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#i am small and tall people’s elbows are face height and I am so pretty
bioswear · 2 years
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Nightwish Weekend Staycation Photodump 🤘
What an amazing reminder of what it means to be alive, being here, being human.
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delcakoo · 1 year
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sunghoon with a short gf‧₊˚.﹅♛ 。‧₊
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requested <3 ! jay ver ! jake ver ! niki ver !
PAIRING ! sunghoon x f!reader
WC ! 1.2k
GENRE ! fluff fluff fluff, crack + slight suggestive
WARNINGS ! none just hoon being the most annoying ever <3
a/n: bejdhjd this was in my drafts for a while sorry T-T i hope u guys enjoy hoons ver, my man fr :D
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well you’ve got yourself an absolute menace for a boyfriend i’m sorry
mf is so tall that you don’t even make it into his line of sight and he’s rEVELLING in this fact
you’re standing right in front of him and he just
“hmm, where’s y/n? i can’t seem to find her..”
“anyone seen my girlfriend? she’s like.. 4’2.. careful you don't step on her!”
probably has your contact name as thumbelina or smthn
please just punCH him please
kidding he wouldn’t even feel your tiny fists 🧌
when you’re trying to y’know
mind your dAmn business
having a peaceful conversation with literally anyone BUT sunghoon
the big baby gets all annoyed that you aren’t paying attention to him so guess what he does
“—and so i explained that i wasn’t going to go with her!” sunoo exclaims to you with crossed arms
“yeah of course,” you agree, “why would you? that’s totally—“
you don't even get to finish because soMEONE has laid a bulky arm on your head like you’re his own personal armrest??!£<%!]?
yup, there's your boyfriend in his stupid white muscle tank top looking down at the two of you
“hey guys 😎😎”
you give him the ‘why am i dating you’ stare
“what?” he smirks, literally challenging you to TRY and fight back, “go on, keep talking tiny people”
you and sunoo take turns punching him ❤️
it has no effect
damned muscle pig
don’t even get hoon started on how much he secretly LOVES his ability to pretty much do whatever he wants with you
“babe, want me to give you cuddles?”
“what? 🤨 not right now, i’m in the middle of cooking this—heY!“
suddenly you’ve been snatched up bridal style as if you’re a ragdoll
“ahh, if you insist, i guess i can spare you some time 😇”
proceeds to throw you on the couch before juMPing ON YOU
giggles the whole time too
“i don’t think i should hug you too tight, how are you so small?”
you wouldn’t mind dying to one of his hugs anyway <3
but please don’t tell him that
hoon never misses an opportunity to make fun of you for being whipped
another example. playing board games and he loses? bro throws you over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes
then he takes you to the nearest couch or bed and tickles you WHILE HOLDING BOTH YOUR WRISTS WITH ONE HAND. 😢
he needs to get his ego back somehow after such an embarrassing loss 💔
watches you squirm under him with a dumb smirk, “you’re so pathetic jagi, i need to take you to the gym with me, seriously”
you don’t know if you should be blushing or scowling
speaking of blushing
eventually sunghoon discovered another one of your weak spots
with your height, all you can see is his chest unless you crane your neck up
that is, unless he takes the initiative to bend forward and get right up in your face like some kind of siREN trying to seduce you??
“sunghoon i don’t know how many times i have to tell you,” you frown, rummaging through your empty pantry, “that was MY ramen, and it was supposed to be for when—“
you have to pause because when you look to your left, sunghoon has an elbow on the counter, bent forward to finally be at your height with his face all in in your personal bubble
and on his lips is a big, FAKE innocent pout, brows furrowed and puppy eyes staring straight at you
you know exactly what he’s doing
trying to flirt his way out of his mess as usual
not that it isn’t working of course, especially due to how weird it felt being face to face with your boyfriend without having to practically break your neck
but you still attempt to stand your guard 🙁
“what do you think you’re doing? you think your pretty face will make me forgive you?” you move away nervously, continuing to reorganise the cupboard
that lasted about 2 seconds before the idiot grabs you by your waist and pins you against the kitchen counter
he leans down even further, whispering in your ear, “c’mon.. i said i’m sorry baby, what else should i do to get you to forgive me..?”
you see where this is going and quickly push him away
“okay okay! whatever, buy me some more ramen and i’ll forgive you..” you mutter in defeat
he releases you right away at that, cheering in victory ☹️ sigh
your weak spot for him never fails to resurface at the worst times
even when other people tease you and he just JOINS IN
you’ll be at the dorms laying on the couch with hoon and niki (the absolute WORST combination, god bless you) watching a movie
and conveniently enough it just happened to be ‘tall girl’
listen
it was for the shits and giggles, but of course mr dumb and mr dumber next to you took every opportunity to make fun of you
niki would punch your shoulder (for what reason sir??) “y/n, she’s like you in an alternate universe!”
your BOYFRIEND immediately laughs in agreement, “maybe if you stack 3 y/n’s on top of each other, it’d equal the height of this girl”
LIKE THROUGH THE WHOLE MOVIE THOSE TWO ARE MAKING THESE DUMB COMMENTS 😭
eventually you save yourself though <3
“sunghoon if you make another stupid comment you’re sleeping on the damn couch tonight 😊”
niki ofc is all “ooOoooooOooHh 😱😱😱😹😹”
meanwhile bro is flabbergasted, “what?! but niki was doing it too!”
“is he my boyfriend??”
“you wish i was—“
sunghoon punches him 😁
but but every once in a while hoon makes sure you know he really does love you for how you are despite all the teasing :c
it’s usually in pretty subtle ways like just. trying to be your one and ONLY assistant
“hey hee, can you reach that plate for—“
“DID somEone SAY hoon can you get that plate? why of course princess!”
before you can protest it’s in your hand already 🧌
“…thanks hoon”
heeseung in the distance shakes his head, muttering about how whipped this man is for you
another time hoon found you crying in the bathroom after a rather unfortunate incident earlier that day
someone SOMEHOW thought you were his little sister due to your height difference
hoons usually very shy with strangers but this time he was NOT pleased
of course he didn’t wanna start anything in public
but he was absolutely passive aggressive
wraps a protective arm around your waist, “uh, no this is my girlfriend actually.” 😐🤨
when he found you crying he literally felt his heart shatter and quickly ran up behind you
back hugs you and whispers softly against your neck
“who cares what those single losers think, you know you’re perfect for me right? you make me feel so useful, always failing to reach everything.. needing my help..”
you laugh through your tears at that, making sunghoon smile as well
“.. it’s okay when i tease you right?”
you quickly nod, “yeah, just not when anybody else does it”
inside his heart just bursts :c
he nods in agreement, “damn right”
hugs for my shorties part 3 🫂🫂🫂 !!
if you enjoyed, reblogs n’ comments are always appreciated and motivating for me to write more :)
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imthatchishiyasimp · 3 years
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HELLOOOOO!!!
I'm freaking out this is my first post, like the first one shot I post and write about AIB and Chishiya.
I really hope you all like it, please please please tell me what you think about it and whatever you want to tell me.
It's long (4444 words), I know, but I hate small things because I get upset. It's very close to the story and it doesn't have lot's of changes, I wanted to try first to write about something I know. In the future I will write more original and new stuff. Also, I wanted to get used to the universe and to the characters first.
HAVE A NICE READ 💚
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“THIS WAY TO THE GAME ARENA”
The sign flashes all around the city. I slowly walk towards the Toei Sendagaya block apartment, focused on the cube in my hands. Due to having no electricity, I’ve gotten used to pick random things from stores to entertain myself.
It’s still shocking to feel the city so silent and calm, and at the same time it feels terrifying. One would think that being that people die every day, the streets would be forgiving. You can’t even lower your guard now. Even since the first day, I’ve liked walking around the streets, checking out shops and random apartments. I kinda feel powerful, but it’s something that deep inside I know it’s just fake and limited. And I’m not giving up, but at least I’m going to enjoy now that I can, until ‘they’ decide that I’m not needed around anymore.
The tall complex shines between the bushes and buildings, its lights on every floor lighted on. I place myself a few meters hidden behind the stairs leading to the central lobby. From there, I sit and watch people climb the stairs. A couple of them look pretty scared and lost, showing signs of this being their first game. The rest all look shaken up but used to this. When it looks like no one else will come, I get up and get to the crowd around the phones.
There’s thirteen people waiting and all of them look at me while I pick the phone from the table. When the facial recognition is finished I can see that there’s only a few seconds left for the game to start. Almost didn’t make it. Would have been stupid to die because I was daydreaming.
‘Move aside’ I say to Chishiya, elbowing him after not having a response. He looks at me annoyed and slips off his earphones. He finally moves to let me place my back at the wall and get my hair in a bun.
“REGISTRATION HAS CLOSED. THERE ARE A TOTAL OF 14 PARTICIPANTS. THE GAME WILL NOW COMMENCE.”
It’s so easy to point out who the newcomers are and the ones that are sick of playing. You can also name who’s going to be willing to put themselves first and who’s going to scary run the whole game.
I start rolling the sleeves of my sweatshirt up when a boy with a cap starts talking to some guys. They look lost, but not new to this. Might be the first week here. I eye them from my spot, not saying a thing but listening to the whole exchange.
“Excuse me, do you know what this is?” He asks a black haired boy. Honestly, he looks a mess, like he has just gotten up from bed and hasn't changed in a few days. “I ended up here and I have no idea what’s going on”.
“It’s a game” He answers. At the same time, the blonde man next to him, probably his friend, tells him to stop it. I chuckle and cover it up with a cough, earning myself a glare from both Chishiya and Aguni. I might be prone to get in trouble with people and they won’t be happy if I screw a game up. Better be quiet.
The blonde guy whispers to his friend and I try to pick something up from the conversation. Not get close to the new ones and something else.
“DIFFICULTY: FIVE OF SPADES”
The card flashes on our phones, telling us the kind of game and the level of difficulty. I was so curious about the card when I got to my first game, I didn’t know what it meant and what I was supposed to do with it. I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I admire the cleverness behind the rules and the method of the games. It’s the work of both a psycho and a genius.
A sporty girl starts to stretch just after the card shows, so she must know what it means. She’s calm and collected and I bet she’s willing to put all of us on the killing zone before she goes down. We could be friends, I think.
I hear a sigh next to me and I catch a glimpse of Chishiya rolling his eyes. He doesn’t exactly hate physical games, but they sometimes mean having to run or climb and he’s not a fan of working out. And, even though he won’t admit it, he doesn’t like having his white hoodie dirty. Not going to judge, I don’t love spades games either, but I will choose them over the hearts ones a million times.
I get down to tie my shoes tighter just in case. I would hate tripping like the clown I really am in front of all these people. Some guy in a hat starts explaining to the two friends from before what it means a spades game. Club games are hard if there are more newcomers than experienced people. I mean, if it's a game where team work means everything, you bet you prefer working with someone who knows the way around the games. Diamond ones are a bit weird: being clever will get you through them, but sometimes the answer is so straightforward that you get lost looking for the catch. Heart games are the worst. They will kill you even if you survive, and pray that you don’t get to play with a friend or someone you know.
“GAME: A GAME OF TAG.”
“RULE: RUN AWAY FROM THE TAGGER.”
“CLEAR CONDITION: DISCOVER THE SAFEZONE HIDDEN IN ONE OF THE BUILDING ROOMS WITHIN THE TIME LIMIT. YOU CLEAR THE GAME WHEN THIS OBJECTIVE IS FULFILLED.”
“TIME LIMIT: 20 MINUTES.”
“AFTER 20 MINUTES HAS PASSED, THE TIME BOMB HIDDEN IN THE BUILDING WILL EXPLODE.”
I turn around to face Chishiya, grinning like a mad girl. He doesn’t even flinch when he stops me from talking. “No, I’m not racing you to the top.”
“But…” I sigh and watch as everyone starts running to the stairs like lost puppies. “You are so mean”. I punch him in the shoulder and cross my arms, walking towards the lift. No need running seven floors up and wasting energy if I’m not even going to be able to brag about having won a race.
Chishiya follows closely behind, probably guessing I’m going to try and leave him there.
“TWO MINUTES BEFORE THE GAME STARTS.”
We get inside the lift and silently wait until we get to the seventh floor. It’s been a long time since I used one, not everyday you get to play in a building apartment. Feels nice, and like we’re back to normal.
Once we get to the top, we both choose a position that lets us have a good look at the whole complex. He goes to one wing while I leave for the other one. No point leaving a flank unseen. I take my cube out and restart it, keeping an eye on the people looking around scattered through the floors. I don’t get why someone would choose saying in the lower ground when a tagger is supposed to chase you through the whole building. Dude, that’s the most critical place to start.
“Hey, don’t get distracted with those games of yours.”
“Don’t be mean, Chishiya. You know I’m paying attention.” Anyway, once I finish the cube, I keep it in my pocket and rest my arms on the banister.
Aguni and his new friend get to the seventh floor and both of us wave towards him. Like always, he completely ignores us and keeps walking towards another high point.
“That’s nasty” Chishiya says and I nod along. Aguni is always so serious during games, it’s boring.
“I place my bet on those two guys and the sporty girl surviving”. I firmly say. They look like they will make it, but not without having a rough time.
He has the audacity to snort and laugh at me and I look at him surprised. “You’re joking. Everyone looks like they’re about to die, as usual. Just look at them, they don’t know shit about what to do”.
“Were you this calm in your first games? Don’t be mean, they are trying their best. No one wants to die.”
“But, where you that stupid?” He says while pointing to a couple of girls on the second floor who are touching their phones desperately. “I’m not saying you gotta be a genius from the start, but if you don’t collect yourself quickly, you are already dead.”
“Well, my majesty, not all of us are like you, and some people need a little more time, and a little more help.”
Chishiya looks at me and, as if I had imagined, a caring and sorry look crosses his eyes. He probably remembers the first time he saw me get through the games and how I completely lost it once. It wasn’t easy.
“THE GAME WILL NOW COMMENCE.”
He nudges my arm with his elbow and I look at him.
“THE TIME LIMIT IS 20 MINUTES.”
“Hey” He says with a soft voice.
“GAME START.”
“Don’t die this time.”
“Wasn't planning to.”
“THE TAGGER IS NOW ON THE MOVE.”
As if we all had planned it, the whole complex goes silent, trying to locate this said tagger. A trumpet goes off and everyone looks scared, ready to bolt to wherever they can.
The sound of the lift’s doors can be heard from our position, so the tagger is probably on the sixth or fifth floor.
Not a penny drop can be heard. Not a breath.
Some people start walking and try to open doors. The rest are all watching closely until something happens.
And it does.
Gunshots run through the dense air that surrounds us. I try to see where they come from and I finally catch sight of the tagger. Probably a man, judging for the height, with a horse head and a really mean gun. He’s on the sixth floor, just in front of the stairs.
I point at him and nudge Chishiya, but I already know that he has seen him.
There’s now thirteen of us.
And then shots are fired again and we can see the two friends and the one with the hat running down the stairs, away from the tagger.
“Told you, they are gonna get killed.” Chishiya says with a smirk.
“Oh shut up, this is not a TV show we are talking about. And I have faith in them”.
They split up on the third floor, the hat man keeps going down while the other two try to hide in the hallway. Not long after, on the ground floor that the tagger chases and shots the first one and finds another man freaking out. I don’t know if it’s better that he died because he went off the game zone instead of being shot by the tagger. Anyway, he’s also dead. And that makes three dead players.
Eleven participants left.
“See, they are smart. At least the cute one”. I say smiling.
Chishiya looks at me and raises an eyebrow, silently questioning just what I said.
“What? It’s not like I’m lying; he is cute, and smart.” I laugh and wink at him, cutting eye contact with him. If we are going to have an awkward moment, please don’t be while we are playing for our lives.
The killing spree of the tagger continues with the pretty and lost two girls. They sure are on their first game, because they look so freaking scared and unprepared. I mean, who would have come with heels and handbags. I scoff and shake my head watching how one of them falls dead and the other one wastes an incredible opportunity of getting away while the tagger reloads. Well, not all of us are strong enough to leave our friend and not panic at the same time. Shame she has to die, anyway.
So now we are nine players still alive.
Looks like everything’s gone silent again, until shouts break the silence and we all look for the source. It’s the cute guy and I laugh when I understand what he’s saying.
“Everyone! The tagger is currently at the second level of the central area! The tagger has bad vision because of his mask! Let’s inform each other of the tagger’s location and search for the safezone together!”
“Oh my god, did he seriously turn a spades game into a club’s one?” I laugh again and Chishiya scoffs under his hood. “I want to be best friends with him”.
“Don’t be stupid.” Chishiya says. We move a bit to see where they are going now that they are all running. “It’s a good idea, not going to lie, but no one will answer him.”
He mutters something else, but I don’t really catch it. I think I saw the tagger doubt his step when he heard the guy shouting, but he definitely looks annoyed when the sporty girl shouts back.
“The tagger is moving from the fourth level of the central area! Anyone nearby, run!”
I celebrate and raise my hands, clapping and laughing in Chishiya’s face. He looks surprised and tells me to shut it.
The girl runs from the tagger and finds an elderly woman in the hallway. With the tagger on their back, they are probably going to get killed. I grip the banister and hold my breath. She seems friendly and clever, I’m internally rooting for her.
Suddenly she jumps off the balcony and starts climbing the pipes up to the next floor. The other woman dies behind her, and the tagger tries to catch the girl but fails.
“She’s pretty good.” Chishiya mutters. “You just wish you could do that. It’s called envy”.
“As if you could do that too. You are just as weak as me.”
“Hey! Don’t throw me in the same casket!”
“EIGHT MINUTES UNTIL THE GAME ENDS.”
“THERE ARE CURRENTLY EIGHT SURVIVORS.”
Already? We should start moving.
I look at Chishiya under my hair and he frowns at something. I follow his gaze and see the tagger looking at the cap boy from an upside floor. What’s shocking it’s him starting to shoot from there. He has been killing just people he casually finds while walking around, not shooting from that distance.
The boy goes down, but looks unharmed. The two friends are on the same floor and get to him, running away from the door he was trying to open.
Not bothering to ask Chishiya if he got that, I start jumping on the place and keep my phone in my pockets. He slides off the hood and shoves me towards the stairs.
“Shall we, ma’am?”
“THERE ARE FIVE MINUTES REMAINING.”
From the corner of my eye I catch Aguni intercepting the boys and I make a face. It doesn’t always go well when he does that, he tends to let them die in order to have his way. The sporty girl stops to talk to them and she starts jumping from floor to floor.
“Do you think someone’s going to get it too?” I ask out loud. Chishiya shrugs and keeps on walking. I tsk and stay behind him when we get to the hallway. I turn around and watch my back, even though I heard a fight somewhere near. Probably Aguni, who are we kidding.
Just when we are arriving at the safezone apartment, the cute boy appears from the other side.
“Cute boy! I’m glad you realized it!” I happily say without thinking. I mouth a silent sorry when he looks at me a bit perplexed. Chishiya elbows me, hard, and I whine a bit. That’s mean.
He picks the doorknob first, but doesn’t open it. The three of us are watching closely, and honestly I’m a bit nervous about the time. I don’t like risking it as much as Chishiya.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” he asks.
The boy answers a couple of seconds after, lost in his thoughts “Why did the tagger chase us? He could have just waited here.”
He is onto something. Now, I’m not liking this at all.
“Seems like there’s something else we don’t know.” Chishiya says, keeping his calm exterior. He’s going to use this poor boy in case he has any doubt of a risk. “However,” he adds, taking his phone out “if you don’t open it…”
There are three minutes left.
Sweat starts running down my back, making me shiver and hold my breath while I watch the boy start turning the doorknob. All our phones beep announcing the time left until we all die with the bomb.
Slowly, he opens the door with caution. We all walk inside, in silence and with darkness surrounding us. It 's empty. No furniture, neither personal objects nor some leftovers of someone’s life. A few steps in we notice a door at the end of the room and we all walk towards it.
It’s not until we are too far inside that another tagger walks out behind the door.
“Look out!” the boy screams and pushes us out of the shot range.
Gunshots fly around the apartment and I duck behind the bathroom door. Chishiya uses the taser and the tagger goes down, but recovers quickly and starts shooting again. I scream when a bullet gazes at my arm. It fucking hurts, but at least the bullet didn’t got me completely.
I can hear the apartment door being shut and the other door at the end closing too. They must have gotten through them. I hope they aren’t harmed.
I wait, trying not to make any sound in case the tagger comes to finish me off. I search through the room, but nothing seems lethal enough to use like a weapon. I hate bringing weapons to games, I don’t really want to kill anyone if I can help it.
Gunshots are fired and I cover myself up, even though they are not directed towards me. Fighting blade weapons? I’m okay with that. Fighting people? Not against it. But, I have nothing towards a gun. I mean, it can take me from a long distance! No point.
“Everyone! The safezone is in apartment 406! It’s impossible to clear the game alone! We need two people to do this!”
Are you kidding? This is so mean. What if you were the only survivor? Not fair, not at all.
Well, it seems like I should get moving and try to do something useful in this game. I haven’t done shit, now that I think about it.
Slowly, I open the door just in time to see the tagger shoot the door and break the safelock. I take small steps following it, ready to throw myself to placate it. Just when the gun is going up I jump and kick the tagger in the knee, managing to bring it to the floor.
I hear a scream coming from the tagger and a lady cursing from behind the mask. She starts shooting and I scream trying to cover myself without being hit. The guy bolts and tries to help me get her off the gun, but she keeps fighting like a mad person.
We both go down before she gets us with the bullets and I catch a glimpse of Chishiya at the door, trying to help but having to cover himself because of the lost shots.
The phones all inform us of the ten seconds remaining at the same time that the sporty girl jumps through the glass of the balcony. The tagger kicks me and gets the gun pointing at my face and I panic just a bit before I push back. The other guy tries to help me, but with no help.
“Hey!” Chishiya shouts.
I’m on the floor fighting the tagger with the gun under my chin, trying to get it off my face, but I see him throwing the taser to the girl and she quickly gets the tagger down.
I let out a sigh before I heard the time almost coming to an end. My eyes search for him and we lock our gazes. I can feel the breath we are both holding and the silent words running through our minds. My fingers clench and I swallow, accepting death like a forgotten friend, saying goodbye with a blink.
But, just like that, with a blink, it all finishes. The buttons are pressed on the last second and we all hear the beeps from our phones.
“GAME CLEAR.”
“CONGRATULATIONS.”
In that same moment, the tagger gets the mask off and we can see an old lady crying looking at us. The collar in her neck starts beeping faster and faster and I scramble to get away from her. Chishiya grabs both my arms and I scream at the touch in the bullet gaze from before, but he doesn’t let go and gets me away at the same time that the collar explodes, killing the lady.
My whole back is covered in blood and I roughly grab Chishiya’s hoodie. I don’t want to look at her and see what we did, even though it was unintended. She was also playing, and she died because we won.
Chishiya and I are left in the room with the dead tagger, and he grips my hand and makes me let go of him. He starts checking the pockets of the lady and gets something out, but I don’t register exactly what.
I get out of the apartment to breathe. I hate this part where we really think about what went down here. Lots of people died, and we got a few days to live just to have to risk it again in the next game. Could have we saved someone? Not really, I know that. But it doesn’t make it easier anyway.
“I’m Arisu.” Someone says beside me. I turn and the cute boy is there, watching me from a distance. “I wanted to thank you, for risking yourself back there. We are alive thanks to all of you.” He sticks out his hand to me and waits.
I’m speechless. No one has thanked me like this in any game. I didn’t really do a thing, but he’s thanking me. I should be the one doing it, he cooperated with the other girl and they stopped the bomb. We could have died there.
I let out a small laugh and shake his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Arisu. And thanks to you, you did the dirty work inside the room.”
I look back inside and watch Chishiya stick the paper in his hoodie and walk towards us.
“I look forward to meeting you somewhere else, hopefully not dead in a game. Be careful and enjoy the warm water in the ocean now that we are all alone in the city.”
With a wink, I walk out of the apartment building with Chishiya not too far behind. I think he heard me talking to Arisu, but he doesn’t comment on it.
We walk, and we walk, and we walk. Neither of us likes to go back to the Beach in the cars, so we always take a stroll through the streets, enjoying the silence and the stars shining above us.
“Does it hurt?” he asks.
“Mmh?” I look at him questioning and he nods to my bleeding arm. “Oh, yes, like a bitch. But I’ll have to wait until we get there.”
He tsks and grabs my arm, leading us to a pharmacy around the corner. I don’t say anything, knowing he will shut me up and will only be a waste of time. We get inside and he starts looking for some disinfectant and bandages.
He knows his stuff. I was surprised at first to discover he knows his way around the medical grounds; and I’m glad he does. It doesn't hurt having someone nearby capable of dealing with nasty wounds.
He silently works and I watch him closely. He’s handsome. And he knows it, that’s why he smirks feeling my gaze on his face. I trace his features taking my time. His eyes are the most scary thing I’ve ever met. They hold so much knowledge and feelings. I always feel like he could take me apart just with his eyes. He mostly covers his emotions, so even though you search for micro expressions, you will come empty handed almost always.
I bring my free hand up and run my fingers through his hair. I love it, it’s so smooth and soft. And the fact that he always wears white to match his hair makes me smile like an idiot.
Chishiya clears his throat and starts covering up the wound. My hand drops and rests in his arm, basking in the heat he’s making.
Once he’s done, he brings down my sleeves and looks me in the eye, silently checking if I’m okay. I nod and take his hand, quickly gripping and, just as fast, letting go. I can hear him sigh behind me, and he follows behind.
“You know, I’m glad I met you here, but I would have prefered meeting you in the real world.”
“Why?”
“Because I know I will be safer here with you, but I also know the probability of us having a happy ending is minimal while we are here.”
“You are not wrong.” A couple of minutes goes by until he adds: “But that doesn’t mean you can’t try and make the most of it while you are alive. It will hurt more, but at this point, who cares?”
I let out a breathy laugh and turn around to hug him. Hard. He stops and lets me hug him, finally giving in and hugging me back. I hide my face in his neck, breathing deep and closing my eyes. I can feel his pulse and his chin coming down on my head, his hand running through my back.
“You are an idiot.”
“And you are mean. Deal with it.”
I swear I can feel his lips kissing the top of my head, but it’s so fast I can’t be sure. He starts walking again and I run to catch him before I lose him.
We may have a complicated relationship, if you can call it that. We are there for each other, not sure of what to do, what to give, what to take. But we do not give up. I’m just glad I’m not alone, and thankful that I have someone looking out for me.
I smile all the way to the Beach.
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roscgcld · 3 years
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INUMAKI TOGE || scary man
request: The little sister ask is so cute is it okay to ask something like it I don't want to bother you, but if it okay then inumaki toge x little sister reader (5 or6), where she is scared of them because he doesn't visit a lot and is quite so whenever he visit she hides under the bed , poor baby would be so sad,also imagine the other 2d years trying to help him,  
I forgot to add this sorry when the other second year try to help him it backfire because she gets attached to maki instead ( string beautiful woman a big sister!) Sorry again for forgetting your writing is so good
note: hello love! no this was not a bother to me at all! I enjoyed writing that imagine! i wouldn’t mind writing a short imagine for this! also, thank you for thinking my writing is good c: it is average at best, but i feel your love~ i hope you enjoy this though!
pronouns: she/her
scene: before yuji’s appearance in the story; since it will be weird to only have maki ><
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"This is going to be your future school, by the way!” A tall white man with a blindfold said to the young girl, who was holding onto his hand tightly as she stared at the school in awe. Today was a special day, the Inumaki clan had revealed to the world another Inumaki heir; one with strong cursed energy that is quite the force to be reckoned with. Even though she doesn’t have the Cursed Speech Ability like her older brother does, she still has all the qualms to be a powerful sorcerer in the future. So, with that, Gojo somehow convinces the Inumaki elders to let the young girl to visit the college.
The main reason? For his own student, of course!
Everyone knows how much Toge misses his family, more specifically, his baby sister. He hasn’t seen her since she was born, besides the odd visit here and there that never seems to end well for the two of them. When she was first born, she loved her older brother to pieces, not minding his tattoos and how quiet the man was. But the older she got, and the more she spends time around others who look relatively normal, it become a shock to her system when she realised that her “onii-chan” has scary tattoos on the side of his face.
And only speaks in onigiri ingredients too! What kind of person talks like that?
Gojo had heard this little ‘issue’ form Yuta one day, after noticing that Toge looking more glum then usual after the school gave students permission to return home over the weekend. So, as the loving sensei he is, why wouldn’t he pull some strings to let the youngest Inumaki heir to come and visit the college? She is going to enroll here in the future anyway; and since her brother was going to be there to keep an eye on her as well, his parents had agreed to let her go with the white haired shaman.
Which was how we found the little girl, wide eyed and dressed in a adorable purple and white kimono, walking beside her guardian for the day. Gojo found the young girl quite adorable, having to hold her tiny hand firmly so she was not running about the school to explore. He didn’t want her to fall and hurt herself, since she was technically under his case; but he also wants to see her reaction to seeing her older brother. “Y/N-chan, shall we go and see the onee-chan and onii-chan I told you about?”
Immediately the girl’s eyes widen as she nodded her head in excitement, soft pigtails bouncing along with her movements. Gojo had to slap a hand over his face to stop his laughter from leaving. He may not want kids, but he does find kids absolutely adorable; and wouldn’t mind taking care of them from time to time. “Let’s go then, cutie!” He said after he took a moment to calm down, laughing when the little girl just tugged on his arm excitedly as she tried to lead the way.
Only to pause when they reached a courtyard and turned to look at the older man with a soft pout; as if silently telling him that she’s lost now. 
Gojo grins and reaches over to pat the top of her head before he led her towards the courtyard, where he was sure the second year students were resting at. The second years were all on break right now, having had 3 hours of lessons earlier in the day. So the man was able to locate them at their usual resting spot - the cherry blossom gardens, resting on the soft grass under the shade of the still budding cherry blossom trees.
“Yo, second years! I have a guest I want you to meet!” Gojo called out as he led the little girl towards them, who now switch to grabbing onto the fabric of his pants as they made their way towards the small group. Maki and Yuta shared a confused look, wondering if Gojo had fathered a child along the way. Panda had opened one lazy eye, his nose twitching a little at the sight of the young girl. Only Inumaki looked like he had an idea on who she is, perking up a little as he got up hastily. “Bonito flakes!”
“That’s right!” Gojo said with a grin as he clapped, gesturing to the girl that was hiding behind the tall man’s legs; peeking over at the group shyly. “Let me introduce you to the youngest Inumaki heir, and younger sister to our dear Toge-kun, Inumaki Y/N!” He introduced before he carefully coax the girl from behind his legs, squatting down before her as he gave the unsure girl a smile. “Now, Y/N-chan - how do we greet people?”
Immediately the young girl pauses before she faces the group once more, folding her hands before her before she gave them a soft bow. “It’s nice to meet you all.” She said in a soft and shy voice, causing both Maki and Yuta to coo at how cute she was. Neither of them have met Toge’s little sister before, besides seeing the odd video and picture from their friend; so seeing the young girl that’s no more than six shyly greeting them definitely causes them to find her adorable.
Toge, on the other hand, was ecstatic. Even though he does not see her as often, due to college and all, he still loves his baby sister to death. Without a fail he will send birthday and christmas presents to the young girl, receiving videos of his baby sister unwrapping them on camera and thanking him with the cutest smile on her face. However, he knows that she still does fear him - so he wasn’t too shocked when she just shyly clutched onto the front of Gojo’s uniform; shaking her head repeated whilst the older man tried to coax her to go and greet the others.
Yuta, as if feeling her distress, decided to get up and gestures for his friend to follow, both boys quietly making their way towards her whilst Maki stayed back to watch with a smile. “Hello there.” Yuta greeted quietly as he bent down to her height, giving the young girl a welcoming smile whilst Toge stood over the two of them. “My name is Yuta, you must be Toge’s younger sister?” He asks in a kind tone as he gestures to the other boy, who just waves at his sister warmly.
At the sight of the two males, the younger girl freezes up before burying herself deeper into Gojo’s jacket, causing the older man to chuckle as he rests his palm on her back soothingly. “Don’t be scared. Like I said, they are nice people.”  He tried to coax the little girl, who refused to pull her face out of his uniform jacket. Her action caused Toge’s shoulders to sag a little, feeling bad that his own baby sister was scared of him. 
It wasn’t his fault that his ability causes him to have tattoos on the side of his mouth and tongue. He remembers crying about it when he was younger too, but had gotten used to it ever since. Plus, a few of his uncles and aunts carry the same markings too, so he didn’t feel too alone.
But when your own baby sister is clearly scared of you, anyone would be sad.
Maki, as if sensing the tension, got up before she made her way towards the two, gently smacking the back of Yuta’s head as she squatted down beside the male; who glared at her in response as he rubbed the back of his head lightly. “You’re hopeless.” She grumbled before she turned to face the little girl with a smile, who had shyly glanced over the new addition to the group. “Y/N-chan, my name is Maki.” The woman greeted in a surprisingly soft tone, causing the little girl to loosen her hold a little on Gojo’s jacket. “Your onii-chan has told us a lot about you, and Yuta and I are quite excited that you came to visit us all the way in Tokyo.”
The three males shared a shocked look, having never expected Maki to be able to converse in such a soft tone with anyone before. But somehow she is doing it - quietly talking and coaxing the girl out of Gojo’s jacket; and soon the two girls joined hands to go to the vending machine to grab a drink. Yuta and Toge both blinked, sharing a look between each other whilst the two girls slowly faded off into the distance. Even Gojo was quite shocked by the outcome, grinning over at the two as he rest his face in his hand, his elbow resting on his bent knee with a grin. “Oya? Seems like you’ve got some competition for attention, Toge-kun.”
“...Tuna.” Toge huffed, and if his zipper was down, there was definitely a pout set on his lips as he looked away from the grinning older man. “Gojo-sensei.” Yuta said with a soft frown as he glances over at his teacher disapprovingly, who only gave a cheeky smile in response. Yuta ignored the older male as he got up, gently patting Toge on the shoulder with a smile as his friend glances over at the slightly taller male. “Don’t mind, Toge - I am sure all we need to do is help her warm up to you a little more. I mean, it’s been awhile since you’ve last saw her. Maybe she just needs more time.”
Toge gave his friend an uncertain look, but it wasn’t like there was any other choice. So he just sighs softly before he nods in defeat, to which Yuta just smiles and squeezes his shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t worry - I am sure she’ll talk to you eventually.
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As the day continue to go by, Toge was pretty sure that there was no way the two of you are going to be bonding anytime soon.
Throughout the entire day, you have been clearly shadowing Maki around; asking her if she can teach you things, following her about as she went to class; clinging onto her every word as she entertained your curious questions. Yuta wasn’t any better then Toge, but she still managed to talk to him without flinching or running away from him; but she’d have to be clutching onto Maki or be close to the older girl whenever she’s conversing with Yuta. Even Panda had some interactions with you - well, it was more so you jumping and climbing all over the panda with the bright smile and loudly giggles whilst Panda laid there, letting you climb about his fluffy body.
However Maki did actually try to get the younger girl to talk to him - asking the young girl to go and ask if her older brother wanted a drink after class, quietly coaxing her to go and ask him for things like snacks or change for snacks. The younger girl though, was not having it - shaking her head with tearful eyes, silently begging the older girl without using her words. This caused Toge to deflate and his mood to drop significantly. It wasn’t like he can control his appearance to begin with.
To be honest, he had never thought much about his appearance. Because of this, he was used to getting comments and hiding his tattoos so he didn’t really stand out - but when it’s his baby sister, who he loves with his entire heart, is the one scared of him? 
Now that was just another low.
Toge whines as he leans back into his seat, watching his baby sister going about following Maki as she went about her day. Yuta, who was seated next to the sulking teen, glances over at him in amusement as he finishes his mouthful of water. “Maybe she just needs some time to warm up to you.” He tried to offer, feeling bad that he was feeling this way. He was sure having your baby sister fear you was probably not the best feeling. Must have been another slap to the face when she ended up falling about your best friend. “I mean, she’s still young. She’ll grow out of this.”
The same boy just whines and tilts his head back with his eyes closed, trying not to think about the entire thing. It was because of this that he didn’t hear soft whispers and footsteps, only looking over curiously when he felt someone gently tapping on his knee. Opening his eyes quietly, he looks pulls his head up just in time to see his baby sister, cheeks rosy and eyes downcast as she held out a crudely picked bunch of flowers. Maki stood beside the young girl with an amused look on her face, looking over at Toge with a raised eyebrow when he looks up as well. “Salmon?”
 “Y/N here said she wanted to make you feel better.” Maki said with a grin as he reaches down to pet the soft girl on the hair whilst the young girl just shyly nods her head. “She felt bad, since I told her that you’re sad that she’s scared of you.” Maki continues whilst Toge blinks before he carefully takes the flowers from the girl’s young hand. Quietly she wrapped her arms around his legs, since he was seated on a few seats higher from the ground. 
Her reaction caused Toge to freeze, watching as she nuzzles closer and tighter her grip even more. “...D-Don’t be sad, Nee-chan.” She mumbles out in a soft voice, one so pure and innocent that it had all the seniors coo at the little girl quietly. “I-I promise to be a g-good girl..”
Toge felt his heart melt, the sadness he felt from the day melting along with him as he reaches over to pat the top of her head gently. He had hoped that his actions spoke louder then words for him, offering the girl a soft chuckle when she just looks up at him with a bright smile. Wordlessly she held her tiny hand out for him, causing Toge to tilt his head as he grabbed it; letting the little girl start to drag him about somewhere.
Maki and Yuta decided to sit back as they watch the two siblings go off to somewhere on campus, probably to the pond located on the temple grounds to feed the fish together. “How did you convince her to approach Toge?” Yuta asks with a raised eyebrow as Maki took Toge’s place on the stone steps, her long sword resting by her side. “Oh, I just explained that her older brother loves her a lot, and ask her who do you think gets you all of those gifts on her birthday.”
“Ah, guilt tripping.” Yuta teases with a grin whilst Maki just rolls her eyes with a chuckle, nudging him softly. “I would say it’s teasing her how to count her blessing.” Was Maki’s reply as they watch the two walk deeper into the campus, Toge nodding his head with an excited look whilst the young girl was talking non-stop about something. 
“But hey, at least both of them look happy.”
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© roscgcld — all rights reserved to me, rose, the author and creator of these works. do not repost/translate/claim my work as yours on any platform
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radiorenjun · 3 years
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drama love || qian kun
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¤ pairing: qian kun x reader
¤ genre: comedy, slight angst, drama, college!au, drama club!au, president of the drama club!kun x star of the drama club! reader, enemies to lovers-ish, frenemies to lovers, friends to lovers, fashion major! reader, business major!kun, tsundere!kun.
¤ synopsis: You and Kun always have this weird relationship where you’re not necessarily enemies but not exactly friends. Most of the time, you would be seen scolding by Kun for skipping club meetings to hang out with the other seniors despite the fact that you were one of the main lead actresses of the club. And as time goes on, watch as you and your senior’s relationship blossom into something more than a simple friendship between two college students.
¤ warnings: tsundere kun! swearing, probably some innuendos but nothing too bad, kun is a year older than the reader, height discrimination against Ten and Kun (I’m sorry), kun a bit more chaotic here than in real life. Lots and lots of teasing and insults, slight mentions of burdening someone, arguments, genz humor, probably a plot hole or two, bullying kun supremacy
¤ wordcount : 23.5 k words
¤ playlist: double take by dhruv,  free love by g, if i could write a bike by chevy, lovely night by ryan gosling and emma stone, kataomoi by aimer
¤ a/n: featuring a few of my moots!
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“Oh,Y/n, good to see you here,” your underclassmen greeted with a polite bowl as you shot them a smile. 
“Hey Chenle, Furou,” you waved, adjusting the beret on your head as you tugged on the saddle of your back to adjust it on your shoulder. “Y/n, meet Sungchan. He just transferred from the Business Department,” Chenle introduced, putting a hand on the taller boy beside him as Furou let out a soft chuckle. You smiled at the tall boy, looking up at what you assume to be a 180 cm giant standing in front of you. “Wow, you’re pretty tall. You know you could be one of the main leads of the drama club,” you raised your brow with a light laugh, shaking the younger boy’s hand.
“Jisung is almost taller than me,” Sungchan chuckled bashfully, looking down at his feet as he retracted his arm. “Oh hush, you’re still taller than our male lead. He’s literally 170 centimeters, I don’t even know how he’s able to get the part. Curse his pretty privileges,” you grumbled under your breath, remembering how your co-partner on the stage was constantly flirting with his girlfriend during practice instead of actually helping with painting the props like the rest of the club members. 
“You also have pretty privileges too, though,” Furou raised her brow, a smile tugging at her lips as you huffed. “Flattery will get you nowhere, honey,” you joked, a sinister smile playing at your lips as you watched a deadpan expression flash over your underclassman’s features. “What are you three up to?” you asked, putting your hands on your hips. “We’re just going to go to a nearby cafe, they say they’re having a huge discount on their infamous cheesecake,” Chenle explained, pointing his thumb behind him as Furou nodded in agreement. 
“I don’t want to be the third wheel, so I’m off studying and catching up with my major,” Sungchan informed with a nervous chuckle, a distressed expression making its way onto his face afterwards as he rubbed the back of his neck. “I see. Well, I hope you all have fun,” you chuckled, pulling the sleeve of your sweater back to reveal the watch on your wrist, your eyes widening slightly at the time. “Oh dear God, would you look at the time,” you blurted out loud, a panicked smile forming at your lips. 
Furou laughed at the sight of your terrified expression. “I suggest you should really get going, too,” Furou added, stretching her head to look behind you to spot a certain someone. “Yeah, if you don’t hurry, your escort will get here,” Chenle snickered, nudging his girlfriend’s sides as they both shared knowing looks. “Escort?” Sungchan furrowed his brows in confusion, watching you gulp heavily as the two continued to tease and snicker at you mischievously. “Y/n’s pretty notorious for skipping her drama club,” Chenle explained, his sinister grin never leaving his face. 
“Therefore, everyday, the club president comes down to pick her up. The drama club escort is pretty scary,” Furou added with a small snort, making you let out a scoff as you crossed your arms against your chest with a roll of your eyes. “I skip club meetings because I love interacting with all my seniors and underclassmen, duh,” you said, lifting your brow as if it was the most obvious thing ever. “Sure, whatever you say then, Y/n,” Furou and Chenle nodded with a roll of their eyes. 
Now, you would probably imagine said club president would arrive in some sort of carriage. Probably the same pumpkin carriage Cinderella used back in her fairytale story. You would probably expect said escort would at least show up in a white or black suit, a button up shirt and beautiful slicked back hair. You would expect an escort to say ‘my lady’ and gently hold your hand as you step into the carriage and take you away as two horses pull the carriage away to your desired destination.
At least that’s what Sungchan thought.
Of course, it’s not a usual sight to see some random guy sprint down the halls shamelessly yelling your name at the top of his lungs with anger flaring his pupils, his fluffy blond hair thrown back against the wind as he ran as fast as his legs could take him as if he was running for the Olympics. He looked exactly like that running emoji except this guy had blonde hair and was wearing a baggy hoodie over his form, some black jeans and a pair of Nike shoes to accent his whole look. 
“Y/N! WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT BEING LATE TO THE CLUB MEETINGS?!”
“That’s my signal to leave, I’ll see you guys arou-” before you could sprint the other way or finish your sentence, you felt someone grab the back of your sweater tightly to keep you from going anywhere. “I have been looking for you for the past thirty five minutes! And now you’re going to fucking run away?” Kun gave you a bittersweet smile, his eyes screaming bloody murder as you paused in fear. You gulped, looking back with a nervous toothy smile, giving your senior a small thumbs up. 
“Good afternoon, Kun, how may I help you?” you asked in the sweetest voice you could muster, sweat dripping down your forehead as you watched Kun’s stare grow even more murderous with your words. “I’m sorry for the interruption,” Kun said in a genuinely nice tone, turning to your underclassmen with an angelic smile before glaring daggers at you before tugging you back to the direction of the school theater room with all his might. You stumbled over your own feet, gripping the saddle of your bag as Kun continued to practically drag you against the floor to the theater room. 
“W-Wait, Kun! I can walk myself,” you grunted, an awkwardly nervous laugh elicited from your lips as you used one hand to grip on your bag and used the other to keep your beret to your head as Kun continued to pull you by the back of your sweater. Kun sighed heavily, grabbing your arms and pulling you up to your feet before turning you around and wrapping his fingers against your shoulder blades and began to push you to the direction he came from. “I swear, one of these days I will fling you to the theater room,” Kun grumbled under his breath as you both walked through the crowded halls filled with eyes boring into the back of your skulls. 
“Kinky,” you snickered, waving at the people you recognized as you and Kun speed walked to the theater room together. You felt him squeeze your shoulder as a type of indicator that you should keep your mouth shut before he actually flings you to the sun like a frisbee. “Shut up, you horny creature. I am not going to be provoked by your unholy perverted thoughts. This should be counted as harassment,” he hissed as you finally stopped once you opened the door to the theater room. 
“Why do you even skip practice, you’re the main lead for pete's sake,” Kun groaned, releasing his grip from your shoulders to wrap his fingers against your wrist and head to the stage where the rest of the actors had gathered around. 
“It’s about time you showed up,” Brooke snickered as Kun let you take a seat right beside her, huffing as you cupped your cheeks in your palms and propped your elbows up on your legs. “Yeah, yeah. Do kiss my ass more, would you, Brooke?” you giggled, shaking your head as Kun started talking about repainting the old props as the paints were chipping off because Angie and Renjun forgot to buy more primer for the last play you had over two weeks ago. “Y/n, please do try to not fuck anything up while we paint,” Kai joked, wrapping an arm around your shoulder.
“It’s in my blood to fuck things up, Kai,” you shrugged nonchalantly, a mischievous grin taking place on your lips. “Where were you off to, though? It took Kun half an hour to find you this time,” Haechan, Kai’s boyfriend, whispered from beside her in curiosity. “That’s like a new record, you had a great hiding place this time,” he gave you a supportive thumbs up, earning a smack from Kai afterwards for tolerating your irresponsible behavior. “The other side of the building,” you grinned, giving the boy an innocent peace sign. 
“That’s our lead actress right there,” Brooke shook her head profusely, chuckling softly at you.
------------------------
“Wait, Kun, since you’re in charge of the sets and props. Does that mean you aren’t in the plays?” Shotaro asked, dipping his brush in the can of pain before splattering dots on the surface of the wooden board by brushing his fingers against it to resemble stars. Shotaro was the newest member of the drama club, therefore Kun, being the president of the club, had the responsibility of guiding him a lot on what to do and what not to do. Which was a fairly simple job considering all he had to say was ‘never follow in Y/n or Ten or Kai or Angie’s footsteps and you’ll be just fine.’
Kun hummed, running a hand through his hair as he sat down in front of the younger boy with crossed legs. “I used to be in the plays but I think I like this a bit more,” Kun said with a charming smile, waving the large brush around as he helped Shotaro paint the skies. “I see,” Shotaro nodded in response, flinching when he felt your hand on his shoulder as you came barging in their conversation. “No, no, Shotaro, you got it all wrong,” you shook your head at him, earning a pout from Kun.
“Kun wanted to win the male lead and grow taller to fit the role of the prince of the stage, but alas,” you leaned over to sling your arm over your senior’s shoulders, earning a death glare from said man as he furrowed his brows and frowned at you. “Our Kun here suffered from malnutrition, therefore he stopped growing completely and now he isn’t tall enough to make it to the male lead,” you grinned, over-exaggerating your words just a tad bit as Kun raised the can of paint by the metallic handle. “I am this close to throwing this can of paint at you,” Kun deadpanned. 
Shotaro hummed, raising his brow at the two of you. “Isn’t Ten shorter than Kun, though?” Shotaro asked, his eyes wandering to the boy in question who was currently chatting up his girlfriend as they painted over their own set of props. “Yes, thank you! Finally, someone who looks at things through my eyes!” Kun groaned, grabbing Shotaro’s hand and shaking it rather vigorously in his grip. “Shotaro, you are an angel,” he complimented, causing you to frown at this. 
“Ah yes, all it takes to get on Kun’s side is to tell him that he’s taller than Mister Chittaphon. Of course,” you huffed, sitting back in between them as you placed your cheek against your fist, looking back down at the prop. “Again, this close to throwing you this can of paint,” Kun repeated with a roll of his eyes. “Don’t worry, I’ll sue you, Kun,” you sent him a cheeky grin, patting your senior’s shoulder in mock pity as he rubbed his temples in frustration, causing you and Shotaro to giggle.
You weren’t quite sure if it was obvious, but you’ve always admired Kun. You didn’t know if your feelings were in the romance department or the mentor department, but you couldn’t help but admire your lovely senior. He was at the top of his major, studying hard everyday and managing his own things while keeping the club in good shape despite the fact that he has three hooligans (consisting of you, Ten, Kai and Angie but mostly you) to handle on a daily basis. 
You knew he was an explendid cook, too. Considering he brought a whole buffet for the whole club that he cooked all by himself to celebrate the new anniversary of this club. Kun was talented and good looking, you couldn’t deny it even if you tried.(and thankfully, you don’t need to because no one ever asked about your thoughts on your handsome senior) He was caring, despite the fact that he was always yelling at your ear everyday, but nonetheless you knew he actually cared about you deep down. 
Kun was the reason why you had joined the drama club in the first place. You weren’t much of a theater kid, but you were pretty good at acting back in highschool. Just as when you promised yourself not to get involved with the art of theater, you saw Kun acting as a prince in a play at a fair your college hosted back when you were in your first year of college and you couldn’t help but sign up immediately so you could get a closer look at his acting. And as time went on, your playful nature was the reason why he was always by your side. 
You refused to think deeper about your feelings on the boy, but you knew they were crossing the line of friendship. Considering the true reason you always skipped classes was (partially to socialise and chat up your seniors and underclassmen to catch up with them) the fact that Kun would always be there to bring some entertainment into your day whenever you even attempt to skip the club meetings. Pushing aside the fact that you almost lost your life over it countless times, you didn’t mind facing the wrath of Kun everyday just to get a few laughs out. 
 Infuriating and teasing him was always a fun activity.
Quite ridiculous, you gotta agree. 
Though, you gotta admit that sometimes his words hurt. You knew he was probably joking most of the time but you couldn’t help but feel saddened sometimes whenever he would grumble on and on about how you shouldn’t have joined the club if all you’re going to do is annoy him all the time. But you didn’t let his words linger in your mind for too long and chose to focus on annoying him either way. 
“Damn, Kun. You should stop getting angry so much before your veins pop out, I don’t think any of us are mentally stable enough to call the ambulance for you,” Kai joked as she stood next to said man who was currently trying his best not to beat the living crap out of you right next to you. “Agreed. You’re old enough, Kun, you don’t need any more wrinkles than you already have, you know?” you teased, poking Kun with the wooden hand of his paint brush with a smug expression on your face. 
“This is age discrimination,” Kun mumbled under his breath after a big sigh of exhaustion, rubbing his forehead with his fingers. “Okay, I discussed this with Ten early and I figured I should have informed you too so I’m telling you now about the new story we’re going with for the next play,” Kun ran a hair through his hair, adjusting the glasses on his face as you cocked your head to the side in confusion. “Wait, what’s wrong with the story I suggested?” you furrowed your brows, offended at his sudden decision to change the story. 
Kun narrowed his eyes, brows furrowing at you as if he was trying to decipher if you were joking or not. “Are you mental?” Kun asked, crossing his arms against his chest as his eyes went wide, a smile of disbelief on his lips. “How the hell did you think a made up story between the dragon and the donkey from Shrek was ever going to be a good plot for a theatrical play?” he exclaimed in disbelief, causing you to scoff as he waved his arms around in confusion. “You just don’t know what a real beautiful story is, Qian Kun,” you scoffed, crossing your arms against your chest. 
Kun groaned, closing his eyes as he pinched the bridge of his nose to keep himself from exploding right in front of you. “I get how you want to make people around you laugh, but I don’t want this club to be the laughing stock of campus, Y/n,” he groaned, hunching his back as he massaged the space in between his eyes to try to reason with you. However, seeing the older boy in distress was like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, you couldn’t help but get on his nerves and push on his buttons even more than you should. 
“People need some laughter, Kun. What are you planning, anyways? Some boring Romeo and Juliet type of shit? Twist it up a bit, if you don’t like the donkey and dragon trope I can give you a new one on the spot,” you waved him off before gasping loudly as an idea popped into your head like a lightbulb turning on. “What about Romeo but make it a furry Rapunzel? Romeo, Romeo! Let down your hair! Or tail, whichever works. Be original, Kun!” you nudge your friend with an encouraging wide smile. 
Kun opened his mouth to speak as his brows furrowed in confusion before closing it after a small pause. “Dear god, you’re even worse than Yangyang when he asked if he could put crocs on Louis,” he hissed, sighing heavily when he made a note to himself to never come to you for plot ideas for the play. “You should be in the Writing major instead of the fashion major, it suits you,” he commented with a sarcastic thumbs up. “Nice try, Kun. Flattery is no way to get me to change,” you winked, earning a small chuckle from Kun himself. 
“Anyways, I was talking over story inspirations with Brooke and Angie. They had some really good suggestions and we ended up choosing this movie called La La Land-” he frowned when he saw you slowly lay down against the wooden floor boards with a loud annoyed groan. “Dear God, Kun. Couldn’t you at least go with something original? My Furry Romeo concept was way better than this,” you swung an arm over your eyes as Shotaro let out a loud alarming yelp when he saw your arm almost knock over a can of blue paint over the props. 
Kun rolled his eyes once again, taking a loud exhale as he met your eyes that practically screamed ‘please don’t yell at me, it was an accident. I cry easily’. 
“As I was saying, it’s about a pianist and an actress falling in love while attempting to reconcile their aspirations for the future. It’s an enemies to lovers-ish type of story,” he ignored how you kept groaning and complaining in the middle of his words. “And I’m supposed to be playing this actress?” you asked, removing your arm from your eyes to lay it on your stomach as you turn your head to look at Kun with a raised brow. “No shit, you’re our lead actress,” Kun leaned over to smack his hand on your knee with a small chuckle. 
“You know if you still want the lead role so badly, Kun. You can take my place in this play, just this once,” you grinned, raising your index finger at him and twirling it in front of his face in circular motions as you sat up. Kun frowned, rolling his eyes as he gently pushed your finger away from his face. “No thanks, princess,” he teased, standing up after ruffling your hair with his hand to go check on the other members on their painting progress so far. “Hey, watch the beret! It’s new, you know!” you hissed before pausing when words that slipped out of Kun’s mouth had finally sunk into your brain, feeling your heart skip a beat at his soft tone.
Kun has never used nicknames or pet names on you. It was always the regular ‘dumbass’, ‘y/n’, ‘l/n, ‘the bane of my existence’ or the occasional ‘the reason why I wished murder was legal’. But it was never ‘princess’. It felt weird being called that, a good kind of weird. You didn’t know if you liked it. The sound of the pet name rolling off of his tongue did something to you and you didn’t know whether to find it ominous or exhilarating. 
“Did he just call you ‘princess’?” Brooke gaped, her jaw dropping to the floor as she ran over to your shocked state. Your eyes widened slightly at her sudden appearance, playing it off casually afterwards as you shrugged nonchalantly at her. “I think so? Why?” you asked, leaning back a bit to relax your posture as Brooke gave you a knowing smirk. “That literally has never happened before,” she grinned, sitting down beside you with a half beta-read script. “Really? Then you must’ve never watched his acting performances before,” you snickered, your mind having flashbacks to Kun’s face always flushing beet-red back when he was the male lead of the play. 
You always teased him for not being able to say ‘my love’ without being a tomato on stage during practice before he stopped auditioning for roles half way through your first year of college. “God, I missed his acting days. Back then, I would be the one making fun of him off stage,” you sighed, chuckling sinisterly when you remembered how Kun had to hop off the stage unceremoniously in his prince costumes to chase you down the school halls whenever you made fun of a certain gesture he made when rehearsing his lines with the previous lead actress. (who had graduated early to pursue a career in music,  if you recalled properly)
“Ah yes, Lunatic Prince Kun chasing down one of the well known clowns this school had ever seen. I still remembered laughing my ass off when Kun dropped his crown midway and had to hold it to his head as he ran down the halls to catch you,” Brooke snickered, shaking her head at the vivid memory, remembering how Kun had cursed out loud when he dropped the (quite expensive) fake crown onto the tiled floor of the halls. “Damn, someone should’ve taken a picture. I didn’t look bad that day considering I was wearing my latest designer shoes back then,” you pouted, putting your chin under your palm as you let out a huff of breath.
“You know,” Ten, Brooke’s boyfriend, spoke up behind the two of you as he came up to sling an arm around his girlfriend’s shoulders with a smug expression. “You and Kun have been getting a lot closer than usual. He’s picking you up for practice everyday, right?” he asked, a smirk adorning his lips as he wiggled his eyebrows at you suggestively. You snorted, waving your hand off. “The man almost ripped my sweater off because he was practically dragging me against the floor. We’re close, alright,” you nodded in agreement, patting the beret on your head afterwards.
“Sounds like Kun has some kind of crush on you to me, though,” Ten added, a mischievous smile spreading across his lips, attracting attention from another one of the club members, Angie. “Kun? We’re talking about Qian Kun, right?” she jumped into the conversation shamelessly, wrapping her arms around your neck to engulf you in a small back hug. You were taken aback by this sudden statement, gently pulling her arms away from you as you shook your head aggressively. “Where the fuck did that come from, Ten Lee?” you spluttered, a flustered expression making its way onto your face. 
Angie laughed. “Are you shitting me, right now? Kun? The Qian Kun? Having a crush? On the Y/n L/n? I knew you were on crack but I didn’t know you were that high, Lee,” she snorted, doubling over laughing at the thought of Kun having a crush on you with Brooke joining in on the ridiculous conclusion her boyfriend has come to. “Yeah, no, that’s not happening,” she shook her head at you, wiping an invisible tear from her face as Angie leaned her arm on your shoulder.
You furrowed your brows as you leaned back with an offended expression. “What’s that supposed to mean?” you exclaimed, looking at your two friends who were bawling their eyes out laughing with a confused expression. “No offense, Y/n. But with the reputation you and Kun have the past two years and people occasionally shipping the two of you for your chaotic interactions, once they truly walk into this theater, thoughts on you being a couple would be thrown out of the window without any hesitation,” Brooke shook her head, giggling behind the back of her hand. 
“Don’t get us wrong. I personally think you two would be cute together once you stop getting at each other’s throats. But right now? I think Kun is more interested in his own toenails than you,” Angie jokes, slinging an arm around your shoulder. “The other day, the man was about to throw a bag out of the window at you when he spotted you running away from the third floor,” she added, wheezing out afterwards as she and Brooke continued to giggle. “She isn’t wrong, perse,” Brooke shrugged.
You couldn’t help but shrug in defeat, a small laugh eliciting from your lips afterwards. “I guess you’re kind of right.”
----------------------------------
You didn’t know what’s wrong with you lately but you couldn’t get Brooke and Angie’s words out of your head since last week’s practice for some odd reason. You would find yourself thinking them over as you were embroidering on one of your clothes for a school project that was due in a couple of days, your brows furrowing as you got lost in your own thoughts as you sat next to your classmate in the fashion department room.
What the hell did they even mean by ‘Kun was more interested in his own toenails than you’? Clearly he’s more interested in you than you would think considering he always picked you up everyday after your morning classes are over for the afternoon club meetings. They clearly don’t know what they’re talking about. Just because you’re always facing the wrath of Qian Kun doesn’t mean he despised you, right? He knows you just like to joke around and push on his buttons, you overheard him laughing it off and calling your silly antics ‘amusing’ once when you were passing by his side of the building.
You cursed incoherently when the needle you were using suddenly broke in half from how hard you were gripping it, grumbling as you realised you have to continue with a new one. You tied the string into a knot against the fabric, cutting the string off as you stood up to walk over to the trash can near the entrance door to throw away the broken needle. A sharp click of the door caught your attention, figuring that it was probably your professor, you turned around only to face none other than Qian Kun, the man of the hour.
“Kun?” 
Kun looked up from his papers, his doe eyes gazing up at you before widening slightly. “Oh, Y/n, hey,” he gave you a kind smile, removing one of his hands from his papers to give you a small wave. “What are you doing here? Have you finally decided to accept my offer of throwing away all of your clothes in exchange for my masterpieces?” you couldn’t help but tease, raising your brow at him as you placed the back of your hand on your hips, inevitably causing the older boy to frown.
“One day I’m going to really fling you to the sun,” he deadpanned, eliciting a small giggle from you. “Sure thing, old man. For real, though, what are you doing here? Came to see your favorite underclassman?” you wiggled your brows, laying your fingers on your chest jokingly as Kun rolled his eyes with a small chuckle. “As a matter of fact, I did come here to see my favorite underclassman,” he nodded, a genuine smile settling upon his facial features as he waved the back of his papers in front of your face. 
Taken aback, you waved him off with a hand, laughing lightly as you felt your heart increasing it’s pace. “Stop, I feel honored to be the infamous Qian Kun’s favorite underclassman. I always knew deep down you liked me-,” you avoided his eyes, chuckling nervously at his word before you were suddenly cut off by one of your classmates who called out Kun’s name behind you from the other side of the room. “There he is! My favorite underclassman,” Kun raised a hand to wave at the boy who called out his name with a smile. 
You furrowed your brows, turning around to see the charming Jung Jaehyun jogging up to the two of you with a smile on his face. “Hey hyung,” Jaehyun greeted giving Kun the typical weird bro-hug the male college students in your school often did. “Hey, y/n,” Jaehyun greeted, giving you a polite smile and a small bow despite the fact that you were bugging him a couple minutes ago while he was finishing a new sketch while calling with his friend, Doyoung, who was in the culinary department. 
“Hey Jaehyun,” you eyed the boy suspiciously. “Jaehyun’s your favorite underclassman? And all this time I thought you and I had something, ‘hyung’,” you mocked the same tone Jaehyun used, crossing your arms against your chest as you huffed, eliciting a few laughs from the two boys. “I’m sorry that you’re too delusional,” Kun grinned mischievously with a wave of his papers, patting your head with the small stack of papers in his hand before walking off with Jaehyun to the desk he was using.
You gave him the stink eye, earning the finger from Kun, himself. Scoffing as you walked back to your desk where your friend,Abhie, was making no effort to hide the fact that she was laughing at your little misunderstanding. “Stop laughing, it’s embarrassing enough as it is,” you huffed, sitting down on your chair with a sour expression as you reached over the desk to grab a new needle to use to finish the design on your old shirt. “Let me take in on how embarrassing that was first,” she laughed, watching as you try your best to cover your flustered expression. 
“Kun and Jaehyun have been spending time with each other a lot more than usual, don’t you think?” you asked as you grabbed a new embroidery thread from the bundle in front of you, measuring the thread as you unwind the bundle. “They’re in different majors but they look quite busy, I don’t think Jaehyun’s even in the drama club. I’m pretty sure he has to deal with his own writing club so I’m sure he isn’t joining the drama club,” you analysed under your breath, your brows furrowing in concentration.
“Guess someone got sad that her senior didn’t see her as their number one underclassman,” Abhie raised her brow, crossing her arms over her chest as she placed her finished embroidery on the table you were both sharing. “What are you talking about? I may not be his favorite underclassmen, but I know I’m definitely his number one,” you lied, huffing dramatically to make your friend laugh even more. You knew very well that you’re definitely not Kun’s number one, but seeing your friend laugh was amusing. And you felt the urge to push on Kun’s buttons as payback for deceiving you. (sort of)
Abhie scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Believe what you want,” she laughed, an amused smile taking over both of your faces as you stood back up and placed your needle back on the table beside your embroidery hoop. “Observe,” you snickered, turning around to walk towards said senior with a loud call of his name, ignoring how most of your classmates instantly gave you death glares from every corner of the room for disrupting the quiet atmosphere you all had developed over the past couple of hours. 
“Kun! Qian Kun!” you exclaimed, jogging up to him as he continued his talk with Jaehyun. 
“I sense an incoming dissatisfaction,” Kun deadpan, sighing heavily as he felt your presence grew closer with every step, causing Jaehyun to snicker at the older’s half annoyed and half embarrassed expression. “Who’s cuter? Me or Jaehyun?” you asked, putting an arm over his shoulder and tugging him towards you. “Jaehyun,” he stated almost immediately with a monotone, his gaze never tearing away from the papers in his hands.
You frowned, causing Jaehyun to laugh even more than he already has. “You didn’t even hesitate to think,” you frowned, retracting your hand to put your hands on your hips as you narrowed your eyes at your senior. “Didn’t need to,” Kun grinned sinisterly, shooting you a small glance before looking back down at his papers with a poker face. “Ouch, my heart hurts now,” you winced dramatically, laying a hand on your heart as you took a step back and swung the back of your free hand against your forehead. 
“My heart’s been broken so many times-”
“Don’t you have your embroidery assignment to finish?” Jaehyun asked, an amused smile on his face as Kun gave you a perplexed expression, his brows furrowed and his mouth gaped open as he tried to find the words to speak. “Oh shit, right, nevermind,” you lowered your hand with wide eyes, closing your mouth shut at the reminder. “I’ll see the two of you later,” you waved, waddling back to your desk when you remembered that you had two days left to finish said assignment and you were barely halfway done. 
“As you should!” Kun exclaimed.
“So?” Abhie raised her brow at you with a small hum. “I’m definitely his number one,” you popped up, giving her an enthusiastic thumbs up and a wide smile. “I am not believing that,” she giggled, shaking her head as you scoffed and went back to finishing your design on your shirt. “Why do you and Kun fight 24/7, though? I swear, you two are infamous for arguing on a daily basis. You’re not even in the same year or major, it’s hilarious,” Abhie laughed in disbelief, running a hand through her long hair. 
“Tough love,” you exclaimed with another enthusiastic thumbs up. “Unrequited tough love,” she added with a soft snort, causing you to laugh as well. “He’ll learn to love me soon enough, just you wait,” you waved her off, sticking your tongue out as you tried to slip the thread into the tiny hole in your needle. 
-
“What if we do a musical for the next play?”
“Kun, stop flexing. We know you just want to sing.”
Kun frowned upon the sound of your voice, turning his head to glare at you as you laid down on the wooden floorboards of the stage. “I swear, if violence weren't against my morals, I would’ve kicked her to the moon. God give me strength, I don’t have enough cash for bail money,” Kun groaned, rubbing his hands against his face in distress as you and a few other club members laugh at his reaction. “I admire the amount of patience God has given you, Kun,” Gwen patted his back sympathetically. 
“Gender equality at it’s finest,” you cheered, raising your hands up enthusiastically before they flopped down almost painfully against the floor of the stage. Kun rolled his eyes, walking over to the other side of the room to discuss the play with the other members of the club. “You really like Kun, huh?” Brooke raised her brow at you, wiggling them afterwards when you met her eyes with an enthusiastic nod. “Of course, I do! He’s my senior after all,” you sat up, stretching your arms over your head with a yawn.
“The smile on your face makes your words seem so passive aggressive,” Kai chuckled, shaking her head profusely. “Oh hush, it may seem like I’m pushing his buttons on purpose but I actually really admire Kun. He’s the reason why I got into this club in the first place,” you exclaimed with a genuine smile, turning your head to watch the older boy flip through the script with Ten and Renjun from the other side of the theater room. “Wait, what?” Kai’s eyes widened at your sudden statement. 
“Yeah, I actually got into this club because of Kun! I remember it like it was yesterday, I was just walking around campus and I passed by the theater. He was practicing for a play and I was like ‘damn, mans got skills.’ And at one point he gave me a flyer to join this club and encouraged me to join, which is why I’m here now,” you explained, shrugging casually as you leaned back against your hands behind you with a soft smile. “And if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have met you guys,” you added on. 
“Cool, but I was asking about the part when you said you weren’t pushing his buttons on purpose,” Kai chuckled, earning a soft smack to the arm from you as Brooke let out a loud laugh in response. “Same, same. I can’t believe you’re not annoying him on purpose, I mean, I’m not complaining. It creates more romantic tension that I could use for my literature essays,” she shrugged, slinging her arm over your shoulder with an enthusiastic grin. “Of course I’m annoying him on purpose,” you rolled your eyes. “I’m not that big of an airhead, you know,” you scoffed as you pushed Brooke’s arm off of your shoulders.
“You know, there’s a chance that Kun would replace Ten in the play this time?” Haechan asked, plopping himself down beside his girlfriend while chewing a mouthful of bread. “Excuse me?” your eyes widened, straightening your back up as you and the girls lean over to hear Haechan more clearly. “Ten got an opportunity to go to an Art Gallery in Busan, he’s not sure if he’s going though but if he does, he can’t be back in time for next month’s play,” Haechan informed, pulling out a cupcake from his bag and handing it to Kai. 
Brooke’s eyes lit up at this. “Oh yeah, he told me about that! It’s a great opportunity for Ten, I doubt he’s going to deny the offer for some play,” Brooke chuckled, shaking her head at her own boyfriend. “So, you’re telling me that there’s a chance I’ll be doing the play with Kun?” you asked, eyes wide as a wide smile spread across your face. “Oh god, I’ve never actually acted in a play with Kun before. He stopped acting by the time I joined the club,” you exclaimed excitedly, your hands balled up into balls at the thought of acting side by side with your senior on stage. 
“More opportunities for you to bully our Kun,” Kai giggled, nudging your sides with her elbow as you nodded eagerly. “That too!” you agreed with an enthusiastic nod, raising your hands up in the air at the thought of finally seeing Kun act on stage once again. “Honestly, I thought I’d see myself on Mars sooner than seeing myself and Kun on the stage together performing,” you scratched the back of your neck with a nervous chuckle as Kun began walking over with stacks of paper in his hands. 
“Here’s your script for the next play, rehearsals are going to start tomorrow so y/n,” Kun gave you a knowing look, eyes boring holes into your head as you gave him an innocent smile and a peace sign as you take the paper away from his hand, your fingertips grazing his own. “Don’t be late,” he sighed heavily, smacking the stack of papers on the top of your head softly before distributing the actors their own scripts. 
You purse your lips, rolling your eyes. “‘Don’t be late’,” you mocked his tone, shaking your head at the elder. “As if you don’t pick me up every morning class before I even have the chance to be late,” you mumbled under your breath, earning a smack upside the back of your head from your friends, letting out a yelp in response. “What was that for?” you rubbed the spot where your friend hit, turning your head around to see Furou with a cocky grin. “Come on, we actually have a pretty strict deadline this time,” Furou sat beside you, patting your back. 
“They say the school is holding some sort of event next month and Kun’s taking this pretty seriously considering the money we earn from this play will be donated to charity,” Furou explained, kicking her feet as she looked around the theater. “So you’re going to be dragged around Kun a lot during rehearsals,” Furou chuckled, giving you a look of mock sympathy, causing you to groan loudly and lay back down on the wooden floor of the stage. 
“Oh well, at least I get to see our lord and savior, Qian Kun, act on stage again,” you gave her a sarcastic thumbs up, smiling at her as you turned your head around to look at the boy in question who was furrowing his brows as he read over Kai’s script with an intense expression, a hand pushing back a part of his dyed hair that was covering part of his eyes, his parted lips mouthing the words printed on the paper. 
Your friend chuckled at how intently you were staring at the older boy, shaking her head profusely. “Does this mean you’re going to stop being annoying momentarily?”
“Keep dreaming.”
-
“As you may have heard from our precious club members, I will be replacing Ten as your supposed love interest on stage,” Kun said, popping out of nowhere as he pulled the chair in front of you to sit right across the table. You furrowed your brows, “are you stalking me?” you frowned, looking up from your phone as you carefully sipped your beverage. You swore that this man was psychic, he can sense where you are whenever and wherever and it was almost not funny. 
Kun rolled his eyes at you, crossing his arms against his chest as he let out a heavy sigh. “We have practice in two hours, I just happened to be in the library the same time as you do. Except I don’t come here for free coffee and free wifi,” he smacked his bag filled with a stack of books on accounting right on the table with a click of his tongue, taking you by surprise at the sudden sound. “I figured we could chat for a bit and walk to the theater room together since you’re oh-so-busy,” he grinned cheekily, causing you to roll your eyes. 
“Excuse you, you’re not my babysitter. I can go to the theater room myself, thank you very much,” you huffed, frowning deeply at the unusual sight of his cheeky grin. You couldn’t help but admire how his eyes crinkled slightly as his lips stretched across his face, thus revealing his cute dimples that made you suppress the urge to poke them. Kun’s smile always had that weird effect on you and you didn’t know why. And you didn’t know if you liked it either. 
Which was probably the main reasons why you liked pissing him off all the damn time. 
“Sure, as if I don’t have to run like Sonic the Hedgehog all around campus to ensure that you’re not skipping,” Kun chuckled, shaking his head at you in amusement. “I’m just helping you, Kun. You always go on and on about losing weight even though you’re literally one of the fittest guys I’ve seen on campus. I’m helping you by making you exercise by disappearing every five seconds,” you went on dramatically, waving your hand around in circular motions as you spoke, sipping your drink with your free hand. 
“You never fail to blow me away with your weird respon- did you just call me hot?” he raised his brows when he took a small pause at your words, causing you to stop sipping your cup. You paused, your eyes grew wide as they scattered to look everywhere but him, replaying your words in your head to figure out where he got that idea from. “I just called you fit, there’s a difference,” you slowly pulled your drink away from your mouth, trying to appear as casual as you could. 
‘Keep calm, Y/n. Qian Kun can sense your fear.’ as you would often say.
“So you’re basically saying I look good?” Kun cocks his head to the side, a smirk playing on his lips as he raised his brow at you, taking you aback at his sudden cockyness. You paused, gulping as you stared into his eyes for a brief moment, sipping your drink loudly as you desperately tried to think of a good comeback. “What did you say our next play was about?” you spluttered, coughing when your voice cracked, putting a hand on your throat out of habit as you looked down at your feet. 
Kun chuckled, looking down at his own hands when you changed the topic. “Since we did La La Land for the last play, I figured we’d do something old timey. A classic. Brooke and Xingyi managed to come up with a few plots and we came up with this story of a princess having a secret affair with her musketeer bodyguard,” Kun explained, choosing to let your words slide momentarily as you revert back to your casual self. “Oh god, Brooke and Xingyi came up with the plot?” you groaned, putting a hand on your face as you rubbed your forehead. 
“Don’t tell me. It’s going to end in despair, isn’t it? Dammit, they know full well I despise getting all emotional on stage, I swear, they’re doing this on purpose,” you grumbled under your breath, plopping your now empty cup on the table with a scowl on your lips as Kun let out an amused laugh. “Oh shut up, they’re taking this chance to see me cry too, you know,” he raised his brow at you, leaning back and relaxing against his chair. You paused, taking his words in before clicking your tongue.
“You’re going to cry on stage?” you blurted out, your eyes going wide at the thought of seeing your senior cry in front of hundreds of people. “Can I rent a camera crew to take HD pictures of you in tears in front of me? I think that would be one hell of a sexy cinematic piece to go with my photography portfolio,” you asked, wiggling your eyebrows at the older boy with a teasing smile on your face. 
Kun chuckled, tutting as he waved his finger at you rather sassily. “Look who’s being a stalker now?”
You leaned back, a frown settling upon your lips at his words as you huffed at him. “I’m doing this for humor purposes, it’s for the good of the world. And my own amusement, of course. Don’t you think a lovely picture of our dear president bawling his eyes out on stage would be a perfect decoration for our stage?” you asked, putting your hand up in the air as if you were caressing an invisible wall. Kun pressed his lips together to stifle a laugh, a hand on his chin and his fingers covering his lips. 
“I think I’ll have to reconsider changing the plot to whatever donkey dragon furry type of fanfiction you came up with in your head back when we were doing La La Land.”
-
“You know, I thought you were gay,” you mumbled, drawing circles on the smooth surface of the piano as you continued to listen to Kun practice on the piano the music department had been using to practice for their own music show for the event. Kun let out a soft chuckle, “is this about the Jaehyun question you asked a couple of weeks ago?” he asked with a staggering breath, flipping through his music sheets as you continued to hum in confirmation. 
Nothing had changed after Ten left for his trip to Busan. Other than the fact that Kun has been rehearsing his lines with you 24/7 considering you were his partner on stage after all. Though, he wouldn’t be as aggressive and you don’t have to sacrifice your perfectly good sweaters getting ruined as these days his ‘aggressive dragging by the back of whatever top you were wearing on that day’ technique had morphed into ‘pulling you by the wrist like a rag doll’ with a script in his hand.
You could see from a mile away that Kun was more than excited to finally be on stage again. And you couldn’t help but let a smile stretch across your lips whenever you sat beside him when you were reciting your lines together, watching the passion glimmer in his eyes as his face contorted with emotions as words spewed out of his mouth like a song bird chirping on a tree branch on a bright morning. 
Kun had called you over after your class to try on the costumes that just arrived and to check on any imperfections and minor details. You were always his go-to fashion kid whenever he needs help with anything that involves fabric and accessories. The moment you opened the door, you were immediately greeted with melodious piano music and a rather handsome senior behind said piano with his brows furrowed in concentration. It was a rare sight to see for you.
“You said I needed to try on some outfits and inspect the costumes?” you put a hand on your hip, walking around the stage as Kun closed the piano lid while he got up on his feet. “As always,” Kun rolled his eyes, grabbing the saddle of his bag and slinging it over his shoulder as he walked over to you. “I told the others to place the costumes near the changing room, come on,” Kun placed a hand on your shoulder as you walked side by side to the changing room, his sudden touch sending shivers down your spine. 
“You okay?” Kun asked all of a sudden, pausing in your steps. 
You hummed, looking up at him in surprise, your eyes going wide. “You just shivered, is the ac too cold or something?” Kun asked, retracting his hand to slip it in his pocket as he looked around the theater room, extending his other hand to feel the cold atmosphere. “Yeah, I’m kind of chilly, I guess,” you mumbled with a slight nod, rubbing your arms to cover up your lie. You weren’t going to lie, you kind of liked the comforting way his hand felt on your skin. 
“I’ll be fine, Kun. Let’s just go back to what we’re doing,” you scurried off to the changing rooms, spotting the opened box filled with plastic wrapped costumes and their props. Trying to shake the thought of holding Kun’s hand in yours out of your mind as you sat down on the wooden floor and began opening a few of the costumes to examine the details to look for odd spots or ripped fabric, hearing Kun’s footsteps catching up to you a few seconds later. 
After a while of sitting side by side, focused on spotting any minor mistakes with the stitching and the quality of the costumes, it was finally time for you to test your own individual costumes. “So, which one do you think I should try first? The pretty princess gown or the Belle from Beauty and The Beast before she developed Stockholm syndrome?” you asked, nodding your head at the two dresses hanging by their clothing hangers in each of your hands. Kun laughed lightly at your small joke as you turned to the mirror, humming as you furrowed your brows.
“Try the peasant one first, the fabric looks pretty low quality compared to the dress,” Kun hummed, pointing at the brown dress in your left hand. You huffed, rolling your eyes as you placed the princess dress on the empty space on the chair beside Kun. “No shit, it is a peasant dress after all. Look at those improper cross stitches, they could’ve done a better ladder stitch on the waist,” you mumbled to yourself as you walked into the changing room and began to change into your new costume. 
“This dress is kind of tight, though,” you commented as you tugged on the ribbon around your waist with one hand and unlocked the door with the other, seeing an unbothered Kun looking through his phone with his brows furrowed. “What do you think? See anything wrong with it?” you did a slow 360 twirl in front of him, tugging the edge of the dress down when you spotted a few wrinkles. “Could use some ironing,” Kun joked, putting a hand on his chin as he looked up at you admiring yourself at the mirror nearby.
“It’s a peasant dress, Kun. They purposely didn’t iron this to fit the aesthetic,” you turned around to your senior with your hands on your hips before outstretching your hand for Kun to give you your princess dress. “Princess dress, please! This is the one I’ve been looking forward to the most,” you grinned, causing Kun to chuckle as he grabbed the clothing hanger with the dress clinging onto it beside him and handing it to you. “Thank you, old man,” you snickered as you hopped in the dressing room again, dismissing the loud offended ‘hey!’ Kun had let out behind you.
Once you walked out of the dressing room, you were tugging on the gloves you were supposed to wear, adjusting the fake plastic tiara on your head. “Okay, Kun, round two. How do I look?” you asked, patting your sparkly dress to remove any dust sticking to the fabric. Kun looked up from the costume he was examining himself with unbothered eyes, which grew wide slightly at the sight before him. 
To say you were astonishing to his eyes was nothing but an understatement. The way the dress defined the shape of your body, the way the crown had accented your face, the way the gloves covering your hands made you look so elegant and delicate. His heart raced as he watched you scratch your hair while examining yourself in the mirror to look for any rips in between the fabric and the designs. He had to keep himself from letting his jaw drop to the floor as his eyes scanned you from the cute little hello kitty socks you were wearing to the beautiful red crown placed on your head. 
“Are you smiling at me, Qian Kun?” 
He blinked, his eyes lowering down from your crown to your eyes, gulping silently as he realised you had caught him checking you out. He kissed his teeth nervously, leaning back against the chair as he looked down at his hands. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbled under his breath, shaking his head abruptly as he felt you take a few steps closer towards him with a smug expression on your face. 
“You think I look good, don’t you?” you pointed an accusatory finger at the boy, who shook his head vigorously at you. “I was looking at the realistic tiara,” Kun coughed, clearing his throat as he stood up suddenly, taking you aback by how close the proximity between the two of you have become once he got to his feet. He resisted the urge to boop your nose as his hands went up to gently lift the tiara from your head, careful to not get any of your hair as he examined it in front of you with a sheepish smile. 
‘God, what am I even doing?’ Kun thought to himself as he used his superb acting skills and squinted his eyes at the tiara in between his fingertips. Though, his attempt to cover up the fact that he was internally flustered was futile for your next words had thrown him into a state of shock for a few seconds. “You know you have a pretty smile,” you commented, your eyes boring into his casually as you watched Kun examine the tiara with a small smile. 
His eyes grew wide at you, his body froze as his smile became crooked at the sound of your words escaping your lips. “Excuse me?” he said after a pregnant pause, your words echoing in the back of his skull over and over again like a broken record player, sending jolts of electricity into his own heart. “You have a very pretty prince smile,” you couldn’t help but reach up and poke the dimples protruding from his cheeks with your gloved finger, grinning mischievously when you saw how Kun’s nervous expression melted into one filled with embarrassment. 
“Thanks,” he muttered, gulping as he plucked up the courage to carefully place your tiara on top of your head again, his fingers caressing your hair slightly. You felt your heart raced as he gently placed the tiara back where it was as if he was crowning you princess himself. “You should smile more,” you mumbled, feeling yourself grow sheepish as Kun’s hands carefully pulled away from you. “Yeah?” he hummed back, almost inaudibly as he looked down at your feet with a soft smile on his face. 
“Can you smile more so you don’t exactly look like a body that just got pulled out of the river?” 
Kun’s head shot up in alarm at your words, all of the bashful and giddy feeling bubbling up in his stomach evaporated instantly as he could feel his vein pop under his skin. Watching as your own flustered expression morphed into a smug one, adjusting your tiara with your gloved hand as you broke the intimate aura that had crawled its way between you two merely seconds ago. 
“Just when I thought you were going to say something normal for once.” 
-
“Oh, five minutes late! That’s the earliest you’ve ever been,” Lin exclaimed, putting the back of her hands on her hips as she watched Kun drag you across the floor into the theater room by the wrist as if he was dragging a body from the fiery pits of the underworld. “I wasn’t fast enough,” you groaned, standing up straight as your back was starting to hurt from your terrible posture. “You are not the Lightning McQueen you think you are, y/n,” Lin chuckled, shaking her head at you as Kun shut the door behind you and released his hold on your wrist. 
“Exactly my thoughts,” Kun nodded in agreement, giving you an amused smile. “I like to believe I’m Sonic the Hedgehog or the Flash, but you do you,” you huffed, crossing your arms against your chest as you walked over to the other members of the club, who were all currently helping the others with their costume as you were all finally starting rehearsals considering the play was  in less than two months. 
“She’s coming in earlier than usual. Usually it would take you about fifteen minutes to half an hour to find her and another ten minutes to drag her here,” Lin commented, taking a step closer to Kun as she examined your figure socializing with the other club members, who were looking at you as if you had grown two heads. (no one could blame them for being shocked to see you on time, usually you would take centuries to get to the theater) 
The boy beside her hummed as he shrugged. His hands dug through his bag for his phone and his script, oblivious to the smug expression Lin was giving beside him. “Mostly because we meet up before rehearsals start in the library to go over our lines,” Kun shrugged, pulling out the crumpled stapled papers from his bag pockets. “We might as well normalize seeing her arrive on time now,” he chuckled, flipping through the pages as he read through the sentences he highlighted a couple of weeks ago. 
Lin raised her brow suspiciously, crossing her arms as Doyoung walked up to Kun with a confused expression. “Did something finally happen between you and y/n?” he asked, putting a hand on his chin as he stood in between Lin and Kun, squinting his eyes at you as he and the girl watched you revise your lines with your brows furrowed with the other members of the club. A tiara was placed on your head as you helped your fellow actors with their lines, your free hand making grand motions as you read your lines aloud. 
Kun furrowed his brows at Doyoung’s statement. “What do you mean ‘finally’?” he asked with an incredulous expression, his head shooting up from his papers as he furrowed his brows at his friend. “I don’t know, there’s something suspicious with you and her arriving together. There’s something even more suspicious with the fact that you’re both arriving on time!” Doyoung exclaimed, crossing his arms against his chest, narrowing his eyes at his friend who gave him a confused expression. 
“Apparently they’ve been having library dates everyday before rehearsals so they’re only a teensy bit late now,” Lin informed, a mischievous grin spreading across her face, causing Kun’s frown to deepen even more. “They’re not library dates, we’re just discussing and reading over our lines together,” Kun retorted, feeling his heart race in his chest at the thought of being on a date with you. He felt flustered at the mere thought of hanging out together as more than friends, but yet again, your little meetups felt more than just a casual hang out. 
Though he was probably overthinking it again.
“Oh, so it’s definitely a date,” Doyoung confirmed. 
“Agreed,” Lin nodded with a hum. 
“It’s not, I’m just there to keep her from escaping campus before rehearsals start. I mean, we are having our big assignments coming up so I guess she doesn’t have that many people to talk to as a reason to ditch practice. “They’re just friendly meet-ups. How can it be a date if all she does is infuriate me and make my college life a living hell even more than Yangyang has. And that’s saying something considering I live in the same dorm,” Kun rambled on, his hands moving around and making dramatic gestures as words of complaint continued to spill out of his mouth like a leaking tap.
“Yet that doesn’t stop you from having a crush on her for the past two years, does it?” Doyoung smirked, raising his brow at his friend who had stopped talking upon hearing his question. Lin giggled, pressing the back of her hand against her mouth as Kun’s expression became flustered. You could practically hear ‘kun.exe.hasstoppedworking’ from the boy’s thick skull as Kun froze in place, trying to come up with some random reason to deny his friend’s words.
Alas, Kun was not much of a liar. 
“Yeah,” Kun chuckled, looking down as he flushed, a giggly smile spreading across his features as his gaze shot up from his shoes to you. Okay, maybe he wasn’t much of a big liar but he was too whipped to deny it. 
The soft, innocent smile on your face as you made a few of the club members laugh with your witty jokes and silly antics, watching them cackle and hold their stomachs to contain their laughter. That was Kun’s favorite smile. “It doesn’t,” Kun sighed rather dreamily, relaxing his figure as he leaned his head to the side to get a better look of your smile.
Truth be told, it really was no secret. Literally everyone in the club knew about Kun’s obvious crush on you ever since he ‘retired’ from being the male lead. Ever since the day he met you when you were just in your first year, looking for new friends and new hobbies to do. Ever since the first day he saw you audition for the main role back when the drama club was doing ‘Romeo and Juliet’ for the annual event your campus always hosts. 
Watching you act on stage as part of the audience made Kun feel as if he was looking up at a sky scattered with stars. The way your personality completely morphs into the character you were portraying and the way you conveyed whatever message your character was trying to send out to the audience had made you find your way into his heart throughout all these years. The way your beauty sparkled under the lights, the way your expressions captured his heart on stage. The way your voice sends butterflies into his stomach as if you were ordering them to fetch his heart like an ominous siren. 
He didn’t mind being teased by you every single day if it meant that he was getting your attention, he didn’t mind dragging you to the theater room everyday if it meant he got to get close to you. He didn’t mind being the target of your jokes if it meant that you two could get a tiny bit of interaction during practice, despite the fact that you two get nothing done together if so. After all, those were the original reasons why his liking for you grew ever so stronger. It was almost laughable.
Hell, it was making him crazy.
“KUN! Y/N IS RUNNING AWAY AGAIN!”
“DAMMIT, Y/N.”
Quite literally.
-
“Oh, how I longed to be in your arms after all these years, Abdul!” you cried out, clutching the dress with both of your hands as Kun wiped the invisible sweat off of his brow, dropping the sword he was clutching to the wooden floor of the stage as a look of despair stretched across your face. 
You only had less than three weeks left of rehearsal, therefore, everyone had to be focused. You had been practicing for the past two hours now without breaks, your throat was sore from delivering lines and dehydration. One of the air conditioners wasn’t working very well this morning and maintenance was coming the next morning, leaving you and the rest of the club members under scorching heat. It was the middle of June, after all. And the god forsaken dress you were wearing was no help whatsoever.
“Princess Putri, my love, my little songbird! Oh how all of these years of holding myself back, all these years of fighting and hoping to reunite with thou,” Kun recited, his face scrunched up as if he had really been fighting a dozen of thieves to protect the princess. The expression on your face did nothing to show how awed you are at the sight of Kun’s acting. It’s been so long since you’ve seen Kun shine on stage again and quite frankly, you missed it. 
You were seeing Kun’s superb acting performance right in front of you. He wasn’t even taking this as seriously as he should in the actual performance. You couldn’t imagine how magnificent his aura would be once the lights shine down upon him on stage once the day arrives. And you couldn’t help but admit that you couldn’t wait. 
Though as much as you would stand on the stage to admire your senior’s acting performance, you were on the brink of being one with the sun itself. You watched with a sorrowful expression as Kun walked over to you, his boots making soft noises with every step he took, his hand on his chest as he came closer to you. You smiled slowly, focusing on staying in character as Kun recited the words written on your scripts.
Reciting the words as he perfectly brought the message his character, Abdul, was conveying to your character, Princess Putri, to life. It was like music to your ears. 
You and Kun were standing in front of each other now, proximities close as the room grew dim save for the two stage lights shining down upon the two of you. The theater was almost as silent as a mouse except for the soft piano music Chenle was playing below the stage. The atmosphere felt seren, it made you feel as if it was just the two of you on stage, stuck in your own little world. 
Eyes gazing into each other, your hands placed gently against his chest. Your fingers fiddling with the tassels on his shoulders, his hands coming around you only to land on your hips as he pulled your body towards his own, his face oh-so-close to your own. “May I indulge in the feeling of finally having your lips pressed on mine, my love?” Kun whispered, his soft voice booming across the speaker, half lidded eyes gazing down your lips before glancing back up to your eyes. 
With glossy eyes, you looked up at him, sniffling into the mic softly before slowly nodding. A sad smile stretched across both of your lips as Kun leaned his head towards your face and leaned it to the side, thus covering both of your faces with his hat, giving the audience the illusion of the characters actually kissing. Upon hearing the club members clap for you, a few whistles from all around the theater room as the lights finally turned back on, you pulled away, making sure to add distance in between the two of you as you coughed awkwardly. 
You couldn’t even stop your heart from beating so loudly in your ears as you clasped your hands behind your back, squeezing your hand into tight fists to calm yourself down. You’d like to think that it was the heat affecting you but you knew very well that there was no point in lying to yourself considering Kun was also avoiding your eyes for a brief moment. For a short moment, you couldn’t get the thought of Kun’s face being so close to yours out of your head. You couldn’t get the feeling of your heart which was on the brink of bursting out of your chest.
This never happened whenever you were acting with Ten on stage before, or any of your partners. It was odd to say the least. But your thoughts were cut short when your co-director spoke up to break the tension in the whole theater room. 
“As expected of the president and our star,” Doyoung clapped unceremoniously, looking down at the clipboard he was holding in his arms as he flipped through the pages. “Okay, so, the play is in less than three weeks. We just need to adjust a few things then we’re good to go,” he announced with a loud clap, putting the clipboard in between his arms. “You all did good, we’re going to cut rehearsals short today, you all deserve it!” he added with a wide smile, earning enthusiastic cheers from the people around you. 
You let out an exasperated groan, rubbing your face with your hands as you internally thank the gods that you decided to use your waterproof make up set today. “Dear god, I am literally being roasted alive,” you groaned, wiping the sweat off of your brows as you pulled the tiara off of your head and placed it on the props where the rest of the other crowns were being placed. Kun walked to your side, pulling his hat off of his head, being careful as to not get the feather on it. “I could tell how much you were practically dying out there,” he chuckled as you both made your way backstage. 
“Why are our costumes so damn hot, too? The fabric is literally acting as an aluminum foil for baking us alive, the maintenance better be here before we arrive tomorrow or else I’m going to fling myself to the sun,” you tugged the bow off of your collar, fanning yourself with your hand as Kun pulled his gloves off of his hands. “Don’t worry, I’ll always be here to help you fling yourself to the sun,” Kun joked, running his hand through his hair to mess it up a bit. 
“That’s so romantic of you, Kun.” You placed your hands on your hips, grinning mischievously at him. “Nice try, you’re never going to get rid of me until you graduate,” you stuck your tongue out teasingly at him, walking over to your bag filled with your clothes and heading off to the changing room. 
As soon as you left your stall, you were immediately pulled by your friends into a group huddle. “Dude, you were amazing out there. God I can’t wait until the big day comes,” Kai exclaimed, slinging her arm around yours as you watched Angie grab your costume out of your arms and placed it in your opened locker. “Agreed, the chemistry between you and Kun are just-,” Gwen gave a chef’s kiss with her fingers at the end of her sentence as she walked beside her. 
You smiled, laughing lightly. “Thanks! Damn, I wish I was one of the audience. It’s been a while since I actually watched a play and not act in it,” you hummed, slinging your free arm around Ren’s shoulders. “Oh my god, I remembered seeing you in the audience two years ago. Look at you now, acting on stage with Qian Kun!” your friend exclaimed, putting her free arm in the air to emphasize her words. 
“More like ‘being the reason why Kun is taking anger management classes’,” Angie snickered, earning a pout from you as you huffed at her. “As he should,” you joked, shaking your head profusely before they began to speak up again. “Are you sure you aren’t into Kun? That scene looked pretty intense and I’m 100% sure the theater hasn’t been this intense since that day you tripped over a can of paint and fell off the stage,” she added with a raise of her brow, her lips quirking up into a small grin. 
You grimaced at the embarrassing memory of tripping over a few cans of pain, thus falling off of the stage and twisting your ankle. You remembered how Kun had to carry you with a disappointing shake of his head to the nurse’s office. However, thanks to your shamelessly bubbly personality, the tension in the atmosphere was cut like a knife when you patted Kun’s back with one arm and raised your uninjured leg up the air, pointing your free hand to the entrance as you yelled “onwards, donkey!”
“I remembered that! Did you really have to call Kun ‘slower than a snail who didn’t study their Math test because they overslept’? We could’ve lost another club member, you know? And what if Kun goes to jail for attempted murder? We’re all too broke to bail him out.  Who am I going to ask Yangyang to sneak into their room for pictures of their elegant notes to?” Kai smacked your arm with her own, a joking frown on her lips as you let out an amused laugh. “Chill out, you’re never going to get rid of me,” you waved your hand off, rolling your eyes at your friends. 
“Also, I don’t like Kun like that,” you deadpanned, sending a glare to your friend, who grinned even more. “Are you sure? The chemistry was hella spicy back on stage, and that kissing scene? Oh god, I was so close to pushing both of your heads together so you can actually kiss!” Gwen gushed, groaning as the other girls agreed with affirming nods and light laughter. “She’s not wrong,” Brooke added with a simple shrug, crossing her arms over her chest when she saw you looking at her to back you up. 
You rolled your eyes. “That just means that Kun and I have superb acting skills, thank you very much!” you exclaimed with a bright smile, earning more smirks and grins from your friends as you all walked down the campus hall to head to the nearby cafe across the street. “Come on, you two looked like lovers who have actually been longing to be with each other for years!” Kai exclaimed, her tone becoming slightly whiny. 
“Again, superb acting skills,” you stated with a silly grin.  
“I swear, you’re so oblivious to your own feelings. Dude, no one looks at their co-star like that!” Gwen groaned, smacking you upside the head gently, causing you to let out a surprised yelp in response. “You’re making a big deal out of this, I swear to god,” you rolled your eyes at your friends, rubbing the back of your head. “As much as I hate to say it, they’re not wrong. You two were all googly-eyeing each other up there,” Ren chuckled, shaking her head at you.
You groaned once again, scratching the back of your head. 
“For fucks sakes, I don’t like Kun!” 
-
“Is that literature?”
You glanced up from your paper, not surprised to see your senior, Kun, sitting down on the empty chair across the table from yours. “Yeah, I was absent last week so I had to catch up on some assignments,” you nodded, tapping the highlighter against your lips as you gazed into your laptop screen filled with nothing but long paragraphs of letters and random words. “Though the professor refused to fill me in on anything and my friends who are in that same class are too busy right now to help,” you groaned, leaning your head on the highlighted literature book on your desk. 
Kun chuckled, sipping his coffee before placing it on the table. “Mind if I take a look? I’ll see if I can be any help,” he asked, putting his forearms on the table as he gave you an amused smile. “Go ahead,” you waved your hand off, your voice muffled by the thick pages of your book as you let out an exasperated sigh. Kun smiled sweetly, leaning over to pull your laptop and turn it so that he could see the screen better. 
“Oh, I did this one a couple weeks ago,” he hummed, scrolling down through the questions your professor had given, furrowing his brows as he read over your answers. “As a drama kid, you’re not much of a literature fan, huh?” Kun chuckled, raising his eyebrows at you as you leaned your head up, placing your chin on your book as you shrugged casually. “It’s just not my cup of tea,” you confessed truthfully, knowing full well that you have no idea what you’ve been writing for the past thirty minutes. 
“When is this due, exactly?” he asked once again, scrolling down your google docs. “Saturday?” you sat up straight, groaning as you looked down at your book with a hopeless expression. Kun let out a small ‘ah’, looking down at your barely finished assignment, thinking so hard you could probably hear the gears in his head turn. “Tell you what, I think I still have my old notes. You can revise and find the answers there instead of working your ass off all night for this,” Kun suggested, giving you a tightlipped smile, sliding the laptop over to you.
Your eyes widened at his sudden statement. “Wait what? Kun, no, you’re going to need it too once the exams starts,” you frowned, shaking your head at him as you gripped the sides of your laptop to slide it over right in front of you. “It’s fine, Hendery borrowed it the other day, too. I don’t mind if you borrow it for a day or too as well,” he shook his head at you, his charming smile never leaving his face. 
“Kun, no. Dude, it’s fine, really. It’s just forty numbers, I’m sure I’ll get it finished before the deadline,” you shook your head vigorously, a firm frown placed on your lips as you gazed up at your senior. “You know you want to,” Kun taunted, his teasing tone sending sparks into your chest as he leaned his cheek against his knuckles, a loopy smile spread across his face. Oh how the turns have tabled. You always found it immensely attractive whenever Kun became cocky.
His usual cranky, mature, responsible self was an admirable feature of his, you weren’t going to lie. But there was something attractive and endearing when Kun’s cocky side popped out, you couldn’t help but admit to yourself that his loopy smile was the definition of ‘hot’. Of course, you weren’t going to admit it to his face. Not today, at least. 
You stared into his eyes, watching as one of his eyebrows turned upwards as he waited for you to accept his offer, his loopy smile gradually turning into a smirk as the seconds went by. At this point, you were just having a pointless staring contest. “No,” you deadpanned, huffing as you shut your laptop and carefully placing it in your bag. “I refuse to accept your help, good sir,” you gave him a cheeky grin of your own. 
“Are you sure?” Kun asked, his smirk never leaving his face as he leaned back in his chair to run a hand through his slightly disheveled blonde hair, pulling his glasses off of his face. “Why are you so persistent in helping me over something so small? It’s just an assignment, Kun,” you placed your hands on your hips as you squinted your eyes at him suspiciously, pondering if he wanted something from you to get him so persistent on letting him help you. 
This was not the usual Kun you knew. Usually, Kun would smack you with whatever papers he had on hand whenever you even joke about asking him for help with your assignments. And now, he was suddenly offering to let him help you? It was enough to convince you that Kun was possibly replaced by an alien. Or even worse, brainwashed by those aliens Renjun had always ranted about. Oh god, you regretted ever doubting and snoozing off during his annoying explanations. 
“Who are you and what have you done with Kun?” you asked, shakily holding up your pen at him as if you were ready to strike at him at any given moment. Kun furrowed his brows, smiling softly at you as he pulled his face away from his knuckles. “Why are you acting as if I’ve been possessed by a ghost or replaced by some sort of imposter, this isn’t among us,” Kun exclaimed incredulously, biting his lips to keep himself from laughing. 
You pulled your bag closer towards you, tightening your grip on the pretty yellow gel pen in your hand. “How do I know if you’re actually Kun and not some kind of alien? Last time I checked, you nearly banished Yangyang from your dorm when he asked you for help on his homework,” you furrowed your brows at him, waving your pen in circular motions as Kun balled one of his hands up into a fist, pressing it into his mouth. 
“Yangyang and Hendery had to perform a whole ass satanic ritual to get you to help them with their studies, it only makes sense for me to be suspicious if you’ve been abducted and brainwashed by those aliens Renjun always talks about,” you slowly got up from your seat, pursing your lips as you began to add on to whatever evidence you have in mind to prove that Kun was probably not himself at the moment. “I’ve watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Maze Runner: Scorch Trials before, I know how this alien shit works,” you hissed. 
Kun’s body began to shake as he tried his best to conceal his laughter as his eyes scrunched up into cute little moon shapes, his dimples protruding from his cheeks, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth to keep himself from doubling over laughing and disrupting the other students or teachers in the library. “And then? Go on, I’m listening,” Kun managed to gasp out as he took his glasses off to rub the space in between his eyes as he laughed silently. 
You couldn’t help but grin, watching as Kun patiently waited for you to go on despite the fact that he was probably on the brink of laughing himself to death. You then pouted, crossing your arms over your chest as you turned your head away from the older boy, tapping your feet against the carpeted floor. “You’re really being suspicious, you know,” you grumbled under your breath as Kun let out another wheeze of laughter. 
“Alright fine, how about this? You do something for me in return if I give you my notes,” Kun asked, a wide smile stretched across his face as he leaned over against the table, raising a brow at you as he placed his glasses back on. You lit up at this, turning your head at him in curiosity. “Yeah sure, name your price. As long as it’s not anything weird,” you nodded, earning another laugh from Kun at your sudden change of reaction. 
“Alright in exchange for my literature notes, you let me treat you out a day before the big day of our spectacular performance. I heard there was a carnival near the park, we could just meet up there,” Kun raised his brow, letting out a small hum as he looked at you with a glint of hope in his eyes. Your eyes widened at his sudden proposal, uncrossing your arms from your chest you leaned your head to the side in confusion. “Like, just the two of us?” you asked rather hesitantly, feeling your heartbeat increase slightly. 
Kun chuckled once again, nervously scratching the back of his head in an attempt to hide how flustered he felt at that moment as he stood up, grabbing his cup of coffee with him with one hand and snucking the other inside his pocket. “Why not?” he shrugged casually, a shy smile stretched across his face as he spoke, looking up at you with a soft expression on his face. Oh how fast your heart was racing at that exact moment.
You bit your lip, looking down at your shoes for a brief moment before gulping slightly. “Is Qian Kun asking me out on a date?” you teased, a cheeky grin forming on your lips despite the fact that your heart was practically ramming against your ribcage. Kun let out another chuckle, his soft smile sending a swarm of butterflies fluttering around and about in your tummy. 
“You can think of it whatever you like.”
You smiled at his words, giggling lightly. 
“Well, better be prepared to be penniless after the charity event ends then, Kun.”
Yeah, you definitely take back what you said about not liking Kun.
-
“Y/n! Truth or dare!” 
“Excuse me?” you cocked your head to the side, dropping your bag at the side of the stage as you walked up to your group of club members who were all huddled up into a huge circle. “We’re playing truth or dare, join us, won’t you?” Ren asked, grabbing your hand and pulling you to sit on the empty spot next to her and Shotaro. “Truth or dare? What are we? Elementary schoolers? I’m definitely in,” you chuckled, scooting over as you rubbed your hands together sinisterly. 
Brooke laughed, shaking her head at you. “I love how we’re just here playing truth or dare while the fossils are over there doing business,” she snickered loudly, looking over the only three responsible members of the club. More infamously known as ‘The Fossils’ which consists of one of the oldest members of the club, aka, Gwen, Doyoung and Kun. Pushing aside the fact that Gwen is only in her second year of college. 
“We can hear you!” Gwen exclaimed from a mile away, furrowing her brows as she flipped through the schedules of the events with the other two seniors. “We know!” Brooke yelled back, a cheeky grin spread across her face as you let out a light giggle. “Okay, so, who’s next?” Haechan asked, spinning the empty wine bottle in the middle of the group circle. “Wait where did you guys even find an empty wine bottle? Isn’t heavy alcohol not allowed on campu-”
“Shotaro, hush! It’s stopping!” you gently pushed the younger boy’s face away with a palm to the side of his face to hush him as you all watched in anticipation as the bottle slowly came to a stop, the empty tip pointing at Renjun, who groaned in annoyance as the others cheered for joy. “Oh fuck,” Renjun cursed, a frustrated smile stretched across his face as you rubbed your two hands together. 
“Dare,” Renjun chuckled. 
“I got a good one!” you exclaimed raising your hand, receiving mischievous grins from your friends as Renjun’s smile turned into an abrupt frown. “I dare you,” you looked around, spotting a small empty plastic doritos bag and placing it in the boy’s hands with a cheeky grin. “To throw this out of the window to aim it at the security guard,” you grinned, your eyes glimmering with mischief as you laughed sinisterly. 
“What did the security ever do to you to make you dare someone else to litter from the third floor?” Haechan asked, laughing along as you all watched the colour fade away from Renjun’s face. “He scolded me for accidentally dropping my juice box to the ground,” you rolled your eyes, patting Renjun’s back and pushing him to get up on his feet. “I swear my juice box didn’t even touch the ground and the old man had to go ham on me,” you grumbled under your breath as Renjun got up to his feet with the plastic bag in his hand. 
Renjun looked back at you, placing his hands on his hips. “You’re making me a victim of your revenge here,” he deadpan, furrowing his brows as you handed him the finger. “It’s a dare, Huang,” you wiggled your eyebrows suggestively. “Either that or you put that maid dress costume we bought earlier on with cat ears for the next hour,” you placed your hands on your hips. “Renjun, put the maid dress on,” his girlfriend barked, pulling out her phone and opening the camera app, eliciting laughs around you as you all watched her serious expression in contrast to Renjun’s terrified one. 
“I rather not embarrass myself publicly like this, thank you very much,” Renjun shook his head, glaring at everyone who was hoping for him to choose the maid dress instead of knocking on death’s door. “Well? Off to it, we don’t have all day,” you grinned, waving your hand at the boy as if to shoo him away from you. “I swear, I’m going to pull an uno reverse on you someday,” Renjun grumbled as he opened one of the windows of the theater room, peeking down to spot the unsuspecting security guard along with the other innocent bystanders. 
You all cheered unceremoniously as you watched Renjun ball up the plastic bag and throw it down to the security guard before quickly shutting the window close so as to not get caught by said grumpy security guard. “Great, who’s next?” you exclaimed with an enthusiastic clap of your hand, ignoring the death glare Renjun was sending you from across the room as he walked back to the circle. “Oh god, I hope we get someone good,” Kai mumbled under her breath as she spun the bottle.
You all waited in anticipation, sucking on your bottom lip as the bottle slowly comes to a stop, the tip pointing right at you. ”Shit,” you exclaimed with a sarcastic smile, looking around your friend group who gave you all evil glares as if to say they were finally going to have revenge for all the stupid dares you made them do the past two years you’ve been here considering the bottle rarely goes to you. 
“Truth or dare?” Brooke asked with a sinister smile, rubbing her hands together as they all scooted closer to look at you in anticipation. Watching as you gave your friends a tight lipped smile, gulping inaudibly as you nervously blurted out a small “truth?” almost questioningly. 
“Do you have a crush?”
“Hah?”
You furrowed your brows, confused. “What are we? Middle schoolers?” you raised your brow, scratching the back of your head. “Just answer the stupid question, y/n,” Kai deadpanned, her sinister smile never leaving her face as you continued to stare at your friends with a confused expression. ‘Well this isn’t as bad as I thought,’ you thought to yourself with a small shrug. “Yes, I do,” you admitted shamelessly as if it was an everyday question, giving them an innocent smile. 
“Who?” Shotaro asked, squinting his eyes at you. You raised your brow, crossing your arms firmly as you giggled. “One question per truth, suck it,” you teased, sticking your tongue out at your friends. Someone else spun the bottle quickly, causing it to stop right in front of you, causing your jaw to drop, eliciting a round of applause and laughter from your friends. “Okay, now spill, who?” Brooke repeated Shotaro’s question, tapping her nail against the wooden floor in anticipation. 
“But I haven’t chosen whether I wanted truth or dare, yet,” you shot back, raising your brow as your friends shared knowing looks. “Still,” they replied shortly, tight-lipped smiles stretching across their faces as you frowned abruptly. “This isn’t fair, I can’t get asked twice!” you retorted, feeling your anxiety creep up as you saw Kun’s figure discussing the events with Gwen and Doyoung at the corner of your eye, hoping to god that he wasn’t listening to any of this. 
Haechan shook his head, tutting at you softly. “The bottle landed on you fair and square, therefore you have to answer the damn question,” he grinned, laughing sinisterly as you purse your lips at how you’re literally cornered by your friends right now. “Fine, I’ll say who it is,” you grumbled, adjusting your sitting position on the floor. “He’s someone who hates me,” you stated, half jokingly, giggling as their reactions dimmed down only to realise that you have pulled an uno reverse card. 
“What? That’s not fair, you have to say their name!” Angie exclaimed, pointing an exclamatory finger at you as you stuck your tongue out at your friends with a cheshire grin. “Suck it, you didn’t say I have to specifically say his name!” you giggled, giving them enthusiastic jazz hands. “Anyways, I’m not playing anymore to save whatever's left of my dignity,” you scooted backwards, giving them two peace signs, your wide grin never leaving your face. 
“Wait, she said ‘he’. And she said that he hates her, which only leads to one suspect,” Kai explained, looking at the rest of your friends with brows furrowed with concentration. They all gasped in unison, looking at you with wide eyes before looking back at your precious club president (aka the poor unsuspecting victim slash bystander) with an equally shocked expression. 
“KUN! DO YOU HATE Y/N?” Angie shouted at the top of her lungs, cupping her mouth to attract the three Fossil’s attention. 
“What?” Kun shouted back, turning around with his brows furrowed, papers in his hands as he used the heel of his palm to push his glasses up to his head. Oh how you felt your heart dropping to your stomach. The fact that you had found out you had developed a small crush on your lovely senior merely less than three days ago wasn’t helping the fact that he looked immensely attractive in his attire. 
With his glasses pushed up to the top of his head, causing the bangs in front of his forehead to mess around a bit. His platinum blonde hair was a little bit messy and disheveled, probably the result of his hands running through them too much in distress. Considering Kun had a morning class today he was wearing a baggy white t-shirt over his tall, built figure. The sleeves were short and wide enough to reveal his muscular forearms. His black ripped jeans giving him that edgy, sort of ulzzang boyfriend look that you would see on pinterest. 
“DO. YOU. HATE. Y/N?” Angie repeated.
“Stop yelling, you’re going to make us all deaf!” Gwen shouted back. 
“Do I hate Y/n?” Kun repeated, pointing a finger at himself before looking at you, his adorably confused expression sending butterflies in your stomach. When the hell did he have that big of an effect on you? You swallowed down your nerves and used your superb acting skills to shoot him a loopy wide smile, giving him a sarcastic thumbs up, earning a soft smile from your lovely senior.
He chuckled briefly, putting the back of his hands on his hips. “Yeah, I do!” He teased, his cute dimples appearing on his cheeks as he grinned cockily at you, causing you to frown abruptly. “It’s scientifically proven by Qian Kun, our lord and saviour himself!” Kai exclaimed, raising her arms up in the air as if she had just received an invitation to the Grammy awards. “Y/n, you like Kun?!” Angie gasped dramatically, shaking Lin’s shoulders aggressively as if she had just found a priceless artifact. 
You laughed, trying to conceal how flustered you felt knowing full well that Kun was joking considering what happened approximately three days ago at the library. You know damn well that he was definitely lying. “You all have a huge misunderstanding,” you exclaimed, standing up to your feet as you jogged on over to stand beside Kun, wrapping an arm around his neck and pulling his head towards you as if you were putting him in a headlock. 
“You can’t see it but he is in love with me!” you joked, giggling lightly as Kun began to start smacking the papers he was holding against your back gently as a sign to let him go. “Get your filthy hands off me,” he joked, his body shaking as he laughed. “You aren’t the draco malfoy you think you are, Kun,” you grinned, looking down at the guy whose neck was stuck in between your right elbow. 
“This is harassment, I should sue,” Kun laughed as you released him from your grasp, smacking his papers gently on your head. 
“See, guys? Kun is infatuated and lovesick.”
Oh how you didn’t know how true your words are. 
-
Today wasn’t one of Kun’s greatest days. 
He didn’t know why he was so upset that day but it was one of the rare times when he would wake up on the wrong side of the bed. The fact that the moment he got out of his room only to see Yangyang’s stuff all over the couch angered him even more, despite the fact that the younger was probably already off to class. Kun had an afternoon class that day as his professor had postponed the classes due to personal reasons, which left him to go to the theater room early to practice his lines before the other club members arrived. 
He wasn’t in the mood to take anyone’s bull crap today and the fact that the event is coming up in a week wasn’t helping his terrible mood. All he wanted was to crawl back to bed and sleep until his emotions weren't bubbling up inside of him, waiting to burst. Though, thankfully for him and everyone else, the club members were able to tell that Kun wasn’t in a very happy mood at that moment. 
So they were pretty cool with Kun using whatever patience he has left and replying with short one worded answers unless needed. Funnily enough, today is the last day of rehearsals so Doyoung decided that you should all just retouch the props and backgrounds with paint and mod podge to be sure that the paints don’t chip off if something happens during the big day. Though, unfortunately for you, you were too high on serotonin (in other words: caffeine) to acknowledge the scary aura Kun was radiating. 
“Qian Kun!” you exclaimed, jumping on him and wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “Lovely morning we’re having, don’t you think?” you grinned, cocking your head to the side to have a better look at Kun’s face, your mood wavering in the slightest bit when your eyes came in contact with his cold, exhausted ones. “Yeah, sure. Have you done your part of the props, yet? We have to make sure everything’s good by the end of the day,” Kun asked, gently pulling your arm away from his shoulder as he tried his best to keep his temper. 
You frowned slightly, putting your hands on your hips. “Of course not, I just got here,” you informed, shaking your head at him firmly. “Well then, get to it. We don’t have much time today and I really want to go home,” Kun waved you off, his tone strict as he looked down at the clipboard in his right hand, using the left to rub his eyes. 
His strict tone caught you off guard. He wasn’t usually this strict to you, he sounded like your 80 year old science professor after the man lost his glasses and refused to find them because there was 20 minutes of class left. Those aren’t really good memories to reminisce at that moment. But nonetheless, Kun wasn’t in a good mood and you didn’t know if you should keep cracking jokes or shut up. 
“Kun’s being unusually not himself today,” you commented under your breath as you walked over to Renjun and Angie, who were repainting the tree barks for the play while you were carrying a can of paint for them. “He’s been like that since he came here, man’s probably having a shitty day, don’t bother him,” Renjun shrugged casually, dipping his paintbrush into the paint can you had set on the floor beside you along with the other cans of paints, earning an hum of agreement from his girlfriend. 
“I agree. Kun rarely gets this pissed off and from what I’ve heard from past club members, an angry Kun isn’t a good thing,” Angie added with a nod, pointing her wet paintbrush at you with a suspicious glint in her eyes. “So try not to anger him, most of us are trying our best to just get shit done and go home, too,” she told you, her tone slow as if she was gently telling off a small, stubborn, bratty five year old who’s prone to mess things up with every step they take. 
In this case, you were that five year old. 
“What if he just needs some cheering up, though?” you asked, sitting down on one of the crates filled with props, careful as to not accidentally knock over the paint cans around you. “He might be in a terrible mood but maybe he needs some cheering up or something,” you mumbled, drawing patterns on the wooden crate with your finger as your eyes glanced from the wood to Kun’s distressed figure. Leaning your chin on your palm as you watched Kun walk around with an emotionless expression on his face.  
Renjun clicked his tongue, bending down to open another can of paint to add more details to the leaves. “Y/n, no. Please don’t, just help us with the props. Angie’s almost done with colouring each individual wooden bush, you should help and actually do something,” Renjun shook his head firmly, narrowing his eyes at you as you gave him a frown, looking down idly at the can of paints surrounding you as Angie carefully dipped her paintbrush in one of the paints, her tongue stuck out at the corner of her lips as her shaky hand carefully added more details to the wooden board. 
Before you could open your mouth, you heard the senior in question call out your name with a heavy sigh following after it. “Y/n, get down from there before you break something. Help the others with the prop won’t you?” Kun sighed heavily, furrowing his brows as he placed the hand that was holding his clipboard to his hip and raised the other to pinch the bridge of his nose as he felt his blood boil in annoyance. “Relax Kun, I’m simply observing,” you grinned, giving him an enthusiastic wave which only happens to make his frown deepen. 
“Observing isn’t going to get anything done around here, why can’t you help out for once other than laze around?” Kun glared daggers into your skull, but alas, you didn’t appear to be as fazed as you were on the inside. “Who took a shit in your cornflakes today, Qian Kun?” you asked, crossing your arms across your shoulders as you grinned gingerly at him, earning a soft groan of annoyance from the older boy. 
He took a deep breath as if to keep his composure and hold himself back from doing anything he’s going to regret. But alas, was murdering you on the spot really that big of a crime if all you’ve been doing the past hour was chat around and push his buttons by simply breathing? 
 “Y/n, I don’t have the patience to deal with your shenanigans today. Just get off the damn crate box and help out for once,” Kun was beginning to grow restless. He didn’t know why he was getting so worked up over your daily nonsensical antics, he didn’t know why seeing your pretty smile was making his patience run out like sand in a tiny hourglass. The way you responded with a quick “nope!” with an eager shake your head wasn’t helping him tame the flaming fury inside of him. 
“Y/n, I swear to God. You’re so ludicrous and infuriating, I don’t even know why we haven’t kicked you out yet,” he hissed, his eyes darkening as he felt his mind grow numb, oblivious as to how your bright smile had faltered at the anger lacing in his voice. “Hey, you don’t need to be so mean!” you exclaimed, furrowing your brows as Kun’s eyes shot up to look at you. “Oh, I’m sorry,” Kun said sarcastically with a roll of his eyes. 
“I think I have the right to express my frustrations if all you’re going to do is mope around. It’s literally the last day of rehearsals, you should be taking things seriously,” he laughed in disbelief, running a hand through his hair. 
You opened your mouth to say something before closing it when you realised you had run out of comebacks considering Kun was ‘kind of’ right in a way. But you believed that you should all have a good break before the actual performance considering you’ve been practicing so hard for the past few weeks. You all deserve a good rest and you were sure you were going to get it if it weren’t for the fact that Kun was currently in a shitty mood and none of you were brave enough to ask for one. 
“Just get down from there and help Angie paint before my brain explodes into smithereens,” Kun sighed once again, furrowing his brows as he waved his hand off. You huffed, mumbling small curses under your breath as you blindly hopped off of the crate you were sitting on before your feet accidentally knocked over a few cans filled to the brim with paint, causing them to spill to the wooden floor. “Shit,” your eyes widened as you quickly bent down to pick the cans up, earning a few frustrated calls of your name from your club members. 
“Shit, I’m so so sorry I wasn’t looking!” you stammered as you saw Renjun hopping off his stool to look at the mess you had accidentally made. “I’ll get the mop, we can still wipe it off before the paint fully dries,” Renjun exclaimed, running his hands through his hair in distress. “I’ll come with you,” his girlfriend patted his shoulder with a heavy sigh. “Y/n, what the hell?” Kun exclaimed, walking up to you as his eyes grew wide, fury glossing over his pupils as you fumbled with your bag to find the wet tissues as your friends ran off to the nearby janitor’s closet. 
You pulled out a box of wet wipes as you knelt down, trying to wipe off as much as you could as you looked up at Kun in a panic. “I didn’t mean to knock it over, I swear! It was an accident, I didn’t-” you were cut off with a frustrated groan from Kun, watching as he rubbed his face with his palms as if he finally had enough of your nonsense. “Shut up, just shut up, y/n. Oh my god, see this wouldn’t have happened if you just fucking listened to me!” Kun scolded, the anger in his tone holding no mercy as everyone stood still in the room in awkward silence. 
Your jaw dropped in surprise, needles slowly piercing your heart as you watched Kun’s face get even angrier as the seconds went by and at this point you ran out of tissues to wipe the paint off. “Kun, I said I was sorry. It’s not like I purposely kicked the paints, I was just getting off the crate like you told me to,” you shot back defensively, careful as to not grip the tissues in your hand as they were dripping everywhere on the floor. 
Kun rolled his eyes, a deep frown on his face as his expression darkened at your words. “I told you to get off of the crates, not walk around like a drunk blind bat. Did you get hit in the head or something? I swear I still don’t understand why we haven’t kicked you out of the club. You’re lazy, reckless, clumsy, you never help around. All you do is cause trouble for everyone, you’re late all the time that you need me to babysit you 24/7,” Kun began ranting, oblivious to how every word was like a dagger shooting through your heart. 
“It’s so annoying and sometimes I just wished I never asked you to join this damn club if all you’re going to do is pile up more work onto not just me but the other members of the club. We were suppose to finish early if it weren’t for your clumsy ass fucking up once again!”
It was pretty rare to see Kun curse. And when he did, it’s usually a sign that you have gone too far or you’ve pushed his limits. You’ve never seen Kun this angry at you before in your two years of knowing him, you’ve never seen him this livid even if you pushed his buttons way more than you should. But the way he looked at you was the one that hurt the most. The way he laughed sarcastically in disbelief as he continued to rant on and on how he’s so close to kicking you out of the club.
The way his expression was telling you to leave his sight for good. The way his dark eyes held nothing but hatred and anger. 
It hurt you. 
His cold angered stare did nothing but pierce your heart as you blinked back the tears that started to gather in your eyes. A lump began to gather in your throat, begging for you to let it out as your eyes burned. You looked down sadly to avoid Kun’s angered eyes, gripping the half dried tissues as the paint stained your hand and dripped down in between your fingers and back to the floor. 
“Look, Kun, I’m sorry okay. Just let me clean it up I swear I-”
“Why did you even join this club if all you’re going to do is burden me and the other members?” Kun snapped. 
“Kun, that’s enough,” Doyoung spoke up upon entering the theater room with a bucket filled with water in hand, putting the bucket down in front of you before placing a hand on Kun’s shoulder to stop him from saying anything else. “Y/n, calm down. It’s not a big deal, you didn’t even spill that much, you can just go home for today,” Doyoung gave you a comforting smile, reaching over to pat your head as you took in a deep exhale to keep your tears in as you felt eyes boring into the back of your skull. 
“What? No, she needs to clean this up and face the consequences of her clumsiness,” Kun’s eyes went wide at his older friend, shaking his head as you bit your lip to keep yourself together. “It’s no big deal, Doyoung. Really, I’ll just clean it up myself,” you shook your head, leaning down to lift the bucket up towards you. “No, you two can go home early. Kun, you’re clearly in a terrible mood so I suggest you just go home and take some rest. Y/n, it’s okay, I’ll clean up. I haven’t been doing much these days anyway,” Doyoung shook his head profusely, grabbing the bucket from your hands. 
“Doyoung, you can’t just-”
“Doyoung, it’s fine I can-”
“Just go home before I dump paint on the both of you,” Doyoung hissed, shaking his head at both of your stubbornness. ‘They really are perfect for each other,’ he thought to himself as Kun clicked his tongue in frustration, walking back stage to grab his stuff to cool off. You stood there in silence, you didn’t know what to say and honestly you were scared that if you were to take one more step, you would fuck something up again and make Kun get even more angrier at you. 
Doyoung chuckled, shaking his head at you as he walked over and placed a hand on your shoulder. “Hey,” he spoke up, attracting your attention. “Go home already. Don’t take Kun’s words to heart, you know very well he didn’t mean them. He’s just having a bad day, he’ll be back to his nice self tomorrow,” Doyoung gave you an encouraging smile, causing you to muster up whatever strength you had left in you to smile back at him. You gave him a small nod, despite the fact that you weren’t so convinced. 
“Thanks, Doyoung.”
-
You were an idiot. It was no surprise to anyone. 
After three days of no interaction with Kun whatsoever, you still decided to go to your little hangout? Date? Friend date? (You don’t even know anymore.) That you both had arranged two weeks ago at the library. You remembered the excitement you had suppressed all week at the thought of finally going out on a date with Kun but that was before the fight that happened at the theater club three days ago. Could you even call it a fight if you were the one who was apologizing and Kun was the one uncharacteristically yelling at you?
You didn’t know anymore. 
You were also hoping to patch things up with Kun when this date finally came up considering you couldn’t find him anywhere on campus. Hell, you even had to ask Yangyang for Kun’s whereabouts which wasn’t much help considering all he told you was ‘he comes and goes like the wind’ but you were desperate to talk it out and apologize to your senior. 
Was this the effect your crush on him had? Usually you would just wait it out until things get better between the two of you but you knew that this wasn’t a minor fight. You actually pissed Kun off to his limits and you knew you had to apologize if you wanted him to continue to like you. That is if he actually does like you and wasn’t flirting and messing with you in the library for laughs and payback for all the mischief you had caused during your two years of knowing each other. 
However, to your dismay, you had been waiting at the park right across the carnival for three hours. And you were getting quite chilly (curse your past self for wanting to look good and had decided to wear you newest short sleeved shirt) and the wound in your heart was slowly opening up again the longer you waited. You’ve sent around five to seven texts by now and you were starting to wonder if he was just busy or if he was purposely ignoring you. 
Y/n: Yuh Kunners   16:49
Y/n: are you coming anytime soon?? Remember we were gonna hang out today right?????    16:50
One missed call from y/n
Y/n: I’m waiting in the park like we planned. Are you on the way lol   17:10
Y/n: kun im getting cold lmfao get over here before i turn into a living ice cube   17:37
Two missed calls from y/n
Y/n: dude i spent an hour choosing my clothes pls come ive been waiting for hours  18:49
Y/n: kun???? Cmon i know u were mad but u cant just stand me up here lmfao :,}   19:00
Two missed calls from y/n
Y/n: i guess ur not coming, huh  19:45
You sighed heavily, feeling your eyes burn as you watch people coming in and out of the carnival, gripping tightly onto the saddle of your bag as you begin to walk to the exit of the park. You pressed the back of your hand to one of your eyes when you realised you couldn’t hold back a tear, blinking rapidly when you started to feel them begging to leak out of your eyes like a broken tap. But you knew you couldn’t just cry like a loser in public just because someone stood you up. 
Your thoughts begin to wander as you make your way down the sidewalk and towards the bus station, feeling your heavy heart slowly sink down to the bottom of your stomach with every step you take. You could admit that you did go a little too far back at the theater room considering so many people had warned you to lay off the joking around for just one day so as to not make Kun’s temper go off the charts. You should’ve listened to them, you could admit that. 
But you also knew that you didn’t deserve to be stood up like this.
And it sucked. 
How could he just yell at you, storm off, proceeded to ignore you like the plague at school, then ghost your text and stand you up just like that without an apology or an explanation? Hell, he didn’t even read your texts. 
“Y/n?” 
You looked up from the ground with wide eyes, recognizing that melodious voice you’ve been longing to hear for the past three days. “Kun,” you mumbled almost inaudibly, your eyes widened slightly to see Qian Kun in his casual attire that could easily send your heart into a heart attack. “What are you doing here?” he asked, coughing awkwardly as he took in your whole look, feeling his breath being taken away by the mere sight of you being more dressed up than you usually are. 
“Waiting for you,” you deadpanned as if it wasn’t obvious enough, feeling your tears dissipate when you finally made eye contact with the boy in front of you, whose eyes grew wide at your words. “Me?” Kun’s eyebrows were raised in surprise, confusion glossing over his facial expression as he pointed a finger to himself. “Remember we planned a carnival date two weeks ago? Or are you just still mad at me for what happened in the theater room?” you asked, giving him a sad smile. 
Kun’s face turned pale at the reminder, your words hitting him like a brick when he realised he had stood you up for who knows how long considering the bus stop you two were standing on was quite the long walk from the carnival. “Oh fuck,” he blurted out when your words finally sink into him, an apologetic expression washing over him as you crossed your arms in front of your chest. “Are you that mad that you just had to stand me up?” you furrowed your brows, taking a step towards him. 
“Y/n, I’m so so sorry,” he started but you cut him off to give him a piece of your mind. “Look I admit, what happened at the theater was my fault and I should’ve listened to you instead of pushing your buttons and causing trouble. But was it really that bad that you had to keep me waiting here for not two- but three hours? I know I was- I am immensely annoying and I’m truly sorry for that,” you took a deep breath to keep yourself from getting too emotional in front of him as Kun stared guiltily at you.
“That was completely on me but that doesn’t give you a valid excuse or reason to stand me up for three hours, Kun,” your gaze hardened as you stared teary eyed inot Kun’s sad ones. He gazed up at down at your hopeless figure, swallowing at what he’s about to do as he leaned towards you to grab your hands in his, giving them a tight squeeze as he lifted them up to his chest. Your eyes widened at the sudden contact, despite the fact that you’ve literally hugged him on stage before. But there was something in his actions that made it seem more intimate in a way.
 “I don’t know what to do or say to make you feel better but all I can say is that I’m sorry, I'm so so sorry,” he started, running his thumbs over your knuckles. 
“I swear, I know it isn’t an excuse but I’ve been so stressed the past couple of days with the play, the big assignments at the end of every semester and I recently got this internship deal and I just started today. I completely forgot about today, I’m so so sorry. I promise I’ll make it up to you, and about the theater-” he swallowed down the guilt bubbling up inside of him as the memory of your hurt expression resurfaced in his mind once again. (which sort of brought him to the point of avoiding you all around campus)
“I had my phone on mute during the internship and I must’ve missed your texts. I’m assuming you sent me some because I know for a fact your impatient ass would probably bombard my phone with calls and texts,” he joked, laughing lightly when he realised now isn’t the most appropriate time to joke around considering you two were in a very tight situation. He gave you a small smile, his eyes filled with a small glint of hope as he took a step and tugged your hands so that he could enclose whatever proximity you two had left in between you.
“I’m so sorry. I know you might not forgive me but I hope you can give me a chance to make it up to you. Right here, right now. The carnival isn’t closing until midnight after all,” he suggested with a small shrug, looking down at his wrist watch before gazing back up to your eyes with a soft expression. You bit your lip, gazing down at your hands being held delicately in his, his thumb caressing your knuckles softly as you gave it a small thought. 
You gave him a genuine smile, your heart lightening as you came to find that you couldn’t refuse anything when Kun was giving you a look as if you were the only thing valuable to him in the world at that moment. 
“Sure, Kunt.”
“Can we just have one day without you pushing my buttons?”
“I have the right to call you day considering you’ve been an absolute Kunt this week, get over it.”
-
“Okay, ladies. I have a confession to make,” you took a deep exhale as you walked over to the food table where your friends were sitting in before the actual performance. “You like Kun?” Brooke raised her brow, opening her mouth as Ten leaned over the table to give her a spoonful of the sweet dessert he was having. Your jaw dropped when you realised she beat you to your own confession but however you weren’t backing down from an opportunity to mess around with your friends. 
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Nope.”
“Yep.”
“I really really like Kun,” you confessed all of a sudden, causing Kai to choke on her ice cream at the sudden news. “That’s so sudden,” she exclaimed with a hoarse cough, leaning over to steal Hyuck’s cup of coffee as she chugged it down while patting her chest. “Cat’s out of the bag, I like Qian Kun. But are you all really surprised?” you sighed, sitting down beside Lin as you sipped on your own drink with a nonchalant shrug.
“Excuse me?” a sudden voice spoke up. 
You stopped sipping loudly at the familiar voice, turning your head around slowly to come in eye contact with none other than Qian Kun himself who was in the middle of eating his fruit salad. His brows furrowed in confusion as your eyes grew wide, embarrassment creeping up your cheeks as your jaw dropped open, your thoughts messy as you try to find the words to speak. “You didn’t tell me Kun was here,” you hissed at your friends, choosing the option to act as if Kun wasn’t sitting right beside you this whole time. 
“Dude you’re literally blind, he was here the whole time,” Kai deadpanned, giving you a look that completely expressed how she was fed up with your idiocy for the day. “Can I speak now?” Kun pipped up, a smirk stretched on his lips as he watched your flustered figure retaliate against your friend’s words for calling you blind despite the fact that you kind of are in a way. “Nope, nevermind!” you shook your head abruptly, standing up as you gripped your handbag and slung it over your shoulder. 
“You didn’t hear me say shit! Obliviate!” you used the straw the cashier gave you as a wand, waving it in front of Kun before you ran for dear life to the one place where he can’t get in: also known as the women’s dressing room. “Oh no you’re not! You can’t just Harry Potter reference you’re way out of this confession,” you could hear the chair grinding against the tile floor, signalling that Kun had got up to follow after you as you both laughed loudly.
“Go away, Kun!” 
You knew that confessing that you like Kun wasn’t that big of a deal considering you did almost cry in front of him when he stood you up a couple of days ago on your carnival date. And you were definitely more than sure that he had reciprocated your feelings considering how he was smiling nonstop (Plus the fact that the apples of his cheeks and ears were tinted pink) after you pressed a small peck on his cheek at the end of the date right as he dropped you off at the bus stop. 
But it wouldn’t be fun if you continued to act as bashful as you did back at the carnival date, would it? 
You and Kun let out small lighthearted giggles as you shut the door of your dressing room to his face, provoking him even more as you jokingly told him to ‘fuck off’ considering you two have about thirty minutes left until you have to get on stage. Yes, you were using this as a delightful excuse to do your make up and dress up fifteen minutes earlier than the rest of the cast considering it was quite a long play and you wanted to reread your script and calm your nerves before show time.
-
“Princess Putri, my love, my little songbird! Oh how all of these years of holding myself back, all these years of fighting and hoping to reunite with you once again and hold you in my arms,” Kun recited as you ran towards him, into his arms which were stretched open wide, waiting to wrap around you in a tight and loving embrace. With a single, meaty tear, you jumped into his arms. Letting him spin you around like the princess you were portraying as the piano music became loud and almost deafening, almost letting you believe that you were in your own world.
Going against the script, you wrapped your arms around Kun’s neck, leaning your head towards his to nuzzle his nose against yours lovingly, eliciting a laugh from said boy as he placed you back on your two feet. “Oh how I’ve been longing to feel your lips against mine,” he leaned his forehead against yours, his words going against the script as he wrapped his arm around your waist to pull you closer to him. Placing his free gloved hand on your chin, his thumb caressing your lips as the camera zoomed in on your expressions. 
Your raw emotions being captured on the camera as you gaze back at Kun lovingly, a loopy smile stretched across your face as you scanned his features. His blonde hair poking out of the hat he was wearing, his front bangs messy and slightly wet with sweat with the sword fighting scene he had with Haechan earlier on stage moments prior. Your heart was beating rapidly against your chest, your breathing hitched as Kun slowly leaned his head towards yours, closer than he should be as the piano music in the background began to slow down. 
His eyes gazed up and down from your eyes to your lips, his tongue darting out to wet his own as his dark pupils sparkled under the theater light, the audience as silent as mice as they waited in anticipation for the long awaited kiss scene. “May I?” he whispered almost breathily, his melodious soft voice sending shivers down your spine, the microphone attached to his cheek picking up on his almost inaudible words. His eyes gazed up at yours for your consent as your lips parted into a wide grin.
You leaned forward, nodding softly with a wide smile on your face. He let out a soft chuckle, lips inching closer to yours as your free hand tugged on the tips of his hat to tease the audience by blocking the kiss scene completely from them as his lips pressed against yours. His hand that was on your chin moved up to your cheek as he leaned his head to the side slightly for a better angle, hearing the audience break out into a loud applause as you gripped onto his hat tighter to cover up the fact that the two of you were practically making out in front of a hundred people. 
Your eyes shut tight as you basked into the feeling of Kun’s soft, slightly chapped lips against yours, the cherry lipstick probably making a mark on his lips as you moved yours against his in sync as Kun’s hand that was on your cheek moved to turn off your mic and his own as he refused to pull away from you. He leaned his face so that he could deepen the kiss, not caring about the lipstick you were wearing that was currently smearing and staining his lips a rosey pink. 
“Holy shit, are they actually making out?” Haechan whispered aloud backstage, leaning his head forward slightly so as to not accidentally get caught by the applauding audience as Lin and Doyoung pulled on the rope to close the curtains. “Did anyone get that on camera?” Kai hissed, looking at the other club members in hopes of finding someone with their camera phone up, smiling widely when she saw Ten and Brooke holding up their phones up with big grins on their faces. 
“YOU MORONS, STOP RECORDING AND CLOSE THE CURTAINS!” Doyoung exclaimed from the other side of the stage. 
-
“Are we just going to ignore the fact that you two just made out in front of a couple hundred people?” Ten chuckled, replaying the video of you and Kun kissing in front of the whole campus and probably their parents, siblings and grandparents. “Plus the owner of the school and the theater majors,” Brooke added with a soft snicker as Ten pulled her close to him in a tight embrace as they and a few other club members gathered around to watch the video. “Priceless, who knew our favorite dynamic duo would end up making out in front of the whole campus?” Kai teased, wiggling her eyebrows at you. 
“Shut up,” you grumbled, leaning your head down on the table to avoid the knowing smirks of your club members. “I didn’t know you were all suppose to bully me today, I would’ve brought a pan to smack you all into tomorrow if I knew this was going to happen,” you added, mumbling small curses incoherently as your friends considered to snicker at your uncharacteristically flustered and bashful state. 
You remembered immediately running off from the stage once your club members started applauding and whistling at you as soon as you pulled away from the deep kiss. You and Kun both had flustered expressions stretched across your faces when you saw the smudged lipstick stains on both of your lips, panting for air as you stared wide eyed at each other. You were also sure Kun had run off to his own dressing room to save himself from any more teasing. (especially from Ten)
As soon as you locked the door to your dressing room, you couldn’t stop your heart from beating rapidly against your chest. The butterflies in your stomach swarming as if there was an earthquake, a giddy feeling bubbling up in your chest. You swore it took everything inside of you to not scream your emotions out into the bag you brought today, but you survived after drinking lots of water to calm yourself down (despite the fact that you could feel a giddy smile stretch across your lips whenever your mind wanders back to the soft makeout session you and Kun had merely moments ago. 
“Hey, can we talk?” Kun’s voice snapped you out of your thoughts, causing your head to shoot up from your leaning position on the table. Eyes wide as you both stared in awe at each other, feeling your hearts race when Kun coughed awkwardly to break the awkward tension settling in between the two of you. “I-” you were soon cut off by Kai, who popped out of nowhere to push you up to your feet with a mischievous grin stretched across her face. 
“Of course, go ahead. Take your time, after all you are done here, right?” Kai gripped your shoulders tightly when you opened your mouth to speak, realising that for once in your life you didn’t know what to say in situations like this. “Right! Now, off you go!” She exclaimed with a soft giggle, shoving your bag in your hands before pushing you towards Kun, ignoring the death glare you were sending her as you followed Kun out of the theater room. 
Kun shoved his hand in his pockets, racking through his brain to think of something to say to break the awkward tension. “So,” he started, wincing at how awkward he sounded before proceeding with his words. “Are we going to talk about what happened back there or?” Kun raised his brow at you, finally turning his head to make eye contact. You bit your lip nervously, looking down at your feet before gulping and looking back up at him. 
“Not until you- you uh-,” you coughed, pointing a finger at the corner of his mouth. “You got a little- a little lipstick there, bro,” you quietly pointed out, internally cringing at how awkward you two were despite the fact that you were fine with shamelessly running away from him after confessing your crush on him with laughs and giggles in between. Kun’s eyes widened at your statement, wiping the corner of his lips with the back of his hand as he mumbled small apologies under his breath. 
Kun paused when you finally told him that the lipstick was finally wiped off. “Did you just call me ‘bro’?” he deadpanned, furrowing his brows in confusion. The atmosphere slowly returning to normal upon his obvious question as your eyes widened in a panic. “I don’t know! I panicked! We’ve never had a post make out conversation before. Or a conversation that doesn’t involve you glaring daggers into my head, I swear if looks could kill,” you shot back, waving your hands around as Kun let out a light chuckle.
“So, do you like Messi?” you asked after a pregnant pause, clasping your hands behind your back with a small smile. Kun raised his brow at you, chuckling softly at your words. “Is that supposed to be a Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo reference?” he asked, letting out a soft giggle when you nodded shamelessly in response, wide smiles stretching on both of your lips as you looked down at your slightly dirty shoes. 
“Can we talk now?” he asked, leaning his body against the wall as you both stared at each other in silence. Except, this time the silence was no longer awkward. Hell, it was almost comforting. 
“Of course, yeah. Sure,” you nodded, trying to keep your cool as Kun took a step towards you. “Well, for starters, I really enjoyed- I mean- fuck,” Kun started, scrunching his face when he realised he was stumbling over his words, rubbing his face in frustration. “What I meant to say was I really liked kissing you,” he looked down nervously, eliciting a small smile from you as you had never seen the calm and collected Qian Kun this flustered in front of you. And you couldn’t even believe the fact that you were the one who was the main reason why he was like this. 
“I don’t know if you meant what you said when you said you liked me before the performance, but fuck it. I really really like you and I really do want to be more than friends or club members,” Kun chuckled, swallowing his nerves down as he fiddled with his fingers in front of you, his dimples protruding on his cheeks as he gave you a cute, toothy smile. You couldn’t help but push your own nerves back to tease him, raising your brow as you gave him a cheeky grin. 
“Is Qian Kun simping for me, right now?” you teased. 
Kun let out a light laugh, shaking his head at you profusely at the sight of your own light expression. “I guess I am,” he shrugged with a staggering laugh, joining you in your small fit of giggles. “Well in that case, I’m just here waiting for you to pop the question,” you placed the back of your hands on your hips, giving him an encouraging smile despite the fact that your heart was beating oh-so-loudly in your ears. 
At this point his eyes had turned into small moon shapes from how wide he was smiling and his cheeks were starting to hurt. “Pop the question? What is this? A marriage proposal?” he teased, raising his brow at you suggestively. Now it was his turn to tease you. 
“Shut up, you know what I mean,” you smacked his arm jokingly, giggling along with him bashfully. 
He took another step towards you, leaning towards you to grab your hand in his, intertwining his fingers with yours tightly. Giving your hand a loving squeeze, he took a deep breath as he looked down at your intertwined hands. “May I be your boyfriend, then?” he asked, a soft, boyish smile on his face. The happy glint in his eyes never leaving him as he stared lovingly into yours, taking in your features slowly as you giggled lightly. 
“Whipped Kun hitting different,” you commented, eliciting a laugh from your senior as he squeezed your hand in his gingerly once again. 
“Just say yes so I can kiss you again,” he rolled his eyes at you, his soft smile never leaving his face. 
You puckered your lips gingerly, answering him with your actions as you waited for him to press his lips against yours. “I’m waiting, Kun,” you said with puckered lips, giggling softly. Kun let out a light hearted laugh (which was sure to add ten years to your life span the more you listen to it) as he commented on how uncharacteristically adorable you were being at that exact moment, earning a loud complaint from you as you frowned at him. “I guess you don’t want me to say yes,” you sighed heavily, sniffing for dramatics as you raised your free hand to your eyes to let out a fake cry. 
“You’re so dramatic, I’m so close to taking it back,” Kun muttered under his breath before reaching over to cup your cheek with his free hand to turn your face back to face his. Pressing his lips against yours in a soft, passionate kiss, he smiled when he heard you giggle against his lips while squeezing his hand that was intertwined against yours at your sides. 
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¤ tagging: @kunrengui @chiffonymark @lebrookestore @leetaeyonglover @oifelixcmerebrou @fruityutas @vera-liscious @c-sanshine @thats-a-jen-no-no @coco-riki @stayzenniesstuff @stayctday @yunntext @qianinterprises @dreamyyang @channoticedmeuwu​ @caratinylyfe​
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waka-chan-out · 3 years
Text
Ballroom Dancing
(Tsukishima Kei x Fem!Reader)
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I wrote a Tsukishima dance fic and I’m here to make it everyone’s problem
post-timeskip, obviously.
word count: 4.4k
content warning: SMUT, semi-public sex, degredation, taunting because he’s a little shit, brat!reader, oral (m. recieving), hair pulling, fingering, alcohol consumption (nothing crazy), slight orgasm denial, light choking
also featuring: kuroo and kenma
“I cannot believe you talked me into this,” you said, turning into your friend as you scanned the huge ballroom.
“What do you mean? You look great.”
“I know I look great, Tetsu, but I still feel ridiculous.”
“Why? Once you start dancing you’ll feel better.”
“Whatever you say. Please dance with me first or I will combust.”
“As you wish,” Kuroo said with a laugh. You moved towards him as he took your hand, starting to move you around the room. The other couples on the dance floor were pressed against each other, hands slipping down from their partner’s waists and faces leaning in close to whisper who knows what in each others ears. Kuroo held you respectfully, knowing that he dragged you here and you could run off at any moment if you felt like it. The music swelled, filling the ballroom with a beautiful hum. The room was huge and silver. A giant chandelier dangled from the ceiling and cast lovely shattered flecks of light all around the room.
You had practiced this dance so many times that you could go into autopilot and observe your surroundings without missing a beat. Kuroo spun you quickly as your eyes passed over the crowd. You recognized a few faces as Kuroo’s friends from college. Some of them he had known since high school. All of the friends of his you had met so far were fun. If they could put up with Kuroo they could put up with anything.
You saw Kenma in the crowd and cast him a smile. He held up a hand to greet you. You knew he’d find you later and talk your ear off, but there was no way you could get him in the middle of the room for a dance. He looked handsome in his tuxedo. He was never as strong as Kuroo, but he still filled it out nicely with his newfound confidence.
“Hey, Kei is here!” Kuroo said happily. You looked back at him with confusion. You knew the name, but he was one of Kuroo’s high school friends that you hadn’t met yet.
“Where?” you asked.
“Right next to Kenma. The blond.” You spun around again and looked over to where Kenma was. A giant loomed over him, his back to you. He had shaggy blond hair and looked relatively thin, but you could see muscle through his tight-fitting dress pants.
“Jesus, how tall is he?” you asked. “He looks huge compared to poor Kenma.” Kuroo laughed.
“He’s always been big. Last time we saw each other he said he was over 6’4 but who knows at this point.”  Your eyes widened.
Kuroo let out his hyena laugh in response and the blond - Kei, though you didn’t know his last name - turned at the clearly familiar sound. He wore a wide pair of glasses that framed serious eyes. His face was cold as he turned, but as soon as he saw Kuroo it softened into a smile. He held up a hand, long fingers twitching slightly in greeting. Kuroo’s hand left your waist, waving eagerly back at his friend.
“After this song let’s go say hi,” he said. You nodded, eyes still fixed on the man. His face settled into a slight smirk as he observed you, then turned back to Kenma, running a hand through his blond hair.
The song ended and you and Kuroo made your way to the edge of the ballroom, but the blond was nowhere to be found. Kenma greeted you with a hug and a shower of compliments. He had really come out of his shell since college.
“Where’d Kei get off to?” Kuroo asked.
“No idea,” Kenma said, glancing around. “He’s hard to miss, though. I’m sure you’ll find him easily enough.” He laughed. “I think he’s grown even more since we last saw him.”
“Are you serious? That’s hardly fair.”
“Agreed. No man deserves to be 6’5.” Six fucking five. It wasn’t often you ran into someone that could dwarf Kuroo. Jesus. You needed a drink.
“I’m heading to the bar, Tetsu,” you said. Kuroo nodded and waved you on, chatting happily with Kenma as you walked away.
Even the bar sparkled with silver. The man behind the counter wore red velvet, looking more like an employee at the Tower of Terror than a bartender.
“What can I get for you, love?” he asked.
“What can you make?”
“Absolutely anything you’d like.”
You laughed. “Can you make a mojito? Pineapple, if it’s possible.”
“Absolutely.” He turned and began to skillfully rifle through the selection of rum behind him.
“What are you, on vacation?” a voice asked behind you. You could almost hear the smirk in his words. You turned, immediately having to look higher up than you thought you would. Kuroo’s blond friend stood behind you with a sly smile on his face.
“Something wrong with my order?”
“I think the answer to that is pretty obvious,” he said, leaning on his elbows against the bar beside you, shrinking to your height. “Who orders pineapple at an event like this?”
“People who don’t give a shit about the snooty atmosphere.”
He cocked an eyebrow and looked away, watching the bartender make your drink. “Am I snooty, then?”
“I think the answer to that is pretty obvious.”
“I assure you, snooty I am not.”
The bartender set down your drink in front of you, plopping a cherry on top as he did so. “There you go,” he said cheerfully. “Whose tab will this be on?” He looked between you and the blond.
“I’m not paying for their little cocktail, thanks.” Kei shrugged and looked at you, that annoying smile still glinting in his eyes.
“I guess that’ll be mine, then. Put it under y/n. I’m definitely not done drinking tonight.” Your eyes met the his. He was looking at you with an unreadable expression, eyes glinting with something that looked like amusement. The bartender laughed and turned to the other man.
“Anything I can get you?” Kei let his eyes leave yours.
“Dry martini, please.” You laughed loudly and took a sip of your drink. The bartender began his order and the tall man looked at you.
“Something funny about my order, too?”
“A dry martini? Who are you, James Bond?”
“Tsukishima. Kei Tsukishima.” He smiled widely this time, clearly amused at your reaction.
“Y/n,” you replied, happy that he went along with the joke. The bartender set the martini down in front of Tsukishima. He picked it up and licked his lips, taking a sip without letting his eyes leave yours.
“Put this on their tab, as well,” he said.
“Excuse me?” you said, incredulous at his attitude.
“I’ll get the next.” He took another sip as the bartender walked off to deal with his other customers. “So, you Kuroo’s new partner?” The word fell from his mouth dripping with sarcasm. You choked out a laugh.
“Absolutely not. We’ve been friends since college.”
“College, huh? He ever mention me?”
“Yeah, actually. I’ve heard all about what a brat you are. He pegged you perfectly.”
Tsukishima smiled. “You think I’m being bratty?”
“You are absolutely being bratty. Don’t forget I’m paying for your drink.” His eyes kept on sparkling. You weren’t sure what he was thinking, but the way he looked at you made it feel like he was seeing straight into your thoughts.
“So.” He twirled the glass in his hand. God, his hands were huge. “If Kuroo’s not your partner . . .”
“If I wasn’t here with Kuroo I’d be dancing alone.” He nodded, looking satisfied with your answer. He threw back the rest of his martini and gestured to your cup.
“Finish your drink,” he said, straightening up and towering over you again.
“Why?”
“We’re going to dance, dumbass.”
You raised your eyebrows at him. He mirrored your expression and nodded at your glass. “Finish it or I’ll finish it for you.”
You glared up at him, pulling the cherry out by the stem and tipping the drink back, swigging the last bit of bitterness. You popped the cherry in your mouth and flicked the stem into Tsuki’s empty glass. He smirked and made his way through the crowd. You followed, head a bit hazy from chugging your drink so quickly.
He made it to the edge of the dance floor right as the next song began playing. He turned and held out a hand to you. His fingers were long and well-manicured. You raised your eyebrows with as much attitude as you could muster, taking his hand. He smiled. His hand was soft and a little cold. He pulled you onto the dance floor.
Your breath caught in your throat as his hand settled on your hip, long fingers splaying out and digging into your side. It was almost possessive. This close he smelled like basil soap and something musky that made your head spin as he gracefully sidestepped and led you around the room.
For such a tall man, he was a remarkably good dancer. His movements were precise and sure, leading you better than even Kuroo did. When he moved his arms you could see his jacket strain slightly. He wasn’t a thick man by any means, but what he had was all muscle. His eyes didn’t leave yours as you danced, intense gaze making you antsy but determined not to look away first.
“I didn’t mention this before but your dress is lovely.” His gaze trained down your body as he spoke.
“What, are you being nice now?” you asked.
“I can be mean if you’d like.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.” His eyes darkened.
“Try me.”
“You sure?”
You shrugged. His hand slid along to the small of your back and he dipped you. Your breath caught in your throat as he pulled you back up, face suddenly serious. He looked around the room.
“Do you know how much attention you’re drawing to yourself with that neckline?”
You scoffed. “What does that mean?” He leaned down, very close to your ear. You got goosebumps as he spoke.
“I’m saying your dress makes you look a little slutty.” You drew your head away from him. He perked back up and smiled at your shock. “I thought you wanted me to be mean.”
“I wasn’t expecting you to diss my dress.”
He shrugged and dug his fingers into your side, pulling your hips flush against him. “I never said I didn’t like it.”
Your face felt suddenly hot. He grinned.
“You’re a pretty little thing when you’re flustered,” he said.
“Keep talking and those dress pants aren’t going to be able to hide how pretty you think I am.” His eyebrows shot up, this time in genuine surprise. You smiled. He clearly wasn’t used to encountering people willing to taunt him back. He looked away for a moment and regained his composure.
“Why would I try to hide that?”
“You seem the private type. I figured a broom closet or bathroom stall would better suit your taste.” His smile darkened.
“Done.”
Your eyes widened. “What?”
Too late. He was already pulling you off of the still swirling dance floor.
He led you past the bar and down a hall, clearly familiar with the terrain. The hallway was littered with doors, but he led you to one of the very last ones. He threw open the door and pulled you inside. The room was mid-sized but cramped. There were chairs lining the table. The walls looked strangely soft, like it was soundproofed for privacy’s sake. There was a window on one side. Moonlight streamed through the half-shut blinds, giving the room a cold glow.
Tsukishima wasted no time in locking the door and taking you by the hips, pushing you against the wall.
“You’re a testy one, aren’t you?” he growled, gripping the fabric of your dress tightly.
“I try to be,” you replied, hand finding its way into his hair and pulling him down to your lips. He kissed you hungrily. His lips were soft and angry, attitude apparent even in how his tongue slipped into your mouth. He was teasing you without words, daring you to push back. You obliged, biting down lightly on his bottom lip. He let out a small sound and pushed harder against you. He separated from you and began to trail aggressive kisses down your neck.
“If you’re going to be smart with your mouth I’ll give you something else to do with it,” he breathed against you. You shivered.
“You’re all talk so far,” you sighed. “If you’re going to do it, do it.” You felt his lips curl into a smirk against your shoulder.
“Naughty thing,” he murmured. His hands trailed up your body, finding your face. He held your cheeks and smiled. He ran a finger across your bottom lip. “Why don’t you show me what else those pretty lips can do?” You said nothing but grabbed his belt all the same, staring him in the eyes with a smug expression on your face. Once his dress pants were undone you sunk to your knees in front of him. He inhaled sharply at your compliance.
He was hard already at the way you kissed him. You wasted no time pulling down his boxers and taking him all the way into your mouth.
“Fuck,” he groaned as he hit the back of your throat. He covered his mouth with his hand, seemingly more out of restraint than to actually hold back any noise. You continued moving your head, tongue sliding over the head of his cock. It didn’t take long to figure out that drove him crazy. His groans raised in pitch the more you took advantage of how sensitive he was. You wrapped a hand around him and swirled your tongue around his head. He let out what was almost a whimper and grabbed your hair, gripping it so tightly it made your eyes water. You sped up, eliciting similar sounds from him.
“Mother . . . fucker,” he groaned in a whisper, hand moving from deep in your hair to your forehead, his touch nearly a caress. You slowed your pace at his enthusiasm and his breathing hitched.
“Fuck. Don’t do that.” You hummed in amusement, the vibrations causing him to tip his head back. You sped up again. Just as he began whimpering you slowed again. His second hand found your hair this time, both tugging tightly.
“One more time and I -- fuck.” He tipped his forehead forward against the wall as you quickened your pace again. You felt him twitch in your mouth and knew he was close.
“Shit. Fuck. Fuck.” He spat out his words, rocking his hips a bit to the pace you set. “Oh, fuck.” His swearing raised in pitch. He was so close. “I --” You pulled off of him completely and looked up at him. His eyes were shut tight. His hips bucked and he let out a horrible little whimper. His breathing was irregular as he repeated the word “fuck” over and over again, to himself and to you. The haze of his denied orgasm began to fade and he looked down at you with deadly serious eyes.
“I’m not playing that fucking game.” He tugged on your hair, pulling you into a standing position. It hurt in the best way, especially satisfying now that he was so riled up. He whirled you around and pinned you against the table. He lifted your hips so that you were seated and began pushing your dress up, hands lost in the mess of skirts.
“You don’t get to pull some shit like that and think you’re getting away with it.” His hands slid up your thighs and pushed them apart. You shivered. His long fingers found the lace of your undergarments.
“Slutty under here too. I should have expected that.” He pressed his fingers against you through the cloth, making you inhale sharply in anticipation. “Oh well,” he chuckled. “These just make it easier for me.” He pushed the fabric aside and slipped a single long finger inside of you. You gasped and your brows furrowed. He mirrored your expression like he was taunting you.
“So wet just from sucking my cock.” He whispered the words like he almost didn’t want you to hear the taunt. He pushed a second finger into you. You breathed out hard, suppressing a noise. He chuckled.
“Oh, no. You don’t get to act all shy now,” he said. His fingers curled and you let a moan escape. “There we are.” His smirk returned to his face. He repeated the motion. You felt your core tightening, forcing your back to arch up against him.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “You’re pretty when you’re all wound up. Too bad you’re such a whore. You let guys do this to you often? Whisk you into a dark room and have their way with you?” You shook your head. He laughed lightly, curling his fingers again. You moaned, gripping his shoulders tightly. “I like your honesty. I guess you’re only a slut for me.”
His pace inside you was steady and his gaze was intense. You knew you were close but if you told him that he’d probably pull away just you did to him. Your eyes shut tightly, hand finding his hair and tugging. You swore and he pulled his hand away. Though you were expecting the motion, it didn’t stop your thighs from closing tightly, begging for the contact that was no longer there. He slipped his fingers into his mouth so casually it made you gasp. He popped them out after a moment and ran his messy hand through his hair.
“Sorry to torture you back,” he said, pushing your legs apart again and pulling your hips closer to the edge of the table. “But when you come I want it to be on my cock.” He slipped his dress pants down again and tugged the lace off of your legs. He ground his hips forward, rubbing against you. Your breathing hitched and he laughed.
“So needy for me. What would you do if I just walked out?” You glared up at him and wrapped your legs around him, pulling him close.
“Not letting me go, huh? Don’t have to tell me twice.” He pushed inside of you slowly, brows furrowing and eyes fluttering closed as he did so. You both swore as he buried himself inside of you. He was big, but it didn’t hurt. You wiggled your hips a little, wishing he would move. He chuckled at your efforts.
“You want me to hurry up? You’re gonna have to ask nicely.” You glared up at him.
“Please,” you muttered.
His brows shot up.
“Please what?”
“Please move already, you stubborn fuck.”
He laughed in surprise.
“So dirty. You asked nicely though, so . . .” He drew his hips back and drove back into you. You let out a sigh. He grabbed the back of your neck with his huge hand and pulled you forward into a kiss as he continued moving. His swearing and your moans got lost in the kiss as he set a faster pace. He pulled away from your lips, leaving his forehead leaning against yours.
“Fuck.” He choked on a groan as he spoke. “You make such pretty sounds. Did your drink make you this honest or is it my cock?” You buried a fist in his hair and pulled. He let out an unexpectedly loud sound at the motion. He stared down at you, eyes on fire.
“Shut the fuck up,” you breathed. He grinned and pulled you in for another kiss, this one much more desperate. His hand trailed up your neck, squeezing lightly as he did. You tipped into his palm but it kept traveling upwards. It stopped along your jaw, thumb slipping up to separate your kiss. He slipped it into your mouth. He swore as you eagerly sucked in the finger, staring him in the eye. He smiled and pulled it back, returning his lips to yours. His hand slipped down between your legs, using the thumb that had been in your mouth to trace a circle on your clit. You gasped and moved away from the kiss. He caught your head with his other hand, keeping you close to him as he continued the snap of his hips and the motion of his finger.
“Fuck, Tsukishima.��� He sped up the pace of his hand.
“Say that again.” He sounded desperate, leaning his head into your shoulder.
“Tsukki . . .” you trailed off before you could say anything else, lost in the feeling of him. He let out what sounded like a growl at the sound of his name.
“Fuck,” he said. It was almost pathetic how messy he sounded. You buried your hand in his hair again, tugging slightly.
“Tsukki, please.”
He let out a shaky sound. He picked his head up and laid a quick kiss on you.
“Come with me. Please,” he said. You nodded and your head tipped back. He began swearing under his breath, words bleeding together into a mess of desperation.
“Fuck, Tsukki,” you moaned, body tensing as you came. At the feeling and sight of you finishing he quickly followed, pulling out of you but leaving his thumb moving to carry you through your orgasm. Your faces pressed against each other, both breathing hard. You felt him twitching against you as he came. He might have gotten on your dress, but that was the last thing on your mind.
His sweaty face buried into the crook of your neck and his arms slipped around your waist, holding you close to him. Your shaky hands found their way into his hair, running your fingers gently through the mess. It felt good to just hold him as you both caught your breath, his strong chest rising and falling against you. He withdrew slightly and placed a gentle, sloppy kiss on your lips before letting out a laugh. You did the same, smiling up at his face. You hadn’t even noticed, but he was still wearing his glasses. They were fogged up from leaning against you.
“You’re pretty,” you said, pushing the frames up into his hair and pressing a gentle kiss onto his lips. When you pulled away his face was red.
“Don’t just say shit like that,” he muttered.
“Aw, who’s flustered now?” You laughed as his face twisted into a frown. He put his glasses back on properly and peeled himself away from you.
“We really should get back,” he said, tugging his pants back up and redoing his belt. You nodded but were unsure what to do about the problem he had left all over your thighs. He saw you hesitating and laughed when he realized what you were thinking.
“Here,” he said, picking up your underwear and approaching. You looked at him in confusion before he used them to clean you off and slipped them into the inside pocket of his jacket. He noticed you staring in horror and laughed.
“I have to give them back at some point now,” he smirked. “Guess you’ll have to see me again.” You rolled your eyes in amusement as you rearranged your dress and tried your best to fix your hair. He was having trouble with his since the rim around his face was coated with sweat. You tried your best to help him. He stared at you with a gentle smile as you worked. You pretended not to notice.
“I think it’s best if we go out one at a time,” he said. You nodded and he approached the door, turning to face you before he left. “Do I look like I just fucked someone in a dark room?” You grinned and shook your head.
“You look fine.”
“You look great, too,” he said with a small smile. He left the room and left you alone, waiting impatiently to go. When it had been long enough you slipped the door open and walked out, shakier on your feet than you’d like to be.
You immediately went to the bar, asking for a shot of tequila. Anything to soothe your nerves. You took it quickly and shook your head. You were fine. You just needed to make sure you got Tsukki’s number from Kuroo.
“Y/n! Jesus, there you are.” Speak of the devil. You turned to face Kuroo as he approached, Kenma and a disheveled looking Tsukishima in tow. He looked flushed. His hair was still messy and a little sweaty despite his best efforts. Your eyes widened with pride when you saw him looking so fucked. You smiled at Kuroo.
“Sorry, I went wandering.”
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
“Got lost.”
“Of course you did. I wanted you to meet my friends.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, ‘oh’. This is Tsukishima Kei. We knew each other in high school. We were volleyball rivals.” Kuroo looked proud as he explained. “I taught him everything he knows.”
“Oh, I’m sure not everything,” you said, turning to Tsukki. His eyebrows raised at your borderline suggestive comment. He reached out to shake your hand with the same hand that had been buried in you not long ago.
“It’s nice to meet you, y/n,” he said through a smile.
“They haven’t said their name,” Kenma said, frowning. Tsukki’s eyes widened before setting into a more sure expression.
“Kuroo mentioned them earlier.”
“Uh-huh . . .” Kenma still looked suspicious. Kuroo didn’t seem to notice, slapping Tsukkishima on the shoulder and starting to talk about the ‘good old days’. Whenever Kuroo turned to address Kenma, Kei’s eyes found yours, smiling very slightly so the other men didn’t notice. You didn’t contribute much to the conversation, quietly observing the huge man in his well-fitting tuxedo.
“Oh shit, y/n,” he said suddenly, cutting off the conversation. “I think you spilled something on your dress.” Your face flushed and eyes widened. Panicked and annoyed, you looked down at your dress.  Sure enough, about halfway down the skirt, there was a patch of what thankfully looked like nothing but a spilled drink at the moment.
“God. I’m clumsy. Not surprised that I ruined my nicest dress.” You laughed it off as the three men stared at you, Tsukki with a smirk on his face.
“Oh, it doesn’t look that bad. I’m sure your dress is fine,” Kuroo said.
“Nope,” you said, glancing up at Tsukki. “Definitely ruined.”
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xsugarysweetsx · 3 years
Text
𝒞𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓉𝑒𝓇 5
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A/N: I may have made a twilight reference but I do like their concept of vampire abilities
Warnings; language; Levi having feelings??;
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“Ugh..no..p..please no..No..NO!“ you spring up in bed panting in a sweat. Just a nightmare, another nightmare. This was only the 3rd day you had been there but the nightmares never gave you a break. The next thing that happened was footsteps running into your room. Your door swings open with Hanji holding a book in hand, Levi was in a fighting stance. They only saw you disheveled from your previous nightmare
“S-sorry guys it was just a stupid nightmare...I’m okay“ you reassure them moving the hair from your face
“The hell were you going to do with a book?“ Levi asks looking at Hanji
“You know maybe, knock some sense into them“ she looked around the room hoping for a laugh from her corny joke. You had to give it to her, she always tried to lighten things up “Hehe, anyway enough bad jokes we need you for something really quick”
“Oh sure“ getting up from the bed you grab a sweater and throw it on over your tank top. Following them you realize it was about 2 am, the forest was quiet and the house’s atmosphere was cool against your skin.
“So what do you need me to do?“ you ask as Hanji opens the front door
“Well, Levi here is our spy and we need to know the exact location of where Zeke can be. You’ll also need some info from the underground” grabbing a coat from the hall closet she gives it to you “Only you know where it is so you’ll have to go with Levi.“
“Only problem is the bastard’s got a couple of goons and the last thing we need is for them or him to pick up your scent. So throw the jacket on“ taking your sweater off you put on the black jacket. It smelled of lemon and detergent, it was nice. Next thing you knew Levi squatted slightly in front of you “Come on we don’t have all night, the sun will come up soon and that’s the last thing I need“
“Right“ hesitantly you take a hold of his shoulders. His hands find the back of your knees and hoist you up on to his back
“Alright, you both have 4 hours to locate and try and get any information you can. Good luck” and just like that, you were off. For someone who was his height, he was strong. He swiftly jumps onto lower tree branches, as to not be too far from the ground. Being up so high and on his back made you hold on to him tighter
“Relax I won’t drop you,” he said hoisting you a bit higher on his hips “now which direction did you run from?”
“I...think it was that way” you point to the northwest of where you stood. Jumping from one tee to the next he barely made a sound. With the occasional rustle of leaves, he was a quiet as a bird. Soon a broken-down roof comes into view. Going into a tree with more leaves he sets you down for a moment. You still hold on to his shoulder for balance
“This shit place it?” He asked
“Yeah this is it...” you confirm
“For the most part, we know where the monkey lives.” Facing you he looks you dead in the eyes “We have to go somewhere and I need you to stay close to me and try not to draw attention. Got it?”
You give him a sharp nod, getting back on his back you hold on tight as you fall back to the ground. He continues his way on the ground, you so happened to have gotten a whiff of his scent which was exact to the one on the jacket. That’s when you had started to notice the way he was built. There wasn’t much skin to see but you could tell he was well built just by the feel of his shoulders.
You would be lying if you said he unattractive, you could feel your cheeks heating at the thoughts, but right now wasn’t the time. It was a bit awkward so you struck up a conversation
“So um, what’s this underground place anyway?“ you ask
“Think of it as a place where vampires can roam around during the day. They can get their blood fills, party, gamble, anything a human can do aside from being in the sun.“ coming to what looked like a cave entrance he puts you down “Remember what I said, keep a low profile, and stay close to me. We’re going to see someone who might know the answers to all this shit.“
Upon entering the cave it was almost like a whole city in there. Buzzing with chatter and the smell of blood filled the air, it almost made you nauseous. Your hand stayed locked in his elbow as you let him lead you through the crowd.
Looking around vampires were much closer to humans than how they were always described as. Not all of them were pale, or mysterious or walked around in capes and dressed like goths. Huh, maybe you should make the next vampire film.
“We’re almost there“ he makes a turn to an alleyway and came to a lonely door “Listen this old man has some screws missing, just stay close.“ knocking on the door there was silence then some low cursing as the door swung open. A tall man with a bit of stubble on his chin, and with the same sharp grey eyes.  
“Well look who came, and you brought a little lady with you too“ he smirked and looked your way
“Shut it old man I just need some information“ Levi sneered. They seemed to know each other well
“The hell would I know about humans mixing in with vampires, “ he said leaning against the doorway “I’ve been around for a while runt, I can spot a human in any crowd.“
“That’s exactly why we need to talk, Kenny.“ damn was he that good that he could tell you were human? Moving aside he lets you both into his small home, it was mostly covered in alcohol bottles, and much dirtier than it should be. Nonetheless, he pulls out a chair and sits down ready for questions.
“What do you know about hybrids?” he said trying not to touch anything in the home
“What? Thinking about having kids with the lady here“ he motioned to you
“No, some bastard wants to make them by force and we don’t know what he’s planning, “ he said crossing his arms
“Ah Levi, always playing the hero huh?“ he chuckles and leans further back into the chair “Well, we Ackermans used to part of hybrids some of the family were hybrids themselves. Having the ability to walk in daylight gave them the up hand. They fed anytime they wanted, healed easily, on top of that they had fewer weaknesses. But people started abusing power, women died..“
“Abusing power?“ you questioned and he nodded
“Some people wanted to dominate any other race, just a world of vampires and hybrids. It came to a point only certain women with a certain blood type could bear the kids and live after it.“ he explains further “So now it’s a bit taboo to have or be a hybrid, knowing the history.“ the beeping of Levi’s watch started going off. Sunrise was coming soon, you had to leave before it was too late.
Nudging through the crowd he’s practically carrying you just to be faster. Emerging from the cave the smallest specks of light could be seen lighting up the sky. It was honestly beautiful, but it was deadly for him, so no time to stop and admire. Luckily Levi was as fast as he was strong and you made it in no time. As soon as he stepped inside you waited just a moment to see the sunrise
“Hey Levi?“ you called
“What is it?“ he asked from the inside out
“You wanna see the sunset?“ you ask him. Walking inside you find some lose cardboard and take him outside
“The hell are you doing?!” he asked not trusting your idea for a damn minute
“Just trust me, I won’t let you burn” you reassure him. He rolls his eyes but still takes your hand and you lead him outside. You set the board up at a certain angle to give him shade and for him to see. As soon as the sun came up he was almost hypnotized.
“Beautiful huh?” You ask as you watch his face in amusement. You didn’t have to know much about him to know, he’s had a rough life. The sun rose higher into the sky which was your cue to get him inside. Covering him with the jacket you take him inside, unharmed.
There was a bit of silence between you both. As you took your shoes off and made your way to the stairs he speaks up
“Thank you.” He said bluntly “....for coming with me..” he sounded almost strained. Maybe he was thanking you for the little sunrise show, you just smile and respond
“Of course Levi,” you said with a smile “I’m um...going to go and shower real quick alright, you should rest up” you leave making your way up the stairs leaving him in the hall.
“I see you’re warming up to her“ Erwin says coming from a different room “that’s good, you’ve needed the interaction for some time now“
“Tch, I don’t have any time for that“ he scoffed as he made his way to the stairs
“you did at one point“ he mumbled to the raven-haired man, making him stop for a moment. Without turning he said
“...maybe I did...but not anymore“ and continued on his way up. Walking down the hallway he could hear your conversation with Hanji. The door was slightly open and he saw you sitting on a chair fresh out of the shower. Your hair was still wet, and your skin dewy. You may have been giving her information but at the same time, you had a gentle smile on your face.
For the past 3 days, this was the first time he saw a genuine smile.
“Hanji...do you..will Zeke find me here? Will he..“ even with all the hope in the world you were still afraid
“Y/N“ Hanji took your hand “I know it’s a lot to take in right now but, with Levi here I’m pretty sure Zeke won’t even step foot in here.“ she smiles with a yawn
“Thanks, Hanji...you should rest“ before you could spot him, Levi leaves to his room. Closing the door he huffs as he leans against the door and stares at the ceiling. He pushes himself off and walks over to the small nightstand and opens the first drawer, pulling out something. He gazes at the picture in hand, not wanting to look at it much longer he outs it back and closes the drawer.
He falls with a sigh on to his bed and says to himself
“The hell is happening to me?”
...
You cleaned up around the house while everyone else slept. Your friends crossed your mind. Sasha taking you out to restaurants, Eren telling you some weird stories, Christa just being the sweetheart that she was. It made you chuckle a bit, but you wondered what they thought of you being gone. You missed Mochi too, his adorable face waking you up every morning.
But, this was better for you and the people you cared for. The less they were involved the fewer people will get hurt. For whatever reason Levi popped in your head. The way he was looking at the sunset, almost like a child looking at stars for the first time. It made you just a bit sad that he never saw something so simple yet so amazing. Next thing you knew a giggle escapes your lips along with a smile
“...oh god Y/N, no.” You murmur to yourself “you shouldn’t now, especially him, he could never...” your head and heart were saying two different things. Yet, you couldn’t at least not in this situation.
<><><><>
“I’m telling you he’s gone insane!“ one man whispered
“I have to agree with you...at first it was a good idea abut now I think he’s going too far-“
“Too far huh?“ a deeper voice enters making the two previous men jump
“N-no it’s nothing like that we-we were-“
“patience is virtue “ Zeke simply says “but so is madness. Without it, can I achieve what I am after?“ he said as he lit a cigarette and took a puff. “you both can wait for your reward right? Unless you want to be one of my labrats. Understand?“
“Y-yes, sir.......”
“Besides, what's one sacrifice for our goal huh?” He chuckled looking at a picture of a certain brunette in his hand. Just how much worse can things get?
<><><><>
Taglist: @mysteriousmagicx @kameko-ko @jin-mowi @mystic-starlove @chronic-claire-universe​ @shrimp1026​ @captainchrisstan @givemea-dam-break @actual-trash-goblin @leiaausmus @sugarysweets-appreciation-blog @levisfilm @kingdoms--night--star @leviiiiiiiii @dilirx @super-peace-fangirl @ultimateelitepenguin @happygalaxymilkshake @lola2001 @sillykawa @queenofcurse @fanfictionreaderholic @notgoodforlife @deludedimagines @xcityretro
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aiekerman · 3 years
Text
Easy pt2 - Eren Jaeger
Eren Jaeger x Reader - fluff
Pt.1
AN - Okay so a couple people asked so I finally wrote it put here’s part 2! I realise you can kinda read it by itself? But reading the first part will give better context. Honestly I wish I could write NSFW to end this off but I’m so bad at it. Maybe one day lol. Also I’m trying to keep my reader as gender neutral as possible, but please let me know if there’s anywhere I can improve!
I’ve titled it the same for continuity sake, but song vibes for this is We Belong by Dove Cameron. 
Content Warnings - Alcohol, swearing (I apologise if I miss anything here but I know these would be the main two)
Summary - Two idiots in love attend the end of semester party and despite attempts to not end up together, they struggle to keep swallowing down their feelings.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jean’s house is filled with over-zealous college students, dropping all their inhibitions at the door after finishing finals. 
You were included in that classification. Having made a bee-line for the kitchen and immediately filled a cup with your drink of choice.
That was three hours ago now and the buzz of alcohol is felt all over. You wander from the bathroom after fixing yourself up, not that much could be done in your current state. Hair frizzing like a tumbleweed. The overshirt you’d arrived in was now secured around your waist to fight the heat of the house, leaving your top half in a tank top.
Moving to allow the next person into the bathroom you wander into the crowd, eyes scanning for one of your friends.
Across the room you spot the back of Eren’s head, confident it was him despite your tipsy state from the sight of his brown hair scraped back in a bun.
Just as you push your body forward to go over to him a hand wraps around your wrist and tugs you in the direction of the kitchen. Your head snapped over to the body pulling you along and see that it’s the party host himself.
‘Y/N, c’mon, shots!’ Jean’s words are short and to the point, the effort required to be heard over the music making for terse conversations.
Your hazy brain immediately forgets your plan to say hi to Eren and smile after Jean, letting him lead you to the alcohol.
His kitchen features a small island, which for the night seemingly doubles as a bar. The entire surface is spread with various bottles and mixers and cups. As he pulls you up to it his eyes are scanning the selection, ‘What are we feeling? Tequila?’
Your face pulls into a grimace and your head shakes fervently. Instead you choose to reach for the fireball whiskey, the thought of the cinnamon taste much more appealing.
Jean rolls his eyes, but reaches for two shot glasses regardless, ‘Pussy.’
‘Excuse me for wanting to drink something that actually tastes good. You know how bad I gag on tequila.’
Jean leans down to your ear to avoid having to yell as he speaks, ‘Keep your voice down, I think Bertolt might get hard just hearing you talk about gagging.’
Your eyes widen at his words, and your eyes swing around the kitchen, landing on Bertolt who is leant against the refrigerator. His eyes are glancing at you, and you see his face turn red when you catch his eyes. He lifts his cup in greeting and you give back a small wave.
Eren’s words from a few weeks ago echo in your brain, but you mentally shake it off as Jean hands you your shot. After a small tap of the glasses in cheer with him you drop your head back to drink. The liquid gives a warm burn down the back of your throat, and you smile at Jean as he scrunches up his nose.
‘Shut up it’s so good.’
As Jean opens his mouth to retaliate, you feel an arm slide around your waist, and a hand comes up to cover your eyes. A familiar voice floats to your ear, ‘I know I am but what are you?’ 
You giggle and attempt to wiggle from the grasp but the arm secures more tightly. ‘Guess who?’
‘What do I get if I win?’
‘You get to do a shot with me.’
‘And if I lose?’
‘You have to do a shot with me.’
‘Wow, talk about peer pressure, Eren.’ 
His arms release you and one comes up to rest over your shoulder. You twist to look up at him, his green eyes are hazy, clearly affected by the alcohol himself. His smile is almost childlike as he beams down at you, ‘Hey.’
‘Hey you,’ you giggle back, wrapping an arm around his back. 
The two of you always leant on the affectionate side, hip bumps and head resting on shoulders never amiss. But when alcohol got involved, you were verging on touchy. 
He drops a kiss to the top of your head and reaches to pour three more shots, sliding one to Jean who thanks him, knocks it back and then wanders off again.
You lift the small glass and laugh as he wraps his free arm around yours, elbows hooked together as you both down the drink. You both erupt in giggles as you push up onto your toes slightly to reach his height and access your shot without spilling it completely. 
Dropping the empty cups down he moves his arm from your shoulder to rest on your lower back. 
‘You talked to Bertolt yet?’
‘I waved to him but haven’t talked to him.’
‘Well what are you waiting for?!’
‘How do you even know he wants to sleep with me?’
His eyebrows furrow and he steps back to look you over, ‘Why wouldn’t he?’
You shove at his shoulder and step back, reaching for a glass of water. Pouring one for Eren as well, which he accepts with a smile.
The two of you worked in sync throughout parties, despite spending half the night apart. But when one of you went out for fresh air chances are the other would be close behind, not even on purpose. So when you knew you needed some water it was only automatic to get one for him too. There was almost a sixth sense between you.
You start sipping at the water, attempting to balance out from the last two shots that were hitting you quick. From your peripheral you notice Bertolt’s tall frame head towards the back door. Your eyes quickly turn back to Eren who is smiling across the room at a girl you don’t recognise. 
‘What happened to just chilling for the night?’
‘Flirting is just chilling. We flirt.’
You internally sigh, flexing your jaw slightly at his words.
‘That is not the same.’
You breathe deep to rid yourself of the strange feeling bubbling in your stomach. 
What have I got to lose?
‘Hey I’m gonna head outside for some air.’
‘Oh cool, I’ll come with you. It is pretty stuffy in here.’
‘No, Eren.’
‘What?’ 
You feel your stomach drop at the kicked puppy expression that overtakes his face. Scrambling to correct your harsh tone, ‘I think I saw Bertolt head out that way.’
This time his face is overtaken by the cheekiest grin he can muster. His hip bumps against your’s and his hand reaches up to pinch your cheek. You swat his hand away and nod over to the girl, ‘Go get ‘em tiger.’ 
He rolls his eyes, pushing at your shoulder once more, nudging you in the direction of the back door, ‘Look who’s talking.’
Stepping outside the cold air bites at your cheek and you quickly untie your overshirt and slip it on, eyes glancing around for Bertolt in the process.
The garden has a few bodies lingering around, most being people outside for cigarette breaks, one girl in the corner losing her last few drinks.
You spot Bertolt sitting on a bench, scrolling through his phone. Sucking in a breath you remind yourself why the hell not? One last time before making your way over to him.
‘Hey, how’s your night going?’ You drop down onto the bench next to him, close enough for his knee to brush against your’s.
‘Hi Y/N, I’m having an alright night.’ He smiles warmly back. Returning the gesture you glance over his face, he was cute enough. But something in the pit of your stomach has reservations, you chose to push it down further.
‘Better now I just got here?’ You nudge his knee with your own and he laughs, giving a small nod. You let out a sigh, maybe your flirting skills weren’t entirely dead.
You begin to think of your next witty remark when he speaks again, ‘Although I’m shocked Jaeger let you out of his sight.’
‘What?’ You felt as though a brick had just hit you across the face. The feeling in your stomach came flooding back up. Now very aware of the tingling across your skin where Eren had been holding you only minutes ago. Your shoulder, your waist, your cheek. 
It was just the alcohol. Yeah, that was it.
‘Please, you aren’t that drunk are you?’
You force out a laugh. But your eyes still clearly read confusion. He tilts his head, his smile almost apologetic.
‘You’re really fooling yourself that hard?’
‘If you’re trying to suggest that Eren and I are a thing then you are the drunk one here.’
‘I’m not saying you guys are a thing, but you’re clearly in love with each other.’
‘Shut up,’ you swear it’s the weakest your voice has ever sounded. Your head turns when you hear the sound of his voice floating out the back door, and you see his figure in the kitchen window as he brazenly flirted.
‘He’s just my best friend.’ You mumble out as you turn your head back to Bertolt, who’s raised his eyebrows.
‘Best friend’s are in love all the time. It’s often the best foundation for a relationship.’
‘If this is just some elaborate way of saying you don’t want to get with me, you can just say it. I’m a big girl. I'll live.
‘Y/N, you’re gorgeous. Under any other circumstances I would be honoured to be your hook up for the evening. But I’m also a hopeless romantic, and I’m not gonna get in the way of you two.’
‘It was his idea for me to talk to you tonight.’
‘His way of stopping himself from trying it with you. Haven’t you guys already hooked up before?’
‘Uh, not really. We don’t talk about that though. Like it never happened.’
‘You and Eren, two of the biggest clowns on campus when you’re together. And you never make jokes about how you almost hooked up?’
Your brain goes blank. You didn’t talk about it. You also didn’t talk about why you didn’t talk about it. It was just an unspoken rule, and you don’t even remember when you both decided it. You tried not to even think about it. Eren was your best friend. That was all.
‘I-’
‘Hey, look I’m sorry if I’ve upset you at all. But I mean, I don’t know if anyone talks about it. But they definitely all think it. You’re Jaeger’s. And he’s yours. Even if it’s not really official.
Your mouth opens and closes for something to say. But your head is empty, except for flashes of memories.
You and Eren, half undressed and laying bed together. Giggling like idiots. Trying to stop laughing for five minutes so you could actually have sex. 
‘How about we go grab another drink?’
He takes your hand lightly and leads you inside, back to the kitchen island of alcohol.
You grab for a random bottle, looking like some kind of rum? And pour a measure - or three - into a red cup. You smile up at Bertolt who’s mixed his own drink and cheers.
As you lift the cup to your mouth you glance Eren and the girl, her hand resting on his forearm as she giggles. Without thinking you down the full cup, immediately regretting the action as it burns down your throat.
‘Woah, you okay?’ Bertolt’s eyes wide as he takes in your scrunched up face.
‘Yeah, I think I might call it a night.’
‘I’m sorry again, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.’
‘It’s fine. I probably needed to hear it. I’ll be honest I start to think it all the time. Then I just shove down the feeling. Thank you, Bertolt.’
‘Have a good summer, Y/N.’ He leans in for a one armed hug and you reciprocate. Smiling and thinking to yourself that he was a sweet boy, but apparently you were already unofficially taken.
He gives a pat to your shoulder before moving off. You stare off ahead, thoughts swimming more wildly as the last drink hits you. 
Eren spots your pained expression and immediately, but politely, leaves the girl and takes the distance in two strides to reach you, his hands gripping your shoulders.
You jump at the contact, breath catching as you look up and meet his green eyes. Heart pounding harder at their intensity.
‘What’s wrong, did Bertolt do something?’ 
It takes all your sober brain cells to keep your eyes from his lips, but once you register his words you shake your head and furrow your eyebrows.
‘No, no he was fine. I, uh, think I’m gonna head home. I could use a lay down.’
‘Oh okay. I can go find our jackets if you wanna say bye to Jean for us?’
Your face heats up at the immediacy in his reaction to leave with you. He did it all the time, but it was now in your head that it had underlying meaning.
‘I’ll be fine, you stay. I only live two buildings over, idiot.’ Your words are half-hearted as you watch his expression sour slightly.
‘Shut up. When have I ever let you walk home alone this late, or when you’re this drunk?’
You drop your head, head not in the frame to argue with him. Turning on your heels you mumble back, ‘I’ll find Jean.’
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You giggle as you manage to finally get your key in the door and push it open, finally managing to shrug Eren off your shoulders.
He’d spent the walk draped over your back, waddling behind you with his legs spread wide, making sure to not catch your feet and send you both tumbling.
Now though he pushed off his shoes, and confidently strolled to your kitchen. He knew exactly where your cups were kept, along with a bag of chips with the intention of sobering you both up to save the hangover tomorrow.
Your eyes took him in as he made his way about the kitchen, pouring glasses of water filling a bowl with chips.
It was all the alcohol’s fault, you kept telling yourself. It was the alcohol that kept flashing images of that night through your brain. And why you felt a stirring of butterflies in your stomach as he flopped onto the couch and spread an arm out, gesturing for you to tuck yourself into his side.
It was all so easy with the two of you. Or at least it had been until the idea of how you could possibly be hopelessly devoted to each other was thrust from the deep recesses of your brain.
‘Why don’t we talk about it?’
He glances up from shoving a handful of chips in his mouth, raising his eyebrows in question.
You repeat your statement.
He scrunches up his face, realising what you mean. Swallowing his food, he shrugs. ‘I don’t know, cause we just don’t.’
Thinking for a moment you reach into your jeans pocket, fishing out a ten dollar bill. 
Striding across the room you pull out his palm and place the money in his hand.
‘I wanna talk about it.’
His face falls slightly when he realises how serious you are, his eyes trained on his outstretched palm.
‘Why?’ His voice is dangerously quiet.
You falter, your mouth is running ten miles ahead of your brain and it was running out of steam as the reality of the territory you were stepping on hit you.
You start to speak, much less confident than before, ‘Cause it’s weird. We joke about everything. But we can’t even so much as mention it.’
‘Why does it matter? It’s been over a year and you wanna talk about it now?’
‘Yeah.’ Eren stands, his eyes never leaving yours. The tension filling the room was suffocating, your neck burning up under his stare.
‘But why?’
‘Because we should talk about it. It’s not healthy for our friendship to just pretend it never happened.’
Your stomach is twisting in knots in nervousness and regret for opening your mouth. But your chest has a burn of frustration for his attempts to avoid the subject.
‘We’ve gotten this far just fine. Why now?’
‘God fucking christ, Eren. Because I love you!’
You freeze. Bold running cold as you choke. Hands slapping up to cover your mouth, for fear of any more impromptu confessions slipping out.
Tears immediately start to fill your eyes, although you’re unsure why.
Eren is staring, open mouthed. His face is flushing red, thoughts firing off as he processed your words. His voice is suddenly much softer.
‘You know, I don’t believe in love at first sight,’ he steps toward you, ‘and I still don’t. But the first time I made you laugh. I don’t think I’ve ever felt my insides light up so fast.’
He’s right in front of you now, pushing your arms away from your face so that his hands can cup it. Your breathing quickens.
‘Just every happy receptor going off. And I knew I never wanted to stop making you laugh for the rest of my life. We didn’t have sex that night cause I just had to keep hearing that giggle.’
A tear slips out of your eye, but it’s quickly wiped off with his thumb.
‘And when I woke up sober the next morning, I got so fucking scared that I’d mess it up if we were together, and that I couldn’t hear you laugh anymore. So I shoved it all down.’
His chest is a breath away from yours, this time you can’t stop your eyes looking to his lips. 
You think to yourself I’ve kissed Eren before. We’re literally talking about the time we kissed. Why am I so nervous?
His voice, breathy and hushed brings you back from your thoughts.
‘Y/N.’
‘Eren?’
‘I love you.’
‘Really?’
His forehead falls against yours as a laugh escapes him, shaking his head before pressing his warm lips to yours. Your arms are like magnets to wrap around his neck and drag him impossibly closer.
And just like always you fall in sync, jumping into his arms as they wrap around your thighs.
A giggle escapes you as he carries you off towards your bedroom. Eren’s insides light up again, like the first time, like every time.
108 notes · View notes
shadowworks · 4 years
Text
Observe: Part One
Pairing: Dabi x f!Reader
Warnings: Bloodplay, hair pulling, violent themes, dubcon themes. No smut in this chapter, but expect it in the next part.
Word count: 3.3k
A/N: This fic is written in third person, but it’s still DabixReader. I’ve always written in third, and it’s just my favourite style. I hope you enjoy! :)
Edit: @pleasantanathema THANK YOU BABE!! You made me a banner just cause you love me, and I’m so emotional! It’s wonderful and I love it!
(ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*:・゚✧
Summary: She hadn’t insulted him. Not intentionally, at least. All she said was he had Endeavor’s eyes—which to him might as well have been an insult.
But this was a lesson she’d learn the hard way with a villain like Dabi.
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She’d occasionally receive a message from former clients on her phone, always someone connected with the criminal network. On the occasion, if she needed more income she’d accept a brightly lit offer on her screen, tapping her thumbs in a quick reply. But for the most part, she managed to distance herself from smuggling trades.
It was a matter of time before her name would disappear from the mouths of villains, from the prowlers who made use of her quirk. From the distraught beggars pleading on their knees for another loan. Subtly, she’d untie herself from the web she spun herself into three years ago.
Well, maybe. She hoped.
These things were hard to tell.
A shot of tequila ghost her bottom lip as she fell in thought. Her elbow perched on the glossy counter and a glass held between her thumb and two fingers.
The soft glow of violet lights filtered from the ceiling and dimmed the room. People mingled at tables, peals of high pitched laughter broke out, a chair screeching across the hardwood floor - and she was alone at the bar counter.
It was fine. She wasn’t often among friends. There’s danger in her line of work, and for those reasons she didn’t try to be involved. Too much collateral damage and all that jazz.
The bartender crossed her line of sight again. He looked a tad confused at her vacant stare and full glass, but she paid him little mind. She stared on towards the glass bottles aligning the bar wall.
“You have no idea how easy you made this.” the voice had come from her left. She pulled herself from her thoughts, turning to a low voice.
There was a man there, sitting two stools down from her seat. He was leaning forward on the counter, long limbs crossed in a careless manner. He looked as though he didn’t want to be there.
Still, a shot glass sat in front of him, his liquor of choice a darker shade than hers. He just ordered. She hadn't even noticed him come up to the bar. Was she that lost in thought?
“What?” She eventually asked, squinting her eyes.
He wouldn’t turn his head and his stitched hand grasped the glass in front to leisurely toss back. The glass softly touched the polished wood upside down, soundless.
“You stand out too much.” He finally said. The black spikes of hair tilted down as he cocked his head to her, grinning a little too mischievously. There was an arrogance to him and it brimmed in a pair of bright teal eyes. “But I wonder if you like that.”
She smiled bitterly, raising her glass like a toast, “Depends who notices.”
She tipped the shot back in her mouth, feeling it burn the whole way down. She flipped her glass upside down and her features contorted. There was a loud clunk when she tapped her class to the polished wood.
The smuggler reached for a charcoal jacket laying on the stool beside her, before stepping off the tall seat. She hardly flirted much really, and when she did it was on more festive occasions diving three shots of tequila deep. It certainly wasn’t after a smuggling trade near the outskirts. But she’d admit, there was an attractive appeal to him. She just couldn’t place it. Maybe it was how he carried his shoulders? His high cheekbones? She let her gaze fall over him while she slid her arm into the sleeve of the jacket.
”If you’re suggesting what I think you're suggesting, I have to say no. You’re easy on the eyes, but…” She offered another half-hearted smile, while she strolled his way toward the exiting door. She didn’t plan on finishing the sentence.
He wasn’t deterred from his plan. He seemed to like that as a staple tugged the corner of his mouth, and his eyes narrowing slightly. Once she neared his leaning figure, all too sudden; a hand shot out and seized her wrist. She halted— her sight falling to her arm, then up to his face, startled.
“I am, huh?” The man in black stood at full height, pulling her forward to leer upon her features. “I’m not so sure you know what's going on in my head. In fact, I’m not sure you even know how much trouble you’re in .”
Her fingers slowly clenched in a fist, ready to flex in response if she had to. For now, she steadied her composure like she taught herself.
“Trouble? I-I’m sorry. I don’t know what you're talking about,” she said.
“I’ve heard of gem smugglers using their quirk for gain. They’re usually fake as hell, but yours look like the real thing. Maybe they are, but I imagine you wouldn’t want anyone hearing about this, would you?”
Her stare was pinned by his immediately.
He knew her secret.
He just wasn’t prepared for her to know his.
***
They sauntered through narrow side streets in the dark, keeping at decent pace. It was perhaps the easiest way through the city as they made their way towards a (tauntingly) vague end-of-the-line. His hideout, she guessed.
His name was Dabi, a member of the League of Villains. He revealed that much at the bar. It didn’t take long for her to cooperate with her own kidnapping once he whispered his burning threats.
Dabi kept her close, letting his shoulders fall back with hands in his coat pockets. He would sometimes steer her away from strangers nearing the same path though. He’d hold her by the elbow or the small of her back, making them look connected like they were a couple. She didn’t like this. She’d glare at her feet every time, and play the role of the upset girlfriend to Dabi’s facade.
When he did it again, she silently shrugged his heated hand off her arm. Dabi sneered.
“Oh come on, are you throwing a fit?”
She wouldn’t answer, preferring to glower at their striding feet. It was odd noticing they both shared a similar taste in black boots. Except hers hugged tighter and raised high to the knees.
Dabi waited a beat, tilting his head to look over her downcast features. When he found what he was searching for he smirked, glancing away.
“You’re embarrassing yourself, you know. Why bother pouting like a stubborn brat?”
”I’m not. I’m just...” she paused, breathing out steadily. She needed to remind herself to stay calm. “I still don’t understand your bosses reasoning for bringing me in.”
She felt a grip hold onto her shoulder, and she turned her head. Dabi’s nimble steps had slowed to a stop, and he twisted her body to face his. For a moment, Dabi let his hand stay on her jacket.
He said her name out loud and mulled it over briefly. It wasn’t every day some young crook was behind a scheme like this. In fact, the whole thing seemed interesting.
“Heh, don’t take this the wrong way, but I wasn’t expecting you’d have a pretty face.”
”What does that have—“
“I’ve heard your name mentioned around the gambling rings from time to time—”
“—And I haven’t sold anything to the gambling rings in over a year,” She said firmly, though her stare dropped to look anywhere else. She didn’t like the quirked smile he gave after.
“But you kept selling shit on the black market?”
”I was done with it. I made enough to keep me off the streets, and I left.”
”Right. That’s not what the Yakuza said.”
She snapped her head up. Dabi had struck a nerve.
”What does that matter? Why is Shigaraki kidnapping a has-been gem smuggler? You said it yourself—he doesn’t care about the money!”
She wasn’t expecting he’d reach for her face, and she flinched as warm fingers pressed on her temple, tugging on her eyebrow with his left thumb.
In the hairs of her brow shined tiny round quartz; clear and clean with three grown on each side. A manifestation of her quirk. Dabi might have mistaken them for a fashion trend if he hadn’t known better.
“Oh, but you do more than that,” he countered. The pad of his thumb began brushing against the hard gem in her skin. “They say you have an ice quirk, but that’s not it, is it? I think you can shoot these little guys from your body like glass.”
She didn’t answer him. She didn’t want to. All she did was study his face. He was scarred with dark burn marks marring the flesh. Staples pinned old wounds to his smoother skin...She didn’t want to know what torture he dealt with to be branded so cruelly. But it wasn’t what kept her staring. No, it’s just that his teal eyes managed to be the most startling feature about him. They looked rather bright, beautiful even. Something quite rare.
Dabi likely felt her gaze flick over his features a little too long as he released her. He must have made his point. And for good measure, he gave her a light shove to make her walk forward once more.
“You’re assuming too much.” she mumbled after catching her footing. She didn’t care if Dabi heard.
They still had some distance to tread, and eventually Dabi’s route led to a crosswalk. There was hardly anyone around, allowing the signal to flash a light green. Dabi’s palm found the small of her back again, pressing his fingers close on her spine. Her arms crossed over her chest in the moment, glaring off to the side.
But something caught her eye.
Her chin tilted up toward a tv, the illuminating screen was built into the skyscraper nearby. The video clips were from today’s broadcast; it showed a familiar man of fire. He was a Pro Hero; the best one in the business—well, now that All Might was retired he was. A massive man with fierce red hair and flame licking at his upper lip and clenched jaw to form facial hair. As he looked off in the distance from the camera, the quality lens focused on his cold and stern eyes. They were a bright teal.
She didn’t break her gaze ‘til they reached the end of the crosswalk. By then, something was reeling in her mind. She recognized a particular pattern in his facial features, or was it a coincidence? It must be. And yet. She took a concentrated glance up toward Dabi taking in the beautiful hue in his sharp gaze peering on. Then she glanced back ahead.
“You have the same eyes,” she said all of a sudden.
Dabi raised a brow. He didn’t fully turn to her, though he was listening closely. “Say what, now?”
“Your eyes. They look the same as Endeavor’s. You both have these handsome blue eyes and…”
She paused quickly, a slight heat tinted her nose—“You, umm, you don’t see that often.”
Dabi didn’t say anything, but his figure went tense at the arms.
“In fact...you really only see someone with the same  pair of eyes if they’re related, like,” She paused to whirl and face Dabi. Then, and only then, did she take in the silent rage creeping across his dark, narrow expression. In cold and stern eyes, she made a realization.
“Like father and son.”
It was silent as they came to a stop. She waited; waited on Dabi to disrupt the creeping tensity. She expected a fist to the jaw, or maybe an eager lick of flame on the offense. Something. Instead, Dabi settled and loosened his posture. His threatening features, which paused on her body swept away as they shifted ahead.
“Keep walking.” He said. He gave another push to her shoulder blade, hard this time. She did as she was told and took a couple stuttered steps but she wouldn’t let up.
“He’s your father, isn’t he?”
Dabi said nothing.
“He’s the number one Hero—but you’re a villain? Is he that terrible? He must be if he ruined his kid.”
Dabi said nothing, but his fingers twitched.
She was feeling spite rising in her throat. Her thoughts unraveled before she could think, and she smiled coldly beside him.
“And for what? Because daddy didn’t love you? Were you not good enough?”
She felt a hand grip her hair and a push. Then the collision of cement with a hard smack.
A bloody taste pooled in her mouth, spreading warmly on her bottom lip. Her cheekbone was throbbing, blindingly white throbbing. A searing pain flared across her inflicted wound and up to her temple.
“Ah no, looks like you tripped there, doll face. You really should be careful.”
Dabi was on her already, turning and slamming her back into the wall. Before she could register anything beyond her pulsing cheekbone, the villain squeezed one hand on her shoulder and the other remained threaded in her hair.
“Now, that was stupid,” Dabi said, his face leering an inch from hers, his teal eyes on full display.
Once the last spotty star in her eyes faded, she fixated on him, managing to crack a weak smile. Blood darkened her lip as she nodded, “Yeah, it was. It really was. I should have stopped talking.”
There was a small pull at his lips in amusement. For his own reasons, the fingers tangled in her locks tugged her closer. “You know, I was planning to wait until you settled in. But now I’ve changed my mind.”
His thumb slowly traced across her lower lip, coating his pad red. His voice dropped low, eerily casual, “I think I’ll fuck you here. Teach you a lesson on keeping your mouth shut, and minding your damn business.”
The smuggler’s stomach fluttered. “Wait, wha-!”
Dabi yanked on the mess of hair collected in his fist, causing her mouth to drop in a silent scream. He acted fast. His lips crashed down on hers. He was vicious, taking the air out from her lungs in a hard kiss. The taste of iron spread through their mouth, their saliva, and he inhaled harsh breathes between sucking of her tongue.
She could barely catch up. Every time she pulled back to breathe, Dabi chased after her lips, banging her head to the concrete behind. It was dizzying, hazy, though she did this to herself. She sparked a wild flame and he retaliated. He was pissed.
She felt him hoist her up by the thigh and he slammed her back to the wall a second time. She cried out. He crushed her mouth, which now wad smeared with sticky blood. He forced her to swallow her throbbing pain; she’d scream when he wanted her to scream.
Dabi was able to press his body between her legs. He rolled his bulge against her core, and her lips parted shakily as he hit the right spot. A tingling heat ached at her core. Oh fuck. His hand was burning at this point, it raked against her outer thigh, sinking his fingertips into her hips.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! Her mind raced desperately. He felt good. No, she couldn’t do this. Not with the stitched up fucker who stole her from the bar.
Just before Dabi’s hand could hike up her tight skirt, enough oxygen flooded her brain to think straight. The gem smuggler flicked her gaze to the alley diagonal from them.
They lingered.
And then, her hand smacked the back of Dabi’s neck.
”Dabi, wait, wait. Let me say something, ” she breathlessly pleaded, allowing her forehead to rest against his. ”Dabi, I want--I want to say something.”
“Unless you’re screaming my name, I can’t say I’m all that interested.”
Her eyes slid shut, feeling his chest fall up and down against hers. He was stalling for breath, it was the only reason he complied.
“You were right, earlier. That’s how I made a name for myself in the blackmarket.” As she spoke, the tips of her fingers slowly crystalized. They took the shape of tiny claws, creeping forward little by little, “I made the gems by using my quirk.”
She listened as his breathing returned somewhat to a steady rhythm. There was only the sound of cars gliding down the road in the distance.
“Is that right?”
His burnt arm reached behind his neck and feeling his palm wrap around her fingers—she knew it was too late.
Her eyes snapped open to see Dabi smirking, “You must think you’re pretty slick.”
Damn, he was too fast. But then again, so was she.
“Well, it was worth a try,” she replied.
And she released her quirk.
Dabi’s ears perked at the cracking of glass, and let go before they slashed his palm, dipping to the ground—Shards of quartz shot out in a broken explosion. The gem smuggler fled.
Her boots pounded into the road as she sprinted for the shadows in the alley across the way, ignoring the shards littering down her body. Her pounding footsteps continued to echo through the darkness.
Dabi was alone when he stood up, teal eyes trained on the alley. What a little bitch. How irritating. But it was alright, he’d come for her. He didn’t mind playing a quick game of cat and mouse before he claimed her rough and bloody. Whatever choices she made, she would come to regret them.
Following after her, Dabi’s steps were calculated as he made his way toward the alley. He stopped to glare ahead.
“Run all you want, doll. It makes no difference.”
He picked up his steps and he ran without a sound.
She only wished she had learned that silence wasn’t her friend.
562 notes · View notes
hedgiwithapen · 3 years
Note
How about the Leverage Crew arriving in Central City in time for the that time Barry got accused of murdering DeVoe. Basically, Leverage Crew (Classic or Redeption is your choice) meddling in that plan. Because screw DeVoe. Can be in the same universe as The Central City job, or a brand new AU; your choice.
this one Long The courthouse was packed when a sleek black van pulled up to a loading zone. Nathan Ford turned from the passenger seat. “You all know the play?” “Mm, yup,” Parker said, clipping a badge to her blazer pocket. “The Boston skip.” “It’s not the Boston Skip,” Hardison snapped, fussing with his tie.. “You’re just grumpy because you have to play the lawyer again.” Eliot smirked. “Hey, you said only if it comes to a cross examine, I did my job, if you all do your jobs right and it doesn’t come to that,” Hardison’s voice pitched upwards. “If?” Sophie put on the emergency break. “If? Hardison, I’m hurt.” “Soph,” Nate sighed. “Let it go.” “For now. We’re having words later,” Sophie insisted. “Can we just get this over with?” Eliot asked, maneuvering to take the driver’s seat. “ you know I don’t like us splitting up like this.” “It’ll only be for a bit,” Parker said, squeezing his hand. “ We’ll be fine.” They left the van in twos, first Parker and hardison, briefcase and extraneous computer in hand, and a minute or two later Sophie and Nate followed-- and Nate with a plain folder tucked under his arm. Eliot drove in the direction of the police station, ready for the next phase of the plan. They hadn’t exactly called ahead, but that wasn’t going to be much of a problem. Cisco Ramon was the first to spot them. He goggled a bit. “What are you doing here?” he asked as Hardison approached the bench where Team Flash had congregated. Hardison smiled, knowing the prosecutor was watching. “I came to offer my services,” he said, sending a quick text with a thought. “ Where is Ms Horton?” “Here,” the short woman said, her eyes cutting between the two as Cisco checked his phone. “ Who are you? Cisco, who is--” Cisco looked up from the message--you didn’t see us coming?-- and relaxed slightly for the first time in weeks. “I’m part of Mr. Allen’s legal team,” Hardison smiled wide. “He’s ok, Cecile,” Cisco vouched. “ He and his, uh, coworkers have helped us in the past. With Z--wait, that was before you. Um.” “My firm helped get Henry Allen some money, after that unfortunate mess. And we’re here to see justice through again.” He hesitated. “ Or pick up where it leaves off,” he said under his breath. Cecile took in a sharp breath. “When did we hire you?” “Uh--” “Cecile, it’s really ok,” Caitlin joined the cluster. “They know about STAR. And apparently about the recent… developments.” “You think we don’t keep tabs on your crazy city? Now, Ms. Horton, as your co-lawyer, we need to discuss strategy. I’ve got some character witnesses I’d like to introduce, some crucial evidence that needs to be submitted, is there an office we might use?” He steered her away, nodding to Parker, deep in conversation with the prosecutor.
“You let that jerk stick around?” Iris jumped when she heard the voice in her ear. Turning she sighed with recognition. “ Lilli--Sophie?” “In the flesh.” She smiled. “I can’t stay long, but Eliot wanted me to ask.” Iris sighed. “If it’s Eliot asking, I guess you mean Harry. He’s been a lot better since Eliot kicked his ass, that’s for sure. And he has been helpful.” “I’m sure,” Sophie sounded anything but sure. “Listen, we’ve got this pretty well handled, but you and your friends may wish to be ready in case of reprisals. Have you upgraded security lately?” “Cisco’s worked on it,” Iris confirmed. “Good. Hardison would love to take a look, later. We’re probably going to be in the area, we’ve had word something’s fishy at that prison of yours.” When Iris opened her mouth Sophie shook her head. “Iron Heights. Point is, we’ll be around should you need anything.” “Thank you for the offer,” Iris said. She shook her head. “ These people are smart, Sophie. Dangerous.” “Not compared to my team,” Sophie smiled. “Save your worry. Look, see? Hardison’s in place, and Parker’s in the wings. I’ve got to go take care of my part. If you see your husband, let him know, will you?” “I-- sure,” Iris said, and she watched as Sophie stood and walked into a crowd. An entirely different person made her way past a bailiff and into the Juror’s box, leaning over to the man beside her and nodding in the direction of the door Barry Allen had just been escorted through. As Iris stood to take his hand across the gap between his seat and the benches, Sophie gave a little nod to the two of them. “It is strange,” the man said. “But I don’t think we’re meant to discuss the case until we’re in the back.” “Of course not,” Sophie said. “I was just thinking about it, is all. If it were a scene in a mystery novel, I’d call it too obvious.” “You do have a point,” the man agreed. “I’m actually a novelist myself.” “You don’t say,” Sophie smiled. “Classic red herring, am I right? And what a story. Two men in the same family accused of nearly identical murders…” She tapped her com, giving a quick signal. Nate was up. “Ah, a quick word?” Nate stepped away from the wall, flagging down Mrs. DeVoe and her companion. “No,” she snapped, putting on what Nate could see was a reasonably convincing mask of Grieving Widow. Convincing to a mark, maybe. But the Mako was right--you can’t con a conman. “Vultures, all of you.” “Oh, I’m not a reporter.” Nate said easily. He nodded to the tall man at Marlize’s Elbow. “Mr. DeVoe, I’m sure you’ll want to hear what I have to say.” He was pleased to see shock cross the face of Dominic Lanse. The man grabbed him by the arm, yanking him into an empty room. Mrs. DeVoe followed, locking it behind her. “Just so you are aware, there is video footage of you dragging me in here,” Nate said in his most helpful voice. “In case you decide to kill me here, probably not your smartest move.” he glanced around. “Private, though. Good.” He gave his signature infuriating grin. “Make this quick,” Clifford said in Dominic’s voice. “Court begins soon.” “Right, well, that’s going to be your problem.” Nate shrugged. “ Let’s skip the pleasantries. I know everything, about your plan at least. Your computer banks! Normal people couldn’t even find them, so you’ve got that going for you, though the security is lacking once you get past that, so B+. I am not Normal People. I have the best hacker in the multiverse, though, so,” he clicked his tongue in mock dismay, “like I said, my team and I --I’m sure you’re trying to think of who we are right now--know everything.” Marlize glanced at her silent watch, frowning. “Oh, no, no, I’m not a meta.” Nate shook his head. “But the thing is, I don’t have to be to destroy you.” “What--” “Again. I know everything, Thinker. Your basement prison, your hidden files, what you want with that satellite… you really shouldn’t have written everything down… twice even.” He fished a small book out of his pocket, and let them see the plain cover. Clifford’s eyes darkened. “That’s mine.” “Yeah, well, I also have the
multiverse’s greatest thief.” “Our home is under police protection and surveillance. There are officers--” “There right now, I’m aware.” Eliot Spencer, clutching a cup of coffee in one hand, flashed a badge at the pair of officers standing by a door. “Any trouble?” “Nope. She just left for the courthouse. Some work, huh? Just standing here.” “Hmm.“ Eliot agreed. “Though I guess if something did happen, the Flash would swoop in.” “Nine times out of ten,” the first officer agreed. “Or one of his buddies. “ “Maybe 8 times,” the second officer shrugged. “ You new?” “Just transferred from Keystone.” Eliot said. “Not so much nonsense there.” “I hear that. Good to have the backup though.” Eliot nodded. “ You do a walk through?” “Uh, no…. Like I said, no trouble, officer-- “Ted Crichton,” Eliot interrupted. “You haven’t walked through? What if someone’s in there, waiting to assault Mrs. DeVoe when she gets back?” “Well, uh, we don’t have a warrant--” “For crying out loud--” Eliot pulled a paper from his pocket. “See? Now let's go. You stay out here. Who has the back-- does no one have the back door? “ The officers hurried inside. “Don’t forget to check the closets,” Eliot called. -- “ Like I said. Best thief. Best hacker. Now, honestly--and you can run the numbers-- your best bet would be to cut your losses right here, right now. You’re already lying on the stand, so say you were coerced into implicating Mr. Allen--if you need someone to blame I do have a list of patsys that really need the jail time. You do that, put your little plan,” he waggled the book “ back in the box or write it up as the next dystopian best seller for High School English classes to dissect for decades to come, and you can walk away from this.” A laugh. “No one will believe anything you say. That book can’t be traced to me, and even if it could be, it doesn’t prove anything. So someone thinks I’m a supervillain. I’m dead. You have nothing that proves Mr. Allen innocent. You’re out of your mind, Mr. Ford.” “Oh good, you know who I am. Think a little harder.” “As threats go, it’s half baked,” Marlize challenged. “What are you going to do if we refuse? Break Allen out of jail so he can be a fugitive? He’d never go along with it. And the Flash can’t stop us.” “I’d run those numbers again, you’ve left out quite a few variables. But no.” “No?” “If you refuse, if you keep up your little game, lie on the stand, sell that sob story, maybe you're right and the Flash can’t stop you. But he doesn’t need to. I’ll destroy you.” “You.” It was not a question. “For someone claiming to be the smartest man in the world, I’m a bit worried about your memory. I said it already--I’m not here alone. But be my guest. Tell your lies. Right about now the Jury is thinking about what an embarrassment to the city Henry Allen’s trial was and how closely this resembles it… the similarities, the way the timelines don’t quite match up… “ “Really? You’re trying to convince the jury to ignore evidence and go with their hearts? A pathos appeal? That’s not going to work. There’s less than a 3% chance of that even ending in a mistrial, much less acquittal.” “I’m sure that’s what your numbers said,” Nate smiled yet again, this time sharklike. “Cute. I bet you think it’s difficult to get assigned jury duty. “ “It-- we checked all the names. We know--” “You know who they are, yes, yes. But you don’t know who we are. Another sloppy mistake. Now, the jury’s, you're right, not a total slam dunk. So, right now the prosecutor is getting word of some new evidence from a very well respected FBI agent about how helpful the Flash and Mr Allen have both been in assisting with a case against a known human trafficker--you know her, Ammunet Black. The one you bought your puppet from. FBI picked her up…mmm, ten minutes ago? And she had some very interesting things to say. You can guess what they were. Add to that the evidence--” “What evidence?” “The wire transfers between you and Ms. Black. In December and a few days ago. We didn’t even have to fake that first one, but even if the second
one looks a little fishy, the fact that--” “Nate, we got him,” crackled Eliot’s voice in his ear. “--the police just found a metahuman locked in your hall closet--Weeper, I think is what Ms. Black called him-- should make things clear. He wasn’t thrilled about having to stick around much longer but your basement is pretty hard for normal people to find so we had to nudge that a bit. But hey, you’re all for planting evidence. Anyways, court’s in ten minutes…. but the police will be arresting you in about three, if my math’s right-- care to check?-- so I can make this very quick. We have video of you threatening the Flash, holding him prisoner the same night as that wire transfer, proof of Dominic’s powers and sale--my hacker thanks you for all those cameras and bugs, by the way, made his job much easier-- and you add that all up and it sure looks like you got upset at the Flash and Allen for poking into your meta trafficking and decided a frame up was in order.” Nate hefted the folder, “and then there’s this.” “And what,” Marlize asked, shaking with rage, “ is that?” “A copy of files that will be delivered to the FBI, NSA and Dean of Husdson University if you don’t admit to the frame up.” Nate said, thumbing through them. “Proof that you, Mrs. DeVoe, fed information to certain entities across Africa and the Middle East where you were doing your research and aid work to assist in their terror attacks and human trafficking--ties in quite nicely to your work with Ammunet, if I do say so myself. And proof that the “late” Mr. DeVoe plagiarized his thesis, his dissertation, even the syllabi for his classes.” “Lies. No one will believe any of--” “Oh, it’s all very well forged. Except for the bit about the Syllabi. For shame.” Nate tutted. “And part of the dissertation. Can they take away a PH.d posthumously? Anyways, even if it wasn’t, do you really think that no one would believe a man who thinks that giving everyone on the planet late stage Alzheimer’s is going to solve famine and illness? What kind of legitimate history teacher doesn’t know about cholera or the effects of the agricultural revolution? Every lie has a kernel of truth to it.” Nate glanced at the clock on the wall. “Well, that certainly was enlightening. And before you decide to simply kill me, run your little calculations with one more variable: Eliot Spencer.” DeVoe’s brow furrowed and what little color he had drained from his face. “ That’s what I thought. Three.. Two.. one.” Nate raised his voice. “ Help! I’m in here!” The door crashed from its hinges. “The Gloat is the best part,” Parker, FBI badge swinging, put an arm over Barry’s shoulders. He stood with Iris next to her and Eliot as the DeVoes were hauled away. “You know, I think I might have to agree,” Iris said, squeezing Barry’s hand. “Or second best, at least,” she added meaningfully. “So… what now?” Joe asked. “I mean, there’s still… the red tape, but… do we need to be worried? Don’t they still have--” “Oh, that sick chair and computer set up?” Hardison asked with a smirk. “I want it.” Harry announced. “When did you get here?” Hardison asked, affronted. -- Parker held up her badge as she pushed the crate up a ramp into Lucille. “Special Agent Hagen! Let me help you with that,” Agent McSweeten said, taking the dolley handle from her. Parker beamed, patting the side, careful not to dislodge the panel on the side. “Thanks!” -- “Anyways, you can’t just call dibs. You’re too late,” Hardison added, giving Parker a fistbump. “We stole it.”
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my heart talks of nothing but you - 1920s fic
*
October, King’s Landing, 1920
Fall in the city has been unseasonably warm. At the train station, people bustle past, sweltering under the station’s glass roof like plants wilting in a conservatory. Jaime stands and waits for the 11:40 train from Sunspear. He is early, and the wait is long enough the heat gets to him, sweat beading under his collar, so he leans his cane against the brick wall behind him and takes off his jacket, laying it neatly across the handle of the luggage cart. Perhaps the Westerlands will provide the chill in the air he’s been craving, as they will be getting out of the city soon enough. He tugs down his waistcoat and, to further combat the heat, rolls up his sleeves. Several women departing from another train give him furtive glances as they pass by. Jaime nods politely to a few of them. 
The train chugs into the station right on time, but the people stepping out from the cars blur together in his line of vision, as he is concentrated on spotting one blonde, tall head. Brienne. After months away, she looks different, but he cannot put his finger on what it is about her that has changed, and it hardly matters, for his heart clenches in his chest all the same.
She is dressed in a white shirt and wide-leg trousers. If her clothes did not already put her in contrast to the other women disembarking, her height would. His eyes fall to the long line of her legs and Jaime is so caught up in adoration, he almost overlooks her companion, a mustachioed man with black hair, dressed in a fine suit with a yellow waistcoat embroidered with suns. The man appears too flashy and debonair for Brienne to fall into casual acquaintance with on the train journey, so he assumes it is someone she knows from Dorne. 
The pair have drawn closer to where he stands, but Brienne still has not noticed him, so he calls out, “Miss Tarth.” Her first semester of university, Jaime was the teacher’s assistant in her history lecture, and teased her by always using her title, despite her insistence to call her by her given name. 
Her head snaps around at the sound of his voice, her face breaking into a smile when she realizes who it is. “Jaime!” she cries out in delight, suddenly in his arms. He laughs against her neck, tempted to lift her feet off the ground, but the familiar twinge in his leg cautions him against it. “What are you doing here? I thought I wasn’t seeing you until this evening.” 
Tonight, the university’s history department is holding a small reception and Jaime asked her to accompany him. 
“I thought you might be in want of a kind gentleman to assist you with your luggage.” She holds up a worn leather satchel that looks more suitable for a weekend excursion. Jaime gapes. “That’s all you took? I know the Dornish are quite progressive, but I assume you wore clothes.” Brienne studied archaeology and spent the past four months in Dorne on an excavation. One day, he has no doubt, she’ll be head of a museum somewhere. 
“Jaime.” she says warningly, but her blue eyes sparkle with amusement. Brienne glances back and notices her companion from the train waiting. “Oh, I’m dreadfully sorry, Mr. Martell. What you must think of my manners.” 
“It’s quite alright.” He passes off a suitcase, embossed with Brienne’s initials, to Jaime. 
“Jaime, this is Mr. Oberyn Martell. He has expertise in art history, particularly ceramics, and was an unending font of knowledge during the dig. Mr. Martell, this is Captain Jaime Lannister, one of my friends from university.” 
“Friends?” Martell’s eyebrows raise. “I thought perhaps professor.” Jaime chooses to ignore the slight on his age or appearance--perhaps both--and shakes the man’s hand. 
“He will be one day,” Brienne interjects politely. Whenever she brags about his work to others, he wishes he was someone who blushed because it seems the only appropriate response to the way that hearing her speak about him makes him feel. “He’s starting his graduate studies in history.”
Martell’s sly but amused smile makes Jaime’s hackles rise, but he can hear his father’s voice in his ear reminding him of his manners. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance. Are you visiting someone in the city?” 
“Friends, as you say.” His eyes dart between the two of them. “At the university.” 
Neither expand on Martell’s meeting, but knowing Brienne, he expects it has to do with her noble view on stolen objects. During many of the past wars, art and other artifacts had been looted from other provinces or populations, such as the Dornish or various groups throughout Essos and ended up in museums in Westeros. She believes archaeologists and other historians have a duty to return these objects to the place of their origin. The first time Jaime had seen her go off on a spiel about it, he had been awed and delighted by the depth of her knowledge, her sound reasoning and argument, and her righteous indignation. 
Outside of the station, they part ways with Martell. The man clasps Brienne’s hand in his own. “It has been an honor, Miss Tarth. You are more of a treasure than the ones you dig up.” Jaime has to prevent himself from rolling his eyes. “And you are more than welcome in Dorne anytime.” His silky smooth voice dips low and he drops his head, kissing her hand before rising, eyes lingering on Brienne a bit too long before he is gone in a flash of yellow. 
“Was he that dramatic all summer?” he asks under his breath, earning an elbow in the ribs from Brienne. Her cheeks are flushed; he hopes from the heat and not because that onerous man had flattered her. 
“Some might say you have a flair for the dramatic.” She turns to look at him, squinting against the sun, but the light makes her blonde eyelashes look quite pretty. “I am so tired of the sun,” Brienne sighs as he waves down a cab. “The only protection against it was to swathe myself in layers. I looked like some spirit haunting the dig.” 
Jaime chuckles, opening the car door for her. As she takes his hand to step inside, he notices the top button of her blouse is undone, revealing a small taste of the pale skin underneath, delicately beaded with sweat. He swallows, shutting the door behind her and trying to rid himself of the image. 
After giving the driver her address, he leans back against the seat. “But you enjoyed your time there? It was everything you imagined?” 
Brienne smiles, almost to herself, before turning towards him. “It was. I’ll save my stories for this evening, though, otherwise you’ll be hearing me repeat them all night.”
Selfishly, he wants to hear them first because he’s missed her. “Did you get my postcards?” He had sent her a series of postcards he collected from various museums around the city, each featuring an object of some importance, and scratched out the names on the back so she would have to guess the object and museum. 
“Yes.” Her whole face lights up, brighter than any summer sun, and she launches into a story about how she figured out a particularly tricky one. 
“I am quite glad you’re back, darling girl.” Brienne scrunches up her nose a little at the name. He used to call her that, too. The first time he said it, he meant it as a comment about his age and experience in the world he had on her, but she had reacted to it with such irritation, he began using it to needle her. “The city wasn’t the same without you. It felt as if you’d been wrenched from my life.” 
She rolls her eyes at him, but there’s a smile she can’t quite keep tucked away. “Like I said, dramatic.” Yet, she looks quite pleased.
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keelywolfe · 3 years
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FIC: Drifters ch.1 (spicyhoney)
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Summary:  When Red came to Edge and told him he needed to show him something in Alphys's lab, this was not what he had in mind.
Notes: Lots of people seemed to like the idea, so heck, I am expanding on it. Thank you everyone for your interest, it drives my mental writing machine. 😊
Tags: Spicyhoney, Violence, Rescued Child, Medical Experimentation, Babybones
Read it on AO3
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Read it here!
~~*~~
Edge clutched the little bundle in his arms closer as he slogged through the snowdrifts. A thin, unhappy wail rose from the tightly wrapped blanket, a tiny waft of vapor rising with it. Edge could only hold the baby tighter, vainly trying to silence the child before their cries carried.
Uselessly. He could already hear the guards behind him, a rabble of snarling and incoherent threats mingled with large bodies crashing through the low-lying frostbitten shrubs and branches of Snowdin wood. Edge ducked behind a tree trunk, crouching, already braced for the near-euphoric rush brought by a large increase in EXP. There could be no survivors, none to follow them.
He waited and didn’t bother trying to silence the baby again, let her wavering shrieks lead the way into an attack that he never had to send. Even as the first few came into view, they fell to the ground shrieking, clawing at their very skin. A Check showed KR shearing away their HP, gouging away chunks as their screams overshadowed the child’s wails.
He didn’t wait to watch them dust. From behind him came a familiar voice, weary and ragged, “keep going, bro, we’re almost there.”
Almost there. Edge got back to his feet, stumbling as his knees nearly gave out. He caught himself in time, leaning against the tree trunk to catch his balance. There was no time to waste, none at all, and still he took a moment to tuck the blanket back around the baby where one tiny fist had worked its way loose to flail in the cold.
“Easy, little one,” he crooned, hardly recognizing his own hoarse voice. “We’re almost there. We’ll be safe soon, I promise you.” He didn’t look down into those pale eye lights, distantly afraid that the child would see the lie on his face. He started walking again in the direction of the cave where their machine was hidden away from any prying eyes. His brother started out at his heels, the snow drifts should have given him more trouble simply based on his height, but Red soon outdistanced him, clearing a path for Edge to stumble along even as the child’s cries grew weaker in the cold.
Almost there, to the machine, to the portal, and to Underswap.
Red was already clearing away the carefully placed barricade around the entrance to the cave. It looked as if an avalanche covered it, but there was a certain place where the snow and stones were thin, barely large enough for a broad skeleton and his tall brother to make it through. Edge helped him as best he could with only one free hand, for once carelessly scattering stone and slush, taking no pains to hide their path. It didn’t matter, they wouldn’t be coming back here again.
Edge tried not to think of everything they were leaving behind at their house. A tattered old book, a ridiculous pet rock, a sock and its collection of threatening notes. None of that was as important as their lives. As her life.
Red cleared the last of the rubble away and gestured towards the entrance. “g’wan, bro, you first.”
Normally, he would have refused. He was far better equipped to take a dishonorable blow to the back than Red was, and he could tell at a glance that his brother’s magic reserves were running far too low for any of his shortcuts.
But there wasn’t time for an argument. He cradled the child close to his chest as he crawled through the small opening. Inside, the cave opened up and he walked unsteadily towards the blinking colored lights that shone through darkness to the far back, where the machine loomed silently, waiting.
Edge didn’t look at his brother while he set the coordinates, ones that he knew as well as his own callused soul. He didn’t watch Red going through what he’d gleefully dubbed the ‘oh, shit’ protocols when he’d set them up, arming the explosives that were already set. They’d always known it might come to this; it was one of the reasons they’d moved the machine out of their basement to begin with. The only question was which side of the portal they would be on when it happened.
A last tap on the controls and Edge pressed the red button, watching as the black, depthless vortex swirled into sight, shimmering with same mysterious power as it always had. Red dusted off his hands, climbing to his feet with a grunt as he walked over to where Edge was standing. In his arms, the child’s whimpers faded in querulous little sounds as she sucked on her tiny fingers, staring up at him with wide, pale eye lights. As insignificant as her weight was, his arm was beginning to ache from holding her.
Red gave him a nudge in the femur with one elbow, digging painfully into the bone. “let’s go, boss.”
“No,” Edge said decisively even as he strode forward. “Not Boss, not any longer.”
Red only shrugged and followed him. “whatever you say, bro.”
The last thing he heard as he stepped through the portal was the soft click of his brother’s thumb on the detonator.
On the other side, from icy cave into a tidy basement, there was no sign that the explosives had done their work. Not so much as a tremor came through and the portal faded away as it always did. But when Red logged the coordinates to their world into the machine, it came up with the message ‘not found’.
It was enough. It would have to be.
Edge took a moment to catch his breath, closing his sockets and listening to the stillness of the basement, of the little gurgling, pleading cries from the child, of his brother’s sneakers on the cement floor. Then he went up the stairs and braced himself to go back out into the freezing cold after the relatively mild chill of the basement.
The path around the house to the front door was shoveled clear, with no traps or signs warning that trespassers could fuck off, one of Red’s charming additions to their home defenses. No, not home, not any longer, he couldn’t think about that right now. He let his feet carry them to the front porch where he rapped firmly on the door beneath the twinkling lights.
It opened and there wasn’t enough left in Edge for even a fraction of surprise that Stretch answered it for once, his lanky frame all but sprawled against the door jamb as he leaned out. The relief at seeing him left Edge nearly weak; all his reserves had been used up getting them this far and now that salvation was in sight, his will was beginning to waver.
That face, like and unlike his own, the sight of which often left Edge torn between snarling into it and kissing that pretty mouth where so many sly insults were offered with painful accuracy. Edge had done both, sometimes only seconds apart as they rolled around on the bare mattress that Stretch called a bed, and he still couldn’t say which he preferred. When it came to Stretch, there was little in the way of answers as to how Edge felt about him, but there was at least one he knew for certain.
Stretch would never let anyone hurt a child.
Whatever greeting he’d been about to offer- depending on his mood, it could be flirtatious, antagonistic, or perhaps even a truly awful pun— died unspoken as Stretch’s gaze dropped to the baby, who was by now whimpering in his arms. His sockets went incredulously wide, his eye lights narrowing into pinpricks of white, his mouth working soundlessly as he stared.
“is that a fucking baby?” he said finally.
“good guess, dumbass,” Red snorted, stamping the snow off his shoes. “puttin’ that phd of yours to good use.”
“Don’t swear,” Edge said automatically. “Can we please come inside?” Normally, the cold wouldn’t have bothered him so much but with his magic depleted, he was starting to shiver, unconsciously clutching the warm bundle closer until the child babbled a complaint.
Stretch nearly tripped over his own feet trying to get out of their way, yanking the door all the way open. “yeah, yeah, sure, fu—udgcicles, jumped up jiminy gyftmas, yes, get in here!”
On any other day, he would never have considered stepping onto the carpet without removing his boots. Today Edge could only stagger to the sofa, collapsing down on the cushion and staring dully at the footprints of melting snow that he’d left across the carpet.
He could hear Stretch speaking, demanding answers from him and Red as he slammed the door shut, but he was too weary to answer. He settled a hand on the baby’s chest, let her grasp his chilled fingers in her little hands as he let his head wearily drop back on the sofa cushions, soaking in the first beginning trickles of warmth that he’d felt since he’d made his mad dash from Hotland, leaving the smoldering wreck of the lab behind him.
The baby was finding no satisfaction from gnawing on his fingertips and as her cries increased in urgency, Edge could only lay on that ratty old sofa and wonder at what the hell he was going to do now.
tbc
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markftmingi · 4 years
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sit down! - part one
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sit down! masterlist
summary: the king of south korea hires you personally to become the prince’s personal bodyguard after he receives death threats but still continues to life his life dangerously.
pairing: prince!badboy!jaehyun x bodyguard!badass!reader
warning(s): mentions of smoking/drug use, gang activity, and some other crime stuff, swearing, jaehyun’s an asshole tbh.
a/n: this was almost a yugyeom story on wattpad over a year ago (excuse any typos pls) but i’ve been in my jaehyun feels recently. i also really want to make this a social media au🥴. also this is my basic “y/n” kind of story but like “y/n”’s gang code name is siren, cause like you lead men to their deaths, get it? 
you took a deep breath before knocking on your boss's office door. his right hand woman, joy, opened the door with a smile.
"miss siren, he's been expecting you," she bowed politely.
you bowed back, "you can call me by my real name you know... i've known you for most of my life."
joy blushed slightly but before she could say another word, your boss interrupted.
"she was instructed to call you miss siren and she will do as such,” he ordered as you sat in the chair across from him.
"whatever you say, yuta," you said mockingly, "what's my job now?"
"you were hired by someone to keep his son out of trouble. his son has a pretty bad record: fighting, smoking, drug use, gang activity, sleeping around frequently, and the list goes on. your job is to make sure that he never does anything like this again... he has a major reputation to manage. he'll be disowned if he doesn't."
"okay... and how am i going to do that?" you questioned.
"you'll be living with him, watching his every move. he lives in seoul palace in south korea." he said sliding the case files over to you.
you raised an eyebrow, "seoul palace? who is he? the prince?"
yuta let out a small laugh, "yes, actually."
you held back the urge to scoff. what kind of prince doesn't respect his father –the king– enough to listen to what he says? especially if it's for his own good. if he keeps up the recklessness, he'll be dead by 25.
"a prince... needs me... to babysit him so that he doesn't get into anymore trouble?" you said slowly to make sure that yuta wasn't losing his mind.
he gave you a hard look, "a prince with a really rich king father that's willing to pay us 500,000,000 yen to babysit him so that he doesn't get into anymore trouble. the prince has been receiving death threats too and he just continues the recklessness.”
500,000,000 yen? that’s nearly 5 million dollars... you could do a lot with that kind of money. you could retire with that kind of money.
"okay, deal."
"great because i already had joy pack your bags and call the jet to south korea. your flight departs in less than an hour." yuta smiled brightly as your face dropped.
although he wasn’t family, yuta was all you had left. he was more of a relative than your boss. it was his father’s company before he took over. his father raised you to obey every single word that came out of his mouth and keep your guard up at all times. sometimes yuta could overstep his boundaries but hey, at least you were getting paid and weren’t an orphan anymore.
you sighed before standing up, taking the files with you. joy followed you out of the office and into her car.
"miss siren, the jet takes off in..," she glanced at her phone, "roughly 40 minutes."
you nodded, "you packed everything i needed?"
"i got most of your clothes, toothbrush and other necessities, your laptops and chargers, and your favorite weapons. the usual things i pack." joy explained as she drives.
you nodded once more before opening your client's file.
name: jung jaehyun (sometimes goes by yoonoh)
nationality: korean
birthday: february 14, 1997
zodiac sign: aquarius
height: 180 cm (5’11")
weight: 63kg (138 lbs)
blood type: A
hobbies: piano, basketball
languages: korean, english, and some japanese
as you continued to read his file, you couldn't help but to want to laugh. the way yuta talked about jaehyun made him sound like public enemy number one. he seemed like a normal man... until you got to his police reports:
seven charges of aggravated assault, four charges of drug possession, two DUIs, and three charges of theft. all of which was pardoned because he was the prince. you didn’t get why the prince himself would do anything of these things. jaehyun could have anything he wanted at anytime but he was acting out.
"he's handsome." joy smirked slightly as she pulled up to the airport.
you looked back up at his picture. she wasn't lying. jaehyun was gorgeous. definitely has the looks of a prince. she laughed once she caught you staring at the picture.
"true, but not happening."
"i'm just saying, y/n - i mean siren. he's handsome, you're beautiful. i saw his friends' profiles too. they all looked like pieces of heaven. something is bound to happen." she said teasingly.
you rolled your eyes as you got out the car, "no romance, no relations. besides he's a prince. he probably acts like he has a stick up his ass."
“you act like you have a stick up your ass too sometimes. maybe he can take it out for you,” joy laughed as you slammed the car door shut and walked away. the jet ride from osaka international airport to seoul, south korea was only about two hours, so you took the time to rest up for what awaits you.
_______________________________________________________
when you got off the jet in seoul, you weren’t expecting four men to pick you up from the airport. nor were you expecting to be riding in a limo. you usually didn't talk much when you were working but this awkward silence was killing you and you think the other men knew it too.
"so how long have you been working under mr. nakamoto?" the man on your right questioned, trying to break the ice.
"majority my life basically."
he turned to you with wide eyes, "how?"
"well, it's the family business. i’m not blood family but they adopted me in. from the time you're able to walk, you're trained to fight. you don't actually work serious jobs until you go through all the training."
"when did you get your first serious job?"
"i had just turned eleven,” you stated.
the man didn't say anything after that and you were relieved. you let out a breath you didn't know you were holding as you all drove to a gate. as if expecting you, the gate slowly opened. you’d been to korea on other jobs before but you never saw this palace before. the building was tall and stretched for yards. it was surrounded by various ponds and small gardens. guards with guns were in a line at the front door. you adjusted your backpack straps as you walked through the main door. the palace was rather modern looking from the old architecture on the outside. it looked like it could house hundreds of people. when the door shut behind you, two women and two men rushed to greet you.
"welcome back, mr. kim!" they all chorused as they bowed slightly.
"staff. this is siren, don’t ask for her real name. she's head of security over jaehyun along with johnny and taeyong. she'll be living here for awhile. treat her with respect." the man you spoke to in the car explained. guess he was addressed as mr. kim.
"yes, mr. kim. welcome, miss siren." they chorused and bowed once again.
do they practice being in synchronization like that?
"uh, thanks." you mumbled, adjusting your bag straps again.
you heard a door open, followed by seven men jogging down the stairs. all seven pairs of eyes locked on you.
"oh don't tell me she's the one who's going to be keeping jaehyun out of trouble," one of them said as a smile grew on his face.
five out of the seven started laughing. something you didn’t take lightly. you didn’t like being laughed at or taken as a joke.
"i'm trained in eight styles of fighting, i have a perfect aim with the gun on my hip, and a few other skills that you'll quickly find out if you laugh at me again." you said calmly.
that shut all of them up. mr. kim gasped, sending an elbow into your side. you didn't flinch at all.
"this is siren and yes, she'll be assisting johnny and taeyong in keeping jaehyun out of trouble which includes limiting the visits of the four of you. siren, this is jung jaehyun, the prince of this kingdom. these are his friends – dong sicheng, prince of china. huang xuxi, prince of hong kong. wong kunhang, prince of macau. chittaphon leechaiyapornkul, one of the princes of thailand. they may be princes but only sicheng acts like it." mr. kim said, giving them a fake smile.
one of the seven came up to you, "i'm sorry for kunhang's comment earlier, i'm johnny– the head of security, and that’s taeyong, other head of security. you can call him ty though." johnny introduced himself and taeyong, holding out his hand.
you shook his hand shortly. joy was right about his friends... they all looked amazing, especially the one locking hands with you. mr. kim looked between you and johnny with a shocked expression and you didn’t know why.
i made a mental note of each of their appearances so i could remember their names quickly. one of the most important things about being on a job was to take note of everyone around your client.
"i'm jaehyun, the one you'll be keeping out of trouble,” jaehyun said copying mr. kim's words.
they both glared at each other. the tension in the room was almost sickening.
"we're gonna go." taeyong announced before ushering the remaining boys to another part of the house.
"bye, siren!" sicheng smiled brightly.
i waved goodbye as they walked away.
"well, you got your wish, doyoung. i got a babysitter now and you ran my friends off again. you happy?"
"very happy."
"good, so get the fuck out." jaehyun said angrily.
you didn't know that much about the royal family but you were shocked. princes were supposed to be respectful or at least act like it. yet you could hear how much hatred jaehyun had in his voice.
mr. kim, doyoung as jaehyun called him, scoffed but looked at you, "siren, be careful. he's a tricky one," he stated before leaving.
you turned to look at jaehyun who was already staring at you.
"johnny really respects you."
you shrugged, "a lot of people do. what's your point?"
"he likes you for some reason and i don't know why and its bothering me."
"you're a big boy. you'll get over it."
jaehyun smirked, "yeah, i'm a big boy alright."
you rolled your eyes and walked past him. had to walk yourself into that pun, didn't you? you felt his eyes on your ass as he followed you up the long spiraled stairs.
"tenth door on the right is your room. next room over is my bedroom in case you get lonely."
ignoring him once again, you walked into your new room. it was huge: a king-sized bed with black silk sheets, dresser, nightstand with a flatscreen TV positioned on the wall. you took out your laptops and phones to charge them.
"why do you have two laptops and two phones?" jaehyun asked, reaching to pick one of the laptops up.
however, you grabbed him by the wrist before he even got the chance.
"don't touch anything that doesn't belong to you... that's rule number one. don't ask me anything business related or too personal. my job isn't to befriend you. my job is to keep you out of trouble, got it?" you asked angrily, “good, don’t make me tell you again.”
"you're so fucking sexy when you're angry." jaehyun whispered, staring at the grip you had on his wrist.
you rolled your eyes and let go of him, “it’s my job to keep you alive and out of trouble. why are you already making it hard for me?"
"didn’t they tell you how bad i was, baby?"
741 notes · View notes
jeon-googi · 3 years
Text
Flower Boy
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— pairing: (ATEEZ) San x Reader
 — genre: slice of life, Barista au
— words: 3k
— rating: SFW
— warnings: none~
— notes: HELLO! It’s been awhile, and I am so sorry for my lack of posting and writing. A lot of stuff has happened, from me graduating Uni early (whoo!), to a few deaths in my family, life has really gotten to me. It makes me very happy to see so many people still liking and reading my stories though, so thank you for all the kind comments and tags! I have a few stories in the works including a spin off of Soulmate! Until next time! (I rewrote a part of the ending and wanted to start off fresh with this so I hope you don’t mind!)
-
 You smiled triumphantly, finally finishing the last stretch of your midterm paper, stretching your arms out in front of you in your cramped work space. It was nearing Spring Break and that meant the amount of school work was becoming borderline atrocious. Luckily, you planned well enough and weren’t experiencing the detrimental study cram like your roommate Irene. 
“Irene c'mon you have to take a break!” You stood up, walking to her side of the dorm which somehow was even more destroyed than yours. Irene groaned as she rubbed her face, leaning back into her chair.
“Yeah a break would be nice…” she mumbled, her eyes red from lack of sleep. You smiled as you pulled her up trying to think of somewhere the two of you could go for a small break. 
“There’s that new cafe nearby! The one Seonghwa from Psych works at?” You offered, gently tugging on your shoes near the door. Irene nodded as she followed suit, tugging on a light jacket. One of your friends from psych, Seonghwa, and a gaggle of his rowdy friends all somehow landed themselves a job at a new cafe by campus. 
“You and Irene should totally come! Drinks on me.” He had offered one day.
The walk was short and sweet, the trees on campus starting to bloom gorgeous blossoms and the light sunny air put a pep back in both you and Irene’s steps. The cafe was a modern looking place, flowers adorning the outside patio. You also noticed the abundance of well dressed girls that filled the place as well. Shaking your head, you pulled the door open for both you and Irene, the bell above alerting the bustling baristas to your presence.
“Welcome to Cafe- Oh! Y/n and Irene! Welcome!” A boyish laugh sounded from behind the barista bar as you spotted Seonghwa’s tall figure operating the espresso machine. 
“Hey Seonghwa!” You waved back as did Irene, filing into the line to the counter. From your spot, you could also spot familiar faces of his friends, Hongjoong his red haired best friend, and Yeosang from your literature class. You could understand now why so many girls were filling the small cafe, everyone here was absolutely gorgeous. You finally reached the counter where another boy leaned, making conversation with every customer, his figure so tall he had to lean down to operate the ipad for orders. Your heart sped up a little as you gave a wave to him, a large smile breaking his face. 
God he was hot.
“Hey your Y/n right? Your friends with Seonghwa?” He asked, cocking his head in a boyish manner as he spoke to you. You nodded a bit lost for words, “Yeah and you’re...you’re San right?” You winced, hoping you got it right. He nodded happily and grinned, “That's me! Now what could I get you?” He asked with a sly wink. You fumbled for a quick order, something along the lines of an iced latte. As you reached for your card, San reached a hand out to stop you, his large hands surprisingly soft.
“No please it’s on me.” 
You went to argue but he quickly passed the order to Seonghwa who shrugged and motioned you and Irene to a nearby vacant table. You and Irene quickly took your seats at the table, trying to ignore the glances of jealous girls at your interactions with the guys. 
“They sure have a crowd going.” You mused, smiling as you spotted some of the waiters entertaining groups of girls. Irene nodded in agreement, her eyes particularly locked on the back on Yeosang’s head. You nudged her and she bashfully laughed it off, the two of you getting lost in conversation before a cough broke you both away. Again, San stood before you, grinning as he held two iced beverages he carefully placed on the table. You both thanked him gratefully as he kneeled down, placing his elbows on the table.
“So ladies what's the plan for today?”
It seemed to be in the cafe’s style that all the baristas and servers would make small talk with the customers, which you didn’t mind of course. You and San unexpectedly went back and forth, travelling from topic to topic. You found yourself getting lost in conversation with each other enough so that Irene interrupted the two of you. 
“It’s getting a bit late isn't it Y/n? We still have some studying to do.” Irene said smugly, sliding her jacket back on her shoulders. Your eyes grew wide as you glanced at your phone, noticing you had been talking for a good while now. 
“Oh shoot yeah, sorry San, I didn’t mean to keep you from your work-”
“No it’s no problem I had fun.” He brushed off your apology with a smile. You and Irene quickly gathered your belongings to leave, giving the baristas one last wave before exiting.
“Wait Y/n!” You heard a call from inside, stopping you in the middle of the door.
“Hm?” You asked, turning back to see a grinning San behind the counter.
“I work Mondays, Wednesdays, and the weekends. Come see me again!”
The hoots from the other boys behind the counter was enough to make your face turn a slight shade of red,
 “We’ll see!” you called back before closing the door behind you. 
After large study periods and quite a few tears, midterms passed as quickly as they began. The refreshing feeling of knowing you had an entire week to yourself was pure bliss to say the least. Irene had planned a trip with a few of her friends, and of course, felt terrible you wanted to stay on campus.
“Y/n c'mon it would be so much fun!”
You shook your head, “It’s okay Irene go have fun! I’m going to just relax here and do absolutely nothing.” you admitted with a content grin. She shrugged, and before you knew it, you were left alone. With so much spare time on your hands, you weren't sure what you wanted to start with. You had a few books you wanted to read, some recipes you wanted to try...or, you could also swing by San’s cafe as well. It had been awhile since you first visited and you couldn't deny the lingering effect he had on your mind. His black hair, smile, the way he rolled his sleeves up when making drinks. A blush stained your cheeks as you shook your head, 
‘Here you are, thirsting over some guy you met once.’
But hey, one visit wouldn’t hurt right, and it just so happened to be the weekend. 
Packing up a small tote bag with a book, your notebook, and a few pens, you headed out down the scenic route to the cafe. The flowers were even more in bloom than the last time you were there, gentle white daisies and yellow poppies. There was another tall man conversing with a family on the front patio of the cafe. He noticed you walk up and gave an energetic wave.
“Hey your Y/n right?” He smiled, a cute golden retriever air about him. You nodded, adjusting the bag on your shoulder, “Yeah, your in my stats class right? Let's see... Yunho?” 
Yunho nodded happily, a large dopey grin on his face, “That's me! To be honest you came in on the perfect day-” Yunho politely excused himself from the family to make his way closer to you, your height differences astonishing this close. 
“What do you mean-” You were about to ask before Yunho hushed you,  glancing back towards the cafe and pushing you behind the cafe's hedge, out of the window's line of sight. He surveyed the front of the store before blowing out a breath.
“Whew alright he didn’t see us.” He said relieved.
“Who didn't see us?” You asked, also trying to peer your head over the bush.
“San. Ever since you came in, he has been looking forward to seeing you, and well, it’s been awhile since your last visit and he’s kind of depressed about it. Today has been the worst, but as luck would have it, you’re here!” Yunho rushed out quickly, giving you a smile of encouragement. You were a bit confused to say the least, but also a bit surprised. 
“He wanted me to come back that bad? I thought he was just being nice-”
“San is nice to everyone, which makes him pretty popular. But the way he stared at you from behind the counter said it all.” Yunho admitted. “I’ve known him for awhile, and I’ve never seen him act like this. If you're not interested it’s totally fine I just wanted to let you know this will really make his day.” With a reassuring pat on the shoulder, Yunho went back to entertaining the guests on the patio, leaving you with a pounding heart. It would be a lie to say it didn’t make you excited, you mean, you did find San very attractive and kind as well. 
‘Lets just see how this goes..’
You walked back to the patio, opening the door gently, the bell alerting your arrival. There was no line like usual, so you had a clear shot from the door to the counter. San was behind the counter again as well, but his back was turned as he was finishing up some drinks for the few other customers inside. You approached the counter with a smile as you waited patiently for him to finish. He quickly turned around, not entirely too focused on who it was before him, but rather typing quickly on the Ipad. His voice was not in his usual tone as he started, “Thank you for waiting, what can I get started for you?”
You laughed brightly before moving yourself closer to the counter, his face being a few heads higher than your own so you could look up into his eyes, 
“Hi San.”
San jumped back with a yelp, a few towers of paper cups falling with his flail, “Y/N? What are you doing here? Today? You showed up-er- here wow uh..” He stumbled over his words, a bright red flush dusting his cheeks. You couldn’t help the laugh that trickled out of your throat. 
“I finally finished my midterms, sorry I wasn’t able to make it in sooner.” You apologized. 
San shook his head quickly, “No no no don’t apologize it’s totally fine-” his hands nervously ran through his hair, pushing it back away from his forehead. 
“I’m just glad-” he stopped to clear his throat, “I’m just glad you came back in.”
You smiled at that. San had a way of being so earnest, even at times like this.
“This time I am paying for my drink Mr.” you warned, already pulling out your card. San’s usual grin graced his features again as he held his hands up in surrender, “Fine you got me this time.” 
You ordered another iced drink, and took a table near a large window within the shop, the sunlight not too harsh yet still warm against your skin. You heard footsteps approaching and you grinned, but looked curious when rather than San bringing your drink, it was Yeosang. 
“Yeosang, hi.” You smiled. Yeosang gave you a polite smile as well, placing your drink down on the table as well as a warmed pastry.
“San got called into the back for a while, so he wanted me to bring this to you since he can’t come over and talk for awhile.” Yeosang said in his gentle voice. You laughed a bit at the situation, picturing in your mind no doubt San’s pouting face. 
“Thank you very much Yeosang. Oh, and Irene wanted me to tell you she says hi.” The startled look on his face was perfect as he quickly excused himself back to the counter. You smiled and shook your head, pulling out your book to start your reading. Chapters in, you noticed the chair in front of you being pulled out. A tired San deflated once in the chair, allowing his head to hang back. You winced at the stiffness in your joints as you set your book down, watching the tired barista. 
“Rough day?” you asked sympathetically, placing your chin on your hand. San shook his head as he sat up, leaning onto the table with his elbows. “Just busy. We’re training some new hires, so I have a lot to do.” He sighed but his smile easily came back. 
“But I am glad you came by today.” He grinned. San’s eyes alway crinkled when he smiled like this, and he always had a laugh on his lips, in a way, you were a bit jealous he could uphold such an attitude. You both made small conversation, enjoying the time you guys finally had together. Before you knew it, the sun was beginning to set, casting the cafe in an orange hue.
Seonghwa emerged from the back, spotting you two chatting away at the table, “Sorry to interrupt but, it’s closing time guys!” He smiled, obviously eager to leave. Your eyes widened as you realized indeed, you were the last one in the establishment. 
“Oh my god I’m so sorry I didn’t realize-”
Seonghwa shook his head, “No you’re good. In fact since San was supposed to help me close, I’ll just have him walk you back to your dorm instead. I’d feel guilty just kicking you out like this.”
San whipped his head around, totally ecstatic over the fact one, he got to leave early, and two of course, walk you home.
“C’mon Y/n let's go!” He grinned, pulling your hand along with him. You laughed as you quickly collected your bag, giving a wave to Seonghwa.
The air outside was warm despite the night creeping in. You walked alongside San down the road to your university, an air of comfortable silence between you two.
“Why did you start working at the coffee shop?” You asked.
“It was always Seonghwa’s dream to have something like this, ever since we were in grade school. I just wanted to help make his dream..I don’t know a reality I guess?” San admitted sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. You nodded, honestly in awe of such kind words. 
“I’m sure he appreciates you very much.” You smiled up at him, causing him to turn away bashfully. He cleared his throat as he glanced back down at you, “Well I mean how about you? I want to know everything about you.”
The walk back to your dorm was filled with conversation with San, ranging from classes to hobbies and favorite foods. It was so easy to talk to him, you found yourself drawn into him with every word and you couldn’t ignore the fluttering of your heart anytime he said your name. Before you knew it, your dorm was in sight. 
“Thanks again for walking me back. I appreciate San.” You smiled, toying with the strap of your bag. 
“Of course! I didn’t want you to walk alone.” San grinned, slipping his hands into his pockets. The air grew stagnant, and both of you fidgeted in the silence, not quite wanting your time together to end. 
“Y/n-”
“San-”
The two of your stopped, realizing you talked over each other so easily before breaking into giggling grins. 
“You first.” San smiled.
“Well I just want you to know, I um...I really like hanging out with you!” You admitted, casting your eyes down to his shoes. “I really like hanging out with you, and I would like to keep hanging out with you. If you don’t feel the same way though I totally understand-”
“Can I kiss you?”
 You stopped, your eyes quickly scanning up from the floor to San’s face, the heat rushing to your cheeks.
“Can you what?”
San smiled, a boyish carefree smile, one that stirred butterflies in your stomach.
“Can I,” his hand found yours, holding it between the two of you, “kiss you?”
You felt yourself nodding before the words even escaped your mouth. San waited, his face only inches now form yours. His breath was shallow, and you found yourself a little giddy at how nervous he suddenly looked. He was only inches away.
“Yes, San-”
You were cut off by a gentle sensation on your lips. It was soft and tentative, like he was holding himself back. San’s hand cupped your cheek and your own hand rose to his chest. He pulled back, his breath light on your face. 
You could feel the heat rising to your cheeks as San chuckled, grabbing onto your wrist and pulling you into his chest, his arms wrapping around you so naturally. 
“I really like hanging out with you too, Y/n.” 
Your face was pressed into his chest, the faint smell of coffee and pastries still lingering on him. 
“But..” You could feel San shifting, leaning down so his face was closer to yours, “I’d rather hang out with you as your boyfriend.” 
Your smile widened as you stared back at him, your hands softly travelling to hold his face. He gently leaned into your touch, his smile mirroring yours. 
“I’d like that too.” You whispered back, your forehead resting against his. The two of you stayed like this, giggling and whispering between each other without care. Eventually San begrudgingly acknowledged he had to leave, but not without a few pouts. 
“I’ll see you soon yeah?”
You nodded, your fingers slowly drifting apart.
“I’ll bring you breakfast tomorrow.” You smiled, earning a large grin from San. It only took him two brisk steps to be in front of you again while you laughed. 
“San you really gotta head home-”
“I just wanted to see you like this. One last time before I go.”
You raised an eyebrow at him.
“Like how?” You watched as his hand returned to your cheek, stroking it gently. 
“Smiling.”
“Smiling?”
“Smiling, because of me.” 
-
-
On her trip, Irene grinned as she stared at her phone. It was a blurry selfie of you and San, looking all lovey dovey at the café, while half of Yeosangs face was in the frame.
‘Told you we’d get them together!’-Yeosang
Laughing she grinned and replied back.
‘About time :)’-Irene
43 notes · View notes
thepetulantpen · 3 years
Text
Two Librarians in Armageddon
(Day 5 of @shadowgastweek! Only had time for one fic this week, but after I read this prompt my brain said Pacific Rim AU and would not leave me alone until I wrote this. It’s pretty long, so here’s the ao3 link.)
(Pacific Rim AU, featuring the wizards as scientists!)
Caleb would not say he’s fond of working with others, let alone sharing his lab.
Solitary work is more in his nature, but after years of sharing close-quarters with Veth- and after getting adjusted to Jester, in general- he’s learned to tolerate, even enjoy, having company while he’s working. His friends have more than prepared him for anyone else he’ll have to work with; they’ve ensured that he’ll be hanging onto his habits of keeping anything important secured, in the event of an unexpected explosion, and of guarding his coffee with his life, in the event of poorly-timed pranks.
He does not think his new lab partner will be bringing any unstable explosives, or sugary abominations to replace his coffee with.
From what he’s been told, the new addition to their little pre-apocalypse team is a physicist working on tech for a competing company, someone far outside Caleb’s scope. The fact that they still have competing companies of mech-developers while there are aliens bursting from the sea to eat them is a nightmare all its own, but the writhing horrors of capitalism are a beast that science, and the Kaiju guts strewn across the table before him, has proved ineffective against.
The truce between them, in the interest of allowing powerful Jaegers to work together, is an uneasy and temporary one. Caleb, personally, doesn’t think it’ll last beyond one or two failures. He just hopes they won’t fall back into the slew of sabotages that plagued them at the beginning of their downward spiral, before everyone realized the world may actually be ending.  
The rather small detail of imminent Armageddon has made his preference, or lack thereof, for company inconsequential. In the long run- or short, if they don’t manage a major breakthrough soon- his opinions as an introvert are insignificant.
It’s not all bad- as an innately curious person, the opportunity to meet someone just as experienced as him in the field of Kaiju is fascinating. Particularly considering that their specialization is so different; he’s almost looking forward to the new insight. He’d even be excited if it wasn’t for the subject matter.
It can be challenging to be enthusiastic about the driving force of the apocalypse.
He digs deeper into the partially collapsed chunk of Kaiju ribcage in front of him, no longer bothered by his poor choice of distraction. It’s a misnomer to call it a ribcage, given that the Kaiju do not have bones in the classical sense, but it’s close enough in location to approximate. He’d rather have a brain to work with, though he’ll settle for what he can get. Storing Kaiju is difficult, with their accelerated rate of rot once exposed to the air- if he’s not careful, his work could be reduced to ash in an hour.
He needs to catalogue the differences between this corpse and the last, pinpointing patterns in organ placement. The work is dull, while still requiring his full concentration to avoid puncturing any of the many, many inexplicably acidic organs. If he wasn’t already good friends with the base’s medics, he would’ve been taken off this job long ago.
Once he’s elbow-deep in a Kaiju, he stops paying attention to the door. He does not notice the knocking, nor the quiet greeting, nor the faint whir of machinery as his new colleague hovers through the doorway.
“Should you be touching that? It looks toxic.”
Caleb jumps at the voice beside him and the scalpel in his hand jerks, cutting into the mystery organ he’d been considering removing. Something vaguely liquid hits his wrist above the glove and he waits two seconds to see if it’ll burn, before deciding he probably doesn’t need to run screaming to the nearest med station.
“It’s fine,” he mutters, partially in response and partially to himself. “I know what I’m doing.”
He looks down, towards his new colleague, who, at first glance, is thoroughly unimpressed at that lie.
He sits in a wheelchair- minus the wheels, as it hovers gently off the ground, coming to about the same height the wheels would give it. Clearly a new model- hovering technology aside- it’s a sleek, minimalist white, matching his equally sleek, swept back white hair. The high turtleneck and overly formal coat allow Caleb to immediately peg him as somewhat uptight. Near-apocalypse has made formality rare.
Caleb hurries to wash his hands, finding the nearby sink labelled for nasty, potentially lethal chemical disposal. “I was told you’d arrive today, but,” he glances up at the dingy lab clock, the glass cracked from Veth’s last visit, “I didn’t imagine it’d be so soon. It’s, uh, a bit of a mess.”
“I’ve seen worse,” he says, unconvincingly, and changes track, “That desk is mine, yes?”
There’s only one other desk in the room, moved there sometime yesterday after Caleb, under threat from his superiors, managed to shift away some of the boxes that line the walls. It’s only a small space, but it’s the cleanest part of the room.
The question, he reasons, is rhetorical, but Caleb nods anyway. He considers that answer enough- though the other man doesn’t move, staring at him expectantly. He’s oddly expressive, his attempts to keep a completely straight face only making any slipups, like the annoyed twitch of his eyebrow, more obvious.
It makes it easy to see the exact moment his patience runs out.
“I’m sure you were informed, but,” here, he looks to the side, dodging Caleb’s returning attention, “for the sake of introductions, I am Essek Thelyss.”
Ah, so that’s what he’d forgotten. Caleb thinks it’s unfair that he had to fail miserably at one of the last introductions he will have made before the end of the world- surely, he could’ve had just one go smoothly.
“Oh- I’m Caleb,” he reaches out a hand, meeting Essek’s already extended one for a brief shake- his hands may be clean now, but Essek doesn’t look thrilled at the prospect of touching Kaiju guts, even  indirectly, “Caleb Widogast.”
Something unidentifiable passes over Essek’s expression- disappointment or judgement, perhaps, at not recognizing the name. Widogast is not printed on any books, nor is it associated with anything high-profile like Thelyss; strictly, it doesn’t exist at all.
That, or the smell of the rotting Kaiju getting to him.
As he watches Essek pause halfway across the room to clear his path, and again to widen the space around his desk, Caleb is hit with the vivid realization that this isn’t going to be an enlightening, academic experience, nor an uncomfortable few days of socialization. It’s going to be more than a bump in the alien-fueled crisis that is his current existence.
This is going to be a disaster.
“Widogast, do you have any idea where my notebook’s gone?”
It has only taken Caleb three days to be able to identify the various tones for annoyed in Essek’s voice. There’s this is a minor inconvenience and this is a major inconvenience and this is one of many annoying things I haven’t pointed out yet today, including, but not limited to, the ever-present stench of Kaiju flesh.
He can say, with relative confidence, that this falls into the latest category.
“Have you tried all your desk drawers?” he calls over his shoulder, knowing the question is unnecessary but stalling for time as he heaves the last of the Kaiju parts- partially burned and fragmented limbs, today- onto his work table.
Essek, unlike Caleb, is meticulously organized, never misplaces anything and files according to system that escapes Caleb, no matter how many times he tries to decode it. From Essek’s perspective, the rest of the lab is a dangerous no man’s land of abject chaos- though Caleb has never lost anything. He knows, precisely, where everything is, no piece of preserved alien fading from his memory. An organization system is pointless, when one has a photographic memory.
That is, until one has to share a lab with someone who bothers to keep track of their belongings.
He doesn’t wait for a response, already able to picture Essek behind him, sitting with his arms crossed and looking deeply disappointed by Caleb’s suggestion, which amounts to did you turn it on and off again? Leaving the still sealed Kaiju parts where they are, he turns back to his own desk.
After exonerating himself and Essek, the list of suspects for meddling with their desks is very short. The base, these days, is not the hub of activity it used to be, back when there were far more Jaeger pilots alive and far better morale. Their lab is typically empty, aside from Caleb and Essek, as few people are inclined towards the smell of dead Kaiju. Even the corporals, some of the rare higher-ups with clearance, can’t be bothered to visit more frequently than their mandatory check-ins.
He can only think of two people who clearance would not be an issue for.
“Is he handsome, Caleb?”
“I don’t think it would be professional—”
“He definitely is, Jessie.”
Before today, he’d thought that Jester and Veth hadn’t gotten around to the visit they’d been threatening; clearly, they’d taken the liberty while he wasn’t in. Veth knows better than to steal notebooks- she wouldn’t be interested in them, anyway- and Jester isn’t in the habit of taking things, only misplacing them.
Caleb hardly ever uses his own desk, preferring to leave his notebooks scattered over the lab tables, in easier reach. Only the older ones are still perched on his desk, in a precariously tall pile- but one notebook stands out from the rest, not quite as ratty and overstuffed as his own.
“Ah, here it is,” he holds it up, gesturing Essek over and trying not to look too sheepish- it is not, after all, his fault. As he hands it over, and quickly turns back to his work, he can only hope that Jester hasn’t doodled anything too embarrassing inside. “Jester must have misplaced it, while exploring the lab.”
“Jester?” Essek asks, eyebrows furrowing in something that would be irritation, if his expression wasn’t trained to be so stoic, “Is she supposed to have clearance here?”
“The medical staff have free reign, in case of incidents with hazardous material.” He glances back at Essek, who still looks confused, and remembers that not everyone is on a first-name basis with the medics. “Jester Lavorre. You might know Caduceus- that is, Mr. Clay- better. He’s the more… healing inclined, of the two.”
“Jester Lavorre,” Essek starts, slowly as he unpacks his own question, “regularly comes here to… explore? What, she just, rifles through your things?”
He is not sure how to explain the idea of Jester to someone who doesn’t know her.
Essek already looks delightfully confounded- a considerable a departure from his typical stern concentration. Caleb almost wants to thank Jester for pulling Essek away from the handheld chalkboards he spends his days bent over, lines of nearly indecipherable equations appearing and disappearing with only the smudge of chalk on Essek’s hands as evidence of their existence. Distracting Essek has proved to be a challenge- even the sounds of saws and the number of other unpleasant devices involved in Kaiju dissection don’t get Caleb so much as a glance.
He does not try to explain Jester, opting to shrug, instead. “She knows she can find me here, so she stays until I show up. Sometimes she gets bored.” It occurs to him that other people haven’t been prepped for company in the same way he has. It occurs to him that it is abnormal to brace for a scavenger hunt every time he enters the lab. “I suggest you leave your important documents in a locked drawer.”
He refrains from telling Essek that Veth can pick locks and that Jester has broken open desk drawers before (there was an incident involving a prank war, smuggling, and increasingly desperate hiding places). None of it seems particularly reassuring.
Essek gives him a strange look, but nods. “I will keep that in mind.”
“You might also find things that aren’t yours by your desk.” Caleb looks over his shoulder to see Essek still watching him. “Consider them gifts.”
“Like what?”
“Like…” Caleb pauses, realizing that none of the things he was about to list are work-appropriate, “Well, it could be anything.”
Caleb’s starting to worry that he might end up causing the rift between companies that leads to the end of the world- with his terrible first impression, and equally bad secondary impressions- but when a parasol shows up at Essek’s desk a day later, he does not ask Caleb where it came from.
He does, however, quietly ask Caleb to send along his thanks to Jester.
“I am not imagining that it smells particularly bad today, yes?”
Caleb has acquired, in part thanks to Veth, partial halves of two Kaiju hearts. Partial is the best they could manage, on account of the massive holes blown in the beasts’ chests. Nonetheless, he’s ecstatic- an opportunity like this, for a direct comparison, is rare.
Kaiju barbecue, as it turns out, does not smell very appetizing. It is what he would think a bucket of cleaning supplies set on fire would smell like, though it leaves the air with the unpleasant aftertaste of cheap fruit snacks.
“They’re a little charred,” he says, hiding a smile- they are far more than a little charred, “Veth’s testing out different chemical combinations for the Jaeger ammunition. I don’t think she’s quite nailed it yet.”
Essek scoffs, cautiously approaching the table with one hand over his nose and mouth, the other resting on the chair’s controls. “How many people of wildly different departments are you on a first-name basis with?”
“Just a few.” Thoroughly distracted with cutting away the burnt pieces, Caleb doesn’t look up. “There’s also, uh, Fjord. He captains one of the boats, works on deployment.”
“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.” A soft whir, as Essek hovers a few inches higher, putting him at a better height to peer over the table with Caleb. “Do you need any help?”
Caleb blinks, surprised, and almost drops the scalpel he was sanitizing. “Aren’t you busy?”
Essek, with his old-fashioned chalkboards in the place of far more convenient holograms, never leaves his desk, never so much as turns around to bounce a theory off of Caleb. It seems like there’s a new pack of chalk and fresh notebook on his desk every other day- clearly he’s making progress, but the bubble of focus around Essek is too intimidating for Caleb to investigate.
“I’ve reached a stopping point,” Essek frowns when Caleb looks at him, waiting for him to elaborate, and sighs, “I’m stuck on the particle displacement we’ve detected at the mouth of the rifts, which only seems to effect the Kaiju, not the pilots. It’s- I don’t think you’d be interested. I need something else to do, while I brainstorm.”
Caleb manages to bite back his disappointment at not getting to hear the rest and points towards the sink- the one safe for normal use, that doesn’t currently have corrosion scars from caustic acids. “I can definitely give you that.”
Essek, unsurprisingly, is incredibly helpful. He might not fully understand the process, but he’s precise in following Caleb’s instructions and doesn’t complain when he has to touch the gross, slimy parts. He generously interprets Caleb’s just put them over there to mean place them very carefully in straight lines. It only takes him a few minutes to get the hang of it, effortlessly following Caleb’s lead as they work in parallel on their respective halves of the hearts.
“I can’t say I understand the appeal,” Essek starts, after many minutes of silence, “but there’s certainly something to working with the actual thing, rather than theory.”
Caleb is working at a particularly tough piece- the Kaiju are, if nothing else, heavily armored, inside and out- the exposure to oxygen making everything harder to pull apart, to cut up and catalogue. He doesn’t look up at Essek’s words, but finds his attention easily split.
“It’s all about,” Caleb pushes down, again, and the muscles finally give, “manipulating the body, finding what makes it tick. From there, we can change it.”
“Like,” Essek pauses, hesitating, “change it from living to dead, you mean.”
Caleb huffs, almost under his breath, “In this circumstance, perhaps.”
To his side, he sees Essek’s hands still, briefly, and feels eyes on him as Essek looks up. Essek has this way of looking at him, like he’s waiting for something, until an invisible tell gives him away. He feels both studied and seen through.
Caleb can’t say he hates it.
“You don’t sound as happy about that as I’d expect. Normally, people are thrilled at the thought of dead Kaiju,” Essek gestures, with one gloved hand, over the table, “More for you.”
Caleb looks firmly down at the heart, imagining the many cross-sections and pieces still unmapped, in the burned away absence. “I just think that more can be done.”
“I suppose that’s one thing we can agree on.” Essek is already looking at him when Caleb looks up, so their eyes meet, “The other side of the rifts are far more interesting. There’s no telling what we could find, how we could progress- but we need those doors closed, if we’re going to be alive to enjoy that progress.”
“I don’t think it’s as simple as leaving them open or closed.”
Essek leans back over the heart, having found what he was looking for in Caleb’s expression, and mutters, almost to himself, “You might be right about that.”
Caleb doesn’t say anything else, just watches as Essek finishes with his portion of the heart. Essek’s hands, even with the borrowed plastic gloves, do not look like they belong amongst the controlled carnage of the lab table. Made for spinning chalk between fingers, and gliding across the holograms.
He lines up the scalpel again, just a bit off-target, just a bit too close to the arteries. “Ah, don’t—”
Caleb grabs Essek’s hand, stopping him before he pierces something he shouldn’t- the faint burns on his own hands are proof of this lesson learned. Essek freezes, startled by the contact, and grips the scalpel a little tighter before he catches up to what’s happened and pulls back.
Caleb lets him go, with some reluctance. “The blood is, uh, acidic. You have to cut around carefully, or it– you get the picture.”
“It’s good that you were watching, then,” Essek doesn’t smile, but his face suggests that he might have, if he possessed less self-control, “I owe you one, Widogast.”
Caleb does not possess that same control- he’s not sure what Essek hears in his voice as he says, “It’s no trouble.”
He thinks, in the end, he may have been more successful in distracting himself from his work, than he was in distracting Essek.
Caleb has reached the point where the crick in his neck from leaning over his work, the pages and pages of pieced together neural pathways and conflicting experiments, is threatening to make the hunch of his shoulders permanent. Essek cannot be in a much better place- Caleb glances over to catch him with his head in his hands, again, a half-filled chalkboard laying forlornly on his desk.
Caleb stands with no warning, letting his pen clatter on the table and pushing his chair away with more force than necessary. Essek looks up, alarmed and- unless Caleb’s imagining it- intrigued.
“Do you want to get out of here?”
Which is how they’ve found themselves on the steel catwalk above the Jaegers, high up in the hanger and out of sight of people who know they shouldn’t be here. Neither of them are stealthy enough to pull this off for long- the equivalent of two librarians, tiny amongst the massive machines that represent their only hope against Armageddon.
“It’s always weird to see them from up here.” The giant, unpiloted mechs seem to stare back at Caleb as they’re shifted into place. Empty eyes, visors with no life behind them. “Feels like we shouldn’t be looking at them eye-to-eye.”
Essek hums, and leans forward slightly, as close to the rails as he dares. “I’m more used to seeing them in diagrams.”
Caleb had known, in theory, that there must be a tangled web of physics behind the engineering of the Jaegers, but it’s different to know that Essek holds those secrets. He’d love nothing more than to pick his brain about it, even if it’s far outside his field. It’s a shame the hanger feels like an inappropriate place to host a high-detail physics lecture.
“It must be interesting, working with us. Thelyss has been, uh,” he hesitates, unsure if this is rude to point out, “forgive me for saying, rather at odds with Dwendalian interests.”
Essek is quiet for a moment, almost long enough for Caleb to pull the ripcord and apologize, before responding, “It has been interesting. It is… an opportunity, for me, to work for something greater than I have in the past.”
“In the past?”
“We have not been as,” he pauses, searching for the word, “kind as we should have, in sharing our designs. Many have failed to consider the state of the world in our quest for progress.”
Corporate sabotage in the race for mechs is something of a well-known secret. The extent of it is hidden, mostly, behind the veil of the destruction that it coincided with. Trading the right secrets to the wrong person could take you far- it just might mean leaving burning cities in your wake.
Essek, overlooking the last of the Jaegers, the vestiges of hope for the world, suddenly looks so tired, older than Caleb had seen him before now. It reminds of Caleb of his own reflection, at night when the manic layer of end of the world is wiped away to reveal exhaustion. Essek’s formality, the organized face he presents, functions as just another mask.
“I have made many mistakes. I am hoping-” Essek shakes his head, correcting himself, “All I can do is try again. To be better.”
Caleb cannot absolve him, cannot lift the weight of things unsaid, guilt anchored deeply. He can only stand there, at Essek’s side, and carry his own guilt.
“Leave it to the end of the world to show us that we can only move forward, until we run out of road.” Caleb tries for a smile, one Essek doesn’t match. “Sometimes, I’m not sure there’s still road. Feel like I’m drifting over the dirt, these days.”
Essek’s response, agreement or disagreement, is drowned out as they start shifting another of the Jaegers, the dragging of metal and old supports strained to their limits forming a din that has passerby covering their ears. Caleb watches its pilots stare up at it, unflinching in the noise.
He finds himself talking as the noise stops, filling the vacuum of silence, “I was almost one of them, you know.”
After he says it, he immediately regrets it. In one moment, it feels like the thing to do- share something personal, after Essek had taken the first step- and in the next, it feels like an entirely unnecessary can of worms. Because, of course, the next question is-
“Under who?”
Caleb swallows and considers lying. He could do it. He could keep it vague- he should, it should stay buried like his name. He’s not entirely sure why he doesn’t want to.
“Ikithon.”
He sees it, the second he says it. He sees the recognition, the surprise, the fear. Essek knows that name, more than anyone in passing knows that name. To Essek, he is not simply an unpleasant teacher.
He doesn’t want to see Essek as someone who worked with Ikithon- he doesn’t want to know what it means that he would forgive Essek, in a heartbeat, but can’t do same for himself.
“I wasn’t able to drift,” Caleb continues, and almost believes that’s the whole truth, the entire, uncomplicated reason, “Dropped out of the Academy.” Not before the damage was done.
Essek looks down, studying the grimy floor beneath them. “Probably for the best.”
“I’m starting to think we should’ve put our funding into time machines, instead of Jaegers.” Caleb sighs, and feels a part of himself leave with his breath. He looks to his side, where Essek remains silent. “Should’ve gone into physics, I guess.”
People rush around below them, preparing for another Jaeger to enter. The gate is cleared, the runway lights up, and various maintenance teams stand at the ready. Caleb wonders how they can stand this, how they can keep going through the motions every day, even as less and less pilots return.
He supposes he could say the same about himself, about anyone still coming to work on this base. For the first time in a long time, they’re all working towards the same thing. They’re all looking to the pilots, spending what’s left of their lives to stack the deck in their favor.
“I know a few of them,” Caleb pauses, and clarifies, “The pilots, I mean.”
“You failed to mention that, in your list of people you know.” Essek tries to laugh, though it doesn’t quite come out right, and looks back up at Caleb, “Which ones?”
“I’m not sure you know them.” People in their position don’t generally interact with the pilots, directly. Caleb would say it’s strange for him to have friends in the Academy, but it’s not the weirdest connection he’s made recently. “Yasha and Beau on the Cobalt line. They’re only just out of the Academy.”
Only just out and making a formidable reputation for themselves. He’s only skimmed the statistics, but if there was a leaderboard, he’d say they’re pulling ahead. Knowing Beau, that’s greater motivation than the potential for saving the world.
Essek’s façade falls away completely, showing his surprise. “The two terrifying women in the Expositor?”
“Those are the ones,” Caleb leans against the railing, out of the shadows. A little more bold, now that most of the people below are distracted. A massive Jaeger, with chipping blue paint and massive jets affixed to its back, steps in through the gate, tracking in water around its heels. “Speak of the devil.”
He can imagine Beau and Yasha working in tandem, seamlessly, to bring the mech into the hanger, ducking its head slightly to make it under the doorway. One hand is occupied, clenched around a scaly leg, metal fingers dug into the fallen Kaiju’s flesh. It’s oddly small, not the fully grown beasts Caleb is used to seeing them drag through.
“Is that-“ Essek doesn’t finish his question, perhaps because he can see the answer in Caleb’s expression.
The Kaiju’s head is entirely intact, its skull spared at the expense of a hole in its chest. A full brain, no shrapnel or missing pieces. Exactly what Caleb has been waiting for, exactly what he’s been trying to piece together.
Essek follows at his heels as Caleb dashes for the stairs, stealth forgotten altogether.
The whirring of saws and grim, grinding sounds of bone being cut come to an end, at long last. There’s a tube prepped, filled with foul-smelling chemicals intended to preserve and suspend alien flesh. The sound, as the brain is deposited, is somehow worse than the grinding noise.
Essek looks at him, watching silently for a long moment. It is difficult, to feel his eyes on him and not look back, but Caleb manages it, keeping his gaze focused on the mass of nerves before him.
“I understand the temptation.”
Caleb laughs, with no humor. “Do you?”
The headset is light, almost flimsy, in his hands. He passes it between them, running his hands over the familiar metal and wires. It looks like it might fall apart any second now, not at all like it’s made of expensive, stolen equipment. Not all like Caleb’s been thinking about it for months, like it could save them all- if he can pull this off.
The Kaiju’s brain floats in the container in front of him, wires trailing off of it. Essek sits beside it, the filtered green light through the tube casting harsh shadows over his face. He’s not supposed to be here, but Caleb should’ve known that Essek wouldn’t stick to his scheduled breaks.
“I know more about temptation than you, Caleb.”
It’s rare to hear Essek angry- figures that he chooses a time like this to finally call Caleb by his first name.
“Then you should know that I can’t pass up this opportunity.” Caleb clicks the final pieces into place, watching the lights on the headset start to glow. He loses the fight against another temptation and glances over to Essek, who looks to be fighting fiercely not for a neutral expression, but to keep back tears. “I will not have more lives on my conscience. If this could win us the fight, I have to do it.”
He reaches for the control panel, lifting the headset with his other hand. He has to get this over with before he loses his nerve, before Essek decides to find someone who might actually be able to stop him, before Jester or Veth or anyone else stumble upon him
Essek grabs his wrist, stopping him. His eyes are wide, a little surprised at himself, but he meets Caleb’s stare dead-on.
“I don’t want to lose you to this,” he clears his throat, and looks down, away, “We all still need you.”
Even now, they can’t help but lie to themselves.
“I have to do this.”
Essek looks back at him and for once, seems frustrated to be unable to peer behind Caleb’s eyes, to get the answers he always does. He looks to the side with a heavy sigh, and Caleb thinks for a moment that he’s given up, that he’s going to agree, when Essek lets go of his hand to reach behind them, to the lab table still covered in wires and abandoned tech.
Many drafts of the headset sit amongst the wreckage, the results of late nights spent working with a collection born of Veth’s sticky fingers and Caleb’s hoarding. Essek grabs one, easily picking out the most functional of the bunch, and presses it into Caleb’s free hand.
“Fine,” his face sets, not in the neutral that Caleb’s come to expect, but in a determination that feels almost dangerous, “Then I’m coming with you.”
Essek’s eyes are a dare, waiting for Caleb to find a reason to deny him. He knows, as well as Caleb, that two of them would increase their chances of surviving this. He also knows, maybe better than Caleb, that none of that matters. Caleb would always rather take the brunt of it, than allow his friends to hurt.
This feels, distinctly, like an argument Caleb can’t win. Essek looks a few seconds away from hooking it up himself.
Caleb sighs, a faint smile escaping him. “Didn’t think you’d be repaying that favor so soon.”
Essek only pushes the headset more firmly into his hands, though it’s hard to tell whether he’s safe-guarding against Caleb losing his nerve, or losing his own nerve.
Caleb puts Essek’s headset on first, taking longer than necessary to adjust its fit, before putting on his own. They sit across from each other, in the distorted shadow of the brain. Essek’s gaze, fixed on Caleb, doesn’t waver and just before Caleb hits the switch, he holds out his hand.
Caleb takes it and turns on the machine.
The drift hits him immediately, like a weight falling on his brain as something too big climbs into his skull and pushes his mind out to the edges, pressed against bone. Everything else, outside of his mind and Essek’s mind and this new intrusion, disappears entirely. Sensation, apart from a terrible, sourceless pain, leaves him.
Essek’s mind bursts into focus like a searing light in the abyss, a star far above him. Caleb reaches for it, as the mind of the Kaiju, oppressive and all-consuming, threatens to swallow him up.
He feels their connection like entwined hands, before they collapse into each other, blurring into one. Warm and cool colors mix together in threads that wind and wind around until they are one inseparable string. Shared pain is conducted through it, a wire of strange electricity.
He is hearing a city on fire, screaming, and imagines he can pick out familiar voices in the chaos.
He is shaking a hand like a corpse, bony and terrible as its fingernails dig into his skin.
He is on a cold tile floor, aware that he is alone, alone, alone—
Somewhere, outside of himself, he squeezes Essek’s hand.
The Kaiju bears down on both of them and he finds himself standing beside Essek on a destroyed city street, its features a mashed together version of Caleb and Essek’s childhoods. It is too much for either of them, even standing together, but when he looks down at Essek, he sees only his smile, sharp and confident.
Everything begins to dissolve as the mind- the many minds- of the Kaiju falls over them.
Waking up is not fun.
Once, in grad school, Caleb stayed up for 52 hours, subsisting on diabolical combinations of energy drinks and pure spite for his professors. After turning in his last assignments, including a paper that served as a major breakthrough in his field but was so manic it was incomprehensible to anyone except Caleb, he crashed hard and did not wake for another day, when Veth checked to see if he was still alive.
He could’ve sworn, at the time, that the headache he felt upon seeing light for the first time that day was the worst he’d ever experience.
This headache easily doubles it.
The lights are, mercifully, left completely off, with only the dim sunlight leaking out from under the blinds turning the infirmary room a dull grey. He’s sat, partially upright, on the thin mattress of the hospital bed, a place he knows well. Outside the room, he can just make out the quiet, constant noise of their busy med station, conversation and machines overlapping.
To his right, similarly propped up, is Essek.
He wakes at the same moment as Caleb and they both turn, surprise mirrored in their faces. At seeing each other, at being alive at all- it’s anybody’s guess.
Objectively, Caleb is sure they both look absolutely terrible, but he can only see the light in Essek’s eyes and his tired smile. There’s a drowsy kind of comfort between the two of them, relief of tension being let go. They lived- they both lived.
“This is not the warm welcome to the land of the living I was hoping for.”
Caleb laughs, even if it hurts, a little. “This feels less like a welcome party, and more like breaking a window and climbing back in.”
There’s no connection between them anymore, no wires or drifts, but he still feels it faintly, a buzzing at the back of his head. Essek’s pain feels like an echo of his own, and his warmth is still there, as if he’s still holding his hand. It’s stable, an anchor to new wakefulness.
“They should’ve known better than to put two of us in the same lab.” Essek shakes his head, and winces at the movement. “It could only ever have ended in disaster.”
Caleb grins and is pleased to see Essek do the same, just as unguarded as he was in the drift.
They only have a few minutes before Jester comes in to yell at him for being stupid- possibly, the whole crew is lined up somewhere outside, lists of grievances in hand. Shortly following that, he assumes there will be a small battalion of military personnel waiting to hear what they’ve discovered.
Until then, he has time to do more stupid things, mostly unsupervised.
He drags himself out of the bed, pretending that he doesn’t nearly collapse as soon as his feet hit the floor, and wheels the bed closer to Essek’s, carefully maneuvering the wires still attached to his chest and arms. Once they’re an arm’s length away, Caleb stops and climbs back in.
This time, he holds his hand out first and knows, without a doubt, that Essek will take it.
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starshineandbooks · 3 years
Text
This Is part of the sidlink exchange ( @sidlinkgiftexchange ) and is for @naobara He seems awesome and I'm excited to give this to him!
Link paces, impatient as always, if better healed, he’s so close to getting to see Sidon again, but what if he doesn't like him anymore? What if he found someone else? What if the prince realizes Mipha’s death is all Link’s fault?
    “Are you done pacing?” Myrah asks, looking up from her scimitar she is cleaning, “I promise, he still loves you, the royal zora siblings have a very specific type, you.”
    Link turns to look at his friend, one of the few left from the before calamity times, she was frozen in time by magic, neither of them is too sure how, but their ages seem to be tied together with eachother’s and Zelda’s, and the trio seems to age more like Zora than hylians now.
    She raises a brow, gold eyes appraising him, different from the usually playful gaze she has.
    “I- what?”
    She snorts, “Come on, Link, you need to get ready, you need to finish collecting the stones.”
    “I guess.” He shifts, arms crossing as he blows hair out of his face to avoid making eye contact.
    “I’ll be with you, we’ll make a day of it, who gets more shiny rocks vs lizards oir something.”
    Myrah sets the blade down, standing up to her half hylian half gerudo glorious height of much taller than Link as she strides to him, hand settling on the hero’s shoulder with a comforting little tune she hums.
    He narrows his eyes at her.
    “Oh alright, we’ll spar too.”
    He smiles, “Good.”
    She shakes her head, then, “Come on, I have a surprise for you.”
    “You do?”
    “Yeah, I do.”
    Myrah stands her hair falling over her shoulder, he can see her gerudo half prominent in her face and hair.  She leads him through her house, and into a room he’s seen a few times but rarely is in.
    She stops then, “It’s okay if you don’t like it, or think it’s too much… I just- Here.”
    Myrah moves a sheet out of the way and Link stares, awed.
    Several things are there, a set of matching swords, one made for Link and the other for Sidon, obvious in the size. A set of voice and vai clothes, both for link. A painting, Sidon and Link dancing at a ball, both draped in fancy jewels. Several pieces of jewelry. And oddly enough, a small box wrapped in silk.
    “Go on,” Myrah smiles gently.
    Link steps forwards, finding the swords first, silver, with gold decorative vines on the hilt, pretty but functional. He tests the edge, sharp, dangerous. He tries the smaller sword, and finds it balanced perfectly for him, a one handed sword, the light glints off of it.
    “Where did you get all of this?” He asks.
    Myrah smiles softly, “The painting is Kaori and Zelda’s gift. I had Ashley in gerudo craft the jewelry, I enchanted them myself. The box is my own doing, and the clothes are things- My mother made them for you years ago. Likely before you remember.”
    Link gasps, “Your mother?”
    “We grew up close as siblings,” Myrah says, “She cared for you like her own.”
    “Oh.”
    “The zoran black smith made the swords, I designed them and enchanted the metal.”
    “You can enchant weapons and jewelry?”
    She laughs, gentle, and nods, “Of course, it was my aunt’s craft, and useful.”
    “Wow.”
    Link opens the box, and stares at the keys, identical, “What is this?”
    “I made you your own hidden, private home in the domain, for you and Sidon.”
    “You did?”
    She nods, “Of course.”
    “Myrah-”
    She smiles, “There’s- one more thing.”
    “What?”
    Myrah turns, grabbing something before handing it to Link, “Sidon asked me to give you this the day before you are reunited and married.”
    Link stares at the rolled up scroll, eyes a little wide.
    ‘My dear sapphire,
                    Without you I am miserable, even when you are only gone a week, I cannot imagine how this year has affected me, yet I doubt it has been easy for you either. You are truly my most prized companion, and should you for any reason wish to not be married, I hold no ill will.
    However, I am excited, because I know if you are reading this we’re almost guaranteed a marriage. I have missed you greatly, even if I have yet to separate this fatal year at the date of writing this, I know I ache for your embrace.
    I hope you are well, I know the princess will take care of you, your friends have never been too patient with your moods that l;ead to taking ill care of yourself. And if I know you, you are either staying near Zelda, or Myrah, likely both, and I know neither will hesitate to make you take care.
    Anyways, I am likely at my wits end, I find you make me better and without you I get- irritable. So, if when we reunite I seem off, I assure you I am fine.
    I know you are busy, just as you know I am. I love you more than all the stars in the sky, the fish in the sea, and the blades of grass you love.
    -Sidon’
    Link doesn't realize he’s crying until he feels the tears hit his hand.
    “Get dressed,” Myrah says, “We’re going on a trip.”
    -------
    It isn’t until Zelda is walking him down the aisle that Link finally breathes again, and the worst this is he has to keep in the proper role, he can’t just rush Sidon and tackle him into a hug, no, that would be ‘improper’, and ‘rude’, and ‘uncivilised’.
    Myrah gives him a little snap followed by a wave that he tunes back in.
    But Sidon’s blinding smile is enough to keep Link anchored, and he’s standing opposite his beloved prince quickly and yet not soon enough.
    And the ceremony is long, and boring, and Link really isn’t sure what’s said, too focused on Sidon.
    Sidon’s usual regal parephnelia is gone, instead it is still silver but it is all sapphire, and he wears his father’s headdress, with silk tied about his ankles, wrists, and wasit.
    Myrah elbows him sharply, “Link,” SHe hisses.
    “What- Oh, yes, I do.”
    Sidon laughs, and then he’s being picked up by SIdon, their foreheads pressed together, and then Myrah is breaking costumes by cheering scandalous things. Zelda smacks her.
    But Link doesn't care, not when he gets to kiss Sidon’s nose and be carried away gently by his prince, his husband now. 
    Husband! They’re married!
    Sidon holds him close, walking through the hidden halls, and he breathes deeply, saltwater and fish, but it smells good, home like even.
    “You’re here.” Sidon says.
    “Of course I am.” Link says, and it’s sincere, just like it should be, just what Sidon needs.
    “I love you. I was- well surely there were other things, people who caught your interest over the years.”
    “Never.”
    “I- Really?”
    “Never, Sidon. I missed you.”
    “I missed you too,” The prince whispers, nuzzling against Link’s face, smooth scales offering solace that had previously seemed miles away.
    “I can’t wait for a forever with you,” Link says, and he means it, he’s finally home. The Calamity is beaten, Zelda and Myrah are happy together, everyone is safe, the champion’s spirits are freed, and he’s in his husband’s arms.
    Everything is well.
    -------
    Link’s used to ridiculous things, okay? The wars of the goddess do that. And so does the fact that he married a shark puppy that’s ten foot tall and more muscled than anything or anyone else Link knows, and he’s best friends with several gerudo soldiers.
    But really, this, this has to take the cake.
    “You what?” Link asks, and it’s tiring.
    “I found this in the spring of courage.” Sidon says, holding up a golden sphere that is clearly a large zora egg.
    “Oh,” Link nods, because really, what else did he expect?
    “I think it’s for us!”
    Link just nods, and turns, leading Sidon to their chambers, and they are easy, setting the orb into a pool.
    “I wonder what they look like?”
    Link nods, of course Sidon wonders, he himself does too.
    So, they sit down, and really, what’s the worst that getting a child could do? They just, will lose sleep, and time. At least the child will be a Zoran, Link reasons, after all, they live longer.
   
    “What do we name them?” Sidon asks.
    Link tilts his head, unsure then, “Lymphina?”
    Sidon hums then, “Maybe.”
    And whatever made the strange egg see fit that it should hatch, as a small Zoran child begins shrieking, a guppy like shape.
    They both turn, and there is a guppy with golden scales to match Link’s hair, red fins like Sidon’s coloration, and striking blue eyes that almost seem to glow. A nurse shark then. Like Mipha had been, gorgeous.
    Sidon gasps, “Oh my goodness, Link!”
    Link nods, “She’s a beauty.”
    “She’s perfect!”
    “What about- Mipha?” Link asks quietly.
    Sidon chokes, “You- really?”
    Link nods, of course he is.
    “I love it. Mipha, she’s going to be as wonderful as her aunt!”
    Link laughs warmly, nodding, because this is wonderful. His beloved husband, and a daughter, his bestfriends ruling hyrule, everything is well. He is safe and so is his family.
    And the little golden guppy with her aunt’s name is going to grow up so loved.
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