#like you know when you say the wrong thing once and for the rest of your life you lie awake at night haunted by the shit you said that once

[ghouljams]

What Once Was

A perspective shift, a pause, a brief respite before doubt takes hold again. Android!Ghost feels his heart beat.

You grew up in Manchester, or at least you had a job out there. You don’t like thinking about “growing up.” As far as you’re concerned you’ve been doing this your whole life. Fixing things. You had a job, an apprenticeship, with a bot mechanic at one of the industrial plants. You’d taught yourself coding, but at risk of electrocution you’d found someone to teach you the rest. It was hard, but the work was rewarding. You were young, but unlike people, bots care more about the results than how long a doctor has been a doctor. They didn’t ask questions, they didn’t know they should have. 

The area was rough, you always liked the industrial parts of town, but even you could admit the place had seen better days. There was this old butcher shop. Real old school, but people like that. Meat tastes better when it’s cut by human hands, you’d heard someone say once. And there was this kid working there, Simon, he couldn’t have been much older than you. You saw him on your lunch breaks sometimes. You shared your sandwich with him.

He smiled sometimes, more than you would have thought given everything you knew about him. He liked working with his hands, you got that. He liked being away from home, you got that too. He never called you crazy when you talked about bots like they were people. He was sweet, you liked that about him. 

He disappeared one day, without saying goodbye. You figured that was just what happened to people who lived like you two did. You didn’t even bother with a police report. Maybe you should have.

-

You still sit with your knees pulled up to your chest when you’re working on small parts. Your brows still furrow the way they did when you were a teenager. Ghost watches you flip down your magnifier over your eyes and remembers teasing you about needing glasses from squinting too much. You still blow the dust out of old cartridges and stick them into your arsenal of wires just to listen to the technicolor drone of ancient video games while you work.

“Just the music,” you’d told him years and years ago, “it helps me focus.”

You’re exactly the same, and yet you’re so unfathomably different. Or maybe he’s different. Different in the ways that matter most, in the ways that mean you’ll never recognize him. It’s better like this. He’s been through too much to be the sort of man you deserve. Barely a man at all, really.

That doesn’t stop him from circling you, like a moth to a flame, or a weary soldier to the comfort of home. He finds himself in your workshop with repairs that aren’t repairs, with injuries that he’s never been bothered by before. Ghost sits and lets you run diagnostics, lets you poke and prod at his gears, and he never says a word. Never mentions that you still look beautiful in work lights, that you shouldn’t hold your tweezers in your mouth because you always pinch your lip, that you’re still you even when he isn’t sure he’s still himself. He never mentions that he has a million things he’s never told you, that he wanted to tell you but never got the chance to. 

He thinks them sometimes: when he’s watching you work, when you smile up at a bot warmly, when you ask him what’s wrong, when you start walking towards him before you even know what he needs, when you lay your hands on him and he flips every sensor to try and feel your warmth. He thinks that he loves you, that no matter how little of him is left he’ll always love you. He could love you with nothing, with bare circuits and white matter, and that would be enough to keep him going.

It was enough to keep him going. It isn’t anymore. Not when you’re here, so close and still a thousand miles away. Not when you don’t recognize him, when you don’t see the scrawny kid from Manchester in the corded steel and dense circuitry. 

Did you think of him when he left? Did you worry? It always felt melancholic, said as a joke that neither of you laughed at: it’s gonna kill me one day, this world’s gonna kill me. Was that what you thought happened? When you knew about his father, when he sat down for lunch with fresh bruises and a split lip, did you think that’s what happened when he didn’t show up the next day? Did you mourn him?

He should have taken you with him. Sixteen. Young enough to kill for a living, but still too young to save you. He couldn’t save anyone, couldn’t even save himself. 

They shouldn’t have put him back together.

Not if it meant he’d see you again.

Not if it meant you’d look at him like this,

Like nothing.

Repairs that aren’t repairs. Injuries that never bothered him before. Diagnostics. Circling. He knows it will burn him, he can feel the heat, but he can’t stop. Androids aren’t supposed to feel. Men aren’t supposed to be metal. And you don’t love him.

Not anymore.

(If you ever did.)

#cod x reader #x reader #simon ghost riley #simon ghost riley x reader #ghost x reader #ghost mw2 #simon riley #simon riley x reader #simon riley x you #mw2 ghost #ghost cod #android!ghost #cyberpunk au #gn!reader

[erwinsvow]

imagine if rafe and pogue reader’s relationship was just a bet between him and his kook friends, to see if he could ACTUALLY get her to fall in love with him, like to get her to be all over him and how long that would last, and the reader finds out omgggg. And they break up lol

you think the ending bits of the conversation between your boyfriend and his friends hurts more than everything you just overheard.

"you really think i'd settle for some fuckin' pogue pussy? nah man, top owes me fifty bucks now."

you hadn't heard the entire exchange, just from the part where you heard your name. stupidly, like a naive girl in love with the type of boy she'd only ever dreamt about, you tuned in, thinking rafe was telling his friends something you'd want to hear.

hiding—as embarassing as it is—behind the wall, holding back tears though they don't care enough to stay held back, they pour down your cheeks as the hits keep coming. the boys laugh, but the ringing in your ears had been so loud you hadn't heard the rest of the joke, didn't understand what was so funny.

the first thought in your mind is that you can't believe how stupid you were. the second is that pope and jj and john b had all been right, that it was too good to be true, that he was playing you somehow, that he was a liar and scumbag. you had ignored what your best friends had been telling you, trying so hard to believe that they were wrong, that they didn't know rafe, or at least your rafe, the one who was sweet and funny and never let you drive anywhere or pay for a thing, the one who paraded you around town like you were something who deserved to be showed off, the one who you took back to your tiny house and introduced to your hard-working parents.

you resist the urge to slide down the wall you're leaning against, though every muscle in your body wants to keel over and cry until you can't cry anymore.

you'd been embarassed enough—they didn't need to see you like this too. wiping away tears with the back of your hand, sniffling but trying to stay quiet, you wait for the boys to walk away so you could sneak out of here and pretend that you'd never even come—though you'd only come because rafe said he was having friends over and you'd baked them some snacks for their game, thought you were being a good girlfriend and doing the things a good girlfriend does.

footsteps and laughter echo in the other room—they're gone. the second it's silent, a sob wrangles itself out, eyes getting blurry again. you don't know how you're gonna bike home if you can't stop crying. your fingers fly across your screen, dialing jj's number. you'd been upset at the blond because he seemed to be the most against you and rafe dating, had the meanest things to say and was the first to insinuate there was something wrong if rafe wanted to date you.

you'd been so insulted, so hurt by his words that the two of you had gone from talking every single day to maybe once a week. you hope he doesn't hold it against you now, but a part of you knows jj never would—that's just the kind of guy he is. he answers by the second ring, and you try to stay quiet, just incase they hear you.

"j? can you come get me? i-um, i'm at tannyhill-" the last part is said with another sob, breaking into a fit of tears again. he says he's with pope and that he's coming, and you hate that they heard you cry, because knowing the two of them they'll go thirty over if they think you're upset. you wanna get out of here, but you don't want them to die.

heart thudding, eyes watery, limbs weak, you stay against that wall for a moment. before you can make your way to the door, rafe's figure steps in to where you are. he sees you before you see him—shoulders shaking, hands wiping away tears.

when you turn to look at him, it doesn't take more a second to know you heard something you shouldn't have.

"hey, listen to me-" he gets closer, and you flinch, backing away. you want to say something mean, something snarky, something that'll hurt him as much as he's hurt you. nothing comes out, and you stare back at him, and you hope he remembers how hard he's made you cry, because you've decided it then and there—you're never seeing rafe cameron ever again.

you dart past him to the door. he follows, reaching out to grab you, but you take off, running down his driveway and into the truck he recognizes as heyward's. you get in, in between pope and jj. the last thing he sees is you crying into maybank's chest while they drive you away, and the last thing he thinks is wondering what the hell he had just done.

#i actually dont like writing much angst so sorry if this sucks #this ask has been here for so long and i knew i could do something with it i just couldnt place it yet #<3 i love u jj #rafe cameron #rafe cameron x reader

[golden1u5t]

he’s clueless. | s.r x fem!reader

ꨄ requested: @reidsdaisies

ꨄ genre: smut

ꨄ summary: your boy is a genius but when it comes to sex, he's absolutely clueless.

you and spencer were on the bed having an intense make out, he was underneath you gently rutting his hips up into your clothed core while you sat on top of him. he let out a whine of protest when you pulled away from his kiss swollen lips but only to let out a soft whimper when your lips come in contact with the heated skin on his pulse point.

his hips were still occasionally rutting up but he thrust up particularly hard when he felt you start to nip at his skin. "'m sorry-i've never really done this before. well, maybe twice before this but it didn't turn out to good. i don't think she really-"

you cut off his rambling with a soft kiss on his lips before you sat up completely. "it's okay, spence. just- women don't usually like to hear about your times with other women while in the middle of trying to do it."

"im sorry, im just really nervous." his heart started to beat faster than it already was as he stared up at you, thinking that he'd just ruined the moment. spencer hadn't been with enough women to know the proper way of doing things. he didn't know what things to say and what things not to say but it seemed like with every women he's ever tried to peruse, he only ever said the wrong things and it caused them to lose interest.

"i was just teasing you, honey." you laugh softly and place your hand on his reddened cheek, swiping your thumb lovingly over his skin. "we don't have to do this if you're not ready, you know."

you had only been together for about four months and sex wasn't something that came up until now, you didn't want him to feel obligated or feel like he was being rushed into this. spencer didn't feel that way though, he wanted to have sex with you but he was just so inexperienced and the thought of you not enjoying yourself like he would caused him to become even more nervous about the whole thing.

"¡ am ready, i promise." he rushed out, his eyes meeting yours. you paused for a moment to give him time to back out if he wanted to, he never did. you nodded your head once you were sure he was being honest and pulled your hand away from his face, you grabbed the hem of your tank top and pulled it over your head.

spencer's gaze dropped to your chest as soon as your shirt was off and the small blush that was only on his cheeks spread across his whole face, if you didn't know any better you'd think it was his first time seeing a woman topless. he sat up as you moved off of his lap and pulled your shorts off. spencer watched you earnestly until you hooked your fingers into the waistband of your panties, he reached out to stop you from pulling them off.

"can i do it?" he asked, tearing his eyes away from your body and back to your eyes.

"you want to take them off for me?" you masked the surprise on your face when he nodded his head and pulled your hands away. you laid back against the pillows and gestured for him to come between your legs.

spencer slotted himself between your legs and tentatively placed his hands on your thighs, he looked up at you for confirmation before he hooked his fingers into the waistband of your panties and started to pull them down your legs. a barely audible gasp fell from his lips at the sight of your pussy, pretty and slick just for him.

it took him a moment to regain focus but once he did he started to undress himself, starting with his shirt and working down to his boxers. you noticed the slight tremble in his hands so you reached forward and helped him push them down his thighs, he did the rest in getting them off.

"god, spencer, you're huge." you mumbled, propping yourself up on your elbows and wrapping your hand around his cock.

"do you think- will it fit?" his hips jerked forward when you swiped your thumb over the leaking tip, his eyes wide as he watched you practically drool over it. spencer had never had someone look at him the way you were looking at him now, it was the first time he actually felt wanted and it was causing a swarm of butterflies in his stomach.

"we'll make it fit." you let go of his cock and lifted your gaze to his eyes. you laid back onto the bed and wrapped your legs around his waist, pulling him into your body. "ready?"

spencer eagerly nodded his head and pressed your lips together, reaching between your bodies and guiding his cock through your folds. the small moans you were letting out against his lips each time his tip bumped against your clit gave him the confidence to keep going, he finally lined himself up with your entrance and started to push forward.

you pulled away from his lips to give him a gentle reminder to go slow, to which you only got a broken gasp and a nod in response. he lowered himself down so your chest were flush together as he bottomed out. he tucked his head in the crook of your neck as your hand went into his hair.

there was a moment of silence before spencer pulled his hips back and carefully thrust back in, he was just testing the waters but the way you tugged at his hair and let out a soft moan let him know that he was in the clear to do it again.

it took some time to get settled into a good pace but once he did, you could swear that it was the best thing you'd ever felt. even with how inexperience he was he still managed to hit all the right spots without you having to direct him much. maybe he was good at it because he spent most his time reading and a few anatomy books had gotten thrown in the mix somewhere or because he learned from his mistakes the few other times he's done it. either way he was the best you'd had in a while.

even though you'd hardly gotten started, spencer could feel himself slipping off the edge. "i can't last, im so close." maybe he should've been embarrassed to admit he was going to cum so soon but he couldn't find it in him to care when you felt so good around him.

"it's okay, just- fuck- just keep going." you moaned out, reached down to hold his hips and try to keep the rhythm going as his thrusts started to falter. spencer grunted and whined against your clammy skin as he felt his cock start to twitch, his head getting hazier with each thrust he dealt to your throbbing cunt.

you spread your legs wider and held his hips into you as you felt his cum filling your walls, he held his breath as the knot in his stomach unraveled. a few seconds later he sucked in a sharp breath and started back thrusting into you on his own, despite the pinpricks of overstimulation.

he was determined to make you cum around his cock even if the line between pain and pleasure started to blur.

#spencer reid x fem!reader smut #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid smut #spencer reid #spencer reid fic #spencer reid fandom #criminal minds #criminal minds fic #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds fandom

[meechlamajor]

would you write headcannons or lit anything for kk....por favor....i love her and the kk fics are a dessert

KK AS YOUR GIRLFRIEND: HEADCANONS

You sing to her 🌚

Whether your vocals are horrible or not, I feel like you should match her goofy vibe. So since she’s always dancing, you should match that by singing her the most unserious things. Like if you calls for you, you don’t answer normally, instead you’d say yes in the form of an overly extended run.

You treat her to Chipotle

KK loves some Chipotle, it’s actually insane how many of her TikTok reposts I’ve seen about it 😭😭 I feel like you guys could make it a once a week thing, Fridays maybe.

She’s so gosh darn touchy

She always wants to hold hands, or even just have a limb making contact with you. So she’d probably rest a leg on you just because.

Because KK is a live stream warrior, you’re going to be a guest in a decent amount of them.

You help KK do her hair, or wash it before her hair appointment.

In addition to that, I feel like you guys would search through Pinterest together to find more hairstyles for her. KK would probably be insanely indecisive, though, so it takes you guys forever to find something that she likes.

KK definitely rummages through your things out of boredom.

“Babe, what’s this?” She’s sat on the floor of your dorm, with a random item in her hand, peering up at you.

“Girl— put that back!”

Your room always ends up a mess as a result of her “curiosity.”

“It looked at me first!” KK replied.

Obviously, she gives you her jerseys to wear to games.

Also, as a devoted girlfriend you do have a blanket with cutouts of her face on it. It’s your favorite thing, ever. When KK got it for you, you laughed for like 10 minutes straight, but you use it like every night.

KK: it’s so that if you ever have another girl in here she knows that you sleep with me every night.

You: Why would I have another girl in here? Beside our friends Kamorea…

KK: I don’t know, you tell me *eyebrow raise*

You ask KK about Wisconsin lore.

You two are sat in KK’s car, having gone through the drive through of a restaurant.

“Why does your cheese squeak? What does that even mean?” You ask.

“It’s just— that’s the way it is and it’s good! Eat it!” KK scolds you, passing you some cheese curds.

“But the cheese isn’t stretchy anymore… that’s why it’s squeaky.”

KK rolls up the bag of fast food, “clearly you don’t respect fine dining. Look what happens when I try to be generous!”

KK loves to dress you, and oftentimes you guys match.

KK gives me “let’s have a movie night” vibes, except you guys watch the same movie over and over.

You guys 100% have a collaborative playlist with some of your favorite songs on it. Some songs I like below ⬇️

You Don’t Even Know - The Internet

Fashion Killa - A$AP Rocky

Go Gina - SZA

Get It Sexyy - Sexyy Red (of course)

Way 2 Sexy - Drake (i feel like kk would love this song but i have no evidence sawry 🌚)

KK has left her dorm after curfew just to go to yours and get into bed with you.

It’s going on 2 A.M. when your phone rings, a FaceTime incoming. It’s KK, so of course you answer.

Your voice groggy, you speak. “What’s wrong?” Granted it was random for KK to call you at 2 A.M. after you guys already said goodnight.

“Come open the doorrrrrrr.” She spoke, a blanket draped around her shoulder and her voice somewhat hushed.

“There’s no way you’re in the hallway right now… calling me…” you trail off.

“I am. Now open the door, please!” KK pleads, “my toes are cold!”

“You don’t have any shoes on?” You climb out of your bed, stalking to the door of your dorm, mindful of your roommate.

“No, I was rushing to get here since I missed you.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE!

soooooo happy that you sent in this request bc i’ve been wanting to write about kk so much! i just love her

i hope that you liked this! thanks so much! 🩷

#meech la major #meech’s thoughts #uconn wbb #kk arnold #anon speaks #meech’s anons #kk arnold x reader

[ybklix]

𝐂𝐫𝐲 𝐁𝐚𝐛𝐲 ♡ 𝐃𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞 ₊⊹

CRY BABY .♡⊹ (( bang chan)) mdni

Chapters:

1: cry baby ((wc: 4.1k))

2: dollhouse ((wc: 3k))

ONE: cry baby.

you're all on your own and you lost all your friends, you told yourself that it's not you, it's them ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡

It didn't matter how long the journey had been; when it came to reaching his hometown, fatigue and jet lag ceased to exist for Chris once his body felt the air of Australia. He had arrived at a wonderful time, with time to arrange things in his new home and visit his girlfriend.

Chris picked up his phone and sent a text to his girlfriend letting her know he had arrived and that he'd pick her up after work. There were still a couple of hours left, so he decided to order a taxi to take him to his new home. He had planned his stay in Sydney carefully and thoughtfully, considering every angle. It favored him quite a bit; his girlfriend of two and a half years lived here, he could continue working from the comfort of home, and he could pick up extra jobs that he didn't completely dislike. Indeed, for Chris, working hard and keeping his mind occupied was always better.

Everything was going quite perfectly that he couldn't help but smile. He bought his dream house a couple of months ago and had since begun his official move, moving his entire life from Seoul to Sydney. Returning, for him, was something he hadn't expected. He found it almost funny that after all his effort, he returned to where it all began, where everything started as a simple dream. But all his sacrifice had yielded excellent results since he had a steady job and stability, doing what he loved most, writing and producing music. When he announced he had to leave, his colleagues almost tried to stop him. He was quite successful and famous as a producer, but they understood that he could continue working, just not in that distant country anymore.

Chris looked at the beautiful landscapes the city offered through the taxi window. He was so excited that once he spent the afternoon with his partner, he would consider immediately go to visit his family. A long day awaited him, but he knew it would be worth it.

Buying a house in a neighborhood like this, spectacular in every aspect, suitable for childless couples, professionals, and simply for families, whose children rarely went out to play and make noise, and for retired elderly people living alone, was just what he needed, a large space just for him, even though it wasn't part of his plan; but suddenly a change in his life and routine sounded so good. Chris didn't know exactly why a house and not an apartment, to start with, as he had in Seoul; not even his own father understood it, Chris just excused himself saying he needed to own a more spacious place where noise could easily be canceled out, for the construction of his own recording studio... but inside him, perhaps there was a certain instinct that he wanted to start a family soon, he knew exactly that this wasn't his girlfriend's idea, not even as a joke, but maybe, just maybe, there was a tiny feeling like that in him.

Once entering the neighborhood, he felt the warmth of living in Australia again despite it being a slightly cool afternoon with the sun hiding behind the clouds. He never thought he would come to this place; he always believed he would live in Seoul for the rest of his life; he was so excited to start a new life but still leaving aside illusions, if something went wrong, he knew he could flee to Korea whenever he wanted... but he wasn't like that, he was never the type of guy who just run away. In fact, he thought that he left Sydney to pursue a dream, never by choice; it would be a lie to say he didn't like Seoul since it was his home for a long time... but once he could see the green grass, the well-kept roses of the people, he realized he had disconnected a bit and had lived in the noisy city long enough. This was what pleased him the most, nature, and if he wanted more buildings and noise, the city center wasn't far from his new address.

He stood there for a few seconds admiring the facade of his new home and noticed a teenage boy entering the house next door, they must be the neighbors, he thought. When he was initially given a tour of the house, as he stepped out onto the sidewalk, a woman welcomed him, told him her name but Chris didn't remember it, she mentioned that she lived with her family and other things like how much they had started to remodel and modernize that house. Still, he felt strangely safe, the distances between the houses were large enough to provide privacy, to his right was that family he supposed consisted of the teenager, and to his left was an older widow, or at least that's what the real estate agent told him.

He sighed in frustration at the sight of the pile of boxes scattered around and thought that he didn't have enough time, but fortunately, he was always prepared and a step ahead, so the interior designer would come tomorrow with her team to help her move stuff. He had to prepare as soon as possible for the start of his new job in the morning, as a professor at the university. He would teach two subjects related to music at different levels, and a few courses about Asian culture. He was nervous, but he had become a teacher in his spare time, and he felt quite prepared for whatever he might face.

He was hesitating whether to take a nap or move a few things in case Leah, his girlfriend, wanted to come; Chris ran his hand through his hair, thinking, so he opted for the second option; he cleared the living room area, tidied up, cleaned a few things, took a shower, and without thinking twice, it was time to pick up Leah.

He took the keys to his new car, really taking seriously the idea of living in Sydney and being well prepared. Ready to have a new life. He felt tense when he realized that he would be driving in Australia again and that the steering wheel was on the right side, unlike his old home where he had obtained his license from a very young age. Still, he set his GPS and left; this time, as he passed by the house next door, he now noticed it was a girl entering the house.

When he finally picked up his girlfriend, the sky was completely dark, and he noticed how tired she looked; Chris felt slightly bad and reproached himself for not thinking earlier and not bringing her a small romantic gesture of welcome, even though he was the one who had just arrived. They hadn't seen each other for a long month, he missed his girlfriend so much that it almost physically hurt not to be with her. A few seconds later, Leah's expression softened, and her serious demeanor turned into a warm smile.

—Channie —she called him affectionately by his Korean nickname, almost in a sigh, and extended her arms.

Finally, they hugged for just the right amount of time and exchanged a tender kiss. He had met her almost three years ago in Seoul; she worked in advertising for a magazine and was somewhat related to the entertainment world, so her social circle was so similar to Chris's; like him, Leah had grown up in Australia with Korean parents, the only difference being that she did have her whole life back in Oceania; still, he was captivated by her at that party, she was only two years younger than him, Leah at that time was just a beginner still in college on a trip in Seoul with her other circle of friends, and he was a recent graduate with a special gift. Despite the differences, they decided to give it a try, leading them to a long-distance relationship for just over two years, but it didn't matter now, at least not anymore for him; right now, he was with her, and he could have her whenever he wanted.

Chris, or Chan to her, caressed his girlfriend's face as he gave her a gentle kiss, breathing in her perfume one last time before pulling away and lowering his hand to her bare thigh with a smile.

—Do you want to go out to eat? Should we go somewhere...? —he spoke.

—Mm, let's order food and you can show me your house.

—It's still a bit of a mess —he warned.

Chris let out a small laugh and did exactly as Leah had suggested. She had been inside the house before, but she was always surprised at how well laid out it was in terms of space and design. He found her reaction endearing and with a smile on his face, he thought about how all of this might one day belong to her too. They both headed to eat at the small and only nightstand table in his TV room; some larger items were arriving tomorrow, so for now, that was what they could improvise with. As they ate, Leah kept talking about how stuff should be arranged to create harmony and coherence in the house. Chris listened attentively and lovingly; they talked about their respective jobs and what awaited them.

After sitting in silence and letting the food settle for a while, Leah spoke.

—Is your room upstairs...

Chris turned to look at her; not seeing her for a long time suddenly had a quick effect on him, and from one second to the next, he found her ten times more attractive.

—Yeah, do you want to give it your approval? —he replied playfully, hoping this would lead to something else.

Chris looked at her profile for a few seconds before she turned and gave him a teasing smile in response. He examined her, from her smooth, slightly upturned nose and her legs barely exposed by the skirt, to her shiny, loose silk blouse. Suddenly, every detail of her drove him crazy and made him feel like a hormonal teenager. He wanted to fuck her right there, right now.

He felt that her mischievous smile and soft gaze were enough signals for him, so he dangerously leaned in and pressed his lips against hers. He started slow and passionate, his right hand traveling up to the hem of her skirt, playing with the thin seam, unsure whether to slide his hand gently between her thighs or do it quickly in one swift motion, while the other hand firmly held her waist. Chris was gradually losing himself, his tongue slipping in, giving her a bolder, dirtier kiss; however, after a torturous session of just wet and hot kisses, Leah squirmed out of his grasp and pulled away from him slowly.

Chris looked confused, but his girlfriend's expression only worried him. With her pink, swollen lips, Leah suddenly seemed shy, with her eyes cast down. In seconds, Chris realized that maybe it was just something she didn't feel like doing right now, and he respected that... but it still seemed quite strange to him. Had she pushed him away? Since when did she reject him? Every time they saw each other, because of their painful long-distance relationship, the most intense and pleasurable sex awaited them.

Chris wanted to believe that maybe it wasn't the best situation for her, tired in her work clothes after a long day.

—It's a bit late... and we both have to work tomorrow —she said, raising her gaze and captivating Chris's gaze—. You'll do great, love —she smiled.

He knew her so well, he didn't understand why she suddenly gave him an awkward smile pretending to be kind... Had something bothered her, and he had no idea? He wanted to ask her so many things, but Leah stood up from her position on the floor and grabbed her bag.

—I really need to rest, and it's getting late. See you tomorrow? —she interrupted.

Chris quickly got up and gently took her waist.

—Of course, I'll drive you home.

As they got into the car, Chris looked at the completely quiet street, with no noise, the houses perfectly illuminated, there was no one outside except for the two of them and the mysterious girl next door coming out of her house with the cold wind blowing her hair.

During the drive, Leah became herself again, outgoing and energetic. She told her boyfriend how they should spend the short break he had as teachers in September; he just thought about how grateful he was to have a sweet moment with her and looked at her with tenderness when the traffic lights indicated he should stop... yet, he was a little hurt, deep down, slightly bruising his pride as a man that he didn't get any physical intimacy from his girlfriend that night... he had waited so long, he thought he could reward her, and when his house is no longer a mess, he would make sure to satisfy her and shower her with gifts.

—I'll see you tomorrow, Chan —she leaned in, giving him a quick goodbye kiss—. Call me.

Again, for the third time that day, she felt strange to him. It was obvious she wouldn't be the same young woman she used to be, capable of throwing a party every time they saw each other... but he felt there was something about her that she had to tell him as soon as possible, or he would go crazy. It wasn't surprising, Chris was an intense guy.

Once he returned home, he threw the keys with fury... he had tried to keep his sanity, but the more he overthought it on the way back home, the less sense it made to him. She didn't anger him, never could he be angry with her, it just, maybe, he thought, it was about him.

He went up to his room, in one swift movement he took off his shirt, feeling the cold air seeping through the small opening in his window. He checked the time on his phone, 11:43 p.m., he needed to rest, to take a shower in the morning and start his day... but he could only think about the romantic date options he could do on a simple Monday.

As he took a few steps towards his bed, approaching it, he noticed through his window how a faint, warm light, not so noticeable, managed to penetrate into his dark room. He turned his body and cursed for not remembering to put up curtains before; for a moment, he felt sorry for not realizing that significant detail, he was so used to the large windows in his old apartment in Seoul restricting the view. It was obvious that there was another room, right next to his.

Chris didn't want to pay attention, but catching the subtle silhouette of a girl sitting by his window captivated him inconsistently. She was wearing a thin white tank top despite the cold weather. He thought about how warm her room looked while giving it a quick inspection. The girl had her face buried in her naked knees, and her loose hair covered her face; her arms embraced her legs. Suddenly, she pushed her hair behind her ears, revealing just her profile. Yet it wasn't hard for Chris to see that she was crying. Her cheek was shining, wet, and he could see the small tears sliding down.

The girl by the window began to sob, causing her back and chest to contract. Chris suddenly didn't want to watch; he felt like he was invading her privacy and pain. But somehow, he couldn't stop watching her; he was so dismayed, but he was more bothered by the fact that he couldn't take his eyes off her.

He had no idea how long he had been watching her... but somehow, deep down, he thought, in the most hidden part of himself, that she looked strangely beautiful crying. The large rectangular window frame captured that girl with glowing cheeks and slightly messy hair, crying in what seemed to be a corner with books and a seat by the window.

The girl by the window closed her eyes tightly and slowly lay down, facing away from Chris's window, ending the performance completely. Finally, he reacted; she was still sobbing, her back moving uncontrollably, but it was harder to see her now.

Chris didn't know what had come over him; he almost felt annoyed that his neighbor didn't put up her own curtains. He could see everything, from his bed, which was positioned so that it faced his room directly, to his posters on the wall, to her backpack thrown on the floor.

Chris sighed and tried not to worry about his neighbor anymore. He wanted to think it was just a young girl in the age of broken hearts and not something deeper... but she was crying with such emotion that it made his head spin. He puffed his cheeks, letting out a sigh, and, retreating to the window, he took off his pants, slipping into his sheets, making sure she wouldn't accidentally turn and see him. Unlike her room, his bed was positioned sideways, his front door facing his bed, and her room's door was on the right side of the bed. Somehow, he felt like her room was more exposed, so he would have to move to avoid causing her any discomfort.

At dawn, the light bothered him, and he prayed that the girl had her curtains closed. Otherwise, he would have to get up semi-naked, and if she saw him, she might think he was a pervert. And just for his luck, some pretty white lace curtains covered her window; Chris was able to leave freely and go to wash up, taking his clothes with just a towel covering his lower half and changing in another room.

Chris looked at himself in the mirror, wondering if his outfit was appropriate: formal pants with a black button-up shirt. He wanted to think it was the best option for winter. He adjusted his dark hair before heading downstairs for breakfast, tired of boxes everywhere; he hoped everything would be in order between today and tomorrow for a better rest.

As he left, driving his car towards the university, he saw her again, walking down the sidewalk in the same direction as him; the famous girl who had been crying by her window, his neighbor, wearing blue jeans, white ankle boots, and a thin pale pink sweater. He saw her so fleetingly that he only saw her profile once again and noticed her backpack slung across her body.

And then she saw him too, just in a quick glance, driving his car, dressed all in black. She hadn't seen him completely, they hadn't even introduced themselves, but her mother confirmed it, he's a very handsome young man, he lives alone, and he bought the property outright, he must have a lot of money. His name is Christopher.

She had seen him at least twice, an embarrassing encounter in the morning when she tried to open her curtains just before leaving home, as she always did, but found his broad back naked, wearing only a towel while holding his clothes; Celeste immediately slid the curtain with embarrassment and just left her room. She hated to admit her mother was right, but the short two seconds she saw of his build weren't bad at all. And the second time was just moments ago as she headed to the university.

So that's her new neighbor, a man who emerged out of nowhere, bought that modernized house that had been empty for so long. She was so used to there being no one next to her room, now she had to be careful of walking around wearing with what she’s comfortable with.

Celeste took a couple of buses and one more subway line to reach her campus, where the first classes went by normally, and it wasn’t until brunch when the only person she talked to approached her.

—Celeste —he said to her.

She looked up from her food, observed him, gave him a smile, and invited him to sit with her gaze.

—I heard we’re finally getting a music teacher —he said again.

—Wow, it’s about time, it’s been a week —she replied.

The guy smiled at Celeste and took one of her fries.

—There’s going to be an art exhibition, you should come —he suggested.

—When? —she asked.

—Friday at 7.

Celeste raised her eyes, thinking if she had to work that day and concluded that if she asked for the day off they’d give it to her since she worked a week with no days off, she could perfectly go see Hyunjin’s exhibition.

It wasn’t new for Celeste to be somewhat… strange. She didn’t know how to explain it, but little by little, she distanced herself from all the people she once spoke comfortably with, and surprisingly, the handsome exchange student was the only one who talked to her. He was two years older than her and was studying visual arts, yet he decided to take music courses, and that’s where they met.

—I’ll be there —Celeste replied, checking the time on her phone—. We still have about 20 minutes ‘till class —she added.

Hyunjin smiled at her; he was quite handsome and popular, so a part of Celeste wants to feel human and like him like most do, if she paid proper attention to him... she could develop feelings for him, she hated the feeling part, and that feelings lead her to false illusions but she felt that in her dull life she needed to at least, have a little crush on someone. Maybe that would help distract her.

Falling in love was something Celeste didn't know, something that was out of her hands and even something she thinks is out of her reach. It's not that she doesn't want to have attention and affection... she just gave up and decided to think that maybe life is lonely for her. Her last intimate encounter and affection for a man was when she was 13 years old at a birthday party when she was dared to kiss someone, that was her last and first kiss. The rest of her years she lived normally without the opportunity of a prospect and love... that was one of the last things she thought and cried about, truly. Love.

The depression and anxiety was diminishing her libido and she remembers that maybe the last time she masturbated out of boredom was a year ago.

But Hyunjin... Celeste thought about whether she should like him, whether she should bring excitement into her life for the first time in twenty years.

She was an interesting and pretty girl, shy, but lonely, she isolated herself too much and lived absorbing the pain and problems of her surroundings; her issue was that she felt too much that sometimes she would go into a kind of self-control, on automatic, off without feeling anything, until she overloaded herself and exploded, it was always the same with her and she felt pathetic that she could never change. Her behavior led her to pull away from everyone... wondering why they didn't come back to her, maybe it's them, not me, she thought constantly.

Celeste watched Hyunjin closely as they talked for 10 minutes and the next 10 they used it to walk to the classroom. She was quite observant and took it upon herself to memorize every detail about him, his full lips, his eyelids hiding in his sharp brown eyes, the almost invisible mole under his eye, thick dark eyebrows, long hair and big hands, come on Celeste, feel something, she thought.

She wanted to bang her head against the wall, only then did she think she would come to her senses to feel something for someone as attractive as Hyunjin, besides he was an artist and the only person nice to her... she felt like a heartless bitch.

Arriving at the classroom, Hyunjin and Celeste sat together and the teacher was already inside as well. She spotted his silhouette as she passed, but saw him completely once again looked up at him... suddenly he seemed so similar, those broad shoulders and all black clothes, she shouldn't have been excited, but something small grew inside her, perhaps the intrigue that maybe her teacher is also her new neighbor? Suddenly the big city she always grew up in seemed small to her with such a coincidence.

Celeste was at least ninety percent sure it was him, she watched him a minute longer and as she felt their gazes cross, she turned to Hyunjin, embarrassed. Class started two minutes later and he finally introduced himself.

—I am Christopher Bang. Sorry for the delay of the subject by a week.

TWO: dollhouse.

places, places, get in your places, throw on your dress and put on your doll faces. everyone thinks that we're perfect, please don't let them look through the curtains ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡

Celeste had lived in that house her whole life. It was only when she turned 18 and graduated that she managed to leave for a year and breathe… but due to economic reasons, she had to return. It's not that she wasn't grateful… she just needed a break from what her family could sometimes be.

Her father was an accountant who worked hard to provide his children with a home in what was considered one of the best neighborhoods in the city. At least she agreed that he did the right thing in that regard. However, he was insolent, dishonest, and unfaithful. She discovered her father's infidelity when she was only eleven years old, one June night when her father probably thought the house was completely empty since her mother usually took them —her younger brother and her— to visit their aunt… but that day was different, one of those when Celeste's puberty rebellion hit, and she refused to go with them. So, she wanted to stay in her room… until she saw them, him and his lover entering the house. She was so surprised, scared, and overwhelmed with emotions that she didn't know what to do, so she pretended not to be there. Overnight, her innocence was gone in an unpleasant way.

She couldn't live with the guilt, so a year later, she confessed it to her mother. Celeste already knew the gravity of the situation by then and had considered a million options that could happen: her mother going crazy, even blaming her daughter for not telling her, or a calm and depressive reaction… but in all scenarios, Celeste maturely considered divorce as a good option. She felt that she was no longer a child, she could live with it; after all, she had discovered that her father was not a good person and that her mother could take care of them. The only concern of poor twelve-year-old Celeste was her younger brother, who at the age of eight, for them, everything seemed like a fairytale, and having both parents was part of their fantasy world. She hated that she cared and loved him… but she was sure that the little one could overcome a divorce. She didn't want to be there anymore; she couldn't even look at her father in the eyes, she was always avoiding any encounter with him.

But her mother's reaction to the truth was… something different from the expected options. Even after years had passed, it still seemed so strange to her. They were there, sitting in the dining room, and it was three days after Celeste turned 12, on a rainy day in July when Celeste got tired of crying and wondering every night why… her birthday celebration made her angry; she didn't feel so sad and dejected anymore. She hated the way her father pretended to love her and everything was fine, the way he played with her brother and gave her mother a kiss on the cheek, she couldn't stand it anymore, so she told her mother. That time she had murmured an oh, and stared fixedly at a fixed point.

“I know, because I saw them,” Celeste said before her mother even asked anything else, but she didn't, she didn't do anything and was shocked. During the night, it was as if nothing had happened, and she served dinner… that wasn't what she expected, she wanted a scene and chaos; she wanted there to be shouts, but somehow she was grateful that there was no such behavior because of Celeste's little brother. But she was blinded by hatred and remorse towards her father.

The next day she remembers that she reproached her mother, shouting, “won't you do anything?”. She didn't answer. After that, she felt so cold and distant, her father was becoming more and more obvious with his affairs, the smell of a perfume that wasn't his wife's, spontaneous outings, and even nights without returning home.

Celeste couldn't stand pretending to be okay, and two months later, after seeing how her mother deteriorated and faded more and more, she walked to her father's small office in the house, being completely a mess, and told him the truth. “I know you have another woman, maybe mom wants to keep pretending with you but I can't.”

She remembered her father's expression, the surprise on his face and its paleness. Celeste didn't expect a response from him, so she was about to leave, but back then her father acted quickly, getting up from his chair and questioning her. “I saw you, don't try to deny it.”

The following years were him trying to fix it and build a bond with her but it was in vain; suddenly her little brother wondered why his father was too lenient with his sister. Celeste lived through her remaining teenage years trying to be someone normal until she finally got lost in music; she didn't want to spend time at home so she tried to enroll in all the extracurricular courses at her school that didn't involve physical effort like sports. Months later after her horrible confrontation, she found a passion for the piano, all her following school years were based on music, being in recitals whose events she never invited either of her parents to, playing for the drama club, being in the literature club, debate club, creative writing club… until she enrolled in her chosen university dedicated to that one thing she was passionate about.

At first, she knew she would annoy her parents with her career choice, but it was the perfect time to blackmail her father to pay for her institution. She wasn't anywhere near forgiving him, but the psychological damage somehow had a price: getting out of that house. Celeste had a busy life, after rehearsals, she started having part-time jobs since she was sixteen with the dream of living in her own space near the university.

She was so busy, she would come home around 10 or 11 at night and what she found at home was devastating. Her mother was a secretary who became a housewife after her second child was born, a boy named Blake. She dedicated 12 years to taking care of her children until she found out about her husband's infidelity. Cecille gradually became an alcoholic.

Celeste had to see it every night when she came home from work. Her wasted mother lying on the couch with the TV on and a strong smell of alcohol. Celeste had tried everything, her aunt's intervention, enrolling her in support groups, but her mother didn't seem to cooperate.

When she turned fifteen, she begged her father to divorce her mother, but she refused to accept it.

Every now and then she had to go check on her brother, to make sure he didn't turn into a complete idiot like his father, or simply into a bad person, related to what was he seeing at home. But even in that, both dysfunctional parents were lucky, Blake was a shy boy, four years younger than Celeste, who grew up with a passion for physics and mathematics; unlike her, he did go out in the afternoons with his friends and lived a life outside of his home. He didn't care how bad things were, as long as he had somewhere to live and his own space he was more than okay, even when he was fourteen he managed to steal alcohol from his mother to go try it at a friend's house later, not everything had to be so bad, or at least that's what he thought… sometimes Celeste wanted to be like him and try not to worry too much. Little by little, both of them grew up without showing affection, Celeste thought that maybe that's why it wasn't something she sought in other people, her perception of love and respect had been so damaged since she was young but she couldn't accept it. She never felt anything when she saw her classmates holding hands, seeing the cheesy actions of strangers showing affection, a hug was something she only remembered fleetingly from her childhood.

When she finally turned eighteen, she found a roommate and rented a dorm room on campus; that place wasn't her dream, the floor was noisy, full of extroverted theater kids, but it was all she had. She had lived like that for a whole year, with no communication to her parents, working and studying at the same time, only communicating with her brother to wish him Merry Christmas and New Year, and in May, to wish him a happy birthday. It all fell apart in her second year of school when her roommate told her she was moving out and Celeste couldn't afford the full expense, she already had an academic scholarship and her parents were still paying for her institution.

Celeste did it, she called her brother on a normal day that wasn't a holiday, her little brother advised her that she could go back home, that's what he would do when he entered college, since it would only take him routes and buses to get there. “I'll let mom and dad know,” he told her over the phone before abruptly hanging up. Celeste couldn't answer, she couldn't say don't do it. And she insisted by text that she would manage on her own. That day her heart broke when she read the text from her fifteen-year-old brother saying: why do you hate them? come back home for me the uni is literally half an hour away from home

She had no choice, she had everything, she wouldn't pay rent, her payment at the university would continue, she would only work to buy her own things and take care of Blake. She never thought he would feel abandoned. She thought about how much it must have sucked to come home alone, with an absent father and an alcoholic mother.

When she told her roommate that she would return to her home in Woollahra, her expression was incredulous, “you've been living there all this time? Why would you want to live in an uncomfortable dorm?”. Celeste wondered if she was being ungrateful.

And then she returned, her father couldn't be happier, and even her mother's dull face lit up at having her only daughter back. She would go back to being the same, practically just going home to sleep.

If she had everything… why did she feel so empty. Her room was still the same as they had decorated it since she was eight, covered in pale pink and white shades. The years passed and she continued to support her brother, going to academic competitions he attended, and for the first time, she asked him to come see her perform at a recital in her university's auditorium.

And so her life remained, until now that she felt stuck once again, in her third year of university. She felt like she was repeating her high school years and it was suffocating her. If she could leave with Blake she would, but she was just a simple university student with anxiety attacks in the school bathrooms.

—You should ask the new guy next door if he has a girlfriend, seriously, he's cute, Celeste. You've never had a boyfriend, right? —her mother mentioned, leaning on the kitchen counter.

Celeste looked at her incredulously, wondering since when her private life mattered to her, and if she had a boyfriend, it wouldn't be something she'd inform her about. She was about to leave for university, she didn't want those kinds of conversations at 7 in the morning.

—Ew, isn't he like thirty? —her brother added, eating a spoonful of his cereal.

—Age can just be a number, Blakey, we want your sister to find love.

—I have to go —Celeste sighed, escaping the conversation.

She couldn't stop thinking about it. Once again, she was right, why couldn't she find love? Her only friend, whom she rarely contacted, moved in with her mother in Melbourne after finishing high school. And now socializing at university where classmates change and come and go, it was so difficult for her to establish any kind of relationship with anyone. The only person she talked to was… an exchange student who shared only one class on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Celeste couldn't help but wonder if she should start flirting with him, just to try to feel something in return.

Every time she examined him more… she realized how cute he was, should she approach him? Anyway, he would leave at the end of the semester, no one could die trying.

When they sat together in class, she couldn't help but be distracted by thoughts that tomorrow she would dress up more for Hyunjin, fix her hair more, wear more makeup… the idea of being liked by someone made her so nervous.

And when she looked up, she saw her new teacher, who she could swear was her new handsome neighbor.

As the class began, she remembered her mother's voice saying he was handsome, and without realizing it, a slight mocking smile appeared on her face as she analyzed her new teacher's appearance in detail. Slightly tanned skin, short, dark brown hair semi-wavy, his intense gaze beneath his slit eyes, prominent nose, and thick lips… and his voice was strong, commanding, and nasal, and his build was… Celeste thought… was this what imagination was like when dealing with the sudden rush of hormones?

She had the idea that maybe she wasn't the only one so surprised and delighted by the assignment of the new teacher. She discreetly turned her gaze to the sides, to her other classmates, and noticed how they looked at him intensely without taking their eyes off the man giving the class, Celeste felt foolish, had she looked so obvious? Had Hyunjin noticed?

Once the class ended, Chris said:

—Before you all leave… —he approached his desk and quickly and gently picked up a paper from his desk— Is Celeste Burton here? —he looked up searching among the students.

Celeste frowned and timidly raised her hand, Hyunjin quickly glanced at her friend and then at the teacher, it also seemed strange to him but he didn't pay attention to it; Chris finally managed to perceive her and added:

—Can you come up for a moment to talk?

His gaze fixed on hers, Celeste nodded gently and began to gather her things, suddenly she was feeling nervous and not understanding why.

—The rest of you, I'll see you tomorrow —Chris concluded.

With a nervous smirk, Celeste was about to approach but a warm and large hand holding her wrist made her turn, Hyunjin was so close to her face that she couldn't even react.

—I have to go to the arts campus now, but I'll see you tomorrow, Cel —he informed her with a smile, almost feeling his cool breath.

—Sure.

She limited herself to answer, she was so overwhelmed by the situation's overload, Chris wanted to talk to her and suddenly Hyunjin was approaching dangerously, she couldn't process it. Celeste returned her gaze to Chris, who had his eyes fixed on Hyunjin until he left the classroom, after feeling Celeste's soft gaze, he cleared his throat and looked at her, waiting for her to come closer.

Celeste walked to his desk and the last two students had already left the classroom, leaving only the two of them; she didn't want to appear nervous, she didn't have to be.

—You signed up during the academic break as an apprentice to some teacher at the beginning of the school year —Celeste quickly processed the information while he made eye contact with her—, well Burton, I'll be your mentor, is that okay?

—Oh, sure, I didn't know I had been selected… it's a pleasure, Professor Bang.

Chris gave her a smile and observed her, her still and straight posture with her hands together against her jeans.

—Yes well, the other students applied for classes with other teachers, but you were selected as my apprentice, I heard you're the best in the class.

Chris raised his eyebrows waiting for a reaction from her to his last comment and suddenly he realized that he was starting to ramble, he didn't understand why he did it. He shook his head slightly and tried to refocus.

—I want to discuss schedules. Wednesday is general rehearsal, so I like discipline, how about Monday to Friday excluding Wednesday, from 1 to 4? It'll be in the music room, for tomorrow.

Chris looked at her intently and Celeste began to think… she would have to shorten her work hours if she said yes, she couldn't miss the opportunity, it would be so beneficial to her resume, she wants to believe that he is a good teacher in terms of his knowledge and being his apprentice could lead her to expand her mind. But she would have to sacrifice a few hours of work; despite being sunk in sadness, she liked the little things like makeup, clothes, going to nice cafes, visiting the cinema alone, all without having to ask her parents for money at her twenty years old, so being his apprentice would only mean a little less pay, and working with him, or for him, for free.

Celeste thought for a second about how young he looked to be a mentor, she wondered if he was really qualified.

—You can’t…? —he interrupted her, expecting an answer.

—Oh, sure, yes, I'll be there. Thank you.

She smiled at him and Chris returned the gesture. Celeste was about to leave when the female desire to play a little took over.

She was steps away from walking through the door, but she turned, with a playful smile she searched his gaze, Chris was drawn to her sudden movement thinking that maybe she had forgotten to say something.

—By the way, Mr. Bang, did you just move to Woollahra? —he looked at her with a slight furrow of his brow and she continued— Oh, I didn’t want to sound weird; I just think we're neighbors now too. So, welcome.

Her tone was so sweet and innocent yet somehow wicked; Chris recognized the slight intentions of approach.

She left and left him sure of one thing, that it was her, the pretty and poor girl who cried through her window the night before. Chris swallowed, she's even prettier up close, he thought.

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

₊˚⊹ ᰔ TAGLIST: @forklesschowder @bubblebisk @calisnewworld @sunarins-whore @bangchansslut6 @snowyquokka @chansbabygirlsstuff @athforskz @heeyboooo @chrizzztopherbang @yerijaksel @moonlightndaydreams @readr1221 @skzswife

lmk if u want to be add 2 the taglist☆

2nd divider by chilumitos, i dont rmber by who the first one oop

#skz #stray kids #skz x reader #skz imagines #skz scenarios #skz bang chan #bang chan #skz fanfic #skz smut #hyunjin #bang chan x reader #bang chan smut #christopher bang #stray kids fanfic #bang chan x female reader #bang chan stray kids #bangchan fanfic #bang chan fic #bang chan fluff #bang chan imagines #stray kids smut

[zhaosbin]

panda plushie—z. hao

summary: when your boyfriend has a long and stressful day at rehearsals, you want to surprise him to cheer him up! little did you know he was already finding his own way to feel better...

reader: gender neutral but lmk if i missed anything!

warnings: MINORS DNI! blowjobs, virgin!hao, pet names (only baby i think?) i think that's it

—

your relationship with hao was a relatively sweet and innocent one. the furthest the two of you had ever went was making out on his couch for 10 minutes. while this was always enough for the both of you, you both knew you wanted more of each other, and that's how you got yourself here.

you enter your boyfriends dorm wanting to surprise him after a long day of rehearsals. you knew how hard he works to be the best performer he can be, and you know how badly it can stress him. you quietly sneak to your boyfriends room with a plush panda behind your back. you knew the rest of the boys were meeting for dinner and they informed you beforehand that hao wouldn't be joining them because he was too tired. as you approach his room, you hear soft whimpering. immediately you think something is wrong so you reach for the doorknob. before you could open it, you hear the prettiest sound you've ever heard come out of your boyfriends mouth. a moan.

you felt your body immediately warm up as your cheeks flushed the deepest shade of pink. you knew your boyfriend jerked off obviously, everyone has needs, but you never really imagined how perfect he'd sound while doing it.

as his whimpers get louder, you knew you couldn't miss the big finale and opened the door. before your eyes was possibly the sexiest thing you'd ever seen. hao was laid out on the bed with his back arched and his neck lazily thrown back, and of course his hand gripping his needy cock. before you could enjoy the sight too much, you immediately lock eyes with your boyfriend.

"y-y/n what are you doing here?" hao rushes to say while trying to hide himself with his blankets. you try to hide your smile, he's so cute when he gets flustered.

"i came to bring you this" you say pulling the plush out from behind you back, "but it looks like you don't need any of my help to make you feel better" you say giggling.

your dominating nature in this moment turned your boyfriend on so badly that you caught another soft whimper that he tried so hard to conceal.

moving closer to him, you kiss his head as you sit down near his legs on the bed.

"i know we haven't really had this conversation yet, but it seems like the perfect time. let me help you baby" you say gently.

hao rushes to shake his head no, you've never done anything like this before and he didn't want you to think he was using you.

"it's okay, i promise. i wanna make you feel good" you say smiling softly.

"o-okay" your boyfriend finally submits and lets out a breath he'd been holding for way too long.

with his permission, you slowly start drawing the sheets back to reveal his pathetically hard cock laying against his stomach. you immediately wanted to test the waters and wrapped your hand around his length.

he quickly jerked his hips up and whined loudly. once you realized how sensitive he really was, you knew you were gonna be having fun with him.

you decide to stop teasing your poor boyfriend and start stroking his cock slowly, stopping at the tip to rub circles on it.

"please, f-faster" your pretty boyfriend desperately says. who are you to deny such a pretty boy begging for you?

you complete his request, going faster and making sure to keep glancing up at his cute expressions. you knew your boyfriend was already getting close, and that's when you decided to surprise him even more.

you take your hands off of his cock and you could swear you see his eyes tearing up from the loss of contact. before he could complain about it, you replace those hands with your mouth.

you only could bob your head up and down a few times before your boyfriend was cumming inside of your mouth.

you quickly swallow it up, relishing in the taste of him. you went on for a little longer until he was shaking and pushing your head away.

"that was amazing", hao says breathlessly.

you both smile at each other and your gazes fall on the panda plushie you had bought for him. it was sitting in its cute pose staring at the two of you. you both meet eyes again and start giggling at the plushie watching that whole encounter. before you could even make a joke about it, hao turns the bear around so it's facing the wall. you questionably look at him wondering why he did that when it was obviously a little bit late.

"what? you didn't think i'd return the favor"?, he says smugly.

for someone completely inexperienced, he was shockingly good with his tongue.

a/n: hii!! this is my first full piece of writing on here 🥺 i hope u guys enjoy and feel free to request anything too! 🩵

#zb1 x reader #zb1 smut #zb1 imagines #zhang hao x reader #zhang hao smut

[timetothirst]

Almost

Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley x GN reader

Inspired by this post that hasn’t left my head since I first saw it

Tags: Canon typical violence, you almost die, Ghost is soft in his own weird way, confessions, everyone needs therapy, i’m not British but i’m using British slang because it’s Simon’s POV, if i got any military stuff wrong no I didn’t, sad Ghost

Rating: M for violence and language

—————

You were dying when Ghost realized he loved you.

It started the same as it always did whenever he had to meet someone new, with a quick handshake and a short introduction before he inevitably found an excuse to walk away as soon as possible. He didn’t dislike you, not necessarily, but he was no social butterfly. You were just another face to him, that was all.

Until you weren’t.

He was having trouble sleeping. That was nothing unusual, though. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d got a full eight hours without some kind of interruption, whether it be an owl outside his window that wouldn’t shut up, an inability to get comfortable because of the countless aches in his body, his thoughts just being too damn loud, or something else entirely. Whenever this happened, he’d make his way to the common room and find some way to kill the time while he waited for everyone else, maybe even get breakfast started or put the kettle on if he was feeling nice.

It was on one of those nights, after he’d finished rummaging through the fridge looking for a decent snack, that he saw you. He went to sit on the couch, and there you were. He didn’t realize it was you at first and tensed up, instinctively reaching for his combat knife (which wasn’t there, of course, since he was in his sleep clothes). At first he was baffled. How did he not notice you coming in? He wasn’t losing his edge, was he? Letting his guard down?

But then he saw the half-eaten packet of crisps in front of you and realized you’d been there the entire time, sitting in the dark, in complete silence.

“Fuckin’ hell…say somethin’ next time, yeah?” He told you, finally allowing himself to exhale.

“Sorry, I didn’t know whether or not you were going back to your room, and I didn’t want to bug you, so-“

“S’fine.” He interrupted with a wave of his hand, sitting on the opposite end of the couch and grabbing the remote.

—————

“Am I missing something here? Why’s he acting so weird all of a sudden?” You asked, staring at the screen in confusion. This was the third question you’d asked in as many minutes, but Ghost didn’t seem to mind. At the very least, he wasn’t giving you death stares or walking away from you, so you figured it was okay.

“Pon farr.” He stated, not even glancing over.

“Am I supposed to know what that means? It sounds like a weird disease…” Ghost side-eyed you as you said this and scoffed quietly.

“No, it’s not a- look, just watch, will you? They’re about to explain it.”

You rolled your eyes, but did as he said anyway.

“Oh my god…so, he can only have sex once every seven years? And if he doesn’t, he’ll just…get really pissed off and fuckin’ die?” You laughed in disbelief, then ate the last of your crisps and tossed the empty packet into the trash.

“Nah, Vulcans can mate whenever they want. Pon farr’s just a biological thing that causes…well, s’ called plak-tow, but it translates to ‘blood fever.’ Means they’ll go mad if they don’t-“

You couldn’t help but snicker, slapping your hand over your mouth with a snort when Ghost’s head snapped toward you. He looked at you with an expression that could melt steel, which would have scared you shitless under any other circumstances.

“…Seen this one.” He grumbled as an explanation, looking away from you and back at the TV screen. He crossed his arms, his face hardening into its usual scowl.

“Yeah, I can tell.”

You spent the rest of the night asking Ghost increasingly complicated questions about the show, and despite his exasperated sighs and frequent eye rolls, he answered every single one.

—————

He just kept running into you, it seemed. Sparring, target practice, and of course, your late night binges of Star Trek, whenever the two of you happened to be up at the same ungodly hour. You sat on your designated couch cushions and laughed at the awful special effects as Ghost told you to ‘shut it and watch,’ though he was sure you could see him smiling through the fabric of his mask.

As much as he hated to admit it, as cliché as it sounded, his days really were a bit brighter with you around. You filled the silence when nothing else did, joked with him, spent time with him…he’d even noticed a few little things you had started doing, things that were specifically for him. Like the night he’d taken out a pack of smokes, only to realize that he’d lost his lighter. He groaned in annoyance and went to put them away, but then, there you were, holding out a lighter of your own, the small flame reflecting in your eyes.

“The lads and I must be a bad influence, eh? I swear I remember you tellin’ me that you don’t smoke.” He’d said to you after rolling up his mask just past his lips and taking a puff of his cigarette.

“I don’t. But you do.” You replied casually, shrugging as if you’d just said the most obvious thing in the world.

“And with the way you keep losing your lighters everywhere, you’re probably spending half your paycheck replacing them!” You added, giving him a playful punch on the shoulder.

Ghost rolled his eyes and told you to piss off, but he never bought another lighter after that.

—————

Price started pairing the two of you together on missions; citing the fact that you got along, as well as the way your combination of skills made you effective and deadly in the field. You were a good team, that was all. You got things done, and you got them done well, no matter the circumstances.

And then everything went to shit.

You had already suffered a dislocated shoulder and pretty bad slash wound, both to your dominant arm, so you were stuck clutching a pistol in one hand while the other dangled uselessly at your side. Almost all of the enemies had been taken care of at that point, but you were making a final sweep of the building in search of any stragglers.

Two seconds. Two goddamn seconds he looked away from you, but that was all it took. Five gunshots rang out in short succession, no doubt from an assault rifle of some kind. You screamed, shot a single round from your pistol, and two bodies thudded to the floor.

Ghost’s heart dropped. He charged into the room, looking around frantically. As badly as he wanted to rush to your side right that second, he knew he had to assess the situation first. He’d be of no use to you if he was dead, after all. The first thing he noticed was that you were breathing, and your attacker wasn’t, probably because they had a sizable hole in the side of their head. Ghost dropped to his knees next to you, trying to calm himself enough to properly check your wounds.

You looked so small lying there, curled up on your side with your face contorted in pain. A shudder wracked your body, blood beginning to pool as Ghost placed a hand on your shoulder. He gritted his teeth and turned you over. As expected, you screamed bloody murder, the movement causing your body to be jostled.

“Shit. Shitshitshitshit-” He muttered, his hands hovering over your body. Before he dared to do anything else, he reached for his radio.

“Bravo 0-7 calling for immediate medvac. Repeat, immediate medvac.” He spoke, unable to hide the tremor in his voice.

“Acknowledged. Requesting location.” A voice crackled over the speaker. He barked back your coordinates, along with an order to hurry the fuck up before disconnecting and turning his attention back to you.

“This is gonna hurt.” He warned.

He undid your vest, and his large hand immediately made contact with the most serious of your injuries, that being the bullet wound in your side. He pressed down hard in an attempt to staunch the bleeding as best he could, and your scream of pain was enough to make him feel as though he’d been shot himself. You seemed too shocked to speak, your breath coming out in short gasps, punctuated by anguished sobs.

“Shh. I know, I know…hey- look at me, yeah? Just keep lookin’ at me.”

Ghost couldn’t remember the last time he felt helpless. But here, now, as he stared down at you, it was the only thing he could feel. He wished he could be angry instead, but right now there was no one to direct that anger towards. Your attacker was lucky you’d managed to kill them before he got the chance to, or he’d have beaten them into a pulp with his bare hands and left them to rot where they fell as punishment for even fucking looking at you.

“Ghost-” You croaked out, your bleary eyes focusing on him momentarily. He shook his head.

“Simon.” He whispered, his own name feeling foreign on his tongue. You stared at him in confusion for a moment, but then your eyebrows raised and a look of realization appeared on your face.

“S…Simon?” You repeated. He nodded, tried to smile at you despite everything.

“Yeah…Simon.”

You smiled back through your tears and let out a laugh that quickly turned into a pained wheeze. “That bad, huh?”

Simon didn’t reply. He didn’t trust himself to. You’d see right through it if he lied, he was sure of it, but if he told the truth, he knew he’d break down on the spot. Instead, he gathered you into his arms and curled around you protectively, trying to keep your body warm to prevent shock.

With a start, he realized that this was the first time he’d ever held you.

“I think m’just gonna…rest for a few minutes, if that’s okay…” You breathed.

As he looked down at you, it was clear that you were struggling to keep your eyes open. He made a strangled noise in the back of his throat, clutching you tighter and burying his face in your hair.

“No, no, no…not you. Anyone but you.”

Simon Riley had never been a religious man, but he prayed then. He didn’t know to whom he was speaking, but it didn’t matter. He only asked for one thing.

“Don’t let them die. Not here, not now. I’ll do anything. Give them more time. Take me instead if you want. I’ll go in their place, just let them live. Please.”

He knew he didn’t deserve you. He always had, really, but that didn’t mean you should be taken away so cruelly. You should have something so much better than this, better than a cold concrete floor slick with your blood and a man like him trying to hold you together while he himself was breaking from the inside out.

“H-Hey…”

Your voice broke through the haze, and he cursed under his breath, quickly wiping his eyes and lifting his head to look at you.

“Fuck. Sorry, I- i’m right here, love. I’ve gotcha. Nothin’ to worry about, yeah?”

You just nodded. Your eyes were barely open now, your chest still slowly rising and falling with your breaths. You felt around for his hand and grabbed it, the silence seeming to last forever as you considered your next words.

“…I’m really glad I met you.” You finally said.

“Don’t. Don’t start sayin’ shit like that. Makes it sound like you’re-“ He exhaled and squeezed his eyes shut.

“I can’t fuckin’ do this, alright? I know I can be an ass, and I know i’m not the best at sayin’ it, but…I need you.”

Simon looked down at you. You weren’t moving.

His time spent waiting for medvac to arrive was a blur. He held you tight, begged you not to leave him even though he wasn’t entirely sure whether or not you could hear. And when the medics did finally show up, they practically had to wrench your limp body out of his grip.

He had to take a separate transport back to base. he sat alone and stared at his hands, watching your blood slowly dry.

——————

Simon lurked outside the door to your hospital room like- well, a ghost. When the doctors finally deemed you well enough to take visitors, he was at your side, like a loyal dog lying at its master’s feet. He held your wrist in a loose grip the entire time he waited for you to wake up, his thumb pressed against your pulse point so that he could be sure your heart was still beating.

It felt like ages that he waited for you. He didn’t even know quite how long he did, actually. He only left your side once, and that was for a shower in freezing water where he scrubbed his skin raw because he was unable to stop seeing the red covering it.

When you finally stirred beneath him, Simon thought he was dreaming. He stared at you with a mixture of disbelief and blind hope, and then you finally opened your eyes. After days, he finally felt like he could exhale. He let himself fall forward, his head coming to rest on your shoulder as he shook ever so slightly.

“God…don’t you ever do that to me again, got it? Thought i’d lost you.”

You reached up and started to rub circles into his back, choosing not to mention the fact that your hospital gown was damp with tears.

“Simon, I-“

He shushed you, rolled up his mask and pressed a lingering kiss to your temple.

“You made it, that’s what matters. You made it back t’ me.”

“And I always will.”

#call of duty #simon ghost riley #simon riley #ghost cod #ghost x reader #ghost x you #ghost mw2 #simon riley x reader #simon riley x you #simon ghost x reader #simon ghost x you #simon ghost riley x reader #angst #fluff #writing #swords’s stories

[milswrites]

My Beautiful Girls

~ Cassian x Single!MumReader

Summary: An anxious Cassian meets your daughter for the first time.

Warnings: Fluffy goodness

Notes: For the ultimate Cassian girly @sarawritestories

"Hi, I'm Cassian. It's nice to meet you!"

The Illyrian General smiled crookedly as he spoke, clammy hands trembling around the flowers trapped within his steel-like grip.

"Fuck . . . fuck . . . Come on Cas, you can do better than that."

Slowly unfurling his wings, Cassian lightly shook them in the hope of brushing away his steadily growing nerves.

"Breathe Cas, breathe" the male exhaled deeply, rolling back his tense shoulders before locking his determined eyes onto the closed door in front of him, "Hi, I'm Cassian! I've heard so much about you!"

A groan of frustration tore from Cassian's lips, shoulders slumping in dejection as he miserably dropped the flowers to his side.

Cassian had seen his fair share of carnage, having stared death in the face a plethora of times and still lived to tell the tale. Yet no battle, nor life-threatening experience, could have prepared him for the terror he felt in this moment.

The great Lord of Bloodshed riddled with fear at the prospect of meeting your sweet little girl, so only for her not to like him.

It was almost laughable, thinking back to how confident he was when you had first brought up the topic of him meeting your daughter. Cassian recalled flashing you a toothy grin, eyes bright and laugh carefree as he promised you that all children loved him. He was, after all, Nyx's favourite uncle.

Yet now, standing before the door to your home, Cassian wondered if he would ever find the courage to enter. Every possibility as to how this introduction could go wrong festered in the male's worrisome mind, until his poisonous thoughts left his wings twitching with the desire to fly away and hide from his fears.

But Cassian couldn't bring himself to flee, not if it meant losing you.

So here he stood, the icy winter air uncomfortably nipping at his wind-kissed cheeks, rehearsing exactly what it was he would say to your daughter when he first met her. Seeking to gain back some control in the face of his uncertain future.

Adamant that he would not be the one to ruin the one good thing in his life, Cassian drew in a long shaky breath before trying again, "Hi sweetheart, I'm so glad I get to finally meet you."

"Right back at you gorgeous"

If the sight of the Illyrian General practicing a mental script to recite to your five year old daughter didn't bring you to the brink of laughter, seeing the way he startled at your sudden appearance did.

Cassian stumbling backwards as you pulled open your door to great him, cheeks flushing a deep rouge as though you had just caught him in a compromising position.

It was only once your laughter had subsided, and the low grumblings of embarrassment from the male's lips had ceased, were you then able to greet him. Your warm lips coming to meet his own frozen ones in a soft kiss, the action working to further deepen Cassian's flustered blush.

An impatient shout from inside pulled you from your kiss, a light chuckle leaving both of your lips as you quickly glance inside to where your daughter was waiting, "She's been talking about this all day you know? I've never brought anyone home to meet her before, she's really excited."

Your gaze falls to Cassian who was drawing in deep breaths in an attempt to calm himself. Concern pooling in your eyes as you watched how his lips were stretched into an anxious smile which failed to meet his eyes.

"Hey, there's nothing to worry about," you reassured your partner, moving a soothing hand to rest against his cheek, "she'll love you just as much as I do."

Appreciation swam in Cassian's eyes, a soundless thank you falling from his lips before he raised a bouquet for you to take. Or rather two bouquets.

"For you and Evelyn" he nervously mumbled, awkwardly shuffling his feet as he waited for you to take the flowers, "I wanted to get her something nice but . . . I'm not actually sure what five year old's like."

"They're beautiful Cas" you spoke, tears of joy lined your eyes at the male's generosity as you placed a gentle kiss onto his cheek in thanks.

"Are you ready?" you asked whilst stepping aside, making space for Cassian to squeeze himself through your doorway, the male having to curl his wings in tightly in order to fit through the smaller entrance.

"Come on, bat boy. It's time for you to meet your new best friend."

Placing the flowers down onto a nearby console, you led Cassian through your home, softly calling out to Evelyn as you approached the room she was playing in, "Evie, there's someone here to see you."

The sound of tiny feet padding across the floor followed your words, Cassian curiously moving his gaze to the entrance of the room as he waited for your daughter to emerge.

Only his eyes didn't quite catch her face as the small girl barrelled right into the skirt of your dress, shyly hiding within the flowing material of your skirt. "Come on Eves" you encouraged warmly, a tender hand coming to rest against her back, "Aren't you going to say hello?"

A little head tentatively peered over the fabric of your dress, Evelyn's eyes widening as she took in Cassian's wings which imposingly filled the space of your corridor. The nervous girl squeaked a small hello in the General's direction before moving to hide behind the safety of your body once more.

Worried that his wings were too intimidating, Cassian drew them in tightly, bending his knees in order to lower himself to Evelyn's level before greeting the shy girl, "Hi Evie, I'm Cassian." The male allowed a bright smile to cross his face as he watched your daughter's curious eyes peer over the skirt of your dress at his introduction, "Your mum has told me everything about you."

Wanting to aid Cassian who was growing increasingly panicked at the prospect of having to break the ice with your timid daughter, you bent down to speak to her, "How about we go into the room so you can show Cassian your toys hmm?" With a sheepish nod, Evelyn takes your hand, hesitantly moving out from behind your skirt in order to lead you into the living room.

Cassian followed suit, standing from his crouch before moving to the door, only to be unpleasantly surprised upon discovering he was unable to fit through the small wooden frame. His large wings blocking him from entering the room.

Curling them in tighter, the male tried again, attempting to walk into the room once more only to be stopped by the thud of his wings against either side of the doorframe. Just as a frustrated curse was about to tumble from Cassian's lips, a melodic laugh pulled him from his anger.

And Cassian could have sworn it was the sweetest sound he had ever heard.

There stood Evelyn, in the middle of your living room, clutching her stomach as she laughed to her hearts content at Cassian's unfortunate situation.

It was impossible for him to be angry, Cassian's brows unfurrowing at the beautiful sound of her laughter, a deep chuckle of his own breaking from his mouth as he watched the young girl giggle. Love already growing in his eyes as Cassian wished to bottle the sound of her joy.

"Evie," you started in-between your cackling, "Why don't you help poor Cas get in?"

It took all his effort for Cassian not to melt when Evelyn padded over to him, cheeks still rosy from her laughter, and held out a tiny hand for him to take.

Making sure to move his wings into a position that would enable him to enter the room, Cassian took Evelyn's hand which was dwarfed by his own, allowing the girl to pull him into the room.

"My hero" Cassian sweetly grinned, crouching down to place a delicate kiss onto the back of your daughter's hand, "Either I'm going to need some smaller wings or your mum's going to have to get a bigger door."

Another round of giggles fell from Evelyn's lips at his words, her little hand still tucked into Cassian's palm, the girl shaking her head as she quietly spoke, "I like your wings just the way they are."

"Thank you" Cassian replied with a smile, cheeks dusting with a pink blush at her sweet compliment. "I like your dress" he replied, coming to lightly poke Evelyn's button nose which earned him an excitable squeal from the girl before her face adorably scrunched into a picture of curiosity.

"Can . . . can I touch them?" Evelyn shyly asked. Her question being met with sounds of protest from you, knowing just how sensitive Illyrian wings can be. Yet Cassian's answer surprised you, the male telling the girl yes without even an ounce of hesitation.

"Here" he softly spoke, taking Evelyn's hand which was still wrapped in his own and moving it towards a spot on his wing he knew wasn't as sensitive as the others.

Not wanting Cassian to feel obliged to do this just to keep your daughter happy you protested once more, "Cas you don't have to-"

"I don't mind sweetheart"

And as Evelyn's hand came to lightly press against the membrane of his wing, Cassian couldn't stop the spark of joy he felt at seeing the young girl smile. Knowing in his heart that despite this being their first introduction, the General would do anything and everything within his power to ensure your daughter's happiness.

It took everything in you not to cry at the sight of Cassian sating your daughter's curiosity. At the dazzling smile which was painted across his face as he looked at Evelyn with such love. A type of love you had only hoped she would one day get to experience, the love that only a father could provide.

“Can I mama? Can I please?” Evelyn’s begging voice broke you from your thoughts.

“Can you what sorry sweetheart?” You ask, wondering exactly what it was that left your daughter so eager for an answer.

“Can we go flying? Please, please, pleaseeee.”

Cassian grinned at you wickedly from behind where Evelyn was stood, shrugging his shoulders as he mimicked your daughter’s pleading tone, “Please mama, we promise we’ll be good!”

As you flatly stared between Cassian’s smirking face and Evelyn’s equally mischievous smile you silently cursed yourself, scoffing in disbelief at the fact Cassian had known your daughter for under an hour and had already pulled her into his troublesome ways.

Praying to the mother for the strength you are going to need for the restless days ahead.

It had been an evening to remember for Evelyn, Cassian having been more than willing to occupy her until the late hours of the night. Bed-time forgotten as the two of them played and played until Evelyn was no longer able to keep her eyes open no matter how hard she tried.

Your daughter sprawled across yours and Cassian’s lap as the three of you cuddled on the sofa. It didn’t take much longer for you to follow suit and join Evelyn in her dreaming, eyes drifting closed as Cassian’s warmth pulled you into an inviting slumber.

Cassian was more than content to sit and watch the two of you sleep, lip curling at the soft snores which escaped from Evelyn’s mouth.

And as Cassian lay there with the two of you safely tucked within the sanctuary of his arms, he wondered if this was what he had been missing all of his life. For being here, surrounded by the small family you had built for yourself, Cassian could have sworn that his heart had grown two sizes bigger.

So as he stayed awake, scared of missing out on a single moment, Cassian whispered into the silence of the night. A hushed prayer for whoever was listening.

“Thank you” a soft smile graced his lips, “For bringing me my beautiful girls.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Notes: Ahhhh I love them so much 🥹

If you want to see any more of them and have an ideas for what it is you want please do feel free to send in some requests because I totally wouldn’t mind writing more about this little family 🥹

#acotar #fanfic #acotar imagine #sarah j maas #a court of thorns and roses #cassian oneshot #cassian fic #cassian imagine #cassian x reader #cassian

[apparitionism]

Asleep 2

For the anniversary this year, I have the second “half” of my @b-and-w-holiday-gift-exchange story for @kla1991 : an involuntary bed-sharing situation that turns not sexy but disastrous. The first part took on Myka’s perspective; this conclusion is written from the other side of the bed. A confession: I find in-universe Helena’s head voice a somewhat difficult register to compose—because while she can’t be fully insane, she needs to teeter or list, sometimes more than a little (but without falling into histrionics). Which is to say that if you don’t entirely buy the turns of thought and/or coping mechanisms I’ve given her here, your skepticism is well-placed. Ultimately I hope it’s the case that a person can be broken but still want in a way that’s... pure? Justified? Sweet? Reciprocatable? Maybe just “vaguely recognizably human”?

Anyway, this is long, first because it extends well beyond the point at which the first part ended, but also because when a Bering and a Wells get to talking (as they at last do!), they need to work things out at their own pace...

Asleep 2

My arm is asleep.

Under normal circumstances, a person would, upon becoming aware of this, shift position so as to restore blood flow.

Under normal circumstances.

But very little is normal about the circumstances under which Helena’s arm is asleep.

She is in a hotel-room bed, in the dark of night, lying on her left side, with her left arm, her now-asleep arm, pinned beneath her. So ends the disturbingly limited “normal” portion of the situation.

Here begins the larger portion: she absolutely must not move.

Irony guts at her with that, a shiv-and-twist remembrance of bronze restriction—but that prohibition had involved a significantly different auxiliary verb: “cannot” rather than “must not.”

Grammatical particulars aside, her immobility now is barely less a torment. This is because her other arm, her alive right, terminates in an even-more alive sensate hand, one that now rests—but is in no way at rest—on Myka’s right hip.

Myka, too, is lying on her left side, a small distance in front of Helena, lying in this hotel-room bed. Such proximity in such a space might, under other circumstances, signify the fulfillment of a long-held dream... but here, now, it seems a nightmare. For Myka is Helena’s colleague and no more; they are in this bed for sleep and no more; and Myka is playing her part correctly while Helena is not, in contravention of what she has sworn to herself she would do no more.

Such drowsy sense the placing of that hand had seemed to make, when she had found herself facing Myka’s back. She had in the past regarded that length covetously, relishing the idea of touch both salacious and tender.

For all her coveting, however, she had in fact only once laid hands on that back, both hands with intention on the clothed blades of Myka’s shoulders: a terrifying embrace, one that was in the most basic physical manner right but overall searingly wrong, screaming bodily truth but surrounded by words that said nothing they should. A perversion of promise, like so much else that had happened in Boone.

Yet Helena had clung to its memory all the same.

She’d thought, here in this unexpected proximity, to supersede that, to touch once again, once again but brief, once again though brief. To erase and replace.

First she touched the right blade, light; yet her hand wanted stillness, more connection than a mere pat against cotton-clad bone. And there was Myka’s hip, a beckoning promontory jut... a place to rest. Rest, however brief.

Once placed, however, her hand had proved reluctant to retreat.

Brief, she reminded it.

No, the hand had responded. I belong here.

Helena knows this is true. She knows also that it cannot be true.

But she is no stranger to holding contradictory thoughts in her head. This has been essential to establishing and maintaining, in these new Warehouse days, a functional equilibrium. Functional. Indeed her goal, in this “reboot,” has been to function, which she has lately defined as something on the order of “to move through time nondestructively.”

This definition had come about due to her realization, pre-reboot, that her difference from others, her inability to fully perform a modern self—her arrogance about that inability, even as she attempted to hide both the inability and the arrogance—chipped at, chipped from, the good (the good nature, the good will, the goodness) of those around her. Over time, such chips accrued as wounds.

Nate. (Adelaide.) Giselle.

She had as a result finally understood that coming back to the Warehouse would mean, at the very least, that those with whom she interacted had already made a bargain, perhaps even a peace, with the inevitable violence of history: with the way the forces of the past could—would—affect, even infect, the present. Helena herself was, at her simplest, merely one more of those forces.

She did consider requesting that she be re-Bronzed, now absent any pretension of traveling through time, but rather as a way of neutralizing a dangerous, and demonstrably unstable, artifact. But then an image had come to her, possibly as an omen, possibly as only a desperate wish: Myka’s devastated face upon hearing such news.

Boone all over again.

Thus the reboot. Because the most significant entry under “function,” with additional emphasis on the “nondestructive” portion of that definition, was her resolution to spare Myka pain. In the past, Helena had been both careless and careful—surgically so—in her infliction of damage on Myka above all others. But she had sworn to herself that those days were done.

Done, but Helena knew she had not paid anything near a sufficient price.

So. To maintain distance, no matter how troublesomely ardent her wish to close it, was—had to be—part of her penance. And to do so decorously was—had to be—the gentlest approach. That was what Helena told herself in her more rational moments.

This moment, in this bed, is not one of those. If it were, she would simply remove her hand. Simply remove it, then roll over.

But her mind races, finding complication: She doesn’t know what sort of sleeper Myka is. Had Helena’s placing of hand awakened her? If she had awakened, has she now fallen asleep again? If she has, would she then be reawakened by the hand’s removal? Or would she, if still awake, draw some negative inference about the entire situation based on removal?

Ideally, Helena would maintain a facsimile of entirely blameless sleep while engaging in that removal, but can she make such a performance believable?

Never in her life has Helena been so concerned about her ability to mislead convincingly as when she has attempted to deceive Myka. That was the case in the past, even at her most nefarious, and now she worries day-to-day that her strictly disciplined disguise of near-constant wishing ache will slip and fail. A simple I am asleep should be... well... simple. But it is not, and Helena is reminded of Claudia’s tendency to observe, in situations both dire and banal, “Here we are.”

Here we are, because Myka is apparently indifferent to the idea of sharing a bed with Helena.

Here we are, because Myka is apparently indifferent to history.

Here we are, and that latter indifference is a surpassing irony, due to the fullness of—

Helena sees that she needs to divert her train of thought, as descending into unjustified anger will help absolutely nothing.

First, she entertains a fantasy of sitting up, turning on a light, and explaining to Myka that this entire situation is untenable, and that if they are going to share a bed, they should share a bed. But it’s true that Myka did not seem even to consider that as a possibility, which seems ludicrous, given the past... no, that’s back to unjustified anger, for who is Helena to resent what Myka wishes not to consider? And indeed, who is she to interpret the past in such a way as to believe she understands what Myka would have considered?

Focus on the facts, she tells herself. What actually happened in that nefarious past. And do so dispassionately.

Regrettably, the word “dispassionately” brings to mind another word: “passionately.”

Again. For she had thought that word not long after she and Myka had first entered this room, first entered it to find, as Helena’s unrestrained fantasies might have conjured, only one bed. That they were clearly intended to share. Thus her mind’s unruly leap to... an adverbial manner in which they might do so.

But Myka had said not one word about the accommodations, so Helena had held her tongue as well. She nevertheless couldn’t help but feel it an elaborate lack of remark on both their parts, the silence practically baroque in its fullness.

Baroque too had been the courtesy with which they jointly prepared for bed, a you-first-no-you stutter-choreography of politeness that ensured privacy, yes, but also reinforced the barrier between their past and their present.

Which Helena understood was necessary. It did nothing, however, to mitigate the breath-hold of preparing to lie down beside Myka.

Once she had managed that lying down, however (with a relative aplomb for which self-congratulation was not, she felt, unjustified), she hoped her torment might ease. A bit. If she could manage the additional task of pretending the body beside her was no more significant than any other human. Some flesh, recumbent.

But when they were situated thus beside, Myka spoke. “You seem a little upset,” she said.

Helena had barely been able to restrain a snort. Now Myka saw fit to comment? As if allowing this portion of the play to pass without remark would create some undue strain upon collegiality? As if their incongruous bonhomie might buckle under the weight of that silence? Oh, that was rich.

Bottling her pique, Helena questioned: “With?” To make Myka say it. Mere saying wouldn’t hurt. Would it?

“You haven’t been yourself since you put that camera in the static bag. Was it a problem, seeing it again?”

Helena held herself rigid so as to keep her body from betraying neither her disappointment at the question nor, contradictorily, her relief...

It was a reasonable question. A good question. Not one on which Helena particularly wanted to focus (although it indicated a certain attention on Myka’s part, an attention on which Helena suspected she should not dwell), but it did deserve an answer. “It closes a door, doesn’t it,” she told the ceiling, for turning her head to address the other body directly seemed an invitation to peril. “That one I opened so nefariously, long ago.”

“Or—and—maybe it closes a loop,” Myka said.

Unexpected. “A loop?”

“Right after college, I went through a self-help phase,” Myka said. She paused, and Helena found herself on relative tenterhooks regarding the applicability of this (new!) information to the current situation. Which reminded her how much she had missed talking with Myka... because of the very sound of her voice, yes, but also because her conversation could range so unanticipatedly. So rewardingly unanticipatedly. Helena had known few people who could lead her on such unpredictable, yet productive, journeys.

Was Myka’s apparent willingness to begin such a journey now indicative of... anything? A softening, perhaps, of relations between them? Not a rebooting of their once-burgeoning intimacy, for that had to remain taboo, but could it be that some restoration of their previous intellectual engagement might be, at the very least, neutral rather than harmful?

Helena had moved a tentative pawn in that direction during their conversation on the airplane. Perhaps this was Myka’s answering move?

With an exhale that seemed like resignation at what she was about to say—to reveal?—Myka said, “I felt like I needed to be someone different—someone better.”

Another pause. Helena considered that such a feeling seemed very Myka (and she heard that phrase in Claudia’s voice), but also very misguided. Of course she was not at all placed to make such judgments, and even less so to convey them to Myka. Thus she said a simple, “Did you,” to encourage without prejudice.

“So I read a lot of books,” Myka said, to which Helena had responded internally, Of course you did. “One was about how to get things done.”

“All things?” Helena asked.

“Sort of.” That was followed by yet another pause. Yet another puzzle.

All these pauses. Was Myka on the verge of sleep? Helena said, soft, thinking she might go unheard, “Perhaps I should read that book. As a help to myself.”

At that, Myka had laughed, more delay, but also soft. “I don’t think it’s any kind of help you need. The guy who wrote it had a big system, all these rules, and I love rules, but these... I admit I didn’t stick with most of them. Honestly, any. But an idea that did stick was actually a pretty minor part: open loops. Stuff you track subconsciously, all the time, because it’s incomplete. How troubling that is. And what a difference it makes when you close a loop, when you each a resolution. I mean, he was talking about stuff like answering emails.”

“Emails,” Helena echoed. So far from artifacts.

“Which this is so much bigger than,” Myka said, exhibiting, not for the first time, an uncanny ability to scoop from Helena’s thoughts. “But maybe the principle holds. You don’t have to tell me. But I hope you have fewer open loops now than you did. Before.”

“Yes. The number. Fewer,” Helena said, factually.

She of course couldn’t say out loud (but it was equally factual) that Myka herself was the loop most capaciously open. The one that gaped, superseding, never mind the number of lesser.

Indeed, however, that number was now minus-one. Oscar. Oscar and his ballad... that loop closed.

Helena had in fact, while handling the camera, begun to ideate a wish that someone (Steve? Claudia?) might be persuaded to use the camera to capture her image... for it had occurred to her that a spark of art, some production on which to concentrate, might animate this reboot... something to pursue, rather than to be pursued by...

But. Lying abed, still and strangely hopeful—a state she should have known would not endure—a realization had struck her, as an open hand to the face, a realization of why Myka had brought up loops and the closing thereof: she had somehow discerned Helena’s wish, via that scooping of thought, and was discouraging her from pursuing it.

So much for any softening. This was instead a warning: Helena should not open a loop that Myka might be obligated to close. And Helena had no trouble grasping that the warning was in no way limited to the use of a single artifact... no, it doubtless applied to any burdensome loops Helena might be thinking of opening, any new incompletions that might come to trouble Myka.

“I understand,” Helena had said, regretting that pawns could not be moved backwards.

At the same instant, Myka said, “I’m glad.”

That collision had canceled communication entirely; in its wake, Myka had turned out her light and turned away from Helena.

Leaving Helena to her thoughts.

Well, fine, had been the first of those.

Next had come an equally mulish sniff of And I will have no difficulty directing any subsequent away from this shared bed.

Whereupon she had proven herself both wrong and right, thinking about history, about the fact that, whatever Myka’s commentary or lack thereof had or hadn’t signified, the fact of Warehouse agents lodging together, sharing beds completely platonically, was certainly nothing new.

This line of thinking had enabled Helena to distract herself by recalling a mission with Steve and Claudia, one in which Steve had announced, after checking in at their hotel, “Bad news. Just a king room left, but they said they’d bring up a cot.”

He had then immediately assigned Claudia to said cot, prompting her to protest, “No way! This situation screams rock-paper-scissors tournament! Loser gets the crappy night’s sleep!”

“No way,” Steve protested back, far more mildly. “The father of science fiction gets first dibs on the lumbar support, and my back’s got a decade on yours, so I call second. If that father agrees.”

Helena had. Sharing with Steve had been fine.

Sharing with Myka should of course have been no different.

Should of course have been...

But now, here in the impossible present, as Helena’s left arm slumbers and her right hand sparks, what should have been? Isn’t isn’t isn’t.

She needs further distraction, so she casts her mind again to Claudia and Steve, to the compensations they have offered her during this strange and estranging reboot: at first Claudia, who had welcomed Helena back so unreservedly and continues to offer wholehearted allyship; and then Steve, who had quickly become an unanticipated boon companion, a partner upon whom Helena has felt increasingly, and increasingly exceptionally, lucky to be able to rely.

And yet these compensations, though Helena hopes she conveys all appropriate gratitude for them, are never sufficient, for Myka—necessary yet unreachable—is always present.

She’d been so, even during that cot-delineated retrieval. Its aftermath had (so much for distraction) involved a significantly Myka-related incident, for Helena had dared, as she, Steve, and Claudia were relaxing in the hotel lounge prior to retiring, to broach Myka as a topic of conversation. As one might do, she’d thought: speaking about a colleague.

“I have an inquiry,” she’d phrased it. To make the ensuing question sound... scientific?

Dispassionate, she jeers at her recalled self.

She jeers also at what she’d said next: a too-bald, “How is Myka?”

She had known, even at the time, that what she had truly wanted was to say that blessed name, to speak about that blessed person. She could not speak to Myka in any meaningful way, and she was starving.

Steve and Claudia had then shared what seemed an extremely charged glance, so Helena hastened to dissemble, making sure to use questions so as to prevent Steve from finding her immediately untruthful: “Given that her liaison with Pete ended? They’ve... recovered, as it were? Both faring well?”

But her tone had struck her own ears as too bright; a desperation rippled behind it, and Helena knew from experience that behind that tiptoed a still deeper threat of rupture, which required work to be kept at bay. As Helena had been instructed by her most successful therapist to do when such awareness overtook her, she began to breathe with attention.

Neither Steve nor Claudia spoke as she did so.

When the danger passed, she smiled, as best she could, to signal to them her appreciation—and to herself, her success.

Steve then said, “You’re not asking about Pete.”

Helena valued—as a personality trait—Steve’s discerning willingness to push. She did not in that moment value how he thus so easily revealed a glaring flaw in her initial approach: she should have asked about Pete; with that as her entrée, the talk might organically have turned to Myka. Foolish of her to think so unstrategically... or was her failure to do so a paradoxically positive sign?

“Give it time,” Steve said, and Helena knew he was making no reference to Myka and Pete’s recovery.

“My relationship to time,” she said, with contempt. Time: she’d taken it. Now she had to give it? A forfeit. Well, that was fair.

Claudia said to Steve, “Speaking of, we’re wasting it. Are we gonna do the thing?”

“Only if H.G.’s on board,” Steve told her. It was an unexpectedly mind-your-manners utterance.

“What is the thing?” Helena asked.

“Claudia’s trying out alcohols,” Steve said. “We can’t do it around Pete, obviously, which means retrievals are our—”

“So many questions to answer, right?” Claudia interrupted, her avidity increasing. “You know, am I über-suave James Bond with the martinis? Or a fights-against-my-general-cool-geek-vibe Carrie Bradshaw with a cosmo?”

Helena had had no idea what she was referring to, but the investigation seemed entirely fit for someone her age. “What have you determined thus far?”

“Turns out cosmos don’t work for me,” she said, “as the prophecy foretold, and Bond-wise, I like a martini all vodka, no gin; sorry, Vesper.”

“Is that all?” Helena asked.

Further avidity: “Oh god no. Vodka drinks aren’t perfect: white Russians are way too sweet. Also in the white family, the wine category pretty much bores me. Also there was this one time Steve ordered a gin drink called a white lady that I couldn’t even think about because it had an egg white in it and one look made me retch.”

“Quite the wide-ranging experiment,” Helena said, hoping to forestall further off-putting description. “Not conducted with inappropriate... ah... intensity, one hopes?”

Steve patted Claudia’s shoulder, at which she rolled her eyes. “I’m supervising,” he said. “No more than a few tries in one sitting, and we’re doing it mindfully.”

Claudia abandoned her attitude and nodded. “Paying attention to what I’m tasting. How to find, you know, notes and stuff. Except for the disgusting egg-white thing, it’s honestly been fun.”

“I’m not opposed to fun,” Helena said, and she was a bit surprised—but pleased, and pleased to be pleased—that Steve didn’t squint in response. “So, Mr. Supervisor, what’s next?”

“I’ve been pushing for the wide and wonderful world of beer, but—”

“Seems too jocktastic,” Claudia said. “You know, ‘Beer me, bro.’”

“I don’t know,” Helena said.

“Anyway that’s really not me,” Claudia continued, as if Helena hadn’t spoken. She did have a tendency to ignore Helena’s ignorance, a tendency that Helena enjoyed and found frustrating in equal measure.

“Her beer perspective is severely limited,” Steve lamented.

“I myself have always found a strong stout ale quite enjoyable,” Helena said: her contribution to Steve’s cause. It was also true, the fact of which he seemed pleased to affirm with a quirk of lip and a quiet “so you have.”

Claudia’s expression remained skeptical, but she shrugged weakly and said, “I guess I could give it a shot?”

“Oh, because H.G. says so,” Steve twitted.

To that, Claudia squared her shoulders. “Yeah. Don’t you know who she is?” she demanded.

“Who I was,” Helena hurried to emphasize, “and given that Steve assigned me the bed on that basis, he—”

“Who you are,” Claudia corrected, throwing the emphasis back.

“And who is that?” Helena asked. What distinction did Claudia imagine was relevant?

“The person who told me my destiny was glorious. You’re still that guy, right?”

Relevant indeed. Helena was taken aback, indeed taken back to that extremity, back in a novel way. She had been so mired in the Myka of it all in the intervening time, that she had lost her view of the bright salience of Claudia’s presence. Wrongly. “I am,” she said. She hoped Claudia believed her.

“Okay,” Claudia said. “So I’ve got this big-as-Pete’s-biceps incentive to hope the stuff you say is true. And by the way, one of you has to casually drop in front of him how I said that, because I want the points.”

Steve snickered and said, “I know my job. But in the meantime, I think I’d like to toast to all these sentiments, and to the agents offering them. With a strong stout ale.”

They tasted the three strongest the hotel bar had on offer, and Claudia pronounced that her favorite, one purporting to convey roasted notes of coffee, chocolate, and other darkness, was “way too complicated for your average broseph.” Which Steve seemed pleased by, as a judgment, so the overall experience scored a success.

There was no further talk of Myka, however, the avoidance of which topic seemed quite deliberate... as if Steve and Claudia had determined that Helena would not benefit from it.

Or that she did not deserve it.

For the best, Helena had concluded. Either way.

Now, in a similar “for the best either way” sense, she makes to raise her hand, with that intended overlay of feigned sleep, so as to shift away and at last regain equilibrium, restoring feeling to her sleeping arm and calming that oversensitive hand. But instead—in what she can interpret only as a stupidly id-driven attempt to bank some never-to-be-repeated sensation, to the memory of which that desperate id might cling in a touch-deprived future—she moves her hand, not away from Myka, but further down her leg.

And her worst fears are instantly realized: Myka’s body reacts violently, as if in revulsion at the very idea of Helena touching her.

It was only a hand at rest, Helena begs, with no conception of why or to whom she is rendering that supplication. That was all.

Alas, that was—is—not all, for in the next split second Myka is falling from the bed and crying out in pain.

Helena, at a loss, attempts a faux-innocent inquiry, which Myka answers unintelligibly. In trepidation, Helena ventures to the mattress-edge, then lowers herself to the floor next to Myka—and she is appalled, for the situation that confronts her is all debility, even more so than the absurd “my arm is asleep” with which this farce began: Myka’s shoulder is dislocated.

Further, Myka is now unconscious.

Spare Myka pain. How utterly unsurprising Helena finds her inability to obey such a dictum in even this most basic physical sense.

Unsurprising... worse, dispiriting, and it brings her low, such that again the incipient rupture asserts its subterranean power, urging Helena to give up, to run away and leave this broken Myka to someone else to bind up and save.

You’ve done it before.

That resounds in her head as both accusation and affirmation, and the voice pronouncing it might be Myka’s, or some deity’s, or that of any of the other personages who jockey audibly for primacy in that space, including Helena’s own.

She initiates breathing with care, even as an eddying undertow tempts her to entertain the notion that escape, too, might be rebooted, tempts her to entertain and revel in its ostentation as a response to Myka’s indifference, her rejection of history, even her revulsion.

Here is my answer to all that, a departure would declare.

Helena labors to breathe herself away from such perfidy, but the scenario creeps along, with an undertone of sinful relish, as she imagines leaving Myka to awaken alone and in pain.

But then—because her labor leads her there—she further imagines the various permutations of “someone else” who might be called upon to save the day in her absence. Whereupon the thought strikes her that moving through time nondestructively requires her to think seriously of, and to think seriously out, such knock-ons... how, for example, would Steve and Claudia respond to having to clean up this mess, knowing that Helena had made it?

Moving through time nondestructively. Interesting, here, the overlap with moving through time selfishly: selfishly, she does not want to destroy Claudia’s image of her as someone whose opinion matters. She does not want to destroy Steve’s image of her either, for it seems to have at least some positive components. Further, she does not want to destroy the fellowship they three are building.

If for no other reasons than those, she concludes that having caused this quite specific damage, she must fix it.

Because she can.

The fact of the matter is, Helena cannot fix most things. She has tried mightily to maintain the pretense that she can... but she has been forced over and over to confront the absurdity of that bravado. This very specific fix-it, however, she can perform. And while that performance—inconveniently, in the present circumstance—requires touch, here it can be functional. Perhaps in success she might in some way efface her earlier invasiveness...

Yet she can do nothing without two functional arms. She thumps her still-insensate left against the bed, hard—too hard, for Myka’s eyes open. She mumbles out something Helena decodes as “whatareyoudoing.”

“Preparing to remedy a situation,” Helena says.

“Okay.” Myka murmurs. She seems oddly comforted by the answer, to such an extent that she relaxes, losing consciousness again.

That’s fortunate, given the required manipulation.

Helena prepares herself to do it quickly, efficiently, as she has done in the past... rather dramatically on one occasion, as she recalls, for an agonized Wolcott... but she should not think of Wolcott. For the regret.

She sets that aside, preoccupying herself instead with the necessary activity. Her manipulation, determined and strong, is rewarded: what begins as a sluggish resistance resolves into a slip-pop of relocation, one that shudders a familiar path through her own bones. She then cushions Myka’s arm with a fresh towel and uses a pillowcase to fashion around it a tight sling.

Levering Myka up onto the bed would most likely cause further injury, so Helena sits beside her on the floor, ensuring periodically that she continues to breathe. The wait is calming, cleansing, its peace a renewal of a soothing activity of which Helena has been long deprived: observing Myka closely, at actual leisure. At no point since her return—so at no point in, literally, years—has she had such an opportunity.

She’s reminded, in that observation, of the true fundament: this precious person. Who could never be merely some flesh.

After a lengthy time, during which Helena is pressed to consider, to remember, to value Myka’s singularity, that precious person’s eyes flutter open.

That person tests her bound arm, a tentative physical investigation that approaches elegance in its delicacy.

But Myka’s delicacy and elegance, too, Helena should not think of. For the regret.

“I’m not in the hospital,” Myka burrs.

Reasonable, practical. This is what Helena should think of. “Not yet,” she says. “But we’ll go if necessary. If you’re in pain.”

Myka’s face contorts. “Not if. I am. Some. More than some. I’m sorry.”

“For being in pain?”

“That. But also, for changing this whole thing.”

Helena leaves the latter alone, for she cannot begin to interpret it. Focusing on functionality, she asks, “Can you dress yourself?”

Myka nods, but she winces far too much with even that motion, so Helena screws her courage to it and says, “I’ll change and then help you.”

Herself, fast, then Myka: Functional, she snarls internally as she addresses the situation, and even faster. She’s relieved to find that Myka’s trousers and boots are less complicated than she’d feared, and as it happens, preventing Myka suffering additional physical pain—even while undressing and redressing her!—is, paradoxically or not, far easier than navigating emotional shoals, or even hand-on-hip physical shoals. Focusing on Myka’s face for twists, listening for labors in breath, adjusting accordingly... it’s distractingly, satisfyingly concrete. Only the present moment matters.

Only the present moment matters. This is the mantra Helena iterates internally as they proceed to the nearest urgent care facility.

Yet as they wait there for attention, Helena finds herself increasingly unable to ignore why they are waiting there for attention. In the present moment, which matters. She begins—or does she intend it as an ending?—with, “I’m assuming you flung yourself to the floor in an attempt to escape a circumstance.”

Myka hiccups a laugh that makes her cringe in protection of the shoulder. “That’s weirdly accurate. As an assumption.”

Helena recoils at the confirmation, but she must acknowledge it. “A circumstance in which I touched you in a way that was unwelcome,” she agrees, with gloom.

“Unwelcome,” Myka echoes.

It’s so... definitive. It was one thing for Helena herself to think it, believe it, say it aloud. Quite another—though it shouldn’t have been—to hear it from Myka.

A punctuating end to what never truly began between them: there is some consolation, if only philosophical, in the idea that after so many starts that were false, they may at least enjoy a finish that is true.

“Of course it was,” Helena says, following with, “and how could it have been otherwise.” She puts the final period upon it by adding a bare, spare dig: “Given history.”

Myka closes her eyes... in acceptance of the cut? When she opens them, they are glistening. Tears? Helena is egotistically gratified by such a response, never mind that it means she has yet again failed to hold to her resolution.

“Helena,” Myka says, and now Helena is gratified simply by Myka’s low utterance of her name. Myka does not always use that deeper voice, and Helena does love (yes, love) the rare pleasure of hearing her name in it. “I’m so tired,” Myka says next.

That is less gratifying. It’s yet another utterance Helena should leave alone; of course Myka is tired. But in what she is sure is a mistake, Helena says, “Of?”

“Everything. But particularly, you.”

A dagger, that was. A cut back. Testimony to Helena’s concatenating mistakes.

“This you,” Myka adds.

The additional twist of blade leaves Helena unclear on the devastation Myka intends. “Of course” is all she can think to say.

Myka closes her eyes and exhales heavy, a near-sob. “Sorry. Sorry. Sorry,” she intones, but what need has she to apologize? “That was the pain talking—or, no, I still know you well enough to know you’ll hear that wrong. What I mean is, I’m saying something I could keep holding back if the pain wasn’t cracking me open.”

The pain. Cracking her open. Which would never have happened in the absence of Helena’s stupid, thoughtless touch. Which in turn makes abundantly clear that the stupid, thoughtless person who applied that touch is the “this you” Myka means.

If Helena is to remain in this situation she must take measures, so she lengthens her inhales and exhales, entirely ashamed both at needing such a crutch and at having to exhibit that need.

After a moment of silence, Myka asks, “Are you breathing differently than you were just a second ago?”

Myka isn’t Steve. Helena could at least attempt to lie about this, to cloak her shame... but it’s effort, either way. “Yes,” she says, choosing the unpredictability of Myka’s interpretation over the unpredictability of her own performance.

“Is that good or bad?” Myka asks. “Or both?”

The questions stop Helena, stop her in the same way her at-leisure observation of Myka had. I still know you well enough, Myka had said, and it is true. This is why, Helena would say if she could. Your knowing to ask that.

But she can’t say it, and, worse, she doesn’t know what she should say. What should come next.

Apparently Myka doesn’t either. That not-knowing persists, hanging, until “next” arrives, as an intrusion from outside their suspension: medical attention is at last directed Myka’s way; she is escorted out of the waiting area and taken elsewhere.

“We’ll call you when you can see her,” Helena is told.

Alone in the waiting area—for no other human seems to have suffered damage this night—and uncomfortably situated on a hard plastic chair, she tilts her head back against a similarly unforgiving plaster wall.

She closes her eyes. She’s had no rest, no rest for so long. She is drained. Physically empty.

Philosophically as well.

She imagines trying to sleep... or rather, she imagines not trying to remain awake.

Doubtless futile, either way.

She next imagines constructing an airtight argument that could not help but persuade all who hear it—Myka in particular, but all others as well—that this entire situation is Artie’s fault.

Also futile.

This despite its being the fact of the matter, for indeed he did bring the situation about. Perhaps not in a proximate sense, but in the ultimate... the idea of which, after a moment, strikes her as both comic and tragic: Artie as the ultimate cause? Of anything, from the universe on down? Though he would doubtless like to imagine himself so... even at the Warehouse, however, he must be not even penultimate, given the bureaucracy that sits over the entire concern...

Helena thus spends the bulk of her time in the waiting area stewing about—stewing over? stewing under?—the relative positions of god, Mrs. Frederic, and various Regents in the universe. None of it, however, requires her to alter her breathing; rather, she composes in her head the opening paragraphs of several publishable monographs on these and related topics. It isn’t restful. But is evidence of something other than emptiness.

When someone does at last call her to see Myka, everything has changed.

Well. Not everything. Helena herself hasn’t, as her bureaucracy-pantheon thought may have been philosophically valid but made no difference.

Myka, however, has changed entirely: her arm is now professionally dressed, but more importantly, the knit of pain has left her face. “They medicated me,” she says, giving the word “medicated” a rapturous cast. “The X-rays said I didn’t break anything, so we’re waiting on results of a scan to see if I need surgery but in the meantime I feel better than I maybe ever have in my life and I am so happy to see you. All these doctors were like ‘why did she think she could fix you’ but I knew why and it was because it’s you. and that scan? It’ll shout out how Helena Wells relocated Myka’s shoulder so she didn’t need surgery, and they don’t know this, but actually H.G. Wells relocated Myka’s shoulder, which is even more amazing. Wait, that’s not more amazing. You’re the most amazing when you’re you than when you’re that guy. Even though I guess you are that guy. Sort of. Wait, Claudia’s been saying ‘that guy’ a lot now. And I cut and paste from her so much, but I don’t like it. The way things are.” She heaves an enormous sigh and blinks at Helena, as if she’s just re-understood that another person is present.

Is there some ideal way to answer this flood? Helena settles for an antiseptic “I’m pleased to see you out of pain.”

Myka gasps and flails wildly with her uninjured arm, which gesture eventually resolves into an index finger directed at Helena. “That’s it exactly. I’m out of pain. All out. No more pain to give. Particularly not to you. So saying I’m tired of you? I regret it, and I apologize for it, and I promise that’s the end of it. I was wishing to get something back, and you don’t want it back, and so I have to be fine. Without it. Without you.”

Without you. Helena supposes she should be impressed by how concisely Myka can foreshadow disaster. “Should I not... be here?” She braces herself for the answer.

“Of course you should. I have to be fine without how you were,” Myka says, very quietly. The collapse of her volubility gives Helena pause.

She knows it would be better not to probe; she ought to, as Claudia says, “take the win.” But “Of course you should” is only facially a win... “How was I?” she asks. To wound herself by making Myka clarify what has been lost.

“Oh, how you were...” Myka says, her words dragging. How much—any, all?—of this might be due to the varying effects of the medication? “Putting me into this story,” she continues. “It was so big, and I didn’t understand what it was, really or at all, but it felt so big. Yearning and tragedy, and there I was, still me, but in it, so in it, all in it, next to you. Bigger than life, and I... loved it? Needed it? Something to take me over. But my wishing for any of it back, when of course you don’t?” She raises that free arm, then lets it fall. Futility, it says. “So small. Only somebody little and desperate would want to make you revisit any of that.”

Medication effect or not, Helena can’t let Myka keep on with this. “Make me revisit it? Yearning and tragedy? I’m the one who inflicted that, and with malign intent; I damaged you. And I cannot imagine a scenario in which that debt is discharged.”

Myka squints. “Debt,” she says, as if articulating a new noun, but not one that names an abstraction; no, this thing is big and blunt, a dumb object that takes up space. Unfunctional furniture. That I carry on my back, Helena moods.

“Oh!” Myka then yelps, her tone shifting to excitement. “But I just damaged myself. So now we’re even!” She delivers that last bit big and broad, for all the world as if she’s the comic lead in a panto.

Helena has not spared a thought for panto in years. “That makes no sense at all,” she says, because it’s the case, but also to scorn the memory. This is no time for that past.

“Would you like me to dislocate your shoulder?” Myka asks, as if it were a reasonable proffer. Still comic, but now strangely sincere.

Helena meets this bizarrely compelling, ridiculous combination with as much severity as she can muster. “Honestly no. I would not.”

“I see,” Myka says, and she points again, this time without preambling flail. “Some prices you aren’t willing to pay.”

Helena can at the very least be honest about this. How nice it would be if Steve were here to verify. “Willing to... in the sense of volunteering to? No. In the sense of understanding that I deserve to? Certainly. So do me damage if you must. In particular, do me damage if you think it could even the score between us. It won’t, but if you think it could? Please do.”

“That’s pretty twisted,” pronounces the only arbiter who matters.

“You sound like Claudia again,” Helena observes. To push the judgment away? Yes, and she tries to make certain of it with, “Is that another cut and paste?”

“Maybe. But now that I think about it, she sees things pretty clearly a lot of the time. Don’t you think?”

“I would like to think,” Helena is compelled to admit. Hoist by her own petard.

At this point—suspending any resolution—a doctor reenters the curtained area. “Good news: no surgery,” she tells Myka.

“See, I told you she fixed it,” Myka preens.

“You did,” says the doctor. “Several times,” she adds, dry.

Helena says “I’m so sorry,” only to hear Myka say, at the same time, “Sorry not sorry!” Another echo of Claudia... this one, however, clearly heartfelt.

The doctor turns to Helena. “Don’t try anything like this again. You got ridiculously lucky.”

“That’s kind of her M.O.,” Myka says. “Except when it isn’t.”

The doctor sighs. “I’m pretty sure that’s my point. And listen, make sure to follow up with your local doc. They’ll prescribe a ton of PT, so brace yourself.”

Myka snorts. “Brace myself? Sure, but not for the PT; my boss is going to flay me alive.”

The doctor barely reacts. “Oh, maybe this one can fix that too,” she deadpans, directing an eyeroll at Helena, accompanied by a murmured, “not a suggestion.”

“Oh, she’s in for the flaying,” Myka says, with more than a little cheer. “If not for this, then for something. Eventually.”

The doctor shakes her head, eyes unfocused. “Good news for me: I don’t have to care.” She points at Myka: “You go to PT.” Now at Helena: “You don’t try to practice medicine.” At both of them, her eyes flicking back and forth with purpose: “Got it?” Helena nods; she senses Myka doing the same. “Excellent,” the doctor says. “Or whatever. I’m done with you now.”

She conveys with her rapid exit that interacting with both of them has been a most exasperating experience.

While Helena does not appreciate being chastised—and especially not for attempting to care for Myka—she does appreciate expertise. Especially when it contributes to Myka’s well-being. It’s a conundrum. “I find your doctor’s aspect strangely appealing,” she says. “Speaking of bracing.”

Myka grins. “I was totally thinking the same thing.”

“And yet I would practice that medicine again.”

“For me that’s good news.”

As they prepare to depart, Helena says, “I confess I’m curious as to what you intend to tell Artie.”

Myka offers a slight stretch of her right shoulder in the direction of her ear: the only version of a shrug available to her, bound as she is. “Maybe I should leave that to you. You’re the writer.” Forestalling Helena’s reflexive objection, she adds, “I know, I know. The research. The ideas.”

“And yet I don’t have any. I certainly don’t see a path to inventing anything that would—”

“How about I take your photo with that camera? Think that’d help?” This is accompanied by a different grin: sly.

Whither the warning? Or is this a test? Myka isn’t Steve, yet Helena goes with truth: “It might. With any number of things.”

“If only,” Myka says, inscrutably. “Anyway I intend to tell Artie that this is all his fault, because he sent us on this retrieval in the first place. Obviously I won’t say what really happened.”

While Myka bestowing such grace is not surprising, it moves Helena all the same. “Thank you,” she says.

Myka opens her mouth, then closes it. She does it again. This wait... it’s grace too. “You’re welcome,” she eventually says. “I mean I’m tempted to tell him how you saved the day—the arm—but I know I shouldn’t, because I don’t want to draw attention to the hotel charging us extra.” To Helena’s quizzical eyebrow, she says, “For the missing towels and pillowcase. Which I tried to talk the nurses into giving back to me, but they’d already tossed them as hazardous waste. Or something. Or maybe I’m just not very persuasive? Or clear in what I’m asking for?”

Helena would very much like to explain that her own answers to those questions are negative and affirmative, respectively: no, you are persuasive; but yes, you are unclear.

“On the other hand, they did medicate me,” Myka says, perking up. “I keep thinking it’ll wear off, but not yet!”

The consolations of intoxication. “To the delight of your shoulder I’m sure,” Helena says. To my delight as well, she wishes she were free to say.

Their return to the hotel room offers another “everything has changed” hinge: no longer a stage for new and awkward performances of politesse, the space is now familiar, a place they have reentered. For the next act of the play?

Myka, who has preceded Helena in, stops and sways—just a bit, but Helena instinctively steps close, taking her by the elbow of her uninjured arm with one hand, stationing the other around the curve of her waist.

She feels Myka’s breath catch at the contact; immediately, she curses herself, loosens her hold, and says a terse, “I’m sure you want to lie down.”

“More than maybe anything. Or, wait, no, not anything.” Myka turns and catches Helena’s eyes with hers, but Helena cannot use that gaze as the basis for any inference.

She backs away as Myka lowers herself onto the bed; eventually, she backs her way into the room’s one armchair. It lacks give. It also lacks arms at a height that might provide anything resembling support. Helena slumps down, trying to be grateful that it exists at all.

Long minutes pass. As in the hospital’s waiting area, Helena imagines trying not to remain awake.

Similarly futile.

She chances a glance at Myka, who meets her eyes again and says, “That looks uncomfortable. Or what I mean is, you look uncomfortable. Which honestly is pointless, unless you’re doing some hair-shirt thing, because we’ve got this big bed. Not a lot of hours before we have to leave it, but we’ve got it for now.”

“That went poorly before.”

“I think circumstances have changed. Don’t you?” Weighted.

Circumstances are always changing, Helena could say. Usually for the worse. Instead she ventures, “You’d let me lie down with you?”

“I never wouldn’t.” Myka squints. “Wait. Did that come out right? Anyway, yes.”

Medication: not yet worn off. “You’re sure?” Helena asks.

“I’m pretty sure this bed is almost as big as a field where Pete’s favorite sport happens. It’s at least as big as an ice rink anyway, and those aren’t small.”

Helena refrains from pointing out that that was no help in the previous disaster. She doesn’t, however, appreciate being able to recline. For the first while, the fact of being beside Myka is less relevant than the slow loosening of her lower back and hips.

 “Can you sleep?” Helena asks, as they are both evidently lying with eyes open to the ceiling.

“Not now,” Myka answers, and the sentiment seems clear: not after all of this. All of this with which we must deal.

The bed first, perhaps.

She turns to look at Myka, if minimally. “Did you request a cot?” she asks, because she doesn’t know. Because the answer might reveal... something?

Myka’s eyes widen. “Oh my god I should have,” she says. Stricken.

“Why didn’t you?”

“It didn’t even cross my mind.” She’s talking more to herself—or perhaps to the room at large?—than to Helena. Is this continued evidence of the medication?

“And do you know why that is?” Helena asks, hoping for that revelation, even if drug-induced.

“Honestly I think I thought I was being given an ultimatum. Like it was something I had to be fine with or else.”

“Fine with ‘or else.’” Helena means the echo as rueful agreement.

But: “Sharing a bed with you. Platonically,” Myka says, taking it instead as a request for explanation.

“Platonically,” Helena scoffs, unable to avoid the idea that agreeing to accept that adverb would, paradoxically, usher in others. (Passionately.) (Speaking of paradoxically.) “That word is so often misused.” It’s a push-off. A push-away.

“But I’m using it correctly.” Myka sounds not offended, but rather self-satisfied.

Fine. Harden the position. “You are not referring to our consciousness rising from physical to spiritual matters.”

“Well... but how about love for the idea of good? As a path to virtue?”

Myka is well-read. In this moment, that fact is not entirely pleasing. “I suppose we were both attempting to be courtly,” Helena concedes.

“I mean I’ll grant you that nobody ended up transcending the body,” Myka says. Helena is about to agree, to snap away from churlishness, to express regret and apologies, when Myka exclaims, “Hey! I just had the best idea for a joke. So you’re not a hologram anymore, right? So you know what you were trying to be? Last night, in bed?”

Jokes. They confound Helena nearly as completely as metaphors do Steve. “I have no idea.”

“A Platonic solid,” Myka declares, triumphant.

Helena is mortified to find that in this case, she “gets it.” “Myka,” she sighs.

“Too soon? But come on, it’s not bad!”

“Alas, it is.” This quality, Helena can recognize.

“Right, but the good kind.”

Helena is not made of stone. Or bronze. How much easier everything had been then, sans choice and sans reason... and most importantly, sans the near-irresistibility of this one human. “I did always enjoy the word ‘icosahedron,’” she tenders.

“See,” Myka says, now in indulgence rather than triumph. “Pretty sure you have more than twenty faces though.”

“You do as well. Some revealed only under the influence of opioids.”

“Here’s one I don’t think I’d have the guts to use otherwise: my explain-it-to-you-using-words face.”

“Explain what to me?” Helena asks. It’s a surrender. She should better have said she did not wish that face revealed, but that would never have stopped a determined Myka.

“Why I flung myself to the floor.”

“I thought that had been explained? You were attempting to escape a circumstance.”

“First, the flinging was more involuntary than an attempt. And second: your hand.”

“Perhaps you don’t remember”—a strange thing to say to Myka—“but we had this conversation previously.” Helena does not want to have it again.

“Not this conversation. In that one, you drew the wrong conclusion. Or relied on an invalid assumption. Actually both of those. Anyway, your hand.”

“Please stop saying that,” Helena requests. Begs.

“Fine, I’ll finish the sentence: Woke up every nerve in my body,” Myka says, causing Helena to cringe and wish she could this very instant construct a truly useful time machine so she could fly backward, overleaping this latest passage so as to muzzle Myka before she could say that, because she believes it but knows it leads nowhere functional. To her continued mortification, Myka carries on, “Woke them all right up.” This, she says rhapsodic. Helena feels that tone in her gut, a hot twist of something she deserves as pain, but that manifests, shamefully, as pleasure. “Then your hand moved, and it shorted out the system—my system—and I fell out of bed, and the rest is history.”

“On the contrary, the rest is quite present.” Helena tries pushing all of it away, striving for detachment. For function.

“So, your hand,” Myka says again.

Helena raises the offender. “Also present.” Detachment. Humor, even; pushing, pushing, pushing. Trying to maintain.

“No, I mean why,” Myka pushes in turn.

Helena bats back, in faux innocence, “Why is it present?”

“Why was it present. On me.” Low now, her voice, just as compelling as, and even more commanding than, when she uses it to utter Helena’s name.

“I have no excuse,” Helena says.

“I don’t need an excuse. I need a reason. Do you have one?”

“It isn’t exculpatory.”

“As long as it’s explanatory.”

No escape now. No excuse, and no escape. “Here is my reason: I wanted to touch you. So against all better judgment, I did. Intending only that, nothing more.” Myka’s response to these words is an exhale. Loud. Unlike the hospital sob, however, this is slow and controlled. Helena allows a decorous pause, but no words ensue, so she goes on. Myka deserves an explanation that is complete. “But then I found myself unable to... un-touch you. Competently. And the rest will at some point be history, upon which I will never cease to look back and berate myself.”

Waiting for whatever may come next, Helena feels exhaustion inch through her, infiltrating her eyes, limbs, brain, sapping every vestige of energy... her surrender to the creeping leach is imminent when Myka says, “I like that reason.”

All right then. Awake and aware. “You do?”

“You really can be impossible to talk to. Listen to me: if I did that—touched you—I would find myself the same. Unable to un-touch. Do you understand?”

What would be the cost of abandoning her resistance? “I don’t know...” she begins, then reverses course and begins again. Truth, never mind the cost. “Yes. I do understand. But I don’t know what to do about that.”

Myka turns her head full toward Helena, twisting her long neck. Helena turns her own head, but that isn’t enough, so she shifts onto her side—her left side, punitively aware that it will be weeks before Myka can turn in such a way.

They look at each other, Helena both knowing and fearing how her guilt must freight her gaze. Regarding Myka so close, looking now into eyes that are open, is a boon she does not deserve.

After a time, Myka says, “I know what I want to do.”

Her intent is abundantly clear. The entirely of Helena’s being balks, stranding her again in Boone: if she makes a move for the momentary better, it will most likely end worse. She cannot find the... courage? or is it foolish disregard for consequences?... to reach for that moment of joy. Neither, however, can she find the discipline to dismiss its possibility.

“But I also know I shouldn’t,” Myka says, breaking with clarity into Helena’s indecision.

Well. Helena can certainly see the wisdom of that, so perhaps at last they are approaching a real accord that will render all hopes and wishes moot, so that neither courage nor discipline features in the—

“I can tell the meds are messing with my head,” Myka says, “and if there’s one thing I want to remember in picture-perfect detail, it’s this.” She moves her right index finger near to Helena’s lips, then withdraws it.

Unable to un-touch. That withdrawal reaffirms that Myka believes what she says. “This,” Helena echoes, mesmerized.

“So I’m going to wait till tomorrow to—listen to me saying it out loud—kiss you. For the first time. I want to be all there when it happens.”

There is a practicality to Myka’s thinking, and to Myka, that Helena worships. She tries to match it with a bit of her own: “If it happens.”

Myka’s jaw drops. “Come on! I said it out loud! It’s real now!”

“It’s been real for some time, hasn’t it? But I’m being realistic about the circumstance. You might not remember that you wanted to.”

“Seriously? I’ve remembered it since we met.”

Helena has remembered it just as long. She has. Denying it is pointless. But she has a larger concern, and though this is the wrong time to address it, perhaps medicated Myka will afford an unfiltered read...

“Or you might think better of it.”

“Of kissing you? I don’t think so.”

“Of what could ensue. The possibility of a... relationship. Between us. What if it doesn’t work?”

“Relationship.” After she says the word, Myka’s lips part and close, as if the very word is savory. “What if it does?”

It is savory. However. “I’m asking as a practical matter, not philosophically. I’m constrained: I can’t leave again. That’s why I came back.” The thin strand to which she is clinging... refraining from attempting to rekindle an intimacy hasn’t been only to keep Myka safe. It has also been to keep the Warehouse safe for Helena herself to inhabit.

“Then don’t leave again.”

“But what if that means you do?” This is not philosophy either. This, too, is history.

“If I do, then I do, but I’d like to think I won’t. We’ve both had our walkaway crises, and they didn’t take. So if it doesn’t work, we put it behind us like adults. If Pete and I could, then so can you and I. But I’d rather not have to. So let’s be careful.” She pauses. “Breathe however you need to.”

The words are an embrace. A physical clasp might be more galvanizing, but right now, Myka is managing just fine with words. “If this works, it will be because you say things like that.”

“Good news, because I mean things like that. And I intend to keep saying them. Hey, speaking of saying, do me a favor and write down what I said just now, about the adults and the careful, because I want to remember it.”

Sluggishly, Helena ideates rising, going to the room’s desk, finding logo-bearing paper and pen, writing...

****

Helena and Oscar are in a salon. They are engaged in a dispute regarding choices and consequences. Helena is standing at a lectern, and Oscar is reclining on a lavishly upholstered chaise longue, kicking his right leg such that its calf bounces in a languid little rhythm against the low cushioned edge.

Kick. Kick. Kick.

“The choices that create a circumstance will not, repeated, resolve it satisfactorily,” Helena says. Is she reading from a monograph? “As we see in the case of your own Ballad of Reading Gaol, do we not? And yet injury need not lead inevitably to future debility, so clearly some choice in the matter is—”

“Helena,” Oscar says, interrupting her monologue. “Helena,” he repeats. He sounds nothing like himself, but rather someone else, and Helena is straining to connect the voice to the correct person.

Kick. Kick. Kick.

“Time to wake up,” Oscar-as-someone-else admonishes. Encourages?

“I know,” she tells him, hugely frustrated, fighting. “I’m trying.”

His impassive mien is no help. It never was.

Kick. Kick. Kick.

Trust Oscar to cast some part of himself as the pendulum of a particularly annoying clock—

“Seriously, wake up,” Helena hears, and consciousness jolts at her: Myka’s voice.

Oscar dissolves. Into laughter or tears, no doubt, as he was wont to do...

Helena’s eyes open, meeting Myka’s, and she is brought back to it all: the hotel, the bed; the shoulder, the hospital... then hotel again, bed again... and finally words, as if for the first time.

Myka is lying on her right side, facing Helena. Her eyes are bright, her gaze intense.

“Are you in pain?” Helena asks.

Myka leans forward, as if that were a signal. The signal: for Helena is the astonished, grateful, transported recipient of a kiss, a first kiss—the first kiss—one that is swift but soft, gentle, genuine. Like morning... “Better now,” Myka says when she pulls back. “I’m going to brush my teeth. Stay there.”

Better now. Not lost on Helena are all the ways that signifies, including: better that this happened now than at some point in the desperate past. Then, such a kiss would have been a tragic wish for all they would never have. Now, instead, it can stand as a reward for having survived all of that, as well as, universe willing, a mark of embarkation.

By the time Myka returns, Helena has sat up, stationing herself on the edge of the bed. She has also realized that she must apologize—for they should not embark on this new voyage with yet another of her many faults unaddressed. “You charged me with writing down part of our conversation. I didn’t. I fell asleep instead.”

Myka hesitates before joining her on the bed’s edge, clearly considering which arm should be next to Helena. She chooses the functional right. “It’s okay. Even if I don’t remember exactly what we said, I remembered what we needed to do.”

“Needed to,” Helena reprises. She could supply words of her own, but why? Myka is saying the ones that matter...

“Needed to,” Myka affirms. “So where were we?” She raises her useful hand to Helena’s cheek, cradling. Helena leans into it, saying nothing, because silence now says everything.

This is a longer kiss, more wandering, more suggestive of possibility, more likely to lead to such possibility... Helena is the one to this time pull away. “A place quite new,” she says.

“And yet I’m pretty sure we’ve been headed here all along.”

“It wasn’t inevitable,” Helena says. She is thinking now of dream-Oscar, who is slipping from her mind, dropping, like a poorly initiated painting, but he must have obstreperously been maintaining something about inevitability. He always did.

“No,” Myka agrees. “And it still isn’t. So let’s be careful.”

“You remember that part? Despite my stenographic failure?”

“Even if I didn’t—but I do—I’d know it’s important.”

Helena turns and touches her right hand to Myka’s right hip. She would certainly not be able to do this now if she had not done so in the night... the night’s ontogeny recapitulating the phylogeny of their shared history. Myka covers Helena’s hand with hers, and there is healing in the simple fact of their sitting. But eventually that is not enough, and another kiss ensues, longer still, and lips outweigh quiet hands—or no, lips add to quiet hands, but hands are not content to remain so calm, and so this continues and might continue—

Myka makes a noise that is clearly not of pleasure; she moves entirely away, her right hand pressing protectively at her left shoulder. “We’re going to need to be careful about this stupid shoulder too. I’m so, so sorry.”

“You’re sorry? I’m the one who can’t keep my hands to myself.” Ontogeny, phylogeny.

“It’s not like I’m some paragon of self-control... and I am sorry, because I’d like to be able to participate fully. But also I’d like to not have to hurry on account of catching a plane. In good news, eventually my shoulder will heal. I know we can’t stay here till then, but...”

“It would help,” Helena supplies.

“If only because we have to come up with how this supposedly happened. I still think maybe I should take your picture. Or you could take mine? Because by the way, here’s a funny thing: I was trying to write a novel.”

“You were?” More that is new... “Speaking of icosahedra,” Helena notes.

“I want to tell you about it.”

“You do?” Trying to convey her incredulity. That Myka would allow her such... access.

“I want to tell you everything. But in the meantime we have to tell Artie something... I guess we’ve got both flights plus the layover in Denver to get our story straight.”

Stories. Narrative. Novels? “But we’ll tell Steve the truth. Won’t we?”

“Of course we will. And Claudia, right?”

“Also necessary. Although most likely mockery-inducing.”

Myka smiles. It’s a sunrise. “Stress testing. If we can take it from her, we’ll be fine. Then again we might need the time on the planes to rest up for that.”

“Weren’t you able to sleep, this past while?”

Myka shakes her head, and just as Helena opens her mouth to express regret and apologize again for her own sleep, Myka silences her with a kiss, one that lingers, lingers, lingers... still half against Helena’s lips, she says, “The un-touching part really is difficult. But don’t worry about my not sleeping: for the first time in a long time, I was happy to be awake.”

END

#bering and wells #warehouse 13 #fanfic #Asleep #part 2 #B&W holiday gift exchange #kla1991 #also anniversary! #which this year arrived a bit unexpectedly #so I decided to do this mashing up of occasions #because I apparently cannot work fast or well anymore #but as for this story #something something sleep and wakefulness #and when one finds oneself in those states #and whether one recognizes the state one is in when in it #or when finally out of it #and of course there are also the transitions

[generalsdiary]

what if ratio breaks down and falls apart?

Dr. Ratio (x Aventurine at the end)

warnings: mental breakdown

word count: 1.9k

a/n: lots of ppl seemed to like this idea so here it is, not beta read, ffs come home aventurine

description: Dr. Ratio breaks down (angst), Aventurine mentioned/shows up at one point (fluff dare I say)

his hands shook immensely with the keys in his hand, the heavy doors open and close. he can feel it. he can no longer hold on. being a victim of routine, he manages to push on just a few moments longer, to put away his bag, lock the door, and take off his shoes. few steps through the hallway and it is over. his body trembling as his chest swells up with pain and sadness, so many emotions mixed up in one. filling up in his throat like a peach pit, choking him and making it harder to breathe. he falls to his knees, his breathing heavy, rapid, and irregular. in moments like these, he knows how to take care of himself, how to help himself, how to fix this. but it is too much. he can't. he also... why does everyone get to break down but not him? he can barely breathe in and breathe out, as many thoughts fill his mind.

eyes filling with hot tears except he cannot cry that much, he has always been incapable of actually crying and letting it all out.

like a water dam overflowing and drowning him along with it. the dam filling with water and using it in useful ways until the workers don’t show up, the tools get clogged, old, and broken. the dam overflows. nature always comes back to take its due, to pick up the price, especially human nature.

he isn't enough. he will never be enough. it is a fool's job, what he is trying to achieve. how could he ever spread knowledge everywhere, making it available to everyone? how is that being realistic? hopeful fool, he knows better than to hope. an idiot. a failure. why did he even think he could be capable of doing that? the aeons were right to not recognize him, he isn't worth their attention- he keeps failing. isn't it the definition of insanity to keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome? not enough. never enough. such expectations were put on him and he jumped to fulfill them- and when he didn't achieve the last one- to become a true genius, then he failed. failed the mold he was put in. failed the beliefs of everyone around him and their expectations. they were all wrong; everyone who said he could do something, become someone relevant, someone who matters and makes a significant change. and the things he did, well they were never perfect and always could have been done much better. for fuck's sake he fails his students, just how many get the actual knowledge, and how many give up? he isn't good enough, he should be better, and get the knowledge across in a way everyone would accept and know and learn. why is he not good enough? he keeps trying and it is never enough. not once has the universe said, ‘okay, you have done enough, you can rest now.’

why does he keep trying? and he is alone in all of it. who is there who cares for him- who puts his view of self aside, who can.. please.. who can please view him as a human.. a person.. just... as someone who doesn't need to be extraordinary- can he be loved in such a way, appreciated? who would care for him? when all that is said about him is that he is rude, when he only tells the truth and tries to help, he is told that he is insensitive, egotistical, and he is so far from it. why does everybody hate him? aeons, he hates himself. why was he born, created like this? it would've been so much easier to have been born an idiot, dumb, to work a normal job, and be happy.

he stares at an empty spot as these thoughts overtake him, and then he sobs as the next ones come... he wants to be held, oh so much. to be embraced, to be cared for, thought of in a positive way, for his name to be called with love. no one is enough, he isn't enough.

his thoughts keep spiraling in a whirlpool, almost like he is frozen in space. eyes fixed, hands shaking and the occasional warm tear falling down his cheeks, which are now red and hot.

his skin feels like it is burning, the clothes on him overwhelming him but he cannot move, it hurts, it all hurts. why does it hurt so much? this vicious cycle never ends. how could he stand up again when he is falling apart at the seams? is he worth it at all, the life he lives, if he cannot even help himself? he will never be enough. he wants to shout, to yell in frustration and anger- all swallowed in his throat while he continues to sit.. broken on the floor.

his thoughts become more incoherent, how could he.. why.. help.. not enough.. and so on. curses, hatred directed at himself, sorrow, and pity. his ears deaf at any sound, he is so lost in his mind, it is like he isn't even there.

this isn't the first time, but it was never this hard. he picked himself up before; standing, going automatically around his home to take care of his basic needs. but now he has no hope, no care for it, he cannot move. immobile and lost, so… so deep in this vortex.

the doors open and close. there's a voice, he doesn't even register it, “..tas?... home?”

the person makes a few more steps and sees Veritas, sitting on the ground. Veritas manages to register distant footsteps, rushed- it doesn't matter; he isn't even there. only his body is.

the person sits down in front of Veritas and hands him a glass of water. his eyes are unfocused, he appears still, hands on the floor with a slight tremor, cheeks shiny from the tears and a warm red color. instinctively he accepts the glass and drinks the water. the cool fluid makes him consciously blink and float back to the present moment. he registers the voice of the person in front of him.

“Veritas.. I'm here, good- the water is good for you- I'm here, alright?” his eyes focus on the blond man sitting in front of him. Aventurine's eyes are filled with worry and his hands cup Veritas' face, caressing slowly. his voice is calm, “you will be fine- I got you, okay?” Aventurine nods to himself more than to Ratio. his hand moves to the indigo hair, pulling his fingers through the soft locks in a comforting manner. Veritas' eyes are trained on him, full of pain and heartbreak, yet his face is neutral, so hurt.

“your head got to you again? I keep telling you- don't listen to it- it isn't right it only says mean things which aren't true. do you hear me?” the only thing he gets in response is a slow blink from the taller man. and it is enough.

“it tipped over, it isn't as bad as your head claims- don't listen to it, listen to me, focus on me. I’ve got you, I'm here-“ he pulls Veritas into his chest, cradling him in a way. “-and I'm not going anywhere”

fresh tears soak Aventurine's shirt. it hurts to be cared for, to be seen, and for that person to stay and not leave.. it feels undeserving and it just makes him cry harder. he sobs into Aventurine's shoulder, breaking down fully. his voice comes out high-pitched, breaking, “I... I.. it is so hard-” he sobs harder and tightly embraces Aventurine.

“I'm here, you will okay, this will pass, I have you, don't- don't struggle against them, focus on me, please?” Aventurine pulls away to raise Veritas' chin and meet his eyes, those sunset eyes filled with tears. and he weakly nods.

“focus on me, my voice, Doc, focus on my voice. and I'm warm- you can feel it yes? my chest is warm and my hands- my scent- you can smell the perfume right? focus on me, ground with me. leave that dreadful place- it never did you any good.” he continues using safe words, repeating them, and when Veritas manages to get a grasp on reality once more; he feels empty, numb and Aventurine takes care of him. Aventurine helps him eat a proper meal, bathes with him where he holds him close against his chest, kissing his temple, and repeating that everything will be okay.

Aventurine holds him tightly in bed and whispers only the softest affirmations. before Veritas falls asleep, Aventurine mumbles kind words with his fingers in his hair.

he stays mostly awake that night, just in case Ratio wakes up in distress or from a nightmare. he doesn't mind it. he cares for him, if needed he'd pick his pieces up every day and help him put himself back together. Veritas is his, and he will always be there for him.

the morning turns out to be a slow one. Veritas would tiredly gaze at Aventurine, the blond man asleep into the late morning, and he wouldn't dare start his day- not yet, not now, not without him. Veritas' thoughts are slow this early in the day, they are quiet. he simply observes the younger man. finding some type of solace in it. he doesn't dare touch him as if the beautiful man was a statue made of glass and might break from a single touch.

when his eyes do open he hums and moves to press his face into Veritas' soft chest.

like it is the first time, Ratio is surprised, frozen for a few moments before he relaxes and embraces Aventurine.

“sleep well?”

he nods.

“I rescheduled my stuff, and I hope you will yours too-“, Veritas interrupts him, “..I did.” his voice quiet, monotone.

“today.. today will be easier, okay?” he raises his head, looking up. “I will be with you as long as you need and then some. please be kind to yourself. you need it” he whispers the last sentence and presses his lips into Ratio's cheek.

“I'll try... thank you.. for.. yesterday, dear gambler”

Aventurine nods, “I love you,” he says, easily, as if he didn't have to think those words through before he said them but it conveyed everything he wanted them to say. that he would be there for him, that he'd take care of him, that he would be his.

slight shock is obvious in Veritas’ eyes, that he would be loved gives him a stutter in his response. he feels so vulnerable, bare and naked in front of him. his emotions nude especially after being seen in the state he was in yesterday and despite that... or perhaps specifically because of it... Aventurine said that. with fear, felt on both sides, but also assurance that this is right, that it is a fact he softly says, “I... I love you too.”

beat. both staring into the other's eyes. Veritas cups his cheek. thumb drawing small circles, voice but a whisper, “please don't ever leave me” in that moment he is baren, vulnerable, his cards are on the table for the gambler to gamble off or hold tightly to his chest and fold.

Aventurine answers quickly with a small nervous smile, “the same goes for you too, Doc”

with all those emotions being so loud and scary, Veritas cannot keep up a coy act and even when he does Aventurine sees right through him.

“I promise” Veritas utters and seals it with a soft kiss.

#honkai star rail #dr ratio #hsr #dr ratio angst #analysis #dr ratio fluff #aventurine #aventurine x dr ratio #veritas ratio #aventio #raturine #ratiorine #comfort #veritas ratio angst

[creative-heart]

"My thoughts will echo your name"| Esteban Kukuriczka

Chapter five: “In the dark, we’re barely hanging on”

Lucia’s notes: We finally getting rid of Lucas! yaayy, so in advance, this is gonna be kind of a sad chapter, also, we’re approaching the end of this wonderful fic, only 2 more chapters to go. The section that is completely in italics are Y/N’s memories.

Playlist:

Happier than ever- Billie Eilish

Atlantis- Seafret

Lose you to love me- Selena Gomez

Somewhere only we know- Keane

Traitor- Olivia Rodrigo

Flicker- Niall Horan

Bigger than the whole sky- Taylor Swift

Content Warning: Break up, angst, sadness, drinking (not too heavily).

Word Count: 1.9k

After that night with Esteban, Y/N knew exactly what she needed to do, the blonde had to admit that this was a decision long overdue, it had just taken her to get to this point to realize it. Mastering all the courage she had she called Lucas “Hey, can you come to the apartment? we need to talk” she said as soon as she heard the phone click when her boyfriend picked up the phone.

“Hello, what is there to talk about?” Y/N rolled her eyes at his reply “just come over Lucas” she hung up pacing around the living room her bags already packed by the couch, she was decided to leave, where to, she had absolutely no idea, it wasn’t like she was going to go back to her parents, that door had closed long ago, she couldn’t turn to Amelia either, they might be friends, but she was Lucas’ sister at the end of the day. Y/N kept pacing around until she felt the turn of the keys in the door and stopped in her tracks taking a deep breath before he saw the guy’s face walk into what used to be their shared home.

“Well.. I’m here, wanted to talk? talk, I’ve got plans” Lucas crossed his arms over his chest. Y/N took a deep breath facing him and raised an eyebrow trying to keep the best poker face she could master.

“I think we need to break up, I’m done and tired of feeling like a fly on the wall for you, you haven’t turned to look at me all but twice in the past year almost. You think I don’t know how you’ve been talking to Alma all these years we’ve been together? and no, before you say anything, I didn’t need to go through your phone, but you’re way too obvious. You’ve never let me be myself, whatever I did was wrong, wasn’t good enough”- damn it- she cursed at herself internally when she felt the tears brimming her eyes through her well rehearsed speech. The girl looked away to wipe at her eyes before turning back around. “I deserve more than this, I don’t deserve feeling like the last option on your life, like you’d rather be anywhere but home with me, I’m tired Lucas, I loved you, damn it, even if you don’t deserve it, in some stupid, sad, twisted way I still do. And I do thank you for everything you gave me when we got together, you showed me who I could be, I don’t know what changed, but it’s too late.” Y/N looked at the tall guy frozen in his spot, absolutely gobsmacked blinking slowly “We’re done Lucas, I’m leaving, pease don’t come after me” she whispered grabbing her things and walking out the door as her keys to the apartment rested on the table beside the door.

The brunette turned around looking at her back “wait….Y/N, we can work through this, I’m sure” he said softly, not that he really cared about her, but his family thought she was wife material and her trustfund was pretty steep. Y/N the Hazel eyed girl turned around once more and he knew, he knew then and there that there was nothing left in there for him, she felt nothing. 

Y/N walked out dragging her luggage after her and started walking down the street, not too sure where to. She just knew she needed to get as much distance between her and that apartment as humanly possible; as she walked her mind alternated between playing over images of her relationship with Lucas, how the whole situation had unfolded over the years.

Y/N had just transferred universities to go to law school in the big city, coming from a small town, this had been the plan since she was a kid, she wasn’t too sure if it was hers or her parents plan, but it was the plan. As she walked into her first class, she saw a handsome guy, slightly older than her standing at the front of the room and she headed over “excuse me, is this criminal law 101?” she said barely above a whisper. The guy looked at her, gorgeous brown hair paired with piercing blue eyes, she felt the air escape her lungs. “Yes it is, take a seat, we’re about to begin”, handsome eyes turned out to be the student teacher assistant, Lucas was his name. 

After a few months of just looking at each other across the room in class, he walked up to her after class and smiled “would you go out for a drink with me?” and that’s where it all started. Sweet nothings whispered in her ear wherever they went, holding Y/N while she cried after her parents told her that she would no longer be their daughter if she dared drop out of Law School to pursue photography, he had  held her up when she thought she was gonna fall to her knees.

Y/N didn’t know when, or how, but she had started crying again her tears falling freely down her cheeks, but she wasn’t sure why, she knew breaking up was the right move, she was better off without Lucas. The blonde didn’t realize how she had made her way to Esteban’s building, she looked at the doorbell panel and saw his name pressing the button hoping he’d be home and he’d be available.

“Hello?” she heard his sweet voice over the com and her heart skipped a bit “is anyone there?” shit, she hadn’t replied “Kuku, it’s….it’s me, Y/N” she hiccuped into her end of the com “are you busy? can I please come in?” she whispered.

“Sweetie, are you crying? oh god, of course, come on in” he buzzed the door opened and once he heard the click of the door closing behind her he went and opened the apartment door waiting for her. As soon as Y/N stepped out of the elevator, suitcases behind her and eyes red with tears he frowned and went over hugging her “Hey hey, what happened babe?” the older man said quietly walking them back into the apartment taking the luggage with him, he walked them both to the couch before going to get a cup of tea for Y/N  “what happened Y/N/N? wanna talk about it?”

Y/N looked up at the brown eyed man for the first time since stepping out of the elevator, tears still streaming down her cheeks like rivers and she hated herself for crying like that. She nodded softly “it’s over” the younger whispered “I finally broke up with Lucas” she gulped thick pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes as to suppress the tears to keep erupting. Kuku couldn’t help but feel relieved and almost happy for that to be over, he knew it wasn’t okay, he could tell Y/N was suffering and he wanted to take that away from her, but he was happy about her being single as he handed her the tea and sat down “I have nowhere to go now Kuku” she whispered taking a sup of the tea “I left the apartment, cause it was his name on the lease, and I can’t go to Amelia’s obviously, I can’t go back home to my parents, another of my friends isn’t in a place to take me in, I don’t know what I’m gonna do” Y/N said looking down into the mug swirling it gently.

“You may think this is a bit out there and crazy….but you could always stay here, I don’t mind, you can take my room, I can either sleep here on the couch, or even go to one of the guy’s places, maybe Mati or Fran” Kuku smiled sheepishly “you can stay as long as you want or need to get back on your feet” Y/N didn’t even dare looking at him, she knew too well what kuku’s eyes did to her on this short time of knowing eachother, not like she was in the mood for much right now, but he melted her heart away. Y/N stayed silent for a while, she really liked the idea of sharing a place with this sweet man, but she knew it was way too risky, after what seemed like an eternity for the sweet eyed man, she looked back up to him.

“I don’t wanna be alone tonight, but I would really appreciate it if you could…please don’t feel imposed, go to one of the guys places after, if you don’t want to, or can’t just let me know and I’ll for sure get another place to stay” Y/N downed the rest of her tea as Esteban shook his head ��nonesense, you stay here as long as you want” he smiled softly rubbing her back and his touch felt like a warm blanket over her, it always felt so protective and she could stay like this forever. Y/N looked at him and smiled softly “Thank you so much, would it be possible to take a warm shower? I got kinda cold” the older man nodded and pointed her to the bathroom.

That night, after Y/N fell asleep in his arms while watching a movie to try and help her distract herself from the events of that day, Esteban stood up carefully picking the petite girl in his arms walking to his bedroom to lay her down as he tucked her in and kissed her forehead he stood back to his full height grabbing a few things to go settle on the couch for the night and he heard a sleepy voice say quietly “sleep with me please?” God every new thing he discovered about her drove him even more insane, that sweet soft sleepy voice and how angelic she looked while sleeping, he could never say no to this woman and so he laid down with her still fully clothed, he didn’t want her to get the wrong impression as she nuzzled back against him he kissed her head closing his eyes letting her always drunkening scent to wash over him lulling him to sleep.

Four days had gone by and he had been staying with Mati and Male to give Y/N some space, but today, encouraged by the pair he decided to go check in on the blonde girl taking some comfort chinese food with him, if she was anything like Male had suggested, she was probably not eating much. Esteban made his way to his place and knocked ont he apartment door. Soon enough Y/N opened the door, messy bun in her hair, pjs consisting of an old scooby doo t-shirt that was way too big on her and some baggy sweatpants, her eyes widened when she saw the guy standing at the door and she tried fixing her hair “kuku… I …I didn’t except you to come over, come on in”. The guy chuckled softly walking into his place and looked at her “No, you clearly weren’t, sorry to come unannounced, I just wanted to check on you, I’ve brought chinese takeout, and we can order some ice cream after if you want, I know how much you like salted caramel and chocolate” Y/N turned around smiling for the first time in days, how did he remember that? they’d only had ice cream a couple of times. 

As she made some place on the coffee table she looked at the guy again “pick out something to watch? I’ll go get something to put the food in” she took the bag from the tall man and disappeared into the kitchen. If Esteban wasn’t mistaken, the smile she gave him right then wasn’t the same she always had, this was different, and he really wanted to discover more behind it, with no one standing between them, he knew he had to start acting soon, but he didn’t want to rush her into something she wasn’t up to. This was definitely screwing with his head.

P.S: I cringed so bad at this chapter god, so sorry, but it was necessary. Also credits to @cafekitsune for the awesome scene dividers.

taglist:

@madame-fear  @cyliarys-starlight @castawaycherry @luceracastro @espinasrubi @lastflowrr @koiibiito @candycanes19 @nperoconelcositoarriba @lxdyred @deepinsideyourbeing

#esteban kukuriczka fic #esteban kukuriczka fanfic #esteban kukuriczka x reader #lsdln cast fanfic #lsdln cast fic #lsdln x reader #lsdln cast #fanfiction #fic #esteban kukuriczka #angsty fic #reblog

[natsukishinomiyaswife]

⋆ 𝓐𝔃𝓾𝓵 𝓐𝓼𝓱𝓮𝓷𝓰𝓻𝓸𝓽𝓽𝓸: 𝓨𝓸𝓾 𝓜𝓪𝓴𝓮 𝓜𝓮 𝓢𝓸 𝓗𝓪𝓹𝓹𝔂 ⋆

Please note: This is a repost from my old blog, @sugarcookiesheep!

⋆ You had never been with anyone like Azul before. How dedicated he was, how hardworking he was. He had dreams that he would always strive for, creating goals for himself and planning whenever he could. His business, the Mostro Lounge, meant everything to him, and you would support him however you could. Over time you began to realize just how important you were to him, how he considered you a priority just like the Lounge, if not moreso. He made you feel cherished, treasured, like you were the only person in the room. You had seen him at his lowest, at his most vulnerable, and you never took the trust he has for you for granted. There was no one but you in his eyes, no one else could ever compare.

⋆ He would go to you first whenever he had an idea or business plan, wanting to know your opinion. Even if it was as simple as changing decor or adding new items to the menu, your thoughts mattered to him most. You would have fun sitting at the table reserved specifically for yourself and Azul, taste testing new dishes and drinks he was considering. The table was tucked away in the corner, secluded to give you both privacy. As soon as you entered the lounge the staff would greet you, recognizing you immediately. They would inform Azul of your arrival, knocking on the door to his office and letting him know.

⋆ Whether he was expecting you or not, his mood would always brighten whenever you stopped by, leaving his office to greet you. He would take your hands in his, pressing a soft kiss to your lips as he asked how you were. He would put his arm around your waist as he walked you to your table, his hand resting on your lower back. He would be focused solely on you, his eyes never leaving you as he pulled out your chair. Once you were seated he would go to his seat, sitting across from you.

⋆ There was a candle in the middle of the table, shining in the dim lights of the lounge. It made your meet up feel more intimate, giving a romantic atmosphere. He would have his hand resting in the middle of the table, palm facing up. He did this every time you sat across from each other, wanting to hold your hand. You didn’t even think as you put your hand in his, doing so out of habit.

⋆ Servers would bring you various dishes and drinks one by one, Azul explaining each as you tried them. Throughout the night you began to notice a pattern, looking towards him as your heart raced. The drinks were made using your favorite fruits, the dishes with your tastes and dietary needs in mind. These new items were meant for you, you realized. He created them thinking of you.

⋆ He noticed your staring, wondering if there was something wrong with the current dish you were trying. Before he could say anything you leaned across the table, kissing him softly. You thanked him as you sat back down, looking at him affectionately. He laughed lightly, saying it was no problem as he mentions how you must have noticed the trend with the new items. You nod your head, Azul going into detail about what the inspiration was for each new thing. Details that you hadn’t even considered, like one of the drinks being your favorite color, or one of the dishes being a recreation of your favorite meal growing up. The thought and care blew you away, leaving you speechless. You didn’t think it was possible to fall even more in love with him, but here you were, falling for him all over again.

⋆ “You make me so happy, Azul” you say, sounding a bit emotional. His breath hitches, squeezing your hand lightly. He felt frozen under your loving gaze, his heart pounding at your words. He clears his throat, his face a light pink as he thinks for a moment. When he responds his voice is just as emotional as yours, his gaze unwavering,

“I…could never repay you for all the happiness you have brought me, even if I tried. I will do my best though, for as long as you’ll allow me.” ♡

Originally posted: February 20th, 2024

𝓣𝓱𝓪𝓷𝓴 𝔂𝓸𝓾! ♡

#♡.sheep writes #♡.twst #♡.azul ashengrotto #twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #azul ashengrotto #azul ashengrotto x reader #azul x reader

[idsfantasy]

I'm sorry if you've gotten this kind of info already, but one of the points you used in that video about Burntrap/Glitchtrap being Afton was him saying "I always come back," which you claim is something the Mimic wouldn't know, but it did know that. Fnaf 6 is shown to be a game in universe just like the rest of them.

Glitchtrap is likely a different branch of the Mimic1 code specifically designated for copying William long term.

There's also a line in Special Delivery. Luis says that Vanessa searched up "How to induce compliance in human subjects" which not only implies that what's possessing her isn't human in any way, but it's something that William would never need to do given that he's a master manipulator.

As for the memory plushies, those likely either come from the Mimic giving you the data it got about them from the VR game, or it's Glitchtrap giving you your own memories that you lost to place you in a vulnerable position given that those memories are likely traumatic ones.

We saw how Afton died anyway, his Agony and Remnant was cleansed by the Puppet in Fazbear's Fright's. There would be nothing left to bring him back. The Princess is going after the monster copying the murderer, not the murderer himself.

Also I'm like 90% sure that the devs of Security Breach thought that Burntrap was supposed to be Afton. I recall Baz saying once when he met Scott at the fnaf movie set that there was a miscommunication involving one of the games endings.

Sorry if this is a mess. Just thought all this was worth pointing out. Have a good one.

The video for those interested:

I don't think that Mimic was plugged into Pizzeria Simulator like it theoretically would have been into Help Wanted. It's possible I guess, but I still think it doesn't make sense for it to latch onto that line, or know what William heard in UCN.

When would that designation have been made and by whom? It wouldn't have been for Help Wanted based on Tape Girl's descriptions nor Mr. Burrows's.

Technically there are other things you can try to induce compliance in. A dog or other pet for example. "Human subjects" just specifies the search. Not to mention, it wouldn't necessarily be literally Glitchtrap doing the searching. Vanessa was talking to computers in AR, and we hear her talking to Glitchtrap in the og HW. He manipulated her mind to make her listen to him, but I think that was more Vanessa looking something up in order to do what Glitchtrap asked her to.

The unused lines specifically refer to the memories as belonging to "it", not the player, so I doubt that would be the case, and where in the VR game would it have specifically gotten the data for all 5 MCI kids and Charlie? Why would they be called its memories if they weren't actually Glitchtrap's memories. Who's code remains if the "his code" isn't William's?

If you're referring to William getting dumped in the lake at the end of the Frights epilogues, there are quite a few reasons I think Frights and Stitchline are a separate continuity from the game timeline. Why would the Princess be around to find out about a copycat and care? He's not the one who she's mad at in that case.

I personally recall a misquote/misattribution of some sort that spread around on that topic. I'll need the timestamped video to confirm that preferably, but in any case, I highly doubt Scott didn't even glance at Burntrap's design before release to notice that something was wrong, and as I mentioned in my video, if Steel Wool was trying to correct things and connect the Mimic to Burntrap, they would have at least made the two have more visual connection than a hand that isn't even actually identical and was already reused from a nightmare animatronic.

While I see where you're coming from, I don't think any of those points negate the evidence I have in the video that you didn't address, though the video was long so I understand why you wouldn't bring it all up. Either way though, I personally think it makes a lot more sense from both an evidence, narrative, and storytelling perspective for Burntrap to be William. Totally cool if you believe differently though! I hope you have a good day as well :D

#fnaf #five nights at freddy's #fnaf security breach #five nights at freddy's security breach #fnaf ruin #ruin dlc #william afton #fnaf mimic #mimi #mimic fnaf #glitchtrap #vanessa fnaf #vanny fnaf #vanny #fnaf glitchtrap #fnaf help wanted #help wanted #help wanted 2 #help wanted fnaf #mimictrap #tales from the pizzaplex #fazbear frights #charlie emily #fnaf help wanted 2 #princess #princess quest #cassidy fnaf #answered asks

[soulsxng]

Sometimes, a person allows me to geek out about dog training/behavior/nutrition stuff a little bit (because they asked me for advice/help), and my brain just latches onto it for the rest of the day. And then I’m just going on long winded dog related info dumps completely out of nowhere to literally anybody in the room.

#[what is she getting us into now? -ooc-] #(aka my sister was asking for advice about some stuff with her dogs #and the entire rest of the day #I’ve been randomly going ‘…So I know I’ve said this like a million times before #and I’m sorry if I’ve already told you…BUT DID YOU KNOW THAT ONE OF THE MOST COMMON THINGS IN DOG TRAINING—‘ #‘Did you know that one of the most common food allergies in dogs are—‘ #luckily my family/a lot of my friends are very big dog/animal people #so a lot of times when it happens everyone else gets really into it too #or #they’re totally chill just listening to me word vomit about it at them) #I also had to give my sister the ‘do not give people vet advice when you aren’t a vet’ convo today #and that if she was going to like…relay something she’d heard or experienced #in response to a health/etc issue someone is having with their dog #that she needs to flat out say ‘in my experience/I heard once that…’ #and then say ‘but I’m not a vet and I don’t want you to rely on just my opinion. so if you’re really concerned about it #you should at least call your vet to discuss it with them if not just bring your dog in’ #it wasn’t over anything major but still #better she learns that sooner rather than later when she DOES try to give major advice and it’s wrong orz

[mirmidones]

i like giving gifts, i like looking for something that the other person will actually appreciate, but most of all i like making gifts with my own clumsy hands. i pour my love into it. it's my affection made tangible. so then naturally it means the world to me when i find out they really like it like i hoped they would :')

#i once gifted to my brother a framed fake troubled birds print i had made myself specifically for him and he had seemed mostly perplexed by #it which. heartbreaking. later on we found out he had straight up thought it was an official troubled birds print and not a crafted joke but #even after that was cleared there wasn't a big difference and i think it was gonna bother me forever -that i had been so wrong with it- #except that now he offhandedly told me 'oh yeah btw yknow how that thing you gifted me is literally... wait perhaps you don't know ok so #remember that troubled bird thing you made me (as if i could forget)? yeah i put it on the wall in my room and it's like the first thing you #see when you come in and i feel it very much haha anyways i was saying ' AND I HAD TO BE LIKE WAIT A SECOND YOU WHAT? YOU WHAT? #YOU LIKE IT? YOU FEEL IT? WHAT? anyways i almost teared up even now i feel a bit emotional idk. i did say it means the whole world to me :') #anyways day saved now i can face the rest of it all #x

[yellobb]

I love learning that my dad is a genocidal fucking maniac

#m rambles #I mentioned offhandedly the stuff going on in Palestine #I’m not shocked that he’s a Zionist #I mean he’s a trump republican so it really isn’t a shock #but to hear him say ‘if they offered me a ceasefire I wouldn’t have taken it either. I would kill them all.’ #and ‘the peace will come when they’re all dead’ #that’s a whole other thing #I was fully prepared to argue against all his points #and good god did I #for once I didn’t have a breakdown when talking to him #I just explained why he was wrong and gave him the evidence and stats #but in his words ‘I don’t need to research because I already know everything’ #jesus fucking christ #I said ‘maybe I’m just a radical but I don’t think anyone deserves to die’ and he said that yeah that was radical #then two seconds later claimed that I would have been happy if hitler killed all the Jews in Germany???? #please make it make sense #like that would literally be your position. that the peace would come after everyone was dead. that’s literally what you said #I’m fuming right now #he’s the only Zionist I’ve actually talked to in two years #and the only Zionist that I know of that I still talk to #I used to think that the man could change if he got off of Fox News for two fucking seconds #but no he’s apparently just as bloodthirsty as the rest of them