#and has he worn similar things?? yeah

[irisintheafterglow]

blood moonlit, must be counterfeit

summary: a guy at a party has a really good dynamight costume, and you two get to talking about your favorite heroes. (pro!bakugo x you)

wc: 1.68k

cw/tags: swearing ofc cuz it's bakugo, mentions of drinking and alcohol, halloween party, first meeting, emotionally constipated katsuki and reader is kinda oblivious lol

note: NEW HALLOWEEN HEADER BABY also this idea had me by the throat so i needed to write it down before it consumed my entire psyche. i'm back to writing for bakugo again because iykyk and halloween fics are giving me a lot of motivation right now. hope you enjoy!

likes, reblogs, and replies are always appreciated <3

“I have to admit–your costume is pretty damn good.”

“Yeah? Just ‘pretty good?’”

“Mhmm. Almost looks like the real thing,” you remark, taking another sip of the dangerously sweet jungle juice in your cup. It's an unreadable mix of bad ideas and bold flirtation, perfect for a Halloween party of barely 21 adults. The blonde guy beside you on the worn leather couch tilts his head slightly like he's re-affirming what you just said in his mind. “I think the real Dynamight would be impressed.”

“Would he, now,” he huffs under his breath, mouth curling into an unreadable smirk. He exhales a quick breath of what you think is amusement through his nose, eyes flicking over your body for the umpteenth time since he sat down with you. It makes your face heat up and you casually avert your gaze downward, catching more details of his costume that you didn’t notice before. 

The gauntlets were obviously the star of the arrangement, covered in numerous scratches, burns, and dents that attested to their “battle” usage. The boots were impressive, too, and you wondered how long it took to place every individual orange eyelet over the front of each calf. The cinder block rectangles sitting on his broad shoulders truly looked like real stone, solid like the toned muscle holding them up. It was the domino mask that threw you off the most, though. The guy must have been wearing bright red contacts, or something, because to look so similar to the actual Pro should have been considered a crime. 

“Who’d you come to the party with?”

“Just some friends,” he replies, shrugging an infuriatingly sexy shoulder. His entire look was putting the real Dynamight to shame, in your opinion. He nods upward in the direction of a guy in an equally accurate Deku costume standing with a very convincing Shoto lookalike. “They dared me to wear this and I lost the bet.”

“Must have been some bet, if you’re moping over here like a toddler.” The shrewdness of your words escapes you until they’re already past your lips; thankfully, he just smirks again and leans his head back, resting an arm on the back of the sofa.

“I’ll ignore that you said that, 'cause you're clearly intoxicated” he mutters, shooting you a brutal side-eye. Thanks to the alcohol, though, you’re far from deterred. 

“How gracious,” you chuckle and his smirk gets a little more arrogant. “What was the bet?”

“Some dumb drinking contest. That asswipe in the green can put down more shots than he looks.” He scowls and you fight down the urge to giggle at his bitter expression. He was the only guy you’ve ever seen that could make a grumpy face look hot. The only guy besides Bakugo himself, of course. “I wouldn’t have worn this shit to a party to save my life.”

“What, Dynamight isn’t your favorite Pro?”

“I’m more of an All Might guy,” he replies nonchalantly. He appreciates the classic heroes. Good sign. “If I had to choose a different one, I’d probably say Jeanist.”

“Jeanist is pretty cool. My best friend had a cardboard cutout of Eraserhead in her closet growing up.” He barks out a laugh and it startles you, but a mysterious feeling in your stomach wants to make him do it again. “What do you think of the current gen of heroes?” He hums thoughtfully, running his tongue over his top lip and you swallow back your drool.

“Red Riot’s a good guy. Deku pisses me the fuck off, but he’s got a good head on his shoulders. Same thing with Pinky and that Half-and-Half asshat. Chargebolt…” His expression turns into a frown so deep you’re worried that Chargebolt killed his family or something heinous like that. 

“What about him?”

“He’s just dumb. If given the choice between his life and a grain of sand, I’d take the sand,” he deadpans and you choke unexpectedly, wincing as your drink travels up the wrong tube and into your nose. His eyes widened in concern, reaching out to pat your back but deciding against it at the last moment. His glove-covered hands hover around you like you’re radioactive matter, carefully watching as you regain your composure. “You good, nerd?” Uses the same vocabulary as the real guy, too. Kind of weird, but I guess we all have our idols. 

“Yeah, I’m good. I just didn’t expect you to badmouth him like you two were friends from high school or something,” you joke lightheartedly and the guy blinks at you twice before computing what you said. 

“It’s whatever. They’re super fuckin’ easy to read, in any case,” he states with an air of finality and you down the rest of your drink, the dim lighting starting to blur everything around you into a single greenish-orange blob. “What about you? What are your thoughts on the new gen?”

“I can’t make such bold judgments as you, but I do think Dynamight is pretty cool,” you admit, suddenly feeling a little bashful when having the same question turned on you. The truth was, you followed the lives of the heroes a bit too closely than the average person should. It fascinated you so much that you were majoring in Quirk-specific journalism, studying the social and economic consequences of being a Pro. “I think his public persona is an interesting case when compared to other heroes.”

“How so?”

“Well, I’d like to imagine that he’s not always the loud, arrogant, obnoxious piece of shit that the press shows,” you start and narrow your eyes in confusion when he flinches at your description. You continue anyway but choose your words a little more carefully. Probably isn’t good to upset the guy who might have fashioned functioning gauntlets, if the costume truly is accurate. “There’s a side to him that I think the public doesn’t know about and doesn’t care to know about, since it’s easier to understand him as a loudmouth with no sense of manners. I just wonder who that guy is under all the yelling and testosterone.” His silence is deafening and you worry that you somehow offended him, but his tone is so gentle that your assumption becomes an impossibility.

“Seems like you’ve given this guy a great deal of thought,” he says lowly, voice barely audible over the sound of the blaring house music. 

“Well, he is my favorite,” you add quietly, not expecting him to catch what you said. He does, though, and that mischievous smirk returns to his face. Somehow, you two had inched closer together over the course of your conversation, and you were now close enough to smell his cologne. It was something deep and smoky, with a surprise note of sweetness, like caramel. “I’ve been following his hero career since I was in high school.”

“I didn’t take you for a superfan, but I do appreciate your support,” he chuckles and your eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “You seriously haven’t figured it out?”

“Figured what out?”

“That I’m Dynamight, stupid. This is my actual costume and those are my actual friends. Hell, I'm paying for this whole shitty party,” he says incredulously, genuinely shocked that you didn’t come to that conclusion already. Your skepticism, however, rears its head and you burst out into rude laughter. 

Dynamight? Yeah, right. More like Dyna-maybe. 

“Excuse me?” He stares at you like you’d grown three heads and your heart drops into your stomach. You must have said your thoughts out loud. Fuck! “You’ve got some nerve, testing the patience of a Pro.” His words, under any other circumstances, would have cut down your pride like a knife. However, his eyes were conveying a different story, one of lust and want and holyshityouwantedhim. “Got anything to say, sweetheart? Or are you gonna just keep gaping like a fuckin’ goldfish?” You abruptly snap your jaw back into place, leaning your head into your hand and smiling in triumph when his gaze again uncontrollably rakes over your body.  

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“See what, gorgeous?”

“That a Pro kisses better than a normal person,” you murmur and his pupils blow to the size of pool balls. He wastes no time, gently but firmly grabbing your chin with two fingers and pulling your mouth onto his. His lips are ridiculously soft and you muster up the courage to bite him softly, heartbeat racing when he groans into your mouth. One arm drapes itself over the back of the couch, the other pulling you as close to him as humanly possible without practically sitting on him. Your hand combs through his hair and the other keeps him on you by the back of his neck.

Right when you run out of breath, he pulls away and swears colorfully at the phone buzzing in his pocket, answering it with one hand while his forearm is still pressed against your lower back. You absentmindedly trace his jawline with a finger while he curses out the person on the other line, eventually chucking the device over his shoulder like it was the last thing he was thinking about. “You need to go somewhere, sweetheart?” He lightly pinches your side at your mockery and you jump, flicking his forehead in defiance. 

“Nah, that was a job for Dynamight. Right now, I guess I’m still fuckin' Dyna-maybe,” he rasps and leans back in to kiss you again but you push his face away, giving him as sober of a look as possible. “What?”

“If you need to go kick ass, then go kick ass. I’m just some random makeout at a party,” you remind him, painfully aware of the sting if he was to leave you alone. His expression contorts into indignancy again but you still try to convince him to alleviate whatever situation he was called in for. “Your job is more important than a hookup.”

“I don’t do hookups, dumbass. I’m interested in you,” he states plainly and your face is set on fire. The Pro, who you just insulted to his face, was interested in you? “So, let’s get out of here, yeah? I can make you dinner that isn’t shitty pizza.” His mouth breaks into a devilish grin and you’re already grabbing onto his hand like your life depended on it. 

“If someone messes with us?”

“It’s a good thing I’m already in costume.” 

if you enjoy my writing and would like to support me, you can buy me a coffee on my ko-fi! you can also check out my full masterlist here :)

#mha x reader #bnha x reader #mha x y/n #bnha x you #bakugo katsuki #bakugou x reader #katsuki bakugo x reader #bakugo x reader #bakugo x you #bakugo x y/n

[half-bakedboy]

Number 2 from the 50 cliché tropes and prompts

Your shirt/jumper was in the laundry pile and I couldn't help but steal it

Buck never understood why he had lost so many sweatshirts and button-downs to past girlfriends. Nine times out of ten, they didn't even remotely fit their figure and they were only worn in the comfort of Buck's home anyways. 

Then he started staying over Tommy's house more and more. He'd always come prepared–an overnight bag filled with an extra LAFD shirt, a pair of jeans, a pair of chinos, and two shirts, one with a collar and one without–just in case he needed to rush out in the morning. 

This morning, he isn’t quite as prepared as he wishes he had been. Tommy’s in the shower after sleepily kissing Buck good morning and Buck promised he’d run Hercules–Tommy’s ten-year-old retired racing greyhound–outside before Tommy dropped Buck off at work. Thunder crashes outside and rain pounds on the roof, and Buck didn’t even think to bring a jacket. 

He looks around the bedroom closet, careful not to invade the private space too much, but he doesn’t see anything that might help. He knows there’s an umbrella waiting beside the door, but he’s already shivering from the chill sneaking in through the closed windows and Buck knows he’ll need something to protect his skin. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a pullover laid neatly on top of the laundry pile. It’s similar to his LAFD one, but a lighter blue that matches Tommy’s on-duty uniform. It won’t keep him dry, but it’ll keep him warm and keep the water off of his skin which is all he has time to care about. He snatches it up and shouts to Tommy that he’s taking the dog outside even though he’s not sure he’s heard. 

Before he gets too far, Buck pauses to get the pullover on. The first thing he notices is how much bigger it is on him. He’s not a small guy by any means, and he’s not much smaller than Tommy–at least he thinks–but there’s so much extra fabric that he has to bundle it up at his waist. He can also tell that the back doesn’t stretch taut against his shoulder blades and that the neckline slouches a little in the front. 

It’s strange to wear something so unfit for him, but at the same time, Buck can’t help but feel giddy. He glances at himself in the mirror and feels small, but not in the way he usually does. It doesn’t make him feel inconsequential or overlooked, but like he’s protected and well-loved. It stirs inside of his stomach until the joy begins to bubble in his chest. 

He notices that Tommy’s name is embroidered just over his heart, and he brings his fingers there to trace over the lettering. It takes everything in him not to whisper his name combined with Tommy’s last and he wonders if this was how his old girlfriends felt when they stole his LAFD shirts that had his name brazen on the back. 

Where he expected to be a bit embarrassed at the claiming nature of it all, he can’t help but feel… powerful. Yeah, there’s something powerful about wearing someone else's name, like he’s screaming to the world that Tommy is off-limits because he’s Buck’s. 

He’s Buck’s. 

He’s too busy thinking about what exactly that means for him to hear the bathroom door open and a freshly showered and shaved Tommy emerge. Another figure beside Buck’s reflection startles him but Tommy’s reassuring hands slide around his waist. It’s strange how normal it feels to have strong, long arms wrapped around him and a broad chest waiting to hold him up as he leans back against it. 

“You’re wet,” Buck says, feeling the dampness on Tommy’s unclothed chest. He’s in sweatpants like he’s ready to lounge around for the day, but the bare skin of his upper body is clearly on display where Buck’s body isn’t hiding it. He wants to pull away just so he can take another peek. 

Tommy doesn’t seem to notice nor care that Buck is analyzing them because he’s too busy doing the same. There’s something in his eyes, though, that sends an eruption of warmth to Buck’s face. Tommy tugs at the extra fabric at Buck’s waist like he’s having the same realization as Buck did, and then he slides one hand up Buck’s chest to trace his name. He whispers each letter like a secret into Buck’s ear, piercing eyes never leaving Buck’s in the mirror. 

Buck shivers, pressing back against Tommy and leaning his head back so that it plops on Tommy’s shoulder comfortably. Tommy finishes his name before dragging a finger to the neckline of the pullover and letting it hang there like a weight that keeps Buck grounded.

“You’re wearing my jumper,” Tommy points out like he doesn’t already know. Buck suddenly feels anxious, like he’s made a horrible mistake, and stands back up straight. He turns to look at Tommy as he speaks. 

“Is that okay? I didn’t bring a jacket so I figured—” 

Tommy kisses him before he can finish, and Buck can only hope it becomes a pattern. 

It’s just as soft as their first kiss and every kiss they’ve shared since then, but it grows in passion second by second. Tommy is gripping the fabric at Buck’s waist like he’s deciding whether he wants to pull it over Buck’s head or leave it on his forever. Buck holds his naked shoulders, palms sliding down the hard planes of his chest then his abs, before sliding underneath the waistband of his sweatpants. 

When a cold nose hits his hand, Buck jumps back, out of breath and startled. Hercules is staring up at them like he’s let them have their fun and he’s done waiting to go outside. Tommy swipes at his face as he chuckles and Buck leans down to pat Herc’s head. 

“I’m sorry, Buddy. Am I stealing all of your dad’s attention?” Buck coos, and he can almost hear Tommy’s good-natured eye roll. 

“Well, if Evan here is done distracting me, I’m sure he’d be more than happy to take you outside, huh?” 

“Oh, if Evan is done distracting you? Like you didn’t just walk out of the shower half-naked and damp and looking like you wanted to drop to your kn–” Buck inhales deeply when Tommy glances down then back up and raises his eyebrows. “Alright, I’m out of here. Be right back,” he promises, pressing one last kiss to Tommy’s reddened lips. 

“Mhm,” Tommy hums, watching him start to walk away. 

“Do you want your pullover back?” Buck asks, because he figures that’s what he would’ve wanted to be asked. 

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s yours now.”

It sounds a lot like I’m yours now, but Buck doesn’t dare ask. Instead, he takes Hercules out, ignoring the storm rumbling above him, and strokes his thumb distractingly against Tommy’s name over his heart. He guesses he’s Tommy’s now, too.

(now on ao3)

#911 on abc #bucktommy #kinley #kinkley #evan buckley #tommy kinard #answered #ficlets #my writing #anonymous #911 spoilers #please im actually dying of how soft this is #also i now headcanon that tommy owns a dog #and his name is hercules #and hes an elderly greyhound who used to be a racing dog #thats just what it is now #thanks so much for sending me this prompt 🥺 #also these keep getting so much longer lmao #the feelings are just too intense now #long post

[rileyslibrary]

Hello! I just wanted to say that your fics have such a distinct feel that it makes it feel like a cinematic masterpiece so moving as each sentence is full of detail and care it’s INSANE

Could you do one where the 141 as a whole are able to go on leave for a few months but reader doesn’t really have a place to go? Like due to thier participation in the military their family has essentially cut contact with them and the military has been a placeholder for their home-life—how would Ghost react?

Once again I love your works and hope you have an amazing day ‼️

The Log Cabin: Pack Light

A/N: Hi, anon! Thank you for your kind words. Here’s the story; enjoy! :)

———————————————————————

You’re at the base’s garage, squatting on the roof of a battle-worn 1994 Land Rover Wolf, welding a rack that had been blown apart during your last mission. It’s quite admirable how these vehicles can withstand anything coming their way and still stand strong after so many years.

How long are you going to stay strong? The sparks dance around you as you manipulate the welding torch, wishing there was a similar way to mend your scars and those you’ve hurt in the past with your decisions.

But these things are far more complex than welding metal; you can’t mend fractured relationships with mere tools. It takes understanding and empathy—qualities that seem foreign to those once close to you.

Or maybe they’re right, and you’re unworthy of their forgiveness…

You close the oxygen and fuel torch valves, lift your welding mask, and wait for the molten metal to cool. You assess the seams and sigh; it needs more work. You put the welding mask back on, reignite the torch, and continue.

As the heat emanates from the torch, glowing around your gloved hands, it suddenly flickers and sputters before its flame eventually dies out. Baffled, you lift the torch in your hands and shake it. You turn towards the valve, only to see Ghost standing beside it, holding the handle. He’s dressed in civilian clothes, though he still wears his mask and carries a rucksack over his shoulder.

“I was calling out for you, but you couldn’t hear me over the...” he trails off, pointing at the torch.

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” you say through the mask, “this thing is a pain to fix.”

Ghost looks at the rack, then back at you. “Does it need to be fixed now?” He asks.

“It does.” You insist, not wanting to disclose the actual reason.

“Liar.”

Your eyebrows shoot up from behind the welding mask. “Excuse me?”

“You expect me to believe that while the rest of the team is on leave and doesn’t require that vehicle, you absolutely need to fix it.” He says.

You look at the torch and then back at him. “I must do it so it’s ready when you guys return.”

“When you guys return.” He repeats. “So, you’re not leaving.”

You forcefully turn to face him. “I am leaving.” You assert.

“Oh yeah?” He provokes you. “Where are you going?”

“None of your business, Lt.”

“See?” He says and lifts both hands, “You’re lying.”

You lower your head and throw the torch onto the roof. “What do you want me to say, huh?” You murmur, “What?”

“The truth,” he replies, “and take that bloody mask off while you’re at it.”

“Why should I take it off?” You sneer and point at his mask. “You wear yours all the time.”

“You can see my eyes, though, can’t you?” He explains and points to his face. He gestures with his head towards you. “Let me see yours,” he commands.

You roll your eyes and lift the mask. He removes his balaclava in return.

“What’s wrong, Y/N?” He asks. “What exactly are you trying to fix?”

‘My relationship with my family,’ you think to yourself and feel your face getting warmer than before when the wielding flames were burning around you.

He stands there with one thumb tucked under the rucksack’s strip. He’s waiting for an answer—a proper, truthful answer.

“This is my home.” You whisper, shrugging and lowering your head.

“What about your family?” He asks, and you shake your head, tears start filling your eyes.

“Any friends?” He asks again, this time softer.

You give him another negative shake of the head, which causes the tears to run down your face. You quickly wipe your cheeks with your gloves.

He removes his rucksack from his shoulder, drops it to the ground and puts his hands on his waist.

“Have you tried talking to them?” He asks.

“I did,” you reply, “but they don’t want anything to do with me. I disgust them, and I’m not proud either...”

“Nobody’s proud.” He admits and puts one hand on the roof’s rack, “But somebody has to do what we do.”

You sniff and rub your nose. “See? That’s why I’m here, fixing that damn rack; somebody has to do it.” You explain. “I don’t have a choice.”

“Not necessarily.” He shrugs. “Not all of us will go see family or friends; Price is travelling to the Caribbean alone as we speak, and I’m off to Scotland.”

“With Soap?”

“Fuck no!” He yells, and a chuckle escapes his lips. “He has no idea I’m going there.”

Your lips curl up, and he returns your smile. He knocks on the vehicle’s roof twice and opens his mouth to say something, but he hesitates and stops. You decide to break the silence.

“Thank you for listening to me.” You whisper.

He bites his bottom lip and pats the roof once more.

“Wanna come with me?” He asks.

Your face warms up again but for a whole different reason.

“T-to Scotland?!” You ask, surprised.

Ghost scratches his cheek and nods. “Yeah,” he replies, “it’s a small cabin in the woods—it has a single bed, an outdoor toilet, and we’ll have to hunt for food. But it has a beautiful pond for swimming and plenty of hiking trails.”

“Wow, wow, wow, one bed?!” You shout, throwing your hands up, “That’s a bit too forward, don’t you think, Lt.?”

“Come on!” He smirks, “As if we haven’t experienced that before. We’ll make it work.”

You look at him, and he returns your gaze. You’re grateful for his offer, but doubt still lingers.

“Thank you, Lt.,” you reply, “but I need to finish that rack.”

“Bollocks!” He shouts and smiles. “How long will it take you?”

“That’s not what I mean-”

“How long?” He repeats.

“Simon..”

He drops the smile and looks you straight in the eyes.

“I’m serious,” he whispers.

“You’re just offering out of pity.” You speculate, and he throws his head up, letting out a sharp chuckle.

“Very bold of you to think I’d invite you out of mere pity.” He says. “I thought you also had plans; that’s why I didn’t offer before. I’m doing it because I found the opportunity.”

You look at him, contemplating his words, then shake your head.

“Thanks,” you say, “maybe next time.”

He picks up his rucksack and begins walking towards the garage’s exit.

“We’re leaving in an hour!” he shouts as he walks towards the door.

“Ghost! “

“Pack light!”

———————————————————————

Part 2 this way ->

#simon ghost riley x reader #simon ghost riley x you #simon ghost riley x y/n #simon ghost riley x gn!reader #simon riley x reader #simon riley x you #simon ghost riley #simon riley #simon riley x y/n #call of duty #modern warfare 2 #cod mwii #ghost cod #ghost cod mw2 #cod ghost #ghost cod mwii #ghost mw2 #simon ghost riley fanfiction #simon ghost riley fic

[lunartadpole]

Eddie learned about two months into dating him that Steve is an active sleeper.

He was always a bit hurt when Steve wouldn't stay the night at the trailer park; dreaded watching Steve's car drive away after a night in. At first, Eddie thought it was a hit and run situation, a one night stand that spans more than one night. And yeah, it makes sense; King Steve probably just wants a new way to get his dick wet, got tired of all the babes and such. Of course this thing they have - whatever that is - isn't serious. It makes sense and still, Eddie's hurt.

But then he starts noticing things. Like Steve's reluctance to leave but his refusal to fall asleep no matter how late it is. And it's not just with Eddie either. He's noticed that Steve always seems to clock out early at any overnight event their little group have - DnD nights in Wheelers basements, Dustin's sleepovers, hell, even Buckley's movie nights. Steve is always first to arrive and first to leave.

Eddie just can't figure out why.

He goes as far as to ask Robin. Because if anyone can give any insight into the mysterious life of Dethroned King Steve Harrington, it's Buckley. But even she has no idea. She says she hadn't even noticed.

He gets his answer a week later.

They're in Eddie's trailer. Steve drove around after his shift, they're lounging in his room, Steve sitting up again the headboard, Eddie practicing his guitar, and it's midnight, bordering on Steve's usual check out time. But Harrington's been complaining about a rough day at work - something about being swamped and Buckley ditching her shift for boobies, Munson! She ditched me for boobies - and Eddie can see his eyes fluttering and his head lolling before quickly shooting up again. Rinse and repeat. Until Steve finally begins to bustle up and leave.

Eddie begs him to stay, half because he wants him to and half because there's no way it's safe to drive home when you're two fleeting seconds away from dropping comatose. They argue back and forth, Steve typically reluctant and a bit…nervous? Scared? Eddie doesn't know. And it doesn't matter because he wears Steve down and soon enough Steve is wearing Eddie's pajamas and the two of them are cuddled up in bed together.

Using Steve as his own personal Teddy bear, Eddie sleeps soundly that night.

At least, until about three in the morning.

Ever since Vecna, Eddie hasn't been the heaviest of sleepers. So when he hears banging in the kitchen rattling through the thin membrane walls, he's upandatem pretty quickly, abruptly women up to the fact that his boyfriend isn't beside him in the bed anymore. Another bang comes from the kitchen.

Okay, he's panicking.

Armed with the old tire iron he keeps by his bed for just an occasion like this, Eddie creeps towards the kitchen, mind racing. Who the fuck is here? Did someone break in? Something? From another dimension? Images play in head like worn film, images of Chrissy Cunningham floating in his living room, the sound of her bones snapping eerily similar to the banging now.

What he is met with in the kitchen is nowhere near as scary, but ten times more weird.

Because Steve 'The Hair' Harrington is in the middle of his kitchen surrounded by what little pans and pots the Munson's own.

"Uhm…Stevie?" he calls, ever so softly. And then louder when he doesn't get a response. "Steve?"

Steve stands like a ghost in the shadows. Eddie can't help but stare at his face, so relaxed unlike anything he's ever seen before.

Then. He speaks.

"I swear I left it here…" Steve mumbles, to himself or maybe to the dark shadows surrounding. The words come out slow and monotone. Hushed, slurred together in a broken string of consciousness. It does nothing to ease Eddie's worry.

"Left what here?" he asks, looking around at the mess for some item of Steve's he might've lost. All the while Harington just stands there, dazed.

Then. "Flowers. Told Eddie I'd get him flowers."

Eddie furrows his eyebrows, pushing forward into his boyfriend's space and thoughtlessly cups his face in his hands, making him look at him. Steve's eyes are just barely open, and they're glazed over with this lost, far off look. He doesn't look at Eddie, rather through him.

And somehow, Eddie catches up, a scoff of disbelief leaving his lips. Who would've thought?

"Okay, alright sweetheart," the grin is prominent in his voice, dripping with fondness. "You're still asleep, huh?" Something inside him surges and he finds himself grazing his other hand faintly across Steve's forehead to brush his bed hair out of his face. His eyes are all the more clouded over in sweet nonsense as Eddie pushes his hair into something that doesn't resemble a sad brown mop.

"I can't…remember where…" Steve mumbles, trying to break free from Eddie's hold but ultimately failing. He lets his head drop against Eddie's neck.

"Okay, let's get you back to bed, alright?" Because that's what you're supposed to do with people who sleepwalk right? Never wake a sleepwalker, that's what they say isn't it? "Hold my hand, it's OK Stevie." Pressed up close against him, Eddie breathed in the smell of Farrah Faucet spray and citrus shampoo and led Steve back into his bedroom, hand in hand.

"How about you try to stay in bed now," he says, leading Steve as he leans against him, skin warm and citrus and weary against his own, feeling a little too much like something Eddie wants to keep holding onto.

"Got somewhere to be,"

"Not right now, cmon," Eddie gently eases Steve down onto the bed, and surprisingly, Steve lets him. Not long after, Eddie is beside him, holding onto him tight once more.

In the morning, Steve wakes up confused, like he's surprised he managed to stay in one spot all night, but doesn't mention anything about sleepwalking. He does ask Eddie, "Did you sleep well? I didn't wake you, did I?" and Eddie just kisses him, tells him, "Best sleep I've ever had. You should stay around more often."

And when Steve agrees, Eddie decides not to bring it up.

It happens a few more times after that. Not all the time but more often than not Steve will stay over Eddie will wake up to him wandering about the house. The majority of the time it's stupid stuff; Steve sluggishly pacing around the room, Steve mumbling sweet nonsense to himself, Steve trying to take a shower in the hallway. Pretty harmless stuff.

Except for the time it isn't.

That time, they're in Steve's house, big and empty. That time, Eddie wakes up at 4am and just barely catches sight of Steve's fleeting figure down the stairs. Like most times before, Eddie is quick to follow him down the stairs towards the living room, staring blankly out the window. A metallic glint flickers across Eddie's eyes. His eyes widen with concern when he realises it's a kitchen knife. Steve doesn't move, but he's breathing real heavy, like he's just waiting for something to happen.

"Steve, darling." He begins, hating how his voice is cracking. "Will you come back to bed? Please?"

This time, Steve shakes his head. Frantic. Paranoid. Eddie watches his grip on the knife tighten.

"Can't." Comes the raspy, hoarse reply. "The lights. It's out there. Swear I saw it. I swear-!"

Softly, Eddie shushes him before he can get more worked up. He stays put a good six feet away, entirely out of self preservation. Harrington's deadly with a weapon in his consciousness and Eddie wouldn't like to find out what he does in his sleep, thank you very much.

"Saw what, love?"

"I heard a thud. It's so cold."

Oh. Oh shit okay.

Eddie isn't unfamiliar with nightmares. God, after what he saw it'd be weird if he didn't have them. After Mike's apparently real psychic ex-girlfriend cut ties with The Upside Down, Eddie was a mess. He couldn't sleep, plagued with visions of terror bat's tearing away at his flesh bit by agonising bit. He can't count the number of times he called Steve in the late hours of the night in need of reassurance. To tell him that it is over now.

Steve was a rock for him. Eddie almost envied him, with how easily he managed to readjust back into normality. Never did it cross his mind it might've all been a facade.

"Steve," Eddie begins, firmly and unwavering. Slowly, he begins to etch more into Steve's space. "Listen to me. The gate is closed. Vecna and the rest of his little hell beasts are gone."

In front of him, Steve doesn't move. He doesn't even appear to have heard Eddie at all.

Eddie swallows, trying to push the thought that maybe, after so near death encounters, Steve's finally gone mad, come undone at the seams, and this is what his mental state has come too: armed with a scarily sharp knife, ready to fight any sudden movement.

"Do you think you could put down the knife, dear?" Eddie suggests lightly, gently touching the outside of his hand incase Steve needs some sort of anchor to come back to. Underneath the edges of his fingertips, Steve's touch is warm, his pulse comfortingly steady, and Eddie holds onto it, selfishly, a little longer than he should have, that tightness he is becoming so acquainted with returning to his chest. He then slips his hand further within Steve's own, carefully taking the knife from Steve's grip and interlocking their fingers as if it were the most natural thing ever. As if it had always been that easy.

"There we go," Eddie praises as he places the blade down on the coffee table. "See? All better now."

"Better…"

"You're safe, Steve. I'm safe. Everyone is safe. Those things can't hurt you anymore."

"But- the lights-"

"Are fine." Steadily, Eddie begins to back out of the room, gently pulling Steve along with him. "Now let's get you back to bed, yeah? You still gotta get your full twelve hours of beauty sleep don't you?"

A dopey smile ghosts across Steve's lips as he huffs a laugh. It's barely anything. But it's enough for Eddie.

"Yeah you do," he teases. They're in the bedroom now. Eddie guides Steve underneath the duvet. As soon as he hits the soft cushions, he curls around himself like a child, protecting himself from the intangible cold or phantom nightmares, while refusing to loosen his grip on his boyfriend's hand. Eddie feels his throat close.

He has questions. How long has Steve been having these nightmares? How many of them result in sleepwalking? How many of them are violent enough to grab a fucking kitchen knife? Why didn't Steve tell him sooner?

But they can wait until morning.

#eddie munson #stranger things #steddie #steve harrington #steve/eddie #steveddie

[bonny-kookoo]

Jungkook

𝐔𝐍𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄 | Helping Hand

Jungkook isn't kind, or at least he doesn't seem to be. But one look beyond the surface reveals that he's a lot warmer than one might think.

Tags/Warnings: Alien!Jungkook, Human!Reader, dystopian AU, space/Sci-fi/cyberpunk-esque, Enemies to lovers, Angst, Violence, Drama, romance, adult, angst, potentially triggering content, mentions of prostitution, fluff??

Length: 2k words

There is no taglist.

-> Masterlist

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You're sitting in the command center where Jungkook is busy steering the ship and putting in coordinates, while you're busy staring out the giant rounded window, watching planets in the distance and meteorites pass by, as well as the occasional star flutter around.

Jungkook had offered you to spend time at the command central outside of your room for once- though he made sure to emphasize that 'one wrong move' and he'd put you right back in there for sure. It's a little odd, how contradictive he sometimes is- but you believe it might just be what his kind usually behaves like. You're not sure- you've never even asked which species he belongs to, down the line. He looks like he might be a Bolku, with his color changing eyes and tall build- but he's missing the distinctive pale skin and horns on his head, so you're not sure. Maybe he's of a different kind?

"Do you.." He starts, not looking up from the control panel as he looks at something on the display down at his hands, "..have any hobbies?" He asks, a little awkwardly, but you welcome the attempt at a conversation.

"No." You shake your head. He frowns a little to himself, taps around on the screen.

"No?" He wonders. "Then what did you do all day back on earth?" He wants to know, and you shrug, before looking outside again, watching a large meteorite slowly moving past the large ship.

"Sleep, if there was no work." You answer. "But sleeping a lot can make your head hurt." You giggle. He doesn't seem like he finds it funny, though, as he sighs, sitting down on the actually pretty worn down chair.

"But if there.." he begins, watching something load on the screens in front of him, a soft, gentle pinging sound signaling something in progress as the system scans the ships's surroundings, "..if there was something you could do, to pass time and.. amuse yourself I guess, what would it be?" He wonders, eyes slowly moving up without his head turning at all, greenish blue gaze watching you from his spot at the control panel.

"..I guess, maybe crocheting?" You wonder, thinking to yourself. "Yeah. I saw older people sell those.. small crochet animals on the side of the street sometimes. I think.. I'd like to know how to make them." You say. He scoffs, clearly not impressed.

"That's nothing practical at all." He says. "What about productive things?" He wonders, arms crossed as he keeps looking at you from beneath his lashes, light sometimes catching on the two silver balls from his pierced brow.

"Well I mean- I'd produce those tiny animals?" You try and joke-

and as he scoffs at that, there's the hint of a smile, his head shaking as he returns his attention to the screens in front of him, scan now complete.

You're about to ask him if he himself has any hobbies, when something similar to an alarm sounds, red Warning label pulsating on the large windows to indicate something dangerous. Jungkook is instantly alert, eyes flashing a sharp yellow before they turn red, while he assesses whatever is going on on his control screens. And then, a loud bang and whaling noise can be heard, before the ship moves suddenly, as if pushed side to side by giant waves of water. It makes you fall from the ledge near the window you were sitting on, tumbling down the floor before you hit the wall on one side, shoulder harshly crashing against the edge of a metal console.

And then, it's quiet, only a slight small pinging sound again, while the system checks for any damage.

"Fuck.." Jungkook curses, before he walks over to where you're sitting up now, ship having stabilized again. "You okay?" he wonders, squatting down near you to watch you roll your shoulder before you nod.

"Yeah- just fell. What happened?" You wonder, looking at him, and he sighs, before he picks you up like a ragdoll with his hands under your arms to stand you up again.

"Scanner's got an issue." He shrugs, arms crossed as he walks back to the control panels. "Probably nothing too bad, but we can't fly like this." He grumbles to himself, while playing with the piercings of his bottom lip, eyes an icy and stressed color of turquoise, signaling his inner emotions. "We'll have to stop at the next Ship station to get it fixed." He informs you, and you nod.

"How long until the next planet?" You wonder, now a little worried about the safety of not only you, but the entire ship with the scanner not working properly.

"Not long. Crion is pretty much only a few hours away- I can get it fixed there." He says, and you nod.

It's quiet, except for the low rumbling of the ship and some beeps here and there, before he talks again, awfully soft.

"Don't worry." He says, sitting down in the chair again. "It'll be fine."

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Crion is a pretty, but very, very crowded planet. It's a sanctuary for many different species all across the universe, and it shows in the absolute variety of languages, foods and other items sold on the streets.

"Here." Jungkook tells you, before his hands come into view from behind you, clicking the tracking collar back around your neck. "I really don't want to have to search for you just because you strayed around- so please just try and stay within my sight." He says, clearly stressed about the whole situation.

The ship has a very obvious dent in one of the sides, damage that needs to be repaired before the scanner could even be talked about. You're not quite sure why, to you the dent isn't actually that bad and just.. aesthetically maybe a bit ugly, but you don't question it. Jungkook is the pilot after all- he'll know what's best.

While Jungkook walks over to talk to a greenish humanoid with multiple arms about his ship, you stay close, just like he told you to- though you can't help but look around here and there, loud metal noises and large bird like creatures in the skies making you a little anxious. "My people already looked at damage-" The humanoid alien says, a tablet in one if his four hands, as he taps with one finger. "Scanner B3 and E2 software. Scanner A1 and A2 fluid damage. And big case damage!" He argues, making Jungkook roll his eyes.

"Yeah I already figured that out myself- can you fix it?" He asks, a greenish yellow that underlines his clear suspicion of the person in front of him.

"Fix it I can-" The man says, three eyes suddenly watching Jungkook with challenge. "You can pay?" He asks.

Jungkook grows tense. "How much?" He wonders, and the man uses one of his three fingers to tap away, quickly calculating something in a program.

"Sixteen-" The alien starts, before his eyes move back to look at Jungkook. "-hundred."

Jungkook takes a deep breath, clearly not able to just say yes to that price.

"Is there any way we can push that down?" He asks, and the alien shrugs, putting the tablet away, before he looks at you.

"You can pay with slave." The alien person offers, leaning forward a bit to sniff with his cat-shaped nose. "Very young. I like- can work for us." He begins.

"Okay-" You start without thinking, when Jungkook's head snaps towards you, eyes an angry red.

"Excuse us for a second-" He offers the man, before he grabs you by the back of your collar, pulling you to the side and out of hearing range for the man. "-have you hit your head on the ship?!" He hisses at you, frown on his face as he talks down towards you due to the height difference.

"What? No." You shake your head. "You just- need to get your ship fixed and if he wants me instead of sixteen hundred that's a great deal-"

"I'm not selling you into prostitution just to get my fucking ship fixed, you lunatic!" He growls again, breaking eye contact as he looks around, taking a deep breath. "There has to be a different planet where we can get it fixed-"

"Jungkook it's fine-" You start, but he turns around and stares at you with a gaze so unfocused in it's emotions that it almost looks like his eyes portray every color they can at once.

"No!." He says, pupils flicking from one of your eyes to the other rapidly. "… I don't care. Anything but that. There has to be a different way." He decides, and maybe from sheer shock over his outburst alone, you don't question him any further. "Come." He instead tells you, and you follow obediently, no longer really feeling like going against his word.

"Have decided?" The man says, and Jungkook crosses his arms.

"I'll pay 850 up front." He says. "The rest after you're finished." He offers, and the man laughs.

"You crazy!" He says. "900 up front."

"Okay." Jungkook agrees, before he pulls out a small, phone-like device to transfer the money to the alien mechanic.

"You really not want sell slave?" The man tries again.

"No." Jungkook denies, finishing up the transfer before he puts his device away, and grabs your hand rather roughly, pulling you away from him after making sure to turn around one last time.

"And she's not a fucking slave."

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"I can't believe this is the third time I'm asking you.." Jungkook sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "What. Do. You. Want. To. Eat." He tries once more, because true to his word, he's been trying for the past hour or so to get you something to eat.

"Nothing." You say, yet again, almost a little amused by the game you're playing.

Jungkook clenches his jaw, clearly looking like he's either praying to gods above- or like he's really trying hard to contain himself.

"Jungkook you need the money to pay off the ship's repairs-" You start, but he simply tugs you by your hand again to a small, open food stall. "Jungkook-"

"Can I have something to eat for this thing?" Jungkook asks the short man grilling the battered.. fish? You're not sure what it is, but it smells pretty good.

"Hey!" You argue at his choice of words for you, and the man chuckles a little.

"Sure. That'll be five." He mumbles, and Jungkook pays before you can even argue- steaming fried pieces of.. whatever placed in a Styrofoam container that Jungkook puts into your hands.

"Eat." He demands, sitting down on a bench under a small roof with you.

You simply do as he tells you to, biting into the still steaming food, really pretty uncaring as to what it might be. It tastes sort of like fish- a little spicy, but very pleasant. He's simply sitting next to you with his back curved and his elbows resting on his knees, eyes constantly roaming around like he's some guard dog ready to defend at any given point.

He's probably still thinking about how to get the money for the repairs- and you still don't understand why he was so.. aggressively against the idea of just selling you. It almost felt like there was an emotional response to it rather than just regular sympathy for you. But it doesn't matter- because you want to help as well, considering he's been somewhat taking care of you for a little while now.

You poke his biceps before holding out your box with one piece of fish eaten, and the other just having been bitten once. "What?" He asks.

"I'm full." You say. He rolls his eyes, sighs, but takes your scraps anyways, eating them while swing your legs on the bench next to him. You're yawning, clearly tired- and he finishes your food next to you, before he leans back on the bench, and rather clumsily pushes you by your shoulder to lay over his lap, thighs surprisingly comfortably and warm. And after a moment of surprise, you finally put your legs up and use your hands to support your head a bit more-

his own resting on your shoulder, as if to make sure you know he's still there.

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#bts imagine #bts fanfic #bts fic #jungkook imagine #jeon jungkook x reader #jeon jungkook imagine #bts jungkook imagine #jeon jungkook imagines #jungkook x you #jungkook fanfic #jungkook drabble #jungkook fluff #bts jeon jungkook imagine #alien jungkook #alien!jungkook

[partycatty]

Right hear me out on the new johnny skin

Please can you write something for this ugly bitch the shock worn off and now im delusional

(Im sorry for asking for this he just looks so stupid i couldnt not)

I HATE YOU FOR REMINDING ME OF THIS ALLGAHJGIAKG

johnny cage > carrot

oh my god he looks like a carrot

warnings: look at him.

[ masterlist ]

you're sitting on johnny's couch, as it's become a regular occurrence for you to waste your time in his home. your phone becomes your best friend nearly every time, as his career of being a celebrity commonly rips his attention from you more than you're happy with. your bubbling frustration with the situation dies down when you hear his front door unlock.

"babe," he calls through the cracked door. his voice is high pitched, like he's hiding something and ashamed about it. "i-i need you to do me a favor."

"yeah?" you reply, eyes still transfixed on your phone for the moment.

"i lost a bet," he shamefully admits. "and i need you to not laugh. if you laugh, i will die."

"you'll die?" you repeat, now intrigued by whatever he's on about. he falls silent, the door barely opening more.

"baby," he tries to sound sweet but it sounds closer to him being on the verge of tears. "is it true... that thing... where like, you lose feelings if your man gets one bad haircut?"

oh, no.

"depends," you shrug, making your way to the door. "if you buzzed it, i won't be able to look at you until it grows back."

"i didn't... buzz it," he mutters. "it's... please don't laugh."

his dodging is starting to confuse and annoy you, so you walk over and pull the door completely open. the sight in front of you pulls a horrified gasp, which then turns into amusement like you've never seen. johnny's hair was gone on the sides, and a vomit-green wisp sat on top. johnny frowns with large eyes. it kind of reminds you of that really sad hamster meme. maybe if you focused enough you could imagine sad violin music at the scene.

"jo—" your attempt at saying his name comfortingly is ripped apart when a snort creeps up on you, and you slap a hand over your mouth. tears well up in your eyes as you fight for your life to not laugh.

"don't," he pleads, arms flopping to his sides. "don't laugh."

you let out a cackle through your hand, slapping another hand over it in a stupid attempt to hold it in.

"it's not funny—" in a while, you think, it wouldn't be. sure, he has the haircut, but you're the one looking at it regularly. "it's not funny."

"you're laughing. i will die."

"how in the genuine fuck did this come to be." your eyes feel like they're going to pop out of your skull from straining yourself so hard. johnny can't even look at you as he explains.

"kung lao and i made a bet that i could cut more fruit than him with his hat."

"you bet your appearance on a hat that's not yours."

"it didn't look that hard! it's a sharp hat!"

"okay, so how did the... haircut come to be??"

"he..." johnny rubs his face, groaning. "he had me walk into a barber and told the guy to fuck my shit up. he said that to the barber. oh my god i look like an idiot, don't i."

"you..." you search for something, anything to compliment him on. your eyes settle on his orange button-up and you stifle a snort. "you kind of look like a carrot."

johnny pulls his head up to meet your eyes. "what."

"it's... it's kinda cute," you murmur with the most strained grin of your life. you step forward and grab the entirety of the hair left on his head, tugging upward. "it's like... plucking you from the soil."

"ow. you're an asshole," he adds, not entirely serious. you try so hard to keep it together, so hard. but his furrowed brows, frown, and carrot-coordinated outfit finally make you snap. you double over in laughter, similar to a hyena. it is quite literally the funniest thing you'd ever seen in your entire life and you laugh so hard you lose your breath.

"IT'S NOT FUNNY!" johnny pouts, stomping his foot and crossing his arms while you howl and slap him around as you try to ground yourself. "I LOOK LIKE A DUMBASS."

"OH MY GOD I'M LOSING IT, I'M GONNA THROW UP— YOU LOOK LIKE A CARROT —"

"STOP SAYING THAT."

#mortal kombat #mortal kombat x reader #johnny cage #mk1 #johnny cage x reader #marley writes ☆

[sophswritingthings]

OMG! Childhood crush reader is such an adorable idea! What if maybe during Mizu and readers visit to swordfather, he starts teasing them (knowing they have crushes on each other) and just absolutely flustering them!!🥰🥹

pairing: mizu x fem!childhoodcrush!reader

warning(s): none

a/n: I’m sorry it took me like—forever to get to this but here it is <3

summary: in the past, eiji had always teased the two of you about your crushes on one another. it seems nothing has changed in the years that have passed.

word count: 490 words / 2,752

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mizu was grabbing the large tongs for sword-father, making sure to tap them behind him before handing them. even though he couldn’t see them; he could hear and feel them.

that’s when you appeared; making mizu drop the tongs to the ground behind him.

“boy!” eiji hissed, furrowing his eyebrows.

“s-sorry,” mizu whispered, picking up the tongs and placing them firmly in his older, callused hands.

“I didn’t mean to scare you, mizu,” you give her a soft smile. it’s evident that you’re blushing at her; and she is too.

“hmph,” eiji huffed. “you need to take your flustered behavior elsewhere, mizu, this is no place for that.”

mizu stared at eiji, her blue eyes wide. her face was bright red. 

“sword-father..” mizu whispered, her voice breathy.

“I can hear it simply in your voices,” he never turned away from his work, his attention never dropped from it.

mizu took the quickest glance at you; seeing that your face, too, was bright red.

and now here she was, on her way back to visit sword-father with you. It felt like you were suddenly the same flustered little kids again.

she readied herself to be poked and prodded about the same as she was when she a little kid.

you glanced up at mizu; she looked so different, you couldn’t deny that. she looked worn out, if you were being honest. where she had been, you didn’t know, but wherever she had—it was wearing her down.

you had walked in silence most of the way, all the while your hands stayed locked together.

when you approached your grandfathers house, seeing it just in the distance, she let go of your hand—as if eiji would be able to sense your closeness. 

and if it was a bad thing.

“grandfather,” you greeted, bowing on your knees quickly. mizu followed your action. you slowly sat up, smiling. “it has been it a while, hasn’t it?”

“It has,” he furrowed his eyebrows, a small smile on his lips. “and you have brought me someone else. I heard his footsteps.”

“sword-father,” mizu spoke, her voice raspy. “It’s.. been a long time.”

“it has,” his eyebrows furrowed downward. “have you finally given up on your foolish quest?”

mizu narrowed her eyes, “I have not,” she hissed. “I am simply passing through—and (y/n) suggested I come visit with her.”

“hm,” he hummed. “I can still hear it. In your voice.”

mizu paused, raising an eyebrow, “hear.. what, sword-father?”

he chuckled, hauling himself to his feet, “that flustered tone of your voice,” he smiled a bit. “I may be blind, boy, but I hear the way you speak around her.”

he gestured vaguely to you. your eyes widened, glancing at mizu.

“feel similar?” you giggled, smiling up at her.

seeing your smile warmed her heart; knowing that you at least found his teasing and actual exposing of her feelings amusing, and that you’d didn’t.. hate it.

“yeah, pretty similar.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

#mizu x you #mizu x reader #mizu blue eye samurai #mizu #blue eyed samurai #ask #asked and answered #fic #fanfic #fanfiction #request #fic request

[swiss-mrs]

#WEIRD☆GIRL

(Word Count: 4.6k)

Rating: PG-13, Adult Language and Themes, All Characters are 18+

Reader/OC Description: Reader/OC is Afro-Latina. She has long, dyed black hair that is worn straight with baby bangs and shaved brows. She is an alt baddie and would've definitely ruled MySpace. Body shape/type is not detailed. No Use of Y/N.

Playlist

Synopsis: One day, while Dave and Todd are out, they pass by a park void of screaming kids. Instead, the park is taken up by a group of what looks to be a mix of teenagers and young adults. Passing by the loud group, the boys can't help but stare, mixing Dave up with a girl more socially unacceptable than him.

Warnings(?): Adult Language, Sexual Themes (No Smut, Just Horny Boy Thoughts), Catcalling (Potentially Triggering Language)

This is written in third person but mainly narrated from Dave's view.

》》》

"I can't believe they had it!" Todd exclaims, gripping the plastic bag in his hand tight. Dave nods, gripping his backpack straps.

"Yeah, we need to start coming here more often. They have everything. We gotta bring Marty with us when he gets back."

Today marked the first day of the boys' last Spring Break. Marty was out of town on a trip to Florida with his family, so this cut down the trio to a duo, Dave and Todd. The two were currently walking along a street on the other side of town than their usual hangout. Todd found a new comic and video game store, and he and Dave figured they'd check it out.

"I can't wait to read it."

"Remember, no spoilers until I pick up my edition too." Dave replied. As they round a corner to get to their bus stop, they are greeted with the sight of a large clearing between buildings.

On the closest side to the boys was a skate park. It had a decent amount of skaters occupying it, echoes of skateboards landing against concrete traveling throughout the park. As the boys walked passed, they could hear the sound of music. The further they walk, the closer the music gets.

The current song that was playing was what Dave imagined rugged bikers with dark sunglasses and handlebar mustaches listened to. Scary and intimidating. It was muddy and grungy and punk and metal? He wasn't well versed enough to really know how to label its genre. Just as one song came to an end, another just like it followed.

He and Todd were both staring at the group surrounding the picnic table that held the speaker. Each one was different from the next, but they all had a similar dark and grungy style.

Something that immediately caught his eye was a black haired girl who took two big steps to get atop the picnic table. As the new song began to pick up, she got into a matching character. As she winded her hips and lip sang to the lyrics, Dave was completely entranced by her. "Woah..."

"Yeah…" Todd absently replies.

Her unnaturally dark hair cascaded down her shoulders and around the curve of her breasts. Her bangs reminded Dave of a toddler who decided to experiment with scissors. They were far too short to be considered "normal", but, Jesus, did she pull them off well.

She had two bows on the sides of her head, one purple and the other an off-white cream color. She wore a black, short sleeve crop top with red writing on it, something Dave couldn't really read clearly from this distance. She had knitted, fingerless gloves on each hand that nearly blended in with her skin tone. Dave's eyes continued to work their way down her legs, finding her thighs covered with light pink, sheer lace shorts that stopped mid thigh. The only thing keeping her "appropriate" were homemade, cut-off jean short shorts.

Dave couldn't help himself; he was captivated. He's never seen anyone dressed like she was, at least not in real life. It was like she stepped right out of an anime. She was incredibly unique. How was she able to pull that off so well?

Dave's eyes wandered down further to get a full view of her exposed, dancing legs. He couldn't help but wonder what it felt like to touch them.

She swiveled her hips in circles as she began to spin and whip her hair to the beat. Dave had this opportunity to move his eyes up, getting a perfect view of her butt, his body lighting up as his heart raced.

She had made a full turn, stopping in the direction of the two boys, catching their stares. Todd immediately turns his head to try and seem captivated by the clouds above, but Dave is not as quick to notice.

"Dave." Todd mumbles, eyes dodging the girl's gaze, darting back and forth from his friend, the ground, and a very (not-so) interesting brick building behind the park. "Dave." Todd repeats, elbowing Dave in the side, finally snapping him out of his hypnosis.

"Ouch!" Dave yelps in surprise, turning to Todd who is looking at him wide eyed, trying to send him a message. Dave looks away from his friend and back to the table dancer. She was staring right at him with squinted eyes. They seem to make eye contact for a solid second before she abruptly lifts a hand to her forehead. She held up her pointer and pinky fingers. The 'rock and roll' symbol she held against her head imitated horns as scrunched her nose, sticking her tongue out like a child. The action shocked Dave, but he couldn't help but find her oddly adorable.

Todd is quick to snatch the handle at the top of Dave's backpack and drag him away to their bus stop at the end of the street. The ride home was a pretty quiet one after that.

》》》

Two weeks have passed since he'd first seen the strange girl. Every spare chance he got during spring break was spent taking advantage of his vigilante skills for the wrong reasons. He had secretly visited that park numerous times, watching his girl and her friend group from afar. He knew that stalking was not how he should've gone about this, but he also didn't see walking straight up to her and introducing himself as an option either.

Something was definitely wrong with him. There is no good reason for him to know where she lives, but he convinced himself it was just to ensure she got home safe. Tonight only enforced that thought.

Usually she would walk home with at least one friend for good measure, but for some unknown reason to Dave, she walked alone.

Today, she had on an extra baggy hoodie. One that he came to know as one of her favorites. It reached the tops of her bare thighs, the hem of her mini skirt just visible below. She wore leg warmers that matched the color of her hoodie and worn combat boots. She had a small backpack that looked like wings on her back, decked out in pins of all kinds. The oversized hood was perched on top of her head.

She was always good about checking her surroundings and looking over her shoulder when walking alone, but this wasn't a matter of a sneak attack.

Dave watched as an older man stepped out in front of his strange girl. Dave couldn't hear the exact dialog due to their distance and the passing people and cars, but he for sure knew that whatever was being said was not welcomed.

"No. Thank you. I'd rather be left alone." Dave heard that loud and clear, so why did this creepy guy not take the hint and leave?

The man abruptly reached for her arm, and gripped it tight. Dave took off in a sprint.

"Get your hands off me, asshole!"

"Don't be a fucking tease-"

"Hey!" Dave cut the guy off, running up behind her. "Didn't you hear what she said, creep? Let her go!" He said firmly. Both the creepy guy and the girl's eyes look over to Dave, both of them giving him a once over. Her eyes were full of confusion, one thinly drawn brow raised. The man scoffed at the kid.

"What the fuck is this?" he shoots back. Dave squares his shoulders and raises his masked chin. "How about you mind your fucking business, princess, before you get hurt." the man follows up, making fun of Dave's costume.

"Let. Her. Go." Dave repeats sternly. The guy laughs in his face.

"Or what, leotard?" Dave follows up by removing the batons from behind his back. He points one at the man.

"Or else I'll have to beat you until you let go?" He says confidently. The girl cringes, that was not nearly as intimidating as he thought it was. The guy laughs again, flicking out a pocket knife. The two men stood there in a stare down. Their pause gave the girl a chance to yank her arm from the man's grasp, simultaneously using her other hand to whip out a pink taser decorated like a mini Gameboy. She shoves the sparked end into the side of the creep's neck, causing him to twitch and spasm. She holds it there until the man falls to the ground twitching, presumably unconscious. She takes her booted foot and jumps into a hard kick to the man's side.

"Fuck you, dipass!" Dave stands there shocked. The girl's gaze switches to face him. He lifts his hands in surrender and slowly puts his batons back. The girl takes one big step closer to Dave. He jumps back, but she is quick to grab one of his hands and begin dragging him down the route of towards her apartment.

They walk a couple blocks and round a corner in silence before she stops abruptly and turns to Dave. He stands there staring, absolutely shell shocked. "Who are you and what do you think you're doing!?" She asks, putting two hands on her hips and resting her weight on one side.

"Uh-" Dave stutters. The girl raises her brows expectantly. "I, uh- I was trying to help you." The girl's brows draw together as she squints.

"Thank you, but, to be honest, you didn't really do much, and that only answered one of my questions."

"Uh, I'm, uh- The name's KickAss." The girl stares at him in disbelief for a good five seconds, searching his eyes for any sense of a joke.

When she doesn't find anything, she lets out a "pfft" and giggles. "You're joking, right?" She raises her brows with a grin.

"Uh, no. I'm not…" Dave's eyes look everywhere but at her.

"I-," giggle, "I'm sorry." Another giggle, " I don't mean to be rude, but KickAss?" Dave smiles nervously, instinctual reaching for the back of his head. "You really need a rebranding, my guy." She says, an amused smile still playing on her lips. Her eyes didn't hold any malice or judgement, just intrigue.

"Yeah, well, I'm obviously not that creative." He laughs nervously. Dave looks back to her, finally getting a proper look at her up close. She's smiling… at him. God, he was going to faint.

"Jesus, your eyes." She says suddenly, catching Dave off guard. "They're gorgeous, my god." She huffs a short laugh, staring into his eyes. Dave can't keep eye contact for long, completely flustered. He thanked the powers that be that he had a mask on at this very moment. He was sure he was as red as ever.

"Thank you." He looks down. "You, uh, your eyes are beautiful, too." He says sheepishly. She laughs, shaking her head.

"Oh, please. They're just a normal, old brown. Nothing compared to your stunners. Wow." She throws back at him. "Well, I appreciate you stepping in, KickAss." She thanks, putting emphasis on his 'name'.

"No problem. You seem to have it handled without me." His illusion of 'stalking for protection' ruined.

"Nonsense! Thankfully, I didn't need you to start a fight this time. The fact that you even stepped in at all when you saw something means a lot, so thank you." She clasps her hands in front of her, swaying side to side.

"Can I walk you the rest of the way?" He asks. She shakes her head.

"As sweet as that is, no, thank you. I don't quite know how I feel about masked men knowing where I live." She teases. "Plus, it's not much further. I'll be okay." She smiles at him, again. Dave can't decide if he wishes she'd stop looking at him or if he wishes she'd keep her gaze on him forever. She begins walking away, "Thanks, again! See you around!" She shouts behind her, turning another corner.

》》》

Two months have passed. Shortly after their first, up close, encounter, Dave made it a point to walk her home every chance he got, always when she was alone. Well, not every time. She started to get suspicious as to how he always knew when she was walking alone. "Are you following me?" She'd ask, Dave giving an unconvincing 'pfft' and a 'no', causing her to roll her eyes. After that, he made sure to space out their walks but still following her from a distance. It's now nearing the end of June, and his graduation date is only a couple weeks out.

This night was a first. She invited Dave in. His eyes widened in shock, "Yeah, sure!" He said a little too enthusiastically, internally cringing at himself, but his awkwardness only caused her to giggle.

She nods, "Okay. My brother is home, so you'll have to sneak in. I'll go in first. Just turn the corner," she points, "and use the fire escape ladder to get to the fourth window up. My window has a collection of ninja turtle action figures on the sill." Dave opens his mouth to say something, but she continues, "Wait there until I come in. I just have to let my brother know I'm home first, then I can disappear into my room." Dave sits his mouth and nods. "Okay, I'll see you up there!" She smiles, jogging into the building.

Dave watches her jog up the stairs until he can't see her anymore. He then makes his way around the building and, as instructed, climbs up the fire escape. He gets to her window with ease. Through the parted curtains, he could see into her dark room. The light in the hallway provided little to illuminate the room from the bottom of the closed door, but thanks to the setting sun, Dave could clearly see the four little trinkets on her windowsill. It made him smile. She was a little nerdy, too.

"Ok, I'll order the pizza!" Before Dave could analyze her room any further, she bursts through the door, tossing her bag on the floor. She turns, closing and locking the door before running up to the window. She throws the curtains open and slides up the window, smiling brightly at him. "Hola."

"Buenas Noches, señorita." Dave says, again cringing at his choice of words, getting a laugh out of her.

"Vamos." She says, stepping aside. He climbs through the window, trying his best to avoid disrupting the figures. "You up for pizza?" She asks once he's fully inside.

Dave nods, looking around at her room. "Yeah, sure."

She smiles up at him, gesturing to her room, "Bienvenido a mi casa." She says dramatically. "Make yourself at home, señor KickAss."

Dave chuckles at her, shaking his head. "Gracias." His accent is still strongly American, but four years of Spanish didn't make it the worst. He goes to sit on the plush bench at the end of her bed. He figured that was a safe bet. He wasn't on her bed, but he also wasn't awkwardly sitting at her desk in the corner of the room. It was a kind of middle ground. His eyes follow her as she goes over to her old school boombox, graffitied with stickers, and turns on some music, low enough for them to hear each other, but just loud enough to disguise their voices from any eavesdropping. "Do I need to worry about your brother?" He asks playfully, deep down a little nervous.

"No, he's playing video games with our cousins online. He can't hear a thing with his-"

"AHHH! NO MAMES WEY!" a scream can be heard, as if on queue, scaring the fuck out of Dave.

She rolls her eyes, continuing, "headphones on." She sits on her bed, crawling over to rest her bare legs on the empty cushion next to Dave. She grabs her laptop that was laying on the bed and opens it up. "What kind of pizza do you like?" She asks, typing away.

"Uh, whatever." He says, unsure.

"Well, guess we can't go wrong with half pepperoni and half cheese." She says, placing the order. "My brother is pretty boring when it comes to pizza." Another scream could be heard in the background, promoting another eyeroll. Dave chuckles a little, nodding.

He twiddles his thumbs before asking, "So, why did you invite me in?" The girl shrugs her shoulders, still typing and clicking away.

"I dunno. You've walked me home nearly everyday for the passed 2 months, and I've grown to trust you. Every time we part ways, I feel the urge to keep you around. I figured it was about time we hung out for more than just a few blocks." She closes her laptop hallway and sets it to the side. His heart flutters.

Dave looks at her stunned. "You want to hang out with me?" The girl squints at him.

"Um, yeeaaah. What kind of question is that?"

"I, uh- I mean- it's just- you know-..." He stutters. She giggles at him.

"What?"

"I mean, you're just so cool, and I'm, you know-"

She looks at him amused. "You're what? A cool vigilante guy who is sweet and funny and someone who should totally should give himself more credit." She bends her legs, nudging him softly with her knee. She scoots down the bed a little to sit closer to Dave, holding her knees to her chest. She uses her oversized sweatshirt to encompass her entire body. Dave looks at her with admiration, his heart racing again, before looking away from her and down at the bench below him. "I don't hear a 'Gracias' or a 'Tienes razón, mi hermosa. Eres muy inteligente y eres la mujer más bella del mundo. Gracias por todo, mi amor.'" She goes on.

Dave laughs, "Thank you. I don't know if you're right, but you are the most beautiful girl I've ever seen." Dave says boldly but still avoiding eye contact, looking down at his hands.

The girl's eyes widen, "You speak Spanish?" She looks horrified, embarrassed by the words of praise she tried to get him to say.

"A little." He twiddles his thumbs more, "I've been taking Spanish all throughout high school. I am no expert, but I can get around." He shrugs.

"Welp, that's embarrassing." the girl reaches up to tug hard on the strings of her hoodie, hiding her face in the fabric. Dave looks up and reaches for her hands.

"Que? No 'gracias'?" He teases, trying to get a look at her face. He has no clue what is coming over him, but he is becoming a bit more comfortable. His heart is still pounding, but seeing her get flustered brought his confidence up. She peers out from inside her hoodie. Her wide eyed look nearly floored him. He was forever grateful that he was already seated or else his knees would have buckled.

"Gracias,... señor KickAss." She says playfully, trying to make up for her embarrassment by joking off. He offers her a soft smile, melting her. It was now her turn to avoid his eyes. Her eyes make their way over to the stereo. "So… you're still in high school?" She asks, looking back to him, wearily.

He nods, "Y-Yeah, but not for long." He says quickly, the realization coming quick that they don't actually know each other's ages. "I graduate in like 2 weeks." Her nonexistent brows raise as she nods. "Are you?"

She shakes her head, "No, I tested out, got my diploma early. I couldn't be bothered with high school anymore." She shrugged. Dave's brows shot up. She really was smart. "It's just me and my brother. The earlier I got out of high school, the more time I had. It allowed me to help out with bills and whatever, get us a nicer place." She gestures to the room around her. "I mean, it may not seem like much, but trust me when I say it's a million times better than where we were." She then takes the time to look around and appreciate her surroundings.

Dave's look of admiration returns. "You're amazing." He blurts out. The girl's eyes find him, holding his eye contact, again with this wide eyed stare. She was gonna kill him. Her heart stopped when she looked in his eyes and found nothing but honesty and softness. She gives him a little smile. My god, Dave was literally going to pass out.

》》》

Dave didn't seem to notice, but hours went by with them talking, eating pizza, and talking some more. It was now pitch black outside, and the only light in the room was coming from her bedside lamps and a flickering candle.

By now, both of them had made their way into the bed. Dave was laying on his back, watching the ceiling while she was laying on her stomach perched up on her elbow, watching him. They were currently both comfortably silent, the soft music still playing in the background. She guessed that her brother must have fallen asleep at his console by now, considering there weren't any more frustrating cries or exciting cheers heard from across the apartment. Dave is the first to interrupt the silence between them. "Would it be a terrible idea to take my mask off right now?"

The girl gasps dramatically, placing a hand on her chest, "and reveal your secret identity, Zorro?" She lets out a short laugh, this causes Dave to let out a tired smile.

"I'm being serious." There's a pause.

"Well…" the girl starts, "you know, once you do so, there's no going back. I'm not so much of a bitch that I'd ever expose you, but you know… it's a big step."

"Is it in the right direction?" he asks, turning his head to look over at her. They stare deeply into each other's eyes.

She sighs, "I'm sorry, babe, but that's a decision you'll have to make on your own." The pet name catches Dave off guard. He nods and sits up, causing the girl next to him to follow suit, twisting her body so she's cross crossed and facing him. Dave takes a deep breath and reaches for the back of his mask. Just as his gloved hands meet the fabric, he felt a smaller hand touch his. "Are you sure?... Absolutely positive?"

He doesn't move, "Positive." He replies. She lefts go of his hand and he pulls the mask forward and off his head. He kept his head down for a second, taking in a deep breath. He could feel her eyes staring at the side of his head.

He looks up and turns to her. They make eye contact for a good 3 second before her sleeve covered hands come flying up to her face, covering her eyes. "Oh my god!"

"Oh my god, what?!" Dave panics.

"You're hot!" She exclaims. Wow, did she really know how to throw Dave off. He watches her, shocked. "This feels wrong, oh my god!" She says, muffled by her sleeves. "I should not be seeing this right now." Dave smiles a little. How does she do this? She's just too cute.

He reaches up for her hands, "Well, like you said, there's no going back, babe." He says, pulling her hands down. Her eyes were squeezed shut, scrunching up her face in what Dave thought was the most adorable way. "Oh, don't be a baby. Open your eyes." He says. She squeezes them even harder just before opening them up, like ripping off a bandaid.

She lets out a sigh as her eyes roam over every feature. She takes a moment to just admire his face before giggling when her eyes make their way to his hair. "What?" Dave asked, this time not panicked, but amused.

She giggles some more, smiling wide. "Your hair is a mess." She says finally, biting her smile.

He rolls his eyes, "Yeah, I don't really do face reveals, so I didn't bother thinking of a way to properly tie my hair up under the mask."

She smiles at him softly, her eyes relaxed. She reaches up to touch his cheek. It's warm and a little sweaty from being stuck under a mask for the last several hours. They get lost in each other's eyes. Dave's jaw was slack, lips parted slightly. Her features still held her soft smile.

"I think I love you." Dave says abruptly, taking her aback.

"What?-"

"I just always feel so safe and comfortable around you, and I love how you're so unapologetically yourself, and you are always so kind and beautiful, and I can't help but find myself always thinking about you, and I'm always wondering if you're thinking about me to, which I hope you do, because I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I wasn't on your mind the way you're on mine, and ever since I saw you dancing on that picnic table when Todd and I were walking to the bus stop and you made that weird adorable little devil horn face thing, I knew I just had to know you, like I was drawn to you, and-"

"Wait, that was you?"

Dave ignores get question and continues rambling, "and I know we're just kids, but I can't think of a better way to live life than with you, and I want us to be together. I want to go to see your favorite scary movies with you, even though it confuses me as to why you still go to them when you say they always scar you, and I want to hold your hand and be there for you when you're scared. I want to go see those bands you always talk about in concert with you. I want to learn every lyric to every one of your favorite songs just to impress you when they come on. I want to hold you at night when you've had a bad day and don't know what to do with yourself. I want to keep you safe and always make sure you're happy. I want to be the reason you smile. I want to walk with you forever, stay by your side. I want to fall asleep beside you every night and wake up to you every morning, and I want nothing more than to hear you say you love me and tell me you love me the same way I love you, and I-"

"Dave, shut up!" She says with a smile, her eyes glistening. "Breathe." They both take a deep breath together. "If you keep going, you'll turn blue." They share a small laugh. "Can I kiss you?" She asks.

Without responding, Dave dives forward and kisses her full force. They deepen the kiss, her other hand reaching up to caress his other cheek, his hands resting on the bed, one on each side of her knees.

Without breaking the kiss, Dave moves to readjust. He pulls her closer, moving her to sit in his lap. She follows his lead, getting up to straddle him. Dave wraps his arms around her waist, hugging her closer to him. She arches her back, "accidentally" grinding against him. Dave is first to break the kiss with a gasp, his hands immediately making their way to her hips. She opens her eyes to find Dave's squeezed shut with his eyebrows narrowed together. His blue eyes open to meet hers after a second, both of them breathing heavily, Dave's eyes wide and innocent, looking up at her.

"Sorry." He says, embarrassed that she was able to affect him so easily. She grins, shaking her head.

"Don't be sorry. It's good to know I have such an effect on you." She leans down to rest her forehead on his. She squishes his check together, pushing him down to the bed, his hands finding themselves caressing her now exposed butt from under the mini skirt she still wore. He felt all the blood drain from his head downward. "Should we keep going?" She asks. Dave nods furiously, no longer able to form words.

She leans in slowly to plant a soft kiss on his lips. "I love you, too."

》》》

Moodboard (exposing "y/n") on my page under #weird girl swiss fic

#dave lizewski x reader #dave lizewski fanfic #dave lizewski x you #aaron taylor johnson #dave lizewski #swiss fics #dave lizewski swiss fics #weird girl swiss fic #dave lizewxki x black reader

[pocketsizedquasar]

thoughts about jon, gender, n hair

aka i've literally wanted to write a fic centered around this concept for like over two years but. well. anyway. i still might write the fic at some point but lord knows when that'll happen so in the meantime here are my jon jarchivist headcanons centered around hair and gender, ft. my personal flavor of jon: persian, w/ a white grandmother, n amab nonbinary transneutral/transfemme

⁃ jon's hair was always kept short as a kid. short hair was for boys, his grandmother had said, and besides, she didn't have the desire nor energy to learn how to care for his thick persian curls; the shorter they were, the less tangled and unruly, the better.

⁃ jon explored some more fem/gnc presentation in college, some of which included growing out his hair. he attributed it back then more to just the fact that he was exploring his queerness (in a bi and ace sense) in general & that he spent a lot of time around georgie (also transfemme), and didn't really think about the actual gender accompanying it -- he wasn't actively thinking much about his own gender. questioning and coming to terms with his sexuality was already a lot.

⁃ but he liked the way his hair looked and felt long. he liked the quiet rebellion of it. he liked the way georgie ran her fingers through it. he liked how many different ways it could be worn long -- in ponytails and buns and braids and just loose down his back. he doesn't remember much of his mom, but he's seen in pictures her long, dark, curly hair, just like his now, and he likes the reminder.

⁃ he keeps it long after college, though upon getting hired as a researcher at the magnus institute, he has a bit of a crisis over whether or not to cut it, re: standards of white cishetero "professionalism" and decorum and masculinity, all of which he's doing his best to perform. maybe even early on in his research days he cuts it a bit and decides it makes him feel so bad (for some inexplicable reason) that he decides to just leave it long, though tidy and brushed and straightened and pulled high up into a tight bun so it looks neat and out of the way and functionally short anyway.

⁃ similar thing happens when he gets promoted to archivist. i personally like him deciding not to cut it here because i like him being allowed to keep one (1) thing, though i def understand other hc's where he does cut it short for S1 / being the archivist. he's still very much keeping it pulled up in a tight bun and out of the way, and removes anything else remotely feminine about his appearance -- earrings, more fem clothing, nailpolish, etc.

⁃ i read mossy's @coulson-is-an-avenger "shopping for gender in a british wal-mart" fic like 2.5 years ago and i still love it so much and it's still canon to me basically re: he tries a skirt Once to work at the sort of peak sweet point where he's settled in enough to feel comfortable trying to wear a skirt but not yet paranoid enough about Prentiss. sasha talks w him about gender and femininity and stuff, though he's not quite ready to confront it yet.

⁃ then prentiss/season 2 hits and he regresses again hard into self-defense mode; the performative masculinity goes Harder. his hair is still long but it's messy; thick curls and flyaway strands frizzing about his sleep deprived and paranoid face.

⁃ by the time s3 rolls around, everything else in his life has gone to shit, so mostly he's just like "fuck it" re: his presentation in general, including his gender presentation. there's also a sense of just.. "this it the one thing in my life I have control over," so he sort of starts just wearing whatever. even if he's not really acknowledging the actual gender feelings to himself. but his hair and his clothes are One thing he can control about himself, one thing the watcher can't really take away from him. so with s3-s4 it's like. yeah he feels like he's becoming less and less human and yeah he's being kidnapped once a month and yeah the world is going to end but at least he can wear a goddamn skirt.

⁃ i do think there's also an element of it too where, there's obvious anxiety and concern about him being a visibly brown and trans/gnc person in fucking London of all places, but as time goes on i do think there's a bit of like. even if i face violence for this what does it matter. i hardly leave the archives anyways, and even then, would that really be anything? in the face of everything else that's happened?

⁃ in the safehouse jon and martin (who to me is a trans man btw) talk about gender a bunch and Jon realizes they want to try using both he and they pronouns and maybe jon decides they want to do some more feminine things, want to try wearing skirts and maybe painting their nails again and martin braids flowers into their hair and things are good

⁃ and then season 5 and the apocalypse hits.

⁃ for the first little while in the safehouse jon's hair is still long. but before they leave, he cuts it, for several reasons -- first like, if keeping it long and presenting femininely was partially about control for Jon, this is them letting Go of that, of what he perceives to have just been an Illusion control. yeah it might make them a bit dysphoric but so what, my body was never mine tobegin with.

⁃ and i think he's also doing it as a mental preparation for leaving the cabin, after jon and martin have had the initial talk about eventually leaving. long hair is a liability; hair can get pulled on and tugged on when being kidnapped and grabbed at; hair can be drenched in shampoo and twisted by plastic hands; hair can be tangled and snag on the walls of a coffin; it can be full of dirt days and days later; hair is a hassle and a hazard and an illusion of control and above all it was a comfort to jon and this is no longer a world where you can trust comfort, martin.

⁃ martin walks in on jon in the bathroom staring at themself in the mirror with a pair of scissors. they ask martin to cut it for them. (martin gets a haircut too, in a show at solidarity and some levity. also undercut martin rights)

⁃ anyway, Somewhere Else Jon wears flowy dresses and grows his hair long and leaves lipstick stains on martin's face when they kiss and hikes his skirts up above his knees when they work in the garden and their hair is long and dark and thick and curly and he likes it; likes the way it looks and feels, the way martin runs his fingers through it, the way it reminds him of his mother and the way it makes him smile at the person they see standing in the mirror.

⁃ and it's good. it's really good.

#tma #the magnus archives #jon sims #jonathan sims #jonmartin #martin blackwood #georgie barker #magnuspod #magpod #tma headcanons #lgbtq #queer #trans #nonbinary #quasartalks #quasarwrites #literally literally have discord messages from two years ago of me yelling abt this and making a fic abt it #(from which i typed up a lot of this post) #and yet here we are #two years later #ficless #so have this instead. i care them

[ahgasegotarmy116]

The Art of Etiquette Part 8 | Jeon Jungkook

Summary: Finishing up your shopping trip goes off without a hitch but Jungkook reminds you of what's going on between you two Pairing: f!reader x Etiquette instructor Jungkook Word Count: 4k~ Warnings: Explicit and suggestive language but nothing crazy lol a/n: This took me literally forever to get out and I'm so sorry but I hope it was worth the wait. I wanted to wrap up this trip quickly and move on but I like the thought of them shopping together so I hope you guys do too! p.s. barely edited as always lol Start from the beginning

After finishing our lunch and finally finding the perfect dress for the event, Jungkook and I head off on our next adventure, bidding adieu to Genevieve once again. 

"So, what's next on the list?" I question after he starts the car and pulls out of the parking lot. "Well what's a beautiful girl in a beautiful gown without a beautiful pair of shoes and jewelry to match?" he teases and continues on our journey to wherever he has in mind. 

"I guess you're right" I say, sinking into my seat and trying my best not to melt from his compliments. 

He hands me the aux again giving me free reign of the soundtrack of our journey and I play some random choices that have been my current favorites which also happen to be some of his as well. 

"Seems like we're a lot more similar than I thought we were" I laugh after having sung along to boyfriend by Ariana Grande. "What makes you say that?" he says turning down the volume a bit. "Well we like some of the same music, we like the same foods, we both hated a majority of those dresses I tried on" I list off leaving him chuckling a bit at the last one. 

"Can you blame me? You looked like a glorified ballerina in half of those and the others just looked way too painful to wear for a few minutes let alone a few hours" he says and I respect his honesty. 

"I'm glad we found 'The One' eventually" I say in quotations, still not 100% sold on it yet. "You didn't like it?" he asks, looking genuinely concerned. "If you didn't like it we could've talked to her and seen if she could've ordered a different one" he says, quickly showing me that there's time to change things if I'm still unsure. 

"No, no the dress is fine it's just...well I haven't ever worn a gown like that before. The closest thing I could think of would be a dress I wore to a school dance but that obviously was no where near as expensive as that one" I ramble leaving him chuckling at my nervousness. 

"What's so funny?" I ask, furrowing my brow and demanding an explanation. "It's just that you look adorable" he chuckles leaving me groaning and sinking back into my chair. "Hey I'm serious you looked very beautiful in the dress and I promise you're gonna look stunning at the event as well" he assures, trying to lift my spirits and it does the trick thankfully. 

'Who am I to doubt a gorgeous man's words of praise? I just I- What? I- Okay I need to stop thinking about him like that but it's hard not to when he keeps on calling me beautiful and gorgeous and ugh I'm doomed' I scold myself, leaving me averting my vision from him to take in the beautiful view outside my window, just now realizing in how truly gorgeous it looks out here. 

"Everything okay?" he asks, noticing my clear shift in demeanor and I quickly try to clear things up without making things even more awkward. "Yeah no I'm fine. I feel like I never really looked outside my window on this drive since I was sleeping the first time we came here" I explain, hoping he'll accept that as an answer and although he looks suspicious he lets it go. 

"You know, I've been out here so many times that I've forgotten to look around as well. It's a nice drive for sure" he agrees and we sit there for a while, going down the highway and listening to the slow hum of my playlist in the background.

~~~~~

As we get closer to the city I realize that I still have no clue where we're going to get these accessories he had mentioned but I didn't think we would be going to a little couture boutique that I've never bothered setting foot inside. Simply knowing for a fact I would never be able to afford anything. 

"You sure we should start there? I mean I'm sure there are a lot more affordable places close by" I say, trying to back my way out of it but he gently guides me inside and nods his head politely in greeting to the sales women there as we walk through the doors. 

"James wants you to have the best of the best and feel confident at your first outing so he wanted us to start at the top. Just take a deep breath and don't look at the prices alright" he coaches before leaving me to wander around in search of the perfect shoes when unbeknownst to me he's already gotten one of the ladies headed to the back to grab a few pairs that might match the dress. 

"You're size eight in heels correct?" he asks, putting on an heir of sophistication since we're no longer alone. "Correct" I answer as I look at the various colors, styles and flashiness of all the items around me as I make my way further and further into the store. 

"Mr. Jeon?" the woman calls for him and he leads me over to where she's placed the various pairs that he thought might've been suitable for the occasion. 

"See any you like?" he asks, watching as I observe the array he had chosen and I pick a plain black pair to start. "These seem nice" I say as I try it on for size and notice they're a tad too tight. "You think they would match the dress well though?" he questions and when I think back to it I realize that we should probably keep looking.

~~~~~~ 

After trying on a dozen more I feel as though we'll never find the right ones until I notice a pair that's on display in the front window. "What about those ones?" I ask, pointing to them and he waves the woman down that had been helping us and she nods before going to retrieve them for me. 

"You're in luck Miss, these are the last pair we have. They are a half size small but go ahead and try them on" she says, placing the box down on the bench beside me.

When I go to take them out Jungkook places his hand on top of mine and I pause, looking over at him to question his motives. "Allow me?" he offers and I nod my head, caught off guard but letting him do as he pleases. 

He takes off the last pair I had just tried on and slips the first shoe on with ease, almost as if they had been made for me. Once he's gotten the other shoe on as well he steps back and holds out his hand, asking me to stand up and walk around in this last hopeful pair. I do as I had done time and time again this but lose my footing as I take my first step. 

"Woah there" he says, letting me fall into his chest, avoiding any further injury for the day. "Are you alright?" he asks and when I lean back to respond my breath catches in my throat, nudging my nose against his. 

"I- um yeah, yes I'm fine" I stammer after having stared at his lips for a beat too long, stepping back and again losing my footing leaving him having to grab me by my hips to steady me again. "Maybe we should take a break from the shoes for the day" he chuckles and I look down at my feet with an excuse of checking out the heels like I had before but noticing that these might actually work. 

Taking a closer look in the mirror I watch myself walk up to it and notice that for once I don't look like a baby gazelle learning how to walk for the first time while also realizing that the color and style matches somehow perfectly after having seen them up close. 

I turn to look back at Jungkook and see a satisfied smile, knowing that we've found the ones. "Those it?" he questions, still leaving the choice up to me and I smile and nod, loving the fact that our efforts were not in vain. 

He makes a nod at the sales woman, asking her to ring them up while he walks up behind me. Looking at our reflection I notice that although these heels are a tad bit higher than my usual ones he's still taller which makes them even more perfect.

"You tired?" he asks, placing a hand on my hip after taking in the sight of the both of us and guiding me back over to the bench so I can finally put my own shoes back on, leaving me thanking my past self for wearing boots instead of some sort of heel as well.

"A little" I say after having slipped my feet back into the boots, standing up and yet again losing my footing, this time only giving Jungkook the chance to grab onto my hand as I thankfully sit right back down on the bench instead of landing on the floor.

"Tried on one too many huh?" he laughs, holding my hand to now aide in steading my balance from the start making me smile awkwardly in thanks for him yet again saving me from my clumsy self. "Yeah maybe" I laugh, picking up my bag and we slowly make our way over to the counter where he pays without bothering to ask for a price.

"How much were they?" I ask, trying to look over his shoulder to see if I could catch sight of it but before I'm able to the transaction has gone through and they're holding out the bag for one of us to take and Jungkook swiftly receives it before taking ahold of my hand again and thanking the staff as we make our way to the next store. 

"Don't worry about it" he says and guides us aimlessly towards the place I could only assume is to find the jewelry to pull everything together. "What do you mean don't worry about it? I'm sure they were really expensive" I argue but that gets me no closer to getting the price than if I would've stayed silent. 

"The invoice will be sent to Matthew and will be charged to James so don't worry about it" he says, assuring me that although he paid this isn't coming out of his pocket. "Fine" I huff and follow him blindlessly before stopping in my tracks in front of the next store. 

"What's wrong?" he asks, looking back at me as we've still got our hands connected leaving him stopping as well. "Jungkook this is Cartier like Cartier the luxury jewelry brand" I say, stunned at even the thought of owning something as expensive as what I might find there. 

"I am aware. Would you prefer to go to Tiffany instead?" he asks, pointing out the Tiffany blue store just a few doors down. "No! I mean no, it's just that this is all so expensive I feel like I could get away with wearing something a lot less pricey than this" I say, trying to explain my way out of adding another dollar to what I assume is the already exorbitant total. 

"Like I said, James wants the best for you and I'm sure your mother is going to enjoy looking at the pieces you've gotten as well" he says placing a hand on my lower back and guiding me in again were we're met with an overwhelming amount of silver and gold and everything in between all enclosed in glass cases. 

"I think these would be perfect thank you" Jungkook says after we've agreed upon a set that would again match the dress but isn't too crazy flashy so it couldn't be used again.

"Are we all done?" I question, not being able to think of another thing that we could possibly need. "We just need to make one more stop" he says and I nod my head, going with the flow since against my best efforts I haven't been able to convince him to stop spending more and more money on me. 

"I thought we were done with the jewelry shopping" I say, as we walk towards the Tiffany store he had mentioned before. "James wanted to get you one last thing as some sort of a thank you for being a good sport and going through all of these lessons or something like that. Anyways he already ordered it so we just need to pick it up" he says and I nod my head, following him in.

Wandering around the store while he talks to the employee about said gift I find myself staring at one necklace in particular and being fascinated by it's simplistic yet elegant look. "Find something you like?" Jungkook whispers in my ear leaving me flinching and taking a step back bumping into him in the process. 

"Stop doing that" I groan and he laughs before leaning in and checking out the case trying to follow my line of sight. "Excuse me, can she try on this necklace?" Jungkook asks, calling the man over that he had spoken to earlier and he nods and makes his way behind to counter we're standing at.

"I was just looking" I try to deny him but he nevertheless nods when the man points to the silver necklace with the small teardrop shaped diamond pendant. He hands it to Jungkook and I look down at it in his hand and see that it looks even prettier up close. 

"You sure you don't wanna try it on?" he asks with a knowing smile and I give him a bashful one back before he nods his head towards the mirror sitting on the courter. I turn around to face it while moving my hair out of the way so he can put it on for me and I immediately fall in love with it.

 He watches my eyes light up in the reflection and nods to the salesman to ring us up for this one as well before even giving me a chance to refuse. I look at the necklace for a while longer, taking in how it looks at different angles and am shocked at how much a small little diamond like that could shine so bright and before I'm able to say a word to him about giving it back he's asking me if I'm ready to go. 

"Let me just give this back and I'll be right there" I say, reaching around my neck to take it off but he walks up and takes my hands down and shakes his head. 

"No, James already got me something from here. I couldn't possibly get another piece as well. I feel as if I'm taking advantage of his kindness" I say, feeling more and more guilty as I imagine how many zeros have been added to the total for this stupid ball. 

"You're not taking advantage of it I promise. Trust me, if anyone else in your position was given free reign to get whatever they thought they 'needed' for one event they probably would've maxed out the card before leaving the first store" he jokes and I smile at his efforts, still feeling incredibly guilty. 

"Okay" I mouth silently and he holds out his hand, leading me out of the store again.

"Jungkook" I call for his attention, curious about something. "Yes?" he answers, stopping so he can look at me properly while I speak to him. "Why have you been holding my hand so much today?" I ask him, leaving him loosening his hold but me tightening mine in response making his worried expression that was once there disappear. 

"I just thought it would be easier for you to follow me especially since it's been a bit crowded today. I didn't want to lose you" he says, looking down at our conjoined hands and smiling, seeing how I have no intention of letting go. 

"Well it's not crowded anymore" I say, looking around at the path we had once traveled. "Sorry I guess it was just a reflex of mine I did not mean to-" "It's fine. I was just teasing you" I say, squeezing his hand, switching roles and leading him to where his car is parked. 

"We're going home right?" I ask and without realizing it the simple words had made his heart flutter a bit leaving him clearing his throat before responding. "Yes, I assume your mother is waiting for you to come home for dinner so I'll go ahead and drop you off now if you'd like?" he asks, leaving it open ended as if he wanted to spend more time together. 

"Oh was there something else we had to do?" I ask, curious to see if he had something in mind. "No nothing, I just thought you might've wanted to get a coat or shall of some sort since the weather is still rather cold these days" he says, no doubt coming up with an excuse to cover up his motives. 

"Sure, I'd love that" I say, smiling up at him and notice how red the tips of his ears have gotten, making me even more happy I said yes to staying with him a while longer. 

He smiles in response and leads us to the first store he can think of that might have something I'd like and as we go through rack by rack we get to talking more casually and before we know it the stores are about to close.

"Let's get you home" he says walking us back to his car where he opens the door for me yet again before driving off.

~~~~~~  

"Thank you so much for all of your help today. I feel as though I would've been lost without you" I admit as we pull up to my house. "I am aware" he says, giving me a mischievous smile before getting out of the car to open the door for me again. 

"Hey! I was trying to be nice and then you go and act al-" "All what?" he teases, cutting me off as he helps me out of the car, leaning against it and trapping me, granting me little to no room to escape even if I tried. "All cocky" I say, lifting my chin up and being confident in my words, full well knowing I'm melting on the inside. 

"Is that so? I guess we've skipped the lesson of getting rid of that dirty little mouth of yours now haven't we?" he taunts, cocking a brow at me and it takes everything in me not to fall to my knees and suck him off right now. 

I nod my head and he tongues his cheek before glancing down at my lips and pushing off the car, giving me room to breathe only for a moment before pulling me into him, moving me out of the way so he can close the passenger door behind me. 

"Let's get you inside. It's past your bedtime Princess" he rasps in my ear before letting go of me and walking towards my house leaving me standing there speechless, leaving me standing there for a minute, trying to take in everything that just transpired. 

'Princess? Where does he get off calling me Princess and why the hell did it make me want him even more? I swear this man is trying to kill me' I think to myself before he calls after me telling me to hurry up. 

"Coming!" I say and mentally curse myself, 'Really? Out of all the things you could've said you said that?' and I can tell that Jungkook's thinking the same thing as he grants me with another cheeky smile before knocking on the front door. 

One of the maids answers the door and Jungkook asks her if there's someone who can get all the bags out of the car and she scurries off and grabs someone to do so. 

"Oh there you are! I thought you would've been back ages ago!" my mother says as she walks up to us, clearly more excited to see Jungkook than she is to see me. "She didn't give you any trouble did she?" she asks, giving me a once over before turning her attention back to him. 

"No, on the contrary she was itching to finish up sooner but I wanted to make sure we had everything she needed before bringing her home. It's been a pleasure spending time with her outside of the classroom and helping make sure she's more than ready for the ball" he says, merely glancing at my mother before looking back at me, my eyes going back and forth between the two of them, feeling shy under his gaze again. 

I swear he always does this right before he leaves because he likes to watch me squirm. What happened to the pure kind man that I had just been with today? Now suddenly replaced by the devilish tempter just daring me to make a move on him. 

After my mother has thanked him and tried to persuade him to come in for a while with him trying to refuse and I come to his aide and shoo my mother away.

"Mom I think I've taken up more than enough of his time today don't you? I'll walk you out" I say quickly, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him out while he says his goodbyes to her. 

"You trying to get rid of me?" he teases, amused by my hurried solution to ending the conversation. "No I just figured there must be something better for you to do than deal with my mother and her antics" I say and he chuckles in response only stopping when I've finished dragging him all the way to the driver's side of his car. 

"Thank you for everything today, really" I say looking down at the gravel under our feet, holding my breath and waiting for that cocky response again but it never comes. "It was truly a pleasure I assure you of that" he says, hooking a finger under my chin to bring my eyes up to him. 

My eyes dart back and forth between his and he leans in again just as he did last night this time giving me an almost featherlight kiss, hardly anything more than brushing his lips against mine, making my breath hitch, frozen and spellbound by his touch. 

"Goodnight Princess" he says against my lips, still barely there but enough to feel his touch as his breath warms my lips, feeling frozen once he's pulled away and sat down in his car. 

"G-goodnight Mr. Jeon" I let out, barely able to break free from the mental hold he has on me making him chuckle at my reaction before giving me once last glance. Dragging his eyes up and down my form before pulling out of the driveway, leaving me feeling utterly naked under his heated gaze.

As I walk back up I see my mother scurrying down the hallway, no doubt trying to hide the fact that she had been spying on us but I wouldn't expect anything less from her. 

No matter how much she tries to hide it at the end of the day she's really just a busybody that loves to gossip but I've grown tired of it. Not even bothering to care if she sees. With the way Jungkook and I have been playing this push and pull for a while it'll only be a matter of time before we end up together. 

Or at least I hope we do...  

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#jungkook fanfic #jungkook #jeon jungkook #bts jungkook #fanfic #fanfiction #kpop #bts #kpop fanfic #jungkook x reader #jungkook and reader #jungkook and you #jungkook bts #jungkook x original character #jungkook x y/n #jungkook x oc #jungkook x you #the art of etiquette #taoe

[turbofanatic]

Hyrule's resting bitch face champion for three decades and counting.

@scopophobia-polaris asked for some more details on this silly guy and I needed to post the redesign of his scars so I'm gonna ramble!

General "rules" I am using for the Bad Moon AU:

-You cannot change the future. If you saw the future, it happens. Maybe not to you, but it happens. Time travel either involves splitting timelines, temporal loops (see the song of storms), or two extremely similar timelines that collapse together (a dumb child goes to the past to plant beans). What does this mean for Termina? OH GOD OH GOD WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TINY WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!

-If you turn into something, you will never entirely turn back.

-Two opposing wishes on the Tri Force will really fuck things up. Also, it happened. Bad Moon is about dealing with the fallout.

Tiny has a series of magic scars from his various transformations. Most of them are benign or beneficial due to Farore's blessing and the Fierce Deity's Mask's intervention, but not all. Believe it or not, this is me nerfing him, because I'm getting rid of all the Terminian masks except for the FD's mask, which gets broken.

-From the Deku mask he has ivy vines. Most are centered along his spine. He uses them to hold stuff. If he sleeps in fertile soil they will grow into the ground and he leaves weird plants that are sort of beholden to him all over the place. Gross. Anyways, remember how the Hero's Shade is covered in ivy? The "missing" eye is also more or less a Deku scrub's pitlike eye now, granting him low-light but otherwise mediocre vision in that eye.

-From the Goron mask he is disturbingly strong now. Most of Farore's blessed are pretty strong to begin with and now he's got Darmani's strength on top of that. His teeth are continuously growing and need to be worn down by grinding them on each other (because he's missing a tooth from that facial scar those teeth are maloccluded and grow all weird). It's definitely inspired by wrathful deity artwork though. He's also extremely resistant to heat. He got the white hair and scales on his shoulders/knees/elbows from Darmani too. Guess what part of his magic scarring the Hero of Twilight inherits!

-From the Zora mask he has some extremely strong scales on his forearms that can be used to defend himself. He can also make nasty electrical shocks, is very resistant to electrocution, is an extremely good swimmer (nowhere near as good as Mikau though), and can hold his breath for twenty minutes easily. His toes are webbed too.

-From the Giant's mask his height just kinda varies. His "true" height is over seven feet tall but it can vary between about 6"/15cm in either direction. He has some control over this but it's more related to his sense of security. He's at his smallest when he's the most insecure but like, that's still 6'10"/208 cm so he's still way too big. Lucky for him the magic also affects his clothes/armor but it takes some time so he just makes/buys things on the larger end and waits for them to shrink to his current size. The effect goes away when removed from his body. Is this so I don't have to be consistent? Yes.

-He turns into a puppy in the War of Eras when he's ten and Zant uses the twilight as a weapon. Specifically an epicyon puppy! A 100lb/45kg puppy! Medli will ride him! I just want to draw the biggest puppy in the world. He can still turn into the big ancient wolf, and thankfully it doesn't do too much to him (unlike Twilink) but his jaw attaches waaay further back than it ought to and he can open his mouth to a scary degree. It's probably influencing those big fangs too. Combined with the Goron bite strength and... yeah.

I'll probably change things because I'm just playing around with him, so don't be surprised when I do!

#bad moon #the legend of zelda #zelda au #oot link #mm link #hero of time #hero's shade

[icarus-star]

hii :3 i know you’re working on a couple projects rn so this can wait!! but can i req something for charlie? like the reader asks him to put on the ghostface mask before they have sex (reader doesn’t know he’s ghostface, but assumes he has a mask bc of the cinema club thing) i think it would make him 1000 times more confident than he usually is in bed :P

mask | charlie walker <3

a/n: this request has been sitting in the back of my inbox for awhile 😭, sorry sorry!! and thank you for being so polite! love it, anon <33

18+ content ahead, pure and absolute filth!!please don't read unless your comfortable with that!!

with charlie being such a big movie nerd, especially about the stab franchise, you just went ahead and assumed that he would have a costume similar to the ones worn in the movies

there was just something appealing about bein' fucked by somebody you can barely see the face of :P

he also liked the idea when you proposed it, was a lil clammy at first because he didn't want you to somehow figure out that he was in fact the one killing people recently

but once it's talked about, it cannot be undone

"voice changer.. or no?"

say yes? he's even more confident in his skills in fucking you

long story short, he against a wall, your on your knees sucking his cock and he's staring down at you with that emotionless mask

he's so rough, fucking your throat and barely giving you a chance to even breath

drool and tears are covering your face, you don't even have a choice but to endure it a little longer

he'll cum all the way down your throat, almost forcing you to swallow it all

omg. he'll twist around all of the iconic ghostface quotes too!!

"i'm gonna see what your insides look like baby..~"

then he'll fuck you, so so fast

he won't even give you a second to adjust to the size of his cock, he stuffs you up all nice then starts right away

omg and he's def gonna choke you!!

his gloved hand goes to your throat, clutching tightly

and the dirty talk 😫

"oh? gonna cum again already? aww no.. i know, i know. it's so much... not too much, i know you can take a little more, baby doll..~"

'n the voice changer doesn't flake out even once!! even though it would be great to hear his actual voice saying all that :(

and he's talking you through every single orgasm with that voice changer

"yeah, cum on my cock again. mhmm~ that's it... come on, oh~ so good, baby.."

he will literally drive your pussy crazy, sorry folks

he's gonna over stimulate the FUCK outta you

maybe even a vibrator against your clit the entire time? 🤗

he'll cum whenever you do, though! mostly

first inside of you, then on your pussy, then your thighs, and your belly

his cum gets everywhere :3

#i ❤ rory culkin #rory culkin #rory culkin x reader #charlie walker #scream 4 #rory culkin smut #scre4m #charlie walker x reader #charlie walker headcanons #charlie walker smut

[kydrogendragon]

Dec 17 - Decorations

(Ao3 Link) (Masterpost Link)

“I think that’s the final box,” Hob says, setting down the plastic storage box on the ground next to the others by the tree.  Morpheus was kneeling down, already sorting through the various boxes and tissue protected containers full of ornaments that Hob had collected over the years.

It used to be, for most of Hob’s memory of actually decorating a tree during Christmas, that they’d place fruits and nuts and candles on the branches.  Even some small presents or little handmade decor pieces were found in his trees of the past. Nowadays, it’s almost always little figures or glass works or something branded as Hallmark.

Hob watches as Morpheus pulls out a small, crocheted cardinal out of a bundle of long-worn tissue paper.

“My girlfriend of the time gave that to me, back in the 1830’s or so. She made it herself. Was one of the first non-perishable ornaments I’d ever had.” Hob says, taking a seat next to Morpheus on the floor. He watches as his friend trails a finger down the length of the delicate red yarn of the bird’s back. It was well done, all things considered. The yarn was definitely fraying in a few places. Hob did his best to do repairs (with no crochet knowledge), but he knows that the little birdie probably doesn’t have much longer to live. It was sad to think.

“It is well made,” Morpheus says, turning the bird around on the tips of his fingers. “Shall we hang this one?”

Hob smiles. “Yeah, go ahead and find a good spot for it.” Morpheus turns his gaze to him, his brows pulled close.

“You do not wish to hang it yourself?”

Hob waves a hand. “Nah. Go for it. You can have the honors of putting the first one up.”

Morpheus nods and stands. He looks the tree over, moving from side to side, appraising each branch for the best spot. Hob works on unpacking some more ornaments and baubles from the boxes while his friend deliberates.

Finally, he hears the shuffling of needles and looks up to see the bird perched towards the top on a branch, hanging proudly against the dark green foliage. Morpheus turns to him, expectantly. Hob gives him a thumbs up.

“Looks good!” He says, holding up another ornament for Morpheus. “Want to hang up another?”

Morpheus looks at the figure in Hob’s hands. It was a little bear dressed as a knight, riding on top of a horse. He’d gotten it from a co-worker a few years back. Said it was the closest they were able to find to anything medieval themed. It had made him laugh at the time and always gets a spot on his tree.

They go through the boxes, slowly. Hob explains the story behind each one as he goes. He knows that Morpheus enjoys hearing their histories. There were a few that were more special to him than others. One was the first bauble he’d ever owned. It was a certified Lauscha Glass silver bauble he’d gotten way back in 1853. He’d traveled down to Germany to the actual town and bought it. He has a similar one, but much more modern, back in the late 1990’s from the same place.

There was quite a collection of ornaments revolving around his various jobs over the years. There were at least seven different teaching or history themed ones: stacks of books, laptop, Best Teacher mugs. There were three bulls and two bears back from his stock market trader days and even one little wooden chair back when he attempted carpentry. That job hadn’t lasted long. Turns out he was decent enough for his own personal woodworking uses, but utterly unskilled in a professional capacity. He’d also racked up quite a few soldier related ones, both for surviving the first one and some “in memoriam” to his “son” during the second war.

There was also a stained glass ornament depicting a robin sitting on a branch. He’d found that in a market in France in the 1970’s. He hangs that one himself beside the small bauble with an engraved E in delicate script. Subtle enough not to be called out by people in his lives, but clear enough that he wouldn’t ever forget.

Hob rubs his thumb over the smooth glass front and presses a light kiss to its surface before he hangs it on the branch. Morpheus watches him at his side, silently. Hob repeats the motion with the E on the front of the bauble before placing it next to Robyn’s. It never does get easier, the loss. It’s easily the hardest part of his long life. Loving people, that was always easy. Too easy, in fact. It made it that much more painful when they eventually left. There’s other ornaments, memories, to those he’s held close over the years.

In another box, there’s a small ship in memory of Peggy and their adventures on the sea when she’d been younger, an orange tabby for Audrey because she always had a soft spot for those crazy beasts, and a variety of other figures and baubles of lovers long past. Hob’s tree wasn’t simply a tree. It was a time capsule of his life, in a way. Memories of those in their graves, of lives he’d once lived, and times he barely remembers - they’re all here, immortalized in glass and clay and yarn.

There’s a hand in his. Hob turns to a blurry Morpheus whose cool hands hold his. Ah. He’s crying. That explains that. And explains why his hands are shaking. He sniffs, raising his free hand to wipe away the trails of tears from his cheeks and eyes.

“Sorry,” he manages through the thickness in his throat. “Forgot how emotional some of these here can get me.” He tries for a laugh, but it comes through sounding more forced than he wanted.

Slender arms wrap around him and black hair fills his vision. Morpheus is warmer than he thought. Hob winds his arms around his friend, holding him close. It settles some piece in him, Hob thinks, knowing that the person here in his arms isn’t one he’ll have to say goodbye to in a decade or two. He gets to keep him, keep Morpheus. Even if his friend decided to head out, explore the world in his own time and take his life in his hands, he won’t be gone. Not like the others. Not like he thought he was after the funeral in his dreams before he’d seen Morpheus standing outside his door with Death beside him. No. No, he can keep Morpheus for longer. For as long as him, if that’s what Morpheus wants.

Ah shit, he’s crying harder now, isn’t he? He feels Morpheus’s hold on him tighten and it just squeezes Hob’s heart knowing his friend, his old stranger, his one constant in life, cares for him so. A shaky sob breaks free from his mouth as he ducks his head into Morpheus’s shoulder. The soft padding of the black cable knit sweater hugs his skin and absorbs the salty tears that pour from his eyes. Hob can vaguely make out Morpheus saying something as his slender hands rub circles into his back.

Minutes pass and the worst of it seems to fade. Hob stays there, enveloped in his friend’s hug and warmth. With a deep breath in to steady himself, Hob leans back, letting his hands raise to rub away the wetness and dried trails of tears from his face.

“God, sorry for that,” he says with a more convincing chuckle this time around. He does feel lighter, though. In hindsight, Hob’s pretty sure he hadn’t taken any time to process this change to his life until now. He’d gone to bed, dreamt through his best friend’s funeral, woken up knowing it was true deep in his gut, then was greeted with the sight of his very much alive friend who was now a human. No time for processing the death that still occurred. Guess a bit of a breakdown had been brewing for some time.

“There is nothing to apologize for,” Morpheus says, still eyeing him with concern. “You have told me many times that tears are nothing to be sorry for.” Hob smiles at that.

“Still. Probably not what you were expecting, I’m sure.”

Morpheus hums. “No, but I do not blame you for it. These decorations hold many memories. Memories have always been excellent catalysts for emotions, both happy and sad. And bittersweet.” He gives Hob another once over before placing his hands on Hob’s biceps and guiding him to sit on the couch. Hob lets him and lets him pull a blanket over his form, tucking it over his shoulders. “Now sit and stay. I will make us tea.”

That gets Hob to laugh. “Thanks, duck,” Hob says, smiling to his friend. “You’re becoming a true Brit.”

Morpheus shoots him that small smile only reserved for him, a good book, and cats, before disappearing to the kitchen and it sends a lance through his heart. God, he really loved him. Maybe one day, he’d even tell him that.

#dreamling #hob gadling #dream of the endless #the sandman #ky writes #december writing list #kydrogen's december drabbles 2023

[blossom-hwa]

Worn-Out Soles [3] | b.c

pairing: Chan x fem!reader genre: fluff, angst, fantasy, royalty!au warnings: kidnapping, injury, death word count: 16.8k notes: — this is a retelling of the 12 dancing princesses :) inspiration taken from the original fairy tale, the Barbie movie, and the retelling by Jessica Day George, Princess of the Midnight Ball. — mc in this story has multiple sisters as befitting the original fairy tale, but they are not blood-related for inclusivity reasons. In a world where magic lies in the arts, you are a princess of Terpsichani, the kingdom whose power comes from dance. Loved by many, you care for your country deeply, though in truth your heart only belongs to the palace's royal cobbler, Chan, who holds equal affection for you in return. It's a love that could never be, you both know, though it doesn't stop you from pining. But then you go missing on the final night of your kingdom's Moonlight Festival, leaving behind nothing but the memories of a final dance. When your sister brings news of your disappearance to Chan's doorstep, there's only one thing he can do. Follow you into the depths of hell to bring you back—or die trying. Part 2 >> Part 3

To Spin a Yarn | Stray Kids Masterlist

Chan finds himself in front of the witch’s hut with no idea how he got there. 

His sides heave with the effort of taking breath. His mouth feels dry, like he hasn’t had water in days. He reaches up and finds there are still tears in his eyes, and the sun has risen and nearly set during the time it took to return.

He failed. He failed so badly—didn’t manage to get the necklace, didn’t manage to get you out. All he has is this wretched crown in a wretched case, and he doesn’t even know how to unlock it. With luck he won’t need to unlock it, he’ll be able to just burn the whole thing together, but the king still has his necklace and he still has you—

Shut up. Chan knocks on the door and tries to breathe. Panicking and crying won’t help you. He needs to think, because he’s going back. Obviously. For the ruby necklace, and for you, and then you’re going to get out of that godforsaken kingdom and never look back. 

Yeah, and look how well that went last time. 

The door swings open before he can try and refute that. 

“Oh! Young man—” The witch sees the look on his face and cuts herself off. 

Wordlessly, Chan opens his bag and extends her the case with the crown. “I have the crown,” he says, and his voice sounds terrible, rough and hoarse and his throat is dry, so dry. “It’s in here, but it’s locked. I don’t know if you can burn it outright.”

She waves him inside, taking the case. “There are many enchantments woven on this. I don’t know if it would burn in the fire in this box,” she replies, brows furrowed. She taps the dent that Chan saw in the middle. “This is where you would unlock it, if there was a key.”

Chan takes a closer look at the dent. He hadn’t tried much before; the king’s room was dark, and then there was no time. Now that he can see it in the light, it’s not really a dent—more of a carefully molded groove, the inset similar to the edges of a cut crystal…

“It’s the ruby,” he whispers, horror washing over him. He thought he failed before, but it’s even worse—the ruby is meant to unlock this box. He’s sure of it. The more he thinks about it, the more it makes terrible. He never quite got the closest look at the ruby, but the general shape and set of the jewel seems to match the box and it just fits.

The witch seems to agree. “Do you have the necklace?” she asks, indicating his clenched fist.

Huh. He hadn’t noticed he was holding something so hard. With effort, he opens his fist, his fingers protesting as blood comes rushing back into them. In his palm lies a silver key, its shape imprinted into his skin. Chan almost laughs. He didn’t even need to use it, in the end. What if he hadn’t gone for this, and tried to take the ruby first? Would he have succeeded?

But no. He needed the key, if it was yours. In case you didn’t manage to get out. The knowledge that he’s right doesn’t comfort him much, though.

“No.” Chan rips the word off his tongue, tasting all his failure on it. “He wears it at all times. I—tried to get this key first. And I did. But he woke up, and then there was no time.” He swallows hard. “And I couldn’t rescue my friend either.”

Slowly, slowly, the witch nods. “I see,” she replies, her old voice grave. “So what will you do next?”

For some reason, this is what breaks the dam of tears that he had just managed to erect.

“I don’t know,” he grits out, all the anger and self-hatred from hours of riding coming out in full force. “I don’t know. I failed. I messed everything up, and I lost Y/N—”

The old woman touches his arm. Guides him quietly to a chair. Waits until his chest stops heaving and he stops babbling nonsense, and extends him a glass of water, which he sips at first, then downs in three gulps. She refills it and then sits before him once more. 

“You did not fail,” she says quietly, and the certainty in her voice finally strikes a chord in his chest, his heart beating a little more slowly. “You brought back the crown, and while we may not be able to destroy it just yet, the center of magic being pulled from the kingdom will already lend to its collapse.” She picks up the case again. “I will work at the enchantments and see if I can break any. In the meantime—”

“I have to go back,” Chan blurts out. “I have to—I need to get Y/N out, I need to bring her back.”

“And so you will,” she agrees. “But not now.”

Anger flares in his chest. “What do you mean, not now? She’s already hurt! I can’t wait—”

“You must,” she snaps, iron in her voice. “It is dark. The king’s men will be hunting you in the shadows, and once you leave the hut my protections will no longer cover you. Even with the invisibility cloak, while they may not be able to see you, you will not see them under the cover of night. And, beyond this, you are in no shape to go.” Chan starts to protest, but she raises a hand. “You have not slept in over a day. You need to rest, and so does your poor horse.” Her voice softens. “When dawn comes, you will go. You must, to save your friend. But until then, you will rest.”

She’s probably right. Chan can already feel his body slumping with exhaustion. But the thought of you, alone and hurt at the mercy of a king of hell still raises his voice. “You said the kingdom would collapse without its center of power,” Chan gets out. “Was that a literal collapse? Or just metaphorical?”

“Literal,” the old woman replies easily. “But it will take some time—the collapse would not be as quick as if I burned the crown in the fire right this instant. You have perhaps a day before the palace will literally begin to collapse. Which is enough time for you to rest.” She puts down the box and turns to a cabinet, rummaging around for a minute before coming back with a small bottle that she gives to him. “This will give you dreamless sleep,” she says, not unkindly. “Please, young man. You must rest.”

Chan stares at the small bottle. He thought he was all cried out, but tears brim at his eyes once more. “Why are you helping me so much?” he asks, voice brittle. “In fact, if you knew all this, why wouldn’t you fight the king yourself?”

She laughs kindly, putting a wrinkled hand over his. “I would, if these old bones would sustain another confrontation,” she says, chuckling a little sadly. “I am old, young man. I have seen many things, and I have fought most of my own battles. Trust me when I say that I would not survive another fight with that kingdom.” 

Chan blinks. “Another?”

“Yes. I am one of those who cursed his family, after all.” She continues as if Chan wasn’t immediately reeling from that piece of information. “This was ages ago, and they hadn’t stirred much, to my knowledge, until you came by. Now I realize they must have been wreaking more havoc than I was aware of.” With a strong sigh, she shakes her head. “That royal family is evil, Chan. Their magic is the darkest of all. While I and the other witches were not strong enough on our own to fully defeat them, only curse them so that they could not bear the sunlight, I have hopes now that their power will disappear forever.”

“…But I failed.”

“On your first try.” She smiles. “But you will return, no? And you will try again. It was not on my first attempt that I managed to curse the Kereseians below the ground. You are on a tighter schedule than I was, perhaps, but I have faith in you, young man. You are pure of heart, motivated by love, and you will not give up until you succeed.” Her tone turns stern. “But to do that, you must rest. Yes?”

Chan’s throat hurts, and not just from a day of riding without stopping for water. “Yes, my lady,” he whispers around the lump constricting his voice. “Thank you.”

. . . . .

When your eyes fully open for the first time, you’re not sure how much time has passed. You recall slipping in and out of consciousness, pain blurring the edges of your vision as you gasped for air, so you wait for blackness to consume your vision again, but this time, it doesn’t.

Slowly, you try to take in your surroundings. You haven’t moved from where you were dropped on the floor, after the king broke one of your legs and had someone else snap the other. You don’t think you could even if you tried. You don’t dare try and turn to see the state of your legs, but from the pain still screaming through your bones and skin, it can’t be anything good. 

You close your eyes again, letting a few tears leak out. Gods and stars above, why did you wake? Why couldn’t you just stay unconscious? At least in the darkness of your mind, you couldn’t register the pain as clearly. Now that you’re conscious it’s all just rebounded. For minutes or hours, you lie there on the ground, fully awake, unable to think or move. 

At some point, the door opens. You barely register it until shoes enter your vision, and even then, the image is blurred by tears and pain. 

Someone squats. Lifts up your chin. You grit your teeth and blink away tears to come face to face with the man you currently loathe most in the world. 

“Hello, my queen to be,” the king croons, though now, even he can’t fully disguise the hatred lying behind his eyes. You don’t bother to hide your own—it’s the only thing keeping you up. You note with grim satisfaction that the burns on his face haven’t healed, his skin still red and raw where the dawn burned him, and he isn’t wearing his crown. “It’s time for the evening meal.”

Bizarrely, this reminds you of your first day here. “I’m not hungry,” you mutter, half a smirk curving your lips before it drops. “I don’t feel well.”

“Of course you don’t.” He laughs in your face. “You will soon, however.” From somewhere to the side, he produces a goblet. “Drink.”

You sneer. “How am I to know whether or not that’s poison?”

“I wouldn’t poison my wife to be, no matter how terribly she treated me.” Mock hurt flashes across his face and you want to slap him. “This is enchanted water from the fountain that was to be your wedding gift, Your Highness. It will heal you completely.” He leans in closer. “You will marry me, and you will bear my child. You have no choice.”

You spit in his face. 

“Such unladylike behavior.” He tuts, wiping away a drop of spit with an almost careless finger. “Do you not want to be well?”

You’d give almost anything to get rid of the pain. In fact, you’re seconds away from giving in. But he doesn’t need to know that. So you say nothing.

He beckons to someone outside of your line of sight. Before you understand what’s happening your head jerks back by someone else’s hand, another hand forcing your mouth open as the king himself pours the contents of the goblet down your throat. 

Choking and spluttering, swallowing in spite of yourself, the first thing you think is that this tastes like normal water. Then a warming sensation begins to filter through your body, spreading slowly through your limbs, and slowly but surely, the screaming in your legs stops and you feel them straighten without your will. 

Your mouth fills with a bitter aftertaste. You’re not sure if it was the water, or just your mind trying to turn your tears into something as bitter as your loathing. The pain is gone, your thoughts are clear, and you wish they weren’t.

If you were just a little stronger, maybe they wouldn’t have been able to treat you like this.

“Still hoping for your lover to save you?” The king laughs coldly, icy fingers cupping your cheek. “He can’t come here anymore, you know. We found where he came in and we sealed the cracks. Right now, my people are combing the forest, ready to serve his heart to me on a silver platter.” He smiles like the bitterness in your mouth hasn’t turned to something rotten that tastes like blood, like your heart isn’t beating painfully fast even as you fight to keep your expression neutral. “I will save you, Your Highness. Day and night I will clip your wings, then grow them again—all so that you can stay with me.” His smile widens. “Romantic, isn’t it?”

Briefly, you weigh the merits of throwing up on him. You've already spat on him twice. But you don’t have the energy, so you do nothing, hatred for the king and yourself burning in your chest. You focus on the burns on his face, on his neck, reminding yourself that he is mortal, that for all his seeming power he can be hurt—

Wait. You almost frown before schooling your expression back into one of hatred. If he has this enchanted water, why doesn’t he use it on himself? If it could heal your two broken legs in minutes, surely it would heal him in no time? Something doesn’t seem right about that, but the king speaks before you can take the train of thought any further. 

“Have her dressed,” he says, gesturing to someone else in the room. “Then take her to the banquet hall.” He takes your arms and drags you up and your first instinct is to shove him away, but then you stumble on your newly-healed legs and fall back into him anyway. 

He ignores your attempt, his eyes boring into yours, his lips curving slowly. Knife blades and blood. “We can’t go without our evening entertainment, after all.”

. . . 

For some reason, you’re dressed even more lavishly tonight, given a gown of the smoothest silk you've ever felt, jewelry with the largest gems you’ve ever seen. You sit quiet and miserable as silent servants do your makeup, then slip on yet another dark pair of slippers on your feet. Briefly you wonder what they did with the clothes you came here in, the white robes and Chan’s lovely shoes. 

What wouldn’t you give for them over these ostentatious ornaments. 

Your legs, though healed, still tremble when you put weight on them. Logically you know they must be fine, but you can’t shake the feeling that they are still injured, that bone shards aren’t still poking out of your skin, that you shouldn’t be able to move as easily as you currently do. The high-heeled dance shoes don’t help at all. But because there are guards, and because you are being watched, you force yourself to stand, to walk.

When you reach the banquet hall, it seems as though nothing has changed. You’re not even certain as to whether the court was informed of your escape attempt, because while you garner a few stares and smirks upon your entrance, it’s still no more than you had grown used to before. The king probably didn’t say anything, you conclude through the meal. Doesn’t want to make it seem like he’s lost more control over the situation than he already has, you suppose. They already know he lost his crown. He can’t make it look like you tried to escape, too. 

But something does change when the meal is over, and everyone begins to enter the grand ballroom. Because while the king still leads you inside, he doesn’t accompany you to the center of the floor, as he had done before. Instead—

“Dance for us, Your Highness,” he says, smiling cruelly. “We have been deprived of your magical abilities, as you choose not to show them to us. I can only assume you are shy, hm?” He cups your cheek in his cold hand and a little laugh rises from the crowd, making your skin crawl. “I am rather curious about your magic, Your Highness. I saw it when you danced for your Moonlight Festival, and I must confess, I fell in love.”

You take his cold hand, bring it down under the thin guise of holding it gently when you want nothing more than to stab him in the throat. “You did, didn’t you.” Your voice is flat but for some reason it still amuses the court even more. 

“Of course I did.” He gestures at the expanse of people around the ballroom. “As I’m sure they all will too, when they get to see the wonder of your art for the first time. So dance for us, Your Highness.” He lets go of your hand. “I will enjoy the spectacle as part of the audience.”

You fight the urge to scoff as you step into the center of the floor, legs trembling. Spectacle. You are not a spectacle, you are a human. But of course he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that he’s forcing you to dance on legs that he snapped and healed within twenty four hours. He doesn’t care that you don’t trust your bones as you would on any other day. You’re shaking all over and phantom pains keep running up your legs in spite of the healing water, and the only saving grace of this whole terrible outfit is the long skirt of your dress, hiding the way your legs tremble.

Despite yourself, tears try to force themselves into your eyes. You swallow them down even as despair clogs your throat. He does mean to make a spectacle of you, like a ballerina in a music box—an object meant for only the entertainment of others. It hurts. It hurts so much. And it would be so easy to give up, to give in to the pain and hopelessness of it all, but—

Your mind turns back to Chan, and the last words he spoke to you. “I’m not going to leave you behind.”

He won’t leave you. He’ll be back. You swallow hard. And if you don’t want him to give up, neither can you.

The several nights you danced with the king, you forced yourself not to bring your magic into play. You feared that the overwhelming sadness would only bring more demeaning laughter to the court. But you remember the terror you were able to strike into your guards when you tried to escape, their eyes blown wide like they were truly scared. 

Even if it won’t last, even if they will only laugh in the end, you would like them to feel as you have felt over the past several days. If only for a moment.

Hanging your head deliberately, you wait for the music to begin. It doesn’t matter what it is, you’ll spin it into what you need. As if the musicians have sensed how you feel, though, the melody that starts is slow, desolate, and everything you wanted. 

And so you let go, injured legs be damned.

The room blurs into a tapestry of black marble and flame. The stares of the crowd become nothing more than pinpricks of light in the distance. The ominous gaze of the king falters and disappears as you whirl around the room, singing emotion through your movements, spinning everything you remember since the night you were kidnapped into a performance on the floor. Confusion, terror, desperation. Disgust, fear, anger. And when it comes time for you to retell Chan’s appearance and the relief and hope that crashed over you—

You look straight into the eyes of the Kereseian king as you spin past. 

By the time it’s over, you’re panting with exhaustion, sweat dripping down your brow. The music is slowing, fading into the air, and as it finally stops, you become aware of the world again. Aware of the silence of the room, the stares of the court, the shakiness in your legs that still keeps you hesitant to put your full weight on them. There are tears in your eyes and you’re certain they’ve fallen down your face, too. 

Then one person begins to clap. And another. And then another, until the ballroom echoes with quiet applause, despite the fact that you have taken no bow. Instead, you turn to look at the king, who steps forward with something unreadable in his eyes. 

“A lovely performance,” he says, the cruel curve of his mouth lifting into half a smile. “Did you make that up on the spot?”

You nod mutely, trying hard not to cry. 

“Your talent is great.” It sounds like it might be the first sincere thing he told you in—well, in all the week and a half that you have known each other—but you don’t bother to thank him. “I think I fell in love with you again.”

This time, you scoff out loud. “Your Majesty, don’t insult me. I don’t think you’d know love if it slapped you in the face.”

His eyes darken. “I was going to try and be kind,” he says, voice dangerous. “But you’ve made your stance clear, I see.”

You give him half a smile. “You wouldn’t know kindness if it slapped you in the face either.”

He spins you into frame, crushing your hand in his grip. “It doesn’t matter,” he whispers in your ear. “For by the end of the night, you are mine to keep and enjoy. Whether or not I show you kindness or love…it will never matter. Not to you.”

It’s true. Because you couldn’t care for him even if he had showed you kindness, even if he had showed you whatever it is he thinks is love—he took you from your home, took you from your family, took you from those who loved you most. And it’s even easier to remember that when, at the end of the night, he takes you back to your room stumbling, half-dead, and exhausted, and orders guards to snap your legs again as soon as you enter your quarters.

Everything hurts. Your body is on fire and you can’t stop the tears of pain from pooling on the floor beneath you. But though you bite your lip so hard it draws blood, you take a small, grim satisfaction in that you didn’t scream this time. 

. . . . .

It takes the full length of a day or more to reach the earth under with Kereseia lies. Chan sets out at dawn, riding more carefully than his haphazard trip a day ago, and with several short breaks, he reaches the opening the witch showed him when night has already fully set, the sun sunk beneath the horizon.

He stumbles off his horse and barely remembers to picket it before giving him a pat of apology and stepping into the cave. Once inside, he searches for the metallic glow of the silver trees below, but—

The glow isn’t there anymore. 

Chan squints into the darkness, anxiety rising in his throat. Keeping one hand carefully against the wall of the cave, he ventures further inside. After some trouble he finds the two rocks that had signaled the entrance before, but when he feels between them, all he touches is solid earth. As if the opening never existed. 

Panic nearly shuts off his mind. He places his head in his hands and tries to think beyond the imminent mental breakdown. The king has obviously sealed off this entrance, and Chan wouldn’t put it past him to have gone through the kingdom and sealed anything that might even be the slightest opening to the earth’s surface. 

Chan nearly curses out loud. Also almost punches the wall, but forces himself not to at the last second—who knows who is watching out here, where the king could have eyes in this darkness? He sinks down onto the cave floor, placing his head in his hands as he tries to breathe. Why didn’t he think that this would happen? It’s so obvious now that he thinks of it—of course the king would try to find where he came in from after he managed to get in. 

Several frustrated tears roll down Chan’s cheek, but he wipes them away harshly. This opening is closed. More likely than not, any others have also been sealed. He has no way of finding another unless it’s by pure luck—and luck hasn’t been on his side for a while—and he can’t easily go around trying to find one anyway, not when it’s dark and Kereseian guards have probably been scouring the area for him—

The guards. 

His eyes widen. They have to get back into the kingdom somehow. If he can find one of them and stay hidden...

He might just be able to follow one back into Kereseia. 

A rush of hope warms his chest but he swallows it down. No use in hoping unless he can actually find one of them, now. But at least it’s a straw to grasp at. 

For the next few hours, Chan quietly passes through the area of the woods, clutching the clasp of the cloak at his throat. He doesn’t hear a sound, though, beyond the usual murmurings of a forest at night, nor does he see anything particularly strange, even when he decides to climb a tree and watch the ground below for a while. As the hours pass, the sky lightens, and when the sky is a dusty gray Chan almost gives up. Any guards have probably already returned underground, and he’s lost his only lead—

A dark shadow rushes past the corner of his vision. Chan whirls around, clapping a hand over his mouth, to see the black uniform of the Kereseian guard disappearing into the distance. 

Heart in his throat, Chan strides as quietly as he can over soft grass and dirt until he’s ten paces behind the guard. Praying, praying that the guard doesn’t notice him, he follows until they reach a small clearing in the woods. The guard mutters something under her breath and places a hand to the grass.

For a moment, nothing happens. Then a harsh, orange glow flares from the earth, the ground clearing until a small staircase appears, circling underground. 

With every step, Chan thinks the guard will hear him. He doesn’t dare believe luck is on his side. But they reach the bottom of the staircase without trouble, the guard muttering expletives about damned humans and damned king, and Chan finally lets himself breathe just until they emerge from a tiny door and Chan nearly barrels headfirst into several other guards. He barely stops himself in time, but even then, one of them looks around suspiciously, like she felt something in the wind. 

Chan holds himself stock still, not daring to even breathe as the three guards begin to talk, winding their way back to the palace. The dark streets of Kereseia look even more unsettling than when he first saw them, cold lamps shining overhead, the strange silver trees casting strange glows onto the ground. The people of Kereseia walk freely through the streets, and it takes all of Chan’s concentration not to bump into anyone while still keeping the three guards in his line of sight. This entrance is considerably further from the palace than the one the witch told him about, and Chan’s feet are beginning to hurt a little by the time the imposing dark gates of the palace come into view. 

But something is strange. Chan squints, almost bumping into one of the guards. “What’s that?” he hears one of them ask, echoing his thoughts. It almost looks like small clouds of…black dust, or something, are rising from the palace. As they get closer, the gates opening to greet them, it only becomes more evident, and Chan hears faint crashing inside, too. 

Oh. Oh, no. His heart stops. 

“The center of magic being pulled away from the kingdom will already lend to its collapse.”

“Was that a literal collapse? Or just metaphorical?”

“Literal.”

The palace is collapsing. Chan looks left, right—it seems anyone with sense has left. Even the three guards he entered with are sounding cries of alarm, already beginning to run out of the gates. There is no one at the palace door. No one to let him in, not that he could even ask—

The doors groan open, and several people come running out, screaming. Chan wastes no time. 

He sprints inside. 

. . . . .

The second night of torture begins much the same as the first. The king comes inside and force feeds you a goblet of enchanted water. The burns still litter his face and neck, but you have barely enough time to wonder why he doesn’t drink the water himself before he’s whisking out of the room, leaving someone else to prop you up on your shaky legs and primp you for the evening festivities. 

You feel sick the whole time, as usual. No one speaks to you but the king, as usual. You dance alone for the entertainment of the court. He takes you as his partner next, and you exchange barbed words as he dances with you hour after hour after hour. 

But then the ground shakes beneath your feet, right as the last waltz is about to start. The ceiling seems to tremble above you. You stumble on your shaky legs, but the king’s grasp on your hand doesn’t let you fall. He doesn’t seem to notice, though, his gaze riveted on the ground trembling underneath his toes. 

All around you, shrieks of confusion and surprise have begun to permeate the air. You ignore them, gaze fixed solely on the king’s face that is growing stormier and stormier by the second. “The ball is over!” he shouts above the din. “Return to your homes.”

“What is happening?” you demand as the ground gives another shake. This time, the king lets you go, and you barely manage to keep your balance. “Why is the ground shaking?”

He sneers. “Because of your little lover,” he snarls. “He’s taken my crown. The seat of Kereseia’s power is too far away, and the palace is collapsing for it. Don’t worry though, darling.” His lips curve into a wide, insane smile. “I’ll escape. But you won’t.”

In the time it takes you to understand what he means, two guards have already grabbed your arms. You writhe and screech, twisting and biting, but their grip is iron. The king laughs, catching your chin between his cruel, cold hands. “It’s such a shame, Your Highness. If you had kept your father’s side of the bargain and just been my pretty wife, instead of having your lover rescue you like some ill-fated hero, you might have lived. But no.” He sneers. “You think your lover is coming back for you now, under this heap of rubble? No. You will be buried here forever, and I will simply have to find another partner.” His expression mocks you as he tilts his head, feigning thought. “What is your second sister’s name…Yeji? I’m sure she will make a fine wife.”

“You—” Rage blinds your vision and you scream, a raw, breathless sound that echoes off the walls. 

The king only laughs in your face. “Take her to her room, and snap her legs,” he says, waving a hand like he’s just asked for another glass of wine at dinner. “I think I’ll leave your wedding gift intact, hm? If only you could escape. If only you had another to dance with.” He cackles, high and loud, and turns around. “If only you could dance in the first place.”

He’s going to break your legs. He’s going to bury you here. He’s going to keep the magic of the stairs intact at least until it collapses on its own, to taunt you—because if you had your legs, if you had a partner, you could leave. But you won’t. You won’t have your legs and you’ll have no one to save you and he knows it. Relishes it.

“MONSTER!” you scream.

He doesn’t even deign to look at you in reply.

You fight the entire way. You kick, writhe, scratch, twist and bite anything you can reach. But in the end, there is nothing, only the pain of two broken legs without the bliss of unconsciousness as pieces of the ceiling begin to fall around you. Sick to your stomach, you cling to the only hope you have left. 

Chan, I know you will return. 

Please don’t be too late. 

. . . . .

By the time Chan reaches your rooms, rubble has already covered the halls, dust rising in the air and choking him until he raises his cloak to his face. The foundations groan beneath his feet, the ground cracking as he sprints across the floor, but he keeps going even as chunks of ceiling begin to fall all around him. 

He’s so close. So far. With every turn he takes, every chunk of stone he dodges, he fears he might be too late. But he is not leaving this palace without you. 

He isn’t too late. He can’t be.

A chunk of marble the size of his fist crashes to the floor just as he skids to a stop at your door. He digs frantically in his bag for the key, the key he took instead of the ruby—and now he knows it was the right decision. If he’d even managed to succeed with the ruby, what would it matter if he’d failed to take you again, and he had to return with no key? His fingers close around the slim silver key and he twists it in the lock with a prayer to any god listening above. 

Something clicks. Chan swings the door open, rips off his cloak, and meets your eyes.

“Y/N,” he breathes. “Gods and stars above, Y/N—” 

“Chan?” You cough on the dust, and Chan immediately rushes to your side. “Chan—I—how did you get back here?" you gasp. “He said he sealed all the openings—gods, I prayed you would come but I never though—”

“I followed a guard,” Chan says, trying not to stare at the sight of your disfigured legs splayed out on the ground. “I got in but—Y/N, what happened—”

“He broke my legs.”

Chan blinks. Blinks again. 

"He healed them every night he wanted me to dance.” Your words fall to the floor, brittle, cracked, broken. “And when the night was over, he would break them again. So I couldn’t run away.” Tears roll down your face but you laugh, an empty noise devoid of mirth that scares Chan more than the groaning of the floor beneath him. “When the palace began to collapse, he threw me in here and did it one last time. So I wouldn’t escape.”

Rocks have begun to thud on the ground around you two, but all Chan can hear is the roaring of blood in his ears. Fury clenches his hands into fists and it’s all can do to stop himself from punching a hole in the floor—save it, he tells himself with more restraint than he thought he had. Save it for when you meet him. “How did he heal you?” Chan asks instead, ignoring the shake in his voice. 

“Enchanted water.” You have to raise your ragged voice above the sound of the palace crumbling beneath you. “The fountain outside.”

Chan blinks. The fountain outside—the one that had been at the base of the staircase where you danced the first time you tried to escape. He knows where it is. He glances between you and the door. He could leave you here and bring back the water, but what if the room collapses before he can get back? “I’m going to have to carry you,” he says grimly, feeling his heart crack with the way your lips tighten. “I’m sorry. I can’t leave you in here.”

You take a deep breath. Close your eyes, then open them once more. “Do it.”

As quickly as he dares, Chan slides one arm under your thighs and another under your back. “One, two, three—”

He lifts you up. You let out a strangled noise and latch onto his neck, holding so tight it’s a little hard to breathe, but Chan doesn’t complain, only throws himself out the door as fast as he can. He’s halfway down the hall when a crash sounds behind the two of you, coming right from the room you just abandoned. 

“There.”

Your voice drags him out of his stupor and he looks to where you’re pointing, the familiar round atrium with a fountain set in the middle. Chan hurries as fast as he can, narrowly dodging a fist-sized piece of marble that hits his leg instead. “Shit.”

“My family wouldn’t approve of that language.” Your voice, though faint, still holds the slightest hint of a smile and Chan nearly cries. You’re not fully gone. Not just yet.

“We’ll worry about my language when we get out of here.” When, not if, Chan reminds himself as he lowers you to the ground. “Give me a moment.” 

The fountain has stopped running, but a fair amount of water remains in the bowl. His fingers fumble with the flask in his bag but he finally manages to tug it free and fill it as full as he can. “Here,” he says, tipping the water to your lips. “Come on, Y/N.”

You empty a quarter of the flask before you push his hand away. “That’s enough,” you say, voice a little clearer. “I can’t taste that anymore.” Gripping the side of the fountain, you drag yourself up on unsteady legs that have already healed. “Let’s go.”

"Didn’t you say he sealed the openings?” Chan asks over the rumble of the palace falling around him. “Even if we leave the palace, I don’t know if I can recreate the opening where the guards came in from.”

“Here.” You stare at the fountain, then at the circle of stones surrounding it. “We’ll leave from here.”

Chan blinks. “How do you know it’ll work?”

“He said he’d keep it intact. Until it fell on its own, anyway. Because he thought it was the most amusing thing in the world, having a clear exit open for me—as long as someone healed my legs, and would dance with me. Neither of which he thought would ever happen.” You laugh once, a sound devoid of amusement, as your gaze fractures with memories of something Chan wasn’t here for. The voice that leaves your throat is brittle, cracked when you speak again. “We should go.” Despite your words, though, you don’t move. 

“Y/N?” He peers into your eyes, into the fragmented expression that terrifies him more than anything he’s encountered during his time here. “Y/N, are you—”

“Chan.” Your voice breaks, tears spilling down your cheeks. “Chan, I don’t want to dance anymore.”

His heart splits. Shatters. Falls to the floor in pieces that mix with the marble dust littering the ground. Then it resurrects itself, fused together with a flame of fury that Chan takes care not to show as he takes your hands, forcing his voice to stay steady. “One step at a time,” he soothes, even as he rages internally at the fact that the king took so much away from you, your family, your liberty, and now even your love for dance. “Just like the other times, yeah?” Never mind that they’ve danced with each other a total of two times, one of which was their last failed escape. Chan’s heart hammers in his chest but he grips your hand a little tighter, lets the other rest loosely on your shoulder so you can shrug him away whenever you need. “Just guide me,” he whispers. “I’ll follow. Always.”

“Follow,” you murmur, so softly Chan almost doesn’t hear you. “He always made me follow.” You blink once. Twice. “You want me to lead?”

“Why not?” Even as the ceiling groans, Chan smiles. “I’ll follow your lead.”

For a moment, it feels as though the world stops as the implication of his words hangs over your heads. 

I’ll follow you everywhere you go, even into the depths of hell. 

You take a deep breath. Look up into his eyes with a gaze still cracked, but a little less so than before. “I’ll lead,” you say, squeezing his hand. Your other hand goes to his back, resting on his shoulder blade the way you danced at the festival just days ago. “I’ll lead.”

“One step at a time,” Chan reminds you softly. His lips quirk. “And I’m sorry if I step on your toes.”

You don’t smile. Not quite. But the barest hint of a sparkle finds its way into your eyes, more of the glass cracks sealing themselves once more. 

“Ready?” You take a deep breath. “One, two, three...”

And you dance.

. . . . .

Your heart leaps into your throat the second you step onto one of the circles. Rocks are flying overhead, the very stone beneath your feet unstable as all hell, but you force yourself to breathe, to guide Chan around the cracks in the marble as you begin to weave your way across the stones. 

For several terrible minutes, nothing happens. The circular steps don’t rise. The ground continues to rumble. With every step you take you can feel yourself faltering, angry tears running down your face. The king lied. He had no intention of allowing you even the minutest attempt at escape. He’s taken away your life, your love for dance, all that you had in this underground hell, and now he’s going to take Chan’s life too.

But Chan keeps dancing. Keeps stepping gracefully, keeps following you, and what can you do but continue? He’s trusting you now, just as you trusted him to return. So despite the tears and the terror, you force yourself to keep moving. Keep dancing. 

And, after what feels like an eternity, you begin to feel yourself rising. 

A shaky gasp bursts from your lips. Between the tears you can barely see where you’re going, but as the circular stones continue to rise you force yourself to focus. It wouldn’t do to trip here and fall, not when you’re so close but so far. Chan’s arms do wonders to hold you up on your unsteady legs, made worse by the shaking of the stone beneath you. For all you’re leading him, he’s the one lending you the strength to keep going. 

You're so grateful he's here. So grateful you are no longer alone.

The vaulted ceiling finally groans open, letting in the gray-pink light of the sun. You almost collapse right then and there, but you don’t. Instead, you take Chan on a last few dizzying spins onto the final stone circle before leaping onto the solid earth outside. Only then do you let yourself go, falling to the grass with Chan in one unceremonious tumble, hands still clutching each other tight. 

For a moment, you let yourself breathe, taking in the pale light of dawn in the sky, letting its rays caress your skin. Slowly, you force yourself to sit just as Chan also rises, never once letting go of your hand on the way. Then somehow you’re in his arms and he’s in yours and you’re—not sobbing, the sounds being ripped from your throats are something beyond tears and cries—but you’re crushing him close, as close as you can with your trembling arms, and trying to believe that you’re free. That you’ve escaped. Kereseia is collapsing and you won’t ever have to go back. 

“Chan,” you gasp. “Chan, I—”

“Shh,” he whispers into your ear, voice shaking as much as yours. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Just then, the earth rocks a little beneath your bodies. You both freeze. 

“The palace is still falling,” you say, wiping away tears. “The ground must also be unstable. We should leave.”

Chan nods. “I have a horse. Let's go.”

. . .

You don’t make it there. 

As Chan leads you through the grass and trees, two pairs of feet dragging to where he remembers leaving his horse, a sharp scuffling noise sounds in a nearby grove. Warily, you look at Chan, who looks back. “Should we—” you start to ask before an unwelcome figure materializes out of the trees and sends you reeling backward into Chan, a scream cut short in your throat.

The king looks—terrible. Far worse than you last saw him, which can’t have been very long ago—only a few hours, maybe. At most. And yet every bit of his exposed skin looks raw and red, angry burns peppered along his throat and face despite him standing mostly in the shadow of the trees, out of reach of the brightest rays of dawn. Even though he wears the same clothes as when he left you to die in that palace, he looks smaller in them. More haggard. 

It doesn’t diminish the hatred in his eyes, though. 

On instinct you push Chan slightly behind you, stepping forward even as your heart threatens to leap out of your throat. “What are you doing here?” you hiss. 

“I could ask the same of you.” The king smirks, though the expression looks more like a grimace than anything else. “I thought I’d never see you again, Your Highness.”

“I could say the same for you,” you reply, acid on your tongue. “Though I didn’t just think, I hoped.”

Behind you, Chan chokes on something that sounds almost like laughter. The sound lends you a little hope. But then it dies away just as quickly, because even though the king looks severely weakened, he still has power. He still has the ruby necklace. You don’t really know what he can do with that power—he’s never actually shown them to you, beyond when he teleported you to his kingdom—but there was a reason his family was cursed underground. It can’t have been because they were harmless. 

“So your lover did come back for you.” The king shoots a hateful glance at Chan, who only steps forward to meet it. “I can’t tell if you are brave, or just plain stupid.”

“Faithful,” you correct.

“No sense of self preservation.” The king laughs. 

“Not as if you have much either,” Chan says slowly. “Not when you’re standing in the sunlight.”

The king sneers, though for the first time, you don’t pay attention to it. Chan’s words made you remember something. While the king had forced you to drink the fountain’s water to heal your legs, he never took any of it for his burns, which you remember finding strange. “It’s too bad you don’t have any of that enchanted water to heal you, yes?” You force a laugh, carefully eyeing the king’s reaction. 

It happens in less than a second. If you weren’t paying attention, you wouldn’t have noticed. But the king flinches, ever so slightly, before he regains his sneering composure. 

An inkling of an idea begins to form in your mind. “Water,” you hiss to Chan out of the corner of your mouth, angling your hand behind you. You school your face into neutral hatred, praying that he heard you, and praying that the king didn’t. “Why are you out here in the sunlight, Your Majesty? If it hurts you so much, shouldn’t you be sheltering underground?”

“Yes,” Chan chimes in, pressing the flask into your hand. Your fingers close around it as he continues. “Your palace fell, but surely the rest of your kingdom is safe?”

“My reason is standing right before me.” A manic gleam enters the king’s eye. “You have my crown, don’t you, lover boy? The seat of my power?” He steps forward and instinctively you step back. “Or if you don’t have it here with you now, you know where it is, don't you?”

Chan scoffs, though you hear the hitch in his voice. “Even if I did, I’d die before you got it out of me.”

“Oh, you might die without issue.” A smile curves the king’s lips, sending chills up your spin. Your grip tightens around the flask. “But how long would you last if you had to see your dear princess hurt?”

It happens in a second. The king leaps. Chan yells. But strangely, your heart remains calm, even as the king’s cold fingers graze your chin—

And you throw the contents of the flask on his face. 

Time seems to suspend itself. The king stares at you. You stare at him. His fingers are just barely touching your chin, like he meant to claw off your skin. Which he might have if he didn’t suddenly crumple to the forest floor, screaming in agony. 

Your legs give out immediately after. If it weren’t for Chan, you’d have collapsed right next to the writhing mess of a king before you, but Chan grabs you and tugs you back, his eyes riveted on the scene before him. 

You can’t look away either. The king’s face seems to be…melting. It’s the only way you can describe it. The raw redness of his skin flares angrier until it looks like he’s—being boiled, or something, you don’t know how you can even put it into words—but the screams of agony grow sharper and louder until they finally begin to die, turning into raw animal sounds of torture and pain as his mouth twists into something unrecognizable. You stand there, clutching Chan, shaking like no tomorrow, until finally the king stops screaming and goes still. 

For a long moment, you and Chan just stand, frozen, unable to tear your eyes from the lump of flesh before you that used to be the Kereseian king. Eventually, though you’re able to speak. 

“I didn’t think that would happen.”

Then you lean over and throw up on the grass. 

Chan’s over you in a second, producing a handkerchief out of nowhere to wipe your lips, raising the remnants of the flask to your mouth to wash out the taste. He’s shaking too, his face a sick shade of green, but he successfully holds himself back from following in your footsteps. 

Finally, you have enough strength to stand up on your own. On unsteady legs, you walk over to what used to be the king. The bright red ruby still rests on his chest, glinting sinisterly in the pink sunlight. Before you can second guess yourself, you pull the necklace around the melted form of his head, trying not to gag. 

Chan takes the necklace from you and stuffs it into his bag. “Let’s go,” he says gently, turning you away from the body. “Let’s get out of here.”

You don’t object.

. . . . .

You reach the witch’s hut just as night is falling. Chan is reeling with exhaustion and you don’t look much better, nearly falling off the horse when you try to dismount. You catch yourself on him just in time, and then there’s not much time to think before the hut door swings open, washing the two of you in warm light. 

“Goodness.” The witch pulls the two of you with surprising strength into the hut, shutting the door firmly behind. “Come inside, my dears. Sit down.”

Despite his exhaustion, Chan pulls out the ruby necklace from his bag and gives it to the witch before collapsing into one of the overstuffed couches with you. She takes it quickly, turning immediately to the crown case, which had been on one of the nearby tables, and presses the gem into the box’s dent. It swings open. Without a second thought, the witch tosses the crown into her fire, along with the necklace. The flames burn bright white for a moment, then die back down to their previous merry orange.

“You are the witch, aren’t you?” you ask, startling Chan. You’d closed your eyes when you sat down and he’d half expected you to have fallen asleep by now. “The one who helped Chan.”

“I am,” she says, bowing low. “I am also honored to be in your presence, princess of Terpsichani.”

You blink. “I—how did you know?”

“While I may live in a hut in the woods, that does not mean I am bereft of knowledge of the times.” The witch smiles kindly. “I am glad to see you safe in your…friend’s arms.”

Chan flushes red. A ghost of your lovely smile plays on your lips when you look at him. “Friend, Chan?”

“I…” Chan swallows, praying his ears aren’t red at least. “I did not know what else to call you, to a stranger.”

“I tease,” you say, the smile growing a little wider as you squeeze his hand. “Don’t be embarrassed.”

“I will admit, it wasn’t hard to see through it before,” the witch says, and you laugh as Chan buries his face in his palms. “Just as it isn’t hard to see through it now.”

You lower your head a little, as though embarrassed. When you look up, though, you look better than you have the entire day. “Thank you, my lady,” you say, taking the witch’s wrinkled hands between yours. “For all that you have done for us. For helping keep my love safe. Should you come ever come to my kingdom, you need never lift a hand for a thing. You will be most welcome anywhere.”

“The honor is mine,” she replies, her eyes crinkling with her smile. “I thank you for your kindness, but I do not insist upon reward for my actions. The knowledge that the evil of Kereseia is gone, the seat of the royal family’s power crushed, is enough.”

You frown slightly. “You sound as though you have experience with the kingdom.”

“She was the one of those who cursed the royal family in the first place,” Chan says. It still awes him that this small woman before him was so powerful. 

“...I see.” You rise from your seat, and before either of them can stop you, you give the witch a low bow. “Then I must thank you for your unwavering service, my lady.”

“Do not bow to me, Your Highness.” The witch rushes to seat you again, gently pressing you back into the couch cushions. “Not to me. I only did what I had to. As did you.”

Shadows cross your face, and you look away. Chan takes your hands. Squeezes them against the memories of an evil king, his face half melted away, the dying screams in his ears…

“Enough for now.” The witch stands, gesturing to the two of you. Her eyes are sympathetic. “I will bring you two food and water, and then you must rest. I insist,” she says, though your and Chan’s mouths both open to argue. “You are in no shape to continue riding for days in this state. Rest here, for now, and I will send you on your way come morning.”

You look like you still want to disagree, but Chan remembers how his last attempt at refusing rest went so he just gives you a small smile. “You won’t convince her,” he says quietly. “And we both do need rest. You’re about to fall asleep right here.”

“You’re right,” you acquiesce as the witch bustles off to another area of the hut. “Gods above, I’m tired.”

“Sleep now,” Chan says, guiding your head to his shoulder. “I’ll wake you when there’s food.”

“Alright.” You blink once, twice, slowly. “Thank you, Chan. For everything.”

Warmth floods his chest, giving him the courage to press a soft kiss to the top of your head. “Of course,” he whispers. “Anything for you.”

. . . . .

It takes a day of riding to reach the outskirts of Terpsichani, and another to reach the capital. When Chan stops the horse at the palace gates, you freeze for a moment. A kingdom doesn’t change much in a week, but even so, everything still feels different. 

It was only a week. You nearly laugh. How could so much have happened in so little time?

The second you dismount the horse everything turns into a frenzy. People shouting, crying, trying to lead you this way and that—noise pummeling your ears, words bouncing off your skull. Someone tries to separate you and Chan and you only pull him closer, not even thinking about what this might look like to those who don’t know of your love. In this moment, he is safety. He is peace. He is the rope you cling to in the ocean of this overwhelming return.

Then the crowd parts for someone and in the midst of it all you lock eyes with Yeji. Her expression, initially disbelieving, crumples into something beyond relief and you feel your eyes beginning to well with tears as she leaps forward, crushing you into a hug. For seconds that feel like minutes that feel like hours you stay locked in her embrace, cherishing the feeling of her arms around you, her face pressed into your shoulder. 

When you pull away, the crowd has quieted at your display of affection. Yeji’s attention shifts from yours to someone behind you—Chan, you realize—and before you know it, she’s walked forward and crushed him in a hug not unlike yours. 

Your heart melts as Chan glances at you over her shoulder, bewildered confusion in his eyes. It’s okay, you mouth, and slowly that confusion turns into a soft relief that allows him to put his arms around her as well. 

Your other sisters come running down the hall, then, along with Chaeyoung, their cries of surprise and relief echoing in your ears moments before they bury you in their embrace too. And for a little while, especially after Yeji joins your hug and pulls Chan into it too, all is right in the world. 

Too soon, though, someone clears their throat. You fight the urge to snap. You want nothing more than to scream foul words at the person who did, but it’s probably not their fault, so all you do is wipe your eyes and turn towards them.

It turns out to be your father’s chief advisor, who wears an expression of half shock, half disbelief. You don’t blame him. You still feel the same way too. 

“Your Highness.” He bows low. “Please allow me to congratulate you upon your return.”

It doesn’t sound like much to congratulate you on, but you can appreciate how hard it is to politely phrase I’m glad you have escaped after being kidnapped by the ruler of the kingdom of hell, so you just try to smile. “Thank you.”

“Your father has received word of your return,” he continues, oblivious to how your heart immediately plummets to your stomach. “He would like to see you, when you are rested and refreshed.”

Your father. You swallow hard. The man who, if the Kereseian king is to be believed, made the deals that landed you in the kingdom of hell in the first place. The man who failed to warn you or do even the slightest thing to prepare you—whatever preparation means in this situation—for what would happen. Even though he could have. 

With effort, you don’t clench your fists. Though you want nothing more than to refuse the invitation and retire to your rooms, he is the king. And you are a princess. Which means you must act as one, no matter how the adrenaline of your return is starting to wear off, no matter how hard exhaustion is beginning to hit instead. “Then tell him I will see him now,” you say, voice as steady as you can keep it. You gesture to Chan. “Please see to it that he is given refreshment. Rooms are to be made up for his convenience of rest. Yeji, have someone assigned to wait on him, please.”

“Y/N—Your Highness.” Chan corrects himself on your name and it almost sends you reeling. He can’t call you by your name here, you know that and he does, but gods and stars above you wish he could. “You don’t need to do all of this for me.”

You look at him steadily. “Chan, there is nothing I could do in the world that would be enough to repay you for you saving me.”

A gasp ripples through the hall. You bite back a frown, turning to Yeji. Did you say something wrong? She must know. What did I miss? you ask with your eyes. 

“If I may.” Yeji looks to your father’s chief advisor. “I would like to speak with my sister before she meets our father. It will only be a minute.” 

He bows shortly. “As you wish, Your Highnesses.”

The crowd slowly begins to disperse, and Yeji walks you to an empty room. Your other sisters disperse but Chaeyoung follows, beckoning a confused Chan with her. It gives you a little comfort to know that someone else is as lost as you. “Did something happen?” you ask as soon as Chaeyoung shuts the door. 

“When Father was informed you were kidnapped, he issued…a challenge, of sorts, to the nobility and royalty of this kingdom and others beyond,” Yeji says carefully. “He promised great reward to the one who would bring you back alive.”

An uneasy feeling begins to spread through your chest. “What did he promise?” you ask quietly. 

“Your hand in marriage,” Chaeyoung replies. 

After a moment's thought, you realize this wasn't unexpected. How many fairy tales have gone the same way? But you never expected to live a fairy tale yourself so the news still hits you like a punch in the gut and you almost have to steady yourself on the wall. You look at Chan, heart in your throat. “Did you—did you know of this?” you ask, hardly daring to hear the answer. 

“I did,” Chan replies, equally quiet. “Her Highness told me, when she came to ask for my aid.”

“And he would have done it without the knowledge that your hand might await his,” Yeji cuts in, her eyes sharp. “You know that, Y/N.”

You do. A deep breath escapes your lips, relief gusting out of you all at once at the reminder. You do know that, know deep within your heart that the minute Chan heard you had disappeared, he would have set out to find you, reward or none. “I do,” you say quietly, meeting Chan’s eyes. He hangs his head, looking almost ashamed, but you take his hands. “You said you would follow me anywhere,” you murmur, tangling your fingers together. “I know you would, regardless what awaited you at the end.”

He squeezes your fingers, a tiny smile on his lips. “I would,” he replies. “Until the end of time.”

“The thing is, he didn’t issue this declaration publicly,” Yeji interrupts. “He announced it to nobility and royalty. I was the one who informed Chan first, but I didn’t know that our father only meant it to be for those of magic blood until later.” Her eyes turn to yours, wide and meaningful.

In your muddled state of mind, it takes you a moment to understand. But when you do, anger begins to burn in your chest. 

He meant for a noble to find you. A royal. Someone of the so-called right blood, someone who would inherit the throne with you without issue or scandal. Someone sure to have magic in their veins. Not one of the commonfolk. Certainly not a cobbler. 

You almost scream. How is this any different from you being married to the king of hell?

This time, you can’t stop yourself from clenching your fists. “I will have no hand but his,” is all you manage to say. “Magical or not.”

“I know,” Yeji replies, putting a hand on your shoulder. “And I will support you, as will our sisters. But you needed to know, so that Father would not blindside you.”

Fury nearly does blind you then, angry thoughts whirling through your skull. Your father made a deal with the kingdom of hell. When he couldn’t keep the first he made a second, and doomed you to a life of agony in the cold underground. To right the second he issued a challenge to give away your hand to the first who would succeed, and in the end, the challenge was only for a select few, and not for the one who found you, who loved you, and whom you’d already given your heart to. 

You swallow hard around the furious lump in your throat. “I understand,” you say. “I will speak to him accordingly.”

“Y/N.” Your name from Chan’s voice cuts through the mess of anger in your mind. You turn to him. “I won’t have you go through more trouble because of me,” he says quietly. His eyes are soft, sad, but he speaks clearly even though he can’t quite look you in the face. “This is not worth as much trouble as it is.”

“You’re wrong.” Two steps forward, and with a surprised gasp from him you’ve locked Chan in your embrace once more. “You’re wrong,” you say again in his ear. “You are worth the moon, the stars. You are worth everything I have to give in this godforsaken world, worth every battle I will have to fight for your hand. Do not even suggest that you are not.” You pull away, your eyes soft. “You fought hell to save me from its clutches. Now, please, Chan.” 

His eyes, full of unshed tears, stare back into yours.

Heart in your throat, you wipe a single tear from the side of his face. “Let me fight for you.”

. . .

Just weeks ago you stood in front of your father’s door just like you do now, arm raised, about to knock. The memory curves your lips, bittersweet, as you rap your knuckles against the wood. 

“Come in,” his voice sounds. You enter the room.

Immediately your father’s eyes widen, like he didn’t quite believe the news that you had returned. Relief crashes over his features and his voice, always so steady in your memory, trembles as he rounds his desk to wrap you in a hug. “Y/N,” he says. “I am glad you have returned.”

If you hadn't known about his role in the contract with Kereseia, you might have hugged him back, perhaps even shed a few tears on his shoulder. For all the coldness with which he treated you over years past, he seems truly emotional now. But even though he seems genuine, it can’t erase the knowledge the Kereseian king gave you. 

It’s true that the king might have lied. If you had only heard the stories of Kereseia, you might immediately assume this was the case. But over the days you spent with him, you know that while he may have teased you in awful ways, spun little white lies about love that he knew you would never believe, he did not lie about the things that were important. Not the threats. Not the punishments. Besides, it takes two to seal a contract. 

Someone had to have done it on your end. 

So you don’t return your father’s hug, only stand there stiffly until he lets go. You sit down silently in front of his desk as he returns to his own seat. “I was told you wanted to see me,” you prompt.

“I did.” Your father’s eyes watch you carefully. You force your expression to remain neutral. “Though it could have waited until you were rested.” When you don’t reply, he frowns. “Why do you remain so cold, Y/N? Did I do something to merit your temper?”

In a moment, you’ve stood, fists already clenched. “That’s rich,” you spit, “considering you should know exactly what you did.”

Shock passes over his expression and then he schools it neutrally, to your fury. “Y/N, you do not understand,” he begins. “Your mother and I—”

“Don’t tell me I don’t understand,” you snarl. “I understand very well. I understand that you were the one who signed a contract with the king to sell my own mother off—I understand that you were the one who later signed another contract when the first fell through to sell one of your own daughters off—to a kingdom we all know as having risen from the depths of hell.” You take a sharp breath. “And now I also know that you used my kidnapping as a challenge, to find someone to take my hand in marriage though I never consented to it—I know all of this, and you dare ask me if something you did merits my temper?”

Your father looks slightly pale. It brings you no pleasure to see him like this, sickens you even because it means everything the Kereseian king told you must be true, but you continue. “I will have you know,” you say quietly, “that the one who found me, the one who saved me, was not one of those to whom you issued your challenge. He is not noble. He is not royal. Do you know who he is?” You laugh shortly. “He is our Chan. Our royal cobbler. Someone you probably have not spoken ten words to in your life.” Your father opens his mouth to speak, but you cut him off. “I am going to marry him,” you say quietly. “Not because of your disgusting decree. But because he loves me, and I love him, and I refuse to have any other hand but his.”

“You are not well,” your father says, and the dismissiveness in his voice nearly slaps you backward. “You are tired, and not thinking straight. You need rest, and then we will speak again.”

You gape. You never thought that your father would accept this easily, but to just dismiss it out of hand? Just like that? “I don’t need rest!” you yell. “I need you to listen to me—”

“You are not in your right mind!” he snaps. “You know as well as I do that one without magic cannot inherit the throne. You need time to clear your thoughts—”

A laugh escapes your lips, a hysterical sound devoid of mirth. “I have never thought as clearly as I currently am,” you snarl. “You are my father! I am your daughter. You bargained me off to the vilest kingdom on earth so that you would have an heir, you failed to tell me anything that might have prepared me for it, you got both of my legs broken for three days straight for a psychopath who would do anything to keep me from escape, and then to fix that you sold off my hand to the first one who might find me and now when I tell you I want that man to marry me, you refuse!” You laugh again and the sound hurts your throat as it comes up, raw and choking. “You haven’t even apologized!”

Something flashes across your father’s expression, but he masks it too quickly for you to decipher it. “I am sorry, Y/N, for what you went through.” Rage flashes through you—what you went through, like he wasn’t the reason it all happened—“But you are not thinking straight. We will speak later, when you have had time to calm down.”

You choke on your own words, finally feeling an angry tear cascade down your face. “I will have no one but Chan,” you hiss. “Know this, Father. I will fight tooth and nail on this until the very end.” You swing the door open and step out, slamming it shut behind you.

Outside, Chaeyoung waits, pale-faced and wide-eyed. She probably heard everything. “Chaeyoung,” you say, forcing yourself to rein in your tone, “Schedule an audience with my father tomorrow. Make sure Chan is there.” You pause. “In fact, make sure the entire court is there.”

She blanches. “Your Highness, are you sure this is wise?”

“Was my father’s hare-brained decision to send me to that kingdom of hell wise?” You ignore her stifled gasp and continue. “Chan is to be well cared for until then. If he desires to return home, he may. I only ask that he be part of the audience tomorrow. Ensure that he is in proper attire, and tell him that I will speak to him before we enter the chamber, so that he knows what might happen.” 

Chaeyoung nods quickly. “If I may, Your Highness…what do you plan to do?”

You smile a little then, though it surely does not reach your eyes. “My father likes to break contracts, it seems,” you say. “I’m just going to break another for him.”

. . . . .

Chan stands in the throne room, fighting the urge to fidget. It’s not just because of the strange looks being cast upon him the longer he stands here, nor the strange clothes a servant gave him to wear when he came to the palace. That, he can somewhat ignore. 

He can’t ignore the king’s baleful stare on him across the room, though.

Chan takes a deep breath, remembering what you said to him before you entered the room. “My father refused to hear that I wanted to wed you,” you told him first. “He said that I was not in my right mind. But I know I was.” Your gaze, so fiery then, had softened. “Allow me to fight for us, Chan. I will win, or fall trying.”

What could he do in the face of your determination but agree?

Still, though, he can’t help but feel out of place as the court comes to order. The king’s advisor announces you, and you walk forward. “Your Majesty,” you say, bowing low. 

“Your Highness, and my heir.” The king’s eyes don’t waver as you rise. “Announce your intention for this audience.”

You turn to address the crowd. For a moment, your eyes meet his, and Chan feels himself relax slightly as your lips curve into just barely a smile. “I have come before my father’s court, escaped from the kingdom of hell, to announce my intention to marry.”

A gasp rises from the audience. Your father’s eyebrows furrow. “The one I wish to marry is not of magic blood,” you announce, and the whispers grow louder. “But he is the one who saved me from Kereseian clutches. And he is the one to whom I have given my heart.”

The king seems to grit his teeth. “Daughter, you know that one with no magic in their blood cannot join the royal family.”

“And yet you issued a decree, Father.” Your low voice trembles with rage, so much grief and betrayal as you stare at the man who was supposed to love you, to protect you as his daughter, but failed in the end and lost you to the depths of fire and hell. “A decree that the one who found me and brought me back would have my hand in marriage in return.”

The king stares back, impassive. “The decree was not meant for the common folk,” he says, slow, clear. “I don’t know how your cobbler heard of it, but he should have known it was not meant for him.”

Knife blades scratch the walls as your sharp laugh echoes through the room. Chan winces as the sound scrapes through his ears, joining the resounding clack of your heels clicking cold on the marble floor. “Let us not consider right now the fact that you sought to sell my hand in marriage away to the first one who would find me,” you spit, acid in your voice. “I wonder if you made your stipulations evident enough, even to those who heard your decree, considering the only one who found me is of no magic blood.”

It’s the king’s turn for a mirthless laugh to suffocate the air. “If he loves you as much as you say, your poor cobbler boy would have snatched any opportunity at life with you, no matter how absurd.”

All eyes turn to him. Chan stares resolutely ahead at the white marble walls though his shoulders ache to curl in out of embarrassment and shame, red-eared, red-faced shame at the publicity of his love—but there is nothing to be ashamed of, he reminds himself, no shame in loving someone as wonderful and beautiful as you. No shame at having succeeded in a task where all others failed.

There is still that sharp sting of being used as a pawn in the king’s desperate attempt to right a terrible mistake, however.

“And I suppose you would now take advantage of that.” You shake your head. “Take advantage of that cobbler’s loyalty, his love, his life—”

“It would have been foolish for him to hope at a chance with you,” the king interrupts. “Cobblers don’t marry princesses.”

Chan’s shoulders finally slump. The red creeps across his cheeks, tears pricking the corners of his eyes. The king is right, here—cobblers don’t marry princesses. Especially not cobblers without magic.

The silence that follows the king’s declaration is deafening. Every pair of eyes fixed on him weighs heavy on Chan’s shoulders, dragging him down, down, down. He doesn’t want to be here. Shouldn’t be here in the first place. He swallows hard, ready to slip out of the crowd and make his retreat before he hears anything more. 

But then you turn your head. Meet his eyes.

And between all the grief and fury dancing in your pupils, Chan sees a smile, then silent words playing on your lips. 

I’m not going to leave you behind.

An echo of the promise he once made you in a castle set in the depths of hell, your hand desperately gripping his.

“You think he came for me in an attempt at marriage?” And here your laugh cackles vindictive between the marble walls, so sharp and cold but with a touch of fiery warmth that soothes the lash of shame crawling up Chan’s spine as you look back at your father. “You truly think so?”

Only the sound of soft breaths interrupts the silence in the hall.

“My cobbler would have come for me whether or not you had issued the decree,” you declare, and in your step forward Chan feels terror, uncertainty, crushing relief—emotions, he realizes, all of the emotions you felt before and when he arrived. “Because he loves me. Cares for me.” 

Every eye in the room follows the sharp snap of your arm forward, one finger extended toward the man sitting on the throne. Every spine shudders at the vindictive anger you threw into the air with that one movement.

“More than you,” you whisper, voice a terrifying contrast to your blazing eyes. “More than my own father.”

Gasps sound around the court at your audacity but Chan can only watch as you take another step forward, staring your father full in the face. “You made one promise to a mad king of hell and almost doomed my mother to death in flames,” you snarl. “You made another promise to right the first and got my legs snapped in two every night for three nights just so the mad king’s son could have his entertainment. You made a third promise to right the second and now you tell me it was one you never intended to keep. The one promise that would truly have righted some of the wrongs, and you shirk from this one, too.” The peal of laughter that falls from your lips chills the air with the same icy fire Chan remembers from the hell-castle. “Tell me, Father. How many promises would you break so easily?” 

“I—”

“No matter.” Your voice carries over the king’s as you take the last step forward, right to base of the throne. The guards make as though to block you but Chan watches as you flash them a look, a single look and a gesture of your fingers like knives in the air that sends them reeling, horror in their eyes. You ascend the steps until you tower over your sitting father, stone-faced. “When I was born, you made a promise to our goddess. Our deity. Our sacred Mother, the giver of the magic that runs through my veins and yours.” 

Your arms rise. Fingers grip the jeweled crown that rests on your head. A gasp begins to run through the crowd again and Chan finds himself stepping forward, a hand reaching out to stop you as he begins to understand just what you mean to do—

You look at him, and in that single second, Chan sees the smirk twitch your lips so very slightly. 

He stops. 

“You promised I, as your first-born, would be the next heir to the throne of our kingdom.” You lift the circlet from your head and hold it out, letting firelight glitter on the jewels, throwing their shine onto your skin. With your face still as it is, the room completely silent, Chan would have believed it if someone had told him you were the goddess herself. “You made an oath to our goddess that unless an untimely death became me, I would be your heir.”

For the first time, the king’s eyes tremble. Slightly, slightly, but it is more than enough for Chan’s heart to feel that slight vindication, that sharp satisfaction that he’s been craving ever since the king opened his bitter mouth and began speaking. 

“Since you seem to enjoy breaking promises so much, I will break this one for you, Father.” You place the crown on his lap with delicate precision. “In the face of this betrayal—that the king of this blessed land would trade his wife to a king and then his daughter to that king's son, would gamble with their lives and those of so many others—I refuse to claim this tainted crown. I can be no blessed heir for such a cursed throne.” Jewel light sparks off your face and the smile painted across your lips. “I am sure the goddess hears this, and I am sure she understands.”

A clatter and a clang sound on the marble as the crown falls and a flinch carries through the crowd as the king stands, fire blazing in his eyes. “You—”

The voice ripples through the hall, silencing every whisper.

She what, exactly?

Chan’s breath lodges in his throat. He nearly chokes on it. 

The Goddess Mother. Terpsichore. She who breathes magic into this land of dance, who gives the kingdom, Terpsichani, its name. 

At the front of the throne room, the king has gone still, all the color drained from his face. Your own eyes have left those of your father, turned wide to the crowd as you try understand what is happening. Both of you compose yourselves, though, far more quickly than Chan manages. As you and your father drop to your knees, so does the rest of the room. 

You speak first. “My lady.” 

My chosen. 

Your shoulders seem to stiffen under the weight of the goddess’s greeting, but you don’t say a word. 

So, too, does your father speak. “My lady.”

Your…Majesty.

From where he kneels, Chan allows his eyes to sweep around the room, catching several other glances as well. No one, it seems, missed the pause before the goddess deigned to call the king by his title. 

Your father’s face tightens. 

I heard the princess’s declaration. I heard the reasoning she put forth to lay her crown, your promise, at your feet. The goddess’s voice echoes off the marble walls, directed at the king. But while I am all-knowing within the borders of our country, my sight in foreign lands is…limited. 

Princess. 

You look up, ever so slightly. 

You called upon me. 

A pause. You square your shoulders. “I did, my lady.”

I ask you now to show me what you experienced, and from there I will render my judgment. 

Silence falls over the hall once more, though it takes on a puzzled note this time. Though from the moment the goddess used the word show, not tell, Chan understood. And so did you.

The blood seems to have drained from your face, leaving a sick pallor to your skin as you rise to your feet. You hide it well, but Chan notices the trembling in your legs, the legs you still don’t fully trust after having had them broken several times on purpose—legs still riddled with phantom pains and tremors that you have tried to hide but couldn’t fully. 

Chan, I don’t want to dance anymore. 

But the goddess said show. And the deities of this world understand nothing more than the magic woven into their own art. 

As heads remain bowed around him, Chan dares to raise his own. Meet your eyes. 

And smile. 

You don’t smile. Not really. But as Chan holds your gaze, he watches as the fear in your eyes hardens, then mellows slightly into something a little warmer, a little softer. Your teeth that had been worrying the inside of your lip disengage, and your shoulders fall back as you step forward. The crowds of nobles scurry backward, heads rising in curiosity, but Chan remains where he is, his eyes never leaving yours, your eyes never leaving his. 

Slowly, you raise one graceful arm, painting sadness, despair, and resolution into the air. 

“As you wish, my lady.”

. . .

Years later, Chan is sure someone—a friend, a child, a grandchild—will ask him what he saw that day, the day the princess danced her story, the story upon which every Moonlight Festival dance would be based upon in the years after. But even as they ask, he knows that he will never be able to answer, because he could never put the sight before him into spoken word. 

There is no music in the room, save for the hushed breath of those who still kneel, and the alternate patter and thud of your footsteps against the floor. There is no pomp, no cheer, no festival at hand for which you dance. But as you spin and leap and whirl across marble tiles, weaving emotion into the air, Chan understands, truly, what art means. How it is transcends the word spoken by the lips, how it brings new meaning to life. 

Fear, when you first found yourself in the palace of hell. Despair, as you danced night after night with the king to whom your father had promised you away, unable to find a plan of escape. Desperation as days passed and no one came to find you. 

You lock eyes with Chan as you whirl to a stop in front of him, just for a moment, your hand outstretched to brush his cheek. As you turn away, the spot burns with the hope he gave you, smothered when the king nearly caught him before he could escape, but still burning, still there, even as you collapse to the floor with the pain of the king snapping your legs, one by one.

A gasp ripples through the room as you rise, unsteady, face drawn tight and pained. With jerky movements you tell of your despair, dancing around the room almost mechanically as you would have with the king every night he healed your pain only for his entertainment. But finally, after three nights of such torture, you turn back to Chan and before anyone can say a word, you pull him forward—squeeze his hands—

Tears brim in your eyes and his as you begin to lead him in the figures you danced to leave the kingdom of hell. 

Clasped in your arms, Chan follows your footsteps, guided by your trembling arms that grow steadier, stronger, as you lead him across the floor. And when you emerge from the darkness, trembling and exhausted but that hope still growing stronger and stronger in your heart—

Abject terror as you confront the man who had hurt you so badly, and then disgust and relief as you watched him die.

Your eyes and his are not the only ones filled with tears by the time you stop, panting, one arm held out to the open windows and the sky. And as you lower it slowly, slowly, to intertwine your fingers with his once more, he looks at you, and you look at him, and no one says a word when you fold into each other, two hearts trembling, beating as one. 

One clap breaks the silence in the room. Then two. But even as the marble hall erupts into muted applause, you and Chan don’t move. Only when the goddess’s voice again echoes off the walls do you finally step apart. 

I have seen, my chosen. I thank you for your bravery.

You bow, eyes cast down to the floor. 

I render my judgment. 

Chan’s stomach seizes with anxiety. Your hand finds his and you grip each other tightly. 

The princess, my chosen, has suffered beyond compare. Terpischore’s words pound through the hall, cold and furious. She suffered for one man’s folly and arrogance. Her own father’s. 

Every eye in the room turns to the king, who still stands, red-faced, at the front of the room. 

I am fair in my judgment. I understand he…attempted to act in the best interests of the kingdom. However abominable his plan was. Chan can almost see the invisible goddess’s lips twist in the air. But the reason does not excuse the action. And for that, I accept the princess’s decision to leave behind the throne, in the face of this injustice. 

Your grip on his hand tightens. 

But as you are my chosen, I give you a chance to reconsider your choice. I will accept the decision you make, but hear my hand first. 

Bang Chan. 

Chan freezes. Tries to swallow. Tries to breathe. Steps forward. “Yes, my lady.”

Commoner. Cobbler. 

He swallows. “Yes.”

Bravest of all those who stand here today, save for the princess who stands by your side.

Perhaps he’s hallucinating, but Chan thinks—maybe—that if the goddess wished to show her face, she might be smiling. 

I bestow upon you the gift you have earned in helping save the life of one of my chosen. 

Chan blinks. Blinks again. The gift.

Something settles on his forehead—cool, icy, then warm, so warm. It melts down, down, his body trembling with warmth that runs through his skin and into his veins, traveling through his blood until it tickles the tips of his toes—

It is true that one who does not have the gift cannot sit on the throne. The goddess’s voice, edged with disdain, once again addresses the king. But the one you tried to bar from the seat now has it. A stronger gift than even you. 

If Chan weren’t trying to wrap his mind around what just happened, he might laugh at the king’s expression. But it—it doesn’t make sense—this gift, what gift does the goddess speak of—

What just happened?

“You have our gift now.” Suddenly warm hands have taken his again, turned him around to face a pair of eyes that sparkle and shine with the shimmer of a thousand jewels. “Chan, you have our gift.”

Our gift. Our gift. 

And suddenly, he understands. 

He has your gift. A gift bestowed by the goddess, the mother of the kingdom’s magic—he has been blessed by her hand, and now—

He has the same gift of magic as you.

My chosen. 

You look up. “My lady.”

Will you still accept your position upon the throne with your favored by your side?

Chan almost cries when you squeeze his hands just before letting go. “A thousand times, yes.”

Then come forward and reclaim your crown. 

An invisible force lifts the circlet of jewels, diamonds and gold glittering in the sunlight as you kneel, head bowing forward. The crown comes to rest upon your head once more, and the hall takes a collective breath.

Do not disappoint me. 

You look up, a light smile playing on your lips. “I won’t.”

The force of the goddess falls from the hall, leaving behind a curious emptiness in its wake. Chan blinks—it all feels like a dream—but there you are, kneeling on the floor with the crown on your brow, and he can still feel magic curling warm in his veins.

He glances at the king, who looks ready to explode. But where the vision once might have made him tremble, Chan finds himself beginning to fight off a laugh. 

You meet his gaze. Glance briefly at your father, a smile tugging at your lips as you stand once more, shoes clicking on the ground. Your hand finds his and the smile grows and grows, splitting your face as joy sparkles in your eyes—

“You once promised that you wouldn’t leave me behind,” you say. Your voice echoes in the hall but for all Chan cares the world only consists of the two of you right now, you and your smile and the way he can’t tear his eyes from your face. 

The smile widens. 

“I promise you now that I won’t either.”

. . . . . 

Compared to other royal weddings, yours is a simple one, just a quiet ceremony conducted in the palace gardens under the setting sun. Some nobility and foreign royalty fill a couple requisite rows of seats, but occupying the placements up front are your and Chan’s families and friends. Unfortunately, this does include your father, but you pay him little heed from where you stand at the altar, waiting for Chan to arrive. 

The rose gold sunset seems to glow around Chan’s face when he appears at the end of the garden, dressed in all the silks and satins befitting a soon to be prince consort. But you don’t process his finery so much as you process the expression on his face—a certain softness in his eyes that you’ve learned, over the past few months, is reserved only for you. 

Truth be told, you don’t remember much of the ceremony. It’s mostly a blur—the officiant’s voice, the garden’s greenery, the wind tousling Chan’s hair and the love in his eyes that makes you feel so safe, so warm. The only part you’re really aware of comes towards the end of the wedding, when the two parties spin each other once under the flowered archway. Hands joined, you raise your arm to let Chan spin once under the peonies and roses. After that, it’s his turn to spin you, but he pauses. 

You haven’t danced much since you returned from Kereseia. It’s caused some gossip in the court, but when you and Yeji began to further spread the truthful rumor that the Kereseian king had broken both of your legs to keep you from escaping, only to heal you every night he wanted entertainment, the whispers died a bit. That’s not the full reason, though. You don’t quite understand it yourself. Yes, sometimes tremors travel up your legs and you still find yourself stepping gingerly as though your bones haven’t quite healed, but it's also that every time you think of some nameless, faceless person taking your hand and leading you into the figures of a dance, you feel sick. Terrified.

You hate it. Because it feels like the Kereseian king has won even though he’s dead, taken away your love and passion for something that was and has always been part of your blood. But you can’t help it, and so it just keeps hurting.

Chan knows. You’ve told him about it more than once, cried to him about it, even. He was there when you broke down before your escape. He was there when you told him, point blank, you didn’t want to dance anymore. He’s also the only one whose arms you feel comfortable staying in for the duration of a dance, though it’s still harder for you to follow than it is to lead. 

When Chan pauses before he honors the wedding tradition, you’re confused, for a moment. The officiant looks between the two of you with a furrowed brow. But Chan only looks at you, and in his eyes, he asks a question.

Is this okay?

You almost start to cry right then and there. For during a wedding that you broke tradition to have, Chan is willing to break tradition just so that you can feel safe. 

Holding back tears, you nod. And as you turn once under the canopy of flowers overhead, you feel something melt out of your chest, some icy block of fear dissipating into the air. 

The vows come after, spoken softly just as the sun touches the horizon, pink and purple light streaking into the sky. “I promise I will never leave you behind,” you say, voice unsteady with tears, and Chan echoes the sentiment, his own words choked. The officiant pronounces you married and amidst the applause of the small audience you kiss, his lips warm and soft and gentle like the sunset. 

Afterward, in the grand ballroom, you do dance a little. Not much, and never with anyone but Chan or your sisters, but it’s fun in a way you haven’t felt dancing to be in a long time and by the end of the night, while you’re certainly tired, you feel content. Happy. Enough that you can smile wide and true as you bow out of the ballroom, even as your father’s sullen stare attempts to pierce your body as you turn away. 

The silent bedroom provides a welcome contrast to the noise of the ballroom, where you’re certain people are still dancing even though you and Chan have retired for the night. You sit on the bed, soaking in the quiet while Chan washes his face in the bathroom.

He emerges quietly, like he doesn't want to disturb your peace. “Hi,” he says shyly as he sits down next to you. A small smile of your own crosses your lips and you have to fight the urge to giggle. After so many years of yearning in quiet, it still seems surreal that you’re allowed to love each other openly, without issue, but you're sure he feels the same way. Emboldened by this, you lean into him, pressing your face into his shoulder, and just breathe for a moment. “Hi, yourself,” you mumble, voice muffled into his skin.

Outside, the moon has risen, full and bright and glowing in the dark sky. When you pull your face out of Chan’s shoulder to meet his eyes, you seem to see the stars reflected in them, and the words slip out of your lips suddenly, softly, hanging in the air. 

“Dance with me, Chan?”

His eyes flicker from startled to confused to concerned all in a second. “Of course,” he replies, “but are you sure?”

Are you? You search yourself for the answer. True, you haven’t danced much in a while. True, you haven’t wanted to dance with a partner that you didn’t know since you returned from the underground. But it is also true that this all stems from an issue of trust—an inability to trust your legs, an inability to trust your faceless partner, an inability to trust that the scars from Kereseia have fully healed. 

And it is true that you trust Chan, enough to give yourself to him.

A smile flutters over your expression. “I am,” you say, taking his hands. “Dance with me.”

You haven’t changed yet, haven’t even slipped off your shoes. Which means that, as you let Chan lead you into the slow figures of a waltz, you are still wearing the dancing slippers he made for you as a wedding gift, the most beautiful pair you have ever owned. Today is the first time you’ve worn them, and even after the dances you took on the ballroom floor, they are so comfortable that your feet still don’t hurt. 

Every night, in the kingdom of Kereseia, you wore out one pair of slippers during the Midnight Ball. You don’t plan to do much of the same here. But privately, you think, you wouldn’t mind dancing the night away with Chan, if it was just you and him under a blanket of stars. Because you trust him, and he trusts you, and you would never hesitate in his hold, knowing that he will never bring you harm. 

“I love you, Y/N,” Chan murmurs, and his voice sounds like music in the air. A melody upon which you could and will dance to for as long as you live.

You sway in his hold, a smile growing on your face. “I love you too, Chan.”

Always, and forevermore. 

If you enjoyed, please don’t forget to reblog and leave a comment to tell me what you thought! Thank you for reading and have a lovely day <3

#stray kids #skz #chan #bang chan #stray kids chan #skz chan #stray kids chan scenarios #stray kids scenarios #stray kids imagines #stray kids oneshots #skz scenarios #stray kids x reader #skz chan scenarios #skz x reader #chan x reader #bang chan x reader #stray kids chan x reader #skz chan x reader #fluff #angst #to spin a yarn #cw kidnapping #cw injury #cw death #worn-out soles #blossom-hwa

[wayfayrr]

I know a lot of people give Twilight a country accent… how do you think the chain would react if reader had a southern/country accent aswell? (If you don’t wanna answer this, dw)

Sorry this one took so long!! It took a few tries to write something I was happy with plotwise!! I hope you'll like it! But for the accents, I have to thank my wife @angry-trashcan for helping me out with them, and by helping I mean rewriting the all dialogue perfectly for me 💖💖💖 they're incredible and I really recommend anyone who hasn't goes and reads hair holds memories because it's an absolutely amazing fic!!!

Where am I? It feels like I’ve been hit by a truck, but worse… This place clearly isn’t my room, because the last time I checked my room wasn’t a forest. 

The last thing I remember was playing twilight princess, then this weird red-eyed shadow and now I’m here? The amount of pain I’m in proves that it isn’t a dream, no matter how much I hope it is. The area I’m in looks vaguely like… no, no that couldn't be possible.

This place is a game. This can’t be outside of Ordon, It can’t be.

“Is anyone there? Anyone at all?” 

No response, but if I really am in… or somewhere similar then I know where to go. After that revelation, it’s a fairly easy decision to follow the path I’ve memorised from many playthroughs. It doesn’t take long to get to find my way either, a matter of moments until I’m on a more well-worn path. With nine people who look like Link standing in front of me… Great… 

"Uh, you 'right, darlin'? We found ya on the trail, passed out. And ya don't look like you're from 'round here."

"Sorry I just... Yeah, I ain't from 'round here."

Why does he look so happy, I’ve not really even said anything have I? He doesn’t recognise me, he can’t it was dark link who’d always look at me in the games when he shouldn’t have, not link. Except for… No let’s not get into that right now. I’m speaking to, I’m speaking to the link from twilight princess and he’s got the same accent as me. HE’S GOT THE SAME ACCENT AS ME. Is that why he’s so excited? It’s part of why I’m so excited.

"You do seem kinda familiar though, darlin'. Even though I ain't know exactly where... just how, but now I could listen to ya all day long."

"I think I may be able to answer that, though I'm not sure if ya'd like the answer I'd give ya."

"I'm fairly certain I can, darlin'. 'Sides, it's not like I don't already know."

“What was that?”

“Nothin’”

He looks obsessed and a bit ashamed? Is my accent really that impressive to him? His voice is nice as well, but his voice isn’t the only reason I’m flustered right now. Link, the hero of twilight is standing over me like he’s never heard anything like me before.

"so [name], are you feelin’ better now?"

"I-I haven't told ya my name. How do ya...?"

“Ah, sorry darlin’ lucky guess, mayhaps??”

"Lucky guess!? I know for certain that that ain't a rare name here, let alone a common one."

"And what you was sayin' under ya breath earlier, you already know who I am, don't ya?"?"

Seems he still has the decency to look ashamed of how eager he was there, but now that brings up so many more questions. Was he aware the whole time, how much has he heard? If he has heard all of that why is he so excited to see me? 

"darlin'?”

"How much do ya know ‘bout me, link."

"Well, it's a uh, long story."

#links✦react #linked universe x reader #yandere linked universe x reader #yandere linked universe #link x reader #moss✦answers #moss✦writes

[taizi]

where nothing hurts and nothing breaks

one piece word count: 3k written for the its pirates server sake exchange ! my other giftee was @incomprehensi-bull who asked for zoro and sanji interaction. sal i really hope you enjoy this <;3 title borrowed from safe by banners

read on ao3

x

“Remember,” the pretty girl with tangerine-colored hair says for the fifth time, her smile a fixed, gritted thing on her face, “Sanji is very small right now. The Devil’s Fruit effect isn’t going to wear off for another week at least. If you try to roughhouse with him the way you usually do, he will get hurt, and I will kill you with my hands. Understood?”

“You could try,” the green-haired man replies mildly. 

“Why are we leaving Zoro in charge of babysitting again?” the man with the long nose says, to no one in particular. “I mean, we can all agree that this is going to be an absolute disaster, right?”

Zoro scowls, but the skeleton says, “Right,” at the same time the man with the long white hair and bright orange horns says, “I mean, yeah,” and everyone else nods along. 

Yonji would have been furious to be made fun of in any capacity. Sanji holds his breath and waits for Zoro to snap at the rest of them, to use his size against everyone smaller than he is, but all he does is lean back against the railing and cross his arms. He looks unbothered to the point of falling asleep standing up.

It’s weird. 

“I’m not a baby,” Sanji thinks it’s important to point out. He’s eight years old, which is a lot of years. He thinks his years are longer than most people’s, because he hasn’t felt like the little kid he used to be in ages. That little kid grew up when mama died.

“We know,” the tall woman tells him, her eyes very gentle. She always looks at Sanji like she understands him completely. It’s nice, even if it makes him feel kind of sad. He wonders if she had big brothers who hated her, too, or if it was just her dad. He thinks it wouldn’t be polite to ask, so he doesn’t. “You’re practically a gentleman.” 

“Sanji can come shopping with us if he wants!” the reindeer says eagerly. He’s sitting on the robot’s broad shoulder and pats it like he’s inviting Sanji up there, too. They’re both small enough that Sanji could probably fit even without asking the rabbit-girl on the robot’s other shoulder to get down to make room. 

Weathered yellow fills his vision as the brim of a worn straw hat slips over his eyes. 

“Nope, it’s Zoro’s turn!” the captain replies brightly. That’s Luffy, with a scar under his eye that curves like a smile, and arms that don’t really look strong but can hold Sanji forever without getting tired. Sanji tips the hat back in time to look up at Luffy’s grinning face. “He and Sanji will have fun today and tonight they can tell us all about it!” 

Everyone heaves a sigh, but no one argues. Luffy doesn’t throw his weight around like Captain Chas on The Orbit does, but he’s very stubborn in a way that reminds Sanji of the spoiled little kids on the cruise ship who get underfoot at dinner and demand dessert before all their vegetables are gone. In similar fashion, Luffy mostly gets his way because his crew loves him too much to deny him. It’s a strange sort of authority for a pirate captain to have, but it seems to work for them just fine. 

Sure enough, Zoro’s shoulders go back just a little, and he levels Luffy with one unblinking dark eye. Accepting the terms and conditions. 

Sanji tries not to be nervous. It isn’t fair to compare Zoro and Yonji just because they look similar. 

Zoro looks like the kind of person Yonji is going to grow up to be—has grown up to be, somewhere else in this strange future Sanji is living in—and he seems to enjoy scathing arguments as much as Yonji does, too. But he hasn’t hurt anyone smaller than him that Sanji has seen. 

In fact, the smallest member of the crew clambers around on Zoro like he’s a walking jungle-gym, and scolds him viciously when he doesn’t take care of himself, and looks up at him with round, bright eyes all the rest of the time. Chopper acts as though Zoro is among the very last people in the world he would ever have cause to fear. 

Sanji’s so used to being afraid that he hardly knows how else to be. The people here who call themselves his real family make it hard to be, though. He absorbs their brightness and silliness and fondness every day and slowly learns how to stop holding his breath. 

The Sunny is docked for the day at a busy, bustling resort island, with enough lights and billboards that you can see the shine of it for miles across the water. There’s a big map on the wharf, twice as tall as Franky, that notes all the places of interest—shrines up in the mountains, a sprawling sea-side spa to the west, an amusement park further inland, the bright green and yellow loops of a rollercoaster visible above everything else, and hundreds of shops and restaurants scattered all in between. 

The Strawhats—that’s who these pirates were, who Sanji himself was, apparently—split up in twos and threes where the road forked but Sanji and Zoro didn’t even make it that far, because there was a market selling produce and all kinds of fresh fish and local goodies right there in the port, and Sanji only had to cast one curious look toward a cart towering with brightly-colored fruits for Zoro to start walking that way. He clears a path for Sanji through the bustling crowd like it’s nothing. 

“If you buy more than you carry, don’t cry to me about it,” Zoro says in the same indifferent tone he says everything in. 

“I won’t!” Sanji promises, not sure if he means he won’t buy that much or he won’t cry about it. 

He was given money—real, actual Bellies—and told in no uncertain terms to come find Nami if he ran out. He doesn’t see how he could! There’s so much in the bag she gave him! 

He says as much to Zoro, half-afraid to spend it all just in case it was a mistake. Zoro replies, “Our grocery budget is half of what it usually is while our cook is on vacation. We’re eating simple.” He nudges Sanji’s head with his elbow without taking his hands out of his pockets. “We don’t usually survive off sandwiches and eggs and soup, you know.”

Sanji figured that must be true, because of how grand their ship is, and because his grown-up friends seem to have fun taking turns cooking meals but they’re just clueless enough in the kitchen that it’s obvious they don’t spend a lot of time in there.

“I can cook,” Sanji says for what feels like the hundredth time. “I can cook for all of you.”

“What part of ‘vacation’ did you miss?” Zoro tells him without missing a beat. “Shut up and look at that weird fish.”

Sanji looks before he can help it. That sure is a weird fish! He forgets to keep arguing his case in favor of darting over to ask the fishmonger a dozen rapid-fire questions about their catch that they answer cheerfully. 

Contrary to what he said before, Zoro carries all the shopping. The vendors hand the goods over Sanji’s head every time, even though he’s the one forking over the gold for it. The swordsman is very big and strong, and probably all those parcels and purchases weigh absolutely nothing to him, but it’s the principle of the thing. 

Sanji tries to imagine Yonji carrying anything for him at all just to be nice. The daydream falls apart instantly, because Yonji only ever took things from Sanji to break them. 

“Do you promise you’ll give it back?” he musters the courage to ask, clinging to the cookbook a kind old woman just sold him, unwilling to let it go without making sure. She had smiled and said she was certain her family’s recipes would be in good hands with him and Sanji doesn’t want to prove her wrong before he gets a chance to even try. “You have to promise.”

Zoro gazes down at him with that inscrutable look on his face he’s worn all day. He could probably take the book from Sanji pretty easily but he doesn’t yank it away or twist his wrist until he lets go. They just stand there, sizing each other up. Sanji’s nerves mount with every second but he doesn’t back down.

Yonji would have hurt him already and laughed about it. The first mate of the Strawhat crew simply says, after enough time that Sanji knows he’s taken it seriously, “Promise.”

Surprised, Sanji lets the book go, and watches it get tucked away in an oversized tote bag with the rest of his little treasures. Then Zoro just stands there looking at him, one eyebrow higher than the other, waiting for Sanji to go chasing after the next thing that catches his eye.

Back on the Sunny, Zoro was goaded easily into fights with his friends, and seemed short-tempered any time he wasn’t napping on the grassy deck or drinking from bottles Sanji wasn’t allowed to touch. He didn’t cause problems on purpose, the way Sanji’s younger brother enjoyed doing, but he seemed to have sharp edges and Sanji didn’t know how to get close to him without getting pricked. 

But he thinks about how Chopper looks at Zoro. He thinks about the mice in the castle that would run from his siblings but cozy up in Sanji’s hands. Animals know. And then he thinks about the way Luffy trusts Zoro, how he doesn’t have to look to know Zoro will be right where he needs him. Everyone on the crew is quick to tease him and make fun and none of them are scared. 

Zoro could have gone with Luffy and the others, but he’s spending the day with Sanji instead. He hasn’t even been mean about it. Sanji abruptly feels really bad about not handing the cookbook over right away.

“My brother has green hair,” he blurts, then stares at the cobblestones beneath his shoes in acute mortification. Why did he say that?

“I know,” the swordsman says, the last thing on earth Sanji expected him to say. “I heard all about your brothers.”

He says it like he’s not impressed by them in the slightest. It’s a weird way for someone to talk about Sanji’s brothers—they’re the best, they’re everything they were supposed to be, and Sanji is the one that went wrong. 

Abruptly, Zoro points at a bench. “Go sit. I think your blood sugar is getting low. If you pass out on me, I’ll never hear the end of it.” 

Sanji finds himself bundled onto the bench with the tote bag in his lap. Zoro set it there as if it was a paperweight that would keep Sanji from blowing off somewhere. That was kind of annoying! Sanji isn’t a baby and he isn’t gonna run off by himself, he’s not stupid. 

But the swordsman is only gone for a few minutes when Sanji’s attention is grabbed by something across the street. There’s a grizzled-looking man lounging in the shade of his stall, flicking through what looks like a waterlogged ledger. There are a bunch of crates and cages stacked around him that are empty—except for one. 

There’s a distressed bird crammed into a cage so small that it can’t move except to shuffle in place, its head ducked so that its long narrow beak doesn’t hit the bars. It’s making a harsh ticking noise, high and tight and anxious. Sanji shoves the bag off his knees and jumps to his feet, weaving through the crowd and ducking down to his hands and knees before the man behind the stall clocks him. He crawls the rest of the way to the birdcage and lifts it down from the cart into his lap. 

The bird stops vocalizing, looking up at him with darting black eyes, its chest heaving. Sanji whispers, “I know how you feel. Let me help.”

But there’s a lock on the cage, and even as Sanji tugs at it, he knows it’s useless. He’s decided to just take the cage away with him when a fist closes in the back of his jacket and he’s hauled all the way off his feet.

He yelps, flailing in midair, and only barely manages not to drop the bird. 

“The hell do you think you’re doing?” the man asks, sounding more bewildered than angry. He wrenches the cage out of Sanji’s hands and then drops him. 

Sanji lands with an oof on the street, and he automatically curls his limbs in, making himself a smaller target. If he tucks his fingers into fists and hides them under his arms, there’s less of a chance his brothers will break them just for fun. He curls his hands into fists but he doesn’t hide them. The fear is in the back of his mind, but it’s not the loudest thing in there. He’s lived on the Sunny for days now where bravery and goodness come before everything and he must have absorbed some of that, because he’s shaking under the sharp eyes of a big, unfriendly stranger, but he still says, “You should let it go.”

“What was that?”

“You’re not taking good care of it,” Sanji says, louder, “so you should let it go.”

The man’s mouth twists in an unkind sneer. “And I should just toss my Bellies into the Blue while I’m at it, eh? That’s not how it works, whelp.” 

The bird is moving around in the cage again, making that dry clicking noise again and rucking its orange and blue feathers up in its anxious bid to get free or somehow create more space. Sanji remembers being tossed behind bars, no respite and no rescue and no one left in his life who cared if he was hungry or cold or afraid. He can feel the metal helmet that encased his head as clearly as if it’s still there. He remembers crying so hard it made him lightheaded, clinging to those bars and wishing he was anything like his siblings, if only so he was strong enough to save himself.

“It’s not your bird, it’s its own bird,” Sanji shouts. “It wants out!” 

The man shifts his weight. Maybe he was going to step forward, or turn around and go back behind his stall, or maybe he wasn’t going to move at all. Sanji will never know, because at that moment a shadow falls over him, and he knows without having to look that Zoro has come back. 

“There a reason he’s on the ground?” Zoro asks. He almost sounds conversational. “Hope it’s a good one.”

The man obviously feels much differently about giving Zoro the same attitude he gave Sanji. He hesitates to answer right away, staring up at the swordsman the way that little bird probably stared up at him when he stuffed it into that stupid little cage. The way Sanji looks up at Judge and hopes for anything else besides what he knows is going to happen.

“He started helping himself to my wares,” the man settles for saying. “Maybe you ought to teach him a bit about how the world works before you let him loose on it. He’s gonna get himself into trouble running his mouth at the wrong guy.”

Sanji is waiting for the moment when he’ll have to defend himself, to make his case, but it never comes. Zoro doesn’t even ask what happened, he just plants himself like a tree in the middle of the confrontation and lets Sanji shelter safely in his shadow, as steady and immovable as the castle walls of Germa Kingdom.

“And are you the wrong guy?” Zoro says, very interested in the answer. He’s got some grilled skewers in one hand and the tote bag that Sanji abandoned in the other, but even without easy access to the swords at his hip, he is not a person anyone would want to get on the wrong side of. That grumpy sleeping dragon that lounges lazily on the deck of the Sunny is gone and the creature left behind is wide-awake and hungry.

Speaking a little faster, the man says, “Look, mate, I’m just trying to make a living here. If I gave away my beasts every time a tender-hearted little brat teared up over them, I’d be out of business.”

Zoro just says, “He’s eight years old and already more of a man than you’ll ever be. You put your hand on him, and you still have your hand. That is more good luck than most people get in a lifetime. Make it count.”

Sanji is not actually surprised when the man snatches up his ledger book and the handle of his cart, ready to make tracks. The bird is left behind, and Sanji picks himself up and hurries over to scoop the cage back into his arms. The bird makes a sound at him like something is rattling in his throat, but it sounds slightly calmer than before. 

When he looks up at Zoro, he finds Zoro already gazing back down at him. He holds out the birdcage and says, “There’s a lock. Will you help?”

“I could break it open, but it might cut itself on the metal. It’s not safe to let it out here, anyway,” Zoro says. “Let’s head back home and get Usopp to pick it open. For now carry it in one hand and eat some of these, tough guy.”

Sanji agreeably accepts a skewer of grilled squid and walks close enough to Zoro that he bumps into him every couple of steps. The bird sticks its beak through the bars and snaps at one of the curly tentacles, sneaking a bite so cleanly that Sanji laughs in sheer delight. He shares the rest of that skewer, as well as the next one Zoro passes him with pieces of tender zucchini and shrimp. 

“Didn’t know you liked birds,” he says.

“I don’t really,” Sanji says. “I just like this one. Do you know what kind it is?”

“Robin will,” Zoro replies with the unremarkable certainty in his nakama that Sanji is still in the middle of learning. “What makes this one so special?”

“We understand each other, that’s all,” Sanji says. He focuses on keeping the hungry beak away from his fingers when he adds, “I was in a cage, too.”

Zoro stops walking. Sanji doesn’t want to look up at him and see the face that he’s making, because then he won’t be able to force the truth out. And he wants to. He feels safe enough to do that now, for the first time since he woke up in this strange, bright, wonderful, silly family. He thought it would be Luffy he told, or Robin, or little Chopper, but it’s not any of them. 

It’s Zoro. The one who lets his siblings crawl all over him and poke fun and start fights, and only ever turns his teeth on any person outside their family who means them harm. The one who never steps in where he isn’t wanted, but keeps careful watch for the moment that he’s needed. Of course it’s him. 

“My brothers are mean to me,” he admits in a whisper. “Yonji likes to hurt me. I’m sorry I thought you were like him. You’re not.” 

There’s a moment of stillness, the two of them standing in an out-of-the-way corner, the noise and bustle of the market all pushed into the background. And then, without warning, for the second time that day, Sanji is lifted right off his feet. He squeaks in surprise, but he’s settled on Zoro’s shoulders a second later, and grips at his green hair to steady himself with the hand that isn’t clutching the birdcage. 

He stares, wide-eyed, out at this view he’s never been given before. 

“Next time we see your brother, I’ll beat him up,” Zoro says without preamble. “I won’t stop until you’re satisfied. And that’s a promise.” 

Sanji hugs the bird closer, and breathes in a deep lungful of air that tastes like salt and brine and certain freedom. He can see the ocean from here, and their colorful ship bobbing on the water, waiting for them no matter how far away they wander. 

“But you’re on your own with Nami when she sees that bird,” the swordsman adds plainly. 

Sanji holds the little bird a little closer and smiles. He understands his nakama much better now than he did even earlier this morning. Zoro might say one thing, but he really means another. Sanji is not on his own at all. Maybe he hasn’t been on his own in a long time. 

(A week later, with the Devil's Fruit effects finally negated, Sanji is searing scallops in the kitchen, following one of the recipes in his new cookbook, and Zoro is day-drinking at the table, and Stella the common kingfisher is sticking her nosy beak into spice jars where it doesn't belong.

Sanji says, “I’m releasing you from your promise.” When Zoro glances at him, he adds, “You don’t have to beat up my brother. I’m more than capable of doing that myself.”

For a moment, the swordsman doesn’t speak. He and Luffy can have entire conversations in a few seconds of absolute silence, but Sanji is not quite there yet. He waits with newfound patience for Zoro to come to whatever decision he’s making, rewarded when Zoro says, “No, I’m going to. I have it on good authority that he was mean to a friend of mine.”

Sanji scoffs and looks away, busying himself with the food, so that no one sees his helpless smile except for the obnoxious little bird that his present friend harangued Nami into letting him keep.)

#one piece #opfic #black leg sanji #roronoa zoro #my writing #incomprehensi-bull #op