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roosterforme · 9 days

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Aim for the Sky Part 3 | Rooster x Reader

Summary: Bradley starts building his daughter's playset with a little help from an unexpected visitor. He wants to finish all of his projects and take care of you and do as much as he can now that he's home. There's so much he wants to get done, it might be time to make a to-do list.

Warnings: Fluff, smut, swearing, oral, pregnancy, bit of angst

Length: 4000 words

Pairing: Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x Female Reader

Aim for the Sky masterlist. This was written to accompany my series Is It Working For You? along with a bunch of my one-shots and other series, but it can be read on its own! Check my masterlist for the reading order.

Bradley was up at the crack of dawn on Saturday. His afternoon nap the previous day turned into one that lasted into the evening when you got up with him and cooked him dinner before going back to bed. His plan was to come home and take care of everything so you didn't have to, but so far you made him homemade chicken fajitas and lulled him to sleep with your fingers in his hair, twice.

But today, he was determined to return the favor. He wanted to get started on building the jungle gym, and he wanted to get in a few reps on his own workout equipment in the garage. He'd clean up the kitchen and take Tramp for a walk later, too. If he got started now, he might be able to build the entire jungle gym frame for his daughter. His daughter. He ran his hands over his face as you snoozed right next to him in bed. Would he ever stop being on the verge of tears when he thought about it?

There was a list of names he liked in the Nugget notebook which was still tucked away in his duffle bag. He had a favorite, but he didn't want to try to convince you that it was perfect until he heard which ones you liked. But he knew it would be perfect.

"Roo?"

He was just about to slip out of bed when you rolled toward him, reaching for him groggily like you couldn't quite believe he was really home. "There's my Baby Girl," he whispered, letting his hand settle on your belly now that you were awake. "And my Nugget."

In an instant, you pushed him onto his back, kissing him as he cradled you with both hands. Your bump wasn't very big yet, but it was noticeable, and he didn't want to hurt you. God he missed waking up next to you, and it was obvious you'd missed him, too. You deepened the kiss, your tongue dipping between his parted lips until you were tasting his mouth. He could feel your nipples harden against his chest through a layer of cotton as you dragged your fingers through his hair before letting them trail down his body to the waistband of the shorts he fell asleep in.

"Okay," he grunted, already hard for you as you ran your index finger inside the elastic. "Take it easy, Sweetheart. Wanna make this last." He rolled you gently onto your back as you cupped him inside his shorts, your thumb stroking his length. You squeezed his balls gently, spreading your legs wide. He glanced down your body as you smirked at him. "If you're gonna show off that pretty pussy, I'll put my mouth all over it."

"Bradley," you moaned, turning your head to the side. How on earth that bashful smile could make him even wilder, he had no idea. But just when he ran his thumb along your wet slit and tickled your ear with his mustache, someone started pounding on the front door.

You squeaked and jolted beneath him, but not in the way he wanted. "What the fuck?" he growled, easing his body off of yours. Once he was standing, he tried to adjust himself in his shorts, but it was obvious he was hard. Then there was more pounding.

"It's your first weekend home. Did you seriously invite someone over here this early, Bradley?" you asked, squinting as you reached for your phone. "It's seven o'clock!"

"No," he grunted. "I didn't even talk to anyone! I just wanted to eat your pussy in peace."

He stormed out of the bedroom, adjusting himself as he went. Tramp was already pacing back and forth and whimpering at the front door when Bradley saw Jake's car parked in front of the house. "Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me." He wrenched the door open and found Jake standing there with some grocery bags and a box of donuts. "What do you want?" Bradley barked while Tramp started licking the unwanted visitor's leg.

Jake strolled inside like he wasn't interrupting Bradley's blissful weekend of giving his wife head and finding out his Nugget is a girl. "I brought all of the groceries and everything," Jake answered, heading for the kitchen, completely unfazed by Bradley in nothing but his compression shorts. "Welcome home, by the way. Looks like the perfect day to start on that playset."

Bradley didn't particularly want to jump down his throat, especially since Jake had been the one to promise to get the damn thing built for the baby if he didn't make it home in one piece. "Why are you here exactly?" he asked, and then he heard your voice from down the hallway.

"Is that Jake?"

"Yes," Bradley and Jake replied at the same time. And then you appeared wearing that old shirt and a pair of Bradley's gym shorts and your glasses, and he wanted to drag you back to bed and put his mouth everywhere.

"What the hell?" you asked, stomping right up to Jake, clearly annoyed that Bradley's face wasn't between your thighs. "You practically woke us up!"

"Well, that's not completely true," Bradley muttered with a smirk, earning a glare from you.

Jake checked the clock on the microwave. "It's 7:18. When you texted me last night and said Rooster was home, you told me to come over around seven."

"I meant seven in the evening!" you said, flailing your arms. "Like a normal person!"

Jake just shrugged and bit into a donut. "I brought the groceries you asked for."

Bradley watched you and saw the exact moment you caved. The annoyance on your face melted away as you grabbed a cream donut from the box. "Wait, why did you ask Jake to bring groceries over?"

You nibbled on the donut and snuggled up against Bradley, looking up at him as you said, "I wanted to make Reuben his cookies today, but I didn't want to leave you to go to the store."

He kissed some powdered sugar from your lips and whispered, "You're the sweetest thing."

You pressed your cheek to his chest and said, "Since he's here, you might as well get Jake to help you with the pallets on the driveway since I can't lift anything that heavy."

Bradley cringed just thinking about it. "You will not be lifting a fucking finger, Sweetheart. I'll take care of everything." He looked at Jake over your head and asked, "Feel like helping me get started on the playset?"

He had half of a second donut in his mouth as he mumbled, "I thought that's why I was here."

----------------------------

Bradley didn't put any more clothing on, and that was a-okay with you. He just added his work boots to the mix. Those black compression shorts were working overtime as he and an equally shirtless Jake hauled everything from the driveway to the backyard. He already cleared out the area where the playset would go, framed it in with long wood planks and filled it with gravel, and today they would start assembling the frame.

Your plan to make five dozen cookies for Reuben kept getting derailed as you wandered over to the sliding glass door every five minutes or so. The yard wasn't very big, and now most of it would be taken up by the patio, shed and playset, but you'd let your husband build anything he wanted back there. He was so excited about the baby, it made you feel lightheaded.

You were pregnant with a girl. Maybe she'd have Bradley's wavy hair. Maybe she would look just like him. You leaned against the open door frame and watched the guys as they argued about a drill bit setting and smiled. When you caught Bradley's eye, he shouted out, "I love you," before continuing with his discussion. He loved you so well, you already knew he'd be just as devoted to his daughter.

The oven started beeping, letting you know it had preheated. You ran your hand down your body and whispered, "Your father is going to spoil you rotten." Then you put the first tray of chocolate chip cookie dough in the oven, and within minutes your entire house smelled amazing. You baked so many cookies for Reuben, you didn't see how he would even be able to eat all of them before they got stale, so you shaped the last batch into little heart cookies with your fingers before tossing them in the oven.

Then when you took a bite out of one of the cookies that was cooling on the counter, you felt her. It was that same light, fluttering sensation as last time when you tried to eat a piece of candy on Halloween. "Hi," you whispered, voice laced with excitement. "Do you have a sweet tooth?" There was more fluttering, and you grabbed at the edge of the counter as you laughed. "You do! Are you going to eat everything I bake just like your dad?"

You closed your eyes and chewed the cookie slowly, letting yourself linger in the kitchen over the feel of your daughter doing some kind of a wild somersault for you.

"It's getting hot out," came Bradley's voice through the open door. "Let's grab some drinks before we drill the brackets into place." Once he was inside with Jake, he started digging around in the refrigerator, retrieving two cans of beer and two water bottles. "You okay, Sweetheart?" he asked as he handed Jake a bottle and a can. He was eyeing you cautiously where you stood with your hand on your belly. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," you whispered, and now both men were looking at you. "The Nugget was just doing some backflips."

"She was?" Bradley asked in excitement, leaving his forgotten drinks on the counter next to the refrigerator. In an instant, he was on his knees in front of you, yanking your shirt up and kissing your belly button while his big, warm hands settled against you. "Is she still?"

"She?" Jake asked with a smile, and you smiled back while Bradley shushed him.

"I think it's still too early for you to feel anything this way," you whispered, tugging your fingers through Bradley's sweaty hair as his stubbled cheek came to rest on your bump.

"Hey, little Nugget," he murmured while Jake took his drinks and slipped back outside. "Can you let Daddy feel like one little thump?" You could feel her squirming around while he talked, but she was probably still too small for him to get what he wanted. "Please?"

You didn't rush him. Bradley just knelt there with his eyes closed for a few minutes while you played with his hair. Now that Jake knew you were having a girl, you may as well just call your parents this week and tell all of your friends as well.

Bradley groaned and hopped to his feet as soon as Jake started up one of his power tools on the patio. He kissed you, his sun-warmed torso pressed against you as he said, "I need to make sure he doesn't break anything." You were still laughing as he rushed outside.

---------------------------

The backyard was coming together nicely. After you fed Jake dinner and he finally left, Bradley undressed you and picked you up, setting you down on the edge of the counter where you could look out the window as the sky darkened. "You got a lot done today," you moaned while Bradley spread your legs and ate your pussy, picking up where he left off this morning. "Such a dedicated Daddy."

"Anything for the Nugget," he groaned before licking a long stripe up to your clit. His forehead bumped your growing belly which thrilled him as he slowly, meticulously brought you every bit of pleasure you should have had in bed earlier. His mind was swirling with all of the projects he had to do and the torn apart attic, and he was still exhausted from being away for so long. But he got lost in your taste and the sounds you were making as soon as he started sucking gently on your clit.

"You know what that fucking mustache does to me," you gasped while he tried not to grin. His fingers found your dainty tattoo, and he sucked on your clit a little harder until you were begging him to fuck you. He wanted to tell you no and draw your orgasm out of you on the kitchen counter, but then you demanded, "I want to come on your cock."

Carefully, so he didn't dare hurt you, he helped you slide off the counter and into his arms. "If this is uncomfortable for you, then you need to tell me, Baby Girl." But you were already spinning around and pressing your gorgeous ass back against him.

"Fuck me," you whined, and Bradley was more than happy to oblige.

He lined himself up with your slick entrance and pushed himself deep as he said, "I thought you told me you weren't as horny in the second trimester."

You were whimpering his name before you got control. "Well now that you're home, I guess I am."

"Music to my ears."

He went slowly, making sure you felt everything, and he cupped your belly and your fucking delicious breasts while you held onto the counter. Your body felt different to him, but in so many ways it was exactly the same. Your response never changed; you always welcomed him knowing he'd get you there no matter what. And you gripped him tight, rolling your hips back to meet him, stroke for stroke.

When he plucked at your nipples, you arched your back, and when he rolled your clit between his fingers, you started to come. He was right there, too, and you pushed him over the edge when you said, "Make a mess of my pussy, Roo."

"Damn it," he growled, lips pressed to your shoulder as he filled you up and kept himself thrust deep to enjoy the squeeze of your orgasm around him. When you straightened up but held him snug inside you, your head tipped back against his shoulder. "How was that, Sweetheart?" he crooned, and you moaned. Then your stomach growled loudly, and he chuckled.

"I'm so hungry. Didn't we just eat dinner?"

"My little Nugget is growing," he whispered, letting his chin rest on your shoulder so he could look at your tits. He brought his hands up so he could swipe his thumbs along your nipples. "I swear these fucking thing are getting bigger by the day," he mused while you reached for the plastic container of chocolate chip cookies. You held it up and let him take a bite before finishing the rest of it yourself. "Weren't these supposed to be for Reuben?" he asked.

You pointed to the island where several gallon sized bags were filled with cookies. "His are regular. The little heart shaped ones in this container are for you."

Bradley could have stood there forever with his hands all over the front of you and his softening cock still inside your pussy while you fed him heart shaped cookies and told him the baby was moving around again. "I want to feel her," he whispered.

Your head tipped back again as you said, "I know, Roo. Pretty soon she'll be kicking up a storm, excited about meeting her dad."

Then you started yawning and he finally took a reluctant step away from you. "It's time for bed," he said, patting your ass. "It was an early morning with Jake showing up and everything." He followed you to the bathroom and helped you clean up his cum from your legs, and then he waited until you were done washing your face and brushing your teeth to lead you to bed. He handed you a clean pair of his boxer briefs and watched you pull them up so the elastic sat just below your bump. He smiled, and before you could pull on his ancient UVA shirt, he pulled you closer.

"Can I help you with something?" you asked, giving him a coy look. "You ready to go for round two?"

He raised one eyebrow. "Are you ready to go for round two?" You were smiling but already stifling another yawn when he guided you toward the bed and tugged his shirt over your head. "You need to rest. I'll fuck you twice tomorrow."

You pulled the blanket up and whispered, "This is all Jake's fault."

Bradley snorted as he pulled the blanket back down, yanked up the shirt and leaned down to press his lips to your warm breasts. You whimpered as he kissed both nipples and ran his nose along your perfectly soft skin. "I can't get enough of these fucking things. My god, Sweetheart." He forced himself to pull the shirt back into place when you started to squirm, quickly kissing your bump first. After he removed your glasses and set them aside, he reached for the lamp on your nightstand.

"Aren't you getting in bed?"

He shook his head. "I'll clean the kitchen and let Tramp out first, and then I'll be in. I love you both."

"Love you, Roo," you curled up on your side, already falling asleep when you added, "You know what I'm hungry for?"

"What's that, Baby Girl?"

"Hot sauce."

He had to stifle his laughter as he whispered, "Finally. I'll take care of that tomorrow, too. I'll just add it to my list. Two rounds of sex, more playset building, and some hot sauce."

You were already sound asleep.

-----------------------------

When you got up on Sunday morning, Bradley and Tramp were nowhere to be found, but both Broncos were in the driveway. "Roo?" You were met with silence as you made yourself some coffee and filled a glass with water. He had covered the refrigerator in rows of ultrasound photos, and you couldn't help but laugh at the way he used up all of the magnets. You picked up one of the now stale donuts that Jake left, and that's when you found a note from your husband.

Walking Tramp to the beach. Back soon. I have my phone. Tell the Nugget I love her.

You smiled, looked down at your belly and said, "Your Daddy loves you." The way she immediately started to squirm and flutter around had you reaching for the counter. "Feels like you love him, too."

You moved his note to the side, and your fingers brushed a handwritten list, partially folded up and sitting on top of all of Bradley's unopened mail that you'd collected. The last time you went through his things, you ended up in a very dark place after you saw the results from the sperm test he took. You didn't want to do that again. You could just want until he got home. He wouldn't be long now.

But you stood there and read the first two things written which weren't hidden from your view. Contact lawyer. Send check to Nicole.

Who was Nicole? And why was Bradley contacting a lawyer without you? Your skin prickled as you reached for the piece of paper before pushing it further away. You considered going to get your phone from the bedroom to call him and tell him to come home, but instead you stood there and got frustrated. You did not want to do this to yourself again.

When he walked inside a few minutes later wearing snug gym shorts and a white tank, he was all smiles as Tramp ran for his water bowl. "Morning," he rasped, yanking his aviators down lower on his nose as he hung up the leash. "You look cute."

You didn't though. You hadn't showered, and you didn't even brush your teeth yet. "Can we talk about what's on this list?"

His brow furrowed and he froze. "What list?"

"This one," you said as calmly as you could. "The one where you wrote about contacting a lawyer and someone named Nicole."

He made his way over to you and asked, "How much did you read?" as he tossed his sunglasses on the counter.

You crossed your arms over your bump and frowned. "That's all I read."

"Good." He snatched it up, unfolded it and handed it to you. "It's my list of things I want to take care of today or tomorrow."

You read the list from top to bottom.

Contact lawyer

Send check to Nicole for permit

Order album for ultrasounds

Call Bradley Ross

Hot sauce reservation for my Baby Girl

Text Reuben

Offer to babysit Jeremiah

Order a new drill bit to replace the one Jake broke

Decide on Thanksgiving plans

"Oh," you said, meeting his eyes as you handed it back to him. "Who's Bradley Ross?"

He folded up the list again as he said, "The contractor who is going to re-do our attic however you want it."

"Oh." You pressed your lips together before you asked, "Are you going to tell me why you want to talk to a lawyer and who Nicole is?"

"Come here," he rasped, and you tucked yourself into his arms, your lips brushing his paper airplane tattoo. "I want a lawyer to add the Nugget to my will. And I think you should come with me to make sure literally everything is in order. for yourself, too." You nodded against him, and then he added, "And I really don't want to tell you who Nicole is, because it will ruin the surprise. But I've never even met her, and I have no idea who she actually is."

"That sounds weird."

"It's not, I promise, Sweetheart."

You looked up into his eyes, his gaze soft as he ran his hand slowly up and down your back. You already felt better just talking to him. "Fine. Keep your secrets. But the surprise had better be a good one."

He nodded. "It's something for our anniversary. You'll love it. Now why don't you bring your coffee outside and keep me company while I work on the playset?"

You were starting to melt. "I could do that."

"Then we can take a shower together?" he asked hopefully. "You can wash my hair?"

You melted a little bit more. "I would love that."

"And then I'll take you out to dinner."

You sat out on the patio in the sun for a while, not doing much to help Bradley other than occasionally catcall and make sure he drank enough water. Then you took a luxurious shower, complete with hair washing and sex against the wall. He was taking you up to the hot sauce restaurant in Del Mar where you had your first date, and you squeezed yourself into the red dress you wore that night.

Bradley was acting like his brain was short circuiting, and maybe it was. "Holy fucking hell," he groaned, gripping the edge of the dresser when he came to check to see if you were ready to go. He was staring at you like he was in agony as he bit down on his knuckle. He let out a soft wheezing sound before he said, "You're pregnant. In your red dress."

You looked down at yourself; you didn't think it looked that bad. "Yes?"

He rushed forward and grabbed your hand. "That's so fucking sexy. We've gotta go. Now. Or else we'll never leave the house."

"Roo!" you laughed as he pulled you along. "I don't even have shoes on."

He threatened to carry you everywhere before you successfully put on a cute pair of shoes. Then you and he dropped the cookies off at Reuben's place, and you gave the other aviator a kiss on the cheek and thanked him for looking after Bradley. And then the two of you were back in the blue Bronco, winding up the coastal highway as the sun set over the ocean. It was nearly Thanksgiving. It was almost your first wedding anniversary. The Nugget was back to doing somersaults. And finally, you were craving hot sauce again.

-----------------------------

This man already loves his kiddo. BG is about to have a do over for the steak dinner that got ruined when she was in Annapolis. I still don't know what they are doing for Thanksgiving (good thing it's on his to-do list), but they will definitely be celebrating their first anniversary very soon! Thanks @beyondthesefourwalls

PART 4

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urlocalfeiner · 3 months

Note

Hey could you do a neteyam x omaticaya! reader enemies to lovers type of beat? :)

i hate you, not | neteyam sully

!requests are open!

pairing: neteyam sully x omaticaya!fem! reader

warnings: swearing, enemies to lovers?, jealous neteyam

neteyam sully masterlist!

neteyam sully hated you, he truly did. he couldn't bare you one bit, he hated the fact you made his heart beat so fast that he seemed to be developing cardiac arrhythmia, he hated how his hands sweated whenever you smiled- showing off your bright fangs, and he definitely hated how his body was taken by an uneasy restlessness every time you were next to him

neteyam hated that. he was deeply irritated when, whenever you would touch him or simply brush past him, he had the feeling that his legs were going to fail and collapse in on themselves. he knew he obsessed with control and losing the control of his own body and own emotions was a deep and cutting blow- he was always the one to be calm and collected, but when you were around him, neteyam found himself being washed of any of that.

neteyam would've sworn to the seven seas on pandora and anyone who were to ask him, that he did not like you one single bit. he claimed he did not like the you, but maybe the truth was that he didn't like himself around you. maybe, just maybe, he didn't like that just from one single look from you could tear down all his walls in an instant.

this resulted into neteyam ignoring your very existence, and when the two of you did cross paths- which was almost every day, much to his dismay- he would reply shortly, trying to pay no mind to you at all.

but it never worked, he couldn't bring himself to tear his gaze away from you sometimes- why did you have to be so unbelievably breathtakingly gorgeous? neteyam had never seen such beauty that matched yours, and it scared him. because who was neteyam sully, the mighty warrior and future clan leader who did not fear to speak in front of any na'vi who might dare challenged him. who was he, he did not hesitate to fight for the things he loves, he was not scared nor worried about what people thought of him. so why was it that he was scared to speak to you, why was he worried what you thought of him?- why was it that everything came easy to neteyam sully, except you.

"tuk, tuk," you hushed tuk holding her in your arms, brushing away her hair from her face as you cooed her to sleep- which is what she did in a matter of mere seconds.

neteyam stared at you and tuk from the other side of the hut, observing the interaction. he hated it- he hated that his mind started to drift to how good you were with children, how you would be with you own. he wanted to slap himself- he did not want you to have his children. no way. but… you would be a excellent mother with no doubt- no neteyam stopped himself again. “i can put her to sleep, it is fine.” he stood up, moving to where you were with tuk in your arms.

“it’s okay, she’s already asleep.” you were obvious to the angry expression on his face, but as you looked up from tuk and saw how he was looking down at you, your eyebrows furrowed. “what’s wrong?”

“nothing.” he blunted stated, reaching down for tuk in your hands- he picked her up gently, removing her from your hold- which you couldn’t protest about as it was his sister. “you can head back home now.”

you were no doubt confused, why was he so irritated about you putting tuk to sleep? “okay, see you tomorrow.” with that you made your way out of the sullys hut, glancing back to see neteyam already looking at you. the two of your eyes met for a split second before he ripped his gaze from you fast, turning back around to tuk. cursing himself for getting caught staring at you.

but when the day came where his father ordered him to help train you, neteyam had never wanted more than to speak back to his father- but he didn’t. he obliged to teach you. he looked at training you like a chore, one that he had to do without choice- just sucking it up until it is done.

“your back isn’t straight.” neteyam pointed out as you held your bow and arrow in hand trying to straighten your back- you had been like this for 10 minutes straight and your back was begging for a rest.

you had no idea as to why the future oke’leytan didn’t take a liking to you, as long as you had remembered he didn’t particularly like you- even though you were sure you had never done anything against him. you were hoping that maybe you and him would become friends with him teaching you, but it only made you not like him. he was rude and nothing you ever did seemed to be good enough for him, but what pissed you off the most was the fact he was not like that with anyone else- you had observed the way he talked to other na’vi in the clan, he spoke to them with respect and kindness. so why did he not speak to you with the same?

“my back is tired.” your arm was slightly beginning to shake from being in the tiring position for so long. you got no response from neteyam. “can we take a break? please.” you lowered the bow, feeling relieved from the exit of the position putting your back at rest.

but your relief was quickly whipped back away as neteyam spoke. “no.” you groaned frustratingly going back to your previous position with your bow and arrow, “your form is sloppy.”

that was it, you have had enough of training for today- you withdrawled your bow and arrow and began to walk away. "where are you going? you are not done." he grabbed your wrist to stop you from going further- he felt his heart start to pick up its paste from the feeling of you skin on his.

“neteyam, we have been doing this for 3 hours now.” you breathed out, swaying the hand that wasn’t in his hold around in dramatic gestures.

“that is because you,” he emphasised you, “have not been listening.” he narrowed his eyes at you, why couldn’t you just listen to him? he did not want to do it as much as you did.

“i have!” you took a deep breath in, trying to settle your temper down- you didn’t want to yell at the future oke’lotyan. “look, i’m sorry but every muscle in my body is aching right now.” your eyes pleaded with his.

neteyam felt bad, his heart clenched a little in his chest at how tired your voice sounded. “okay,” he breathed out. “we will take a quick break.” your eyes lit up, a grin forming onto your face before he spoke up again. “but, it is only a short one, got it?

“yes, got it.” you nodded, grinning- you couldn’t really believe neteyam sully was letting you take a break, you would’ve never thought. oh, he loved your smile.

you dashed quickly across the large tree branch, leaving neteyam standing there by himself- he stood there for a quick second until he was bolting off right behind you. “hey!- where are you going?!” he shouted out for you as he continued running after you, jumping from tree to tree. until you finally stopped on a branch filled with moss. “i thought you said your muscles hurt?” he glared at you.

your eyes shot widely, snapping your neck to him as you crouched. “uh- they still do?” it wasn’t technically a lie, your body did hurt before. now it just didn’t.

neteyam had finally had enough of you, in that moment his jaw clenched. why did you have to be so beautiful that it distracted him? why did you have to have the most amazing smile? why did you have to be the one he had to train.

you saw the gears twisting in his head, you braced yourself for him to start yelling- and you were right, you started yelling alright.

“eywa!” he cursed, rubbing his temples. “you are so frustrating!” he looked up at you, meeting your eyes. “do you think i want to be here right now?”

he paused, waiting for you to answer- “no-“ before you could he cut you off.

“i could be doing so many things right now!- but no, i am stuck here, trying to train a baby.” it was like he was talking out loud to himself. you furrowed your eyebrows at the name he called you.

“baby?”

“yes!” he exclaimed, throwing his arms up in the air. “you are a baby.” he pointed right at you, you were offended to say the least.

“right, i am the baby.” you rolled your eyes, which made neteyam even more mad. “i am so the baby here!” you got up, advancing towards him angrily. “you are the only baby here neteyam- you always complain and complain and complain! you’re life is oh, so hard, neteyam. how could you even bare?” you mocked his voice, his jaw clenched tighter at every word you said. “having to train the baby!- i mean you’re totally right! the future oke’loyten should not have to train a baby!” sarcasm dripped from your mouth.

“do not talk to me like that.” he stepped forward to you, looking down at you as he was taller than you- any other na’vi would most definitely run away from neteyam at that moment, even you could admit he was scary when he was mad.

but you didn’t falter, you stood your ground. “what are you going to do about it? you can’t hurt a baby, can you now?” you said whilst glaring daggers at him.

both of you were too prideful to back down at that moment- and both far too angry. if looks could kill, both you and neteyam would be 6 feet under by now- with the way the two of you were glaring at one another.

“huh?” you spoke up again, after there was no reply from the young warrior.

neteyams jaw clenched, his tail swaying angrily behind him- eywa, you got under his skin. “that is no way to speak to your future oke'leytan.”

you knew he was telling the truth, it was in fact not a way to do so. you sucked in a sharp breath and stepped back- backing down. “some future oke’leytan you are.” you mumbled, but neteyam heard it.

he grabbed your wrist in one swift motion, pulling you to meet him again. but as he did so, he regretted it. you were waiting for him to say something but he didn't- because neteyam didn’t know why he had stopped you, he wanted you to go, he really did- then you wouldn’t bother him anymore, so why did he want you to stay with him so bad?

he looked down, his skin burning at the sensation of your touch- neteyam quickly let go off your hand, regaining himself. “go back to the village.”

your ears slowly bent downwards, your gaze locked onto the ground as you turned around and began your way back to the village.

neteyam watched you leave, his eyes not leaving your figure once- as you disappeared from his line of vision he sucked in a sharp breath and hit the closest thing to him, a tree in anger. “stupid.” he muttered, running his hands over his face. he felt stupid, completely stupid. you were just a woman, nothing else and nothing less- but oh, you were so much more than just a simple woman to neteyam.

his parents had always shown so much love to one another whilst he was growing up, he thought that when he found love it would come easy to him like his parents. but, alas it didn’t- it was confusing for him, he didn’t get it one bit.

the way your face twisted with hurt when he called you a baby replayed in his mind, over and over again. how sad you looked when he told you to go. neteyam sully had never felt like more of a skxqwng.

eclipse had fallen over pandora and the people were celebrating the 100th day of the year, it had always been tradition to hold a special celebration at eclipse for it. you were usually excited for these, but not this one. you didn’t want to go because you knew he would be there. neteyam. you didn’t want to see him, how could he be so rude to you? why was it that he was so nice to every na’vi except you- and you were confused why you cared so much of what he thought of you.

you were deep in thought as you sat on a log just outside the skirts of the large campfire that many of the na'vi were dancing around, chanting. until you thoughts were interrupted by a voice. "hello,"

your head snapped up to the male voice, to see who it was. your eyes adjusted around the dimly lit place, narrowing carefully at the tall figure standing in front of you.

it was ateyo, a young warrior in the clan- which you hadn't spoke to much before, only merely seen him pass you or when he was talking to neteyam. "uh- hello." you replied, cringing at how awkward you sounded, because in all honesty you didn't really feel like talking to anyone at that moment.

"do you mind if i join you?" ateyo asked, which took you a bit by surprise- you didn't reply at first which made him grow anxious. "if you want to be alone that is fine." he began to turn around.

you shook your head quickly, "no, no- don't worry," you breathed out making him turn back around to you. "yes, you can join me." he grinned, sitting down on the empty space next to you.

"so, how have you been?" ateyo asked. you were a little confused at why the na'vi had suddenly decided to speak to you, but you didn't really mind.

"yeah, i've been good." you gave him a tight smile, which he returned. "i heard you have nearly completed your iknimaya."

his ears perked up slightly at your statement, he almost seemed happy you had heard of him. "yes, i am close to finishing." he said it proudly, puffing out his chest a bit.

unbeknownst to you a pair of eyes was watching you and ateyo carefully.

neteyam had arrived a bit late to the celebration- which was unlike him but no one questioned it. guilt was eating away at him, the way he treated you was not acceptable and he knew it.

he was in search for you, making his way around the clan that was sitting around and dancing around the large fire- his eyes searching for you in the crowd of na'vi. neteyam had finally spotted you, sitting alone a ways bit away from everyone- you looked sad. a pit formed in his stomach at the sight of you looking hurt. he began to make his way to you.

"neteyam, there you are!" he stopped in his tracks, turning to look at the na'vi who had stopped him- a girl, yo'ila. she had been trying to gain his attention for months now, he wasn't sure if her parents had set her up to it or it was merely herself- but he did not really care, he did not spare once interest for the girl- he didn't spare any interest in any other woman in the clan, besides the one he swore he did not like. "do you want to join me and my friends? we are sharing stories over there." yo'ila pointed to a group of young na'vi who were all engaged in conversation.

neteyam politely shook his head, "sorry, but-" but before he could finish she grabbed him by the wrist and was pulling him towards her friends. as he was getting dragged away he looked to where you were sitting by yourself- but now, you were not. but accompinied by another na'vi, one that neteyam knew and considered one of his friends- he hated it.

he sat down next to the girl who had dragged him away, he did not speak much as the group of teenage na'vi engaged in conversations- he did not want to speak to them, he wanted to talk to you. "would you like some mis'ko?" yo'ila motioned to the cup of liquid in her hand, neteyam nodded gently, taking it out of her hands and sipped on it.

his head turned to your direction again, you were laughing at something ateyo had said. neteyam felt his heart sink to the pit of his stomach at the sight of you laughing with another- he knew he couldn't be jealous as you were not his and surely would never be with the way he acted towards you. if looks could kill ateyo would be six feet under by now, neteyam was glaring hard at him- unknowingly gripping the small wooden cup in his hands tightly, his claws digging harshly into it.

you looked beautiful, the small glow of the fire illuminating your face and its perfect features, the way your nose crinkled up as you laughed- it all made neteyams head foggy, as if you had put him under a trance that had no escape- and he wasn't sure if he ever wanted to break free of it.

but as he looked to ateyo his mood changed, the fluttering feeling in his stomach caused by you turned into a pit in his stomach that made him feel sick- he had never experienced the feeling of jealousy before, his mother always told him one should never be jealous of another- but as he saw you and ateyo talking and laughing, neteyam experienced jealousy, and eywa, did he hate it.

he know understood his father when he told him that his mother was promised to another when they met, how he felt as if he could never have her- he now understood exactly what his father must have been feeling.

"are you okay, neteyam?" yo'ila spoke, ripping neteyam out of his thoughts- breaking his gaze away from you and ateyo, his eyebrows furrowed to what the girl meant by the question- but as he gazed down to his hands that were about to break that small cup in he was holding he realised he had been slowly crushing it between his palms.

without an answer he looked back to you and saw ateyo getting up, presumingly to get some food for the two of you. neteyam turned to the girl. "excuse me." he quickly got up, it was his chance now that the na'vi had left you- without another word to anyone he made his way over to you.

as you looked up to see neteyam walking right towards you, your mood suddenly shifted to what it was before- being reminded of what you were sad about in the first place. you now wished you hadn't even attended the celebration in the first place.

neteyam finally reached you, you refused to make eye contact with him- looking to the ground. "may i speak with you?"

you glanced to where ateyo was, seeing he was lost in conversation with an elder- you knew he was not coming back anytime soon. you sucked in a sharp breath, finally meeting neteyams pleading gaze- which was surprising for you as you had never seen the boy look at you so softly. "fine."

neteyam nodded, sitting down where ateyo had sat before- and that is when the all too familiar feeling that he hated oh so much came back. his palms began to form a sweat, his heart beated fast- he was sure you could hear it. he coughed quickly, "uh-"

you beat him to talking, "if you are here to scold me then you can leave." you looked at him, and yet again, neteyam felt at a loss for words under your intense gaze- you huffed annoyedly, rolling your eyes you sat up from your sitting position, ready to leave.

before you could a tight hand wrapped around your wrist, stopping you in motion with its strong hold. "no, stay." you slowly turned back around, your tail swishing slightly underneath you- and met neteyams eyes again, his tone was soft and angelic- a tone you had yearned to here be directed at you for as long as you could remember.

your mind told you to leave, but your heart- oh, damn that thing. your heart was controlling your body at that moment, and you obliged it- sitting back down next to him. his hold on your wrist never leaving.

"i came to say.." neteyam breathed his words out, taking a deep breath. "i am sorry." your ears perked up, eyes widening- unsure if those words had just left his mouth. had he just apologised- to you?

your heart fluttered as he looked into your eyes, his features soft matching his gaze- your skin touching his which lit a small fire that was sure to burn you at any given moment. "did your father tell you to apologise?" your eyebrows furrowed, you knew he always listened to his father.

neteyams head shook, "no, he did not." the look you were giving him made him realise you didn't believe him. "y/n." your name left his lips and you swore you melted right then and there, you were putty in his hands. "i am sorry for being a skxqwng to you."

you hard expression softened, your gaze ripped away from his. "okay," you breathed out, "i accept your apology."

neteyams eyes widened, a grin forming slowly on his face- he didn't think you would forgive him, but oh, it felt so good.

"i am back- oh, hi neteyam.." ateyo stood there in front of the two of you, two cups in his hand- he glanced down to where neteyams hand was wrapped around your wrist.

neteyams jaw clenched at the na'vi, "hi." his reply was short and laced with venom throughout it. ateyo sensed the tension in the air- any na’vi could from about 5 feet away.

ateyo cleared his throat, “i got you your drink, y/n.” he lifted up the cup he held in his left hand that held liquid in- you smiled gently at him as he handed it to you. “thank you.” you thanked him taking a small sip.

ateyo stood there, admiring you. seemingly forgetting there was a certain na’vi who was death staring him right next to him, neteyam. “ateyo,” neteyam spoke up, ripping the boy from his trance. “i heard nitia’l wished to speak with you.” yes, it was a lie. but neteyam didn’t care, he just wanted for ateyo to be gone.

ateyo nodded, “i will speak to you later y/n.” and began to leave.

you turned to neteyam, who was watching as ateyo left carefully. “that is not very nice.” neteyams head snapped to look at you, confused. “lying.”

“i did not lie.”

you raised an eyebrow, you were not dumb. you had just been talking to nitia’l earlier that evening- she most certainly did not want to talk to ateyo. “you’re not very convincing.”

“i was to him.” he replied. rolling your eyes at him. he kept staring off at ateyos figure leaving behind you. “why was he talking to you?” his eyes focused back on you with a emotionless expression.

“i don’t know.” you shrugged, taking a sip of the liquid the na’vi boy had given to you. “probably had no one else to speak to.”

“or he likes you.” you were a bit taken back by that comment. “no- he does not like me.”

neteyam knew what male na’vi were like, after all- he was one of them. “hm..” he paused. “if he talks to you again, tell me.” and with that neteyam turned his back to you and began walking away leaving you dumbfounded. was he being protective over you? was neteyam sully jealous?

neteyam sully was indeed jealous.

#neteyam x reader #neteyam x you #avatar way of water #neteyam sully #neteyam #neteyam x y/n #neteyam sully x reader #avatar #peter parker #avatar 2

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motimatcha · 3 months

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Adam headcanon

there may be spoilers for episode 8

Adam is very soft. And although this statement hardly applies to his character, the clothes he wears and his wings are really very soft.

Adam presses his wings tightly to his clothes and body so that others do not touch them, since, among other things, his wings are very sensitive. And he also pays significant attention to them in order to so easily allow someone to touch his wings.

Adam has a fairly ordinary appearance, which hurts his fragile ego - compared to other angels who stand out for their bright appearance. Therefore, he constantly wears his exorcist uniform so as not to look like an ordinary person compared to others.

Adam is slim, not fat by any means. His massive monastic robe creates a similar effect. Beneath the clothes is a fairly slender, but by no means thin, body - he's strong enough to lift someone of Charlie's build with one arm.

He takes a bath two or three times a day. It's all because of his clothes; Yes, it’s soft and comfortable, but it’s massive and it’s easy to sweat in it, and Adam probably doesn’t like feeling sticky and sweaty, so whenever possible, he takes a bath not only in the morning and evening, but also during the day.

(Spoiler for those who haven't watched episode 8) ; I think that before Lute made (?) a deal with Lilith, she tried to independently subjugate the exorcists and Adam in particular. Perhaps she was thinking that underneath Adam's rough exterior was a man who enjoyed being humiliated. Her attempt to deal with Adam was unsuccessful, but he had an amazing time.

When Adam is not behaving as he usually does, he becomes a pleasant enough person to at least just watch. In those rare moments when he takes off his mask and grins, looking at something interesting to him, he looks attractive (this is probably why many girls fall for his appearance, trying to close their eyes to his character?)

There are people who admire Adam and perhaps for their sake he tries to maintain some kind of reputation. His behavior changes, but not that much: for example, he tries not to swear in front of children who look at him with admiration; he seems to be trying to mentor other angels, although his advice falls into the category of "what not to do. Never!" — few people know that Adam gives these tips as recommendations for implementation.

Adam watches porn. A lot of.

#hazbin hotel adam #adam #hazbin hotel #adam x reader #hazbin hotel headcanon #hazbin hotel adam x reader

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ugh-yoongi · 3 months

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the very last thing i decide | pjm

(or, the one in which a love exists that's easy and instinctual as much as it is painful and self-destructive.)

✘ PAIRING jimin x f. reader ✘ SUMMARY you learn what it means to love with blood on your hands. ✘ GENRE hitman/assassin au; angst, smut ✘ RATING explicit. minors dni. ✘ WARNINGS they are both hitmen (hitpeople?) so there's all the content that goes along with that: violence, death, mentions of blood (a lot) and weapons, murder, but no explicit gore. everyone is morally grey at best and downright psychotic at worst (especially yoongi). reader gets stabbed. no one knows how to be a functional human being. swearing, smoking, light smut (penetrative & oral sex), miscommunication and unrequited love but not really, i drop a classic tumblr meme in a line of dialogue. ambiguous/hopeful ending!! some of the themes here are kinda heavy and i am not entirely sure how to tag them so if you have any questions pls don’t hesitate to ask! ✘ WORDCOUNT 12k ✘ LISTEN TO manchester orchestra - telepath ✘ THANK YOU i cannot remember everyone i’ve showed this to over the years. @the-boy-meets-evil for looking this over and brainstorming with me today. @hot-soop for always being a help. @effortandmore because you told me an embarrassingly long time ago this was worth finishing. and i’m pretty sure i also sent this to @jihopesjoint at some point too. i did a quick edit of this on my own, but after nearly three years i just wanted it posted and out of my wips so i'm sure i missed things. pls ignore them. ✘ AUTHOR'S NOTE fic drops two days in a row?? who am i?? i started this in may 2021 and it was supposed to be a simple pegging fic. i abandoned it bc i was convinced no one would want to read it. between today and yesterday i have written thousands of words and made it across the finish line. i hope you like it. the violence is a metaphor for love or whatever.

[37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA]

Jimin’s hair had been red the first time he met you.

How fitting, he thinks, considering he’s currently bleeding out on a table.

Well, there’s still a bit of fight left in him. He hasn’t lost consciousness yet, which he assumes is a good sign; he can still hear Hoseok barking out orders quite clearly. The edges of his vision are fuzzy and the pain in his abdomen is sharp and unrelenting, but he still has enough brain power left to wish he’d died instead.

Because you’d saved his life. And now he’s further indebted to you.

(Jimin never leaves a debt unpaid, but he’s not sure how to make even on something like this.)

Jungkook and Taehyung are fetching supplies faster than Hoseok can ask for them. Two pairs of frazzled, spaced-out eyes. Four sets of trembling limbs. Namjoon’s wearing burn marks into the floor, his cuticles bloody and nearly worried to the bone since he can’t keep them out of his mouth.

And then there’s you.

Sitting cross-legged in a chair as you scroll through your phone. Jimin’s blood is still drying on your hands, leaving smears as you drag your thumb back and forth across the screen, and this doesn’t seem to faze you one bit.

Behind you, Yoongi takes a seat at the piano and starts playing Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and Jimin simply cannot die like this. He can’t die on a wooden table in a room with a piano on which Min Yoongi is playing Baroque organ pieces.

“What is this, a fucking funeral?” Hoseok snaps, though there’s a desperation creeping into his tone that Jimin does not like, does not want to hear. “Cut it out, Yoongi.”

Said man staunchly ignores the doctor, transitioning flawlessly into the fugue. Jimin barely hears the tinkle of your laughter but he hears it all the same, and he wants to pretend it doesn’t calm him, bring him back down to earth when he starts drifting too far away. But you do, and it does, and all he can think about is: will you miss him if he dies? Will it take you long to wash his blood from your hands?

Hoseok’s absolutely incensed, pushed to the limits of his stress at the thought of not being able to save Jimin’s life, and Jimin appreciates this, really, but not when Hoseok pushes two gloved fingers deep into the wound in his stomach so hard all he can do is cry. “Yoongi—”

You snort. You don’t even look up from your phone.

Namjoon, for all his leadership and stoicism and poise under pressure, is just as frantic and panicked as the rest. It’s not everyday one of his people is inches from death ten feet away from him. Most people usually die in the shadows. Kim Namjoon has faced down death more times than most, yet watching the life slowly fade from Jimin’s eyes is too much even for him. “Yoongi, please—”

But the fugue keeps going, tempo change after tempo change, the two pillars of this organization spiraling completely by the time the coda starts, unfocused and sweating and praying. To gods they don’t believe in, to hope, to chance—whatever and whoever might be listening. Jimin usually loves hearing Yoongi play. It’s the only thing that humanizes him, and Jimin had spent so many restless nights shoulder to shoulder with him on that exact bench in the blue hours of the early morning, hypnotized by the way the older man’s knobby fingers moved across the keys.

This is it, he thinks.

Jimin’s going to die with Toccata and Fugue in D minor playing in the background.

He’s imagined his death so many times. Stupid not to in this line of work. Violent, quick and painless, in his sleep, drawn out and gory, a message. And in all of those scenarios, it’s either jarringly silent or there’s someone screaming. Usually him, sounding much like he is now, two fingers stuck in his gut. In all of those scenarios, Min Yoongi is never playing Bach as everything fades to black.

You sigh. “Shut the fuck up, Yoongi,” you say, your tone as blasé and inconvenienced as ever.

Shocked at your audacity, one of Yoongi’s fingers slips and hits the wrong key, something dissonant and metallic as it rings out. But the music stops all the same, the silence nearly giving Jimin whiplash. Now he can hear the clinkof Hoseok’s tools, the squelching of his wound, Jungkook’s desperate pleading for him to just be alright, please God, just hang on. He wants the music back. He doesn’t want Jungkook’s crying to be the last thing he hears. Doesn’t want the sound of his own organs imprinted into his memory.

“What’d you say?” Yoongi asks, because no one talks to him that way. They wouldn’t dare. Most people try not to talk to him at all.

But you do.

And, inexplicably, Yoongi listens.

You roll your eyes. “You go deaf in your old age? I said shut the fuck up. Hoseok’s two knuckles deep in Jimin’s fucking stomach and you’re over there having your little Amadeus moment.”

He bristles. “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” Yoongi repeats, and Jimin can’t see him, but he knows his eyes are narrowed, lips pulled back in a snarl, fists clenched at his side.

“Oh, princess,” you coo, and Yoongi’s fury is palpable, permeates every inch of this place, overrides all the fear and anguish. “I’m talking to you, baby. I know Jiminie’s busy trying not to die and that’s stressful for all of us, but please do try to keep up.”

Jimin hears the flick of Yoongi’s switchblade. Then he hears him say, “Please let me fucking kill her,” in that lazy Daegu drawl of his, like forming full words are beneath him. Not worth the effort when they’re directed at you.

Still seated, you uncross your legs and, through blurred vision, Jimin watches you grab Yoongi by his belt loops to tug him closer, grab the wrist that holds his knife and press it to your own throat. “Don’t threaten me with a good time, Yoongi. Be a good boy and make it hurt.”

Jungkook’s near hysterics at Jimin’s side. “What the fuck is wrong with you two? He’s dying!”

Jimin tries to say I’m not, Kookie, I’m okay but the pressure on his abdomen is too intense. He can barely breathe, and Hoseok’s still digging around, still looking for that stupid fucking bullet, had to do something and do it quick so there’d been very little anesthetic and finesse, and he’s silently screaming for someone to just comfort Jungkook, tell him everything’s going to be okay, but instead—

“Serves him right for being a fucking idiot,” you say, words muffled by the knife still pressed to your throat. “What a painful, permanentlesson in not forgetting your fucking vest.”

“Stop it!” Jungkook sobs, fingers ghosting along Jimin’s matted fringe.

Yoongi’s still scowling. “Just say the word, Joon-ah. I’ll make it quick.”

You actually laugh at that. The kind of full-belly laugh Jimin would kill to be able to produce. “You wanna fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid.”

Someone snarls. Probably Yoongi. “You’d look so good gutted on the floor like a fish,” he replies, and if Jimin knows him at all, he knows he’s got that dreamy, faraway look in his eyes. The one he always gets when he’s about to kill—the one that makes him so unhinged and dangerous. “Left there to bleed out and die all alone like the trash you are.”

No one’s survived that look before, but you just grin, as if being on the receiving end of it is nothing more than another simple inconvenience. “Do it, then,” you prompt. “You’re so big and bad, yet here you are, waiting for Namjoon’s permission like some kind of pathetic fucking dog.”

“I’m no one’s dog.”

Your eyes slowly flick over to Namjoon. “No?” you ask, smile widening as Jimin watches you drag your heeled foot up the inside of Yoongi’s calf, his thigh, stiletto coming to rest in the center of his sternum. “That’s a shame, princess. That pretty neck of yours was just made for a collar.”

There’s no doubt in Jimin’s mind now that he actually died back in that penthouse and is now residing in whatever level of hell is watching you give his associate a semi despite him being a millisecond away from murdering you.

Yoongi would do it, too. No hesitation. You’ve been on his shit list for as long as Jimin can remember, and you’ve been daring him to put his money where his mouth is and just kill you already for just as long.

Taehyung groans. “Can you two just fuck already so the rest of us can be spared of this?”

You click your tongue, tone melting like butter. You’re fond of Taehyung, soft on him. “No can do, angel. Yoongi here knows I only have eyes for our Jiminie, and god does that hurt his little feelings.”

Your wicked smile gives away nothing—whether you’re telling a bold truth or just unnecessarily needling Yoongi further—but Jimin’s caught off guard and chokes on your words nonetheless.

Hoseok’s forceps still digging around in his stomach, there’s a quiet hurrah of triumph as he finally locates the bullet. Jimin feels nothing as he retrieves it and plucks it out, a reverberated clank! as he drops it into a kidney dish, your words the anesthetic he’s needed as they play on a loop in his head.

When he finally blacks out, either from the pain or the adrenaline or both, it’s your face that greets him. He never gets the chance to tell you why he forgot his vest.

[64.1466° N, 21.9426° W | Reykjavík, ICELAND]

Jimin’s hair is blue when it happens the first time.

It’s November. Namjoon has sent the two of you to Reykjavik and it’s dark all the time, the midnight hue of his hair blending into the impenetrable nighttime that surrounds you. Jimin works best like this—out of sight, part of the shadows. He’s light on his feet, lithe in ways no one else is, not even you, and he’s impossible to anticipate under the cover of darkness.

That’s why Jimin always takes care of the appetizers.

It’s your job to clean up the main course.

The two of you are two halves of the same lethal coin, working together flawlessly after years of carefully honed practice. Jimin slams an unsuspecting man’s head into a wall and you’re right behind him to put a bullet in it.

It’s just how it goes.

And he trusts you. He has to, otherwise he would’ve gotten taken out years ago. You’re not always in his line of sight, but he always feels you, senses your movements before you’re even on your feet. The times it’s gone wrong—and it’s gone wrong so many fucking times, despite how cautious and skilled the two of you are—you’re always right there to catch him before he even hits the ground. Just like a ghost, as if your only purpose in life is keeping Jimin safe and alive.

(It isn’t, but it sure feels that way.)

Tonight it’s another hit carried out in an overpriced penthouse overlooking the northern shore. You’re in and out, don’t waste a second more than you need to. Jimin doesn’t spare a glance at the carnage left behind. Nothing he hasn’t seen a hundred times before. All blood bleeds the same, but he still wonders, foolishly, if his looks different to you. If it feels wrong when it stains your hands and seeps into your clothes.

Jimin has never been covered in your blood before, but he likes to think it would.

The two of you don’t speak until you’re in the quiet safety of yet another hotel room, chain lock thrown across the door, deadbolt secured. A small arsenal of weapons is retrieved from ankles and waistbands and cleaned and packed away meticulously. Jimin’s the one who makes the call to Namjoon, tells him in code that the job’s done. You’ve barely broken a sweat, but under the fluorescent light of the bathroom, Jimin can see a small smattering of blood just along your temple when he closes the distance between you.

Someone else’s, of course.

Anyone who made you bleed your own blood wouldn’t be a quick, clean kill. Jimin would make sure of that.

There’s less to be done about the half-inch scar in the hollow of your throat—a pearlescent reminder of the twin scar he has just below his navel; a callback to the day your devilish mouth said the words Jimin can’t stop thinking about.

“No can do, angel. Yoongi here knows I only have eyes for our Jiminie.”

Maybe it’s stupidity. Maybe it’s the feral, years-long build up that’s been simmering between the two of you—low enough to keep warm, contained enough to never evolve into a rapid boil. Maybe Jimin’s just finally desperate enough to go seeking out answers to questions he’s far too scared to put a voice to.

(Really, Jimin knows it’s adrenaline. Nothing more than chemicals. The two of you high on it, heads floating above the clouds. Powerless; or, at the very least, indifferent to stop the very clear path that’s unfolding on the ground below.)

But, god, he needs to know.

Needs answers.

Needs to know if there’s even a chance you feel it, too: the magnetic ebb and flow the two of you have been dancing around for years. If you see how fondly he looks at you. If you have any idea how easy it is for him to get lost in you. If you know he’d let someone put a bullet between his eyes before he placed his life in the hands of anyone else.

Jimin knows he loves you. He’s known it for a long time, just like he knows all those other things that are second nature to him. Loving you is easy and instinctual as much as it is painful and self-destructive.

At least that’s what he’d thought. Until your devilish mouth said those devilish words and sent him into a tailspin he’s yet to recover from.

You have to feel it. God, can’t you? The way the air crackles between you. The way his skin ignites with a simple look from you. The trembling of his fingers at his sides, desperate to just reach out and touch you—fingers that have been bathed in blood, that have taken life. Fingers that now just want to graze softly across your cheekbones, catch on your bottom lip. Fingers that want to hand you the world on a silver platter. Jimin would do anything for you, give you whatever you wanted. You wouldn’t even have to ask.

Can’t you feel that?

He needs to know.

Jimin is composed, elegant. He kills with grace and still maintains as much of his softness as he can. Isn’t ruled by emotion the way Yoongi and Jungkook are. But now, as he teeters on the edge of the unknown, all he wants to do is jump. Wants to buck all his training, all his resolve and forethought, and jump.

“Did you mean it?” he asks, voice thick. Fingers curl into the expensive silk of his shirt just so they have something to do—something to keep them from reaching out and touching you. “Back in Seoul.”

You’re the smartest person Jimin knows. When you ask, “Did I mean what, Chim?” he knows you’re fucking with him. Dragging this out. You know exactly what he’s asking and he knows you’ll never give anything away so easily.

“What you said to Taehyung,” he answers.

You tsk, eyebrows raising in intrigue. As much as Jimin trusts you, as well as you know him, know all those dirty, dirty secrets he’d never tell anyone else, he’s never been so bold with you. “That those long fingers of his would look good wrapped around my throat? Yeah, I meant that.”

Jimin’s jaw clenches at your taunt. “Don’t play games with me.”

A smirk graces your lips. “Trust me, sweetheart,” you say, voice sickly-sweet as the affection starts popping at the last seams holding him together, “if I wanted to play with you, there’s nothing you could do to stop it.”

With Jimin pressed into the wall behind you, you turn to meet his eye in the mirror. Another smile, teeth bared as you run your tongue across your lips, and this one is his undoing. Makes his cock twitch in his dress pants. Makes him bold. “Do you want to, then?” He takes a step forward—close enough to smell the gunpowder stuck to your clothes, your hair. Close enough for the sulfur and metal to sting his nostrils each time he breathes you in. “Do you want to play with me?”

You love Jimin. Maybe it’s a trauma bond or the implicit, unwavering trust the two of you have in one another, but you know you love him limitlessly. But you also know you can’t love him the way he loves you, the way he deserves to be loved by someone, which is why your mask slips as you say, “I can’t give you what you want, Jimin.”

You try to make him understand that. Really, you do—because Jimin is the smartest person you know, and you know he’s thought about every possible consequence down to the most minute detail and has decided this is worth it anyway. You want to believe in something the way Jimin believes in you, even though he’s wrong. You want something worth throwing all of this away for.

Maybe it’s Jimin, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just been so fucking long since someone has looked at you with any gentleness in their eyes at all that when Jimin meets your gaze and says, “I don’t want anything more than you’re willing to give,” you take his hand and jump, too.

And there’s nothing gentle about the first time.

It’s all raw, urgent need, Jimin trying desperately to convince himself it’s more than it is while you convince yourself it’s less.

It’s the two of you finally giving up and giving in, letting yourselves be pulled taut by that invisible string tying you together.

It’s Jimin’s sharp intake of breath when you fully step out of your clothes, the sight rendering him immobile. Whatever plans he’d had before seeing the curves of your body, all the scars from years of working by his side, the mottled yellow-greens and purples from the bruises lining your skin—he has no plans now. Can barely think. Wouldn’t be able to tear his eyes away from you with a gun to his head.

It’s the final bricks of the wall he’d built around himself—around his heart, around all those words and feelings he’d never put a voice to—crumbling into ash at his feet. Now he knows he can’t go back. Can’t return to a reality where this isn’t his truth. Where there’s no you and him, him and you. Where it’s just a physical exchange, a give-and-take, tit for tat.

And god, he knows he shouldn’t think like this; knows he’s keeping the truth buried somewhere deep behind lock and key.

…But now that he knows how it feels to move inside you, what else is he supposed to do?

You’re everywhere. Clenched around him. Your taste on his tongue. The feel of you on the pads of his fingers. The smell of you making a mockery of all logical thought. No—no, he can’t do a goddamn thing to stop the avalanche now it’s started.

“Fuck,” he whines, fingers digging into your hips. The soft skin he finds purchase in such a contrast from your hardened exterior, but Jimin knows. He knows you, knows the person behind the mask, sees straight through you each time it slips.

What stared back at him had always been just out of reach.

Taunting him.

Screaming come and get me, come make me yours, come and fucking take what you want.

Until now.

Now it’s tangible. Now it’s breathy, fractured moans that echo off tile walls. Now it’s the sound of his name thatleaves your lips like a prayer. Now it’s the sheen of sweat that covers both of you. Now it’s nails scraping down his back, tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck.

(And Jimin won’t tell you this, but those red welts are proof that this is real, this happened, and later on when he’s alone, when his mind is working overtime, he’ll look at them and he’ll smile. Because they’re real. Because this happened.)

Now, it’s the way blue becomes his favorite color. Because he can see his reflection in the mirror as he unravels and comes to his own demise as he spills inside of you; can see the fluorescent lights reflecting off the hue of his hair.

Jimin’s hair is blue when he realizes he’s in love with you.

[34.6037° S, 58.3816° W | Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA]

Jimin is blond when Namjoon sends you to South America.

The details had been scarce: a diplomatic advisor with a rap sheet of human rights violations that have been continuously swept under the rug and his equally-corrupt lawyer. A candid photograph paperclipped to another manila folder, Namjoon a fan of all those old cliches. Likes being a little cheeky that way when he can get away with it, because god knows he can’t get away with much, doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.

It’s a simple job. You and Jimin will have it dealt with in a matter of hours. Less if you’re lucky and the universe is agreeable. But the humidity sticks to your skin, has sweat seeping into your clothes and rolling down your temples, and if there’s one thing you can’t stand it’s the heat. Makes it hard to think. And Namjoon—Namjoon, who makes sure all of his agents want for nothing—is a cheap bastard. Rarely approves nice lodging, says it’s too risky despite your arguments to the contrary, that people don’t care what you do when you have money, so you’re stuck in some shithole motel room with an aircon unit that keeps blowing out stale, warm air.

And maybe you shouldn’t, maybe you should be more cognizant of Jimin and all his feelings, but it’s fucking hot, so you peel your shirt over your head and undo the button of your pants. Sit on the edge of the bed and try to think about anything other than the temperature, how it’s starting to prick uncomfortably at your skin.

Jimin clears his throat, keeps his eyes glued to the disgusting carpet. “Got a text from Seokjin-ssi,” he says, words strained. “Looks like they’ll be solo jobs.”

You groan. Leave it to Seokjin to change the plan at the last minute. “Tell Kim Seokjin he’s a useless piece of shit.”

“Done. Anything else?”

“Tell Kim Namjoon if he ever sends us to South America in the summer again I’ll kill him myself.”

Jimin has a laugh like an anodyne. A laugh that takes all those broken, bleeding parts of you and soothes over them like a balm. “Seokjin-ssi says he’s not passing along that particular message.”

“Tell him he’s a bitch, then.”

“He’ll kill me if I say that.”

“He hasn’t done field work in years and he’s probably too vitamin D deficient to leave the basement. He couldn’t even kill a fucking rat.”

There’s another laugh. More forced, less tinkling. You recognize it right away, the sound of anxiety. Solo jobs aren’t common for the two of you. For Yoongi and Taehyung, sure, but not you and Jimin. You’re a team for a reason, and though you’re more than capable of getting this done and out of the way, it doesn’t feel right. Settles in your gut like something rotten, knowing you’ll be without Jimin.

And you know he’s thinking it, too. How he turns the burner over and over in his hands, as if there’s some combination of words he can send back to Seoul to get Seokjin and Namjoon to reconsider. Plans don’t change often; not like this, anyway. These have been declared solos for a reason, and that’s a thought you can’t linger on too long.

“Are they leaving it up to us?” Jimin nods, still not meeting your eye. “Do you have a preference?”

He shrugs, tossing the phone on the small table in the corner. Nothing else to be done. “Not really. What do you think?”

“Nah, don’t care, either. Just toss me one.”

Santiago Aguirre… 47 years old… Resides in a high-rise luxury apartment in Retiro…

Your eyes skim the file, study the black and white photograph of the lawyer. Read over the list of all his high-profile, degenerate clients and all their high-profile crimes. You read about the previous attempts on his life, the seemingly never-ending list of people who want him dead. Your eyes go back to his photograph, frowning at the smug look on his face. What stares back at you is a man who thinks he’s invincible, who thinks a penthouse apartment on the top floor and a security team in the lobby means he’s impervious to harm. A man who has made money off people just like him: dirty, corrupt, hands stained red.

“Okay?” Jimin asks, looking up from his own file.

He’s so striking. So safe. And you know what he’s done, giving you the hit he thinks is easier, willing to risk himself on a solo mission to ensure you make it out. There’s no guarantees in this line of work, in life in general, but Jimin’s brand of selfless love is certainly one.

So you just nod, knowing someone slimy like this can quickly go sideways, and decide you can do the same.

“I’m gonna get ready,” you say. “The plan is the same as all the other solo jobs. Get in, get it done, get out as quickly as possible. Lay low. Don’t come straight back here.”

Jimin rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Anything else?”

You exhale. Try to quiet the nerves roiling in your stomach. Barely resist the urge to press a lingering kiss to Jimin’s forehead before you swallow hard and say, “Yeah. Stay alive.”

It comes out more like a plea.

—

You’re good at your job.

Rarely feel much guilt over it, either, which—well, you’re not sure what that means. That something is permanently broken in your psyche, probably. Being able to take life so easily and without remorse. It’s not natural.

Kim Namjoon is a man who plays God, is the one who decides who gets to live and who has to die. His word is the only law you adhere to. And that’s… that’s something. Makes it less burdensome, takes some weight off, because Kim Namjoon wouldn’t accept a morally-ambiguous job. He wouldn’t ask you to put your life on the line for some petty bullshit.

This is how you’ve lived for the last four years. Four years of blindly following Namjoon’s word, of being a good little soldier and doing whatever is asked of you. Four years of being responsible for not only your own life, but Jimin’s as well, just as he is for yours. Four years that have served you well, all things considered.

Until now.

Something about this job hits you hard. Doesn’t settle quite as quickly as the ones that have come before. For the first time, you’d looked down at the lifeless body at your feet and couldn’t stop the trembling, could barely quell the nausea. Thought what the fuck am I doing, what kind of life is this for the first time. Thought back to that day four years ago when Kim Namjoon saved your life and offered you a job and wondered, for the first time, what would’ve happened if you’d said no.

Now, as you suck on a cigarette, legs dangling off the roof of a building looking not far from collapse, a new thought:

Would Namjoon let you go if you asked?

He’s taken care of you. For four years you’ve wanted for nothing. Have socked away more money than you’ll ever be able to spend, even if you live to a thousand. You could go anywhere, become anyone, and no one would suspect a thing. There’d just be you and a million lifetimes’ worth of transgressions, alone under the weight of all that burden; alone, except for all the ghosts that come to greet you every time you close your eyes.

Doesn’t matter. Namjoon might be willing to let you go, give you the chance to salvage something from this life in the name of normalcy, but Yoongi would gladly put a bullet in your head before he let you disappear with all his secrets.

Doesn’t matter.

You stub out the cigarette and put the butt in your pocket. Make your way down to the street. Stay under the shadows—just visible enough to redirect any suspicion shot your way. You pretend to take a call, flawless Argentinian Spanish falling from your lips as you tell the imaginary person on the other end all about your fucked up day at work. How your manager never gets off your ass, doesn’t trust you, thinks you’re too fucking stupid to run a simple executable.

No one spares you a second glance.

Not here, on this nondescript street in a nondescript Argentinian neighborhood, and not when you stumble into the tiny lobby of your shithole motel. The poor kid behind the desk doesn’t even glance up, just mutters a good evening, miss under his breath that you return in a voice far too high-pitched to be your own.

Better to be seen and be unremarkable than draw attention to yourself trying to stay invisible, you figure.

The cameras in the stairwell are broken so you take the steps two at a time. Pull the room key from its place inside your boot, happy to no longer have it digging into your skin. Pause just long enough to make sure you don’t hear anything on the other side of the door before you’re unlocking it with your free hand wrapped around the trigger of your gun.

It’s empty.

Of course it is.

Jimin stashed the burner in a place no one but you would think to look. You text one simple word to Seokjin—Hey!—and you get two in return: Who’s this?

You know who it is, you fucking dickhead.

It takes a few seconds, but the reply is a simple—

Sorry.

Then you toss aside the phone and float in the darkness of the room. There’s nothing to do but wait, because you don’t dare to do anything alone. There’s sweat and blood and fuck knows what else stuck to your skin, your hair, but you can’t risk taking a shower. Can’t risk the water dampening your senses. Can’t risk being cornered in a moldy bathroom, only one way out. Can’t risk doing anything alone. Can’t take a fucking shower.

It’s this thought, more than anything else, that has your body flushing with rage.

What kind of life is this?

Namjoon had never mentioned repaying your debt. He’d never insinuated you owed him anything at all for saving your life, but you know something like that never comes for free. Namjoon doesn’t do anything just because. Has no goodness in his heart to do anything in the name of it. Watching Jimin nearly die in front of him had been the exception to his usual nature; a rare slip-up by an otherwise detached, uncaring man.

Still, whatever you owe him has surely been repaid by now. Tenfold, if the bloodstains along your collar are anything to go by.

It’s time for Namjoon to let you go.

—

Something is wrong.

Two hours have ticked by and there’s no word from Jimin. No word from Namjoon or Seokjin, either, which is the only reason you’re still in this nauseating motel room and not out on the streets searching for him. Solo jobs don’t go like this. The two of you are always in and out, tragically efficient. Back to where you started and then back on a plane, nothing left behind except a singular bullet hole and another fragmented piece of your conscience.

You’ve had a lot of jobs go wrong, but never two hours.

You’re about three minutes from coming out of your skin. Sick to your stomach with worry, anxiety weighing you down like an anchor. You wouldn’t be able to go out searching for Jimin like this even if you could, and there’s no point in dwelling on that, examining it further. All you can do is wait.

It’s another hour before you hear the click of the lock. You’re nearly on your knees in relief, but you stay rooted to the flimsy mattress. Try not to think about how you’ll have to sleep on it, even though you’ll be up half the night with residual worry. All those lingering ghosts.

Jimin doesn’t say anything, so neither do you.

[55.6761° N, 12.5683° E | Copenhagen, DENMARK]

Jimin’s hair is orange when you go to Copenhagen.

Not for a job, just to breathe. You wanted to see the city at Christmastime; Jimin’s never been.

You crack a joke. Point out buildings of similar color, have him stand in front of one as you take a picture. Everyone smiles when they pass the two of you on the street, Jimin’s eyes fond even though he rolls them as you pose him how you want. Still stands against an apricot-colored wall and flashes a smile and a peace sign, cheeks pink from the cold. Does a good job of pretending the two of you aren’t here just for fun, that this is something more.

It’s not.

The two of you fucked in a hotel room in Reykjavik and haven’t spoken a word of it since.

You nearly lost your mind over him in Buenos Aires and haven’t spoken a word of that, either.

Instead, his hand finds yours as the two of you walk around Tivoli Gardens. You marvel at the lights and Jimin marvels at you. You share mulled wine and spiced doughnuts. Jimin tries to drag you on the swings but you plant your feet and refuse, laughing through your refusals. As dangerous as your lives are, motion sickness might be the most. He gets his revenge and poses you in front of a giant nutcracker, then again in front of one of the endless Christmas trees.

Jimin pays for the two of you to decorate honey cakes. You’re surrounded by families with shrieking children and palpable adoration, and it’s all you can do not to wonder if anyone you’ve taken out had ever had something like this. Something that makes your soul warm; something that still lingers in your bones years later.

The two of you take a selfie when it starts to snow. It stings when you have no one to send it to, so it just lives in your phone. Maybe it’s enough.

On another day, Jimin holds your hand through Torvehallerne. This time you marvel at him while he marvels at all the food, eyes wide each time he turns to ask if he should buy something. You always say yes and he always shares, and it’s all you can do not to think about why you don’t have to budget yourselves. Why you’re able to walk through the market and buy whatever you want; how you could buy every item for sale and it wouldn’t make a dent.

(You pick up small trinkets for Taehyung and Jungkook. Not because you want to, but because it feels nicer than remembering that you have no one to buy gifts for. Not really. Not anymore.)

Jimin wants to ice skate, so you do. He holds your hand then, too. More out of necessity than anything else, and he has none of his usual grace. Someone hands you a free cup of hot chocolate, just because. Jimin pouts and then it’s his hot chocolate. It’s all you can do not to kiss away the whipped cream on the corner of his mouth.

Back in your lavish hotel, after countless days have blurred together and Jimin’s fresh from a shower, skin flushed, you finally ask yourself if it’s worth putting up such a fight. If it’s really all that bad to care for Jimin and be cared for in return. If it’s all that bad to be someone else, just for a little while: someone with a normal life who makes a normal living and has a normal capability to love. Someone who isn’t damaged beyond repair.

That will never be you. Not fully, and certainly not in this lifetime, but maybe it could be, a little.

“Jimin,” you say, because you need to try. Jimin loves you in ways you’ll never understand, and you want to be better for him. “We should talk.”

Your voice is small and hesitant, and Jimin hates it. Sees trouble where there’s only vulnerability, so he misreads. Shakes his head. Takes a risk and stands between your legs at the edge of the bed—yours, because there’s two—as he tilts your head back, thumbs pressing into the contours of your cheeks. The scar still sits in the hollow of your throat, and that version of you feels so far away. That life feels so far away.

There’s no violence here. There’s no blood, no fugues. There’s just you and Jimin, whose voice is small like yours when he shakes his head and says, “You should kiss me instead.”

The second time is nothing like the first.

Jimin moves delicately. Feels like silk lace, tastes like spun sugar. Moves both his mouth and his body fluidly, no hesitation, yet he still takes his time. Still pauses to look at you with endless devotion; with awed reverence. Makes a map of your body and marks all his favorite places with his lips.

“Tell me what you want,” he says. Speaks the words against the skin just beneath your ear. “Anything. I’ll give you whatever you want, just have to ask.”

What you want isn’t tangible, isn’t possible, so you stay quiet. Thread your fingers through Jimin’s hair, gasp when he mouths along the column of your throat. Jimin reserves all his softness for you. Bathes you in it. Would kill anyone to keep it that way.

So you say, “Want your mouth,” and let slip a quiet moan when he gives you what you’ve asked for. When he situates himself between your thighs and sucks and licks until you’re writhing, making a mess, grasping fruitlessly at the sheets, his hair, his shoulders, only calming when his hands find yours and your fingers interlock.

Jimin mouths at you until you’re trembling. Until you’re needy and desperate, hips moving on their own, fucking yourself against his face. Until nothing exists except the heat in your belly, the stars behind your eyelids, the heady, fucked-out sound of Jimin’s voice as he talks you through it, murmurs praise against your cunt.

Jimin mouths at you until you forget.

This isn’t your life. This is not something you can have.

But, in the grand scheme of things, what does it matter? You’ve made peace with death, and there’s only one of two ways it’s going to come for you in the end: by Namjoon’s hand or someone else’s. So what does it matter?

This time, Jimin fucks you slow. Kisses you with your taste still in his mouth. Thumbs over a hardened nipple just to see what earns him a reaction, and what you truly want is more time—something else that’s impossible.

Jimin’s hair is orange when you think you might be in love with him.

[ 48.8566° N, 2.3522° E | Paris, FRANCE ]

Jimin’s hair is pink when—

“Sit,” he says, gesturing to the toilet.

Soaks a washcloth in warm water. Wrings it out. Stands in front of you, and there’s water dripping onto the floor and Jimin doesn’t care, doesn’t seem to see anything in this moment except for you, your hands covered in someone else’s blood, and he reaches out, gently grabs your wrist. Palm up. Someone else’s blood. Everything smells like copper and iron. Looks too surreal beneath the fluorescent lights of this hotel bathroom for your mind to make sense of it.

There is care in the way Jimin cleans your hands. There is tenderness in the way he both refuses to see what you really are and the way he’s the only one to ever see you so entirely, when you look down at the blood he’s washing away and all you can see is stigmata. When all you see is sin.

“I know you don’t love me,” he says, and there is a conviction in his words that stuns you into silence. “Not the way I love you, anyway.”

That tenderness is still there as he says this. As he presses the wet fabric into the meat of your palm, wipes the stains away, and the warmth is as calming as it is undeserved. It feels like something forbidden. It feels like salvation and condemnation all at once, like whatever sick depravity permeates you is contagious, will take over Jimin, too, just from touching you.

Jimin is close enough to reach out and touch. Close enough to see the violence that he exists in alongside you: the rips in his clothes, the scars that decorate his skin. Close enough to know he smells sickly-sweet, just like death. Your hand shakes as it reaches for him and never follows through. Doesn’t want to contaminate him.

“I do,” you finally say. Whatever is in your voice is not conviction. “I can’t.” You suck in a breath, try to steady your breathing. This is where it all comes crashing down, you think, because in all the years you’ve done Namjoon’s bidding, you’ve never cried. You can take life so freely and without thought, but you cannot love Jimin. “Someone like me isn’t capable of it.”

Jimin pauses, the washcloth stuck in the space between your ring and middle fingers. “And who is someone like you?”

Water is still dripping to the floor. Serosanguineous: blood tainting something untouched. Not something one thing or another but both, watery-pink. Looks like Jimin’s hair. “I’ve killed a lot of people,” you answer. “More than I can count. More than I can name. More than the ones that come to haunt me at night.” Your free hand moves to your chest, covers your heart. “There’s nothing here, Jimin. I’m not sure there ever was.”

The washcloth drops to the floor, and all that blood belonging to a man whose name you never bothered to learn before you put a bullet between his eyes finds a new place to rest. “I think,” he begins, clasping your unclean hand in his own, voice dropping to a whisper, “you forget, sometimes.” You gasp as he places your palm to his cheek, drags it across his face, smears a stranger’s blood across his skin. “That we’re the same.”

Jimin is always overwhelming, but the love he has for you is even more so. It consumes you entirely, embeds itself beneath your skin, makes a home, would tear you apart, body and soul, to return to him.

[ 47.4979° N, 19.0402° E | Budapest, HUNGARY ]

Jimin’s hair is lavender when it all goes to shit.

“You’re being followed.”

Seokjin’s voice is garbled through the earpiece, tinny and metallic, and you roll your eyes. Some things don’t need to be said, because you’ve known someone was following you for the last three blocks. Average height, black peacoat, close-cropped haircut. Not the kind of person that’d stand out here, and that’s exactly why you’d sent Jimin in the other direction.

“No shit,” you respond in Hungarian, because you already know the man following you doesn’t speak or understand it. “Give me somewhere to go.”

It takes Seokjin a few moments to run the translation. “There’s a side street up on your right,” he answers. “It’s tight, but there’s an alleyway at the end. You can buy some time if you’re quick.”

“Where’s Jimin?”

You pass a vendor selling lángos and duck into the street behind the stall. Just as Seokjin had said, there’s a small alleyway up on the left, and your footfall is near-silent as you break into a sprint to reach it. “Safe,” is all Seokjin says.

You take a second to steady your breathing, knowing you’re good on time—the man following you was close enough to know where you’d turned, but, if you’re lucky, not much after that. That plays on a loop: if you’re lucky, if you’re lucky, if you’re lucky. What is luck, what does it look like, in a life left entirely to chance? In a life with no guarantees?

You tuck yourself away, focus on Seokjin’s metallic breaths. Think about his basement in Seoul, why he’s in it. Ask, “What happened in Addis Ababa?” because it feels important to know.

There’s not much you know about Seokjin’s life. Whatever happened in Ethiopia had been before your time, reduced to hushed whispers and gossip fodder after your arrival. No one spoke of it, Seokjin especially, but every now and then something would slip in the same way weeds grow in sidewalk cracks.

A job gone wrong. A bombing at the consulate with Seokjin inside.

His reply is simple, words spoken carefully: “I loved someone once, too.”

He can’t see it, but you nod nonetheless; an answer that doesn’t require a response, because you know. It’s enough to fill in the rest. What Seokjin’s trauma looks like. Why he doesn’t do field work anymore. Why he prefers the solitude of the basement, rarely a sound beyond the electric thrum of the server racks.

Who had gone in to retrieve him, and why Yoongi has the scar over his eye.

“You loved someone,” you conclude, “and he would’ve been willing to die for you.”

“Yes,” Seokjin says, and it’s like the word’s been punched out of him. Sounds like something repressed, something left to rot in the darkest corner of the world.

Love, to Seokjin, looks and sounds the same as death.

“I think most people spend their entire lives searching for a love like that,” he continues, and if you could see him you think he might look dazed, off-kilter. You think he might be an avatar. Seokjin is prying his ribcage apart, unwrapping the barbed wire from his heart, saying I once was in love and this is all I know of it. “But, to me, in this life, it’s a prison. Once someone is willing to die for you, how do you keep them alive? How do you—I kissed that skin. I worshiped it. I pressed my lips to it with whatever softness was left in me. How do you look at that same skin and know you’re the reason it’s mangled?” He exhales, all tremor. “You can’t. You can’t.”

You know this all too well. You know what it feels like to look at Jimin and know, intrinsically and subconsciously, that you wouldn’t even hesitate. You’d take and give life to keep him alive and safe. You know that when you exit this world at someone else’s hand his face is the last thing you want to see.

You know it’s a liability.

You know it’s a target painted on your back. Between your eyes.

You know there’s nothing left to say, that this particular conversation has run its course. The two of you sit in an amicable silence, and you hope Seokjin can hear the life that surrounds you, however mundane. Hope he can hear the lángos vendor trying to hawk his goods; hope he can hear a city 8,000 kilometers away; hope he can hear these regular, everyday people going about their lives and remember there’s hope beyond his four walls.

I think you’d like it here, you think, but you don’t dare to say it aloud.

Time passes in a meaningless blur. Could be minutes, could be hours. No one’s come to kill you, so you reckon you’ve long since been in the clear. And maybe it speaks to Seokjin’s idea that love is a prison, because you know something’s happened to Jimin long before Seokjin speaks it into existence.

You’re up and out of the alleyway before you’re told to move. Have no idea where you’re going, but you’re racing through the streets of Budapest with a panic you haven’t ever felt in your life. Feels like quicksand; feels like molasses; feels like you have to wade through all the blood you’ve spilled, now congealed, to get to him.

“Where am I going?” you demand. Your lungs are on fire. In the split-second of silence it becomes a desperate scream. “Seokjin, tell me where the fuck I’m going!”

“The—fuck, the wa-warehouse up on your right.” You can’t think about why he’s crying. “I don’t—I don’t know wha-what’s there, you need to be careful. Please, you have to—”

Twenty seconds and you’ll be there, you’ll be with Jimin, you just need to keep running. You need to keep your head on straight. Remember your training. Remember you’ve built a life in a viper pit.

A man in a uniform is unloading a shipment around the back of the building. Faces away from you, bent at the waist. Takes very little effort to smash his head into the stone exterior and knock him unconscious, pocket his badge. You can’t get stupid now. Tell Seokjin to make sure all the cameras are cut, ask what floor when you shut yourself inside the freight elevator, unwilling to take the stairs and run into anyone who might be waiting. All the way to the top, he says, so all the way to the top you go.

—

Over the course of your life, you’ve made peace with death. Have stared it in the eye more times than you can count. Have dealt it out, evaded it, shook its hand.

You are wholly unprepared for the sight that greets you.

Red. Everything is red—the walls, the floor, what used to be a beautiful parquet pattern in the wood. In the center of the room: two bodies, maybe three. Not much that’d be able to identify them beyond a pile of teeth, no saying whose is whose. Slaughterhouse scraps.

And this is not—Jimin doesn’t work this way. Isn’t his MO. Jimin’s kills are elegant and neat, topped with a bow. What you see before you is ultraviolence. It is unhinged, it is fury, it is a complete loss of control. It’s what love looks like to Jimin, because he sits at the very edge of a rotted chair, legs crossed. Face streaked with blood, clothes covered in it.

“Jimin,” you say, because what else is there?

He tilts his head to the side, smirks a little, looks at you beneath his lashes. Eyes that used to find you across a room and calm you. Eyes that have locked onto you in the throes of pleasure. Eyes you’ve seen yourself reflected in, bathed in love and adoration.

Eyes that now contain nothing.

“Jimin, what the fuck happened?”

He removes his gloves with his teeth and doesn’t flinch away from the taste of iron. “They said they hurt you,” he states simply, “so I did what needed to be done.”

“What—” Nausea claws at your throat; for the first time, it’s all too much. This isn’t Jimin. This isn’t your Jimin, who smiled as you posed him against apricot walls in Copenhagen, who took a bullet to the stomach to protect you and never, ever told you. This is not the Jimin who wasted the last of his goodwill on loving you. “What did you do?” you whisper.

He rises to full height and it makes you flinch. You are scared of Jimin for the first time in your life: scared of who he is in this moment, what he’s capable of. And he sees it, lets that brand of anguish overtake him. Reaches for you before he decides against it and lets his hand drop to his side. Says, “I would never hurt you,” as if the words could brand themselves into your skin so you’d never forget.

“No, you’d just—” You squeeze your eyes shut. Don’t think about how one of the men nearly embedded into the floor was the one trailing you earlier.

Instead, you think about Seokjin: Once someone is willing to die for you, how do you keep them alive? You think about: How do you look at that same skin and know you’re the reason it’s mangled? You think about: In this life, it’s a prison.

You drop to your knees. Let the blood seep through your clothes and into your skin, undeserving of shying away from it.

Namjoon should’ve let you go.

You think about the men in front of you. Who they were, who they loved. The grief all of this is going to leave behind, and it becomes impossible to breathe. You grasp at your throat, think about all the times you’ve been strangled and who’d been there to cut the rope. There is no limit to Jimin’s devotion, and you understand now, how it drove Yoongi to madness. How he loved someone so much he would’ve retrieved their corpse from a building and how that same person can no longer bear to look at the damage they’d caused.

“This isn’t love, Jimin,” you choke out.

He stands in front of you. Stigmata. You’re worshiping at the altar of some kind of devil. At least his hands are clean when he places his fingers beneath your chin, forces you to look up at him. “What is it, then?”

“Destruction.”

A quiet huff of cruel laughter. “See, this is the difference between me and you, darling.” He takes back his hand, runs it through his blood-streaked hair, and your chin sags to your chest without his support. “Because I already knew that. Because I have destroyed myself every single day loving you.” He squats down, eye-level, and he says, “I need you to listen to me when I say this, sweetheart: you do not love me the way I love you, because I would do worse. When it comes to you, there is nothing on this earth I would not destroy to keep you safe.”

He clears his throat. Collects whatever’s in his mouth and spits onto one of the bodies. “If this is enough to have you tucking your fucking tail between your legs, then go, because this doesn’t even scratch the fucking surface.”

You can’t bring yourself to say anything, and sometimes that says it all.

Jimin presses a kiss to the top of your head. Makes a call. Cleaners will be here soon, he says, better get going.

You watch him go.

[ 37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA ]

Jimin’s hair is black when Namjoon calls the meeting.

He takes the seat across from Namjoon’s desk because they don’t meet like this often. Assignments are usually manila folders slipped under doors, hushed whispers in hallways confirmed with a nod or a text on a burner phone. Assignments are not last-minute assemblies in conference rooms and offices.

But the way Namjoon is looking at him, with his clenched jaw and a gaze that’s meant to look barbed to anyone who doesn’t actually know him—Jimin doesn’t need to ask what this is about.

Had he bothered to look, he would’ve known by the way you stood in the far corner of the room, face obscured by the mid-afternoon shadows. Yoongi’s close to you, for some reason: dressed head to toe in black, perched on a lateral file cabinet, using a metal corner to sharpen his switchblade. Just like a harbinger of death. Some sort of fucked up omen, a warning that’s come too late.

Didn’t I tell you this would end badly, he hears Yoongi taunt in his head. This is what happens when you lay with trash.

Easy for Yoongi to say when he doesn’t know what it means to be cared for by you. Doesn’t know how it feels to give in to the freefall and plummet at your feet, stripped back and laid bare. Doesn’t know how it feels to kiss secrets into your skin like constellations, to map his tongue along every unspoken confession.

Easy for Yoongi to say, because he doesn’t have to survive the aftermath. Doesn’t have to feel the heartbreak, the agony of having you and watching as you slip through his fingers. Yoongi doesn’t have to struggle just to breathe, doesn’t have to endure the nights staring at the ceiling, watching as the daylight creeps into the corners of his vision. Doesn’t have to watch you looking so unaffected.

“Jimin.” Namjoon’s tone is flat, needlelike.

Behind him, Yoongi chuckles lowly. “What?” Jimin asks, his gaze trained on the painting behind Namjoon’s head. Looks like one he’d seen in Berlin, the time the two of you had gone just because and spent an afternoon ducking in and out of museums to escape the rain.

When he closes his eyes, he still sees the raindrops stuck to your eyelashes. The beads of water rolling off the sleeves of your leather jacket. How blinding your smile had been. The laughter in your voice as you ordered beer after beer after beer for the two of you in flawless Berlinisch. A brief, fleeting glimpse at normalcy. At the kind of life the two of you could have if you were just… different. Lived different lives. Were different people.

“You’ve gotten sloppy.”

Namjoon’s words are a cold bucket of water. Snap him back to reality, yank him back to the present where he’s forced to leave those river-lined streets behind. You’re silent and Yoongi’s still snorting laughter. “Okay,” is all Jimin can bring himself to say.

Jin had gotten sloppy once, too, and Namjoon stuck him down in the basement to work logistics. Might not be so bad, Jimin reckons. He’d be away from you, spared of this fucking misery. “So you know that’s unacceptable.”

Jimin just shrugs, resigned to his fate, whatever it may be. “I’m reassigning the both of you,” Namjoon continues. “You’ll both have new partners for your next assignments, since you clearly can no longer be trusted together.”

“Who?” Jimin manages to choke out.

Namjoon raises an eyebrow, clearly having expected an argument. “You’re being sent to Shanghai with Jungkook. You,” he says, turning his attention to you, “are going to Moscow with Taehyung.”

She’s fond of Taehyung, Jimin wants to say. But you’d been fond of him too, once upon a time, and that’d only ended in heartbreak, so who fucking cares.

They’re cruel, the tricks Jimin’s mind plays on him. How he convinces himself you look pained. How his fingers wring together at the thought of entrusting his life in the hands of someone else, someone new. At your life being just as at stake; at Taehyung being tasked with keeping you alive. Would you die for him, too, the way you’d always told Jimin you would for him? Would Taehyung take a bullet to the stomach to keep you safe the way Jimin had?

Even more cruel is the way you scoff, pushing yourself off of the wall as you fold your arms across your chest and say, “That’s bullshit, Kim Namjoon.”

No one talks to Namjoon that way except you.

Yoongi’s knife stops twirling. Just like a bird sensing a storm, senses on high-alert as he flicks his gaze over to you. “I’m sorry?” Namjoon says. “What part of Jimin losing his mind and nearly outing all of us seems like bullshit to you?”

“Hm, let me think,” you retort, a manicured finger tapping against the hollow of your cheek. “The part where you’re reassigning me for someone else’s mistake?”

Which part was the mistake? Jimin wants to ask. Needs to know how much you regret. Was sleeping with you the mistake? Falling in love with you? Getting too caught up in all these daydreams and letting reality get away from him?

“This organization is more important than Park Jimin getting his goddamn dick wet,” Namjoon snaps. “Keeping all of you safe—keeping you alive—is more—”

You scoff. Take an entire container of gasoline and pour it right on top of Namjoon’s flammable ire. “Then perhaps you’d be so kind as to explain to me why Min fucking Yoongi can fuck damn near everyone in this establishment, yet I have to sit here and listen to your goddamn mouth—”

Jimin doesn’t think Yoongi even knows his arm is moving.

There’d just been the trading of barbed words. His own name being spoken into the ether. Yoongi’s arm moving away from his body, switchblade clasped tightly between his fingers as he plunges it into your flesh.

Jimin watches it puncture your arm in slow motion. Feels the bile in his throat, the heat in his belly. Looks first at Namjoon whose jaw has gone slack, skin pale, as he stammers over words that won’t come. Then he looks at Yoongi—expects to find shock or guilt but finds only a muted disinterest and flared nostrils.

Finally, he looks at you. Watches the white cotton sleeve of your shirt slowly turn red and sticky-wet. Watches as your lips move around syllables and vowels and consonants Jimin can’t decipher.

“—fucking piece of shit, this is my favorite shirt! I’ll never get all this goddamn blood out of it—”

Jimin thinks he hears Yoongi say you deserve it. But Jimin isn’t really thinking much as he clambers out of his chair and moves in Yoongi’s direction. Doesn’t think at all as he lets instinct take over, lets adrenaline steer him headfirst into yet another bad idea.

He’s always known there’d come a day he’d be face-to-face with the sight of your blood. Had always known it’d come from someone else’s hand. Had always promised himself that hurting you would be the last thing anyone ever did.

Jimin has his fingers wrapped around Yoongi’s throat and he finally understands it—the joy Yoongi finds in taking life.

“What’s the matter, Jimin-ah?” Yoongi taunts. Jimin tightens his grip. Suddenly hates that fucking scar across Yoongi’s eye. “You’re never on clean-up duty. Always make your girlfriend do the dirty work. Finally grew some fucking balls, huh?”

“Fuck you,” Jimin says stupidly. Can’t think of anything more to say. Not that he needs to. Wrapping your hands around someone’s throat sends enough of a message, he thinks.

Namjoon’s still tongue-tied as you yank Yoongi’s blade from your arm, immediately pressing your other hand over the wound to stem the bleeding. The sight of your blood is making Jimin dizzy; the smell of the iron hanging in the air. All he wants to do is choke the life out of the man in front of him, but more than that, he just wants to hold your hand. Wants to comfort you, even though he knows you don’t need it. Not from him, not from anyone, but he still wants to. Wants to press his lips to the sweat at your brow.

And Yoongi can see it, too, because he starts laughing. It’s an odd, fractured noise. Jimin isn’t sure if he’s ever heard him laugh before, decides he also hates the way it sounds. Feels all wrong watching it leave his crooked smirk. Makes Jimin’s stomach plummet to the ground.

“Oh, you’re fucked, aren’t you?” Yoongi teases around Jimin’s slackened grip. “You weren’t just fucking her, you’re in love with her.”

Weird how Jimin is the one with his hands around someone’s neck and feels like he’s the one suffocating.

[ 31.2304° N, 121.4737° E | Shanghai, CHINA ]

Jimin watches the life drain from an innocent woman’s face and feels nothing.

Jimin watches Jungkook cut a man down and feels even less.

When it’s over, he cleans up wordlessly and doesn’t eat for three days.

[ 37.5665° N, 126.9780° E | Seoul, SOUTH KOREA ]

Jimin’s hair has faded to brown by the time he returns from Shanghai.

The more complicated job had gone to you and Taehyung. Jimin had tried not to take it personally. The Russian hits are always unnecessarily violent and Jungkook still isn’t fully trained. There’s still a phantom pain in Jimin’s stomach that warns him of the consequences of taking on more than he can chew. So, sure, Shanghai had gone fine, but his mind had been nearly 7,000 kilometers away the entire time.

Good thing he’d returned to Seoul unscathed, too, because he’s sure Namjoon would’ve eliminated him without a moment’s hesitation if he’d fucked up again.

But Shanghai had only served to prove the leader right. Jimin can’t work with you anymore. Can’t focus, can’t stomach the violence, can’t keep his goddamn head on straight.

He sighs as he glances at Jungkook to his right. Jimin had watched him murder two men in cold blood not even thirty-six hours ago and now he’s doe-eyed and sucking down his third banana milk of the morning. It really makes his head spin, being paired with this grown-up infant of a man now instead of you, but for all of Jungkook’s apparent shortcomings, he’d kept Jimin alive. He isn’t dead.

And then you walk in with Taehyung and he wishes he was.

Because you’re laughing and Taehyung’s got his arm slung around your shoulder and you look happy. It’s the kind of happiness that should be contagious, bloom warmth in his chest, but it doesn’t. It just takes the last frayed strand of hope he has and sets flame to it.

You don’t look like you miss Jimin at all. Don’t look like you’ve lost sleep or skipped meals.

“Didn’t take you long, did it?” Jimin says, because he’s wounded and lashing out. Not because he means it.

You must know he doesn’t, too, because you don’t react. “Watch your mouth, Park Jimin,” Taehyung warns, because he doesn’t know, and this only sets Jimin off more. You don’t need defending. Or had you, and Jimin had simply thought it wasn’t his place to provide it? That you wouldn’t want it?

“Or what, Kim Taehyung?”

Taehyung is cherubic. It’s part of his charm, one of many reasons why he’s so effective. If you’re looking to die, you look for the guy who looks like Yoongi, not the one who smiles wide and warm like Taehyung. So when he sets his jaw and pokes his tongue into his cheek and says, “Or I’ll cut your fucking head off, you stupid fuck,” your attention is finally piqued.

“I’m so sick of this,” Jungkook wails, banana milk tossed carelessly in the trash. “All of you need to get your fucking shit together!”

Taehyung rolls his eyes at the same time you pretend to inspect your nails. “Is that why you’re so temperamental, Chim?” Taehyung prods, looking every bit the pretentious, murderous angel he is. “Because you got sent to China on a babysitting mission while the grownups did real work?”

“Fuck you,” Jungkook snaps, rising to full height. “I’m not a fucking child.”

“Oh? Could’ve fooled me.” Taehyung’s words are razor-sharp and smell like kerosene. “Tell me, then: were you on babysitting duty? Had to look after our precious little Jiminie while he nursed his broken heart?”

You sigh, full of faux-exasperation, and place a gentle hand on Taehyung’s forearm. Dig your nails in just enough to be a warning, and if Jimin hadn’t been looking he’d miss it: the way Taehyung deflates instantly, anger dissipating like smoke, back in control. Just because you’d touched him. Just because you were there. Jimin knows that touch, how it feels to be under your control, and it makes his chest ache. Makes everything feel like it’s sitting wrong in his stomach, and he’s either going to be sick all over Namjoon’s overpriced fucking rug or wrap his hands around Taehyung’s throat the way he’d done to Yoongi.

He’s out of his goddamned mind; he feels untethered. Helpless. Like it was always going to end like this, and maybe Jimin knew that and had just ignored it. Maybe now he’s paying the price—maybe he’s finally found something he can’t afford.

Jungkook’s still going off, nasty gaze set on Taehyung because he’s the only one playing along. They’re exchanging words Jimin can’t make heads nor tails of. Words he doesn’t care about. Words that ring empty and hollow because they sound nothing like the way you say his name. Shapeless, unlike the way your lips move around those syllables.

“Jimin,” you say, the sound finally registering and bringing him back down to earth. All he can do is stare. “Can we talk?” Taehyung and Jungkook are still trading barbs.

Wonders how he got here. Looks around the room and wonders if each and every one of them is destined for this same fate, this madness. Wants to tell you why he forgot his vest, why he was three hours late in Argentina. Wants to grovel and beg and leave this place and never look back.

More than anything, he wants to know what it feels like to actually be human.

So he shakes his head. Tries not to be haunted by the way your face falls at the rejection.

There is a scar on his abdomen and a scar on your arm that both tell the same story. There is a man in the basement who is in love with a man above ground and is too weighed down by guilt to do anything about it. There is a man here who plays god, has soldiers to do his bidding, and there is very little here that Jimin has only for himself.

The two of you will have that conversation, but he needs to be human, first.

[ 34.6901° N, 135.1956° E | Kobe, JAPAN ]

This is a waste of your fucking time.

Whatever Namjoon had thought would be here doesn’t seem to exist. Yoongi can barely tolerate you on a good day, threatens to stick a dagger in your neck at least twice an hour, but the more time the two of you waste chasing ghosts, the closer he comes to unraveling entirely.

“Stop fucking staring at me,” he snaps, blowing the smoke of his cigarette right in your face.

You tut. “But you’re so beautiful, Yoongi, I just can’t help it.”

He digs his switchblade from his boot. Makes a show of flipping it open. “I can cut your fuckin’ eyes out of your skull,” he intones. “Maybe that’ll help.”

In your ear, Jimin’s laughter rings like crystal.

Ricochets off of all the corners of Seokjin’s basement, makes the echo sound warped through the earpiece. “Please tell Yoongi-ssi to keep an eye on the man with the shaved head. In front of him, roughly sixty degrees to his right.”

You relay the message. Watch as Yoongi transforms—sharpened gaze, rigid posture, disappears into the shadows. More apex predator than man. “And me?” you ask.

“Backup,” comes Seokjin’s voice. “We haven’t found your mark yet.”

You hum. Pick up the cigarette Yoongi left behind and stick it between your lips. Smoke it nearly to the filter. “You got it, boss,” you tease, just because it flusters him.

“I’m—that’s not—knock it off.”

Exhale. Stub out the cigarette. Butt in your pocket. “Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Jimin says, and his voice is soft, sounds like spun sugar. “Stay alive, all right?”

Jimin’s hair isn’t dyed at all.

if you've read this far: thank you so, so much! i am more appreciative than i can put into words. this is very different from what i typically write, but i hope you enjoyed it nonetheless.

i would love to hear your thoughts if you have any. <3

#jimin x reader #jimin smut #bts x reader #bts smut #jimin imagine #jimin scenarios #jimin fanfic #jimin x you #jimin x y/n #bts imagines #bts scenarios #bts fanfic #bts x you #bts x y/n

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shiorilizzy · 1 month

Text

My thought about yandere Wriothesley

I swear he has SO MUCH POTENTIAL!!

He may look like a gentleman, you can see him as a gentleman and he can even be a gentlemen

But be aware of how far he took to get revenge on his foster parents. He will do anything to get what he wants.

Well at least to you, he will be gentle and easy, not that brutal and bloody.

I have a feeling that Wriothesley will have eyes on good girls. You may be noisy or sassy, you may be silent and shy, but your eyes, your heart… They are so innocent… So pure… It’s utterly beautiful like crystal to him. The way you help others, the way you are not scared of his appearance.

He may notice you when you two are in the shop, both buying a big bag of tea, milk and sugar. He is surprised at that amount of tea and your shining aura.

His heart goes BANG when he sees you help a homeless boy, you defend him against those bad people.

You’re… kind… and brave. He loves your slight tremble, trying to act tough.

He is jealous of that boy. He is so lucky to have you protect him. Wriothesley wishes he had someone like you in the past, maybe his life would be a little sweeter.

Like a hunter set his eyes on the prey. He will find a way to approach you.

Even if you have a boyfriend or husband already, it doesn’t matter to him. Remember his material for talent upgrade? He need “Order”, not “Equity” (or Justice to me). And it’s right for you to become his lovely and only treasure.

Wriothesley is actually very human. He will not just snatch you into his place.

At least, he tried to be a normal boyfriend, a perfect lover to you. After all, he really wants an ordinary life like everyone else.

But later, things got ugly. He struggled so much to believe you or everyone, everything around you.

He suspected the man talked to you on the street that day. He thought your family, your friends were trying to separate you from him. He is scared that you’ll leave him someday, that he will lose something he treasured so much again.

That’s when he decided: You need to be placed somewhere he can watch, always.

Things got even worse if you wanted to break up with him. You’re done. There is a high chance that you will wake up with your leg broken, or cuff, depending on how bratty and cold-heart you were.

Well, he will bring you down with him no matter what.

If I have to describe Yandere Wriothesley in one word, I will say: manipulation.

I believe Wriothesley is hella good at manipulating. Do you see how he cornered Lyney till he lost control? This big shit will gaslight you to believe fish can walk.

He did say that he would feel bad if he kept a pet in the fortress because they could not see the sunlight. But he could train you to accommodate to the environment. That’s much easier.

He will act like he was not the one who kidnapped you but “just a little bit forceful invitation to live with him”.

He will be a gentleman, respect you, listen to you, even argue with you if you are too “fussy”, told you that you can be nicer to him.

Why he is doing those? Because he knows you’re a “good girl”

Sooner or later, your kind heart will make you doubt yourself that maybe you were too harsh on him.

Your innocent soul will soon feel guilty because every “hassle” you cause others to deal with.

Wriothesley, unlike most of yandere who just lock his darling in a room the whole day, he makes you busy all day, let you roam around the Fortress on your own. You’re his darling, his cute little pet, not his prisoner.

He needs to create a playground for you, so you don’t have time to be sad, angry, miss the upper world, or even think about escaping.

Luckily, he is the Duke, the Warden, and the fortress is out of Fontaine’s control. So technically, he is the King down here.

So darling, what do you want to do? Just name it and he will give you.

A baker? Prisoners will smile happily when receive your delicious food every day. A teacher? Those people will express how grateful they are to gain more knowledge thanks to you. An accountant or secretary? Wriothesley himself will gladly have you on his side, helping him with paperwork.

Even if you want to be a slut. You will be promoted from part-time slut to full-time slut. But only for him.

Whatever you want, name it and he will find a way.

See? Life is really good down here, right? You have a dream job, delicious food, pretty clothes, lovely people, and especially, a man who is loyal and loves you unconditionally. What could you ask more?

Slowly, even if you can escape, you will not do that because you’re having so much fun and peace in here.

After all, the Duke really wants to be loved, as much as he loves you. But being a skeptical person because of his trauma, he needs you to stay where he can watch you.

Sometimes, he will show you his weak side. That will kick your mother hen instinct, just like that day when you protect that weak boy.

Oh this sly wolf, he will do everything to get you.

But do not think you can get away with everything. You definitely don’t want to see him get mad ever again.

Let’s say, you escaped and got caught by him.

That man will let you sit and watch he torturing your partner in crime (of course you cannot do all the work yourself), let you hear their loud agony, see their body slammed hard on the ground.

The more you beg for them, the more torturing he will give them. Until you are trembling in fear and tears and whimpering.

Does the guiltiness eat you? That’s his intention. He just knows you too well.

That is just one of his tricks. He has plenty to use. After all, he lived for quite some time, and most of them were in the Fortress.

He usually hugs you in sleep. Don’t hesitate to put your head on his arm or sleep on his body. He LOVES those pressures.

I have a feeling he will hug you like a teddy bear. And when he needs to switch to the other side, he will just “move” you along with him.

Even when you guys are in a “bad term”, he will sleep and hug you no matter what. Wriothesley even snug his head in your neck, like a poor boy.

As if you WERE the one at fault!

Overall, Wriothesley will make your relationship become “normal” sooner or later. You will think that this is just a little “special”, a little extraordinary, a bit of spice in love that everyone has.

That staying here forever is normal

That his love is totally normal

That you love him

That you want to have a family with him.

Wriothesley is smart, he knows what he wants, and doesn’t really care about morals.

So it is impossible for you to escape since he set his eyes on you.

I would write about him in bed another day

#genshin impact #genshin x reader #wriothesley genshin #wriothesley headcanons #wriothesley x reader #yandere genshin impact #yandere genshin x reader #yandere wriothesley

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lazycats-stuff · 7 months

Note

Hey, I wanted to ask if you could do a bat!bro who’s Australian? And very aussie, like they go bogan (look it up if you don’t know) when they are mad and every second word is basically just a swear word of some kind (especially c*nt)

Also showing everyone Kath and Kim, it’s a classic and I recommend it to everyone.

Okay, sure thing. I love Aussies, but the spiders and snakes scare me. Also, I looked up Kath and Kim and I think I will watch it. It looks fun. If there are aussies reading this, have fun. Back in my short era lol.

Summary: (Y/N) is Australian. Everyone is done.

Warnings: cursing, aussie behavior, swearing, Kath and Kim showing, mentions of bogan culture

(Y/N) is an interesting person if you ask his family. Bruce and Alfred like his easy going personality, but they absolutely hated his cursing. Absolutely hate his cursing. Alfred wasn't afraid to threaten him with punishment. Bruce just said not in public.

Dick loved the egalitarianism he had for people. He never judged the people and he considered everyone equal. He is also authentic and never changes himself for anyone or anything. At galas, he was himself and so he was in public.

Jason liked his common sense. He thought that people lacked it now a days and he enjoyed it. A new perspective for Jason. He loved his sense of humor and the way he would get mad. It was funny to see his accent thicken up to the point where they can't understand him and the way he goes bogan, made Jason cackle every time.

Tim loved the common sense more than anything and the informality he has. In America, there is a certain level of formality, but with (Y/N)? There was no such thing known as formality. He didn't even know the meaning of the word. And there is something that (Y/N) has called mateship. Tim knew that it was friendship between them all and it made him happy knowing that he loves them so much.

Damian loved (Y/N)'s optimism. It was bigger than Dick's and that's something. Damian couldn't pinpoint it, but it felt nice. And those two are polar opposites. They both grounded each other with their opposite views. But that didn't mean (Y/N) was naive. He knew that it wasn't that easy. And Damian knew that the world wasn't so bad.

But the one thing that annoyed the absolute shit out of everyone was the fact that he showed them Kath and Kim. They loved the show, they have agreed that is a good tv show, but they didn't want to have it shoved down their throats.

" Oh you fucking cunt! "

Bruce looked up from his coffee at the insult. He raised his brows and Alfred sighed in complete disappointment. They looked at one another. What is going to happen? More so, what has happened?

Who pissed him off?

" No cursing! " Alfred yelled back and there were thunderous steps going to the kitchen. Jason was running from (Y/N), ready to get out of the manor. Bruce guessed that he was running to the garage to his motorbikes.

" What happened? " Bruce asked as Jason his behind him. Alfred glared at (Y/N), still mad about the cursing.

" This cunt went into my room! "

Alfred was absolutely fuming at this point. Bruce sighed as Jason used him as a human shield. Did he love his sons? He did. Would he protect them at every given opportunity? Yes. But when they are arguing amongst each other? Nope.

" And why did you go to his room? " Bruce asked, trying to find some middle ground with them both.

" Because he took my shirt! " Jason said and Bruce glanced back at (Y/N). (Y/N)'s eyes widened and Alfred had to grip the counter in order to control himself a little bit. He can't really run anymore so the way to reprimand is going to be throwing stuff.

" I didn't you cunt! I have told you, talk to Dick, you fucking dickhead!" (Y/N) yelled back and Alfred cracked his neck from side to side. Bruce glanced at Alfred and he looked mad at all the swearing that was happening.

" And why would Dick take it?! " Jason asked, peaking his head from behind Bruce.

" Cause he wanted it for a while you stupid cunt! "

Alfred looked up. Somebody is going to die today. Bruce might have a no kill rule, but Alfred didn't share the same code. He wasn't above it.

" Okay, you promise not to chase me if I go talk to him? " Jason asked, looking like a little child.

" Go. " (Y/N) said, seemingly tired from arguing.

Jason booked it out of the kitchen. Alfred took a deep breath, glaring daggers at (Y/N).

" Master (Y/N), you are my grandson, but I won't allow cursing here. " Alfred explained in a neutral voice, but (Y/N) knew that there was a layer or threat underneath it.

" Alfred, it's a necessary thing. " (Y/N) defended himself and Alfred raised a brow, clearly telling him that he wasn't having it. (Y/N) sighed walking over to Alfred, giving him a hug as an apology.

" I'm sorry Alfred, but I can't really help it. It only happens when I get really mad. " (Y/N) mumbled and Alfred just grumbled before giving him a hug too.

" Well, I stil love you none the less. " Alfred said, ruffling up (Y/N)'s hair.

" Hey mate! " (Y/N) said, trying to duck from the hand. " What mate? " Alfred teased with his own accent and Bruce chuckled. (Y/N) gave Bruce a hug too before running off.

And there it was. That aloofness.

" I still don't believe that he is your son. A complete opposite of you. " Alfred noted and Bruce just took a sip of his coffee. Why does this happen to him?

#dc x male reader #dc comics #x male reader #batfamily #bruce wayne x male reader #jason todd x male reader #batman x male reader

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w3irdo666 · 3 months

Text

AT THE VERY BOTTOM OF YOUR PATHETIC SOUL

Yandere!Alastor x Fem! Reader

Tags: manipulation, abusive friendship (?).I am not sure if i may name it friendship.. obsessive behaviour,swearing

Notes: Well, it's quite risky one-shoot...Enjoy.

You were an ordinary sinner who came to the hotel in the hope of redemption. There was nothing remarkable about you. Simple appearance. An ordinary sinner. An ordinary pathetic soul. But not for him. For him, you were something special.. No, Alastor does not know how to love, he will never love. He wants to own. Seeing your fragile figure is unbearable for him. He wants to have you under complete control. He wants you to depend on him. You were like a lovely vase for him, which he just wanted to push in order to observe watching how beautifully it shatters into many fragments.You were like a stupid kitten, too stupid for this black world. Sometimes Alastor wondered why you ended up in hell. Such a kind, quiet soul.. what did you do to get here? He always had to squeeze his microphone tighter when you walked by. Your scent drove him crazy and kept him busy at night.Every day it became only stronger to remain calm around you. He felt like a hungry animal, ready to tear to pieces his pathetic prey.

Oh, how lovely your innocent face is when you sleep. How he wants to see that face grimacing in pain.How he wants you to wake up with his hands on your neck, oh, probably your frightened face will be magnificent... No, he is sure that it will be incomparable.You are so stupid that you can’t even suspect how strange it is that you always find yourself in a problem, Alastor suddenly appears nearby and is ready to help... He does it all. He deliberately puts you in danger and then saves you from it like a hero.When one day you unknowingly cuddled up to him when he was 'rescuing' you. He blessed the devil so that you wouldn't notice his erection in his pants.

After a month of staying at the hotel, he has already gained complete trust in you.. And really, like a kitten, you give a little attention, and he has already become attached to you.. How pathetic.

"Hmm? What's wrong, dear?" His static voice sounded in the darkness of your room. You wiped away your tears with quick movements of your hand, the skin around your eyes swollen from the tears shed from yet another betrayal.You turned to him. You were sitting on the bed, shaking slightly, knees pressed to your chest. But here he is. The one you need so much, isn’t it? You don't need anyone except him. He is your everything. "I-i.." Your voice was trembling.Hell.How difficult it was for him to remain calm. "H-he forgot a-about me..h-he said n-no one n-need m-me.."Alastor stepped closer to the bed. His casual smile turned slightly into a mockery.You slid off your bed and walked over to him. You lifted your head up. Ah. You needed support so bad. What a poor girl.Alastor's hand moved to your cheek and stayed there. Your warm skin was the opposite of his, cold. “Darling, you know that besides me...No one appreciates you? No one will value you as much as I do, your friend Alastor.” You closed your eyes and took his hand that was on your cheek. You rubbed yourself against his hand. Fuck, how difficult it is for him to remain calm. "Yes Alastor....No one would be good for me, only you..." What a poor creature. So mired in despair that you are so easy to manipulate.

Every time after betrayal,l you sit in your room on your bed. You try not to cry. Cry, but at least be quieter.Nobody cares about your suffering.But then he comes and gives you hope... But you don’t know that this is all his doing. He does this so that everyone would betray you. So that he would be the only one you trust. Your hope. Your air.

He will dig to the bottom of your pathetic soul to break you completely.To surrender into his arms.

#hazbin alastor #hazbin hotel #alastor #alastor x reader #alastor x y/n #alastor x you #alastor hazbin hotel #alastor fanfiction

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writeforfandoms · 2 months

Text

Homeward Bound 2

Find the series masterlist

Your job as the caretaker is rarely boring, especially around nesting time. Fortunately, you're prepared for almost anything.

Warnings: Swearing, accidental self harm (walking on hot sand), bits of backstory.

Word count: 1k

Your room off the hatching grounds was small, with just the necessities. A simple bed, a small table for some jerky and water, and a small wardrobe. You didn't inhabit this room all the time, thankfully - your normal room was bigger, more spacious. But for the last weeks leading up to the hatching, if you weren't out on the sands, you could be found here.

You didn't dare go far from the eggs, especially as it got closer to hatching day. It was risky, considering you would only get a few hours’ warning, at best.

So when someone knocked on your door at some ungodly hour, you woke and rolled out of bed before your brain even had a chance to catch up. You threw on your robe for some semblance of modesty, yanking the door open.

One of the messenger boys stood in front of your door, hair mussed and cheeks red from his run. “One of the dragons,” he said, one hand waving back the way he'd come.

You didn't wait for the rest of his message, pushing past him and sprinting down the short hall and to the sands. Hot sand nearly burned the bottoms of your feet, but you paid it no mind.

It took only a moment to find the dragon in question. A new mother, gray wings spread wide, nearly prancing in distress but somehow never even touching her eggs.

“Hey, hey, easy,” you soothed, approaching her carefully, hands up. “Easy, beautiful. Calm down and show me what's wrong.”

She hissed, higher pitched than normal, more nervous than aggressive. But she settled, at least a little, all four feet remaining planted now.

“Good,” you crooned, taking another couple steps closer. “Now. Show me what's wrong.”

She hissed again but allowed you close, wings slowly settling against her back again. She stepped back carefully, allowing you to see the nest.

And the clear crack that ran across the top of one of her eggs.

“Oh.” Sharp pain lanced clean through your chest. “Oh, beautiful….” Ever so carefully, your fingertips ran across the crack, feeling for moisture. It was possible the internal membrane hadn't torn, in which case you could patch up the egg. Fortunately, that looked to be the case this time. You breathed out slowly, pressing your palm mid-way down the shell to check the temperature. A little cool, but not bad.

You could make this work.

“Okay,” you breathed out. “Okay. Your egg is okay.” You looked up at the dragon to make sure she understood, meeting brilliant golden eyes fearlessly. “I'm going to help.”

She trilled softly, lowering her head to nudge your shoulder very gently.

“Yes, yes,” you murmured, sparing one hand to pat her snout. “Go get your rider, and a few others if you can. Quickly.”

She hesitated only a moment, the instinctive pull to remain at her nest strong, before she turned and took off. You didn't watch her go, instead focusing on shoring up the sand around all the eggs. That would help keep them all stable and warm.

Now to address the crack.

You didn't want to leave it alone - there was too much potential for things to get in there and cause problems.

You had all the things you'd need for a kind of paste you could cover the crack with. It would need to be reapplied periodically until the egg hatched, but it would work.

You spared a brief thought of thanks that your mother had taught you everything about this job.

The tromp of boots on sand and the trill of the dragon pulled your attention up from the sand. The mother had returned with her rider and two others. Including Simon.

“Pack more sand around these eggs,” you ordered the three. “All around them. But do not touch the cracked egg. I will be back in three minutes.”

You stood, frowning thunderously when one of the riders goggled at you, mouth open. “Now,” you snapped.

Simon cuffed the gawking rider before striding off to grab one of the shovels. You turned and ran back to the small storage room off the hatching grounds, full of ingredients for just such a need as this.

The sand was hot as you carried the bowl back to the egg, reminding you painfully that you were not wearing shoes. You grimaced but pushed through, walking calmly this time. You didn't want to get any sand in the bowl.

The three riders had made quick work of getting the eggs braced with more sand, Simon still holding the shovel even as he watched you approach, eyes dark.

“Good,” was all you offered, kneeling carefully next to the cracked egg. Partially to not get more sand around, and partially to make sure your robe stayed covering you. You covered the crack with the paste, carefully going beyond the edges of the crack to be sure nothing could get in. When you checked, the egg was already a little warmer. Very good.

Sighing softly, you pushed back to your feet. “Very good,” you murmured. “The egg will be fine. Thank you for your help.” You looked at each of the three riders. The one who belonged to the mother dragon actually stepped forward to hug you, something you returned a little awkwardly.

The mother settled around her eggs again, even more carefully now, crooning softly before she settled her snout right next to the cracked egg. You patted her head, relieved.

It took until you gathered up the bowl and tugged your robe tighter to realize that Simon was still standing to one side, gaze still fixed on you. You paused, foot scuffing through the sand, eyes blowing wide before you schooled your expression back to neutrality. You nodded to him once and strode back to the storage room, covering the remaining paste with a cloth. It would keep for a while.

You needed to wash up.

You paused, just for a moment, at the edge of the sand where the hallway to your room branched off. Simon was standing next to Ilsbet, one hand under her chin, forehead pressed to hers. You turned away from the quiet moment. But not before you smiled.

#homeward bound #dragon riders au #simon ghost riley x reader #simon ghost riley x you #f!reader

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faebaex · 1 year

Note

Hi? It's my first requests, so if you don't mind could you please do GN!MC stingrays × octavinelle?

(I'm sorry if i have grammatical mistake)

Have a great day Author-nim ♡

Octavinelle with a Stringray Reader

author note: hiii welcome! i feel like it is going to become my mission to turn every imaginable sea creature into a reader (✯◡✯) i'm up for the challenge! this was really fun to write! also, accidental sugar daddy Azul? Accidental sugar daddy Azul <(￣︶￣)>

characters: Azul Ashengrotto, Jade Leech, Floyd Leech x GN!Stringray Reader

background:

You are a stringray mer, specifically of Bluespotted Ribbontail species. You are considered quite attractive, and your small stature and timid nature only add to your allure. Despite having quite potent venom, your spinal blade does not carry over to your human form.

Azul Ashengrotto

Oh you poor, sweet summer child.

The first time Azul laid eyes on you, people swear they could see thaumark signs in his eyes.

It was like someone has personally delivered prey to him.

But he was doing you a favour, you know?

With your timid and tender nature, it was only a matter of time before one of the many rogues at this school took advantage of you.

But luckily for you, he can offer you protection. Just sign here and... Perfect. That was easy, wasn't it?

And that is how you began working as a server at the Mostro Lounge, in exchange for Azul's 'protection'.

You quickly became the most popular server at the Lounge, your attractive appearance and nervous, stuttery service becoming a hit with the clientele. Poor little thing, you tug just right on their heartstrings.

Azul was surprised. Whilst he was expecting you to have some popularity (exactly the reason he preyed on you in the first place), he wasn't expecting you to blow up like this.

But he isn't complaining! Celebrating, in fact. Sales have never been better, and seasonal specials have been selling out faster than normal since you joined his staff.

Anyone who goes in the VIP room after hours will see a huge grin on Azul's face as he pours over the business ledgers.

Its because of this that Azul starts to spoil you.

It starts small at first, an extra 15 minute break here and there, a side you hadn't asked for slipped on to your employee meal.

Soon enough, you are granted exclusive access to the VIP room, a perk that was only afforded to the twins up until now.

Oh and what a coincidence, you'll find a study guide for that class you are struggling with on the VIP room table as you take your break. It must have been left out after a client meeting... No harm in you thumbing through it whilst you take your break, Azul would coo.

Azul tries to be discreet, especially once the twins cotton on to your special treatment, with Jade flashing a sharp toothed eerie grin and Floyd complaining that he too wants free study guides.

Azul could justify it, of course, with that you are their best server, in order to maximise the hours you could work, he needed to ensure no other aspect of your life got in the way.

He was definitely justifying it more to himself than he was the twins.

So come, dear. Let him show you your new special uniform for the lunar new year seasonal service...

Jade Leech

You make work so much more fun for him.

Watching you quiver and almost drop a glass when he creeps up behind you and places a hand on your shoulder is just precious.

"Oya, oya. Those glasses are quite delicate. Do be careful."

However, despite the fact that he slyly bullies you for fun, he is a very good manager.

He will always ensure you take your break on time, and that your employee meal is ordered far enough in advance that it is ready for you as soon as you sit down on your break.

And should any particularly rowdy clientele decide to bother you...

Then he will ensure they are dealt with <3

It is his favourite part of the night, after all. How he adores it when you hide behind him.

Jade ropes you into his sneaky work agendas too.

For example, he'll coach you into pushing the mushroom dishes to customers so that he can stop Azul from taking them off the menu.

Probably the least sinister smiles you've received from him are when he beams at you when you deliver a bunch of mushroom dish orders to the kitchen.

Jade will stand with the most innocent smile as Azul looks on in confusion through the order ledger and the sudden influx of mushroom cuisine orders, with you hidden behind Jade.

Azul: "Why are they tucked behind you like that?"

Jade: "They're tired. :) "

Considering the nature of your 'deal' with Azul, Jade's protection of you extends outside of the Lounge into your school life.

But that doesn't mean it is convenient, even if it is effective.

He terrifies you just as much as the people around you, after all.

However it has its perks.

The lunch line is infinitely easier when you have a 190cm eel ensuring that you don't get caught in the lunch crush.

He likes to tell you over lunch how his favourite food is octopus when Azul is sitting right there.

He'll then remark, with the most unassuming of smiles, how he hasn't tried stingray yet.

Funnily enough, you don't feel so hungry anymore.

Floyd Leech

Oh dear.

This man terrorises you.

You're just so cute to him! Especially when you tremble and tear up when he spooks you.

He just wants to tuck you under his arm and keep you <3

Floyd is constantly on your heels when you are working. Whether he is spooking you or draping himself over you, he's always somehow impeding your work.

Azul is constantly scolding Floyd and tries his best to keep you separated, so that Floyd's behaviour does not bother you. Or effect profits.

Jade just looks on in amusement.

Despite the above, your relationship with Floyd isn't all bad.

You and Floyd take your breaks together, simply because he stops working when you do and throws himself over your lap when you sit down to rest.

He's fairly calmer then, passing the time by showing you pictures of clothes he is thinking of buying and asking your opinion on them.

You caused a few mood swings at first when you didn't give a good enough response, but after awhile you got comfortable enough to give him your honest opinion. That makes him happy!

He also shows you his basketball videos, even if most of them are just Ace getting taken out by one of his basketball throws.

He's definitely roped you in to going to practice with him one time. He thinks it would be funny watching you struggle to make the hoop.

Floyd is also the cause of one of your most terrifying incidents at NRC.

On one of your rare days off, you were taking a swim in the Octavinelle pool to relax and reacquaint yourself with the water, and Floyd snuck up on you and scared you.

And well...

You almost skewered him with your spinal blade.

You narrowly missed stabbing him right in the stomach. Even Floyd was shocked but the suddenness of it.

... Until the giddiest grin spread across his face and he started cackling.

You, on the other hand, started bawling your eyes out.

Floyd ended up carrying you to the Lounge because you wouldn't stop crying.

He sat you on a barstool whilst Jade prepared you a drink and Floyd went into the kitchen to steal you some ice cream.

Floyd then gushed to Jade about how cool you were when you almost stabbed him with your tail blade and how sharp it looked.

He looks freakishly delighted when he remarks that maybe next time you'll actually get him.

If you did, he'd probably wear it as a badge of honour and show it off to everyone shamelessly.

Meanwhile, Azul comes to check what all the noise is and pretends to be upset that the twins are giving out free refreshment, like he doesn't do that himself.

#twst #twisted wonderland #twst azul #azul ashengrotto #twst jade #jade leech #twst floyd #floyd leech #twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #azul ashengrotto x reader #jade leech x reader #floyd leech x reader #octavinelle #azul ashengrotto x y/n #jade leech x y/n #floyd leech x y/n

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ghost-proofbaby · 5 months

Text

SO SCARLET (IT WAS MAROON)

CHAPTER SIX: IS IT OVER NOW?

LET'S FAST FORWARD TO THREE HUNDRED TAKEOUT COFFEES LATER, I SEE YOUR PROFILE AND YOUR SMILE ON UNSUSPECTING WAITERS.

☆ pairings: rockstar!eddie munson x fem!reader

☆ warnings: no use of y/n, strong language, angst, minors dni

☆ WC: 5.8K+

☆ A/N: if i could put the entirety of the lyrics to this song on here, i would. it's! their! song! (side note: these idiots need to start making progress before i tear my hair out i mean it. they make me think about jumping off of very tall somethings)

thank you to my love @hellfire--cult for the divider!

masterlist

The coffeeshop that Eddie chooses isn’t one you’re familiar with. It’s smaller, more hidden, tucked away in an unsuspecting corner and disguised from prying eyes.

It wouldn’t have been your first choice, but you’re sure his thought process on choosing public locations differs from yours now. One wrong move, and he’s sure to end up on the cover of another magazine. Actually, one wrong breath, and the public eye probably eats him alive.

He’d sort of brought that upon himself, building up such a polarizing reputation all by his own hands.

“Ever been before?” he asks as the two of you stand in line, the scent of espresso burning your nose and the hiss of steam wands cutting straight through the soft chatter of fellow patrons.

You only shake your head. No words to ease his clear anxiety as you watch him shift his weight between his two feet and his hands dig deep into his pockets.

“It’s pretty good,” he continues to ramble, looking up at the menu rather than you, “They’ve got decent hot coffee, and their lattes aren’t too bad. I like the vanilla one best, which is probably boring but-”

“Eddie,” you interrupt him sternly, “What happened to not talking?”

He scoffs a little, finally turning to look at you. “We aren’t seated yet. Once we get a table, I swear, my lips are sealed.”

You highly doubt that.

It’s torture being this close to him for this long. The accidental bumps of his elbow against your shoulder that send you jumping from the contact. The way you nearly stepped on his foot when you’d shuffled out of the way for someone, and your apology got tangled on your tongue when he’d reached out to steady you. In small moments, when he’s too busy glancing nervously around the cafe, you spare him longer looks. Since he first came tumbling back into your life a mere week ago, you’d been staunch on your stance that he had changed beyond measure. But here, out at a coffee shop with just the two of you present along with all his nervousness, you can see glimpses of something familiar beneath the surface. The way he bites his lip, the way he fiddles with his rings, how he’s occasionally humming tunes beneath his breath as he avoids eye contact with you – you hate it. You hate every aspect of it, and all the painful nostalgia it stirs within you.

It reminds you of your first date with him, back in Hawkins. All the confidence he’d exuded at that Halloween party you’d met him at had disappeared the moment he got you alone sober. As if he had felt the weight of what this would become from day one, as if he knew just how much of both your future’s rested in one stupid date.

You almost get lost in the memories before it’s your turn to order at the counter.

“Just a vanilla latte, please.”

You can see his small smile out of the corner of your eye. A small trace of triumph is clear as day as you order the exact thing he just said was his favorite. It wasn’t intentional, but there’s no use trying to convince him of that.

It’s just a coincidence, you try to convince yourself. It just sounded good after he brought it up.

“I’ll have the same,” he tells the barista behind the counter, moving to pull out his wallet.

On your first date with him, you had bickered endlessly about who would pay. And you nearly do it again – you nearly reach out a hand to stop him and insist you could pay for your own coffee on instinct.

It would be so easy to let history repeat itself, to watch your greatest hits reinvent themselves at this moment. Maybe, this time around, the two of you can get it right.

You don’t move a single muscle as he hands over his card.

He murmurs out a soft thank you when it’s returned to him with a receipt, and you’re already turned to scout out a table to sit at.

There’s plentiful booths, a few high-tops by the front windows. There’s even half booths lining one wall of the cafe. If you were out on your own, all of these choices would be perfect. You’d take a seat at any of the tables and be content, especially the high-tops that offered the perfect opportunity for people watching between work.

You choose a table in one of the back corners. Somewhere darker, and far from everyone else in the building. Somewhere hidden.

“Here?” he questions, hesitating behind you as you drop your bag down beside one of the chairs.

“Something wrong with this table?” you ask over your shoulder, hand gripping on the back of the chair as if it could ground you.

“I mean… not really,” you turn and look at him over your shoulder, “It’s just kind of dark back here, and you used to like sitting by windows-”

Your throat tightens at it – the acknowledgement that he remembers. That he can recall anything from the past, of you, of your time spent together. Part of you had been convinced he’d taken a sledgehammer to the past, shattered it into something unrecognizable and abandoned it altogether.

He hadn’t. It should have been obvious, but he hadn’t.

“Maybe I’ve changed,” you cut in, gaze unwavering as you dare him to challenge you on the fact, “Besides, I don’t want to be distracted while I work.”

You won’t lose this game; whatever he’s currently playing at, you can’t afford to lose. You are not the girl he remembers, and he is not the man you’ve mourned for two years. Both of you, it seems, need that reminder.

He joins you at the shadowy table without another word.

You take to setting up your laptop and notebook, powering up your devices as you flip back open to your pages of contacts and physical notes already taken. Your eyes refuse to find his the entire time as you log in, as you open up to that damn refusal from the latest venue, as you sigh harshly out your nose at that bitter reminder of failure.

When they call your names for the lattes, he’s up and retrieving them without you even asking him to.

In your short time alone at the table, you lean forward to rest your forehead on the palms of your hands. It’s exhausting – being around him, pretending like you wouldn’t have enjoyed the view out the window, facing the reality that his mess had once again become yours. Every inch of your skin prickles with the need to run. And yet you don’t. You could have told him no, easily turned down his offer for coffee. But you didn’t, so now, you’ll live with the consequences.

“One vanilla latte,” Eddie appears, setting down that takeout cup of coffee down in front of you before he takes his seat, “I didn’t know if you’d want any extra sugars, but if you do, I can grab them-”

“Thanks,” you interrupt blandly, lifting your head from your hands as you watch him sit down his own coffee. You really, really didn’t want to hear him ramble anymore.

Didn’t want to ponder how it’s almost as endearing as the first day you met him. Didn’t want to think about how each syllable that falls from his lips strikes something deep in you, something stained and something yearning for erasure of a past both of you can’t change now. Didn’t want to keep caving so damn easily.

You are meant to be furious. You have every right to be; he left first, he stopped loving you first, he broke this first. You’ve had two years to gather up all your grief and all your anger, package it nicely with a bow on top, and that is what you should be handing over to him right now. Not forgiveness, not understanding. Certainly not endearment.

Something in your chest still shudders at the sight of his wince when he tries to sip the hot latte too soon, effectively burning his lip and tongue.

“So, you come here often?”

What the hell happened to not talking?

It’s not him to blame – it’s you. The words tumble out embarrassingly quickly. You had a plan, why weren’t you following the plan? Get a free coffee, get a break from the office, maybe manage to have some sort of breakthrough while away from that stuffy building. You weren’t supposed to be talking to him.

And he knows it. Damn it, does he know it as his lips curl at their corners ever so slightly, “Yeah. It’s convenient, nice and close to the studio.”

Where the fuck had all his rambles disappeared to? What are you supposed to do with such a short, such a normal response?

“Right,” you nod, acting as though the location of his studio would be common knowledge to you, “Right, no, of course. It’s good to have a convenient coffee place.”

He leans back in his chair, nervousness misting away and some sort of confidence creeping in instead. Fuck him.

“Do you have one around here?”

He’s testing the waters, seeing just how much conversation you’ll allow. The threshold should be none. Zilch. A resounding absolutely not.

“I usually stop by the Starbucks closest to my apartment.”

So much for that.

“Starbucks?” he crinkles his nose, and dear Lord, you need to look away. Save yourself the heartbreak, because those wrinkles are almost a replica map of the ones you remember back in Hawkins when he’d make faces at you across the Hideout when someone would approach him with boring conversation he wanted no part in. The same disgust, the same silent conversation between you transpiring, “I thought you were always a coffee snob. Hated that shit.”

You had been. When he had known you, you had hated that subpar commercial coffee.

“Like I said,” you swallow hard, looking down to your keyboard, realizing the conversation needed to end, “People change.”

Did you change, though? You still hated the taste of your morning coffee, cringed at either the burnt bitterness or overwhelming sweetness you could never find peaceful equilibrium between. A thousand different orders, a thousand different experiments, and you still had yet to find anything that satisfied your caffeine cravings.

Kind of like how you window-shopped at the bars. How you’d look over various men that Romina pointed out, and only shake your head before picking out something wrong with them. Something that wasn’t to your usual taste, something that wasn’t him.

You finally take a sip of your latte as Eddie nods, muttering a soft, “Guess so.”

It’s perfect. The latte isn’t too sweet, isn’t too bitter. It’s exactly what you’ve been searching for these last two years.

“They have really good muffins,” Eddie continues on, mimicking you by taking another sip of his drink. This time, he doesn’t burn his mouth, “Cinnamon rolls, too.”

The small talk is nearly killing you. You should go silent on him, begin to work on figuring out the venue situation. But you watch the way he fiddles with the sleeves of his leather jacket and can’t help but remember the old one with safety pins holding together the sleeves. Finally, you cave outwardly.

“What kind of venue do you want?”

It’s not small talk, but it’s not personal talk. It’s just you swallowing your pride, and shocking yourself by reaching out for the help everyone has pestered you with offering the last week.

“What?” Eddie’s eyes widen, no longer rubbing the fabric between his fingertips.

“The venue for the party,” you elaborate, “What are you looking for in it? Small? Big? Private? Rooftop? I’ve tried asking Matt, and he’s given me nothing to work off of.”

Eddie slowly lifts his hands to lay on the tabletop, watching you with such careful eyes that you can see all the lack of trust in them. “Does it… matter?”

You scoff, and before your brain or heart can warn you against it, you’re scooting your chair around the table to be closer to Eddie. You pull your laptop along with you, shifting it so that both of you can see the screen as you bring up your list of options. A colorful spreadsheet: rejections highlighted in a muted red, the ones you haven’t heard back from highlighted in soft orange, the ones you’re unsure of and haven’t even sent out queries regarding highlighted in a nearly transparent yellow.

Only one is highlighted in a pastel green. The one with a rooftop option, as well as several downstairs rooms. The one you thought seemed the most like Eddie.

“Yes, it matters a fuck ton,” you explain, pointing at a random line as his eyes dart about your impressive display, “The ones in red are ones that already rejected me, but most are larger venues you’ve played in the past. By the way, why have you destroyed so many green rooms?”

“I get bored,” he flatly replies, leaning in with squinted eyes, “What does that yellow mean?”

“Those are ones I’m unsure about. Either too big, too small, or too exclusive.”

“And orange?”

“I sent out an email, and haven’t heard back.”

“And…” he pauses as he reaches that venue, “And green? Why’s there only one green?”

It occurs to you he’s the first person to not turn their nose up at your extensive organization. Everyone else had thought it was stupid, wasteful, to spend so much time on the spreadsheet. No one had asked you to explain the color system before, usually hardly glancing at the screen before brushing you off.

No one had even questioned the green line yet.

“Green is the one I think…” you trail off, unsure of why you’re so afraid to admit the meaning. You sort of feel foolish; that terrible imposter syndrome managing to creep up on you as you doubt your judgment, “It’s the one I think might be the best fit. It probably isn’t, I don’t know. Honestly, I can take it off the list-”

“Show me the venue.”

“I really don’t-”

He interrupts you by saying your name sternly, looking away from the screen to glance at you with raised eyebrows, “Just show me. It can’t be any worse than…” he looks back over the list, letting out a snort, “Jesus, Webster Hall? Yeah, they’re not letting us come back any time soon.”

“What did you do to them?” you ask, too curious for your own good. Most of the venues wouldn’t divulge the messy details, only staunchly say no and promise they had their reasons once you mentioned Corroded Coffin.

“I’ll tell you if you show me the green venue.”

He knows he’s won when you finally click onto the still open tabs. You’d opened the hyperlink for every single different room, ranging from the large main one to the petty small one on a rooftop. You start with the largest room, and Eddie eagerly drinks in the details on the page.

He whistles softly, only loud enough for you to hear, “Quite the venue.”

“This is just the first room.”

He looks at you, clearly shocked, subtly nodding for you to click through the rest of the tabs. His reaction is fairly consistent as you show each new room, new capacity, new option. You can see the way his face lights up – you had been right.

Your judgment was correct. You hadn’t been an idiot, shouldn’t have doubted yourself. It almost makes you feel as if there’s still a chance that you still know him. Somewhere deep down, beneath your layers of stained armor and his layers of reckless defenses, you still know him.

“It’s… good,” he says softly after reading over that final tab you had opened, “Like, really good.”

You exhale in relief, “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he leans back in his chair, “I don’t think we’ve ever played that venue before, either, so… no wrecked green room to hold over my head.”

You should stay on track and focus; you are making progress. After a week of hopelessness, you were finally not feeling like an absolute failure. Better to keep the train moving forward than to halt right now.

And yet, your mind picks up on that green room comment again, and you can’t help it – all your focus flies out the window.

“Why do you fuck up all those green rooms? And don’t just say you were bored,” you ask, curling your hands around your still warm cup of coffee, “I mean, I get it – the rockstar image or whatever – but isn’t it… isn’t it more trouble than it’s worth when it comes to scheduling tours?”

He shakes his head softly, curls tumbling over tense shoulders, “Definitely not for the rockstar image.”

“Then why?” you turn your head, ignore the screen, focus on him. On his scruff and the bags under his eyes, on the cracks in his chapped lips.

On that distinct look overtaking his face that says you overstepped.

“Forget it,” you weakly say, taking back your words to the best of your abilities without being able to pull them back onto your tongue, tuck them back into that box of anger and grief, and curiosity now, apparently. “I guess it doesn’t really matter. Either way, it’s good that these guys have nothing against you, right?”

“They still might,” Eddie shrugs, sucking his bottom lip in between his teeth, “Word travels fast between venues.”

He says it so sadly, it’s hard to think of a proper response. You know he brought it upon himself. There’s no room for sympathy at this table, in this cafe.

But it still only adds to your motivation to do this job, and do it well. A parting gift to Eddie; a way to silently swallow the pride leftover from a messy breakup, and apologize for the way you’d left without a trace. Right then and right there, you decide that’s what this has to become. For your peace of mind, and possibly for his.

“You want a rooftop,” you don’t phrase it as a question, but as a statement as you yank your laptop closer to you, fingers flying over the keyboard, “A rooftop with a nice view, that’s what your email said.”

“I mean, that’d be nice-”

“You all want an open bar,” you add, continuing to type loudly enough a few people glance back towards the dark corner. You pay them no mind, your determination taking over, “And it needs to be smaller than your normal shows according to Matt. That doesn’t mean we have to limit venues by capacity – we could just limit ticket sales.”

Eddie’s mouth falls open ever so slightly, watching you in awe as you start a new document. Making a checklist of just what was possible. No more spreadsheets littered with reminders of rejections, of what you weren’t sure you could get for the band. It would be nice to have a list of the venues you couldn’t contact now, but there was no need to let their names glare at you every time you reviewed your plans.

“We need a top three for venues. What are your top three?”

You finally pause your clacking to look at him. Still stunned, still under the spell of watching you come to life.

It used to be this way back in Hawkins, too. Whenever you took over on a school project, or a new gig for Corroded Coffin. You could do this. You would do this.

“I don’t-” Eddie starts, before taking a deep breath, “The only venues I really know by name are the ones I can’t perform at. The ones that banned me.”

“Awesome,” he shrinks back a little at that, almost in disbelief, but it was awesome. Not that he’d gotten banned, but that you had somewhere to start, “Send me that list. Type it up on your phone right now, and send it.”

“To your email?” he questions, already doing as you’d commanded of him.

You consider it. Your email was already overflowing with work related notions, and brimming with those goddamn rejections you had yet to delete and move past.

Personal email was out of the question. You only checked it for coupons from your favorite online shops and notifications from your mother’s Facebook.

You snatch his phone out of his palm, and don’t look up at him until you navigate to the contacts app, hit the small plus sign, type in the magic number that you don’t check to see if he actually deleted two years ago. You just assume he did.

Your number.

“Text it to me,” you instruct him as you pass the phone back. His hand still hovers where it’d been when you’d taken the cell phone, as if he’s frozen. “Now, please.”

You don’t care if it’s stupid to do, it’s necessary. He’ll probably just delete it once you finish this final favor, this final gift to him to send him off and out of your life for good.

“O-Okay,” he stutters, and not even a minute later, your phone buzzes with a text.

You flip it over, keep it angled so Eddie can’t see the screen.

New text from ROCKSTAR ♡ !

He may have deleted your contact, but you’d never deleted his.

You’d tried to, make no mistake. Spent plenty of late hours staring at that haunted number, even tried to backspace it away a few times. But every time your thumb would hover over the delete button, your hands would shake and knuckles would ache. Every time you’d manage to fully backspace the number away, it was no use; you still knew it by heart, still retyped it and saved it as if nothing had ever changed. There had been a short week of having his number blocked, but you’d given up, unblocked it then sometimes still sat and waited for another round of calls from him begging for a chance to just talk.

You always seemed to have one foot in the door, one foot out with Eddie. Always stained, never cleaned of him.

It didn’t matter. After these next three months, you’d delete it. You told yourself you would, for real this time. You’d erase him, properly let him go until you forgot the sound of his voice and couldn’t even recall the first three digits of his phone number. You would. You had to.

You flip the phone back over and face it down on the table, looking up at him, forcing a polite smile. It kills you – it startles him.

“Alright, Mr. Rescue Party. Shall we begin?”

—

You never return to the office.

Hours later, when the sun was setting and the table was littered with empty coffee cups bought by Eddie to continue to fuel the two of you, you receive an email from Lydia.

Leaving and locking up the office now. Hope the meeting with your client went well. See you tomorrow.

You blink rapidly at the message, hardly being able to process the time. It was nearly seven.

“Okay, so, that venue was a no-go,” Eddie says as he approaches the table again, finally stepping back inside from calling your green venue. The two of you had decided it was time to stop sending off emails that could be easily ignored – you were tracking down numbers and calling them directly, now. Forcing them to give an answer then and there rather than putting you off for weeks, “I was right about word traveling between those assholes- What’s wrong?”

He stops just before he pulls out his chair, leaning down with his forearms pressed into the back of the seat when he notices your expression of shock.

It had been easy, too easy, to waste away the hours with Eddie. And, sure, the main distraction had been planning and putting everything into action. Eddie had narrowed down his top three venues, you had found a few businesses that would service an open bar and had begun to gather quotes. But it hadn’t all been business.

Small things had slipped in. A short conversation had been had about the best bars in town when you’d begun that side quest, Eddie admitting which bars in town let him frequent them while offering the most privacy (not many, unsurprisingly) and you’d listed a few of the clubs your coworkers liked to frequent. No overlap to be found. But then, there had been the joking after Eddie called one of his other top three venues and put them on speaker, allowing you to hear the way the owner chewed Eddie out for the time he’d caused chaos at a show that wasn’t even his own. The moment the owner hung up, Eddie had made a face, somewhere between embarrassment and irritation, until you’d finally spoken up and mocked one of the last things the owner had said before the dial tone.

“Don’t you ever call here again,” you’d jokingly mimicked in a deep and comical voice, wagging a finger in Eddie’s direction in fake scolding.

It hadn’t even been that funny. But the two of you had still descended into giggles like two children, until tears pricked the corners of your eyes and your stomach ached just a little bit.

Small moments. Small exchanges. Things that were personal, things you wouldn’t have done with a normal client. Things that had a full day slipping away from you quietly in the darkest corner of a coffee shop you never even knew existed mere blocks from your work.

“It’s seven, Eddie,” you tell him as if he should be just as taken back. He hardly blinks an eye, “We’ve been here seven hours.”

“And?” the creases between his brows finally smooth, standing back up straight, “We’ve been getting shit done, and we’ve been paying customers the entire time. I don’t see the issue.”

The issue is the way you made work not feel like work.

The issue was the cycle you had been fearing, avoiding, and falling victim to ever since he’d been waiting for you in that conference room that very first day. Every time Eddie would inch back into your vision, whether right before you as he was now or in the form of emails you’d find yourself reading over before bed, you were forgetting the anger. It kept feeling like a time machine, sending you right back to that very first night. Before the fame, before the hurt.

You have no idea how you’ll manage to keep this to just a parting gift.

“I just…” your words fall short, because he’s technically right, “I didn’t realize we’d been here that long.”

Eddie takes his seat with a nonchalant shrug, “Easy to lose track of time when you’re actually getting shit done,” he stops, blanches at his words as he stares at you as if he thinks he’s just insulted you, “Wait, I- No, I just mean- I don’t mean you weren’t getting things done before. I swear.”

You’re not offended in the slightest, “I know. But to be fair, I really wasn’t. I’m sorry for doubting how helpful you’d be when you showed up earlier today.”

“Don’t do that.”

“What? Apologize?”

“No, discredit yourself,” he stresses. And you hadn’t noticed it, but your two chairs had seemingly grown closer over the hours as his knee bumps your thigh, “You… I’m not an easy client. You were handed a shit deal, plus Matt really wasn’t giving you anything to work with. I wasn’t giving you anything to work with.”

“I’m working for the entire band,” you remind him, remind yourself.

All it does is remind you of even more people you miss. Gareth, who was the little brother you never had back in Hawkins. Jeff, who had been one of your closest confidants. Craig, who would’ve answered your phone calls even in the dead of night. All friends you gave up when you walked out on Eddie. You always forget that – you didn’t just leave behind one person, you left behind an entire life.

Eddie’s phone buzzes, and he makes no move to grab it, “Have they been helpful?”

You stare at the phone, waiting for him to reach out. He doesn’t.

“Sort of.”

Another buzz. Another unanswered message Eddie clearly has no interest in responding to.

“Sort of? What did they ask for in their lists?”

Another buzz. Finally, you break free of whatever conversation Eddie’s trying to have, and lean forward to grab his phone and pass it to him, “You need to check that. What if it’s Matt?”

Eddie doesn’t glance at the phone, only crosses his arms, effectively tucking the phone out of your sight as well, “He can wait. What did the other guys ask for?”

You can hear the next buzz, more muffled against his t-shirt and beneath his jacket.

“Eddie.”

“Sugar.”

He knows the nickname is a weapon against you. He uses it more deliberately this time, not letting it just slip out as it had at the office.

“Open bar, fuzzy robes, normal things,” you finally spit out, trying to not let the echo of him calling you that name to worm into your brain and begin to rot you away, “Now, check your phone. Please.”

This time, when the phone buzzes, Eddie removes it from being trapped beneath his armpit and actually looks at the screen. You know immediately you were right; his face falls as he reads over the missed messages, all his teasing fading and that air of light-hearted arrogance being sucked out of the space between you two.

You don’t need to ask, but you do anyways, “Rockstar duty calls?”

He looks up rapidly, mouth already forming the word no, but you shake your head to stop his lie.

It’s fine. It’s entirely acceptable that other people need his attention, that he has other affairs to tend to. You had gotten used to it when the two of you were dating and he first made his big break, you shouldn’t expect a change now when you were nothing more than a stranger working for him. It shouldn’t sting, and you shouldn’t feel a small fraction of you hopeful that he’ll be defiant and insist on ignoring those duties.

Today was only ever meant to be one cup of coffee. The fact that you two had lost track, fumbled and turned one cup into four, was only a blip.

“I get it,” you say, sinking back into your chair. And you did, you really did. It was easier now to understand than it was back then, back when this very type of situation started the domino effect that was the beginning of the end, “You should go if they need you. You are a rockstar, after all.”

It’s a hard sentiment to say without a trace of bitterness, but you manage. He’s a rockstar. All his hopes, all his dreams, have finally come true. He gets to breathe, he gets to be rowdy, he gets to hear crowds scream back all those lyrics you’d watched him write in his bedroom back in Hawkins. He got everything he wished for.

You should be happy for him. If this arrangement is going to work, you have to be happy for him.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” he asks you as he shoves his phone into the pocket of his jeans, standing and beginning to gather empty coffee cups.

“Work,” you shrug, crossing your arms as you glare at the laptop, already feeling preemptive frustration at the thought of picking up where you’ve left off today, alone.

It’s not just because you want Eddie to join you on the project. It’s not Eddie’s help that you specifically want. It’s just nice to have someone to help shoulder the load with you, right?

“At the office?”

“That’s where I usually work, yes.”

“Come to my place instead.”

Time almost freezes. He’s standing there, nearly all of the empty latte cups balanced in his arms, and looking at you as if he hadn’t just asked the most insane possible thing of you.

“Eddie,” you speak softly, carefully, as your arms drop from your chest, “I don’t think that Lydia would be okay with that-”

“I’m a client,” he points out, “Besides, you’ve been stressed about this project, and I like to think I helped with that today.”

He did. God, he did.

“Just think about it,” he’s nearly begging. Beneath the lowlights of this cafe, features dancing with the reflection of some Christmas lights pinned up to line the top of the wall as they cast an aesthetic glow of gold over the surroundings, Eddie Munson is begging for your time, “You have my number. Think it over tonight, and just text me if you decide you want to. I can send over my address.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Probably not,” at least he’s being honest. But quickly, it becomes apparent he’s misinterpreted you as he continues on, “You’re probably going to get photographed by paparazzi when you show up if you’re not careful, and if they figure out you’re there to see me, you’ll probably end up on the cover of some lowlife magazine-”

“That’s not the part I’m concerned with,” you lament, finally choosing to stand now. The last thing on your mind is publicity, or cameras, or magazines, “I mean, I don’t think it’s a good idea to make this,” you motion your arms between the two of you, “A habit.”

His face falls ever so slightly. A soft drop of his eyebrows, a gentle pinch of his lips. You swear, you watch him nearly drop one of the coffee cups before he regains composure, “It won’t be. It’s… It’s just work, yeah?”

Just work. Just a project. Just one final parting gift. This is nothing more than a source of closure for the two of you, a slamming of the door on that chapter of your life where the boy standing before you was your end-all, be-all. He’s right – it’s just work.

Your voice hardly comes out a whisper, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I’ll think about it,” it takes everything in you to level your words, to keep them from shaking, “I’ll ask Lydia, and I’ll let you know.”

A slow smile spreads across his face, and you can’t ignore the way it puts the glimmering lights on the ceiling to shame. No shade of gold, no twinkling reflection on the windows overlooking the busy street, can compare to the knife his hopeful smile strikes in you. It’s the type of smile that aches, that resonates, that haunts.

It’s the kind of smile that tells you you’re going to bleed for this, no matter how much you resist.

“Cool,” he nods, finally taking a few steps back, “I’ll see you tomorrow then, maybe?”

The kind of smile that tells you the bloodstain is never going to wash out, whether this is all just for work or not.

“See you tomorrow, Eddie.”

The idea of closure is about as tangible as smoke and mirrors as he leaves you alone in the dark corner of the coffee shop. It almost hurts as much as it did the first time he walked out to be a rockstar.

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thisismeracing · 10 months

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The (un)lucky one | CL16

― Pairing: Charles Leclerc x fem!reader (she/her) ― Word count: 2.4k ― Warnings: not proofread; mentions of food; a bit of jealous!charles; angsty but fluffy ending. ― Summary: Charles and Yn have a history back from when he was at alfa romeo, Yn used to be his PR assistant, and they were close to best friends. Now, years later, they are still friends, but Yn is Carlos’ assistant now, and she can help but root for her new friend and boss. Meanwhile, Charles is having trouble with no longer having her undying support all the time. He’s been through an unlucky season on the speedway, will he be unlucky in love too? ― A/n: I actually liked this far better than I thought I would, so I hope you guys enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! Let me know your thoughts by reblogging and/or leaving me an ask (anons are on) *mwah* 🤍

⁕ Based on this request. ⁕ my masterlist and my taglist ⁕ you can support my writing by reblogging, and leaving a comment (don’t forget to follow me if you like the piece)

It is easy to associate someone with a smell, taste, or color. Especially when those things are very particular. One day you see them wearing a certain shade of yellow; the next thing you know, every yellow item will remind you of them. Not of the clothes they were wearing that day, but of them. Then, they tell you their coffee order, and, of course, every time you see a venti, caramel frappuccino with almond milk, it’s their face you’ll see. When you smell the coffee, their perfume will come around too.

What Charles didn’t know is that these associations are common when you are in love.

And he was, in fact, in love with Yn.

He was just unaware.

Yn was his PR Assistant back when he was just a curious and hopeful boy in Alfa Romeo. They hit it off quickly, not only because she was young like him, but because she was always honest and just so fun to be around. She would walk into the room, red Converse on her feet, a coffee cup in her hands, along with a small notepad, and a pen either around her neckless or on her ear, and Charles could swear time would stop to let her pass by.

Yn was an event.

And he was happy to witness it.

She was also very organized. She had everything noted and ready to go in a minute. She was quick with solutions to seemingly hard problems and set on her beliefs. About the latter, people would say that she was simply stubborn like Charles. But he knew better. She was passionate and driven, and he… well, he fell in love, and he didn’t notice it.

Until they moved to Ferrari.

They have been working together for about three years now, and she had to switch drivers when they started in Ferrari. That meant she was now Carlos’ PR Assistant, and he got to have her full attention – something Charles hated. But he knew her before him, and he knew her better, that’s what he kept telling himself whenever he saw the two of them interact, whenever she had a meeting with his coworker, and not him, or whenever he watched Carlos get her coffee order wrong. He knew her better. That wasn’t much, but somehow it was enough for him.

Until it wasn’t.

“Hey, Char,” Yn smiles when the Monegasque approaches the table, bending to leave a kiss on her cheeks, and leaving a friendly tap on his teammate’s shoulders.

“I got you your favorite.” He has that small prideful smile on his face when he pushes the white cup towards Yn, but as fast as the smile comes, it goes when she frowns and a bit her lips.

“Thank you, but Carlos got it to me,” she shook the cup in front of her and winked at her friend and ex-boss.

“Oh- but Carlos doesn’t know your order.”

“I finally got it right after a thousand times missing either the oat milk or the blonde espresso,” Sainz proudly stated, sipping on his water.

“And did you get-”

“Caramel syrup, sí.”

“Four pumps?”

Carlos nodded, “2 pumps of frapp roast. I’m telling you, I’ve learned it.”

Yn noticed the way Charles’ shoulders slumped just the sightless, but she thought it had something to do with the fact that he wasted time getting her something that she wouldn’t drink in the end. She did not notice, however, how his eyebrows furrowed and his grip on his cellphone got stronger watching her and Carlos go around what they were doing on Sunday before and after the race. He missed doing it with her, missed having her undying attention, missed the certainty that it doesn’t matter how boring a meeting or media duty would be because she was always just some steps away.

The next day, Charles is getting ready for the race in the garage, and Yn is around cracking jokes about something one of the engineers did. When she turns, Charles is in his white racing suit, zipping up the front end. Yn lips tip up in a small smile, one he can read as a nostalgic one by the way her eyes roam around the piece of clothing, and takes in a small breath of air. It’s endearing.

“Missing the old days?” Charles asks, sporting a playful smirk, and Yn rolls her eyes teasingly.

“How’d you know?”

“It used to be just us against the world. I learned to read you.” He confessed. He almost wanted to add that he missed the old days too, but because her attention and affection would be all his, her time and her eyes would be for him.

Yn took a step closer to him and started helping the Monegasque with the front velcro of his suit. “All this white reminded me of Alfa Romeo’s suit, but though I miss our younger days, I think you look far better wearing Ferrari merch.” This time her smile is pensive and then playful after a beat.

Charles's hands itched to hold her by the waist, bring her close, and read her eyes, but when he was about to do so, Carlos called Yn from the other side of the garage. Yn gets on the tip of her red converses and kisses his forehead, something they used to do after becoming friends on their first year on the grid, and then, just like that, she leaves to attend to whatever Sainz needed.

When it was time to get going and get into the car, Charles tried to get a glimpse of Yn, not even a hug or their traditional forehead kiss which hasn’t happened before races in a while, he just wanted to find her eyes, see how they would silently wish him a good race, but instead, he found her with Carlos, her back to him. He watched as Yn patted his shoulder and then got on the tip of her toes to hug him. A long hug. A hug he wanted to receive.

Charles sacked up all his anger and jealousy and got into his car. It would be a good race. The car was fairly better than the last races, and the Ferrari duo got a p2 and p3 position which increased the chances of double points.

It's a tight race. Carlos and Charles almost lose their positions during the first few laps, but they were able to hold it until Leclerc needed a tire change. And when he came back the orders were clear: Sainz would not fight with his teammate and would give up his position for Charles. Everyone saw how Yn's face changed when Vasseur spoke through the pit-to-car audio, and man, wasn't she pissed. The camera panelled on her, and she cursed asking why couldn't Carlos have this one.

By the last lap, Charles was p3 and Carlos p5, and it was all the team's fault. Both of them could have had a podium, but strategy wasn't really Ferrari's strongest subject.

When the three winners gathered in the small room to wait a few minutes for the podium, Charles had a small smile on his face, one which went away when the big screen in the room showed some of the highlights of the race, adding garage reactions this time. He saw Yn questioning why Carlos couldn't fight him, why wouldn't they give her boss and friend his well-deserved podium. Charles knew she fought nails and teeth for those she loved, and she wouldn't hide her disappointment with Ferrari's decision.

He expected, however, that she would choose him to fight for because he was her closest friend there. He was with her the longest. He would have fought nails and teeth for her win.

The podium celebration didn’t feel as good as it would back when he would have Yn’s undying support. Charles still smiled, still waved, still tried to seem happy with his achievement, and he kept the friendly face up until he got back in the garage and Yn was there by Carlos' side as usual. Sainz congratulated him on his podium, but the Monegasque only nodded, lacing his fingers with Yn’s and walking straight to his driver’s room.

“What the fuck was that mouthy response to the team's order of letting me pass Carlos?”

Yn was still surprised by how he laced their fingers and almost dragged her to his room, so hearing his hushed and stressed tone made her frown deepen.

“Who do you think you’re talking to in that tone?”

Charles’ jaw tightened. “Don’t try deflecting, Yn. I saw how mad you were when I passed Carlos.”

“And what about it, Charles?”

“I can’t believe you’re acting so unbothered by it. It was a shitty attitude, and you know it.”

“Because everyone’s supposed to adore you and always choose you?”

“BECAUSE YOU’RE MY BEST FRIEND, AND YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO ROOT FOR ME, TO PICK ME, NOT CARLOS, NOT LANDO, NOT LEWIS, BUT ME!” He exploded, voice raised, hands gripping his champagne-wet hair.

Yn took one step in his direction, pointing her index finger at him, “Don’t you dare to scream at me, Charles. I won’t let you work off your frustrations on me, especially when you don’t have reasons to be angry!”

“I DON’T?” he screamed again, and she raised her eyebrows. “You think watching my own team destroy my chances at being a world champion is not reason enough to be angry? Or having your best friend distance herself from you? Oh, wait! And how about seeing the woman I love rooting for a different driver?” this time his voice wasn’t as high as before, but he was still loud, he was still angry.

What he seemed to forget was that he and Yn were like a mirror most of the time. They would reflect each other’s energy and feelings. So if Charles was angry, Yn was furious. And if he was heartbroken, she was devastated.

“I was your friend before him! I’m your best friend,” he whispered, finally letting tiredness and sadness catch up to him.

“You are indeed, but not everything is about you or us. Others deserve to win too, and they deserve some love and attention. Carlos deserved it today. We’ll talk when you’re not acting like a dick and screaming at me for being oblivious to the feelings you kept hidden.” She stated before turning away and leaving, slamming the door on her way out.

Charles sat down on his chair and let his head hang between his shoulders. His eyes were burning and he felt like cursing and screaming again when he heard Carlos’ voice. Now, Carlos was his friend, his teammate, a good guy, someone he even liked to have around, but he was jealous of him, he couldn’t lie to himself anymore. And right now, he was the last person he wanted to see.

“You could have told me, you know?” the Spanish closed the door behind him slowly.

“Not now, Carlos,” Charles mumbled.

“She doesn’t like me. I mean- she does like me, but not as much as she likes you, not as much as she loves you. You’re two tontos.”

“Well, you can bet she hates me now. I take it you heard how I talked to her, right? The whole garage must have heard.”

Carlos chuckled at Charles' dramatic antics. “Not everyone heard, but yeah, some people did… I don’t think she hates you though, she’s just angry with the way you talked and probably angry you didn’t tell her you loved her sooner.”

“I’m usually unlucky, and I was afraid-”

“No, Charles,” Carlos interrupted. “The team's strategy is shitty, we take it as if we were the unlucky ones, but we are actually pretty lucky. Look at the life you have. Look at how many people love you. The woman you love loves you back. How’s that being unlucky?”

“Yeah, I was afraid my love life would be as shitty as my racing career.”

“I’ll let that one pass because you have the right to be upset for a bit after this stressful weekend, but you don’t have a shitty career, and you know it.”

Charles nods, snickering.

“I was jealous, you know,” he confessed after a couple of minutes in silence. “You deserve to win too. You deserve to be a world champion just like I do, but I wanted her support. I wanted her to choose me even though everyone else did. She was the only one that mattered. But I’m an idiot, and I didn’t tell her that. How could she guess?”

“Yeah, life is unfair sometimes, and feelings are hard to deal with, but the good thing is that you can work on those things most of the time. Shower, drink some water, get some food in, and then when you’re calm enough, go to her and let Yn know your feelings. Again. Gently this time, preferably.” Sainz chuckles lightly between the last sentence, and Charles rolls his eyes playfully.

And that’s exactly what Charles did. That’s how he found himself breathing in and out in front of Yn’s hotel room door. He rings the bell after almost five minutes of silent pep talk. When Yn opens the door, she’s already in her pajamas, and he can almost see tear stains on her cheeks. Charles feels like punching his own face because clearly, he was the one to blame.

“What do you want, Charls?” her tone was tight, and she did not invite him in, but the fact that Yn used his nickname gave Charles enough hope and courage to talk.

“I- I’m sorry for earlier,” he started. “I’m truly sorry for all these years. I should have been honest with you. I’m sorry I exploded and screamed at you. I should have told you I loved you before. And you’re right. I’m not the center of the world. Carlos deserves to win too. But it’s just- I’m usually unlucky in some aspects, and I was afraid-”

Yn rolls her eyes and grins playfully at him, interrupting his messy speech. “No, Charles, you’re actually lucky because I do love you back,” she grins, and he stares at her for a beat before crashing their lips into a passionate kiss.

And Charles felt like the luckiest guy in the world. No winning cup felt as sweet as having the girl of his dreams loving him back.

― ⋆🪩 VOICEMAIL: Every time you reblog and comment on my stuff a fairy is born somewhere, make sure you're creating glittery fairies around the world hihi *forehead kiss*

taglist: @sachaa-ff @mickslover @formulakay3 @mishaandthebrits @crimeshowjunkie @chaoticevilbakugo @fdl305 @wondergirl101ks @saintslewis @81astri @iloveyou3000morgan @carojasmin2204 @smiithys @f1kota @shhhchriss @lunnnix @balekane_mohafe @uuuseeerrr12 @karmabyfernando @crashingwavesofeuphoria @culpamias @pinksstrawberry @callsign-scully @moonyschocolate13 @v1naco @piggyinthesea

⁕ my masterlist and my taglist

#charles leclerc #charles leclerc imagine #charles leclerc fluff #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc x you #f1 fluff #f1 angst #f1 x reader #f1 fandom #f1 imagines #f1 fanfic #charles leclerc angst #millie writes #cl16 #charles leclerc fanfic #charles leclerc fic #charles leclerc one shot

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lilmashae · 4 months

Note

Merry Christmas! Could you write Jay x (Older) Noona!Reader? I really love your writing 🥺 🫶🏼

i'm so sorry this took me so long to get to ! of course, baby — and merry very very very late christmas 🫶🏽

very gentle jongie ! | 18+, swearing, pet names, etc. | p.js x f!reader

jay who'd do anything his precious, sweet noona asked of him. he'd literally give you the world if you asked — because he wants to.

"jay, i'm going out!" you'd shout from the front of your shared apartment, and before you could turn around, there he was. "let me drive you, noona." with his keys already in his hand and a smirk stark on his face.

you're hungry? he's cooking for you, ordering your favorite take-out. if you're tired and sore? jay'll run you a hot bath. he misses you? you come home from work to flowers and anything else you could imagine... all because he wants you to know how much you mean to him.

jay who takes such good care of you, but sometimes needs taking care of himself.

he comes home after working all day so tired and sore. "you should take it easy, jay... seriously, you're overworked!" your hand placed on your hip as you look back at him with furrowed eyebrows. "i'm fine, y/n, really."

"no, you're not."

"noona, i'm telling you — i'm alright."

"and jongseong, i'm telling you that you aren't!" you really didn't mean to raise your voice. but honestly, you were just worried.

jay who's so gentle with you even as you two argue.

jay who fucks all of your worries away — missionary, doggystyle, whatever you want. he's kissing your face and cooing in your ear, jay holds you so close to him.

"fuck, princess... 'sucking me in so good, ah!"

"jay... baby, please," you'd softly whine into the mattress and he'd tighten his grip on your hips, one hand deepening the arch of your back as he kisses along your neck and on your ear. "such a good noona, yeah? so worried about me, taking everything i give her with a cute little arch in her back... shit! you're so perfect, mhm. my sweet girl?" his girthy length stretching your gummy walls to a perfection. whines and gasps escape your lips as each stroke/thrust deepens and you feel his tip kissing your cervix. jay's skin is so warm as his arms hold you so close you could melt into him.

you only feel yourself getting hotter when his lips meet your own. fingers toying with your clit, that knot in your stomach is about to snap. fortunately for you, the hot sticky, soothing feel of his cum oozing out of you brings down your high.

jay who cleans you up and lays you down on his chest, rubbing your back and kissing your forehead, telling you how much he loves you!

guidelines and disclaimers | posting in bulk because i know i won't be active for a while!

#lil-ma-shae #enhypen smut #jay x reader #jay smut #jay park smut #enhypen x reader #enhypen #enha smut #enha hard hours

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penny00dreadful · 6 months

Text

Rookie Mistake

AO3

17th August 2023

Someone was following him home.

They were keeping their distance at least. But they'd been keeping their distance through the last three turns.

They could, at the very least, try not to make it obvious what they were doing.

Usually someone following him wouldn’t be a problem. Steve was an expert at what he did and losing a person who was tailing him was easy.

Or it used to be anyway.

His back had taken much longer to heal than any of them had expected and he’d been told his chances of walking again were fifty-fifty. Pretty much a coin toss.

But he’d started to get the feeling back in his legs again around the three month mark. While all of it still hadn’t returned and the doctors were unsure if it ever would, he could at least walk again.

He couldn’t move as fast nowadays, though the cane helped. But it didn’t help enough to escape from his followers' sight.

He was slow, he couldn’t run and he couldn’t stand for extended periods of time.

He could walk for even less. Which was probably why Claire at the gas station had kept shooting him concerned glances.

Walking to and from there was pretty much the extent of what he could do in a day.

Barely fifteen minutes there and back, but enough to have him exhausted and trying to keep the pain at bay.

Eddie was gonna lose his fucking mind once he found out. He worried too much. Steve still remembered the first words he heard when he woke up in the hospital.

“If you ever do that to me again, I swear to god sweetheart, I’ll take you out myself.” Spoken through teary eyes and with shaking hands as he reached for him, like if he didn’t touch him immediately Steve would drift back off into a coma.

This was the first time Steve had been home alone for an extended period of time since he'd been recovering. Eddie had looked at him with a stern pointed finger and an order not to do anything stupid.

So of course he had decided he was going to walk to the nearby gas station to pick up some of their favourite snacks.

They were gonna do a lazy streaming binge session later that evening, complete with a blanket fort like little kids, when Eddie got back from helping at the garage with Gareth.

What else was he supposed to do? He couldn’t drive anymore. He didn’t have the strength in his legs for the pedals.

And the gas station was just outside the estate they’d chosen to settle in. Eddie had wanted to be closer to his Uncle Wayne and be able to see his friends again and Steve could never refuse him that.

Except now he was limping home, cane in one hand, paper bag of junk food in the other, with pain and exhaustion shooting up his legs, right into his weakened back.

He could barely even focus on the space around him, he was concentrating so hard on just putting one foot in front of the other and getting home without passing out from the pain, never mind fighting off an assailant.

In his heyday he wouldn’t even have had to think about how he would handle this situation.

Now, however. Now he felt so fucking helpless.

There was a gun concealed in a secret pocket just inside the front door. If he could just get to it, he might make it out of whatever this was.

Even though Steve was on medical leave and Eddie was… retired, old habits die hard. They’d never not be trained to be killers and expect something around every corner.

God, he’d been so stupid. This was so stupid. Eddie would never let him hear the end of it.

Steve would be lucky if he could keep upright once he hit the front door, everything was so painful.

But Steve was well versed in pain. Literally trained in it. Torture, interrogation, field medicine, pushing past injuries to get the job done. Steve had handled it all, always dreading the idea of being put behind a desk. Even now he was determined to make sure that didn’t happen.

No offence to Robin and her job. He’d be dead ten times over without her but it just wasn’t something he could fathom doing.

There was a mentor position opening up though.

Dimitri was retiring to spend more time with his family which meant that Steve could possibly be looking after the new recruits in the near future.

Y’know.

If he didn’t fucking die here and now at the hands of some idiot lacking subtlety.

As far as anyone in the neighbourhood knew, Steve had moved to the area with his husband while recovering from a catastrophic fall, which wasn’t exactly incorrect.

The best lies were the ones that had truth in them.

And the neighbours had all been very… neighbourly. It was a little foreign to him. He was used to growing up in upper class neighbourhoods where he would maybe shoot a quick smile and a hello towards the couple across the road but apart from that, he pretended they didn’t exist and vice versa.

But here, though it was a solid middle class suburb, they all actually spoke to each other.

Bastien would usually chat while he was out walking his golden retriever named Bread.

Lucy and Anthony, a couple in their eighties, knew everything about everyone and gave them the best neighbourhood gossip.

Sandra loved hosting a cookout and invited them every single time.

Even the neighbourhood kids were all very sweet for a bunch of teenagers.

Best of all was their next door neighbour, Chrissy.

She had knocked on their front door with a freshly baked apple pie in one hand and an invite to her big blowout divorce celebration in the other. It was only the day after they’d moved in and Steve had hobbled downstairs to find her and Eddie chatting like they’d known each other forever.

Steve had originally worried they were only being included in these events as the token queers of the neighbourhood. Just so all these middle classers could pat themselves on the back for their diversity but those worries were quickly put to rest.

Their acceptance was quiet. It wasn’t braggadocious. It was sweet.

Chrissy's divorce party had been a wild night full of karaoke, an obscene amount of chinese food and glass upon glass of pink, glittery, fruity cocktails.

All things that Jason had hated.

Things Chrissy loved.

Things she hadn’t been able to enjoy in her own home in years. But now she was free to do whatever her heart desired.

Chrissy deserved way better than Jason anyway.

She had leaned into Eddie’s side and taken Steve’s hand in hers and slurred that she wanted “what you guys have. You’re so sweet to each other. How long have you been together?”

They had made eye contact over her head with raised eyebrows.

The start of their relationship was always a bit of a blurred line.

“Seven, eight years maybe?” Eddie had said, holding her steady with an arm around her waist.

“Really?” She’d asked, blinking her big eyes up at the two of them. “That’s such a long time. Jason and I got married after a year. Don’t do that.” She added, pointing back and forth at the two of them. “It’s a bad idea.”

Steve patted the hand that was held in his. “We won’t. Don’t worry.”

Especially considering they’d already been married two years by then.

As the night wore on and more and more stories had come out about what Chrissy’s marriage had been like, Eddie had offered, with three cocktail umbrellas in his hair and a Pink Lady in his hand, to hunt Jason down and make him disappear.

Chrissy had giggled with a roll of her eyes.

"Oh sure, you big softie.” She said as she lightly swatted his arm. “If he starts calling around unannounced again, then go ahead."

Eddie had smiled, sweet and innocent, but his eyes had been sharp and hard and Jason needed to watch his fucking back.

Steve had been able to convince him to at least give Jason a warning the first time, before he completely wiped the guy from existence.

But only one warning was all Eddie would concede to with a pout and a mutter of ‘You’re no fun’.

If Jason couldn’t take a hint and kept coming around after that, it wasn't Steve's problem anymore.

In general their time in the neighbourhood was nice. It was domestic. The area was safe and sleepy and naive to most of the wrongs of the world.

It was something Steve and Eddie had never had the chance to have, especially considering the start of their relationship had been so… combative.

Which is what made the guy trailing behind him stick out like a penguin in the desert.

He was unfamiliar.

In an ill fitting black suit that looked like something out of a bad spy movie and greasy slicked back hair.

Steve wasn’t scared of him.

He was clearly inexperienced.

Or just stupid.

The guy kept his gaze locked on his target, one hand constantly in his pocket and a look of grim determination on his face.

Obvious.

But he also seemed to be growing in confidence too. Getting slowly closer and closer.

Steve kept his pace slow and relaxed, trying his best to hide the pain and exhaustion he was feeling sinking into his back and down his legs.

And trying to hide the fact that he knew a fucking idiot was tailing him.

If some fucking newbie gang member or whatever was able to take him down because Steve couldn’t help but push himself, he was going to be so pissed off.

All he needed to do was get inside.

Unlock the door, get inside and he’d be able to grab one of their concealed weapons and take care of whatever this was.

Easy peasy.

Or it would have been easy peasy if not for the second guy.

The second guy who’d descended on him just as he pushed his front door open, looping an arm around his neck.

He dropped his bag and his cane, scrabbling against the hold and just barely brushing the hidden gun compartment with his fingers before he felt it.

The sharp sting of a needle in his neck and the cold of whatever it was spreading through his veins.

The last thought that ran through his head before everything went black was that Eddie was going to be so dramatic about this.

He didn’t know how long it was before he woke up but he could take a guess.

It was an empty warehouse he was being kept in, if the bare concrete walls, metal roof and high ceilings were anything to go by.

The windows were right at the top, only letting the barest sliver of orange daylight through.

The sun was low enough Steve guessed he’d only been out for an hour.

The whole place smelled of damp and was shrouded in shadow, the only light being that bit of orange sun and one bare light bulb hanging over his head.

Brimborn Steelworks, he thought.

He could smell the sea air, hear gulls outside, and the warehouse had been abandoned for as long as they’d been in the area so it was a pretty safe bet.

Just outside the circle of light he was washed in, he could hear muttering and bodies shuffling around.

About four by his estimation, along with the sound of metal parts shifting against each other.

Guns.

Fantastic.

Just what he fucking needed.

His hands were knotted behind his back, not even tied to the chair he was sitting on. Who used rope to tie people up anymore?

Aside from certain… intimate circumstances, Steve hadn’t had to deal with rope in ages.

Not since… well.

It was usually zip ties or duct tape that were used.

Much quicker, much easier to conceal in pockets or pouches.

And judging by how he was tied, fingers pointed downwards, inner wrist to inner wrist and just a bit too tightly, these guys had absolutely no experience with ropes.

Kinky or not.

They hadn’t even bothered to blindfold him.

Or gag him.

Eddie would have never been so sloppy. He could’ve done better than this to Steve with his eyes closed and on a Tuesday afternoon.

If he was at full strength, he’d have been able to manoeuvre the weak bindings of his ropes until he was able to tug them free and kick the shit out of the closest guy until he got his hands on his gun.

Then he’d be out of here and on his way home before Eddie had the time to properly spiral.

But he wasn’t at full strength, he could barely even pull against the binds around his wrists, tugged at an uncomfortable angle behind his back.

Not a gentle angle and not at the proper straining points he was used to.

The rope was rough and harsh against his skin instead of the delicious soft bite of the silken binds.

But it was fine.

He wouldn’t be here long.

“He’s awake.” A voice in front of him said.

The accent was mostly American but with the slightest tinge of Russian underneath.

Great.

Two men in ill fitting black suits with their guns held loosely at their sides stepped into the light. The other two stayed behind him, probably as some kind of security or intimidation measure.

Well, it was nice to see them try.

Cute almost.

“Hello.” Steve sighed. “Can you guys tell me what this is all about so we can get it over with, please?”

“Oh,” the one in front of him sneered, “he thinks he’s funny.”

“I think I’m very funny, yes.” Steve nodded, relaxing into the chair as much as he could.

The guy scowled. Clearly he hadn’t learned that sometimes having fun on the job was necessary. Helped alleviate stress. “You’re gonna answer our questions.”

“Sure thing, Drago.” Steve nodded. The guy really did look like Drago. Big meaty head and short crop of blonde hair. “Hit me.”

Drago smirked. “If you insist.”

With an almighty crack he brought the back of his hand down across Steve’s face, snapping his head to the side.

He could feel the blood welling up in his mouth where his teeth had cut into his cheek and the heat from the strike blooming over his skin that would no doubt turn purple within the next day.

God, never start an interrogation with violence.

Fucking casuals.

Steve sucked at the blood pooling in his mouth and spat it at Drago’s feet.

“You’re going to regret that.”

Drago scoffed with a roll of his eyes. “Who do you work for?”

“Scoops.” Steve grinned with blood stained teeth and a nonchalant shrug. “Scoops Ahoy. That little ice cream shop at the mall?”

“Cute.” He sneered.

“Thank you.”

“Maybe you need more persuasion.” A voice came from behind him and a sharp blade was pressed against his neck. “How would you feel if I were to cut your pretty throat?”

Steve ran his tongue over his bloody teeth.

“Do it.”

There was a stutter of movement as the four of them glanced at each other.

“You think we won’t?”

“No, go on, do it.” Steve pressed his neck against the blade which was immediately pulled away. “You think you can get more answers out of my dead body?”

The guy with the blade swung himself around to face him, digging the point into his cheek this time with a snarl.

Steve couldn’t even be bothered to give him a name in his head.

He’d be Knife Guy.

Didn’t matter.

He’d be dead soon.

“Or,” Steve continued, “do you think that I’m going to cower to any more of your threats now that you’ve just shown me you’re not willing to kill me?” He laughed. “Never start with your last resort.”

The tip of the blade was dug in deeper and dragged across his cheek, cutting into his skin but Steve could barely feel it as he distantly heard the sound of tires screeching to a stop outside.

No one else seemed to have noticed.

“We don’t need to kill you, we just need to make you talk.”

“Well,” Steve sighed, grimacing at the hot sticky blood running down his cheek. If he was lucky it wouldn’t scar.

If they were lucky it wouldn’t scar.

“I suggest you hurry up, you’re running out of time.”

The four of them laughed. “You think your buddies are coming for you? We targeted you because you were alone and impeded. You had no safety net around you.”

“You sure about that?” Steve took in each of their faces, all looking so confident in a job well done. “You’re right, my buddies aren’t coming for me. If they were, you could take your time. But as it is you’ll all be dead in about,” he tilted his head, listening for the first distant gunshot, which sounded only half a second later, “three minutes so…”

“If not your buddies then who?”

“You guys seem a little new at this.” He said gently, like he was speaking to children. “Have you ever heard of The Shadow of Hawkins?”

Their blank faces told him all he needed to know.

Fair enough.

It was a fairly obscure name after all.

And a bit ridiculous.

“How about The Demon of Dresden?” He glanced around. “No? The Bloodyhanded? Ringing any bells?”

Steve blinked at them all in bewilderment.

Did these guys know anything?

The gunfire outside was getting louder and closer to their building and the guys around him seem to have finally clued in, clutching their guns tighter.

Like that would do anything for them.

Steve refused to give them a moment of reprieve.

“Really guys? He’s gonna be so offended.” He shook his head, as though disappointed. “Well, maybe you’ll know him by his most famous title.” The last gunshot cracked through the air leaving a terrible silence in its wake. “Kas. The Betrayer.”

Every one of them flinched at the name, the colour draining from their faces as a door slammed open in another part of the building.

“He's trying to scare us.” Knife Guy swallowed. “Kas is dead.”

“He was." Steve nodded. "But you had to go and resurrect him. But here’s another one for you.” He grinned again, blood coating his teeth and leaned as far forward as his bindings would allow him, despite the strain on his back. “Who do you think I am?”

“Why does it matter?" The third guy spat, but Drago had a horrible realisation dawning on his face.

"You…"

“Who?” The fourth asked, whipping his head back and forth to look at the two of them. “Who is he?”

“He… you…” Drago shook his head, his full accent apparent now. “You can’t be!”

“Who gave us our intel?!” Knife Guy shouted at the others, also cottoning on.

“You…” Drago swallowed. “You’re his-”

“Sweetheart!” Eddie’s voice echoed around the warehouse seeming to come from all directions and none all at once.

Knife Guy was by his side in a flash with a fist in his hair and the blade pressed against his throat again.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Steve said, glancing up. “He’s very protective of my hair.”

His fist only tightened.

“Fine,” Steve shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“Hey fuckos!” Eddie was still shrouded in darkness, completely hidden from view. “Tying him to chairs is my job!”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Oh, for god's sake.”

Drago stepped in front of Steve, squaring his shoulders and puffing out his chest, pointing his gun towards the various dark corners. “If you want your-”

Four loud gunshots rang out, echoing throughout the room.

Steve felt the warm splatter of blood across his face.

Four bodies fell to the floor, a clean bullet wound through three of their foreheads.

Knife Guy, the one who had his hand in Steve’s hair was screaming in agony, clutching his blown apart knee.

“An hour, sweetheart.” Eddie’s figure stormed out of the dark, coming to a stop just in front of him. He still had grease from the garage streaked over his cheek and embedded into the creases on his hands to go along with the copious amount of other people’s blood spattered all over his body. “I leave you alone for one hour and I have to answer a call from a worried Chrissy checking to see if everything's okay because our front door is wide fucking open. How did you go and get yourself kidnapped by Ruskies?”

"Oh, I'm sorry, please continue to tell me how getting fucking ambushed outside our home is my fault."

"It didn’t start outside our home, did it?"

Knife Guy wailed again and Eddie looked down on him with a cold glare.

“Oh, sorry.” He said, not sorry at all. “I must have missed.”

With a simple squeeze of the trigger he put a hole through Knife Guys head and the screaming stopped.

Steve expected Eddie to walk behind him to cut his binds but instead he just swung his leg out and sat himself down on Steve's lap.

"It started at that fucking gas station because you can't sit down for five minutes straight." Eddie pulled a small pocket sized first aid kit out and tilted Steve's head to the side. "Even if fucking Hippocrates or god damned Florence Nightingale rose from the dead and told you to take it easy, you'd still be ignoring their orders." He scoffed as he roughly pressed a butterfly bandage over Steve's cheek. "And you call me the hyperactive one." He mumbled.

Steve winced, glaring at him as Eddie pressed down particularly hard on one strip.

His mouth was still pulled into a deep frown but he stroked his fingers gently over Steve’s cheek, caressing his face with the gentlest of touches.

"You okay?"

Steve couldn't help but crack a smile.

"Yeah baby, I'm good. But they got the angle of my arms all wrong. It's really uncomfortable."

"Hmm. Well as an expert in tying you down to chairs, I'd have to agree. How dare they steal my thing. I fell in love with you when you were tied to a chair."

Steve raised an eyebrow, complete disbelief written on his face.

“Oh yeah?” He tried to bring their faces closer but he was impeded by his bindings. Eddie just gave him a feral grin. “Which time?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Tell me.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Eddie cooed. “No.”

“Asshole.” Steve rolled his eyes. “Would you mind?" He tugged at the ropes again. "My back is fucking killing me."

"Of course." Eddie muttered into Steve's mouth but never properly closing the distance while simultaneously lifting his weight up. “All you had to do was ask.”

With the bindings now gone, his shoulders and arms felt like fucking lead and the blood rushing back into his hands was causing terrible pins and needles.

Eddie was digging his fingers into Steve's muscles, trying to alleviate as much of the strain as he could.

Steve closed his eyes and groaned, his earlier ill-advised trip was catching up with him again and he was dreading having to walk out of this place.

He just wanted to be at fucking home, in his fucking bed with his fucking husband.

Or maybe they could still do that naked blanket fort in the living room with a movie marathon and an obscene amount of snacks.

When he opened his eyes again, Eddie was on one knee with his back to him.

“Hop on.”

Steve grumbled but couldn’t find it in himself to argue, sliding himself forward, slinging his arms over Eddie’s shoulders and allowing himself to be carried off.

Eddie was strong and steady under him, barely flinching as he grabbed tight to Steve’s thighs and stood.

Their walk back was quiet and Steve wasn’t looking forward to the amount of paperwork that would have to be filed as a result of this but he hoped since he was still on medical leave he could get out of it.

The sun was starting to set outside, the sky splashed with brilliant shades of reds and oranges and pinks. Now that he was outside he saw he was correct about where he was being held.

Brimborn Steel Works.

Still got it.

When he turned his head back around to face forward he saw that Eddie had driven Steve's beloved bimmer here.

The driver's side door was flung open and the car was at an odd angle, the direction and darkness of the tire marks behind telling Steve that Eddie had practically drifted into the lot at speed.

There were a few bullet holes in the doors and the passenger window was shattered but it wasn’t the worst that car had ever seen.

Bodies littered the ground around them, all in the same out of date suits Steve’s four goons had been wearing, all with the same guns, all with the same kind of build and all with slowly coagulating pools of blood and brains around them.

Damn.

Eddie really didn’t hold back this time.

Steve looked back at his car.

He couldn’t drive her anymore.

Probably never would be able to again.

They’d talked about trading it in for a model with push-pull controls for his hands instead of floor pedals so he could have that freedom back.

But they hadn’t gotten to it yet.

Eddie had taken his motorcycle to the garage, he would have arrived home with it. Probably seen the front door wide open and a grocery bag on the ground like Chrissy said.

It would have been quicker to get here on the motorcycle.

But Steve couldn’t ride on it.

Not as a driver or passenger.

At least not yet, not until he was further healed.

So Eddie had come here with the car, either because of hope, stubbornness or pure confidence, knowing he would get Steve back.

Steve smiled to himself, tightening his arms around Eddie’s shoulders and burying his face in his neck, peppering little kisses on any skin he could reach.

“You okay back there?”

He could hear the grin in his voice as Eddie lowered him down into the passenger seat, turning on his knees to rest his forearms across Steve’s thighs.

“Yeah.” Steve smiled down at him. “Just… thanks for finding me.”

Eddie straightened up to his full kneeling height, taking Steve's face in his hands.

“Of course, sweetheart.” He leaned up, pressing the softest of soft kisses against Steve’s lips, full of love, adoration, dedication.

Steve could feel it pouring out of him and into his own body.

The gentlest intimacy from a man who could cause so much violence.

Eddie brushed their noses together. “I’ll always come find you.”

“You always say that.”

Eddie hummed. “Because I always will.”

AO3

A prequel fic set in this universe will be dropping next week 👀

@geekymagicalpotato

Big thanks as always to @hbyrde36 for her magnificent beta work and to the STWG for their motivation.

#steddie #stranger things #eddie munson #steve harrington #steve x eddie #eddie x steve #penny00dreadful #steddie fanfic #steddie fic #fanfic #pennys anniversary event #spies au #spy steve #“retired” eddie #rookie mistake #tw guns #tw murder #tw kidnapping #rookie mistake fic

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