothing more than a cheap commodity. He was so tired by the end. I should have helped him.

11 April, 1968

Last week I was walking by the book stalls down at the Seine and saw a bargain bin of English language books. I found a book of poetry and I swear to god, that damn thing fell open on this:

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun, Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good. W.H. Auden

I don’t think I could find a better articulation of my mood. Either Fate has something against me, or I’m just that unlucky. I bought it. I couldn’t help myself.

21 July, 1969

Sometimes, I think miracles do still exist in this world.

Down at an old hotel, the entire town was crowded in the dining room. They had a TV balanced up on a shelf so everyone could see and they caught the BBC1 broadcast. The entire room was dead silent. It was overwhelming, I can still hardly imagine it. A man walking on the moon!

The whole time I kept thinking how much he would have loved this. How he would have laughed. How he probably would have tried to sign up to be a spaceman! The more I remembered, the more I thought about that night by the river, after we first met. All those stars in the sky. Decades later and I still wonder about it – how it’s possible to be so in love with someone – but then again, how could anyone fail to love him? He was so warm, so full of life and excitement and dreams. God. We had so many dreams, so many plans for the future. We were so naïve, thinking the world might owe us a little happiness. What a joke.

And now here I am. Alone with nothing but memories – just like always. That life we wanted, it’s as far away as the moon. Unreachable and impossible.

1 January, 1970 We never He was I thought A Soldier with a metal arm?

The journal ends there.

Bucky looks at the ticket stub that fell from the delicate pages and the words bring forth a wavering reel of images, brand new and unfamiliar.

Moulin Rouge New Year’s Eve Ball Admittance: 1 Individual 31 December, 1969

The black lacquer of a piano. Silver sparkles reflecting from crystal chandeliers. The scent of fizzy champagne and the tang of blood and a dark apartment overlooking the twinkling lights of Paris.

Disoriented, Bucky sets the book down. What the hell is this? Who is she? She must be Hydra, she has to be. How else would she know the Soldier? Why did she take him, what does she want? Why does she have journals from so long ago, what do they mean?

It’s the eternal tragedy of his god damn life – always questions, never answers. He looks around the warm, peaceful little cabin and scrubs his hands down his face. He needs to plot his next move, but the bullet wounds throb with fresh, fiery pain and he’s suddenly and overwhelmingly exhausted.

So, he remains seated, surrounded by pages upon pages from someone else’s life.

Blinking back frustrated tears as he stares at the books, he knows without a doubt, that these three years of writing hold more memories than he could conjure in the lifetime he’s lived.

Distantly, he hears the slow crunch of boots on snow. Rousing himself from the miserable train of thought, he scrambles to his feet, turning to face the front door when footsteps hit the porch steps and begin to climb.

Bucky wipes the tears from his eyes. And he lifts his knife.

*****

Pacing back and forth across the small porch, she stops in front of the door and reaches for the handle.

And draws away again. Curses and keeps pacing. Tries again, pulls back.

“Open the door, you god damn coward,” she whispers harshly.

Squaring her shoulders, she turns the knob and pushes it open before she can lose her nerve. Stepping inside, the room is silent, just as she left it. Orange flames flicker in the fireplace, the smell of smoky wood and pine needles hangs in the air. She shuts the door quietly, shakes out her coat and hangs it on the rack. Taps the snow from her boots and unwinds her scarf. Rubbing her temples, she takes a deep breath and starts for the stairs, determined to face him.

She takes three steps, before the wind is knocked clean from her lungs.

The heavy body hits her from behind, one arm curling around her chest, the other pressing her butcher knife against her throat. The voice in her ear is so gut wrenchingly familiar, she nearly faints.

“Leaving a strange man alone in your bed with access to knives – not your best move.”

When he was lying unconscious wrapped in her quilts, she thought he seemed smaller than she remembered. Now, the breadth of his body against her back makes her realize just how wrong that assessment was.

“Yes. I should have hidden the knives,” she tries to speak. “Something to remember next time.”

“Tell me who the fuck you are.”

She should be terrified right now. The most prolific assassin of the 20th century has a razor-sharp blade sitting at her throat and a metal arm digging into her chest. With the slightest move, he could crush her lungs or slit her throat. He wouldn’t even have to try.

She should be terrified, but she’s not. Because the years, the decades, have been nothing more than an empty echo without him, and now he’s here. Against all odds, he is here with her. Relaxing in his arms, she leans back and closes her eyes.

Bucky stiffens abruptly at the movement.

Her hand floats up and reaches for the wrist flexing at her throat. She feels his grip tighten further, but for some reason, he allows her curious touch. Fingers trembling, they find the thin ridge, running down the long white scar curving from his right thumb across the back of his hand.

It’s nothing more than a gentle caress, but –

Like a hammer to his skull, his head splits head open. With a frightened snarl, he shoves her away and she stumbles forward, catching herself against the sofa. Slowly, she turns to face him fully.

Dark hair frames his face in sweaty tangles and his blue eyes are wild.

“What the fucking hell was that?” he hisses. The knife is held outward and he scratches at the scar, trying to scrub away her touch.

“I’m sorry,” she says, rubbing her throat. “I wasn’t – I’m sorry.”

“How the hell did I get here?” Bucky barks. “Last thing I remember, I was gut shot and bleeding out in a god damn blizzard.”

“I found you. Brought you here.”

“Yeah, obviously. Except I’m fuckin’ heavy and no offense, but you don’t look much like a super soldier. So, I’ll ask again - how the hell did I get here? Who else is working with you?”

“No one, it’s just me. And I’m not working. You – I don’t know, you just followed me. When you collapsed in the snow, I rolled you over and shouted your name, and your eyes just – they opened and you got to your feet.”

Bucky glares at her. “Convenient, that you knew my name. And how to wake me up.”

Jaw clenching, she glares back now. “I didn’t know how to wake you up. You were bleeding everywhere, but you stood there like you were waiting for something.”

Biting the inside of his cheek, he grimaces. He thinks he knows what’s coming.

“Say I believe you. Then what?”

“You asked for instructions, so I told you to get in my truck and I brought you here. I’m sorry, I didn’t know – I wasn’t sure what to do. When we got here, you wouldn’t go upstairs. You just laid down on the dining table and – ”

She pauses, but he sighs resignedly. “Keep going.”

“Both bullets, they were still – inside. I had to dig them out. I got bandages and tried to stitch up the wound. You were awake, I thought you were awake, the entire time. You were telling me what to do. Kept asking if – you kept asking if I was new.”

Bucky feels his face heat in embarrassment. Shifting uncomfortably, he grudgingly explains. “That was a secondary protocol. Something happens to the Asset, it’s programmed – I mean I was programmed - to help fix the problem.”

The cabin is quiet for a drawn-out moment.

“Oh,” she finally says. Her voice sounds small.

“So? You’re former Hydra then?”

She blanches at the comment. “What? No! I was never with them.”

“Really,” Bucky says sarcastically. “You just happened upon me and knew my name and brought me to a cabin in the middle of nowhere for no reason? That was all just luck?”

“Stop being a jerk. I said I don’t work for them,” she snaps, anger seeping into her voice. “I’d slit my own throat first.”

Bucky goes quiet, considering the statement. His loses some of the hostility when he replies, but his tone is still suspicious. “But we know each other. You know him. Or – me. The Soldier.”

“Yes. I know the – Soldier.”

“Well, I don’t remember you,” Bucky says harshly, and he watches her face fall. He feels a pang of remorse at her disappointment and almost points out that she’s not unique, he never remembers. But he holds his tongue.

Eyes dropped to the floor, her shoulders sag. “I didn’t expect you would.”

An awkward silence fills the room. Bucky feels that strange ache in his chest once again, a desire to smooth the unhappiness from her face, and an apology tumbles from his lips.

“I’m sorry I don’t remember. Trust me, it’s definitely not you.”

“No. Please don’t apologize,” she says quickly, looking up. She shakes her head like she wants to say something more; instead, she swallows the words and offers an olive branch. “Do you want to know? I mean - do you want me to tell you?”

Bucky considers the offer. Before him stands a lovely woman. One who knew the Soldier, who met the worst incarnation of himself, but without the security of Hydra to help her. He comes to a swift, depressing conclusion.

Chances are, he did something shitty to her.

Does he want to know then? Does he really need another gruesome memory clogging up his brain?

Sure. Because Bucky never knows when to quit.

“Yes,” he says firmly. “Tell me. I want to hear it.”

“Okay, I can do that,” she says softly. She motions him to sit on the couch, but Bucky hesitates.

“Can I, uh, have some pants first?” He asks stiffly. “This is sort of awkward.”

The surprise on her face makes Bucky think for one fleeting moment that she might laugh. But then she nods and disappears through a small room off the kitchen. When she returns, she’s holding a neatly folded stack of fresh laundry and he recognizes the contents of his backpack.

“Here,” she sets it cautiously on the dining table. “I’m sorry I went through your bag, I didn’t have any men’s clothing, so…anyway, I washed it all.”

Bucky snatches his ragged Captain America t-shirt and black sweats from the top of the pile, shimmying into them. Pulling a rainbow colored band off his wrist, he ties his hair back and drops to the couch.

She takes the armchair across from him, as far away as she can get in the small living room, and tucks her hands under her legs. Bucky knows he’s unlikely to enjoy whatever she has to say, but he folds his fingers together and waits. She stares down at her feet, appearing to gather her courage before meeting his grim stare head on.

Her voice is steady, as she starts to speak.

“Paris was cold that December and it snowed early. It was New Year’s Eve in 1969.”

*****

Next Chapter

*****

Tags are open right now, if you want one, please send me a DM or ASK.

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #bucky imagine #bucky barnes imagine #bucky fic #bucky barnes fic #bitsmasterlist #altnl

917 notes · View notes

tyrusquacks · 5 years

Text

Misdirections: Prologue

Read it on AO3

Cyrus felt like he could kill Andi right now. Despite being far away from her, each stood on the opposite ends of the ridiculously wide street of Broadway, he was certain that the girl was giggling at him. It’s not like she was doing a good job hiding it. Had he not been so embarrassed, Cyrus might have tried to find the humor in the situation. But right now, that was beyond his capability. Instead, his eyes shot daggers at Andi, which he hoped she could feel, while his mind devised all sorts of revenge plots to get back at his friend. The worst part was that it was all entirely Andi’s fault. She knew that Cyrus had very little faith in the drivers of New York City. That he very religiously followed all traffic lights at all times, which, she liked to point out, was not very New Yorker of him.

So why had she egged him along at the intersection, seemingly convinced that 3 seconds would be enough to cross Broadway? Fucking Broadway!!!

Of course, it wasn’t enough time. But Andi, who was already a few feet ahead of him, swiftly ran to the other side long after the countdown was over and the red hand on the light had stopped flashing. Almost immediately, impatient drivers began to move forward and aggressively honk at a panicked Cyrus who gave up midway into the street and ran back to the safety of the sidewalk from which he was currently murdering Andi with his stare. If he was being honest with himself, almost no one cared. It was summer. Which meant that the streets of downtown Manhattan were swarming with tourists who were either too engrossed in the scenery of imposing skyscrapers or too fixated on following their map, physical or digital, to notice a certain 16-year-old’s pathetic and failed attempt at crossing a street.

In theory, Cyrus should have overcome his initial anger by now. Except he didn’t, and this irrational bundle of emotions had now only changed target. Cyrus was angry at himself. Anyone else who hadn’t been in his hormone-fueled teenage mind for the past couple of months would find his reaction absurd, and under normal circumstances, it might have been. After all, he had just rationalized himself that what just happened was practically a non-event for all witnesses, of which there were few to none. The truth was, being extremely self-conscious did unspeakable wonders for the teenage brain.

Cyrus was suffering from a very common, yet rarely spoken about ailment known as the spotlight effect. Simply put, he always felt watched, less in a creepy stalker way than bearing the nagging feeling that people around him not only paid attention to what he did but constantly judged his every move. He felt that way in school, at home, on social media, and now on a hot summer day on Broadway. Perhaps this wouldn’t such a bad thing if he felt confident about who he was and what he was doing. But it was quite the opposite. Lately, his thoughts were ridden of judgment about his own lack of a sense of self-accomplishment. And while he had always been a pensive person by nature, he found himself spending increasingly longer periods of time reflecting on all the things that he either had done wrong, hadn’t done at all, or should have been doing.

Unsurprisingly, the prospect of beginning his junior year in a few months and having to start serious conversations with himself, his friends, his parents, and his school officials about college and his “future”―whatever that entailed―had exacerbated this feeling. And if somehow that hadn’t been enough, the disastrous status of his romantic life was also becoming a trusted source of insecurity. Somehow, that’s probably what he felt most guilty about.

Cyrus Goodman has been out as gay to practically everyone he knows since middle school. In the liberal bubble of New York City, his sexuality was never an issue with the people he interacted with on a daily basis, and he was well aware of this privilege. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake the feeling that there must be something wrong with him when everyone around him was having some kind of romantic experience and he wasn’t. Maybe it wasn’t the case, but it definitely felt like it.

In some regards, the environment of nearly automatic acceptance he was is only made things worse. As fucked up as he knew that sounded, he couldn’t even blame homophobia for his lack of romantic encounters. It also didn’t help that living in such a big city, he couldn’t pretend that a lack of possible romantic interests was the thing that was holding him back. It should be the total opposite. In fact, Cyrus believed he had run into more cute boys his age than he could count, and that according to the law of probability and probably some other principles that he had no time for, some of these boys were bound to like other boys. At this point into the endless pit of self-deprecation, the question he would ask was:

Then why hasn’t any of them liked me yet?

Before he even had time to mentally go down the preexisting list of all the possible reasons why, Cyrus was abruptly pulled out his thoughts and back into reality by a soft tap on his left shoulder, followed by a rather polite “Excuse me.” Startled, he briskly turned to face whoever was trying to get his attention. A girl with long blond hair, approximately his age or a little older, stood in front of him and began talking as soon as he made eye contact with her.

“Hi, sorry if I scared you but you look like you’re from here so I was wondering if you could help us,” she explained with a smile.

The “us” she was referring to consisted of her and the taller blond boy who was standing next to her, sporting a reluctant smile which signaled that he did not want to be part of this interaction. But the girl seemed nice, so Cyrus decided he would try to help. Only a few moments ago, he had been spiraling down some fairly unhealthy thoughts, but it only took a split second of hesitation before he returned their smile and replied:

“Sure, what do you guys need help with?”

“Do you know if there’s a Subway around here? It should be on this block but we’ve been walking around for like 20 minutes and we can’t find it,” she answered, her polite smile wavering as her despair became more obvious.

Although it didn’t show outwardly, Cyrus began to panic. He was horrible with directions and he knew it. That’s the main reason he never really went anywhere without his trusted best friends, Andi and Buffy. Worst of all, he didn’t live in the area they were in. He was merely being dragged along by Andi on one of her surprisingly frequent craft supplies shopping sprees. But now that he had already committed to helping this girl and her decidedly silent companion, he felt too awkward to tell these tourists the truth about his less than exceptional navigational abilities. So instead of saying: “I’m sorry, I don’t know,” which he really didn’t, he kept trying to help.

“Um like which- which one do you need?” he asked her, as he uncomfortably shifted his all his weight to one foot.

The girl seemed confused by the question. She gave a questioning look to the boy next to her who only shrugged in response.

“Well uh, I don’t know, whichever one is closest. I didn’t know there more than one in the area,” she admitted, visibly annoyed now. Her response made Cyrus chuckle internally. She had to have known that there was more than one subway line. It seemed like a no-brainer, even for a tourist.

“I mean… yeah, it depends where you wanna go. Do you have like an address?” he asked. Had he known what he was doing, he would have sent them to the nearest train station he knew of. But since he didn’t, he strategized to stall for as long as he could until they hopefully gave up or asked someone else. Unfortunately for him, despite her friend’s mildly uncomfortable silence, the girl seemed intent on getting a concrete answer out of him.

“No, we don’t have one. We didn’t think we’d need it. A friend told us there was a Subway on this street so I didn’t think it would be so hard to find. Could you just tell us if we’re supposed to go north or south?” Her tone was still polite, but growing increasingly forced. But Cyrus could tell that she wasn’t annoyed at him specifically, but frustrated with the situation as a whole. Now he was feeling awkward and guilty that he was being practically useless to these strangers. Suddenly, he felt unable to keep the charade going for much longer. After all, he only had to say north or south. Plus, he was sure that either way they would eventually stumble upon a subway station because as far as he knew, they were often not too far apart.

“Yeah okay. In that case, you should definitely go north,” he affirmed with all the fake certainty he could muster. He thought he was off the hook until the girl spoke again.

“So this way?” she asked, pointing in a general direction to their right. Now, more than ever, Cyrus wished Andi was still with him. She would have known what to do. For the first time since he’d started speaking to the stranger, he glanced across the street to find Andi looking down at her phone, waiting for him. He also noticed that the pedestrian light indicated that he could cross, so he decided to end this conversation as quickly as possible so he could escape to the other side of the street before the light went red again.

“Yup it’s that way,” he responded with more of the false confidence from his earlier reply, while vaguely gesturing to his right. The girl seemed satisfied with his answer and her face visibly relaxed as her smile became more genuine.

“Thank you! Thanks a lot,” she said while simultaneously beginning to drag her friend―or whatever he was―with her. “Have a great day!” she nearly shouted, already walking away, without waiting for Cyrus’ response.

Both relieved and a little panicked about what he’d just done, Cyrus wasted no time in crossing the street as fast as he possibly could until he reached Andi who was still on her phone. Needless to say, his encounter with the tourists had dissipated his anger towards his best friend, rendering all murder plots useless. Once he stood directly in front of her, Andi looked up at him and shoved her phone in her pocket.

“Who was that?” she inquired.

“Just some strangers. They were asking me for directions,” he responded, scratching the back of his head. Almost immediately, Andi’s eyebrows shot up.

“You? Giving directions? Since when-”

“Since never,” he interrupted her. “I panicked and just pretended I knew what I was talking about until they went away.” His tone was brusque and he clearly didn’t want to elaborate any further, which Andi must have noticed because she started walking again without a word, although Cyrus could tell she trying to suppress a chuckle. Still, grateful of her silence, he just followed her pace, sure to keep up with her this time to whatever thrift store they were headed to. As if his efforts to catch up with her had reminded her of what happened earlier, Andi turned to Cyrus to ask him about it.

“Hey, why did you run back? We were already in the middle of the street so you could have just run to the other side with me.” Her voice was soft and Cyrus couldn’t say that she was annoyed, just sincerely confused at his counterintuitive reaction. For his part, maybe he was no longer angry at her, but Cyrus wasn’t any more thrilled to discuss what he still felt was an embarrassing moment, so he didn’t. Instead, he looked away and just shrugged. Once again, Andi seemed to understand and didn’t pry. They had been walking in comfortable silence for only a few minutes before something caught Cyrus’ eye.

Subway.

The food franchise, not the mode of transportation. Cyrus stopped in his tracks, staring at the green sign as a wave of realization hitting him. Maybe she was talking about the restaurant this whole time. Then he thought about how confused she’d seemed when he asked her which subway line she wanted to take. Come to think of it, he hadn’t specified “subway line”. And when he asked her for the address she was headed to, she probably thought he meant the address of the restaurant.

Andi, who had noticed that he stopped walking, turned around and shot him a questioning look which he ignored as the maybe in his head turned into a most certainly. He looked back to where he was walking from, now painfully aware that he sent two strangers in the very opposite direction of what they were looking for. He definitely messed this up for them. His only consolation was that they were clearly tourists visiting the city so there was no chance he’d run into them again. Right?

Next: Chapter 1

#tyrus #Andi Mack #tyrus week #misdirections #tyrus fanfic

9 notes · View notes

actuallylorelaigilmore · 5 years

Text

my heart is thrilled by the still of your hand, chapter 1

Happy birthday to @bethanyactually! This first chapter is heavy on the internal monologue, but the next two have actual plot, and that plot is full of shippy dad!Schneider feels <3 so I think you’ll approve. I hope you have a great day!!

Penelope x Schneider, One Day At A Time. Also on AO3. Chapter 1/3.

****

“The Alvarezes are gonna be okay. And so are we.”

It was the start of something, reaching for his hand.

She’d never done so before. Schneider was usually the one who did the reaching, the risking...and Penelope liked it that way.

But she needed the connection, and with their fight still echoing behind them, she knew Schneider wouldn’t invade her space unless she gave him the opening.

Besides, it helped--it made it a little easier to offer him the truth like a second apology. He was such a warm, present person; Schneider grounded her without even trying.

The least she could do was be honest. Make it clear that he mattered, that he was more than his father’s son. That he belonged to them just as much as the cold world he came from, if not more.

With his hand in hers, Schneider would listen, because he always listened. He always forgave. This was the worst fight they’d ever had, and Penelope was finally starting to see the cracks that got left behind when they just moved on instead of trying to repair the damage.

Schneider was really good at papering over them, the same way he brushed off his father’s abuse, his childhood neglect. But she wanted better for him than that. He deserved better. He deserved to know he was loved, to not have to doubt it.

It stuck with her, the way Schneider had protested when Penelope told him he wasn’t really family. The way he’d tried to approach her, to keep talking. She didn’t have to see his face as he left to know how he must have looked--like a kicked golden retriever, loyal and confused and scared but never, ever fighting back.

After Mateo finished going over her finances, giving her the breakdown along with some much-needed--if not entirely welcome--perspective, Penelope had remembered all the times Schneider let her into his apartment without hesitation, all the times she took him for granted because he seemed happy to let her.

She got so angry at herself for that, that it made her mad at him, too.

Why didn’t he stand up for himself? Why didn’t he ever? If Schneider had gotten mad back, told her off, she would’ve listened--if only because it would’ve been such a shock.

But no, he just went when she told him to go, and accepted when she came back to apologize, and looked at her with all that trust and hope swimming in his eyes. Just like always.

It felt different this time, sitting there on his couch. She felt different. Because Schneider was important to her, and the possibility that he might not know it? That he might not trust it anymore?

That was on her.

So, she told him.

“I like the man you are just fine.”

Please don’t change, Penelope added silently, staring him down through her tears--hoping he got it. Please don’t let anyone, even me, convince you that you need fixing.

Schneider managed the tiniest of smiles in response, still gripping her hand, but mostly he stared back as though he was waiting for the other shoe. As though it might stop being true if he blinked. His expression was so open, so full of raw emotion...so Schneider...it was a relief when he pulled her in for a hug.

Penelope didn’t have to look at him then, didn’t have to watch all his feelings as they happened, trying to tug at her own. For a guy with a gambling problem, he seriously had no poker face.

She could feel the tension in their hug, where normally there was none. He was quick to offer her his arm or a shoulder, whenever she needed it, but in such a casual way--this was something else. This was because he needed it, because he needed to know they were really okay.

So it mattered, that Penelope had initiated the contact first, that she’d made things right again, enough that Schneider could hold on even after his father came back into the room.

She might not know Schneider’s father very well, but she could guess what he thought about ‘real men’ and hugging. It was her who let go first, drying her eyes while Schneider took another moment. His hand stayed on her back long enough that she was surprised his father didn’t comment.

Maybe he didn’t notice. Penelope was pretty sure Schneider’s dad had mentally lumped her in with the hired help as soon as he knew she wasn’t Avery, rendering her invisible.

Still, fading back to give Schneider space to talk to his father wasn’t easy. The protective part of her wanted to tell the man exactly where he could stick his ideas about Schneider and their building.

And hearing her own thoughts, Penelope realized suddenly that was how she felt about it. Somehow, in the face of someone like Lawrence Schneider, she and Schneider had become a ‘they.’ She was itching to step in, to be a united front.

It wasn’t her place--but the impulse was there.

Penelope wished she could blame it on the hugging, the handholding, the whole freaking day. Nearly losing her best friend and finding out she was losing her home. Watching Schneider turn into someone else and realizing how much she hated it. Having to face what that meant, how much she really did appreciate who he was the rest of the time.

If that was all it was, an emotional reaction to the closeness and the clearing of the air, then it would be a fluke, easily dismissed.

She really wished it could be dismissed that easily.

She used to be able to dismiss Schneider that easily. Brushing off his compliments, rejecting his flirtations, hinting that he was around too much. It used to make her feel slightly more in control of a life that had been spiraling.

2016′s Penelope couldn’t save her marriage or keep her kids in line or ever get her Mami to listen, but she could lay down the law with her overly-involved landlord.

Sometimes, it even worked.

They were so far past that now, Penelope knew there was no going back. Watching Schneider finally snap and kick his father out right in front of her made that clear.

She didn’t even get the chance to take her earrings off.

Even though Schneider was one of the most important people in her life, he had the oddest ability to be more like a mirror than a person, sometimes.

He knew what made her panic, and what haunted her dreams--how to calm her down or how to cheer her up. And through all that, Penelope didn’t know him nearly as well as he knew her. She hadn’t even realized it until Schneider was standing there in his open-collar dress shirt, watching wide-eyed as his father left.

“That was freaking amazing! Where did that come from?!?”

Schneider was a lot of things, but tough was not a word she would have ever used to describe him. Until now.

Everything was changing this year. Avery was his first serious relationship, the first woman he’d ever let beneath the surface. Besides her.

And then his father came to visit, and it was like she finally, really saw him. Not just the cheerful geek with endless hobbies and unlimited compassion, but the man underneath that. Who struggled. Whose life was not easy, despite all the money.

Schneider was a different person around his dad, and not one she liked. But if anybody understood trying to live up to parental expectations, wilting under family judgement, holding on to any chance of a future...it was Penelope.

As much as it sucked to watch her best friend disappear into a suit and his best corporate manners, it was something else, to see him come back. Stronger.

Penelope would have been the first to admit that Schneider possessed a quiet, unassuming sort of strength. The kind that kept him sober for the last eight years, that kept him going. It was appealing, in the same sweet way he was.

She had no idea he could be the man who kicked his jerk of a father out without hesitating. For just a second, it was like Schneider filled up the room.

And though she would die before admitting it to anyone else, that was even sexier than Quinces Schneider. So she couldn’t blame her feelings on a fluke.

Maybe the real start had been months earlier when Schneider became her best defense against anxiety attacks, always ready with animal memes or to rush to her side when she needed it.

Or before that, when she hurt his feelings and he forgave her--the first time, when it wasn’t even really an argument so much as Schneider letting her lash out without defending himself.

Or when she saw him without the beard and glasses and realized he could actually look like a guy. The kind of guy she would grab a drink with...and maybe make it to a seventh date.

Or when he brought Alex back safe and acted like he deserved to be banished forever because he couldn’t keep a teenager from looking for trouble.

Or, or, or.

It was easy to get tangled up in the history between them, the gradual shift from acquaintances to friends to family, and lose sight of the bigger picture. However much things had changed since she met him--and re-met him--they were changing again whether Penelope welcomed it or not.

“Family's everything.”

There was so much weight in Schneider’s words, in his smile, in the way he was able to look sad and happy simultaneously like no one else she had ever met.

The handholding and the hugging were more than enough for one day--too much, even. What Penelope needed to do was move things back to steady ground. To the familiar.

But he was so full of love standing there, with no expectation of anything. It radiated out of him.

It pulled her in.

Schneider had been her safe space for a long time now, but he’d never had a gravitational pull all his own. That had to be why she felt off-balance, right?

It was hard to pull herself out of the hug, when all Penelope wanted was to stay instead. And wanting that was so weird after the day they’d had, she stepped back again, almost immediately.

“Hey, you want to come over for dinner?”

Even that was new, actually inviting him. Usually, it was enough, waiting to see if he would show up. Usually, he did.

But after the fight, and the talk, and the all-of-it, Penelope wasn’t willing to wait and see. She didn’t want to leave open the possibility of him spending his night somewhere else.

She didn’t want to spend her night without him.

Penelope could still feel the warmth of his arms around her, the realization hitting her nearly as hard as that Ice Bucket Challenge after Schneider had talked her into it: she had actually been underselling it, when she told Schneider she liked who he was.

She liked him so much more than she ever could’ve predicted she would.

As quickly as her mind, and heart, veered into new and alarming territory, the cold shock of reality followed, bringing her back to her senses.

He was her best friend. He was her family.

He was with somebody else.

“You can invite Avery.”

Penelope hurried to add that on, segueing into a promise of cookies and her family’s company, hoping he might not notice her slight flush.

Hoping it wasn’t written all over her face how much she needed him to say yes.

She had to tell her Mami and the kids the good news, and make sure they set enough places at the table. She had to give herself a stern talking to about mixing friendship and attraction and stress and love together and getting it all confused.

Penelope was too caught up in her own thoughts to worry about Schneider staying behind.

Later, she would remember seeing the case his father gave him, still sitting in his living room.

Later, she would remember that Schneider didn’t sing and dance along with her as she left.

There would be plenty of time for her to catalog all the red flags she should have noticed, once it was too late.

And making lists in her head at night, of all the ways she’d failed him as a friend when he’d needed her most...well, at least that kept her from thinking about how Schneider had pulled her into him, how she had wanted to keep holding on.

For a while, anyway.

#happy birthday #bethanyactually #alvareider #penelope x schneider #odaat #one day at a time #alvareider fic #alvareider fanfic #odaat fanfic #odaat fic #my fic

47 notes · View notes

elshopper · 6 years

Text

Wish You Were Here

Hi, so I wrote something - shocking right? I’ve been sitting on this one for what feels like forever, so I felt like it was just time to post it... no time like the present! It’s multi-chaptered, and I’ve only posted the first, but I wanted to share it on here just for kicks and giggles. Long story short, this is canon compliant with s2, but once s3 stuff kicks into gear I’m just gonna call it a future AU.

Wish You Were Here

Rating: T

Ch. 1 WC: 6,839

Summary: It’s a quiet summer evening in 1989 when all the shit festering in Hawkins comes back from the dead after about 5 years of normalcy. After a tip that his worst nightmare is on the first bus back into town, Jim Hopper sets his paranoia-fueled back up plan into motion – to get his daughter as far away from the threat as fast as possible.

Only he knows his daughter, and he knows she would never leave her family to deal with the mess she felt like she made. So, he enlists the help of the only other person he is entirely confident would die to protect her if he had to – her boyfriend.

Anxious Mike Wheeler and a reluctant El Hopper embark on a road trip with no end in sight, on the run from the bad men that still haunt both their dreams. With this, they are forced to confront the darkness barreling toward them – supernatural or otherwise – and defeat it one last time.

Read on ao3 here, or down below!

Chapter 1: The Night Shift

June 12th, 1989 – 7:08 PM

As the night grew on, Hopper felt as if the stale yellow lights in his office were buzzing just to annoy him. They were blinking too. Not in any type of peculiar way, just in the way that pissed him off. It set his teeth on edge, but it was his fault that he had paperwork to finish. If someone would have told him about all the paperwork before he went to the police academy, he might have chosen another path in life. So, he blamed his current suffering on himself.

In an effort to refocus (and to avoid reaching for those emergency Marlboro Lights he kept in his bottom left desk drawer), Hopper stood up to stretch his legs. A few steps around the office couldn’t hurt him. He found himself roaming aimlessly in-between the tables and chairs, peeking onto other peoples’ desks. He looked at the pictures and calendars and flyers that adorned the paint-chipped walls. There were smiling families. A couple of posters for lost pets and bikes.

Above Flo’s desk, there were groups of pictures of the station at holiday parties past, dating back decades. The faces were faded and some of them were now course with age and experience. Some of the people had cycled through, moved away, retired, passed on. As he thought to himself about what ever happened to that George McDermott that graduated two years above him and joined the force when he moved to New York, he noticed something. Hopper wasn’t in a single picture until about four years ago.

He had been to these holiday parties in the past, and hell, they usually sucked ass. Someone always overcooked something, the Secret Santa gifts were always disappointing (somehow, Hopper always ended up with a coffee mug and a fresh pack of cigarettes), and he was always surrounded by the people he worked with – the people he didn’t want to be around in his free time. So, he would stop by, drop off his gift (a 12 pack of Budweiser) and pick up his coffee mug, and get on with his night. That came to a stop though, around five years ago.

For the snapshot of Christmas ’87, all were gathered around Powell, who was showing out for the girl he chose to drag along with him whose name Hopper didn’t even bother to catch at the time. He had a pair of sunglasses on, and a cap on sideways. Rolling his eyes, Hopper’s focus shifted to the back-right corner where he was standing. El was standing on her tip toes to the left of him so that she would be visible in the back row, a cheap Santa’s hat sat lopsided on her head, smiling as big as ever. He remembered when Flo brought the developed pictures a couple of weeks after, how he had to bite back a few tears. It had been the happiest he’d seen her in a long time.

Christmas ’88 was a similar story, except this time El was held piggy-back by Steve Harrington, just so that she was tall enough to hold the mistletoe over an oblivious Powell, who had his arm around a different woman than the year before. Hopper stifled a laugh, and crossed the room.

Those few steps led him to the corkboard that hung to the right of the entryway. There were always notices from officers, the occasional wedding invitation, a couple of baby pictures, along with a picture of a cheeky Harrington at his graduation from the police academy. He smiled at that, remembering the party afterword Steve had thrown. El had begged him to go, and he reluctantly let her, and pretended not to notice when she and Will came home smelling like whatever cheap beer kids were into these days. He didn’t even ask.

Next to that was the newest edition; the edges of the freshly developed image were still crisp and flat unlike the rest. This was the picture he was most proud of, the only one in the office he had proudly hung himself.

Standing in front of a red velvet curtain, El had the biggest smile on her face. She held her newly-received high school diploma out in front of her, the black graduation cap slipping off to the side of her head just a little. As Hopper remembered, she had tried all day to pin that damned hat to her head, when in the end she just tossed it during the ceremony. She was pretty peeved about the whole thing, but Mike Wheeler had made sure to take her picture under the “Hawkins High Class of ‘89” banner that hung above the stage anyway. Hopper was really glad he did.

The phone rang.

It made him jump, just a little. The shrill bell cut through the air like a knife, reminding him exactly where he was. A second ring.

“I’m comin’, I’m comin’,” Hopper said, to no one in particular.

Probably those damn Petevsky kids out doing god-knows-what.

“Hawkins Police Department, this is –“

“Jim?” the voice on the other line shot back before he could finish his sentence. Shit. He really hoped that voice didn’t belong to who he thought it belonged to.

“Uh… yeah. May I ask who’s calling?”

“Jim, this is Murray Bauman,” the voice said.

It all came flooding back to him then. The last time Hopper had seen or heard of the likes of him was in ’84, when he had written him a check…

“…for your trouble.” Hopper said, slipping the envelope into Murray’s hands. After taking a quick look inside, Murray slipped it into his interior jacket pocket.

“Oh, Jim, that’s really not necessary, you know – “

“I know you’re going to keep your nose out of my town.”

“Seeing as the case is closed, yes,” he replied. “But if you hear anything about that Russian girl…” he trailed, a knowing, teasing smile on his lips. Hopper loathed it.

“Yeah, yeah, and one more thing,” Hopper said, taking a step closer. “Keep an eye out for a Dr. Martin Brenner for me, would you? If he shows up anywhere, for any reason, you call me.”

Murray nodded.

“I see.”

“I can’t imagine you’d hear anything, but just… do it. Understand?”

“Won’t be a problem,” Murray said, with a sleazy smile, before sneaking back off to his van and disappearing down Main Street. Never to be seen or heard from again…

“Bauman?”

“I have an update on your target.”

“My target?” What target…

“I’d assume you’d rather not discuss this over the phone?”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he answered, trying to sound casual, but instinctively checking his surroundings and reaching for that bottom left drawer.

“I’ll be with you in 5,” Murray said, and just like that the line went dead.

Hopper took in a deep breath. Surely that call wasn’t about who he thought it was about, although he had no idea what else it could be. After years of nothing, he thought for sure he was really dead. He had every reason to believe so.

El maintained that all through her high school years. Any hesitation from Hopper about seeing a movie or going shopping at that damned new mall was met with an eyeroll and a brash reminder…

“He’s dead, remember?” El said, curtly, her eyes flashing dark, but just for a second. “I have nothing to worry about, neither do you.”

That memory felt cold and distant. He had believed her. He felt like, out of everyone, she would be the one to know. He didn’t want to ask questions, to press any further. Especially about that, about him. If she felt safe, then she was. Simple as that. On that logic, the past five years had gone by pretty smooth.

The more the silence continued, the more the lights above him buzzed, the more Hopper stared at El’s graduation picture on the corkboard… the more frantic his thoughts became. They whizzed around in his brain, and he slowly but surely lost the ability to control them. He reached for that emergency cigarette box in his bottom left drawer, lit up, and waited.

With each passing second, Hopper could only feel more and more regret. And why, he wasn’t entirely sure.

(Did El really think he was dead?

Or was she just lying to make him feel better.

But, she wouldn’t lie… would she?

Unless, she was lying to make herself feel better…)

But, none of it mattered now. His mind jumping from place to darker place, he took another drag of the cigarette.

He planned for this, he remembered. He never thought it would happen, but he had planned for it anyway. He had always been paranoid, he had just pushed it away, to the far corners of his mind where it was lying in wait – ready to reach out and grab him.

Another drag.

He should have seen this coming. He should have known. Hopper was slipping, spiraling internally – his heart rate matching how fast he was thinking about his next step, when –

Tap tap tap tap tap.

Hopper jolted, putting the butt of his cigarette out in an old cup of coffee and rushing to the door.

When he opened it, he saw the exact same annoying little man he had known five years ago. Not a thing about Murray Bauman was different, sneaky look in his eye and all.

“What is this business about ‘my target?’” Hopper asked, trying to sound like he hadn’t been meditating on the matter in the excruciating minutes between his phone call and Bauman’s arrival at the station.

“Dr. Martin Brenner. What. A. Case!” Bauman replied, walking right past Hopper and into his office as if he was returning back home from a long day at work.

“At first, I thought you gave me something just to keep me busy.”

Hopper stared at him as if he had gone insane (which he may or may not have) as he tried his best to mask all the thoughts that were swimming in his brain. Murray was completely unphased, slamming down a large stack of files and folders in front of him on the nearest desk. He started to rifle through them while keeping eye contact with Hopper and pressing on.

“Or maybe he was just some old hack from the old Department of Energy Lab that you wanted to make sure got the axe in ’84 during that… uh… mass casualty. I knew I had heard that name before.”

He stood still, and could only nod his head in response.

“But then…”

The space between what Murray had just said and what he was about to say seemed absolutely infinite.

“I heard some chatter.”

Murray opened a green file, and fished for a piece of paper, still moving at a pace that almost made Hopper’s head spin. How on earth could he know anything in this mess?

“About a year ago. A Dr. Martin Brenner. In New York! Now, I thought ‘that’s a pretty common name’ but then they mentioned something about him being in the WPP and that was obviously a huge red flag.”

“The WPP?”

“Witness Protection,” he answered without missing a beat. Everything he said seemed rehearsed, like he had spent the entire car ride over perfecting every line.

“Long story short, your guy is back on the grid.” Bauman said, finally coming to rest with his papers. Hopper felt his blood pressure rise even further (if that were possible), and his lungs ached for another cigarette, bit his feet stayed nailed to the floor. He was stuck.

“The grid? What do you mean by the grid?” Hopper asked, his voice hushed, despite the fact that no one was around to hear them. Force of habit.

“I mean, I have your guy.”

“You have him?” Hopper asked tentatively.

“He’s in Indianapolis. Here!” Murray passed him the green folder. “Here are his flight records.” He shuffled some more papers out of his interior coat pocket. “And here are copies of the record for the hotel in Indianapolis he’s been living out of for… eh… about a week now.”

Hopper studied the coffee stained, crumpled up papers, and lo and behold, there he was. Along with his flight records, there was a photo ID image plastered on. Staring back at him was Martin Brenner’s face, still cold as ice. The years the years had worn it down, the lines were deeper and the look in his eyes was even more distant. But it was him, Hopper knew it was him.

“He’s been in hiding, as far as I can tell.” Bauman kept on. “Since ’83. Maybe ’84.”

Hopper sifted through the papers, his expression hardening with every passing moment.

“I’ll be damned,” he muttered.

“Maybe he’s been living under an alias. No way of tracing that, unless of course, we have the alias.” Murray laughed at his own words, but Hopper couldn’t be bothered. In fact, he wasn’t really listening anymore. The gears in his head were turning, dusting off thoughts in a corner of his mind he never dreamed he’d have to visit again.

“You’re sure.” Hopper said. It wasn’t really a question.

“Beyond a shadow of a doubt.” Bauman answered, smiling. Pleased with himself.

It made Hopper’s stomach churn, but he forced a smile and a nod.

“Well, it’s been really nice to see you, Bauman. It really has. But, I have business I really should be tending to,” he said, moving towards the door to show Murray back out to the parking lot.

“Business? It’s an empty office. It’s almost 8:00!” Bauman responded, backing out the door. He laughed as Hopper pressed him towards the humid summer night from wince he came.

“Yeah, in the middle of summer. Kids are out of school…” Another step, and Murray was back out the door, still facing him. The yellow light from the office shining off his glasses.

“I’ll get out of your hair,” he said, with that same, slippery smile.

“Thanks, Bauman,” Hopper said, trying his best to sound sincere.

“If you can ever find it in your heart to repay me, I’m still looking for that Russian girl…” Bauman said with a wink. Hopper would have shut down his reply with a hasty denial for the hell of it, but he had already shut the door. In fact, he was already deep within his office, fumbling around for a little brown lock box. Damn it all if he had lost it. He never thought he’d need it, so he hadn’t taken great care in making sure he remembered where it was… how stupid that had been.

As he shuffled though the depths of his drawers, he picked up the phone on his desk and dialed home without even looking up.

“Hello?” the voice on the other end rang out.

“Joyce,” Hopper responded, “Listen.”

“Hey! How’s the night shift going? “she teased.

He figured the answer to her question would come the longer she stayed on the line.

“I need you to meet me up here. Its urgent.”

“Why? What is it?” her tone wavered, switching almost immediately to worrisome. He didn’t want to trouble her over the phone.

“Just get up here. Please?”

“Do I need to bring the k– “

“No,” Hopper cut her off. “No, don’t tell them you’re coming to meet me, just slip out. Can you bring the wagon?”

Just as she answered yes, Hopper’s hands finally landed on that little brown lock box. Sifting through his giant ring of keys and cursing himself, Hopper looked for the right fit.

“Come on,” he grunted, shaking the key as he turned it. Once the lock clicked open, he breathed a small sigh of relief. Miraculously, everything was still there, just as he left it. He almost laughed to himself… He had actually thrown this whole plan together a couple of years ago, it was a fail-safe. A last resort. He took a deep breath.

This is never going to work.

After a few moments in the silence, lost in his thoughts, staring at El’s picture on the cork board, and waiting to hear Joyce’s tires on the pavement outside, his answer hit him.

Unless…

June 13th, 1989 – 3:36 AM

It wasn’t a good night of sleep anyway.

Despite how painstakingly average the day was, Mike had felt like something was just… off. And what really pissed him off was that he couldn’t figure out exactly what it was.

It had been a scorcher, with the temperatures “projected to be the 2nd highest on record!” Holly so promptly informed him as he cranked up the AC in his car on his way to take her to the pool. He had rolled his eyes, only to be met a bright red sunburn by the afternoon.

Max had been there today, off of work. She and El had opted to spend the majority of their time by the pool gushing over some new novel that had hit the shelves the week before. Not that he minded. Will was there too, albeit he arrived a little late. He told Mike to put sunscreen on, and he didn’t listen.

They sat around in the sun it crept down below the tree line, which was when he drove El and Will back home just in time for Ms. Byers to offer him a seat at the dinner table – one he would have to politely decline. He knew his dad was cooking out tonight for God-knows-why. So, he had to be home. No funny business.

Shockingly enough, dinner was uneventful. More talk about college this, and responsibility that. Mike stared blankly at his baked beans. Still, despite having an alright day, something felt off. Like a picture being just a little off center when you get it developed.

“Michael, your nose looks red.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Did you put sunscreen on?”

“No, I forgot.”

“Responsibility, Michael…”

“I know, I know.”

And that had been it.

But still he tossed and turned, only finding sleep in rare patches of the night. He wasn’t having any nightmares. He didn’t have anything to be nervous about… that he knew of. He still felt weird, nevertheless. He would call El, but he didn’t want to bother her about it – whatever it was – if she was asleep. He would see her tomorrow, they were going to grab dinner on Main Street. If he still felt weird then, he would tell her.

When he woke up for what felt like the zillionth time around 3:00, he thought he would radio El, just in case. Maybe she could tell him why he couldn’t get to sleep. She always did a good job of clearing his mind anyway. He would apologize, but he really wanted to hear her voice.

He tried twice, and didn’t get an answer. Static. He sat his walkie back on his bedside table with a groan into his pillow. What was wrong with him?

His mind was still wrestling with unconsciousness when he heard what sounded like a soft knock at his window.

Mike sat up, blinking. His clock shown 3:36. It had been about 12 minutes since the last time he checked.

Tap…

…tap…

…tap

This time it was a little more defined, more urgent. There was definitely someone at his window.

That’s why El wasn’t answering, he thought. She was just on her way over.

It wasn’t a far bike ride, she came over sometimes when she couldn’t sleep… maybe she had been feeling just as off as he was.

Throwing himself out of bed and rubbing sleep out of his eyes, Mike shuffled over to the window.

Where he expected to see El’s face was just the empty, foggy glass. The faint yellow light from the nearest street lamp unphased by anything blocking light. What on earth had been making that noise? Whatever it was, he couldn’t see it. Mike was now fully awake, adrenaline pumping through his veins and his palms starting to sweat. He could feel his hair sticking to his forehead.

There’s a good chance this is a nightmare, Mike reminded himself.

But it wasn’t.

More timidly than he would care to admit, he stepped towards the window. In a last-ditch effort to protect himself, Mike grabbed a dusty, old toy light saber from behind his bed – it hadn’t been touched in years, probably. Mike opened the window with the end of the light saber, and it creaked up slowly.

In the silent summer night, he heard a whistle.

That was when he swallowed his childish fear and stepped up to the window, and he was relieved (and then scared all over again) to find Hopper in his driveway, leaning up against the hood of Will’s mom’s car.

“Is… is everything okay?” Mike whispered out into the night. “What are you doing here?”

All Hopper did was nod at him, signaling for him to come down and meet him. Something was wrong. Mike wordlessly backed up a couple of steps, and made his way towards Nancy’s old bedroom – her window was right over the garage, and ever since she had moved out for college, Mike had made sure to use that window to his advantage.

Within a minute, Mike was standing in front of Hopper in his pajamas, breathing a little too hard to be proud of himself for making it off of the garage roof unscathed.

“Oh, so that’s how you sneak out of there. And I always thought you just jumped.” Hopper said, whispering.

Mike rolled his eyes in response.

“What are you talking about?” He was painfully aware how much he sounded like a liar. “I don’t sneak out of the – “

“Listen, kid, I’m not in the mood.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

Hopper smelled like cigarette smoke. That, to Mike, was the giveaway that something was really wrong. There was a reason he felt off. He wasn’t going insane. He swallowed.

The only person who ever kept Hopper from smoking was El, and if she were here, she would really let him have it about how she could smell it on him. The more confident a communicator she became, the more she would whip the cigarette in Hopper’s hand into the nearest cup of liquid with a flick of her head.

Mike could see the scene in his mind perfectly, at dinner a couple of years ago when Hopper came back from the store with a box in his right hand and a shopping bag in his left.

“Those are bad for you.”

“I know, but what really matters is that you don’t –“

“Have you ever heard of second-hand smoke?”

El finally coaxed him to quit, argument after argument. Mike figured he snuck the occasional smoke every now and again, but he didn’t want to be the one to tell her that.

Back in the present, Hopper sighed, his eyes trained on the driveway where Holly’s chalk drawings painted the pavement.

“I need to ask you a favor,” Hopper said, his eyes unmoving from the faded sunflowers and rainbows.

Mike took a quick breath.

“Is El okay?”

“Yes,” he responded, annoyed. “She’s in the car.”

Mike looked past him to see El, asleep in the passenger seat, hugging the pillow that sat between her head and the leather.

“She’s asleep.”

“I can see that.” Mike responded. “Why? What are you doing here at 3:00 in the morning?”

Hopper took his right hand and moved it up to rub his brow. He closed his eyes for a brief moment before standing up all the way off the hood of the car and moving away from it, like he didn’t want El to hear, even though they both knew she was a heavy sleeper.

At full height, Mike was proud to say he was almost as tall as Hopper. Almost.

“Look, I don’t really know how to ask you to do this. So, I’m just gonna…”

An agonizing pause.

“…start talking.”

Mike stared blankly ahead at Hopper, waiting to hear what he had to say. Was he skipping town? Taking El on a vacation without telling her? Dropping her off? None of his ideas made any sense, so he chose to listen instead of guess – a pretty rare occurrence, he figured. He chalked it up to being startled out of bed a few minutes prior.

This still could be a nightmare, Mike reminded himself. Although, he feared he was wrong about that too.

“In the event of anyone… finding us, I always had a backup plan. Ever since El started school. Just in case. I saved up some cash, made some false papers, untraceable license plates and car registration. Just because I was so… paranoid.” Hopper swallowed.

Mike nodded.

“The plan being to just get her out of town while I deal with things, with people. You know. Make sure she was as far away from them as possible. I dunno. Send her with a map out west to the middle of nowhere for her to hide out for a second.”

“And then, I actually got to know her. I know how her mind works. The way she thinks through her problems. I know how stubborn she is,” he stifled a small laugh. “And I know, without a doubt in my mind, that she would never leave any of us here to fight any battles for her…”

Mike nodded his head again, ignoring the way his pulse quickened as he listened to Hoppers words. He pushed away the questions in the back of his mind (Who do you have to deal with? Where out of town? For how long?).

Hopper nodded this time, finishing his thought as he met Mike’s eyes.

“By herself.”

Mike’s eyes narrowed. Hopper continued.

“I’ve gotten some information that they, um…” he trailed off, almost like he was evaluating whether or not he really needed to finish that sentence. “I really need you to take her out of town. Just for a little while.”

Mike was dumfounded.

“How long is a little while?”

“Just until I can take care of things.”

“Take care of who?” Mike took a step closer, and the volume of his voice rose too. Hopper shushed him.

“Why don’t you let me worry about that.”

“Where am I – “ Mike started. “Where are we supposed to go?”

“I feel like it’s best if you don’t tell me.”

“What?” Mike spat, a little bit louder this time. “I mean… what! Do you realize how crazy this sounds? You just want me to just drive off and not tell you where I’m going?” He felt the words just falling out of his mouth. “You think I’m a terrible driver!”

“Geez, and I thought you’d be excited,” Hopper snorted, but it was cold. Forced. Mike wasn’t nervously laughing though. Not this time.

“Kid,” he started. “Please. I swear, this is our best bet.”

Mike wasn’t so sure.

Maybe it would help if Hopper would tell him what this perceived threat actually was. Or maybe it would make more sense if their friends tagged along too – isn’t there strength in numbers? And he was surprised Hopper picked him in the first place… what sane father sends their daughter off in a car with her boyfriend in the middle of the night to not tell them where they were going?

This is some kind of test, Mike thought. One glance at El, still passed out in the passenger seat, and her bag in the back, made him think otherwise. Dammit.

As far as he knew, aside from the occasional nightmare and her fear of loud storms, El was doing just fine. Just normal. She made it through high school. She had a family. Hopper adopted her. She had friends. Mike thought that fixed a lot – if not all – of her problems. And she hadn’t caught any attention from suspicious neighbors either. Everyone in town believed she was Hopper’s kid – transferred to his custody from her mother in the city. People whispered, but not for the reasons he feared. Just bullshit reasons.

Monsters and darkness and other dimensions were things of the past, and if Mike was being completely honest, they didn’t even feel like they actually happened. The only thing that reminded Mike that El had any type of superpowers was her blatant refusal to get up and change the television channel. All of the circumstances in which he met El in the first place just didn’t feel real. They never talked about it. He didn’t like to think about it, and neither did she.

Mike wiped the palms of his hands on his flannel pajama pants.

This was the first time – in a really long time – that he had to confront just how different El really was. He always felt like they would talk about it someday. He wanted to know what happened to her when she was a kid, even though he knew it would just make him sick. He was still curious, and he figured that one day she would be ready to tell him about it. He didn’t think that day would be coming anytime soon.

“I will take care of explaining to your mom.”

Mike barely registered that Hopper was still talking to him.

“Just sneak back in your house and grab a bag and pack as much as you can.”

Mike still didn’t move, his fingers twitching and his eyes trained on one particular pebble on the driveway.

“Try to be quick, and don’t wake anyone up.”

Mike’s eyes moved back up to meet Hoppers’ but he still didn’t make any moves. Hopper leaned back against the hood of the car, and pulled out a box of cigarettes and a lighter from his pocket. Mike watched, a slight disapproving grimace on his face.

“Do this for her, okay? She needs you to.”

He lit it up, and took a drag.

“Just doesn’t know it yet.”

Ten minutes later, Mike yawned as he traipsed back across the driveway, fully dressed and duffle bag slung over his shoulder. Hopper dropped his cigarette butt on the driveway and pressed it with the sole of his boot. He motioned Mike around to the back of the car.

“These license plates are new and registered under a fake name. That shouldn’t be a problem for you since you would never speed past a state trooper and get pulled over, but just in case…” Hopper whispered.

Mike rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to get pulled over.”

Hopper didn’t even bother to respond, passing Mike a thick and worn manila envelope.

“In here are some false ID papers, and some cash to get you through.”

“How much money is in here?” Mike asked.

“A little over…” Hopper stalled. “ten thousand.”

Mike’s eyes flew open as wide as he’d ever felt them go.

“DOLLARS?” he whisper-yelled. Hopper shushed him.

“Yes.” The confirmation didn’t lessen Mike’s expression. “To be used for food, gas, and cheap places to stay only, you got that?”

“Yes sir,” Mike answered.

“My spare pistol is in the glove compartment.” Hopper said. “You remember how to use that one, right?” He didn’t stop to hear Mike respond. “There’s a box of ammo in there too. Emergencies only.”

“Of course,” Mike said. He could hear his voice shaking.

Of course, he remembered shooting cans out behind Hopper’s old cabin a couple of winters ago. Just in case, he thought at the time. It sent a shiver through him to realize – that just in case feeling in the back of his head that made him ask Hopper to teach him to shoot a gun was probably the same one that made Hopper save up all this money and forge all these papers.

Shit.

“Just, take the car, pick a direction, and drive. There’s a map in the console.” Hopper continued on, almost like he had practiced this speech in the car on the way over. “Don’t tell me where you’re going. Don’t tell any of your friends either. Don’t call them. Don’t write to them. The more people who know where you are, the easier it will be to find you. I’ll tell them what they need to know. Understand?”

Another nod, and after a second of thought…

“Wait…” Mike started. “How are we going to know when it’s okay to come back?” If it’s ever okay to come back?

Mike looked wistfully off in the direction of his house, thinking for the first time of what his mother was going to think. What Holly was going to think. He didn’t even want to know what his dad was going to think.

“Every Sunday, at 7:30 eastern time – mind the time changes – I’ll be talking.” Mike’s forehead creased in confusion. “You tell her to come find me,” Hopper said, and Mike remembered. “I’ll let you know when it’s safe to come home.”

“Okay,” Mike said, nodding his head. “Okay.”

It wasn’t okay.

“My mom…” Mike trailed.

“I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of her.”

“When El figures it out… when I tell her why we’re leaving town… she’s going to want to come back,” Mike said. To his surprise, Hopper actually stopped to listen. Nodding, as if he knew Mike wasn’t done talking. “She doesn’t want you to deal with… anything, anyone… alone. She wants you to be safe. So do I.”

No one wanted to keep El out of the grasp of bad intentions more than Mike. Maybe with the exception of the man standing in front of him, Mike thought, even though they sometimes disagreed on just what that looked like.

All events of the past 20 minutes considered, Mike was pretty sure keeping El away from whatever threat was headed towards Hawkins was probably for the best. And, if he was being honest with himself, he knew what the threat was. Who the threat was. What convinced him, finally convinced him, to climb into the front seat of the car and put it in reverse was that Hopper agreed with him.

“I won’t come back until you say it’s safe,” Mike said. Hopper leaned into the window.

“Even if she tries to make you?”

Mike nodded.

Hopper shoved Mike’s bag in the backseat next to the one he’d packed for El (the bag was actually Will’s, Mike noticed) and closed the door as quietly as he could. The passenger seat was still. Mike envied her. He was a shitty sleeper, and she would probably miss the end of the world.

“Don’t let her be too mad at you for too long,” he said, an uneasy laugh escaping him as he did. “You’re doing the right thing.”

Without another word, Hopper passed the envelope through the window.

“Be smart with that money.”

Mike nodded again.

“I will.”

“And the gun is for emergencies only.”

“Yes sir.”

“And be safe, will you?”

As he shifted the car into drive, Mike watched him take a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and light it up. Mike was waiting for him to turn and saunter off in the direction of his house, which was really only a few blocks over and to the left. He had the route memorized like the back of his hand, and he laughed to himself just a little remembering the day that Will told him they were moving. They were all moving. Together. So close.

But then, he remembered where he was. What he was doing.

Hopper stayed put, watching the car drive out of the cul-de-sac. Mike watched him take a drag through the rear-view mirror, and once he crested the hill, Hopper was out of sight. For some strange reason, Mike breathed a sigh of relief. A loud one too.

El shifted in the passenger seat at the noise, causing Mike to whip his head around waiting to meet her eyes. Instead, she sighed in her sleep and hugged her pillow even tighter to her torso and brought her knees in closer. Figuring she was cold, Mike fumbled with the air conditioning with one hand while shakily driving out of the neighborhood with the other.

He couldn’t help but watch her sleep in between lengthy glances at the road ahead of him. She looked so peaceful and so blissfully unaware. Part of him wanted her to stay that way for as long as possible. He knew, once her eyes opened to focus on the dawn of a new day, she would have questions for him that he couldn’t answer. Not without her getting angry at the response.

He knew she wouldn’t be happy knowing Hopper was left alone to deal with whatever mess she felt like she created. She would want to go back, demand he turn the car around, give him the cold shoulder for a few hours.

She had spoken to him before about it, the guilt. After some time passed, she would tell him about her nightmares – of tunnels, dark and spooky forests, and the Upside Down. With time, all those faded away and became shadowy memories that no one dared speak of – as if speaking about it would bring it back into their reality. What really bothered her after all this time was the guilt, she would say, with tears in her eyes.

El’s steady breath was starting to cause the window to fog. Mike smiled.

She felt the guilt when Will had to go to the doctor. When she saw the pictures of Barbara Holland in Nancy’s old room. When Max woke up from nightmares filled with screaming monsters. When Will’s mom sat on their porch in the mornings, distant and lost in thought about Bob Newby. She had even felt it when Ms. Henderson went on and on about their lost cat from a couple of years ago.

It was because of this that Mike tried his hardest to keep his most violent and real nightmares to himself. Sometimes, in the silence of the middle of the night, he could still hear Bob’s scream.

It was everywhere for her. Everything – every inconvenience – made her feel at fault. Mike spent a great amount of mental energy focusing on ways to convince her that wasn’t true. Because it wasn’t. Every time he tried, she always thanked him for being supportive and patient. But Mike still had the sneaky feeling that she was just saying that so he wouldn’t waste anymore breath. He knew she felt horrible for the damage she caused. Even though she didn’t mean to, and all the wounds in Hawkins were healing.

He mindlessly took a right at the red light on Elm, and decided it was time he start focusing on where he was actually going.

He knew the streets of Hawkins like the back of his hand. He’d never driven that far outside the town, so passing the Hawkins city limit sign felt a little like space travel.

He always knew he would leave someday, or at least he hoped he would. Mike knew his departure for college was coming up soon. August 27th, he reminded himself. He’d been dreading it, if he was being completely honest – it being saying goodbye to El. Not like he didn’t have a way to talk to her or like he’d never see her again. But, still. That didn’t mean he was super eager to see her standing in his rear-view mirror in the same way he had just seen Hopper about 15 minutes ago. But, just like a lot of their past and childhood traumas, Mike and El just felt it best if they just didn’t talk about it at all.

He never pictured leaving Hawkins like this. In the middle of the night with his one duffle bag in the back. His sleeping and unsuspecting girlfriend in the passenger seat.

Oh God, this isn’t kidnapping, is it? I’m not going to jail, right?

It was then that Mike decided his brain was a little too worn out for all this deep thinking. So, he just kept his eyes on the road and listened to the very small and distant sound of the radio.

At the next stoplight, his headlights bounced off the red and blue marker for Highway 30.

Good enough for me, he thought to himself. We’ll end up somewhere sooner or later.

He wasn’t even one hundred percent sure where Highway 30 would take them. But that was the point, wasn’t it?

Merging on to the dark and deserted highway, Mike chose to take advantage of his quiet time while El snoozed all curled up in her pillow to figure out exactly what he was going to say to her when she woke up and realized they were about 400 miles away from home.

Blinding him, another bright green sign caught his attention.

INDIANA HIGHWAY 30 TO PLYMOTH, VALPARAISO, CHICAGO

Chicago it is, Mike thought to himself, glancing over at El, still passed out cold.

El’s going to love Chicago.

AN: I have it all mapped out from here, I just have to write it.... wish me luck on my first chaptered fic! lol, hope you enjoy <3

#stranger things #mileven #stranger things fic #stranger things fanfiction #mileven fic #st #mike wheeler #eleven #hopper #writing things #marty writes #lookee i did something!!!!#hope u like it :)

44 notes · View notes

geollejimin · 6 years

Text

Kookmin Headcanon #6

Jungkook isn't ever sure if it's a blessing or a burden that he can tell down to the second when Jimin is about to spiral in to self-loathing.

He recognizes the signs with ease, and it's also with alarming calmness that he pulls Jimin back from that brink every time -- as if it's almost just another daily responsibility, like brushing his teeth or doing laundry. He always frames it in a way that makes Jimin think it was his idea, it was his strength and resolve that brought himself back down to earth, and Jungkook is content with that. If that helps Jimin live another day relatively worry free in the already busy world they live, what's the point in hogging all the glory? It's for Jimin, after all. He can forgo the praise every now and then.

For Jimin. But tensions were high -- promotions on the horizon and the looming anxiety of constantly being in the spotlight non-stop for a few weeks. It was an unspoken rule that everyone did everything within their power to look their best. It wasn't an odd sight to see Namjoon walking around in a face mask the minimum three times a week, something he never really committed to doing any other time of the year. Jin agonizingly washed his sheets every night to keep his skin the clearest possible (where did he get the time?). Jungkook himself put in extra hours at the gym out of habit. He didn't even actively think about doing it anymore before a comeback, he was on autopilot. Everyone seemed to have a dedicated, yet realistic, game plan to prepare for the cameras in the coming months. Except, of course, Jimin. There were the aspects of Jimin's obsessive personality that he could prepare for after years of practice. They were the physical ones -- the eating habits (or lack thereof), the late hours practicing until his feet were blistered -- Jungkook had those down pat. He was nothing if not a professional at being annoyingly persistent, in a sneaky way. At meals, Jungkook watches Jimin push food around his plate out of the corner of his eye, talking excitedly and animatedly about something topical so no one would suspect anything else was afoot. In this way, Jimin is a master manipulator, and far too clever for his own good. But Jungkook is too -- Jimin falls victim to pettiness far too easily, and all it takes is Jungkook nonchalantly picking the best bits from Jimin's plate every couple minutes for Jimin to pull it out of his reach and tell him to knock it off. "You're not eating it anyways," Jungkook points out, feigning innocence as he makes another grab for something delicious looking. "Just because I don't inhale my food like air like you do doesn't mean I'm not getting to it," would come the biting reply. And ten minutes later the plate is clean, and Jungkook can deal with Jimin's sour mood knowing he's accomplished something. The long hours of practice requires more persistence and more of a back bone. The others members would drop out of the practice room one by one, turning in for the night and saying they'd put in more hours tomorrow. Jungkook, exhausted after half of them had already left, envies them -- but Jimin isn't even close to calling it a night, and if Jungkook didn't stay, he's positive they'd be peeling Jimin off the floor of the practice room the next morning, asleep and feet in a terrible state. So, he stays. Every angrily restarted routine, every minor tantrum when something isn't just right. He doesn't say anything to quell Jimin's obvious irritation. Years of experience has told him that there isn't anything that he can say that Jimin will take deeper than face value anyways, so he bides his time. He practices alongside with him even through his exhaustion, but doesn't scold Jimin about the late hour. If it's important to Jimin, he wants him to know it's important to him too. When the time comes and Jungkook pretends to badly roll his ankle during a particular step, he is always half-expecting Jimin to get irritated with him and tell him to go home if he's going to be an obvious hindrance. But of course he doesn't. Jimin hears Jungkook's over-exaggerated hiss of pain and he whips his head around, the music fading in to the background around his instinctual worry. "What happened?" He asks quickly, a hand on Jungkook's lower back, every ounce of irritation in his demeanor evaporated. "Did you hurt your foot?" "It's nothing, just stepped on it weird." Jungkook has never considered himself an award-worthy actor, but even he can't deny that when he puts weight on his now "bum" foot and his barely-there yet telling grimace gets Jimin's eyes wide with concern, he's got at least a little bit of natural born talent somewhere in him. "You need to go home and rest," Jimin says. Jungkook just shakes his head. "I'll stay, I want to practice hard for the comeback, too." "You can't practice through the pain, that's not healthy." Jungkook shakes his head once, firmly. "If you can, then I can too." Jimin goes silent, and it's in that moment of clear realization on his face that Jungkook knows he's won. When they're in the car on the way back to the dorms not ten minutes later, Jungkook is on beside himself with internal self-congratulations. Half elated because his clever plan worked perfectly for the third time that week, and half on cloud nine as Jimin absentmindedly rubs and works his very much normal and uninjured ankle. But those were the physical ones. They were easy. Jungkook excelled in the realm of the physical, he was a very tangible kind of guy. Disputes, love... it all could be settled with physicality, touch, contact; it's how it always had been for him. Unfortunately, Jimin existed seemingly entirely within the realm of the emotional, which might as well have been on top of Mount Everest during a blizzard as far as Jungkook was concerned. His psyche was guarded heavily, and penetrating it was something Jungkook had yet to accomplish. He couldn't fight off the feelings of inadequacy that plagued Jimin, couldn't drag them out back and intimidate them in to leaving Jimin alone. The way Jungkook had always dealt with -- or not dealt with -- emotions wasn't how Jimin processed his own, and it bothered Jungkook that he couldn't make anything any better. What use was he to Jimin if he couldn't even make him feel good enough? And it was times like these that were the worst. Here, in this green room after a performance. Jimin in his costume, each piece of it designer and exceedingly expensive. In one hand, the glittering trophy from that day's win. In the other, his phone with which he had just tweeted a picture of himself, trophy held close to his shining smile, to their fans all over the world, thanking them for making it all possible. Not a hair out of place, his makeup accentuating his best features, his pristine and perfect milky skin. And yet... Everyone around them was exhausted, either sleeping in whatever corner they could claim or snacking and chatting away tiredly. The sea of people made the two of them fade in to obscurity, hard to be noticed. But Jungkook was watching Jimin, and Jimin was watching himself. Jimin stood in front of one of the long mirrors in the green room, the day's spoils grasped tightly in his hands, but a darkness had crossed him. His stare seemed distant and cold as he analyzed himself in his reflection, unblinking, a direct juxtaposition to the buzz of tired excitement around him. His gaze seemed to judge silently, himself on trial for every small imperfection and mistake he could find. He was the judge, the jury, and the giddy executioner. The sight would have been alarming and uncomfortable to anyone who noticed it -- but Jimin had somehow convinced himself that in a crowd of people he faded in to the background every time. Even with his fiery neon hair, his bright skin and listless, hooded eyes, his full features and rhythmic way of moving, he thought there was nothing that set him apart from everyone else, nothing memorable about him at all. Jimin believed if he was alone in a room, it was empty. Jungkook watched him for what felt like too many minutes, disbelief overcoming him alongside waves of agitation. How could no one else see what he was seeing? He could chalk it up to exhaustion, to ingrained casualness that made everyone numb to the barely noticeable signs of something not being right with the others. But this was the Jimin that Jungkook couldn't decipher. The one who had almost everything and still felt as though it was going to be yanked away from him as soon as the world who adored him now had grown tired of him. The one who thought he didn't deserve any attention until he had become pretty, not realizing that someone had been attached to his side for years before the awards, the recognition, the brand. The one who seemed to find fault in every aspect of himself where Jungkook only found something new to study and memorize. The one who thought that in a crowd of adoring fans, no one was ever looking solely at him, when in reality it was never anyone in the crowd who couldn't peel his gaze away. What was Jimin still yearning for? And how could Jungkook make sure he got it in abundance? Jungkook could agonize over the why's and how's, like he always did around promotions when this behavior was at its peak. He could obsess over how to pull Jimin out of this spiral and continue to never actually do anything about it. He may not be able to connect with Jimin on his level, may not ever understand the convoluted and complex inner workings of Jimin's self-loathing, but Jungkook could still fix things the best way he knew how, the one way he always excelled at anything he put his mind to. Someone on the opposite side of the green room called Jimin's name, jolting him out of his trance. He blinked once, twice, and by the time he had done a 180 and was floating towards the assistant calling him to change, his facade had changed to one of unbothered content, one that would seem genuine to anyone except those who bothered to look further. As he passed Jungkook their eyes met for a brief fleeting split-second, and he could tell that Jimin knew he had been caught, but Jimin continued on with an astonishingly good poker face. Jungkook lowered his eyes back to his phone, his resolve steeled. If Jungkook existed solely within the realm of the physical, then he'd settle this the way he'd resolved every conflict in his life until this point: Physically. And with no holds barred. *** "Hobi-hyung, the food is getting cold. Where is Jimin-hyung?" Hoseok looked up from his plate and nodded his head in the direction of the room he shared with Jimin without hesitation. "Same place he's been all night." "He hasn't come out yet? At all?" "Your guess is as good as mine." "I went in there earlier," Taehyung said from the couch, his plate resting precariously on one lifted knee. "He wouldn't talk to me. It was like trying to communicate with a brick wall." "You all should just leave him alone," Yoongi offered quietly from the kitchen table where he sat alone. "He will talk when he's ready, you know how he is when he gets upset." Jungkook wasn't convinced. He wiped his chin with the back of his hand as he stared at the closed door to Hoseok and Jimin's room. "Jungkook-ah, if you go in there and try to make him talk when he doesn't want to, he's only going to withdraw more," Namjoon continued in Yoongi's place. There was a long pause, the five of them watching Jungkook watching the door, all with the same thick tension. "You can't fix everyone," Jin added, quiet. "I don't need to fix everyone." "You know exactly what I meant," Jin replied irritably, glaring holes in to the back of Jungkook's head. "There's literally no need to be so dramatic." "He doesn't want to talk," Namjoon said from beside him as he swallowed a mouthful of food. "I'm begging you, Jungkook-ah, for the sake of his mental well-being and your own, don't force him to." Jungkook should listen to his leader, he knew that, but that still didn't really stop him from already being on his feet and stalking towards the door, picking up Jimin's untouched plate along the way, before Namjoon even finished his sentence. "Or, you know, do," he could hear the exasperated voice behind him. "Everything I say is only a suggestion at best anyways." Jungkook stood at the door for only a few milliseconds before turning the handle and letting himself in. He didn't bother knocking to announce himself; what was the point if wasn't going to get a response anyways? Jungkook always lived by one motto: do first, ask permission second. Jimin was curled up against the wall on his bed, surrounded by waves of blankets that didn't cover any inch of him, leaving him exposed to the cold temperature Jin insisted on keeping the dorm's thermostat at. He didn't look up at Jungkook when he entered, didn't say anything or acknowledge his presence at all, but Jungkook could tell he was awake. And if he was awake, he was listening. "Hyung?" No answer. "I brought you food. It's cold, but you should eat something." Again no answer, but Jungkook wasn't really looking for one anyway. He gingerly placed the plate on the nightstand by Jimin's bed, next to the journal Jungkook had given him for his birthday the year before, written in twice before it was forgotten. He was surprised Jimin still insisted on keeping it close even though he never used it. The bed dipped as Jungkook sunk down on it, close enough that his thigh brushed Jimin's lower back. Jimin still didn't move. "Hyung, don't you want to talk about it?" "Go away." "No one is mad at you, you know." "Go away." "You're allowed to have off days--" "Jungkook!" Jimin whipped his head around and his small, balled fist landed directly on Jungkook's chest, giving him a firm shove. "I said leave!" Jimin might as well have been blowing smoke on Jungkook for as much effectiveness as his shoved were. When Jungkook didn't even budge, it angered Jimin further, and soon both his hands were pushing with all their muster against Jungkook's solid chest. As his desperation grew in to franticness in trying to get the other to move, Jungkook just stared down at him, silent. He didn't put up a fight, but he also didn't back down. Eventually, as was always the case, Jimin tired himself in to a stupor soon enough, and he collapsed face first in to his pillow with an annoyed huff. His fingers were still fisted in Jungkook's shirt and he didn't make any attempt to remove them. Jungkook knew he needed to let Jimin say his piece first, it was the only way he could coax Jimin out of his heavily-guarded shell. He didn't make a move to touch him, he simply stayed silent and still, watching Jimin back rise with his exhausted breaths. Finally, he spoke. His voice muffled from the pillow smothering him. "I'm humiliated." "For being sick?" He hugged his pillow around his head tighter. "During practice! I fainted in the middle of practice and even though I was fine, I was still sent home! Don't you know how embarrassing it is to be sent home like a child?" He seemed to sink further in to the mattress. "I let you guys down." "You didn't let anyone down." Jimin replied with something biting, but it was far too muffled by the pillow to make out, and Jungkook didn't want to ask for a repeat. "You didn't let me down, hyung," he whispered after a long moment. He expected Jimin to continue to prolong the silence between them, ignore him completely, start throwing fists at him in vain again -- but Jimin just turned a small potion of his face away from the pillow he was still buried in, looking at him with one eye clouded with some sort of expression Jungkook couldn't place. It almost seemed as if Jimin was looking for some sort of confirmation that he was lying. "That's easy for you to say," he finally replied. Jungkook's stare turned quizzical. "What is that supposed to mean?" "Every fucking thing you touch turns to gold." Jungkook could feel the blood rising with heat in his veins. "I have no idea what you're talking about, and neither do you." Jimin shot up angrily from where he laid on the pillow, his livid face inches away from Jungkook's, challenging. "Have you ever even let down anyone in your stupid life?" "Yeah, I have." "Oh really? Who?" "You." Jimin only pulled back a fraction of an inch, his eyes only widened for a hair of a second, but it was enough for Jungkook to see the surprise on his face at Jungkook's no-hesitation response before he hardened again and sneered, "And what exactly is that supposed to mean?" Jungkook threw his hand up in exasperation. "What do you think?" Jimin made to move off the bed around him. If Jungkook wouldn't leave, he'd do it himself. "I don't have to listen to this nonsense." He didn't make it but a few inches before one of Jungkook's long and muscled arms wound itself around Jimin and practically threw him back to where he had been sitting on the bed a few seconds prior. He bounced as he hits the mattress, shock evident on his face at the blatant manhandling. "Well you're going to listen anyway."

(to be continued)

#kookmin #jikook #HC

164 notes · View notes

royal-duality · 6 years

Text

All is Fair in Love and War ||Part 7 of Friends are Family ||

(Just so everyone is aware and so nobody gets confuzzled, this takes place before any of the previous Friends are Family fics. It’s the prequel to everything so far! Because I can.)

Warnings: I don’t think there’s any, but let me know if I need to tag anything!

Pairings: Logicality

Summary: It wasn’t fair that Patton struggled to breathe around him.

Or; in which Patton tries to confess to the nerdy guy that comes in on Wednesday's

It was a typical Wednesday. The café was filled with people of all ages, some in groups while others were alone. The atmosphere was friendly and serene as the day passed.

Patton couldn’t deny the fact that he loved his job. Not only did he get to do something he loved and bake pastries and other goods, but he also got to enjoy seeing people go about their day. He watched people who were happy as well as people who were not. He saw the people who needed a break and the ones who never worked a day in their life.

Maybe it was strange, but there was just something soothing about watching people’s lives. Looking into their eyes and reading a story without words.

It appears his routine was not meant to stay though, as a boy with glasses walked through the door and into the café. Patton smiled and turned to face the customer, only to freeze in awe. His heart stuttered as butterflies flitted around his stomach.

This man was absolutely gorgeous.

Patton internally berated himself before pasting a bright smile on his face. He raised his gaze to meet with the other’s and nearly stumbled backwards at the lack of emotion in his eyes. Never had he met someone whose eyes didn’t tell a story. Even those that were blind had stories to tell with their eyes, but this guy… It was like he had built an impenetrable wall to hide what he felt.

What was worse, was the fact that this made the man even more interesting to Patton.

“What can I get for you today, sir?” Patton asked, his voice light and cheery.

The man took a moment to scan the menu before returning his gaze to Patton. Their eyes stayed locked the entire time, and if it was anyone else, the situation may have become awkward. However, Patton followed the motto of, “It’s only awkward if you make it awkward”.

“I would like to request an order of a large black coffee, with a request of 2 shots of espresso. Additionally, I ask you to refrain from adding sugar.” The customer’s voice was apathetic, and his face was that of a stone.

Patton’s heart melted a bit. He didn’t know what exactly it was about this stranger, but he made Patton fall in love as soon as he walked through the door.

Nodding, Patton cast a bright smile at the man before turning to make his cup. Grabbing a marker Patton scribbled a cute phrase on it as well as a little doodle. “And what’s your name, sir?” Patton asked. Name’s weren’t a necessity, however he really wanted to know who this stranger was.

“Logan.”

The next day had been less eventful to say the least. Normally, Patton would find interest in everything and everyone. But that was before Logan walked into the café and into his life. Now it was difficult to find anything that excited him even half as much as the thought of the stoic man.

Still, he went about his day. Wearing a smile and reading people’s stories.

A week passed before Logan had shown up again. Just like last time he wore an indifferent expression. He had a tie on as well as a black polo, and dress pants. The look was then completed with his glasses that rested on his nose.

Patton’s smile widened as soon as he noticed the other boy. “Good afternoon, sir! What can I get you?” He asked.

Logan rattled off his order, it was the same as last time. Once again, Patton went about his routine. He wrote the other’s name on the cup and hesitated before writing, “Where have you bean all my life?”

Once satisfied, Patton handed the other his cup and smiled brightly. Logan thanked him before leaving to sit at one of the tables. Patton watched as he sat down and opened a book up. He had a feeling that Logan was a bit on the nerdy side.

Patton’s heart was beating wildly as he watched the other, hoping that maybe he would turn and just glance towards him. Yet it appears today was not his day. Logan finished his coffee before standing up and making his way out of the café, not sparing a glance in Patton’s direction.

Sighing Patton rested his head against the counter. A frown settled on his face as he thought about the encounter. What was he even doing? He didn’t even know anything about this guy other than that his name was Logan and he liked books and coffee!

He let out a groan in despair. Love sucks.

Weeks passed by. Logan had taken an affinity to showing up at the café at the same time every Wednesday.

At almost exactly 4:00 pm Logan would walk through the door and order his usual before sitting down at a table to read his book.

Every Wednesday he would show up and Patton would feel his heart rate spike as hope filled him. Maybe he would notice him this time! Maybe he would finally show Patton his story!

Yet every Wednesday was the same. His eyes were a wall of stone.

Still, Patton had held on this long and he wasn’t planning on giving up anytime soon! He spent too many good puns and pick-up lines on the other to give up now.

He knew it was probably foolish, but he just couldn’t get the other boy out of his head. He was like a parasite attached to Patton’s brain and heart.

It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair that Patton struggled to breathe around him. That Patton had to hide a blush every time Logan so much as looked at him. It wasn’t fair that Logan knew how Patton felt.

He had to.

It was impossible not to notice Patton’s affection towards the other male. Heck, even a few of the customers had noticed the cashier’s longing gaze.

And so, it went. Every Wednesday, Logan would show up. Patton would smile and make his order, writing a small pun on the cup beside the other male’s name. Logan would read a book as he drank his coffee. Once he was done he would get up and leave, Patton admiring him from afar.

It had been 7 months now. School had started up again and Patton saw less of Logan at the café. However, they did share 2 classes together.

While yes, sharing classes was great, it was also the worst thing ever. Now he had to watch as Logan sat so close to him, and still he was just out of reach. Patton was starting to think he always would be. No matter how much he ran, Logan would always be a step out of reach.

So close, yet so far.

He remembered how Roman had laughed when he recalled his current situation to his friend. Roman had told Patton that chasing after Logan was hopeless. He didn’t believe in hopeless. And he most definitely didn’t believe that Logan was worth giving up.

So, he decided to up his game. Sending notes and casting small smiles at the other, yet it seemed to be a fruitless endeavor as Logan would simply acknowledge him. Nothing else. Not even a tint of pink to his cheeks or a quirk of the lips. Not even a giggle or scoff at the puns!

Maybe Roman was right…. Maybe it was hopeless.

Patton’s thoughts spiraled downwards into a perpetual loop of fear and insecurity as he walked down the hallway. It just wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair that he had to fall for someone so perfect! He-

His thoughts were cut off as he walked into a brick wall. At least, that’s close enough to what he would call the person he ran into. Patton looked up, his eyes meeting with Logan’s. Face flushing scarlet he stuttered out apologies to the other male.

“I-I’m so sorry! I wasn’t looking where I was going, and my mind was kind of in overdrive.” Logan raised a brow as Patton spoke. A moment passed before Patton’s eyes widened. “N-Not that that is an excuse for bumping into you it’s just-”

His words were cut off by a low chuckle. Patton stared in awe at the boy in front of him as he chuckled. “While I could say I accept your apology, I believe this would create a perfect excuse to ask you to attend Dinner with me.” Logan’s voice was smooth and deep as he spoke and- Wait. Was that an invitation for a date!?

“Wha-Are you asking me out on a date.” Patton almost died at the shrillness of his voice, but managed to keep equanimity, just long enough to see the tips of Logan’s ears burn scarlet as he nodded.

Silence surrounded the two as Patton stood in shock. “I- Yes! Of course, I will! Jesus, I was trying to let you know that I liked you for forever!” He yelled before freezing. Turning to Logan he saw the other stare at him with wide eyes.

Patton grinned sheepishly. A small smile found its way onto Logan’s face as he looked at Patton fondly. “Cute.”

Just then the bell rang, signifying the start of 7th period. Patton smiled brightly before bounding up to Logan and kissing the other boy’s cheek. “Bye Logan!” With that, the energetic male ran down the hall to his next class, meanwhile Logan watched the other with awe.

“Until then, Patton.”

#logicality #sanders sides #patton sanders #logan sanders #fluff #strangers to lovers #mutual pining #prequel #friends are family

33 notes · View notes