#he has to go into trances to talk about smiling monster shadows

[navree]

he doesn't get to see a fucking movie, he doesn't get to see the fucking empire state building, can the eldritch abomination be allowed to look at something he wants to look at ONCE

#personal #malevolent podcast #malevolent #let him watch his movie! let him sightsee!! #he has to go into trances to talk about smiling monster shadows #and the guy he's attached to is ignoring giant warning signs because he's sleepy #take him to a museum! let him look at a nice painting! #let the baby see good things goddammit he doesn't even know how hotels work

[onyxoverride]

Curiosity Killed The Cat...

Sukuna x Reader

◙warnings: Monster fucking, monster tongue cunnilingus, size kink ish, full nelson, a bit of objectification, virgin! reader, blood kink, dacryphilia, multiple orgasms, belly bulge and lowkey cumflation, I say you’re “small” but it’s compared to him and he’s huge, marking, smut minors dni (18+) I block blogs with no age indication

◙word count: 3k

◙summary: You’re too curious for your own good but this experience is too satisfying to pass up. Especially with a powerful monster such as this.

◙note: make sure to read the warnings real good please <3

All your life your technique has gotten you in trouble. Not just your technique but the combination of its ability and your personality is… chaotic at best.

The sheer amount of times your mother has said “Curiosity killed the cat,” is uncountable. But you are all too stubborn, too curious. A simple fascination with the bizarre and unknown can get you in dangerous situations, yes. But the satisfaction of knowing, experiencing is too euphoric to give up.

Plus, you could keep shifting into different domains to escape if anything particularly hostile showed up. It’s not like you weren’t trained either but being the ephemeral child of the estate, fading in and out too often to put your focus onto being train in close combat. What a dangerous sorcerer you could be if you put your mind to it. You are just too inquisitive, prying at the seams of every single thing you know or learn, to try to focus on something so simple, so boring like close combat. Which has grown increasingly frustrating with your mentors and parents.

But who cares? You get to see oceans in the blink of an eye, curious voids made of shadows, places that look like they’ve been taken over by nature, and others that have no life insight. Repetitive buildings that go on forever, others that reach higher than the sky. Some are much more ominous but the strength of your curiosity overpowers any fear you could possibly hold.

Each day you keep trying to find a new sight, a new place to adventure. Sometimes it’s harder than it looks. The best places have the best barriers, so powerful it feels like you bounce off them but they never resist long. Some who reside in that domain are curious too, usually, they are not home or you can evade them quite easily. They become too comfortable in their own domains but it’s not like you are trying to hurt them.

Mother is calling you again before you run off somewhere she won’t be able to find you, looking particularly frantic this time, tugging at your yukata.

“Just because you’re an adult doesn’t mean you should be hopping around like a stupid frog in others domains. You’re too reckless, we won’t be able to find you if something happens,” she is panting as she holds her chest, “you know, what I’ve been telling you is true — curiosity-”

“Curiosity kills the cat,” every time she says that it feels like it’s incomplete, that there’s something missing. You roll your eyes and huff a bit but it’s not like she can stop you from leaving, “I know. I’ll be safe.”

That’s a lie. At least you never try to be safe even though you evade most of the curses. You learn as you watch them, you learn when they try to chase after you or even talk.

Wiggling your mother’s grip off you, you slip behind a corner and when she tries to follow you, you’re already gone. Slipping away quickly out of this reality and into the next. She didn’t get to tell you about the bad feeling she had.

Wet. That’s the first thing you can process when you enter this new domain. Red liquid soaking the edges of your yukata. Something blood-like but more like wine. Then it’s the overbearing weight of a fear that you’ve never felt before. An involuntary reaction, something akin to when prey realize the eyes of a hunter is on them — a feeling to run or freeze or fight washes over you but still this fear is nothing compared to your interest in what the hell is here with you.

It’s almost hard to lift your head at the weight, slowly dragging your eyes upwards, over ram skulls and the curious liquid that you’re starting to realize is definitely a mixture of blood, up to a throne and on the throne-

Whoever you’re looking at is big — thick muscly legs exposed casually as he sits, four arms swirling around a ram skull, looking bored but each of his four eyes shine. A smirk set on his cheeks and a heavy smile on his belly.

Interesting, is the first thing he thinks when he feels you enter. When he sees you the second thought is this will be fun. Is it strange you are thinking something similar?

He stares at you — a challenge of whether or not you will speak or him. But you meet his eyes, which most don’t dare, and a sly, satisfied smile stretches on your face.

A split second is all it takes for him to disappear. When you try you look around, feet shuffling backward to try to see more you’re met with a broad chest. Two hands ghosting over your ribs and another bringing your face back to look at him. No, for him to look at you. To inspect you.

“It’s not often a human stumbles upon my domain,” voice rough and demanding just like his presence, vibrating through your body as he pulls you close to him.

You’re hesitant to speak, what could you even say? You’re special? Or that you’re stupid enough to do this shit?

Before you can even try to formulate a response, the hand holding your face wraps loosely around your throat. Not squeezing but enough of a threat to make you swallow — skin warm, blood pumping with adrenaline. It’s almost deafening — the blood making your ears feel full and able to hear every little movement his kimono makes. You can hear the mouth on his belly move before you feel it. Matching the sadistic smile he wears on his face. You are so much smaller than him, so powerless before him. It’s not like you could activate your technique with him touching you either. Maybe you should have listened to your mother-

“You’re soft but with a technique like this you could be useful,” the two hands that were just ghosting your body press into your hips, groping at what they can, “your body too.”

His nails skim over the skin his hands can find exposed, jostling your yukata until more and more of your skin is bare to him. Part of you feels like maybe you should stop his hands, back away, figure a way out of this domain but… this is exactly what you wanted isn’t it? The excitement, the thrill, the satisfaction of experiencing something new.

Under thick hands and sharp nails, he can feel your blood rushing, warm and lively. Almost entranced with the feeling against your skin, you don’t even realize he’s turned you towards him, yukata thrown somewhere near some skulls and catching on their horns most likely. He shouldn’t be touching you, flinching away would be a reaction more warranted but why is it that you lean into his touch like so. Falling into his haunting warmth so obediently, his hands groping over soft supple skin and nails scratching so lightly over the doughiest parts of your body and molding into his muscles.

Snapping out of your trance just a bit, his tattoos cause your eyes to trail over his body as his own clothing falls off his body, carelessly. Prideful, like some ancient statue standing tall after years of wear and erosion that could never take away from its composition. He’s looking down at you like he would anybody but the lust that gleams in his eyes makes you feel special, wanted. Reaching a dainty hand out, tracing the edges of the mouth on his belly bellow rippling set abs. He holds his breath a bit — because no one has ever dared reach back for him.

Truly interesting you are, a sadistic smile settling on his face as two hands set under your ass, hiking you up to him even as you yelp in surprise. But you cling to him, finding comfort in the strength of his arms and it dawns on him once more, “you are so small.”

Small compared to him at least, almost kitten-like, “Small? Or are you just very big?” He throws his head back in a short raspy laugh, loud and echoing across walls you can’t see but it makes you smile nonetheless even as he holds you completely bare to him. Naked as the day you were born but no attempt to cover yourself, something wicked leaking from your bones as he holds you, hands big enough to cover the important parts of your body no matter what size, the softness of your thighs pressing between his fingers.

The audacity you have is so… you tread on a thin line but you’re finding your balance as he holds the line taut. Top set of hands trailing over your arms and breasts, caressing your neck as you bare it to him with sly heady eyes. This plaything just might be worth the trouble.

He presses your legs to his sides, cunt directly on the mouth of his belly as he lets it open. Fear is one thing that runs through your veins, the teeth looking quite intimidating near your nethers but it does nothing to bite. Letting a long slick tongue slink out and tease your folds, hands and nails digging into your ass sharply to keep your cunt pressed onto the tongue that is decorated with a similar tattoo like the ones that decorate his body.

“You’re untouched,” he can taste it on his tongue. Flowering into the heat of his body as he tastes your juices. A virgin. Perfect. As you should be, to be deflowered by him is an honor and you should be thanking him for even touching you. Letting your innocent cunt be defiled by a monstrous tongue… it just feels too good to stop. But it does make you squirm, his gaze and the rough texture of the tongue lapping at you combined with his nails digging far too deep into the flesh of your ass. Warm stinging pain as he holds you flush to his tongue, writhing while the red warmth glides slowly down, adding to the red liquid staining his feet. Fleetingly you wonder if this is how there is so much red water here. Not exactly blood but definitely could be a mix.

There’s no time to process the pain, he makes sure that you only feel pure unadulterated pleasure. The tip of the giant tongue writhing against your hole as if requesting access to your virgin cunt. Pressing in while you gasp at the feeling, the mixture between pain and lewd pleasure muddling your brain as you moan helplessly in his arms.

His four eyes catch everything. Soaking in the sight of your face, eyes rolling back and moaning shamelessly whenever his tongue rolls into you just right, he can feel you coming closer to rapture while your legs tremble. The smirk he wears is all too sexy, seductive. Falling so willingly into his arms with an overflowing curiosity for what you don’t yet know. He hums and oh when he does you can feel it vibrate through him and to the tip of the tongue that’s wiggling on the entrance of your cunt. You’ve long past the pleasure you can produce by yourself, with your own two fingers, now it’s a gasping almost painful rip starting from your cunt to your belly in waves. Cunt fluttering around the tip of the tongue that has droplets of blood on it either from your virgin pussy or from the blood produced from his nails.

You don’t even know what name to call out, and as if reading your thoughts he laughs at your depraved babbles being pushed out of your body.

“Sukuna,” he draws you closer to him in one breath, words ghosting over your face, “call my name, little moaning lamb.”

Trailing your hands across the markings on his body, across the sinew of his neck you moan into him as he looks down upon you, “Sukuna, please.”

He looks satisfied, prideful while your fingers graze his jaw, “please, what lamb?” A cue for you to use your words and no matter what you say he will destroy you.

Earlier he called you untouched, detecting your virginity like a snake, “touch me, please,” begging into his pectorals as he retracts the monstrous tongue back into his belly.

“Less of a lamb, more of a vixen,” you feel a large fleshy member slide across the blood that warms the globes of you behind. He chuckles at your shiver, letting the bulbous tip trace over your wet folds. A type of fear crosses your face and he savors the expression, handling you like a live ragdoll.

You know he wouldn’t listen if you ask him to go slower, to prepare your cunt for the stretch but you have an inkling of what he might be thinking, something about how you’re lucky enough to receive his tongue and how virgin pussy is the best when fucked raw and unprepared besides the wetness coating your thighs. It’s not like you want the nails digging into your behind to be inside you either, so you bear with his tip gliding along your slippery folds, getting stuck on your hole as he presses you lower and lower. Tip breaching your cunt with a loud gasp of pain and pleasure as you feel his laughter while bracing yourself against his chest. Your own nails dig into his chest, drawing some of his own blood but he basks in the feeling. Barely a stinging pain but just enough to know you’re pawing at his chest trying to bear the fullness of his cock stretching your rim. Basking in how you shiver against him, filled with pride.

“You should be thankful I am the one to be deflowering you. A God like me, bouncing you, a little helpless mortal, on my blessed cock,” he sinks you a bit lower, the fluttering of your tight hole making his tongue run across his teeth, “women would beg for me, but here you are. What should you be saying to me, little vixen?”

There’s only him feeling your head, his deep voice filling your body while his cock does the same, trying to formulate a response. Babbling out, “tha-thank you-” gasping once more, sinking one more inch or two, “thank you, so much, Sukuna.” You can feel his cock, or that of it that’s inside you, twitch as the sound of your voice.

“You will take all of me.”

He leaves no room for objections, not that you have any to plea for him to hear. Yet you still nod against his chest as he sinks you lower and lower. Luck looks upon you in the way that you are wet enough to take him so your hole does not tear. You feel so impossibly full. He’s in your guts while your walls encase him so tightly, any other man would be gasping in pleasure but he is no man. The occasional grunt he blesses you with while he fills you, now completely inside you, balls flush to your bloody ass. His other set of hands ghost over your chest, a quick fondle before wrapping around your ribs to bring you up and off until only the tip is in you once more and then bringing you mercilessly down again. The claw marks in his chest only get deeper while your yelps and moans echo off the unknown walls.

Beautiful claws sinking into his chest, he’s again hit with the fact that you are incredibly intriguing. You and your cunt enrapture him endlessly, falling him into a curious sentiment. A small human to ensnare him… he’s not sure if he likes the thought or not but what he does like — no, love — is you wailing on his cock about how you can feel all of him inside you. Slick your hole produces coating his cock so deliciously while your body accepts him wholly. You swear you could taste his cock in your throat if you focused hard enough, it does feel like your belly extends to accept him and as you finally gaze down to yourself, you realize it is.

With every thrust downwards his cock descends your tummy that he’s been watching this whole time and it only makes your gummy walls flutter rapidly around his cock once more, sending you over the edge once again, pulling an orgasm from your body.

He chuckles once more, watching as tears trail down your face, orgasm wracking your body as he continues to focus on your abdomen, hand trailing down to press at your stomach while the rest keep you steady and bouncing. Horrid wet slapping, fluids mixing together down his leg, groans resonating from his chest as he feels his hand through the skin of your abdomen. Your babbling moans and tears coating your face only spur him further, cock throbbing inside you as he releases his cum inside you. Ruthlessly filling all the spaces his cock couldn’t with a resounding grunt, cum gushing out of your cunt and most of it stretching your tummy even more than his cock before he pulls it out, white rushing out of your body while one more orgasm is pulled away from you.

Laying tired and used in his arms, he finally speaks “well, look at you vixen.”

You successfully took all of him, even if your body couldn’t handle the amount of cum he pumped into you he could just try again until he’s fully satisfied. Looking down at your sloppy cunt, covered in cum and trickling blood mixing with it and other liquids you can’t discern. Your hole feels like it’s gaping from the stretch his cock put you through. It is quite the sight for him to see, his cum claiming your insides and the marks on your behind claiming your outsides. You throw your head back into his hand and giggle. Red eyes peering down at you in curiosity, body buzzing and fuzzy, satisfied with your hands stroking his chest.

You finally remember what was missing from that stupid phrase your mother would preach to you:

“Curiosity killed the cat…

but satisfaction brought it back.”

𝔱𝔞𝔤𝔰: @kenmachishi @novvabeam @armins-bowl-cut @yourtamaki @jeonmahito @peachysimp @thethyri @undereiner and thank you to all the people who said yes to belly bulge y’all really helped me: @pupimouto @junisfics @katsukied @aqueencomplexx @dabitdabi @jeankirstins @viixens @iit-s-kitty

𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔫𝔨 𝔶𝔬𝔲 𝔣𝔬𝔯 𝔯𝔢𝔞𝔡𝔦𝔫𝔤, 𝔩𝔦𝔨𝔦𝔫𝔤, 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔯𝔢𝔟𝔩𝔬𝔤𝔤𝔦𝔫𝔤 !!

//: 𝖒𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙

#⚫.writing #❖.sukuna #◆.jujutsu kaisen #⚠️.monster fucking #⚠️.blood kink #⚠️.belly bulge #⚠️.dacryphilia #⚠️.virgin #⚠️.objectification #⚠️.full nelson #⚠️.size kink #wow lots of warnings huh #sukuna x reader #sukuna smut #sukuna x reader smut #four armed sukuna x reader #true form sukuna x reader #true form sukuna smut #jujutsu kaisen fanfic #jujutsu kaisen smut #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen x reader smut #sukuna x you #sukuna ryoumen x reader #sukuna ryoumen smut #sukuna ryomen smut #sukuna ryomen x reader smut

[astrella-writes]

prompt | @ssoftlydreaming​ asked: nfjsja ok from sweet home can you do lee eun-hyeok and basically he has to decide if he should risk the danger of everyone in the apartment complex or save reader who is outside and struggling to survive.

warnings | female pronouns, angst, spoilers for episode one of the netflix adaptation of sweet home, if you haven’t watched episode one complete then this won’t make much sense, panic attacks, the general horror of sweet home, eun-hyuk being a logical pain in the ass, somewhat of an open-ending.

word count | 1.7K

author’s note | i hope this satisfies your masochistic desires! i’m honestly so happy to have angst as my first request, and that isn’t sarcasm at all.

The sound of his descending footsteps echoing throughout the concrete stairwell became background noise to Eun-Hyuk as he stared at the unanswered messages he had sent you well over an hour ago. This was strange behavior coming from you, considering you usually responded back within minutes. Not wanting to jump to conclusions, he tried to think of a logical explanation to calm his increasing worries. Perhaps your phone died on your walk home, or you had to work over-time without a chance to inform him.

He was certain some minor inconvenience caused your abrupt absence, although he couldn’t shake off the unnerving feeling settling like a burden of tense muscles upon his shoulders. Realizing there wasn’t much more he could do, especially since all the calls he gave you went straight to voice mail, he decided to wait patiently for a reply from you and try to keep his thoughts clear during the meantime.

Eun-Hyuk stuffed his phone into his pocket as he finally reached the half-open double doors that led out onto the first floor, his ears immediately picking up on the commotion before he looked over at the front entrance that was blocked by the shutters. A group of people stood dispersed nearby, talking amongst themselves and watching one resident in particular as he tried tugging on the metal bracing that barely budged. The man sighed, dropping his arm and admitting defeat as he walked away from the shutters, mumbling to himself.

‘First the elevators aren’t working, and now this?’ he thought to himself, unimpressed with the current situation, especially since he had work that night. He wasn’t the only one annoyed by the circumstances as the surrounding people openly expressed their vexation. Although, unlike most of them, he remained calm and simply observed the scene with his hands in his pockets. Multiple residents spoke loud enough for him to catch on to the fact that the security guard was missing, which made little sense considering this was an issue for him to resolve.

“Excuse me?” a feminine voice sounded from behind him, causing him to turn around and look at the woman. “Do you have any service on your cell?” Despite having just been on his phone, Eun-Hyuk was so preoccupied with his thoughts regarding your whereabouts that he didn’t notice the minor detail of whether he had any service.

Pulling out his phone and unlocking it, he immediately dialed your number, taking the possibility to hopefully connect with you and find out where you were. When his ear met with a high-pitched ringing, Eun-Hyuk lowered the phone, lost in thought for a second before looking at the woman.

“I guess not,” he said, watching as her face dropped in disappointment and she turned to walk away, but he stopped her with a question. “What’s going on here?” 

The woman hesitated, wondering if anything was even worth sharing considering she would give him more questions than answers. She went on to explain how every main exit had been closed up, locking everyone inside. Although she speculated someone was behind this, she had no idea who it was and for what purpose it was done. 

The explanation caused Eun-Hyuk to swallow thickly before turning his gaze towards the concealed entrance. He stared for a moment, silently wishing for your safety.

                                                          ―――

A shrill ringing penetrated your ear, causing you to jerk your head away from your phone and hang up on your attempt at calling Eun-Hyuk. With a frustrated cry, you threw your cellphone upon the ground, hearing the shattering of the screen as it smacked face-first against the concrete.

On the verge of tears, you made yourself as small as possible in the alleyway's corner, pulling your knees up to your chest as you rested your forehead on top of them. Your breathing grew increasingly more labored as the sensation of dread and pure hopelessness consumed your mind.

Eun-Hyuk’s words repeated in your head during times like this, when you were at risk of having a panic attack. Stay still. Take slow breaths. Think of something nice.

You squeezed your eyes shut, allowing the gathering tears to flow freely down your cheeks as they gathered at the tip of your chin. Forcing yourself to take in deep breaths, your trembling body gradually stilled. Eventually, your thoughts morphed as you focused on your breathing, rather than the surrounding chaos.

Think of something nice.

Eun-Hyuk’s face filled your mind, the sight prompting a ghost of a smile. You recalled your first meeting which occurred almost a year ago, when you had just moved into Green Roof Apartments. Someone had suddenly removed the towering stack of boxes you were carrying from your hold, and just as you were about to thank the person for helping, you realized you recognized him.

It turns out that you both used to attend the same high school, although you weren’t in the same class, your friend group interacted with his friend group quite a lot. Seeing his face brought back all those times at lunch when you would sneakily try to steal glances at him without your friends noticing. They noticed, of course, and teased you relentlessly about your crush but they were nonetheless supportive. They even proposed setting you two up on a date, because a ‘little birdie’ told them he had been crushing on you too.

Unfortunately, you were in such denial that someone as handsome as him had feelings for you, and rejected the offer. He was simply unobtainable, the extent of your relationship never surpassing polite greetings and friendly smiles until you both graduated and never saw each other again. Or at least, that’s what you assumed would happen.

It seemed fate gave you two another chance, unsatisfied with your prior silent pining and not acting upon anything. Considering you both matured immensely, talking came easy, and it wasn’t long before a much deeper connection began blossoming between the both of you.

His sister reacted indifferently when she walked out into the hallway one day, only to witness the both of you moving suspiciously away from each other, as if trying to conceal something. She caught on immediately, especially since her brother had been mentioning you quite often.

“Seriously? He’s the best you can do?” She scoffed, eyeing her brother disapprovingly before pushing between the both of you and walking off. You stared at her retreating figure in shock, oblivious to the smile on Eun-Yoo’s face as she disappeared down the stairs.

Once his sister found out, Eun-Hyuk became increasingly more open in terms of your relationship. And eventually, after a long week of his sister degrading him for not moving to the next step, he asked you to be his girlfriend. It wasn’t the most romantic of set-up’s; he had knocked on your door and asked you so casually that you wondered if he was joking.

When he assured you he wasn’t, you almost knocked him off his feet from the abrupt hug you gave him, accepting his simple proposal.

The memory faded, and the realization hit you like a truck. Eun-Hyuk was waiting for you, and you couldn’t give up on him. Taking a deep breath, you got up from the ground, trying not to focus on the screams and sounds of destruction in the distance as you lightly jogged towards the entrance of the alleyway. You peered behind the wall and looked both ways. The coast was clear; it was now or never.

                                                           ―――

You raced around the corner, narrowly dodging the attention of a nearby monster as its head popped up from one of the many dumpsters lining the brick wall of Green Roof Apartments, the location you had been trying to reach from when this all started.

The sound of metal creaking, which you quickly recognized to be the shutters descending, urged your aching legs to run faster as the darkness before you faded the closer you got to the entrance. That’s when you noticed Eun-Hyuk struggling to keep the shutters open as a distraught woman crawled towards him. He reached out a hand towards her, just as he looked up and made eye contact with you. His eyes widened at the sight, although bloodied and bruised, you were very much alive. You smiled at him, relieved, feeling safe already.

That was until you heard a rustling coming from your right, along with animalistic groans, as if something was just stirring back to life after being immobilized and ready to lash out again. A flurry of panicked voices came from the lobby of the apartment, everyone watching in horror as the hunched-over silhouette of the monster with a snake-like tongue began recovering to its full height.

Luckily for you, the monster disregarded your presence as it ambled towards the entrance. You stood frozen in fear as the shadow of its body passed over you, the sound of its languid steps lulling you into a trance as your body trembled lightly. 

It was perceptible that trying to run past it would end in your demise, leaving you stuck on what to do. Your pleading eyes drifted towards Eun-Hyuk, hoping he would come up with a plan to distract the monster long enough so you could make a break for the gap underneath the shutters he had been holding open - a perfect enough size for you to slide under.

He stared you dead in the eyes as he dropped the shutters; the metal clanging loudly against the tiled floor. You blanched, staring back at him in disbelief. A semblance of guilt took over his features, and you shook your head in denial. 

Your eyes stung with tears, and you wondered whether to cry and beg for him to help you or keep the remaining bit of dignity you had left. The monster suddenly shot its tongue within the gaps of the barred metal and Eun-Hyuk disappeared from sight as he dodged; the trance you were in instantly dissipating as you came to terms with the situation.

He left you to fend for yourself, surrounded by a horde of monsters. You weren’t sure whether to give up or keep going, considering nothing seemed worth fighting for at the moment. 

Did he regret it? Of course. Would he do it again? Without question. Eun-Hyuk would sacrifice anyone to keep his sister safe, even you, and even himself.

#sweet home #sweet home x reader #eun-hyuk x reader #eun-hyeok x reader #sweet home imagines #sweet home netflix #sweet home x reader netflix #angst #sweet home angst

[ellitx]

Chapter 5: Reticence

𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁

previous || next

art belongs to _01ki_

word count: 3.5k

           Night had fallen fast upon the ruins. The hours that had gone by that were previously painted with hues of red, orange, and pink had all but faded leaving only a matte black canvas with no stars to be looked upon.

           The darkness was thick and only a small source of light had allowed you to see a limited portion of your surroundings. Other than the darkness and yourself all that seemed to exist was the cold wind that brushed against your bare skin.

           Cold water soaked your whole body, almost freezing as it went. Your face is drenched, the drops coming together to run into your eyes and drip from your chin. You released a shaky sigh and lowered yourself even further at the lake to cool down your burning face.

            Today was rather… eventful, so to say. You bit your lower lip remembering the time you had gotten intimate with him. It made your heart race and face go burning hot just reminiscing those scenes that happened an hour ago. You sunk yourself even more until your entire head was submerged by the cool waters. 

           Stop thinking about it!

           You scolded yourself and shut your eyes tightly to erase the salacious thoughts breaching your head. Truth to be told, you still can’t believe if it was real or just a fragment of your imagination. If it’s the latter then you should be ashamed of yourself for having thoughts such as that.

           Forgive me father and mother and to the Celestia! You cried internally and buried your face in your hands. The water did not even help you to cool down your already burning face, sinking yourself further and deeper into the lake.

           But even so, you can’t help but remind yourself how much Venti had poured his love onto you. His kisses were desperate and needy, clinging and holding you close to him in fear of losing you. Your fingers lightly traced the edge of your lower lips faintly remembering how his lips brushed against yours.

           The beating of your heart raced and you lifted yourself, gathering the air you needed after letting yourself doused underwater. Another sigh spilled from you as you gazed upwards and stared absently at the blank canvas of the midnight sky.

           A promise to stay together…

          A sudden worry about your wisp friend has entered your head. You do wonder if he has really disappeared or not. It feels odd he’s missing in the group as the three of you are always together. You pray to the Celestia that he’s fine and safe, hoping he’ll come back to the two of you.

           Your mind fades into dullness and everything is a foggy illusion. The quietness of the spring calms you; taking your mind off of things. All the things you honestly are unconcerned about. It’s the water. Your mind swirls, and it’s like standing on an everlasting waterfall. Ever so beautiful, but it can never last.

           You blinked and your scrutiny went towards the stream, noticing a turquoise light shimmering underneath. A brow arched from your front in curiosity, letting yourself sit properly to get a good look at it.

           Like a butterfly that was tranced by the sight of nectar, you were attracted to the mesmerizing glow of the waters. Unable to turn away, you reached for it and felt your own fingers roaming on your leg.

           Your leg…? Now that you take a closer look at it, with a little bit of trouble observing in the dark, there were marks circling around your thighs. A light teal jagged pattern surrounded it combined with little shapes of triangles and diamonds.

           The calmness that once blanketed you was now replaced with turmoil. You can feel the uneasiness in your chest waiting to take over. Perhaps it only wants to protect you but there really isn’t any danger. It sits there like paste propelling you towards anxiety you just don’t need.

           You let out a slow controlled breath and attempted to loosen your stiff shoulders. You closed your eyes and took a deep breath to calm yourself and say the marks have no effects on you— or so you think it was. 

           Though it was once again discarded the moment your eyes cast towards your chest and shoulder. A shape of a diamond was plastered right above your chest, with little triangles left on the edge. You were definitely sure they weren’t there before yet the marks continued appearing that almost coated half of your entire upper body.

           A sense of dread washed over you at the display of these unknown symbols that appeared out of nowhere. Maybe you should go back to Venti, you’ve been staying here for who knows how long now, not to mention there are monsters lurking here that might attack you. 

           You’ve cleaned your body already and you don’t want to make him wait for you any longer. Standing up, you wrung your hair and let the chilling waters drip back to the stream. The fact that the marks glowed even more peeved you that it might attract attention from anything wandering nearby.

           Unfortunately, the gods didn’t heed your pleas of hoping no one will see you. Your body shivered when you felt eyes piercing right through your back, watchful and almost too engrossed. You covered your chest and turned around to see any entities within your call.

           Your throat bobbed in fear and anxiety, hastily grabbing your clothes in an effort to hide your bare self. It didn’t do much to cover you entirely, but it was still enough to obscure your front. 

           “Venti…?” You shakily asked out to the quiet ruins. You already expected only silence to greet you until a familiar chiming of a bell reached your ears. As the light drains away there is barely enough even for shadows. Whether you like it or not, the darkness comes and under it everything in this forest is hidden. 

           Even the stars and moon cower behind a dense layer of cloud, giving the air that tincture you associate with the world before a storm. 

           Your ears become sharper and your mind paranoid, every snap of a twig is a predator, even if it is a fawn. For each aroma, your brain jumps to the most fearsome thing it could be and your body prepares for flight, fright, or freeze.

           For the most part, you just freeze. Running will give your position away and you’re not much of a fighter. All you can do is wait while the blackness comes and pray that the dawn is not far behind. 

           You settle in for a wait but it’s only minutes before a strong gust of wind charged at you. You shut your eyes and held your feet onto the ground, clutching onto the cloth as your hair fluttered against the air.

           The small chiming was louder than before, almost close to you. You slowly opened an eye, taking a peek up to the time that white dotted eyes were staring at you. You shrieked in alarm and fear, startled by the small creature abruptly appearing right in front of you.

           Your feet slipped in sheer panic, accidentally causing yourself to fall down and swamped yourself by the chilling waters of the lake.

—

           “Th-thank you…” You muttered before taking the dry cloth offered to you by your dear wind wisp friend. It indeed surprised you to see Barbatos was here all this time. You thought he had suddenly vanished during the war against Decarabian as Venti had never really mentioned or talked about him when you were with him.

           Well, it was a little bit of your fault you never asked about his whereabouts. Still, you were relieved and glad to know he was still alive and well all these years. A small smile crept to your face before patting his head in thanks.

           Barbatos nuzzled on your hand then looked at you expectantly before flying over your shoulder. You blinked in confusion then giggled before carefully handling him on your palm and putting him down.

           “Stay right here, okay? I’ll go change for a while.” You stood up from your kneeled form and headed behind the tree. However, your little friend followed after you making you stop in your tracks and furrowed your brows in worry.

           Barbatos tinkled in delight and continued cuddling on your shoulder to erase the frown glued to your face while he rubbed himself against the diamond symbols on your skin. You awe in wonderment when a faint glow emitted from both you and him, though now was not the time to be amazed. You don’t want to get yourself cold from this breezy air, and as much as he was being cute and all, you still need to dress.

           “I’ll be really quick! Just stay awhile for a bit.” You pleaded and this time he reluctantly abided by your words much to your relief. You made your way to the large plant as you hurriedly slipped your arms on the sleeves and tied the back of your dress, untucking your hair after that as you flipped it over your shoulder.

           You placed a hand on your chest, feeling the steady beat of your heart against it. It still scares you what these designs on your skin are, though you do feel some sort of aura mizzling over you.

           A pang of throbbing pain in your head struck you; it seems like you’re exhausted. The headache told you it was time to rest someplace quiet, to ride out the storm within your brain, for in time pain does ebb.

           There are days tiredness comes in both forms, physical and mental. Your body really needs to rest as well as your mind, to get rid of the anxiety swarming your entire being. Without rest, your body will spiral into exhaustion.

           A yawn escapes from you and you notice Barbatos from the corner of your eyes peeking behind the tree. You gave him a tired smile and motioned for him to come closer to you. 

           You really have to look for Venti, you don’t know how long you’ve been making him wait for you. Albeit you’re really drained and sleepy, you have to force your legs to carry you in search of the said bard.

           Barbatos took notice of your fatigued state and tugged your sleeves in a struggle to make you stay awake and catch your attention. “We… We need to find Venti.” You mumbled as another yawn evaded.

           He furiously shook his head and urged you to sit down on the ground, making angry jingling sounds. As if he’ll let you wander in this kind of time. It’s already late and dark, not to mention how tired you look so far. 

           You sink down onto the ground and rest your back against the rough trunk of the tree. The sleepy feeling must be how Teyvat feels when the summer has passed when it needs all those months to regenerate and come back in the spring.

           The small creature flew over to you and settled himself on your palms. The tunes that he played to you to dreamland is a song you’ve heard and thousand times before and never enough. The chords are like a well-worn path, one your brain follows along willingly.

           The mellow tinkling lulls you to sleep. In moments, your body relaxed, breathing steadily.

           After making sure you were dozing off and in deep sleep, Barbatos took his chance to nestle himself on your neck. He can’t believe his powers drained out after marking you, and it’ll take a whole day for him to recover and revert himself back to his human form.

           He didn’t think ahead and carelessly poured out his Anemo powers onto you just to let the symbols design your skin. He channeled himself onto you, letting the small wisps of wind gradually restore his powers.

—

           The reverberation of a wistful sigh grabbed his attention, perking his head at you in silent concern.

           Your eyes wandered everywhere, almost like a frantic search. Barbatos doesn’t need to ask what— or rather who you were looking for. It was already obvious to know who it was. It’s none other than him— or should he say, Venti.

           You puffed your cheeks, slightly vexed your lover has left you all alone. “He even promised to stay with me… and now he’s breaking it?” Hearing your muttered words made him panicked as he swung his head, trying to defend “Venti” in his current form.

           A series of continuous wailing of a bell made you look at him before giving a mirthless chuckle and fondle his hooded head to calm him. “Maybe he just went somewhere to do something…” You said cheerlessly, gazing over the waters of the lake to distract yourself.

           You shouldn’t think of things like that. You know he won’t ever do that to you and he never will. You looked over at Barbatos and propped your chin on your palm, playing with his little antennas.

           “Well, at least you’re here with me~ I really miss you a lot.” Your laughter was so free and pure, so childish despite the one you recently gave that sounded so empty and hollow. It came to his ears in a tickle and bounce— and it was only the moment he could do nothing but join in such generous mirth.

           You leaned back and placed your hands on the ground to support your body as you looked up to admire the blue sky. The sensation of calmness and serenity wafting through you eased your mind and body, taking in the gentle breeze of the old ruins.

           The tiny elemental being watched you in admiration. Your eyes blinking from time to time that allured him, allowing your lashes to flutter softly. Your eyes are simply spellbinding and captivating that he could get himself lost in there.

           He unconsciously floated to you and snuggled himself on your hands. The memories of you and his friend being together made his heart wrenched in shame and guilt of what he was doing. He thought he was already sure the feeling that caged him was already absent, and yet here it was again coming back to humiliate him, one that he absolutely resented.

            Your hums created a wordless melody of sweet-sounding harmonies, echoing in the winds to send it along to the other side. Until your next words that created a song had battered him with hurtful misery. 

           “Fly, fly away. Like a bird in the sky. See the world on my behalf, to the heavens may you fly.”

—

           The sky was black tranquility married to the poetry of stars. It was the softness that called your body and brain to rest and let the heart go to its steady rhythm. Night came as a reward of sorts, a restfulness above to calm the soul.           

           The two of you traveled to the garden you once slept in, hoping Venti would be there. You’ve been waiting for him to come back the whole day and there was still no sign of his presence greeting you. You were nodding off as you continue and patiently await, expecting him to come back to you.

           You pulled Barbatos close to your chest, absently staring off at the cecilia flowers he had come to collect for you. The petals shined brightly under the moonlit sky. Indeed it was beautiful and radiated elegance because of its pure colors and one of a kind flowery, though a feeling of sorrow ran through you the more you looked at it.

           Fiddling the stem between your fingers, you brought it close to your nose, breathing in the fresh scent that reminded you of him. You were getting drowsy and drowsy as time flew by, each second felt like an hour the more you waited.

           The collection of various flowers placed on the ground cushioned your fall as your petite body collapsed. Your wisp friend let out a frightened chime and summoned the winds to immediately check up on you.

           A sense of relief washed away his worries that you were simply asleep and tired. It’s already time and he can feel his energy recovering— enough to alter himself back to his human form. It was all thanks to your anemo energy within you that allowed him to transmit the vitality from you to him.

           He glided to the bushes, facing the small pond as it mirrored his appearance. A gentle gust of fresh air blows around him, the leaves dancing with the winds in his direction.

           He has always loved the wind, for it comes to him so boldly, touching his skin. In soft breezes, it is finer than silk, smoother than water. In the gales it sings through the trees, sending loose leaves on a dancing fun air ride, hypnotic and beautiful. Almost like how the crowds have gathered around him to listen to the strumming of his lyre.

           Today is almost still and he found himself in silent anticipation. His gaze went back on the rippling water, reflecting his appearance once again. Turquoise optics stared right back at him, eyes casting downwards to his chest while his fingers trailed over the same marks drawn on your body.

            His pale skin allowed the symbols to gleam even more in the garden. Its teal light granted him to feel the Anemo ran through his body, the powers returning him once more in need to go in search for the true beholder of the winds.

            Venti turned his head to look at your sleeping form. His eyes glued to the pattern on your thigh, faintly glowing that matched with his. Now, where were his clothes? He remembered he left it here before he was reverted to a little elemental wisp. 

           His hands reached for the white top that draped on the tree’s branch, slipping his arms on the sleeves and slowly buttoning up his shirt before leaving the top open to observe the marks drawn on his chest. The more he looks at the patterns inscribed on both yours and his skin, the more his heart raced in incitement and interest.

            His hands hovered to his mouth to hide the wide smile and blush that clambered up on his front. This is bad, really bad. He was smiting for you all over again just like before. It reminded him that he was the one who covered you with these and how much you enjoyed it when he was creating it for you.

           His throat bobbed before shaking his head to erase the thoughts, letting himself focus to get dressed. Venti had finally finished wearing his attires, leaving the cape and midsection outfit left on the ground, not bothering to wear it anymore. He carefully approached your unconscious form and knelt down to brush your hair away that had fallen from your face.

           Your soft skin felt ticklish as you squirm in your sleep when his fingers brushed your cheeks. You slowly opened your eyes revealing the kindly tranquil of [eye color] orbs and met gaze with him.

           Your entire body system awoke, the exhaustion was all but gone when you immediately pulled him into a tight hug. Venti wrapped his arms around you and cradled you in his arms, kissing your head as a greeting.

           You buried your face on the crook of his neck and clutched onto his shirt firmly. "Where have you been?" Your voice wavered when you asked if he could faintly hear your soft sobs against him. “Sorry for the sudden disappearance. Something… came up.” His words trailed off causing his excuse not to be really effective which he already expected to happen. 

           There’s nothing he can do about it when he is in that situation, but he was very reassured that he can finally hold you close to him. Not being able to show his affection for you was unbearable especially how you were so worried about where he had gone off to.

           The subtle kisses on his neck made his focus go back to you. Every time you place them there, he knew he’d adore you for all time. Those sweet kisses on his neck made his heart quivered as he pulled you close to him and lifted your head to meet with his gaze.

           The pout on your face induced him to want to shower you with kisses and apologize for leaving you all alone. His lips pressed against your head then close to your eye, from your nose to your cheeks then down to your lips.

           He was firm and gentle as he pulled you in, burning your lips with his mouth. You can hear the soft whisper of his breath as he exhaled. Venti inched closer and encircled his hand with yours, lightly pushing you down onto the ground as he penned you between him.

           His mouth moved downwards leaving a trail of kisses on your skin until he stopped on your neck. You whimpered as your body shuddered when he lightly nipped on it, giving small sucks that had you released a small cry.

           Even without telling a soul, it was common knowledge that both of you were lovesick and amorous. It was in the way your gaze lingered on one another, the way your voice became softer, and in coquettish smiles that he’d never worn before whenever he’s with you.

#genshin impact #genshin impact x reader #yandere genshin impact x reader #yandere genshin x reader #venti x reader #genshin impact venti x reader #yandere venti x reader #genshin impact venti #yandere venti #genshin impact reader insert #genshin x reader #yandere #yandere genshin impact #elliwrites #Illusory Sense

[idontblushsrry]

Itadori Yuuji Boyfriend Headcanons

A/N: Reader is from America and a black female. Idk why i decided to write this but I think that Yuuji would be a fun boyfriend lmao. I don’t entirely know what the reader’s cursed technique should be so lmk if you have any ideas. Until then enjoy Yuuji and reader being 2 idiots in love. Spoilers for all the eps of jujutsu kaisen up to about episode 11, nothing past that though as I want to finish the show first before reading the manga, so please be respectful of spoilers and label them (and tag if necessary) in the comments. Also srry if this cuts off abruptly bcus of the point the show is at. This is also like, all over the place but whatever.

(also sorry this was posted later than usual oops)

Word Count:  1943

This dork-

He is so sweet and kind and considerate 

But also a dumbass but also like he’s your dumbass

You and Yuuji are both equally stupid like bless yalls hearts

You and Yuuji met during his time at the Tokyo Academy when you transferred from America

The moment this man saw you walk up with Gojo-sensei he was smitten

Like your skin was glowing??? how???

And you had a slight accent but like he loved it too

And when you came up to greet him and shake hands you smelled so good and your skin was so soft

((He would later come to find out that the root of that was the shea cocoa butter lotion you used))

But yea mans was smitten and he is fully in love with you lmao

Will do literally anything you ask

You hungry? He’s prepared a 5 course, michelin star meal

Want new clothes? He’s been training for the day he could hold your bags for you

Ran out of hair products?? He’s already back with a special box of your products that he had imported from America

To this day you don’t know how he was able to get those products so quickly

He is loves when you tell him things about you from your day, to your times in america, to how your cursed energy works

Yall are the couple that does stupid shit together

Like one time you showed Yuuji one of those life hack videos and he was like 

“We should totally do that” 

And you were like “Bet”

Needless to say Fushiguro was very confused at the sight of bandaids on both of your fingers the next morning

“???What happened?”

“Well you see, I told Yuuji that I should use the glue gun because he didn’t even know where to put the glue stick. And he said nah, I got it and um yea so I fell and the glue gun was plugged in and then he tripped over me and so now we look like this.”

Gojo and Kugisaki thought that this was hilarious while Fushiguro decided that he’d store your guys’ glue gun in his shadows from now on

How yall manage to get through missions you go on together alive is a miracle

Speaking of missions, you eventually ask Yuuji what’s his deal because you feel a powerful aura coming from him but he never uses cursed energy, always cursed weapons

Cue Sukuna’s mouth popping up on the side of his face like “Hey mamas”

(You can’t tell me that Sukuna isn’t the type of guy to ask where his hug at)

“YUUJI WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!”

“Oh, I guess you haven’t met Sukuna yet, huh?”

So he sits you down and explains how he ate Sukuna’s finger and you're sitting there like ‘mhm mhm mhm, sorry you what?’

For like 3 days after he told you that you couldn’t bring yourself to kiss him just because you were processing the fact that Yuuji ate someone’s nasty old ass finger and would have to eat 19 more

And the fact that he’s the vessel of like the worst curse known to man 

During those 3 days, Yuuji’s pouting because he’s like ‘I fucked up, now she doesn’t wanna kiss me let alone talk to me because of this monster inside of me :(’

Meanwhile you’re just like ‘why would anyone eat some random mummified finger?’

Eventually you get wind of Yuuji’s bad mood and immediately, you rush to smooth things over with him.

You knock on his door and hear blankets rustling before he goes, “I’m not in the mood to play fight right now Kugisaki’

“Can I come in baby?”

You immediately hear the most comical almost cartoonish amount of noise ranging from a cup falling over, sheets falling off the bed, and what sounds like Yuuji falling flat on his ass before he opens the door

When he does, you’re laughing and it’s like the sky is no longer grey and the world is filled with color

You smile at each other before your moment is interrupted with Sukuna going “Finally, full offense, his whining was getting annoying”

You step inside his room and apologize for ignoring him, explaining that you just needed time to process things, explaining that you should’ve told him that before dipping

He just grabbed you in a bear hug and lifted you of the ground and spinning you around laughing happily, after all he wasn’t even upset with you, he just missed you

And thus begins the honeymoon phase of your guys’ relationship

Fushiguro is actually really happy for you guys and is the most supportive of your relationship but if anyone asked him to admit that out loud he’d actually apparate to the nearest marooned ship

Nobura doesn’t hate you guys but she thinks all couples are disgusting, so while it’s nothing personal, she does gag when you and Yuuji do so much as make goo goo eyes at each other

Gojo is actually like the main cheerleader of your relationship. 

He is the teacher that changes the seating chart to put students he ships together

He was always pairing you and Yuuji up on missions and placing you as sparring partners like ur not slick

If Gojo is the cheerleader, Sukuna is an actual antagonist

Like the man goes out of his way to CHOOSE violence

Like on time you kissed Yuuji’s cheek on a date and when you pulled back, your lip was bleeding and Sukuna’s mouth was smirking at you

Another thing he likes to do is tell you all of Yuuji’s simp^tm thoughts

Like all of them

Now Yuuji isn’t ashamed of how much he loves you and is in fact very open with it, but he doesn’t need Sukuna telling you that the only reason he bought x mouthwash was because it made your breath smell like “sunshine” and he had to see if it would work on him

Speaking of dates, good luck

Now I stand by the fact that Yuuji would never half-ass a date and things with him are certainly never boring

But he’s also like a country boy in the city and his tourist tendencies tend to get the best of him

Like you’ll be trying to find a spot to eat and when you look back Yuuji’s gone

((Prolly to buy another I <3 Tokyo shirt so you can both match))

He always catches up with you ad you eventually learn that but like the first few times be havin you ready to put up a lost child signal on the loudspeaker

He’s very sweet and this is where his thoughtfulness shines through

You and Yuuji plan dates in the same way one plays bingo

Like because you never know where you’re going to be r when exactly you’ll both be free (especially with Gojo-sensei and his bare minimum ass information) you two tend to go ‘ok well if we’re here we’ll go here and if we’re here, we’ll go here’ and so on and so forth

But Yuuji always remembers such little one-off details about you that make your dates.

Like you mention wanting to try a sushi train and he’s already scrolled through multiple yelp reviews and watched every youtube restaurant review like 9 times

But every high has a low and Yuuji and your’s low comes suddenly and it brings you crashing to the ground with no warning and nothing to slow your descent

When your class of first years were sent to exorcise the special grade cursed womb

When Yuuji’s hand got blown off and he told you to run you froze, your mind racing faster than your legs could even start

“(Y/N) RUN!” Yuuji’s voice broke you out of your fear-based trance

“I- I...can’t...I can’t leave you!” you cried out all your rational senses screamed at you to go, run, he had Sukuna and you were barely a grade 2 sorcerer. But your intuition told you if you left him you wouldn’t see him alive again.

You were trapped in a paralysis of indecision but the choice was made for you when a sticky tongue wrapped around your midriff and you were gulped into the mouth of one of Fushiguro’s frogs

“Goddamn it Fushiguro! Let me go! I need to... save... him.” You were outside the building before you could even finish arguing.

You glared up at Fushiguro but your eyes softened some when you saw how beat up Kugisaki looked.

He gave you this look that said he did what he had to do and he didn’t care what you had to say about it 

You and him waited in the rain for Yuuji or Sukuna to exit the building

You tried to focus yourself and save your negative emotions for your cursed attack

When Sukuna inevitably appeared, one finger stronger, you were fully prepared to fight him

However, he didn’t seem interested in fighting you and more engaged in fighting with Megumi

You tried to urge Fushiguro to wait it out, eventually Sukuna would lose control, but when Sukuna took Yuuji’s heart hostage, you both knew you’d have to fight

You and Fushiguro gave it your all but when Yuuji came back he still died 

It took all your strength to not completely fall apart after his death and the support from the second years as well as Kugisaki and Fushiguro helped

You’d tried to visit him at the morgue but Shoko only told you that she didn’t think it’d be a good idea.

You still slept in his sweaters and the things that smelled like him from time to time, trying to make the idea of him last, but after a month, the smell of him had started to fade

Everything about Yuuji’s memory seemed to become leached away with time, from his smell, to the wear present on things he’d given to you

You couldn’t help but feel resentful towards yourself but also to Sukuna, he’d taken Yuuji from you with the same care that one would throw litter on the ground

The pain in your chest didn’t wane either, it only became ignorable to a degree as training for the exchange with the Kyoto students became more intense

Fushiguro is a comfort to you as well, aside from you, him and Yuuji were the closest to each other and so he gets a lot of what you’re going through and doesn’t push when you become more withdrawn

He also lets you pet his demon dog too but when you ask him why he’s letting you pet it he just says ‘because no one would believe you if you told them’ lies

The bastard really just does it because he knows you’re sad and he doesn’t want you to be sad

Speaking of the Kyoto students, Zenin Mai and Toudou Aoi are permanently on your shit list

You’re relieved that Panda, Maki, and Inumaki came to your guys’ aid but like if you had your way Mai wouldn’t even exist

Anyways Maki has Panda physically restrain you while she tries to calm you down 

“(Y/N), you can kick her ass at the exchange!”

When you calm down, Panda puts you down and even though Mai’s long gone with Todou to go get his handshake, you make a promise that carries through the wind

‘Zenin Mai, pray that the next time you run across me I’m feeling kind, because if not-’, the last word is lost as the wind picks up but Mai feels a shiver rack through her body that more than ensures your message.

#jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen imagines #jujutsu kaisen hcs #jjk x reader #itadori yuji x reader #itadori yuji #jjk itadori #black reader #x black reader #idontblushsrry

[hoarding-stories]

One quiet midmorning has a message in Yasha's ear, short and to the point, asking if she would mind some company. She welcomes it, with a small smile that speaks of a routine long established. Essek appears in the house's teleportation circle not long after holding a novel and greeting Yasha warmly. They speak for a while on scattered topics, Beau is currently off at the Cobalt Soul but she left another book recommendation for Essek if he has finished his current one (he has, and switches it out while marveling at Beau's ability to find them), Yasha happily shows off the new growths on her plants and Essek oos and awws, she also plays a bit on her harp, speaking about the new songs she's attempting. Most of the time however, is spent in companionable silence, sitting and enjoying the new day.

Midday is marked with the teleportation circle in the Brennatto household activating and Essek stepping through. He pauses for a moment before exiting the room, very nearly managing to dodge the toy bolt that grazes his shoulder. He smiles and concedes the point to Luc, promising he'll dodge next time (they have a rule system, one is no big magic, another is no headshots established after one too many black eyes). There is lunch with Veth and Yeza, they talk about odd customers at the shop and new alchemical experiments. Luc proudly shows off new spells he's learned from his lessons with Caleb and Essek gives him additional tips, oddly proud.

Afternoon is heralded with an extra pair of hands at the Blooming Grove, ready to help out wherever he can (Essek has quietly come to the realization that half the jobs he does is a Clay getting out of their chores but he doesn't mind). Essek grabs his enchanted parasol (that floats over his head, leaving his hands free) and his rose-printed gloves and follows Caduceus around like a very peculiar shadow. Essek gives small updates on the other members, Caduceus teaches him scattered information on the plants they tend, and they both feel at peace in the nature around them. He receives a few packets of a new blend of tea Caduces is trying with promises of giving his opinion on it next time they talk.

Sunset finds Essek on the Nein Heroz, immediately tackle-hugged by Jester who's joy only grows with the gift of handmade pastries. Fjord gives him a solid clap on the shoulder, Kingsley a jaunty salute, and they speak about nautical things; trends in trade and shipping, the latest sea monster encounter, and how everything is faring. Jester gleefully informs him that his baking has improved in leaps and bounds and he really should bring her some every time he visits (like he doesn't already). Essek will never tire of watching the sun go down over the open ocean (for as much as the light still hurts his eyes).

Evening brings him to Caleb, sitting at his desk engrossed in work. Essek joins him, but not before making some of that tea from Caduceus, and begins looking over work of his own. He quietly shares with Caleb tales of their friends and scoops up a cat that had started to wind around his ankles purring. Caleb regales him with anecdotes of his students, wondering at their brilliance and bemoaning their failures. Essek eventually offers to help with some grading that needs to be done and they settle into an easy pattern. He also manages to pry Caleb away from his work before the hour becomes too unreasonable, dragging them both to bed while claiming Caleb's students would not appreciate a half-asleep professor.

Lying there, halfway into his trance and listening to Caleb's quiet breaths, Essek can't help but think about how lucky he was to have met the Mighty Nein and how much they have changed his life for the better.

#critical role #cr spoilers #different timezones who? #i just thought of this #and tried to get it down right #like Caleb's epilogue #i have a lot of very soft feelings about Essek's ok #it's the small quiet things #and i said the finale would have me posting embarrasingly sappy things #this isn't quite what i was expecting #but it works

[melancholydreadfuldream]

Hell-bound with you

Fandom: Doctor Who

 Pairing: Doctor x Reader

 Summary: You are the unwilling companion of the Doctor.

 Warning: ooc, plot holes as usual, dark!doctor, insanity, etc. You have been warned.

   A/N: I hope this post show up in search result  just fine. The part four of my other fic I posted at the end of last month just won’t show up in any search result, tags not working. I hope this one work okay.

     I watched in amusement from my spot as Jack tried to summon the Doctor but failed instead, he kept getting her companion. I couldn't help but laughed at the old man expression when Jack kissed him in the mouth. 

  I was surprised when the old man, Graham, revealed that the Doctor is now a woman. Jack is giddy with excitement as he wanted to see the Doctor so much. But he kept pulling in the companion instead. Yaz and Ryan. 

  Eventually Jack realized that the judoon technology is the reason why he can't pull the Doctor to him. Personally, I was grateful that the Doctor is not here. I wouldn't want to catch his - i suppose now - her attention. I admit I am a bit curious about how she looks like. The Doctor's first time as a woman, I wonder how she will act.

  My attention snapped back at Jack as he warned the companion about the lone cyberman. It was all very cryptic. 

  Turned out the companion has never encountered a cyberman before so they understandably are confused.

 Both Jack and I had suffered together in the short time since we met and you know what they said about forming a close bond during a life and death situation. It makes us comrade.

  Jack knew some stuff about me that I would never tell anyone. I am so grateful that I met him while stranded in this alternate universe. 

  Of course, it just my bad luck to have landed in a time period where cybermen overrun the world. I was lucky I met Jack. It would take me forever to sort thing out otherwise. I shuddered at the thought of being taken by cybermen for conversion.

  I didn't know what to think of the companion because I didn't know of them. I didn't know of the newest incarnation of the Doctor being female either. There were rumor floating around about it but I missed her first season on the account of finding myself suddenly existed within the impossible DW universe.

  I hated it. It wasn't fun. And I ended up ruining the Doctor's timeline. I had to run from him when he changed into that monster. Oh, I know he would come looking for me sooner or later. He would never let me go just like that. Misery loves company and all of that. Some part of him did blame me for changing him, I just know it.

  But running away and found myself stranded in another DW universe isn’t exactly how I planned my escape. The upside of being here is that I’m finally free of that person.

  I heard an amused chuckle within my mind and I frowned. Right, I guess technically I am still haunted by that person. I glared at the bow-tied figure that only I can see, a proof of my insanity. I tried to ignore him and his unwanted commentary on whatever it is Jack and I did.

  This particular universe thankfully still follow the canon, I think. I don't know if it will be a blessing or a curse my escape being here, knowing my luck it will ended up as another curse. I do know one thing, this time I have to avoid the Doctor at all cost. It will be hard, I'm sure, as I felt it so many times before back then, someone pulling the string and play on me like a puppet. Of course, no one believe me, not even that person.

  I didn't know the future of the Thirteenth Doctor but I will still be a threat to her should she realized what I am. That's what happened with that person. He insisted that I stay with him and everything has gone wrong ever since. 

  I tried not to think about that person and his now-never-happened future courtesy of me, of my presence, in his life.

  "(Name)?"

  I snapped out of my trance as Jack called out to me in concern.

  "Is it him?"

  I blinked when I realized I must have been talking out loud and thus gaining Jack and the companion’s attention. "I'm fine."

  Jack gave me a look that said he didn't believe my bullshit. 

  I ignored him. I noticed the companion are staring at me as if I was insane. I held back a frustrated laugh. Well, I am insane, somewhat.

  Jack introduced me to them. “This is (Name). She is with me.”

  "Is she a friend of the Doctor too?" Graham asked Jack.

  "Well..."

  "No." I firmly said as I glared at him in warning. "Oh, just shut up." I glared at an empty space on my left.

  The companion stared at me warily.

  “err, did she just talk to an empty space?” Ryan asked.

  “Yeah, she does that.” Jack replied, not taking his eyes off me.

  I tried to focus on Jack and the companion. I rubbed my forehead, feeling a headache forming.

  Jack's frowned as he observed me. "She's...complicated." He suddenly yelled in pain as the nano-genes started to attack him. He complained very loudly.

  I was worried for him. "It’s time. We should leave here, Jack." I said as I grabbed him. “You already did your part, warning them.”

  "You are right but there is...” Jack groaned. “...one more thing, (Name), you are not coming with me."

  "What?! What the hell are you talking about?" I punched his arms in annoyance.

  Jack rubbed his arms and give me a look. "You should go with them and stay with the Doctor."

  I was pissed. I thought he understand. "No. You..."

  "I know what you think of her but I still think you would be safer with her than with me. Also, maybe she could help you with him." Jack replied, turning to glance at the space I have been staring at before despite not being able to see what I see.

  "Like hell, I'm not going! And you can't make me!" I yelled petulantly.

  The companion stood there looking confused at our argument.

  Jack let out a sad smile. "I'm sorry, (Name)." He took my hand that is on his arm and let it go.

  I blinked in confusion and annoyance. I was momentarily distracted and Jack took that opportunity to activate the vortex manipulator on my person and I suddenly blip out of the ship and found myself on Earth instead.

  7777

  I almost lost my balance as I landed harshly. I cursed loudly.

  I saw the Doctor's companion materialized not too far from me.

  "Son of a..." I growled. "That damn head jar!!" I cursed Jack. "Shut it!" I snapped on the empty space near me.

  The companion stared at me warily.

  I groaned in annoyance.

  "We should go find the Doctor." Yaz suggested.

  "Yeah, you guys go ahead. I'm out of here." I said.

  "But I thought that Jack fellow said that you should stay with the Doctor?" Ryan asked.

  "Ignore that cheeky bastard's words!" I said and then stopped myself. "Except about the cyberman. That was true. Alright, I'm leaving." I waved at them and left despite their protests.

  Screw Jack. He is not the boss of me. 

  7777

  I walked without a purpose as I ponder over what I have to do next now that Jack has abandoned me. Like hell, I’m sticking around to see the Doctor no matter how curious I am of the female Doctor.

  “He’s right, you know, you would be safer if you stay with the other Me.” He said.

  I glared at him. “And what? Risking of her turning out like you because of me?”

  “I think you give yourself too much credit. I was always going to turn out this way sooner or later. Valeyard, remember?”

  “But you are not the Valeyard.”

  “Yet.”

  “And that’s what make it worse. I did this to you. I turned you...”

  “Victorious. That’s what I am, thanks to you. It wasn’t that bad.” He said with a shrug.

  “You burned down planets!”

  “I did that once in a while. You know this." He is referring to Gallifrey. "Besides, you know they deserves it.” He said as a dark expression crossed his features.

  “We lost Clara. I wouldn’t call that victorious!!”

  “And we avenged her.”

  I was ashamed that it was the truth. I did help him to avenge Clara’s death. In fact, I was the one who urged him to do it because I couldn’t accept her death. They haven’t even done Trenzalore yet. And now they never will. Because of me, Bow-tie won’t even get a new set of regeneration. But considering how he turned out, am I doing the world a favor by limiting his life to his eleventh self? Now he will not get the chance to regenerate into Eyebrow. Or did I just make it worse? Like he implied, he is very well on his way into becoming the Valeyard.

  “I am curious about the Doctor of this universe.” Victorious pondered. “I have never regenerated into a woman before. I was on my last regeneration right now."

  I tensed at that. I kept reminding myself that the person in front of me is not quite real so even if he did figures out the truth, there is nothing he can do about it. No Clara, no new regeneration. Unless he made me fill her shoes, play her role so to speak on Trenzalore. I hope not. Well, I had escaped him, somewhat. 

  The real Victorious probably was too busy right now to ponder about the calling of Trenzalore. And knowing him now, he might actually let Trenzalore burns.

  I think I bought enough time for myself so it might take him a while to locate me especially since I have a bio-damper ring on my person to hide the void stuff that apparently covered me when I first arrived in DW universe. With the ring, he won't be able to track me down easy. It also help hid my presence from the Doctor of this universe too.

  I sighed as I stared at my 'companion', the one only I can see, an accidental result after some weird mind meld with the Doctor. 

  When I first took a glimpse of him the first time I was stranded in this alternate universe, I thought he was somehow in my head, then I beginning to question my sanity, creating a shadow figure of the Doctor in my headspace. Seemed like I could never be free of the Doctor. Part of me believed I deserved it, to be haunted by the Doctor that I ruined.

  Sometimes I really thought he is the Doctor when he suddenly said things that sounded like something the Doctor will says. And then he is being all sarcastic with his unwanted commentary on everything I do and...meh I thought of him as a figment of my imagination designed as my personal demon to torture myself. But, weirdly he does know information that I could not possibly know, things that the Doctor or some other screaming genius might know but not little stupid, ordinary Me. There is no way if he is a hallucination created by me for him to know those complicated stuff. Anyway, thanks to that, Jack trusted me, I did save his life, both our life actually, by following the advice of the shadow Doctor. 

  Jack believe me albeit a bit reluctantly at first and eventually did trust me enough to watch each other back through hell and back. It was all very dramatic but also rewarding as we formed a friendship. Unfortunately, he's loyal to the Doctor hence he disbelieved me when I said I am bad for the Doctor, he still somewhat believe the Doctor is the answer to fix everything that could go wrong, even though he should know better. 

  I groaned as I ponder on what to do now. I understand the truth in Jack's words that I might need the Doctor of this universe help should Victorious able to track me down to this universe. But I am also right about my presence around the Doctor never bode well. So you see my dilemma?

  Thankfully the Doctor and her companion never look for me. I guess she is not curious enough with me.

  Back then as I watched the first two episode of season 6, I found it weird that bow-ties who supposedly adores children, didn't bother to look harder for little Melody Pond after she escaped the astronaut suit. Maybe there is some additional information about it from DW book or the audio-book but I never got my hands on them.

  Anyway this is good. It would be troublesome if she did decided to track me down.

  7777

  I thought I covered my track very well but the time bounty hunters somehow able to track me down at some black market in some random planet. It was weird but it seemed the Tardis translation circuit still work on me even if I am not anywhere near the Tardis. Or maybe it is thanks to that annoying 'companion' of mine?

  I'm following the advice of the shadow Doctor to find an equipment to, as he said he will indulge me for now, hide me better. I used my vortex manipulator given by River a long time ago at the Library. She taught me how to use it so that I won't accidentally kill myself while using it.

  Anyway after I purchase the said equipment and before I could use it per the shadow Doctor's instruction, the hunters found me.

  Honestly I hope the self defense lesson I got from River and then Jack would be enough to at least help me escape my pursuers. I thought I did good but they still found me.

  That's when the shadow Doctor 'helpfully' told me that I had a tracking chip somewhere inside my body courtesy of the real him. That bastard. Putting a tracking chip without my knowledge or permission like I am some freaking pets.

  I glared at him angrily.

  He grinned in amusement. "Hey, technically it wasn't me who did it."

  "Close enough..." I muttered.

  He told me the equipment I purchase earlier should destroy the chip into dust inside me without harming me in the process. Removing the chip would be better but without the correct equipment and a professional medical knowledge, it would be too dangerous.

  But before I could use it, they found me again. I was at some random abandoned building. One of them broke my wrist as I fought him. I screamed in pain.

  "Hey, don't hurt her! He won't be pleased!"

  "She won't stop struggling! She bites me!"

  I groaned in pain as they pushed my whole body on the wet floor.

  "She is not to be harmed in any way." Someone said. "The client is very specific about that one. He need her for something. He is willing to pay so much for her."

  My eyes widened in fear as I realized they are not planning to take me back to Victorious. That would be even worst. Are their client some enemies of the Doctor who is trying to take me as hostage? Or do they after the knowledge I have of the Doctor? But there is no way someone could know. I was sure Victorious remove all threat on me.

  I catches the glimpse of dark expression crossing the shadow Doctor's feature as he too listen to what the men had said.

  "Who even is she? Why do they willing to pay so much for her?"

  "Don't you know? She's the consort of that guy, the Doctor."

  I rolled my eyes in disdain at that misinformation but made no move to correct them. There is no point.

  "For real? But she is running from him? Why?"

  "Have you been living under a rock? That man has gone insane. Who would in their right mind stay with him?"

  "I heard the stories about him."

  "Not stories."

  "So, is it wise to betray him like this?"

  "You assumed we got the job from him but we didn't. By the time we hand her over to the client and got our money, with this technology to cross over universe..." He glanced at the elaborate vortex manipulator on their wrists which you assumed they got from the said client. "we can make a new life in some other universe. He won't be able to find us."

  The shadow Doctor chuckled coldly. "Whoever that client of their is, I know they are not stupid. To go after what is mine, they would have to take care loose end in order to remain undetected from me." He said as he observed the men. "That vortex manipulator probably has an expired date on it and more..."

  He turned to look at me, kneeling before me with almost a bored look. "I did warned you that you would have been safer if you stay with the other me."

  I glared at him. "Quit talking, do something." I hissed at him.

  He smirked. "You didn't say please."

  "Who is she talking with?" One of the men asked.

  They hauled me up to face them.

  "You are not very smart, are you?" I said with a smirk. "He is already here. The Doctor. Or should I say Victorious?"

  They looked around nervously.

  I pulled my sonic screwdriver, the one I stole from Victorious, and set out sonic sound, as instructed by him, that momentarily hurt everyone's ears but also caused some old hanging lamp to either explode or fell to the ground, causing chaos. 

  I ran immediately out of the building. Ignoring the growing pain in my wrist, I yelled at him to tell me how to use the equipment to destroy the chip. I moved the equipment to some spot of my neck and pulled the trigger.

  I clamped my mouth as burst of hot fire pain filled me. I gasped as I fell to the ground. Tears filled my eyes. I felt so dizzy.

  I distinctly heard him telling me to stay awake and ran. So I did albeit really slow.

  Like I said before, someone or something seemed to be pulling the string on me because as I made my weak escape, I found myself face to face with the companion I met with Jack weeks ago and there is a woman with rainbow stripes on her clothing with them. The Doctor, my mind supplied.

  Shit.

  "It's you." Ryan whispered, seemingly surprised to see me.

  "Doctor, she is the one we told you before. she was with Jack." Yaz explained.

  The woman glanced at me in guarded curiosity. She walked toward me and opened her mouth to say something but I fainted right into her arms.

  7777

  I woke up inside the Tardis in the medical bay. How did I know that? He told me.

  The Doctor, the female one, entered the room and smiled upon seeing that I already wake up.

  I no longer feel any pain, not on my broken wrist and on my neck. I assumed she fixed that. And someone changed my wet dirty clothes with something comfortable.

  I heard her yapping about the danger I put myself using the equipment she found with me. I didn't listen, still a bit too dizzy.

  "Who are you?"

  "(name)." I replied.

  "Ok, (name), I'm the Doctor. My fam said you were with Jack and that he instructed you to stay with me?"

  "He was wrong." I said bluntly. I forced myself to get up and stand up despite her protest. "I should leave."

  "You can't. We are in the vortex. Also you were hurt. Who hurt you? Also who put a tracking chip inside you? You destroyed the chip using that equipment. Are you running from a prison? Did Jack broke you out of prison?"

  I groaned and chuckled harshly. "You talk too much." I said as I clutched my pounding headache. "Prison, huh? I guess you could say that. Oh, shut up." I snapped at my right.

  "Who are you talking with?" She observed me curiously. "The fam told me that..."

 "I am a bit insane? That would be correct. Better stay away from me, doc." I said in derisive.

  She glanced at me.

  "Stop looking at me like that!"

  "Like what?"

  "Like I am some animal in a zoo."

  "I am so sorry."

  "For what?" I asked in confusion.

  "For whoever hurt you like that." She whispered. "Yaz changed your clothes. She said you have scars on your arms, consistent with someone being restrained and being injected and also..."

  "Stop." I glared at her menacingly. "That was private. None of your business."

  She, thankfully, stopped talking about that topic. But she suddenly pulled my sonic screwdriver. "How did you get this?"

  I took a deep breathe trying to calm myself over the fact that she and Yaz invaded my privacy. "It's mine."

  "Not possible." She said firmly.

  "Uh-oh, someone in trouble..." I heard him said in a teasing sing-song voice. I glared at him before turning to face her. 

  "Someone gave it to me." I lied. "Now give that back and let me leave." I demanded.

  She shook her head as she took a step back. "Did you steal this?"

  "Ding dong, she got it!" The shadow Doctor answered cheerfully much to my annoyance.

  Fine, I'm going to give her some shock value. "River gave it to me, satisfied?"

  The Doctor look shocked, her mouth dropped open. "You know River? River Song?"

  "That was a low blow, (name)." The shadow Doctor whispered at me in disappointment.

   "She was my friend." I spat. That wasn't a lie, technically. River was my friend but in the other universe, not in this one. "I'm sure you wouldn't know me, Doctor. She wouldn't talk about her friends with you. Mostly because you would not be interested." 

  The Doctor observed me, trying to spot the lie. She seemed satisfied to find none. But she is still suspicious though. "Why would she give you this?"

  "For my protection. I will only know how to use it whenever I was in danger." That one is not a lie since the shadow Doctor only tell me how to use it whenever I need to escape danger.

  She hummed at that, probably wondering if I ever misuse it. She didn't seem to keen of returning it though. At least she didn't confiscate the vortex manipulator.

  "Jack vouched for me. Do you think he would send someone not trustworthy to you?" I said. The answer is yes, by the way, because that traitor Jack ignored my warning how I am not good for the Doctor's timeline. If I am to stay with her, predictably things will not be canon again and it will definitely be hell-bound.

  The shadow Doctor chuckled at what I said.

  The Doctor didn't say anything.

  I raised an eyebrow. "I guess you don't trust Jack or do you only trust him when he is useful to you?" I asked in vicious tone. "Fine, keep the damn sonic screwdriver."

  "Oh now you have done it. She is not going to let you leave now." The shadow Doctor helpfully informed. "That is my 'i-don't-trust-this-person-i-need-to-solve-what-she-is-hiding' look." He grinned gleefully.

  I almost want to slap the jerk if not for the fact he is not really there so it is kinda pointless.

  Resigned to the fact that I am stuck with the new Doctor, I am determined not to let her in my head. A mistake I made with bow-ties which in turn caused him to become Time Lord Victorious.

  But I have no idea what the future hold for this version of Doctor and her companion. One thing for sure, the canon is about to go to hell, especially since I have no idea what to do and what to avoid doing.

  "I think you should stay with me. I can help you with whoever after you. But I need you to trust me."

  What a hypocrite. She doesn't even trust me. Why should I trust her? 

  "I don't want to intrude. Just dropped me back on earth at 2020." I said.

  "Oh, bad year." The shadow Doctor supplied. 

  "I insist you stay here for a while. After all, isn't that what Jack want me to do? Welcome to the Tardis. It is..."

  "I know what it is. River and Jack told me."

  "Well then...if they trust you, I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt..." She smiled brightly. "Welcome aboard, (name). We are going to have adventure of the lifetimes."

  If she think I would rejoice, she is sadly mistaken as I stared at her flatly, not impressed.

  He chuckled at my expense.

  The Doctor glanced at my unimpressed look, sighed. "Well, you are a tough one."

  7777

  And so I ended up becoming the Doctor's unwilling companion...again.

  She re-introduced me with her fam and officially give me a room in the Tardis.

  Yaz is wary of me but Ryan and Graham are nice and friendly.

  And just like that I got pulled into their adventure. I tried to refused saying I'm feeling ill most of the time, preferring to stay behind but unfortunately the Doctor doesn't trust to leave me inside the Tardis.

  Does she think I could drive the Tardis or something? Seriously...

  7777

  I was stuck in a nightmare. I was back with Victorious and he punishes me for escaping. He trapped me in a special room designed to punish me mentally. He always did know I am weak mentally. He was surprised that I could survive this long by luck alone.

  I saw the laughing figure of a trickster, saying the joke is on me and...

  I woke up to the concerned face of the Doctor, the female one.

  I remembered now. I fell under the clutch of some wannabe gods from ancient Syria. They fed from people's nightmare.

  The woman, Rakaya, glanced at me wickedly, saying I have some delicious nightmare.

  The Doctor saves the day and able to trick the wannabe gods into eternal imprisonment.

  At the end, as I sat with a blank expression on my face on the stairs at the console room, Yaz and Ryan approached me and asked if I want to talk about my nightmare.

  I just said that I dreamed of being back in the room. They didn't push me for more. Yaz, being a police officer, probably suspected based on my scars, that the room was where I was imprisoned before.

  7777

  Darn it.

  Despite my determination not to get attached with the Doctor and the fam, I failed. Damn adventures and dangers and excitements, it does bound us closer with each other. I saved them, they saved me.

  "Admit it, you miss this, didn't you? The adventures, dangers, excitements?" The shadow Doctor teased me. "You got used to it already."

  "what about you?" I asked him. "Do you miss being the Doctor? Saving people and planets instead of destroying them on a whim?"

  He was silent. For once, he left me alone. I think I hurt his feeling despite him being a hallucination.

  7777

  Once I was almost taken by another bounty hunters, the Doctor rescued me and declared that I am under her protection and anyone who want to take me, will have to go through her first.

  The oncoming storm expression on her face is enough to make them back off and I was left in peace.

  The Doctor is not pleased that I still won't tell her the reason.

  "You have your own secrets and I have mine. Respect that!"

  "I can't protect you if you don't tell me the truth." The Doctor had said.

  "Fine, let me leave. I can take care of myself!"

  Both the Doctor and the shadow one snorted at me much to my anger.

  The fam has to interfered with our arguments. 

  "Cool off, the both of you!" Yaz demanded.

  Reluctant to leave for the next adventure but having no choice, I went with them. Another life-threatening incident passed with me rescuing Ryan, softened the Doctor and she apologies to me, sort of. 

  7777

  It finally happened. As Jack warned, the lone cyberman has come.

  The Doctor asked me the thing that the cyberman after so I told him about the cyberium. Jack did told me about it in passing. He was part of the alliance, after all. I guess he told me about it because he always planned to dump me at the Doctor. I admitted I hold a grudge against Jack for this still.

  The Doctor took me with her but instructed the fam and the rest to stay put. She asked me more about cyberium. I honestly don't know anymore but she kept pressing me, taking her frustration at me.

  To be honest, she frighten me at that moment, reminding me of Victorious.

  From the way the Doctor reacted when she explained about cyberman to the other, the shadow Doctor concluded that she must have lost someone to the cyberman.

  Bill Potts, my mind supplied. I knew she was supposed to be the Doctor's companion after Clara. Since Bill is not here anymore, I can only assume she is the one the Doctor lost.

  The Doctor raced against time competing with the cyberman called Ashad to get the cyberium before him.

  She eventually figured out the cyberium is possessing one of the residents in the house. She managed to trick the cyberium into leaving its current host.

  The cyberium is attracted to the Doctor for a host much to my horror as she started to blurt out something the Time Lord Victorious would say.

  I saw the shadow Doctor glanced at the other Doctor in amusement and curiosity. His eyes darkened with the lust for power. At that moment, he look so much like the real Victorious I have to believe he is truly him, not a pale imitation of him.

  He turned to look at me as he finally notice the look of dread on my face. "You see? The Doctor has always headed to this..." He said with a chilling smile. "It wasn't you who turned me, dearest (name)."

  "Get away..." I whispered in fear. I snapped out of it and yelled at the other Doctor, "Doctor, don't!" at the same time as Yaz.

  Thankfully, the Doctor snapped out of it too.

  The lone cyberman threaten to destroy the planet right that second if the Doctor refused him the cyberium.

  Having no choice, the Doctor give its back to him. I have failed Jack. I know she has no choice but this meant Jack and the alliance would be in danger again.

  As we returned to the Tardis, the Doctor made a plan to go after that asshat, I mean, Ashad. 

  She prepared some machinery in order to fight against the cybermen armies. At least she is confidence she could win this. 

  I planned to go with her to help and rescue Jack and then I am going to slap the hell out of him.

  7777

  Of course, things just don't worked as well as the Doctor planned. We are in the far future where the last of the human race located. I couldn't find Jack or the alliance.

  We are overpowered by the cybermen and got separated from each other. I ended up with Yaz and Graham while the Doctor is with Ryan.

  Somehow we ended up in cybership with the cybermen armies in the middle of waking up.

  We are trapped. Everyone is panicking. I heard Yaz tried to talk to the other Doctor via an unreliable communication device.

  I turned toward the shadow Doctor. "Do something!"

  He turned to me with a chilling smile. "I have taught you before, right?"

  I swallowed down my fear. "Please..."

  He sighed as if what I am asking him is too troublesome.

  I jumped when the steel door started to shake some more under the constant attack from the cybermen.

  "You remembered when you were taken from me by the Division?" He suddenly asked.

  I remembered it. I was taken, my mind half lobotomized in order to gain access on what I know of the Doctor. I woke up to everyone in the building died. I assumed Victorious did it.

  "I could activated the physic bomb I planted inside you."

  "What?!" This is the first time I heard this. "What the hell is that? Why do you insist of putting things in me?" I lost it at him. I am furious, wouldn't you be?

  "(name)!" Yaz called out to me in concern but I ignored her and the rest who thought I finally lost my marble.

  "Oh chill out, it won't kill you, well, only temporally." He said as he played with his nails.

  "Bastard!"

  "If I activated the psychic bomb, you and everyone in this ship will died, well not you obviously, and the cybermen but they will lost all function for roughly an hour or more. Enough time for you to escape, well, once you are resurrected that is." He said.

  "What about them?"

  "What about them?" He parroted. He shrugged. "Not my concern."

  "The hell with that! Save them too!" I demanded.

  "I warned you not to get attached..." He sounded bored now.

  "Find another way!"

  "Why should I?"

  "Please. You are the Doctor."

  "I'm not the Doctor anymore, remember?"

  "Fine, you are victorious! So prove it!! Save them and be victorious over the cybermen!!" I screamed at him, tears of desperation filled my eyes.

  He took a look at me and relents. "Fine."

  I let out a shaky relieved breath at his answer.

  He instructed me to tell the mechanic of the bunch with me to remove some electrical thingies to support enough for teleportation for all of us to escape.

  "It is not enough!" The mechanic said. "Only enough for four and there are seven of us!"

  "If only someone has a sonic screwdriver..." The shadow Doctor said mockingly. "Guess you have some decision to make, little (name), which four gets to escape with their life."

  I cursed the other Doctor for taking the sonic from me. To my surprise, Yaz pulled a sonic screwdriver from her bag.

  "She told me to give it back to you." Yaz explained.

  My mouth dropped open in shock. I laughed in near hysterical and turned to the shadow Doctor with a grin. "Tell me."

  He sighed in exasperation. "Fine."

  I used the sonic as instructed, giving the teleportation enough power to transport all seven. "Go!" I instructed Yaz and Graham and the rest to go first.

  "What about you?" Yaz demanded.

  "I have one last thing to do." I turned to the shadow Doctor as everyone left the ship. "Do it."

  He glanced at me with a look and smiled. "Being a martyr?"

  "Buying them some time. They are far enough not to get affected by the psychic bomb, correct?"

  "Correct."

  "And you are the one who said I will survived it so not a martyr."

  He hummed. "You sure?"

  "Do it."

  "As you wish."

  Just as the door crashed open, I screamed as he filled my head with so much pain it triggered the bomb creating a pulse of energy that sweep the cybermen off their feet.

  I clutched my heart as it was rudely stopped.

  The last thing I saw is the shadow Doctor hovering over me, muttering something I couldn't hear.

  "I only ask because triggering the bomb would send a signal directly to him..." He said. "He is coming, (name). I am coming."

  7777

  I slowly opened my eyes, found myself on the ground. "Oww..."

  The Doctor and the fam are there, surprised to see me alive.

  The Doctor scanned me with her sonic. "But...this is impossible." She blurted out. "You are only human, how can you...? You are immortal? Like Jack?"

  "Ugh stop talking. Can I get some water please?" I pleaded.

  Everyone stared at me weirdly but an old man thankfully gave me some water.

  The Doctor still couldn't get over the fact that I survived and demanded to know what I have been hiding from him.

  "Take it easy, doc, she did save our life." Graham said.

  The Doctor relented.

  "The cybermen..."

  "Out of commission for now. How did you do that?" The Doctor asked.

  "Tell you later."

  She glanced at me. "You better." She said firmly before turned to Ko Sharmus who showed us to the Boundary and there a portal opened.

  Both the Doctor and the shadow one blanched in horror when they recognized the ruins of Gallifrey.

  And then some random guy leaped out of the portal.

  "Master." I heard the Doctor spatted in disgust.

  "What?" I accidentally yelled. Last time, to my knowledge, the Master is Missy, though? What happened to her?

  "Like a pest...he just keep coming back, huh?" I heard the shadow Doctor said with a chuckle.

  The Master demanded the Doctor to go with him. She refused at first. But when he threaten to kill the rest of us, she relented.

  Reluctantly, she goes with the Master through the portal, instructing the rest of us to stay behind.

  "Follow them." The shadow Doctor demanded. 

  I stared at him as if he has lost his mind.

  "Do it!" The force of his words gave me headache.

  "Oh, alright! Geez!" I glared at him in annoyance but did as I told and the pounding headache lessened just a bit.

  Yaz and the other tried to stop me but I told them not to follow me.

  The Doctor is enraged when she saw me. "What the hell? (name), get back out there!"

  The Master is not pleased to see me either. "Control your pet, Doctor, or I will be forced to kill her."

  I glared at the shadow Doctor at my predicament of having two very angry Time Lord. "I have no choice, okay!" I said to them.

  The shadow Doctor chuckled and told me to say something for him intended for the Master.

  "Like hell, I'm gonna say that. He is going to kill me." I refused as I glared at the empty space beside me much to the confusion of two still very angry Time Lord. He wanted me to call him by his name 'Koschei'. I clutched my head. "Oh, fine!!"

  "You always have such a sort fuse, Koschei." I repeated word for word.

  Both the Doctor and the Master flinched and glared at me suspiciously.

  Great. Nice going. Is he planning to get myself killed?

  "How do you know that name?" The Master demanded.

  "He told me." I gesture to the empty space beside me.

  The Master stared at the empty space before chuckled darkly. "Your pet has gone insane, Doctor?"

  I stared at him flatly, trying to cover my fear. "The Doctor told me." which is the truth. "just not the Doctor you know." also truth since the Master technically never met bow-ties.

  The Doctor stared at me in confusion.

  "Yeah, don't care." The Master shrugged and pointed his gun at me as I raised my hand in surrender but the Doctor stood firmly in front of me, shielding me from him.

  "Don't you dare." The Doctor hissed at him.

  "You don't want to do that. Unless you want me stop both of your hearts." I said, more like repeating the shadow Doctor said.

  "Are you threatening me?" The Master look pissed.

  "(name), who are you talking with?" The Doctor turned around and grabbed both of my arms, demanding an answer out of me.

  "I..." Is this it? Do I have to tell her the truth? I turned to look at the shadow Doctor. I swallowed down hard as I look at the Doctor and then at the Master. "To answer your question, yes, that was a threat. How do you think I made the cybermen lost his function, Doctor? I have a psychic bomb inside me, killing me would trigger it, would kill myself and stopped both of your hearts. So unless you want an early death, I suggest you temper yourself." I said as flat as possible.

  Both Time Lords stared at me in shock.

  "Psychic bomb? Who did that to you?" The Doctor demanded in concern and slight fear.

  "The Doctor did." I said softly.

  She released me as if stunned.

  The Master curiously looked at me and the Doctor. "Oh fuck this, you ruined my moments, ape!"

  "(name)..." The Doctor stared at me as if I grow two head suddenly.

  "Come on you two, we need to be somewhere else right now!" The Master demanded.

  The Doctor grabbed my hand and took me with her as the Master led us the ruin of the citadel.

  As we entered the hall of matrix chamber, the Master suddenly hit me over the head, causing to collapse on the floor, losing my consciousness.

  Both Doctor and the shadow Doctor are enraged at my behalf. The Master claimed he need her attention on him, not on her stupid pet.

  7777

  I woke up to huge commotion. The Master is yelling something at a hologram of Ashad and his armies, asking them what happened. We could heard explosion. He turned to the Doctor asking her what has she done but the Doctor claimed it wasn't her.

  They were shouting at each other. Until a signal caught on his communication device.

  "A signal. The four taps of two hearts." The Master suddenly said in confusion.

  I glanced at those two as they started to bicker again. They are the last two Time Lords, so who was it that send him a signal?

  My heart suddenly beats faster as dread filled me.

  "The signal is getting close but something seemed to prevented it to come through..." the Doctor said as she pulled her sonic at the device that now emitting some sort of pulse. A portal suddenly appeared in the middle of the room.

  I turned toward the shadow Doctor who look at me fondly. I couldn't decipher the meaning of it for a time. He suddenly started to fade away and my eyes widened as I suddenly have a realization.

  "No!!" I shouted at both the Doctor and the Master trying to make them stop just as a pulse of energy exploded knocking all of us off our feet and I lost my consciousness once more.

  7777

  The portal opened. A man in bow-ties and dark purple suit stepped out of it.

  The Doctor and the Master groaned on the floor. They looked up to see the newcomer.

  The Doctor froze in shock when she saw her past-self. Her mouth dropped open.

  He fixed his bow-ties with a grin. "Finally..." He turned and glanced at the other two Time Lords. "Hello there."

  "Who the hell are you?" The Master asked.

  "Victorious, at your service." He said, bowing mockingly at them.

  The Doctor's face paled at the name. "But you can't be..."

  "Oh? Why not?" He asked.

  "You were me. And I never, he never..."

  "You are the Doctor. Interesting." He said, eyes gleaming in excitement.

  "You...are not me." The Doctor finally realized.

  Victorious turned toward the unconscious human at the floor. His eyes softened considerably as he walked and squatted before the human, one hand gently removed the strand of hairs covering the face. "I guess even here, you couldn't escape a Me after all, huh?" he said. He sighed as he cradled the human into his arms. His forehead touches the human gently. "Seemed like you still keep some secret from me too..." He glanced at the Time Lady before him with a chilling smile before turning to look at his human again. "You bad, bad girl, what is to be done with this?"

    A/N: I don’t know if there will be more. Maybe if inspiration hit, I will. Bear in mind, if I do write more, I might just add it in the same post instead of making another one so stay tunes? But for now, TTFN.

#doctor who x reader #thirteenth doctor x reader #eleventh doctor x reader #doctor who fanfiction #thirteenth doctor imagine #eleventh doctor imagine #shiefenwrites

[bubmyg]

orchid - myg

pairing: yoongi x reader

genre/warnings: fluff, angst, childhood best friends to lovers, fake engagement au? kind of?, emotional constipation to the max, rapper/singer!yoongi, wedding planner!reader; set in a beach side town because i can’t help myself, loosely based off like three different hallmark movies, told entirely in yoongi’s pov, random svt members appear too

word count: 19,079

summary: everyone has a theory as to why renowned singer songwriter min suga hasn’t released an album in over two years but none of those theories point to a crippling inspiration block. or to a wedding. or the one where yoongi doesn’t know his fiancé's favorite flower but he knows yours.

a/n: the longest fic and the hardest fic i’ve ever written is done. i’ve never written something that was this invested completely from a member’s point of view so this was certainly something new and challenging and fun! i hope u enjoy (pls let me know if u do) and thank u for reading this monster jfkjsld

Petals of bleeding purple, a hard line in the center of white where blending hadn’t been buffed out with a brush, almost pink meeting in a jagged line as if dipped onto nature by the curved tip of a damp paintbrush. They came in uneven waves, plucked from their stem to rest on the edges of Yoongi’s yellow notepad. His smile grew with the volume of words he scrawled across the page, patient in gently brushing them aside with the curve of his tiniest finger the longer you fiddled with the flowers in your grasp. 

“Sorry,” You hushed after the third time he’d nudged the offending petals aside, burying them in grains of sand that moved each time you shifted closer to him. He dropped his pen just to glance at you, something bleeding into his own vital organ at the way your eyes were comically, genuinely, dilated in apology. 

“S’okay,” Yoongi’s hand fist in the sand behind him, lounging backward. “I suppose I should be, you know, talking to you.”

“Why?” You gently shoved at his shoulder, “Special occasion?”

His cheek lulled against his arm, eyes falling shot as the corners of his mouth turned up. One deep inhale and he hummed, “—going to miss you, you know?”

Your grasp didn’t move from his arm, instead sliding downward to curve your fingers around his elbow. When he didn’t budge, you shifted closer, squashing any remaining petals below your thighs as you settled your cheek against his sleeve. “Are you really, though?”

Yoongi’s eyes shot open, chin pointing down towards you, “Are you serious?”

A sliver of your irises appeared under your eyelashes, turning away into his grasp after a second to shrug. 

“Well…” He let out a grunt as he shifted, dropping his notepad and pen on top of his nearby bag, “I probably won’t miss you catching crabs just to drop them down the back of my shirt. I won’t fondly remember that time you shoved me into the tide with my work uniform on. I definitely will be forgetting your haircut in seventh grade—” You smacked his thigh, earning a gentle grin as he jostled his arm, coaxing you to look at him. 

“But you?” Yoongi reached past his bag, gathering one of the flowers you’d plucked into diligent fingers. The crooked end of his index finger pleated it behind your ear, hand hovering there. He leaned closer instead, heart swelling in the same way your pupils dilated to collect all the celestial bodies glittering on the push and pull of the tide beyond your tiny campsite. 

He shook his head, barely a twitch in his neck, “I could never forget you, angel.”

“Good!” 

Yoongi startled forward instead of back, bashing your foreheads together with an audible, hollow sounding thump. He groaned in time with your scrambling, your touch leaving him to instead stretch over his lap, rustling around in your own bag. It didn’t come without you digging your palm into his inner thigh, forcing another tiny grunt from Yoongi’s mouth before you settled again, a safe distance away. 

He eyed you again, welt quickly swelling onto the crown of his hairline, sand digging into the dip in his eyelids. You held something in cupped palms and he had half the mind to assume it was a crab to dump down his shirt like some sort of sick joke. 

But Yoongi supposed the sick joke was on him because in a blur of momentary pain and a two percent chance that you’d snatched a ghost crab out of the darkness, you were still the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. 

“—because I bought you something to remember me by.”

Yoongi’s studio collected trinkets. A baseball jersey with his stage name plastered across the back draped to his chair. A tiny Kumamon plush squished between his monitor and a sea turtle shaped coaster that held his favorite coffee tervis. An oxymoron of a welcome mat with a brutish cat advertising go away. 

A framed platinum record for his debut single encased on either side by a song of the year and a record of the year trophy. Just trinkets. 

Something meticulous to his nature never moved his items. Their arrangement created some sense of security and warmth, feet stepping out of rubber sole slippers in the hallway to the thick grey rug over the tile floor like brushing away a curtain of gathered mist in the haze of an already uneasy conscious. The programs on his massive computer monitors didn’t help, nor did his untouched keyboard or the various other pieces of equipment scattered with less than neat wires over his work space. 

But the trinkets didn’t move. That he could count on. 

The press, he could count on them too. Their newest angle, an attempt to prod their way into his growing collection of items, was plastering a grainy image of himself onto their glossy covered magazine front. He could handle the images when they were nothing but background noise in his email, a notification from an intern in marketing that he’d been caught. Yoongi deleted the email with a good conscience. Going to a bar didn’t warrant front page gossip news. 

He’d seen it all in two years since releasing any substantial work. The first guess had been that his contract was under negotiation. Dropped after successful debut? Then he’d signed for five more years and they had to scramble for something else. A fake feud with long time soloist Jung Hoseok, battle of the company’s two superstars, who will come out on top? Hoseok released new music first. Yoongi had producing credits on it. 

And Hoseok was the other shadow in the grainy press image in the present day, his face cut off by the massive pink banner that curled around the perimeter of the magazine’s layout. 

Excessive partying? The headline read. Yoongi pressed his thumb to the center of the cover, bending the magazine as he lifted it closer. Font a handful of sizes smaller than the title looped underneath the image, the curled edges of characters slipped around his throat and stalling his sharp inhale for a half second. 

Min Suga, one hit wonder? New questions as hiatus stretched toward the two year mark. 

The vibration of his cellphone startled him out of his trance. The magazine flopped forward in his grasp, giving out to curl over his knuckles as he poked at the device with his free index finger. 

“Hey.”

Yoongi dragged his fingers down his cheek, letting the limp magazine rest against his thigh. “Yeah, Tae?”

“Are you working on something?”

His blank monitor mocked him, the plain black screen with massive SUGA written through the center ridiculously simplistic and frustratingly idle. Yoongi shook his head even though his manager couldn’t see him over speaker phone. “No.”

“Great, they want you in the conference room in ten,” Taehyung’s voice dropped an octave, falling out of professionalism as he casually asked, “Have you seen the headlines?”

“Yeah,” Yoongi let the magazine fly, hitting the free space near his keyboard with a smack and a tinkling noise. Just another trinket. “What do they want me for?”

“To talk about the headlines,” He could hear the smile in Taehyung’s voice and he could hear the way it erased at Yoongi’s lack of response. “No we’ve...figured out a way to move forward from this. From all of this. Maybe. Just be here, alright?”

“Where else would I go?”

“I don’t know, the bar?”

Yoongi let himself laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation. The last time he’d set foot in a club was the last time he’d been photographed in one. An incident that happened far before his first album when he’d just been signed to the label from some offhanded success on a self published streaming site. 

“Watch it.”

“Didn’t know you still had it in you, old man,” Yoongi could sense Taehyung beaming and he relaxed. Marginally. 

“Whatever. See you in a few.”

His phone hit his work space with another elicited click of soft against glass. The reflection of his idle monitors curved over the object in question, contouring shadows around the silver and purple object until Yoongi reached for it, dragging it out from underneath where he’d shoved the magazine. 

A tiny glass orchid purposed to be a pin with the sharpness of a gold latch strapped to the back teetered in Yoongi’s open palm. A misplaced trinket. He clutched it tightly, letting the smooth edges cool into the calloused lines of his hand as he stood from his desk chair, safely depositing the object a tier up on his desk, far away from any further misplacement. 

The magazine didn’t last long in Yoongi’s collection, though. He rolled it, depositing it with a heavy thump into a trash bin on his way out the door. 

Taehyung fidgeted in time with Seungcheol shuffling papers at the head of the small conference table. He crossed his legs, uncrossed, shuffled to the side, fingered at the edge of his own stack of folders slipped sideways from their neat tower, shifted enough to bump shoulders with Yoongi where he sat white knuckled in the chair directly next to him. Yoongi nudged him back, intentional, reaching over to pat his thigh until he settled. His manager and friend glanced at him with wide eyes and Yoongi shrugged, retracting his hand to fold it with the latter then shoved intertwined fingers between his thighs. 

“How’s the writing coming?” Seungcheol asked finally. He hadn’t looked up, continuing to filter through a myriad of stapled packets, one eyebrow cocked into styled bangs. 

Yoongi shrugged again, features wincing. His shoulders hunched from the curl of his stature into himself but he allowed his muscles to relax, and inverted shrug. “No different,” It was shame at himself in his voice, at the nagging innards that told him he needed to make music and at the smoldering creative synapses that refused to fire anymore. Softly, he added, “But I’m working on it.”

“Have you spoken with Jihoon?” Seungcheol looked up then, enough to flatten a packet to the table and slide it across. It was a list of credited songs to said company producer, ones Yoongi would have to do no more than record over his soft vocaled friend and send out a release date to the public. 

The high value Yoongi held his art to, personal and important to him, loomed in his subconscious. Somewhere in the archive he was sure he could connect to Jihoon’s words, dig out enough content to compile into an EP and sate the media. 

But it was the principal of the thing. 

“I’ll figure it out.”

Seungcheol accepted the packet when Yoongi pushed it back, nodding with folded fingers settling over the paper. “About the press...recently—”

“We have an idea!”

Yoongi glanced at Taehyung like he’d grown a second nose from the round of his smiling cheek but Seungcheol didn’t seem affected, nodding with a gentle smile curving upwards on his lips. “Go on, Taehyung. You explain.”

It was only the three individuals in the cramped conference room, a spare in the back corner of the company hallways that was grabbed for the sake of privacy and the ability to drop formalities between the artist, manager, and CEO who’d become easy friends. Yet, Taehyung’s dramatic pacing around the perimeter of the room suggested he was plotting a multi-million dollar investment to a swath of shareholders. 

“What’s the one thing in the world that takes ages to plan?”

Yoongi squinted, “...I don’t believe that description is limited to one thing.”

Taehyung ignored him, “When googling this very thing, there are to do lists that range anywhere from a ten step process to an eighty-eight step process, depending on how you choose to split up the planning…”

“It’s an event in which there is an entire job created to plan the very thing.”

“Event planners are a universal job,” Yoongi sighed, “Go on.”

Taehyung’s steps stalled, one arm still folded behind his back, the latter lifting one finger in Yoongi’s direction. “What’s the one, single most romantic day and event that will ever happen in a couples life?”

“Romance is not limited to a singular interaction and often the horrors of capitalism prey on that insecurity when in reality, leaving someone their favorite coffee in their favorite coffee mug before they go to work can be considered romance—”

“Correct!” Taehyung remained unaffected by his rant, letting his wrist hinge to point a stiff index finger in Yoongi’s direction, “If one day you happen to find someone willing to put up with those kind of statements, what would you like to do to them? Or with them, I guess—”

Seungcheol sighed, brushing his paperwork aside to clatter ring clad fingers against the top of the conference table. “How do you feel about getting engaged?”

Yoongi briefly thought the world had chosen that exact moment to flood the remaining thirty percent of it’s surface with water, voices sounding far away as if muffled by an echo and thirty pounds of wool. He managed to pull himself out of it by actually looking at something blue, the stretch of skyline on the tiny window just beyond Seungcheol’s shoulder and even if towers of smoke created faux clouds, it still reminded him to breathe. 

As a result, a neanderthal question tumbled out of pouted lips, “To who?”

“Someone,” If Yoongi weren’t fond of the organization in his files, he would have tossed one like a frisbee directly at Taehyung’s neck. His manager flailed his hands as if it were simple, “Anyone! That’s the beauty of the plan.”

Seungcheol had shifted forward to bury his face in intertwined fingers, muffling the audible sigh he let out. “At first, we thought to sign a contract with someone within the company,” Red marks were left in the path of his fingertips dragging down from underneath his eyelids, “But the aftermath of the eventual breakup would be too much for both parties. We can’t do that, not to someone in or outside the agency—”

“I wouldn’t do that anyway,” Yoongi’s levelheaded sternness faltered as he dropped his gaze to the fiddling fingers in his lap, “This is all my fault. I’m not incidentally sharing my burden with someone innocent.”

“Besides—” He tried to smile, “—not sure you could get anyone to want to fake marry me.”

“You are so dense,” Taehyung scoffed, “Half our talent would add a dating clause to their contract right now if you were on the other end of it.”

A deep spring pink blossomed in jagged puzzle pieces over Yoongi’s bare cheeks and he was thankful for the lack of schedule and makeup as he involuntarily lifted a hand to rub at the back of his neck. 

“Essentially, your partner will remain nameless,” Seungcheol drew a shape on the table with his nail, “We’ll disguise them as a non-famous individual. Something about a short term relationship but a long term planning process for the wedding—” He nodded solemnly, “—that’ll be why your music has been on hold.”

He wasn’t done, lifting his finger from the table, “The suddenness and the eventual break up of the relationship will be a win win. Each will buy you time to write.”

“And you know what else?” Taehyung had sat again, barely, dangerously hovering on the edge of his chair as he leaned toward Yoongi. “You can go home!”

Another folder glided across the table, coming to a stop in front of Yoongi’s furrowed eyebrows. He tucked his thumb inside, flipping it open to be met with a full page ad, one that had his breath stalling in his throat and his tongue curling into a dried knot. 

“There’s still a wedding business that runs out of your parents’ former home.” 

Yoongi watched you spread the petals with a delicate touch, fingers placing pressure in the sand as you instead created them a tiny rut to rest in, safer from the curl of gentle night breezes brushing off the calmed waves. His gaze trailed in a jagged line, from the ballpoint tip of his pen to the half drawn character crooked between the lines on his yellow notepad to the stretch of his legs outward on the tiny embankment to the crouched curl of your stature. Finally you settled, one full flower in cupped palms, breeze catching the petals there to drape them across the lines in your hands. 

“Did…” He paused when you glanced at him quizzically, “You got the last of the contract details finalized, yes?”

A bright smile encased your features at his question, nodding, “Same day you signed your contract, superstar!—” You leaned closer, hand falling over his knee and he tensed, “Technically I’m a business owner now. You should be nicer to me.”

“So you never finished the application then?” You tilted your head and Yoongi clarified, “School. Scholarship. The city…” My city. 

A quiet smile graced the wrinkles next to your eyes even if your teeth died from it, dropping your chin. One petal plucked from it’s center, lifted by the pinch of your fingers until the wind caught it and it drifted toward Yoongi, slipping up over the spine of his notepad and settling against his belt. 

“I don’t need a degree to teach me a business I already manage,” You said kindly. “If your parents felt confident enough to completely sign it over to me in their retirement, then I suppose we’ll just have to trust their judgement.” 

You tilted your head, “Why? Do you not trust me?”

Yoongi swallowed. He wasn’t holding his bag, but it felt heavier in that moment, like it’s very important contents were weighing on the straps slung to shoulders that drooped involuntarily. You’d gone back to plucking at your flower by the time he gathered himself, eyebrow still raised albeit. 

“No, no, it’s not that,” The next mark on his page was angrier, dark and scuffing through thin pages to leave flakes in its wake. “You’ll do great.”

“I…” Your speech stalled but your petal picking didn’t, “You know, up until I signed the contract, the business was yours to have. Your parents would have left and still would leave it to you in a heartbeat.”

“I don’t want to run the business. You do. We both know that,” And he meant it. Taking over the family business had never been more than a joke passed over dinner and the occasional holiday, especially not when you’d earned full time employment there. His parents had never been interested much in the idea of keeping it in the family. It hadn’t started that way and there was no reason for it to be such in the future. Why allow you to spend thousands of dollars to start your own aspirations from the ground up when you could continue something that had only improved in legacy from your thoughts and ideals in the time you’d been employed there, anyway. 

Still, Yoongi knew you felt a certain level of apprehension towards signing the contract. There were invisible standards to hold up in your mind, just like there were invisible boundaries you desperately never wanted to cross. 

There was a feeling of indebt clouding the way your clammy fingers shook to sign the paper on the same dinner table you’d been invited in to by the boy whose gum filled smile only shined for you. 

The petals had stopped drifting against his calves again. He glanced at your shoulders rounding, arms limp between the part of your thighs. 

“You’re sure?”

Yoongi nudged your shoulder, incessant until you looked at him.

“I’m sure.” 

Your face grinned at Yoongi in melded inks, ones clearly from the office printer in Taehyung’s office slapped onto low grade, basic copy paper. 

“Do you know the owner, by any chance?” Seungcheol nodded toward the document in Yoongi’s possession, “The person who bought it from your parents?”

Purple specks bled into pink when he dropped the folder to the table, instead using the last link of his middle finger to rub at his eyelid. 

“No,” He met the tattered edge of his fingernail instead of the eyes of his boss, “I have no idea who took it over after them.”

Fingertips patterned a beat to the table top, lining over Seungcheol’s soft hums as he considered the information, shuffling a bit more at his paperwork. 

“Story will hit the press in three days. Your flight will leave in a week. I’ll email you the itinerary but essentially there will be a series of different press dockets done in your time at home—” Seungcheol gestured vaguely, “—engagement photos, staged bits of you planning, things to make it believable, completely produced and sent by us, of course. Keep the prying away from your next album.”

“We’ll insinuate that this is a wedding you’ve been planning for a while, something you’ve been fronting the majority of the work for in the comfort of your ridiculously romantic seaside hometown.”

Yoongi set his shoulders after a half heartbeat of silence, one that earned Taehyung’s gaze on the side of his face, “Is that our only option?”

“Of course not. It’s an idea, no more no less,” Seungcheol sighed, “Unfortunately, we’re to the point where there is only so much I can do for your image. Refuting claims of going to a club seems ridiculous, but the narrative is out there now. No one cares that you were there with Hoseok, they only remember their fabricated feud.”

A gentle smile crossed his lips, “An inspiration block isn’t a good story until there’s music that comes out of it.”

“How do I keep—” Yoongi’s tongue dried on your name, stuttering it back into his throat as he corrected, “How do we keep those close to the situation from telling the press?”

“We’ll give the wedding planner a check. Otherwise, no one should know the wedding is fake. Improve authenticity if anyone gets a hold of the gas station attendant who met you one time,” Seungcheol made air quotes with his fingers, “Trusted sources, you know.”

“...is that something we should be worried about?” He leaned forward in his chair, “Someone leaking something to the press, that is?”

Yoongi swallowed. His chin broke the rigidity of his stature first, dropping, then shaking, fists on curling outward until flattened palms curled around the edge of the table. 

“No,” He said finally, “Shouldn’t be an issue.”

Particular details he knew would be in various reminder emails and sent by text from Taehyung well in advance became background noise to him, like the water from earlier had returned and lipped over his ear canals. They’d taken his lack of protest as a go ahead on the plan, discussing contract details for legality and file purposes without much input from Yoongi. He wasn’t going to deny them, anyway. No matter what the selfish ball unfurling in the sinking pit of his stomach told him to feel. 

Taehyung standing caused him to stand, numb in moving as his brain registered the quiet dismissal without his conscious quite catching up. It was his name that startled him enough to focus, Seungcheol standing opposite him with a hand resting on the back of the chair he previously sat in. 

“Enjoy your trip home,” It wasn’t a suggestion, it was a request. The next bit was a comfort, “It’ll come back.”

In the light of his trinkets, Yoongi lounged into his office chair, carefully pulling his phone to his face. The expected text messages were there, ones Taehyung had labeled with giant letters WRITE THIS DOWN WHEN YOU OPEN IT, an email from Seungcheol with his flight information, and an obligatory email from Jihoon that he assumed was at the prodding of their shared boss. He swiped past all of them with a delicate index finger, instead tapping around meticulously organized folders until he found his contacts. 

Phone changes had been abundant through his young career but he maintained a vast majority of the information. Including your name, one he scrolled by without truly remembering if it were there but quietly hoping to see anyway. He let that same finger hover over the name, gathering enough courage only to press on it to pull up the full contact page but not to hit the tiny blue phone hovering out next to the number. 

Instead, he slipped his phone to his desktop, shaking awake his idle screen to click onto an internet browser. The business name appeared in the search box from a prior investigation but Yoongi typed it all out anyway, making sure to add the town so that the relevant place was pulled up. 

The website was a bit generic but it was leaps and bounds ahead of what it had been when his parents still held control all those years ago. In any case, it was a higher quality version that the manila folder Seungcheol had presented him with, that a screen cap of the business homepage that currently stared at Yoongi in ridiculously bright pixels. 

Incidentally, the cursor hovered over your picture, one slightly bigger than the panels of options and tabs scattered underneath. His gaze wandered from the familiar lines of your smile to the orchid he’d placed aside earlier, gaze wavering until he could see the reflection of the glass in the computer monitor. 

Long fingers plucked the trinket out of it’s place for the second time that day, letting it rest to the heel of Yoongi’s palm as he placed it between his thighs, sighing. 

“See you soon, angel.”

Muscle memory presents in things like riding a bike, something your body never quite forgets how to do. But even the trained cyclist will bobble after years of not climbing aboard their vehicle or at the very least, they certainly won’t be hitting their personal record the first time back out. In a similar fashion, Yoongi’s wrist remained limp over the head of his steering wheel, bypassing the correct turn twice. 

It wasn’t that he was lost. He recognized his surroundings once engulfed further into the scenery, pulled into the days of his youth and budding adulthood. But it wasn’t his final destination. 

By the third time his rental SUV rolled past the gravel turnoff, he started to think his subconscious was doing it on purpose. 

His conscious remembered the back way, guiding his car out to the highway that circumvented the coast line, blue blurring into the early afternoon sky until he was almost startled by the return of trees as the road curved back on to land. A few purposeful turns later and his phone GPS, a backup that he’d tuned out the nagging of, happily informed him you’ve arrived. 

The grass was a bit greener than he remembered, almost plush under his tennis shoes as he stepped out of the car. The flowers definitely were, decorated meticulously around varying archways, wire and wooden in build, chevron patterns of pink and purple and blue and yellow and everything in between. Paneled outsides of the main building appeared to have been freshly painted, a red outlined in white dirtied near where the cinder block foundation peeked up from the ground and the mulch collected in the landscaping. 

Yoongi scuffed his way to the winding dirt path that led to the front door of the two story farmhouse, the only thing that appeared as though it hadn’t changed. Bits of gravel stuck here and there but the path was otherwise a beige dirt, dust clinging to the ground from the lack of rain and kicking up around Yoongi’s ankles as he shuffled. Ground lanterns lined the way, solar panels absorbing the heat for their evening duty, some staked out of the ground more so than others, tilted at all angles but the effect in the night was there regardless.

A handful of paces from the house was a wooden sign, it’s white outer edge not fairing the same as the house as chips were missing to show the wood underneath, splinters poking out in all directions otherwise. Most were covered by stacks of hay bales positioned strategically around more clay pots of flowers, ones that had started their vining process up the rough posts. 

Your face wasn’t there this time but your logo was, contact information splayed out underneath the looping script, Be Happy, white on top of a powder blue. You hadn’t changed the name when you took over ownership. Yoongi had a size too small t-shirt somewhere deep in the recesses of his closet with the same name in opposite colors, black and white. You’d looked ridiculous when you worked events together, even when you returned back to the house and spent hours on the front porch swing sipping slightly unbalanced lemonade Yoongi made on the spot while shit talking the groom.  

The memories, plural in the way they swirled to the forefront of his conscious at the first step of his sole onto the lowest porch step, elicited a tiny upward curl to the outer seam of his lips. Curled fists stuffed their way into the pockets of his pants, hanging his head as he vaulted another step up until two heeled boots cinched at the ankle came into his view. 

The lipped edges of his white bucket hat flopped into his direct line of sight but he still managed to register a lot of black, skin tight in a pair of ripped jeans, in the ajar hang of a leather jacket on toned collarbones, in the widen of perfectly round irises that blinked three consecutive times at Yoongi’s frozen figure. 

“Suga?” The man squeaked, taking another step backward on the staircase. “What are you....why are you....”

“How did you get to this town of all places?”

Yoongi’s lips parted just enough to let out a noise that would stall the younger man, a prolonged hum until he finally settled on the gentle answer, a tease in a monotone, “By plane and then rental car.”

The black figure giggled, giggled, a high pitched noise that made his features crunch up in the center of his nose. In his distraction at Yoongi’s poor attempt at humor, he rushed out your name, something that made the younger man pause in his laughter fit to cock an eyebrow. 

“Do you need to....” The poor man blinked again, chin cocking in the slightest, “Are you needing…” A high pitched noise of confusion came from the back of his throat and his chin twitched the opposite direction, “How do you know Y/N?” 

Yoongi’s lips pressed into his cheeks again, just for a fraction of a second, “Small world—” Determined yet wobbly steps carried him to stand level with the man yet still leaving him a few inches below eye level. Sharply, he stuck out a hand, “—Yoongi.”

“What—”

“Call me Yoongi,” Yoongi slipped his bucket hat off with his free hand, letting black locks fluff in static pieces around his eyelashes, “Please.”

“Jeongguk. Jeon Jeongguk,” The younger man surprised Yoongi by grasping his palm with both hands, giving it a firm shake. He continued to stay attached to him as he turned up toward the house, eyes darting wildly until he chirped, “T-they’re out right now but if you want to come inside, I can go see if I can find—”

“That would be great,” Yoongi smiled kindly, letting his hand stay in Jeongguk’s grasp as the younger enthusiastically began to drag him toward the front door. 

A lot of things appeared to be updated from when Yoongi resided within the creaking floorboards of the house yet somehow, you’d tastefully managed to keep its original charm. There wasn’t anything that said you couldn’t update whatever you pleased, you owned the house and you owned the business, his parents happy to hand over everything in favor of an easy retirement a few cities up the coast, a bit more lively than the sleepy, tourist free town they’d spent the majority of their adult lives in. Even then, Yoongi found himself oddly charmed by the way you’d retained a lot of what you’d grown up around too, a consistent visitor from your cognitive teenage years to a steady employee through high school and college. 

It was between admiring the sealer you’d chosen for the hardwood floors and wondering how you’d so artfully covered up the floral wallpaper his mother insisted on piling onto drywall that Yoongi’s heart stopped beating somewhere in the base of his throat, resuming it’s patter at a skyrocketing pace as it shot downward into the pit of his stomach. 

There was something to the low sitting wardrobe piece kept in the foyer of the business section of the house that Yoongi couldn’t quite understand. In the end, he decided it was probably due to the fact that none of the drawers would quite stay on their tracks, sticking shut when you tugged on their flapping gold handles after twirling tiny gold bars into minuscule locks and then tipping out and forward when you finally could get them out, puffs of dust curling outward from the harsh scratch of wood on wood in the process. 

Maybe it was that the top left drawer stayed unlocked at all times, enough to harbor a cardboard box that kept the keys for the rest of the drawers. Maybe it was that he knew there was nothing in the locked drawers aside from some decades old paperwork, a handful of paper grocery bags, and his every day personal items, ones that never stayed in there during business hours. 

That is, until he started storing a few secrets underneath his wallet and car keys. 

The first secret didn’t remain that way for long. Plane tickets were booked just as a formality but they signified so much more, like the unsigned contract he’d had emailed to him in the middle of recording something on his half dead microphone to upload to the very account that had pushed him toward getting recognized by an entertainment company. Unsigned quickly became signed and synonymous with the day it no longer became a secret, breaking the news to his parents that he wouldn’t be going back to university after the summer of catering to carrying any and all truckloads of equipment associated with a wedding planner to and from their positions. Yoongi was careful then, softening the news as to why there was a new key on his lanyard and garnering the warmth that his announcement of finding an apartment near his new job had lessened his parents' apprehensions in the slightest. 

Then there was you. The person who’d started off as willing to listen to his halfhearted rants about basketball and the specifics of what an angry bride sounded like over crust-less peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and eventually became the person his parents trusted with hearing those complaints firsthand. In a roundabout way, he had your eventual co-workership to thank for starting his career, giving him more time to write and record and publish, particularly when you lessened your hours at your shared university in order to take over a greater role at the business. 

In Yoongi’s mind, the ideal scenario was the one with the highest probability of becoming reality. He would sign with an entertainment company not minutes away from a university with a high ranked business graduate school. You would get into said graduate school, giving his parents a final few years to iron out any details they wished for your eventual takeover. 

He would have enough time to translate song lyrics into Yoongi words and effectively cure part of the yearning in his heart that dragged his chest first toward you anytime you were in his general vicinity. 

The addition of you to his secret drawer came in the form of a tiny velvet box, the first step toward allowing his yearning to manifest in an exterior way rather than remaining simply as his heart swelling and spilling between the spaces in his rib cage. 

Yoongi took the staircase two at a time, dropping onto the ground floor with a resounding creak. Socked feet pulled at the various splinters formed between the spaces in hardwood as he made his way through the silent business level of the house. His plane tickets and apartment key came out of hiding, resting on top of the wooden piece of furniture as to not forget them with the addition of his massive grey suitcase stationed next to the refrigerator two rooms over. He left the normal essentials though, allowing himself that familiarity in what would be his last night in the house potentially for good. 

Meticulous fingers balanced the proper key between the hole underneath the handle, mechanical click making Yoongi’s tongue pull back into his mouth in triumph as one hearty tug had the drawer popping free. He shrugged his backpack from one shoulder, enough to deposit his wallet into the front pouch and snag his keys on the twirl of his index finger. The next object made his throat dry, digits clasping around the box with a hard swallow. 

If you can’t see it, it can’t make you anxious. Yoongi promptly hid it away next to his wallet, shoving his arm back through the dangling backpack strap and striding for the front door. 

You seemed to be just as startled as his most vital organ, pausing your advancements into the house just in front of the heavy piece of furniture, loose knobs rattling with the steps you took. Yoongi instead scrambled, tripping out of the oak chair Jeongguk had left him in when he’d scurried away in search of you. In the process, his hip nudged at the corner of the round conference table, scuffing across the floor and effectively rattling all the metal again. And every other loose object in the house, it seemed. 

“Yoongi?” Your voice came out soft, lips parting like a fish out of water. Your apprehension lasted long enough for a soft smile to corner into the seam of his lips before you were coughing, shaking your head as your stature set, “What can I do for you?”

The bashful smile spread into a bit of heat that sprinkled his cheeks and his hand touched his neck, shoulders hunching. “Uhh—” He squinted from underneath his eyelashes, “—do you happen to plan weddings?”

He missed the way your stature froze again, rigid all the way down to the tips of your toes that rooted to the ground inside your shoes, gaze instead jerking to the squeak of delight Jeongguk let out from the doorway. The younger’s eyes widened when your gaze whipped to him, trying to retreat outside before you could scold him but to no avail. 

“Can you go finish loading the archway into the trailer for me?” Jeongguk nodded frantically, another step dragging the door with him until you added an octave louder, “The sunflower pots go with it, not the petunias.” His got it! was muffled by the echoing shut of the front door. 

“Thank you. I wasn’t trying to cause any trouble—”

“Sit.”

Yoongi plopped directly down into the chair, watching with pursed lips and round eyes as you drug out the chair across from him, taking your time in sliding to the end of the wood. A sharp inhale racked your shoulders, keeping your gaze on the grain of wood where it peaked out from the lace table runner curled down the center of the furniture until you finally looked at him. 

“No how are you? No how’s business going? No stack of signed CDs for me to hand out to customers as incentive?” Your eyebrows furrowed in teasing but the light didn’t quite reach your full smile. Not the one Yoongi remembered. “Just a I’m getting married.” 

“I didn’t say that.”

“You implied it.”

Yoongi’s smile softened, leaning forward until one of his hands could encase the fiddling of yours. You glanced at him between picking a bit of skin from around your thumb nail. 

“How have you been, angel?”

It was childish, the way you pulled your hands against your chest, and there was still a hint of something in your voice, teasing, “No, too late now.”

He shook his head, a soundless laugh leaving through his nose. “Business seems to be going well. I see you’ve made a lot of upgrades on the property—”

“I told you,” Your arms instead threaded at your chest, leaning back into the chair, “You are too late. Should have done those formalities first.”

“Ah, right. Customer treatment now?”

“What’s your spouse's name?” You shifted again, enough to cross your legs, “For the paperwork. Not for the press.”

Part of Seungcheol’s monologue curled into his mind in that second but he had no reason to believe you were series. He shook his head, earning a laugh from you that confirmed his suspicions. You were kidding about the last part. 

“That’s actually, uhm—” Yoongi turned, glancing in the general direction of the staircase, “—is there anyone else around?”

“Jeongguk is my only employee. Spill, who are they?”

“Have you...read anything about me lately?”

“Truthfully, Yoongi—” Your arms uncrossed to grip the chair underneath you, legs unfolding to place your feet flat on the ground, “—I try not to.”

Yoongi nodded. Right. You’re the one who left. You’re the one who stopped returning phone calls. 

“The press hasn’t exactly been...patient in waiting for my second album. The negative press has piled on so much that it’s started to reflect on my image and frankly the state of my agency.”

“Is any of it true?”

He blinked at you, “Last week they contrived the image of me being an excessive party-er.”

“Right, they have no idea then.”

Part of Yoongi grew warm at your conviction. “I suppose…”

“The idea is to create positive press with a story my agency can control.”

“Ah, so to fake a wedding,” You nodded gravely, “Everyone loves a celebrity wedding.”

That’s what Taehyung said. “I guess. They thought if they sent me home, that it would give greater meaning to the story. That I’ve been pining at home trying to make the wedding perfect for all these months.”

“And your music?”

Yoongi blinked, finding you leaning forward again with your fingers clasped together, thumbs rubbing at each other. “What about it?”

“Why is it so delayed?” You were gentle again in your obvious statement, “You used to write a song a day here. At least.” 

“Wasn’t that much.” And something in Yoongi remained endeared at the fact that you thought he was constantly writing something new each time he carted his notebook around with him and not fretting over a set of three songs he’d written with your smiley nose wrinkle in mind. 

“Just haven’t felt anything in a while,” To say it out loud felt weird, especially in the presence of someone he’d no much as said hello to in the past handful of years let alone confided his feelings in. The house wasn’t your weekly beach trips.

And you weren’t his best friend anymore. 

“I’ll figure it out.”

“So you need me to…”

“Help me plan a fake wedding,” He said it simply because in his head, he wanted it to be simple, “Obviously, we don’t need the nuanced things in between. But I do need the outward details to be very apparent.”

“...there will be press here eventually to take pictures of me planning. I need to be seen at a venue...here...picking out flowers...you know. Doing wedding planning things.”

“After a few weeks, my company will call it off and I’ll go home. Somehow, they plan to frame the story as a mutual breakup that leaves me in heart break,” He had to refrain from rolling his eyes, “Hopefully from that I can slap together some music to sate them. At the very least, maybe they’ll give me some space.”

“Probably not.”

The tension left Yoongi’s stature and he allowed himself to laugh for a few beats at your bluntness. “Yeah, you’re right, probably not. It’s worth a try or at least, my agency thinks so,” His eyes flicked across your face, “It’s nice to be home, anyway.”

You didn’t allow him the luxury of enjoying the simple silence of your presence, instead standing with a harsh scrape of the chair across the floor. He held his breath as you approached the wardrobe, exhaling when you reached past the top to crouch on the bottom, yanking open the right to retrieve a stack of stapled papers from within. 

“Do you want to go ahead and start?”

Yoongi frowned, “You don’t have any questions?”

“No.”

“You aren’t worried about the press being here?”

“You’re my client,” You shrugged, “Whatever comes with that isn’t my business.”

“...do you want your check?”

It was your turn to frown. “Has your service been fulfilled to your utmost satisfaction?”

Yoongi settled back into his chair. “No...not yet.”

“Then I don’t need paid yet.” A pen materialized in your grasp, one you twirled twice before clicking on. “State your full name.”

You blinked at each other in a challenging silence until you shrugged, “I could just put Min Suga, if you like—”

“Min Yoongi.”

Yoongi watched the poke of your tongue between your cheek fondly, enamored even when you didn’t look up from writing to say, “Spouse...to be determined…”

You’d moved your paperwork party to the front porch of the building, sign now flipped closed and the main entrance gate shut and looped together with a rusted old chain. Condensation lipped down Yoongi’s knuckles when he reached for the glass of lemonade Jeongguk had brought the both of you, ones that garnered his attention away from your incessant chattering. 

“I don’t need to make a full guest list,” He said finally and when you didn’t respond, just continued to rock yourself in the wicker chair you perched upon, he clarified, “The wedding isn’t actually happening.”

“What are you supposed to tell the press then? What if they want a rumored guest list?” 

“I’ll just tell them Hoseok—”

The chair stopped abruptly. “...J-Hope?”

Yoongi rolled his lips together to keep himself from laughing, “That’s the one.”

The rocking resumed and the audible sound of the pen scratching against paper could be heard over the breeze and chirping of birds. “I forgot you were signed under the same agency. Hope World is one of my favorite albums.”

“I had a feature on there, you know.” It was embarrassing how quickly he informed you of the obvious fact but you smiled to his flushed cheeks. 

“You also had a number one best selling album.”

“Did you ever get the album I sent you?” 

“I gave it to Jeongguk.”

Yoongi didn’t have to remind himself of his guilt, he just had to keep it at bay. He smiled, “I can get you another copy.”

“So can I,” You scribbled a nonsensical line to the paper, letting your wrist rest on the pad of paper as you looked at him, “Who else?”

“You.”

You didn’t blink. “I’ll be there. I’m the event coordinator. Theoretically.”

“And theoretically, I’d want you there,” Yoongi didn’t blink, “In another circumstance. I’d invite you.”

He didn’t miss the way your voice softened into a murmured thanks, resuming your haphazard scribbles, “—but unfortunately I am nothing the press would be interested in. Give me another name.”

“Uh...Taehyung I guess. He’s my manager. The fans know a good deal about him. It may be obvious that he would be there, though.”

“It’ll work for now,” Your wrist carried your pen in looping circles down the length of the page until you flipped it at the stapled corner. “Okay, next. Who would you have stand up with you?”

“Taehyung.”

You couldn’t hold your laughter that time, puzzling Yoongi’s features. “I can do that—” You eyed him as you pressed pen tip to paper, “—but that would really make it obvious that he’s attending.”

“Oh,” Yoongi frantically reached for his lemonade again, downing a sizable gulp, “You’re probably right.”

“Okay, most important question. For me and for the press,” You clicked the pen a few times in a rhythm he didn’t recognize, “Give me a date.”

“I was told I had a four week time frame. Agency orders,” His eyebrow cocked when you choked, “What? Do you need more time, because I can call—”

“You think a month is enough time for people to believe you?”

There wasn’t anything condescending about your question. You’d been sitting with him long enough for the sun to start to hide behind the coastline, bathing the world in a color that bordered between black and blue, a hue he couldn’t quite place a name to but knew by heart. You hadn’t jumped at the first opportunity to write a number on the blank line of the check tucked neatly in his wallet. You’d barely considered the validity of his motives and immediately jumped into the task at hand. 

You hadn’t asked him what was wrong when you, of anyone, had the absolute permissions to do so. 

“The press currently believes I’m lazy, undermine close friends for fame, am not genuine in the message of my first album, and, for some reason, that I am unapproachable,” Yoongi shrugged, “I’m, frankly, not too worried about what they do and don’t believe at this point.”

Your features quirked as you shut the packet on your lap, settling your palms flat to the paper to let the pen roll a few paces away in your lap. 

“Yoons.” 

Part of his facade crumbled at the tenderness in which you uttered the nickname as he gripped a bit harder to the chair in an attempt to keep it in place. An audible breath shuddered in and out of his nose before he looked at you. 

“Are you doing okay?”

The fragmented part of his heart that had tumbled into his throat threatened to spill out as you offered him the compassion he wasn’t quite sure he deserved from you and the only way he knew to keep it down was to stand and swallow. His bucket hat came in white knuckles, smashing the article of clothing over wind ruffled hair as he averted his gaze to anything but you. 

“Fine. It’s getting late and I’ve already kept you far past business hours,” Long steps carried him past your stature, pausing with a hand on the rail and a foot on the second step. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

For a second, Yoongi’s peripheral swore to him that you reached for his hand in passing. 

“You’re…”

“Hi,” Yoongi thrust his hand toward the blonde headed man in front of him before he could finish. “Min Yoongi. Nice to meet you.”

The stocky florist blinked at the hand presented to him, then to the taller Jeongguk standing behind Yoongi. Yoongi didn’t have to look to know that giddy smile was still plastered on Jeongguk’s lips and he swore he felt him nod against the side of his ear from how close the younger man was standing to him. 

“Park Jimin,” He said finally, settling his smaller hand into Yoongi’s grasp. After a brief shake, his fingers continued to grip on as his gaze wandered to you where you were picking through a jar of fresh lilac. “What...what can I do for you guys today?”

“Why else do I come to you, Minnie?” You turned, wielding one of the long purple stems to tickle toward the blonde’s nose. Jimin broke away from Yoongi to giggle, swatting at you. “New client. New wedding. New flowers.”

“Right. I have a few of those,” Jimin nearly head butted the glass counter displaying arranged boutineers and sample bouquets, returning a moment later with a tiny notepad and a pen he took off the cusp of his ear, then jammed in plump lips while he flicked through the lined pages. Through the object in his mouth, he muffled, “What can we start with?”

“The usual. Twenty some of each,” Yoongi watched in muted fascination as you moved about the shop, dropping the lilac back in its place in favor of something green and leafy. Various other stems snagged on the ruffled leaves, dragging a messy handful of vegetation, earning a surprised squeak from your lips as you began to untangle them. 

Subconsciously, he reached across, fingers brushing yours in route to pull away one of the three strands. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Helping you?” Yoongi plopped the freed strand back into its container, again stretching long digits toward you. 

“Do you want to be photographed with me?” You wielded the stems away from him until he stopped making grabby hands and instead resorted to jutting his bottom lip out. “Me being your fake fiance’ wasn’t part of the deal.”

“They’re not going to think that,” Yoongi finally succeeded in snagging the tangled flowers away from you, gentle fingers prying them apart and placing them back in their rightful container. He smiled to the glare you set on his cheek, “We’ve got it covered.”

“We’re here for flowers,” You childishly poked your tongue out at him, “Not to argue the logistics of your weird celebrity powers.”

“Don’t make it sound so glamorous,” Yoongi huffed, trailing you as your footsteps took off rapidly through the shop. As abruptly as your speed picked up, it stalled, making him nearly topple over you and a stand of glass butterflies in the process. His hands gripped your waist to steady himself, an action you barely flinched at as you covered his wrists with your hands, leaning past his arm in silence. 

After a handful of heartbeats more, Yoongi ducked closer to your ear and whispered, “Why did you bring me back here?”

There was a small crash from somewhere on the opposite end of the store, then a fit of mingled laughter, something that had you relaxing out of Yoongi’s embrace to look at him. 

“They can’t hear us back here,” You explained. “Now...if you were to actually be getting married, what kind of flowers would you want?”

Yoongi blinked, “I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.”

You weren’t amused, “What about your fictional spouse? What would they like?”

~

He spotted your figure on the bridge carrying over some of the largest sand dunes, your figure just a silhouette but your features lit up by your phone pulled to your nose. He ignored the buzz of a notification in his pocket, instead calling out your name. 

“Yoongi!” You bounced a bit in greeting, arm waving so that the illumination on your screen remained for him to see. He ducked his head in response, gripping the straps of his backpack a bit tighter as he stepped out of his sandals, crooking them in between his index and middle fingers to change terrain to the sand coated wood. He barely reached you when you were snagging his wrist, dragging him down the opposite side of the bridge until bare feet changed once more to pure, cool granules of the beach. 

“Come on,” You tugged a bit harder until he fell in step next to you, “If we hurry, we can pick some before it gets dark.”

“These would be the ones you’d pick,” Yoongi grunted a few minutes later, crouched on a sliding hill of sand to reach his fingers into the vined mess of vegetation rooted to the dirt underneath. The rumble of a crab itched in the arch of his foot where it was buried deep in the sand to anchor him in place but he was afraid to jerk away in fear that his already squinted eyes would be unable to spot the singular stem of pink flowers again. Something in his shoulder popped, knee too, and the crab finally secured it’s pinches into his skin, but he managed to return with the stem in twirled fingers, falling backward onto his backside in a pride crushing triumph. 

Your phone flashlight blinded him as you jogged around the corner, frowning first then breaking into soft giggles. The center of the light shifted away from his eyes, allowing them to adjust to the fact that you were hovering above him with an entire handful of pink and white stems. 

Miserably, Yoongi lifted to a seated position, quite as the last of the sand fell back to the ground from his shoulders and around the crevices in his cloth backpack. His arm stretched slowly upward, holding out the flower with eyes scrunched shut until you slipped it in with your existing bouquet.

One eye peaked when you didn’t say anything, the second falling open in time with your lips softly touching the apple of his cheek. You held your free hand out, palm up, until he laced his fingers with yours. 

“Thank you, Yoons.”

He waited until he was standing, stalling your excited dragging of his figure down the beach with an exclamation of your name. 

“I have something else to give you later,” Yoongi said slowly, “Don’t let me forget.”

You used your intertwined fingers to punch his thigh with his own knuckles, “Better than this flower?”

A slanted smile was the only thing his rapidly beating heart would allow him. 

“Hopefully.”

“Orchids,” Yoongi decided finally, gaze still wavering off beyond your figure, “They’d probably like orchids.”

You swallowed, bouncing once on your heels. Your chin cocked, eyes staring straight ahead from where he stood in front of you. Quickly, he amended, “Is that okay? Are those not good wedding flowers—”

Your steps picked up in speed like they had before, effectively bumping into the bin of glass landscape decorations in trying to brush past him. He took the time to balance the tin, centering a blue butterfly and it’s green caterpillar counterpart before dashing off after you.

Jimin and Jeongguk appeared as though they’d been caught with their hands in a cookie jar although they were no more than crowded around the computer monitor of a shop that Jimin owned and managed. Nonetheless, you seemed to pay no mind to their startled appearances, speaking past Jeongguk’s chin on Jimin’s shoulder to nod toward his forgotten order notepad flopped open on the glass container. 

“Did you—”

“Orchids,” You said, “Pink ones, if you can.”

There was a strange lingering scent from the greenery Yoongi had helped you separate, one he didn’t notice until he was rubbing crooked fingers underneath his nose while waiting for Taehyung to answer his call. He squinted at the smell with a wrinkled nose until the dial tone rolled over to an obnoxious rustling that projected loudly through the speaker. 

“How’s it going, married man?”

Yoongi flinched at the content of Taehyung’s words and the volume, using his thumb to lower it while holding the phone away from his face. When he was sure his manager’s excited outbursts wouldn’t be wholly projected to the entire hotel, he sighed, “I’m not married.”

“But you’re going to be soon,” Taehyung sang. More rustling on the other end. Yoongi wished he could hurl a much too white hotel pillow through the screen. 

“Why did you send me five texts asking me to call you? What do you need?”

“Oh, right,” There was something muffling Taehyung’s speech now that wasn’t the aggressive sound of crinkling. The heel of Yoongi’s palm met his forehead in realization and he could picture the over-sized hamburger clenched between Taehyung’s fingers from miles away. “Namjoon and the team will be there with a new photographer tomorrow to get some staged shots for the press.”

“Staged…” Yoongi rolled to his stomach, sanctioning his weapon pillow against his chest, “Of what?”

“It’s supposed to simulate an engagement photo shoot. They want the pictures for a cover story. That’s why there’s a different photographer coming. You’ll actually get to meet this one,” More wrapper crinkling. An audible swallow. Yoongi began to think a pillow wasn’t the only weapon he needed. 

“How am I supposed to do that with just me?” 

“They only want your face. The anonymity adds to the suspense and interest,” Taehyung sighed, “They should be bringing a model with them. They’ll just be used for their shadow, essentially. Maybe their hands, hand shots of the rings will be good—”

“I don’t have rings.”

“We do.”

Yoongi groaned into the plush of his pillow. “Won’t that ruin the whole facade if someone figures out who the model is? I don’t want to drag a literal total stranger into this mess.”

“Give me a better idea, Yoongi. Use both your hands? Craft a cardboard cutout in your hotel room?”

“I just…” 

If he closed his eyes, it was like traveling through idealization with a fish-eye's view, placing him first in the depth of that rickety old wardrobe piece while a hand he recognized as his own looted around inside to snatch a velvet box, one his point of view was tethered to as he then was transported to the inside of a backpack, rattled around inside with a yellow notepad and a handful of uncapped pens. 

Somewhere along the way, the trip was halted, marked by a nonsensical swirl of color as his fingers rubbed at his eyes, Taehyung’s sarcastic rambles just background noise as the story picked back up in the forefront of his consciousness. It was a longing that generated the second half between the darkness of the backpack and the open breeze off the beach, viewpoint now situated in his own palm, looking up at your tear filled eyes, then skipping forward to peer into the familiarity of his own gaze as he was slid securely onto a finger. 

It was the ridiculous daydream about becoming a literal piece of jewelry that made him speak, cutting off Taehyung’s increasingly outlandish suggestions.

“I’ll do it just…” Yoongi settled his chin on top of the pillow, letting his eyes open to the cloth headboard in front of him, “Don’t send the model. I have someone I can get to stand in.”

There were muffled noises of surprise marked by more, very apparent, chewing until Taehyung sighed, “Won’t that just create the same issue you said previously? What if someone finds out who your stand-in is? What do we do then? Pretend to marry the two of you?”

“That won’t happen,” Yoongi saw shades of pink in hazy petal shapes when he closed his eyes a second time, squishing his cheek against his free hand that rested on his pillow. “Just don’t send the model. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“I don’t know much about the entertainment industry but don’t they generally have models available that can do these kinds of things?” You blinked across at Yoongi as his stylist, Mingyu, jabbed a makeup brush between the closed crease of your eyelids. 

“They do if you’d like me to have them call one,” Yoongi shifted in his own chair, fiddling at the collar of his button up that had just been meticulously fixed for him. He tucked an index finger under the tight fabric, tugging it away from his neck. When that couldn’t sate him, he popped the top button and folded the lapels across his chest. “This isn’t exactly part of your contract…”

“It’s not.” He continued to be amazed by the nonchalant way in which you accepted his suggestion, seeming to move in autopilot since he rigidly explained the dilemma from your dew covered front porch that morning. Stunned must have graced his gaze when you glanced at him, your eyebrows raising considerably when Mingyu moved on to poke and prod at your hair, “But you’re my friend, so I’m helping you.”

You ducked a bit, catching his eyes that darted away while gloss tinted lips parting into a neat oval. “We are still friends...right?”

Yoongi masked his relief with his tone, pitching his voice in firm words so that you couldn’t hear the way his heart did several back flips that tickled the back of his throat and retrieved some of their broken pieces in their tumbling path, settling a bit of warmth that was a step closer to full into his chest cavity until it spread upward into the tiny tug on each curve of his lips. 

“Of course we are,” Stoic faltered when you blinked at him. Yoongi let himself smile. 

“One more question,” You lowered your voice, dipping a bit closer to him Mingyu shifted behind you to continue toying with your hair, “Why do I have makeup on if you won’t see my face?”

Yoongi’s shoulders bounced in silent laughter, lips wrinkling then rolling together to prevent anything audible and he shrugged. His healing heart let him study your face for far more time than necessary, finally settling on your eyes as his cheek nearly lulled to his shoulder. 

“You look nice,” He assured gently.

You turned away, surprising Mingyu in the process as he now had better access to final touches, but even through the touches to your face with fingers and brushes and pads, Yoongi didn’t miss the trace of your smile. 

“Okay you two…” The photographer approached you like walking through sand was wading through knee deep water, sandals dangling on feet he lifted in high stepping advancements until he was stationary in front of your folding chairs. Knee length jeans appeared to be self tailored by a pair of kitchen scissors and a pink hoodie hung off broad shoulders along with a camera dangling off an equally thick strap. “Are we ready?”

Yoongi slipped off his chair first, offering a hand to you. You took the offer delicately, feet hitting the sand with a minimal puff of debris. He was a breath away from addressing the photographer until he spoke to Yoongi’s publicist Namjoon instead, the only other individual wandering around beyond Mingyu’s box of equipment. 

“No faces, right?”

“Uhm, you can get my face. Just...my face,” Yoongi smiled kindly, squeezing your hand in reassurance, “That’s preferred actually.”

The photographer blinked at the smaller man in front of him for a passing beat before addressing Namjoon again, “So...no faces then?”

“Seokjin,” Namjoon warned tiredly, shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a crooked knuckle, “Cooperate.”

A wheezing laughter broke out from the photographer’s lips, Seokjin’s lips, the noise carrying upward into the coastal breeze of early afternoon. There was a minuscule tug on the twine of Yoongi’s fingers and he found himself, perplexed, glancing at you. Despite the fond expression on your lips, he could sense the confusion in your aura too. He gave a second comforting squeeze until Seokjin’s laughter quieted away into periodic hiccups placed between the raise of his free hand until it landed on Yoongi’s shoulder. 

“I’m just joking,” A kind smile was left in the wake of Seokjin’s giggles, patting twice at Yoongi’s shoulder before he was off wading through the sand again. 

You tugged down on Yoongi’s hand, squeaking, “Are we supposed to follow…?—”

He pulled in the opposite direction, leading you through the ruts Seokjin’s fussing left. When you caught up to him, shoulder bumping into his arm, he laughed quietly, “I guess so.”

“Okay!” Seokjin’s sweeping announcement sent a domino effect through the small caravan of three people now subject to the wind in the center of the beach. Yoongi bumped into him, you bumped into Yoongi, Yoongi was sure Namjoon was laughing from where he watched on. The photographer turned, catching sight of intertwined hands first and he lifted an eyebrow as he addressed Yoongi.. 

“Just your face, right?”

Instinctively, Yoongi pulled you closer even if the inquiry was spoken without any ulterior motive, instead a genuine confirmation. “Just my face,” Yoongi nodded sharply, “In fact, if we can limit the pictures to shadows and features—”

Seokjin held up a solaced palm, “No worries, I know what’s going on here.”

Yoongi felt your gaze on the side of his face but he situated his thinning eyes to the man in front of you as he began to fiddle at the various knobs and buttons on the back of his camera. His smile erased into something of confusion when he found Yoongi eyeing him, rushing in a series of startled noises to amend, “It’s understandable that you would choose to keep your partner anonymous if they are not in the spotlight themselves. I’ve covered it before—” Yoongi’s expression softened only slightly when Seokjin lifted his camera to his face and the lens twirled closer to the point of Yoongi’s nose. The shutter clicked over, making Yoongi blink, and Seokjin pulled the device away to squint at the preview. A thumbs up followed, paired with the purse of tulip shaped lips that spread into a kind smile, “—your secret is safe with me!” 

Part of him forgot that there was a limited group who were aware of the full situation even in scheduled events like a photo shoot, a timeline for what was supposed to be something of life changing unity. The weight in his pocket wasn’t one that would hold any higher meaning, rings faux quality and meant to superimpose elegance where Namjoon had pulled them from a plastic prop bag. This wasn’t his bulky backpack with his deepest regret hidden in the front porch.. Instead, it was just another gimmick to save face and time for his favorite writing journal that he’d unpacked from his suitcase only to move over into the shoulder bag he carted around everywhere. 

And, to some people, it looked like he was, truthfully and honestly, engaged to you. 

There was a twitch of your hand in his and Yoongi relaxed with that pressure in mind, nodding once. A grateful smile laced the seam of his lips and he backed off of his stance with a nod, “Oh, right. Thank you…”

“Of course,” Seokjin beamed, gesturing vaguely again, “Should we get those face shots first?”

You were turned gently around the pivot point that was your connected hands, free palm slipping gently into the crooked fingers Yoongi offered face up. As for your hand he’d previously held, you slipped it away, just quick enough to rub the clamminess against your thigh before returning it to its previous position. Slowly, you lifted your gaze to Yoongi’s. 

He didn’t even try to hide his fond smile as the camera shutter whirred over your shoulder. 

“Do couples actually do this?” You complained through clenched teeth, rigid smile coating your mouth even if no one could see you but him. Something genuine twitched upward in your lips when his smile grew a bit brighter at your whined complaints, “This is so awkward.”

“That’s great, perfect,” A few more clicks and the sound of Seokjin’s thumb against plastic buttons. “A few more...could you touch their face, maybe?”

Yoongi didn’t give you time to complain, cupping his palm to your face, stroking his thumb gently under your eye to soothe the tension that immediately curled upward in your shoulders. 

“Better or worse now?” He teased, tilting his head to look between your wide eyes. 

Your fingers responded to him, slipping around his wrist to keep his hand cradling your face. In the same moment, you took your hands that remained intertwined and molded his hand around your waist, stepping closer to him in the process. Your thumb pressed against his racing pulse point and he swallowed, a moot attempt to calm his heart that he was sure you could hear and feel. 

“I don’t know,” You shot back, smile loosening, “You tell me.”

Yoongi shook his head, a genuine laugh emitting at your antics while his thumb continued it’s strokes to the apple of your cheek and his hand scrunched it’s way to the small of your back, holding you against him. 

Seokjin jogged backward across the beach with some vague instructions, haphazard words sticking in Yoongi’s brain to act on. Pretend and dance. The implication of the words roused a single syllable laugh from your lips, head tipping back, more of an amused smirk settling into your expression when you came to.

“This should be good.”

Yoongi cocked an eyebrow, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know,” You repeated the challenge from before, a daring confidence seeping into your aura now. 

His touch fell away from your face, holding his hand palm up instead. “Give me your hand.”

Your expression didn’t falter as your hand landed in his, head only tilting when he squeezed your hand and started to move you. 

“You know, the sand doesn’t exactly make this easy.”

“Is that your excuse for squishing my toes?”

Yoongi’s expression crossed into horrified for a fraction of a second, “I haven’t stepped on you!”

“Not yet.”

“What if I dipped you?” He tightened his grip on your waist. 

“Then they’ll see my face,” You squeaked when he half jerked to do so, lightly smacking his chest in retaliation. 

“The picture will be cropped.”

“Yoongi—”

“I’m going to do it.”

And he did, a full pivot that bent you at the waist, half hovering over your angled stature. The slow spread of his laughter across his features came in time with his foot giving out as support underneath him, sending your figures stumbling a few paces. He managed to ground himself while you clawed at his shirt in an equal amount of startled joy, dragging yourself up by tight fists on the open collar of his shirt with your forearms pressed to his chest. 

“I think you need some dance lessons, Min Suga.”

If you were anywhere else in any other circumstance with any other person, Yoongi would have kissed you. He told himself that, a firm response to his conscious that was trying to will his muscles to do so. He was wholly aware of the desire, one stirred by your proximity and your presence and you. And, given a few more seconds of silence aside from the lip of foam across neatly created ruts in the sand and the mechanical flick of a camera shutter, he might have excused the situation and the circumstance and the presence of another person. 

But, Seokjin, who was none the wiser to any of it yet assumed the relationship before him was very real, tried to combat a kiss regardless. A loud, satisfied wah! Came as he approached in messy steps that sent sand flying everywhere below his still attached sandals, startling your embrace apart to find him hunched over the preview screen. 

“Great,” His smile was knowing and his wink confirmed it, “Shall we move on to something else? Hands, maybe?”

Yoongi took to threading his fingers around yours to combat the heat that curled behind the thin layer of makeup on his features, staring straight at the overlap of your index and middle fingers around the bend of his thumb. You cleared your throat into the painful silence and the ambiance of waves continued to be blissfully unaware. 

Seokjin sliced into the tension with confusion, “Uh, yeah, that’s great but...rings?”

Yoongi felt like those waves had just become self aware and barreled out of gravity’s clutches, swallowing him whole and effectively dragging him into their depths. 

“I mean, if you guys aren’t doing rings, that’s fine too. There are all kinds of symbolic ways to outwardly show your unity, I just assumed it was with rings but perhaps that was wrong of me. We can do something else—”

The band meant for his finger was just too small but Yoongi jammed it on anyway, aided by the clamminess slowly engulfing every inch of his skin. Scrambled movements nearly sent yours tumbling to the sand below but he managed to secure it between the pinch of his thumb and index finger, joints twitching periodically as he let his gaze meet yours again. The tips of your fingers barely brushed his curled knuckles and he moved the ring out of your reach. 

Yoongi swallowed, taking the crook of your left hand in his free one. “Let me.”

The hollow echo left by the screen door clattering shut on his shoulders felt like the raw crescendo before the soul gripping bridge in a song. Except the final chorus wasn’t the round trip loop, a tie up with a neat bow on top that made a song a story. His story wouldn’t lead him back to the rickety screen door and the creaky floorboards underneath the heavy piece of wardrobe furniture in his parent’s, your, business foyer. 

Yoongi didn’t think the last time he’d open the top drawer would be to put the velvet box back, its contents still very much intact, his heart very much not. The plane ticket and apartment key mocked him, a reminder of his unfinished heart song, one he supposed would remain a rough draft with no clear path to an end. 

At least, that end wouldn’t include you. 

He felt selfish for the hot tears that pricked the back of his eyelids, the direct result of your excitement, your adamant exclamations of how perfect your futures were about to become. The guilt was eating him alive, that he couldn’t simply feel happy for you without his conscience drifting to the ring he’d bought you and how selfish, horribly selfish, his confession would be after you’d just poured your one track soul to him. He couldn’t remember half of what you’d told him due to his own personal inhibitions. 

He couldn’t tell you he was hopelessly in love with you. He couldn’t do that to you.

Yoongi let the drawer shut for the final time, choosing to drag everything else out so as to not see the black box again. One tear became three, lipping down his nose and dropping onto his fumbling fingers as he jammed the lock into the knob, turning the mechanical click one more time. 

And then, he simply went to bed. He had a flight to catch, after all.

“Is it true?”

He stopped flipping through the paperwork, non disclosure agreements and consent forms you’d scribbled your support onto in the dull blue pen Namjoon had handed you. You sat in the chair from before, makeup wipe Mingyu had handed you damp against your thigh as you instead took to fiddling at the diamond band still wrapped to your finger. 

Yoongi pressed the pages shut, leaning into the back of your chair, “Is what true?”

You turned to peer up at him, diamond tucked between your fingertips, “...that you get to keep props sometimes.”

“You want to keep the ring?”

“It’s pretty,” The band slipped easily off your finger, cradled in your palm, “A little big, but that’s okay. Who doesn’t want the evidence of their first fake engagement?”

“Not your first magazine cover shoot?”

“No one will ever see my face. I’m basically a hand and head model.”

“You can keep the ring,” Yoongi conceded with a laugh, “Are you done with this paperwork? Nothing else you want to read?”

“I am and if you are as well—” You jumped off the chair to stand in front of him, “—I want to take you somewhere.”

“Don’t you have work to do today?”

“I’m working right now. Wait right here.”

 He watched, silent, as you skipped over to where Seokjin was chatting with Namjoon in the small gravel area beyond the sand. Seokjin’s expression flitted to you while Namjoon’s went to him, raising an eyebrow while you tugged on the photographer’s sleeve to cup your hand around his ear. 

“Yeah,” Yoongi heard Seokjin exclaim, scrambling backward away from your whispers with a frantic smile, “Yeah, of course. I have a few hours before my flight leaves. Lead the way!”

You approached him in a similar, giddy fashion, taking his wrist. He raised an eyebrow, stumbling a few dramatic paces when you tugged on his arm. 

“Yeah. Lead the way.”

“Why are we at a dance studio?”

You tugged on the strap of his bag rather than his hand this time, ignoring him as you coaxed him through the glass doors. It was dimmer inside, lights shadowing the rounded front desk and the flutter of various flyers pinned to a cork board in the corner with the small ceiling fan that whirred overhead. Even then, Yoongi still startled at the noise, yes noise, of greeting the man twirling in an office chair at the front desk let out. 

The man knew you by name, stretching forward rather than standing up to take your hand over the desk. He directed his attention to Yoongi next, standing but in a quieter fashion than his previous actions suggested, gradual in the way he held his hand out. 

“And you’re...Suga, right?”

“Yoongi,” He corrected quietly, slipping his hand into the man’s, “Nice to meet you…”

“Soonyoung,” You and the man provided at the same time, effectively earning mingled laughter. “I thought I heard from somewhere that you were in town. Planning a wedding, right?” Soonyoung leaned away to pass his gaze between your two figures, “I guess the rumors must be true if you’re hanging around with this one.”

That earned a halfhearted swat from you and more giggles from the man as he shuffled around, presenting a clipboard to the top part of the desk. “Are you needing studio space again?”

You nodded, pressing a pen between Yoongi’s fingers and sliding the paper underneath his curled hand. He blinked absently at the words name, time in, and time out. You continued to talk while he feathered the general outline of his name above the line, “If anyone asks, it was his idea to rent studio space.”

Puzzled, Soonyoung slipped the clipboard from Yoongi to squint at it. “Will someone ask? Why would someone ask—” 

Again, your hand was on the strap of his bag, dragging him around the corner, “If, Soonie, if!” 

An echoed got it! was the last thing Yoongi heard until you shut him inside a dark studio space. He watched his shadow light up in the mirror when the lights crackled to life, tint uneven on his lips, shirt he wore to the shoot a bit haphazard across his collarbones, black fringe windblown and stuck in blinking eyelashes. 

“Am I allowed to know why you brought me here yet?”

“I told you,” He watched in the reflection as you crossed the wood floor, crouching next to a small set of outlets with varying cords dangling out of them. You jammed the short white one into the end of your phone, prodding around with your index finger until the soft sound of something top forty began playing through the speakers. You stood, approach to his figure marked by swaying, off beat movements, “I’m giving you dance lessons.”

“Are you going to show me how to do that?” Yoongi accepted you when you took his hands despite his dismissive words, “Because if so, I don’t want them. I want a refund, in fact—”

“I told Seokjin to follow us here and take a picture of you signing up for dance classes. They’ll run the story like you did it directly after the cover shoot photos,” Dramatically, you swung your twined fingers together to the rising beat of the music, “Cute, right?”

Yoongi hummed, continuing to allow you to lead him in messy circles around the studio, “I thought Namjoon was my publicist?”

“Maybe you should hire me,” Your eyes cut in zigzags down his features before you dropped your chin, movements relaxing enough for him to take over, “This soft image suits you better, anyway.”

“You’ve been reading the articles?”

“Free publicity. Need to see how my business is being represented” You shook your head when he squinted at you, “I’m joking. They’ve never mentioned the business directly. The pictures don’t give enough clarity to location.” 

You looked at him again, “So yes...I have read a few.”

“And they’re portraying me as…” Yoongi’s nose wrinkled, “Soft?” 

“Quiet. Gentle. One who shows his love in simple ways,” One corner of your mouth turned up in a smile, “Frankly, it’s rather unfair that they thought anything otherwise.”

Another broken chisel of Yoongi’s heart slotted itself back into place, healing with the warmth that spread quickly to the tips of his toes. He squeezed your hands, “I’m glad you still see me that way.”

“The Agust D video though,” You gripped his hands back, tilting your head, “The bleached hair and the makeup. Perhaps I understand the savage hype—”

Yoongi shoved you away, a halfhearted attempt as you still clung on to him with the last link of your knuckles tucked between the empty spaces in his spread fingers. Laughter followed suit, mingling with the silent, shoulder bouncing emission of his before you were brought close to him once more. This time, there were no cameras. No Namjoon to type reports to Taehyung and Seungcheol, no Mingyu to tuck plastic ends of brushes into sea breeze hair, no Seokjin to fool. Second time failed to be the charm, Yoongi’s face leaning a fraction of a space closer to you until you dropped your gaze again. 

“We can leave soon, if you want. Seokjin should be out of town by now.”

Yoongi didn’t move until his silence coaxed your eyes back to him. “I was dragged here against my will for dance lessons,” He let go of your hands, stepping back to shrug himself out of his cross shoulder bag and place his appendages on the high rise of his hips, “and I intend to get them.”

Lessons came less in the form of serious intention and instead manifested in you teaching him what not to do as he observed with his back against the mirror and his pen against his notepad. The yellow pages were no longer empty, the tray of ink shoved through the middle of his pen now considered to be used. The radio hit on max volume couldn’t drown out your laughter and if Yoongi ignored the tiny, unfamiliar space the joy was confined to, he could convince himself that everything was back to normal. That this was just another off day between carting flowers and chairs and catered crock pots to venues where he got to watch your joy overfill his heart with a warmth that he had to make space for more by manifesting that into something tangible. 

Filled lyric notebook and all. 

“This is going to look like a stock image.”

Yoongi couldn’t contain his snort, adjusting his stance a bit to fit your comment. Legs angled wide from his hips, arms folded neatly to his chest, nothing relaxed about his stature. He turned to where you were mirroring his position. “You’re probably right.”

Jeongguk leaned so far across Yoongi he stumbled out of his similar position, tripping to a stop between the two of you as he looked up with wide eyes. An apology came soft but his inquiry came an octave lower, “...what is going to look like a stock image?”

The item on the agenda was picking a venue, or rather, make it look like you were picking a venue. With the rumored wedding date less than days away, finishing touches were to be in order, but the press would be days behind by virtue of what was being actively publicized as a private wedding. And by the way you were standing just in front of a mock row of chairs beyond a meticulously decorated arch, pastel pinks and yellows and blues and purples, it looked like you’d just been cut directly from a wedding magazine’s ad section for structure rental. Yoongi wasn’t sure how the press would frame it. The house wasn’t the rumored location for the wedding, anyway. The beach was. But the press was only available for a short time, their hired stint by Yoongi’s company lasting until their flights left in the evening after they would capture what would eventually be the last of Yoongi’s wedding planning ventures. 

He shifted in the plush grass, squinting closer at two flower pots that made symmetry to the front display of the mock wedding alter. The way they moved with the wind was artificial, and his focus slid to see if those beautiful petals on rungs of the arch were fake flowers as well. 

“Do people actually have weddings here?” He thought back to his years as an employee. You’d always arranged for off property events. Your set up in the field behind the house suggested otherwise. 

“Not yet,” You nudged Jeongguk where he’d scrambled to stand between the two of you, managed to fit his broad stature in the minuscule space, “Jeongguk has been heading the project to get us a space to do so here. We could offer a discount on the venue if they used our services. Extra profit.”

“But for now it’s just a mock set up,” Jeongguk nodded. “That’s why I don’t understand why we’re here...shouldn’t we be getting the last of everything set up at the beach?” He turned to Yoongi with a question in his round irises, “And Yoongi, when is your fiance’ getting in? Have you arranged for transportation from the airport? Should I go get them?”

“Jeongguk,” You touched his arm, squeezing gently, “Why don’t you take the rest of the night off? I’m going to need you to be at full capacity the next couple days.”

“But I can come help—”

“Jeongguk.” 

Yoongi glanced behind him as the sound of tires on gravel descended, watching as the familiar SUV that had been trailing him through the weeks made it’s exit. Somewhere in his pocket, flight details buzzed from Taehyung. His gaze found your serious expression when the car peeled out of sight, speaking kindly to your coworker, “I’ve got it. Please take the night off. Tell Jimin the same.”

It hit him then that it wasn’t just you he’d be leaving to deal with the aftermath of his press playtime. In fact it was you that he’d be leaving to deal with it, your knowledge effectively making it ten times harder to sate what would essentially be a town’s population left confused and without him. The panic of it made his lips part but you cut him off before he could speak. 

“Do you want to go down to the beach for a little bit?” Your eyes widened, gesturing to where Jeongguk was still very much in earshot in the trek for his car. “Make sure everything is in order…”

Part of him was relieved that you seemed to want to talk to. The tension left him in a sigh, “Absolutely. I’ll drive.”

“Hold your hand out.”

Yoongi blinked, still trying to shake off the vibrating blurs in front of his lenses from the force in which his head had smacked into yours. He rubbed at the space that throbbed in an attempt to lessen it, “What?” 

“Unless you don’t want my gift. I can keep it.”

He was slightly disoriented but he didn’t miss the embarrassingly fast thrust of his hand toward you. “No,” He said simply, “I want it.”

You beamed, taking his wrist to press your fist against his palm. Slowly, you spread your fingers, depositing the smooth object against his skin. Then, you folded his fingers together over it, gently pushing his curled digits towards his chest. 

“It’s a…”

“Orchid!” You nodded, bouncing slightly where you sat, “It’s a pin, if you want to put it on your backpack. Or you can just display it. It’s yours.”

Yoongi turned the glass piece over in his palm, stroking his index finger through the smooth rivets of glass where white and purple mixed in a marble like texture underneath the surface. His smile was teasing as he passed it to his opposite hand, “Anything to remind me of nearly dying in sinkholes trying to help you pick these, huh?”

“Shut up,” You dug your fist into his thigh, leaning closer to him again. Dangerous territory for the endeared roar of Yoongi’s heart in his ears. “Where’s my present?”

“What?”

“You told me to remind you that you had something else for me. You know, other than the orchids gathered by near death experience,” You blinked at his confusion, “This is me reminding you.”

The weight on his bag could finally be released, a weight that had previously tucked into that wooden drawer and forever had resided on the tenderest part of his stuttered heart. All his pent up emotions, ones swallowed down and confined to the red lines crossing horizontally on his yellow notepad, could be released, could fly off the page and relieve a bit of his intense yearning. 

At the very least, he could say I love you out loud. 

But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He couldn’t bring himself to do that to you. 

So, instead, Yoongi reached past you, bringing his lyrics back into his lap. His flips through the pages were calculated, counting until he made it to the eighth draft. Meticulous fingers peeled back everything in its way, tugging until it was a clean rip in the paper. Gently, he held the page out to you. 

“A piece of paper—”

“It’s the song the label wants to release as my first single,” Yoongi blinked at you until your teasing sobered up, dropping back a bit from where you leaned over him to take the page with you, “The first draft of it anyway. I want you to have it.”

It’s for you.

Your eyes widened, squinting through its contents as the sun began to bath dusk pastels into the landscape surroundings. Yoongi added softly, “Something to remember me by.”

“You make it sound like you’re dying.”

“That’s what you said,” He laughed gently.

“Yeah, but the way you said it. The way you keep talking. This song…” You frowned, “You’re only moving a plane ride away. A phone call away at that. We don’t have to say goodbye.”

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

You tried to reach for his hand, “But not for good. This isn’t the last time we’ll ever see each other.”

Yoongi evaded your touch to make it hurt less. The more time between your last touch on his skin, the easier it would be to forget. He stood to not have to see the hurt in your eyes, holding his notebook against his chest as he reached for his backpack. 

“Speaking of, I have to be at the airport fairly early tomorrow,” He adjusted the straps of his backpack, pointedly shoving his hands into his pockets. “Come on, I’ll walk you home.”

“Remember the last time we were here?”

“Similar circumstance, too,” You brushed spread fingers across the small hill of sand in front of your crossed ankles. 

Glittering fairy lights strung to a timer on varying ends of the venue set up reflected on your skin and in your eyes when you eyed him. White chairs in a ten by thirteen grid buried into the sand, a velvet pink rug cut between the fifth and sixth chairs in the row, leading upward to where a white sheet took the place of where the wedding party would presumably stand. There was a custom arch, too, one Jimin had sweated over to have only the best pink and purple orchids threaded through the white rings and rungs. The venue space existed even when there wasn’t an event scheduled, that part of the beach roped off to tourists and locals alike, but it had certainly been magnified at the premise of the false wedding that was supposed to be occurring the Saturday following the current Thursday.

“You’re really leaving tomorrow?”

“Day after.”

“Ah,” You nodded, scooping up some of the sand and letting it drain between the spaces in your fingers, “Rather than being left at the altar, you’re doing the leaving.”

“I’ll have someone sent to help you clean everything up,” Yoongi touched underneath his chin, letting his fingers slide to the back of his neck, “I’d stay and help but—”

“No need,” You waved a hand, “Maybe making Jeongguk do it will suppress most of his questions.”

“Right…” Yoongi’s lips pressed into his cheeks, “Sorry about that, by the way. I hope he doesn’t think too horribly of me.”

You ceased all movements, turning to him. He paused in plucking miniscule specks of dust from his jeans, seizing at the softness of your tone. “Why are you saying a definite goodbye again?”

“I’m not.”

“Then you can make sure Jeongguk doesn’t hate you when you come back and visit. Or when you text me. I’m not asking for much. Even a happy birthday would suffice.”

He hadn’t felt a chomping sense of all consuming guilt since he’d lied about not saying goodbye before. 

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be sorry,” The curl of your hand wrapped around his index and middle fingers where they rested in the sand, “Just don’t say goodbye to me again. Not like before.”

The suffocating weight was back, like a crater sized boulder resting directly in the thinnest part covering his most vital organ. Yoongi let himself nod. 

“Okay, angel. I won’t.”

You smiled away from his gaze, letting your fingers slide just barely away until the two of you were no longer touching. Instead, you scrambled, gathering your feet underneath you to crouch next to him. 

“Want to help me pick some orchids?”

“Can I take them off the decorations?” You smacked him, standing yourself to brush sand from the backs of your thighs. “What? No one is going to see them anyway.”

“Don’t remind me,” It was scoffed but he sensed the sincerity. He didn’t want to remember either. “Come on, I think there’s a patch further up the shore—”

Yoongi fully woke the third time his cell phone rang on his bedside table. The light bathed his stack of packed luggage in the corner when he dragged it closer, ignoring the caller ID in route to accept it and press it against this ear. 

“Yeah?—”

“Yoongi,” Taehyung sounded as exhausted as the sand heavy behind his eyes felt, “I booked you an earlier flight. You’re to get on it.”

“Why?”

“Do it. Details are in your email. Don’t look at social media, if you can help from it.”

“I won’t look at social media,” Yoongi found it within himself to snort, rubbing at his eyes with a tired knuckle, “How early is this flight? I still have to pay the wedding planner.”

“Let us do that. We’ll direct deposit it. It’s the twenty-first century, we should do it that way, anyway.”

“Taehyung,” He sat up in bed, letting his duvet and sheets curl around his torso as he squinted at the soft white filtering through the sheer curtain of the singular window in the room, “I’m not leaving without telling them goodbye. They’ve helped me, us, tremendously through this. The least I can do is tell them thank you in person.”

“Besides, what’s the rush for me to get back? I don’t have a schedule for at least another two weeks.”

“Yoongi, they know.”

In the silence left by that vague yet horrifying statement, Yoongi swore he heard a camera click. Then another. Then a flash to pair. 

“They know what? Who is they?”

“The press. And not that the engagement is fake,” Taehyung rushed to amend as if that made it any better, “They found out where you are. Someone must have been tipped off through the pictures we published and sent their own team to investigate. And they found out the identity of the wedding planner. Which, I kind of commend you, having them step in for those pictures was genius. Are they wanting any extra money for pretending to be engaged to you? Seungcheol said he’d pay whatever they want. You should see the headlines, marrying the wedding planner, the story just keeps getting cuter!” 

“You told me not to look at the headlines,” Yoongi cut off numbly. He was on autopilot moving about the room, yanking things back out from their neatly packed suitcases, managing to locate a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie that vaguely matched. “I’ll call you later.”

“The flight, Yoongi! Don’t do anything stupid please—”

There was a small group of reporters waiting on him in front of the hotel, ones he managed to shake off with relative ease but it did nothing to calm his nerves as he sped through familiar streets to get to you. He found the same scene in the parking lot of Be Happy, a handful of reporters crowded around with their cameras and phone mics and notebooks, shouting out questions that were still so far off base from the reality of the situation that it forced a headache behind his ears and on the spot below his fringe almost immediately. He shrugged them off too, leaving them at the gates to the drive that you hadn’t opened well into business hours, jogging until he reached the front door. 

It was locked, understandably so, forcing him to tap knuckles gently at first and harder the more frantic he got while calling your name. “Angel, it’s me. Let me in, please, let me help.”

Yoongi saw red, red and pink, and more red when you fiddled at the locks, dragging the door open to reveal tear filled eyes that only amplified at his presence and the volume of the shouts outside. He touched you only enough to shuffle you backward, letting the door shut behind him and he was halfway through locking it when you thrust something toward his face. 

It was a blurry picture from the night before, your face fully on display as you accepted something that was very much not an orchid from his grasp. It was a weed, something Yoongi knew the name of when his only thought wasn’t occupied by the tears lipping angrily down the slope of your nose. 

“I don’t know why it shocked me, really. That someone found us. Even if I hadn’t done that photo shoot with you, it wouldn’t have mattered. People would have assumed it was me, anyway. People were already starting to question with all the things your company allowed to be released. I was getting weird phone calls to the business phone and I just assumed they’d all go away when you did,” You swiped your phone away from him, letting it clatter harshly to the circle table, “I didn’t think the universe was selfish enough, that you were selfish enough to leave me like that again.”

“You should have told me you were getting weird calls,” Yoongi rasped hoarsely.

“Right, and what would you have done?” You blinked, “Called it all off? And then what, left me again?” 

“Why do you keep saying that, angel—”

“Don’t. Do not call me that,” You held up a hand, collecting yourself until the streams of tears weren’t as thick on your skin, “I keep saying that because it’s what happened. You left me here without so much as a second glance back. Then, when you needed me again, something to save face for a writer's block, you came back.”

“Why couldn’t you have just come home before that?” You were sobbing again, unable to help it. Yoongi felt all the healed pieces of his heart scar for a second time, “You were always writing when I was here. I could have helped you.”

“And I did help you. But I hurt myself. I had to live through all the reasons why I fell in love with you with no plausible endgame that wouldn’t shatter my heart. Again,” You laughed despite the unattractive sniffle you sucked in, “You did this to me again.”

He could hear his heart in his ears, “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“How could you have?” Another laugh, one that made Yoongi wince, “You forgot to not forget me. Even then, you never let me get a word in.”

“I’m sorry,” Yoongi breathed. “I’m so sorry.”

“Great,” He watched your fists curl at your side, setting your shoulders, “Then if you’ll excuse me—”

“What—”

“I have a wedding to get ready for,” You shrugged, “That’s what everyone expects, right? Then that’s what we’ll give them. In real time, not on some corporate media delay.”

“I’ll fix this. I will, I’ll—”

“Yoongi.” You paused across the room from him, facade clearly shattering as you begged, “Please just go. You probably need to pack for your flight tomorrow still, right?”

“Angel.”

“Go.” 

“You’re to call it off. Now.”

Seungcheol sighed into the phone speaker, overlapped by Taehyung interjecting, “We can’t do that, Yoongi.”

“It wasn’t a suggestion, it was an order. I do not care how you cover this up, how you choose to handle it, or if you have to eliminate my contract. I don’t have a preference and I don’t have any ideas,” Yoongi sighed into his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, “All I ask is that it’s called off. That the media knows it’s not happening and that they leave me and everyone in my hometown alone.”

“All I can think is to suggest that the wedding is postponed indefinitely due to some sort of complications—”

“Great, do that. I’m not taking my flight, either. Neither flight.”

“You have schedules in a few weeks.”

“I’ll handle that when the time comes,” Yoongi sighed, covering his face with his hand, “I just...I really need to stay here for as long as possible.”

Taehyung continued to mutter to himself while Seungcheol murmured, “May I ask why?”

“It’s a long story,” Yoongi eyed the bouquet of pink in his fist, swallowing toward the heavy tides as they propelled towards the shore on the heels of heavy winds, “I’ll have to tell you some other time. But right now...I have to go.”

In any other circumstance, Yoongi would have sobbed seeing you ascend the aisle. And frankly, in the given circumstance, he wanted to as well, breath welling in the base of his throat when you hesitated upon seeing his figure, choosing eventually to drop your head and stalk for him. When you were in earshot, he said, “You didn’t pause.”

Tear tracks were still evident on your skin, fresh in fact, when you glared in confusion, “What?”

Yoongi gestured with his free hand, cuffs on his suit jacket riding up over the jewelry dangling from a delicate wrist bone as he pointed for the place beyond the last row of chairs. “You’re supposed to pause until the proper music starts. Standard wedding procedure.”

“Good thing this isn’t a wedding,” Your fingers brushed at your cheeks, trying to cover up, “Why are you still here? I figured you’d be long gone by now.”

“Change of plans. I don’t think I’ll be leaving for a little while now. Turns out I have a fiance’ here,” He took one step toward you, kicking up sand with the polished toe of his dress boot, “Weird, right? Who would have known…”

A short huff left through your nose. “You’re lucky you’re cute. Otherwise, I wouldn’t find this funny.”

“I don’t think this is funny. Not what I have to tell you, at least.”

 “Well get on it with it,” You kicked up some sand without moving, “I have wedding details to finish.”

“I’ve kept this in for far longer than I should have. I thought it would be selfish of me to say it, especially when I really wanted to. After all, I was leaving. I wasn’t just leaving to go to university a few towns over or to accept an internship. I was signing to release an album. A real life album, something I’d always dreamed of doing.”

“And in my ideal situation, you would come with me. You would have taken the scholarship for that business school and at least stuck by my side for just a few more years. It was selfish of me to even have the thought. I feel guilty about it every day.”

“The extension of that thought was why I had it in the first place. Why my conscience would even think to conjure up such a painting of the future, one that included you in the short term but would assure you in the long run. Hopefully. I always hoped that.”

“When it didn’t work out that way, I didn’t want to give you any indication that I had wanted that in the first place. You had your mind set up and you were so excited. So excited. I couldn’t do anything to pull you away from that. I didn’t want to. I still don’t want to.”

“And I’ve regretted it every day since that night,” Yoongi used the bouquet as a wand, waving it vaguely as his free hand dug around in the pocket of his jacket. “Have you ever looked through the drawers of that wardrobe piece in the foyer of the first floor?”

You blinked, welled up tears not able to break from the streams you’d previously wiped away, “I could get all but the top right open after your parents moved out. I guess I lost the key to it.”

“It’s because I had the key,” The black box balanced between his fingers, tucked underneath the first knuckle on his thumb and the pad of his index finger, “This was in there.”

Yoongi popped the box open, revealing the glittering band inside. It was real, unlike the prop you’d happily collected from the photo shoot, polished in its original condition where the dusted outer edges of its container didn’t fare the same. “This is what I had to give you that night. It’s not what you think,” He shrugged, shifting to let the box slide fully into his cupped palm, “Or maybe it is. I wasn’t proposing, certainly. But I didn’t want to give you this. Not the draft of that song. Nothing else.”

“And it had a message attached to it so—” Yoongi thrust the flowers toward you, waiting until you took them so he could fully cradle the ring box in both hands, “—if you’ll allow me to be just a little bit selfish for a second, I’d wholly appreciate it.”

“I’m in love with you. I always have been and at this point, I think I always will be. My goodbyes and my horrible communication all were done with the idea of protecting you in mind but now I know it did nothing but hurt you more and for that, I apologize.”

He stepped twice, bringing him to stand directly in front of you. “I don’t think what would have happened if I would have told you all this that night. I can’t predict and I don’t want to think about it. I can’t change it,” Yoongi shut the ring box, gripping it tight in one hand as his opposite appendage tested your wet cheek, finger breaking the trail in route to cradle your face, “but I’m telling you here and now that I love you, angel. I really, really do.”

“I can tell you what would have happened.”

Yoongi frowned, attention split between clearing your tears and watching your teeth try to collect your trembling bottom lip. 

As if it clarified, you added, “I would have told you the same thing I’m about to tell you now.”

“I love you. Then, now, always,” You sniffled into quiet laughter, “Even a few Min Suga scandals can’t push me away.”

The seam of your lips tasted like salt and strawberry lip balm and you, one touch of your mouth as a result of the words Yoongi had waited years to hear come out of your mouth effectively sweeping up all the pieces of his shattered heart into a dustpan and fusing them back together, leaving it to soar in his ears as the moon fondly watched his hand on the side of your neck draw you closer. 

“I have two questions,” You mumbled against his lips. “Can I have the ring now? I think I’ve waited long enough.”

Yoongi laughed, pecking your mouth one more time in fear you’d dissolve into the ocean waves and he’d wake up in his apartment in the city. His grip fumbled the box back open, just as shaky as he had been in pushing the fake ring onto the proper finger as he nodded, “Yes, you certainly have. Second question, shoot.”

“Do I still have to marry you tomorrow?”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Better you than J-Hope,” You grinned through your tears when he laced your fingers together to squeeze your hand, dragging you in for more sweet affections from his pouted mouth. 

“Right,” Yoongi punctuated his words through stamped kisses down your jaw, “I’ll remember you said that when I introduce you two.”

“Besides. I’m only wary about the wedding being tomorrow,” Your features scrunched when he nosed your cheek, “We need a little more time to plan, don’t you think?”

“Maybe just a few years. Maybe just a few months,” You shrugged when his gaze returned to yours, laughing as the realization flickered over in real time to Yoongi’s expression, “Just some more time I think would be good.”

Yoongi hummed, letting go of you to pry apart the stems in your hand picked bouquet, careful in plucking one of the flowers away from the center before reaching to pleat it behind your ear, lips following to settle on your cheek. 

“Good thing I know a wedding planner.”

Min Yoongi, better known as rapper, singer, songwriter, and producer Min Suga released his second studio album on Friday. Titled ‘Orchid’, it’s rumored to be a series of poems written for and about his spouse with which he recently celebrated marriage to from the privacy of his secluded, beach side hometown. This release comes nearly four years after his debut album and some fans have speculated the songs seem to be speaking to each other, as though the track lists tell the story of the couples love from Min’s perspective. The album is projected to debut number one, proving that perhaps the wait is, in fact, worth it in the end. 

#bts reactions #bts imagines #bts scenarios #bts x reader #bts fluff #yoongi imagine #yoongi imagines #yoongi x reader #yoongi fluff #fic: orchid

[aliaslua]

Everything I wanted

Michelangelo (TMNT 2016) x Fem!reader 

Summary:  A deep friendship flourishes between the reader and Michelangelo. Despite your attempts to disregard what your heart desires, the affection between you is impossible to ignore. One day, for no apparent reason, Mike starts treating you coldly. Could this be the end of a relationship that never even started?

Category: Romantic, some angst but mainly pure fluff. 

WARNINGS: None c:

A/N: So I've been feeling super romantic lately, couldn't help but to write this fluff piece to calm my heart! Hope you like it! Also, English is not my first language, so constructive criticism is always welcome. Thank you for reading!

You can also read it on AO3 <3

How long?

You sighed deeply and continued to stir the sauce pan.

How long has it been since you realized you were in love? The memories of that heavy rainy day when Michelangelo had knocked on the balcony window were still vivid, you remember it as if it were yesterday, even though it was almost a year ago. At that time you weren't yet part of the group, effectively. You had met those vigilante - the turtles - only two weeks ago, and despite having made maybe two or three visits to the lair, their attitude towards you was still very reserved, very cautious. It made sense... They didn't know you and had a life that did not allow suspicious people around, it was the most rational thing to do. Even though you understand the point of view, it still brought you a little discomfort to be treated so coldly.

You sighed again. They all did treated you like an outside at that time... Everyone but him. In that night that now inhabited your mind, Mike had sought refuge in your apartment. The rain was too heavy to come home, could he stay overnight? Well, of course! So you brought towels and a thick blanket, you increased the fire in the fireplace and made him hot chocolate. He was so happy, so grateful. He was like that, after all: humorous, cheerful, positive.

So you spent the night together... Talking, cooking, playing cards and waiting the end of the torrential rain that insisted on falling. That had been the first time you had been up all night but the wait was not at all tedious, Mikey was so funny and so joyful that the hours passed like minutes and only when the first rays of the sun appeared on the horizon did you realized how long it had taken. 

"Damn, is it day time already?." He had said "Thanks for the company, Babycakes. Best date ever." He winked and chuckled. 

You shared with him a genuine smile and even after he left you continued to smile for the rest of the week.

That had been a year ago. After that, Michelangelo started to neglected his patrol shifts to visit you. You ordered pizza, watched series, played board games. He loved to watch you doing your hair and once or twice he had let you gave him a manicure session, his company was the highlight of your day and you guys started to see each other at least three times every week. It didn't take long for his brothers to find out and Leonardo gave him a scolding that seemed monstrous by Michelangelo's reaction when he told you - Well, guess you lost the chance you had to make a good  impression. At least Mike liked you - he did, a lot - but indiscipline had resulted in punishment and now he could only visit you when he was off duty.

It was during that period that you realized you were in love. The realization came through you like thunder. You were waiting for him to come in through the window, but he didn't show up. You remembered that he wouldn't come - the punishment also involved not leaving the lair for a month, only for missions - and you realized the terrible sadness of knowing that you wouldn't see him. Suddenly, his absence felt like a hole in your chest and the pain was more than spiritual: you could feel the unbearable contraction of your own heart. In the weeks that followed you tried to rationalize: "He's my friend and I like him. Of course I miss him! That's absolutely normal. Nothing wrong or unusual. It doesn't mean I am in love" Maybe, maybe. If you don't say it, if you don't accept it, if you deny it until the end, then it won't be true. It is not love.

But it was. It undeniably was. When that month finaly passed and you saw his shadow crackle on your balcony again the vivid heat that stung your chest screamed that he was the man you loved. You still remembered the feeling of being in his arms again. His scent, his skin, his laughter, his soft voice that whispered in your ear how he had missed you, you still remembered the thrill you felt in your body when he popped a kiss on your ear.

From then on things had gone downhill. Your denial transformed into a snowball that grew to a point that was impossible to ignore. You started to visited him at the Lair once a week and you still had weekly visits in your apartment, you had your own internal jokes and non-verbal codes. The hugs became longer and longer and letting go seemed irrational, while everything about him felt right: his smile, his arms, the way he scratched his neck when he needed to think, the way he tucked your hair back behind your ear , the teasing, the flirting ... Everything was perfect, it was suffocating, it was too much.

The kitchen alarm woke you out of your trance. You drained the noodle water. Today was wednesday and Michelangelo had promised to visit, but canceled at the last minute. Recently things have been... weird. One day you had arrived at the Lair and you felt a tension that hung in the air, that kind that remains after an interrupted fight. Mike started to be awkward, embarrassed, shy. This suspicious posture caught you off guard and suddenly it seemed like you didn't even know each other. He had stopped calling you by petnames, he didn't give you hugs anymore and the messages were so rare that sometimes they didn't even come. You didn't understand what had happened. What had you done? It was impossible to know. But canceling today's meeting had been the last straw and the message was clear to you. It had ended before it even started.

A deep sigh made you swallow the knot in your throat and with a forkful of your dinner, you held back your tears. Maybe it wasn't meant to be. You were too different. How could it be? He was the hero of the city and you couldn't be more ordinary. A large sip of wine warmed your body. This time, a single tear ran uncontrolled down your cheek. You would never get over him. You would never stop missing him. You would be forever haunted by the cruel doubt of not knowing where it had gone wron-

A soft knock on your balcony window made you jump in fright. You immediately recognized the noise, how could you forget? That had been a harbinger of your happiness for the past year. Mikey.

In a hurry, you wiped away the single tear with the back of your hand. When you arrived in the living room, he had already entered. There was a giant space between you. Normally you would run to hug him but it all seemed so inappropriate now. Your heart was beating so fast that you could feel it in your throat. You looked at him and it seemed that you weren't the only one who had been crying.

"Y/N I ..." He took a deep breath. He looked different. Perhaps older, matured by sadness. His eyes no longer had the sparkle that had made you fallen in love with him. "I'm sorry to come at this hour. I ... I ..."

A deafening silence filled the room.

"I can't stay like this anymore." He finally said, in a sigh "I can't, it's impossible. I can't eat, I can't drink ... I can't think of anything... I have no motivation to do anything I ... I can't live anymore with all of this in the chest. I ... I need to hear you reject me. "

"What?"  Was all you could say, astonished.

"It's all I am asking for. Please reject me. Tell me already that I am a monster, that I took advantage of your trust and friendship and that if you knew it that would came to this you would never have been so kind. Please ..." This time you had no doubts, he was crying. "Please, just tell me! End all my hopes, because I can't think of anything else. I-I can't live in peace until you finally tell me the obvious. For God sake. Tell me that you don't love me back. So I can finaly get over this stupid dream and move on!"

"What." You said pathetically, for the second time in a roll.

He crossed the room with determination. He approached you with the same delicacy and affection that you thought had disappeared and with the same care he kindly held you face.

"I'm in love with you. I am in love with you since that first day when you gave me a blanket and made me hot chocolate, when we played cards and talked about basketball. You are a sight inked on my mind and since I met you I can't think of anything else." He closed his eyes bitterly "If everything was different ... I-If I were different, I would do anything to be everything you needed. But I know ... I-I know I'm not... I am not the man you want and more than that I know that I’m not the man you deserve... But I can’t spend another minute pretending I don’t dream about you every day, because honestly, I’m going crazy. Just say it. Say that this is impossible and that I am the last person in the world that you would like to be- "

When your lips touched, it was as if an electric current was running through your body. There he was, Mike, your Mike, back in your arms, asking you to do the impossible. There was nothing to be said - You could only show him. His eyes widened with the unexpected advance, but with the same speed he returned the kiss, deepening it. His lips were everything you had imagined, warm and soft and it was almost impossible to contain your moan when he dropped his hands to your waist and pulled you closer. Your body was hot but it was no longer because of the wine, the repressed desire turned to caresses and your bodies seemed to scream "finally, oh god, finally!"

The pause for breathing was followed by two panting bodies. Leaning on his arms, a stunning view of his blue eyes was the only thing that interested you.

"I love you, Michelangelo. "You said, almost whispering." I love you, I love you, I love you. "

He smiled for the first time since arriving at your apartment, you saw clearly when his eyes started to shine again. You joined together again in a long, hot, lingering kiss. Lost in the heat between your legs, the cold in your belly and the joy in your heart, you could only think of how everything was perfect.

You sat on the couch, you on his lap. The night was still young and silence was enough to describe the joy you shared in that embrace. Finally in his arms, you laid your head on his shoulder while he played with your hair. Staying there, with him, was everything you wanted, for the rest of your life.

"I will make you the happiest woman in the world." He said while sniffing your hair.

"I already am." You said, after kissing his neck "You already did."

#bayverse tmnt #tmnt #tmnt 2016 #michelangelo #tmnt mirage #fluff #angst #mikeyvsreader #reader

[chaseatinydream]

pirate king (83) || atz

The blade seems to sing in the ghostly light of the half moon as you take one step, then another, down the length of the ship. The deck seems to have been vacated, silent and empty, but you’re screaming inside your mind for someone, anyone, to step out and see what you’re doing - to stop you from what you’re about to do.

No one does. All you hear is the sound of the sea, waves lapping against the shore, pulling your mind into a trance like quicksand, impossible to escape from. You take another step forward, and just like that, and you’re at the door to the captain’s cabin - the light from the lamps inside flickering across your face.

One step away from committing an unforgivable sin.

You raise your hand to the door, knocking three times, the other clutching the blade behind your back.

Please don’t respond, you beg, screaming through the haze of your mind. You feel like you’re merely watching your actions play out in front of you, completely unable to control your body in the least. Keep seeing me as a monster, be afraid of me. Don’t open the door!

The door swings open.

There he stands in the doorway, eyes tired, but a gentle smile on his face. You would rather it be twisted with wariness, with hate, with anything but that guileless expression. Your fingers tighten around the handle, the carved decorations carved into steel digging into your skin.

“Kill the human captain, and return to whence you came.”

When he sees you, he steps back, holding the door open a little wider so that you can come in. You curse yourself, desperately trying to resist the powerful magic of the reflection in the water, but your feet start to move forward of their own accord.

“Yeosang decided to bed down with Wooyoung in the hammocks tonight, to give me some time alone to think.” Hongjoong says, closing the door behind the two of you as you turn around to face him, effectively hiding the blade with your body. “I just... It’s good that you came. There’s much...” He hesitates, taking you in with his one good eye, unfathomable sorrow flickering in its depths. “There’s much that we need to talk about.”

You don’t say a word, lips clamped firmly shut. Your mind, however, screams with the effort to move your mouth, a warning, a cry, something!

“About what we were saying earlier, I’m sorry about it.” Hongjoong’s words are low, regretful as he leans against the table in the middle of the room. Too far for you to stab without alerting him, the dark voice in you whispers. A tiny fraction of relief spills across you. “Jongho doesn’t mean any ill will, he was just being cautionary, and-”

“He’s not wrong.” The words escape your mouth without your permission. “I almost killed someone. It’s right for you to be cautious of me.”

Hongjoong nods, looking relieved that you understand. It’s not me, you want to cry. Get away from me, as fast as you can! “So, what are you going to do about the Royal Navy?”

Hongjoong gives you a faint, little smile. “Well, it might be the last battle that the Treasure will see.” He says softly, and you have to strain your ears to catch his words. “There’s no other way but to fight, after all.”

Dread wells up inside of you. Is there truly no way to save the Treasure? In the end, it’s all because of you that the Treasure has gotten mixed up with the Royal Navy in the first place, so what if they could just...

You have no soul, so if the heart of the sea were to be robbed from you, you would cease to exist. All traces of your existence would be wiped from this earth like a blank slate. None of your so called family would be able to remember you, much less your existence nor sacrifice.

Your breath catches in your throat.

But... they won’t even remember you.

All the memories you’ve made with them, the first time you had gone drinking with them in the tavern, to learning how to use a sword with Jongho and Yunho, from the time Hongjoong had journeyed with you through the sea witch’s lair, to sitting on the pink beaches of Eleuthera with Mingi. Learning how to cook with Seonghwa and Yeosang saving you from a bullet. Embracing in the darkness of nightmares with San and sitting on the masts with Wooyoung to watch the sunrise.

They’re all going to be erased.

All gone.

This entire life would have been worth for nothing.

“But I have a plan.”

Your eyes widen at the news, and you look up to see your captain with a shadowed, pensive expression on his face. “Earlier today, while you were still unconscious, an envoy from the Royal Navy approached us. He said that the commander-” you catch the almost imperceptible grit of his teeth, “-would be willing to speak to us on a small island somewhere between where the two of us are now. A no man’s land, if you will. To, well, negotiate.”

That can’t be right, you think, confused. The Royal Navy clearly has the upper hand in this situation, so why would they be willing to negotiate?

“Of course I know it could be a trap.” Hongjoong’s sigh breaks your train of thought, and you look up to see him running a hand through his hair. “But it’s the best option that we have now. Wooyoung, Yeosang and I will be going tomorrow while the rest of the crew will be targeting the command ship, so I want you to stay with San - safe and out of sight.”

You want to argue. It’s got to be a trap, you can’t just go blindly walking into it like that! But you only nod, quiet and accepting, eyes downcast. The sides of Hongjoong’s mouth turns up in a sad smile.

“Good girl.” He exhales, breath a little shaky - he must be afraid, too. “We’ll come back to you, alright? Since you promised me that you’d stay alive, I need to do so too, am I right?”

If you were in control of your own body right now, you would have burst into tears at his words. The weight of the dagger is heavy in your had, yet you can’t let go of it, metal seared to your skin. Hongjoong rises to his feet, turning away from you to look over the map spread out over his table. “If it all goes according to plan tomorrow, we’ll be able to escape.”

His back is turned to you.

You frantically try to scream, to make him turn around, to warn him somehow, but your body refuses to listen to you. You rise from the bed, dagger clutched in hand, taking slow, measured steps towards him.

No!

“It’ll be a narrow chance, of course, but it’s still better than giving you up to the Royal Navy.” Hongjoong continues to speak, tracing the map with a finger. Your hand is trembling, as you desperately attempt to wrench your hand away from its intended path - you won’t let yourself hurt your captain, not now, not ever.

Don’t do it, you beg yourself. Please, don’t make me do this. I’d rather die than hurt him like this-

Despite your best efforts, however, your arm raises the blade high into the air, your eyes fixed firmly on the side of his neck, where warm lifeblood flows the strongest. Just one slash, quick and clean, and you’ll be free once again-

All of a sudden, there’s a wicked fast flash of silver, and the point of something cold presses to the tip of your throat.

You find yourself staring down a long silver blade, a single cold, green eye reflected in vicious steel. A bead of cold sweat trickles down the back of your neck as you look up to see the man in front of you.

Hongjoong looks terrifying.

Fear, nauseating and dizzying, gnaws at the pit of your belly as you freeze, too scared to move an inch. You’ve seen him give enemies this stare many times, but it’s never once been directed at you, and you’re so, so afraid.

“You’re not Chin Hae.” Hongjoong’s voice is cold, measured. His blade doesn’t waver in the least as he stares you down, fearless light in his eyes identical to the ones that burn when he faces down insurmountable waves and impossible odds. “What are you?”

Your body doesn’t react for a moment, before a high, cold laugh suddenly spills forth from your lips. “So, you know her far better than I thought you would. How did you tell?”

Hongjoong lets a snort escape him, not amused in the least. “From the very second you stepped into the room. The last thing Chin Hae saw before she fainted was her patient being shot. Knowing her, he would have been the first thing she asked after.”

Your heart clenches. He knows.

“Secondly, when I told you about my plan to take the commander of the Royal navy hostage, you didn’t argue.” Hongjoong continues, grip on his sword cutlass tightening. “The real Chin Hae would have protested, asked me to give her up to the Royal Navy instead, because she’s selfless like that. You’re not her.”

“So, you’re observant.” Your tongue flicks out to swipe at your lips, head tilting to the side, uncaring in the least of the blade at your throat. “That is truly a pain to deal with.”

“Get out of her body.” Hongjoong’s lips curl back into a snarl. “I don’t care who or what you are. Leave Chin Hae alone.”

Your voice leaves you in a mocking hum. “You mean, leave her to die in your arms, human captain?”

At the words that your mouth utters, Hongjoong stills, his eye going wide with shock. Your heart plummets into the pit of your stomach, horror spiking through you. Silence looms heavy and oppressive over the two of you.

He looks terrified.

“What?” He finally utters, voice cracking with what you know as fear. Another laugh escapes your mouth, mocking him, taunting him. “Oh dear... seems like the two of you weren’t quite as close as you wish you were, captain... she must not have told you.”

That’s not it! You scream into the dark recesses of your mind. I just... I just didn’t want you to worry, I just couldn’t bear to see you hurt. Hongjoong, please, don’t think that way...

You remember the last time he had clung to you, like you were the only anchor in the middle of his storm. The way he had broken down in your arms, had wept for you and the crew is still fresh in your mind.

While Hongjoong is distracted, your body takes the opportunity to strike. Lashing out with the blade, your hand curves down in a sweeping arc, aiming straight for the jugular at his neck. He barely manages to react in time, diving out of the way before the blade sinks into the wood of the table, splitting it clean down the middle in a show of strength you’ve only witnessed once in your life.

“Perhaps she thought of you as unreliable to trust.” Your voice coos, voice sickly sweet with false sympathy as you raise the blade again. Raising the blade once again, you swing at him faster than you’ve ever moved before.

Hongjoong curses, dodging to the side and the blade narrowly shaves off a few strands of hair from the back of his head. They go fluttering in the air, but before they can even reach the ground, you’re already lunging for him once again in a jab to the throat.

Your captain, unable to react in time, grabs the blade by the hand, stopping it right before it can pierce his neck. Hot, red blood, however, flows crimson down his palm and onto the ground, staining the blade of the knife. Horror lurches in your chest.

He’s hurt!

Ducking around you so swiftly that you can barely follow his movements with your eyes, Hongjoong pulls on you hard, arms wrapping around you and yanking you into his chest. “Stop fighting!”

Your body lashes out with inhumane strength, and Hongjoong is flung into one of the bookshelves lining the walls. Books fall all around him, scattered on the ground, and Hongjoong lets out a moan of pain that tugs at your heartstrings - you hurt him.

A sob almost leaves you. You hurt him. He was just trying to protect you, and you hurt him like that with your own hands.

“You’re remarkably curious, human captain. It’s rather entertaining to see what that bloodied boy on the beach has grown up into.” At your words, a low growl leaves Hongjoong’s lips, more animal than human. “In your hand there is a drawn sword, yet you have not used it. Are you truly afraid that you might hurt her?”

Your heart breaks as Hongjoong struggles to his feet, using his sword to prop himself up. One of his hands are pressed against his side, possibly a broken rib, you realise. And yet, he’s still wearing that indomitable expression on his face, unwilling to give up.

“You’re still standing? You humans are really so interesting.” Your voice is teasing, the dagger in your hand raised once again. “Human captain, since you’ve impressed me, let me tell you something. Did you know that killing you will save Chin Hae’s life?”

Hongjoong’s uncovered eye flies open in shock, and he blinks at you, unable to speak. “Wha-” Instantly, you’re terrified. he had said once before that he would rather willingly take on all the pain alone than see any of you suffer, so what if he... no, you don’t dare to so much as think about it, but...

“Only killing you will be able to save her, human.” Your mouth moves on its own, without your permission. “If you truly care about her, you’d die for her, wouldn’t you?”

Terror immediately floods through you, so acute that you feel like you’re falling apart, piece by piece. She’s lying, you want to say, even though you know she’s not. Anything to stop that sudden hopeful light in his eyes, the way his eyes fix on the knife in your hand as if that’s the only thing they see. “That’s all? Just my life?”

Just his life? Ache wells up in you, so fierce it hurts you from deep within. What does he mean, just his life? Does he really intend to die for you, just like that?

“You can tell I’m not lying, human.” Your voice sinks into a dark, enchanting purr, almost hypnotic. You take one step forward, another and another until you’re crouched in front of him, blade in hand. The expression on Hongjoong’s face could break your heart clean in two. His eyes search yours, a pained smile on painted on his lips.

I’m sorry.

Your hand raises the blade into the air.

“I’ll make it quick for you, favored one.”

A silver crescent cuts across the air.

The blade comes down.

#ateez #ateez fanfic #ateez fanfiction #hongjoong #seonghwa #yunho #yeosag #san #mingi #wooyoung #jongho #ateez pirate king #w; pirate king #a; ot8 #w; fanfiction

[strangerobin]

Rue: Chapter 2 (A Jasper Hale x OC Imagine)

Old scars are reopened. And one day, we all will have to choose. To continue living a lie, or wake up and face the truth.

“I’m telling you, she’s just like me.” Renesmee pouted as she rode on Jacob’s strong sturdy back. The wolf only snorted. “It’s true!” Renesmee pouted even more at Jacob’s snort. “Here let me show you.”

Warm and tender hands cupped her face, a relaxing floral scent mixed with the smell of damp earth, steel blue eyes that sparkled in the sun and the daisies and leaves braided into chocolate tresses. “You must take care, Child.”

Jacob grunted in response.

“See, she’s a sweet lady who was just passing by. And the lot of you scared her away!”

“There’s not many like you out there, Renesmee.” Edward sighed. “We couldn’t be too careful now. The Volturi may have given up last time, but there’s no saying when they’ll be back. Or if this lady was not here for some unknown reason to hurt you intentionally-“

“Daddy!”

“And how would you explain her appearance so suddenly?”

“We found each other!” Renesmee exclaimed in excitement. “It was destiny!”

“Now you’re just sounding like your Aunt Alice.” Edward chuckled.

“Mommy.” Renesmee turned to Bella then. “When do you reckon I’ll see Adeline again?”

Bella titled her head slight and pretended to give it some thought. “Maybe when she’s ready? I’m sure she’ll come see you again if she means to.”

“There’s so much I want to show her and talk to her with.” Renesmee sighed with longing, her little heart beating even faster in excitement at the potential of gaining a new friend. Especially a hybrid like her! “I want to see again already.”

Edward and Bella shared a cautious look.

“I’m sure you will soon enough.”

“Tell us about that kind lady-”

“Adeline.”

“Tell us about Adeline again.” Carlise smiled encouragingly at Renesmee as she stretched out her hand towards him.

Renesmee was alone in the clearing, twirling around giggling at the fluttering butterflies around her. She knew she was safe, her family was around hunting, and Jacob was nearby. There really was no reason to be afraid. It was then when she heard a soft whispered from behind. Panicking she spun around on her heels, ready to call for her family. But the sight that greeted her set her into complete shock.

Standing at the edge was a woman, young and beautiful, heartbreakingly so, probably the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen. Rosy lips parted in awe, steel blue eyes with golden flecks in the centre that somehow radiated warmth, golden freckles over the apples of her cheeks. Her chocolate brown tresses were braided on the side loosely, with daises and heathers woven into it; and that lovely fragrance, she smelt of flowers and damp earth after the rain. She could hear her quick pulse, and that glowing skin-

Renesmee gasped, making the connection at once.

She was a hybrid.

“I wonder what her motive was.” Carlisle pondered, interest piqued. “There aren’t many of her kinds out there, the only ones we do know are Nahuel and his family. And she certainly didn’t seemed to be from the same family…”

“So there could be more than even the Volturi was aware of?”

“But then what of her motive?” Esme asked. “If she had planned to visit us, she would’ve showed up right at our house. Not trying to ambush Renesmee out in the open…?”

“She could be just a nomad passing through?” Rosalie shrugged. “I mean it doesn’t happen everyday but it does happen.”

“But she kept mentioning her maker.” Edward pointed out. “You’d think she came from a large family by the way she spoke.”

“Ughh! I can’t see her at all, it’s so foggy.”

Alice sighed in annoyance and flopped on the couch next to Jasper who only smirked understandingly at her.

“It’ll come.” He smiled and rubbed her hand comfortingly.

“Perhaps we should take turns and be on guard for the next few days.” Carlisle exerted his caution nevertheless. “Renesmee show the others how Miss Adeline looks will you?”

Renesmee nodded and went around the group. It was when she came to Jasper that something happened. Jasper had grown eerily still after an audible gasp, frowning before abruptly standing, eyes shifting everywhere, fists clenched nails digging into his own skin, shoulders tense.

The room had gone quiet, Alice hoovered closely a look of worry on her face. “What is it?” She asked carefully, trying her best to conceal the worry in her voice. Even Edward had gone rigid, his face slowly morphing into shock as he registered Jasper’s inner thoughts.

“Are you certain?”

“I need… I need to…” Jasper mumbled, seemingly in a trance. Then he barged right out of the window and into the greenies at the back of the house.

“I’ll go with him.” With one last sweep, Edward darted out of the house following closely behind Jasper.

The Cullens eyed one another uncomfortably, unsure of what had just transpired in the span of five seconds. Bella reached out to squeeze Alice’s hand encouragingly, as if she unknowingly needed the strength.

Emmet laughed nervously to break the tension in the room, none the wiser.

“Old flame maybe?”

“Jasper.”

His insides was in a turmoil as Jasper raced towards the clearing; his mind a chaos and he couldn’t think straight except-

Adeline.

Could it really had been her? 150 years later? It all seemed laughably lame. How could anyone live 150 years and not age? Unless you were a Vampire then, or a hybrid apparently. But he was so sure his sweet Adeline was not. Could not be a monster like him, not even by half-

But those eyes, a cooler shade of cornflower, specks of gold that glinted in the Texan sun.

“Jasper!”

He’d run his hand through those silky tresses every day by the river as she napped with her head in his lap; and then every night in bed; secret rendezvous that would shock the entire town and disgrace their family name had they known.

Adeline Ruelle.

“Major Whitlock.” She drawled flirtatiously, voice dipped in honey, head on her shoulder as she gazed at him slyly, her loose locks tumbling down her back. Her delicate hand reached out to muss up his hair roughly. “I kind of like the sound of it.”

“Well Mrs Whitlock.” He snatched her hand and laid a single kiss over her ring finger. “Then you shall hear it again and again.”

“Jasper wait up!”

She’d leaned in to steal a kiss from his lips, and he had chased her back to bed with more.

“Jasper Whitlock wait up!”

Edward’s bellows snapped him from his reverie. Jasper turned to his brother’s concerned eyes.

“Talk to me, Jas.” He studied his brother worry permanently etched onto his features. “It’s not like you to run out of the family. Alice is worried. Everyone is worried.”

Funny, even Alice had somehow slipped out of his mind. So transfixed was he on his lost love.

“Are you very sure, Jasper?”

Jasper glared into his brother’s golden eyes. “I’ve never been more sure.”

“You’re hesitating.”

“It’s just… If you’ve ever seen her, then you’d know. You wouldn’t be able to forget her. She was the most dazzling sun in the whole of Texas. Her look, her… her eyes. And her voice. The way she holds herself.” Jasper spun around in a frenzy. “It has to be her…”

“And for her to reappear again now. She’d have to be something immortal. Like us. Is that what you want to say?”

He was at a lost of words, he had ran out the moment he saw her. But what if it wasn’t her? It had caught him by surprise, chilled him to the core that she could be out there all this time and he had not known… Had not really stopped to think of the implications of it all…

“I don’t know.” He finally muttered in defeat. “But suppose she was her or her offsprings or…” They might know more about her, what happened, perhaps finally giving him the peace of mind he needed.

“Brother.” Edward comforted. “I’m not saying we know who or what she is. All I’m saying is, you need to get a grip of yourself first. Let us help you find her, if it really is her I’m sure she’ll have no scruples to see you. Hell for all we know she could just be a doppelgänger.”

Jasper had to laugh at this, the tension lines easing slightly.

“Hell, doppelgänger?”

“Shall we trace her scent first? If she went West, she could be all the way into Seattle by now, and it sure as hell won’t be an easy task to trace her in there.”

“Edward…” Jasper stuttered, tripping over his tongue to find the right words. “I- Thank you. Thank you for everything.”

“What are families for?” Edward grinned, relived to finally see the Jasper he was used to.

*

“Come Adeline.”

“Come hold your brother,” Father beckoned towards her in the shadow of the house. “He tore through his mother’s womb just to see you.”

“No…” She wanted to run, to scream, but no word came out of her. She was stunned in her position by the blood stench.

Father walked towards her in slow deliberate step, a white bundle in his arms, thrusting it into her unwillingly arms. “Take him.”

In her arms laid a small babe.

His hair matted with dried blood and he grinned Cheshire like at her.

“Bring him out so that your sisters may see him.”

Gingerly, she stepped out of the threshold and into the twilight. Watched as her sisters danced in the pure white, each with arms around a man. And in unison, bit into their jugulars, tearing at the arteries beneath, fresh blood spurting out in fountains.

She was drenched from head to toe in crimson.

Hyperventilating.

She needed togotogotogotogotogotogo-

“Rejoice!” Father bellowed from behind, as her sisters continued to devour their chosen meal. “For the house of Elwyn welcomes a son!”

She was going to be sick.

She opened her mouth to let out a silent scream.

And scream she did.

Terribly loud.

Except she was also underwater. Choking on icy cold water. Pushing herself up from the tub, she broke the surface and gasped for air. Coughing out the residue of her nightmare.

Great just great. Of all the things she could dream of, why had she dreamt of that now?

The underwater was her sole consolation and safe place for years and even now it was invaded by her despicable dreams.

Perhaps, perhaps Adeline had been on the run for too long. She needed a habit, a set of routines, something to ease her nerves. She needed a memento, something to ground herself to on a daily basis.

Something to remind her that she was still partly human in this insanity.

1pm, downtown Vancouver.

She’d been here 20 years ago. And now she’d come on a detour to retrieve something from her past.

Stepping inside the bank quickly, she made a beeline for the counters.

Adeline smiled enthusiastically at the man behind the counter.

“Hello, I’d like to open my mother’s safe.”

“I’m sorry do you have her delegation? We don’t-”

“She died recently.” Adeline smiled again. One thing she picked up over the years was that, conversations of the dead was extremely uncomfortable and humans struggled to get out of it as soon as possible. “Tragic yeah I know. It was a freak accident. So now me and my sissy are gathering her things and for the funeral-”

“Just a moment ma’am.” The lady turned around with lightning speed. “If you could just show me her death certificate?”

“Yeah sure, here.” She slid the fake certificate she made in the library with a little glue and photocopy. Amazing what you can do with just two dollars nowadays. “Thank you!”

Half an hour later, Adeline was on the next train towards the Yukon plain.

A single silver locket hung over her throat; its cap embellished by intricate floral carvings. And as she fingered it gently, her eyes closed as she settled in her seat, a sense of peace washed over Adeline one she had not shared in for a very long time.

*

“Did you find her?” Carlisle asked when the two returned.

Jasper passed by in a huff without even so much as a greeting and went straight for his room. Everyone could feel the frustration lingering in the air; Alice immediately got up from her perch by the window and trailed after the sulking man.

Edward simply shook his head.

“So was she really an old flame of his?” Emmett chirped on the side and Rosalie whacked him right on the chest, glaring at the brunette and silently admonishing his insensitiveness.

Sharing worried glances, the Cullens each harboured their own questions in the meantime, unsure when was the right time to broach it.

“Jasper.”

“Jasper talk to me.”

Alice’s desperate pleas finally broke him from his trance. “Alice.” She was kneeling before him, face close to his, her hands hoovering, unsure where to place. Even Alice was worried about him now. His lover, the one who had been his brick and stone since their first meeting. Though they were not mates, like Bella and Edward were, they had pledged to be with each other, as long as the other was willing. But now for the first time he realised, he had not been fair to his sweet lover all these time.

Had she knowingly anticipated this? Jasper suddenly thought. Had she seen this in one of her visions? And still decided to show up in that little diner just to find him? If so Jasper held nothing but respect and love for the little pixie. Her pure heartedness, her kindness. Always giving and never asking for anything in return. And he in return had withheld this one truth from her all these years.

Speaking had never been his best forte. Tiresome as it can be, right now he needed to tell her the truth. He owed her this one truth.

Mechanically he walked into the next room with Alice by his side, and he went to open one of the safes. Producing from it a simple inlay box.

“Open it.” He nudged her gently, gestured for her to open the lid. “Look inside.”

Shooting him an amused look, Alice carefully lifted the lid and gasped. Inside was a number of mementos Jasper had harboured over the years. The largest was centred in the middle, a framed sepia portrait of a girl in a simple blouse with a modest pair of pearl earrings. Curls held in a loose half do, showing off her heart shaped face and that brilliant smile, transmitting warmth and sweetness through the portrait.

“Her name was Adeline Ruelle.”

“Well the resemblance is certainly… uncanny.” Alice murmured.

“Didn’t see that coming did you?” He had to chuckle at that.

Alice narrowed her eyes playfully and swatted his in the chest. “You know I can’t see hybrids and shapeshifters well!” No Alice wouldn’t have seen this because she would be looking at a blindspot; and he wouldn’t have thought this was possible because he’d long since accepted that his lost lover was dead. A century and a half ago.

Jasper mouth dried, figuratively, when Alice moved to take the velvet pouch next. He winced as he gently shook the pouch, tumbling the diamond ring into her ready hands.

“I… I proposed to her you know. Once, a long time ago.”

Alice trained her gaze back on her lover as he swallowed hard, ready to tell part of his truth.

“She’d moved with her Grandmama from Louisiana a year or two back, dressmakers and strictly French. We were to be wed in the Town Hall on the Summer solstice when the war was over. She could never had her gown picked because I know… she didn’t want to spend even a dime more of my money. The ring already costed me a fortune she said. She’d taken to hand sew her own dress for her wedding day with her grandmother. She was just that sweet.” Here Jasper chuckled in nostalgia, but then his eyes grew sad again. “I would’ve given her the world if I could, but I was only a Major then. And…”

“Towards Christmas, when I came home for a visit. Something had happened during my absence, she had grown distant. Always startled, by the smallest sound, a change in the wind. I thought it was only wedding nerves, but really I should’ve seen it then.” His lips tugged into a self-depreciating smile. “She could never have wanted me.”

“Stole away in the dead of the night, left only a note and her ring. Asked me to give it to another woman when I met one.”

“I just…” Jasper ran a hand through his in frustration. “How do you ask the man you supposedly loved to hand your wedding ring to another woman? Just like that?”

“You loved her with all your heart.”

“Damn right I did.”

“Oh Jasper.”

“Broke my heart, that one did. ” He whispered. Thought I could’ve gotten over her with you here. Was what was left unsaid.

Alice pursed her lips and looked away.

“What would you do if she really is the same person?”

He gave her a pointed look. “Hey it could really be a case of wrong identity, similar face, different person.”

“I…” Shifting uncomfortably, Jasper shrugged. “But if I never find her then I’ll never know.”

“You might still have your chance with her.”

“Alice…”

Suddenly he was sure of nothing anymore.

He really should hate her; here was a love built from the foundation, firm, safe, something he had known for years, depended on. Saved him even. Could he gamble all this for someone who’d broken his heart in a heartbeat all those years ago?

“The heart wants what it wants. Jasper.”

“We never promised each other anything Jasper, except that we’ll be there for each other. We’re not mates, remember?”

Of course he remembered. But you didn’t need a mate to live a good enough life, didn’t need to reopen scars that no one had interest in seeing. That the perpetrator herself may not even had an interest in to begin with.

“Alice we’re ok, we’re enough.”

Alice only smiled sadly, knowingly. Sometimes he hated that knowing look, as if she was hiding secrets from him, knew that he was destined to fail.

But then, he had been hiding secrets from her too, hadn’t he?

“It’s alright.” Alice soothed, “we’ll find her. Then we can decide from there on what to do.”

“We’ll find her, just you wait.” She promised with a loving kiss to his forehead.

#jasper hale #jasper hale x reader #twilight #jasper hale x you #jasper hale x oc #jasper hale imagine

[fanficshiddles]

Trust, Chapter 5

When Loki returned, it was the middle of the night. He was confused to see that it looked like all the lights were on in the house, it was like the Blackpool Illuminations.

He got out of the ship and had to blast a few creatures away from around the house. More of them ran scurrying back into the barley, eyes glaring at him. He frowned, that wasn’t so good if they had emerged from the barley.

Trying the door, he found it locked. He tried knocking, but Darcy didn’t answer. Using his Seidr he had the door unlock, as he stepped inside and shut the door behind him, he found Darcy leaping out from the side and she started hitting him. But it barely felt like a cat pawing at his arm.

‘You bastard! You left me here all alone!’ She snarled angrily as she kept hitting him.

‘I wasn’t long, I told you I had to nip out.’ He said, amused at the tiny mortal trying to hurt him.

‘IT’S DARK! YOU SAID YOU WOULDN’T BE LONG! THOSE CREEPY ASS MONSTERS WERE TRYING TO GET IN!’ Darcy screeched at him.

Loki could hear some genuine fear within her voice too. He grabbed her wrists tightly and stopped her from hitting him.

‘Well, well, well. The brave, and seemingly fearless, Darcy does in-fact get scared?’ He smirked.

‘Of fucking course I was scared! You left me here all alone for bloody ages and without you I’d have no way of getting anymore food or off this planet.’

Loki was rather impressed that she admitted she was scared.

‘I may have forgot that time on this planet goes slower than anywhere else… so while I was only away for two of your mortal hours, it was a lot longer to you.’ He said sheepishly and let go of her wrists, glad when she didn’t try hitting him again. ‘I apologise for that, Darcy. It also makes sense why the Greyls came closer, they thrive on fear so will have picked up on that.’

Darcy’s mouth fell open, she couldn’t believe it. ‘Un-fucking believable. NOW he tells me all the important shit!’ She turned around and started walking away from him, throwing her hands up in the air.

-

‘What exactly is that?’

‘What is what?’ Loki asked, looking over at Darcy with a frown.

She was at the table, Loki had just been sitting crossed legged on the floor again. He seemed like he had been in a trance again.

‘When you go into that weird trance. Last time your face looked like it was going to burn off.’

Loki sighed and rolled his eyes. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Try me.’

His jaw clenched as he stood and made his way over towards her. He sat down opposite her and clasped his hands together as he stared at her.

‘Do you really want to know?’ He asked.

‘I wouldn’t have asked otherwise.’ Darcy snarked.

Loki sighed. ‘Alright then. If you must know, I am trying to get the tesseract back for Thanos so he doesn’t snap my neck in half. When I go into those ‘trances’ as you call it, I am communicating with one of his minions. My supposed handler. Thanos is apparently getting antsy, impatient. I fear that if your team doesn’t hurry up, I will be out of time.’

Darcy’s mouth fell open, Loki could almost see her tonsils.

‘I… I had no idea. Dude, I thought you just wanted it for yourself, not because your life was in danger!’

‘Well, now you know.’ Loki shrugged.

He watched her carefully when she got up from her chair and walked over to Loki, she put her arms around him and actually hugged him. He froze on the spot, confused at her affection as she put her cheek on top of his head.

‘You poor thing. Having to make do with me. You’ve got no chance of getting the tesseract through me.’

Loki frowned, but still didn’t move. Why was this mortal hugging him?

She let go and stood up straight, tapping her lower lip she had an idea.

‘Look. I don’t believe you want to hurt me, I know you’d have done it by now.’ She started pacing back and fore. ‘But the Avengers won’t swap me for the tesseract, that’s for certain. I’m sure if Thor knew that the purple grape was still threatening you, he would see your side of it.’

Loki’s lips tugged into a smirk at her nickname for Thanos. ‘You know of Thanos?’

‘Yep. Thor explained he was the reason behind you attacking New York. But none of us had any idea that he still had control over you.’

‘He doesn’t.’ Loki snapped.

Darcy stopped pacing and folded her arms over her chest. ‘He clearly does. He’s threatened your life, that’s the highest level of control.’

Loki narrowed his eyes at her. But he realised that she was right…

‘You told me not to think so little of myself. But I think you should take your own advice. You said you’ve always felt like you were in Thor’s shadow. Why not change that, show people who you truly are. That you don’t do what other people tell you. Don’t let Thanos scare you into doing something you don’t want to do.’

Loki tilted his head slightly, thinking hard. ‘There is just one problem. Thanos and his people are far too powerful, they would find me. Eventually. No matter where I go. And as strong as you may think I am, I would not be able to defeat them alone.’

‘So, don’t fight them alone.’ Darcy said, hands on her hips.

‘Who, pray tell, do you suggest would help me?’

A big smile spread across her face.

‘No… No, no, no.’ He wagged his finger at her and abruptly stood, walking away from her. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

Darcy followed him. ‘Come on! I know you don’t think much of them, but they managed to kick your ass and all those aliens. I’m sure together, they could help protect you and fight off Thanos.’

Loki walked over to the window and stood there, staring out. Hands balled into fists at his side. He saw Darcy’s reflection pop out from behind him.

‘You know it makes sense, Loki.’

‘They would never help me anyway. They will just lock me up. Or worse, send me back to Asgard.’

‘Not if you hand yourself in voluntarily. Explain to them what happened. Tell them about a bigger threat than you to Earth! Hell, if you get Thanos off your back then maybe, just maybe, you could show Earth your nicer side. Get some of us mortals on side and we might just elect you for president or something.’ Darcy said, clutching at straws now.

Loki raised an eyebrow and turned to face her.

‘That could happen?’

‘Sure.’ She shrugged. ‘I mean, surely you couldn’t do worse than our current president.’

‘They will never believe me.’ Loki shook his head.

He hadn’t wanted to admit it before, but he truly was stuck. He didn’t want to be under Thanos’ rule. He never did in the first place. But the thought of grovelling to the Avengers for help made him feel sick. And Darcy knew that, she could tell.

‘Don’t think of it as asking them for help. Think of it as… trying a new tactic.’

‘Expand.’ Loki folded his arms over his chest.

‘Think about it. How annoyed would Thor be if you were able to do things he can’t. If you end up gaining a fan base on Earth, for helping people. Redeeming yourself.’ Darcy started getting excited at the thought as she talked. ‘You could become the favourite Avenger! It would be easy. You have the brains, unlike Thor. You have the built-in strength, unlike Stark who has to wear a suit for that. You’ve got agility and grace, unlike Bruce. Then there’s all your magic-ey stuff. The whole package!’

Loki grinned cockily and nodded. ‘Well, that is true. It wouldn’t take long for mortals to see I am their best hope.’

‘Exactly. And you’d have the back up of the others if Thanos does come looking for you.’ Darcy put her hands behind her back and crossed her fingers, hoping all this sweet talking would work.

Sure, she wanted to go back home. She knew convincing Loki to hand himself in was likely her only hope, as she knew for a fact they wouldn’t come and rescue her. They didn’t even know where she was. But there was a part of her too that genuinely wanted to help Loki. Even though he had kidnapped her, he hadn’t been mean to her. She’d seen an oddly vulnerable side to him and she felt that, for some weird reason, he understood her. He could’ve been mean to her, belittled her. He didn’t know her and had no obligation to her either. But he had been rather kind and supportive.

‘You certainly know how to stroke a God’s ego. I know exactly what you’re doing, Darcy.’ Loki said, eyeing her carefully. But he smiled. ‘But it’s also all true. However, as soon as I get off the ship they will lock me up, like I said.’

‘Maybe at first, but then you can talk to them. Besides, I’ll have your back.’ She smiled genuinely up at him.

‘And why would you help me?’

‘Because you’re the first person to not see so little in me.’

Loki felt a slight kick to the gut. He could relate to that, a lot.

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘This is a ridiculous idea.’

‘But a brilliant idea.’ Darcy countered.

‘I really hope I’m not going to regret this.’

#Loki #Tom Hiddleston #fan fiction #trust #tasertricks #darcy lewis

[thedumbguywithaheart43]

Boomlord weird adventure

Chapter 8 what time is it?

It was early morning in the omnispace void. Boomwood had gotten to the kitchen to start brewing coffee as the footsteps of a yawning purple hair woman enter the room."morning Twilight."Twilight mearly gave him a wave before sitting down. Looked at her noticing the look on her face. To be honest she looked exhausted.'ah shit'he quickly poured a shot glass of the Cuban coffee and handed it to her. She stared at the coffee for a minute."I appreciate the gesture but I doubt this is going to do much for me."good Lord gave out a chuckle."Twilight trust me this is Cuban coffee any more than this and you'll be wired."He gave out a chuckle before Twilight downed the shot, unsurprisingly her face scrunched up. This was probably the most bitter thing she ever had."bleh! Why would you drink something so bitter!"Boomlord shrugged."honestly I only drink it for the caffeine. If it helps I think I have some orange juice in the fridge."Twilight just looked down rubbing her head . Not long after the other girls walked in each of them heading into the fridge grabbing various fruits mostly apples. Pinkie pie was the only one who grabbed something else, looks like she found the flan and was in heaven."oh my Celestia this tastes so good!"At least she wasn't breaking the fourth wall again.

2 After everyone ate they all headed to the living room again."ok girls this is it we are heading to the next world. Now before I go this mission is not meant to be dangerous however the world we're entering can be a bit chaotic so be prepared for anything."The rest of the girls nodded they likely had assumed as much from the previous conversations."so where are we going anyway"dash blurted out as boom pulled out his pen."yeah I'm with Dash partner id hate to go in blind."Aj took a step forward to make her point."we're going to a place called ooo I spent a lot of time there and it's the only place I can really say I have friends anymore...."booms voice got deep as a sorrowful look overtook his face for a minute. This was enough to make Applejack back off. Twilight in particular took a mental note of this.'guess friends are a touchy subject for him.' boom grabbed his notepad An drew another circle, in the center he wrote °adventure Time 1°as always the golden electrical ring formed with a blackened middle. Boomlord jumped into the portal and when he landed his feet were on solid ground. Solid green grassy ground. He surveyed the area around him noticing he was in a grassy clear field however the ends of what looks like old nuclear bombs stuck out overtaken by the grassy plains. The girls enter next each of them still in their same outfits however 4 of the girls had notable changes to them . Twilight and rarity each had a sword at their side. Twilight sword with a sleek and purple short sword with her cutie mark on the hilt. Rarity sword on the other hand looked as if it were made of blue crystal with a white metal hilt her cutie mark also on it. Fluttershy and rainbow Dash had also had the return of their wings which Dash took this opportunity to fly up into the air a bit doing a few loops and swirls."Hell yeah I missed this!"boom couldn't help but smile."Real fly girl up there."a few of them awkwardly smile."so where's our destination?"Twilight asked giving him a quick grin knowing that he's trying his best to make everyone feel better about being in a strange world."we're going to see princess bubblegum at the Candy Kingdom."and just like that he found himself lying on the ground being pinned by pinkie pie."DID YOU SAY CANDY KINGDOM! A KINGDOM MADE OF CANDY IS THIS PLACE PARADISE O.M.C O.M.C."Twilight practically had to pry pinky off of him ."yes the entire Kingdom from the trees to the ground is made of candy including the people."He started to brush himself off as pinky smile only widen."but please don't eat the Candy people or I will probably have to stop you"pinky reluctantly nodded.

3"rainbow do you mind taking an aerial view try to find the place that looks like it's surrounded by Pink cotton candy trees.... Well because it is surrounded by Pink cotton candy trees."boom called out before stopping looking at the ground a large Shadow now loomed over them. It was Spike. All the ponies turn to look back in both shock and horror. Spike mostly remain the same with one slight difference... He was absolutely Giant. His whole body in total was about the size of a two sorry house and his wings could probably cover all of them with ease."oh yeah I forgot dragons are huge here but at least he still looks different from them normally they're just Giant tube dragons with big ass butts."The ponies/girls stared for a moment but in silent agreement they chose not to address it not that Spike would mind he was too busy checking himself out."oh crap I'm HUGE you guys look so small from up here!" It was the most adorable giant grin in the world. Rainbow decided now was a good time to take him to the air as she being flapping her wings disappearing above the clouds. Surveying the land below she was able to make out what looks like pink trees and a large structure that looked somewhat like a castle."guess that must be what I'm looking for."she kept looking around noticing in One direction was a rather large tree that almost looks like it had Windows in it and in the opposite direction she noticed tall mountains made entirely of ice."heh heh heh what do we have here"a voice from nowhere stated in a malicious tone from behind her. Is she turned to look behind her she saw a giant monster with a bat like face and long blue limbs with crooked nails.'OH SHIT'at this point rainbow Dash started nose diving down towards her friends with the creature in pursuit who was maliciously chuckling the entire way down. The rest of the group saw the creature and the girls had various reactions. Applejack rarity and Twilight look like they were getting ready to fight with rarity and Twilight pulling out their swords. Fluttershy and Pinky had decided to stick near Spike who is now using his wings to shield them.Then there was boom standing out in the open as dash passed him and he just smiled. Apon seeing him the creature stopped a look of surprise on our face."hey Marceline it's been a while"the creature began to shrink taking on a human form she had pale white skin and incredibly long black hair which reached down to her feet a simple jacket and jeans and her ,guitar-axe strapef to her back and a nice big floopy hat which covered her in a shroud of darkness. She give out a wide smile revealing her fangs before wrapping her arms around boom giving him a hug."holy glob dude!your back it's been like 4 months!"he returned the embrace from his old friend as the rest of the girls started to calm down noticing that whatever that thing was it seemed friendly at least now it did."oh that's right."he turned to the girls and dragon."everyone this is my old friend Marceline... The vampire queen"a few of the girls jaw started to drop."your freinds with a literal blood sucking vampire?"Marceline shrugged at Twilight comment."actually it's just the color I'm after."Marceline started floating on her back around them."so boom what brings you and your new friends back to ooo."Boomlord got quiet."I found it Marcy.... I found the Rose fire and they're here because Twilight here"pointing at the slightly flustered purple pony girl."is the key to everything."Marceline stopped moving for a moment the words settling in her mind."oh we need to get to the Candy Kingdom right away then."then without word Marceline started floating off towards the direction of the Kingdom and boom followed along with the girls and the giant dragon...... Yeah that might be a problem.

4 After a few hours of walking they all managed to reach the candy kingdom with Spike deciding to hide in the trees to avoid unwanted attention. Pinkie pie look like she was about to go crazy or more crazy."o.m.c so m-much candy!"she was practically foaming at the mouth."look pinky just eat the sidewalk or something just please don't start eating random people I don't want to deal with any drama today especially because we need the princess's help."the pony started walking forward into the rather nice town and to boomlord credit every building and every person was made of candy, And many candies citizens passed by. Mr cupcake crunchy punch bowl guy."wow this is actually really fascinating I can't help but wonder what they're DNA is like how do candy people procreate do they need to breathe or eat its quite fascinating"Twilight then begin rambling about a whole bunch of science jargon that boom did not know but he found himself listening to every word she spoke it wasn't until arsenaline tapped his shoulder that he snapped out of his trance."I see you found a real good friend~"she whispered in a teasing tone."w-what no she's just um cool you know for someone who was a horse the other day."Marceline rolled her eyes."horse or not you always did have a thing for a Smart ones~."boom felt his blood pump. "Oh you're one to talk."Marceline then backed off she knew how far she could go before boom would made her regret it. After a while of walking the group then found themselves at the castle as a pink cared and pink skinned princess in a long pink dress noticed them."oh my! Boom you have returned and with.. many female companions huh"princess bubblegum gave a smirk."oh don't you start now too!" Boom was probably going to say more before pb gave him a warm hug."so I assume this has to do with the rose fire."bubblegum look down at him and while she kept a smile her face was full of worry."yeah Twilight here um it's kind of a long story."bubblegum nodded."it always is."about an hour had passed after this meeting and boom had explained to Marceline and bubblegum how we came to meet the girls and discover the fire leaving out the parts where he burned himself or threw a skillet at Twilight."interesting I'll probably have to run a few scans on Twilight then with her permission."Twilight nodded."good we'll start by using the rejuvenation tank to monitor your body and vitals while I conduct a few scans"boom notice that she was pointing to the large tank filled with water and knew that this meant that Twilight was going to have to strip down which he then took his cue to leave. "I'll be back soon gonna check on stuff."and before anyone could say anything he left the room.

(oh and before I forget I'll be opening asks for boomlord and Friends so if they appear in the story feel free to ask them a question ask box is officially open)

#mlp fandom #adventure time #fanfic #writing #pinkie pie #twilight sparkle #applejack #rainbow dash #fluttershy #comedy #slightly saucy

[inlovewithsaturn]

Dean Winchester’s 42nd Birthday

Dean woke up on his 42nd birthday the way he had been waking up nearly every day in the last few months: an armful of white fur and wet kisses across his cheeks. When Miracle first came home with them Dean had made sure to get her a big, cushy, memory foam dog bed so that she would be comfortable, but it had taken all of three nights for him to relent and let her sleep pressed against his side. He liked having her there, hell, he didn't even try and hide it. He was trying to hide things less now. He was trying to be better. ** **

He was trying to be the man Cas had told him he was. 

The thought of Cas had him hugging Miracle just a little tighter to his chest, burying his face in her warm fur. He thought about Cas a lot. His eyes, his final moments, his confession. Dean missed him more than he really thought was possible. But life goes on. You lose people and you have to keep going, no matter how big the ache in your chest gets, you have to keep going. That's what Dean was trying to do. He wanted Cas’s sacrifice to mean something. If he got out now Cas’s death would have been for naught, so he kept going. 

There had been some close calls, even as the number of hunts got lower and lower. Dean had a nasty gash still healing on his ribs from where a piece of rebar almost got him, now that would have been a dumb way to go. Those first couple of weeks had been hard. Dean contemplated just ending it all, he wasn't really sure how to go on after everything that happened, wasn't sure how to fill the angel-sized hole in his heart. But Cas’s words played on his head in a loop and he wasn't going to die and throw away the chance Cas had died to give him. He loved the other man far too much to let that happen. 

So Dean got up, he pulled on his dead guy robe and grabbed the plate from last night’s pizza rolls, and he scratched Miracle behind the ears. Today was going to be a good day, whether the universe wanted it to be or not. He hummed as he walked to the kitchen. He was doing better. Coffee was scenting the air as he neared the doorway and, oh, bacon? Happy birthday to him! As he grinned and rounded the doorway three things immediately became clear. 1. That was not his brother (way too short), 2. The “unbreakable” glass plates he got at the store were not in fact unbreakable if the cuts pricking his legs were to be believed, and 3. He was going to get to start his birthday by killing whatever son of a bitch had decided to put on that trenchcoat and waltz into his home. 

The shattering dinnerware caused the creature to turn in surprise, it's elbow nearly bumping the frying pan to the ground, but it caught it at the last moment. It then turned back, blue eyes locking with green. Dean was frozen, not for long but for longer than a seasoned hunter should have been. In two long strides he had a knife from the butcher block in his grip and was pressing the blade to the fucker’s neck with his other arm solidly around it’s chest. His voice was wobbling when he spoke. 

“I dont care what the fuck you are, get out of that body now or your death is gonna take a hell of a lot longer than it needs to.” 

The sigh of frustration coming from the monster was almost expected. Monsters were cocky little bastards. The words it spoke though? Rather surprising. 

“Dean, if you don't let me go the bacon is going to burn and this is the only pack in the fridge.” 

Huh. Okay. So it was going to get extra tortured then. It was one thing to take his shape but pretending to be his angel cooking him breakfast was another. He pressed down harder with the knife, drawing a blood and a wince-

“Cas?” 

Dean didn't loosen his hold but he did turn his neck to look at Sam, who was currently in the same position of shock Dean had vacated moments earlier. His brother’s face pushed the tears that were burning the back of his eyes into the light. He needed a drink. 

“Sam, get the silver and the holy water from the cupboard,” Sam didn't move. “Now!” Dean gritted out, just as the monster cut in. 

“I'm not a shapeshifter Dean, or a demon, I was just trying to make breakfast.” 

“Shut up. Stop saying my name.” Was all Dean could manage. He had been thinking about hearing Cas say his name, just once more, for weeks now. This was agony. 

Sam had apparently been shaken from his trance because the next thing Dean felt was residual holy water splashing his cheek. He let go of one arm so Sam could push up the coat, his coat, and draw the thin silver blade over skin. 

Nothing happened except a few pricks of blood and a sharp inhale that Dean could feel pressed against his chest. Then there was a quiet, fluttering, woosh to his left. A sound he hadn't heard in months. 

“It seems I should have arrived at the same time as Cas, sorry about that.” 

Dean’s brain was going way too fast. It felt like there was cotton stuffed in his ears and all the way through his skull. The edges of his vision went dark, zeroing in on the figure standing next to the stove, white jacket somehow almost glowing. Now Dean was almost certain that this was a dream because the last thing he saw before fainting backwards into the counter was Jack, smiling like there was absolutely nothing amiss. 

His head hurt. Not like a hangover but more like that time a vampire had clocked him from behind with a 2x4. He opened his eyes, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. That dream had been insane. Why was he in the kitchen? 

“How is your head Dean?” Cas’s low voice washed over him in a sea of warmth. 

“It hurts like a bitch. What happened Cas?” 

Oh fuck. Not a dream. 

Dean pushed up so he was sitting and tried to stand and tackle the man before him at the same time but the floor seemed to rush towards him and he ended up slumped on Cas’s chest. Warm arms caught him by the waist and sat him back down. A large hand gripped his chin and he was turned to see his brother. 

“Calm the hell down okay? You hit your head pretty hard on the counter.” Dean jerked his eyes back to Cas and tried, again unsuccessfully, to leave his hold. His face was turned again. 

“He's not a monster Dean, stop moving. You have a cut.” Sam lifted his hand to place a small bandaid on Dean’s eyebrow. 

“What?” 

“Jack pulled me out. Please let your brother finish his first aid so we can talk.” 

Dean sat still. 

Once Sam was satisfied with his handiwork he and Cas helped Dean stand and move to the table. 

Dean sat still. 

This was not happening. How in the world could it be? 

Cas sat in front of him. Cas gazed at him with a mix of worry and pure joy. Cas reached out a hand to gently squeeze the one Dean had lying limp on the tabletop. He felt real. He felt like Cas. 

“Cas?” Cas smiled wider. 

“Hello, Dean.” 

Tears slid down Dean’s cheeks as his hand not currently occupied with gripping onto Cas lifted, shaking, to brush across the angel’s cheekbone. He was really here. He was warm and solid and breathing. He was the most beautiful thing Dean had ever seen. 

“How are you here?” His voice was barely above a whisper. He was terrified that if he spoke too loud or moved too fast this would all fall apart and he would wake back up in his bed, alone with only his dog and memories to keep him going. 

“Jack came to an agreement with the Empty, he could help it sleep if he was allowed to pull a few angels out to help in Heaven. I was the first.” 

“I prayed to you Cas. I didn't think you could hear me but I kept praying. How long have you been out?” At this, sadness shadows across blue eyes, guilt evident in his ethereal features. 

“A while by Earth standards of time. There was so much to be done. I heard them. I heard you.” 

He looks back up. 

“I am sorry Dean, we worked as fast as we could. I cannot tell you what it is now, but it is far better than what my father created. Jack is a good leader. It was important I finished before I saw you again.” 

“Why?” Dean is now holding both of Castiel’s hands in his own. A sad smile graces Cas’s mouth.

“Because I knew once I saw you I would be unable to leave you again.” 

Dean stands, the floor now remaining steady under his feet, and has his arms around Cas in seconds. Castiel stands as well so he can wrap around him, Dean’s face quickly finding its home in the crook of Cas’s neck. 

“Thank you.” 

“I didn't actually do it, Jack is the one to thank.” 

“No.” Dean pulls back so he can see Cas’s face. “Thank you for coming back.” 

“I’ll always come when you call.” 

Dean pulls him back in, suffocating himself in the scent of Cas. He stays that way for a time, only pulling away when he hears a small giggle from behind him. Jack is beaming, as is Sam, and Dean rushes to envelop Jack in a hug as well. 

“Thanks kid.” 

“Of course, Dean. It was his choice anyway, I just made it happen. I don't think there is anyone better to teach him how to be human than you and Sam.” 

Dean pulls back. 

“Human?” 

Cas speaks again, anxiety laced into his words. 

“Yes, as Jack said, I made the choice. I can go somewhere else if that-” Dean’s arms surround him once again, crushing any doubts he was holding. 

“We are gonna teach you everything okay? You're gonna love it.” Dean is smiling so wide his cheeks hurt. Cas is staying here. Cas is human and real and he's here. 

“I know you all need to catch up on some things but I do have some pressing matters to get back to, and I brought a birthday cake that I would very much like to eat.” Dean doesn't know if he will ever be able to feel this much joy ever again. 

“And I insisted on a birthday pie as well, though it is not traditional I thought it may be appreciated.” Dean’s heart could have exploded right then and there. Cas is the best thing that ever happened to him. 

“Get some plates Sammy.” 

They sit down, Cas and Dean on one side, Sam and Jack on the other. They eat cake. Dean eats pie. They tell Cas about the things Dean left out of his prayers, like Dean’s application to a local mechanic, and how Eilleen has been staying over more and more. They all hug Jack goodbye and he promises to drop in sometimes. Sam leaves to call Eilleen, and finally Dean and Castiel are sitting side by side in the empty kitchen. Cas speaks first. 

“I got you something.” Dean blushes and averts his eyes from the man beside him. 

“You didn't have to Cas. You coming back is pretty much the birthday gift of a lifetime.” Cas chuckles at that but slips his hand into the breast pocket of his coat all the same. 

“I wanted to. You deserve good things, Dean. Especially on your birthday.” Dean wants to make a joke about how utterly unworthy he is of anything Cas has to offer but the words die in his throat as Castiel stands from his seat to kneel on the cold floor beside him. Holy shit. 

“I heard your prayers Dean. I know how hard you tried to get me out. I know about your mom’s ring. I could hear the life you planned out for us. I heard everything. I could see you too. I know how hard you have been working to be true to yourself. I never regretted for a moment that I let the Empty take me. Not one. You are worth everything. I rebuilt Heaven for you, Dean. Everyone will benefit but I did it for you. You are so full of love. From the moment I raised you out of hell I knew I would never lay my eyes on another soul as beautiful as yours. I know I do not technically exist and you are legally dead but I do not want to spend another moment without you. So, Dean Winchester, will you marry me?” 

Dean is on his knees, hands cradling Cas’s face, lips crashing against the ex-angel’s before he can even utter his response. He’s been wanting to do this for years. Dean kisses with every ounce of adoration he has in him, pushing away only when he needs to breathe. Their foreheads rest against each other, two sets of tears mixing on cheeks. They are breathing the same air, eyes still closed, chests rising and falling in frantic harmony. 

“Yes! I love you. I love you so much I can hardly stand it.” 

They're kissing again, soft and sweet. Dean’s fingers are threaded through dark hair, he never wants to let go. They stay kneeling on the bunker floor wrapped in eachother’s arms for what feels like an eternity. Once Dean can feel his knees giving out he stands and drags Cas along with him, the shorter man scooping up the ring box on the way. Dean hadn't even seen the ring yet. Cas clutches his hand and rests it over his heart while he fumbles to get the jewelry free. 

It's a simple band, nothing flashy or ornate, but Dean’s eyes catch on something engraved inside. Cas reads his mind, the same way he always does. 

“For Love,” Castiel smiles that same watery smile that is seared into Dean’s heart.

“The engraving, that's what it says. I made it before we came.” With those words he slips the ring onto Dean’s hand. He doesn't let go, only uses one hand to pull Dean back in, kissing him with all the love in the world. Dean kisses back, matching him move for move. 

The next day they walk hand in hand through the door of the lone jewelry store in Lebanon, Mary’s old ring in Dean’s pocket. Lighter silver than the one on Dean’s finger but fitting all the same. They get it engraved too. 

“We are.” 

#fanfiction #fanfic #spn fanfiction #spn #supernatural #supernatural fanfiction #Destiel #destiel fanfic #also this is my first try and fanfiction since like 2015 so here we go

[imagine-loki]

Trust, Chapter 5

TITLE: Trust CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: Chapter 5 AUTHOR: fanficshiddles ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine Loki kidnaps Darcy Lewis, in hopes of getting the tesseract in return for her. Imagine his surprise when he grows rather fond of the mortal, finding that she understands him better than anyone else ever has.  RATING: M

When Loki returned, it was the middle of the night. He was confused to see that it looked like all the lights were on in the house, it was like the Blackpool Illuminations.

He got out of the ship and had to blast a few creatures away from around the house. More of them ran scurrying back into the barley, eyes glaring at him. He frowned, that wasn’t so good if they had emerged from the barley.

Trying the door, he found it locked. He tried knocking, but Darcy didn’t answer. Using his Seidr he had the door unlock, as he stepped inside and shut the door behind him, he found Darcy leaping out from the side and she started hitting him. But it barely felt like a cat pawing at his arm.

‘You bastard! You left me here all alone!’ She snarled angrily as she kept hitting him.

‘I wasn’t long, I told you I had to nip out.’ He said, amused at the tiny mortal trying to hurt him.

‘IT’S DARK! YOU SAID YOU WOULDN’T BE LONG! THOSE CREEPY ASS MONSTERS WERE TRYING TO GET IN!’ Darcy screeched at him.

Loki could hear some genuine fear within her voice too. He grabbed her wrists tightly and stopped her from hitting him.

‘Well, well, well. The brave, and seemingly fearless, Darcy does in-fact get scared?’ He smirked.

‘Of fucking course I was scared! You left me here all alone for bloody ages and without you I’d have no way of getting anymore food or off this planet.’

Loki was rather impressed that she admitted she was scared.

‘I may have forgot that time on this planet goes slower than anywhere else… so while I was only away for two of your mortal hours, it was a lot longer to you.’ He said sheepishly and let go of her wrists, glad when she didn’t try hitting him again. ‘I apologise for that, Darcy. It also makes sense why the Greyls came closer, they thrive on fear so will have picked up on that.’

Darcy’s mouth fell open, she couldn’t believe it. ‘Un-fucking believable. NOW he tells me all the important shit!’ She turned around and started walking away from him, throwing her hands up in the air.

-

‘What exactly is that?’

‘What is what?’ Loki asked, looking over at Darcy with a frown.

She was at the table, Loki had just been sitting crossed legged on the floor again. He seemed like he had been in a trance again.

‘When you go into that weird trance. Last time your face looked like it was going to burn off.’

Loki sighed and rolled his eyes. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Try me.’

His jaw clenched as he stood and made his way over towards her. He sat down opposite her and clasped his hands together as he stared at her.

‘Do you really want to know?’ He asked.

‘I wouldn’t have asked otherwise.’ Darcy snarked.

Loki sighed. ‘Alright then. If you must know, I am trying to get the tesseract back for Thanos so he doesn’t snap my neck in half. When I go into those ‘trances’ as you call it, I am communicating with one of his minions. My supposed handler. Thanos is apparently getting antsy, impatient. I fear that if your team doesn’t hurry up, I will be out of time.’

Darcy’s mouth fell open, Loki could almost see her tonsils.

‘I… I had no idea. Dude, I thought you just wanted it for yourself, not because your life was in danger!’

‘Well, now you know.’ Loki shrugged.

He watched her carefully when she got up from her chair and walked over to Loki, she put her arms around him and actually hugged him. He froze on the spot, confused at her affection as she put her cheek on top of his head.

‘You poor thing. Having to make do with me. You’ve got no chance of getting the tesseract through me.’

Loki frowned, but still didn’t move. Why was this mortal hugging him?

She let go and stood up straight, tapping her lower lip she had an idea.

‘Look. I don’t believe you want to hurt me, I know you’d have done it by now.’ She started pacing back and fore. ‘But the Avengers won’t swap me for the tesseract, that’s for certain. I’m sure if Thor knew that the purple grape was still threatening you, he would see your side of it.’

Loki’s lips tugged into a smirk at her nickname for Thanos. ‘You know of Thanos?’

‘Yep. Thor explained he was the reason behind you attacking New York. But none of us had any idea that he still had control over you.’

‘He doesn’t.’ Loki snapped.

Darcy stopped pacing and folded her arms over her chest. ‘He clearly does. He’s threatened your life, that’s the highest level of control.’

Loki narrowed his eyes at her. But he realised that she was right…

‘You told me not to think so little of myself. But I think you should take your own advice. You said you’ve always felt like you were in Thor’s shadow. Why not change that, show people who you truly are. That you don’t do what other people tell you. Don’t let Thanos scare you into doing something you don’t want to do.’

Loki tilted his head slightly, thinking hard. ‘There is just one problem. Thanos and his people are far too powerful, they would find me. Eventually. No matter where I go. And as strong as you may think I am, I would not be able to defeat them alone.’

‘So, don’t fight them alone.’ Darcy said, hands on her hips.

‘Who, pray tell, do you suggest would help me?’

A big smile spread across her face.

‘No… No, no, no.’ He wagged his finger at her and abruptly stood, walking away from her. ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

Darcy followed him. ‘Come on! I know you don’t think much of them, but they managed to kick your ass and all those aliens. I’m sure together, they could help protect you and fight off Thanos.’

Loki walked over to the window and stood there, staring out. Hands balled into fists at his side. He saw Darcy’s reflection pop out from behind him.

‘You know it makes sense, Loki.’

‘They would never help me anyway. They will just lock me up. Or worse, send me back to Asgard.’

‘Not if you hand yourself in voluntarily. Explain to them what happened. Tell them about a bigger threat than you to Earth! Hell, if you get Thanos off your back then maybe, just maybe, you could show Earth your nicer side. Get some of us mortals on side and we might just elect you for president or something.’ Darcy said, clutching at straws now.

Loki raised an eyebrow and turned to face her.

‘That could happen?’

‘Sure.’ She shrugged. ‘I mean, surely you couldn’t do worse than our current president.’

‘They will never believe me.’ Loki shook his head.

He hadn’t wanted to admit it before, but he truly was stuck. He didn’t want to be under Thanos’ rule. He never did in the first place. But the thought of grovelling to the Avengers for help made him feel sick. And Darcy knew that, she could tell. 

‘Don’t think of it as asking them for help. Think of it as… trying a new tactic.’

‘Expand.’ Loki folded his arms over his chest.

‘Think about it. How annoyed would Thor be if you were able to do things he can’t. If you end up gaining a fan base on Earth, for helping people. Redeeming yourself.’ Darcy started getting excited at the thought as she talked. ‘You could become the favourite Avenger! It would be easy. You have the brains, unlike Thor. You have the built-in strength, unlike Stark who has to wear a suit for that. You’ve got agility and grace, unlike Bruce. Then there’s all your magic-ey stuff. The whole package!’

Loki grinned cockily and nodded. ‘Well, that is true. It wouldn’t take long for mortals to see I am their best hope.’

‘Exactly. And you’d have the back up of the others if Thanos does come looking for you.’ Darcy put her hands behind her back and crossed her fingers, hoping all this sweet talking would work.

Sure, she wanted to go back home. She knew convincing Loki to hand himself in was likely her only hope, as she knew for a fact they wouldn’t come and rescue her. They didn’t even know where she was. But there was a part of her too that genuinely wanted to help Loki. Even though he had kidnapped her, he hadn’t been mean to her. She’d seen an oddly vulnerable side to him and she felt that, for some weird reason, he understood her. He could’ve been mean to her, belittled her. He didn’t know her and had no obligation to her either. But he had been rather kind and supportive.

‘You certainly know how to stroke a God’s ego. I know exactly what you’re doing, Darcy.’ Loki said, eyeing her carefully. But he smiled. ‘But it’s also all true. However, as soon as I get off the ship they will lock me up, like I said.’

‘Maybe at first, but then you can talk to them. Besides, I’ll have your back.’ She smiled genuinely up at him.

‘And why would you help me?’

‘Because you’re the first person to not see so little in me.’

Loki felt a slight kick to the gut. He could relate to that, a lot.

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘This is a ridiculous idea.’

‘But a brilliant idea.’ Darcy countered.

‘I really hope I’m not going to regret this.’

#Loki #God of Mischief #Submitted fic #submission #trust #chapter 5 #fanfichiddles

[chaoticdazefire-new]

Morning guys! Today I'm finally getring back to posting my It Lives fics. (Sorry for the delay) Im posting 2 parts today since the first one is kind of short and its been a while. In todays chapter, its the morning after you and your friends performed the ritual that finally brought Noah back, and you just get a call with a new lead on stopping the Power. But before you go to get some answers, you take the time to catch up with an old friend. You can go to part 16 here. @it-lives-in-westchester @anxietyismyspiritanimal @ouleye I hope y'all enjoy it!

    The following morning, you rub your eyes wearily as the suns rays shine through your window and hit your face. You check your phone to see it's only 8:30 and groan. Given you only got roughly four hours of sleep last night, you're not ready to greet the outside world just yet. Just then, Luna stretches at the foot of your bed and walks up to you, gently headbutting your arm and purring. You scratch her head for a few minutes until you're interrupted by a phone call from Connor.

     You answer the phone still half asleep. "Hello?"

     "Woah, sorry, did I wake you up?" He asks. You chuckle a little bit and sigh. "No, I actually just woke up. What's up?"

     You can hear muffled voices in the background, one sounding like Jocelyns. "I'm pulling a shift at the hardware store right now, but Joss just came in here with some pretty solid information about the um... Situation."

     "Really?" You ask, "like what?"

     "She said she found-" Connor suddenly stops mid sentence and you can hear the phone drop, and in the distance you can hear Connor yell "put that back Joss it's just a display!" You pinch the bridge of your nose, and after a minute of more muffled talking, Connor picks the phone back up.

     "Heh, sorry about that."

     "Are you sure Jocelyn is the one who found actual information?" 

     You hear Connor give a small chuckle over the phone. "I'm sure. It's pretty busy here today, so maybe it's best if you just come here."

     You flop your head back down on your pillow and scoff. "But I don't want to get up yet."

     "Well, when you are ready to get up, you know where we'll be."

     "Yeah yeah, I'll be there soon."

     You hang up the phone and lay down a little longer, cherishing the comfort of your bed before getting up and running around for the rest of the day.

     Before leaving, you make sure to take care of Luna, then head to the shed to check on Russel. As you step into the backyard, you take a long look at how destroyed it is. Branches from your tree have been broken off and scattered throughout your yard, dirt has been picked up and tossed around, not to mention the tire tracks in the grass leading up from your driveway to the tree where Connor slammed the vine bear.

     Well, this is a mess.

     Surprisingly, despite a few cracks and loosened boards, your shed still remained intact. You step inside and spot Russel nestled up in his nest, easily startled at the sound of the door creaking open. He puffs his feathers and caws, but once he realizes its you, he giddily jumps up and hops along the table as you approach.

     "Looks like someone is happy to see me." You hold out your arm and he quickly leaps onto it, cawing with excitment. You gently stroke the feathers along his wings for a moment, until he suddenly puffs up and caws aggressively at the door. You feel your heart race as you carefully set him back in his nest, not taking your eyes off the door. You grab your bat and grip it tightly as you slowly approach the door.

     You take a deep breath and place your foot between the door and the frame, then YANK it open! You charge out of the shed with your bat held high ready to swing- but no one is there. You look around skeptically but see no one around, and slowly lower your bat. You look back at Russel, who is still cawing from his nest, and then you hear a strange sound coming from your pond. You raise your bat once more and begin to cautiously advance towards the pond.

     As you slowly approach the pond, you can see a torrent of bubbles shooting to the top of the water, and you feel your heart pounding in your ears. You can feel your legs begin to go numb as you are only a few feet away, but you keep on moving.

     Then, as you finally stand right before the pond, the bubbles disappear in an instant. Bewildered, you cautiously look into the water and only see your reflection. Just as you are about to look away, you spot a face appear right behind you in your reflection. A face that you've only seen in a drawing you discovered at Coras: Redfield.

     Immediately, you spin around and swing your bat as hard as you can, and see the figure just dodge it by a mere inch, their long brown hair brushing in the wind. "Hey!-"

    "Noah?!" You drop your bat and feel your entire body shake as your heart drops like an anchor at the sight of him, relief washing over you. "Jeez, you want me gone again that bad already?" He asks, his arms still covering his face like a shield.

     You roll your eyes and he grins. A small smile tugs at the corner of your mouth and you pull him into hug. After hesitating for a split second, he wraps his arms around you as well. "What are you doing here Noah?" You ask, still locked into a hug. "Trying to get my head taken off apparently."

     "No, seriously," you say strictly as you pull away. "It's not even 9 o'clock yet, how did you even know I was in the backyard?" He shrugs and puts his hands in his pockets. "Well, I knocked on your door first but you didn't answer. Then I heard your bird in there making all sorts of noise, so I figured I'd come out back to see if you were out here. And then you tried Lucilling me."

     You can't help but shake your head and laugh. "You scared the hell out of me. I thought you were-" you cut yourself off, thinking back to the face in the water. He raises an eyebrow at you as you remain silent. "Thought I was... what?" You shake the thought off and look back at him. "I thought you were something else."

     He looks at you, eyes wide. "Something that involved using that?" He points to your bat lying by your feet, and you pick it up. "I...I just thought it was something from the woods."

     "Hey, look around." He scans your entire yard with his hand and looks back at you. "There's nothing here now. Its just us." You look around yourself without seeing a hint of anything suspicious. "Yeah, you're right."

     But I know what I saw...

     You take a long skeptical look back at the pond, then turn back to him. "Connor actually called not too long ago. He said him and Jocelyn might have found something new about the Power but they're stuck at the hardware store. Want to take a walk there with me?"

     He shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly. "I might as well, since you clearly need a bodyguard." He grins as you playfully punch him in the arm. You set your bat back in the shed and you and Noah head out into town. But as you're walking away, you swear you can feel something watching you from the trees. Something that makes your blood run cold.

******

    The walk into town is long and quiet, giving you and Noah time to catch up.

     "So, how does it feel?" He looks at you with a raised eyebrow.  "How does what feel?" You lightly nudge him in the arm. "You know, to be back. To be you again."

     He looks down and stares at the ground as he walks, thinking before answering you. "I'm not sure how to feel about it honestly. For three years I was trapped as some shadow monster, now all of a sudden I'm back," he looks at his hands, studying them. "And it's like I never was that monster."

     You walk in silence for a minute as you take in his words, and think of how to respond. "I wouldn't necessarily say you were a monster." He looks at you as if baffled. "Then what was I?"

     You shrug your shoulders. "You were just... You. Just with a new look." He scoffs, but with the hint of a smile on his face. "And telekinetic powers? And the ability to go through walls? Not to mention a terrible speech problem."

     You both burst out into laughter, the first time you've seen him laugh in years. You can't help but stare at the smile on his face, the happiness he hasn't felt in so long, even if it's just for a moment.

     You look forward as you can just see the town in the distance. You look over to say something to him, but realize hes no longer walking next to you. You turn around to see he's stopped a little ways back, staring down a long street. You make your way back to him and follow his gaze, and you know exactly what he's looking at:

     His house.

     You look at his face and see the pained expression, the joy he had just felt disappeared, as if it were never there.

     "Do you... Want to go? And see her?" He doesn't speak, nor does he look at you, his entire focus still locked on his house. "Noah?" He shakes his head as if coming out of a trance, and looks at the ground. "No. I can't." He kicks a pebble by his feet and watches it skip into the grass. "I'm not ready for that. Not yet. And I don't think she is either. Not after thinking I've been dead this whole time."

     You put a hand on his back and rub it soothingly. "Hey, there's no rush. You've been through so much. Just take it all one step at a time, okay?" He still doesn't meet your gaze, but nods his head.

     "Now come on, the town is just up ahead." He slowly starts walking with you, taking one last look at his street, guilt stricken across his face.

  When you finally reach town, you notice him looking all around, at all the people, all the buildings, even the birds flying above. "Enjoying the scenery I see?" You say jokingly. He gives a small smile, still looking around. "Just taking in what I've missed the past few years."

     You smile and look forward, and see the hardware store in the distance. You keep walking until he suddenly puts an arm in front of you, stopping you in your tracks.

     "Hey-"

     "Do you have to be there right away?" He asks. "I'm not necessarily on a schedule, why?" He nods his head and you notice he's stopped you in front of the cafe you sat down at the day he followed you from school, where he told you the story about when Jane chased after him when he ran away as a kid.

     You look at him grinning from ear to hear as he meets your gaze. "It's been a long time since I've sat down and had a blueberry muffin." Rolling your eyes with a smile, you both walk inside.

     "Go ahead and find a place to sit, I'll get us something to eat." You look at him with a sarcastic smile. "You're treating both of us to blueberry muffins?" He smiles. "Technically, Dan is treating us." He pulls out a ten dollar bill from his pocket and walks in line as you find a seat by the window. After a few minutes, he sits in the chair across from you and hands you a muffin. You take small bites from it like a mouse while he scarfs his down.

     "So, you still never told me why you were at my house at 8:30 in the morning." He looks up at you with a mouth full of muffin, and holds up an index finger while he finishes eating.

     "I assumed you'd want to play 21 questions with me about everything, so I figured we might as well sit down somewhere and talk about it." He picks up whats left of his food and admires it before finishing it. "Plus, I really wanted a muffin."

     You raise a mischevious eyebrow at him and grin. "So, you wanted to take me out on a date is what I'm hearing?" As soon as the words leave your mouth, he nearly coughs on his food. "What? No! Nothing like that-"

     "Noah, I'm kidding."

     He eases up and sits back in his chair. "Oh, good." He looks out the window, his cheeks a shade pinker. You both sit in silence for a minute and he clears his throat. "So um, what do you want to know?" You gaze out the window, so many questions racing through your mind, deciding what to ask first.

"How much do you remember? From being like that?" He huffs and looks at you, "all of it." He looks out the window, watching as people walk by. "I remember floating through the woods night after night, day after day, just feeling lost. Like I had no idea who I was. I remember being alone for so long, just thinking to myself how much I deserved it." You look at him, pained as you take in his words, and then he looks at you, his eyes lighting up a little bit. "And I remember the day someone I thought hated me came barging right into those ruins calling my name like she had no fear." He smiles at you and you smile back.

"Well, I wouldn't say she hated you. But she did have a little fear running up in there." You go to take another bite of your muffin and you can still feel his eyes on you. You look back up at him to see his smile has faded. "What?"

"...Why?" He asks. You tilt your head at him. "Why what?"

"Why did you come for me that day? At all? After what I did?" He swallows hard, and you can see the guilt across his face.

"I had a dream. That you were at the ruins, begging me to come help you. You told me I could save you." He looks at you, confused. "So, a dream made you go out there, where I could have killed you for all you knew?" You shrug your shoulders at him. "I knew the risks I was taking."

He looks at you as if struck. "You were really willing to do that? Even after I-" You cut him off before he has time to finish. "It doesn't matter what you did or didn't do that night Noah. You didnt deserve what happened to you. I promised you before I wasn't going to pull away again, and I'm sorry it took me two years to keep that promise."

A small smile spreads across his face, and you smile back. After smiling at each other for what feels like too long, he clears his throat. "So um, we should probably get to the hardware store and see what Connor and Joss picked up."

     "Oh, right, of course." You wipe your mouths with a napkin and toss out your trash before heading out. But as you're heading out the door, you get a weird feeling in your gut.

     You look around the cafe and see everyone is paying no mind to you, yet you can't help but feel like someone- or something- is nearby, watching you.

#it lives in the woods #noah x mc #noah marshall #ilitw fic #ilitw