#but its better than not acting and having your whole life disrupted

[jakeyt]

Covet: Chapter 2

Pairing: Jake Kiszka x f!Reader

Covet Summary:

Life was good. No, life was great. 

Was. 

Until.

Jake Kiszka crashed into the picture.

You welcomed him into your life—your home. 

Yes, he was your best friend’s twin. But, he was also the one who would end up disrupting your whole world with his attitude, his troubles, and the annoyingly natural way he lured you in. 

Jake Kiszka came with so much you really didn’t want.

At least that’s what you tried to convince yourself.

Warnings: descriptions of past toxic relationship/cheating; consumption of alcohol; anxiety; mentions of sex/sexual situations; Jake being an asshole; Reader takes an extra Melatonin (doctor's advice)

Chapter Word Count: 8.1k

Covet Masterlist

a/n: wooohooo! we have come to chapter 2! 

please forgive me for how long this took to be posted. i am a school teacher, and the end of year is the most hectic. 🫠 so, busyness combined with my need to make sure i personally feel good enough with a chapter to post it. . . it’s not a good combo. lmao although, summer is right around the corner! and i promise when it comes, covet will get much more of my attention!! 

reminder that this is a ~slow burn~ in its truest form. 

i <3 and appreciate you all!! i truly can’t say thank you enough for the support and kind words (it means so much, esp w/ this being my first gvf fic). i love hearing feedback from each and every one of you!! 

alright, i will be done w/ my rambling. i apologize on behalf of myself. lol

hope you enjoy, my loves. 

Disclaimer: this is absolutely, undoubtedly 110% a work of fiction. i do not claim to know greta van fleet. i do not claim that any of this actually occurred. again, this is a complete work of fiction. And, please, DO NOT steal this work, as it is 110% mine. plagiarism isillegal. and, as our friend google puts it, plagiarism is “illegal if it infringes an author's intellectual property rights.” and, being these words/ideas are my intellectual property rights. . .don’t take them. legal action will be taken if you take credit for any of my work.

🌼🌼🌼

Chapter 2

The first month of living with Jake went about as smoothly as one would expect. 

His first full day in the apartment, you’d woken up, ready to be nice. Really. You’d tried your hardest to forget about how he’d acted when he had made his grand entrance. 

But he wasn’t giving up on his act. 

When you’d been standing at the coffee maker in the kitchen that first morning, loading your K-Cup, he’d stopped at the counter. You didn’t know what for, but when you noticed him there, you had tried to start a conversation. Some meaningless small talk to try and break the ice he’d created. 

And his only response? A barely audible hum. 

You did give him credit for glancing up to at least acknowledge your presence. Although, that’s the bare minimum of basic human decency. So, you didn’t give him much credit. 

But, that had been it. And then, he’d left for the day. 

It had instantly caused you to be pissed at everything. Including the coffee maker’s little unnecessary spurts as it poured coffee into your mug. 

Every day since then had gone about the same, sometimes with even less interaction than that. And to you, the lack of desire to even try to associate with you was offensive. 

After all, you were the person who had literally given him a place to live.

To make things worse, he was that kind of asshole that you couldn’t seem to get out of your head. It really just confirmed how truly repulsive he was.

You had gotten an idea midway through that first month to begin compiling a list of apartment rules. 

Initially, it had seemed pointless. Then, you reminded yourself that you were worth better treatment. You knew you deserved for Jake to show at least a sliver of respect towards you in your home.

🌼🌼🌼

You decided to tell Josh of the rules you’d crafted. 

“I will be very honest, I really don’t know how well those will go over, Y/N.”

He was giving you a look that instantly made you go into defense mode. 

“Joshua. It’s been a month,” you matched his look with one of your own. You wanted your point to be known. You were going to make damn sure that Josh understood why you wanted to do this. “Josh, he still barely even looks at me. I think rules would give us some sort of common ground. And it would force him to show the place—and me—some respect.”

“Jake has never been one to want to follow the rules — do what he’s told,” he scratched the buzzed side of his head, right above his ear. 

You stood with a hand on your waist, right under your thrifted crop top. You eyed him, making sure he knew he needed to elaborate. 

You didn’t know much at all about your roommate. 

You’d been waiting for Josh to share more, but he didn’t share much. He claimed that it wasn’t his place. You were desperate though. All you knew about Jake was that he was your best friend’s twin, what his record choices were, that he had been in an apparently crappy relationship, and the fact that he was an ungrateful asshole. 

Josh relented slightly. “I’ll tell you this story because it involves me as well. And we were so young,” he leaned with his back against the checkout counter, facing away from customers. “When we were in our freshman year of high school, he played soccer while I participated in theatre. He enjoyed it and he was actually quite good at it, you know,” Josh smiled, obviously replaying memories. “But, high school classes grew increasingly harder. We both struggled, honestly. We love to learn more. . . I mean, you know this about me. He’s the same way. But we really only enjoy doing it most when it concerns the subjects for which we’re passionate. 

So, high school work being less than interesting to us both, our grades dropped. Big time,” his eyes widened, once again reliving it all. At this point, he was staring into space to tell the story. “Our parents and teachers came down on us hard. They told us we would be kicked out of our extracurricular activities if we didn’t raise our grades.”

You shook your head, looking around the store. A couple of regulars were perusing. You knew them well enough to know it would be awhile until they were done. “I know exactly where this is going.”

You both made eye contact then, and as he looked your way, he gave a little closed-mouth grin that made his eyes crinkle. “Yeah? Guess.”

You smirked at your friend. “You, being you, were determined to show that you had what it took to make the grade. You cared enough about theatre to continue it,” he nodded at your words. “And, in the time I’ve known you, you’ve never been one to say no to a challenge. It’s why we are friends. I love a good challenge.”

He made a noise of agreeance. Then, his eyebrows raised and his lips turned down. The look he gave you told you he was impressed. “You know me well,” he continued. “Now, how well do you know your roommate?” 

You scoffed. “As you know, not fucking well. But I know he couldn’t give two shits about what others think of him,” you pointed to yourself. “I’m a shining example. So, —.”

“Essentially, he said ‘fuck it’ and just decided to continue on with what he had been doing in his classes, which was jack shit,” Josh had finished for you, wanting to complete the story he’d begun.

“How did he even pass high school?”

He gave you a deadpan stare and raised his  eyebrows. You rolled your eyes. At the same time, you both said:

“Girls.”

You rolled your eyes even harder this time. “Good God.”

Josh nodded, lips turned down, his eyes still held a little glint. “Yup. Get my point now?”

“Yeah, but like I just said, I’m not one to turn down a challenge. Just like you, Josh,” you smiled at a customer who was finally walking up to the counter, a few records in hand. “And your brother. . .I’ve learned he is nothing if not a challenge.” 

He nodded, he knew you were right. And he’d known you long enough to know that you did indeed enjoy overcoming any problem life may hand you.

In this instance, you hoped he understood your current challenge/problem was Jake.

And you needed to know how to fix it. Josh was your only source. You just had to get him to break for more information. 

Again, you really liked a good challenge. 

🌼🌼🌼

The shift rolled on. The two of you had been working the closing shift that day. 

So, as the day shifted to evening, and with about an hour before the store closed up, you started nightly duties. Josh went about straightening vinyls, fixed the ‘Featured’ wall (his favorite), and re-folded the shirts the store carried with the Black and Gold’s logo. 

Meanwhile, you swept and dusted the store. 

You hated to admit it. You really did. But you couldn’t help how the conversation from earlier had piqued your interest even more than before. 

You were now hooked. You wanted to learn more about your mysterious roommate. 

You debated how you were going to ask Josh for more information. What was a way you could ask that would convince him to tell you more about his twin? 

Ever since Jake had moved in, you’d tried so desperately to get information out of Josh. 

And he just refused to budge.

You were putting the broom away when you’d settled on how to ask him. 

You were going to be a jackass and use manipulation. 

You sucked, you knew this. You were just dying to know more about this person with whom you shared your home. And, to reiterate, it had been a damn month of knowing next to nothing about him. 

So, when you joined Josh behind the counter as he balanced the register, you were ready to play your hand. 

“Alright, so, Elsie still isn’t sure if she wants to be in your movie.” There it was. A complete lie using your sister— the one he was completely smitten with. In truth, Elsie had agreed on the spot. 

But, again, desperation had led you to this. 

You didn’t look up from your task of watering the plants that sat at the window. Just keep talking. “I have a proposition for you. You tell me more about Jake and I will convince her with everything I have to star in your film.”

You still didn’t look over to him. You were afraid of rejection. Then, you heard what seemed to be a sigh of defeat out of your best friend. You looked up to him, his eyes still reading uncertainty.

“Y/N,” he sighed. You knew he was about to say the same thing he had said for the past month. 

“I know, Josh. It’s not your story,” you moved forward to be standing right next to him. You balanced your elbow on the counter, you needed to say your piece—needed him to understand. You locked eyes with him, pleading. “Come on, Josh. I am desperate. He won’t offer anything up. He is silent. It’s been a month. He refuses to acknowledge my presence, hence me forcing him to notice me with the rules,” you paused, suddenly looking to the ground. You needed Josh to bend to your vulnerability. “But, I just need something else. You told me that one story earlier,” you urged. “Just something else small that might help me know him a bit better than I do now.”

You looked up. You were anticipating another rejection from him after you’d finished babbling. Though, his eyes seemed to open more at your apparent state of helplessness. 

He knew that it wasn’t fair what Jake was putting you through. He had to acknowledge that. You knew he felt most things with you. And you knew he was someone who had enough integrity to want to help you out. He knew this situation had been less than ideal.

He just had to loosen up on his stance of not wanting to tell his brother’s stories.

He released one more sigh. “Fine,” he looked you in the eyes. “And please try your hardest to get your sister convinced to star in my film. The role was created for her.”

You nodded. You looked to the ground once more at that last part. You felt guilty for using that little white lie. “You’ve got it.”

“Y/N.”

You looked up to him after he’d spoken your name in a tone that was much more serious than his usual. 

His brown irises were intent as he spoke. “You have to know I’m breaking a big rule of mine,” he continued. “I don’t like speaking to stories that belong to other people. Our experiences are unique to us. They deserve to be told by those to whom they happened.” 

You nodded. You understood his point. You totally knew why he felt the way he did. 

“Josh, you can just tell me childhood stories that involve both of you,” you grabbed his arm. You needed him to know you were being genuine. “I don’t want to make you betray your principles.”

He patted the hand you’d placed on his arm. “I appreciate that, Y/N,” he cleared his throat. “I just think you need to know some of the—,” he spread his hands out to emphasize, then clapped them back together. “The bigger pieces of him. At the moment, he won’t let himself show you who he is. He really isn’t a bad person. He’s just been through a hell of a lot recently.” 

All you could do was nod your head once. There wasn’t much left for you to say. You would let the curly headed man begin when he was ready. 

He eyed the clock. You looked with him. Only thirty minutes to eight o’clock. 

You looked down to your palms, wiping them on your jeans. They were suddenly getting clammy at the prospect of what information could be hitting you within the next 30 minutes. 

“I’m going to begin by saying that as his five-minutes-older brother, I’m glad that Jake gets to finally live life for himself without having to worry about being hung up on a girl,” he looks to the two folded chairs that always sit behind the counter. “Let’s sit.” 

You follow him to the chairs. And as he sits in the right chair, you sit in the left. He looks into space, contemplating what to say next. 

“Jake is seriously going through something he has never experienced before. I mean, your significant other being unfaithful to you sucks anyhow. But she’s been all he’s known for so long. . . This is a complete life upheaval for him, of sorts,” he pauses. “He and this girl — they truly were together for a long time. What are he and I . . . 24 now?” 

You nod.

“Well, they got together when we were juniors in high school. That would make this relationship about seven years old,” he sighs. “Long time to be together—and it began when they were really only kids.”

You nod again, coaxing him on. 

“So, since they were together that long. . . there was a lot that happened between them in high school alone, but then you have post-high school when he set his life plan on the back burner for her. We had these plans — big ones. A dream we’d shared. All of us. Sammy and Danny included.”

You were wondering what the dream could have been. “What was the dream?”

Josh shook his head. “It was Jake’s first. We all followed along behind him,” he looked down, rubbing the back of his neck. “It wouldn’t be right for me to share.” 

You were left wondering at that, but you did understand why Josh didn’t want to share. There was honor in that. And he wouldn’t be Josh if he didn’t show his honor, especially by showing loyalty to those he loved. 

“So, his dream. . .,” you exaggerated the word by using your hands as jazz hands. “It went down the tubes?”

Josh gave you a look. It was a look that told you to take a step back and try to understand. 

You relented. 

You knew it was only right to put your grumpiness with Jake aside for this story. Josh was showing vulnerability on his brother’s behalf. Plus, you’d been the one to force Josh out of his moral values to divulge Jake things. It wasn’t right to act anything but respectful to these tellings of Jake. For Josh’s sake alone.

And you’d be lying if you said you weren’t dying to hear more. Learning of Jake’s past was like satisfying this raging itch.

“I’m sorry,” your voice was quiet. 

The edges of Josh’s eyes wrinkled as he gave you a reassuring grin. “It’s okay,” he patted your knee and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I know why you’re blunt about him. I know the man’s entire range of emotions. He acts like a child when he— when his emotions are so big and bad.”

“And right now,” you started. Your heart was growing slightly soft. “He is feeling the most emotions.”

Josh shook his head to agree. “Though, this girl was always a pill,” he rolled his eyes. “I liked her a lot at first, truly. But she started flirting with me an awful lot to be dating my brother,” his body shook as if to shake the memory. “It’s honestly not a shock to me that their relationship ended the way it did.”

Though, as soon as the last words had left his mouth, he looked down to consider them. He was weighed down by an emotion he didn’t need to speak out loud for you to know. Guilt.

It was your turn to reach a hand over to touch his knee. You just sat your hand there and told him. “You cannot blame yourself for any of this.”

He continued looking down. “I should have talked to him about how she would make advances. . . To warn him. Maybe he would have never gone and he could have—.”

He placed a palm to his forehead, eyes closing. He was going to get lost in this thought if you didn’t stop him. 

“Josh, she was a terrible person all along,” you placed a hand on his back, rubbing his right shoulder blade. “Jake isn’t a stupid person. He can’t be. You aren’t. And he’s your twin brother. He could have noticed the signs if he wanted to. It was his responsibility to drop her when he had the chance,” you gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Before any of this happened. Apparently he just loved her too much to fully acknowledge what he needed to do.”

You gave him a couple of minutes to really think about that. Then, finally, he lifted his head. “He wouldn’t have listened to me anyways,” He had a gleam in his eye. “My brother is a stubborn asshole,” he chuckled a little. “If you haven’t noticed.”

You gave him a look that said ‘No? Really?’ That turned a few more giggles loose from his chest. 

He continued, letting his tone become serious again. “So, our senior year, Jake really started getting serious about his dream. We all made these real plans, but they were ruined,” he paused, his mouth becoming a straight line. He was remembering a moment that caused a particular annoyance. “That was until she brought up how she wanted him to move with her if she got accepted to this prestigious school in Illinois,” he cleared his throat. “It makes me angry that she asked, but I also get wanting to ask your serious significant other to move with you. It was different—more than that, though. 

Her selfishness was so prominent so often; I think that’s why her asking rubbed me so wrong then, and still does now. She knew if she asked, he’d go. He’d leave his own aspirations in the dust for her. She knew what he wanted—what he’d always wanted. But still, she deemed her choices, her career, more important.”

You nodded, completely seeing eye-to-eye with your best friend. “I think there’s this sense of justice in you for your brother that he hasn’t always seemed to have for himself.”

“Yes!” Josh’s expression was one of relief that you understood. “And the thing with Jake is

. . . He’s always—girls have—,” he paused, gathering his thoughts. “As soon as his hormones kicked in when we were younger, he started noticing girls. He indulged himself in all of that,” Josh lifted his eyebrows. “He really has a strong appreciation for women, I’ll say that.” 

You rolled your eyes, nodding and then crossing your arms, sitting back. Your stomach leaped in a way you chose to ignore at the mention of his appreciation for women. To you, it was ludicrous that he couldn’t appreciate you in some capacity. If he needed sex in order to appreciate a woman, you were not the one.

“A big piece of him changed when girls started becoming involved. He lost a piece of himself. It’s almost as though he didn’t see himself as worthy without one. And now—.”

“And that’s why it’s so hard for him right now,” you finished the statement, bringing yourself back. “He’s lost a sense of his identity. . .

having to find out who he is without a woman.” 

Josh clicked his tongue, a smirk showing with a dimple in his cheek. “Precisely. It’s been a while for him,” a little spark caught in his eye. “On the drive moving him here, I told him that he needs to take a fucking break from women until he starts understanding what it means to think of what he wants first,” he rubbed at his forehead. “I know it seems like a terrible thing for me to say, but I think it’s important for him to put himself first for once in his goddamned life. He deserves to know who he is without a woman claiming him as her own.”

“Because he is worth knowing himself for who he is,” you concluded.

“Aw, Y/N. . . You growing a soft spot for Jakey?” Josh smiled smugly at you.

You held eye contact with him for a few seconds and then laughed outright at his statement. “You’re funny,” you looked to the clock, realizing you were only a couple of minutes from closing. You got up from the foldable chair and went to grab your purse from a hook behind the desk.

Josh followed your lead, but stopped to look for his phone. He tapped at all of his pockets.  Then, coming up short, he looked around the register and the checkout counter. 

You helped him look. But, the sound of Gloria Gaynor belting that “she will survive” helped you locate it easier. You saw it light up, sitting atop a box of new records at the back of the shop. 

You groaned, already walking to get it for him.

“Josh, you have got to be better about keeping track of your phone.”

Josh tsked at you, “And you have got to be better about not bossing me around,” he turned off the lights around the register. “I refuse to be a slave to such a tiny device that doesn’t serve any purpose to my spiritual healing.” 

You rolled your eyes at him, though you knew he was right. As you approached his phone, you got one final glimpse at the caller ID picture. It had been a picture of Jake. 

Even though you had just taken a deep dive into Jake’s past and grown a tiny fraction of sympathy and understanding for him. . .his picture still made you want to punch things. 

As much as his recent past had sucked, he  treated you with such blatant disrespect for someone who had offered their home to him. 

When you traipsed back over to Josh, he was waiting for you at the door, hand already on the doorknob to leave. “Jake called you.”

Josh turned around. His back was facing you and a thumb pointed behind him. “Pocket,” he said.

You snickered a little bit and did as he told you. Josh was choosing you over his prick of a brother and, quite frankly, you were bursting at the seams. 

🌼🌼🌼

You were not ready to go home to more awkwardness and Josh could tell as much, so he invited you to get a quick drink after work with him. 

He filled you in on everything else he deemed necessary as you drank a couple of margaritas on the rocks, him settling on just one Salty Dog.

Josh told a few finishing details about how much it had sucked to be separated from his womb mate for so many years.

“It honestly felt like I was cut off from him.”

Your heart hurt for him. “I’m glad he is nearer to you now,” you paused, curious. “Did he miss you that much too?”

Josh set a look on you, “Who was the first person he called after it happened? He was ready to be with me again,” he put a hand over his heart. “Came back to his understanding, sensitive twin . . . every moon needs its sun.”

You gave a conceding nod and shrug. “Fair,” you smiled. “You're obviously the sun.”

“Obviously,” he flashed a smile your way. “He might not admit it right now, but he was not at his happiest with her,” he stated. “As ironic or untrue it may seem with his moodiness, I think if he isn’t already, Jake is on his way to feeling the most free he has in a long time. I’m glad to have him back with me. Being away from each other wasn’t good for either of us.”

Your heart swelled for the tenderhearted man next to you. You watched as he looked off into space with what could only be described as a soft sort of pensiveness. You were happy for your friend, despite how Jake was acting or made you feel.

You felt your head get slightly light from the alcohol on an almost empty stomach from being at work nearly all day. You were still so curious, you wanted to know more.

“So, how did it happen?”

“Well, all I know is she was getting quite distant for a while, but Jacob thought she was only distracted by her job. Gave her the benefit of the doubt, let her do her thing and just followed along,” he gave you a look. “He did that much too often. My brother isn’t a puppy dog, but he followed her around like one,” Josh’s jaw clenched and he scratched at his bare chin. “One would say that he loved her. But as his twin, if my telepathic brain is worth anything, I believe that more than love, Jake shared so much with her when they were young that he felt obligated to follow her lead. . .no matter what.”

“And that makes you angry.”

“Oh, quite,” he continued, eyebrows bunched together. “The way he put it when he told me of the situation was that it was as though she was,” he held up air quotes. “‘Shooting the shit.’”

“Just told him like it was no big deal?” You shook your head. “That’s harsh.” 

“More than that, told him in a way that made it seem like she was already done. Essentially, his reaction meant nothing to her. She just needed to tell him in order to end things,” he continued. “She told him it had been going on for quite some time and that she didn’t think they could make it work after it all.”

“What did she do after she told him? What happened after?”

Alcohol was interacting with your senses. Otherwise, you wouldn’t show open curiosity like this. You were sure of it. 

“Well, she left,” He chewed his lip lightly. “Left Jake to deal with the aftermath — the knowledge of it all — by himself. She went to stay with a friend and he had exactly a week to get his shit together and move out. So, being the decent and thoughtful person he is,” you made a sound. Josh gave you a look. “He respected her wishes and got the hell out.”

You really had no words for the situation. It was horrid for Jake, you had to admit. You felt bad for him. You really did. Even though he pissed you off beyond belief, you still knew he was deserving of better than any of what she had put him through. 

You just wished he wouldn’t react in a way that made him become an utter jerk. Due to his attitude, you couldn’t claim that you knew the person who seemed so selfless and loving in Josh’s stories. 

The person you knew was the opposite of the one told in Josh’s tales. 

You only knew a self-centered jerk who held absolutely no respect for you in any way. 

You hated to admit to yourself just how much you wished to know the person Josh had told you about this evening. 

🌼🌼🌼

As Josh dropped you off at the stoop to your apartment that night, he shared with you an idea that had come to him. 

“This weekend. We need to do something this weekend.”

You quickly agreed, “Yes! I’d love to have a weekend that’s just us. . .like old times.”

“Actually,” he scuffed the bottom of his white sneaker against the stair step he stood on. He eyed you. “How about we involve Sammy and Danny?”

You could be okay with that. Then suddenly, your stomach flipped. “What about Jake?”

He met your eyes. “He would join. All of us. Game night.”

“Josh,” his name came out like a child’s whine. “Why?” 

He put a reassuring hand on your shoulder. “It will be good for both of you. He’ll get to be around you with others and you’ll get to be around him while he’s with people he already knows and feels most comfortable with,” he squeezed lightly at your shoulder. “It will be great. He’ll come out of his shell, and surely he’ll act a little more like himself if he’s around myself and the other two.”

Your stomach rolled at the idea of actually spending any sort of time with Jake. 

Establishing rules? Sure, you could do that. It might take 10 minutes max. But an extended amount of time actually hanging out? 

You agreed to it before Josh left you that night, even though you had your hesitations. 

You wanted to bring some joy to the man that had been there for you through so much. You were also desperate to look like the bigger person in this situation. And, surely agreeing to this would make Josh see that you were trying when Jake wasn’t. 

You needed Josh to see the trueness of your heart in all of this, no matter how much bitterness his brother had caused you.

When you’d entered your home that evening, the lights had all been off. Jake’s door was closed. He was asleep. Thank God.

As you stood at the bathroom mirror taking off your makeup, you convinced yourself it would be fine. You could find positives. You’d hung out with the other three before. You all got along very well in a group setting and honestly always had a great time. That part would be all right.

You just had to convince yourself that Jake wouldn’t ruin it by simply being there with his persistent little dark cloud of distemper. 

By the time you tucked yourself under your covers, you decided no matter what, you would have a fun time. If only for the benefit of the other boys and yourself.

You were also determined to show the best parts of yourself to Jake. A darker part of you wanted him to feel slightly (very) guilty for how he’d been treating his simply incredible roommate. 

But before game night, you had to talk to him about your rules. You weren’t looking forward to him blowing you off. You had a terrible idea that would be the response you’d get to you speaking to him. 

But you still had to try.

🌼🌼🌼

You thought through the best time to go over the rules with him, and decided the day before your night with the guys was the best option.

Your mind had settled on Jake taking two possible routes with the conversation. You figured going over them on that Friday before would work for both of these possibilities. 

One possibility was that he would sulk and pout and react like an asshole, and doing it on Friday would give him an entire day to do so. The second option was that he could very possibly just straight up ignore you like he usually did. And, you thought it best to do it a day before he would be forced to associate with you. 

It also seemed fitting to do so on the day that marked almost an entire month of him living with you. You were only one day away from it having been a whole month of him sharing your home. What a perfect time to actually acknowledge and officially, really talk to you. 

Time for him to realize all you were was a super kind person. A person who offered him shelter when there was virtually nowhere else for him to go. 

He needed to respect you and your hospitality.

You had gotten used to him usually arriving home by six every night. So, you loomed in the living room until he got home around six that evening. 

And almost right at 6 o’clock, you heard his keys jingle in the lock. 

As soon as he walked in and saw you leaning against the couch, he stopped to stare at you. It was an awkward-ass stare that made you want to slap him right across the smooth skin of his tanned cheek. 

He was just infuriating. 

“Hey,” you started, trying to sound easygoing. You didn’t know why you were nervous, but you were. 

“Hi,” his response was spoken as a question. 

You knew that you standing there probably seemed extremely odd to the man.

You didn’t care if it made him feel uncomfortable. He deserved it after making you feel edgy for the last month in your own home.

He started to move on from you, already deciding to disregard you. 

“So,” you started, sticking to the assignment. And, surprisingly when you spoke, he stopped in his tracks. “I think I’ve decided it might be a good idea to make some apartment rules.”

With his back facing you, you saw him shake his head. His wavy locks caught the streams of the evening sun’s yellow glow, making the head shake that much more offensive. 

When he still didn’t turn around, you continued. “You can go change your clothes if you want,” you folded your arms tighter to your chest. “I’ll wait out here.”

He then turned, crossed back to the kitchen counter and dropped his keys in the key bowl you’d had since Elsie lived at the apartment. Then finally, he faced you. 

Your stomach did a little flip. Why were you nervous to establish these rules for your apartment? You just needed to get it over with. 

He raised his eyebrows and gave you a look that said ‘so?’ 

His face showed that he was already irritated. It was like the mere act of standing across from you was too much. Being forced to interact with you was a hassle. 

And instantly, you were irked. Could he be any more ridiculous? 

Admittedly, you were also already done with this talk. Screw him. You heatedly whipped your phone out of the back pocket of your jean shorts. You clicked through to your notes, where you’d started the rule list. 

You started with the most agreeable rules.

“The first rule: don’t go in each other’s rooms. I think that’s common sense, but just in case it needs to be stated,” you moved on. “Number two: if we buy food or drinks, they belong to us and only us. I was thinking we could even make two separate sides of the fridge. One side for yours and one for mine.”

You looked up when you heard him take a breath. You looked at him just in time to see him breathe out a tight-lipped sigh, a mocking smirk on his face as he bugged his eyes. 

You chose to ignore him, blatantly rolling your eyes and looked back to your phone. 

“Rule number three: do your own dishes and do your best to keep the sink empty. Rule number four: keep our common spaces clean. You know, kitchen, dining room, living room, bathroom. . .clean up after yourself,” you glanced at him, seeing that he was looking into space, eyes still huge. His arms were crossed across his chest as yours had been. “Rule five: do your own laundry. And I think switching off every other day for whose laundry day it is would be a good idea. I get Monday, you get Tuesday, I get Wednesday. . .and so on.”

You paused, giving him room for notes if he had any. His face held a look you couldn’t quite read. 

“Any thoughts?” You questioned. 

He gave a little chuckle that seemed to mock the same air you’d just spoken the rules to. It was insulting. Still, you wanted to hear from him. So you waited. 

And after a solid two minutes of just standing there, he loudly exhaled. His hand combed through the front of his hair, pushing it back. His eyes blinked a couple of times afterwards. “You seem to have it all nailed down, roomie.”

“Well, thanks,” you hesitantly responded. You were pleased that he was okay with what you’d shared so far. But his mention of the nickname seemed more snarky than anything.

“No, I mean,” he cleared his throat, rubbing at his chin. “You’ve got it nailed down. Like, you left no room for any ‘notes.’”

You scoffed at the air quotes he gave the word. “I’ve hardly ‘nailed it down’,” you gave your own air quotes for his words. “These are just an outline of ideas I have.”

“Just keep going,” he sighed as though he was completely exasperated and tucked both hands in the pockets of his jeans. “I have a date in like an hour.”

“A date?” 

“And it’s your business how?”

“You just told me,” you argued. “That’s how.”

“Didn’t mean you could ask questions about it,” he bit back. “I was just telling you so you would know I don’t have time to just stand here and listen to you drag on about these ‘rules’.”

You shook your head, shocked at how rude a person could be. Completely in awe of the man, you decided you would continue. You were ready to be rid of him. 

“Fine,” you angrily pressed your phone back on. “Speaking of dates. . .Rule six: when you have a date over, please keep them out of the common areas and remember the walls are thin. . . In general, no especially loud music, no loud. . .,” you cleared your throat and your skin prickled with embarrassment. “. . .  anything else.”

“Oh,” he seemed interested. Figured. If it had to do with a woman, his interest was suddenly piqued. “That also applies to you and Josh, I assume?”

“What?!” You were suddenly very disturbed at that statement. “Josh and me? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

He tilted his head down, his eyes sticking onto yours, hair falling to swing next to his face. “Seriously? You apparently know the walls are thin as shit. And our rooms are right next door, so I can hear the two of you stay up all hours of the night talking,” he looked to the side, his eyebrows raising. “Who knows what the hell else you both do after I fall asleep. You are both touchy as fuck with one another, so I’ll just let my mind wander with what happens behind closed doors.”

You started laughing hysterically at the whole statement Jake had just made. You couldn’t even gather your thoughts. Shocked was an understatement for how Jake’s assumptions left you feeling. 

“Are you kidding me?” You stepped towards him, pointing a finger in his direction. “Of course you would assume a friendship is more than what it actually is. Hopeless fuckin’ roma—.”

You stopped yourself. You had almost called him a hopeless romantic. How would you even begin to explain that you knew enough about him to call him that?

He took a step forward, his jaw clenched. He crossed his arms across his chest again. His chest seemed to continue to rise with his irritation. His fingers were digging into his biceps, clad in his light blue button-up.

“No, finish. Please.” 

Your blood pressure was rising, you felt your skin prickling with embarrassment and guilt. Your heart was racing. You shouldn’t have exploded and almost exposed what Josh had told you. You couldn’t betray Josh’s trust like that. You were being errant. You knew an anxiety attack was on the horizon if you didn’t stop soon. Betraying someone you love was known to bring you to tears quicker than almost anything else. 

You also couldn’t deny how bad you felt for referring to something that was probably still a sensitive topic to your roommate. As much as you despised him, you didn’t have to be so overtly uncool towards him in a hard time.

“Let’s just keep on with the rules,” you tried to calm yourself down. You didn’t need to have an anxiety attack in front of him. That was the last thing you needed. “Please?”

He seemed to catch on to your nerves. And luck seemed to be on your side with how he relented so quickly. He still seemed a little irked, but his eyes were softer than they were before.

“Go on.”

You breathed in and out once, then situated your nerves the best you could to finish. 

“I, um, I thought it would be cool to add a little something that would help keep us accountable for getting to know each other,” you didn’t want to meet his eyes, so you kept yours glued to the screen of your phone. “We both love music, so I was thinking. . .Rule seven: we switch off every other night and play a record on the record player. One of our own choosing. It would give us a good idea of who we’re living with.”

“Because the music we love really says so much about who we are,” he agreed honestly. 

You looked up after he’d spoken, and the look on his face as he looked down said he hadn’t meant to speak it out loud. His eyebrows knitted together like he had conflict within himself. He didn’t want you to know he thought similarly to you, you were sure of it. He’d let his precious little guard down the slightest, smallest bit. 

You couldn’t help it when a teeny-tiny grin landed on your lips. You shook it away before he could possibly see.

“Yep. Totally,” you said very quietly in response. But you knew he heard you when he blinked a couple times and then ran a hand through his hair, bringing his head back up in the process. 

He was making you feel very antsy, and his date would be here soon. So, you tried to finish quickly. 

“And finally, rule eight: we keep a work schedule posted to the fridge so we’re aware of when the other one will be at home. It will be helpful to know if the other one is at work; just in case of an emergency or anything, I thought it’d be helpful.”

You looked up as you finished, he was now leaning back against the kitchen counter. His amber-brown eyes stayed locked on yours earnestly for a bit. You felt your cheeks heat. Then he asked, “And you’re sure there’s not anything else?” 

You shook your head ‘no’.

His previously haughty tone was coming back when he spoke next. “How do you expect me to remember all of these things? And we'll post our schedules on the fridge?”

You couldn’t help it as your heart leapt the slightest bit. He still wasn’t completely rejecting any of the rules. In fact, unless he was somehow being sarcastic, he even wanted a way to remember them. 

“I—I’ll print it all out at work and put everything on the fridge,” you shoved your phone into your back pocket. “I’ll even include a place for our phone numbers, just in case we ever need those.” You added, "And we can just post our schedules when we get them every week."

He nodded once. He looked up at the ceiling then, obviously done with the conversation. You didn’t blame him. You really were too. 

You were suddenly longing for him to ignore you again. His presence was making you tense. You didn’t know how to act around him. You hadn’t had that problem with anyone for a long time. 

The last time was probably middle school when no one knew how to act around each other. 

But now as an adult woman? You hated that someone made you feel like this. 

And in your own home, no less.

He pushed off the counter and started to his room. Then, only steps from his room, he turned on his boot to face you, he held a look of blatant vexation. 

Ugh, what now? You thought.

“Do we really have to have our own sections for our food and drinks in the fridge? Why don’t we just put our initials on things that belong to us?” He reasoned. “I’ll even buy the damned Sharpie.”

You couldn’t find a way to dispute his suggestion in the moment. You could agree with that. “Yeah, sounds good. Good idea.”

He gave an almost-smile (couldn’t show too much cordiality), “I have a few of those every once in a while.” 

He then got a smug grin on his face, “Oh, and you might want to get some earplugs for tonight. . .paper thin walls and all that.”

“Jake,” you were stunned at the audacity. Your shoulders tightened up. “Seriously?”

He set his head back, raising his eyebrows up. A smirk raised his lips, “Nowhere on that rules list did you say I’m not allowed to bring women over. And I really can’t control whether or not I make them scream,” he set you with a stare, raising a brow. “And I’ve gotta say, that’s always been a pretty normal occurrence,” he paused. “And I most likely wouldn’t have been too keen on following a ‘no women’ rule anyway, so.”

“Asshole,” You scoffed, your thighs quivered. The disdain he caused you floated through your whole body. “A little full of yourself?”

“Alright then, don’t plug your ears,” his smirk only grew. “You’ll hear for yourself tonight. Post-breakup recovery fuck, y’know? Gotta get some of this lingering tension out of my system,” he shook his shoulders and arms out to emphasize his words.

Your skin grew angry goosebumps at the thought of everything he’d just said to you. You were amazed by him. Truly. 

Not in a good way. Not amazed in the sense he’d wanted you to be.

He turned on his heel to continue the walk to his room, and you just stood in your spot. Your bare toes dug into the carpet, waiting to hear his door click. 

Once finally alone, you let out a breath you’d apparently been holding. You shook your head at his repulsive words. You were utterly shocked that he would say any of that to you. What the heck? 

This interaction had shown you that it was obviously too much for him to be a pleasant human for an extended period of time.

And he had no issue making you feel completely on edge. 

Distasteful son of a bitch.

You wanted to go hide in your bedroom for the night. You didn’t want to chance running into him again.

You stomped to your room. You had had enough of Jake Kiszka for one night. 

🌼🌼🌼

You downed the recommended 2-pill dose of melatonin that evening, but snuck in one extra with a giant swig of water. 

Jake had left about an hour prior and you’d be damned if he woke you up with any sex-related noises. 

You were ready to get some sleep anyway, completely tired after the stress you’d dealt with. Your doctor had suggested melatonin to induce necessary rest after any anxious episodes. 

You knew you were to blame for a part of the stress, sticking your foot in your mouth the way you had. But Jake was the main culprit of the stress.

And you were done with him ruling your emotions for the evening. 

🌼🌼🌼

And of course, the next morning, Jake was stuck in your head. 

You hated it. It wasn’t because you wanted him there. It was thanks to a ridiculous dream that had plagued you during the night.

Your sleep had graced you with a reminder of the moment you’d almost outed your knowledge of his past. But in the vision, you weren’t feeling the onslaught of nerves you’d originally felt in the moment anymore.

No, in this version of it, all you could focus on was the vision of his chest, how it had been heaving in the midst of his irritation.

And it wasn’t even a covered chest that haunted your dream. No, it was his chest that seemed to be persistently bare. The bronzed, silky-smooth chest you’d seen one too many times in the month he’d lived with you. 

You couldn’t understand how he was 24 years old and still didn’t know how to button his shirts past two buttons. It maddened you that he didn’t know how to button his entire shirt. His toned light brown, sun-kissed chest was distracting in a way you wished it wasn’t.

All you wanted was to escape your roommate. And now he was literally haunting your dreams. 

You had chosen to deny how you’d woken up with sweat on your forehead, hair stuck to your equally sweaty face. You weren’t going to let him have that control over you. Not even in your dreams.

And now, you were completely dreading spending the evening with him in any capacity. 

You just hoped Josh came armed with damn good booze for game night. You desperately needed to get out of your head.

🌼🌼🌼

a/n: next chapter is game night! we’ll finally get introduced to sammy and danny <3

there is sooo much to come. i can’t wait to share more with you all. like i’ve previously mentioned, their story is quite the rollercoaster. our beloved roomies are both very stubborn . . . it’ll make for a grand ‘ol time! lmao

i hope you enjoyed!! plz message me & let me know what you thought! hearing from you guys is just so wonderful! let me know if you'd like to be tagged for future chapters!! <3

taglist:

@joshym, @gretavanfleetposts, @alyson814, @jaketlover, @writingcold, @jessicafg03, @gretavangroove, @gvfpal, @twinszka, @reesetrippingthelight, @lallisonl, @laurenlovesgretavanfleet, @Fretaganvleet, @222headedcalf, @dreamssingold, @carbondancingthroughtime, @raviolilegs, @whollyfreeamongstthestars, @llightmyllovee, @sacredjake (even if it seemed to refuse to tag, i still tried - ugh! i apologize for any weirdness of the tagging. if i missed you, please let me know! i think i included everyone, but it's def possible i accidentally left someone out.)

#jake kiszka fic #jake kiszka #josh kiszka #greta van fleet fic #josh kiszka fic #sam kiszka #danny wagner #greta van fleet #jake kiszka smut #eventually #jake fic #covet #my fics

[jakey-beefed-it]

Thoughts on depictions of Certain Villains using their depression as an excuse to be fuckstains in FFXIV. Under a cut because spoilers

Preface that I am enjoying the hell out of Endwalker and as a whole have nothing but good things to say about it. Including its portrayal of devastatingly bleak circumstances hammering home the sheer pervasive inescapable horror of despair. And the following isn’t even a complaint about the writing (except that I’m still Annoyed by the mincing camp-gay villain stereotype Fandaniel is), it’s just a pesonal beef with a certain type of person who is, tbh, not unreasonably portrayed in the game- the edgelord who takes his depression and makes it everyone else’s problem.

Maybe it’s the ‘Has struggled his whole life with depression’ in me but I have found myself struggling to regard a lot of these depressive bastards in Endwalker with anything but moderate to severe contempt. 

Fandaniel gets the worst of it; like, yeah, having the Fermi Paradox answered in that depressing a fashion after struggling with feeling like you’re the only one who cares at *all* about the well-being of ‘lesser’ creatures is gonna kick your teeth in, emotionally. Hermes, I get. Hermes, I sympathize with. 

And being reborn again and again only to confront that same nihilistic despair sucks! Feeling like you’re the only sane person surrounded by uncaring, unfeeling monsters sucks! Amon even gets some sympathy.

Fandaniel, though, the modern iteration that’s sort of the culmination of the two plus however many other lifetimes, is just so offensively bad a caricature of campy nihilism I just wanna roll my eyes so hard they come loose and rattle around my sinuses for a while. 

And collectively, the lot of them, like, I get it. I’m a depressive fucko, too. But you don’t... go around imposing that on others? That’s supremely immature in a way most literal children aren’t. It’s such pathetic wannabe edgelord behavior it just irritates me. 

There’s a music video, Radiohead’s ‘Just’. In it, some guy just lies down on the sidewalk and gives up. Okay. Fair, that’s certainly a choice I’ve been tempted to make. And people come along, and they ask him ‘wtf, man’ and he says ‘don’t worry about it, you don’t want to know’ but they insist for various Capitalist reasons that he Must Get Up and Get Back to Work (it’s very Metamorphosis in that regard) or at least tell them why, and of course he ends up doing so finally in a portion of the video where you see his mouth moving, but there are no captions, so you don’t know exactly what he said. But the next shot is of everyone else lying down on the pavement, too, so presumably it was the sort of existential despair on display with the various dragons and Ea we see recreations of in Ultima Thule.

That guy didn’t make it everyone else’s problem in any aggressive way, and while personally I’m of the opinion that such activities are better reserved for the privacy of one’s own home (depression naps all the way to actual suicide) rather than inflicting them on the general public, the POINT of the video is that the mere act of giving up/opting out is itself unacceptable to the whole Capitalist Machine, so sure, he does this in public because no matter where he does it it’s gonna be ‘disruptive’, might as well go for disruptive.

But yeah, anyhow back on track, Hermes and his reincarnations, Zenos, and the Meteia (though I don’t blame them so much given they were set up to fail by a shitty parent creator) are all about Making Their Depression Everyone’s Problem, and I just can’t abide that shit. What are you, twelve? Lashing out because surely nobody’s ever felt this way before? Meteion is a child, relatively speaking, hence she gets much more of a pass, but Hermes? Zenos?

Alisaie at least reads Zenos for filth.

The game is very good at Themes, and conveying the whole Meaning Is Where You Make It approach to nihilism, which I agree with enthusiastically and respect, but to contrast that you need some first year philosophy student wannabe Nietzcheans (who don’t even get HIM for that matter). I get it, but they do annoy me, perhaps because I have dealt with enough ‘dark enlightenment’ assholes who use their depression as an excuse to be the fucking worst.

Pull yourself together and plant a flower, ya fuckwads. Admittedly Eitherys doesn’t have prozac, but a tactile hobby and choosing to see the good when you can goes a long ass way.

Ya dicks.

#Jake plays Final Fantasy XIV #Endwalker spoilers

[redbrokenwhistle]

Let there be speak of the wasteland. Above all else it is not a literal model. Like a forest full of lightning bugs, it is an approximates where the individual "accomplishment" is rendered less consequential to a larger idea of focus and creativity with the individual at the center. Ascending in life is a creative process reliant on your choices. Youre shooting for something Dionysian, allowing the Dionysian if it occurs, and building with the Apollonian. For it to be the most helpful it should serve you, but you should only be doing it in good faith, not because you hate yourself about it.

The Idol and the Inner world: that thing which doesn't make you better. Characterized by dissatisfying re-emergence through its doorway, into it's Ego.

Inner world, idol, false experiences.

Utilizing the right hemisphere of the brain to render datum and form relations from internalized datum which is naturally and uniquely in the interest of the individual.

It is a model for permitting human creativity and meaningful invention. Meaning is found in solving problems, not in having problems. There are no scaffolds in western psychology which were, even as they were, permissible to the metaphysics and psychology of solution. The environment, the egoism, the uncertainty and the judgement calls, the risks you take just to get hit by a bullet or to find a toolbox empty. These are real experiences, in a real world Or sometimes you leave with less than you walked in with, while still being whole. where what you stumble upon you are made to remember, use, reincorporate, and double back to. As Nietzsche said, to which no one can articulate better, "As long as life is ascending, there is happiness".

Submission to an idol is part of the internal world

We can also observe things that bring great disruption, or rather the real world reveals is a past association with a past self, one that is likely rejectedx [NOT FULLY THERE]

Excuse - any inaction that gives volume to the inner world, note too a delayed response as in post cognitive engagement with an addiction (example of reason) - principle of avoidance

reason is always invented after an action has taken place, and is dependent upon a subjects place in the hierarchy. There is an inherent belief, those higher will assume a will to already be in the action. Every inquisition can only find discrepancy in the power ego hierarchy. Every arrest is made onto citizens within a nations laws. Imprisonment does not determine freedom.

hierarchy escalates by levels of management where those who have assimilated into the ego have surrendered their identity to one wholly devoted to the system. Hierarchies have a large dependency on training (which supplements the observation of protection and gatekeeping) where

Cerebral aggrandizement is not the right path (reference below)

‘Self talk’, largely useless, and similar to nietzsches “we have not been taught to think” in this compulsive act we recede from the real world, and attempt value at something immaterial

Nietzsche expects us to hold our action accountable as "no reason".

He who does not know how to put his will into things at least puts a meaning into them. That is, he believes there is a will in them already (principle of 'belief', principle tenant of idols) I notice every time I'm unknowingly practicing belief, its in a support a fantastic robust inner world. -----> hope? - these are related somehow - If you seek outside yourself, and still feel life is not ascending, you have not been seeking to make yourself. Belief has to deal with something that is not known. But it must be known to not be known, while having characteristics that influence the contradictions of the individual. Reason and belief? Logic and belief. Belief is not mandatory, belief and ideology. What happens when one believes they must choose to believe? I wonder, if belief is a passive happenstance. Is the value of belief in the dedication to the belief? - Faith. Belief is the spirit. - Under my tenants, this is self deception.

Value of idolatry is in not discovering yourself. More fundamentally christian than the spirit.

Assumptions are made by one who lacks ingenuity or selfishness, or both.

Assumption is a fallacy that attempts to navigate the labyrinth of the internal world, a place of only endless, painful striving. A place to which the subject assumes all the answers need only be discovered inside them, discovered so they may become whole. But in distilling what we seek, an idea can be interpreted, and we create scenarios on the real world, Beware: one has what they seek, this is not what we feel there. there’s a little more, one needs to perform confidently and reflect, in the mirror of the real world

There is a great lie, under anxious stress it promises value. It is a devourer. Creat your world and stand tall

The real world is not a world of chance, it is a world of creation.

On the Inner world, on Conscience

The inner world is a cope.

The inner world is one of disturbances. This inner world, this. . . conscience? Constantly reliving events, weighing themselves against what, our desires of the real world?

In the inner world one is assured, one is be convinced everything will 'work out in the end'. Is this an assumption of a larger, regressive Christian value*? Is this where we really say, life is worthless?

You seek inside the labyrinth to become whole. What? How is it that what you seek cannot be made? you cannot make?

There is no acceptance, as long as one can one needs to be thse change.

Any action of rejection is not an action of overcoming

*the ascetisism, hope pity charity chastity

t

Im so quick to judge things, not appreciate them

Strange as well, one will place an object obefore him and say "I must have this thing!" and the objection has become creativity gets in the way. I no longer have the focus as I once had before I endeavoured. When did this be? Creativity as an objection to meeting your goals. What? Does the whole world masturbate with sandpaper while claiming, "well its masturbation so it must feel good!"?

Hope when in opposition to what has been shown in pattern does not spare cognitive dissonance, dissonance at attempt by self deception

To be active for oneself, is this the way of egoism? - relation to help

A valuable relationship does not have to be with a friend.

#wasteland

[outofcontextsimsmachinima]

I dont want to get too off topic on this blog but since this is a somewhat big platform I want to talk about whats going on as we are facing the climate crisis head on.

Thousands of scientists all over the world are currently on protest in tears. No media is bringing this up. We should be seeing news about NASA scientists being arrested for asking to be heard but instead it is silent. Scientists say we have 3 years left to stop everything, we have the answers, but our governments arent listening. That we need to stop all new projects. Over 110,000+ new fossil fuel projects have been signed off in 2022. That should be concerning. Oil, gas and coal need to be stopped if we want a chance at survival and it needs to be talked about. We have 3 years, we have answers, we have alternatives and we need to government to act now. Theres a man on hunger strike just so the government will read the latest IPCC report. Just to look at a scientific document. They cant even do that.

A woman from Just Stop Oil was one of the only interviews in media ive seen as of recent, where she was mocked for her clothes and not given the chance to truly speak on the science as she was interrupted to be told her ego is too big. It was a copy and paste situation to the interview from the movie Dont Look Up. This response of mockery over a genuine concern for humanity should terrify all of us.

Despite Bidens word, he has signed off more new oil, gas and coal works.

Did you know that Congo just sold more oil blocks in their rainforest and river.

Maximum temperatures in India and Pakistan have been continuously over 40 degrees Celsius (104°F) for almost two weeks. Thats 10 celsius more than average.

The arctic passed over 30 degrees celsius this past month. Both sides of the earths ice experiencing heat waves. The arctic is bubbling METHANE.

And so so so so much more from flooding, new oil sign offs, etc.

If you are in a country thats just about to start elections, please look into parties that will do their part for the climate crisis. If you are not signed to vote, enrol asap. If youre in Australia, like me, you can enrol here by TODAY. (And maybe look into our third party system and what the greens have to offer? But i didnt tell you that..)

Look into protest groups like the Extinction Rebellion and see what protests are hapening nearby and what you can do to help. This is quite literally life or death for humanity and we cant risk ignoring it and letting it be ignored. We have to educate ourselves on whats going on, get mad and fight it. Because media is refusing to let us know of the doom were facing if our government continues to support oil, gas and coal the way they are. This isnt to make you feel doom, but encourage you to act to prevent doom.

#they speak #psa #like i truly dont care that this is a sims blog #im an activist first #and not speaking on a platform with a following just does not sit right with me so im sorry if this disrupts your day #but its better than not acting and having your whole life disrupted #not sims related

[bibbykins]

Insufferable

A/N: The long-awaited flashback is here! It's short, but it is here! I hope this can really show the turning point in Jungkook's and MC's relationship and I would love to hear everyone's thoughts. As usual, tips are not required but greatly appreciate. Hope you all enjoy and have a wonderful day/night!

Note: This is a part (specifically a flashback) of The Household's Bunny series, so I recommend reading at least the Prologue before this one

Word count: 3.6k

Pairing: Soft Yandere! Jungkook x Chubby! Reader

Summary: Roommates are bound to have arguments, especially when one of them is as temperamental as Jungkook, but you didn't expect the first argument to get so unbelievably personal.

Warnings: abandonment issues, mommy issues, allusions to past abuse, family issues, crying, yelling, vomiting, panic attack, exhaustion, some soft yandere thoughts, some possessiveness, jungkook is mean and the MC gets a little mean too

There was something so constricting about memories of a shitty childhood. There were times when looking in the mirror felt like searching for the child in you so you could give her the hug she desperately needed. There were times when waking up felt like a check to make sure you were no longer in the home you had to grow up in far too quickly. However, the comfort of being in a different home only came so far when you didn't have anyone beside you or even emotionally available enough to talk to.

You stayed in bed for hours before it felt like a good idea to move, almost waiting for the mirage of change to fade before it brought you back to the gym with your mom or your uncle's apartment littered with whiskey bottles and leaky tear ducts.

Sometimes putting your best foot forward each day felt so hard with all-consuming loneliness clinging to your heels.

You had started your day going through your memory box. Hindsight said that was a poor idea. The box was a sure way to get you into a bad mood. You liked to think you breezed past all the stages of grief, but just because you accepted reality didn't make it hurt any less. The box was a strong reminder of that much as it sat with a melancholic aura. The creme color faded and the thorned vines connected to roses only added to the malicious undertones of its existence to your mental health. It was full of childhood photos, your birth certificate, school achievements, and the last known address your mom had.

Ah, your mom. What a way to bring clouds to your sunny day. You don’t know why you put yourself through the turmoil of the memory box. Maybe you were hoping it would be easier by now. You were always wrong. Looking through childhood photos and finding no love in the eyes of your mother when she looked at you and watching the love in your uncle’s eyes fade with your mother’s presence. You got to the fated birthday card, thumb rubbing over the defunct address longingly. You held the envelope in your hand, inspecting the birthday card she sent you. Three words in the repetitive note written on the inside caught your eye, and not the ones you so desperately wanted from her.

Feeling a familiar pressure behind your eyes, you tossed the card aside and stood. It was time to eat, go on a walk, do anything other than this. You found your way to the kitchen and came across a silent and solemn Jungkook. His jaw was clenched, but it felt like it always was around you.

Your relationship with Jungkook so far was not very complicated, in the way it was nonexistent. He either didn’t care about talking to you or he actively didn’t want to, you really couldn’t tell. This didn’t stop you from trying, though. Like an idiot.

“I’m making food, did you want any?” You asked from your place seated on the couch, and the silence that was his response for deafening, “Okaaaay.” You sang awkwardly, “I just know that you usually don’t eat throughout the day and-”

“And what do you know?!” He snapped, blinded by his pure and unbridled, but most important unprovoked, rage of you. Your eyes widened and your body jumped. Holy shit, you had never heard him yell like this, “You don’t know anything about me, or in general, so just stop trying so fucking hard!” He was harsh in his tone and it lit your whole nervous system on fire. What the hell did you do to him?

You shook your head, not sure why he was yelling about, but it made your throat feel like it was going to close, “Look, I was just trying to be polite, but you don’t need to talk about me like you understand-”

“Understand?! What’s there to understand?” He challenged, eyes wide like he was expecting you to say something but he continued, “You’re some spoiled girl living here rent-free because your precious dad doesn’t want to take care of you.”

Your heart caught in your throat as it shattered. He was right, your dad didn't want to take care of you, but not in the way he thought. Why was he doing this? Has he genuinely felt this way all along? Was he just holding in his anger until you poked the bear a little too hard? “You don’t need to yell at me.” You stated firmly and it seemed to only make things worse.

“And you don’t need to fucking be here in the first place!” He spoke, temper long lost and you could hear his voice mix in with Jungyoon’s, all he needed was a bottle of whisky and a set of calloused hands, “You didn’t need to fucking live here-”

“You don’t know anything about me.” You spat out. Now, you were losing your temper. You could take a beating, but for only so long, especially as an adult, "And it's not like you're paying rent either, so what do you know about me or my living arrangements?" You hissed and you watched his eyes flare, making you nearly regret your provocation.

“No, but I know how you look naked-”

“Fuck you.” You spit the word out at him, something you haven’t done to another person for a while “Don’t weaponize my work or play a game that you absolutely will lose.” You warned, “I know all about you, and I can use that, because you’ve been a star since you were 15, and that sucks, that makes you mad, doesn’t it?” Your temper effectively lost as you ripped into the rage-filled man before you, “Yet you don’t know anything about me, and that must piss you the fuck off, huh?” You stood from the couch, tears building in your eyes before you could stop it.

“I know enough, spoiled rich girl.” He seethed and you laughed humorlessly at this worldwide pop star calling you spoiled and rich.

“Not only are you wrong, but you’re also a poor listener.” You shot back, “I’ve told you all before Jungyoon isn’t my fucking dad, he’s my uncle.” His mouth opened but you cut him off before he could start, “He can’t stand the sight of me so he travels for work.” Your tears are undoubtedly falling, but you can’t stop, “And you’re talking to me like this because what? You had a scandal or something?” You gave him his chance to talk and boy, he took it.

“Mona told me you know your mom.” His voice was like venom, “So, why the fuck are you here? You have your blood relatives.” He exaggerated the word like it meant anything to you, “Why are you here, disrupting our lives, acting like an innocent orphan girl around actual fucking orphans-”

“I never said I was or acted like an orphan!” You exclaimed incredulously before scoffing, “That’s why you’re mad? Because you never knew your mom and I did? Because I know who my blood family is?” You could laugh at how ridiculous that was, “I know them, so what? Where does that get me?” You looked at him expectantly but he didn’t talk, “I knew my mom, and guess what? She just didn’t fucking want me.” He was silent, but you still couldn’t stop, “I’m sure if your mom could’ve got to know you, she would’ve kept you, because you’re not insufferable to be around, you’re just a fucking asshole.” You wiped at your cheeks furiously, “But me? I had 15 years to prove myself and it still wasn’t enough. I still wasn’t enough. Jungyoon never wanted me either, he got stuck with me and had to cope.” Your voice began to break and you had to take a breath, “I was the insufferable one, so-” You stopped, finally as you regained your sense of reality and watched Jungkook who had an unreadable expression and the realization of the word vomit you spilled out to him hit you like a train as you exhaled quickly, rage in your voice quickly replaced with soft melancholy “I am the insufferable one here, so there.” You shrugged, face a wet mess, “Hope that brings you peace.” Your stomach was churning as you turned on your heel, unable to hold in your sobs. You couldn’t bear the awkwardness of waiting for the elevator so you opted to take the stairs.

You sobbed louder as the door slammed shut behind you, but you didn’t want to linger so you bolted down the stairs, the bile in your stomach signaling that you needed to find the nearest trashcan and quickly. You made it to the ground floor and spilled your guts into the small trashcan. Yelling always made you unbelievably ill, whether it was getting yelled at or yelling, the sickness it made you feel overflowed. The yelling only reminded you of-

You vomited again at the mere thought. You cried harder when you finally finished, breathing becoming staggered as you began to panic.

Fuck, they’re gonna kick you out, and then you’ll be alone again. You lost your temper, people don’t like other people who lose their temper. Why couldn’t you just mind your own fucking business and leave him be? You’re stupid. Why do you think you’ve been alone all your life? It’s because people don’t want to be near you. You’re-

“Insufferable.” You mumbled, numb, even if for only a moment.

Sure, Jungkook provoked you, but you knew better. You didn't go to therapist after therapist throughout your adolescence for nothing. You felt as if you set yourself back eons after that outburst. He didn't need to know all that about you, ever. He probably didn't even care to know, and you said it anyway, like you were gunning for gold in the trauma Olympics. You didn't want to minimize his struggles, you just wanted him to shut up and stop yelling at you. You let your eyes flutter closed as you cried. How can you complain about being alone when you're like this?

You don’t know how long you stayed there, sitting next to a trash can full of your vomit as you wallowed in your self-hatred. The all-consuming loneliness the boisterous house subdued returning with full force. Jungkook was right. You didn’t need to be here. You were only disrupting their routine.

You blew out a sigh as you staggered to the elevator, fully set on going up to your room and crying yourself to sleep after you clean up. You brought the trashcan with you, not having the heart to just leave your puke down there. You thanked your lucky stars when Jungkook was no longer on the second floor as you went to the kitchen and rinsed your mouth before going to take out the trash and take out your burnt oven pizza. Finally, you were headed back up to your floor. You watched the numbers tick by with tired eyes. You glared at the empty trashcan, electing to take it with you instead of making the trip back down to put it back. Surely, they wouldn’t need it for a few hours.

The elevator dinged as you grabbed the black plastic bin and then you were met with Jungkook. Relief flashed across his face before irritation settled on it, “Where the fuck were you?!” He asked hurriedly as you trudged past him, too exhausted to fight. You were running on autopilot the whole way up here, and you couldn’t bear another spat.

“I was on the first floor.” Your voice was low, trying to communicate you were done arguing as you lifted the bin as proof. You then set it down and went to your bathroom and began brushing your teeth.

He scoffed, “You were on the first floor for 30 minutes?” He asked as if he caught you in a lie but you nodded as you rinsed your mouth.

You were down there for thirty minutes? No wonder you felt so tired.

“Yep.” You popped the last letter before correcting yourself, “Well, I spent like 10 minutes cleaning up that bin, so not exactly.”

“Why?” He asked as if you were being ridiculous, as if he wasn’t the one on your floor demanding answers.

“I vomited.” You spoke simply and before he could ask, “Yelling makes me puke.” You were so blase about it he sighed in frustration.

You walked to your room and froze when you saw your memory box strewn about, and it was like a dam broke all over again. You looked at the photos, at the eager little girl looking for love in places she would never find it.

Old habits die hard.

Before you could even stop yourself, you sunk to your knees in garbled sobs and broken cries, “Hey, hey, wait.” Jungkook’s shaky voice did nothing to bring you back to reality as you cried. His hands placed themselves on your shoulder, making you flinch violently, much to his horror.

Fuck, he didn’t know how to do this. He didn’t know why you were crying, but he knew it was his fault, at least in part. Even if at this moment it wasn’t, his outburst surely didn’t help. Fuck, he’s so dumb. Fuck, he shouldn’t have talked to Mona just moments before seeing you.

The envy of even seeing your own mother’s face ate up at him and he took it out on you. Not to mention that he made you vomit from the yelling. He suddenly felt more like an arrogant asshole than he did before as his hands now hovered over your form and he took a moment to look at your room.

Scattered on the floor were childhood photos and ribbons from competitions. Things Mona kept in her own house, having a whole wall filled with every one of their achievements. Even Jin had a photo album of their things. And you, you kept all these for yourself. You were the only one who cared enough to save these things and he wondered how much you threw away to maintain space in the small empty box. Fuck, he didn’t know how to do this.

You sighed shakily, “You can just go.” You cried, “You don’t have to be here.” You don’t know what he could possibly gain from watching you cry.

“I know.” His voice was calm, even, “Can I help you up?” He asked and you wanted to look up at him in confusion but you didn't want him to see your tears.

You both had just ripped into each other, and here he was, wanting to help you. Why would he do that? Why would he stay when he doesn't have to? Why would he want to help you up after a fight?

Too tired to even think about questioning him and no longer angry at him, you simply scoffed, “Can you?” You sighed, not having the energy to stroke his ego and stand up without his help.

You never let people bear your dead weight, not wanting the awkwardness if they couldn’t carry you, but right now, you just wanted to lay down.

He snorted lightly, happy to hear anything other than a sob for you, “Don’t worry about me, you just cry and mind your business.” He spoke lightly, and the comment made you fight a smile. Then, he lifted you with so much ease, you figured he was trying to show off as he placed you on the bed. He looked at you after he sat on the floor before his eyes caught onto the gold foil of a 16th birthday card. You were wiping at your face as he read the card against his better judgment.

I know you must be confused, and I can’t help that. I wish I could pretend to be a mom, but I can’t. I can’t be your mom, and I never should have tried. It would be best if we forgot each other. I just can’t keep pretending, and I know you can see it, even if you don’t want to.

I’m so tired.

-Mom

Now, he felt even more like an asshole. He also felt a little bit angry that your mother could just leave you behind without so much as saying sorry. She wrote like she was a teenager and you were her mother. She obviously didn't put much thought into the seemingly last message to her daughter and it made his heartbreak for you, “That was the last I heard of her.” You snapped him from his thoughts and he looked at your puffy face, “She had left months earlier, and then I got that, but she moved before I could try to see her one more time.” There was a distant ache in your words as you looked at Jungkook sitting amongst your memories.

“Is she… still alive?” He asked, not sure why he felt the need to know.

“Not sure, but it doesn’t make much of a difference, I guess.” You blew out a sigh, before looking at your papers and folded posterboards, “I was cleaning out my memory box, and I’m not sure why I do it when I know it just upsets me.” You could still feel tears leaking from your eyes as Jungkook picked up a photo of you on your 14th birthday, posed between Jungyoon and your mom. You had a bright smile on your face and they looked at the camera with a tight expression, “You can really see how much they didn’t want to be there, but that's the happiest they look in all of the photos.”

He wanted to say you were wrong, but he could see it. He could see the happy little girl trying to make up for the unhappy adults around her. He knew he should’ve asked Mona why Jungyoon didn’t try to call or visit or why she was so eager to take you in if you knew your family. He should’ve just known better. Yeah, he understood how it felt to be alone growing up, they all did, but by the time they were all 17 they had a home that wanted them. You were going to graduate from college soon and you still felt unwanted.

No thanks to him.

“I’m sorry.” He blurted and you looked at him with wide eyes, “For being an asshole, I’m sorry- and for making you cry. I just…” He shrugged, “You’re right. I was jealous you knew your mom and I already was suspicious of you and I- I’m dumb, and I’m sorry.” He looked at you, eyes a bit glossy and you wondered when was the last time someone apologized for making you cry.

“It’s okay.” You smiled weakly, “You are dumb, but that’s okay.” You chuckled when he frowned, but eventually, he also broke into a short laugh, “I think… we’ve felt a lot of the same things in different ways, so I can’t blame you.” He wondered how you could be so forgiving, and he was scared of how many times that has gotten you hurt, “I like living here and I like all of you, so I hope I can get you all to like me too, even if just a little.”

“Don’t accept less than you deserve.” He spoke firmly before he started picking up your memory box, putting things neatly back in.

“Wh-”

He waved his hands nonchalantly, “You, sleep, I’ll clean this up and order some food.” He didn’t look at you as he said this, mostly to hide his blush, "If...If you want, I can give this to Jin. He has a whole place he keeps our stuff like this… he's really sentimental." He stumbled, still refusing to look at you.

However, he jumped when he heard you hiccup a cry. Ready to apologize, Jungkook was just about to turn to look at you until he heard you speak, "That… That sounds very sweet of you to do." You wiped a sentimental tear away as the blushing boy remained frozen.

"It's Jin's hobby, not mine." He deflected before waving his hand at you, "Sleep, I said." He frantically demanded.

You could see his ears getting red and you smiled, “Yes, sir.” You mocked in your work voice and made him freeze for a moment as you erupted into giggles while he whined, “Okay, okay, I’ll sleep.”

Eventually, you surrendered to your exhaustion as he delicately put away your papers and photos. He hummed lightly, smiling as he came across your debate team awards. No wonder he lost the fight before it even started. He turned around after lifting the box and sighed almost dreamily as he watched your sleeping face. You were beautiful, delicate, and puffy from the tears. He had the urge to keep apologizing for being such an asshole, but after looking through your achievements and your photos, he resolved to just keep proving it.

He wouldn’t let you get hurt again. Not by him or anyone, especially your mother, even Jungyoon was on thin ice.

His blood boiled at the thought of your mother for a reason he couldn’t understand. His hand extended shakily as he pulled the covers up to your shoulder and you hummed contently, making his heart melt a bit at the little smile you had. He wouldn’t fuck up with you again, not like this. He would be nice, at least a little, and first and foremost, he would order food you liked.

He froze.

Fuck, what food do you like?

He relaxed. Well, he could just ask the guys.

Fuck, they’re gonna ask questions.

Fuck, they’re gonna kill him when they found out he made you cry.

He looked back at your sleeping form, not having the heart to wake you up. He sighed, looks like he’ll just have to bite the bullet. He dreaded each moment as he quickly made an untitled group chat with the guys since you were added to their original one. He could only hope Taehyung wouldn’t change the group chat name to something stupid.

Tip Jar

#yandere bts #soft yandere bts #bts fanfic #bts series #yandere jungkook #bts angst #bts fluff #poly bts au

[deadpoetsmuses]

"inspiration". | neil perry, dps.

in which a summer is spent with the poets, with a significant feature of neil perry.

✧ title: "inspiration".

✧ pairing: neil perry x fem!reader.

✧ genre: fluff, with slight mentions of angst.

✧ word count: 2,733.

✧ warnings: written in headcanon format, home life mentions, the reader lives in meeks' grandma's house, knox being a simp for chris.

✦ author’s note: requested by @mybabysweetascanbe! it's kinda funky how i wrote this as a headcanon but it still ended up being my longest fic lmao. also i wrote the poem that neil made for the reader myself so i'm sorry if it's kinda cheesy 🗿 but i hope you all enjoy this one !! don't forget to take care of yourselves guys <3

✎ The summer holidays had always been a time for the poets’ relief.

✎ Their academic year was constantly filled with difficulties for the poets, but it was harder for some when they were home for the summer.

✎ Neil felt as though he couldn’t be himself-- he loved reading and writing even more so than he did with accomplishing any of his parents’ wishes, like heading into medical school. He especially loved to act, and it was rough to keep that concealed around his dictatorial father.

✎ Todd’s older brother would be at home as well, and it was worse enough being in his shadow; but it had gotten worse with every one of his parents’ daily proclamations.

“We were quite disappointed with your grades from last semester, son,” His father reprimanded, looking down on him with stern eyes. “I just don’t understand what’s gotten into you. Your mother and I raised you quite well and you have your brother to guide you along. You know that he’s remarkably intelligent and well accomplished. Why can’t you be more like your brother?”

✎ Charlie and Knox had been just like Neil. The constant pressure that their parents put on them about becoming a banker and a lawyer was daunting; and all they wanted was to simply live as regular teenagers without concern for their future.

✎ Fortunately, Meeks’ grandmother was a woman who had a colossal and motherly love for the poets with a sizable residence in which her grandson’s friends could inhabit during their vacation.

✎ Thus, the poets resided in the Meeks household in the summer before their senior year so as to escape the stress and troubles brought to them in their own homes.

✎ Even though the summer was fleeting and their time was short, the poets found their time to be everlasting when they met the student boarder of the house.

✎ She went by the name of Y/N, which was a name that sounded just as sweet as the lady to whom it was attached.

“Hello, everybody! I’m Y/N!” The girl said, reaching out her hand to shake one of the poets’. Truth be told, it had been quite some time since any one of the boys had been in close contact with a woman; so they found themselves to be quite the martians in the situation. It took a few moments before one of the poets-- Neil Perry-- could offer his hand and shake hers. “I’m Neil! We’re friends of Meeks and his classmates from Welton.” The boy swore that he felt a spark as their fingertips touched, but he tossed the feeling aside; along with the apparition that he saw of a faint glimmer in Y/N’s eyes.

✎ The boys instantly took her in to their little group, and they all fell in love with her personality-- which was a platonic statement of course; but Neil Perry found this to be otherwise as he actually began falling into love with the new girl.

✎ He loved the way she cared for her new friends, the way she projected her personality through the clothes she wore, and all of the little smiles she gave him.

✎ With every beam and twinkle that she delivered, Y/N found herself to be falling for Neil as well.

✎ He provided a feeling for her that made the blacks of her eyes expand and butterflies to quiver inside-- which was the very same one Neil had felt when he first laid his eyes on her.

✎ She had been a fantastic addition to the band of poets, and the boys could not have had it any other way.

Despite the summer coming into fruition, the poets did not fail to meet up in their little cave every once in a while to read poetry, discuss girls, and laugh. The first meeting of that summer was simply like any other. “Guys, what do we think of Y/N?” Meeks questioned. A clamor of answers that ranged between “I think she’s great,” and “Do you think Mrs. Meeks has any more people in her house like Y/N?” echoed in the dark cave. Clearly, the boys had favored Y/N; but certainly not to the point where they’d be infatuated with her. “Yeah, I think she’s nice. She’s really pretty too,” Knox added. “Woah there Knoxious,” Charlie replied, expelling out a chortle. “I don’t think Chris would like to hear that. And besides, she looks more like she’s Neil’s type than yours.” Charlie’s words weren’t incorrect, but it was needless to say that Neil had strongly agreed with that statement.

✎ Over the summer, they would all begin to get to know each other better.

✎ The poets eventually introduced Y/N to the intricate realm of poetry, and she wholeheartedly fell in love with every line that was recited.

✎ They enjoyed every moment of their fleeting time together. Of course, there would be times where the boys would get into small fights and bickers.

✎ Pitts would always be yelling at Charlie for taking an ungodly amount of time in the shower, while Charlie would be yelling back about how Pitts always seemed to inhale the food that Mrs. Meeks provided for them before he himself could even take one bite.

✎ Cameron did his best to do some summer reading at night, but he found it quite hard as his room was beside Knox’s room, and Knox would spend hours on end talking to Chris over the phone.

“Oh, Chris. How do I love thee?” Knox sighed, lacing the telephone cords in between his fingers. “That’s the title of a poem we learned in Mr. Keating’s class. It reminds me of how lovely you are. Of course, she’s not as pretty as you are,” Knox’s giggles not only erupted through the phone; but it travelled through the walls as well, disrupting Cameron from the climax of his novel. “We get it, Knox! You’re a romantic poet! Now why don’t you go tell Chris about how you finished with a D minus in English!”

✎ While all of the little squabbles took place, they hadn’t even noticed the slight change in Neil and Y/N’s behavior.

✎ Y/N seemed to be keeping to herself more often, while Neil appeared to have possessed an undying smile on his face around the poets; particularly in the mornings when everyone gets up early except for him and Y/N.

✎ Little did they know, Y/N’s room had been vacant for the past few days since the arguments began-- which was approximately three weeks after the boys had arrived to the Meeks’ residence; and Neil seemed to be giggling in his room every night when the rest were asleep.

✎ In the duration of those three weeks, Neil had become more familiar with Y/N than any of the other poets had been.

✎ They’d walk along the nearby river every morning, discuss poetry in the late afternoons, and eventually fall asleep in each other’s arms at night.

“How long have you been living here?” Neil inquired, peering into Y/N’s eyes. His vision didn’t have to stretch too far as his face had only been a breath away from Y/N’s. The pair laid together under the warm covers of Neil’s bed with their legs entangled in one another’s and their hands interlocked, talking about anything and everything that came to their minds. “It’s been two years since Mrs. Meeks took me in,” She replied, gazing over Neil’s chiseled face. “In the whole time I’ve been here, I think you’re the most interesting thing that’s happened to me,” Y/N added, beaming up at Neil. Hearing her words, Neil slowly leaned his lips onto Y/N’s forehead, giving her an endearing kiss. She too had been the most interesting thing to happen to Neil in a long time.

✎ For each and every day that they were together, Neil wrote love poems.

✎ His poems revolved around his time with Y/N and included detail of all sorts; such as how colors appeared to be more bright and more vivid when he was with her and how lovelier the birds had sounded in the morning during their walks.

"My love,

The luminosity of the golden sun

does not compare to the radiance

of your glowing skin.

In this air full of morning dew,

the most beautiful scent in the air

is still you.

The sounds we hear of the melodious

birds are all because of your presence,

and they sing only for your beauty.

I look into your eyes and I see nature

reflected back at me; but it is much more

pleasant to perceive than if I were to do so

through my own set of eyes.

Though the morning lasts for a mere set of hours,

My fascination for you can go for as long as

this smooth river flows.

✎ Neil felt embarrassed about being so infatuated with Y/N, so he kept his poems hidden for the time being.

✎ Somehow, the boys had failed to notice Neil and Y/N’s constant disappearance.

✎ Although, they’d make little remarks from time to time that ran along the lines of “Ooh, Neil found a muse!” and “Y/N definitely likes somebody here. It’s probably me.”

✎ The last comment came from Charlie, which later earned him a smack on the head from Neil.

✎ So, Neil and Y/N did their best to keep their relationship hidden throughout the summer.

✎ The two were rather domestic in their relationship; they did all of the typical-couple activities that everyone else had done.

✎ To anyone else it would have been rather common to witness, but to them it was simply extraordinary being with one another.

It had been a scenic day at the river that morning. The beauty of the nature surrounding it had been ordinarily pleasing to Y/N; but all of its best qualities were magnified for Neil as his hand was in hers and the only thing he could smell was her fragrance. He had been quite nervous for the entire morning as he promised himself the night before that he would finally gather the courage to say those three magic words he’d been imagining to say for quite some time. Unbeknownst to him, Y/N had been thinking the same and had been visualizing how she would say it at that moment for the past few hours since. Just when the cascading waters began to relax and the chirping of the birds started to quiet down, the pair stopped on their trail and those three words were finally professed by Neil in a sudden manner while Y/N had spoken the same in a clear and gentle tone. They looked into each other’s eyes, recognizing the same look of love and eventually realizing what was said. As it was acknowledged, the two lovers simply smiled at each other and kept walking along; their hearts now beating on the same rhythm and their minds thinking of nothing but one another.

✎ Time to time, they would go up to the attic and listen to the music from Mrs. Meeks’ old gramophone, caressing one another as they slowly dance along to the lyrics of Ella Fitzgerald’s songs.

✎ Neil would always sneak a flower out of Mrs. Meeks’ rose garden and leave it on Y/N’s bedside table for her to wake up to.

✎ One of Y/N’s ways of communicating her love would be recommending books to Neil that she thinks is encompassed with his personality. Since then, Neil’s library had enlarged to a great extent.

✎ There would also be some occasions where one of them-- mostly Neil-- would get a little cheeky and try to express their love for the other out in the open.

“Eat up, boys! You know there’s plenty more of where that came from, so don’t be afraid to dig in!” Mrs. Meeks endorsed, setting down a bowl of mashed potatoes. With a jubilant ‘thank you’, everyone at the table promptly began to tuck into the mouthwatering cuisine. The boys soon found themselves distracted with the heavenly taste of Mrs. Meeks’ cooking; and Neil took this opportunity to covertly sneak his right hand onto Y/N’s thigh under the table. A scarlet blush crept its way up to Y/N’s cheek as she sent Neil a glare. Though her eyes expressed the message of “Not here!”, every other signal in her body sent the message of ‘Yes, Please’ to a very triumphant Neil.

✎ The summer inevitably came to an end and the boys were forced to return to Welton, much to their dismay.

✎ They couldn’t stand ending their summer; and they especially couldn’t stand leaving their new friend behind while the rest of them stayed together.

“Oh God, How are we supposed to leave this beautiful girl all alone in this big house?!” Charlie pleaded, theatrically dropping down to his knees and shouting out loud to the heavens. “It’s all just too emotional for us,” Pitts added as he went along with his friend’s act, his head bowing down to the ground in grief as he placed a comforting hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “Just take me with her, God! Let me be with Y/N at her all-girls school!”

✎ Despite all of the inconveniences they put upon Y/N, the poets really did leave a mark on her. These boys showed her a new way of life-- she knows what ‘Carpe Diem’ means, and she knows how to seize her days because of them.

✎ Of course, Neil had a harder time coming into terms with their departure more than anyone else.

✎ Leaving the Meeks’ residence meant that he was leaving Y/N, which was something that he hadn’t prepared himself for.

“I’m not ready to leave you,” Neil confessed. Tears were beginning to form in his eyes, but he quickly blinked them away. After the individual hugs and goodbyes Y/N had given to the rest of the poets, the ill-fated time had come when she had to bid her own farewell to her lover. Neil believed that though their time was short and fleeting, it truly had been something special and something that he’ll never forget. Y/N was his first love, his first muse, his first everything; and no amount of riches could ever sum up to the prominence of that. Y/N placed her hand on Neil’s face, stroking away his tears with her thumb as she felt her eyes begin to swell up as well. “I’ll write to you every day, Neil.” Naturally, Y/N was on the brink of tears as well. She couldn’t bear to leave Neil after everything he’s shown her. It feels like she’s known him forever, yet everything felt so new and exciting with him. She loved him too much, and she knows she’ll continue to love him long after.

✎ Neil was afraid that she would forget about what they had soon after she had left, so he decided to give her all of the poems he had written about her.

✎ As her hands clasped the thick set of parchment, the tears she had been trying so hard to conceal had all poured out, staining the paper and her hands.

“Neil… these are beautiful,” She croaked. Her eyes skimmed over every title and date, realizing that there had been a poem for each and every splendid day that they had been together. “You’re beautiful, Y/N. That’s why I wrote these,” Neil corrected. “Everything I love about you is in these poems, and all of the love I have for you is written in each letter. I just don’t want you to forget about me while we’re apart.” The absurdity of Neil’s words made Y/N chuckle softly before she stepped forward and linked her hands around Neil’s neck, reducing the space between their lips. “I love you, Neil. You’re always going to be in my mind and you’ll always have my heart in the little pocket of your Welton blazer.”

✎ Y/N felt truly fortunate to have met Neil. This summer had come as quite a surprise for her-- she did not expect to fall in love so soon and with such an extraordinary person like Neil Perry. He was everything she’d ever looked for and he gave everything she deserved.

✎ Even though the bright days of the summer had ended and the early falling leaves of the autumn was yet to arrive, the change was of no concern as the only thing that mattered was what had been consistent-- and for Y/N and Neil, the thing that stood still for the two of them despite all odds was each other.

dedicated to these lovely people!! @mybabysweetascanbe @disagreeingpoets @catflowerbean @galaxyrhytm @nananostalgic @ughgclden @towriteabetterlife @neilsemeraldsweater @yourpal @willowestelle

#dead poets society #dead poets #dps #dead poets society fanfiction #dps fanfiction #neil perry #neil perry x reader #neil perry fanfiction #neil perry fluff #neil perry angst #richard cameron #charlie dalton #knox overstreet #todd anderson #steven meeks #gerard pitts #jemi-writes #jemi-requested #jemi-dps

[1ddiscourseoftheday]

Tues 15 June ‘21

Venice MP filming is underway, romantic canalside walks and gondola ride are a GO, as seen in pap pics and many (many) videos from fans gathered on site! I’m sure they appreciated all the little sheer polo showing off Harry’s tits, who doesn’t love a good hiddies moment huh? GQ probably did too; they already wrote a whole article about the outfit Harry wore yesterday! But even they can’t say anything better about those shorts than that they look “presentable” LMAO. TAKE THAT corduroy shorts! What about those fans though? Well, they are certainly bringing us plenty of videos- Harry handing co-star David up out of a boat like a sweet gentleman, aww, Harry skipping about between shots, Harry with a lil purse, Harry just trying to live his life and like go eat food when not working, etc etc... maybe folks could take a few steps back? Looks like Harry is really getting hounded through the tiny Venetian streets and on set, by pretty large crowds, to the extent of disrupting filming, oh no. Harry signed a picture for a nearby school-- “stay outrageous”, again dating it (June ‘21) but possibly by the end of the day he was wishing people would not be quite so outrageous.

Meanwhile the antis stuck at home are frothing at the mouth trying to convince larries (or maybe themselves?) that we now ship David and Harry- uh sorry sweaty but having the ability to understand that holding hands for cameras does not have to mean that people are really fucking is actually a pretty major core component of the whole larrie thing?! But good luck with that! It makes sense that seeing Harry acting lovey dovey with someone that they know he isn’t actually sleeping with would throw them in a tizzy though, after all their whole identity is based on denying that’s a thing that’s possible... poor things, baby’s first cognitive dissonance! It can really make you question things huh, and that’s always rough.

But they’re not the only ones with things to say about Harry! Superstar of stage and screen Mandy Patinkin posted video of himself and his wife getting four minutes’ worth of lightning round pop culture trivia questions wrong, but he nails one of em- asked what a Harry song (WS) is about, he remains silent. Well done, that’s just what Harry would have said! And Selma Hayek told a story about Harry coming to her house where her pet owl (who Harry was enthralled with and wanted to hang out with him) regurgitated an owl pellet in his hair! LOL poor Harry; naturally she said he handled it very well and was very sweet. Yes, it’s possible Harry’s interactions with her were because she’s in Marvel’s Eternals; it’s also possible he was at her house because her husband is the head of the company that owns Gucci, or for some other reason entirely.

Liam’s Lonely Bug NFTs went on sale today!! Liam was excited and happy and all over the internet posting and chatting and watching it all happen. The auctions are still open for most of them so final news on that tomorrow! Today was just Liam being hype about it- “Fandom is working its magic thank you!” he said when his request to get LB trending got it up there worldwide in like half an hour, he said more interactive content will be added to the NFTs as time goes on, that Louis cooking was “very funny”, when asked to describe his NFT collection in one word he chose “liberating,” and his hair guy reposted comments Liam has been making in the discord talking about maybe going blond with a “hmmm”. Oooh? He did a long live talking about everything, patching in the other Lonely Bug creators and quite a few other NFT people (enough that at one point Liam jokes that there are enough of them to dress up as the band to satisfy commenters asking for 1D stuff). Anyway one of them compares this NFT to ‘the original Nirvana recordings’ hmmm I mean… that is another thing that is rare I guess yes, but that’s very specific and random sir? “I know for some of you this NFT world is slightly different than what you’re used to from me,” said Liam, “but your support so far has been amazing (as always!)”

And not only that- another new Liam song coming?! We haven’t even got the one yet! (or maybe this is the same one..?) Anyway, school pal S-X (Liam hyped his music a couple weeks ago) talked about him in an interview, saying "Liam is a good friend of mine and we've got stuff coming soon. I don't want to say too much as you know how those One Direction fans get [HEYYYY… oh wait yeah he’s totally right]- when I mention him I can't even open my Twitter. But we've got a song coming and it's a smash. It's sooner than you think and that's all I can say." OH RILLY?? INTERESTING! I was just eyeing him for the artist showcase Liam said he was gonna do on veeps but OKAY! He also said "We're both from Wolverhampton and I was in college with him at the same time, and going from that to global stardom at 17 is not normal for any person. To have toured the world, done stadium tours and everything, he is one of the most famous people in the world. So he will go through scrutiny from the media and whatever, but I can tell you he is one of the nicest people, one of the most genuine people I've ever met. He's a real good friend of mine."

And speaking of unexpected songs; another Zayn demo leak was posted! This time he’s singing You with Ellie Goulding; the song ended up being released by Troye Sivan.

And Anne Marie posted “rehearsals for #OURSONG live! I just love this song so much. I also miss your face @niallhoran” with a picture of them singing away; apparently she’s referring to the recording of the acoustic version which is out on Friday. Niall posted a picture of the Danish football player who collapsed during play the other day giving a thumbs up from the hospital; indeed it is very good to see that he’s all right.

#harry styles #liam payne #zayn #niall horan #my policeman filming #my policeman spoilers #leaving aside the thing antis can't seem to grasp which is that we don't ship harry and louis at all #shipping and thinking people are queer are literally NOT THE SAME THING #but I neither think harry and david are fucking nor ship them so that's that on that #15 jun 21

[twisted-in-wonderland-jay]

Birthday from the boys (NRC)

Something to know for reading all of this is that I’m going to try my best to write platonic relationships that can be implied as romantic. Because some people may like a character but not feel romantic feelings towards them but still would like to know how they would act on their birthday.

Part two is the teachers and RSA

Riddle

He would prune the garden himself, regardless of the queen of hearts laws he would paint the roses your favorite color

He would lead you to the garden where the two of you would have tea and talk for hours

Eventually taking you around the garden

Ace

Out of all of these boys, he’s the one that’s most likely to forget your birthday

This man did not write it down

He overhears you talking with the other first years and them saying happy birthday. Then it finally clicks and he remembers that today is your birthday and he plays it off like he remembered

He’s not being mean in any way he just honestly doesn’t remember birthdays well

He talks with the first years while you’re not around and plans a little sleepover of sorts at your dorm

When you come back to your dorm for the night you find all of the first years there and they’re just kind of chilling in the lounge

They bring out a cake for you saying that they all baked and decorated it themselves but with the experience that the first years have it’s a strange-looking cake but it does it taste all that bad it’s just a lot of frosting and decorations because each one of them wanted to add a personal touch.

You guys have fun run around the dorm causing trouble

Then once it turns 12 you guys decide to settle down for the night and plot twist you don’t actually go to bed but instead play Mario kart till 3 AM

Deuce

He would try his hardest the whole day to make it the most perfect and kind of relaxing day ever. But utterly fail

In his eyes, he failed but it’s not that big of a deal

He’ll try to hold the door open for you or carry you around for fun and either, drop you, or trip

He feels really bad the whole day that he keeps messing everything up and it keeps getting less and less romantic

At the end of the day, you assure him that you had the best time and it was very fun. Which he doesn’t really believe because again he feels like he failed but he’s glad you had a good time.

He also stays the night hanging out with you until you fall asleep.

Trey

He would bake you a cake from scratch and decorated it with little flowers of your favorite color

He’s a really sweet guy so he would invite a couple of your close friends maybe three or four of them so that you’re not alone on your birthday and you also won’t have any leftover cake because you’ll eat it all.

A very nice and sweet get together messing around having fun

Cater

The morning would start very easy with the simple happy birthday and him taking you skateboarding you don’t have to go to a skating park or anything like that he’s just gonna teach you a couple of tricks.

But progressively throughout the day, it gets more centric and fun

At the end of the night can you both watch fireworks after you’ve just got done bungee jumping...

Leona

He’s not going to skip his morning to afternoon nap to tell you happy birthday even if he does care

A prince got to get his beauty sleep

When he wakes up he goes and attempts to find you and if he doesn’t he just goes man and gives up but if he does find you he tells you happy birthday and then walks off

Depending on your relationship with him he could be very distant and not caring but if you go and hang out with him during the afternoon when he’s not sleeping he’s pretty chill about it not really caring that you’re there if you have a negative disposition towards him he might care and tell you to leave.

Ruggie

He would take you shopping for the day

You might think he doesn’t have any money but those are jobs that he’s been working aren’t for nothing

He took all of the money he could for an entire month of work and saved it up spending it on your birthday

“What?! this is only part of my savings, not my entire Life funds” hehe...

Jack

Since magic mirrors make travel very easy he decides to take you back to his hometown

Not to meet his parents or anything but just to hang out because he talks about home a lot and wants to take you. What better time than your birthday

He takes you around his town and tells you about all of these places that he has memories that as well as putting you in the general direction of where he lives

He takes you to do all the fun things you can think of where he lives

When you both go back tonight NRC he quickly takes you by his dorm so he can grab something

He comes back with his gift to you which is a little cactus for you to take care of.

Azul

He wouldn’t have a birthday party for you

He would however have you meet him in the lounge

you two would have dinner together

Just the two of you...

you’ll take a walk through dorms halls just to talk in this moment you share alone

Jade

He would hang out with you if you wanted him to if you didn’t want him to he would tell you to go hang out with your friends since it is your special day

He would give you some sort of terrarium or if you’re not into those he would give you a rare plant for you to take care of as a gift

If you did want to hang out with him and you didn’t care where you went he’d invite you to a botanical garden for the day.

Whether you like it or not he’ll probably talk on and on about each plant and its properties in medicine and poison

Floyd

He would throw a great surprise birthday party for you

He’s got all of your favorite foods your favorite drink an awesome cake

And somehow he surprisingly kept this under wraps until the time of your birthday party

It would be in you’re dorm, and don’t worry afterward he would help you clean up the mess

When you walk in the door he has everyone holding confetti launchers... which he 100% is going to help you clean up after a lot of convincing

Kalim

This man knows how to throw parties and that’s terrifying

He would throw a massive party for you

He’s inviting all of NRC as long as they’re friends with you. Hell if you had friends in RSA he would invite them too.

He would have one of your other friends distract you for the day because it’s going to take the entire day to set up this banquet

He’s got everything a giant cake, fancy lights, a lounge area, a DJ, a chocolate fountain anything and everything that you would need for a successful party

Throughout the day if you try to go see him at all somebody’s always there to stop you and to distract you

You guys party for the whole night

Jamil

He would not throw a birthday party for you

As we all know he’s not really a people person

Chill about it passes you in the hall and says happy birthday

He offers to make you dinner but if you want to you can always decline

Although there is one thing you can’t decline and that’s the magic carpet ride he wants to take you on

He wouldn’t ask to borrow the magic carpet he’d just do it

Vil

He would throw a big banquet for you regardless of what you want

He’ll probably say something along the lines of “Fufufu do you think I have the time to do all this? someone else said it was a good idea and they did all the work it’s not as if I care or have time to.” But we all know he cares

He about all of Pomefiore if you have to invite any of your friends outside of the dorm he would be a little irritated and save fine I guess you can about your “other friends”

Epel

It would be the beginning of the day and he’s down the hall in spots you. He would immediately not yell your name but scream it and run to you yelling happy birthday. It would make quite the scene but he wants everyone to know that it’s your birthday and also Vil would probably hate the fact that he just screamed.

He asks you if you’re ready to “rock and roll” (for anyone who doesn’t know this is just a saying to ask if you’re “ready to go”)

He’s taking you on a trip to go do a bunch of fun stuff in town and to probably prank some people because why not.

Rook

Wouldn’t throw you a party instead he would probably stop by your dorm and announce his presence and sing you happy birthday.

Bring you some sort of small gift

He would tell you that he will follow you the whole day and you can do whatever you want with him

Rook is rather chill compared to some of the other boys. However, if you want him to he can take over because he’s kept note of what you like to do so he would take you to do things that you like.

Idia

He wouldn’t do anything special for your birthday

In fact, he’d probably have Ortho buy three slices of cake only, for the three of you

Throughout the day he doesn’t say anything about it

When you go to his dorm later he tells you happy birthday you guys eat the cake together

He kind of half-heartedly apologizes for not being able to throw a proper birthday party for you and that he’s sorry but his anxiety kind of got the best of him.

To make up for it he offers to play games with him until you want to leave

Before you leave he gives you a flower. An Asphodel The primary symbolic meaning of the Asphodel flower is peace after death and the afterlife, but this is not the meaning that is implied it is a white flower which generally symbolizes purity also it’s a symbolic flower of Hades

Ortho

He throws a big party at your dorm (if your dorm is Ignihyde he’d take it somewhere else), not ignihyde. Because the students are quite antisocial and it would be very disruptive.

He would invite all of your best friends

It is the cutest surprise birthday party ever

There would be fireworks, trick candles, and so many fun childish games that you would play at a party

Malleus

Malleus is somewhere in between depending on what you want so no this won’t be a surprise birthday

He’ll either throw a big party for you in the diasomnia dorm inviting basically everyone from all the dorms as long as they know you

Or if you’re more on the reserve side or you want a smaller party he’ll have a couple of your close friends join him and going to your dorm and having a get-together little party for you.

If you want to though he is 100% okay with just you and him hanging out for the day

Sebek

This man is crazy

He wrote down your birthday and planned weeks in advance

He would write down everything that you like in hopes that when it becomes your birthday he has everything that you could ever want on that day

He tries his best to bake a cake but then realizes that he’s actually really good at it

On the day of you’d think that he be really loud and excitable and overbearing but in fact, he is the complete opposite being very considerate and not quiet but an inside voice because he doesn’t want to stress you out or seem disingenuous.

He doesn’t host a party for all of your friends it’s just you and him. The reason for this and putting in so much effort just for you and him is because he’s rather shy when it comes to not just romantic feelings but platonic feelings as well not showing people how he really feels especially when it’s around other people as well. So it’s kind of to make himself feel more comfortable as well

Silver

Silver isn’t the party kind of person so he’ll probably get you a cute little gift like a bouquet of roses specifically white roses to symbolize purity or maybe a charm bracelet.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to throw you a birthday party it’s just that he doesn’t know how to go about it since the only parties ever really celebrated is his own because of Lilia when he was younger.

If you say something about not having a party or a cake he’ll get a little sad thinking that he might have failed you.

He’ll probably just follow you around doing whatever you wanted for the day as long as you didn’t have class.

He would also have a cute little lunch with you of food that he made before. You guys would probably go sit in the courtyard and eat next to a tree. Be careful though he may or may not fall asleep...

You might have to wake you’re sleeping, Prince

Lilia

He’ll invite you to a concert and then right as the performance is about to start he’ll say something like he has to use the restroom or he’s going to get a drink and he’ll be right back he promises.

As the performance is starting and the lights turn off you start to worry that he’s going to miss it

And then as the stage lights turn on and you see him on stage getting ready to perform

He’s going to perform an entire album that he and the light music club came up with for you as a birthday gift

Knowing him at the end of the performance he’s probably going to get off the stage to go and kiss you (Not necessarily on the lips if it’s a platonic relationship it’s probably on the forehead with the cheek as a sign of affection no love).

#twisted wonderland #savanaclaw #diasmonia #heartslabyul #ignihyde #octavinelle #pomefiore #scarabia #riddle rosehearts #trey clover #cater diamond #deuce spade #ace trappola #leona kingscholar #jack howl #ruggie bucchi #azul ashengrotto #malleus draconia #jade leech #kalim al asim #jamil viper #vil shoenheit #rook hunt #epel felmier #idia shroud #ortho shroud #floyd leech #lilia vanrouge #silver twisted wonderland

[theonewiththefanfics]

Come Back To Me (one-shot)

Synopsis: Bucky Barnes has gone through hell and back to reach his happiness, and his happiness came in the form of the love of his life. But what happens when she’s ripped away? What happens when she comes back and can no longer be happy herself? How does he get her back

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x f!Reader

Genre: AAAAANNNNNGGGGGSSSTTT, sooooo much angst. Lil bit of fluff as well (also, we’re gonna pretend like Endgame didn’t really happen, and WandaVision wasn’t as emotionally devastating), smut

Warnings: extreme sadness, depression, refusal to eat, unprotected sex, allusion to ra*e, but not the act. if there is anything else, please let me know and message me :) (MINIMALLY EDITED)

Word count: 9301 (it gon be a ride)

Bucky’s been scared many times in his life before. He wouldn’t admit that out loud, but most of the time, even as the Winter Soldier, he was terrified. Afraid to fail and of the consequences that would follow, afraid to succeed and have another person’s blood on his hands, afraid to look in the mirror, for the face staring back at him wasn’t quite his own, and even afraid to sleep in the dark, terrified the spirits of his victims would come out for revenge. But he’s never been as scared as he was in that moment, pointing a gun at the head of the love of his life, while she did the same, only without any clue as to who Bucky was.

           His mind was still processing how they’d gotten in that position, and it refused to accept it, because nothing, not a single thing had clued him in on how that day could turn south so quickly.

           It had started off as usual with Bucky’s flesh hand sliding down Y/N’s naked spine, as she had her face pressed against his toned chest, small snores escaping into the air, while a small dribble of drool trickled down the corner of her mouth.

           Bucky couldn’t help the smile lifting up his lips. It was moments like those, he believed in good things. 5 AM, the New York sky dark and without a trace of morning light probably until 8 AM, with his favourite person in the world pressed up against his side, soaking up his warmth, leeching it off without any shame after having been satisfied (or at least he hoped so) by his tongue, fingers and, well, other things as well.

           Y/N shifted a bit, trailing her palm up to his abs and settling in the middle of his chest to feel his strong heartbeat. Bucky laid his palm over hers. Even in her sleep, she didn’t hesitate to entwine their fingers and bring them under her chin, closer to her, as if she needed him next to her at all times.

           He felt bad, he truly did, as he squeezed Y/N’s side, making her frown. “You gotta wake up, dollface. We gotta get ready.”

           “Dunantdo,” she mumbled, and if Bucky hadn’t been there to take care of her drunken ass more times than he could count, he wouldn’t have been able to decipher her slurred words as “don’t want to.”

           “I know.” He chuckled. “And believe me, there’s nothing in this world I’d wanna do more than lay here with you… well maybe go down on you a few more times at some point as well, but the mission won’t happen on its own.”

           Bucky felt her chest rumble against his, as she laughed. “Oh, I wouldn’t mind you going down on me, mission and all.” Her words were clearer, but still laced with sleep, and muffled by his skin while he felt her calves run against his as she stretched out.

           “I know you don’t. The missing hair chunks on my head prove that.”

           “Hey!” she slapped his chest but soothing it immediately blearily looking at him with a pout. “I didn’t pull that hard!”

           “I’m not complaining, sweetheart.” He pressed a kiss against the top of her head. “In fact, if you ever stop doing that, I will make sure you regret it, but unfortunately we don’t have time for a rendezvous. Jet’s gonna be ready in an hour.”

           Finally, after having accepted the fact she won’t get any more sleep, Y/N lifted herself to rest on her elbow right next to Bucky’s ribs and opened her Y/E/C sleep-filled eyes to look into his cerulean ones. “We can still squeeze in a quickie if we hop into the shower together.”

           “We can,” Bucky hummed, metal fingers lifting up to cup her cheek and place a strand of unruly hair behind her ear. “But you know a quickie for us is never quick.”

           Y/N let out a scoff and pushed away from their fluffy duvet, making her shiver as she placed her feet on the cold floor. “And whose fault is that? You’re the one with the super-soldier stamina.”

           “And you,” he pinched her ass making her squeal before giving him the middle finger and taking the red Henley she’d so happily taken off his body the night before only to put it on herself, “are the completely irresistible one. Can you blame me for wanting to spend eternity between those two legs in every way possible?”

           The smile she threw him over her shoulder was nothing short of wicked, but instead of joining him in the warm embrace of the bed, Y/N made her way to the bathroom. “Keep talking, Mr Charmer. Might just get you what you want.”

           Bucky was happy about having super speed as well with how quickly he hopped out of the bed and pressed her against the cold tile wall.

           ***

           Much to Steve’s annoyance, although they were barely fifteen minutes late, Bucky and Y/N were late, and when he saw the smug grins both of them sported, he genuinely thought his eyes would get stuck at the back of his head with the hard roll he gave to them.

           “As a new policy,” he started, flipping over the mission file, “I’m putting you two on a celibate streak.”

           Y/N raised an eyebrow, plopping down on one of the metal benches as the Quinjet lifted in the air. “Really, Steve? Do you truly want to deal with Bucky like that? Cause I know, I don’t.”

           “Well, your fondueing is disrupting the schedule.”

           “Oh relax,” Nat butted in, throwing Y/N a chocolate bar, given how no one had had time to eat proper breakfast. “It’s not like the HYDRA base was going to suddenly disappear.” 

           “It could’ve,” the blond super soldier countered.

           Nat rolled her eyes, not bothering to hide the smile she had on her face. “Which is why we have an inside man, who as of three minutes ago has confirmed – they’re still there. And by the looks of it, not even trying to run.”

           Bucky’s arm slung around Y/N’s shoulder and pulled her closer. “See? Everything’s still on track. Besides, from what I heard from Sam, he’s loving the whole under-cover thing so we were doing him a favour.”

           Tony had gotten out of the pilot’s seat and joined in on everyone discussing Y/N’s and Bucky’s sex life, so that was her cue to switch the comms in her ear from ‘communication’ setting to the ‘music’ setting, leaning against Bucky’s side and closing her eyes, cashing in on those lost sleep minutes she’d spent in the shower with her lover. 

           When they had about forty minutes left in the air, Bucky once more woke Y/N up as she’d fallen asleep while Steve and Tony went over the last briefing. 

“Bucky and I will take the South-side entrance,” Steve said, pointing at the holographic map Tony had pulled up. “Y/N, Nat and Wanda you take the East, and go as easy as you can, Red.” Steve nudged his chin towards Wanda who nodded. “Just because you can bend reality doesn’t mean you can bend your health. That’s where the main intel storage unit. Get as much as you can and get out. Tony will take the air and wait until Sam joins before blowing everything up. Clint, Bruce and Thor have all checked in, and are already in their positions on the ground as blitz attack. Once F.R.I.D.A.Y has confirmed everyone’s location away from the blast zone Tony will detonate the bombs Sam has set up inside. Got it?”

Affirmative nods came from everyone on board, as they went to do final checks on their gear and equipment.

“Be careful out there, alright?” Bucky mumbled against Y/N’s neck as she double and triple checked her ammunition count, strapping a sword to her back as well, just in case. Her obsession with Medieval fantasy shows giving her a reason to make Tony pay for her lessons. 

           “We’re gonna be fine,” Y/N gently patted Bucky’s cheek before giving him a peck on the cheek as he wrapped two strong hands around her waist. “We always are.”

           But where typically she was right (most of the time), it was in that instance where she couldn’t be further from the truth if she’d tried. 

           Despite having Sam on the inside and him having gone through great lengths to make the infiltration as easy as possible, getting inside the building had been suspiciously easy, and that had set off everyone’s alarm bells, but knowing how important gathering the information was, they pressed on, keeping the thought that it could be a trap at the back of their minds at all times. 

           Thor, Bruce and Clint had started their ground attack two minutes before the rest had joined, with Vision guiding and disabling every system possible from back at the tower, so Tony and F.R.I.D.A.Y could put all of their focus on retaliating against the helacarriers coming their way. 

           “Cap, we’re in,” Natasha announced, ducking through the door, as Wanda covered her six, and Y/N lead the way in front, bullet shells flying out from her rifle. 

           Their comms crackled with echoes of gunfire outside as Tony lead them through the place right until they got to the main room where the whole system mainframe resided in.

           “Five-minute countdown commenced,” Y/N said it out loud to inform the rest of their team, as she stood behind Wanda, who’d created a red shield of magic, keeping the assault away and them inside the room.

           Five minutes until they had to get out of the building because in eight minutes time Tony and Vision, having infiltrated HYDRA’s system would blow everything to bits. If that failed, Wanda was there to provide a safety dome for the three of them, but it was just as a failsafe. Even though she now had full control of her powers, understood them better than ever, taking in a blast that will level a whole ass building was still a lot and there was no guarantee bricks and beams wouldn’t just settle right over them to then fall on top the women, she was still recuperating from a rival witch attack and it had taken out a bit more energy from her than usual.

           “How’s it looking over on your end, Vis?” Wanda asked through the comms, connecting back to the rest of the team in the tower.

           “The files are coming in, but too slowly,” his smooth voice invaded everyone’s earpieces. “And unfortunately F.R.I.D.A.Y’s mainframe won’t allow for a faster download, as she needs to scan everything for viruses.”

           “Should’ve used a flash-drive,” Y/N mumbled under her breath as she watched the HYDRA agents line outside the room, creating a two-level firing squad basically. 

           “Last time we did that, the files corrupted the drive and then erased themselves,” Tony butted in, then groaned as something hard hit him. “And no one needs to hear you complain about losing the six seasons of Brooklyn Nine-Nine again.”

           Y/N just rolled her eyes and steadied her rifle against her shoulder once Nat gave the go-sign. Then something beeped through everyone’s comms. The three-minute countdown before the whole building went down.

           “We’re barely at seventy-six percent,” Nat’s tone was calm, but the frustration didn’t go unnoticed by others.

           “Plan B then.” Wanda changed her stance a bit, but not by much as to not arouse any suspicion from the agents. If they could be taken out by the blast instead of her it’d be less energy used on her part.

           “Are you sure?” Sam finally butted in, having gotten in contact with Bucky who’d given him a comm linked just with their interface. “We can try and delay the blast,” Sam said right as Bucky commanded him to do so.

           “No,” Wanda stated. There were already at the two-minute mark. “Get out. We’ll take cover once the files are ours.”

           “Y/N,” she heard her lover start, but she just shook her head, even though he couldn’t see it. 

           “Wanda’s right. Just be here to pull us out from the rubble. I have no want to climb through the wreckage.”

           A deep, long, exasperated sigh echoed in her ears, and it made her smile. “You know, sometimes I really hate you.”

           “Love you too, hot stuff.”

           A chorus of gags followed shortly after their little display of affection, and even though they were nowhere near one another they rolled their eyes almost at the exact same time, as Vision told Wanda to stay safe.

           “You owe me a foot massage, Vis.”

           “Gross.” Y/N chuckled.

           Wanda just threw her a smirk. “Imagine how we all feel about you and Bucky.”

           “Okay, we’re down to sixty seconds!” Tony said, making Y/N nervously glance back at Nat. 

           The assassin just shook her head. “Eighty-seven percent.”

           She gritted her teeth. If the building went out before they got the files they’d be stuck with just what they had. “F.R.I.D.A.Y, please speed up a bit, the place is about to get blown to bits.”

           “Rerouting the files to a different server,” the A.I. was immediately on it. “Will have to do the scan later.”

           “Thirty seconds, guys!” Steve shouted as whoever was still near the base scrambled to get out.

           Nat’s head whipped back to the computer screen. “Almost there.”

           But the whole thing seemed to have made the HYDRA agents realise something was amiss, yet it was too late for them. As Sam counted off the last five seconds, Natasha rushed to the other two women, grabbing them by their waists and crouching down while Wanda created a red dome of magic, explosions shaking the whole house.

           For a second the rumbling felt more like someone shaking you awake from a deep sleep until the walls of the room exploded, raining fire, brick and metal down on them. 

           That would’ve been fine if not for the fact that the floor underneath them decided to disappear as well, an array of curses coming from their mouths as Wanda immediately rounded out the shield while the rest of their teammates kept nagging them to respond.

           “Y/N, I swear to everything you hold dear, I will kill you myself if you die,” Bucky pretty much screamed, while she groaned as the sudden shift in balance had made her hit herself in the ribs with the rifle.

           She gritted her teeth, as Wanda used more of her powers to stabilise them. “We’re fine,” she responded. “No need to bring in the cavalry yet.”

           A deep sigh from what seemed like everyone echoed in her earpiece, and when Wanda was sure there’d be no second shockwaves from the blast or no debris that could fall right on top of them where she’d need to take her focus away, she flew the three women out of the ruined building and onto the grassy knoll where the team stood waiting. 

           Bucky was instantly next to Y/N, pulling her into his body and her lips against his once Wanda released her from the energy bubble. 

           “God, you’re disgusting,” Sam mumbled, and it was followed by a small yelp when someone hit him in the side.

           Y/N threw him a mischievous grin when she pulled away. “Don’t be a Bitter Betty. The offer to set you up still stands.”

           Sam cackled, as everyone had now regrouped and together were marching away to where the jet sat disguised between the trees. “Hard pass. You’re a worse matchmaker than Steve.”

           “Hey! Amelia was an amazing girl.”

           “She is except for the fact that she’s not interested in men.”

           Steve’s cheeks reddened up a bit, as Tony gave him a sympathetic pat. “ ‘S not my business to ask what people’s sexuality is. And blame yourself. You’re the one who’s called Sam.”

           “Oh, don’t you even –“ but his words were cut off midway as gunfire rained down on them from the sky.

           Instantly Wanda threw up a shield once more, Bucky going to cover Y/N with his body, but HYDRA opening fire from the top had left their sides unprotected, and a well-aimed shot from a bazooka ripped everyone apart. 

           The blast was minimised thanks to Wanda and her quickly directing a part of her magic to contain it, but the missile still threw them away.

           Y/N’s head was ringing, and she wasn’t sure if it was because of the loud noise of the blast, because of her having hit her head against a tree trunk, or because of all the screams from her teammates, yet she had zero time to recuperate as an agent rushed towards her, knives ready for a kill.

           The first one embedded itself inside the tree, and barely not inside her head, as she moved to the side in the last minute, but a small sting still crept along the side of her head where he’d managed to split the skin.

           She was up and rolling away, grabbing one of her own knives from the side of her leg, finally unsheathing her sword. There was no time to put more clips in her guns.

           The first agent was quick work for Y/N, I mean he only three more knives left, and he’d been one of the unlucky ones to stand next to the building when it went off, so the shrapnel had ripped a piece of his Kevlar open giving her the perfect place to put her sword in, but the next ten were not as easy.

           She was worn out, tired from having experienced two explosions and some of the agents were new backup, which meant they had more strength and energy, but she wasn’t going to let them get the best of her. 

           At the back of her mind, Y/N heard everyone chiming in as to where they were, how many people were after them if they needed backup, but mostly Y/N heard Bucky’s calls that he was coming to get her, even though she hadn’t requested help, she was too busy dodging bullets and knives to even respond. 

           She was human, she needed help, she wanted help, but then something odd occurred to her – most, from what she’d heard through the comms, were fighting maybe four to five people at a time, with the exception of Wanda, Tony, Thor and Hulk who had tanks and cars going after them, while Y/N had a group of twenty to twenty-five people to manage.

           It was an ambush, it dawned on her.

           She wanted to scream at herself ‘No shit, the whole thing is an ambush’, but it was an ambush of Y/N specifically, which was odd given how she was pretty much one of the few who had no direct ties to HYDRA, but that one moment of confusion was enough for someone to land a slice to the side where her own suit had a hole in it. 

           “Oh, we don’t want you,” a voice went through her comms that she didn’t recognise. It was muffled as if someone was whispering through someone else’s mic. “But we’ll hurt you more than ever.”

           An unsettling quiet settled around before she clearly recognised Bucky breathing out a ‘no’ and then a panicked ‘Y/N!’ rip through his throat. Her head whipped to see one of the most frightening sights of her life that will forever be ingrained in her mind.

           Bucky was laying on the ground, completely paralysed without the ability to even flex a muscle, blue eyes turned towards her in terror and helplessness as he watched while nine more agents stormed towards her.

           She was capable, of course. He’d even experienced how capable the girl was on his own skin, and it had left his super-soldier skin bruised and battered for a few days. But right now, she was tired, she had zero ammo left, all of her knives were embedded in the heads or chests of other assailants and somewhere along the way her sword had snapped in half, leaving her with a jagged piece of steel, which was also protruding out from someone’s chest. Y/N had nothing, but her punches and kicks left. And even she knew there was no way she’d last long enough to get back to the jet in one piece.

           So, gathering whatever strength remained in her body, Y/N retaliated on last time. She heard people shouting that they were coming for her, and for a moment she truly believed so when a red ball of magic hit a group of seven agents knocking them down, but when Y/N’s eyes flitted to where it’d come from, she saw the agents subdue Wanda, as they'd somehow managed to put an electroshock collar around her neck. She fell to her knees gasping in pain.

           All of it, Y/N realised, every single thing that had happened had been a distraction. They’d split them apart, and the Avengers had most likely helped HYDRA accomplish their goal when the bomb went off. 

           For a moment she wondered why’d they’d want to take her, why not take their ‘weapons’ back, but just as quickly came the realisation of their words.

           Someone grabbed her by the ankle, yanking her down. 

           Y/N saw stars behind her eyelids, and her teeth clanked together. She was lucky her tongue hadn’t been between them. 

           Bucky screamed as if someone was ripping his heart from his chest.

           A gun hit her on the head.

           And then everything went black.

***

                      Bucky was going insane. He’d trade having his brain being put through the meatgrinder for seventy years once again if that meant Y/N was back with him, but the empty space in his bed, the unused shampoo and conditioner bottles, the dirty cup in the sink told him otherwise. She was gone, and he couldn’t do anything about it. 

           For two weeks he was basically a zombie, barely eating and functioning, spending most of his time by the interrogation room’s computer, following up on dead-end leads and any breadcrumb he could find, yet every single time he thought he’d gotten something as if life was mocking him, it turned into dust, just like his hope slowly was. 

           There was pretty much no one else but him, Sam and Wanda left in the tower, as the rest had split off into teams to go and search every left-over HYDRA base in the world. The only reason he wasn’t out there was because Steve had benched him.

“You’re compromised,” he’d said. Bucky couldn’t say he wasn’t.

Sam had stayed behind because during his last raid he’d gotten hit by some gas, rendering him pretty much useless for half a week, and no one felt comfortable enough to ask him to put his life on the line before a full recovery.

And Wanda… well, Wanda wasn’t taking the whole thing too great either, but she was still functioning, so she was just waiting for the jet to come in and fly her out to Serbia with Vision for a potential lead on Y/N.

Defeated for the night, he grabbed the coffee cup that once had been filled and trudged his way to the kitchen area. God, fucking hell, how much did it hurt to even breathe. 

           Just as he was about to pour himself another cup of the burning black liquid, all of his senses went haywire, and he spun around to look at the hallway of the living room. He instantly recognised the shadow standing in the middle of it, how the shape curved and sloped in such a familiar way. How could he not, when that shadow belonged to the woman, he intended to spend the rest of his life with, when his hands had memorised each and every way she was formed.

           “Dollface?” his voice cracked at the end, but when she entered the light, instead of warmth filling his heart at the relief of her being back, ice-cold fear rushed through him at the sight of the black muzzle across her nose and mouth, not to even mention the HYDRA symbol in the middle of the chest of her tactical suit. 

           The first shot rang out right after he blinked, giving him barely enough time to dodge it, but Y/N was already on the move rushing towards him and kicking her leg out so that her knee would connect with Bucky’s chin. 

           A sickening crunch echoed through the room, as his head met the marble floor, bright lights flashing behind his eyes. He could even feel his teeth vibrate from the impact. It was this second which he used to somewhat regain a sense of place, that Y/N used to straddle him down, hand going behind her back to pull out a gun, but Bucky knew her. He knew her moves and how she left her left side open.

           When his forehead connected to Y/N’s nose, he almost vomited at the feeling of bone-crunching against his skin, but it gave him enough time to deliver a blow to her side, disarming her before grabbing her bicep and pulling her arm behind her back, his own metal appendage wrapping around her shoulders and pulling her flush against him. 

           “Come on, sweetheart!” he was pleading, but his grip unyielding to her struggles. “Fight this. I know you can.”

           But to his horror, HYDRA had dug their nails into her mind deeper than he ever thought was possible, as she smashed the back of her head against his nose once more, red blood spilling everywhere.

           He staggered back, palm cradling his face, but he still had one free to block the fist that was coming in his direction. This caught her off guard for a millisecond, but not long enough for Bucky to do anything, as she smashed her foot against his knee, bringing him down, yet he’d expected it, using the position to his advantage and grabbing Y/N behind the legs, yanking her towards him, and making her back hit hard against the floor, dizzying and knocking the air out of the woman.

           It took him three seconds to slide over to the gun she’d discarded and to stand up, and it took three seconds for her to flip herself up and aim the gun that’d still been strapped to her thigh.

           Both of them were shaking, but both for different reasons. Bucky was shaking because he was making the love of his life look down the barrel of a gun, while she was shaking because the only thought on her mind was about if she didn’t finish the mission, the consequences would be more horrible than anything HYDRA had done to her before.

           “I don’t want to hurt you! Please snap out of it!” he hollered but didn’t lower his weapon. It went against all of his instincts to be in that position, even when the two sparred, Bucky, to Y/N’s annoyance who was hoping for a real fight, pulled his punches. It was unnatural for him to even consider harming her.

           She cocked her gun, didn’t even hesitate. 

           “Sorry, can’t do that. You’re my mission.”

           Bucky took in one last breath.

           It hitched in his throat.

           He blinked away the tears pooling at his bottom lashes.

He’d never pull the trigger. 

           She steadied her aim.

           Bucky closed his eyes.

           But the bullet never came. At least not for him.

The yelp of pain made him open his eyes just to see Y/N’s body jerk to the side and drop to her knee, hand clutching at her shoulder, with Sam behind her, his own gun aimed at her with a little stream of smoke coming out of the barrel. 

Yet the second her shock passed Y/N swiftly turned to Sam, gun in her usable palm when her body seized up, and she fell to the ground unconscious. 

           Bucky was panting, as he looked to see Redwing, two blue lights on each side dying out, as it deactivated the tasers. It took him a second to realize what had happened, but then he was by Y/N’s side, pulling her body up to cradle against his own.

           “What the hell, Sam?!” Bucky yelled, hovering his left hand over Y/N’s mouth. When the metal fogged over, his whole frame literally shuddered in relief, as he went on to the next job – stopping the bleeding before her breathing stopped.

           “She was gonna put a bullet between your eyes!”

           “You didn’t have to shoot her!”

           “Oh, I’m sorry,” Sam mocked, dropping to his knees and shredding apart a kitchen towel to press against the wound. “Would you have rather had your brains splattered against the floor?”

           “You had Redwing taser her! That was enough!”

           “If I hadn’t shot her, Redwing wouldn’t have been able to taser her.”

           He hated the fact wounding Y/N had been a necessary step in subduing her. No, Bucky told himself, not her. Not his Y/N, but whoever HYDRA had placed in her mind.

           As gently as possible, he scooped up her body and with Sam in tow made his way to the med bay.

           F.R.I.D.A.Y had alerted the medical staff of the situation, so they were ready when Bucky came in. Instantly two nurses took his girl from his arms and laid her down on a gurney, Helen Cho stepping up with surgical gloves.

           “A through and through in the shoulder,” she remarked more for the medical records than anyone else. “She’ll have a few painful weeks of recovery, but nothing fatal.”

           Bucky nodded in acknowledgement, but still, he didn’t let anyone touch Y/N without him being beside her. As Helen patched up her shoulder and strapped her down on the cell bed, he was still there beside her, both hands clutching onto her palm, not moving an inch away.

           A little while after Helen had left, he felt a presence hovering behind him, and Sam stepped into the room, leaning against the wall, brown eyes looking over Y/N.

           “How is she?”

           Bucky sighed, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. They were cracked and on the verge of bleeding despite the regenerative cream, Dr Cho had applied. “Asleep,” he mumbled. “So that’s better, I guess. Gives her time to heal.”

           He heard Sam shuffle around a bit, and then he entered Bucky’s peripheral as he sat down on a chair next to the bed.“It took them thirty years to break you, yet it took them two weeks to break her…” Sam said biting on his lip, and the statement made anger course through Bucky’s veins.

           “Are you seriously calling her fucking weak?” He snapped looking at his fellow Avenger. “You have no idea what kind of torture they pu-“

           “I’m not calling her weak,” Sam interrupted. “Y/N is one of the strongest people out there. What I’m saying is – back then it took them years to break a person… now it took them barely fourteen days… what else have they ‘improved’ on?”

           The thought of Y/N having her mind ripped apart and then put back together as if she was some ragdoll made bile rise in Bucky’s throat, and it didn’t settle when he thought of how far that horrid machine had come since he’d been in one. 

           But as much as Bucky wanted revenge, as much as he wanted to destroy HYDRA, to make sure what happened to Y/N never happens again to anyone else, let alone if what Sam implied was true, he couldn’t leave her, not when she would need a familiar face the most. 

           He gulped, closing his eyes and tightening his grip on her hand to steady himself. Just the thought of her in all that pain made him go to the edge of breaking apart. “She’s gonna be alright, isn’t she?” If there was one thing Bucky appreciated from Sam it was his honesty.

           “In the long run most likely. You’d be the proof of that…” Sam sighed. “But first, we gotta make sure she doesn’t shut people out.”

           But that was most definitely easier said than done, given how the second Y/N woke up, which was about a day later after being knocked-out cold when she realised what had happened, it was not like a wall had magically appeared between her and anyone from the team, but a fucking fortress surrounded by an impenetrable mountainous barrier, and she was the only citizen in that mind castle. And Bucky was the first one behind the door.

           It broke his heart to see Y/N pretty much shut down. She refused to eat, barely drank the water provided, and couldn’t sleep one bit, yet what hurt most was she absolutely rejected even the thought of going back to their shared room, and instead stayed in her barren cell, white walls, with a thin blanket and a paper-like pillow. It got so bad they had to put her on an IV drip so she wouldn’t waste away. But it didn’t matter to her. She was like a ragdoll.

           It was about five days later when she said her first words. Y/N had her head in her hands, matted Y/H/C strands spilling between her fingers, as her nails dug deeper into her skull. That’s the position she’d been sitting in for the past five hours, not even bothering to lift her eyes as a paper plate with a meal, a single plastic spoon next to it and a paper cup of water was slid through the opening at the bottom of her cell door. She wasn’t hungry anyway. In fact, what she really wanted was to disappear from the surface of the earth, for the ground to open and be swallowed by molten lava or have a sharknado crash in and get eaten by a great white.

           “How’re you feeling?” Sam asked arms crossed as he leaned against the entrance to the door. He’d been asking that since the first time she opened her eyes, but never received a response, so when the scoff she let out was almost inaudible, but he still picked up on it, he straightened out. “Just peachy,” Y/N mumbled. “Absolutely fantastic. Ten out of ten would recommend.”

           “Y/N…”

           He really didn’t have anything to say. I mean what could you possibly say… but he had to at least try, given how miserable Bucky was. He’d heard him sob so loud through two closed doors and a running shower, that he had to do something.

           Sam swallowed hard before entering the room and cautiously, keeping as much space as possible between the two, sat down next to Y/N. He wasn’t afraid of her. He could never be. But he knew she needed to let him closer on her own terms. “You can’t keep going like this. You can’t keep everything in. If you don’t wanna talk to the shrink, it’s fine, but at least talk to someone else…”

           “I am talking to you.”

           “Yes, but you know who I mean.”

“How am I supposed to even look at him?” Her head shot up, and tears threatened to spill down her face. “How am I supposed to talk to him? To touch him, knowing I almost killed him.”

“It wasn’t you.”

“But it was!” The words were a hiss. “It was me. I understood everything I was doing, I knew who he was, I knew what we were to one another, yet…” she choked in the middle of the sentence, not wanting to say the truth. “I wasn’t going to hesitate. I was going to kill him. If you hadn’t gotten involved, one more second and Bucky would’ve been dead. Because of me.”

“HYDRA messed with your brain,” Sam stated. “I know that everyone knows that and Bucky most of all. Why do you think he couldn’t pull the trigger?”

“Because he’s an idiot.”

“No, because he’s been in the exact same situation.”

She bit her lip. All her brain was doing was screaming that Sam was right, to listen to him, he knew what he was talking about, but the guilt, the absolutely corrosive horror at herself for what she was going to do wouldn’t let common sense come through. “I just.” Y/N choked and then cleared her throat. “Just tell him I don’t want to see him. I – I can’t see him.”

Sam did know heartbreak. He’d felt it when his first girlfriend had broken up with him, he’d felt it in the army when his friends lost limbs and lives, and now he felt it looking at two of the people he’d grown closest to struggle to find one another and themselves.

He cleared his throat standing up and wiping hind palms down his thighs. “Wanda is also – “

But Y/N didn’t let him finish the sentence. “No.” She shook her head. “No one. Please.” She tucked her face against her knees. “I just wanna be alone.”

And so he left her alone. In fact, everyone did so. 

For a whole month, the usually lively tower was a glass structure of sombre and pain. Everyone was hurting. Wanda had retreated to her room, sitcoms on the rerun, Vision always by her side as she tried to manage the sadness of one of her dearest friends going through such a tough time and the guilt of not being able to help Y/N, to save her from that pain. Nat and Clint along with Tony had locked themselves in one of the lower levels of the tower analysing the data she’d gathered. They needed to occupy themselves with something, otherwise, they’d be overcome by their own thoughts and they were too dark to manage at that moment. Bruce and Thor had relegated themselves to the lab doing experiment after experiment, trying to find out how HYDRA had managed to do such damage to Y/N. 

Steve, however… Steve was doing quite bad. He felt probably the most amount of guilt than the rest of his teammates. He’d taken up the role of the leader, he was supposed to make sure everyone stayed safe. Yes, they were the most skilled people in the world, but they trusted him to make the best calls. And him not having taken into account a blitz attack from HYDRA after their blitz attack had broken two of his friends because Bucky was doing just as bad as Y/N, if not even worse.

He wouldn’t sleep, he couldn’t; Steve heard his cries each night until, at twelve of one AM, they’d cease, and he’d make his way to the cells. Steve had told Y/N a week after she’d been brought back that there was no reason for her to stay in there. She’d just sat on the bed, arms around her knees and staring at the wall. She didn’t go back to her room. 

But each night Bucky would sit by the glass doors and look at the frame of the love of his life, curled underneath a white duvet, a single pillow underneath her head (Y/N loved pillows, she couldn’t sleep without at least four of them) body in a foetal position. She looked so broken. She was. And because of that, so was he.

It was about three AM at night, when his routine was shaken up by none other than Y/N. Typically she’d sleep through the night not even stirring, slipping into the cot at nine PM and then waking up at six AM when Helen came in to switch her IV. She was eating now, but still too little for it to be enough. 

However, that night she was stirred awake by the feeling of someone watching her, not the camera that was always on but by human eyes.

That was the first time she’d seen Bucky since having woken up and regaining control of her body.

Her breath hitched when their eyes met, and his whole body straightened out. Y/N remained under the covers, while Bucky sat by the doors still. His palm pressed against the glass.

“Hi, doll.”

Two words, but that was enough for the dam to break. Tears spilt down her face, and without a second to spare Bucky had rushed inside and laid down next to her, strong arms weaving around her shaking body, as his own pain merged with hers.

All Y/N could manage to say was ‘I’m so sorry,' and it became a mantra she repeated in Bucky’s chest, hoping that somehow the words would find their way and settle beneath his skin so he could understand with his whole being how much she meant them. 

           “Please.” He was close to sobbing by that point, hand moving to cup her cheek. “Please let me help.”

“I can’t, Bucky! I can’t!” Y/N was close to complete hysterics by this point. “Every time I even think about you, I remember the emptiness, the absolute numbness that was in me, when I pointed a gun at your face, and I meant to kill you! I was going to pull the trigger, if not for Sam… So,” she gulped looking down at the ground, at their feet. “Tell me how the hell am I supposed to let you anywhere near me when I’m terrified of myself.”

           The grip he had on her face, was tight, strong and sure. “Because it wasn’t you. I know what it’s like to have your brain scrambled around and rearranged with false truths and present them as real… but the thing is – they’re not. And you taught me that. You were the one who made me realise it, dollface. Now let me do the same for you.”

           “I can’t even look at myself in the mirror because every time I do, I see that – that monster staring back at me.”

           “Reflections are deceiving,” Bucky whispered, pressing his forehead against hers. “Mirrors can’t and will never show the truth. It’s a twisted, flipped and made-up version of us, and we can’t allow ourselves to believe it. It’s not us.”

           And despite the pain, despite the guilt and anxiousness, Y/N chuckled, letting out a small sound of happiness for the first time in a while. “When did you get so wise, Gandalf?”

           She could feel the relief that flooded Bucky’s body slowly seep into her own. “Well, re-reading ‘The Hobbit’ helped… but more so you. You taught me that. You made me realise the man that haunts my nightmares might have my face, but it’s not me. He’s not me and I’m not him.”

           “Will you…” Her voice shook as she said the words as if there was a possibility, he could say no. “Will you help me?”

           “You never, ever have to ask for help. I’m always here for you. Whatever you need, I’m always here. I’m so sorry, so sorry you had to go through that.”

           And for the first time in six weeks did Bucky get to hug Y/N. Feeling her body melt into his almost made him have a breakdown of his own, as she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and grabbed onto him like her life depended on the tightness of her grip.

           Six weeks, almost two months without Y/N in every imaginable way had almost broken Bucky to a point of no return. Had they gone longer periods of time without seeing one another? Sure, but this was different. When the person you love is right there, but more unreachable than when they’re thousands of miles away, that’s a different kind of pain. 

           She didn’t release her grip form him, as Bucky shifted and sat up, her legs moving to lace around his waist on instinct. With one hand underneath her thighs the other going to take off the IV bag from the stand, he stood up and moved through the tower, finally retreating to his room, where he took off a photo frame from the wall and hung up the medical supply while gently laying Y/N down between his sheets.

           She’d been in that position many times before in different states of undress, in different emotional states as well, but not once had she been alone there. And neither would she be alone now. 

           It was the first night Bucky slept without waking up, and when he did Y/N’s head was resting on his chest. He held her a bit tighter then.

***

           The road to recovery was slow. 

           It started with her spending her days and nights in Bucky’s room, no longer isolating herself from him. It turned to late-night talks where they just chatted about miscellaneous things, and if she felt comfortable enough, then about every heavy thing pressing on her heart. Then she ventured off to her own room, and once evening slipped inside the room of who was her neighbour. She slept next to Wanda that night.

           The next night, she and Wanda sneaked inside Nat’s bedroom, and just hung out a bit, painting their nails. When Y/N went to sleep next to Bucky, she felt as light as the light-yellow colour adorning her fingers.

           On the morning of the eleventh day of her recovery, she woke up earlier and made everyone breakfast, putting some extra chocolate chips in Sam’s pancakes. He deserved it for all the trouble he’d gone through. The smile on his lips and the kiss on her head from him meant more than any thank you he could say. 

           But it was about a month down the line, after evenings where she’d joined in on the movie nights and had discussed the gathered intelligence from other missions as well as the tactics agents should employ when Y/N took her biggest step yet.

           Bucky was laying on his bed ‘The Two Towers’ between his fingers, the metal appendage flipping the pages as gently as if they were made from butterfly wings, when Y/N came out of the bathroom, hair wet and dripping onto her nightshirt. Well, it was actually one of Bucky’s shirts, but at this point, every piece of clothing he owned belonged to her as well. Besides, in his humble opinion, she wore them better than he ever could. 

           “Buck?”

           “Yeah?” he hummed, flipping to another page.

           “Buck I – “ she took in a breath. “I want to have sex.”

           “What? Ow!” The book had slipped from his hands and the edge hit his eyebrow, making Y/N hiss, and instantly come over to try and soothe the hurt part.

           “I mean – “ Bucky stuttered much like his heart. “I’d love to. Gosh, dollface, you know I’d do anything you ever wanted me. Tell me to spend forever between your legs, and I will, but… Please don’t feel like we have to. You’re still healing, and –“

           “I want to,” Y/N was quick to quench his doubt, running a gentle finger over his brow. “I do. I – I need to feel you. I need to feel… I need to feel whole, and I haven’t in so long.”

           His hand cupped her cheek. “You are whole. You don’t need me to complete you. You don’t need anyone to complete you.”

           “I –“ She huffed, struggling to form the thought running through her brain into words. “I – I know that. At least I think so. But… but there is this part inside me, I can’t seem to heal myself, this crack that no matter how hard I try to mend just won’t do. And that’s because that part can only be filled by love. And yours is the strongest one I have in my life.”

           A tear slipped down his cheek. “Oh, doll…”

           Her legs slowly shifted so they were straddling him as Bucky leaned up in a sitting position, palms dropping to her hips and sliding underneath her PJs to touch the soft skin of her back.

           His nose skimmed against hers, and Y/N sighed at the feeling. She’d slept like that – nose to nose curled up next to Bucky – for close to a month and a half now, but the anticipation of the kiss turned her into a bundle of nerves. 

           “One word,” he breathed against her skin, pressing a kiss to her collarbone before looking deeply into her eyes. “One word and we stop.”

           And even though she wanted to say there was no doubt in her mind about doing it, she nodded. He needed the reassurance just as much as she did that if something happened, he’d be there for her.

           When Bucky’s lips met hers, it was just like the first kiss they’d shared. A bit tentative, unsure, yet filled with so much restrained passion and pure love it was overwhelming, and Y/N’s eyes immediately filled with tears.

           “Darling, let’s just not do this,” Bucky said noticing the clear pearls dripping down her cheeks, but she shook her head.

           “I just missed you so much. I missed letting you love me.”

           “Well, it’s a good thing people don’t need permission to love. I never stopped. I can’t imagine ever not loving you.”

           His mouth was on hers once again. Bucky let Y/N lead the whole time. He didn’t deny himself from exploring her body, from feeling every crook, dip, and crevice of her form, but she was always in control.

           When her shirt dropped to the floor, she was the one who started lifting it up.

           When she laid down to pull Bucky on top, she was the one who flipped them over and pulled him on top.

           Her hands skimmed the band of his boxers, and Bucky unconsciously ground against Y/N’s clothed core at the feeling, both letting out moans of relief at the friction.

           “Can you take ‘em off?” she breathed, as Bucky left beautiful marks on her neck and chest so they could bloom through the night and could be greeted by them in the morning. 

           “You sure?”

           She nodded. “Please.”

           They did it together. Y/N linked her fingers behind the fabric and pulled it down his legs while he shimmied out from the boxers and kicked it to the floor. 

           “Can I take yours off?”

           As sure as she was about everything that was going on, there was still some hesitancy in her body, and he immediately sensed it, pulling a little bit away. “Y/N…”

           When her hands went to wrap around his wrists where they rested against her hips, horror washed over Bucky like a cold shower. “Did they…?”

           “No!” Y/N was immediate to answer. “No, they didn’t… but… they said after they were done with me after they turned me into their puppet… after they’d make me hurt you, you’d never want to touch me. That, in your last moments, you’d only have hate in your heart for me, and I’d have to live with that for the rest of my life.”

           He gently put a finger underneath her chin and lifted her head. “Even when I was staring down that barrel, all I could think about was how much I love you. How I’d give my life for you even if you were the one taking it. I could never hate you.”

           A violent sob ripped through her chest. “I don’t deserve you.”

           “You deserve the world, and I’ll try to give as much of it to you as I can.”

           She couldn’t take much more of his confessions because Y/N’s chest was already as full as it could be of love, so instead, she pulled Bucky back down for a passion-filled kiss, while shimmying out from her own underwear.

           “Condom?”

           “No,” Y/N shook her head. “Not this time. Need to feel you as you are.”

           “You sure?”

           She nodded. “Helen put me back on the pill about a month ago.”

           Bucky shuddered, nodding. “Alright. Okay. But I need to make sure I don’t hurt you first.”

           Y/N was about to say he could never hurt her, when two of his fingers slipped along her folds, cutting her words off in favour of the groan of pleasure.

           “Gotta take care of my girl the right way.”

           A moan seeped into Bucky’s skin when he pushed a cold metal digit into her tight entrance. His arm had the added feature to feel things if he wanted or switch it off when he didn’t want to, which was a nice thing, especially during missions (he’d forgotten to do so one time and when a bullet bounced off, it wasn’t like a bee bumping against glass, hot pain had rippled through his whole arm, so it was a good idea on Shuri’s part), but this time it was on, and the absolutely exquisite pressure and warmth that squeezed around his digits was enough to make him grind against the mattress to alleviate his own growing pressure.

           “Bucky, please,” Y/N practically mewled, eyes screwed shut, nails digging into his skin, making him groan in pleasure. He’d forgotten how delicious the sounds were and how close to the edge just the feeling of her nails marking half-moons into his back could bring him. 

           “Fuck,” he swore leaning up to kiss her once more, while he increased the speed of which his fingers were going in and out of her, while his thumb rubbed circles around her clit, and when he hotly breathed against her neck to ‘soak him all down to his elbows’ Y/N’s eyes rolled to the back of her head and she arched up from the bed as an orgasm shattered her world.

           Gently he coaxed her through the orgasm while muttering praises against her mouth.

           “You’re so beautiful,” Bucky sighed leaning to rest on his elbows. “So fucking gorgeous.”

           Y/N smiled, stroking his cheek. “You’re beautiful too, Bucky. More than you’ll ever know or will let yourself believe me.”

           The crooked smirk which he threw her reminded the one from Steve’s tales of him and his skirt-chasing days. “Guess you’ll have to convince me.”

           “With pleasure.”

           Her hand snaked down to where he’d been running the tip of his cock between her folds, before gently pressing him down so he could easily slide inside. When he was sheeted a moan of satisfaction came from both of them.

           It was like homecoming. Like curling up in a warm bed on a cold winter’s night. It was just right.

           “God, I could stay like this forever.” Bucky tucked a strand of hair behind Y/N’s ear.

           “We have forever and then some.”

           A look she could not figure out crossed his face. It was like absolute joy mixed with fear and terror. “You promise?”

           Y/N kissed him, trying to pour all of her love into the single act. “With everything I have in me.”

           He took that as the cue that he could move and experimentally rolled his hips towards hers. Bit by bit he picked up the pace, breaths turning into pants broken up by moans, sweat beading along his skin, a small burn appearing in his knees, but even that discomfort couldn’t overshadow the heavenly pleasure rippling through his veins.

           She’d always been the epitome of beauty and love, that’s how completely Bucky had fallen for her, and he could only hope he was the same for her. 

           “Bucky,” she choked out. “So close.”

           “Yeah?” His vision was starting to go white at the edges.

           “Mhm – ohh!” The confirmation turned into a squeal when he hit just that right spot, he concentrated all his thrusts to match it, and soon enough both of them were falling over the edge, clinging onto the other as if they were the last lifeline that existed for them.

           “Hey,” Bucky cooed, opening his eyes and seeing how furrowed Y/N’s brow was, how hard she was fighting to resurface. “Come back to me. Come back, doll.”

           Slowly, Y/N’s breathing evened out, her trembling became small shudders from the aftershock of the pleasure, and her lids fluttered, gaze meeting his.

           She’d come back.

           She’d always come back to her home.

           To Bucky.

Tags (crossed out wouldn’t take):

Bucky tag list: @thunderous-flower @who-cares-rn @projectxhappiness @callmebucky-doll @coal000 @killuaenthusiast @courtneychicken @sophiealiice @raquelbc2003 @watch-out-for-thorns @potentially-kinetic @thatonegirljessy99 @proxinge @bbkenna @buckysclub @ulired @fangirlofeverythingbasically @mrsalh32611 @horrorx570ximagines @the-nargles-made-me-do-it @pooslie @itsisabelanotisabella @httpmcrvel @purplebananatragedy @pxrrishly @parker-barnes-af @skulliebythesea​ @california-grown​ @stevehesaidabadlanguageword @belongsto-prachi​ @hello-i-am-insane​ @its-nott-my-problem @emmalbg @hopeinahotbox

Everything tags: @lumelgy @palaiasaurus64 @supernaturalbaesduh @breezy1415 @crazy--me @thatawkwardlittlefangirl @sea040561 @staryeyedgirl @deathbyarabbit @s-c-a-r-e-d-po-t-t-e-r @reblogger-not-a-blogger @m-a-t-91 @dalilx @i-need-a-hero-i-need-a-loki @maladaptive-ninja-returns @averyrogers83 @in-the-end-im-still-trash @gallifreyansass @dewy-biitch​ @avxgers​ @unlikelygalaxygiver​ @magicwithaknife @ollyoxenfrees​ @bnhvrdy​ @tvwhoresblog @celebsimagines @thatkindofgurl​ @sj-thefan​ @teenwolflover28 @lestersglitterglue​ @im-squished​

Marvel tags: @nerissa98​ @happyseagrill​ @asguardiansoftheavengers​ @crazybutconfidentaf​ @wishingforahome​ @pizzarollpatrol​ @desir-ae​

A/N: My Bucky boiiiii! I’m back! hope y’all like this rollercoaster :)

P.S. if you see yourself on my tag list and you’re crossed out means the tag didn’t work. if you still wanna be on the tag list please message me your new url and what was your old one so I can change it (if it’s not the change of the url then I genuinely dunno what could be the problem)

P.S.S. my tags are always open. 

P.S.S.S. please don’t repost my works on other platforms without specific written permission and don’t plagiarise them 

#Bucky Barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky smut #bucky barnes imagine #bucky imagine #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x female reader #bucky x y/n #Sebastian Stan #sebastian stan x reader #sebastian stan imagine #sebastian stan x you #sebastian stan x y/n #winter solider imagine #the winter soldier #the winter solider imagine #the winter solider x reader #winter solider x reader #the falcon and the winter soldier #wandavision #marvel #marvel imagine #Marvel Studios #imagine marvel #marvel endgame #Avengers #The Avengers #avengers fanfiction

[wolfstar-in-color]

June Creator Spotlight: BigBlackDog

Hello, colorful cuties, and welcome to our first creator spotlight!!

Each month, we will highlight a different creator in our lovely fandom who features diverse characterizations. We will invite you to get to know them better through questions and answers, Fandom Discourse(tm), and a featured prompt created by our guest!!!

For our first spotlight, we are more than pleased to highlight the incredible work of bigblackdog!!! See a little snippet of this wonderful interview below, along with bigblackdog’s prompt! Look below the cut for our complete interview. Don’t forget to share and interact with this post, and if you have anyone you’d like to recommend for a spotlight, shoot us an ask! You can find our first guest’s Tumblr here.

“I've experienced ups and downs in the wolfstar fandom. It often feels like the wolfstar fandom is willing to engage in discussion about every political issue but race. And the few people who are trying to talk about race consistently encounter this silence.”

bigblackdog’s prompt: I want to see more latino characters who are not impoverished or criminalized. Give me a joyful latino/e remus!

Hello, I'm bigblackdog! I'm almost 30, and I've been active in fandom on various platforms for about seven years now. I'm latina/e and live in the u.s. with a small white dog.

Q: How did you start creating in the fandom? What did you wish to bring into the fandom? 

A: Like a lot of fans I started with self insert fic as a middle schooler. Sometimes the practice of self-insert gets ragged on in fandom, as if you're not doing real character work, but I think it's really cool. And if you're an under represented identity in the traditional western canon of literature, self insert is a radical practice. Making space for yourself in a story that refuses or ignores your identities is a radical act. And that's what i want to bring to fandom-- disruption and self care.

Q: What things about s/r as characters or in their relationship inspire you to create around them? 

A: Wolfstar was the first queer ship I was introduced to. I wasn't someone who arrived in fandom with my own robust queer reading skills, I needed other queers to hold my hand and introduce me to queer ships and how to find them and build them. My interest in r/s was simply a clinging to queerness I wasn't finding in other places. I really think it could have been any characters, as long as they were queer.

Q: What things would you like to highlight about the Wolfstar fandom and your experience in it? 

A: I've experienced ups and downs in the wolfstar fandom. It often feels like the wolfstar fandom is willing to engage in discussion about every political issue but race. And the few people who are trying to talk about race consistently encounter this silence. It's hard not to feel bitter. But i've also met some amazing people and overall feel that fans really are trying their best to be welcoming and inclusive.

Q: What type of content do you wish you saw more in the fandom? 

A: I want to see more discourse that aims at amplifying underrepresented voices like wolfstar-in-color. I want to see more fans of color joyfully and irreverently writing themselves into the magical world!

Q: What is your favourite wolfstar fancontent (fic/fanart/gifset/etc) and how does it inspire you? 

A: I love dontthinkonithermione's rp. Not only does she do an amazing nerdy know it all Hermione, she envisions Black characters in every corner of the hp world. Have you seen her Hogwarts p.e. professor rps? i love the space she creates for herself, and the joy she does it with.

Q: Which of your own identities inform your creative processes? How has that process been for you? 

A: I started out in fandom really trying to feel out the nooks and crannies of being queer. As i've spent more time in fandom and become more confident in my queerness I've started looking closer at some of my other identities-- Latina, mixed, adhd-- and how i can squeeze them into the hp world. For a long time it was hard, especially with being Latine and mixed, to envision how that identity could belong in a 90s British boarding school in the Scottish wilderness. I also really struggled with the feeling that i would get "diversity" wrong. I’ve also struggled with feeling like I have to write diversity because i'm an underrepresented voice. Brown people are often pressured to do the work of educating white people about racism and in fandom spaces that often means pressure to write the reality of racism instead of the fantasy that white writers get to play with. And sometimes i just want to write a pwp without worrying about the revolution, you know? But i really love fandom for its refusal to play by the rules of capitalism and canon, eventually i started to feel like putting more of myself into my writing was another rule i could break.

Q: What advice do you have for other content creators with diverse backgrounds in the fandom? What would you say to people that might feel they don’t have the “right” history/experience/characteristics to participate in the creation of content related to Wolfstar? 

First, there's a lot of content on tumblr that aims to silence your voice, learn how to recognize the difference between cancel culture and encouragement. Sometimes content that seems well meaning still presents writing diversity as a list of black and white rules (and virtue signaling) instead of encouragement for underrepresented voices to share their own messy experience. Set those rules gently aside. Second, fandom is built on the idea that the author isn't the only person who gets to play. we all get to play. It doesn't always feel like we were invited, but the great thing about fandom is there is no barrier to entry, no prior experience or publishing hoops to jump through. This is our playground too. If canon is dead then why can't our stories be brown and queer and neurodivergent? Third, find your people. i've found that having just one other person to talk about race with has made the whole space feel more welcoming.

Q: How could we build a more diverse fandom? 

A: We have to stop prioritizing white and cis male voices. We recognize that policing irl is a problem inextricable from whiteness and maleness, but we don't see that fandom policing online is also a problem deeply embedded in whiteness and maleness. White and cis male people frequently use their discomfort with difficult topics to change the subject from a critical discussion to one that prioritizes their white and/or male feelings. The same thing happens online when personal discomfort is used to cancel or undermine content that's challenging to a white or male voice. White and cis male voices are used to having their needs met above others. And we still cater to that in fandom spaces when we privilege 'fetishization' discourse over racial discourse. When we lift up bipoc and women/trans/nb voices and the issues they're concerned with we'll make fandom a more welcoming place for underrepresented voices.

Q: What’s your favourite thing to modify in Sirius’s or Remus’s characterizations to bring new perspectives to them? 

A: It really depends on the story i'm writing and what issue i'm trying to figure out. Sometimes i need Sirius to be Adhd to come to terms with my brain, sometimes i need two brown boys to fall in love and be happy against all odds.

Q: What does diversity mean to you? What does that encompass in fannish spaces? 

A: This is a hard question! I tend to think of diversity as those voices that are disenfranchised or pushed to the margins. And fannish spaces have all the same hierarchies and blind spots as other spaces. In fannish spaces there's the idea that you can curate your experience to some extent, but for marginalized voices, at least in my experience, no matter how much you curate the marginalization is still there.

Q: What are your ideas about the notions of culture and ethnicity? How do you relate to those notions? 

A: There was a time in my life where relating to my ethnicity was largely a process of recognizing larger systems of oppression and how they worked against my various identities. And for a while it was a really helpful way to frame my experiences. Now I feel a little less attached to ethnicity as like, a monolithic concept threaded through my whole life and more attached to the small things that I enjoy about my ethnicity and culture-- making a really good pot of beans, for example.

Q: Leave us with a quote or work of art that always inspires you. 

A: "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." Audre Lorde

#creator spotlight #bigblackdog #bigblackdogfic #wolfstar #fandom #diversity

[bleachbleachbleach]

Fic: Away, Away

This was written for Day 13 of @hitsuhina-week! If you prefer, you can also read this on AO3. Which is my preference, because Tumblr keeps eating my spacing whether I use Rich Text or HTML so it looks absurd on here. >.>

Aftermath / Going on a Trip Together Hinamori Momo + Hitsugaya Toushirou Pre-Series

--

This will be the last time. 

(Whisper it, so he won't hear.)

--

Every spring, Junrinan finds its way to the western mountains. (The souls of Rukongai wander.) There is no grand procession: They disperse across the vast range, often alone and sometimes in twos. They are always careful not to cause disruption, because while one soul in a forest full of spirits generally isn't worth the effort, seven is a meal.

They are three. 

Soon, they will be two. Hinamori can't stop whispering her new name, hi na mo ri. It's early to be out here, but the snows were mild this year and new growth is already peeking from beneath the thick, rich leaf rot. She feels an affinity with this year's tender saplings, a feeling that grows hotter with every whispered repetition of her name. Her grandmother had given it to her, showed her how to write it. She'd studied her name harder than she had the exam.

Hinamori has an acceptance letter. In April, she is leaving. 

Hinamori nearly walks straight into a nettle spirit--the hair-eating kind--draped across the game path plain as day.

"Do you wanna be bald?" Toushirou grouses as he yanks her back just in time. "I guess it fits. You're acting like a blind old man." 

Hinamori blinks, brushes imagined hair from her face. It's the fifth time she's tried to walk straight through a spirit in as many days. 

"Studying is bad for your eyes," says Toushirou. He doesn't care for moony Hinamori. Momo had paid a lot more attention to what was in front of her. But she's Hinamori now. At least, that's the only name she'll write, dragging her thin stick through the dirt outside the house. So that's what he calls her.

Toushirou squeezes through a bumble of pot-bellied mushroom spirits and Hinamori follows him, stepping carefully into his tracks.

"You'll need to keep reading even when I'm not around. It'll go if you don't practice," she says.

Toushirou makes a noncommittal sound.

"I'll send you letters full of kanji and quiz you on them when I visit." I'll learn how to write them pretty, she promises, just like Baachan does.

"Will you write me back?" she asks.

"Probably not."

This hurts her. But Toushirou plans to go the rest of his life without writing a single thing. It's not personal.

"Why would I need to tell you what happens in Junrinan?" he says. "You already know."

--

And if I forget?

--

Life in Junrinan doesn't change. That's what Toushirou was promised. The winters are quiet and slow, and in spring they go to the mountains. Summers are for farming, and autumns for harvest. Then winters are quiet and slow again.

Spring passes with bracken and angelica in hand. It is counted in the spirals of ferns as their number grows in the baskets. Some are dried; some are steeped. Mostly, they are sold. Many of the men in Junrinan spend springtime waking before dawn to sprint to the mountain, forage the lowlands, and return to the village for evening revelries, but Toushirou and Hinamori and their grandmother have always spent the whole of the season between the trees. The mountains prefer it when you stay. 

This will be true no matter how long Hinamori is gone.

April 12th through July 20th, then our first break, she says, scratching numbers in the dirt. But Junrinan doesn't have dates the way the Academy does. She draws the way the trees will change. The change happens in a long straight line, and beyond July 20th there is an emptiness rather than a repetition. How do you draw an unwritten future?

Hinamori writes her name again.

--

In the spring, everything is full: Toushirou enjoys the wet green of it, the late snows and vernal flooding. The water flows down from the mountains ice cold and the forests are loud and thick with spirits.

The spirits have no names that are written and no faces that have ever stayed the same, unremembered but immemorial. They are loud. Most of them respect the borders of his body. They brush against his legs with thick wet fur or scrape his cheek with leathery wings. They coil around his throat, treating him like a tree or rock. Some of them are trees and rocks. They are the mountains and forest, just like the wandering souls of Junrinan. They all belong here, more or less.

Toushirou can see most of them. When the blurry ones pass through you, it's feverishly unpleasant for the split-second it happens and then is nothing at all. The blurry ones, Toushirou figures, aren't actually in this forest. They are like shadows at sunset, cast long and far from their bodies. Their true bodies roam a different world entirely.

That's what Hinamori wants to do. 

Hinamori used to clamor for shinigami stories any time one of them passed through town. She'd been told one time that all travelers carried stories and now expected it.

The shinigami never expected her. Unless commerce was involved they didn't tend to acknowledge souls, or even look at them. So they always seemed surprised by Hinamori, like it hadn't occurred to them that they'd meet a real, full person out here. Which is fair enough, Toushirou grudgingly allows--there are plenty of souls in Junrinan so old and staid they cannot move, nor speak. (Don't touch them. It's unlucky.)

We don't talk about those.

The shinigami talk story: The story of black dye. The story of a tall bathhouse. The story of grilled meat on sticks. The story of the time they saw a noble. The story of a big fish. The story of a bigger fish. The story of the bullet train. The story of my sister, who isn't very interesting but is the only thing that comes to mind right now sorry. The story of 19th seats should be paid more. The story of the soul who wanted a story. 

Almost none of the stories are about death.

"Little girls shouldn't go into those mountains," one shinigami once said, which is as close as a story ever came to it. "Nasty stuff in there. They're called Hollows, you know. Real bad guys."

The shinigami patted the sword at his hip. He'd just told Hinamori a story about the third son of a lesser noble whom everyone loved and thought deserved better than the shadows of his elder brothers. And how preposterous is it, really, that he should have to prove himself when his brothers never did? Pushed out here into the boonies, seeking honor and fame. He really feels for the guy. Don't you? Don't you?

"You seem to know a lot about 'this guy,'" Toushirou offered.

"I'm a master storyteller," said the shinigami.

I've killed a Hollow before, you know, boasted the master storyteller. He'd led a unit of twelve men into those mountains out there, which were so quiet you could hear your own heart beating. When you can hear your terror--that's when you're on the cusp of valor. His eyes lit up. I was the one who cut the mask, he said.

Twelve is obviously far too many (seven is a meal), and those mountains have never been quiet. Toushirou didn't think he'd really been.

In the spring, though, there's a dark scar where once there'd been a copse of trees. Shattered branches and burned ground. His grandmother says it smells like Hollow. 

"They see things differently," his grandmother half-explains, of the shinigami and their Hollows and the silence of their mountains. Of course this would seem a different place to them.

"They're idiots," says Toushirou, though suddenly he's not sure. The scar is hair-raising, and his stomach roils. Maybe they really shouldn't be out in the woods.

"The shinigami know more than you," says Hinamori, taking his hand in hers. She grips it tightly, reassuring, or maybe annoyed. Both. She has a lot of school spirit for someone who hasn't even been yet.

But she doesn't let go of his hand, even after they've returned to the cover of the live trees, kitsune fire nestled in the brambles at their feet.

Toushirou makes the mistake of noticing a spirit that tends to linger just out of sight. It feeds on your instinct to look, and it grows higher and higher the more you crane your neck, so sure you'll be able to sneak a glimpse of it. By the time you realize the trick, you've always been had. It's very annoying.

--

This will be the last time.

(Scream it.)

--

"It's so dark out here," says Hinamori, in spite of the kitsune and all the rest. Lots of spirits glow. She is still holding his hand.

Toushirou thinks of the small lamp Hinamori had bought to study by, the wild shadows it cast on the interior walls and the way it had made all hours bright. He thinks of all the hours she hadn't slept. All because some shinigami had told her a story about a school. 

Anything would seem dark by comparison. He can't remember the last time she hadn't had her lamp on when he went to bed.

Hinamori is going to snap the bones in his hand. He yelps. Tears prick in his eyes. "What's wrong with you?"

She doesn't let go, and then she doesn't let go.

"It's so quiet," she says faintly. Her free hand wavers over her heart protectively.

It's so dark. It's so quiet. Quiet enough to hear your terror.

Except it's not. It's not dark.

It's not quiet.

The forest is full, air thick with chirrups and buzzing, screeching, hooting, chittering. Bodies clack and bones shudder. Reeds whistle and something large makes a whomping, resonating tone. Foxfire hisses as it makes sparks, throws phosphorous motes that dance high above. A heartbeat glow marches up the ridged spine of a lizard spirit. The forest is as it has always been.

Toushirou's eyes widen. 

"You can't hear them anymore."

To Hinamori, it is all darkness and silence. 

She sinks to the ground, burying her head in her knees as though to hide from the quiet. From the black. She drops his hand.

"Momo--"

She shakes her head. She opens her hands to the sky like she's waiting for a bird to land. For a split second, a small warm flame billows from her palms. 

Then the entire forest catches.

The thought had been innocent enough--to be her own light in the darkness, conquer her fear. But the forest only hears the conquering. It's the kitsune who don't take kindly to Hinamori's light. Their fire screeches up and outward and then all the spirits are in frenzy. A meal! scream some; and others, a threat! A danger to be expunged. A strange thing not of this forest, these mountains.

Outsider! the world around them hisses. Away.

away, away

Hinamori screams as the flames leap forward--the claws, the vines, the terrors and all in between. She throws herself in front of Toushirou. 

Toushirou can't find his voice at all. The wide whites of his eyes feel the propulsive gust of the forest coming down on them. On Hinamori. No! he can't shout, cold fear coiling over his frozen legs and pricking at his shoulder blades. Something serpentine rushes past him and he's on the ground. His head smacks hard against a writhing tree root and he tastes bile, feels nothing. 

Hears everything.

away

When he wakes, snow is falling, wet and sloppy. Kitsune are nibbling at the singed edges of a hanafuda. Hinamori is in her grandmother's arms. She's crying.

--

Before Hinamori started studying, with her bright lamp and her long nights and her feverish poetry scratched into the ground, before the hunger came, she'd woken one morning to a futon streaked with her blood. Her grandmother said that this was womanhood.

"The tea will stop the bleeding," she assured a tearful Hinamori as they scrubbed at her futon, pinking the waters. Toushirou beat at the stain with his feet, splashing everywhere.

"You don't have to touch it," Hinamori had said quietly, her eyes fixed on the water. "It's my mess."

"Baachan said I have to help," Toushirou objected. "Besides, am I supposed to just sit here and watch you bleed?"

--

Just one last time.

--

Hinamori isn't hurt, but she is in pain. The forest doesn't want her anymore. (She is leaving.)

"The forest sees them differently," his grandmother says, the other half of her earlier explanation. "Them," meaning shinigami. "Them," meaning Hinamori, now.

Shinigami see and are seen differently. They belong differently. Toushirou had only ever distinguished them by their black clothes, and sometimes their attitude. But his grandmother talks about reiryoku, about reiatsu, about the realms the shinigami travel through and the spirits they are blind to. The spirits that belong to different worlds than theirs, even when they're side by side. Some worlds are bound to one another, tied by fate and duty; others are repelled.

As Hinamori's reiatsu blossomed with her womanhood, slowly folding outward past her skin, beyond her body, her worlds were chosen for her. Like the bleeding, there's a tea to help this, too, but it's not the same. 

There is no going back.

"What're you looking at," Toushirou scowls at her. He's not sure what to do with her pain. There's nothing he can do for her pain. But she's looking at him differently, a little less like Hinamori and a little more like the rest of Junrinan does, and that scares him.

She asks him if he'd felt anything. Something cold.

She's asked him before. Every day since the incident, she's asked him.

His answer is always the same. No. Just fear.

He should be helping his grandmother. They're here in the forest for a reason, and that hasn't changed; they have foraging to do. But he doesn't want to leave Hinamori alone. 

"Don't be afraid of it, Shiro-chan," says Hinamori. Hinamori, who's now afraid of the dark.

Hinamori, who is leaving.

--

She doesn't have a choice. When her power comes into her she knows there is only one place she can go. It's a place she has always wanted to go. (She has always wanted to go places.) But now she has to.

She smiles. 

If she is going to go, she's going to fly. She will love, and yearn, and cry. She will give all of herself to the future before her, even when it means that precious things can be only memory. If there is something Hinamori leaves in him when she goes, it's flight. 

Someday, Toushirou will remember to remember that.

--

"Will you write me?" she asks.

--

--

(You will be written.)

--

She returns for the summer, then is gone again. Winter, then gone again. But she doesn't come home for the spring. They'll be going to the realm of the living. They will fight Hollows, just like the Gotei 13. She explains the meaning and stroke order of the characters, go tei,  though she doesn't explain what the Gotei 13 actually is. That part must already seem obvious to her. Shinigami stuff. That's all Toushirou will ever need to know. Seems pretentious.

When Junrinan returns to the mountains this year, Toushirou and his grandmother stay behind. "It's dangerous," she says. She squeezes his shoulders.

It's dangerous now. 

There is no going back.

Junrinan may not change, but life does, and by the second summer, Hinamori has mostly forgotten the shapes of the forest spirits. Toushirou is forgetting them, too. 

The difference is, Hinamori has found replacements. She talks about incantations and sword stances, friendships and histories. She has been to the realm of the living. It's only been a year, and already they have nothing in common but their memories, ever-receding. 

Sometimes she wakes up screaming. She doesn't say why.

--

Toushirou dreams of a chill ripping through him. He dreams of a place where there are no mountains as far as the eye can see.

--

He wakes to Hinamori.

#hinamori momo #hitsugaya toushirou #hitsuhina week #bleach fic #IT'S FOR THE CULTURE #I wanted to play with the idea of the districts of Rukongai having their own cultures and practices apart from what we know of the Seireitei #I thought it would be interesting to imagine that it's because these things are not legible/perceivable to our shinigami narrators #because their existence is tied more closely to other worlds and realms #So just like there are things that humans can't see wandering their world there are things that shinigami can't see either #👻👻👻👻👻👻 #yes this is the angery fic that hates me but its deadline is today so now it is done!

[dreamii-yume]

New Episode Update Let’s GOO!!!

Warning : This is just Yume having a mental breakdown, seriously. This episode update was WHACK.

~ MAJOR SPOILERS FOR 68-75 ~

I know we ain’t participating and all but the game reminding you that there’s 10 minutes left to prepare is seriously bad for my heart.

Aah, shiet. Vil is still hurt.

He still has small wounds and scratches that he hid make up. Daddy, I’m worried.

Apparently, yeah, I’m not the only one cause my homeboy, Epel just asked to switch the center role with Vil. THE CONFIDENCE.

Aw, he’s worried about him falling over during stage (And make the performance look bad) Come on, Epel just be honest-

...He finally became the ideal poisoned apple that Vil wanted, huh?

Vil being proud a mom.

But the queen inside him is STRONG.

He’ll embrace the villain in him, OUR QUEEN CAN STILL GO. INJURED, WHO?

...AAND he proceeds to roast Epel again lol Typical Vil.

I love how Epel just accepted a nickname like “Doku Ringo-chan” lol It’s so cute, senior-junior relationship goals right there.

HERE WE GO.

Everyone is actually really confident hahaha

I really wish Deuce’s mom, Ace’s brother, Jamil’s sister, and Vil’s dad were here in person to watch.

HECK I WANT KALIM’S WHOLE FAMILY HERE WHY NOT

T-THEY’RE REALLY LETTING US HEAR THE FULL SONG. 

IS THAT JAMIL RAPPING.

Look at Jamil’s solo SD dancing. LOOK AT IT.

I really fucking love Vil’s singing voice aaa

HIS VOICE IS SO GOOD.

Album when disney.

Is Vil okay.

...aight im hearing some high quality panting here

...dont mind me listening to it a bit too much...

...they’re going to be great reference for some spicy- leave me alone

Vil panting is making me feel SOMETHING.

ANYWAY. THE CROWD IS A MOOD.

IS VIL OKAY.

Unmei no megami is giving me idia ptsd here.

Heartslabyul Senpais are watching their kids, looking all proud *sniff

Oh god, after playing Obey Me, it just occurred to me how similar Cater and Asmodeus’ voices are...

Watch these Senpai dorks act like Ace and Deuce’s second family. Trey being the dad, Riddle being the mom, and Cater being the supportive big bro. It’s so beautiful.

Riddle’s voice is a lot more softer now, I just realized...It’s so soothing...

God i miss u too octavinelle never change

Yeah, why tf did Floyd not audition for this

Bro, can you imagine Nobuhiko Okamoto in the squad as well??? IMAGINE-

Of course, he wasn’t in the mood back then. Of course. Why did i even ask.

IMAGINE FLOYD BEING IN VDC NEXT YEAR.

Omg i miss u too octavinelle never change

Azul’s gonna overblot again with Floyd’s marketing skills lol

Jade coming in like welp i guess thats that. Too bad, huh Azul?

GOD i miss u too octavinelle never change

SAVANA BITCHES HI

I wonder if these mfs knew that Vil just overblotted and malmal was the one who fixed the stage lol

oooh Leona’s sus about something he a sharp boi

Speak up my guy—

still so weird leona taking his job seriously

Malleus looking happier seeing this performance rather than Lilia’s lol

I miss the simpery in Sebek

Silver’s not in the verge of falling into a coma for once wow

Chenya’s so cute.

AND WE’RE BACK TO CUTE HEIGH HO TEAM

fcking shotacons man...im not one to talk

Aw, they didn’t show Neige performance...

The simping in the crowd is a MASSIVE mood.

WHO WINS TELL ME

These night raven fuckers better vote for us and not pull a “oh shie my hand slipped lololol” i swear to god- im gonna throw hands

*me holding my phone and pretending to vote as well

Suspense music intensifies be like-

HAAA

BOIS, ITS ONE VOTE DIFFERENCE WHO IS IT AAAA

WHAT.

HOW DARE- HOW!? HOW DID WE LOSE!?

WE LOST BY ONE VOTE!?

EVERYONE’S SO SHOCKED LOL

vil pls dont overblot again-

Noooo grim’s tuna cans-

WE REALLY LOST TO A LEGIT KIDS SONG.

These children do not have the right to be this cute. I wanna take Timmy, Toby, and Shelpie home.

I swear to god one of these dwarves sounds like Cheka lol Is it Toby?

EPEEELLLL DONT CRRYYYY

KALIMMMM DONT CRRYYYY

KALIM HAVING THE AUDACITY TO SOUNDING LIKE A BIG BROTHER AND THEN CRYING HIS OWN RIGHT AFTER LOLOLOL

I HATE THIS EPISODE YALL MADE MY TWO BOIS CRY IM FIGHTING THIS EPISODE. BURN THIS.

This background music too though im deeeeddd

KALIM IM SO SORRY FOR MAKING A SINFIC ABOUT YOU PLS DONT CRY-

Jamil impressed about Vil being “calm” and Vil just going “h e h. you dont even know.”

....ha...

Monsieur Rook. WHAT did you say.

ROOK VOTED FOR ROYAL SWORD. Are you kidding me. You snek how could you- i loved you

WHAT DID I SAY- Ya’ll night raven fuckers shall not slip by their fingers when voting rook.

Vil is in the brink of passing out aaaaa

I have never heard Ace this pissed before whoa- lol he sounds like Deuce in his delinquent mode

Aw...Rook felt that Neige’s performance carries a stronger bond than theirs :’( it’s hard to put the blame on him when he’s saying all these stuff

It’s just like what they said in the past episodes that it’s really hard voting for your own team when you know the opposing team is better.

Aww...He just wanted Vil to believe in himself more...Rook is such a best man. Im crying-

Oh noooo is Vil gonna cry too nooo- daddy turned to baby really quick SOMEONE GIVE HIM AN EMERGENCY HUG

Well- at least...at least the 100 year record of not being able to win is still going, yeah? Um...bad joke? Sorry, i’ll see myself out-

NEIGE NOT NOW AND YOUR VII-KUN BULLSHIT- we’re having a moment here

Neige is such sweetheart but aaaahh— This makes it worse, we can’t even hate him aaa—

OMG JUST WHEN I THOUGHT THINGS COULDN’T- AAAAA

MONSIEUR ROOK. YOU’RE A FAN OF NEIGE!?

MOTHERFUCKER just got exposed by Neige himself lol

Going to Neige’s shake hand events, sending him letters, buying all his merch and shie- HE’S A FULL BLOWN NEIGE STAN

WTF YOU SNEK GET OUT OF THIS SCHOOL-

OOOOHHH THAT FUCKING ALBUM- HIS “LIFE’S WORK” or whatever bullshit IS FULL OF NEIGE

...actually- my japanese is lacking- im not sure lol what is a ブロマイド??? Lol I feel like a clown.

Rook is sweating profusely LOL

...what do you have to say for yourself, monsieur rook.

Wait- huh is that-

IS HE GONNA CRY-

WHY IS EVERYONE CRYING!??!?!?!

HE’S SILENTLY CRYING AS HE INTRODUCED HIMSELF TO NEIGE WHAT. THE. FUCK IS THIS EPISODE.

Neige fanclub??? Eternal Snow??? What kind of creepy-ass- OH, HE EVEN HAS A MEMBERSHIP NUMBER TOO-

Props to Neige with his :) expression unfaltering.

I’m- I’m speechless.

Vil is just looking down at Rook in disappointment like- “you’re more pathetic than I am”

Queen just went “I think you need this handkerchief more than I do now” THAT’S RIGHT. REPENT MOTHERFUCKER.

Rook crying is cursed.

But damn, I’m kinda liking this new relationship this bitchy relationship they have

Neige just dragged everyone’s ass back on stage and his snow white energy just said “LETS ALL BE FRIENDS AND SING”

NEIGE IS FUCKING GREAT- HE REALLY DID GOT THESE BITCHES TO SING HEIGH HO LOL

ACE’S RELUCTANT SINGING AND DEUCE LOOKING LIKE HE’S HAVING FUN

KALIM IS SUCH A MOOD, SINGING EVEN WITHOUT KNOWING THE LYRICS AND JAMIL JUST HAVING THAT “i want to die” ENERGY

AIGHT. ROOK IS HAVING WAY TOO MUCH FUN AND EPEL IS TRYING HIS BEST. HE’S SO CUTE-

OMG NEIGE AND VIL HAVING SUCH GOOD HARMONY—

YAHOO Y A H O O TANOSHIINDA~~ 

YA’LL SURE ABOUT GIVING ME THIS BLESSED MOMENT??

What a somewhat happy ending, even though Rook just backstabbed us I’m crying Beauté 100 points!!!

LOL Vil realizing he’s having fun singing with Neige- “SOMEONE JUST END ME RIGHT NOW-“ The desperation in his voice-

I love how Neige’s yahoo yahoo is messing with everyone’s head, even Vil wants to pass out lol

haha Crowley is so depressed lol

WHA- WHO-

HEADMASTER OF ROYAL SWORD!?

He looks like your typical grandpa- and his outfit looks like that one mickey mouse wizard outfit but blue—

Old man just went “we won lol” just to piss Crowley off I like this guy’s energy already-

Crowley being most likely as old as this guy—

ooohh this man just sensed something in this stage- Leona did too, didn’t he???

* Damn. Crowley talking so fast sounds like he’s making a load of bullshit lol

Anyway, I’m just glad that it’s not mickey mouse who’s the headmaster— I would’ve lost my shit.

We’re back in our dorms and I forgot that the squad doesn’t live with us anymore. It’s suddenly so lonely now...

Grim is getting the yahoo yahoo ptsd too lol it’s too goddamn catchy

oooohh shiet- mickey is calling us again

YES we finally got a good picture of this motherfucker

It seems like nothing is disrupting our communication this time, so MC thought to call Grim but—

Grim is not here.

Uuhhh...Grim? Where you’ve gone??? We’re getting flashbacks of the first parts of the game.

We went out to find Grim and HE’S CHOMPING ON ANOTHER BLACK STONE ON THE STAGE-

GRIM SPIT THAT OUT YOU LOOK TERRIFYING

AAAAAHH GRIM HAS GONE FERAL— He’s attacking US

Is this because we didn’t win his tuna canss nooo

NoOO SWEET BABY COME BACK.

Legit I’m sad, please baby don’t overblot like this...

He learned a new move though- SCRATCH

Ooh— We’re seeing some Ignihyde scenes here~

P U H I H I

Idia getting a lot of emails from bigshot companies whoa—

THAT OLYMPUS—?! EXCUSE ME??? Ortho what- Are we finally getting that Hercules episode—

Damn getting a hot chance in olympus only to put them down the recycling bin oof— Idia why edit : Yume was informed that olympus is kind of a company that sponsored VDC sorry she was mind-fucked at this moment and the ability to understand proper Japanese just went whoosh lol Thanks to @starshiningsirius for pointing it out for Yume~ ♥︎ HONESTLY YUME’S JUST GONNA WAIT FOR ACTUAL PROFESSIONAL TRANSLATORS AT THIS POINT LOL Don’t trust me for important situation too much lol

Aaaahh...We’re getting this shut-in out of his room in the next episode, are we?

And that concludes the whole Pomefiore Episode! JESUS CHRIST 75 CHAPTERS ALL IN ALL!? How long is the Ignihyde chapter going to be, huh!?

This was a really, really fun episode lol I’d consider this a fan service episode actually cause of all the things we get to experience— The singing, dancing, and the new songs, THE DRAMA. (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

But then, the plot thickens, no? What’s going to happen to Grim? In the Ignihyde episode? And those reoccurring memories of us? And our relationship with Tsunotarou lol ALSO WE NEVER REALLY DID FIND OUT WHAT ROOK’S UNIQUE MAGIC IS. DISNEY EXPLAIN—

Thanks for reading this shitpost of Yume losing her shiet lol See you all in the Ignihyde Episode~ ❤

#twisted wonderland #spoilers #episode 5 #Talk with Yume

[panharmonium]

this is their “because we’re the same” moment.

this is kakashi gauging the situation and making a conscious decision to offer up private information about himself, not because it’s something he particularly likes talking about, but because it’s what the kid in front of him needs to hear.  a teacher with poorer instincts might have bristled at sasuke’s behavior, or taken it personally, but kakashi knows better than to react that way.  he isn’t upset by sasuke’s lashing out, and he doesn’t bite back - he stays quiet and collected, and he lets sasuke’s attacks roll off him like water.  then, in the same mild tone as always, he issues a calm correction, while simultaneously offering sasuke an opportunity for connection.

and just like with iruka’s confession to naruto, this connection is successful.  sasuke is visibly, dramatically affected by hearing this.  it snaps him out of his rage, and sends him into a quiet, almost abashed contemplation.

his expression softens.  his anger evaporates.  everything deflates and deescalates.  he stops shouting and starts listening.  this is the first time he’s ever been approached on this subject by somebody who can rightfully claim to know what they’re talking about.  this is the first time sasuke can’t simply discard what’s being said to him because “well, what the hell do they know, anyway?”  this is the first time he’s ever been approached by an adult who a) sees through his ‘perfect student’ act and knows exactly what’s motivating both his past successes and his current crisis, and who b) truly, honestly understands the pain he’s feeling.  

this has NEVER happened to sasuke before.  sasuke is, as far as we can see, left to fend for himself after the uchiha massacre.  he has never had an adult address his issues with him like this, honestly and in plain language and with a kind of steady compassion that is gentle and empathetic without crossing the line into indulgence (which has its place, but which isn’t the kind of guidance sasuke needs right now).  kakashi asks sasuke to hold himself accountable for his actions while at the same time saying “i understand how you feel.  i know how badly it hurts.”  he validates sasuke’s refusal to be lectured by someone who can’t possibly understand what he’s going through, even though it means sharing a piece of his history that he absolutely has not discussed with any of the other kids and that he generally tries to keep private.  he knows sasuke deserves to hear from somebody who Gets It.  he knows sasuke will refuse to listen to anyone who doesn’t get it.  he knows sasuke shouldn’t HAVE to listen to anyone who doesn’t get it - sasuke deserves better than preachy platitudes from people who can’t possibly understand how much pain he’s feeling.  

this is the most important conversation kakashi and sasuke ever have.  it’s not the first time they address this issue - kakashi started his careful foray into the Itachi Waters as far back as their preparations for the final round of the chunin exams - but this is the first time he really dives off the dock, and it’s almost an effective enough attempt to avert disaster.  sasuke stays up in that tree for hours after kakashi leaves, thinking about what he said.  we see how much of a pull sasuke’s “new comrades to help fill the void” have on him, despite how difficult it is for him to consider giving up the quest that for years has been his sole reason for existing.  

kakashi reaches sasuke during this conversation, the same way iruka is able to reach naruto.  but unlike iruka and naruto’s connection, sasuke’s situation ends up being a perfect storm of bad circumstances - kakashi is ordered out of the village just when orochimaru’s minions are about to make their move, and the connection he makes with sasuke is disrupted before it can make the kind of difference in sasuke’s life that iruka’s companionship makes in naruto’s.  and of course, we all know where things go after that.

but it still matters!  it matters that this is the last conversation they have.  the next time they meet, three years later, it’s a mirror image of this, right down to kakashi tying sasuke up with a wire.   that moment when kakashi tells him “look deep inside your heart, one more time / deep down, you know the truth” - the shot flashes to sasuke’s memory of all his old classmates, the same way sakura and naruto emerged in his mind when kakashi told him “still, we’re not all that bad off.  at least you and i have found new comrades to help fill the void.”  and then the camera zooms in for a close-up where the only thing in the frame is sasuke’s trembling lip - because he’s hurting!  even though he’s too far gone right now to come back (and he has valid reasons for this, importantly), there’s a buried part of him that still feels conflicted.  a part of him is still up in that tree, trying to decide what to do.  

the importance of sasuke finding an adult who understands what’s he dealing with and can connect to him in a way that no other grown-up has ever been able to do just CAN’T be overstated.  sasuke needs his friends - desperately, he needs them - but he’s also in desperate need of an Adult.  sasuke has been living in an absolutely fucked headspace for years and years, and he has way too much trauma/baggage to sort through on his own.  he’s sixteen years old.  he needs a grown-up to support him - and the only person he’ll ever accept in this role is somebody who understands him, someone else who lost everyone they loved, someone else who suffered at the hands of the system, someone else who hated himself and blamed himself for the deaths of the people he cared about and who somehow still made it out of the darkness without succumbing to the tempting oblivion of self-destruction.

sasuke needs to know that it’s possible to suffer the way he has suffered and still be a whole person, still live a whole life, still have loving and meaningful relationships with the people around him.  he needs to know that he can do more than just survive - that maybe he’ll have to overhaul everything he thought he knew about what it means to be “strong” or “safe” in this world, but that if he can manage to do that, then there is a way for him to be rescued from his pain, one that doesn’t involve hurting other people (or himself).  he needs to know that his life can be more than just the terrible things that happened to him.  and the only person who can teach him all of that is someone who’s already figured it out for himself.  

#long post #naruto #meta #he's like me #lotta thoughts happening in my brain right now and i'm sorry for all the meta dumps but i have a backlog from last week when i was busy #i absolutely Must talk about these things before they eat me alive

[alicemitch09writes]

lame

09.

new beginnings are always the hardest part

Despite everything you said – being happy to see your two childhood friends finally acknowledging each other, coming to better terms with their relationship, you didn’t talk to the two for a week though, slightly pissed that they let their damn egos get the best of them.

Really, boys were stupid. So stupid. How stupid? Fucking stupid!

Yet, at the same time, you merely used it as an excuse to really re-evaluate your stance on things.

Honestly, it was nice to have them work through their feelings and finally see each other on equal footing, despite the fact that they had to use their goddamn fists and talk civilly- nope. Childhood friends with serious issues that were slathered by insecurities and bullying could only be mended by fists and screaming. Still, despite having the two finally coming to terms with each other, they still felt so far and out of reach. You had to wonder, where were you in all of that?

Exhaling through your nose, you rested your head against the mop handle, running your forehead through the wood to ground you. “Stupid,” you say to no one in particular. Well, maybe it was more to yourself.

Tiredly making your way through your home, sluggishly pulling the door open, you announced your presence, voice slurring. “I’m home.”

All you wanted to do was bury yourself in bed, take a short nap, or drown in bath- 

Something was off.

Immediately, your senses were on high.

First, you caught a familiar scent – two of them, actually. One smelled like sweat and body wash, the other was of burnt sugar. Then, there were the familiar gentle beats. Rushing towards your living room, you all but slammed the door wide open, yellow eyes opening just as wide.

Green and carmine eyes widened at your presence. Staring. You blink. They blinked. You blink again. Izuku raised a tentative hand, smiling weakly. Bakugou just stared with his hands in his pockets.

…

…

…

“OLD MAN! What are they doing here!?”

At your outburst, your grandfather comes running towards you whacking you in the head, hard.

The boys winced at that.

Your grandfather eyes you sternly. “Don’t be rude to our guests, foolish girl!”

The two guests just eye you – one worried, with his hands out, the other in awed concern, feeling the pain from the whack.

"You didn't answer my question," you growled, the back of your head still hurting. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY DOING HERE!?"

"Simple: they came to visit."

"AND YOU JUST LET THEM!?"

"They were standing outside the house, it's rude to just leave them there."

"THEN YOU SHOULD'VE! THEY'RE NOT FUCKING STRAYS!"

"They're our guests, foolish girl."

"You should've left them out, then asked for my opinion!"

Beside you, the two boys shifted their eyes going back and forth at your heated exchange with your grandfather.

"Why should I? It's my house."

"Don't I get a say?"

"Do you want me to hit you again?" he raised a hand threateningly, causing you (and the two boys) to wince and take a step back, the back of your head still throbbing. "Ha, thought so." You gave him a sneer, he smirked smugly.

“I’m going to cook now, keep them company!” turning his back, he casually waves off at you three, walking to the kitchen. “Have them greet your parents.”

Sighing, taking a few calming breaths, you glared at the two boys, gesturing then with your head. Without a word, they were on their feet and followed after you.

It’s been a while since Bakugou’s ever been to your house. Izuku comes over a lot, has been over the years. He can't help but feel jealous of how close the two of you are, he felt so left out.

There was an altar by the corner of the living room, where he found you kneeling in front of, lips pressed tightly staring hard at the wooden cabinet long and hard. Eventually, you took hold of the doors and opened, expression softening as you saw the smiling photos of your deceased parents.

“Hi Ma, Pa, looked who came over to visit.”

Quickly getting to his knees behind you, Izuku gestured for Bakugou to do the same, hands pressed together in front of his chest. “Auntie, Uncle, it’s been a while!”

“A-Ah, yeah…” Bakugou says, awkwardly, you had to roll your eyes at that.

“These idiots finally got their act together,” you reported, almost smugly. “still, doesn’t change the fact that they’re the worst knuckleheads in this day and age.”

Some would think that it was a little odd to have your guests come and greet the dead, but this was quite the tradition in your home. Most of your family’s close friends were used to it, Izuku included.

Knowing this, Bakugou felt left out than ever.

For he remembered the day after that day, how his parents spoke in hushed tones when he came home after nearly dying by the hands of a sludge villain and saved by Deku – of all people, the solemn look in their faces after a quick inquiry on the bruise on his jaw, tears alarmingly threatening to spill from his mother’s eyes, his father’s careful expression – “(Name)-chan’s parents, they’re dead.”

It was all too surreal.

You missed out on school for a whole week, grieving. Classmates were murmuring amongst themselves at your absence, having heard of your little altercation and the death of your parents on the same day. Also, students fawned over him for the Sludge Incident, for managing to hold back the villain (when in actuality he was barely breathing had Deku not jumped in) which was honestly the last thing on his mind.

Deku, who was surprisingly left alone, would stare at your chair worriedly, thumbs quick to send a quick text in between classes. He had wanted to ask him about you but held himself back. Pride and guilt held him back. Also, it felt like it wasn’t his place anymore, neither was it his right.

During the funeral, he finally saw you dressed in an all-black kimono his heart clenching at the bags under your eyes, the redness surrounding it, your puffy tear-stained cheeks, the dullness in those once bright (e/c) eyes.

When they arrived, immediately both his parents gave you a big hug, you barely hugged them back, much to their concern. Auntie Inko gave you a hug, as well, when she and Deku arrived. As for him? He kept himself back, hidden, knowing how his presence would only make things worse. And yet, he still came because he was worried about you, so, so, so fucking worried.

You were barely there, receptive or alive. Bakugou hated it, it wasn’t you – you were never much of a crier, always wearing your heart on your sleeve and brimming with life. Now though, it looked as though you were half-alive. He couldn’t blame you really, he can’t imagine losing his parents, of having a part of you die.

While your grandfather attended to guests, receiving condolence money and sympathies, he ensured a distance was kept, knowing you needed time to mourn. Judging from the redness in your eyes, the blankness in your gaze, it would probably take a while.

Looking at you now, seeing the color back in your face, your eyes, the lively (if not, careful hostile) aura emanating off you sets him at ease. Well, almost.

He tried not to linger on the fact that he had a part in utterly destroying a part of you the same way he did Deku, but it bled through as the months went by. All he could do was stare at your parent’s faces, silently offering his heartfelt apologies for all those years he wasted.

"GRANDDAUGHTER! WHILE YOU’RE AT IT, BRING THEM TO THE DOJO!" A yell came from the kitchen, disrupting the peace.

His eyes fell to your form, shoulders slacking. He may not see your face, but he could tell there was a sour expression written all over your face.

Then you sighed, twisting in place to look at the two.

"How about it, boys? Wanna let off some steam?"

The dojo was adjoined to your house - a small traditional dojo that's about ages old, you're not sure but you know but it's been there forever - or so you're told.

A wide space greeted you, polished wooden floors and tatami mats on the ground, calligraphy of 'fortitude', and your family name done by your grandmother hung from the walls along with some ornaments and nondescript paintings that were as old as you (maybe) – everything was in place.

With your grandfather as the head of the family, duly seeing that he lived the family legacy and upheld tradition, he saw fit that the dojo was well-taken care for, that his students weren’t weaklings – family or not, and that the Yoruichi family lived up to its potential and filled with honor (this part, he drilled hard on you when you were younger). In addition, he was the current coach of your school's martial arts club and you were his star pupil, which spelled big favouritism, but nobody complained after sweeping the floor with them on the first day.

Growing up, this place was your safe haven, you could always find peace here, it also held so many good memories that smelled pleasantly of bamboo, faintly of wood, and the faint sounds of a wind chime resounding.

Unable to help yourself, you threw yourself to the ground sideways – an act catching the boys by surprise, Izuku to shrieked, and Bakugou to start - hands planted firmly on the ground, cartwheeling away before doing it again except doing it forward, then sideways, and then your body twisted in mid-air, before landing gracefully on your feet arms raised on both sides.

"(Nickname)!" Izuku called after you, causing you to giggle, especially because your hair was a complete mess now.

"Sorry, couldn't help myself." Patting your hands to the sides, the feel of your skirt made you realize why both boys seemed red in the face. Thankfully, you wore shorts underneath.

With Shinsou busy and final exams in the way, your sparring sessions had been put to a hold. You missed sparring, training – even if it were against Aizawa-san or your grandfather, you loved the thrill of fighting. It was in your blood, after all.

“Really, you shouldn’t be so reckless!” berates your green-haired friend, marching towards you, the blond following close behind.

Looking around, the blond teen took in his surroundings - the aged wooden beams overhead, the cubbies, your grandmother's calligraphy set neatly set in one of the fine cabinets, until his eyes stopped on some pictures. It was the three of you, during your younger days when your grandfather wanted to train all three of you.

Unaware of the way his eyes softened at the picture, he continually looked over and relived the memories – he could almost hear Deku’s crying as he tried to punch hard, him hollering in mad glee, and then you lording over the two because the dojo was ‘your turf’. Carmine eyes traced the smile on your 8-year old face, pulling away to find that you were wearing the same smile. Except, unlike the photo – where the smile was directed at him, Deku was crying in it – your smile was directed towards your green-haired friend who marvelled at the trophies you and some fellow students of the dojo won.

Jealousy was an ugly emotion, but it was always there. He hated it.

As a child, since discovering his quirk, he’d been showered by praise and was the center of everyone’s attention. But for him, the only praise and attention he wanted was from you. However, because he was a shitty kid with an overgrown pride, you barely batted his way and spared him even an ounce of acknowledgment. Honestly, he’s been starved for your attention for so long now.

Only when you had shoved his kindness away in middle school did he realize how badly he’d hurt you, how little of an effort he did to truly reach out to you. He had a handful of ‘friends’, but not really, and you had Izuku – a friendship built on trust and love, he wanted that. But he was too selfish and prideful to do shit about it.

Before he knew it, Bakugou acted on his feelings.

“(Name),” you looked up, (e/c) eyes blinking in question. “let’s spar.”

“Ka-Kacchan-?”

“Sure.” You said with a shrug.

Green eyes blinked at you, then at the blond-haired teen, darting back and forth at the two of you. Were you really doing this now?

“W-Wait a minute! Are we really doing this now?” Izuku tried to reason, seeing at the two of you began to circle each other, him in the middle. “We should just talk, recall the good times! L-Like…Like…um…” the tension between you two, it was unpalpable, raw, and intense. “(N-Nickname)! Remember the first time you showed us a kick split and Kacchan tried to mimic?”

As funny as that memory was, his two friends were too busy circling each other, resembling animals in the wild. Their expressions were blank, but their eyes spoke too much.

(E/c) met carmine. Both unwavering, unyielding, and both hungry.

“(Nickname)? Kacchan? Are you listening to me?”

Readying into a stance, you closed your eyes as you took a deep inhale, opening them when exhaling slowly out your mouth. Bakugou’s fingers were tingling, smoke emitting.

“(Nickname), Kacchan, please there’s no need to-!”

Without a moment of hesitation, Bakugou was lunging forward, the explosion – which was half-powered, Izuku noticed – leaving a cloud of smoke behind that momentarily filled the area.

You didn’t seem the slightest bit bothered by the smoke, one arm quickly raised to guard against his fist, and the other readily grabbing hold of his knee that followed soon after. With all your might, you pushed him off. (In a fit of panic, Izuku cleared the smoke clouds away with a fling of his fingers at 2% power.)

Bakugou threw his fists, to which you easily deflected or swatted aside, keeping the blows away from you. Tossing his hand away, you planted your hands on the ground and swung your legs to hit him low, Bakugou quickly moved out of the way, rather clumsily. For a moment, he swore he saw you smirk, swinging your legs around with ease to swing at him again.

He had realized then that he had no idea how you fought; he was going into this blind. You both (three, counting Deku) may have trained together under the same dojo when you were younger, but that had been years ago! Plus, being a Yoruichi meant that you were proficient in other forms of martial arts. But again, emotions got the best of him. For some reason, despite being caught at a disadvantage, he found himself gleaming.

You were fast – much faster than he had anticipated, and extremely agile. He took note of the fact that your eyes were its usual (e/c) color, despite the fact that it was dark out. All the punches and hits received were all raw strength, honed from years of training under your grandfather. He always knew you were a capable fighter, despite having not used your quirk just yet. Fuck, were you mocking him?!

Seeing the frustration in his eyes, you smirked, grabbing hold of his incoming fist, catching him off guard, to toss him aside. So answer: yes, you were mocking him.

He had no idea how much you had studied his fighting style over the years, becoming familiar with his straightforward tactic – it was so predictable. And after seeing the Sports Festival and the fight with Izuku from yesterday, you easily caught up on how adaptable he was given the situation and had quick reflexes. It made you sick.

Yet at the same time, despite knowing this, both of you seemed rather in tune fighting each other.

Izuku, who had long given up trying to be the peacekeeper, could only watch in awe at the two. The mood between you two was…something, to say the least. And watching you two fight? It felt as though it were a dialogue if that even made sense – a mad disarray of Kacchan lashing out on you, you easily avoiding all his punches and explosion, you were able to catch Kacchan off-guard a lot whenever you changed fighting styles to which he’d manage to counter in his own reckless way. It was a nail biter to watch, yet it was fascinating at the same time. The two of you were in perfect synchronization with each other.

A cloud of smoke filled the air, your eyes narrowed to see through just as a palm cut through, nearly punching your cheek clean. Ducking a swipe of Bakugou's smoking fists, you took hold of his wrists and twisted them inward, Bakugou barely had time to react and the explosions went off his skin.

Angered, he used your closeness in an attempt to headbutt you, but you easily evaded, losing balance in the process. Seeing this, he grabbed hold of your hand, tugging hard to twirl against him, back to his chest. Instantly, he caught hold of your other hand. The position looked as though you were dancing, it was rather intimate.

"What's the matter? Not gonna use your quirk on me?" he taunted in your ear, making you shiver.

"As a matter of fact," throwing your head forward and back, smacking your hair to his face, he releases you - just barely - but it was enough to free you, sweeping him off his feet to pin him to the ground – an elbow to his back and one arm stretched out painfully behind him. "I don't need my quirk to beat you. I'm plenty strong on my own." Releasing your hold, you tilt your head to the side, unable to help the smug look on your face, faint lines of yellow lining your eyes. "Not bad for one 'seemingly quirkless', huh?"

Quirkless. Something in him roiled, especially with the way you said it.

Pushing himself off, making you lose balance, he grabbed hold of your collar and nearly slammed you to the ground, switching positions. “What the fuck is your problem?”

(E/c) eyes gave him a cold hard stare, the corner of your lip slightly twitching. It made his tenuous temper flare.

Tightening his hold, he asked again. “What is your fucking problem?!”

“My fucking problem is you!”

Okay, that threw him off.

Bakugou pulls back, blinking at your response, completely dumbfounded “I thought you were ‘working on being a better friend’? Was that all for show?” His voice was soft, hoarse. It hurt that after all this time, he was still a stranger to you. Yet at the same time, he's rather confused with how lightly you've been handling this.

Unable to look at him any longer, you look away. Those carmine eyes were full of hurt; you didn't like it.

"Let go of me," you tell him, his hand had slackened, allowing you to push him off. And he lets you, feeling defeated as he watches you pick yourself up.

His eyes turn to Deku for help, assurance, assistance, never would he have thought that he'd come to Deku - of all people - for such. Deku just stared, weakly at you, then at him – at a loss.

Before you could walk away, Bakugou grabbed your arm, his grip hard. "No, you're not walking away that easy, (Name)."

Your name sounds so foreign when he says it, you gulp, refusing to look his way. "What the fuck do you want from me?"

He glowers, tugging you back to face him, staring you down. "What I want is for you to stop being so fucking difficult and talk to me!"

You couldn't help scoffing, harshly tugging your arm free. "You? Talk? Wow."

Bakugou had always known you were a petty person, but to be this difficult at the same time? It was really grating his nerves.

"(Nickname)..." Izuku berates in the background, which was silenced by Bakugou.

"CAN YOU FOR ONCE JUST LISTEN TO ME!?"

"K-Kacchan..."

"WHAT DO YOU CALL THIS THEN?"

“I’M FUCKING TRYING TO BE CIVIL, BUT YOU’RE BEING SO FUCKING DIFFICULT!”

“YOU? CIVIL? IF THAT ISN’T THE JOKE OF THE CENTURY!”

(Somewhere in the kitchen, Shihan casually cooks dinner, knowingly oblivious to the explosion, yelling, screaming, going on in his beloved dojo. Casually checks the spice intake on one of his dishes, adding a bit more.)

Bakugou opens his mouth, about to berate on one of your bullshit of an excuse to give him the time to speak only to stop. He realized how much you’d instigate and rile him up, and how much he’d fall for it. This was never-ending, the ceaseless anger between you two, it had to stop. “Why won’t you give me the chance, (Name)?” his voice was brittle, so brittle and soft, from yelling and of hurt.

Vulnerability was something you never expected of him, but you were too proud to even recognize it from him of all people. “Your life is fucking perfect, why the hell do you want to make a mess outta mine!?”

“Perfec- “he nearly spat out the word, hating it. “you think my life is perfect?”

Rolling your eyes, hard, Bakugou swore it was enough to see the insides of your head. “Come on, do I need to list it down? You and your perfect family, your perfect little cozy home, your perfect academic performance, your perfect quirk,” that part just had to be overly emphasized, dramatized, much to his disgust “life just hands you everything perfectly in a neat little bow-“

“My life is anything but perfect! I'm anything but fucking perfect! My life’s not fucking perfect because I don’t have you in it, (Name)!” he angrily yells.

That made you stop. Izuku, too.

And after a few seconds of saying it, as did Bakugou. "Fuck," he muttered, ducking his head, to hide his reddening face, he was reeling at his confession – pent up after being so long overdue.

“…what…?”

Izuku’s hands slapped over his mouth, a small noise coming threatening to come out as he watched the two of you in keen interest. “…K-Kacchan…(N-Nickname)…”

(Now would probably be the worst time to gush, squeal, or scream over this, as though he were watching a rom-com movie, but he couldn’t help it! Izuku had always been the biggest supporter of you two, wanting you both to end up together since you were children.)

After all this time, he liked you, too?

When he looked up, he was surprised to see how red you were – you were, like him, blushing hard. Like that one time you visited to give your ochugen gifts.

Wait.

“Wait.”

“I’m outta here!”

The door slammed shut behind you.

Dinner was an awkward occasion, an extremely awkward one especially because your grandfather had Bakugou sit right next to you. 

Your grandfather, painfully knowing that he is, acted oblivious to the tension and casually chatted up the boys - Izuku mostly doing the talking, whilst Bakugou mumbled here and there, you kept your head low avoiding the gaze of anyone in the table.

Just after dinner, you made a beeline for your room, uncaring for your grandfather's wrath - you could deal with that later, you just wanted a moment to yourself after Bakugou's confession.

“My life is anything but perfect! I'm anything but fucking perfect! My life’s not fucking perfect because I don’t have you in it, (Name)!”

Fuck.

His words rang in your ear, all the blood rushing the instant his voice rang in your head.

Fuck.

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck," you wailed into your pillow.

With special permission from Aizawa-san, and Izuku's insistency, you found yourself at the prestigious UA once again in time for its culture festival.

To say the place was huge would be an understatement, and that’s saying because you’ve been here a lot whenever Izuku was injured, more than just three USJs, it felt like its own continent! This time though, it was colorful and vibrant than usual.

The school went all out, I see. You thought to yourself, after all the bad shit that happened to them.

You still held Izuku with careful regard, it was always easy to forgive him, but appreciated the gesture that he extended his invitation to you. He wanted you to be there, to experience the joy of a high school culture festival even if you two weren’t school mates anymore. (Also, it was his way of saying sorry.) All things considered; things immediately went back to normal between you two.

(Save for one)

Meeting up with your best friend at the front gate, you were surprised to find him covered in dirt and grass. But before you could even ask, he hurriedly brought you backstage to meet up with his classmates before the show started.

“Everyone this is my childhood friend, Yoruichi (Name)!”

Giggling at his stutter, you shouldered him playfully before bowing at his classmates. “Hi everyone! It’s nice to meet the lot of you!”

A series of ‘oh’ and ‘ah’ came afterwards, soon after, the two of you were bombarded with questions. Tiredly, you turn to your best friend, sharing a look. Man, I miss the days when we were invincible.

“Ah, it was that girl who yelled at him at the hospital!” a tall plain-looking guy pointed at you, to which Iida yelled that it was rude to point. You could only offer an apologetic smile, nudging at your best friend’s shoulder again.

“Eh? I didn’t know Midoriya had another childhood friend!” some guy with flaming red hair and shark teeth said, kindly and in shock.

“More than that, Midoriya’s been keeping this beauty from us!” a small purple-haired boy screeched, angrily turning to your best friend. On instinct, you stepped in front of your friend protectively.

“Wow, I’m offended you don’t talk much about me, Izuku.” You teased, elbowing the green-haired teen. He laughed, scratching his cheek.

“This is so radical, a female childhood friend. Must be nice~” a boy, with a streak of black over his hair that could only remind you of Pikachu, gushed. “But wait, haven’t I seen you at that one café- “

“Dunce face, shut your mouth.” Bakugou suddenly appeared in your line of sight, you immediately turned away before he met your gaze, fighting the blush creeping its way to your cheeks.

“Ne, ne, ne,” a pink-skinned and pink-haired girl gushed, nearly shoving her face into yours. “So, like, is Midoriya your boyfriend?”

In unison, you two stared at each other before bursting into laughter, used to the question for so many years.

“No way,” Izuku says, trying to calm down. “(Nickname)’s like a sister to me!”

“I second that! Izuku’s such a whiny big brother with a big brain.”

“(Nickname), you didn’t have to put it like that…”

Grinning toothily, you playfully ruffled his curly locks, discreetly eyeing a brunette who seemed to sigh in relief.

“Wait a minute, since Yoruichi’s your childhood friend, does that mean that Bakugou’s your childhood friend, too?” a short-haired punk-looking girl asked, a few heads turning to the blond. Said blond stilled, expression a careful blank.

“Yeah, he is.” The reply came easy, nonchalantly. Playfully. “Is. Was. Somewhere in between.” You wiggled your hand in the air for emphasis.

It was a cold response, almost as cold as Todoroki’s ice.

“But that’s enough about me, I heard you guys were putting on a live performance?” the mood easily shifted, two kinds of excitement stirring from the class. “And Izuku, you’re dancing? Since when!?”

“Sadly, we kicked him out.” The pink-haired girl says, arms crossed.

“Deku-kun worked his best!” Ochako defended, cheeks puffing.

“That’s right! That’s right!”

“Ah, Midoriya-chan looks mad?”

“More than that, he’s blushing too.”

Several eyes turned to the green-haired teen, cheeks puffed and an angry flush dusting his cheeks, glaring your way.

“I-I mean, dancing sounds fun. Plus, I’ll have you know that we’ve danced together before, (Nickname)!”

(e/c) eyes narrowed playfully, finger poking at freckled cheeks. “Dance Revolution, Just Dance, and Dance Master don’t count, dumdum. Plus, you suck at those!”

“She’s so brutal!”

“Almost like a female Bakugou.”

“Uwa, it’s kinda rare to see Midoriya like this. He seems more comfortable and less grounded.”

“I see what you’re saying! And he usually shies away from girls!”

“Yoruichi’s got spunk, doesn’t she?”

“Oi, we got to prepare! Come on, now!”

Realizing this, you stepped away from Izuku, wishing him luck. He had told you that he wanted you to meet someone after the show, you could only nod at that.

Meeting carmine eyes, you faltered, body shifting to move, but stopped. Braving a look his way – much to his shock, you offered a small smile. “Break a leg.”

Their show was amazing, spectacular, a showstopper, and you made sure to relay your praises to the class afterwards.

Shortly after the show (and sharing your thoughts about their presentation), you were introduced to Eri, the sweet little girl Izuku told you about during his work-study. The moment you saw her, she immediately won your heart. Oh, and you were introduced to Mirio, a goofy senior who was super friendly and an amazing presence to behold.

Without even knowing, you somehow wounded up with the rest of 1-A joining whatever sorts of fun the cultural festival has to offer. Most of the time, you stuck close with Eri, who'd grown fond of you after your first meeting, sometimes, sticking with the girls (even though your nose would crinkle at girlish topics), or even hung with Bakugou's ragtag of friends (of which, you were surprised to find that he had a clique of his own!).

It was a rather eventful day, and your legs were all tired out from constantly moving around. Still, it was a fun day. Sitting against a railing, you watched as Izuku ran off towards the gate, a paper bag in hand. Smiling at his retreating frame, you leaned back and watched around, eyeing the festivities - or what's left of it, feeling suddenly lonely about it all. This was where Izuku and Bakugou went to school, this was their cultural festival, and you were just an outsider.

“Here,” you blinked as a churro appeared out of nowhere, offered to you. Retracting your hands from your sides, you carefully took the treat in your hands and looked up, meeting carmine - Bakugou.

“Thanks,” you reply, dumbly.

Sitting next to you, Bakugou was strangely quiet, hands buried in his pocket. “What did you think of our performance?” he asked, rather quietly.

“Pretty kickass,” you say honestly, still staring at your treat. "I forgot how well you could play the drums."

The corners of his mouth twitched, but his expression remained a careful, almost wistful blank. His eyes though, they were another story. “I’m glad you came, (Name).”

Scoffing, a smile found its way to your lips, you bump his shoulder with yours. Surprised, he looks up, eyes finding yours, (e/c) warm. “Yeah, me too.”

Something inside him stirs, strangely, comfortingly. He could feel his throat drying just looking at you, just as you bit on your churro - a big crunch, followed by sugar falling off.

“You should consider transferring.”

“Pass, I’ll just take the supplementary lessons Aizawa-san offers.”

"Like they'll do you good."

"Hm,” you swallow, using the back of your hand to wipe the cinnamon sugar off your mouth. “lest you forget I have my shitty old man, and he teaches me plenty."

He mulls at your words as you chew on your churro, enjoying the youthful vibe of the cultural festival. Truth be told, being here actually made you jealous. You never enjoyed the cultural festival at your middle school because everyone did such a mediocre job and could care less about having fun. But this? This was nice. Relaxing, fun even.

"What happened to you?"

Stopping midchew, you let the words sink in - word by word, before finishing the last piece of your churro. Mulling over his question, you leaned your head back to watch the cotton candy-colored skies. "I gave up." You said simply, decidedly, honestly. "You seem to disregard people who care about you."

He swallowed thickly at your words. There were a million things he wanted to say while you were right there, no animosity between the both of you for once, however, he found himself choked up. All the words, questions, they held up in his throat. It felt pretty fucking lame of him.

However, if anything, there was one thing he's been meaning to say to you for a very long time. "(Name)," he starts, he liked the way your name comes out of his mouth, always liked how it's comparably lighter to say compared to a million words that made up language.  "I'm sorry."

Startled, you turned to him, really stare at him. Two words, yet they carried so much weight. So much history addressed. So many years of fighting, crying, yelling, and stubbornness. All it took were just two words.

Surrendering, you leaned against his form - feeling his body flinch at the contact, but doesn't move away, eyes falling shut. "I'm sorry, too."

That made him scoff, offended at your apology. "Shut up," As far as history has shown, you have nothing to apologize for.

"No, really listen." you continue, eyes dropping to your fingers. "I'm much to blame for our history. I've been so incredibly petty, cynical even whenever it came to you. Izuku was always so forgiving and he'd try to pass it on to me, but I just tossed it aside, never realizing that in the process I was hurting both of my dearest friends. By neglecting Izuku's wishes, I was neglecting you in the process. I was so selfish."

"I've been selfish, too."

"I know."

"And prideful."

"Oh, I know."

The makings of a smile creep its way to his lips. "And shitty."

You snort. "Oh, believe me, I know." Unknowingly, you laughed easily.

Bakugou watches as you laugh - eyes crinkling, cheeks brightened (with a few specks of cinnamon sugar sticking), your teeth were exposing, a light-hearted laugh escaping your mouth, you looked so pretty like that. He rather liked hearing your laugh.

Finding his elbow, you wrapped your arm around his, leaning ever so closer. Bakugou might've jumped at that, but you couldn't tell, too contented at that moment. "I missed you, fucker."

At your admission, he felt his chest stilling, calming. Before realizing it, the expression on his face lightened, softened, carmine eyes taking in your form against it – had you seen it, it would have done you over.

It was the softest expression he could ever muster.

"I missed you, too-"

"Oi, Bakugou!"

"There you are! We've been looking all over for-"

Kaminari and Kirishima both stopped at the sight of two teens, relishing in each other's presence - quite comfortably, too - which was ruined by their arrival.

Curious, you peeked a look at the two teens.

And then there was Bakugou, who was absolutely furious.

masterlist • ten

#lame #bakugou katsuki x reader #bakugou katsuki #bakugou katsuki fic #bakugou katsuki angst #bakugou katsuki angst fic #bakugou x reader #bnha #bnha x reader #bnha fic #bnha angst #bnha angst fic #mha #mha x reader #mha fic #mha angst #mha angst fic

[impaladolan]

Capture - Grayson Dolan [8/-]

summary: y/n is quick to plot revenge.. but does she get away with it..?

warnings: swearing, alcohol consumption, and smut :)

a/n: i seriously love you

Anonymous said:

Ooohoohohoh I’m excited for her to steal his Rolex haha omg maybe she wears it and doesn’t give him it back when he asks for it OMG u know what would be cute!! if one day she goes snooping in his bedroom and tries on his chain necklace n rings and he walks out the shower n he’s like ummmm ok ily

Anonymous said:

i want y/n to ride gray’s thigh in his office, like he’s just got in still fully in his suite w his gun on his belt and she just walks in and strips 👀👀

Anonymous said:

I have an idea hehe!! WhYi f y/n gets drunk like she f inds alcohol in graysons office or kitchen or something and shes being really bratty but it’s so cute and she’s giving him nose kissies and hugging up and telling him stuff and he’s just listening and loving her

Relaxation.

That's how you'd explain the certain state of euphoria I'm embezzled within. Young love is a treacherous trap that can either end in favor, or be torn to shreds in only mere moments. To feel so passionate and fervently invested in someone you've only ever known and loved is such a thrill, and you could never forget those memories embedded in your mind.

Like right now, laying in bed while the sun's first shine leaks through the window and gleams down upon the two of us, nuzzled under the covers. His leg was wrapped over mine and his arms hung loosely around my hips, sheltering me from ever possibly leaving his grasp. I was the first to wake, but I dared not to move an inch.

The world around me was motionless, so peaceful and calm. Nothing could bother or disrupt the atmosphere around me. Everything felt so perfect, embraced by the one I love and the man I admire. Nothing, and I mean nothing, could ever unsettle me in this moment.

At least, that's what I keep telling myself...

A darkness warped over my newly sunken eyes, shielding the world around me. I called out his name, but nothing came out. The warmth I once felt upon my body, vanished into the air and seemed like it'd never return. The world became cold and useless, all the positivity and tranquility that once surrounded me was blown away and now, I sit in darkness;

All by myself.

Him.

-

It seemed too early in the morning to be awake at such an hour, but you had crashed shortly after making it back to your room last night. You were so mortified and embarrassed, for all those men to see you so vulnerable and being punished. Though, the crazy inside you kind of liked it, but still, it pushed boundaries.

Initially, you had wanted to sleep in all day, and hopefully never leave your room ever again. Although, today's forecast decided otherwise. A ground shaking rumble of thunder made you awaken and the shoestring lighting bolts strung across the darkened sky had drawn you in. Since you essentially have no concept of time, whatsoever, you had to believe it was early in the morning, unless you really had slept in all day...

It's been presumably an hour or so since you first fluttered your eyes open. By now, you had plotted a sickening revenge to his outrageous acts he had committed only a day ago. Of course, you had created horribly ill plans that even you could never pull off. Such as vandalizing his expensive vehicles or even trashing the entire house. You had even gone as far as to planning an "accidental" fire in the kitchen.

But something inside you had put a halt to those thoughts.

Other than not wanting to be known as a malicious arsonist, you had some sort of pull towards him— but what that pull was, you couldn't figure out. The phrase; " Darling, I may be a stranger to you, but you're no stranger to me," has been left in your mind ever since the words first left his mouth. You couldn't possibly help but wonder what that even meant. You felt like you've known him from a past life somehow, and that could potentially explain the affection you have towards him. All of that aside, you have to remember that he isn't who your brain morphs him in to be. He's a felon who's abducted you and has pulled you away from society and everything you've ever been a part of.

For some reason, that's hard for you to mentally consider.

Aside from criminalizing yourself too by creating a fire or becoming a vandalizer, the best option is to state your assertiveness and trespass the "laws" that he has forbidden you ro break. Unlike yesterday's escapades of you ruining the dining room table, today you were up for higher anticipated endeavours. You had it all planned out and you knew what you'd do in order to complete your vengeances.

And he's not going to be very happy...

The atmosphere above and around you still rumbles with the loud, crackling thunder and the strikes of lightning flooding certain increments of light through the surrounding windows pave your path to the daunting door. You were still dressed in the white shirt that could barely pass as acceptable in the public eye, and your feet were frozen at the first touch of the wooden floor. You kept on like you have done in the previous times you have left your room for mischievous reasons. You silently open the door, leaving it wide open as you crept out of your assigned room and into the hallway. You knew that the very first place you would go would be the kitchen. No, you aren't creating a fire or any of the sort, but you were going to raid the fridge and have your fill with what it has to offer.

You walk straight past the opening and right into the glorious establishment of cookware, like it was your very own home and you were just up for a midnight snack. In all honesty, you could get used to living here.

If only it weren't forced onto you, that is.

Your fingertips soon collide with the long, frigid handle of the refrigerator door and pull it wide open, marveling at the large display of different beverages and foods strategically set up. Of course, it was mainly veggies and several healthy-looking meal options. Which didn't surprise you whatsoever.

He has a nice physique for a reason...

You couldn't find anything that made your stomach growl with hunger, until you opened up the freezer drawer and spotted a nice looking ice cream container. Still, it looked healthy and it'd make you all the more frozen, but it would manage to subside your aching sweet tooth for now. You pop open the lid and fish around the drawers for a utensil. With a content sigh, you plunge a huge spoonful of the solid liquid and empty it into your mouth, savoring every last flavor like it would be the last time you'd ever eat the sugary treat again. It was delicious, the absolute best ice cream you've ever devoured in the entirety of your life.

You almost ate half the jar until you decided you were parched and needed a nice drink to soothe your throat. Luckily this time you were familiar with where the glasses were kept and already had your hand wrapped around a large wine glass that was a little bit higher up than the rest of the glassware. You set it down quietly, trailing your eyes upon the clean and prim counter.

A tall, fancy upscale bottle of what looked to be whiskey was settled in the corner, nicely organized with the other alcoholic beverages that were of the same importance.

Now, you weren't exactly a "drink-whiskey-out-of-a-wine-glass" type of gal, but as they say; desperate times call for desperate measures— and you were on the search of something to loosen you up a bit, and that was that.

You brought the glass over to where you had stationed your cup, not even flinching when you uncork the liquor and pour its contents out. With improper proportioning of the said liquid, you put the whiskey back how it was.

"Fuck, here we go." You inaudibly groan to yourself, just knowing that you'll regret every decision you've made in the near future. Raising up the plum-full glass, you tip it back into your mouth and down a whole gulp.

Nasty.

It's definitely an acquired taste, but the barely detectable taste of vanilla made it hardly feasible. You dared to not put the glass down until you were finished with it and had that sour taste submitted through your fiery throat.

The least you could say was that it's pretty smooth, but not something you'd drink in your free time.

In your head, you knew you'd feel a bit wonky, considering your nearly empty stomach and your abstinence from alcohol for the last month or so. It'd be easy to feel the side effects and overall feel much better, like you were aiming for.

Once you drained the glass of every last drop, you held your breath and rushed to the sink. The overwhelming want to just regurgitate what you ingested had drawn upon you, but you refrained from doing so. Waiting out the sickly feeling, you run a bit of cold water over your hand and press it against your forehead for a moment. Everything became hot, even with the freezing temperatures, you felt like breaking a sweat.

All just the side effects of alcohol, I'm sure.

Within the passing minutes, the faintness flew away and the sounds of the thunderstorm filled your ears. A large banging of the clouds above frightened you and you knocked over the glass you had just rested your lips on.

You didn't even feel bad about all the shattered pieces on the floor, it actually brought a smile to your face and you were ready to begin the fully planned extravaganza.

First stop; his room.

You skipped back the hallway, still quiet but not as careful as before. You weren't afraid of any consequences and whatever he was going to do to you wouldn't be too harsh. It's not like he's embarrassed you enough already anyway.

You easily find his door, pushing the handle down as slow as possible, just in case he was asleep in his room. His door didn't creak as you opened it, and nor did his floorboards as you walked straight into his marvelous bedroom. It was extravagant, but yet it still felt homely. You check the bed, no sign of him or anyone for the matter. He probably at a meeting, or something.

Not that you care..

You continue your stroll, glancing around his room for anything that could spark your immediate attention, considerably his desk. It held a lot of his more—fashionably inclined belongings. Such as his masculine jewelry and expensive watches. There was even a small, purple ring that reminded you of something you had worn a long time ago. You brush that off, it brings up sore wounds from a time where you were a lot happier and everything was simpler.

I wish I could say that now..

You began to pick up the neatly placed objects, slipping a couple of heavy necklaces around your neck and the large rings upon your fingers. You laugh at the size difference of your hand and how they barely stay on your fingers.

The stationary mirror attached to the desk caught your eyes, and you begin to make funny faces at it. Which sends you into a hushed giggle fest that makes you double over in your seat. Still caught up in your laughter, you take off all of the rings, just leaving a couple on the desk and tossing a few over to his bed. You do the same with the necklaces, except for the two that you threw into one of the drawers.

That’s when your eyes caught the nice watches, stuffed in clear pouches with the brand labeled across them. Rolex is the first you saw, and the first one you picked up. You weren’t thinking clearly. Hence the reason you tore it out of it’s protective packaging and brought it up above your head, throwing it down to the ground and watching the tiny glass fragments splatter everywhere.

It’s not like he can’t buy a new one, right?

Feeling content and a little less frustrated, you left the messy scene and followed your footsteps back into the hallway. He didn't seem to hear you, so the determination to find out his name came across your mind and you became dead set on finding it, so you basically sprinted into his ominous office and delved into his comfy chair without care.

Your motor skills were altered and it seemed to take for ever to lift yourself out of the chair and tap on the computer keyboard for it to wake up. While it began its process of turning on, you led your hand down to the drawers and pulled at them. And that’s when you found the very first locked up thing in this house.

“Care to tell me what you’re doing in here darling?” His alluring voice blasted through your ears and made you leap upward. “It’s not been a day and you’re already back to being a brat?” You couldn’t see what he looked like, but his silhouette looked suited and enticing.

Very enticing, actually...

“M’trying to find out your name, Daddy.” You spoke before you could think, crossing your arms over your chest while your lips form a pout. His body leaves from the doorway, and you’re barely able to see him as he strides over towards you. Suddenly, a light flips on and you’re met with his beautiful frame, a smile daunting his face as he looks down at your innocence.

“You have no idea what you do to me, do you?” He moves closer, wrapping his hand under your chin while his other has his blazer hung on his finger and thrown towards his back. He looks cute in a smile, until it forms into a confused frown.

“Have you been drinking, Y/N?” Your eyes widen and you quickly nod. You knew you’d be in trouble with him anyway, so might as well be honest now. “I c-couldn’t sleep and I- I just wanted a sip of somethin’.” You shrug, looking downward as you give him an okayish explanation.

“You know what helps me sleep?” He lets your chin go, dropping his jacket and beginning to roll up his dress-shirt’s sleeves. You shake your head, chewing your bottom lip as you take in his appearance. “A nice cocksucking does.” Thunder crackles loudly outside as his husky voice deepens and makes a cool wind run down your spine.

“Then let me help you..” You wrap your arms around his neck, twisting him around and forcefully pushing him down in the chair you were once sitting in. You were about to fall to your knees to “help” him, but he pulls your hips towards him and sets you on his lap. You replace your hands around his neck, sinking your fingertips into his hair and massaging the silky softness of it. He sweetly sighs, readjusting the leg you were sat upon.

And that’s when you feel the sensation you’ve been craving for however long you’ve been here.. you think..

“M’hm, do that again..” You ask, your voice barely above a whisper. He actually obliges, his brows furrowed as he watches your face contort. “Like riding my thigh, huh?” He asks as he placed his large hands around your waist. You nod, moving your hips in the same direction. You eyes shut, your head falling back a little as you smoothly move against his muscled thigh.

It felt so good, everything felt so good actually. He somehow looked so much more attractive, the beard dotting his face and his hair styled nicely. Even what he was wearing had you wanting more.

You open your eyes for a moment, watching his pleased expression as he watches you needingly thrust yourself upon his warm, clothed thigh. He even steadily lifted his knee in the correct places, aiding in the pleasure that him alone could bring you. Your eyesight seemed foggy but visible enough to see the gun at his waist side, and you almost froze when you saw it. Even in your intoxicated state of mind, you knew that just the weapon could possibly help you escape and make it back to your own home.

You didn't think it through thoroughly..

You lean in, your lips next to his ear as you practically collapse upon him, though your movements to further yourself towards releasing didn't halt. You slipped your left hand down to his waist band, sensually gliding it over his tented groin. He shutters under your touch, clearing his throat as his heads falls back slightly. As quick as your body would let you, you grab for the handle of the gun and raise it up towards his forehead, stopping all your movements and gaining his attention.

"Y/N—" He starts, gliding his hands up your bare thighs.

"Don't fucking move, or I'll— I'll shoot you." You sounded clear as day in your head, but your words became slurred as they left your mouth, and he smirked at your innocence. Just as quickly as you pulled the gun, he took it away.

He grabbed the barrel and snatched it from your grip, placing it back into its holster at his side. You yelp as he grabs your wrists, twisting them around your back and slamming you into the table with an evil chuckle. "Better keep those hands pretty little hands to yourself, princess. You're too innocent to commit murder anyway." He continues his hoarse chuckles, licking a stripe up his hand before striking your slick pussy. "D-Ahh!" You hiccup, pressing your legs as close together as you can.

“Better fuckin’ pray that you can walk tomorrow, darling...”

to be continued...

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