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whump-town · 3 years

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You Dance With Tears In Your Eyes

Summary: a college AU set up in the late 80s/early 90s with football star and quarterback Derek Morgan and his secret boyfriend Hotch-- it's not a happy story but I don't think I really have to warn you guys about that anymore

Also, a little based on a story my grandmother told me about my great uncle and his partner. Never met my great uncle but everyone says I'm a lot like him, I think they just mean gay but don't know how to say it

Warnings: homophobia, violence, racism *I mean it when I say homophobia*

Pairing: Derek Morgan/Aaron Hotchner

@yourlocalheartbreaker

The title is from Frank Ocean's song Self Control

Now and then you miss it, sounds make you cry Some nights you dance with tears in your eyes I came to visit, 'cause you see me like a UFO That's like never, 'cause I made you use your self-control And you made me lose my self-control, my self-control

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Living shouldn’t be reduced down to what it is, the bare bones of things that don’t even make Derek Morgan who he is. He lives by them anyways, stupid rules. Social norms, Aaron always clarifies because even when those silly rules drown them Aaron needs to be concise. Social norms dictate every inch of life and for once Derek wishes he were the type of person who could be given that inch and take a mile. They’re the reason he can’t hold his boyfriend’s hand in public. Why he can’t kiss Aaron on New Years’ and why he is reduced down to loving his roommate. Why, at this rate, he’ll never marry or adopt children, or why he could lose any career he goes into because some nosy asshole finds out his partner isn’t a woman. And, yes, he knows there are anti-discriminatory laws but he’s a black gay man. The world is stacked against him.

It makes him so angry. He’s blinded by the irrational of it all, why nothing can just be simple for them. Aaron tries to comfort him but Derek’s anger scares him, he doesn’t understand it. Aaron has long lost the ability to decipher the complexity of human emotions. Still flinches at loud noises like he’s expecting each bump to be accompanied by the pain that laced his childhood and has to ask, around every turn, if Derek’s angry with him. He can’t tell. Everything looks like anger. With Derek, it frequently is. They cope in very different ways, Aaron chooses nothing. Shutting down all his emotions until he cracks and that’s worse. It’s worse than Derek’s anger. That doesn’t mean Derek doesn’t hate the way he quakes with fury. If not because it feels childish to be blinded by emotions then because it scares Aaron.

There are a million other things, at twenty there always is. It’s his philosophy class with all this bullshit reading he doesn’t understand. He has to ask Aaron for help and Aaron has to ask him for help with things too but it makes Derek feel stupid. It’s philosophy, it can’t be that hard. That’s the same way Aaron feels about calculus. There’s maintaining rent and going grocery shopping and football (games, practice, gym, and training).

College had been a learning curve. Getting up at four in the morning to go to the gym for football had been the hardest thing in the world without his mother flicking his bedroom lights on and off or Desiréecoming in to smack him in the face with a pillow. There’s no one in the entire world in charge of getting him out of his bed other than him and, in his freshman year, while he had thought sleeping on that impossibly hard mattress would leave much to be desired, and it did, he found himself glued to his every morning. Not wanting to leave the safety of its flimsy comfort.

Sharing an apartment worked wonders, having a workaholic boyfriend was really the best trick. An unexpected answer to his problems but, also, a very cute one. He managed to add one person to the list of people that cared about where he was, that made sure he got up in time to make it to the gym and practice, and asked if he had a bad day or rub at his sore muscles.

Derek rolls over in bed, not as surprised as he should be to find the other half empty. “Aaron?” He still searches, runs his hand over the sheets as if he doesn’t know that if Aaron were in the bed he’d be right there. Hogging the bed and the blankets, pressed up against Derek’s back snoring like there’s no tomorrow. “Aaron?” Derek sits up and squints, grimaces at the light trailing in from the open door.

Aaron’s hunched over the beginnings of an essay, pen ink smeared across his left palm and steadily chugging along. He can write a full essay in the span of a night, five hours for about 3,000 words but if it’s a short synopsis sort of thing then about an hour. Despite this astonishing gift, Aaron still makes himself write all his essays weeks in advance and spends days upon days proofreading and combing through them for the tiniest mistakes. He’s a straight-A student so he’s doing something right but Derek gets mostly As too with far less hastily. Aaron is just extra.

Derek steps up to the desk, doesn’t make a sound as he leans up against the side of the chair. He wraps an around Aaron’s shoulders, leans down to kiss his head. “It’s two,” Derek informs him, “come to bed. Please?” Derek’s exhausted. He feels the regret of being pulled from his warm bed. Each second feels like twenty minutes, the world sluggish and too cold. He leans closer to Aaron, wrapping himself around him. “You always smell so good,” Derek whispers. He presses his face into Aaron’s hair, catching the mix of scents.

“Bakery,” Aaron grunts. His answer as simple and concise as he always is but even more so now that he’s tired. Aaron had worked an on-campus job for the entirety of their freshman year but after he got a scholarship that would roll over each year after that (so long as he kept a certain GPA) he started at a bakery down the street from their apartment. Derek had always liked the way Aaron smelled, gently masculine in a way only Aaron could ever be, and it had mixed with the scents of softly, perfectly made baked goods he works around all day. Cookies and cakes. He’s picked up a few tricks, Aaron can make moist cakes and perfectly round cookies but his bread… It’s the best food Derek has ever eaten.

The first time Aaron made bread Derek got down on one knee and confessed “Aaron Hotchner if I could marry you I’d take you to the damn chapel right now”. To which he was lovingly pushed and told to “shut up” but fresh-baked bread (even if Aaron had taken a single bite and concluded he hadn’t ratioed the sugar right) is heavenly. He’s gotten much better since and it’s really hot when he’s standing there in one of his dress shirts with the sleeves rolled up taking his stress out on the dough.

And he can’t tell anyone. Can’t boast about his hot ass boyfriend or the bread he makes from scratch.

Derek crouches down by the chair, knows he’s winning when Aaron breaks from his work just enough to glance at him out of the corner of his eye. “Can’t this wait just a little bit?” he asks. “I want to sleep with my boyfriend and he’s out here writing an essay that isn’t due tomorrow and likely isn’t due for the next month.” Derek reaches up, strokes a strand of hair back behind Aaron’s ear. His fingers graze an open wound and Aaron flinches away, the pain unexpected.

The bare bones of Aaron Hotchner are the along the same in principle to Dereks-- all things that he cannot change. Even as he stands as tall as Derek, their bodies are not the same. Derek is lean from years of football, his arms stretch his shirts. He looks like an athlete, has the benefit of the doubt whenever he’s around men. His teammates walk naked in front of him, no one for even a second thinks anything of it. No one suspects him of the atrocities he commits within his apartment.

Aaron doesn’t have any of that. His hair is a little too long, hangs down in his face when he’s studying or reading. Nothing about him is hulk-ish, he’s delicate with his movements and while it had been something that Derek was immediately drawn to it also draws other’s attention. Bad attention.

The same boys that play around with Derek, snapping towels at him while he walks, terrorize Aaron.

Derek wishes there was something he could do because if this were anyone else- if Aaron were a girl- he could. It wouldn’t be dangerous, not the sort of thing that would cost him his football scholarship or get him stabbed and left to bleed out in an alley or beat within an inch of his life. He would have to out himself to protect Aaron, to stand in front of his teammates that coach keeps calling his family and tell them to keep their fucking hands off his boyfriend. No. No, because something like that would be death. It would be worse than what’s already happening. And Aaron won’t allow it.

All Derek can do now is await the next attack, leave Aaron someplace to come home to. Give him a place to be, without burden, without hesitation. It’s not enough. They’ll kill him. Derek knows they will and it’ll be fun for them, only a matter of time.

“Come to bed with me,” Derek asks one more time. He doesn’t want to sound entirely needy but he really doesn’t want to go to bed without Aaron. The bed is lonely.

With a sigh, Aaron nods and Derek stands up, moves out of the way so Aaron can throw pens in his textbooks to mark his place. He steps away, from the desks, yawning as he makes lazy lurches forward towards their bedroom. “Turn the damn--” Derek rolls his eyes and reaches over and turns off Aaron’s desk lamp.

He passes Aaron in the doorway, places his hand on his hip, and reminds him of their objective. “Bed,” he mumbles and Aaron nods, jerking back to life as he steps further into the bedroom.

Derek lays down on the bed, crawls over to his side, and gets comfortable while he watches Aaron lazily strip down to his underwear. He gets caught in his head again for a moment, standing there just blankly staring at the dresser. Trying to figure out if he should put on pajamas or not. Derek calls his name and opens his arms. “Come here, “ he says and Aaron smiles. Sheepishly he comes, blushing as he crawls into the bed and where Derek instructs him. Humming, pleased, when Derek brings the blankets up over them. His eyes are already closed, head tucked under Derek’s chin when Derek wraps his arms around him. Pulls him close, tight.

He’d read in a book about deep pressure, its effect on the parasympathetic nervous system. He’d studied Development Psychology for some time, thought about all the ways in which it checked every box of his interests. He thinks he might want to be a teacher. That’s where he learned about the importance of the bond between guardian and child. Where he learned a hug sometimes really is a fantastic answer to the most startling problems.

It’s also the fastest way to get Aaron to sleep.

“Tighter,” Aaron whispers. He can’t quite feel Derek’s bones pushing into him, the hammer of his heart still too strong. He groans, choking up a laugh when Derek does just that. Holds him tight, makes him ache with the proximity, his inability to move.

Derek doesn’t mind, he’s got an armful of bakery boy. Couldn’t be more content with anything else.

0000000000000000

All things considered, Derek didn’t actually face that much scrutiny when he told his mother about the stupid twisting and turning feeling in his stomach when Martel Harris put his hand on Derek’s back. Leaned in too close and Derek could smell the cologne he wore and feel his proximity like lightning across his skin. He’d thought it was just nerves but at the end of a football match Martel lifted him up, threw him up in the air, and God that had felt better than flying. Lit him up inside like he was something, someone.

Desiréecried and Sarah wouldn’t speak to him for a week, opposite reactions because of the same fear. Their mother always said the two of them were two halves of the same coin-- too alike to get along and too different to ever get away. They came around, their mother’s gentle hand always the voice of reason. Three stubborn as all hell kids, too much like their father. That’s what she tells the three of them, tears swelling in her eyes as she proclaims that none of it matters. Orders Desiréeto stop crying tells Sarah to get over herself. She loved and married a black man despite the death threats that followed them everywhere they went. Despite the people that called it blasphemous. Called it sin. As if love could be such a thing.

Her mother told her not to come home, not to call. She wouldn’t do that to her son, she knows it won’t change a thing. There’s something about love that makes you blind to the small pains. She never looked back twice, never reached out to her parents. She chose love and Derek will too.

But that doesn’t mean the fear goes away.

It doesn’t actually change a damn thing.

Standing in the tiny bathroom attached to Derek’s friend’s bedroom Aaron leans over the sink, letting Derek rub

shampoo through his beer-drenched hair. “I just don’t understand why they have it out for you,” Derek mumbles, his voice has deepened, his frustration laced confusion evident. They’re in a rather suggestive position, Derek’s body keeping Aaron bent over the sink-- ass to groin. Aaron shoots him a look out of the corner, a pretty clear “look at us right now and take a guess at why”. Derek ignores the look, he’s rather good at ignoring Aaron’s sharp looks. He shakes his head, grumbling some more to himself and gently working the shampoo out of Aaron’s hair. He leans closer, Aaron groaning as the sink bites into his stomach, and smells his hair. Derek groans, unsatisfied with what he finds. “Smells like strawberries with a slight undertone of beer.”

Sounds about as close to a win as they’re getting. “That’s as good as it’s going to get,” Aaron mumbles, grateful when Derek sits back up. While Aaron’s come to terms with the particular hand he’s drawn in the terms of college social lives Derek isn’t as quick to accept. He feels hopeless, a feeling he thought he’d escaped upon leaving Chicago and everything Carl Buford. Aaron can’t stand to see that look, the one he’s grown so used to seeing after events like this.

He pulls a towel down off the rack, starts trying to dry his hair. This isn’t the reason he keeps his hair short but it’s certainly a helpful addition to keep in mind. “Don’t overthink it, it’s not your fault.” Aaron could go blue in the face trying to keep Derek from coming up with a mile-long list of all the reasons why that’s simply not true. The truth is, it’s really not Derek’s fault. No one even knows about them. Their relationship isn’t the reason why Hunter Whatever-his-last-name-is poured his cup of cheap, smells like piss, beer over Aaron’s head.

Not that what happened downstairs can just be so beautifully summed up as just that. Hunter Whatever-his-last-name-is had grabbed Aaron as he was walking in, doing as Derek instructed by coming in the screened-in door at the side of the house. “Who’s dick did you come to suck?” and Hunter Whatever-his-last-name-is cupped Aaron’s cheek. Dug his thumb into the wound he created and smiled, grinned happily at the sight of Aaron trying so hard to getaway. Hunter’s grip relaxed and as soon as it did Aaron was blinking the beer out of his eyes. “Get the fuck away from me,” Hunter shoved him, hard. “Faggot.” Aaron hit his hip on the counter but said nothing, he’ll leave the bruise for Derek to find another night.

“I should say something to that pig,” Derek’s distracting himself with putting everything back in the bathroom the way it was before they came in. Straightening out the rug and fixing the other towels. “Let me catch him trying something--”

Aaron can’t take it, all of Derek’s pointless anger, his stupid guilt. He’s just had beer poured down his back. He can’t even accept Derek’s sweatshirt to replace his smelly shirt, can’t walk out of here wearing his boyfriend’s sweatshirt without getting shanked. The beer smells awful but he’s fairly certain getting stabbed is a whole lot worse. Derek doesn’t have to deal with that. No one messes with him because no one thinks to. “It’s because of how I look!” He’s shaking, bangs hanging down in his face still damp but no longer dripping water down his face. “You? You look normal. You get to walk around with all your football buddies, no one bats an eye at the quarterback, Derek. At least you like women too!” He points to himself, digs his finger into his own chest. “Me? I look the part. I can’t even pretend. Everyone knew, the whole world knew before I did!”

Derek just stands there, caught in the headlights trying to figure out what to say.

He wipes his eyes, jerks away from the hand Derek tries to put on his arm. “No. No!” he can’t do touch right now. Not like this, not when his body won’t hold still and his knees keep trying to buckle. It happens, this panicked cornered feeling, and usually Derek would hold him down. They’d sit on the floor and Derek would hold his arms down to his chest and they’d just sit like that until Aaron can breathe again. Bones against bones until Aaron feels the fractures of his humanity coming back together but for now, right now? He can’t do it. He can’t be touched.

“I want to go home,” he manages, lower lip quivering despite how much he wants to hold it together. “Please take me home.”

Derek just stares at him, stands there, and watches Aaron cross his arms over his chest and curl in, trying to squeeze the panic out himself. “Okay,” he caves. “Go on, I’ll follow you down.” It’s degrading, humiliating the fact that they can’t even leave this room together. Aaron’s upset and Derek can’t do anything about that right now. It’s not safe until they’re home.

It’s never safe.

With his hair dripping into his face Aaron stumbles in the dark. His shirt is soaking wet, stuck to his skin, and freezing him as tramples down a thin stretch of grass between houses. He wishes he had Derek’s sweatshirt. Something warm. At least something to cover his arms. It had been a stupid idea coming here right after getting off work. The bakery is so impossibly hot and after getting off his shift all he wanted was to be with Derek. To sit in whatever little room Derek could guarantee was safe and drink whatever cheap crap Derek brings him from downstairs. Just sit and listen to the music filtering in from downstairs.

“Hotchner!”

He freezes-- a deadly mistake.

“Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

He knows what happened to Derek. In the hush of the night, laying facing each other in the dark, Derek had told him. Each word a puff of hot air against Aaron’s face, hitting the hot tears rolling down his cheeks. It was supposed to be even, Derek’s intention was to express alikeness. He’d seen the scars, no matter careful Aaron was about the light when he thought things were headed in the direction of nakedness, Derek saw them. He hadn’t said anything that time, run his thumb over the one on Aaron’s chest but kept up his ministrations. Acted as if he didn’t until that moment in bed.

Aaron still hasn’t found the courage to be honest about his own childhood.

Derek comes around the back, half-expecting tonight to go like it always does. Except Aaron hasn’t had any alcohol and he doesn’t come stumbling around the porch to greet Derek from the darkness. There are no stolen kisses or hushed laughter. No Aaron. Derek has half a mind to shout out for him, he couldn’t have gone off far, but then he sees him. Derek sees them. The moonlight shining down casting this awful hue between the houses. He sees Hunter draw his foot back and he can’t hold it back. Won’t let this go on. “Hunter!”

The second that Hunter’s attention is away from him, Aaron slumps to the ground. His blood smeared against the house. He’s still breathing, awful ragged breathes that shoot blood off his lips. He sees Derek in the moonlight, rushing past him. Aaron wishes he wasn’t a coward. Between each blood speckled breathe, he wishes that he wasn’t a coward and had just told Derek. That way he would understand Aaron can take it. He spent his childhood taking beatings for just being alive. At least now it was something coherent. Being beaten for being gay requires at least knowing something about him. His father couldn’t even bother with that.

But Derek doesn’t understand.

Aaron never told him.

He’s pulled down, out of orbit, and back to Earth when Derek squats down beside him, cradles his head in his hands. “Aaron?” he calls out, but Aaron can’t force his eyes to move from the dirt. “Can I--” Derek doesn’t know where to put his hands. If he can put his hands anywhere. “I’m going to-- to lift you, okay?” It’s not a matter of if he’s strong enough. He benches more than his own body weight and that’s significantly more than Aaron’s. He’s just not sure if Aaron’s going to fight him and if Aaron fighting him is good or bad.

“Lean forward,” Derek whispers, cupping the back of Aaron’s head and directing it into his shoulder. He turns, manipulates both their bodies and winces each time, no matter how gentle and calculated his movements are, Aaron still cries out. He still hurts him. “I’m sorry,” becomes his mantra. The only words he can manage out around the tears, the only thing he can get past the thickness in his throat.

Sorry he didn’t stop this sooner.

Sorry that he keeps hurting Aaron.

Sorry they couldn’t be other people. In other places. In another time.

Sorry that it’s all for nothing, that there’s no way this ends well for either of them. They’re going to end up dead or alone but certainly separate.

The second Derek has him in his arms Aaron grips his shirt tightly in one blood-stained hand. He rests his head on Derek’s shoulder, soaking in his warmth. “Home?” he asks, voice breaking.

“We’re going home.”

Aaron wakes up alone in bed.

He’s completely naked, laying with three blankets pulled up over him. One that he recognizes is from the living room. There’s one of Derek’s homemade sock heating pads digging into his sore ribs where he rolled over onto it, he can feel more of them underneath him. He’s been laying here for a while. None of the socks are warm anymore. He’s on Derek’s side of the bed, facing his nightstand, and watches Derek’s blurry alarm clock change time. 1:36 passing to 1:37 to 1:38 just waiting for the fuzzy fingers in his brain to ease up. To allow him to think.

It’s Saturday.

Derek’s off at a football game, not due back for hours. Not until tonight, long after Aaron’s gone to bed.

For an overwhelming moment, his eyes fill with tears, desperation, and solitude creating an awful twist in his stomach. He doesn’t want to be alone. Protectively he draws his knees up, tries to knot himself up, and create a mangled ball. His heart picks up, anxiety increasing as he lays there. He wants Derek. He doesn’t want to be alone.

On the phone’s first rings he curls in tighter, overwhelmed by his own crying that he presses his face into Derek’s pillow and ignores it. He’ll let the machine catch it-- that’s the whole reason Derek bought it. With a sharp end, muffled by the blanket he pulls up over his head, a voice comes through. The machine catching the voice mail.

“Aaron, sweetheart? This is Fran, Derek’s mom? I’m sorry to keep calling sweetie but Derek’s awake now. He’s worried, says you should have woken up by now. I can send Sarah to come get you, Derek told me what happened last night. Please call me back? I hope you’re okay.”

He lays in confused silence, trying to process why Derek’s mother would call him. She calls all the time and occasionally he answers to tell her she’s just missed Derek-- he’s off with friends, at the gym, or at class. They know of one another Derek talks about him to Fran as much as Derek talks about Fran to him. But Fran call him? That’s never happened.

Then he catches it-- “Derek’s awake now”-- and he sits up. Pushed from his mind is the pain, his ribs scream and the blood he can see he’s left on Derek’s pillow. Derek’s awake now. Hunter Whatever-his-last-name-is is on the football team. An offensive lineman. A guy whose entire job is to protect Derek but now he knows, he has to know.

Derek’s awake now.

He throws himself out of bed, clipping his already sore hip on the nightstand and staggering for the phone. Tears spilling over his face. What happened while he was sleeping? What did Hunter do?

Fran picks up on the first ring. “Aaron, is that you sweetheart?”

He sniffles, rubbing at his nose with his finger. “Yes, ma’am.” He knows she can hear him crying, his choked sobs as he falls in the direction of the closes chair.

“You had me worried sick,” she says and he can hear that unmistakable fondness in her chastising tone. That must be where Derek gets it from. It makes him smile, even if it’s weak. “How are you feeling, baby? Derek told me what happened. I’m sorry. If I see that boy I’ll wring his neck. Give him a piece of my mind for bothering my boys.”

He just nods, despite the fact that she can’t see that. He knows he should answer her question but he has no idea what he feels. Nothing. He feels nothing as he sits here holding his breath as he waits to ask about Derek. To know what happened because of him. “Is Derek okay? What happened?”

Hunter told a few other team members what he saw. Most brushed him off, Hunters a douchebag, and they like Derek. Others just hate Aaron enough for it to matter to them, enough to what to do something. Or, rather, not do anything. It only took one tackle, a limb bent the wrong way under the weight of three boys.

It was Derek’s knee. A career-ending injury.

A scholarship losing injury.

“Can I--” Aaron chokes. He’s afraid of what happens if Fran says no. “Can I see him?”

“Of course you can.”

Aaron turns away Fran’s offer of a car ride but Desirée still shows up.

He answers the door in a sweatshirt and jeans and knows immediately who it is when he opens it up. Desirée just stares at him for a moment, he can feel all of the seventeen-year-old judgment sizing him up. “You look… awful,” she tells him. She lets herself in, walking past Aaron with one more look. “Mom says I can drive but if you want to do it I have to let you.” She puts the car keys on the counter, sighs as she looks around. “Derek says…” she chews her lip, as she sizes him up again.

He wonders how intimidating he could possibly look to her. Hunched over and wearing a sweatshirt that’s too big for him.

“Would you teach me how to make bread?”

He can’t help but smile, nods without any hesitation.

“Really?”

Aaron nods, “it’s not that hard. More of a-- a waiting game. You have to give the yeast time to rise.”

Desirée has no idea what that means but she nods, “cool.”

He lets her drive. Mostly because his vision is swimming but because he tosses the keys back to her, a clear okay that she can drive, and she beams at him. She likes him. That’s so weirdly important to him.

She has to wake him up when they get to the hospital. The first thing she tells Fran is that he let her drive and Fran smiles at him, shakes her head, and says “you must have a death wish.”

Aaron blushes under the attention, eyes falling to the floor. He barely manages, “drives just like Derek.”

Fran laughs, nodding her head, “she does. Too heavy on the brakes.” Her smile fades a little when she sees Aaron’s sweatshirt, recognizes it from home. Knows it’s Dereks. “Will you let someone look at that,” she asks, too many of his wounds look deep. Cuts that need stitches and a nasty black eye that she knows he hasn’t iced. She’s reminded a little too quickly that Aaron and Derek are still very much kids. Tricky kids. Too old to be told what to do but still wanting direction.

Aaron nods, shying away again from the attention, but nods.

They leave him when the nurse steps in, doesn’t need to say a word. Fran sees him hesitate to lift his shirt and knows. Derek had managed to tell her most of what happened but the morphine made his speech slur, made him emotional. He’d sobbed, high and in pain. Told her what he’d seen the night before. Hunter hitting and kicking at Aaron, the way Aaron slumped forward. How he’d carried Aaron home. Washed the blood off him with a rag. She knew what was under Aaron’s shirt wasn’t something for them to see.

Derek wakes sometime in the middle of the night. The drugs from the surgery are wearing off and with it his blissful escape from the pain. Licking his dry lips he looks around the room, spotting his sisters and frowning as he tries to find his mother. She’s leaning over another cot, on the other side of the room. He watches her, hears the familiar chorus of Blackbird, and watches her stroke Aaron’s forehead, following the line of the relaxed brow.

It makes him smile, his mother used to sing Whitney Houston to him and his sisters to sleep. He told her about Aaron’s obsession with The Beatles, how of all the records the two of them own that’s the only one Aaron will play. Desiréebought the album, his mother told him a week later. She saved up to get it and was eager for her moment to speak to Aaron about it. To be able to befriend her brother’s boyfriend. That’s about the same time Fran began to hound him about bringing Aaron home, to Chicago. She wanted to meet him.

Fran kisses Aaron’s forehead, waiting another moment just to make sure Aaron’s truly asleep before she stands. “He was having a bad dream,” she tells Derek. In truth, he’d been crying in his sleep. In pain, she could tell, and restless. He’d settled with her there and it made her sad to think that maybe he’d just grown too used to sleeping beside someone else. She’d pulled his blankets closer and sang, just as she did with the other three when they were little. Even when they’re twenty, it still works like a charm.

Fran smiles, tries to soothe Derek’s nerves so he doesn’t worry about Aaron. He’s fine for now, sleeping soundlessly. She sits down on the edge of Derek’s bed, cups his cheek, and asks “how are you feeling?”

Derek just looks over to Aaron, his pale parted lips parted and the bandages holding him together. “Is he okay?” He’d been so scared last night watching Aaron sleep. No amount of Tylenol was doing a thing for his pain. Several times he’d sat up in the night and searched for a pulse, counted the far too many seconds separating each of his breathes. Derek thought Aaron might die right there beside him but he’d been more afraid of what might have happened if they went to the hospital.

Fran sighs, stupid love. It’s cute, she has to admit, but so senseless. “He’s sleeping, he’s okay.” She tries to redirect him, “how do you feel?”

Derek looks back over to Aaron. He looks. There’s more than just those pale lips and the bandages. It’s Aaron. He’s sleeping under multiples blankets and looks like himself. How he always looks when Derek rolls over to face him. He believes his mother, she never lies. “My leg hurts,” he whispers, voice cracking. It’s like the entire thing is pulsing, a continuous stabbing feeling. He cries but not from the pain. They betrayed him. The people he so stupidly thought of as his friends. They hurt him like they’d been hurting Aaron.

He should have known better.

He shouldn’t have been so stupid.

This is his fault.

“Derek?” Aaron sits up, hesitating under the combined attention of Derek and Fran.

Fran stands up, nods Aaron over. “Sit with him,” she offers. “I’ll go get a nurse.”

Aaron nods, still waiting, still hesitating to be where he wants to be. Derek motions him closer, manages to move his body over in the bed. Just enough room for Aaron to squeeze in beside him.

“I don’t think I”m supposed to--”

“Lay down.” Derek can see all the bruises and cuts up close again. He brushes his fingers through the hair above Aaron’s ear, turning his palm to his cheek. Gently tracing the outline of a bandage. “Runaway with me,” he whispers. He thought about it all night long while he watched Aaron sleep. “There’s only four more weeks left of the semester.” Aaron’s smart, he’ll get in anywhere he applies. “We’ll transfer someplace else, anywhere else.”

Aaron frowns, he doesn’t like the idea of this impulsivity. Mostly the number of uncertainties that it creates and the questions. Where will they go? How will they know it’s safe? Are they dropping out? Where will they transfer to? What Aaron can’t get into the college that Derek does?

“Hey,” Derek hushes, he strokes his thumb across Aaron’s cheekbone. “Hey, whatever you’re thinking stop. I’m not leaving, not going anywhere you don’t. We do this together, alright?” He smiles, leans forward, and softly knocks their foreheads together. “Four weeks and all of summer break, okay? That’s plenty of time for a smarty pants like you to figure out where we can go.” It had taken less time for Aaron to conclude Illinois was close enough to home for him to go if something happened to his mother but too far away for her or his brother to come to him.

They’ll figure it out.

“Runaway with me?” he asks one more time.

“Okay.”

#criminal minds fanfiction #aaron hotchner #derek morgan #hotchgan #mortch #hurt hotch #tw homophobia

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theartofimagining13 · 3 years

Photo

WRITTEN BY: A.Wölf.

BASED ON: Imagine: After a big discussion with your fiancé Tom...

CHAPTER 3 (FINAL): THE WEDDING GUEST

PREVIOUS CHAPTERS: 1 DISENGAGEMENT | 2 THE TALE OF THE OFFENSE

TEASER | POSTER

As Pedro had assured, Tom did in fact forgive my little indiscretion. Not without giving me a hard time and making me swear one million times that I would never do it again, of course. It was like a very long trial and I was waiting to be sentenced by my fiancé. But there are always tiny holes in the law that defense attorneys creep into in order to save the guilty from the death penalty. That’s how I was absolved from my sins; my closing argument went something like this:

“It was a one-time thing. I was blinded by anger. And, technically, it wasn’t cheating. I had left my engagement ring on the bedside table.”

Hey, all is fair in love and war; even cynicism.

“And where did you spend the night anyway, Thomas?”

Touché.

Where had he spent the night indeed and why would I believe him? Implying that he could’ve been with someone else as well while I was at home, alone all night, was what finally made him reconsider everything. I obviously snapped when I woke up in the morning and he wasn’t there and… the rest is history. What about Pedro? Well, men understand men. However, Tom never wanted to see him again and they hadn’t spoken since that day. Pedro was found guilty and that friendship was sentenced to death. Case closed. Jury, pound the gavel.

I kept my promise and behaved. I didn’t see nor talked to Pedro the weeks leading up to the wedding, and Tom was obviously a bit paranoid and constantly checking on me. The more I behaved, the more he believed in me again.

The sound of a mug being placed on the coffee table in front of me suddenly brought me back to my living room and the book in my hands. I glanced up to see Tom sitting across from me with a mug of his own.

“Thanks.” I said with a smile as I reached for the hot chocolate he had been kind enough to make.

“Sure.”

I could see that he was nervous. He was sitting on the edge of the couch, just staring at the hot beverage in his hands. His lips parted and closed a couple times until he cleared his throat.

“How are you feeling?” He asked.

“What do you mean?”

“D-do… do you still want to do this?”

I felt a pinch of guilt in the pit of my stomach at the vulnerability in his tone. It resembled a kid’s after they’ve been scolded and traumatized.

“Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that?” I calmly inquired.

He sighed and placed the mug on the coffee table and hesitated for a while but finally looked me in the eye.

“More than ever.” He said.

I swallowed hard.

“I just-” He carried on. “I just need to know that I’m not pressuring you because… maybe… I proposed too soon and that had something… or a lot to do with what-”

“Tom,” I had to stop him. “You cannot blame yourself for that.” I closed and left the book on the couch to get closer to him and hold his hand. “I made a mistake, and I am here because I want to be. That’s… if you’ll still take me, of course.”

I felt him holding my hand tighter before he leaned in and kissed me tenderly, almost thankful.

“You’re not going to run away on our wedding day, are you?” He half-teased.

I giggled, bit my bottom lip and shook my head as I leaned in for a second kiss. Maybe the Pedro situation still needed closure. Maybe this was it.

Maybe it was wedding jitters.

Someone from the catering service came to my table and whispered something in my ear that sent a chill up my spine.

I gave a discreet nod and then looked at my brand new husband and smiled for him. I waited a couple minutes and excused myself to go to the ladies’ room. I walked in a different direction; towards the parking lot of our wedding venue where a black pickup truck flashed its headlights at me.

“You have got to be kidding me.” I mumbled to myself as I ventured into the woods surrounding the parking lot and up a small hill where the truck was semi-hidden.

I was in a wedding dress and heels, for fuck’s sake. Of course I was mad.

I opened the passenger door and cocked my head at the sight of Pedro in a dark suit, white shirt, undone bowtie, behind the wheel and with beer number who knows in hand, since there were several empty glass bottles scattered on the backseat.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I said while folding my arms across my chest.

“Get in. Close the door.” He demanded.

Once I did, and looked ahead, I realized why he had chosen to park on the small hill. You could see the whole venue from there.

“Are you seriously watching my wedding from the parking lot with a portable beer cooler like a fucking redneck who didn’t get tickets to a concert?”

He ignored my insult and smiled. Mischievously like only he could.

“I couldn’t miss it.”

“If Tom sees you here, the only thing I’ll be getting on my wedding night is a divorce.”

“You look beautiful.”

Pedro was definitely tipsy. I had just had my first dance with my new husband, and here I was, ten minutes later, in my imprudent lover’s car.

“Pedro, what do you want?” I calmly asked.

“I guess I came here to say… congratulations.” He added with laziness on the last word and while leaning against the car seat headrest. “I sent you guys a gift with the waiter. The one with the gold polka dots. It doesn’t have a note.”

I frowned. Was he crazy?

“Thank you.” I cleared my throat. “I have to go back. You should leave, Pedro. This won’t end well if anyone sees us.”

I reached for the door handle but before I could get out, he took my left hand in his. When I looked at him, he was staring at my engagement and wedding ring set while deep in thought.

“Would you have said yes if I had given you one of these?”

I gave him a don’t-even-go-there kind of look. I hadn’t seen this man since our last encounter that had ended in tragedy and drama over not only Tom finding out about the affair but also Pedro’s strong aversion to any type of commitment. Some people were allergic to shellfish; my lover was allergic to love.

“I thought you didn’t do rings…” I said.

“You do know why I said that the other day, right?” He asked.

I sighed with frustration and moved my hand away.

“I don’t know… because you hate the idea of marriage?”

“No, mi amor.” He chuckled. “Because I am not the man for you.”

I was starting to get mad.

“You’re too good for me.” He added.

I was mad. He “wasn’t the man for me” and apparently not good enough for me but he sure could fuck me, the shameless son of a bitch, who also added,

“I know what you’re thinking but… things aren’t black or white.”

Something finally clicked and the things Pedro had said in the past filled my mind. “Women like you”, “I feel like Beauty and the Beast.”, “Tom is the man you marry”, “I’m not the man for you.”, and the sight of him now; absolute resignation making peace with the fate he knew we could only share. Or he was settling for.

This man truthfully couldn’t see his own beauty but seemed overwhelmed by mine, which perhaps, I wasn’t seeing either.

“So, the shades of gray are your many insecurities, is that what you’re trying to say?” I asked.

“I constantly ask myself how you ended up in bed with me.” He took a big swig of beer.

“Well, maybe you won’t have to anymore.” I said with a sarcastic tone.

Pedro got closer to me. He stared at my lips and swallowed hard. I knew he wanted to kiss me but he was restraining himself to somehow “respect” my wedding at little bit. The thought of me in this ethereal white dress, wildly kissing this currently scruffy-looking-fellow, was inexplicably appealing. But I, for once, kept still.

Let him suffer now.

“I will be here until you no longer want me.” He murmured. “Until you tell me you’re sick of me.”

I was furious. I stared straight ahead and saw Tom on the dance floor with a big smile on his face and realized many, many things. Were it not for these deep-rooted insecurities Pedro lived his life with, perhaps, we could’ve had it all. This is all I could ever be to him, a lover, a trophy of some sort because he thought he was unworthy of me. Ironically enough, he was so used to that belief that he would never risk taking a bigger step with me.

If I was such an “accomplishment” for him, then why wasn’t he willing to do something greater to keep me in his life? Truth is, I would’ve loved to be Pedro’s girlfriend at least. I loved the sound of that, even the aesthetic. But that was never even a possibility because he would always self-sabotage. And there Tom was, dancing, celebrating and showing the world he loved me and had me in his life, and all Pedro wanted was a smidgen of that.

I was only an ego boost, and a woman Pedro could not handle in the long run.

I forced a smile for him and got out of the car.

People accept the love they think they deserve, and Pedro, Tom, and I were playing by this rule that formed a triangle of tough love. I wasn’t so different to Pedro. I had sabotaged my healthy relationship. Did I feel like I didn’t deserve it then? Did Tom feel like he deserved my betrayal?

In this moment of clarity, I was sure now that I’d either have to break the chain or force therapy on each of us. I closed the door and started to walk away but Pedro called out my name as he rolled down the window to speak one more time.

“Give me a call when you come back from your honeymoon.”

I half-smiled and walked away.

Had I finally learned?

#IN HIS ARMS #Pedro Pascal #Tom Hiddleston #Fanfic #Fiction #Fanfiction

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genderbinaryisforlosers · 3 years

Note

everyone on the carte blanche for the ask meme

everyone? oh boy this is gonna get long ajfhdsf

JUNO

First impression: i, like a lot of people who get into the podcast without knowing a great deal about it, was expecting at most an ambiguously bisexual angst machine with a closely-guarded heart of gold. juno being an explicitly bisexual genderqueer angst machine is perhaps the most pleasant surprise of my life. the angst machine heart of gold characters were kind of my type at the time, so i loved him right away

Impression now: every time i think about juno’s arc from depressed mess held together by bad coping mechanisms, safety pins, and a few good strong puns into someone who can talk about his feelings, feel comfortable about being happy, and recognise when he needs to change, i want to cry about it a little bit. the depth of my love for juno steel has only grown along with him

Favourite moment: juno has a lot of great one-liners and i’m still a big fan of the “on the other hand i wasn’t wearing a watch” bit and who can forget such classics as juno finally deciding to stop moping over nureyev and move on only for him to open the door to his apartment and find nureyev sitting in the dark dramatically, but honestly nothing will ever hit me harder than his sudden, pissed-off declaration of “i can’t die yet, i still have shit to do!” in promised land. god.

Idea for a story: oh i have so many and i want to write most of them so no spoilers, but juno accidentally kidnaps a baby during a carte blanche heist and shenanigans ensue

Unpopular opinion: obviously we all know he’s dummy thicc but i feel like a lot of people forget he’s an actual genius, like the stuff he notices and how he strings it together is sometimes so obscure and he’s almost always right. oh, also juno is not skinny and i will not be taking criticism on that

Favourite relationship: this is so tough because every dynamic is so good, but i think it has to be juno and rita. those two are so good! the best best friends in the world!! i’m really a sucker for any dynamic that’s ridiculously in-sync so i loved these two as soon as juno saw rita’s notes in prince of mars and went “makes perfect sense to me” (which it probably didn’t, because rita, but he trusted that she knew what she was doing which is the important part)

Favourite headcanon: this isn’t really a headcanon but i still think about how juno is (was?) deathly afraid of heights but when he heard rex glass coming he still attempted to climb out of the window. either his aversion to working with dark matters/other people in general was so strong is overrided his fear, or his office was actually on the ground floor. not sure which of these is funnier.

NUREYEV

First impression: we’ve all seen the memes about nureyev knowing juno steel for one (1) day and deciding to Risk It All by leaving him with his name, look at this Hopeless Romantic, this utter DISASTER of a homosexual. the fact the very next time we hear from nureyev (at least directly) he’s patiently waiting in juno’s dark apartment to surprise him with a heist definitely supports this image.

Impression now: even after literally being inside peter’s head, i feel like we didn’t get a real sense of who he is until man in glass, where we find out he aggressively compartmentalises everything that causes him stress. he’s also distinctly someone who’s had his heart broken before, i think, which makes those first appearances of his very strange. but it does remind me of what juno says about diamond, and how he decided to provide the trust first and wait for the trustworthiness to grow in (only to get severely hurt), and i think that’s exactly what nureyev did. i am also... very uneasy with how suspicious he’s behaving this season because obviously i want to believe he’ll sort it all out and not betray the crew but... oof

Favourite moment: the beginning of what lies beyond pt1 where he’s affectionately bullying juno into taking care of himself? cleared my crops watered my skin etc etc etc

Idea for a story: i’d love to hear more about his past as a young thief idolising buddy and vespa (i can’t actually remember if that’s canon or fanon but anyway i wanna read it!)

Unpopular opinion: i think people often cling to an image of him that more resembles his first impressions in season 1 instead of seeing the depth that we’ve been given about his character in season 3

Favourite relationship: him and juno but honestly it’s a close call between them and his budding friendship with rita. even though she learned it by accident, his name is still a point of intimacy and it’s one less secret to keep around her which has to be a weight off his shoulders, at least a little? they seem like they could be really good friends once ultrabots is out of the way. juno steel love (and also bullying) zone activates whenever they’re together

Favourite headcanon: i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again - nureyev has never done a household chore in his goddamn life. he doesn’t know the water needs to be hot when you wash dishes.

RITA

First impression: honestly i’m not sure? i don’t remember having a big awareness of her in murderous mask but i remember loving her “note-taking” in prince of mars, i thought she sounded really fun and cute

Impression now: rita is really fun and cute, she’s also an extremely hardworking and dedicated woman who had the guts to throw in with a detective fired from the force and then invest all of her time and money into helping him help people.

Favourite moment: Rita Gets A Knife. enough said

Idea for a story: i don’t know honestly! i really struggle to write rita because her thought processes are so wild and i don’t think any story i could come up with would match mega ultrabots of cyberjustice.

Unpopular opinion: this shouldn’t be unpopular because juno steel himself shares this opinion but all future-jupeter headcanons are incomplete without rita also being a huge part of their lives

Favourite relationship: rita + franny 4ever obviously.. jk it’s juno & rita have you heard rita minute 3 they’re too adorable for this world. im still Soft over their conversation at the end of soul of the people when he said he couldn’t stay in hyperion anymore but he wouldn’t leave with the carte blanche if rita wasn’t coming because he was done leaving her behind, and she threw out all her hesitations on the spot and said call the big guy. speaking of, rita & jet are a close second. instant best friends i love them.

Favourite headcanon: i think this is basically canon now but rita being literally half the height of jet is so good

JET

First impression: “haha lorge funny man puts juno in the trash”

Impression now: jet sikuliaq is one of the dearest characters to me out of anything ever. he is a huge, menacing, polite, kind, sincere man who i would very much like to give me a hug. he’s the best aro ace in outer space and while being generally very levelheaded and straightforward, also takes every opportunity to fuck with juno because it’s very easy and very hilarious to him personally. he is everything my autistic acearo ass needed and i’m so glad to have him

Favourite moment: all of them every single one. him putting juno in the trash is of course a classic and every moment jet chooses to be funny makes my heart happy, but also every piece of genuine advice he gives. i’m a particular fan though of buddy recounting her years in the lighthouse and him saying he became concerned when she didn’t come downstairs at the usual time. “you took the door off its hinges.” “i was deeply concerned.” king of understatement

Idea for a story: again no spoilers for you but..... tools of rust time loop au

Unpopular opinion: this isn’t “unpopular” as much as it is unknown but jet is buddy’s queerplatonic partner and i will keep saying it until everyone believes it

Favourite relationship: jet and buddy,,, just everything about them. the way he suspects when she’s lying, the way she makes tea for him when she expects him to drop by. the fact he comes to check on her when she is 41 seconds late to the family meeting because it’s unlike her to be late and the last time she was late for something her brain was turning to radiation soup. but most especially the way she snaps at him to stay out of her business and he said he could not because he made her promise eight years ago to never stay out of the business of her health, no matter how many times she asked. they r literally in a qpr

Favourite headcanon: i don’t think this is true but i still think it would be funny if the ruby-7 used to be painted red but when jet got it he had it painted green because he Just Really Likes Green (as evidenced by his hovercycle). it’s very funny to me.

BUDDY

First impression: it’s been a minute since i relistened to time gone by but i’m pretty sure the first thing she ever says in the podcast is sliding up to depressed accidental whiskey thief juno and say “that’ll be ten million creds,” scaring the shit out of him, so needless to say i was in love instantly.

Impression now: my love for buddy aurinko has only grown and if it sounds like i already said that in this post it’s because i did about juno and it’s appropriate because the parallels are astounding. the heart of it all gave us such depth to buddy’s internal monologue and why she always sounds like she knows exactly what to say and what that’s like and honestly will i ever be over the heart of it all as an episode? unlikely. i think i’m gonna have a little piece of it in MY heart forever.

Favourite moment: everything she’s ever said is iconic as hell i especially like “in an impressive fit of hubris i’ve decided not to prepare my words for this vow” which made me laugh out loud but once again i must give it up for her iconic “I WANT TO LIVE” moment. honourable mentions to her taking rita out for ice cream and giving juno shooting lessons while she’s in her actual wedding gown. i love her

Idea for a story: buddy and vespa as sun/moon dieties.... that’s all

Unpopular opinion: stop drawing her with a fancy high-tech eye like the theia!! it canonically looks like garbage and it’s described in detail, please, i’m dying, also don’t minimise her scars you bastards

Favourite relationship: buddy and vespa invented romantic love and the entire carte blanche crew’s relationship to her is great but you know by now i’m a slut for buddy & jet out-of-this-world queerplatonic partners. the way she checks in on him during tools of rust to make sure he’s not relapsing and he comes to find her when she is 41 seconds late in the heart of it all to make sure she’s not having a heart problem!! it’s the trust,, the devotion,, the mortifying ordeal of being known

Favourite headcanon: she can sing. absolutely tears it up at karaoke. i’m right

VESPA

First impression: knife lesbian goes STAB. she will heal your wounds but she will be threatening to give you more the whole time

Impression now: she is extremely strong, heart-rendingly tender, and despite being in the older half of the carte blanche crew somehow has unmistakable little sister energy which makes her downright hilarious. i’m so glad she got to marry buddy and they’re official space wives now they’re so good for each other

Favourite moment: both from shadows in the ship, either “GUN!!” “KNIFE?!” (iconic) or when she clocks the dark matters drone pretending to be juno because it called her crazy and juno wouldn’t call her crazy. i’m always a sucker for “shapeshifter fails to fool mark because they Know Each Other Too Well” and it was just *chefs kiss* so good

Idea for a story: i really want to write something about when she was first staying at the lighthouse with buddy post-reunion, and getting to know jet and stuff. i think it would be cute

Unpopular opinion: i know vespa doesn’t canonically have lots of scarring but people who don’t draw her with scarring? cowards.

Favourite relationship: once again, although buddy and vespa invented romantic love, i just love the dynamic between vespa and juno so much. they’ve come so far with each other and their weird sibling dynamic gives me life. at the end of what lies beyond when juno says “we’re not gonna kill her, vespa” and instead of sounding full of Rage and Suspicion she’s like “whyyy notttt?” and he’s like “because i said so!” and that’s just good enough for her even if she’s a bit grumpy about it. i love it.

this took.. a hot minute to do! jshkfjsdgsa thank you dyl ily <3

#michaelburnnham #riley replies #be gay do crimes in space #the penumbra #juniverse

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gb-fics · 3 years

Text

Dressed in Confidence

Fanfiction:

Kiryuuin Shou x Kyan Yutaka (Golden Bomber)

Note: So, you might have seen the self-cover Shou shared yesterday and it inspired me to write a fic right away. For the context: The character originally performing the song has a magic suit that makes him confident and popular with women. Please, don’t question how it works, we’ll just pretend a suit can magically change Shou’s appearance and personality in this fic ^-^ Also, if you haven’t seen the video, please check it out, because he is gorgeous in it and maybe it will make the story seem a little less random ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgzL_Ccmr1Y

„Just go over and talk to her already”, Yutaka urged quietly.

He didn’t know whom of the girls Shou had set his eyes on, but the glances he kept sneaking at the group of women opposite to their booth at the bar were more than obvious. Yutaka had waited to speak up until Jun and Kenji had went over to the counter to secure new drinks for themselves though. Shou was naturally self-conscious and Yutaka hadn’t meant to make him uncomfortable in front of the others. But his silent longing was becoming hard to bear.

“I can’t just do that”, Shou protested. Obviously, he knew what Yutaka was talking about immediately. He didn’t even seem surprised that Yutaka had noticed. “I’m not some kind of gigolo.”

Yutaka frowned. Although he was pretty good at seeing Shou through, he sometimes didn’t understand his reasoning anyway.

“Chatting up girls in bars and being a gigolo are two totally different things.”

Next to him Shou squirmed on the bench seat.

“I just don’t have that kind of confidence”, he whined.

“You are handsome, famous and you have money. Women have every reason to be interested in you. So, pull yourself together.”

Yutaka had lost count of how often he had given Shou similar pep talks already.

“I’m not”, Shou said right away. He cleared his throat. “I mean, I’m famous. And I do have money. But I’m not handsome.”

It was difficult to come up with the right reply to that. Yutaka never found the right words to talk about Shou’s looks.

“You should let them decide for themselves”, he pointed out.

Shou shifted his weight again. He reached down to check for the bag he kept on the floor between his legs. He had kept checking for it all evening, as if he was scared it might suddenly disappear.

“Please, if I go over there, I won’t even be able to look them in the eyes.” Shou winced.

Yutaka hoped that Jun and Kenji would hurry. The conversation was starting to make him uneasy. He didn’t know how to cheer Shou up without praising him, and he didn’t know how to praise him without making him uncomfortable. Being Shou’s friend could be difficult.

“What’s in the bag anyway?”, he changed the topic. Not the best solution, but at least a way to distract Shou from his self-pity.

“Ah, I wrote Party wo Tomenaide for that franchise, remember? They’re currently working on this magic suit and they gave me a prototype when I recorded the video for the self-cover. It’s supposed to make you cool and confident and popular with women.”

“And you brought it to the bar?” Yutaka hadn’t meant to let disdain sneak into his voice, but Shou pulled up his shoulders instinctively as if he wanted to shield himself from potential judgement.

“Just in case”, he said defensively. “We sometimes end up talking to women, when we’re in a group and I thought it might be a good chance to try it out. See if it even works. In case there is ever something I’ll need a lot of confidence for.”

Yutaka felt soothed to think Shou had only eyed the women as test objects to sate his curiosity about the suit and that he had not fallen in love from across the room. His tendencies in that regard were sometimes worrisome.

“Well then, give it a try”, he suggested. He had heard about the suit but hadn’t known Shou actually owned a prototype. He was curious, if it would work. Shou’s confidence could surely use an occasional boost and it would be great to no longer be the one responsible for it.

“If you insist”, Shou mumbled, but he was already fumbling with his bag. It was obvious he had only waited for some sort of permission.

He pulled out a suit coat and inhaled soundly before he got up. For a moment, he just stood there with the piece of clothing in his hands indecisively. Then he slipped it on in a surprisingly smooth motion.

All Yutaka did was blink and the next second, a completely changed person stood in front of him. Shou’s traditional Tamiya shirt had miraculously transformed into a silky, black suit. It even came with matching dress shoes. But it wasn’t just that. His hair had changed, too. It was styled in perfect shape and showed green streaks that made his look seem edgy and interesting. He was even wearing makeup that differed his usual style. A bright yellow flower stuck in his buttonhole.

Shou had transformed into someone so conventionally attractive, he might indeed start working at a host club.

Absent-mindedly he straightened his suit coat and turned towards the group of women.

He looked dazzling, but almost like a stranger.

Yutaka was surprised that he hesitated for so long before approaching the women anyway. He followed him with his eyes, curious how this would turn out.

Shou’s posture seemed straighter than usually as he walked through the room, yet he still managed to look awkward. He looked like a person who was arguing with himself about every step.

Finally, he stopped right behind a cute girl with bangs. Yutaka should have been able to guess it was her whom Shou had been watching. He would have chatted up her more light-haired friend, but when it came to Shou, she was just his type.

The girl didn’t notice him, though.

Shou just stood for a moment, although her friends had already noticed him. Seemingly, Shou had no idea how to draw attention to himself. He hesitated for far too long, before he reached out and tapped the girl on the shoulder. She flinched, which caused Shou to jolt in return and the whole situation was so awkward to watch, that Yutaka winced under his breath. The good looks and the confidence to approach women had done nothing for Shou’s coolness.

The girl turned around and even from across the room, Yutaka could tell that she seemed startled at Shou’s appearance. Her expression wasn’t annoyed but spoke of pleasant surprise. If a girl looked at you like that at first sight, it was very difficult to blow it.

Even from across the room Yutaka could tell that Shou would blow it.

Instead of looking at the girl while talking, he kept his eyes on the ground and his posture shifted, making it seem as if he wanted to curl back up into himself. He looked exactly as miserable and self-conscious talking to women as he had as a teenager. Everything about his body language radiated insecurity.

Yutaka sighed.

The woman shook her head. Instead of taking it with dignity, Shou managed to look even more miserable. Knowing him, Yutaka assumed he was probably blushing. He still didn’t make eye-contact.

After a very painful minute, Shou turned around and shuffled back to their table. He no longer seemed confident at all. His outward handsomeness remained, but it didn’t match with the way he carried himself at all.

“Sorry”, Yutaka said. “At least now you know.”

Shou sat down on the bench next to him again. Yutaka noticed that he wasn’t slumping down as usual, though, but sat surprisingly straight. It made him look taller and more self-assured.

“Too bad the suit is not working.”

“Oh, I don’t mind”, Shou said and turned towards him. His voice wasn’t as quiet and gloomy as Yutaka had expected. He spoke smugly. “I’d rather spend my time with you anyway.”

Yutaka eyed him suspiciously. The makeup suited him; his features looked more contoured and his skin smooth. His lips were always wide, but tonight they glistened invitingly. It was still Shou’s face, but the makeup brought out all its good qualities more strongly.

“What?”, he asked.

“Why would I waste my time with these women, when I can spend the night with a pretty guy like you?”, Shou asked. He was meeting Yutaka’s eyes head on. That was rare for him already, but tonight his gaze was challenging rather than stubborn.

Yutaka was so irritated by his unnaturally confident tone, that it took him a moment to realize what was going on.

“Oh, ha ha, very funny”, he said dryly.

“I mean it”, Shou insisted and placed his hand on Yutaka’s shoulder. He often did that, especially when he got tipsy and he had already had a couple of beers tonight, though by no means enough to justify him acting so out of character. His touch right now felt different, however. He wasn’t just seeking out body contact, he was using the gesture as an excuse to lean in, bringing them closer together. Suddenly, Yutaka was very aware of how close Shou was sitting.

“Let me buy you a drink”, he said, before turning around. Shou usually hated calling over the waiter and when they went to a restaurant together, he normally left it to the others. He was too shy and polite to raise his voice at strangers.

Now, he raised his arm and called out loudly: “Excuse me?” to make the young waitress turn around. “A bottle of champagne, please. Your most expensive one.”

The waitress nodded and headed off.

Shou turned back to Yutaka.

“Champagne? The expensive one? What’s gotten into you?”, Yutaka asked, still irritated. Before this, he could have written it off as a joke, but Shou would never waste money just to prank him. “You never order anything high-end.”

He still felt like he was talking to a stranger.

“Nothing but the best for my kitten”, Shou said.

Yutaka chocked.

“What?! What did you just call me?”

“Kitten”, Shou repeated. He sounded hoarse. His eyes trailed down Yutaka’s body and he didn’t try to hide the fact that he was shamelessly checking him out. It made Yutaka feel unexpectedly hot.

“Unless you prefer another pet name?”

And then Shou smiled.

It wasn’t a smug, cocky smile. His smile was warm and genuine and it looked just a little bit insecure as if he worried that he had crossed a line. It made Shou look shy and kind and charming. His teeth weren’t showing, but his lips seemed even wider and absolutely gorgeous and the small dimple on his left cheek didn’t seem as misplaced as usual, but it fit in perfectly with his handsome face. The smile turned him from a stranger into nothing but Shou, but the best version of Shou that he could possibly be. It was Shou the way he would look if he were no longer worried and self-deprecating; still shy but no longer scared.

Yutaka’s knees grew weak. But it wasn’t just his knees. It was his shoulders that suddenly held no tension anymore and his arms, that turned into butter and his whole body felt like it might just melt away when Shou smiled at him like this and called him cute names.

“Uhm”, he said.

“Your champagne”, the waitress interrupted them and Yutaka turned hastily, glad for the interruption that allowed him to clear his head. Something about this suit seemed to be working at least.

The waitress placed a bucket filled with ice on the table, that held a bottle of champagne. Steam was rising from the bottleneck, indicating that it had just been opened. Yutaka hadn’t expected it to be done for them already, but it was probably better that way. They would surely have created a mess otherwise.

The bottle came with four glasses and only their sight made Yutaka realize he had completely forgotten about Jun and Kenji. He wondered what was taking them so long.

“Let me get that for you”, Shou offered, although Yutaka hadn’t moved to fix himself a glass at all.

Shou placed his fingers on Yutaka’s wrist as if he wanted to physically stop him from helping himself. Once again, the gesture wasn’t untypical for Shou. He often touched people while talking to them, but this time, it had a different quality. Usually, his touches were distracted as if he didn’t really notice what his body was doing at all. But right now, he looked down on his hand resting on Yutaka’s bare wrist, and then he looked up, meeting his eyes, as if he wanted to make absolutely sure, that Yutaka became aware of the contact. His touch was fully intentional this time and Yutaka sensed heat creeping up his neck.

The touch lasted just long enough to not feel accidental, then Shou pulled back and reached for the bottle of champagne instead. He closed his long, slender fingers around the bottleneck firmly and took up a glass. His movements were secure and controlled. Yutaka had always admired Shou’s hands, that seemed too elegant and coordinated for someone who moved the way he did. But when it came to his hands, Shou always seemed to know what he was doing.

He poured a glass of champagne without spilling a drop and held it out to Yutaka.

Yutaka thought that with all the things that had changed, Shou’s hands had stayed exactly the same.

He took the glass and Shou held his gaze for a moment. It was Yutaka, who looked away first. Shou was wearing coloured lenses and his eyes were bright and intriguing. He didn’t seem in a hurry as he poured himself a glass as well.

Yutaka watched his movements closely. He could still recognize Shou’s way of moving, but he seemed less stressed and therefore less awkward. The only real difference seemed to be, that he was relaxed for a change and Yutaka wondered, if Shou would always look this sexy, if only he managed to put him at ease more.

Shou placed the bottle back into the bucket and held up his glass to Yutaka while meeting his eyes again.

“To a night full of fun”, he said. He said it like he was thinking of something dirty.

“To a fun night”, Yutaka agreed and clinked his glass to Shou’s. He did his best to make it sound less suggestive.

He emptied half of the glass in large gulps. The champagne made him feel bubbly inside, but he doubted it was because of the alcohol. This version of Shou made him nervous.

“Tastes expensive”, he observed lamely, although he couldn’t tell one champagne from the other.

Shou smiled again and once more, Yutaka thought that his lips looked stunning tonight.

“Oh, you guys ordered champagne!”, Kenji’s voice chimed in unexpectedly.

“When did you change, Shou? Is that the magic suit?”, Jun asked and pulled up his chair to sit down opposite to them.

Although Yutaka had hoped to be rescued from this weird tension, he still felt mad at them for interrupting.

Kenji placed himself on the bench next to Shou.

“He brought the suit to the bar to pick up girls, but it doesn’t work”, Yutaka declared maliciously. He was no longer sure if he was annoyed with Jun and Kenji for showing up, or for staying away for so long, or with Shou for acting so weird in the first place.

Shou patted the bench next to himself.

“Here, Kenji, come closer”, he said.

Kenji shuffled closer.

“Why?”, he asked. It was very much like Kenji to comply first and ask questions later.

Shou raised his hand and ran his forefinger across Kenji’s sharp jawline.

“So I can get a better look at your handsome face.”

Something inside of Yutaka constricted uncomfortably. He didn’t know why he felt so upset, but he couldn’t deny that he felt jealous of Kenji. Since the suit hadn’t worked on the girls, he had assumed it was only him having this effect on Shou.

“Oh god, what’s up with you?”, Jun asked, sounding seriously worried.

Kenji gave an embarrassed sound, but started pouring champagne for him and Jun as well without waiting for an invitation.

“The suit is turning him gay”, Yutaka explained nonchalantly and emptied his own glass.

“What’s turning me gay is sitting here with such cute guys”, Shou said lightly. He didn’t sound embarrassed at all. Rather than joking, he seemed flirting.

“That’s disturbing”, Jun said somewhat too loudly. “Someone get him out of this suit!”

Shou batted his eyelashes before looking right at Jun at the other side of the table.

“Please, Jun”, he said. “If you want to undress me, all you have to do is ask.”

Jun made a startled noise that turned into a mixture between a nervous laugh and a cough.

Yutaka placed his glass on the table too soundly.

Shou turned towards him. He leaned in closely.

“Don’t be jealous, kitten”, he said lowly. “I haven’t forgotten about you.”

Yutaka wondered how Shou had noticed his feelings without even looking at him, when Yutaka had troubles naming them himself. He felt oddly happy when he heard the pet name again. Shou hadn’t used it for Jun and Kenji. Maybe that meant something.

“I’m not jealous”, he lied and reached for the bottle of champagne. “I just need more alcohol, if you’re going to stay like this.”

He poured himself the rest of the champagne until his glass was so full, it nearly overflowed, before he put the empty bottle back onto the table.

Shou pulled the flower from his buttonhole. Up close, Yutaka could tell that it was a yellow rose.

“Here”, Shou said. When his voice was so low and deep, Yutaka’s body turned into butter again. He wondered, if Shou had the same effect on Jun and Kenji while wearing the suit.

“What are you doing? Get that thing out of my face!”

“Take it”, Shou insisted. “This one is only for you. To remind you, that you’re special to me.”

Yutaka hesitated. He wished Shou would sound joking, because a joking Shou was something he knew how to deal with. He still had the feeling that he was getting pranked, but he didn’t know how to avoid it.

He took the rose gingerly and placed it on the table plate demonstratively instead of keeping it in his hands. Shou’s facial expression was impossible to read. Yutaka could not tell, if he had offended him.

“It’s empty already?!”, Kenji complained. He had taken up the champagne bottle and studied it in disbelief.

“I can order another round!”, Shou offered right away and already raised his hand, but luckily, Kenji stopped him.

“It’s fine”, he said quickly. He seemed to be a little uncomfortable around this new version of Shou as well.

“Yes, I think it’s time we all go home”, Jun confirmed.

“No!”, Shou protested. “No, no! This party can’t stop! We have to keep drinking! Let’s celebrate all night.”

“It’s late”, Kenji pointed out.

“And you seem to need rest the most”, Jun agreed.

“You should take off this suit”, Kenji added. He spoke very gently, not like he was soothing Shou, but as if he was seriously worried about him.

“They’re right”, Yutaka said softly. He realized that he was worried about Shou, too. Tonight, he seemed unpredictable and possibly reckless. “Let’s pay the bill and then I’ll take you home.”

Shou turned and looked at him cheekily.

“I see, so you want to continue the party elsewhere.” His tone left no room for wondering what kind of party he had in mind.

“What? No!”

“I’ll take you to a fancy hotel”, Shou suggested and this time, he leaned in so far that Yutaka involuntarily pulled back. “Just give me a chance. If you let me, I’ll make you feel things that no woman has ever made you feel before.”

Yutaka’s neck felt hot again and now his face started to heat as well. He thought of everything that entailed. He thought of feeling Shou inside of him.

“Just let me try”, Shou coaxed, but he no longer sounded flirtatious. He sounded like he was begging. The despair in Shou’s voice scared him. He didn’t know what to do with it.

“Shou”, he said as sternly as possible and grabbed him by the shoulder to push him back. It felt like dealing with someone, who was very, very drunk. “It’s really time you take off that suit and get some sleep.”

Shou pulled back from his touch and wrinkles were showing around the root of his nose. The lines made his face look so characteristically himself, that Yutaka felt almost relieved.

“I don’t want to”, Shou said and finally, he sounded like his stubborn self again. “I don’t want this party to end.” He seemed to be repeating the words like a spell now and gestured towards the table as if he wanted to include everything. “I don’t want this night to end. I want to stay with you all night.” He gestured towards himself. “Like this.”

Yutaka didn’t fully understand what Shou meant, but his emotions seemed so raw and honest, it pained him anyway.

“You can’t, Shou. You are not yourself.”

Shou hung his head.

“I am”, he said. “I am.”

“Hey”, Yutaka said gently and touched his arm. Jun and Kenji stayed out of the conversation like they always did, when Shou turned difficult. It was only ever Yutaka, who managed to soothe him. “You need some rest.”

“Fine”, Shou agreed reluctantly. “But you have to take me. And I’m keeping on the suit.”

“Okay.” Yutaka sighed. He figured they could argue over the details later. He looked up at their bandmates. “Why don’t you guys go pay? We’ll pay you back later. I’ll make sure Shou gets home safely. Maybe the fresh air will help.”

“Alright”, Jun agreed. The fact, that neither of them argued about splitting the bill immediately although it contained the expensive bottle of champagne proved they were all irritated by Shou.

“Come here”, Yutaka said as gently as possible and took Shou’s arm to pull him up from the bench. “Let’s get you home.”

Shou followed without resistance. He picked up his bag, that was now empty and allowed Yutaka to guide him over to the front door of the bar.

It was colder outside, although the temperatures were warm enough that they didn’t need a jacket. The cold air cleared Yutaka’s mind a little, but finally getting some distance to Shou certainly helped as well. Inside the bar, he had started to feel dizzy.

Yutaka pulled out his phone and opened an app.

“I think I’m going to call us a cab, alright? We can’t take the train with you looking like this. Also, you might try to pick up random guys, if we don’t get you home straight away.”

“You’re jealous again”, Shou observed and this time, he sounded gleeful.

“I’m not”, Yutaka muttered and requested a ride before putting the phone back into his pocket.

When he looked up, he realized Shou was standing awfully close again. The suit seemed to be making him taller as well, because Yutaka had to look up to him slightly. Maybe it was just his straight posture in combination with the heel of the dress shoes though.

“Have you heard of personal space before?”, he complained and took a step backwards.

Shou took a step forward immediately. If anything, he was standing even closer than before.

“Sorry, that my handsomeness is making you nervous”, he said with a sleek grin. Yutaka had not thought that to be sentence he would ever hear from Shou unironically.

“Uh”, Yutaka said. He had been meaning to deny it, but Shou’s face was so close now, that he forgot how to say words.

“Shh, kitten”, Shou said quietly. He reached up and cupped Yutaka’s face with both hands. His touch was gentle but very secure. Yutaka could sense how bony and strong his fingers felt. They were surprisingly cool.

He knew that he was supposed to pull back, but he stood frozen, and he felt guilty for that. He knew that Shou was not himself and it was up to him to keep the situation from getting weird. But truth was, that he liked the way Shou touched him and he liked it when he held his gaze for so long and he liked it, when he called him kitten.

“Don’t”, he forced out softly anyway. “You can’t just do something like that in public.”

They were the only ones out on the street, but someone might walk out of the bar any moment. Anyone could see them.

“I don’t care”, Shou said. “I don’t want to worry about who could possibly see us. I’m tired of always worrying. I just want to kiss you.” He paused. “May I?”

Yutaka knew exactly what the answer was supposed to be. Under no circumstances could he allow this to happen, because it was reckless and dumb and moreover immoral.

“Yes”, he whispered.

Shou leaned in and kissed him with astonishing force. His kiss wasn’t hesitant at all. He kissed like he knew what he wanted. His lips were soft and his hold on Yutaka was firm. It made him feel very safe and oddly frail. He parted his lips and allowed Shou to kiss him like no one had ever kissed him in a public space before. Their teeth clicked together and Shou’s nose brushed his cheek and when he pulled back eventually, Yutaka was out of breath.

Shou looked at him and he broke into that sweet, bashful smile again, that looked so much like him, except lighter and happier than Yutaka had ever seen him before.

For a moment, he thought that he might just give in. He considered going back to a hotel with this new version of Shou, who would hold him in his strong arms and whisper sweet nothings into his ear and kiss him full of confidence. Yutaka would grow weak in his arms, because he was handsome and cool and self-assured.

But it wasn’t real.

“Stop it”, he said as gently as possible as Shou moved to lean in once again. “This is no good.”

“We can go somewhere more private”, Shou offered immediately.

Yutaka shook his head.

“It’s this suit. There is something wrong with it. It obviously works on men instead of women. It’s making you weird. You need to take it off.”

“No, no, please”, Shou said and he reached up instinctively, clawing his hand into the lapel of the suit coat as if he was scared Yutaka might try to tear it off. “This suit is not changing me. It’s just making me more confident. It’s … This is me. This is the version of me that’s in my head. It’s who I want to be. All the time. I don’t want to … I can’t let this end. I want to stay this version. I don’t want this party to end.” Vaguely he gestured back to the bar.

“So, you want to be someone, who promiscuously hits on all of his bandmates?” It had been meant as a joke, but it came out bitter. The way Shou had touched Kenji’s face made their kiss just now meaningless – regardless of whenever it was the suit or something Shou repressed violently.

“I want to be someone who is at terms with and open about his sexuality”, Shou blurted out.

Yutaka was pretty sure that the surprised was written all over his face. Before tonight, Shou had never indicated liking men at all.

“I want to be able to joke about it”, Shou said. “I don’t want to hide from the people closest to me. But most importantly, I want to show you how I feel. You’re the person I …”

He finally let go of his suit coat and his arm dropped down by his side as if he no longer had the energy to gesture at all.

“I wanted to try if the suit worked. I thought, if it does, I’d one day wear it to tell you. I wasn’t meaning to do it right away. Things got out of hand. I was scared of this night ending, because … I don’t know what will come afterwards.”

Yutaka licked his lips.

“So, you …?”, he started, but didn’t know how to finish the question.

“Yeah”, Shou confirmed. “I love you. And when I’m wearing this suit … when I’m wearing it, I’m cool and handsome. I’ll keep wearing it. And if you give me a chance, I think I can make you like me a little too. You allowed me to kiss you like this. You are at least somewhat attracted to me in this suit. I can be this version of myself for you. I’ll keep being it.”

Yutaka shook his head slightly.

“What are you going to do?” He wasn’t mocking Shou. He was sad, because Shou sounded so desperate. “Keep wearing the suit in your sleep?”

Shou shrugged and smiled helplessly.

“I hope they’ll design magic pyjamas soon”, he said.

Yutaka looked at Shou and all he saw was a handsome host. He had no idea where the despair in his voice was coming from. It was as if he couldn’t see below the pretty surface at all.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”, Shou plead. “I confessed to you. Don’t I deserve an answer?”

“Please, take off the suit”, Yutaka said. He suddenly felt exhausted. He was tired of dealing with this person in front of him. He just wanted to talk to his friend. “I want to give you a proper reply, but I can’t when you are wearing this suit.”

“It makes me better”, Shou insisted.

“This …” Yutaka gestured towards Shou and the green streaks in his hair. “I feel like I’m talking to a stranger. I need to make sure it’s really you.”

Shou looked at him for a long time and Yutaka was convinced he would decline. But then he nodded and slowly took off the suit coat.

He blinked and then Shou was already different.

He was back in his Tamiya shirt, his arms bare and pale and awkwardly holding on to the suit coat. His hair was blonde again and looked uncombed because he had run his hands through it early this evening. His face was flushed and bare and his eyes were tiny, but dark and so much warmer than when he was wearing coloured lenses. He kept his eyes cast down and yet Yutaka had the feeling he was seeing them for the first time tonight. He seemed small, hunched over once again and his head too large for his shoulders, making him look frail and in need of protection.

Yutaka felt a giant wave of affection rushing through him and he had to stop himself from wrapping his arms around Shou.

He had missed him. He had missed him so much more than he had ever expected. And he thought that this awkward little guy with the small eyes and the messy hair was the most beautiful version of a human being possible.

“Hey”, he said quietly.

Shou looked up briefly, but he didn’t manage to hold his gaze for too long, just as it had always been.

“Hey”, he replied.

“Do you …?” Yutaka broke off. For a moment, he considered that Shou might have forgotten about everything that had happened tonight. “Do you still feel the same? Without the suit?”

“Yeah”, Shou confirmed. “The same. Plus, an awful lot of regret for saying it out loud.”

Yutaka chuckled.

“I’m sorry for making you uncomfortable.” Shou looked down onto the suit coat in his hands. His hands still looked the same. “I behaved awful tonight. Sorry for putting you into a position like this. Let’s just forget I ever said anything. In fact, let’s just forget about this entire night.”

Worried lines were showing everywhere on Shou’s face. His face looked all weird and wrinkly. He looked like his old gloomy, over-thinking self again.

“I should probably burn this thing to make sure I never do anything this stupid again.”

“You probably should”, Yutaka agreed.

Shou had looked happier when wearing the suit, more relaxed. Yutaka wanted him to look this happy always, but he knew they’d have to find a different way for that.

“Sorry”, Shou mumbled again.

Yutaka paused for a moment.

“Though, if I’m honest, I’m going to miss you calling me your kitten”, he confessed jokingly.

Shou looked irritated. Yutaka let him suffer for just a few seconds more.

“I’m also going to miss you kissing me”, he added.

Shou looked up and sucked in his lower lip. His teeth were showing visibly. He looked by no means conventionally attractive and Yutaka loved him for that.

“Really?”, Shou asked insecurely.

“Really”, Yutaka assured him without hesitation.

Shou started smiling and it was the same smile as before. The warm one with the cute dimple, that made his lips look gorgeous and that was shy and hesitant, but finally happy without a trace of worry. And Yutaka thought, that they were going to get there and that they wouldn’t need a magic suit for it at all.

“We can always work on that”, Shou said. “Right, kitten?”

#Golden Bomber #Kiryuuin Shou #Kyan Yutaka #kirikyan #fanfiction #fanfic

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bffsoobin · 4 years

Text

01|02

↳ when your beloved throwing team finds itself lacking on equipment within a school that claims to value athletics, you take it upon yourself to find the right person to remedy your problems. little did you know, the right person would be perpetually busy and you would be stuck trying to barter with one of his friends. how long will it take for you to convince Beomgyu that your team is just as important as his?

➤ highschool!au, thrower!reader x volleyball player!beomgyu, rich kid!beomgyu, fluff, very light angst, mentions of other members and members of BTS (go read @btxtreads sister series Perfectly Perfect!!!)

Word Count:1,777

A/N: I am so sorry this took so long! I hope you all enjoy it even though it’s been a hot minute since part one!

•:•.•:•.•:•:•:•:•:•:•:•☾☼☽•:•.•:•.•:•:•:•:•:•:•:••:•.•

You were staring daggers into the back of Beomgyu’s head. It was the end of a very long school day, and the sound of him complaining about how sore his arms felt from the game the night before lit hatred in your chest. You were still close to boiling over the blatant ignorance he had displayed toward you last night on the court. If you owned a burn book, Choi Beomgyu’s name would be at the top of every page.

All day, you had tried your best to forget his arrogance, but the fact that you spent so many hours of your school day sharing a classroom with him only made your annoyance tick upwards. The longer he spoke, the clearer it became that your emotions were seconds away from eruption. In the middle of an intense staredown with your history textbook, you heard your name.

“Right, Y/N?” Beomgyu was leaning toward you but not lifting himself out of his seat so that his ring of adoring classmates wouldn’t be in between the two of you.

“Huh?” Although you had missed what he said, you could only imagine what kind of annoyingly arrogant comment he was in the middle of making.

“I was just saying that even you came to support us last night. That was sweet of you!”

Your blood was boiling just under the surface of your skin, and the devil on your shoulder told you to let all of your anger loose on the boy right now; but the fact that so many of your peers were also listening in had you thinking twice.

“Oh, yeah, I was there. It was a good win, but too bad Yeonjun couldn’t keep himself together and had to sit out at the end. I’m sure your coach wasn’t too happy with all of that...” you watched the way his eyes had narrowed slightly, “trouble.” If there was anything you knew for sure about the men’s volleyball team, it was the fact that they held their teammates very close to their hearts. And after yesterday, you wanted to hit Beomgyu as close to the heart as you could.

Now, as you saw the subtle way his jaw shifted, you felt a tinge of regret. Maybe you’d gone too far, insulting one of his best friends. Just as you opened your mouth to apologize, the bell rang and a bustle of students began their exit from the school. Within the bustle, you made your way over to where Beomgyu was shoving notebooks into his bookbag.

“Hey. I’m sorry,” though his back was to you, you could sense his hesitance to accept your apology. “I didn’t think about how mean that would be. I really did enjoy watching the game though, even if we got into a sort of fight afterwards.”

You rocked back and forth on your feet as you waited for him to turn around. Once he did, there was no way to miss how intimidating his tall stature made him.

“Thanks for the apology,” you let out a sigh of relief at his acceptance but it stilled in your throat when you caught his blank expression. “Although I definitely wouldn’t call our talk a fight,” he began to walk out of the classroom and some magnetic force had you following him in lockstep. You hated the way you hung around and waited for the next words to fall from his lips. He was too captivating for his own good.

He slammed his locker shut. “After all, we have to be civil at our meeting tonight.” He leveled his gaze with you as he leaned casually against the metal and crossed his arms. Feeling like a deer caught in headlights, you knit your eyebrows together in confusion.

“A meeting? About what?” Much to your own annoyance, your voice gave away your utter confusion. Beomgyu smirked at your response and you knew he had secured some type of upper hand.

“Me, you and our coaches are meeting tonight. To talk about that funding you need?”

“What? Really?” The excitement of possibly getting funding won out over your need to convince Beomgyu he didn’t hold as much influence over you as he thought. As you celebrated, you thought you caught a glimpse of his mouth quirked upwards before he backed away to head toward the exit.

“Coach Jungkook’s office, 4 pm!”

——

Around 3:55 pm, you found yourself hovering outside of Coach Jungkook’s office. A small voice in the back of your mind had convinced you that you couldn’t walk in any earlier than 4 o’clock, so you settled for leaning against the wall and running through your mental list of needs for the team. You were so caught up in your thoughts that you didn’t even register the sound of the door creaking open.

“Y/N,” your neck whipped around quickly to see Beomgyu holding the door open, staring down at you expectantly. “Were you...waiting out here this whole time?” You could hear the start of a laugh at the back of his words that made heat rush from your neck up to your hairline.

“Shut up, Choi,” you pushed past him, keeping your gaze on the carpeted floor until you saw the coaches come into view.

“Ah, there you are!” Jimin called out to you in lieu of an actual greeting. You wondered briefly if all three of the men were waiting for your arrival as you simply stood in the hall; but you cleared your throat and attempted to focus back on the task at hand. Jungkook’s office was extremely spacious and well decorated. The walls were plastered with photos of his beloved volleyball team from every year since he began coaching here. You even spotted some older pictures and trophies from the man’s own days on the team.

There were oddly comfortable looking armchairs located in front of his desk, one of which was already occupied by Beomgyu, who was spread out comfortably as if he owned the place. And truthfully, he probably did. Jungkook gave you an easy smile as you stood idle in the space between the empty chair and his desk before gesturing loosely.

“Go ahead, sit down!” His sunny disposition always threw you slightly off guard, especially after knowing the way he acts on the court. Nevertheless, you sank down into the inviting chair and tried your best to return his grin.

“So,” he continued, “Jimin told me you guys need a little funding help?” You felt three pairs of eyes drift to you, and suddenly the importance of helping your team began to outweigh your nerves as you began to explain your situation.

“And given the...extra boost the men’s volleyball team gets from Beomgyu’s family,” you scratched the back of your head gingerly as you glanced at the boy in question. “Coach and I thought you would be willing to help our team out.” Your heart was beating erratically in your chest as you waited for Jungkook to say anything.

“Well, I certainly think I can help you guys out. If you’re on the way to big competitions, I want you to have the best chance possible,” he slides open a drawer with ease and you can see Jimin’s eyes light up with excitement. Jungkook drops a sleek black checkbook onto the desk in front of him and nods Beomgyu’s way.

“Why don’t you take Y/N and show her around the trophy room while Jimin and I talk numbers?” The idea of being shown around the volleyball team’s trophy room would normally make you gag, but right now you’d do just about anything for Coach Jungkook. Beomgyu agreed easily and got up to leave so quickly that you had to sputter a poor “thank you” to the man saving your team’s skin before practically running out the door.

While the trophy room was located behind a normal door, the inside was excessively intricate. A fancy thermometer was set to an exact temperature to keep the expensive wooden shelves from warping under the weight of their wins. Beomgyu took an easy lap around the room before stopping in front of a ceiling tall glass case boasting an insanely tall golden trophy.

“This was from our nationals win last year. The winning game was so close that we played for what felt like three hours. Soobin played with an injured wrist and Taehyun had strep throat but we still managed to pull it off.” You wandered closer, genuinely interested in seeing such an expensive trophy up close. Once you stood in front of the case, you could really admire the careful engraving that shone underneath the small led lights that were embedded around the case. For some reason, you found yourself holding you breath, whether to avoid fogging up the glass or just from the proximity to Beomgyu, you weren’t sure. He was standing so close next to you that a single twitch of your wrist would have you grazing fingers.

“You guys are really good,” you didn’t turn your head to look toward him, but you caught part of his smiling reflection in the glass. “I mean it. As much as I shit on you guys, you’re really good at this.” You glanced sideways to see a genuine smile on his face that kicked your heart rate up.

“Thank you. We work hard. I think sometimes people forget that,” you swallowed hard, unable to avoid the thought that the statement included you.

“But I think we also forget that other people work hard for their sport.” A warmth spread through your body at his confession and you noticed the way the lights from the trophy case accentuated the sharpest features of his face. He licked his lips and your eyes tracked the movement eagerly. His cool eyes met yours just seconds after, and you prayed that you hadn’t been caught in the act of staring.

“That’s why I’m happy to be helping you out, Y/N. My team and I can be...closed off. Because we know we’re good and nobody bothers to humble us.” He hummed in thought for a second before laughing out loud. You raised an eyebrow in silent question of what was so funny. “Actually, I think you’re the first person who’s dared to try and humble me since I joined the team,” he had begun walking toward the door of the trophy room and you once again found yourself following without question.

He paused by the door, swinging it open and gesturing you to exit before him. “And honestly,” he shut the door with a resounding click. “I think it’s really cute.”

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oh-for-fic-sake · 4 years

Text

Undercooked Popcorn

Masterlist

You and Konner have a mini training session in the barn and get in trouble with Clark.

Warnings: fluff, Swearing,

A/n: Here is a small fluff piece I have been working on enjoy XX

Taglist: @iloveyouyen

After the initial move to Mrs Kent's house they had given you a week to settle in before getting stuck in to your school work. Not only you but konner as well letting you both bond which you had, the both of you had become close...konner had opened up quicker than you had, already secure about his place in the family you on the other hand was less sure. You had a trouble with it you wanted to believe that you was here permanently , that this was it where you belonged but you couldnt help holdingnyour breath still waiting for something to happen. Currently you and konner was in the old barn, you'd both unconsciously decided that it was your hang out, the place you go to escape the adults and get to know one another without the eagle eyes of the others. Somewhere to get away from an overbearing Clark who seemed to take the term mother hen to a whole new level, it wasnt necessarily bad but it was hard for you to go from no one gives a shit to holy shit this guy is consistently fussing over you. You knew he was trying to be inclusive and trying to solidify your place in the family reassuring you, wanting to show you he cared. Which was good youll admit you liked the attention in a way, you'd not had this type of parental guidance for a long long time but you'd didn't realoze how suffocating it was. You also suspected that your injuries had something to do with it aswell, you couldn't exactly fault him for it.

So here you were hiding out in the barn with konner as Clark flitted about the place doing odd chores here and there .Martha had gone out to work and would be home after the lunch rush at work. You rolled across the blanket that covered the hay pile your lime green cast glowing in the noon sun you winced as the light reflected off of it and shuffled moving it into a shadowed area. Currently you and konner were shareing details about your abilities, something the both of you had avoided and danced around until you got more comfortable with each other.

"Soo you don't make things? You just stretch'em" you nodded at him as he sat above you cross legged on one of the wooden cross beams that spanned the large space.

"Yeah pretty much..I can't touch living things tho, no plants or animals or people" you said glancing at your arm sighing it would have been nice to just fix it but no you had to wait it out.

"That sucks..." you nodded mournfully but then tilted your head back to get a better look at him.

"So what about you? Your an ET wannabe right?" He laughed flipping you the bird"Fuck you" you giggled as he shook his head jumping down from the beam landing just before you.

"Kryptonian is the politically correct term I think....Well hybrid... I'm half Clarks and... Half human" he said dusting off a little to sit on the hay across from you. You noticed the hesitation and the way he swerved around his own comments. Deciding to leave it be you opted to ignore it, much to Konners relief.

"So can you do all the stuff he can?" Konner smiled and shrugged

"You mean dad? Yeah sort of, I can do most...We are still waiting to see if we're exactly alike but I've got the strength speed and flight....I can do the lazer thing to which is cool but I havent found a practical use for it yet...Or a way to practice that shit is hot." You hummed at him then looked out of the open barn doors to the corn field.

"Corn?" He tilted his head following your gaze confused

"What?" You smiled at him Sitting up letting your arms fall into your lap

"Pop some corn...I mean theres a field right there...." he looked at the rows of corn catiously.

"Popcorn...You want me to use my laser eyes to...Get you a snack? How is that gojng to help me?" You rolled your eyes at him grunting."Oh for fuck sake...get unpopped popcorn and I will throw them in the air and you pop'em with your melty eyes.... you know target practice...And if I happen to catch some with my mouth its a bonus!" He sat up a little it wasn't a bad idea but Clark wouldn't like it.He doesnt like him practicing without him here.

"What about dad? Won't he be pissed?" You laughed and shook your head.

"Not really not like anyone can see us out hear and Clark did say we can practice around the place" Konner's grin fell he was worried that you hadn't really...Adapted? well you had...But you wont refer to the others as Dad and Grandma. As far as he was concered you were his sister already but he just really wanted you to know it was okay...That you really did have a family now. His dad and Grandma had told him not to push but he got the feeling you wanted to...Somethjng was holding you back.

"..You do know he is technically your dad now to right... You can call him dad and you can call Grandma, Grandma they wont be mad....I think they would like that." you sighed looking down, you knew that but it just... You didn't know, was it disrespectful to your real parents? You'd only been here a week? Surely it was to early...Even if it felt right, natural. He waved a hand at you

"You dont have to...I just didn't want you not to.. you know..Incase you thought they didn't want you to thats all, don't want you to have stupid thoughts like that holding you back" you blinked at him smiling sadly

"I-I do but...I still dont think I will be here long...I'm gonna slip up, if I ever accidentally hurt Martha I'm gone" he frowned at you

"No...If that happens; which I don't think it will, but if it does then we deal with it togethet...you wont get very far if you do run...Me and dad will bring you back home and we talk things out .Thats what family is, we stay together and help each other, your my little sister, the first person my age I don't have to worry about hurting so much. I can relax more around you because you can protect yourself if thing get to much, you think im gonna let you leave over an accident? Fuck no like Dad keeps saying your here now, your a kent and your stuck with us...I hope you see that sooner rather then later it can't be nice always being ready to run" your lip quivered eyes filling with tears as he explained this, the conviction in his voice how he spoke with absolute certainty. Unwilling to cry in front of him you simply nodded to him. Getting the message he patted your arm then disappeared for what seemed like seconds with a small bag of unpopped corn cernals.

"Show off" you sniffed moving to wipe your eyes only to hiss when you cracked yourself on the head with your cast you whined rubbing to sore spot and froze when Konner held out some tissues to you

"I grabbed them inside" you smiled at him meekly. He gave you a soft look, he hated seeing you struggle but he had said what needed to be said, said what he had needed to hear when it was him all those years ago. Quickly he changed his expression and smirked tossing you the bag of popcorn cernals you opened them swiftly still fighting a few tears back then looked around deciding on the safest area to throw them.

"So... Just to clarify if this falls down you will save me right?" he smiled nodding"Of course I will, you will be out of here before it even started falling down" you nodded then took two cernals in hand.

"so one or two?" he smiled and held up a finger. One. you threw it up and shreiked as he tried to ignite it missing ...well you only noticed he missed when you heard the little tap of it hitting the floor you both laughed seeing two tiny holes in the side of the barn. You grabbed another and threw it up he missed again, but he ws closer than before.This carried on for another few minutes with you oth getting excited as he got closer just skimming one, the heat from his vision making it partially pop.

"Oh no that one dont count you didnt hit the fuckjng thing!" He argued

"It popped tho!" You blinked at him.

"Okay half a point ready to go again?" He fist pumped then nodded readying himslef to go agajn.Finally thirty six cernals later he got it. You both jumped up.

"FUCK YEAH WOO!" You quickly moved to the popped popcorn on the floor dusting it off then ate it, you held up your hands to him chewing slowly as if you was a food critic then shook our head.

"Yep no under cooked" you both stared then burst out into hysterics crying with laughter.

"Lets try two this time!" You nodded moving to the bag pulling two more cernals out of the bag when you turned back round you froze. Shit.

"Why are there singe holes all over this barn?" Konner jumped turning around faceing an unamused Clark, who stood frowning at the both of you with his arms crossed. You and konner shared a look then peered around the barn...There was lots of them.. Some were just peep holes others longer and had charred lines around them. In all the fun youd both forgot where you were, and the barn now looked like it had taken a spray of bullets from a firing squad.

"Well? Konner? Y/n?" You cleared your throat and smoved to stand beside Konner

"Konner was...practicing, training" Clark raised an eyebrow shifti g his weight to one foot.

"Hmm? what exactly? See how he could burn the barn down without setting it on fire?" You both winced at his tone...He really wasnt impressed.

"You know this barn is older then me? It survived me growing up playing in it, yet an afternoon with the both of you and it looks about ready to keel over?....What were you both doing?" You moved to open your mouth but Clark stopped you holding up a hand.

"And if you try to get smart with me and say training again your going to be grounded for much longer then you already are young lady!" You flinched back. Wow. He had never spoke to you like that...Well not since you met him, he was always so laid back and fun, the type of adult you listened to because they were so chill but who knew he could switch over to no nonsense stern dad so effortlessly... You wavered uncertain how to approach him like this, it had been a while since youd cared about an adults opinion of you and you really didn't want Clark to hate you turning you looked to konner for help.

"Well...we were seeing how accurate my aim was...So y/n was throwing popcorn cernals and I was trying to pop them....I did miss a few times." Clark blinked then scanned the barn. He sighed shaking his head at his son exasperated.

"Konner... We've spoke about this I will take you to the fortress to train, but not here you could hurt yourself!" Clark stopped his scolding when he saw you take a large step infront of konner

"It was my fault I wanted to see so I came up with the idea...He was just trying to cheer me up." You stood firm shaking a little, you didn't like Clark raising his voice, he didn't shout but it was enough to make you nervous of him. He fixed you with a look making you cower from him slightly then sighed shaking his head, he didn't want you to be scared of him.

"Thank you y/n. But even if it was your idea he still knows how I feel about it I'm disappointed in both of you. Your both grounded for the rest of the week, this was very reckless and I don't want to catch either of you doing this again are we clear?" You both nodded to him solonmly resigning yourself to a few days being stuck indoors. He sighed then smiled a little to tell you the truh he was happy in a way, you'd become close and were up to mischief, which was good? You could both be a little reckless and act your age. You both had someone to let loose with. But he couldn't help worrying over the two of you. Had you got to carried away the barn could have collapsed, yes konner would have most likely got you both out but you were already hurt, already vulnerable and fragile. He really didn't want to risk anything. Luckily it hadn't come to that and the damage to the barm wasn't that bad... A few new boards and a new cross beam at the top, regular humans would need to dismantle the roof to sort it out but him and konner could have it done in an afternoon, he would also have you help as he had no doubt that you'd encouraged your brother. He smiled chuckling catching the two teens by surprise.

"Popcorn...I mean it was obvious right?..Wish I'd thought of that one...Any way lets start sorting this out befor Ma gets home shouldn't take to long not like the time I-" he caught him slef noticing the looks he was getting.

"What did you do to the barn?" You asked breaking the silence as konner waited both eager to hear what Clark had gotten up to when he was little. He cleared his throat

"Never you mind, now come on get to it, start picking up all that corn the we can see about plugging some of those holes" you shared a look with konner moving slowly collecting the corn as Clark moved to the back of the barn inspecting the damage.

"What do you think he did?" Konner shrugged

"Not sure apparently according to Grandma he was a little goody two shoes so... it couldn't have been that bad"

"Im gonna ask her when she gets back" konner froze and shook his head.

"No dont! Do not do that! We don't wana be in trouble with Grandma ever, dads a piece of piss to deal with but Grandma? She is a different beast altogether...To clever with punishments I mean she perfected her methods on him... She knows what shes doing" you blinked at him.

"We? You mean you I wont get in to much trouble...I mean evidence points to you, your the one with laser eyes." You smirked impishly at him as he looked shocked.

"You'd throw me under the bus? Just like that?" You nodded

"To avoid Martha's wrath abso-fucking-lutly sorry dude but Im not getting sucked into that shit show...Actually....Dont worry I got this she will never know." Befor Either on them could ask you'd closed your eyes then opened. Konner took a step back as they glowed bright. And sure enough the small holed were closeing, you coiled the fibres of the wood around in tight circles until the holes were all coveres feeljng aroh d the planks looking for them all. Konner gasped watching the way you manipulated the planks hearing a slight tiny creaking of the wood as it bended around itself. You moved to the side looking at the damaged beam quickly knitting it back together filling in the two deep burns that ran across it. Slowly you looked back down to the other two and smiled.

"All done...The beam should hold I made the grain tighter where it was." Clark smiled as he made his way towards you patting your shoulder and giving a sweet kiss to your hair.

"Thank you y/n now I think we shouldall head inside dont you?" You stuttered as he continued past you and Konner. Who was gaping at you.

"That was so fucking awsome! You made that look so easy...Is it? Whats else can you dowith it? And your eyes shit! Even I was scared for a second..." you flushed fidgeting going all bashfull.

"Oh haha sorry for scaring you...And that was easythey were tiny holes to plug." You moved slowly following Konner and Clark to the house.

"You still gonna ask Grandma about what he did?" You nodded at him laughing.

"You bet! I wana hear about all the dumb shit he did" he smiled at you as you both made it to the kitchen. Clark had entered and was already sitting down at the table with a drink.

"Your both still grounded by the way" you pouted at him

"No fair I fixed it!" He rose a brow at you

"It wasn't about the damage, I want you both to be carefull, you were reckless and both put yourselves at risk unnecessarily so rest of the week. No phones, games or tv. No leaving the farm and you can help your Grandma and me with the chores..." you sighed and looked to konner defeated he only shrugged in responseas if to say 'nothing you can you do' you slumped down into the chair pouring yourself a glass of juice from the pitcher Konner following suit grumbling to yourselves Clark shook his head getting up placing his glass in the sink. Teenagers.

#superman imagine #superman x teen reader #superman x reader #superman x you #superman x y/n #konner kent x sister reader #clark kent imagine #clark kent x teen reader #justice league x teen reader #justice league x reader

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fleckcmscott · 4 years

Text

Bewitching Hour

Summary: October has been a blissfully busy month. With Halloween around the corner, Arthur and Y/N have some planning to do.

Warnings: Swearing

Words: 4,665

A/N: Special thanks to @hhandley80 for this request! You've been so supportive and sweet. I truly appreciate you and hope you enjoy it!

On a side note, my oneshots will be more sporadic. I'm still writing but life has been life. Also, I've finished the first draft of another multi-chapter featuring Arthur and Y/N. It's going to take time to rewrite the subsequent drafts and edit, edit, edit. The chapters will go up once the story is ready. Thanks for your patience and support! 🙂 I heart you all!

If you have any thoughts or questions, please comment, feel free to message me, or send me an ask!

Arthur's suggestion that they make plans to celebrate Halloween should not have been a surprise. He loved starting traditions with Y/N, and she prized adopting them with him. "It's been awhile," he'd said as they'd walked arm-in-arm to the laundromat. "I think it'd be nice."

Holidays had been a source of merriment most of her life. The beauty of red and green decorations at Christmas. Turkey and mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving. An egg hunt and chocolate rabbit at Easter. The togetherness of family during them all.

Halloween, though, wasn't a favorite.

As a child, she'd had fun trick-or-treating, riding her bike from house to far-flung house. And she hadn't minded escorting her little sister as a teenager. Y/N's homemade witch costume had been passed down. She could still recall the sleekness of the ribbon between her fingers as she'd secured the pointed hat under Mabel's chin.

But the magic had fallen away. When married to Jeff, she'd had to attend his boss's annual party. After receiving an apologetic shrug and kiss, she'd be relegated to hanging out with the other wives. They'd included her in their recipe swaps, in their exchanges of mild gossip. Her natural friendliness made chit-chat easy, far easier than having a good time. Those evenings had been spent nursing a glass of wine and willing the clock to go faster.

During the period she'd cared for her father, she'd tried to hand out candy. She liked being a good neighbor and imparting kindness in the form of bite-sized sweets. As his health had declined, the porch light had gone dark. Random rings of the doorbell would result in shouting and swearing. Repeated attempts to explain the door's lock wasn't broken. Festivity would transform into drudgery. It hadn't been worth the trouble. Instead, she'd watched terrible TV specials while her thoughts wandered to a future far from Boonville. A future she'd doubted would ever be.

"I don't know if it's your thing," Arthur had continued, bringing her back to the present. "But you might enjoy it with me." The response he longed for was evident in the worrying of his pocket, outlines of his knuckles visible through the tan cloth.

Everything they'd experienced together had soothed the sting of those wasted years. The hesitancy lurking in her was silly. Unwelcome. Less than either of them deserved. She'd met his keen eyes and half-smile. The sudden mental image of him dressed as a cowboy or pirate, eyepatch and all, prompted a laugh. Convinced her as she dug out her dry-cleaning stub. "It isn't my thing," she'd said. "But you are."

Relief had relaxed his wrinkles, save for his crows feet, which had deepened as he'd returned her happy expression. A slender arm wrapped around her waist, drew her against his solid frame. Once the clerk disappeared through the swinging doors to retrieve their clothes, Arthur grasped her chin and kissed her. The tender explorations were soon sloppy, and she'd giggled, his enthusiasm becoming her own. Their noses had met, his lashes resting on his wide cheekbones. "I think you're the sweetest treat, Mrs. Fleck."

Currently, Donahue's Department Store, Gotham's number one retail emporium (if the ads were to be believed), was bustling with last-minute shoppers. Weary mothers escorted their babbling children through the aisles. Clerks swapped out displays for the changing blue light specials. Lines went for yards. Patricia and Y/N sought refuge at a corner table in the café on the top floor. The warm glow from the pendant lamps provided a relaxed ambience, one that matched the hot cider and pumpkin spice cake they were savoring.

"I've got my grandson on Sunday," Patricia said between bites. "My daughter's going to a party with a medical records tech from Gotham General. Met him when she missed the bus. They split a cab and hit it off." Chuckling, she lifted her mug. "Speaking of, how's married life been so far?"

Memories of the past week quickened Y/N's heart, until she thought it might stop. How Arthur had gripped her replacement Social Security card, just to read her new name. The way he'd grab her for a twirl whenever they were in the kitchen. The reverence in his gaze when they'd lay together after sex, a look that both thrilled and made her blush. "The bills for his medication and appointments will no longer make us cringe," she deadpanned. She lowered her fork. "When we met, I was kind of blindsided - I'm not the type to fall in love quickly." The corners of her lips tugged up. "Being married to Arthur feels like a habit. A habit I should have learned twenty years ago."

"I'm glad you found each other." Patricia reached across the light brown table and covered Y/N's hand, gave it a squeeze. Then she wiped frosting from her mouth and nodded in the direction of the escalator. "Now let's find a costume that'll drive him nuts."

Beyond the colorful cosmetics and pungent perfume counters, they sorted through racks of vinyl smocks and plastic masks. Pop culture icons and princesses. Vampires and spooks. Knockoffs of classic movie monsters. Most were poorly made and decidedly uninteresting. Y/N pawed through accessories in a nearby basket, a cigar here, a patched hat there. "How about a hobo? I could steal Arthur's tie."

"This was his idea. Give him something a little exciting." After a roll of Y/N's eyes, Patricia held out a plastic display bag. "Found it."

The white font on its blue label declared she should "Create a unique look!" A woman in a leopard-print leotard and bow-tie wore black cat ears and a tail, the only two items included in the set. Y/N's nose wrinkled. "I don't think so, Patricia." She rummaged through another bin and examined a hockey mask. "I don't show a lot of skin."

"You show Arthur." Patricia ignored Y/N's glare, continuing to shove it at her. "Every man loves a woman dressed as a cat. Our next lunch is on me if I'm wrong."

Patricia could be relentless, but Y/N had to admit she was usually right. She arched a brow as she eyed the costume. Maybe she could find a solid body suit instead of animal print. The kit was only $2.98. And her friend had made it a challenge. "You're on. But I'm not wearing a bow-tie." She crossed her arms across her chest and tapped her mouth. "Your turn. Would Robert like you as a French maid or a go-go dancer?"

~~~~~

It was a busy season for performers. Arthur remembered HaHa's talent agency being booked solid for October by the end of August. Myriad functions at nursing homes, parties, and children's organizations took place throughout the city. Amusement Mile had a series of special events, allowing Arthur to work extra hours before the slowness of winter dragged in. Once the holiday was over, he'd buy make-up and props on clearance.

He'd always assumed he would like Halloween - if he'd had the chance to celebrate it properly. It was about connection, something he'd never managed. The customs gave him a pretense, a template to meet people, rather than leaving him wondering how to go about it. Provided a hiding place for his seeming inability to act normal.

Recollections of the day were few but vivid. When he'd been around eight, there'd been a party at school. The teacher had made brownies and given the students a half-hour respite from lessons. (A welcome relief, since he wasn't very good at most of them.) But he hadn't had a costume. Hadn't known how to reply when the other kids asked where it was. Not wanting to be left out, he'd pocketed a watercolor pallet and sneaked to the bathroom.

The teacher (he wished he could remember her name) had walked in as he'd smeared green and blue on his face, a pathetic attempt at a turtle. Fear of punishment had caused his laughter. But her kindness as she knelt, wiped away tears and pigment with a scratchy, brown paper towel, had calmed him. "Wait here," she'd instructed. It had taken all his courage not to run home.

After some minutes, she'd returned, an old white sheet in one hand, black marker and pair of scissors in the other. "The nurse won't miss this." She'd traced eyeholes, helped him cut them out. She'd asked questions. About his mother and what it was like at home. Questions he was at a loss for how to answer. Finally, she'd draped the cloth over his head. "There," she'd declared. "Gotham Elementary has its own ghost."

Even as he'd gotten taller and the sheet no longer went beyond his knees, that costume had remained his go-to. He'd venture out to the rest of his building, knocking on paint-chipped doors and pushing broken buzzers. Having learned to stay away from doors that yelling or funny smells emanated from, he hadn't gotten a lot of candy. What he had collected he'd shared with Penny. The wax lips became a free toy. He wasn't sure his memory of startling his mother and being tickled until he couldn't breathe was real or imagined.

At twelve, he was told he was too old to go trick-or-treating. He'd starting scrounging for change to buy hard candies at Helm's Pharmacy. They weren't particularly appetizing, but they'd been what he could afford. Only a few kids rang, a number that dwindled further every year. Most neighbors kept their distance, likely aware he was troubled. Cinnamon discs and butterscotch drops had loitered around the apartment for months. He'd sucked on them in an attempt to cut down on his smoking, just to save money. It hadn't worked.

Y/N hadn't spoken about the holiday, not the way she had other special occasions. At first, he'd thought it had slipped her mind. Work, planning their honeymoon, completing the red tape required to meld all aspects of their lives had taken up much of their time. But, given her reluctance to talk in detail about her past heartache, he'd come to assume her Halloweens had been unpleasant. He was certain he could change that.

Sitting on the dingy, dark green plastic seat of the train car, he giggled to himself, chest puffing up as he straightened. They'd been man and wife for eight whole days. Movies and songs said love was supposed to be somewhere between serendipitous and fated. A happy accident that was meant to be. Lying awake at night, he would find himself wondering where they were on that scale. If the emotions swirling through him - the excitement of belonging, the fear of fucking up - were what every newlywed felt. Then Y/N would snuggle closer in her sleep, murmur nonsense into his skin, and for a few minutes he'd be at peace.

Years had been spent trying to figure out who he was. Trying to find an identity, his role within the world. While he was still searching, it had been far easier to become accustomed to the role of "husband" than he'd dreamed.

Teaching his wife about events across the city had been a delight. Gotham Village's Annual Costume Extravaganza was a parade that went all the way to Gotham Square. He'd participated a couple of times, never formally registering but slipping into the clown section. It had been exhilarating. Had allowed him to pretend, for a little while, that he was being seen. That the crowds lining the sidewalks were cheering for him. Signs for extravagant balls were plastered on billboards and lampposts throughout the streets; he'd have gladly attended and shown her off. A haunted house was being held in a building in his old neighborhood, a fundraiser for the orphanage. He hadn't brought that up.

In the end, once he'd explained trick-or-treaters went from apartment to apartment, they'd decided on a cozy evening at home. The details had been left to her. Whatever she'd plan, he'd love it. He wondered what she'd disguise herself as. Would she be a sexy devil or nurse, like he'd seen on a sit-com? The notion sparked a fire in his cheeks.

Given how busy he'd be, he'd stay dressed as plain, old Carnival. Part of him regretted accepting two gigs, especially on a Sunday. He would have preferred her company. But he wanted to put the money towards the wedding band he'd put on layaway. (Even though they had one account, he wasn't going to let her chip in for it.) He should already be wearing it for all of Gotham to see.

The lurch of the subway prompted him to rise and grasp the pole grip. His stance widened as it came to a halt, knees bending with the instinct of a man who'd ridden public transportation since he was a boy. As soon as the graffiti-covered doors parted, he stepped out onto the platform and ascended the stairs, eager to share his new insurance information with Dr. Ludlow.

~~~~~

Scratchy violins and the hum of a theremin. Shrill shrieks and cracks of thunder. A cackle resounded, then a pipe organ, playing a melody in a minor key.

There was no doubt about it. Halloween spirit had saturated 4A.

NCB's Movie Marathon Mayhem had begun at 10:00 AM. Y/N had had it on since getting out of the shower, hoping to catch a horror classic while she decorated the apartment and prepared Bloody Mary mix. As she hung cotton batting between the television's rabbit ears, creating a long, narrow spider-web, she realized they were only playing cheesy B-movies. Giant insects threatening buildings. Science experiments gone wrong. Alien invasions. Oh well. At least she wouldn't have to pay much attention to get the gist of the plots.

The orange plastic platter, black bats along its edges, had been an impulse buy. She thought its array of sugary skeletons, candy bracelets, and Jolly Jack chocolate bars would be well received. But having seen only one or two kids in the lobby, she had no idea how many children lived in their building. She hoped she'd bought enough.

The cardstock window decorations she'd found were festive and matched Arthur's sweet nature. One portrayed a warted, green witch flying on a broom past a full moon. On the other, a ghost and mouse shared a pillowcase of candy and wished a "Happy Halloween." She held the tape dispenser between her teeth as she stuck them to their white front door.

Just then, the elevator dinged. Glancing to her left, she saw Arthur stroll down the cheerfully lit hallway. Buoyant expression on him, despite his white, blue, and red make-up being streaked from sweat. Striped prop bag on his shoulder and carved pumpkin cradled in his arms. "The store owner was going to throw it out," he explained with a half hug. "But he let me have it as a tip."

Classic, triangular eyes evoked the annual carving contest her parents had taken part of back home. Her father had been well-known in the community, being the town's only doctor. Entering the competition had been expected. They'd never won but enjoyed it all the same. Y/N had picked out the patterns and scooped out the squash's slimy innards. Her mother had baked the seeds. Peals of their laughter echoed in her ears, and a lump formed in her throat.

She swallowed hard against it. Dammit, Y/N. Get it together. This was supposed to be a special night for Arthur and her. She needed to distract herself. One of his curls peeked out from under his bald-cap and green wig. She twirled a strand around her finger. "With that toothy grin, it just might be your twin," she said. He pecked her temple, the kiss sticky from greasepaint. She lit the half-melted candles using his red lighter and put the jack-o-lantern just outside their door.

While he freshened his paint in the bedroom, she slinked into the bathroom to change. Arthur's and her routines were closely aligned; keeping her costume hidden had not been easy. The headband holding the furry cat ears was quite stiff, its teeth a tad sharp on her scalp. Once it was in place, she hid it under her hair. The lint on her form-fitting stretch top and leggings reminded her why she rarely wore all black. She retrieved her brown eyeliner from the nearby shelf and started in on her whiskers.

Arthur's footsteps neared, heavy due to his clown shoes, and Y/N turned to lean back on the sink. His thin lips parted as he scanned her body, forehead furrowed in pleasant surprise. His reaction planted a seed of bliss in her belly, one that bloomed every second they regarded each other. The lunch she'd have to spring for was well worth the pink shells of his ears. Eventually, she held out the fluffy, wired tail and a safety pin. "Would you pin this just below my waistband?"

Fingers grazing hers, he took it and sat on the toilet lid. He cupped her hips and pulled her closer, positioned her until the dampness of his breath hit a bare sliver of her back. "Hold still," he murmured, his voice sending a tingle through her. At his gentle ministrations, the spandex of her leggings felt snugger. "Did you- Did you read my journal?"

A faint click of metal as the pin closed. "No." She colored the tip of her nose, frowned at how lackluster the shade was. "I'd never do that. Even if I'm dying for a preview of your material. Why?"

"No reason." A soft huff, his shy smile clear in his answer. "I have an idea." He handed her a washcloth and hurried out of the room. She was patting her face dry when he returned, a fine tipped brush and pot of black greasepaint in his hand. "This'll look better."

Her brow arched. She'd only had her make-up done once; Patricia had invited her when they'd first met. Such an outing was not her preference, but Y/N had accepted, being new in town and wanting to learn about her colleague. There'd been champagne at the counter, which she'd sipped until she'd spent too much on eyeshadow and apricot scrub. The next morning, she'd put the products and a note on Patricia's desk: "I'll never forgive you. Thanks!"

The heat radiating from Arthur prompted her to close the gap between them. She craned her neck towards him, slid her palms to his yellow vest until she held him just below his ribs. His forefinger curled under her chin, lifted it slightly and angled it to the right. The cool, wet brush met her fevered skin. The dusty smell of the greasepaint blended with a whiff of stale cigarette smoke and traces of his sweat. She licked her lips.

The vibration of his chuckle was felt before heard. "I really like your costume," he said lowly. Two more ticklish caresses of the bristles on the apple of her cheek. "If you're not careful, I might werewolf and go wild."

She stretched closer to him, the fervor in his tone going straight to her center. Though he'd been growing bolder, his cocky side wasn't often revealed. She wanted it, thirsted to see more of the wild horse kicking inside him. Her touch ran over his chest, until she dipped under his black suspenders and pulled. "Are you going to gobble me up?"

Teasing strokes on her nose. "Maybe." Then his thumb whispered along her jaw and guided her face upwards. His kiss was supple, slow, a drag of his mouth as his tongue sought entry. She yielded, the simmer of anticipation bringing her to her toes. He groaned deeply and palmed her thigh, then fondled the curve of her rear-

The ding-dong of the doorbell halted them. He lifted his head and laughed, gaze sparkling. "I got paint on you."

She twisted in his arms and looked in the mirror. The whiskers caught her eye, embellished at the ends with dainty curlicues - his skill never ceased to impress her. Red brightened her lips and streaks of white were on her cheek. "It's all right. They'll just know I've been necking with a clown."

~~~~~

The sound of the bell continued. Over and over and over. More than it ever had in Otisburg. There were mummies, ghosts, a couple of skeletons. A superhero proudly displayed his red cape and blue tights, and a kid in her karate robe went on about her yellow belt. A tiny clown, too young to walk, was brought by her sister. As Arthur made funny faces, the baby cooed and tried to take his red, foam nose. Arthur parted with it gladly.

Only one member of the Wayne family appeared, slicked back hair and pompous pout making the disguise complete. The man accompanying the boy introduced himself as their upstairs neighbor and shook their hands. After one look at Y/N, he nudged Arthur's bicep. "So, she's the one keeping half the building up at night. Good on you, pal." Arthur blinked in confusion as she ushered the guy away, red-faced and muttering about his nerve.

Arthur was overly generous, giving out fistfuls of sweets while taking a few extra seconds to gather his nerves and compliment the costumes he liked best. It felt good to interact with strangers without constantly second guessing himself. Y/N would rub his arm or kiss his shoulder and tell him what a great job he was doing. "Kids are easy," he said, refilling the candy dish. But he reveled in her praises, anyway. And the knowledge that meeting the neighbors was going well.

Clean-up required little effort. The jack-o-lantern sat on their kitchen table, flames flickering as the wicks burned away. The door decor was packed safely for use next year. His plaid blazer was slung over the back of a dining chair and his wig was off. Y/N's decision to leave her whiskers on pleased him - she made a damn sexy cat. He pocketed the last few pieces of candy to snack on during the remainder of the evening.

The Sunday Night Special Presentation she'd picked out, a made-for-TV horror movie, began at 9:00 PM on GBC. Most of its airtime was punctuated by her tipsy snickers and legal wisecracks, which was typical when they watched something stupid. Yet, as the show went on, she grew quieter, barely speaking between sips of her third cocktail. As they sat on the sofa, her posture stiffened. Forearms crossed over her breasts. Her nails dug into her upper arm.

The change started two-thirds of the way into the show, when the plot about a doll running amok twisted into a story about a professional woman trying to assert herself against the demands of her mother. Against the expectations of availability. To fight for the simplicity of having dinner and peace and quiet. It resonated with him, which felt weird. Especially when the film cut to black, the implication being the mother would meet a violent end at the hands of her possessed daughter.

A cheerful jingle came on. Puerto Rico was a direct flight from Gotham Airport, it advertised, a flight that lasted "two hours and fifteen tropical minutes." They should get out while the weather was still good. The juxtaposition of mood broke him out of his ponderings. He flicked off the blaring television with the remote. Then he heard Y/N sniffling.

She set her glass on the coffee table, a slight tremble in her hand. "I need some air," she whispered as she rose, then went out onto the fire escape.

Arthur rubbed his thigh and pressed his lips together. He wasn't used to seeing her cry. Not from sadness. Should he follow her? Give her time? Both had worked previously, depending on the situation. But he wasn't sure what had upset her, what situation they were in now.

Exhaling sharply, he grabbed her glass and dumped the rest of the drink down the kitchen sink. Rinsed their dinner plates and put the slow cooker in the fridge. When he'd finished making decaf coffee ten minutes later, she still hadn't returned. He ambled towards the ajar glass door and stepped out.

Moonlight outlined her shapely figure and reflected off her hair, the silver a contrast to the orange glow of the streetlamps illuminating her face. Her stare seemed fixated on the street below. He followed it to see a group of ghouls and goblins spraying shaving cream on a shop window. A couple, one he'd see occasionally when out for a cigarette, walked down the sidewalk. A woman was half-carrying a drunk man towards a bus stop.

Upon clearing her throat, Y/N spoke. "I may not look like it, but I had a great time with you tonight. The movie just got to me." Relieved, Arthur sidled next to her, wrapped his arm about her back. Her head fell to his shoulder and she smoothed her hand over his stomach. "I don't mean to hide from you. Someday you'll know the details of my earlier life." She scoffed. "When I'm ready to think about them." He entwined their fingers and kissed her hairline, avoiding the wired tips of her cat ears.

Shivering, she took a shaky breath. "There are no skeletons in my closet. Only disappointments." Her voice cracked as she beamed at him, cupped his cheek, and pressed her face to his. "Knowing I'd get to have you would have made those years so much easier."

He held her tightly, massaging between her shoulders. She'd been speaking about herself, but he couldn't help thinking it was about him, too. His years with Penny. His stints in Arkham. The loneliness, the isolation, the endless anger and yearning to be more than a speck of dirt no one cared for. His journal was full of questions about where the hell his one and only was. If he'd known she'd be real, tangible instead of a figment, would existence have hurt less?

Wincing, he tried to push through those thoughts. To focus on her instead of himself. What mattered was that Y/N needed him. Perhaps a joke would cheer her. "I was thinking the other night of how easy it is to smile around you," he said. "You tickle my funny bone." Amusement bubbled in her throat, music to his ears. She released a contented sigh and nuzzled the crook of his neck.

Peaceful stillness ensued as the minutes passed. Though the breeze was chill, goosebumps forming on his pale skin, her affection kept his heart warm. His fingertips rubbed circles into her lower back, and she offered a pleasured hum. Across the way, footsteps pounded. He glanced to see a kid darting up the street, plastic pumpkin pail in tow. The boy's scream was filled with boundless energy: "Happy Halloween, Gotham!"

Snorting, Y/N took Arthur's hand and led him inside. The cheap tail she wore bounced with every exaggerated swivel of her hips. "I've behaved all evening, which your werewolf comment made extraordinarily difficult." She looped her arms around him and flashed a come-hither stare. "May I have a goodie?"

The scrape of her nails on his scalp coiled a knot in his abdomen. "Aren't you supposed to say 'trick-or-treat?'" he asked huskily.

"Your pussycat needs a petting or two." She closed the bedroom door behind them. "Maybe even a mauling."

His brows shot up on a hitched giggle. Then he palmed her hip while she started in on his buttons. Before she got too far, he traced a whisker with the pad of his thumb. Let their foreheads meet and pecked her eyelids. "Only if you give me something good to eat." He pressed into her, his enjoyment relentless, not waiting for her reply before devouring her mouth.

~~~~~

Tag list (Let me know if you want to be added!): @harmonioussolve, @howdylilflower, @sweet-nothings04, @stephieraptorr, @rommies, @fallenstarsabyss, @gruffle1, @octopus-plasma, @tsukiakarinobara, @arthur-flecks-lovely-smile, @another-day-in-chuckletown, @hhandley80, @jokerownsmysoul, @mrscarnival

#arthur fleck #arthur fleck fanfic #arthur fleck x reader #arthur fleck x ofc #arthur fleck x female reader #joker 2019 #watchwhathappens

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paodequeijofeliz-blog · 4 years

Text

I would do it all again

Ride or Die Fanfiction (characters and main story belongs to Pixelberry Studios).

Pairing: Mona and MC (Annie)

Information: this takes place after the first book.

Summary: After what happened at the parking lot, each member of the crew tries to build a new life, following the “every man for himself” motto. But Annie doesn’t agree with that and tries to pull them back together, especially Mona, who she has been waiting for too many years.

Warnings: none.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

I would do it all again - Part 5

“There’s paint in your… Everything.” Annie started to giggle, herself also covered in dark blue paint. “Gee, Avery, I think you’re right. We’re gonna be blue for the rest of our lives. Like little Avatars.”

“I told you!” the other girl laughed too, trying to clean the paint out of her face with a towel, but only made it spread even more. She was shorter than Annie, with puppy brown eyes and an adorable big smile. Didn’t look nothing like her uncle Dominick. “But worth it. Look at this room. It’s perfect.”

They stopped to admire the results of their morning’s work for a few moments. After days watching tutorials online and searching for the right materials, the room was finally finished. Mona had confessed to Annie her wishes to turn it into some sort of studio, where she could draw or practice her guitar skills again. Of course, the last time the Lebanese did either of those was even before meeting Annie in the first place, so it could be hard to catch up again. But her eyes lightened so beautifully at the idea, the girl couldn’t wait to have the room ready for Mona to start.

That’s why backup was required, and who better than Avery? It was about time for Mona to meet her anyway, especially now that she had just returned from Italy after a family visit.

“Do you think we have time to clean up before they arrive?” Annie peeked over the window, but there was no car to be seem in any side of the road.

“Yeah, I think so. Let me call my uncle and check if he can hold back longer.”

Dominick picked up the phone immediately, mumbling and pretending it was a work call. Between codes, he was able to reassure them it would take a while to get home, maybe an hour. That was the right amount of time for both girls to clean the room and themselves. When the car finally parked outside, Annie was brushing her wet hair while Avery finished putting the paint cans away in the mess room.

Mona’s voice was audible in the distance.

“… never trust ‘em. Those supposedly safe economical cars are always a headache, they don’t survive a single storm on the road. If you gotta change cars, go for something with higher resistance, especially you who need to ride through this bumpy road every day.” The door was opened to reveal both Mona and Dominick carrying grocery bags inside. “Hey, babe. How are… What did you do?”

The Lebanese narrowed her eyes, scanning the room for something dangerous. She knew that look on Annie’s face meant trouble.

“Nothing. Why?” the girl tried to put on an angelic smile.

“You’re jumping in the same place. Why are you so excited? Should I be worried?”

Avery popped her head from the hallway before Annie could answer the question. “Hi, everyone.”

“Oh hey, cookie! Come here. Let me introduce you. Calil, this is Avery, my niece.” Dominick held the brunette girl from her shoulders, placing a kiss on the top of her head. “Cookie, this is Malika Calil. Or Mona.”

“Or boss” Annie added, teasing.

“Nice to meet you” Avery answered after a brief laugh. “It’s good to finally put a face to your name.”

“Same here.” Although Mona wasn’t normally friendly, she got very fond of Avery. “So, what did you two do today to make Annie look like she’s about to shoot fireworks from her ass?”

The teacher rolled her eyes, still too damn energic to stay still. “Ok, ok. C’mon. Avery helped me to do a surprise for you.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Don’t uh-oh. It’s a nice surprise, promise. Or I hope so, at least. If you hate it, we can change everything. No worries. It’s reversable. Most of it.”

“Stop explaining, Ann.” Avery put a hand on her forearm, trying to prevent her friend from jabbing. “Just show her. Trust your guts. Be confident.”

Mona arched her eyebrows in surprise. “I liker your attitude.”

“Alright, c’mon. Close your eyes.” Annie held both the woman’s wrists and started to guide her in the right direction. “Wait. Not yet. Not yet. And… Okay, now. Open it.”

Those dark eyes started to open slowly, a little bit afraid of what Annie had done, but then widened at the sight of the room. “Oh. My.”

Mona was startled. Her soon-to-be studio had two of it’s walls painted in a dark shade of blue, with tiny sprinkles of silver that made it look like the night sky. The sprinkles would get bigger as it reached the ceiling, forming stars and constellations on it. The other two walls remained white, one of them with a huge drawing table by the window, favouring the natural light. The other, though, as soon as Mona approached, appeared not to be a simple white, but a paintable kind, like a white board where the Lebanese could write and erase anything as it pleases.

It was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

“You said you’re a creature of the night. That the night sky inspires you. So… I… I hope it’s good. Like I said, we can change it, paint from scratch again, no problem. The important is for you to be comfortable here.” Annie hesitated, trying to work on her confidence like Avery suggested, but Mona was awfully quiet, and they couldn’t see her face, since she had the back turned.

“Uhm… I’ll make some coffee. Help me, cookie?” Dominick pulled his niece gently by the elbow, closing the door behind them to leave the couple alone.

Silence continued afterwards.

Annie was slowly getting more and more terrified, especially when noticed Mona’s closed fists. She approached her carefully, hands lifting, but too afraid to touch. Mouth opened, but no word could be formed. Has she gone too far? Was the woman mad because the room was painted without her? Annie thought she had been so careful to listen to the signs, make a good choice…

“Mon… I’m sor…”

“I love you.”

When Mona turned around, there were tears in her eyes. The last time Annie remembered seeing her cry was six years ago, after the shooting, when they said goodbye to each other between blood and promises. Today, it was different. The woman wasn’t sad. Her black eyes were glowing with a sweet form of love, this time no longer afraid of cops breaking them apart. Fists still clenched, posture tense, but a warm expression. It was like her body didn’t match her heart at all… Like it was fighting against it’s own feelings.

Annie approached her, breath caught on the throat, a sheepish smile emerging. Without sudden movements, she held Mona’s fists and brushed them with her thumbs, causing it to relax and slowly given up on the fight, obeying the heart’s commands. The girl only stopped when they were inches apart, diving in those beautiful Lebanese eyes like jumping in the night sky with no parachutes on. Their fingers intertwined at the same time Mona’s posture eased a bit, leaning in for a tender kiss that made Annie melt down in her arms.

“I love you too.” Whispered Ann, eyes closed and foreheads together. “Did I hurt you somehow? Did I…?”

“You could never hurt me. Not even if you wanted to.” Mona opened her eyes again, causing the girl to do the same. “I’m sorry I frightened you, I’m not mad or upset, far from that. I’m… It’s just… No one has ever done things like this for me before, Ann. I know this room is nothing compared to the other huge sacrifices and battles you have been fighting for so long, but it hit me hard. It’s so personal. So perfect. It’s not only safe, or careful, or well-planned, it’s also me. The real me. Like you can read me through and through. I don’t think anyone ever got so deep.”

“I know you hate to talk about this kind of stuff. But I hope it’s already clear that I’m not standing here just ‘cause you’re hot and funny, although those are qualities worth mentioning, might I add.” Mona couldn’t stop smiling mischievously over that observation. “I’m not playing around or seeing where it goes, Mon. I worry about you. I want you to feel comfortable and free to be yourself again. Even if ‘yourself’ means not sharing the silly-feelings talk you dislike. I love you the way you are. I’m all in, babe. Head over heels. Sorry if it scares you, but that’s the truth. Deal with it. And my love comes with things like these surprises attached.”

Annie gulped, afraid her statement had been too straightforward, but Mona didn’t back up, tense or hesitate at all. On the contrary, her arms involved the girl’s waist, bringing her closer into a not-so-tender kiss. It tasted like fire and sweetness at the same time, the type of kiss that could make someone falter between rip their clothes off or shout “I love you”. She didn’t know how much time that continued, since her full attention was captured by Mona’s lips and hands, until finally they ran out of breath and needed to break it for a second.

“Man, I’ll repaint the entire house if it leads you to kiss me like that” Annie chuckled, hands entangled on the back of the woman’s neck.

“Are you complaining I don’t kiss you passionately on a regular basis?” Mona arched her eyebrows, turning around to press the girl against the door, one leg between hers. “Well, let’s see what we can do to solve it…”

Annie felt the air escape her lungs; knees so weak she would have fallen on the ground if it wasn’t for those tattooed arms sustaining her body. “Don’t tease me, we have guests waiting for us in the kitchen.”

Mona growled, placing a last bite on the girl’s neck before finally releasing her. The way she trembled forward, still shaken up, made the Lebanese open a cocky smile. “My, my. Have I taken your strength so fast? I barely touched you yet.”

“You know…” Ann held herself on the door handle, eyes locked with the woman in front of her. “It’s the ‘yet’ part that’s almost causing me a freakin’ heart attack right now.”

Avery’s voice came from across the apartment. It smelled like fresh coffee even from the hallway. As Annie went to the kitchen to take a mug, she saw Mona’s phone lighting up on the balcony. Some random number was calling. “Mon, you’re phone’s ringing.”

“She’s in the bathroom.” Dom was resting against the back of the chair, a half-empty package of biscuits on his lap. “You should answer, it could be her parole agent checking in.”

The girl nodded, cleaning her throat before picking up the phone. “Hello. Can I help you?”

A woman’s voice came from the other side of the line. “…Oh, yes. Hello. I am looking for Malika.”

“She’ll be here in a minute. Who’s this?”

“I am a… Childhood… Friend. We used to be very close. My name is Ada.”

“Hm, I don’t remember your name, but Mon doesn’t talk a lot about her childhood.”

“I see. And you are?”

“Oh, sorry. Annie. I’m her girlfriend.”

“…I can say I have been looking forward to meeting you. I’ve heard a lot about your story.”

“Aww, that’s sweet, thanks. Hey, she’s here. Just a sec. Babe, it’s a friend of yours.” Annie offered the phone to Mona, watching her frown in confusion.

“A friend of mine? Who?”

“Ada.” She gave her girlfriend a quick kiss on the cheek before turning to sit by the balcony, never catching how Mona’s eyes widened.

“Hi” the Lebanese said, her heart pounding against the chest.

“Hi to you, baby girl. Guess who else got out on parole too?”

For just a moment, Mona felt like her whole world was about to fall apart again.

#mona x mc #choices: ride or die #ok now thats enough fluff #let the problems beginnnnn

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vulpesse-arc · 4 years

Text

THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

tagged by: stolen :) tagging: @scendant , @verumking , @sunszenith , @blackedsun , @saigeonmain , @quartlet , @shadowhelmed , @hotman , @devilglow , @drivenchaos , @re-no , @ladyfortunes , @cchilyoja , @quartlet , @deathboundinautumn , @ioniacriminal , anyone else who might like to do this :)

MY MUSE IS: canon / oc / au / slightly canon-divergent / fandomless / complicated.

IS YOUR CHARACTER POPULAR IN THE FANDOM? YES / NO. [ She is mayhap one of the most famous characters in the entire franchise as well as one of the oldest and who has suffered the most because of the fandom’s misconceptions. ]

IS YOUR CHARACTER CONSIDERED HOT™ IN THE FANDOM? YES / NO / IDK. [ Once more, yes, she’s definitely seen as one of the hottest characters in the game. I suppose that this has both good sides and bad sides? Especially when you encounter people who refuse to see past her physique. ]

IS YOUR CHARACTER CONSIDERED STRONG IN THE FANDOM? YES / NO / IDK. [ Ahri might not be the strongest character in the fandom but she’s certainly not weak either. What she cannot accomplish with mere physical strength alone, she can accomplish thanks to her charming abilities so she’s definitely a strong and dangerous opponent to face. ]

ARE THEY UNDERRATED? YES / NO / IDK. [ Yes and no at the same time? People love and hate her in equal measure but, after writing as her for so many years, I have also come to realize that few are the ones who actually pay attention to her lore and to her depth as a character. I’d say that her fame has made people blind towards who she really is and this is very sad. ]

WERE THEY RELEVANT FOR THE MAIN STORY? YES / NO, she’s more on the neutral side.

WERE THEY RELEVANT FOR THE MAIN CHARACTER? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG. [ LOL doesn’t really have a main character or someone who’s inherently more important than others: everyone is the main character of their own specific story. This is why she is relevant to those who encounter her and those who have come to become part of her tale ; for the rest of the world, however, she’s nothing more than a vulpine vastaya with a pretty face. ]

ARE THEY WIDELY KNOWN IN THEIR WORLD? YES / NO. [ Ahri is well known in Ionia due to her past as a vicious man-eater. However, such tales and legends belong to ages long passed and no one would be capable of discerning her true identity by simply looking at her ; this is why even fellow vastayas and ionians are usually unaware of her relation to the beast that devoured entire villages. As far as the whole world is concerned, no, she’s definitely not known by the majority. ]

HOW’S THEIR REPUTATION? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL. [ I’d say that her reputation is definitely bad. As previously mentioned, she carved her name in the legends of Ionia with her undying hunger and through the unfair massacre of many innocent souls ; although such legends do not carry her name, you can still find visual depictions of the vixen who spread chaos and havoc through the holy lands. In the present days, she is still considered as someone who should not be trusted: rumors about what she is capable of have spread and only fools are willing to consciously approach someone who might easily dine on their souls and hearts. ]

HOW STRICTLY DO YOU FOLLOW CANON? — I began writing as Ahri many years ago, which means that her lore has been twisted and modified quite some times from the very beginning. Although I do follow her present canon and I do adore every little detail that has been shared in pursuance of giving her more depth, I cannot really leave behind everything that I have developed in the past years. An easy example is the fact that my Ahri is still loosely based on the Korean myth of the “Gumiho”, which is a detail that plays an extremely important part in my portrayal: Ahri is, in fact, more beast than woman, is someone whose morals will always linger in the darkest shades of gray, is someone who adores violence and who has yet to properly harbor any type of guilt for everything that she has done thus far ; another detail is the fact that she devours souls as much as she can indulge in the flavor of hearts and livers as well. So, I would say that my Ahri is canon but with her own little twists?

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals. — Ahri is an incredibly complex creature, someone whose very existence is quite paradoxical for she represents both death and the maiden at the same exact time. She can be cruel and heartless as much as she can be gentle and dulcet, she is always greedy for knowledge and there is nothing that she adores as much as listening to someone’s stories or learning new facts about a world that is still oh so foreign to her. She’s beautiful, elegant, has the fluffiest tails you will ever see and she’s definitely the best cuddle buddy! Despite her murderous nature, there is something oddly soothing about her company that will naturally lure you closer.

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?). — Ahri is not a good person, not even a good animal. She’s incredibly instinctive and easily becomes victim to her own whims and desires and feelings: if she decides that she wants something, she will not stop in front of anything in pursuance of quenching her thirst. Because of this, she’s a huge liar, she’s manipulative and sly and dishonest, she knows the weaknesses of those around her and does not hesitate to exploit them in pursuance of elevating herself to a higher plane. She’s not easy to deal with because she will rarely say the truth and will rarely allow others to come close to her ; it doesn’t matter who the other person is, her first instinct will always be that of hunting them.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO RP YOUR MUSE? — I was asked to write as this muse many years ago by a friend of mine. I didn’t even like her at first... I thought that she was nothing more than some easy fanservice for the game but I am so glad that I changed my mind because she has ultimately become my favorite muse and someone I always come back to, no matter how many years have passed.

WHAT KEEPS YOUR INSPIRATION GOING? — Poetry is perhaps my strongest inspiration when it comes to Ahri! Poetry and visuals of idyllic landscapes, of flowers in bloom, of porcelain marred by blood. Music might sometimes help too (for example I do tend to listen to the OST of “Memoirs of a Geisha” whilst writing replies) but I’d say that poetry is indeed my strongest inspiration, it’s the one thing that makes me think of other aspects of her and that continues to fuel my motivation to be here.

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

DO YOU THINK YOU GIVE YOUR CHARACTER JUSTICE? YES / NO / I SINCERELY HOPE I DO? [ I’m extremely hesitant and nervous about my portrayal, so... I do hope that the people I write with might eventually begin to enjoy my portrayal of Ahri. ]

DO YOU FREQUENTLY WRITE HEADCANONS? YES / NO / SORT OF? [ I think of headcanons very often but I must say that I haven’t posted too much on this blog lately. Some of them got stolen, others got ignored and... That lowkey killed my motivation to openly post the ideas I have about my muse. This is however something that I plan on changing soon! ]

DO YOU SOMETIMES WRITE DRABBLES? YES / NO [ It depends on my inspiration or on the prompt I am given. ]

DO YOU THINK A LOT ABOUT YOUR MUSE DURING THE DAY? YES / NO

ARE YOU CONFIDENT IN YOUR PORTRAYAL? YES / NO / SORT OF? [ Not really... I love my Ahri, I love the headcanons that I have developed for her and I adore the interactions that she has had during this time, but... I’m always scared of people’s bad judgement, of being seen as uninteresting or as not talented enough to portray such a complex character. ]

ARE YOU CONFIDENT IN YOUR WRITING? YES / NO / A LITTLE BIT. [ I believe that I can still improve, especially considering that my writing style is constantly changing. But I am not too sad about it! ]

ARE YOU A SENSITIVE PERSON? YES / NO. / SORTA.

DO YOU ACCEPT CRITICISM WELL ABOUT YOUR PORTRAYAL? — As long as the criticism comes with the intent of helping me to improve my portrayal, then yes, I do accept it well because it would allow me to look at things from a different point of view and thus help me to realize in which fields I am currently lacking. Due to the fact that the LOL characters can be quite ‘loose’ when it comes to their canons (especially in the case of those who weren’t given much material to work with in the first place), I do believe that everyone can take quite a large amount of creative freedom when portraying them ; however, I do realize that some of my headcanons might sound weird to someone else and I have absolutely nothing against explaining my side of things, the reasons that have motivated me to make Ahri behave in a certain way instead of another. Criticism is always good, as long as it’s not accompanied by free hatred.

DO YOU LIKE QUESTIONS, WHICH HELP YOU TO EXPLORE YOUR CHARACTER? — Absolutely yes! I love it when people come and ask for more information about Ahri or when I receive really curious anons about the most mundane aspects of her life.

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES TO A HEADCANON OF YOURS, DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY? — Why not? I might not drop the headcanon since I’m still certain that I am the person who knows my muse the most but I’m not against discussing things with another person, especially if our points of view are really that different.

IF SOMEONE DISAGREES WITH YOUR PORTRAYAL, HOW WOULD YOU TAKE IT? — I admit that I’d be sad over it since I’m well aware of how much passion and effort I am constantly pouring in my portrayal. However, that wouldn’t be the end of the world! There are so many beautiful Ahris out there who have taken a different path from me and thus developed their muses in a different manner, so I’d just suggest to the person to try and interact with them instead.

IF SOMEONE REALLY HATES YOUR CHARACTER, HOW DO YOU TAKE IT? — Ah, you would be surprised to know how many people hate Ahri in the fandom! What saddens me is the fact that such hatred usually stems from really useless and dumb reasons, such as her being more famous than another champion or her receiving more skins than their fave... Even in the roleplay community, I sometimes encountered people who hated her simply because she was “too famous” and that really annoyed me because it’s groundless bashing with no roots to support it. However, I can understand why someone might dislike a character who’s so manipulative and dishonest! Obviously, I wish that people saw more than just this one side of her, but... We can’t have everything in life, sadly.

ARE YOU OKAY WITH PEOPLE POINTING OUT YOUR GRAMMATICAL ERRORS? — Of course, as long as the person is not rude about it! I am Italian so English is my second language and grammatical errors can and will indeed happen.

DO YOU THINK YOU ARE EASY GOING AS A MUN? — I think I am easy going although I am incredibly shy and this... This is a huge problem when it comes to interacting with others since it might take me a while to respond to messages and open up to someone else. This is a side of myself that I truly wish to change and I’m working really hard on abandoning my comfort zone, but... It takes time, a lot of time. However! Despite my shyness, I can assure you that I’m the softest person you will ever meet and that if you manage to make me feel comfy around you, I will not stop speaking about Ahri and about music and about videogames and anything else that we might have in common! Once I do grow close to someone, I love to talk and meme and share things and... I think I also become slightly clingy? But I always mean good, I swear... I’m just a shy bun who wants to have fun and love you :(

#.• ❤ ─ ▸ love CHANGING shape each day. ╱ ❪ ﹠ study 08 ─ hcs games ❫#:O #this was interesting to write

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shootwinterfest · 4 years

Text

WINTER MYSTERY - NEW STORY from ASLEEPINAWELL for Shoot Secret Santa!

Winter Mystery by @asleepinawell

also here on AO3!

"The snow is really coming down now," Reese said as he shut the door behind him.

Shaw inched slightly closer to the fireplace to escape the cold air that had invaded the room when Reese had opened the door. "At this rate we're going to be stuck here tomorrow."

"At least tomorrow," Root agreed as she swept into the room. She handed a mug down to Shaw before settling in front of the fire herself on the other side of Bear. "The Machine says the snow plows won't be able to get through up here until Tuesday."

Shaw took a cautious sip of her hot cocoa. Yep, definitely spiked, thank god. If she was going to spend the next few days crammed into a cabin in the middle of nowhere with the whole team, then she was going to need some alcohol.

"How're we supposed to help our number if we're stuck here?" Fusco asked from the chair in the corner. He'd tried to sit by the fire earlier, but Shaw had sent him away for hogging all the heat. Root only got fire privileges because she'd resorted to cocoa bribery.

"Well, the good news is that our number is snowed in as well," Root said. "It'll be hard for anyone to get to them with all the roads closed." She reached across Bear to try to steal Shaw's mug, but Shaw saw her coming and pulled it back out of reach with a warning glare.

"Good thing I packed some extra snacks," Shaw mused as she sipped her cocoa. "The freezer here is stocked full of nothing but microwavable mac and cheese. Gross."

"What'd you bring?" Reese asked, a little too innocently.

Shaw's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "None of your business and no, I'm not sharing. You should have thought of it yourself."

"You're not sharing?" Fusco asked, outraged. "We could all starve here, you know?"

"Way too much shitty mac and cheese for that to happen," Shaw assured him. She eyed the others, looking for any suspicious expressions. Maybe she should hide her food stash before she went to bed, just in case.

"Don't worry, sweetie," Root said, patting her on the knee. "There's only one snack I want in this house."

Shaw choked on her cocoa.

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

It wasn't that Shaw hadn't trusted the Machine when she'd assured them (through Root) that the house was well-stocked with food in the event of them getting stuck, it was that she hadn't trusted the Machine's taste in food, a fear which had turned out to be correct. Thus the small pack full of supplies Shaw had brought for herself. None of it was too fancy: coffee, tea, and cocoa packets, trail mix, a couple types of jerky, a chocolate bar, some pop tarts, cookies, marshmallows (for the cocoa), and a bottle of whiskey. Certainly not fancy dining material, but still, it was stuff with more flavor and texture than frozen dinners and tap water.

"You know, if you hide that somewhere I won't be able to make you surprise spiked chocolate again," Root pointed out once they'd retired to the room they were sharing.

Shaw hesitated over the bag. Root had a point. But…. "That sounds like something someone would say if they were planning to steal my food."

Root paused in mid-stroke of brushing her hair to cast a disdainful look at Shaw. "Sweetie, I'm not interested in your pop tarts."

"That's just what you want me to think." She zipped the pack up and looked around the little bedroom. It was the largest bedroom in the place, but it was still tiny and there wasn't anywhere obvious to hide anything.

Root set aside her brush and sat down on top of the heavy wool blanket on the bed. "When you're done being paranoid about your snacks, come to bed and I'll show you what I'm actually interested in."

That was too good an offer to pass up and Shaw ended up shoving her pack under the bed. If someone wanted to steal it they'd have to get in here without waking her up and good fucking luck with that.

She did make one detour before joining Root, though, to twitch one of the curtains aside and look out at the snow falling.

"We're going to be lucky if we can even get the front door open tomorrow." She could barely see the trees through the heavy snowfall.

"Being stuck here for a few days doesn't have to be the worst thing ever," Root said as Shaw shut the curtains. "I can think of plenty of ways to pass the time."

"Be a lot better if we weren't sharing a tiny cabin with the boys," Shaw said. She walked back to the edge is the bed and, when Root tugged on her arm, let herself be pulled down into the warm blankets and a tangle of limbs. "Guess it's their own damn fault if they didn't bring earplugs though," she decided.

"They'll get over it," Root agreed.

They were both thoroughly exhausted by the time they finally fell asleep. Root, always the late sleeper, might have slept until noon if she hadn't been awoken by Shaw's outraged yell. When she rolled over to see what the fuss was, she found Shaw standing next to the bed looking grim.

"My pack is gone."

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

Root was tired, cold, and (because of the first two things) grumpy. She'd had a lovely evening with Shaw in their isolated snow-bound cabin, gotten to go to sleep in a very warm, soft bed, but then been rudely awoken and dragged downstairs to the living room with the boys and accused of petty thievery. The only upside to the whole thing was that Shaw was currently being unbearably adorable in her efforts to unmask the supposed criminal.

"The facts are these," Shaw stated as she paced in front of the fireplace. "Last night I put my own personal pack with my possessions in it under my bed."

"Our bed," Root corrected.

Shaw rolled her eyes. Her hair was still messy from sleeping but pulled back in a loose ponytail, strands escaping everywhere, and her whole face still looked soft from sleep despite her current level of focus. It contrasted nicely with her stern tone and Root couldn't help but smile fondly while she watched her even if it made Shaw look more annoyed.

"Fine, the bed Root and I both slept in."

There was a soft snicker from behind her in the room. John, probably. Neither he nor Fusco had been awake when Shaw had announced the mandatory team meeting.

"Despite the fact I didn't hear anyone come into the room all night, this morning, my pack had mysteriously vanished. Since we're currently snowed in at an isolated cabin, the only viable suspects are the people in this room."

"You seriously think one of us took your food?" Fusco asked. "Seems to me that the most likely suspect was the person already in the room with you then."

Shaw turned her suspicious stare on Root for half a second and then shook her head. "Everyone is a suspect right now. The door was open this morning when I woke up and it was definitely shut when I fell asleep."

"Oh, that part was definitely my fault," Root admitted. "Bear was scratching at the door and I let him in. I left the door cracked in case he wanted to leave."

"He was?" Shaw looked down at where Bear was snoozing near her feet. "I don't remember hearing him."

"Yes, well, you were pretty worn out," Root said, perhaps a bit smugly.

"If the door was already open, then anyone could easily have snuck in," Shaw said. "Or Root could have smuggled the pack out when she let Bear in."

"Or Bear could have stolen it," Root pointed out.

"Bear would never! You take that back!"

John cleared his throat. "It's six am. Can we go back to sleep and sort this out later? You can search the place while we're passed out so you know no one will be eating your stash."

"No one is sleeping until the thief comes forward and returns what they took." Shaw turned her full attention to John. "Where were you last night?"

John was sprawled on the couch wearing pajamas that looked like...a suit. "In my room with headphones on until I fell asleep. I only left it to use the bathroom once."

"And do you have any way to prove that?"

"How would I do that?"

Shaw looked back at Root. "I'd like to call the Machine as a witness."

It was Root's turn to roll her eyes. Shaw was being very cute with this whole righteous detective act, but she was really tired and would rather go back to bed and continue using Shaw as a heat source. "She's been having a hard time maintaining a clear signal with the storm, and also there's no cameras set up here so Her information would be limited."

"Reese and Fusco both have phones."

"True."

"Skynet spies on our phones?" Fusco asked in horror.

"There's a total of twenty three different organizations spying on the average phone at any given time. Trust me, She's not the one you need to worry about. She doesn't care about the websites you visit that you delete from your phone history." Root smirked at the terror on his face. "Private browsers tabs aren't really private, Lionel. How long have you been working with us now?"

John looked thoroughly amused by Fusco's discomfort, so Root added, "And John is no exception, though I'm disappointed in his taste." She didn't have any clue what either of them looked at since the Machine actually believed in privacy for some reason, but she must have hit a nerve because the smile fell off John's face.

"None of this matters," Shaw cut in. She pointed at Fusco. "What did you do last night?"

Fusco was bundled up in a threadbare purple bathrobe in an armchair in the corner. He looked even more tired than Root felt.

"Me? I tried to get my beauty sleep and regretted thinking Reese was kidding about the earplugs thing."

"And you didn't leave your room at all?" Shaw asked.

"No, I...wait, I did. Got up to use the bathroom some time in the night, no clue when. I did see someone else up and about but it was dark and they were at the far end of the hall so it could have been anyone."

"The far end of the hall, as in near the door to my room?" Shaw asked. "Did you see how tall they were?"

Fusco squinted at her. "Yeah, now that I think of it they were really short. Maybe about five foot three. Sound like anyone here?"

"Maybe you stole your own food in your sleep, Shaw," John said, amusement in his voice.

Shaw crossed her arms, her biceps flexing in a threatening way that caused both the boys to stop laughing and Root to have a sudden shift in reasons for wanting to go back to bed.

"This cabin isn't that big and there's nowhere to hide," Shaw said with way more icy intensity than Root thought was strictly necessary for the situation even if it was extremely hot. "It's only a matter of time before I find out who took it." She turned and headed back up the stairs, leaving the others in uneasy silence.

"Shorty really likes her pop tarts, huh?" Fusco asked.

"And how did you know she had pop tarts, Lionel?" Root asked with a smile that was mostly teeth.

"Because I saw when she bought them at the rest stop on the way here," Fusco said, trying to inch his chair away. "Why don't you go talk to her instead of threatening me? You know none of us did it."

"I know nothing of the sort." She stood up and brushed herself off. "I suggest that if either of you are responsible, that you make her pack reappear before she comes back downstairs."

"And how do we know you aren't the one who took it?" John asked.

"You don't."

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

Shaw returned to her room after she finished her second sweep of Reese's room. Root had come upstairs while she was away and was fast asleep in bed again, curled up on her side under all the thick blankets with Bear next to her. The whole scene was kind of endearing despite Shaw's general state of annoyance.

It wasn't like a bunch of junk food even mattered that much; it was the principle of the thing. She doubted Root was the culprit, even if she would have had the easiest access. Though she wouldn't put it past Root to cook up some trouble to keep her entertained while they were stuck. She'd probably consider it some sort of cute gift or something.

There were several feet of snow on the ground outside now and the house was chilly as fuck and Shaw was tempted to crawl into bed next to Root and sleep in the warmth and forget about this whole thing, but.... But she really wanted some goddamn coffee and the almost-acceptable instant coffee she'd packed was worlds better than the shit in the kitchen.

She decided it was time to be practical about the whole thing. The next step any sane and logical human would take at this point would clearly be to draw a detailed diagram of the crime scene and map out all the possibilities.

Root knocked her map on the floor when she rolled over fifteen minutes later. Shaw cursed and reached down to retrieve it. It wasn't her fault that there'd been nowhere else to spread out her research.

"Sameen? What time is it?" Root still looked cranky and her eyes weren't quite open yet.

"It's nine."

"That's still too early," Root grumbled. She rolled over so her head butted up against Shaw's leg and cuddled grumpily against her.

"You tell me who took my food and we can nap all day." That was a lie, but Shaw felt entitled. She was the victim here.

"If I admit to it, can we go back to sleep? It was terrible of me, and you can spank me later."

Tempting for several reasons, but…. "Did you actually?"

"No." The one word was infused with infinite crankiness.

"Then no deal."

Root sighed and then opened her eyes. "Fine, let's get to the bottom of this then."

"That's what I've been saying--" Shaw trailed off at the look on Root's face.

Root flung back the covers and jammed her feet into her bunny slippers with murderous intensity. Shaw watched in fascination as she pulled her oversized fluffy robe (pink, with a hood that had bunny ears to match her slippers) around herself and tied the sash like she was preparing for war. She grabbed her taser from the nightstand and raised an eyebrow at Shaw.

"Well, are you coming or not?"

Shaw trailed after her, half-impressed, half-turned-on, as she hunted down both the boys and corralled them back into the living room.

"Let's start with the obvious suspect first," Root said, her voice full of that cheerful homicidal glee that did things to Shaw. "Lionel."

She rounded on Fusco, tapping her taser against one palm while grinning at him.

"Why am I the obvious suspect?" Fusco protested, looking around nervously.

"You're a police officer," Root said as if the answer was obvious. "Now, where did you put Shaw's pack?"

"I didn't--"

The taser crackled threateningly in Root's hand.

Fusco looked at Shaw desperately. "Hey, can you maybe keep your homicidal girlfriend from killing me?"

Shaw shrugged. "Root does what she wants. You should probably answer her question." She'd stop Root before she could do anything permanent.

"I told you, I didn't take it! Sure, I thought about it. You were so uptight about it who wouldn't have?" The taser buzzed violently again and Fusco leaned so far back in his chair he almost tilted over backwards. "I didn't touch it though! I'm not crazy enough to go into that room. Who knows what I would have walked in on?"

Root paused and tilted her head. "That's actually believable. He is pretty spineless."

"Hey!"

On a different day, Shaw might have defended Fusco from the insult, but he'd just admitted to thinking about stealing her pack to annoy her so he was on his own.

"That leaves you." Root turned on John with a bright smile. He failed to look concerned.

"Why would I take it? I actually like the microwave dinners."

"John, you're going to need a more believable excuse than that."

"No, that actually checks out," Shaw said. "He has the worst taste ever."

"Well, if none of us took it then where is it?" Root asked.

"Hey, why are you suddenly free from suspicion?" Fusco demanded.

Root raised her taser threateningly, but Shaw waved her down, suddenly concerned by something else.

"Where's Bear?"

A quick search of all their rooms turned up no Belgian Malinois.

"Did he get outside?" Shaw wondered. She hoped he was okay out there. His paws might get cold.

"Maybe he's in the basement," Reese suggested.

"There's a basement?" This was news to her.

"Yeah, it's kind of hidden away, but I had to go down there to fight the furnace last night."

"Show me."

The door to the stairs down was hard to spot in a tiny alcove off the kitchen and Shaw had overlooked it last night. The door was also open.

"I think the mystery is about to be solved," Reese said as he led the way down.

The basement was a small, dirty room with a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and in the middle of the floor was Bear, chewing happily on a piece of Shaw's jerky. Her backpack was lying ripped open nearby, contents strewn about the floor. Bear wagged his tail nervously when they approached.

"Looks like someone was a very naughty a doggy," Root said.

"It's not his fault," Shaw protested ad she surveyed the damage. "He must have been hungry. Poor guy."

"So we get tasered, but the dog gets a pass?" Fusco grumbled.

"Let's go back upstairs," Reese said hurriedly before Shaw could react.

Shaw bent to see what was left. Fortunately Bear seemed to have ignored the chocolate and cookies and other things that might be bad for a dog's stomach, though there was drool all over everything.

"You're a smart boy, aren't you?" she said, scratching him behind the ears.

"Maybe we should bring everything out of the dirty basement," Root suggested. She had stayed behind when the other two left. "He can keep eating your food in the kitchen."

"Yeah, okay."

Twenty minutes later, Shaw was back upstairs and in bed with a mug of hot chocolate (the cocoa mix had been declared salvageable). Root was mostly asleep next to her again and Bear was at the foot of the bed snoring. Life was okay again.

Shaw felt content enough that she even allowed Root to snuggle up next to her without complaint.

"Sameen, I have a confession to make."

"Hmm?"

"I may have seen Bear take your pack last night."

"What? Why the hell didn't you say anything?"

"I was going to, but your little detective routine was adorable and then I got to threaten the boys and that's always fun."

Shaw was tempted to pour her chocolate on Root, but that would have been a waste.

"Well maybe you get to sleep on the couch the rest of the time we're here."

"Is that really what you want?" Root snuggled closer and brushed her lips across Shaw's neck with just the tiniest hint of teeth.

"Maybe," mumbled Shaw without much conviction.

"I'll make it up to you if you let me sleep for another hour."

"Fine. Better be a really good apology."

"Mmm." Root was already drifting back off, her head on Shaw's shoulder.

Shaw sipped her hot chocolate, listened to the soft sounds of Root breathing, and watched the snow fall outside the window. All things considered, it was a pretty nice day.

#shoot secret santa #root x shaw #THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR GIFTING US WITH THIS WONDERFUL STORY!!!#person of interest #sameen shaw #root

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eldritchsurveys · 3 years

Text

1083.

Do you have a vlog? If not, have you ever considered starting a vlog? >> I don’t have a vlog and I’ve only considered it as a humorous thought exercise, not seriously. My own mannerisms and facial tics embarrass me when I’m aware of them or can see them on video, so I’d rather not put myself through that.

Did you go to AM or PM kindergarten? >> I don’t remember. Edit: I think at one point I was going to pre-K in the morning and kindergarten in the afternoon, because they realised I was precocious or whatever, but they didn’t want to just fully skip me to kindergarten (idfk, man, teachers are weird). So I went to both at the same time, and graduated from both at the end of the year.

What are your favorite youtube channels to watch? >> Wisecrack, Overly Sarcastic Productions, The Take, Philosophy Tube, ContraPoints, Ethys Asher, MTQCapture (just for FFXIV dungeon guides, but hers are the best), Final Fantasy Union, Implicitly Pretentious, NakeyJakey, Ask a Mortician... those are all the ones I can remember off the top of my head. I’m always looking for new channels, but it’s hard to find consistently interesting and well-made content that isn’t about things I just don’t particularly care about.

Which relative(s) do you look the most like? >> ---

Have you ever watched a live birth video? >> No.

Have you ever given birth? >> Heavens, no.

Do you remember when the Internet was a new thing? >> I vaguely remember when Internet for the casual at-home user became a thing. The Internet as a whole is a bit older than me, and I was very young when things like IRC came out.

Do you remember Y2K? >> Yes!

How old were you when the year changed to 2000? >> I was 12.

What was your favorite childhood vacation? >> ---

Have you ever wished you were born the opposite gender? >> I did think I was binary trans for a few years. Now I’m completely off the gender axis and floating in todash space somewhere. As intended.

What’s your birth order: oldest, middle, or youngest? >> I am the youngest of my father’s offspring.

Do you fit the stereotype for whatever birth order you are? >> I think if there’s any stereotype I’d be liable to fit, it’d be only-child stereotypes, since that’s how I was raised (my father’s other children were decades older than me and I barely knew them).

Have you ever worn overalls? >> Yeah.

If you’re a girl, how old were you when you started your period? >> I’m not a girl, but I was 11 or so.

Do you get cramps? >> I did. Awful ones, too, the kind that would incapacitate me (sometimes in public...). Which is the primary reason why I started taking the Pill -- I didn’t dare to hope that it would get rid of periods altogether, but I was very relieved and happy when it did.

Is your mom mentally stable? >> ---

Is your dad a complete jerk to you? >> ---

Where do you want to go on vacation next? >> I would love to go on a vacation to anywhere, but that’s not feasible right now.

What is one place you want to visit before you die? >> *shrug*

Has anyone ever committed suicide in your town, that you know of? >> I mean, I’m sure someone has, but I don’t know anything about it.

What’s your favorite type of crackers? >> Oh, god, I forgot what they’re called. But they’re long and thin and rectangular and they come in flavours like garlic and rosemary. Also, matzo. Love matzo, particularly the egg and onion kind.

What’s your favorite spice? >> I really couldn’t say.

Are you sensitive? >> Way more so than I’d thought I was. Turns out a complex system of protections and defense mechanisms was shielding a very soft core. (Thank god. As much as they can and do backfire and cause their own problems, can you imagine how much worse off I would have been without those mechanisms?)

Are you intuitive? >> I don’t know, really. How does one measure that?

Are you spiritual? >> Maybe. I don’t really know what people mean when they use that word, so I’m hesitant to say one way or the other.

Do you wish your life were easier? >> My life isn’t particularly difficult at this juncture. I just have... a very small window of tolerance and take things a lot harder as a result. I don’t wish my life was easier, I wish my brain was less on fire.

What color hair did your first crush have? >> ---

What was the name of your first crush? >> ---

Did you ever play on Mamamedia.com? >> No.

Do you remember your first email address? >> Yeah, it was [email protected].

Did you name your lego characters? >> I didn’t have LEGO. I had Tinker Toys and an Erector set, neither of which came with little people iirc.

What was/is your high school’s mascot? >> ---

What is/was your favorite class in high school? >> ---

Is college an adventure? >> ---

Do you take medication for anxiety or depression? If so, does it work? Does it help you? Or does it make you feel worse? >> I do not.

If applicable, what form of birth control do you use? >> The Pill. Not for the birth-control function, though... not having sex covers that pretty well.

Who is your favorite cousin? >> ---

Do you look your age? >> According to other people, who apparently care about that sort of thing, no.

What’s your favorite flavor of frosting? >> ---

Do you like toe socks? >> No.

Muffins or cupcakes? >> Cupcakes, but rarely. I just don’t like muffins period.

Have you ever had a bag stolen? >> Probably.

How old were you when you got your first phone? >> Seventeen.

Are you ready for summer?!?! >> I will be in a couple of months, you can guarantee that.

Is winter your favorite season? >> No.

How many people do you know who’ve said winter is their favorite season? >> Quite a few, actually. I feel like I’ve encountered far more winter people than summer people. I see people complaining about warm weather constantly. I will never understand (even as a person who runs hot, I will still never understand). Even with the side effect of getting SAD in the winter, I love being solar powered.

Are you unique in any way? >> I mean, probably.

Do you have any hidden talents? >> No.

Has anyone said you and your mom look like sisters? >> ---

Who was your best friend in high school? >> ---

What book or movie gave you nightmares as a child? >> None.

What song makes you cry? >> Plenty, but I can’t think of one right now.

Does anyone know who your first crush was besides you? >> ---

How many teachers have you had crushes on? >> I was thinking about this last night. Calling the obsession I had with that one teacher a “crush” is erroneous because... the reason why I felt the way I felt about him is because he was nice to me. Literally, that was it. I was freshly traumatised (and being in and out of the hospital was just re-traumatising me), had an attachment disorder and was emotionally neglected, and was used to being treated poorly. When I told That One Teacher that I cut myself, he gave me a hug. Like... groundbreaking! No one else had responded that way! Of course I was attached to him, he actually treated me like someone who deserved kindness and care. It’s really hard not to feel crushingly sad for teenage!me (and, as an extension, current!me, who is still bearing the effects of the past) when I think about that.

Did you make your Barbie dolls get crushes on each other? >> I don’t really remember what I did with Barbie dolls.

Did your Barbie dolls go on dates? >> ^

How old were you when you had your first kiss? >> ---

Do you like church? >> Eh. Depends on the church, I guess. I’ll always have affection for Black Church(tm).

Do you have scars from self-harm? >> Yep.

Do you have cellulite? >> A little, I think.

How old were you when you started getting zits? >> I had them through my teenage years.

Did your hair change at all when you went through puberty? >> I don’t think so.

Are you taller, shorter, or the same height as your mom? >> I’ve been taller than that woman since I was 12.

Would you ever consider adopting a child? >> If I was ever going to raise a child, this would be the only way it’d happen.

Who was your first roommate? >> ---

Have you ever had a teacher who was rude? >> Yup.

Is your mom paranoid? >> ---

Do you trim your own hair? >> I buzz my own head, yeah.

Did your mom read you bedtime stories as a child? >> I was not read bedtime stories as a child. I made up my own in my head instead.

What are all the things you remember being for Halloween? >> ---

What was the name of the first pet that you loved? >> Roxie.

Did you have your own room as a child? >> I did.

What color was your nursery? >> ---

Did your parents know your gender before you were born? >> I don’t know.

What is your name (first and middle)? >> Mordred Shadow.

What would you have been named if you had been born the opposite gender? >> My name isn’t related to what my parent named me, and I have no idea what he would have named me if I was born the opposite sex.

Do you like your name? >> I like the one I gave myself, yes.

What would you name your children? >> ---

Do you exercise regularly? >> I’m again trying to do the take-a-daily-walk thing. Again. I fail every time, but I keep trying. Can Calah says there’s something good about that, better than failing and giving up on ever doing it again. I don’t know, but I’ll trust him on it.

Do you have a healthy BMI? >> I don’t know.

What is your favorite season? >> Spring.

Do you look like your mom? >> ---

What is the origin of your last name? >> I have no idea. I assumed that in this world, Stephen King made it up, but maybe he didn’t. The “canonical” origin of my last name is Gilead-That-Was.

What is the meaning of your first name? >> It’s unclear.

What month were you born in? >> May.

Do you share a birthday with anyone in your family? >> ---

Do you have a sweet tooth? >> Nope.

What photo editing software do you use? >> I either use Paint to just resize or crop an image, or Pixlr if I need extra editing tools.

Where do you buy most of your clothes? >> There is no place where I buy the majority of my clothes. They come from all over.

#surveys #survey #random survey #not for reblogging *glare*

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thatpastaguy · 4 years

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Warm: An Alphyne Short Story

This is a gift fic as part of the @undertalesecretsanta event that happens every year! This year was my first year participating and I had a lot of great fun working and hanging out with all of the people involved. Anyway, this specific fic is for the wonderful @shedpuns who had the request of me writing an Alphys X Undyne fic. She wasn’t super specific with her request so I decided to do what I always do when I have the chance to write about my OTPs. Write an angsty hurt/comfort fic that has so much emotional pain in it that it makes people wonder if I even like the two characters involved. Now without any more stalling let us begin and I hope all of you reading enjoy and have a Merry Christmas!

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

Warm: An Alphyne Short Story

One of the things that Undyne hated most about the surface was that it couldn’t make up its damn mind about the weather.

She was, of course, used to living in the underground, a place that was nice and segmented when it came to its climate. Snowdin was cold, Hotland was well...hot, the capital was temperate, and Waterfall her home was rainy and cool.

But upon the surface, the place was ridiculous. It was sweltering some days but on others, it was freezing. She couldn’t understand how humans or anyone could live like this. In a place where it seemed like a dice roll what type of weather it would be.

And apparently, it was warmer now than it was supposed to because of some dumbass human stuff that she wasn’t even going to try and understand. Something about a bunch of gas trapping in heat or something like that. Which somehow Alphys and monster magic was going to help fix? It was all confusing as hell to her.

The only saving grace to any of this was that as Frisk had told her there were things called seasons. Certain periods in the year where they could most of the time rely on the weather being relatively similar. Winter for cold, spring for cool to warm, summer for hot, and fall for cool to cold. There was at least some sense to it.

However, she still had to wait out the seasons she didn’t like. Summer was a definite challenge with her baking in the sun. But winter was definitely the worst. It was so damn cold all of the time making her feeling as if she’d freeze on the spot.

Undyne hated winter above every other season. It was the one that she always waited through with annoyance, begging for spring to come as fast as it possibly could with the sweet warm rain that it brought.

But even if she did loathe winter there were some upsides to it. She did like the holidays that came around that time along with the general sense of togetherness it brought. It always reaffirmed that she had great family and friends.

She also looked back on the chilly days of winter with fondness because of what happened between her and Alphys the first year they were on the surface. It was one of her most cherished memories and always brought a warm toothy smile to the monster’s face.

Alphys and she had been dating for a couple of months and had grown closer with each other. The two of them were, of course, friends before but now had grown into something much more. Into something deeper with more affection. They were more than just friends, they were now lovers and above all else partners.

However, one aspect that had been slow to progress in their relationship was physical intimacy. The two of them had held hands and kissed but the supposed “next step” in their relationship hadn’t come from them. The closest thing they had done to that was share a bed a few weeks prior and that had only happened after some protest from Alphys.

Undyne didn’t really understand why Alphys was so hesitant. She knew she was shy and awkward and would probably take time to get used to doing romantic stuff with her. However, Undyne also thought that a shut-in nerd like her would jump at the chance to get it on with someone awesome like her.

But Alphys just didn’t want to take that step no matter how much Undyne wanted. That is until one brutally cold night in the middle of January.

The two of them had planned a big date to celebrate the first six months of their relationship. Alphys and she had planned a whole evening out with each other. They were going to go out to an anime and manga shop then afterward would go out to eat at this expensive authentic ramen shop in the city.

Undyne was super pumped for it. She didn’t even care about how cold it was going to be. All she cared about was that she was going to spend an amazing night out with the monster she loved.

The former captain of the royal guard was putting on her outfit for their date. It was composed of a cool blue dress shirt with a black jacket over it. She had long suit pants on with stylish black boots.

Undyne had just one of her arms through one of the armholes of the jacket when she heard a knock at her front door. “One minute!” she shouted from her room.

She put on her jacket and then straightened it out before heading out her bedroom. She quickly headed down the stairs and ran right up to the door. Undyne put her hand on the doorknob and opened the door.

Her eye widened as she saw Alphys on the other side of the door. Undyne opened her mouth to say hi but she stopped herself when she saw the state Alphys was in.

Alphys wasn’t dressed in any sort of way for the date. She wore an expression of somber sorrow on her face. Her eyes were red and there seemed to be tear stains on her cheeks. She had been crying and from the evidence on her face, it had been only a short time ago.

Undyne stared at her with wide eyes for a moment, not sure what to say. “...Alphys, are you alright?” she asked while still in shock.

“C-Can I...c-come in?” she shakily asked.

“Yeah, come on in,” Undyne replied. She then moved slightly to the side to let her in.

Alphys slowly walked inside into Undyne’s living room. She quickly slipped out of her winter coat revealing that she was wearing a rather conservative sweater with long pants. She sat down on Undyne’s couch with her head down.

Undyne stared at her wondering what could’ve caused her to be this way. She knew Alphys was sensitive but she hadn’t seen her face like this in a long time. Not since she first met her staring at that dark endless pit in Waterfall.

She down next to Alphys and place a hand on her back. “Alphys, what’s wrong?” she gently asked. “What happened? Did someone make fun of you or something? Oh I know it’s those damn human brats from the next neighborhood over isn’t! I know it must be them! When I see those little bastards again I’m going to kick their asses so damn fast-”

“I-It’s not t-that.” Alphys meekly answered.

Undyne’s temper quickly cooled as soon as she said that. “What is it then Alphys?”

“I-I...I saw o-one of t-the amalgamates t-today.”

Undyne’s blood ran cold. Alphys hadn’t uttered the words amalgamates in a very long time.

“I-I was out t-today d-doing some errands a-and I saw S-Snowdrake’s mother w-with her family,” Alphys explained. She then paused for a second trying to hold back tears. “...T-They said that she w-was doing well. They told me t-that they weren’t h-having any t-trouble adjusting t-to daily l-life on t-the surface. A-All of them seemed h-happy but I-I could t-tell by l-looking at h-her face that she…”

Tears dripped down Alphys’ face as her emotions overtook her. “She was in so much pain!” Alphys exclaimed with her face falling into her hands. “I-I saw that look o-on her f-face and I could see how m-much suffering a-and pain s-she was still in a-all because o-of me! S-She wouldn’t b-be like this if it wasn’t f-for me. I-If it wasn't for my sick e-experiments with d-determination.”

“Hey Alphys, it’s okay,” Undyne said while placing a hand on her shoulder.

“N-No it’s not,” she said with her voice trembling. “I-I’ve caused s-so much pain and e-everyone is just t-trying to t-treat it like it isn’t a big d-deal b-but it is. I-I’m horrible! I shouldn’t e-even be on the s-surface! I-I shouldn’t be with you o-or with anybody! I-I should just be l-left somewhere to rot.”

“Stop that!” Undyne suddenly shouted.

Alphys head turned up as she recoiled slightly from shock.“S-Stop what?” she asked feeling slightly scared.

“Stop...Stop saying that your worthless or you don’t deserve me.” Undyne explained. “You do deserve me! You do deserve to be here! You’re amazing! You’re the most amazing girl I’ve ever met! Or hell most amazing person I’ve ever met!”

The two of them stay silent for a moment. Both of them just stared into the other’s eyes.

Undyne then sighed. “Look I’ve told you that I’ll never stop telling you how much you deserve this. I’ll keep doing that because it’s the truth and always will be.” she warmly told her. A big toothy grin then formed on her face. “And if words won’t convince you I think I know what to do.”

“And what’s that Undyne-” Alphys suddenly stopped talking as she felt Undyne’s warm lips on hers. Everything stopped at that moment. Time itself froze as she felt Undyne start to kiss her deeply.

Alphys didn’t move for a second but soon to her surprise she was kissing her back. Both of their lips were locked firmly on each other. Nothing else mattered anymore, all that mattered was the passion between the two.

Undyne pulled Alphys in closer to her. She then pressed her tongue up against Alphys’ mouth and she was quickly given entrance. The two of their tongues invaded the other’s mouth. Their tongues mingled in their mouths.

The two of them clung to each other just enjoying the sweet sensations of one another. They then pulled apart. Both of them gasping for breath. They both panted, filled with so many different types of emotion and energy.

Undyne looked down at Alphys and knew what they were going to do tonight. She knew what Alphys needed. She needed to be embraced by someone that truly loved her.

“W-Wow Undyne, t-that was incredible,” she said through a few quick breaths.

“We’re not stopping there Alphys,” Undyne told her in a warm smooth voice.

“W-What do you m-mean?” she asked confused.

Undyne smiled. “I want you Alphys. I want to be with you more than anything in the entire damn world.” Undyne explained. She then leaned in closer to her and began to kiss her. Her hands then found their way to the bottom of Alphys’ sweater and began to tug on it.

“W-wait...Undyne, please s-stop.” Alphys suddenly told her.

Undyne quickly pulled away from her. She looked up at Alphys and stared right into her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“U-Undyne, s-should we really b-be doing this?” she meekly asked with a blush on her face. “I-I’m not sure if I-I’m ready for this k-kind of stuff.”

“I know it’s a big step and stuff but I know we’re ready Alphys,” Undyne answered while looking straight into her eyes. “Because I know when we're together there’s nothing we can’t do. I know that sounds cheesy as hell but it’s true. When we’re together it’s amazing...”

The two stayed silent for a moment. Undyne could tell Alphys was thinking hard. Trying to figure out what to do next. Questioning if this was even right.

“A-Alright I think I’m r-ready.”

“That’s great!” Undyne excitedly exclaimed.

“B-But can we n-not do it here?” Alphys asked. “I-I mean this c-couch is comfy and a-all but I t-think it’d be better i-if we were in your b-bed.”

“Alright let’s get upstairs then.” She said with a nod.

Suddenly Undyne jumped up. She then scooped Alphys and began to carry her bridal style. This caused Alphys’ cheeks to turn a bright scarlet red which made Undyne smile.

She then quickly walked up the stairs to her room. Undyne opened the door and walked through it into her room.

Undyne gently laid Alphys down onto her bed. She slipped off her jacket and placed both of her hands onto the bottom of her shirt. She then took off her shirt revealing her muscular torso that laid underneath. The only thing covering her chest her black silk bra.

Alphys’ face was now a bright red as stared up at her from the bed. Her eyes quickly darted around noticing her large biceps and her perfectly segmented abdomen.

“Heh like what you see?” Undyne asked with a smile.

“U-Uh...yeah…” Alphys replied, embarrassed.

“Good. Because you’re going to be seeing a lot more of it.” she confidently told her.

Undyne then slid off the shoes she was wearing and unbutton her pants which quickly fell to the floor. She took off the band that was holding her hair up with her red hair falling to her shoulders. She then got onto the bed and stared down at Alphys.

Alphys stared at her feeling a mixture of both excitement and embarrassment. She had seen her like this before but she was still somewhat flustered. Flustered from seeing what she had only dreamt of.

“Now then let’s get you out of this sweater.” Undyne sensually told her as one of her hands got to the bottom of her shirt.

Alphys squirmed slightly as Undyne quickly pulled her shirt off of her. Undyne then quickly pulled off her pants, trying to get her to the same level of undressed as she was.

Undyne stared down at her. She admired her amber yellow scales. Alphys was slightly chubby do to her poor diet from when she was still underground but it was cute.

Alphys, however, looked down at herself and let out a sigh. “Look at me,” she said staring down at herself. “I’m nothing compared to you.”

“What are you talking about?” Undyne suddenly asked. Alphys’ eyes widened. She then looked straight at Undyne. “You’re beautiful.”

Alphys stared up into Undyne’s eyes and realized something. Something that she had realized a long time ago but hadn’t really fully comprehended it until now.

Undyne loved her. She loved her more than anything, even with all of her flaws. She didn’t care about all of the bad things she had done in the past. She loved her for her no matter what.

As soon as she realized that that was when she was ready to give herself completely to her. Her mind, body, and soul all to her.

Alphys suddenly locked lips with Undyne. For once instead of thinking she just gave in to the emotions flowing through her. Letting her experience something more amazing than anything she had ever felt before.

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

Undyne and Alphys laid there on the bed wrapped up in its covers. The two of them were tired but also happy. Alphys was snuggling into Undyne’s chest enjoying the warmth coming from her.

Undyne then looked down at her with a small smile on her face. “How do you feel?” she quietly asked Alphys.

“Warm,” Alphys replied.

“Good,” Undyne said to her with a smile. She then laid a gentle kiss on her lips.

The two of them then laid there for a moment, not saying a word. They just enjoyed the warmth of their naked bodies up against each other.

“You know I was so scared about this.” Alphys suddenly spoke up. “B-But now looking back I-I have n-no idea why I t-thought that because t-this was amazing.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it.” Undyne happily told her.

“I-I want to thank y-you Undyne. I-I don’t think I c-could have been able to build u-up the courage if it w-wasn’t for you.” Alphys quietly thanked her.

“No problem Alphys,” Undyne replied. “I just wanted to express how much I loved you and make you feel good.”

“Heh, you s-sure did that,” Alphys told her with a quiet laugh.

“Hell yeah, I did. I kicked your dream version of me ass when it came to screwing you.” Undyne told her with a proud smile on her face.

“I guess y-you can say that,” Alphys said while smiling back at her.

The two of them then began to slowly drift off to sleep. Alphys fell asleep against Undyne’s chest. Undyne sleepily looked down at her with her eyes half-open. She gently caressed the top of her head so happy to be with her like this.

Even though most of Undyne’s memories of winter were of the cold and the dark this one she’d only remember how warm and happy she was.

#fanfic #undertale #alphys x undyne #hurt/comfort #undertalesecretsanta #alphys #undyne #big gay #gift fic #christmas

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verai-marcel · 5 years

Text

More Than Words (Chapter 1 of 2, RDR2 Fanfic, Prisoner AU, 18+ ONLY)

Summary: After a terrible nightmare, you find yourself texting Charles, who comes over immediately despite the late hour. The comfort and safety you find in his arms is nice, but you want something more. How much do you need to beg for him to give you what you really want?

Author’s Notes: WARM FUZZIES, I WANTS THEM. That is all. Also a soul-consuming fuck from Charles. Yes. PLEASE. I used to think of Charles as a good friend, a brother-type character. Then I played the epilogue in RDR2, and I fell in love.

Tags: Charles x Reader, fluff, hurt/comfort, smut, gentle domination, D/s, Master/pet, aftercare, TW: past noncon

Find it on AO3 here.

Chapter 1: Build Me Up

You couldn’t breathe. You knew this feeling. You hated it. This invasion of your body, this brainwashing of your mind, being told that the only one who’d ever love you was him.

You awoke with a cold sweat, sitting straight up in your bed, swallowing the cry that was welling up from deep in your heart. After a moment, you took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It had been a while since you had dreamed of your ex. For five years, he had convinced you that he was the only one for you, that no one else would have you, that you were lucky to have him.

When you finally wised up to his asshattery, he tried to force you back into submission on one terrible night that you told no one about. To be fair, you had heard worse stories; your experience wasn’t that bad. After all, when you had finally begged him to stop, he did. But you knew that if you told your best friend, she’d find him and put him in the hospital; she was usually level headed, but when it came to her loved ones, she didn’t hesitate to protect them, whatever it took.

So you didn’t tell her. You just didn’t want to think about it. You let it go and put all that shit behind you. There were better things to do, other things to worry about, greater things to pursue.

But that didn’t mean that your subconscious had let it go like the rest of you had, and on occasion, you dreamed of the past. It had only happened a few times in the last two years since you left him, and it had been almost five months since your last dream.

Usually you just got up, paced around your apartment for a bit, read something light and funny, drank some water, and went back to sleep. Or if you were feeling particularly down, you’d drink some of the plum wine you had stashed away until you passed out.

But tonight you pulled out your phone and stared at it for a minute.

And then you hit the Messages app.

I had a bad dream

You hit send.

A heartbeat later, you immediately wished you hadn’t hit send. Who the hell were you, texting Charles in the middle of the night? You had gone on zero dates with this guy. The last time you saw him, he was leaving your apartment after you had made a fool of yourself, after he had given you a mind blowing orgasm and taking nothing for himself. He had kissed your forehead, told you to keep hydrated, and left you his phone number, in case you ever needed anything. Anything at all, even just someone to listen to you, he had said.

Your phone buzzed.

I’ll be over right away.

You stared at the message, unbelieving. You quickly texted back.

you don’t have to

it’s fine

sorry for waking you

After a moment, he messaged back.

I want to.

***

You heard a soft knocking and you rushed to the door. The moment you opened it, he charged in, sweeping you up in his arms. The shock of his sudden hug hit your heart hard, and you lost the ability to stand as you dropped to your knees, emotions that you thought you had long since buried bubbling up within you. Clinging to him, you cried, burying your face into his shoulder and letting out everything that you had bottled up for years.

***

Sitting in Charles’ lap on your bed, you sniffled and drank the hot chamomile tea that he had made for you as he held you, rubbing your back. You looked up at him, and his kind eyes almost made you cry again. You hadn’t told him anything yet; he just knew that you needed comfort, and gave it to you without asking why.

“I… I had an ex,” you started.

And you told him everything, words tumbling from you like an avalanche, unable to stop until it was all out of your system. Even the things you hadn’t told your best friend.

Charles was angry on your behalf, but he was very good at controlling himself, although you could see the simmering in his eyes as you spoke. By the end of your explanation, he had calmed, the only emotion on his face was a tenderness, warm and inviting like a campfire. You had only looked up every once in a while to gauge his reaction, to see him silently listening to you, no judgement, only empathy. Now that you were done speaking, you looked at him, only to find him watching you carefully.

He cupped your face, his thumb massaging your cheek. “Thank you for sharing. It must have been tough.”

You nodded.

“Are you feeling better?”

“Sort of. I mean, I am. But it’s weird, I hardly know you, and yet I’ve told you more than I’ve told anyone.”

Charles laughed softly. “I’ve been told that I’m a good listener. I’ll keep your secrets safe, I promise.”

Leaning into his embrace once more, you slowly fell asleep to the slow rocking of him holding you in his arms, and the steady beat of his heart.

***

You woke up to a familiar warmth, and found Charles, under the covers with you this time, spooning you. You turned in his arms, and he tightened his hold on you, mumbling in his sleep.

“Chaaaaarles,” you cooed.

“G’morning, kitten,” he mumbled.

“Why do you call me that?”

“Because you made noises like a kitten when I was pleasuring you,” he answered, shifting back to sleep.

Your cheeks grew hot, thinking of that night. And then you felt a bit horny when you felt his morning wood against your thigh. Nudging him with your leg, you inched closer to him. He instantly woke up and scooted back. You stopped, feeling a little hurt by his rejection. It must have shown on your face, for he reached out to you and caressed your cheek with his knuckles.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said softly. “You know I want you too. I just think we need to get to know each other a little better first.”

You blinked. God, you were pouncing on him as if he were just a hook-up. He deserved better from you, didn’t he? A little more space and time to get used to you? Your friend had joked that you went through men like she went through chocolate. But she had a point; these past two years, you had flirted and dated and fucked, but never seriously.

Charles made you want to be serious again.

“Okay, okay,” you said, holding up your hands in surrender. “Let’s go on a date.”

“Sure. When?”

“After I get up and get ready?”

Charles just gaped at you for a moment, but then he shook his head and laughed. “Alright wildcat, I’ll go with you.”

***

The two of you ended up at your favorite cafe. After scrolling through Yelp and frustrated by how few places were open early on Sunday morning, you just said ‘fuck this shit’ and went with a classic. Charles smoothly bought your flat white and almond croissant while you were fishing for your card, and guided you to a table with his hand on the small of your back. He even got up to get your drink for you when they called your name.

Plus a hundred points. He was suave, much more than you expected.

And somehow, an hour passed like a minute, just chatting about your life, his life before coming to this town, general interests, and animals.

Then your alarm went off on your phone.

“Shit. I have to go to the animal hospital,” you said as you picked up your purse. Charles stood with you.

“Need any help?”

You looked at him for a moment, wondering if you were allowed to take him with you. You decided against it; if he wasn’t an official vet tech, he wasn’t allowed to help because of all the liability issues. But his heart was in the right place.

“I can handle it,” you said. “I’ll see you later?”

Charles nodded and waved as you left.

***

i’m off work now

wanna get some food?

You couldn’t stop yourself from messaging him again as you got out of the animal hospital. It had been an emergency surgery for a poor cat who had been hit by a car. She lost a leg, but the rest of her was in relatively good condition, and would survive. But it had been a long five hours, and you were exhausted. Lately you had been called in for these kinds of surgeries because you were good at keeping steady and making quick, calculated decisions. But once you were out of those situations, you let loose and were boisterous. Perhaps that’s how you balanced out; you didn’t know how your friend stayed so calm all the time, except for when you were teasing her.

Your phone buzzed.

I’ll come over and cook you something after I pick up some groceries. You must be tired. Take a nap. I'll see you at 5pm.

You smiled. He was too kind.

sure

thank u

Putting your phone away and getting into your car, you drove home with a big goofy grin on your face.

***

You had taken a nap when you got home, so exhausted that you just collapsed on your bed and passed out. When you got up, you had been opening windows to let in the cool evening air when your doorbell rang. Taking a deep breath, you went to let in Charles, who was carrying some grocery bags.

“That’s a lot,” you commented. “Cooking for an army?”

“I noticed you didn’t have much in your fridge,” he said. “Other than a couple of takeout containers.”

You sighed. It had been a rough few weeks at the hospital, that was true. One of your coworkers had warned you of compassion fatigue, and you had waved it off, but now you felt it. You had no energy for yourself, always taking care of others. Your friend had been the only one who had regularly checked in with you and made sure you took time for yourself here and there, but she couldn’t watch you all the time. Besides, you didn’t think you needed anyone to coddle you.

And now Charles, within just a week, had noticed how poorly you ate when you were alone.

He cooked a wonderfully healthy meal for you; baked chicken with spices, herbed potatoes, and a chickpea and spring green salad with a poppyseed dressing and candied walnuts. Your mouth watered as the smells filled your kitchen. He listened to you chatter away about your day at work when you should’ve had the day off, and he told you about his work at the construction site. You learned that he worked with Arthur, and that he had forgone his volunteer work at the animal shelter today to take care of you.

“I’m sorry,” you said, feeling bad for making him change his schedule.

He immediately went to you and hugged you tight. “Don’t ever feel bad for needing me. Ever.”

Your heart raced to hear him say something you didn’t know you needed to hear.

As he finished cooking dinner, you finally got up and helped him get plates and silverware, feeling bad that he was doing most of the work. The two of you ate on the floor, your plates on the coffee table. Your place was small, just a studio apartment with a bed, a small coffee table in front of a TV, a kitchen, and strangely enough, a decent sized bathroom. Sure, you could probably afford more now that you were a full veterinarian, but you wanted to save money and pay down your student debt. Besides, you didn’t spend much time at home anyway. For all the hours you were called in, you easily worked 60 hour weeks on average lately.

The two of you finished your meal and cleaned up everything together. It was magical, almost like he was your boyfriend already. Not only that, now you had a fridge filled with Tupperware containers of meals for a few days, so you didn't have to eat out for a while.

This was definitely not how you’d imagine things going. By now, with any other man you would have slept with him and sent him on his way.

Charles was different. Your best friend was right, these country boys were something else.

Now that dinner was done and everything was clean and put away, you weren’t sure what to do. You turned to him to ask what he wanted to do, but he was prowling towards you, his hands gripping the kitchen counter behind you as you realized you were trapped between his big arms. He crooned your name, so sweet sounding on his lips, and you were instantly turned on, feeling desire gliding through your body. He leaned over you, forcing you to crane your neck up to him. You parted your lips.

You knew what you wanted to do now.

“Please,” you begged. “Take me.”

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

Chapter 2 Here.

#rdr2 #rdr2 fanfic #writing #charles smith x reader #charles smith #nsft #lemon fanfic #fanfic #red dead redemption 2 #prisoner au

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fatehbaz · 5 years

Note

Wait, what's the anthropomorphism debate? If you'd prefer not to answer dw! I can look more into it online

Apologies in advance for this long post! I’m not all that great with ontology and theory, so take what I say here with a grain of salt; I am not “an authority.” I’m going to hijack the ask to summarize “the ontological turn in anthropology.”

So: the ontological turn in anthropology from 2008-2012, and the debate about anthropomorphism

I’m sorry that I did not answer this sooner. I’m also sorry that this is going to be a very long post. You might know all this stuff already, so please feel free to disregard all this text! A recap for viewers who missed the previous episode:

This question was - I’m assuming - in response to me being a silly-billy and making a meme of a distressed, sweaty person awaking from a nightmare, to illustrate the anxiety that confronted me when I noticed that there has been some recent Tumblr discourse replicating the heated academic anthropology debate about anthropomorphism from around 2008-2012. I was at relatively progressive university, focused on ethnoecology at the time (a field of anthropology right at the heart of the discourse), so I was forced to participate!

Basically, the 2008-2012-ish period saw the relative “mainstreaming” of a movement to “decolonize anthropology and conservation/ecology” and uplift Indigenous/non-Western worldviews as an alternative to Western views of the natural world, and this movement was basically referred to as “the ontological turn in anthropology.” It sought to acknowledge that Indigenous cosmologies were legitimate - as in, Indigenous/traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is very sophisticated, and therefore the cosmologies that maintained this knowledge ought to be given more credit. A major, if not the central, issue in this dialogue was how to prevent “intellectual colonization” by respecting the utility/validity of specific Indigenous worldviews like Buen Vivir, animism, totemism, etc. Thus, one of the most frequent and intense focal points of discussion and argument was “anthropomorphism” and animal emotion. Technical scientists were still uncomfortable accepting the environmental knowledge of non-Western cultures that believed in things similar to literal animism. The discourse was also deeply concerned with “the Anthropocene” and the climate/ecological crisis, and sought to uplift Indigenous relationships with ecology as examples of alternatives to capitalist resource extraction economies.

At the time, I fried my brain out while reading hot-take after hot-take about anthropomorphism - but I’m not all that great with ontology and theory, so this subject might not be as overwhelming to other readers!

The discourse was extensive; and some Tumblr discourse I’ve seen lately seems to be asking similar questions that the 2008-2012 discourse also grappled with.

Many Latin American scholars - and Indigenous people - had been actively writing about Indigenous cosmology’s importance to anthropology/ecology/conservation for decades but especially since at least the late 1980s and early 1990s (especially Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, an anthropologist working in Latin America and since dubbed the leading scholar of “Amazonianist” thinking promoting the knowledge of Andean/Amazonian peoples). However, this movement begun to be taken much more seriously in American academia around 2008-2010, led by the influential writing of ecology-adjacent anthropologists and theorists like Bruno Latour, Phillipe Descola, and Isabelle Stengers.

This discourse and its mainstreaming coincided with the rise of “object-oriented ontology” (OOO) - headed by Graham Harman, who was given more attention partially because of the rising popularity of his friend Mark Fisher, at this time. OOO played a major part in some of these discussions, since it basically (don’t quote me on this) allows for statements like “all other living things - and perhaps non-living things, but that’s more complicated - probably experience some strange alien form of subjectivity, and are therefore are potentially sentient at their own scale depending on how you want to define sentience.” Timothy Morton (who coined the term “dark ecology” - after which my blog was named) is/was a close colleague of Graham Harman’s. Morton sort of “bridged the gap” between the anthropology/ecology enthusiasts and the more space-y OOO theoretical stuff.

Anthropomorphism?

A sort of conclusion to this discourse, which was eventually acknowledged by many anthropologists and ecologists, is similar to Isabelle Stengers’ notion of “cosmopolitics”: Animals and plants have unique experiences and perspectives, probably very bizarre and strange to the human observer. Humans and other living things engage in “world-building” and may have an “interiority” that isn’t always going to match definitions of sentience or consciousness, and therefore it can be difficult to “translate” the experience of other living things in a way that humans can understand or relate. However, it is still worthwhile to attempt to translate the experience of other living things, partially by acknowledging that we live in a strange community of living things and therefore should value the biosphere as a community.

But I think Adrian Ivakhiv, an environmental scientist at University of Vermont, better summarizes this view of anthropomorphism which is gaining popularity. You can read the summary here, from December 2010.

You might recognize these themes from Tumblr discourse about animism/anthropomorphism. This is a discussion of how various human cultures conceive of other living things, and how living things, whether “sentient” or not, still “subjectivate,” and therefore participate in their own “world-building” at some scale.

“On animism, multinaturalism, & cosmopolitics.” December 2010/Janurary 2011. Adrian Ivakhiv.

Excerpts:

Either most existing entities are supposed to share a similar interiority whilst being different in body, and we have animism, as found among peoples of the Amazonian basin, the Northern reaches of North America and Siberia and some parts of Southern Asia and Melanesia. Or humans alone experience the privilege of interiority whilst being connected to the non-human continuum by their materiality and we have naturalism – Europe from the classical age. Or some humans and non-humans share, within a given framework, the same physical and moral properties generated by a prototype, whilst being wholly distinguishable from other classes of the same type and we have totemism – chiefly to be found among Australia’s Aborigines. Or all the world’s elements are ontologically distinct from one another, thence the necessity to find stable correspondences between them and we have analogism –China, Renaissance Europe, West Africa, the indigenous peoples of the Andes and Central-America [6]. [“Who owns nature,” 2008]

These ontological options can be portrayed as follows:

This would be a world that demands an ontological politics, or a cosmopolitics, by which the choices open to us with respect to the different ways we can entangle ourselves with places, non-humans, technologies, and the material world as a whole, become ethically inflected open questions. […]

In her multivolume work Cosmopolitiques (1996–97) and publications that followed it, Isabelle Stengers (2005) forwards a “cosmopolitical proposal” that, unlike most forms of cosmopolitanism, does not presume the existence or even the possibility of a “good common world,” an ecumenically peaceable cosmopolis. On the contrary, her proposal is intended to “slow down the construction of this common world, to create a space for hesitation regarding what it means to say ‘good’” (2005:994). The “cosmos” of her cosmopolitics “refers to the unknown constituted by [the] multiple, divergent worlds and to the articulations of which they could eventually be capable” (2005:994). Such a cosmopolitics does not pre-assume what will count as “common,” whether it is “human nature,” “cultural differences,” or the laws and discoveries of science; or, on the other hand, gods, souls, spirits, or anything else that anyone might bring to the table.

Stengers’s call is echoed by Latour (2004b), Mol (1999), and Law (2004), who argue on behalf of a politics for building, enacting, or co-producing shared or common worlds — not worlds that posit “nature” as the “unique author of a single account” (Law 2004:123) propping up a “reality that is independent, prior, singular, and definite,” but worlds in which “everything takes effort, continuing effort” (Law 2004:131–132). Such methods and modes of knowledge-making recognize their own complicities in the worlds they enact; and they are political in the sense that they raise questions about how the world of associations — the society of humans and other entities — is to be organized. Seeing ourselves as cosmopolitically entwined with each other and the other others of the world means seeing ourselves as actively practicing ways of “worlding” or “world-making” (Wilson and Connery 2007).

More importantly, if world-building is something that all entities are involved in, then all are carving up, in their own way, what will qualify as subject and what will qualify as object. (…)

A balanced processual perspective, however, would be one that argues that all things participate in subjectivity — all things subjectivate — in their own different ways, which may be more or less like ours depending on the specificity of those things; and that all things participate in objectivity — all things objectivate, becoming objective, material, bodily data for other things — also in their own different ways, which are also more or less like ours depending on the specificity of the things.(…)

Sorry again for the wall of text.

Thanks for the ask!

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