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linh-cindy · 1 year

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An Unexpected Rejection

The scene where Cinder is asked by Prince Kai to be his personal guest at the 126th Annual Peace Ball but she declines- in Kai"s point of view!

Kai was late.

He really needed to see Dr. Erland, but apparently, time wasn't on his side.

He spotted the nearest elevator behind him and as it was about to close, the elevator operator was able to hold it.

"Please hold," the voice announced.

"Sorry, sorry," Kai said to the person inside the elevator, practically slipping into it, "thanks for the hold--"

His voice caught when he saw the person inside.

Linh Cinder was leaning on the elevator wall, arms crossed, and she seemed genuinely shocked to see him standing there.

"Linh-mèi?" Kai blurted out.

She froze. She pushed herself off the elevator wall, something that Kai should have told her not to do and risk her being uncomfortable.

"Your Highness," Cinder muttered quietly, bowing.

Kai could sense the tension radiating off her. He wished he could do something to ease it.

Silence filled the elevator. A minute passed before Cinder spoke.

Cinder cleared her throat. "You should, um, just call me Cinder. You don't need to be so-" She slammed her mouth shut.

Kai's mouth twitched into an almost-smile.

Stop! Act normal! Kai scolded himself.

"All right, Cinder," he said, thankful his voice was steady. "Are you following me?"

Cinder frowned, which made Kai a little guilty he was teasing her. "I'm just going to check on the med-droid," she said. "That I looked at yesterday. To ensure it doesn't have any remaining bugs or anything."

Kai nodded. This was not going well. "I was on my way to talk to Dr. Erland about his progress," he told her to cut the silence. "I heard through the grapevine that he may have made progress with one of the recent draft subjects. I don’t suppose he said anything to you?"

Cinder fidgeted with her belt loops. "No, he didn't mention anything. But I'm just the mechanic."

They didn't say anything after that.

She doesn't know.

The elevator stopped. Kai motioned for her to exit first, then he followed her.

"Your Highness?" said a young woman in front of him. "I am so sorry."

"Thank you, Fateen," said Kai quietly. He kept walking.

Cinder frowned, confused.

Not a dozen steps later, they were halted by a man who also gave his condolences to Kai.

Kai saw Cinder shiver beside him. She stopped.

"You haven't seen the net this morning."

A heartbeat later, Cinder's eyes widened and she clapped a hand over her mouth.

Kai was surprised, but it faded away easily. He ducked his head. "Good guess."

"I'm so sorry. I didn't know-" she stammered frantically, her voice hinting at a million apologies.

Kai tucked his hands into his pockets. "I wish my father's death were the worst of it."

Cinder's eyes clouded over. Was something wrong? "Your Highness?"

Kai turned to look at her. He was getting sick of all these "Your Highnesses". Of course- not when Cinder said it. Wait-

"You can call me Kai," he blurted out before he could stop himself.

"Excuse me?"

"No more ‘Your Highness.’ I get enough of that from…everyone else. You should just call me Kai."

Cinder seemed momentarily dazed before he continued. She blinked like waking up from a daydream. "No. That wouldn't be-"

"Don't make me turn it into a royal command," he said, smiling.

Cinder scrunched her shoulders up by her ears. "All right. I suppose."

"Thank you," said Kai gratefully. "We should go then."

After a bit of quiet walking, he asked curiously, "What was wrong with the android?"

Cinder scratched at an oil stain on her glove. "Oh, I’m sorry. She’s not done yet. I’m working on her, I swear." She's talking about Nainsi.

"No, I meant the med-droid," said Kai, pushing down the urge to ask more about Nainsi. "That you fixed for Dr. Erland?"

"Oh. Oh, right. Um. It was…it had…a…dead wire. Between its optosensor and…control panel," she stammered.

Kai raised his brow. She was lying.

Cinder cleared her throat as if to clear away the awkwardness. "You, uh, said that something was worse? Before?"

Kai said nothing.

"Never mind," said Cinder, shrugging. "I didn't mean to pry."

Dammit, Kai. You just blew it.

“No, it’s all right. You’ll find out soon enough.” He lowered his voice. “The Lunar queen informed us this morning that she is coming to the Commonwealth on a diplomatic mission. Supposedly," he told her.

Cinder almost tripped, and Kai felt a pang of guilt as she stumbled after him. "The Lunar Queen? You can't be serious."

“I wish I weren’t. Every android in the palace has spent the morning taking down every reflective surface in the guest wing. It’s ridiculous—like we have nothing better to do.”

“Reflective surfaces? I always thought that was just superstition.”

“Evidently not. Something about their glamour... It doesn't really matter."

“When is she coming?”

“Today.”

Cinder looked horrified.

“I’ll be making an announcement in half an hour," said Kai.

“But why would she come now, when we’re in mourning?”

Kai smiled grimly. “Because we’re in mourning.”

He stopped.

Shoot, Nainsi.

Kai turned toward Cinder nervously. “Look, I really appreciate your helping with the med-droids, and I’m sure the best mechanic in the city has a million jobs to prioritize, but at the risk of sounding like a spoiled prince, could I ask that you move Nainsi to the top of your list? I’m starting to get anxious about getting her back. I—” He paused long enough to catch the anxiousness in Cinder's face. “I think I could use the moral support of my childhood tutor right now. You know?” He wanted her to know he was lying. He needed to let her know he was lying. Lying for something far more important than childhood attachments or moral support.

Understanding flashed across Cinder's grease-coated face. “Of course, Your Highness. Sorry, Prince Kai. I’ll take a look at her as soon as I get home.”

Kai would have hugged her.

Oh, Cinder, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Kai stomped down his ridiculous thoughts and gestured at a door that had Dr. Dmitri Erland's name labeled on it.

As soon as they entered, Erland leapt to his feet. "Your Highness--I am so sorry. What can I do to help you?"

“Nothing, thank you,” said Kai. Then he reconsidered. "Find a cure."

“I will, Your Highness.” He pulled his hat on. “Of course I will.”

Cinder looked at Dr. Erland and guilt immediately clouded her eyes after a few seconds.

Kai cleared his throat. “I found your pretty new mechanic down in the lobby, and she tells me she’s here to check on the med-droids again. You know I could get you funding for some upgraded models if you require it.”

Oh shoot shoot shoot, did I just call her pretty? Kai thought furiously. What was I THINKING, oh SHOOT.

He willed himself to ignore her.

“No, no, they only needed a touch of maintenance,” said Dr. Erland, reassuringly. “Nothing to worry about, and I would hate to have to program a new model. Besides, if we didn’t have any malfunctioning androids, what excuse would we have for asking Miss Linh back to the palace from time to time?”

Kai saw Cinder glare at the doctor from the corner of his eye, and he couldn't help smiling.

“Doctor," Kai started, “I heard a rumor that you’ve made some sort of a breakthrough in the past few days. Is it true?”

Dr. Erland seemed as if he could slap anyone who started the rumor, but so far he seemed calm. “My prince, you should know better than to ask after rumors like that. I hate to give you hope before I know anything concrete. But when I do have solid information, you will be the first to see the report.”

“Right. In that case, I’ll leave you be and hope to see a report cross my desk any day now.”

“That could be difficult, Your Highness, considering you do not have a desk.”

Kai shrugged, unprovoked, and turned toward Cinder. "I hope our paths will cross again." He bowed his head a little.

"Really?" asked Cinder, grinning quite stiffly. "In that case, I guess I'll just keep following you."

Regret shined in Cinder's eyes for half a breath before Kai laughed.

Kai took Cinder's hand before he could stop himself. Panic crossed her face as he lifted her hand and placed a soft kiss on it.

Kai let go of Cinder's hand and bowed, exiting the room.

Then he got an idea.

An idea so crazy, it just might work.

"Gracious," whispered Dr. Erland as Kai opened the door.

“Pardon me, but might I have one more brief word with Linh-mèi?”

Dr. Erland gestured toward the mechanic. “By all means.”

Kai turned to her, still in the doorway. “I know this sounds like very poor timing, but trust me when I say my motives are based on self-preservation.” He inhaled a sharp breath. Please let this work. “Would you consider being my personal guest at the ball?”

Cinder froze for four heartbeats and a half. Her eyes were big and scared.

Kai waited.

And waited.

Then he raised his brows to catch her attention.

She blinked. "E-excuse me?" she stuttered.

"I assume you are going to the ball?"

“I-I don’t know. I mean, no. No, I’m sorry, I’m not going to the ball.”

The hope rushed out of Kai in a millisecond.

SHOOT.

“Oh. Well...but...maybe you would change your mind? Because I am, you know.”

"The prince," Cinder completed for him.

"Not bragging," Kai blurted out, feeling sweat trickling at the back of his neck. "Just a fact."

"I know."

After a long moment, Cinder said, “I-I’m sorry. Thank you—I… thank you, Your Highness. But I must respectfully decline.”

Kai took a moment to process what she said. Once he did, he attempted a grin that hurt his face muscles. “No, it’s all right. I understand.”

In truth, he didn’t.

Hell, she was probably in love with someone else.

“My sincerest condolences, Your Highness,” said Dr. Erland. Kai nearly forgot he was there. “In more ways than one, it seems.”

Cinder glared at the doctor. Kai found it cute when she narrowed her eyes at him, scrunched her eyebrows and pressed her lips together.

Kai blinked a few more times to clear his head of that ridiculous thought.

“It was nice to see you again, Linh-mèi,” said Kai.

The look of annoyance was peeled off Cinder’s face and was replaced by panicked apology, but Kai couldn’t stand a second longer in there. Her mouth was just opening when Kai wrenched open the door and closed it behind him quietly.

Kai leaned against the wall beside the door to Dr. Erland’s office and dragged a hand down his face. “Stars,” he breathed. How could he be so foolish?…

Kai heard the doctor’s faint voice through the wood.

“What a shame you cannot blush, Miss Linh.”

Overwhelmed and exhausted, Kai cleared away his confusion at the doctor’s statement.

Can my life get any worse?

Tags:

@kaider-is-my-otp

@cerenoya

@just2bubbly

@impossiblesuitcase

@thetlctrash

@opakitty

@winterrhayle

@cindersassasin

#the lunar chronicles #kaider #linh cinder #tlc cinder #tlc kai #emperor kai #prince kai #Kai is such a nervous wreck in this #why is this so long #my writing has gotten lousy rip

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apocalypticavolition · 4 months

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Let's (re)Read The Great Hunt! Chapter 21: The Nine Rings

You can tell I'm getting into the weeds when it comes to chapter art. Frankly, the people who made this card were getting into the weeds when it comes to game mechanics because that card effect has nothing to do with Mr. Caldevwin. Is that a spoiler? The whole rest of this post is full of them when it comes to this series, so don't keep reading if that bothers ya.

This chapter starts up with the Harp icon as Rand performs this evening and reflects a little on Thom. I suppose it also reflects inns in general.

The innkeeper was a lean woman with a long nose and graying hair, but her wrinkles seemed part of her ready smile more than anything else.

A thin innkeeper? She must be evil! That's why she's giving a home to these soldiers.

“As you say, my Lord.” Mistress Madwen’s glance flickered to Rand’s sword; the bronze herons were plain on scabbard and hilt. She frowned slightly, but her face was clear again in a blink.

I was kinda joking because I don't remember much about this gal but she is very snoopy. I suppose part of it is just her job but her disapproval of Rand's weapon does make me wonder.

“We are not hunting the Horn, mistress.” Rand did not glance at the bundle in Loial’s arms; the blanket with its colorful stripes hung bunched over the Ogier’s thick arms and disguised the chest well. “We surely are not. We are on our way to the capital.”

A thousand miles away, Moiraine feels a sudden surge of pride and does not know why.

The innkeeper gave a surprised blink when Hurin sat at table with them—an Ogier, it seemed, was one thing, but Hurin was clearly a servant in her eyes.

All of this is pretty good set-up for how stratified the societies of the eastern subcontinent are. In Baerlon and the Borderlands there wasn't much concern for any divisions within the party except gender lines and Moiraine's being Aes Sedai, and it's hardly unreasonable to expect blurred lines in social divisions in a small group traveling like this, but it's clear that in Cairhien the wilderness is no excuse to start fraternizing.

Selene’s was still half full, but she motioned curtly for one of the girls to take it.

Lanfear's wondering what the odds are of her finding a stasis box with some proper Chinese food in it.

Rand hesitated only a moment. It had been too long since he had practiced the flute rather than the sword, and the coins in his pouch would not last forever.

Here's that important theme again. We're in book 2 and already Rand's worried he's losing his sensitive side to war. He doesn't even know.

Selene looked at Rand as if wondering what he was...

I wonder if LTT had ever picked up any instruments. Probably not.

Did she really let me go? I wonder if she’s following me. Or waiting for me. “Sit down, Captain. Please.” Caldevwin drew a chair from another table. “Tell me, Captain, if you don’t mind. Have you seen any other strangers recently? A lady, short and slender, and a fighting man with blue eyes. He’s tall, and sometimes he wears his sword on his back.”

Note here how Rand is already succumbing to the paranoia associated with his condition. Book 1 Rand wouldn't have had these thoughts and he wouldn't have felt compelled to ask questions like this immediately either.

“A wondrous place I have heard, Lord Rand—I may call you so?—and fine men, the Andormen. No Cairhienin has ever worn a blademaster’s sword so young as you. I met some Andormen, once, the Captain-General of the Queen’s Guards among them. I do not remember his name; an embarrassment. Perhaps you could favor me with it?”

You can tell that this guy is only a Captain because he's nowhere near subtle enough to play in the Cairhienien Major Leagues.

Just as Selene opened her mouth, one of the serving girls let out a cry and dropped a lamp she was taking down from a shelf.

Lanfear's really restraining herself here to not make the Captain himself have to run away screaming.

The Cairhienin’s eyes sharpened. “It is part of the statue, my Lord Rand,” he said slowly. His gaze flickered toward Loial; for an instant he seemed to be considering something new.

"Are the Ogier allying with Andor to steal our old statues?!" Sure it sounds silly but like, what else can they be thinking? They probably don't know that the statue's a sa'angreal (it's way outside of the usual) but why couldn't it be a war asset from ancient days? Why would the Andorians even know about it to send a spy? Rand's causing trouble again and he barely even knows it.

“I have five hundred laborers in camp beyond the diggings, and even so it will be past summer’s end before we have it clear. They are men from the Foregate. Half my work is to keep them digging, and the other half to keep them out of this village. Foregaters have a fondness for drinking and carousing, you understand, and these people lead quiet lives.” His tone said his sympathies were all with the villagers.

Well based on the size of the village, five hundred carousers hitting them up every night would probably get the place burned down in a week or two. Keeping civil order is an incredibly difficult task!

For twenty-three years Barin Madwen and I were arguing when we weren’t kissing, so to speak. That’s by way of saying I have some experience. Right now, you’re thinking your Lady never wants to see you again, but it’s my way of thinking that if you tap on her door tonight, she’ll be taking you in.

Again, the "skinny innkeepers are obvious Darkfriends" things is a joke but... it could work for Mistress Mad wen, couldn't it? Moves from Lugard to Cairhien to escape bad deeds there, runs the inn to keep her eyes open in case anything happens, Choedan Kal discovered so she becomes important, Ishamael takes her to the party so she's up to date, and here she is with advice that could be entirely innocent or could be straight from Lanfear - and why attack Rand like all the DFs from last book did when he's already in a Forsaken's clutches?

It's probably not remotely intended in the text but hey.

“Daes Dae’mar, Lord Rand,” Hurin said.

In the Game of Houses, you win or you die.

Okay maybe I'm getting my fantasy epics confused but I do enjoy how Jordan managed to communicate all of GRRM's themes even though they're not central to his own thesis.

“He has the right of Daes Dae’mar, Lord Rand. Cairhienin play it more than most, though all southerners do.”

And this is a bit of cultural blindness, really. We saw that Malkier's end came from someone playing Daes Dae'mar and while everyone has to fall in behind their leaders for obvious reasons there's going to be some jockeying. The Borderlands are just so far away from the rest of the world that they don't have to play the game at all, especially since Tar Valon actually comes through for them consistently - but then, that's the Game too, in its own way.

But in the morning, Selene was gone. When Rand went down to the common room, Mistress Madwen handed him a sealed parchment. “If you’ll forgive me, my Lord, you should have listened to me. You should have tapped on your Lady’s door.”

I'd say this still fits the Darkfriend theory.

Loial almost missed a step. “I never like to be far from my books, Captain.” His wide mouth flashed teeth in a self-conscious grin, and he hurried to strap the chest onto his saddle.

Okay Loial, I guess I was a little mean calling you naive before.

“He had the inn watched, Lord Rand,” Hurin whispered. “The Lady Selene must have gotten past them unseen somehow.”

Caldevwin has every reason to wonder if Lord Rand murdered his wife and is having the Ogier carry her corpse around in a box at this point. Good thing we'll never see or hear from him again, unlike Mistress Madwen who apparently gets mentioned again in Winter's Heart for some reason? Bizarre.

“Nothing is happening the way I expect,” Rand said.

And it never fucking will.

Next time: Stuff doesn't happen as Moiraine expects either! (Unlike Rand though, she'll sharpen up on her understanding of the future)

#let's read #wheel of time #wot #robert jordan #wheel of time spoilers #wot spoilers #rand al'thor #loial #lanfear #hurin #elricain tavolin #aldrin caldevwin

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asslye · 1 year

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Silent notes

Warnings: Angst to fluff

This was from my wattpad draft for some time thought i should post it in here instead

Tsukishima blinks once, then twice before he opens his mouth to speak, only to be silenced by Nishinoya's hand over his mouth.

"I want to— no, I need tell you something." Nishinoya says in the most solemn tone he can muster, brows scrunched together as he firmly holds Tsukishima's shoulder with a grip that Tsukishima did not expect.

The silence that drags on for another few minutes starts to worry Tsukishima and he only mirrors the scowl with a greater intensity than the other. Nishinoya rarely ever has such a serious expression when they're together so whatever he's going to tell him is probably important.

It is at that point that his insecurities decide to emerge and rear its ugly head from the recesses of his mind and Tsukishima suddenly wonders if Nishinoya is going to breaking up with him. They had only been going out for almost half a year so perhaps Nishinoya had finally had enough? They had so many differing interests and with such opposing personalities, it wouldn't be surprising if his boyfriend was tired of dealing with him.

His brain is already whirring up nonchalant statements as a defence mechanism to counter whatever Nishinoya was about to tell him, preparing himself to give sneers and haughty looks to mask his emotions.

What he didn't quite expect was the sudden fear that seeped into Nishinoya's expression, feeling slender fingers sweep over his cheeks and the corners of his eyes and it is then Tsukishima realises there were tears. His own tears.

"W-Why are you crying?! I haven't said anything yet!" Tsukishima feels he doesn't deserve the concern that's laced in Nishinoya's voice, doesn't deserve the love that Nishinoya has always engulfed him with.

"You're... You're breaking up with me, aren't you?" He hates how weird his voice comes out, trembling and raspy. Nishinoya looks confused, and now so does Tsukishima. Was that not the purpose of their talk?

"Oh my god." Nishinoya starts, rubbing at Tsukishima's cheeks even harder as if trying to erase any trace of his tears. "Is that what you were thinking?! I'm not breaking up with you, Kei! How could you even think that! I love you so so so much!"

"Then why the hell did you look so serious as if someone just died?!"

"Uh well..." He swallows nervously, hands falling to rest on Tsukishima's shoulders again. "I was trying to y'know... Build up a climax to tell you that I really love you... Guess that didn't work out too well..."

“What?" Tsukishima hisses, fingers curling tight into fists and even though he's angry, he feels like he's about to burst into tears anytime soon. While it's not Nishinoya's fault, he still feels like he's been played. "Do you have any idea how I feel?!”

Nishinoya clamps a hand over Tsukshima's mouth once more, sighing at the brief silence. He didn't realise the extent of which Tsukishima's inferiority complex went and clearly he had crossed the proverbial line with his little stunt he tried to pull.

"I'm sorry, Kei!... I didn't mean to worry you like this... I'm sorry..." Slowly removing his hand, Nishinoya leans in to pepper apologetic kisses over Tsukishima's face, at the corners of red puffy eyes, to the slender bridge of his nose down to the tip, and over blotchy cheeks before finally descending onto swollen lips, chewed raw from anxiety.

"I hate you so much..." Tsukishima utters with no real bite just as Nishinoya pulls away to breath only to be pulled back by the waist hugging him tightly scared that once he loosen his grip Noya might slip away from his grasp, gently pushing his face to the crook of Nishinoya’s neck pressing soft kisses So light it makes Noya giggle.

Nishinoya knows it's not true but he decides to keep it to himself. For someone like Tsukishima to worry about such a thing was a blatant fact that he loved him so and this was something so precious that Nishinoya would like to keep locked away in his heart forever.

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pochipop · 2 years

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Can I request an headcannon on how Bakugou, Izuku, Todoroki and Kirishima would react to their crush ((Y/N)) going from funny and outgoing, to closed off, rude and aggressive after a breakup with her ex. She starts working herself so hard on training and such that she can hardly stand.

＃GENSHIN IMPACT !! ♡ — STRUGGLING WITH EMOTIONS AFTER A BREAKUP.

#. synopsis! — how they love and like to be loved .

#. characters! — kirishima, bakugo, midoriya, todoroki .

#. warnings! — mentions of unhealthy coping mechanisms .

#. alt accounts! — @ddollipop (nsfw) @yyolkchi (reblog/spam) .

#. others! — navigation & masterlist .

𖦹. ━ KIRISHIMA !!

Kirishima worries very quickly but doesn't approach you immediately. He feels lost on what to do, but it's painfully obvious to him that something is wrong. . . He just doesn't know what, nor does he know how to fix it. Since joining UA and studying alongside you, Kirishima had always admired your positive demeanor and funny quips. They made him feel a sense of ease and allowed him the chance to relax even in difficult situations. He knew he could count on you to be a good friend to him, and somewhere along the way, his feelings. . . Changed. Deepened, he supposes.

He's always been a sucker for the little things, so when he watches as you withdraw from everyone in what feels like the blink of an eye, —he's scared, because he doesn't know how to put the pieces back together again. His previous image of you is scrambled amongst this new conglomeration of negative feelings that you don't know what to do with, —and when you snap at him for the first time, his heart aches to the tune of your harsh words.

"Hey, (y/n), are you okay?" Kirishima had asked, jogging to catch up with you on the way back to the dorms.

You gave him a surprised glance, but pulled your gaze away quickly. . . As if there was something there behind your eyes that you just didn't want him to see.

"I'm fine, yeah," you answered, adjusting the strap of your bag on your shoulder just to give your hands something to do.

He hesitated after that. It wasn't what you said, it was how you said it. . . Like his concern was inconveniencing, —and it wasn't like you at all.

Maybe that was the moment he finally understood what he didn't before. Maybe it was that dejected spark in your eyes that finally helped him understand. . . You weren't fine. You were trying to process something, and everything else was getting lost in the mix. "You just seem. . ." he paused, searching for the right words, "I dunno, upset I guess. Maybe angry. I can't put my finger on it, but I know something just isn't right, and I want to help if I—"

"I said that I'm fine," you interrupted, tone cold and harsh.

He felt himself shrink back like a kitten that's been hissed at by its mother.

"Sorry," he apologized, with no clue what else he could do for you.

If you wouldn't let him in, he couldn't do anything. He couldn't fix what you wouldn't tell him was broken, —couldn't mend what you wouldn't say. And Kirishima decided that it wasn't really his place to begin with.

A few nights after that, the two of you haven't spoken. He's stolen glances at you in class, but each time, you only seemed to drift farther away from him. It pained him to see that faraway look on your face, like you were waiting for something, or someone, that might never come.

The redhead is wide awake, despite the clock's creeping numbers. It's technically Saturday now, but he doesn't feel tired enough to sleep yet. Outside, he can hear. . . Something. He's not sure what, but eventually brings himself to move to the window to sneak a peek.

Shock rakes through his body with a grip as cool as frozen iron. At first, he thinks it's Midoriya down there, training at such an ungodly hour. Maybe he just let the time get away from him, accidentally staying out past curfew. . . But the more Kirishima's eyes adjust to the darkness, he's quick to realize that's not the case.

He watches for a bit as you throw yourself into this individual sparring match, —steps becoming sloppy, and movements disjointed. It's so unlike you. Whenever he's seen you use your quick, he's always admired the control you have over it. And this feels like a completely different person to him, like someone else is inhabiting your body and using your quirk as their own.

You stumble, knees buckling with that last hit. Before he can see you crumble to the ground, Kirishima is moving as quickly and quietly as he can through the halls to reach you. Something isn't right, and he knows it. . . And he just can't ignore it any longer.

"Y/n!" He calls out, rushing to your side.

You're still kneeling on the grass, teeth clenched with an arm clutching your abdomen.

"What are you doing out here so late?" Kirishima questions, "—oh man, are you bleeding?"

It's not much, but your knee is busted up and some blood has seeped from the small wounds. He quickly pulls you up and helps to steady you with his own body, wrapping one of your arms around his shoulders. He takes you to his dorm room, insisting that you let him take care of the injuries on your leg, even if they're minor. In the end, you're hard pressed to find the strength to resist. . . So, you don't.

As he cleans your knee up for you, he asks in the most earnest tone you've ever heard him take with you for a genuine answer to his next question.

"What's going on?" He asks, shaky hand dabbing at your skin with a damp paper towel, "it's so unlike you to do things like this. You're not reckless. . . At least, I never saw that side of you. Not until now."

He's not saying it to make you feel ashamed, but you can feel it pool in the pit of your stomach anyway.

"I. . . I needed an outlet," you admit, unsure of how else to phrase it.

"I needed something to put my mind to, something I could dive headfirst into without anyone questioning it. But obviously, I picked the wrong option."

It wasn't unusual for you, or for anyone studying at UA for that matter, to train hard in order to achieve personal goals. However, the way you'd been going about it was, just as Kirishima said, —reckless. Roughly two weeks of extended, rigorous self-training, paired with all the regular classes and healthy competitions between your peers. . . You were running yourself into the ground, and the worst part is that you knew it.

"Why the sudden need for an outlet like this?" Kirishima presses gently, preparing himself to give advice, or even to offer comfort, depending on your reply.

"I got dumped," you say, bitterly so, not caring if it sounds silly to admit it.

That's the truth of the matter, and you've come this far with him, so he might as well know the full story.

"It's not like it was the most serious relationship in the world. We're all still high schoolers and everything, it's just. . . The way it happened, the way it seemed like I was the only one torn up about it, I. . . I guess that hurt more than the actual end of the relationship," you elaborate.

"You should feel however you need to feel about it," Kirishima says firmly.

"Whether that's sad, crying into a pillow for a while, angry, taking frustrations out on some of the training dummies. . . Just don't do this to yourself. Don't block us out. You have lots of friends that love you, —that care and are worried about you, y/n. So please don't push us away."

You're at a loss. The guilt only piles higher when you look him in the eyes and are forced to come to the sobering realization that he's being completely genuine. The worst part is that he's right, and there's nowhere left to run and hide. Everything is on the table now.

"I'm sorry," you tell him, in a voice that's barely above a whisper.

Tears prick at your eyes.

"I've felt so stuck. Like nothing was going to change unless I could prove. . . Something to myself, whatever that something is. That I'm strong, maybe. Or that I still have a powerful will. But I lost myself in the training. I tried stuffing down my emotions, and they started to choke me by the end of it. And I took that out on everyone around me, who just wanted to help, and I'm. . . I'm sorry, but I know just saying that isn't enough."

"Everyone needs help sometimes," Kirishima tells you, slipping his strong arms around your neck to pull you in for a tight hug.

His warmth is familiar and comforting.

"Even the strongest people on the planet need help sometimes. It's okay to ask for it."

𖦹. ━ BAKUGO !!

Bakugo notices the changes, but actively ignores it for the first week or so. He sucks with feelings, and he knows it, so he doesn't even think he'd be able to help. Not to mention that he's hard pressed to admit that he wants to in the first place. He's not in any position to be telling anyone else how to express themselves in a non-aggressive way, really. It might even be hypocritical for him to step in, he thinks.

Things will go back to normal. Maybe you're not getting enough sleep and it's taking a toll on you, he reasons. Mr Aizawa has been harder on everyone recently; it wouldn't be surprising if you weren't getting enough rest. Heaven knows Bakugo has certainly pulled a few late nights to get extra studying in as of recently.

Or maybe something is happening behind the scenes in your personal life, —the life he knows very little about. Perhaps you're struggling with any number of things that are common for teenagers; insecurity, hormones, comparison, stress. . . His guess is as good as anyone else's, really. And he hates to admit it, —but he's worried. More so especially as the days go by and you haven't returned to your normal self; full of life and ready to make the most of each day.

The final straw for him comes in the form of a moderate grip around your wrist, pulling you away from your training. He says nothing as he practically drags you along, but you don't struggle. . . In some way, you're almost glad this is happening. Maybe Bakugo will be the one to talk some sense into you. Maybe he can help you overcome this cycle of self-neglect that you've found yourself in.

"You shouldn't be here," he says to you in his usual gruff tone, lowering his volume so that no one else throws glances your way.

It's already strange enough that he's taken it upon himself to speak with you away from everyone else like this.

"What do you mean?" You ask, wrist falling away from Bakugo's touch.

The lack of contact forces you to notice just how warm his hands really are.

"Don't play dumb," he frowns, "—you know exactly what I mean. You look like you have one foot in the grave."

Surely that's an exaggeration on his part. . . It hasn't gotten quite that bad, has it? You know you look worn out, but half-dead has to be pushing it, at least a little. You hope.

"I'm just having a hard time right now," you mumble, a bitter tone lacing through your words.

"I can tell," Bakugo answers flatly.

"And it's none of my business what's causing it, so if you don't wanna tell me, fine. You don't have to. But you should know that heroes have to understand a lot, and one of the most important things is when to step back in order to save yourself the trouble of the crash."

He's right. It's important to know your limits no matter what career path you choose; from pursuing an average life to reaching for number one hero. His harsh but factual words ring true to you, and you feel shame twinge just under your skin.

"I. . . Got broken up with," you say before you could convince yourself not to, "—and it's the first time, so I feel lost now. Training is something I control, so I pushed everything too far, and I know I did. But I didn't have another solution."

"That's stupid," he tells you, pointedly so, his characteristically blunt nature earning a small laugh from you in spite of your tender ribs.

"I know," you reply.

"You could hardly stand back there. All your moves were sloppy, your aim was so far off it might as well have been in the opposite direction, —I mean come on, be realistic about this. You're not learning anything like this, and you sure as hell aren't getting better. You're just running yourself in circles until you collapse, and from the looks of it, that won't take very long if you keep this up," he scrutinizes, and rightfully so, you digress.

"I get it. I'm not dumb," you mumble.

"Could have fooled me acting this way," Bakugo answers harshly.

"Listen, I said that I get it, okay?" You repeat.

"I heard you the first time," he replies.

"Yeah, and I heard you insult me enough the first time. I know I'm being stupid, but I couldn't think of anything else to pull me up. I wasn't trying to make you worried, or anyone else, for that matter. I just wanted to feel like I was in control," you say, catching him largely by surprise.

"You did, whether you meant to or not," he tells you. "Deku's been talking about it for days, —he had a whole meeting with the entire class yesterday evening just to tell everyone to be extra nice to you."

Suddenly, the cookies tied to your dorm room doorknob and the small "have a good day!" note left on your desk that morning make a lot more sense. . .

"I have a lot to make up for, don't I?" You ask, hand curving around the back of your neck awkwardly.

"Probably," Bakugo shrugs, not sugarcoating the truth. . . And it's comforting in a way that coddling never really could be.

"But they're all a bunch of pansies. They'll forgive you as soon as you say you're sorry, so it's not like you have anything to worry about."

His reasoning is a little off, but his conclusion is correct, so you let him have it. After your talk, Bakugo drags you over to Mr Aizawa and gets permission to walk you back to the dorms. It seems that everyone is in silent agreement that it's for the best. And it's then that you decide you'll fix things as soon as your body has gotten a good rest. . . Starting with Bakugo, since he went to all this trouble.

𖦹. ━ IZUKU !!

Izuku's worry is painfully obvious to everyone, you included. If he's trying to hide it, he's doing a really poor job of it. The more he worries, the worse you feel, and the more you throw yourself into any training you can possibly think of. You take to physical combat like a fish to water after the first few days. It feels good for a while, like you've tapped into an untouched part of yourself. Until the high wears off and the strain begins to slow you down. The cycle begins. . . And it's a thin line to walk, —much thinner than you even realize.

Midoriya watches from afar as you drift away. He's at a loss, has no clue what to do for you, nor how to approach this without bursting into tears at your feet. He's not the best at emotional regulation himself, and in fact, he always thought you were pretty solid in that department. So, this new development shocks him, leaves him rattled, and because he's lost as to what to do for you, he can only sit and feel helpless to stop it.

"Hey, y/n," he gives you a small wave, and you're anything but oblivious to the way his eyes refuse to meet yours.

"Hi," you answer blandly as you stuff the last of your things into your bag.

"Do you have any plans for this weekend? Everyone was planning on getting together and having dinner, because it's been a while since we've done that. . . Everyone's been busy and all. . ."

A part of you wants to go, —wants to be with your friends, people you really do love and care for. But a nagging voice in the back of your mind is telling you that you just can't risk it. There's something you need to fix inside of you before you let people around you, —close enough to see into your heart.

"I'm not sure," you reply, "I'll think about it."

Izuku knows what that likely means. It's code for "no, I'm not doing that but I'm trying to be polite, so take this hint and leave me be." Still, the optimist inside him won't let the glaring reality he faces break his spirit. He hopes you really will think about it, and that you'll decide to come in the end.

"Okay," he offers up a small smile, "—where are you headed now? If you want, we can walk back to the dorms together."

"I'm going to train for a while before I head back, so there's no need to wait for me," you tell him, and you cringe at the fact that it sounds much meaner than it was meant to be.

"Training?" He cocks his head to the side.

"We did a lot of that today, aren't you tired? You really shouldn't work too hard, it'll take a toll on you eventually," Midoriya notes.

And he's right. You know he is, because it's currently happening. You're sore, everything aches, and you have random scratches along the skin under your uniform. This isn't good for you, and you've long since acknowledged that. But something is calling you, telling you to just go, train, get all of these feelings out in hopes of regulating them enough to not feel like screaming all the time.

"I'll be fine," you insist.

It sounds harsher than you intended, and you know he picked up on it too. His eyes widen ever so slightly in shock. . . You've never spoken like that to him before. In fact, he's never heard you speak to anyone like that at all. Not ever.

"Sorry," he apologizes, hoping to diffuse everything and step out as soon as possible.

But he can't go back to the dorms. He has a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach that if he goes, something bad is going to happen and he isn't going to be able to look at himself in the mirror if he ignores that feeling and something does end up occurring. So, he sticks around and watches from a hidden place as you use fists, feet, knees, and even your quirk on practice dummies.

Things seem fine for the first ten minutes or so. He almost wills himself to leave you in peace, feeling guilty for spying on you like this. . . Izuku feels like he's invading your privacy, encroaching on something he shouldn't be.

And then it happens. You throw a solid left hook, but your knees buckle, and you yelp as your balance falters. Before he can think, he's rushing toward you, but not fast enough to stop you from knocking one of the training dummies over with your body. Shaky arms hold you over the inanimate object before they give way as well, and you allow yourself to go limp.

"Y/n! Are you alright?" He questions, kneeling down beside you.

It feels shameful, but you don't have the energy to keep the facade up anymore.

"No," you whisper out, throat tight from the threat of tears, "—I'm not."

"Is it bad? Here, let me help you to a hospital or something," he offers, an urgent tone lacing his words.

You roll off the training dummy, back slamming against the ground with a soft thud.

"Listen," you tell him, bringing an arm up to cover your eyes where tears are welling.

"I'm really sorry. I've messed up a lot, and I don't know how to fix it. . . Or how to fix myself, I guess."

"What do you mean by that?" He asks.

"I got broken up with," you say, too exhausted in every way possible to feel embarrassed about it anymore.

"It wasn't even that big of a deal. It's not like I thought we'd be together forever, or that we'd grow up and get married. . . None of that, I just can't escape this feeling of dread now. Like I'm waiting for everyone else to decide I'm not worth it too, and just leave me hanging."

Midoriya falls silent for a moment.

". . . It's okay to be sad," he decides, "that's normal, I think. I can't really say that I know how you feel, because I've never been in your shoes. But I know what it's like to feel hopeless sometimes, and maybe even alone. And I can promise you that working yourself to the bone like this doesn't make that any better. It'll drive you crazy if you let it. So please don't shut your friends out."

He may not know what it's like to be in a relationship, but he knows what it's like to care for someone so much that it stings. He's beginning to think his feelings for you are mounting in ways he could never have predicted.

Any attempt at stopping yourself from crying goes completely out the window. You force yourself into a sitting position with tears falling down your cheeks. Still, you give Izuku the smile he deserves.

"Thank you. I really mean that."

𖦹. ━ TODOROKI !!

It takes Todoroki a while to catch on. When it comes to emotions, he's not the best with them, and he's kind of oblivious to it as well. Which really isn't his fault, of course, —his apathy is both unintentional and a product of his home environment.

He just thinks it's odd at first. The change is sudden, and he chalks it up to stress or a little bit of cracking under pressure. Every high school student goes through that, —even him.

Even so, Shoto has a feeling somewhere inside that says things in this case just aren't that simple. You've been short with him recently. . . With everyone, actually. He's also noticed the way your mutual friends have been sparring you worried glances for a bit now.

Just what is it that he's missing? Did something happen and he's just completely out of the loop?

He wants to ask but struggles to find the right words to say in doing so. Sure, he might not be a wordsmith by any means, but he should be able to do this much. . . But he just can't. For whatever reason, everything feels so futile, like he'd just be messing it up if he pressed it. The alternative of leaving it alone and doing nothing seems just as unpromising, though.

"Todoroki!" You call his name, snapping him away from his thoughts immediately, "—come on. We should start before Mr Aizawa thinks we're slacking off."

"Oh," he utters softly, "yeah, you're right. Let's begin then."

"Don't go easy on me. If I win, I want to win fair and square," you comment.

"Understood."

It's then that he notices a lot of things all at once. Reality hits him like a ton of bricks, unforgiving and impossible to miss.

Your usage of your quirk is beyond unstable, which isn't typical of you at all. In fact, Todoroki can't think of a time when you've never had almost perfect control of your abilities. Even Bakugo had commented on it when he first met you, —which was saying a lot. And it was deserved.

But this person sparring with Shoto now feels alien to him. It's not the you he knows, the one who has impeccable composure when it comes to using your quirk. Your movements are uncoordinated, too loose at some points, and stiff as a board at others. Everything you shell out is easy for him to dodge or retaliate against, even at close range.

"Timeout," he says, putting both hands up so you'll lower your guard.

It's hard for you to meet his eyes after that. You're not dense enough to think that was a good showing of your abilities, —but it was all you could offer.

"Are you okay?" He asks.

"Everything you're doing seems so erratic and unplanned, and you're starting to look like it's getting harder for you to stand, —and it's not like you at all."

His matter-of-fact way of communicating wounds your pride a little, but you know it to be true. This isn't you at all.

"Not to be rude. It just feels like you're fighting with anger instead of intellect or skill, which you have both of, and we both know that. Did I do something to make you upset?" Todoroki questions.

"No. . . You didn't do anything wrong," you tell him, but he still seems skeptical of your answer.

"You haven't been talking to me much recently either. Like you were trying to shut me out," he comments.

You open your mouth to deny it but stop yourself. There is some truth to that. Shutting him out was necessary for the continuation of this weird, unhealthy cycle of copious amounts of training and layers of self-isolation and despair. Shutting everyone out was necessary for that.

"I. . . It's not you," you attempt to assure him, but the wavering tone leaves him cynical.

"It's not anyone. It sounds so annoying and cliche to say it, but it really is just me. I feel like I've dug a trench for myself, and now I can't seem to get out of it."

"Did something happen?" Todoroki inquires further.

There's really no point in hiding it any longer. You've gotten this far into the conversation, so you might as well tell him everything.

"I was in a relationship up until a few weeks ago. Nothing all that serious, but it was nice to think someone had those kinds of feelings for me, you know? At least, I thought so. I got dumped, and it wasn't even bad or anything, —it just. . . Was. It happened, and that was it. But I feel so weird about everything, like I did a bunch of things wrong, and I need to be punished for it or something. Which I know makes no real sense, but in my head I. . . I don't even know."

And the truth is that Shoto doesn't know either, nor does he know how to make it right. He wishes he could snap his fingers and heal whatever emotional wounds you've been scarred with. . . But he can't. He's a hero in training, not a sorcerer.

"I can't say what's a good solution," he prefaces, "but I don't think what you've been doing is really working. Your body won't keep going forever if you don't give it time to recover."

"I know," you heave a heavy sigh.

"I just wanted to feel like I was in control of something. Like I was regulating myself somehow."

"Class is almost over. When Mr Aizawa dismisses us, let me walk you to the dorms and then I'll go buy you something to eat. You'll feel a little better once you've had a nice meal," he suggests.

It's all he can think of, and it's more than enough. Food won't solve your emotional troubles, but his company and encouragement paired with an actual meal instead of the random snacks you've been having for the past few weeks are likely a great place to start.

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a-libra-writes · 2 years

Note

I came up with a request for Michael!! And I hope it's not too long!! ❤️❤️Kay so how would he react to his girlfriend who he is very much in love with, seeing him do a very illegal action and kind of brutal, beating up someone or worse, when she didn't know about this side of him and she is quite startled *almost* scared of him? Thank you in advance❤️❤️

"Michael?"

He stops what he's doing immediately, whole body stiffening up as he holds himself at an awkward angle: leaning over a man, a foot on a broken rib, a fist scrunched in a shirt that's making the man choke and sputter... or maybe that noise is from the missing teeth and flowing blood. Curses race through Michael's head, admonishing him for being stupid and careless. He's usually so careful. He hasn't brawled like this since -- well, it's hard to say. It's usually Arthur or Tommy's boys doing this.

"Michael," You say again, a tremor in your voice. He doesn't want to turn around and see the face accompanying that voice. Instead, he drops his fists. They fall to his side like deadweight. The man is still sputtering, choking mumbles and pleas. Michael wants to bash his face in until it's paste. The thought is strong, but it doesn't frighten him. It's this shithead's fault for barging into your shared home. That's right, he's an intruder. Michael can use that.

He jumps on it. "Go back to bed, love," he's trying to sound calm, but it's not coming out right. "He -- he broke in. Go back to bed, you don't want to see this."

You've already seen it. Their bodies are silouhetted from the moon peeking through the window, but you see the blood dripping off Michael's fists and seeping into the wood floor. The wood floor in the living room you decorated to your heart's content, because Michael said you could have whatever you wanted. He insisted you buy that expensive imported couch, because he noticed how your eyes lingered on it. Anything for my girl. I'll let you take the whole damn store.

The silence stretches. You realize he said something. "Sh... should I phone the police?"

You knew what the answer would be, somehow. "No. Leave it to me, sweetheart, I'll get -- I'll call Arthur, or John. You just go to bed. I'll worry about it."

He isn't panicking about the (dead?) intruder under him. The panic the fear you won't turn around and go to sleep. His hands don't reach out to comfort you, and you're almost grateful. They're slick with the same dark liquid pooling on your floor. The man isn't sputtering and mumbling anymore.

He says your name desperately. "I'll take care of it. I'll phone the police in the morning."

You just nod, the action feeling mechanical. The way your stiff legs walk you down the way you came also feels automatic. You were one of those tin wind-up toys that'd seen better days, dutifully yet awkwardly clunking to its destination.

You were surprised at how you had a half-mind to close the door. You stood there, hand on doorknob, listening intently through the wood. There was some shuffling, some footsteps. It was hard to hear; in your old flat, the walls and doors were thin enough to overhear a neighbor's whole argument. You stayed like that, heart beating, head racing with what you just witnessed and what would be next.

Michael keeps a gun in his desk drawer, and in the nightstand, you recall. If he heard an intruder, wouldn't he shoot them?

You're at the nightstand before you can blink. You don't go through Michael's things, but the drawer is locked. Your's isn't. It never has been. You never thought to open Michael's, or his desk in the office, or his dresser.

The bed is still warm on your side when you lie down. It's cool on Michael's. You sit on top of the sheets and comforter, still listening, hearing nothing, heart pounding. You stare at the ceiling until your eyes adjust and you can make out the light fixture. You keep still, full of terror, full of anticipation. Expecting someone to come through that door ... hoping it's Your Michael, not the other one in the hallway. Your Michael asking if you're okay. Looking at you in confusion when you ask about the man in the hallway. "Did you have a nightmare, sweetheart?"

No one comes, Your Michael or otherwise. At some point the room lightened. You think you dozed off for an hour or two, but it's hard to say.

There's a knock at the door, the front door. There's a light outside your window. Your heart jumps into your throat and you throw yourself off the bed. Instinct tells you to rush for that nightstand and the pistol inside, but your last thread of logic reminds you it's locked.

The bedroom door opens and you almost yelp. Your brain doesn't register Pol standing there, also in night clothes, but wrapped in a fine wool coat. She wraps her arms around you. "Oh, good god, are you alright? It must have been frightening. Are you hurt?"

Polly was always kind to you. You just can't think of a good response. Again, your mechanical limbs move, embracing you back.

"Where's Michael?"

She takes a moment too long to pull away and answer you. "He ought to be with a doctor, but he wanted to make sure you were alright first. That robber was armed, thank god nothing happened."

You try to remember if he was.

Polly retrieves your nightjacket before bringing you out. The man is gone, the massive pool of blood remaining. You immediately wonder if blood got on the French couch, then disgust slinks up your stomach and berates you for even caring about it. Michael is sitting at the far end of the livingroom, wrapping his fists in bandages. A man you recognize but have only met a few times is beside him.

"Er, good evening," the young man, Isaiah, averts his eyes from you. You know him as a friend of Michael's, but he isn't close enough to call you by name. He looks to Michael and Polly, and you, and back again. Avoiding the sickly sight and smell coming from the middle of the room. Michael and Polly don't even glance at it.

Michael finally gets your attention, looking at you with those grey-blue eyes you adore. They don't look warm now, but at least they're more familiar. He stands up, masking a wince. His bandanged hands are on your shoulders. You wondered when you began to tremble.

"I'm relieved nothing happened to you," he says. He wraps you into a warm embrace, which always comforted before, but you can't stop trembling. You pray you won't cry.

"A-Are you hurt?"

"Nothing serious. Listen," he pulls away slightly, to look at your face. His neutral expression and intense eyes contrast with your trembling lips. "You need to stay with Pol tonight, it'll be safer."

"W-we're in danger? Michael, what -"

"I don't want you to have to clean... this. I'll take care of it, fix up the house for you." He cups your face, stroking your cheek with his thumbs. "Hm? You can rest easy with Polly."

You nod. He kisses your forehead, then your cheek, where a tear slipped down. You hadn't noticed. Michael gives you another embrace, one you wish you could stay in and cling to, until the bloody bandages get your attention. Then he returns to Isaiah, and they speak quietly. You pick up "Tommy" and "warning", even as Polly is leading you away to pack your things.

By the time you're dressed, packed and stepping out of the house, a car has pulled up. Tommy and two men step out, the former looking as put together as ever in spite of the early hour. He lights a cigarette and gives you an expression you can't read.

"Already phoned the police," he says coolly. "Nothing to worry about, miss."

Miss. He never called you by name. Polly ushers you forward, sending Tommy a glare over her shoulder. You look back too, but at the doorway. Michael is standing in the doorframe, his bruised and bloodied hands in his pockets. A bruise is blooming on the left side of his handsome face, and there's spatters of blood on his white shirt. He isn't looking your way. Those eyes are hard steel again, staring straight at the man walking up to him.

He's unrecognizable in that moment. It chills you. You continue to tremble on the way to Polly's.

#oooop hand slipped #michael gray x reader #peaky blinders x reader #libra minis

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sweater-daddiesdumbdork · 3 years

Text

The Perfect Life

Part Five

Summary- 5.1k Dark!Steve x You x Dark!Bucky. You took your chances out in the sunflowers and Bucky still managed to find you. Now your caught in the super soldiers grasp and the barn is his destination to break you. Your sweet pleads can not dissuade him.

Warnings- Non Con Theme, Orgasm Denial and Knife Use, Mentions of blood. This is an 18+ Blog.

Part 4

“Bucky, I will behave. Whatever you want.” You cried into his shoulder as you felt the barn's darkness swallow you whole. The last memories of this place where they broke you made you quake and shiver. Steve wrapping you in the ropes, Bucky running the blade over you while they both took their time breaking you in.

No it can't happen again.

“I- I can do what I did for Steve.” You offered as he swung you down onto a pile of straw on the barns floor. You twisted to pull yourself away, but he was quick to drag you back and shoved you onto your back, his weight holding you down, ignoring the pleading.

“I know what you did for Steve.” Bucky said, his eyes cold as he snatched your wrists to yank above your head and lash a coil of rope around one, pulling it tight around them so you couldn't wriggle out of the bindings, but loose enough he could roll you from your back to your stomach. “And one day, I will see you on your knees swallowing my cock.” He sat back and gripped your chin, making you blink teary eyed up at him. “But when that happens it's because you want to. Not because you have to.”

“Bucky I will never want to.”

He studied you, again his touch gentle on your face as his face was a thunderous anger brimming in his greyish blue, resembling a summer storm just about to release. “You will be eating those words one day.” He shifted off your body and unbuttoned your jeans to yank them off, your flailing legs trying to kick at him but he was quicker to dodge flying feet and tossed your jeans away. Monsters didn’t care.

“Fuck you Bucky, you know this shit is wrong. What you two are doing to me.” Anger welling through you, knowing that your pleading wasn't going to make him stop. Nothing was going to make them stop.

Bucky stretched one leg to the corner of the mattress and tilted your hip enough when you caught him in the chest, right where you had stabbed him with the tip of the knife. It made him hiss at the sting, bright white teeth snapping together as his mouth turned to a sneer while he bound one ankle hurriedly. His palm smacked harshly against your ass, digging his fingers in the flesh. “Same argument every time Doll. We’re mistreating you...” he let you flip back into place and wrapped the rope around your ankle. Making you spread eagle now on the mattress as he rose above you, admiring you all spread out for him. “... This is what you think of us, or me? Fine. Then that is how I will treat you.” He reached down to give a yank on your ropes to make sure you weren't going anywhere before he strode away, leaving you all alone.

“Bucky... ? “ You called after him with a shaky voice, but he left you all alone in the dark barn. The soft coo of disturbed birds trilled above you in the hay loft and slivers of moonlight sliced through busted beams above, putting the whole place in shadows.

And the shadows played with your mind, waiting for one of them to come out and claim you as before, this was a living nightmare, so if Steve showed back up suddenly, it really wouldn't surprise you.

Just as helpless as before, your mind created devastating scenarios. Brutally being destroyed made you squirm more, the ropes rubbing wickedly in your wrists but never loosening. Of course you should have known better, Bucky would be an efficient knot maker.

Your mouth felt dry, your body hyper aware of the slightest breeze going through the barn, the straw underneath you, the prickle of the old ropes in your wrists and ankles as well as the angle Bucky left you in. You did your best to calm yourself, whatever was coming you could handle. You hoped.

He didn't leave you alone for too long, soon the door creaked and a twist of your head showed him striding back in. Having changed into a pair of loose grey sweats, bare chested and in his hand a silver flash of the kitchen knife you had brought with you. He must have gone back to retrieve it.

“What are you going to do with that?” You asked, looking at him warily and trying to shift away from him as much as the ropes allowed.

Bucky spared you a glance wriggling in distress on the hay pile , twisting your hands to tug at the ropes, panting slightly as your eyes glazed in fear and mistrust. “Whatever I want Y/N, because I’m a monster who just takes what I want without caring about others.”

You rolled your body as he sank to his knees next to you, trying to avoid him, but he crowded into your space and felt the suffocation of his much larger body smothering yours into the scratchy straw. It prickled down your back and along the back of your thighs, making your skin crawl in the process. It would have been maddening if you weren't so focused on the man above you or the cold silver knife that you stupidly thought would keep you safe before.

Now he was going to use it on you.

Bucky twisted the flat of the blade to trail along your quivering stomach, your chest rising rapidly in your panic thinking that you were going to feel the knife press sharply to split you open. The blade was cool on your heated skin, ice cold to you that the steel of it felt like it was burning you. “Bucky don’t.”

“Don’t what Doll? According to you, this is what I am.” He moved to straddle you, his heavier weight making you sink into the hay, trapping your thighs flat beneath him. His palm fell forward while he leaned forward, his eyes roving up your naked body, a storm cloud grey swirling pattern in his eyes while his pupils widened like a dark moon. “Monster, say it again.” The tip of the blade dragged between your cleavage to scrape your collarbone and up your neck, the tip pressing against your fluttering pulse below your neck.

Your voice stuttered in your throat, cursing yourself for your attempt. Tears strained at the corner of your eyes as you arched your head back to strain away from the knife tip, but Bucky followed, always close enough for you to feel the pressure.

But never close enough to actually split your skin apart, to feel the warm gush of your blood racing away. The threat was there though, a flick of his wrist could split you open.

“Say it Doll, remind me of what I am.” He demanded again and that is when the words stuttered from you in defeat.

“A monster Bucky, a monster. You and Steve both.” you sobbed out and he smirked cooly while dropping his head to drag his tongue over a taunt nipple, the blade threatening to press into your jugular so you couldn't move, couldn't even jolt in surprise.

“A monster that is going to consume you.” He nipped at your nipple, making it sting enough so you let yourself choke on a sob. Sliding further down, his knife started to drag back down your chest, the tip welting your skin enough to scratch a faint line down your body. The only relief of that was the knife wasn’t pressed to your jugular, able to twist your head in just the tiniest big of freedom once more

“Please don't Bucky…”

“You don't get to ask for any favors Y/N.” He snapped with a slight bite to the flesh of your belly below your belly button. “You're mine to do what I want with.” His other hand, the whirl of mechanics gears cut through your harsh breathing whimpers and his grunts as he pressed his nose into the curls on your mound, inhaling your intimate scent deep into his lungs. The cool hand pressed your thighs open wider than they already were, dragging fingers through folds that were dry for now.

You were too scared to be aroused at the way Bucky treated your body, his promising threats making you distracted. But he wasn't having that, the feel of his digits hurt as he chased that bud.

“Can’t even get wet for me Doll? Make it easier on yourself?” He taunted as he arched his brow at you. You shook your head a moment to answer and shuddered when he spread your pussy folds apart, admiring the pink flesh for a moment before he spat on you, spreading through your warm core to lube you.

“Shouldn't matter to me, your comfort.” He informed you while he went back to pressing his mouth close to your core, tendrils of his hair falling forward to pool against the top of your mound, tangling in the curls there. “I should just fuck you raw, right?” Pink tip of his tongue circled your clit, and this time the tiny little bud was starting to throb tenderly, your body did arch on its own accord and he let the knife follow your body's movements, not letting it cut at you.

“Bucky…” You gritted your teeth, hating that you even let it escape. He hummed against your clit, sending a jolt through your system while he suckled and kissed your clit, the sharp tip of the knife sinking slightly into your skin near your hip, dragging down to make a red welt, tiny beads of blood welling up.

You didn't even notice the slight sting as he flattened his tongue, lapping at your clit in quick flicks. His eyes lifted knowing, watching the heave of your breasts as you tried breathing in deep enough to keep your calm. “Taste so good, I might just stay here all day Doll. Eat you out as long as I want.” Another drag of his tongue through your folds was followed by two quick nicks of the knife tip to your hip, slightly deeper than before, the pleasure of his tongue lapping through your cunt was matched with the stinging sharpness on your hip, both distracting as to what was going on.

“Wh-what are you doing to me Bucky?” You asked with a watery quiver and he buried his face into your cunt, tossing the knife far enough away that you couldn't reach it and grabbing your hips to stop your squirming, which made you go mindless.

The sound was downright filthy, his grunts and groans followed with messy sucks and kisses fucking you on his tongue till you were so close, his nose bumping against your clit to keep you rubbing your cunt into his face, wanting more, needing more.

You were SO CLOSE.

Clenching on his tongue and your mindless pleases uttered above him, he quickly yanked away just before you crested. Lifting your head with arousal blown pupils, you rocked your hip, trying to get him to put his mouth on you again. But he sat back, the lower half of his face glistening with you.

His gaze still cold seeing you withering in the hay. “Bucky, please.”

“You tried to leave Y/N, you don’t deserve to cum. You have to earn that.” He leaned over and was sure to kiss you, full of tongue and teeth so he could spread your taste through your mouth while you were left not reaching any satisfaction, still trying to find your release and wanting to cry for not getting it.

“Are you leaving me here Bucky?” you whined out when he pulled away, spreading your folds to tease you just a little, the slightest touch making your lids flutter but he yet again never let it get further than that. “That's what heartless fuckers do Y/N, you can stay in the barn.” He pushed to a stand. “My mark though… looks good on you.” Your gaze dropped to your hip, that was really stinging now. You saw streaks of blood welting around a B.

“You cut me?” You cried out, struggling in your bindings. Bucky gave a nod while going to collect the knife.

“I marked you Doll. A reminder of who owns you.” He softly said over his shoulder as he headed for the door and left you to lay there, body aching in more ways than one.

You were back to being helpless and you screamed in absolute frantic frustration, cursing them with everything you could think of and sobbing uncontrollably until you felt like your body was drained of every last drop you had left to offer.

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Bucky went back into the house. The cold house, it felt empty without your presence in there. His hand shook slightly holding the knife you took from the butcher's block and he tossed it loudly into the sink, little droplets of your blood whisking along the steel harshness and down the drain.

“A few days out there will remind her.” He muttered to himself, trying to justify his actions. Still he could taste your sweetness on his lips with a dart of his tongue collecting, and a raging hard on in his sweats. It was hard not to fuck you in the hay, to keep you clenching there in heated agony with denial.

This wasn't what he nor Steve wanted, hell he wanted more of what you two had the day before, lazy days of reading and then cooking for one another. Tiredly he climbed the stairs, heading for a cool shower and jerked off in the shower. Steve had told him that it might take a while till they could convince you that you were right where you belonged.

Bucky hated this, hated having to break you. But he was good at it. He could be patient. It would be worth it in the end.

Cold water streamed over his steaming body as he fisted his erection, palm slapping against the shower wall as he pictured you so willingly on your knees, smiling up at him with want.

One day.

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How much can a person take till they break? It was a question you were going to find out, as Bucky was set on edging you over and over for days, every time you thought you were able to control that one thing, he proved you wrong. Your body responded to him, each and every time he descended on you, betraying you in the most mindless way. Your muscles screamed in the restraints, wanting to fold on yourself till you were small as possible to combat the fluttering flame that made your lower belly clench now at just the sight of him.

Your tears, your pleas, did nothing to stop him. Every time he would end it with a clashing kiss and whispered reminder that you were there to do as they wanted, you had no choice. The sooner you submit to that, the better your life would be.

“You said it yourself Doll, we do what we want, we are monsters.” and he would fit a vibrator against your cunt, taking out a small remote. Even when he wasn't there, he could be in control of you.

“No, no Bucky, I was wrong.” You tried apologizing to him, dreading the added torture of the vibrator. Bucky just seemed to know you had relaxed and the vibrations would start like a gentle lull in your core, to edge it up slowly, hours of it till your body gave out.

He knew you were lying to him, trying to find mercy.

After you felt like you really couldn't take it anymore, you tried to bargain with him. Eyes pleading as you looked up at him. “I promise I can be good, your good girl. You will be so proud of me, please Bucky.” Your voice was so timid, so sweet, so soft. You were giving in to him.

It almost broke the man, his hands lingering at the ties holding you in place, but his forehead dipped to yours and pressed his lips to yours. He felt you surge, so accepting of it that it gave him hope.

“Soon Doll… you are almost there.” his fingers curled in you, stroking your fluttering walls till he once more pulled away.

You were close, so close, so close you thought as your tired wrung out body tensed once more, wanting to crash and held on the edge, denied of pleasure and drained of the will to fight.

Now and then you would fall into fitful sleep, when your body gave out and you sunk into nothing. But it never lasted all that long, always being on edge. You were jerked awake once more by the creak of the door and you expected to see Bucky come back for the sweet torture of your body.

But it wasn't your dark Bucky coming, no it was golden hair and blue eyed storm, massive as his boots thudded against the old dusty boards of the floor stalking towards you.

Steve must have just come home because his suit was looking worn for days, his beard a bit more rugged, grown out. He squatted next to you, tracing a finger down your quivering belly where you rolled slightly under his touch, panting slightly as the vibrations started humming through you, Bucky had turned the vibrator back on.

“Oh Sweetheart, do you know how disappointed I am to hear you misbehaved?” Steve tutted as he circled your belly button, pressing a hand against your mound to make the vibrations more intense.

“I was bad, but I learned, I swear Steve. Let me show Bucky I can be good.” You squirm with a whine. “Just make it stop.”

He tilted his head, his eyes roving up and down your sweat streaked body, quivering in your restraints. His gaze stopped at the B that had now scarred into your hip, his hand sliding to cover it, his thumb tracing the loops that made up the letter. His jaw clenched slightly, fingers digging into your hip possessively before he pushed to a stand

A sob broke when you thought he was going to leave you laying there but he leaned over you with taunting sush, his fingers worked on the ties. “Hush now Sweetheart, I just came back, you really think I’m leaving you here all alone.” he directed and the ties fell loose, your arms dropping that made you scream at the sudden release. Your muscles having been long stretched in your restraints were burning in relief at being loose, you curled into a fetal position to get rid of the vibrating toy, gasping in relief when you were finally free from it all. Soon your ankles were released and Steve reached down to scoop you into his arms.

“Promise to behave right Sweetheart?”

“Yes, please Steve just take me out of here.” You pulled in closer to him, your arms circling his neck and closing your eyes to hide your face against his shoulder. While carrying you out, Steve gave a pleased smile.

Maybe they finally have you where they want you. Compliant, the perfect housewife.

Steve brought you into the quiet house and right up the stairs towards your yellow sunflower bedroom. He set you down in front of the bathroom door, nodding towards the over sized shower. “Go start the water and I will be right there.” You give a nod, immediately obeying what he told you to do.

Steve watched as you carefully walked away from him, sure you were steady on your feet and started to undress from his midnight blue stealth suit. The rush of water sounded off the porcelain tub and a whisk of the curtain told him you were waiting for him. Fisting his hand on his cock a moment to control the throbbing, seeing you all subdued spread eagle in the hay had gotten him worked up, but even more was Bucky's mark on you. You belonged to both of them, seeing you with Bucky's signature, well that made a part of him feral. Needing to lay a claim on you.

Following you into the tub, he found you standing under the hot spray, head tilted back as it ran rivers down your body, swirling at your feet to escape down the drain. Your skin was turning pink from the heat and Steve reached for your hips, pulling you back into him where he rutted slightly against your plump ass while he brushed his chin against your shoulder.

The scratch made you inhale sharply, a slight whine rising from the back of your throat. You were so sensitive that your body still ached. “Steve…”

“Mmhh, you are going to be a good girl for me, I have been gone a long time.” His hands roamed up your body to cover your breasts, kneading and rolling his fingers against your nipples, pulling expertly. “And I know Bucky left you so close, but never quite able to cum, right Sweetheart?” His tone gruff in that way that made you take notice, your body tensing for him; thighs clenching, pussy weeping, breathing coming in pants. He pulled a bit harder when you didn't answer right away.

“Y-yes Steve.”

He hummed a bit, turning you to face him, backing you to the wall and pining you between him and the cool tiles. “I’ve missed you, a lot. Missed that sweet mouth of yours.” A kiss pressed to your lips, a swipe of tongue insisting to claim you. Steve didn't give you a choice, he never did. He deepened the kiss and crushed himself into you as his hands grasped your hips and pushed you roughly up to wrap your legs around him, his cock hard between you, pressing heated into your belly. “That image of you on your knees with your lips spread on my cock got me through the nights I was away. I know that sweet cunt is ready for me.” He growled into your mouth as he spread your ass cheeks apart and rutted his hips. “I can just smell how aroused you are.” Steve didn't even try to take it easy when he filled you with a jarring thrust.

As on edge as you had been for days, the stretch of him burned, made you cry out in a yelp but he bit your lip, sucking the air from you to swallow your cry while he thrusted into you, bottoming himself. “Don't fight this Baby, be my good girl.”

You nodded harshly in agreement, already your swollen aroused walls squeezing around him, seeking that long denied satisfaction, you grabbed at his back, digging in your nails to hold on as his thrusts pounded into you, each one a powerful breaking force that left you going mindless. Burying your head into his shoulder with sobs of his name, Steve was efficient.

He had fucked you enough times to know what spots made you really break apart. You used to fight against it, prevent that cresting moment that gave him the satisfaction in knowing he owned your ass.

You didn't even try this time. You squeezed around his driving cock, clawed at his upper back and mixed tears with the water raining down from above you, making your bodies sticky and slippery all at once, hair plastered to your heads. One hand to your hip, his other wrenched your head back, baring his teeth as he grunted with each movement, drops of water catching in his lashes, drizzling down to escape into his darker beard.

Your own eyes rolled back in your head, your voice breaking with a cry of his name as you creamed around him, your body locking and he smirked with a kiss, fierce, dominating.

No way he was done with you.

Pulling out, he dropped you to your feet, easily holding onto you to keep you from falling when he twisted you, your face twisted against the shower tiles and his broad hairy chest pressing into your back as he smacked your ass with his palm, hard enough for you to plead out.

“Fuck Steve, finish it.”

“I will when I'm good and ready. Your body is so fucking ready that it will take me however many times I want you, drip my cum from your sweet little pussy all fucking night, because you. are. mine.” he was sure to make his point, his palm tapping against your ass sharply with each word, leaving your skin stinging fiercly.

You groaned, but did not fight him. They made it clear, you were theirs. His hands wrapped around your hips, his fingers so easily finding that B that was carved into you and digging in harshly. Dropping his head close. “Bucky might have marked you, but you will never forget me once you swell up with my child.”

And he pulled your hips out, thrusting his cock back into you. You arched your back at the impact with a fatal moan, the moan that made Steve lose it.

He fucked into you like a man desperate, hips slamming into your ass and his body caged around yours, keeping you pressed into his chest as his mouth worked on your neck and shoulders. One hand kept a hold on your hip, holding you in place while the other roamed your chest, squeezing your tits and pressing onto your stomach. When a hand found a way between your thighs, you broke.

You felt yourself sag as you came crashing again, and Steve filled you with his seed this time. Sure to pump himself in you over and over even after the hot spurts deep in your clenching core stopped and he panted against your shoulder, finally going still. “Can’t have you lose any Sweetheart.”

Your eyes squeezed shut as you did your best from losing it entirely, this was your life. You could either fight it and live in some form of torture, or accept it for what it has become.

Pulling out, he grabbed some soap and suds his hand to run over your body. Compliant, you moved the way he wanted you to, holding onto him to keep your balance. Turning you around to do your back, he mentioned out loud. “You are awful quiet Sweetheart.”

You tilted your head into the water and stepped away to rinse off, moving aside so he could finish himself.

“Sorry Steve, what would you like me to say?”

He hummed as he scrubbed at himself in the shower before he tilted his head. “How about you are happy to see me? I might actually have a surprise for you. Bucky and I both do.” He cranked off the water and stepped out, drying himself rather quickly and wrapped a towel around his hips. As you climbed out, he held out an over sized towel for you to step into, moving down your back and he knelt in front of you, rubbing the back of your thighs and along the inside.

His fingers followed droplets paths to catch, his lips pressing against your belly, while looking up. “You are beautiful, and will be more so when you are all swollen.”

It was something you certainly could wait for. Your hands braced back against the sink to keep your balance once more, still feeling weak. In an attempt to change the subject, you looked down at him.

“You said you had a surprise for me?” He grinned up at you before giving one last kiss to your belly before going to a stand and wrapping you in the towel.

“It's in my bedroom with Bucky waiting for you.” he directed, gently making you continue when you paused to get dressed in your room. Clutching the towel tighter, you padded down the couple doors towards his bedroom. His door was shut so you waited in front of it while Steve’s oversized palm pressed against it, swinging it open.

You first saw Bucky, sitting cross legged in the center of the bed. Loud purrs emitted from his lap and your eyes dropped to your curled up cat, sleeping on him with loud purrs, flicks of her tail showing her content.

“You… you went and got my girl?” Your eyes welled up in surprise, Steve bracing his hands gently against your shoulders to lead you to the bed.

Bucky looked up from under strands of his hair having fallen forward as he was looking down at your Suga, his fingers grazing through her fur so gently.

You rushed to kneel on the bed, your hand quivering to reach out and pet her, but then yanked it away, looking between Bucky and Steve for permission. “Go ahead Doll.” Bucky reached out to grasp your chin and make you look at him with a smile. “You earned it.”

You took this gift, reaching forward to wrap your hands around your cat and lifted her into your arms, pressing your face into her familiar soft fur as she squirmed a bit to get comfortable and then started head butting you with happy meows and kitten licks on your nose and forehead.

“Where, when... How did you guys get her?” you asked incredulously at this gift. You eased her down onto the bed, while she started to clean herself and settled back down between you and Bucky.

Bucky nodded over towards Steve who had made his way to his closet and was getting dressed. “Steve picked her up.”

“On my way back, I swung by your apartment complex. We had all your stuff packed Y/N and put in storage. Your cat was being taken care of till I was able to go collect her.”

You couldn't help the soft smile at seeing your baby, your fingers scratching just under her chin, taking a shuddering breath.

“Thank you Steve, Thank you Bucky.” and both the men rumbled a ‘You’re welcome’ back.

Part of you was so happy to see your cat, but part of you, the part that was desperate, felt your situation just get that much more desolate.

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It was hours later when Steve checked in on you back in your room, you were curled with your cat on your bedspread, sound asleep for probably the first time in several days. Carefully he closed the door so you could continue sleeping, turning away to go back downstairs where Bucky was to fill him in on his mission.

As Steve heavily made his way down the stairs, he couldn't hold himself back. “So thought you should just mark our girl?”

Bucky, who was sprawled on a corner of the couch, book wedged in his hand, he never bothered pausing from his reading. “Can’t be letting her forget who owns her. My method worked didn't it? She was compliant for you, and gave you just what you wanted without a fight. In fact, wasn’t she a bit happy to see you Steve?”

“She did-”

“Then you are welcome.” The soldier cut off his friend, flipping the page. Steve’s brows furrowed a bit but let it drop, making his way to the office he had set up in the back of the house, behind a locked door.

Upstairs your eyes sprang open as soon as Steve shut your door, letting out a relieved whoosh that you were being left along, your body still so sensitive to touch of any kind. Suga shifted closer with a soft meow, head butting you. You scooped her closer, once more burying your face into your cat's soft fur and letting it keep you quiet while a sob broke in your chest, muffling the sound.

You can’t live like this and you were running out of time before they actually did make you pregnant.

#the perfect life #non con #knife play #dark steve rogers #dark bucky barnes #dark steve rogers x reader #dark bucky barnes x reader #amber writes #sweater writes

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gaiuswrites · 3 years

Text

King of Cups || Chapter 9

Chapter 9: The Hanged Man

Archive: ao3 | masterlist | eight

Pairing: Din Djarin x fem!Reader

Summary: After some time apart, new conclusions are met.

Word count: 7.8k~

Rating: Explicit

Warnings/tags: SMUT, fingering, unprotected piv sex, emo emo emo (are we even surprised any more), mature themes, abandonment/family trauma, loss

Notes: Friends, wow. I'm honestly embarrassed by how long this took. Thank you for your patience. I hope you find the reward worth the wait. This chapter is nearly all in Din's POV until it switches and blends in the last chunk. If you’re new to KOC, you’re more than welcome to start at this chapter! Love you guys x (gif credit: @bestintheparsec)

“Din.”

Familiar fingers brush through his hair, a hand he knew once combing over his overgrown locks. He feels the drag of nails across his scalp, tucking a truant curl behind his ear, and the act feels like home— like hearth.

Somewhere beyond his open window a morning bird trills, perched in its roost nestled into the forked branch of the elm.

He breathes a sigh, the sound thick with sleep, and turns to his pillow, burying himself deeper into the linen.

“Din, honey.”

He blinks— lazily, molassesed— her shape clearing into focus.

Green eyes peer back at him, fine lines framing the corners of them, and crescents crease around her lips, pulled warm into a soft curve.

Small toys— wooden things, baubles and bits, dolls made from scraps of old fabric—litter the floor, spilling from the chest butted against the stone of the wall. A book, well-loved and dog-eared, rests on his nightstand—the one he insisted she read from each night, the story he couldn’t possibly fall asleep without hearing—the images written on the page, dancing in his small mind to the tune of her voice.

It’s all there now as it was then before.

“It’s time to wake up.”

She sits at the edge of the bed—his bed—the weight of her arm draped over his shoulder like a blanket— like shelter. Like never being fearful again. Like never dying. Like summer, forever.

“I am awake,” he murmurs, and it is with his own tongue that he speaks. Not that of a boy, but a man—unfiltered, unmodulated. Stripped of his helmet, he hardly recognizes the tenor of it, of its richness, but he feels the words reverberate against the hollow of his throat and he knows they belong to him.

Light casts through the window behind her—particles of dust, trapped in the tines. Floating there, suspended on strings.

She only smiles, and strokes a thumb across the sweep of his cheekbone, there in the room he last felt safe.

“No, not yet.”

It’s time to wake up. It’s time to wake up. Wake up wake up wake—

“Not yet.”

His eyes blur open with a flutter of his lashes, the lifeless durasteel ceiling coming into view—the jade of her gaze fading, fading. Blowing away.

He shifts a hand through his hair— through the long strands in dire need of trimming— lying on his bedroll, spine knobbing into the thin mattress. The cold metal overhead stares back at him.

His chest rises. Falls.

Din can still feel her, the warmth of her, there on his cheek.

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There is no part of this that comes easy.

He knows what you’re thinking, he can see it in the guard you’ve encased yourself with— your glass walls, your glass house. Transparent but impenetrable, Din can only look. A spectator, watching as you go about your routines— a stranger on the outside.

And he sees how you look at him.

You think he’s fine.

You think he’s marble. Unbreakable. Impervious to time, to cold, and he does nothing to correct you; no, he allows the belief. He lets you believe the calloused veneer of his beskar— lets you assume he is more machine than man.

Din thought it would be simpler. Convenient. Din thought it would hurt less.

Because how can he tell you? How can he possibly communicate the imprint you’ve left on him— how his mind revolves around the imagery of that evening in vicious figure-eights. How he can’t unremember your heat curling around his fingers, how he can’t unbridle the pulse of his cock in your palm. How he can’t unspeak that which he called you, his virgin tongue flicking new and flighty around the word.

Cyare.

It tripped—in the midst of his pleasure, it sprang clumsy from him how the inevitable always seems to where you are concerned: transport to Coruscant, his past, his history, his identity— it just happens, reasonless, illogically. Some driving magic beckoning him to buckle, wishing him to give.

Your moans, your gasps, how you prayed his name— this is the white noise murmuring through the ship, harmonizing with the tinny mechanical beeps and settling groans of the bulkheads. You churn like smog through his helmet. Ever present, the memory of you is constant— invasive. It’s suffocating him.

He’s been dealt plenty of injuries and contusions— he has the scars enough to prove it— but it’s this. It’s this that’s killing him. It’s you.

All of these paintings, life-like and lurid, and yet it is this wound - untended, uncauterized - that scalds most: the moment Din, that beskar apparition, slipped away from you. You were there, hip under the weight of his glove, and he simply

went, like fog.

He watched your face crest and fall—felt your heart, skipping nervous like a stone over a morning pond, little waves rippling lightly, lightly out and out until it puttered quiet and

sank.

He abandoned you there. He left you before you had the opportunity to convince Din that you wouldn't do the same to him. Because Din has learned this, his suit of armor a trudging reminder of the inherent fact: good things leave.

You’ll be gone soon. You’ll leave him—he’s taking you home and you’ll leave him. His son will leave him.

He’ll be alone again. He’ll have the Crest, he’ll have the Guild—he’ll have the life he once cast in stone for himself, the life he’s worn as proudly as the Mudhorn emblem he boasts on his pauldron. But that was then - before - and he can never find his way back to that now; now that he knows what he knows—of breakfast and bitter caf and laughter like church bells and warmth and goodness and you.

There is no part of this that comes easy.

There in the galley, lamp-lit iridescence caressing your countenance, you asked him once if he was scared of anything and he told you he wasn’t sure— not yet.

Din lied.

As a rule, he doesn’t make a habit out of dishonesty; it doesn’t typically suit him, he is blunted to a fault— earning allies and enemies alike with the very attribute—but he lied to you then. Maybe his fears are the same as everyone else’s, maybe they’re simple. Human.

Maybe he’s scared that you’ll unchain him from his armor, of his shortcomings and tragic flaws and see the pulpy heart of him—that you’ll look and look and look, and you will like nothing that you find there. That he’s just a man.

And perhaps, he’d rather remain unknown than risk the chance of being unlovable.

For there is a certain hollow you befriend in the aftershock of loss—there is an aperture loss gores you with. There are some holes time can never fill; they remain trenched, dug from rusted trowels— left to fester, left to ill.

Sometimes, in the surly vacuum of space, in those dulled moments in which he has nothing but to count the seconds as they tick clocklessly away, Din attempts to conjure the last word his mother gave to him. He didn’t know it then—he didn’t know it was intended as a gift, boxed and ribboned and bowed. He didn’t realize—a child, wide-eyed with naivety, drenched in fright—that he should cherish it. Remember it. Keep it safe.

No matter how hard he tries, how hard he strains, he can’t recall it. He practices the nightmared memory of it, transports himself into that war zone, dodging shrapnel and brimstone just to catch sight of her face— and he can see her lips moving, can feel the fan of the flames as his world is reduced to cinders, but he cannot hear her.

Was it goodbye? Was it I love you? Was it be safe? Was it hide? Hide hide hide for me. Be good and hide, kind boy—

It dogs him. The nothinged mumble, his silent passenger.

There is no part of this that comes easy.

He heard you. There in Valentia, the city buzzing cacophonously like an orchestra tuning their instruments, he overheard the Twi’lek translate for the older woman.

Family, she said. You have a beautiful family.

Din has never in his life considered forsaking his Creed— forgoing the thing that saved him, made him, honed him to tungsten, sharp as a blade.

But he did then.

It was a flash, something fickle and brief— like the flicker of a candle before it diffused to smoke— but in that nanosecond he saw himself ripping off his helmet. He saw himself going to you, pulling you close to his plated chest. He saw the surprise wash over you—the shock that bubbled to elation. He saw you smile, that crippling gorgeous thing, with his own naked eyes and—

And then suddenly you were there before him, snapping Din from his reverie, blanket snug to your chest, the child — his child— slung beside you. He wished he had an explanation, but before he could process his actions his hand was drawing itself to your body, tugged by some unseen force—robbed of his autonomy— and rapturously, he touched you. He felt you.

His knuckles grazed your arm—your warmth, radiating past the aged leather of his glove—and the wisdom that woman uttered, the plain truth only the ancient could learn— only a mother could know— rattled around his mind, unanchored and barreling.

Yearn for the past. Reclaim time.

Hold onto them hold onto them hold on—

Never let them go.

Ready? he asked you, arm resigned to his side, feigning monotony beneath the cover of his visor.

You threaded an even smile to your lips, as if Din were none the wiser— as if he hadn’t catalogued every lick of your expressions, every curve and bow and wrinkle as your emotions sung across your face. As if he didn’t know when you were lying. As if he didn’t know when you were falling apart.

Ready, you replied, swallowing past the disappointment welled in your throat.

Both your hearts broke then. Perfectly—the same.

This is the Way.

///

Din is gone over a week. It’s the longest he’s ever been away for a hunt—it’s the longest nine days of your kriffing life.

The ship feels vacant without him; she’s cumbersome, too cavernous for the likes of only you and his foundling. Her durasteel sidings yawn morose against the wind beating restless against her—her metal stretching like a lothcat in a patch of sun. The doors and hatches complain ajar and gripe shut, as if she’s recalcitrant to go about her standard operating procedures without Din’s presence. The old gal misses him, down to her steely bones and dual ion turbines, and in truth — and despite yourself— you suppose a small part of you feels the same, shares an inkling of that same loneliness.

The rituals and dog-eared routines you’d drawn comfort from are now rinsed in a forlorn wash.

The single bowl of food you prepare looks wrong without its twin beside it.

You scroll a finger over your display screen, flicking through various articles, the faint light from the holopad basking the contours of your face in a lonesome shade of inanimate blue.

Anything good you hear him ask, there in your inner ear— the memory of his voice leaving a nick among the many wrinkles of your brain.

You sigh, quietly— alone. Never.

Even Munch misses him, although he expresses it differently. He’s been a downright terror with Din gone. At first it was a vacation, a luxury retreat; you and the child gorged yourself on crackers and grava berries and dried bantha meat—mindful of sweeping up the crumbs on whichever surface you snacked. You giggled and ran amok and shared secrets in code only the two of you could decipher.

But one day grew to two, and two to three and three to four and by the fifth you were out of treats and your patience too had dwindled to short supply.

The child is special— unquestionably unique. And as much as you adore him, would lay down your life for him if it came to it, Maker he is uniquely qualified to send you round the bend twice over. He’s baffling, infuriating— just like his father. Of all the things he could have inherited from the man, of course he decided to latch on to his vexing penchant for mystery.

You lost him for half a day. He was somewhere aboard the Crest, of that you knew that for certain, but he managed to enact a stunt that could’ve puzzled even the most illustrious of illusionists with how quickly and effectively he vanished, seemingly out of thin air.

He emerged eventually for dinner, babbling wickedly. There was that, at least: you could always count on Munch to — well, munch.

Over a week of this— nine days, sixteen hours, and twenty-two minutes, to be exact… But who’s counting.

The sky glitches with lightning, sparking like a bulb in dreadful need of changing, and veins of violet skitter along the horizon, chased by the clapping hammer of thunder. Fat drops of rain trace down the transparisteel, the metalled drum of their pattering against the Crest lullabying your eyelids to a slumbered close. You drift, weightless, waxing and waning in and out of a reoccurring dream that always blurs to mere suggestion - to shadow - as soon as you wake.

The harsh sound stirs you—the ramp’s gears springing to life, signaling the Mandalorian’s return. Rapidly, you blink clear the slog of sleep from your eye, re-emerging from the forgotten depths of your subconscious and half-roused, you bound from the copilot’s chair. You rally from your stupor, instinct urging you to meet the bounty hunter by the entrance—some tittering, foolish part of you still so glad and girlish just to see him.

Hobbling down the ladder with veteraned coordination - one leg one arm one foot one hand - you hop the last two rungs to land catlike on the balls of your feet, heading towards the stern of the ship and—

You don’t make it three steps.

He’s there. Din is there— nine days later and finally, like a hallucination, he’s here— ominous and backlit by the glow seeping in from the galley. An obelisk, undaunted.

Your gut somersaults, flipping until it dizzies.

Knee-jerked and reflexive, the basest part of you demands you go to him, to cross the threshold separating you— the time and space and uncertainty dredged like a moat between you two. But instead of greeting him as you wish— two arms thrown around him, welcoming him home—back to the Crest, to the child, to you—you stand there, dumbstruck and wanting.

The passage of the corridor is like a strait. It's so narrow you can smell him— his carbon musk, his petrichored sweat—and it furls thick into your sinuses, fogging up your vision, clotting the faulty wiring of your mind. He’s brought the wet in with him, drip dropping from his hulking frame to splat puddled onto the deck.

plop

A beat ferments, hanging ripe from its branch as the tempest rages outside the sheltered hull of the ship. Distantly, thunder booms from above.

“Din— hi.”

“You’re up.” He doesn’t move from the archway. Stiffened, composed from granite, the man hardly breathes. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t,” you offer hastily—untruthfully.

Din scans you: your obviously tousled hair, the drowsy flush kissing your jaw, the tell-tale crinkle of your tunic. Your tongue darts out to skip over your lip and his lungs pull, aching beneath his ribs.

Maker, you’re pretty even when you lie.

“Go back to sleep,” he assures, but you hardly register it; it’s scarcely above a murmur by the time the words hum through his modulator.

“Can I make you some food? Can I—"

There’s a tarred shake of his helm, tiredly dissuading you. “No, you—you’ve done enough.”

“But you must be exhausted, Din. Let me help you,” you urge, sincerity shaping the lilt of your voice. “Please, I—” You falter. Vision finally adjusted in the dimmed hall, it is then that you spot it.

Your mouth runs dry.

He’s dappled in a violent scarlet, foreign red splatters contrasted against all that silvered grey, bleeding with the rainwater to roll sanguined down the rounded edges of his armor.

Blood. He’s covered in blood.

Something pitted—something vital— in you contracts; horror, prickling the fine hairs along your forearm. “Maker, what happened?”

Eyes gaping fearful, you skitter around his breastplate, his vambraces, the paneling of his flight suit, roving meticulously in search for the source of his injury. Thoughtless, consumed with only one concern - is he hurt? - your hand flies to his chest where it rests—solid. Fretting. “Stars, are you—”

He can see it—he can see you, always—how your gaze swells, laced with a surge of adrenaline, of care, and Din lays his broad palm flat over your knuckles, grabbing your frantic attention. “It’s not mine—hey, it’s not mine.”

Your shoulders deflate, relief visibly relaxing the rigidity in your spine, and for the first time in what feels like minutes you release the breath you’d fostered high behind your teeth.

He doesn’t know what overtakes him. Perhaps it’s your sleep swollen lips or the soft petal of your cheek— taunting Din, daring him to feel you again, as he did before— or perhaps it’s the all too apparent fact that you simply give a shit about him— despite everything he’s done, all of that which he has left unsaid. That you worry. That you care.

Puppeted, arm hoisted by some invisible strings of fate—those unseen threads of inevitability—he reaches for you. Din’s thumb roams the slope of your cheekbone, the buttered hide of his glove gliding over your skin. Something rattles flustered in your chest, and you must look pathetic— how your eyes bat at him and your mouth parts, breathy and demure.

“Dala.” He sounds pained when he says it, as if it’s poisoning him; the very syllables like hemlock dripping down his tongue—slowly gradually, ending his life— this life.

This life as he knows it.

You nuzzle into the cradle of his palm, encircling a hand around his wrist, urging him still. You both know he could break away from you without an ounce of strength squandered, but he doesn’t; he listens, he quiets for you. Enchanted, neither of you dare move— neither of you, willing to shatter the profound spell of intimacy you’ve stumbled onto.

He holds you like this, and you hold him to you. His hand on your cheek; yours over the birdcaged throb of his heart— burning - devouring - its entombed aril like the heart of a dying star.

“Where’d you go?” you whisper, heathered, into the heel of his hand. There is something broken in your cadence, like the chipped rim of a fragile cup, and it punctures him just there beneath his sternum.

Where’d you go?

Where’d you go before? When you left— where did you spirit away to?

Why didn’t you take me with you?

A sick wave rots his stomach. He couldn’t answer you then, not when you were wobbly and coltish beneath him—Din can barely answer you now. His digits twine into your hair, cupping the arc of your neck. The gesture is not unkind. It is delicate— urgent, too—and the following hush you share speaks tomes for the both of you, the sob of his leathered fist admitting what he cannot utter.

I couldn’t. I couldn’t.

Maker, if you could see him. See how his face folds for you, grief lined into the shallow grooves that mark him. The cycles of it— how they bend him into something contorted. Something in need - I need you I need you I need - something ugly, he thinks. Leftover. Hidden. Hide hide hide hi—

You turn, pressing a kiss into the rough of his palm. It’s a soft thing— trepid and cautious—too worried you might frighten him away to offer anything more than a chaste brush of your lips—too worried you’ll send him scurrying back into the cratered unknown he crawled out from.

But he doesn’t.

Din doesn’t turn tail and run, he stands firm—weaving his hand further into your scalp, guiding you closer to him with a throaty sound. The forehead of his helm sinks to yours, and through its filter you discern the tremor of Din’s breathing, made fuzzy by the tinny modulator.

This is nothing like before. Din was hot blooded and vicious then, possessed by the infernal likes of some great beast, but he has since been tamed, if only momentarily—coaxed into a certain meekness by the frail ache of his heart—by the grace of your kind mouth, kissing his gun-worn glove.

He groans your name, mumbled and brassy. The two of you so close, so merged, that if it weren’t for his helmet, you’d feel the tickle of the syllables as they sweep over your face. Din repeats himself, repentant—praying for forgiveness on the cross of your name—your kiss, a benediction.

Again, he calls you. I’m sorry.

Again, you kiss him. There is nothing to forgive.

Again. Again.

With a flutter of bravado, you sling a lumbered arm over the span of his neck, notching yourself into his chest, an interlocking piece finding it’s match. Din’s forearm comes to coil around your waist, wide hand spanning the small of your back, and if possible, gathers you nearer— a growl emanating somewhere from under his beskar.

“Tell me to stop,” he breathes, bullet riddled—grating—warring with the countless shards of himself he has yet to reconcile; but his body betrays his intentions as Din’s grasp finds itself lower, filling his fingers with the plush of your ass. “Tell me, please.”

Arousal rushes to pool in your depths—at the proximity of him, the hungered way at which he paws you—and it’s a reaction you feel mimicked by the iron rod straining against Din’s flight suit, pressing into your thigh. You shake your head, gaze colored earnest, and you shift, applying a grind of your hips against him in response.

Din lets out a defeated groan; weak to you, a fabled Mandalorian warrior brought to trembling knees by the guile of a good woman. And suddenly, like striking a match in a room swarmed with gas, you are incendiary.

He’s everywhere— groping and kneading your arms, your ass, your neck and waist. You are malleable beneath him, sculpted like wet clay under his eager touch—as if he is committing your form to memory; the fervor of his grip, reclaiming time.

He hooks a hand under the crease of your knee, yanking you to the column of his armor, sealing your bodies together. Gyrating your hips against him, your clit yearns against his thick outline as you dig into the cowl draped over his shoulders.

Sliding his hand down your backside, he presses his palm into your clothed heat from behind, pads of his fingers insistent as you saddle your spine into his touch, granting him better access. His cock brays, straining beneath his many layers, and a withered moan breaches past your lips.

“Gods, Din.”

Din. He can’t stand that—his name, lush in your wet mouth—and without ceremony, drops your leg from where he’d glued it to his hip. Like a beggar, impoverished and need-stricken, he begins to fight with your clothing, half tempted to rip the damn things off you, leaving you tattered; he’d happily buy you a new wardrobe if it meant having you as he’s wanted for these long months—naked and vulnerable and his.

Your tunic and pants come off in a flurry, your underwear too, discarded hastily in some forgotten corner—and with a hand on your chest, he walks you backwards until your bare ass connects with the durasteel, a jagged inhale tearing through you at the chill. A question knits your brows to meet as Din paces away from you, increasing his distance.

“What are you-”

He interrupts you with a groan. “Just - gedet’ye - just let me—”

His gaze drips like wax down your body—eyes dressing over your clavicle, the supple weight of your breasts, the gorgeous dusting of hair at your mound, the sweet press of your thighs as you clench them together, your pretty knees, your pretty ankles, your pretty feet, pigeoned inward nervously.

Pretty pretty pretty—fuck, all of you. So fucking pretty.

With the cock of his chin, his gaze returns to the heave of your breasts—tracing over your nipples pebbling in the everpresent draft of the Razor Crest— and you rile under him, heart stammering loud—so loud you’re convinced he can hear it with the aid of his helm. And Maker above, the way you’re fucking staring at him—all hooded lids and flushed cheeks. Din wants to fucking ravish you.

Dismantle you.

Pick you apart bit by bit until you’ve come undone completely.

And as if slogging through gravity itself, movements prowled, he steps to you. Din finds your hips, running the whisper of his gloves along the slopes of your sides; a master of patience, commanding time to his will, he crawls up your skin

slow

deliberate.

You’re all but helpless to the shiver that traverses the planes of your body, zipping along your synapses like the fault lines of a quaking planet—cracking you open, exposing your molten core. You’re not proud of the noise you make when he cups your breasts. Starved, you whine as he takes you into his hands, pinching and groping until you’re pert and sore and you drive your pelvis into him, rutting yourself against his frame like some flea ridden slum-mutt in the prime of her heat.

Din seethes, mumbling in Mando’a—spitting curses you can’t pretend to comprehend, but that blot warmth along your cheekbones at the oaky depravity of which he utters them.

He seals over your mound, blood pumping at your seam, bundle of nerves pulsing steady against the heel of his hand. Immobile, he waits, hovering stagnant and teasing before his lust to feel you outweighs his desire to make you be good and wait—and parting through your curls, he kisses the tips of his orange gloves into your honeyed cunt.

It’s dirty. He’s dirty, he’s fucking filthy—covered in foreign blood and alien soil—and you feel depraved, unclean. Powerful. You feel, perhaps, as the Maker intended—wild and without shame, to roam his gateless garden and sully the soles of your feet.

You feel raw. Din Djarin sands you raw.

The pump of his wrist is merciless, pistoning in and out in shallow thrusts, knuckles angled to prod at that spot— that piece of primordial heaven sequestered at the channel of your cunt—and he keeps discovering it over and over again with a sharp shooter’s precision—zeroing in on his mark and releasing the trigger. Dead eyed.

You grab greedily at his bulge, at his cock begging for regard beneath the protective fabric covering him, and you squeeze the best you can. The angle is awkward and unweildy and it’s not nearly enough for either of you, but it conveys your intention well enough.

Can I have this? Will you give this to me?

Din growls his reply, leaving your pussy to fumble with the waist of his trousers, fidgeting over the pesky buttons—the final of the flimsy holdouts separating you and the tempered steel hanging solid between his legs. It bobs free from his pants, ruddied tip straining and pining for you, and without spending another moment idle, he rediscovers the warmth of your naked body— molding himself to your form, his grip once more finding the pit of your knee and bracing it to his side.

He ruts the underside of his shaft through your slick folds, his blunt head nudging at the swollen cleft of your center—each pitch of Din’s hips sending bolts of pleasure crackling through your core. He’s stifling a string of moans while he does it, while he undulates against you, the sighs and gasps digitized to near silence as he coats his cock in your gloss—and not for the first time do you find yourself considering how fucking colossal Din is. How fucking virile and engulfing, like blaster smoke and tabacco and cedar. Like coaled smog from a cremulator. Like giving life, like taking it away— like mercy. Vengeance.

Din swipes your standing leg up to match the other in a fluid motion, effectively levitating you off the ground with only his palms secured beneath your hamstrings and your strangled hold around his neck to suspend you.

“Tell me to stop and I will.” He’s practically begging you now, anguish wrecking through the timber of his voice—grasping blindly for an excuse not to lose himself in you completely, not to bury his primal drives and fears into the chasm of your sex.

You’ll leave him you’ll leave him he’s terrified you’ll leave him

“I-I don’t want you to stop— I want this. Din, I want you, I missed you. I miss you.” You miss him. He’s right here, cock streaking through your middle and still, you miss him. You’ll never stop missing him—wanting him. An unscratchable itch at the median of your back, burning for his affection, for his touch.

He releases a husked sound at that, as if hearing it from you hurts— your words, purpling a bruise into the bloody beat of his heart—and like a dipping sun sinking below the crust of a darkening planet, the last of Din’s resolve fades to utter black as he finally - finally - buries himself into where you weep for him.

Oh Maker. Fuck, fuck—

You muffle a relieved cry, forehead collapsing to the slope of his shoulder. Your walls shutter, blinking and gasping around his cock as he rolls up into you, lips pulling taut around his girth with each drag through your cunt. Din fucks you slurred and languid—his pace, sweltering like a summer fever—heavy, punitive. Smothering and thick. You can feel every vein, every silken ridge, as he notches himself inch by inch— the cant of his hips meditated, aiming to melt you open with each wave.

Stuffed to the hilt inside you, he rakes in a ragged breath, calming the race of his bloodstream drumming percussive in his ears.

It occurs to you then that he might be trying to be careful with you, curled around him like this, crushed up against the bulkhead. You think he might be treating you as a jeweler would handle a rarified gem— gentle and tip-toed, afraid of letting you clatter to the counter, of scuffing your facets— devaluing you.

But you don’t want that. You don’t want cautious or considerate or any of those awfully pious things. You want to be owned. Devoured. You don’t want to feel anything else but him. You want him to need you so terribly, so primally, he bleeds. You want to forget your own damn name and replace the memory of it with his—just his, to sit besot like liquor on your tongue. Din Din Din.

“Fuck me— please - please - fuck me harder Din.” Fuck me like you need to. Fuck me like you want me— please just tell me you want me. Tell me I’m wanted. Tell me I’m worth this.

You can see the deliberation span over his mask, the light glinting off the steel there hesitant, wary. Are you sure?

“Fuck me.” I want this. I want you.

He wants to give this to you somewhere soft— somewhere you deserve. With a feathered mattress and molted down pillows and gauzy curtains billowing in a sea breeze as light dapples prismed patterns on your dewy skin. He wants to give this to you somewhere beautiful—perhaps on that planet you once probed him about - Adega - with its red trees and warm nights and friendly natives you’d cherish and keep aloft in your breast.

He wants you to feel safe. Adored.

But what he wants and what he needs are two vastly different things—two opposing extremes at odds with the other. Because he needs to fuck you here— it has to be here. Needs to score your backside with metaled bites from the Crest’s unforgiving interior; needs you crumpled and sloppy, panting out his name to echo shamelessly into the deviled bowels of his gunship.

He needs you charred for him. Scorched earth.

And with your panted pleas, lilting addictive and irresistible, he is all but helpless to deny you— to deny himself. Relenting, resolved, his voice bottoms out.

“I-I’m gonna fucking ruin you.”

He fucks you frenzied. The snap of his hips drives you into the wall; he lifts you off his cock just to spear you on it once more, fucking up up up into you, unleashing all his strength— his neglected need—into the grail of your womb. The salted slaps of skin are loud enough to make a lecher blush. It’s a chorus of beskar rattling, wet and ugly and Maker, he’s splitting you open and all you can do is mewl.

You screw your eyes shut, lost to oblivion—crown of your head shoved back, jugular bared for him like prey before the slaughter.

“No.” Leveraging his mass against you, Din clasps at the nape of your neck to command your focus, forcing your chin. “No, look at me,” he orders, brutal and sinewed and there’s desperation there. Din needs you looking at him — seeing him— the embrace of your gaze like a life raft, tethering him here, grounding him to this plane of existence, the one where he has found salvation—if only fleeting, if only like hourglassed sand sifting through his fingers—within the temple of your body. Struggling and led-lidded, you pry your lashes apart, shivering as you drink in the punishing expression leering across his visor; and as you always do, you peer past the murky T there, meeting his eyes camouflaged in their sockets behind it.

“There you are. There you are, my pretty thing - hnng—” He silences himself with a hoarse moan, the sensation of you clenching firm around him, gripping Din like a man would a rope, dangling some feet above the ground, hiccuping him to stutter. “T-That’s it, dala—fuck, y-your pussy is so godsdamn tight.”

You go boneless at the praise—at how he tongues out those fond epithets, vehement and covetous and brined in sincerity—and your breathing quickens as you soak the coarse weave of Din’s flight suit, chafing your clit to shambles with each bow of his starved sex.

You’re close. Stars, you’re so kriffing close—reach out and touch it and you’re there, a promise fulfilled dancing at your fingertips—and you almost tell him; you wish you could - don’t stop don’t stop please right there Din - but you’ve lost your voice, vocal chords stricken with tension. More than that, you’ve lost the wedge of your brain that recognizes articulation all together. Speech itself. You’re wasted. You’re shattered. You’re being fucked within an inch of your sorry life.

Nimbled, without a word of warning, Din relocates— grappling under the plats of your thighs and bracing you featherlight to his chest—negligible in comparison to the ton of armor he dons cycle after cycle, weightless when compared to that of his Creed, hanging like a yoke around his gullet. You yip in surprise and scramble around him, calves digging into his back, forearms clamped around his shoulders—his cock remaining delved within your pussy with each footfall.

Four long strides and he’s reached his destination: a large crate, stranded just outside the hallway leading to the galley. Stooping at the waist, he lowers you down with astonishing ease until you’re flush on your back, knees flanking his frame. You heave a sigh, petulant and wanting, when he slips from you mid-adjustment, a lewd squelch accompanying the movement. It is to the fervor of your clawing, desperate nails scratching down metal - please please please - that he glides back into you with one deft sweep, a satisfied gasp tumbling loose from him.

He looms over you now— Din, a tower unyielding—thrusting into you rough and hard and perfect. He’s filling you in undiscovered places long gone unrealized, nooks you didn’t know you had—the length of him completing you, making you whole.

“Tell me to stop,” he pants, orange pads of his gloves dimpling your hips.

With a tremor of your chin, you moan—broken and chirping. “Don’t - please - please don’t - shit - don't stop—” Your prayers convulse, dying in your throat, sentence cut short as he circles his thumb over your clit, catching at your slippery bud. Ever the marksman, he’s debilitatingly attentive to you, the hide of his glove snagging against your cleft, and combined with the steady rock of his dick shredding you open, you’re all but defenseless to the dawning of your release, crawling closer and closer and—

“Din,” you pant, ”Din Din Din, I think I—I’m gonna cum. I’m gonna, oh Maker—”

The muscles in your stomach seize, a twisted expression cramping your brow. You scamper to his arms, reaching out for something - anything - a parcel of real estate to clutch onto while you unravel. You’re grappling with his pauldrons, the pulsepoint at your wrist humming over the symbol welded to his shoulder, and you mage into starlight. You’re fizzing. You’re blind. You’re atomic and phasing in and out of realities and you burn— a meteor hurtling through the upper atmosphere crashing crashing crashing and—

Language exhausted, all there is left for you to do is cry, the evidence of your orgasm ricocheting like a hail of gunfire against the Razor Crest walls.

“That’s a good girl, that’s a good girl for me—f-fuck." It’s like taking a jab to his solar plexus, how you cinch around him— the corset of your walls milking his cock until he’s shaking, stumbling. The drive of his pelvis has gone erratic, the throbbing bloom gnashing its teeth in his gut—that rabid thing desperate to be released, uncaged—teeters on the identical ledge you’d just leapt from.

“Tell me to stop - please - tell me to, tell me to stop—” You’re all eyes. Your whole face, swallowed by the sweet, glassy orbs notched below the quiver of your forehead, and you’re looking at him like he could hang the damn moon and it’s too much— it’s too much too much he can’t levee this raging need— and with a hurried gasp he pulls out of your heat to tug at his slicked cock— panting ragged as he gushes onto your stomach, your legs, your pretty pussy made pink and puffy with abuse.

His breathing is labored; you can see it in the mountainous rise and fall of his chest plate as his strokes slow, his other hand digging into your flesh, indenting you. He exhales, scraping clean the fissure between his lungs, and Din tips his head, angling it backwards— granting you a rare sliver of the stubbled swath along his neck. The sightly patch, treasured behind his silvered grotto, shouldn’t be the thing that plays upon your heartstrings like one would pluck a harp— not after he’s burrowed himself inside you, not after he’s carved you to his likeness— but it does. You’re butterflied and cherry blossomed and you grin— not so much on your lips but in your soul, and there is a purring warmth that’s radiating like candle flame from the anima alive beneath your breasts and—

And then, suddenly — like time, like memory— he is gone.

He leaves you. Mirrored, he does as he did that night—laying a squeeze into the meat of your hip, he transpires to atoms, dissipating round the unknown bend of a corner and you’re alone again—alone, with only the citric bile steeping in your insides to accompany you, threatening to rise up your windpipe.

No. No no nonono—

Din’s presence, a beacon in the moonless night, disappears— leaving you orphaned and moored and mortified. He’s done it again— he’s left you, he keeps leaving you— and it renders you sick; viscerally, you’re angered and ill and green-washed with naivety.

Fool you once, shame on them. Fool you twice, and what in Maker’s name did you expect? A declaration? An about-face? As if a Mandalorian could let the beskar from his blood. As if Din could reanimate the cadaver of his past—could slip into that old snakeskin he’d shed cycles before.

It paralyzes you. Immobile, you are chambered flat on your back in the resin of your embarrassment, bereft of your vision as you stare sightless into the steel. You’ve separated—your mind and your body disjointed like oil and water, and you don’t hear it. You don’t hear the tread of Din’s feet, you don’t register his aura, Illuminous in the archway; you don’t see the stray towel fisted in his grip, you don’t feel the clench of a frozen hand around your heart as he does his. For he sees you there—a tick in your jaw; eyes distanced, fogged—and he knows he’s done this to you. The scarring of how he derelicted you then tarnishing the new-leaf flesh of the present.

He steps towards you, closer now, and your alerted gaze pins to him. A surprised expression makes a home there, astoundment freckling your face— and although he hasn’t earned the right, it strikes him bullseyed between his plated ribs because it hurts— the obvious shock of him returning for you hurts. Din is not a good man— not all of him. Sometimes, you and all your heaven-lit gleam, you make him forget that.

But sometimes, you make him remember.

And Maker, if you don’t look good like this. Streaked with his seed, creamy white pearling the maps of your body, the shine of it catching in the cannistered shafts of filtered light.

There’s a word for this—for you, for how you look, splayed and painted with his cum—with him. It puffs up like petals would, there in the square of his center. He’s never said it. His mouth doesn’t know the feel of it, his lips don’t know its shape. It’s scribed in Mando’a, and as native as the language is to him—as fundamental as Basic, if not more so—the word itself is foreign. Gawky. The thought of it alone hobbles through his mind on foaled legs. Din keeps this word barred, its essence clinging to the iron partitions of his skull, its perfume clouding his senses, his better judgement, his confounded rationality dangling precarious by a string.

Beautiful. Mesh’la.

You shift under his watchful eye, knees steepling mousy, and gingerly, he prizes the two apart and you let him.

You let him you let him of course you let him.

Din runs a damp cloth up your seam, up those hypersensitive folds, towards the expanse of flesh leading to your belly, and you hiss—a startled chill icing through your body.

“It’s cold,” he informs you, well after the fact, and you chortle a note in response. He continues to lave you clean, the drag of the material smoothing over your stippled planes and it’s intimate—how he takes you under his care, how he unmakes his mess.

Your heart, silly flustered thing it is, it tells you the act feels worshipful—reverent, maybe—but your head convinces you to look away, to cower, to do anything but address the blaze left in the wake of the rag he’s swiping over you. It’s too much. You feel vase-like— fragile and dainty, for the bounty hunter to either fill with wildflowers or crush under the heel of his boot— and it’s too unbearable. Bringing a hand to your sweat-sheened face, you shadow your eyes, ostriching shyly— if I can’t see him, he can’t see me.

A clipped tone escapes his helmet and it’s a sound you can’t place— it’s short, a blip—and you presume he’ll remain mum until he speaks. “You don’t have to hide from me.”

You don’t have to hide from me. I don’t want you to hide from me.

You nearly whimper at that. There’s something endearing and bronzed about how he says it, something torn, too—and you peak through the curtain of your fingers to watch him perform his ministrations. Almost begrudginly, you remove your hand from it’s shelf, resting it on the swell of your breast while he passes the cloth along your inner thighs, erasing the sticky traces of himself. There’s a quiet pause, a moment of distilled nothing before—

“I didn’t think you were coming back,” you admit, small.

He soothes his thumb into the crook of your hip, voice blunt with guilt. “I know.”

Sighing, you nod a little thing, a half-gesture, practically creeping under the Mandalorian's radar undetectable. Thunder shouts, lightning cracks— the bombastic storm outside apathetic to the lull within. Din clears his throat, rasping. “Was that okay?”

You resist the temptation to snort. Din is such a juxtaposition—one you don’t imagine you’ll tire from any time soon. He’s dangerous and protective and clever and strong and kind, despite his best efforts to snuff his compassion to ash like the butt of a dead cigarette. Lifting your palm from its perch, you extend to him, measuredly sliding your fingers against the crate— stretching stretching until he meets you, dubious and toddling like a child’s first steps, orange-dipped digits touching nude flesh. Your everbright grin brightens all the more— bewitching, back-breaking—as you entwine your hands to mesh.

“More than okay,” you say coyly. “Was that-was that good for you?”

Din huffs out an airy chuckle rich with disbelief, like he can’t fathom you’re even asking him—like you’d even have to ask at all. “That was—that was good. Very good,” he confesses gruffly, never a man for poetry, breathlessness still apparent in the bleed of his vocoder. “Even better than I imagined.”

A feline grin unfurls your lips, boldly quirking the droll corners of your mouth. “You imagine this often, Mando?”

Smirking wry and devastating, Din ushers you up by your woven hands, your body pliable and easy to his will; uprighted, his hips slot between your pretty knees, and he expertly twists your arm behind your back, snaring it there. Spine swooped, breasts brushing against his beskar, your nipples pebble cold. “Don’t let it go to your head, dala,” he gravels, visor tilted down at your dwarfed form, tenting you.

“Well," you tease lightly, "I’ll try my best.”

And you look at each other with all the tender awkwardness of two people standing on the edge of a brave new unknown.

Nervous, girlish, you smile.

Fluttering, pussy-drunk, he smiles back.

///

Nested in the pronged branch of a tall tree spindling up from the graveled soil, Din— a man, a boy too— reclines supine against the bark. His feet dangle like they did then, back when he wasn’t so afraid, and the air is dusted with a rosy haze as dusk settles upon the tired day.

The sun sets. The world twinkles a midnight blue, winking starshine as she spins.

Somewhere, behind him, his mother calls him home for supper.

tags: @girlimjusttryingtoreadfanfics @pedros-mustache @miranhas-art @djarrex @djarinsbeskar @bookloverfilmoholic @keeper0fthestars @misguidedandbeguiled @bookishofalder @helmet-comes-off @grumpymuffinmama @niiight-dreamerrrr @spideysimpossiblegirl @janebby @greatcircle79 @gracie7209 @thatonedindjarinfan @altered-delta @email2ash @stevie75 @shegatsby @onebrownoneblue @uniquebiscuitmongerdonkey @severinsnape @kirsteng42 @justanothersadperson93 @mrsbentalmadge @radiowallet @librariantothejedi @whataperfectwasteoftime @babydarkstar @punkremus @mandobloggin @alma-rt1 @not-the-droids @pedrostories @kylieann0716 @jk7789

#King of Cups #din djarin x reader #din djarin x fem!reader #din djarin x you #din djarin x ofc #din djarin #the mandalorian #mando x you #mando x reader #mando x fem!reader #din djarin fanfic #din Djarin smut #the mandalorian fanfic #star wars fandom

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mx-julien · 3 years

Text

Zane is curious to a fault and that's my favorite flaw. remember in Prime Empire when he had Unigami's hardrive with him because he just wanted to study it? delectable. amazing. so i offer you a more descriptive and entirely different telling of That Time The Mechanic Exposed One Of Zane's Character Flaws.

a "vaguely after s8" timeline and Some General Robot Gore, but none of the End Of The Season Plot things. wanted to spoil myself a little bit bc i love underexplored character flaws and broken robots. (you can read it on Ao3, too, if you'd like - coming soon)

///

Concrete walls don't clash with many colors. Not with red plastic, gold wiring, titanium plates, or steel screws, though the lack of a window means the only real light Zane has comes through the wraught iron bars. They're rather crude, if he's being honest; they only used rebar, not even the nice, smooth, round kind of bars they have in Kryptarium. They should rethink calling him their "Most Valuable Prisoner" if this is the kind of conditions they put important people in.

He'd halfheartedly kick at a rock, but all of his motors are shot except for the ones on his neck, abdomen, and right arm; also, there are no rocks nearby. So he just lies there, half propped against a wall with his left arm detached and strewn about to the side of the cell that's illuminated.

The rectangles of light coming through the rebar are interrupted by a figure wearing a bowl hat. In a few moments The Mechanic standing outside Zane's cell, "Little nindroid," he leans in, keys jangling on his hip, "You didn't think I wouldn't come back for ya, did you?"

After a moment to process the double negative, he tries to right his head and mostly succeeds, though his vision is still slightly tilted to the left, "No," he uses his one good arm to push his back further up the wall, so it looks more like he's sitting than considerably incapacitated. "What surprised me was your stupidity in bringing me here," he looks pointedly around the room, "Or did you not realize that you led us straight to your base?" Zane looks the mechanic in the one good eye he has.

He just laughs, "Like you'll ever make it back to tell 'em!"

A few goons of various heights dressed in tattered brown leather jackets and ripped, stained light wash jeans make encouraging comments. The shortest one is a man who raises a fist and yells, "Yeah!" While the tallest one, a woman, chuckles and the one that's mostly obscured by the Mechanic curls one hand into a fist and hits it against their palm. An ode of what's to come. Oh joy.

"Be quiet-" they comply, rather promptly at that. He searches the key ring and, after what felt like ages, opens the cell door. "You're going to give me that capacitor real nice like," he motions his hands in a 'come come' manner that Zane discovers he finds incredibly demeaning, "Or I'mma take you apart until I find it like the Good 'Ol Mechanic I am." He leans down - still out of arm's reach - but too close for any semblence of comfort, "Like I've wanted to for so long. You get me?" He smiles, showing of his teeth shining with gold and silver.

The metal piece replacing his eye has a few lights in it that stare at Zane like they're expecting him to blink. "We destroyed it-" he narrows his eyes, "Do you really think we'd keep around a device capable of holding that much radioactive energy?"

"No," he stands up and wallks backwards until he can lean his back on the bars, "I think you are curious enough to want it around to tinker with - to figure out all its secrets and whatnot. But smart enough to know that your other little ninja friends wouldn't agree." He takes out a cigarette and flicks the lighter, bringing some more brightness into the room before snuffing it out after it's served his purpose, the butt of the cigarette glowing a dark red, "So you either have it or you know where it is."

Zane feels a tangible sense of checkmate as he sees the ash fall between oily human fingers, but it's not over yet. "Fine," he finally raises his head the last several degrees to straighen it fully, if only to see the Mechanic smirking around his cigarette, "But if I don't tell you where it is, how is taking me apart going to help? You'll never find it if I'm not intact."

"Tell it to me now," he shuts the door, letting it make a clang so loud it makes the tallest henchperson flinch, "And you won't have to see me rilfling 'round that chest of yours to see where the memory stick's at." He pulls a pair of foot-long pliers out of one of his overfilled pants pockets and smiles in a way that's bordering on the edge of deranged.

This is Zane's own fault and he's fully aware that he deserves what's coming to him. But he can't help feeling relief when a door down the hallway is kicked in and "Hands off the nindroid!" echoes through the room.

The goons spring to their feet just in him for Nya to incapacitate the shortest one and push the mid-sized one against a wall. It's enough to keep her occupied that the tallest one puts her arms around Nya's neck in a choke hold. Only to have Cole barrell through the hall and haul her over his shoulder, flipping her over onto the ground.

Just recovering from being pushed, the last one high tails it out the door.

"Darn hard to find good help these days," not to be forgotten, the Mechanic quickly locks he cell door and throws the keys across the room, coming to rest near what used to be the nindroid's left elbow, "Oh well," his other hand grabs wire cutters out of an inner coat pocket, "Guess we'll have an audience, eh, nindroid?"

He takes only two steps closer before the bars groan and bend behind him. The Mechanic spins around, shocked. Nya chooses that moment to walk through the new opening in the rebar, drag him a few feet closer to her by grabbing his shirt, then punch his lights out.

Cole watches it happen, a few of his dreadlocks obscuring one of his eyes, while he's still holding one of the bars in his hand. He promptly throws it aside after his eyes land on Zane's... rather disheleved look, "Hey buddy," he bends down at his right side, putting a hand on his back so it's easier to sit, "Not looking too hot," he scans the room, finally able to process the extent of the damage, "What the hell did they do to you?"

"They tore that arm off," he uses his head to gesture to it, as if there are some other remains of a titanium android's arm lying around in close proximity, "And then it joined me as I was pushed off a building." Zane puts a hand on Cole's shoulder, "But I gathered what I could of it and I'm okay. All the important things are intact."

Finished tying up the two goons and the Mechanic, Nya walks in, surveying the damage she, Jay, and Pixal will have to repair, "What did they want from you, anyways?" She takes off her gi to use as a makeshift bag to hold the large arm plates she's picking up, "They seemed to specifically go after you after they regrouped."

He's lifted into the air, his legs uneven: the right showing too many wires to be fully intact inside and the other being so crumpled it became an inch shorter. Cole's supporting all of his weight, one arm gripping the area where an arm used to be and his right holding on to the metallic one that's slung around his shoulders.

"They were looking for the capacitor from last week."

"That thing?" Cole walks sideways through the opening so Zane's legs don't catch, "But you destroyed it a few days ago? Why'd they think- don't tell me you didn't..."

Pointedly, Zane looks the hallway, admiring the bent bars and one piece of pig iron laying on the floor. Nya stands up, gi in hand, and leaves the cell, putting her other hand on her hip and sighing, "Zane. This is why-"

"I know- but it stores so much energy that it might be useful if I can just-"

"Just what?" Cole readjusts his grip on him, making the loose pieces in his legs rattle and clank together, "Get captured again? Damn it, Zane, this is one of the many reasons we destroy those things; so we don't have to deal with another burnt down monestary or worry about someone getting kidnapped like this!"

"I-" he lets his head hand down, giving him a clear view of the wreckage that is his lower half. His voice gets quieter, ashamed, "I hadn't fully realized that."

After a few moments of silence, Nya gets out her phone to call the commissioner. He's dragged out the door and up some stairs onto the roof. Zane's set down against an air conditioning unit, propped up.

Cole just situates himself to his right, holding his one good hand. He runs a hand through his hair and takes a deep breath, letting it out ten seconds later. A minute later, he finally speaks, "Just-" he turns his head to look away from Zane, to where the Bounty will presumably show up soon, "We can always get you one from Borg; the guy has everything," he squeezes his hand, "Except- except you. We only have one of you, and I'd like to keep this Zane in one piece."

"I'll..." he leans forward a little, catching Cole's eye, "I will try to restrain myself - in the future, that is - when it comes to things like this."

The latter just nods, accepting the apology as one might tuck their rightful mail into a coat pocket after a neighbor returns it.

Zane's not forgiven, yet, just understood.

Nya comes up after not much longer and sits on his other side, where his left arm would be usually when it's not shattered into pieces, held in a bag made from the gi of the water ninja.

Soon, the Bounty will descend out of the clouds, but right now it's quiet. Zane closes his eyes, shutting off visual sensors and allowing his head to rest on the AC unit behind them. If he sits here long enough, he just might forget how damaged his legs are.

And how the capacitor sitting right next to his heart has never felt heavier.

///

yes i made the mechanic sound a little bit like an american southerner; yes i am a southerner; yes i edited for clarity so others could understand

also this was very much supposed to just be adjacent to the Curiousity As A Fault thing for Zane, THEN i realized that the Mechanic was in that Prime Empire scene and just gave up and finished writing anyways because this is for fun

edit (2022): WOW this is questionably written... I need to edit this and post to ao3 bc some of these scenes and the grammar is... rough

#ninjago #ninjago headcanons #ninjago fanfiction #zane julien #cole brookstone #nya smith #ninjago mechanic #robot gore kind of #LRGwritesthings #lego ninjago #zangst kind of

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mooniefics · 3 years

Text

— a life in your shape

pairing : jean kirschtein / reader

word count : 2.5k

tags : unrequited love, pining, near death experience, confession of love, hurt no comfort lol

warnings : canon-typical violence, descriptions of injury to the reader

summary : you've always wanted it, always pictured it, always ached for it. you loved when jean looked you way. all you'd ever wanted was a life with him, not just a life in his shape.

— originally posted 1 / 22 / 21 on ao3 —

the mess hall was buzzing with life, rowdy with the chatter of dozens of cadets seated at long tables and speaking through swallows of their food. glasses were lifted and set down, bowls and plates clinking, utensils scraping sharply over various surfaces, nearly so loud that you could barely hear yourself think. but it all seemed to come to an abrupt silence when you settled your eyes back on him, taking in his formerly pale complexion now bronzy and sun-kissed from your hours of training, the annoyed yet playful glances he shot to connie and sasha as he worked through his soup and bread, full lips forming words that you couldn’t quite focus.

you were almost embarrassed of how smitten you were with jean, but in your mind, you couldn't understand how anyone wouldn't be taken with him. his thin frame had filled out with lean muscle in the year and a half that you'd been training together in the 104th corp, somehow managing to grow even taller than he already was on that first day, still so spirited with his persistence to be among the best of this class, a lively spark that never seemed to dampen gleaming behind his eyes.

"oh god, this again, jean?" you heard connie bemoan exaggeratedly, pulling you from the trance that you were surprised the other three at the table hadn't taken notice of.

jean was almost pouting now, and you would've found it so endearing had it not been the next words to spill from his mouth, indignant and full of tenacity. "don't be an ass, i've been trying to figure out a good excuse to sit with her for days now."

you followed his gaze despite knowing exactly who you'd find his eyes locked on, and forced yourself not to frown when you were met with the sight of mikasa just a few tables away.

"she's out of your league, man. not to mention having a thing for jaeger already, and not to mention that jaeger wouldn't hesitate to hand your ass to you again if you pissed him off like you always do. cut it out."

"connie, that's mean!" sasha feigned offense on jean's behalf, most likely for the sake of goading the reply that came as a distraction to snatch the remainder of bread from his plate.

"i'm just being honest with him here. he's asking for advice, so i gave him some. jean always talks about being realist and yet he— hey is that my food?!"

you turned away just as connie was lunging himself across the table, hearing the sounds of his fruitless efforts to tear the loaf from the girl's mouth, propping yourself up on your elbows and allowing your head to fall into your hands with a heavy sigh.

"what do you think?" in an instant, jean's eyes were on you, amber irises looking so intently at you that you could already feel a bothersome heat flushing your face. but registering his question sobered you, and stealing a glance at the beautiful dark-haired girl seated somewhere to your left was all in took to snuff out the light flutter in your chest.

"i don't know, jean. i think connie's kind of right about the whole eren thing." you were honest with him on a surface level, but it still didn't feel good to see him frown when you told him something he obviously didn't want to hear. you tried to remedy it by offering something more introspective—something a bit more true to your heart. "what i mean is that.. i think you're selling yourself short. mikasa obviously has her sights set elsewhere at the moment, and i just think you deserve someone who can bring the same sort of.." you struggled with your words for a moment, how could you not when he was leaning forward like that, listening so intently to you and you alone. "the same sort of passion. someone who can reciprocate." someone like me. but you bit those foolish words back.

"you understand, don't you?" he implored, looking past the bickering mess that sasha and connie had devolved to and gazing with such longing in the other girl's direction, "i mean.. i've never seen anyone like her, no one as beautiful.." each word gouged at your heart, a cold, empty sensation that left your chest feeling painfully hollow. "i know you're a girl, but you can see it too, right?"

you could see it, you were painfully aware of how you could never match up to her unfamiliar yet alluring features, that graceful, slender frame that could somehow soar through the air with ease and still thrown you down onto your back so hard it would knock the wind out of you, introversion that gave off such a charming air of mystery to her admirers.

"yeah," you mumbled back, ignoring how a huffing connie fell heavily back into his seat beside jean, defeated, sasha happily gulping down her unfairly earned chunk of bread, only taking notice of how jean was too fixated on mikasa to pay your dismay any mind, "i see it alright."

─── · 。ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

the air was thick with an unrelenting heat, stinking of steam and coppery with fresh blood, your vision fading in and out. your head was ringing with a deafening, high pitched peal and such an unbearable, crippling pain. you could feel your boots dragging across the hot dry dirt as something tugged you back by the collar of your shirt, and the terror of a titan with its misshaped limbs and mouth hauling you to your demise made you thrash aimlessly, screams for help spilling out as a disjointed groan of pain. and though it almost sounded as if you were underwater, sinking further and further beneath the lapping waves of your impending unconscious, you heard it, muffled, desperate, thick with tears, your name spilling from his lips.

and suddenly you remembered, you remembered the kidnapping and the unfaithful comrades and the mission to save humanity's last hope, your former friend now an almost unrecognizable abomination with ymir, bertholdt, and eren sitting atop his shoulders, clasped in his monstrous hands, that had now resorted to flinging titans in his primal desperation for escape. and as you blinked away the spots blacking out your vision, head lolling uselessly to the side, you could see your horse, half crushed in a puddle of red on the yellow grass, and realized that the warmth streaming down the side of your face is your own blood.

"jean..?" you mumbled, uselessly, barely coherent, but the near sob of relief from behind you is like an anchor back to reality.

you could see his calves on either side of you, feet kicking up clouds of dust as he pushed you both back, further from the fray and carnage, as far as he could muster. one of your blade scabbards was missing, you could feel that the clip on your gas tank had snapped off in your spectacular fall caused by the titan that was flung down in your path, irreparable damage most likely made to the fine mechanisms within the housing of your gear. you felt utterly hopeless, watching as the shade of a tree just barely shielded you from the blazing light of the sinking sun, hearing jean's gasping pants from behind you, feeling how rapidly his chest was rising and falling against the back of your head as you slumped into his body, leaden limbs weighing you down uselessly.

"jean." you wheezed, trying desperately to crane your heavy head back to meet his eyes one last time, eyes that no longer harbored the naive passion of youth but still gleamed so radiantly, "leave me.. here. you're g'nna— gonna die.. if you stay..."

you could feel his violent trembles now, feel him rip his green cloak from his shoulder to press against the throbbing wound on your head. "no. i-i'm staying. i n-n-need," he was scared, you knew he was terrified of allowing what happened to marco to happen to you, or sasha, or connie, or anybody, even if the boy's death was nowhere near his fault, "i need to s-save you."

but you could also feel something else—feel it coming—the terrible, earth trembling footfalls of a titan making a shambling, uncoordinated advance to you and the scent of your blood. and suddenly jean was screaming, a sound so raw and petrified that you couldn't help but cry yourself at the sound of it. he laid you down on the ground, bunched cloak pillowing your bleeding skull, unable to push himself to his feet but still drawing his last blade to swing at the thing coming to kill you both, covering your battered body with his own.

and in that moment, you hated yourself. though your head was swimming and your lucidity was waning, you knew that you would both die there, under the baking sun and in the jaws of a titan, and it would be your fault. every regret that you'd ever harbored flooded your mind: not hugging your mother long enough when you still had the chance, not drinking that liquor when squad leader hange had offered it to you, and, most of all, never having the bravery to be honest with jean.

and you mourned all that lost time in those final moments, every late night you'd spent as trainees under the stars when you and your friends would sneak out of the dormitories to talk at some ungodly hour, every shared meal where you didn't speak nearly enough to him, every second of the crushing embraces you'd offered each other when the thought of your fallen friends caught up to you and proved to be far too much to handle on your own. how could you have done so much yet so little with your life?

and just as the titan was stumbling upon you, jean's scream of terror dampening out into a faithless cry, the thing was gone, galloping away to join a newly assembled horde descending upon one single point on the plain. but somehow, you felt no relief, not as you reached out a weak, trembled hand to grasp the blood and dirt streaked fabric of his shirt.

and as he turned to you, eyes still wide and body shaking with horror, thrumming with the adrenaline of near-death, you whispered, hoarse and tired as your grasp on the world slipped away. "i love you, jean. i love you."

your eyes fell shut, the involuntary spiral down further and further into the deep waters of unconsciousness pulling you in deeper and deeper by the second. you were grateful that you at least got to say something meaningful as your last words.

─── · 。ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

there was a bright light, delicate, billowing fabric flouncing about in your bleary gaze as your eyes barely opened, something wrapped tight around your head, not making the pressure of the pounding headache any better. you couldn't fight the groan that even the small movement of turning onto your back caused, but you tried to force your lids open just an inch more at the sound of a gasp coming from somewhere in the room.

there were fast footsteps, a few shouts of "sasha, no!" and then a crushing weight on your chest, squeezing around you, pulling you up in bed as a tearful sob of your name came from a comfortingly familiar voice.

"sasha. please. h-hurts." you barely managed to croak out, feeling yourself been torn free—or rather, her torn away—as connie yelled.

"get off them, you moron, they're fucking injured!!"

"i'm s-s-sorry!" she wailed, allowing herself to be dragged to the door by the disgruntled boy, "i'm j-just so happy you're s-s-still alive!!!"

"and i am too, but that doesn't mean i'm gonna go throw myself on top of them while they're in the hospital!"

their bickering was almost comforting in a way, allowing the strain in your chest from sasha's hug to ease as you watched them elbow each other in the sides on their way out of the room to take their loudness out into the hall, blowing raspberries and struggling to not laugh through their feigned anger. and finally your gaze was allowed to wander over to the furthest wall from your bed, and you saw jean, staring down at his shoes, brow furrowed and lip bitten. and he seemed almost startled to find yourself in his gaze, feet slowly taking him to your side.

"i owe you my life, you know?" you said as he settled himself on the edge of the mattress, still not meeting your gaze.

"you don't owe me anything. you shouldn't feel in debt to me."

"but i do," you risked to settle your hand over his, finally drawing his worried, amber eyes onto yours, and you could feel your heart beginning to pick up, the butterflies that you had always forced to settle with a pessimistic thought to squash your optimism light in your chest, "i meant what i said before i passed out in the field. i always have."

and for just a moment, you thought that this was finally it, that you would no longer have to languish over wasted time and wasted words, fingers just barely curling around his warm palm. then, a knock at the door, light and delicate before the handle turned, pushing open to reveal mikasa.

and you caught every small movement of jean's features, the way his eyes sparked with a familiar light, the sudden, faint flush of color across his slender face, lips parting and just barely perking up at the ends. an endless, unwavering adoration.

"eren is awake, if you'd like to talk to him." that was all she had peeked in to say, but jean was still gazing at the door for a moment too long after she'd left.

"u-um.. if you don't mind—"

"go ahead." you told him, gently, pulling your hand away, retreating as far as your body could into the mattress, under the covers, turning your gaze away.

and though he'd slowly, almost nervously exited your room, you could hear the clear pick-up in his pace as soon as he'd shut the door behind him and exited into the hall, probably rushing to try and catch mikasa for a moment alone in the hallway before he had to share her attention with everyone else.

and it hurt, like a blade buried between your ribs, being jerked and twisted with every memory of his affinity, the one that was never directed at you despite how you craved it. and you'd realized that you had melded a life in his shape, a life where you were always just a few steps too far behind, hand outstretched, reaching for him as you hurried to grasp at any minuscule opportunity to be with him, speak to him, hear his laugh and see his near blinding smiles that never seemed to last long enough to you.

but, perhaps one day, someday farther into the future. and if not then, maybe in another life.

#jean kirstein #jean kirschtein x you #jean kirstein x you #jean kirstein x reader #jean kirschtein x reader #jean kirschtein angst #jean kirstein angst #snk x reader #snk x you #aot x reader #aot x you #shingeki no kyoujin x reader #shingeki no kyojin fanfiction

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cheelduh · 3 years

Text

How to bet your way into someone’s heart. (Highschool AU)

Pairing: Childe x fem!reader

Warnings: Fake weed. Poor Signora smh. Oh yes, lots of swearing. UNEDITED ASF IM LAZY BYE.

Synopsis: Childe is being an infatuated idiot, Lisa has eyes for vending machine chocolate, and Kaeya is desperately in need of a pencil. With all these distractions, there’s no way in hell you’ll be able focus on the task at hand.

This is crack.

I don’t have time.

You think as you race down the hallway, shoes slapping against the floor as you expertly dodge multiple students in your way.

Bullet. You're as fast as a bullet, because everyone around you is a blur and you don't stop, can't stop, not until you meet your target.

It's funny how one can accomplish many challenges and feats they were unable to, merely due to pressure. Pressure is a twisted ugly thing that can gnaw its way into the pit of your stomach and grow like a parasite. Pressure is a parasite that can either bring the best in you, or the worst, but at the cost of one's peace of mind.

"Move it Signora!" You shouted a warning at the senior blocking your way. There wasn't any time for you slow down at that point, and you'd risk bumping into the breakfast club's stall if you swerved to the side, sending juice flying everywhere.

Signora's eyes widened momentarily, getting the gist albeit her anger, and choosing to back up flatly against the locker.

Her lipstick nearly slips from her fingers as you swerve past, a thick gust of wind in your wake.

It messes with the hair she woke up two hours early for.

Signora plots her revenge. You still don't have time.

You nearly kick the door to your home room down, but you can't risk the perfect image your teachers have of you. So you pat down your t-shirt, take five tempting deep breaths, and tentatively knock the door.

The door opens and you're met with a young man, familiar amber pupils welcoming you.

You try not to huff and puff at the cost of your stamina. Thinking back, there's no way in hell you could have physically been that fast.

"Good morning Y/N," Your homeroom teacher gives you a small smile, moving aside to let you in. "Class is just about to start."

You check your watch, then turn to him with an apologetic tone, trying not to crack under the eyes of your classmates. "I'm so sorry Mr.Zhongli, I slept through my alarm."

Your idiot ass forgot to set one because you studied till four in the morning.

"You're like thirty seconds late, cut the shit." Beidou boos from the back, causing your stance to stiffen.

"I don't wanna hear it Beidou. If anything, you're two periods earlier than usual." Ningguang calls her out for you, but you have a feeling it's more so on behalf of a personal vendetta.

Ignoring the two bickering, Mr.Zhongli gives you the handout. "Take a seat. Do not fret over such minuscule things dear."

Relief washes over you. Your impeccable attendance is not on the line.

Childe tries to flag you down next to him but you send him a pointed glare and sit next to Lisa instead.

"You should give him a chance you know." Lisa doesn't even have to open her eyes to know what's going on.

"Please," You scoff, digging through your bags to collect your notes. "As if I have the time to fool around with a shady kid like him."

Your friend sighs in disapproval, and makes no move to take out her own notes as Mr.Zhongli begins the lecture on the Archon war.

"You should really pay attention." It bothers you that she doesn't, but then again it's not your place to tell her what to do or not to do.

"I don't need to." She yawns, blinking an eye open towards you. "I have you after all."

"I'm tired of saving your ass." You groan and pull a pen out of your pocket to get started on the exercises as Mr.Zhongli talks in the background.

The course outline contained all the topic, and you made sure to teach yourself as much as you could before class to stay ahead.

Immersed in the worksheet, you blinked away your sleep and tried to answer as many questions as you could at the moment. You didn't hear the slight shift next to you, and the change of breathing, or the rate of which time went by.

A familiar scent makes its way into your nostrils.

"Lisa. Why do you smell like mango juul juice." You know the scent from when Signora blew a mango flavoured fog in your face yesterday at lunch when you said you were hungry.

A chuckle erupts and you freeze in place. "That's because I'm not Lisa."

You blink. Once, twice, and then crane your head to the side to meet a pair of teasing cerulean eyes.

Fingers loosening in shock, the pen drops on the desk with a short thud.

You whisk your head towards the front of the classroom, and Mr.Zhongli is nowhere to be seen.

"There's no saving you now." Childe's smirk widens, and he scoots closer to you. "Mr.Zhongli had to get something from the staff room. The staff room is near the cafeteria."

"Which is also near the merch stall." You grumbled, bringing both hands to massage your temples as a headache is beginning it's reign.

"Tsk tsk. Smart girl. I'd like to add that he's forgotten his wallet in his office as well, which is in the south wing."

"Son of a..." You mutter underneath your breath, and opt to scoot further back, but your efforts are futile because your desk is in a corner.

Your next beacon of hope is Lisa, so you scan the room full of chattering students, only to find her pestering her crush, Jean.

Shit...there's nothing getting you out of this one.

"What did it take?" Is your only question, the despair starting to brew. How much did it take for your best friend to betray you?

"A dollar and fifty for vending machine chocolate."

You take a moment to breathe, calming your nerves and burying down the urge to screech. "What will it take?"

"For what?" Childe replies back innocently, and you can't believe how fast he can change masks. You almost give in.

"For you to leave me alone."

"Aww come on girlie," He whines, closing in the distance. "Don't be so cold."

What did your mom tell you that one time? Oh yes. That if you were ever backed against a wall, then just break the damn thing down.

Too bad it's figurative. You're just about ready to sock him in the face if you didn't know he was into that sort of thing.

"I'm serious about you," He says, and it sounds so real, so genuine, nearly makes you sputter. "See? I've even bought school supplies.

He unzips his light backback and spills the contents on the table.

A lone piece of paper flies out, a lighter, and a mechanical pencil with no lead that follows straight after. There's also a pocket knife that you choose to ignore.

You're not the least bit surprised.

"First of all, how the fuck are you passing this class. Second, do you really think I'm into nerds?"

"Well, considering that you are a nerd—"

"You're making things worse."

"My bad, my bad." He rubs the back of his neck sheepishly. "But on a serious note. I'll do anything."

You cross your arms. "I'm not just another one of your conquests Childe. It's not like I have the time. There are better things to do."

"You need to relax." He says so simply, with complete disregard as to what you are trying to say.

"I am relaxed." You reply, picking up your pen to continue your work. If he's going to annoy you, then you might as well get shit done while he's at it.

You're not wasting any more time.

"When was the last time you got a full eight hours of sleep?" His voice is soft, too soft, and it's not at all like the Childe you know.

Your pen stops momentarily, but you will yourself to continue writing. The words look fumbled, but you don't care. The best thing to do is get your work done and ignore the idiot next to you.

"C'mon, Zhongli won't be back for another half an hour at least. Let's go." He kicks the bottom of your chair to urge you.

The pen shakes in your hand, and you narrow your eyes at the paper, digging holes into poor question eight. "I'm trying to work here. Let me work." You'll say anything to get him off your back.

"Fine fine fine..." He raises both hands in mock surrender. "I'll stop bothering you."

Your ears perk up at that, and you turn to him so fast he has to hold in his laugh. "Really?"

"Yeah," Childe nods along, bringing your hopes up. "If you win a bet, that is." And they're back to ocean level.

You roll your eyes. There's always a catch. That doesn't mean you're any less interested.

"What's the bet?" You ask curiously, all your focus now on him. Just as he longed for from the very start.

He flicks a thumb towards the door, leaning closer to whisper next to your ear. "We bet when Zhongli comes back."

"Are you kidding me?" You aren't bothered at all at the close proximity, mainly because you're too tired and only care about the freedom that will come with your win.

Childe, however, is a completely different story. His heart is beating a thousand times a second, but his face doesn't show it. Not one bit.

Kaeya leans in from the seat behind you two, interested in what's going on. "Ooooh secrets."

"Shut up Kaeya." Childe and you monotonously drone in sync, still having your little staring contest.

The captain of the skating team smiles, about to ask—

"No. We don't have an extra pencil. Even if we did we wouldn't give it to you." Childe finally breaks his gaze to scare off Kaeya.

Kaeya raises a smug brow, and leans back in his chair like the jerkwad he is. "Then don't let me keep you two love birds."

That's all it takes for him to earn Childe's unwavering respect and loyalty for as long as he lives.

After the two are done creating an elaborate handshake as a mark of their newfound friendship, you decide to just forget about the handout. It's not like you're getting anything done anyways.

"Anyways, back to the bet." Childe says, resting his cheek on his fist as he stares at you dreamily. You try not to break under his gaze.

"If I win, you have to go on a date with me."

"No way in hell—"

"Then I'll bother you for the rest of highschool."

Highschool is eternity. You don't want to live through an eternity of this.

"Fine." You answer, and for the first time he sees genuine fear in your face, it makes him waver slightly. Not enough for him to pity you.

"If I win..." You trail, thinking loud and clear as you ignore the excited chatter of your classmates. "I want you to pay attention to class."

"What?" He exclaims incredulously, blinking in disbelief. "I thought you'd get me to stop talking to you altogether."

"If you're paying attention in class, you don't bother me as much and your grades go up." You grin smartly, and oh archons it livens his entire day up, and it's only nine in the morning.

"You care about my grades?" Childe bites back a smile.

"Not at all." You lie, and quickly look away. Woah the floor tile looking trippy.

He decides it's better to get on with the bet without causing you any more distress. After all, you've given him such cute facial expressions today. He's feeling quite generous.

Pulling out his cracked-as-shit latest model phone, he unlocks it and tinkers with it a bit before turning the screen towards you.

"We'll be using this to time both of our predictions at the same time. Whoever has the closer time to when he finally swings by is the winner." The rules are simply put, no room for error.

You tilt your head in confusion. "Why am I seeing a slime review?"

"SHIT!" Childe fumbles with his phone, aggressively tapping on the screen. He lowers his head and voice as if he's been through fifty consecutive hits in the face. "It's uh, Teucer's account."

"Yeah...okay." Is all you can say.

"Ok what do you bet?" He changes the topic to unfuck the situation.

Putting a finger in your chin, you think for a minute, calculating the average of all the times Mr.Zhongli has left the classroom for a considerable amount of time.

"Fifteen minutes." You're sure of it. It's like clockwork every day.

"Hmm..." Childe crosses his arms, seemingly in deep thought. "Five minutes." He places his bet, and both timers start simultaneously.

Five minutes?! Is he serious?

You laugh inwardly. This challenge is in the bag.

The sense of victory you feel dulls when your ears pick up the echo of footsteps nearing the classroom.. Both your heads snap up to the doors.

There's something scary about Childe once his competitive side comes out. "Looks like I've won." He turns to you, eyes darkening evilly.

"What? There's no way in hell a ginger is right." Your palms are clammed up, eyebrows furrowed in panic. You calculated every single variable, how could this be?

You race to the front, Childe right on your tail as the entire class clamps up. The footsteps get louder, causing even whispers to become total silence.

Then it hits you. The shitty music about getting bitches and bars playing on the other side.

The door is swung open by Childe, and you're face to face with an idiot sophomore with a speaker in his pocket.

Childe’s grin is long gone, and you sigh in relief.

The false alarm encourages the class to return back to their idle chatter.

"Scaramouche?" Childe spits, narrowing his eyes at the unamused boy. "I thought it was Signora's shift today."

By "shift" he means being a complete dickwad and scamming fake weed to students in return for their souls. It only really works on the freshmen.

The only reason the club still runs is because Signora threatened the principal with some sus pictures she snapped of him and his assistant.

"Apparently she had an emergency." Scaramouche explains, lowering the volume on his outdated beats pill. "Something about a hair appointment because she got ran into by a, and I quote "lecherous imbecile.""

You steer clear of the conversation, finding the whiteboard far more fascinating and worth your while.

A loud cough is heard from behind the kid, and you're met with a crestfallen look on your beloved teacher's face.

You go through a whiplash of emotions, becoming completely numb towards your loss.

"They were out of slow cooked bamboo shoot soup." He sighs, handing a stack of papers to Childe, who is wearing the fattest smirk on his face at his victory. "Please hand these out to your classmates Childe, and we will begin shortly."

You check down at the timer despite knowing who’s won. Five minutes and twenty five seconds. Somehow, you don't feel as dejected as you thought you'd feel.

Maybe the date will be fun. Maybe Childe isn't so bad. Maybe...you do have time to indulge in these sort of things. If he’s so hell bent on getting your attention, perhaps it’s possible that you can make some room in your heart for him.

However, all those thoughts fly out the window when Childe hands you the new worksheet.

“I hope you're ready for our date tomorrow. We'll be sparring till sundown, and after you’ll be feeding me with chopsticks." He winks, and it makes your heart flip even though all you want right now is to go to the bathroom and barf your guts out.

Feelings are complicated.

You smile back at him nauseously, tight lipped and all, then you pull out your phone, go on maps, and search for the closest cliffs to jump off of.

After he's done, Childe slouches back in his original seat with a different kind of enthusiasm, and opens up his messages. He texts Zhongli a "thank you <3".

#childe x reader #genshin oneshot #genshin impact oneshot #genshin imagines #childe #tartagila #kaeya alberich #fanfic #genshin impact #genshin tartagalia

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maplecornia · 3 years

Text

chapter 26

𝔴𝔬𝔯𝔡 𝔠𝔬𝔲𝔫𝔱: 1.85K

𝔰𝔲𝔪𝔪𝔞𝔯𝔶: You watched them from the sidelines ever since you were a young teenage girl. Now you’re grown up, they’ve returned after 2 long years and everything has changed. What happens when you pull back the mask and find the darkness within? What happens when you see that they’re broken?

𝔞/𝔫: i don't think i'll ever get over how hot Namjoon is ;-;

You groan as you lean against the pillar near the entrance to the BigHit building.

Last night, when Taehyung walked you back to your apartment, you didn't sleep very well. Turning to glare at your rather disheveled reflection in the mirror, you let out another groan.

Why did he have to show up? You were perfectly fine, things were perfectly normal, and then he had to screw up your heart all over again. Letting out a small scream, you throw a 3-second fit before leaning your back against the clear glass wall.

Sooner or later, you're going to have to go in.

Why can't it be later?

Letting out a guttural growl, you pull yourself off of the glass and head inside the building, stomping like a little two-year-old. You really don't want to see him today, you're afraid of what will happen if you do.

You don't want to fall.

Please God, don't let me fall.

Entering the building, you feel a bit more comfortable, not so out of place. Now, you have a purpose, a plan; a reason for being here. Smiling softly to yourself, you walk forward, this time nothing in your way. As you reach the receptionist's desk, you smile as you recognize Jojo behind it.

Playing coy, you knock twice on the desk before glancing away and holding your head in your hands. She glances up, ready to greet the newcomer but as soon as she sees your face, she breaks into a grin.

"Ah~ it's the snoozer, early today I see." You frown at the nickname but when she smirks your way, you can't help but grin like a giddy child. It feels good to have friends or at least the beginning relationships of one.

"I told you, the time was wrong." You pout, flopping on the desk and she laughs before preparing the schedule you need for Namjoon today.

"Mmhmm, and what happened yesterday? Was Mr. Kim too tired of waiting and told you to stay at home?" The mention of yesterday causes your grin to fade a little. With it comes the memory of Taehyung, and he starts to reenter your mind. Pulling yourself off the desk, you smile weakly, shaking your head.

"No, I had an injury, Namjoon wouldn't let me come in." She blinks a bit in surprise at the informal way you address him.

"'Namjoon?' Huh, I didn't think the two of you were that close. You only met once after all." She mumbles before typing something into her computer. Realizing your mistake you let out a small gasp.

"Oh, I'm sorry. He told me to call him without honorifics, I suppose it slipped my mind." You look away from her, a bit embarrassed, but as soon as she presses the print button, she chuckles.

"Don't worry, Yen. I was just joking." When you don't look at her, she sighs a bit before lightly knocking on your head. Surprised, you rub your forehead and pout as you meet her gaze once more. Smiling, she pays no mind, presenting you with an ID badge. Your eyes widen as you see it, and you take it from her waiting fingertips.

"Is this mine? I didn't think they'd process it so fast."

"Of course it's yours, whose else would it be?" Jojo chuckles, leaning over the counter and pointing to your name. "See? Lin Yen."

You bite your bottom lip, trying to suppress your grin. Somehow, this makes things all the more real, you can't help your delight at the sight. Jojo catches sight of the cute expression and can't help but laugh as she pulls away.

"Now hurry up, the schedule is all ready for the day. Don't forget to check in with the head manager, you remember his name right?" She reminds you, making you pause for a moment before you run off.

"Of course, it's Kim Sejin. Everyone knows that." She smiles at the coy response and waves you away.

"Okay, hurry up and go then. I'm sure Mr. Kim is waiting for you." You bow to her before taking off, a small bounce to your footsteps.

Walking through the halls without Namjoon is a bit scary, but exciting at the same time. You can't help but love the butterflies coursing through your stomach, and is it weird that you kind of want to barf and dance at the same time? Everything is so exciting and new, it's as though the world has been painted a different color.

You try your hardest to forget everything, just live in the moment as of right now. No more worries about the past. About your friends. About your mom. About Taehyung. Right now, you need to focus on yourself.

And this job seems like the perfect escape for that.

Humming slightly to yourself you do a little twirl in the hallway before turning the corner...

...and bumping right into Kim Namjoon.

You let out a small shriek, stumbling back, your body shrinking into a small protective ball like it normally does. It's a little defense mechanism you've acquired over the years. Your eyes closing themselves tightly, you don't realize who you've bumped into until he takes you by the shoulders and catches you mid-air.

Blinking as he rights you, you look up and find yourself face to face with your boss.

"Are you okay?" he asks, his voice coated with worry, and you chuckle a bit nodding sheepishly.

"Yes, I'm sorry I should've been paying attention to where I was going." You reply, stepping back from him. Though he sighs in relief as he releases you, you find that there’s a heavy cloud hanging over his head. He’s not fully there with you, lost in some unforgotten thought. Furrowing your brow in confusion, you wonder what happened to make him look that way. You open your mouth to ask him about it, but he's already speaking, and your words fall on deaf ears.

"It's a good thing that I bumped into you." You tilt your head in expectation, curious to what he's about to say next. "I needed to talk to you."

"But your schedule isn't ready yet--"

"That can wait."

You open your mouth to protest, but he's already taken you by the hand and is dragging you down the hallways.

Even though you cry out incomprehensible questions and sounds of alarm behind him, he can't seem to hear you. He doesn't want to hear you. His mind is too cluttered with the events of yesterday.

The outlandish plan that BangPD has in store for you.

"Why her?" He asks, his hands clenching tightly at his sides.

After the meeting, BangPD requested to meet privately with Namjoon, after all, he was the leader and one of the people that Sihyuk trusts the most. It didn't matter to RM anyway, he needed to talk to Sihyuk as well, and if it had to be on his terms then so be it.

Bang Sihyuk glances outside at the setting sun, casting shadows throughout his office. Serene and insoluble, shadows meant to conceal that which he would rather keep inside. He sighs before answering, his hands secured behind his back as he stands before the massive glass window.

"You know, BTS wouldn't have existed without you. If I had never come across you that day, if I had never been inspired to create a group that will strengthen and invigorate your music, we would have never gotten here." Namjoon glances at him in frustration. He hates when people beat around the bush, but his respect and humility won't allow him to speak out against his senior.

"It's the same with her."

Bang Sihyuk reaches out and taps on the window before letting out a soft chuckle.

"Did you know that glass is so easily broken? That is, when it's on its own. But when you fortify it, when you strengthen it with multiple pieces, then it becomes indestructible." Turning around to face Namjoon, he smiles.

"Almost Bulletproof."

Biting his bottom lip, Namjoon remains silent as he watches BangPD walk to his desk and sit down. He raises his brow when Namjoon remains standing, but when it's clear that he has no intention to make himself at home, he merely sighs.

"She auditioned before, you know. For the BE:LIFT project, for Source Music, she even auditioned for Plus Global." Namjoon balks at that. This is new information to him. He knew that it was her dream to be a singer, but never did he know that she wanted to be an idol. Especially since she's a foreigner, that would be near to impossible. "I didn't accept her."

"Why?"

"I didn't want to share her."

At the explanation, Namjoon turns away, running his hand across his face in frustration. This is much more complicated than he thought. Somehow, she's been connected to the company for the longest time. Not just through Jaejin, not through him himself, not even through Jungkook or Taehyung. Before any of them had a chance to see her potential, she's been on the mind of their former CEO since she auditioned 5 years ago. For a program, she would never be able to succeed in.

"I have been planning this for a while, Namjoon."

He's unwilling to accept it, he can't accept it.

"She's the missing piece."

At the thought, his hand clenches subconsciously around yours.

He can't stand the thought of you disappearing far from his reach.

And yet, almost against his will, he finds himself bringing you to the very fate that will keep you from him.

Perhaps forever.

He pauses when the door comes into his line of vision. Almost as though he were afraid of what lies behind that very same door. Mrs. Kwon looks up from her desk as the two of you enter the small lobby, and presses a button on her phone before muttering incomprehensible words to a person on the other line.

Out of breath, you place your hand on your chest before looking up at him. At the sight of his set jaw, and stony eyes, you can't help but feel a bit worried.

What exactly happened to make him look that way?

Once more, you open your mouth to speak to him, but Mrs. Kwon interrupts and you look at her in surprise, not noticing she was there.

"You may go in."

Confused, you turn to Namjoon, but all he does is give a nod to the secretary before stepping towards a massive oak door. Curious, you peer around him to glance at it, not quite aware of your surroundings. There's a small plaque on the door, one that reads the name of the person residing within in perfect neat letters.

방시혁

Bang Sihyuk.

Your heart stopping in your chest, you freeze halfway to the door, your hand slipping out of Namjoon's.

"Namjoon, why are we here?" you try to keep the fear, the anxiety, the worry out of your voice, but the efforts are futile. He swallows hard, steadying himself before turning to you, his warm eyes soft and apologetic.

"He wanted to meet you."

𝔫𝔬𝔱𝔢: you can probably guess what will happen next, but nonetheless i'm exciiiited

chapter 27 here

check the Infinite Stars masterlist for more chapters

check my BTS masterlist for other BTS content

check out my masterlist for other kpop fanfics

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nothing-but-dreamy · 3 years

Text

TRUE COLORS ~ Ch. 3

You want to start the series? Chapter 1

Pairing: DBH!Connor x OC!Maya

Words: 2325

Warnings: none; Connor is adorable

After another long day at the Chicken Feed truck, Maya was glad to be back home. The neverending rain got replaced by soft falling snow, how it got announced. As she entered her apartment, Maya shook off the snow from her cost and got greeted by the soft female voice of her intercom. A nice warmth and her favorite ambient music were flooding her own four walls. That was home.

The tall skyline of Detroit rose behind the windows, its lights sparkling like million candles in the distance. One by one, Maya switched on small lamps for more indirect light and atmosphere. It was just past eight but already dark. From the right, she heard a low plop.

"Hey, Trevor. You're awake. Good morning, little one.", Maya said and greeted her small, nocturnal gecko in its terrarium. The small creature croaked happily as it saw its owner. Maya sprayed water for more humidity and removed an old leaf.

"It's freezing cold outside. You can be happy to be in there where it is so warm.", she said low, closed the glass door of the terrarium and decided to take a bath. A long, hot bath would be the right thing to end this long work day and to start her evening.

"You have a visitor.", the intercom announced. Maya lowered her pencil and looked confused at the digital clock of her stove.

"Now? Who would visit me now?", she asked into the empty apartment. Trevor had no answer. It was past 2 AM and there was no one who would visit her to such an hour except Gary, who would have some kind of trouble. Maya sighed, stood up and answered the door. Surprise wouldn't be even the right choice of word to describe how Maya felt as she opened the door.

"C-Connor? What...what are you doing here?", she asked, still with the handle holding in her hand to close the door whenever necessary.

"Lieutenant Anderson suggested that I shall visit you.", Connor said and looked kinda lost. He had followed Hank’s instructions and yet, it seemed to be wrong again.

"Visit me? Why?", Maya asked puzzled. She watched how Connor, whose hair and shoulders were covered in snow, looked at a point in the distance. His LED flashing yellow.

"To talk about emotions.", Connor answered and looked back at Maya. She knew that she still looked at him with confusion.

"Okay, help me a bit here. I'm confused and have no idea how I could help you. Is it because of your case? Happened something there?", Maya asked directly and noticed how Connor relaxed a bit. That was a field he could control. Suddenly, she felt the coldness of the hallway on her naked feet, so she stepped aside.

"Come in. It's getting cold.", Maya said softly and let the android in, “What happened?”, she asked, closed the door and followed Connor.

"We were chasing two deviants and I...I had trained my gun at them. They were right in front of me but...", Connor started his explanation while he stepped into her living room.

"But you haven’t shot them?", Maya asked as he didn’t end his sentence. She tried to keep the nervousness out of her voice but held her breath.

"N-no... I... I couldn't.", Connor answered and looked at the ground while his LED was spinning yellow. Maya released her breath and relaxed. But she was also concerned about the state of the android.

"So, you didn't shoot them and that troubles you?", Maya asked softly. Connor nodded and this time, she gave him the time to speak when he was ready. He stopped at the wall and looked at her paintings.

"I got sent by CyberLife to investigate the spreading deviancy. The phenomenon that androids seem to start to feel. I got programmed to hunt and to stop deviants before it’s too late. To prevent something bad from happening.", he said automatically as if he was just repeating something he had said hundreds of times or what was an essential part of his code.

"But you couldn't shoot the two androids even if they were right in front of you? You acted against your program?", Maya asked, slowly understanding what the android's problem was. Connor was shifting between fulfilling his mission and obviously developing emotions on his own. For him it was problematic to process everything properly. Maya was sure that there was nothing in this world that would be more difficult for him right now.

"I... I don't know how that could happen.", Connor said and looked back at Maya who leant against her couch with her hands shoved into her front pockets.

"Can you tell me more about the androids? Or the case?", Maya asked calmly.

"It were two girls from the Eden Club. One of them killed a guy... accidentally.", Connor answered, remembering the early evening.

"Why did she kill the guy?", Maya asked, now, truly interested. Until now, she had just heard a few rumors about androids developing emotions. But murder was a whole new level.

"She said she was just defending herself as the victim started to hit her. She feared that she would die and so she... She...", Connor said and stopped.

"She defended herself to run away with another android?", Maya asked and connected the dots.

"Yeah... Lieutenant Anderson said the two girls seem to be in ... love.", Connor said and drew his brows together as he processed the said. Since he had started to talk about the case, now, it was the first time where his LED circled rapidly in a blinking yellow and a hint of red. For Maya the indicator that this was his main problem.

"They were in love? And as the one told you why she did it you couldn't shoot her?", Maya asked and Connor nodded. Once again, the android looked through her apartment to distract himself.

Connor scanned the area out of habit. The gecko croaked as it watched, very interested, how the android walked through the apartment. Next to the terrarium was a desk with sketches scattered over it. A bigger pad laid in the middle of the desk. A sketch of a person was drawn but it wasn't finished, just the outlines, so Connor had no idea what it would be later. Next to the desk was a canvas stand with a painting in the making. Several shades of green were smeared across the canvas and created an illusion of depth.

On the wall behind the stand, Connor saw finished, colorful paintings. They were paintings of geckos and plants like copies of the plants that were spread in the apartment. Connor scanned the plants. All of them were real and healthy with the right hydration. Another painting of her gecko hung at the other wall and Connor was looking at it for a few minutes. Maya walked over to him. His LED had calmed down back to blue. She was glad to see the android to be more relaxed again.

"You're very talented. Are you a painter?", Connor asked, looking at Maya with curiosity.

"Yeah... I'm currently studying art to get my bachelor's degree.", Maya said and looked at the painting one last time before she walked over to the couch. She signaled Connor to follow her. Maya sat with crossed legs in one corner of her couch and Connor sat next to her, well-behaved like a kid with his hands folded in his lap and with a straight back.

"So, how I see it, you have troubles processing the fact that you couldn't shoot the deviants how you should have.", Maya said cautiously. Connor nodded but stayed silent.

"Was it a conscious decision you made?", she asked further. Minutes were ticking by before Connor looked up at her. His brown eyes looked soft but sad. His face held a confused expression. Maya laid her hand reassuring on his arm and she noticed how his LED circled yellow. Maybe processing her question or her touch.

"Take your time to answer. We have all the time in the world.", Maya said low and softly with a smile.

"It was a decision I made. I decided not to shoot because...", Connor admitted finally.

"Because?", Maya asked softly. Connor looked from her hand into her eyes.

"I saw no reason. I knew I had to shoot them because my program, my mission, demanded it but I... I didn't want to.", Connor admitted low and blinked several times as he realized what he had said. Maya smiled softly at him.

"You made a decision on your own, Connor. It was your own decision to spare these girls because their death wasn't helpful for your mission."

"But I.. that must not be! I have to fulfill my mission to stop the deviants.", Connor said troubled.

"I'm convinced you will be able to find a way to solve this case without killing someone. There is always an alternative. To spare someone's life is always better.", Maya said and watched how Connor calmed down. His LED turned from yellow back to blue and slowed down.

"You said something about love earlier.", Maya asked and tried to guide the conversation to the next important topic. The reason why Hank had sent this android to her in the middle of the night.

"Y-yeah... Hank said the androids, the two girls, would be in love.", Connor explained and looked confused again. For Maya, he looked totally cute like this but she had to focus back on the current situation to keep a clear mind.

"You now, love is a good thing. There is no need to stop it. Love is the biggest power in this world.", Maya tried to explain a complex emotion.

"But they're androids. They don't really feel something. Their emotions are just errors in their software. They're emulating them.", Connor said, what sounded more like instructions in a manual.

"Do you really think that?", Maya asked, interested in his answer. There was something in his eyes that betrayed him.

"I.. yes.", Connor said but Maya saw the insecurity in his eyes. It had been a mechanical, programmed answer which would come automatically.

"What is love?", Connor asked suddenly.

"Oh, uhm... you can't explain that easily but I will try it. Love connects people in a powerful way. There is the bond between parents and their kids. Between siblings and of course, between two people in a relationship. When you love someone, they are the first thought in the morning when you wake up and the last before you fall asleep. You are willing to do anything for the one you love. Sometimes you fear to lose them because without them you wouldn't feel complete. There are people who would die to save the one they love. Or kill each other because they can't be together like Romeo and Juliet.", Maya tried to explain as best as possible. Love was a complex structure which wasn't easy to explain within a few minutes.

"That's a dramatic reaction.", Connor said serious as he processed the information.

"Love can be magnificent...or even disastrous. But if you love, you know that because the other person is everything you can think of. They matter more than your own life and you just want to be with them. Suddenly, there is someone in your life who seemed to be more important than yourself.", Maya closed her explanation. Connor inclined his head to one side.

"Have you ever been in love?", he asked interested. Maya was friendly and calm and the complete difference to all the humans he had met so far. He watched her bright eyes sparkling in the half dark and her hair falling over her shoulders like soft waves. For the first time, he noticed such things on someone else.

‘Software instability…’, the note popped up in front of his eyes.

"Oh… uhm…not really...not how I have explained it but in some way...yeah-", Maya explained stammering.

"But you're alone, aren't you? Or do you have a partner at the moment?", Connor asked further. Now, more interested in her than before.

‘Software instability…’, once again the note was showing up.

"No, I.. I'm single, at the moment. I had a few relationships but nothing too serious.", Maya answered, shifting uncomfortably.

"Haven't you loved them enough that they left?", Connor asked and Maya felt more uncomfortable under his intense glance which was innocent at the same time. She understood that Connor was like a child at this point. If he wanted to understand, he had to ask questions that came to his mind.

"Unfortunately, it's not that simple. There are different factors for people to stay together and sometimes... it's not enough to love each other. Sometimes even loving someone isn't enough that a relationship works out.", Maya tried to explain but she saw that Connor had difficulties to follow.

"Okay, look, I will try to explain it to you.", Maya changed her sitting position closer to Connor. He followed her lead and it seemed that he made himself more comfortable.

***

As she awoke, Maya realized that she must have fallen asleep on the couch. Slowly, she remembered how she had tried to explain love to an android the whole night. As she sat up, Maya noticed the blanket covering her.

"Connor?", she asked sleepy into the apartment but there was no response. She wasn't surprised but she smiled softly about the memories of how they had talked until she had fallen asleep against Connor's shoulder in the early morning hours.

Feeling wonderful, Maya pulled the blanket closer to her chest to keep the warmth a moment longer. That was it that a small piece of paper fell to the ground. Maya leant forward to collect it. It was just a small note but the words let her smile:

I had to leave and I didn't want to wake you. Thank you for … everything!

#connor #dbh connor #detroit connor #dbh connor x reader #dbh connor fluff #connor dbh #detroit become human connor #detroit become human #game #writing #gaming #video games #love #fanfic #fanfiction #fandom

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chronicallylatetotheparty · 4 years

Text

Float Like A Butterfly Ch.3 Unwanted Burdens

Summary:

Marinette and Adrien are trapped in cages of duty and resentment.

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

"Don't you think Adrien's been acting weird?" Marinette asked.

Alya glanced from Kitty Section readying their instruments to her best friend. She wanted to reassure Marinette that her concerns were just her imagination running away with her again. But Alya noticed it too.

"You mean with Chloe?"

Marinette's nose wrinkled at the mention of Adrien's first friend. But her worry quickly came back. She never realized how little time they spent together until they started spending more. It wasn't what she would call a positive development. They seemed to argue a lot more now.

Alya looked at Marinette and knew they were thinking the same thing. Going over what she overheard in her head.

"I'm no good at being nice, Adrien."

"You don't have to be nice. You just have to not be cruel."

That was after Chloe had acted like her usual self with Sabrina. Alya didn't know if she agreed with Adrien or not but she never told anyone. It was a private conversation. And Chloe sounded oddly... vulnerable.

"They've been acting weird," Marinette conceded. "But there's something else that's... off about him." Her eyes widened. "What if it's something I did? Or something his fans said online? Or something worse!?"

Marinette blinked as she realized she was leaning into Alya's space. Stepping back Marinette slowed her words down to a less panicky level. "Could you check with Nino, please. Just, of course, you know, casually."

As if she summoned him with talk of his best friend Nino showed up. Frowning at his phone.

Giving Marinette a worried look Alya complied. "Nino, any word from Adrien?"

Nino bit his lip. "He can't make it."

"What!?" Marinette winced as her yelp attracted unwanted attention from the rest of the ship. "Did he say why?"

"Something about messing up on the piano?" Nino glanced back at his phone, expression shifting into a glare. "It's just like Adrien's old man to be a killjoy the five seconds he spends with my bro!"

"Hey," Forcing some optimism into her voice Alya placed a reassuring hand on her boyfriend's shoulder. "I'm sure Adrien will sort it out. It's not the first time his dad has kept him from hanging out with us.

Nino wasn't convinced but he nodded anyway and let Alya kiss his cheek. He also noticed that Adrien was acting weird. But no matter how Nino asked, Adrien always evaded the question. It was wearing on his patience.

"Captain Anarka speakin' to ya! So, how's it comin' along me young pirates!"

Marinette started as Juleka's maman appeared out of nowhere. She was loud and jovial and apparently didn't like cleaning? Maybe it worked for the Couffaines but Marinette's mind needed a bit more order to function properly.

Still, it was her home, er, ship so Marinette could appreciate Anarka's unconventional hospitality. A smile formed slowly as Captain Couffaine's exuberance pulled her and her friends out of less pleasant thoughts.

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

Adrien played the piano mechanically. Feeling his skin burn under his Father's stern gaze. When he wished for more time together Adrien didn't mean being judged in person.

Despite the focus Gabriel's mere presence demanded, Adrien's mind wandered. Juleka had extended an open invitation to the entire class for the music festival. That was the first time one of his... not-exactly-close friends had actually invited him over.

And he was stuck here.

Adrien winced as a discordant note echoed from where his finger slipped on the wrong key. Eyes glancing fearfully at his father.

"I've heard enough." Gabriel raised his hand to forestall any more noise from Adrien. "Are you sure you're practicing, Adrien?"

Standing, Gabriel showed his back to his son. Not looking at Adrien when speaking to him. Voice full of accusation and annoyance.

In other words, Gabriel acted the same as always.

"... I'm just doing the same exercises over and over again..." An idea came to him. "I think I could make better progress if I could just play with other musicians." Adrien forced his tone to be hopeful, trying to reason with his father. "After all, music is meant to be shared with other people don't you think?"

"We Agrestes are soloists." Gabriel crushed Adrien's argument dismissively, deigning a glance at his son. "Not mere group members. I suggest you rehearse your piece some more. You'll play it for me again later today."

His heartbeat spiked. "But- Father! You promised that I could attend my friends' concert!"

"Not after that performance you've just given."

But you promised! Adrien's jaw clenched to keep the words down. There was no point in arguing with someone who didn't listen.

"Which is probably due to their influence.

His hands trembled. You don't know them! You don't know anything!

"You need to refocus, Adrien."

With that Gabriel and Nathalie, who Adrien had forgotten was even there, left without a backward glance.

"You need to refocus, Adrien."

Adrien sat their as a growing pressure built in his chest. Clawing, demanding, yelling. Jerking to his feet Adrien paced, trying to get his body and mind to quiet down.

"You need to refocus, Adrien."

Rubbing at his eyes Adrien sent a brief text to Nino. Forcing his breath to even out. He didn't feel like talking at the moment.

"You need to refocus, Adrien!"

That done Adrien snatched up his basketball and threw it at the net. His piano disappearing into the floor. Grabbing the ball as it bounced he threw it into the net again. His piano rising from its hiding place.

"YOU NEED TO REFOCUS, ADRIEN!"

Again he threw the ball.

Down it went.

Again into the net.

Up it came.

Again.

Down.

Again.

Up.

Again.

Down.

Again.

Up.

Again.

Down.

Again.

Up.

Again.

Down.

Again.

Up.

Again.

Down.

Again.

Up-

"YOU NEED TO REFOCUS, ADRIEN!"

Adrien shoved the ball forcefully away from him. Not caring what it hit. Grabbing the remote he turned on his TV and raised the volume as high as it would go.

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

Marinette stared openmouthed at the massive shockwave that came from Luka's electric guitar. By comparison she was only mildly surprised when police helicopters appeared overhead.

Sabrina's dad pulled up with a megaphone. "Mme. Anarka, are you completely out of your mind!?"

M. Raincomprix was on a first name basis with Juleka's maman? That probably wasn't good.

"It's the National Music Festival today, Officer Roger! My crew's allowed to play whatever they want!" Anarka projected over the speakers.

Definitely not good. Marinette tried to de-escalate the situation. "Uh, maybe we could turn the volume down a bit, Captain? Then there'd be no more problem, right?"

"No! Out of the question!" Anarka dismissed immediately. "I didn't name my galleon Liberty for nuthin' y'know! It's a matter of principle!"

From there things quickly spiraled. Anarka's stubborn refusal to listen to anything Roger had to say prompting him to pettily give more and more tickets. Each addition enraging her so much her voice stuck in her throat.

Anarka stalked away from the others on deck once Officer Roger and the other police left. Face red and fists clenched.

Marinette looked at her friends, all of them worried. Especially Juleka and Luka.

Luka. "Are you okay?" Marinette asked.

"Um, yeah." Luka gave a wan smile. "It isn't the first time ma's gotten mad at the cops."

That didn't reassure Marinette the way he probably meant it to. "So, this, happens often?"

"I wouldn't say often." Luka's gaze landed on Juleka, currently being comforted by Rose. Appreciation lit up his eyes. "It's harder on Juleka. I help where I can but I can't stay with her all the time. Rose has been amazing the past year. She stays with Juleka if me and ma are working."

"You have a job?" Marinette blinked in surprise.

"I have to. Maman can't pay for-" Luka stopped. Apparently realizing that he might've said too much. "Anyway I help her out... Doesn't leave much room for hanging out, though."

His gaze travelled across the deck. Taking in all of Marinette's friends. For the first time she realized no one from Luka's school was there.

"That's... You're a good brother, Luka." Marinette felt she understood the older boy a bit better. Even if the Couffaine's as a whole were even more unclear.

He shrugged in a 'anyone would do it for family' kinda way. "I-"

Dark, purple-ish fluid flowed from the helm, covering the entire Liberty.

Marinette went cold. "Oh, no!"

Sure enough, Anarka was akumatized.

Captain Hardrock wanted to destroy the music festival until only their song remained. Amid the fear and uncertainty of being in the power of an akuma without her transformation, Marinette felt pride that her friends rejected Captain Hardrock without hesitation.

Marinette's mind raced as she struggled to find a way out of the chains that bound her with Luka. No one else was coming. She was the only hero Paris had to protect it! She had to find a way out! She had to-

Tikki peered at Marinette from her purse. Smiling in relief, Marinette gave her a subtle nod. Stealthily, Tikki phased through the lock, chains falling with a clatter.

"Wow! How'd you do that?" Luka gave her a wondering look.

"Uh, I, uh- With this!" She held up the guitar pick he'd given her.

"Your amazing," he praised, helping her up. "A real magician, Marinette."

"Uh, you think so? Oh, it was nothing. Uh, amazing? Really?"

" 'Scuse me but some of us are still chained up here, y'know," Alya interrupted.

"Right!" Marinette placed herself between her friends line of sight and the locks. Obscuring Tikki from view. Soon everyone was freed.

"How're we getting off this crazy ride, dudes?" Nino asked.

Luka looked around the inside of the Liberty, which wasn't as transformed as the outside. "I have an idea."

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

"Few! That was close!" Tikki looked out from Marinette's purse at the others who made it off the Liberty in makeshift rafts.

They were on the opposite side of the Seine. Luka, Juleka, Rose and Ivan. Marinette gazed after the Liberty. Alya, Nino and Mylene still onboard. Liberty's chains catching them before they could take off.

Anxious, persistent defeat loomed in the back of Marinette's mind. Threatening to drown her. She pushed it back with difficulty. "Tikki, I have to save my friends!"

"But last time you struggled without someone to help you," Tikki pointed out. Concern for Marinette's wellbeing overriding any other considerations. "You should go to Master Fu for help."

Conflicting emotions flickered across Marinette's face. "... You're right," she agreed, resigned.

Quickly, Marinette found a hiding spot and transformed. With a backward glance at the destruction wrought by Captain Hardrock, Ladybug reluctantly swung towards the Guardian.

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

"Marinette Dupain-Cheng, pick an ally you can trust to fight alongside you in this mission. Choose wisely. Such powers are meant to serve the greater good. Once the mission is over you will retrieve the Miraculous and return it to me."

Ladybug was only half listening. Engrossed by the only Miraculous that lit up in her mind.

No. Please not his. Please.

But no matter which Miraculous she looked at her gaze was drawn back to his ring. Hand trembling, stomach turning itself inside out, (Ladybug didn't want anyone else) her fingers closed around Chat Noir's ring. Once it was in her hand she pressed it to her chest. It was the only thing she had of him.

Master Fu's eyes widened at her choice. "Are you sure, Marinette?"

Ladybug just nodded.

Staring at her for a moment, he finally spoke. "The Miraculous of the Black Cat is the most dangerous out of all in existence. Whoever you choose must put others above himself."

The words entered but did not impact her. Like a stone being thrown into waters too turbulent to make ripples. "Of course... Master Fu."

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

"Luka Couffaine, this is the Miraculous of the Black Cat. Which grants the power of Destruction. Once our mission is complete you will return it to me."

Eyes wide in disbelief, Luka carefully took the offered Miraculous. Wonder quickly morphed into confusion, however. "Wait. Black Cat? But what about-"

A ball of green energy shooting out of the ring interrupted him. When he lowered his hand at the fading light a small, cat-like being floated in front of him. Its ears drooping and eyes sad.

Luka took an involuntary step back as a requiem filled his head at the sight of it. Fingers twitching for his guitar.

"You're not-" Green bubbles erupted from its- his mouth, gaze turning toward Ladybug. "Why isn't it-" Again green bubbles came out before he could finish.

Ladybug gave the small, sad, cat-like being a pained look. "We need your help, Plagg. Paris needs your help... Please."

An unspoken understanding passed between Ladybug and Plagg. A conversation Luka was not privy to.

With a nod Plagg sized Luka up. "Well," he said with a mocking grin. "You're not much to look at. Name's Plagg."

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

With every misstep Ladybug reminded herself that Panthera was not Chat Noir.

That she couldn't expect him to function on the same level as someone who had his Miraculous for over a year. Couldn't expect someone she only just met to know her movements as well as someone who'd fought by her side since the very first akuma. Someone who'd never held a staff to wield it as expertly as someone who'd spent hours trying to figure out every possible use.

Ladybug reminded herself of this every time Panthera was caught in Liberty's chains or lost his staff to Captain Hardrock's swordplay or held back when he should push forward.

Her earrings beeped insistently, reminding her that time was almost up. Finally, Ladybug managed to trap Captain Hardrock to the helm with her Lucky Charm. Cataclysm destroying only the compass instead of the entire ship like she planned. Luckily, it turned out that's all they needed and she purified the akuma.

As the Miraculous Cure set everything right Ladybug turned to Panthera and- Luka was grinning at her. Relief adding to his joy. He held up a fist. Hesitantly, Ladybug raised her own, rewarding him with a smile.

"Bien joue."

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

I hate you!

Adrien glared at the screen, having turned down the volume once the news reported something of actual interest: the akuma attack... And Ladybug's new partner.

I hate you!

Panthera, as he called himself, had a rather uninspired suit design. The only significant difference from Chat Noir's look was his green hair.

I hate you!

Heartbeat pounding in his ears, Adrien dissected everything about this 'Panthera' as he could from the shaky broadcast. The newbie held his staff like a club, having trouble with the extending functions.

I hate you!

Captain Hardrock thrust with her sword. Pushing Panthera back. Splitting his staff in two he held them in an X, blocking an overhead blow. But immediately Captain Hardrock switched to an underhand strike, separating the two halves of the staff and sending one flying into the Seine.

I hate you!

Ladybug's yo-yo pulled Panthera out of the supervillain's sword range. But not before losing his remaining staff.

Captain Hardrock charged. Ladybug dodging both her and the flying chains. Panthera jumped away from her sword... and right into the boat's chains.

The remote creaked in Adrien's tightening grip; teeth clenched.

I hate you!

Quickly breaking Panthera's restraints, Ladybug helped him to his feet. Together they charged. Or rather, it should have been together. Panthera had to retrieve his staff which threw off their timing.

Ladybug leapt from chain to chain in midair, as graceful as a gymnast. Panthera a fraction behind her. Captain Hardrock took advantage of the minut delay by breaking past Ladybug's assault, jumping onto the mast net.

I hate you!

Sweat beaded on Adrien's forehead despite the coolness of his room.

Ladybug summoned her Lucky Charm -her own chain- and searched for how to use it while Panthera protected her from the Liberty's attacks. Finally getting into his role.

They conferred for a moment before the chains forced them to split up. Ladybug disappearing below deck while Panthera took on Captain Hardrock. He was marginally better than before, returning her strikes blow for blow. But Captain Hardrock still managed to pin him to the mast with her chains.

I hate you!

Panthera was saying something to the supervillain... Attempting to reason with her. It didn't work, of course, but it gave Ladybug the distraction she needed to rescue him. As they fought Ladybug maneuvered the supervillain towards the helm. In one swift movement she tied Captain Hardrock to her own wheel.

I hate-

Adrien jumped to his feet, eyes wide as the first vestiges of fear mixed with his already pounding heart; the ship sailed through the air for one moment before crashing to the ground. Sagging back down he saw Panthera call on Cataclysm. And Ladybug's cure put everything back to normal.

Nadja went on to heap praise on this 'new Chat Noir' and ask questions Adrien hoped no one ever found out. I hate you! Scowling he turned it off.

I hate you! Adrien's frown deepened. Ladybug... was usually better at communicating her plans. I hate you! It was a confusing thought. I hate you! As it meant Panthera wasn't the only one to blame for such abysmal teamwork. I hate you!

A sharp crack brought Adrien's attention to the remote still in his clenched fist. Uncurling his fingers Adrien stared at the break running along the bottom. I hate you! If you weren't looking for it you wouldn't even notice. I hate you!

The sound of Adrien's door opening was the only warning he got of Nathalie's entrance. (Why didn't he have a lock? Every other room in the manor had a lock, even the kitchen had a lock! So, why didn't he?) Not for the first time Adrien noted how she didn't knock before entering.

His father's assistant glanced between him and the piano but said nothing about it to Adrien. That didn't mean she'd say nothing about it to Gabriel.

"Adrien. Your father had something come up at work and won't be able to hear your recital today." Nathalie's impassive expression never changed. "...He still expects you to practice. I'll try to fit you in tomorrow."

"..."

"Adrien-"

"I get it." Adrien snapped, unclenching his jaw. "Father has more important things to deal with."

Nodding once, Nathalie left as quickly as she arrived.

Adrien's chest rose and fell as his breath came rapidly. I hate you! Mind snapping back to the akuma fight -fingernails digging into his palms- or more specifically, Ladybug's new partner.

Panthera wasn't any better than Chat Noir. I hate you! Adrien's hands were shaking. I hate you! He wasn't a better fighter. I hate you! The remote slipped from his grip as he clenched and unclenched his fingers like claws. I hate you! He couldn't follow Ladybug's signals like Chat Noir could. I hate you! Adrien's vision blurred, eyes burning. I hate you! It was hard to tell across a screen. I hate you! His throat was too tight. I hate you! But the only significant difference was how silent Panthera was compared to-

I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate-

Was that the only reason?

I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I-

Wildfire raged in Adrien's chest. Burning his throat, his stomach, his head.

I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!

Did they really choose this wannabe Chat Noir because he WOULDN'T ASK QUESTIONS!?

I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!

Building pressure pushed at Adrien's chest and jaw and throat and eyes and fists.

I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!

Choose him because he would be quiet and obedient and SYCOPHANTIC!?

I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!

Bile rose into his mouth and stung his throat.

I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!

Adrien's whole body shook. Everything blurred, nothing was clear. Except the great, persistent, growing pain that threatened to shake him apart. He could feel himself cracking, breaking, shattering-

His phone rang.

Adrien scrambled for it. Like it was a rope tossed into the deep, dark well he found himself drowning in.

I hate you!

Without bothering to glance at the caller Adrien answered.

"Sup, bro!"

Blinking rapidly, Adrien saw Nino, Alya and Marinette crowding into the screen. Behind them were their other friends making some last minute preparations for the music festival. Suddenly his raging storm was much more endurable.

Nino leaned into the camera. "Dude, is your camera off? It's all dark."

"Uh, yeah, just a sec." Realizing that he must look like a mess Adrien hit mute and hurried into his bathroom. The red eyed, tear stained face that he washed away made him grateful his friends hadn't seen him.

I hate you!

With a deep breath Adrien turned the mic and camera back on, forcing a smile. "Hey."

"There he is!" Nino grinned.

Alya turned the phone to focus on her. "So, we know you were looking forward to being here. Which is why this girl," Alya wrapped an arm around Marinette and hugged her close. "Had the brilliant idea to do this video chat!"

Smile softening into something more genuine Adrien gazed at Marinette's pink face. "You were thinking of me?"

"W-well, I just thought that it was a shame you couldn't tea- be here! So, I just, yeah..." Marinette trailed off, eyes everywhere but the screen.

His heart slowed from breakneck speed to merely sprinting. "Thank you."

Marinette squeaked and muttered what could have been a 'you're welcome' before pushing the phone back to Nino. Wiggling out of Alya's grasp as she dashed off.

His best friend grinned at them as Alya chased after Marinette offscreen. But once his eyes came back to Adrien, Nino's brow furrowed slightly. "Seriously, bro, how you holding up?"

I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!

Something must've shown on Adrien's face as Nino asked: "That bad?"

Trying to downplay it Adrien shrugged. "It's not like it's the first time he's changed his mind."

That was apparently the wrong thing to say, as Nino scowled at the specter of Gabriel Agreste. "Dude. No offence, but I wanna sock your old man."

Laughter bubbled up and spilled out of Adrien. Blocking his breath and forming a stitch in his side. Vision blurring. Hand covering his mouth as he tried to control himself. Tried to stop it from devolving into hysterical sobbing.

"Adrien!?" Nino's eyes were wide with alarm.

Biting the inside of his cheek Adrien gasped for breath. "S-sorry." He fought of the giggles that threatened to choke him. "It's just... he's a head taller than you."

Nino drew himself up indignantly and Adrien was relieved to see his misdirection work.

"That bony hermit never gets off his rear-end! My little brother could kick him into next week, dude!"

A bark of laughter escaped Adrien's control. Thankfully not igniting the false manic glee. "Thanks for that."

Despite his confusion Nino still smiled at Adrien. "What are bros for?"

Gazing gratefully at Nino, Adrien felt himself balance on a melancholy plateau. "I really will be okay. This," by which he meant their call, "helps."

Nino fidgeted, adjusting his cap. "I just... wish I could do more, y'know?" The unspoken for you was clear as day.

A pleasant warmth bloomed in Adrien's chest, softening further the ache that remained. "I know, bro. That's why I love you."

"I love you, too." Nino searched for something more to say as he searched Adrien's face for what remained unsaid, but nothing came to him. "Well... Kitty Section is starting soon. Might as well greet the band before they become famous and forget they know us."

"No, we wouldn't want that would we..." Adrien could almost ignore the pressure in his chest.

After a round of waving and sympathizing with him for not being able to make it, they began. Kitty Section was amazing. Rose's voice was never like that! Juleka smiled widely, carefree. Ivan was the most intense Adrien had ever seen. They looked... alive.

Gabriel would certainly classify it as 'classless noise' but to Adrien? Kitty Section had something that he couldn't replicate inside the four walls of his cage.

I hate you.

At least, not without Plagg.

While he stayed in frame Luka never took his eyes off Marinette. A hopeful smile evident even across the screen. As night came on and the band went from rehearsing to performing, Luka seemed to play for one person only.

Adrien had never met Luka, despite hearing about him from the bandmembers in his class. And he didn't really count saying hello over video chat like his father. The older boy was nice, polite and good at guitar. Besides dyeing their hair Adrien couldn't honestly say Luka bore any resemblance to his sister.

"-out of chaos comes creation!" He heard Anarka spout in the background, talking to someone he couldn't see. Adrien didn't know why but the phrase stuck in his head. It was like a promise.

Out of Chaos comes Creation.

Wrapping it tightly about himself, Adrien brandished it like an amulet against the voice that wouldn't stop whispering at the edges of his thoughts.

I hate you.

Apparently, that wasn't why Adrien's mind had latched onto the phrase.

Trying to drown it out with Kitty Section's illegally loud music didn't work. It was always the same volume.

I hate you.

Distracting Adrien from enjoying his friends' concert. Like a thorn in his side.

He knew what it was. It was everything he was trying to ignore. Everything he felt at seeing himself replaced so easily. At the excitement in Alya's voice when she shot out theories about Panthera. At the Guardian, at Ladybug, at himself. All summed up into three little words Adrien had never said to anyone.

I hate you.

Despite Adrien's attempts to even his breathing and calm his heartbeat, the voice continued to plague his thoughts for the rest of the night.

I hate you.

A reminder that, even in his own mind, Adrien could never be free.

#ml angst #ml au #adrien angst #adrien agreste #captain hardrock #marinette dupain cheng #float like a butterfly #ml fanfic #ml fanfiction

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