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lampadarietto · 8 months

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hi!!1! i hope u are feeling good today ^w^ just a disclaimer before the actual request, can u give (space) after symbols? like:

i eat dog food today!it isnt so good, ngl ❌

i eat dog food today! it isnt so good, ngl ✅

u dont need to keep up w doing that, but i ask at least in my request. i have some reading difficulty so the space between the letter and the symbol makes reading easier to me. thanks!!1!

anyway- i wanted to ask for a platonic tadc one. jax, caine, ragatha, gangle, zooble, pomni and kinger x teen reader (im not sure if u are used to making multiple in one post, but u can choose just one or somes if u are struggling :3), the reader have a personality similar to a eeve, if u know what i mean. shes kind and caring, a bit energetic and fun-loving, she protects the other characters and give them some weird things she finds around, she smiles a lot and i imagine one trait of her appearance, it being she having a cardboard box in her head that shows her facial expressions by emoticons, like ">w<" and ":0" (u dont need to add that, i just thought its a fun concept to write about). bUT in the other hand... shes not so sweet. she is chaotic and not much as jax but she loves to tease others (like playfully fighting or being playfully mean but never crossing a boundary by doing so), shes stubborn to do things she dosent want to do and shes lazy, she is bold w her feelings and she have a bit of a short temper to some topics (even tho she dosent physically hurt anyone, she does create a beef w them and is sure to show it, by dirty looks and being passive agressive)

anyway, i dont think i have further ideas. so have fun!!1! u can deny this request if u want. its totally ok ^_^

Omg sorry about the symbol thing!!!

Also this is probably my fav request so far because im a big sucker for platonic requests so thank you!

this took like 3-4 hours to write help

₊ ⊹JAX

✰If you like pranking people, you're surely going to ask Jax for help.

✰he's like the pranking master there, just ask and he'll help you!!

✰definitely bullies you at first, kinda depends on how you look and act. Also endlessly bullies you because you're really young. Would not care that you're a 'teen', you're still a little child in his eyes.

✰You're short? im sure you won't mind if Jax puts his arm on your head!

✰Tall?? like, taller than Jax?? Hes gonna kick you behind the knee so you're shorter! (be ALWAYS on guard because this guy kicks hard even when he doesn't mean it)

✰You're like, happy all the time?? He would try to make you sad (as a joke)

✰If you're small, he IS going to throw you at things and maybe people too in certain occasions.

✰If you're arguing with someone, he just roots for you on default. He doesn't even care what it is about or with who you're arguing with, he's gonna trip the person you're arguing with either way (unless it's caine, that dude floats)

✰If you have a cardboard box as your head, he's surely drawing on it or putting stickers on it. Everyone would do that, sure. But his stickers are either offensive or just ugly (will act as if you stabbed him with a fork if you remove them)

✰If you've got long hair (or hair that you can tie up) he'd go like "let me tie your hair, it looks ugly" and pull on it as hard as he can (ultimately making you fall)

✰teaches you comebacks so you don't look like a 'loser' while arguing with someone (please don't use his comebacks they are really bad)

✰might let you see where he puts his keys to various places (like rooms and stuff, yours included somehow) but dont tell anyone or he's going to kick you into the sun

✰Personally, i give rocks i think are pretty to the people i care about. I draw a face on them, and bam here's the gift. If you do that too, but maybe with other objects, Jax is probably going to hit you with it atleast once (not too hard though)

✰If you tend to give lots of gift he's probably going to need a little corner of his room called 'gifts from ___'

✰Some gloinks came into his room once and stole some of the gifts from that corner. Jax never told you (he forgot to..)

✰Steals your food at the dinner table while bullying Gangle because he has nothing better to do

✰If you're in time out for any reason (like swearing too much) he's going to get you out of the punishment (he always fails bruh)

✰The only reason why he fails is that he's bad at coming up with an excuse because it's to get YOU out of trouble. It's easy when he's trying to get himself out of trouble and comes naturally, but it just doesn't with other people.

✰overall really annoying if he actually enjoys spending time with you, would recommend unless you're really irritable

₊ ⊹ZOOBLE

✰Zooble is really chill, they may even become your 'gossip buddie' if you'd like.

✰The fact that you're younger than them makes it easier (for them, at least.) since you can learn alot from them!

✰Pulls up to your door, rings the doorbell and when you open she goes "i HAVE to tell you about-" and just enters your room while he speaks(unless you don't want to, of course)

✰if you have a cardboard box head, they surely wrote 'zooble' on your carboard box and some insults somewhere (mainly for Jax)

✰laughs ALOT when you tease or straight up pick on people (especially Jax)

✰If you see one of his parts not in the place it's supposed to be, please put it in it's respective place! If you've become friends with zooble, they will surely trust you with things like putting back a body part if she doesn't notice it's in the wrong place!!

✰If you swear a lot, they'll probably laugh until Caine puts you in timeout (that's when she knows she's next)

✰If you ask nicely, they will try to find some (digital) nail polish and let you paint their nails (or them painting your nails, they don't mind either way.)

✰Almost chopped some of your hair off once while trying to do a cute hair style (the crab hand thing is really sharp. They didnt mean it!!!!)

✰flips you off on daily basis for random reasons and roll their eyes in the sassiest way possible

✰If you give them gifts, they'll act as if it's horrible but store it in his room later (he's NEVER telling you that)

✰Is grateful when you (try to) protect them from gloinks. Everytime Zooble is around, some gloinks are already there to just steal her body parts! Help her, do something please!

✰Overall very chill, would recommend unless you get offended easily

₊ ⊹CAINE

✰oh boy!!

✰the circus is a place for children. Finally a child or someone close to one!!!!

✰He's very excited. Makes you and the others (Zooble doesn't usually come though) go have adventures! you even got to choose once!!!

✰Again, if you wear a carboard box head he will sign it like hes a celebrity and write a something next to his signing. (his handwriting is really elegant too!)

✰Once made you look after Bubble while he was dealing with... some things and the whole circus was almost set on fire (all thanks to jax trying to see if Bubbles were flammable)

✰If you swear too much, you'll have to go in timeout!!!! (Zooble goes in timeout often)

✰Stores every single one of your gifts even if Jax says they're ugly

✰𝘓𝘖𝘝𝘌𝘚 your energy and attitude!

✰Very happy to see you enjoy your time here with the others.

✰If you're a picky eater or dont like the (digital) food chef Bubble cooks, hes surely going to make Bubble cook something of your choice!!

✰If you entered the circus when you were 10 years old or less, you probably had a bedtime before turning 12. If you were up past your bedtime, you were usually put in timeout!

✰Finds it funny that you tease people.

✰Overall much of a father figure if you've entered the circus when you were really young. (like from 7-11 years old)

₊ ⊹POMNI

✰Pomni was NOT expecting to find a kid in the circus.

✰Why aren't you trying to find a way out? You're young, get out of here and live a happy life!!

✰Other than than, Pomni is very shy and awkward at first.

✰She's not.. sure on what to say. To you, to everyone.

✰She's still trying to find a way out so she won't talk to you or anyone at first.

✰After some time, you speak more and more to her until she gets comfortable with you.

✰She chuckles when you tease people, sometimes.

✰will draw on your cardboard box head if you have on and write her name on it.

✰She often talks to you about the exit door, about the real world.

✰"Don't you want to go back?" she literally bombards you with questions of all kind..

✰Try to be friendly with her, please! She's still trying to get used to the circus and it's weird individuals... (ahem.Jax.)

✰i just KNOW that Jax tripped Pomni atleast once. Please don't let that happend..

✰(tries to) Keeps your gifts somewhere in her room, often loses some..

✰Overall really nice when you get to know her. Stutters alot when shes nervous and is still shocked.

₊ ⊹RAGATHA

✰a kid?? here?? Oh my.

✰She WILL tell you about everything you should know.

✰"Oh, be careful or you might-" "This is where we usually-" "don't! Its dangerous!"

✰She tries her best.

✰Shes always there for you! She tries to get you involved in activities, adventures and everything!

✰Writes a happy phrase on your cardboard box (if you have one) so that you're happy, even when not feeling like your best.

✰loves your gifts! Is a little weirded out at first but loves them alot! She keeps them in her room like trophys.

✰Will make your hair look very cute if you let her touch it. She will put bows, ribbons, every cute thing that she think might fit you.

✰Loves to have someone as nice as her (for the most part) and is glad that she's not the only one with a 'cheerful' attitude at the circus.

✰You can protect her if you want but be careful for random sharp things! Ragatha will be mad(not at you) if you accidentally get hurt while you try to protect her..

✰Shes honestly like a mother figure or an older figure you can count on.

✰Overall the nicest person at the circus, would recommend

₊ ⊹KINGER

✰He jumpscared you once.

✰Apologized right after, of course!

✰Kinger is a rather.. paranoid person. He doesn't get out of his impenetrable fortress unless someone needs him, and gets starled easily.

✰At first, he wasn't sure on what to think about you.

✰When you decided to gift him a little handmade insect collection, he immediately thanks you and invites you into his fortress.

✰You two had fun, and he said you could come in his fortress at any time, but to just warn him beforehand.

✰Stores every gift you give him. Could be an insect collection, rocks or handmade stuff. He doesn't care. He collects them.

✰He still jumpscares you (accidentaly) most of the times. He doesn't mean it!

✰He's super convinced that 𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐞 would've 𝘢𝘥𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘥 you.

✰He wishes she was still here, just to show you off.

✰Would get amused when you tease people!

✰Please dont let the gloinks just steal his fortress!!!!

✰Overall pretty chill aside from the sudden jumpscares and random screams, would recommend

₊ ⊹GANGLE

✰would warm up to you pretty quickly.

✰Please comfort her when shes crying or when Jax breaks her comedy mask!!! :(

✰Almost always has her comedy mask when she's with you. Shes just so happy!

✰If you try to help her fix her mask, shes going to be really grateful.

✰Stores every one of your gifts.she Thinks they're beautiful!

✰Please teach her some comebacks so that shes not completely hopeless against Jax :(

✰Shes mostly kind to you, but Gangle is also a shy soul.

✰She's like a bigger sister to you.

✰She tries her best to be as happy as she can around you.

✰Overall really nice (but shy), would totally recommend unless you dont like people crying alot

#the amazing digital circus #x reader #tadc zooble #tadc pomni #tadc jax #tadc #tadc kinger #tadc caine #tadc gangle #tadc ragatha

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iwonderwh0 · 1 year

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Connor’s rig guide

Okay, in the first part I talked about some basics of manipulating objects in Blender, now it’s time to look at them again within the context of Connor’s rig.

Note: I just realised there were a minor mistake in a rig. Fixed in ver. 2.2 (same link)

Click on Main_Rig object (from outliner or directly from clicking on it in the working area), check that nothing else is selected and go to the pose mode. Here you’ll be able to finally pose the character. You can move and rotate bones around just the way you would do any other objects in blender.

Tagging you, my dear rig-testets, here: @middleofnothing @detroitbecomeonline

How to reset position/rotation/scale

Let’s say you moved it in some ugly way and want to reset it back the way it was in its “default” position. For this you need to select the bones you want to reset (or just select everything with A) and press

Alt + G - to reset position

Alt + R - to reset rotation

Alt + S - to reset scale (although I don’t know why would you scale bones)

Bone Layers

For this specific model I used bone layers to separate bones into groups according to their purpose and/or layout. What it means is that rig is divided into a few categories that can be hidden/revealed for convenience.

Blender has a system of built-in layers for armature (32 of them in total), which looks like this

I marked “actual layers” with green, because those are the layers we actually use and so-called “pointlessly repeated layers” jare ust a mirror of those we have above for the purpose of locking them (to restrict any changes we could accidentally make), which if you ask me is fucking retarded, there are better ways to visually represent it

Anyways, we can reveal what’s inside them by clicking on them (just ignore what’s in a purple box, pretend it doesn’t exist), we can select multiple of them by holding Sift or deselect by clicking on them again (while holding shift). White circles represent that the layer has something inside and isn’t empty. Filled white circle indicate that the active bone(s) (the one(s) we have selected atm) are inside this layer, or, if nothing is selected it means that the last time there were, it was on This layer.

As you can see, by default those layers look weird and there’s no way to name them, which kinda ruins the purpose of layers. That’s why we won’t use them, and instead use free plugin “Bone Manager”, if you have my blend file, you should have it working already and it looks like this:

You can already see right away how much more user-friendly it is, doesn’t even requires explanation, as you can see all you need to know intuitively. It’s basically all the same layers from before, but displayed like they were actually made for people.

To see this window, you should be inside pose mode. From there you can find it in the left corner of the working area under the tab “Bone Layers” like you can see on the screenshot. If you don't see that, then hover your cursor above working area and click N on your keyboard to show/hide it (or find this small arrow and click on it)

In regards to this specific rig I used 19 layers in total, you can see all of them below. They were mostly made for my convenience while rigging although I tried to rearrange them in a way that would be convenient for posing

(you can rearrange them if you want, it doesn’t affect the way any of those bones function, it’s purely for visual representation)

About those layers in detail

“Face original controls” - as the name says, it’s face bones from original rig. Not all of them though, I put “Tongue”, “Lips Upper (orig)”, “Lips Lower (orig)” and “Eyelids_orig” on separate layers, although they are all technically just face original controls. You’ll probably struggle to see them if you try to switch to them now, but it’s because bones are displayed as barely visible wires atm, I’ll explain how to switch it to other types below.

Other layers that contain original controls are

“Helper Deform (orig)” - those move small parts of the mesh, but I don’t think they’re really useful or helpful, more like confusing and messy. You can try tweaking them around, but I suggest to ignore this layer. This layer exists because I was afraid to delete something just to find out it was actually really important later on. Maybe those bones Are helpful, idk, try it.

"Tie”, “Jacket” and “Shirt” are also just original bones that are responsible for cloth. For now I don’t yet possess the kind of black magic wisdom it takes to know how to rig clothes in a meaningful way, so it’ll probably be a frustrating experience to try to manipulate those.

“Some pointless garbage” - originals bones that were there, but doesn’t do shit. Ignore it.

“Face custom controls” - a set of controllers made by me in an attempt to make usable face rig. It’s not comprehensive and only have controllers for eyes, eyelids and eyebrows (I got frustrated about the state of the mouth and haven’t finished it. Eyes and eyelids requires improvements too, but huh, better than moving each individual bone from original rig, which btw you can still do instead of/in addition to using controllers) This layer looks like that:

For eye individual controllers you’d want to rotate them instead of moving (double-click R after selecting them to rotate freely)

I realise now that eyelids move a little too much along with the eyes. I didn’t know the shit I was doing when I started this mess, so I’d probably managed to do it better now if I were to do it again.

Eyelid(s) controls:

You’d think that they’re responsible for upper eyelids, but actually no, not exactly, instead they are linked to the action of closing/opening the eyes and as you can see, lower eyelid moves along slightly (just like it does in the game. I tried to replicate the way it happens)

I tried to do the lover eyelid controller at some point as well to allow for the squinting(there are also wrinkle maps for that), but it is one of those things I haven’t yet done after realising that it is easy enough to break those eyelids already as they are now...Maybe later

And finally, eyebrows, which are probably the most interesting and complicated piece of this rig as they’re the only controllers that I managed to actually link to dynamic wrinkle textures, the ones I can’t shut up about. Each of those controllers are, just like eyelids, linked to the action (frowning/rising eyebrows depending on if you move them up/down or left/right from the nose. Or you can actually do both and see in-betweens of all kind of mix of the two), you can see it more clearly as skin around the corners of the eyes moves slightly(up) as well when frowned. I can dedicate the whole other post explaining exactly how I managed to do that, there’s A LOT to say, it’s absolutely ridiculous how complex it is under the hood. I spent maybe a week researching dynamic-wrinkle concept in 3d and I still can’t wrap my head around how cool it is.

Okay, that’s all for the face.

But before moving on, a few words about what I have already mentioned about how you can use original controls to achieve more/other face expressions and actually pose mouth that I completely abandoned for custom controls.

If you switch to one of those layers with orig. controls, you’ll see something like this:

You can see those tiny dots that indicate those controls, but maybe they’re too small to be seen easily.

For this reason, you can switch the way they look to something else, instead of wire, you can do it here (generally you’ll use Stick or Octahedral if not Wire, ignore others)

Below is an example of how it looks like when displayed as Stick. I added a custom bone for the jaw just so it’d visible at all times, so it won’t be affected.

Okay, moving on to those next layers

Now finally about how we can move the body. For this purpose there are two different ways to bend those arms/legs and those are known as Forward Kinematics (often shortened to FK) and Inverse Kinematics (IK).

In this rig there are separate layers for them called

“FK CTRL” and “IK CTRL” , for forward and inverse kinematics accordingly.

Forward Kinematics is when you pose bones one after another in a rigid way. From bottom to the top. In this rig they are color coded with green.

Note: a little update made to the rig after those gifs were made — now finger bones are in the FK CTRL layer. Used to be on DEF layer before

Inverse Kinematic (IK) is the other way around - you move the last element of a chain and all the bones before that move accordingly. You can further adjust the position of the chain by using “pole target” (in the gif below you can see how it works. It help you rotate elbow or knee) I made IK controls yellow.

This rig is switched to IK by default, so if you try to move green bones of arms or legs it won’t move. I’ll explain fow to switch between IK/FK in a moment.

“Root“ layer contains two shapes. One of which is the circle around where the character stands on the ground - if you move that it’ll move the whole character

Another shape is the words “Some settings” above the head. If you click on those and go into item properties menu, you’ll see that there are a buch of switches there:

Eyes_Follow_Head - whether or not eyes move along with the head if you rotate it or stay focused on eye controller.

FK>IK_Hand_L - switch left hand from FK(if set to 0) to IK (if set to 1)

All the remaining ones are just the same, but for the remaining hand and legs.

Layer “Torso” is quite self-explanatory. Just move/rotate things around to understand what they’re doing and you’re good to go.

And...It seems like I’m forgetting something really important as if there’s a lot more to tell about, but HUH. I don’t remember what is it exactly and if I figure it out, I’ll update this post.

Oh, right, about other layers. Those are mechanical layers responsible for things to function properly and those layers aren’t intended to be touched so if you don’t know what you’re doing DO NOT TOUCH OR CHANGE ANYTHING in those layers. Which are “Eyelids”, “Follow-Eyelid”, “DEF”(this one contain original bones btw, but don’t touch it if you're tot sure), “MCH” and “IK”

Lemme know if you have any problems/questions/suggestions/fic recommendations or if you want me to ramble on about some specific thing in rigging(or 3d in general), like the way I made those controls for eyebrows, or how to create your own controllers. Or...you got the idea.

And if you use this rig for your renders, mention where did you get it from (I wonder who that could be about?) ;^)

#rigging connor #dbh #dbh connor

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godesssiri · 10 months

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Thrifting Philosophies 4

Cheap is good - free is better

My Grandad gave me the 1 non-ugly furniture piece I had when I left home, the one thing I haven’t replaced with something better in the years since. The drawers from my childhood bedroom were too big for the tiny place I was moving into, so I asked around my family for a small set and Grandad came through with a set that had been shoved into his garage when he downsized and no longer had space for them, I was told over a decade later that they were the drawers my mother and aunt shared in their childhood bedroom – those drawers could have been sent to a thrift store when Grandad went into a rest home but because I asked for them they’re still in the family and my mother and aunty get to see them and reminisce about sharing a bedroom.

If you need a [object] ask around if anyone has a [object] that would serve. Family, friends, neighbours are all great resources for free/cheap furniture. My dining chairs came out of my stepdad’s mother’s garage, my bedside table came from a forgotten corner in my mother’s porch, I have a gorgeous Art Nouveau console table that my aunt didn’t have space for anymore, I always loved my great aunt’s hope chest, so she gave it to me before she went into care. Just ask if you need/want something that someone you know no longer has use for. Volunteer to help when people are downsizing or having a clear out because there’ll be stuff they don’t want to take with them, and it’ll often give them impetus to make the decision to get rid of a piece if they know you want it and will value it. And like the drawers from my Grandad’s garage, they’ll carry memories, and you’ll feel that you’ve saved those memories from being lost.

I have several lovely family heirlooms that came to me rather than anyone else in the family simply because I put my hand up and said, ‘Can I have that one day please?’. I didn’t get those things straight away but when the owner was ready to let them go, they already knew I would value them so they were happy for them to come to me. The cool thing about loving and valuing second hand is that you become known as The One Who Can Be Trusted With Heirlooms and people give you all sorts of lovely old things because they know you’ll look after them. I’ve had older relatives quietly pass me things, bypassing their own children, because they know that their heirloom would just be shoved into storage in their kid’s houses but in my house it will be displayed and/or used and loved. I even get passed things by acquaintances and even strangers because they want something treasured to go to someone who will appreciate it, my real estate agent gave me a mirror that belonged to her mother, my mother’s friend’s daughter’s Tae Kwon Do instructor gave me her mother’s crystal rose-bowl (yeah read that chain again, I had never met the woman but she had been told about me).

You can also keep and eagle eye out for things left on the side of the road. Things in dumpsters, if the dumpster is outside someone’s house then please ask them before you take stuff. Watch Marketplace and/or community free stuff pages online. Some thrift stores will put a free box outside filled with bits that they don't think are worth anything and you can take any treasure you find in there, sometimes people having garage sales will do the same. There's a huge amount of stuff out there that people no longer want and they don't think it's worth it to try and sell and often it just needs a little TLC to make it into the perfect thing for your home.

My previous thrift post

#thrifting #thrift shopping #solarpunk #fuck capitalism #sustainability #eco home #reduce reuse recycle #anti capitalism

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mrburnsnuclearpussy · 11 months

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Jean Luc Picard: welcome to the starship enterprise

Carson: hello, please let me go I don’t want to be here

Picard: sorry but I don’t know where you come from, you just appeared here

Carson: I’m going to be late for the dinner :(

Picard: don’t worry we will use the ship to find out where you came from

Carson: I came from Downton abbey my home the place I love and cherish

Picard: I too know what it’s like to be in love with inanimate objects

Carson: what

Picard: even these statues in my bedroom come to life and speak to me, and sometimes I think-well I think-…oh no I can’t say that

Carson: say it

Picard: well, that I would like to make love to them

Carson: that’s disgusting! I hope you die >:(

Picard: no! I thought you understood me!

Carson: I don’t understand anything! I don’t like your ugly house :(

Picard: it’s not my house it’s a starship. A Starfleet vessel and we search for new life forms

Carson: you should stop. That’s illegal!

Picard: it’s not, and you’re from the past well things have changed now bitch. Get used to it. Also I’m not disgusting for liking what I like

Carson: you are, you are hedonistic and should think about what you’ve done. I will find my own way home

Picard: try it

Carson: *walks around the ship and bumps into Data*

Data: omg r u from Sherlock Holmes? That��s my favourite books they are so good and I love the bit where-

Carson: where is Downton abbey

Data: it’s in the computer :) i can take you to the holodeck and we can play

Carson: I don’t want to play but I’ll go home because I have work to do, so thank you

*they arrive at the holodeck in a simulation of the tv series Downton abbey*

Carson: oh that’s good everything is back to normal now :)

Data: you’re welcome, but you have to leave now

Carson: no I work here? Why would I leave?

Data: it’s not real lol it’s a hologram! :3

Carson: what is that? That sounds stupid go away I’m trying to clean the cutlery 🍴

Data: computer, discontinue program

*they are left in a black empty room with yellow grid patterns on every side*

Carson: what is this :( I don’t understand

Data: it’s not real bub, I told ya. Now come with me

Carson: no, I’m staying here forever! It’s my life and my purpose!!

Data: …it’s an empty room lol

Carson: no it’s real I saw it, I just having a dream or something…I will stay here until it comes back

Data: I cba with this anymore I have to go sorry

Carson: …*sitting in corner silently*

And form that day onwards he lived in the barren gridded box and it became a jail cell.

~The end~

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ackasamii--archive · 3 years

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just as he wanted

summary: with love comes sacrifice

pairing: steve rogers x fem!reader

word count: 2.1k

warnings: angst

note: so this is a repost of my one shot from other blog i impulsively deleted so i hope you enjoy this!!

When was the last time she laughed? A full wholehearted laugh from the core.

Ah, it was in her small New York apartment located in the quiet part of Brooklyn. It was rare to catch a quiet moment in New York, but home was the place Y/n always went. And this time, she brought a friend who was in dire need of it. Someone who carried the world on his shoulders quite often, someone who needed a day or two to relax for once.

With a grin on her face, Y/n handed the last of the dumplings to Steve, who sat comfortably on her worn couch that she had brought at least two or three years ago. The couch had seen better days, the green color was faded, some tears here and there, but she couldn’t find herself to complain. After all, it had many nights of long and thoughtful conversations from five years ago, and she couldn’t bring herself to give that up. If her memory were to vanish at an older age, what else could remind her of the time spent with Captain Steve Rogers?

Steve stared at the two dumplings left and shook his head, “Take them, I’ve had enough of those for one night.” He smiled and let a short chuckle escape his lips, but lately, she’s started to notice how his smile never reached his eyes. Which is why she persisted he have the last of the two dumplings. He looked Y/n in the eyes and assured, “Really, I’m fine.”

Y/n sighed at his stubbornness but let it go as she set the box down on the coffee table and settled down next to him, leaving just enough space between them. She couldn’t help but stare at the man before her with an adoring smile while he was lost in his own wandering thoughts. “Whatcha thinkin’ about?”

He blinked and turned to stare back at her, “What are you thinking about?”

“I asked first.”

Her heart fluttered once another smile broke out onto his lips. Steve leaned forward, clasping his hands together and sighed. “Honestly…” Y/n scooted closer to hear him better, their shoulders nearly touching. “What my life would’ve been like if I hadn’t been on that plane.”

With a thoughtful look, Y/n shrugged, “A lot different, man. I mean if you weren’t on the plane, I wouldn’t know that one story Bucky told me about you and a trash can lid.”

Steve laughed lightly, his muscles flexing slightly with every movement he made, and then his blue eyes met hers.

“Peggy and I, we…” Steve stopped short, looking down at his hands and hadn’t noticed the frown now on her lips. Or the fact that her heart sank at the mention of his old flame. He looked back at Y/n, who quickly made her frown disappear as he asked, “Have I ever told you about the time we met?”

She shook her head but remained silent, letting him continue. Something ugly within her tickled her heart as he passionately talked about that woman. That woman she would possibly never be able to compete with. Eventually, she had to come to this conclusion one way or another without avoiding it. As the spark in his eyes grew brighter and brighter, she knew that his heart still sat in the palms of that woman’s hands.

It hurt her to no end. It hurt her that she wasn’t good enough for him, it hurt her that he may never see her the same way he saw Peggy Carter. Perhaps she was nothing like her, but at times, she wished she could be. But could she blame the woman? No. It was Y/n that just couldn’t compete or even be compared to such a brilliant and strong woman.

Steve told her time when he first got his shield. And how Peggy shot at him. The scenario was so entertaining, that Y/N couldn’t help but laugh along with him. Laughing at that point in time would’ve been so foreign, but not between the two. It was almost natural, as if they were old friends. Which was exactly what Y/n knew he saw her as.

Now, Y/n had no idea why this memory came to mind. Maybe she needed one semi-happy moment to lift her fallen spirits while cladded in black. It was the black clothes. She wanted to change out of them quickly and that’s what she was about to do right after Tony’s funeral. After paying her respects, Y/n was ready to return back to her small apartment alone and possibly take in everything that has happened.

But no.

She stood stiff in front of the time machine transporter or whatever the hell Banner called it, with Steve on her right. Somehow, she didn’t know how, Y/n had gotten wind that Steve was going to travel back and return all the stones. Alone. Normally, she would protest to such a horrid plan only because she was worried about his safety. But this time, she was in too much shock to even utter one word. She wandered how Bucky or even Sam was okay with this. Or why she wasn’t told about this. Maybe because of this very reason, Y/n would try and stop him, and then it would be her fault that time would be screwed up.

So, that’s why she stood silent and stiff to the side while Steve was giving Bucky a hug as if he won’t be coming back. Y/n hoped Steve wouldn’t be that stupid to try something. Finally, he had turned to her, Y/n tried relaxing her shoulders and sending him an encouraging smile, but he could see right through her façade and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“It’ll be fine, stop worrying.”

She shrugged with a defeated look on her face, “Can’t help it.” Impulsiveness was strong today. Y/n pulled him into a hug and buried her face into his shoulder. Her hold was tight as if he was disappear in mere seconds. After a few seconds, she finally let him go and mumbled a, “sorry.”

He only chuckled as he walked towards the platform. What if he doesn’t come back, those thoughts kept nagging at the back of her mind and her mouth suddenly became dry as she wondered if this was her chance just to say it. It three words she’s been ready to say ever since he first came over to her apartment. If she tells him before he leaves, maybe he’ll come back, maybe there would be something more than just friends..

Her moment would pass if she didn’t say anything now. She doesn’t hear Banner count down as she nears the platform, blurting, “Steve—”

But she was a second too late.

His figure was nowhere to be seen and Y/n fiddled with her fingers anxiously. ‘No, I will tell him,’ she assures herself, ‘when he comes back I will tell him.’

Y/n closed her eyes and quietly counted down to five along with Banner. Her heart pounded against her chest excitedly as she got to three. Her fingers became shaky and clammy as she reached four.

She opened her eyes at five.

Only, he wasn’t there.

It was like there was no breath in her lungs and her heart had fallen out of her mouth. With wide eyes, she whipped around to face Banner who was frantically looking at the tech set up before him.

“What happened? Where is he?” Her questions came out rushed and frantic while she looked from the platform and to Banner. After receiving no answers from the green giant, her voice became strain as she shouts, “Bruce, where is he?!”

“I don’t know!” Banner said with his eyes still focused on the contraption.

She was too late. The realization dawned on her as she stared at where Steve once stood. What if he was stuck somewhere, please don’t be stuck somewhere. Y/n’s heart was beating so fast, she was pretty sure it could run a marathon right now. Where the hell was he?

In the corner of her eye, her state of panic shifted as she spotted Sam walking away from the scene and Bucky standing further away. She watched the two, wandering why they weren’t showing the appropriate reaction to this situation. But Y/n kept watching, Sam walked past Bucky and towards an occupied bench. She doesn’t remember seeing that bench, overlooking the lake. Was that always there or did she never pay any mind to it before now?

Y/n trudged to Bucky’s side, she studied his face and the scene ahead of her. Sam was speaking to the figure on the bench, the tension soon shifted, and it finally dawned on her. Her mouth hung open as she watched the two. How…? Time travel was quite the complicated topic for her and in this moment she couldn’t understand what the hell had happened.

“Is that…?” She wanted to be sure, but the answer was already settled deep within her.

Bucky only nodded in response, not once his eyes had wavered from the two. From the back, she could definitely feel that it wasn’t the same Steve. Which meant…

He went back for her.

She should’ve realized it sooner and stopped him. But she was too late. Y/n was too late because she was a coward to say anything then and all the other times where she had the opportunity. This was what she got for being so fearful of rejection. Her eyes welled but she willed herself not to cry, she couldn’t and won’t cry. It was her fault for missing her opportunity.

A few minutes pass as Sam comes back with the shield in his hand. But Y/n’s remained on the figure on the bench. Seconds pass and Bucky isn’t by her side anymore, only her, slowly moving towards the bench in curiosity and caution. Maybe she should’ve prepared herself for what she would find, or maybe she shouldn’t have approached him. No matter, she was already next to the bench looking at an older version of Steve Rogers.

There were always jokes about Steve acting like such an old man. But now, he was right there. Sitting on the wooden bench with a relaxed smile on his face, his blue eyes facing the ocean. After hesitating back and forth with herself, Y/n sat down at the end of the bench to stare at the view with him, only she caught sight of a silver object around one of his fingers. The same ugly thing bubbled within her as she glared at the ring until his hands shifted and she finally looked at him.

Actually looked at him.

Steve was smiling. No, it wasn’t forced. It wasn’t a simple smile. This was his happiness. She could see it in his eyes as they lit up. In all her life, she had never seen someone so at peace and happy. So blissfully happy.

The brutal truth hit her in the face right then and there. She had been selfish. Y/n had wanted Steve to stay and be with her so they could both live a happy life. But that was not what he wanted. He was taken from his time and forced into this new one without having the normal life that he desired and deserved. She wanted him to stay somewhere he wasn’t meant to be. Now she understood the saying, the truth hurts. Maybe she knew the truth already and just denied it.

Y/n knew there was no way of stopping him. Why would she stop him from gaining his happiness? What kind of person would that make her?

“You kids didn’t get into too much trouble, did you?” She teased lightly, trying to smile.

There, his chuckle was throaty but warm. “You’ll never know.”

An amused smile curved onto her lips.

Then she was back. Back on that couch, during that night, next to Steve who had trailed off in his story telling and deep into his sinking thoughts. She noticed how much he did that whenever they talked about either Peggy or the forties. Her envious heart blinked back tears as she looked away from him bitterly, her jaw clenching and unclenching as she glared at the box of dumplings.

Maybe she should eat them.

Only she didn’t make a move for the box, she turned to stare back at his side profile, still in adoration. She couldn’t help herself. But it hurt that he would stare at her the same way.

“Do you still love her?”

His eyes twinkled as he stared back at her. There was no answer but you knew and he knew. It was unspoken, but they knew.

A tear rolled down her cheek as she stared at the older man in content. She sighed and wiped the rogue tear away from her cheek and turned her gaze to the view before them. He doesn’t return her feelings, this was her first love, and she knew now that love meant sacrifice, thanks to Tony. Maybe the best way to love Steve Rogers…

Was to let him go.

#steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x black!reader #steve rogers x you #steve rogers #steve x reader #captain america x reader #captain america x you #captain america #mcu x reader #mcu #marvel #marvel imagine #mcu imagine #steve x black!reader #steve rogers imagine #steve rogers fanfiction #chris evans x reader #chris evans imagine

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littlesniggy · 3 years

Text

Yes, Sir Part Two

@onepieceya Hay Sniggy! I'm really excited about this new box opening and I would love to request the second part of the Lucci scenario "Yes, Sir" if it's also allowed... I'm not sure lol

Thank you a lot for your awesome blog and posts, your writings are mind blowing ( ꈍᴗꈍ) I feel like I could read everything you post... And of course I will send a few requests for the more "unpopular" characters even if I feel like they are still very popular haha!

Well, I was gonna write it either way but this way I got a little more motivation 😂 So, as promised, Part two of "Yes, Sir"

Warning: 18+, nsfw, Master/slave, choking, maybe a little bit of pet play, spanking, orgasm denial

Pairing: Rob Lucci x female reader

Word count: 1.9k

Part One Here

Rob Lucci had gotten up and went over to the table, grabbing the belt that was still lying on top of it; the black leather was fitting perfectly in his big hand. He came back to you, not minding his dick bobbing up and down while he moved. You would’ve jumped right at him but you knew he wouldn’t let you; and more importantly, he probably wouldn’t fuck you either and be thrown out of his room the way you were.

He stopped in front of you and crouched down, holding his hand up to present you the belt. “I’m gonna put this expensive piece of leather around your worthless throat.” He announced. He didn’t need to tell you – you wouldn’t object to him either way – but he wanted to. “Yes, sir.” You whispered, watching his hands put the belt around your neck, feeling the warm fabric press against your skin and how he slowly tightened it.

Only when you felt him choke you did you snap out of your trance like state and your hands instinctively grabbed at the leather, pulling it away from your wind pipe. In response, Rob Lucci pulled harder, denying you the ability to breathe almost completely. Dry and ugly sounds left your body, your face turning red and it felt like your eyes about to pop out.

Out of the corner of your eyes you saw his dick twitch a little at your desperate attempts of staying alive but ultimately being completely at his mercy. And this thought turned you on despite the situation you were in. He loosened the belt just so much that you could breathe again, the wheezing sound not really flattering but you didn’t care. The air burned in your lungs but you were thankful he decided against killing you.

“What a lovely sight that was.” He purred, getting up again, his dick almost touching your face when he got up – almost. Your eyes followed his member with a longing look in your eyes and the agent couldn’t hold back his low laughter. “What a whore….yearning for my dick. You want it that badly?” he asked, holding the ‘leash’ tight that was wrapped around your neck while looking down at you.

“Yes, sir.” Was your automatic response. Rob Lucci’s eyes bore into yours, the animalistic glit becoming more and more prominent. With a short nod with his head he ordered you to crawl towards the bed. You obliged, turning around and slowly crawling on all four towards the huge king size bed. But it was rather difficult since the belt around your neck made you choke with each step.

“Slowly there. The more you pull the longer it takes us to get there.” He chuckled, his eyes wandering down your back while you crawled in front of him. He licked his lips when his eyes stopped at your still clothed ass, already imagining how good you’d feel around him. And since your master didn’t see the need to fuck you he was sure that you haven’t had sex that often. There just wasn’t that much time as a slave.

When you finally got there he ordered you to jump on it like a dog, watching you in amusement. This was getting more and more fun to him which was your luck because otherwise he’d have to make it fun for him in a different way and he wasn’t sure if you’d still be so eager once he went all out.

“Take your dress off. I can’t fuck you otherwise.” He demanded, watching how your hands swiftly removed your dress completely, exposing your panties and your stockings. God, this just got a thousand times hotter. He loved stockings; especially if you were wearing nothing but stockings. “Underwear.” He ordered again, his voice sounding a little impatient for the first time this night.

After taking off your panties, you wanted to remove your stockings as well but he pulled harshly on the belt, making you fall face first on the mattress in front of him. “I didn’t tell you to remove your stockings. Leave them on.” He growled, a shiver ran down your spine at his words. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”

He pulled you up by the belt again before he pushed you on your back. Your legs were spread wide open, exposing your dripping cunt to his hungry eyes. You mewled under his intense stare but didn’t dare close your legs. Rob Lucci took in this sight, his dick twitching once again, pre-cum gathering at his slit and dripping down in long strings. You had to suppress a moan at this sight.

“P-please…” you whispered, your eyes catching his attention again. “Is there a reason why you speak up?” he wasn’t pleased. His eyes were narrow and he was mad that you distracted him from his staring. “Touch me.” You pleaded, your eyes looking at him beggingly. “Touch you?” his voice sounded almost disgusted at your request as if he found the mere thought to be appalling.

He propped himself up on the hand that was holding the belt right next to your head and his other hand grabbing your pussy almost violently. “Like this?” he asked, pressing the heel of his hand down on your clit. A loud moan rumbled through your body and you arched your back, pressing your pussy against his touch. He felt your juice coat his hand and run down his fingers when he started pushing two inside of you, feeling your tight walls around him.

“Yes!” you panted in a high pitched voice, moving your hips against his fingers, Lucci not even needing to do anything beyond just keeping his hand like this. “Yes what?” he asked dangerously, curling his fingers upwards and pressing against your g-spot. You’ve never heard yourself make such a noise but you couldn’t help yourself – if felt just so good.

“Yes….sir!” you panted, spreading your legs even wider for him to have better access. As a reward he started moving his fingers inside of you, spreading them in delicious ways, making you moan shamelessly. “Nasty slave.” He commented, listening to the wet sound his fingers were creating by thrusting into you.

“God!” you moaned when he hit your g-spot again, grabbing your thighs with both hands and bending them in an inviting motion. Rob Lucci’s eyes moved over your legs that were still adorned by your stockings and between your bent and spread legs. He wanted you.

“Stay like this.” He said when he removed his fingers, leaving your pussy feel empty and wanting. He also let go of the belt in his hand and sat back on his feet, still fully clothed and not intending on changing that anytime soon. He put his big and warm hand on your thighs right under your own hands, squeezing your flesh and leaving red marks when he scratched over your delicate skin with his nails. “Don’t move.” He said again, lining himself up on your entrance before thrusting into you in one smooth go. Your own nails dug into your thighs, your back arching once again and a loud, animalistic moan left your mouth. He was filing you up completely and you loved every inch of him.

“As expected….” He just mumbled before he started moving inside of you. He used slow but deep thrusts, wanting to feel your walls clench around his member. But this wasn’t enough for you; you wanted to be fucked senseless and he was just teasing you! So, you tried to take matters into your own hands by moving against him but he didn’t like it.

A harsh but not too painful slap stung in your cheek and you looked at him in shock but your pussy clenching around him even harder. Rob Lucci couldn’t restrain the small growl at the feeling. “I said don’t move!” he growled at you, stopping completely and just staying like this, buried deep inside of you.

“I’m sorry…!” you apologized, looking back up at him. But he didn’t move, he was completely still. The longer this went on, the more you squirmed under him, your walls clenching again and again around him. “P-please….” You whispered. The agent’s hands moved over your hands and up your legs, feeling the thin fabric of your stockings before his hands closed around your ankles, holding them tightly.

And then, without a warning, he started to ram himself inside of you, your body moving closer and closer towards the headboard by his sheer force. You screamed at this feeling, letting go of your thighs and instead pressing your hands against the headboard behind you in order not to bump your head and possibly getting a concussion.

Rob Lucci spread your legs in the ear even further apart, his hips smacking hard against you, the sounds your pussy was making became even more lewd. “God!” you moaned, throwing your head from side to side, letting him fuck you like the little slave you were.

The man above you panted slightly, his face not giving away how good you made him feel. Only the low growls from time to time betrayed him.

Suddenly, he let go of your legs, pulled out of your hot core and spun your around on your stomach. His hands deftly opened the belt around your neck and removed it – but you wouldn’t be missing it for long since he grabbed your arms and tied them together behind your back, rendering you unable to move.

His hands grabbed your hips, pulling them up and without a warning he buried himself deep inside of you again. Another moan erupted from your throat and you pressed against him as much as possible. He started moving again, his hips snapping against your ass, raw sound of skin on skin filling the room.

You felt his hand move overt your back, scratching your skin before it moved up and grabbed your hair. “Hngh!” you panted as he pulled your whole upper body up from the bed just by your hair. Small tears gathered in the corners of your eyes but the dick inside of you made you forget about the pain for the most part.

When he started smacking your ass cheek on top of that, you were completely at his mercy – and you loved it. “Cum…..G-gonna…..cum….!” you panted, your tongue lolling out the longer he continued to fuck you.

“Cum?” he panted slightly, not even close to his orgasm at all. “Why would I let you cum?” he asked but not stopping his assault. “C-can’t…..can’t hold it….back….!” your wild moans made it difficult for you to form coherent sentences. Another smack and you clenched even more around him. He felt how your insides got ready for your orgasm, ready to cum around his dick. And when felt you almost cum – he pulled out.

Just a little bit longer! Just one more thrust! Why did he pull out? Why didn’t he let you cum? “Don’t do this to me!” you whined, trying to look at him over your shoulder but it was impossible due to his harsh grip in your hair.

“You’re coming when I tell you to cum. Not a second earlier. And as it is right now, you don’t deserve to have your orgasm yet.” The tip of his dick teased your slick lips, gliding over your slit and the sensitive tissues. A long moan was your response but you didn’t start arguing. Maybe this way he would be a little more lenient and let you cum faster but you doubted it.

“Let’s continue, shall we?”

#one piece #op #rob lucci #Rob Lucci x reader #Rob Lucci imagine #op imagine #op x reader #female reader #ns.fw #master/slave #op rob lucci

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miracleonice87 · 3 years

Note

69 with Tyler

“So… what are your plans for New Year’s?” ✨with Tyler Seguin, our mutual love

quick note: I took this in a way different direction than I’d originally planned. I blame my withdrawals from hockey for my need to write about the actual game in a holiday piece. (remember when we had NHL hockey around the holidays? le sigh.) also Jamie and Katie are still together in this one, as they always are in my head, except when I’m writing about him as the MC. she’s my idol — sue me.

quick warnings: hockey injury involving blood, swearing

_____

No matter how many times it happened, you still felt ill each time. You’d never get used to seeing the love of your life get injured before your very eyes.

The same sensations of the blood draining from your face, your pulse becoming unsteady, bile rising in your throat. They happened every time.

The next thing you felt after the initial physical reaction was Meg Dowling’s hand gathering your hair at the nape of your neck, stroking it slowly in an attempt to soothe you from the seat behind yours. Katie, ever by your side during Stars games — your left side, per the request of both your boyfriends, after they found out that she had been on your left during most of their best games — immediately took your hand in hers. You swore that Andrea Bishop must have jumped across the bar between where she stood and the seats at the front of the suite where you were, as you felt her hands come to squeeze your shoulders, the only one speaking around you as she coached, “Baby, breathe. He’s okay. He’s gonna be okay.”

You finally found your voice when you saw Tyler move his shoulders after what felt like an eternity, though he was still splayed on the ice after a nasty late hit, with Jamie knelt beside him, Klinger hunched overtop. Rads, Esa, and Bish stood near the goal, wordless. The men at the bench all stood, waiting. Bones looked like he could either start screaming or pass out on the spot. The entire arena was hushed.

“He’s moving,” you squeaked shakily, the women surrounding you in the suite breathing a collective sigh.

He was moving, yes, but even from high above the ice, you could still see that his eyes were squinted, his hips and legs moving slowly from side to side as he writhed in pain. Terrified, you watched the trainer carefully extricate the helmet from Tyler’s head, and nausea struck when you noticed a significant pool of blood pouring from... where? Where? Where was it coming from? His nose? Ear? Mouth?

“Oh, god, I’m gonna be sick,” you moaned then, pressing a clammy hand to your forehead. Andrea cooed, “Okay, okay. Put your head between your knees. Just breathe — in through your nose.”

Katie rubbed your back as you followed your other friend’s instructions, the girls exchanging frightened looks once your eyes were no longer focused on them, nor on the scene below.

Once you felt that the imminent wave of sickness had passed, you slowly sat up once more, breathing through pursed lips. Upon seeing that Tyler was still lying on his back, the white towel pressed to his face already stained with blood, you turned helplessly to Katie, knowing she would be able to tell what you were thinking.

“You wanna go?” she asked, arranging your hair behind your shoulder. You offered a slight nod. “Okay, let’s go,” she agreed, standing with you as Meg hung your crossbody from your arm.

Alandra Dickinson, your best friend within the group besides Katie, met you at the top of the suite stairs, pressed a kiss to your cheek, and forced a cold bottle of water into your hand.

“Drink that,” she ordered as she pointed to the beverage. “Small sips.” She then pulled you in for a tight, brief hug, and urged you along, Sarah Pavelski squeezing your trembling hand with a sympathetic expression as you reached the door of the box.

As you turned the corner and approached the private elevator, the mechanical doors opened to reveal John, your favorite arena security guard.

He gave you a tight-lipped smile, one that didn’t meet his joyful eyes the way it normally did, and he tilted his head to the side, inviting you to join him in the elevator.

“I figured I might meet you here. Come on,” he spoke. You sighed with a thankful half-smile and, with Katie right on your heels, stepped into the elevator.

“Just heard on my radio that they got him up,” John told you quietly when the doors shut. “Needed help, but no stretcher.”

You nodded silently, your hands gripping the water like a vice.

“This was supposed to be a fun game,” you finally said in a strangled murmur. “New Year’s Eve, hang in the box, all go out after.”

Katie placed a tender hand to your upper arm, covered with the denim jacket, yours embroidered with “Seguin 91,” that each of the WAGs had worn tonight to represent their significant other.

“I know, babe,” Katie concurred softly. “It sucks.”

You glanced at her anxiously as the doors opened to the tunnels. John led the way, the other security staff along the corridor nodding knowingly as you and Katie trailed behind him.

Finally, you reached the medical room, where John peeked into the window. One of the medical staff spotted him and nodded, so John opened the door a crack.

“I’ve got Mr. Seguin’s better half here,” John announced. You heard a worried “ah, fuck,” leave Tyler’s lips, which actually left you feeling relieved. “Think she could come in?” John asked. The team doctor, without taking his eyes from Tyler, encouraged, “Yep, send her in.”

You whispered a “thank you” to both Katie and John as you rushed past them into the room. The first thing you saw was Tyler’s arm outstretched from where he sat propped against the exam table, his back to you.

“I’m okay,” he insisted the moment he heard your footsteps.

A choked exhale fell from your mouth, and you closed both your hands tightly around Tyler’s, careful not to jostle him as the doctor flashed a pen light at his eyes, testing his pupillary reaction, while an assistant held a fresh towel to the right side of his face. You noticed the first towel, now nearly soaked in red, lying on the counter, tossed aside. You shifted your eyes away from it and toward your boyfriend, who, despite his condition, currently had a smirk on his pink lips.

You couldn’t help but smile yourself. “What in god’s name are you smirking about, Seguin?” you asked incredulously.

“Were you sitting on Katie’s left side instead of right today?” Tyler asked hoarsely, the only brow that was visible quirking upward. “Just wondering if I have you to thank for this too or just Neal.”

You sighed, ghosting your hand along the bare skin of his forearm, and your eyes flickered to Katie, a smile slowly spreading across her face from where she stood in the doorway.

“Just Nealer, baby,” you informed him as you turned your attention back toward him, the doctor turning to prepare what looked like a suture kit. “Katie and I know better than to pull that shit.”

Tyler smiled, turning his head to face you as the medical assistant stepped away to help the doctor get prepped. Only then did you lay eyes on the enormous gash on Tyler’s upper cheek, dangerously close to his eye.

Tyler’s expression shifted as he watched you assessing the damage.

“What... is it bad?” he asked innocently.

“What tipped you off?” the assistant joked, glancing at the two of you briefly.

You tried to shake yourself out of it, but struggled to find your words.

“What, am I that ugly?” Tyler joked, attempting to lighten your mood. You opened your dry mouth, shaking your head.

“Uh, no, no,” you replied. “It’s just, um, it looks... um...”

“It’s big,” the doctor supplied as you trailed off. “It’s significant, Tyler. We’re gonna stitch you up, but we’re gonna have to bring in the optometrist to check you out before you leave. He should be here very soon. I don’t think it will affect your vision long-term, but we just want to be sure. And, to no one’s surprise, you do have a concussion as well.”

Tyler rested his head against the cushion behind him, rolling his eyes in annoyance. “Great,” he grumbled.

“Hey,” you warned. “None of that. You’re lucky it wasn’t any worse. It looked... it looked like it would be.”

As the doctor wheeled his stool back in front of the table, Tyler gave you a pained look. “I’m sorry I scared you, baby,” he told you softly, lifting your hand to his lips.

You shook your head, pushing back some of his chestnut brown curls from the unmarred side of his face to brush a kiss across his temple.

“Don’t be sorry,” you said. “Wasn’t your fault. It was that little shit James Neal.”

Chuckles erupted from everyone in the room, and the doctor shook his head in amusement as he approached Tyler with a syringe.

“Alright, 91,” he began as he uncapped the large needle, making you feel woozy all over again. “You know the drill. Gonna numb you now. This is gonna hurt.”

Tyler took a breath and you felt his grip on your hand tighten as the doctor inserted the needle. You focused on Tyler’s wincing eyes instead of the object being poked into his face. He hissed and swore, then, a grimace still on his face, quipped, “So... what’s everybody doing for New Year’s?”

You snickered sadly at his attempt to deflect, hanging your shaking head, and squeezed his hand a couple of times. He gave you his best smile.

“I’ll tell you what you’re not gonna be doing is going out gallivanting tonight,” the doctor told him as he finished the injection. “So it looks like your New Year’s plans just got a lot less exciting.”

Tyler scoffed. “C’mon, doc,” he tried to reason. “Do you see this girl standing beside me? She’s an absolute smokeshow, and I know she’s got some pretty dress picked out for tonight, and you’re telling me I can’t take her out?” he argued, motioning toward you dramatically.

You felt yourself blush, and the doctor threw you an understanding smirk.

“Unfortunately, Tyler, yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you,” he said. “You’ve still got a long season ahead of you, and if you want to recover quickly, you need to go home, lay low, and get as much rest as possible. Now, hold still.”

Tyler huffed as the doctor began suturing his cheek, and you cupped the near side of his neck soothingly. He shifted his eyes toward you and gave you an appreciative, if disappointed, smile.

“So much for those big, fancy New Year’s Eve plans with everyone,” he muttered as he laced his fingers with yours. “I’m sorry, love.”

“Whaddya mean?” you teased. “I’m gonna have a great New Year’s. My boyfriend and I are gonna have a nice, quiet, relaxing evening by the fire with the dogs. After he gets his face sewn back together.”

Tyler breathed a laugh, bringing your hand close to his chest. “Well, the fire part sounds like fun, at least.”

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tangledinmdzs · 3 years

Note

Hey! Hope you're doing well! Would it be possible for you to do the juniors making up after an argument? Thank you, and stay safe and healthy!

hi hi!

most definitely can~

i’ve gotten a lot of variants with this request so i hope you enjoy the way that i’ve written this; please look forward to more to come soon!

here’s to your request :D

[ver. light]

✧༺♥༻∞　　∞༺♥༻✧

Lan Sizhui

“i prefer classical music,”

“oh c’mon, A-Yuan, if you want to say classical music is better just say classical music better,” you tell him as you’re scrolling through your spotify

“all music is objectively good, it’s just, my preference”

genuinely it’d be hard to actually have disagreements with this man

because he’s usually not very opinionated

but it also depends on the topic

because as an music major (in composition and theory) he gets opinionated about a certain number of things concerning the realm that he is studying

“alright then, i’m putting on the lo-fi studying radio,” you announce

and you don’t even have to look over to him to see the pained grimace that he makes beside you

“y/n, for my sake-”

“or would you prefer indie? i can throw in some songs from the billboard hot 100 if it’d make it better?” you tease him and end up laughing as he leans all into your lap draping himself over you

you watch him reach for your laptop to pull up his own choice of classical music

you don’t really have much of a preference when it comes to choosing music to study to

but you’re a lot more open in your tastes then your boyfriend was,

when Sergei Lyapunov - Ballade, Op. 2 begins playing from your computer you give a small little smile as you watch Sizhui begin to scribble on his notebook beside you

“one day you’ll have listen to more than the classical theories that you study, A-Yuan,” you tell him

at your words Sizhui doesn’t really respond, just gives you a light little shrug

he’ll compromise one day, you’re sure

Lan Jingyi

when it comes to petty fights with this guy, it will also somehow be around food

well, isn’t food always worth fighting for? (haha)

“Jingyi!” you call out after you’ve opened the fridge and find an empty box of macaroons instead of the actual treat that you were expecting to enjoy

“yes my dear!” Jingyi would reply, teasingly until he walks into the kitchen,

see you with a raised eyebrow on your face

and holding up an empty box in your hand

“you ate the rest of my macaroons,” you pout to him,

“wah, noo, couldn’t have been me; are you sure you didn’t eat them before?” Jingyi denies as you make your way across the room to him,

“i definitely didn’t because i told myself that i would treat myself to it as a snack after coming back from my study session,” you reply easily to him

you end up cornering him up against the wall, holding the evidence clear as day up to the side of his face

Jingyi tries to give you a little innocent smile, tries to get out of it

you look up to him, then teasingly put your hand out

“give them back,” you tease him

Jingyi just gives a small laugh, patting his stomach to indicate the food’s long gone passage into his digestive system

and instead of letting him be,

Jingyi is more than surprised when you suddenly tickle him

“y/n, y/n, y/n, i’m going to throw up!” Jingyi pleads to you in between his laughs and your giggles

you finally let him off the hook once you’re both breathless

and you seem a bit happier to let him pull you into his arms

“save some for me next timee” you whine once his arms wrap around you and you’re both catching your breaths

“yeah, i’ll eat them with you next time,” JIngyi promises

Jin Ling

“i don’t see why you don’t like it”

Jin Ling loves you, most of the time

it’s just

sometimes

he’s just...confused with you

“the color’s ugly, y/n” Jin Ling disagrees,

you click your tongue at him, leveling the tie on chest

“yellow brings out your eyes, babe,” you try to persuade and Jin Ling just shakes his head at you

“i’ve seen enough yellow in my life time since i spent that one summer at my uncle’s” Jin Ling tells you and shudders as he remembers the big yellow drapes in his yellow room in the yellow house on the yellow estate of Lanling Jin

maybe he just has a bias with the color (i mean would anyone blame him?)

you purse your lips, look up to his nicely done hair and then back down to the tie

“alright, we’ll go for a gold tie then,” you remark and Jin Ling bulges his eyes at you

“that’s still a shade of yellow,” Jin Ling points out to you when you’ve turned from him and began to riffle through his tie selection again,

“i like yellow though,” you tell him

and then do that thing

the widening, shimmering of your eyes taking up puppy dog form

and though Jin Ling hates yellow

he lets you do the gold tie around his neck for the party

Ouyang Zizhen

“oh no no, not that shade sweetie” you comment right away and plunk that awful shade of taupe beige from his hand

“hey i was looking at that,” Zizhen tells you, but before he can so much as say anything you’ve put the color card into the discarded pile and it will forever be lost to all the others that you don’t like (and some cards he was still looking at)

“we’re not painting the guest room beige, i can’t believe you were even considering that,” you tell Zizhen

“i wasn’t, i trying to compare it to this creamy one,” Zizhen says and you note the other color card that he’s holding in his hand labeled ecru

you wrinkle your nose

“that’s also pretty ugly,” you say and reach for it

“hey, i kinda like it though” Zizhen says and actually puts a bit of distance between your hand and the card he’s holding

he holds it high and out of your grasp, waving it this way and that to make it harder for you to try and grab it from him

though you’re not easily defeated, so you do everything you can to try and get the color card from him

somehow that transpires to the point of you climbing onto his lap, both of you laughing away at each other’s childish antics

only when you manage to pull the card from the tips of his fingers and sit heavily down do you realize where you are

you’re sat fully on his lap (nearly on his stomach),

your noses could brush one another’s if you moved just a millimeter closer

and you both pause, smiles still on your face

and then you lean in, nuzzle your nose against his

and that gets you both laughing loudly again

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ieromoon · 3 years

Text

gif tutorial

here is a very long tutorial showing you how i made this gif:

i use photoshop cs5 and KMPlayer to make my gifs. KMPlayer you can download here and you can probably find a photoshop download if you do a bit of completely 100% legal searching...

this is not the only way to make gifs, there are probably much much easier ways to do it but this is the method i learned like 5 years ago. it may seem long-winded at first but with practice it becomes much easier and quicker

i apologise in advance if this is hard to follow, and also please remember to save after like every single step. photoshop has a habit of randomly not responding.

anyway, without further ado......

so first of all you need to create a new folder somewhere (i just put mine on the desktop so it’s easily accessible) and name it something like ‘caps’ or ‘screencaps’

then make sure you’ve downloaded the video you want to make the gif from

open the video in KMPlayer

press ctrl+g to open the frame extraction window which looks like this:

first change your extraction location to the folder you just created (caps/screencaps/whatever you called it) and then choose your settings.

these are the settings i use when i take screencaps. the only thing i ever tend to change is the number of frames to extract. i like my gifs to be smooooooth so mostly i extract every frame, however changing it to every 2 frames looks just as good and your gif will have more ‘action’ in it (because you’re extracting from a longer period of the video - if that makes sense?? lol)

once you’ve found the scene you want to gif, make sure the frame extraction window is open (ctrl+g) and then press ‘start’ when you want to start capping and then ‘stop’ when it’s over. (when you press ‘start’ the frame extraction screen might disappear. it’s still taking screencaps, just press ctrl+g to open it again to press ‘stop’)

now your screencaps are done you can close KMPlayer and open photoshop.

first, go to file>scripts>load multiple DICOM files

when this window appears find your caps/screencaps folder, select it and press ok

this is what photoshop looks like after pressing ok. you need to go to the bottom right corner of the timeline and press the button with 3 squares on it (convert to frame animation):

then after it’s changed, press this thing:

and then choose ‘make frames from layers’:

now it should look like this:

now delete any frames you don’t want/need by selecting them in the frame animation timeline thing at the bottom and dragging them over to the trash bin:

then go to this bitch again:

and click on ‘select all frames’. they should all be highlighted. click one of the little black arrows on any frame and choose ‘other’:

and choose what you want your time delay to be. i tend to go for 0.05s

now when you press the little play button in the bottom left it should move. wow, we’re doing it!!

if you want the gif to loop click the arrow next to ‘once’ and change it to ‘forever’:

now we’re gonna crop and resize this baby. the recommended post width for tumblr is 540px if you’re uploading one gif. (268px if it’s two gifs side by side)

so go to image>image size

and when this box pops up change the width to 540px:

now that it’s the right width i’m gonna crop it to get rid of those ugly black bars from the top and bottom of the gif. (this step is probably unnecessary in most cases tbh)

go find the crop button on the toolbar:

then just crop the image like so:

it looks great!! yay us. nearly done, i promise.

now we need to go back to the bottom right corner of the frames and press this funky lil button (convert to timeline animation):

and now it looks like this:

next step is to select EVERYTHING by pressing ctrl+alt+A so that it’s all highlighted, and then go to layer>smart objects>convert to smart object

to check it’s worked press the little play button again. if it’s moving, congratulations you now have a gif!!!!

you can immediately save it but i recommend sharpening and colouring it first.

to sharpen it go to filter>sharpen>smart sharpen

these are the settings i used, but it differs from gif to gif depending on the quality of the video:

then you just need to colour it if you like:

and then save it.

to save go to file>save for web and devices. you can change the settings if you like to see what looks best. just make sure at the bottom it says ‘Forever’ under Looping Options instead of ‘Once’

oh, and make sure the file size is under 8mb otherwise it won’t upload to tumblr properly.

and voila! you have a gif you can upload to tumblr and make everyone jel of your mad skillz.

if you made it this far and it worked, congratulations, well done and i’m so sorry this tutorial was so convoluted and bad. there’s a reason i’m not a teacher. if anything’s confusing or doesn’t work just message me and i will try to help lol

and if anyone wants to know how i coloured the final gif then just let me know too! i ran out of space on this post.............

#gif tutorial #tutorial #this is prob the worst tutorial anyone has ever made #anon do you regret asking for it yet hsksks #like i said if you wanna know how i coloured it just ask #can you tell i lost my mind halfway through this

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haloud · 3 years

Text

things we could burn in one go (eminence) - chapter 6

also on ao3

Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Isabel Evans & Max Evans & Michael Guerin, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes, Forrest Long/Alex Manes Additional Tags: post-s2, Canon Compliant, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, starts forlex ends malex, other characters may appear - Freeform, tags subject to update

Chapter Summary: Alex comes home to find his world turned upside down; Max and Isobel struggle to save Michael’s life.

Excerpt:

How close did they come to that chest being stilled forever? The answer was clear, splashed rust-red across Michael’s clothes, and Alex couldn’t stand it, couldn’t reconcile it, couldn’t balance the equation made by Michael this morning and Michael here, now, this.

Alex stood sharp, with a purpose, stood over Michael whose eyes moved rapid behind his lids, Michael who flushed with life but hadn’t lived since being healed, Michael who could so easily be an illusion of hope, snatched away in a second, snuffed out. Jerkily, Alex shot out a hand, then yanked it back, checked over his shoulder for Max or Isobel or—anyone—like a kid with a hand in the cookie jar. A touch so innocuous, necessary, even; Michael shouldn’t be forced to rest with dirty clothes; but. Was he allowed? Was the universe watching?

His hands were heavy; purpose and gravity worked on them, yet with a weightless almost-faith they remembered the hill and valley of Michael’s chest, the texture and temperature of his skin, the cartography, topography of loving him and being loved.

Rain pounded the windshield, and pain pounded Alex’s head, from the back of his neck to behind his eyes. He huffed out short relief when he finally turned down his quiet street and settled back against his seat, no longer needing to squint through the panicked flutter of the windshield wipers at the too-bright lights of other cars as he coasted into his driveway. Parked, he rolled his shoulders back and stretched, heavy eyelids opening and shutting, brain ticking over slowly as it tried to marshal signals to his body to get him out of the car and to the door.

Exhaustion didn’t cover the way everything wore on him. Work, other people, the Project hanging over him like Damocles—how much longer could he hold Fields off without an answer before she took drastic action or moved on, maybe even called Flint in? He had a calendar in the drawer by his bed counting down the days to the end of his contract, hidden away so he didn’t have to explain himself when Forrest stayed over. Not that he relished everything about a return to civilian life, a life he’d never lived as an adult…

Even his loved ones wore on him sometimes. Guilt was another chain around his shoulders, from the way he’d ghosted Kyle for weeks, to shooting down offers from Maria to hang out, to letting his morning call with Liz this week slip from a real conversation to a perfunctory text confirmation that Arturo and Rosa were fine. On top of that, he still hadn’t texted Forrest since he landed, and now Alex was avoiding his phone, the tension of expectation he imagined on the other side of the line too much to bear.

And then there was Michael. Brilliant, stubborn Michael, who reminded him without meaning to how wide a gulf he still had to cross to regain his trust, the trust that Alex would always protect him, no matter what.

But—one day at a time. Hour by hour if he had to. Old advice from the counselor he saw after his injury, but no matter how high the papers piled up in his mental inbox (call your therapist), he hadn’t been able to get himself to book a new appointment with a new one, so he’d do what he could, and fall back on the somewhat insufficient tools he had in his outdated toolbox.

And one day at a time meant getting out of his car, carrying his groceries through the rain, and getting in the front door. Okay.

As he turned to leave the car, something moved in his peripheral vision, and he whipped his head around to chase it. Squinting through sheets of rain and twilight-gray haze, he could just make out a dark shape huddled beneath the overhang, but whether it was human, animal, or object, it was impossible to tell. Through the thundering static downpour, Buffy howled behind the door.

Moving slowly, he retrieved his combat knife from the glove box and cracked the door open. The rain rushed up from a rattle to a roar, loud enough to cover the scrape of his boots against concrete and brick as he crept toward the porch. He was soaked cold within moments, blinking water out of his eyes, still and smooth as a cat after decades of conditioning, every muscle locked to avoid tremor. The closer he got, the louder Buffy grew, barking and slamming herself against the door. A few feet closer, and the shape took form—human, definitely human, adult male by size, but whoever it was, they were slumped beside the door, not crouched, not lying in wait, so Alex lowered his knife.

Still creeping closer, he spoke up, “Hey! Do you need help—”

But before he could get out a single word more, the person lifted their head, and—

“Michael?”

Alex bounded forward the last few feet, dropping his knife with a splash, flinging himself to one knee beside Michael’s huddled form, grasping at his sopping clothes, seeking injury, something, anything.

“Michael, what’s wrong? What—”

He tipped his face up and his head lolled back; his breath rattled in his chest. The only color between his ashen face and rain-black hair was an ugly streak of red from the corner of his mouth across his cheek and chin, and a gust of wind blew the storm against them, washing his blood pink, and then it was gone.

“Michael!” Alex repeated, more urgently, frantically. How did this happen? Who could have done this? Alex’s mind shot straight to his own earlier question—how long would Fields let him go without answering. Was this his answer? Tripp’s dog tags hung leaden around his neck. He could choke on them, on the cold tin symbol of his own inaction, even now.

“Max is already on his way,” Michael said, voice breathy and labored, then laughed, a bizarre and throaty caricature of his normal laugh, and his elbow bent robotically to let him tap his temple. “Called him.”

“Why didn’t you go straight to him so he could heal you? Michael? Michael!”

But he was gone; his eyes rolled back to whites, and he slumped strings-cut so Alex almost dove to catch him in his arms; his hand fell from his head to the brick patio and struck the ground with the force of gravity, skinning his knuckles.

It took seconds for Alex to process his shock—seconds Michael might not have to waste, but nonetheless--the rain had his hands slipping on his skin, so Alex held on tighter, clutching Michael’s head to his chest, curling his body around him on the most animal instinct to shield, shelter, protect.

Despite the cold downpour, Michael’s skin was feverish, his breathing bad and worsening, his pulse fast and weak. Bracing his weight on his good leg, Alex pulled Michael over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and stood and unlocked the door.

Buffy’s barking stopped as it swung open; she scrambled around Alex’s feet, pawing at his legs, herding him inside, sniffing at Michael’s fingertips that dangled inches from the ground. Panting, Alex hauled him to the couch and set him down.

Inside, out of the rain, Michael somehow looked worse. His entire front was soaked with blood along with rain; he stank of it, all copper and salt, and bile rose in Alex’s throat. He held his breath and grabbed a towel.

“Gonna ruin your stuff,” Michael rasped. “Gonna ruin…”

Milliseconds before pressing call to figure out how far away Max was, Alex dropped his phone from numb fingers as Michael—there was no word for it, for a second, a heartbeat, Alex lost all faith in his own eyes—as Michael blurred and disappeared and blurred and reappeared a few feet away, whining like a shot doe.

“What the f—Michael!”

“Alex!” Max’s voice bellowed. A fist pounded on the door, shaking the entire frame.

“It’s open!” Alex called back, dropping to the ground beside Michael again and lifting his head into his lap. “Michael,” his voice broke as Max threw the door open. “Michael, what happened? What’s happening?”

His only answer was a babble, words Alex couldn’t understand, words that doubled, tripled in on themselves, moved backwards to forwards and slid out of Alex’s mind the second he heard them, alien, unknowable.

“Michael!” The word wrenched out of Max’s mouth. Buffy paced behind him, whining, letting out a single loud, anxious bark that went unanswered as all the energy in the room funneled toward Michael.

“Hey—[][][][][][][],” Michael said, a horrible, gasping laugh rattling out of his chest.

As the words left his mouth, he groaned and curled in on himself, choking, splattering himself with more blood as it bubbled up between his teeth; then Alex had to strain to hold him still as his back snapped into an arch. Light flashed, then flashed again, and Alex’s logical mind wanted to call it lightning but—but it wasn’t. It came from inside Michael, as all the strength left his muscles and he collapsed, again, limp against Alex. He was so feverishly hot, even for him.

“What the fuck,” Alex whispered. His mind came up blank for anything else to say; his hands tightened, one hand’s nails digging into his bicep, a fistful of bloody shirt in his other. Michael tipped his head to the side, nodding against Alex’s chest.

“Alex,” he croaked.

“I’m here.” To Max, he repeated, “What the fuck? I saw him just a few hours ago, what the hell happened?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know!” Max said, reaching out to grab him.

Alex’s hands tightened more, on pure instinct, clutching Michael to his body, but then he forced himself to let him go, to let Max lay hands on him.

Max continued, “I heard him in my head, like he screamed in my ear, and I just—knew he’d be here, somehow. It’s not normal, it’s not—we never hear Michael, he’s always closed off. I don’t know what happened.”

As he spoke, his hands wandered over Michael, across the bloodstains on his chest and neck. His brow furrowed; he moved as if on autopilot, until his hands found purchase on Michael’s temples, and he closed his eyes. Softly, his hands began to glow, and Alex held his breath.

If Max couldn’t fix him…

No. He wouldn’t even entertain the thought for a second, not when his body still tingled with the sense memory of Michael’s living heat. He couldn’t die; it went against nature.

Max grunted, and his exertion pulled Alex back down to earth. He couldn’t do anything for Michael that Max couldn’t right now, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be helpful. Levering himself to his feet, he headed for the bathroom, Buffy following, barking anxiously. Wrenching open the medicine cabinet, he downed two Tylenol dry to head off the pain in his leg and hip he knew was coming, then from under the sink he snatched a fresh bottle of acetone and marched back to the den.

There, it was something out of a horror movie, rain lashing the windows, lit only by the artificial twilight of an afternoon storm, Michael spread out, skin grey, blood red, Max hunched over him looking half as sick, and Alex thrust the bottle at him.

“Drink,” he ordered, and as Max obeyed, guzzling the acetone, gasping between gulps, Alex returned to where he belonged—at Michael’s other side, holding on to him as if their bodies touching would be enough to keep his spirit tethered to this world—the only world—that is, the world they shared together, rendering all others that may exist utterly meaningless.

As nightmarish a scene as they made, Alex let out a sigh of relief when he clutched Michael’s wrist and felt his pulse strengthen. His eyes moved rapidly under his lids; his breathing was regular.

“It’s working,” Alex said, voice croaking out through a thickened throat.

“I hope,” Max groaned. “His mind is like—it’s like an animal fighting back. I need Isobel, I called her, but I’m afraid if she went in we’d lose her too. I can’t think—” his eyes met Alex’s, terrified. “It has to be Jones. Jones did something, I can’t think of anything else that might have done this.”

Alex could. But he seized on the opportunity to have an enemy he could exact answers from, one that didn’t lie at his own front door.

Absentmindedly, searching for soothing and knowing on a base level where it lived, Alex ran his fingers through Michael’s rain-soaked, sweat-soaked hair, stroking it away from his forehead. Blood was drying in rivulets now on Michael’s face and neck, and Alex followed the path of one with the tip of his finger, from the corner of his eye down his cheek.

How close had he come to losing him? If he’d been stuck in traffic, if he’d stopped for coffee on the way home, would it have been too late?

No. No thinking like that now. Stay in the moment.

“What do you need?” he asked Max, who finished off the acetone and tossed the bottle aside, reaching for Michael again.

“I think I won’t know until Michael wakes up again. If he does. If not…Isobel will be here soon.”

“When you heal, can you feel what it is you’re healing? Do you know what’s wrong with him?”

“Sort of?” Max’s hands began to glow again. “I’m healing burst blood vessels—all over his body. Internal scarring, almost like burns, it’s—bizarre.” He shuddered. “What I can feel from his head is separate, and I’ve never felt anything like it before.”

Michael shivered in Alex’s arms as Max placed his hands on his head again and filled his body with light, and Alex kept his eyes on Max, watching for any sign he was hitting his limit.

“How’s your heart?” He asked, though the concern flowed bitter and false over his tongue. Even at his coldest, most calculating, he wouldn’t bring himself to sacrifice Max outright, but if Max had to give his life to save Michael’s, would Alex truly stop him?

“I’ll live,” Max replied through gritted teeth.

Over by the door, Buffy rattled off a series of barks, getting louder and louder until the door slammed open. Alex flinched at the sound, hand flying to where his gun would be if he was wearing it, even though he knew with near-certainty who it would be.

“Where is he?” Isobel shouted, red-faced and panting as she rounded the corner into the living room, Buffy jumping and barking at her heels. “Michael!”

“Iz!”

The glow from Max’s hands faded, and he struggled almost to his feet, but Isobel was there before he stood fully, folding him into the hug he was trying to give her. Then Isobel reached for Michael, shoving Alex aside so she could cling to her brother, and Alex went.

She made a strangled noise when he was in her arms, limp and lifeless even after all Max’s effort.

“I’ll get more acetone. Maybe he’ll drink some,” Alex said, using the couch to pull himself to his feet.

Isobel continued to ignore him, but Max grabbed Alex’s wrist and said a quiet thank you as Alex left the siblings alone.

The bathroom door snicked closed behind Alex before he turned the light on, and in the dark he breathed in deep and deliberate until his lungs no longer caught on every inhale against his aching ribs, his galloping heart. He white-knuckled the sides of the sink to keep himself upright until the shaking stopped.

And when he checked all his welds and seams and found himself still watertight, he turned the light on, met his own eyes in the mirror, just once, and got back to business, grabbing the rest of the eight-pack of acetone.

Before he opened the door, his phone buzzed, and he flicked it open. It was a text from Forrest.

Hey! Just got back to the hotel after dinner. Having a great time so far…but I keep thinking I’d have more fun with you here. How’s my girl doing? And how’s my man?

Alex’s thumb hovered over the keyboard for a few seconds, lips pressed together, head blank of anything to say. Then, a lump in his throat, he shut it down without replying, and headed back to Michael and the Evanses.

He breathed a little easier when he re-entered the room and was met with a different scene than before. Max and Isobel had Michael laid out on the couch—and Alex’s mind flashed back to the way Michael had disappeared and reappeared and what the fuck was that?—and he rested more peacefully than he had before. Color was coming back to his skin.

Isobel sat on the arm of the couch, stroking Michael’s hair off his forehead, while Max sat on the floor at the other end, back against the couch.

“Thank you, Alex,” Isobel said, acknowledging him for the first time.

Alex acknowledged her back with a nod, as Buffy paced from the couch to the door and back again a few times, finally settling with a whuff against Max, resting her head on his thigh, looking up at him with huge, soft eyes.

“Hey girl,” he said softly, petting her ears.

“How is he?” Alex asked.

“Alive. Sleeping.” Isobel ran her hand across his forehead again. “We’ll see where his mind is when he wakes up.”

Alex sat on the piano bench, folding his hands between his knees. “Max kept saying he’d never felt anything like this before. Can you describe it to me?”

She groaned and rubbed her temples, and Max nudged a bottle of acetone closer to her. “It’s almost like interference, but not. There’s nothing in there that isn’t Michael; he’s not possessed. But it’s like Michael’s been repeated. A thousand different Michaels all shouting at once. He’s quieter now. But…I don’t know.”

Watching Michael’s face, approaching peaceful in an unconsciousness Alex was too fearful to be fooled by, Alex spoke slowly, uncertainly.

“When you discovered you could use telekinesis alongside your other powers, what was that like? Was it spontaneous, or…?”

“Not really? Noah said that we all had the potential for much more than we imagined, and—after—I was so angry, I thought, if Michael can use his anger this way, why not me?” She shrugged an elegant shoulder. “So I wouldn’t call it spontaneous. I could always have done it, I just never thought to, until I did. Like knowing how to swim and learning a new stroke. I was clumsy at it at first, but I was just doing something I already knew how to do in a different way.”

“Hm.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Before you both got here, Michael was…”

“He called me. Like your psychic scream, Isobel, except he’s never done that before. And he kept emitting light. While I was healing him,” Max said, looking up at Isobel. “Flashes of light. Not electricity.”

“And before you got here, he—teleported. Only word for it. Something none of you have ever done.”

“What?”

Isobel grabbed Michael’s shoulder tightly, like he might disappear right in front of her, like she could stop him. Max just shook his head silently. He really did look awful, eyes red, dark bruises beneath them, a shakiness to him that hadn’t been there last time Alex saw him, some random Thursday when he brought marshmallows to Michael’s because he’d never actually had a smore that wasn’t made in the microwave. Maybe his condition came down to the rigors of saving someone’s life with your own, but considering how worried Michael had been for weeks, Alex thought not.

“I don’t know,” Alex said, dragging his hands over his face. “None of us know. We’re just talking in circles.”

“I guess we just have to wait for Michael to tell us,” Max said.

“Or we go beat it out of that bearded f—”

“No, Isobel.”

“You can’t keep defending him.” Her voice went high and loud, zero to a hundred. “Look what he’s done! He almost killed Michael, what is wrong with you?”

“I’m not defending him!” Max shot back, wounded. “I’m telling you not to go running off on some half-cocked vengeance scheme when Michael still needs you here! If he’s lost inside his own head somehow, there’s no one who can help him but you. We’ll deal with Jones later, when we know Michael is safe.”

Isobel growled but capitulated.

Not letting any ugly silence settle, Alex got up and said, “I’ll put some coffee on.”

They watched over Michael for all the rest of that evening and into the night, as the storm quieted and the sun set and Michael’s hair dried into a familiar halo of curls. At some point, Isobel brought Alex’s groceries in, half-ruined, and Max made dinner with whatever could be salvaged. While they worked, Alex sat with Michael in a chair pulled up to the couch where he lay, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest.

They started slowly. He eased up the hem of Michael’s ruined t-shirt with a pinch of fabric, without touching his body at all; he inched it up his back where it rested against the couch, until he ran out of room to work with cloth alone. The shirt bunched around his underarms.

Alex had no choice but to touch, so he did.

His hand still fit the circumference of Michael’s arm, and he lifted it. Michael moved without resistance, idle art in living warmth, velvet skin, liquid veins. Alex moved as if he was as delicate as glass. The second arm was no easier; Alex worked just as tenderly, every inch of his skin lit up with sensation. Leave no trace, like Michael’s body was some untouched scrap of woodland in Alex’s brief custody rather than the sweetly historied path toward home. But that was where Alex was right now, what time and choice made of them.

He pulled the shirt over Michael’s head, and it came away easy in his hands, and he went to his bedroom to get a new one.

The whole thing took less than a minute.

Michael slept on.

“Any change?” Max asked softly, handing Alex a plate of the dinner he’d already forgotten about. Buffy followed him from the kitchen, but she didn’t go after the food, opting for her bed beside the piano, where she continued to watch Max with adoring eyes. He didn’t comment on Michael’s shirt, for which Alex was pathetically grateful. In the kitchen, the water ran as Isobel did the dishes.

“No. Can…you sense any change? Through your bond, or through a handprint?”

“No. Maybe? When I first got here, he took up so much space, metaphorically, psychically, that it was almost hard to breathe. He feels more like himself now. Like he fits inside his body. So that’s probably good.”

“Probably,” Alex agreed.

The water shut off, and Isobel appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. “I’m going in,” she said flatly.

“What?” Max asked.

“His head. I’m going in. I need to see what he’s seeing; to try and pull him out. This?” she waved a hand at Michael. “Isn’t normal. Liz died and she wasn’t out this long. I’m going in to get our brother back.”

Take me with you? Alex almost said it, almost begged, as much a violation of trust as it would be to walk Michael’s mind uninvited. But as Max healed his body, as Isobel healed his mind, Alex was helpless to do anything, and he never wore helplessness well. It clawed its way out of him. It destroyed things if he failed to catch it in time.

But he held its leash tight, for now, and gave Isobel an equally tight nod.

“What do you need?”

“Space. No interruptions. It seems like you’ve got enough acetone”—five bottles were still left at the foot of the couch—“so I just need time.”

“You can have the guest bedroom,” Alex agreed.

He and Max carried Michael between them, sharing his weight. Some rearing and needy part of Alex wanted to do the work himself, bundle Michael in his arms and hold him close, but he’d already carried him once today, and Tylenol only went so far. Once he was situated on the bed, Max went to get acetone and water for Isobel.

Weak in the legs, Alex sat beside Michael’s head, never taking his eyes off him. He couldn’t; he wouldn’t. And neither was it a possibility for him to reach out and touch his hair, his forehead, his cheek, so he only watched.

In the door, Isobel cleared her throat. She held both liquids—Max had put them in different-colored cups—and set them on the bedside table before sitting on Michael’s other side.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Alex said, but made no move to go.

After a few seconds, Isobel made a frustrated noise and tossed her hair. “Whatever. You can stay.”

“I—really?”

“It’ll be boring, and if it freaks you out, you can’t interrupt. But yeah.” Alex opened his mouth to respond, but Isobel just held up a hand. “I don’t pretend to understand your weird alien soulmate bullshit. Yours or Max and Liz’s. And I don’t really care what your deal is with Forrest Long, but if you mess my brother around, I’ll end you.”

“I’m not—”

“Again, don’t care. I just know…” she softened. “…I just know how much you mean to Michael. So you can stay.”

Alex swallowed, the lump in his throat too big for him to answer with words, so he nodded, and Isobel nodded back.

“Okay. Starting now.”

Her eyes slipped closed as she lifted Michael’s hand and pressed it between both her own.

The world didn’t change; no power within Alex’s senses rippled between the two of them. Isobel wasn’t wrong to call it boring, as even the uncertain anxiety of what was transpiring in Michael’s head couldn’t keep his attention from wandering. Half an hour in, Max came into the room to stand beside the bed as well, and he clapped a hand on Alex’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze, an attempt that reassured neither of them. But it was a brother’s touch, and that meant something.

In that room, throughout that silent ordeal, they were family. Alex was part of that family. It was a feeling he had no room on the shelves for; it fit in none of his boxes. He could barely comprehend it, so it sat in the center of the floor, and for a few hours, everything rearranged itself neatly around the new centerpiece of his world, like it was meant to be there all along.

The night deepened on, pain and exhaustion graying Alex’s vision. Discretion and strategy overtaking his determination, he was close to calling it quits and attempting a few hours of sleep when Isobel surfaced, bone white and nose bleeding as Max scrambled to hand her the acetone.

“Did it—”

Max didn’t even finish the sentence before, with a drowning, sucking gasp, Michael followed her out. Alex shouted, elation, shock, fear, everything, as Michael coughed and coughed until a clot of blood dislodged from his throat, guzzling the water that Alex passed him. His bloodshot eyes met Alex’s over the rim of the glass, confused and shocked, and Alex just nodded, trying to say without words everything that…just everything.

Everything.

On Michael’s other side, Isobel was laughing, breathless and triumphant.

“I’m going to kill you! I’m going to fucking kill you,” she wheezed, throwing herself into Michael’s arms.

Michael’s eyes fell shut as he rested his head against hers. “I know,” he rasped in return, but his lips pulled into a smile anyway. “I know.”

“Michael,” Max said weakly.

And Michael replied, “I know.”

Max rounded the bed to fold the both of them into a hug. Alex might have even joined them, if he wasn’t—he realized only now—shaking too badly to move. But in the midst of all the sensory overload, the misfiring nerves electrifying his helpless flesh, one sensation rang true.

Alex’s hands rested on the bed, stiff and motionless, until one of Michael’s crossed that untouched skin, light at first then more firmly, finger atop finger, knuckle nestled into soft palm, and Michael held his hand and gave it a squeeze, and Alex squeezed him back.

#malex fic #alex manes #michael guerin #malex #roswell new mexico #rnm fic #max evans #isobel evans #my fic

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n0-eyedtaissa · 3 years

Text

Don’t You Forget About Me (Outer Banks OC x The Pogues): Chapter Four

tagging: @hughstheforcelou @reggiemantleholdmyhand-tle@cactiem & @kazinejghafa.

(chapter one can be found here, chapter two can be found here, and chapter 3 here)

Part Two: One Year Later

key event: the big move

There’s a lot that can happen in a year, a whole cycle of three hundred and sixty-five days. It was a year full of memories, a year full of recounting the smallest of details to her dad, to the cops, and to herself. Clementine was the last person who saw Kimber as she snuck out the window, getting picked up at the foot of the driveway by Liam Gatwin (who over the last year had become more and more suspicious). Kimber doesn’t come home after that. It takes three days for Lyle Adams to report his oldest daughter is missing. The police thought that was suspicious, but they didn’t know Kimber. She was an adult, technically, not confined to the household, and it wasn’t unlike her to spend a few nights at Gat’s house. The question that everyone wondered was “Why didn’t you report it sooner?” and the simple answer to that was no one thought anything was wrong. Yet…little did they know.

Clementine has had a tough year herself. She stopped sleeping, too wracked with the guilt of knowing there could be so much more she could be doing to help Kimber’s case. She knew all the details and had the timeline she’d written down on the back pages of the notebook that was now kept under her mattress. Clementine’s a lot jumpier now, around both her father and around Gat…around everyone now actually. It was like she crept around every corner waiting for something else to be taken away from her. Sure, she was like that as a kid, always anxious about something, but now she had a reason to be. First she lost her mom, then Kimber disappeared, and now the family was moving out of the only place where Clementine could feel either one of them. She tapes another big cardboard box closed and adds it to the stack in the corner of her empty room. Clementines eyes can’t seem to adjust to the look of her bare, white walls so she walks into the living room to curl up on the couch — the same spot where Kimber would sit and watch reruns on the history channel with her dad.

“Quitting time already?” Lyle asked his youngest daughter with a smirk and a twitch of his mustache. He sits down on the couch with a groan and kicks his feet up on the coffee table.

“I might get back to it later I just hate looking at how empty it is in there” Clementine sighs, “The white walls hurt my eyes.”

Lyle chuckles as he grabs the television remote. “Well, this time next week you’ll have a whole new room to decorate however you want, right?” He flicks on the TV and that’s the end of the conversation.

Of course, Lyle Adams got the job over in the Outer Banks. A few months beforehand he flew out to North Carolina from Florida (something he didn’t like as he was notoriously claustrophobic) for the job interview where the dock owners asked him questions about his past jobs and his family life so of course, he passed with flying colors. He was charismatic, a hard worker, and incredibly experienced. He was able to work under pressure and various kinds of duress (such as having his oldest daughter disappear without a trace in the middle of the day that past June).

“I guess” Clementine answers, not in the mood to feign more enthusiasm than she has been.

Lyle looks over at his daughter and sighs. “Look, Clem, I know things have been hard lately. Beyond hard, actually…” He turns down the volume of the tv and turns towards her. “And that’s why I think it’ll be good for us to get away from here, all right? It’s time for us to get away from all of this hurt so we can heal. We deserve a fresh start, as a family. Me, you, and Gat”

Clementine scoffs at her dad. “He’s not our family, Dad. He never has been.” She stands up and prepares to storm off like a typical angsty teenager.

Lyle rolls his eyes, having always favored Liam Gatwin over most of his other workers on the Caprice. He definitely liked Gat more than any of Kimber’s boyfriends from the past…Sometimes Clementine thought that her dad might actually like Gat more than he really liked either one of them. Sure she knew that her dad loved her sister and herself but there was time where Clementine wasn’t quite sure if he liked them. So when Clementine found out that she was moving, and that Gat was coming with them, she immediately wasn’t a fan of the idea. But she couldn’t tell anyone about that— that would unravel the story she worked so carefully to spin in order to cover for Kimber, even though she disappeared. Lyle may have trusted Gat to be his little helper on the fishing boat, but Clementine didn’t trust him at all. How could she? He was there when Kimber snuck out the window. He hugged her, wiped away her tears, and loaded her up into his truck, never to be seen again. Clementine will always remember that moment, down to the most minuscule details. She made eye contact with Gat that day, she knew that for sure. He nodded at her and she nodded back. What they were agreeing to, however, was still unknown to Clementine and would be for quite some time.

“After all he’s done for us Clementine, he’s family. Whether you like that or not, he’s coming with us. End of discussion.” Lyle grumbles and turns back to the television, cranking up the volume loud enough where he wouldn’t be able to hear any further complaints.

Clementine shakes her head angrily and turns down the hall to go back to her room, but something tells her to stop in front of Kimber’s bedroom door. She raises her fist to knock on the door before she realizes she doesn’t need to do that anymore. Force of habit. Slowly she turns the doorknob and lets herself into her sister’s closed-off room, feeling like some kind of intruder. The bedroom feels like a sort of untouched time capsule, a snapshot moment in time that proved Kimber lived there, even though she was gone now. It still smells like jasmine oil and the faint whisper of burnt out candles that Kimber was always falling asleep with still burning. Most of Kimber’s things are still unpacked, there’s a stack of boxes in the middle of the room from when Lyle tried to get started but got too overwhelmed with the task. Clementine grabs a partially full box and starts tossing things inside.

Kimber’s bedroom was always a treasure trove of Stuff. She had lots of little boxes filled with odds and ends: a jewelry box filled with small silver earrings, an empty cigarette pack that was filled with beads from a necklace she broke but swore she’d get around to fixing sometime soon. She was always keeping secrets and her bedroom was reminiscent of that. Everywhere Clem reached she pulled out some little object that Kimber was hiding. There's a plastic bag taped to the underside of her desk that has two little pressed pills in it. It’s molly, Clementine remembers when her sister bought it and came home with her pupils the size of saucers. She laughs and pockets it for later before heading over to the closet to attempt to fold up the bulk of Kimber’s clothes. Clementine fills up one box and then another, labelling them with one of Kimber’s many graffiti markers and stacking them on top of her still unmade bed.

Clementine’s too focused on packing boxes and emerging herself in her sister’s corner of the universe for a while that she doesn’t realize that her dad has poked his head in the door.

“You’re packing up in here?” Lyle questions, looking startled and out of breath.

Clementine looks up at her dad, holding on to one of her sisters jackets. “Someone had to do it” She shrugs, turning back to the boxes.

Lyle takes his hat off and runs a hand through his greying hair. “I was— I was coming down the hallway and I saw the light on…I” He laughs to mask his disappointment.

Clementine’s face falls as she realizes what her dad was assuming. She quirks her lips, evading eye contact. “Nope…it’s just me”

~~~

The house got packed and then the movers came. Everything was changing now and Clementine had stowed her feelings about the topic deep in the boxes that were filled with the rest of her belongings. She still didn’t really know how to feel about moving twelve hours away. Despite everything though, Clementine couldn’t deny the appeal of road trips. She like the anonymity of rest stops, the ugly florescent lights that gave everything that particular green hue. She liked to wander up and down the aisles of the convenience stores that felt frozen in time, reading the bizarre slogans on the bedazzled t-shirts and trying on cheap pairs of sunglasses Clementine “accidentally” steals. She liked the giant portion sizes and demanded her dad buy her the biggest medium-sized cherry slushy that she’s ever seen. It’s a long trip but it’s not too bad when her dad lets her pick the music. They switch off every couple of hours and Lyle pretends to hate everything Clementine puts on but she still catches him tapping his thumbs against the steering wheel. The two of them spend the night at a cheap motel and Clementine steals all the loose change from her dad’s pants pockets in order to raid the vending machine. She sneaks out of the room and sits on the back of the truck eating her peanut butter M&M’s under the neon red lights of the hotel sign. Sneaking back into the hotel room, Clementine takes of her sneakers and gets under the scratchy sheets, staring at the water-stained ceiling and preparing for another day on the road tomorrow.

“Wake up, kid. We got a long day ahead of us” Lyle whispers as he shakes Clementine awake, knowing full well that she wasn’t much of a morning person.

It’s still dark outside when the two of them leave the hotel, Clementine’s bundled up in one of her dad’s old sweaters and she’s lulled back to sleep by the slow bounce of the truck tires on the open road. She wakes up startled when her dad rolls over a big pothole and she hits her head against the window. “Are we there yet?” Clementine mumbles, squinting through the sun and pulling her hood up far over her head.

Lyle laughs, looking at her from the corner of his eyes, reaching a hand out to pull Clementine’s hoodie over her eyes. “Go back to sleep, Tiny”

~~~

Clementine doesn’t know how long she fell back to sleep for or how long her dad was driving before he shakes her awake again. “We’re almost there, kiddo. Look at this view! This is our new home!” Lyle taps excitedly on the steering wheel as he cruises the truck up the coastline. It’s a vast expanse of blue water, speckled with ships and other various boats. Clementine sits up as she notices a handful of surfers catching the crisp waves, craning her neck to watch them as they drive up the long road.

Then she sees it. The sign, sunbaked and faded, enticing her to believe something she wasn’t really sure about yet: The Outer Banks, Paradise On Earth.

“Welcome home, Clementine” Lyle says, honking the horn to let everyone know that they’d arrived.

Home. Clementine looked around, taking in her new surroundings. She likes the look of the small town, the mom & pop shops that had probably been there for decades, the people who made a point of waving at them as they drove past. But Clementine knew enough about wealth disparity to be able to recognize the difference between the different parts of town, noticing the big plantation houses and the flashy ways they tried to cover up their dark history. She knows damn well that her dad couldn’t afford a house like that so she’s not surprised that they drive a little longer, until the roads turn into dirt and pebbles and the much smaller houses have chipped paint and slanted rooftops. The truck tires crunch under the gravel as Lyle pulls up in front of an empty yellow house with a screened-in mudroom. Clementine opens the door to spring out before her dad can even shift the truck into park. She stands out in front of the house and just looks at it. It definitely had potential but it needed a decent amount of sprucing up. It needed plants and string lights on the patio, an outside umbrella. It needed cheesy yard art, or a welcome home mat in front of the front door. Right now it was just a house, it hadn’t yet become a home but that would happen all in due time.

Clementine turns to her dad, squinting at him over her stolen gas station sunglasses, “It definitely has potential”.

#fic: don't you forget about me #obx oc: clementine adams #obx oc: lyle adams #outer banks fic #outer banks oc #the pogues x oc #the pogues

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littleoddwriter · 3 years

Text

Scared of Losing You | Roman Sionis x Male!Reader

"Hello there! Your Roman X Reader fics are awesooome! And I want to suggest a request: an Roman Sionis X Male Reader when the reader is caught in a fight between Sionis, the Joker and the Bat family, and gets badly hurt (Joker 's fault). Roman had to deal with the Batman to save his love from death - Angst and fluff at the end + The Batman trying to save reader as he sees him as the only person who can calm Roman. Thanks in advance!!!" @jiejie-eonni-onee-sama

A/N: Thank you so much! That means a lot! <3 I really hope you like it and that I managed to do your idea justice! Thanks so much for this delightful request!!

summary; Basically what it says above: You’re badly hurt by the Joker, Batman helps you and Roman basically, Roman is afraid of losing you.

notes; TW/CW // Hospital; Severe Injuries; Flesh Wounds; Broken Bones; Stab Wounds; Violence (none of these things are really explicit, though, but if any of this triggers you, please be cautious!). Male!Reader; Angst; Fluff; Anxiety; probably non-accurate descriptions of hospitals and such, because I suck; Roman’s usual nicknames for Reader in my fics.

Never in his forty-plus years of living, had Roman thought he'd end up in a situation such as this. It all happened far too fast for his liking; and in retrospect, he should have guessed this would happen. The clown just wasn't to be trusted. Nobody was. Not in this line of business anyway. The Joker had some specific connections that Roman needed in order to acquire a special kind of weaponry. Of course, upon discussing this with the clown prince of crime, he had been a little too agreeable, which should have made Roman more suspicious of him than he had been in the end. Either way, they had made a deal and discussed when and where to meet to get the business going. Now, Roman found himself in a fight with the backstabbing son of a bitch, namely the Joker, and also the fucking Batman and his little birds. Of fucking course! The latter had come in addition, as they had gotten wind of the ruckus caused by Black Mask's, and also the Joker's, underlings. It had already been bad enough, but with the bat and his birds there, Roman had been distracted, busy fighting the one and only Batman, who had gone between him and the Joker. All the while, the clown had taken the opportunity to snatch you away from the corner behind some wooden boxes, where Roman thought to have placed you safely. He hadn't thought the deal to be too dangerous, nor for it to take long, so he had allowed you to tag along, whilst being surrounded by his men. Unfortunately, those precautions hadn't been enough, when the fight had started.

Roman hadn't even noticed what had happened until he had heard your anguished screams, the agony and bone-chilling terror in your voice. His stomach turned almost painfully as he finally registered those sounds, suddenly frozen in place. Graciously the bat had noticed it too, and stopped the punch he was about to land onto Black Mask before it actually made contact with him. When he finally turned his head to seek you out, he saw the Joker looming over your bloodied, twisted and bruised figure. Rage, anxiety and hurt filled Roman to the brim. His sight narrowed in on the Joker, his vision red, his posture tense and dangerous. With a rapidly beating heart, he stepped towards you in quick, booming strides. Holding his gun against the Joker's temple, Black Mask spoke lowly, hissing his commands, "Let go of him. Right now! Or else I will blow your fucking brains out." "As if you aren't planning on doing that anyway," the Joker replied, grinning maniacally with blood splattered on his face. Your blood. "No, actually. I'm planning on fucking torturing you to death some other day. Let him fucking go. I won't fucking repeat myself!" To his chagrin, the Joker's grin only widened, especially when he noticed that Roman's hand was a little unsteady. This never fucking happened! He was a good shot! He always had steady hands! In quick succession, the clown had suddenly grabbed onto Roman's arm and twisted it, making his grip loosen and the gun clattering to the floor. Fuck! Not too long after, Roman wrenched his arm out of the Joker's hands and swung fist after fist into that ugly grimace of the other man. With sickening cracks resounding from either Roman's knuckles and the Joker's face, the Black Mask kept punching until he was suddenly pulled off the other man by a strong pair of arms. "You need to stop," the Batman growled into his ear. "Fuck you! You don't fucking tell me what to do, you fuck!" Roman yelled, trying to get out of the steel grip the bat had on him. The Joker was coughing and wheezing, as he writhed on the grimy, bloodied warehouse floor, a grin still spread on his battered face. He was dragged away by the little birds. Then Roman was suddenly let go of, and he collapsed to his knees. You laid only a few feet away from him. You hadn't moved at all, couldn't possibly. From the looks of it your one leg was broken, an open one, one of your arms was twisted sickeningly, and there was way too much blood all over you to have only been caused by those two limbs. "I'll help him," the Batman rasped, looking at Roman, who swallowed thickly, barely even looking up for a second, his mouth slack. "How? Why?" "I believe he's the only one that will keep you from going on a killing spree right now. I'll take him to the closest hospital. The staff there is really good and can be trusted, I promise. But I need to take him immediately, or else he won't make it." Cautiously, Roman looked at the bat for a few moments, assessing, then he looked back down at your mangled body and nodded weakly, whispering his broken agreement. After that, everything happened in a rush, a haze, Roman couldn't possibly piece it all together. He just knew that the Batman carefully picked up your almost lifeless, quietly whimpering, body and brought you outside to his car. He instructed his birds, Roman couldn't remember what he said, but he knew for some reason he was let off the hook that night, as Nightwing helped him away and to the hospital, after the other birds took care of the Joker and his men until the police would arrive. It certainly wasn't one of his best moments, Roman had to admit. He was trembling, unable to speak, shaken up. This wasn't like him at all. Nothing had ever made him feel quite like this. He hated it. Yet, the thought of losing you was something he hated even more. Hours and hours later, in which Roman had paced around the waiting room of the hospital, thinking up the worst possible scenarios that could have happened from then on, a doctor finally came in to update him on your status, "The surgeries were a success. There weren't any major complications. Obviously, his leg and arm were broken, quite cleanly even, so it was easy to fix those. He also suffered from some stab wounds to his abdomen and thighs, such as cracked ribs, and many bruises and open wounds due to impact from dull objects, probably. We were able to fix him up well enough, though. He's in CCU now and will be put into a general room, when he's woken up. You can go to him now, of course, Mr Sionis." "Thank you," Roman rasped, nodding curtly and then following a nurse to the CCU and your room there. As he went in, Roman had to halt for a second and take a deep, steadying breath. You looked awful, mangled, still so lifeless. Tubes and wires were connected to your body, your broken, twisted arm was in a cast and a sling, such as your hurt leg. Your body was basically all bandages, up to your neck, from what was visible to him outside the blanket and hospital gown. Your face also had some bandages and plasters on it, such as swellings in various sickening colours and some crusted blood. Roman never wanted to see you like this ever again. Thanks to his money and influence, he was allowed to stay, and you were given a sizable bed, so both of you could fit on it. Cautiously, Roman laid down on the mattress, on your 'better' side, without the broken arm and leg, which were both on your left side. He kept a few inches between himself and you, carefully lacing your hands together. Gently, he stroked his thumb over your knuckles, lifting your hand up to his face and kissing it softly. Not for the first time that night, he wondered what exactly the Joker had done to you. He wondered why he had done it. He wondered why he hadn't noticed it sooner, why he hadn't been able to stop that fuck before it had gotten so bad. Shaking his head slightly, he tried to get rid of those thoughts. They were of no use. It was done now anyway. You were still alive and that was all that mattered to him. He didn't care if you were immobile for a while, or perhaps forever. He didn't care if you had to be fed by a tube for a while, or perhaps forever. He just cared that you were still here, alive. And wasn't that a weird thing for him to feel and think- to want? Looking at you like this, he focused on your chest and it's gentle rise and fall. The proof that you were still here, still alive. The beeping of the monitors underlined it, but it wasn't the same as seeing you breathe. Even if it was helped by the tubes in your mouth and throat. "I love you, Y/N," he whispered into the nearly silent room. Roman has never told you that. He started to regret that now. It was something that didn't pass his lips easily. It was something that was tinted with lies and trauma for him and you knew that. He had explained it to you one day when the two of you had gotten into an argument about this whole thing. He knew it had hurt you that he couldn't say it back, whenever you uttered those sacred words. Neither of you had wanted to have a fight ensue, but in the end it had helped to make the two of you understand each other better. Ever since, it hasn't been a problem anymore. Yet, Roman had to admit that perhaps he should have tried harder to make those words work for you at least, after all. Even a variation of synonyms could have been an idea, but he didn't really think of that before. He couldn't be happier for you to still be alive, so he could make up for it. At least he hoped he could still say it, when you woke up. Those words always got stuck in his throat, when he had tried to say them before, and then he had given up. With a heavy sigh, he kept watching you in silence, trying to stay awake until you would finally wake up, but as time passed, his eyes slipped shut and he fell asleep next to you, your hands still intertwined. After two days of constant anxiety, regular check-ups from the doctor, and sleeping as restless as he never had before, Roman finally felt and saw you stir, your eyes fluttering open. The night before, the tubes in your mouth and throat had finally been removed, now you had breathing aids through your nose instead. "Hey, baby," Roman whispered softly, grasping your hand in his, gently stroking over it with his thumb. Blearily, you turned your head and looked at him, a grimace of pain on your face. It made Roman's heart clench painfully. A weak grumble left your lips. With a sweet kiss to your knuckles, Roman leaned over and pressed the button to call the doctor. They checked you over and then put you in your own room on the general station. There, Roman lay down next to you again, gently taking your hand into his once more. Fortunately, the doctor said you were bound to recover completely, and so far there were no complications or anything, but you would have to rest a lot. "Roman," you rasped quietly. Smiling slightly, Roman leaned into you and kissed your bruised cheeks softly. "Welcome back," he whispered against it, his lips brushing over your skin. "What even...?" "You don't remember what happened?" "Not entirely. I kind of, I- I don't know. I know we were in the warehouse to meet the Joker and that something went wrong. But I don't remember much after. The doctor said it was normal, and it would probably come back soon, though," you explained, your voice raspy and broken from not having used it and having had tubes down your throat. "Alright, 'kay. It's probably for the better that you don't remember it, right now." "Yeah, I can see why. Even through the morphine, I can feel the pain, ugh. I must have caused some shit, though. I'm sorry." "Is it bad?", you shook your head. "And don't you fucking apologise. Fuck, you haven't done anything wrong, I'm sure. I don't know exactly what happened or why he did it, but that fucking clown was suddenly on you and---" Roman couldn't continue that sentence then. The thought alone made him choke on the words, a lump forming in his throat. He swallowed thickly and squeezed your hand tightly. "Oh, alright. Are you okay, Roman?" "I'm alright. Don't fucking worry about me. Oh my fucking God, baby! I'm not the one, who is fucking attached to tubes and wires!" "Right, right, sorry!" Shaking his head, Roman leaned into you and shut you up by capturing your lips in a gentle kiss, pecking your lips repeatedly. "I was--- really fucking worried about you. I'm just glad you're alive. And especially awake again." Smiling slightly, though it pulled more into a kind of grimace, probably due to the bruises all over your face, you looked at Roman. Even though your eyes were so bleary, they held so much adoration in them. It was truly breathtaking to him. The words were climbing up his throat, wanting to get out. Roman opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, closed it once more. Patiently, you looked at him. "For fuck's sake!" Roman muttered, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, before opening them back up and looking at you with tears shining in his eyes and an open expression on his face. He heard your breath hitch. "I- fuck! I love you, Y/N. I was afraid of losing you. I never fucking want to go through that again. 'Kay?" Tears gathered in your eyes and one slipped out and down the corner of your eye. Gently, he wiped it away with his index finger. "I love you, too, Roman. So much. I- I'm glad I'm still here, as well, my love," you whispered, a watery smile gracing your chapped lips, "And I'm very proud of you for saying it, y'know?" "You better not get too used to it, my sweet boy," Roman rasped, grinning, but quickly sobered up again, "Enough of those heartfelt moments, though, ugh!" "Hmmm, not really, but yeah, okay. I'm tired anyway. I think I should sleep some more, right?" "Definitely. Go to sleep, my little prince. I'll be here when you wake up, 'kay? I promise. I'm not going anywhere." Your eyes fluttering shut, you were still smiling, when your breaths slowly evened out, while Roman was looking at you like a hawk, making sure your chest kept rising and falling, despite now having evidence of you being alright. It didn't feel like it just yet, but it would have to do. You were alive and going to be better. He just had to keep telling himself that. At least he could now sleep with the knowledge that he's been able to tell you that he loved you.

#tw hospital #tw injury #tw flesh wound #tw violence #x male reader #x male!reader #male reader #male reader insert #roman sionis #roman sionis x male reader #roman sionis x y/n #roman sionis x you #roman sionis fanfiction #roman sionis imagine #ewan mcgregor #ewan mcgregor x male!reader #ewan mcgregor fanfiction #ewan mcgregor imagine

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jasperwhitcock · 4 years

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equinox | chapter 07 –– “a cruel god, a wrathful goddess”

here is chapter six of my bella as a vampire and edward as a human fanfic inspired by an au that @bellasredchevy posted. you can read the new chapter on AO3 or here. i post updates on AO3 or on tumblr using the #equinoxjw tag. but it seems 10/10 times my tag does not work, so that is a fun mystery for me to solve.

oof... sometimes u get distracted and then ur sister gets married and then u get unmotivated & d*pressed and forget to update ur fanfic for over three months... my bad y'all... sorry for the wait hehe. i hope it is worth it. again, i'm so thankful for the comments & i read them all. i get too shy to respond, but i WILL. i just need to talk myself up first. i love u. thank u. hehe. ♡♡♡ merry christmas/happy holidays if i fail u again before the 25th. i WANT to update more frequently. my catchphrase these days is "i'm trying my best," so... i'm trying my best.

this is for the sweet anons who slide into my ask box & ask me questions abt my fanfic. and for taryn, who consistently reminds me that there are people wanting to read this seeing as she is one of those people, kim, who i am so desperate to impress that i began working on a new chapter once she started to read my fanfic, and kae, because without her, this fanfic would never have existed in the first place. i love how i'm writing this as though it's the intro to an actual book when it's literally just chapter seven. ok, i will shut up now so u can read. love u. again.

07 A CRUEL GOD, A WRATHFUL GODDESS

In great contrast to the noisy ambience of the other students in the hallway, we were silent on our walk to our shared biology class. I wondered how conscious Edward was of the stares and whispers focused on our proximity to one another, but my guess was that he was very much conscious of it. I intentionally ignored glancing in any direction that I sensed one of my siblings’ presence, although I figured it was mostly paranoia driving me to feel as though we were about to cross paths. Holding my breath to more easily walk beside Edward left my senses impaired to the ability to pinpoint their location.

I was lucky that for the majority of my immortal life, I’d managed to escape unwanted attention. But now, it seemed that precious luck had finally run out. Maybe embarrassment had been creeping up on me, maliciously building itself up all these years, waiting until just the right moment to rear its ugly head and exact revenge that immorality had stolen its favorite object of humiliation to torment. But here it was, ensuring that I was finally catching up on feeling awkward and out of step, a feeling I experienced for what seemed like the entirety of my human life. I thought once I’d been changed, I’d never feel this way again, but becoming misaligned with my family made me feel bashful to parade my defiance in their faces. I had operated better under no scrutiny as a mortal and was surprised to realize that that still held true as an immortal as well. Because though there was now never a struggle of staying upright or a risk of tripping over my own feet, that didn’t prevent me from feeling self-conscious as I walked beside Edward. Although for different reasons –– it was too mortifying to consider what my family might make of what my actions suggested about my feelings towards Edward.

And yet still, I would put up with the ridicule and disapproval of my siblings if it meant I could listen to Edward speak his silly philosophical theology, his questioning of god and existence, for just a few more hours. If I were going to be teased over Alice’s visions regardless, I might as well find out what I can about this pretentious boy before I leave him alone forever. If only to understand why his moving to this small town threatened to warp my own future so much. In losing night and in losing death, there were so very little anomalies in the endless amount of time I’d been given. So what would it hurt to allow myself to fixate on this minuscule difference in my life for just awhile?

It could hurt Edward, a more selfless part of myself reminded me. If indulging myself was playing with fire, I was being justly punished with the way flames were efflorescing the inside of my dry, burning throat.

If a god did exist, why would it make sense for such a being to craft someone like Edward with his perceptivity, and send him off to this small town, home to a secret such as ours? If a god did exist, why it would be fair for such a being to craft someone like Edward, someone who tempted me both in bloodlust and in curiosity, and send him off to this small town, home to the very vampire who desperately wished to kill him most? If a god did exist, if our kind had fallen short of heaven, I could understand why sending Edward into our path –– and more specifically, my path –– could be some kind of punishment. But what I couldn’t understand is why a god would allow someone as innocent as Edward to be endangered for the sake of bringing a sinful, undead creature to justice. It seemed the only reasonable explanation would be that a god probably did not exist.

And how could there be? I was on the precipice of falling into temptation with every step further in the hallway and every question he asked and answered. I could never not be very much aware of the fact –– especially now with his body merely inches from my side and his sweet fragrance blooming both deliciously and relentlessly in the air. And even as I impossibly withstood the lure of his blood, how was I meant to ignore the irresistibility of his mind and how inexplicably concerned I was to understand it? It seemed like a very cruel experiment of free will and knowledge –– far too cruel to allow much room for the kind of god Edward hoped for.

I frowned as I realized that this experiment wasn’t that of a cruel god’s but that of a cruel vampire, and I felt very much like a vampire as the sound of his heartbeat was so appealing that it made my mouth water.

“Do the stares bother you?” Edward spoke quietly to me as we weaved throughout the hallway. Easily distracted, his question was able to pull the more civilized parts of myself together, though this was probably also in thanks to my choosing not to utilize my sense of smell. I found it funny that at least one of his thoughts had been in a similar vicinity. But of course, the rest of his thoughts were probably free of all consuming agony and struggle. For all his curiosity about morality, to inflict this existence upon him would probably devour him in misery. At least as a human, despite whatever conclusions he may come to, there was still some hope to be had for an afterlife. This thought should have been dark and depressing, but because it made Alice’s vision seem like a complete hoax, I almost found it funny. How would Edward ever end up like me?

“Oh, no,” I swallowed the venom in my mouth. “I live for attention.” I watched from the corner of my eyes as his gaze flickered over to me, the ever present half smile appearing on his face at my joke. My answer came out so comfortably as though I was used to this, when in reality, the student body for the most part had grown accustomed to ignoring me. And, of course, there was nothing comfortable about the demanding, aching dryness in my mouth or the burning in my nostrils. “How about you?”

“Likewise,” he joked, laughing. “This is interesting –– their fascination. I understood their interest on my first day because I’d guess a new addition to the student body in a town this small is something of a rarity, but today, walking by your side is garnering even more attention. Is it a once in a lifetime opportunity to have Bella Cullen walk you to class?”

“You’re just so observant, aren’t you?” I rolled my eyes, though the corners of my mouths pulled up despite myself. “And I’m not walking you to class. I’m walking to a class I just so happen to share with you, so don’t get the wrong idea. I think they’re just surprised because they’re probably under the impression that I don’t play nice with others.”

“And do you?”

“You tell me,” I replied, pausing to face him beside a wall of lockers next to the entrance of our biology classroom. As he stopped beside me, a gust of air from a passing student walking hastily down the hallway sent his scent reeling into me at an unfortunate moment where I’d chosen to breathe in. My muscles tensed to spring, and I desperately anchored myself to the floor as my mind fell into disarray.

“Nicely enough,” Edward winked naturally as though we’d been the best of friends since his first day. The demanding thirst was intruding on my awareness, and the desperation for something wet and hot and delicious in my desiccated throat was so dizzying that his voice sounded as though it were underwater. With an effort as though I were swimming through drying cement, I resurfaced, just barely proving my dominion over the desire. I focused on his voice so that it’d become clearer, forcing myself to take another excruciating breath in and exhale the fire out. “I will say I am honored to be the exception –– to be plucked from the masses by the renowned, reclusive Bella Cullen.”

With torturous effort, I snorted as though I wasn’t fighting everything within me to keep him alive. I breathed in again heavily, allowing my body to become a pyre so that I could speak. “Alright, that’s enough. Stop saying my name like that. And you’ve lost the privilege. I am never walking you to class again,” I rolled my eyes even though my joke could very much be the truth. The bunching of my muscles, the twitching of my hands, and the fierce pain in my throat reminded me of the fact. Before he could point out the contradiction of what I’d previously clarified, I sighed. “Let’s take this quiz.”

His pretty green eyes were alive with mischief and enlightened with what must be more answers to questions he hadn’t outright asked me as he turned to enter the classroom. I followed behind him towards our shared table.

Air from the vent rushed out, thrusting the scent of his blood wafting into my face again. I paused for an indistinguishable moment as I battled agony, murderousness, monstrosity. Holy fuck. What was I trying to prove! Was it really worth this? Swallowing hard, I sat beside him as though nothing happened. My suffering was so great that Emmett could have brutally ripped my arm off, he could have beat me with it, and I wouldn’t have noticed nor felt a thing. I could have been set on fire, and it’d feel like sinking into a cool pool of water on an even cooler day. I was already burning alive, my body acting as a furnace, and I was imprisoned inside it.

Without intending to, I sighed aloud, exhaling as though it would smother the flames. It was a stupid, attention seeking thing to do. Humans sighed to expel air or express some sadness or relief or exhaustion, so when my family emitted an audible breath, we did so as a means of blending in. But to breath out in a way to clue Edward into the fact something was plaguing me… it was a stupid invitation for more questions. And these were questions I had no intention of sharing the answers to. I felt his eyes on me, but before he could say anything, Mr. Molina began passing out quizzes face down on our lab tables as students continued to pile in from lunch.

“Alright, class. Today we have a pop quiz–– oh, come on, guys, don’t groan. You will have the opportunity to make corrections after these have been graded. This is just an assessment of what you’ve retained from this unit so far. You will have the entire period to complete–– thanks for joining us, Mr. Patterson, glad you could fit my class into your busy schedule. Why don’t you take your seat? –– You will have the entire period to complete your quiz. If you finish early, feel free to get a head start on this weekend’s homework! I’ve written the reading down on the board. Aw, I’m sure you’re all moaning because you’re disappointed at how light of an assignment it is because I just know how very excited you all are to continue your passionate pursuit of studying biology. Alright, now that everyone’s settled–– wait a minute––” Mr. Molina paused, raising his pointer finger in the air, his eyes squinted in anticipation. Three seconds later, the bell signaled the beginning of class. “Begin!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Edward reluctantly turn away from me. In an elegant script, he wrote his name at the top of the paper and began his quiz. I turned away from him to look at my own paper, preparing myself to uncomfortably hold my breath for the next hour. The difference this made in my thirst was almost insignificant, but enough so that it gave me a tiny more leverage in my control. I smoothed out the pucker on my forehead with the eraser from my pencil, accidentally snapping the rubber off against my face.

Absentmindedly, I began to breeze through the assessment, circling the correct answers, but my mind was more absorbed in the warmth of sitting beside Edward. Aside from the affliction of doing so, it was too pleasurable to have sat beside him so often and for so long today. I enjoyed the toastiness like a lizard basking in the sun. It made me recall the muddy human memory of laying out on a blanket in my backyard beneath my beloved blue Arizona sky, hiding beneath the small shade of a book. Not the blistering heat of a summertime Phoenix sun, but the warmth of the first day of spring. But the heat of Edward’s body alone was enough to fill my mouth with venom, so I tried to refocus my attention onto my quiz.

When I turned to the last page of questions, a motion beside me diverted my concentration once again. I peeked over, turning my head slightly in Edward’s direction to see what it was. As he thought over one of the questions, his right hand was moving peculiarly as he lifted and dropped down his long fingers almost as though he were impatiently tapping each digit one by one along the tabletop. Except the movement was more exact and calculatingly random. Engrossed, I watched as his his soft, fragile skin rippled over the muscle, the tendons appearing and disappearing with every bizarre movement. It took me a moment to make the connection between the large grand piano in his home and the motion of his hands. I realized he was miming piano movements while he thought through his answers. There was something both weird, funny, and endearing about this. I smiled to myself, not having the required oxygen to quietly laugh.

I felt his curious eyes flicker over to me and watched peripherally as he raised his eyebrows. I shook my head, biting down on my lip to unsuccessfully fight the smile, and returned to completing my quiz.

I finished a moment later and impatiently waited another ten minutes or so before I could turn in my work. I tried to ignore Edward for this small period of time at least, mentally reading myself the opening chapter to Wuthering Heights. Even though the words were committed to my memory, it was still never as good as actually reading from the book itself.

Once I’d decided an appropriate enough time had passed, I stood up to walk my quiz to the completed basket on Mr. Molina’s desk. Even having waited, I was still the first to finish the examination.

“Thank you,” the teacher whispered without breaking his focus away from the crossword puzzle he peered through his glasses at. I breathed in now that I’d placed some distance between myself and Edward, gladly facing the cool, fresh air from the vent.

“Neophyte,” I whispered back now that I’d replenished my oxygen supply.

“Excuse me?” He glanced up, his slightly aged face confused.

“Neophyte,” I repeated. “Eight across, two down.”

I took in one last clean breath and walked back to my seat as he tapped his pen across the squares of the space, mouthing his count of the letters to check if the word fit.

As soon as I took my place in my seat again, Edward stood up to walk his own quiz to the basket.

I wanted to watch him, but instead I forced myself to unzip my backpack and retrieve the biology textbook.

Busying myself with the assigned chapters, deciding to actually read them so as to not feed into my invasive Edward obsession, I couldn’t help but listen as Edward too placed his own textbook on the countertop.

I heard the scribble of pen on paper as he began to write what I imagined were notes until his large hand slid the paper over to me beneath the wall of my hair spilling over the desk. Well, I wouldn’t ignore him if he was the one deciding to bother me.

You know I’m pretty certain that cheating is a violation of the student handbook, but I’ll let you get away with it just this once.

I turned to glance at his face to see if he were serious. His eyes were warm and inviting, his mouth in the same crooked smile.

I took the piece of paper and looked around for my writing utensil that had gone missing somehow. My eyes zeroed in on a suspicious, tiny pile of wood dust on my side of the desk. When had I brutalized my pencil? He held his hand out to offer his own pen, and I accepted it, carefully plucking it from his fingers without making contact.

I wasn’t cheating. You were doing something funny. And what do you know about the student handbook? You’re new.

I slid the paper and pen back to him and watched as he combed a hand through his bronze hair, reading my response. The smile grew wider as he construed the biting tone of my note.

Can I be let in on the joke? Edward wrote, turning to look at me once he was done. Again I was prisoner, though this time not to my own body. I was momentarily held hostage by the beauty and warmth of his light green eyes. I was understanding more and more the attraction the other students had for him. If I had a soul, it was as though he were staring straight into it.

I recovered, placing my hand atop the desk and then wiggling my fingers as though I were weaving my way through a very complicated piano piece.

Oh, Edward mouthed, immediately understanding. He silently laughed and placed his left hand to his forehead briefly as if to hide his face in mock embarrassment. The ink from the pen spilled onto the paper as he began to write again.

In my defense, there’s research that supports classical music puts students in a heightened emotional state, making them more receptive to information and helping them focus.

That’s very nerdy of you. I scribbled back, the corners of my lips pulled upwards.

I know. As I read the words on the notebook paper, we both laughed a little too loudly for the quietness of the room.

“Please remain silent for your classmates still working,” Mr. Molina stage-whispered from his desk, his eyes still fixated on the crossword puzzle.

It’s a bad habit. Edward tacked on to his message. I beamed. I knew a thing or two about bad habits today. I was appreciative of this silent conversation on paper; it made it easier to be beside him without needing to breathe to speak aloud.

What were you playing? I scrawled.

Clair de Lune. Edward wrote back. His thick eyebrows raised as my eyes lit up, and he continued writing. You know Debussy?

My mother used to play a lot of classical music around the house. It was one of my favorites.

It’s one of my favorites, too. Edward’s eyes were a little sad and lost in thought, and he smiled softly.

I was shocked by the change in expression and weirdly desperate to return the brightness back to his eyes. The burn in my throat was almost forgettable in the face of my concern. Almost, but not quite. He turned his head down to write on the paper again.

You said Rosalie played piano. You never learned? He turned to look at me, his expression curious. I shook my head and shrugged, reaching for the pen.

I didn’t think I had the coordination for it. While this was true for the time I was human, it wasn’t true now. Still, even though my days stretched into endless nights, I hadn’t yet devoted time to any instrument as an immortal.

Edward read the paper, his long pointer finger tracing the line beneath the words as he did so. He held his large hand out, and I dropped the pen into it.

I’ll show you sometime. Edward half smiled at me, his eyes sweet and earnest.

Knowing I shouldn’t be allowing him to think making a plans with me was an option, I reached for the pen to tell him that it was alright, but I froze as he suddenly moved to drop the pen and take my hand. Though he should have been the one hesitant and cautious as though approaching a dangerous, wounded animal, I held perfectly still as though he were the danger, and I needed to play dead for protection. You can’t play dead if you are dead, I thought to myself.

My body tensed as my hand was enveloped in the heat of his much larger palm, uncertain as to what he was doing. My muscles screamed at me as I clenched my free hand into a tight fist, terrified of myself.

A shiver rippled through him as he felt the chill of my frozen fingers, and I twitched the hand in his possession, wanting to yank it away to protect him from the iciness but not wanting to alert him with the swiftness of the motion.

He smiled mysteriously at the spasm as though he somehow expected it. I wanted to ask him what he was thinking but didn’t want to risk breathing. My control could too easily be lost. Besides, I was scared that if I were to open my mouth, I’d end up screaming.

I felt him push slightly and realized he wished for me to curl my fingers, so with great concentration and the acute awareness of his fragility, I moved my stony hand into the shape he directed, my fingers curved slightly beneath his like a relaxed talon. I didn’t like the shape; it was odd and inhuman and made me think of the violence I could cause.

But it wasn’t a claw. Because once my hand was positioned the way he wanted, he began to slowly place pressure on my fingers, and I dipped and rose them accordingly to carefully move with his. I watched as the two of our hands together played what I imagined must be the opening chords to Clair de Lune.

The disconcerting emptiness in my chest soared at the bizarre pleasure of this touch, and a weird sensation tickled my scalp, moving swiftly down my spine to my entire body.

My muscles tightened violently and then relaxed, sending a shiver to ripple through me. It was too much pleasure and too much pain as my throat ached and I leaned into the warmth.

Embarrassed and not wanting to push my luck, I cautiously pulled my hand slowly away. He lifted his hand to allow me to escape as though I couldn’t just break his hand to do so, a half-smile pulling on his lips. I pretended not to notice the goosebumps on his arms.

See? he mouthed before deciding to whisper. “You could do it.”

I forced myself to smile and then turned away for the rest of the hour, trying to keep from doing anything stupid like looking at him or killing him. I’d completely forgotten where we were.

When the bell finally rung, I collected my things atop the desk hastily. Edward reached for my backpack and held it up for me.

“Thanks,” I murmured as I dumped my books into the bag. Before I could take it from him, he slid it onto his back and nodded his head once for me to go forward.

Feeling awkward, I turned and allowed him to follow me to the door. I was lucky to walk in front of him, taking the opportunity to breath again as the vent blew out in front of my face.

Exiting the classroom, I paused for a second when I saw Emmett waiting for me across the hallway rather than his typical spot beside the wall of lockers next to our shared Spanish classroom. Even though I was well aware of the fact I’d been dangling my irresponsibility in their faces all day, I still felt as though I was being caught in the act.

Emmett’s eyebrows raised as his golden eyes watched Edward follow behind me, carrying my backpack. I crossed the hallway reluctantly towards my big brother.

“Hello,” I greeted him, avoiding his eyes. I felt smaller than ever beside him with my head down, and yet not small enough as I wished to disappear.

“Hey, little sis,” Emmett began uncertainly, though I glanced up to see his full lips were beginning to stretch into a smile that I didn’t like. “Who’s that with you?”

“Uh…”

“I’m Edward Masen,” the lanky human boy introduced himself confidently as he stopped beside me. “And you must be––”

“Emmett,” my brother interrupted, grinning as though he always so comfortably interacted with humans. This was all too weird, but he looked to be enjoying it far too much. His desire to mess with me and his confidence in Alice’s visions seemed to override the abnormality of speaking to a student so amicably. I watched as he breathed in and shot me a meaningful look. I grimaced.

I opened my mouth to put an end to this torturously awkward interaction, but Emmett interrupted again.

“It’s nice to see you made a friend,” he began, an evil glint in his eyes as he watched my face. I was confused as to where he was going with this because our entire family would come across as misanthropic to the rest of the school, so why should it matter to him. He turned his attention to look at Edward who was closer in height to him. “You know, we worry about her––”

“Okay, let’s go to Spanish,” I cut him off quickly. “Edward, can I have my bag, please?”

Without looking at him, I reached for my backpack as he offered it and threw it over my shoulder, heading down the hallway. It was a massive relief to put some distance between myself and Edward. My thoughts were clearer, and I could breathe freely.

Emmett burst into laughter, his guffaws booming in the hallway. Several students paused in fear making me concerned about Edward’s reaction to my giant of a sibling, but I relaxed when I heard Edward chuckling along with him.

“Um, see you,” Emmett said to Edward before his steady, near silent footfall followed after me.

Even moving at a lethargic human pace, he caught up to me quickly.

“That wasn’t funny,” I grumbled.

“What the hell are you doing?” Emmett chuckled, ignoring my question.

“What the hell are you doing? What was that back there?”

“I don’t know. That was weird, but not as weird as you playing with your food.”

I hissed quietly.

“Damn, I’m kidding, Bells. But seriously, what are you doing? What happened to your high and noble speech about doing the right thing and staying away from the kid? I thought Esme was about to produce real tears. It even softened Rose.”

“Ugh, don’t talk to me about Rosalie right now. She’s been giving me dirty looks all day. It makes me feel awful. I already feel bad!”

“Well, I don’t really care what you do either way so––” I looked at him questionably. “I mean, sure, I want you to do the right thing, whatever that means. I don’t want you to feel miserable. But on one end, I didn’t really mind so much what happened to me.”

“Rosalie did,” I countered.

“Yeah, Rose did,” he acquiesced quietly.

“Anyways, I’m not having that conversation. I wasn’t talking to him today to test whether or not he’s worth it. That’s… unethical.”

“So what were you doing?”

“I don’t know,” I groaned in answer.

Emmett laughed.

“You’re weird these days, Bella.”

“You’re weird everyday,” I quipped back before sighing. “I don’t know. He’s weird, too. I guess… I’m not making any decisions, at all, but if Alice told you what she told me… wouldn’t you be curious?”

Emmett thought it over. “Yeah, I think so. But I also don’t think I’d have even made it to this point,” he admitted. I winced.

“It’s kind of unfair for me to care more about satiating my curiosity and dance with the devil this way, right?”

“Well…he may not know it, but isn’t it more so that Edward’s the one dancing with the devil?”

“Yeah,” I agreed, frowning as we walked into our Spanish class. “I guess it is.”

I made the decision to avoid thinking of Edward for the remaining hour of school. I paid very little attention in Spanish, returning to the familiar mind-numbing boredom that classes had been prior to the last few days. Now that it was in stark contrast to the sudden life breathed into my time at Forks High School by my fixation with Edward, the tedium was no longer something dealt with indifferently and sluggishly. Now, it left me feeling restless, and it almost pained me how laborious it was to sit through a life I wasn’t an active participant in. It was nowhere near the pain of dealing with the excruciating thirst I had around my bronze-haired lab partner, but it almost tampered with my thoughts more knowing I’d feel less miserable if I spent this time analyzing every word Edward shared with me, every fluctuation of his tone, every glint in his perceptive eyes, every expression on his pretty face… But I was becoming too obsessive. The same hunger for adventure that made me fall in love with reading must be what was leading me to so treacherously, so impetuously dive into exploring this insignificant and yet cataclysmic difference in my life.

As though it had a personal vendetta against me, time moved even more lethargically than it ever had before, but finally, the bell signaling the end of school rang. Emmett’s eyes shot a concerned look at me as I rose from my seat too quickly, and I immediately felt embarrassed again. The cautious reminder in his expression made me feel childish as Emmett was never one to care much about bending the rules.

“See you at home, I guess,” he shook his head, giving me one last look that seemed to suggest I’d lost it.

“See you,” I mumbled, slinging my bag over my shoulder. Leaving Emmett behind to wait for Rosalie, I weaved through the crowded hallway and out to the parking lot. Students were bundling together and squealing at the chilling air as tiny, fluffy snowflakes fluttered down from the overcast sky. The floor of the parking lot was almost as glassy as yesterday as the rain from this afternoon had melted into a thin layer of icy mush. Though there was hardly enough snow for a decent snowball fight, some of the rowdier students were bundling up a pitiful pile of snow to form pathetic snowballs in their fists.

I nearly skipped to the pearly white vehicle parked beside Rosalie’s overly conspicuous crimson car which was forming a small crowd of admirers. Leaning against the trunk of the car, I watched the front doors of the school to look for Edward.

The tangle of reddish-brown hair was easy to spot because of its strange metallic tint as he strolled out of the building with Naomi, the student who’d provided him with the information about my family on his first day. He had his coat folded over his arm, revealing how form fitting his light tan turtleneck was. He truly was a very attractive boy. It was odd that I hadn’t really paid much attention initially. With his dazzling face and tall, lean frame, Edward was pretty enough that for the vampires who searched for exquisitely beautiful humans to create into even more stunning immortals, he could probably be a contender for someone to collect.

Thinking of how Emmett questioned my motives today, I quickly banished the idea of Edward as an immortal from my mind, even if it was only a hypothetical inspired by my observation.

Edward paused, asking Naomi if she could hold on to his backpack for a moment. When she grabbed it, he pulled on his long black coat, and fiddled with the collar. Recollecting his backpack, he slid it onto one shoulder, then rubbed his hands together, blowing the warm air from his mouth to heat them up. Thinking of the sweetness of the smell of his breath made me remember to take in swallows of fresh air before he made his way over to me.

As he was distracted momentarily, I watched as a stray snowball flew towards Edward’s head. I was overcome with the urge to intercept it in the event it may hit him too harshly and knock him to the pavement, but flying across the parking lot inhumanly fast twice in one week was probably not the way to go about correcting my mistakes.

The soggy snowball crashed into Edward’s hair, exploding into shards of ice and water that slid down his prominent cheekbone. I laughed aloud at his shocked expression as the curtain bangs framing his face were immediately drenched, darkening his hair into a brown color. Once he’d realized what happened, his face broke into a good-humored smile.

“Holy shit! Sorry, Edward!” The classmate who had thrown the snowball with poor aim called out.

“No worries!” Edward called back. He shook his head, chuckling as he wiped the water from his face. As he laughed, his eyes found the space where I waited and brightened seeing that I, too, was enjoying the moment.

“Hey, I’ll see you tomorrow,” he told Naomi, who was too beside herself in tears of laughter to reply.

Edward sauntered over towards me, and I inhaled deeply as a fortuitous whisper of wind blew from the tree line. I held onto the notes of crisp eucalyptus, fresh snow, and cedar wood, trying to distract my mind from the offensively mouthwatering scents approaching me.

Edward was a coordinated human, but even he lost his footing on the icy pavement. His body slid forward for a moment, but I stepped towards him to close the space between us and caught him by the elbow.

He looked up from his boots against the frozen parking lot into my eyes, startled momentarily at the swiftness in which I had appeared. Then, his full lips lifted into a crooked smile that creased his astonishing green eyes into half moons. I let go immediately and took a big step back to ensure a safer distance between myself and the warmth of his fragile body. It had been a risky movement, but somehow in comparison to yesterday, it didn’t seem to matter as much. I figured our classmates were too involved in their gawking at the details of my sister’s car or their feeble, slushy snowball fight to notice, and oddly, I didn’t care that Edward had seen. It was beginning to feel too late to keep up certain pretenses.

Although, it wasn’t too late, and it shouldn’t feel that way. I reminded myself I still had every intention of leaving Edward alone once I’d figured out what was so compelling about our paths crossing that had Alice’s visions spiraling in a confusing jumble. I took another step back slowly.

“Thank you,” Edward said, his eyes humored with another secret he didn’t seem willing to share. “You keep saving me.”

“Well, let’s not make this damsel in distress thing habitual,” I snorted, turning so that he couldn’t see the smile forming on my face. I felt shy about showcasing any comfort or happiness in his presence now that I was reminded of how fleeting this experimental friendship was, but I wondered if subconsciously I wanted him to catch me in my misery and ask me to explain, though I wasn’t certain why I wanted to sabotage myself like that. I opened my door and turned to look at him again. “You coming?”

Before he could answer, I dipped into the driver’s seat, and breathed in one last time. Well, once this was all over, I could finally stop inhaling dramatically as though they were truly my last, dying breaths. The air was mostly clean of his scent, but I knew that regardless, the heat of his body would be enough to disrupt my comfort and control. As the thought crossed my mind, I painfully swallowed back the venom pooling beneath my tongue.

Edward swerved through the crowd obsessing over Rosalie’s car and opened the passenger door, sliding into his seat. As he placed his backpack on the floor and fiddled with his seatbelt, I made sure to adjust the air conditioning so that the heat could warm Edward from the frigid Forks air. Though for me, just being in his presence made the intimate interior of the car feel as though I were again sitting by his fireplace.

“That’s a beautiful car,” he murmured. “Is it an M8?”

“Uh, it’s a BMW?” I asked uncertainly as though he’d spoken another language.

Edward grinned as though he wanted to laugh but didn’t want to make me angry. Rosalie would have loved to answer all his questions if he too had an interest in cars. Would have loved to, if she wasn’t deeply offended by my actions or if I had any intention of Edward meeting any more of my family members.

“Ready?” I bit my lip as I forced out any inconsiderate plots of murder that threatened to distract me from being a defensive driver.

“Mhm,” Edward answered.

I reversed out of the parking slot slowly, but as I looked in the rearview once I’d straightened out, I saw the fleeting image of Rosalie’s exquisitely beautiful and exceptionally angry face. I quickly readjusted the mirror to remove my sister’s reflection and sped out of the parking lot in a way that could have taken out a few unlucky students if I didn’t have above average years of driving experience.

Peripherally, I watched as Edward’s thick eyebrows raised, but he decided not to question me. Once we’d reached the main road, I slowed my speed so as not to rush through this time, even though I knew for his safety and my sanity, I should. As I drove, his right hand moved in odd shapes again against the arm rest of the passenger side door as though he were playing piano once more.

I decided to bite and use up some of my limited air supply.

“What are you playing?”

“Clair de Lune again,” he replied. Then, he began to hum the melody aloud for me as he moved his hand.

I thought to offer to play the song for him through the speakers, but I decided against it as I listened to Edward’s soft, velvety voice hum beautifully through the song, breaking the silence.

The ugly, slush-like falling of snow transformed into a falling of rainwater, and Edward’s voice was orchestrated by a lovely symphony of raindrops.

Before his voice could weave into the more involved moments of the piece, Edward stopped.

I looked over at him, curious for the reason as to why. His face was turned away from me so that all I could see was his untidy bronze hair as he gazed out the window. I pulled in front of his driveway and parked against the curb.

Miraculously, I’d made it again. Carefully, I inhaled through my nose to experiment with my control. The sweet bouquet of the boy’s blood was potent and even more mouthwatering than usual from the snow turned rain that’d wet his hair. I hadn’t considered the possibility that he could smell better than before, and I kept myself from groaning aloud as I dug my nails into my own palms. The tingling sensation in my nose was as though I’d sniffed some powerful chemical, the burning sensation in my throat as though I’d taken a long drag of a cigarette. But more painful. More demanding. Desire, need flew from my core out towards my extremities, and the beating of his heart pumping the blood through his body drummed loudly in my ears. It seemed to move through me, my frigid body almost twitching with every pulse, ready to lunge forward and crush his neck to my lips.

“What was your mother like?” He asked me suddenly, his voice soft. Edward turned from the window to face me, and I was bewildered by the intensity of his expression. His eyes were light and beautiful against the gloomy grey of the sky, and they squinted slightly as though studying my face like this information was absolutely essential. But this was not what stunned me, as I’d already seen the severity of this expression before in our ephemeral time together. It was the unexpected vulnerability of his stunning face. The more time I spent looking at him, the more I realized how beautiful this human boy really was. And it seemed a great tragedy for this beautiful boy to harbor such devastation in his eyes.

Whereas previously in his presence, my thoughts had become incoherent due to a lapse in control, now my thoughts were incoherent in distress and desperation to understand what had gone wrong and how I could fix it. I was momentarily dumbfounded, but I pulled myself together after the soft sound of a few droplets of rain against the roof reminded me that he was waiting for an answer.

“Well, she looked a lot like me, but prettier,” I began stupidly. He raised his eyebrows. “Or at least, she used to look a lot like me, and I used to look a lot like her. I don’t so much anymore.” It’d been so long since I’d really spoken about my mom, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or cry. I knew I should have made some comment about whether or not she looked like Esme or Emmett since our story made us siblings, but I didn’t want to taint the rarity of sharing who she was with a lie.

“She was more outgoing than I am,” I continued, thinking through the foggy memories I held onto from my human life.

“That’s difficult to believe,” Edward teased quietly, his lips curving into a half smile.

I laughed, listening to the melodic sound of it, thinking of how it symbolized how very much different I was now from the human girl my mother knew.

“I was always very shy,” I smiled, before speaking up again, caught in the echoes of my past. “She was brave and irresponsible and slightly eccentric. And she was a very unpredictable cook!”

I laughed aloud again thinking of some minor explosions in our tiny kitchen and some questionable dishes. Edward laughed too, but when our laughter faded into the falling of the rain, my smile faded.

“She wasn’t perfect,” I admitted. “I think I recognize now that she was very fallible. I worshipped her when I was younger, but when I think back, I do see how in some of the ways she raised me, I was done a disservice… I grew up too fast. When she died––“ I sighed, feeling insincere and guilty about perpetuating this lie when I really should have said when I died, “––Esme became more of a mother to me, and even Rosalie’s been more traditionally nurturing than my mom ever was… But still, she was my best friend.”

“You miss her,” he murmured simply. I met his gentle eyes.

“Yes,” I bit my lip.

“How old are you, Bella?” Edward asked. “And not the formulaic, theorized version where you were born in your thirties. How old are you really?”

I tensed, wondering if he was asking this again because he’d taken note of how I didn’t directly answer this question the last time he asked.

“Seventeen,” I answered automatically.

“You don’t seem seventeen,” he responded, reproachful.

The tension left my body at the tone of his voice. I smiled again easily.

“Sorry?” I asked, biting my lip to hide the smile, unsure of how to respond.

Edward chuckled and the subtle crinkles by his eyes lit up his face. “Well, I wish you’d been given a happier, normal childhood.”

“I’m fine,” I shrugged, brushing it off. “I hardly remember most of it, and what I do remember reminds me that I probably didn’t have much chance at a normal childhood to begin with. I was terribly shy, remember.

“I did do girl scouts, though….Oh, and ballet briefly,” I admitted, unsure as to why I was volunteering so much information about myself. Wasn’t the purpose of me sitting here to uncover information about him?

“Why does that make you… embarrassed?” Edward’s eyebrows pulled up.

For an odd moment, I felt betrayed by the flush of my cheeks before I realized there was no blood rushing to my face. I blinked, bewildered by the peculiarity of this long buried instinct to become frustrated with my easy blushes when I hadn’t blushed for years. I felt self conscious as I wondered what Edward saw reading my expression to so perfectly decipher my feelings.

“I was very uncoordinated,” I dismissed his question as I fought the urge for my hand to flutter to touch my cool cheek.

“Now that truly is difficult to believe,” Edward half-smiled. “I can’t imagine I’ve seen anyone as graceful as you.”

I laughed aloud at his compliment, though I didn’t doubt his sincerity. I knew this was true of myself. It was true of all of our kind to appear fluid and effortless, but still, no one had ever applied the word to me. My vampiric poise was irrelevant and unimpressive to my family, and the very few humans brave enough to overcome their nerves to compliment me typically found their words to fail them.

“You’re very odd,” I beamed.

“What do you mean?” The bronze-haired boy asked, again wanting to be let in on the secret. While I had an insatiable thirst, it seemed he had an insatiable curiosity.

“How old are you really? Your word choice is bizarre for someone your age, you know.”

“Oh,” he laughed easily. “Well, I’m actually not seventeen. I’m eighteen. But I’ll try to strictly adhere to a more teenage vernacular, so I can compliment you in a more acceptable way from now on.”

I looked out at the dim light of the brewing storm, my smile fading as I decided that I should probably allow him to escape me before I did something I’d regret. But I knew I wasn’t resolved enough to completely leave him alone. He made me monopolize too much of the conversation, and I wasn’t satisfied with what I knew about him yet.

I sighed aloud, and Edward, too, looked out at the rain darkened sky.

“Will I see you tomorrow?” he asked hopefully, making the assumption that our conversation was coming to an end.

“Yes,” I promised reluctantly. My eyes flickered back over to his pretty face, studying the lines of his strong jaw, his chiseled cheekbones, his full lips, committing this inconsequential face to memory as I silently resolved that this should be –– and would be –– one of the last times I’d allow myself to be this close to him. Tomorrow may well be the very last.

Likewise, as though his thoughts were in the same vein, his beautiful green eyes studied my face as well, though he did so in that mysterious way of his where he looked at me as though hoping to read my mind.

He sighed, then collected his backpack. Edward opened the door, stepping out into the bitterly cold weather. A shiver ran through his lanky body, making my body tense with perverse excitement. I cringed away from the deadly instinct and swallowed against the dryness of my yearning throat.

Edward’s tall, lean frame leaned down to peek into the car.

“Goodnight, Bella,” he spoke softly.

“Goodnight, Edward,” I almost whispered, gazing into the beauty of his dazzling green eyes.

Edward smiled his half smile, and closed the door, escaping into the building torrent of rain.

I gasped in relief at his absence, then stiffened realizing how the cab of the car was still heavily perfumed with his scent. I took in another deep breath, forcing myself to confront the burning thirst again, willing myself to manage it. I sighed as I hit the gas, making Edward disappear behind me.

Both my control and the rain pour strengthened significantly as I turned onto the long drive leading to my house. I grimaced as I wondered how I’d face my family and explain the complete reversal of what I’d promised to do. I didn’t have time to consider for much longer as suddenly, a figure appeared instantaneously in the drive. I slammed my foot on the brake immediately in shock at its appearance, not wanting to total yet another car against one of my siblings.

I peered through the windshield, unable to see through the complete downpour that submerged my vehicle as though it were underwater. It was annoying for my perfect sight to be obstructed by anything, rainwater or even the transparent windshield because of my eyes’ desire to focus on the microscopic scratches.

The car violently screeched against the muddy pavement, and it looked as though we would have to bid this car goodbye until the figure hidden by the storm placed their hands out on the car roughly and forced it to a stop. The tires screamed in protest, and the metal groaned as it warped into the shape of the palms. I listened as it unnaturally bent again in a piercing moan as the figure fixed the indentions they’d created.

My windshield wipers swatted away a flood of water. Finally, I could make out my sister Rosalie, her hair dripping wet down her back like a supermodel who’d just emerged from a pool on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Her exquisite face was absolutely furious.

I gulped, feeling like a child who’d just been discovered sneaking home past curfew.

I felt uncertain as to what to do and why she’d chosen to stop me here. Surely she could wait for us to be under the cover of the garage before she chastised me. Not wanting to be drenched by the rain, I revved the engine to ask her to move aside, but the car didn’t inch forward against her strength. Beginning to feel annoyed, I revved the engine again loudly and for longer, but still, she didn’t move.

“Rose,” I hissed as I hit the brake again so that the car could roar viciously in the storm, only to be cut off by the voice of my adopted mother.

“Girls!” I couldn’t see Esme through the obscured glass behind the downpour, but even with the barrage of the rain, I could hear her lithe steps run furiously to the front porch. “Please!”

Rose’s head snapped up to look in Esme’s direction before turning to glance unhappily back at me. She stepped aside, and I sped into the garage, parking the car hastily.

I exited immediately and went to expect the damage to the front of the hood. It was only a minuscule bend from having been pushed and prodded back and forth, and I was positive Rosalie could make it look like new, though why it had been necessary to punish the car was beyond me. It wasn’t even mine.

I wheeled around once I’d heard the near-silent steps of her run, a wave of anger making me forget my guilt.

“Are you insane?!” I demanded.

“I could ask the same of you, Bella!” Now free from the obscurity of the rain, I could see in perfect detail the stunning fury of her glorious face. Her golden hair had been darkened by the rain, and it was slicked back effortlessly, like a glittering waterfall down to the middle of her back. She looked like a wrathful god, but I couldn’t find it in my stubbornness to care about how valid her anger may be.

“Okay, but did you have to take it out on the car? What did it ever do to you! You couldn’t have waited another twenty seconds to confront me? Well, you have my attention now, Rosalie, so say whatever it is you want to say!”

“You’re just unbelievable, Bella!”

“He’s not going to say anything, Rose! We already talked about this yesterday. You heard Alice! He’s not a threat to you and Emmett, so I don’t understand why you’re taking this so personally.”

“Exactly, Bella. I heard Alice. Which is precisely why I fail to understand as to why you wouldn’t understand why I’d take it so personally. After all these years of sisterhood, how can you not understand how I feel about this?”

I frowned, my forehead puckering, but still, I retained my anger. She huffed, continuing.

“If it was an inevitability, I’d understand. However, it hurts me deeply that you recognize the choice that you have. The choice that Edward has. And still, you’re willing to play with his mortality as though it were a game, when I never had that choice.”

I froze, the realization dawning on me that she was right. No matter the ways in which I tried to justify my actions or spin my intentions, she was right. Another part of my mind acknowledged that while I was aware of right and wrong, I wasn’t certain that what was right would be enough to keep me away anymore.

We stared each other down much like we had yesterday. Only today, rather than anger, her face was contorted in hurt, and mine was contorted in hopelessness.

“But… you found Emmett when he was still human…” I weakly protested, selfishly trying to highlight the irony, though I knew it was pointless as I wasn’t advocating for Edward to be changed either. That was too complicated a thought to wrap my mind around. But whatever may happen –– and I was still very much aware of the worst of possibilities –– I didn’t want my sister to hate me for it.

“He was dying, Bella,” Rosalie whispered. The anger on her face had completely faded, and in its place, pain marked her eyebrows, her full lips, her golden, sad eyes. In her sadness, she looked like a work of art, like one of those paintings of a weeping saint. “It’s not the same.”

I didn’t have a response to that, and I felt as though I was at an impasse, both with myself and with Rosalie. Because I knew the promises I’d made and broken, but I knew the promise I’d made to Edward today, and I had no willpower, no desire, and no intention to break that promise.

“You may not feel anything for him now,” Rosalie began, her eyes intently fierce as they bore into mine to warn me. Only this warning felt significantly more horrible than I’d imagined it may be, because it wasn’t made in anger, but in desperation and love. “But if Alice is right, you will. And it seems to me a horrible way to repay someone you love to steal their life, their future, their soul from them. You should leave him alone now while you still can, because once you love him… it’ll only hurt more one way or another. And you’ll have to live with that for the rest of your existence. I know I have.”

And with that, Rose turned, her face cold and sad, and she left the garage.

#equinoxjw #twilight fanfiction #twilight renaissance #twilight au #twilight fanfic #the twilight saga #twilight saga #twilight #edbella #edward cullen #bella swan #edbella fanfic

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1000roughdrafts · 4 years

Text

A Christmas Surprise

Pairing: Sam Winchester X Fem!Reader

Explicit 18+/Warnings: fluff, blowjob in the Impala, dirty talk, swearing unprotected vaginal penetration, Sam being adorable

Summary: Sam and Dean ‘force’ you to go to a Christmas party at Bobby’s, despite your pleas for a night in with just some beer and pizza. It turns out, it wasn’t so terrible of a night after all.

Word Count: about 2-2.5k

A/N: using a Poker Card: J💗(Dirty Talk, Holiday Fic, “I love hearing you moan.”)

This was queued for Christmas day but I'm very angry about the finale and since part two of Hope is a Dangerous Thing is in the editing stage, I thought I'd share this little creation whilst I finish that one. Hope you like it :)

Sitting in the backseat of the Impala, you stare out of the window in annoyance as the snow, illuminated only by the passing street lamps, trickles down. You place a hand on Dean’s shoulder to grab his attention.

“Do we have to go?” you softly whine, hoping that Dean’s music would hide your voice from Sam. He was more excited for this party than you and Dean combined, although with the fight the two of you put up, that wasn’t that great of a feat.

As Dean opens his mouth to reply, Sam flips off the music and spins around to face you. He says something about how everyone is expecting at least an appearance from the three of you, and when was the last time you’d all been in the same place when it didn’t involve work?

“We don’t get to take these kinds of breaks often, Y/N. The least we could do is show up, hm, babe?” Sam says, eyebrows pressed together and lips taut like a mother at her wits end. If he didn’t look so cute in the Christmas sweater he found at a discount market, you might have fought back a little.

“Fine,” you say like a peeved teenager, crossing your arms and scooting back in the seat.

Dean slaps a hand onto Sam’s knee, much to Sam’s irritation. “Besides, we got a surprise for you,” he says with a smug grin, waggling his eyebrows at Sam who whispers for him to shut up before glaring at his brother and clearing his throat.

“Is it a case?” you say in monotone without removing your eyes from the falling snow.

They awkwardly chuckle, saying nothing more until Sam adjusts in his seat and points out of the windshield. Dean takes a sharp right turn down a skinny road, sending your body flying against the seat.

“What the Hell, Dean?” you shout.

“Sorry, cupcake,” Dean chuckles, “just some last minute... loose ends to tie up,” he says, glancing over at Sam. He shuts off the engine in front of a closed up pawn shop. Turning around to face you, he holds a hand up, “stay here,�� he says.

He and Sam step out without giving you a chance to respond. Minutes later, the two come back and get into the Impala without so much as a word.

“Did you just break into a pawn shop?” you ask, leaning forward as Dean starts up the engine.

“Uh, yeah,” Sam replies, looking back at you through the side of his eye.

“Why?” you ask.

Sam opens and closes his mouth, holding an open palm in the air and glances at Dean. Dean rolls his eyes before meeting yours in the rear view mirror.

“Bobby asked us to check up on something on our way over. Something about a haunted object, or whatever,” he says, twirling his hand before spinning the wheel. “I don’t really know, but it was a bust, nothing haunted there,” he says.

“You probably didn’t inspect it thoroughly,” you groan, “should have let me come in to do it right,” you say under your breath.

As Dean gets back on the main roads, he holds up a finger, “ooh! Let’s play a game,” he says, looking at you through the mirror. “I made it up and it’s called ‘shut up and quit whining or I’ll make you wear Sam’s ugly sweater’,” he says with a smirk and raised eyebrows.

“Dean!” Sam scolds, looking at you apologetically.

“No, it’s fine,” you say, giving Dean a snide smile before settling in for the rest of the drive.

Having been hunting with the Winchesters for years, you know how Dean gets. Though the two of you occasionally butt heads, you have been great friends. Sam has always been the apple of your eye, however. You knew you loved him the second you laid eyes on him, and somehow, despite it taking him a few years to come around to the idea of being together, you knew it was the same for him.

If it weren’t for Dean’s sharp corners and reckless driving, you might have fallen asleep. Pulling into Bobby’s salvage yard, you perk up, eager to step out of the car and say hi to everyone.

The exhaustion of greetings aside, and when you had a few drinks in you and Bobby by your side, you started having more fun than you imagined you would. Talking with Bobby always seemed to ease your stress about any situation. He was the father to you that yours couldn’t be.

Hunting ran in the family, and unlike Bobby, your dad didn’t really include you in his operations. It was something that really connected you to Sam and Dean when you met, as they knew what that kind of relationship felt like. At least Dean understood. He knew what it felt to always want acceptance from the man who taught you everything, and getting close to nothing instead was soul grinding.

Bobby was able to give you that, as he did for Sam and Dean, and it was times like tonight that made you even more grateful for the Winchesters. When hands slid onto your sides and you feel the scruffy cheeks of your boyfriend on the side of your face, you smile, and turn around to embrace him. The whiskey you’d been sipping on has you feeling the perfect amount of buzzed; a bit dizzy, very happy, and not overly talkative.

“Hey, handsome,” you whisper, kissing his collarbone

“Hi, gorgeous,” he coos, kissing the top of your head.

You hear Bobby groan from behind you, mumbling something about getting a room, and chuckle as Sam removes a hand from your back just long enough to wave at Bobby before he walks off.

Sam pulls you from him, a smile radiating from him as his eyes oscillate between yours. He reaches behind you for his drink from the table, taking a sip and winking at you before bringing it into the air while keeping his eyes on yours.

“Excuse me,” he says, stopping to clear his throat. “Uh, can I have everyone’s attention, please?”

With all eyes on him, he brings the drink back down and wraps a hand around your back, letting his hand rest on your hip as you turn to face your friends and family.

“As you all know, we had a rough year, and the fact that we were all able to get together to celebrate means the world to me, to us,” he says, using his drink to gesture at you. “I learned a valuable lesson this year, and the many before, that time is not on our side, especially as hunters,” he says, everyone nodding and humming in agreement. “So, it’s important, I think, to let the ones you care about know that you care about them, that you love them,” he says, voice shaking slightly.

He slowly sets his drink onto the table, pulling his arm from behind you. Standing in front of you, your eyes widen as he reaches into his back pocket for a little red box. Gasps fill the room as he drops to one knee, smiling up at you.

“Y/N, ever since I met you, I knew that you were the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with,” he chuckles, “whether that be another two years or twenty. So I’m asking you,” he lets out a breath, “in this ugly Christmas sweater, in front of all of our family and friends,” his eyes scan the room before meeting back with yours. With one hand, he grips onto yours, and uses the otehr to hold the box steady in front of you, “will you make me the happiest man on the planet by taking my hand in marriage?”

Shocked, surprise, and happy doesn’t even begin to explain what you’re feeling. You cover your mouth with your hand, tears swelling in your eyes as you look down at him. You know you should answer him soon, but you want to soak in the sight of him in front of you like this, you want to be able to close your eyes and picture him like this whenever things get bloody.

His eyebrows raise just a bit as he expects your answer.

Nodding first, you squeak out a yes. He pulls the ring from the old, battered box and places it on your finger before standing. Cupping his hands around your face he kisses you, and the room fills with cheers and clapping.

When you pull away, you examine the ring, “wow, I actually love this.”

“Oh, good,” he says, letting out a breath, “stole it from the pawn shop,” he says, winking at you.

“That’s what we were doing there?” you ask, laughing. “What if my ring belonged to a dead person?” you joke, wrapping an arm around his waist.

“Good thing we know how to deal with that,” he laughs, kissing the top of your head.

“You know,” you say, “there’s a few other ways I could make you the happiest man on the planet.”

Eyebrows raise, “is that so?”

“Yep,” you say, biting your lower lips. Grabbing his hand you lead him out of the front door, smiling at friends as they cheer with "congratulations".

You make it to the Impala, nodding for Sam to get into the backseat. “Lay back, like that, yeah?” you say.

He tilts his head as he looks down at you. With a chuckle, he asks, "here, really? Dean'll kill me," he laughs.

"He won't even know, just get in," you smile, pushing his arms.

He slides into the backseat of the Impala, hands nervously placed in his lap rubbing his thighs.

You sit next to him, shutting the door behind you, in a rush to unbutton his pants. Tugging on the elastic of them, he lifts up enough for you to pull them down.

You can't help but to smile seeing him hard and ready for you, kissing him on the lips before peppering the kisses down his neck. Wrapping your hand around his dick you squeeze gently, almost forcing an airy moan from him.

You slide your hand up and down, Sam's eyes closing as his head falls back against the seat. He scoots forward a bit, giving you more room.

Lowering your head, you open your mouth and let your tongue slip between your teeth, using it to guide you. The back of your tongue falls onto his tip, and he moans as you bring it to the base of his dick and back.

Placing your lips around him, you force the entirety of his erection into your mouth, humming while you suck until your lips hit his stomach. You wrap a hand around the base of him, adding pressure with your lips as you make your way back to the tip in a twist motion.

He moans louder, sending an electric rush through you, "fuck, I love hearing you moan," you mumble with your lips still wrapped around his dick. His hand falls onto your head, careful not to apply very much pressure, but enough to let you know he enjoys it.

You twirl your tongue around his length, licking and sucking at the tip while holding onto his legs. His moan turns into a growl as he gets a grip of your hair, pulling your head up.

His lips slam into yours, forcing you into the wall of the Impala. You let out a whine as his teeth pierce into your neck, just enough to leave a mark without drawing blood. His hands grip onto your sides, and through nibbling kisses he barks a command, "take your pants off."

You oblige, as nothing gets you hotter than when Sam takes charge. Fumbling to get your pants off, he helps pull them down your legs, and as soon as they are, yanks you into his lap.

His fingers dig into your back as he pulls you close to him, lips pressed deep into your neck. He waits until he can feel you getting wet before pushing himself inside of you.

You lay your hands on his chest, arching your back as you awkwardly bounce up and down. His hands scratch their way down your back and to your hips, pulling them into him before up and back down. He bites down on his lip, squeezing you tightly as he spreads out his legs.

When you lean back, his thrusts go deeper, the tip of his dick hitting your cervix in a way you never thought you'd enjoy. A pain that carries an excitement with it. Your eyes clench shut as you let you head fall against your back, and he takes it as a sign to go stronger.

Keeping one hand on the small of your back, he uses the other to stimulate your clit, moaning when he sees how much it thrills you.

"Fuck," you utter in a shaky breath, now recognizing that you've been clenching your jaw. You slip your tongue between your teeth, focusing on breathing through your nose. But when his pace quickens, he bounces his legs with a gasp of his own, and your mouth opens to let out a choppy moan.

You can feel yourself puddle in his thigh, and soon after, the pulsing of his dick as he finishes inside of you.

"Fuck," you say again, breathless and sweaty. "I cant believe I get to do this for the rest of my life."

He chuckles, sliding his hand up your back to cradle your head. He pulls your head to his, kissing you softly.

"I can't believe it either," he smiles.

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ot7always · 4 years

Text

Fractured (part 2)

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Word Count: 3.7k

Pairing: Yoongi x Reader

Genre: Mafia AU, angst, fluff, (future) smut

Chapter Warnings: Mentions of violence including murder (non-explicit), mentions of guns, mentions of blood, minor injury, toxic household, sparring, mentions of mental illness/trauma including: flashbacks, self-loathing, unhealthy coping mechanisms, anxiety, panic.

Rating: 18+

Summary: You’d always known something was strange and different about your “family,” but it wasn’t as though your environment encouraged curiosity from you. You thought you wanted to know all the answers, but nobody ever told you that the more you learned the more pieces of yourself you would leave behind.

A/N: This chapter took a while for me to write, but it’s finally here. I was originally planning to make this longer, but instead decided not to overwhelm with too much character establishment at once. But not to worry, we will be meeting all of the boys soon, and there will be longer chapters in the future!

If you would like to be tagged in further chapters, feel free to leave a comment or shoot me a message!

Left. Right.

Distraction was your best friend.

Left. Right.

You didn’t have to worry about anything else when all you could hear was the blood rushing through your ears and all you could feel was the fiery ache in your limbs.

Left. Right.

You didn’t want to think about yesterday. You didn’t want to think about him, or the way – you shook your head as if to dispel the thought.

Left. Right.

The way he begged for his life once he realized who you were –

Left. Right.

The way the desperation in his eyes turned into hopelessness –

Left. Right.

“The gloves exist for a reason, you know.” an amused voice called out from the doorway. Shocking you out of your trance, you unclenched your fists, hissing at the intense ache as your fingers stretched out. You didn’t notice Yoongi’s approach until he was right in front of you, hands gently gripping your wrists as he eyed you with concern. He wasn’t the best at recon for nothing, after all.

“You’re bleeding again,” he stated simply, disappointment lacing his voice as he turned your hands, inspecting the cracked skin of your knuckles. “You should be taking better care of yourself.”

“Why?” you asked bitterly, “Besides, this is how I take care of myself.” Your tank top, leggings, and hair were all sticking uncomfortably to your skin, soaked through with sweat. You struggled to even out your breathing, eyeing the punching bag still swaying from the force of your fists. You practically lived and breathed here when you weren’t out on a mission, determined to remove yourself from harsh reality, even momentarily.

It was then that he looked at you, brow furrowed and eyes heavy with emotion. Sadness? Empathy? Displeasure? You tried not to let your heart sink at the thought of him being unhappy with you. Despite all of the boys knowing about your habits, you found that Yoongi was typically the one who sought you out, determined not to let you self-destruct.

In a world that was loud and dangerous and unrelenting, you found comfort in his quiet care, never asking you to talk about your feelings. Not that you would talk – he knew you like the back of his hand. Several years older than you, he had more memories of you than you even had of yourself. While you hadn’t been the closest growing up, his age and seriousness having your younger self favour his juniors, you couldn’t say he wasn’t always there for you.

It was as you grew older that you learned to appreciate his maturity and bluntness. You could always trust him to give you objective advice, though you hadn’t gone to him with anything besides work in years. It wasn’t as though you were going through anything the others weren’t, and so you preferred not to complain.

“Let me bandage you up,” he said, more of a demand than a request. He tugged you over to sit on a nearby bench, stepping away to grab the first aid kit. This routine was normal by now. You pushed your body far too hard, taking advantage of the brief respite from your thoughts only to deal with the consequences later. Anything was better than dealing with what you’ve done with your own two hands. You stared down at them, the blood welling up there reminding you too strongly of where those same hands were the night before.

The blood running down your fingers.

The screams.

The crack of the gun.

The wail of despair from the man’s wife, eyes full of disbelief as you turned to meet her gaze. She wasn’t supposed to be there.

No.

Your breaths were quickening, and you couldn’t tell if your hands were trembling or your vision failing. Perhaps it was both.

You turned to her-

“Hey.” The soft voice was accompanied by gentle hands taking hold of your forearms. Your blurred vision took several moments to focus on Yoongi crouched down at your feet, looking at you with an understanding that almost hurt to see. You instead opted to direct your gaze at the ceiling, focusing on tracing the shapes of the lights with your eyes as you calmed your breathing.

He stared at you for several more moments, only moving when he was satisfied that the look of terror in your eyes had gone away. Settling beside you, bandages in hand, he drew your hand into his lap. Turning to take in his features, you took note of the slight downturn of his lips, there for only a moment before the practiced look of indifference took over.

His hands were nimble as they worked over your own, touch gentle yet firm. A comfortable silence swept over the room. The speed with which he worked was impressive, though unsurprising. The only person who had done this more than him was perhaps Seokjin, who had more medical training than the rest of you combined.

As he worked on your other hand, he paused his motions. “You don’t need to struggle alone,” he muttered, almost too quietly for your ears to pick up. The words brought forth an ugly twist in your gut, your shoulders tensing up almost imperceptively.

“I deserve it,” you whispered, gaze stuck on your bandaged hand. Did hands that caused such pain deserve such tender care? If not for his insistence, you would have let them bleed. After all, what have you done to warrant comfort?

Despite finishing his work on your hand, he kept it in his hold until you turned your eyes to him. The sight that met you carved a hole in your stomach. It wasn’t often that you were met with the dejection in Yoongi’s gaze, and seeing it now hurt more than you’d expected.

He took several breaths to collect his thoughts. “Y/N-”

You didn’t know if you were disappointed or relieved when the door to the gym burst open suddenly, footsteps and loud humming cutting through the tense atmosphere. The melody paused once the owner took note of his company, and you jumped up upon noticing who had joined you.

“Jungkook! Spar with me,” you requested abruptly, already making your way toward the boxing ring in the corner of the room. You didn’t let the confused “Okay” or the long-winded sigh deter you from your newest distraction.

As you settled into place on the far side of the ring, you did your best to ignore Jungkook’s doe eyes sending you a look of concern after passing over your bound hands.

If it was a physical challenge you were looking for, Jungkook was the person best suited to delivering. Despite being the youngest of the men in the house, he was arguably the most talented in combat. Eyes sharp and hands steady, he always struck with devastating accuracy whether it be with bullets or his own fists. Yes – he was exactly what you needed.

Perhaps the gloves would be in your best interest, as Yoongi had pointed out previously, but you held no concern for your best interest. Bending slightly at the knee in preparation, you suppressed a hiss as you curled your fingers into loose fists, the ripped skin of your knuckles chafing against the gauze.

The average person would be uneasy at the sight of Jungkook’s identical stance before you, face devoid of emotion – he'd always been a competitive one. But you? You were invigorated. You needed this – the emptiness of mind that came with a good fight.

He swung at you first, your body reacting on pure instinct before the action even registered. Forearm raising to block his attacks, you allowed your thoughts to float away, body acting on its own accord. This was your therapy.

Jungkook was relentless in his assault. He didn't give you even a moment to breathe, both of your limbs a blur, bodies light on your feet. A distant part of you registered Yoongi's presence out of the corner of your eye, though you had no ability to think on it further. Calves burning, chest heaving, hands throbbing, forearms aching – yes, this is what you wanted. What you needed.

Struggling to take in breath, you backed away quickly, hand raising to signal for Jungkook to pause.

"Are you alright?" he asked, taking in the sight of you, breath ragged, red beginning to dot the gauze on your hands. You truly looked to be in no state to fight, especially one you voluntarily chose to be in.

"Fine," you gasped, but you knew it to be a lie. Physically? You were drained. You had already been in the gym for over an hour before Jungkook arrived, consistently failing to give your body the rest it deserved. Mentally?

You couldn’t remember the last time you were okay.

Your life was a whirlwind of doing things you regretted and dealing with the consequences later. The guilt, the gnawing emptiness. It grew with every mission, the branches of torment expanding to fill every nook and cranny of your head.

So you tried to forget.

But you could only do so much. There were limits to how much physical activity you could take, limits to how much you could sleep the days away. And in those grueling moments in between? You remembered.

It didn’t matter that you grew up like this. It didn’t matter that you were trained for it. They couldn’t train the humanity out of you. They couldn’t train away the loneliness, the mortification. You just got better at hiding it.

You wished you could find it within yourself to ask the boys how they dealt with everything. Whether they had trouble coping. Whether they were as weak as you.

“Y/N?” a bewildered voice called out. Snapped out of your thoughts, you whipped your gaze from the floor up to Jungkook’s face, worry colouring his features. “Maybe we should stop-”

“No. I need this.” Settling back into position, you intently blinked away the exhaustion. If you were being honest, you felt awful. Your limbs felt heavy, the ache only increasing with time. But this was pain to deflect pain, and you would always choose this pain over the alternative.

You didn’t give Jungkook time to think it over before you darted at him, jabs directed at his upper body in quick succession. He blocked you swiftly and easily – it was rare that you could take him off guard, even rarer to defeat him. And that was when you were in perfect condition – you couldn’t even begin to test him in your state. But you tried anyway.

Despite your commitment to pushing yourself more and more, you felt it when your body stopped obeying your mind. It was only minutes of tossing blows back and forth, circling around each other, before you found it increasingly difficult to keep up. Jungkook had no such problem. He batted your weak punches aside easily, countering with hard thrusts you were finding more and more difficult to block.

You should have put a stop to it then, but you were stubborn. After all, if this were a real fight, you couldn’t just back out, right?

It was as you failed to move your arms in time, consistently lagging a beat behind, when Jungkook hit you in the abdomen. Hard.

You dropped to your knees immediately with a loud groan. Black swarmed your vision as you heard a nearby “Fuck,” hands placing themselves on your shoulders. You didn’t realize it was Yoongi before you, not Jungkook, until his gruff voice rang through the room.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he snarled, “Do you really need to win that badly?” The fury in his voice was clear, Jungkook shuffling awkwardly in response. It hurt to breathe, the movement of your abdomen initiating new waves of pain with each inhale. This would definitely make for an ugly bruise.

“My fault,” you hissed, attempting to stand but stumbling, stabilized only by Yoongi’s hands on you. When you shifted your gaze to Yoongi’s face, you almost stopped breathing. Despite the lack of verbal reprimand, the glare he was sending you increased your heartrate exponentially. It wasn’t often he got angry, but when he did, nobody could deny he was the scariest of everyone – parents included. You couldn’t help but to wither under his stare, eyes shooting around the room in an attempt to focus on anything but him.

When Yoongi harshly jerked his head toward the door, Jungkook very quickly got the message, scurrying away from Yoongi’s scorn. Alone once again, the silence was deafening.

“I know you do this on purpose,” he started, eyes scanning you, a frown painting his face once he took in how much you aggravated your earlier injury. The long pause told you he was choosing his next words carefully. “Do you really think punishing yourself will heal you?”

Your mouth forming a firm line, you tossed your head back, fixing your gaze on the ceiling above you. You wished you could say he didn’t understand, but you knew he understood more than anyone. The way he was speaking to you rather than yelling as he probably should have only confirmed it.

“Yes,” you murmured. No. You didn’t know. Could this even be healed?

All you knew was that you needed it. The physical distraction, the physical pain, it made things a bit easier, the evaporation of a few droplets from an ocean of guilt. If you could call this guilt.

Because this was less about your victims and more about you.

Was it selfish to mourn what you’ve done more than you mourned those who suffered from it?

The people you’d hurt – were they ever really innocent?

Nobody was innocent in this line of work. Nobody’s hands were clean. Did that make it okay? Did it erase the gruesomeness of what you’d wrought?

Maybe to the you on mission, it did. The you without remorse. The you who never hesitated, the you who did what was necessary to succeed. The you they made. She had no self-regard either. She knew the job, and the sacrifices to complete it didn’t matter.

But she was just a mask.

If you could wear her all the time, maybe you could be okay.

“Oi,” a stern voice snapped you out of your thoughts. “Did you hear anything I just said?”

Reminded of your position – half-squatting, almost all your weight on Yoongi, the intense throb of your abdomen – you exhaled. No, you thought, though you were certain he knew that anyway. “Sorry,” you mumbled.

He gave an exasperated sigh in response, though didn’t push the matter further. “Can you stand?”

Despite your own doubt you nodded, groaning as Yoongi tugged you upright. Everything ached from your head to your toes, and your vision swam at the sudden movement, dizziness having you cling onto his shirt.

“I’m carrying you,” he stated firmly.

“I’m fine-”

“Don’t be stupid. You don’t get an award for being the most stubborn person in the house.”

As much as you wanted to argue, the fact that you didn’t have the energy to do so was proof enough that he was right. You truly didn’t know if you could get back to your room without his help. “Okay,” you sighed, relenting. Pride meant nothing when all it would give you was more injury.

Stabilizing you, he turned to ease you onto his back, pulling your limbs into place while you simply allowed him to manipulate your body, too tired to try to help. When he straightened, you were so relieved not to have to carry your own weight that you let your head slump forward, face buried in Yoongi’s shoulder.

“You’re not acting like someone who doesn’t want to be carried,” he chuckled, carefully making his way past the barriers of the boxing ring. You made an indignant noise in response, somewhere between a groan and a whine. You didn’t ask for this, but he couldn’t fault you for enjoying it. He was far more comfortable than he looked.

Pocketing both of your discarded phones, he set out to leave the gym, his grip on your thighs firm. As you exit, you noted that the sun had set during the time you’d been there - it must have been longer than you thought. You allowed your eyes to flutter shut, the subtle rocking from his footsteps lulling you into a semi-conscious state, more relaxed than you’d felt in days.

It was a long walk from the gym to your room, the estate more of a mansion than a house. When you were small, you reveled in discovering new nooks and crannies, new hallways and hidden stairwells. It hadn’t mattered to you then that you would get scolded by the maids, or even one of the wives for being too curious a child. Maybe you should have listened to their advice, for all that your curiosity got you.

“Well, what do we have here?” a gruff voice called out. Your head snapped up at the sound, reaction visceral, your momentary ease of mind instantly replaced by wariness and a tinge of something else. Fear? Disgust?

Yoongi’s grasp on you tightened imperceptively at the sight of the man before you, as if to draw you even closer than you already were.

“...Sir,” came Yoongi’s terse reply seconds later. Sir. The only acceptable way to address Namjoon’s father in this house. Each of you learned such at a young age - even Namjoon. Perhaps it was better this way, to remain disconnected from the man who flipped your world on its head.

“Y/N. I see you allowed yourself to get injured again,” he said, eyes narrowing on you as he crept closer.

Your blood ran cold at his words. How did he know? It wasn’t as though it had been long, and you doubted Jungkook would have told-

The cameras.

They were all over the house aside from the private rooms, though you wouldn’t put it past Namjoon’s father to bug your rooms too. You’d always known they were there, but you didn’t think he would actually watch. The thought sent a shiver up your spine.

Stopping in front of you, a calloused hand reached out to grab your chin, roughly jerking your head up to meet his gaze. You tried not to shrink back at his proximity, struggling to maintain eye contact.

“You should be taking care of yourself. After all, your body is one of the most important things in this house.”

You tried not to grimace noticeably at his words, waves of revulsion flowing through you. Your body was one of the most important things in the house? It was appalling how the same words Yoongi had spoken to you earlier could be twisted into something so vulgar.

“Yes, sir,” you bit out with gritted teeth, stare breaking as you threw your gaze to the side instead. Dull pain throbbed through you, made worse by the tension in your body at your unwelcome company.

After what must have been seconds but what felt like an eternity, you were released, Namjoon’s father turning his back to continue on his way. “I still expect you on mission tomorrow,” he called out without turning around, eventually turning the corner and disappearing from sight.

Bastard.

You didn’t notice the sustained stiffness in your limbs until Yoongi broke the deafening silence left behind. “You alright?”

The soft call of his voice pulled you out of your rage, your body slumping against his, the last of your energy seemingly depleting after the encounter. You made a noise somewhat resembling a noise of affirmation, muffled into the fabric of his shirt.

Appeased enough by your response, Yoongi made his way up the stairs to your room. In the 30 seconds it took to walk there, you were already dozing off again, face tucked into his neck. His warmth was grounding - reassuring after a day that left you rattled.

You didn’t register the fact that you were in your bedroom until you felt your body hit plush sheets, the comfort of a mattress making you groan in relief. When you blinked your eyes open, though, the sight you saw had you squinting to make sure you weren’t seeing things. Fancy computer setup, keyboard tucked into the corner of the room, sheets of writing plastered onto otherwise bare walls… Yoongi’s room?

“Wha-” you started, but paused when an object was tossed onto the bed beside you. A first aid kit.

“I would’ve taken you to your room, but I already know your stubborn ass wouldn’t have one of these.”

“Hey!”

“Do you?” he cocked a brow.

“...No,” you admitted sourly.

Rather than look at the smugness you were certain painted his features, you settled yourself into his bed, unceremoniously shoving your face into the pillows. The smell of vanilla and musk washed over you, Yoongi’s comforting scent surrounding you on all sides. It had you quickly making your way into a deep slumber, interrupted only by the sensation of Yoongi’s hand grabbing onto your own.

You blinked away the weariness, tired eyes watching his motions as he unwrapped your bandages, sighing at the sight of the blood staining them. Your hands didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore, but the cracked skin was an angry shade of red.

You hissed at the fiery sting of the alcohol-soaked cotton he dabbed onto your wounds, the sensation familiar but nonetheless unpleasant. You relaxed again once he completed the same treatment to your other hand, finally slathering aloe vera onto your skin and beginning to rewrap them.

You blinked furiously in an attempt to stay awake, the gentle yet practiced touches on your hand no longer enough to keep you alert.

“You can sleep, you know. I won’t kick you out,” he said, exhaling a laugh at the sight of you struggling to keep your eyes on him despite your exhaustion. You gave a weak huff in response, but you couldn’t help feeling relieved at his words.

No longer having any reason to hold back, you allowed sleep to take you, your breaths evening out and your muscles relaxing.

It wasn’t long before Yoongi finished his work, placing your hands neatly by your head. The movement didn’t even make you shift. In your slumber, you missed the way a hand stroked lightly at your hair before getting up to leave you in peace, the door closing quietly behind him.

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