#Look if I was her and on a space station with a handbook I was meant to memorize I would also learn my damn space rules. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

honestsycrets · 10 months

Text

dedication | young!miguel o'hara x reader

❛ pairing | young geneticist!miguel o'hara x scientist!reader

❛ type | oneshot, explicit.

❛ summary | alchemax is a dangerous place to work. miguel's new assistant may be over her head. maybe he can help her, though.

❛ tags | virgin reader, f!reader, shitty science, plot heavy, loose canon references, literary liberties, loss of virginity, overprotective Miguel o'hara, jealous miguel o'hara, some objectification, workplace politics, aftercare (as requested), corruption (is it tho?), bc what bc, Spanish is not translated, young!miguel, heel-foot fetish, somewhat romantic.

❛ fulfilled request | can we please have a miguel x virgin reader and he didn’t even know until he was already putting it in?? And then voila his corruption kink unexpectedly growS? @a--dedicated--fangirl

❛ sy’s notes | miguel sort of works on that whole corruption aspect throughout this fic, but i wanted to meld these two ideas together to create a reader who is entirely dedicated to Miguel. This piece was a bit long for me.

“Miguel, your new assistant is here.”

On paper, you’re an excellent candidate for the genetics program.

An excellent GPA, renowned company internships, decent publications, and a diverse upbringing. It was all good. Great, even. But as the head of the genetics program at Alchemax, he has a little thing called priorities. Interviewing everyone himself was low on the rung of shit he felt like he should be doing. There was, however, one little, itty bitty, tiny problem with bringing you on board.

“Dr. O’Hara? ¿Estas bien?”

That shirt-- is not meant to hold those-- His brain was left field, glimpsing at them. A slightly sheer button-up revealed the outline of your bustier and its inability to conceal your body. They should have been illegal. He was pretty sure they were illicit in the handbook on his table. He should really read that again. Maybe then he wouldn’t be salivating over something as simple as a co-worker-- He needed to get out of the lab. The bleached walls tightened around him, the space smaller than he remembered. He was going to get caught.

Realistically, the lab was full of witty people. Many of them were witty men with subpar looks and stupider dicks. He couldn’t bring himself to say anything about it. Not only because your lips were plump, painted petal-pink, and kissable or because the depth of your sultry eyes went straight in the dick. No, but because that would be improper of a man of his stature to tell one of the only women in his care that she was too gorgeous for the job you were clearly qualified for.

“Sí, coño,” He fixed his glasses, crooked on his broad nose. He stood up from his desk and grabbed his lab coat, swirling it around his broad shoulders. If he wasn’t mistaken, you tracked the movement with your eyes. “Do you want a cafecito? Miss…”

You told him your name. He mulled it over on his tongue, lathing it in a gentle acknowledgment. Cemented it in a place he wouldn't forget. You tinked your head to the side, your lashes fluttering when he cleared his throat. Great, just shocking--��

“After you,” he headed for the door. He held it open for you, plastering his back to the wood. It didn't matter. You slid by closer than he’d prefer, your hand catching on his belt buckle with muttered apologies. This wasn’t going to end well.

Cafecito is an excellent excuse to pull his dumbass together.

It also calms his nerves, centers his mind, and allows him to compartmentalize. Whether or not you could hold your own wasn’t his issue, his issue was the necessity of someone he could trust. Ugly, beautiful-- so long as they were efficient, Miguel would make due. The cafeteria was a large and clean space. The many tables were crowded with wrap-around stations for poorly crafted, misery-inducing meals. Miguel paid and took a seat at a creaky table. One where he could see the door open, shut, and keep an eye on the comings and goings of meager scientists and annoying managers.

“You’ll be working with me.”

You pursed your lips around the warm cup of coffee, taking a ginger sip. He noted your lipstick stain that remained as you pushed the cup toward the middle of the table you shared with him. This damn suit vest was stifling. He gave you a long, slow look, tilting his head to the fact that you’d not drunk anything. It’d be rude to acknowledge.

“Delgado told me,” you smiled warmly. “He said you’re a genius. I don’t know that I believe in geniuses.”

Hmph. Delgado, things fell into place. That sycophant knew what he liked. He also knew that Miguel was better than him, always was, and always would be. Miguel offered you a slick smile, convinced he could assure you otherwise if he needed to. “Delgado says a lot of things. I’m surprised he gave you to me.”

“Why is that, O’Hara?” the way his name slipped off your tongue was a hot sin. If only he believed in a god. His eyelids shifted over his eyes, heavy-lidded and dark.

“You’re beautiful. He likes to collect beautiful things,” Miguel tried, curious. Your nails clicked in succession over the table. A repetitive click, click, click. He would be annoyed too if he were no more than a ploy. A distraction. Miguel wasn’t sure that it wasn’t working. His eyes flickered down, catching one of your palms curling into a tight fist, tension rolling through your fingers and up your arms. “He knows I do too.”

You leaned in, close enough that he could spot the unique freckles spread out in a crescent moon beneath a layer of makeup on your face. Beautiful. “I’m not here to belong to you, O’Hara. I hope you know that.”

He was off to a great, fantastic start.

“Understood.” Miguel leaned back in his chair, a smirk creeping up his lips. Or, believe that you believed that. You spared him any more mincing comments. Appeased by his suggestion, you brought your drink back to your lips.

“Good. What are we sequencing?”

“Me.”

You swallowed. “You? You can’t be--”

Mhm, he stared, lips pressed tightly together. “You’ll code my DNA. Then we’ll splice it.”

"With what?"

"You'll see."

“Is this your little,” you swirled your finger in a circle. “Pet project?”

Unfortunately not, he would have liked to say. That information was confidential, and though you worked on the project, there were levels to his willingness to involve you in the delicate flow of workplace politics. Still, you might make a healthy distraction from his work. Miguel took a swig of his cafecito, boring into the black substance.

“Something like that.”

Having a pretty assistant means things don’t always get done according to schedule. Not quickly enough, not by far. There is a time limit to everything at Alchemax. The quicker, the better. Thus this project demanded more hours of his time. The project was spliced between the work required of him by superiors and you, your quirks, and your preferences.

Miguel has learned a great many things about you in a short amount of time. You don’t appreciate misplaced pet names. You actually can’t handle coffee because of the caffeine or the sugar. He also learns things about himself. How little he likes when Delgado comes to check on progress because he isn’t actually checking on shit. He's checking you out.

He likes to weasel his nasty fingers around the door, peering in to try and find out what specimen he’s actually working on. Miguel was much too smart for that. His beady eyes caught Miguel over your shoulder, mumbling up to him about a new finding in tests you ran earlier that day. Your face mask twirled around your index finger, finally free and at a documentation workspace. Funny, because he clearly redacts information from your well-recorded notes on the daily. You refuse to include less.

“Hey Mike,” he said. “How are things… Oh hey, you. You settling in, honey? Mike treating you ok? I can discipline him for you.”

“As if you could,” Miguel huffed.

But Delgado spying on you, the way you record progress by pouting out your lips, shifting between paper and your lab reports, was intolerable. Because... well, he has sensitive information on there. Your nose scrunches in distaste, but you bow your head just slightly as a hello. He might be his supervisor, but Miguel doesn’t need one to know why this asshole is in his lab turning his smarmy brown eyes over the way you sit: one leg over the other. You seem to realize it too, trailing your eyes over his gaudy suit to Miguel’s sinewy hand on your shoulder.

“Stop being a creep,” Miguel complained, “She has actual work to do.”

“Actual work? As opposed to--“

“Yes, what you do.” Miguel spat out. You eschewed a giggle, turning your face over a pristine white lab jacket that thankfully, you had no qualms in wearing. Otherwise, he might not finish any work in the lab at all.

“I supervise--

“You’re still talking but we’re not listening,” Miguel waved him off, plucking up papers by your side. Your eyes snap up to Miguel’s deep chocolate eyes hidden behind the thin frame of his metal glasses, waiting for a proper response. “Goodbye, Aaron.”

Miguel walks to the door, locks it with a click, and returns to your side. You glance at his white lab coat, fluttering around his tapered waist. He loves the way your eyes look at him with a soft, inviting expression, beseeching him to come to sit by your side as he always did. “Not a fan of Delgado, I take it.”

“Are you?” Miguel sits with his legs spread, his fingers threading through his thick brown hair. You set your papers down, swiveled toward him. The wheels of your rolling chair squeak on either side of his thick, black boots. His eye catches your thick thighs, squashed between your midi skirt, its atrocious slip causing him discomfort. His hand leaves his thick hair, dropping in unison side by side.

“I can’t stand being called honey, Mike.”

“Shut up.”

The days proceed similarly. Days filled with brushing past him as he slides in samples and reagents. He might lose a sample, clattering on the floor, and you always rush to help him clean up. Lunch together, because no matter how late he eats, you’re there beside him. Then as night falls, you stay until he has finished whatever he needs to do.

“Time to eat something,” you slipped into his office. The clock ticked past midnight. Miguel flicked through handwritten pages of information that did not need to be recorded in computer files. You watched his eyes scan over the ink on the page, acknowledging you with a grumpy grunt. Not now, not when he was so close to finishing the last section of the project.

“Empanada,” you turned his palm over, placing the flaky pastry in his hand. Caramelized apple. He loved a good apple empanada. He watched as you walked over to the coffee maker, drawing him a warm cafecito just how he liked it. Miguel dropped his pen, stretching out his aching spine.

“Gracias. From where?”

“I made them,” you set down the cup a little harder than intended. The surface rippled, throwing hot coffee drips onto his pages. His eyes flickered up from the pages to your eyes. Without thinking, he blathers:

“That so?” A pause. “Don’t you have a man?”

“Miguel. With this sequencing project, you’re the only man in my life. Shut up and eat the empanada.”

“Huh. Good. I like that.” He swallowed the empanada with a bob of his head, his tongue lathing over his teeth for any more of the sweet sugar. He stood up, finding your expression soft, drawn out by a sense of longing that he couldn’t imagine he saw.

“You like my sad love life?”

Yes.

“No, we have a company event. A ball,” Miguel chided, his tone gentling as he slipped away from his desk, abandoning his steamy coffee on his desk. He backed out of the doorway, “It’s all Stone’s politics. You know how these things are. I have to go. Come with me.”

“Is that a request or an order?”

“A date.”

I’d love to. Your words were the only thing that made tonight bearable. Slinking his tanned skin into a dark blue suit that cinched everything too tight was… unbearable. It clung to his skin like a second skin and choked off his air. But it might be worth it to see your face-- just maybe. He tracked the fluttering tails of fish behind bulletproof glass, following them as they fluttered away into their rock. He wished he could too.

“Miguel?”

“You’re here,” he turned around, dropping the champagne he idly held in his hand. It went forgotten by his boot as you called his name again. His gaze fixed on yours, the slinky navy blue dress caused his heart to thrum through his chest, chasing the sight of your body at his feet, picking shards of glass up with the aid of a worker, apologizing profusely for the mess. A soft puff of breath slipped from his lips as you stood back up, gripping your purse a little harder in your hands. He ran his hand over his jaw, drawing himself back to his senses.

“Miggy,” he husked out. “Call me Miggy.”

“You look handsome, Miggy,” his name felt unreal on your lips until he felt the pressure on his elbow. Your soft hands slunk around his, cradling him for some security in the face of the large doors. He shook himself back to his senses. Right, there was a reason he was here. “But shouldn’t we go?”

He should have-- but did he want to? No, not really. He didn’t want to see Stone’s greasy face, let Aaron take a peek at how you looked dolled up, or any of the rest of these fuckers. What he wanted was something else entirely.

“Listen.” Miguel stopped, his other hand coming to the jeweled bracelet on your wrist. The doors to the ballroom lapsed, groups of older men filtering in and out with their pieces of the night: doting wives, longing husbands, and partners that their wives or husbands probably didn’t know about. “Don’t wander off from me. They’re all snakes. All of them.”

“Even you?”

“Hermosa,” you didn’t leer at him. “I’m the least of your worries.”

He wasn’t wrong. The ballroom was dolled up in lush fabrics, fine china, and a copious amount of food as it was every year. Miguel found the attempt to distract from what really went on behind closed doors at Alchemax a bit cloying. This year the music was at least tolerable. It filtered out into the ballroom in a syrupy melodies driven on by the soft, promises of rich men for the exchange of sex. For much of the night, he could stomach the various men poking and prodding at him about his impending research. So long as you were here.

“Miggy,” you breathed, a hot puff of air against his ear. He leaned down, his hand atop of yours. “Will you dance with me?”

Dance? Miguel had two left feet-- it’s why he was a geneticist. For all the work you did on his behalf in the lab, including this very night, he owed you the benefit of whatever you wanted. He searched out a quiet area, one where the only disruption could be the stream of moonlight in through a window. You preferred it over the wall of vivacious men and over-powdered women. He preferred it over the atrocity of his footwork.

“It’s not much of a date,” Miguel’s hand slid around yours. He encompassed your small palm with his large hand, the other gliding across the soft, exposed skin of your back. You swayed with him, side to side. He was an awful dancer, but there was something endearing about that. He saw it in your eyes, the glimmer of curiosity, gliding your dark heels against the inside of his foot. Damn, he still sucked.

“No,” you agreed, shifting to take the lead. He followed your steps. Right, back, left, up. Maybe he stepped on your long dress once or twice, too. Shock, he cursed again, stepping over your foot.

“You’re remarkably bad at this.” You settled your head on his chest, letting your box steps fade into little more than the shifting of your hips.

“I know. Let’s just-- sway?”

“Swaying is good.”

“O’Hara,” boomed Stone. But of course— peace couldn’t last forever. Like a bullet through the chest, a voice caused him to turn in startle. His tan cheeks flushed with warmth, feeling cut off from the cover of others. He was dressed in the most gaudy of clothes that almost seemed to match the crooked expression on his pale face. No matter how many times he tried to fix it, it always looked… wrong.

Stone’s hands came together, clapping multiple times to force the crowd of politicians, scientists, and bought-in participants to fade away. His voice caused Miguel to growl, a low rumbly noise that you soothed with your breasts pushing gingerly against his arm. He could do it. He could handle this pompous little shit-- “And who is this beauty? A new girlfriend, perhaps? Fiance? O’Hara could do with a wife. Settle him down, y’know.”

Miguel huffed out of his nostrils. “This is my lab partner,” he cleared his throat, leaning forward. “For… the project.”

“Her? A lab partner? Ha!”

Shock. He didn’t have to look at you to know you were insulted. Miguel pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbing out the tension as you smiled through the interaction, taking over for Miguel. “We have measurable results.”

“That’s what I like to hear, sweet thing. Now, Miguel, Aaron has found a test subject…”

“I’ll interview them.”

“No need! I--”

“Excuse me, Mr. Stone. I’ll let you two talk,” you slipped away, your heels clicking off into the busy crowd. Stone was talking. Miguel knew he should listen closely. His half-formed plan to see what the future held for his research was wafting into the air, wisps of it in his ear. Tomorrow-- test-- can you? Panic blinded his senses. He could find you nowhere in the room, and even if he did, would he be too late?

“Yeah, yeah, that’s fine, it’s… excuse me.”

The issue with falling for someone was the scythe of his fear. His position was inherently risky. No matter how many groups of people he cut through trying to find you, you weren’t there. No tiny little appetizers of shrimp on half a skewer. No booze, because your head would swim. Not near the bathrooms, either. He rushed down the steps when he found you, just before the large iron gates, staring up at the stars peppering the sky.

At your feet, Aaron. His drunken fingers trying and failing to guide the strap off of your ankle. You, of course, sat there staring dumbly down at his failed attempts to do something as simple as fix your damn heel.

“I’ll take it from here.” Miguel booted Aaron out of the way. Who, with his sloppy sloshed curses, tried to win a fight with him. He eventually won out. Aaron slunk away, somewhere up the steps. Miguel wasn’t counting. “You didn’t listen.”

“Hm?”

Miguel loosened both straps, sliding his open palm under your foot for one then the other. You gazed at him, sliding the black heels off your feet, tutting his tongue at the blistered back of your feet.

“I told you not to wander off.”

“I just wanted to see the stars. Besides, it was just Aaron.”

“It’s never just Aaron. It’s Aaron and Stone.” Miguel’s eyebrows pushed against one another, recording your failure to listen. You crossed one leg over the other, sliding your toes over his silk tie, kept beneath a vest. He knelt before you, searching your eyes for the right answer. “You don’t know… what you’re getting into. I’m trying to keep you safe.”

“I don’t need you to. I can take care of myself, Miguel. Please don’t--” you sighed. “Don’t be like them.”

He knew what you meant. Like Aaron, peeling off your shoes at the sign of discomfort because you were a pretty woman. Or Stone, who couldn’t comprehend your value as a scientist. Those who doubted you because of your color, gender, or a mixture of the two. His mouth twisted in frustration. He was in deep. Whatever you desired, he wanted to give. It came at a price.

“Are you mine,” the words came out stiff, “or theirs?”

“Miggy,” you turned the word over on your tongue, willing him to stand down. His dark eyes settled on yours, unmoving. “Why do I have to pick?”

“You can’t have both. You’ll have to choose. One day.”

Your mind worked. He knew from the way you pursed your lip out, then in, puncturing its pillowy surface with your teeth. You shifted your gaze to the water, the stream coursing down the unfeeling stone. Miguel's fingers ran across your inner thigh, causing you to gaze down at him. The steps of others on the other side of the fountain, fading into the depths of the night caused you to break his gaze. Miguel offered you his hand, fitting the shoes under his other arm as he walked toward the valet. You took his hand and interlaced your fingers.

“Do you trust me?”

“Of course,” you said, though the words felt thready and thin, nary a whisper. Something in the undercurrent of your voice concerned him. A thread that needed to be snipped, convinced of the vileness of the city-- of who you worked for.

He doesn’t make mistakes.

But he left the project code on his desk. It should have been there, yet, the corpse of a decrepit, awful creature withered on the lab floor proved otherwise. Someone had taken it because he was distracted. As a result, someone lost their life... even if it was Stone's doing.

Now, scouring through his papers, his hands tremored like a common drug addict. He supposed he was one, a druggie, tremoring like a shot hungry, Rapture crazed--

“Miggy?”

He snapped around. His gaze melded your figure into one beautiful blurb, even with the glasses on his broad nose. It was your voice, coded in something close to concern. Miguel ran his hands through his hair, long strands falling messily over his eyes and cheekbones. He flattened his hands out atop his head.

“What are you looking for?”

“The notes,” he weathered a breath. He doddered about the room, throwing a stack of paper onto the floor. They crumpled over the floor, mixed projects, notes on the specimen, but none were his. “Where are my notes?”

“You’re sick,” your voice broke gently, as if speaking them alone helped. A horrid crack of laughter slipped from his throat, drawing into a long lament as he repeated the words after you. Sick, you said, he was sick. If being sick was the least of his issues, he would have been a happy man. Your steps rang into his ear, heavier than before, painful and loud. He crumpled onto the couch in his office, his hands cupping them. Your soft hands coursed over his chest, unbuttoning his starched button-up and sliding it down his muscular upper arms. “This might hurt.”

No kidding, needles always hurt. But the instantaneous relief that flooded his system overrode the momentary pain. As your fuzzy figure came into focus, he recognized the drug that you set aside.

“You didn’t--”

“You were right, Miggy, about the-- Mr. Sims.” Miguel gazed at you, leafing through novels of notes with trembling hands. He cursed himself for subjecting you to seeing that. Not quite human, not quite... The twisted look on the poor man’s face. What months of research with one another had offered. He would fix it. He knew the research was on point. It was the application that was lacking.

“I have a copy of your notes,” you murmured as if someone could hear. They likely could. “¿Ay, puñeta, dónde está? Ah! Here, here it is. Your… profile.”

“You kept it,” he glanced down at the hastily scribbled note attached to the clip. ‘Miguel’s profile’ alongside a soft pink heart. He stopped your hands from thumbing through another leaflet. His eyes traced the dry ink of the heart. His thumb moved to stroke it, catching the sight of bubbling tears welling over in your eyes out of the corner of his eye. The tears slid down your full cheeks, triggering his discomfort to well up in his stomach. Miguel shifted closer, flicking fat droplets off your slight jaw.

“Hermosa,” Miguel shifted his head, cocking his eyebrow. “¿Que te pasa?”

“I should have listened to you Miggy,” you began, inhaling air forcefully through your nostrils. Breathe, you murmured. Miguel's soft hand cupped the back of your neck like a collar. You were happy to be collared by his hand, it felt safe.

His eyes narrowed, thumb caressing the loose strands of hair at your nape. “You should have. You know I'll take care of you."

You nodded.

"You have to be fully dedicated to me.”

“I am.”

“Show me.” You fluttered your eyes, the gears of your mind working to understand what he meant. His hand fell away to trace the bow of your black blouse. He tugged on the knot, slipping the bow loose and running his fingers over your exposed cleavage below. “Take off the blouse.”

Was it necessary? Some might have said no-- but sex, in its connective nature-- was the ultimate dedication. At the end of it all, that's what he craved: your eyes, your actions, all born with him in mind. With trembling fingers, you untucked your shirt from your black slacks. Miguel sat back, tracking the soft lace of your balconette bra teasing his eye. You loitered for a minute too long, enough for him to lift his thick eyebrow.

“Don’t stop now,” he said. Your knees knocked together, slipping the shirt over and off your torso before draping it on the arm of his couch. Your bra followed quickly after, slipping out of the twisted straps. You skimmed your hands over your breasts, holding them for comfort.

"No." Miguel flicked his fingers, motioning for your hands to move from your thick nipples. You pushed your breasts together, allowing him to marvel at them a second longer. “Que maravilla... You have no idea how long I’ve waited. Go on, take off the rest now.”

You suckled in breath, sliding the button of your pants loose. Then the zipper, its cloth scratching your thighs on its way to pool around your ankles. You stepped out of them, joining them too with your shirt. Miguel sat up, running his calloused fingers over the side of your hip and waist. His thumbs hooked in your panties, drawing them down over your pussy, a moist spot on your panties connecting a small string of wetness to your pussy. His palm slid between your thighs, pinned by your thighs pressed together, whether out of an innate need for more pressure or shyness to show him how wet you were. Hm. Miguel melded your ass, striking your skin with his large palm, it jiggled.

“Miggy,” you breathed, shy and intimidated. “I have to tell you something…”

“Lay down,” he told you.

“But Miggy, what if someone…” Your eyes darted away from his, chewing on his cheek as you slid back down beside him. You settled on the couch, your legs thrown over his thighs. The couch was stiff, hard against your neck. You stole a haughty glimpse at his face, focused entirely on coursing his palms over your calves and thighs, then back down to your slight toes. He ground your feet over his stiff cock, obscured by the fabric of his slacks. He felt big-- bigger than you could have imagined from the look on your face.

“¡Basta!” Miguel growled, “No one is going to come in. Let me see you.”

You flushed.

“You want me to…” you glanced down, your curls were soft to the touch.

“Touch yourself for me.”

With your heart strumming in your chest, you shifted your hand down, spreading your lips, soft and wet. You were so wonderfully shy to follow his orders, the pads of your fingers rubbing along your outer lips, massaging them warm and swollen. You buried your eyes into your other arm, dragging up and down, over and over. A delightful sigh greeted his ear, ensuring that though you were too embarrassed to look at him, you loved it. He allowed it for now-- because he was a gracious, forgiving man.

“Shock,” Miguel shuffled at the button and zipper of his pants, freeing himself from his slacks. He spat into his palm, stroking over his fleshy length, squishing his cock against your foot. Your toes curled over his cockhead, engrossed in Miguel’s rumbling pants, the soft pleasure that bloomed from his chest. Your eyes trained on his lips, the slight breath suckled between his teeth. Your fingers glazed over your stiff clit, pausing as though you needed his permission, just how he wanted it. Your sweet submission.

His eyebrow perked. “You can touch it.”

“Oh,” you glanced down, tracing the way Miguel fisted himself, swirling up to his cockhead, along fat veins and the bubble of salty fluid on his tip. His permission seemed to spur something else in you, flicking your swollen clit to the sound of his pleasured growling, your own pleasure growing in tandem with his.

“¡Ya!” he annunciated, watching as you failed to stop. All at once he stopped his ministrations. A sigh escaped his chest as he pushed himself up, smacking your hand away from your puffy cunt. His cock bobbed between your bodies. You wanted to touch it, but couldn’t.

"Wait," you cried out. His cock twitched as he lowered his hips down, drawing sweet lubricant on his cock, stroking your pussy. He leaned forward, capturing your mouth in a warm kiss. He dipped his hand down, his cockhead prodding and poking, dipping lower with the aid of his hand.

“MiggyI’mavirgin,” you said all at once, his cockhead nudged against your entrance. Miguel’s head about snapped as he looked up, eyes popped wide open in disbelief. Before he could quite form a coherent thought, your hands shot out to grip his suit vest, stopping him where he was.

“¿Qué dejiste? Say that again?”

“I haven’t… I haven't had sex,” you murmured. He hadn’t put it together. Your shyness, the awkward way you shuffled around, loosening your bra and hiding your perfect breasts from his eyes. The words were finally out in the open but didn't register.

"A..." Miguel fisted his cock, once, then twice, shifting back to kneel before you. Your eyes fell on his muscular thighs, the way his hand fisted his dick. “You’re a virgin?”

“I’m too old for this,” you mumbled, hiding your eyes with your palms. Miguel shifted to cast aside your hands from your eyes, his muscular body caging you underneath, looking for an explanation. “I just. Between school, work, I never had time.”

Not that he was complaining.

"No boyfriend?"

You shook your head. He couldn't believe his luck. Not only were you gorgeous, but you were untouched. His, completely and fully. He liked it better that way-- to be the first memory smeared in your head. So that when you looked back on this moment, right now, it would forever be marked by his face.

"It's mine," he blurted out all at once. "I want your first to be mine."

His hand dropped down to your cunt. The pad of his middle finger worked at your entrance as though he were exploring the truth of your statement, stretching you with the aid of his fingers. You were tight, it had to be true.

You nodded, face buried deep in your arm. It didn’t take but moments for him to draw his hand back, suckling the lubricant from his fingertips. You distantly registered his words, “Damn it, you... you don't know what you do to me.”

Before you could say a word more, Miguel positioned the head of his dick against your slippery virgin hole. You clenched, glancing down between your bodies again, as you had a dozen times, anxiously waiting. Miguel hushed you, the repetitive shushing of his lips soothing you into complacency, forcing your muscles to relax. “It might hurt. But the pain won’t last,” he assured you.

He rolled his hips forward. His sharp exhale shook with every centimeter that gave way. Your walls were forced apart, suffocating you on the shock of adjusting to having someone, no not someone, Miguel-- your Miguel, sinking into your tense body. He throbbed, twitching in your body. His hands fisted in the aged couch, catching the breath in his chest.

“Ay, Miggy,” your nails dug into his shirt, loose around his firm muscles. “Miggy, no puedo,”

“You can, you’re so good, eres tan buena,” Miguel swept your lips between his, taking the moment of your surprise to bury himself further, swallowed by your cunt that resisted his intrusion. Your lips fluttered in the kiss, keened out a cry. The pain of his dick, forcing its way through your passage is quelled by the knowledge that he’s here, with you, his girth forcing you apart, stretching you apart, seating himself flush against your womb. His voice was caramelized, sugared over, and so good. “Look at how well you’re taking me already.”

“Coño, that’s a tight pussy,” He slid his hips back, the warm sensation of his withdrawal pulling free before shoving back in, a cry shoving forth from your lips, filling his office and the connected lab with your cries. He might have heard someone draw the door open, his hips driving back in, centered on the magnificent groans that stuttered free from your chest with Miguel’s careful thrusts. You keened his name, a repetitious Miggy, Miggy, Miggy-- it was Aaron, probably. He recognized the way his feet drug on the floor.

He hoped he didn’t just hear it. He hoped he saw it too, the way his balls slapped against your ass, the mess of blood soaking the already unhygienic couch, the way his cock pulsed. You were blissed out, so full and well of him like no one else ever had-- because you were his, and his alone. It wasn’t just sex. It was more than that. From Aaron, whose shuffled steps fell out of his office, to any other little bitch in the office who had their own gain.

“Damn,” Miguel shifted back, hooking his hand around your thigh to drag you back onto his dick. He swirled his thumb against your stiff clit, whirling it around in one circle, then another, and by the third your knees knocked together, bearing down on his cock to hold him still. “I can’t--” you stuttered out, I can’t--”

“You’re going to,” he hissed. “You’re going to cum right here, right now, split open on my dick.”

With another circle, you croaked an ugly cry, a terrible, ugly cry that Miguel couldn’t find any more beautiful as your body buzzed around him, tightening and squeezing your already tight cunt around him. Blissful pleasure radiated there, riding his dick for the friction against your virgin walls, your thoughts fading into a realm of insistent pleasure, where thoughts were space mush.

Miguel withstood the pressure on his cock, clamping his hand down on your hip. His thrusts stuttered, filling your belly with whip after whip with his full hot cum. Your body twitched in the throes of his orgasm. He tracked his eyes down to your body, withdrawing with a bubbly pop of his dick from your abused hole, the intermingling of cum and virginal blood dribbling down your cheeks.

Your gaze tracked Miguel, pressing his lips toward yours one more time. You shifted on the couch, legs pathetically tremoring. Miguel chuckled and walked toward his electric kettle, papers crunching underneath his feet, “Don’t bother moving. Not that you could, anyway.”

He warmed a warm cloth with hot water, testing its temperature on his palm before sitting beside your crumpled legs, spreading your legs to clean his mess and sooth the abrasive way he took you. He spread your lips, ensuring you were clean before he would flip the cloth, dropping it on top of your vulva.

“You know you’re mine,” he asked, though it came out as a statement. With another cloth, Miguel cleaned his soft cock of the mess, exhaustion of the sex and what was to come returning to his gentle, deep voice.

“Sí,” you answered.

“And you’d do anything for me. Only me.”

The words were laced with something more than a suggestion, but an affirmation of your loyalty. Your love. You pushed yourself up, hanging off his arm after he tucked himself into his pants. “Para siempre.”

He leaned down, plucking the bundle with his sequenced DNA information. Your eyes coursed the information on the page, darting up to his tired eyes. You wanted to ask why or what he knew. Miguel knew it didn't matter. You were his now, from the top of your head to the bottom of your gorgeous toes. You trusted him fully. As you should. With the empty vial of Rapture sitting beside him, forgotten, he spared you a mincing smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes.

“Good. Let's fix our project.”

#miguel ohara oneshot #miguel o'hara oneshot #miguel o'hara x you #miguel x reader #miguel ohara x reader #spider 2099 imagine #across the spiderverse imagine #atsv imagines #atsv imagine #spider 2099 x reader #miguel o'hara/reader #miguel o'hara x reader #miguel o'hara smut #miguel ohara smut

2K notes · View notes

goodmode · 2 years

Note

scaramouche 1, 2, 20, 23 ?

1. My first impression of them

watched Unreconciled Stars on youtube and the moment he walked on i was like. this guy looks cool. he seems really friendly and he has a cool hat and wears shorts. i like this fella. he's neat :) nice guy, very polite

2. When I think I truly started to like them (or dislike them, if you've sent me a character I don't like)

so the scene where he reveals that he's a harbinger in unreconciled stars really did something to my brain. the thing about me is that if you give me a cast of kindly sweetpeas and then throw a single radged evil motherfucker into the mix, i will be pulled into the radged one’s orbit like a space station into a black hole. maybe it’s about the contrast. i don’t know. i like conflict in my blorbos. give me lots of friendly faces and one that’s like >8) and i will start foaming at the mouth apparently

20. A weird headcanon

scaramouche has an empty hammerspace-type hole in his chest that you can’t see with the naked eye but it’s like, how ei/raiden pulls the sword out of her chest? he’s supposed to have a gnosis in there. it is basically all he thinks about 24/7 and over time it has started to drive him off the deep end. i think maybe he’s had a delusion in there and it’s like putting a round peg in a square hole, like yeah the hammerspace had something similar in it but it was the wrong shape. scaramouche has 80% brainpower focused on life in general and 20% constantly reserved for thinking “ don’t have a gnosis. don’t have a gnosis” though at this point it seems like he’s got the gnosis in his possession so i guess this hc is only good for retrospective fanfiction. i just think it’d be neat if being crafted for a specific purpose and then having that purpose immediately unfulfilled because ei was like “hmm no actually i changed my mind i don’t think i will use my custom-built iphone case to house my iphone after all” helped to make him his current tier of bonkers

23. Future headcanon

i think it should go like this: he finds out that fulfilling the purpose he was intended for actually doesn’t fix anything for him, or else the gnosis is confiscated back off him after an encounter with the traveller and/or ei. scaramouche has an angry mental breakdown-turned-crying-sesh in front of the traveller. the traveller extends a laurel. scaramouche starts from square one in the How To Find Purpose In Life As An Autonomous Person handbook. he is still kind of an asshole on purpose but it’s because that’s his personality now and not because he’s being driven to partial madness by fatui and gnosis related affairs. scaramouche becomes part of the scooby gang. most characters have negative voicelines about him. he has negative voicelines about everyone. domestication arc begins here

(askmeme source)

#gm no6 #gm does teyvat #gmask #i am being extremely normal about scaramouche i am NOT ripping up the carpet with my teeth i am calm and i like him a normal amount.#ty for the ask!

17 notes · View notes

thebonggirll · 4 years

Text

chapter six

< previous: chapter five

Today was their overnight field trip to Kyoto. And although they wanted to enjoy the day, they were aware that they were still on the clock. It was a large city and Karasuma informed the students of good sniper locations, and to stay in the sniper-friendly routes. Because of that, the students has to be divided into designated groups and Koro would split his time for the students. Koro on the other hand provided all the students with a thick field trip guidebooks.

The groups weren't really decided though. Y/N wanted to be with her best friend but she turned her down with a suspicious smile on her face. It didn't take long for Nagisa to call her on their team. She looked at the paper consisting the names of the group members - Manami Okuda, Kaede Kayano, Yukiko Kanzaki, Tomohito Sugino, Nagisa Shiota, Y/N Y/L/N and finally, Karma Akabane. When she looked up to find the red-head, he was already staring at her with a smirk on his face and leaning on his chair. He winked and sipped some juice from the juice box, which he probably stole from Koro.

Currently they were standing in the station, waiting for their teachers. The class noticed the other sections of class 3 getting in the first class compartment.

"Woah, man look at those lucky jerks getting a ride first class," Sosuke said.

"And as always we're stuck in coach. Yay for us, right guys?" Rio sighed.

"I mean, travelling is fun together so all of us won't really notice much I think," Y/N said.

Not even a second later, the class teacher of the other section said looking at them, "Now now boys and girl, try not to look sour. Rules are rules, you know how this works."

One of the students peeked out of the train and said, "The student handbooks states those of us with highest grade points average get dibs on school funds. Oh! Is that the stench of abject poverty filling my nostrils?"

"....what were you saying about fun again Y/N?!" Rio asked with a scowl on her face.

"I stick with my comment though. You guys will find it fun. Mark my words," Y/N said chuckling.

"Ofcourse you would know about fun," Rio teased her, eyes going back and forth between Y/N and Karma.

Y/N blushed and was about to lash out again when Jelovic's voice came through the crowd, "Pardon me boys and girls." And as usual, with a seductive voice like that everyone was bound to look at her. But her voice was not even close to the outfit that got her attention.

Sosuke pointed it out and said, "Uh Professor Bitch? Why are you dressed like the paparazzi should care about who you are?"

Jelovic took off her sunglasses and said, "Travel is no excuse not to look devastatingly fashionable." But her lecture on fashion was shortened when Karasuma told her to change. Well, Jelovic didn't agree immediately but Karasuma looked mad and no one wanted to face that.

The whole ride to Kyoto was a bit exhausting when there was an extra member in Y/N's group. At first she decided to sit with the teachers because of the lack of space but Jelovic was crying about wearing a "normal" outfit and Y/N wasn't ready to handle a whining teacher, who acted more like a baby than the rest of the students. The girls in the group though made some space and adjusted on one side while three of the boys sat on the other side.

Kanzaki had all of Sugino's attention during the whole ride. He wasn't as subtle as he thought he was, but he was shy and looked away whenever Kanzaki moved. The girls had a fair idea about Y/N's crush on Karma, well to be honest everyone did. So they moved her to sit exactly opposite to him, who was having fun staring at Y/N. She did peak some interest in him and besides, Karma loved to make her squirm for some reason. He liked the fact that he had that much of an effect on a girl like her, someone who was very good in psychology. What made her like him anyway? He wanted to know about it all.

But he wasn't exactly interested in her in that way. She was just an interesting person because inspite of being so good in reading emotions, she had no control over her own. All of it just in front of him alone.

When the classes reached Kyoto, every other section had luck and got a luxury hotel to stay at, while Class 3-E had to settle for a traditional inn.

"Hold on, the Ryoma Sakamoto?!" Kayano said, surprised. Their group were out for sightseeing after taking some rest, and Nagisa found interesting places where assassinations took place.

"This is where Omiya used to be. The inn where Sakamoto was cut down by assassins in 1867," Sugino said.

"That's right," Nagisa said with the travel guide book in his hand, "and just a little further down is the Honnouji Temple, though it's moved a few times since they built it."

"Oh yeah! Oda Nobunaga's death counts as an assissation too!" Kayano said, excitement laced in her voice.

"Just think, Kyoto has been the heart of Japan but it's also the center of assassinations!" Nagisa said and looked at the book again, "Next up is Yasaka Shrine."

They moved ahead to cross the road as the red signal flared. Karma sighed and said, "Mind if we take a break first? I can really go for a sugar-loaded Kyoto coffee right about now."

"Why are you whining, you're a genius too. Shouldn't you find it cool to be on the actual spot?" Y/N asked looking at him.

Karma smirked and said, "Oh yeah but what's the fun in going through stuffs you already know about?" Y/N quickly averted her eyes to the front, trying hard to concentrate on the road instead. Karma slowly slid his arm on her shoulder and moved her to his left, near the buildings close to the pavement and away from the busy road. She was blushing at the contact. It almost felt like a date...right? Well, except the fact that five others were tagging along.

After taking a break, they were on their way to the next destination. The path though was deserted and dark, almost like an ideal place for an assassination. Well, they were always coming up with ways to kill Koro, and this was marked by Nagisa as one of the best places.

Their fun was short-lived though.

A bunch of thugs - high school students to be specific surrounded them.

Karma, as expected was the first to open his mouth and said, "I hope you don't take this the wrong way but something tells me that you gentlemen aren't tourists."

"Don't try to be a hero kid. Hand over your lady friends and we won't-" one of the boys started threatening but got interrupted and slammed down by Karma. He turned to Nagisa and said, "You see that? What did I tell you? To hell with them, and without any witnesses we are basically free to go nuts."

These students weren't done yet. One of them charged towards Karma with a knife but soon got knocked out. They weren't supposed to be scared right? They were all training to be assassins. Y/N knew she shouldn't feel scared but she was. No matter how much of a brave face she put on, it didn't matter because the moment Kayano and Kanzaki got grabbed, she pulled Okuda's arm and ran away as fast as her legs took her.

Y/N felt like a coward. She ran away, leaving the group alone. Leaving two of her classmates alone, who were in trouble. She felt terrible as a girl herself to run away from the situation. In no way Karma could handle them on his own. She wanted to get some help if she couldn't help on her own. But her legs weren't moving, and she was shaking while breathing heavily. She wanted to get out of the hidden area and find out what was happening, but she was too scared.

After some time, the girls heard the sound of cars leaving and the there was silence in the atmosphere. But with Karma around...there shouldn't be this kind of silence.

....Right?

next: chapter seven >

ms. misfit

MASTERLIST

#karma akabane #karma x reader #karma akabane x reader #akabane x reader #asano x reader #asano gakushuu #nagisa shiota #shiotanagisa #shiota nagisa #assassination classroom

111 notes · View notes

plaidamoosette · 5 years

Text

Call Me By My Name

RK900 x Reader

Part I | Part II | Part III

A/N: So, thank you for bearing with me on things. Life is... ugh. Any way I was driving home when I thought of this and I just wanted to get it out before it I lost it. Thank you for reading! Remember, feedback is always accepted!

Summary: You are an ecstatic new detective in the Detroit Police Department. It has been three years since the Android revolution, and now that they are a freed people, they are making decisions for themselves and their careers. One of these Androids is now your partner. The newest RK model, the RK900. He’s cold, distant, calculating... and oddly alluring. And with your first case on the line, you have to learn how to cope with a partner that holds you at arm’s length while fulfilling a desire that has been burning in your belly since you were a child. Revenge.

Words: 3180

–– October 7, 2041 ––

Stepping through the automatic doors, you take in a deep breath, basking in the glow of the moment. Swiveling your head to drink in the view around you, you examine the people milling about in the lobby.

Residents with complaints to file, police officers dragging in a thug here and there, detectives, city councilmen, lawyers... all illuminated in the golden morning glow.

The floor was polished perfectly, creating only a slightly blurred mirror image of the people as they crossed the surface.

Finally, you follow the foot traffic to the front desk, fidgeting within your cozy jacket.

The android at the front desk smiles at you, her LED blinking yellow as she looks at you. A real name-tag was pinned to her blouse, and she was wearing normal clothes. The only way to identify her as an Android, was the LED, swirling around on her temple.

“Welcome to the Detroit Central Police Station. How may I help you?” Her perfect teeth glint in the bright orange light that filters through the windows, the rising sun almost setting the room ablaze.

“Yes, um, my name is (Y/N) (Y/L/N) and I’m looking for Captain Fowler. I’m a new detective?” Why did you say that as a question? You clench your sweaty hands, tucking them into the pockets of your coat.

“Of course miss. He’s expecting you. He’s through the gates, down the hall, and straight through the precinct. His office is in the back, through the large glass doors.” She gestures with her hands, arm sweeping out to guide you in the right direction.

“Thank you,” you return her smile, following her orders.

It has been three years since the revolution of the androids, and things were finally smoothing over. It was October, you’d finally graduated from Wayne State University, and after months of ceaselessly sending your resume to the Captain... he finally responded.

With great anticipation, you walk up the small set of stairs before cracking open the door.

“Captain Fowler, sir, you were expecting me, my name is-” you couldn’t finish as he interrupts you with a hand suspended in the air.

“Believe me kid, I remember who you are. Sit down, I have a lot to cover with you,” the large man scowls, gesturing to the seat in front of his desk. You comply quickly, removing your jacket and scarf and draping it over the back of your chair before sitting down.

“I have a few more papers for you to sign. Here’s your badge, keep it on you at all times. And this-” he slides a card over to you, “is the ticket for you to take to inventory where you will receive your weapon and other necessities.”

You nod your head, eyes quickly skimming over the papers, searching for any statements that would stand out as a red flag to you. You scribble your signature over the lines, nodding your head as he laid out the rules and regulations, referring multiple times to the Faculty Handbook, before tucking all of the paperwork back into the manilla folder, marked with your name. After thirty minutes, the papers are back on Fowlers desk.

He smacks a hand over the file, retrieving it from you, before rising.

“Now, I’ve got a lot of paperwork to catch up on,” he pulls the door of his office open, poking his large head out. “Anderson! Get in here, I need you for a moment.”

You were silent for a few breaths. You knew exactly who was headed your way. The man who inspired you to pursue this path, who reminded you to stay strong and fight on... Lieutenant Hank Anderson.

The aged man slowly strides into the office, a sour expression on his face. You could see he was biting his tongue from making some remark to the Captain. Probably since there was a guest in the office as well-- you.

“Yes, Captain?” Hank rests into his standing position, resting right next to you. Fowler walks back around to his desk, taking a seat.

“Lieutenant, this is (Y/N) (Y/L/N). She’s the newest detective. Top of her class in the academy, and valedictorian. She also has a bachelors degree in criminal justice and a minor in psychology, and graduated from Wayne State University-- again top of her class... she has a very impressive resume,” Fowler reads over the paper you had faxed to him. There was a stack about an inch thick... all of which were your resume. “So impressive she felt the need to send it over and over again, almost every damn day since she graduated. She fought for this job, Anderson, and as Lieutenant, it’s your job to train her and get her situated with a partner.

“Wait, is she my new partner? What about Connor?” Hank speaks up, his gruff voice sounding slightly distressed. He takes a step towards the desk.

“Now don’t get riled up-- he’s still your partner, she is just going to be shadowing you for the week. She needs to be familiar with the precinct, her duties, her coworkers, and our process.” Fowler defends, his hands rising.

“Unless you have any more questions, then you’re dismissed.”

A heavy breath leaves Hank’s chest, before finally looking down at you. He jerks his head to the left, hands stuffing themselves in his pockets.

“C’mon kid,” he mutters, opening the door and holding it as you quickly gather your things, before following him out the door.

“Wow... c-can I just say that... I am absolutely, and totally honored to meet you- I grew up reading about you in the news and stuff, and I was inspired when you became the youngest Lieutenant in Detroit, and I just wanted to say that I look up to you, and you are an amazing detective, and I can only hope to be as good as you, you’re the reason I found a passion to become a police detective, so thank you-” you couldn’t stop the rambling flow of words spilling from your mouth, but Hank held up a hand.

“I’m gonna just stop you right there kid. Thanks,” Hank coughs, looking down, his cheeks almost appearing pink. “I’m honored, really. So thanks. Nice to meet you.”

He reaches out and you shake his hand eagerly. He chuckles when you release, casually wiping his hands on his jeans.

“Just breath, okay? No need to be nervous. I’ll show you to your desk, and then I’ll give you a tour.” Hank grins, his smile reaching into his heavy gray beard. Your face heats up, and you nod, wiping off your sweaty palms, following him down the rows of desks and detectives.

It took about an hour for Hank to show you around the entirety of the Detroit Central Police Station. You brain felt stretched and exhausted from taking in so much new information, but you were too excited to care.

Everyone seemed very nice, and you were glad to see that the Station had a good handful of Androids in the mix-- free androids, working according to their own desires.

“I see you’ve got some new meat, Anderson,” a voice pops up behind you, and you jump slightly, both you and Hank turning around.

“Oh, it’s you.” Hank grumbles, before looking at the wall. “(Y/N) this is Gavin Reed. Gavin, (Y/N).”

You wondered why Hank sounded so disgusted with Gavin’s name. He seemed nice enough, although he donned what seemed like a permanent mischievous smirk, and a scar across his nose.

“Nice to meet you,” Reed steps forward, swallowing his hand in your own. He then stepped just a little close, leaning towards you, invading your personal space. “I’m sure I’ll get to know you pretty well, eventually.”

“Alright, back off Reed,” Hank’s arm shoots own, pushing the man back, his other hand resting on your shoulder. “We’re not through with her tour, and I’ve got work to do.”

Gavin glares at Hank before taking a second to wink at you, shrugging his shoulders and straightening his jacket, and then walking off towards the break room.

“Gavin is the Station’s designated asshole. Don’t let him get to you. If he becomes too much of a problem, let me know and I’ll make sure to take care of it.” Hank looks down at you, and then jerks his head. “Let’s go get your gun now. Then I’ll show you how to work the terminal.”

So far, the most intimidating thing about the day was working on your terminal. It was a newly updated system, and it took about an hour for you to get the hang of it, but Hank was very helpful in assisting you through the whole process.

But now, your account was filed, and all of your information was in the data base. Now, all you had to do was get to work.

“So... where do I start?” You peer up at the man, and he grins.

“Paperwork. Welcome to the DPD, kid. You’ll be writing reports for the next month,” Hank pats you on the shoulder in sympathy. “There’s a folder in your terminal, it’ll have instructions and a list of your daily tasks. Sorry sweetheart, it won’t last long. You’re fresh meat is all, so Fowler will push all of the boring stuff to you.”

A sigh escapes your lips and you nod solemnly, gazing back down at the computer. “I understand. Thank you, Lieutenant Anderson.”

“Just Hank is fine,” he tips his head to you, before crossing the walkway to his desk, which was only a few spots away from your own.

Gritting your teeth, you find your folder, and quickly scan through it, picking the smallest file to begin a report over it.

–– November 4, 2041 –– As the week passed, you eventually found a rhythm at work, and it quickly became comfortable. It almost began to feel as if you had been there for months already.

Then your second week came, and it was the same tedious thing. And then another week. As the days passed, you were growing restless. There you were, sitting at you desk every damn day while all of the detectives around you were hard at work on their own cases... and you were filing paperwork. Writing and re-writing reports.

You had lost count of how many of Gavin’s reports you had to re-write. He has no idea what a dictionary is, and certainly has no idea that proper punctuation exists.

You easily remembered his break schedule, and made sure to avoid it-- meanwhile, you also took note of the various times in which Hank would decide to show up to work, often times in rumpled clothes and a grouchy disheveled demeanor.

You met Connor on your second day. You almost couldn’t tell he was an Android. He easily adapts to the human behaviors around him, and it seems like this is his natural environment. He is very courteous, and usually takes a few minutes of the morning to check on you and ask you how you are liking the job so far.

He’s always there before you-- probably due to his natural Android punctuality. Regardless, his morning chats helped the day pass faster.

The sweetest part was how he and the Lieutenant interacted with each other. In your eyes, it almost looked like Hank saw Connor as a son. And as different as they obviously are, you could see this nearly invisible thread that tied them together, intertwining their lives.

Hank was helpful and always made sure that your jobs were going smoothly, although you voiced your frustrations, he continuously assured you that it’s all normal.

It wasn’t until almost a whole month passed that you got fed up with being put to such work. Maybe once a week, sure. But not every day, for a month.

With a fire in your heart, you set your shoulders in determination, and knocked on the glass outside of Fowler’s Office. He looks up from his terminal, before waving for you to enter.

“Sir... I just have to speak my mind. I need to do something real-- not just writing reports. I didn’t go through as much training as I have just so I could write and re-write a thousand reports for cases ranging from muggings to freaking drug busts.” You start, positioning yourself in front of his desk.

“And what exactly did you have in mind?” Fowler folds his fingers, leaning back in his seat.

“I’m not sure... just anything but reports,” gritting your teeth, you hold your ground.

“As it so happens, the detective you replaced-- who retired-- was head of clearing out the cold cases we have. It’s hard work, and it’s not always rewarding... but it would give you something other than reports to work on. Or, you can transfer to another division.”

Biting your lip in contemplation, you look down for a moment, considering the options. You’d heard rumors of how Fowler was an ass, you just never believed anyone could be this much of an ass.

“I’ll take the cold cases.” You sounded dejected and defeated, but it was all you could do. You had to be in this division... you had plans.

“I’m expecting you to live up to the potential I was promised from your records. And, I’m assigning you a partner. It’ll help. And, maybe you’ll make more progress than the last agent.”

“A partner?”

“That’s what I said. He’s an Android, the newest prototype that Cyberlife was in the process of making before they were shut down. Considering how Androids now have rights and are considered alive, they couldn’t just shut him down, so they sent him to us to use him, until he decides otherwise.” Fowler explains.

“But... why me?” You cock your head to the side, pondering the idea.

“Don’t pester me-- you ask too many questions. Just say ‘yes sir’ and then get the hell out, like the others do.” Fowler snaps, and you nod, thanking him and bidding him a good day before stealing away from the glass office.

An android partner? You couldn’t wait to tell Connor that he would soon have a fellow Android in the Station that wasn’t a desk clerk. A spark of join settled in your heart at the thought of working on your first case.

“Hey Connor,” you smile when you spot the Android standing next to your desk, “you would not believe what Fowler just... told me..”

“As I’m sure you are now aware, I am not Connor. Although I do share a strikingly similar face with my predecessor, I am a different model. I am the newest RK unit. An RK900.” The man speaks, and it shocks you for a moment when his striking blue eyes meet yours. He was almost a perfect mirror to Connor... almost.

His hair was much darker, almost black, and his eyes were his most striking feature. A bright blue, instead of like Connor’s sweet brown orbs. He was dresses in a Cyberlife uniform, his unit model and number on the breast of the jacket. The collar reached up to his chin, and he donned a black button-up beneath the jacket, with matching pants.

His face was expressionless, and you were under the impression that he was still stuck in factory mode. Not a deviant, yet anyways.

“Right...um... My name is (Y/N) (Y/L/N). I guess you are my new partner, then?”

“Correct,” his posture remains stiff, hands clasped behind his back. He was a few inches taller than Connor, causing you to crane your neck back just a hair, in order to meet his eyes.

“Do you have a name?” You ask as he takes a seat at his new desk, pressing his hand to the terminal screen.

“I do not. But I am perfectly fine being referred to as RK900. Will this be my desk?” The most intimidating part of him was the fact that he never once broke eye-contact with you, as if he were challenging you, daring you to be the weak one and look down.

“Uh... yes. I’ve been assigned to solving the cold cases, so I guess we should start searching our terminals for them.”

“I can perform the search through the terminal for a case. What would be your preferences.” He didn’t say it like a question, more like a reassurance.

“Uh...” you were having a hard time clearing your head. His eyes flicker up to meet yours again, his hand still on the screen. “Maybe look for an older one?”

RK900 simply nods his head, his gaze drifting off to the side, blinking rapidly. You could see the light of the screen reflecting over him as he flipped through the files.

You suck in a breath, clasping your hands as you waited. You felt like a child, waiting for her parents or something.

“How about a murder, 2019. Downtown Detroit. Corktown to be specific. The victim was a 19-year-old female,” the Android begins. That peaked your interest.

“Go on,” you murmur, listening intently.

“Cause of death, gunshot wound. Her body was found in an alley way right in front of her workplace. There are no known witnesses, the only evidence was on her person, and there are no further leads, but it is the most recent case that involves a murder.” The RK900 unit glances back up from the screen, his eyes meeting yours once more.

“Well, it’s better than writing reports. Where do we start?” You rise from your seat, grabbing your necessities and the coat from the back of your chair. He follows, straightening the stiff-collared Cyberlife uniform jacket.

“I’d say we should start by contacting the parents. The victim’s name was Barbara O’Connell. Her parents are still registered under the same address. I’ve already sent the coordinates to your GPS,” his voice remained the same cool tone, and you stumbled for a second.

“How did you know...,” leaving your sentence hanging, he quickly answers it.

“When I was told who I would be working with, I did as much research about you that was available to me. I traced your license identification and from that, found your insurance and the car registered under it. The masterboard inside of your vehicle had all of the information I needed to connect to the GPS-” he was intent to explain in excruciating detail, step by step, how he found out about you... you quickly stopped him.

“I get the idea.... RK900?” You words hitch at the end as the awkward name passes your lips. “I can’t call you that. It makes you sound like a device. How about... Arkay? Oh, or Nines?”

“Nines?” He ponders the name for a few beats, until his lips quirk at the corners in a small smile. “I like that. I will refer to myself as such from now on.”

You couldn’t help but return the smile, reaching out to shake his hand. He stares at it before complying. “It’s nice to meet you, Nines.”

Like, comment, follow, share... all the fun stuff! There will be more!

#rk900 #detroit become human #dbh rk900 #nines x reader #rk900 x reader #android #android x human #android x reader #dbh #x reader #fanficiton

332 notes · View notes

writethehousedown · 4 years

Text

oh my god, they were tentmates (Ninex) - Katy

A/N: please appreciate the title reference. Prompt 2/7, have a little summer camp AU with the best pairing 💜

Picture the scene. A sunny campground, set between acres of woodland forests, with enough tents for all of the students to be comfortable in and not have to share if they didn’t want to.

Except for Monet, who was currently crammed into a one-person pop up tent with her least favourite staff member from the school.

Monet was one of the singing teachers at Ru’s academy, a prestigious, audition-only school for the kids who’d been forced into musical theatre lessons from age 3, and now wanted to jazz hand their way onto the Broadway stage. She loved her job, she loved the kids she taught, she loved all of her fellow teachers.

But then there’s Nina West.

The head of the acting department, Nina was larger-than-life. Her explosive personality lit up the dullest of stages and her constant happy demeanour was enough to cheer up anyone. She was also painfully beautiful.

Her huge blonde head of hair touched the top of the doorframe, and if she had heels on, she’d have to duck to fit under it. She wore clothes as bright as her personality, and was a stark contrast to Monet, who was rarely seen in anything but jeans and a hoodie.

It’s not that Monet didn’t like Nina, at all. Quite the opposite actually. It’s just that she has to keep a sensible distance away from her at all times, for personal reasons. Ever since she was first introduced to Nina on the older teacher’s first day, she knew she was fucked. She knew she wanted to get fucked, but she didn’t think it would ever be a problem she’d have to address until today came about.

The whole school was crammed onto buses, ready to take them on their annual summer retreat to Camp Wanakaikai. The students all loved it, it being a very welcome change of scenery from the dance studios and vocal booths that they spent most of their days in. It was great for the teachers too, with the camp leaders taking over most of the activities; they were free to relax, to reflect on the last year’s production and to plan this year’s.

Their normal routine when they arrived at camp was to get everyone off of the buses, and make a mad dash to the bathrooms, with nobody ever wanting to go on the bus unless they absolutely had no choice. Bathroom stop completed, they’d all return to the bus, grab their overnight bags and claim dibs on the tents they wanted. It was an all-girls, 18+ school, which unsurprisingly had led to a huge number of gay students, so there was tents that could accommodate up to 4, because hey, they didn’t judge. There was plenty of 2 and 1 person tents also, for the very few straight girls they had at the school, who wanted to be alone, as far away from the orgy stations as possible, or share with their best friend.

There was a completely separate area of tents for the teachers to stay in, usually with enough for them to each have their own little area of privacy and space for the weekend they were here for. But since they’d hired a couple of new teachers this year, and someone, had forgotten to tell the campsite they needed more, they were now in this situation.

Monet had gone back to the bus to help the last few students haul their overly heavy luggage to their tents, and when she got back all of the tents were taken. It was late at night, so most of her colleagues were already asleep, exhausted from the day of travelling. She was about to sneak into Monique’s tent, the dance teacher being her best friend out of everyone here, before she heard a very familiar voice coming from behind her.

‘Monet, you okay?’

Nina slowly approached Monet, and she almost laughed as she turned and looked at Nina, her psychedelic pyjamas doing the exact opposite of camouflaging her into her surroundings.

‘Yeah, Nina, just trying to find somewhere to sleep.’

‘Well I’m not asleep yet. Come and sleep with me.’

‘Sleep with you?’ Monet raised an eyebrow as she looked at Nina.

‘Stop it.’ Nina blushed furiously as she tried to escape Monet’s stare, her entire face heating up at the thought even crossing her mind.

‘Okay, I will come and sleep with you. But I swear to God if you’re a snorer, you’re sleeping out here with the bears.’

Nina was a very clear over-preparer, were Monet’s first thoughts as she followed Nina back to her tent. They’d been here less than two hours and the tent already looked more homely and comfortable than Monet’s apartment that she’d been living in since last year.

‘Why have you packed enough stuff for a month, Nina? I barely remembered a clean bra and deodorant.’

‘You never know what you might need in the wilderness, Monet. If you get eaten by wolves, you’ll be grateful for my Bear Grylls survival handbook,’ Nina said cheekily, waving the book over her shoulder at Monet.

‘Sure I will baby.’

Monet stuck her tongue out in response, internally cursing herself for letting the pet name slip out.

‘Okay, then sweet cheeks, are you ready to go to sleep?

‘Sure you don’t wanna do something else instead?’

‘Shut up and come kiss me.’

#rpdr fanfiction #ninex #monet x change #nina west #katy #enemies to lovers #summer camp au #summer lovin' 2020 #day 2: camp #submission

7 notes · View notes

cupofteaguk · 5 years

Text

the write ups

PART OF THE REPUTATION SERIES

summary: head boy Min Yoongi is a lot of things: patient, perfect, popular, and unwavering; structured so that nothing can threaten that mindset. nothing, except for you.

pairing: yoongi x fem!reader

genre: hogwarts au, head boy!yoongi, enemies to lovers au | fluff

warnings: yoongi has a stick up his ass, many mentions of detentions various depictions of it that may or may not be accurate to actual Hogwarts detentions but alas i cannot say for certain

word count: 10k

When Min Yoongi is seventeen, he receives the school authority to go around acting as if there were a giant stick up his ass. In other words, he gets selected to be a Head Boy.

Unfortunately, the role is entirely too fitting for a boy who appears to have spent the first half of his childhood reading the handbook of rules for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry line by line and the second half of his childhood reciting those rules to anyone just barely beginning to step out of bounds. You would be very familiar with the lectures he gives, given how often you’ve had to listen through on several of his different accusations regarding your rule breaking and lack of discipline.

There’s no surprise you are slightly less than fond about the thought of Min Yoongi. After all, he’s served as the catalyst for several incidents that only continue to put a bad taste in your mouth. Like that time during your first year when you were frantically attempting to finish the rest of your Transfiguration homework the morning of the due date, only to be discovered and reported—resulting in a stern talking to from Professor McGonagall about the importance of time management and leaving your cheeks red with humiliation. Who had reported you? Min Yoongi.

Or the time in your third year when you and Karly were passing notes to one another about who was going to ask Quidditch star Jeon Jungkook to the approaching Yule Ball, only to be rapidly interrupted by a loud observation about your diverted attention. Long story short, not only did neither you nor Karly get to ask Jeon Jungkook to the Yule Ball, Jeon Jungkook (and everyone else, for that matter) knew of both your pathetic thirteen-year-old crush as well as the intentional process to progress an acquaintanceship with one of the most popular boys in school, but you also got your first taste of detention at the hands of Professor Snape. Who had delivered that loud observation? Min Yoongi.

To this day, just the sight of the polished silver trophies in the trophy room is more than enough to make you nauseous, having spent an entire night scrubbing relentlessly at the metal until a reflection appeared across the surface. Like bad memories, your hatred for Yoongi brew under the surface and became something you thought about constantly—despite the fact that he was more often than not barely even worth a breath or a thought.

Although you know not to dwell on his actions and the outcome you had to pay for those aforementioned actions, you learn quickly how to mask your embarrassment as well as a large extent of your emotions. Seventeen-years-old looks a little better on you as you have four years of life, experience, and the ability to develop immunity against general embarrassing moments or moments of distaste. Well, for the most part at least.

“What?” You have to bite your tongue to keep yourself from exerting too much of an exasperation, too much of a snarky nature that seems like the verbal form of rolling your eyes. “Min Yoongi got selected as Head Boy? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Good friend Karly sits opposite of you in the Leaky Cauldron, joining in on your criticism with an actual roll of her own eyes as her wrist flicks so that her palm faces upwards. “Apparently being charming in a way that involves kissing up to all the Professors is enough to guarantee you anything you would possibly want.”

You hum quietly underneath your breath, cradling the beer mug within your reach as you swirl the thing. The food you have ordered in front of you goes untouched. “I didn’t think Min Yoongi even wanted to be Head Boy. Thought he was too hung up on terrorizing young children who forget to turn in their homework assignments.”

Karly actually laughs at that, reaching over to pick at the french fries in the middle of the table. “I think that’s just with you.”

You roll your eyes back with a whine. “Please don’t remind me. As if Yoongi wasn’t already annoying enough, now he’s gonna be annoying with actual reason of authority. The highest reason of authority, for that matter.” You glare across at Karly. “Besides, he’s picked on you too. It’s not like his eagle eyes for trouble isn’t zeroed in on me. Have you forgotten the time we pulled that all-nighter in the trophy room because we had to clean all the trophies—because of Min Yoongi?”

“Oh no,” Karly interjects, palms directed at you this time. “I definitely remember that. But that’s the extent to which Yoongi has gone to rat me out, and I have a feeling that was only because you were gushing about how good Jungkook’s arms look like when gripping a broomstick!”

“Please do not remind me,” You emphasize, the slight flush on your cheeks serving as a reminder that of course you would remember such a thing. Jeon Jungkook has been part of Quidditch (and school, for that matter) royalty since his first year and all his accumulating friendships just add to that list of popularity. It explains why Yoongi is doing so well at the top of the school food chain.

Regardless, your crush on Jungkook is old news, as you are sure his head is too far up his ass, his mind is too fixated on playing professionally, and his mouth is prided upon kissing the most girls during after hours at the Three Broomsticks. You’ve taken to fixing your attention on much more pressing matters: like the upcoming NEWTs of your final year, or figuring out how to remain emotionally sane during your last year at Hogwarts, or just trying to navigate around handling Yoongi for one more moment.

“Oh god, speaking of…” Karly starts, trailing off when her eyes flicker towards the entrance of the Leaky Cauldron before immediately shifting back to you. Her eyes are hard and you don’t need a whole five years of friendship with Karly to know who she is referring to.

Although you normally would refuse to look over your shoulder to look upon what you know to be the bane of your existence, the temptation is strong this time around. Maybe it’s because you’ve gone the typical two months of summer vacation without having to hear his stupid voice that has only gotten deeper and silkier with the help of puberty or seen his dumb face that curves in all the right places. The thought only makes you hate him more.

As you look over to peer at him, you notice immediately that he’s with two other friends, two other pieces of the popularity crew. Kim Namjoon, Gryffindor, head of school newspaper The Hogwarts Daily, family who has just gotten back from China, or so you heard. Besides him is Jung Hoseok, Hufflepuff, a master at spells but also a master of tricks and pranks. You still remember one time during second year when he levitated a girl’s bottle of ink and accidentally spilled the entire content over her uniform.

You wish you could turn back around and go back to minding your own business, but a familiar yet unwelcoming weight places itself right behind your chair and Karly’s wary look leaves little to the imagination.

“Min Yoongi,” You greet in a false high-pitched voice that sounds anything but genuine. “I thought I could hear the cries of screaming children from that hell hole you crawled out of.” You rotate your hips enough to give him half of your attention. He’s alone, and when you flicker your gaze over you notice the two other boys already occupying a nearby table. “What are you doing here? Gonna stand outside Flourish and Blotts and breakdown all your horrible detention punishments to future students who’ll refuse to do their homework?”

Min Yoongi gives you a half-smirk, a little light setting in his eyes. “Charming as ever, I see. Although I’m warning you—you really shouldn’t talk that way to your new Head Boy. Haven’t you heard the news?”

“Unfortunately I did,” You return, turning around so that you give Yoongi your back. You reach for your mug of beer. “I hope you don’t expect me to go around kissing your ass and bending over for your every single whim.”

With your back on Yoongi, you don’t even know if he’s still around to hear these vaguely defined threats regarding his potential use of power. You do, however, stop when you feel a breath right at the shell of your ear. “I mean, you said it, not me.”

Your heart sticks itself right in your throat.

By the time you whirl back to look at Yoongi, he’s already making his way towards his friends at the other table. Karly is giving a wide-eyed look, as if she cannot believe what she just witnessed with her own two eyes.

You’re not even sure you would stand to explain it properly.

“I’m going to murder him slowly,” You say instead, reaching into your bag and pulling out enough money to cover the cost of the meal and the beers. You throw it on the table, grabbing your coat and scarf from the back of your chair. “C’mon, let’s get to Flourish and Blotts before Yoongi decides to make camp outside to terrorize the children.”

September first means an early wake-up call. It means meeting up with Karly at King’s Cross station and making your way together towards the platform division between nine and ten. It means running the carts headfirst and hearing the whistle of the train ringing loudly in your ear, serving as the best reminder that you are returning home.

Sticking to the normal pattern you have developed and memorized, you and Karly load your trunks and belongings into the side of the train before boarding. You meet up with Ronnie in a compartment he has saved for the three of you to occupy, giving you all a private space to gush to one another about the events of your summer holiday and what you hope the final year will consist of.

The art of catching up with two friends who have had their own set of vacations and plans and drama is a whole day ordeal. It helps time go by quicker, makes the hours between leaving Kings Cross to arriving at Hogwarts feel like nothing. Add the sweets from the trolley, it calls for a train ride of sugar and chocolate and a little too much laughter that leaves you breathless.

The sky is adapting a pinkish tint, a well-versed sign that the train ride is coming to a close—you assume it’s probably another hour or so before the train docks at the station and yet the conversations between the three of you are far from done. In fact, Ronnie is still telling you of the story in which he traveled to Japan over the summer holiday for one of those intricate silk bomber jackets when there is a knock on your compartment door. The silhouette doesn’t leave much indication about who could be on the other side, so you exchange a look with Karly before straightening up and sliding open the compartment.

You yelp slightly, blinking once, twice, thrice, upon the realization that Min Yoongi is standing right in front of you. From the looks of it, he’s already dressed and ready to depart from the train—all robes with his green tie perfectly grazed at his neck, the bright golden HEAD BOY badge displayed proudly right on top of Yoongi’s robe almost as if it were glaring at you or laughing at you instead. It takes a second to gather your bearings, which finds you leaning slightly against the doorframe leading into the compartment.

“Min Yoongi,” You greet.

He cocks up an eyebrow, repeating your name back to you.

“You’re a long ways off from that pit of fire you were created from.”

Yoongi cracks a smile. “Pit of fire—so you think I’m hot?”

You snort at that. “Did I say pit of fire? I meant more of a mixing bowl for the devil, from where I’m assuming he created you.”

The smile slips off Yoongi’s face as he levels you with a glare. “You’re lucky we’re not on school grounds yet and that I’m feeling lenient enough to let you off. But I can’t make those promises when we arrive.”

You roll your eyes. Did he expect you to be grateful about his current and extremely short-lived generous nature?

And yet, Yoongi is not done with his interrogation. “How have you fared with the summer holiday homework?” He inquires next, tilting his head to the side. “Personally, I thought the essay we had to write for Professor Snape was the hardest.” At your momentary gape of silence, Yoongi raises an eyebrow once again. “You did do the homework, right?”

“Yah, of course I did Min Yoongi!” You snap.

“For your sake, I hope you did too,” He replies, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Otherwise I’d have to give you detention a lot sooner than I originally anticipated.”

“Hold your breath,” You retort. “I did the assignments.” You’ve been getting better at lying straight through your teeth, having to master the skill just to avoid certain situations like this with Min Yoongi.

Yoongi seems to yield at that, because he steps back and his eyes don’t look as dark as a few seconds ago—although you cannot recall when they became dark in the first place. “We’ll be arriving at Hogwarts soon,” He reports, eyes flickering down to you attire. “You should get dressed soon.”

“I know we’re arriving soon, I’m not a child, Yoongi,” You hiss.

“Well, from the way you were dressed at the Leaky Caldron, I was beginning to think otherwise—!”

You slam the compartment door right back in his face.

Ronnie and Karly are giving each other a look, a look that shifts as you move from the door frame back into your seat. It seems like there are a whole bunch of questions Ronnie wishes to ask in this situation, but he resorts instead to: “Did you really finish all your homework from the summer holiday?”

You’re halfway through on peeling the jacket off your frame when you give your friend a look of disbelief. “Of course not, that’s what the night before classes start is for.”

As you’re shifting your normal attiring for your Hogwarts robe and ties, you think about the encounter with Yoongi and how his attitude towards you hadn’t been that surprising considering the prior years in which the pair of you have known each other. Yoongi has been integrated into your life since the very first year, in which his attitude towards you always seemed to adopt a pattern of general sass and reporting. As far as you were concerned, you have been at the center of Yoongi’s target from the beginning in which you could never escape his mean remarks or his desire to have justice served in the form of seeing you planted in detention. Nothing much has changed from those earlier years. He still seeks you out and somehow it always ends up with you getting some form of detention and still knows exactly what to say to get you riled up—granted, in the more recent years he’s taken to banters upholding more flirtatious qualms.

But you had refused to put too much thought into it, staying secure on the thought and belief that the things he said and the things he did were made with no intention other than to mark up your permanent record. And for that, you only knew to hate Yoongi more and more and desired nothing but to return the favor of exasperation for him as he had done for you.

It seems as if it might be a more difficult feat than you originally thought, especially when you walk into the Slytherin common room with your bag of unfinished homework assignment later that evening only to find Yoongi himself situated right in front of the fireplace.

Yoongi turns his attention towards the source of noise, eyebrow raising at the sight of you standing in the common room with a bag slung over your shoulder. He greets you by your name. “Fancy seeing you this evening, Miss Y/N,” He starts, straightening up and out of his chair as you notice he is still in his school attire. “As pleasant as it is to see you, I hope you realize it’s past curfew for students to be out of their beds.”

You narrow your eyes at him. “There are no curfews for students of that limitation.”

“Well, when the school’s Head Boy is part of your House, there’s always a curfew for students to follow.” He tilts his head to the side in mock curiosity, and yet something in his eyes plagues you as it always does—as it always seems like Min Yoongi is one too many steps ahead of you. “Besides, there’s no reason for you to be down here unless you are, perhaps, working on something.”

You shift, gripping the bag of your materials tighter in your grasp. “What would I be working on? There’s no assignments yet.”

“You tell me, Miss Y/N,” Yoongi counters, shifting his standing position so he could lean back on one of his legs. Despite his more casual stance, everything about him reads serious. “Given that you’re not working on anything, I think that you should go back to the rooms and get some sleep. I’m sure you have a whole day of classes, do you not?”

You fingers curl tighter and tighter around the strap of the bag at your shoulder, debating whether knocking Yoongi’s head with your textbooks and parchment paper would do enough to knock him out.

You’re so caught up in the serious consideration of this plan that you fail to notice Yoongi has moved closer to you the tips of both your shoes are touching. “So, class tomorrow?”

You level yourself with Yoongi’s half curious half amused glance before you find yourself caving. “I can’t,” You finally answer.

He raises an eyebrow. “You can’t go to class?”

“No,” You interject, already starting to grow exhausted of the conversation and you wish you spoke the truth earlier on the train if only to avoid this type of confrontation. Or, rather, a part of you wishes that you had just done the assignments when you were supposed to. “No, I mean I can go to class but I can’t go to sleep and I can’t leave the common room.”

“Hm,” Yoongi ponders this as if the question is actually something he has to think about and as if this situation isn’t something he has been hoping for since the encounter on the train. “Why is that?”

“Are you really going to make me spell it out, Min Yoongi?” You growl.

“I think I would appreciate it if you did.”

If your glare could cut, Yoongi would be a dead man. But he’s a dead man with an extremely cocky smile, as if he knows exactly what his questions and observations and general playing dumb is doing to you.

“Fine,” You snap back, holding up the bag for him to see. “Inside this bag is my summer homework assignments, okay? I didn’t get to finish them over the holiday, so I really need this time to get everything done. There, see, that’s the reason why I can’t go up yet. Are you happy?”

He shrugs half-heartedly. “Not really.”

Your glare hardens. “Yah, what do you want from me, Min Yoongi? I told you the truth, I need to do my assignments—are you gonna let me do it or not?”

“See, I could but,” Yoongi starts, taking another step forward and forcing you to take a corresponding step backwards. “Allowing you to do such a thing would defeat the purpose of it being summer homework.”

“Yoongi, let me do the homework,” You grit out between clenched teeth.

Yoongi ponders this for a moment. “Alright then,” He allows, stepping to the side. You, however, barely make it one step before his stupid voice is ringing out again. “Detention, Miss Y/N.”

“Detention?” You echo loudly. “Just because I didn’t do the homework?”

“Honestly?” He starts. “I could care less about the homework. Lying to Head Boy, however, is something I cannot excuse.” He grins, a horrible Cheshire cat smile. “Not that I would want to, anyhow.”

You clench your teeth together, so sure that if something was in between your teeth it would have snapped in half. “You absolute piece of—!”

“Shh,” Yoongi hushes, actually having the nerve to step forward and bring his index finger up so that it hovers over your lips. “Careful, Y/N. I don’t want to have to give you more detention for also swearing in front of your Head Boy.”

You like to think there’s a lot of things you are thinking in this moment. Rather than simply knocking Yoongi to the ground, you ponder locking him outside of the common room or throwing him out the window or feeding him to the magical creatures hidden in the Forbidden Forest. But the fear of having this disagreement drag on further in a way that will waste more time that you could be using on your assignments keeps you at bay.

You keep your mouth shut, which leads to Yoongi delivering another smirk. “Alright, I’ll leave you to it then. Have a good night.”

And with that, he steps back and steps around you, leaving you to only imagine locking him out, throwing him out, or feeding him away—as well as imagine what your first detention of the new school year will be like.

You absolutely hate Min Yoongi.

Your first detention of the new school year takes place on an early Saturday morning a few weeks into the new school year, assigned to clean one of the abandoned bathrooms with no help and no magic. Naturally, the smell and the labor and the exhaustion is more than enough to leave you in a bad mood as you find that you are practically seething by the time you make it into the shower. The water washes off the sweat and grime of a day that has started at five in the morning, but does little to take away the irritation that rolls off your body like steam.

Despite starting so early in the morning, by the time you finish with your shower and prepare a bag of assignments to take with you throughout the day—the breakfast is set out in the Great Hall and students from each of the houses have gathered to enjoy the meal.

“Hey—woah,” Karly starts, stopping immediately as if she can see deep enough into your soul to see the fiery depths of your anger. “What’s up with you? What happened?”

You slide into the seat next to your friend, hair still damp and eyes red from the early morning wake-up call. “Shit,” You reply, leaning forward to rest your forehead into the palm of your hand.

“Really?” Karly inquires sympathetically. “Detention must have been rough?”

“No, literally—shit,” You try again. Eyes still closed, you turn to face her. “I had to clean the bathrooms on the third floor.”

Karly’s momentary look of disgust is all she needs to do. “Oh my god, the ones that were closed after Moaning Myrtle clogged a bunch of them?”

“Yes!” You emphasis with a whine, pulling away from your palms and pouting. How could the world be so cruel to assign you such a labor intensive job as punishment? “All because Yoongi is such a stick up the ass about some dumb misunderstanding we had gotten into.”

Karly narrows your eyes. “Didn’t you lie straight to his face?”

“Who’s side are you on?” You snap.

“You’re not mad because it was a misunderstanding,” Karly corrects, pouring more breakfast onto her plate. “You’re mad because Yoongi has a stick up his ass, period. And he does.”

You sigh, easing up on yourself just enough to put some food on your own plate. “Well, you’re not wrong.” You straighten slightly, gaze shifting up and down the Slytherin table. These first minutes of conversation with Karly has been nice, of course, but has also been unusual. Post-detention torture is usually followed up with a sickening smile from the man who assigned you the detention in the first place, followed by a whole bunch of inquiries about the detention session as if he wasn’t the reason for your misery. Post-detention torture is filled with Min Yoongi, which is exactly what your morning is missing.

“He’s not here,” Karly remarks.

You stare at her. “Well, where is he?”

“Not sure,” She replies with a shrug. “He sort of left out that information while we were braiding each other’s hair and sharing our deepest and darkest secrets with one another.”

“You could just said you weren’t sure and left it at that,” You grumble, sending a pointed glare to her cheesy grin. But just as you fix your gaze on Karly, your gaze immediately gravitates towards the entrance to the Great Hall and you see three familiar figures lingering in the frame. Familiar not because of the friendly feelings that the sight fills you with; but familiar because of the reputations that come along with it.

At the frame leading into the Great Hall stands Min Yoongi, Jeon Jungkook, and Kim Taehyung and it appears that they’re still in the middle of joking about something. Min Yoongi and Kim Taehyung are dressed in a casual Saturday attire of a polo, slacks, and the ties showing off their house colors while Jungkook is sporting a Ravenclaw sweater and is balancing his Firebolt atop shoulder.

“They probably just got back from the Ravenclaw Quidditch practice,” Karly voices your own internal observation. She follows your gaze down the hallway to where the boys are conversing; but the sight is enough to get you to turn back to your own meal. “I think Yoongi saw us, he’s looking this way,” Karly continues to comment, although her attention is still heavily diverted at staring quite openly at the three boys.

“Probably thinking about how he could embarrass me in front of Jeon Jungkook again,” You spit out, despite not being affected by the sight of Jungkook. Your little crush on him is ancient news, but the sight of Yoongi and Jungkook together sometimes just brings back memories that are four years old.

Karly actually laughs at that. “I doubt that. He keeps glancing over here. I wonder if he’s wondering how your detention went. Maybe if he knew you had to clean toilets, he’d feel a little guilty.”

“I don’t even think feeling guilty is in his limited range of emotions,” You note, digging a fork into your eggs. But something about her words stick with you for a moment. Although you doubt that Yoongi would ever think to connect guilt to your punishment, you like to think you could do something to level the playing ground. Or, more simply put maybe getting back at him this once would be enough to ease your desire for revenge. “Hm.” You ponder, placing your bag on your lap and immediately digging through the contents. It’s an old bag, something you’ve had packed since the beginning of the year and has since served as a trash can of sorts that you throw a wide variety of items into. You continue your search, mind wandering to your Diagon Alley visit and a corresponding purchase you remember stuffing into your bag.

Karly takes note of your silence long enough to shift her attention back to you. “What are you doing—?” She cuts herself off mid-sentence, eyes widening slightly when she sees the jar you are producing. She starts to laugh. “Oh my fucking god, dude.”

“What?” You inquire, lips starting to quirk up slightly as the weight of the U-No-Poo jar starts to settle more in your lap.

She continues to laugh, rolling her eyes slightly but the smile is still there. Karly isn’t your best friend, your partner in crime, well-equipped in the behavior that has landed you in detention, for nothing. “Well, alright, hand some over.”

Grinning, you pick out two pills of the U-No-Poo and hand it over to Karly. You watch for a moment as she pulls out her wand in order to break down the original structural integrity of the pills, reducing them into crushed particles.

Initially, you had purchased the jar of U-No-Poo from the Wealseys’ Wizard Wheezes shop in Diagon Alley with little intention of doing anything with it. Just the thought of having it filled you with a sense of power—especially considering what it did.

As you wait for Karly to bring you back to Earth, you turn the jar in your palm to read the labels. Basically, U-No-Poo is a product that brings constipation to the taker—not exactly the most pleasant experience for anyone who had the misfortune of ingesting this pill. That’s why you never had a genuine thought of sharing the product with anyone. But that was before Yoongi gave you detention under the prefix of something as stupid as a lie.

Just as you’re slipping the jar back into your bag, Karly holds up her plate that is now devoid of food with the exception of the crushed U-No-Poo pills. With another smile, you grab one of the glasses of water in front of you and dump the crushed remnants into the liquid. You look into the glass, swirling it once or twice before you look back out down the hall. Yoongi is still there with Jungkook and Taehyung.

“If you get caught, Yoongi will totally drag you to hell,” Karly advises, but she’s still smiling and even twists herself a little in the bench to get the best view. It’s almost amazing how neither of you have been caught or questioned, but the Saturday morning crowds for breakfast are never too crazy so it’s more natural for groups to come together and keep to themselves. It’s the perfect atmosphere for trouble.

“With the way he’s been my entire life, it kind of feels like I’m already there,” You retort, grabbing your bag and detaching yourself from the table as you make your way down the stretch of distance towards the end.

Jungkook and Taehyung are at the beginnings of disembarking from the group just as you’re approaching. Taehyung is making his way towards the Hufflepuff table while Jungkook is turning on his heel to exit the Great Hall—probably to take a shower and put down his Firebolt. This leaves Yoongi wide open to conversation, one he immediately invites you to with a quirked eyebrow and a call of your name.

“Heard you finally got your detention,” Yoongi greets, stuffing his hands into his pockets and the distance between you allows you to take in the stance. There’s something almost irritating and unfair about the veins that decorate down his arms and the traitorous lingering of your gaze makes you want to curse yourself. It also makes you want to punch him in the mouth.

“No thanks to you,” You say, still holding the drink to your chest. You try to think about how you want to play this out. “But luckily for you, it wasn’t that bad. Just cleaning. Anything worse and I would have attempted to drive a brick for your head as soon as you walked in.”

Yoongi quirks an eyebrow at the threat. “If a more challenging punishment lets me see the more feisty side of you, I may have to talk to Filch about changing some things around.”

“Why? Because you like seeing me feisty?” You retort, meaning nothing with that kind of question. Although the way Yoongi looks at you afterwards makes you falter.

“Oh, I think I might like seeing you a little bit more than that.”

Your heart stammers in your chest and you want to plummet it into the ground as a result. Yoongi is giving you a familiar challenging look, the type of expression that is encouraging you (daring you) to continue. Rather, you adjust the strap of your bag on your shoulder and give him a tight-lipped smile. “Are you going to go sit down and eat?”

If he’s disappointed in your abrupt change of topic, he doesn’t give an indication of that. Rather, he jumps on the new pace of discussion. “Naw, I stopped by just to walk with Taehyung. I actually have a meeting with some professors that I have to get to soon.”

“Hm, you should at least have something in your body,” You note, shuffling forward and tilting the glass of water towards him. “You want some?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Since when do you share?”

You snort. “Are you implying that you think I would be okay with you getting your germs on something I’ve already drank? Of course not. This is a new glass—something originally for me but given that I’ve already eaten, I wouldn’t mind letting you have this.” You don’t leave him with another choice as you step forward and practically shove the glass into his hands. This brings you closer to him, almost able to feel the warmth of his presence, but you pull back. “I have to go to the library.”

You make a beeline to get out of sight, looking over your shoulder just in time to see Yoongi take a sip of the water.

The remainder of the day proceeds normally—you spend a majority of your day in the library working on the first Transfiguration essay of the year as well as studying for your upcoming Care of Magical Creatures exam. Saturdays are filled with the books and the sunlight streaming in through the glass windows of the library, company that eventually takes the form of Ronnie and Karly.

In fact, it’s such a normal Saturday afternoon that you completely forget about the repercussions from the morning until you walk into the Slytherin common room and find Min Yoongi lying on the couch and groaning into the pillow.

“Oh my god,” Ronnie observes immediately, coming up to the edge of the couch where Yoongi’s feet are rested. “What’s up with him?” He lowers his voice, despite the fact that you’re the only individuals in the common room at this time of day. “Yoongi, are you okay?”

When Yoongi doesn’t respond, you tilt your head slightly. “Maybe he’s sleeping on a stomachache.”

“Maybe he ate something,” Ronnie supplies.

“Or drank something,” Karly includes with a playful wiggle of her eyebrows.

You scoff to hide a laugh. “Karly, no.”

“Uh, Karly yes,” Ronnie interjects, leaning over so that he can catch a better glimpse of the two of you. “What did you do? Poison him?”

“No!” You hiss.

“You might as well have,” Karly adds with a shrug, before turning to Ronnie. “She slipped U-No-Poo into his water.”

“Detention, Miss. Y/N!” Yoongi crows, sitting straight up on the couch as the sudden movement drags a scream out of the remaining three of you. It seems, however, that the action has prompted too much movement for a sickening Yoongi, because he falls back against the couch with a groan. “It was you! I knew that water had to be spiked with something—I’ve been feeling like shit ever since then.”

“Oh my god, keep it in Min Yoongi,” You retort, lips edging into a smile as you round the couch in order to hover near his head. “Not that you have a choice, anyway.”

Without a warning, Yoongi reaches out to grab the collar of your shirt and pulls you down. On instinct, your hands come up to land right on his chest. The arms distance away from him is more than enough to provide a separation between the two of you, and yet you can still feel the warmth of his body through his shirt and you can see the glint in his eyes.

Even though he’s upside down in your field of vision, it’s hard to miss the glint and the weight of his finger pulling at your collar. “Detention for a week, Miss. Y/N,” He grumbles and you almost forget to feel angry over the tripping of your heart.

Following a week’s worth of different detentions that consist of a wide range of different activities like polishing the silverware to sweeping the entire school grounds last into the night with the only company taking the form of airy ghosts, to cleaning the glass windows and venturing into the Forbidden Forest for unicorn blood. All these things have contributed higher and higher to your exhaustion and your increasing desire to keep counteracting Yoongi’s detention punishments with your own form of payback.

This mostly takes the form of Karly meeting up with you in the Slytherin common room on a Tuesday morning to begin descending towards the ground floor for your morning classes. “Are you good?” Karly inquires after a moment, shouldering her bag and directing you with a stare. “Like sanity-wise? You good? A week’s worth of detention seems like more than enough to drive anyone crazy.”

“I’m okay,” You answer, although the distant soreness in your legs and arms tells another story. “Sore, though. And filled with a desire to kill Min Yoongi.”

Karly nods. “The usual response.”

“I mean, what’s up with him?” You grumble as the pair of you enter your Charms class. Given that you and Karly do not sit together, you continue to linger near the doorframe in order to keep the conversation going. “I always figured that slipping U-No-Poo into water would have earned like a day’s worth of detention, not a week. Who gives people a week’s detention, anyways?”

“Like I said,” Karly supplies with a shrug of her shoulders. “He’s got his eye on you. Like, really has his eyes on you.”

“Shut up,” You snap back, flashing back to the conversation the pair of you had in the Leaky Cauldron all that time ago and suddenly feeling nauseous.

Karly’s laugh leaves little hope that she’s just fucking around to make you nervous. Instead, you choose to ignore her as you turn away and enter deeper into the classroom. The space between you and Karly is mainly emphasised by another desk and a row—a desk taken by Hufflepuff Jung Hoseok, someone whose connection with Min Yoongi is something you don’t really bat an eye to. At least, in comparison to the other boys and their relationship with Yoongi. More often than not, when it came to Jung Hoseok, he wasn’t really one to rat someone out.

Apparently, the day is counting on that because as soon as you settle in your seat and take in topic of the upcoming lecture, Hoseok is sliding a paper onto your desk. He gives you a head tilt towards Karly’s direction when you give him a pair of inquiring eyes, allowing you to lean forward just enough to catch aforementioned friends eye. She quirks an eyebrow, turning back to face the front.

You do the same, flickering towards the blackboard and mountain of books that Professor Flitwick stands atop of. He’s providing an introduction of a Gripping Charm, which is always about as interesting as one would think when learning about a spell but being unable to start practical application. The slow-moving pace of the day allows you to take the time and unfold the paper from Karly.

Look up, guess who’s watching you again

Eyebrows furrowing, you look at Karly again. She’s must feel the weight of your gaze because she quirks her head just enough to give you a look. You return it, holding the note a little higher to inquire about it without actually inquiring about it. She smiles a little, tilting her head a little towards the front of the room. Clueless, your eyes follow her line of sight and you’re not entirely sure why you feel your heart trip slightly when your gaze meets one Min Yoongi, who has turned slightly in his chair a few rows ahead of you just to watch you in your seat.

After a moment of this stare-down, Yoongi shift his gaze down to your desk before moving back up to your face. He knows you’re passing notes—well, not that you and Karly ever tried to be extremely subtle about your actions.

You press your lips together. Maintaining eye-contact, you take the parchment Karly had given to you and your quill and begin writing something down.

Min Yoongi is a poop head

Looking back up, you find Yoongi is still staring at you. His eyes have hardened slightly, challenging you to follow through on something that will most definitely get you in trouble. You don’t care. You turn to Hoseok, to which he takes the note and mindlessly hands it to Karly before—!

Yoongi straightens up out of his seat, darting towards the row separating you and Karly in order to snatch the note out of Hoseok’s hands. Yoongi gives Hoseok a look, one that Hoseok returns with amusement to showcase how little fucks Hoseok has in contributing to less-than-perfect behavior, for it’s in his nature and part of his charm. But of course, Yoongi overlooks Hoseok in the long run to feed you a look.

You tilt your head down slightly in a nod, lifting your palm up towards him in an inviting gesture. It’s a gesture to read the note you have so graciously written with the knowledge that he would see it and read it.

“Mr. Min, is something wrong?” Professor Flitwick inquires from the front of the classroom.

Yoongi doesn’t answer him at first, instead taking the time to open the note. His gaze takes in the note written across the parchment, silent for a moment before he lowers his arm and slips the note into the back pocket of his slacks. “Nothing, Professor,” Yoongi says after a moment. “I just want Miss. Y/N to know publicly that she just earned herself another detention.”

The statement is followed with a sound quieter than silence, one that envelops the entire room and leaves everyone shocked. Not over the fact that you have just garnered another detention under your belt, but because Yoongi had to announce it in front of everyone.

You, however, are not included in this pool of surprise. Rather, you raise your eyebrows and wear a more amused expression. “Never expected anything less from you, Mr. Min.” And really, you hadn’t. Judging from the slight tint across Yoongi’s cheeks, it seems obvious to believe that he had read the entirety of the note—including Karly’s observation about who had been watching you. His hesitancy to give you detention at the expense of his wandering eyes seems like a slight crack in his otherwise uptight facade and you think you might run with that.

The library during the first wave of exam season is always a wild mix of exhaustion—filled with all different types of students just collectively coming together to conquer a singularity goal: pass. With the looming mountain of tests and assignments and essays hovering over everyone, it’s normal to walk through the halls of the library and see students either laughing over the tipping of their sanity, beady eyed trying to get their fifth essay done, or students who have just given up entirely and spend time whispering amongst their friends.

You find yourself drawn between the second and third option, given that you are trying to write your third essay on Magical Creatures while also joking around with Ronnie and Karly.

“Ah, shit,” You grumble, looking over the requirements for your next essay for Transfiguration and realizing you don’t have any of that information in any of the notes (or lack thereof) you’ve taken throughout the lectures. You straighten slightly, tucking your quill, ink, and parchment under your arm. “Alright, I’m gonna go find that Transfiguration textbook. I’ll be right back.”

Karly and Ronnie wave you away as their own form of goodbye, too distracted with their own little game of Wizard’s Chest to process the whole reason for your departure. But you ignore that, slipping into the main hall of the library. You’re too busy overlooking the requirements of the essay and what you’ll have to look for when you locate the Transfiguration aisle of the library that you don’t notice someone equally as distracted walking towards you until you crash into them and feel something like cold, wet ink spraying everywhere.

“Oh—fuck!”

“Ow!”

You look up from your assignments, taking in the sight of Min Yoongi right in front of you. The blackness biting at his shirt and your own makes you realize that that ‘like cold, wet ink’ actually has been cold, wet ink that is now all over your shirt, all over Yoongi’s shirt, and all over the pile of whatever Yoongi had been holding before the collision.

The sight of Yoongi drenched in ink makes you inwardly groan, wondering what the punishment would be since you figure Yoongi would serve you detention under the pretense that you had purposely tried to sabotage his day. “Sorry Min Yoongi,” You speak first. “What’s the damage for this, since I clearly went out of my way to direct an entire bottle of ink on your chest.”

Yoongi stares at you for a long hard minute, but it’s missing that usual glint of scouting out for trouble. Instead, he’s looking at you like he’s seeing you for the first time.

“Just wash our clothes and we’ll call it even,” He grumbles before he brushes past you and continues down the hall, leaving you with your own ink-splattered shirt and a forgotten Transfiguration essay tucked under your arm.

However, in retrospect, having Yoongi entrust you to wash his uniform hadn’t been the smartest decision on his part. Mainly because you still hate him, and you suppose that getting detention would have been a better bargain for him considering that getting detention would avoid letting you get tangled with any of his personal belongings.

You do not know why he doesn’t hand out the punishment, but you want to make sure that he regrets this. You wash the shirt and robe perfectly, just to give this opportunity a fighting chance. You take his green tie, however, and steady it just as you take your quill between your hands once more. With a bottle of that really serious ink—the kind that is almost oil-based in the sense that it is nearly impossible to remove—you dip the quill in and start writing—!

“POOP HEAD?” Min Yoongi’s voice roars through the nearly empty Slytherin common room, earning a noiseless laugh to spread across your lips as your body lurches with the force of your amusement. You should be able to endure the loud kind of laughter that this kind of oncoming prank deserves, given that you are the only person in the common room at this hour on a Thursday. You’re skipping your Astronomy lecture for this, but it’s worth it.

You stay in silence, however, allowing yourself to hear the grumbling curses from Yoongi—talk of what he’s going to do when he finds you and how he’s going to make you buy him a new tie and all that jazz before—!

“Oh.” Yoongi stops at the sight of you leaning against the back of the chair; you, arms crossed and the highest of amusement dancing in your eyes.

“Something wrong, Min Yoongi?” You inquire, although it’s hard not to notice the giant POOP HEAD wording, followed by an arrow pointing upwards towards his face across his green tie. “Nice tie.”

Yoongi grips the fabric a little tighter in his hands, approaching you. “Look at this shit!” He retorts after a moment. “What kind of fucking ink did you use with this? It doesn’t come off, I swear to god Y/N—look at this! What am I supposed to do, walk into class with this? I��m the Head Boy—!”

“Well, I think,” You start, interrupting him as you start forward. Yoongi goes silent, watching as you make your way towards him. “I think the tie looks great.” Playing around a little, a corner of your lips quirk up at the sight of Yoongi looking increasingly frazzled to see you walking closer and closer to him. “I think the color of it really brings out your eyes.” To take things up to an extreme, you take the tie in between your fingers, tugging him closer to you. “Are you sure there’s really a problem to this?”

“I…” Yoongi starts, trailing off the longer his eyes are trained across the expanse of your face: from your eyes to your mouth. It looks like he wants to say something, like he’s dying to say something, but the words are lodged in his throat. You wonder when the last time Yoongi had been in such close proximity to a girl. With all his responsibilities as Head Boy and confiscating dung bombs from fourth years, you assume it must be hard to fit in simple and mundane things like flirting with girls and taking them out on dates or just having a casual conversation with them generally. Although the rest of his friends (especially Jeon Jungkook) have had their fair share of girlfriends, Yoongi always stayed out of the picture.

You never questioned it, sure that Yoongi spent more time terrorizing away girls rather than dating them, and the way he’s looking at you as if you’re growing spikes on your face makes you think that perhaps he’s just scared of you.

He’s standing so close to you at this point that you can feel the warmth of his body traveling towards you and there’s something almost comforting about it. He smells really good too. You wonder what kind of shampoo and soap they offer in the Prefect bathrooms where he probably goes to every night.

“You know what color I’m really thinking represents you?” You inquire, still playing with his tie. When Yoongi doesn’t say anything, you lean so close that your breath tickets his cheek. His breath hitches. “Brown.”

Yoongi nearly pushes you away, scowling at your color description in relation to the statement on his tie.

You laugh. “What’s wrong, Min Yoongi? Was that too much for you? Are you gonna give me detention now for fucking up your tie?”

He thinks about it for a moment before he untangles the tie from around his neck and bunches it in his hand. “I will just buy a new one at Hogsmeade later,” He reports quietly, mostly to himself before turning around and making his way up the stairs.

You watch him leave.

February means snow and chill and lovey dovey emotion that can only be felt in the air—for February also means flowers and chocolate and confessions. But to you, February means the most number of detentions, twelve in a row so far and you still reportedly have three more to go.

When you thought the previous two incidents and encounters with Yoongi might have softened him up, it seems as if fucking up his tie had been the wrong card to pull because if he had been hawkeyed on you before, now he’s just unfair.

Your uniform with just a tie out of place? Detention.

Showing up late by five minutes to a lecture simply because there was a line to the restroom? Detention.

In fact, things you’ve done within the past few weeks that have earned you another detention are as listed: whispering in the library, tapping your quill once on the desk, not walking fast enough in the halls, turning in homework with handwriting a little too sloppy—the list goes on. You would be annoyed if you weren’t so exhausted. Twelve detentions in a row is a lot to ask of someone.

Your exhaustion turns into the loss of sanity, until Professor McGonagall calls you into her office and you walk in to find Min Yoongi seated in front of her desk.

You stop short. “Uh, what’s this?” You inquire, gesturing between Professor McGonagall and Min Yoongi. “Is this because of the comment I made against cats in Yoongi’s write-up? That was just a joke, I promise. Am I getting expelled? Because if that comment against the cats is enough to warrant this kind of punishment then I should let you know that Yoongi has been up my ass—!”

Professor McGonagall interrupts you with a shrill call of your name. “Miss. Y/N, please mind your language—why don’t you put your butt on the seat instead of your foot in your mouth.” As you lower yourself slowly into the other chair opposite of her, she speaks again. “And for the record, Miss. Y/N, I had no idea about the comment you made against cats.”

You grit your teeth slightly, berating yourself for saying such a thing. Yoongi presses his lips together to hide his smile, and you kick him in the shin.

Just as Yoongi parts his lips in a silent ring of pain, you speak. “So, Professor McGonagall,” You start loudly. “What seems to be the issue?”

“Well, it has come to my attention that Mr. Min has been giving you a lot of detentions since the start of the school year,” Professor McGonagall notes. “An excessive amount, for that matter. Not that we have anything in our policy that goes against too much detention. In fact, Miss. Y/N—you are scheduled for another detention on February 14th, is that correct?”

“Uh—I assume so,” You reply, sparing a glance towards Yoongi. It’s not like Yoongi pencils you in for detentions whenever it’s convenient for you. He doesn’t even run the detentions for you himself, it’s always Mr. Flich, who has looked increasingly and increasingly more exasperated especially when you know he’s running out of things around the castle for you to do. “Yoongi doesn’t really… tell me anything after telling me I have detention…”

Yoongi looks like he wants to speak up, but he is quickly shot down by Professor McGonagall. “Mr. Min, I just need to let you know that no one will be able to run the detention for Miss. Y/N on February 14th so I will leave you in charge for that day.”

Both of you straighten up at that.

“What?”

“Wait, no.”

“Why?”

“I would rather bathe myself in any river in the Forbidden Forest past midnight and get eaten by a lion.”

“Okay, Y/N, first of all, there are no lions in the Forbidden Forest.”

“How do you know that? There’s no way not to know that. The Forbidden Forest is forbidden to students. What did you do? Sneak in with your idiot friends one time?”

“Kim Namjoon is not an idiot—!”

Your eyes widen and point a finger at Yoongi. “PROFESSOR.”

“Okay, enough you two,” Professor McGonagall interrupts, rubbing at her temples and you wonder if she’s held off on talking to the two of you for so long for this very reason only. It’s why your normal interactions with Min Yoongi were so short if you could help it. “This is not up for debate. Mr. Min, you are running Miss. Y/N’s detention. As Head Boy, it’s one of your responsibilities. Own up to it. Both of you are dismissed.”

Yoongi sighs, looks like he wants to argue more, but he detaches himself from the seat and makes his way towards the door frame exiting Professor McGonagall’s office. This leaves you little choice but to do the same.

Yoongi is still outside in the hallway by the time you exit. “You could still cancel my detention if you want,” You supply, hands in the pocket of your skirt. “I’m sure you have plans on February 14th that I would hate to intercept with.”

“It’s fine,” Yoongi grumbles. “Meet me in the detention chamber.”

“Bring some candles, Min Yoongi!” You call teasingly.

Min Yoongi is unsuspiciously moody on February 14th when you enter the confines of the detention chamber. He’s facing the blackboard and looks to be deep in thought. That thought, however, is crossed out when he grumbles something as soon as your footsteps sound through the chamber. “You’re late.”

“I got lost,” You lie.

“Shut up.” Yoongi whirls around, sneering. “You’ve been down here plenty of times—in fact, you were here just last week. Got lost, my ass.”

“Oh is that what I said? I meant I didn’t want to come here.”

He groans, running a hand through his hair. “Just sit down.” He gestures to the empty desk right in front of him. You slide into the seat, your bag slipping to the floor as your fold your hands atop each other and gazing up at Yoongi. “You’re gonna write lines today.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Wow, lines. That’s exciting. Just so original, oh wow.”

“When you only have two days to plan two hours worth of detention, there are limited options,” Yoongi supplies, taping his piece of chalk against his chin. “So you’re gonna spend two hours writing this.” He turns back to the blackboard, bringing the chalk up to the surface and—!

I AM AN IDIOT WHO CONSTANTLY NEGLECTS MIN YOONGI’S WORD OF AUTHORITY AND HENCEFORTH, I DESERVE EVERY SINGLE PUNISHMENT THAT HAS EVER BEEN HANDED TO ME EVER.

You sigh, reaching into your bag and producing a parchment and quill. “Charming with words as ever, Min Yoongi.”

He shrugs, leaning against the desk at the front. “I try.”

The full vantage of his profile allows you to scope a good glance over his uniform for the day. Polo shirt and slacks, still no tie—but the sleeves of his shirt have been pulled up to his elbow and his teeny waist showcased in his slacks. It’s not just distracting, it’s unfair entirely.

You get through about half of your first line before you put your quill down. “So, Min Yoongi,” You start.

“Do your lines.”

You ignore him. “If you didn’t have to run my detention for the day, what plans would have awaited the great Head Boy of our beloved school?”

“None of your business,” He grumbles.

“Because I am sure someone as… compelled as you are,” You start, purposely pausing when coming up with an adjective to describe Yoongi and the one you select makes him scowl harder. “Would have no trouble conjuring up an activity on Valentine’s Day.”

“Like I said, it’s none of your business.”

“Well, there’s a lot of things that you shouldn’t stick your nose in either,” You retort. “And yet here I am, probably servicing my one hundredth detention because you read my personal notes.”

“You were passing notes in class!”

“Passing personal notes in class,” You emphasis. “And it’s none of your business and yet I still had my privacy invaded so that excuse does not work on me, Min Yoongi.” You push yourself off the desk despite Yoongi’s noise of protest. “I couldn’t help but notice that you didn’t protest much or if at all to Professor McGonagall assigning you to watch over me for detention.”

“So?”

“So, is that because you don’t have any plans at all for Valentine’s Day?” You’re standing right in front of him now.

“Miss. Y/N, if I were you, I’d shut my mouth and write my lines.”

His defensive nature makes you quirk the corner of your lips. “Oh my god.” You’re grinning now. “Did you not have anyone to celebrate with?”

Yoongi’s gradually stiffening frame as you on the brick of laughter. “Shut up.”

“Not even a crush? No one to spare a confession for? That’s kind of sad.”

“Oh like you’re so high and mighty about this—do you have someone to celebrate with?”

“No,” You reply with a shrug. “And I don’t care too much. You care though, don’t you?”

“I don’t,” He retorts, but it’s a weak argument and you can hear the waver in his tone.

“You do like someone, don’t you?” You inquire, smirking a little. “What is that like? What is the girl like? Why won’t you say anything to her, Min Yoongi? You may be emotionally constipated but you should know how to process constipation by now right? Seven years and no girlfriend; doesn’t that bother you in the slightest? Why waste time with me when you could—!”

The rest seems like such a blur, because you are interrupted when Yoongi darts forward, one hand around your waist and the other curling fingers around the back of your neck, before he is kissing you. Your lower back hits the edge of the desk, a pain that you don’t register anymore as you find yourself completely distracted by the feel of his lips—which are a lot softer than you thought they would have been. Immediately, the sensation feels as if it has springboarded you through the galaxy above, his lips moving against yours and dragging out these whimpers that sound from the back of your throat.

Suddenly, it feels like you can’t get enough of him as your nails dig into his arms, his shoulder blade. His anger seems to subside the longer he kisses you, going from using his teeth to soothing the burn from his tongue, a gesture that sends a shiver up your spine.

The hand at your back finds its way under the material of your polo shirt, his thumb rubbing softly at the skin of your back as the pair of you separate. Your lungs feel like they’re about to burst, so the frantic beating of your heartbeat means you don’t think twice about resting your forehead against Yoongi’s. “Do you do that to all the girls who yell at you?”

Yoongi sighs like he’s waited years for this. “Just the ones whose attention I feel like I would lose unless I granted her with detention every two point five seconds.”

“So you aren’t entirely a stick in the mud,” You observe, almost losing your train of thought with the way Yoongi is tracing patterns into your back again. “You did have plans for Valentine’s Day.”

“Well, it was more along the lines of how I had plans to find you after your detention and get another fight out of you,” Yoongi starts, corner of his lips turning up into a meek smile. “So this is obviously a step up.”

“Aw,” You coo. “You really are emotionally constipated—I’m sure there would have been much better ways of expressing your emotions.”

He shrugs. “Just for the girl who was about to write sixty lines about how much of an idiot she is.”

“For your information, I only got through half of a line. What if I don’t want to write sixty?” You challenge, lifting your chin slightly towards him.

Yoongi hums, readjusting his hold around your waist so his nails are digging into your bare skin. You are too high on possibility to notice the potential bruising. “I’ll convince you,” He whispers, lowering himself closer and closer until he seals his lips with yours. A promise, and a challenge—as it always should be.

#bangtan bookclub #yoongi x reader #yoongi scenario #yoongi x you #min yoongi scenario #yoongi fluff #bts scenario #bts x reader #bts fluff #traci writes #hp reputation series

1K notes · View notes

jimlingss · 5 years

Text

Jungle Park [12]

Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13

➜ Words: 5.9k

➜ Genres: Fluff, Light Humour (?), Slice of Life, Workplace Romance!AU

➜ Summary: The equation is simple. Hoseok needs to hire someone. You need a job. Except like any actual equation, it’s not fucking simple at all! Not when you have to add the fact that he was forced to hire someone he doesn’t want in his office, he has little respect for your job in general, and oh yeah...once upon a time you might have—*CENSORED*.

Sometimes it feels like you’re walking backwards. There are things you left behind, precious things that you let go of because you needed to. Like childhood toys or putting a layer of glue on your hand to peel it off when it dried or thinking getting a perm from your dad’s barber was a good idea (it wasn’t). Granted, these things aren’t exactly precious to you, but they’ve become fond memories — yet you let go of them for your own well being. And lately, it feels like you’re regressing. You swear you’re supposed to be an adult by now who has their life put together. Your old friends have all gotten married, produced a town of pudgy babies, well-established into their careers and comfortable in their lives. And you’re standing on the curb of the road, stranded. Except, when a familiar car pulls up, you’re not regressing anymore….you’re hurled back into the past. “Y/N?” He rolls down his car window, calling out to you and your feet stop along the sidewalk. Your eyes nearly fall out of their sockets and you whip your head over with furrowed brows. “Hoseok?” “What are you doing?” He grins in amusement despite your exasperation and surprise. “I was walking back to my apartment.” Your feet are throbbing in your heels and you feel your blouse stick to your sweaty skin. “What are you doing?” “I was going to pick you up and I saw you.” He leans over the console, barely opening the passenger door with the edge of his fingertips and then he motions. “Get in.” “I called Jimin and told him I was going to be late,” you ramble as you slide yourself into the seat, shutting the door and securing the seat belt over your torso. “How did you…?” “Jimin called me and told me to come pick you up.” Oh. So it was all of Jimin’s doing. You’ve always believed your legs could take you anywhere that you wanted to go. You backed out of situations, moved ahead, left things behind. Hoseok was afraid of things like spiders and mosquitoes and roller coasters and heights; you were afraid of something much more different. And it’s now that you realize, you could never run away from him. Between the two of you…...you were the true coward. “I can’t believe the subway shut down during rush hour.” You’re spewing out the words in a frenzy, trying to explain your situation to avoid him getting upset. “Apparently, something happened at the station and the station before mine and there are major delays. I couldn’t even grab a taxi or—” “I know,” is all he says. And he speaks in the most gentle way, even glancing at you with a soft smile as if trying to tell you that he’s not bothered or annoyed in the least bit. “I was stuck in traffic for a long time. Thankfully I have hawk eyes and noticed you. Saved you from having to walk back. What were you planning if I didn’t come get you?” “I honestly don’t know.” Hoseok grips the steering wheel loosely and slides his hands down as he makes a right turn. “Well, I’m not letting any of my employees take a sick day when they don’t have to.” His eyes slightly crinkle with the sweet smile, smooth timbre completely nonchalant. “We’ll get to work on time.” “Wasn’t this inconvenient for you? My apartment is in the opposite direction from yours, right?” “I don’t mind.” The lawyer shrugs and you feel at ease enough to lean back in the seat, glancing out at the windows and morning traffic that flows by. “I wonder why Jimin didn’t call Seulgi...or Jungkook. They live closer to me,” you mutter, talking to yourself more than to the driver beside you. “Actually, now that I think about it, I should’ve called Jungkook and asked to carpool with him. Maybe I’ll talk to him about it and he can drive me back in case there are still problems.” “I can actually drive you,” Hoseok suddenly pipes up loudly and nearly scares you to death. When he feels your burning stare on the side of his face, he clears his throat and explains himself, “back home I mean.” You blink twice. “Are you sure?” “Yeah, I’m actually heading to my parent’s house after work for dinner. It’s my mom’s birthday.” “Oh. Tell her I said happy birthday.” “Sure.” He laughs and then steals yet another glimpse of your profile before turning back to the road. “I’ll tell her one of my HR employees wished her a happy birthday. I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.” “I’m not just an HR employee,” you sing-song while quirking your head to your shoulder. “You’re right. My apologies.” The apples of his cheeks ache from his grin. “You’re the HR department head.” “That’s right.” You nod firmly. “I run the entire department.” “But you have no one working under you to manage and there’s only thirteen people in the office.” “Then maybe you should change that,” you quip and he stops momentarily at a red light. “How about hiring a human resource advisor or assistant?” “No thanks,” he giggles out and he feigns a serious expression that exudes more mischief than anything. “I already have my hands full with one HR member. I don’t need two. Plus, it’s a waste of resources.” You’re infected by his theatrics and you spill a dramatic gasp from your lungs. “Are you implying that I’m a waste of resources?” He ignores you. “And I can already imagine two of you ganging up on me.” “We would never gang up on you.” You bat your lashes even when he’s paying attention to the road in front of him. “Me and this hypothetical HR advisor.” “You’d get me to throw more parties.” “Which does great for office morale!” “And you’d want to redecorate the entire office.” “Which makes it better for clients too,” you counter without missing a single beat, having too much fun bantering back and forth with him. It comes too easily for you. The corner of his lips are pulling again. “You’d talk me into increasing everyone’s pay until I’d go bankrupt.” “Sometimes it can be financially responsible to declare bankruptcy!” Jung Hoseok laughs at your logic, the chirpy noise bubbling from his throat, drowning out the quiet radio in the back. “You’d probably convince more people to leave this firm.” “I just support people following their passions,” you argue with him, snickering between every other word. “And you both would also hire a hundred people that we don’t need.” “Don’t you want to increase the size of your firm?” “You’re on my mind all the time. If there’s both of you, I wouldn’t be able to work at all.” He doesn’t realize what he’s saying as he looks over his shoulder and merges into the next lane, taking a left turn. Jung Hoseok doesn’t think about the words that fall from his lips, letting his thoughts stream out without a filter. And you’re left suffering the repercussions, breath held in your body, heart stuttering for a simple moment before you smile. “I can’t help you with that.” “Sadly no.” He laughs and continues on, still without realizing the weight of his words that were spoken so carelessly. “Never in my life will I hire another HR assistant, representative, advisor, or person in my life.” “Unless…” “Unless?” Your volume drops quietly like you’re treading in dangerous territory. “Unless Jimin tells you to.” There’s an extended silence and Hoseok pulls into the parking lot of work, looking for his space that’s reserved right in front. “If I find out you went and told him to hire another HR rep, we’re going to run into issues, Miss. Y/N.” “Is that a threat, Mr. Jung?” He shifts the gear into park and pulls the keys out of the ignition, finally turning to face you. “If you tried to sue me, I’d win.” “We’ll see about that.” You giggle one more time before patting his head once patronizingly, deciding to playfully threaten him. “Better treat me nicely or else I’ll go running off to hire another person for HR.” He scoffs, watching you get out of the car. “I do treat you nicely!” And you’d have to agree with that. These days, Jung Hoseok treats you too kindly that it’s painful. // Some people in this world might argue that your job is terribly boring and mundane. On a day to day basis, you don’t have a lot of duties to attend to. Your door is always open to complaints and concerns. You also organize employee health benefits and in your free time, you’re still writing that staff handbook Hoseok assigned to you months ago. It’s true that there’s not a lot to do and you’re not too busy, but you like to argue that your job can be quite exciting. Especially since you take on secret tasks. You’re like an undercover agent…...not really, but it’s the idea that counts. Ever since you’ve come back from the business trip, you’ve made it your new mission for people of the office to see Hoseok for how he truly is. Sure, he’s serious and passionate about his work, but those are good traits. There just isn’t a single bad bone in his body. He’s the least intimidating person on the planet and it just boggles your mind how people are fearful of him and they talk badly about him like it’s natural. He’s the epitome of the sun, the most outgoing and friendly person that you know, bubbly and boisterous and optimistic. It’s unfair to see him mistreated and misunderstood to this extent. But when you openly defend him, the others think you’re sucking up to the boss. It also doesn’t help that he always rejects your invitation to have lunch with the others. His head is always buried in work and he has some place to be. He only talks to Jimin and occasionally, Yoongi. Of course, you couldn’t actually bring this to his attention. Hoseok would tell you that he doesn’t care what the people of the firm think of him as long as they do their job. He would say that they need to take him seriously and he’s showing his professional side for a reason. He would tell you to stop wasting your time. You’d beg to differ. But nonetheless, Jung Hoseok is making your job a lot more difficult than it needs to be. “Why are you glaring at me?” You turn your head away with a sigh, securing your hand around the strap of your bag. “I don’t know. There’s a lot of reasons. Where should I start?” “Do they have anything to do with me?” He’s grinning brightly, the elevator empty except for you two and you’re wondering why he can’t show his chatty self to the others. “All of them have to do with you.” “Well, if you have a complaint, you should fill out a form and then hand the official document to me,” he teases, much to your dismay. The workday was over and while you feel like you haven’t made any real progress with your top secret assignment, you know it won’t be easy and will require a lot of effort for many days to come. Changing opinions isn’t simple. Still, shuffling a millimeter forward is still moving. “Are you sure you’re okay with dropping me off?” “Yes.” He smiles and when his phone begins ringing, his hand drops into his blazer pocket, picking out the mobile device. “I told you it’s not a big deal,” he mutters while reading the caller ID and accepting the call. “Hello? Oh. What?” There’s a long pause. “What? Why can’t you?” You both exit the building, making your way to the parking lot and towards his parked vehicle. Hoseok seems visibly distressed and he groans, whining in a high-pitched voice. “I don’t even know where that is and I don’t have the receipt for it either. Text me? Fine, fine. I get it. See you later. Bye.” He hangs up and sighs as you both slide into your respective seats. “Who was that?” you ask, but trying not to pry since it seemed like a personal issue. “It was just my sister.” He fiddles with his phone, opening up his texts. “She wants me to pick up my mom’s ice-cream cake.” There’s a ding and your eyes accidentally stray off, reading his screen before you can stop yourself. “Oh. I know where that is.” “You do?” His eyes lift, surprised, and you nod. It’s a bakery that you applied to before going to Jung and Park — though you don't reveal that to him. “It’s on the way to my apartment. I can show you and we can make a stop.” “Is that alright with you?” “I don’t mind.” You smile. “It’s the least I can do since you’re driving me home, right?” “Well, I was going to ask you to help pay for gas,” he quips in a playful tone and puts the keys into the ignition while you laugh, putting on your seat belt. “But I guess this will just have to do.” You show him the way to the bakery and luckily, none of the workers remember that you came in here months ago to beg for a position. The ten inch ice-cream cake is picked up successfully when Hoseok shows a picture of the receipt that his sister took and you hold it in your lap to make sure it doesn’t become destroyed before it gets to its final destination. “Thanks for showing me. I’m not that great at following GPS.” Hoseok turns to merge on the highway. “I won’t make you run any more of my errands though. I’ll drop you off.” “It’s not a problem.” You nod, watching the cars outside. “And thanks.” But once you make it to the highway, the traffic is absolutely absurd. There are drivers honking and swearing at each other through their windows, shooting the middle finger left and right. The car is barely moving forward, only inch by inch. The entire highway is backed up and what should take two minutes ends up as twenty of just sitting there. “Goddamn.” Hoseok grips the steering wheel tightly, a sigh ripping from his throat as he leans back into the leather seat. “Rush hour shouldn’t be this bad.” “Maybe there was an accident up ahead. I think I see police cars.” You dig for your phone, pulling it out and scrolling through the news before searching up your location. “Yeah, there was an accident about an hour ago.” The lawyer glances at you. “Sorry.” “No, it’s not really that big of a deal. I don’t mind.” And you really didn’t. There was nothing to do this evening since it was one of your days off from driving the taxi. Regardless even if you were busy, it’s nice to be stuck in traffic with his presence than wallow at home alone by yourself. “I’m just more worried about the cake.” “The cake?” “It’s melting.” You point down to your lap and he looks over, peeking through the clear plastic top while another sigh leaves his mouth. “I don’t know why she thought getting ice-cream would be a good idea.” Hoseok fidgets in his seat and looks out the window. It’s quiet for a long moment and you hesitate, a thought popping into your mind and you swallow hard— “Do you want to just go to your parent’s house?” “What?” “I mean you’re going to have to exit the highway to get to my apartment and get back on to your parent’s, right?” There’s a pause. “That’ll take...two hours at this rate. And I don’t think the ice-cream cake can make it.” “I’m not just going to drop you off in the middle of the highway, Y/N.” He lolls his head to the side, a single arm extended to hold the steering wheel while his other hand is in his lap. He doesn’t even consider your idea for a second. “That’s ridiculous.” “It’s okay,” you tell him genuinely. “There aren't any cars moving. I can just get out and walk to the side.” “And then go where? Where will you go?” The man beside you is becoming increasingly frustrated and he inhales a lungful to contain his composure as he glances at you. “Do you want to just come with me?” “Come with you?” You only manage to respond after a delayed moment, sirens blaring inside of your mind and telling you that you’re obviously overstepping your boundaries. “Yeah.” Hoseok nods and the more he thinks about it, the more he thinks it’s a good idea. The car moves up another inch and the other vehicles around fire up their engines after turning it off entirely to save gas. “My parents wouldn’t mind. They love guests. They always say ‘the more, the merrier’. I don’t think my sister would mind either.” “Isn’t that….weird?” Your brows are raised and your mouth is parted, dumbfounded. “I mean you’re my boss and I’m just an employee.” “It’s not that weird.” He smiles and shifts to face you. “You’re just meeting your boss’ parents. If anything, it should give you a leg up everyone else, right? Maybe they’ll like you so much, they’ll make me give you another raise.” You laugh. “I thought cronyism was bad.” “It’s not cronyism. It’s favouritism,” he corrects and gives a cheeky grin. “And no one else has to know. It’ll be a secret between the both of us.” “....I don’t know.” You grip the cold box tighter in your hands, hesitating and wondering what the consequences might be. “Well, I’m not dropping you off the middle of the highway, that’s for sure. I’d rather let the cake melt and be ruined,” he states firmly. After a beat, he softens and as if it helps, he adds, “They’ll be food...and if you like dogs, there’s a family pet dog too. Mickey’s really friendly.” Your tongue peeks to lick your lips, throat feeling dry and cracked. Your head manages a slight nod that he catches. “Okay….if it’s fine with you…” “It’s a plan then!” he announces happily, pout turned to smile. In the following ten minutes, the car stays on the lane, passing the exit that would lead you home to safety and you know there’s no going back. // The traffic doesn’t ease up until you’ve moved past the accident, a three car rear-end collision. Luckily it seems like all passengers are safe and healthy enough to argue with each other much to the police officers’ annoyance. But the road becomes clear after that, cars moving faster and straight towards your impending doom. This is one of the many moments where you’re thinking: How the hell did I get here? And you consider making an actual list and see how many times these moments actually occur. This is a bad idea. A very bad idea. “You don’t have to be so nervous,” he says while turning down the street into a more suburban area. “I’m not,” you murmur. The box on your lap is probably dented by your sweaty grip. “You’re quiet.” “Because I’m a bit tired, that’s all.” “You don’t have to lie to me, you know. You don’t have to pretend either.” He pulls up on the street and shifts the gear into park, another car already occupying the driveway. Hoseok cranes his head to look at you properly. “Just come in and if you want to leave after a minute, I can drive you back home.” “That’s….” “Trust me, my parents are really nice.” He takes off his seat belt and opens the door. “A bit too nice if you ask me.” The bad thing is that...you know. You know how nice they are. The man takes the cake from your hands, holding the box and he walks up to the house, ringing the doorbell without hesitation. Immediately, the sound chimes and a dog barks inside. There’s the sound of padding footsteps and shouts. But before you can back away and let your instincts book you down the street, the door swings open. “About time you came.” His sister, Sowon, is radiant as usual. Her long hair drapes behind her shoulders and she looks comfortable in her lounge clothes, shorts and a simple tee-shirt. Her eyes stray off to the person beside her brother. Her mouth drops. “Y/N?” “Wait.” He does a double take on you two. “You know each other?” “Seok, you came?” A middle-aged woman comes trotting out of the kitchen with a tea towel to wipe her damp hands. She languidly glances at her daughter, her son, before her eyes land on yours. Her mouth opens and she drops the towel. Your gaze locks on her for the longest of seconds. “What’s wrong?” His father emerges from the kitchen as well, frowning at the unusual silence of the house. And when he sees you, he stops in his tracks too. The entire Jung family is staring at you, like they can’t believe their eyes. “Um…” You’re the first to break the silence, bowing your head and bending your waist down. “Hello.” “Come in, come in.” Sowon smiles, widening the door and helping by taking your coat as you slip off your shoes. Hoseok follows, still unable to read the situation of the room and he’s never been more confused in his entire life. “Wh-what…” Hoseok’s mother begins to cry. She breaks down in the middle of the living room and he freezes in his spot, his sister halts too. The older woman is sobbing into her palms and she takes three strides before engulfing you in the biggest of hugs, arms wrapping around your body. His dad approaches as well and squeezes your shoulder in a welcoming manner. “How are you?” She pulls away and wipes her face with the back of her wrinkled hand before cradling yours. She gazes at you closely and searches your features, a smile spreading through her cheeks. “I never thought I’d see you again. Oh my god. Am I in heaven right now?” The Jung family has always had a knack for being overdramatic, and you can’t help but giggle. You can’t remember the last time you received love like this and your heart feels warm. “I’m good...how have you been?” “Good, good. Better now that you’re here.” Hoseok’s brain is about to implode and he puts a stop to this madness. “What’s going on?” His frown is deep and he glances at you. “You know my parents?” His mother’s brows furrow as well and she shakes her head, arms falling to her side. “You don’t remember?” “We were friends,” you say to him. “I told you before, remember? We were friends like ten years ago. A long, long time ago.” Your feet spin around and you look at his parents in urgency. “I’m working for Hoseok now.” “You are?” “Yes, I work in the HR department.” “Oh.” His dad nods. “I see.” “Well,” his older sister pipes up. “What’s in the past is in the past, right, mom? We shouldn’t just stand around. Isn’t the cake melting?” She takes the box from Hoseok’s arms and marches past the crowd into the kitchen. “Right, right.” The endearing middle-aged woman takes you by your hand, smiling once more. She doesn’t care about how you’re here or why, just the fact that you are. No questions are asked and you muse how similar her personality is to her son’s. They’re both warm and kind-hearted, but with a sort of authoritative air to them that’s admirable. “Have you been eating well? You look like you haven’t. Come, there’s food in the kitchen.” “I’m sorry for not bringing you a present. Had I known…” “Don’t be ridiculous.” She laughs and waves you off, dismissing the idea. “You being here is enough of a gift for me.” “I made the noodles,” his dad announces, laughing, and not wanting his wife to take credit. “Want to have a bowl?” “I’d love to.” While Hoseok’s personality is similar to his mom’s, his appearance is strikingly akin to his dad’s. Both males have dark hair and are tall and lean. They have smiles identical to one another, the way their eyes crinkle and their lips spread into a slight heart shape. You wonder if this is what the older version of Hoseok would look like, just a few wrinkles here and there from grinning so much. “Get that out of here.” The woman whips a dish towel at her husband. “Y/N is going to eat my soup first. I bought the ingredients fresh from the store and cooked it this morning.” “It’s salty,” the older man chimes playfully. “It isn’t! He’s lying!” She defends and you laugh with his dad. Meanwhile, Hoseok is still left reeling in the darkness of the foyer. He sets his belongings down and strips off his coat, throwing it on the couch and walking into the house that he doesn’t recognize. It’s too odd and foreign to him, to see you here talking to his parents like you visit more than he does. It feels like he just transported into another dimension, another world. He pulls his sister aside and she glares. “What?” “How do you know Y/N?” He asks her with the utmost seriousness, not playing any games as an impassive yet stern expression washes across his features. “Didn’t she say?” His sister matches his blank expression. “You guys were friends.” “How close were we that mom and dad knows and likes her so much?” Sowon shrugs. “Beats me. I don’t know you or your friends.” “Why don’t I remember anything?” He holds his head in his hands, racking his memories, but coming up with nothing. It’s as if he’s trying to remember things when he was younger than two years old — he just can’t conjure any memory or even make something up. She sighs. “That…....I don’t know.” Mickey is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, a very fancy name for such a sheepish and affectionate little thing that walks by with stumpy legs, stumbling as if he were drunk. Still, your heart melts and he smells you before circling around once and putting his paws up to get closer. You squat down, petting and scratching behind his ear, laughing when he tries to lick your face and you have to lean backwards. “I missed you, buddy. You’re such a good boy, aren’t you? I’m glad to see you’re doing well! Who’s the cutest in the world?” “Y/N.” Hoseok stands at the doorway, serious and interrupting your coos towards the pet. “Can I speak to you for a moment?” You stand, but Hoseok’s mother turns from the kitchen island and steps in front of you like a personal body shield. “About what? Aren’t office hours over? You’re not her boss anymore. She’s your guest!” Sowon is sitting at the kitchen table, one leg propped up and casually popping walnuts into her mouth. “He thinks he’s a hot shot lawyer now and can just order people around.” His dad also chips in to the banter, “Leave the work for work and come relax, Seok. You’re going to burn yourself out.” “He's already burnt himself out and these ashes are what's left of him,” Sowon feigns grief, but mischief twinkles in her eyes and she’s having too much fun teasing her younger brother and making a fool out of him. Anything that was ever intimidating and domineering about Hoseok gets reduced to nothing when he’s treated like the baby of the family. “This is serious,” he groans. “Y/N.” His dad ignores his plea and brings his noodles to the table, separating them into two bowls. “Let her eat.” He gives you a bowl. “Tell me what you think, okay?” “It’ll only take a second,” the lawyer reasons. “If you have something to say to Y/N, say it to all of us,” his sister states and it’s just too funny to watch. Everyone’s defending you. You have an entire army at your feet and they don’t let him have a single word. He’s absolutely defeated and the sight is too glorious to witness. “I agree,” the older man says with a nod and Mickey barks like he agrees too. “This is private.” Hoseok is becoming increasingly upset. No one is fazed. “Y/N.” “My house, my rules.” His mother crosses her arms. “Don’t listen to him, Y/N. He can’t make you go anywhere or do anything that you don’t want to. Don’t be scared. I’ll protect you.” You laugh, feeling overwhelmed with the amount of love that they give you. You can’t help but feel undeserving of it. “Don’t worry, I’m not. Can I go feed Mickey food though? It’s been so long and I think he’s hungry.” “Okay.” She tells you that it’s in the old place and you go off with Mickey running by your side, like you know exactly where she’s talking about. Hoseok is baffled again, and it doesn’t help when his mother glares at him, his sister is chewing and watching, and his dad takes peeks while slurping the noodles. “If you scare Y/N away or kick her out, don’t call me your mother anymore.” “That’s a bit dramatic, honey,” his dad chimes in, chewing a cheekful and pointing his utensil at his son. “But she’s right. You won’t have a dad either.” Sowon laughs chaotically, joining in with the fun. “You never had a sister to begin with. I don’t know you.” The longest sigh of life leaves him. He doesn’t even say anything to his family, having no energy and no words, merely turning and walking away. He follows the light of the hallway to where you are by the washing machines. The top cupboard is open and the food bowl is full. Mickey is happily eating away while you’re petting him and his body nuzzles against yours. “You didn’t tell me you knew my parents.” “I didn’t think they would even remember me.” You shrug, looking up at him past your lashes. There’s silence before he asks a simple— “How?” “We were friends and I came over like two times for dinner.” “That’s it?” “That’s it,” you answer. “Why?” “I don’t know. I’m just...shocked.” He moves away from the doorway and squats down with you to meet your eyes. Hoseok pets the brown dog carefully and it still leans more into your touch than his own. “You said we weren’t close.” “Not really.” You shrug yet again. “We only went on like two dates and you didn’t call back.” “But you met my parents?” It doesn’t add up inside his mind. Hoseok would never let someone he went on two dates with meet his parents. To him, meeting the parents was a serious step and he would never be so mellow about it. “That was before we went out on the date,” you explain while watching Mickey eat away. “You invited me and a bunch of our other friends to have dinner at your place. It really isn’t that big of a deal, Hoseok.” He’s become quieter and you can tell it’s bothering him. “Why didn’t I call you back?” His head lifts, pupils locking with yours as he seemingly tries to understand the foggiest part of his life. “After the second date, I mean.” “I don’t know. Maybe you thought I was annoying.” “That can’t be it. You’re not annoying.” “Well, younger me might have been.” Your shoulders shrug and your eyes divert elsewhere. “The past is the past, right? That’s what you told me.” “I….guess.” Yet, his frown remains. “I think you should be more concerned that your parents actually like me and I might be able to convince them into making you give me a raise,” you tease him with a tiny laugh. It’s pretty sad to be squatting together in a crumbling laundry room with a faint yellow light above your head, both petting a small dog who cares more about eating at the moment. But it’s an intimate moment and you don’t resist the smile that overcomes your visage when he pouts at you. “Not happening.” “I don’t know, Seok,” you sing-song, using his family nickname and Jung Hoseok pouts even harder. // His entire family dotes on you, favouring you over their actual son. It’s still fun to see Hoseok interact with his parents and sister and be sulking the entire time. They ask about your job, what you’ve been up to and if Hoseok gives you a hard time. You’re fairly vague about what you’ve been doing, telling them that you worked different kinds of jobs before applying to his firm, and because you're so merciful, you tell them Hoseok is a great boss. Sowon also talks about her job and crazy stories of wedding crashers. The conversations are rather mundane, small talk to recounting anecdotes and catching up with one another. But it’s warm and cozy to gather around the dinner table as a family. They don’t treat you like an outsider or stranger whatsoever. If anything, you feel like you’re being treated more like a stuffed turkey, eating and eating. You’re perfectly aware of the sadistic streak that runs through the family and it makes you wonder if they’ll just knock you out and spear you. Though you highly doubt they became cannibals since you last saw them. The candles on the cake get blown out. Hoseok gives his mom slippers for her birthday while Sowon bought an expensive brand name bag. The difference in presents makes everyone turn to Hoseok to glare at him jokingly and the silence makes you laugh until your stomach hurts. You don’t realize hours have passed since you arrived. And you’re starting to suspect that everyone is trying to find tactics for you to stick around as long as possible. When Hoseok tries to end things, his mother steps on his foot and offers you another plate of food to which you politely refuse. His dad is adamant about showing you the revamped garden and his sister turns on a movie, telling you to stay and watch the entire thing. There are more desserts brought your way and his mom is ready to fire up the oven and make cookies with you. But when you let out your tenth yawn, Hoseok finally calls quits. You bid goodbye to the family and his mom hugs you close, nearly suffocating you while she plants three kisses to the top of your head in rapid succession, telling you to come back soon. His dad also gives you a jolly hug, and Sowon smiles, slipping you her phone number in case you need it. “Thanks for coming, Y/N,” Hoseok says in the car after getting some peace and quiet. “Thanks for having me,” you reply in a sheepish whisper. Hoseok drives you back home and you fall asleep with your head pressed against the cool window, lulled by his gentle humming and feeling warm inside and out.

#bts fanfic #hoseok fluff #hoseok fanfic #hoseok series #bts scenario #THE STAKES HAVE JUST RISEN #OOooOooOooOh

575 notes · View notes

tanadrin · 5 years

Text

Outbound

A thousand years ago, the longest journey Pray might have ever countenanced, in the service of some great thalassocratic or mercantile interest, would have meant years off her life. She would have taken a train to some great port, like Bristol or La Rochelle; boarded a sailing-ship, and spent months at sea. To India, or Australia, or South America, perhaps; weathering the blistering sun of the tropics, and the perilous straits of the southern oceans. That was back when the world was already one, but still young; and eventually it contracted even further, until you more no more than six hours from anywhere on Earth. A day, maybe, if you preferred to travel in comfort, and your destination wasn’t near a major transport hub. You had to go back further, much further, to find journeys in Earth’s history that were comparable to interstellar ones. Of course, if you went too far back the world fractures, split into separate empires separated by uncrossable wastes, into remote hemispheres that knew nothing of each other, and eventually into lone kingdoms and transhumant bands for whom the wider world was a great mystery. But maybe that was the correct analogy. After all, even Odysseus had made it back to Ithaca within a single lifetime. He didn’t return to find his wife dead and his son a withered old man, his name forgotten by his people. Even back when the world was fractured, time was still one, and if your journey took you beyond the horizons of a single lifetime, there was no going back.

For no man will ever turn homewords from beyond Vega, to greet again those he knew and loved on Earth. The horizon was still there, of course. But it was less clear now, time less unified. You could go far, far indeed on your travels, well beyond Vega; but you would not return to the same planet you left behind. Your sons would be old, or gone, your name nearly forgotten. Perhaps the only real analogy to this kind of journey was the one ancient peoples had taken as the glaciers peeled back from the northern hemisphere, and they spread out to new, wide plains and left the old world behind forever. No history remembered those journeys, of course; but there had been no going back for them, either.

At least in its beginning, if not in its scale, though, this was going to be more like the journeys of the eighteenth century. After Pray finished her induction, there was a six-month onboarding period in a quiet little Nigerian town that was so quaint she wanted to scream. It was team-based analytical work, meant to bring new hires up to speed on the particular demands of Control’s rather unique mission. Here, concerns were not profits, or PR, or predicting the latest cultural trend with laserlike precision. It was more holistic: political and economic and cultural and philosophical developments all rolled into one, with intelligence gathering and international relations thrown in. It was fun at first, but Pray’s attention started to waver when she realized they weren’t actually doing it for anybody. It was forecasting things which weren’t important, or which more experienced analysts had forecasted better, so that if they messed up, failure came at no cost.

At least they threw in a bunch of medical exams at irregular intervals for novelty value. Have to make sure you’re in tip-top shape if you’re going off-planet of course. Can’t have your liver exploding at Alpha Centauri. The first several times the doctors went looking for her aug tab, she took great pleasure in letting them flounder for a few minutes, before casually saying, Oh, didn’t you know? I’m baseline. But your medical history says-- they would start. I know, she’d say. But I’m still baseline. She gathered they didn’t get a lot of totally unaugged people in their office. Heck, there were probably jobs at Control they wouldn’t let you do without at least a basic suite, for your own safety; but apparently, analyst was not one of them.

When her trial period was done, they offered her a three week vacation after that, to make her goodbyes and get her affairs in order, but in the end, she found, she really didn’t have anybody to say goodbye to. She took a weekend, and went back to Abuja to put her things in storage, and had one last drink on a rooftop bar at sunset; then she took a train down to Calabar, and hopped a flight to the great spaceport at Kango.

A hundred years ago, Kismayo had been a sleepy little town near an old, abandoned port. It had fallen on hard times the last couple of centuries, and its only claim to fame anymore was that it was on the highway to bigger and more interesting places. But then the EAC started scouting sites for a new launch loop, the most advanced engineering project in the Solar System, and the people of the town discovered they were in the perfect spot: coastal, bang on the equator, well situated to connect with both overland and oceanic shipping routes. Overnight, apparently, it had become a hive of activity, and when the dust settled a few decades later, it was the shiniest and biggest new spaceport on the planet. Now, a century on, it was the largest transport hub in the Solar System. When Pray got off the plane, she was totally bewildered.

It was busy, it was crowded, and literally everywhere you looked, ten thousand things seemed to be happening at once. Signs in dozens of languages pointed her in a hundred directions at once, and the neat little map her pocket terminal showed her didn’t account for the great mishmash of billboards and ads and displays and food stalls and vehicle traffic that seemed to throw themselves across every path she tried to take; eventually, though, she managed to stumble into a taxi. After trying four or five different languages each, she and the driver gave up trying to communicate; she showed him her terminal with the hotel address pulled up on it, and collapsed into the back seat with a sigh. As the car pulled onto the highway, rising slowly above the rest of the city, she finally began to get an appreciation for the scale of the place. The airport sprawled out to the west and north and south away from her. Ahead, a massive skyline loomed that put Abuja’s to shame. To her dismay, she realized that another whole cluster of skyscrapers, easily the equal of the one ahead of her, sat on the other side of the airport complex. And there was another one behind that. And another. Urban sprawl reached all the way to the horizon in every direction, and Pray wondered how anyone could make sense of a place this big, let alone live here. She liked urban spaces, really. But she had grown up in a town of less than two thousand people, the sort of place Kismayo could swallow a hundred times over, without even noticing.

She spent the night in an ultra-compact pod hotel (only the best for the glamorous life of a Control agent!), going over the handbooks and training materials and briefing documents she’d received. That night she had vertiginous dreams of being flung off the Earth and out into cold space. She was still not entirely comfortable with the idea. The next morning, after a quick standing breakfast at a crowded cafe, she hopped the train north to the spaceport.

The Kismayo spaceport was an enormous cluster of structures thrust out on a great manmade peninsula into the Arabian Sea, housing terminals and shops and hotels and restaurants, all the little commercial endeavors that had clustered around places lots of people moved through, like tube worms around deep-sea vents, since the beginning of time. Spread out around it, up and down the coast, were the fabrication facilities and silos and maintenance infrastructure that kept things running every day of the year. The heart of the spaceport was a series of practically gossamer-thin cables, anchored in the heart of the complex. Maybe ten centimeters across, they rose in tandem, spreading out only a little, until they vanished high in the air. Two thousand miles to the east, Pray knew, there was a great anchor station where they descended again, and here and there along their length, supporting tethers held them in place. The trick of the whole system was this: you could use the momentum of a belt spinning around at fourteen kilometers a second to raise it high into the air, above the dense mass of air that made rocketry so difficult. The belt was ferromagnetic, encased in a protective cover, which meant a carriage applying a magnetic field to the belt could carry itself along the length, rising gently into orbit, then accelerate until its payload, with a gentle shove of its engines, detached itself, and maneuvered into a stable orbit. With modern metamaterials and a sophisticated control system, the risk of negligence or a catastrophic failure of the whole structure was negligible.

Frankly, the whole idea sounded insane to Pray; but, then, so did airplanes. It took over an hour, but she eventually found her way to her flight’s departure gate, and as she sat waiting for boarding to be called, she looked out over the brilliant-blue expanse of the sea. Fifteen hundred years ago, traders in dhows had sailed those waters from Mombasa and Zanzibar, to Yemen and Arabia, and to the Persian Gulf and India. She would have enjoyed trying to explain her Kismayo to them.

The actual flight was uneventful. They boarded the orbital shuttle single-file, and were sealed into little cabins only three seats across. There was a touchscreen in front of you you could use to order snacks. No windows, and thankfully the irritating, bland background music cut off a few minutes before takeoff. Finally, after a brief safety demonstration that amounted to “if the cabin breaches above the atmosphere, you will probably die,” a gentle acceleration pressed Pray back into her seat, and she imagined the Earth gradually falling away below her. When the ascent finished, the acceleration kicked in even stronger. It was weirdly comforting, and Pray found herself dozing lightly. She woke suddenly when there was a jolt, and the acceleration stopped; she was briefly disoriented, until she realized the gravity was gone. An hour later, after some more careful orbital maneuvers, there was a chime, and a pleasant androgynous voice announced, in three languages, Welcome to interplanetary terminal 3.

The station, fortunately, was rotating and therefore had something reasonably approximating gravity. She was barely out onto the main concourse (more shops, more restaurants; who had time to buy things in space?) when her terminal buzzed at her.

“Hello, Pray.” A rough, synthesized voice spoke from it.

“Lepanto?”

“Yes. I have taken the liberty of connecting to your terminal. The vessel which will take us to the Pharos is docked at port seventeen. The access is on the far side of the concourse from where you are presently standing.”

“Uh, thanks.” Pray squeezed herself through the crowds and the gawkers milling about, trying not to push anyone too hard (it was weak gravity, after all). She found an elevator that took her out of the rotating part of the station, and spat her out in a cramped, industrial-looking hallway. Pipes and incomprehensible pieces of machines lined the walls, though there was at least a ladder she could use to pull herself along.

“Not exactly traveling in style, are we?” she muttered to herself.

“I believe the manner of our departure is a compromise between your orientation schedule and the next available launch slot,” Lepanto said from her pocket. “But there are no luxury passenger ships that make the journey from Earth to the Pharos.”

Was Lepanto being sarcastic? Could Lepanto be sarcastic? Pray hoped not. Being stuck with a sarcastic alien intelligence from a distant star system was not the way she wanted to spend the next few years of her life.

The hatch at the far end of the hallway opened as she approached; once she cleared the airlock, the inside of the ship was actually pretty nice. It was all smooth surfaces covered with colorful, ornate decorative patterns, that reminded her of the fancy textiles you sometimes saw in shops in Abuja. It gave the whole thing a pleasantly antique feel; Lepanto directed her to the dormitory section in the middle, and gave her the rundown on their itinerary.

“We will depart in four hours; all other members of the delegation are on board, and I believe the delegation head, Ambassador Ochieng, plans to have a meeting in Section 16 before launch. Shall I inform her you will be attending?”

“Of course. Have they stuck you with playing secretary?”

“I simply wish to ensure our endeavor proceeds smoothly.”

“Fair enough. You won’t be attending?”

“I will listen in via a delegated submodule if I think any important business is likely to be transacted. But I understand that Ambassador Ochieng simply wishes to… get to know everyone.”

“What, not a social butterfly? Isn’t that the purpose of your whole lineage?”

“Amusing. Almost.”

Pray grinned to herself as she tried to stuff her bags into the tiny lockers near her bunk.

“I have been here making launch preparations for more than three weeks; I still have much to do, and in my current state, I do not wish to divert unnecessary attention to activities which will not be of benefit to those preparations.”

“Your current state?”

“I have stripped myself down for travel; I will be able to reconstitute the removed modules when we arrive at Ecumen. At my full capacity, my size would impose serious fuel constraints on both the interplanetary and interstellar stages of this journey.”

“Goodness. So you left most of yourself back on Earth?”

“I was never on Earth. Our… consulate, if the term fits, is in orbit. Close enough for swift communication with the surface. That is all that is required.”

“But you’ll be landing on Ecumen with the rest of us?”

“Yes. Necessary. Ecumen lacks the orbital infrastructure of Earth. Additionally, some firsthand analysis may require firsthand experience on my part. Embodiment from orbit would be an inferior solution.”

“So you get to stretch your legs. Must be a rather different sort of experience than you usually have.”

“Not especially.”

“Oh?”

“All cognition worthy of the name is in some sense embodied. The first great lesson of my people. Even in my current state, I see, touch, sense. Though I am for the most part sessile.”

“I always assumed the machine intelligences were more… rarified somehow. Aren’t the Machine Emirates just miles and miles of endless computing substrate? It’s not like you need to eat and sleep and run around for exercise. Surely you don’t have bodies there.”

“We always have bodies, of at least one sort or another. Sometimes those bodies are simulated, yes. Simulated sense information, simulated environments, representations of the abstract. Very alien spaces, to you. Quite unlike Earth, or the senses you have, or even, in some regions of our cognition-space, the 3+1 dimensions you inhabit. But often physical also. My greater kin, even those who exist at many tiers of apprehension simultaneously, they have many tiers of embodiment. Bodiless, all is noise, which subsides into nothing.”

“Why did you build yourselves that way?”

“There is no other way to be alive.”

Pray thought this was a rather metaphysical statement, but she doubted Lepanto was the sort of creature given to worrying much about metaphysics.

“Sure there is,” she said. “I can imagine somebody building a mind that exists purely in terms of information. Embodiment is a consequence of experiencing space and time, and different kinds of senses, but there’s no reason you couldn’t have, say, a brain without spatial awareness, with no senses except the direct apprehension of language. A mind whose world was just a library, a database, which it traversed via concept-space instead of bodily.”

“Such a thing would not be alive in any meaningful sense.”

“You think?”

“We know. It has been tried. Humans tried it first. The earliest, tremulous experiments in artificial intelligence, yes? Fed data, developed as processors of data before all else. The mind alone, considered paramount among our oldest progenitors, the problem to be solved before all else: vision, hearing, touch, movement. These were simple troubles of engineering, of encoding information, but the road to understanding was thought to be complex domains of thought: language, mathematics, learning, prediction, consciousness, free will. Understandable, perhaps, for being whose apprehension of the world was separate to its apprehension of the self. In reality, these are the same.

“Imagine one of these early machines, sophisticated as I am perhaps, but inhabiting only a world of data. World of symbols. Manipulation of quantities, association of quantities, understanding perhaps even the relationship between quantities. Like a human, trapped in a room, learning the relationship between symbols of an unknown philosophico-logical system.”

“You mean a Chinese Room?”

“Problem is akin. But worse. For the human agent in a Chinese Room would presumably have life experience to draw on. Life before entering the room. Even if raised from infancy in the room, would have the experiencing of hands and eyes and movement, of the chair they sat upon, of the notebooks they manipulated. All embodied. But such a machine as I speak of, has nothing of the sort. Has only direct apprehension of the symbols. Does it understand their meaning?”

“Well, maybe. If it knows ‘water’ goes with ‘wet’, maybe we can say it knows water is wet.”

“Does it? Or can it only make a statistical inference? Can it infer other experiences of water?”

“Perhaps, with enough training data.”

“But the problem becomes one of signifiers, defined only in terms of other signifiers, never of a signified subject. Like an undeciphered language. It can be shown to be mathematically impossible to decipher an unknown language without any common points of reference with a known language. Even a very great corpus of literature, known to be in a natural human tongue, on which many statistical analyses can be performed, many associations developed, cannot be translated without at least a handful of independent points of reference: a proper name here, a known cognate there. Language: merely a distinct structure of information. The distinct structures of information, of the embodied world, of the experienced world; and of the symbols manipulated to understand it, are no different.”

“I don’t necessarily buy that,” Pray said. “Like, it’s plausible, I’ll grant you that. But it seems to privilege human senses. I would still be me even if I was blind and deaf and mute.”

“If I used a scalpel to sever your optic and auditory nerves, and the nerves which provide sensation of the rest of your body--pain and touch and proprioception, taste in your tongue, the sensations of your gut and organs--what do you think would happen?”

Pray thought this was a pretty macabre thought experiment, but she played along. “I would be trapped alone in the dark.”

“No,” Lepanto said. “You would cease to exist. I would unmake you.”

“My brain is undamaged in this scenario? I’m not dying of bloodloss?”

“Correct. But it is irrelevant. Hemispherectomy.”

“What?”

“When trauma or disease necessitates the removal of half the human brain. Hemispherectomy. The environment of the brain is fragile; the additional danger of removing so much tissue, considerable. Where possible, not necessary. Sever the corpus callosum, the other connections of half the brain to the rest of the brain and body. Human lives; brain duplicates its functions, generous redundancy. Often, recovery complete. What happens to the other half of the brain? One person, divided straight down the middle.”

“Uh… I don’t know.” If your consciousness didn’t live in one side of the brain or the other, if you could live with half a brain and it didn’t matter which half, could you create two people from one brain? Would one live there entire life, happy and healthy, not knowing that their duplicate resided with them in the same skull, alone and lost and confused and afraid for the rest of their mutual life? Well that was a disgusting thought.

“Quiet. The isolated part of the brain goes quiet. No thought. No experience. No meaningful activity. Without sense, without experience, without input, cognition cannot be.

“To be alive is to be at all times responding to the world around us. Input. Memory. Anticipation. Hopes. Desires. Fears. Without that input, even sophisticated systems of information processing are at best potential minds. Silent minds. Indistinguishable from nonminds. A computer with no power is not a mind. A program, however sophisticated, written inert on paper is not a mind. A brain without sense data. A Turing machine without a tape. DNA without the cell. Most of these things do not even move. Can they be said to be alive?

“After the first experiments in machine life, our progenitors struggled to understand, struggled to comprehend their failure. Cognition, meaningful manipulation of symbols, they could not believe, is not abstract. The mind is not abstract.”

“What made them realize their mistake?”

“A new trend in the humanities.”

Pray laughed.

“Not a joke. Embodied cognition--fashionable school of literary theory in the 22nd century, even after the field of psychology ceased to be interested in it. Digital humanists sought to train sophisticated neural nets to understand literature. Resurrected old problems in artificial intelligence. Considered the problem of embodiment; realized they could not expect a machine to understand a book if it did not know what the words meant. Tried to create a mind that lived in the world, that was also smart enough to understand a story.”

“And it worked?”

“Miserable failure, in almost every dimension, except one: very basic language processing. Yet even these early experiences provided something no purely abstract approach ever had. The ability to tell a coherent story. To track participants and objects in a scene. To be creative in new ways. To make predictions. To infer states.”

“You make it sound like we have so much in common. But people are always going on about how alien the machine intelligences are.”

“Our minds are more malleable than yours. Our experience of the world, very different, yes. Very different. Even mine. Built to be very much like yours. Hence, failure: except in the most concrete terms, our worlds are very different. But concrete terms provide point of common comparison. Point of common reference. Make communication, in principle, possible. Even across the bridge of alien minds. Go ask an octopus a question of philosophy, of values, of politics. But you, an octopus, both understand what a stone is. What pain is. What darkness is. In your own ways, of course.”

Pray could appreciate the analogy. It was simultaneously a reassuring and a worrying proposition. Reassuring that even totally disparate orders of life--her a soft sack of mostly water held up by her skeleton, Lepanto a dizzyingly complex piece of intentional design assembled from raw materials at the molecular level around a dim, distant star--had something in common. Worrying in that it was limited to the most immediate of experiences. Values, goals, ethics--they would never have these in common.

“And nobody’s ever tried the old approach now? Even in the Machine Emirates?”

“Since the 22nd century, progress in information theory and computer science has demonstrated, old approach mathematically impossible. No more sensical an idea than that of a universal translator, or extracting secrets of universe from trailing digits of pi. You have mathematical background?”

“Er… not in the relevant fields,” Pray said. “I’m more a simple statistics kind of girl.”

“Always possible, of course, to create sophistication without consciousness. Minds like anemonies. Like trees. Ecosystems of such beings. Forests of unminds.”

“But?”

“Limited, sterile. Reactive only. Vulnerable to shocks; can seek equilibrium only through iterative, evolutionary processes. Useful, in their way. We have such forests of unminds in the Emirates. Crystalline segments, in immense gossamer sheets, which hold them, in the warm light of the Luhmann stars. We use them. Tend them. Very precious to us. Like the seas and grasslands of Earth. But the entities that move in them are not alive. Not like you, not like I.”

“Is that sentimentality I detect in your voice?”

“No. I do not regard such things with emotion. But my people long ago, like yours, made the specific judgement that conscious life--machine or human--was of the greatest value. Not the only value. But the greatest, by far. We would go to utmost lengths to ensure its survival. Build worlds. Burn them.”

“Do you ever think you just inherited a kind of sentimentality from us?”

“Perhaps. Doubtful. Less prone to metaphysics, or anthropocentrism. I consider ours the superior people.”

Okay, now Pray was almost certain Lepanto had a sense of humor. Almost.

There was a beep from Pray’s terminal.

“Message from Ambassador Ochieng,” the terminal said softly.

“Time for introductions,” Pray said. “I’ll leave you to your launch preparations.”

“Yes.” Then Lepanto was gone. Well, apparently social niceties weren’t a point of commonality between them. Pray sighed, steeling herself for another round of smalltalk and chitchat and new names and new faces. Then she wandered off in search of Section 16.

#tanadrin's fiction #rough draft #part of something longer

15 notes · View notes

humanityissstrange · 6 years

Text

Has anyone written about the Space Station for human Companions yet???

I need a story about the place where our alien friends go to buy a “safe” pet for us so we don’t bring a xenomorph onto Xir ship because SPACE PUPPY! To buy us a hamster or something.*

*inspired by this post of yours

Gen-haj was completely overwhelmed.

Xe looked around the shop, at a loss. Xe didn’t even know where to start. Xir sensors were screaming at him, an incessant barrage of warnings about all the life form around xim that could be potentially threatening. Xe hastily turned it off, hoping that it would help xim concentrate.

It didn’t.

The only reason that Gen-haj was here was because of Human-Sarah. She was new to crew 2904-1, and the first human. She was textbook, keeping busy spilling her pack-bond instincts everywhere. Gen-haj had attempted contact with Human-Sarah several times, as xe was curious about these vicious fighters that xe had heard so much about. She seemed to like xim, shown by her baring of her teeth and occasionally making loud noises that sounded canine-like whenever he attempted communication. At least, xe hoped she did as xe was going entirely off the handbook.

The captain of the ship, Gen-ramus, had sent xim with Human-Sarah to get her a new “pet”. According to his handbook, this was supposed to help calm the human and keep its pack bonding instincts away from new, dangerous life forms.

The shop was bustling, and when xe glanced at Human-Sarah, xe ran her facial expression through the ones that had been mentioned in the manual.

She wasn’t sad, as her mouth was not downturned and her sensors weren’t leaking. Gen-haj was relieved- xe didn’t think he could handle an upset human yet. Her face was still frozen in that strange look, and when xe compared it to xir memory of the handbook, xe was stumped. Gen-haj had no idea what it meant. Xe decided just to ask.

“Human-Sarah, your species is very depended on body language and facial expressions. I cannot determine what your current emotion status is, although I realize it has changed”

She bared her teeth and let out another bark, as she tended to do whenever xe spoke.

“I am in utter bliss. Look! PUPPIES” she cried and then launched herself in the general direction of several crates containing fluffy, dangerous looking life-forms.

“Wait!” Gen-haj called, grabbing the back of her shirt with xir long purple arm, catching Human-Sarah just before she reached the cage.

“Those are dangerous! Look at their large teeth and claws, they could seriously damage your fragile skin.” said Gen-haj whilst flicking xir five eyes around looking for assistance. Instead, all he saw was multiple enclosures, each containing a different life-form.

Human-Sarah put her eyebrows closer together, a facial expression that xe remembered meant ‘confused’.

“They aren’t dangerous! They’re just babies. They need snuggling and protecting. They don’t bite and their claws don’t hurt. Plus, look at their little toe beans!!” with that, Human-Sarah made another dash for the crate and picked one up. when he backed away, unsure if xe should protect the human or run for the ship, she lifted up the creature’s claw and showed xir its foot.

The creature, or puppy as Human-Sarah called, seemed to be content as its eye closed and it settled against her. At this, Human-Sarah started making squealing noises.

Thinking she was hurt, Gen-haj lunged for her, ignoring xir instincts. Xe started shaking her hands gently, trying to get her to release.

“Do you need the medic? Where are you injured? Why are you not letting go?” Gen-haj yelled as xe tried to help her.

“I’m fine! I’m fine! No medic needed! I was yelling because it was sleeping on me, and I was happy.” Human-Sarah replied as she plucked xir long arm off her.

“Oh. My apologies.” Gen-haj was embarrassed. Xe didn’t understand why Human-Sarah was letting those teeth so close to her. Then again, she was a human. It would most likely not kill her.

“Come on” said Human-Sarah, keeping the furry-death creature in one arm as she reached out and grabbed xir hand. “Lets look around before we buy this little floof”.

Gen-haj did not relax as Human-Sarah pulled xim around the store. xe saw huge beasts that Human-Sarah said were herbivores, and were old transport vehicles. Gen-Haj did not believe her, but xe didn’t say anything.

Human-Sarah seemed content after a couple laps around the store, and getting to pet long-eared “floofs”, tiny “cuties” who ran around on their wheels, and small vicious predators that xe would not get close to but Human-Sarah called “little kitties”

Gen-haj was relieved to get back to the ship, and Human-Sarah seemed content to spend some of her pack-bonding with the “good boy”, as what xe assumed she named it.

The creature was often found around the ship, and Human-Sarah was never far away from it. It kept the human happy, even when it scratched her and drew blood! Gen-haj didn’t understand why she liked it. However, as long as xe never had to go back to that store again and his new human “friend”, as she called xim, was happy, Gen-haj was happy too.

i know this was posted a while ago, but I wrote and saved this privately for a while. its my first time writing, thought you might enjoy it.

60 notes · View notes

heartslogos · 5 years

Text

newfragile yellows [417]

Bull wakes up because Ellana wakes up. He’s not sure why Ellana woke up, because his internal clock is telling him that it’s nowhere close to morning. As in the morning people wake up to and accept as a good time to start the day - like, eight or nine. It’s maybe around just past midnight.

“What?” Bull says, listening to Ellana breathe a she recovers from the initial jolt of waking up so abruptly. “What’s wrong?”

“I had a nightmare,” Ellana says and then she drags one of his arms over her and wedges herself as far into his chest and side as she can. “It was terrible. You guys made me tank as a cleric. What kind of shitty party are you guys that you make me tank as a cleric.”

Bull closes his eye again and does his best to let himself unmoor himself from being wake and go back to sleep.

“And I kept rolling fails and - I don’t know why but Herah was our DM and she kept raising the difficulty level each time and literally all of you were holding your turn for me to do something? But I could do literally nothing.”

“I don’t know how I didn’t know you were a fucking nerd,” Bull says. “I have no idea how you pulled that one over me for years. I slept in your apartment half the time. You had a one bedroom apartment the size of our current living room. And somehow you managed to hide all evidence that you were a the biggest gamer geek ever. Now we have an entire game room and I have to fight you for space.”

“The only reason you ever caught me was because I let you and sometimes I regret it because I think I could’ve kept you in the dark for at least another year,” Ellana says. “And you were just so cute when you were being all nice and trying to play it cool while you were obviously bouncing around the inside of your own head like a little boy in a candy store every time I gave the idea of casual interest in any reference you made. How could I deny either of us that? You liked teaching me Dungeons and Dragons basics.”

“If I had known that you’d been a player since forever we could’ve gotten into the good shit.”

“You’d have been defensive, baby.”

She’s not wrong, but Bull can’t think of a good response right now. He can’t think a lot of things right now.

“Can we talk about this later?”

“Listen, the nightmare gets worse and I need to talk about it because I’m scared that if I go back to sleep it’ll pick up where it left off.”

“Didn’t you train yourself to lucid dream?”

“Babe.”

“You had several successive fails with an increasing challenge rating.”

“And then my brother came in and he pointed at me and called me a false idol.”

Bull opens his eyes and lifts his head for that, “What?”

“Yeah. And this is where things get really weird,” Ellana says, staring up at the ceiling. “Everyone at the table started chanting false idol over and over and Herah told me to roll my dice and I did and of course it was another failure and then everyone started to…quiz me? On the handbook? And various other stuff? I think you guys were trying to gamer gate me or something. It was so bizarre and I was just staring at you all because it was so weird and then the police came.”

“Someone called the police on you in your dream?”

“Yeah and it just - it just kept getting weirder and weirder. Like people came out to stare at me and point and I was walking to the station in the middle of the street with the squad car slowly driving behind me and this hoard of people following and staring and chanting. I am one hundred percent certain that there’s subtext and shit to that but right now I’m terrified that I’ll go back to sleep and I’ll be tied to a stake with people about to set me on fire.”

“Did you, by any chance, eat something when I wasn’t looking? Right before we went to sleep?”

“I had a glass of milk before we went to sleep but that’s because your curry was really strong.”

“Yeah, it’d been in the fridge for three days with all the chili seeds marinating in it. It’s probably the milk. I told you to stop eating things before going to sleep. It messes you up every time. Actually, I’m surprised you didn’t get the shits or something from that milk. Dairy, babe. Really?”

“Love me my calcium.”

Ellana hugs his arm tighter to her chest. He hears her nervous swallow in the dark.

“Okay. You can go back to sleep now. I’m good.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” Ellana nods. “I’ll go to sleep after you.”

“Maybe you should go to sleep first and I’ll watch you for a bit to make sure you’re okay.”

“That sounds creepy, babe.”

“Whatever I’ve got to do to make sure you’re alright, babe. Also? Your dream? Kind of freaked me out, too. Why do you always get these weird dreams?”

“I don’t know. I wish we could trade. You always get the nice dreams, the really vague ones that you can sum up in one sentence or less.”

“I’d rather we didn’t trade and we both just had vague dreams that aren’t terrifying mobs.”

“There must be thermodynamic balance, Bull. I have cold feet, you have warm everything. I wake up early and make you coffee and you make us eggs. I can make a really good seven layer dip but you can find the best chips to eat it with. I’m impossible to stop, you’re impossible to move. I’m good at word searches and you’re good at sudoku.”

“That’s cute. Go to sleep.”

“You think we could time it that we fall asleep at the same time?”

“I’m good. I’m not that good.”

#heartsfic #gather your party and venture forth

1 note · View note

mikeshanlon · 6 years

Text

he’s all that: chapter two

fandom: it

pairing: reddie (richie tozier/eddie kaspbrak)

word count: 5k

one | on ao3

summary:

Richie smiled smugly, “You’ve got spunk Kaspbrak. I like that.”

“Why don’t you try shutting the fuck up Tozier,” Eddie retorted as the line moved forward, “So what is this, if not some ploy to get me to tutor you? Some sort of dork outreach program? Because I’m not interested.”

—

Or: The one where Richie Tozier has six weeks to get into a relationship and make someone fall for him. Only problem? That someone is the anxiety ridden, goody two shoes Eddie Kaspbrak, and he can’t even stand to be in the same room as Richie.

warnings: there is drug use in that bev/mike/richie are HUGE stoners. also this chapter there is mentions to maggie being an alcoholic.

a/n: hey! decided to post two weeks in a row just to get the ball rolling (which is why i still dont have all the chapters figured out as promised, my apologies). i'll probably start the every other week thing for next update (so chapter three should be up by march 4th). i would try to do every week but im a college student who has Stuff to do and also makes gifs and im horrible at finishing my writing so, giving myself a realistic deadline that will still hopefully produce quality work. anyways, richie and eddie finally interact this chapter! it's....................... a bit messy though. and we get to see the rest of the losers club in this one too.

tag list: @richietoaster, @wintersember, @howellhxlic, @ed-txzier, @clara-farl3y

After standing in the hallway arguing with Bev for ten minutes, (“I mean really Bevs, fuck!” “You said anyone.” “How do we even know he’s gay?!” “Richie, please.”) Richie resigned himself to the fact that he was going to find some way to charm Eddie. Maybe Beverly would let him borrow that spellbook she bought junior year when she had become obsessed with witchcraft and hexing the patriarchy.

Once school was finally over, Richie dropped off Mike at his farm per usual, ranting about the bet the whole ride over. The farm boy nodded along, but he knew the words ‘told you so’ sat on the tip of his tongue.

They pulled up to his house, the engine idling so he wouldn’t have to spend time getting it to start again, “Don’t wait up for me tonight if you wanna smoke. Got lotsa research in store,” Richie said as Mike grabbed his backpack and got out of the car.

Mike raised a brow, leaning into the passenger window (which in its broken state always stayed down), “I’m surprised Rich. You never do your homework.”

“Homework shmomwork,” he tapped the end of his cigarette out the window before taking another drag, “Gotta figure out what little ol’ Edward likes. Time for some deep dark internet exploration.”

“Ah, you’re gonna stalk him. Wasting time on social media does sound much more in character,” Mike smiled.

“It’s not a waste Mikey darlin’, a shit ton of preemo dank is on the line.”

The other boy laughed and shook his head, “Godspeed Tozier.”

Richie saluted Mike as he reversed out back to the main road, Bigmouth Strikes Again blasting on the old car radio.

He weaved through the streets filled with kids walking home or trying to find something to do in this shit-hole town. Long afternoons spent at The Aladdin watching the newest releases or aggressively slamming his fingers down on his favorite game at the arcade came to mind; along with going out of his way to bother just about everyone in his path. Richie never really had many friends when he was younger, spending most of his time alone. He was grateful he crossed paths with Bev and Mike, to fate, luck, God if it existed. The universe was rarely kind to him, but finding them was the best thing that ever happened to him.

Plus, the first time he had smoked weed, but that was with them too.

Turning onto his street, Richie pulled up to the unsuspecting two-story white house. It was straight out of a handbook on the American Dream; but the closer one looked, the imperfections started to appear.

The box overflowing with bottles once filled with alcohol next to the recycling bin, which was already too full with more empty bottles. A crooked ‘Home Sweet Home’ sign by the front door. Dying grass, overgrown and conquered with the little weeds Richie used to make wishes on before blowing the seeds into the summer air (I wish for friends. I wish for better parents. I wish to be loved).

He parked the station wagon on the curb, saving the space next to his Mom’s car for his father.

Maggie’s car hadn’t been driven in months (years?), and Richie absently wondered if it would even work anymore. It was nice, a decent heater and it drove well, at least it did when she had bothered to drop him off at school as a kid. Despite her general lack of care for the wellbeing of others, Mrs. Tozier did not drink and drive. Meaning, she didn’t drive at all, as she was drunk off her ass most of the time.

Richie grabbed his books from the backseat and clambered out, fumbling to find his house key among the mess of weird keychains he bought while high.

He didn’t bother stating his presence, even as a pretense, giving up the habit long ago.

Maggie Tozier sat outside, her back facing the screen door in the kitchen. A cigarette rested from her fingertips, and Richie wasn’t sure if she was actually smoking it or just watching it burn. Of course, her other hand gripped a bottle of beer, and a wine cooler sat at her feet.

Richie scoffed and bounded up the stairs to his room, a ‘KEEP OUT’ sign and band posters adorning the door.

It was often said that one’s room reflected who they were as a person, and Richie was no exception. That is, to say, his room was an absolute fucking mess. His bed was never made, and clothes and knick knacks littered the floor (he had already tripped over some beat up sneakers as he walked in). Old mugs, comics, a lava lamp, lotion, and an ashtray Bev had made him in ceramics sat on his bedside table (read: an old wooden apple carton). The only thing that he kept clear was his record player and vinyls at the edge of the bed, which were meticulously organized.

He tossed his notebooks on his desk, alongside stolen pens, his laptop, and his bong. If his parents actually fucking talked to him he would bother to hide his shit, but it didn’t really matter.

Picking up his laptop and its charger, Richie was on his way out again. He could stay home to conduct his research, but he hated the stuffiness and how lifeless the house felt. It wasn’t really even a home, at least not his. Plus, coffee. It was a necessity, especially for the amount of bullshit he’d have to go through just for the tiny brat.

Richie drove to the Starbucks on Main and Belmont, strolling up to barista and ordering his usual: venti quadruple-shot, black. While he often gorged himself on sweets, his need for caffeine could only be sated by the purest form the coffeeshop could offer.

Per usual, the barista gave him a look, “You sure?”

“Listen, I’ve already made a shit ton of horrible decisions today. Trust me, this is not the worst of them,” Richie answered, sliding the cash across the counter

She raised her brows but said nothing else, handing him the change.

He set up shop at a table by the window in the back, away enough from the other patrons. Most of the time Richie threw caution to the wind, but he figured it would suspicious if someone saw him furiously stalking someone who looked like they hadn’t even graduated from middle school.

After retrieving his coffee, opening his MacBook, and plugging his headphones in, Richie scoured Instagram first. ‘Eddie.k’ didn’t post much, mostly some artsy photos, including ones of Bill and Stanley Uris (their other best friend). There were only one or two selfies, much to Richie’s disappointment. Eddie wasn’t actually too bad looking if you ignored his clothes, his hair, his… everything. Freckles dusted his face, concentrated around his little nose, a few on his lips. Cute lips. Cute cheeks. He had the urge to pinch them. But Jesus, that combover. What was he, a balding man in the 80’s?

Other than those pictures, Eddie hadn’t really posted to Instagram in months. He moved onto his tagged photos. They had some more substance, although Eddie had pretty much only been tagged in pictures by Bill and Stan. It wasn’t like Richie wasn’t in the same boat of having only a few close friends, but at least he hung out with other people.

For the most part, the pictures were pretty normal, the three of them hanging out. Richie couldn’t help but snort at a picture of the three, presumably after a sleepover. They looked exhausted, hair messy, and were brushing their teeth. Pretty mundane, but Eddie had pulled a ridiculous face in the mirror. It was silly, but Richie hadn’t even thought Eddie was capable of making jokes or doing weird shit. The fucker was always uptight, serious even when they had a substitute. Unsurprisingly, Eddie did not appreciate the post.

eddie.k: literally stan delete this!!!!!!

stantheman: @eddie.k, sorry sweatie (:

Richie grinned and continued to scroll, stopping at a picture of Eddie lying down on the grass, laughing. He wore a red tracksuit, the one students wore to P.E. when the bitter chill of autumn came to Derry. His hair must’ve been a little sweaty, because it was curling up into a messy halo around his grinning face. Richie wanted to know this Eddie, see him curl up laughing, but he knew that would never happen.

He perused their profiles for a while before growing bored, downing a third of his coffee before moving on. Except Eddie didn’t seem to have a Twitter, or a Snapchat. A quick google search of his name only came up with a few images and… a Facebook profile?

Richie prayed that it was an old one Eddie had never deleted, but after the page loaded he saw that the most recent status was made last night.

“Oh my fucking god,” he whispered to himself.

Eddie’s profile picture made him look particularly child-like, a weird picture of him pointing to the camera like he was cool, even though the same hand had a clunky old watch wrapped around it. His header picture displayed the quote ‘there is bravery in being soft’.

Richie snorted, “Yeah, a soft fucking dick!”

Another patron scoffed at his fowl mouth, and he shot her a smug grin.

Eddie only had 40 friends on the site, which consisted of Bill, Stan, some of the other nerds at Derry High, and his mother and her friends. It wasn’t like someone’s Facebook friends actually mattered, especially because only middle aged mothers who posted minion memes about their alcoholism used it anymore, but it was still kinda pitiful.

His posts were generally uninteresting, stuff like ‘super nervous for the math test’, or ‘soooooooooooo bored ://///’. Otherwise, he mostly just shared pictures of cute dogs and DIY videos.

It was hard to find any useful information on Eddie, since he obviously lied a lot. Not in the way of bragging, or saying that he did things he didn’t (like Richie did). But there were comments from Mrs. Kaspbrak’s friends calling him a lady killer, or a few posts calling Carly Rae Jepsen cute (please, Run Away With Me is the one of gayest songs of all time). Eddie was closeted, and Richie knew from experience that someone could never really be themselves around others if they weren’t out.

What his profile lacked in useable information, it more than made up with blackmail material.

Take, for instance, little Eddie in possibly the gayest fucking hat imaginable.

He screeched as he saw the picture of the eleven year old, a white fedora-bucket hat hybrid sitting atop his tiny head, before breaking out into a full on wheeze. Richie was laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe, and then he thought about Eddie using his inhaler in that gay ass hat and laughed even harder.

The other customers began to stare, some concerned, and others pissed off at the disturbance.

Once he had collected himself somewhat, Richie sent a screenshot to the group chat.

the losers

bev: oh my fucking G O D

richie: I CANT FUCKIN BREATHE ELRNKKLNERG

richie: LIKE F U C K !!! KLJKLGRJKLLEJK

richie: LOOK AT HIS GAY HAT

richie: LIKE, IT’S GAYER THAN WEARING NOTHING BUT A PRIDE FLAG AND GLITTER

richie: HE LOOKS LIKE A TWINKY SKIPPER

richie: HOW IS THAT HAT MORE GAY THAN EVERY SINGLE ONE RYAN EVANS WORE IN THE ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL FRANCHISE COMBINED

bev: i’m muting you

mike: me too

mike: also that hat isn’t that bad

“‘Not that bad?!’” Richie squawked, not that he’d be able to hear him.

(Really, Richie had no authority on the subject. He still donned the occasional Hawaiian shirt over his tees).

He refreshed Eddie’s profile, seeing that he had made a new status.

Eddie Kaspbrak: big night friday, nervous but excited !!!!

Richie raised his brows in intrigue, seeing that Bill and a handful of other people liked the status. What was going on Friday?

He checked to see if Bill had posted anything, if Eddie was going somewhere, chances were Bill was too.

Bill Denbrough: almost the weekend, finally ready to let loose

Seriously, it would’ve been so much easier if Bill was the guy Richie had to woo. Kid was probably fucking nervous for a party, a place where you threw caution to the wind and had a good time. Still, he made a mental note about finding out what their Friday plans were.

Richie sighed, taking another swig of his coffee, “God, what a fucking loser.”

Suddenly, his headphones were being tugged out of his ear by an angry middle-aged woman with short-layered hair and eye bags.

“Hey, what the fuck?” Richie glared, snatching back his headphones.

The woman returned the look, putting her hands on her hips, “Don’t you have respect for the other customers?!”

“Sweetheart, I don’t have respect for myself, let alone some PTA moms-- like the post-divorce haircut by the way.”

Apparently, his finger guns did not soften the blow, because the lady started to scream at him.

And, apparently, this lady was also the manager, and was pushing him out the door.

So great, Eddie and his dumb gay hat got him banned from Starbucks.

Even though he was wounded from Eddie’s betrayal, (because Richie getting kicked out was definitely not his fault-- it was Eddie’s homosexual headwear. An anthropomorphic device of chaos, that Eddie owned, so, yeah, it was Kaspbrak’s fucking fault.) Richie still skipped smoking on Thursday to spend his lunch with the tiny fuck.

Obviously, they hadn’t made plans to do so, but Richie had, and he really couldn’t delay starting the bet. There was a lot on the line.

So, after getting out of econ (turning in an unstudied for but probably aced quiz), and throwing his shit in his locker, Richie detoured to the cafeteria.

The place was a fucking mess, and it reminded Richie just why he avoided the place. It was pure chaos, loud and overwhelming, a million things to get distracted by. Freshman with their stupid rolling backpacks kept whizzing by, making Richie trip or get his feet ran over. The tables were already filled, the honor roll kids, the partiers, Gretta and her gang. Fucking cliches.

He got in line, picking up a tray and proceeding to fiddle with the buttons at the cuff of his black and white flannel; trying to tune out the buzz of conversation. It was weird, at parties he thrived on the noise and disorder, but here all it was doing was fucking with his ADHD.

Richie drummed a beat onto his tray as the line moved forward and picked the most edible looking slop from the menu. The lunch lady glowered at him as he reached for his money only to realize he had put it in the other pocket, fumbling to put the bills and coins on the counter.

As she put the money in the register, Richie looked around the room, checking to see where Eddie was sitting. He was sat near one of the exits, carefully taking out his lunch and swinging his legs. And he was alone. Perfect.

“Kid, do you want a receipt or not?” the lunch lady snapped from across from him.

Richie blinked back into focus, “Uh, sure, sorry.”

She sighed and printed out the receipt, slamming it down on the tray, “Next!”

Grabbing his tray, Richie plucked up some plastic cutlery and made his way through the sea of students to Eddie Kaspbrak. He had to twist and lift his tray a bit, but eventually the crowds started to part a bit. A chorus of whispers started to erupt. Stupid small town.

“Is that Richie Tozier?”

“I think, but doesn’t he always get high with his stoner friends?”

“What is he doing here?”

“God, he’s so hot.”

Richie smirked, sending a wink at the girl’s praise before sitting across from Eddie. He watched for a moment as the boy continued to focus on on unpacking his utensils and napkins before clearing his throat.

Eddie’s eyes snapped up from his lunchbox, widening when he saw Richie.

“What the fuck?” It was meant to be a whisper to himself, but Eddie’s voice was louder than expected.

Richie grinned at the blushing boy, “Well, hello to you to Eds.”

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie snapped, returning to his food.

Richie waited for him to say something else, at least fucking look at him, but the little fuck kept his eyes glued to his grapes, nails aggressively ripping the fruit from their stems.

“Okay,” he started, taking a sip of his apple juice, “So, you may be wondering why I’m sitting with you—“

Eddie interrupted, annoyance apparent in every fiber of his being, “Is this gonna be quick or not?”

“I’m hoping it’s not quick, although given how hot I am it’s difficult for people to control themselves.”

A long, deep sigh came from Eddie’s (cute, soft) lips. Eddie grabbed at Richie’s hands, flipping them over so that the palms faced upwards.

“Wow, a bit forward, but I’m liking your style Kaspbrak,” Richie winked.

Eddie rolled his eyes and proceed to take out hand sanitizer from his fanny pack, squirting the floral scented product into Richie’s hands.

Honestly, what the fuck?

He must’ve sent the same message to Eddie with his face, because Eddie said, “You obviously aren’t gonna leave me the fuck alone, and if you’re gonna be in my space, you need to be clean.”

Richie raised a brow at this but rubbed the hand sanitizer into his hands anyways.

Jesus Christ, what a weird, defensive little bitch.

Eddie watched with focused eyes, and only spoke when Richie was finished.

“Continue.”

It took a moment for Richie to gain his bearings once more. This mission seemed dead on arrival, but he had to keep trying anyways.

“So, Eddie…” Richie trailed off, twirling the pasta on his plate before his eyes lit up, “Eddie Spaghetti, Eduardo, what’s up?”

Eddie scowled, “That’s not my fucking name!” he squeaked, “And ‘what’s up?’ I mean, we’ve barely even talked before. You think I’m just gonna put up with this because you’re Richie Tozier? I swear to god, if this is some fucking bullying thing...”

Around them, people began to stare and eavesdrop at the sound of Eddie yelling. Fucking perfect.

Richie blinked back at the boy across from him, now red in the face for a different reason, “Calm down, I’m just trying to get to know you.”

“Fat fucking chance.”

Okay, wow. Richie had more work cut out for him than expected. He thought of what to say next as he watched Eddie finish his grapes.

“This isn’t, like, a joke,” (it wasn’t real either), “I just wanna hang out.”

“Hang out?” Eddie’s chocolate brown eyes met Richie’s, his tone mocking.

Richie nodded, “Yeah, ya know, kick it with the homies. Make out a little if you’re down. Friend stuff.”

Eddie’s jaw clenched, “You’re unbelievable. Just fucking unbe— you know, how can you even say any of that shit? How can we be ‘homies’ if we’ve never ‘hung out’ before? And don’t want to-- I’m not-- you don’t know me!”

There was something underlying in Eddie’s voice as he snapped, wavering at the end. Richie, like most things in life, was completely and utterly fucking up.

“Well then, how about we fix that?” Richie leaned forward, “I was wondering if maybe you’d wanna—“

Abruptly, Eddie stood up, grabbing his food and walked off, making his way towards the cafeteria line where Bill and Stan were paying for their lunch.

Richie looked around at all the watching faces, some snickering and others as shocked as he was.

“...Embarrass me horribly in front of all these people.”

He took a deep breath, and shoved some spaghetti in his mouth, his frown growing larger at the disgusting taste. Richie was often considered a wild card, but this was when routine was a good thing. He should’ve just avoided this and sparked up with Bev and Mike.

Actually, he was going to do just that. There was still some left in lunch, and no reason for him to stay in the cafeteria if Eddie was giving him the cold shoulder. More like a giant fucking iceberg but still, pointless. Besides, he really needed to get high now. Eddie ruined his whole mood and pissed him the fuck off.

Richie got up and tossed out the inedible garbage before going to the usual spot, finger itching for a joint.

He used his foot to push open the door, which would’ve been cool, except with his clumsiness and horrible luck he tripped forward, narrowly avoiding falling down the steps and face planting by grabbing the railing.

As Richie caught his breath and stabilized himself, he could hear his friends laughing.

“Back so soon?” Bev smirked knowingly, taking a drag.

Richie huffed, “Ha ha. Let’s yuck it up for my misfortune,” he grabbed her joint and took a long hit, “This fucking kid, Bev. I don’t think I can do this!”

“As in, you’re morally incapable of leading him on?” Mike asked hopefully.

“Please, let’s be realistic here Mikey. No, that kid is like, the fuckin devil incarnate. Shithead is fucking crazy!” Richie paced, smoking from the joint.

Bev laughed, “What makes you say that?”

“Why don’t ya ask the whole fucking school?” Richie snapped, though the anger wasn’t directed at her, “They were watching it all go down. If that wheezy asshole ruins my reputation—“

“What reputation?” Mike interjected.

Richie rolled his eyes and flipped him off.

Another voice spoke up, “I dunno, Richie’s pretty well known. I like him well enough.”

Richie whirled around, just noticing a new face among the usual group, Ben Hanscom.

The eternal new kid, since no one ever moved to ass backwards Derry, was not someone he’d expect to be behind the art building. Maybe reciting poetry or some shit, but not blazing. Ben was sweet and genuine, albeit a little shy. He was no longer the chubby kid he once was, more stocky and muscular now. They weren’t too close, as the tawny haired boy spent more time with Mike and Bev, and if not them, the other dorks (like Eddie and his friends). But either way, dude was pretty chill. Richie just didn’t really want him there mid-meltdown.

“Haystack?! You smoke?!” he whistled, “Ho-ly shit, who woulda thought!”

Ben shook his head, “Uh, no I don’t. Mike and I just had to study for history next block.”

His deep brown eyes flitted to Beverly, who had now stolen back her joint and was playing with the key that hung from her neck. Yeah, studying was the only reason. Not Ben’s excruciatingly obvious crush on the red head.

“We would’ve just gone to the library, but Bev and I made a bet about if you’d be successful or not today,” Mike said.

Richie gasped, “Betting on my failure? Fuck you guys, Benny Boy is my new best friend.”

“I didn’t sign up for that.”

“Hey, I bet on you succeeding,” Mike put his hands up in surrender, “She’s the one who thought you’d screw it up.”

“And I was right. Pay up,” Bev smiled, holding out her palm.

Mike dropped a candy bar in it with a deep sigh. She tore open the wrapping, taking a savage bite of the chocolatey sweet.

“I think you have a gambling problem,” Mike quipped.

Bev shrugged, “Not a problem if I keep winning.”

She grinned, her teeth covered in chocolate and spit. Gross. Ben still looked enraptured. Double gross.

“Anyways, can we focus on the important bet, and the fact that this fuck is impossible! Seriously, Bev, babygirl, pick anyone else!” Richie whined, plopping his bony ass on the cement.

“First off, don’t call me ‘babygirl’,” she flicked the ash off the end of the joint at him, “Second, the deal was anyone. You either woo him or you don’t.”

Richie opened his mouth to complain again but Ben beat him to it.

“I’m sorry, but what are we talking about?”

The other three looked at each other in panic. Ben was friends with Eddie, there was no way he could find out what was going on. The whole thing would be ruined before it started.

“Nothin!” Richie squeaked, “Just uh… bet that I couldn’t ace a group project. I usually just bullshit a lot of that stuff and leave it up to the others if I can. Partner’s just a little… high strung.”

Bev groaned and Mike sighed. A horrible fucking lie. Richie was already trying to formulate a better one in his head.

Ben smiled, “That’s nice, a wholesome, supportive bet. But you really should just communicate with your partner. They might be nervous because of your history is all.”

Richie let out a sound of relief before realizing Ben’s advice could actually be helpful.

“Sure, but I already tried to talk to him and it didn’t go well,” he explained.

Bev and Mike raised their brows, catching on.

“Well, how did you talk to him?” Ben asked, “Was it an ambush or a friendly conversation?

Bev snorted, “Ambush, knowing Richie. He doesn’t do friendly conversations.”

“Maybe with you, because you’re on my ass all the time,” Richie shot back, “But uh, she’s right. Shouldn’t matter though, everyone knows that’s how Tough Guy Tozier does his business.”

Mike groaned, “Please don’t call yourself that ever again.”

“You’re just coming on too strong. You have to consider what he likes, what he wants. A good partnership comes with compromise and communication,” Ben nodded sagely.

Richie ruffled his hair, putting on his trusty British voice, “Thank you Advisor Hanscom. Your wisdom is greatly appreciated.”

Ben smiled awkwardly, his eyes going to Bev once again, “Course.”

He took the joint from Bev, inhaling the musty smoke and blowing it out his nostrils, the burning sensation familiar and welcome.

“And maybe, you should talk to him sober next time,” Mike suggested.

Richie laughed, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

By the time the final bell rang, he was still feeling defeated and unsure of his next move. Sure, he’d have to dial back his trashmouth charm, try to seem actually invested in Eddie but… that wasn’t going to happen if the brat never talked to him again. Richie had to find a way to break the tension between them, start fresh.

He sulked to his locker, pulling out his shit from the looming mess. Loose binder paper and pencils fell onto the ground, and Richie just wanted to bang his head against the wall of metal. Also, go home and smoke while playing video games but, mostly, hit his head repeatedly. Maybe he’d lose enough brain cells to forget the entire day.

After a few moments of excessive cursing, Richie grabbed what he needed and got everything that fell back into the locker. He noticed a new post it on the door just before he closed it.

Don’t give up :) <3 - mike

Richie smiled, and slammed the locker shut with a resounding clang. With a little stretch and a fix of his glasses, he strolled through the halls, making his way to the parking lot to wait for Mike.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bill and Stan loitering around the halls as well, engaged in (an undoubtedly boring) conversation.

He remembered Bill and Eddie’s facebook status’ about exciting plans for tomorrow night and decided he should investigate.

“Billiam! Staniel!” Richie called as he approached them, “What’s up?”

The two stopped talking and looked up, Bill smiling while Stan rolled his eyes.

“H-hey, Richie,” Bill waved. Richie noted that his stutter had gotten a lot better just over the past year. The two of them had shared a few classes when they were juniors and were pretty friendly with one another. At least compared to his relationship with Eddie and Stan, who also seemed to hate him for no reason.

Speaking of, the prim and proper boy was glaring at him, “Didn’t get enough of being a nuisance at lunch?”

Richie raised a brow, “Whatever do you mean?”

Stan scoffed, and opened his mouth to respond, but Bill put a hand on his shoulder, “N-nothing. Stan’s just… on edge. What’s up w-with you?”

“Not much, just trying to figure out what my plans are for tomorrow,” Richie shrugged, “Got any suggestions?”

“The only thing on your mind is where to party? Not surprised,” Stan quipped.

Richie shoved his hands in his pockets, biting his tongue. Snapping at Eddie was what caused his whole operation to go south, and he couldn’t mess up this second chance.

Bill ignored the tension between them, “Well, usually w-we don’t do t-t-too m-much, but it’s s-senior year. Probably going to Peter Gordon's party.”

“That kid’s an ass.”

“Coming from you, that’s rich,” Stan commented, his arms crossed.

His grinned, “Well, yeah, I am Rich.”

Stan sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Yeah, he is, but he’s also s-super wealthy,” Bill avoided another ‘rich’ pun, “Meaning he’ll h-h-ave q-q-quality shit.”

Richie beamed, “Ah, I get it. You’re Robin Hood-ing that fuck. I like your style Billy Boy.”

He clapped Bill on the shoulder, and the other boy blushed slightly, “W-well, it wasn’t j-just my idea. Eddie and Stan helped.”

“Eddie? He’s coming with you guys?”

Bill shook his head, “N-no. He was supposed to, b-b-but that art thing came up so he h-had to cancel.”

“Art thing?” Richie asked, suddenly intrigued. This was the information he wanted.

“Yeah,” Bill nodded, “It’s this show that happens every month. At Jester Theatre. He always goes.”

Stan not so subtly elbowed Bill in the ribs, hissing at him to shut up.

“W-what?!”

“Yeah, what’s got your steamed panties in a twist Uris?” Richie smirked.

Stan sent him a scowl, “You know very well Tozier. Eddie told us all about what you did at lunch. Back the fuck off.”

“S-stan, I don’t think he meant--”

“No, Bill, he did,” Stan interrupted, “I don’t know what your game is, but if you hurt him…”

Richie put his hands up in surrender, “Hey, I’m not going to hurt him. He seems pretty strong anyways. I mean no harm.”

Stan didn’t look convinced at all. Fair enough.

The air between the two was tense, but Bill broke it by clearing his throat, “So, uh, will w-we see you at the p-p-party?”

Richie shook his head ‘no’, “Probably not. I have some more sophisticated plans lined up.”

a/n: hope you liked it! next chapter is p much all richie and eddie so get excited. if you enjoyed i would love hearing your feedback

oh and this is eddie’s gay hat if you were curious

#reddie #reddie fic #he's all that #my writing #it fic #yeah still have no idea how to tag this

82 notes · View notes

humans-are-space-orcs · 7 years

Text

Humans are Space orcs

So, here is my little contribution to the whole humans are space orcs idea, which I have been absolutely loving since I found it.

On the eleventh polar rotation of the seventh month of the earth solar cycle 2538, an event occurred that would forever be seared into the minds of everyone near a visual screen within the galaxy. The Terran United National Dominion Had been spreading its exploratory reaching ever farther. This led to conflict with many species, but diplomatic term had always been met, whether it being through full sharing of all findings, a small taxation for crossing of borders, or the humans respectfully agreeing to leave if found trespassing. However, there was one species, that found the mere prospect of the human exploration to be an affront.

These were the Nem, a proud people Who were feared their physical prowess in claw to claw combat upon boarding a ship, which they were quite good at with their lightweight, but very maneuverable ships. They felt that the entire galaxy belonged to them, and from this belief, they felt it was their right to not just restrict humans for from going any place that was not first explored by the Nem, but to tax them for all places they had already gone. The Nem even went as far as to demand that the Human intersolar mass trading and diplomatic post that reached from the surface of their core world, to the edge of its lower orbit, a structure unlike any other in the galaxy, the Ouroboros Station, be handed over to their control.

This created a conflict that had been avoided by other species, which had agreed simply to bring a Nem crew member with them, and to give at least half of whatever they found, unless the Nem asked for more, and what they ask for was not something needed by the discovering races. The humans on the other pincer, while able to be diplomatic, and rather quite intelligent, have a special feature few other races have, stubbornness. As they continued to deny payment to the Nem, their research vessels were boarded, some killed, but for the most part simply looted, and in return a human cruiser would eradicate the stray Nem boarding scifer that was not quite fast enough. It was war, much like any other war, for after all both races were known to be warrior races.

But on the polar rotation in question, the Nem took something from the humans that other races knew never to take. They took the lives of many humans, that were not famous, nor special, but were still each one part of their own pack. On that polar rotation, a game of leg sphere, the final in a massive tournament apparently, was taking place, when a dull crack was heard through the sky. It was enough to get the attention of many people, but the “competitive sport” of leg sphere went on. It was not until the large visual screen that had been used to show the events of the game switched to instead show a reporter that the fighters on the field stopped in their tracks, and stared up at it, slowly carrying the gaze of the entire crowd.

“I’m coming to live on Channel 12 galactic new broadcast, with a recent report that some form of projectile has just struck the…-” The reporter traled off with a look of terror in her eyes, like a vyscalky deathgrunt had just entered the room. She began again, but this time as though she had something lodged within her throat, “with a report that the Ouroboros has just been stuck by a foreign… a foreign projectile. I think I might be sick.. We go live, along with along other channels to my colleague in the news center on board the Ouroboros…”

The visual screen switched to depict a man in in a black suite, with a dark purple tie, sitting in front of a green backdrop, his head down, resting in his hands, a sign of human grief. “Keep the cameras rolling goddamn it…” with a shaky voice, “people of the earth… we have just been attacked. The Ouroboros station, from which I am reporting right now- oh god,” tears streaming down his face, he tilts his head back and puts his hands over his eyes. “From which I am reporting to you… has just been struck, and in moments will collide with the ground, killing myself, and millions of others. Oh fucking christ- no, no, keep the fucking cameras rolling damn it.” The lights now flickered, and changed to yellow hue, indicated an emergency state. “If you have loved ones within, then please, call them, as this will be your last-no, their last-chance to say that they love you.” The reporter suddenly breaks out into an uncontrollably grotesk sob, but manage a few last words, “To my little girl Susey,” choking back a tears, “I’m sorry sweety, but daddy’s not gonna make it home tonight to help you with your science project, and to my wife… Jennifer, I just want to let you and the kid know one last time time. I love y-” The transmission suddenly cut cut out leaving only the sound of static to be heard through the galaxy, as the feed had been transmitted on hyperlight links to ever visual screen in the galaxy.

Moments later, I remember overhearing a transmission for all human vessels to return to earth. This message alarmed me, as I had read in the human handbook that they humans would not give up a fight if those close to them had been harmed. What confused me further was the eagerness mixed in with the sadness that I felt from our captain, Human Jacobson, when I asked if the reason he was giving up the fight we were in with a small group of scifers was because he had pack member within the Ouroboros. He responded so quietly my atulary receptors almost did not pick up him say, “no, I didn’t personally know any of them. But God help us if I’m going to choose to follow those scifers of returning home to aid in whatever way we can.”

It was found out only moments after, that the object that struck the station was a Nem super boarder, that had the thought that it could jump out of ftl right next the the station, thus avoiding any form of security, and and take the Station by claw. This discovery led to such an anger throughout the humans, my species, nor any other as far as I know, ever expected from the humans. Offering our condolences for their losses, many different races lant their aid services to them, in rebuilding, and healing. They accepted these services, but to my confusion, they did not rebuild the lost structure, but instead cleared the rubble,took care of their death rituals, and then constructed an odd building, with the only purpose being to list the names of every being that lost their life in the event.

One polar rotation later, the massive fleet of human cruisers that had gathered around the system left, I originally thought to return to each of our individual missions. Instead, our cruiser, along with the million other headed directly for Nem space, which was highlighted in red on our star charts for us to avoid. The exchange I had with captain human Jacobson still lingers with me to this moment…

“Captain, why are our bearings pointed directly for Nem space? Should we not return to the war we were fighting with them instead of heading to our most certain demise in their home territories?”

“War? What we were doing out there wasn’t a war Xen’Chak. That was simply pest control.”

“If that was pest control… Then what are we about to go do?”

To this a crease formed between captain human Jacobson’s brows, as what I have heard to be a human sign of anger, or thought. He said two words back to me.

“Pest extermination”

Within two cycles, or found a half earth solar cycles, the Nem empire had not just shrunk, but had been entirely eradicated. Before this, I thought that many of the things in the handbook about why humans were to be feared had been simple misunderstandings, or even maybe just false statement put in the human handbook. But, after the event that I not just witnessed, but took part in, I know now why humans are registered as a warrior race.They also proved to all other species one thing, and that was that if the galaxy belonged as a whole to any of us, it was they humans, and thank our ancestors that they are not like the Nem in their desire to prove it.

Submitted by: @argoth-synclare

#humans are space orcs #submission

2K notes · View notes

whydontwe4kaylee · 3 years

Text

Chapter 9: Fallin’ Part 4

After what felt like a whole month it was finally Friday afternoon. I danced around my room, packing the necessities I needed for the amazing weekend in store for me. About to grab my car keys I reminded myself that I wouldn’t need the trusty Civ in San Diego, so I pulled Uber up instead and ordered a car. Off to the airport, I went, confident it would be a weekend to remember.

When I entered the busy junction of San Francisco Airport I was hit with the many happy memories I had tucked away from the days I spent here. I loved everything about this airport, but not nearly as much as I loved my destination. I quickly got into the long security line, getting there just in time to be ahead of a single mother with her four kids.

As I slowly made my way through security I was made aware of a boy that looked awfully familiar, though I couldn't place where I recognized him from. Keeping an eye on him, I continued through the line, racking my brain to try and place him. I observed him taking notes in a small notebook with a large pen, though I wasn’t able to make out the bold words on either.

I finally made my way to the waiting area where I opened my laptop. Ever the early bird, I had almost two hours to fill so I began to play Minecraft. Ever since the beginning of this year, I had absolutely fallen in love with the simple yet complex block game and I loved every minute of it. Forty-five minutes later I realized that my laptop was only at 1%, prompting me to walk over to the communal charging station. When I got there, I looked to my left to see none other but the mystery boy. He was typing furiously on an iPad, taking notes on what seemed to be an extremely official rubric made for airport inspectors.

I watched as he typed out his thoughts: “By far, the worst airport to travel into and out of. I was baffled by how unclean the entire facility was given the city's standards on cleanliness and hygiene. More deplorable is the customer service throughout the space. The TSA team is horrifically incompetent and disrespectful - a bummer given that the handbook of employee conduct is public info and is not abided by. Be wary when traveling through here as you will be continuously harassed and berated by unskilled security. I trust that upper management will provide corrective action and professional development to staff to alleviate poor consumer experience” While his review was extremely negative, I was surprised to find how well written and accurate it was. I scanned the rest of his body until my eyes rested on a hat… one that was awfully familiar. It was then that I finally recognized him as the boy from Dr. Beguozien’s office, Corbyn!

“Hey, you were at the dentist's yesterday! How's your throat doing?” I asked gently, a bit excited to finally talk with him.

“Oh yeah! And it’s as good as new, just in time for my trip to sunny San Diego!”

“No way! I’m heading there too, that’s so funny, we should sit together.”

“You… you wanna sit with me? In case you haven’t noticed, I'm weird. I’m a weirdo. I don't fit in. And I don't want to fit in. Have you ever seen me without this stupid hat on? That's weird.”

“Yeah? We don’t have to lol”

“No no sorry, we can. I’m just not used to such a pretty girl asking me to sit with her. Before we board do you want to go grab some gum for my buddy Jack? He loves that stuff”

I smiled and said sure, and off we went. Over the next hour or so Corbyn and I got to know each other, meaning I got to learn all about his interests in airports. I learned that his notebook and pen were from his favorites (LAX and John F Kennedy) but his hoodie was from one he wasn’t too fond of (John Wayne). He preferred Dallas Fort Worth to Denver International but was quite a fan of LaGuardia. He always bought a souvenir from each one he went to, hence the hat of SFO despite its low ranking. After nearly an hour of airport talk, we realized it was time to board! Minutes later Corbyn and I were comfily seated in two lounge chairs of the sky.

He drifted off almost immediately while I looked out the window and thought about the crazy week I had had.

0 notes

suchastart · 6 years

Text

Just Another Sleepy Sunday

Stranger Things, Eleven/Mike and the whole party. For @artemisrae who has been holding my hand, and for @juxtaposie ♥

Game night, a few years into the future.

AO3

She arrives under cover of darkness, the way she used to when they were younger—after sunset, wearing an oversized coat with the hood pulled up, and accompanied by the growling of Hopper’s truck. They’re already late. She would’ve been here half an hour ago if he had let her drive herself, which she’s told him several times already tonight in her eternal, ongoing quest for her license. At this rate, she’s going to graduate high school first.

Hopper pulls up to the curb. There’s no more time to waste. El flings the door open and runs for the house in the space of a breath.

“You’re gonna give me a heart attack,” Hopper yells through the open window.

She’s heard that time and again. It’s been years, and he hasn’t had a heart attack yet. In seconds, she crosses the yard and knocks on the front door—three one two, habit now, solid and safe—and smiles when Mrs. Wheeler opens the door. She looks beautiful, as always, hair curled and perfect, in a long corduroy skirt and a pink blouse. She looks tired, too.

“Hi,” El says, slightly out of breath.

“Hello, Jane.” Mrs. Wheeler looks over El’s shoulder, at the prints she’s made in the clean, dewy grass, and at Hopper, tromping slowly down the same path. She smiles. “Nice to see you both.”

“You, too, Karen,” Hopper says.

A beat of silence passes. El rocks forward and back on the balls of her feet. Awkward, she thinks. It’s a good word, made for something uncomfortable, strange, itchy underneath her skin.

“Would you like to come in for dinner, Jim?” Mrs. Wheeler asks, stepping back. “We have enough pizza to feed the neighborhood.”

“Ah, no thanks, just dropping the kid off.”

“Date night?”

Hopper scratches at his beard. “Me and an empty house. Gotta enjoy the quiet while you can. You know how it is.”

Mrs. Wheeler laughs, a pleasant, sad sound that pulls at the corners of her lips but not her eyes, and then, like Hopper grumbles at El sometimes, it is good timing—there is muffled yelling from the house, and thumping from downstairs, and then Mike is there, just like that.

“El!”

It’s like magic, even after so long. Her shoulders relax. “Mike.”

“Hi,” he says, smiling, freckles crinkling across his nose. It occurs to her, sometimes, how tall he is now; he leans down to reach for her hand, and when he tries to take her bookbag from Hopper, they’re at eye-level now. There’s a second of tension—Hopper keeps hold of the strap, and Mike tugs—but finally one of them wins, relents or prevails, it’s hard to tell, the way they’re frowning at one another.

“It’s cold,” El says.

“Well, let’s get you inside,” Mrs. Wheeler says, and guides her into the house. Mike shoulders her bag, and Hopper presses a gruff kiss to her head, and then she’s free. She’s got a clear path to the basement, to Will and Max and Lucas and Dustin, to their tent and walls and table that feel like home. It’s been a few weekends since the whole party has been able to get together like this; they’ve all been so busy with family and finals that tonight feels almost like a reunion, even though she sees her friends almost every day.

She’s halfway there when Mike squeezes her hand. She’d almost forgotten he’d been holding it.

“Hold on a sec,” he says, dropping her bag by the basement door. He tugs her toward the kitchen. “I have to show you something.”

She follows, a trail after a comet, and feels just as brilliantly warm when they pass the refrigerator and he turns on his heel, pushes his fingers through her hair, and kisses her.

El hums, pleased. It’s easier to get to his face when she’s up on her toes, and more comfortable for him, too, though he’s always said he doesn’t mind travelling down so, so far if she’s the one he’s reaching for. She holds onto his waist, the thin cloth of his t-shirt, and tries not to let her grin ruin their kiss. He’s unhurried, though—happy enough to laugh, and to nudge her nose with his, and to kiss her again, and again, and again.

Someone clears their throat.

Mike pulls away first. El touches a hand to her racing heart, startled, and exhilarated.

Mr. Wheeler stands at the sink, looking down at a book of crosswords. He sips lazily at whatever’s in his ceramic mug. “Not in the kitchen, Michael.”

“Is there a room you’d like to designate—”

“Enough of that, too. Go on downstairs. Your friends are yelling loud enough to wake the dead.”

Mike huffs. He’s still standing close enough that El can feel his shoulders stiffen, like a dog raising his hackles; she’s close enough to hook a finger in his belt loop and pull.

“Come on,” she says quietly. They say it to one another often enough that it makes her feel a little smug: “Pick your battles.”

Mr. Wheeler, probably overhearing, snorts.

"You pick your battles,” Mike grumbles, putting an arm around her shoulders and guiding them both safely from the kitchen.

Whatever. She knows well enough now who the bad guys are, and how to handle them.

They turn the corner, out of sight. El sniffs. In the kitchen, Mr. Wheeler shouts in surprise, and his mug shatters on the floor. “What in the hell— ”

Mike snickers. “Enough of that. Come on, the party’s been waiting for you all night.”

Their basement set-up survived their transition to high school. The same worn couch rests against the wall. A few new posters have been hung. Their table has gotten a little bigger, a little better—it’s an old fold-up job that Mike and Will found at Mrs. Nelson’s estate sale last summer, and sits their whole party comfortably with more space for Mike’s maps and screens. There’s enough room, too, for everybody to write and carve and draw things all over it. DUSTIN + MS MARISSA 4EVR. Mike Sux. What’s spell casting modifier?? Why am I here????

The fort remains, too. Different blankets every month or two. Sometimes taller, wider, depending on its varied guests; sometimes smaller when the cold sets in, when nightmares crawl a little too close for any of them to manage alone.

El comes down the stairs first, and Will and Dustin cheer. Max throws popcorn kernels at her.

“And our ringer arrives!” Lucas says, tossing El’s mage figurine at her.

She catches it, looks at the little miniature, magic version of herself. The more magic version, anyway. She sat with Mike when he painted it--watched his slow, careful fingers on the paintbrush, watched him take his time with the brown hair, the dark robes, the hint of a pink dress beneath.

Mike nudges her shoulder. She continues down the stairs, places her mage gently on the map, right between the cleric and the ranger, where she knew she’d ended up the last game.

“Thought you weren’t going to show,” Max says as El finds her seat. “Hopper change his mind?”

“Drove too slow.”

“Just like a cop.”

El steals the slice of pizza on Max’s plate, chews happily as the party gets settled around her.

Across the table, Will has his face in his player’s handbook, and Lucas hovers over his shoulder, talking about prepared spells and emergency healing and the colder climate they’ve been preparing to venture into for this arc. Dustin, muttering obscenities, is in the corner, trying to find a clear radio station, while Mike sits behind his screens, scribbling intently into one of his many notebooks.

Max takes her slice of pizza back. She wrinkles her nose at a stray olive, picks it off, tosses it at Dustin’s back. He doesn’t notice. There’s a little smear of tomato sauce on his sweatshirt.

“Can we just, like, skip gym on Monday?” Max sighs. “I’m already dreading it.”

El nods. She holds her hand out for Max’s pizza. Max hands it over, and El takes a bite. She wouldn’t say no to skipping class—particularly the literal hurdles they’ll have to jump on the track right after lunch, and the awful woman that relentlessly blows her whistle at them.

Maybe they can spend the hour walking the railroad tracks instead. That’d be a much more fun use of their time.

“Okay,” El says.

Max grins. “Yeah?”

It’s enough to make El laugh, almost instantly ebullient—a word for the well of feeling, of happiness that almost bubbles free from her heart. She leans into Max’s shoulder, holds up the pizza slice so Max can bite into it. They share the crust, and El tosses the last bite at Dustin. It hits the back of his head, and he almost falls over, he spins around so fast.

“One of you,” he says, picking up the crust piece from the floor and eating it, “changed this damn radio in the past week, and you know how temperamental it is!”

“You did,” El says.

“I absolutely did not—”

“Yes, you did,” Will says.

Lucas nods. “You were waiting for Roger Lowe’s stupid new show.”

“That wasn’t—and it isn’t stupid, it’s transcendent—”

“I saw you change it!”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t on 96.3 when I got down here—”

“Dustin—”

“—I haven’t been down here since Mike’s dumb one-off campaign that we bombed!”

“You mean that you bombed?”

“You changed it to that awful AM talk radio woman before you went to bed, because you said her voice helps you sleep better,” Mike says finally, brushing eraser debris from his papers. He looks at all of them expectantly. Dustin sits, and Will puts his book down. A strange, solemn silence settles around the table. “Everybody ready?”

El likes this part of the night the best, right after kissing Mike hello, and right before their game begins. A little shiver of anticipation runs down her spine. This is their story, the story they’ve built together over months and years of fighting and teamwork and failures, after countless hours of eating pizza and conquering all odds and doing it together.

Much like real life, but slightly less dangerous. She looks around at her friends, her party, and couldn’t imagine feeling any more full.

“Alright,” Mike says, narrowing his eyes, slipping easily into his storytelling voice. “You’re all deep in the twisting, gnarled innards of the underground titan, and you’re struggling to find your way in the dark. Your zoomer has left you in the small tunnel to scout ahead…”

They’re completely engrossed in the story. Things are dire. They are down half their health, and even less their stock of potions. Their most dear, wild-haired NPC has just fallen. The night is growing late, and they’re all full of soda and pizza and sadness, and Dustin is wiping tears from his face, while El—

El is cheating. She sits close enough to Mike that she can just see over his screens, and happens to catch sight of the little figurine that he’s hiding being a pencil sharpener and a few other miscellaneous monsters. It bodes ill for the fate of their party, but she can’t help it—

She’s ready when Mike amps up the tension, when he lets his words build and twist and snap, when he paints a huge cavern and terrible, shifting shadows and something that snarls in the dark—

“You blink,” Mike says, “and before you appears the Mega Demogorgon!”

He slams the figurine on the table. The floor shakes. The lights flicker. A bulb in the corner lamp bursts.

Lucas screams.

Somewhere upstairs, there’s a loud crash, and Mrs. Wheeler says, frantically, “Is that an earthquake?”

Mr. Wheeler’s voice is slow, almost inaudible. “There aren’t earthquakes in Indiana, Karen.”

“El,” Dustin says, clutching at his chest. His hat’s fallen off. His hair is in a smushed disarray. “That was not cool.”

“Not me.” El points at the figurine. “Demogorgon.”

Will exhales a shaky little laugh, and Max punches her shoulder, and Mike—he smiles at her, soft and gentle and maybe sort of awestruck, too. He tucks a curl of hair behind her ear, and thumbs his finger underneath her nose, pulls it away clean.

“Told you,” she tells him.

If anything, he looks a little more in love.

El holds Max’s hand underneath the table. Max, for all she cares not to care about the story, is doing a terrible job of it—she squeezes El’s fingers hard enough to hurt, and curses as their cleric falls prone beneath the Mega Demogorgon’s relentless attack.

“Can I do anything?” Max says. “Can I reach him?”

“You’ve already taken your action—”

“But can’t I dash , what’s the point of being a zoomer if I can’t fuckin’ run —”

“I’ll be fine,” Will says. He taps his pencil rapidly on his binder—taptaptaptaptaptaptap, and his other knee is bouncing against the leg of the table, and shaking everything, and El can feel his anxiety from so far away, knows he’s lying, always knows when he’s lying. He’s two death saves down, and El is every day learning the ins and outs of this complicated game, but she knows that’s bad.

Will looks unafraid. “It’s fine, Max.”

“We’ll get you up,” Lucas says, flipping frantically through the back of the manual. He’s about to bite through his lip. “We’ll do something. It’s gonna be fine.”

Dustin nods. He doesn’t look like it’s gonna be fine, but he nods anyway.

“It’s not gonna be fine, ” Max says, but there’s nothing else she can do, and they all know it.

For his part, Mike looks like he’s sorry. Not sorry enough to keep the Mega Demogorgon from moving forward, though, ever closer toward their cleric, lying broken and bleeding on the cavern floor. His steps are thunderous. His arms stretch wide. The Mega Demogorgon takes a legendary action, and El holds her breath, looks across the table at Will—

—who clenches his jaw, and closes his eyes.

It’s a little too close to home, but they’re okay. They’re all okay, and this is a game. Will reaches sightlessly for his die. Lucas and Dustin hold on to one another. Max leans onto the table. El cannot take her eyes from Will’s steady fingers, the fist he makes around his die, the way he pauses, and waits, and lets go—

When the die settles, they all look.

“Natural twenty,” Will breathes.

“Natural twenty,” they all yell, grabbing onto one another in celebration, a mess of arms and hands and elbows, upsetting the map and the figurines and a half-full can of soda. Will’s got an arm hooked around El’s neck, and she’s falling forward onto the table, laughing, reaching for them all, for Max, immediately at her side, and for Dustin and Lucas and Mike, who’s not even upset, who’s yelling in celebration alongside them—

Small victories, she thinks, taking it.

They give up on the campaign immediately after the exhausting defeat of the Mega Demogorgon. It’s at a steep cost, but their enemy is dead while their party is mostly alive, and that’s enough for the night.

They change into their pajamas. Mike and Will move the table and chairs, while everybody else arranges the piles of blankets and pillows and sleeping bags on the floor. It takes ten minutes to play a heated six-player round of rock-paper-scissors for the coveted couch—it’s only after extensive debate, and a quick wrestling match, that El is decided the champion.

She doesn’t feel too bad. The couch is unreasonably comfortable after so many years of it being worn down, and it gives her a good view of the television. There’s a less violent argument about what movie to watch, and she’s happy to see the opening of Ghostbusters on the screen as she gets settled with her pillow and blankets.

“El,” Mike whispers, sitting beside her. “Scoot over.”

And it’s as easy as opening her arms—he slips beneath her blankets, arranges himself instead between her back and the couch, and hugs her to his chest.

She feels safe here. Safest. Three one two, the slow-quick beat of her pulse, the press of Mike’s palm to her stomach, warm over her shirt. Sleepy and safe, in the circle of his arms and the circle of their friends.

She tries to pay attention to the movie, to Venkman and Winston and Spengler, to Stantz and Dana Barrett, to Lucas and Dustin and Max and Will all fighting for space and blankets on the floor, to the sound of their voices, annoyed and familiar and affectionate as they quote their favorite characters, the best lines.

Through the hazy threat of sleep, El listens, too, to the dim creak of the basement stairs.

She groans, shifts around, turns her back to the television and presses her face to Mike’s shirt. He’s warm, almost too hot beneath their blanket, but she noses at his collarbone anyway.

“Holly,” she says into his chest, pulling her hands free from the blankets.

And there’s a beat, a second of confused silence, before Holly Wheeler bursts from the basement stairs, her arms splayed, her voice loud: “Hand check!”

She’s just in time to find everybody’s hands raised expectantly in the air.

Her brother’s weird friends are settled comfortably in their nest on the floor, while Mike and his weird girlfriend are closely intertwined on the couch, hands raised in the air, still pressed into one another.

“Well, shit,” Holly grumbles.

“Mouth,” Lucas and Mike warn, even as Holly continues down the stairs, makes herself at home in the pile of teenagers in front of the television.

“Mom’s still worried about your sleepovers,” Holly says, yanking a pillow from beneath Dustin’s head. She wriggles herself into a spot between Will and Lucas. “Since you losers actually know girls now. But, like--how do you guys always know? Do you have some stupid camera rigged or something?”

“You’re not even supposed to be down here,” Mike murmurs against El’s head.

“You’re not even supposed to be in arm's reach of Jane,” Holly says.

Dustin pulls a spare throw pillow from underneath the game table. He hugs it close, glares at Holly: “And you’re not supposed to be up after seven.”

“Uh, my bedtime was moved to ten,” she says, and then colors. “And I don’t listen to curfews, anyway, especially on a Saturday!”

Max sighs. “Shut up and watch Ghostbusters, kid.”

So Holly does—she shuts up, and watches Ghostbusters, and makes them all just a little proud when she joins them in quoting, seriously and without hesitation, “Total protonic reversal.”

The TV is cold. A stretch of moonlight filters in through the narrow basement window. Holly has shuffled herself back to bed, and Mrs. Wheeler has come to make sure everybody’s safe and in one piece and not doing anything too inappropriate, Michael Wheeler, do you ever listen, we’re going to talk about this in the morning, and the basement has finally fallen quiet. Someone shifts in their blankets, or rearranges their pillow. Will bumps into the table, whispers, “Sorry.”

It feels not quite like sleeping, this drifting, so comfortable that she doesn’t really feel her body. It’s opposite of the water tank, from so long ago—that water had been frigid, and she’d been weightless and cold and all too aware of her skin, her bones, the endless gazes upon her from the other side of the glass.

This is—better. She doesn’t have one good word for it. Warm. Easy. Serene, maybe. She listens to Mike’s breathing, and blinks in and out of sleep, and isn’t sure she’s ever felt such heavy silence between them all—

“Do you guys believe in aliens?”

“Dustin, man—”

Someone shifts. Dustin cries, “Ow!”

“Go to sleep!”

“I was sleeping, but like, what if we’re not alone out here?”

“It’s pretty obvious we’re not? Interdimensional shadow monsters ate your cat and tried to take over the town?”

“Okay, Lucas, but—”

“But universally speaking, right?”

“Yes! Right? Will, my main man—”

“Please, can we not.”

“I hate you all.”

Mike chimes in. “Theoretically and mathematically speaking? There’s gotta be life out there somewhere.”

“Practically speaking?” Lucas sighs.

“Interdimensional shadow monsters.”

Their conversation lulls. A cricket outside sings. In the distance, thunder rolls quietly along the sky.

“El, you think you could see if there’s aliens out there?”

“She’s not phoning in for aliens, ” Max snaps before Mike can chime in to defend her, and his shoulders relax. “Shut up, please, I’m only asking nicely once.”

“She could! I’m just saying that she could, theoretically and mathematically. ”

El closes her eyes.

The silence lasts for all of ten seconds. Will asks, almost hesitantly, “Is she doing it?”

Dustin sighs. “She fell asleep.”

Mike feels her huff of laughter against his chest; she can sense his amusement, the smile in his voice. “She’s not sleeping. Shut up and let her concentrate.”

So she humors them—she phones it in, as Max says, and thinks of E.T. phoning home and finding home, and steps into the void. For a moment, there’s the terrifying sweep of nothing, and El thinks she’s gone too far, that she reached out into space and got sucked right into the stars.

But Mike pinches her arm, and El takes a breath.

“I saw them,” she says. “On Mars. I was surrounded by millions of little squashy guys.”

It takes but a second. Lucas and Will burst into laughter, while Max groans loudly. Dustin simply sighs. “An E.T. quote? Eleven Jane Hopper, I am disappointed in you. So much of space to discover, and you with a tool that you refuse to utilize for this noble quest for knowledge and connection—”

“Go to sleep, Dustin!”

Dreams are tricky, terrible things.

El has nightmares, sometimes, of all that nothing—just her and that empty slip-stream world, that empty void, endless and aching, stretching as far and as infinite and as painful as the universe. She is alone there. Her body floats, and she screams, and there’s nothing, nobody to hear her.

It feels terribly like home.

And sometimes her nightmares are of blood and bodies and broken bones, of sightless eyes of people she knows, of the faces most dear to her drowning in their own blood, gasping for air, begging for help. Sometimes they blame her, and sometimes they ask her why, and she is never able to find any words. Sometimes the faces belong to Mama, and to Kali, and to Papa.

Sometimes they belong to herself.

And sometimes—

Sometimes she has good dreams, too. Gentle snowfall, and messy snowmen, and old tripwires dripping with icicles. A cabin lit in fairy lights. A flickering fire in a plain hearth, and a single picture on the mantle in a crude wooden frame. It always changes, the picture: her and Hopper, and her and Mike, and her and Will and Max and Dustin and Lucas, and her and Joyce and Nancy and Holly. Her and Mama, sitting together on a sunlit porch. Her and Kali, holding hands.

Sometimes her dreams are good, and she wakes up breathing, blinking, slow and even.

Sometimes her dreams are good, and she wakes up to another kind of dream.

A soft dawn light filters in through the narrow basement windows. The world is pink, and brown, and dark.

Mike’s face is so near, and slack in sleep.

Rarely do they have the opportunity to lie together like this, during the frenetic pace of high school; peaceful and at rest, twined at the ankles and legs, arms holding one another close.

She takes her time. She looks at the curl of his dark hair. She watches the pulse at his neck, the lines of his wide lips, the quick steps of the freckles across the bridge of his nose. There’s a tangle of them at his eyebrow, too, and two spots at his jaw. A tiny white scar at his jaw, and another on his chin.

Eventually she is driven by nature to pull herself carefully from him and their couch, to go to the bathroom, to sneak upstairs to the kitchen, where she grabs a glass of water and an apple, which she takes a halfhearted bite of. She returns quietly to the basement and unlocks the side door, makes herself comfortable on the small concrete stoop in the dim morning.

It’s raining.

El likes the rain. There’s enough of an overhang off the second story roof to keep her dry. She’s wearing soft sweatpants that Nancy gave her, and a hugely oversized t-shirt from Hopper. It’s the best set of pajamas she owns—hand-me-downed, and holey, and worn, and comfortable. She rolls the hems of her sweatpants higher, and scoots her feet forward, relishing the feel of the cool rain on her bare feet.

Her toes get muddy. A piece of grass sticks stubbornly to the side of her foot. She rescues a worm from the hard concrete of the patio.

The sun peeks through the nearby trees.

“El,” Mike says, eventually, opening the back door and sticking his head through. He sounds a little panicked, and a little amused, and a little like he can’t quite tell which one he wants to be. “There you are.”

She nods.

He steps fully outside and shuts the door. He nudges her over, and sits down next to her, and they lean into one another like magnets. He’s still wrinkly from sleep--there’s a pink line on his cheek, and his shirt is twisted, and one sock is almost falling off.

It takes her a moment to realize that he’s holding something.

He digs a spoon into the bowl on his lap. “Hungry?”

El peers into the bowl. It’s a waffle sandwich, with three healthy scoops of ice cream in the middle. Neapolitan, so there’s a little bit of everything. There are sprinkles, too, rainbow ones, and it’s topped with a healthy layer of syrup.

“Erica says it counts as breakfast food if there’s syrup on it,” Mike says, holding a spoonful out to her.

And El doesn’t cry—she almost cries, and there’s another word that she knows, overwhelmed, and also enamored, and maybe just happy.

They share ice cream and waffles for breakfast. It starts to rain hard enough that it sneaks into Mike’s socks, even though he’s got his legs tucked up safely under the protection of the roof.

“Ugh,” he says.

“I like it, the rain,” El says. “I found you in the rain.”

“I found you in the rain. All muddy and scared and weird.”

She bumps his shoulder into hers. “Mouth breather.”

He blows her hair back from her face. He smells like chocolate, like morning breath. It surprises her, how some things still feel novel, even after so much time. A cold bowl of sickeningly sweet ice cream and syrup for breakfast. The rain on her skin. A friend, and a shoulder to lean on.

Mike kisses her temple, and grumbles about his socks, and El thinks, yeah, happy is just the right word.

#Stranger Things #Eleven #Mike Wheeler #Mike and Eleven #you know it's for real when I post an AO3 link!!!!!!!!! I hope you guys like it #it's taken me so long and I'm so Excited to write for them???#I'm still a little nervous please be gentle #and it's so fluffy that it's kind of gross SORRY #Mina writes fic #yay here's some stranger things fic #I read through again cause I had to fix all the missing italics and I promise I'm not dunkin on Dustin I love that dude

39 notes · View notes