#and i like going zigzag through the map too its just

[rotworld]

10: Motel Hell

(previous)

desperate to get out of nelton, you make a risky decision and find somewhere to stay along the road.

->contains gore, graphic description of corpses.

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Home is west. Northwest now, so far away it feels like the edge of the world. 

You’ve tried to get there a few times. Every now and then, you’ll get lucky. The Drift will have mercy and you’ll end up so close you think you can taste it, the pull urgent but not so taut and uncomfortable. Somehow, it’s always eluded you. You get turned around, your inner compass spinning haywire. The road spits you out just east, too far north, not at all where you mean to go. Lost—that’s what you are. But you never feel that way until you try to find home.

And even if you ever reached it, would it be worth the trouble? Would anyone see you as kin, or would it be a town full of strangers? You don't try anymore. Home is best left abstract and distant.

Night is falling. The shadows grow. The sign seems to lunge through the fog, sudden and vicious. “DRIFT INN. NEXT EXIT.” It’s not close enough to spot off the highway, but you do see a spatter of streetlights and neon. Not enough for a town, just a small place between things for the unlucky and desperate. Anything is good enough for you now. The exit is an uphill zigzag, a silent intersection with a light that takes too long to change. 

You see two long gray slabs with red roofs. Nothing around but concrete and tufts of hardy grass growing in the cracks. The parking lot is sparsely occupied, a couple windows aglow behind drawn curtains. Still, you hesitate. Your recent misfortunes have left you somewhat wary. You consult your map. You’ll make the final push for the University tomorrow, get there by dusk. South, then east? Or start heading east now? For once, you find yourself hoping there’s no town in that vast distance, no unexpected detours. 

Something flits past the window as you’re planning your morning route. It’s gone when you look up but you were sure, for just a second—

And then you see it. Another, drifting silently into your windshield. Landing on the glass and melting to nothing. The sky is the color of a coming storm. Your heart starts to race. 

[NOW PLAYING ON THE RADIO: SATURDAY NIGHT BY THE MISFITS]

The automatic doors wheeze open. A single fluorescent tube buzzes overhead. The floor is grimy-looking tile and the walls are off-white. Nobody’s sitting behind the check-in desk. All you can hear is the whirr of an electric fan in the corner and a crackling radio on the counter.

A tiered shelf against the wall displays travel brochures coated in a fine layer of dust, advertising the orchards and public gardens of Green Valley. These must be old. There is no Green Valley anymore—it’s been called the Stillwoods since before you were born, although the occasional antique road sign marooned along the highway might still bear the old name.

The doors open again behind you. There’s a woman standing there, hands in the pockets of a gray peacoat. She’s wearing heels and her hair is meticulously pinned into a neat bun. 

She gives you a quick, appraising look. “Hey there,” she says. “Checking in?” You nod and she slips behind the check-in desk, noticeably keeping her distance and never turning her back towards you. She doesn’t give you a price or ask how you’ll pay, simply reaching for a room key off the back wall and setting it on the desk. You don’t think there was a courier sign on the door. Your visible apprehension makes her grin. “So…I don’t actually work here. But I saw you pull up and thought you might appreciate a hand. There’s four of us here tonight.”

You take the key, the plastic tag attached reading 108. “Is the place abandoned?” you ask. That wouldn’t surprise you. This motel was clearly attached to the Stillwoods once upon a time, but now it’s out here in the middle of nowhere. That happens sometimes, during a particularly violent shift or an anchorware malfunction. That’s how the University became its own city, too.

The woman makes a noncommittal sound. “Not exactly. At least, it wasn’t when I got here. It’s like this, see?” 

She leans back and turns the handle of the door behind the desk. As soon as it’s cracked open, the smell of blood comes rushing out. She opens it just far enough for you to glimpse the back room and the body inside: head so badly bludgeoned that you don’t realize it’s lying face-up for a while, jaw broken and wrenched open so wide the mouth is more like a gaping wound of teeth. There’s blood pooling on the floor and arterial sprays arcing on the walls. Fresh enough to drip. 

The woman yanks the door shut again. She looks unbothered, you think, unusually cheerful considering the situation. She adjusts her small, rectangular glasses on the bridge of her nose. “See what I mean? Kind of a mess. I’d have taken off by now if not for how the sky looks. Rather take my chances here than out in a Drift storm.” The snow is heavier already, a thin layer blanketing the pavement outside. “Anyway, wanna get settled in? 108’s right with the rest of us. Gotta keep an eye on each other, after all. Hard to say who’s a mimic and who’s not.” 

You frown. A mimic wouldn’t waste that much food.

The woman is friendly, at least, and endlessly talkative. She’s a University graduate. She’s been living in Splitrock Junction for the past few years, testing the water and soil for “intrusional particles,” but she’s looking for a career change. “Anchorware! That’s where the money’s at,” she tells you. “That’s the future of the Drift, you know. It’s caught on in all the major industries but it’ll get more affordable later. The lab where they build that stuff makes the University look Stone Age. God, if I could get my hands on some of that equipment…” 

You barely say a word as she leads you outside and across the parking lot to the adjacent building. Four rooms are occupied in a row, lights on, muffled voices coming through the doors. You walk up in time to catch part of a conversation—an argument, more accurately. They’re talking about mimics.

“So you’re telling me the one that’s see-through and foggy like frosted glass isn’t called a glass mimic?” 

“Glass mimics are literally made of glass, man. Or something kind of like it. It shatters if you hit it hard enough.” 

“Kind of like it? So they’re not actually made of glass. They don’t even resemble glass.” 

“I didn’t name them, okay?” 

The woman pauses to knock on 106. “We’ve got another,” she says. 

106 opens just slightly, the door halting on a chain lock. The face that peers out at you is obscured by a surgical mask and a pair of sunglasses. “Shit, Chatterbox made it back in one piece,” he mutters. “So either it left you alone or you’re the mimic.” The doors on either side of him creak open. A man pokes his head outside of 105, looking nonplussed. Nobody comes out of 107 but you hear a quiet huff, a quick exhale of laughter.

“Well, this is all of us,” the woman says. “We’re a little short on trust right now so you’ll have to settle for nicknames. That’s Newbie in 105. He’s from outside. Like, outside, you know?”

“Outside the Drift?” you ask, startled.

Newbie frowns. He’s blond and clean-shaven, wearing an open suit jacket and loosened tie. “Couldn’t we have picked our own nicknames? God, it’s freezing all of the sudden.” 

“This totally normal, not at all suspicious guy lurking in 106 is Glasses.” 

“Bite me,” Glasses snarls. “Half the mimics out here copy faces. You’re not getting mine.”

The woman rolls her eyes. “Shrug is in 107. He’s kinda quiet. Second most likely to be a mimic, if we’re making accusations.” 

107’s door opens slightly wider. The man standing there doesn’t show his face, keeping his head down and his hood up, hands stuffed in the pockets of an oversized sweater. He’s on the shorter side. “Hm,” he says, and shrugs.

“And I guess I’m Chatterbox.” The woman laughs. “I’m in 104. The walls are really, really thin, we mostly just yell at each other. Nobody else around so it’s not like we’re bothering anyone.” 

You unlock 108 and find a small, musty-smelling room. There’s stiff, crusty carpet, a single bed with sheets that feel like packing paper, and a closet-sized bathroom. You put your backpack on the bedside table and add the Drift Inn to your map.

“So what are we calling you, stranger?” Chatterbox yells. She’s right, the walls are really thin. Four rooms down and you can still hear her fairly clearly. 

“Courier,” you say back. 

The wind picks up outside, growing from a whisper to a vicious howl. You peek through your curtains and find your footsteps in the snow have nearly been filled in already as more blows across the motel parking lot. You scan the row of cars parked out front apprehensively. The one you saw in the blizzard was an SUV, you think. Silver. Hard to make out in the haze and all the white. You don’t see it out there now. You’d like to tell yourself that those two things can’t possibly be related, but there’s a corpse behind the check-in desk, beaten so badly the face barely looked human.

You don’t want to think about it. You let the curtains fall back into place and sit on the edge of the bed. “Newbie, you’re from outside the Drift?” you ask. “What made you decide to come here?”

You hear him clear his throat nervously. “I’m doing market research, you could say. There’s a lot of interest in developing the Drift, getting it connected to the rest of the world. You guys are missing out on a lot of things. Phones are only local, right, so you can’t call Prismville from the University. And mail takes forever since you don’t really have a reliable delivery service. Uh. No offense, I mean.” 

“Didn’t some outsider company already try getting a foothold here a while back?” That sounds like Glasses. “Like a decade ago or something. Putting all those cables in the ground, then acting surprised when they got fucked up after a couple shifts.” 

“Ohhh, that’s right! They started growing skin and then they all slithered off,” Chatterbox says.

“Is that what those are?” you ask. “I’ve seen those before. They’re farm pests, mostly. They really like eggs.” 

“Mhm,” Shrug adds.

“Can I ask about that? What’s up with the eggs?” Newbie says. “Why are they everywhere? I keep seeing people eat them raw, shell and all.” 

Chatterbox laughs. “So those aren’t actually eggs.” 

“You’re pulling my leg.” 

“No, I mean, they look just like eggs, right? So we call them eggs.”

“Oh, so these get called by what they look like, huh?”

“Okay, look, there are different kinds of shifts, right? Depending on how things are intersecting, or if they’re intersecting at all, and sometimes—”

The wind shrieks and the windows shake in their frames. Snow drifts under your door, melting on the carpet. Through the space beneath the curtains, all you see is white. “It’s getting bad out there,” Glasses says quietly.

“I, ah, thought the Drift didn’t get snow?” Newbie asks.

“It doesn’t,” Chatterbox says. “Unless the Road Ripper’s around.” 

There’s a pause. You’re holding your breath. Glasses is the first one to speak up again, scoffing, “That shit’s an urban legend. Nobody could live out on the road that long.”

“Hm,” Shrug agrees. Or maybe disagrees. You’re not sure.

“What if he doesn’t, though? What if he does come into town sometimes, drifts in and out before anyone realizes who he is?” Chatterbox insists. “It’d be easy. He could slip out with some couriers and nobody’d know. Maybe he is a courier.”

There’s another, longer pause. “Wh—really?” you say, incredulous. “I’m not a serial killer.”

Chatterbox makes a thoughtful sound. “Well, a serial killer would probably say that.” 

“I was the last one here! How could I have killed somebody?” 

“Not saying you did it, just saying maybe you should leave first in the morning,” Glasses mutters. 

The idea of falling asleep here unnerves you, but your car won’t be warm enough. You consider shoving a chair under the door. It’s flimsy, certainly nothing that’ll deter somebody hellbent on killing on you—somebody with the kind of strength you saw—but you’ll hear it fall over at least. You take a quick shower and crawl into bed, too tired to care how stiff the mattress is. The others are loud but the wind drowns them out after a while and the conversation dies down.

Maybe you won’t sleep, you think. You’ll just lay here on your side, facing the door and the windows. Listening for footsteps in the snow, or a car pulling up.  Just a few hours, you think, checking the clock. A few hours until dawn, at least. Maybe the blizzard will have moved on by then. You try to keep yourself moving, shaking your foot or tapping your fingers. The room is frigid, the heat barely able to keep up with the cold air seeping under the door, but exhaustion is slowly gaining on you. It becomes a struggle to keep your eyes open.

“…I heard that’s a thing he does,” Chatterbox is saying, sounding muffled and far away. “He picks somebody and follows them around for a while, but he lets them go a few times before he actually kills them. And it’s not like he just leaves other people alone, but that’s kind of different. It’s like he’s whetting his appetite or something. Picks off other people so can hold himself back from whoever his main target is. Maybe it’s a mimic thing? Do you think he shapeshifts? I had a friend back at University who specialized in mimics, I think some of them do similar stuff…”

Your eyelids flutter. Just a few hours, you remind yourself. A few hours and then…

You can’t breathe. 

It’s dark, a deeper black than night in every direction, and you can’t breathe. There’s something—something around your neck. Squeezing too tight. Wanting to split you open, wanting to tear into the soft flesh of your throat. It wants to, yet it never does. But even when it lets you go, uncoiling slowly, slinking out of sight, your lungs are on fire. You heave and you choke and you try to scream but you can’t get any air, can’t breathe. You can’t remember how.

There’s something in this darkness with you. You can’t see it but you can hear it breathing in deep, echoing sighs. You can sense its vastness, the crushing weight of its attention. You’re trying to run but your legs are weak and sluggish, flailing, going nowhere. The air ripples and it’s here, above and all around you. Silent. Observing. Your neck throbs where it touched you, skin tender and throbbing with your heartbeat, and still you can’t breathe. 

There is a dark moon above you. It’s a misshapen pearl, a silvery stone with a hole punched through its center. It’s growing as it sinks from the sky. It’s bigger than you, bigger than your car, so close you think you could reach out and touch it.

It blinks.

You gasp and jolt awake. It must be morning. Weak light trickles under the curtains. You’re cold, but not as cold as you were last night. The stench of blood is thick and cloying. Your door is open, the chair you wedged under it knocked aside. 

You sit up slowly. The room is red. Every breath draws in the smell of rust and rot. There’s hardly a surface in the room that hasn’t been spattered in gore. The walls are glistening with it. There are dark red puddles hardening into the carpet. The bedspread is soaked through beside you because there is a body there, posed atop the sheets as though it climbed into bed with you. It doesn’t have a face, just a head so badly bludgeoned that it could be a split pomegranate, soft and gooey and oozing chunks of meat through cracks in its skull. 

It’s wearing a peacoat, gray wool spattered with blotchy red stains. 

You scramble out of bed, lunging for your shoes. The carpet is so saturated it squishes wetly under your steps. There’s another body curled up at the foot of the bed in the same unsightly condition, intact except for the gristly paste where a head should be. Blood and brain matter spill across the floor in a pinkish smear, bits of vertebrae poking through the taut, torn flesh of the neck. Newbie’s tie is half-submerged in the slurry, tightened into an uncomfortably small knot.

The third corpse is propped up against the door, seated with its back against it. You shove it aside. You try not to look. But you see red, you see a scalp split apart and a broken shell of skull fragments underneath, little white slivers floating in a soupy clot. A gush of thick, partially coagulated fluid spurts out when it thunks against the ground in your haste to leave, dislodging the sunglasses folded neatly in its lap. 

The morning air is crisp. It’s just cold enough that some of the snow has stayed, the shallow layer left revealing the spotted prints of snowboots, a trail of blood, and smooth drag marks. Every door is wide open, a mess of red slush inside. The gruesome trail wanders out of your room and then rounds the corner, vanishing into a section of the parking lot you never thought to check. Nothing is parked there now but you still feel nauseous with fear.

Strangely, 107’s snow is clean. You notice as you’re leaving, starting your car, headlights flashing into the open rooms. Everything else is slick and splattered, dark red puddles frozen to the bed, except 107—the room right next to yours. The footprints, you notice, come out of that room clean. They go only in one direction; only leaving. 

You try desperately to remember Shrug’s face but you never saw it. He was careful, keeping his head angled down and his gaze lowered. Maybe it’s just hindsight, fear coloring your memories, but thinking back, you thought he might’ve had a small smile on his face when you looked at him.

(next)

#rotpeach writes #goretober #the drift

[berylcups]

La Squadra Splatoon Au/Crossover Pt 2 of 2

Okay here’s the final part! As I said before, the kits aren’t balanced, just based on how I think their stands would translate into. Also their personalities on how they would act in this type of situation.

Sigh I’m finally done 😩 this took longer than I thought. Well I hope you guys like it !

Pesci:

Ink/Octoling: Octoling

Species type: dumbo octopus - a little unusual looking but very charming! Just needs more confidence.

Ink color: dark sea foam

Weapon: splatana wiper- light weight and can keep others at a distance. He can steady his aim and use a vertical swipe to pack an extra punch. It feels similar to a fishing rod so he will get comfortable with his weapon real quick!

Sub weapon: torpedo - like sensing who’s near by this sub will weed out anyone in its radius.

Special: stingray - just like beach boy going through walls, this powerful special can too and if he’s lucky he might get a catch!

Play style: He’s a nervous guy so he likes to keep his distance but don’t expect him to be a pushover. Taunt him enough or splat him enough times and he’ll get pissed enough to get serious and ready to chase your ass down ! But unprovoked, he’s most likely going to be painting. (Until prosciutto yells at him to be more assertive of course)

Melone:

Ink/Octoling: octoling

Species type: Graneledone boreopacifica octopus - this the best known mother in all of the animal kingdom. It holds its brood for roughly 4 years. Nobody is more dedicated to their young than Melone.

Ink color: periwinkle

Weapon: E-Liter - He prefers long range, and he wants to be as far removed from the action as possible. Work still needs to be done so an intimidating E-Liter will keep any enemies at bay.

Sub weapon: Autobomb - it’s a mini junior! He can throw one or two of these and have it (slowly) chase after who came within his radius.

Special: super chump- another automated round of “juniors “ to show up and blow the place sky high. They can be cancelled out by shooting at them but nobody can get rid of them all. Worst case scenario he paints some turf-which is what is needed anyway!

Play style: Mel doesn’t like being in the heat of the battle. He plays as defensively as possible. His preferred role is guarding the base and spawn points. The more turf that’s taken the closer he’ll move in and pressure the enemy back into their own base. Throw some auto bombs in for good measure. He didn’t raise/program those things to collect dust.

Ghiaccio:

Ink/Octoling: inkling

Species type: Humboldt squid- the most aggressive squid known to man! He has sharp teeth to grind out of pure rage, but there’s plenty of them on the tentacles too 😬

Ink color: turquoise

Weapon: Octobrush - brush users are fast and they are AGGRESSIVE. They are on the opposite side of the map and the next second you’re getting your cheeks clapped by the brush and you respawn.

Sub weapon: Fizzy bomb - another aggressive type of bomb. You shake it with everything you got and chuck it at your opponent and watch it blast them away.

Special: Kraken Royale - white album is impenetrable and it’s highly destructive. Going into kraken mode and chasing down his enemies is going to be a blood bath. All you can do is hope to out run him until he powers down and then attack him back during that one second he’s vulnerable.

Play style: OFFENSIVELY OFFENSIVE. Ghiaccio is the embodiment of pure rage. He will go and chase anyone who has the misfortune of catching his eye and splatting them repeatedly. He will easily zigzag through splattling fire and charger shots and somehow make his way up to you and splat you. You better hope he runs out of ink.

#jjba #jjba x reader #splatoon #splatoon 3 #jjba x gender neutral reader #jjba x gn reader #jjba x gn!reader #jjba golden wind #jjba part 5 #jjba pesci #jojo pesci #jjba melone #jojo melone #jjba ghiaccio #jojo ghiaccio #la squadra

[lindsaystravelblogs3]

Days 35-37 – Thursday-Saturday, 29 June - 1 July

Thursday

We caught up with at least half our group in the breakfast room this morning.  A couple flew out early today and a few were flying out during the afternoon, but about ten of us were staying on in the hotel for a couple of days or more.

We stayed in our room most of the day, resting and trying to get rid of our persistent coughs.  We did a bit of washing and spent most of the day on our photos and blogs.  We had enough food in the room to have a scratch lunch and we went back to the bar upstairs for a light dinner at night.

Friday

We had a slow start to the day but went out late in the morning for a walk through town.

We started by exploring our hotel, its various restaurants, the swimming pools, the spa and some of its other features, without indulging in any of them.  We then left the hotel for the walk into the city.  It is quite a climb up the hill to the big square that lets onto bridge over the defensive ditch where the main street starts.  We wandered down, stopping to look into many windows and doorways, and took a few photos before settling down for a cold drink. I had a milkshake – nothing like we have in Australia, but still quite enjoyable.  Heather had a very sweet berry drink – icy cold and delicious, but a bit too sweet.

We continued walking a very crooked path to some gardens – zigzagging up hills and down according to the map, when I reckon we could have found a route that involved a flat walk or single climb and a downhill stretch, rather than up and down so many hills.  We arrived at the place where the cannons are fired each day and a guy (a sort of a gate-guard/sentry, who I am sure doesn’t need to shave for a couple more years) told us we would have to pay to go any further.  When he found that we only wanted to go to the gardens, he said they were just up the hill another couple of hundred metres.

We trudged on and although I struggled to call the area a garden, it was interesting with superb views over the harbours and much of the city.  We walked around and decided to have lunch there, but struggled to find a table in the shade.  We eventually moved one to a slightly more shady spot but realised that there were dozens of really scungy pigeons roosting above us with a thick layer of droppings under the table – so we gave up and kept walking.  I thought we had walked miles (maybe we had) but it turned out that we had been walking in a long crescent, and were much closer to the centre of the city and our hotel than I imagined.  We set off to go back to the hotel for lunch, but detoured to the city and ate at an al fresco café not so far from our digs.

After a casual lunch, we raided a nearby shop for a few food items for tomorrow’s lunch and wandered back to our hotel and its welcome air-conditioning.

We were pretty buggered after such a long walk in the heat so did something we have never done before – we rang for room service and ordered a very enjoyable meal brought to our room.  At our age, you would think this was a pretty normal option but we enjoyed it for its novelty and decided to do it again tomorrow.

Saturday

It was our 34th wedding anniversary today.  Happy Anniversary to us!  Thirty-eight years together and thirty-four married.  So if it is our anniversary, it must also be the first day of the new financial year!!

Happy New financial Year everyone.

It was also Michael’s birthday so we rang (Facetimed) him first up before breakfast.  We spoke with Anne-Marie and Saranna too.  We also tried the other kids too, but they were off doing more important things.  We will try again tomorrow when it is Rob’s birthday as well.

We had decided yesterday that we would take a walk a bit further on from the gardens we visited yesterday, but it was hot and we had things we wanted to do, so we decided to stay in all day instead.  We blogged and edited photos (and I did a bit of the usual stuff I need to do to close off one financial year and start the new one) most of the day and of course, I had to keep tabs on how the Aussies were going in the Test Match.

We made quite a satisfactory lunch out of the items we bought in the city yesterday and decided to order Room Service again for our Anniversary Dinner.  All the other options were less inviting, and even a walk into the city was a bit daunting, so we settled on our second ever Room Service dinner.  Bummer!  When it arrived, the half-bottle of wine we had ordered had been replaced with an expensive full bottle of one we had tried before and didn’t like.  We sent the waiter back for the correct one and more than thirty minutes later, after completing our meal, we rang to find our what had happened to our wine.  Heather’s pasta was not the dish she ordered and she could only eat a few mouthfuls.  And my pork sausage that was supposed to be identical with the one I had last night, ended up as some sort of plastic replacement that I didn’t enjoy at all.  Heather eventually got back onto the Room Service people about the wine and they tried to sell her a full bottle of another one that we didn’t like.  They said they couldn’t find any of the wine on the menu so tried to serve us battery acid instead.  We finally got an overpriced half bottle of some rubbish that they obviously couldn’t sell to onsite customers – and yes, it was like cheap rotgut.

We really enjoyed Malta, but after tonight, we are looking forward to Athens tomorrow and a proper anniversary celebration within the next few days.

[purrble-archive]

Also I have noticed I am one of the only people who actually likes moray towers

#i think its fun to play on.. #like starting the match and just paintjng a little to go forward #jump off the ledge; fall onto another platform; paint and then jump off AGAIN... #its just so fun to me i love doing it #and i like going zigzag through the map too its just #i like it a lot ok an d a whike back i realized no one else agrees OQ039JDMAKKDKW #EVERYONE hates it and im like DAMN... OKAY.... #doubt its gonna b in splat 3 now since yall hate it so much #and i havent heard many actual critiques of 8t but if there are im sure theyre fair #i just thot it was funny no one liked it #my first unpopular opinion... #grr.txt

[foxghost]

Joyful Reunion, Chapter 91

Translator: foxghost @foxghost tumblr/ko-fi1 Beta: meet-me-in-oblivion @meet-me-in-oblivion tumblr Original by 非天夜翔 Fei Tian Ye Xiang Masterpost | Characters, Maps & Other Reference Index

Book 3, Chapter 21 (Part 1)

Autumn sun is burning bright overhead as Li Yanqiu brings the horse to a halt outside the Hall of Supreme Harmony. An evening breeze has set the banners to either side of him fluttering.

“Long Live Your Majesty!” The Black Armours army salutes, falling on one knee in front of him in an earth-shattering display.

Xie You and Cai Yan have slowly made their way to the palace, but Li Yanqiu has stopped there before the steps, his mind wandering for a little while. Earlier, there was that one moment where it felt as though he … sensed something.

“Good work,” Li Yanqiu says.

The Black Armours part like the tides, leaving a path open. Li Yanqiu steps into the main palace. The Jiangzhou Imperial Palace has seen its share of trials and tribulations, but after some repair and renovation it has become even more extravagant than the one in Xichuan. A eunuch steps forward to untie Li Yanqiu’s cape for him, after which Li Yanqiu keeps walking through the corridor.

Both Zheng Yan and Lang Junxia have already arrived. As Li Yanqiu walks by the Eastern Palace, he glances inside to find Lang Junxia sitting in the corridor playing his flute. He doesn’t get up to bow even as Li Yanqiu passes by.

“It has been a wearisome journey.” Li Yanqiu pays no mind to Lang Junxia, and simply says to Cai Yan, “Go get some rest.”

Cai Yan trails him from behind. “The auspicious hour where we must offer sacrifices to the heavens is at dawn tomorrow. You should try to sleep earlier as well, uncle.”

“We may have a new home, but I’ll be taking my medicine as always. Don’t worry.”

And so along with the other servants of the Eastern Palace, Cai Yan bows as Li Yanqiu departs.

In the Palace of Eternal Autumn,2 Mu Jinzhi is painting her eyebrows in front of the mirror. Her clothes, accessories and makeup have also been delivered, and her maids are opening and checking each box over one by one.

“Who got on your nerves this time, Your Majesty?” Mu Jinzhi says with a smile, her reflection looking at Li Yanqiu in the mirror, one eyebrow raised.

“No one in particular got on my nerves,” Li Yanqiu replies, standing behind Mu Jinzhi. "No matter how sharp your eyes may be, there are times when you can be mistaken.”

Mu Jinzhi puts down her hairpin and says, “A request to recruit retainers for the crown prince’s palace has been issued. We should get a list of candidates after the civil exams and let him take as long as he likes to choose.”

Li Yanqiu replies courteously, “Thank you for keeping this in mind and taking the trouble, Empress.”

They hardly have anything to say to each other, and so as soon as Li Yanqiu finishes saying this, he leaves the room. In the mirror, Mu Jinzhi rolls her eyes at his back.

Li Yanqiu returns to his bedroom and looks out at the clear skies outside.

Zheng Yan happens to be sitting beneath the veranda, asking a servant to open up a case for him to search for his wine.

“Zheng Yan.” Li Yanqiu is wearing a slight frown. “Why are you still here?”

“The crown prince despises me, Your Majesty.” Zheng Yan says courteously, “With Wuluohou Mu around, I no longer have a need to see him roll his eyes at me. Don’t you think he and I would both be happier if we don’t see each other?”

“The sight of Wuluohou Mu makes my blood boil.” Li Yanqiu gives his reply to Zheng Yan just as amicably, “All four of you great assassins are warped — from what I can see now, it actually seems like Wu Du, the least accomplished amongst you, is more upright than you lot. I keep wondering if Wu Du’s poisoned you people, and that’s why you three have become this way.”

Now those words have essentially insulted Zheng Yan along with the rest. One brother Li used to be sharp as a blade, while the other is brocade with hidden needles. Zheng Yan sussed out Li Yanqiu’s disposition long ago, and knows he’s furious.

Zheng Yan says at once, “Forgive me, Your Majesty. I’ll head over to the Eastern Palace right away.”

Only once Zheng Yan is gone does Li Yanqiu heave a long, long sigh.

“Your Majesty, it’s time for your medicine.” A palace maid brings him his medicine. Li Yanqiu takes it without looking, drinks it, and casually tosses it into the courtyard. The coloured glaze bowl shatters into a million pieces with a quiet crash.

“Wow —!” Duan Ling has finally arrived in his new home.

The chancellor’s estate has given Wu Du and Duan Ling a courtyard house only an alley away from the main house. Compared to their old house on the outskirts of the estate in Xichuan, their new home is a lot bigger, with four buildings, two gates, a spirit screen, and a back courtyard where they can keep horses. They’ve even been assigned a steward and two servants to have at their beck and call.

The courtyard has a rockery and a pond; the land behind the pond is a bamboo grove. Peach trees are planted at the edges, while a gentle stream is led into the pond, flowing back out through a zigzagging water duct. The bamboo pipes are set on top of the wall, and the water itself is drawn from the chancellor’s main estate.

“The Lord Chancellor said you should rest for now,” says the steward. “Have a bath and wash off the dust of the road. There will be a banquet in honour of your return tonight.”

“You may go. We don’t need anyone to wait on us,” Wu Du tells the steward in the front courtyard. Duan Ling is inside looking this way and that; their new home is outfitted with silk brocade blankets and screens; carved windows cast ornate shadows on the walls, reminding him of the Viburnum. Even the decorative items are made of celadon. There’s also a study provided for him to study in.

The steward carefully helps Wu Du into the room.

“Certainly.” The steward seems to have predicted as much from Wu Du, so he merely stands out in the courtyard — but he isn’t leaving.

Duan Ling stops to think, then he tells the steward, “Master Wu’s house contains secret information of the martial arts societies, and too many poisonous things are kept here. He’s worried that it may unintentionally injure you and the other servants, so you don’t need to stay here in the courtyard house. If we should need anything I’ll go ask for help at the Chancellor’s estate. You may go.”

The steward nods then, and after giving both Duan Ling and Wu Du a bow, takes his leave.

The only way Wu Du and Duan Ling can have a conversation is to not have any outsiders around — otherwise they may drop dead before finding out how or why.

“There’s money here too!” Duan Ling says in the next room over, “Two hundred taels of gold!”

Duan Ling had already written a report of the treasure from Tongguan. Now that Mu Kuangda has a mountain of gold, Duan Ling doesn’t even know what the chancellor is going to do with it. If it’s for spending though, it’s enough to buy an entire city. This bit of reward isn’t really all that much money.

But Duan Ling is still pretty glad to have it. At least they won’t have to eat flatbread at every meal anymore.

Sitting in the room, Wu Du says, “If there’s anything you want to eat I’ll go out and buy it for you.”

“You stay put. Stop moving.”

Duan Ling comes in with bedding in his arms, and after telling Wu Du to scoot over, he puts another pillow on his bed.

Wu Du stares at Duan Ling and says, “If you sleep in this room, I’ll sleep on the floor. Right there, just off the bed. That way I can keep you safe.”

“You’re not worried I’ll stomp you to death when I get up to get water at night?” Duan Ling says smilingly.

Wu Du recalls that this was precisely what he said himself several months ago, and suddenly finds it really funny. Both of them laugh.

Wu Du says, “Let me do this.”

“Can’t you just listen to me?” Duan Ling says seriously.

“Alright alright.” Wu Du replies, “But you’ve got to give me something to do. I’m injured, but I’m not a cripple.”

Wu Du really doesn’t feel right having Duan Ling wait on him this way, but it’s not due to Duan Ling’s identity — it’s because for all his years he’s never had anyone take care of him like this before.

“Then take a bath,” Duan Ling says to Wu Du.

Wu Du raises a hand and sniffs his sleeve, upon which his face goes bright red. Duan Ling leaves the room to summon a servant to bring them water.

The young servants carry in a huge tub and set it down in the corner room. Then they add bucket after bucket of hot water, then some cold water to cool it down.

“I can wash myself,” Wu Du says hurriedly.

“Strip already,” Duan Ling says to him, then he carries Wu Du’s dirty clothes off to the back courtyard where he tosses them into a basin. He draws some water and soaks the clothes in them before he heads back to the house to search for clean clothes. Mu Kuangda has found the right person this time; the steward they met earlier is extremely considerate, and Duan Ling has somehow forgotten to give him a little bonus.

Soon, Duan Ling comes in with a bundle of fresh clothes, and he rolls up his sleeves to scrub down Wu Du. Wu Du still has bandages wrapped around his hand that mustn’t get wet, and he’s trying to scrub himself with one hand. When he sees Duan Ling come in, the blush on his handsome face spreads all the way down to his collarbones.

Duan Ling holds Wu Du down and scrubs him clean all over. Ever since the night he sustained those injuries, Wu Du hasn’t had a bath. And now with his left hand resting at the edge of the tub, his wide and strong shoulders and back are above the water, letting Duan Ling scrub him as he wishes.

“Don’t fall in now. Hey don’t—don’t—don’t—don’t reach any lower!”

The bathtub is huge, and Duan Ling has leaned halfway into the tub. Wu Du can feel that Duan Ling really is seriously trying to scrub him down, but alas Duan Ling’s hands keep moving all around his body touching him and Wu Du can’t take much more of this.

Duan Ling says, “Raise your leg a little.”

Wu Du finds Duan Ling quite amusing all of a sudden, and in a bout of playfulness he wraps one arm over him and pulls him in. With a splash, the ground all around the bathtub is covered in water.

Duan Ling says angrily, “Why you!”

Duan Ling is soaked through, while Wu Du’s cheeks are suffused with a blush. He laughs. “You go ahead and bathe. I’m done.”

Duan Ling says, “You’re too dirty. Stop moving.”

Duan Ling unties his robe, removes his wet clothes and pants, and climbs onto Wu Du to straddle his thigh naked. When he does, an unbidden and indescribable sensation rises to the surface of his heart. He’s never felt this way before, not in any instance where he’s touched Wu Du skin on skin.

Duan Ling’s face also starts to take on a blush; it’s almost like he’s returned to that night when he was still a child, that night when he saw Lang Junxia’s body through the window panes. Yet when he faces Wu Du now his heart is beating even faster, as though there’s an exceedingly novel and exciting sensation just hiding behind a layer of gauzy silk, waiting for him to reach out for it.

“Why’ve you stopped talking?” On the contrary, Wu Du has come back to himself. With one arm languidly resting on the edge of the tub, he uses the other hand to give Duan Ling���s pale back a pat, staring at him with a questioning look in his eyes.

“No—no reason,” Duan Ling says nervously.

In that instant Wu Du seems to have realised something as well; his eyes are smiling.

Duan Ling hums something quiet, and without looking up to meet his eyes, he keeps scrubbing at Wu Du’s chest with a cloth.

Outside the room, footsteps approach, and both Wu Du and Duan Ling stop moving.

“Hey buddy, don’t you still owe me a cup of wine?” Zheng Yan’s voice says indolently.

Duan Ling is quite startled — he’s never met Zheng Yan before, so he’s assuming it’s someone from the chancellor’s estate barging into their house. But Wu Du is wrapping one arm around Duan Ling’s waist and pulling him closer.

Without a pause, Zheng Yan keeps walking towards them and opens the door to the corner room. Right as the door opens, Wu Du is holding the fully naked Duan Ling in his arms, making him drape himself on his chest, burying Duan Ling’s head against his shoulder.

When Zheng Yan comes in it’s to a view of Wu Du holding a young man, the two of them taking a bath together.

“Zheng Yan! Can you take a hint or what?!” Wu Du says impatiently, “Get outta here!”

Zheng Yan bursts out laughing uncontrollably. He hurriedly closes the door and says, “Continue, don’t get mad at me please. I truly never expected that.”

Wu Du replies, “Wait outside. That’s enough out of you.”

Duan Ling only looks up again once Zheng Yan’s footsteps have grown distant, and before that he was pressed up against Wu Du, both of them naked. He had felt their hearts both beating out of their chests, as well as that thing between their legs swelling up so much they’ve gone stiff.

They face each other, a little out of breath. Wu Du puts a finger in front of his lips to pantomime shh, and that they should continue washing up. Duan Ling swallows, and scrubs Wu Du’s hair for him.

“All done now,” Duan Ling says quietly, and steps out so quickly that he nearly slips on the floor.

“Careful.” Wu Du reaches out to wrap an arm around Duan Ling’s waist, making him stand upright.

Duan Ling quickly wipes himself down and puts on a pair of pants. The blush has faded from his cheeks. He helps Wu Du out of the bath to dry him with a cloth, but when he gets between Wu Du’s legs, the dry cloth bumps into the erect, powerful thing standing there, and they’re both blushing crimson again.

Wu Du throws a robe around himself. His injuries are almost all healed, and he can already walk with a little bit of a limp. He puts on a pair of wooden sandals and limps his way across the veranda, dragging his feet, passing by Zheng Yan as he heads to the main house to look for things.

“So fast?” Zheng Yan says, “I didn’t scare it out of there, did I?”

Wu Du spits profanity at Zheng Yan, startling Duan Ling who’s still in the corner room, as it’s the first time he’s ever heard Wu Du say something so foul. Soon enough, the sound of wooden sandals are approaching him again as Wu Du slowly clacks all the way back to hand Duan Ling clean clothes for him to change into.

Once they’ve dressed properly, the servants come back to get the bathtub. Wu Du’s hair is still dripping wet as he leans against the daybed, barefoot and dressed in nothing but a bathrobe. He raises his left hand so that Duan Ling can change his bandages for him, before he starts engaging in an intermittent conversation with Zheng Yan.

I do not monetise my hobby translations, but if you’d like to support my work generally or support my light novel habit, you can either buy me a coffee or commission me. This is also to note that if you see this message anywhere else than on tumblr, do come to my tumblr. It’s ad-free. ↩︎

The Palace of Eternal Autumn is the imperial empress’s palace, and sometimes the phrase stands for the empress, just as “Eastern Palace” stands for the crown prince. ↩︎

#相見歡 #fei tian ye xiang #joyful reunion #xiang jian huan #fox translates things

[thinking1bee]

When it Reigns Part 6

Requested by Anonymous

Pairings: Kara Danvers x Reader

Tags: Angst, Kryptonian!Reader, Parent!Reader, Parent!Kara, Estranged Parent, Graphic Depictions of Injuries, Blood, Humor, Bad Dreams, Memory Loss

Everything Taglist: @sammy90682 @nobody13 @owloftheshadows @captain-josslett @camslightstories @worldovart @finleyfray @acertainredhead @sammm9068 @reginassecretlover

You followed Elizabeth outside of her home and into the barn.  

“Where are you taking…”

Your question died on your lips as soon as you voiced it. Inside of the wooden structure was a spaceship, dusty and forgotten in the hay, and Elizabeth went around to turn on more lights so that you could see it better.

“You asked about your birth mom. I lied. I didn’t adopt you,” she explained. “I found you in this. One day, this crashed a mile from where we are now and when I looked inside, I found you, a giggling baby.”

You furrowed your eyebrows, a million questions going through your mind at a mile a minute. “I don’t understand,” you finally said.

“I didn’t either. I didn’t know where you were from or who left you in this thing, or even why. When I saw you, you looked so helpless that I took you home.”

You stared at her with your mouth agape. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

“I swore that I would tell you when you turned 18.”

And then that never happened because she got kicked you out. You pressed your fingers against your temples to assuage the growing headache.

“I thought that maybe, you would be better off on your own not knowing.”

“That I’m an alien???” you demanded.

“Y/n, all I wanted was for you to have a normal life.”

You couldn’t stop the scoff or the roll of your eyes. She’d flip out if she knew that you were married to one, and thanks to her, this woman that dared to call herself a mother, your life had been anything but normal.

You eyed the space pod, your hand reaching out tentatively to touch the metal, and like the ship recognized you, it powered up, the engine whirring to life as the ship lit up. You gasped in shock as you tried to absorb what was happening. You kept touching it as you circled around it, feeling the contours of the edges and bends. Then you watched as a latch of some kind opened. Out of it came some sort of crystalline rod. You approached it and reached out to touch it. When you did, it too, lit up, and after wiggling it from side to side, it disconnected from the pedestal it was seated on. You twisted and turned it in your hands, watching as a bright light flashed on and off inside of it. It was a beacon, a map that would tell you where to go next.

You nodded in determination as your grip tightened around it. You knew what you had to do next. Elizabeth sighed and you looked at her.

“Be careful,” she whispered to you. All you could do was nod. In all the years that you knew her, this was the most helpful she had been. A part of you wanted to say thank you but…you didn’t want her to think that you owed her now. Besides you were doing just fine without her and as far as you were concerned, it was going to stay that way. You turned towards your car and left her there to live all alone.

***

It wasn’t too long before you found yourself in the middle of nowhere. Literally, the middle of nowhere. The beacon brought you to the middle of the desert, and as you neared your destination, the slow flashing inside the beacon turned into blinking. That had to mean that you were getting closer, right?

You were walking, the hot sun beating down on you and you could have killed for water. You wiped the sweat from your eyes and cursed the sun. It was way too hot for this.

Suddenly, the ground started to shake. Your immediate thought was an earthquake, after all those were common in California, but the idea was immediately dashed the moment rocks started to grow from the ground. In the shape of monoliths, rocks started to sprout in varying directions, cross crossing and zigzagging on top of each other until it formed a structure. You watched, with your mouth hanging open, as you stared at the towering fortress. It was intimidating and it radiated mysteriousness and power.

You took a deep breath, and with trepidation, walked inside. The inside was dark and dank, despite having just grown right before your eyes. You walked around, looking at everything, and noticed a strange insignia carved into the base of the rock. You continued to look, observing the ominous looking place when you saw a particularly flat slab of rock with a hole in it. You looked at the beacon in your hands and then at the hole, noticing that the hole had the same shape as the beacon. Coincidence? You approached the slab and fit the beacon inside of the available opening until you heard a click. The moment it happened, the room lit up and right in front of you, a figure appeared. You stared at it, a sense of familiarity and fear filling you as you both recognized the figure and backed away from it.

“You’ve come. I imagine that you have questions and I have answers.”

“I know you, you whispered. “Ive seen you in my dreams. What are you?”

You didn’t expect an answer. The figured never talked, and you wondered why you were talking to it now, but when the figure removed the hood of its cloak to reveal its face, you gasped.

“I am science. I am a friend.”

Okay? Well, she finally said something to you. This was very real. This was not in your head. All of this was happening, and it was happening so fast.

“Where am I?”

“This is the Fortress of Sanctuary, a building made from a piece of your dying planet. A piece of Krypton.”

Your eyes widened. “Krypton? Oh my god, my daughter was right. She said that I had powers a-and I didn’t want to believe it. I’m like Supergirl.”

“You are so much more than that,” the woman said.

“Then who am I?” you asked.

“You are a culmination of centuries of work, a being designed for one purpose: to execute justice.”

“So, I’m a hero?” you asked, clarifying that you heard her right.

“They will not call you that. They will call you WorldKiller. They will try to contain your power, but they will fail. You will show no mercy to those who oppose you. Your justice will burn the world of man.”

Horror filled you as she said her words, your eyes widening as she spoke with nonchalance. She made it seem like you two were discussing the weather over a cup of coffee, but no. She just told you that you were going to burn the world to the ground! Of course, you were going to have some choice words for that.

“No, no!” you blurted. “I’m not a Worldkiller. I have a life, a daughter, a wife! I have a company to run, I ave to be there for my family! I’m a good person”

The woman frowned. “Your offspring, among other things, was an unfortunate error.”

You whipped your head around to look at her, your fear immediately morphing to anger.

“Your powers were supposed to manifest when you came of age, but she delayed the realization of your destiny.”

“Angel is not an error!” you snapped.

“You will soon forget her,” she continued saying. “You will forget all mortal trappings.”

Forget Angel? Forget Kara? No! That couldn’t happen. They were the reason you kept going. Without them, who were you? What were you?

“No this can’t be right?” you whispered in fear. You ran your hands through your hair as you swallowed thickly.

The woman smiled, her dark eyes radiating pure evil, and you saw it. You could see that this woman had a whole agenda planned out and somehow, you were at the epicenter of it. Coming here was a mistake. Elizabeth was right. You were better off not knowing anything about yourself.

“It is time for you to emerge,” she said to you. “It’s time for you to Reign.”

The moment she said those words, something happened to you. A shrieking noise, one loud and powerful, assaulted your ears. It grew louder and louder, the noise getting more and more deafening until it was all encompassing, until it was all you could hear. You grunted and gasped as you covered your ears, but it didn’t work. It was like the horrendous sound was coming from inside of you. A horrible foreign warmth settled over you brain like a blanket. Something was trying to take you over.

“No!” you screamed. “NO!”

But it wasn’t enough. No matter how much you fought, you were losing this battle. You slapped repeatedly at your head, gripping it with shaking hands as you willed the noise to go away, but it didn’t. Slowly your world faded to black, and all you remembered was Kara and Angel, and how you couldn’t bare the thought of forgetting about them.  

***

When you stood up again, the noise was gone, and you faced the mysterious woman as your eyes glowed a scarlet red. You were no longer Y/n Danvers, but an instrument of destruction designed to carry out and fulfill your destiny. You were Reign and you were ready.

“I have awoken,” you whispered in Kryptonian.

Part 7

#supergirl fanfic #kara danvers x reader #reader insert #angst #injuries #blood #humor #bad dreams #memory loss #estranged parent

[petri808]

Bakudeku canon divergent, vampire quirk AU

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

For the next several days, Bakugou stopped in towns along the train route that were in the easterly direction to see if any other strange reports had been made. He wasn’t sure if the first man’s attack had anything to do with his friend, but in the towns, he was able to confirm a sighting of a green streak, there were coinciding reports of attacks in the days preceding them. Always a similar story, late at night, didn’t see the attacker, and bite wounds on various parts of the body such as the arm, shoulder, or even neck. The other thing they had in common, were the victims were found in drunken stupors. Was it a coincidence? What was another coincidence, is after the first victim, the rest were all what police classified as problems. With or without quirks, they were bad men who had lists of crimes under their belts. That meant whatever was causing the attacks now appeared to have a specific target.

Bakugou stood in the Ena township police station, tapping his foot to release some of the pent-up energy. “Yesterday,” he questioned the desk sergeant, “are you telling me that attack was just yesterday evening?”

The man nodded. “The victim is still in the hospital being treated for low blood levels. They’ve had to keep him sedated through the IV infusions because he wouldn’t stop screaming about a man with green eyes.”

“And there’s no other incidences?” The officer shook his head. “That means the attacker could still be here.”

“Wait, do you know who it is?”

Bakugou shook his head no. He wasn’t about to tell some beat cop who he suspected it could be. “It’s just based off the pattern I’ve been tracking. There are usually a few attacks over the spans of one to three days, and then they just end. So, if this was the first, it means there will be more.”

After speaking with the cops and getting a map for the area of the latest attack, Bakugou staked out the scene. There are no traces left behind to say who or what had caused the attacks, but what he did notice of the area is it was a seedy side of town. The victim said he’d been pulled off the main street into an adjoining alley way around 1 am, too quickly to even get a scream out. He remembered the time because the bar he’d just left had hit its closing time. The alley was narrow, and empty save for a few dumpsters for neighboring shops, no doorways or lighting, perfect for hiding in.

‘Tonight, is still a new moon…’ Bakugou noted, which added to the dark cover of night. After his reconnaissance, he went back to his tiny hotel room to get a few hours of sleep. It was going to be a long night.

It was a decision he didn’t know if he would come to regret someday, but in the end, the blonde hero realized that his flashier costume would make him stand out way too easily. So, after foregoing his costume, Bakugou dressed all in black for the undercover work. He climbed to the roof of a building, dead center of the area the attacker might choose in the hopes that the green lightning seen by eyewitnesses will be the tell-tale sign he’ll be able to use to track the person. Patience wasn’t exactly his virtue, but it was the only way he was gonna catch the guy.

The first night’s stakeout yielded nothing. No sightings, no attacks. Which could mean anything or nothing. Previous attacks didn’t always take place every night in a row, but it could also mean the attacker had moved on. Did they catch-wind of him being there and fled? Damn he hoped not! This was the closest he’d come to catching up to the green lightning! Two nights later, Bakugou was growing disillusioned. Every day he checked back with the authorities to make sure no other sightings had been made in town or in surrounding cities, and with the answer being ‘no’ each time, there was a small glimmer of hope he was still in the right place at the right time.

But as he laid on a rooftop on the night of day 4, a lot of thoughts were plaguing him because there was nothing to do while waiting but think. Sometimes he would run the events of that AFO fight though his mind trying to remember any little details that may help him. Other times, it would be about Midoriya and what could have possibly made the man run off like this. Those thought’s either left him broken or wanting to strangle the guy for causing them so much pain. Midoriya better damn well be ready to do a hell of a lot of apologizing to their friends and family!

Bakugou grimaced at the last thought. Such personal emotions he would rather lock away into some box deep within the recesses of his soul than to admit the truth. He told himself he was doing this for their friends. He tried to convince himself that he was doing this for aunty Inko and to make All Might proud. These were a part of the search, yes… but not the full reason. The blonde had to admit he missed the stupid nerd. Midoriya was his childhood friend, and no matter how much shit he gave the guy, he was the one person he could count on. He was still determined to beat the mouse and become the Number one hero… but he was also proud of how far Midoriya had come in the last three years. It would be a shame for it all to be thrown away now.

Just as he was ready to call it a night, Bakugou heard a muffled scream from a nearby street. He rushed over as quickly as possible, racing into the alley way just as the unconscious victim’s body is being laid down. Bloody hell he was right all along!

“DEKU?!”

All he could see was the person’s back, but he’d know those red shoes anywhere. The mousy green hair looked even wilder than normal. Midoriya still had on his costume, but it was torn up with a raggedy cloak swaddling his upper body. Simply put, his friend looked like a homeless man off the streets. The figure froze for a second, then without turning to face off against Bakugou immediately flashed with green and took off into the sky. Green lightning!

“DEKU YOU, FUCKING ASSHOLE!!!” Bakugou blasted off after the man. Damn it, his gear would have helped with the propulsion! He couldn’t remember him being so quick before, what the hell was going on? Midoriya was streaking away, zigzagging along roof tops, and heading towards a section of industrial warehouses. If it wasn’t for the quirks electrical output to tell him where to go, he could easily lose sight in the darkness.

He gritted his teeth and pushed his quirk to its limit. There was no way Bakugou was going to screw up this opportunity. So, if he couldn’t catch up, he could knock the nerd out of the sky! “ARRGHH!!!” He sent repeated AP-Auto shots towards Midoriya at medium power, growing angrier as the man dodged the first few volleys. “THAT’S IT!!!!” In his rage, Bakugou increased the spread like buck shots of crackling fire ringing around the fleeing figure, and he kept up the pace in rapid succession.

“AHHHHH!”

The scream pierced the night and Bakugou saw several hits knock the man off course, barreling the body straight for the ground. It wasn’t his intention to hurt, but damn it, Midoriya shouldn’t have run in the first place! He turned on the turbo and reached the man just as he was trying to get back on his feet.

“Don’t fucking think about it!” Bakugou grabbed the man’s shoulder and whipped him around. “Goddamn it Deku! What the fuck is your problem?!”

“K-Kacchan, wh-wh—”

“Don’t you Kacchan me, you bastard!” He gripped tightly so that Midoriya can’t squirm away easily. “Did you think I wouldn’t come looking for you idiot!”

“Yes.”

It was as if the wind had been knocked out of him. Okay, he should be surprised by that answer. When had he ever acted like he cared when it came to Midoriya? But that didn’t mean such a quick and blunt response wouldn’t hit him like a brick to the head. And you know what, he has shown he cared in his own way. Damn it! When has he ever just left the man behind? His fist balled up and cocked back, striking Izuku hard on the chin and sending him back to the ground. “Stupid fuck!” Bakugou spat the words out before dropping to his knees on top of the man. “I ought ‘a beat the crap out of you right now for even thinking that!”

But Midoriya shoved back trying to push the man off. “What the fuck are you talking about?! You don’t give a shit about me, never have! When the hell did you start caring?!” He kicked and twisted, fighting the larger male. “Get the fuck off me! I can’t stay here!”

“You are coming home with me Deku whether you like it or not!”

“NOOOOOO!!!” Midoriya activated his quirk up to 70% and bucked Bakugou off him. “It’s too dangerous, Kacchan just get away from me!” He took a stance to spring himself back into the air, but the blonde scrambled and jumped on top of him, pushing him back to the ground. “Get off, I don’t want to hurt you!” Midoriya screamed. This was getting out of control. Exhausting so much energy on Bakugou was stirring up his hunger and if that happened, he didn’t know if he could control himself.

“What the fuck ya gonna do, drink my blood too? What the hell is going on with you Deku?! Goddamn it tell me what the fuck happened in that forest!”

“Y-You know about that?”

“How do you think I tracked your ass down?!”

The pain is his stomach was rising fast. Midoriya winced as the rush of blood sounded off in his ears and other tell-tale signs progressively made its entrance. This was not good! “Kacchan please,” his voice whined and pleaded through the aching throb in his core, “let me go before something happens.”

“I don’t care what it takes Deku, I can’t lose you again.”

“I-I’m so sorry Kacchan.”

Bakugou’s eyes widen as he saw a dark red sheen enveloping the whites of Midoriya’s eyes. Is this what happened when he’d attacked all those men?

Every last nerve was fighting against control. It was an option Midoriya didn’t want to use, but if he could control it just a little longer, all he wanted to do was give himself a head start. “Please,” he begged one more time, “just forget about me Kacchan.”

“Get it through your fucking head! I’M NOT LEAVING YOU!”

That was the last thing Bakugou remembered…

#bakudeku #katsudeku #bakudeku fan fic #bkdk #ktdk #bakudeku fan fiction #bakudeku canon divergent au #vampire quirk #decchan #bakugou katsuki #midoriya izuku

[bubmyg]

lost - knj

pairing: namjoon x reader

genre/warnings: travel!au, roommate!au, bookstore owner!namjoon, strangers to lovers, ft platonic reader x taehyung, fluff, lots of angst regarding uncertain futures, namjoon has a cat named marie

word count: 16,451

summary: taehyung’s warning was simple: stop and you’ll never want to start again or the one where you’re left alone in a loft apartment above a bookstore owned by a man with the sweetest dimples you’ve ever seen.

a/n: my first fic in three months omg...i hope u enjoy it as much as i did writing it :-(

Tiny succulent leaves spiraled outward from a central lobe rooted somewhere in the limited space provided by it’s miniature clay home. The pot rattled with the dips of open road, contained mostly to the corner of the dash and the dusty van window yet a victim of the unforgiving lack of traction still attached to the tires that had carried you for miles up until this point. 

One thousand, two hundred and thirty-one miles. And counting. 

You tucked your knee into your chest, lounging so the seatbelt started to cut into your neck as your head lulled to the side, eyeing Taehyung’s profile. 

“You’ve kept that one alive,” You commented absently. 

A noise of surprise broke the hard line of Taehyung’s clenched jaw. He glanced at you, genuine innocence shining through his confusion. It mirrored in his blunt, “Huh?”

You nodded toward the bouncing plant, “If you think about it, killing aloe vera would be kind of ironic…”

“Oh,” Taehyung wrinkled his nose, adjusting his wrist where it laid languidly on the top of the steering wheel, “I think succulents are more my speed. Or at least, the speed of traveling. My daisies didn’t appreciate the darkness of the bedroom. The sunflowers protested the living room on day one.”

“At least if a succulent spills it doesn’t immediately shrivel up and disintegrate…”

By bedroom, Taehyung meant the front section of the shades of beige van he’d acquired in high school, the area with a barely functional bed nailed to the floor of the “trunk”, with windows covered by tattered pieces of flannel you’d hand sewn to resemble curtains. By living room, he meant the back half, where a tiny, rainbow rug sat in the center of splintered wood and a few fold out lawn chairs, matching flannel curtains from the bedroom drawn open to allow sunlight to push through the thin layer of grime gathered in each corner of the windows. 

His daisies had spilled fresh potting soil into your clean pillow case, one you’d shaken free of debris by holding it out the open window of the van while Taehyung shrieked with laughter. His sunflowers wouldn’t even balance on the tiny lip between the window and the inside, ceramic pot tumbling through Taehyung’s clumsy fingers and shattering onto the rug. A glittering piece of the white pot still sat lodged between a space in the wooden floorboards. 

You grunted in acknowledgement, unfurling your legs to heave yourself forward, snatching the tiny plant from its place on the dash. You turned it gently in your palm, “This would have been nice to have a few weeks ago.”

The tiny seaside town you’d rumbled into by accident of the lack of fuel in the van’s tank lead to three nights of camping in crab infested sands, gorgeous sunset photographs you’d clipped to the twine string zigzagging through the living room, and a horrible ripple of blisters sun stained into Taehyung’s shoulder blades. 

He gestured to the scarf you’d prematurely yanked from your luggage shoved into a compartment on the bottom of the vehicle, knee directing the steering wheel as he balled the fleece and tossed it at you. “Good thing it’s almost winter. Put my aloe down.”

You unfolded the pleats of the scarf once you settled the pot back against the windshield, curling it around your arms to settle back into the seat. Your eyes drifted to the scenery beyond the plant, coming first in the fashion of a neon highway sign advertising the next town. You glanced at the tiny red tick on the fuel tank meter. 

“Are we stopping tonight?”

Taehyung’s gaze met the places yours rested on. He sighed, palm pressing into the steering wheel first until his fingers gradually curled around the leather. “At least to get gas and dinner, yes. Look and see if there’s any hotels around, please? And then maybe how far we are from our next stop? I don’t want to hang around too long and miss the harvest festival…”

The tiny tag clipped on the digital map of your phone showed a tiny motel with a singular Yelp review from someone named Min Yoongi within walking distance of the gas station Taehyung had turned into. Your legs crossed where you sat on the edge of the blow up mattress in the bedroom, eyes squinted as you twirled around the general vicinity of the tiny town with the tip of your index finger. 

“Status update, copilot,” The van rocked as Taehyung took a running jump into the open back, momentum causing him to crouch in the center of the living room. Your mouth parted to respond in time with a tinkling crash to your left. 

“There’s a motel across the street,” You uttered in an unimpressed monotone, locating the source of the crash as three similar aloe plants to the one on the dash tumbling off your tiny bookshelf to the rug below. Three sad aloe plants a mess between the sprinkle of potting soil in between grains of rainbow. 

A sheepish look crossed the geometric edges of Taehyung’s smile. “I’ll clean it up,” His cupped palm swept over some of the more elevated piles of soil as if to prove his point, “Will you go see if they have anything available?”

“Got it, boss,” You stood, crouched still due to the proximity of the top of the van to your head, and began to edge your way outside. 

Your hesitation came near the very bookshelf, the sign of the crime, sole of your shoe squashing into the center of the limited pile Taehyung had created by scraping his hands across the rippled weaving of the rug. You stayed crouched at the waist, fingers thumbing through the titles, titles a cumulative collection from your own personal belongings and the various shops you’d stowed away in the growing months of your journey. Their dusted and rough covers slowly transitioned into the item you were looking for, a slick yellow folder bursting at the pockets with the mixture of paper clipped, stapled, typed, and handwritten papers curled within. You squeezed it’s outer edge, thumb feeling into the tiny rip that was begging to form on the spine of the folder. 

“I can’t clean if you don’t move,” Taehyung’s hand wrapped around your ankle, startling you to do a hop step into reality. 

The imprint of the ripped folded scratched at the crease in your thumb where you rubbed your palms together, quick strides weaving you down a deserted sidewalk to cross a deserted street where a three story, house shaped structure sat. Your palm flexed into the ends of your scarf still dangling from around your neck, tucking it tighter to you to avoid the stream of words that began to ink across the forefront of your subconscious from the simple touch to the folder. 

The interior of a structure whose exterior gave off the impression of outdated was instead rather modern, like stepping out of a deserted movie from the eighties to step into a fifties diner in the twenty-first century. Sleek tile in patterned squares wrapped around a black, raising desk, one that had a tiny stack of business cards and a credit card reader clipped to either side. A man was hunched over a laptop placed on what appeared to be a second level to the desk, it’s lid plastered in various hand drawn stickers peaking over the countertop as fingers continued to audibly hack away at a keyboard. 

His black curls bounced when the screen door clattering shut behind you, wide eyes either perpetually surprised or simply shocked at the presence of a person in the otherwise desolate area. You assumed it was a little bit of both once his shoulders relaxed into the black polo hugging his toned upper body but the circular innocence to his eyes remained. 

“Hi!” He chirped as you squinted at the gold plated name tag strapped on one side of his shirt. Jeongguk. “...how can I help you?”

“Do you have any rooms available?”

The surprise traveled into the rise of Jeongguk’s eyebrows into his shaggy fringe. It was short lived this time, though, movements instead turning frantic as he lifted the sticker covered laptop to the top layer of the desk, resuming his furious hacking with his tongue poked between his cheeks so that a dimple appeared to the side of his lips. 

“I do,” He said after a moment, glancing up at you as his fingers continued to work, “Plenty, actually. Just trying to, uhm…”

“There!” Jeongguk cheered finally, voice an octave louder than before and there was a twinkle in his crinkling eyes as he directed his full attention to you, “How many nights and how many beds?”

“One and two,” You rested your forearm to the counter, thumbing one of the business cards out of its plastic tray. A fond smile curled onto your lips when you noticed the tiny logo was the same doodled design gracing a sticker pasted to the center of his laptop lid. GCF Motel and Design. “Please…”

“Of course, absolutely. Coming right up…” His index finger tapped hard at the touch pad a few times before a different color illuminated the stars in his eyes. He blinked, nodding once to himself before he cupped the credit card reader and dragged it toward you. “It’ll just be fifty for the night. Card reader is here—it works, I promise—or I can take cash. And make change for you, if...you know.”

“I have a card,” You said gently, plucking the plastic from the tiny holder stuck to your phone case. The chip reader clicked to life after a few passing seconds of your card sitting idle in the slot, taking longer in its processing that left you in a silence with the bouncing man across from you. 

“Have you been busy lately? There’s that harvest festival a few miles from here this weekend, so I wasn’t sure…”

“No. No, uhm,” Jeongguk glanced at you under the shadow of his bangs, “You’re actually my first guest in two weeks.”

“Oh.” Two tiny electronic beeps signaled you to take your card but you were still delayed in doing so. You smiled warmly at the man across from you instead, “Well, then I’m happy we stopped here.”

“We means you’d like two room keys, right?” The tiniest of red dusted the apples of his cheeks, gaze cutting away to the level of the desk you couldn’t see. 

“Please. Tae should be here any minute—”

The screen door clattered harshly when your tall best friend tripped through the threshold, loud in his, “I got the living room clean!” while Jeongguk’s perplexity amplified ten fold. 

“Uhm, here’s your room keys. It’s on the third floor. Stairs and elevator are behind the desk,” Jeongguk passed over two green cards, holding them separately to each of you. You accepted yours with a gentle smile, Taehyung with a sleepier confusion that almost mirrored Jeongguk’s. His movements grew jerky again as he rustled behind the counter, presenting two sheets of paper in your direction now. “...and here’s a sheet of stickers. They’re mine. I hand draw them and sell them...I have my own website, it’s listed on the logo sticker in the center.”

You fondly assessed the page as you drew it closer to your nose, eyeing the etched star shape and the shaded in hues of a tiger flower. “Thank you, Jeongguk,” You said gently, holding the stickers to your chest. 

“Of course!” He chirped while Taehyung continued to squint between the room key and the sticker page. “I hope you enjoy your stay...don’t hesitate to come find me if you need anything. My room is the only one on this floor if I’m not here at the desk.”

You were gentle in turning the door knob to a close while Taehyung flopped dramatically onto the nearest bed corner, still clutching his sticker sheet that he stretched above his face. 

“Motto out the window tonight?”

Taehyung hummed, twisting the sheet to the right and then to the left, “For one night only—” He blinked to the side of the paper at you, “—did you look at these?

The motto hadn’t applied for three nights of your travels, the sleepy town with the sticker making motel owner included, the motto Taehyung’s sentiment that if your head ever touched a real pillow again, you’d want to cease your travels. A just keep going, arbitrary reason for continuing to blow through your college savings to travel the country. The first night had been in a storm when it was simply too dangerous to board up in the back of the van. The second night had been after Taehyung had contracted a cold from sneaking into a resort pool in a downtown tourist center. The third seemed to have no other motive than genuine exhaustion. You blamed the third potted plant spill of the month. 

Mention of the motto made your mind drift to your travels as a general cloud of thought, one that generally evaporated into the back of your conscious so that you were able to focus on the paper map Taehyung had shoved into your grip from the last rest stop or the delayed play by play instructions on your phone due to the limited signal or simply forgotten due to your laughter at whatever ridiculous song Taehyung had decided to blast over your carefully wired auxiliary cord. 

Just like you ignored your dwindling funds in the debit card you’d just mindlessly shoved into the barely functioning card reader, ones that funded the purpose of the sparkly eyed boy perched on a plastic stool in the lobby. Your purpose remained nothing but the ghost feeling of the rip in your yellow folder still digging into the crease of your thumb. 

“You should order some from him. It’d make his week,” You said gently. 

Taehyung laughed, “I don’t think he delivers to a traveling address, kid.”

You tried to manage the panic in your voice. 

“Tae.”

He didn’t answer, just a grunt from outside the van where he was currently pumping air into the front driver’s side tire. Panic could only manage itself for that one call. You tried again, louder and with a slap of your hand against the nearest open door. 

“Taehyung.”

The van rocked again and he answered verbally this time, agitated. A peek of one half of his face became visible, “What?”

“Where’s my folder?”

Taehyung blanched, full features coming into view, “What?” 

Your hand did a dramatic sweep across the bookcase, collecting your tattered copy of Pride and Prejudice in your wake to let it drop unceremoniously to the floor. “Where is my folder?” Another book, a title you didn’t recognize but a cover you connected with the flea market Taehyung had insisted on visiting near the beach, dropped to the floor from your grip. “It’s not in its spot any longer.”

“I had to take everything off the shelf to get all the soil up,” One foot made it inside the van as your stack of discarded books continued to grow. “I swear I put it right back but it may have fallen—”

“Fallen out? Of the van?” Two more books plopping audibly to the pile. You thought about Jeongguk and his stickers and what would happen if someone threw out all his sketches. His sense of purpose suddenly gone due to someone’s recklessness. 

“—behind something,” Taehyung finished, nudging you aside to retch the shelf away from where it was bolted to the wall. It only came a fraction of the way, barely enough for Taehyung to lodge his fingertips down it and effectively rule out any possibility of your folder being there. Instead, every book still clinging to the shelf flopped sadly to the floor. 

The miles you’d traveled up until that point seemed to rush by in your peripheral, every open stretch of rolling road, the glittering nightscape of lively cities, the blackness of the sea current swallowing up ruts in the shore, the decades old gas stations that drained your cash from your wallets into the tank to the freshly renovated rest stops that had patterns pressed into the concrete intentionally and not just because a local raccoon decided to test his luck with some half dry concrete. It propelled you back into the moment, thousands of miles ago, where you’d stood in the same spot in Taehyung’s parents driveway with a cardboard box at your feet filled with things still labeled from when you’d moved out of your college apartment. 

“Why did you keep this?” Taehyung had teased with a wrinkled nose, handing over your tattered textbook from your world literature class freshman year, the second volume in a group of three you’d paid a month's rent for. Highlighter bled into the outer edge, marking the thin off white pages appeared a mirage of rainbow that contrasted a shade more neon than the rug you’d stretched out below your feet. 

“I paid for it,” You defended, settling the paper back between one side of the shelf and a heavy, dolphin shaped paperweight that you’d stuck felt on the bottom of to keep in place on the road. “Besides, it has full, translated classics in here.”

Taehyung pretended to understand the fascination of literature that came with your education with a raise of one eyebrow and a single, gentle nod that shifted his gaze back to the remaining contents in the box. He ruffled for a second before retrieving one of the items draped on the bottom. 

“Okay—” He stretched your manuscript folder up in two hands so as to not let the contents on the inside spill out the sides. “—explain why you keep this.” 

You snatched it from him, holding the yellow protectively to your chest. It looked a bit comical, the whole situation, you hovering over the disorganized stack of papers that you’d written off, figuratively, of course, chin resting on top of the folder as you stared hard at the worn spine of the text book you’d just placed to the shelf. 

“If anything…” You moved slowly with the folder in hand, stretching it toward the felt dolphin and textbook. One hand clutched it while the other brushed aside things to make room for it, tight palm effectively dragging the weeping edges of the folder apart so a tiny rip formed in the yellow near the top of the makeshift spine. Gradual movements turned frantic as you shoved it onto the shelf, pushing the dolphin to hold it in place as your thumb remained on the newfound rip. 

“...I paid a lot of money for the printer and pen ink it took to write all of that. It’s like keeping a twenty dollar bar of gold that can never be converted into usable currency.”

The dolphin was the only thing remaining on the shelf, staring at you while you stared at Taehyung, blank, not moving. Somewhere, up on the dash, the unharmed succulent rattled with the gust of wind that curled against the outside of the van. 

“We’ll find it, it couldn’t have gone too far. There isn’t much space to search anyway—”

“Why did you touch it in the first place?” Your sharp cut in didn’t register in your mind as unreasonable, not at first. Instead, your mind drifted to all the times in which he’d be apprehensive of your unwillingness to throw away the folder, to, as he put it, simply transfer all the handwritten files into digital versions to zip away with the ones that were already locked in a cloud somewhere, all the times you’d caught him staring, perplexed as you pulled out the folder and flipped it open to make sure none of the pages had shifted order. “You know how much it means to me.”

“This would be different if I was intentionally trying to sabotage something of yours. I moved it to clean. It has to be somewhere in this general vicinity,” Taehyung held his hands palm up to you. Penance. Until he ruined it with a sighed, “Besides...don’t you think it’s time we throw it out anyway. I don’t think a constant reminder of rejection is—”

“Go on with your trip,” You said suddenly. 

He paled in front of you, knuckles and all where they grew tighter on the edge of the unhinged bookcase. “Our trip…” He corrected, drawing out the silence at the end as punctuation.

“Your trip,” You shoved yourself off the floor, stepping past him to hurdle to the cracked concrete outside. “Help me get my luggage.”

Taehyung spluttered, lips foaming like a puffer fish out of water, eyes narrowing like you’d just grown a third hand from the tip of your nose. “Dove, we’ll find your folder. We can keep it up front so it never gets lost again. I wasn’t trying to insult your situation, I just care about you and—”

“Tae,” You said his name gently, the calmest you’d managed to spit it out in the entire ordeal, calm like the ghost of a smile that dimpled into your cheeks, “It’s not about the folder.”

“Go on. Go to the harvest festival. Hit the next few cities. I’ll be fine here.”

His eyes bulged now, “You expect me to leave you here? There’s nothing here and I’m no stranger to how our funds have been dwindling.”

“There’s a motel. And a cafe somewhere according to the map. I’ll find a job. Maybe I can rake someone’s leaves when the seasons start to change,” You smiled, “I’ll figure something out.”

“And when I come back? Will you want to go with me?” A bit more forceful, Taehyung set his eyebrows and added, “I will be coming back for you.”

You shrugged, opting for simple, “I don’t know.”

The tension sagged from Taehyung’s person, all the confusion and frustration and bubbling anger, returning him to the default of your best friend complete with a tiny half smile. A loaded inquiry in the way he tilted his cheek into his curled fist.

“Why, dove?”

“The motto,” You stretched out a hand toward him, “I quite liked the bed in the motel.”

“...so I think I’m going to stay around a little longer,” You finished your, shortened albeit, story to the pouty lipped cafe worker, offering a tentative smile. 

The man who’d introduced himself as Yoongi and the owner of the tiny building, removed a hand from where it had been perched on his hip, gently plucking the wad of bills you offered to him. The register opened with what would have been a small puff of dust if the space around it weren’t so meticulously clean, the sleek black counter top and the checkered floor free of any imperfections. Yoongi had swept away the little particles of gravel you’d tracked in after he’d handed over your carefully crafted club sandwich. 

“So, are you planning on staying at Jeongguk’s place?” 

You blinked, a useless piece of collected information about the town in your short twenty-four hours there slipping out. “Are you the Min Yoongi who left a review on his motel?”

A charming smile crossed over the man’s gums, shoulders bouncing silently as he began to pool your change in his cupped palm for you. You took his nonverbal answer, leaning closer on your elbows, “Is Min Holly some of your relation? They left a review, too…”

Yoongi’s nose wrinkled when he laughed a second time, plopping your change down in a small tin next to the register when you motioned him to keep it. “...something like that.”

“It’s a fine place to stay, by the way. Just a dumb joke we have going,” He fished behind the counter for a rag, rubbing it over the places in the counter that had been touched. Dark eyes assessed you playfully from under white fringe, “There’s a review hidden in ours that says we make grilled cheese sandwiches without cheese.”

“Are you...in need of any help making those bread sandwiches?” You panicked when one of his eyebrows disappeared into bangs and a snort racked his shoulders, “Sorry, that was really forward. I just...my travel funds have been running low regardless of me stopping here. I really need a way to make money during my stay.”

“I don’t think Seokjin would appreciate having to split his already limited tips,” Yoongi continued to wipe at the counter, shuffling down the row of bar stools you sat at and back up.

“...you said you have a background with literature, right?” You nodded. “You could check with Namjoon and see if he has any odd jobs for you. He owns the bookstore on the next block over…”

“If anything, he could have you paint the outside,” He meticulously began to fold the rag, shaking his head, “The place looks like it just time traveled from the eighteenth century.”

Yoongi wasn’t wrong. All the buildings in the town seemed to be situated in a similar fashion, curled into strips of three or four businesses about three or four blocks long yet, it appeared that the majority of the buildings were abandoned or at the very least, not functioning businesses any longer. You pinpointed the specific building you were in search of on instinct that the one centered in the middle of a strip of buildings that appeared completely out of place had to be the one Yoongi teased about the exterior. Chipped cream and dark brown lined the paneled walls and thick frames around doors and windows, two stories of windows coated in a visible layer of dust and webs on the corners.  As you strolled closer, you could make out the beige pink hue of plastic letters pasted onto the inside of the left display window, Monie’s, with a looping cursive font displaying a phone number and a website. Propped up in the thin stream of dust and crumpled window stickers was a sign, black coated in specks of brown with neon orange advertising help wanted. 

You wrapped your fingers around the door, pulling it open to step inside. 

The first thing you registered was the temperature difference, winter chill just starting to nip into the air outside but the bookstore was coated in something that somehow bordered the favorable side of cozy and unbearable. Minimal lighting added to that ambiance, bulbs caged in thick metal where they were screwed in planned intervals above the bookshelves. Plants littered the empty spaces in between already crowded furniture, bonsai trees to be exact, curling in their awkward shapes out of hand painted pots. Any decorations that maybe could have been placed on walls occupied by floating bookshelves instead littered the displays in each of the front windows, a massive plastic snowman, fake holiday grass plopped on top of fake winter snow, a myriad of specialty figurines ranging in sizes and shapes and colors all centered around a wooden table that appeared as though it had been made directly from a fresh stump. Perhaps, judging by everything else, it had. 

The books were another thing, appearing more like library shelves than those you would see in chain bookstores or in the aisles at various department stores. Titles varied in size, in their positions in how they laid against each other. In fact, there seemed to be no reason to the way they were organized, obscure children’s books tucked in between used biographies of a fourteenth century royal and three new copies of the first book in the latest dystopian young adult series. 

You turned down the last aisle, one that seemed to harbor anything from an entire encyclopedia set to preschool board books, to find a steep staircase at the end of the shelf. The dark wood matched that of the outside of the building, leading upward into a shadow until you could no longer see where it went. Careful footsteps carried you across creaking wood covered in various colors of woven rugs, testing a hand onto the rail of the staircase. One foot on the first stair and it creaked worse that the floor, the second a wail just as bad. 

Nothing, however, could have prepared you for the tiger striped cat that bounded down the stairs past you. 

You yelped, clinging to the staircase as your knees gave out in your brief moment of panic and had you sinking to a crouch. A deep swallow into you cradling the posts between the stair railing and you managed to get your heart rate to calm by pressing the blunt end of your palm against your chest. 

A voice acted like the pull start of a generic lawn mower, kicking the roar of blood in your ears back to life.  

“Where are you going?”

It was spoken kindly, a genuine inquiry in which the tone matched the man who stood within the row of books. Namjoon, your conscious presumed. He was tall, a long navy coat fluttering against his khaki jogger covered ankles. A deep maroon t-shirt showed off the glitter of a pendant necklace dangling between the defined planes of his chest where the terror of a cat was now cradled. Thick rimmed glasses rested on the very tip of his nose, deep set brown eyes magnifying when he nudged the frames up with the tips of his index and middle fingers. A gentle smile indented permanently into his mouth, showing off dimples that became deeper set the more his laughter grew at your prolonged silence. 

“Oh, sorry I...I was just—”

“Unfortunately, my business is not enough to harbor a second floor,” His nose wrinkled with his smile as he dropped his gaze enough to place the cat onto the floor before effectively shoving bracelet covered wrists into his pockets, “Can I help you with something else?”

“I’m looking for a job,” You blurted, still standing firmly on the second stair while the cat, calmer this time, scurried past you once more. It creaked again with the two movements, the cat and the nervous shift of yours, and you allowed yourself to wince this time.

The man tilted his head, dark brown locks sticking behind the glass and frames. “And why would you come here in search of that?”

“Yoongi sent me,” You blinked, “Uh, Min Yoongi. The guy that owns that cafe up the street? I’m going to be staying in town for a little while and I’m in need of something...I have a literature background, if that makes my case any more compelling. At the very least I could reorganize your shelves or something—”

“My shelves stay as they are,” He cut in absently, waving a hand. Go on. 

“—besides,” Your finger pointed dumbly toward the window display behind him, “You have a help wanted sign in your window.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the trajectory of your finger, shaking his head, “No...I don’t think I do.”

You clambered off the staircase, pointed in brushing past the tall man to stalk determinedly for the opposite window display. The sign stuck to the window in some sort of build of debris that you didn’t particularly care to question but instead made it hard for you to pull up when you were straddling a tiny train set and a mountain of fake snow in an attempt not to harm any of his decorations. It came in a cloud of dust, coating your fingers and glittering in the baths of afternoon sun that cut through the window. 

You found that he’d trailed after you, close enough that when you stumbled out of your awkward stretch position you could press the sign just spaces from his chest. 

“See.” 

He took it from you, that trace of a smile still prominent as he squinted at the object in his grasp. His sleeve curled over his fingers, gradual in clearing away the grime build up over the printed words. 

“Oh,” He simply, “I suppose I do.”

More than the confined heat of the sun through the windows warmed your body from his gentle carmel stare, something that curled your toes into your shoes as your hand had the opposite reaction in jutting out towards him. Quietly, you offered your name. 

“Namjoon,” He settled his free hand in yours, giving it a firm shake without pulling away. Instead he tilted his head, “What’s your story?”

You tilted your head in the opposite direction, “Is this my interview?”

His smile grew warmer when his teeth appeared under his lips, “And if it is?”

“I’ve been traveling with my best friend for the past few months. We started after our university graduation and didn’t look back,” A halfhearted laugh followed the slip of your hand out of his, “Truthfully—” kind of, “—I was starting to run out of money. Your town seemed to be about my speed,” You set your shoulders, “...so I told Taehyung to leave me here. Now I’m in your store asking for a job.”

“Where are you staying?”

“The motel, Jeongguk’s right?” You brushed your foot into the floor, “He told me I didn’t have to pay for anything until I left, or at least built up enough to afford his rates, but—”

“That won’t do,” Namjoon dismissed. Curtly, he turned, stalking off between the shelves with the sign tucked to his chest. 

You were sure you looked like a personified exclamation mark wrapped around a question mark but you allowed yourself to stumble after him anyway, trailing him between the awkward route of shelves you’d yet to explore in your short venture through the store. Finally, you arrived at a small desk, one with a clear glass top with flyers and charts and business cards lodged underneath it. A register, the most modern item of the entire store, took up most of the desk space, placed directly next to an illuminated desktop computer that displayed a background of a light blue koala character etched out in a vaguely familiar art style. You noticed the cat from earlier had wandered back into view, now perched on a red leather stool that was placed behind the counter and let out a particularly discontented mrow! when Namjoon shooed it aside to take a seat. 

Ring clad fingers began to clack away at an outdated keyboard for the modern monitor, features scrunched at the center. Namjoon’s glasses slipped down the length of his nose, this time purposely, as he leaned closer to the screen, mouth parted as eyes darted over the contents. His entire expression shifted when he leaned away, soft smile returning as he gestured for you to join him on the opposite side of the counter. 

“Have you ever worked with any type of cataloging software?”

You blinked at the foreign objects on the screen, a whirlwind of passwords and edit options, and ISBN numbers that you didn’t understand other than how to finesse the cheapest textbooks when you were still in university. His whirlwind explanation that hadn’t allowed you any time to answer the initial question ended with a single syllable laugh. 

“I’ll help you,” Namjoon promised, spinning on the stool to face you. His gangly legs crossed, elbow meeting the thickest part of his thigh as he cheek settled into his palm. “And dusting? How are you with a rag?”

A smile broke out of your tense uncertainty, “That I can definitely do.”

He hummed, drumming his fingers against his cheek, “I think I can find plenty for you to help me with here, if you’d like. I can’t promise much pay.”

“But no staying with Guk. You can stay here as part of your payment.”

You subconsciously glanced outward around the store, to the crowded shelving and potted plants and lopsided books, as if maybe a bed would manifest somewhere that you hadn’t seen it before. To that, Namjoon laughed, louder and so that his face scrunched up around his eyes. 

“I live in the apartment above the store. That’s where the staircase leads. I have an extra bedroom…”

“But that’s only if you’d like,” He rushed suddenly, voice growing an octave as his hands flailed, “I know we just met so if you’re not comfortable living with me, you can absolutely continue to stay at the motel. I just thought it might be easier on you financially and travel wise if you were already here, you know. The bedrooms are on opposite ends of the apartment. There’s two bathrooms, too—”

“Thank you, Namjoon,” You placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, waiting until he relaxed under your touch, “That sounds like a wonderful idea. I accept your offer, if you don’t mind having me, of course.”

He started to shake his head only to be interrupted by a strangled meow from below your feet. You watched as the cat curled in between your legs, butting into your shin while an audible purr rumbled into its next meow. 

“You’ll have to bargain with her for use of the bedroom, actually. It’s unofficially hers at the moment,” The tiny cat continued to nuzzle into your jeans, tail curling happily each time she threw her body weight into you, “It seems like you’ve passed the Marie test.”

You crouched, allowing her to inspect the curl of your fingers before she happily began to settle her chin into the crevices of your palm, rubbing back and forth until you began to flex your fingers in her fur. 

“Miss Marie, can we be roommates for a little while?”

She mewled in response, bypassing your hand to jump into the open space on your thighs. You adjusted her in your arms instead, stretching back to a standing position to smile at Namjoon. 

“First task complete.”

Namjoon cocked an eyebrow, “Which was…?”

“Befriend the cat that ratted me out,” You grinned, bouncing her a bit in your arms, “What’s next, boss?”

“Why don’t you two start by cleaning out those window displays while I go to retrieve your things from Jeongguk,” He slipped his glasses off between the pinch of his fingers, allowing them to twirl back and forth for a moment, “Who knows what other hidden treasures are in there.”

You found your things stacked in a neat pyramid on a bed. Your bed. You clutched the ‘treasures’ you’d uncovered in the window displays a bit tighter to your chest. 

It was a modest room, full size mattress squeezed into a vast majority of the room, leaving just enough room for a dresser and closet doors that folded open to one side. Your things looked massive in the center of the bed, particularly with how they’d been stacked in awkward, Jenga like angles. You frowned until you found a slip of paper dangling off the very top piece of your luggage. You cradled Namjoon’s things, a curly haired teddy bear and a miniature pair of leather shoes, into one arm to pluck the note. 

It was another sheet of stickers, different from the first, with a handwritten note in swirling purple marker scrawled to the blank side. 

Come back and visit me! Or maybe I’ll come into the store more now...Here’s some of my newest designs as thanks :)

“Jeongguk insisted I bring you those.” You crinkled the edge of the paper in hand, startled by the soft voice. It was Namjoon, now without his long coat, arms folded across his chest where he leaned against the doorframe. He nodded toward the other contents in your grasp, “What are those?”

“Oh!” You passed aside the paper to grip the bear and shoes in separate hands, stretching the items toward him. “Just some things I found hidden in the displays…”

He pushed himself up off the door, pulling the bear into his grasp first. Long fingers tucked into the wirey fur of the toy, scratching gently as a fond smile slowly worked upwards into his cheeks. Crinkles formed underneath his eyes as he pressed the bear underneath his arm, cradling the two tiny shoes next, raising them up above eye level for inspection. 

“You’re right, I forgot about these,” Namjoon passed the shoes into one palm, closing his fingers to hold them at the center of his chest. “Thank you for doing that, by the way. It looks wonderful.”

You returned his grateful smile, unsure of how to accept a thanks for a task assigned to you as an employee. It was the first time since the morning that you’d allowed yourself to think of the yellow folder, one that symbolized the exact opposite of the gracious, polite expressions Namjoon had yet to fail to provide. 

It’d been less than twelve hours, but you had no reason to assume he would offer anything otherwise. A less than conventional situation with a less than conventional job offer with a less than conventional boss with less than conventional job benefits.

His mouth fished once, twice, gawking at the shoes in his hand before his gaze settled back on you. Lips pressed together, head tilting. 

“...would you like some tea?” 

The disarray, library aura the maze of shelves in the store provided came as a result of the equally disorienting ordering process from Namjoon, so you learned. He avoided section titles, author groupings, or series shelving. Instead, there was some mental list of steps all based around bogus marketing techniques that accounted for the haphazard strew of books to the point where you weren’t quite sure he had meaning to it anymore and was simply doing it to stay to some imaginary regiment he’d convinced himself of. 

Best selling young adult dystopian novels were on the far shelf, the one closest to the desk, and hidden behind the busy leaves of a bonsai in the back left corner. There were three copies of the first and second books but only two of the third book. Children’s books were placed backwards on the shelves, spines facing inwards, the shapes giving them away. Biographies were always placed on the third shelf from the bottom, eye level. 

No romance made the cut to “easy on the eye” locations. 

“I’d be replacing them every day,” Namjoon explained as he gave you the third tour of the store with a third set of instructions for shelving. You weren’t sure how to politely tell him that he wasn’t in the position to assume he had that much patronage daily. 

In the end, he’d left you isolated to cataloging month old shipments, boxes piled high with novels at the top of outdated best seller lists scattered in between obscure titles of obscure genres with obscure authors that you often found yourself squinting at in wonder with their unfinished tab open on the blinking monitor in front of you. Cataloging meant updating the system first so that when your second customer of the eight hour day came in, you could properly run their crossword puzzle booklet or copy of the town newspaper through the bar code scanner without having to employ the help of the tiny red calculator hidden within the contents of the desk. 

Eventually, you convinced Namjoon to let you update the website too, starting with the boxes you still had left to do and moving onto those things already existing on the shelves when a customer appeared for something new on the shelf simply because they had seen it online. Namjoon had eyed the customer like they were leaving with a third arm rather than a newly acquired how-to manual on toothpick crafts and promptly requested you do whatever that was. 

Your reorganization of the window displays had done a number in themselves, cleaning away the cobwebs to make the neatly arranged scenery, now free of any cheap decorative foliage or precipitation, visible from the sidewalk. Three different individuals had appeared with comments about such, one in question of if the newly cleaned window decals had always been there, one asking if that was the current working phone number, and the third asking if the store was under new management due to the “new changes”. 

Aside from updating the website and reorganizing his conglomeration of acquired decorations, you couldn’t get Namjoon to budge on anything else.

Especially not ordering some more romance novels. The best sellers in your short time as an employee. The genre tab you were constantly updating on the website.

You tried to mention it casually over a cup of tea one evening, your feet propped up on a wooden coffee table similar to the one you’d placed fresh flowers on in the shop. 

“Okay, former literature student,” Namjoon swung his feet off where they had been resting across from yours. The patchwork red recliner he sat in creaked as he leaned forward, white mug cupped in two hands with the rim resting on his smiling bottom lip, “...and I can’t believe I didn’t ask you this already. What are some of your favorite authors? Go.”

You hesitated. Of all the classics, the literature tailored for a specific class genre, the novels you’d exhausted class discussion after thesis on, you’d still honestly answer that easy to read, cliche romance were your favorite, especially when written by a select few authors you’d claimed to some sort of unspoken circle you trusted. 

There were things to learn in even the cheesiest of cliches, in generally the most ideal situations that were few and far between the reality you’d seen, love could and would prevail. Love was the start, the middle, and the end to the spines of worn romance novels, ones often criticized for having the same plot hidden under ten different covers plastered in warm pastels and photographs of flowers draping over bicycles and down the sides of beach side houses. 

But just because it’s ideal and not realistic doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist in what you strive for. At least, that’s what you stood by, particularly when your pencil or your fingers moved to creatively express that very mantra in the plot of your own romance story lines. They were romance at the surface, or at least hidden underneath the flaps of your tattered and lost yellow folder. 

The tear itched at the bend of your thumb and you rubbed it as you squinted at Namjoon, pretending to be in thought. “That’s a hard question.”

“Is it?”

He’d garnered enough information about you in the last weeks to understand you were well versed, at least enough to recognize, to understand, and to adapt. Lying could work but would be virtually useless in the face of your almost stranger roommate. The laymen’s, internet speak resting in the deepest recess of your conscious cooed to you quietly. 

It’s not that deep just tell him you enjoy the occasional Nicholas Sparks novel. 

Instead, the cursed part of your conscious blurted, “Have you ever read Twilight?” 

Namjoon didn’t laugh at you but with you. “I have, actually…” His lips puckered to take in enough tea to coat is tongue, another gentle laugh shaking his shoulders, “Is this your way of saying Stephanie Meyers is your favorite author?”

“No! No, I mean...not necessarily,” You shrugged, “I enjoy the occasional cliche. Even in the easiest cliches there can be a lesson to be learned. Just with some padding. Like bumpers on a bowling lane, you know. You still make it to the pins just with some extra help.”

“Right,” He lounged again, taking the natural rock of the recliner with him before releasing his foot so it swayed his relaxed stature, “That makes sense.”

“The artistic value isn’t lost simply because it’s popular or it’s based on something popular, you know,” You glanced behind his head, to one of the various artwork pieces he had nailed throughout the apartment. This one was a canvas coated in navy birds, ones that grew sloppier in shape the smaller they grew towards one corner. “It wouldn’t be popular otherwise…”

“I don’t disagree,” Namjoon narrowed his eyes but they crinkled on the edges, “I also wouldn’t fire you if you told me the Twilight franchise was the peak of literary and cinematic history. I just would...respectfully disagree.”

“Would you fire me if I told you I write romance?”

“Is it about vampires that sparkle?”

“No.”

“Then no,” He grinned this time, “If you can’t answer your favorite author question then who inspires you when you write? Most art is modeled after that of which we’ve already consumed so I can’t imagine you’re any different.”

No thought of the yellow folder burned through the itch on your thumb as you rattled off your extensive list of ever evolving authors, ones you adored in middle school then reread in college to find new light (or some glaring darkness you missed in the naivety of your uneducated youth. See: the glitz and glamour of The Great Gatsby) within, those young adult novels of dystopian future in which you’d always wanted to teach your own university course on all the way down to the grossest cliches that had you and Namjoon wrinkling your noses. 

“They’re still wonderful,” You bargained, “In every sense of the word. Wonderfully awesome, wonderfully terrible. Refreshing to read, refreshing to pick out eyebrow raising and quite frankly glaring issues that high school teachers choose not to point out in their lessons.”

“Have you ever thought about ordering more for the store?” 

“There are plenty of popular titles in the store,” Namjoon resisted immediately. His mug of tea was empty now, nothing to divert his attention from staring directly at you. For a moment, you feared you’d imposed on something like when you’d offered to reorganize the shelves. 

Gently, you tried to express your point and correct him, “Yes, but not that’s currently popular in the last five years, or even the last decade. It would be a good selling point, at least to garner a bit more profit—”

“No.” He wasn’t harsh. Just firm. “I’m content with our current inventory.”

“However, if you would like for me to order you something to read, I would be happy to do so. You know where the catalogs are.”

That’s not the point. You sighed in the defeat of your changed window displays and online catalog update. 

“That’s okay, Namjoon. Thank you anyway, though.”

“So, what do you think?”

There were two expectant pair of eyes blinking at you, one the curator of the dish placed just beneath your nose, the other wholly hoping for your features to be unable to hide the disgust of whatever cheese, tomato, and bread contraption currently resting on the part of your bottom lip, ready for a taste. 

“I haven’t even taken a bite yet, Jin,” You laughed, testing the warmth of the sub bread against. You turned the sandwich in one hand, wincing when some of the cheese spilled out and singed at the skin of your palm. “It’s hot.” 

“It’s delicious,” He argued, dragging the bar stool closer to you. 

“It’s already on the menu,” Yoongi mumbled. 

“It’s not,” Seokjin slapped his palm on the counter, ears growing red as he fumed at his boss, “This stromboli has nacho cheese instead of mozzarella. Instantly better.”

“If it’s good, you can make it for everyone who orders it,” You eyed Yoongi as you gave it another temperature test and he smiled shyly, “The nacho cheese gets too hot...I don’t want to have to handle it.”

Tentatively, you jutted your teeth out to take a nibble off the corner of the steaming sandwich, managing to acquire a mouthful of bread, pepperoni, and of course, the seeping nacho cheese. Yoongi was right, it was scalding, but it burnt your taste buds enough to mask any horrid taste that may exist and you managed to swallow it down with a minimal wince. 

“Amazing right?”

“They can’t even speak—”

“They can’t speak because it’s so amazing,” Seokjin nudged your side while you tried to digest the burning coals currently sliding down your throat, “Right?”

“It’s not too bad,” You croaked finally, making prolonged eye contact with a viscarly annoyed Yoongi as you dragged your ice water closer and downed two, three, five gulps. “Would probably be better if it weren’t the temperature of the sun.”

“That’s not a yes—”

“Maybe, but it’s also not a no,” Seokjin happily clapped in the seat next to you, making a full rotation on the bar stool in victory before he swiped the plate from under your nose and went to take a bite for himself.

His high pitched screams muffled by the way too large bite of yeast and runny cheesy came in time with the ding of the cafe door that had Yoongi straightening and you snorting. 

Namjoon ignored the way Seokjin’s palm began to rapidly slap against the counter top as he waddled directly for you, a large cardboard box cradled to his chest as he happily chirped your name in time with the slap of his sandals against the tile. He deposited the box to the empty bar stool on your opposite side, only then allowing his gaze to deviate to a violently coughing Seokjin. 

“Is he okay?” He asked simply, that same comforting calmness etched deep in his tone. 

“Loaded question,” Yoongi grumbled. 

“He’ll be fine,” You dismissed, waving your hand over your shoulder. Seokjin coughed in outrage. You placed both hands on either side of the taped lid, tilting your head, “What do you have here?—” After a second, you perked up, “—Is it this week's shipment?”

Namjoon’s hands covered yours, soft with the vanilla pine lotion you knew he kept on the bottom shelf behind the counter in the store. Gentle thumbs nudged your appendages aside, instead tucking his nail underneath the tape and flicking across it. 

“You reviewed my final order list, right?”

You nodded, “Yeah, you were going to order some extra crossword books and replace those couple copies of encyclopedia that Marie...had an accident on…”

“Right, but—” He balled the tape when it reached the far end of the box, still holding your eye contact as he began to fold open the flaps on the box, “—I added a few more things before I sent it in.”

“Oh yeah?” You couldn’t help but grin too, “And what did you order?”

“Well, first of all…” Namjoon shuffled around, trying his best to shield the contents inside from you until he retrieved what he was looking for. An exclamation point coated his features when his fingers wrapped around the desired book, drawing it out with a giddy grin.

“Is that Gatsby?” You gaped, reaching for the paperback book in his hand. You took in the horribly refurbished cover, sighing blissfully as you looked at Namjoon. At the same time, you each breathed, “Hate Gatsby.” 

“I bought ten copies I think,” Namjoon took it back from you, flicking it back into the box like a frisbee, “If anything, we can put them to Marie’s litter box. Lead her there.” 

“I like this already. Show me more.”

“The next one I bought for you, if you want it,” He shuffled a bit longer this time, eyebrows meeting his hairline when he finally latched onto the item yet seemed to struggle a bit more with lifting this one. The veins in his arms strained, bottom lip tucking under his teeth as he threw his shoulder into it, letting the heavy hardback hit the top of the counter with an audible thud that silenced Seokjin’s moaning behind you. 

“Twilight?” You laughed, stroking your fingers over the raised text, “I can’t believe you brought yourself to write this on an order.”

“I can’t believe I did either,” Namjoon beamed, glowing in the rays of your praise, “I thought you’d like it and I wasn’t sure if you had a copy of it so…”

“My copy is in the van,” You flattened your palm to ignore the itch on the bend of your thumb, forcing the rush of emotion down past the sudden lodge in your throat, “This is a nicer copy than mine, anyway.”

“Isn’t that the book about vampires?” Yoongi deadpanned. You slid it toward him, letting him turn the heavy text over to read the soft pink cursive that curled a summary across the back cover. He eyed Namjoon, “You...ordered this?”

“I got a few copies for the shop too,” He ignored Yoongi, addressing you as he instead shoved a stapled packet of paper toward you, bits of other paper and an envelope fluttering to the top of the box in the process. “And I...consulted some of the newer best seller lists and ordered the things that sounded interesting from those. I’ll let you shelve them, if you want.”

“You haven’t read this, have you Joon?” Yoongi continued to gape at the cover, flipping it back over to stare open mouthed at the table of contents. 

“I could help you next order too,” You flipped through the list, running your index finger over the highlighted titles, “...if you like.”

“Uhh…” You heard an excessive amount of extra fluttering, peering over the top of the packet in your hand to see him ruffling at the papers and envelopes that had slipped out of his grasp when he passed you the list. You watched as he pried open the singular envelope with crooked index finger on the flap, wincing as he did so. “Yeah...yeah maybe.”

“What?” You asked gently, trying to laugh, “Is that the bill for all this fresh content?”

“Yeah—” Yoongi had stopped where he’d been rubbing at bits of nacho cheese Seokjin had spilled over the counter, watching Namjoon carefully. A smile met his lips, one that never even touched the crinkle around his eyes or the sparkling softness in his irises, “—something like that.”

“Can I tell you something?”

You paused where you’d been mid chopping vegetables, a task you’d handed off to Namjoon only for him to show sizable difficulty with. You tasked him with dishes instead, handing off each new soiled piece for him to dunk in the basin piled high in bubbles. He hesitated with his wrists hidden underneath the suddy mess, fingers holding onto the wire edges of one of the charred racks from within the oven. 

After a second, you started again, allowing the slice of metal through the onion slices under your moist fingers to fill the cramped kitchen once more. “Of course,” You glanced at him once you’d finished the row you were on, absently sweeping the pieces back and forth across the cutting board underneath a cupped palm, “What’s up?”

“I’m not very good at ordering books for the store,” He held up a palm when you tried to suppress your reaction, “I know you know this, but I’m just...acknowledging that it’s always been like this. I don’t like to think of myself as pretentious, but I suppose my ordering and stocking habits are a bit on that side.”

“In the beginning, I had a reason for it, or at least, what I convinced myself was a viable reason. I’d purchased the shop after living in the apartment above a quickly failing bakery for far too long. I wanted it to be something that thrived in this secluded little town.”

“Like a bookstore,” You nodded without any sort of teasing or malice. You were a book person, after all. You craved the homey feel of a locally owned bookstore in any crevice of the Earth, probably contributing to some twisted fate in the universe to how you ended up in one particular place in one particular line of employment after being lost on the road for so long. 

“Right, but not just any bookstore. I wanted to give the place something unique,” White bubbles gathered and slipped down the length of his knuckles when Namjoon drew his hands out of the water, letting them grip on either side of the sink as he leaned into it, “A scavenger hunt of sorts sounds appealing, right? Once you find the book in the store, there’s some sort of satisfaction to it. Especially if you don’t really know what you’re looking for and you end up stumbling upon an extensive history of stuffed animal fur.”

You wrinkled your nose, “We have that?”

“Somewhere,” Namjoon nodded gravely, cracking a smile at your indignation, “I would have no idea where it is.”

“And to an extent, that business plan works. Keep just enough popular titles to appease to the general public. Keep more obscurity to draw the crowd craving originality. Garner revenue from individuals on any spectrum of literature pretentiousness,” He shrugged, letting his shoulders roll up to his ears as his chin dropped, “It worked for maybe five months. Then the newness wore off.”

“I’ve never really been able to recover even with our normal patronage. Now that there’s appeal for business in neighboring towns, all of us have started to suffer. People would rather stay in a Hilton next to a Panera and shop at the three story Barnes and Noble than tour our locally owned amenities that provide damn near the same thing.”

“Jeongguk and Yoongi have been able to adapt, though,” Namjoon’s shoulders relaxed again, letting his hands dip down into the water to grab at the wire rack. He passed the rough edge of the sponge over the edges now exposed out of the water, soft enough that the fibers barely pulled any of the grime from the utensil. “I can’t seem to find my way out of a rut.”

“Have you tried?”

Namjoon laughed, “I ordered Twilight, didn’t I?”

“But did you order New Moon too? Or the other two books in the series? What about the DVD adaptations?” You started to dice the onion now, speaking to the tiny pieces you nudged aside with the tip of the knife, “Did you put them in alphabetical order? Or did you at least consider creating a young adult section? Or a vampire romance section? I can offer more recommendations—”

“I can’t afford to pay the bills,” Namjoon said gently. “Not...not anymore. Way before I hired you, even.”

You grew silent, letting yourself sink into the lip of the counter top. 

“I had to start using my monthly order funds to pay rent on the store. And my personal rent. And the light bill. And…” He sighed, dunking the wire rack a few times in silence to rinse it of the bubbles. 

“That’s what those envelopes were today. Notice of eviction.”

Your mouth fished, pursing at the seam of your lips and puffing your cheeks out as you pondered the terrifying thought. Never mind that this was your temporary home and temporary place of employment but this was Namjoon’s livelihood, his greatest accomplishment, his love. 

Behind convoluted marketing strategies and a quietly picky selection in what he read in his personal time, there was a man who absolutely adored the power of literature in its simplest form, tangible, physical books. You’d witnessed the way his eyes lit up when the tiny bell at the front of the store tinkled with the arrival of someone new, his long legs and eager persistence quick to beat you out from behind the counter to assist the customer, whether that be to point out a general area as to where something may be located, to recommend something of his own, or to simply offer a casual conversation over a cup of coffee he offered in a floral paper cup from the tiny room underneath the staircase. 

“So, what do we do?” 

He was puzzled only for a moment, the furrow in his eyebrow traveling upward with the smile that appeared as he dragged his hands out of the water. Massive palms dabbed to his thighs as he backed away from you, bumping into the edge of the counter on his way but he found his target, the massive stack of sliced open mail. Some ruffling with semi damp hands that splattered visible water droplets over the counter later, his pinched fingers appeared triumphant holding a mint colored envelope with a red printed logo stamped on the return address corner. 

“There’s uhm…” Namjoon’s fingers pried inside, drawing a folded piece of paper out. Through the back, you could see the same red logo, bold and in the center of the page this time. “One of the companies I order from sent this not too long ago. I don’t know if it’s a sign but it kind of seemed like a sign.”

You abandoned your chopping to accept the paper, now doused in vague water spots, from his grasp. He voiced the contents your squinted eyes began to scan. 

“Basically, if we can get sales above a certain threshold by the end of the month, I can apply for a grant worth—” He was in front of you now, reaching his index finger over to hover above a bolded monetary amount, “—that. That would give enough time for you to help me implement some of your ideas…”

“And if none of it works,” Namjoon shrugged, folding the paper back into it’s neat little pamphlet, letting it dangle to his side, “then I guess this wasn’t really meant to be.”

A small part of you envied him in that moment. Perhaps there was more than what presented itself outwardly, but Namjoon was frustratingly calm about simply giving up something he worked so hard to achieve simply because of a couple of setbacks. The yellow folder that triggered you to step off the trunk of Taehyung’s rickety travel van certainly could not relate. 

Instead, you blurted, “You want my help?”

His normal composure fractured a bit, longer pauses, hums even, stationed between stumbled words, “If you’d like to, yes, I’d love to have your help. Outside perspective is the only way I’m going to change my ways. I don’t think I could do it, not productively, by myself.”

“And of course, if you’re still around by then,” Cautious brown irises met your own, swimming in something unreadable, a guard almost, “I know you’ve said you aren’t sure when Taehyung will be back. If he does come back—”

“He’ll be back,” The skin behind your neck grew hot with how quickly you assured that, a statement mostly spoken to sate the tiny nagging part of yourself that was left lost with your entire situation as a whole. Namjoon blinked, unwavering, chin twitching just enough to nod. 

“But I’d be happy to help for as long as I’m here,” You allowed yourself to smile even if the line wobbled a bit. You resumed your chopping in silence, only long enough to finish off the vegetable underneath your palm before you were sweeping your work space clean, dusting your fingers off in the process. 

“Where should be start, boss?”

You were tasked with reorganization while Namjoon took to his computer, conjuring up flyers dedicated to those few events you’d agreed upon after exhausting a list of potential, quick ways to garner attention and profit. Aside from making the store more navigable for the average person (as well as setting aside some funds specifically to order the missing books in series), bringing people into the store seemed like an obvious answer to gaining short (or long) term interest in the store. 

An easy way to bring people into the store was to host events. 

Armed with three massive stacks of flyers in the basket on the front of Namjoon’s spare bike, you took off on an advertising run. You stopped at Yoongi’s, watching Namjoon wallpaper flyers to the glass windows outside the cafe while Yoongi looked disgruntled between the spaces in the fluttering paper yet made no attempt to remove any of them and quietly took a stack you handed him to hand out to customers as they came in. Jeongguk barely let you get the question out of your mouth, appearing with a sheet of thick, round, metallic stickers of his own design that he used to plaster the various event flyers over the front of his desk and a promise to photocopy the flyers and post them to every gaming community he knew online. 

The first event advertised was in connection with the local elementary school, parents pouring through the doors one Wednesday after school while their beaming teacher brought up the rear. You settled them in with fresh baked cookies and hot chocolate while Marie made her rounds, resisting gooey chocolate off of chubby fingers and happily deciding upon a small girl in the corner who was completely enamored with a dinosaur themed pop up book she’d discovered with Namjoon’s help. 

You’d watched quietly where he knelt next to her on the shorter shelves, one’s you’d specially arranged for the event and as a way to pinpoint the location of the children's books previously scattered aimlessly about. He’d murmured gently too her, offering books on the shelves she couldn’t quite reach until she made grabby hands at a slightly disgruntled stegosaurus when Namjoon had flipped open the first thick page. 

Hoseok, their teacher, drew you out of your fond trance. His arms were filled with educational books, ones a level between the ages he taught and that of high school, glossy pages filled with just enough text and just enough pictures to appeal to all ages. Wavy red hair parted down the middle, fluttering against shining apple cheeks as he beamed giddily at you, rainbow cartoon smiley faces in a repeated pattern on his shirt almost blinding you all the same. 

“I did some shopping while you two watched over them,” Hoseok admitted bashfully, a slight pink tinting his ears as he glanced at the book on top of his stack, a midnight blue cover with an abundance of jungle animals spilling across the surface. “I hope they weren’t too bad.”

“Not at all,” You softened, pulling your gaze away from Namjoon when the little girl proudly parked herself in his lap and began to chatter absently about the next dinosaur that popped into view, a triceratops by first glance. “I could give you a discount since they’re for the school?”

“Oh no, I couldn’t—” Hoseok’s eyes widened, tossing his fringe as an absent habit, “—I’d like to support anyway. I feel as if I don’t do that enough lately.”

“It would be no problem.”

He brushed past you to place his towering stack on top of the counter, already digging deep in the pocket of his bright purple jeans. A wad of cash was pushed across to you before you could even begin to swipe barcodes through the system. 

“Consider it a donation.”

The dinosaur popup book sold during the event along with a dozen other children’s books that Namjoon assured you were relics, books he’d forgotten were on the shelves at all let alone ones that would sell instantly upon being relocated to an easy to find vicinity (whether that be grouped or closer to the ground where two foot tall humans could scan at eye level). 

Other things started to leave too, filling the space in between scheduled events. You saw a fair amount of hand sized romance novels leave the door, ones you plopped randomly onto a singular turnstyle you assembled from multiples hunks of plastic in a dusty cardboard box in the room underneath the staircase, flowery covers with fraying spines shoved into purses and jacket pockets. Magazines started to go, new and old issues alike after you ordered them in stacks on Namjoon’s wooden table as it sat in the front window display. Series started to go as a whole, limited in quantity but at least as a whole rather than in the first and third book with the second book to be ordered from an online delivery or serviced from a nearby chain. 

You sold out of crossword puzzle books when the second event came, murder mysteries and a fair few of the popular horror authors leaving the store too when the local florist used the space to teach a beginner’s bouqet workshop. The blonde headed man, Park Jimin in all his charming giggles and devastating smile, brought in his self written gardening manual, giving Namjoon a sizable check to be able to sell them while he did his workshop. 

You had every reason to believe it wasn’t the atmosphere of the bookshop that had elderly women kissing red lipstick stains into his blushing cheeks and selling out his small stack of green pamphlets but Namjoon wasn’t one to turn away the check. 

“What do you know about daisies?” 

Jimin’s expression immediately grew amused, glancing at you from under shaggy fringe as he hunched to untie the cat covered apron pressed to his stature. He freed the knot at his spine, straightening once more as he shrugged it over his head and began to meticulously fold it. 

“A lot,” His eyebrow cocked, letting the apron fall to his now empty table, “What are you wanting to know?”

“Let’s say you were trying to grow a plant in a moving van—” You crossed your arms, “—could you do it?”

His nose wrinkled at the bridge, “With a lot of finesse, probably. But if we’re talking about a plant that’s good with traveling...succulents might be a good bet.”

The dip between your thumb and palm itched and you rubbed it at your hip, smiling, “That’s what I figured.”

Locations around the store were progressively growing blurrier each time you glanced up from the harsh lighting off the computer monitor in the shop. There was a soft glow from the moon where it reflected on the floor panels at the front of the room but it didn’t quite reach through the rows of thick shelves (you’d rearranged books, not furniture. Namjoon wouldn’t budget on layout) but otherwise, you worked in the dark, fingers working on muscle memory around the keyboard as you continued to plug in information to the online application. 

The events worked, giving the store a two month boost in sales that granted you, at the very least, a chance to save the store. It was just that, a boost, nothing that could sustain long term even with newfound organization and aggressive attempts at community engagement. Even with all that, you lacked the funds to properly distribute across all things that needed tending to, particularly the ordering that would require you to keep up with the amount of product that went out the door after the first event. 

It was a curve, one with a sharper downfall than the first. 

Creaking on the staircase alerted you to Namjoon’s presence, phone flashlight outlined Marie where she sat cradled in the curve of his elbow. He placed her on the floor when he reached the bottom, allowing him to properly balance the basket curled on his opposite forearm. 

“...alright?” He murmured. The wicker container was slid to the counter top next to you as he slid onto the free stool. 

You hummed, flicking your index finger up and down the scroll to send the typed text whirring by. “Just about done,” You placed your chin on your shoulder, gaze cutting away from his gentle smile to nod at the basket, “What do you have there?”

“Oh!” Namjoon thumbed at the lid, digging inside to present you with two plastic wrapped sandwiches. He placed those aside, returning with a metal thermos next, followed by two paper plates and forks you recognized from the utensil drawer in the apartment. “I packed us a little paperwork picnic.”

You dragged one of the sandwiches closer, careful in picking apart the wrap to discover sliced tomato, floppy lettuce, and careful strips of bacon stuck between two fresh buns. Lemonade was dunked into two plastic cups by the careful hands of Namjoon, his smile growing when you shot him an inquisitive glance. 

“I said packed for a reason,” He teased, nudging you when you pinched at one of the ranch drenched piece of greenery, “Jin insisted I take them when I was picking up lunch earlier.”

“Was the picnic part your idea?” You accepted a glass from him, drawing it to your bottom lip without taking a sip. 

His gaze remained unwavering as his hand dipped back inside the basket, tripping it across the glass counter top a bit but managing to retrieve the checkered strip of fabric at the bottom of the basket in the end. It fluttered from its folded position when he lifted it higher, showing that it wasn’t a full checkered blanket but instead a strip of fabric, sheared at the edges and appearing to be a leftover from something sewn.  It was just big enough for each of your glasses to sit with a comfortable distance from each other, something Namjoon completely by gently drawing your cup out of your grasp and settling it next to his. 

“Maybe,” He watched as you continued to squint at the end of the sandwich, “...that means the food is safe to eat. Promise.”

You let yourself take a sizable bite, chewing thoughtfully through the crunchy bacon. You swallowed, serious into the next nibble you tested, “You have more trust in Seokjin than I do.”

It was quiet as the two of you began to dig into your meals, the first of any sizable food you’d had the entire day as a result of being cooped up in a mountain of tax papers, profit spreadsheets, generic online bell curve generators, and the daunting application that hung on the thread of an accidental click to send its incompleteness spiraling into the cloud of uncertainty for the store. 

Your typing resumed in silence too, scrolling rather as you simply scanned over the answers you’d provided for the longer answers, open ended questions reminiscent of essay portions of school applications. The words by themselves registered but the combination of such into sentences didn’t comprehend in your mind, subconscious elsewhere as the pixels flashed through your blurred peripheral by means of your own flicking fingertip. 

“So what’s your story?”

The screen stalled at your command, shoulders sagging. Softly, you wiggled the mouse to click out of the screen at hand, bringing up the smiling koala cartoon whose name you’d learned was Koya. “Is this another interview?”

Namjoon’s fingers warmed your wrist, pulling your hand toward him until your stool spun on its own accord. He continued to hold onto your wrist, thumb traveling upward to brush across your knuckles. 

“No,” His voice grew warm, quiet for the ambiance created in the quaint shop near the midnight hour, “I only know a fraction of your story, the rising action, maybe? I’m not too sure. I don’t have enough information to even begin to plug it into the imaginary literary equation.”

“You graduated with a literature degree and you have questionable yet defendable taste in books read in your free time,” Namjoon squeezed your skin, “What else am I missing?”

“I write sometimes,” The words came so quick that your conscious had to pause to gather your next thought, trailing your gaze over Namjoon’s head. You squinted, blurring the darkness of the children’s shelves a bit more as you corrected, “I’m a writer.”

“I had a book deal right out of graduation, something I’d worked ages on. Revised three different times to appease to different agents, none of which ended up signing me. Self publishing was an option I just saw the other side. Heard too many pitches that made me a bit too hopeful.”

“And then finally I found someone who wanted to take me on. Who assured me that I could make big waves within their agency. Said they’d never quite seen anything like my writing style, something that didn’t quite fit in my declared genres,” You laughed bitterly, letting your hand drop from Namjoon’s to rub across your lap, “Said they’d never quite heard anyone as headstrong about my particular beliefs either. Said it was a good thing, made me memorable.”

“I got all the way to their corporate office in the city to sign off on the rights. I even went to the effort to type up my notes and my drafts and whatever else I could find—” You offered a smile, “—I prefer handwriting—” sighing, you spread your fingers apart, pressing at the bend in your thumb, “—Had it all stapled and put together in a nice folder.”

“Then they told me they couldn’t sign me. I don’t remember the exact reason. I think I stopped listening to them after my potential agent was called out of the room for a phone meeting with another prospective client.”

A shaky inhale kept the mist of tears that involuntarily gathered in your waterline at bay, gaze darting to your wringing fingers, “Have you ever played that jelly bean game? The one where half the blue ones taste like raspberry and the other taste like disinfectant wipes or something? It kind of felt like that. Going in expecting one thing and leaving with the exact opposite.”

“I didn’t know I could feel that lost,” You admitted out loud, further elaborating, “I had no plan other than that. It seemed like all my other friends were graduating with a perfect bridge into their new lives,” You let yourself smile, “...even Taehyung. He was always planning on traveling after graduation.”

“He never really understood what I was going through. I didn’t expect him to. Like I said, he had his own plans, one that hadn’t included me until a week or two before they were to begin. I don’t blame him for not understanding how to handle me. And in a way...I feel guilty for placing that kind of responsibility on him. He didn’t need to feel obligated to care for me but he did and he always had and for that I’m sorry.”

“I guess I thought doing something impulsive would give me a purpose again. At the very least, maybe it’d renew my purpose. Maybe I’d want to start a whole new book. Maybe I’d want to try self publishing if I forgot about the horrors I endured through the other process,” A tear appeared now, slipping down the bridge of your nose as your lips wrinkled into a shriveled petal and you shook your head, letting your palms lift and fall back into your lap with an audible slap, “Nothing.”

You startled when something scuffed on the floor, gaze focusing on what you could see in front of you once more. Namjoon had shuffled closer, bringing his stool with him until his knees bumped into yours, close enough for the warmth of his palm to cup your cheek this time soft in using the curve of his thumb to collect the stream of tears as they began to fall more freely. 

“Can I tell you something?” You murmured, waiting until his silent gaze met yours. 

“This gave me a purpose again. You gave me a purpose,” You grinned, some of the excess tears spreading over your tongue, “At first it was just wanting to figure out why this strange man with a cat wanted to arrange his bookstore like that.” 

“Old dog new tricks,” Namjoon insisted, voice gentle for the first time since his initial question. 

You let both your hands cup his wrist, holding his hand against your face, “You reminded me of my initial purpose. What I grew so far from...that there’s so much warmth in literature and books and the written word.”

“There’s always worth in spreading that type of love to the community,” Your lips curled in the edge, not quite reaching your teeth, “It’d be a shame if you didn’t get to continue to do so.”

“Thank you, sweetheart,” The intimacy expanded outward, encasing your statures in a safety bubble when his forehead touched yours, holding you there by means of his hand on your cheek and your fingers around his forearm. He waited until he no longer felt new splashes of tears underneath his diligent thumb before he spoke again. 

“Have you ever thought about trying again?” 

Namjoon was so close, the warmth bleeding off his dark irises giving your uncertain heart a squeeze. It didn’t cut into your confusion, “Try what?”

“To get another book deal,” He straightened just enough to pick at your opposite cheek with his free hand, placing stray hairs aside in a meticulously soft way, “Just how far have I inspired you, honey?”

You swatted at him, squawking until he held up a hand in surrender. 

“I haven’t, not with...that book anyway. Truthfully, I trashed everything but my handwritten notes that day. I think I even impulsively deleted the files or if they’re still out there I wouldn’t know where to find them.”

“I suppose my next question as to if I can read anything by you is moot now.”

“I’m sure there’s some embarrassing poems out there on my undergraduate literary magazine website…”

Namjoon cocked an eyebrow, “That’s a scavenger hunt I’m willing to have.”

“And it’s one I’m willing to help you with—” You giggled, managing to catch his hands when they went to do grabby hands around your body at the computer mouse, “—after we submit this paperwork.” 

“Ah, right,” Warm hands landed on your hips, spinning you to face the monitor while a heavy chin settled on your shoulder, “The whole save my passion thing. I suppose the poems can wait.”

You wrote a poem in undergraduate about a divorce as told by the family cat, the detached perspective of an animal who has no conscious understanding of anything in the human world, yet is still watching his life crash before his eyes. He’s not getting food as often. Everyone is always yelling. Suddenly, dad isn’t there anymore. His tiny human, the child of the family, comes and goes in a confusing schedule. But he still has to be a cat.

The script on that section of the university page barely functioned any longer, drawing your poem into mismatched fonts with spacing that surely wasn’t what you’d originally intended. The flit of your gaze over the up and down scroll of the page fit the same detached sense that the cat in the story had. 

Life still went on around you as the crippling rejection email for the store grant hovered in the next tab over from your poem. Namjoon’s absent restocking of the shelves at the front of the store proved that. 

You clicked out of your poem, letting the etched red logo at the top of the email cover your vision once more as you sighed. A bitter tap of your index finger later and the image was hidden, just leaving the wall of text that was just several different ways to say you didn’t receive the grant. You’d opened all their resource links, those hovering in the next browser over while Koya watched on behind them. 

None of those would work, either. You didn’t buy from their partner supplier. Your store square footage wasn’t enough. You didn’t specialize in one specific genre. You didn’t offer library-like services alongside the business aspect. 

One tab had the generic question plugged into a search engine, easy ways to make money. You felt like you were applying for school again, scrounging for scholarship opportunities on survey websites that did nothing but implore armies of viruses into your hard drive. Some of those resources still sat in unorganized folders in your email, ones you mindlessly scrolled past with your cheek scrunched into your curled fist, fingernails pressing crescents into your palm the harder you squeezed. 

University emails changed from graduation subject lines to assignment subject lines to personal sprinkled within, exchanges with members of group projects or monthly subscriber updates from clubs you participated in. 

Junk emails continued to pour in on the daily even if your email was virtually untouched since you’d sat out on the road which meant the folder continued to dump an unprecedented amount of data into your deleted file never to be cleaned out where you used to diligently empty it. You did that with a clear conscience, a small victory in your hazy consciousness as your finger misjudged and you found your drafts opening.

There was a singular email, the body text left blank and the subject line half typed. Manuscript...A tiny paper clip indicated that something was attached. 

For a second, you feared you’d overloaded Namjoon’s system with the file size until the PDF materialized across the screen, blank at first until the last of the near eighty pages downloaded and you found yourself face to face with the typed contents of your lost yellow folder. 

Your laughter drew Namjoon from his task, his silhouette shadowing over what was already dark in the store, another late night venture between the two of you when the news of rejection had the both of you searching for something to do that wasn’t nothing. He was smiling at first until he caught a sheen on your cheeks, laughter slowly materializing into sobs before he could properly reach you. 

He uttered your name, hip catching on the edge of the counter as he lunged for you yet reeled back at the glaring title on the screen. The initial hug his instinct wished to provide stalled, hands instead landing on your shoulders as he squeezed. 

“What’s this?”

“I think this thing is haunting me,” You groaned miserably, “Either that or your computer itself is haunted.”

Namjoon kept a firm grip on you as he shook the mouse, minimizing the tab and all the others until Koya’s smiling face spread across the screen. Gentle pressure turned you, hands leaving to spread palm up, fingers wiggling. 

Softly, Namjoon encouraged, “Let’s go to bed.” 

Marie’s meow managed to piece some of the scrambled pieces together once your slow advancements at the lead of Namjoon’s hand paused, leaving you to realize this isn’t your room. 

“This is your room,” You audibly expressed, flinching away from one of the two foot tall character’s he had curled in the doorway. 

He let go of your hand to allow you to make your decision, assuring that his searching gaze ducked to find your own. “Is that okay?”

Your whimper welcomed the stretch of one of his hoodies across your torso, snug to the fresh coffee ground and fresh rain scent that clung to his duvet as long fingers tucked it around your body. He settled in next to you, just close enough to stroke at your cheek with his thumb and the flat of his mouth. 

“Hey Namjoon?” 

He shifted closer, curled knees encasing yours as his fingertips began to stroke down the back of your head. “Yeah, love?”

“Do you want to try again?” You regarded him with just your eyes, mouth and nose hidden underneath the hem of his sheets. “To keep the store?”

His lips lingered on your forehead this time, cradling the back of your head until the shaking of your shoulders subsided. The tip of his nose pulled back to brush where yours would be underneath the blanket, nodding so the skin brushed accidentally a second time. 

“What else is there to do?”

You found a warm bagel and a handwritten note on a napkin in place of Namjoon’s stature when you woke. Raw eyes found it difficult to decipher the shapes he’d quickly scrawled with a blunt tipped marker but somehow you made out store. You abandoned the plated bagel and headed for the staircase.

“If that’s not Marie I don’t want you down here,” A laughing voice ordered your descend when you’d barely made it to the fourth stair. 

“Why?”

“Did you not read my note?”

“It said that you were working in the store.”

“And that you’re not allowed down here yet.”

You continued your descent a few slow stairs at a time, “I won’t look.”

Namjoon snorted, an image you saw when you already broke your promise to find him seated at the counter completely swamped in crafting materials. Strips of construction paper, jagged cardboard, stacks of printer paper still half hanging out of their packages. 

“What are you doing? DIY decorations?”

He looked up where he was furiously spinning a shard of pipe cleaner, “I thought you said you wouldn’t look.”

“Oops,” You shrugged, bare feet chilled all the way up your legs to where your sleep shorts began as you shuffled toward him, squinting at the mass chaos he’d created. Your gaze trailed upward from the browns and purples and metal utensils, starting to offer a generic question once more until you found your manuscript still open on the computer monitor. “What are you…Namjoon what are you doing?”

He grunted into the last spin of his fingers, securing the last, electric blue pipe cleaner in the poorly jabed hole through the top of the object he held in whitening knuckles. An audible breath slipped through his lips, hanging ajar for a second before his lips drew upward into a smile. 

“I, uhm,” Namjoon thrust the object toward you, “I made you something.”

It appeared to be made of three separate pieces of cardboard, a front and back cover with a sizable strip bent to accommodate either, acting as a mock spine. Purple construction paper was glued over the brown substance, dobs of glue staining some of the edges but flat otherwise. A trio of electric blue pipe cleaners sat in neatly spaced, tightly spun balls on the far left side, binding the ball of pages instead that had already begun to bend at the cardboard covers.  The same messy handwriting that covered the napkin now forgotten in Namjoon’s bed graced the front, the title of the novel larger than your name. The back held similar penmanship, the synopsis you’d provided to various companies scrawled just above a tiny, attempted portrait of you. 

“I know you said you got rid of the other one but if you ever wanted to try again, you know, to get it published—” Namjoon smiled, tucking his arms between his legs shyly as he leaned toward you, “—now you have a potential mock up to show them, too.”

You kissed him with your palm pressed into the pair of scissors he’d dropped when he heard you descend down the stairs, body leaned awkwardly over the counter until he stood to intercept you. His palm held onto the side of your neck while you clutched the book to your chest, breathing into the open seam of his lips. 

“Thank you so much.”

“I’d make you ten more copies if you wanted me to.”

Your laughter stopped just a hair short of kissing him again when there was a knocking at the front door, gentle at first and then frantic when you jumped away from Namjoon. Through the spaces in the shelves, you could see Jeongguk, his over exaggerated waving growing smaller as you and Namjoon approached. 

“Was I…” Jeongguk’s gaze flashed to Namjoon’s flushed cheeks when you pulled the door open, “Was I interrupting something?”

Namjoon did an astounding job of holding in his irritation, “What do you need, Guk?”

“Oh!” He perked up again, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. A sheet of paper was thrust against your chest, “Special delivery. You need to look at it now.”

“What—”

“No time to explain,” Jeongguk shot you a thumbs up, taking backward steps that had him stumbling over pieces of gravel on the sidewalk as he went to dash in the opposite direction of the hotel, “See you later!”

Namjoon went for the sheet of stickers while you came to inspect the tiny piece of notebook paper balanced on top of it. 

“Are those tiny aloe plants?” He continued to awe, pointing at the characters on the sheet. 

Hey dove, good news! I found your folder. If you want it uhm...look up. I guess. 

Taehyung stood across the street, hair entirely longer than how’d you’d left him, adorned in a matching baggy grey sweatsuit with your yellow folder clutched against his chest. 

He braced for the impact of your arms throwing themselves around his neck yet still managed to stumble back two or three paces in a fit of laughter as you clung to him. “Hey there,” He greeted, nose in your hair as he managed to properly weave his arms around your waist and squeeze. “How’ve you been?”

The initial joy seized in your heart as you pulled away to look at him, softening, “I’m not going to go back with you.”

Taehyung’s grin grew wider, all geometric edges and bouncing fringe as he nodded. A gentle understanding, leaning in closer to murmur, “I didn’t think you would, kid, not from the second you stepped out of the van—” After a second, he said a bit louder, “—and besides. That’s not what I asked you.”

You hummed thoughtfully, glancing over your shoulder to where Namjoon continued to regard the interaction fondly. You smiled, turning back to Taehyung. 

“Have you had breakfast yet?”

He shook his head, gentle in sliding his hands down your arms before taking your hands, shaking them gently between your bodies, “I’m not going to stay much longer,” One hand left you to take the folder he’d shoved underneath his arm, “Just wanted to bring you this.”

You took it gently, rubbing thoughtfully at the old rip in the spine. A few more had joined it from whatever turmoil it had endured in the last months. “Where did you find it?”

“I’d put it underneath your seat when I cleaned. To keep it safe,” Taehyung’s smile was regretful and amused all the same, “Forgot I put it there…”

“Are your succulents okay?”

“Mhm…” His hand cupped yours where you held the folder, “You still haven’t answered me. Are you okay?”

Another involuntary glance behind you to Namjoon who offered you a thumbs up this time. “Yeah,” You nodded, “Yeah. Yeah, Taehyung, I’m great.”

Taehyung’s smile was equally as fond, nodding once to your rapid ones, “I’m glad…” He trailed off, patting the folder in your grasp, “Well I, uhm, just came to return that to you so—”

“Can you keep it?”

“What?” 

“Can you keep it safe for me?” You pressed the folder back against his chest, “I don’t think I need it anymore.”

“Yeah, yeah I can…” Taehyung gradually pulled it closer until it was hugged against his chest, taking a step backward, “Yeah. I’ll keep it safe.” He made prolonged eye contact with you, smiling, “I’ll see you?”

“Of course,” You touched his chest, “And hey, Tae?”

“Hmm?”

You patted him and then your folder. 

“Don’t get lost out there.”

#bts reactions #bts scenarios #bts imagines #bts x reader #namjoon imagines #bts fluff #namjoon fluff #namjoon x reader #fic: lost

[icarusbuck]

19. I can't do this anymore

FOX! 911 | mature but not explicit content

∞

Rain beat against the windows as Buck lay sprawled at the edge of the rug in Eddie's living room. Eddie sat cross-legged beside him, surveying the hundreds of puzzle pieces scattered across the hardwood floor.

"Your stupid rug keeps tickling me," Buck complained, not for the first time.

"So sit up," Eddie told him, not for the first time. "Or put a stupid shirt on."

Buck rolled away from Eddie, leaning on his elbow as he scratched at his bare belly. He fixed Eddie with a scowl as he did, and then rolled back into the same position. His attention returned once more to the thousand-piece puzzle he'd discovered while rooting around the game shelf in the hall closet. Truth be told, Eddie hadn't even known he owned a puzzle, let alone one of that size.

They had the house to themselves for once. Christopher was off on a field trip and would be gone until early evening, which gave them a whole day off with nowhere to go and nothing to do. It was driving Eddie crazy. After breakfast, he'd emerged from the shower to discover Buck turning the contents of the box out in the living room.

"Kitchen table too good for you?" Eddie had teased, and Buck's only response was a shrug as he flattened out on the floor in nothing but sweats. 

Buck, as it turned out, was ridiculously good at puzzles. In the time it took Eddie to find and arrange all of the edge pieces, Buck had three separate sections of the puzzle put together based on the colors and patterns alone. He was pretty sure Buck didn't even reference the box before doing so. Still, he picked up piece after piece, always managing to select the exact one he was looking for.

Thunder rumbled beyond the windows as the storm clouds moved over Los Angeles.

Eddie shifted his weight onto one leg and extended the other out to stave off the static feeling numbing his toes. He sighed and tossed the box away from him, resigned to working on a very small section of the puzzle that showed clear blue sky. He'd picked through the rest of the pieces for ones that matched and assembled them in a pile near his knee, but his interest was already waning.

Especially compared to Buck's pin-point accuracy. He managed to fit three pieces together in the time it took Buck to complete several inches of the bottom side of the puzzle.

"I can't do this anymore," Eddie grumbled, rubbing the feeling back into his foot.

"Okay, well. You aren't exactly helping me anyway," Buck spoke without ever stopping. His hand hovered over the pieces as he scanned them.

Eddie glared at the side of his head and gestured toward the mess. "I did the edge pieces," he said, mildly insulted.

"I didn't really need you to," Buck observed, smiling widely once he found the piece he was looking for. He placed it without looking up.

"Don't worry, I'm not offended," Eddie announced sarcastically. He picked up the box again, studying it and assessing their progress. Well, Buck's progress.

"I don't really care," Buck said, teasing. He shifted his weight and bumped up sidelong into Eddie's thigh.

Eddie exhaled through his nose like a bull and threw the box down again. "Why are you even here if you aren't going to pay attention to me?"

Buck shrugged awkwardly, only managing to lift the shoulder that wasn't supporting his weight. "Just find something else to do, let me finish this first."

He made a face at the back of Buck's head.

Admittedly, it probably wouldn't take very long, but as he sat there and looked around the room he couldn't find anything to hold his attention. He wasn't interested in watching anything. It was far too wet to go outside. His bookshelf held nothing new, nothing worth rereading. He could bake, but he wanted to enjoy his down time with Buck, and the kitchen wasn't exactly the best place for their current activity. He sighed and looked down at Buck critically.

Buck had his feet in the air, ankles crossed. They swayed leisurely to some imaginary beat in his head. He supported his weight on one elbow, the arm curled under him while the other periodically stretched out across the sea of identical looking pieces to select one. The muscles in his shoulders bunched and rolled every time he moved.

The perfect distraction.

Eddie leaned over his hips and planted his hand on the other side of him, mapping out the long plane of Buck's back with only his eyes.

Buck squirmed, almost as if Eddie's attention was a tangible thing.

Light as a feather, he began tracing one finger over Buck's skin, beginning near the hem of his sweats. He zigzagged his way around from freckle to freckle, drawing fleeting images with his mind's eye.

"Quit it," Buck complained, but he didn't put any weight behind it. His hand went still over the puzzle pieces, giving him away.

"You told me to find something else to do," Eddie reminded him. He bent his head to press a kiss between Buck's shoulder blades.

There was a hyper-sensitive spot just to the right of his spine, halfway between ticklish and pleasurable. Buck described it as pure sensation echoing through him, like plucking a guitar string or striking a nerve, and it stretched from his butt cheek all the way up the back of his neck. He'd never been able to explain its existence.

Eddie discovered it early on, and there was no turning back. He wasn't above abusing the knowledge now. He skimmed over and dragged his teeth across it knowingly.

Buck slapped his hand down on the floor for leverage as he tensed and arched away from the point of contact. He took a ragged breath and made a strangled noise, but Eddie had already moved on. He followed the creeping flush steadily making its way into Buck's shoulders, leaving a trail of open mouthed kisses in its wake.

He paused his progress at the base of Buck's neck. His muscles remained taut, breaths coming short and fast. Eddie ran his hand down Buck's back, simultaneously appreciating them and attempting to soothe some of the stiffness out of them. Buck relaxed marginally, enough for Eddie to slide his hand around his side. He reached across Buck's chest and wrenched him up off the floor, bowing his back in one smooth motion.

At the same time, he sunk his teeth into the place where Buck's neck met his shoulder. Buck gasped and shuddered, clutching at Eddie's arm. 

"Do I have your attention now?" Eddie growled, setting his lips against the shell of Buck's ear. Buck could only nod, twisting against his hold.

He was quick to roll over once Eddie let him go, avoiding the scattered puzzle pieces as he landed on his back. Eddie flattened out over him before he finished rolling over, kissing and touching everywhere he could.

The day dragged slowly on, but at least he had something to entertain him for a while.

#fictober20 #911 on fox #buddie #evan buckley #eddie diaz #rainy day puzzles and... other things ;)) #you may have seen this prompt and thought 'surely griffin will give us angst' #and to that i say: NAY

[fayesdiary]

I WISH I KNEW ANYTHING SUBSTANTIVE ABOUT BIRTHRIGHT SO I COULD GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO BUILD OFF. I think you mentioned that one of the late game maps (Chapter 21?) was a nightmare -- do I even want to know what that was about?

Don’t worry about it! So, about Chapter 21: It’s a Defeat Boss map (and thank god, if it was a Rout chapter I would have screamed) You’re in a volcano, and to get to the boss you either have to go through a zigzag route, or just use a flier to get to the boss. Seems simple enough, right? The problem is that the map is flooded with enemies, with most of them being Stoneborns: monsters with 1-5 range that literally throw boulders at you, so they have shaky hitrates but hurt like a truck (and because Fates has 1-hit RNG compared to most of the other titles like say, Awakening, they will hit more often than you’d tend to think). Oh, and there are enemy reinforcements every turn, because screw you. Also some archers scattered around so you can’t just fly to the boss. You can technically slow them down with a Dragon Vein, which turns the pathway into lava tiles, so it reduces movement and damages units every turn. Problem is that it often hurts you more than it hurts the enemies, because they high HP and low Movement isn’t much of an issue to Stoneborns since they can attack you from 5 range. They’re literally Valentia archers with stones, for crying out loud. To make matters worse? Activating the Dragon Vein blocks the path forward too, meaning that every unit that can’t fly is stuck until the Vein respawns, which takes around 4 turns. And when you finally get to the boss (which is also a Stoneborn that talks for some reason), if you don’t manage to kill it in one round you are greeted with a literal battalion of reinforcements near the boss that gives Warriors a run for its money. Every. Single. Turn. If Ryoma wasn’t such a powerhouse, I’m not sure how I would have beat this mess of a chapter, honestly...

#fire emblem #fire emblem fates #fire emblem fates birthright #fe14 #you can't even say it was because of lunatic or maniac or whatever #i was playing on HARD for fuck's sake #luckily i was playing on casual too #i'd dread to think how many times i'd have been forced to reset otherwise #ask replies #iturbide

[moonoreos]

fic: it’s a metaphor

Dosan remembers that first day. He saw her in the midst of a bustling crowd. He saw her, and it was as if time had stood still. He very well knew time actually did not stop, but it sure felt like it had. Pedestrians zigzagged through the paved concrete to make their way across the park, but he stayed immobile. It was only when their eyes met that he released the breath he had been holding.

Was that the moment everything changed?

It’s impossible not to agonize over what could have been in the aftermath of heartbreak. It was all he could think about for a good while. He spent years trying to beat it out of himself, trying to convince his wayward heart that it doesn’t need an anchor, but one look at her and he’s right back where he began. Time away did nothing to dull the sting. It remains just as acute as it was the day it found him.  

Or was it when it first dawned on him that sail off without a map held a world of possibilities?

She is leaning against his shoulder now, asleep and unaware of the chaos she inspires in his mind. The fire he stoked earlier crackles in the quiet night. He's not sure if the warmth emanating through his body is feeling its effect or the effects of her closeness that he has been starved for all this time.

Dalmi shifts a fraction, and the hair he’d tucked behind her ear falls over her face again. Reflexively, he reaches over and pulls it back for her. She has smudges of dirt on both of her cheeks. He thumbs over one side, and it’s barely a graze but he still feels the pleasant buzz of her skin. The smudge remains. With a sigh, he turns to the business plan he holds in his hands.

The possibilities were endless, Dalmi had said about Tarzan. Just how much could it learn?

Dalmi has always been a dreamer. A seasoned one at that who is keen on solving problems, not letting them become the nail on the coffin of the ideas she spins.

It was a concept he couldn’t ever grasp. To dream was to be brave, to want something so unfailingly that the prospect of failure itself would never be a deterrent. It was a terrifying idea. He could not set himself up for something that was just as likely to fail as it was to succeed. Life offered too many uncontrolled variables, too many uncertainties.

He flips through the pages, studying the scope and intended applications, the road to an MVP, short term and long term goals, and he can see it all so clearly. Dosan has never been particularly visually inclined, but Dalmi evokes something in him. She has a formula figured out, a way of imagining things, that immediately make sense to his one-track mind. She speaks, and he sees colors in her words—red, green, blue, and all the others he never thought of before he met her. He sees moving pictures brought to life in vivid sharpness, sees the solution of a problem he had never even thought of. Dalmi is a visionary, bursting with life and ideas for how it can be elevated. Dosan became familiar with the sense of fulfillment that had alluded him most of his life in working with Dalmi, in making her colorful, broad stroked dreams come true.

Perhaps that is why she came to be his dream. He wonders now; was it then that he reached the point of no return? When he realized that he wanted nothing more than to become the man who was deserving of her beautiful heart and the pure, unbridled warmth it exuded? It was the first thing he'd wanted unfailingly, even with the heavily skewed probability that he was going to fail.

Dalmi stirs awake, lifts her head off his shoulders leaving room for the cold air to rush in.

“Ah, I’m sorry,” she says, not looking at him.

“You should get some more sleep.”

“No,” she says, decisively turning to him. “I didn’t come here to sleep. We need to—”

She is pointing at the Tarzan business plan still in his hands.

“Did you read it?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you think?”

What did he think?

His thoughts are clear as the starry night sky, but he struggles to verbalize them. This is another fork in the road. The first time he knowingly took the wrong turn. The road was riddled with several thorns, but the joy of falling in love with Dalmi easily overpowered any pain he felt, any pain he still feels. If given the chance, he’d take the same wrong turn again in a heartbeat.

But he needs to do right by her this time. It’s what Dalmi deserves. He will survive even if he is not standing next to Dalmi, even if there is someone else in place next to her. After three years being oceans apart, he’s just grateful that he gets to breathe the same air as her.

“What can I do to make you work with us? At least tell me the terms you want,” she prods, when Dosan doesn’t offer anything.

“Forget it.”

“Stock options, ten percent?”

“Dalmi-ah, forget it.”

“Or do you want shares now? I can try and persuade unnie.”

“The money I got when 2STO took over Samsan Tech,” he begins, steadying his voice. “I still have it. With that money, I want to acquire shares in Cheongmyeong Company.”

He turns to face her, holds her gaze confidently, as she furrows her brows in confusion.

“What are you talking about? That should be your money. Just join the company. About shares, I’ll talk to unnie—”

“That’s my condition.”

The question in her eyes makes the dull ache in his chest sharper.

“I know, you and Team Leader Han are…,” he can’t say it, he just can’t. “I will always respect your decision. In business and—, and in everything.”  

He looks away, moves to pick up the cup ramen that is lukewarm to touch now. He can still feel the weight of her eyes on him. It makes the storm inside his heart rage even harder. He reaches for the second cup ramen and pushes it towards her.

“Team Leader Han and I,” she starts, pulling the chopsticks off the edge of the cup ramen. “We’re not… we’re not together.”

It’s possible his jaw would have dropped to the floor if he hadn’t been chewing mouthful of ramen. He slurps the last of it and looks at Dalmi uncertainly.

“But Team Leader—”

“It’s not true,” she interrupts, hastily.  

Dosan would be much more upset with Han Jipyeong if Dalmi hadn’t been looking at him with her wide expectant eyes this very moment.

“I—,” he starts, and stumbles immediately. “I mean, it would’ve made sense if you two were together. He is your first love.”

“My first love, Nam Dosan from the letters, doesn’t exist.” She sighs, setting the cup ramen down. “My first love was an illusion, but my feelings for you, the real Nam Dosan, was never an illusion. I’m sorry I said things I didn’t mean.” Her voice is shaking by the end, her eyes filled with tears.

Dosan is overwhelmed, but his hands move of their own accord when her tears spill. He pulls her closer instinctively, an old habit borne out of the need to reassure her in times of distress.

“Dalmi-ah. Don’t cry.” He has her face cupped in his hands, wipes the tears running down her cold cheeks with his thumbs.

“I thought about you everyday,” she says, lips quivering. And Dosan can’t believe what he is hearing. He wants to echo her words, because it’s true for him too. His every waking moment was haunted by traces of her—sometimes as a pleasant memory that gave him the strength to pull through a difficult day, more often as an omnipresent ache in the hollow of his chest. He wants to tell her these things, so she knows what she means to him, but there is a knot in his throat that he can’t unentangle. All he can bring himself to say is, “Why?"

She blinks back her tears, looks at him in confusion. “Why do you like me?” He asks again.

He continues when she doesn’t offer a response. “I am not the one who wrote the letters. I’m not the one who comforted you. I lied to you, I hurt you. Why do you like me?”

Dosan feels tears stinging the corner of his own eyes. He’s still recovering from the whiplash after learning that Dalmi is not with Han Jipyeong, but these doubts have plagued him for a long time. Even when things were fine between them, before the house of cards crumbled, he could never be sure that it was really him that Dalmi liked.

She takes a deep breath, reaches for his hands that are still cupping her face. Her hands bring a sharp awareness, but Dosan doesn’t flinch. It warms his heart instead as she uses her own hand to steady his and nuzzles her cheek into his palm further.

Sensing what is coming next, he beats her to the punch. “You like my hands. Only my hands. How can that beat someone you held in your heart for fifteen years?”

“You really don’t know, do you?” The pain in her eyes is a pinch in his own chest. He would do anything to take it away from her, but he needs to know for certain so he persists.

“Why do you like me?”

“It’s a metaphor,” she says, squeezing his hand.

“What?"

“Your hands. They’re so much more than just that, they're all of you. I like you because of you. You’re the whole and only reason.”  

It takes a moment for him to process this but when he does, he is dizzy with relief. Dosan feels his heart soar, and suddenly, he is a different kind of overwhelmed. Tears spill over his eyes, but he's smiling through them. Dalmi’s eyes soften, and mirror the relief on his own. For the first time in a really long time, it feels like they are on the same page again. And that means everything to him.

His eyes slip to her parted lips, his thumb inches closer and just barely grazes the tip of her cupid’s bow. She closes her eyes at that. Dosan doesn’t know much about physical intimacy, but he knows that that's a green light.

Nam Dosan has relived their first kiss countless times since that blissful evening on the Morning Group rooftop. He had been so sure he would never forget the softness of her lips, the dizzying force of her fondness. It had been one of the few things that kept him going when he woke up in a foreign city, not knowing how he fit in, for three years.

When their lips touch, he knows his memory had failed him. Her lips are ice cold but gliding his own against it is a high like no other. They kiss slowly at first, like they are building a fire from the sparks that fly between them. She moves closer, snakes her arms around his neck, and the fire ignites in earnest. Dosan chases after the heat, licks it off her bottom lip, and feels her breath hitche. Reluctantly, he breaks the kiss but he can’t bring himself to put much distance between them. Dalmi’s cheeks are tinted pink, and the smudges of dirt do nothing to deter from the picture of loveliness she makes.

She opens her eyes after a moment, like she’s waking up from a daze. Her pupils are dilated, and her brows raised in question.

“Thank you,” he says, voice hoarse and overcome with emotion. He doesn’t wait for a response, immediately leans back in and closes the gap between them. There’s so much more that needs to be said, but it can wait. Tomorrow will come soon enough, and the sun will bring with it light and clarity.

For now though, under the cloak of the starry night, Dosan wants to curl closer to her warmth, and whisper his boundless longing into her lips.

#start-up #startup #tvn start up #nam dosan #seo dalmi #dodal

[ushioka]

Distant

I haven't written in a long time, and my creativity has been severely lacking, but I'm still here, managing and loaded with internalized thoughts and sentiments. The last few months have been surreal to me. Everything around me seems to be moving too quickly or too slowly. When I return to reality, I see how quickly time passes and how things change. Everything slows down when I'm lost in my thoughts, and oblivious to my shifting surroundings. I suppose you could say I'm far from fully living in the moment, but I tend to hide from it. When I lived in California, I spent most of my teen years telling myself that life will take its course and that all I have to do is wait for my life to feel normal or better. I told myself this in my head without doing anything to change it. Instead, I lazily went through social media, watching other people and friends live more and become more responsible than me. If there's a word or phrase that comes to mind to describe life like that, it's miserable, or feeling trapped in a bird's nest when others are already flying out. Knowing you have the ability to succeed, yet your shoulders are dragged down by a heavy feeling of melancholy, confusion, demotivation, and fear. Months pass by while you're cooped up in your room, and it feels as though you've grown roots to ur bed. I'd really want believe in chance and coincidences, but everytime they appear in my life, they become phases. Getting an opportunity, having the mindset of achieving, or putting your whole heart and soul into something, just to fall back to square one. I understand that this isn't for everyone, but I envy those that are given an opportunity and use it to build their own success and future, they allow themselves to run with it. I'm almost 18, not 17, 16, or 13, and I'm just one number away from being considered an adult, who’s supposed to beready and prepared to begin their lives. I know a lot of people will tell me that 18 isn't when everything will change, but it is when it will start. It's difficult to notice when there have been so many changes but no firm start with a solid foundation. It feels like I'm on a very zigzag line that isn't at all parallel to other people's lines, but we're both moving forward at the same time because that's simply life; it doesn't stop for you. I may be all over the place, constantly doing new things and failing miserably, but at the very least, I've developed ten different personalities as a result of it, and I know what kind of person I can and cannot be. Like i said i’m no longer in california but indiana the name sounds less fancy and less expensive truly. but it’s that one state almost in the middle of the map that’s there but not favored. When i think of indiana i think of corn and old people, why old people? because it’s the perfect place to retire and buy a home after living a crazy expensive life and job in a booming city. Just calm and very still. People who have lived a life they knew would be tough and worthy admire me because they knew nothing in life would ever be flawless or easy, but they put themselves through college and jobs and awful people to just go to a more difficult work environment. It shows that it is possible to be in difficult situations and still make the best of them, earn money, and be successful. know I should surround myself around those individuals, and I have, but they are typically much older than me, having lived half their lives already, and they despise hearing my nonsense and excuses about how afraid I am or how I haven't experienced mine yet. For example, my grandmother and I are extremely different people, but sometimes a conversation isn't the best. She'll get irritated and angry listening to me talk about how far behind I've fallen, because it's nowhere near a successful life. She'll see me do things that everyone should be able to do but that I struggle with. She'll be furious because she knows I'm capable of so much more. But, while I cringe, she'll tell me how she did this and that when she was this age, and how I can do the same.

[mimiwrites2000]

Legends

Chapter Eleven ~

AO3 ~~

Pairings: Armin x Annie/ Eren x Mikasa/ Levi x Hanji (other pairings will be added as the story goes on)

Words count: 11142

* spoilers for chapter 127 and up

Summary:

an injury

a miracle

an understanding

and maybe 'everything happens for a reason' holds some truth in it, and all of it leads to that tingle of emotions with unsolvable maze that hypnotize its victims

~a story of broken hearts who are searching for a cure while mending each other’s wounds

Stiff

Cold

Annie decided that these two words suited her father’s behavior for the past few days.

He would turn his back to her when they slept, and for the first time since they got to the cottage, he would sit beside her at the table, but his posture would be rigid the whole time.

He wouldn’t look into her eyes, and he would answer her ‘good morning’s with a curt nod, he would talk to her in succinct sentences, and he would be last to say goodnight.

He was away, in a far land and Annie couldn’t reach him, and the map she had was written in an alien language; curves and zigzags crossing on it, tangling in a lump of threads of smudgy ink, and Annie can’t identify its head from its toes.

She doesn’t know how to reach her father.

And maybe she never would, maybe she never knew who he was in the first place.

Does Annie know who her father was? Does he know who she was?

Had they really talked like a father and a daughter should do?

Annie didn’t consider her time at Marley as a time when she had a “family”, even at dinners back there, her father used to bombard her with the most complicated quizzes about battle tactics and strategies.

The only time she realized she had someone who cared for her was on her last day at that place.

But now they needed to talk more than ever.

Annie was itching to argue, to make her points clear, to hear what he thinks, to understand each other, but she couldn’t bring herself to start the conversation with her father.

She didn’t want to be the one to start the conversation.

Annie wanted him to approach her, to tell her he was doing this to be happy with her, because it’s the best for her. And if he did, she would probably agree without batting an eye.

After all, the only motivation that kept her going in the last decade was her father, the far-fetched wish to live with him in peace, some place where no Marley’s titles or warriors missions existed, where they lived for their day and slept in the night with no fears.

She had dreams about those days, and oh how badly she wanted them…

All these thoughts rushed into Annie’s head when it was the night before Eren and Mikasa’s wedding, when all the girls were sitting on a bed around Historia and her baby, eyeing layers and layers of the most colorful, silky fabrics Annie ever saw in her life.

Gabi twirled while holding an orange dress, the skirt flowing around her, and she was laughing, Pieck clapped for her and joined with her laughter.

Mikasa didn’t stop smiling for the past three days, and Annie never saw the girl this happy ever before, hell, this Mikasa was nowhere close to the Mikasa she called a ‘beast’ during their training days. Mikasa was trying to choose between three white dresses, Historia, as well as Kiyomi, were giving their input on each dress, saying things as ‘this one’s neckline is not for your neck shape’ or ‘this won’t bring out the beauty of your waist’ or even ‘this one would make you look shorter’.

For Annie, all the dresses looked the same.

And from Mikasa’s confused glances, she, too, couldn’t see the ammunition Historia was blasting the dresses with.

Mikasa had some otherworldly luck to have Kiyomi, all the wedding wouldn’t have been held without her help.

Who else other than Kiyomi would have gotten all these dresses and the other preparations in a post- apocalyptic situation, and made the bride not feel less than a noble daughter’s wedding?

These soldiers and warriors finally got a moment where they can do what was for their delight, no war, no missions, just getting ready for a party in a faraway cottage in some place in the vast mountains.

A party, huh…

Annie wondered, as she flipped through her options, her many options.

She caressed a pink dress, the silk of it soft against her palm, gold emblazoning it in spattered dots...

They never held any parties at their training days at Marley as well as on Paradise, in fact, Annie had never gone to a party before.

All her childhood was spent kicking at dummies and training until she coughed blood and her ankles would twist with every step she took. And when she was a teenager, when her peers would be acting like their age, going out, getting into trouble, meddle with boys- Annie was sneaking into the sewers of Sina to get information on the monarchy.

And then she spent four full years suspended in clear crystal, hearing the tales of a boy with once a big dream…

And here she was, not able to look into his eyes.

Annie’s fingers wouldn’t be enough to count the times in her crystal when she wished she could open her eyes, to crack them open enough to peer into Armin’s ocean ones, to answer his questions, to ask him questions, to raise her voice and stomp her feet and scream at him, or to just nod at anything he says.

Now she got him in her arm reach, where she could extend her finger tips and hold him, to caress his cheeks and run her fingers through his golden hair, to gaze into his endless ocean eyes and get lost in them, not having a worry in the whole world about finding her way back; no mission, no Marley, no Paradise.

But she shouldn’t.

Annie must stay away from him.

Selfishness was engraved into her mind since she was a kid, and that self-indulgent tumor grew up with her until the day she parted from Marley, it was the only time in her life that she got someone else aside from her own.

Then she saw a world caged in three gargantuan walls, where people were as oblivious to the outside world as a fly unaware of the hand that would swat it in less than a second.

She was on a mission to kill those people.

To end countless, innocent lives just because the rest of the world decided to.

And that awakened something in her, some emotion that she didn’t know was hidden inside of her.

And her selfishness only inflated more, it’s membrane stretching into a thin, transparent layer, threatening to rupture any time, and all Annie thought about was damn this world, damn these walls, and damn all these people, I just want to go back home, the only place where I belong.

Annie was aware of how far her selfishness could go, and she didn’t want to get Armin entangled within its threads…

She has no other choice but to go with what Eren told her a few nights ago.

Annie had to take a deep breath to muster all the self-resistance stamina she had left to not groan out loud and lob herself down on the bed. She distracted herself by looking outside the window, where a figure stood, facing the endless mountains.

It was then that Annie noticed that it was already sunset; the orange sky streaked with pink reflected its rays into the room, creating a warm combination of colors, casting shadows on the carpet. The light angle made halos around dust particles dancing in the air, they almost looked like golden dust, and it stunningly framed the figure standing outside.

It wasn’t hard to figure out who it was; blond hair, short, and dreamy.

It no longer surprised Annie that each time she thought of Armin, he materializes before her eyes from thin air. If Annie believed in signs, she would’ve thrown all these dresses away, jumped through the window, and tackled him to the ground in a hug.

And maybe she would kiss him.

Annie shuddered at the thought.

She was carried far away, and she must anchor herself down.

“Annie!” Historia shrieked and any straying thoughts scurried out Annie’s head.

Historia walked to the window and closed the curtain, sheltering Armin from Annie’s eyes. Historia huffed: “You’re distracted! This is the fifth time I call you!”

“Uh, sorry.”

“Did you choose a dress.”

Ah shit, Annie looked around, and saw each girl holding a dress in her arms.

Annie dived her hand in the pile of clothes and fished out a blue dress, without a second thought, she decided: “This one.”

~~~

The girls had been in Historia’s room for a few hours, they closed the door shut after Kiyomi walked in with bags lining up from her wrists until her elbows.

All thanks to Kiyomi, the atmosphere had morphed into an enthusiastic, before-wedding milieu, and the tension they greeted Eren and Mikasa’s wedding announcement with was disintegrating into light crumbles, flying away with the breeze.

Oh this fresh, chill breeze would certainly be one thing Armin would miss about this place.

Who would’ve thought life would be so laid-back here? Armin thought as he stood outside the cottage, eyeing the outlines of the mountains, contrasting against the yellow sky, streaks of grey clouds scattered upon it, peachy-like hue dusting its soft arcs.

The likelihood of staying at such a serene yet thrilling place perhaps would tend to zero if it wasn’t for the recent unfortunate events, Armin was miraculously given a chance to know these people, to have time to reflect on what was important in his life, and to be lucky enough to see his friends being happy and in love.

His childhood friends were getting married the very next day…

Here we go again…

Armin groaned as his thoughts veered towards that someone.

She will no longer remember you.

Armin sighed, familiar with the next destination his brain was stopping at.

Why are you so concerned if she remembers you or not?

You’re being selfish.

You said yourself that her happiness would come from within herself!

Then why “remembering” would have the tiniest bit of importance?

The nauseating maze-like spirals of thoughts had been swirling inside Armin’s mind for the past few nights, and no matter how long he searched, he could never find the portal out of it.

That is until he heard the click of the door behind him, harbingering the arrival of someone, but Armin didn’t bother to turn around, he merely kept looking forward, admiring the view.

“It’s a nice place, isn’t it?”

Armin didn’t turn his head; his muscles were frozen-shock after he heard that voice, he looked at the man beside him, and what the hell was Mr. Leonhart doing outside?

Armin thought Mr. Leonhart wouldn’t want to see his face ever again, that he wanted to leave and rub the memory of Armin out of the folds in his brain. Armin glanced at him from the corner of his eye; his signature cane clutched into his hand as he watched the sun going down, and if it wasn’t that Armin knew who this man was, he would’ve mistaken him to be a character in one of the books his grandfather used to read to him when he was a child.

A character with peace trailing behind them, someone with a serene life in some cottage who spends their day watering their flowers and going for walks by the river, talks to birds and feed wolves.

An elderly man who appreciates in life what others are too blind to see. His slightly hunched back embodies an evidence that life wasn’t a motherly-kind experience to him.

The sympathy people feel for older people trickled down Armin’s chest, and he had a sudden curiosity gnawing at his stomach to dig deep into this man's head, to garner enough memories to comprehend his choice with altering Annie’s memories.

What were the exact memories Mr. Leonhart wanted to shred to pieces and dust into unremarkable ashes? And why?

“My leg,” Mr. Leonhart spoke, he probably decided that Armin wouldn’t invite him to a conversation no matter how long he stood there beside him, “it has a story of its own, a story I am not so proud of.”

What? You tripped on the stairs? What an inspiring backstory you’ve got.

Armin held his tongue from letting that out, he had enough trouble with this man to make him not even think of meddling with him in any way possible-

Armin turned his head to look at him, a ting of fear travelled from the tips of his fingers to the brink of his button nose that Mr. Leonhart could read minds.

However, when he found out that Mr. Leonhart was already watching him, a thought rolled into his mind that Mr. Leonhart could read eyes, he can dive deep into them, reach the bottom of them and seize the treasure hidden in their entrails.

“This injured leg… is the fruit of Annie’s training,” a small prideful smile danced on Mr. Leonhart's lips, and Armin’s eyebrows rose under his bangs; he was irritated by his own visible curiosity to hear the rest of the story.

“Annie… she used to train from dawn until dusk, her determination never wavering whatsoever, each evening her kicks were stronger than they were in the morning, she had the ability to keep going, never stopping,” Mr. Leonhart was quiet for some time, then, as if he organized his words into a queue before letting them out of his mouth: “poor Annie, I was never easy on her, I kept pushing her, edging her over her stretching limits over and over and over…”

Mr. Leonhart stopped talking, his tone was sealed with finality, and Armin smelled the qualm that chained Mr. Leonhart tongue onto the roof of his throat; he was having second thoughts about letting Armin into this part of Annie’s past.

But from the brief encounters he had with Mr. Leonhart, Armin was aware that he is a man of a word; if he sets his mind to do something, he would do it, no matter the cost. If he took a step, then it was commenced after a thorough tactical strategy, that was filtered through his mind enough times to have emphatic consequences.

He was revealing this to Armin for a reason.

“I was a horrible father, and it finally backfired at me. One day, I was, as always, working her to the bones. I remember how cold it was, it was so cold that I couldn’t feel the tips of my toes. Annie was kicking at the dummies, and she stopped, she was panting, and… I provoked her,” the smile dropped off Mr. Leonhart face.

“I told her that with such a performance, she would never fulfill her mission, the mission she was born to complete, that she will never be a warrior,” Mr. Leonhart exhaled, “before I knew it, she was kicking at my leg, and she was screaming, screaming in a way I’ve never heard before.”

Mr. Leonhart stopped once more, and Armin realized that his pauses were as calculated as his words.

The pause did its charm on Armin, it gave this new fact enough time to sink in, settling in and decaying into powder before it dissolved into a moisture, Armin’s sponge-brain absorbing every last bit of it.

Annie was the reason behind Mr. Leonhart inseparable cane.

This man, who wasn’t her real father, trained her since she was a child to be a weapon.

A weapon.

That’s what Annie believed she was her whole life.

And here he stood, her father, admiring the darkening sky as he narrated his anecdote to a stranger.

“She drove her feet into my shin, again and again and again, I cannot even remember when she stopped,” Mr. Leonhart chuckled, but its sound was out of the place, an extraneous addition, “the pain was unbearable, I had to go see a doctor.”

“What did you do to her after that?” Armin was flabbergasted as the question slipped unwillingly off his tongue, but he couldn’t hold himself back.

“Nothing,” Mr. Leonhart lingered his gaze on Armin, the dumbfounded expression on Armin’s face made him chuckle once again, but this time it sounded candid; not forced.

Armin bashfully averted his eyes, he felt like a kid in his own skin.

“I could not be prouder; my daughter was strong enough to protect herself.”

Armin thought the smile that stretched on Mr. Leonhart was out of habit whenever he talked about Annie.

This story that Armin thought -at the beginning- was an superfluous tale of an old man with regret flowing out his heart was all but a way to pave his amends path with his daughter, to ease the dull ache left from his atrocious acts towards Annie.

Memories flashed before Armin’s eyes, memories from a few weeks ago, when Annie was miraculously saved, when she told him how she parted from her father after he dropped to his knees and apologized.

How he begged her to come back.

How she promised him…

“Arlert,” Mr. Leonhart anchored Armin down from his thoughts, and with his eyes, he asked Armin a question.

Do you see now?

Armin didn’t answer him, but he had a million answers rummaging through his head, banging against his skull, looking for a chink in the unyielding bone to break through and seep outside.

“She went through more than she would ever let on,” Mr. Leonhart didn’t state anything more than a clincher, Annie wasn’t the talkative type in the first place, and Armin doubted that she would ever tell him more about her past life.

He knew, he already knew how her life was disastrous and unfair to her, he was well aware that she went through hell and back.

But hearing her story from another perspective, from the one who occupied a major piece in her life… it held another tone to it, a tone of a fairytale, ones who have sad ending, where the heroes die before reaching their goals.

But what if it meant happiness for someone you love?

Armin’s own words echoed within his mind, resonating with the only truth possible.

Annie is the someone Mr. Leonhart loves.

There was nowhere around it.

And when you love someone, you crawl to them, you ask for their forgiveness, and you spend your whole life absorbed in them.

“I met Annie when I was twelve,” Armin found himself telling his own side of the story, he wasn’t sure if Mr. Leonhart would listen, but he was sure that if he didn’t want to hear him, he will make it loud and clear.

The silence prompted Armin to resume narrating his tale: “She was… different,” Annie’s stoic, bored face, in a training corps uniform flashed in front of his eyes, “her skills were outstanding, everyone thought she was some invincible human.”

Mr. Leonhart hummed, and that let Armin know that in the warrior training unit; she had the same reputation.

“Annie didn’t shine in teamwork though, she was… aloof,” Armin shrugged, lacking other words to describe Annie’s social life back then, “but, no matter how skillful her kicks were, she was bad at hiding her nice side.”

Invisible chains sprouted from under Armin’s feet and held him back from talking in such a point-blank way about Annie, he wasn’t even sure if he should talk about her in the presence of her father, or if he should talk about her at all.

“What else?” Mr. Leonhart asked, and that was enough to loosen the almost-suffocating chains around Armin, it was enough permission to keep going.

“She was caring and considerate, even if she would never admit that, she even risked her own life to save Connie and Jean and the others several times, and considering her mission, she could’ve… let them die.”

He was reminded of Annie at Trost, before her real identity was exposed.

Armin shook his head slightly, “It’s not just that, while training, yeah she used to be recluse, avoiding as much interaction as was possible to pass the training, but I’ve seen her frantic eyes when someone got injured. I… one time, I broke my leg, she didn’t leave my bedside until it was curfew,” Armin swallowed, remembering those days made his heart clench in his chest.

Armin looked down and swept his foot on the dirt one time, the cleats on the sole of his military boot leaving paths in its trace, he tilted his head up and gazed into the horizon, a dark blue gradually enveloping it, the stars faintly announcing their arrival, waiting for pitch-black darkness to show off their glinting beauty.

Armin concentrated his eyes at one single star; its luminosity more intense than its peers ringing it, standing out of the crowd, then with a slow pace, Armin warily said: “She spared my life… twice.”

Maybe Mr. Leonhart came out there to glean something out of Armin, however, Armin had no idea what it could be that Mr. Leonhart was fishing for, but he kept going on with his story, consequences be damned.

“If she killed me, she might’ve… completed her mission, but…” Armin recalled the mountains of wreckage in Stohess, the exacerbated results of a battle that they were too wishful to avoid. Even though it happened some time ago, there was one detail Armin could never overlook.

At one point, Annie had Eren right in her hands, she could’ve easily bitten him off his titan form and then climbed the wall, and Armin was almost certain that they wouldn’t be able to stop her, however, she didn’t.

She ran away.

Leaving her target behind her, even though she was a finger-length away from it.

“A new life is waiting for Annie,” Mr. Leonhart said, “she is still young and has all of her life to spend as she wants to.”

“I wonder if it’s that easy to move on,” Armin wondered, and he wasn’t trying to stir up an argument with Mr. Leonhart, he was just voicing his thoughts out loud.

“She can, and she will, besides, I already thought of a new residence.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, and… I’m not sure if it is going to work out, but I might introduce her to her real parents.”

Armin clinched his eyebrows, if he knew Annie well, he could predict that she wouldn’t want to meet them. Armin opened his mouth to ask, but Mr. Leonhart interrupted him.

“You’re an eccentric man, Arlert.” Mr. Leonhart commented, and Armin blinked three times.

Mr. Leonhart didn’t elaborate, he merely turned around, walking into the cottage, leaving a bewildered Armin behind his back.

~~~

Kiyomi promised to get the wedding arrangements as fast as possible.

It took her only four days.

The wedding day has arrived, and as Kiyomi promised, the preparation for the wedding made it feel almost like a typical wedding, well, as typical as a runaways’ weddings could get; even though Eren and Mikasa protested saying that it was really unnecessary to even hold an actual wedding, but Kiyomi insisted, and they couldn’t be more grateful.

It was a change of mood, how the guys would shove Eren into the room whenever he tried to get out, try to convince him with “If you see the bride before the wedding, it will summon bad luck! And you two had enough of this!”, so Eren would surrender, busying himself with fixing his hair for the millionth time since the morning.

The guys had never, ever leisurely taken their time to get ready; Kiyomi got them suits that were more extravagant that anything they ever wore before, even though Kiyomi apologized countless times for ‘not being enough’.

Let’s just say that it was a hurdle to snatch Connie away from the mirror.

“You’ve been flexing since you got into that suit, notice that we all are wearing suits, but none of us did what you’re doing,” Armin said, as he fixed his tie in the right place around the collar; if he was honest, he’d just wring it out the window; it was choking him, he wasn’t used to wearing any of this.

“Oh, come on, Armin! It’s not like we hold a wedding every day!” Connie complained, flexing one more and winking at his reflection in the mirror before he turned to Armin, catching him in the middle of an eyeroll.

Connie’s lips curled into a crooked smirk, one eyebrow up, the smug look he was giving Armin made him check behind his back, because he wished Connie was looking at someone else behind him.

“We all know why you’re setting yourself up,” Connie smugly threw that at Armin, who only blushed and looked down, Eren turned his head at them, getting curious.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Armin went back to fixing his tie, then he realized that there was no more extra work to be done with it, so he turned to lace his shoes, only to realize that they were already laced and shiny.

Armin hunted for something to busy himself with, but he jumped when he was met face to face with Connie’s mischievous eyes, “All fancy for Annie, aren’t you?” he teased, breathing into Armin’s face, making him cringe away, and did Connie spray all the cologne bottle on himself? Because Armin’s nostrils were burning from its pungent smell.

“Come on, man, you’ve been visiting her for four years,” Connie held out four fingers, “four fucking years! It’s too obvious that you have something for her,” His voice suddenly veered from a teasy bastard to a caring guy, “she’s leaving soon, you should probably make a move or something.”

Armin could just walk straight to the window and jump out of it rather than talk about this with Connie. Armin’s jaw clenched for a passing moment, and it wasn’t because he couldn’t sleep last night thinking about all of it, but it was because Annie had been avoiding him for the past few days.

It’s not a big deal, Armin would lie to himself, even though it would sting him whenever she walked past him as if he was merely transparent air.

He didn’t even have a proper talk with her, and she wasn’t giving him any sort of invitation to talk to her, all her attitude was screaming ‘don’t talk to me.’

Armin opened his mouth to defend what was left from his courage: “I-”

“Don’t even try to deny it!”

Armin fell silent, his head craned downward, dwindling with whatever he wanted to blurt out. Connie’s arm wrapped around his shoulder, giving him two buddy-pumps before he withdrew, the pungent cologne scent decreasing with him.

The clock on the wall ticked.

With each tick, Armin was reminded by how he was squeezed into a narrow time to talk to Annie, or more like get her to talk to him, to let him talk to her.

It was so unfair that she didn’t explain her ignoring, and Armin’s hands were clasped together, helpless and powerless, uselessly dangling by his sides, unable to do anything. He wouldn’t force her to talk to him, and it’s not like he can.

And it’s not the weather he wanted to talk about with Annie, it was something very personal to her, something horrible that she was going to face without even being aware of it.

But…

Maybe he shouldn’t.

“I might… I might talk to Annie, I don’t know.” Armin had no intention of doing so, but he just wanted Connie to stop and get away from him, if his friend had a hair-wide capacity of paying attention, he would’ve noted the ‘rift’ going between Annie and Armin.

But here was Connie, being himself.

“Talking?” Connie asked, pressing his lips together in a thin, straight line, as if the word itself was a smudgy piece of bread that had a dubious bitter taste, “talking? Are you fucking serious?”

“Ok, I honestly have no idea what you want me to-”

“You’ve been shot in the mouth, literally, and you still think talking is the best way to solve things out?” Connie stood up, raising his hands beside his head, giving up on Armin. Connie had had it with him and his bullshit, “Eren, I’m done with this, I’m leaving him with you.” Connie turned his back and left.

Armin put his head in his hands and sighed, listening to Connie’s steps descending the crooked stairs, though he was sure Connie left not out of care for Armin’s sanity, but to check on Jean, who didn’t get into the cottage since the morning.

Eren didn’t say anything, he only strolled around the room, dusting his already spotless suit, sometimes stopping by the window; dodging the elephant in the room.

“You’re getting married, huh,” Armin muttered, he wasn’t sure if Eren heard or not, but soon enough, the spot on the bed beside him dipped, Eren laced his fingers together, leaning with his elbows on his knees.

Eren smacked his lips: “I am.”

Armin forced a chuckle, but he wished he could retreat it as it sounded imprudent and dry. He always knew that Eren used to be blinded by his anger at the titans, to the point where Armin was definite he was hopeless and would never see Mikasa in any romantic way, so to finally see him moderate his rock head and acknowledge Mikasa’s feelings and his own, Armin could grow wings and fly.

“I… can’t believe that this is actually happening,” Eren’s voice was coming from the faraway land of dreams, Armin looked at him, and the soft look Eren wore and the slight smile on his lips, it was sincere and candid, stem from deep within his soul…

Armin didn’t see that in a long time.

Mikasa was the reason behind that.

“Armin…” Eren straightened up, cleared his throat, and looked right into Armin’s eyes, “I know we didn’t talk about it-”

“Stop,” Armin interrupted, and Eren did stop momentarily, even though he chewed on the inside of his lower lip, “there’s nothing to talk about.”

“It won’t get us anywhere-”

“Besides,” Armin continued, interrupting Eren again, “it’s your wedding, we can talk about anything later.”

Eren underwent the effort of swallowing whatever he had to say, it was loud and coarse, as if he gulped down a ball of razor-sharp thorns.

Armin was thoughtful for a moment, before he decided to speak up his mind, or at least just a marginal chunk of it, this was Eren after all, his childhood friend, his friend who stood up for him when they were kids, and kept on doing that many years later: “I thought about it, and maybe what you will do is right, maybe altering Annie’s memories is the best for her.”

Eren was comprehensive for a while, he knew Armin for a very long time, and he knew when he wasn’t telling the truth: “You don’t have to say that to make me feel better.”

“I’m not, I’m really not, after all, she fought all these years to go back to her father, now she’s with him, she’s happy.” Armin heaved a sigh, “maybe there’s no point to keep dwelling on her past.”

Something about the way Armin said that Annie was happy made Eren realize that maybe this was a side of Armin he never truly discovered before, and for a moment, Eren wondered if Armin was a replica of the books he reads; each page holding new words with hidden secrets, and each time you reread them, you decipher another code between their lines, the more you realize that you didn’t know anything about them before.

A flurry of words swirled inside Eren’s head; however, he couldn’t think of anything else to say besides: “I’m really sorry.”

He was sorry for many things that had passed, and many things that has yet to come.

“There’s nothing to apologize for, I should be the one apologizing, I think I overreacted back there.” Armin was referring to the night by the stream, when Mr. Leonhart bid his plans.

“I would have reacted the same way…” Eren swallowed, trying to hold back what he was about to say, but he thought about it countless times before, the words might suffocate his lungs if he doesn’t let them out, “if Mikasa’s memories were changed, and all these years were gone… I don’t want to go through that ever again.”

“Would you do it?” Armin asked this one simple, succinct question, spinning his head, his eyes locking with Eren’s.

Forest met ocean, embracing at the shore line, familiar with each other for as far as the shore meander, but the deeper you go into one, the farther you get from the other, each has their own labyrinthine mysteries that will never be unveiled for the other for as long as they lasted.

Eren closed his eyes, the way Armin didn’t hesitate before his enquiry uncovered the fact that it was on his mind for some time. After all, Eren did say that this idea has crossed his mind, conversely, he responded: “I don’t know…”

Armin didn’t reply, but he looked at Annie’s ring on his finger, he couldn’t get himself to take it off, even though he didn’t see Annie wearing his ring in those past few days…

Armin has got this far without breaking, he decided that he passed the turning point some time ago: “And… I think you were right; whatever I have towards Annie can’t be real.”

“Armin what are you talking about?”

“It’s like you said, Bert did affect my memories as well as my emotions.”

“No Armin listen-”

“If you think about it, my emotions for Annie don’t make any sense, we barely know each other, we were friends before we turned into enemies and then again we briefly turned into allies,” Armin fixed the already- fixed collar of his suit, “It’s probably some passing infatuation.”

“You’re wrong.”

Armin rolled his eyes, ready to toss a lame sarcastic comment back at Eren, but when his eyes met the intensity of Eren’s glare, that sarcastic comment crawled to an abandoned corner in his mind.

“That was just another lie from me, I just…” Eren’s gaze wavered; his stomach queasy at the thought that Armin still didn’t forget about that day, of course he won’t forget it you idiot. Eren wished he could travel to the past and knock himself out before he had the audacity to say that out loud to Armin and Mikasa.

It was Armin’s right to know about this, Eren had to steer things back into their lane, or as close as he could get them: “I just… I guess I just wanted to fuck up with your minds. I wanted you to stop you from doing anything that you would regret later.”

“That was a horrible way to do it.”

“I…” Eren let out an irritated breath at himself, “I’m sorry.”

Armin looked down; his eyes fixated on a dot on the carpet between his knees.

His childhood friends are getting married, finally getting married, they’re starting a new life, turning a new, blank page, and they were ready to fill it with new experiences, new mistakes, but most importantly, they were doing it together.

Maybe Armin should start a new life too.

“You know a few weeks ago,” Armin cleared his throat, “when you asked if I could forgive you…”

Eren nodded, but then realized that Armin was caressing a spot on the carpet with his shoes and didn’t see him, so he said: “Yeah?” and Eren hated the hopefulness in his tone.

Armin sighed and turned his eyes towards Eren, who already was watching him, and in a moment of determination, he said: “Yes, yes I do.”

The tips of Eren’s lips twitched upwards, hiding the grimace from bile rising up his throat; unsalvageable guilt puncturing his windpipe as he looked into Armin’s eyes, and Eren couldn’t bear them any longer, he could no longer handle the serenity of Armin’s blue orbs pouring an endless ocean into his own, so he just leaned forward and engulfed Armin in a bone crushing embrace.

Of course, Armin only hugged him with a similar tightness, patting him on the back, before someone called Eren from downstairs.

He was finally permitted to step out the room, so, he got up, shrugged his shoulders, and went for the door, his hand landed on the knob before he turned his head towards Armin: “I can’t give you any relationship advice, I… well I’m just not good at that,” Eren pulled his suit down, fixing the pocket square, “I just know that you’ll make a good choice.”

Armin nodded, the smile remaining on his face as authentic as he always was.

“Just one last thing, perhaps… let your heart make a decision, just for once, you’ll not regret it,” Eren gave Armin one last smile, then he walked out the room leaving the door opened behind him.

Armin groaned, shaking his head.

His life was much more complicated than any other story he ever read, and he could only wish he will have a happy ending worth all the struggles.

Not before long, Armin got up and followed Eren.

The couches were lined along the wall, making the living room spacious, the dining table was pushed to a wall too, right under the window, and Kiyomi, with the help of Gabi and Falco were already lining up the dishes varying in colors and contents; holding food and drinks Armin didn’t hope he would get a chance to taste for a long time.

Armin looked around to what used to be a versatile, dull living room which multifunction as a bedroom, now the whole room was draped in translucent gold and white fabrics overlapping each other, retelling the golden streaks embellishing the sunset peeking from the opened window. Ornaments from different shapes and sizes were hung on them. From where Armin was standing, they looked like twinkling stars.

Kiyomi did a fantastic job, and it was visible how it stunned Eren; he walked around the room, caressing the fabrics, his jaw dragging behind him on the ground.

They deserve this, they really do, Armin thought as he descended the creaking stairs, his own breath taken away at the dazzling preparations. He did know that Kiyomi was probably capable of doing anything she ever wanted, but he couldn’t imagine that she could pull off a whole ceremony in just a couple of days, and vastly succeed at it.

The sun was going down as everyone gathered in the room, they stood in half a circle, Eren and Hanji at the center of it, waiting for the bride.

Eren fidgeted in his spot, transferring his weight from one leg to the other, fixing the tie around his neck, sweat already gathered on his forehead.

“You might need this,” Armin said, as he handed Eren a handkerchief, “it was a good idea that you got your hair in a bun; otherwise it would be sticking all over your face.”

“Yeah…” Eren replied, dapping the fabric over his face, his fingers trembling, “she’s taking a long time, isn’t she?” he asked Armin, and for his dismay; his voice cracked.

“Whom? Mikasa?” Eren nodded, “well a bride should take her time getting ready, she waited for this long enough,” Armin concluded, not giving it much thought, of course, a bride needs her time, right?

However, Eren didn’t stand still, he pressed his lips, swallowed a thick lump in his throat, then he breathed out, loud enough for only Armin to hear: “She might have changed her mind, you know? She can just say no and h-honestly I wouldn’t blame her, you were right, what was I thinking when I proposed to her-”

Eren’s rambling stopped when he felt a hand squeeze his shoulder, he tilted his head to the side and saw Armin with a ludicrous smile emblazoning his face.

Armin didn’t utter a word, instead, he just nudged his head to the side.

Eren’s eyes followed Armin’s gesture,

His breath caught in his throat.

Mikasa stood at the doorway, the bride was in a pure, humble white dress with a bateau neckline, it hugged her body perfectly from the top, flowing in delicate waves at her hips. Mikasa held a bouquet of various colorful flowers, articulately arranged. Her hair was gathered in a bun, her bangs were curled, framing her circular face.

Mikasa’s flushed face could be seen even though her head was down, but when she titled her head up and finally looked at Eren, time stopped, as well as their breathing.

The world spun, fading with a twirl of blurry memories, and the two of them were in the clouds, Eren’s hair was shorter and he was the same tall as Mikasa, their celebratory attires morphed into their training uniforms, and the spark in Eren’s eyes shone, Mikasa’s hair whipped around her face with the soft breeze.

And then they were younger, much younger, Mikasa was in her ankle-length pink dress, as Eren stood in front of her, his eyes larger, and it was dark and cold, and Mikasa had nowhere to go, so Eren extended his hand, Mikasa stared at it for a moment before she took it, her other hand closed tightly around the red scarf that Eren just wrapped around her, he pulled her closer to him, and-

“Ok, now, I feel bad for you kids, but apparently I’m the one marrying you two.” Hanji said as they stood between Eren and Mikasa, pushing their glasses up their nose bridge. Hanji looked between Eren and Mikasa and noticed that they didn’t hear a word from what they said.

Hanji snapped their fingers in front of their faces, both jumped, letting go of each other’s hands, Mikasa almost dropping the bouquet, but luckily, Annie caught it at the last moment.

“Ok, so as I was saying, I hope you bear with my lack of experience in this field…”

Hanji’s voice faded in Armin’s ears, the wedding, the people around him, everything grew fainter until they were diminished into nonentity when Annie came into his sight for the first time that evening.

Armin always thought Annie got a beauty of her own, her golden hair and blue orbs were enough charm to get his head dizzy, but he didn’t think Annie would surpass that and take his breath away in an instant.

Armin never imagined that Annie would actually want to wear a dress, well, he was wrong. The dress was light blue, the fabric dropped off her shoulder, showing her collarbone, then it fitted her perfectly until it got to the waist, where it spread into a flowing skirt with multiple layers, giving it volume and twirling with every movement she made, it stopped right above her knee.

Annie’s hair was down, brushing her shoulders, two braids hugged the crown of her head until they met in the middle of the back of her head, a simple silver necklace was around her neck, a blue crystal glowing in the middle of it.

Armin was mesmerized by Annie, his eyes only lingered on her, hungry to just stare at her, and he had no idea how he went through the past few days without talking to her.

Swiftly, Annie turned her head and their eyes met, Armin immediately turned his head to the side, chewing on the inside of his cheeks that were basically on fire, what an idiot what an idiot what an-

“-please get the rings!” Hanji’s loud enthusiastic voice brought Armin back to earth, he shook his head, waiting for whatever was next, but everyone was just silent.

Kiyomi gasped, covering her mouth with her hand: “I forgot about those!”

Well, it seemed that despite Kiyomi’s thorough preparation, she forgot about one of the most important parts, and it was ridiculous because Mikasa and Eren were as shocked as the others.

Armin chuckled, of course something wasn’t going to go as planned, their whole lives had been like this: “I think… I have a solution.” Armin said, he ran into the bedroom upstairs, and got back in mere seconds.

Mikasa smiled when she saw that he was holding her red scarf.

Armin handed the red scarf to Eren, he took it gratefully and inched closer to Mikasa. Eren wrapped the scarf around Mikasa, trying not to mess up her delicate hairstyle. The torn, weary fabric didn’t complement her shining white dress, but Mikasa caressed it with the tip of her fingers as she looked into Eren’s eyes, her eyes watering.

“And finally, you may now kiss the bride!” Hanji chirped and stepped back.

If the situation was different, Armin would’ve rolled on the ground with laughter at how flaming hot his childhood friends’ whole faces were, this was the first time everyone would see them kissing, Armin grinned like an idiot when Eren awkwardly wrapped his arms around Mikasa’s waist, whom stood on her tiptoes, leaning on Eren’s chest.

Mikasa closed her eyes and leaned forward, her lips met with… something, which was certainly not Eren’s lips.

Laughs erupted around Mikasa, she opened her eyes, only to be met with a red flushed Eren, it took her three seconds to realize that she kissed his nose.

Before Mikasa allowed herself to drown more in embarrassment, she clamped Eren’s head in her hands, yanked him down to her and pressed a kiss onto his lips, only for a second before pulling away.

The laughs turned into cheers and clapping, and soon enough, the fire on Eren and Mikasa’s faces turned into a red dust on their cheeks, and everyone was in a corner in the room chatting and eating and drinking.

Armin walked to his friends, hugged them and congratulated them: “It makes me really happy that you two got the happiness you deserve.”

“Oh, Armin, thank you so much,” Mikasa hugged Armin again, and he can’t remember a time when Mikasa was this happy, she was smiling nonstop, her face’s muscles might never go back to normal. Mikasa pulled back, holding Armin at arm’s length, she looked him straight in the eyes and said: “I hope you find your happiness too.”

Armin knew that Mikasa was referring to the memory they saw when Eren first woke up, the memory where he saw himself standing on an alter by the beach. Armin felt his cheeks heat up, he averted his eyes from Mikasa only to land on Annie, who was standing beside Reiner, tasting an appetizer of a rolled bread with something inside, Armin lingered his gaze on her for a moment and didn’t realize his mistake until Mikasa followed his gaze.

In a millisecond, Mikasa’s eyes were as wide as the plates on the dining table, her mouth opened, and she blinked once, twice, thrice before she exclaimed as loud as a whisper would allow her: “Annie?!”

“N-no, no,” Armin shook his head, he didn’t know when it happened, but he jumped a foot away from Mikasa, he looked at Eren, asking for help, but Eren just stood there, raising a smug eyebrow at him, and Armin wanted to slap it off of his face as hard as he could -somehow- without making a scene.

Luckily for Armin, someone clasped their hand on his shoulder, and Armin thanked whoever it was, but he immediately changed his mind when he spotted Jean, his face stoic, and his hand was squeezing Armin’s shoulder too much it started to hurt.

“Jean…?” Mikasa asked, it was the first time she saw him that evening, and she wasn’t sure if he stood with the others in the semicircle a few minutes ago.

Jean didn’t address Mikasa, and it was worrying that he was glaring at Eren.

Of course Jean won’t be dumb and break a fight right in the middle of a wedding and a peaceful moment they all deserved, Armin thought, he can’t be that impulsive, but Armin wrapped his fingers around Jean’s bicep, just in case.

Jean marched past Armin, past Mikasa and stood right in front of Eren, before he clapped his hands on Eren’s shoulder, drilling Eren into the ground, then he said in a choked voice: “I swear Yeager, if you even think of hurting her anymore, you’re dead, you’re so fucking dead.”

Everyone in the room was staring at those three, Eren, Mikasa, and Jean, no one dared to say anything, they merely watched, waiting for whatever would unfold before their eyes.

Eren didn’t waste time, he, too, clapped his hands on Jean’s shoulders, looked him dead in the eyes and said: “I would rather die than hurt her.”

Armin watched, silent, then he watched Mikasa, who had tears in her eyes, and her hands were shaking.

Jean kept looking right through Eren’s eyes, he dug a hole in them, but Eren didn’t fidget, he was staring at Jean with the same intensity. Jean clenched his jaw so tight, his teeth gritting could be heard from across the room, he squeezed his eyes shut, and he looked like he was fighting something inside his head, as if the voices in his skull were ricocheting against it, fighting each other until last one was standing.

Jean opened his eyes, he let go of Eren and turned to Mikasa.

“Jean…” Mikasa whispered, tears were trickling down her cheeks, and she didn’t know what she was supposed to do, and her head was vacant of words, all she did was stand there, looking at Jean, his intense expression abandoning his face.

He held his hand up and wiped the salty tears on Mikasa’s face with the tips of his fingers, soft and as light as a feather, only for more tears to spill out her eyes, she opened her arms and flung herself onto Jean, hugging him tight tight tight, and he rubbed her back in circles, soothing circles that subsided the crying into small sniffs, and when Mikasa pulled back, she was smiling and laughing, and everyone in the room felt the tension lessen.

“Well then, anyone cares for a drink?” Chirped Connie, holding a bottle of liquor before he opened it, a fountain squirting from its narrow slot, everyone cheered, and soon, glasses were clanking against each other in the amidst of chatter and laughter.

Armin smiled at Connie and thought how lucky Jean was to have such a friend by his side, through all of this, and Armin deemed that it was most likely Connie who convinced Jean to do this, to come and face Eren.

After some time, Gabi, with the help of Pieck, sat up the vinyl player and a slow song started playing, eventually, everyone stood to the side, making place for the freshly married couple to have their first dance.

Armin stood beside the window, the food table by his side, and its aroma was mouthwatering, however, Armin wasn’t hungry at all, he got a drink and watched his friends dance together. The final rays of the day swept into the room, golden sparks danced around Eren and Mikasa, and the way they swayed in harmony sent tranquil waves deep down in Armin’s stomach, they do look like they are on a cloud or something.

Eren engulfing Mikasa in his arms. Mikasa only looked at him, and him only. It was like they were made for each other, and Armin thought of Mikasa, this woman he knew since he was only nine, and her big, big heart.

He could only dream of someone as forgivable as she was, who else would’ve forgiven Eren for all the shit he done? Who could see the good in Eren no matter the circumstances?

Mikasa, and Mikasa only.

She never gave up on him, and it’s not because he bounded her with chains or whatever anyone would assume, no, she chose this path, she chose to deal with hell, to burn her fingers again, and again, and again.

Mikasa was loyal for her love, and when you love someone, when you truly love someone, you can’t give up on them, you can’t leave them behind, even if they were sinners who committed irredeemable crimes. When you love someone, you want to fix them, to teach them how to love themselves, to help them see the good in themselves and work on it.

It would hurt, yes, but the taste of holding that someone would equal holding the world, with all its good and bad, but you’re holding them, in your arms, caressing away their tears, laughing with them, holding their hand when life is being harsh to them.…

Mikasa was born to be with Eren, and Eren was born to be with Mikasa.

There was no way around it.

Soon enough, some hyped music played, and everyone joined Mikasa and Eren, no one dancing seriously, merely having fun. Gabi and Falco certainly were having a lot of fun, and Armin was surprised when he saw Commander Hanji and Captain Levi dancing, and he wondered if there was something between these two,

What a sight, Armin thought as he sipped on his drink, Magath, Pieck, and Reiner, seemed to be happy to, and Armin found it bizarre how they were having a party with their once-were enemies.

Armin rolled his eyes when he saw Jean and Connie already swaying drunkenly on their spot, but he didn’t feel like he should scold them. If anything, he himself couldn’t tolerate alcohol well, and it was showing because his head felt lighter on his shoulders.

Something moved outside the window, catching Armin’s eyes, he peeked outside, the last threads of light seeped past the mountains, leaving stars scattered all over the dark blue sky, then Armin saw that someone was outside, blue dress, and blonde hair.

Armin didn’t think his actions thoroughly, he just abandoned his glass on the table, and went outside. He stood a few feet away from Annie, but something screwed his feet in their place, and he couldn’t go any farther.

Armin stood there, his hands in his pockets, it was getting chilly outside, maybe he should tell Annie to get back inside or she’d get sick, she probably couldn’t afford postponing her travelling due to some unforeseen illness.

“You do know that it’s creepy to just stare, don’t you?” Annie said, turning around, facing Armin, her hands crossed, “or maybe you’re used to it?”

Armin smirked and shrugged his shoulders, he took a few steps closer to Annie, “Uh…” he was already stuttering, “isn’t it cold outside?”

“If you’re cold, you can just go inside.”

“I wasn’t talking about me…” Armin mumbled, but Annie pretended as if she didn’t hear him, and of course she would be nonchalant about not speaking to Armin for the past four days; for god’s sake, they met after four full years of silent, freezing nights at the basement, and she was smearing her face in a pie.

Annie rubbed her arms: “You know… we’re leaving tomorrow.”

Armin’s mouth shaped in an O, he blinked his eyes a few times rapidly, and something heavy dropped into his stomach, he cleared his throat: “U-uh, well, I- that’s kinda surprising.” Armin pulled out his right hand from his pocket and rubbed his throat.

“I know, my father just told me before the wedding,” Annie said, turning away from Armin and admiring the black figures of the mountains in the horizon.

Armin bit his lip, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, he didn’t know that Annie was leaving this soon, and he doubted that anyone inside knew either. A soft, slow music drifted from the window, and that certainly helped calm down Armin a little bit.

“Do you… do you really want to leave?” Armin finally asked, he wanted to ask a bigger question, to ask if she wanted her memories erased, but he couldn’t get himself to.

Maybe he was scared to hear her answer, if it wasn’t the answer he wanted.

Annie cocked her head to the side, tapping her foot a few times: “Well, it seems the most obvious thing to do, I can’t- we can’t stay here.”

“Oh…”

“Kiyomi already got us fake passports and identities, so that would get us moving much easier.”

“Oh really? What’s your new name then?”

Annie was quite for a while, then she sighed and answered: “Annika.”

Armin snorted, and Annie stomped his foot; it wasn’t exactly playful.

Still in a fit of giggles, Armin said: “Well then, would Annika accept a last dance with me?” he stopped laughing, dumbfounded at his own words.

Annie pondered his offer, put a mimicking finger on her chin: “Annika says no.”

“Oh…” Armin looked down at his feet, caressed his suit a few times, before he got an idea, it would either be fruitful, or would earn him a slap.

“Well then, would Annie accept this dance?” Armin said as he got closer to Annie, putting the tips of his fingers on Annie’s hands.

Annie felt warmth from where Armin’s fingers touched her, she rationalized it by thinking that they were still warm from his pockets, but she had no explanation for the warmth she got when she looked into his eyes.

“You may have your dance.” Annie whispered.

Armin pulled Annie closer to him, she had already anticipated the hand that wrapped around her waist, she held one hand up, expecting he’d take it, but instead, Armin wrapped his other hand around her waist too.

Annie had no choice but to place both of her hands on his shoulder.

They were so close together, their breaths mixing in the middle, Annie smelt the sting aromatic of alcohol in Armin’s breath, she looked into his eyes, dubious if he was sober or not, she sighed internally when she saw them focused. She had no idea that Armin was actually… well, drinking, those four years in the crystal did change him… in many, many ways.

Armin’s fingers barely grazed Annie’s hips, his hands so gently engulfing her but at the same time anchoring her in a way she never experienced before, with the way Armin was watching her, she knew that her cheeks were pink, her heart raced in her chest. She glided down her hands closer to his chest and felt a ting of jealousy when she didn’t feel his heart panicking like hers.

Their bodies swayed to the harmonies of the music, the chilly breeze ruffled Annie’s dress, but she didn’t mind, she was warm and content, with someone. Armin wanted to capture this moment and reserve it in a jar forever, a moment filled with gratefulness, serenity, and perhaps, perhaps something else...

Armin never wavered his sight off Annie, but he couldn’t hold eye contact with her for more than two seconds, she’d find anything to look at except him, and he wanted to look into her eyes, to memorize their blue, the streaks of a mesmerizing ocean deepening her orbs, making him see depths of the ocean he could only dream of, and Armin was falling into that endless hole of the unknown, but he was warm warm warm.

An alien feeling was diving in his veins, and it was dangerous, so dangerous and risky and he promised himself that he must push it away, he shouldn’t trespass into forbidden territory, he wanted to start a new life and hanging into that foreign tingle of emotions would only drag him back into the past, cuffing him with memories that soon would drift away with the wind.

They won’t exist anymore.

As much as that frustrated Armin; he still smiled at Annie, and uh these blue eyes of hers, the way they sparkled whenever she turned her head, reflecting the stars above them.

“Annie…” Armin whispered, he knew that he was spending his last moments with her… his last moments in her memories that soon will be gone, and it was irrefutable that this was his last chance to talk to her.

You still think talking is the best way to solve things out? Connie’s voice rang in Armin’s head.

Annie looked at Armin, nudging her head, prompting him to continue, instead, he leaned forward, his forehead touched hers.

Annie’s eyes widened, blood rushing to her cheeks, and her breath caught in her throat.

Armin rubbed his forehead against hers, and Annie’s fingertips trembled, she swallowed, and could no longer decide if Armin was sober or not, because there was no way he’d be showing… this affection, if he was in his right state of mind.

Armin smelled apple pie and a floral fragrance, he breathed in Annie’s scent, wanting to remember it for as long as he lived. He closed his eyes, an apple tree formed into the darkness, various flowers interweaving into a carpet around it. He spotted a girl with a straw hat covering her face sitting under that tree, and an invisible energy pulled him towards her, drawing him to her, his legs moved on their own, he walked to her, trying to not trample any of the flowers in his path.

Armin knelt when he got closer to the girl, she tilted her head up and-

He opened his eyes and met Annie’s piercing blue ones.

Armin glanced at Annie’s lips, he unconsciously pressed his lips together, his tongue slithering between them, and wetting them, when he looked back up to Annie’s eyes, they were wide open.

The hazy look in Armin’s eyes, and how they were half lidded, showed Annie a side of Armin she never saw before, she glanced at his lips while he was distracted by hers, and it was the first time in her life that she had a desire to touch someone’s lips.

Sirens went off in Annie’s head, she should step away and wake up from this dream, what was she thinking?

Annie lifted her hand off Armin’s chest, and brushed a finger against his lower lip one single time.

Soft, Annie thought, she didn’t notice Armin following every single move of her hand.

Armin cupped Annie’s hand, and kissed the inside of her palm.

Tingles ran all over Annie’s body, and she decided that she doesn’t care if Armin was drunk or not, because she was lost in his lovely small gestures that made shivers run into her veins, sending warm electric-like pulses from her palm to as far as the tips of her toes.

Armin trailed kisses down Annie’s palm until he got to her wrist, kissing her pulse, feeling it on his lips.

He glanced at Annie’s lips, then back at her eyes, his mind was dizzy, thoughts were crashing in his mind, and he was trying hard to diverge the wrong ones from the horribly wrong ones, but the dominant one screamed this is your last chance,

Armin leaned forward, his lips brushing Annie’s in a soft touch, like a feather.

Annie didn’t close her eyes, she didn’t have time to react, Armin pulled away as swiftly as he leaned in, a slight smile tugging at the corner of his lips, and he couldn’t stop the blazing fire igniting in his veins; he was surprised that such a marginal touch made him feel wonders.

Annie blinked, the sirens in her head exploded and burned and turned into ashes, and she was uncertain if Armin kissed her or not, it was gentle, too gentle for her to consider it an actual kiss, and a courageous motivation made her tug Armin by the collar of his suit, and brought him down, planting a firm, full kiss on his lips as her eyelashes fluttered shut, Armin staggered in his spot, before he fixed his footing, and enveloped Annie in his arms.

Everything around them went mute, silent, and they were riding foreign sensations, a mix of them that they both were oblivious to, it was like fire, but a soothing one, a fire which they danced with its flames, tapping their foot at its crackling, twigs snapping in a roaring blaze, but they kept on moving.

Annie moved her lips against Armin’s, and she shivered when his hand touched the lower of her back, that shiver was a reason for her to loosen her grip on Armin’s collar, hesitantly, her arms sneaked around his neck, she felt his hand on the lower of her back quiver when she traced his undercut, and that made the tips of her lips quirk up against his lips.

Armin felt Annie smile against his lips, against his own lips, he was this close to Annie, her scent drove his dizziness away, and it was replaced by the full awareness that he was against her body, pressing his frame into hers, touching her, kissing her.

They both knew that this was wrong and useless, it was all in vein; Annie’s lips quivered when she reminisced that Armin knew she won’t remember any of this, and her throat clinched, the corner of her eyes burned, and she was angry at everything, at Armin, and how he finally did something.

But after what?

Annie pressed her lips harder against Armin’s mouth, she was clinging onto him, she could do anything to not forget him, to let this boy live in the depths of her mind, some place where her memories can’t be touched, can’t be tempered with no matter what.

She ran her fingers through his hair and begged them to remember how soft it felt against them, she touched his cheekbones, his eyebrows, his eyelids, and she was pleading to reserve his memory.

And so did Armin, he rubbed his hands on her back, the silky fabric soft against his palms, his hands traced her shoulders, and he noticed that she was in a better health compared to few weeks ago, his hands kept their wandering, all the while he kept kissing her; his finger tangled in her hair, and he imagined that each strand was a ray of sunshine in a cold winter afternoon.

He cupped Annie’s cheeks, the tips of his fingers sensed a cold moisture on them, and after it, he tasted salt on his lips.

Armin pulled away, he tried to inhale, but when he saw tears streaming down Annie’s cheeks, he froze on his spot, his hands lingering on her face.

She looked at him through half lidded lashes before she suddenly flinched, and stepped back, her face flushed and her lips glistening. Armin was dumbfounded, his arms stretched out but vacant. Annie blinked rapidly and shook her head in dizzy-whips, she glanced at Armin’s eyes one last time, before bolting inside the cottage.

At the threshold of the cottage, Annie pumped into someone, she didn’t want to apologize, but she found herself speechless when she saw her dad staring at her with a void expression.

.

.

excuse me for a second- *screams in a pillow* YALL I WROTE THIS KISS SCENE A FEW MONTHS AGO and I'm so thrilled to finally share it with you this took so looong to edit but after all it's a really, really long chapter I thought about splitting it into two chapters but yeah idk it ended up being one, long chapter anywaaaay what do you think? I'm really excited to hear what you guys think!!! also if you wanna chat just hit me up on tumblr! I'll be happy to talk about literary anything lol ok byeeeee

#Aruani #armin arlert #annie leonhart #armin x annie #eremika #eren x mikasa #Eren Jaeger #Mikasa Ackerman #levihan #levi ackerman #hange zoe #aot #snk #snk fanfiction

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Fault Lines Under the Living Room

Part II: Breathe - Chapter 6: Just Another One

Also available on AO3! Chapter Summary: Ratchet and Rodimus embark. Word Count: 5096

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They could have left the last stage of planetbreak to autopilot, but Ratchet kept his hands wrapped around the yoke. If there was damage the shuttle’s sensors had missed, he said, better to have someone sentient piloting. Rodimus nodded along with his logic, like he hadn’t been aware the moment Ratchet decided he would do everything in his power to distract himself from… all this.

Rodimus had little room to feel offended. He was trying to dd the same, exploring the shuttle’s interface while background threads worked through anything he might have forgotten in their haste to leave. He hadn’t gotten around to telling the engineers about the ominous blinking panel in engine room 3, and he’d neglected to pick a replacement judge for the upcoming karaoke contest. His consciousness slipped between these background thoughts and exploration and Ratchet’s piloting, both of them trying so hard not to acknowledge the other than they jumped when the alarm went off.

“Frag.”

Rodimus grabbed for controls that failed to materialize in front of him.

“What?” he demanded, looking to the monitors for an incoming projectile despite the answer pooling in his mind.

“Haven’t reached exit velocity,” Ratchet said, punching commands into the console with one hand firm on the yoke. “Forgot how much power it takes to get these old war rigs moving. I’m adjusting the flightpath to buy us time to build momentum.” The alarm stopped. “There.”

Ratchet’s words were echoes of his thoughts, old knowledge by the time they reached Rodimus’ audials. Ratchet didn’t know how to fix that problem. Rodimus hadn’t realized it was a problem. Conversations between them were already a challenge, to add this new dimension was—

They were thinking about each other’s thoughts again. Rodimus rapidly shifted between menu options until the flashing light dragged him back out of his head.

“This sucks,” he said.

Ratchet grunted. He couldn’t keep up with all of Rodimus’ thoughts at once, and even hanging onto one was a strain, so he was trying to create hard divides between them. Right now, he was generating a list of all the medical supplies one could expect to find on a ship this size, basing it on a combination of Autobot guidelines and the kinds of repairs he had seen on POWs. Rodimus’ processor tried to latch on, but the thick jargon kept him slipping off, back to exploring the workings of their new home.

No, was home not the right word? The place they were living? Where they were captive? Their cosmic questing raft? The Decepticraft? The Drifter?

Ratchet withdrew the tracker from his subspace, ignoring the way plinking ideas sunk into his thoughts like lead nuggets into molten cadmium. Autobot and Decepticon tech was not designed to be compatible, but he had performed enough surgeries with parts scavenged from the battlefield to know how to jury rig the connection. As he pulled out a small utility knife, he thought sadly of the universal adapter he had stashed with the rest of his medical supplies, all of it now sailing away to parts unknown. Though he would knock a dent into Arcee if they ever caught up to her, he did hope his kit was getting put to use.

Rodimus wondered how long Ratchet had been preparing for his trip, when the planning had started (at the vote? Overlord?), how he could have missed it. Ratchet recoiled from the blunt curiosity and his list fell apart, dumped out of short term memory as his processor scrambled to pull up the answers to Rodimus’ questions.

Mistake, mistake, mistake.

“Just—stop,” Ratchet said, waving at Rodimus like he could dispel the corrosive thoughts with a gesture.

How do I stop? Does it hurt? You’re so quiet? Are you okay? Does it hurt? What do I do? Rodimus had never had reason to stop his processor before, and the effort of trying to now was making it worse.

Ratchet, though, had a lifetime’s experience forcing himself to focus in stressful situations. He stopped responding to Rodimus’ questions, and the thoughts that did come through were focused entirely on his hands as he stripped down the tracker’s cable. Once a physical connection had been established, he would need to register the tracker as a pilot in the navicomp, then reroute the transceivers in the shuttle’s communications array to increase their range.

His calm confidence guided Rodimus’ focus. The stream of questions would not abate, but they were no longer provoked from panic, nor did they interrupt Ratchet’s process.

Will it accept an Autobot ident?

Some even turned out to be helpful.

“Probably not,” Ratchet said, their connection helping Rodimus pinpoint which of his thoughts Ratchet was responding to. “Not a problem, I can just program a new one… dammit.”

The computer flashed red: outdated codes.

“Who was stationed on this ship they would bother updating their security?” Ratchet wondered aloud, his processor trying to piece together a workaround simpler than taking apart the entire navigation system.

Rodimus hesitated, but Ratchet caught it, so there was no point to staying quiet.

“Prowl passed me some intel before we left,” he said.

“Hm.” Ratchet’s thoughts turned sharp, a phantom pain that caused Rodimus to wince.

“Codes,” he said. “Just in case.”

He hadn’t asked where Prowl had gotten them, though Ratchet’s imagination filled in the gaps. Instead, Rodimus had been doing his best to appear professional and capable before Optimus’ infamous adviser. Prowl’s optics could not bother to emote for how unimpressed he was. That Rodimus had assumed this meeting concerning “galactic relations” would be about culture clash with their closest neighbors had not helped his image.

He had nearly run out of the office when Ultra Magnus commed to say he was actually late for another meeting, stopped only by the datapad forced his way.

“A few precautions,” Prowl had called it. Rodimus downloaded the files and stored them among the events on Kimia, tech specs for the waste disposal system, and other things he could willingly not think about.

Ratchet’s hand, poised over the keyboard, clenched and shook itself out.

“I hope you ran a virus scan on that thing before you plugged it into yourself,” he said, doing a commendable job not bringing up everything this subject of conversation was making him think about.

“No, but I passed it through my antivirals.” And it didn’t feel like Prowl was remote controlling him from the opposite side of the galaxy. He doubted Prowl had the processing capacity to pilot him through multiple rounds of volcanic derby racing, for one.

“Here.” Ratchet retrieved his portable med kit from his subspace and set it on his lap. The lists were moving back in: everything he’d lost versus what he had to work with now. Rodimus found himself sobered and accepted the antiviral chip when it was passed to him. “Load this and run another scan. You might experience a few seconds lag or disorientation; just ride it out and let the chip do its job.” A few very rare cases experienced sensory inversion, but longterm effects were uncommon enough Ratchet wouldn’t bother to mention them.

Rodimus cracked a grin as he popped open a port cover and inserted the chip. He grimaced as he installed the program—invasive medical programs were rarely comfortable to integrate—then ran Prowl’s files through it.

So, there had been a tracking signal that Rodimus’ programs had failed to uncover, but once that had been snipped out the rest were deemed safe. Rodimus tightbeamed the data to Ratchet who used it to finish building their fake Decepticon and finally got through. ‘Galeforce’ finished integrating the tracker and set the system to start searching for Drift’s signal.

“Thanks,” Ratchet said, a longer pause than normal between thinking the word and saying it out loud. Internal distractions compounded and inevitably led them to crashing into each other, so maybe talking would redirect enough of their attention to stop the spiraling before it could start.

Rodimus chanced a glance at him but could not catch his optic; he was still focused on the controls.

“No problem,” he said. Drift had once wasted a full off-shift failing to teach him how to meditate. The problem had not been Drift’s teaching: it was all Rodimus and his inability to let a thought go once it manifested. It was like they stuck him, coils of barbed wire wrapped round and around, each pinprick demanding his attention and—”How far is it to the outer rim?”

“Depends where we’re going, and if Drift’s on the move,” Ratchet said. The screen of the navicomp blinked, a pinwheel replacing the previous screen. “Might find somewhere to get comfortable. This part’s been known to go for a few hours.”

“Hours?” Rodimus repeated. Anything that could have once been considered comfortable was covered in junk. The captain’s chair had belonged to Ratchet before they had taken off, and the flight deck chairs were too abandoned to feel secure.

“The transceiver on Drift’s speeder isn’t strong enough to send a direct signal,” Ratchet said. “It’s going to have to bounce between Galactic Council transmission planets a bit before it makes it back here.” Assuming Drift had strayed close enough for one to grab his signal. From what Ratchet understood, though, they were almost impossible to avoid these days. “Whatever we get’s going to be a few days old, but it’s a start.”

Rodimus’ processor drew up a cartoonish map, a dotted line zigzagging between planets to show the path Drift’s signal would take. He recoiled from under Ratchet’s scrutiny, but all his haste could add was a backdrop of randomized stars.

“While we’re waiting, I’ve got us on course to slingshot around Scarvix’s star,” Ratchet went on. A note of surprise: Rodimus’ stress had caused his own cables to tense. “By the time the tracker gets us some coordinates, we should be ready to… This isn’t helping.”

Rodimus was distressed and Ratchet was spiraling. How were they going to make it all the way to the outer rim? What would they do if Drift had nothing for them? Refused to help? Rodimus couldn’t keep tying himself in knots, nor could he endure the sting every time Ratchet anguished over a possible future trapped together.

“I distract myself.” Rodimus forced his voice through the fog.

“How?” Ratchet was gripping the edge of the captain’s seat, squeezing until the hard edge reminded him which body was his.

“A lot of things work: racing, fight,” Rodimus said. “Anything that could get me out of my head for a few minutes.”

Meteor surfing, free all skydiving, asteroid spelunking. Any activity that teased the edge of mortality (crafting a spectacle was a bonus) was fair game. The rush of knowing he was solely responsible for the continued light of his spark never failed to wipe his mind of the stress of everything else.

Ratchet could not relate. Nor could he imagine how they were going to fit a racetrack into a ship just a bit larger than Swerve’s. Sparring might have been an option, were it not for the fact that every step risked tripping and landing face first on something volatile.

The idea hit Rodimus and he groaned.

“What about—cleaning?” Ratchet gestured around them. “I don’t want to put up with this chaos for longer than I have to.”

And there was something nostalgic about it. After the destruction of his Rodion clinic, Ratchet started practicing performative minimalism; anything of purely sentimental value had to be kept on his person, out of harm’s way. Prior to that, his offices had been littered with evidence of a life lived mostly within their walls: chickenscratch notes immediately forgotten, used energon cubes, and fond mementos from old friends he would get around to calling one of these days, for sure. Over days and weeks it would pile up, until he was using his lap as a desk and had no choice but to sweep it all back into a configuration resembling tidiness.

Rodimus balked at Ratchet’s fondness of those memories. Cleaning for him was performed on hands and knees, tips of steel wool sticking into his finish as he worked rust out of wash rack corners. Back and forth over the same spot, over and over and over, until boredom pressed down like it intended him to become one with the floor.

“Punishment detail,” he said, though Ratchet had already guessed.

During the war he had bounced between barracks and military vessels, plugging into recharge docks still warm from their last occupant. How could he ever take pride over a cleaned room when neither the space nor the mess belonged to him? He had tried to improve his habits upon moving into the Lost Light, but there were reasons Ultra Magnus refused to meet him at his hab suite.

“It’s not just about the space,” Ratchet said. “It’s an emotional reset. When you have time to clean, it means the fighting’s over for now.” Ratchet’s memories had lost hold of entire days stationed in field hospitals, brought back only as he had wiped down his instruments and organized his remaining supplies. Rubbing cleanser deep into his joints to free them of the day’s residue was one small kindness he could afford himself.

Rodimus shrugged and twisted in the seat so he could rest his chin on the back of it. He scanned the room. It certainly looked like a fight had gone through.

“Right.” Ratchet did one better than him and stood up. “You’ve got decent knees, so you can start by hauling those shelves back into place.”

“Decent knees?” Rodimus repeated, allowing himself to crack a grin. He shoved himself from the chair and wandered out into the swamp, tripping once as he felt something snap under his heel. “Old joint all worn out, doc?”

“Just got them replaced,” Ratchet corrected, “and I’d rather not break them in on a mess that wasn’t even my fault.” First Aid would let him have it, and he was already due for a tongue lashing whenever they got back to the Lost Light. “This can be your penance.”

“Penance.” Rodimus laughed through the word, though he was already maneuvering around the shelves in question, trying to guess which end would be easiest to lift from given the state of the floor around them. “Right, because I’m the one who put you on this ship in the first place.” Neither would have been out here if Ratchet had just asked to go get Drift.

Nor if Rodimus had gone first—not sent him away—prevented Overlord—

“Here,” Ratchet said, clearing some of the space Rodimus had been tiptoeing around. “Let’s start with this.”

They started together, Ratchet picking through whatever was in Rodimus’ way as he heaved the shelves upright, but their tasks caused them to drift apart, Ratchet sorting through his findings while Rodimus shoved the room back into a semblance of order. He drifted into a rhythm of lifting and pushing, occasionally grunting with the effort of returning the room to its previous state. This plan was derailed almost immediately: he’d had other things on his mind when he first rushed onto the bridge, and the placement of the various shelves and crates had missed his attention entirely. Even Ratchet’s memory of the layout was imperfect.

So, he got creative with it, using the shelves to form a divider between the cockpit and what would have been the command zone. He used the crates to fill in the gaps and form uneven benches along the walls, and as he took to shoving the broken pieces and miscellaneous ends into piles, the bridge started to take the shape of a living space. Ratchet, glancing up from his work only to remind Rodimus not to lift with his back, had no complaints about the design choices.

He spoke up again when Rodimus paused before one of the larger crates, considering it carefully.

“It’s not a bad idea,” he said, “but I doubt you’re the first to have it. Why would the Cons waste space with chairs when they’re already tripping over storage cubes?”

“You can’t relax sitting on a block,” Rodimus said, although, he reflected, that was likely the point.

In the end, he settled for placing a couple smaller cubes on either side of the makeshift table, almost adding a third before he thought better of it and slotted it into a space on the wall, finally covering up the loosened panel from which red light continued to trickle. His cables relaxed and he became aware that he had been hearing a buzz (a melody?) in the back of his processor ever since the flare. The silence that swept in to fill the space was just as loud, but slightly less grating.

His optics swept the room; still chaotic, according to Ratchet, but Rodimus thought it was gaining a shape. Noticing that he had accidentally blocked the door at the back of the bridge, he went to clear it, and was surprised when it didn’t open automatically for him, nor did he see a control pad.

“Ident sensor,” Ratchet said. He had noticed it built into the upper frame of the door.

“What, more secret tech stashed back there?” Rodimus asked. Both their minds bloomed with possibilities, but Ratchet shut them down.

“Recharge docks, more likely,” he said. “We had similar systems on some of the larger warships. Kept bots to their assigned off-shifts.” On one occasion, a superior officer had tried to use the same tactic to lock Ratchet out of his medbay when he was supposed to be recharging. After the public fallout settled, no one else dared to try it. “I can rig up our transceivers with a couple more facsimiles, soon as I’m finished here.”

Rodimus grinned and waved up at the sensor. He thought he could feel a brush of radiation as it scanned him, but Ratchet rebuffed the notion; it wasn’t nearly that powerful.

If that was true, what was to stop the Decepticons from lacing their ships with invisible observation devices? What if it had already discovered the intruders and was sending alerts straight to the DJD who were—

Fifteen pounds titanium alloys, ten pounds compressed carbon, eighty pounds halogen…

Ratchet’s thoughts were calm, regular, and purposeful enough for Rodimus to latch on. He glanced around again. He could start clearing the stairs. Or sweeping up glass. He could create a designated pile of useful equipment, or check that all the navigation terminals were in working order, or perform a quick security sweep. So many options. So many ways to prove that he was taking this seriously and was ready to work to stay out of Ratchet’s way.

“Come here, Rodimus.”

Of course, thinking about his options accomplished none of them. Aware he would continue wasting time if left to his own devices, he complied, plopping down in front of Ratchet. He landed in a relaxed sprawl, his position calculated down to the bend of his fingers.

Ratchet glanced up to him, thoughts of energon stock briefly set aside.

“Maybe you should’ve paid more attention to those meditation lessons,” he said.

“Told you, it didn’t work.” Never mind that he hadn’t said that part out loud; it was the defining feature of that memory. Drift had tried so hard, patiently explaining each step and troubleshooting when Rodimus struggled. They had tried different techniques, positions, even locations, and at every one, Rodimus’ thoughts had caught up to him and refused to be ignored. And every time, Drift had nodded with gentle understanding and suggested something new to try.

Because that was who Drift was: patient, calm, nonjudgmental. A forged mentor.

Ratchet’s thoughts hit him like acid rain.

“Did you know your ‘best friend’ at all?”

Of course he did, he wanted to say. All the important bits! Like that he was more regimented than Magnus when it came to his refueling schedule: one cube at the start of duty shift, and one at off-shift, every single cycle. That with his years brought experience untold, solutions and advice always at the ready. That Drift had been, and still was, extremely dangerous.

But when he dove inward to find these answers, he discovered something else: another Drift, sharp, with tattered, ill-defined edges that nonetheless drew and intimidating silhouette. This Drift was cloaked not in radiant light, but wrapped himself in darkness like a shawl, and when he tried to speak it was in many voices, none of which Rodimus recognized.

“Real friends don’t worship the ground you walk on,” Ratchet was saying. “I know your perception’s skewed since you think you have to live up to the very scratches in Optimus’ finish, but that behavior’s not healthy and it’s not normal. Drift is a real person, not some sort of—of fantasy fulfillment for you to drain until your hero complex is satisfied.”

Impatient, masking over constant stress, deeply critical of everyone but wrestling with his own failings: the other Drift’s hand appeared not with a sword, but a gun.

“I’m sorry.”

And vanished.

Ratchet released his death grip on an energon cube and set it aside.

“Not me you need to apologize to.”

“I know,” Rodimus said. “But you’re here, and it means something to you.”

“It doesn’t.” Ratchet’s lie was scratchy, like a frayed wire. “Drift’s made plenty of bad decisions in his life.” You’re just another one.

That’s not any of your business.

Habit kept them civil on the outside, but nothing, least of all self control, could stop them from thinking their truths. Drift had taken his post-war freedom and handed it straight to Rodimus, his dripping optimism like a fresh protoform faith. He had taken every dirty, demeaning job the Lost Light required of him, because he was good at them, because he wanted to help, because it was the only thing he knew how to do, because Rodimus had asked. Rodimus had taken advantage of, given an opportunity to, betrayed, saved, sacrificed—trying his best and couldn’t help that—

“Cleaning,” Ratchet said. “Cleaning.”

It took Rodimus a second just to find his body, then remember the piles of cubes stacked between them.

“What?” he asked. Even with a mental warning, he startled at the cleaning rag that landed on him.

“Some of the cubes were damaged in the crash, but it’s impossible to tell which when they’re piled together like this,” Ratchet said. He picked one from the pile and nested it in his own rag, diligently wiping away the loose energon before he unwrapped it and held it to the light. “Clean ‘em and check for damage. Get a leaker, pour it into the can with the rest. We can feed them to the ship’s reserve cells.”

The flight time bought by even a full crate’s worth of cubes would be negligible, but that wasn’t the point. Rodimus took a cube off the top of the nearest pile, feeling along the buckled edges. Were it just his own head to deal with, it might have been enough, but Ratchet’s still burning fury would not be so easily shut off.

“He volunteered,” Rodimus said.

Had he? Ratchet hadn’t known that. Rather than calm him, though, the new information made the fire in his spark burn hotter.

“I’m not having this conversation,” he said.

The cube hit the floor with an unsatisfying thud and Rodimus stood up.

“Whatever.” He had a taste of grim satisfaction watching Ratchet freeze.

“Don’t—” Ratchet started, but Rodimus cut him off.

“I get it,” he said. “You hate me. I’m used to it. I get people hating me for who I am way before they find out all the slagged choices I’ve made. But when you’re—you—”

Ratchet was treating Drift like a drone, unable to make any choice beyond its core programming, and Rodimus the cruel engineer who delighted in watching it shock itself. Rodimus could take lashing Ratchet delivered, but objectifying Drift and calling it righteous was a step too far.

“Except that’s not what I’m saying,” Ratchet said. His voice was steady and he stayed seated; he did not try to chase Rodimus. “Of course Drift is self-sufficient. I’ve never doubted that. And I believe you that he volunteered, because it’s the exact kind of glitched plan he would come up with. But the world is bigger than you, Rodimus.”

He knew—

Drift pledging life and spark to a leader whose words struck a thousand furnaces. Cast through self-revolutions of building and breaking himself, each new face patterned after what the last one lacked. Fighting his way up an eroding cliff face of rejection, reaching out…

“It’s more than you,” Ratchet said. “Drift might have volunteered. But I’ve got to check your conductors for rust if you think he wanted to go.”

“I know, but…” If Drift wanted salvation, who was Rodimus to deny him?

“His friend, allegedly.” Though Ratchet seethed with the word, there was a hidden gentleness behind it. Drift needed friends.

Rodimus had never considered that. He knew Drift was not well liked among some Autobots, a target of suspicion if not outright hostility, but Rodimus had always seen him rise above it. Strong and steadfast and as confident in himself as he was, isolation seemed no weight on his struts.

“He’s just a bot like any other,” Ratchet said. Well. Not any other. Neither knew anyone quite like Drift. “He gets slagged ideas, too, and as you’re friend, you’re supposed to tell him that.”

Ratchet had never hesitated to tell Optimus when he was being an idiot. Not much good it had done them all in the end, but memories of yelling at the Prime while elbow-deep in his wiring helped break the tension that had crystallized between them.

“I messed up,” Rodimus said quietly.

Ratchet gestured to the floor on the other side of the cube pile.

“You did,” he said, shaking his head at Rodimus’ ripe disappointment. “What do you want me to do? Say you tried your best and forgive you? You’re right, Rodimus. Whatever your reasons for not acting sooner, Drift’s the one who has to deal with your consequences.”

“I’m scared,” Rodimus admitted as he took a seat again. He picked up the cube he had been checking before and looked it over: no leaks. He put it in the intact pile and retrieved the next. “I liked what we had before, and I’m scared Drift’s going to hate me now that his big sacrifice turned out to be for nothing.”

“What you had before wasn’t sustainable,” Ratchet said. He had moved back into his own rhythm, optics on his hands while he spoke to Rodimus. “Want to talk about objectifying? You treated Drift like a personal worshiper.”

Rodimus ducked his helm. It sucked to feel Ratchet’s scrutiny even without those fierce optics on him, but he knew it was deserved. It had just been so nice to feel appreciated for once. To have someone tell him, without disclaimer or exception, that he was good at something and could help people. Everyone else was always searching for his flaw; Drift had been the first to explore Rodimus with the intention to find his virtues. It was the praise Rodimus missed most, second only to the camaraderie, and even while acknowledging it was for the best, it still stung to know he couldn’t have that back.

Ratchet set down a cube and did not immediately reach for another one.

“I can’t make any guarantees about what Drift will do, but I think you would actually find friendship without aftkissing to be more rewarding,” he said.

But I liked that, Rodimus thought, to his horror. Ratchet rolled his optics.

I’m sure you did.

“Of course,” he said out loud. “And you never doubted it? Never once thought, ‘Hey, this level of devotion from a bot I haven’t shared three words with is a little weird’?”

No. But a few moments slipped in from Rodimus’ memories. When Drift told him about his affiliation ceremony, there were embers of a once blazing inferno glowing behind his optics, a side of the ex-Decepticon that Rodimus told himself was but a lingering echo. Drift had given up that kind of passion on his road to atonement. At least, Rodimus had convinced himself as much.

“He told you exactly what you wanted to hear, knowing you would fill in the gaps,” Ratchet said. “He is a survivalist.” And to have survived so much, only to once more find himself without a home or support was a mockery of justice and everything Ratchet had believed the Autobots stood for.

That was why he needed to leave.

“And you’re getting your new chance because of it,” he said. “You didn’t earn it, but you’re getting one anyway. And if you really meant that apology, you’ll do something different this time.”

Rodimus knew that, could internalize the idea, but when so much of what he did felt like an externally sourced script running of its own volition, he struggled to make it a guarantee. He could intend, with every fiber of every cable, to do better the second time around. But so often the pressure of potential disappointment became its own self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Well, so long as we’re stuck together, you won’t be alone,” Ratchet said. “I’ll be there. I won’t let you do that to him.”

“Okay,” Rodimus said. He had heard promises like that before, from bot who promised to support him only to turn tailpipe once they learned what that meant.

But now he could feel Ratchet’s resolve. Not to Rodimus, to whom his emotions were turbulent and untrustworthy, but to Drift and giving him what life would otherwise conspire to keep away. He thought Drift a fool for the role he had assigned himself at Rodimus’ side, but he would not deny him his agency if that was something he wanted to regain.

The navicomp beeped. They stood simultaneously and Ratchet moved back to the captain’s chair to inspect the screen.

“We’ve got a hit,” he said. “Vitreous.” An organic planet, according to the report. Neither of their databanks could produce any further information.

“A week?” Rodimus’ voice was tight as Ratchet scanned the details.

“Give or take,” he said. “If we need to refuel, that will add a couple days.”

“Sure.” Rodimus was trying very hard not to think about what a week of this would be like.

Ratchet was doing it enough for both of them.

#maccadam #transformers #ratchet #rodimus #my writing #longfic #fault lines #posting this a full day after ao3 dfsgjldfkjh #lifes really living rn

[pilot-boi]

Shouting In Cafes: Chapter Nineteen

Airborne

This world keeps spinning, and with each new day I can feel a change in everything

AO3 LINK

 “So…what is this thing?” Neptune questioned as he stared down at the lump of fried dough on a plate, covered in a heaping helping of powdered sugar and red strawberry sauce.

“It’s a funnel cake,” Sun explained, after a moment of confused silence. “Are you seriously telling me you’ve never had funnel cake before, bro?” 

They were sitting under a bright pink and blue pinstriped umbrella by the food stands. The two had gotten sandwiches for lunch, and Sun had suggested sharing something sweet, which had resulted in the funnel cake Neptune was now eyeing dubiously. 

It had first resulted in Sun winking and commenting, “Well I know where you could get somethin’ sweet bro,” to which Neptune had shoved the map in his face and fled to the nearest food stand. And then funnel cake.

“I feel like I’ll gain twenty pounds just looking at it,” Neptune mumbled.

Sun barked out a laugh. “You won’t! Just try it, I think you’ll like it!”

After a few more dubious glances between the plate and friend, Neptune stabbed a piece of the dough with a plastic fork and bit into it.

“Well?” Sun was leaning forward expectantly, watching him intently. Eyes way too wide, but when weren’t they?

Neptune avoided his gaze for a moment. “It’s…not bad.”

“You liar! You like it!” Sun accused. “And of freaking course you’re using a fork.”

“What else would I use?”

“Uh, your hands? Duh?”

Neptune didn’t reply, simply stabbed another, more substantial, section of the funnel cake with his fork, and ate it in one bite.

“Hey, leave some for me!” Sun protested, diving forward and knocking Neptune’s utensil out of the way. 

It didn’t take long for them to polish off the plate, and by the end of it, Neptune had taken notice of a smear of strawberry sauce across Sun’s cheek.

He felt a momentary urge to wipe it away, to reach out and brush the sticky substance off. His arm was half-outstretched before Neptune stopped himself, not wanting to risk rocking the boat any further. 

Boundaries were something Sun tended to ignore, but not him. He liked his boundaries nice and sturdy, thank you very much. And doing something like that would definitely be enough to tip off even Sun.

“You’ve got some on your face.” He said this instead.

“Oh?” The blonde took a napkin and wiped off his cheeks. “Got it?” He asked when he’d finished.

Neptune made the mistake of letting his eyes linger too long, and cursed himself silently when Sun met his eyes. 

“You good, bro?” Sun asked, waving a hand in front of his face. “Spaced out?”

Shit.

Neptune dropped his gaze. “No, no, sorry…I just…”

You’re unreal. The hottest guy I’ve ever met. Your eyes are so pretty when you smile. And you smile so often, that my heart can’t physically take it. But what’s worse is when you just look so open, and I don’t know what to do with that.

The words he wanted to say chased themselves half-formed across the landscape of his consciousness. His stupid heart was more than eager to say them all. But he’d already come too close to ruining a perfectly good friendship, and he wasn’t going to give it a chance.

So those words Neptune wished he could say, he swallowed, and tucked safely into his heart never to be released.

Those words were dangerous, and to say them now would jeopardize everything that he’d accomplished today. He’d made it this far, he couldn’t ruin it in the eleventh hour.

Sun was straight. This wasn’t a date. Sun was straight. 

Now if Sun could just stop staring at him like that, maybe he could hold it together for a few more hours. After all, he could see the sun beginning it’s downwards descent, and he knew he wouldn’t have to endure much more of this.

Because even though this definitely wasn’t a special birthday date, he’d come too close to forgetting that a couple times. 

He was getting more caught up in it every time Neptune held his hand and Sun swung their clasped hands between them as they walked. He didn’t protest as much he normally would when he begrudgingly accepted an enthusiastically presented brightly-colored stall-game prize. 

And then the thing with the funnel cake. That wasn’t flirting right? Because with every time he had to ask himself that on this godforsaken not-date, the less convincing Neptune sounded to himself.

“Well, I think that was the last one.” Sun commented, ignoring Neptune leaning heavily on the railing underneath the ride they’d just gotten off of, knees shaking.

He’d pretty firmly figured out by the second ride that he didn’t like roller coasters quite as much as he was letting on. However, he didn’t say anything, mostly because Sun enjoyed it so much himself. 

Sun could not make it more obvious that he liked roller coasters. A lot. They were fun, fast, and unexpected. Rapid twists and turns that made you feel like you were flying, before depositing you safely back to earth. 

 Sun’s enthusiasm was infectious, and the huge exhilarated grins that Neptune received after each ride felt like reward enough. Each ride felt a brief little escape from the bonds of reality, into a universe where he could forget that this wasn’t a date.

And besides, Neptune signed up for this. If he’d really wanted to, Sun had given him a perfectly good out at the beginning of the day. But alas, Neptune was a weak spineless man with no willpower, so he went along with Sun.

Glancing up, Neptune realized that the sky had mostly darkened, and the last rays of the sun were filtering past the horizon.

“It’s getting dark…should we go soon?” Neptune asked from the railing he was clinging to like his life depended on it. Which it definitely did. No way was the world supposed to be spinning like this.

Sun perked up immediately, nearly falling over himself to pull the map from his back pocket. “No, no! There’s one more ride left!”

“There is?” Neptune groaned, and glanced over at the map Sun was displaying proudly. He squinted in confusion before his eyes landed on what appeared to be the park's star attraction. “You mean the Ferris wheel?” Neptune asked.

Sun nodded. “We should go on it!”

Neptune shrugged, finally relinquishing his grasp on the railing. “Sure, if you want. Seems a bit slow, though. You sure it’s your kind of ride?”

Sun nodded as they started walking towards the line for the Ferris wheel. “Not usually,” Sun admitted, “but I’ve heard it’s got one hell of a view!”

The line for the Ferris wheel was a bit longer, but again, with Sun carrying on, switching topics, and goading Neptune into playing along with his conversations, the time flew by. 

The Ferris wheel was bedecked with golden fairy lights that ran up and down the support struts. There were colorful triangle panels decorating the arms that extended outwards to the edge of the wheel, and the gondolas were bright cherry red. 

By the time they were seated in the little gondola, a small two-seat car with a rounded bottom and an arched over canopy, the sun had fully set.

Neptune didn’t notice the number of people filtering out of the park, or the fact that nobody else had gotten onto the ride after them. He was too caught up in Sun’s voice, eagerly relaying to him some adventure he’d had with one of his other friends. 

“You did not see a sea monster you idiot.”

“Bro I’m serious! Though I’m pretty sure it could have eaten my face off.” 

The wheel started turning, and as it did, Neptune turned his head to look out towards the city.

“It really is a pretty view…” He admitted, as the sparkling city lights spread out like a speckling of glitter across a black blanket. The fairgrounds were a decent distance away from downtown, and also at a slightly higher elevation. This made for a dramatic landscape which unfolded as their cart was slowly lifted higher into the sky.

“It is,” Sun said, in a tone of voice Neptune couldn’t quite identify. 

Sun wasn’t looking at the city.

They’d just reached the apex of the wheel and were about to begin their downwards descent when the wheel stopped.

It wasn’t a jarring stop, like you’d expect had the wheel somehow jammed. It was soft and deliberate.

Planned.

Neptune turned his head to Sun, who he’d just realized was a lot closer than he’d been so far today, aside from on the coaster cars. But in those, Neptune had been too busy screaming to notice the distance.

That was a lie. He’d very much noticed.

This was different though. And now they were hanging midair, for some reason.

“Sun, what’s going on?” He asked, leaning over slightly to look over the edge of the car towards the ground.

“This… is a birthday present. From me to you.” Sun declared, though his voice lacked some of its usual force. 

He almost sounded nervous. Neptune didn’t know it was possible for Sun to sound nervous.

 “I thought the gift was the trip to the amusement park?” he asked, confusion inching into his voice.

Sun scrunched his nose and rolled his eyes. “I mean it was…but this is the real one.” 

That was when the first heart-stopping explosion occurred.

Neptune jumped violently where he was sitting in the cart, hands flying to grip the railing in front of them, blocking the front of the cart. “What the fuck-”

He looked up. 

The sky was ablaze with fireworks.

Great bursts of all the colors of the rainbow decorated the sky against a backdrop of stars. They shot up from the ground in spirals or large balls of brilliant golden light. Zigzagging patterns through the air or elegantly erupting into blossoms of color.

The entire display went on for about five minutes, perhaps more, and Neptune spent all of it transfixed.

He’d never really seen fireworks.

Heard of them, sure. And pictures and videos, but never in person. He’d never really seen the appeal. 

Yet here he was, seeing them, and now he understood why people loved them so much. The sounds, the shapes, the colors. There were so many colors. The sky was a blank canvas that, in an instant, had been painted by watercolor until it was drenched with all the mesmerizing glory it could possibly contain. 

When the last echoes of the bursts had finally stopped ringing in his ears, Neptune sat back against the cart, having not realized he’d leaned forward when the show had begun. 

It was easily the best birthday present he’d ever received.

---

The fireworks had been the perfect cherry on top. This day had been nearing perfect, and the fireworks made it all click together. 

When he’d found out it was Neptune’s birthday, he’d realized that there couldn’t be a better way to do this. Finding out about the fireworks at this amusement park had pretty much cemented his decision on what to do. 

Planning the day trip, and keeping it a surprise was more effort than Sun had ever put into any event in his life. 

And watching the colors of the fireworks reflect in Neptune’s eyes had made it all worth it. 

They’d cast shadows that danced over his face, before lighting the night all over again. His glasses reflected the lights, flashing with a million billion colors and casting lights down onto his cheeks. His cheeks were flushed in awe, and Sun was captivated.

When it had ended, Neptune had sat against the backrest of the gondola again, still with an awed expression on his face.

“Did…did you like it?” Sun dared to ask, his heart threatening to beat its way out of his chest.

Neptune turned his head to him with a smile just tugged at his lips.

“I loved it.” And I love you, Sun nearly said. Nearly said, but didn’t say. He wanted to though.

Sun could have left it there. He could have waved to have them brought back down, dropped Neptune off, and just held out a bit longer.

A month was pretty fast, even by his standards. But he couldn’t handle to wait any longer. Already bouncing eagerly against the walls of his heart were the words he’d had tucked away all day.

All week. Month. Since the drive really, twenty-seven days, but who was counting.

Neptune didn’t smile enough. Didn’t laugh enough. And he wanted to make sure that smile stayed, even just for a few moments longer. 

It was why he let it happen, with no plan as to what to say, he just went with what his instincts said to do. Which was always dangerous for Sun, but when had that stopped him before?

They said to do it now, because he’d never find a moment like this with Neptune ever again. 

Sun grabbed one of Neptune’s hands in his, nearly melting then and there when Neptune’s fingers interlaced with his automatically.

It was quiet.

There was just so much Sun wanted to say. Even though it was only a month, and he knew it sounded crazy, and he knew he was probably acting like some stupid lovestruck kid.

So much he wanted to spill out until Neptune understood just how much he meant to him. But words had never been his strong suit, so his stupid brain was settling for hoping his intense gaze conveyed everything he couldn’t.

And for once, Neptune didn’t avert his eyes. Sun hoped that meant he wasn’t totally fucking doomed.

Clinging to that hope, Sun took all the words jammed into the bottleneck his mouth was making. He shuffled them together, and said what mattered most right then and there.

“Will you go out with me?”

#rwby #neptune vasilias #sun wukong #seamonkeys #mine #my writing #shouting in cafes #coffee shop rwby #chapter 19 #writing wednesday

[savage-rhi]

(just leaving another prompt here ^_^) Higgs and Fragile are exhausted after a long day delivering cargo and they put up their camp for the night - very close to a couple of hot springs.🔥

@nireey Here ya go hon 💙

Higgs finished setting up his portion of the camp, glaring towards Fragile’s gear and Timefall shelter that was already set for the night. She had beaten him to it an hour ahead, going through her gear like it was nothing. It was yet another thing he envied her for. Not only did she have a high DOOMs level, but she was quick at any task given to her. Needless to say, Higgs was a little jealous.

Grumbling to himself, Higgs got up after putting down the last of his equipment and decided it was high time he bathed. He was amazed that Fragile hadn’t chastised him for how bad his body odor had become. Then again, he didn’t make any comments about her own either. The two had been traveling nonstop for a week to deliver medicine. There wasn’t much time to really care about hygiene considering the emergency. Nonetheless, Higgs was thankful they camped by a hot spring. 

He stripped freely out of his porter uniform the closer he got to the spring formation, not a care in the world and not paying much attention as he swung his clothes over his shoulder. Higgs only snapped back to reality when he saw Fragile’s head poking out of the water from the blue spring ahead, looking at him with wide eyes as he stood there naked from head to toe and froze.

“Oh fuck--!” Higgs exclaimed, running behind a large boulder nearby as Fragile quickly turned her head away. 

“I swear I didn’t see anything. If it’s any consolation!” Fragile hollered, meanwhile Higgs was rubbing his face and trying to compose himself. He shuddered, feeling embarrassed at how clueless he had been. He should have checked first to see if Fragile was in the springs before stripping down. 

“I feel like a cheap whore!” Higgs replied, surprised to hear Fragile laugh hard from the comment. It got his lips to quirk into a smile, despite his face flushing hot with red. 

“No wonder you became a porter, couldn’t make the cut working corners in the city huh? Why don’t you come out? There’s room for the two of us.” Fragile shouted playfully as Higgs rubbed the back of his neck, eyes wandering about before he peeked around the corner, meeting her eyes. 

“You sure?” 

Fragile nodded.

“I promise I won’t look.” 

True to her word, Fragile turned around and away from Higgs. He gathered up his courage and ventured out, hesitation in his movements as his body trembled. Truth be told, he could care less if Fragile saw his junk. He had seen many naked people in his time at the community showers in Edge Knot City that it didn’t phase him too. Nonetheless, Higgs didn’t want her looking at his scars, asking questions about how he earned them. The last thing he wanted, was to have a conversation about his daddy. The man had already stolen much of his life away, why give power to something that was dead?

Higgs let out a sigh of relief as the water splashed over his flesh. The more sunk in, the less his body began to hurt. He hadn’t realized how much weight he had been carrying until now. His whole back screamed out of relief as the warmth radiated through his skin. He closed his eyes before Fragile cleared her throat. 

“You alright?” She asked, her head and shoulders sticking out of the water. Higgs was thankful it was murky. 

“Peachy. Besides for my business partner seeing my goods.” Higgs joked, letting out a small laugh as Fragile snorted. 

“It’s nothing to brag about.”

“Excuse me?” Higgs made a face.

“I’m kidding!” Fragile held up her hands in surrender as Higgs rolled his eyes. “So, did you set up camp alright?”

Higgs nodded, taking a moment to splash some water on his face as he slicked his wet fingers through his hair, combing out debris.

“Yeah. I checked the maps too. I figure we should leave before noon tomorrow, then we can make it to our destination. I don’t reckon any BTs are gonna show up if we take the lower pass.”

Fragile nodded, letting out a content sigh. “Seems you’ve been overworking.”

“I like being one step ahead of the monsters,” Higgs smirked. “You could learn a thing or two.”

Fragile crossed her arms, the water gently splashing away from her. “Are you saying I’m stupid?”

“Take it as you wish, sweetheart.” Higgs teased, moving a hand forward and splashing Fragile. She shielded herself, only to return the favor. They both ended up acting like a couple of kids, playing in the water and trying to one-up each other. Eventually, as their movements settled as did their laughs, Higgs let out a content sigh.

“Man, why are we so tense with each other at work?”

Fragile shrugged.

“I don’t know, but maybe we should change the dynamic.”

“Couldn’t agree more. I like it when you’re less of a bitch.”

“And I like it when you’re less of an asshole, you downgraded to bastard at least.” Fragile chuckled as did Higgs before he realized how close he had gotten to her. They both froze, looking at each other's eyes before Higgs caught onto Fragile’s gaze going over some of the scars on his chest.

“Do they hurt?” Fragile asked softly, as Higgs felt fear trickle down his spine. 

“N-no.” He murmured, trying to be firm but the words wouldn’t come out properly. 

“How did--Higgs, who did that to you?” 

Things happened in slow motion, Higgs could see Fragile’s fingertips trying to reach out and touch the damaged tissue. He snapped himself out of the trance, jumping back in the water. This startled Fragile as she shirked back, looking at Higgs and seeing his eyes were wide. He looked like a frightened dog, fearing its master was going to hit him. 

“I’m gonna---I’m gonna go.” Higgs bolted out of the water so quickly, Fragile had no time to stop him. 

By the time Fragile got out of the springs and dressed, she saw Higgs was lying down in his Timefall shelter. A soft sigh escaped her lips as she crouched by him, taking note Higgs was sound asleep. 

“I’m sorry if I stepped out of line. We can talk about it later. You’re safe with me, Higgs. Just remember that.” Fragile said quietly then made sure her movements were calm as she made her way to her sleeping mat and shelter. 

Higgs slowly opened his eyes, trying his best not to whimper. He heard everything, and as much as Fragile’s words touched him, he could feel the stray tears escape his eyes and cascade down his cheeks. Zigzagging through stubble and marks. He wondered if he would ever be able to open up to someone in full, and felt he had missed his shot tonight. His uncle haunted him, despite his best efforts to push him back. 

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