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netherfeildren · 7 months

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Pink : Part I : Humanist Seeking Person in Love

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader

Summary: Humanism: an outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters. Humanist beliefs stress the potential value and goodness of human beings, emphasize common human needs, and seek solely rational ways of solving human problems.

The story of a son who won’t love you, and his father, who will.

-OR-

the father-in-law AU

Rating: Explicit 18+

Content Warnings: No outbreak AU; Fix-it-fic but the thing that needs fixing is a person; Daddy issues; Daddy kink; Divorce; Welcome to the father-in-law suck and fuck extravaganza; Possessive behavior; Jealousy; Slow burn but like not really; DD/lg dynamics; Older man/Younger woman; Self esteem issues; Discussions of emotional and mental abuse; Unhealthy coping mechanisms

A/N: Check the tags on the masterlist, as well!

Word Count: 7.4K

Read on AO3

Ko-fi

1. Humanist Seeking Person in Love

The video you’d watched had said that the differences between a jamb nut and a coupling nut should have been obvious. A jamb nut, which was what you were currently looking for, was typically half as tall as a standard nut, or a coupling nut, and would be of a small, stouter shape compared to the other options. As you stare at the wall of overwhelming stock, the incomprehensible mess of steel, PVC, aluminum and plastic hardware you feel, a little bit, like you’d like to start screaming as loud as you possibly can, for as long as you possibly can. Just a rip roaring and rageful, top of your lungs, screech. Maybe it’d scare the leering men around you. Maybe they’d desist from the ogling of your ass in the tight confines of your ratty leggings, or the mildly pitying glances as your frustration and confusion becomes more and more obvious.

You try and take a deep breath, glancing down at your phone again and the screenshots you’d taken of the parts you need to fix your leaky kitchen sink. Zooming in, you hold the picture up next to the pipeware currently gripped in your sweaty hand and wonder again if what you’ve chosen is the right piece. You don’t understand why the hardware store, a local business, isn’t as neatly and efficiently organized as the larger chains, and why they make it so damn hard for someone without experience to come in and shop. You don’t want to buy the wrong thing and waste the money you already don’t have, you don’t want to have to make the trek back to this God awful fucking place. You hate the hardware store, you hate the way it smells, dusty and wooden, the cavernous hollow echo of it, the leering gazes of the men shopping, looking at you as if you’re some helpless child, something soft and easy to snap up and eat. You hate the memory of following your father around on many a Sunday morning after he’d forced you to come with him in some false attempt at bonding, at spending time together when really all it was, was another instance of you cowering behind him, trying to make yourself as silent and small as possible so as to avoid his anger and irritation.

You look back down at the piece of PVC in your clutch, at the picture of what you’re supposed to be buying again, back at the other option, a copper bolt you think might look right but can’t really tell the difference, and you feel the backs of your eyes pinch and go hot and achy. A sharp, throbbing pain starting up behind your left eye and spiraling out like a stain to cover your forehead. You want to go home. You want your kitchen sink to stop leaking. You want the past year to never have happened. For your marriage to not have so irrevocably unraveled that the husband you’d so desperately fought to keep had left you out in the cold, divorced, very nearly penniless in a new apartment that you couldn’t make feel like home no matter how many fall scented candles and throw pillows you stuffed into every nook and cranny. You want to not have to make decisions like these and take care of things like this. You want very, very badly for someone else to come and take care of you, help you, make the choices that seem very hard in the moment but that, in the grand scheme of things, aren’t really so difficult, but that still sometimes call for a second opinion, wiser, more experienced hands.

And in that next blink, in a soft, deep voice that should not be as easily recognizable in your mind as it is given the handful of times you’ve actually heard it, your name, being murmured from behind you. The lilt of a question, the gruff of shock coating the syllables as it pushes against your bare nape. Soft as a sledgehammer, like ice water down your naked back, your shoulders hitch up to your ears, going tense and frightened, a hot flush of shame spilling through you, the keenest desire to run away from that soft voice as fast as your stupidly October flip flopped feet’ll take you. You hiccup the half sound of his name, not turning around, lashes fluttering quickly to prevent the dry heat of your eyes from spilling over, nerveless fingers going listless around the plastic nut. You don’t want to turn around. This is a cursed place, this hardware store, and you should never have come, and you really do hate it here. Deep breath, deep breath. Be polite, be succinct. You don’t need to talk to him. You don’t need to think about the past. Fuck the sink, fuck the pipes. You’ll just move apartments. You let a long stream of air out of your mouth, and then turn on the ball of your foot to face him.

“Mr. Miller,” you breathe with a limp smile you know isn’t going to fool anyone.

He frowns, the line of his mouth wavering as he tries to contain his displeasure. “We really back to that?” You shake your head, looking away from him as the last shopper in the aisle you’re inhabiting walks away, leaving the two of you alone. The store suddenly seems to exist in a vacuum echo, all other patrons seeming to disappear, all sound going out. You even feel the imitation of a hollow pop in your ear drums. When you look back at him, he’s really scowling now. His strong brow pulled down over those too pretty, thickly lashed hazel eyes that you know so well on another man, a younger version of him.

It was the first thing you’d noticed about him, the first time Sam had introduced you to his father, they have the same eyes. The same but different. There was a coldness to Sam’s gaze that you hadn’t recognized until it was too late for you, but you recognized it now, with a painful sort of awareness, recognized the lack thereof in his father’s eyes, how different they were even in their similarity.

He raises his brows at you, a pressing gesture, “Joel.” His name feels like salt on an open sore in your mouth. “What are you doing here?” And he looks at you, just a little bit, like you’re an idiot, or maybe that’s only you, for his voice is gentle when he says, “Pickin’ up supplies with some of the boys on my crew. What’re you doin’ here, sweetheart? Sam with you?” Your heart beats like that of a small and hunted creature, pounding painfully against the confines of your ribs while a hot, humiliated flush washes through your entire body, heat suffusing your face so intensely there’s probably steam rising off the surface of your skin. You shake your head quickly, a barely there jerk. You’re suddenly trembling so hard your throat aches as if it’s been pierced by a lancet straight through. Another sharp jerk, and he steps forward a concerned look marring his face.

“You haven’t spoken to him.” It isn’t a question.

“He’s been feildin’ my calls for months. Assumed I’d done something– something else, last time to piss him off again. What’s wrong? Everything okay?” He pauses, head tilting, and you can’t look him in the face as you say it, gaze falling to your fingers twisted around the nut.

“We’re not together anymore. He– he left me. We got divorced six months ago.”

Shocked into silence he takes another step towards you, the toe of his heavy boot coming into your eye line. The ends are thick and rounded, and you wonder if there’s a casing of steel within, how much a kick in the ribs would hurt delivered by a boot like that, and the violent thought startles you, your eyes going wide, shooting up to his face as if worried he could read your thoughts. Ashamed that something like that in reference to him would even cross your mind, for looking at him, the gentleness in his gaze, the utter concern, a man like this would never hurt a creature softer than him, you know that.

It’s funny, or strange, or a phenomena not easily understandable or explainable unless you’d had a certain type of experience with a certain type of man, but there was a sort of sixth sense instilled in a person who’d dealt with cruel men that made it easy to recognize when one had the capacity to hurt you and when he didn’t. There were, of course, those who were good at masking it, but there was always something, a way they held themselves or moved around others, the cadence of their voices, clues that spoke of the sort of man he was. And from the first moment you’d met him, you’d thought Joel had something that spoke only of gentleness. Despite his size and seemingly rough aspect, there was something about his voice, and the way he carried himself, the way he moved around those who were smaller or weaker or less, less alive, less potent than him, that was always careful and always aware.

“What?” He moves as if he’s going to reach for you, and you flinch back, the curve of your spine bumping into the framing of the shelves behind you, face turning away quickly. He goes tense, forcing himself into stillness, the white of his teeth flashing in a grimace, but he puts his palms up in a staying gesture, it’s alright, easy, he murmurs, I won’t touch you, hands lowering to fist in the pockets of his jeans into tight balls of false restraint. As if he’s afraid of what they might do of their own volition otherwise. “What do you mean he left you? What happened? He–”

“I don’t want to discuss this with you. Call him again or– or I don’t know. It’s not my business anymore. He was never happy with me,” you stupidly add, finally braving a look back at his eyes again, a bitter laugh scratching up your throat, “You know this. Call your son, Joel.”

You move to leave, to get away from him, but he shifts, blocking your escape, sending your heart up into your throat. “Honey, wait–” but you’re spinning on your heel the other way, stumbling in your flip flops, and you think he says something about the wrong way, but you’re rushing, blindly trying to get away from him down the aisle as fast as you can. You’re going to cry, you can feel it, any second now. You weren’t expecting to see him, the reminder of everything that had happened, your marriage and its failure and the part Joel had played in it. A painful and jarring shock to your nervous system that you’d not been prepared to receive. You blindly scramble through the aisles of the hardware store, losing yourself to the gloom of the dimly lit back rows where plywood and carpeting are stocked, that detested dusty hollow smell intensifying. You take another blind turn, another, until the sounds of the store have gone faint and then a frightening pressurized silence. Bracing your palms against one of the eye level shelves you let your head fall between your shoulders, your bag sliding down your arm to hang and sway at the bend of your elbow. You watch the slow back and forth pendulous movement, eyes wide and blurred. If you don’t blink, you won’t cry, and you’re so fucking tired of crying over this.

“If you were tryn’a get away from me, exit was in the opposite direction,” comes his voice again. Your eyes flutter shut, a single tear drips from the line of your lashes onto the dusty concrete floor.

“Please, go away,” you croak.

“Tell me what happened.”

“What do you think happened? Don’t ask stupid questions.”

“He– he’s a fuckin’ idiot, sweetheart–”

Your stomach lurches, “Don’t call me that.”

But he doesn’t listen, continues on unheeded. “There’s gotta be something we can do. I’ll– I’ll talk to him. I’ll make him see that–” You let your head fall back the opposite way now, looking up at the high, cavernous ceiling of the store, another bitter laugh. It’s the only kind left to you now.

“I don’t want him back, Joel. Be serious.”

“He needs you–” And oh, that makes you angry.

“Fuck you.” You spin around to spit the words at him, rushing forward to shove at his rock solid chest. He doesn’t budge even half an inch. You shove again, again, a humiliating sob making its way up your chest. You blink then, you can’t help it, the tears fall unrestrained. It’s a specific type of humiliating, facing the estranged father of the man who you’d been married to, who’d been unable to love you, who’d abandoned you.

Sam and Joel had been unaware of each other’s existence for almost twenty eight years, but two years ago, Sam’s mother had finally told him about his father, his name, where he lived, how they’d gotten together when they were too young, and how she’d split, scared and vulnerable, without telling him a thing. The two of you’d gone looking for the man, and you’d both been varying degrees of shocked at what you’d found. Sam, faced with a man so unlike himself he’d immediately resented him more than he already had for the fact of his absence his entire life. You, as well, faced with a man so unlike your husband that it had made you resent your marriage even more. Immediately welcoming, loving, patient, gracious and generous and forgiving of the fact that a son had been kept from him for almost three decades. Despite the severity of his character, his serious reservedness, he’d done everything in his power to open himself to this long lost son. Not once had the news been met with cruel anger or outrage. Joel had accepted his son immediately and without question, listening to his mother’s reasoning, accepting the fact that a mistake had been made, forgiving, willing to move on and embrace Sam in all the ways he’d been denied for so long. Sam hadn’t been able to fathom it. He’d been mistrustful, hostile, angry, all the things he always was but compounded and heightened to a terrible degree he eventually started taking out on you.

And it was funny because the fraught, or lack thereof, relationships with your fathers had been the thing that had initially bonded the two of you. Too young and alone and without direction, you’d met him in your last year of college. The relationship had immediately developed without boundaries or reason, you’d been obsessed, a little desperate, unquestioning, and then married a few short months later. Two too young, too lost people, burdened with daddy issues. A terribly sad cliche. You’d never had a chance. You never should have been. And there’s a part of you now, looking up at this man, your ex-husband’s father, that wants to feel angry at him, that wants to spit in his face and say this is all your fault, everything that happened to me, everything that was done to me was in your name, and I blame you for all of it, but you know it’s without reason or countenance. And worst of all, anger, blame, resentment, it’s not anything near to the things you feel when you look at him. The memory of a small, dark restroom flashes in your mind’s eye, his eyes gleaming above your face, the thick slope of his shoulder, the patterned wallpaper behind him, sickening comfort.

You go still and frozen, fingers twisting in the front of his shirt, jerking with a painful shiver from the top of your head, down the length of your vertebrae, to the tips of your toes that cramp and spasm. Looking up at his face, you can feel a pulse throbbing in the muscle beneath your right eye, and the way he looks down at you, as if he’s never felt as sorry for any other creature in his entire life as he does for you in this moment, so embarrassing. You let your head fall forward again, landing with a soft thump against his chest, an uncontrollable tremble moving like fire through your frame. “Fuck you,” you say again, whispered, soft and weak and without any sort of force behind it. “How dare you say that to me,” another tear. “He’s always needed you. It was never me he wanted, never me he needed. It was always you.” You watch as one hand withdraws from its pocket cage, lifting to push a soft tendril of hair back behind your ear. And there’s fire left in the wake of the brush of his skin at the hollow there. Another shiver of a worse kind, one of desire, one of lust, moves through you.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it – I’m sorry, honey.” Stupid southern charm and their stupid pet names. You clutch at his shirtfront more tightly, press your forehead harder into his sternum, and he brings his hand to your shoulder, tucking you into himself more securely. He’s huge and warm and smells faintly of salt and sweat and laundry detergent. Something clean and fresh and masculine. He smells alive. His other hand comes up to the back of your head, moving through your hair. Fucking, Sam, he murmurs above you, and you’re sure he’s shaking his head in that disappointed fatherly way. “Tell me what you were looking for. What had you lookin’ so confused and irritated in the plumbing aisle?” You’d laugh if you could, a non bitter sort, but you don’t have the ability anymore, and that makes you so angry. Angry and irrational.

“My sink’s leaking, and I can’t afford a plumber because your son divorced me and left me with no money and no house and nothing for myself, and I hate this stupid place. I hate the way it smells, and I hate that nothing’s labeled clearly, and I hate the way you men,” you shove at his chest a little bit again, “look at me like I’m some dumb little girl who doesn’t know left from right.” Even if that’s what you kind of feel like, a dumb little girl who doesn’t know left from right anymore. Slightly out of breath, you go limp and exhausted against him. His palm flattens at the center of your spine, supporting you, and it’s so fucking inappropriate. You should move away. You don’t know him well enough for this, he’s your ex-father-in-law, you shouldn't let him touch you, but should and should not and right and wrong and inappropriate or not has never really mattered to you where Joel Miller is concerned. “This is the worst place in the whole world,” you mumble, voice muffled from where your face is squished against the annoyingly hard and delicious muscles of his chest. You feel, keenly, like you’re being a little bit ridiculous, a little bit embarrassing, but his big hand is slowly moving up and down the length of your spine, soothing and comforting, and you can’t bring yourself to care. He’d been kind from the first second you’d met him, and then, at the worst moment, he’d been understanding, and you’d never really stood a chance against him either.

You’d never had a chance with the son, you’d never stood a chance against the father, there had never really been much choice or possibility for you as a whole where either of them were concerned.

I was such a little person. Tiny in my insignificance, naivety, hope. Desperate to be as good as I could be, and pathetic in my failure to make myself into what I thought the world wanted of me.

“You can’t afford–” He breathes out roughly through his nose, stopping himself from continuing. “Do y’know what it is you’re looking for? What part?” And you nod your head, still buried against him, unable or unwilling to pull away. “Let me help you,” and he says it so, so gently that it makes you want to stomp your foot and cry and throw a fit at the unfairness of it all.

“Don’t want your help,” you can’t help the muffled whine it comes out as. All you want is for someone to help you.

“Of course you don’t, sweetheart,” he soothes. “But let me anyway. S’the least I can do for talkin’ out of my ass.” You finally pull back, looking up at him, and he brings his thumb up to catch the wetness at the fine skin beneath your eye. “Please, don’t cry,” he whispers like it hurts him.

And even though he’s currently catching the salt of your eyes with his fingers, you lie obstinately, “I’m not,” whispered back just as quiet.

After he helps you find the correct piece for your sink, finally, which ends up being neither of the options you’d been previously weighing, a fact that almost sends you over the deep end again, and paying for it at his aggravating and overbearing insistence, he walks you to your car.

“Is he still in Austin?” He asks as he holds your door open for you, your shopping bag still clutched in his hand. One of the guys on his crew had come to find him while you were checking out, but he’d sent him away with a shake of his head, said he had something to take care of.

“I don’t know, but he sold our house.”

“Fuck– Where’re you living?” The sound of his spit curse has a wet flutter moving through you, shame following bitterly in its wake.

“I got an apartment in the East Side.”

“And he just left you to fend for yourself? Took your fucking house?” He’s getting angry, and you don’t think you’ve ever seen him get angry. Something foreign like excitement jumps within you.

“Well, that’s the point of divorce, Joel. You separate and are left to your own devices.” You reach for the little plastic bag, but he jerks it out of your reach.

“He has a responsibility to you. He–”

“Again… the point of divorce.”

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ, that boy,” he mutters, shaking his head. And that’s the thing of it, you think, that’s always been the crux of the issue. Sam was always a boy, has always been just a boy… there had never been any chance. “Let me come help you with the sink. Let me fix it for you.” Something to take care of, that’s what he’d said, that’s what he’d called you, what he sees you as.

You’re shaking your head before he can even finish getting the words out, full of regret, and a wish that it could have all been different from the very start. “You know that isn’t a good idea,” and he goes silent because he does, he does know, he’d known since the first time probably. It had been obvious in the way that a secret thing can only be between the two people involved in the unsaid. “I can do it myself. Don’t worry. I’ll find a way.”

“You still got the same number?” He asks.

“Please, don’t call me. Call Sam. He’s the one that needs you. He’s the one that–”

“And who’s taking care of you? Who’s gonna take care of you, sweetheart? You need someone too, we all do.”

A flash of that earlier anger again, and you reach forward to rip the bag out of his clutch now, angry because he’s right. Because he’d always seemed to have a grossly misplaced ability to read you exactly as you are. He’d read you for what you were from the first second he’d laid eyes on you, naive and hopeful and falsely in love with a son who’d never loved either of you in return. “Maybe,” you tell him, “But that can’t be you.” He looks away from you, gruff sound of irritation passing through his clenched teeth, and he drags a heavy palm down his bearded mouth. Fuck, again that provoking spit curse. The wallpaper in that dark restroom had been covered in little blue motifs, butter yellow details sparsed throughout. It had surprised you, the pretty and delicate design in the home of a, for all intents and purposes, bachelor. It spoke of intention and attention to detail, to his space, to care of his home. That dim moment was, strangely, sickly, the brightest memory of the entire two years of your marriage.

“You still got my number?” He presses anyways. Unheeded or uncaring of you trying to push him away, and there’s something about that, that’s pleasurable, his inability to let a thing go where you’re concerned, his unwillingness to allow you to hold him at arms length. Like he doesnt care to be kept away from you, and so he won’t. You nod your head once, face burning, molars grinding to keep yourself still and in place. You’d felt, for two years, trapped, running in place, and now left limp and exhausted and colorless, and you hope that he can’t read that exhaustion in you. For some reason, that would be more embarrassing than everything else, for him to see just how defeated you’d been left. He gives you one of those looks, those direct, piercing, aggravating looks that you’ve seen from him before, aggravating in a way that is inciting, like a relentless tongue against a slick swollen cunt, God. Your hands are shaking, and he bends his head down to your level to look at your directly, “You promise me that if you need anything, anything at all, doesn’t matter what it is – that you’ll call me. No matter the hour, no matter what it is. Promise me.” Another sharp jerk of your chin, if you talk you’ll scream or make a sound not wholly belonging to the body of a girl, woman, whatever you are. Another nod, the mute shape of an okay passing through your lips. And his face is so concerned, his hand almost lifted in the imitation of what you have to tell yourself, as a form of self preservation, is an ill intentioned caress or hug, but that you know he’d mean as nothing more than genuine comfort. You deflate in relief when he doesn’t touch you, right here, out in the open for the whole world to bear witness to. Things like that, after all, are only meant for dark, wallpapered bathrooms. He’d already taught you this.

The relationship had not been what either of them had expected, Sam and Joel, from the get go. There was a smallness to his son, a pettiness and a cruelty and a spoiled rotten vein through the core of him that was incongruous with who Joel was as a man, something that was glaringly obvious to all involved. And try as he might, in those early days, they could not overcome the disparity in their personalities. The attempts from Joel at closeness had been fraught with tension and unsaid resentments, and eventually Sam had given up, stopped answering his father’s calls, evading his attempts to connect. Your marriage had spiraled into dissolution shortly after that. As if the failure to find whatever it was he’d for so long hoped for in a relationship with his father had highlighted all of the things you yourself lacked, all the ways in which you were so specifically dissatisfying to him and always would be.

The marriage had not ended up being what either of you had hoped for, the honeymoon phase quashed and dead early on, no brightly lit halcyon. Reality had set in quickly when confronted with the disjointedness of your pairing, a bone out of place, your specific inability to please him in the ways he’d thought you would when he’d first met you. There was something about you that had always been a little bit lacking, something ascetic and cold natured about your personality at times. Since you were a child, trying to appease an unappeasable father, to emulate a singular mother. Always impossible, always falling just short of utter failure. Not so terrible that you were outwardly obvious in your mediocrity, but never everything you could be. Painfully, succinctly average. Sam had come to realize this quickly. Perhaps, unaware prior to tying himself to you because the only thing you’d ever been not average at, was being a little bit of a liar, of being placatingly complacent when the moment necessitated, manipulative in a way that you found protecting. But you see, that’s what happened when you had a cruel father who always needed appeasing, something Sam, in his abject fatherlessness, couldn't understand. Funny, you’d said that to him once, near the end, called him abjectly fatherless, his weakness a consequence of his lack of a paternal role model, and oh, how he’d hated that. Endings could bring out such cruelty in people, you’d found.

But the manipulation of a moment had become, in some ways, your only talent. The art of superficial gratification at a moment's notice as a way to keep the people around you falsely happy and calm. Like all small and frightened creatures, you’d learned your strengths well, but as all truths do, yours had eventually surfaced. The fact that you weren’t really so appeasing in the ways he desired, not so nice, not so perfect, not so subservient. That the persona was all just a way to keep him happy as a means of getting someone to love you, to stay because you didn’t know how else to be.

Your mother always said you could’ve been nicer to him. She was a kind, soft, patient thing. Quiet and easy and always, always, above everything else, understanding. It was the worst thing about her. A detriment, a weakness, and she resented you for your resentment, for seeing her as such, but you could never help it. Always asking you why you couldn’t just be a nice girl, a good girl.

You didn’t think you had not been nice, not been good. You had only been yourself.

Your father had always hated that about you, you being yourself. The man you’d chosen to marry didn’t seem to like it very much either. And she’d tried to instill her better qualities in you, your mother, so you weren’t all bad all the time. There could be a brightness and a lightness and a sweetness to you sometimes, it’s true. You weren’t always all bad. But there was – is still – also a bitterness and a resentment and an anger, a screaming that you could not quell no matter how hard you tried. And so you’d attepted to give him everything you could, your husband, everything you had at your disposal in all ways, to do and be all he could have ever asked of you during those two small years of marriage. Because truly, they had felt so very small, made you even smaller.

Everything except for sex. You’d never been able to give him that the way he’d wanted.

At first, it had been normal, sweet, soft missionary in the darkness, tepid insinuations of orgasms, always hushed, always exactly how he wanted it. But eventually, when the other parts of you began to fail, he got mean and callous and casually cruel. And as you pulled away physically, he called you frigid, a prude, boring, cold, bad in bed, didn't know how to make a man hard. And it had made you so agonizingly insecure, already a sensitive and anxious thing when it came to your physical form, he’d beaten you down, embarrassed you, belittled you.

With time, you’d realized the truth of it which had been nothing more than that you’d never really wanted him. He had never made you desperate, he had never made you wet. It was his character, his attitude, yes, but it was also him. He just wasn’t it for you, and it wasnt that you were a prude or frigid at all, only that you needed patience and understanding and care, gentleness. Things he possessed none of.

You just needed a little time to warm up and someone who wanted to give you that time.

The reality that your life had not been full of varied and foolish adventures, and that time had seemed to simply slip away like an echo in the brain from one moment to the next was duly painful. A handful of months of wan and false lust, two years of cold, bitter marriage, and now, six months of barren aloneness. Too many mistakes had been made, too many regrets, three big ones that could be held like stones scorched to burn by the sun in the palm of your hand so that even if you let them go eventually, their imprint would still be scarred into your flesh afterwards forever.

So, perhaps the divorce had been painful in the moment. Or not perhaps, there was nothing uncertain about it, you’d fought tooth and nail to make it work, to keep him with you. Prostrated and humiliated and debased yourself. But with time, it became obvious that it was a fantasy you decided you should finally cast aside, as all children do childish things at a certain age. And then, it had been the easiest thing in the world. After all, and let’s be honest now for a moment, the reckoning had come in the shape of his father. That is, at the end of it, the reason you’re really here.

Sat now, before the open cabinet below your kitchen sink, leaky pipe drip, drip, dripping monotonously in front of your glazed over eyes, you think of him. He’s a large man, intimidating and dark and stoic. Taller and broader than his son. Lush, mahogany curls streaked with silver that speak of age and experience like the smile lines around his eyes. Deeply grooved when he laughs that beautiful laugh of his. He looks exactly like the opposite of whatever his son is, like he’d have the ability to make the opposite of you, to pull out of you whatever the antithesis is of what his son was able to. It had been immediate, the nature of your thoughts towards him. The desire, the desire, the desire, you had wanted like you’d never wanted before — like an illness, like dying.

Your marriage had been circling the drain, and then you’d met him, and it should have been innocuous. He’d been kind and polite and welcoming, but also, aloof. Holding himself at a distance, something afraid that he carried within himself, like he didn't want to hope, like he was just a little bit scared of what it meant now to have a son, something to lose. You knew a little bit about that, the worst part of it all is never the cruelty, it’s the hopelessness. Everything had become so much worse after meeting him. An unbearable sort of awareness of something that your listless, frigid self recognized as man, man, man, something like hunger. Something slanted about the desire, wrong, sure, for he was your husband's father, and yet, you wanted him. You wanted to know what he smelled and tasted like, and what the weight of his cock on your tongue would feel like. If it was bigger than his sons, you were almost positive of that, if it would stretch the corners of your mouth to near splitting, the hinges of your jaw to aching.

You’d met your husband's father, and had realized, painfully, with uncompromising clarity, all that your husband could be, all that he was not, all that he would never be. There was no comparison between the boy and the man, and it made you hurt.

Your eyes flit back to the screen of your open laptop and the instructional video there, popping another fuzzy peach gummy onto the flat of your tongue, mouth full of sucking sugar. You’re going to fix this sink if it’s the last thing you do, and you’re not going to think about him again. But tomorrow, you’ll start not thinking about him tomorrow. The talent of a liar never really wanes.

The apartment is quiet, nothing but the cheerful crackling of your sweet pumpkin candle and the mocking splish splash of the drain pipe. You had, in recent weeks, come to think of your abandonment as something of an accomplishment. Perhaps, your loneliness is a good thing, you’ll tell yourself as a comfort, a sort of friend; you can’t be used against yourself again in this solitude, and oh, how you’d been used. That anemia in your character, the ascetic thread of your personality had been weaponized and wielded against you until you couldn’t tell up from down and left from right. You were certain there’d been cheating, even if you’d never had any proof to confirm it, merely grateful you’d never gotten sick as way of evidence. But you knew. And it could've been so much worse for you, of course, of course it could have. But he’d left your mind so off kilter, broken and confused and not yourself. Utterly damaged in a way that was humiliating and devastating when you thought of the way you’d been, such a little person. So often, not a woman, just a little girl.

And then his father. Joel. Seeing him today – you had never felt the way you should have felt towards him. Like your eyes were open, awake for the first time in your entire life. A man like that – he was changing. And you wanted, needed very much to be changed. Seeing him today, being presented with that reminder of what he was, how he made you feel, how he’d always made you feel. There’s something ghoulish about you concerning him – about this desire. That ascetic or anemic or under-grown, illformed thing about you, exterminated in the thrum of how alive he is. How unlike his son. You’d never known what it specifically was, never been able to categorize it, and then there had been that moment, brought so low, six feet beneath the ground sort of debased, and he’d been there and you had been – unburdened from the weight of his own son, by him, and you’re not even sure he knew the extent of it. The power he’d wielded over you in that moment in the dark. And you can’t say it out loud, what it is you’d want from him, you can’t even say out loud what it is about him that changes you as it does – not a woman, just a little girl – but you think that if you could just see him, then you’d know, or maybe you could be brave. You don’t know what it is, but you’d know it then, with him in front of you, you’d have the answer to this question that’s plagued you for so long – how to be yourself in a way that is good.

You’re pushing yourself to your feet, fueled by the thought, fingers gripped over the ledge of the counter to pull yourself up, sink forgotten, stumbling to your front door, shoving your feet into your shoes and fumbling for your keys. How to be yourself in a way that is good.

When you were seventeen, your father had been at his angriest. Angry in that way that all angry father’s are. Loud and brutish – an anger that is cowing, a sign of true weakness. Brute force in the shape of the man who gave you life. When you think of it now, even as a grown woman, you still feel that phantom limb of fear, and you know that it isn’t normal for a grown woman to be afraid of her father, and yet you are. And then to think that you’d gone from your parents home directly to the bed of the same sort of man, one even crueler, if possible. You’re forced to laugh your singular terrible, self deprecating laugh at the irony of it – even worse, if possible. For what’s worse than a person who constantly needs to be soothed into kindness and patience and calm?

Once, in that terrible seventeenth year, funny and strange and unknowingly perfect, you’d been gifted the Farmer’s Almanac by your elderly neighbor. She’d said that she’d read it since she was a girl, liked the peace in knowing that the year had been predicted by experts and put down on paper. It made life seem more secure, more in control in a small way. You’d needed that during that turbulent time, locked in your teenage bedroom, lulled to sleep by the sound of your father’s anger and the year’s long-range weather predictions before your blurry eyes. It was so comforting to be able to read the future in text, catastrophe or sunshine, at least it was there. You still read it to this day. And there’s no congruity to the thought now, as you crawl into your car, a ghoul in the night, banging your knee on the hastily opened car door, sprouting gooseflesh in the cold; this desire, desire, desire that is the worst thing you’ve ever felt in your whole life, and yet, you can’t bring yourself to stop because there is something about control in this moment also. Control like knowing what the future will be like on paper, control like a man who is entirely grown into himself, who knows who he is and who he is not and is not uncertain, who will not yell, who will not hurt you. He has this – your husband’s father – you know he does. There is something about control, there is something about knowing how a thing will be, there is something about being yourself in a way that is good.

You’d picked up the wrong wine on your way here. Rushing, trying to fix your makeup in the car, you’d gotten confused, chosen the one he didn’t want instead of the one he did. And it was nothing, or an accident, surely nothing to incite his ire, but he’s so fucking angry hovering in front of you. He looks at you, now sometimes, like he hates you, like you’re the worst thing that’s ever happened to him. He said you’d humiliated him in front of his father. That he was going to think he didn’t have good taste, couldn’t afford a decent bottle of wine. And you don’t know Joel very well, but he doesn’t seem like the type of man to care about such things. Calling you an idiot in that poisoned shrill tone he takes on when he’s delivering a set down, and you’re trying to tell him to please, please keep your voice down, Sam, your father is going to hear you. You’d heard someone say once that a truly powerful man never feels the need to raise his voice, it simply isn’t necessary for him, and you’re reminded, terribly, of your father, with the sight of your shrill and seething husband in front of you. And then a low toned that’s enough, son from the mouth of the kitchen, and it’s so much worse, entirely catastrophic in a way, and you’re rushing away so humiliated, face on fire, tear caught over the trough of your lower lid, trying the doors in the hallway for the nearest restroom. You hear the murmur of voices, one struggling to maintain composure, the other, cool and steady, then the slam of the front door, and finally, the silent din of his house settling around the two of you as you find a restroom to hide in. Your heart beats so fast it makes you nauseous, knees strangely aching, listening to the heavy steps of Joel’s boots, as if he’s trying to warn you with those measured, weighted thuds that he’s coming, coming, coming for you. Turning to face the far corner of the restroom, you press your palm over your mouth, face slippery and burning and so stupid, the soft swoosh of the opening door, a paused breath as he takes in your form huddled into the wallpaper, and then the muted snick of the door closing behind him, shutting the two of you away together.

Part II

Netherfeildren's Masterlist

Updates Blog!

#pink fic #Joel Miller #joel miller smut #joel miller fanfic #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller/reader #joel miller/you #Joel Miller smut #joel miller imagine #the last of us au

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luciddownloading · 7 months

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Mercury Aspects and Sense of Humor

Aspects to your Mercury (as well as its sign and house placement) say a lot about your sense of humor: how you're funny and what you find funny. If you have many varying aspects to Mercury, you express your humor in many different ways. You also might just be ridiculously funny.

Sun conjunct Mercury: The Funny Guy (or Gal). These people identify with their humor so they seek a lot of validation for being funny. This can make them a constant Joker. "Why so serious?" they ask. "Because everything isn't a damn joke!" you may reply. But, they like taking the piss out of everything and everyone, themselves included. This can be a source of insecurity, too, though. They may feel as if they are always being laughed at, not with, even when it's not convenient.

Moon-Mercury aspects: Naturally funny. Seriously, some of the most hilarious people you'll ever meet (I might be a little biased as I have the sextile 😁). Humor is their intuitive response, so they react in very funny ways, sometimes unintentionally. VERY quick-witted. Needs to feel free to joke/laugh or engage with witty people to feel comfortable. The soul of a comedian. Can use humor to heal or comfort others. Either laughs off/through their feelings or do NOT laugh at them when they're having an emotional moment or they will hurt you.

Mercury conjunct Venus: Pleasing humor. Wins people over through jokes and laughter. May be fond of "corny" humor because it's very inoffensive, wholesome and oddly charming. Can make the worst puns or lamest jokes sound hilarious. Sometimes, people laugh with them just because they like them so much, not because of the joke itself. Observers may think, "Um, calm down, he/she isn't that funny." Very common with their love interests or people they date. Easily falls for very witty individuals.

Mercury-Mars aspects: Potty mouths. Vulgar humor that only they can get away with. If people are rubbed the wrong way, it only amuses them more. An expert at making sex jokes or telling hilarious stories about their sex lives. Funny people of their preferred sex(es) turn them on. Savagely skilled at sassy comebacks that will shut the other person up. Legendary roast sessions or reads. Can go on very funny rants whenever they are pissed off or worked up.

Mercury-Jupiter aspects: The clown. Big and broad humor. Loves being a silly goose. Doesn't care if you find it funny or not. It's hilarious to them! Most likely to have an unstoppable laughing fit over something stupid. Will fail the "try not to laugh" challenge. They can't hold it in! Their humor is like sunshine on a cloudy day. Like to uplift people with jokes. Even their laughter is like a healing medicine. Possibly has a distinct laugh and a huge one, at that.

Mercury-Saturn aspects: Dry wit. The absolute masters of sarcasm. It's like their second (or native) language. People sometimes don't know when they're joking and take them seriously. On the flip side, they get really annoyed when people make a joke out of something that they're taking seriously. Sophisticated humor. If American, they might really love British humor and comedians. Making jokes out of difficult situations but in a cynical or "I hate my life" way. Only gets funnier as they get older. Takes things less seriously with age and learns to use humor as a coping strategy.

Mercury-Uranus aspects: Offbeat humor. Other people sometimes don't "get" their humor. Can feel alienated in that way until they meet a fellow weirdo who laughs at the same things they do. Then, it's like "Thank God! I've found my people!" Super-quick, when it comes to telling jokes, comebacks, or getting the joke. Will laugh at things that go over other people's heads. Comedic genius: brilliant bits or wild one-liners. Might get off on controversial jokes or laughing at things they know they shouldn't. Frequently guilty of knee-jerk laughter in inappropriate moments.

Mercury-Neptune aspects: A chameleon-like wit. Can be dry, goofy, odd, offensive or wholesome in their humor, depending on the environment/audience. May write very funny screenplays or novels or be a great comedic actor. The hilarious main character of their own ongoing movie. Tells a lot of jokes to themselves, in their head or in private. Most likely to laugh out loud in public at an internal joke and look a bit crazy. Cracks themselves up. May imagine cracking others up or getting caught up in wacky situations.

Mercury-Pluto aspects: Dark comedy. "Wow, that was fucked up. Funny but fucked up." Might tell themselves that or be told that by others. Can keep some jokes to themselves because other people couldn't handle them. May think they're just joking around but destroys someone psychologically and triggers their trauma with a single quip. Sometimes, though, that's the intention. Mean streak may come out via humor in a way that horrifies them or they regret later. Or they just own it. SHADE, okay? More shade than a oak tree. It's giving Real Housewives or Tiffany Pollard. "Hilarious reality show villain" energy.

#mercury in astrology #mercury aspects #mercury astrology #sun conjunct mercury #mercury conjunct venus #mercury mars aspects #moon mercury aspects #mercury jupiter aspects #mercury saturn aspects #mercury uranus aspects #mercury neptune aspects #mercury pluto aspects #astrology #astrology observations

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juiles · 8 months

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Hiding it

Requested: yes

Summary: you’ve had adhd your whole life and have managed to keep it from your team and 2 year long girlfriends. They start to get snippy with you and when you get an injury and they find out, you snap a little.

Type: angst and fluff

Pairing: Wandanat x reader

Warnings: swearing, anger, blood, gunshot wound, fighting, yelling, argument

Important questions!!!!

Masterlist here!

Request here!

A/N: so this idea was given to me by a very lovely reader and honestly i fell in love with the idea! I have ADHD and honestly it just gave me some outlet which i needed tbh.

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It had taken you 18 years to officially get diagnosed with ADHD. Your parents couldn’t have cared less about your well being which is why it took so long. You had been so shamed for the way you were that when you started with the Avengers, you just decided not to tell them. You had your coping skills and your medication. You didn’t need them to think anything less about you. The only person who knew was Cho and that was because she did your prescriptions for you.

You weren’t great at making sure they were refilled and that meant you messed up. Small things that wouldn’t normally set people off however, they were so consistent that people started to notice.

You had been dating Natasha and Wanda for a few years now and had managed to avoid them finding out so far. Perhaps that’s what had gotten you into this predicament. If you had just been honest with them, they wouldn’t have been so mean to you.

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“Really y/n?! Again?!” You flinched, hearing Natasha’s voice rise slightly as you two sat in the quinjet while Tony flew you three home. “Why can’t you just pay attention?! God damn it. You could have gotten someone killed!”

You felt like sinking into the seat and disappearing from her line of sight and not saying anything, however that made her more mad. “Really?! You’re going to ignore me?!” She stood up, her hands flying up into the air as she stomped her way into the cockpit leaving you alone to overthink what had just happened.

You had lost track of the snipper that stood on the roof of the building across from you after Tony had mentioned a helicopter near by that you ALSO needed to keep an eye on. You couldn’t keep an eye on both but felt bad so instead of mentioning it to them, you tried to do both and in the attempt, last track of both of them. Luckily, Natasha had gotten the intel quick enough that the three of you were able to get out unscathed. Now it was just having to listen to them both bitch about your mistake.

Once the quinjet landed, you slowly grabbed your things and trudged outside, hoping to have Wanda comfort you but much to your dismay, Natasha had gotten to her first and as soon as the brunette landed her eyes in you, she instantly started berating you for being so careless and “how dare you be so risqué about Nattys life!”. This wasn’t the first time they had yelled at you. Last week, after a mission, the two of them ignored you for 3 days because of an accident you had. This time, instead of taking it, you trudged your way inside and instead of turning left and entering the bedroom the three of you shared, you went up 3 more doors and opened the door on the right to reveal your bedroom.

A room you hadn’t stayed in, in years due to moving into the shared room. You closed the door and threw your duffel on your bed and with a groan, you hauled ass to the bathroom to strip out of your suit and get in the shower. The warm water felt nice against your dirty skin and you relished in it however, the feeling only lasted a moment before you heard a door open and Natasha and Wanda were barging into your room causing you to get out of the shower and change into some spare clothes.

“Seriously y/l/n. That was a really reckless mistake that could have caused a life!” Wanda ranted storming into the room as you opened the bathroom door. “What if Natasha had gotten shot?! Huh?!” The guilt that already gnawed slightly at your stomach intensified as you ducked your head squeezing your eyes shut. “I would have NEVER forgiven you if something had happened to her! Do you understand me?!” You nodded softly before Natasha grabbed the witch’s hand.

“Come on love. Let’s go have a shower hmm?” She said, loud enough for the words to sting you. “I don’t want to see her face right now.” With that the two left, slamming your bedroom door shut, causing you to jump. You stayed in your room for 2 days after that. No one except Pepper cared enough to come and check on you. The woman had been bringing you food, which you barely touched and reminded you to sleep.

On the third day, Fury came knocking and told you that you had a mission and to be in the jet in 15 minutes. You stuffed your duffel bag, threw on your suit and slipped your way to the jet, managing to avoid your angry girlfriends.

The mission, which was supposed to be an easy single person intel recon, turned into a 3 day stakeout where you ended up getting shot in the shoulder at the end right before escaping. Upon your return, you were whisked away to the medbay where Cho, Natasha and Wanda were waiting. The latter two, with angry looking faces. “Come on Y/l/n. Let’s get that stitched up hmm?” Cho said guiding you to sit down as you actively avoided the assassin and the witch standing beside you.

“Where the hell were you?! You didn’t tell anyone you were gone y/n/n! What if you died?!” Wanda said, fear and anger etched into her features.

“It was stupidly reckless y/n.” Natasha said, her face her normal calm facade.

Cho sent the two looks to shut up as she finished stitching you up. “I’m assuming since you were gone for three days that you didn’t take your meds so when you take them tomorrow, remember you’re going to have side effects okay? Also, you need to come and get a refill soon.” Cho said softly to you as she finished up the bandage.

Your eyes widened and your head whipped up to look at her before quickly stealing a glance at the two avengers frozen beside you. “M-medications?! Side effects?!” Natasha stuttered out. “What is she talking about detka?”

Chos eyes widened commically as she looked at you. “I thought they knew! I’m so sorry y/n/n!!” the doctor rushed out. You simply shook your head and muttered an assurance that it was okay before she skittered out the door. You slowly stood with a grunt and brushed past your two girlfriends with the intent to head back to your room to clean up. They followed behind you, scrambling with their words before you quickly stopped and turned on your heel with an angry look on your face.

“Shut up!” You seethed at the two who froze and stared at you wide eyed. “God for once just stop. Not that it’s any of your business but i have ADHD. A pretty severe case and Cho does my meds for me. All those “stupid little reckless mistakes” were caused by something i have NO control over. You two couldn’t have given two shits about me for the past 5 days so why the fuck would you care now?!” You felt all the anger in your body start to boil up. “FUCK!” In a state of anger, you turned around and punched a hole in the wall beside you which caused your knuckles to start bleeding however, it seemed as if you didn’t even notice as you continued to punch the wall with no thought to your safety at all.

The girls were in a state of shock for a moment before Natasha grabbed you by the shoulders and pulled you away from the wall, Wanda using her powers to hold your hands still. “Baby stop! Stop! You’re hurting yourself!” Wanda said walking towards your angry looking figure, your eyes narrowed on her as she reached her hand up and cupped your cheek which seemed to snap you back to reality. “Take a deep breath my love. Just take a moment okay?”

Your eyes filled with tears as you stared into her blue eyes then turned to face Natasha’s green ones. “I-I’m sorry… i’m sorry i’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get so angry. I c-can’t always stop it.” You muttered pulling your hands to your chest. “Without t-the meds I-I don’t have good control of my emotions… they-they feel like they’re trying to rip through my body…” Wanda merely hushed you as Natasha pulled your shaking form into her body, being extra cautious of the now open and bleeding wound on your shoulder.

“No detka. We’re sorry. Were sorry we couldn’t help you and instead just got angry with you…” Natasha murmured into your hair. “Why didn’t you say anything…?”

You merely shook your head and clutched to her shirt with your bleeding hands as your body began to rack with sobs. “Shhhh… you’re okay malyshka. Let’s go to our room hmm?” You nodded softly as the two lead you into your shared bed and settled down, with you curled up between them. You sat and cried for a while before the sobs turned u to sniffles and Wanda pulled away causing you to whimper.

“I’m just getting the first aid kit my love. We need to restitch your shoulder and bandage your hands okay? I’ll be 2 minutes.” With a kiss pressed to your forehead, the witch shot off and was back in less than a minute with a full first aid kit in hand. You were shifted to be leaning into her warm body as Natasha started cleaning you up. The three of you sat in silence as this happened until you were all bandaged up and securely back in their arms.

“I’m a burden…” You whispered softly. Wanda went to say something but got stopped by a look from Natasha. They knew you needed to get it out. “I’m a burden and weak and stupid. That’s what they called me…”

“Who detka…?”

“My parents… kids at school… teachers…. I was never good enough and when i turned 18 and finally got diagnosed with ADHD it made sense to me but i feel this gnawing shame in my stomach. A shame that was shoved in me from birth. That who I am is nothing more than a burden and no one should have to deal with me. The meds help a lot… i appear almost normal. Those times the boys have jokingly told me I’m annoying and it seems like i have a big reaction to it is because it’s my biggest fear. That my family will leave me again, that everyone i live will get bored with having to help me with everyday tasks and leave me alone again… I know i can be a lot sometimes. I know i can be stand off ish. But i’m scared. I can’t handle losing another family…” You squeezed your eyes shut, holding back the tears as you tried to wriggle out of the girls arms before the two pulled you in tighter and squeezed you, the both pressing kisses to your hair and face while whispering assurances to you.

“No baby. You are not a burden. You are not annoying. You are not too much. You are our perfect girl. We are so sorry we messed up but you need to know that you love you with everything in our hearts and we NEVER want you to be alone again or feel like you’re weak because you’re so strong.” You scoffed lightly rolling your eyes at Wanda’s words.

“You are y/n. You are so strong to be holding all of this to yourself and not be able to tell anyone else but never again okay? From now on, Wanda and I will be here for you. To support you and love you and care for you. In the ways people should have when you were little.” Natasha said, with a finality in her tone and a kiss on your head, making you believe she was telling the truth to some extent.

Of course it wasn’t perfect after that but they kept true to their word. Everyday, the would remind you of their love for you in the small things. They would make sure you had taken your pills and eaten more than an energy drink with them. They would leave kisses on your head as you walked past. They set reminders on their phones to remind you that you had a load of laundry in or that you had said you would do the dishes. Small things to remind you that they will fight by your side through it all. While they may have seemed insignificant to the others, you knew how much these small things meant and you cherished them all.

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mvth3r · 1 month

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you and daryl are incredibly similar. sometimes that isn’t a good thing.

CW: 18+ MDNI

A/N: herbalist reader is one of my favorite pairings for daryl, i’ll probably end up writing more of them specifically. anyways, this is for the anxious (me) over thinkers (also me)!

you and daryl hadn’t been together very long. months starving on the road had brought you closer, him hunting constantly to feed the group and you analyzing and collecting every edible leaf and berry right alongside.

the hunter and the herbalist. terms like “girlfriend” and “boyfriend” seemed a bit childish to both of you, given that you weren’t teenagers anymore, but you were partners through and through. to some, you were an unlikely pair, but your group understood the many ways you intersected.

you’d grown up damn near just as rough as he did, with an abusive mother and a father who drank himself to death trying to cope. it’d been a lonely childhood, and you spent most of it outdoors, falling in love with nature.

your similarities made your relationship strong and laid the foundation for understanding each another, but sometimes it made for a worse situation, like now.

you and daryl laid next to each other on your cot, pressed together from the lack of space. it wasn't uncomfortable, but the charged awkwardness that had lingered between the two of you recently soured the air.

you couldn't see daryl's face, but you knew from the irregular rise and fall of his chest that he wasn't asleep. the cell was dark save from the strip of moonlight peeking around the sides of the privacy sheet.

you sighed silently, only your shoulders moving with the expression, but it didn’t go unnoticed.

daryl pulled away from you, leaning as far out of your embrace as he could without falling off the bed.

“what?” he mumbled, voice gruff. you could hear his confusion, and it made you wince.

“nothing, just,” you paused. for a moment, you considered letting it go. he would come to you when he was ready. or he wouldn’t if he truly hadn’t enjoyed it. or if he wasn’t really interested in sex. but would that mean he hadn’t really wanted to do it with you? or that he had, god forbid, felt pressured?

no, you steeled your resolve, you would not let this overthinking and anxiety overtake you anymore. it was just a question. you could ask a question.

you pushed yourself up onto your elbow and, reaching over daryl, flicked on the oil lamp that sat on your makeshift nightstand. you blinked as your vision adjusted, finally bringing daryl into view.

staring just below his eyes, you blurted out your ailment, not wanting to allow yourself time to bow out.

“did you not like having sex with me? when we did a few weeks ago,” you kept your voice low, though you were sure most everyone was asleep.

daryl had already been frowning, but it deepened at your words, “what’re you talkin’ about?”

and out came the word vomit.

“well i just mean that, y’know, we haven’t had sex again since that first time, which was great. i really enjoyed myself, and i thought you did too, but then you never mentioned it and you never tried to do it again, and i’m thinking maybe you just aren’t into sex? which is fine! but then it’s also not, because that would mean i either forced you or you felt like you had to have sex with me, which isn’t cool, and—“

daryl cut you off with a hand over your mouth and you opened your eyes at the interruption, never even realizing you had closed them during your rambling.

meeting daryl’s eyes, you saw shock and amusement melting the confusion right off his expression. a blush was starting to bloom across his cheeks.

“i didn’t mean to leave ya hanging,” he said, “I guess i was in my own head too. thought ya would come to me when ya was ready.”

“when i was ready…” you trailed off, dumbfounded.

all that overthinking, just for you both to be in the same place.

“ain’t wanna force ya or nothin’,” he clarified at your expression.

you stared at him in shock for a moment, and then you were moving, surging up from the cot and swinging your leg over to straddle his waist. your hands settled on his deliciously firm shoulders for balance.

daryl’s hands roamed over your hips, slipping underneath your his loose sleep shirt to press into your skin. his head bowed to lay against your neck, whispering, “i always want ya, babe,” as his lips peppered kisses up your throat and over the soft curve of your jaw.

you could feel him getting hard beneath you where he was pressed against the thin cotton of your panties. you started getting wet in response, hoping, albeit naively, that he wouldn’t be able to feel it.

daryl’s hands tightened on your hips, encouraging you to grind down against him and you followed his lead easily. a moan bubbled out of your mouth unbidden at the feeling. you weren’t going to last long, not with the pressure just right and just where you needed. it had been too long.

your man, just as needy as you, was in the same position. his head rested back against the wall, lips parted on a moan of his own as he controlled your pace, rolling your hips down again and again against his.

you felt your orgasm starting in your belly and you slumped forward, hips stuttering as you rode it out. the fabric of daryl’s shirt muffled your whimper.

stuck in his shirt as you were, you couldn’t see daryl’s face when he came, instead feeling him shudder and his hips jerking sporadically once, twice, and then stilling all together. he hissed out his release, hands tightening like a vice around your hips before he let you go.

you hid your smile against his shirt.

later, after you and daryl had changed into different bottoms and laid back down on the cot, you drifted easily into sleep for the first time in weeks, your mind quieted.

being so well sated was a bonus, though, and, by the quiet snores daryl was making, tucked against your chest, you figured he would agree.

#daryl dixon #daryl dixon imagine #daryl dixon x reader #twd imagine

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martinmynster · 2 years

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💣💥🌋👊🔪🤬🔫

#psychosomatic symptoms are so fucking stupiddddd #eczema not only spreading and ruining my fucking life it's now seriously getting in the way of me reasonably coping with my derma #(made worse by huh huh stress and mosquito bites allergy rashes) aka excessively exfoliating it #+ my nails are not doing better in fact they're doing worse 1 of them is pretty much attached to my foot by nothing but betadine nd prayers #but if it's psoriasis it makes sense #im at my limit pick a struggle!!!!#and ive been playing like an amateur i know very well the first rule of derma is 'Be up to date with your god damn moles.' and yet #i only realized today ive been terrorizing this poor thing for weeks #but so many wounds turn into moles without notifying me im sorry when did that even happen #im sure that was a pimple last month im sure of it!!#when did we switch teams???

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avocado-writing · 2 months

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Hey there, if you’re still doing requests for BG3... I'm terribly angry about something big and outside of my control at the moment. Could you let me know what you'd think the BG3 companions do if Tav started self destructing? Like Tav passing harsher judgments, snapping at neutral NPCs, or fighting more dangerously and recklessly with bad guys?

Oooo the angst possibilities! Fun! Going to write like you’re self destructing due to stress, and you’re picking unhealthy coping mechanisms. Here we go:

Astarion

at first probably thinks that it’s quite funny. We know he enjoys seeing a little bit of suffering.

but, the more it goes on, the more worried you can see him become.

this isn’t like you. He knows you by now. You’re… kinder than this, damn it.

he takes you to the side one day after he’s seen you be short with a friend.

“whats the matter?” “Nothing, Astarion.” “If you’re going to lie to me, darling, you’d better do a better job of it than that.”

you go to snap at him, fire on your tongue, and then something inside you breaks. You just start sobbing. Everything which has been weighing on your mind has finally become too much.

he isn’t good at comforting words, but he does hold you. Runs his hand up and down your back, and lets you know you he’s here for you whenever you’re ready to speak.

helps you centre yourself again, eventually. He loves you. He’ll do what he can to make things better.

Gale

Makes a couple of snide remarks about how you’re acting, suggesting maybe you be a bit kinder, but then he stops to reassess how you’re acting.

there’s something wrong. You’re pent up. Furious, but not with the people you talk to. They just happen to be the ones bearing the brunt of it.

he sees the injuries you nurse on yourself after battles too. You used to be a clever fighter. Now you are a reckless one.

takes you aside one night at camp and presents his findings very matter-of-factly, concluding that there must be something the matter. When he puts it so astutely, you know you have no chance of hiding from him.

tears slip down your face and he is there in an instant drying your eyes. Telling you there’s nothing to worry about. Reassuring you that “the great Gale of Waterdeep is on your side, we’ll find a way to work things out.”

he puffs his chest out, you chuckle and bury your face in the crook of his neck. Yes. You will find a way to work things out.

Wyll

When he first sees you acting out, as it were, he immediately intervenes.

he knows what it’s like to be under great levels of stress. He made his contact when he was a teenager, after all, and had to deal with all the fallout that happened consequently.

he takes you to the side, holds your hand tightly in his, gets you to look at him.

“i love you, you know that, yes? If there’s something the matter, you need only tell me.”

you begin to crack immediately. Damn this sweet man and his emotional intelligence. Why is he perfect.

you let him know you’ve been under a lot of stress lately. You agree you’re not coping with it very well. He says he’ll help you however he can, but you need to stop being so unkind to yourself.

“you matter, my love. You deserve sweetness.”

holds you close, and you just stand there for a while, together. From then on whenever something is wrong, he is the first one you go to.

Karlach

Sees you snapping at a friend, jumps in.

“whoa, whoa, whoa! Soldier, where is all this coming from?”

you snap to tell her it’s none of her business, she wouldn’t understand… but then you see the hurt in her eyes and immediately feel awful.

“Oh gods, Karlach, I’m sorry…” your voice is wobbly, cracking a bit, and she cups your face in her warm hands.

“hey, hey. it’s okay. Tell me what’s going on.”

you blurt out all your feelings to her in one, long, run-on sentence. She can’t help with a lot of the personal stuff, but she can listen, and she holds you to her chest and rocks you a little. Being engulfed by her embrace is very comforting.

”I’ve got you, babe, eh?” You know she does. For better or for worse.

Lae’zel

She sees the vicious way that you’ve been acting in battle. Strange, usually it’s her attempting to take the big hit, not you. She can take it, you can’t.

She finds you when you’re tending to your battle wounds. Sits down. Stares at you until you instigate conversation.

“what?” “You are not acting like yourself.” “Oh? And how would you know what that is?”

you’re just saying these things to be hurtful, but she’s stalwart. You’re deflecting.

She tells you she’s been enamoured with you long enough to see how you usually are. That you’re kinder, smarter. You’re lapsing into these feelings out of some sort of self-preservation, but you don’t need to.

”if there is something weighing on your mind, share it. I am here to help ease your burdens.”

you don’t love to cry in front of her but that is remarkably… sweet. It breaks you a bit.

You promise to stop being so foolhardy, especially in battle. She says that must be for the best, lest you get rended in half.

“Hey!” but she’s smiling. Your heart swells as you realise she’s trying to make you laugh.

Shadowheart

Lets you get quite far down the burrow of self-destruction before she does anything.

once again, she’s loyal to the lady of loss. Nothing you’re doing is exactly alarming to her.

but it does get worse and worse… she sees you snapping at friends, being harsher to passers-by, and she’s constantly having to patch you up after battle due to your wounds.

eventually one day you snap at her, and that’s her limit.

“I know something’s causing you stress but it isn’t me. I’m trying to help. So you can either pull your head out of your arse or I’m leaving this tent.”

the two of you have a little squabble, but it quickly becomes obvious your heart isn’t in it. Your anger turns to sadness. You collapse in tears and she pulls you to her without a second thought, holding you close.

despite her sharran devotion, she starts whispering how things can get better, how they will change. How the first step is letting people in.

her hand wound throbs as she comforts you. But in this moment she knows she’d pick you every time.

things are easier from then on, knowing she is with you.

#astarion x reader #astarion x you #shadowheart x reader #shadowheart x you #lae'zel x reader #lae'zel x you #astarion x tav #shadowheart x tav #lae'zel x tav #gale x tav #gale of waterdeep x tav #gale x reader #gale of waterdeep x reader #wyll x tav #wyll x reader #wyll ravengard x tav #wyll ravenguard x reader #karlach x tav #karlach x reader

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justporo · 7 months

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Hello! Very sorry if your post was rhetorical, but you asked for Astarion fluff and I had an idea. Since he's a canonical cay person, I like to think that a druid Tav would enjoy wildshifting into a cat and lounging in his lap, either acting as a heat source or letting him run his fingers through their fur when he's nervous or upset.

Anon, thank you so much. I immediately had a scene in my head and this was a true delight to write.

So now that I'm already crying from replying to that other Anon message (not their fault ofc), let's return to our regularly scheduled fluff, eh?

Pairing: Astarion/GN!Tav (You, Druid this time) Wordcount: 1,8k

Cats with Benefits

Sometimes it got all too much. Those were usually the moments you used your wild-shape abilities to shift into a cat and strolled off into the forest to have some moments of peace and quiet.

Today had been an especially exhausting day – the party had been fighting and bickering trying to figure out how to get through the Mountain Pass. The way was always steep and only loosely fixed, so you only made very slow progress and all of you were already completely exhausted came noon. So, you had decided that you’d take an additional rest midday when the sun was high and hot, adding to your already physically demanding hike.

You had put down your pack, went a few yards into the nearby patch of trees you had stopped at today to use their generous shade, and shifted into your usual form of a fluffy black cat and started to stroll around the small patch of forest. For some time you just wandered over fallen trees or through the underbrush, enjoying how differently it was to experience nature from the perspective of a feline creature. You loved it – it was almost like meditation for you.

The others didn’t know you wandered off like this sometimes. Or at least they hadn’t mentioned it. They wouldn’t leave without you and so far, you’d always gotten back to them in time. And as of late tension was high enough that everyone was pretty much occupied with just themselves, so they didn’t miss you.

After some time, you found a nice big rock in the sun on a clearing in the woods. Perfect for a cat to lounge on and take a nap. You jumped up, allowed yourself a long full body stretch and a big yawn and then rolled up into a ball of fur to enjoy the sun and some time alone.

As you laid there, your thoughts started to wander. You thought about your companions. You liked them, each and every one of them. Naturally, some more than others but you respected them all. But the path through the Mountain Pass had been a strain on all of you. And it really hadn’t helped that today everyone had just seemed on edge from the very first step on out.

Specifically, Astarion had been incredibly annoying today. Not being able to stop complaining about everything. Always replying with a sarcastic remark. To be honest, your relationship with him was probably the hardest and most formal of all thus far.

You had already realised that his flirty and sassy behaviour obviously were his coping mechanism for something deeply troubling, but by the Gods, it seemed he could never shut up. He was hand full at the best of times. Your furry ears started to twitch and the tip of your tail zig-zagged just thinking about it.

You tried to clear your mind then after your thoughts kept spiraling, hoping to relax enough that you could actually sleep a little.

But only shortly after your peace was broken.

“Well hello, who are you my beauty? A descendant of a mighty mountain lion? Rawr.”

No, it couldn’t be… The damned vampire had found you.

Of course he didn’t know it was you, but…

You opened one eye lazily and saw Astarion lean down to you, reaching out one hand to stroke you. Your jaws opened and you could already feel the hiss inside you rising to the top, but oh.

His touch was so gentle. His fingers softly stroked from the top of your head down your feline neck and back and you couldn’t resist leaning into his hand when he started again from the top.

“Someone likes that, hmm?”, Astarion said softly while petting what he received only as a wild but friendly cat.

Shifting into an animal also meant adapting some of their unique abilities and habits, so you couldn’t help when your feline body responded to the gentle touches by purring.

The vampire was positively intrigued when he heard that. As you opened your other eye you could see his big smile – a genuine one. You had never seen him smile like that. “Seems like someone’s just as touch-starved and desperate for some comfort as me”, he whispered while continuing his pets. That made your ears perk up and you immediately felt for the pale elf. Questions filled your mind about his unknowing revelation.

But you had barely any time to ponder them because suddenly the vampire scooped you up into his arms and sat down in front of the boulder you had laid down on. You yelped – or rather meowed at the sudden change of position.

Astarion moved carefully with your cat self in his arms until he was laying in the grass, legs angled, and you snuggled up against his chest. Since he had donned his armour and was only in his camp clothes you could feel his body, beneath your own.

This was incredibly weird and would probably end up with an awkward revelation but – you couldn’t deny that it was also very delightful.

“We can be cuddle buddies, my beauty, at least for an afternoon. So we can both get some much needed affection, hm?”, Astarion whispered to you. His red eyes looked so sad saying that. Whatever you had started to think about to get out of this situation evaporated. Suddenly, you only wanted to keep him company – it seemed he desperately needed it.

And the way he unknowingly had started opening up to you: it was a good albeit saddening look on him. You wanted to provide some comfort it that was what he seeked.

Also, it felt incredibly good to lay there on your new vampiric stone, soaking up the sun together while Astarion carefully continued petting you: scratching behind your ears, stroking down your back with both hands, even when he tickled one of your paws with a single finger. And you couldn’t stop purring. That bastard knew exactly what to do to keep the purrs coming.

Then after a while he just laid there with you, hands on your soft and shiny fur. He sighed: “I wish I could take you with me. You seem to like me. At least more than my other companions.”

Your ears perked up again, you looked at him but he had his eyes closed, head lolled back to enjoy the warming sunlight.

“Especially, Tav”, Astarion continued with another sigh “I wish I knew a way how to change that.”

That was it. You couldn’t in good faith continue to lay there with him as he offered up his innermost feelings. You got up and jumped off the vampire’s chest who got up on his elbows looking sad by your departure. You sat there and shortly pondered if you should just leave, keeping your secret. But you couldn’t, you needed him to know – and also have some words with him.

You changed back into your humanoid form, making Astarion scurry back from you, eyes wide with shock.

“Hi Astarion”, you whispered as you knelt beside him.

“You – what? How? Oh, I knew your eyes looked familiar!” His voice rose several octaves and you kept silent as his mood changed from shock to anger – but he stayed where he was.

“What the fuck was that about? Trying to spy on me?”, he hissed at you. Excuse him? He invaded your privacy. “I was here first, you bastard!”, you spat back and crossed your arms over your chest.

“And you didn’t think to reveal yourself before I proceeded to make you fucking purr?” “How when you didn’t leave me anytime in between petting me and lifting me up? I only wanted to be alone!”, you screamed back.

That made Astarion’s shoulders slump a little, some of his softer side returned. “I’m sorry”, he said quietly.

“No, I’m sorry”, you replied and looked down at your knees while pressing the balls of your head against your forehead “I should have said something way earlier.”

You looked up at him: “But then you sounded so sad and I… didn’t want you to be sad so I let it happen and it was kinda nice... I’m sorry, I invaded your privacy like this, Astarion. I’ll just leave and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

You saw the surprise on the vampire’s face who remained silent. So, you moved to get up, but Astarion quickly grabbed your wrist. “No, please. Stay… It was nice”, he confessed and looked into your eyes. The look he gave you was almost pleading.

The urge to move in and hug him overcame you, so you acted upon it – you had already laid on his chest, hadn’t you? How much worse could this make it?

You moved in and wrapped your arms around him – surprising the yelping vampire so much that he fell onto his back again. You were scared that you had crossed yet another line but to your own surprise you felt his arms wrap around you in return slowly.

And so you hugged him long and tightly. He was tense at first, but you felt him relax after some time. He even started to stroke your back again. You squeezed him and held onto him trying to offer him as much comfort and affection you could muster.

“For the record, I do like you, Astarion. You’re just annoying sometimes. But so can the others be, and I too”, you spoke into his chest, squeezing him yet harder. “And if… if you need someone to maybe talk to or hug you or just, you know, lounge in the sun… I can also change back into a cat, if you want me to. I could be your cat with benefits so to speak”, you brabbled into his shirt before you got too shy to make the offer. Your words were muffled but you hoped he heard you.

He did and the vampire chuckled softly. “That sounds… nice. Thank you. I may take you up on that if you promise you will keep this our little secret”, he answered hesitantly. You lifted your head from his shirt but not letting him go. “Would you like me to change back into a cat?”, you asked him and blushed as you realised what kind of weird deal you had just made with the vampire.

“No, Tav, not this time. This… this is very nice too”, Astarion replied and gave you another – the second this afternoon! – genuine smile. And this time it felt even better, knowing it was actually meant for you. You smiled back and placed your head on his chest again. Astarion’s hands kept softly wandering over your back as you kept holding him.

This is where you comfortably remained until it was time to get back to camp. But you were both sure it wouldn’t be the last opportunity to enjoy a nice cuddle in the afternoon sun.

#astarion #astarion ancunin #baldur's gate 3 #fanfiction #baldur's gate iii #astarion x tav #bg3 spoilers #baldurs gate #astarion x mc #astarion x oc #astarion x reader #astarion x you #poro answers #poro writes #cats #again

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novelconcepts · 11 months

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There’s a line from American Gods I keep coming back to in relation to Yellowjackets, an observation made early on by Shadow in prison: “The kind of behavior that works in a specialized environment, such as prison, can fail to work and in fact become harmful when used outside such an environment.” I keep rotating it in my head in thinking about the six survivors, the roles they occupy in the wilderness, and the way the show depicts them as adults in society.

Because in the wilderness, as in prison, they’re trapped—they’re suffering, they’re traumatized, they’re terrified—but they’re also able to construct very specific boxes to live in. And, in a way, that might make it easier. Cut away the fat, narrow the story down to its base arc. You are no longer the complex young woman who weighs a moral compass before acting. You no longer have the luxury of asking questions. You are a survivor. You have only to get to the next day.

Shauna: the scribe. Lottie: the prophet. Van: the acolyte. Taissa: the skeptic. Misty: the knight. Natalie: the queen. Neat, orderly, the bricks of a new kind of society. And it works in the woods; we know this because these six survive. (Add Travis: the hunter, while you’re at it, because he does make it to adulthood).

But then they’re rescued. And it’s not just lost purpose and PTSD they’re dealing with now, but a loss of that intrinsic identity each built in the woods. How do you go home again? How do you rejoin a so-called civilized world, where all the violence is restricted to a soccer field, to an argument, to your own nightmares?

How does the scribe, the one who wrote it all out in black and white to make sense of the horrors, cope with a world that would actively reject her story? She locks that story away. But she can’t stop turning it over in her head. She can’t forget the details. They’re waiting around every corner. In the husband beside her in bed. In the child she can’t connect with across the table. In the best friend whose parents draw her in, make her the object of their grief, the friend who lives on in every corner of their hometown. She can’t forget, so she tries so hard to write a different kind of story instead, to fool everyone into seeing the soft maternal mask and not the butcher beneath, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the prophet come back from the religion a desperate group made of her, a group that took her tortured visions, her slipping mental health, and built a hungry need around the very things whittling her down? She builds over the bones. She creates a place out of all that well-intended damage, and she tells herself she’s helping, she’s saving them, she has to save them, because the world is greedy and needs a leader, needs a martyr, needs someone to stand up tall and reassure everyone at the end of the day that they know what’s best. The world, any world, needs someone who will take those blows so the innocent don’t have to. She’s haunted by everyone she didn’t save, by the godhood assigned to her out of misplaced damage, and when the darkness comes knocking again, there is nothing else to do but repeat old rhymes until there is blood on her hands just the same.

How does the acolyte return to a world that cares nothing for the faith of the desperate, the faith that did nothing to save most of her friends, that indeed pushed her to destroy? She runs from it. She dives into things that are safe to believe in, things that rescue lonely girls from rough home lives, things that show a young queer kid there’s still sunshine out there somewhere. She delves into fiction, makes a home inside old stories to which she already knows the endings, coaxes herself away from the belief that damned her and into a cinemascope safety net where the real stuff never has to get in. She teaches herself surface-level interests, she avoids anything she might believe in too deeply, and still she’s dragged back to the place where blood winds up on her hands just the same.

How does the skeptic make peace with the things she knows happened, the things that she did even without meaning to, without realizing? She buries them. She leans hard into a refusal to believe those skeletons could ever crawl back out of the graves she stuffed them into, because belief is in some ways the opposite of control. She doesn’t talk to her wife. She doesn’t talk to anyone. It’s not about what’s underneath the surface, because that’s just a mess, so instead she actively discounts the girl she became in the woods. She makes something new, something rational and orderly, someone who can’t fail. She polishes the picture to a shine, and she stands up straight, the model achievement. She goes about her original plan like it was always going to be that way, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the knight exist in a world with no one to serve, no one to protect, no reason propelling the devastating choices she had grown comfortable making? She rechannels it. She convinces herself she’s the smartest person in the room, the most capable, the most observant. She convinces herself other people’s mysteries are hers to solve, that she is helping in every single action she takes. She makes a career out of assisting the most fragile, the most helpless souls she can find, and she makes a hobby out of patrolling for crimes to solve, and when a chance comes to strap her armor back on and ride into battle, she rejoices in the return to normalcy. She craves that station as someone needed, someone to rely upon in the darkest of hours, and she winds up with blood on her hands because, in a way, she never left the wilderness at all.

How does the queen keep going without a queendom, without a pack, without people to lead past the horrors of tomorrow? She doesn’t. She simply does not know how. She scrounges for something, anything, that will make her feel connected to the world the way that team did. She moves in and out of a world that rejects trauma, punishes the traumatized, heckles the grieving as a spectacle. She finds comfort in the cohesive ritual of rehabilitation, this place where she gets so close to finding herself again, only to stumble when she opens her eyes and sees she’s alone. All those months feeding and guiding and gripping fast to the fight of making it to another day, and she no longer knows how to rest. How to let go without falling. She no longer wears a crown, and she never wanted it in the first place, so how on earth does she survive a world that doesn’t understand the guilt and shame of being made the centerpiece of a specialized environment you can never explain to anyone else? How, how, how do you survive without winding up with blood on your hands just the same?

All six of these girls found, for better or worse, a place in the woods. All six of them found, for better or worse, a reason to get up the next day. For each other. And then they go home, and even if they all stayed close, stayed friends, it’d still be like stepping out of chains for the first time in years. Where do you go? How do you make small choices when every decision for months was life or death? How do you keep the part of yourself stitched so innately into your survival in a world that would scream to see it? How do you do away with the survivor and still keep going?

They brought it back with them. Of course they did. It was the only way.

#yellowjackets #yellowjackets spoilers #yj meta #long post #shauna shipman #lottie matthews #taissa turner #van palmer #misty quigley #natalie scatorccio #the question not being how do you survive the wilderness. the question being how do you come BACK.#the way each of them tries so hard to keep moving forward #unable to untangle the girl in the woods from the adult suffering in polite society #how the world doesn’t want to hear about the pain or the night terrors or the sleepwalking or the addiction #the world wants the bright colors and the flash-bang headlines #the world doesn’t want who they are. who they had to be. it wants pretty perfect tragedy #that specialized environment lives on in each one of them every day #but it’s not a place anyone else can ever go #how do you feed that for so long and then just…stop?#constantly thinking about nat saying we didn’t make it out. none of us.#because no. no they didn’t. the girls died the minute that rescue chance did. what came back was risen from those ashes

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prettyflyforawhitelie · 2 months

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Hi! Drunk Husk confession please! Maybe he doesn't remember the next day and his crush flirts with him and he gets all flustered and stutters so she shuts him up with a kiss 😚 and tells him that she feels the same way he does. Thank you!!

Ahh this is so cute! I love this!

Pairing: Husk x Reader

Warnings: Alcohol

Word count: 1910

Authors note: I actually quite like this one, but if you were looking for anything different just message me and let me know! This was very roughly proofread, so apologies for any mistakes.

A Drunk Mind Speaks a Sober Heart - Husk x Reader

Ever since you decided to give redemption a shot and stay at the Hazbin Hotel, you quickly learned which of your fellow roommates (hotel-mates?) you could have the most fun with. Charlie was always cheery and go-lucky, but good luck trying to get her to do just about anything that would jeopardize the hotel’s reputation of a sin-free environment. Vaggie wasn’t exactly one for going out (or even hanging around with any of you, except for Charlie, of course), so she was off the table. Alastor was… well, Alastor was creepy as Hell, so even if he did want to go out, you would have a sneaking suspicion that he was planning something more sinister. Sir Pentious could go both ways. He always rejected going out, but if you managed to drag him to a bar and he got drunk, it was actually the funniest thing ever. Nobody ever invited Niffty out because… God knows what would happen if she escaped your line of sight.

This left Angel and Husk. Angel always knew how to have a good time, but after learning of the abuse that he has to endure during work, you realized that his constant drinking and partying was just a way for him to cope with his trauma. Feeling awful for him, it left you mostly turning to Husk whenever you wanted to have some fun.

At first glance, Husk was kind of a prick. He always seemed uninterested with anything that anybody had to say, constantly complaining every time he was forced to do one of Charlie’s eccentric “bonding exercises”. But you’ve had enough late nights at the bar to know that if you really got to know him, Husk was a sweetheart. He was fiercely protective of his friends and gave excellent advice, never turning you away when you've had a shitty day and just need to talk.

When you first arrived at the hotel, you were so very grateful for the free lodging, but still felt like you were isolated from the already-established friend circles of the group. At the end of the day, though, Husk, however standoff-ish he wants to appear, never turned you down for a drink and a good conversation. As embarrassing as it is to admit… you think you've developed quite an attraction towards him. Not only was he a great listener and the only person who seemed to give a damn about what you had to say, but he was adorable, too. The way his wings flapped slightly when he laughed, the little ear-twitches he gets when he’s startled, everything. Out of all the sinners in Hell, he seemed like the only guy that still had a bit of humanity left in him.

This is the driving factor that left you sitting at his bar, still striking conversation with him through the early hours of the morning, almost every night. Tonight was no different, either.

Walking to the bar and taking what you have now claimed as “your stool”, you don't see Husk doing his normal barkeeping chores. In fact, you don't see him at all. That is, until he bursts through the main door of the hotel carrying some crates filled with bottles of a green-looking drink. You rush over to him to lighten his load, a sigh of relief escaping his mouth. As you both reach the bar and set down the crates, you ask,

“So… what’s this?”

As he unloads the bottles from the crates to the bar, he responds,

“Apparently some good shit! I struck a deal with the owner of the club down there, apparently their bar is the only place that sells it, until now! Cost me a pretty penny, but it's supposed to have you seeing stars after only a couple glasses. Wanna give it a try? Shit, I think we’ve got ourselves enough to last until we all get redeemed!”

“Sure, why not.” you reply.

I mean, it’s not often that anything exciting happens in Hell, and this was the closest to an “exciting” experience that you’ll get for a while. When he finished unloading the crates, he placed two glasses on the bar and filled them to the brim with the green liquid.

“Absinthe, it looks like. Hopefully Charlie won't be too pissed, at least it'll bring more drunks like you and I into this shithole” he says and laughs.

While he immediately downs his glass, cringing at the taste, you smell it suspiciously.

“Are you sure this is safe? I mean, you bought it from a club owner you’ve never met.” you ask. “Doll, what the Hell’s gonna happen? We're gonna double die?”

Well, he has a point. Plugging your nose, you sip from the glass, suppressing a small gag. This better be worth it.

While carrying on your normal random conversations, you noticed Husk slowly becoming more unkempt and loud. This was a very odd sight, as he could hold his liquor like nobody's business. To be fair, though, he had downed about 3 glasses in the past hour. You were still working on your first. If this stuff is as strong as he said it was, he may genuinely be wasted right now. You could not only tell this from his progressively increasing volume, but also from the topics that he was talking about. Normally, he preferred being the listening ear, the shoulder to cry on. He did chime in every now and then, but nothing intensely personal. But tonight, he seemed ready to tell you just about anything. While you guys were on the topic of money, you were quickly brought to the topic of gambling.

“So, you've talked about all the gambling you did when you were alive… but I don't think I've ever seen you gamble, or, Hell, even play a card game. What happened?” you ask.

As you ask this question, you can see something change in Husk’s look. Did you say something wrong?

“I- I dont wanna talk about it.” he manages to hiccup out.

“What, didya lose that bad?” you chuckle. “Must've been a ton of money if you're still this upset.” you say.

He looks into the distance, fixating on anything but the current conversation. You weren't used to him actually avoiding conversation like this.

“Oh, um… Look, I’m sorry if I said something-”

“Don’t apologize.” he cuts you off. “I figure I should tell you anyway.”

“Tell me what?” you ask.

“I quit gambling because, well -” he hesitates, thinking of the right words to say without dropping the entire mood of the room.

“I- I used to be an overlord.”

Huh? What?! Husk? The drunk bartender… used to be an overlord?

“Really?” you ask. “I have - so many questions. But… but why did that force you to quit gambling?”

“Well, you could say that I relied on luck for much of my power. I would collect souls and gamble them away to increase my status among the other overlords. That was until… that was until I met him.” he motions to the Radio Demon’s room.

“Alastor?” you ask.

“He made me an offer that was too enticing to refuse. If I won, he would grant me power beyond my wildest dreams - all the souls I could possibly make use of.”

“And if you lost?” you wonder.

“He - He would get my soul.”

Realization hits when you see where this conversation is leading to. So Alastor… owned Husk? No wonder he seemed miserable! Suddenly, you felt bad for all the times you ran to complain to him and ask for advice, poor thing was probably dealing with enough of his own trauma.

“Oh, Husk. I- I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s okay Doll. What's done is done, no use in dwelling over it now.” he sighs.

“Besides,” he says, “he can have my soul. I think the only thing that still gets me through every day is knowing I have a heart. That’s what really matters. So, it doesn't matter who has my soul, but who I can trust with my heart.”

Wow. Wasted Husk is… insightful? Sweet? You had never heard him become so open about his backstory, his emotions.

“That’s…sweet, Husk. I hope that you know that you can always trust me, with your heart and anything else.”

He blushes at your words, smiling. “Y/N, you already have my heart. You’ve had it since the very first day you walked into this hotel. Ever since you first spoke to me, I’ve had something to look forward to at the end of the day. You give me a reason to actually enjoy this shit hole. Thank you, y’know, for being here.”

There’s no way he just said that! Does Husk… like you too?! Taking this pure honesty as a sign of his obvious inebriation, you take away his fourth glass from him.

“Alright, mister, I think it’s time we both head to bed. We’ve got a long day of ‘trust exercises’ to look forward you” you say while taking his hand and guiding his stumbling body to his room. As you lead him to his door and part ways from him, you swear you could hear him say something under his breath.

“I love you, Y/N”

********************THE NEXT MORNING…********************

When you awoke from your deep slumber, you could hear the voices of essentially everyone else in the lobby. As you leave your room to greet them, you see everybody but Husk.

“Where’s Husk?” you ask.

“Maybe the bitch finally got up and left like he always says he’s going to!” Angel replies, laughing.

You roll your eyes, going back into the hallway and knocking on Husk’s door. When you hear no reply, you peek into his room. He’s passed out on his bed, not even underneath the covers. Damn, I guess that stuff really is strong. You slowly approach his bed and stroke his head, softly saying,

“Husk! It’s time to get up. If we aren't out for Charlie’s exercises she may just kill us.”

He groans, slowly opening his eyes, clearly flustered that you are in his room and seeing him like this.

“Oh Satan, uh, yeah, I guess it is that time.” he mumbles.

As you move to leave his room, you turn back.

“Hey, Husk. I really appreciate what you said last night. I don't know if I made it clear, but… I’m glad you told me.”

He blinks slowly at you, clearly confused.

“Wh- What did I say last night?” he says, internally panicking. If he drunkenly confessed to you, he will literally crumble into a ball right here.

“Y’know, that stuff about me being the only one who has your heart, the one who makes ‘this shit hole’ bearable?”

His eyes widened. He could literally die of embarrassment right here, right now.

“Oh my Satan I didn’t mean to say that - I mean, I did, but just not in that way - you really don't have to say that you feel the sa-” Husk is cut off by your lips meeting with his in a sweet embrace, one that he never wants to leave.

“Husk. It’s okay. I… I feel the same way. I’m so glad you told me, whether in a drunken rant or not.” you giggle, leading him by the hand out of his room. Whatever faced you today would be bearable simply because you knew that at the end of the day, you will always have Husker.

#husk x reader #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel x reader #husk oneshot #hazbin hotel husk #husker hazbin hotel #husk fluff #husk x reader oneshot #charlie morningstar #niffty #sir pentious #vaggie #alastor #helluva boss #angel dust #confession

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rzyraffek · 1 year

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Slashers with y/n that just gets along with everything

Like slasher could litteraly kill somone near y/n and she would be like alr alr whats really important is that you are happy🤠😎. Im sorry that first 2character had super long headcanons while last ones have way less :( I had no ideas Request open!

Billy Lenz

He always expects some sort of negative response when he calls people and when he heard new voice on the Phone he got even more exited cuz new person new reaction! He totally didnt expect her to just go "yeah yeah sure buddy, anyways... how is your day man? Cuz im so so tired...*starts normal converstation*

He probably tries to stay in character but he is so caught of Guard he doesnt know how to react really (hehe the table has turn)

Now he kinda hopes that she will pick up cuz shes very intresting😈 billy likey

"Ew its this creep again! He is asking for you y/n? Of please dont tell me you befriended him??" "So what? He said hes favourite fruit is strawberry he cant be that bad!" *billy saying slurs on the phone*

You need to constantly tell him that, no Billy no harrasing women isnt sexy, you arent quirky, you are mentally ill

"Y/n i killed that bitch that was gossiping about you 🧍 " "👍good for you billy im glad you found healthy way to cope with that negative emotion😇" "on god"

His whole moral compass is created around the simple question 'does it hurt y/n?' .1:no it doesnt so feel free to do it .2 do not do it, she will ban Billy from sweets (bad ending)

The man from hush

This guy. This dude. This Little gremlin. He is upset that he gets no reaction! Like please oh please act all angy when he 'acidently' shot tire in her car! But oh no ofc no, she had to be like "oh its okay honey i have backup in garage🥰" hes like HHUH SINCE WHEN WE HAVE GARAGE

Like tbh thats how i imagine how they met: he saw her, he wanted to hunt her, she was so chill that she didnt even leave her household while the power was off and he went inside and just saw her having lil nap on couch. 🧍🤨erm exuse me gurl im trying to roleplay epic hunter here tf

He probably kidnaped her cuz she was too weird to just kill her but he didnt want to risk her calling police. He probably tied her up and yeeted her on backseats. And then she begun judging music on the radio"yo big guy can i get some good music taste?" "What? Whats wrong with Taylor Swift?"

He will overshare everything to kinda check where is her limit if it comes to being chill "yeah so i killed this old lady.." "im sure you had good reason🥰" "🤨... anyways... yeah so i was drinking some redbull when some guy said i look ugly so i shoot his head off and-" "HEY HEY hold up geez you CANT drink Energy drinks?? Bestie you know it is unhealthy?? Also you like hunt for sport it will ruin your condition!? How you gonna shoot people with shakey hands?? You crazy or something?" "Damn😔"

Micheal myers

I tried to put him here but i realised he will be as chill as her.

Like he can give her gifts covered in blood and she' just going to clean it and wear it like nothing happened or completley ignore it

He cares about this stuff as much as y/n so like not at all. I mean tbh theres is a bit of difrence: shes at least positive about it! Like "yeah micheal go for it, love🥰😇 i know its hard to cope with trauma take it all out alr?" Shes trying to be a good supporting gf not her fault she never had serial killer bf!

Brahms Heelshire

He lives for attention! What do you mean the war crime he commited this lunch break is okay!?!? Baby pleasee

But this negativity disapears the moment he realised he can get a lot of positive attention when he will do some nice stuff! "Oh honey I didnt kill any rats today" "oh that's amazing brahms I'm sure you and the rats inside walls will get along well soon🥰" (rats in walls bully brahms)

Please complement him or he will get a tantrum and destroy something

Brahms and rats have very hard past i might do seperate hc about that

Ghostface

"Look babe! My newest victim *shows photo*" "ugh baby...😰 you NEED to buy new camera or watch some youtube tutorials about how to take good photos" "aw man whats wrong with my pictures 😔"

Otherwise y/n supports his hobbies! People need to grow😇 (and he needs to grow up)

If theres 2ghostfaces(like in most movies) they will bet money on how long you gonna keep this 'do whatever as long as youre happy' act. Well they didnt know that this wasnt an act but her personality

Also they will probably try to use this chillnes aginst her like "oooh y/n something terrible happened! I crushed my car oh what will i do!" "Alr bestie i will drive you over there😇" "😈omg you are so nice i totally didnt expect that(heheh i dont need to pay for gas today (hes very evil))

#slasher x reader #slasher headcanons #billy lenz #billy lenz x reader #brahms heelsire #brahms x reader #micheal myers #micheal myers x reader #ghostface x reader #ghostface #hush headcanon #hush 2016 #hush x reader #the man x reader

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qqtxt · 4 months

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[🐯] windflowers brought me back to you

✿ pairing: beomgyu x reader / idol!txt / non.idol!you / exes-to-lovers (kind of) / very angsty in the beginning but fluff at the end / 8,915 words ✿ disclaimer: cursing and foul language / heavy emotions and insecurities / mentions of food and eating / clichè romantic trope / reader is friends with the other members / reader calls beomgyu ‘gyu’ / the timeline kind of follows their act:lovesick tour / jokes of death in a playful manner / txt members acting like cupids (not them trying to fix your relationship with gyu) ✿ you thought the day that beomgyu broke up with you was the day he had let go of the love he had for you; little did you know, he carried his love for you throughout his tour and came back to fix his mistake. ✿ 🎧: windflower by mamamoo (lofi remix by karma)

note: hi 👉👈 i know i literally dropped off the face of the earth but honestly, life has been a handful but i’m slowly writing things in the drafts and this is one that was sitting on the shelf for a while that i didn’t know how to feel about it so, i’m sending it off the shelf! merry x’mas, lovelies and hope you are all safe and well! 💖

[masterlist 🌸] / @kflixnet ✨

it was a normal day today; it would’ve been, it should’ve been. peace, quiet... the lingering embedded pain in your heart every time your phone receives a notification and you know you’re not going to see a familiar name showing up. at this point, it’s been months. you should move on by now; maybe you were, in some twisted way your heart was healing each time his name rang in your mind and you tried not to show any emotion–cruel, but it was the only way you’d cope. it was progress, one day at a time, slowly, his face will dissolve, his name won’t hurt you when you hear it, and maybe you’ll man up to delete all traces of him from your life.

today, however, that name you’ve been longing for shows up in person by your door–and he only hopes that you still long to see him as he lifts his head up to look at you–all your efforts be damned.

choi beomgyu, who decided to let you go–days before he went on tour–was standing in front of you. the tour merely ended days ago and he had returned home. the first place he was determined to go was wherever you were.

the sight alone is what makes you wonder if this was some sort of cruel hallucination. it doesn’t feel real, let alone look like it. your chest feels like it’s contracting on you; restricting you from breathing right the longer you process what’s happening. why isn’t this going away? when will it disappear? what the fuck is going on? is this a nightmare? no... is this a dream? whatever it was, it was hurting you; it was scaring you, you’re shaking, you still–stay still, for fuck’s sake, don’t move–still can’t breathe.

“y/n.”

oh my god.

it fucking talks.

it makes you instinctively shift back, one step, two, your hand still gripping the door handle. if this was some sort of apparition, you want absolutely no part in. beomgyu licks his lips, well aware and prepared for you to slam the door in his face... but the longer you wait... the more he feels like there’s a chance.

a chance that you hadn’t banished him completely. that maybe somewhere, in your heart, he’s still in there.

he slowly reaches out with one hand, carefully, as if he’s afraid you’d dash off if he had moved any quicker. when his hand touches the side of your arm, a gentle squeeze as his fingers manage to have a hold on you, it reaffirms to you that this is real–that this isn’t some sort of sadistic mockery from up above but it just may be a commentary coming from hell itself with how ironic this all was. the one who decided to end things and cut ties with you shows up at your door, under your mercy, looking afraid of you.

as if the nights you spent crying wondering what went wrong didn’t matter. as if you didn’t suffocate yourself to sleep in the tears of thinking if it was all your fault, if you weren’t good enough, beautiful enough, not nearly enticing as the people day in and day out of the industry he works in. as if... you didn’t wish things ended differently if only you had the chance to make things right. as if he didn’t just disappear the second he broke your heart.

your head robotically manages to look down to the side where his hand is twitching as he has a hold on you. it feels like it’s barely there but the longer you stare; the veins and the tremble of his hand, it all confirms to you that it’s real. you don’t move a muscle as your eyes look back to him. the silence is your welcoming friend when beomgyu’s lips quiver as they part to speak, yet no words come out.

you find the strength to grip his wrist and push his hand off of you. you would’ve been quicker, stronger, if it wasn’t the way he holds onto your hand before you can shove him off entirely. it scares you, so much that your eyes snap shut to the unknown. in the midst of seeing the pitch black, the scarring image of his face still flashes beneath your eyelids. you hate how your stomach still churns at the sight of his face; how handsomely painful it was to swallow it.

his hold on you is tight, desperate... anxious. his hand... feels exactly like they way they were when he last held onto you. his slender fingers find their way to hold yours properly, feeling palm-to-palm. not even when you try to shake him off does he let go; he holds on tighter.

he takes a step closer, stopping when your eyes peel open and he gapes when the tears start to fall from your eyes. his lungs feel like they’re failing him; contracting, shrinking on him when he needs to breathe the most. ten seconds; it was only ten seconds that he stares at you in the midst of heavy breathing and his eyes start to water. hot tears stinging his eyes but he stubbornly holds his gaze on you.

just what on earth was he doing?

you’d be surprise that beomgyu was wondering the same thing.

where does beomgyu begin? ten seconds, with ten fleeting thoughts that rapidly thread through his mind. one, you look beautiful. two, you still, always, breathtakingly look beautiful–as if the months had done nothing but polish the imagery he had of you in his mind. three, i miss you. four, i miss kissing you. five, i’m sorry. six, i’m sorry. seven–ten, i’m sorry.

“i’m sorry,” is the first thing you hear him say under a whispered breath.

shaking; the syllables trembling to get past his lips.

the soft sound of surprise, choking from your tears, echoes into his ears like a stab to the chest. you’re squeezing his hand, so hard that it feels like it’s starting to dig into his skin, clenching to his bone but he deserves it. he deserves all the pain willing to lift from how much he’s hurt you.

the piercing glare he’s met with almost makes him break but he refuses to let go of your hand. it feels like the only leverage he has on you to make sure he doesn’t let you go. let you go. how truly, ironically idiotic. another step closer and you can feel his breath ghosting your skin. he’s already making you cry without saying anything and upon hearing his voice for the first time in four months makes your heart shatter.

“what do you want from me?” your whisper is broken, so soft that it can barely be heard but it cuts straight through beomgyu’s ears, aiming to strike a chord in his heart.

“y-you.”

the answer was simple, yet the most difficult to say.

the silence soon gets filled with the sounds of you crying and you trying to stop yourself from crying. it’s ugly, painful, and no matter how many hits to the chest beomgyu takes, he’s taking it all rightfully so. you grow tired, weak, unable to hold yourself up that beomgyu has his arms around you and he knows. he knows that he’s trying to be as close to you not for your sake but for his.

your presence was all he ever dreamed of since the day he said goodbye.

and now that he’s here at your doorstep, as selfish as it may seem, he doesn’t want to say goodbye.

beomgyu slowly shifts you back into your home when you don’t say anything. hell, you’re not even looking at him. your hands are glued to your sides, stubbornly staying there as he calculates his movements to close the door behind him. when he turns back around, he sees how you’ve moved to sit on the sofa, sitting crossed-legged with your feet folded between your thighs and you hug a pillow.

he swallows thickly and feels his hands getting all clammy. the fact the he’s in here speaks volumes but it doesn’t guarantee anything just yet. he makes his way towards you and kneels before you, sitting on his heels, peering up to you with a small frown. he keeps one hand on his lap, the other reaching out to touch your knee.

it seems like that captures your attention when you gaze down to his hand on you and–and...–”oh... oh my god,” you gasp, pulling out the ring from the box, adoring the simplistic but shining silver band with the engraving of his initials. “it’s so pretty!”

he chuckles and reveals his hand behind his back, making you grow wide-eyed at the similar ring he’s wearing on his middle finger–ignoring the way he’s flipping you off playfully–that you grab for his hand to see how your initials are on the ring he’s wearing. it was your one year anniversary and you’re certain he’s not proposing but it’s the sentiment that gets to you. you feel the tears filling your eyes and–he slips on the ring onto your middle finger, now laughing when you flip him off in return.

he snatches your hand and kisses your knuckles, shaking his head, “augh, such a cheeky little thing you are.”

“takes one to know one, you brat.”...–your eyes scan the initials imprinted on the ring he’s still wearing. it reminds you of the ring you shoved back into the box and in the deepest part of your closet... but the scarring memory of where it is is imprinted to your brain.

beomgyu was prepared for anything–but nothing can prepare him for the way you uncross your arms hugging the pillow to trace the engraving on his ring. it’s as if you’re in disbelief he’s still wearing it and it pains him. it pains him how sad you looked; as if he wasn’t the root of the cause to begin with.

he builds up the courage to speak when your hand goes back to hugging yourself, this time staring at a spot on his shoulder rather than outside the window.

“i never took it off,” he begins, clearing his throat when your eyes flicker up to meet his gaze. he notices a shift in your eyes when you notice that he’s crying, quietly, still trying to remain strong and tall to get his thoughts out. “i... i never stopped loving you. you’re–you were all i ever wanted to be with. still are.”

“it doesn’t make any fucking sense,” is the full coherent sentence you’re saying. it makes his gut drop to his stomach, his mouth going dry. “you broke up with me,” your voice is soft; a mere whisper. but it cuts through the thick tension; straight jabbing him through the chest. “you left me.”

he licks his lips as he shifts up, on his knees as he squeezes your kneecap, “y/n, please let me exp–”

“you don’t have to explain anything,” you move your knee to let his hand slip away, now keeping your knees in front of you like a shield from him, “you told me you didn’t love me anymore. told me you never wanted to see me again...”

he shakes his head at your words, trying to get a look of your face when you hang your head low, refusing to look at him as you hid behind your knees, “so why the fuck are you here?”

that gets him to sit back on his heels in defeat. he lowers his head to his lap. beomgyu has one hand on the armrest next to you, the other holding onto the cushion on your other side. at the lack of his response, you peek from over your knees to see how he tries to muster up a reply. and when it does come, you find yourself getting angry.

“i thought it was the best for you. i... you didn’t deserve a love like this,” his voice shakes as he speaks, “you deserve to have someone by your side. day by day–everyday. giving you the love you deserve and–”he gets choked up with his words, to the point it’s making it hard for you to breathe. you hated it. you hate how you believe every word he’s saying even if it’s making your heart break and again all over again.

“i thought you were better off with someone else other than me.”

you clutch onto the pillow close to your chest, sitting up a little until your eyes are aligning with his eyes the second he tips his chin up. tears falling from his eyes, your eyes; both crying, like miserable, broken faucets.

“have you ever thought to ask me?”

it was a simple question; yet the hardest for beomgyu to comprehend.

“have you ever wondered what it was like from my point of view? seeing you smiling on stage as if nothing happened to us. days of wondering of what went wrong, months of unable to put together why all of the sudden the one person who promised he won’t leave me, left?” you’re surprised you’re speaking without losing a train of thought. but you guess that’s what anger does to you when you feel your veins being set ablaze. the anger, the frustration, the pain; it all bottled up and now it was your chance to vent it out to the source of your suffering.

“i thought about you everyday,” he tries to defend himself, straightening his back, “i keep thinking of you. when i’m awake, when i’m asleep,” he gulps, brows meeting the centre of his forehead at how serious he sounds, “i miss you,” he whispers, “i’ve missed you so much–”he gasps softly when he tries to reach for you and you move away from him, dodging his touch trying to reach your knee.

“you don’t get to do this to me,” your words hit him; hard enough to get him to rise to his feet when you start to move away from him. you manage to stand, ditching the pillow with your mind pinning your bedroom as your destination to get away from him. the blood boiling from within is making the words fly out of your mouth before you can hold them back. maybe you’ll come to regret it later or maybe you won’t. in the heat of the moment–right fucking now–nothing else mattered.

“you don’t get to leave and decide when to show up promising me the moon and the stars and in the next, make life a living hell for me,” you’re now talking to the wind, to the hallway of your home because it was easier to vent that way than saying it to his face. stubbornly refusing to look at him as you trudge your way to the bedroom. based on the footsteps, the brush of his fingertips against your lower back, you can tell he’s following you closely.

your hand pushes the bedroom door open and you’re turning around in attempts to shut him out but you should’ve known better. should’ve known that your heart would grow weak at the sight of him; more so when he’s crying, begging with his eyes even if he doesn’t know he’s doing it subconsciously. his eyes have nearly gone red, much like yours but you always, always feel the hurt he feels even when you shouldn’t.

he holds onto your shoulders to stop you from closing the door as he steps in; to your room, to your personal space, to you.

“i’m sorry,” he says, licking his lips to taste the saltiness of his own tears tearing him down, “i’m so sorry,” his voice is softer this time, a weak whisper, a broken plea.

then he leans his forehead on you and it breaks you for the second time when you start crying again. he anchors you with a hand on your shoulder, the other reaching up to wipe the tears falling from your eyes.

“i-i can’t take back what i did. i can’t fucking rewind time but i can do better now. i promise,” he sniffs, shaking his forehead against yours, “p-please...” he begs, “please give me a second chance.”

for a split second, beomgyu’s heart stops when you blink up to him; past the tears, past the horrible struggle to breathe. the hammering in his head stops thumping to hear you sob a broken you didn’t even let me say goodbye.

beomgyu’s eyes shut as shifts his hands to pull you into his embrace; feeling his heart clench at the sounds of you crying and shaking against him. the consequences of his rash actions are being paid with each tear, each cry you let out that it scars his heart. and he knows it. slept with it every night, haunting him when the daylight comes through and the first imagery that comes to mind is the smile on your face he’s taken away. with a hand cradling the back of your head to the space between his neck and shoulder, the other clutching you by the waist to feel all of you. as if he doesn’t want to wake up if this was some sick, twisted dream; a beautiful nightmare, a bittersweet hallucination.

“you’ve hurt me so much,” your words are muffled to his skin, as he feels your tears burning his skin but he stubbornly holds on, nodding against the side of your head as he whispers: “i’m sorry.”

“i hate you,” you don’t mean that.

“i want to hate you,” and you have every right to.

“but i can’t,” beomgyu feels your arms weakly hugging him, then it shifts to a tighter grip as you pull him close. if this was a dream, you wouldn’t want to wake up from it, either. he exhales shakily as he feels your arms around him, welcoming him back home even if he knows he doesn’t deserve it but he’ll prove it. from the moment he saw you today, from the days building up to this moment; in every waking moment since he’s made a decision he’s regretted, he promised himself he’ll make it up to you.

it could be days, weeks, maybe months, but beomgyu wants to work for it.

for you, for us.

“i’m sorry,” he murmurs into your ears once more, and this time he feels you nodding into his shoulder with a croaky i know.

“i love you,” he tries his luck, even when he knows it’s too much to ask for.

he doesn’t get a reply, but he doesn’t need to when you simply snuggle into him and give his waist a squeeze. that... this was enough.

being in your arms, being home... this is love.

love itself isn’t easy and beomgyu knows that getting your forgiveness isn’t something that’s just granted. sure, the two of you fell asleep on the same bed that night, granting him to hug you and cocoon you from the pain he’s caused embedded in your chest but it wasn’t something you could forgive right away.

to be honest, as you woke up in the middle of the night and saw his face so close to you, it didn’t feel like you needed to forgive him for what he had done. an apology wasn’t something you were looking for; not when he was away, not when he’s here... perhaps... perhaps it was the reassurance that he truly did love you during the time apart; during the days and nights you spent wondering if your love was real... maybe that was the thing you needed the puzzle pieces for.

and it’s not something he can just say, that would be impossible.

it was hard. you love him, that much you know. he says he loves you but... that doesn’t feel like it when the doubts start to cloud your mind. not when you had accepted the fact that your love with beomgyu wasn’t meant to be; not when you’ve finally tried to remove him from your heart, only for him to stem his presence back in the deepest crevice you can’t seem to get rid of.

beomgyu wakes up to emptiness that morning and he pads out of your bedroom to see you preparing breakfast. even though all he wants to do is stride up to you to hug you, there’s something in the air of eggs and bacon that tells him not to... so he doesn’t. he asks if you need help instead to announce his presence and you tell him that he can help with getting the table ready and pour whatever juice he wants.

breakfast was eaten in silence but in the tension lighter than the day before. he feels his heart in a chokehold when you clear your throat and he looks up to this expression on your face he can’t piece together. he gulps the orange juice down and reaches across the table when he sees your fingers trembling as you hold onto your cup.

he makes you set the cup down and then he holds onto your hand. gently, reassuring you that you can say whatever’s on your mind because even though you two have been apart for months, once upon a time, beomgyu could read you like the back of his hand... maybe some information are out of date but he knows your body language. he still remembers the things about you to know you had something on your mind but was too nervous to speak.

“i... still love you,” your confession is soft but it was certain. beomgyu heard it and you know he did when he involuntarily squeezes your hand as an acknowledgement. “t-that much i know but... i need time...”

you swallow and look up, meeting his gaze with glazed eyes, “i took so long to heal from us,” you can feel your own breath wavering and you try to swallow it down but it doesn’t seem to work when you feel your eyes start to burn. “f-from you... the last thing i expected is you showing up on my door to tell me you still love me when i spent days convincing myself you never did.”

beomgyu’s mouth opens to retort, to tell you that you’re wrong, that you should’ve never felt anything of that sort but... succumbs to the fact that he can’t change anything you’ve felt in the past; during the time of his absence. your feelings were valid and they are real in his eyes as he witnesses more of the result of what he’s done. quietly, he seals his lips together and nods.

“i just need some time to clear my head and... and...” beomgyu hates the crack in your voice when the emotions get the best of you.

“hey, no no no,” he quickly rises from his seat and lets go of your hand. his eyes watches how you’re wrapping yourself up, trying to hide yourself but he’s crouching before you. his hands carefully peel you open so you can lean into his embrace as he lures you to bend from your seat, entering his arms as he slots your face to his neck; the tears trickle down his skin as he holds you closely.

it solidifies to him that he’ll need to respect your decision to give you the space you need until you’re ready to see him again... until you’re ready to love him again.

three days.

going to work eased the nerves, gave you some time out from overthinking about the questions you can’t get the answers to. you don’t even know what questions you had. you quite literally don’t know what you don’t know. it was confusing, frustrating... suffocating. it’s a bit lighter and bearable when you are on speaking terms with beomgyu despite him giving you your space. before he left the morning after you two reconciled, he asked if he could contact you during this time and you had agreed. that much you can give him, that much you know you can handle.

apart from the good morning’s and the sweet dreams’... everything in between felt like a blur. you two could still converse like you used to but you’ll be honest to admit that something doesn’t feel quite right. like something was missing... maybe it was trust? you weren’t sure if you trust him, if you could wholeheartedly trust him when he says he loves you.

you enter the quiet of your apartment and set your bag down. work has been idle, so it granted you some extra time to try to clear your mind but not without anything to do. as you switch on the television for some white noise, the knock on the door is what makes you jolt at the sound that resonates your home.

carefully, you pad your way over and take a look at the peephole, noticing a familiar looking face and–”y/n!”

“oh?” your eyes widen, gaping at the face smiling at you so widely.

“augh, don’t tell me you forgot us already!” soobin chuckles, spreading his arms out and you’re raising a brow at the word ‘us’ but you step into his arms regardess, peering over his shoulder to–”k-kai?”

“this is ridiculous,” soobin scoffs a laugh, squeezing the life out of you that you squeak a garbled: “s-sorry, sorry! i just–soobin, i can’t breathe!”

“hyung!” kai huffs, prying his arms from your figure. that grants the latter to cheekily pull you into his arms.

"ugh, hug stealer...” soobin mutters under his breath, patting kai’s shoulder when the younger boy clings onto you like a koala, now dragging you back in to your own home. they quickly settle in as if they live here, knowing where everything is from the layout to where you keep your cups you use to make tea and then making tea with what you have. they move like clockwork; soobin putting the water to boil and kai making you sit on the kitchen counter and you watch them.

kai occupies one of the stools you have by the island and soobin leans his hip against the kitchen sink as they both watch you fiddle with your fingers on your lap, legs dangling against the kitchen cabinets behind your feet.

“i... i’m sorry,” are the first words you say to them after a while.

soobin gapes, shaking his head, “h-hey, we didn’t come here for that...”

kai frowns as he hunches over the island with folded arms, a similar expression with soobin. being together with beomgyu meant that you were introduced to the circle of people he surrounds himself almost everyday. if beomgyu wasn’t here with you, he’s back in the dorm with them so it was a matter of time that you all slowly spend time together. and it happened so naturally that you forget that beomgyu’s the reason why you know the rest of the boys in the first place. you get along with all of them but for some reason, you gravitated towards soobin... who drags along kai just because.

it was hard to keep in contact with them when you know they’re with the source of why you were hurting during your break-up. seeing them felt the same like seeing beomgyu; it reminded you too much of him that you shut all of them out. taking advantage of the fact that they were away on tour meant blocking them on any social media platform and on your phone gave you the power to control what can hurt you and what can’t. and it can’t hurt you if you can’t see it. at least, what’s what you told yourself the second you started to dessert your phone and soon, all five of them are on your blocked list.

“i know but,” you offer them a small smile, “i’m sorry.”

soobin and kai keep quiet, returning your smile that slowly fades when you continue to speak.

“when things ended between me and gyu... it was hard to see you guys, let alone talk to you even if it was on text so i...”

“blocked us?” kai auto-fills, not with any malice but simply for the act of trying to help you. soobin hisses with a narrowed look he shoots at the younger, “huening!”

“what? i was just trying to help!”

“yeah,” you snort, now looking at your hands on your lap, “i didn’t know what else to do and i most certainly knew i couldn’t talk to you guys in the right headspace so i just did what felt right in the moment,” you glance up to see they’re both still staring that you shyly lower your eyes, “again, i’m sorry.”

“will you stop apologizing?” soobin huffs, crossing his arms and tilting his head at you. “we didn’t come here for an apology. we came here to check on our friend.”

with pressed lips, you nod.

then, curiosity takes over.

“did... did you guys know?”

both of them shake their head.

“he only told us after our show in chicago,” kai answers, now resting his chin in his palm. “then we all tried reaching out to you but–”

“huening, oh my god,” soobin chastises, to which kai rolls his eyes, “how else am i supposed to say it?!”

“oh i don’t know, maybe with a bit more sense?”

“you have no sense!”

the two of them only stop bickering when they hear you laugh, clearly enjoying the way they can still act how they did months before they left, as if nothing has changed and... the words slip out of your mouth: “you guys are still the same old idiots.”

three laughters now intertwining, filling the kitchen. slowly, however, the hilarity subsides, and soobin’s the first to break the silence.

“that applies for beomgyu too, you know?” beomgyu never stopped loving you.

you meet with soobin’s eyes and even when you don’t say anything, soobin can feel the sadness in your eyes especially when you look away. the disbelief evident, the betrayal still running in your veins, in your every waking thought.

“hyung never stopped loving you,” kai tries to help, “even on tour, he keeps writing these cheesy lines–”kai’s voice is cut short when soobin lets out a sound, a mix of a yelp and a tsk that it gets lost in translation. that’s not what gets kai to stop, though. what does is the way you quietly plead with a soft don’t.

“i-if you guys truly meant it when you said you came here as my friends, then please just come here as that,” they only notice you’re about to cry when your voice wavers, eyes still avoiding them. you hop off the kitchen counter, rubbing your nose with the back of your hand when you feel the tears incoming, “d-don’t come here to fix a mistake that someone else made.”

they can’t respond when you mutter a soft be right back and scurry off to the bathroom; closing and locking the door after. the two boys almost get into an argument on whose fault it is but decided against it when the water boils. they instead prepare instant ramen and cups of tea, waiting for you in the living room as they circle the coffee table.

when you return to the sight, on cue, both of their arms wave out a ta da! that it makes it difficult to stay mad at them. whether you knew them through beomgyu or not, they truly did care about you and that much was evident.

the three of you ate for the first time in a long time that night. all smiles; filling in each other on the ins and outs, the whats and all about. they stuck to their word. being there with you as friends; not a peep about beomgyu.

you were able to sleep well that night.

the next day, your daily routine continues from morning of leaving to work until the time you return. you’ve done the same cycle that sometimes you’re on autopilot; getting to work, clocking in, heading to your cubicle, seeing what you need to do throughout the day, grab lunch, then a snack, after that continue to work until you can clock out. today is no different... except when you reach home, there’s a guy standing outside your apartment complex.

just as you walk past and intend to scan yourself in, a voice breaks you away from what you were about to do–”yah... it’s only been a few months and now you don’t know me anymore?"

you look over your shoulder to the source of the voice, squinting your eyes when he’s clad in a black cap, leather jacket and black jeans–he might as well be a shadow for all you know. he tips his chin up and lifts his cap to let you get a good glimpse of his eyes. the glow of the lamppost illuminating his features for you to see that it’s–”jun...”

he gives you a small wave with that gummy smile of his.

“long time no see.”

"funny,” he starts off, “it feels like you broke up with all of us,” yeonjun says, his voice reaching you softly but surely in the quiet of the night. from your apartment, you obliged when he asked you to walk with me? and you can’t reject him when he came all the way from his dorm, probably after practice just to see you. he offered his arm for the taking, allowing you to link arms and he steals your bag to hold as the two of you mindlessly made your way to a park nearby.

that’s how you two ended up on a bench.

“it does feel that way,” you chuckle, shaking your head. you glance at him, seeing how he does the same when he senses you doing so, “i miss you guys, though.”

“feeling’s mutual.”

a shared sigh.

“i just couldn’t bring myself to–”

“you don’t have to explain yourself,” he cuts you off, letting out a soft tsk after. “we understand. i understand. i would’ve done the same thing if i were you. hell, i bet beoms would’ve done it way faster if he was in your shoes.”

“still keeping up with spreading the slander, huh?”

"it’s the only reason for my existence,” he winks at you, earning himself a laugh from you. the beautiful thing about yeonjun and beomgyu’s friendship beyond their group was how they had this playful banter. beneath that, there’s this root of respect and protection they have for one another, even if it may seem absolutely manic at times.

“i heard soobin and kai met up with you the other day,”

“yeah... it was nice seeing them,” you lightly bump shoulders with him, “nice seeing you too.”

he scoffs a laugh, “duh, don’t need to tell me that.”

“augh, cocky,” you snort, crossing your arms.

he makes a sound like he’s offended, hand to his chest. the two of you glance at each other and share a laugh... but you’re not stupid. you know yeonjun’s here for another reason and it’s clear when he pulls out something from his sling bag. a book, one that looks familiar and–”here,” he places it on your lap, then he puts his hands into the pockets of his jacket.

unfolding your arms, you hold onto the book, noticing the name choi beomgyu scribbled on the cover; like some high-schooler’s notebook. you eye it curiously but break away from it to look at yeonjun, who refuses to look at you.

“i found it in my bag when i clearing out my luggage and... i figured you should have a look. return it to him when you’re done, okay?”

he sees your hesitance, especially when you try to give it back but he makes you hold onto it, giving you a couple of nods of reassurance.

“what’s worse than what you’ve already went through?”

well... he wasn’t wrong.

“shall we go get ramen?” is the next thing he asks, as if he didn’t just give you a bomb to diffuse on your own. “i think there was a convenience store nearby, right? down the block?”

yeonjun turns to look at you when he doesn’t hear a response and tries not to laugh at your expression, the mix between what the fuck? and what is wrong with you? nevertheless, you shove the book in your bag and get up. then, you start walking, to which he gets up hastily to match your pace with a grin when–”you’re paying!”

curiosity gets the best of you that night.

you’ve showered, clad in just a shirt and shorts as you sit on the bed, blanket to your hip with the book on your lap. with shaky fingers, you open it and initially, it doesn’t make any sense... until the more you read, the more you can decipher the words and the dates that correspond with the time during your break with beomgyu.

they’re lyrics.

something kai said a couple of days ago echo in your mind: hyung never stopped loving you. even on tour, he keeps writing these cheesy lines–

you don’t process them as lyrics when the memories flicker through like a film in a rose-tinted film. the first time he asked you out, under a dingy lamppost near your apartment. the day you two kissed at the park underneath a tree in the middle of the night. one of the worst argument you had when you found out he was leaving for tour not from him, but from soobin. it felt like a domino chain of one memory after another, you barely make it halfway to realise yeonjun’s intentions of making you read this.

not for your artistic visions of approving beomgyu’s lyrics, but for recognising that you’re all he writes about during a time you thought he didn’t love you anymore. his feelings bare on the pages, bleeding through the ink of his pen as he writes about the insecurities of not being able to fulfil a partner’s wishes when he’s not even here most of time. how could i compare to someone else when i’m not even there? i’m like a ghost, your ghost, wandering and searching for your love, wondering when you’ll leave me when you know it’s easier to do it when i’m not around.

the realisation is relieving as it is painful. painfully overwhelming. you felt sad that he felt this way, then angry that he didn’t tell you about this, then happy that he was telling the truth all along. you were all beomgyu’s ever loved, love, still loves. it’s making your head spin, your mind blurry; it’s a clusterfuck of emotions you can’t comprehend. he should’ve told me. why didn’t he tell me? why did you suffer all alone? you only realise you’re crying when you can’t see things clearly, your chest heavy, breathing is more difficult when it feels like your mouth is being stuffed with cotton.

your phone buzzes by your bedside table and it’s...

[beoms 🐯] hey, you still awake? 🙇‍♂️ [12:42a.m.]

you push the book to the side and you hastily reach for your phone. with wet fingers, you don’t know what you press in the midst of trying to blink away the tears rapidly filling your eyes but the second you hear beomgyu’s voice echoing from the speaker, it makes your heart stop. unwittingly, you’ve tapped to call him and whether it’s an honest mistake or a nudge from fate, you’ll take it.

carefully, you put the phone to your ear, rubbing your nose with the back of your hand.

"please, answer me. are you okay? is something wrong?” the way he sounds worried makes your stomach churn, the butterflies roaming free like they once did; like they always did. it becomes clear; his intentions, his mistake. “g-gyu...” you try your best to contain yourself but it’s like he always knows; the tremble in your voice, the soft sniffs.

“ba–”he stops himself before his old habit kicks in, clearing his throat, “y/n, a-are you crying? what’s wrong?”

you inhale and intend to answer but a soft sob escapes instead. your hands are shaking and you can’t even hold your phone properly. the lack of response from you is all it takes for him to tell you to–”i’m coming over. i’ll be there in ten minutes. don’t hang up, okay?”

you hear rummages from his end as you sink in the bed, pulling your legs up and attempt to shrink against the headrest as you keep your phone to your ear. the line grows quiet on the other end and then it’s a couple of thuds and the sounds of his breath against the microphone that indicates he’s plugged in his earphones.

“t-talk to me. let me hear your voice, please.”

“i... i read your notebook,” your voice is soft, but beomgyu catches all the syllables.

the quietness from him dissolves when you hear the sounds of the outside world welcoming him. then the sounds of his clothes ruffling against the wind tells you he’s running.

“what notebook?” he asks mindlessly, trying to keep you talking so he knows you’re on the line with him. that you’re safe. that when he reaches you, he knows you’re still at where he thinks you’re are.

“the one you took on tour.”

you hear him stop running when his sneakers screech loud enough for you to hear. then it’s his soft panting, the slow realisation hitting his nerves.

“how–why did you read it?”

“because i didn’t trust you.”

beomgyu remains quiet and you’re squeezing your phone so hard, it feels like it’s going to shatter. your eyes are closed, snapped shut with the tears still trailing down your face but now’s a good time as any to tell him how you really felt during your few days of trying to process things.

“how could i believe you when you broke up with me? months later you show up at my door telling me you never stopped loving me and i’m supposed to believe it right away?” beomgyu remains by the sidewalk, pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth to stop himself from speaking. his hands, clench to fists in the pockets of his hoodie as he listens with a bated breath.

“i never doubted you for a second when we were together but the moment you broke up with me, i started questioning everything. i jumped to my own conclusions because that’s all i was left with,” the sounds of you crying grows evident when beomgyu can hear how hard you’re trying to breathe. the imagery of you crying, possibly curling up all alone is what gets him to start walking again, picking up the pace as he pins out the route to your place in his mind.

“i-i’m sorry,” he murmurs, shaking his head, blinking away the tears, “we’ll talk when i’m there, okay? just please stay on the line with me.”

you didn’t. not because you didn’t want to but because you can’t let him hear the cries that leave your mouth the more you process the words he’s written in the pages of his notebook. and that only made beomgyu run faster to get to where you are.

beomgyu’s partially breathless as he stands in front of your door, knocking on your door frantically. “y/n!” he calls out, giving the door a few more knocks, impatient with each thump of his chest that reminded him of how fast he’s sprinted to get here. he doesn’t let up until the door opens so when it starts to creak open and–”y/n...” he mumbles under his breath, still trying to breathe right but then he sees the notebook in your possession, along with... with the...–”promise me you’ll wear it?” beomgyu huffs, holding his pinky out with a familiar looking ring on his finger. you chuckle and hold out your pinky to lock it with his, a matching ring on your finger as well, “of course.”–beomgyu’s brought back to the present when you extend your arm out, seemingly returning his notebook.

he catches his breath, shaking his head as he peels the book from your fingers, “h-how did you get this?”

“jun gave it to me earlier,” you murmur, quietly, voice strained and beomgyu hates it. hates how you look like you’ve been crying so much your eyes are puffed up, your nose sounds like it’s blocked and how your fingers tremble–smudged with black ink–gripping yourself for support.

“why didn’t you tell me?” you ask, to which it seems like the question to what you’re referring to pops up like a haunting in his mind through the time you’ve spent apart; the thing that keeps him up all night since he’s made his mistake. truthfully, he only considered it for a fleeting moment before it disappeared, committing fully to a decision that broke his heart and yours combined.

“i-i didn’t know how,” he sounds helpless, the crack in his voice is what causes him to break, “i thought–”he swallows”–i truly thought...”his breathing grows shallow as he inhales through his quivering lips, his voice drowning in his emotions surfacing, tears pooling in his eyes.

”...i thought i wasn’t the one for you–”beomgyu lets go of the book, allowing it to thud onto the floor as he steps in. the door closes behind him and everything fades to black the second he enters your arms that welcome him in.

he’s still suppressing his emotions to his best ability; as if in some twisted way, he thinks he can still bottle it in. holding up a front. sticking his chest out. what gets him to crack is when he feels your hand running through his hair–like you’ve always did–the feeling of the silver band on your pinky, lightly grazing his scalp that it breaks his entire façade.

the promises weaving through each stroke–i love you, gyu. he feels your fingers–you love me. tangled between his hair–i’m here. your fingers glide down, resting by the nape of his neck–i’m not going anywhere. he feels you, the soft squeeze you give by his neck and he can breathe–you’re okay. beomgyu clutches onto you like a lifeline, his face buried in your neck as he cries, quietly. then, it grows louder with the agony he’s held in his chest thinking he was doing what was best for you, for us. the pain he’s carried alone, the weight of his thoughts burying him so far deep he hadn’t thought of allowing them to resurface but it all comes out; overflowing before he can restrict them at the feeling of you in his arms.

god only knows how long you two stay like that. until either of your breathing evens out. until the tears dry up and you two no longer have running noses. the air around you, though heavy, feels lighter than it was a few days ago. it’s more... calming, if it made sense. the tension that felt thick, seemed to have filtered out and all that’s left is–”i love you,” beomgyu whispers, his hands cradling your face past the tears that have dried up on his face. his nose, slightly red from all the crying and his eyes are slightly puffy but his emotions shine the brightest.

you’re no different. even when there are bags of emotions lining the under of your eyes, your nose seemingly blocked with damp cheeks, beomgyu’s able to see your eyes just as clear as day. the fogginess of uncertainty has faded away; washed by the tears. the clench in your chest has loosened, screamed and released through the cries you two shared earlier. it’s ugly, it’s painful, but that’s still love.

“i love you,” you whisper back; and this time, beomgyu felt it. you felt it. the two of you did. although certain puzzle pieces are left askew, the right ones are finally, finally back in place.

an hour later, the two of you snuggle on the sofa with cups of tea on the table. beomgyu embarrassingly has to explain the lyrics upon lyrics he’s written and braves himself to tell you what he’s felt during his time apart. the setting allows you to speak of how you felt, your thoughts, your conclusions; and he rebukes each one just as you soothe every insecurity he brings up. it won’t go away immediately and beomgyu knows–you know–it’ll take some time for him to prove to you each day he truly loves you but it’s... it’s a start.

it’s a start to loving each other again.

that’s all beomgyu could’ve hoped for and he’s got it.

a moment passes and now you’re curled up in his arms, resting your heads on one end of the sofa with your legs intertwined to the opposing end. beomgyu feels your heartbeat thumping against his chest as you rest on one of his arms, curled up slightly so he can play with your hair as he looks at you.

the redness in your eyes has subsided, your nose no longer blocked and you can breathe right. he feels freer, lighter, as if all is right now that he has you in his arms like this. without anything being hidden from you; the truth bare as his eyes gaze into yours.

"if you hide anything like this from me again, i’m going to strangle you myself,” your voice is soft and calm, in total contrast with your words that it makes him chuckle. for the first time in a while, he laughs as it comes from his gut; pure happiness bubbling from within and escaping in the beautiful sounds of his laughter. he nods and leans in, lightly brushing his forehead on yours, “i think i’d die first before you get the chance.”

that makes you laugh with him; quietly, at ease. feeling the security like you did before the rocky bump ever occurred. you let your eyes close as you scoot closer to him. he welcomes the way your arms sneak beneath the sofa to curl around his waist so you can snuggle him.

“can i stay the night?” he murmurs into your ear, and he doesn’t need to look to know you feel offended when he feels the way your body tenses for a split second. “you’re asking?”

he snorts, shifting his arms around you so he’s able to cocoon you in as he kisses the side of your head, refusing to look at you as he slowly succumbs to sleep with his announced decision of: “i’m staying the night.”

you smile against his neck and he feels it. more so when he hears the confirmation echoing into his ears softly.

“much better.”

as the night treads along, two steady heartbeats beating as one, beomgyu feels his heart resting at ease in the presence of yours. not all is rainbow and sunshines, nor will the scars mask over easily over the course of the coming days but... but–”goodnight, beomie.”

good nights are ahead of him as long as he had you in them.

((the boys wake up to a small commotion, ushering them out of their rooms to see what it’s all about. it was nearing midday and most of them were about to wake up anyway, but this... this definitely beats any morning call whatsoever.

they stand a distance away, four boys watching how you and beomgyu are trying to set up the dining table with takeaway food, an array of balloons that get none of the work done since you two keep swatting it at each other and a cake that takes the centrefold.

“well what do you know,” taehyun muses quietly, shaking his head as he leans against yeonjun, “guess you’ll never let this die, huh?”

yeonjun holds his hands out to receive the soft high-fives, “i’ll take all the credit.”

the surprise might’ve been ruined considering the four of them quite literally watched the two of you set it up but it was well-received (as it always does with the boys and food–). it feels like things were back in place; as if the boys had gained a friend again after being cut off for a couple of months. the pieces reconnected itself and stories upon sparks of memories fill in over a rerun on the television and all of you huddled up on the sofa, on the floor, circling the coffee table.

as you have your feet over beomgyu’s lap, you’re immersed in a conversation with taehyun (who the rest berated for not seeing you but he’s quick to defend himself saying he just wanted to give you some space and put a fucking sock it in, huening!) about what he found fascinating throughout the tour.

with beomgyu’s directly in front of yeonjun who sits on the sofa behind him, it gives the older a perfect clear in to hover over beomgyu’s shoulder with a poke to the cheek, "beoms,”

“hm?” the latter nonchalantly glances over.

“i mean this in the nicest way possible,” he murmurs, ”if you breakup with y/n again, i will never, never forgive you.”

beomgyu snorts and shoves him away playfully, eliciting a laugh from the older... but he doesn’t miss the way the younger whispers i won’t ever forgive myself, either. while yeonjun made it his mission statement to make sure beomgyu never forgets this, it feels like he succeeded with what he was intending when he sees how beomgyu looks at you adoringly; the light has returned in his eyes and it... it was nice.

fine, yeonjun won’t tease beomgyu about it... yet.))

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