#im larger than life in a way that makes people want to pry their fingers under my chasis and tear me apart

[ibis-gt]

47 maybe?

i love handhelds so much im going to explode

**********

Anya fidgeted nervously with the bedspread, smoothing wrinkles and plucking at the corners to make it as neat as possible. She glanced over her shoulder at the tiny man sitting on the edge of her nightstand, kicking his feet and staring at the floor below. She’d intended it to just be a quick look, then back to business, but something about him made her stop and stare for a moment. The blanket slipped out of her hands and she ignored it as fell to the mattress with a quiet fwump. But the sound and movement made the little man look up at her, and she started and turned back to the bed, face burning with embarrassment.

Felipe hid a chuckle behind his hand. It was odd that a woman so much larger than him was so nervous around him. He supposed she was worried about hurting him by accident, but she hadn’t managed it yet. He didn’t think she was capable of it, quite frankly. He watched her fuss with the already-perfect bedding and sighed happily. One week ago, he’d been working on his family’s farm, wondering if this was going to be the rest of his life, just digging in the dirt and living off the land. He didn’t mind it really, but he wanted a little excitement before he resigned himself to an uneventful existence. Then alarm horns had blared, he could see people in the nearby town running and screaming, and he’d caught sight of the giant raiding party and ducked into the cornfield to hide. Best mistake of my life, he thought dreamily, and gazed up at the woman who’d snatched him up in a handful of corn and stuffed him in a bag without even realizing.

“Well, I suppose that’s as good as it’s going to get,” Anya said at last, breaking Felipe out of his reverie. She brushed a lock of hair behind her ear and tried to pry her gaze up from the floor to look at him again. “Are you, um, ready for bed?” 

Felipe stretched his arms over his head and arched his back, yawning hugely. “S’pose I am,” he said, and stood up, waiting for her to pick him up. She still hadn’t gotten used to that yet. Her hand shook as she reached out for him, then snatched it back to her side.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m… it’s just… you’re so small. I’m worried I’ll… I don’t know, squeeze too tight, or something.”

“Then don’t squeeze,” he said. She gave him an exasperated look, and he laughed. “Sorry, let me be more clear. Here, just lay your hand out like this.” He held his hand out flat, palm up. “Set it on the edge here, I’ll just walk onto it. No squeezing necessary.”

She mirrored him, but didn’t reach out, instead staring doubtfully at her own palm. “But… what if I drop you? What if you fall?”

“You won’t. I trust you. Do you trust me?”

“Trust!” Anya gave a startled laugh and sat heavily down on the bed, slapping her open palm to her forehead. “It’s insane to talk about trust. We’ve only known each other a few days. I kidnapped you, for heaven’s sake.”

“All trust starts somewhere,” Felipe said. “It can start here for us. Hold out your hand.”

Anya looked at him again and sighed. She held out her hand, palm up. It shook ever so slightly as she set the backs of her fingers against the nightstand. Felipe placed one foot on her hand, holding his arms out for balance. When he was steady, he took another step so that he stood fully on her hand. Anya inhaled sharply, but her hand stayed where it was. He gave her a gentle smile and sat down, curling up in her palm.

She felt his tiny weight settle on her hand and let out the breath she’d been holding. She quite literally held his entire life in her hand at this moment, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Like he was meant to be there. Her fingers curled inwards as though protecting him and she lifted her hand up, and him with it.

Felipe's stomach flip-flopped as he ascended. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on Anya's face, watching the furrow in her brow relax and her worried eyes soften. Her features were so huge that he could see minute changes quite easily.

“There,” he said, beaming up at her. “Easy as that.” He traced a finger along one of the wrinkles in her palm. “Your hand is comfy.”

She laughed. “You don’t have to lie. It’s calloused as hell.”

“No, no, I mean it! It's got character. It’s quite warm. I could fall asleep here." He gave her a reassuring smile.

"Could you really? Do you trust me that much already?"

"I do. I’m pretty sure you couldn't hurt a fly."

"You don't know me very well, then."

Felipe hummed and leaned back against her fingers. He drifted his hand down her thumb. “I’d like to get to know you well,” he said, his voice so soft Anya almost couldn’t hear him. Her heart began to pound. He was very forward about what he wanted. He wanted a relationship with her, a serious one. She wasn’t necessarily opposed to it, but there were certain… considerations.

"Well… I like you, I really do, but I mean, you're so… and I'm so… would it even work with us? You couldn't handle…" She gestured vaguely to herself. "All this!"

"As God is my witness, I would gladly die trying!" Felipe said, pressing his hand to his chest with heartfelt sincerity.

Anya couldn't help it. She burst out laughing, so hard she snorted. When she'd gotten a handle on herself again, she saw Felipe staring up at her with the purest adoration plain on his face. That was the thing about him. He made her laugh in the most unexpected circumstances, and he meant every word he said. And he wasn’t just cute in the general way that humans were, being so tiny, but genuinely attractive when she looked at him up close. Nice strong features and kind eyes. She could get used to waking up to that every morning.

“We can try,” she said after a thoughtful pause. No harm in at least trying. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow. It’s late.” She set her hand down on the pillow and waited for him to get off. He didn’t.

“I wasn’t kidding when I said I could fall asleep here. If that’s alright with you, I mean?”

“Oh! Oh. Yes, that’s… that’s alright.”

Anya watched, face burning, as he laid down on his side and shifted a bit to get comfy, even nuzzling his face into her palm, before finally closing his eyes and letting out a sigh of contentment. His breathing evened out and he seemed to fall asleep in seconds.

He really wasn’t kidding. Huh.

Anya carefully laid down, trying to keep her hand still so she didn’t disturb him. Her elbow ended up lodged awkwardly under her ribcage, but she would’ve sacrificed all the comfort in the world if it meant he could sleep peacefully. She owed him that, at least. Anya thought she wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep, too nervous that she’d fidget or roll in the night and hurt Felipe, but before long her eyelids were heavy, and with every blink she felt less and less like keeping them open, and at last she drifted off as well.

#asks #writing #g/t #giant tiny #anya and felipe #on the one hand slow burns are more realistic and the payoff is more satisfying #on the other hand im an impatient bitch and a romantic at heart #love at first sight but then also they have to work through some stuff and Communicate ok. that's my shit

[heyheydidjaknow]

I would’ve posted this earlier but, alas, I passed out early. This is a longer one, but tumblr got its act together so I can post it all in one part. You guys know where the other chapters are, and if you don’t, they’re at the end of the chapter. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go eat straight Nutella.

Chapter 10

“I’m thinking about getting some gloves.”

He looks over at you as he laces up his skates. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” you nod, smiling slightly to yourself as you look your hands over, trying to imagine what they would look like. “Like, badass, fingerless gloves.”

He smiles. “Dude, those would look metal as fuck.”

“Totally, right?” Your smile widens. “With studs and shit.”

He gets to his feet, hopping onto the ice. “Hell yeah.” He drops a puck to assault as you go back to your backed-up coursework the best you can—your handwriting has gone to hell, but you are working with what you have.

You flinch at the crack of his stick, the cross of the T ending up underneath the letter somehow. A cheer from Casey tells you the rubber cylinder’s fate.

‘I swear I learned this.' You squint at the basic algebra, the pencil, crudely held in your fist, hovering over the packet. ‘Why can’t I do this?’

“How’s your pile coming along?” Another crack.

“It’s comin’.” You run your fingers through your hair. “Just… trynna remember how to do ne—… subtraction.” ‘Not debate. Negating is debate.’

He laughs. Another crack. “Man, that thing really fucked you over, huh?”

“Thoroughly.” You decide against continuing to torture yourself, having been at it for the past five hours—most of it in the library before Casey invited you to watch him practice some more— and set the large stack of homework back in your bag. “Are you actually making the shots?”

“Casey Jones doesn’t miss shots.” Another crack.

“Pardon me, oh almighty king of the ice.” You stand on your good leg, grabbing the side of the wall to watch as he went back to collect his pucks.

You two have managed to bond over a mutual respect/love of heavy metal and hockey and, seeing as you are staying out of the Hamatos’ hair for a while—not upon request, but out of courtesy—you have managed to spend a lot more time with him than you may have otherwise. Your school has not assigned Biology any big projects yet, so, until you are assigned it, you do not have anything other than your health to stress about.

“Pardon accepted.” You watch his form as he performs another slap shot.

“You…” you trail off, trying to remember what you were going to say.

“What?”

You shrug. “Dunno.” You lean your head on your arms. “I’ll remember eventually.”

He drops the second puck. “Got any plans after this?”

You sigh. “Nope. Probably gonna head home and try not to cut my fingers making dinner again.”

He takes another shot. “Then let’s go out after this. You and me.”

You smile. “What, don’t have any plans either?”

“Nah.” He drops the third. “Dad doesn’t care if I’m home late anyway.”

“True, true.” You have decided against prying into his home life; it is not your place and does not concern you in the slightest. “Where do you wanna go?”

“Wanna catch a movie? Heard there was this new pizza place just a couple blocks down if you wanna try to sneak it in.”

You snicker. “In the box and all?”

“Yes.” He grins mischievously and hits this one off the walls. Some way, somehow, it still makes it into the goal. “I bet your sweatshirt is big enough to stick the box under.”

You stick your tongue out at him. “Not in the mood for burns on top of scars, Jones,” you reprimand him teasingly. “That just ain't it.”

“Then you can wear mine under that one and—”

“Your sweat-soaked hoodie you’ve been practicing in all day?” You cringe at the thought. “Over my dead body.”

“I mean…” he licks his teeth, smile widening, “it’s not exactly like you’re in the best—”

You laugh. “So not cool!”

He puts his hands up in defense, gliding over. “I mean, am I wrong, though?”

“That is completely besides the point, you ass.” You balance on your foot, crossing your arms. “Damn. Making fun of the girl with the broken leg.”

He leans against the wall. “Man, you were dying before the crash.”

You roll your eyes. “Alright, whatever, Jones.” You lean against your hand. “How’s Johanna,” you sing.

He presses his hand against your face, pushing you away. “Annie is doing fine.”

You grin, steadying yourself on the wall. “Do you feel her, Johanna?”

“I’m gonna tell her you call her that if you don’t quit it.”

“Do you think that walls can hide her? Even when you’re at her window?”

He pushed his arm all the way out. You hop back.

“Her name isn’t even Johanna.”

“But she is Johanna,” you whine in protest, not bothering to hide your mirth. “She has the hair, the voice, the disposition. She’s an ingénue and you know it.” You have been teasing him about this for a while now: the girl in question—Annabelle Halshaw, a year below you two—had caught his eye when he had heard through the grapevine that she was the lead singer in some indie band. When he had shown you a picture and told you the story, you insisted on calling her Johanna for her golden hair and soft, sweet singing voice he had proudly had you listen to.

“She’s not.”

You roll your eyes, sitting back down as you grab your bag. “Lie to yourself all you want,” you goad, “but deep down, you know in your heart that the truth,” you put a finger up, “is apparent.”

He hops off the ice, sitting next to you as he unlaces his skates. “Whatever.” He smirks. “How’s The Don?”

You avert your gaze. “I haven’t seen ‘im.”

“Boo.” He tied the laces together. “Some girlfriend you are,” he ribs.

You go red. “Not my boyfriend. Not even friends with benefits.”

“Yeah, sure.” He sets the skates into his bag. “That’s why you already know his family.”

“That—”

“And why you’ve had him over to your place.”

“If you don’t cool your tits, I’m telling Lucy you’re crushing on her friend.”

“Don’t you dare!”

“What,” you simper, “think I won’t?”

He grabs his bag. “If you do, I’ll show her that video.”

You laugh, following him out of the rink. “You’re the worst.” You note how strange it is that he spent so little time on the ice as you two walk out, but you do not say anything about it.

“Hey, you’re the one throwing threats around.”

“Yeah,” you argue, “but my threat is clearly better.”

He rolls his eyes, pushing you again.

You two keep chatting on the way to the theatre about anything and everything, from new bands to upcoming games to the newest blockbuster horror movies. You are not personally on the hockey team, but, as his friend, it is your duty to care. Besides, you figure, it gives you something to look forward to.

The movie is fine. You convince him against sneaking an entire pizza in, you split a bucket of popcorn, and you give him shit for getting freaked out by the disembowelment scene. It is payback for him teasing you about crying during the last movie you two went to a couple of days ago.

You two stand at the streetlight.

“Dude, it’s like eight,” he groans. “It’s not even late.”

“True,” you agree. “Counterpoint: I still have another week’s worth of work to do by Friday on top of the homework I’ll have to do anyway, so unless you wanna help—”

“Forget I asked.” He pulls his hood up against the autumn wind. “Need me to walk you back?”

“Nah.” You shrug. “If someone mugs me, they’ll give me an excuse to not do my homework.”

“Murdered?

“I’m already halfway there.”

He grins. “See ya tomorrow, Y/N.”

“See ya, Jones.” You wave as he runs off.

The walk home is quiet and considerably easier than it was a couple of weeks ago. Seeing as you now get queasy whenever you get into a car, you have been limited to taking the subway and walking, which, among other things, has contributed positively to your physical strength. You know that you should probably at least try to take the bus or a cab around town to build your tolerance up, but the last time you tried, you had almost tripped and fallen from how shaky your legs were getting out. Oddly enough, you note as you go through the door, you do not have a considerably larger fear of heights than you did before, or of fire, but cars were tripping you up, even though you were the one that crashed it. You feel thankful that, at least, you do not think your fear is crippling. At least, you reason, you can still get into the car.

You lock the door behind you, debating whether you feel like adding to the collection of cuts you now possess— they are self-inflicted, but not intentionally so; you stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the fact that you physically cannot use your hands to cut things. You decide against it tonight, tossing your bag on the bed as you sprawl across it, admittedly exhausted. You allow yourself a couple of seconds with your eyes closed before you pull yourself up with a groan and get back to work.

A part of you wishes that you had the physical energy to stay out longer. You are always trying to find excuses not to sleep, and although the mountain of homework and readjusting your timelines for things you missed is certainly one way to keep yourself preoccupied, it is not exactly what you would consider fun. Then again, reliving your greatest traumas while you sleep is not exactly fun either.

You catch yourself peeling at the newly applied bandages on your fingers, fingernails catching under the crudely applied adhesives. Applying bandages properly requires more dexterity and patience than you currently possess, and you are hardly going to ask someone else for help with something as stupid as that. You have lasted this long without needing too much help. People can live by themselves. You will live, probably. Well? Not your concern.

‘I should eat something.’ Your eyes strain to focus on the piece of paper in front of you, your mind wandering aimlessly as you try to impress the actual importance of finishing this upon yourself, but you find that is an insurmountable feat.

You drop your bag off the side of the bed, reaching down and pulling your shoe off, leaning back into your pillows, the weight of the day practically immobilizing you. Fumbling hands switch the lamp off, bathing your room in momentary, blissful darkness before the gravity of your decision sets in.

“Alright, me,” you breathe to yourself. “What’s it gonna be today? My folks? Bradford? What’s his face? Hell,” you chuckle, “why not all three? I’m sadistic enough, I’m sure.”

You close your eyes. “Give me your worse,” you challenge as you slip into unconsciousness.

--

Two weeks.

He had kept his distance for about two weeks. It was not as if he did not care or was not morbidly curious what the crash had done to you—his glances through the curtains did not tell him much-- but, after some debate, he had figured you needed time to recuperate before you would want his company. Two weeks, he figured, would be enough time for you to get back on your feet or, at least, for you to start wanting company.

His excuse to see you had come in the form of his brother’s newfound prideful boasting. Feigning insult was as good an excuse as any to go see you; after all, he just so happened to be in the neighborhood anyway, and it was normal to pop in to see someone if you were already just a couple blocks down, right? Sneaking away was easy enough—they would not mind his absence—and he, after much prep work, knew exactly how and why he was going to say the things he would to get in your good favor. The plan, he knows, would have gone swimmingly.

His plans seem asinine when he hears you crying.

His brothers do not cry much. He does not, either; it was a habit that they had all thoroughly bullied themselves out of when they were much younger and, if they still did, he knew nothing of it. His master did not encourage this, per se, but talked, then, frequently about the importance of maintaining a more stoic disposition and not allowing emotions to cripple you in battle. Practically, Donatello was satisfied with that explanation, having not properly cried for more than a year now. To hear the sound again, especially coming from you, was novel.

Novel, too, is how you are crying. The sound is less of actual sobbing and more of you being strangled, quiet gasps for air escaping your lips as you shake on the bed, curled in on yourself and clutching at your chest as if whatever pain you are experiencing is centered and can be relieved by something between your collarbones. His eyes, for the first time, trace the lines on your skin, your sleeves riding up your arms to reveal them to him, tears racing down and along the gash in your face. Everything about the scene, from the soft gasping of panic to your position to the heavy scarring, is completely foreign to him, rivaled only by one or two particularly hard nights when he and his brother were much younger.

He slides in through the window, leaning onto the bed. His fingers flick your lamp back on as he grabs your shivering shoulder tightly, shaking you awake as he mumbles words of encouragement. He is not sure if his help will be appreciated, if snapping you out of it was even what he is supposed to do in this situation, but now is not the time to think of that. You are in pain. He can offer you this kindness. “Wake up,” he pleads, not thinking of how this would look until your eyes snap open to look at him.

Immediately, the reality of the situation sets in, and he scrambles off the bed. ‘Why did I think that would be a good idea?’ Panic. ‘You just walked into her room like a fucking creep. See, now she’s going to—’

“Sorry.”

He blinks, looking up at you from his place on the floor. “Huh?”

You clear your throat, wiping the tears from your eye with your sleeve quickly as you bring your knees to your chest, voice hoarse. “Sorry,” you repeat. “That you… I’m not sure what I’m apologizing for, but I know I should be apologizing.”

He is completely dumbfounded.

Your eyes glance to the open window. “I should probably start closing and locking my window, right?” You rub the back of your neck, voice clearing the longer you talk. “It didn’t occur to me since I’m so high up, but if you guys can get in, The Foot can too, right?”

‘Why is she apologizing?’

You push the hair out of your face. ‘You need something, right? I—uh—need to stop saying ‘right’ so much.” You shake your head to clear it. “’ Sup?”

He hears himself mumble some bullshit out about being in the neighborhood.

You sigh. “Sorry.” You close your eyes. “I’m usually up later; I’ve been so tired lately.”

‘Is she serious right now?’ He is completely lost. ‘She was just crying her eyes out in her sleep and now she’s apologizing? Did I miss something?’ You are smiling now, eyes still bloodshot, as if the whole thing is a figment of his imagination, still shivering where you sit.

He rises to his feet, kneeling in front of you on the bed. “What was it about?”

You blink, seemingly confused. “Huh?”

“Your nightmare,” he clarifies. “You were crying. What was it about?”

You avert eye contact. “Nothing too crazy,” you shrug. “Just about the crash. Nothing too exciting.” If possible, he thinks the bags under your eyes are worse than the last time you saw him.

He takes your hands loosely, turning them palms up to look, for the first time, at the patchwork quilt that is now your skin. “What happened in it?” He runs his thumb along the lines, keeping his voice low; he remembers how that used to help when Mikey used to have fits when they were younger. Leonardo and Raphael were never good at that; they took better to being more violently snapped out of their moods, but, then again, they never had this kind of breakdown; theirs were always more driven by loathing, self or otherwise.

You pause, still not looking him in the face as your muscles relax. He remembers, vividly, how he had done something similar when you two had first met, how much better, health-wise, you looked. ‘How long has it been since then? Three months? A little less?’

You take a deep breath. “Just… family shit,” you mumble, eyelids drooping as you trace his frame loosely. “Fire.”

Your gaze is piercing as you finally look at him properly. He feels something catch in his throat as you bow your head.

“It’s my fault, you know.” Your voice is so soft, barely a whisper. “That they’re dead, I mean.”

The air is a suffocating blanket that smothers you both.

“I never told you, did I?” Your focus does not shift as it might have a bit ago. It is locked solely and intensely on him, taking in every detail of his expression. “How I died? How they died? Why I died?”

Hesitantly, he shakes his head. He thinks it best to just be quiet and let you talk. He does not think he has ever heard anyone speak in quite the same tones, ever looked at him quite the same way you are.

You take another breath. “I wanted to try my hand at baking.” You force your eyes to stay focused on his. “I was—still am—not good about sleep. I always slept bad, and never at the right times. I used to take pills for it, to try to get myself back on track.”

He sees where this is going.

“I thought I could still stay up as late as I was used to.” You glance to the side, stealing yourself a second before focusing back on the boy in front of you. “I sat down in my room, turned on a movie. I set a timer. I fell asleep.” You swallow, hands shaking in his. “I can’t smell well, either. I must not have smelled the burning.” Your lips curl in a bitter smile. “Sure as fuck felt it, though, when I woke up.”

He lets you finish.

You try to blink the tears out of your eyes. “They were asleep,” Your voice rises ever so slightly. “I fell asleep at two something. I woke up when they started yelling.” You purse your lips, face reddening in shame as your nostrils flair. “They were trying to get someone out of bed when the roof caved in above them. My door got blocked.”

You feel yourself smile.

“So,” you strain not to cry, “that, Donatello, is why I’m here and why I’m dead, and why I really do deserve to burn again.” You laugh. “Hell, my body count is rivaling some serial killers, so that’s… that’s certainly something.”

He lets go of your hands, face blank.

You lean forward, placing your hands on your knees. “I don’t blame you,” You wipe a wayward tear out of your eyes, trying to swallow the frog in your throat. “Fuck, man, I’d think less of me, too, if it were me.” You nod towards the window. “I get it if you want to leave, but I thought you might want to know why—”

He stops you mid-sentence, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you to him.

Your arms lay slack at your sides as you try to process what is happening.

He does not say a word.

You break.

You burry your face into him, tears welling in your eyes as you let out a strangled sob. You hold onto him tightly as you struggle to breathe, body shaking as you wrap your own arms around him the best you can. The sound roars in your ears like thunder, the deafening quiet of the apartment punctuated only by your own cries. He gently holds you there, resting his head on top of yours. Each sound you make sounds as though you are physically being choked by your guilt, and his chest feels as though it is being crushed by an invisible hand as he listens to your pain.

Neither of you knows how long you stay like that.

He considers telling you a story from a long time ago, about some training he and his brothers had back then, but thought better of it; he does not want to upset you any more than you already are, and being in good company with someone like him may not be exactly what you need right now. Granted, he does not know what you do need, but he knows listening to him talk about bashing brains would not help your sensibilities any.

Instead, he stays quiet.

You pull away after a while, wiping your face off again as you mumble out an apology.

“Don’t apologize.” He clears his throat. “It’s good to cry; it releases endorphins.”

You smile at that. “Well,” you giggle tearfully, “if it releases endorphins.”

He smiles back, face flushing. You look good, he thinks, even with your face all red. He knows that, scientifically, there is probably a reason, but he cannot think of it right now.

He stands up. “I’ll get—”

You grab his hand tightly.

He looks back at you.

“Can I ask a favor?”

He blinks. “Of course,” he agrees easily. “Anything.”

You glance off. “Promise not to take it weird?”

He feels his heart rate increase. “Y-yeah,” he nods.

He feels you pull him gently back on the bed. “Can you stay here tonight?”

His eyes widen as they flicker between the mattress and you. “What,” he clarifies breathlessly, “like sleep with you?”

You nod.

“In the same bed?”

You hesitate, nod again.

He clears his throat, face heating again. “Like, actually?”

“If it wasn’t actually, I wouldn’t ask, would I?” You grip his hand tightly. “I just really don’t want to be alone tonight.”

‘Oh.’ He mentally kicks himself. ‘She’s scared. Don’t make her uncomfortable.’

“It’s alright if you don’t—”

He is extremely quick to reassure you that he is more than happy—‘Bad choice of wording.’—to stay tonight until you fall asleep, but that he would not stay the whole night as to not worry his brothers.

You nod in agreement. “That’s fine.” You rub the back of your neck. “Not sure I would be good company when I wake up, anyway; I still have class.”

“Oh, right.” He nods in understanding, pushing himself further onto the bed. “Which side…?”

You shrug. “Which way do you face?”

“I usually lie on my stomach.”

“Then it doesn’t matter.” You slide your sweatshirt over your head after a bit of squirming around, tossing it onto the couch.

His face is now scarlet. “Okay then,” he mumbles, laying down on the side away from the window. ‘Is she going to—no, stop that.’

You look over at him, face down on the mattress. You can almost feel the heat coming off him. “Are you alright there, buddy?”

He nods.

You shrug, laying down under the blanket and curling into him, facing the window. “Mind getting the light?”

He reaches over, clicking it off.

You sigh in content, turning to face him, teetering on the edge of the mattress. “I’m not venomous,” you inform him teasingly. “I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: of the two of us, you should not be the one who’s a nervous wreck.”

“You dunno that.” His voice is muffled by the bed.

“You’re the strong one,” you argue.

“So?” He turns his head to look at you. “I’m the guy laying in the—I’m just gonna stop that sentence.”

“It’s only bad if it isn’t consensual.” You smile reassuringly. “I invited you to lay with me, right? So, unless I make you uneasy, then we’re all good.”

He breaks eye contact. “So,” he clarifies, “you don’t mind if I move closer to you?”

You shake your head.

He hesitantly slides himself further onto the bed. “Can I move closer than this?”

“You’ve already seen me bawl my eyes out. You’re doing me a service. Move as close or as far as you want.”

He moves to press his side against you. “Is this fine?”

You nod. “Look, how about this?” You rest your arm under your head. “If you do something I’m uncomfortable with, the safe word is pina colada.”

‘We already have a safe word?’ He was not sure if he is on cloud nine or just terrified of you.

You are very confused why he looks so warm. “Do you need me to turn the AC on?”

He shakes his head. “I’m good,” he assures you tightly. Slowly, he reached an arm out and over your waist, pulling you closer. You do not seem to resist in any way, wrapping your good leg around one of his to pull him closer.

‘Conscious touching.’ He glances down at you, trying to act cool. ‘Conscious, intentional touching. She smells so nice and she feels—okay, this is not going to work if you keep being a perv.’

“Thanks,” you mumble, humming softly. “I appreciate this more than you know.”

Cloud nine. Definitely on cloud nine.

“Every time.”

You giggle.

He blinks. “What?”

“Every time,” you note, already nodding off. “Like in that book.”

‘Which one?’ “They wrote it down for a reason, right?” The longer he spends like this, the smoother he feels.

“Totally.” You smile, closing your eyes. “Just know that this goes both ways, alright? If you ever need help like this, you know who to call.”

This is new. ‘Help like this? What, like crying?’ His eyebrows furrow as he tries to understand what you mean. ‘Or he means if I ever need company in my—what did I just say?’

You pick up on his confusion. “Emotional help, I mean.” Your fingers trace the indentations in his shell absentmindedly. “I mean, I know sometimes I didn’t want to go to my family about stuff. I dunno if you have that…” you trail off, realizing that you might be unintentionally bashing his brothers. You sincerely do not want to blow this.

“I mean,” he says after a bit, “I think I get what you’re talking about.” He sighs. “You mean stuff that they’d make fun of me for, right?”

You nod.

He feels his heart melt a little. “I’ll have to take you up on that.”

You forgot how safe he makes you feel. “Goodnight, Donnie,” you mumble sleepily.

“Goodnight, Y/N.”

You pass out not long after that. If he has to estimate a general amount of time, he will clock it in at about five minutes. He does not move, however, until about thirty minutes before sunrise, too busy listening to the sound of your breathing and memorizing how exactly your body feels next to his. As he slips out of the window, early morning air waking him back up completely, he wonders if, someday, he could stay to see you wake up next to him. Not out of necessity, but just because you both wanted to stay like that for a while more.

‘I hope so. It’s a nice dream to have, anyhow.’

Table of Contents

Chapter 9

Chapter 11

#tmnt donnie #donnie x reader #2012 donnie #donnie #donatello x reader #tmnt donatello #donatello #tmnt #tmnt fanfiction #tmnt 2012 #tmnt 2k12 #teenage #teenage mutant ninja turtles 2012 #teenage mutant ninja turtles #hurt/comfort #still angst #but not as much #hamato clan #donatello hamato #y/n #self insert #self insert fanfiction #tmnt x reader

[bellamyblcke]

I Want to Ruin Our Friendship

Fandom: True Beauty

Pairing: Han Seojun/Im Jugyeong

Summary: Jugyeong and Seojun find each other again. And everything and nothing has changed

A/N. Show verse! Future fic! Mutual pining! Happy endings! Huzzah! Follows canon up till the end of 1x12, where instead of the “reveal”, Suho and Jugyeong just date in a chill way and then amicably split at the end of the year. Also yes, I did write this before 1x14 came out, but here’s my take on a flash forward, I guess. 

Read on AO3

Jugyeong is working on a model’s face — she knows she knows his name, but she’s really having trouble remembering it — when she hears a voice calling her name, and she looks up. “Huh?” she asks, not seeing anyone in front of her.

“You?” she hears, and she turns around. “Han Seojun?” she asks in disbelief, and then she’s squealing and dropping her brush and rushing at him.

Seojun raises an arm as if to defend himself, but Jugyeong pushes past the arm, hugging him tightly around the waist and burying her head in his chest. “Hey!” someone calls. But, “It’s alright,” Seojun says into her hair, raising a hand to hug her back.

She pulls back from him, holding him by the elbows. “I didn’t know you’d be here,” she says, whacking him. It’s been almost five years now since she’s seen Seojun, not since he’d debuted and Suho had moved to the States to go to school in Los Angeles, and Jugyeong had decided to stay in Seoul to work.

“Hey!” he calls. “I didn’t know you’d be here either.” But he looks pleased. It’s been so long since Jugyeong has seen that pleased look that she feels a smile spread wide across her face.

She’s missed him. She tells him so, and watches the pleased look warp. “You missed me?” he says as if in disbelief.

“Of course I did,” she says, promptly. He runs a hand up the back of his head, ruffling his hair. It’s dyed a shade of red now, and it suits him. Though he’d always been handsome, the kind of handsome that made people stop to look at him, she thinks he looks even better now. The thought causes a flush to go through her. She reaches up and ruffles his hair to chase the feeling, and he shoots her a look, catching her wrist.

“Hey,” he says.

“Do you two know each other?” the model she’d been working on asks, and Jugyeong turns back to look at him. She’d completely forgotten he’d been there. Seojun drops her wrist, and Jugyeong pulls it back into her chest. It feels strange and tingly.

“We went to school together,” Seojun says, dropping into the chair next to the model. Jugyeong’s coworker Kim Soo gives him a giddy, panicked look, which makes Jugyeong want to laugh. Seojun is far too ridiculous to obsess over.

But still, Jugyeong feels very aware of the fact that he’s here, propping his feet on the makeup table in front of him, and talking languidly to the guy beside him, apparently they know each other, though Jugyeong has still not been able to determine his name. He looks up at Jugyeong, and raises an eyebrow. “Don’t you have work to do?”

“Don’t you?” she says, automatically, swiping at his feet to remove them from the table.

“I do,” he responds, and gestures at his face, and Jugyeong laughs despite herself, screwing up her face at him, and he laughs, too.

“Sorry,” she tells the model, picking her brush back up and returning to looking at his face, tilting it to change the angle, and adjusting the blush slightly, and then stepping back. “You’re done,” she says, fluttering her hand to indicate that he can go.

He raises an eyebrow at her, but pushes off the chair, and with a wave to Seojun disappears. “Well,” Seojun says, and Jugyeong stares at him for a moment, “What?”

“Aren’t you going to make me over?”

“Oh,” she says. Why is she holding a brush again? “Yes,” she says, and then steps forward into his space.

She’d just been doing the same thing moments before, in fact she’s put makeup on hundreds of people at this point in her career, but suddenly it feels absurdly intimate doing it to Seojun. She feels as if his skin holds a charge. His eyes flick up to her face. “Are you normally this particular?”

Jugyeong flushes. She’d been smoothing cream on the edge of his cheekbones for a minute now, and she swipes a larger amount across his entire cheek clumsily. “Yes,” she says, tartly.

His eyes are warm. “I missed you, too,” he says, softly, so that only she can hear.

.

They get soju and samgyupsal after the show, and when they are sitting and eating, two girls come up to him to ask for autographs. “Is she your girlfriend?” the one on the left asked, looking shyly at Jugyeong. “She’s pretty.”

Seojun looks up at Jugyeong as if just now noticing she is here. “Is she?” he asks, but there is a humor to the question that Jugyeong doesn’t get. She tucks her hair self-consciously behind her ear. It’s shorter now, and back to her natural black. “I guess she is.”

The girls squeal, and walk off twittering. “You know they think you said I was your girlfriend,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. Seojun shrugs.

“Are you not dating anyone then?” Jugyeong asks, unsure why she is prying.

“Why?” he asks, mouth full. “Is this a date?”

“No,” Jugyeong says automatically. “We’ve been friends too long for that.”

Seojun gives her a look, though with his mouth still full, she can’t quite read it. Jugyeong takes a large sip of soju to fill the silence, and sputters as she swallows it.

“You can’t hold your liquor very well,” Seojun comments smugly.

But later, as he is walking her home, she finds that it’s him that can’t hold his liquor well, not her. He’s stumbling, and Jugyeong has put his arm around her shoulders to steady him. He’s tall enough that he has to stoop to lean on her. His hand pats at her hair in an affectionate gesture, and Jugyeong smiles, pulling his fingers from her hair, and placing them more securely on her shoulder.

“You’re drunk,” she informs him.

“No, I’m not.” He pushes off from her and then turns around to look at her. “Your hair,” he says, gesturing.

Jugyeong raises a hand to it. “What?”

“You cut it,” he says, as if this is a big surprise.

“Yours is red,” she informs him.

He gasps, putting a hand to his scalp. “Is it? Where?”

She laughs, and then steps forward and puts her arm around his waist. “Come on,” she says. “You can sleep on my floor.”

“She’s inviting me into her house,” he says, and Jugyeong whacks his arm, and he laughs into her hair, and she thinks of how two nights before, she had gone for a walk by herself in the park, and passed Prince Comics, and thought about how boring her life was now, how in high school everything had seemed so much more intense, joy and anguish pungent enough to taste, but now it had all faded to a sort of mellow contentment. Perhaps that’s what growing up meant, she’d thought. But, here, arm and arm with Han Seojun, Jugyeong feels awake for the first time in a long time, as if she had blinked and gone backwards in time.

.

When she wakes the next morning, Seojun isn’t where she’d left him lying on the floor, wrapped in a blanket, snoring quietly, and she startles and swings her legs from bed, darting out into the main room. But then there he is, in the t-shirt and jeans he was wearing yesterday, leaning against the counter and talking to her mother, looking ridiculously put together for the time.

Jugyeong stops in the doorway, and he turns back to look at her. “Good morning,” he says, brightly.

Her mother turns more slowly to look at her, and Jugyeong gives her an awkward wave, unsure if she’s going to yell or not. She’d meant to sneak Seojun out in the morning. “You could have told me Han Seojun was dropping by,” Eomma says instead though, her voice somehow both cheerful and threatening. “I would have cleaned.”

Soejun looks around the place and his eyes widen. “Have you not? It looks spotless.”

He nods his head to Jugyeong and she sees that there is a bra hanging over the back of the couch — not one of hers but how is he to know that? — and she gasps, plucking it up and tossing it out of sight. But Seojun just laughs, still talking to her mother about his latest music video, which her mother watched nonstop after it was released, while repeatedly reminding Jugyeong that she had passed up the opportunity to make Han Seojun her son-in-law, and now look where he was. It had been a nice video. Though not really Jugyeong’s thing, Seojun has always been good at the sort of easy sexuality that sells. Sometimes she thinks everything comes easy to him.

“Leave him alone!” Jugyeong cries eventually, extracting Seojun from her mother’s clutches.

“I don’t mind,” he says, smiling as she drags him away and into her room.

He mock gasps when she presses the door closed behind them, trapping him against it. “Are you taking advantage of me?” he asks her, and it’s only then that she realizes how close they are, and she moves back from him, almost tripping in her haste to get away.

“Han Seojun!” she cries, but he just smiles. And Jugyeong realizes that she’s smiling too, that she’s hardly stopped smiling since she’s seen him again.

.

It’s only a little bit later when she goes to the bathroom and sees herself in the mirror that Jugyeong realizes that this is the first time Seojun has ever seen her without makeup. And while her skin is nicer than it was when she was a teenager, she still has spots, and her face is puffy from sleep and her hair is a wreck . “Ay,” she cries, splashing water on her face and then running a brush through her hair so it lies flat, and smoothing some bb cream on the red parts of her face. It’s not much, but it’s enough to make her feel more comfortable.

“Sorry,” she says, when she gets back to her room. “I must have given you a fright.”

“Hmmm, you always do,” Seojun says, not looking up from his phone. He’s half-lying on her bed as he texts, and Jugyeong flushes at the sight of it, though she couldn’t say why. Why would she think he would care if she was wearing makeup or not? He’s never thought of her like that. She throws herself down on the bed next to him, and he startles, moving his phone out of sight. “Aish,” he says. “You’re such a loser.”

Jugyeong just hums. “Han Seojun?” she says, watching him carefully. He looks over at her, something cautious in his eyes. Their legs are brushing.

“What?” he says, suspiciously.

“Let’s stay friends this time,” she says. “Let’s not miss each other again.”

He looks at her for a moment longer, and then, “Alright,” he says before he shoves her so that she goes falling onto the ground below.

.

They keep their word to stay friends. They’re both busy with work, but she finds it’s easier to slot him into her life than she could have imagined, and even though several weeks before, she hadn’t seen him in years, she finds now she can hardly imagine her life without him. He’s meant to go on tour in a couple of weeks, and she’s already mourning the loss of him.

She’s at his apartment now, and they’re arguing about which movie to watch. Seojun likes to talk throughout the whole thing, which is endearing, but also means that it can’t be a movie Jugyeong really wants to see. But she finds she likes squabbling with him, too. It feels natural.

She lunges for the remote in his right hand, and he holds it high out of reach. “It’s not,” she leaps, “fair for,” she presses forward again and he dangles it just out of reach, “you to use your height,” she’s pressed tight into him now, and she stretches just a little further and feels the remote right at her fingertips, “against me!”

He is silent, and she looks down and realizes his face is millimeters away from hers. She freezes for a moment, the remote forgotten. And then she remembers herself, and scrambles backwards across the couch and away from him. His face has softened, in surprise, she thinks, but then he smirks, and presses the button to start the film. “‘Fair is fair,” is all he says, settling back into his spot.

He falls asleep part way through the film, despite it being his choice, his long legs stretched out in front of him. Juyeong is curled up all the way on the other side of the couch, wrapped tightly in her blanket, but she extricates herself from it, crawling towards him to see if he’s really asleep. The credits are rolling now, and she thinks to do something to tease him, tickle him awake maybe, but she finds when she is close, she doesn’t want to. Instead, she just stares at him, his face sleep-soft and handsome, his hand clutching his blanket tight to his chest, and Jugyeong feels a sort of overwhelming tenderness wash over her. It’s a feeling she’s only ever associated with Suho before, and she’d mainly felt it when she’d seen him in pain and wondered what she could possibly do to help. Now, she feels it again unprompted, like an itch in her fingertips, like a tiny heartbreak. Like a smile.

.

He is walking her home after dinner again, sober this time, when he says, suddenly, “Why did you and Suho break up?”

Jugyeong makes a sound in response, considering. “Why do you want to know?” she asks, eventually.

“I don’t,” he says, coughing, and then when this response seems too absurdly untrue, “I was just curious.”

“Well,” Jugyeong says. “He wanted to go to the States for school. And I wanted to stay here.”

“And that’s it?”

“No,” Jugyeong says, because it’s not. It was far more complicated than that. She’s never tried to tell anyone before, but if there was anyone that she could explain it to, it’s Seojun. And she tries to think of how to put it to words: “I don’t know if you know, but I was really badly bullied back at my old school.”

Seojun makes a sound, but Jugyeong’s not sure she can keep talking if she looks at him, so she doesn’t, just keeps her gaze on the landscape. “And when I came to Saebom and people seemed to like me, I was so frightened that they would find out that I was a fraud. And that they would all leave. But Suho,” she released her breath. “He didn’t care about that. He just thought well she likes comics, too. Or I don’t know, l like that she’s so ridiculous. And he was popular, but he was alone too, you know? He felt just as alone as I did. We needed each other.” She smiles. “And he was the first person to tell me I was pretty that I believed, you know?”

“I’m sorry,” Seojun says, finally. The streets had passed as they walked. “That people treated you like that back then.”

Jugyeong looks over at him in surprise, and she finds that his face is both strange and deeply familiar. He’s looked at her like this before, she thinks. “It feels like a long time ago now,” she says.

They walk a ways further, and then she says what she’d meant to say all along, “You don’t forget your first love,” she says, “But you don’t always end up with them either.”

.

He goes on tour and it’s not as bad as she’d thought it would be. He calls her most nights. Everyone else in the house goes to bed early, and Jugyeong sometimes goes out and sits on the patio and looks up at the stars as he talks. “Are you tired?” he’ll say when she’s been quiet for too long. The concern in his voice will always touch her, and even if she is, she’ll say, “No,” and he’ll start talking again, and she will hug her legs to her chest, and think this is almost as nice as being with him, the knowing that he wished they were together, too.

.

Six months after the runway show, they find themselves working together again, a photoshoot this time. She finds him in a crowd of fawning costume assistants, and smiles over at him, overlarge. He’s thinking of getting into acting, and he’s cut his hair short for a role, and it makes him seem unfamiliar. When he comes up to her, she reaches up, and he bends down so she can smooth a hand over the shaved hair. “Am I a dog?” he asks her.

She barks at him, and he laughs. “Make me pretty,” he says, smiling at her as he takes a seat in her chair.

She smiles back, smoothing a hand down his face. She’d meant it to be joking, but it comes across as too intimate instead, and she snatches the hand back, heading over to the mirror, flushing, though he hadn’t seemed to mind. Kim Soo had come along as well to assist, and she gives Jugyeong a look. “Are you really not dating him?” she asks, as if the possibility of them not dating is an absurd one.

“We’re just friends,” Jugyeong shoots back automatically. She’s said the same thing hundreds of times over the years. Even when she was dating Suho and the three of them went out together, people still assumed it was her and Seojun that were dating. But it’s the first time she’s said it, and it’s rang false, like she wishes it weren’t true.

She catches Seojun’s gaze in the mirror, and he makes a mock-frowny face at her, and then shrugs, as if to ask, you good?

It is both startling and ridiculous to realize she had been moping about the concept of not dating him several feet from him, and she nods emphatically to make up for it, heading back to him, and brandishing her brush with a zeal she does not feel. “I’m going to make you so dazzling no one will be able to resist you.”

“Watch out,” he says, eyes sparkling, and Jugyeong feels that thing again, a kind of pained happiness, like she can’t stop, “I wouldn’t want to dazzle you.”

.

Jugyeong is waiting outside his studio building for Seojun to be done with rehearsal, tapping through a game on her phone, when a group of girls pass by, staring up at the building and giggling, as if even just the sight of it were enchanting. “Han Seojun is signed with them, you know,” the one on the right says. She says it with a kind of proprietariness that has Jugyeong’s hackles rising, and she glares over at the both of them. As if they have any claim on him. But soon they’ve passed on, leaving Jugyeong standing there alone.

She’s still frowning when Seojun exits the building. His manager shoots her a look as if to say behave , which she doesn’t understand at all, but lets him leave with her, and they start down the street together. She loves being his friend, Jugyeong reminds herself. In some ways he was her first real friend. Even more so than Sujin and Soo-ah. She doesn’t know why all of a sudden the designation grates. All these years, she had caught sight of him on billboards and in magazine spreads, in ads on tv and in tagged instagram posts, and she hadn’t thought anything of it. And now, even his fans annoy her. She tries to imagine what he would say to such a strain of thought, and is struck by such an intense mortification that she can hardly bear it.

“What’s got you all pissy?” he asks.

“Nothing,” she says hastily, and he laughs at her expression.

“It must be something very embarrassing,” he says. “Go on. Tell me then.”

“No,” she says, and then when his expression grows even more intrigued. “I just got my period,” she says, lamely. “It’s nothing important.”

“Ah,” he says, shortly. “I know where to go then.”

He takes her to a corner store, and buys her the most ridiculously sugary ice cream she could possibly imagine, and then watches as she eats the entire thing. “It’s Gowoon’s favorite,” he says, smiling, and Jugyeong thinks, I’m so screwed, I’m so screwed, I’m so screwed, on repeat.

She goes home and throws herself down onto her bed, and cries. And then thinks it would have been better if she really had gotten her period, because there is no one to blame this melodrama on but herself.

.

Jugyeong is at Seojun’s apartment cooking dinner when her phone rings. It’s sitting on the counter while she is stirring at the stove. Seojun is fresh from the shower, and he keeps ruffling his hair, slightly longer now that the role is over, but still disconcertingly short, and it’s distracting Jugyeong. He smells like apple shampoo and soap, and she’s had to remind herself not to think about what he smells like on repeat for the last thirty minutes.

“Get it, would you?” she says. “My hands are full.”

He looks down at her phone, and then frowns. “It’s Suho,” he says.

Jugyeong pauses, unsure what to do in this scenario. She hasn’t actually talked to Suho since he last came back to Seoul over two years ago now. They had gotten tea and then walked around the neighborhood afterwards. The silence had felt heavy between them, and when he had left, they had hugged and Jugyeong had wished him well, and it had felt final in a way that was satisfying. Tied up. She doesn’t know if Seojun still talks to him. She hasn’t asked. And now, she dithers, before she sighs and says, “Don’t burn it,” picking the phone up and handing him the spoon as she walks a bit away into his living room.

“Hello?” she asks.

It is silent for a minute on the other line, and Jugyeong repeats the question. “Hi,” Suho says, finally. “I’m in Seoul for the weekend.”

She wonders what the proper response for this is, and just settles on, “Oh?”

“Would you like to meet?” he asks, and there’s laughter in his voice. It’s a familiar tone. Jugyeong relaxes upon hearing it, and then she looks up and makes eye contact with Seojun in the kitchen. He looks away when he sees she’s looking, fiddling with the pan.

“What are you doing now?” she asks.

.

Suho looks different, Jugyeong thinks. But then so does she. So does Seojun. None of them are eighteen any more. For some reason, this strikes her as funny and she begins to giggle. The two men turn and look at her.

“Something funny?” Seojun says, archily.

Dinner had been awkward, but afterwards, they had brought out the alcohol, and Suho had started talking about a song he was writing that he thought Seojun would be good for, playing bits of it on the guitar while Seojun sang, first in mocking tones and then genuine ones, and Jugyeong had sat on the chair in the corner and watched them, apart, but still included, and thought again, as she’d thought so often that year she and Suho had dated, that she was glad that they had come back together, that whatever had been between them had healed. They deserved to have each other in their lives.

“I was just thinking that we’re not kids anymore,” she says now.

“You sure?” Seojun says, and pokes her, and she yelps and pokes him back.

Suho watches the exchange, looking between the two of them. “Are you dating now?” he asks in that calm way of his.

Seojun stiffens, removing his hands from her, as if he’d been struck, “Why do you ask?”

“No,” Jugyeon says right on his tail, fluttering her hands. “We’re just friends.”

“Ah okay,” Suho says. Jugyeong wonders if that means he still has feelings for her, or if he doesn’t care what they do any more. He had been so jealous of Seojun before, and she’d never understood why. But she does now.

But just because she wishes there were something there, doesn’t mean that there is. In a way nothing has changed since they were young. Everyone thinks it, but there’s still nothing between them.

.

Seojun has a morning rehearsal, and he goes to bed early, looking strangely glum. It’s Suho who offers to walk Jugyeong home. The alcohol has loosened the conversation between them, and they talk easily together as they walk. He has a fiance back in the States, a Korean-American girl, and he likes living in Los Angeles, though he misses Seoul sometimes. He enjoys writing songs but he’s thinking about trying producing. Jugyeong sighs, listening to him talk.

“Am I boring you?” he asks.

“No,” she says. But her gaze has gone back down the road as if she can still see Seojun’s apartment and him within it though it’s blocks and blocks away now.

“Are you really not dating?” he asks, seemingly following her train of thought. There is a genuine confusion in his tone that baffles Jugyeong.

“We’re not,” Jugyeong says, but it comes out much more wistful than she’d intended. But then Suho’s not one to pick up on stuff like that. He just hums, and Jugyeong sighs again. She really is quite pathetic, she thinks. Worthy of all sorts of mockery. And yet….

And yet she can’t seem to stop.

.

Several weeks later, she runs into Gowoon at Prince Comics. She graduated from university and moved back to Seoul a couple of months ago and yet Jugyeong still hasn’t seen her yet. They’d kept missing each other. They embrace, and then spend almost thirty minutes talking about the latest novel releases, and it’s only when Jugyeong is pausing for breath, that Gowoon says, “So I heard you and my brother have been seeing each other?”

“What?” Jugeyong says, aghast, clutching at her chest. “Where did you hear that? Did he say that? What did he say?”

Gowoon huffs a laugh, looking rueful, and then pumps the air. “I totally called it,” she says. “You like him. I mean, poor taste, ew, but you like him.”

“Of course I like Han Seojun,” Jugyeong says, defensively, folding her arms in front of him. “We’re friends.”

“You like like him though,” Gowoon says, leaning forwards, and smiling in Jugyeong’s face.

“What about my brother?” Jugyeong counters. “You commented on his instagram photo the other day. He talked about it for three days.”

Gowoon flushes. “He’s annoying,” she says.

Jugyeong adjusts the stack of books in front of her, and when Jugeyong looks up at Gowoon again, she is watching Jugeyong closely, something akin to pity in her gaze. She is pitiful, Jugyeong thinks, miserably. “You should tell him,” she says. But Jugyeong couldn’t. She has lived both a life with Seojun in it and one without, and she’d never want to do anything to risk him leaving. Not again. She can just suck it up. She can.

.

Two months later she gets an invitation to Suho’s wedding. The wedding is in Los Angeles and at first Jugyeong thinks she just won’t go, but then she worries that if she doesn’t go, it will seem like she’s not happy for them. When she is. She looked the fiance, Amanda, up on facebook, and she’d looked sunny and happy standing arm and arm with Suho. They’d been wearing matching jackets and grinning stupidly. It had been nice to see Suho like that, stupidly happy. And then Jugyeong thinks, well if she is going to go, to prove she’s happy for them at the very least, she’s relatively certain that Seojun will be going as well. And then she thinks, well if they are both attending, going as far as leaving the country to attend even, they might as well just go together. But if that were the case, she would have to ask him to go with her, which would involve confessing, which she has no intention of doing.

“I’ll just not go,” she says, miserably. She’s sitting on the floor of her sister’s living room. A bottle is between her legs and the room is lightly spinning. She still feels weird about coming over to their house sometimes since Joon-wo was her teacher, but admittedly he’s been her sister’s husband much longer than he was her teacher at this point, and well, it’s better than drinking at home.

“Don’t be stupid,” Unni says, brandishing the wooden spoon she’s holding to mix the greens. Jugyeong thinks it’s rather indecent of her to be cooking while Jugyeong suffers alone, but her sister is seven months pregnant now and using her belly as a resting board so perhaps it can be forgiven. “You just need to man up and tell him.”

“I can’t do that!” Jugyeong cries. “He’ll hate me.”

“He won’t hate you. He’ll respect you for owning your feelings.” She nudges Joon-wo. “Right?” she prompts .

He looks up at her, wide-eyed, and then back at Jugyeong. “Yes,” he says.

Jugyeong shakes her head, not convinced. “You are not going to that wedding alone, Jugyeong,” Unni says, emphatically, and Jugyeong finds herself nodding along. Her sister has a way of sounding convincing like that. Like it was just a fact. Jugyeong was not going to the wedding alone. The thought causes a thrill to go through her.

.

Still, Jugyeong puts off doing it for weeks. She’s positive that he’s received an invitation, because she saw the pale green envelope sitting in his mail almost a month ago now, but neither of them have brought it up. In fact, they’ve hardly talked about Suho at all since the night he asked her why they’d broken it off. But it’s at the point where she’s having to buy her plane ticket soon, and she really doesn’t want to fly alone for the first time, and the fear of that makes it somewhat easier to say, “Are you bringing a date?”

Seojun had been laying out snacks for movie night, and he jerks, and then turns to look at her. “Huh?” he asks.

Jugyeong bites her lip, looking at him. “To Lee Suho’s wedding.”

Seojun looks torn, and he doesn’t immediately answer. Probably, Jugyeong thinks, because he thinks it would be awkward to tell her while she’s there at his place that he is. Because he knows that Jugyeong will be at her ex’s wedding alone, following after him and his glamorous date, and he feels pity for her. Of course he does. “It’s alright if you do!” Jugyeong says. “You should!”

“I should,” Seojun says, slowly, and then he curses, and stands up, walking into the kitchen. Jugyeong follows after him.

It’s not fair of her to be upset, she reminds herself, although she can admit to herself that she is upset. The more she thinks about the idea of Seojun bringing a date, the more upset she gets. Already, she can feel the conversation spiralling out of her control. “If you want to,” she says, miserably.

Seojun turns to look at her, and she has the sense, all of a sudden that he’s angry. “Okay,” he says.

Jugyeong blinks back at him. “Okay what?”

“Okay I’ll bring a date." He turns towards his phone as if he’s going to call one up right now, and Jugyeong lunges for it without thinking. He looks at her in astonishment, and she snatches the hand back, mortified, clutching the offending article to her chest.

“Sorry,” she whispers, and then before she can stop herself, she’s begun crying.

It’s right for him to bring a date, she reminds herself. In fact, in the whole time they’ve been friends again she hasn’t known him to date anyone, though he’s always being asked, and before, she’d used to read articles about all the various people he was linked to, and he’s young and handsome and charming, and he should date people. Just because he doesn’t want to date Jugyeong, doesn’t mean he should be alone.

“Why are you crying?” Seojun looks baffled, and also concerned, as if he’s not sure whether he should comfort her or not. And she knows that she should stop, because she’s perilously close to doing something that she can’t come back from, but Jugyeong has started in earnest now, and she’s always been a bit of a sloppy, uncontrollable crier. Her mascara is streaking down her face, and her breath is coming in awkward hiccups, as she looks back at him. And he has the nerve to still look handsome, even now. “Is it Suho? Is it because he’s getting married? I mean I know—”

“I like you!” Jugyeong wails, crying harder, and Seojun pauses, looking as if she’s struck him with an iron.

“What?” he says, and Jugyeong buries her face in her hands. She’s actually so embarrassed she thinks she might die.

“Are you crying because you like me?” she hears him saying as if from a distance away. He sounds vaguely distressed. She’s totally and completely ruining their friendship. Jugyeong cries harder. “You hate me!” she cries. He pulls at her arm to get her to come out from her curled position, but Jugyeong is resolute. She’ll die in here if she has to, he’s not looking at her puffy, awful, friendship destroying face. Ever again. “We used to be friends, good friends, but now you hate me.”

“Aish, let go,” he says, tugging again at her arm, and Jugyeong pulls it in harder, murmuring, “You let go,” but somehow she’s not at all prepared for when he actually does, and her elbow comes up, and whacks him hard across the face. She hears a crack, and when she lowers her hands in horror to look at him, she sees him clutching his nose, blood leaking between his fingers. She gasps.

“What?” he says, in shock, looking down at the blood on his hand.

Jugyeong scrambles forward, looking for a towel and then dousing it in hot water and coming back and pressing it to his face. His expression is petulant. “Is this how you confess?” he asks.

“I wasn’t confessing,” she snaps, though admittedly, she was.

He gives her a look. The look is equal parts skeptical and fond. It is a look, that Jugyeong is used to, though normally with a bit less fondness. She’s always been an abysmal liar.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Don’t be sorry,” he says. He bats at her hand holding the towel and she removes it. His nose has stopped gushing blood, but the heat of the towel has given him a pink cheeked look, and Jugyeong has the thought all of a sudden that he looks bare-faced, too.

He leans towards her, and Jugyeong jerks back, and Seojun releases his breath through his teeth. “What are you doing?” she asks, putting a hand between them, as if to ward him off.

“I’m going to kiss you.”

“I thought you just wanted to be friends,” Jugyeong says, not lowering her hand. This seems an important point. She’d been sure that was what he had wanted. She’d poured over their conversations time and time again, and always came to the same conclusions.

Seojun pushes at her hand, and she slowly lowers it, letting him take her face in his palms. His hands are large enough to completely cover her overwarm cheeks. His face is very close to hers, his eyes dark and serious on her face. “Im Jugyeong,” he says, slowly, as if he doesn’t want her to misunderstand. “I have never wanted to just be friends with you.”

And then he does kiss her. His mouth is warm, and Jugyeong is frozen for a moment, still not processing what that means, because really they’ve been friends now for a year and before that a full year back in high school, and she’s going to have to do an in depth analysis with someone, someone who is neither Gowoon, Kim Soo or Unni who would all be far too triumphant, about what all of this means, and what the signs were that she had missed, but she doesn’t know why she’s thinking this much when she could be kissing him. So she does. She kisses him back.

And Jugyeong can feel something inside her unfurling, like some tiny part of herself that has been tensed for months, for years maybe, is relaxing. He likes her. Seojun likes her. He doesn’t want to be her friend. He’s here, pressing up against her, making a pleased sound as she leans forward to kiss him more fully.  She can feel his smile.

And she thinks, maybe, that she could do this for a very long time, press her smile against his.

But when her nose brushes his, Seojun shudders and Jugyeong pulls back, raising a hand to her mouth, horrified. “Did I hurt you?” she asks, her hands fluttering over his shoulders “I can stop.”

“Im Jugyeong,” he says again. He says it like he’s pleading with her. His eyes are half-lidded now, and he is not at all looking at her like he hates her or thinks she’s pathetic or minds at all that she definitely still has mascara streaked down her cheeks. “I think we’ve wasted enough time.”

#true beauty #seojun x jugyeong #han seojun #im jugyeong #team seojun #obviously #my writing #dorks #dorks in love #i am very very weak for them

[inkribbon796]

Whiskey and Exhaustion

\Summary: Ed doesn’t get paid enough for half of the things he does, from babysitting the younger enforcers that worked for Dark, to making sure Bim doesn’t expose all of them to the police. He’s contemplated asking Dark for a raise, or a vacation . . . Or both.

For Ed Edgar’s birthday.

When Ed was a kid he had grandiose plans of how his life was going to go. He’d of course wanted to be a cowboy, obviously. Living a rough and tumble life out in the middle of nowhere mostly on horseback.

A dream that had been more riddled with holes than Wil’s victims often were. Ed’s father had started working for Dark, in the exact same position that Ed now held in his stead. Ed’s first encounter with a horse revealed one thing: Ed had bad knees, even as a kid. It made getting on and off a horse hard for him. Along with the fact that his dreams of being a cowboy were filled with fantasies that his father quickly ruined for him.

So he was currently one Dark’s most experienced enforcers. There were only a handful of people still alive that had worked for Dark as long as he had. So he’d seen a lot of rough stuff, things that every once in a while kept him up at night with a glass of whiskey in one shaky hand and a cigar in the other. Tonight, Dark had given him free reign over the whiskey and bourbon in his liquor cabinet, a rare mercy from the person responsible for putting Edgar in this state.

Today, even on his birthday, it was one of those days.

Edgar was sitting in Dark’s office, Google and Dark’s personal assistant had been in the room for a little bit but they’d mercifully left Ed alone. Now he was the only one in the room.

The door opened and Ed tensed, last thing he needed was a drinking buddy.

“Hey, Ed,” Illinois walked in.

“Shit kid, thought yeh were in Brazil,” Ed looked up, still sober enough to notice the much deeper tan he had.

“I got a lift,” Illinois walked over to Dark’s liquor cabinet to grab a whiskey glass. “Mind if I join you?”

“Yes, tell yer ol’ man yah can drink at home,” Ed told him.

“Was it Dark or the Bookworm?” Illinois ignored him and checked the ice, starting to pour himself a drink.

“Where did Dark even find that kid?” Ed groaned. “He’s got balls ‘a ice.”

“Oh yeah,” Illinois agreed as he took his first few sips of his drink. “Guy’s a real piece of work, had to talk to him before I came in. Who got killed this time?”

“My assistant,” Ed told him. “She was creeped out by Dark’s new pet, and I think she had a crush on him.”

“Poor thing,” Illinois rolled his eyes. “Pretty sure the guy’s veins are ice too, but last I checked people don’t get set on fire for flirting poorly.”

“She was tryin’ ta pry inta Dark’s personal business an’ apparently found out about Celine in a way he didn’t like.”

“Yikes, the Ol’ Man’s gotta go public about her before he keeps digging that pit for himself,” Illinois groaned.

“Dark, quit digging pits fer ‘imself?” Ed scoffed. “What world have yeh been living in? Sounds like fun, can I join?”

That got a chuckle out of the young adventurer. He took two boxes out of his coat, one was square shaped, another was a flat box.

“Nice magic trick, did Dark teach yah?” Ed asked, clearly suspicious of the gifts.

“Maybe,” Illinois shrugged. “I picked up my own tricks here and there, had to since I was babysitting Artie and Yan all the time. I mean, I got adopted for a reason.”

“Yah got yerself picked cause Dark could tell even from day one that yah were going to follow ‘im around like a lost puppy. I mean kid, you practically grabbed onto his arm an’ refused ta let ‘im go. Even Kay thought yeh worshiped the ground he walked on.”

“That’s a bit much,” Illinois dismissed, tipping back the rest of the glass. “Probably when I was ten and didn’t know he had the disposition of quicksand.”

“Yeh can still jump out,” Ed warned, staring at Illinois who gave him a murderous glare.

“Just open the boxes, Ed,” Illinois warned. “I’m not going anywhere, you’re in one of my dads’ offices.”

“Fine,” Edgar sighed and took the larger box to pull out a case of four whiskey glasses with horses etched onto them.

He took one of the glasses out and examined it, “Huh, thanks.”

“Second one’s from Sierras, she wanted to know if you picked up any cute girls lately,” Illinois smiled.

“Why?” Ed chuckled to himself, “so she can steal my date and my bike?”

“Probably,” Illinois answered, a little bit of humor coming back into his voice.

Ed laughed as he pulled out a shirt that read: “I’ve got OLD BALLS, what’s your superpower?” It came with a card that read: “From one fabulous bitch to another.”

What surprised Ed was the shocking nice note inside, even if she did insult him several times. “Huh, she’s lost her mind.”

“You know the old saying,” Illinois shrugged, pouring himself another drink. “Distance makes the heart grow fond.”

“Yeah, I’ll believe that when she stops sending me brochures to old folks’ homes,” Ed warned. “I’m not even fifty.”

“Could’a fooled me with all those wrinkles and bags,” Illinois jabbed.

“Can it you,” Ed snapped goodnaturedly.

“The Old Man said you have the day off tomorrow,” Illinois said, standing up and taking his glass with him. “Try to sleep in.”

“What’s the occasion?” Ed whistled. “I get to drink an’ not walk in with a hangover tomorrow.”

“Take advantage of it while you can, I’ve got to be in bright and early tomorrow, found the Old Man’s face on a rock slab in Brazil, and he wants it translated out ASAP.”

“Shouldn’t he know what’s on it?” Ed asked.

That question got another noncommittal shrug, “Thanks again for the adoption.”

“Thanks for being one ‘a the only two brain cells yah Lost Ones had, made it easier,” Ed told him.

Illinois smiled and took off his fedora, blowing air on the bronze star pinned inside of the hat. Immediately a portal into Dark’s side of the Void ripped open to let Illinois through.

With a lazy, improper two finger salute, Illinois jumped backwards through the Void, leaving Edgar to his whiskey and the comforting silence of the room.

#Superhero AU #Masks and Maladies #Markiplier #Ed Edgar #Illinois the Adventurer #ahwm Illinois #birthday post #birthday alcohol

[the-marvel-imagines-blog]

Madness | Chpt. 1

Requests are Open

Chapter Title: “The Warrior”

Pairing: Loki x Original Female Character

Word Count: 4,795

Warnings: mentions of character death, drinking

Name Pronunciations: Hjalmar: “He-all-mar” | Aaldir: “All-deer”

A/N: I had my fun with this and took a lot of liberties while creating this story. You will need to suspend your disbelief as I have taken some stuff from (mainly) the cinematic universe but also the comicbook universe as well as stuff from my own imagination. Please note, also, that this story has some original characters and that the beginning takes place before the events of Iron Man 3. I really hope you enjoy reading this as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it so far.

I stood with a glass filled to the brim of Hjalmar’s favorite Asgardian ale. I never enjoyed the taste, but it was strong enough to get a man three times my size drunk, so I was going to need it. This was what we did after a battle. We had grand feasts and told stories of the battle we fought. Most of us would falsify how many we killed or exaggerate how graceful we were on the battlefield. Hjalmar was no different. He had stood taller than the God of Thunder himself, yet he was no God at all. Hjalmar was a simple warrior, but he was one of the best. The battle on Vanaheim claimed a few Asgardian lives, but none had been greater a friend than Hjalmar was to me. The drinks I consumed during the feast would be in honor of him.

As soon as I rose from my seat, Thor’s eyes, blue as Midgard’s oceans, landed on me. As he became silent, the entire room died down. Normally, I didn’t have much to say, but the prince-with hair as gold as the King’s throne-always knew when I had something on my mind. When everyone’s eyes followed Thor’s to land on me, I began to speak, “tonight, we sit at a table with places set for absent friends. Each battle that claims a life of one of our own also claims a piece of ourselves. Hjalmar was my closest friend, and his heroics on Vanaheim will be remembered by those who loved him...as I did,” I smiled in fond remembrance as my eyes lowered to my drink. The energy in the room was buzzing, even in the silence. I could feel the life surrounding me, and it gave me the strength I needed to gaze around at the faces in the room. I raised my glass, ale spilling out and trickling down the side, “so, brothers, I urge you to drink heartily for the fallen, and take pity on those they will conquer in Valhalla!” I exclaimed.

Cheers erupted from the half-drunken men. They shot up from their seats with glasses raised high and cheered before drowning their own sorrows in drink and celebration for the lives of our friends. Before I could drink, my eyes met those of my prince and childhood friend. Thor’s eyes were filled with understanding because he was one of the only people to truly understand just how much Hjalmar meant to me. Even in my darkest moments, when I felt completely isolated, I still had Hjalmar. Now, that security was gone. He raised his glass to me, and I did the same to him It was a mutual understanding. Aaldir-the man who raised me as his own-took in Hjalmar when he was just an orphan boy, roaming the streets of Asgard. He raised us both, and I saw Hjalmar as a brother and best friend. Hjalmar and Thor trained together during their childhood and fought at each other’s side in battle. My heart broke for Thor just as much as it broke for my own loss and sorrow, Hjalmar had been with me through my darkest nights, and now...he was gone. I didn’t know how I could face the only father I ever knew when I felt so much shame over the loss of the closest thing to a son he ever had. And Thor. The sorrow in those blue eyes cut me like a knife. I wanted to sob into my drink.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I tipped my head back and chugged the ale that left Hjalmar on the floor some nights. There were times when the massive drunken man would be held steady on my shoulder as I led him back to the house after a night of feasting and drinking. Tonight, I would have no one to carry home. Just the thought of it brought tears to my eyes, and I finished my glass of ale, tossing the empty cup to the side. I walked away from the noise and out into the fresh air. As I stared out into the vast universe, I wondered if he could see me. I wondered if he could understand that I hated him for leaving me to live the rest of my life without him. I wondered if he could understand that I still loved him with every fiber of my being because he was the only family I ever had. The thoughts clouded my mind so heavily that I almost didn’t hear the soft footsteps behind me. However, I was always aware of him. Thor. There had only been two other people I was more in tune with, and I couldn’t even bring myself to say their names anymore.

As I leaned against the railing of the balcony, Thor stepped beside me and copied my stance. I felt his gaze on the side of my face, almost like he was trying to read me like a book. I shook my head, strands of hair falling from behind my ears. My heart felt like it was being torn in two, “none of this feels right. Valhalla wasn’t ready for Hjalmar, and I’m not ready to let him go,” I confessed, tears filling my eyes once again, “I just...can’t close my eyes without seeing it,” I added, turning to face the golden-haired God of Thunder.

Thor’s hands cupped my cheeks, and I leaned into his warm touch. The only other man to make me feel so safe was...him, and that comfort died when he used his power to torment and murder the Midgardians without a hint of guilt. I fought back the tears, never wanting my prince to see me as just another hopeless maiden. Asgardian women were meant to be strong. We gave life to the God’s, so were we not stronger than them? I could not show my weakness to Thor, not now, not when he lost so much, “you should not worry yourself with things outside the realm of your control, my lady,” he spoke, stroking my cheek with his calloused thumbs, “Valhalla received a great and glorious hero when Hjalmar walked through those doors. He will continue to fight and drink and eat as he always did in life, and there will come a day when we’re all together again. I understand he was one of your closest friends, but he died a valiant death, and you will see him again in Valhalla someday,” he reassured me.

I pulled away from his grasp and stared down at the streets below where I was beaten and abused for defending my prince. Not Thor. Him. I shook my head, my bottom lip quivering and, in my eyes, resurfaced unshed tears for a man that died long ago, “my sorrow is not only for Hjalmar. I think of-” my breath hitched in my throat, and I swallowed back the sob that threatened to shake my body. I swallowed and grimaced, fighting back the need to shed tears on behalf of a man who caused so much destruction but tried to protect me from it at the same time, “I think of how your brother was dragged through the streets of Asgard in chains...like he was an animal.”

“I do not enjoy seeing this, either, but I’ve tried to think of it like a hunter coming back from a successful hunt. He will speak of it for weeks after. While my father may be taking this too far, he does it out of pride for our accomplishment. You, me, and the heroes of Midgard brought my brother to justice, and this is my father’s way of rejoicing” he tried to explain. Thor always did his best to soothe me. Seeing that his words did nothing of the sort, he continued, “his treatment will not upset you so much if you can remember what he did on Midgard.”

“How could I forget it?” I snapped, suddenly angry that a man who knew me so well assumed that it would be possible for me to forget something so tragic and so deeply disturbing. I could remember seeing him on Midgard. I could remember the pain and fear in his eyes when they met mine. He still wore green, and a part of me resented him for it. The man I knew was still alive beneath the hatred and anger he felt. What could one do when the person that holds the largest piece of their heart poses the biggest threat to all they hold dear? Life. He destroyed so much of that while on Midgard, and I could not forget it. It would be a my most haunting memory for the rest of my days. My eyes lowered as I realized how wrong it was for me to be upset with Thor when I did not feel any true anger toward him, “it all seems like...like a nightmare that I should be waking up from. None of this seems real anymore,” I explained.

He reached down between the two of us and grabbed my hand in his much larger one. His long fingers intertwined with mine, and, as I looked up at him with concern for the sudden motion that would undoubtedly draw attention to the two of us, he smiled down at me, “come with me” he urged, giving my hand a gentle tug in his direction. We began walking, the sleeves of my dress and his black robe that draped over his broad shoulders hid our hands from the prying eyes of the warriors who were still feasting. There had already been whispers of who his queen would be when he assumed the throne, and the moment he was seen with any acceptable woman, it would be scrutinized. I did not wish for my relationship with one of my greatest friends to be jeopardized over something so trivial.

As we walked out of the sight of the crowds, he pulled me closer to him. Soon, I found my arm looped through his, and we walked together toward the forest. I glanced up at him, taking in the view of the man before me. I couldn’t deny his beauty. Each day I knew him, he grew more and more beautiful, and there was a small piece of me that wondered what it would be like to be the object of his deepest affection. Still, I could only entertain the idea because an even larger part of me would be...his. I shook the thought from my mind as we made our way to a small clearing in the forest. At the very middle of the field of green was where I would sit most days, my back leaned against the most beautiful and unique tree of them all. We all knew it as “Life’s Tree.” The trunk was as brown as the earth with flowers lining the branches overhead. I glanced up at Thor, “why did you take me here?” I asked.

He smiled down at me as he sat against the tree as he had so many times before. I would bring him to that very spot so many times in our childhood, and I would sit with him. As we grew older, he would find his moments of peace and solitude in the forest with me, but nothing compared to the moments I shared with him underneath that tree. They were moments of pure peace and beauty. It was when our lives were much simpler, when it was no worry how long we were wrapped up in each other. He was no prince in the eyes of Odin, but he was my prince, “these woods are your home” Thor answered, breaking me from my train of thought, “in over a thousand years, do you truly believe I haven’t noticed you singing to the trees? Odin claims time and time again that this forest is healthier now than ever before, that your presence has helped it thrive,” he stated.

“The king...your father has always been more poetic than most,” I exclaimed, smiling down at him before I lowered myself onto the ground next to him.

He chuckled to himself as his gaze flickered up to the flowers on the tree. The red and white petals caught every hint of starlight, and it spilled down onto the two of us, specks of light illuminating his face to me, “I asked my father the story of this tree once, especially why the leaves do not fall like the rest and why it is unlike the other trees in this forest. He told me that a long time ago, this used to be a simple meadow. No trees and no life could be found here. Then, one day, Death itself planted this tree beneath the biggest star in the night sky, and her tears watered the sapling. No one touched the sapling from that moment on, but it still grew and brought up the most beautiful forest in all the Nine Realms with it. The red flowers symbolized the violence and bloodshed of death, and the white represented the purity and innocence of all life at the beginning. The reason why it never withers is because these two forces have danced together since the beginning of the universe, and it will continue long after you and I cease to exist,” he murmured, recalling the story with fond memories of this place. He stared down at his hands that were folded across his lap, “your problem is not that my brother was taken through the streets as much as it is you cannot visit him.”

I shook my head in disagreement even though my heart knew his words to be true. For so many years, I tried to pretend that I didn’t care about him. When he betrayed Asgard and tried to kill Thor on Midgard, I tried to forget the man he was before. When he fell from the bifrost, I tried to forget the joy he brought to my life. When I saw him on Midgard, I lied to myself-told myself that I didn’t want to save him. I still did. I wanted to do it for myself and for him...and for her. My sorrow grew, “there is no part of me that wishes to see your brother. I care not of him but of the safety of Asgard,” I lied.

Thor saw right through me and challenged me, “then why does Odin’s treatment of him trouble you?” he asked, his hand grasping mine as he often did when he could feel my sadness. Too many people believed Thor to be a lumbering oaf, but he was so intelligent and so intuitive. He could read me like an open book most of the time. He was so compassionate and pure of heart. His mere existence made me want to cry tears of joy as he was one of the most selfless and heroic men I knew. In every moment I felt unsure of myself, his support was something as small as squeezing my hand, or it could be as extravagant as lifting me up off the ground with shouts of celebration. He was not only a hero to the Midgardians. He was mine, too.

His gentle squeeze of my hand was all it took for me to come up with the right words to articulate what I truly felt, “locking away someone like...him is dangerous, especially when he is given no time to visit with others. Think of how much hate and filth is in those dungeons. A man like your brother is sitting in that cesspool, soaking it all in. He’s listening and calculating. That anger within him is festering, especially when he has no one to put out that raging fire in his heart. He’s becoming more and more dangerous the longer he sits down there. I only fear for the safety of my home and the safety of my people,” I explained.

“The people of the Nine Realms are safe because of his sentencing. He hasn’t tried to break out of his cell thus far, but if he does, we’ll be ready for it. And may the gods take pity on any being who should go up against the likes of you,” he assured me with a soft chuckle to lighten the mood. Upon seeing that I couldn’t even muster a smile, he frowned,“you have a heart too kind for this world and all others, Lady Eva. You are a beacon of light that people look to, and you have lightened the darkness in my own life time and time again. I know that you seek to find good within my brother, but after all he has done, after all the destruction he has left in his wake, he deserves none of that compassion. Deep down, I think you know it’s true. That’s why you have not spoken his name since the battle of New York. I love my brother, but I cannot forgive him for what he has done to both the population of Midgard as well as what he has done to you. He has caused you so much distress and sorrow, so much pain and misery. I cannot trust him with the people of Asgard, and I certainly cannot trust him with you, my lady”

“Do you know what it’s like to feel lonely, my prince? Do you know how it feels to walk through the forest with the trees being your only friends? Do you understand how it feels to sit next to the water and listen to it splashing against the rocks because that’s the only way to drown out the voices of those who have hurt you? Do you understand what it’s like to wish for a table full of friends and family who love you? I do. Your brother does, too,” I explained, trying to make Thor see that before he tried to take over the throne, his brother was gentle. He enjoyed causing mischief, but he needed some way to release his sorrow and grief. I continued, “you think that he pushes people away to hurt them, but he does it because he’s afraid of hurting them. He has been told all his life-since we were children-that he is an abomination, that he’s no good, that he doesn’t belong here. What do you think he sees when he looks in the mirror? He knows what he is, and he knows he’s capable of hurting others, so he pushes them away before that can happen. He has tried to protect us just like you’ve always tried to protect me. The man we knew before is still alive inside that man we saw on Midgard. I know it, and I’m going to bring him back,” I added.

“You have enough hope for the both of us, my lady. You’ve always had a heart big enough for every living thing in the Nine Realms combined. I just wish to see you at peace. You have worried for him long enough,” he stated, recalling the many times in the past when I would fret over the raven-haired God and how the Asgardian people treated him. I worried about him more than I ever did myself. When we were on the battlefield together, I would put myself in harms way for him, but he did the same for me time and time again, so I owed him, “will you be okay with just your own company tonight, Lady Eva?” he asked

I saw the reflection of my green eyes in his blue ones, and it made my heart ache even more than before as I thought of the countless moments the same thing happened between myself and him. His eyes were the purest shade of blue, brilliant and deep. I nodded my head, suppressing some of my most beautiful memories to keep myself from feeling the pain of his absence, “the trees will watch over me through the night. Like you said before, this forest is my home,” I answered.

“Sing a song for him tonight-for both of them, as I know you miss her just as much,” Thor suggested, knowing that I needed some way to process. I couldn’t go home to face Aaldir, and I would isolate myself for the time being. Singing to the trees had always been something that I used to soothe myself, and it helped lift the sorrows of death from my heart.

My fingers brushed against his hand. The only thing I desperately wanted in that moment was to feel the touch of another, and if I had it my way, I would’ve been speaking with the man who was the polar opposite of the God of Thunder. If I had it my way, I would be sitting beneath that same tree, braiding his black hair away from his face. Instead, for that moment, I had to settle for the possibility that I would never see him again. I glanced up at Thor, “will you be listening?” I asked in reference to his suggestion.

He smiled and stood up from the forest floor. I followed him, my deep green gown straightening itself as I rose. His eyes softened as he gazed down at me, “I’m always listening,” he assured me, leaning down and brushing his lips against my cheek. I felt like crying. I loved Thor with every inch of my heart. He was one of my greatest friends, and I wouldn’t trade him for the world. However, I needed him. I needed him in that very moment. After all I had lost that day, I needed to know that I wasn’t losing him, too.

When Thor pulled away and leaned his forehead against mine, I felt the familiar trembling in my knees that I did before he first kissed me in our younger years. It was not the first time I had been kissed, and it was not the last, but it was a moment of clarity the two of us shared with each other. As he smiled at me, I couldn’t help but allow my sorrow to melt away just in that moment. I was brought back to a simpler time, a time when I didn’t know as much of the cruelty in the Nine Realms as I did now. I was oblivious to so much of the pain that humanity experienced. I didn’t know true sorrow until I gave my whole life away. Now, I was clouded by the pain and suffering so many living things experienced in their lives, and it tore me apart. However, as I stood there with Thor under the light of the stars, I was brought back to the simple moments, like when he told me that he could see all Nine Realms in my eyes or when he traced the constellations on my skin in the silence of the forest. Or when she first smiled at me.

After Thor’s silent retreat back to the castle left me in the forest alone, I gazed up at the white and red blossoms of the tree before resting my palms against the trunk. The energy from the tree flowed through me, and I passed my own energy into the tree. I closed my eyes and felt the essence of the whole world at the tips of my fingers. I felt her sorrow as if it were my own, just as I felt her joy as if it were mine. To me, the world was alive, and there had never been a day when I took her gifts for granted. She was mystical and wonderful. She sustained each of us, giving of herself every single day for thousands and thousands of years. I mourned with her when she grieved for those lost in battle, for she provided for them until their last day, and she didn’t like saying goodbye. Just as I mourned with her, she did the same with me, too. It was as if we were one and the same. I knew that a part of her felt sorrow and grief for the same strange reason I was. It was because of him.

As I thought of the other beautiful moments of simplicity in my life, the moments of purity, he was in so many of them. Even though he had been stripped of his innocence so long ago, there was something that held him together. Even though he experienced so much prejudice and cruelty in his early years, he maintained his positivity through our childhood and early adulthood. My prince, my prankster, my friend. Malevolence surrounded him the last time we saw each other in New York. I saw a man who killed my best friend and took his name and face. He wouldn’t even look at me during his sentencing, but I couldn’t help but wish he had. My peaceful moment with Thor was meant to be with him. Every single moment of my life was meant to be spent with him. I did not hate him for the hurtful things he said to me on Midgard. I did not hate him for pushing me away time and time again. I hated him for taking away the one thing that made my fight worth it. I hated him for making me care so deeply for him, that the rest of the Nine Realms disappeared when he was with me. I missed him with my whole heart, and I made up my mind in that moment. I would save him even if he didn’t want me to.

*Loki’s POV*

As I sat in the dungeon, books strewn across the floor, I dared to close my eyes. Every time I did, I could see her green ones staring back at me. I could still see the fear and anguish that struck her when she saw me on Midgard, and I wished for her to simply kill me. The pain became more and more unbearable the more I closed my eyes. I could not sleep without dreaming of her, without contemplating how my actions ruined her. My mind was no longer my home, and I wished for her to just put me out of my misery. Every time the dungeons fell silent at night, I could still hear her whisper my name under her breath. I was brought back to Midgard, and I could still feel the pain my actions caused her.

The dungeons had not fallen silent just yet, but I hoped that the guards would come down soon to quiet the other prisoners. I clenched my jaw, a piece of me wishing for the noise. I could not bear to hear her disembodied voice anymore, the sound of her cries still echoing in my mind. I had not seen her shed the tears, but I heard them on our way back from Midgard. The guards had pushed me along, and she stayed behind me, comforted by my older brother who deserved someone like her. I certainly didn’t. I knew that if the silence fell to leave me with her voice in my mind, I would fall into the pit of madness I knew so well. The cell I was imprisoned in had already seen enough of my fury.

Suddenly, a soft melody cut through the shouts, and my heart dropped to the floor. Everyone became still. The prisoners stopped banging on the walls of their cells, the guards stopped speaking with one another, and everyone stopped yelling. Everything fell completely silent-so silent I could hear the guard from across the room shift his weight onto his other foot-and we listened to the song.

“Now, the stars shine brightest wherever you are, and they will shine on me no more.”

It was her.

The voice, the beautiful melody, the sorrowful lyrics-it all pointed to her.

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes to welcome sleep for the first time in days. Still, I could not fall asleep. When I closed my eyes, I saw hers, and they were filled with tears. They twinkled as they fell from her green eyes, like stars falling from the night sky. She was in mourning. I could feel it. I felt the way her heart was breaking, and there was nothing I could do about it. There had been so many moments that I would run to her aid when I felt her pain and anguish, but this was one of the many moments when I wanted to be there with her, but I couldn’t do it. She didn’t need me, anyway. I was a monster, and she was...not. She was my friend, my princess, my love.

My Eva.

#loki #loki imagine #loki imagines #marvel imagines #marvel imagine #imagine #tom hiddleston imagine #mcu #mcu imagine #loki laufeyson #loki odinson #OFC #original character #original female character #angst #thor #thor odinson #madness fic #fanfic #fic #longfic #madness

[seraphimsinful]

I've been big and small and big and small again and still nobody loves me still nobody loves me

#nobody nobody nobody #repetition tw #man im struggling rn #feel very helpless and small and huge and tiny and big #im larger than life in a way that makes people want to pry their fingers under my chasis and tear me apart