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lilahisntsadanymore · 2 years

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Two teenagers in a dark world, they manage to survive as long as they're together. But one day Regulus has to go on a deadly mission, leaving Y/n a letter... Is there a chance he comes back alive?

Pronouns used for Y/n: she/her

Pairing: Regulus Black x reader

Words count: 3k (this started off as a blurb lmao)

Warnings: mentions of death, not proofread

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

This cruel world

That day the sky was dark, just like the thoughts inside Y/n's head. Inevitable gloom surrounded the house and penetrated the rooms, at least more than usual. Y/n never liked the house on Grimmauld Place, but she was forced to live here since she married Regulus.

The marriage didn't look quite like Y/n imagined it. She surely was happy to call herself Regulus Black's wife, and Regulus reciprocated that feeling, but it would be better if they didn't have to live with Walburga.

It wasn't like the old woman wasn't fond of her daughter-in-law. Actually, she was pleased with Regulus' choice, but because of that she kept asking for a grandchild. The house of Black needed an heir, but Y/n felt like it wasn't the right time. Her and Regulus were only eighteen years old, they could and wanted to wait. Not the mention the terrible war.

Everyone thought Y/n was on Voldemort's side, that was expected from a deatheater's wife. Except, nobody knew even Regulus himself wasn't really on the Dark Lord's side. While Y/n tried to stay neutral, Regulus was making up a plan to defeat Voldemort.

"Take this," Regulus said, handing Y/n an envelope.

It was a dark green envelope with a silver wax seal. On the other side Regulus wrote 'Y/n Black'. He also put something besides a letter inside, a small circle that reminded Y/n the shape of a ring.

Y/n had been sitting on a windowsill in her and Regulus' bedroom for Merlin knows how long. She woke up without Regulus by her side, realizing that he's keeping an eye on the last preparations for his 'mission'.

The girl looked in her husband's eyes. He was worried. Not about himself, but about his wife. The mission was dangerous, Regulus didn't fear death, but he was afraid what would Y/n do he dies.

Everyday Regulus cursed himself for sentencing Y/n for living that life. She was so beautiful, so young, so pure, she didn't deserve all this fear. All this stress. He regretted marrying her, because she deserved better.

"I don't want it." Y/n eyed the envelope.

"Darling, if I die there are things-"

"I don't wanna hear it!" Y/n stood up from the windowsill. "You won't die, Regulus."

"It's a dangerous mission. And there are some things I need you to know and do if I don't come back from that cave."

With a soft sight, Y/n took the envelope in her hands. She brushed her thumb over the seal and began opening.

"No, don't!" Regulus stopped her.

"I thought you wanted me to read it?"

"Only if I die."

Y/n shoved the envelope back into Regulus' hands. "You won't die, you idiot!"

The girl walked angrily to the door, her footsteps heavier than normally. Before she could put her hand on the doorknob, Regulus grabbed her wrist and forced her to turn around. Y/n looked at him with confusion.

"I'm going soon," Regulus' gentle voice didn't match the tight grip he held on Y/n's wrist, "I don't wanna leave knowing our last conversation was an argument."

Last conversation...

It would be wrong to say goodbye in the atmosphere of anger. Y/n wished it wasn't true, but her husband really could die on that mission. She would despise herself for the rest of her life if the last words she said to Regulus were insults. At the thought of it, Y/n had to fight back tears.

But she couldn't. In her own eyes she was a bad partner to Regulus. "I'm sorry," she mumbled as her (y/e/c) eyes were letting out more and more tears each second.

A moment later, Y/n threw her arms around Regulus, almost hanging her whole body on him. Regulus closed his eyes and put his left hand on his wife's back and let his right hand play with Y/n's hair.

"I'll love you forever," Y/n cried silently, "I don't know what I'd do without you, Reggie. Please, try not to die."

"Can't make a promise I might not be able to keep. But know that wherever I'll be, my love for you will never end." Regulus placed a kiss on the top of his wife's head, then pulled away just enough to take her face in his hands. She was crying and Regulus hated the fact that he was the reason. "Promise me two things. I know you can do that."

Y/n wanted to speak, but something didn't let her open her mouth. As if someone shoved an invisible rock into her throat. So instead, she nodded, tasting tears on her tongue as they rolled down to her lips.

Something was missing. As Regulus held Y/n's face, the girl could feel one of his rings was missing.

"When I am gone, tell my brother what I did and that I did it to defeat the Dark Lord. I don't care about anybody else, I want him to know the truth so he can forgive me." Y/n nodded again and Regulus hesitated to continue. "And secondly... I want you to move on. In the pace that suits you, but please do. I would hate to sentence you to loneliness."

Y/n shook her head. "No," she managed to whisper. "I won't move on. You're coming back, Regulus, I won't have to move on."

Instead of saying anything, Regulus kissed Y/n. He put all his emotions into this kiss, as if he wanted to kiss her enough for all the years she would spend without him, in the worst case.

He didn't want to lie. It wasn't even a 50/50 chance of him coming back. It was almost certain he would sacrifice his life. It would be a miracle if he returned home safely.

Not a really long time later, Y/n stood in the hallway watching her husband putting on his shoes and his coat.

"Do you have your wand?" The girl asked.

"Yes, love." Regulus replied, not adding that he won't actually be able to use it in the cave.

Y/n felt tears stinking in her eyes again. She looked out of the window and started blinking fast. This didn't help, a single year managed to free itself from the girl's eye.

Regulus wrapped his arms around Y/n, hating himself even more in that moment. He was cursed and because of that, Y/n was too.

"Tears are of no use, darling." Regulus softly brushed his lips on Y/n's forehead. "I'm still alive, cry when I'm gone."

"And this won't happen, right?"

When Y/n stared at Regulus, he felt as if she was trying to read his mind. Her eyes were reaching his soul. And maybe Y/n was trying to read Regulus' thoughts, but she wouldn't find the truth there. He was too good at occulumency.

"Your eyes are too beautiful to be ruined by tears."

Regulus brushed Y/n's tears away with his thumb. After placing one last peck on her lips, Regulus was gone behind the huge door.

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Y/n paced around her and Regulus' bedroom for the whole day. She didn't speak to Walburga nor even saw her. For all she cared, that woman could as well not exist and Y/n would be fine.

It was like just another day when Regulus went to work and the two women were left with each other. Thankfully, the house was big enough to let them avoid one another.

Y/n's gaze kept wandering to the letter Regulus gave her. She put it next to a frame with a photograph of them. They were both kids back then, life was nice and easy. Well, maybe not so nice for Regulus, but it was still better than what they were going through now.

As much as Y/n was curious what was in the letter, she wished she would never have to read it. Regulus would make it back home safely and Y/n would let the fireplace swallow the letter, never revealing what it said.

Not wanting to focus on the envelope, Y/n shifted her stare to the picture. She smiled at it, recalling the memories. It was a cold winter day of the year 1976. Regulus told his parents he won't be coming home for the Christmas break, because the whole Slytherin team is staying in Hogwarts to use the time to practice, so he had to stay as well. Of course it was a lie, but Walburga and Orion didn't suspect anything.

In that particular moment the photo was taken, Y/n and Regulus were reading a book. It was a thing they did quite often - sitting on a couch in their common room to read one book together. It felt like a date and neither Y/n nor Regulus had a problem with being quiet. And so the picture captured Regulus turning the page as Y/n's head was resting on his shoulder. There was, obviously, no sound but in her memories Y/n could still hear Regulus asking if he can turn the page. And she would hum quietly in an answer.

It was just three years ago. They were kids and now they're suddenly adults. The world forced them to grow up.

A sudden sound of cracking pulled Y/n out from the memories. She put her right palm on her chest, feeling her heart wanting to jump out.

"Kreacher!" She whisper-yelled. "What have I told you about scaring me like this?"

The house elf bowed his head a bit. "I'm sorry, mistress Y/n. It's very urgent."

"What is it, Kreacher?" The worst thoughts ran through the girl's head.

"Master Regulus, he..." It was noticeably painful for the elf to say it. He served for the house of Black longer than he knew Regulus, but Regulus was his favorite. The boy once even called Kreacher his friend, but the elf told him it's an insult to Regulus and he shouldn't say that.

"What happened to Regulus?" Y/n asked with tears basically waiting to flow. As if they needed permission.

"Master Regulus... Died."

Died. He died. Y/n felt as if her body went numb. She couldn't feel her legs anymore, so she stumbled down on the floor with tears now running down her face in uneven streams.

She grabbed Kreacher's tiny arm. "Take me to him. Please, Kreacher take me to Regulus." Y/n's pathetic sobs filled the room.

"I can't take mistress Y/n there."

"You have to! I want to see him."

The conversation was difficult for Kreacher as well. "It is unfortunately impossible... Master Regulus was dragged underwater."

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Y/n had no idea how much time she spent crying on the floor. Neither did she have any idea how many days she spent in the bedroom. The curtains didn't let a single sunray through, so she didn't know when it's a day and when it's a night. She barely slept, but if she did she didn't care to check the time.

Kreacher had told Walburga about Regulus' death, Y/n heard the woman scream and cry. Despite of going through this loss together, in the same house, a few feet away from each other, neither woman bothered to check on the other one.

The curiosity, the need to know what's the letter saying disappeared with Regulus' death. It died with him. Like many more other things died in Y/n as well that day. But she had to do it, she had to force herself to read the letter.

Y/n didn't want to do it alone, but neither did she want to do it with Walburga. She didn't have contact with any girls she knew back in Hogwarts, so she decided to pay Regulus' brother a visit.

Kreacher helped Y/n apparate to Sirius' flat and then was told to go back home. He had to keep an eye on his first mistress as well. When Y/n was finally outside, it turned out to be an evening. The sky was grey, but stars weren't out yet.

"Y/n." Sirius said, it almost sounded like a question. He didn't expect Y/n's visit.

"I don't like the fact that I am here either, but you have to let me in." Y/n demanded in a cold manner.

"And why is that?"

"It's about Regulus."

Without any more words, Sirius opened the door wider, letting the guest walk inside, and then closed it, making sure it's locked.

"The living room is the door on your left." He instructed the girl, walking behind her with a hand on his wand in the back pocket of his black jeans.

Y/n sat down on an armchair. It wasn't as big as those in the house at Grimmauld Place, but also comfortable.

"Are you going to make me some tea or keep staring at me like I'm some anomaly?" The girl asked with a tint of frustration in her voice.

She should be nicer, she knew that. But without Regulus by her side, she had to be stronger. And to her strong was cold, callous. That was what being raised in a pureblood household taught her.

When Sirius walked to the nearby kitchen, divided from the living room by only an arch instead of doors, he still kept an eye on Y/n. Something was off. She had always been like this, but there was something going on.

"You are quite an anomaly, really. I mean, why would you suddenly decide to pay your husband's traitor of a brother a visit?"

Y/n took the cup of tea in her hand and drank a bit. "Do you live here alone?"

"Yeah, but Remus, James and Lily visit often. Actually, Lily and James are here everyday. They need company after... After Euphemia and Fleamont... Passed away."

"Oh, I'm sorry. What happened?"

"Don't apologize, you didn't even know them. Dragon pox took them. But enough of depressing talk, what brings you here?"

Y/n set down the cup on the coffee table. She didn't want to say what she had to say. Sirius wasn't going to like it. Or was he? He could hate Regulus, but still they were brothers...

"Regulus..." Y/n sighed. She had to say it. The quicker the better. "Regulus brings me here."

Y/n didn't cry. The tears that she cried already were enough, they washed out all feelings she had before. Now she was just empty. With a black hole where her heart once was.

"What has he done?"

"He died. Regulus died."

Silence. The silence after that sentence left Y/n's mouth was enough to let her hear hers and Sirius' heartbeats. Both sped up.

"He died?" Sirius asked. "He was only eighteen, what happened?"

"He intended to destroy the Dark Lord. He barely told me anything about his plan, but I know he went to a cave. There was something that would let Regulus destroy the Dark Lord. But he drowned. Kreacher said he was dragged underwater."

Y/n had no idea where she found that strength to spit it all out. She had to search deep down in her soul to find this strength.

Now it were Sirius' eyes that glossed with the salty liquid. He believed Y/n, she had no reason to lie.

His little brother was dead. All these long years Sirius was sure that Regulus was on Voldemort's side, but he died fighting for the good side. All these long years Sirius wasted on this silent war between him and Regulus were pointless. Regulus was on the good side. And he died thinking Sirius hates him.

Sirius never hated Regulus. They could disagree, fight as much as they wanted, but Sirius could never hate his little brother. They went through the same hell at home, but Sirius ran away and Regulus had to stay and keep up with it. It must have been difficult for him. And Sirius never even got to tell him how much he admires him. How much he loves him. And now he couldn't.

"He left me a letter," Y/n pulled out the dark green envelope from her purse, "I didn't want to read it alone. Can I do it here?"

"Yes, sure," Sirius stood up, his body extremely tense. "I'll be in the kitchen, just yell if you need me."

Y/n's fingers delicately opened the envelope. She took the letter, first scanning the writing. The black ink formed elegant letters, typical for Regulus. If Y/n didn't know he wrote it, she would have guessed anyways.

As Y/n began reading the letter, her ears caught silent sobs coming from the kitchen. She would talk to Sirius later. He needed someone to comfort him. Y/n barely know him, but now they were going through the same mourning.

My dearest Y/n,

When you're reading this letter, I am dead. It was meant to happen and I apologize for putting you through this. It pains me terribly to know you cry because of me. I know my effort won't go to waste and you will someday live in a better world.

I hope you won't mourn for too long and you will find someone else worth your love. Whoever that will be, know that I accept your choice. I loved being loved by you and everyone else who gets to experience it will be lucky.

You might hate me and I understand it. You can rip this letter in pieces and forget me, but know that I love you regardless. Wherever I go after my death, I'll look at you and smile, remembering all the memories we have made. The moments I spent with you were the ones I was the happiest, our wedding day was just something that carved into my memory. That's why I'm leaving you my wedding ring. You can put it on a string and wear around your neck or throw it away and forget I existed.

Thank you for showing me what happiness feels like, you're my own ray of sunshine in this dark world. I love you so much, I could take out my heart from my chest and break it in two if you only asked me to, my love. I believe one day we'll meet again, but until then, goodbye.

Always yours, R.A.B.

#marauders x reader #marauders imagine #marauders era #hp fanfic #marauders #Regulus Black #regulus black imagine #regulus black fanfic #Regulus Black x reader #hp fandom

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chouxtranslations · 10 months

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Shizun 011 - Exorcism fee

Long Jingtian had been living in an internet cafe for two days.

The cafe had no difference between night and day. Bright, loud, the place was filled with the sound of men yelling:

“Kill that son of a bitch!”

“I’m going to fuck you up!”

“You moron, did your mom just fuck off and die or what?”

“Bro! A surround!”

“...”

Between the cursing of teenagers and the mixed scent of smoke, men’s sweat, and ramen, Long Jingtian felt like the place was saturated with yang energy. it felt very safe.

Demons probably don’t come to these kinds of places, right?

To think that the famous Young Master of the Long family would end up in such a place, he felt rather pitiful. He wallowed while ordering a fancy sushi platter from a Japanese restaurant, downed a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, and decided to put his head down and nap on the desk.

Suddenly, a sickly sweet scent like orchids or osmanthus wafted through the air. The scent enveloped him and tugged at his soul. In a daze, he unknowingly started to follow the scene, and after walking for a long time he seem to have stepped into an illusion.

Long Jingtian opened his eyes and realized that he was in a historical feeling women’s boudoir. Upon the walls hung scrolls of noble concubines salaciously bathing, jewellery and rouge were scattered across the dressing table, several red candles were lit on the table, black silk draped over an ornately carved bedframe, and red embroidered slippers laid on the ground. Everything exuded an illicit atmosphere.

In a trance, Long Jingtian thought that the scene was rather familiar.

A gentle female sigh came from the bed.

Long Jingtian jolted awake and landed on the floor in a fright. He scrambled to run out of the room. He remembered, this is the first appearance of the skin painting demon in “zombie princess” where she seduced the male lead!

He was very interested in film, read the script, and even sat in on some of the discussions between his father and the director. This scene was very sensual and one of his favourites!

The demon is coming for him!

The door of the boudoir was locked, and it didn’t budge no matter how he pushed against it.

Long Jingtian started to recite scripture. But it was something he was trying to learn last minute and he got stuck after only two lines. Rather than the rest of the scripture the only thing that was in his head was despair and the words on his future tombstone:

Born to wealth and nobility. Died a negligent student.

Within the silks, the graceful shadow of a beauty slowly stood up, stretched enticingly, and softly sang an old song. “Silk floated like smoke in the sunny courtyard, spring shows on the watering threads. Step forward and yet stopped. Return to the room to re-do the huadian. But a look was snuck at me with a flowered mirror which reflected half of my visage, causing me to brush my hair crookedly. Stepping out of the boudoir bashfully-”

It was a guimen dan song by Du Liniang in the play “The Peony Pavillion”.

The melody lingered with three sighs a song. It was simply wonderful.

The director had said, the audience hears the demon before they see her. There has to be beauty with a tinge of horror, and within the horror intoxication.

Now that he’s experiencing the situation first hand, Long Jingtian wants to murder the director with his bare hands.

He huddled in the corner and shook like a leaf. Then he saw a delicate, pale hand with a beautiful red manicure reach out and lift up the silk, showing a bewitching face.

“Gongzi, do you think this one is beautiful?” Jin Yunu has painted a new skin and changed to the new face. Now, instead of a dignified classical beauty, he’s a flamboyant and seductive beauty.

The huadian had fallen, his hair was let loose, his shirt was half falling off, his body was gracefully inviting, his face was practically an aphrodisiac, and his bedroom eyes were such that men would willingly die at his feet.

This damned demon had even manufactured a little bit of cleavage! The level of deception has shot up like a rocket!

Long Jingtian kept on staring with his mouth open.

Jin Yun lazily swayed towards him while dragging embroidered slippers, delicately saying “This one has admired gongzi for having features akin to Pan An and endless talents. This one would like to offer to share a pillow, to rendezvous with gongzi under the moon, and to join our families...”

(T/N: Pan An, 潘安 was a famously handsome man in Chinese history)

This was also lines from the script.

Jin Yunu’s eyes and voice all carried the power to captivate his victim’s souls. As long as they weren’t an eunuch, he could stir up the sinful flames within them and make it so they couldn’t help but to run to his embrace and move with heat akin to thunder and lava.

Long Jingtian was so mesmerized that his body almost gave out, but at the critical moment he remembered what happens in Jin Yunu’s bed and his behind started to hurt a little again.

He hugged his chest and refused in terror, “No rendezvous!”

Seeing that he’s not following the script, Jin Yunu also stopped following the script. He blew at his earlobes and replied in a joking matter, “Gongzi’s body is so wonderful, this one would like to do the unspoken rules again...”

Long Jintian immediately understood and sadness rose from his heart. He looked in the mirror every day and know that he was handsome enough to shock the gods and demons. That’s why this man-adoring demon has tangled up with him!

Life or dignity, what’s more important?

This was a painful decision.

He shakily got up, went to the bed, and laid down spread eagle with his clothes off. Pushing down his fears, he mustered up what he could and said “If you’re letting me live, then do me as you wish...”

Jin Yunu blinked several times and couldn’t figure out why he changed his mind. Could it be... he was just too good in bed, and Long gongzi wanted more but was too embarrassed? That he didn’t want to admit it but thought things through and is now asking for another?

He was an actor even when he was alive and never minded such things. As long as it got him what he needed he was fine with unspoken rule-ing his way through. Long gongzi was young, handsome, and willing to bottom, it was actually quite enjoyable.

If this is what he asked for....

Jin Yunu mustered up all the techniques his knew and did his best to serve, so much so that Long Gongzi felt so good he almost cried.

Afterwards, Long Jintian entered into post nut clarity and stared at the black silk canopy in a daze, he thought that he wasn’t a pure boy anymore...

Jin Yunu was by his ear and softly asked, “Can this one play the skin painting demon?“

Long Jingtian held back his tears, “Yes...”

Jin Yunu asked further, “The director is casting the role tomorrow, this one wants to meet him. Would gongzi pass along some words of recommendation?”

Long Jingtian didn’t dare to refuse. “Fine...”

As the saying goes, the fellow taoist may die but this taoist will live.

Humans are selfish.

He decided to betray his conscience and let Jin Yunu meet director Wang. The director is an up start who’s in his early thirties, and he had a nice face and body too... He hoped the demon can be satisfied with the director instead and let him go.

Jin Yunu was immensely satisfied and didn’t try to rip open his skin again. He hugged Long Jingtian and gave him several kisses, saying with gratitude, “Thank you kindly for your generosity, gongzi. If Yunu can fulfill one’s heartfelt wish, this one will definitely provide thanks to gongzi.”

Long Jingtian moved his behind with difficulty and put on a fake smile, “No need to thank me, go thank the director.”

Jin Yunu got up and smiled while releasing the illusion.

A cold breeze blew by and brought with it a wave of coldness.

Long Jingtian jolted awake, and realized that he wasn’t in the internet cafe any longer. Instead he had been lured by Jin Yunu and ended up naked on the concrete by the roof escape door.

Only the marks on his body and the pain in his behind reminded him what happened.

He got up with difficulty, put on his clothes, wiped away his tears, then sat back down in the cafe in a daze. After a while he gathered what’s left of his conscience and called the director. “Uncle Wang, are you doing alright?”

“Pretty good, how are things with you?” Director Wang was family close with his family and had recently been promoted to fatherhood. He was feeding his baby, but when he heard Long Jingtian’s voice he got worried and passed the bottle to his wife. Walking to the veranda, he asked worriedly, “I heard from your father than you ran away from home? There should be no overnight grudges between father and son. Your pops is worried about you and it’s in the middle of the night.... Don’t drink so much, go home.”

Long Jingtian was tearing up again and his conscience was starting to feel worse and worse. “How did you know I fought with him?”

Director Wang laughed. “I went over yesterday wanting to talk about the casting. Your pops had drank a little too much and complained a heck of a lot... We didn’t even get through the work. I was going to go over to your place again tomorrow to show him the head shots from the short list.”

Long Jingtian asked, “For the skin painting demon?”

Director Wang was surprised, “How did you know?”

Long Jingtian warned him, “If... If a beauty that looks like the demon tries to do the unspoken rules with you, just give him the role. Don’t do anything that would do auntie wrong.”

Director Wang was at a loss, “Kid, are you drunk again?”

Long Jingtian sobbed, “You’ll know soon.”

He hung up.

It’s truly awful to push a good man into the fire.

Long Jingtian was full of guilt with no release. He didn’t know what to do so he decided to get back to gaming. However, he was tilted and kept getting killed off. The more he played the angrier he got, and then... a neuron connected.

Your place?

The script to “Zombie Princess” hadn’t been leaked, and the painting of the bathing concubines was something that his father got at an auction a few days ago for the movie. Not even the director knew about that.

So how did Jin Yunu know about it?

Director Wang seems to have said something about going over tomorrow to talk about casting?

Jin Yunu said he wanted to meet the director and investor tomorrow to talk about the unspoken rules?

Isn’t his dad the investor?

Jin Yunu might not only do unspeakable things to the director, but to his dad as well!

...

Long Jingtian was stunned. He immediately tried to call his dad only to find out his dad had blocked him. His mom was still overseas, and there was no outsider who he could get to help, and he didn’t want to get outsiders involved anyway...

He thought about it, grabbed his board, and dashed straight to Yinmao mall. Bearing the mocking gaze of the crowd, he yelled frantically, “PANDA MASTER, WHERE ARE YOU?!”

He went around like a headless fly from the evening to next noon with no leads, and was about to despair...

Suddenly, a handsome young man with smiling eyes and a ratty t shirt appeared before him, and nervously asked, “are you looking for me?”

Long Jingtian sized him up with suspicion.

“My name is Lu Yunzhen, I was the one who gave you the warning last time.” Lu Yunzhen knew that stating his age wouldn’t help his case and tried to provide proof by reiterating their previous conversation. “I wanted to help you, and you thought I was a scammer.”

“Yesyesyes, I was totally blind to what I was seeing!” After everything he’d been through he didn’t care to question anymore. In fact he was about to hug Lu Yunzhen and cry. The only reason he didn’t is that when he reached out his hand he realized a scary looking man in black was standing behind Lu Yunzhen and glaring at him...

He chucked the board and took Lu Yunzhen to a corner of a cafe before painfully recounting his experiences.

To have such a good man get unspoken-d twice by a demon, how sad...

Lu Yunzhen expressed sincere sympathies, then waited for Long Jingtian to go to the washroom before quietly asking Mo Changkong “Is this skin painting demon dangerous? If it’s too much we shouldn’t take this job.”

Mo Changkong was firm in his reply, “Easy as pie.”

Lu Yunzhen relaxed and started to fuss over the fee. The two of them had discussed the money situation before they left the house. He would act as Mo Changkong’s manager and get the businesses, while Mo Changkong would defeat monsters and use all the money on family food expenses.

He even searched online for standard pricing for exorcisms, only to be met with pages and pages of con artists who charged hundreds of thousands only to be thrown in jail.

Lu Yunzhen was a law abiding citizen who didn’t want to emulate con artists. He remembered that when his grandfather took him to improve his fortunes as a child, it cost around a hundred yuan.

With the inflation these days, and how the demon is probably more serious than bad luck, and there’s a life involved...

It needs to be a bit more expensive.

Long Jingtian returned from the washroom and asked expectantly, “Great master, can you save me?”

Lu Yunzhen pretended to deliberate the issue, then replied reluctantly, “We can, but as per the rules of our sect we must charge a fee.”

Long Jingtian nodded hard, “but of course, but of course!”

Lu Yunzhen pretended to be calm, held up three fingers, mustered up his courage, and stated the high price that he had been deliberating for a long time. “Three thousand yuan!”

If-...if that was too expensive, he can give a discount...

#shizun #feng yu nie

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garza63list · 2 years

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Ideas To Help You Fix Your House While Keeping On Spending budget

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casualnepotism · 3 years

Conversation

me: just in cases i prepped some ideas for if sunny has to leave the party

ryan: that would be the most heartbreaking thing to happen so far and also the party wouldn't last without her

me: well you can't be nICE about it THAT'S rude

#me: i can think nice thoughts about myself but if you do it now hold on sir #now i'm self-conscious about it #what is this reaction???#it was immediate too i was just 'no no he can't be nice now i must be Uncomfortable'#what the fuck brain let me live #just be happy that we made a good character and move on #NOPE not allowed #ah well #sunny ray #yeehaw isolation cabin #(don't worry she's probably not leaving the party i just overprep because of anxiety and also i love character creation)#hmu if you wanna hear about my genderless aasimar paladin sent to protect their creator's child who is deeply cognizant of their own mortali #ty and who is currently going by cyrus #cause i love them #they were created specifically for this and when this is over they will return to stardust and windstrokes #if they die before then they will live on in the gentle atmospheric brush of the mortal plane #ever exploring #ever creating #flowing freely from one being to the next fully aware and unbothered of the multitude of their existence #i kinda love cyrus #is the thing

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fullfiresiren · 3 years

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beauty of the dawn

jujutsu kaisen

fushiguro toji x reader

The notion of a loving family was something foreign to Fushiguro Toji. Family, to him, was a bitter word -- full of hate and abhorrence. Abandonment and fear were a commonality in his own childhood. But in you, he finds a warmth he didn’t think he deserved – a home he craved, a love that makes him feel safe; full of gentle touches and soft kisses. But he’s scared. He's broken, and angry, and he knows the threat of his family is always lurking close, snapping at his heels, ready to devour. You bring the notion of family to his doorstep, and he spooks. He panics. He can’t let them find you, he can’t and he has to give up the only feeling of warmth he has ever known to do so.

It haunts him forever – leaving behind the only woman he ever loved, and a child he will never know.

word count: 3.8k.

notes: *inhales* ANGST— lmao but really, I live for it. Toji may be a bad person, but I suck dick, not morals, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ bro I fr don’t even know what came over me. This has been like the smallest headcannon for me and somehow it turned into this horribly sad piece, and although Toji is a dick, I also think he is an incredibly complex character that, at the end of it all, was just a desperate father trying to look out for his child. I think he deserves much more than he got, and he kinda gets shat on in this fic lmao I'm so fuCKING SORRY FOR THAT--

warnings: nsfw/18+, angst, hurt no comfort, abandonment, unplanned pregnancy, pregnant reader

“Take me,” he prays, panting secrets that fall from his lips onto your soft skin; promises of pleasure as he breeds you deep. “Take all of me.”

And you do – over, and over, and over again.

Hilting him to the deepest part of yourself, and holding him close, so close, his breath a hot ghost across your face as he leans his forehead against yours. You keep him there until he is finished, taking his seed like it was sacrament. He gives you everything he has to offer, and only when you have slipped into a light slumber does he pull away.

He never strays far, though, and he cannot stay away for long. You are like sweet honey and warm sunsets; the breathing embodiment of a life he was never before privy to – the promise of something better; a miracle. Far from the cold depravity and sharp pain of his own family, in you, he found only warm touches, and words of tender affection. Toji feels so overwhelmed by the amount of love he has for you, that sometimes it’s unbearable. He feels so happy he could die.

He is not an honest man, by any means. He kills for a vocation -- and enjoys it, too. It’s something he’s good at. It’s an easy way to make money, and it helps him pay for his half of the rent on the meagre apartment you share. It also lets him keep the fridge full, make sure you’re always warm, and that you’re never without. He doesn’t really care about himself or what he has to do – so long as you’re happy.

The weight of his body is always heavy between your thighs, his chest solid, thrusts slow and deep, stretching you, making a perfect fit for himself inside you. He likes drawing it out – each time he takes you. He enjoys seeing you beg for release, relishes the way your tears slide down your flushed cheeks, because he likes being the one to kiss them away, knowing he is the only one who ever makes you feel this good. His name sounds so perfect when it falls from your lips at your height of ecstasy, and the way you take him in has him swearing he can see heaven.

You see a side of him that no one else does, but he’s dark, he’s toxic. The amount of sadness in his soul is challenged only by the sheer force of his anger. He's sure that he wasn’t always like this, but... he can’t really remember a time when he wasn’t. Everyone and everything was his enemy. He’s never really told you much about his family, or his past. His childhood had been dark, you assumed, based on the way he flinched around children, and steered clear of any conversational topics that included them or parental figures.

Toji Fushiguro was untouchable to everyone, and only just tangible to you.

He wants to be able to give you everything. He wants to lay his head on your chest in the depths of the night when he’s feeling lost, listening to the steady rhythm of your heartbeat to guide him home. He wants to come home every night, no matter what happens to him throughout the day, and be able to feel the brush of your soft lips; to taste your tongue with his – god – he wants to. But he’s afraid. He’s scared. If he gives you everything... if he shows you who he really is... what happens if you see something you don’t like? Will you pull away from him? Will you cast him out and abandon him – just like his family did? Toji isn’t feeble by any sense of the word, but he thinks that would be the one thing that would break him.

That’s why he’s only let you see glimpses... and only every now and then.

He’s just so miserable when he’s alone. He’s angry at the world, and you’re the only thing that soothes him. The only thing he has ever loved.

You’re staring at yourself in the mirror when he comes home, locked away in the too-small bathroom. You hear the keys turning in the lock; a signal of his arrival, and the door to your apartment opens, bringing with it sounds of paper bags crinkling, keys being tossed into their bowl, and huffing exhales as he struggles to kick his heavy boots off.

“Toji?”

“I’m home!” he calls, his voice a deep timbre in his chest, smooth like rich oak.

You follow it, leaving the safe space of your bathroom to find him, and when you pass the threshold into your small kitchen, he’s lifting bags of fresh groceries onto what little counter space you have. The movement carries with it droplets from an October rain that had caught him by surprise on his walk home, ones that hang from the edges of his black hair and drip down onto his damp black shirt.

“Toji,” you repeat, beaming as you bound into your small kitchen. “I have wonderful news!”

He spares you a glance between unpacking vegetables, dark eyes tracing the curve of your face, hands grasping at packets of food that need to be tossed in the fridge, and cans to be stacked in the shelves.

“Hmm?”

He offers you his face, leaning in close, pausing in his task to receive a small blessing of affection from you — a soft kiss against the scar on his lip that has his eyelashes fluttering closed, and then one more fully against yours – always greedy for any love you bestow, always chasing just one more, just once more, just another, my love, just one more...

He continues with his chore, but only when you giggle at the fluttering of kisses he peppers across your face, your jaw, suckling at your neck, your hands against his chest pushing him gently, urging him to finish his task – but not before you give him another deep kiss, all giddiness and mirth swimming in your gaze. He can’t help the deep chuckle that spills from his lips at seeing you so happy.

“Toji,” you begin, and he’s rummaging in the paper bags, brows furrowed because he could have sworn that he bought three carrots, and not two -- “I’m pregnant!”

He stills.

He can sense your beaming smile, almost feels the warmth of it on his cold skin, and it only makes him shiver.

The seconds tick by without any form of reaction, and the atmosphere grows horribly tense. Toji doesn’t look at you, but he can see from his peripheral vision that your smile slips at the same time that your shoulders round and you make yourself smaller, unconsciously closing off. You’re twisting something in your hands, suddenly nervous, and he has a nauseating feeling that settles in his gut, because he knows exactly what it is that you’re holding.

It’s proof.

“Are you... happy?” you ask, and you hate that you have to. It’s like a punch in the gut, and you’re afraid. This was not the reaction you were expecting at all.

“Are you sure?” he doesn’t know why he asks that.

He isn’t looking at you, and he isn’t moving – he’s not even blinking. You feel your hands becoming sweaty as you clutch the positive pregnancy test, mouth dry. A quickly increasing panic creeps over your skin, gripping you by the throat, and you honestly have no idea how to traverse this kind of response to your news. In the bathroom you only practiced scenarios in relation to a beaming, positive reaction.

Which room should we make into the baby’s room? Our baby can always sleep with us, though, and I know they’re definitely going to prefer you – I'm hopeless with kids... but I hope they look like you, Toji – a perfect combination of everything I love about you!

Do you want to pick names out? I hope it’s a girl... but a boy would be wonderful, too! I know the baby will adore you, no matter what! Do you have any names you like? We can name them after someone you love? If it’s a boy, I want to make his middle name yours...

Why didn’t you think he was going to show apprehension or reluctance? Why were you so idiotic to assume this is something he desired when he’s never given you any signs of wanting to start a family? He’s probably feeling entirely overwhelmed – and no wonder – you have no tact about this. Fuck, you’re stupid. You fucking idiot. Pathetic, dumb, worthless--

“Y-yes,” you reply, and your voice is a shadow of its former self. “I took three tests. I have one here--”

“How.”

You flinch a little under the curtness of his words.

“W-what—?”

“How did this happen?”

“Uhm...” your voice sounds so frail when you speak, and you can't help it. He’s making you feel like you’ve committed a horrendous sin. You’ve managed to combine the epitome of affection between the two of you into the creation of what will become a child – a perfect mix of the two of you, and yet, you’re beginning to hate yourself for doing so. You didn’t mean to... it was an accident... “We don’t... you know... use protection... and we... have sex... a lot...”

“I thought you were taking the pill.”

You feel like you want to throw up.

His entire body is unnaturally still, and he’s not looked at you once since you’ve told him. You are pretty sure that the can in his right hand is warping under the violent pressure of his grasp, and you wring your hands around the test nervously, the weight of it somehow heavy against your palms.

“I... don’t take the pill...” you remind, and then as an afterthought, you add, “I’m sorry.”

Words you never thought you would say in relation to this. You never though you would have to apologize in this kind of situation. You exhale a shaky breath, and it seems to bring him back to reality. He sets the can down on the countertop with more force than needed, and you try your best to blink back tears as you ask, “You’re... not happy... are you...?”

It’s more of a statement than a question, and it hurts to say – god, it hurts. The words sting when they leave your mouth, like a hard slap against your face, but the ache is not nearly as bad as the way his silence is wounding you. You feel like you’re about to collapse from the amount of pain you have in your heart.

“I need to go somewhere,” is the most he offers you, before he’s turning on his heels and striding past you, leaving the apartment you share.

The noise of the front door slamming shut echoes in your mind long after the sound itself has gone.

He never did come back.

— — — 5 years later — — —

In the end, you were blessed with a baby girl, all chubby with round, rosy cheeks. Dark hair and eyes like her father, but soft and gentle like her mother. She was an almost perfect child. She never cried, and she never fussed, content in just being close to her mother. She listened when you spoke, and learned fast, growing just as quick, and you would die for her. She was your blessing; Akemi – the beauty of a new dawn.

You’re sure that he would have loved her more than life itself, but you try not to spare any thoughts his way anymore.

Toji gambles his life away, blowing through anything he earns as quickly as he makes it, drowning himself night after night in heavy alcohol to dampen his senses until they are nothing more than a faint hum in the back of his brain.

With any luck, those things will kill him long before the guilt does.

He fucks faceless women, drunk beyond sense, and when he finishes, he leaves before they sleep.

“Hate me, (y/n),” he sneers, turning sharply to vomit up onto the wet asphalt, breath a shaky exhale as he stumbles into the cold night, thoughts only on you – only ever on you – unaware that he’s crying. “Hate me. I fucking deserve it.”

His face is smeared with bile and tears, and he is so fucking angry -- so desperately sad, and he cries, and cries. He wants to go home. He just wants to go home. He wants to meet her – his darling daughter – he wants to hold her, and kiss her forehead, and tuck her into bed. Fuck everything that he thought – he would have been a great father, he knows it – and you knew it, too. He’s so lost without you, and he wants to lay his head on your chest in the safety of your bedroom, listening to the steady rhythm of your heartbeat to guide him home. He wants to feel the brush of your soft lips again; to taste your tongue with his, moan your name into your parted sigh, make you feel him again.

He screams, but it catches in his throat before he can, and he splits his knuckles open when he sends a furious punch against a brick wall.

He can protect you from a lot of things – but not the power of his family. Not that. He’s just one man, and they’re so many. He has a heavenly restriction, and they are all blessed with both innate and inherited techniques, passed down through eons. He knows what they’ll do if they ever found out about you – about the child, and Toji swears on everything he has, that he won’t let them touch you – or her. Even if he won’t be able to. Even if he’ll never be able to hold his daughter, to thank her for being born, to cradle her against his chest and feel her wrap her small fingers against his – he won’t let the Zen’in have her. He won’t.

But that doesn’t mean that he deprives himself from watching over her – or you. Eyes follow the two of you home from her pre-school, singing nursery rhymes to your hearts content, watching as she orders “up, up, mommy!”, squealing happily when you lift her onto your shoulders. He imagines himself in your place; lifting her to higher heights, hearing her giggle a chorus of happy songs as your hand finds his, lips on his scar as you tell him how much you love him.

But he always keeps his distance, dark baseball cap shielding his features, and leaves before you feel someone following you.

It becomes increasingly hard to keep it at that. He starts pushing the boundaries, testing how close he can get. He knows he shouldn’t -- he has no right to – but when she dropped her stuffed toy one time in the supermarket, and you were oblivious to it, he finds himself bending down to grasp the too-soft toy in his calloused hands, dropping it in your basket when your back is turned, and your brows are furrowed as you regard the price difference between her favorite flavor of juice compared to the off-brand ones.

The thrill of being so close, of doing something, anything fatherly, was like a fix – a short relief from the aching despair and loneliness constantly plaguing him, and he finds himself doing it more and more – always pushing, always testing the waters. He even smiled at her once when she caught him staring, and she sent her own toothy grin back at him. His heart soared.

His daughter’s name was Akemi, and he first heard it when it fell from your lips one warm afternoon. He wants to write her name on his heart – right beside yours.

He wants to give her something – a pretty gift, but he doesn’t know what. He was never good at buying presents, and would only ever bring you flowers, since it seemed like something that could never go wrong, and would always bring a bright smile to your face. Flowers would be strange for a child, though. He twists the dainty silver bracelet between his large fingers, thinking bitterly that this was the same way you held the pregnancy test all those years ago. He didn’t really care how much it cost him. He’s sure that the salesman added unnecessary tax and extras to the price just to give himself more commission, but Toji doesn’t care – he just wanted something pretty to give to his daughter.

When he finally sees her enter the park, small hand tugging yours happily, his mind goes empty, and he can’t stop staring. You are as beautiful as ever, and it’s no wonder his daughter is so ethereal when she has you for a mother.

She is perfect, he thinks -- too good for this life -- and even though it’s the worst thing he has ever done, he is reminded that pulling away from you was the only way to save her from his family. It looks like she escaped the curse of inheriting any of his bloodline's techniques, and what’s more so – it seems like she, too, is oblivious to curses; skipping past them as she chases leaves that skit about the dirt path of the park, her teddy in her arms. Toji dips his head down when she draws near the bench he’s sitting on, the brim of his baseball cap keeps his face hidden, and his sadness known only to himself.

“Excuse me?”

He bristles when her voice floats past his ears, so gentle and sweet.

“Hey, mister,” she pokes his knee with her slim finger, so tiny compared to the size of his body, and he jerks at the contact. “Is this yours?”

She’s holding the bracelet in her small hand, the silver glinting in the morning sun, offering it up to him with large eyes, so close to him. At this distance, he can see the true color of her eyes – exactly like his own – and the small freckles that dot her skin. The longer he stares, the more his chest constricts painfully, tightly – he’s finding it hard to breathe, and he exhales suddenly, sharply snatching it away from her.

The force of the movement causes her to stumble a little, tripping over her feet, and before she knows it, the man who was once sitting before her has entirely caught her in his large arms, scooping her up before the ground has a chance to harm her.

She blinks once... twice... swaddled in his arms, sitting against his broad chest, and Toji frantically looks for you, finding you caught up in talking to another mother, too busy to notice. He knows he would scold you for it if he was still in your life, but when his daughter laughs, he snaps his head back to look at her, forgetting what thoughts he had in his mind at the glinting sound of her happiness.

“Whoa!” she exclaims, “You’re fast! Thanks for catching me!”

He doesn’t know what to say – if he should say anything at all. His plan was to give her the bracelet, telling her that it was a late birthday gift from someone that loves her very much, and walking off before she (or you) has the chance to catch on or respond. But now that he’s inches away from her, holding her close as she peers up at him, he’s lost again. He’s lost, and he can’t breathe. He needs you to steady him, but you aren’t here, and he doesn’t know what to do, what should he do, what should he--?

“Where did you get that scar from?” she asks innocently, her large eyes suddenly trained on the mark beside his lips.

“F-from an accident,” he mumbles, “a long time ago.”

“Oh,” she hums, hands splayed against his broad chest, looking around her, swaying her legs absentmindedly. “Wow, you’re really tall! I can see everything from up here!” she exclaims happily, “My mommy’s not as tall as this, so when I sit on her shoulders, I can’t see nearly as much as I can now!”

“Oh,” he mutters, not really knowing what to say, “is that so?”

“Mhm,” she nods, “Mommy’s not as big as you are either.”

At this, he gives a genuine laugh – a sound he hasn’t heard fall from his lips in a long, long time, looking at her with quiet adoration.

“She’s not as fast as you either,” she continues, “you were super-fast!”

“She’s strong in her own ways, though,�� he mutters, offering her a soft smile.

“Do you know my mommy?”

He bristles, actively avoiding her gaze. His heart is racing from this much interaction with his daughter, and he’s sure she can feel it under her small palm. It beats for her – if only she knew, and Toji contemplates, for the briefest of seconds, just telling her. The thought leaves his mind as soon as it enters. He doesn’t have that choice, and he doesn’t deserve it.

“Not really,” he mutters, dipping down slowly to set her footing on solid ground once more.

“She’s really pretty,” the little girl continues, playing with the soft fabric of his t-shirt in a small moment of fondness and familiarity, “and nice – and she makes great food!”

Toji realises only after the fact that his hand had settled on top of her head, and he’s stroking her hair softly, thumb caressing her cheek when he moves to cup her face. She doesn’t seem to mind at all, and Toji is overwhelmed with a plethora of emotions. Pride in you for doing all this by yourself and raising such a wonderful child, shame for abandoning you and his daughter, mirth, anger, warmth, sadness, love--

“Akemi!” you call, seeing her lift her head at the sound of your voice. “This way, honey!”

“Oh, I have to go now! My mommy is calling me!” she perks up, gripping her teddy a little tighter and offering the man a smile. “Bye-bye!”

“W-wait!” he calls, thrusting the gift into her small hands. “This is for you, uh... f-from me...”

She looks down at it, before her whole face lights up, and Toji is suddenly breathless – she looks so much like you when she’s surprised, happiness blossoming over her face the same way it would on yours.

Toji feels a deep-rooted emptiness inside his body when he watches his daughter retreat away from him; a living embodiment of all his failures to you, and yet, as he sees her long, black hair whip out behind her, he realizes something else — she was your promise delivered; a combination of everything good between the two of you, in itself a miracle. He might not be in her life, but he was also partly responsible for creating something so beautiful, so ethereal.

He knows he doesn’t deserve it, but if he was ever fortunate enough to be granted a second, it would be a miracle; a holy gift.

A blessing that would accompany the beauty of dawn.

#jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen x you #toji x reader #fushiguro toji x reader #toji x you #fushiguro toji x you #angst #pregnant!reader #abandonment #dilf toji

1K notes · View notes

yostresswritinggirl · 3 years

Text

Readers: We want Red Xiao x Reader x Green Xiao content PLEASE

Exiled: Well yes but actually no

Intermittent

Pairing -> Red/Green Xiao x Reader

Word Count -> 2088

Themes -> Okay, get this: Fluff, Angst, Suggestive scene (but not too bad). It's a trifecta.

Series -> #SojournerSpecials (masterlist)

Credit: @m370N4 for Header

Warnings -> Spoilers, violence, oh gawd there's so many violence

Your lover is going through a phase.

Perhaps you should have expected this much after the things that he's gone through, and the things that he is going through. The Archon War does not pick its victims. Saints and sinners, weak and strong, participants and bystanders; they all have one thing in common, they all can die any day now as the war rages on.

The thought of impending doom puts your heart into great unease as your arms tighten, lips softly pecking the red diamond on the Yaksha's forehead as he sighs in what you hope was relief.

The adepti are strong and aid in this war under the stead of Rex Lapis, but on the forefront of greater danger leads the Yakshas. The fateful battle between Osial and the Geo Archon ended not too long ago to put an end against the Lord's destructive ministrations, but Gods do not die, only slumber; his hatred in great intensities brought forth demonic plague that now haunts the blood bathed lands of Liyue. With his indispensable power and contractual obligation, Xiao became one of the five known Yakshas devoted to conquering those evil.

You were no beast in the battlefield but alongside Cloud Retainer and Ganyu you hold well in ensuring the well-being of mankind, but you only wish there was anything you can do to help the true warriors of the Harbour.

"How are you feeling?" You ran your hands through his chopped hair as his body leans against you, still tense. Xiao produces a strangled groan upon the question, a sound you still have yet to grow accustomed to.

It was a side effect even the glorified Archon did not expect. Yet it was too late to back down from the duties, to turn away from the chaos.

"Still standing, nothing I cannot handle," leaning away from your hold, his honey eyes then sets upon yours in gentle reassurance. Exposed fingers softly brushing against your cheekbone reminiscent of a flutter, so light it sends your heart into a faster pace. "And on your end? I have heard of the mortals establishing a new type of governance, how is it faring?"

Xiao hooks his fingers under your chin in full attention, and the pairing with his tantalizing smile sent your mind melting. "It's going-," your cleared your throat of the strangled pitch you produced and tried again, "Going great! Ganyu made it her duty to oversee it as the secretary."

"That is a fine arrangement." He hums inquisitively but you both know his attention was on somewhere else, what with the way his sharp orbs kept flickering to gaze on your lips. And with how his face was slowly, surely drawing near.

"Indeed, indeed." Breathed you as you closed your eyes, ready to capture his lips for a longing kiss, his other hand rests on your lower back to guide you to his lap—

When the shutter doors slammed open, the interruption causing you to yelp as Xiao embarrassingly hides your head to his exposed chest. That did NOT lessen the warmth of your cheeks.

"Conqueror of Demons! I- I'm sorry to interrupt-"

"Pervases, go on."

"The Yaksha of flames-" A rumbling roar of a scream had all three of you shoot your heads up in alert. And within seconds you had scrambled to your feet, rushing out of the shrine to investigate the commotion. The atmosphere had you choking from the scent of arson, black smoke erupting from the burning grass and natural flora around the area.

But in the middle of the ruins had you almost dispelling the contents of your stomach, your hand shooting up to cover your mouth at the the sight. Besides you Xiao dashes past in a vain attempt to quell the flames— the lick of fire that burned the Pyro Yaksha whole, who screams in both agony and anguish over the deep unknown, skin and clothes turning black and charred.

Xiao's swings barely made a dent to the wall of fire that prevents anyone from coming close to the Yaksha. "Please, leave me alone! Let me go! Stop it!" There was an illusionary sense to her words as she screams at the empty void in front and within her, piercing and aching. You called for her name, shouted, in hopes that she may snap out of it.

Dried up tears came upon her ruby gaze as it flickers over to yours. She heard you. Her lips quivered into those of familiarity and she opens her mouth- only to scream her loudest, one last painful cry, as her body drops as a smoking corpse.

Charred and pure black. Twitching and steaming, but not alive.

You didn't realize you were crying until you felt the comfort of Xiao's hand wiping at your cheek, his red fingerless gloves catching the dampness as you released your sobs.

You didn't notice the gradual decrease of red in his clothing until you looked at him one day without feeling a pang on your chest. When you looked at him with only curiousity upon him calling your name, he offered a smile as he cups your cheek; it didn't feel like the same traumatic time when the Yaksha died, your cheek leaning on his cerulean palm.

It wasn't red. Maybe that's what drove away your thoughts.

"It looks good on you," you mumbled as you watched his now black and green hair sway from the breeze.

"Thank you."

The clouds of Jueyun Karst brings peace to all that gazes on it. That may be the reason why it was Menogias' favorite place to sit by upon finishing her duties for the day, and at times she invites you over when you are done with your own; 'your presence soothes me, it's unfair that Xiao gets to keep you to himself, even if he is your lover!' you giggle at the verbatim the Hydro Yaksha always spouts everytime she drags you away from the other, with a cute yet teasing pout on her pristine face.

Those moments always has you laughing guiltily as you wave to Xiao, who only dons a gentle smile at you two's dynamic.

But she was beautiful and elegant despite her slaughtering hands, with a mind vivid and witty.

And so you find peace next to her, as both of your hands weave cloth into apparels to calm your minds. She had always been an avid fan of stitching and knitting even her own clothes, the only reason you knew how to weave the needle was because of her incessant teachings. Right now she knits a sleeve of beautiful patterns while you took on the duty to make a wooly scarf. Jueyun Karst is cold.

"How are you faring, dear? I have heard you and Xiao-" your hands paused at the implications, "-were witness to the passing of the Yaksha Indarias. Changes are glaring among that of the Conqueror of Demons, but you are a special case who is not under the influence of the karmic binds."

Her cold blue gaze seem to pierce your soul unintentionally and you couldn't bring yourself to look upon them.

You gulped and ceased on finishing the blanket to look at her own work. It was pretty. Tiring and fearful, not just for yourself, but for her too. And especially Xiao.

She holds you close in a soft embrace as you poured your honest confessions; it felt unfair for them to suffer like this, driven to self-destruction or to eternal agony. Menogias strokes your hair affectionately as she reassures your worries.

After all, they knew their oath would come to this.

And they still honored their duties to protect Liyue, for both the mortals and the realm of the Adepti.

"H-How about you?" You sniffled, looking up at her now gentle gaze. "Have you been feeling well? I don't want you to be destroyed by your own mind too."

The Yaksha's gracious smile parts after a pause to finally reply, when a glint from the side suddenly interrupted your peace-

azure pupils dilated upon recognition;

your body flies back upon her powerful push;

blood spurs from her right thigh as a jagged pillar of rock pierces through;

your back and hitting the cliff's compact ground as your vision swims.

No, no, no, no, you recognize that glow even if it was similar to another. Your body whimpers as you struggle to get up, rolling to your side to see the inevitable— the floating silhouette of the Geo Yaksha raises his arm where an orb glows over it, a single eye glows from his shadow...

The last you saw was the flash of neons and black before the world was engulfed by a blinding light.

The next thing you know you were desperately trying not to puke as you cradled the mawled and still bleeding corpse of Menogias, weakly patting her cheeks as your desperate attempts to wake her- to convince yourself that she was still alive. That the spears of stones impaled through numerous part of her body was nonexistent.

Behind you Xiao flicks his head to the side as his mask disperses. His jade spear dripping with blood as her gentle eyes hardened as it squeezes out the tears.

"(Y/N)," your wails turned into whimpers and hiccups, loose arms wrapping around your waist as Xiao pulls you away from the bloody mess. You didn't have the spirit to protest, your eyes still trained on the deceased Yaksha's face as you wept in your lover's arms.

A familiar censer that wasn't there before hangs by his waist.

And when the pain didn't make you weep anymore, a beautifully woven sleeve of blue and clouds adorn his left arm. Those who live after a millenia would not be aware of a reminiscent and deep scar hidden beneath it.

"I was not aware you were out of your domain," the moment he landed, a firm hand grasps your waist to keep you steady on the balcony's railings. Where you're currently perched on, precariously.

You were still unused to the purple cloth that flows behind him. But it matches the wind that comes with him, and the beautiful clashes of colors that makes up who he is now. He was not reminiscent of the red gentleness that he was 2000 years ago, but a teal shadow that lingers at the edges of your vision as a blur.

"I wanted to thank you for purging the malignant monsters that haunted my domain by the cavern," your gaze falls away from the moon as you swing your legs up and over, turning to face the Inn and him yet still remaining seated on the railing.

His eyes were hostile, not at all indicative of the lightness it had long ago. Chest covered in white, and the many memorabilias that dangle with him. Xiao's hands rests on the railing by your side as your fingertip traces the Vajra hanging by his neck, chunky to pointy; Pervases, the name leaves your lips in a whisper.

A guttural growl leaves him in intensity that had you reeling yet still worried for him. Behind his lidded eyes were pure hurt from the fear you conveyed, but he shook his head at all the thoughts that invades. Xiao lets loose a tired yet mocking laugh, "I just remembered something unpleasant."

Before he can turn back to gaze at your ethereal form, you've thrown your arms around his head to pull him against your chest. Your grip and uneven heartbeat alerted him of your will to not cry at his misfortune; such sympathy is wasted on him, yet he wraps his arms around you close in a gentleness that once again reflects his deepest trait.

"...your blessings, not your flaws."

At the sound of your familiar lyrics, as if with a mind of its own, the tension on his shoulders drop immediately into your warmth.

"You've got it all, you lost your mind in the sound;

There's so much more, you can reclaim your crown;

You're in control, rid of the monsters inside your head;

Put all your faults to bed."

Urged the strokes of your hand on his head, the voices quiet into almost nothingness. The Conqueror of Demons smiles again.

"You can be king again."

To the realm of the Adepti and those who knows even the slightest of him, it was nothing to debate about when it is claimed that you were the real reason that the golden-winged king, the Conqueror of Demons— that Xiao still exists today.

If you recognize the song 🤝 big sad

@moaa @dandelion-dreams @witchsungie @lehra @zelos-simp @legionqueensav @snackgod @rxsalinee @cala-ran @wind-wheel @lilydewi22 @yellowflowre @traveler-lumine @nonniechan @creation-magician @hanniejji @gojos-baby @just-some-stars @volleybloop @kookieyachi @xiaophilia @bunniesrorange @anormalguyreader @scarletroseneko

#genshin impact x reader #Xiao x reader #genshin impact Xiao #exile.flower #Angst #Fluff #segcy #Xiao² #I have given in to the temptation #gender neutral #xiao genshin impact #sojourner special

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buckyownsmylife · 3 years

Text

daddy issues - final chapter

The one where Ransom doesn’t feel ready to become a father, but he should have thought about it before sleeping with a complete stranger.

When Ransom’s latest one night stand lets him know that he’s going to become a father, he finds himself looking for the qualities he never believed to have so he can become the parent he never got to witness as a child.

for general warnings and author’s notes, please go to the fic’s masterlist.

A/N: this is it, everyone! Thank you for following along for the ride. This series is now officially completed, but I will write an epilogue for it eventually (it most likely won’t be coming out next Tuesday). If there’s anything in particular you’d like to see in it, please let me know!

Y/N’s P.O.V.

The gentle sunlight dancing through the sheer curtains woke me up. I did not understand why anyone bought these types of curtains - maybe for the living room, sure. But to place them inside a bedroom?

The aesthetic purposes weren’t as important as the usefulness and as far as drapes go, these were pathetic. I had told Ransom about them before, and all he did was chuckle and agree to call his interior designer to ask for something made of a better fabric.

Yawning, I sat up on the bed and stretched out my arms, moaning softly at the pleasurable pain on my muscles. I was still half-asleep, mind not yet connected to anything when I felt a sweaty hand slip from my stomach to my thigh, and I realized it was naked.

I was naked. All at once, the memories from last night returned and I whipped my head to the side to check on a sleeping Ransom, face turned to me as he snored gently on the pillow.

I remembered everything then. The fight, the insecurities, the reassurances, the physical reassurances… The way he told me he loved me…

I wanted to say it back. I really did because I knew I felt the same way about him, but I hadn’t anticipated it would happen during sex after what was probably one of the worst evenings of our lives.

It felt too real. Too much, too soon. I needed to get out of here.

In my rush to leave the bed, I dipped the mattress too abruptly considering there was someone else slipping on it - someone I didn’t want to wake up. So that’s precisely what happened.

Ransom’s P.O.V.

I inhaled deeply as the slumber slowly left my body, memories of the night before rushing in as I exhaled into a smile. God, that was the best night of my life.

Opening my eyes, I was hoping to find her body right next to mine, close enough that I could reach over, touch her and maybe repeat some of last nights best moments until hunger forced us to leave the bed.

But my fingers didn’t find anything and when I looked up, it was to find her frantically trying to put on some clothes as she fumbled from one side of the room to the other.

“What’s going on?” My voice came out harsher than I intended, throat hoarse from last night’s activities and the sleep that still somewhat dominated my body. Upon hearing it, she froze, keeping her back to me while my mind raced, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

And then I understood it.

“You’re trying to leave me.” She didn’t deny it, but guilt must have been inside of her, fighting for dominance over her fear because she turned around to face me, a pained look on her expression.

“Ransom…” I knew that tone. I hadn’t even employed on anyone before because I never cared enough about someone to feel bad when I broke things off with them, but this feeling was universal.

I rushed to leave the bed, uncaring of the fact that I was still naked when I crossed the distance between us and took her face in my hands. “Don’t do this,” I pleaded. “Don’t lock me out again.”

Tears dominated her eyes and she blinked them away, forcing them out so they could run over her cheeks. Frustration was clear on her every feature, she shook her head as best as she could considering my hold on her, squeezing her eyes shut for a second like she was trying to think.

“Why the fuck can’t I control myself around you?” She burst out, and immediately the angst I was feeling escaped my body, letting me go now that I knew what was bothering her.

Taking a deep breath, I brushed her hair away from her face, gazing deeply into her eyes so she’d know how much I meant what I had to say.

“Because you like being with me just as much as I enjoy being with you.” She couldn’t counter that, but when she tried to avoid it, I called her out, “It’s true, you can’t deny that!”

She bit on her bottom lip, trying to contain herself, trying to get a hold of her emotions that must have been all over the place. I could understand that, considering… well, everything. Not only her pregnancy and our emotional connection, but the array of feelings we went through last night.

One thing remained true. I loved her and after what she did for me, I knew she loved me too.

“Your head’s trying to talk you out of it,” I recognized, hoping now that I was showing the problem she would acknowledge it too. “But you know this in your heart, just like I know on mine!”

Once again, she didn’t oppose it, and that gave me all the confidence I needed to keep going.

“We’re supposed to be an ‘us’, sweetheart,” I breathed out, hope and longing evident in every single word I uttered, as well as my eyes, that never strayed from hers. “Please, give this a try.”

Silence followed. She was calmer now, more rational. Her breathing was slower but she still looked weary, still looked scared. So I let her go, separating my skin from hers even though it was the exact opposite of what I wanted to do, so I could give her as much room to think as possible.

But I was going to lay all of my arguments because this was the battle of my life.

Y/N’s P.O.V.

I felt cold without his hands on my body, his presence towering over me. Hugging myself, I hesitated between leaving the room or staying there, when he started to talk again, making the decision for me.

“You know it makes sense.” He was talking about him and I, I knew it. And I agreed. There wasn’t a single cell on my body that could deny this - not anymore. Still, my brain persisted, stuck on idiotic reasonings that had no place ruling something so important to my heart. “It makes so much sense.”

The fact that he was willing to fight for this, to fight for me was making this even harder on me. It was clear on the way he spoke - on every word he said - that this mattered to him and I felt comforted in the knowledge, but even more frustrated that my stupid insecurities still haunted me.

“I know I’m not easy,” he acknowledged, leaving me even more frustrated with myself. “And I definitely don’t deserve someone like you. But if you want me, I’ll be here.”

I had to say something. I couldn’t just let him think so low of himself, not when he was being the perfect partner and my only reason to hold back resided exclusively on myself.

“I do want you,” I managed to admit, my voice tentative as I played with my own dress. “I want you Ransom, and you do deserve me but I…”

That was enough to get him near me again, hands once more cradling my face as he dipped my head so I’d look him in the eye. “I know you’re scared,” he recognized, tongue wetting his lower lip as he rushed to try to calm me. “I know you’re scared of loving me, and I was scared too.”

A chuckle escaped his lips, he sounded almost guilty. “I still am, if I’m being entirely honest. But I’m willing to give this a try because the other option… well, the other option is simply unacceptable to me.”

Silence laid heavily in the room as I contemplated what he was saying, thinking about the other option myself. I didn’t want to live it. I didn’t want to go through this alone and love Ransom from a distance.

The fear of losing him brought me the courage I needed to push through and tear down the last wall I was stupidly trying to keep against him and I.

“You’ve done so much for me,” I recognized, trying to keep the shame in my voice to a minimum. “So much to prove to me that you’re worth it.”

The light coming through the curtains made the atmosphere almost romantic somehow, and now I found myself enjoying them because this way, I could see the sparkle of hope that twinkled in Ransom’s deep eyes.

I needed to say it. It was time for me to say it. “You’re the only person I want to be with,” I started, dipping my toes in the water while I prayed that the sea wouldn’t take me. When Ransom smiled, thumbs brushing over my cheeks, I felt comforted that if a wave should swallow me, I’d die happily in its embrace. “Ransom… I love you.”

His lips connected to mine, my heartbeat loud on my ears but I wasn’t anxious anymore. All I could feel was happiness, blinding, hopeful, bright - taking over my entire body when he parted and rubbed his nose against mine, cocky grin on his lips as he teased, “I know.”

Snorting, I allowed him to pull me back to bed, perfectly content on his embrace as I was suddenly reminded of something. “Oh, but if you ever cheat me, I’ll cut off your balls.”

It was my payback for his response to my love confession, but also my way of admitting my biggest insecurity. Ransom knew it, and so he pulled me back to lay against his chest so he could rub my back calmingly.

“You really shouldn’t worry, baby…” I knew from his tone that he was joining in on the light banter, but whatever he was going to say would be a truthful reflection of his feelings on the matter. “I don’t think anyone is more attractive than you.”

That sent me into a fit of giggles, aided by the fact that he took advantage of my distraction to start tickling me. Once he was done and I was trying to catch my breath, I caught him staring at me with those deep, emotion-filled eyes again.

“Besides…” he continued, like he had never even paused. “I’ve never wanted anyone half as much as I want you.”

#my series #ransom drysdale x reader #ransom drysdale reader #ransom drysdale reader insert #ransom drysdale reader inserts

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bluejayblueskies · 3 years

Text

can i be gentle?

Words: 7.1k

Relationships: Jon & Tim, Tim & Martin

Tags: Canon Divergence, Tim Lives, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Whump, Post-Unknowing, Injury Recovery

Warnings: suicidal thoughts/ideations, blood, injury, hospitals and hospitalization, survivor's guilt, body horror, minor gore, gun and knife violence, mentions of death, mentions of canon-typical worms, implied child abuse, meat, alcohol, swearing, crying, smoking

Ao3 link in source

Tim aches. It’s full-body, radiating through his arms and back and legs, and he wishes more than anything that he could go to sleep, to chase away the pain for at least a little while. It feels like he’s been hit by a bus.

Or been on the receiving end of several kilos of C4 igniting all at once. But that metaphor’s a bit too on-the-nose, in his opinion.

He should be dead. He should be dead.

(Does he wish he were dead? He hadn’t cared, in those few moments of clarity before he pushed the button on the detonator and the colors solidified into black nothingness, whether or not he would wake up when the smoke cleared. It’s hard to tell. He’d attached so much of himself to revenge, before, when it was easier than feeling everything else bubbling up underneath, and now that it’s been ripped away from him, he doesn’t know what emotion should be filling the gap. Probably relief.

He doesn’t feel relieved.)

The nurse is speaking to him. Her lips are moving, but he can’t hear her. His ears ring and ring and ring, and it sounds like spirling, mocking laughter.

They do some tests. Blast-induced hearing loss, the pamphlet they give him proclaims. Prognosis is good. Most patients recover in 6 weeks. Hearing aids can help with high frequencies.

His ears ring and ring and ring, and he’s alive.

He’s alive.

Jon is not.

“It’s because of him, you know.”

Martin startles badly at Tim’s voice. Tim wonders if it had been too loud; the ringing in his ears is incessant, and every word spoken sounds as if it’s coming from a very, very far distance. He moves a bit further into the room that they’ve placed Jon in, his hands shaking where they grip the wheels of the wheelchair they’d given him. Hard to walk when your leg is shattered. And some ribs as well.

Martin says something, Tim thinks, as he’s turning. His eyes are wide and rimmed with red, and he’s looking at Tim expectantly. Tim sighs, then winces as the motion sends tendrils of pain through his ribcage. “I can’t hear you, Martin. Either speak up—way, way up—or just… move your lips more or something. I don’t care.”

“What?” Martin enunciates, and it’s so ridiculous, Tim wants to cry.

He answers anyway.

“Me. Being here. I’m alive because… because of him.”

It was stupid, thinking he could protect Tim from an entire building collapsing on top of them. But his hand had gripped Tim’s wrist and he’d pulled him to the floor and he’d covered Tim’s body with his own, so when the shock wave had hit, Jon had gotten the worst of it.

Tim refuses to feel guilty about it. He does anyway. Because they’d argued, and Jon had stalked him, and Tim had cultivated his anger and fear into a simmering ember deep in his chest, but at the end of the day, Tim wasn’t supposed to survive.

Jon was.

Tim swallows, hating the bitter taste in his mouth, and says, “Do you… do you think he’s going to wake up?”

Martin says something, too softly for Tim to hear. His mouth twists into something small and pained, and he looks at the floor.

It’s answer enough.

Tim doesn’t ask again.

They arrest Elias a few hours later, after Martin’s collected himself enough to bring his plan to completion. Tim’s only regret is that he isn’t able to see the look on Elias’s face as he’s dragged away.

Knowing Tim’s luck, he’d probably have just looked smug.

The name Peter Lukas crosses Martin’s lips, spelled out in exaggerated motions when he visits Tim again. Tim thinks, absurdly, of the hydra. Cut off one head, two grow back.

Lukas probably won’t be better. Knowing their luck, he’ll be much worse. But Tim thinks of the way Melanie had shaken after she’d come out of Elias’s office, of the haunted look in Martin’s eyes when Tim had asked how his plan went, and can’t find it within himself to care.

They release him from the hospital with a hefty prescription of pain meds, small plastic hearing aids tucked in each ear, and a thick folder of discharge papers. Martin’s there when they do; the bags under his eyes are dark and smudged, and he nods mechanically as the nurses talk to him, outlining Tim’s care regime for the next few weeks. His eyes keep flicking to the side, to the corridor that leads to the long-term care section of the hospital. Wordlessly, Tim reaches over and takes Martin’s hand in his, giving it a single squeeze before holding it tightly.

Martin lets out a breath through his nose and squeezes back.

“Do you want me to, er. To take you back to yours?” Martin asks once they’re out, his voice on the softer side of muffled and overlaid with that constant ringing but audible enough now that he doesn’t have to shout.

Tim feels something almost like embarrassment curling in his stomach. “I, uh. I don’t have a place anymore.” Tim drums his fingers on his thighs, looks at the ground, and says, “I canceled my lease. About a week before we left for Great Yarmouth.”

There’s silence between them—or at least, as close to silence as Tim can get right now. Tim thinks Martin says something, a word or two brushing up against the edges of what the hearing aids allow him to hear, but he can’t grasp any of it. So, Tim looks up at Martin, at the pinched, pained expression on his face, and says, “Don’t pretend like you didn’t know.”

“Know what?” Martin says bitterly. “That you never expected to come back? Yeah, I got that part. I even got why, you know? Doesn’t make it better, though. I didn’t want to lose you, Tim.” Martin pauses, then says, so quietly Tim can barely hear it, “I didn’t want to lose anybody.”

“Yeah,” Tim says. But that’s not how this works. We were never going to all survive. Everything is fucked, and it still is, and it always will be.

“I’m sorry,” he says and finds he means it. Then, to clarify: “For hurting you. And… and for Jon.” He doesn’t elaborate on that point. He doesn’t know what he would say even if he tried. “But I’m not sorry for going, and I’m not sorry for pressing that button. If I would have died, I wouldn’t have been sorry for that either.”

“Right,” Martin says slowly. “But you didn’t. And the Circus is gone now, so do you…?”

“Do I still want to kill myself?”

Martin winces.

“Hey, your question, not mine,” Tim says, holding his hands up in a defensive gesture. After a moment, his hands drop back to his lap, and he gives a small shrug. “Don’t know. I knew I would do what I needed to in order to destroy the Circus, and I did. Thought I would die in the process, but I didn’t. I’m still trapped in the world’s shittiest job, and I don’t really…”

Tim shrugs again. “I don’t know,” he repeats. Then, because it feels true: “It was never… it was never the dying bit I was chasing, you know. I didn’t do this because I thought it would be a good way to get killed. I did it for Danny, and that’s it. Plain and simple. So if you’re asking if I want to die, the answer is no. But I can’t guarantee that I won’t make the same decision again if I have to.”

Martin’s quiet for a long moment. Then, calmer than Tim expects, he says, “Okay.”

“Okay,” Tim echoes. Then, with a levity that only feels slightly forced: “I suppose it’s back to your place, then. Just be sure to buy me dinner first.”

Martin doesn’t smile at that like he used to, but his face does soften a bit. His voice is lighter when he says, “Oh, I will. Within your dietary restrictions, that is. Which means no alcohol.”

Tim groans. “You’re no fun.”

“Uh huh.”

They begin the commute back to Martin’s flat, and the atmosphere between them grows more lighthearted than it’s been in months. Tim feels something warm and familiar curl in his chest, and he realizes just how much he’s missed this. It’s not quite easy conversation, not like it used to be, but it’s nice all the same.

Tim’s ears ring, and his entire body aches, and he still feels a numbness in his core in the shape of suspicious glances and calliope music and a face he can’t remember, but for the first time in a long, long time, he allows himself to smile.

Tim doesn’t visit Jon often. At first, it’s the guilt, acute and cloying and weighing him down. Then, it’s old hurt and stale anger, resurfacing and driving away any passing thought of Jon that isn’t tinged with bad memories and broken trust. After that, it’s just habit.

It also hurts, if he lets himself admit it. To see Jon lying there, motionless and clad entirely in white, the heart monitor attached to him reading out a constant horizontal line even as his eyes move in small, jerky motions behind his eyelids.

See? a part of him whispers. He’s not human. Maybe he never was. Maybe he was always a monster, and you just never noticed. It wouldn’t be the first time.

A newer part of him, one that gets more prominent by the day, recognizes that even if Jon isn’t human anymore, he never would have chosen this. This stasis, this half-death. Not what came before, either. That part of him remembers the way Jon’s hand had gripped his tightly as they’d opened that trapdoor, and how it had continued to do so even as the worms had begun to bite into their skin. He’d tried to protect Tim then, too, putting himself between Tim and Jane Prentiss. For all the good it did, when the worms began to come from all directions. But Tim remembers the way the terror and pain in Jon’s eyes had been tinged with sadness, with a silent apology as he gripped Tim’s hand hard enough to bruise and they both accepted that this was it.

It hadn’t been, in the end. And now it is, with Jon all-but-dead and Tim still here, wheeling his way into Jon’s hospital room for the first time in weeks.

He’s halfway in before he realizes he’s not alone.

“Oh,” he says. “I… I didn’t know you’d be here.”

Martin lets out a sharp, jagged laugh. “Where else would I be?” he says, and it’s tinged with something bitter and broken that takes Tim a bit off-guard. It’s become almost routine now, for Martin to visit Jon, and usually, he comes back looking drained but otherwise fine. Sometimes, when Tim asks him for status updates on our resident medical mystery, Martin even manages a small smile and responds, still dreaming.

Martin scrubs a hand across his face, and Tim realizes belatedly that he’s crying.

“Martin?” Tim says carefully, moving a bit closer to where Martin’s sitting. “Are you… did something happen?”

“No,” Martin says, his voice catching in a way that indicates that something very much did happen. “It’s fine.”

“Is it…?” Tim pauses, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. “Is it about Jon?”

Martin’s laugh this time is more like a whimper. “Nope, he’s- he’s the same as always. Still asleep.”

Tim moves closer but doesn’t say anything. The clock ticks rhythmically in the background, and he waits. Patience has never been his strong suit, but it’s been something that’s been required of him as of late, and he’s getting better at it.

He likes to think he’s getting better at a lot of things.

Martin doesn’t speak again for a few minutes. He stares at his hands where they rest just shy of one of Jon’s, his fingers restless against the sheets, coming up occasionally to fiddle with the thin black ring that rests on the middle finger of his right hand. Then, so quiet Tim almost can’t hear it, he says, “My mother died today.”

Oh.

“I’m sorry,” Tim says. They’re empty words, but they’re better than the good riddance and about time and you’re better off without her sitting on the back of his tongue, begging to be released. He doesn’t think they would be appreciated right now, no matter how true they might be.

“Yeah,” Martin says. He’s still staring at his hands. “They called me a few hours ago. She… she passed away in her sleep. Natural causes. From- from her illness.” He falls silent for a few moments, his fingers twisting in the sheets. Then: “I… I think I should be sad?”

Tim studies Martin’s face—the tear tracks down his cheeks, the unhappy set to his mouth, the way he’s shaking ever so slightly where he sits. His face is one of grief, but Tim doesn’t ask. He waits for Martin to continue, and after a moment, Martin says, “She was the only family I had left. She- she was my mother. I took care of her, I- I did my best to be a- a good son.” He takes in a shaky breath, curls his hands into fists, and says, “I haven’t seen her in months, you know. I- I visited at first, but she… she never wanted to see me. So I just stopped going. I’d call, every Saturday, but it was the same every time. She’s resting. She doesn’t feel up to talking right now. Call later, and we’ll see what we can do.”

Finally, Martin looks at Tim, and the guilt in his eyes is so acute Tim can feel it cut through him to his core. “I should be sad that she’s dead, but… but all I can feel is relief. And that hurts. I- I don’t know… why am I relieved? God, she was right, I- I’m horrible, no wonder she- she never wanted to see me, I- why can’t I- I can’t—”

Martin cuts off with a wet sob, and all at once, Tim understands.

“It’s okay,” he says, and he collects Martin’s hands from the sheets, holds them tightly in his own. “You can feel however you like, it’s- it’s okay.”

He squeezes Martin’s hands, just once, and repeats, “It’s okay.”

He knows Martin won’t believe him. But still, he sits, and Martin cries, and he says, It’s okay.

It’s okay.

The hearing aids are a permanent fixture in his ears now, as most people have full hearing restoration after six weeks apparently doesn’t include him. The tinnitus is still particularly bad some days, but they help with everything else. It’s not perfect, but it’s a small price to pay for living, he supposes.

He’s not sure when, exactly, he decides that he’s glad he’s alive. But he does.

He wishes he hadn’t been able to hear at all, when the Flesh attacks. He wishes he hadn’t been able to hear the wet, sticky sounds of things that shouldn’t be able to move without bones slipping through the vents, shattering the relative peace they’d begun to cultivate. He wishes he hadn’t been able to hear the pops of Basira’s gun, bullets burying themselves in things that barely flinched at the contact. He wishes he hadn’t been able to hear Melanie’s screams of anger, the responding screams of pain from things with too many eyes and teeth and limbs as her knife carved a violent path through them.

There are yellow doors and hands slick with blood and a sudden quiet as the last of the twisted, mangled creatures falls, sliced neatly in two in a way that’s just a bit too clean.

Melanie is breathing heavily, but her hands are steady and her eyes are hard with something raging and violent. When Basira reaches tentatively for her knife, saying, “It’s over now, Melanie. We’re- we’re safe,” Melanie stiffens but doesn’t resist.

“This isn’t right,” Tim says after Melanie comes back to herself in bits and pieces, enough to shudder at the blood coating her arms up to the elbows and mutter something he can’t quite catch before disappearing into the toilet. “None of this is. God, can we ever catch a fucking break?”

“We can deal with it later,” Basira says. She’s calm, but she can’t quite hide the tremor in her voice. Her Al-Amira is splattered with viscera. “Right now, we need to make a call. Get this cleaned up.”

“What,” Tim says bitterly, “so we can continue hiding away in the Archives? You’re the one who said we should start sleeping here. Should have known it wouldn’t be safe. It’s not like it was before.”

He rubs at one of the small circular scars on the back of his left hand, his skin crawling with a phantom itch that makes him vaguely nauseous.

“We stay here,” Basira says, leaving no room for debate. “We make the call, and we stay here.”

Tim makes a low, frustrated noise, and bites out, “Fine. Because Basira always knows best. Whatever.” He unlocks his wheelchair and says shortly, “I’m going outside for some fresh air. The smell of rotting meat is making me sick.”

Basira doesn’t follow him.

Martin does.

They situate themselves just outside the glass doors, and they don’t say anything for a long time. Martin still looks vaguely ill. His face is pale, and his hands are fidgeting at his sides. His fingers are resting on his ring, twisting it back and forth, agitated. His shoes are stained a glistening red.

Finally, Martin tilts his head back so it hits the wall behind him and says to the air above him, “Is it horrible that I wish Jon were here?”

Tim snorts, anger still bubbling under the surface of his skin. “Because we’d have done so much better with our own flavor of spooky bullshit?” He bites out a bitter laugh. “Maybe he could have compelled them to explain exactly why every single monster out there has a personal vendetta against us. Working for an eldritch horror of voyeurism doesn’t give you much in terms of an offense.”

“Stop,” Martin says sharply. “You know what I mean.”

Tim does. He’s just not particularly inclined to wax nostalgic about the power of friendship and comradery when he’s got bits of meat stuck in his hair.

Still, he finds that he means it when he says, “I wish he was too. For what it’s worth. Which isn’t a fucking lot, but it’s what we’ve got.”

“Yeah,” Martin says. His hand brushes against Tim’s, and they fall back into silence.

The police arrive, followed closely by the ECDC. It’s a messy affair, even messier than the last time Tim had been in this situation, and Tim wants nothing more than to get away. Forever.

He doesn’t make any jokes this time. He just nods in the right places, and when they’re finally released and he and Martin return to a flat they haven’t seen in weeks, he can feel weariness cutting through him to the bone.

When he wakes the next day, Martin’s gone. His note, stuck to the door of the fridge, says, At the hospital. Be back around noon.

It’s ten in the morning, and the sunlight is bright as it streams in through the kitchen window.

Tim digs out the bottle of rum that Martin keeps tucked in the back of his cabinet and pours himself a drink.

“Peter Lukas wants me to be his assistant.”

Tim looks up from what’s turning out to be quite an impressive doodle of the little figurine of a frog in a top hat he’d purchased back in research from a charity shop and says, “Absolutely not.”

Martin sucks his bottom lip between his teeth, holds it there for a moment, and then says, “I don’t know if I have a choice in the matter, really. It’s… it’s not safe here anymore.” Quieter: “He said he can help. Off- offer protection.”

Tim audibly scoffs at that. He sets down his pencil and notepad and crosses his arms across his chest. He can already feel a headache coming on. (More than the usual, that is. He’s almost able to tune out the constant ringing in his ears now.

Almost.)

“What’s he going to do, isolate them to death? It’s not like the Lonely’s any better of an offensive force than the Eye. We’re doing just fine without involving him.”

“Are we?” Martin’s voice is hard and a bit choked when he continues, “We’re living down here because it’s not safe to stay outside for too long. We’re still finding bits of- of flesh in- eugh.” Martin shudders and folds inward on himself. Quieter, enough so that Tim has to watch the motion of his lips to make out the words, he says, “Jon’s not waking up.”

Tim feels something inside of him twist. “We don’t know that. We don’t know what’s happening with him.” A touch bitterly—old habits die hard, he supposes—he says, “Maybe he’s just not done going through his monster metamorphosis yet.”

“Tim.”

Tim sighs. It’s a profoundly weary sound. “Yeah, yeah. I… I miss him too, you know.”

He’s surprised to find that it’s not a lie.

“Right.” A small, shaky smile crosses Martin’s face, and he says, “I- I suppose they’re right, then. Distance does make the heart grow fonder.”

“Somehow,” Tim says, “I don’t think whoever coined that phrase had this situation in mind.”

Martin’s smile fades as quickly as it had come, and Tim feels a pang of guilt. “Sorry,” he says, pushing away from the desk and wheeling across the room to where Martin sits. He hesitates, just a moment, before placing his hand on Martin’s where it rests on his knee. “I… I suppose I’ve forgotten how to be lighthearted about all of this.”

Martin nods. It’s a small motion. He’s silent for a long moment; Tim squeezes his hand and says nothing. Finally, Martin looks down at his hands and says, “It’s been four months, Tim. Nothing’s changed.” He pauses again, his mouth pinching around the edges. “I… I visited him today. I begged him to wake up, to- to do anything to indicate that he’s even still there. I don’t know why I expected him to answer. It’s not like anything’s different now. He- he’s never going to wake up, Tim.”

Martin’s voice cracks, and he repeats, wetly, “He’s never going to wake up.”

Then, Martin’s crying, heaving sobs that overtake him completely and have him hunched over, dripping salty tears onto the back of Tim’s hand. “Hey, hey, hey,” Tim says, leaning forward as far as he’s comfortably able to and wrapping Martin in as hard of a hug as he can manage. He rubs his hands in circles across Martin’s shoulderblades, feeling Martin’s shaky breaths against the side of his neck, and says, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

He repeats it, again and again, as Martin cries into his shoulder and says, over and over, words thick with grief, “He’s dead, Tim. He’s dead.”

“It’s okay,” Tim says. Maybe if he says it enough times, he’ll start to believe it.

Eventually, Martin’s body stops shaking and he pulls back, the tear tracks on his cheeks already beginning to dry. His eyes are red-rimmed and glistening, and he looks tired, grief apparent in every line of him.

“I said I’d think about it,” Martin says, in a voice rubbed raw and hoarse. “When Peter called me. I- I said I’d think about it. I- I don’t know why…” He cuts off, makes a small, distressed noise, and says, “What do I even have left? If- if this can help, what- what do I have to lose?”

Tim feels a pang of hurt flash through him, but he suppresses it. He squeezes Martin’s hands, gives him as wide a smile as he can without breaking, and says, “You have me. And I’m not leaving—you’re stuck with me. So don’t think for a second that if you take Peter’s deal, I won’t be there still. I’m like a bad penny, or, I don’t know, a- a fungus or whatever. The point is, you’re not going to get rid of me. Whether or not you decide to work for Lukas—which you shouldn’t, by the way, in case I haven’t made that abundantly clear—you’re not going to be lonely, okay? Not on my watch. I can be very persistent when I put my mind to it.”

Martin looks at Tim, eyes wide, and another small, hiccuping sob escapes him. “You really mean that?”

“Yes, Martin,” Tim says, exasperation and fondness filling him in equal measure. “Christ, just because things got… rough for a bit, it doesn’t mean I stopped caring about you. Honestly, don’t know if I could. You’re a very lovable person, you know. It’s not like being your friend is a hardship.”

Martin laughs a little at that, his voice still thick with tears. “Well, when you put it like that…”

Tim gives him another smile, and this one feels easier. Like it would be harder not to smile. Still, he’s careful with his words when he says, “So, then. What are you going to do? I’ve made my opinion more than known, but…” Tim swallows around the lump in his throat and continues, “It’s your decision.”

“Yeah,” Martin says, barely more than a whisper. “Yeah.”

Peter calls again. And when Martin hesitates for a long moment before giving a quiet yet firm no, the relief that sweeps over Tim is enough to make him feel weightless.

Two months later, as a man who smells of death shuts the door behind him, Jon takes a rattling breath and finally opens his eyes.

“Tim?”

Tim raises the hand that’s not holding a rather large bouquet of white daisies and baby’s breath in a half-wave. “Hi, boss. Been a while.”

The look Jon gives him is half-shocked, half-nervous. “I… I suppose it has. Six months, apparently.”

Tim makes a sound of affirmation before wheeling himself fully into Jon’s hospital room and letting the door swing shut behind him. “You know,” he says, allowing a blanket of levity to fall over him, “when we said you should get more sleep, this isn’t exactly what we meant.”

Jon just stares at him for a moment, face blank and eyes wide. Then, a laugh escapes him, a small hiccup of amusement. “Yes, well. I can’t say that I feel particularly well-rested.”

Tim imagines what it must have been like, to be locked in a dreamscape stasis for six months. He can’t say that the idea sounds particularly relaxing. “Yep, sounds about right. Guess we can cross ‘spooky coma’ off our list of possible cures for sleep deprivation.”

Jon folds inward on himself a bit, hugging one arm to his chest and gripping the other tightly. “Right,” he says, his voice small. He looks away from Tim, focusing on the small window in the corner of the room, and says, “I… I’m sorry, Tim.”

Right. Jon still thinks Tim hates him.

Tim lets out a long, weary sigh and makes his way to Jon’s bed. He practically shoves the flowers into Jon’s hands; Jon takes them, more out of surprise than anything, white petals tickling the bottom of his chin. “It’s been six months, Jon. You’ve been… honestly, a bit dead? No offense. And I’ve been alive. And we both know it was meant to be the other way around.”

Jon opens his mouth, and Tim holds up a hand. “Don’t. I know. I already hear enough about it from my therapist, I don’t need to hear about it from you too. The point is that I’ve… I’ve had time to think. And some of the things you did, I can’t forgive you for. But some of it…”

Tim shrugs. “Martin would always go on about how it wasn’t your fault. About how you were suffering just as much as us. And maybe I didn’t believe it because I was already angry, or maybe I didn’t believe it because all I could think about was finally getting a chance at the revenge I’d chased after for years. But then you were gone, and the Circus was gone, and I just… didn’t have anything left for the anger to hold on to.”

Jon clutches the flowers tightly in his hands, looks down at the petals. “But you were right,” he says quietly. “A- about me.”

Tim casts himself back six months and sifts through a metric ton of bitter remarks and angry assumptions. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

Jon lets out a slow, shaky breath. “About me not being human.”

Oh.

“Jon—”

“Do you know what I was dreaming about?” Jon cuts in before Tim can say anything else. “I- I don’t remember, not really, but… but I can guess. I… I Know, somehow, that- that they were the same dreams, over and over and over again.” Jon takes one of the flower petals between his fingers and rubs it back and forth, a nervous gesture. “I started having them soon after I took this job, you know. Naomi Herne was the first one, and I- I didn’t understand why. Every night, she was trapped in the fog, forced into her own grave, and I would try to move, because it- it felt like I should have been able to, but it- it never worked. So I… I stopped trying after a while. I would stand and watch as she relived one of the worst experiences of her life, every night, and I- I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

Jon crushes the petal between his fingers. “She was the first one, but- but there are so many more now. Lionel Elliott and Jordan Kennedy and- and, Christ, Georgie—”

Jon makes a small, unhappy noise. “I don’t know when I realized that they could see me in their dreams too. That in trying to help, I- I’d just made myself another source of terror.”

Jon falls silent for a few moments; the quiet is filled by the familiar tick tick tick of the clock in the corner. Then, so quietly Tim has to focus on his lips to catch the words, he says, “I… I think I made a choice. Before I woke up. I don’t… I don’t know what it means for me, not really, but I know it means that I’m worse than I was before.” He lets out a bitter laugh, devoid of any humor. “So, you were right. I’m just- just even less human now.”

Jon falls silent again, and for a few moments, there’s just tick, tick, tick. Tim rolls the words over in his mind, looks at Jon’s pinched, unhappy expression, and says, “Okay.”

Jon looks at him then, his brow furrowed in confusion. “Okay?”

Tim shrugs and repeats, “Okay. You’re not human. I’m not going to pretend like that thrills me or whatever, but it’s… honestly, it’s a lot less of an issue for me now than it was back then.”

“I- I don’t…” Jon trails off with a frustrated noise. “What?”

Tim sighs. “A lot’s changed, Jon. Things have… well, things have kind of gone to hell. Honestly, we could use a few monsters who are on our side for a change.”

Jon blinks at him in stunned silence for a few moments more before saying, bewildered, “... Right. Uh, I- I suppose I shouldn’t ask how you’ve been, then.”

A wry smile cracks across Tim’s face. “I’ve been just peachy, thanks for asking. Blow up one Circus and suddenly every spooky monster out there wants to kill you. It’s been one big, long, horrible sleepover in the Archives. But hey, at least Elias isn’t there! Now we’ve just got Lukas, and if one or two staff members disappear every once and a while, well—that’s just how it is at the Magnus Institute. Nothing to be concerned about. Sometimes, we still go out for drinks.”

“Tim,” Jon says flatly. The exasperated expression on his face is so familiar—so Jon—that Tim feels a tension he hadn’t known he’d been holding slip away.

“Yeah, yeah,” Tim says, waving a hand absently in Jon’s direction. “Point is, I’m not disappointed or angry or whatever that you’re back in the land of the living.” He pauses, and then, more sincerely: “Martin’s not the only one who’s missed you, okay?”

Jon’s lips part into an O. Then, his mouth twitches up into a smirk, and he says, “Mm, you’re right. Basira did stop by earlier, and then of course Georgie, and I bet even Melanie—”

“Unbelievable. And here I was nice enough to come all the way over here, to bring you flowers.”

“Mm, they are very nice flowers.”

“Damn right they are.”

Jon smiles then, a fragile thing, and says, “Thank you, Tim. I… I’ve missed you too.”

Tim could point out that Jon had been asleep for the majority of the time in question. But he knows that’s not what Jon means. So instead, he offers Jon a smile in return and says, “Be honest: more or less than the Admiral?”

Jon shoots Tim a flat, unimpressed look. “Tim, don’t be ridiculous. Of course less than the Admiral.”

Tim’s been out of the wheelchair for a week when he finally manages to make his way to the roof of the Institute, still learning how to maneuver the crutches he’s moved on to. He swears he can feel every motion of the pins and the rods in his leg—skin covered with even more scars for the collection—as he finally heaves himself through the door and into the cool night air.

The view is just as good as he remembers.

There’s the faint smell of cigarette smoke hanging in the air, and Tim’s entirely unsurprised to see Jon silhouetted against the glow of London, leaning against the wall that rings the roof with his back facing Tim. The cigarette glows a dull red as he raises it to his lips and breathes in.

Jon doesn’t say anything, even as Tim painstakingly makes his way over to where he’s stood. Tim props his crutches against the wall before leaning his weight heavily against it, arms crossed atop the wall in a mirror image of Jon as they both look out onto the city below, humming with life and light.

Finally, after a particularly long drag of his cigarette, Jon says, “I’m going to get Daisy.”

There’s no room for argument in his voice. But that’s never stopped Tim from trying anyways.

“I thought you were done doing stupid shit that’ll get you killed,” Tim says, turning his head to look at Jon. Jon’s staring forward, but Tim gets the distinct impression that Jon isn’t looking out at the city at all.

“It won’t kill me,” Jon says quietly. He moves his hands as he talks, surprisingly competent sign language that he’s begun using tentatively in his conversations with Tim. When Tim had asked him where he’d learned it, Jon had been quiet for a long moment before telling him that he hadn’t.

Well. At least the Eye was being useful for once.

“Yeah, whatever,” Tim says. “Dead or not, you’ll still be gone. You know people who crawl into that coffin don’t come back.”

“I don’t—” Jon cuts off with a frustrated noise. After a moment, he continues, “I have a plan. I- I read a statement, and it said that I would need an anchor. A- a piece of myself to keep here. I can find it when I’m down there, and- and use it to guide me back.”

“Right,” Tim says dryly. “Because our plans have always gone so well.”

“What would you have me do, Tim? I- I can’t just do nothing.”

“Why not?”

Jon affixes him with an expression that’s half-affronted, half-stunned. “Tim.”

“What? Jon, we barely know Daisy. She tried to kill you. No, don’t give me that look.” Tim jabs a finger in Jon’s direction. “You know I’m right.”

“I…” Jon trails off. After a moment, he hugs his arms to himself, his snubbed-out cigarette still smoldering slightly on top of the wall. “I know. But I… I still have to go. I… I’m still going to go.”

Tim exhales slowly and says, “Right. Suppose I should have expected that.”

There’s silence between them for a moment. Then, Jon removes his hands from his arms and signs as he says, quietly, “Why don’t you hate me?”

Tim stares at Jon for a long moment before saying, “What?”

Jon sighs and repeats, the motions of his hands larger and more emphatic, “Why don’t you hate me? Basira and Melanie, they- they keep looking at me like I’m some… thing, and- and maybe I am. No, not… not maybe. I’m not… I’m not human anymore, and I- I know what you said, but what happens when I—?”

Jon cuts off with a small, choked noise, like the air’s been sucked out of him all at once. Weakly, he signs, “I’m so hungry, all the time. What happens when I… when I can’t take it anymore? When I- I become dangerous, a- a monster, will you—?”

Jon’s fingers curl into fists, and he drops his hands to his sides, angling himself away from Tim and staring at an arbitrary point in the distance. “It’s better this way,” he says, loudly enough that Tim can make out the words above the hum of London at night and the ever-present ringing in his ears. “I… I don’t want to go. I don’t want to lose this, to- to lose you and- and Martin. But maybe it’s better than becoming something that will hurt you.”

Jon won’t meet Tim’s eyes. Carefully, Tim reaches across the space between them and takes Jon’s hand in his, uncurling Jon’s fingers gently in an attempt to release some of the tension. Slowly, he says, “You know, I… I shouldn’t be alive right now. Back after the Unknowing, when I woke up in the hospital, I… I didn’t want to be. It was supposed to be whatever it takes, and to me, that was always going to mean my death. Revenge and poetic justice and all of that. I should have died, but I didn’t. And… and you did. And it’s not something I feel guilty about, because we both made the same choice in the end, but that… that doesn’t stop me from feeling, sometimes, like it was my fault somehow.” He lets out a sharp laugh and says, “Well, I was the one to actually blow the place up in the end, but, you know.”

Tim holds Jon’s hand carefully in his like it might break otherwise, the mottled texture of the scar tissue firm against his fingertips. His eyes find the thin white line slashed across Jon’s throat, the stark white bandage poking out from the collar of Jon’s shirt where it covers a fresh scalpel wound in his shoulder, the pale pink spots that pepper Jon’s skin in a mirror image of his own. He can’t see the splash of jagged scars across Jon’s back, a memory of shrapnel and white-hot explosions, but he knows they’re there. “You asked why I don’t hate you?”

When Jon nods mutely, Tim says, “I just… ran out of reasons why I should. I still wanted to, but…” He shrugs and gives Jon a wry, humorless smile. “We’re all just stuck in the same shitty situation. And I guess at some point, I just decided that you hadn’t chosen to be here any more than I did.”

“Oh,” Jon says, barely audible.

Tim takes Jon’s other hand in his, squeezes them firmly, and says, “And I’m sorry. Not for- for how we used to be, because I think the blame for that falls pretty evenly onto both of our shoulders, but… but for everything else. For what’s happened to you. Figured I’ve spent enough time feeling sorry for myself, I might as well extend you the same courtesy.”

Jon’s fingers tighten around Tim’s, and he mumbles something Tim can’t quite catch. Then, he extracts his hands from Tim’s and signs, shakily, “I’m sorry too. For everything. But for what it’s worth, I… I’m glad you’re here. That you’re not dead. I- I know it’s been bad and- and I wish I could fix that, but I… I don’t know if I can.” Jon’s eyes when they meet Tim’s are sad but determined. “But I can fix this. I- I can get Daisy back. I can find my way out.”

Tim looks at the firm set to Jon’s mouth, the furrow of his brow, and says, “Okay. But I’m going to hold you to that. Otherwise, I might have to go in after you.”

Jon looks horrified. “Tim.”

Tim holds his hands up in a placating gesture. “Hey, come back in one piece and we won’t have to worry about it.”

Jon opens his mouth, then closes it again. There’s a long pause before he finally says, decidedly, “I will. I- I promise.”

Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Tim wants to say. Instead, he shuffles closer to Jon and leans against the wall again, crossing his arms on top of it and looking out over the city. “Good,” he says softly.

After a moment, Jon shifts to face the city as well. His arm brushes against Tim’s, and Tim lets that point of contact ground him as he looks up and up and up at the stars above, pinpricks of light on a satin black sky.

“Thank you,” Jon says, just loud enough for Tim to hear.

Tim moves his hand to cover Jon’s where it sits on the wall and squeezes once. “Yeah.”

They stand there until sunlight begins to tickle the edges of the horizon. And when Jon gives Tim’s hand one last squeeze, the other holding the lid of the coffin open, and says, “Be back soon,” Tim believes him.

Three days later, Jon climbs out of the coffin with dirt caked underneath his fingernails and a thin, sharp hand clutched in his. “Tim,” he says, and Tim ignores the pain in his leg as he lets his crutches drop to the floor and hugs Jon tightly.

“Looks like I’m staying above ground after all,” Tim jokes, his voice light even as his words come out wet and choked.

Jon’s laugh vibrates against Tim’s chest. “Yeah,” he says, burying his face in the fabric of Tim’s shoulder to hide his smile. “Yeah.”

#tma #the magnus archives #jonathan sims #tim stoker #martin blackwood #creators are revealed now so i can post this!#very exciting #blood cw #body horror cw #injury cw #hospitals cw #suicidal ideations cw #more cw in the body of the post as well #my writing #my fic

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supremeinlilac · 3 years

Text

Into the light (I'll hold you)

Pairing: Coven!Cordelia Goode x Fem!Reader

Prompt: Slow dancing in the greenhouse.

Word Count: 2557

Warnings: Self doubt, angst.

A/n: Canon divergent, H*nk doesn't exist and Delia's acid attack never happened, although she has still had the Sight previously. Was saving this fic but fuck it, I'm posting it now😌

Halloween.

The night of eerie suspense and the lingering sense of being watched. You enjoyed the days festivities when you were younger, skipping excitedly door to door under a white sheet with your friends.

This Halloween would be your second at Miss Robichaux’s, the first you’d all gone out to a party and got a little too drunk, returning to an irritated Ms Goode. It had been the first time you’d kissed her, and she’d rejected you because of the state you’d been in.

Still, it was the night that had started the path of your relationship with the headmistress.

You loved Halloween.

This year, Fiona Goode, reigning Supreme, returned to the academy. You were instantly weary of her, due to the fact Delia never liked to bring her mother up in conversation of her past. When you’d overheard her telling your girlfriend that she was wasted potential in the school, a prickle of icy anger called the hair at the nape of your neck to stand rigid.

You and the rest of the witches had decided to stay in, watch films and play games. It wasn’t often that everyone could get together to celebrate an evening where witches were celebrated, so they wanted to make the most of the friendly atmosphere that surrounded them. It never lasted long in the coven.

Fiona went out to a bar, her witches hat crooked atop her head and you found yourself glaring at her as she left. The woman alit a flame inside you, one that easily spread and engulfed your powers, fire licking hotly at the tips of your fingers and threatened to overpower you.

Cordelia had stayed behind with you, much to her mother protest, to have a quiet night while the rest of the hubbub would be concentrated in the living room. You were both wrong to think that there’d be no disturbances.

The shattering of glass fractured the silence in your shared room with Cordelia. She’d been braiding your hair, an intimacy that the pair of you rarely found time to do together. She hummed the song you were sung as a child, a habit that she’d picked up in your time at the coven, the action now second nature. It no longer only served to soothe you, but now it brought her comfort too.

Her fingers stilled in your hair, head snapping to the door. You heard a couple of loud thuds and shouts, and then her hand was clutching yours protectively.

“Hey Cordelia?” You heard Queenie shout up the stairs, “you best look outside.”

She was off the bed like it had burned her, drawing the curtains back to show the slow advance of the people outside. You heard her shaky inhale, before she fisted her hands in her trousers and turned to you.

“It’s just the locals. Playing tricks on us, you know how Madison likes to irritate them the rest of the year. Lord knows we’re not the best neighbours,” her face looked serious but the waver in her voice betrayed her. She sounded like she was trying to convince herself more than you.

It had been a blur after that, shouting and running, and Cordelia slipped out of your grasp. You’d been fighting, had a kitchen knife pressed into your hand by, Zoe, maybe? No. It had been one of the other girls.

They wouldn’t die, those zombies, if that’s even what they were. You’d slashed at a part of them that they shouldn’t have been able to get back up from. Yet it did, limbs flailing and reaching spindly towards you.

Knocked to the ground, you think you must have passed out. But not before you’d seen Cordelia trying to defend the house, eyes furious and scared and dark.

You remembered the purr of the chainsaw, the splatter of blood. The silence that hung after.

The next day you found Cordelia sat at her usual bench in the greenhouse, frows furrowed in concentration as she mixed ingredients with the gentle crack of test tubes and vials. You could see the anguish behind hooded eyes, it was clear that she’d been restless last night, down here long past when everyone else slept.

You had seen her from your window as you’d been drawing the curtains the night before, standing over the pile of haphazardly thrown bodies of the zombies. You weren’t sure how long she’d spent there, not wanting to disturb her until now.

She’d also been absent at both breakfast and dinner, with the excuse of paperwork, but you could see through the thinly veiled lie. You brought her a sandwich and a yogurt, setting them down on a bench before pulling a chair up beside her to watch her work.

Cordelia could mix potions and restore plants without thinking, her craft a lovingly perfected dance in which he moved around the greenhouse with practised ease, plucking vials off the shelves and balancing glassware in steady hands.

Her hands shook. Slightly, almost unnoticeable was the small tremor but it indicated her unease. There was blood still crusted under her fingernails.

You softly coaxed her to put the glass down with fingers around her wrists, guiding her to look at you before lazily lacing your fingers together. She whispered a greeting with a small smile, almost as if she hadn’t registered your presence until you’d touched her.

“I feel like I failed everyone. My girls.” Her voice cracked languidly, eyes falling to where your hands joined on her lap, her nails scraping at your skin nervously. “How can I be headmistress when I cannot protect you all?”

“It’s not your job to do it all alone.” You reminded her gently, thumb brushing over whitened knuckles, following the dip and contour of her skin. “Cordelia.”

A single droplet of shimmering water does not sink a ship. A single cloud cannot shield the sun. A single parent could spend years doubting their worth, unaware that it takes a village to raise a child.

No single person can bear the weight of the world’s troubles without crumbling.

Not even Cordelia, whom you thought could harness the sun if she willed it, could do everything herself. It simply was an unrealistic expectation that her mother had used to weigh her down with.

“Look at me, baby. You are not alone, okay?”

When her head lifted slowly, the light caught the water in her eyelashes, diamond tears shimmering and rolling down the curve of reddened cheeks. You were quick to coo at her, hand coming to cradle her face so you could lean to kiss them away, salt on your tongue.

She shook her head, refusing to look at you and you felt hopeless, like a bystander on the site of an accident. As much as you tried to couldn’t get close enough to her to help, to comfort her as she needed. Running in a dream, tripping over a mere breath and wading through syrup as you tried to escape.

“I’m a failure.”

You found yourself shaking your head, the phantom of a protest falling from your lips, how could Cordelia think that.

“Everything that Fiona says is true.” She continued, head falling into her arms on the desk. Your hand rested on her back, a gentle reminder of the comfort you could give her if only she asked for it. If only she would accept it when you would give it to her anyway.

“I don’t belong here.” Whispered from under her hair which hid her.

Cordelia didn’t realise her own worth, and you wondered if anyone ever truly does.

Does the night sky know its beauty? Or does it envy the blue of the day? Does it wait for the sun to kiss its head and grant it eternity. The night sky is rich with light, if it would only look deep enough within itself to find it. Burning stars and planets reflecting the sun, a kaleidoscope of colour on an ebony canvas.

Cordelia would often look at pictures of her absent mother when she believed to be alone. She was secretly envious of Fiona’s effortless graceful command and hold that she had over the whole coven. She believed her own magical abilities to be inferior to that of the Supreme’s, but it was an unfair comparison, for a Supreme would always persist.

She thought that it meant hers weren’t strong enough, scared for eventualities like the previous night, that she would fail at the role of protector. But she hadn’t failed, she’d fought just like you and Zoe, and it was just the luck of the draw that Zoe’s fear would trigger her Power Negation.

But Cordelia held such raw natural, burning potential that you’d habitually find yourself staring as she practised spells. Eyes following the deft flow of her fingers as she’d manipulate movement. She’d had the second sight within her, so at least on a subconscious level she must know her power.

“You belong here. And look around you, look at this place. Yourgreenhouse.”

“You made it into what it’s become. It’s you.” You spoke, letting yourself spin to appreciate all the work she’d put into this place, into herself.

Cordelia lifted her head, hair falling from her eyes and crowning her face as she followed your gaze to the hanging planters, the glass vials. To the floor that she’d swept only days ago, leaves starting to litter the stone again.

She watched you run fingertips over the exposed brick on the wall, your attention solely on her work around you. She could see the adoration in the iris’ of your eyes, alight with your honesty. You gaze returning, always, to her as you walked to her.

Tentatively, you reached out for her. Was she yet ready to accept your help, your love as you wanted to give it to her?

Still unsure, Cordelia shied away from your comforting touch, head returning to her hands.

“You don’t have to live behind Fiona’s words anymore.” You whispered into her temple, as if straight into her mind.

Sometimes it is easier to live in the shadows than to confront those who cast them.

She’d spent her whole life cowering in Fiona’s shadow, growth and development stunted from the lack of light. Self-belief fractured into a gaping crack.

She’d been trapped, dark and alone with a mother figure who didn’t love her in a way she understood how to be loved. They both loved each other then, and ove each other now, but sometimes mere love isn’t enough. It isn’t consistent enough to be safe. You can love someone and still hurt them.

You had spent time working on her confidence, creeping back into the light and into herself again. Breaking down the thoughts that had grown to immobile threatening walls that only served to block the light more.

All it had taken was one night of Fiona being back for all that progress to retreat back to where they’d been hidden. Cordelia had urged you then to back away, to leave her and grow by yourself, that she was only holding you back.

But you gritted your teeth and grinned in the face of the devil. You weren’t scared of the dark. And you’d be damned if you were leaving it without your girlfriend. Even if you had to start right back at the beginning, you’d help her to heal.

“You could be the next Supreme.” You urged, pulling her head from where it rested on the table, forcing her to look in your eyes and see your honesty.

“Don’t say things that aren’t true.” She begged, vision hazed by tears.

“But it is true, Delia. You’re so powerful.” You pressed, eyes conveying your severity like your voice couldn’t. Willing her to believe.

You reached to brush the tears that clung to her eyelashes before they fell and stained her face. A lingering kiss to her lips, the feeling of her lower lip wobbling between your own. In that moment, you could feel her fragility.

You didn’t want to push further, knowing that she may never truly believe in her full potential like you did. Instead, you pushed yourself to feet and bounced in front of her. She looked up in confusion, eyes still full with tears that caught the light, and you wanted nothing more than to kiss them away again. They didn’t deserve to dampen her skin.

“Dance with me?” You asked, standing and offering a hand the way you’d so often seen in movies.

A shy smile formed on the headmistress’ lips, cheeks pink and the tips of her ears flushed as she allowed herself to be pulled from her seat. Into the shine of the moonlight, which shone beams of liquid silver through the glass onto the hard stone and the soft of Cordelia.

Your arms secured themselves around her waist while hers stroked the back of your neck. Moments like this made you wonder if perhaps the cliché’s people told you about love had been true. Maybe this could be forever. It always felt like forever when you were in her arms.

You swayed to phantom music, slow and deliberate, soft touches and kisses on bare shoulders. You felt like even a whisper would shatter the perfect peace you’d enveloped you both in, sending ripples of doubt over the sheer water and to Cordelia again.

The moon felt like perfect company in that moment, like a third person, watching and waiting. A witness to the silent change.

Cordelia pressed her forehead to yours, her fingers splayed through the hair at the back of your head, holding you close. You could see the depth of her eyes, searching for the lie in yours that wasn’t there to find. You truly believed that she was the next Supreme, she had to be.

“Say something.” She breathed, hand on your waist dancing under the hem of your top, cold fingers on warm skin.

“Like what?” You asked, pulling back momentarily so you could smile at her. The hand that was behind your head tucked hair behind your ear and brought your hand from her shoulder so she could press lips to your knuckles. The ridge of bone under the soft of her skin and then she was hugging you again.

“Anything, I just want to hear your voice.”

So you told her about yourself. Stories she’d never heard and memories you’d thought you’d forgotten. Whispers of your past shared with your future.

She nuzzled her chin into the crook of your neck and listened, breathing deep the smell of your perfume that clung, lingering to the collar of your clothes.

A laugh.

Rippling up your throat at reminiscing a memory, vibration muffled against her ear at your jaw, and Cordelia swore that she could feelyour emotions. Truly feel you, and she realised that you couldn’t lie to her. Couldn’t will yourself to say something untrue just to still the aching beat of her heart within her chest.

You couldn’t make yourself want to mend her. You didn’t want that. You wanted to help her heal. Heal from her past that held less joy and laughter than yours did.

You wanted to help her create memories of her own, just like this.

Slow dancing in the greenhouse.

Dancing in the dark under the glow of the patient moon.

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kouomi · 3 years

Text

Counting Down To You

Summary: When meeting your soulmate is a matter of life or death, is it possible to beat the clock and find them in time? (F!Reader x Sakusa Kiyoomi)

Warnings: talking about death, some sadness, fluff at end, sad to happy

Word count: 3,010

A/N: sorry for not posting in a while! Pulled this out of my drafts, there might be a lil sequel/separate ending to this later!

Masterlist

Posted: April 27th, 2021, 5:30 PM EST

Everyone had countdowns from the moment they were born. It was a ticking time bomb within every person that would be lethal to not only them, but their soulmate as well when it detonated. The whole system of having a soulmate was a double edged sword; sure, if you managed to escape it you met your soulmate, but the slightest slip up could lead you to a grave.

The timer started when you or your soulmate was made aware of the other, such as hearing their name for the first time or seeing a picture. Everyone’s timer was set at different times, most people having a couple decades while some of the lucky ones have a hundred years, or the unlucky only a few years, months, weeks, or even days. When the timer starts it’s simply your soulmates initial and a date on your wrist, but when it got to the last 7 days, the timer turned into one that looked like a clock, slowly ticking off the seconds until left you had to meet them or die.

The death wasn’t immediate, it was more like a sickness. It wasn’t able to be cured even by meeting your soulmate, for as soon as the timer ran out, so did your chance of survival. Once the last second ran out the timer disappeared and was replaced with your soulmates name as if it would be any help at that point. Three days was all you were given after the timer ran out. Three measly days to say goodbye to everything and everyone you knew.

There were other ways other than seeing someone’s timer to tell if their time was running out. Once it turned from a date to hours the person started to become “sick” their body weaker and more noticeably a cough. It was horrible to watch but an even worse feeling was it happening to you.

When your timer started, you were given exactly a year. It felt like a cruel joke that at the age of fifteen you were only given a year to find your soulmate or die, but the date on your wrist was a constant reminder it was reality. You tried for almost that entire year to find him, to find the one with a matching timer and who matched the initial on your wrist but it was useless. Even if you managed to find them you’d have to kiss them to stop the timer and you couldn’t go around kissing every stranger who’s name happened to start with K. By the last two weeks you’d given up, finally coming to terms with the fact you were going to die and there was nothing you could do about it.

You were in Tokyo for the national volleyball tournament as you were accompanying the team you managed, happy to at least be in a beautiful city for your last few days on earth. A gentle breeze picked up your hair and blew it around your shoulders, a few stray strands waving in front of your face as you stared at the quiet city streets below. It was oddly peaceful, a sense of a calm before the storm blanketing the night and preserving the moment around you.

“Y/n/n?” A familiar voice asks from behind you, “What’re ya doin out here, it’s freezing.”

Turning around you see one of your closest friends, Miya Atsumu walked out on to the balcony where you stood, leaning on the railing. You’d noticed the freezing air nipping at your bare skin but hadn’t paid much mind to it, your mind to focused on other things to care about the cold.

“Waiting.” You answered, returning your gaze to the sky as he walked over to stand next to you.

“Waitin for what?”

You glance at your phone screen, seeing it read 11:59 before moving your arm up so it rested underside up on the metal railing. Just as you did so the date on your wrist disappeared and was replaced with a timer, the seconds slowly ticking away.

“That.” You sigh, taking notice of the way the normally positive atmosphere that followed Atsumu had faded, “167 hours, 59 minutes, and 47 seconds left.”

“Hey, maybe we’ll find them here!” He exclaims, a smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes crossing his face, “There’s thousands of people!”

“I can’t go around kissing thousands of random people, Tsu.” You chuckle, pushing off of the railing and walking back to the door, “Come on.”

“I have an idea!” The blonde gasps before rushing inside, making you give him a quizzical look as he frantically looks around the room.

“Why are ya yelling at midnight?” An authoritative voice asks, making Atsumu freeze momentarily before he turns around.

“Kita! Yer name starts with K right?”

“Do I really need to answer that?”

“Atsumu, I know what you’re thinking and no.” You say, watching as his shoulders droop.

“Why not?!”

“Kitas timer hasn’t even started yet.”

“It’s worth a shot! He has the right initials, doesn’t he?”

Both you and the captain blink at him before glancing at each other and shaking your heads.

“They’re backwards.” Kita states, Atsumus face falling at the realization, “Hers say S.K. mine are K.S.”

“Thanks anyway Tsu.” You smile, your hand resting on his shoulder as you walk past him and down the hall, “Don’t worry about it. I still have a week to watch you guys win. Good night.”

The two boys watch you leave, a sad feeling encompassing the room as you disappear down the hallway. The silence hangs in the air as if saying it’s own piece to the drastic weight of the situation, the weight pulling down on the two making their shoulders visibly slump as they continue to stare where you once stood.

“Stop looking at ‘er like she’s already dead.” Kita says, making Atsumu jump. “Yer just gonna make ‘er feel worse.”

Almost as soon as you’d slipped through the door of your room you collapsed on to your bed, an empty feeling filling your chest as you pulled your blanket over your head. Sure, you’d come to terms with the fact you were going to die, but it didn’t stop the horrible feeling that weighed down your heart as it set in that this was your last week. In another week you’d probably be in a hospital bed with all of your friends giving you sad pitiful looks as you slowly withered away, left with nothing other than the name of the soulmate you’d failed to meet in time.

Were they panicking as well? Were they doing everything they possibly could to find you so you could both survive? This was the greatest chance you had to find them seeing as you were in the city and at a large event, but what were the chances of them even being there?

Your worries and questions followed you into your sleep, dried tear tracks staining your face as you fought to get any rest.

Even in your dreams you found yourself on the brink of death, a man standing just out of reach. He was so close, you could feel the fabric of his jacket just barely brush past your fingertips. He was so so close, yet so impossibly far, you found the last slivers of hope you held for finding this stranger in time slipping away just as he began to walk out of your view.

3 hours 26 minutes and 17 seconds

They’d lost. You watched with a hallow expression as the boys dressed in orange and the entire stadium cheered for Karasuno and their victory, while your team was almost frozen in time in disbelief at the final score. After what felt like hours you all walked off the court, silence haunting the group as they all sulked.

“I’m sorry Y/n.”

You turn around and see a few of the boys standing in front of you almost at the brink of tears, their sad gazes only getting worse as they fell upon you.

“Ya said that you’d be watching us win until...” Atsumu continues, his hand clenching into a fist as he trails off, “But we lost. Sorry.”

“Stop being so dramatic, Tsu.” You say, making his expression turn to one of surprise as he and his brother look to you, “Just being able to see you guys play like that was good enough. Especially seeing that quick attack. Man, that was cool!”

They both smile slightly and so do you, walking closer and hugging them both with one arm. You close your eyes for a moment and relish in the hug, imprinting the feeling on your mind as one of your favorite. They squeeze you to themselves though you don’t mind, the three of you standing there for what felt like hours. You wished you could stay there for hours, stand in the arms of the people you considered family. You wanted to stay with them, with the whole team and make more memories, to keep living with them. Your heart ached for the wish as you knew it was an impossible request, knowing this most likely would be the last time you could hug them. If only there was more time, just a few more days. But the timer on your wrist continues to tick, the seconds going by and your time running out.

After a while you finally let go and walked out with the others, the air not as heavy as it previously was though the discord in your head running wild.

0 hours 10 minutes and 43 seconds

“Hey Y/n, are you coming?” Aran asks, standing on the first stair of the bus and looking to you.

You look down at your wrist and read the numbers, feeling a pull at your heart.

“I’m gonna take a walk really quick, can you guys wait a few minutes?” You ask.

He nods, hiding his worry for you behind a slight frown before he climbs into the bus, the doors shutting behind him and the engine starting as the bus waits to leave.

You sigh as you turn around and start walking down the sidewalk, a cough racking your sore body as you did so. Everything hurt and your legs resisted every movement, but you refused to spend these few minutes stuck in the bus.

0 hours 2 minutes and 24 seconds

Finally you came across a bench where you collapsed, a grunt leaving your body as you finally relieve your legs of your weight. Your head was thrown back on the back of the bench and you stared up at the cloudless sky, the stars seeming to laugh as they stared at your disheveled state.

“Could you not sit so close?”

You turn your head to the side and see another person on the bench next to you. With a sigh you scoot over, wincing at the burning sensation in your arms as you do so. The stranger hunches over himself and you hear the all too familiar sound of coughing, their fit lasting almost an entire minute before they straighten themselves out again.

“Are you okay?” You ask, turning your gaze away from the sky to look at them.

“Fine.” He mumbles though another cough gives away his lie, “There’s not enough time for me to care.”

You give a light laugh, a cough of your own stopping it short. “Time’s a bitch, huh?”

“Sure.”

0 hours 0 minutes and 53 seconds

“What’s your name?” You ask after a few seconds of silence.

“... Sakusa. Sakusa Kiyoomi.”

Your heart seems to stop as you hear this, the world around you suddenly coming to a halt as you blink at him.

“You’re joking right?” You ask in disbelief. Surely this was some kind of messed up prank, it wasn’t possible.

“Why would I be joking?” He responds, “Who’re you?”

“Y/n. Y/l/n.”

You see his eyes widen as he turns to face you, his once defeated appearance gaining new life though the exhaustion is still visible in his droopy shoulders and bags under his eyes. Despite the mask covering half of his face you could tell he was attractive, dark brown eyes that bore into yours slightly obscured by long curls. There were two moles on his forehead that were hardly visible in the low light, his intense expression almost forcing you to look away.

0 hours 0 minutes and 32 seconds

“Are you...” He starts, eyes glancing down for a moment, “Your wrist.”

0 hours 0 minutes and 27 seconds

You read the number in your head as you held out a shaky arm for him to see, a small gasp leaving your lips as he holds out his own for you to see a timer in sync with your own and your initials just below it.

0 hours 0 minutes and 20 seconds

“I’m... we’re not gonna die.” You breathe, your eyes moving up and meeting his again, “I know we just met but I don’t think there’s enough time for us to spare.”

He blinks at you, almost too shocked to respond.

0 hours 0 minutes and 16 seconds

“Can I kiss you?” You ask, anxiously waiting for his response.

0 hours 0 minutes and 13 seconds

Sakusa doesn’t say anything, his other hand unsteadily reaching up to pull his mask off.

0 hours 0 minutes and 8 seconds

Almost in slow motion he leans closer to you, his body almost towering over your own as he rests on one of his hands.

0 hours 0 minutes and 5 seconds

You see your breath in the cold air as you tilt your head up to look at him, fighting back the cough in your lungs as everything around you seems to be slowly clicking into place.

0 hours 0 minutes and 3 seconds

You lean closer to him, his breath dancing on your lips. Just before you meet your body seems to give out beneath you, this small slip up seeming as if it’s been waiting to rip away your last few seconds to save your life.

0 hours 0 minutes and 2 seconds

Sakusas other arm shoots out and hooks under your back, holding you up and closer to himself.

0 hours 0 minutes and 1 second

As soon as you were supported in his grasp you leaned up and pressed your lips against his, your eyes fluttering shut as you put all of your hope and fear into this one moment. The kiss is short but it felt as if something you were missing all your life, your body feeling reenergized and the air escaping your lungs as you pull away.

You blink at each other for a moment before you both look at your wrists, joy filling you both when you see the timer stopped at one second. Below it where there was once only two letters is now each other’s names, the sight making butterflies fly through your stomach.

Realizing his arm was still around you, a light blush dusts your cheeks as you suddenly acknowledge how close you were to each other.

“Y/n?” You hear Atsumu yell from down the street, Sakusas arm pulling away from you as he approaches. “We were lookin all over for you, are ya okay?”

“I’m okay.” You smile, “And you don’t need to find a replacement for me just yet.”

“Huh?” He asks, finally noticing the boy next to you, “Oh hey Sakusa, what’re ya doin- wait.”

“Hi.” He says, cringing as Atsumu seems to explode.

“Y/n, you and Sakusa?!” He exclaims, “I can’t believe this!”

“Why are you yelling so much Tsu?” You ask though give him a smile, “Why were you looking for me?”

“Oh yeah, Coach wants to leave.” Atsumu answers, “And ya were gone a while, we got worried.”

“I’ll be there in a second.” You say, nodding for him to leave. He gives a loud “ohh” when he finally understands what you were implying, giving a thumbs up before jogging back the way he came.

“I should probably head back too.” Sakusa says, standing from the bench and stumbling slightly.

“Sakusa?” You ask, standing as well. He turns around, pulling his mask back over his face and shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Kiyoomi.” He says in an almost shy tone.

“Kiyoomi.” You repeat, smiling slightly at his name, “Can I get your number?”

“Y/n yer back!” One of the boys yells as you climbed on to the bus, taking one of the free seats.

“Yep.” You grin, all of them giving you a strange look before you hold up your wrist, the once gloomy atmosphere turning joyful as you’re practically tackled out of your seat and into a giant mess of a group hug.

“Yer not gonna die?” Osamu asks in a whisper, his chin resting on your shoulder.

“No, I’m not.” You respond, your arms wrapping around all of them and squeezing. “Now can you all stop crying? You’re gonna make me cry.”

There’s a small series of laughs as you’re somehow held tighter, the tension the last thing on your mind as you close your eyes. What had once felt bittersweet now brought joy to you as you relished in the feeling of being with the people you considered family. Finally, after a year of living your life as if it was your last moments, you were able to stop; to take a moment to breathe. That one kiss had freed you of the chains of a ticking clock and given you the thing you’d only ever dreamed of: more time.

As you all were forced to pull away by your coaches telling you to get in your seats your mind wandered to the boy who’d made this possible. Sakusa Kiyoomi, though he was still a stranger to you, had made a spot for himself in your thoughts as well as bringing butterflies through your stomach. Maybe with the extra time he’d given you, you could spend it with him.

Kiyoomi. You thought, thanks for being my soulmate.

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sleeping-on-cracking-ice · 3 years

Note

hello! i was wondering if you could make a kurabe imagine/fanfic? any type!

Yesss! I’ve been wanting to write for him. Thanks for requesting! ❤️

To Protect The Protector | Daikichi Karube

{Alice In Borderland Masterlist}

Character(s): Karube (ft. Alice, Chota, Shibuki)

Genre: fluff

Summary: Karube came back from his game injured, so you look after him for the night

Warning: swearing, blood

Word Count: 2.1k

*reader is gender-neutral

The air was frozen around you. No breeze or slight wind was present in the slightest, making the atmosphere unsettling. Even the crows were silent, having lost their usual screeching that rang through everyone’s ears throughout the day.

Your adrenaline has been on a constant flow through your veins since you survived the first game. Watching the young high school girl get penetrated by the laser struck a deep chord within you. You couldn’t move a muscle as Karube pulled you into the next room before you were engulfed in flames.

You’ve never experienced anything like this world. Where has everyone gone? Who is running the games? Are there any other players?

A young woman that you met last night at the first game named Shibuki decided to stick by your sides for a while. You all took refuge in an empty mall, considering the amount of resources that would be available to you that could come in handy for some reason or another.

Shibuki sat everyone down after a good night’s sleep and explained the concept of the world you were now trapped in. She had only been present in the game for a little longer than you, but you still put trust in her as she obviously knew more than the four of you.

Your boyfriend Karube, who you happened to be with at the time of everyone’s disappearance, has become more anxious about your safety. Since things started becoming peculiar, he has remained tight to your side, ready to shield you from god knows what.

That was just his personality. Yes, he could be blunt and impatient sometimes, but he honestly did care about Alice, Chota and you more than you guys could have ever imagined. He knew he was the brawn of your small friendship group, so he took it upon himself to be the protector.

But unfortunately, him and Alice were too confident and curious for their own good. Alice and Karube had a private chat on one of the mall balcony's discussing whether they should go to an extra game to gain an idea about how they play out, but also to see if they were able to find any players that had a past in medical fields to perhaps look at Chota’s searing burn injury on his lower right leg.

When it came to the next day, Karube talked to you in private without the others, wanting to have some alone time with you.

“Wait what?” you asked shocked. “You’re going to another game? Karube, I’m sorry but are you an idiot? You saw what happened in the game we went to, you could die at any moment!” you exclaimed at him. Karube went silent from your outburst but tried to reason with you. “Look Y/N, I know you’re worried but Alice and I need to see how this place works so we can protect you and Chota.” he said, placing a hand on your cheek.

“But what about you? Who’s going to protect you?” you remarked. You were scared more than anything. You didn’t want to wake up the next morning to find that Karube and Alice never returned. It would’ve absolutely shattered your heart.

He looked up at you from his position on the bed in remorse. He felt awful putting you through the stress, but he knew he had to do it if you wanted to stay alive for as long as you could.

“Come here,” he said after a short juncture of silence. You glanced at his stressed face before moving towards the bed and placing your thighs comfortably on his lap. He wrapped his strong arms around your frame and held you tightly against him.

It should’ve felt comforting, but at that moment it didn’t. If anything, you were dreading the hug because it felt like a goodbye.

“I’m so sorry baby, but I have to go.” Karube rested his chin on top of your head. “I promise you I will do everything in my power to make sure I come back safe and sound.”

He felt you move your head up and down in a nod against him. You pressed your face into his orange shirt. “I know you’ll come back. A stupid game wouldn’t get rid of you. The world would have to work much harder to kill you off.”

Karube chuckled and pulled back to look into your eyes. “You’re right. I’ll be back before you know it.” he claimed.

You wished that were true. There you were now, standing out on a stone ledge looking over a big part of Shibuya. The lack of hustling and bustling from thousands of people was strange to get accustomed to. It was unsettling, almost frightening.

“Why the fuck did I let them go?” you cursed, letting out a harsh huff of breath. “This is bullshit. They have another day on their visa. We could have all waited until tomorrow to go to another game together.”

You heard Chota let out an agreeing hum from the table he was seated at behind you. “It does seem a bit pointless now that we’ve had time to stress about it,” he admitted.

You slouched forward, having hoped for at least a positive response from Chota to reassure you. You continued to keep scanning the streets below you, looking for any sign of another person. Anxiety filled your body the more you looked and couldn’t spot him.

“Shit,” you breathed out, rubbing your face with your hands. “Chota, what if they die?”

“Shh, don’t talk like that. They’ll be fine,” he shushed you quickly, trying to keep worse case scenarios out of his head.

Several hours later after the sun had set, you saw the familiar unpleasant light that indicated where the games were. Karube and Alice had left early to try and look for a doctor for Chota’s leg, so you knew they would then be on their way to the game.

Your heart leapt to your throat and stayed there for several hours as you laid on a couch. You couldn’t help but envision awful ways that Karube could possibly be killed. Before you knew it, hot tears began pooling in your orbs and running down your face onto the pillow underneath your head.

“Oh fuck,” you cried, your voice cracking, “Please be okay Karube. I can’t live on in this world without you.” You let out soft little sobs, trying to stay quiet in order not to alert Chota or Shibuki who were in the room over from you.

Quite literally, you cried yourself to sleep. Your eyes became heavier and heavier alongside the irritation that the tears brought. You closed your eyes and allowed yourself to pass out, manifesting the vision of seeing Karube laying next to you when you wake up. He would be unharmed and have the biggest smile on his handsome face, ready to pepper kisses all over your face to make up for all the stress he put you through for going to the game without you.

Soon enough, you woke abruptly from a loud noise coming from the door of the room, watching as it swung open harshly to reveal Alice holding Karube by the arm, acting as a crutch.

Karube stumbled in clutching his side. He glanced up with stained tears of pain in his eyes and smiled when he saw you still half-asleep on the couch.

You widened your eyes in surprise and breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh my god, Karube! Alice! Thank god.”

You scrambled to your feet and rushed over to the two exhausted men to help Alice out with Karube. Karube lifted his arm and wrapped it around you as you crashed into him in a reunion hug. Karube winced heavily from the huge machete wound in his side stinging.

“It’s okay baby, we’re okay,” he comforted you, pushing his face into your hair and breathing in your scent. You felt tears filling your vision again, the relief of seeing Karube safe and sound in your arms again being too overwhelming.

Ten minutes later, after everyone welcomed Alice and Karube back, you and Karube were sitting on the couch while the others searched for something fresh to eat further in the mall (which would be a challenge). Karube was wincing as you lifted up his black t-shirt to take a look at the wound he gained from the tagger in the ‘Tag’ game.

“Shit babe,” you groaned. Luckily it appeared like the machete hadn’t cut too deep into his abdomen. He wouldn’t need stitches, just disinfectant and a tight bandage to stop the blood flow.

Karube watched you as you walked over to the table to grab the disinfectant and medical bandage to use on him. He felt on edge because you hadn’t said much since he’d returned from the game. He was thinking maybe you were agitated with him.

“Y/N,” he said, catching your attention. “I’m sorry I went to the game. I know it was a mistake now,” he admitted, hanging his head low apologetically.

You shook your head disapprovingly and focused back on his wound. “Yeah, it was a mistake. This is the least that could’ve happened Karube.”

He could tell you were annoyed, because you always got smart with him when he’s angered you.

“Now you’re going to be disadvantaged at your next game with this gaping wound in your side.” You stated. You began pouring the rubbing alcohol onto a cloth. “Just warning you, this is going to hurt but try not to squirm too much.”

Karube nodded and held his black t-shirt up so you could disinfect his injury. As you pressed the cloth to the slice, Karube hissed and placed his hand over yours. “Just be gentle,” he stammered.

You nodded and continued to go slow.

After you managed to clean his injury, he stood up so you could wrap the bandage around his abdomen. He stared at you as you did so, smiling to himself about how lucky he was to have you look after him like this.

When you were done, you brushed off your hands and placed the disinfectant back on the table. Karube sat back down and looked at you.

“Thank you Y/N,” he said in a sweet tone. You glanced over your shoulder and saw him gazing at you lovingly. You grinned, being glad that he was okay.

“You’re welcome,” you answered. “Can you promise me something?” you asked, turning around fully to face him. Karube leant forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Of course, anything for you.”

“If it ever came to a choice between you or me to continue living, you need to promise me that you’ll choose yourself,” you murmured. Karube’s cheeky smile rolled off his face, replaced by a confused expression.

“Why would I do that? I love you. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I survived but you didn’t.” he said sadly, reaching out his arms to invite you into a hug.

You took the invitation and trudged over to him, standing between his legs and letting him wrap his strong arms around your waist while resting his head on your stomach.

“Yeah, I know you would Karube. I feel the same way but, you have a dream and a bright future ahead of you. I wouldn’t want to take that away from you if it came to that.” you ran your fingers through his coarse, bleached blonde hair and he let out a big sigh.

“But my dream is you Y/N. I want to stay with you,” he professed. “I want to leave this place with you, no one else.”

You felt your heart clutch itself in your chest. You felt awful. You didn’t know what to do or say to make things seem better than they were. That was the horrific reality about that world, nothing you could ever say would make things better or more comforting.

“Why don’t we just focus on surviving and keeping each other alive for now and focus on the more serious stuff when it comes to it,” Karube spoke up, resting his chin against your stomach to look up at you with his big dark eyes.

You stared down at him with so much love. You do anything to keep him with you, to keep him happy and safe. Just his eyes alone show the amount of love and care he holds in his blunt heart.

You smiled slowly and nodded your head in agreement. “Of course. Let’s just focus on staying alive right now so we can have many more moments together.”

Author’s Note: I hope this wasn’t too boring. I have a lot of requests for Alice In Borderland lined up so I’ll be working through them and posting them when I can! 💕

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theredsuzuran · 3 years

Text

Muzan x reader ~ Lily

This is a song fanfiction on the song Lily by Alan Walker, k-391 and Emelie hollow. This story is inspired by the Japanese legend of yamato no orochi. I might do a second part as well. It's my first ever fanfiction so please excuse my mistakes.

Warning : mention of slight gore and blood

Enjoy

Lily was a little girl

Every decade on the night of full moon the first born female child of (L/n) clan are sent as bride to a powerful demon named Akai lurking on the mountain of Akakura which was believed to be inhabited by oni from ancient times. Your great grandfather and his then pregnant wife was attacked by that demon although on their constant begging and vows of servicing to the demon he spared their lives but on one condition that was they needed to send him one girl from their household every decade on this very full moon night. Your sisters and aunts, who you never get to see were presented to that oni. You being the oldest daughter of your family was nominated as the bride this year.

Afraid of the big wide world

When you first get to know about this, you were absolutely terrified and angry of the idea to be separated from your parents and siblings in order to serve your duty as a bride to that potentially harmful demon who you knew would devour you as you never saw any of your elder sisters or aunts come back therefore it was nothing but a human sacrifice in your judgment and being a child it horrified you, often causing nightmares of the said demon. From a very tender age you were brainwashed that the outside world was a dangerous place and it consists of unknown creatures lurking around the earth's surface with the sole purpose of causing grave harm to people. Being a child you were easily convinced but as you grew older your curiosity got the best of you as well as the urge for understanding the outside world became a necessity.

She grew up within her castle walls

Now and then she tried to run

And then on the night with the setting sun

She went in the woods away

So afraid, all alone.

As a child most of the time you were confined inside the four walls of your room, you were not allowed to go out unless required. There were servants who tended you day and night. It was necessary because the child for the sacrifice should be flawless in every aspect and most importantly healthy or else great catastrophe would fell upon your family. Sometimes you wish you were a sick person. That doesn't mean you didn't try to run away from home. Every now and then you tried escaping from your residence and one time during sunset you were successful in escaping, that was for the first time you went out from your house, you ran miles and miles away, bare foot. For the first time in life you were so far away from home you never imagined this day might come. The softness of the green grass beneath your feet, the fresh air lingering in the atmosphere made your heart giddy. As you stopped running for a while you encountered the sight of a city in which there were lots of people gathering around the street, both men, women and children of your age wearing lavish clothing and accessories, you have zero social interaction skills, servents being an exception even your parents also were not available all the time, on top of that you were timid and young, this overwhelming crowd of unknown people startled you which was honestly frightening but you were determined. Therefore you brush off your worries in order to explore the city, you were happened to be in the middle of a festival, which you seem to know since your servants who served under (L/n) family often talk about such festivals obviously they are not allowed to discuss such things infront of you but somehow you managed to eavesdrop and acquire information. Festivals are truly majestic, it was way better than the stories you have heard from the maids at your residence. It was colourful, lively, cheerful, loud nothing like the world you are used to see. There were various stalls consisting of items like jewelry, cloths that are being displayed on the street, on both sides of the road. The the smell of hot dishes like yakisoba, Takoyaki and ikayaki from different stalls hitting your nostrils making your mouth watery. As you were wandering around aimlessly, admiring the lighting and beauty of the festival, you bumped into a bunch of drunk men, you quickly turned away to apologize but a man with rough demeanor pulled your arm and started throwing curses at your way which definitely made you uncomfortable as you looked around to ask for help but none of them responded or came to your aid.

"look where you walking, brat!"

"I am sorry, please forgive me" you were not accustomed to such rude behavior as your maids and servants and even your family members were gentle towards you which was likely because you came from a very wealthy family. Which was quite visible by those men by the way you dressed, expensive (f/c) kimono wrapped around your figure made with the finest silk in the country and the gold hair pin tucked in your smooth (h/c) hair.

They warned her, don't go there

There's creatures who are hiding in the dark.

"What's with the hurry miss, join us for a bit?" With that said from the other guy, your eyes widened, you tried your best not to cry, they warned me your mind started to race with the worst case scenario as you started to remind your parents word about the outside world but you came back to your senses as they yanked you down the alley. Your heartbeat increasing rapidly, sweat covering your (s/c) countenance, your mind was going blank but you snapped out from your thoughts as you noticed the man's arm closed to your face without wasting any time you bit the man harshly causing him to drop your hand, taking advantage of that situation you ran towards the opposite direction earning screams and curses from behind. You didn't try looking back but you knew they were chasing you from behind. You stumble across the way as never in your life you ran so fast and somehow manage to get into the wood. Being exhausted and breathless you collapsed onto the ground. The sound of footsteps growing lounder as they were approaching you, tears stared to form up in your face am I going to die?

"Found you kitten" one of the drunkards chasing you commented, grabbing a handful of your (h/l)(h/c) hair roughly, lifting you up from the ground, then he took out a knife from his pocket and brought that near your neck in order to create a minor cut which begun bleeding instantly. You screamed in pain but no words came out from your mouth, you felt completely defeated and tired. There was no hope. You felt as if you were going to die but you didn't want to. Yet.

Then something came creeping

It told her, don't you worry just-

Suddenly rustling of leaves and bushes were heard from afar which caught you and the rest suprised.

"Who's there?" The man holding you shouted but complete silence was observed. This pissed off the man even more and he shouted angrily this time with more intensity.

"Come out or I will kill this girl in this instance" no sooner did the words left the man's mouth than he saw you were out of his sight and standing before him was a slender pale man in his late twenties having remarkable dark curly hair and plum red eyes contrasting his features sharply. He was holding you firmly but gently in his arm.

"How did you-"

You saw his eyes glowing under the moonlight pointing directly towards those men, his glare was deadly and menacing which could make anyone fall on their knees. One of the men began to charge towards you but his attempt went futile because the man holding you kicked the man with such immense strength that he went flying over the air and died a painful death crashing loudly against the ground snapping his neck in the process. The other man in feat of pure rage tried to punch that mysterious man but his head exploded due to the pressure of that raven hair blocking his attack. The other man who watched all of that fainted. It was a gruesome scene for you to witness but you tried your best not to cry because the man infront of you just saved your life.

"Thank you mister for saving my life, I thought I was going to die if it were not you I'd be dead, I appreciate your help" your voice still shaking, you lowered your head and then look up for the first time his red orbs met your (e/c) ones. The moonlight reflected through the branches of the trees made you see his face clearly, you have not interacted with men before except your father, siblings and uncles so being closed with a man this handsome made you a little nervous. You could feel your blood rush through your cheeks. Seeing you nervous made him chuckle slightly, he gently put you down on the ground from his arm.

Follow everywhere I go

"A young girl like you should not be roaming around in the woods late at night, there are a lot of people and creatures having full intent to hurt fragile beings like yourself" he spoke to you with his calm, monotonous voice.

"Yes you are right mister and I apologize for causing you trouble but I really needed to come out" you replied with a soft hum. Which made that man curious.

"Is that so? What's your name child?"

"My name is (y/n)(l/n), and yours?"

"Muzan kibutsuji"

A perfect chance for him to devour this girl which was driving him crazy because of the aroma she was emitting, he can take full advantage of this situation, there was no way in hell this girl could protect herself as minutes ago she was cowering with fear and misery, how pathetic he thought.

"I was meaning to say this for a long time now kibutsuji san you have the most beautiful pair of eyes, it's very unique, I am glad to meet you" the sudden compliment coming from you widened his eyes. He have been living for a thousand years now both humans and his underlings alike are scared of him even his demons admire and respect him out of fear. All of them knew how ruthless, manipulative, egoistic and deceitful this man is but this girl shows her genuine gratitude towards him even though she is vulnerable and exposed. What a clueless human he thought letting her guard down to none other but the dangerous Muzan kibutsuji. There was pure innocence in her voice and glowing admiration in her eyes, gleaming with positive energy which evoked strong emotions in all his seven hearts that were stoned ever since he abandoned his humanity.

"Its dangerous for you to go back alone let me escort you home" the demon replied which you gladly accepted. For now.

Muzan held your hand tightly as the two of you began to walk out from the forest and enter the town again, talking on the way, learning about each other.

"How old are you (y/n) chan?"

"I am 13 years old, kibutsuji san"

"Muzan will be fine, (y/n)"

"Sure Muzan!" You smiled enthusiastically, you enjoyed his company as you were not allowed to have friends it made your heart flutter with an unexpected feeling of warmth. You wanted to clinge on it. Never in your life you felt so secure and content.

Top over the mountains or valley low

"Say (y/n), why did you ran away from home?" Muzan asked

"I don't want to get sacrificed to the oni" you replied with sudden drop to your voice. Muzan stopped walking and looked down at you with concern written over his face, he didn't know why he was acting this way but there was this sudden urge to keep you safe, the thought of seeing you suffer made him somewhat sick to his stomach.

"What oni?" He asked this time holding your shoulders gently, he could say you were scare to talk about this but somehow you felt at ease around him which you never felt towards anyone, you started to trust him even though you just met him.

"There has been an old tradition in my family for generations, every decade on the night of full moon the first born female child of our family is sacrificed to the oni living on the mountain of akakura for last 50 years, I am next in line that's why I was running away, I am not ready to die" you replied almost sobbing

Give you everything you've been dreaming of

Just let me in

"Once I attain the age 18, I will too be send to the oni as his bride" tears came rolling down your cheek, the demon lord can sense your terror which you were trying to hide. What a pitiful creature, I shall be your savior he thought to himself.

"You are a brave girl, I admire your inner strength (y/n)" he cupped your face with his arms, caressing your features softly brushing away the tear drop forming in your eyes.

"I don't know for how long" you replied smiling a bit. appreciating his effort to soothe your anxiety.

Everything you want in gold, I'll be the magic story you've been told

Everything was good until you heard your name coming across the other end of the street, it was two of your servants and your uncle approaching both you and Muzan. The look in your face suddenly changed to that of a drastic one, the slight flush which covered your countenance few seconds ago was gone and was replaced with a pale look similar to that of muzan's. It was evident to the demon from your expressions that it was rather unpleasant for you even though they seem to know you and by judging the looks of your uncle, he figured you two are related.

"Where have you gone milady?" One of your maid came rushing towards you, but you hid behind muzan's back averting your gaze from the maiden and your uncle. As you could feel an intense glare coming from him. Thanks to your uncle you are in great trouble now.

"My name is (u/n)(L/n), this girl's uncle, I apologize on behalf of my niece for causing you trouble" the (h/c) hair man said to muzan.

"I am Tsukihiko kibutsuji, Do not worry about that and (y/n) didn't create any disturbance" it would be a bit suspicious to you that why muzan lied to your uncle about his real name if he didn't mention he was a demon earlier when you two were conversing and he needs to hide his identity in order to survive.

"Thank you so much for your help, (L/n) family will owe you for this" he bowed to muzan showing his gratitude towards him while glancing at you with the corner of his eyes.

"You here young lady, I hope you won't run away like this you could have just asked our servants or me if you really wanted to go out that badly, you have made your mother worried sick" the man cooed directing towards you.

𝚕𝚒es you thought You'd never let me go out, you are only behaving nicely because of muzan.

"(Y/n)" the soothing voice hit your ears and you looked up to see muzan "you must go back home, as your uncle stated they must be really worried, right?"

You felt really defeated but you decided to let go of him, he already saved you from a great disaster. It would be selfish of you to ask for more but you really hoped he'd help. Before you headed back you asked turning your head back at his direction.

And you'll be safe under my control

"We will still be friends right?" Muzan was taken aback friends? He thought a genuine smile appearing on his face. He nodded at you which made you sigh with relief and then you waved goodbye to him in the hope of seeing him again someday, your first friend.

"Yes (y/n), we will meet again"

Just let me in, ooh.

#kimetsu no yaiba #muzan kibutsuji #kny muzan #muzan x reader #fanfic #demon slayer #demon slayer fanfic #demon lord #demon x reader #anime

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hoboal87 · 4 years

Text

In Secret

Title: In Secret

Pairing: Jensen x F!Reader

Summary: Y/N and Jensen have been in a secret relationship for five years, and she wants more.

Warnings: Angst, Affair, Open Relationship, Oral (F receiving), Implied Smut, Jensen Is A Bit Of An Ass

A/N: This is my entry for @winchesterxfamilybusiness “Make Me Swoon” writing challenge! My prompt is “I’m tired of being your secret.”

A/N 2: Y’all, I never expected such an overwhelming positive response to this one-shot! This will soon be a multi-part series, I’ve already started working on the next part, but I don’t know if I’ll get anything posted before Elastic Heart is complete.

A/N 3: THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS COMMENTED/REBLOGGED/ASKED TO BE TAGGED!

No Beta all mistakes are mine.

The air is thick around you, the smell of sex filling every inch of your room. You could die just like this, here, with the man you love, holding you tight against him as you both come down from your highs. He rolls you both over, his hand gently rubbing over your stomach, inching down to your sore and swollen pussy. You groan when he dips a finger into wet heat.

“I love cumming in you,” he whispers, gently biting at your ear, and you can feel his smile. “Wish I could do it every day.” He starts pumping his finger, tightening the coil again, and you bite back another moan.

“Mmm,” you hum as he sinks another finger in, his thumb brushes over your clit. You reach behind you, palming his half-hard cock. “You could, y'know.”

The atmosphere between you changes in an instant, he huffs, and pulls away from you, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. You should’ve known this is how he would react, every time you breach the subject it always ends the same way. The guilt you both feel, the lying, all of it comes to the surface, rearing its ugly head.

“Just tell her,“ you beg as he leaves your bed. "That’s the whole point of your agreement, isn’t it?” He doesn’t respond, reaching down to grab his once hastily discarded jeans off the floor. “She gets to fuck whoever she wants and so do you.”

“This is different, Y/N. You know that,” he sighs and steps into his jeans.

“Why?” You sit up, using the sheet to keep yourself covered. “Tell me, Jensen. Why is this different? Why is okay for her to think that your out fucking some random girl instead of me?”

“Y/N,” Jensen turns around, his emerald eyes staring you down. “It’s more complicated than that. We-” he gestures between you, “we have a history. You don’t think she knows about our past?”

“Our past?” You can feel the heat rising in your cheeks. “We were friends. There’s nothing in our past, we didn’t even start any of this until after you two were together. You had years- years Jay, to do something about that. You knew how I felt about you, but instead you jumped from girl to girl and I was the one who had to put you back together, she doesn’t get to take all the credit.”

This isn’t the first time you’ve had this fight with Jensen. Every time they go on hiatus you beg him to stay just a few days longer, knowing that it would be almost two months before he’d be back. You know deep down that it isn’t fair, he spends nine months out of the year in Vancouver, and when he’s here it’s almost like you’re a normal couple. Almost. You and Jensen couldn’t go out in public, not even as “friends,” all it would take was one ill-timed photo to throw both of your worlds into utter chaos.

Being the other woman came with its own set of rules. When it all started you were just happy to be able to be with him, even if that meant it began and ended at the threshold of your home. When you were together you were the only two people in the world, you didn’t discuss her or the fact that she was pregnant. You, in particular, were allowing yourself to live in ignorant bliss cherishing everything he had to give you. You never thought you were the type of person who’d be having an affair with anyone, let alone Jensen, but you can’t help yourself from falling into bed with him every time he comes over.

You’d gone to high school together, and for four years you waited patiently for him to ask you out on a date. Instead, he dated one of your friends, biting your tongue when he told you about their relationship ending; you knew it wouldn’t last.

You went your separate ways after high-school, you’d stayed in Texas to go to college, and he’d gone off to Hollywood, you’d kept in touch through the years. Reconnecting when you’d moved to Vancouver for your job. It started out as harmless flirting, double entendres, and teasing.

The first time you slept together it wasn’t something either of you had planned. She was in L.A. working on her latest movie, and you were still on the rebound from your latest break-up. It was a night of too many drinks and loneliness drove your actions. You kept your distance from each other in the weeks that followed, sorting out your feelings, unsure if it was a one-time drunken mistake or the start of something real.

The second time you were both sober. He’d come over to discuss what happened; how he would never cheat on her, he was in love with her, he wanted to marry her. You tried to understand, Jensen was always a fantasy, someone who you could never have. You didn’t want to ruin your friendship with him over sex. You both agreed to put it behind you, never discuss it again, “pretend it never happened,” he insisted. It nearly killed you, but you nodded hesitantly.

He reached out to squeeze your knee, and you made your way towards the front door. You fidgeted with your hands as you entered the front walkway, not wanting him to leave. There was a hesitation as Jensen reached for the doorknob, and you pulled him in for a hug, melting your body into him. Before you knew what was happening, your lips were on his, wanting, needing more. He had you caged against the wall, hands pawing at you, lifting you up, encouraging you to wrap your legs around his waist and he ground himself against you. His mouth never left yours as he carried you to your bedroom, dropping you playfully on the bed.

Jensen rid himself of his shirt while you shed your own, desperate to have his skin against yours. The first time was messy, rushed, this time you wanted to take your time, appreciate every moment that you were having with him. He placed sweet wet kisses over your breasts, making his way down, tugging at your jeans to expose your soaked panties. You lifted your hips as he hooked his fingers around them, pulling them along with your jeans down, tossing them onto the floor.

Jensen placed gentle kisses on the inside of your thighs, you could feel him smiling against your skin as he moved towards your aching pussy. His eyes met yours, giving you a final chance to stop him. “Please, Jay,” you murmured. Each swipe of his tongue was pure ecstasy, you reached down for him, holding his face closer to you.

You try to clench your legs around him, but he keeps them apart, eyes flicking up at you as you fall apart. He continues his assault on your cunt, removing one hand, and teasing you with his finger. You groaned as it slid through your folds up to your clit, pressing down as his tongue fucked into you. Unable to make any intelligible sounds, you heard a low chuckle come from him as two fingers entered your weeping hole.

He pumped them fast, spurring you on as you felt the coil tightening. You felt yourself clenching around him and you breathing grew heavier, his fingers finding your sweet spot, brushing it again and again as his mouth focused on your bundle of nerves. You lost all control of yourself when he added a third finger, cumming hard on his face.

“Fuck,” you moaned as he pulled away. He climbed up your body, placing wet kisses over you until he was hovering above you. His cock was hard and ready, precum leaking from the tip, you gently wrapped your hand around him, and he let out a soft groan as you slowly began to pump him. He kissed you passionately and you could taste the release of your climax on his lips.

“I love you, Jay,” you whimper. It wasn’t something you were ever planning on admitting to him, or to yourself, but you couldn’t stop the words from leaving. “I’ve always loved you.”

“I love you too, Y/N,” he whispered in your ear as you guided him towards your entrance. Jensen’s eyes bore deep into you, studying your face as you took in his words.

“Please, Jay,” you begged, “fuck me.”

Jensen doesn’t move; you know he doesn’t have an answer.

“I’m tired of being your secret,” you huff. “It’s been five years.”

“Goddammit, Y/N!” He shouts, throwing his hands into his hair. “She’s my wife, the mother of my children. You want me to throw it all away?”

You try to stammer out a response, but he continues, pacing in front your bed.

“You act like this is easy for me, it isn’t. I told you after that second time, I’m never going to leave her. You said you could accept that. That’s the only reason we continued this. She’s paranoid enough about you as it is, and you want me to tell her that we’ve been sleeping together for the past five years, how do you think that will make her feel?”

“How will it make her feel?” you scoff. “What about how I feel? My feelings don’t matter?”

“That’s not what I said, Y/N.”

“I’ve kept my feelings to myself for years, Jay. I’ve tried to be understanding, I haven’t asked you for anything. I don’t push the subject, but I’m tired, Jay.”

He paces in front of you, muttering to himself.

“I want you, Jay, you’re all I’ve ever wanted,” you whisper, it’s something you both know, but you never planned to say it out loud. “I broke up with Steven for you.”

“He never deserved you, sweetheart,” he says, and a smile creeps upon your face. For a moment you think that he’ll admit that he wants more with you.

"You never like anyone I date, Jay,” you chuckle slightly, “I think it because you’re jealous.”

Jensen’s body stiffens, and you know immediately that he doesn’t like your joke. He grabs his shirt off the dresser and pulls it over his head before storming out of the room.

“Jensen, babe, I was just-” you follow him out, quickly pulling on a camisole and yoga pants, not bothering with underwear. “Jay, it was a joke.”

“We both know it wasn’t Y/N,“ he snaps back and your smile quickly fades. "You think I like watching you parade with some douche? You wanna slut around with some fuckin’ prick, I ain’t gonna stop you.”

“You don’t get to talk to me like that, Jay,” you hiss. “You don’t get to act like some jealous boyfriend. You’ve made it very clear just now, that I am not your girlfriend or whatever you wanna call this.”

“You’re right, babygirl, I’m not,” he huffs, “and I’m never going to be. I’m never going to be yours, Y/N. If I wanted that, I would’ve made my move a long time ago.” Jensen’s words are like stabs to your heart, and you try to conceal the tears forming in your eyes. “I chose her over you, I’ll always choose her over you.”

There’s a flash of regret playing on his face. There they were; the words that you knew were coming sooner or later. You’d hoped he’d never say them, that the two of you could go on the way you had been for years in denial. He remains stoic as you use every ounce of willpower to not break down in front of him.

"We’re never gonna be more than this, Y/N,” he says softly. “You have to know that.”

“Y'know Jay, if you wanted this to stay casual,” you wipe the tears away, “all you had to do was say so. You’re so concerned about her, but she’s in Austin ‘slutting around’ as you delicately put it, sleeping with who knows how many people-”

“Shut the fuck up, Y/N!” Jensen screamed, and your heart fell into your stomach. He’s never yelled at you like this before, you pushed him too far this time, letting your own jealousy take over. “Don’t talk about what goes on in my relationship with my wife. She is nothing like you, she doesn’t spread her legs every time someone gives her the time of day.”

“You fucking asshole!” You yell, picking up everything that you could get your hands on, and throwing it at him. “Get the fuck out!”

“Y/N,” he tries to reason with you, blocking himself from the barrage of items being thrown at him. “Baby, listen.”

“No!” You push him towards the front door and he stumbles backwards into the hallway.

“Y/N,” Jensen reaches out to soothe you. “I’m sorry, I didn’t- I didn’t mean it.”

“Don’t touch me,” you slap his hand away. “You’re never gonna touch me again,” you push him again, moving him closer to the door. “You can go back to your perfect wife, your perfect family. Congratulations, Jay. You don’t have to choose. We’re done.”

Part 2

#jensen ackles #jensen x reader #implied smut #angst #makemeswoon #sabrina's 250 follower writing challenge

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kaizokuou-ni-naru · 3 years

Text

The Voyage So Far: Enies Lobby

east blue (1 | 2) || alabasta (1 | 2) || skypiea || water 7 || enies lobby || thriller bark || paramount war (1 | 2) || fishman island || punk hazard || dressrosa (1 | 2) || whole cake island || wano (1 | 2)

this is still one of my very favorite nami panels. i think she’s really great through all of water 7 and enies lobby in general, actually, even though she isn’t really one of the characters in focus for a lot of it- like zoro and sanji, she stays pretty steadfast and very badass even though everything that happens, and never gives up on robin for a moment despite being one of the ‘weaker’ members of the crew. and it’s always fun to see her playing with lightning.

one of my favorite jokes from the first half or so of enies lobby is the strawhats both being completely unsurprised that luffy charges in ahead of them as soon as they arrive AND being able to find him immediately by following the explosions. they know him so well.

luffy’s never been scared of dying, going all the way back to when he told coby he was fine with dying for his dream back in chapter two or three. that conversation is what his exchange with blueno here reminds me of- blueno asks him how long he intends to keep fighting, and luffy says until he dies, like there’s nothing to it.

it’s always been a trait of his to face death unflinching with a grin, so long as it’s for the sake of something he cares about, be it his crew or his brother or his dream, and i just really like that about him.

i’ll go into it in the dressrosa post too, but i think it’s really impressive just how long oda held off on giving luffy any sort of significant power-up. he gets his first big power boost in the whole series here, forty volumes in. i’ve always liked that oda is very conservative with power boosts like this, because it both keeps the series’ powerscaling in check and makes the times it does happen much weightier. this is a monumental moment, and it feels like it.

also, i love the way gear two is drawn pre-timeskip, especially with the steam. it looks very cool and atmospheric.

i really like how united the strawhat crew feels throughout enies lobby, after all the internal turmoil and discord of water seven. even though the matter of usopp leaving the crew is still unresolved, they’ll all together once more, on the same page, and fully united in the goal of saving robin, whatever consequences it might bring.

the tree of knowledge has such a cool design- it looks massive, and even more than that, it looks old. you look at that tree and you know its been there for easily thousands of years. its seen entire eras of history, and it would be priceless even without the countless books stored inside it.

and then it burns.

i’m so endlessly sad about the tragedy that is robin’s relationship with her mother. they never even got to see each other until their world was ending, and even then only for a couple minutes.

olvia is a very interesting character, because she’s someone who chose her dream over the people she loved. that’s not an inherently good or bad choice, but it is a choice she made, and it’s what led to the ending she and robin had to have. i’ve wondered a lot what might have happened if she chose the other way, if she never left or if she came back sooner or if she chose to flee the buster call with robin, and how different (and almost certainly better) robin’s life would have been if she had.

in a way, olvia reminds me a lot of kouzuki toki. they both die in order to fling a light of knowledge and hope into the future, and they both send their children away and choose to stay behind to choke on ash for the sake of a better tomorrow.

i didn’t really notice until putting these panels together, but a lot of things burn in enies lobby. ohara burns, and the pluton plans and the world government flag, and enies lobby itself, and at the end, the going merry burns, too. if you extend it back to water seven, there’s the galley-la headquarters, too. in an arc that deals so much with the preservation and destruction of history and knowledge, it’s a fitting motif.

the world government flag burning is still to this day one of the most striking panels out of a series full of them, in my opinion. in one act, the strawhats proclaim their absolute defiance against the world government, and their willingness to make enemies of the greatest power in the world for the sake of their friend.

it’s also another one of those moments that’s interesting to think about in the context of luffy’s past. it was a ship flying that same flag that shot sabo down, and while luffy wasn’t there to see it, i don’t think he’s oblivious to that fact, especially given how he says just before this he understands robin’s enemies perfectly.

dadan told him and ace that there was nothing they could do against the whole world, and luffy went and did it anyways.

sometimes i just think about how scary it must have been for robin, someone who’s been weighed down by the shackles of her past with no escape in sight for so very long, to open herself up and let herself hope, for life and freedom and a dream that’s always been out of reach.

franky has a lot of really great moments between this arc and water seven- his conversation with usopp as usopp is working on merry and his talk with robin on the sea train are two others. it’s almost impressive how quickly he becomes an immensely likable character once we start getting to know him, given how he’s first introduced as an absolute piece of shit.

his burning of the pluton plans is a favorite of mine, and i think it might be because, like so many people before and after him, he’s choosing here to stake all his hopes on the strawhats, on luffy’s ability to pull off the impossible and on robin’s goodness. when robin’s only ever been chased and hated and called a demon by the world, franky chooses to trust her and luffy with the legacy his dad died for, and neither of them let him down.

monster point looks SO FUCKING TERRIFYING in enies lobby, and i LOVE it. look at that. franky is seven and half feet tall, and in front of monster point he’s tiny. monster point is huge, and dead-eyed, and a force of absolute destruction. i do kind of wish we got to see chopper go completely feral like this more often. he deserves to be terrifying!

i love how much FAITH all the rest of the strawhats continue to have in usopp throughout enies lobby. he left the crew and they really would have a right to be angry at him if they chose to, but it doesn’t even seem to cross any of their minds. they’re just happy he’s okay, and they include him again without missing a beat, because he’s still their friend and they know down to their bones they can trust him, even after everything.

i’ve always really loved zoro and kaku’s little moment of post-battle banter here- zoro relays paulie’s message about cp9 being fired, kaku says he’s out of a job, zoro tells him to try the zoo, and kaku cracks up.

it feels very real to me for whatever reason, and i think part of it ties back into how well one piece handles morality with its characters- zoro and kaku are genuinely pretty similar people who get along decently, it just happens that they wound up on opposite sides. there are series where you’d never see moments like this due to the lines between good and bad being so firmly drawn, and i love how one piece blurs those lines so much they may as well not exist a lot of the time.

this is the other sequence, along with luffy climbing the drum rockies barehanded, that always makes me physically cringe to look at. it looks so painful. robin is so nearly powerless here, but not quite- she can still buy time for her crew to catch up, even if it’s only seconds, even if she risks shattering her teeth or even her jaw in the process. she’s spent so long giving up and has only just started daring to hope- she’s not about to go gentle.

there aren’t many panels that give me catharsis like this one. there really aren’t.

oda’s villains are usually complicated and awful and often a little admirable, if only for how clever or how terrifyingly powerful they are, but every now and then he comes up with someone who’s just pathetic and cowardly and pointlessly cruel. spandam is like this, obviously, and so is orochi, and the celestial dragons, and i’d argue flampe from whole cake island as well. and there’s nothing like seeing characters like them- weak, cruel people so assured in their own power and rightness- get obliterated.

one of the things i really like about enies lobby is that nobody really gets sidelined- everybody gets multiple chances to shine. luffy, usopp, and obviously robin are the most in focus, obviously, but zoro, sanji, nami, chopper, and even franky all get a bunch of individual awesome moments. oda’s ability to handle his cast satisfyingly is consistently really impressive (if sometimes strained in huge ensemble arcs like dressrosa or wano) and it really shows here, i think.

i just really love the entire climax of enies lobby. much like the arc as a whole, it just feels triumphant, even though the situation is extremely dire. luffy unlocking gear three, robin’s cuffs getting unlocked, usopp shooting spandam and the marines all the way from the tower of justice- it’s all just good, a long chain of much-needed victories and catharses, and it feels very good to read.

i’ll always be impressed by just how much characterization oda manages to give merry, a boat. she’s only really a character in water seven and the end of enies lobby, only about two chapters of which she actually speaks in. and yet i don’t think you’d find a single one piece fan who disagrees that merry’s death is easily one of the most heartwrenching in the entire series.

i love the reactions of the strawhats to robin’s thanks. they’ve just gone through hell to save her, most of them are beat to shit and they all risked their lives, and yet they all just smile, or brush it off, because to them there’s nothing else they could have done. it’s all worth it, so long as they got her back, so long as she’s safe and happy.

merry’s funeral just hits me in the chest every single time i read it. it’s tragic, of course, but there’s also something almost lovely about it, something peaceful about her getting to go out on her own terms, carrying her crew to safety one last time, defying every rule of the universe to do it. just like a strawhat pirate.

oda’s ability to communicate emotion through expressions really comes through here, too. merry has the only lines in this scene, fitting for her death in the limelight, but the shots of every other crewmate’s face let us know at a glance just what they’re all feeling and just how strongly they’re feeling it.

you know, i’d forgotten we only learn the name of the new world after enies lobby. we only get proper exposition about the revolutionary army and the yonkou here, too, despite them being set up since loguetown and jaya (or alabasta, or even chapter one if you count from shanks’s introduction) respectively. oda’s ability to parse out exposition and explanation so we always have just the right amount of information is really impressive- we always have more questions, but we also always have the feeling that those questions have answers, and that sooner or later they’ll be revealed.

points at shanks. i just think he’s neat.

it’s my opinion that one of the great joys of one piece is seeing luffy and the crew rise up in the world, and seeing them gain more and more notoriety. i love nothing they do ever happens in a vacuum- everything has impacts, and there are always outside eyes watching, and often those impacts are things that they never could have predicted.

ace and blackbeard is still, i think, definitely one of the coolest looking fights in the whole series. it’s not all that often we get to see two people with extremely flashy and showy abilities go all-out against each other, and the resulting fireworks are still really something to behold, despite how badly it all ends.

#the voyage so far #one piece #opmeta #long post #arc: enies lobby #arc: post enies lobby #not japanese

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