#rather than floating around in some weird sad dream where nothing & no one feels real

[erekiosuncreativeideas]

Not Really There (AHIT oneshot)

Summary :

"If there was a higher being watching him from afar… Then it had to be the cruellest being in the universe. Staring into the pond, Moonjumper’s eyes were fixed on a familiar face, one he had known for a few years now.

Berry."

Moonjumper suffers from the loneliness the Horizon offers him... Until he discovers a new ability, allowing him to appear in the real world. Except... It doesn't go well.

Also available on AO3 : https://archiveofourown.org/works/31866103

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Hello people, new one shot ! It's one of the birthday gifts I made for @habijob for her AU, @queens-nightmare !

Two others will come after this one, making a three part series of one shots (the series will be called "Loneliness and Helplessness") ! I hope you'll like them ! In any case, I had a lot of fun writing them.

Read the one shot under the "read more" ! Happy reading !

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If there was a higher being watching him from afar… Then it had to be the cruellest being in the universe. Staring into the pond, Moonjumper’s eyes were fixed on a familiar face, one he had known for a few years now.

Berry.

Oh, Moonjumper had had a lot of friends in the course of his existence, but he never forgot them. All of them had different personalities, appearance, humor and, well… Things that made them special in their own way. One of those things was dreams. Every human’s dream was different from one another, and this could be said for all the kids Moonjumper had been bonded to. For some, their dreams were about painting, reading, fighting, playing dolls or hide-and-seek… And, for Berry, it was Space. Of course, just like all the other times, Moonjumper’s outfit had been influenced by his “host”’s dream, making him wear a starry cloak and planet-like bracelets. This wasn’t a bad one, to be fair… He had had worse, he could say that much, so here he was pretty lucky.

Although, in another regard… He wasn’t.

Stuck in this lonely place, the dream being couldn’t do anything but look at the outside world through a window, one he couldn’t open. This was frustrating, no, unbearable. It was like being starched and seeing a bottle of water in the desert… Only to find out that it was impossible to uncork at all.

Today –or, however, he could refer to the passage of time in such an awful, unchanging place-… Yeah, today was one of those times where Moonjumper’s loneliness was at its peak. Being able to see his dear friend outside but not being able to talk to him, to even just being… Seen at all! This was horrible, terrible and extremely cruel.

This wasn’t fair.

Out of frustration, the dream being put both of his hands on the “pond“, his only window showing him the outside world. Pushing with all of his strength, Moonjumper groaned, his frustration growing stronger and stronger as this did nothing at all. The pond was not moving, was not letting him go through. Why did it have to be that way?

-“Come on!” he whined, desperate for contact, any type of contact: “Why can’t I leave?” He pounded on the window, shutting his eyes hard for a moment, still trying to push… But nothing worked. No matter how hard he was trying to get out, no matter how hopeless he was, no matter how unfair this situation was… The pond still remained the same: unmoving… And still locked.

A wave of melancholy hit him at the realization, and he let himself lie down on the pond, his face turned to Berry and all of his other friends he could see outside. Friends… Who could touch him, who could actually talk to him.

Friends he knew existed.

Tears swelled up in his eyes as he couldn’t look away, a mix of negative feelings washing over him. Jealousy, despair, hopelessness, anger, frustration… The more he watched Berry having fun with people who could really be there with them, the more unbearable it became. And yet… Yet, he kept watching, envying these children so, so much.

They were free, they weren’t as lonely as he was… Oh, what he would give to be in their shoes! If only he could leave that hellish place…

-“Just once…” he begged, his voice breaking as he started to cry. He was feeling so miserable…

He closed his eyes again, letting his mask knock on the pond- the closest he would ever get to freedom, surely-. This was torture, just pure torture! Why did he have to go through this? What did he do to deserve such an horrifying fate?!

-“Please…?” he asked softly, knowing fully well that the pond wasn’t sentient in any way, that no one but him could hear his plea… And yet, he couldn’t help but still try. Still, unsurprisingly… Nothing happened. The world remained the exact same, silent and lonely, without any possible exit.

Moonjumper cried for a while, his tears falling onto the window but never going through- just like him. Why did it have to be this way? Why?! This wasn’t fair, this wasn’t fair!!

Fuelled by a wave of fury, the dream being started to push on the pond once again. He didn’t want to stay here any longer; he wanted to be out, out of this world!! He hated it, loathed it so much! The anger kept growing and growing, getting more intense as seconds passed. He didn’t want this!!

-“JUST… ONCE!” he screamed to the pond, his fingers bending from how much he was pushing on the flat, inert surface. One would have expected this to end in the exact same way than his previous attempts… However, something else happened.

Something… Moonjumper had never experienced before.

An unknown feeling enveloped him and he sensed his consciousness leaving his body. He felt… Empty, in a way, but it didn’t feel so bad, just… Weird. It happened quickly, though for the dream being, it felt like it lasted a few minutes at least. This was… Such a strange sensation and, as soon as he was able to… He opened his eyes, his curiosity washing away his despair and fury. What… What had happened?

A blinding light made it hard for him to distinguish anything for a few seconds. Confusion filled his mind- wait, what? Why, what- what could possibly be producing so much light? There wasn’t anything like that in the Horizon! However, after a moment, the dream being was able to discern colors, shapes… And, soon enough, people.

Real, actual people. Right in front of him. But this wasn’t what stroke Moonjumper the most- no, far from it. His eyes fell on a very familiar face.

His friend’s face, who was looking at him!

-“Berry!” he exclaimed, as his eyes widened from the surprise. Moonjumper was… Out? But… How? What had happened? How had he escaped the Horizon? Still, his attention focused back on the child and his friends, who were all looking at him, something Moonjumper had longed for years. New tears appeared in his eyes, as his wish had come true. Joy and happiness hit him like a wave- finally, finally he was free, he was out, and… His friend was there, looking at him, actually seeing him!

And yet… There was something wrong, very wrong going on.

-“Moon-Moonjumper?! You’re real!” gasped the kid, his eyes fixed on the dream being. But contrary to the latter’s expression, there was no delight on his face, no relief in it. Instead… Instead, there was fear. Berry wasn’t looking at him like he was facing a friend. It seemed like he was staring at a monster.

Just as the realization fell on Moonjumper’s mind, Berry and his friends crawled away from him, terrified expressions visible on their face. Before he was able to say anything, the kids started to run, as if their life depended on it. The dream being was unable to look away, too dumbstruck to move either. Wait, no… No, this wasn’t supposed to go this way, no…!

-“Berry?” he called out to his friend who was no longer there, almost talking to himself instead. His tears of joy gave way to ones of sadness again. A twisted smile appeared on his face as a wave of despair engulfed him again, one that was so, so much stronger than anything he had ever felt before. He had wished to leave his prison so much that he didn’t even expect it to go wrong.

And the look in Berry’s eyes, the way the other stared at him, horrified… This sight was now carved in Moonjumper’s mind, like something he would never, ever forget in his immortal existence.

-“Why are you running…?” his voice broke- and he just couldn’t contain his sorrow anymore. New tears pushed the previous ones, making them roll down his mask, as the dream being held his head tightly between his hands. His cries became louder and louder, misery and melancholy crushing him. He had thought being lonely was awful… But this was nothing compared to this. Compared to having his friend looking at him like a monster, to having his friend running away from him!

Why?! Why did it have to go this way?!

His emotions were getting more and more uncontrollable and, before he noticed it, his presence in the outside world started to get… Rather unstable, strange particles floating around him, their number increasing as seconds passed. His stress was getting so strong that he felt his grip on reality slip for a short moment. It felt just like what he had experienced before, his sense of reality disappearing… Although, it still felt different. His vision turned black, and he started to feel full again, just like he had always been in the past. And, when he opened his eyes… He was back there.

Back in the Horizon, back in this nightmarish place, back in this… Prison.

His eyes widened, and his sobs stopped for a moment as he looked around him, anguish filling him again as he was forced to realize that… He was not outside anymore.

-“No… No, no, no!” he screamed, his distress more than audible. Why, why?! Why was he back here?! He had been free just a minute ago- his eyes glanced back to the pond. Panic and anger grew inside him, and he floated closer to it, pounding his fists on it.

-“Why?!” he yelled, both livid and hopeless: “Why ?!” he repeated.

Why letting him out… Only to have him experience such a terrible rejection, and bring him back here afterwards? How could fate be so cruel to him when all he had wanted to was to interact with a friend! Nothing more!

Why making him suffer like this?! Was his imprisonment not enough?! Was his eternal loneliness not enough?!

Moonjumper let himself sink down, lying on the pond just like before… Though, now, he couldn’t look through it. He just… Couldn’t anymore. All he could see, as he kept his eyes closed, was Berry’s terror. He kept crying, his sobs echoing all around with no one to hear him at all.

Could it be that… He had never really been out there at all…?

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Oh my, someone really is feeling sad over there, now that's a shame :)c I'm sure everything will get better in the next two !!!! ...... :)

#a hat in time fanfiction #a hat in time #ahit #erekio #erekiosuncreativeideas #fanfiction #habijob #habi #queen's nightmare fanfiction #queen's nightmare #moonjumper #mj #oc #angst

[quarantined-with-bucky]

I Was Good To You

Bucky x Reader

Words: ~ 4,000 (lol sorry)

Summary: You were good to Bucky

Warnings: Angst

A/N: I really love the song “you were good to me” by Jeremy Zucker and Chelsea Cutler (actually they have a lot of good songs, together and separately). But I felt like this song needs to be read from the opposite perspective literally every time I hear it, hence this fic. It’s a little different than what I have written so far, so I hope you still enjoy it! I put some of the original lyrics in the fic as quote-block format; it’s mostly in the reader’s POV and I’m sorry in advance for having to do Bucky like this – it just fits the song.

...

It was a fairly new relationship. And while you and he were both equally cautious about taking said new relationship too fast, it couldn’t be helped that the two of you were inseparable. From the day you met, he had been invested in you – your life. He claims it was because he was frozen for so long; because he didn’t know how to live “normally” in the twenty-first century. He went from World War II to Hydra to today. While that made perfect sense to you, a part of you always wondered if it was something more. Sure, Bucky had never had the chance to (and likely will never the chance to) live mundanely. He won’t ever work a 9 to 5 job, he won’t spend nights cooking and washing dishes, he won’t be doing lawn maintenance, working on a dingey car, or grocery shopping (and then forgetting your grocery list at home). You thought that he may have attached himself so quickly to you so he could partly experience the normalcy of civilian life. Not that you were complaining.

He often spent nights at your house, sleeping in your too-small bed, sitting on your countertop, and lounging on your loveseat. Waking up next to him was heaven. If you weren’t securely wrapped in his arms, head laying on his bulky torso, then he was using your chest as a pillow, the weight of him almost making it impossible to breathe. But that extra weight was calming; he may have even been the weighted blanket that has been sitting in your Amazon cart for well over four months. You’d wake up from an uninterrupted night of bliss, fingers running through his long hair, Bucky refusing to get up until you promised pancakes.

But then, three months into it, he left. Its not like he had a choice, you reminded yourself, its his job. And you were well aware of it – he made you aware of it. He told you he would be gone for three weeks. And that’s fine; you could spare less than a month of your life for the good of the rest of the world? It felt almost selfish to think that way. He wasn’t yours; he had to save the world, he belonged to the world – to himself.

So, you tried to keep yourself busy to distract yourself. But there really wasn’t much to do; hobbies you once enjoyed felt exhaustive and boring. The issue is you used to do everything with him: eat, work, eat, shower, sleep. Now it’s eat alone, work alone, eat alone, shower alone, sleep alone; each task a glaring reminder how desolate it was.

Floating, but I feel like I’m dying

Your routine felt like nothing – it just felt empty, the way that it lacked conversation, playfulness, fun, it lacked him. Nothing, in fact, felt real. You walked around the neighborhood and it felt like a fever dream, like you were gliding along the sidewalks. Not a single thought roamed through your mind, just the absence of what used to be. The days always went by painstakingly slow, but every Friday night you wondered how the week had gone by so quickly.

Your friends invited you out on the weekend, and while you mostly said no, they made sure to drag you out a couple times. The company was honestly welcome, it just felt like an empty effort to get dressed up and go to the bar when you really would rather be there (or home – in bed) with someone else. But by the time your friends got you in a routine to go out, Bucky came back home to you.

Months went by while the two of you were attached at the hip, smiles never leaving either of your mouths.

You woke up one morning to a heavy figure sprawled across half of your naked body. Yawning and trying your best to inhale a breath with his chest laying directly on top of yours, you flexed your arms and legs straight out, cracking a few joints that had been overused just a few hours ago. Bucky’s eyes popped open, his blue iris’s peering into your own. He rubbed an eye-booger away with the palm of his hand and started off the morning with “I have to leave tonight.”

You were confused and you knew he could read it on your face. “No good morning?” You joked haphazardly, trying your best not to blurt out every thought racing across your mind at that moment – the main one being what the fuck?

“’M sorry, baby,” he mumbled, still half asleep, pushing his face into the corner of your neck, planting a wet kiss to your shoulder, then your collarbone, then your jaw.

“How long do you think you’ll be gone for?” Your fingers traced up and down his back, nicking on the scratches you left last night; nearly healed but you knew they were there.

He hummed and lifted his head to press a kiss to your lips. “Couple weeks.” Another kiss. “I’m not sure.” That being said, you didn’t bring it up again. It was better to spend the day binging pancakes and watching movies in bed than discussing it any further.

I know it’s easier to run

After everything I’ve done

It was finally time for him to leave. After all your distraction kisses didn’t work. As soon as the clock hit 8:00 pm, he stood, despite you feigning sleep beside him. He leaned over you on the bed and held a head to your cheek, then pushed the hair from your face. You opened your eyes, holding his hand in yours. He stood there for a moment that felt like an eternity, just watching each other with sad eyes. “I wish I could stay,” he murmured.

You nodded, unable to find your voice. As he straightened back up, you stood next to him, pulling a shirt on and following him to the door. After opening the door, he cupped your face with both his hands and pulled you close to him. “See you soon, okay, doll?” If this was his best reassurance tactic, it wasn’t very good. You met his mouth in an open-mouthed kiss, tongues swiping over each other, exchanging the words you couldn’t find earlier. Slowly, he kissed you back, releasing a long breath as he pulled away.

And then you did it.

“I love you.”

And then you regretted it.

He stared back at you, eyes scanning over the whole of your face: faltering smile, eyebrows drawn together, eyes suddenly glazed with worry.

“Goodbye, (Y/N).”

He turned and shut the door without looking back or saying another word. He really left. He really ran away.

Tears welled up into your eyes. Like that morning, the only thought you could process: what the fuck? albeit, this time, it was a little angrier than before. What did that mean? You immediately assumed he was done with you. But the more you laid on your bed, sobbing your eyes out into your pillow, the more that didn’t make sense. There’s no way he wanted to breakup with you – he was so happy before he left. Maybe he just didn’t love you? Maybe he loved you but he just wasn’t ready to say it? And honestly, knowing Bucky, it was most likely the last option. He enjoyed spending every waking moment with you doing the most absolute boring tasks; you don’t just suffer like that if you don’t love that person.

Then again, despite agreeing to take this relationship slow, he surely did not have a problem basically moving into your house and sleeping with you (which you would’ve assumed to be a much greater step than saying “I love you,” considering he was from 1917 where usually the order is reversed).

All that worrying seemed to be in vain. He returned to you no later than 13 days after.

You pulled open to your front door only to find a sheepish-looking Bucky on the other side. His hands were tucked into his pockets, shoulders shrugged unusually high as he stared directly at the ground. But as soon as that door swung open and he saw you standing bewildered on the other side, he grabbed you by the waist and pulled you off the ground against his chest. He hummed softly into your collarbone, “I missed you.”

And suddenly your heart began beating out of your chest. You hands found his hair and you gently untangled the knots, while you shut your eyes and breathed in his earthy scent. So, you’d been right: Bucky was just weird. You didn’t want to relive that scene from two weeks ago, instead opting to relax in his arms. “I missed you, too.”

Growing, but I’m just growing tired

Now I’m worried for my soul

And I’m still scared of growing old

As time went on, him leaving became more frequent. You couldn’t help the fact that they were getting a lot of new leads. Honestly, you couldn’t be more grateful to have Bucky. Not only is he the light of your life, but invariantly the same for everyone else in the world. His job was to protect people and you couldn’t imagine the world if he wasn’t off doing what he did so well. But they became more frequent and longer. Lately, it had felt like the two of you had spent more time apart than together.

Laying on the couch, his cheek resting atop of your chest, his torso and hips nestled between your legs, you broke the calm silence. “So next Friday’s my birthday,” you mumbled.

He chuckles in response, tilting his head up to meet your gaze. “Is this your way of reminding me to get you a gift? Because don’t worry, doll, I already got you something.” He winked and set his cheek back to his original position, softly shutting his eyes as you curled a lock of his hair around your finger.

“No,” you giggle back, rolling your eyes to yourself. “I want to take a trip. I think we should get away for the weekend.” You released the strand of hair, instead running your hand over the back of his neck. “What do you think?”

He sits up immediately, no disregard for your hands, and shakes his head. “(Y/N), you know that I can’t. What if they need me and I’m not here?”

You bite your lip, quickly searching for something to say. And what you blurt out actually happens to be the dumbest thing you’ve ever said. “Aren’t there like a million Avengers? I think you can take one weekend off.”

Now he rolls his eyes and scoffs. “(Y/N), you can’t be serious. You know it doesn’t work like that.” And at this point, you’re not sure if he’s talking about the Avengers not working like that or if your relationship doesn’t work like that – after all, he still never said “I love you” back. Not when he came home that time, not when he left for the next mission, not for your one-year anniversary, and not after the fact he realized that date occurred while he was away on work.

“I know, but – ”

“I’m sorry,” he interrupts, his tone harsh. “But no.” The way his jaw sets and eyes narrow at you doesn’t make you think he’s very sorry.

Staring back at him, you nod, getting up from the couch before he can see the tears well up in your eyes (for the record, he saw them). “I’m tired, Buck. Goodnight.” And with that, you scurried off to your bedroom. You locked the door and fell onto the bed, silently letting the tears fall down your cheeks. You buried your face into your pillow, throwing his against the wall, the smell of your bed – that smelled like him – pissing you off beyond belief.

Was this going to be your life? Constantly leaving, never saying “I love you” when everything he does clearly shows that he’s in love with you. There as a point in your life when you thought men were confusing. But, damn, James Barnes is a whole new story.

He clearly got the message that he’d be sleeping on the couch that night. He didn’t disturb you for the rest of the night – he didn’t even try. Could he hear you sobbing in your room? You could only assume yes. But that clearly didn’t make a difference to him.

But that’s okay. You’ve learned how to console yourself, how to calm yourself down during a panic attack, how to make the tears stop on your own.

That would become your reality. Would that be your future? Bucky talked about the future – quite a lot, actually, especially for being the one who won’t say “I love you.” He wanted to settle down, he wanted the future that was taken away from him years ago: to eventually settle down, raise little babies, grow old with you. He surely liked to talk about it, but never show it. There had to be some way he could ask Steve to take a weekend off. If he was reluctant to do it now, would he ever? Or would you just live in the shadows of his life, tying down the house alone, raising babies alone, growing old alone.

The next morning, you woke up to Bucky next to you in bed. He stroked your hair until you opened your eyes (that you could only assumed were swollen and red). He had apologized for the night before, pleaded for you to understand, and even gave you your birthday gift early. While you decided to forgive him, for the sake of the universe, you still couldn’t bury the hatchet completely. You weren’t going to show it, but what you were thinking about was important, and dammit you were justified in asking yourself those questions. (Even more justified to ask him those questions, but it was just never the right time).

And I’m so used to letting go

But I don’t want to be alone

One day, months later, your grandfather had passed away. It came as quite a shock, and it took you a few hours to even process the fact that he was gone. You’d been through countless calls with other family members and friends checking in on you. And while everyone meant well, every call resulted with you in a rush to hang-up, falling into a fit of sobs as you ended each call.

He had basically raised you since you were born and the fact that he had been ripped away from you so suddenly had burned you even more. Despite how sad you were, however, you had to be glad that you were able to fall apart in Bucky’s arms. Holding you tightly, reassuring you yet never telling you you’re overreacting. As someone who had been around loss his whole life, he definitely understood and thought it best to let you express your feelings earnestly.

That’s why, when Steve Rogers called his phone later that night, you couldn’t help but express your feelings very earnestly.

“Bucky, no, you’re not going.” You were sitting up in bed, in the middle of the night, darkness swallowing the room as Bucky stood to dress, not even bothering to turn on the lamp beside him.

“(Y/N), I have to. Please, don’t make this hard, baby.” His hand reached out to touch your cheek if only for a moment before he continued to dress and gather his things.

Tears fell down your cheeks freely, your voice coming out cracked as you begged him once more. It might have been pitiful, from his eyes, you’d assume. You were only one step away from looking like a sobbing toddler making grabby hands at her favorite toy. “Please, Bucky. You can’t leave me alone right now.” A sob rips through your throat and you nearly scream. “I’m always alone. I don’t want to be alone right now.”

You’d done the research: there were at least 12 Avengers nowadays. You didn’t know who was in what galaxy, but you were positive that one of them could take his place. Its not like he even really had superpowers. He was basically an enhanced man – plus they already had one of those? Surely, he could be spared this time around.

He shakes his head but sits down to pull you in his arms. “Baby, please. You can’t do this to me.”

And it takes everything in your whole being to not scoff. Do this to him? What exactly are you doing to him? Oh, just something he does to you on the weekly basis. You swallow your tears and shove him away. You don’t know what made you pull a complete 180, but it did finally feel good to get some things off your chest that had been plaguing your mind recently. “You always leave. I’m used to it.”

He opens his mouth to speak. Nothing comes out. He watches you pull the covers over yourself and turn away from him. He closes his mouth and leaves the room.

God only knows where our fears go

Hearts I’ve broke, now my tears flow

You’ll see that I’m sorry

Cause you were good to me

It was the post-mission jitters. The remnants of the adrenaline from earlier that day still coursed through his veins as he paced back and forth around the jet, eagerly anticipating his return to you.

“What’s up yours?” Sam asks, eyes narrowed at Bucky, clearly in confusion but also in annoyance.

Bucky stops in his tracks, eyes wide, feeling as though he had been invisible for the whole plane ride. He shrugs, and as Sam raises an eyebrow, he offers an explanation: “I’ve gotta see (Y/N).”

A grin breaks out on Sam’s face. He falls back in his chair, throws a hand over his heart and pretends to faint. “Oh, you have to see your lover. I’m Bucky, I’m so in love,” he mimics in a high-pitched voice.

Where Bucky normally would threaten to beat Sam to within an inch of his life, he couldn’t bring himself to do anything. He stood, staring at Sam’s hideous imitation of himself – he swears his heart stopped beating. “Yes, exactly.”

Sam chokes and stutters a “what?” before Steve interrupts them from the cockpit.

“We’re landing, guys. Buck, grab a seat.” So, Bucky does exactly what he’s told, plopping himself into the seat across from Sam, ignoring all the questions and comments from the man across from him.

God, he mentally kicks himself. It’s been almost two years. Two years you let him treat you like that. Now, while Bucky doesn’t think he’s done anything outwardly wrong and had obviously never purposely tried to hurt you, maybe he could’ve been a little better regarding work. Maybe he could’ve taken that weekend off with you.

You really consumed his whole life. His thoughts were constantly about you (mostly sweet and innocent, sometimes dirty), he constantly wanted to be by you, talking, laughing, touching.

He made up his mind before the plane even lands. The last mission is over, and new – personal – one begins.

He leaves the complex, stopping by the florist to buy the biggest bouquet of roses he can get his hands on. A grin is itching at his mouth as he anticipates your reaction during the rest of his drive. His heart is racing – in a good way. In a way he hasn’t felt in, well, forever. His confidence is at an all-time high as he’s never felt surer of himself in his life.

He’s already planned it out. You’ll open the door and he’ll scoop you up in his arms, hand you the flowers, and finally say “I love you.” He doesn’t know what took him so long anyway.

And now I’m closing every door

Cause I’m sick of wanting more

You know he didn’t get to decide when he left and for how long he’d be gone.

But he did get to decide his priorities. And honestly, you weren’t even sure if you were one of them anymore.

You were torn because you know how much his work means to him. Not only was it his calling, but it was something he thought was important to use his good work as a means to make up for all the bad things he’s done in the past. And while you’ve told him multiple times that that’s definitely not how it works, nothing will change his logic. So, you’ve stood by him; if it was important to him, it was important to you. Of course, you wanted to see your boyfriend exceed, feel fulfilled.

Now, you were just tired of seeing Bucky like that when it cost you everything. He was your everything. You had a job, yes, a home, a family. But the one person you were supposed to be with – actually be with – didn’t value you the same as his job. And thinking that to yourself just has to be the worst, most necessary wake-up call you need.

That was all you needed. You sat at your desk with a pen and a piece of paper. You couldn’t even think of an opening line for about two hours. Sitting there, chewing the inside of your cheek, you wrote countless paragraphs, scrapping some, keeping others, adjusting sentences, trying not to sound too mean – then having to start over because your teardrops fell onto the paper and smudged the ink.

All in all, it took you two days to write him the note – note turned letter. You folded it in three, left it on his pillow. As you placed it down, you broke out in tears. Falling to your knees, you shoved your face into the mattress, wailing into the sheets one last time. It remarkably still smelled of Bucky’s soap; probably just god handing you one more gut-wrenching blow.

You’d spent the night on the couch, unable to bear the sight of that letter or the smell of those blankets. The next morning, you tried to keep your head as clear as possible. No breakfast (no more pancakes with Bucky), no music (no reminders of your song), no phone (no messages from Bucky). It was time to leave. Time to leave this house, this life, this relationship. You’d quickly shoved a few bags full of clothes and necessities and threw them in the back of your car, not looking back. Just like he did after you’d told him you loved him.

Swear I’m different than before

I won’t hurt you anymore

Cause you were good to me

He practically skips up the steps. Knocking first, he rocks up and down on his tip-toes unable to contain his excitement anymore. Not getting an immediate response, he knocks again.

It would make sense that you weren’t home if it was work hours, but it was 7:00 pm. Bucky was thrown-off; you’d be at home eating dinner right now. Chalking it off to maybe you were in the bathtub, he digs around in his pocket for the key. Pushing the door open, he cautiously looks around the kitchen, then the dining room and living room, unable to find you. The bathroom was empty, and you hadn’t responded to him calling your name, echoing throughout the house.

He pulled out his phone while carefully kicking the bedroom door open with his foot. Straight to voicemail. Voicemailbox full. He tosses the roses beside him on the bed and sits on the edge, nearly ready to go searching again before a piece of paper catches his eye.

His heart drops.

It sinks.

There’s not a time in his whole one-hundred-year existence that he’d felt this much anticipation and fear.

He grabs the letter with shaking hands, carefully unfolding it and his eyes are fixated on the date you’d scribbled at the top of the page. Two months ago.

#bucky barnes #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #fanfiction #angst #bucky barnes angst #captain america #bucky x you #bucky fanfic

[atlasfreak]

hell is hot from your mistakes

chapter three; Tumblr edition

The afterlife is a mess of time and space.

Dream got the brunt end of that mess, of time, and bad luck follows Tommy even in death.

Dream is mere seconds too late reviving him.

Tommy wakes up in a familiar, unfamiliar world in a familiar, unfamiliar body that looks so much like an old friend of his, and yet he remembers everything when really, he shouldn't. His brother's voice guides him, the Nether is blistering heat and dust and his hands are hoofed.

ArchiveOfOurOwn Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30073104/ or THIS

Tommy spends the next day on high alert.

They don't leave the cave, to Wilbur's annoyance; Come on, it'll help things. You- you always took walks when you were upset back before exile, didn't you? His voice floats around distantly - as though he wasn't really back at Tommy's side yet - but Tommy can hear him well enough to be pissed.

"We're not going outside, Wil. We went out fucking yesterday - less than a day ago! And someone fucking died. We stay in here. I wouldn't be allowed to go, anyway."

Fine. Fine. But we should head outside. I have t- I'm rather bored.

"Wilbur, I swear to Philza fuckin' Minecraft-"

Truth is, Tommy did want to go out - he wanted to roam the red fields and forests, counting shroomlights and watching zombified piglins growl at each other. He can't stand it, being cooped up in a cave too empty, space next to him too cold.

But it'll be a long, long while yet before his piglin mother even considers letting him leave the safe sanctuary of the cave.

Speaking of - she's curled in on herself, watching him with a hawk's eye, red from tough Nether tears; tears sapped of all water, tears leaving saline stains along her cheeks. All day she's been torn between getting lost in her awful, awful grief and caring for him, watching over him, protecting him. If not for Tommy, she'd probably sleep the day away in her pain. So Tommy spends the afternoon in the red red cave, trying to entertain his guests and keep his mother from mourning... too heavily. Right now, that means running all around and jumping over her and over the soul soil patch and over the edge of the far side of the cave, where it leads down into a second one.

He's trying, anyway. Wilbur isn't making this any easier. At all.

He sounds in Tommy's left ear. Tommy, if I scout ahead do you- and then he's too quiet for Tommy to hear, -forest? How about that?

"You cut out, Wil," Tommy murmurs, crouching down and bunching his haunches to jump. Mama piglin sprawls out, giving him less of a challenge.

What? You're not just trying to get me to shut up, are you? Wilbur pauses, I'm- I'm cutting out?

"I dunno. You just sound really far away."

I- how long have I sounded far away for?

"A day or so," Tommy mumbles, springing up and landing on all fours on the netherrack behind his mother. She purrs and he feels her tail whip his arm as it wags. Approval. "Ever since you left."

Left?

"To go take brother piglin to the dead zone, right?" Tommy asks. "You know. You went silent. And you were back when I woke up."

Oh! Oh, yes. Yes, I took the piglin to the - how do you call it? The Death Zone, so you could be reunite when you die, Tommy. Lemme tell you, he did not want to leave you guys alone.

"Oh. He's safe then?"

Yes. He's safe - he's with a friend.

The former blonde laughs. "A friend? Yeah, he'll either love or hate Mexican Dream, I think."

Oh, he loved Mexican Dream, Wilbur smiles. Very entertaining fellow, M.D.

Wilbur's voice grows no louder, no closer as they talk; still it sounds far off, distant. Tommy brushes it off and glances to his side. Mama piglin is laying over on her side now, eyes closed.

Tommy rumbles gently at her. Wilbur pauses in what he's saying to stare as Tommy goes to lay beside her -she deserves rest.

Is your mother asleep? Wilbur asks quietly, as if she could hear him.

"Yes," Tommy whispers. "She would've growled back otherwise, even if she's sad."

Good. Come on, let's go.

Tommy glances over, like he'll find Wilbur; like Wilbur will be standing beside him. "What?"

Let's go. Y'know, outside. Come on, Toms, we're going to the forest.

Tommy feels panic flare up in his stomach. "No, nonononono, no. I'm not just leaving her, Wilbur!"

We'll come back, don't worry, Wilbur insists. I'll make sure you don't get jumped. Come on. We need to find- I need to show you something.

Tommy hesitates. He's not.. sure about this. About following Wilbur again. Trust only goes so far when you're TommyInnit, post death.

He voices his hesitation.

Theseus fuckin' Innit, I won't let anything happen to you out there, Wilbur declares. Come on. I'll protect you.

"How're you gonna 'protect me' if you're a fucking voice?"

I'll spec. I'll warn you and scout- it's called ghosting for a reason. It's ok, Toms. I have your back.

"You're sure," Tommy mumbles, casting one last look at his mother. "And nothing- nothing bad will happen?"

Nothing bad will happen. I swear on my life- well. My death.

Tommy swallows and he weighs his options and he makes a decision.

He follows Wilbur's voice out of the cave.

Wilbur does keep his promise, though; whispering Not there, there's a pack of piglins or Watch out to the right, there's a hoglin over there whenever he senses movement. Tommy's head shoots up at every creak or murmur or whistle, jumpier than a chicken on Christmas Eve. Wilbur chuckles.

"Wil, where- where are we going?"

It's somewhere. I don't know exactly.

"Wh- I thought you had a plan!"

I- I kinda do, I don't bloody know!

"Wilbur!" Tommy shouts, "Why'd you lead me out here if you didn't have a plan?"

Keep your voice down. You don't wanna end up like m- mister piglin brother.

"Low ass fuckin' blow," Tommy snarls, but he lowers his volume. "If I die out here, Mama won't even find my body. The hogs will eat it. I don't wanna die again, Wil, I really, really don't."

You won't die, Wilbur says, voice confident as a dying man - take that how you will. If you die, I've failed. You won't die.

"You're so fuckin' weird," Tommy growls as they continue walking - just a little piglin and his disembodied voice of a brother, wandering through the brush. "You're so fuckin' weird today."

Hey, Tommy - look. What's that? Wilbur suddenly asks. His voice is clearer, closer than it's been in hours. Tommy glances over. A little stream of lava falls from the Nether roof and spills across the netherrack floor. Two little red creations bathe in its fiery warmth.

"That's a strider, innit?" Tommy mutters. "You ride 'em cross lava."

Tommy, go up to it, Wilbur whispers. It's friendly.

"How'd'you bloody know that it's friendly?" Tommy grumbles, but he approaches the lava anyway. The nearer strider turns at his footsteps - it sees his hooves one step too close to the heat and it rushes to knock him away at the same time that Wilbur screams Not THAT close!

The strider shivers when it drags itself out of the lava to stand with Tommy - it's young, and Tommy is taller just barely. He moves a hand up to pet it. "Wil, go look for little blue and orange mushrooms. I wanna take the strider home."

I don't see anything, Wilbur says after a moment, but maybe it'll follow anyway.

The purple critter makes a noise akin to a fire crackling and Tommy plays with the frills on the side of its head. "Aw."

Tommy listens to the creak and chattering of his new friend and Wilbur is silent for a moment, then We should keep going.

"We found a strider. We can just head back. No need for all this, it'll keep us entertained for awhile. Little pet strider! I'll name it Shitass."

Wilbur sighs. Awful name. I hate it. What's it gonna speedrun - death? No, and that's not the only reason I lead you out here. There's something else I want you to see.

"Not the only- you wanted me to find a- you're so fuckin' sus today, I swear. Whatever." Tommy rubs his eyes with a groan. "Just tell me what you're looking for. We'll go find it some fuckin- some other day."

Fine.

Tommy blinks.

Then he falls to his knees. His head explodes with hundreds and thousands of voices, all screaming at him, all shrieking at him, all loud, too too loud, too fucking loud-

Wilbur is sus! Aww, Wilbro! Can you name the strider after me? What the fuck is that? Can you say hi to my friend? You missed diamonds. You need blue fungi to lead a strider! Kill it for string. Boat with legs!

Tommy clamps his hands over his ears.

Chat.

"Tommy."

He looks up.

Wilbur is visible.

He's visible! Translucent, yes, but he's there, sitting atop the strider, wearing the dirty old trenchcoat from Pogtopia, hair tangled and eyes gloomy. He points into the distance, across the Nether - the crimson forest ends in a cliff and leads into the wastelands.

"There." he says. His voice is clear as ever - real, not just in Tommy's head. "Over there is a fortress with intact blaze spawners and unlooted chests. It's just over that crest."

"What?" Tommy manages through the mind-wrecking chorus in his ears. He doesn't see anything- no stormy red-black bricks anywhere in sight, just black fuzz creeping into his vision with every new voice, shattering his eardrums. "A- a fortress?"

"You have to learn to fight like this - as a piglin," Wilbur instructs. He tilts his head up. "And you need to get blaze rods. Then- then you can go back."

Woah! DUDUDU! E. Dude just find the smp portal hub, 4head!.Go get them rods, you can take a blaze or two!

Tommy whips around to stare at Wilbur. "I thought you didn't want me to go back."

"I don't," Wilbur sighs. "I really don't. But- but it's not as safe here as I thought it was. I.. you need to get back to the Overworld. Not the DreamSMP specifically, but the Overworld. So.. I'll help you. There's a fortress across the Wastelands, completely untouched. You can get blaze rods and maybe obsidian and gear from it."

Tommy is silent.

Wilbur hops down, but his hand never leaves the strider's head. "That's a long time from now. Prove to me that you can survive it, I'll take you there."

"Why are you so incitement that I can't die?" Tommy demands. "I'll respawn, won't I?"

"Insistent, not incitement," Wilbur corrects with a shake of his head. It's so odd - Tommy still isn't used to seeing him. "You're a mob. You have one life and one life only and Tommy, listen to me. You can't lose it. You can't lose that life. You can't die."

"Wilbur, you're scaring me."

Suddenly, chat is gone. Tommy peaks open his eyes, his head is still aching like a bitch.

Wilbur's gone, too. There's only open space where he had just stood, the strider blinks at him slowly. Must be confused, poor thing. There's no trace that Wilbur had ever been corporeal - just empty air.

Good, Wilbur says; back to a lonely voice, back to being chat. Good.

Tommy swallows.

"Come- come on, Shitass," Tommy whispers after a moment. "Let's.. let's go home."

It's quieter than late nights in the van, quieter than the blanketing silence of L'manburg in chunk-error ruins. Wilbur doesn't speak, but Tommy can hear his breathing. It comforts him; Wilbur hasn't gotten tired of him, hasn't left him behind. The strider follows them without the encouragement of food, and Tommy is grateful. He doesn't want to have to search this place for a single speck of blue just to have a friend that's not a disembodied voice.

"Why don't you do that more often?" Tommy murmurs as they walk. He still isn't heavy enough to leave tracks like his mother, Tommy notes.

Do what?

"Become.. real. Ghostbur."

Other people can hear me, and see me. It's not safe.

"Chat gets really fuckin' loud when you do it," Tommy comments. "It hurts like hell. You're chat, usually, but like... a moving chat. Like you're real, just not visible. When you became see-able, chat came back. Are you blocking them?"

I should be more careful with that first bit, Wilbur hums. But now I want to go ghost less. If it hurts you and there's no point to doing it, why should I?

"Be more careful with w- wait, 'go ghost?'"

It's a reference.

"What to?"

This thing called Da-

Tommy freezes. He feels ice sink through his veins, weighing down his legs. A new sound, a sound neither Wil nor Tommy have ever heard before - it echoes through the Nether, loud and piercing. It hits his ears with the force of a sledgehammer on a bell. The strider pauses and Wilbur shuts his mouth. It's almost like a scream, a cry, a call. A desperate one.

Shit.

"Mama! Mama, it's ok, it's ok!" Tommy can't describe his voice as anything other than frantic, desperate. "Mama, I'm right here, I'm right here, I'm safe!" he shrieks, running through the brush, stumbling over roots and thorns and bushes. The strider follows slowly.

He tries to match her scream, tries to tip her off - I'm right here, I'm right here! - but he doesn't hear her come to him, doesn't see her relieved white eyes. Wilbur is in his ear, whispering warnings and observations and-

"I don't care if there are hoglins, fucking- find her! Find her, you useless fucking ghost!" Tommy screams at Wilbur.

There's just a beat, a single heartbeat of stunned silence. Tommy pants, a mixture of exhaustion and fury trying its hardest to escape him. Wilbur's voice echoes in his mind as he whips around, looking desperately.

If you go forward a bit, there's a cliffside. Below is a very tall tree, far left of the cave. She's standing beneath it.

Tommy runs. He runs faster than he ever had with hooves, maybe faster than he had with feet. His mother glances up as he scrabbles down the cliffside, slipping down jagged rock. He feels hot, wet pain run down his leg but he doesn't slow to check, just tumbles to the ground with a yelp. She shuts her mouth and scruffs him immediately, sniffing his head and checking, reassuring herself, please be alive please be alive please be alive despite the very real squirming and very alive "Mama, please calm down, please, I'm fine."

She collapses when she realises he's safe and fine and alive and she's not childless and she holds him close.

If it were anyone else, Tommy would squeal and try to wiggle out, away, but it's his mother. He lets her hold him, forcing a purr. See? I'm fine.

Wilbur's voice rings out, distant. Tommy, what about the strider?

Tommy doesn't respond. He just lays in his mother's arms, eyes closed.

Nevermind, got it! Tommy turns around to see the strider hit the ground right in front of them with a distressed crackle and an OW THAT MUST'VE HURT out of Wil.

His mother has it dead in seconds.

GOD DAMMIT! Wilbur screeches. I JUST GOT THAT B- I JUST GOT THAT DOWN!

Tommy flattens his ears. His mother snarls as the strider falls apart in a cloud of smoke and dust and string.

Wilbur sighs. Tommy raises an eyebrow. "Can't you just bring one back by yourself? You can- you can 'go ghost', you literally didn't need me."

There's no response.

"Wilbur?"

Not even soft breathing. Tommy's tail falls limp. His mother hugs him closer, as if the lack of wagging meant he was about to drop dead, evaporate like the strider had.

Wil's gone. Tommy can only hope he's going to come back, like he did when his brother died.

Maybe Wilbur just doesn't like death.

Tommy leans into his mother's soft fluff.

"I'm sorry for leaving."

She huffs.

"Please never - fuckin' - please never scream like that again."

Her response is a low snort. You made me afraid. I was afraid. Never run away like that, and I will never scream, Tommy understands.

"Ok, Piglin Mama," Tommy murmurs. "Ok."

Wilbur runs his hands through his hair - real hair. Real, physical, human hair. Living hands, real hair.

He's furious. He won't let it show.

"What's this?" He asks, calm and collected and cool. With a soft smile and curious eyes - he's used to playing a mellow role, an innocent role. "What've you done?"

Dream narrows his eyes. "Why now did it work? Why couldn't I bring you back before, Wilbur?"

Wilbur ignores him, instead digging through his trenchcoat pockets. "Oh, I still have my deck!" he chirps. "Wanna play solitaire?"

"Is it why I can't bring back Tommy?"

"Or are you more of a poker guy? What about war? That's easy enough for you, I think."

"Wilbur," Dream hisses. "Listen to me."

"We could play Uno - queen can be pick up two, king can be pick up four, joker can be skip! Or reverse-"

"WILBUR!"

Wil smiles. "Yes, Dream?"

"Why can't I ressurect Tommy?"

"Do you not like card games? I'm afraid I've only got cards." Dream stands and Wilbur raises an eyebrow. "Aw, do you really have to look up to make eye contact with me?"

"It's because you're wearing tall boots. I'm not wearing shoes," Dream insists. "Sam took them," he adds quietly.

"Sure it's the boots, Dream," Wil snickers. "Sure."

Dream blinks. "Don't distract me."

"I didn't do anything."

"Listen up, Wilbur Soot," Dream snarls.

"Bit formal, what with the whole full name bit, but I'm listening. I'm listening, go ahead, Dream." Wilbur tilts his head, insufferably smug.

"You will tell me how to revive Tommy - you'll tell me what you did, you'll stop tampering - or I will kill you. Do you hear me, Wilbur? Do you understand me? I will kill you."

Wilbur sorts through his deck, counting cards and yawning. Unimpressed.

"I will kill you and bring you back and kill you again. Over and over and over, as long as it takes. Every minute of every hour of every day of every month of every year until. You. Spill. Your. Secrets. Now do you want to listen to me, and do it the easy, easy, easiest way, or d-"

"Actually, I'm a bit - little itty bitty bit, tiny bit - tired of of this whole living thing, love," Wilbur interrupts. Dream stutters as Wilbur runs past Dream, spins round to face him and fall back, arms spread like a bird and wearing a shit eating grin. Wilbur Soot throws himself at burning, starving lava with a silly salute and bright eyes.

"BYE, DREAM!"

The freckled man can't do anything but stare as Wilbur's face contorts in awful, horrible pain for just a moment, then gone. Fully, completely gone - nothing but a swirl of smoke. The scent of burnt flesh stains the air and Dream feels like he's going to vomit. A charred sleeve falls to the ground in front of him - embroidered patches display old flags.

Dream picks up the cloth.

Green and white and pink, blue and purple with a white... sun? And-

He clenches his hand around the scrap.

Half a black circle, a fine yellow border and a bold yellow x. A line of blue runs along the top, and red along the bottom, and white cuts through the center with two more crosses.

The flag of a fallen nation.

Dream holds the patch with shaking hands, fury racing through his veins like hot fire, the fire that ravaged fur and ravaged flesh. He lifts the chunk of fabric to the lava, flinching as the fire swallows it eagerly and licks at his skin with a flash of searing, searing pain. Tears prick at his eyes as he holds a scorched, damaged hand to his chest, breathing like sailer too close to the sea and its sirens. Dreams turns and he swipes the water off his face and he throws it to the ground, to the ring of red blood (his own, his own blood, his own horrible horrible red blood) and a single glove, a single fingerless glove taken from his own hands, a glove with just traces, traces, traces of a dead man, miniscule little skin cells, gloves he had borrowed long ago from hands stained gray with gunpowder, and he waits for the blood to lighten and glow and he waits for Wilbur to appear again with the same cold, cold eyes.

Wilbur doesn't respond.

Dream punches the wall. "STOP TAMPERING! STOP TAMPERING!"

He almost hears the mocking laughter.

Then stop trying.

Far, far away, a small piglin opens his eyes. He's tucked against a bigger piglin, a sow who had never let him sleep beside her before.

There's a baby strider sleeping in front of him an a kind voice in his ears.

Good morning, Tommy.

"Oh, Wilbur! Wil, you're back! Wil. Wil. Wil. Wil, where were you?"

Off. Visited an old friend, brought a new one. Sorry about- about yesterday.

"It's ok, I think. And, by the way?"

Hm?

"Thank you, Wilbur."

For the strider?

"For... everything, really. Everything here."

Oh.

Tommy doesn't hear Wilbur's quiet ...Don't thank me yet.

#tommyinnit #tommy innit #dsmp tommy #dsmp tommy innit #dsmp tommyinnit #dreamsmp #dream smp #dsmp #smp #dsmp fanfiction #fanfiction #dreamSMP fanfiction #wilbur soot #wilbur mcyt #wilbur #wilbursoot #mcyt wilbur #mcyt tommy #mcyt tommyinnit #tommyinnit mcyt #tommy mcyt #dreamsmp mcyt #mcyt dreamsmp #dream mcyt #dreamwastaken #mcyt dream #abusive dream #dsmp dream #dreamsmp dream #atlas; hell is hot from your mistakes

[aquidragon]

Purple (Part 1)

Spencer Reid x Reader Summary: Spencer sometimes considered his eidetic memory a curse, however when he spots a gorgeous woman crossing the street with a purple ribbon, he can’t help but fall heads over heels for her. However, there’s more to her than it seems... Warning(s): Mentions of blood and alludes to violence Word Count: 2.2k A/N: Here’s my first ever x reader series! Thank you to @criesinreid​ for beta-reading this for me! (Part One: Here) (Part Two: x) (MASTERLIST) ---

---

      Spencer Reid POV

It was a sunny Tuesday morning when I saw her, with beautiful h/c hair that was tied with a purple ribbon. Maybe it was because of the color, since purple was my favorite, but I felt like I was drawn to her. I watched with a rather stupid expression as she walked past me, with a wide smile from across the street. I felt my heart flutter and my face get warm. She was gorgeous. My eidetic memory allowed me to picture her smile and her shining h/c hair as she chased after her friends. After a few days, I caught myself imagining holding her hand and taking her out on dates. Would she like attending the library with me? What kind of genres did she enjoy? I could tell that she at least could read, since she was holding a few books close to her chest as she ran. I could no longer focus the book I held in my hands, the words seemed jumbled and scrambled. Nothing made sense, except for the woman that had blessed my very mind. The few seconds that I had my eyes on her, I couldn’t get her picture out of my vision. I let out a small sigh as I closed my book, allowing my mind to drift to her again.

“Pretty boy has got a crush.” The familiar teasing voice of my colleague joked from right above me. I looked up from my slouched position on the jet’s couch, I snorted, brushing over my lower lip with my tongue. “I-I don’t have a crush.” I responded, which I knew wasn’t convincing as Morgan laughed and took a seat beside me. 

“Come on, you’ve been staring out into space.” He gently patted my shoulder, his dark eyes just dancing with playfulness. “So, who is she?” The older FBI agent asked, earning a small groan from me. “I told you I don’t have a crush.” I unintentionally let my voice lift up an octave, which gave away my lie. The look on Derrik’s face made me sigh and finally give in. “I saw this girl across the street from the coffee shop I frequent before work, Morgan she is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.” I knew it was rather dramatic, but it was true. “Well, did you get her number?” My co-worker asked, I shook my head sadly. “I didn’t get to her, she was running after some friends.” The sinking feeling in my chest began to drag down my mood. I suddenly felt like a dunce, how couldn’t I have just ran to her, asked for her name, her number, anything? 

I cursed my inept ability to flirt, or talk to women in general. Looking at my friend made my brain begin to curse itself. I wasn’t as confident as Morgan, I couldn’t even cross the street to go after the girl that I was really fond of. This made me bring my hands up to my face, I dragged my palms over my eyes, I was much too tired to think too much about my hopeless attempts at relationships. 

Morgan must’ve noticed my downwards spiral into hopelessness, because he patted my shoulder a few more times as the plane began to shake into the descent. “Hey don’t lose hope, she might live in DC, maybe you’ll see her again.” I looked up at him again, rubbing one of my eyes as the pressure rapidly changed. “How? Morgan I can’t just search DC for her, there’s 705,749 people that live in DC.” I challenged, hopelessness sinking deeper into my chest. I also felt frantic, I felt this paranoid need to find this woman again. 

Morgan laughed, shaking his head. “Oh I know you Doctor Spencer Reid, you’ll find this woman.” Before I could respond with more statistics about the likeness of me running into a random person I hadn’t even met, the plane started to rumble on the runway. The rest of my team all groaned as they were awoken from their naps on the five hour flight we had just endured in Seattle. 

After the plane was landed, I begrudgingly dragged my suitcase behind me towards the BAU offices. I wasn’t looking forward to doing paperwork, usually I could whisk through them with ease, but the nagging feeling in my heart made it impossible to think. All I could think about was her, and that purple ribbon that bounced with her movements as she ran. I scuffled all my paperwork back into a file, I would fill it out tomorrow morning, after my third coffee of the day. I was just about to leave when I heard the soft voice of my closest friend. 

“Leaving so soon Spence?”  JJ asked tiredly, I could tell that she was struggling to keep her eyes open. “Yeah- I’m too tired to do paperwork tonight.” I responded briskly, bringing up three of my fingers to rub one of my eyes. “Wow, Spencer Reid, too tired to do paperwork?” The teasing voice of Penelope came next, her entire body was limp and exhausted. I couldn’t help but crack a small smile, gathering up the last of my stuff. “Yeah-I have plans” I responded nervously. I couldn’t tell Penelope that I had a crush on a girl I randomly laid eyes on. I’m sure I could just tell the woman that the mystery girl owned a purple ribbon and she could find my crush within a couple hours. Tops. 

“Ooo plans?” Garcia asked, a little bit of excitement glittered in her eyes. I opened my mouth to tell her that it was just a trip to the library, but Morgan stepped on. “Woah now Baby Girl, we can’t have our pretty boy here giving away his secrets.” He sent a wink at me, which made me chuckle. “I gotta go guys, see you on Monday.” I walked out of the office, heading towards the silver elevator that would take me to the main floor. 

Now, I normally don’t believe in dream analysis. There’s just not enough evidence to prove that our dreams are somehow linked to ourselves. However, the events in my dream felt so unbelievably real. I saw the woman again, with her gorgeous h/l hair and sparkling e/c eyes. We were in a void, which reminded me of being underwater. My hair was fanned around my head, as if I was swimming. I looked back over at the woman, her hair was also floating around her pretty face. The purple ribbon was no longer on her head, but instead it was tied around her pinky finger. 

“Spencer, look!” She spoke, but her voice was echoed, and sounded like a weird mix of voices. “We’re connected.” I blinked, confused. “Connected?” I muttered to myself, before I felt a tug at my pinky finger, making me look down. Just like the woman’s, a purple ribbon was tight around my finger, and led just to her pinky. 

I let a joyous laugh bubble out of my chest. “I guess we are.” I looked back at the girl, she was now closer. Her face was slightly blurry, but it also seemed so clear.  She seemed sad, from the way her hands floated over my shoulders. “Please find me.” The woman with the purple ribbon whispered, her voice softening. “I need you.” Then I heard gunshots, screaming, and a woman screaming for help. I moved to protect the girl, but she was gone, I was now in a decrepit looking house. I unholstered my gun, approaching the door where I heard the noises. Blood began pouring from the crack between the door and floor. I let out a scream.

And then I woke up

---      Y/N L/N POV

Any method to get away from my psycho family was a win for me. Even if it meant hanging out with my shitty friends from high school, who did nothing but cause trouble and get high. Now I didn’t really have an issue with people getting high, I once dabbled in it when I was in my early college years. I only stopped when I started to fall behind in my classes. 

So today, I decided I was going to the cute little coffee shop I passed after stopping at the library. I’ve been in a desperate need for coffee anyway. Looking into the mirror of my vanity, I cautiously applied makeup to my face. Brushing a hint of blush onto my cheeks as I smiled at myself. I loved makeup, maybe it was because my parents never let me use it growing up. They believed it was “against God's will” or yadda yadda. 

It didn’t matter anymore, I lived in my own shitty apartment, so I could do whatever I wanted to myself. After finishing up the last touches to my face, I reached over to tie my ribbon. I didn’t know why, but I was always drawn to the color purple, so I bought a lot of purple-colored accessories. My ribbon was my most prized accessory though, I could tie it in my hair in whatever way I saw fit.

So, I tied it in my favorite way before admiring myself in the mirror once again. I tried to ignore the subtle scars marking certain locations on my face, but I felt like my makeup covered them well. Feeling satisfied, I switched off the lights, grabbed my phone and headed out. 

“Ugh seriously?” I exclaimed as I stepped outside, only to feel the subtle drops of rain on my hair. The coffee place was only a block or so from my apartment complex, and I really didn’t feel like digging for my keys again. So, I bolted, hurrying to the cafe as the rain started to pelt down harder. 

Once I reached the building, I threw open the door and got inside. Breathing heavily, I searched my purse for my wallet and made my way over to the line. The line went by fast, I ordered my coffee and went to sit down right by the window. A storm had rolled in, I sipped at my beverage as I watched people outside scramble about in hopes for shelter. 

One of them being a handsome lanky man that I swore I saw somewhere. He glanced at me from outside, through the window, and his face lit up. He swiftly entered the cafe, and made a beeline over to me. He didn’t order anything, but the baristas seemed to recognize him, one of them even waved. 

“I-I’m sorry is this seat taken?” The brunette asked, breathlessly, as he stood behind the seat next to me. I shook my head, scooting my chair over so he could get into the one he wanted. “Do I know you from somewhere?” I asked, curiously, I swore I recognized him. 

The handsome man seemed surprised, he took off his soaked jacket. “Uh, I saw you last Tuesday.” He mumbled, his voice squeaking a bit. I bit the corner of my mouth and observed him from head to toe. He was well-dressed, with a dark grey cardigan over what seemed to be a dress shirt and tie. He wore dress pants, but had two well-worn converse and two differently colored socks. 

Suddenly it came to me, I had glanced at him as I rushed to catch up with my friends. I remembered that I really wanted to look back at him again, but had a time constraint. “Oh yeah!” I grinned, taking another sip of my caffeinated beverage. “I remember now.” The man seemed pleased at my words, fumbling with the ends of his cardigan nervously.  “Oh, well, I’m Doctor Reid.” The man seemed like he wanted to shake my hand, but kept his hands as far from mine as possible. He nervously cleared his throat, looking at me in the eyes. “Doctor Spencer Reid.” Spencer gave me a hopeful smile, which I returned. “It’s a pleasure to formally meet you Doctor, my name is Y/n.” I didn’t bother saying my last name, I didn’t want to be associated with it. 

“No please, call me Spencer.” The fawn-brown haired doctor sounded tense. “No need to use formalities with me here.” He clarified, making me laugh. “Alright, alright. Spencer it is then.” When our eyes met, I swore that Spencer looked at me with so much intensity I thought I would explode. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish, trying to say something.

Ring

“Oh sorry lemme get that.” The doctor scrambled into his pocket, pulling out an ancient flip phone and answering the call. “What? Already?” He paused, listening into the call, I began to become more intrigued by the minute. His face fell, his once bright and handsome face turned into one that resembled haunted somberness. “I understand, I’ll be there right away Hotch.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked, not bothering to suppress my curiosity. “It’s my-job.” Spencer answered sluggishly, making a face as he slid on his damp jacket. “Oh?” I watched as he scrambled for a napkin and he fished a pen from his satchel. 

“Call me?” The honey-eyed man asked hopefully, after sketching out his number on the paper. I nodded, taking the napkin into my hand, scanning over the haphazardly written numbers. “Of course-” I responded, but Spencer was already halfway out the door. I snorted, slipping out my phone and typing in the man’s number. Now THIS will be interesting...

---

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid #spencer reid imagine #multiparter #spencer reid fluff #purple #criminal minds #reader insert #implied soulmates

[satoruvt]

the color of you - gold (2)

i lost the template for the banner i used in part one so i had to make a new one and it looks different and im sad but at least this chapter is fuckin AWESOME

pairing → keigo takami x bakery owner!reader

word count → 1736

summary → you’re not really dating, so you can’t really be in love with him… right?

song inspo → portland by armors

part one | part two | part three | part four | part five

“Does everything look correct?”

The packet in front of you is intimidating, thick and detailing every aspect of the relationship you and Hawks are supposed to have. You flip through the pages, looking over the big points - no one but you, Hawks, his publicist and your lawyer are to know about the terms of your “relationship,” you need to be okay with having your picture taken, and the whole thing will only last a few months to cover a few press conferences and an awards ceremony. The line for your signature on the last page is blank - you expected Hawks to have signed it already, but the line above his name is blank as well. The ball’s in your court, it’s saying.

“Yes,” you say, nodding up at his publicist. “Everything looks fine, thank you.”

“Any boundaries?” Hawks speaks up, and you meet his eyes from across the table. You shake your head no, offering a curt, gentle smile. Your lawyer hands you a pen to sign the contract, and after a deep breath, you drag the pen across the paper in your name. Hawks does the same after you.

“There we go,” he says when he’s done, clicking the pen. His smile is laid-back, easy. “We’re officially in an unofficial relationship.”

You can’t help the smile that dances on your lips, because it really is ironic, but it’s quickly forgotten as the publicist goes over the general idea. There are big events scheduled for the two of you to be seen together - the press conferences, a few dates, the awards ceremony. You’re welcome to do anything else that you might want, the publicist says, and you don’t miss the wink Hawks sends you.

The rest of the meeting is settled with a copy of the contract handed to your lawyer, and the four of you disperse. You’re gathering up your things when you see Hawks waiting in the doorway. “Let me walk you to the front,” he says, and you do.

His agency building is smaller than you thought it would be, given he’s the number two hero. You get strange looks from a few people as the two of you walk towards the front - you’re not surprised, if you were anybody else but yourself you’d be curious too - and it’s not until the two of you are in the elevator, taking it down to the first floor, that Hawks speaks again.

“So,” he begins, and you turn towards him. “Fancy going on a date with me tonight?”

His gaze is playful, so you join in, and it’s not as awkward as you thought it would be. “You read my mind. Must be a lovers’ connection.”

He likes the humor, you decide, when his teasing smirk grows into a grin. “Well, I figure since we’re gonna be dating for the next few months, I should know about my new girlfriend. Doesn’t do well for the press if they ask me questions about you that I don’t know how to answer.”

You laugh, nodding along to his words. The elevator doors open and the two of you continue to the front of the building in comfortable silence.

“I’m very much looking forward to our date tonight,” you tell him when the two of you reach the front doors. They slide open as another person walks into the building, and the warm air from outside brushes against your legs. Hawks grins, pulls you closer to press a chaste kiss to your cheek. It takes you by surprise and you feel your face grow hot, but before you can say anything Hawks is already walking back to his office.

“See you tonight, babe!” He calls, and you roll your eyes, but the soft smile on your face would fool anyone.

And although it’s embarrassing to blush over something as simple as a cheek kiss, you suppose the pink on your face is a good thing. You notice paparazzi outside of the agency, and they definitely saw what just happened.

-

By this point, you’re not really nervous to be going on a date - “date” - with Hawks, but Jesus, it’s stressful to pick out what the hell you’re gonna wear. Do you actually try? Do you put on some jeans and a nice blouse and call it good? What does going on a fake date with the Number Two hero call for?

In the end you settle for a sundress, something in the middle. It doesn’t take much longer for you to finish up getting ready before you’re heading out the door to the restaurant Hawks had told you to meet him at. You’re lucky it’s not that far away - a fifteen minute walk at most. The sun glows in the evening light, drenching the world in melted gold.

The restaurant is small, but filled with a decent amount of people. When you step inside the gentle hum of overlapping conversation fills your bones, and you see Hawks in a booth down a walkway. You point him out to the hostess and she lets you find your way to him. 

“It’s awfully rude to keep your date waiting,” he says when you get close enough, standing up to greet you.

“What can I say? I dress to impress.”

Hawks kisses your cheek and you scrunch your nose at the feel of his stubble on your face. He lets you into one side of the booth, and you’re expecting him to sit on the opposite side, but instead he sits next to you. The low light of the lamp overhead makes his eyes brighter.

“You do look great.”

“Why, thank you.”

Both of you are teasing, playful, and the conversation is fluid to follow. You’re not speaking across a table so your voices are hushed, gentle, and you think you’re starting to understand why Hawks chose to sit next to you rather than across from you - it’s intimate, couple-y. 

“You know,” you say, finger tracing the rim of your wine glass, “since we’ve been dating for a total of, like, five hours, there’s a lot that I don’t know about you.”

“Ugh, were you even a fan?” Hawks teases, and you scoff, rolling your eyes. His tone softens when you make eye contact with him. “Ask away.”

“For starters, I don’t even know your real name.” You lean your head on your palm as you look at him. “And I feel like, as your girlfriend, I am entitled to that.”

Hawks chuckles, and there’s a certain look in his eyes that you can’t put your finger on. “It’s Keigo Takami.”

Keigo.

“Keigo, huh?” You repeat. It floats around in your mind, lingers on your tongue like the taste of honey. It reminds you of amber, gold, of coins and riches. Keigo.

“Well, I’m Y/N L/N.”

“I know, I looked you up.”

“At least one of us is smart.”

By the time your food comes, you’re barely eating, and it catches up to you how much the two of you have been talking. You’d been worried that the whole thing would be awkward and weird and not at all convincing, but you’re certain if anyone saw the two of you right now, they’d assume you were dating. The conversation rarely stops, and if it does -

Oh. He’s close.

There’s a moment of silence, a break from talking as you shift from one topic to another. On top of the two of you already being close from sitting on the same side of the table, with how much you’ve been talking, you’ve just gravitated towards each other. His arm is draped over the back of the bench, casual, but you can’t really focus when you fixate on his lips.

“And so we, um…” you trail off, then blink yourself out of your trance. “Wow, I completely forgot what I was gonna say.”

Hawks - Keigo - notices, and his face is smug. The smirk on his lips is nothing short of pride.

“Catching feelings for me already, Y/N?”

“In your dreams,” you bounce back.

For the first time tonight, you check your phone. It’s getting late, and although you don’t live very far away, you don’t want to be caught alone after dark. “Ah, I should probably get going.”

Keigo nods, reaching into his pocket to pull out a few thousand yen banknotes and set them on the table. You want to tell him that you have your own money to pay, but he cuts you off by getting out of the booth and speaking himself. “I’ll walk you home,” he says, and you furrow your brows as you get out, too.

“Are you sure? I don’t wanna trouble you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Keigo says, offering his arm to you with a sly grin. “It’s my duty as a hero. And your boyfriend.”

He puts emphasis on the word and you can’t hide the amused smile from your lips, looping your arm through his. 

The walk to your apartment is as comfortable as being in the restaurant with him, but somehow it feels nicer. You suppose it’s the open air, the golden sun having gone down past the distant mountains, leaving remnants of its light in freckles and rosy skin. The walk home seems faster, and you find yourself a little disappointed that the night is ending so soon.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to come inside,” you say, voice sultry as the two of you stop in front of your door. “Make the paparazzi think we had a little more fun in the privacy of my home?”

Keigo shrugs, and you can see him thinking about it. “I mean, if you’re okay with it…”

“Now who’s catching feelings?”

He scrunches his face up and you giggle. When you speak again, your voice is softer. Crickets chirp somewhere nearby. 

“I had a good time, dating or not,” you tell him, find your key and unlocking the door. “Thanks for taking me out.”

Keigo takes your hand in his and brings your fingers up to his lips in a formal kiss (though the wink he sends you says otherwise). “Anytime, princess. See you later.”

He takes off out of your apartment building and you go inside, immediately laying down on your sofa in the living room. You feel over the spot on your hand where he kissed you, humming quietly to yourself. 

Maybe this won’t be as hard as you thought.

#ADSKFKDJFL THIS SERIES IS MY BABY #I WILL NURTURE IT TO ADULTHOOD #bnha x reader #mha x reader #boku no hero academia x reader #my hero academia x reader #boku no hero academia imagine #my hero academia imagine #hawks x reader #hawks bnha x reader #bnha hawks x reader #keigo takami x reader #takami keigo x reader #keigo takami imagine #hawks imagine #x reader #reader insert #imagine #tcoy

[mushyjellybeans]

Baby Please Come Home Part 2 (Bucky Barnes)

Pairings: Bucky x reader, Wanda x reader Warnings: A little angst, language (sorry Uncle Stevie), FLUFF, Mushy Bucky, angst with a happy ending, Mushy ending. A/N: MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! Part 2/2 of the request sent in by @stuckonjbbarnes​ enjoy my lovelies!

MushyMasterlist

Part 1.

Two months, that's how long it has been since you wrapped yourself up in his strong arms, protecting you from the dangers of the world.

Two months since you heard his gruff voice, kissed his soft lips.

Tossing and turning on the sofa Wanda had put up for you due to short notice, you rested your forearm under your head and gazed up to the ceiling.

Your heart clenches with thoughts of him with his new woman, you were so sure he was having an affair. Who hides their phone if they have nothing to hide? What did she have that you didn't?

You didn't run far, you actually just went to her one-bedroom apartment to talk to her about it and it was her insistence you stay here for a while until you figured things out. She lived just a couple of blocks from where you and Bucky lived.

"He's not having an affair," Wanda spoke from the doorframe, flicking the light switch on your eyes take a few seconds to adjust to the light, your head perks up to the direction of her tired voice.

"How did you-"

"Your mind is really loud and I'm trying to sleep." She sighs. Of course, you had to choose to crash in a mind reader's room. "His secrecy was something else." She whispered.

Your eyebrows furrowed, "what do you mean?"

If there was an award out for the quickest dressed achievement, you would be confident you would win it.

The rain poured heavily when you stepped out of Wanda's apartment building. Immediately regretting not wearing a jacket. You were just dressed in your comfiest sweater with an old pair of skinny jeans and your favorite shoes as you walked down the deserted path in need of some fresh air.

You walked to central park, taking a seat on an empty bench. Raindrops falling from the end of your tendrils onto your clothed shoulders, you tucked your hand between your crossed legs as you sat there thinking over everything Wanda had just told you.

"The secrecy is for a whole different reason. Trust me on that."

"But how do you know Wanda? What is he hiding from me?" You breathed, running your fingers through your hair and tugging at the ends.

"It's big, but it's not what you think." She wasn't giving you the answers you were looking for, making you more frustrated in the process.

"Alright. Then why is he snappy? Why does he choose to argue with me on the smallest of things?" Wanda had just shrugged her shoulders.

"I can only give you so many answers Y/N. If you wanna know, go and talk to him."

You sighed heavily, your chest walls feeling as though they were collapsing.

"I'm going out for a walk." You put on your shoes and walked out, leaving a frustrated Wanda behind.

You didn't notice what time you left her apartment, but by the constant shivering of your body, you were gone for more than an hour. Stupid for not bringing my phone either!

The park was clear, just a couple of random people walking past usual hand in hand. It was close to home, you would think back to those times you and Bucky would walk the same path, hand in hand, giggling like teenagers and talking about everything and anything.

Wiping the droplets from your cheeks with your damp sleeve, you sniffled a few times and decided to go back to Wanda's. You would think about what you would say to Bucky tonight and go and see him in the morning, you had to hear him out if nothing else.

It seemed to take you longer to get back to the apartment than it did to the park. The walk did very little to clear the confusing thoughts of your mind.

The lights from the outside were turned off when you looked up to Wanda's front-facing window. That's weird you thought as you ascended the never-ending flights of stairs.

"Hey Wanda, what's wrong with your light-" you stopped mid-sentence as you walked in the door, all of the lights were turned off and from the hallway, you could smell the delicious aroma of French vanilla candles, some scattered on the sideboard as you entered. Your favorite Christmas song was playing in the background. A small sad smile creeps it's way to your lips as you quietly shut the door behind you kicking your wet shoes off. You decided to take a shower, figuring she had invited Vision over for a romantic evening and didn't want to intrude.

But this is Christmas, yes, Christmas my dear The time of year to be with the ones you love.

As you stepped into the living room, you were frozen in your spot. Eyes wide open, mouth agape and your heart beating loudly in your ears.

The fire was roaring, heat erupted around the chilly air, more candles were scattered around the room, on the fireplace, the mantelpiece, the windowsill. But also around the nervous man kneeling on the rug in front of you with a velvet box next to him.

"What are you... what are you... oh my God Bucky you’re here." You sobbed, not believing your eyes. You missed him, he was the missing part of your heart.

"I called him and told him to come." Wanda strolled in with her arms folded and a smirk on her face. You blinked a few times, gaze going from Bucky to Wanda's. "This was the secret." She whispered in your ear. winking as she left the apartment to give you two privacy.

"Is this... is this a dream?" You whispered but the pinch on your arm told you otherwise.

"I hope not." He finally speaks, his voice hoarse and he looks so tired. "Y/N come closer." He held his hand out and you hesitantly took it. His thumb rubbing the top of your soft hand as he looked up at you.

"I have something to say and I don't want you to interrupt me." He speaks softly.

You nod your head and he clears his throat before continuing.

"Y/N Y/L/N. I fucked up, really bad. I just... with everything that happened with Steve and me not knowing what to do with emotions I didn't know what else to do. I treated you so badly but I love you so so much and I'd rather die than not have you in my life. I can't live without you, not now - not ever. I would never do anything to hurt you, I would never cheat on you. This was my secret, I didn't want you to find out and I got scared because this is real. I haven't had a girlfriend for over 70 years and I've never had a wife but I want one and I want you, I want kids, I want the picket fence life. I want it with you. I'm so sorry for everything I've done. I should have handled it differently, I love you so much and if you don't want me I do understand, I haven't been a good boyfriend." Both of you are sobbing by this point.

You squeeze his hand tenderly. "I do, I do want you Bucky. I'm sorry for wanting to invade your privacy and the accusation. I'm sorry I didn't help you."

"Doll, listen to me. You're the best fucking thing I've had and got in my life. I won't keep anything from you ever again, I promise."

He smiles up to you, the corners reaching his eyes, you're lost in his blue eyes and you feel like you're floating on air. You return the smile.

"Oh, I almost forgot." He laughs nervously. Scratching the back of his neck, picking up the velvet box beside him as the record scratches to a new song.

"I don't wanna make us mushy. But I meant everything I said, I'm willing to give you the best life I possibly can, I'll keep you safe I'll keep our children safe. I'll never let you down, so doll. Will you make this 100-semi-stable brooding old man the happiest on earth and be my wife?"

You pretend to think for a minute, tapping your chin with your free hand before speaking.

"Well, Mr. Barnes. If I look as good as you when I'm 100 I'll be happy." You laugh. "And yes, of course, I will. I love you."

He stands at your answer, picking you up by the waist and spinning you both around. Your squeal echoes through the apartment followed by lots of giggles and happy sighs. You pull back to look at him and press your lips to his for the first time in two months.

"Don't you ever leave me again, doll." He whispers against your lips.

"I'm not going anywhere Buck, I promise."

He puts you down, slips the ring on your finger and admires it.

"It's gorgeous." Your comment.

"Wanda helped. She was the girl I was texting." He smiled.

He looked down at his shirt and pulled it away from his body noticing the wet patches on the shirt.

"You're soaking darling." He pats your wet sweater, "let's get you showered and I'll make some hot chocolate for us."

"Sounds perfect." You said leaning against the doorframe and admiring your fiance. "It's perfect." You whispered to yourself, a smile never leaving your face as you undress in the bathroom.

Bucky walks in minutes later startling you slightly and undresses.

"Thought you were making hot chocolate?" You asked, amused and impressed by the speed he takes his clothes off.

"It can wait. I've missed you darlin'" Pulling your back to his chest as he guides you into the shower. The hot water cascading down on the two of you on Christmas eve.

Christmas and New Year's will find you home There will be no more sorrow, no grief, and pain And I'll be happy, happy once again

Ooh, there'll be no more sorrow, no grief, and pain And I'll be happy, Christmas once again

Permanent Taglist: @morsmordrethings @stuckonjbbarnes @sebbbystaaan @valkyriesryde @honeyvbarnes​ @buckysdumbmetalarm @veganfangirl5 @lovvliies @infj-slytherclaw @marvelsangels @photography-to-all @livylou3333 @iheartsebastianstan @tuesdays-are-for-bobby​ @margoshanotherwriter​ @zeilenkrieg​ @mypassionsarenysins​

The FAM: @stateoflovinged​ @chloerinebarnes​ @capandbuckylvr​ @ficsxreaderr​ @babblingbonky​ @captain-kelli​ @darlingtholland​ @mrwinterr​

#bucky barnes #bucky barnes x you #bucky x reader #bucky fluff #bucky imagine #bucky x y/n #fluff fluff fluff #fluff fic #bucky barnes angst #angst #angst with a happy ending #sergeant james barnes #the winter solider fanfiction #the winter solider imagine #the winter solider x reader #mushyjellybeans #marvel fic #marvel #fanfiction #fanfic #christmas eve #baby please come home #requested #mushyjellybeans writes #bucky fanfic #bucky x you #buck barnes #bucky barns x reader #bucky barns imagine #bucky barns fanfiction

[thekisforkeats]

In The Hall of the Raven Queen (Let All the Broken Pieces Shine, Chapter Four)

Info: The Magnus Archives, D&D AU. JonMartin, more ships to be added. Rated T. Post-Canon. Jon is amab nb and uses they/them, Martin is a trans guy.

CWs: Body transformation, Ageism (sort of), Apocalypses (mentioned), Doubting reality, Child abuse (mentioned; Martin remembering his mother), Alternate realities, Character death (mentioned), Shouting, Minor Innuendo

Summary: Martin and Jon are both alive; they reunite, flirt a bit in front of a goddess(!) and get their marching orders. Cryptic marching orders, of course. Can these two ever get any other kind?

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

First Chapter Previous Chapter

Martin opens his eyes and is, for a moment, confused. There was a Jon in his arms, and now there is no Jon in his arms, and this is Bad. He can remember poetry and fire in the darkness, burning the web, burning the tapes… and the last thing, the most important thing: he’s never letting Jon go, ever again.

He scrabbles about a bit as he gets up, like he’s trying to find his glasses. “Jon? Jon!!"

Jon’s voice comes from above: “I’m right here, Martin.”

Martin looks up and there’s Jon, looking down at him with a sad sort of smile. And something’s off about them, to be sure--they look twisted and withered and are their ears pointed? But, no, that doesn’t matter just now. All that matters is that Jon’s alive.

So Martin climbs to his feet and stares at Jon for just a moment before wrapping his arms around the other man. He just breathes in the scent of Jon, somehow still all paper and cigarette smoke despite the apocalypse.

Then he proceeds to kiss Jon within an inch of their life, because they both survived. Mostly. Sort of. He’s ignoring all the weirdness he feels, just now.

It’s Jon that breaks the embrace, which is rare; usually Jon is incredibly clingy when it comes to hugs. “There will be time for that soon enough, I hope,” they say. They take a deep breath and slowly let it out.

Then their jaw drops.

“Your… your skin. And you…” They gesture to Martin’s face.

“My skin? What about my skin? What about my face?!” Martin eyes Jon and then his face falls. “Oh, God, do I look all old now??” Jon’s always looked older than they are, but some part of Martin still can’t quite believe that no, really, Jon loves him, and that part is somehow worried this might be an issue.

Not that he’s vain or anything, it’s just, he’s not sure he can pull off “younger than he looks” like Jon can.

“No,” Jon replies. “It’s… you’re… rather handsome. Tan, a bit slimmer. Your features are almost…” They pause, considering. “Yes, there is a decidedly… elven look to them. Your ears aren’t as pointed as mine, but they still point.” They indicate a nearby mirror.

Martin’s been so focused on Jon he’s barely noticed his surroundings. He’s already reaching up to feel at his ears, blinking, when he peers into the mirror. And there it is: his hair is red again, the touch of the Lonely gone almost entirely. He seems like he’s maybe a couple inches shorter, and he’s definitely slimmed down. His ears are slightly pointed, his eyes tilted a little differently, and his skin’s gotten bronzed like he’s gotten a tan.

It all clicks together in his mind, all at once. “...Oh. I’m a half-elf. Cross between a human and an elf. That’s… huh.” That’s odd, is what it is. He clears his throat and actually starts to look around. “So what’s going on…?”

“It seems our mission isn’t entirely over,” Jon replies, and points out something so obviously strange it’s a wonder Martin overlooked it thus far: a hovering cloak. And again as Martin takes it in, it all clicks in his head at once. The hovering cloak, the raven symbol on the same. The monochrome nature of everything but the figure of himself in the mirror. The balcony of the fortress overlooking the bleak landscape.

Martin's response is to yelp and grab Jon as he steps away from the floating cloak, dragging the other man a step or two back with him, because if Jon thinks Martin’s letting them out of his sight ever again they're sadly mistaken. Jon gets to stay right next to him for the rest of eternity.

In the meantime, his voice is speaking his realizations aloud as his poor brain catches up with reality. “The Raven Queen!!” A pause. “...The Shadowfell!!” A pause. “...Wait. Am I… dreaming? This… can’t be real.”

He remembers the poetry and fire in the darkness, yes, but… that can’t be real, either. For one thing, if they’re here then they should both be dead. Shouldn’t they?

The Raven Queen sounds amused when she speaks. “Ahh… you know of me, then.”

Jon turns to blink at Martin. “After what you saw this past year… you’re asking if something is real?”

“Well… I mean…!” Martin waves a hand to encompass drained colors and black sky and craggy peaks. “This is… Jon, this is… it’s from a game. A tabletop roleplaying game.” His cheeks heat. He doesn’t consciously think Jon will mock him for his hobbies, but it’s still a difficult thing to admit to. If nothing else, his mother used to gripe at him endlessly for being so fascinated by “fantasy worlds.”

Jon’s response is almost flippant; they merely nod. It certainly doesn’t seem to surprise them that Martin knows this.

The Raven Queen still sounds amused. “The Sage of Shadowdale had traveled to your world many times before. That was part of how I even knew to send… Jon there to begin with.”

Martin blinks at her rapidly. “...Come again?"

Jon blinks at her as well, “‘The Sage of Shadowdale?’ Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“Elminster,” Martin puts in immediately, and waves a hand. “No, no, I get… now that I think about it… I mean, Ed Greenwood, the guy who wrote… well, ‘wrote’... the Forgotten Realms setting for Dungeons and Dragons, he would claim that these three wizards from different worlds visited him because they all had portals to Earth, and that’s where he learned all this stuff? And, I mean, it’s like… neat bit of world-building there, guy! It never seemed as daft as, say, Robert Ervin Howard claiming Conan actually visited him and being completely serious about it. But it’s always supposed to have been that the D&D worlds are just… other worlds on the Prime Material Plane. So, no, I guess… everything was real all along, except whatever wasn’t, and we’ll never really know which is which.”

He frowns. “No, I’m talking about ‘sending Jon there to begin with.’” He clutches Jon’s arm tighter and almost glares at the cloaked figure. “Has Jon been a shadow elf this whole damn time?!”

Jon sighs. “According to…” they gesture at the Raven Queen, “...her, yes. I have been one of these ‘shadar-kai’ for some time. She had restored me to being a high elf when I awoke, but you were dying and I…” They look away. “I couldn’t let that happen. So I… told her to siphon the vitality of my form and give it to you so that you’d live.”

“You WHAT?!” Such terrible fury overtakes Martin that he turns to Jon and actually shakes them slightly. Jon’s eyes widen, and they start to open their mouth like they want to reply, but Martin’s still barrelling forward. He’s shouting in the shorter man’s face, shouting so he doesn’t cry.

“What happened to ‘one way or another, together?’ What happened to ‘where you go, I go?’ You’re just… you’re just doing it all again, after… after everything… I mean… Annabelle was right, Jon, it worked, you heard them, didn’t you?! And now you just… you just… give up your life to…” He trails off, blinking. Oh. Oh.

This is the Shadowfell. Martin was dying. If he’d died here, then he wouldn’t have been able to go with Jon, because he’d have been stuck here serving the Raven Queen.

One way or another, together.

Why does “or another” always have to be something bad, though?

“You would have had to remain here, had they not,” the Raven Queen puts in, echoing Martin’s thoughts. “This way, you can go together. Which, I take it, was the point.” She was regarding Martin, the tilt of the cloaked head seeming thoughtful.

By the expression on Jon’s face, some of the things Martin said hit hard; there’s a flicker of guilt and remorse before they pull themself together, bring their composure back up. They nod. “Exactly. I was doing what I had to so that we could go together.”

Martin feels sheepish now. He doesn’t like yelling at Jon; his love already puts so much on their own shoulders, and Martin doesn’t like the feeling that he’s trying to overpower Jon to get what he wants. He’s always terribly aware that he’s taller and bigger and stronger.

So he smiles and says, with a little shrug, “Guess that explains the half-elf thing, actually. If you put your energy in me, then…” And then he realizes how that sounds and starts blushing really hard.

It seems to have worked; Jon smiles a bit. “Usually you were the one putting energy into me.” Their tone is nonchalant. “What’s the phrase, turnabout is fair play?”

Martin knows damn well Jon does not mean that in the way he’s taking it, because Jon just doesn’t really… do innuendo most of the time and it’s pretty obvious when they are. Nonetheless it makes him blush more and then he catches Jon’s grin widen and… wait, no, was that… was Jon trying to make him blush...?

Ugh, the man confuses him sometimes.

Jon turns back to the Raven Queen as if they said nothing at all (and infuriatingly they might just be unaware of how their comment could be interpreted and Martin just can't tell) and says, “So… what is it that we are supposed to do to help this world?”

“I thought you would never ask.” Is that sarcasm from the Raven Queen? It seems it might be, a little. “There is a great evil that will be rising soon, and I am sending you to restore the balance. If this evil is not stopped, all Toril will be destroyed.”

Martin’s still distracted by Jon’s maybe-not-purposeful innuendo, so he’s not thinking when he mutters, ��Oh, that’s helpful. Cryptic knowledge instead of just ‘here’s what you need to do.’ Again.”

The Raven Queen just… looks at him, the glowing eyes inside the cowl unblinking.

Martin blinks and stammers, realizing just who he’s talking to. “Oh. Oh! I didn’t… I mean… uhh… I’m sorry, y-your… Majesty….” He tries bowing a little. It’s still sinking in. Actual demigoddess.

This seems to pacify the cloaked figure. It’s not flying at him and attacking him, at least.

Jon just nods. “Very well. I trust that… between Martin’s knowledge of this world and our combined intuition we shouldn’t have too much trouble figuring it out.” They pause, then say, “Are we to do this on our own or can others assist us?” They look to Martin. “Will others assist us?”

“Oh, we’ll probably be able to find, umm… adventurers and such.” There’s a kind of giddy excitement rising in Martin. They're talking to an actual demi-quasi-goddess queen and they're in the Shadowfell and they're about to go on adventures in Toril.

“There will be others who will assist you,” the Raven Queen says cryptically. She looks between them both, then turns. “Come this way. I have something to return to you, ‘Jon.’”

Martin frowns as they follow, and whispers to Jon, “I don’t like the way she says that, like you should have some other name.”

Jon whispers back, “Well… given my knowledge of elves is limited to Tolkien and other high fantasy… Jon doesn’t exactly seem very ‘elf-like.’” They give Martin a pointed look. “Does it sound elf-like to you?”

“N-no… not really… I mean it could be short for, umm…” Martin thinks. Hard. “Uhhh… no, I’ve got nothing.”

The Raven Queen moves on into the room beyond the balcony, past the table on which unappetizing food is laid, while firmly ignoring the mortal blather going on behind her. Something about her attitude and tone, her movements, indicates that she clearly expected to be doing this earlier, before Jon got all “save my boyfriend or else” and  “I’m mortal now deal with it” on her, and while she’s put up with all of it thus far she’s reaching the end of her patience.

There’s a dias behind the table, and near the dias there’s a stand on which sits, in a place of honor and reverence, a long sword. It is made of a black metal that seems to absorb the shadows around it rather than reflect the minimal light of the room. The same black metal constructs the cross guard and hilt. On the pommel is a gem, possibly a sapphire, that gives off the only reflective glint of the weapon. The scabbard is plain, if well made, and is stained a matte black color as well--having the same light absorbent quality as the weapon itself.

Jon stares at the weapon with a look of awe and steps forward, their hand outstretched. “This… this is mine…” It’s not a question. It’s the same sort of look they had when they looked at Jonah Magnus in the Panopticon, and yet somehow it doesn’t bother Martin as much as it did before. Then he realizes that it doesn’t bother him because it’s not quite the same sort of look. There’s no envy there; it’s just a recognition that yes, this thing Jon’s looking at is meant for them even if they didn’t know it until this moment.

“I’ve never fought with a blade in my life… at least… not that I remember, but this is… it’s mine.” Jon looks to the Queen. “May I?”

The Queen merely nods.

Martin finds himself gaping. Jon is actually an elf, and has a magic shadow sword. “...I must be dreaming,” he whispers.

Jon reaches out and takes the sword in their hand. “I know this weapon…” They look at Martin and a chuckle escapes them. It’s not as mirthful as it once was, but it’s something. “This… I know it. I don’t know where the knowledge comes from… but I can use this.” They look so right holding the sword, like it was a piece of them that had been missing and only now was the picture of Jon complete.

Martin can’t really help it. “You are .i hot right now,” he bursts out, and then blushes, because the weird shadow queen’s right there. What is he thinking?

A tinge of pink comes to Jon’s cheeks in response and they busy themself sliding the sword into its pitch-black scabbard as if to try to hide the reaction. “Thank you,” they say to the Raven Queen. “Truly. I hope that more… memories? Knowledge? Come in time. Perhaps when next we meet, I can be more cordial and… more as you anticipated I should be.”

The Raven Queen takes a moment to look at Martin and murmur, “Mmm, yes, likely Sune.”

Martin sputters and stands there, just… blinking. Sune is the goddess of beauty in Faerun, their version of Aphrodite or Venus, and sure he's red-haired, but he couldn't possibly serve her! He can’t shake the feeling that the Raven Queen said that just to shut him up.

The cloaked figure turns to Jon then. “Of course. You are to be forgiven for this entire encounter; you have had a difficult time.” She gestures. “Come. There is a place not too far from here where you may travel to the Material Plane. My servants will outfit you and then take you there.” A pause. “While you travel this realm, do not stray. The place you go is not remotely safe for the living, and only my protection will keep you from being sold as slaves or meat.”

Jon straps the sword over their shoulder, not seeming to care that it looks terribly out of place with their clothes. “We will not. Thank you again, for all your generosity.”

Then they grab Martin by the arm and follow the Queen deeper into the fortress.

Next Chapter

#the magnus archives #tma #jon sims #jonathan sims #jon the archivist #martin blackwood #jonmartin #jmart #fanfic #my fanfic #tma spoilers #otp: one way or another together #tma d&d au #let all the broken pieces shine #there all caught up! #now to finish and post chapter five

[qqueenofhades]

12 for Garcy? Only if you want to of course:)

The house is not far from where Flynn grew up, not far from his late grandmother’s apartment off Ilica, one of those big old places with overgrown vines on the walls, gables, rambling turrets – looking straight out of a gothic novel, for all that it’s five minutes from bustling downtown Zagreb. It is obviously a fixer-upper, and Lucy broke through a floorboard in the basement the other day and discovered a nest of mice. (She’s not proud of the fact that she, having coolly faced down ruthless secret societies and all manner of nasty villains throughout history, ran upstairs screaming at Flynn to call the exterminator now, but hey, they all have their secret shames.) But it’s the kind of house that bookish little girls dream about while reading under the sheets at night, and it’s theirs. They’re working on, or rather Flynn is working on, rebuilding it, and it looks better every day. Real. True.

Both of them are not sad to be out of America for a while, and they have no definite plans to return immediately. Lucy finally sold her mom’s house and doesn’t exactly have an academic job to leave behind, and it was time for a new beginning. She’s doing some work in state archives over here and guest lecturing at the University of Zagreb, and Flynn – well, it’s a lot stranger for him to be back here, especially without the NSA job that was the reason for his presence last time. But he seems happier, in a way she’s never seen him, or maybe that’s just because he’s finally starting to shed the iron-hard shell in which he has lived by necessity for so many years. Lucy does love Zagreb. It’s a charming little town-city, there are plenty of side streets, square, churches, cafes, museums, markets, gardens, galleries, and other places to explore, and everyone either speaks English or is vastly patient with her stumbling attempts at Croatian. It’s so different from the crammed crowds, the hustle and bustle of San Francisco, the on-the-go-go-go Bay Area, where everyone is always worrying about money or bathrooms or traffic. She can walk everywhere, or take the tram. Shopkeepers have made an effort to remember her name. It’s weird.

Lucy gets home tonight with an armload of groceries, unreasonably proud of herself for having navigated the aisles of Konzum without having to pull out her phone to Google Translate product packaging, and sets everything on the counter. There’s still a faint haze of sawdust floating in the air – Flynn must have been busy today – and a fresh coat of paint drying on the living room wall. He’s good with his hands, not that that’s surprising. Building things, building places, building a house, a home, and she glances around for him, but he’s not here. Probably had to run out to get more drywall or whatever it is.

Lucy opens some cans and valiantly sets about cooking dinner. She is, of course, very far from a culinary maestro, especially in a second language, but she’s working on it, and she likes to have the ritual of eating together. Once she’s slapped together something resembling cordon bleu and put it in the oven, she glances around for Flynn again. She thinks about texting him, but decides she can wait a little longer. They’re living together, they are together, they’ve been like this for almost eight months now and left California five months ago, but she worries about being clingy.

At last, as the timer is going off and she hunts in the bare drawers until she finds an improvised oven mitt, the door opens and Flynn appears, looking fresh-scrubbed and oddly furtive. He sticks his nose in, clears his throat, and says, “Uh, smells good.”

“Thanks.” Lucy eyes him curiously. “Big line at the hardware store?”

“No.” Flynn backs out of the kitchen and zooms up the stairs at warp speed, forbearing to offer any more details about his afternoon adventures. Since this is fairly standard for him, Lucy rolls her eyes tolerantly, but when he comes back downstairs, clearly having tackled his unruly dark hair with a wet comb, he seems even more skittish than usual. When she asks him if he wants to sit down, he jumps, then nods gravely, as if invited to a state dinner by the President. He perches in one of the undersized chairs, then says, “Thank you. Ah, for dinner. It looks, ah – my grandmother used to make this, it’s – nice.”

“You’re welcome,” Lucy says, dishing them up and sitting down across from him. They eat in silence for a few moments, Flynn looking twitchier than ever. Then finally she says, “Garcia, is everything all right?”

“I…” Flynn debates the answer to that question. He gets up, jostles the table, grabs some matches, and determinedly lights some of the candles they keep around for atmosphere, as if gosh darn it, something will be romantic around here. Then he says abruptly, “Lucy, do you – do you like this? Here? Us?”

“What?” It’s Lucy’s turn to be surprised. “Yes. Of course I do. I love it.”

Flynn coughs. He can’t seem to meet her eyes. “I just thought,” he says, to the ceiling fan rather than her, until he wrenches them down to face her. “Well, my mother came over here – rather haphazardly, admittedly – to be with my father, and you – and I’ve been waiting… I hoped…”

“Garcia,” Lucy says again, not entirely sure where this is going and feeling obliged to offer a helping hand. She loves this man to her very soul, but my god, the density. “What are you saying?” A sudden spear of anxiety goes through her, turning her cold. “Is it that you don’t like this?”

“What! No!” Flynn looks aghast. “I just – I wanted to be sure, I thought about doing this some other way, and maybe it’s not what you want, you don’t have to, I can live, I just – I had to, I want nothing more in the world, and… ”

And with that, as Lucy finally cottons on where this is going and can’t breathe, Flynn reaches into his pocket, pulls out a small box, and goes to one knee on their half-finished kitchen floor. He looks up at her with those devoted, drowning, unbearable eyes, the ones that want more than anything, and can sometimes struggle, to put it charitably, with turning it into words. “If you wanted,” he says. “We could have our books here, and our nights in bed, and the windows open, and go up to the roof to look at the stars. We could have – this could be our house. It could be like this. Mice and all. It could stay. You could have it.” He pauses. Then he adds, almost as an afterthought, “And me.”

“You…” Lucy is laughing and crying and laughing all at once, as she gets out of her chair and faces him on the floor. “Garcia, are you asking me to marry you?”

Flynn realizes he hasn’t done that yet, and looks chagrined. He pauses, and then at last, he nods. “Yes,” he says. “But if you don’t want – ”

The rest of his sentence is cut off as Lucy flings herself into his arms, knocking him backward, and the ring flies out of his hand onto the floor. Neither of them care, because she’s landed on top of him, she’s kissing him senseless, he’s kissing her back just as savagely, and neither of them say anything until they’re good and damn well ready to, which takes several minutes. “Yes,” Lucy Preston says, and it is the easiest thing she has ever said, the best decision, the deepest and most desperate desire of her heart. “Yes, yes, yes.”

(They finally hunt down the ring, and he puts it on her finger looking like a man in a dream, and they go upstairs to their bedroom, in their house, and she does not mind in the least that her dinner has been entirely forgotten.)

(september prompt list)

#timeless ff #garcy #garcy ff #prompt fills #thealocksly #ask

[stolethekey]

so, what’s the past for? i’ll need it if love don’t last long

notes: this is for @romanogersweek.

it feels a little weird to be posting fanfic right now, but i hope y’all take this as an opportunity to take a break from reading/donating/educating rather than one to leave. 

donate to the bail project here.

read on ao3

-

Steve Rogers, long ago, was the man who never ran. He was the man who faced down his problems and enemies indiscriminately, who spat in the face of both Nazi generals and the very idea that anything could keep him from fighting for a better world. He used to be the paragon of bravery, the man who worked to uphold his reputation as the symbol of courage his country held in the highest regard.

Until that one fateful day, when he’d decided to run—away from the death and destruction, away from the friends he’d seen suffer too much pain to be truly happy ever again, away from time itself. He ran, straight until another timeline, hardly conscious of what he was doing until he ended up standing on the doorstep of a woman he’d last seen lying peacefully in a casket.

By the grace of God, or maybe the devil, Peggy had been home that day. After she’d recovered from her shock, she’d welcomed him in, he’d asked almost clumsily for a dance, and when the music stopped she’d pulled back and said, “I want to introduce you to Daniel.”

He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but he likes Daniel. Daniel is sarcastic and witty but warm and solid—a safe place for Peggy’s often slightly-chaotic personality to land. So he’d shaken Daniel’s hand and accepted his invitation to stay for dinner and then stayed the night because, honestly, where else was he supposed to go?

And then one night turned into two, which turned into a week, and then Steve ended up staying in their house permanently. They established a general rule that he was not allowed to tell them about the future, but could contribute to strategy discussions about missions he had never heard about. He helped them during the day and tried to stay up helping them at night, except Peggy started chasing him to bed with a broom a few weeks in.

He’s never liked sleeping much, but after—well, after everything, he likes it even less. 

Some of the dreams he’s familiar with: the nightmares and memories full of too much blood and smoke and explosions that rack his imaginary body with tremors come initially, as he expects. Those he can deal with; those he has dealt with for years. The ones that he is markedly not equipped to deal with are the ones that come later: the ones that aren’t vague flashbacks or terrifying possible futures but vivid, specific memories, memories that leave him with an aching heart and stinging eyes when he wakes. 

Steve thinks this distinctly unfair, given that these memories haunt his waking moments too; but his life has never been fair, and so each night he succumbs to more and more detailed recollections of moments running infinitely around in his head. 

The worst ones are always about her. Those run his mind in what feels like slow motion, forcing him to relive even the most minute details of the days they were carefree and alive and happy, at least as much as they could be. He starts seeing flashes of vivid red hair and brilliant green eyes everywhere, and in his dreams, they’re inescapable. In his dreams, she’s inescapable. 

In his dreams, Natasha is always there. Sometimes, she’s perched in the passenger seat with her feet on the dashboard where he’d always hated them, laughing at him as he steers the car down an open country road, the two of them alone in the car in the middle of the night. He turns the music up to drown out her laughter and she smirks, promptly deciding to sing along to the sounds of Out of the Woods coming through the stereo instead.

“Come on,” she coaxes, her voice still viscerally real in the layers of his unconsciousness. “I know you know this song.”

“I will not,” he says, but a smile is still floating unwittingly to his lips, and by the time he pulls into the open clearing he’s belting are we in the clear yet, in the clear yet, good with a fervor that would impress any concert crowd. 

Sometimes, it starts in that clearing, with him shutting off the car and the two of them lingering in the darkness for a moment. He pulls open her car door, the moonlight filtering into the seat and casting a soft, silver glow over her features. She comes willingly, laying a blanket on the ground with a flourish as she steps out of the vehicle. 

“When did Tony say it was starting, again?”

Steve checks his watch, and he’s seen this dream enough times to know exactly where the second hand is going to be when he does. “Five minutes.”

They settle onto the blanket, side by side, and he glances over at her. “What was the first shooting star you ever saw?”

She meets his gaze, her smile soft and nothing like the cold, calculating grin she’d given a certain arms dealer mere hours before. There is a brief moment of hesitation, and then she smirks. “You.”

His mouth falls open before he digs an elbow into her side, and she laughs. “Get it? Because you had a gun, and that stupid star on your uniform—”

“Yeah, yeah, a shooting star,” he groans, letting his head fall back onto the ground. “Shut up.”

She does, but only because the atmosphere around them tangibly changes—Steve feels it too. A second later, a jet of silver streaks across the sky, and Natasha sucks an audible breath through her teeth. 

He looks over at her, and watches the second meteor through the reflection in her eyes—the silver makes them glean, and she grins at him. 

“Enjoying the view?”

He shoves her, she laughs, and he thinks he could live in this moment forever. 

Sometimes, they’re standing on top of a massive hill, gazing at the city of Rome, beautiful and regal below them. And even though it’s a dream, he can feel the heavy exhaustion of a battle just fought seeping into his bones, can sense the relief of another disaster narrowly averted cloaking his shoulders. 

Natasha reaches for him, the streak of blood on her face looking real enough to touch, and gazes out at the sprawling city beneath the hill. “I almost wish we could stay,” she murmurs. 

She doesn’t voice the rest of the sentiment—that they could stay here, in this world away from the world, and live normal lives. Become normal people, people who window shop and sit in cafes and don’t have to save the world every other day.

She doesn’t say it, because she knows he understands, and also because they both know it’s impossible.

“Me too.”

There are other dreams, too—dreams where they’re both tired and sad and frustrated; dreams where their friends have been snapped into thin air and the ones that haven’t been are gone too. 

There are dreams where they’re the only two people left in the gigantic, designed-for-at-least-fifty-residents Avengers facility, where he walks into a room with zero lights on and her crying. 

“You know, I used to think it was hard to tell when you were scared,” he says, trying valiantly to lighten the mood. “But not so much anymore.”

She looks at him ruefully through her tears. “You don’t have to do this every time.”

He shrugs and gives her the best smile he can muster. “I have no idea what you mean. I’m just passing by, and I don’t want to leave you if you’re crying.”

She glares at him, but gives a half-laugh, and he moves to sit next to her. He doesn’t say that he knows she tries to hide from him when she’s crying, that he actively tries to find her when he hasn’t seen her in a few hours. He doesn’t tell her that he needs her there, by her side, that he’s terrified he’s going to lose her, finally, irrevocably, for real, every time it happens.

Her tears subside, every time, and every time he leaves once they do. She lets him go, turning back toward the screens with a sigh, and he watches her back straighten as she goes back to business. 

Never, in any of the dreams or memories or whatever they are at this point, does he stay. He would if she asked him to.

And then there’s the worst one, from the night before that day, where she shows up at his door before curfew with a bottle of wine in one hand and a key in the other. 

“It’s for my apartment,” she says, placing it gently in his hand. “Just in case.”

She cuts off all of his protests with a sad, firm smile, then uncorks the bottle of wine and pours it into two of his water glasses. 

They talk, about everything and nothing, and at one point she perches on his bed and tucks her knees into her chest. 

“I don’t know if anything is ever gonna go back to normal,” Natasha says quietly. “It all feels broken, somehow. Unfixable.”

“What does?”

“Everything,” she says, gesturing at the walls around them. “Life itself.”

He doesn’t know why that hurts a little to hear, but he shrugs and stands anyway. “We still have to try. For everyone.”

“I know,” she murmurs, draining the last of her wine and standing too. “Trust me, I know.”

It’s the last real conversation they have, and it’s always the last one that plays before Steve wakes. 

For weeks, Steve gets out of bed in the morning with tears staining his cheeks and a rush to the bathroom to collect himself, but Peggy intercepts his mad sprint one day and forces him to sit at the kitchen table and talk. He says he doesn’t want to and she gives him a withering glare that would probably topple a wall of solid rock.

He tells her about Natasha, about the aliens, the assassins out to kill them, the Accords. He doesn’t tell her about HYDRA, or about the midnight drives, the shooting stars, about Rome.

Peggy seems to understand anyway, and for some reason the sympathy in her eyes melts away some of the ache in Steve’s chest.

When he runs out of stories to tell, he starts talking about her past, about the way she was taken from her parents as a child and then trained in the Red Room.

“Those ladies are tough,” Peggy says with an impressed nod. “One of them escaped my locked trunk after I’d tied her wrists and ankles, then shot a policeman with his own gun on her way out. And that was when I was trying to work with her.”

“Nat almost never obeyed orders after she had turned,” Steve says with a laugh. “I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like to try and work with her while she was still at the Red Room.”

“Well, she was the only one who could do the job. We needed her.”

Daniel snorts from where he’s leaning against the kitchen counter. “For the record, I thought it was a bad idea,” he mutters, earning him that exasperated but loving Peggy Carter glare that had once been reserved for Steve.

Steve is slightly surprised to find that he doesn’t mind at all. 

-

As the years go by, the memories become gradually less painful. The ache becomes a little duller, the wounds a little less fresh. The Carter-Sousa household adds a third long before children come into the picture, and they slip with only minor hiccups into a routine that works for everyone. Steve’s only allowed in public with a disguise, so while Peggy and Daniel are at work he spends his time drawing, cooking, cleaning, and generally being a good housekeeper. When they get home, he helps them with plans if he can and plays old card games if he can’t.

When the kids do arrive, Steve teaches and nurtures them as his own, and he gets through it with only vague stabs of pain as he remembers the Barton family. They know only that he is hiding from the world and that no one can know about him. They grow into strong, incredible adults, and when they move out Steve wipes away a tear that matches the ones coating Peggy’s and Daniel’s cheeks.

Peggy and Daniel are older, obviously, when the house goes back to holding only the three of them, and Steve starts picking up more of the dirty work. They both retire far later than most people would, finally admitting defeat to bodies that just can’t keep up with their younger colleagues and targets anymore. It’s hard, watching them become unable to do anything but gesture in frustration at the news, but it’s not as hard as it was to arrive at Peggy’s hospital bed, so many decades before. 

He’s had enough time, this time, with her. They’ve spent fifty years in the same household, they’ve had a life together. So he cherishes the wrinkles that now adorn her hands and the lines of her face, and he ventures outside to run errands with only the slightest twinge in his heart.

The only time he ever dislikes this whole arrangement is on a single grocery store trip.

He collects everything on his list with little issue, keeping his hood up and his head low as he peruses one particularly crowded aisle for the hot sauce Peggy likes. Nobody pays him any attention, and as Steve wheels his cart into the checkout lane he congratulates himself on a faultless grocery run—God knows he’s had some close calls.

One would think he’d have learned some lessons about celebrating too soon.

He’s aimlessly selecting a pack of gum and skimming magazine covers (Brad Pitt is the sexiest man alive this year, according to People) when he hears a laugh. 

An unmistakable, once life-affirming, thought-he’d-never-hear-it-again laugh.

His blood freezes over in his veins as his hands go slack, the Trident mint in his hand falling onto the conveyer belt and tumbling underneath a couple bags of Doritos. He stares at the fallen gum for a moment, not seeing it at all, before forcing himself to raise his head. 

She’s there, in the flesh, helping the customer in front of him—her nametag says Natalie, and her hair is darker than it was when he met her, but it’s definitely her, and Steve thinks he might faint then and there. His hand tightens around the cart as he fumbles his phone out of his pocket and stares at the date—November 15, 2000. Of course. 

Steve is desperately trying to find a way to get out of this when the woman in front of him takes her last bag and leaves with a grateful wave. Steve swallows thickly as Natasha beckons him forward, smiling brightly at him as she does. 

There is no recognition in her eyes—of course there isn’t—and something about being a stranger to her makes him want to grip the counter in front of him so tightly that it breaks.

She says something, but he doesn’t hear her; his ears are full of a roaring, sharp wind, and suddenly he’s back on a dark, foreign planet, a jagged cliff behind him and a limp body lying broken in front of him. He can feel the cold, tough dirt between his fingers again, can see the ice crystals forming on the strands of red hair he had run his fingers through so many times.

Her eyebrows knit together in mild concern as her mouth moves inaudibly once more, and Steve wrenches his mind back to reality. 

“Sorry,” he manages. “What was that, again?”

Natasha gives him a perfectly practiced customer-service smile and says, “How are you today?”

“Great,” Steve says, trying and failing to keep an edge of panic out of his voice. “Just dandy. You?”

“Well, you know, a little nervous,” Natasha says easily, swiping a can of chickpeas past the scanner. “It’s my first day on the job.”

He remembers. He also remembers her seated at the foot of his bed, playing with her hair while she told him about one of the first missions for SHIELD she’d ever failed.

“I was undercover as a cashier at a Safeway—”

“O-oh,” Steve sputters. “I’m sure you’re doing great.”

“Well, so far, so good—"

 “I had him, for a moment, and then I didn’t—”

“—But, you know, things can always change, right?”

Steve feels curiously as if his head is swimming, and he doesn’t think he can hear anymore. He wonders dimly if Peggy would find him, were he to faint in a grocery store. 

“He’d somehow stolen my nametag while we were scuffling and I didn’t even notice—”

“Um, sir?”

“He picked the lock with the pin—”

“Sir!”

Steve jumps. His hand smacks against his cart on the way up, the rattling of the metal doing nothing to calm his nerves.

“Sorry,” he says, shaking his head to clear it. “Did you say something?”

Natasha frowns, and the familiarity of the sight almost sends him back into the recesses of his brain. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, trying to sound unconcerned. “Yeah. Long day, sorry.”

She gives him a sympathetic smile and hits the keyboard. “That’ll be two hundred and one dollars and thirty-five cents. Paper or plastic?”

“Uh, paper,” Steve mutters, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Thanks.”

He takes the bags off the counter as soon as she fills them, trying his best not to look like he’s impatient but still trying to move as quickly as possible. When the bags are all in the cart, he grabs the handle and speed-walks away, throwing a feeble “thank you” over his shoulder. 

He looks behind him the entire way out of the store, relaxing slightly only when he turns the corner to a different area of the parking lot. Then, as he spots his car, he almost has his second heart attack of the day.

Natasha is standing next to the trunk with her arms crossed and a half-guarded, half-inquisitive look on her face. 

“Do I know you?” She asks as he shuts his eyes, desperately praying that this is a dream. 

Once it becomes clear that this is not, Steve takes a deep breath and resigns himself to whatever nightmare scenario happens next. 

“No,” he says hoarsely, unlocking his trunk and gesturing at her to move aside.

“But you know me,” she says matter-of-factly, taking a step to the left and watching him place the bags she’d just packed into his trunk. “At least, you seem to.”

Steve stays silent as he finishes loading his groceries and shuts the trunk door, then turns to face her. “I’d rather not do this here,” he says quietly. “Where I’m exposed.”

“Okay.” Natasha shrugs. “Follow me.”

She leads him into a small, dark alleyway behind the store. Steve thinks the overwhelming scent of garbage is going to rot his brains forever, but he does appreciate that they probably won’t be overheard.

“So,” Natasha prompts. “Who are you?”

Steve hesitates. He’s made it decades without telling anyone anything—besides Peggy and Daniel, of course—and a prickle of anxiety is creeping up his spine at the mere thought of saying the words out loud. 

On the other hand, that anxiety is nothing compared to the way he’s pretty sure his nerves are currently fraying at the edges, and he’s sure that Natasha would see right through him if he decided to try and lie his way out of this. 

Besides, if there’s one person who can keep a secret, it’s her.

He settles on a half-truth, one that gets him out of most of the hard conversations but is still hopefully enough to satisfy her.

“I’m, uh, from the future,” he says carefully. “I promise.”

Her eyes narrow, her natural skepticism overtaking her features. He can see her brain working, can see her scrutinizing his facial expression, his body language, anything that might betray a hint of a lie.

“I believe you,” she says finally. “Some of the tech I’ve seen being developed…well. Do you work for SHIELD?”

“I did.”

“So we worked together?”

He gives what sounds like a half-laugh, half-sob. If meteor showers and midnight drives and painful conversations overlooking the city of Rome are “working together”—

“You could say that.”

She bites her lip, assuming the thoughtful expression he knows to mean she’s trying to decide whether she wants to know the answer to whatever question she’s going to ask, then tilts her head slightly. “Can you tell me one more thing?”

Steve nods.

“When I die, have I contributed something good to this world?”

He almost chokes on his breath, staring at her with equal parts wonder and horror. “How—Why—"

“You were a little too surprised to see me,” Natasha says wryly. 

Half a century, apparently, is enough time to forget how well Natasha can read people. How well she can read him. 

“You give more to the world than you could imagine,” Steve says softly. “You save it. More than once.”

Her smile is more relieved than anything, and Steve wants to bask in its remnants forever. This is a younger Natasha, a less-worn Natasha—he’d almost forgotten how she’d looked before the snap, before she’d chosen to take on a burden that was far too heavy for anyone to carry.

This is the Natasha that he’d catch dancing in the early light of dawn, carefree and lost in her solitary art, even if it was just for a moment. The one that’d been lost five years before the rest of her was, too.

“Well,” she says as her watch beeps, breaking Steve out of his reverie, “I should get going. I assume you know I’m not actually here to bag groceries.”

“Of course.” Steve moves to leave, then turns back towards the disgusting, garbage-lined alleyway, suddenly aware that his next words are the last words he’s ever going to say to her. That he has a chance, now, to do what he hadn’t been able to do so long ago. 

He wants to tell her that the key to her apartment is still on his keychain, sandwiched between the keys to his car and his current house. He wants to tell her that his fingers brush against it as he unlocks the door or starts his engine; he wants to tell her that it’s the only thing he has left of her. That everything she has—everything they have—is going to be destroyed in about twenty years, that a big purple titan is going to ruin any hope he has of living a life that he is unequivocally happy with.

Instead, he says, “Take your nametag off before you go after him. Trust me.”

Maybe, in this timeline, she’ll remember. As she makes her decision on that icy, god-forsaken mountain, maybe she’ll think about today. Maybe she’ll think about this mission, the one that went smoothly, and wonder if he’d used his last words to make things a little bit easier. And maybe she’ll think about all the other ones, too, the ones where they fought side-by-side, and realize that this was him trying to do it one last time.

Her soul is hers, he knows—but he’ll help it move if he can.

The corner of her mouth ticks up in a half-smile. “Aye-aye, captain.”

He almost laughs.

#romanogersweek #my mcu fics #steve rogers x natasha romanoff #romanogers #prompt: timeless love

[daybreak-academy-fanfic]

Daybreak Academy: Chapter 70

Dark of Heartness

Summary: In which Anora has one heck of a fever dream. Word Count: 3,241 First | Previous | Next ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆ ⚬ ☆

The first thing she saw was a pure blue sky. Anora blinked once, then twice. At her fingertips, she could feel water that didn't inherently feel wet. It was then that she assumed that she was dreaming. After carefully working herself up on her feet, Anora tried to get a better baring on where she was. But that was the thing- this world, this dream, was only sky and sea. There was nothing else in sight.

“Where...” she wondered to herself before almost tripping over something. Anora spun around, trying to find what she almost tripped on, before her gaze looked downward.

There, staring up at her, was her Chirithy.

Except it wasn't.

This Chirithy, unlike hers, was living. It was an actual creature that stared up at her with red, unblinking eyes. The eyes were not the only thing off about this Chirithy- its fur (real fur, not fabric!) was a deep purple with black stripes. Its cape was a dark pink and its little holding pouch was pitch black.

“Hmm...” the dark Chirithy bemused, successfully scaring Anora now, “This wasn't your dream to have. I meant to pluck your other self from slumber. Oh well.”

Anora took a step back from the creature. She looked it over with a skeptical glance. Of course the Chirithy noticed, still staring up at her, looking as if it were sizing her up.

“Are you still tongue tied?” it mused darkly. “Perhaps your hearts are very similar after all. Fascinating.”

The creature leaped into Anora's arms- she caught it, but only out of reflex. She could feel the pure darkness seep out of the creature and into her veins. But, as much as she wanted to let go of it, she couldn't do so. It seemed to know this as it started to give her a malicious smile.

“Darkness is in every universe, little miss Light. But in this one, you'll find that it's especially… potent.”

The dark Chirithy hopped back out of her arms, then started to bounce away from her.

“Don't know how long I'm gonna keep you here for,” the thing delightfully hummed, “But I'm sure it'll be long enough to cause a major change in this world!”

And with a laugh, the dark Chirithy flipped up into the air and disappeared.

“Wait!” Anora called out to it a second too late. But it was already gone, choosing to ignore her. Anora held herself and shivered.

Even in dreams, she was alone.

Figuring that she had no other thing to do, Anora started to walk forward. She kept an eye out for anything of interest. There was still only sky and sea- how long did it go on for?

“Hey! Get back here!”

Anora looked up and saw a boy with spiky brown hair in a red and black outfit running up to her. Behind him was… his twin? The boy in front didn't seem to notice her as he continued to run over. Anora braced for the collision, but it never happened; the boy in front faded just as he made contact.

“Ah man, missed it!” the other boy grumbled. “This is gonna take forever...” Giving a small, exaggerated groan, the boy turned his attention to Anora. He was so stunned to see another person there that he froze for a moment.

“Whoa,” he remarked once he moved closer to her, “I didn't expect to see anyone else here!”

Neither did Anora, in truth, so she stared right back at him with a good degree of skepticism.

“The name's Sora!” the boy greeted, pounding his fist into his chest.

Anora offered a small smile before bowing her head to him. “Anora.”

“It's great to meet you Anora!” Sora then brightly smiled. But his smile faded into a light frown. “If you don't mind me asking, why are you here? According to Chirithy, I'm here because I… I died. But! Someone I know is still holding on to me, so I gotta get back. Is that why you're here? Because you… you know…?”

Anora slightly recoiled and looked at Sora as if he gained a second head. This had to be a stress dream. Had to. Why would she dream about a boy that had died and seemed so set on getting back? It's not like she…

A sudden shot of pain coursed through Anora's mind. She immediately flinched in reaction, letting out a sound of surprise hurt, as she clutched her head in her hands. Sora jumped back in surprise before rushing over to her.

“Hey, hey, hey, it's okay!” he tried to assure her. “You're safe here. I think. You're safe here with me, anyway!”

The pain in her skull wasn't letting up, but trying to focus on Sora's voice did help bring her back a bit. Anora tried to focus on Sora more than the pain; his hands were gently placed on her shoulders, not sure if he could actually do anything to help her, and his face held enough worry for four. Looking down, Anora just now realized that he wasn't all there- from about the knees down you could see through Sora, like he was a ghost.

It was in realizing that Sora was only half way there that shocked Anora out of her pain. She staggered back from him and stared with an increasingly paling face. Sora hadn't seemed to notice -or he did, and just pretended he didn't- as he gave her a gentle smile.

“It doesn't matter how you got here,” Sora said, sheepishly scratching the back of his head, “But I'm sure you want to get back, huh? You can come along with me. Maybe Chirithy will show up again and tell us what we can do for you!”

Chirithy? Thinking about Chirithy made her head hurt again. He talked about Chirithy like it was something helpful, but the one she talked to? It was a dark entity. It was not there to do any help whatsoever. Why would it want to...

“Hey,” Sora said, snapping Anora from her thoughts, “Are you still with me? We can try to find a way out together.”

“Together...” the girl mumbled. That word… It was… familiar. Together… “We'll go together.”

“Great!” Sora declared before offering his elbow out to her. With a wide grin he said, “My lady.” in a very charming tone of voice. Anora looked at him- a small smile creeping on her lips as she came to realize that he only wanted to help. Anora linked her arm into his and together the two started to walk through the vast ocean and sky world.

Sora picked up rather quickly that Anora wasn't much of a talker. So he made do in telling her more about how he ended up in this place- the Final World, he called it. Admittedly, she was only half listening. Sora had guided them to an area filled with floating masses of star dust, each one arranged to look like a large star. They floated quite a bit from the ground, some were calling out to the duo, others were silent and seemed sad about something.

But there was one star that Anora noticed and she immediately made Sora stop. The boy curiously looked at her as Anora unlinked their arms to walk over to the star. Something about it was… familiar...

“Anora?” the star inquired. Anora got a bit closer to the star, raising her hand to gently brush at its side. Odd as it seemed, the star sighed- like it had been gingerly touched against the cheek.

“No,” it then decided. “You're not her. Your hearts are very similar, but you are not the Anora I know.”

Sora gave the star a curious tilt of his head. “What do you mean?”

But Anora was having certain thought of her own. “Ephemer?” she curiously asked, moving her hand around to other parts of the star as if she could feel some imaginary face. Maybe, deep down, she could. Something about this star was just… so… familiar…?

“Stop that,” the star lightly chuckled, “That tickles.”

Embarrassed, Anora's face flushed a light pink as she put her hand back down. Okay, so maybe she was getting a bit too curious. This dream was so weird.

“Oh, don't give me that.” the star, that felt a lot like Ephemer, mused in a playful voice. “You know I'm very ticklish- even in a dream, even when we're not quite the same heart.”

“You still haven't answered my question yet.” Sora butt in, making a pouting face in doing so.

“Sorry.” the star apologized. “I haven't forgotten- but you're from this world, unlike her. She needs more time to understand.”

“You've mentioned that.” the boy hummed. “Can you explain why?”

“Of course.” the star agreed. “You see, Sora, Anora is being kept here because of a Nightmare. In her world, it would look like she is sleeping. But her heart is trapped here. She won't wake up in her world unless her heart is freed in this one.”

“So...” Sora mulled over as he crossed his arms in thought, “I need to use the Power of Waking?”

“No.” Ephemer (and Anora was fairly sure it was Ephemer at this point) softly disagreed. “Nothing that drastic. However, I'd owe you one if you help Anora out.”

To this, Sora gave a small chuckle as he absently scratched the tip of his nose. “It might be a bit sooner than you think.” he mumbled to himself. But he quickly shook his head before saluting at the star. “But I'll do anything I can to help!”

“I knew you'd say that.” the star laughed- it even gave a small noise to indicate that it had smiled. “Alright, so here's the deal; the Nightmare that is keeping Anora here has a very weak hold on her. I believe it's because this Anora has come from a completely different universe. To free her heart, you need to find three special tokens- each one representing who Anora is. They are scattered around the area, but are still in close enough proximity for you to easily find. Find them, and they should help bring her back to her world.”

“Got it.” Sora nodded. He turned to Anora and pumped his fist in the air. “Alright Anora,” he decided, “Let's go find these tokens so you can get back home!”

Anora smiled as she started to follow Sora out.

“Anora, wait.” Ephemer's star requested. “I have one more thing to tell you.”

Giving a little sound of curiosity, Anora turned her attention back to the star.

“Anora,” Ephemer's star said, in a tone much softer than before, “Don't ever forget -no matter what I may do to you- you mean everything to me. Okay? I never… I never want to see you hurt again- especially because of something I did. Alright? Will you remember that for me?”

Anora cast the star a cautious side glance but nodded in agreement, regardless.

“Thank you.” the star sighed. “Now go catch up with Sora, too much time has passed already.”

Anora gave another nod before starting back to Sora, who had been patiently waiting out of earshot. Ephemer's star let out a small sigh as she left.

“Miss you already.” it mumbled to itself before softly disappearing.

. . .

Sora was the first to notice something new in the distance. He even tried to race her to the weird object in the distance. Anora didn't humor him, letting Sora race ahead while she tried to figure out what the object was as she came toward it. It looked like… Well, she didn't know what it looked like, honestly. Maybe some sort of odd looking sword? If it was, it certainly didn't look like one.

The guard was large and shaped a lot like a cello. The blade resembled a wave of water, with the music notes strung along like sheet music, that held up a treble clef. On the treble clef was something that resembled a blue wizard's hat with a small star at the top. Somewhere, some how, something told Anora that the sword was called 'Counterpoint.'

“It's a Keyblade.” Sora explained to her. “They're weapons used to fight against the darkness. Since I'm pretty sure this is one of the tokens we need to find, I wonder if that means you're a wielder too.”

Anora bit her lip as she looked over at Sora curiously. She turned her direction to the swo- Keyblade and started to reach out to it. The Keyblade reacted almost immediately- jumping from its little capsule to her hand. It was a lot bigger than it looked now that it was in her hands. Sora let out a small whistle of approval.

“Yep.” he decided. “I think that means you're a Keyblade wielder now.”

Trying to shift her grip on the Keyblade, Anora placed both hands on the guard as she got a handle on the odd shaped weapon. Suddenly, without warning, the Keyblade tugged her in a certain direction. It wasn't even a gentle tug either- it was like someone was yanking on the other end in an attempt to knock her down.

“Sora!” she squeaked, “What's going on?!”

“Dunno.” came the very unhelpful answer. “Maybe it's pointing you to the next token?”

Anora worryingly looked at Sora before looking back at the Keyblade. Unsure of what else to do, the girl begrudgingly allowed the Keyblade to pull her to where it was directing them. It had to be the most absurd game of tug-of-war she had played in a long time. But Sora's hypothesis wasn't wrong- the Keyblade did lead them to the next token.

“Roller skates?” Sora wondered out loud.

Anora stared at the token for awhile before giving him a small nod. As she walked over to the capsule containing the skates, she softly said to him, “It's like flying. But without wings.”

The boy had never thought of it that way before. He offered a friendly smile and an agreeing nod before saying, “Gotcha.”

Unlike with the Keyblade, that transferred itself from the capsule and onto Anora, the roller skates disappeared the moment she touched them. The Keyblade started to pull her in a new direction now. Anora looked over at Sora -to make sure that he would still follow her- and he gave her a nod of affirmation. Once more the two followed the Keyblade's guiding as they came across the last capsule. When Anora realized what the object inside was, she gave a bewildered blink.

Inside the capsule was a color photograph. In the photograph was a group photo of her, Ephemer, Skuld, Strelitzia, and Kieran. They were all huddled close to each other with wide smiles etched on the faces. Mystified, Anora reached out to the capsule. The photograph left the capsule and went directly into her hands so she could look at it closer.

“Who are they?” Sora curiously questioned as he leaned forward to see the photo a bit better.

Anora didn't answer him at first. In a tiny voice, she said to him, “These are my friends.” The girl bit her lip as she contemplated telling Sora that this photo had never been taken before. It even looked fairly recent. But never in the year she'd been attending Daybreak had they all been together like that.

“You all look so happy.” the boy said in a thoughtful voice. Anora gave a thoughtful hum as she ran her thumb against the photograph.

“My friends are my power.” she then softly mumbled under her breath.

“Hey!” Sora playfully shouted. “That's my line!”

Anora looked over at him, confused, before a smile worked its way onto her lips.

The moment was soon broken when the photograph started to glow. Sora and Anora turned their attention to the photograph at the wrong time- its glow becoming so bright that it nearly blinded them. The duo quickly shielded their eyes from the light. When they were able to open their eyes again, they were no longer in the Final World. Instead, they were standing on a large, rounded stained glass window. Anora looked over the stained glass and let out a sharp gasp when she recognized herself depicted on the window.

The Anora in the stained glass was facing toward the outside edge, her back gently arched and her eyes closed in a peaceful manner. She was depicted as wearing velvet overalls that reached a little above her knee, with a hood in the back; underneath of that she wore a white shirt with puffed sleeves and a Peter Pan collar, and a pair of light gray leggings. By her head was a large circle containing four smaller circles. In one circle was Ephemer, another had Skuld, and a third had Chirithy. The last, fourth circle, contained a star symbol that seemed both familiar and unfamiliar to the real Anora.

Sora did not seem as mystified by this new place as Anora was. In fact, he seemed to know exactly what to do here as he summoned his Keyblade.

“We have to seal the keyhole,” Sora explained, pointing to the keyhole (one that Anora certainly had not noticed until now) with his Keyblade. “See?”

Anora tilted her head but nodded regardless. She summoned her Keyblade without much hassle, and pointed it at the keyhole. Sora mirrored her and soon enough, the tips of their Keyblades started to radiate with a white light. A quick beam of light came from the Keyblades, hitting the keyhole with pinpoint accuracy. There was a little click before the keyhole started to fade. The corner of Sora's mouth twitched a little before he turned to Anora.

From the fading keyhole came a stream of sparkling light that surrounded Anora in a loving embrace. The sparkles started at her feet and moved upwards; the further they went, the more Anora started to fade. It did not need to be said that these were meant to take her back where she belonged. Allowing the sparkles to envelope her caused Anora to feel rather sleepy- but she wasn't going to fight this drowsiness. The light was warm and welcoming.

“Well, I guess this is good bye.” Sora brightly told her. “Maybe one day I'll meet the you that lives in our world, or maybe you'll get to meet me in yours.” He paused for a moment before cheerfully deciding, “Or both!”

Something told Anora that the Sora in her world was either a toddler, or not even born yet. Regardless, she returned his goodwill with a smile.

“Thank you.” she quite honestly said before disappearing altogether. The sparkles that had surrounded Anora burst like fireworks above the Dive station. With another bright flash of light, Sora found himself alone in the Final World once more.

He gave himself a broad smile, knowing that he had helped Anora. He decided to return to where they had talked to that one star. But when he got there, it had vanished. The boy was confused for all of five seconds before a big grin etched onto his face.

“Whelp,” the boy happily declared, throwing his hands behind him. “I guess that means I'm off again.” As he went back on his merry way, he even started to sing, “99 remnants of me to find, 99 remnants of me! Find them all, change our fates, 99 remnants of me to find!”

#daybreak academy #chapter 70 #kingdom hearts fanfiction #Anora #Chirithy #Sora #Another Dream #Season 2

[littlebluebird2000]

Little Red Riding Hood

Genre: BTS fantiction, Supernatural au, smut

Pairing: werewolf!jimin. redridinghood!reader

Warning: mention of abuse, not smut yet but steamy, blindfolded, voyeurism 

Words: 1740

Summary: Ever since you were a little girl, your mother warned you about the dangers of the woods, and the creatures that lived there. That is why you never dared to stray from the path to grandmother’s house. However, one encounter may change everything you ever know about the woods.

part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

AGE 19 

 The soft chirping of the various bird along with the sound of the river flowing always help to put you at ease. It had become natural now. The forest was like a second home. A home that you enjoy passing my time more than my actual dwelling. The inhabitants from town would be horrified to know that you spend most of my time in the woods they all are so afraid of. If only they knew what you knew.

  You never have been attacked in the woods. Just a very angry squirrel one-time…but nothing compares to what those people say lives in here.

 “The monsters in those woods feeds from human flesh. They will attack anyone they don’t recognize as there own and SNAP!” One drunk man had said. “It’s over.”

 You remember passing by, laughing. You though the same when you were younger. The words your parents had implanted in your head had stopped you from seeing the real beauty the woods had to offer you.

 The animals here were so intriguing. A red fox had once taking a cookie from your basket. A skunk had passed by you, but it did nothing but look at you like you were crazy for freaking out. A friendly little brown bunny had let you hold him, but one animal had let you truly speechless.

 A wolf.

 A beautiful grey and white wolf.

 It was rather large and had scared you to death the first time you had saw him. You were quite surprise when it lay by your feet and started whining. You had tentatively pet his ear after a few moments, and it seemed to like it very much.  From that day, you had made a other friend in the forest. You had Jimin and the wolf now.

 “You should see him, Jimin! He is so beautiful.” You had sighed dreamily at your best friend.

 “Him? How do you know it’s not a ‘she’ little red? ” He chuckled.

 “Because I just know.” You swung your basket around, skipping happily as you walk. “I don’t know why he never comes when you are around though.”

 About 3 years ago, Jimin had started to get more ‘responsibility’ from his dad and couldn’t always walk with you. You were quite happy when sometimes, when Jimin was not around, the wolf would come walk along with you to grandmother’s house. The wolf always seems to come when you’re feeling down and comes only if needed.

 “Maybe he feels when you are alone and sad.” Jimin replied. “He knows when you need reinsurance. When you’re with me, the wolf knows you are safe. That’s why he doesn’t need to come.”

                                         ｡☆✼★━━━━━━━━━━━━★✼☆｡

 You sigh as you came back to reality. The hot summer air contrasts against the cooler temperature of the waterfall, making you shiver. You were alone. Neither Jimin nor the wolf had accompanied you today. It was ok. You needed some time alone anyway today. Life home was becoming more like a burden and you came to the waterfall to relax your mind. You didn’t want to talk or answer any question. You just wanted to relax for awhile.

 It was your lucky today. The sun was burning hot and the bird’s chants help you let go. You had taking off everything; your dress, your red ridding hood and your undergarment.  You felt so free here. To think you could have always followed the path to grandmother’s was crazy now. You were so happy that Jimin had showed you the way to this place.

 You smile as you recall how he had done it. The red ribbons were still attached to the trees to this day. The next day, after he had convinced you to follow him, he had made a ‘path’ with the ribbons to the water fall. After that, it had become our secret place. Well, the wolf also comes sometimes but that doesn’t really count.

 You let yourself float as you start to think about Jimin. How you wish you could see his face. You were convinced that he was not a little boy anymore. His voice had change and became much deeper than before. It sends chills down your spine sometimes, but you won’t tell him that… His attitude changed also. He seemed, well, more mature if that makes sense. He was 20 after all. After his eighteenth birthday, he started to spend less and less time with you and was more preoccupy being with his father. It made you a bit scared that you were going to lose the only friend that I ever had, one day. Jimin said something along the line that his dad was helping him control his instinct or some shit. I don’t really know. It was to hard keep up with him and his things.

Your fingers ran true your hair, trying to remove the knots that had been form by a long day of walking. You were cautious when washing your body though. There was still some bruising left from another fight with your dad. The bruises were disappearing, but the areas were still somewhat sore.

Suddenly, a crack was heard behind you. You gasp, putting your feet back on the wet ground of the small river. Turning around, your put your arms around your self and sunk deeper into the water. A small ‘shit’ was heard in front of you, behind the trees.

“Jimin?” You call out, stressed. “Is that you?”

“Y-Yeah, it’s me.”

You closed your eyes in relief and laughed. “You scared me so much.” But you suddenly yell out, realizing something. “Don’t look here, I’m naked!”

“I-I know. Uhm, I saw your clothes.”

You blushed a little. Worried that he had see your underwear.

He cleared his throat. “I haven’t seen you for a little while. How are you doing?”

“I’m fine.” You pouted a little. “I just missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

Silence reign trough the air and your blush intensified. Your heart was beating so fast, you were starting to worry he could hear it. That always happen when he comes back after a long time. It’s like your body had a mind of its own.

“I have some news for you.” Jimin said. I can hear him fidgeting with something.

“What is it.…” You gulped nervously. What if his dad finally said that he can’t talk to you anymore. That would destroy you completely.

“Do you trust me, little red?”

“Jimin, what are you--”

“Y/N. Do you trust me?” He repeated firmly.

“You know I do.” You responded softly.

“Okay then. Turn around.”

You frown your eyebrows. “What? Turn around?”

“Did I stutter?”

“No but--”

“Then shut it and turn around.”

Unsure, you did as he asked. Arms still around your body, you wondered what he was up to.

“I have to verify something.” I could hear shuffling behind me. “Before…” He trailed off.

“Before what? Verify what?” You question nervously.

“I have to verify if you can see my face. If you are ready.”

“Wait, really?!”

You could not believe it! Were you dreaming? Had you hit your head against one of those big rocks by the river’s edge? But what did he had to verified?

“I’m sure that I’m ready to see you.” You replied.

“Are you?” You can almost picture the smirk on his face as he said this. “Let me be the judge of that.”

The splash the water made as he enters startled you. Realisation made you move away from him. “Jimin, I’m naked!”

“Shuuut, little red. Don’t worry. ” Your breath was shaky, and your chest was moving up and down rapidly. “Now close your eyes for a second” His voice was a murmur now, and you realise that you two had never been so close before. You could feel him behind you. Tingles crept on your back like electricity, and it seemed to intensify as small wave of water hit you, letting you know that he was advancing toward you. And he was close. So close “Close your eyes.”

You did. At the same time the movement in the water stopped. You could almost taste the tension in the air as you breath in with difficulty. What was happening to you. You had never felt like this before. And he hadn’t done anything yet…

He was behind you. You could feel him now. Not touching you, but almost. Like a sweet temptation. You could possibly touch him if you lean back a little…

 Something was put over your eyes, surprising you. It was a soft material of some sort. You opened your eyes tentatively. You really could not see anything apart from the intense sun light that succeeded to go through the thick material. “There you go” Jimin whispered close to your ear. An intense shiver ran through you and he chuckled.

“You trust me Y/N?”

“Yes.” You answered again without any hesitation.

Not a second latter, you back was press against his front. You could not stop the gasp of surprise that left your lips. It was like sparkles were dancing behind your vison. Sparkles. Sparkles. You could not explain it a better way.

Jimin drew you even closer, and he seems to have difficulty breathing as well. He was naked as well, you could tell, and his warm skin felt so good against yours… His hand carefully caresses your arm, your belly... You felt dizzy. “Jimin” you said softly. “Jimin I-I”

“It’s alright, little red.” He gulped and nuzzle his nose against your neck, biting the skin there gently. You shake violently. “Do you feel this?”

You nodded. “I don’t know what it is, but I feel so weird, Jimin.”

“Yeah?” He bites your neck again, but this time, a bit more harshly. “A good kind of weird?”

“Yeah.” You swallowed with difficulty. “Th-There’s tingles”

“Tingles?” Jimin hummed almost humorously. “Do they ache?” He whispered this in your ear. You simply nodded. It was aching…

“Tell me were it aches Y/N. I will help you.” He growled, and you swear you had never heard anything sexier in your entire life. He bites your ear and rubbed his front against your back. By now, you were sure your face was all red. Was it supposed to be this hard?

“Please tell me where…” Jimin almost pleaded. His voice dropped “I’m a big boy. I can help.”

                                         ｡☆✼★━━━━━━━━━━━━★✼☆｡

Please, let me know if you like this story! Drop a comment or a like it would mean the world. Part 4 is coming soon and yeah (smut,smut smut…)! Drop a request also if you want. I need inspiration for something to write after this:)

#bts smut #jimin smut #bts imagines #bts imagine #bts jimin #smut #bts #bts werewolf au #fanfiction #park jimin #fanfic

[unpack-my-heart]

Above, Beneath, Betwixt, Between - Chapter Seven

@constantreaderfool @xandertheundead @violetreddie @tinyarmedtrex @mrs-vh @eds-trashmouth @annoyingtozier @burymestanding

Read on AO3 HERE

No sooner than Eddie had appeared in the doorway, he collapsed, body folding in on itself messily, a crumpled piece of paper abandoned on the deck.  Stan and Mike sprang into action immediately, loyal attendants to their fallen prize, scrambling over each other to get to Eddie first.

Richie didn’t move.

He watched them haul Eddie to his feet, he watched them tentatively let go of Eddie’s arm, encourage him to take a small step forward, and watched Eddie fall onto the deck once more, flailing arms and buckled knees. He watched Eddie’s face twist, shifting through distress, anger, frustration, a brief visit to joy before swinging straight back to distress and the cycle began again. They seem to have forgotten him, standing slack jawed on the grass below, as they haul Eddie back to his feet and usher him back inside, sheet still wrapped tightly around his torso.

Dazed and confused, Richie followed them inside, dragging his feet slightly, reluctant to break the spell, anxious that this had all been a fever dream, the imaginings of a sleep-drunk brain, and that he’ll walk into the house only to wake up in his frigid bedroom, the ghostly spectre he’d grown so fond of drifting on the moors. Spectral. Not flesh but air and heat and … longing.

But, when he walks inside the house, Eddie’s there, an image in soft pink skin and flushed cheeks, and Richie feels sick. His stomach churns, because it’s different now. Their dynamic, the Eddie he’d grown used to over these past sprawling months, has gone. He’s disappeared, a relic of the past. Now, sitting on his new couch, protective plastic sheeting crackling underneath him, is an Eddie reborn. A phoenix rising from the ashes of what once was. Ten hours ago, Eddie would have walked straight through that couch, drifted through it like smoke, leaving no trail, no indication he had ever passed through. Now, he’s sat there, with Stan holding his wrist, checking his pulse.

His pulse.

Richie wondered idly whether he’d notice the difference, whether he’d be able to hear the blood rushing through Eddie’s veins, whether he’d be able to hear each thump of his newly beating heart as screamed out, with voice anew, I am I am I am.

It’s different now. Eddie’s talking to Stan, voice shaky and unstable, answering Stan’s torrent of questions with his newly vibrating vocal chords and holy shit that’s Eddie’s voice. His real voice. His voice as it should have been, how it once was. It’s deeper than it was before, now it doesn’t melt and bleed into the air, syllables lost to the breeze, or whole words that floated skywards so that only the birds could hear.

“So, to address the elephant in the room, or … maybe the elephant that isn’t in the room, your arm,” Stan said.

The space where Eddie’s arm once was, where it should be, is empty. The socket is smooth, unblemished flesh, as if his body had never had any intention of sprouting another appendage. There is no indication that Eddie had ever had another arm, no indication that the recorporealisation process had gone wrong, and energy that should have manifested his left arm had been sucked away, absorbed into the reaction and lost forever.  Eddie looked vaguely concerned, and kept scratching absently at the armless shoulder-socket, as if trying to slough the skin away and allow the bone to extend and blossom like the trunk of a tree.

“Eds?” Richie said, voice tundra cold against the warm air, and it almost makes him jump.

“Richie?” Eddie replies, and it’s happy, so happy that Richie starts crying on the spot. Stupid fat tears fight their way out of his left eye and chase each other down his cheek, skating on the ice of his skin before pirouetting off his chin.

“Are ye crying, soft lad?” Mike asks, voice honey smooth, and it just makes Richie cry more.

Several minutes lost to Richie’s sobs later, and he’s crouched in front of Eddie, who’s still sat on the couch.

“How do you feel, Eds?”

“Honestly? Rather weird. My arm, my … my no arm itches and I can’t scratch it properly and it’s driving me insane”

“Oh, that’ll be energy residue. There will be some left over energy hanging around that area for a few days, maybe a few weeks, a few months at a push and definitely not more than a year. It’ll stop eventually,” Stan supplied over his shoulder, already knee-deep in plates of metal and large segments of complicated looking circuit board.

“Very reassuring,” Eddie replied sardonically, and they continued to bicker back-and-forth, playful stuff with no real bite, but Richie wasn’t listening.

From where he’s crouched, Richie realises with a jolt of excitement tinged with fear that he could reach out and touch Eddie. He could place his hand on Eddie’s knee, and it wouldn’t fall straight through to the couch. If only he were brave enough, he could reach out and feel Eddie’s skin, soft and warm and alive, under his fingertips for the first time. For the first time, he could pull Eddie to his chest and cradle him, he could poke him in the stomach when he’s being fussy, or he could grab his hand and close his eyes and breathe when they’re lying outside on the grass, listening to the grasshoppers.

“Rich? Are you listening?”

“Huh, wha’?”

Eddie pulls Richie out of his introspection with a dopy grin, all lopsided and too many teeth.

“Stan was asking where I was going to live now, y’know … I can live, and I was wondering whether you’d mind, and  if you do mind it’s certainly no problem, Mike’s agreed that --”

“Eddie”

“Yes, Rich?”

“If you leave me I’ll never forgive you”

– X –

The morning after, Eddie still can’t walk. Richie quickly realises that he must take it upon himself to teach Eddie to walk again. Like a mother hen teaching her chick to run, Richie stands at one end of the room and yells encouragement to Eddie, who shuffles, snail slow, towards him. More than once, Eddie trips over his own feet, or slips on a rogue corner of the carpet, and falls to the floor, comically slow, arms flailing, mouth caught in a surprised ‘O’. Richie always catches him, sweeping him up in his arms.

Sooner than Richie could have expected, Eddie manages it. He walks, unaided, with gritted teeth and a knotted brow, from one end of the living room to the other. He’s almost panting by the time he reaches Richie, but he’s done it. Richie hoots with joy, and wraps his arms around Eddie’s waist and hoists him up into the air, a trophy. Eddie squeals, and smacks at Richie with his one-arm but he’s grinning, a grin so wide Richie’s sure it’s going to split his face in two. Eddie still looks unstable, bambi legs wobbling slightly with each step, but he’s mobile. He stumbles around the small house, running his fingertips over every surface, touch-starved and greedy, he picks up seemingly random objects and holds them to his nose, smelling them, he eats more than his fair share of dinner every evening, and Richie’s punched in the stomach when he realises that what he feels for Eddie isn’t platonic. It isn’t anywhere close to platonic, having skated past that junction several hundred miles ago, and Richie watches Eddie as he walks purposefully into the kitchen, mug in hand, babbling something about learning to swim, and Richie knows it’s not platonic, it’s not anywhere close, because it’s love.

– X –

A loud crash comes from the kitchen, and Richie sits up in bed with a start. He hasn’t heard that kind of crash since Eddie became physical over a week ago. Eddie can walk almost normally now, occasionally tripping over but mostly he strides with determination. Sleep-drunk, Richie charges down the stairs two at a time, desperate to lay eyes on Eddie, the physical Eddie, to dispel any fears that the last week had been nothing but a cruel trick played on an impressionable mind. Luckily, when Richie skids into the kitchen, Eddie’s standing there, a vision in tartan pyjamas, staring at a mess of ceramic shards and honey-coloured liquid on the floor.

“What the fuck happened, butter-fingers?” Richie asked, grabbing the dustpan and brush out of the cupboard to sweep up the shards of mug.

“I -- you’ll laugh at me, I don’t want to tell you”

“Eds, I promise I would never laugh at you, ever never ever”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise”

“I … I tried to walk through the wall”

Richie released a bark of laughter, before clamping his hand over his mouth.

“Sorry! Sorry, I couldn’t help it. You tried to walk through the wall?”

Eddie nodded his head, morosely.

“I guess I was tired, I’m – I’m still not used to feeling tired, you know? It makes me feel rather odd. I guess I forgot I was … real”

Eddie looks so desperately sad that all the hilarious thoughts of Eddie walking full pelt at the wall evaporate from Richie’s mind.

“Oh, Eds. Oh sweetheart, I’m sorry”

The pet name falls out of Richie’s mouth before he can stop it and Eddie flinches.

“Shit, Eddie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, I just –”

“Rupert used to call me sweetheart,” Eddie replies in a reverent whisper and all the air gets punched out of Richie’s lungs. “I haven’t thought of Rupert for … I don’t know when I last thought of him”

“It’s okay to move on, you know?”

“Is it? Is it okay to move on when he never can?”

“Don’t you think he’d want you to be happy? To remember the fun you two had together, to remember and cherish your love but … to grieve it, and grieve him and …”

Richie’s words fail him, and he flails his arms, a useless attempt at expressing himself non-verbally. Eddie seems to be able to read him, though, as he hums thoughtfully. The mess on the floor glistens in the moonlight.

“I suppose he wouldn’t want me to be sad forever”

Neither of them speak, then. They clean up the mess, and Richie takes the shards of ceramic out to the outside bin, wrapped in a piece of kitchen roll. Eddie’s already upstairs when he comes back in, and Richie can hear the tap running, the sound of someone spitting toothpaste into the bowl of the sink, and then the door opens and it’s Eddie, Eddie who’s stood there in his stupid tartan pyjamas, and his old man slippers and his tousled hair and his tired eyes and he’s got toothpaste smeared on his chin and Richie can’t help it. He pulls a surprised and initially resistant Eddie into an embrace. Eddie’s stiff at first, but soon Richie can feel his muscles loosen and he becomes jellied and pliant in Richie’s grasp. They stand in the darkness of the upstairs hallway, Eddie’s face buried in Richie’s neck, with one Richie’s hands carding through Eddie’s hair, the other wrapped loosely around his shoulders.

“Thank you,” Eddie whispers, and it’s small, a mouse that crawls from Eddie’s mouth and squeaks in Richie’s ear.

“Whatcha thanking me for, Eddie Spaghetti?”

“For … for helping me. For being kind. I haven’t known much kindness in my life, or in my death I suppose,” Eddie laughs at himself, an ugly sort of hiccup snort that makes Richie bark out a surprised laugh, too, and then they’re laughing at themselves, and each other, but they’re still hugging, anchored to each other in the tempest of confusion that their lives have become in the past few months.

“I am so very lucky that you bought this house,” Eddie says, staring at Richie with glittering eyes and Richie tries to convince himself to kiss Eddie, caution be damned, but he can’t because he remembers.

He remembers the letter he got the day before, sat in his bedside drawers.

Instead, he presses a chaste kiss to Eddie’s forehead and pulls away.

“Goodnight, Eds”

– X –

Richie only manages three hours of pretending to sleep, of staring at the ceiling and watching the shadows dance, before he gets up. He tiptoes across the room, cringing slightly as the door groans open, and then shuffles across the landing to Eddie’s room. The door was wide open, so Richie pokes his head in only to discover the bed empty. It wasn’t made though, and when Richie presses his hand to the mattress he finds that it’s still warm.

He immediately knows where Eddie is.

He walks back to his room, less concerned about the groaning floorboards now, and opens the curtains. He spots Eddie immediately. He’s standing at the mouth of the lake, throwing stones into it, watching them skate across the surface and then disappear into the depths, never to be seen again. Richie crosses his arm, and leans against the support beam, and watches.

Eddie looks beautiful. His skin, solid but pale as marble slate, shines in the frosty light of the moon. Richie watches him walk towards the grass, and then, suddenly, he’s off, sprinting towards the trees in the distance that border the forest, the forest that Richie knows Eddie spent a lot of time in immediately after his death. Richie watches him, watches him sprint like a cheetah towards the darkness of the trees, before he skids on his heel, and sprints right back again. Right back to Richie. Right back to their home.

Richie stoops, and opens the bedside cabinet and pulls the letter out. The bright white paper practically glows in the moonlight.

Dear Mr Tozier,

I am writing to inform you that your visa (business - fixed term) is set to expire in less than three months. You will need to return to your home country before the given date, or risk criminal sentencing.

Please be advised that, should you wish to extend your residency in the United Kingdom, you must apply to do so from your home country (The United States of America).

Please do contact my office if you have any further questions,

Yours Sincerely,

James Brown

Immigration Officer

#reddie #eddie kaspbrak #richie tozier #Richie Tozier x Eddie Kaspbrak #it 2019 #it 2017 #ghost au #property developer au #thefutureisbright #ao3 #above beneath betwixt between

[jj-ktae]

Millennials - Part 6 -

Title: Millennials Genre: Fluff, romance Pairing: Kim Yugyeom x You Summary: Life is made of stages and each of them is a hard push on the back, forcing you to forge ahead. You’re facing your biggest crisis, and then there’s him, who lives from day to day. Of course he does, he is just a kid. Words: 3535 Warning: Small age difference. Yugyeom x Noona Reader.

Please check my masterlist and reblog for previous chapters!

- Part 6 - 

There’s no such thing as sadness, Yugyeom thinks. Everything is good in life. The weather is perfect, everyone is beautiful, the food tastes better than usual and wow, when did his skin become so perfect?

He communicates with you via messages because you’re busy and honestly, he doesn’t mind. You never wait for too long before answering, you agree to whatever he proposes and most importantly, you’ll be seeing each other at work tonight.

Yugyeom had no idea he would ever be excited about going to work.

“Look, it’s our Don Juan.” Jackson is the first one to tease Yugyeom when he joins his friends the day after. They’re supposed to do some shopping and Bambam is currently trying to walk around, his arms full of extravagant clothing and jewellery.

“Bam! Can you hurry the fuck up! I can’t find anything interesting in that shop!” Jackson yells before turning around to find a cutely blinking Yugyeom. “Also, don’t leave me with the lovesick guy!” he finishes, his body leaning against a huge rack of belts.

“Do I look lovesick? Because I am. God, I’m so in love.” Yugyeom sighs dramatically but his face shows nothing but pure bliss.

He cannot believe what is happening in his life. Nothing seems real, it’s like a dream dangerously close to end until he pinches his hand. Yugyeom has no idea how to function anymore but does he even care? What is reality even? He doesn’t mind staring at the wall for hours if it means reminiscing the awesome kisses he gave you.

He certainly has no problem grinning to himself and feeling full just thinking about how your hands grabbed his with tenderness.

“You look stupid.” Jackson concludes with a shrug as Bambam comes back with huge shopping bags and greets a dreamy Yugyeom.

“It’s okay.” Yugyeom doesn’t mind being teased. He isn’t even sure he is aware of his surroundings anymore. His feet are floating, taking his body wherever the hell it has to go and following his friends.

It’s been one day and he is still not over the fact that he is dating his precious noona.

He will never have enough of your cute tone over the phone. He loves your shy reactions and embarrassment whenever he becomes cheesy and sweet.

Goodnight, Gyeomie.

He starts laughing whenever he thinks about the way you call him.

“Here he goes again…” Bambam sighs as he puts the heavy bags into Jackson’s car. His friend merely pats him on the back before whispering about weird kids.

Bambam observes him one last time and laughs when Yugyeom whines cutely in front of his phone.
 “She’s so cute. She’s too cute I don’t think I’ll survive. She’ll be the end of me!” Yugyeom wails again, his long body colliding with the car seat.

“STOP IT!” Both his friends warn him but he barely listens.

He is on cloud nine.

--

The grocery shop is empty tonight. A huge storm is threatening the whole city, worrying its people and resulting in them staying in for the whole day. You had no trouble coming to work, which is fine but as you’re staring at the wall, you’re wondering if time is going to pass as slowly as it does, now.

The door opens, turning your attention from your book and the reminder of your sentimental status enters, smiley and careful.

You don’t know how to act. Yugyeom is blooming, teeth showing because his smile is huge. He walks toward you and stops himself before he can lean for a kiss. He knows too much about you to act carelessly. Knowing you, you will probably tell him to be discreet. 
How can he? He wants to talk to everyone and tell them he is dating the perfect girl waiting behind the cash-register and who looks like she wants to murder everyone.

Yugyeom takes his jacket off and waves at you, his cheeks turning pink. “Hi, noona.”

You nod, looking around the shop to make sure that the customer who just came in behind Yugyeom won’t see it. “Hey, Yugyeom.”

Yugyeom stills, his smiles dying at the mention of his full name. You seem distant, cold even, but maybe you’re just shy? He lets it go for now, not eager to feel depressed when he should enjoy your presence.

“Excuse me?” The customer asks as he peeks from behind the aisle. You simply raise your head at Yugyeom when you don’t see him move.

Is he going to stare at you all day? Gosh, it’s so embarrassing.

“Can you please go and see what he needs?” You ask, your tone harsher than intended and if you didn’t go back to reading your book, you wouldn’t have missed the pure look of hurt painting Yugyeom’s face.

He walks away, silent.

You hear him speak but he sounds dejected. It’s not like you can do anything about it. You don’t want to be this way but it’s out of your reach. Yugyeom makes you go soft and if you don’t mind being mushy on the phone, reality is harder and turns you into that bitch Yugyeom doesn’t deserve.

When the customer arrives, Yugyeom strolls to the storage room and decides to ignore you. You don’t know what to do so you let him be. It’s a pity, you both should enjoy the feeling of being together but because of you everything is ruined.


After two hours of ignoring each other and him doing his best to hide into the storage room to apparently sort it out, you start freaking out. What if Yugyeom breaks up with you? What if he understands that you’re a bitch and will probably hurt him even more if he stays around you?

He was so sweet the day before with his flower and oh god, the way he kissed you back, how gentle he was.

You want to slap yourself so hard when you come back to your sense. You thank the last customer before she goes away and decide to go and see him.

Knowing Yugyeom, he must feel so sad about the situation.

You enter the storage you and he stops as soon as he sees you, arms full of tiny boxes. “Do you need something?” He asks, expectant and worried for what might probably come.


What if you break up with him? What if you realised he will never be good enough for you and change your mind? He should have known; it was too good to be-

“I’m sorry.” You say calmly. “I’m sorry for acting weird and being cold. I just…it’s new to me, you know? I don’t know how to act; I feel like I don’t know how to be a good girlfriend so I push you away before I can embarrass myself some more.” You rub your face tiredly, mad at yourself for being the reason behind Yugyeom’s pouty face.

The latter says nothing and simply puts the boxes down on the floor, sighing.

He gets up and stares at you, his arms crossed over his chest and you understand he is mad at you.

But he isn’t and it takes a second for him to reach for you and wrap his arms around your frustrated form.

“Don’t think about it too much, Noona. If anything bothers you, just tell me.” He leans and hides in the crook of your neck, his breath tickling the sensitive skin. “I can understand. I’m young but I’m not stupid.” He jokes because he feels relieved and doesn’t want you to feel too bad about the situation.

“I don’t think you’re stupid, Gyeomie.” You sigh, as guilty as ever. He is still beating himself when you’re the one at fault.

Yugyeom squeals and parts from you just enough to see your face. “God, it’s even better when you say it to my face.” He leans before you can even answer and kisses you.

It feels good. Yugyeom is the same gentle person, careful and caring as his long fingers cup you chin to deepen the kiss. You let him, your own hands grabbing his shirt to keep your balance as your knees go weak. He even hums into the kiss when his tongue shyly meets yours, not afraid to let you know how much he enjoys it.

His lips leave yours when he finds himself too overwhelmed and his fingers end in your hair, threading the locks in adoration. His eyes look at you with all the love they can hold and he smiles. “I have to practice later; do you want to come and watch me dance?”

You nod, eyes still closed but fluttering open when you hear him chuckle cutely.

The grocery shop’s door opens before he can kiss you again so he merely brushes his nose against yours affectionately before walking back into the shop.

You take a deep breath and try to focus on your breathing because your heart is melting.

--

You ignore Naya’s messages when you sit into the dance studio. She is teasing you non-stop, sending numerous times “you’re so whipped” along with a ton of emojis and you’re sure you’ll kill her next time you’ll see her annoying smiley face. Yugyeom went to change and you’re not sure you’re ready to see him dance but the place is empty and the atmosphere is so cosy. It feels like some really professional studio where talented crews come up with great choreographies.

Yugyeom arrives rapidly, his clothes drastically different and skin out in the open. He looks rather embarrassed for his face has never been so red and goes to the speaker to connect his phone, starting the upbeat music.

“Just tell me if you get bored, okay?” He says from where he stands in the middle of the room and you nod, legs crossed and eyes wide open.

What you see goes beyond your expectations. It takes a while but as soon as he starts moving, you see it, peeking from behind the floating top he is wearing.

Yugyeom has tattoos?

They seem to be everywhere, on his ribs, on his shoulders, they come and go with every move but aren’t enough to make you forget about the way Yugyeom dances. He seems to be a totally different person, from the way his jaw clenches to how passionate his eyes are. His legs look even longer with every step he takes, his pace following the beat perfectly and matching the music heavenly.


Suddenly, he looks like a man.

This duality amazes you. Earlier he looked like a lost boy in the middle of a crowd and now he seems in control of everything and uncaring of his surroundings. He doesn’t even mind thrusting his hips in the air and even looks at you from time to time, smirking and looking more sensual than cute.

When the music stops, he makes it start all over again and does a whole different choreography, as amazing as the first one yet even more perfect.

You don’t move, captivated and patient, like you’re in front of a mysterious movie. You could watch him for hours you decide, it’s so controlled and perfect.

He is breathless when he is done, but still glances at you to wait for your reaction. You can only clap, your hands now the only sound in the room and Yugyeom blushes again, his dark mode now off and baby boy side back.

“You’re a great dancer. I didn’t know you were…this good.” You muse, eyes shining and looking impressed.

Yugyeom merely shrugs. “Something’s off with that music. I’m supposed to do an improvisation but I’m struggling.” He smiles, grabbing the towel next to you and sitting.

You hum, nodding slowly. You don’t know much about dancing but it doesn’t look like he is struggling at all. “You’re doing amazing, in my opinion. I don’t know much about it but I loved it.” You lean to rest your head over his shoulder but he moves away, whining.

“I’m too sweaty, noona.”

You sigh. “It’s fine, Gyeomie.”

The later smiles sweetly at you. “You’re saying this to get more kisses, aren’t you? You’ve said it around twenty times already. I’m too weak for this, noona.” He leans and stops before his lips can touch yours.

“But you like it, right?” you mumble, looking at him. “Also, you said you wanted to keep on calling me noona.”

“I like calling you noona. You’re my noona, noona.” Yugyeom teases, biting his lip.

“It does sound like a kink.”

He hums. “For who? You or me? You look like you enjoy it, though.”

You smile, reaching up to get a kiss. “I do, I really do.”

The atmosphere is different. It went from being icy to being warm and you have to admit you prefer it that way. You don’t know what the future will be, but you do know that you want him to keep smiling for you.

You sit properly when you’re done kissing him and you finally remember something you’ve been waiting to ask. “So, you have tattoos?”

Yugyeom’s face instantly change, his features turning a soft shade of pink and his hand aiming for his cheek, grabbing the burning skin. “Yes, I-” he looks down, suddenly too self-conscious about his revealing tank top. “I always wear these when I practice, I forget I have those-” He stammers, obviously disturbed, “I hope you don’t mind…?”

You chuckle when you find his expectant gaze. He is too cute to be true. He must probably be thinking that you’re about to break up with him, again. “It’s fine, I like them. How many do you have? I can just see some parts peeking.” You look down and tilt your head, not daring enough to pull on the fabric to reveal what seems to be a flower on his ribcage.

Yugyeom gulps, not expecting to be showing his body after barely a day of relationship. “Ah, well, if you want to see…” He raises on both knees and starts showing you the said flower. “This one is a dandelion.” He pulls on the other side of his tank top to reveal a single sentence. “I also have this one.” He offers his shoulders and then stop, blinking cutely at you.

His hesitation surprises you. “What’s wrong?”

He smiles, the tip of his ears turning as red as tomatoes. “Well, the last one is on my back, I don’t think I should…remove...” his arms fly in the air, mimicking weird moves.

You understand right away and opt for a bit of teasing to relax Yugyeom. “You looked less embarrassed earlier with your hip moves.”

He laughs, head jerking back and acknowledging your remark. “Anyways! These are all I have. Do you have tattoos, noona?”

You shake your head, body now resting against the wall as Yugyeom goes back to a sitting position. He scares you when he claps his hands.

“Let’s take a selfie!” He takes his phone out of his pocket and raises an arm toward you. “I want to have a picture with you, noona.”

“I’m not photogenic.” You make a face but approach him nonetheless.

Yugyeom hushes you and proceeds to take a thousand pictures.

--

The rest of the night goes by as fast as it started. You grab something to eat on your way out – Yugyeom doesn’t seem to let you go back home – and walk around for a while. It’s peaceful yet stressing, because you have to get used to the overly touchy Yugyeom and his constant need to show you how close he wants to be. He always has a hand around your shoulder and oh god does he have to keep on touching your nape with his way too long fingers?

You like it, you like it to the point of hating it. Nothing about Yugyeom makes you find a reason to refuse his kindness. Not even the cute smiles he offers, not even his gentleman side. You accept everything and it makes your brain cells battle for dominance over which one is going to win the fight of resistance. 
One side is obviously drowning into his kindness while the other one freaks out, frightened by the idea of committing to such a great human being.

Naturally, it makes you act like you have two personalities, one giggling when Yugyeom steals a kiss between two trees and another one not reacting when he does cute gesture to make you laugh.

Yugyeom looks puzzled but doesn’t ask. You notice he fears your reactions every time he does something.

And it’s true. Yugyeom is freaking out.

He doesn’t know if it must do with the fact that your relationship is new, or if you’re going to go back on full cold mood any second.

He leaves it at that when he finds himself in front of your doorstep. You barely kiss him before going inside. It’s the end of a roller coaster he isn’t sure he can keep on riding and despite his incredibly great mood earlier that day, he isn’t sure he feels as delighted as he used to.

--

“She’s scared.”

Jinyoung doesn’t know why he has to deal with a sulky Yugyeom in the middle of his bookstore. The young boy arrived earlier than expected with a sad face and won’t stop whining right onto his face.

“I don’t think she wants to be with me. Sometimes she does look truly happy, but then something happens in her head and she turns cold.” Yugyeom’s body is limp on his friend’s counter, who is currently typing stuff on his computer, focused.

Jinyoung sighs after a while, crossing his arms over his chest. “Tell her. I don’t know what else to say and you will probably never believe anything I try to explain to you.”

Yugyeom scoffs, barely raising his head. “So what do I do? I lost ten years of my life to confess only, what more do I need to do? Can’t we just be happy and romantic and cute?”

“You’re not 10 anymore. If you want your noona you’ll have to fight for it.” Jinyoung laughs, “Kim Yugyeom is discovering life, how interesting.”

“Please, I wanted to see her tonight because it’s her day off and she told me she was busy. What kind of busy? I’m her boyfriend. Well, it doesn’t even feel like I’m her boyfriend. Every time I feel like she is back on normal mode she does that shit again and it’s only been two days.” Yugyeom is frustrated. If he had to explain the situation, he would say it’s way too complicated. He knows nothing about dealing with his own feelings, especially this strong. If on top of that he must deal with a conflicted significant other, he might as well give up.

“I’m telling you,” Jinyoung points a finger to his friend’s forehead and pushes Yugyeom’s head away from his expensive wooden counter. “Talk to her.”

The latter nods, fingers tapping the furniture one last time before getting up. “Are you done yet? I need a drink.”

Jinyoung rolls his eyes. “You’re so dramatic.”

Yugyeom feels burdened. He has no experience when it comes to complex relationships and has no clue about how to deal with such weird dynamics. He only knows about living without worrying about the future so of course he can’t deal with you.


He can’t understand what more he can do, but he also doesn’t know why you agreed on dating him.

Maybe you pitied him. Maybe you didn’t want to hurt him?

The bar is crowded but Yugyeom barely pays attention. He sits and avoids Jinyoung’s remarks like his friend isn’t even there. His mind is clouded by doubt; from the very first thing he should say to you next time he sees you to the possible outcome.

He looks around, barely thanking Jackson when he offers him a fresh beer.

“I don’t think she doesn’t want to be with you. She probably has a hard time accepting? I agree with Jinyoung, get that talk. It’s the only way to know and reassure her if needed.” Jackson announces when Yugyeom stays quiet. He looks back at his friends and agrees, grabbing his beer and drinking softly.

“It hurts to say this but,” Jinyoung leans on the table, “Jackson is right.”

Jackson rolls his eyes dramatically, puffing. “I, too, can be a smart-ass.”

Yugyeom smiles at the two, turning around when a group of people start singing way too loudly.

“Just enjoy for tonight, you’ll think about it-” Jackson pats his friend but slows his pace when he sees the way Yugyeom’s face turns shocked.

Jinyoung glances at the two, “What’s wrong?”

Yugyeom tilts his head, brows furrowed as he scoffs, bitter.

“She’s here.”

“What?” Jinyoung raises from his chair to get a better view and Jackson starts looking around the room, clapping his hands.

“Great, finish your drink and go talk to her!”

Yugyeom softly shakes his head, his eyes turning too dark to be considering any sort of normal discussion.

He doesn’t get it.

Why the hell are you sitting and laughing with another guy?

“I don’t think she wants to see me, right now.”

#got7creators #got7 x reader #got7 x you #got7 kim yugyeom #kim yugyeom #kim yugyeom got7 #yugyeom #yugyeom x reader #yugyeom x noona #yugyeom soft #got7 scenarios #got7 scenario #got7 imagines #got7 fluff #got7 fanfic #yugyeom fluff #yugyeom fanfic #yugyeom au #got7 au #got7 park jinyoung #park jinyoung #got7 jackson #got7 jackson wang #bambam #got7 bambam

[willow-salix]

Random bit of fun because it's been the kind of day where I needed to make myself laugh.

Everyone knew that Selene had a love of classic horror films, the ones that Alan said were boring and not in the least scary. The same ones that John always turned his nose up at because the special effects were non existent. Virgil liked them because they always had great music to them and Scott and Gordon just found them hilariously funny. 

But this one was different, while her favourites were made in the 1960s, she had stumbled across one that was positively modern in comparison from the 2010s. She'd put it off over and over again but if there was one thing that hanging out in a floating space station gave you an opportunity to watch all the movies you had previously never had time for. She had quickly run through almost all the movies on her watch list and was down to two, it was scary or the prank show Gordon had insisted she watch, so it was time to watch the scary even if that time was 3am and she couldn't sleep (not that she expected the movie to help). So there she was, camped out on one of the couches in the sunken lounge of the villa, blanket over her legs, tablet balanced on her knees, watching the movie. 

It started with three young girls happily playing tea parties in their attic play room when all of a sudden they dropped their dolls and little tea cups and as one, moved to the windows, opened them, and jumped the fuck out. 

Selene jumped in shock. "Da fuq was that about?" she yelped, eyes glued to the action which had cut to a young single father having one last chance to impress his bosses at the solicitors where he worked. He was a widow, his wife having died in childbirth and he was fast running out of money,  debts mounting, he needed this job.  

The owner of a big old house had died and the young father was the one sent to go through all her papers and check the house over,  looking for her most recent will, before they could sell. Seemed simple enough, but this was a spooky movie so obviously that wasn't going to go well.

He said goodbye to his son, planning on being done by the weekend when his son and the nanny would join in for a weekend in the country, all very pleasant... Selene was now quite bored after the dramatics at the start. She reached for her cup of cocoa and sipped as she watched the young father, Arthur Kipps,  board the train and promptly fall asleep. Cue a dream of his late wife which shocked him enough to wake with a start. A helpful man by the name of Sam offered him a ride from the station to the guest house. 

At the guest house Arthur (whom she could see as non other than Harry Potter no matter how hard she tried) was told he didn't in fact have a room booked and must go away. Strange. But the wife of the landlord took pity on him and let him stay in the attic... The same creepy ass attic the girls had jumped from.

"No Harry! Don't sleep there!" Selene warned but of course the twat didn't listen. Though he appeared to get through the night unscathed and proceed to make his way to the creepy ass house he was looking through. 

Selene jumped and squeaked her way through his first visit when the bitch in black decided to pop her ugly ass face up now and then and waft around in the background when she shouldn't be. 

She got a major case of the sads when a kiddie died due to the black bitch and got rather indignant on Harry/Arthurs behalf when the villagers all seemed to blame him. But by the time he went back again and began to uncover some clues as to the woman in blacks identity and why she might be creeping around like a dick and scaring the shit out of people, Selene was on the edge of her seat and not in a good way. The ghost popped up, eyeballs being all weird and dodgy and it all got a bit much for Selene, though she would blame sleep deprivation from back to back rescues. 

"Expelliarmus! " she yelled, waving her wandless hand at the screen in an attempt to make the spook go away.

She might be a super tough witchy but even she wasn't good with jump scares, it was the dodgy plinky plonky music they used to fuck with your head that always got to her and after she had shrieked and almost dropped the tablet for the fourth time she paused the film and, grabbing laptop and blanket, decided her spaceman would so appreciate a late night visit from his witch. 

She padded her way down the hallway from the lounge on a hunt for her elusive man. She checked Scott's office where he was known to sometimes hang out but found it empty. The kitchen was just as deserted so she let herself outside, taking a deep breath of the cooler night air. Ahh, target spotted and locked on! He was stretched out on one of the loungers arranged around the pool, which to some would seem strange in the middle of the night, but she knew he enjoyed the quiet. Such a shame she was there to fuck that up for him. Sucked to be him right now. 

She tugged his book out of his hands without asking - he didn't need it now- put down the tablet and scooped up the cat that was curled up on his lap, dropping him unceremoniously on the floor.

"My space man." Armstrong gave an outraged meow but she nudged him aside with her foot. "Go find Alan and sleep on his face."

There went his peace and quiet. Much as he loved her she had the subtlety of a cyclone sometimes, even at half past three in the morning. How was it even possible that she was still this bouncy? He tried to catch his book as it was whipped out of his hands but missed.

"I was reading that."

The cat went next and, although he had actually been enjoying the warm weight of the purring creature on his lap, he would never admit it and therefore didn't raise a protest. 

Selene pushed his legs apart, ignoring his questioning eyebrow and settled between them. He let his feet fall to the floor, making room, allowing her to wrap his arms around her middle and lean back against his chest. 

She picked up her tablet and propped it up on her knees. This wasn't going to be pleasant, he had very little faith in her viewing choices. 

"Selene, " he sighed. 

There was that tone that they all heard at least once a day, the one that said he was already done with your shit. Good job she was immune to such things. 

She wiggled to get comfy and smiled to herself. This was much better, her man would protect her from evil jumping ghost ladies that desperately needed to cleanse, tone and moisturise once in a while, he was awesome and could like…shoot it with a laser or some shit, what more could she want in a movie buddy? 

"You know I have no interest in watching this, " he protested weakly as he caught sight of the screen. 

She ignored that too, he'd like it once it got going, she was sure of it, and hit play. 

The dumbass formerly known as Harry had balls, she'd give him that, he hadn't given up and was yet again back in the house of oogie boogies with nothing but a dog for company. The story was unfolding and Selene was actually beginning to feel kind of sorry for the emo ghost, but she still didn't trust her and said as much, very vocally and frequently. 

"Don't go in there…. Shit shit shit creepy rocking chair… ahhh I fucking hate those little wind up monkeys, this, this is why kids were disturbed in the victorian times, look at the fucking toys they give them, what's wrong with the parents…" she paused her mini rant by yelping and hiding her face in John's neck when the ghost popped up again, "not cool, so not cool dude. " 

John but his lip, refusing to laugh at her comments, it would just encourage her and honestly, she was bad enough as it was. She was so animated in everything she did, so open, honest and just full on. 

He much preferred to sit and watch in silence, but Selene was never quiet for long and with four brothers he was used to never getting his own way.  It had been a busy few days and while the others had passed out early, they were both too keyed up to rest. He'd chosen the sensible option of quiet relaxation, obviously she'd had other ideas.

He made an attempt to watch the film but it was almost impossible, having missed the start and with her near constant distractions. He gave up all pretence of paying attention and simply enjoyed having her so close, tightening his arms around her middle.

Once she deemed it safe she looked up again,  uncurling a little from the protective shelter of his arms and managed to sit through another five minutes without freaking out, that was until there was a massive ass house fire and Harry/Arthur's friend Sam told him a bit more about his own story, that's when she started to get defensive and head more into pissed off territory.  

"Why do you keep calling him Harry?" he asked but received no answer as she launched into another tirade. 

"What is wrong with you? Oi, ghost bitch, stop that shit! Don't make me come down there! You might be able to mess with the now non wizard but try a real witch for size."

She cheered and got a little excited when the heroes tried to help the ghost, though the bitch wasn't very appreciative and just did her banshee impression, which lead to Selene screaming back at her, as if that would actually help, making John jump in shock. How was she so loud? 

She relaxed when she thought it was all over, only to bounce back up in the last few seconds in complete outrage. "They should have called me, I'd have kicked that bitches arse in less than a day and been home in time for dinner, now look! Look at that! What the fuck was that? Fucking vengeful ghost, what's wrong with you!"  She pushed the tablet aside in a huff, crossing her arms, sulk mode activated.

The chest she was leaning against was vibrating against her back as he shook in silent laughter. She turned to glare at him, which just made things worse as he lost control. 

John was laughing at her, this was unacceptable.  She nipped his chin in retaliation, trying to hold in a laugh and not admit that she had been a massive wimp. 

He continued to laugh, the lines of stress and worry that had formed over the past few days vanishing smoothing out as he relaxed and let go. She smiled, glad to have helped. Even if her way had been unconventional, it had done the job. 

John hugged her tighter, his amusement fading away to leave him with quiet contentment as she placed the tablet on the ground and rested her head back onto his shoulder. High above them, a bright spot in the dark sky he could just make out his beloved craft, awaiting him, but, as was becoming more and more frequent, he didn't feel the immediate urge to return. They lay in silence for a while, watching the stars, relaxed and at peace. 

"Want to take your witchy to bed so we can get some sleep?"

He smiled, turning his head for a quick kiss. "That's an offer I would be a fool to refuse."

They gathered their things, turned off the lights and returned to the silent villa, bed calling. 

#John Tracy #Selene is the worst person to watch a movie with #it's 3am #There goes his peace and quiet #Thunderbirds #thunderbirds 2015 #thunderbirds fanfiction #thunderbirds are go #Fan fic #fan fiction #fan fic update #fan fic stuff #fun stuff

[gold-from-straw]

Everything That Happens - ch5

I’ve Been Twisting To The Sun

The students return to Hogwarts, and Harry returns to the battle for the first of many attempts to save everyone. Again.

Read from the beginning on AO3 if you like!

“I can’t believe we’ve got an eighth year dorm, rather than being back in Gryffindor,” Ron grumbled, and dropped heavily onto his bed. “At least they’ve colour-coded our beds.”

“Feels weird to be so much lower down as well,” said Harry, looking out into the grounds from the second floor which had been repurposed into two large dorms and a central common room.

“Yes, well, they were lucky to be able to repair Gryffindor and Ravenclaw towers to the extent they did,” said Hermione, looking around. “As it is the year sevens are sharing with the year sixes.” She shook her hair out and sat next to Ron. “Only four Gryffindor beds - who didn’t return?”

“Dean Thomas,” Ron grunted from his position spreadeagled on his bed. “He’s got a place in a muggle art college, apparently. Seamus told me on the way up. At least Zacharias Smith moved overseas, we won’t have to share with him.”

The room was a cheery mixture of red, blue and yellow hangings, but Harry’s eyes were drawn to the two beds in the corner, the green almost apologetic and faded. “Who came back from Slytherin?”

“Nott and Malfoy,” said Hermione, darting him a quick look out of the corner of her eye.

“I can’t believe they’re making us bunk with that lot, honestly,” Ron said, shaking his head.

“Ron, leave it. The war’s over. I think it’s a good thing we’re all in the same room. I’ve always thought the segregation by house is way too partisan, and encourages bad feeling among students.”

“Hear hear,” said Justin Finch-Fletchley from a couple of places over. “And because we’re all of age, we can use the cupboards in the common room for firewhiskey.

The boys cheered and the chatter raised, regardless of Hermione’s disapproving looks.

***

Being back at Hogwarts was both a blessing and a curse. Seeing the school, his only real home, so battered and broken made Harry want to hide under the invisibility cloak and never open his eyes again. The great hall was quieter now, every house depleted in some way, and the colours looked muted, as if the castle itself was in mourning. The returning eighth years sat together at one table just in front of the teachers’ dais, and for the first few weeks, every dinner felt like a funeral.

On the other hand, every corner reminded him of something new to add to his list, some event he had to follow through to determine if it could be changed, or should be changed.

And seeing the new ghosts made Harry all the more determined to do it. Because he realised he’d been afraid, before, afraid that if he sent himself back to that horrible day, the smell of curse fire and smoke, the screams and yells and horror, that he’d freeze and possibly even make everything worse.

The first time he saw Colin Creevey he almost fell to his knees in the corridor. Dennis was sitting on a bench by the window, swinging his legs, and Colin sat beside him, translucent and yet more vibrant than anyone else in Hogwarts.

“Oh, Harry,” said Colin, looking up. “Hi! I’m glad we saw you, how are you doing?” he chirped, floating up.

“I… I’m fine, Colin,” he said shakily. “Ummm…” He glanced at Dennis, his little face so much younger than Harry had ever been, he was sure. “I’m sorry,” he blurted. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, no, no, Harry, you don’t have to be sad,” said Colin, giving him a chilly pat on the arm. “I was just telling Dennis here, nothing hurts, and we can still chat - and I’m not lonely either. Nearly Headless Nick says I can share the job of Gryffindor ghost with him, isn’t that great? All the house ghosts are taking on an apprentice, the Fat Friar’s got three!”

Dennis nodded up at his brother and Harry, and swallowed hard, trying a watery smile.

***

That night, Harry took deep, calming breaths as he lay in bed. They didn’t work. But he was determined to do this, determined to go back and save just one person. Colin would be easy, Harry could just make sure he left with the other evacuees, and then return to his own time, leaving his old self to run straight to the Grey Lady.

He tried to ground himself by listening to the quiet snores of his dorm-mates. The evacuation. Where had he been? Kingsley had been ordering people into position and then--

“Potter,” said Professor McGonagall, and Harry opened his eyes to focused, nerve-jangling chaos, jostled by bodies moving in every direction, the smell of fear, and God, even in his healthy future body his head hurt with it all.

“Aren’t you supposed to be looking for something?” McGonagall snapped.

“What? Oh,” said Harry. “Oh yeah!”

The Horcrux - she was talking about Ravenclaw’s diadem, and he couldn’t miss that, no matter what, otherwise saving one or two people would mean nothing. Even so, he caught a glimpse of Remus hurrying out into the grounds, and the twins into the school, and the sight of them all alive rocked him to his core.

He shook his head and rushed on. He had to focus! He’d been delayed last time, looking for the Grey Lady, but he knew where she’d be now. Instead, he hovered in the entrance hall, waiting, watching - there!

“Colin Creevey,” he snapped, whipping out a hand and grabbing the sixth year boy as he sneaked past. “And… you.” He pointed awkwardly at the Hufflepuff boys with him. “There’s a reason we’re evacuating you, now go.”

Colin rolled his eyes. “Harry, we can help! We’re nearly seventeen, the age is just an arbitrary cut off, please!”

“No, Colin,” he said, gripping his shoulders hard and shaking lightly. Harry was small himself, but Colin was still tiny, his voice not even broken, and Harry had to swallow hard as he remember the ghost with long wavy hair. “Please go, all of you, please. You’ve… you’ve got to keep the little ones safe.”

He saw the Hufflepuffs glance at each other and seized on it. “All the overage students are here, who’s going to look after the little ones?”

“The fifth years?” ventured one of the Hufflepuffs tentatively.

Harry shook his head. “Nobody knows what the hell they’re doing in fifth year. It has to be you. And if… if we fail, someone needs to fight to get them home, yeah?” He ducked his head to try and catch Colin’s gaze. “Please… please go look after your brother? Don’t let me find you d-dead on a battlefield.”

Colin met Harry’s eyes. Maybe he saw something there, some truth, but he nodded once, solemn, and returned to the crowd. Harry saw him direct the other boys around the side and start to help with herding the evacuees out.

Harry took a deep breath, then felt a spike of fear rush through him. He couldn’t let the night get away from him! Where had he been… he’d been with those students, and then he’d come back and - and he was here! He’d come back here, and found Nearly Headless Nick!

He looked around wildly, everything different from the bottom of the stairs where last time he’d been at the top, but there! “Nick!” he yelled, and as the ghost turned, Harry relaxed his hold on his past self, and sprang back into his own time.

Harry’s eyes snapped open and he stared into the darkness, breathing fast. He sat up and checked the time, but it wasn’t even 3am yet. He sighed and slumped back onto his pillows.

Now he was awake (had he even slept at all? He didn’t think much time had passed while he was time travelling) he couldn’t bear to lie still. The soft breathing of his dorm-mates taunted him. Eventually he sat up and pulled the Marauder’s map out from his trunk.

Opening up the parchment and saying the words had an instant settling effect on him. He searched Ginny out just on instinct, and smiled to see his ex’s name floating in the girls dorms, bunked down with Briony Dunstan, and Romilda Vane from the year below.

Harry followed the names along Gryffindor tower, like a calming roll-call. The writing was crammed together more than usual, the sixth and seventh years in the same room on both the boys and girls side and - his eyes did a double take, catching on the name Colin Creevey and skittering back.

He stared at the map, hardly daring the breathe. Then, in a sudden burst of motion that tangled his legs in his blankets and almost sent him tumbling to the floor, Harry scrambled out of bed and hurled himself out of the dorms. He tore through the silent, moonlit corridors, up the moving staircases and stumbling against the Fat Lady’s portrait. “Pax,” he gasped out.

“If you say so, dear,” she yawned, and swung open. Harry scrambled through the hole, only pausing a moment in shock to see the common room half its usual size, a wall that had never been there before blocking off the room from the staircase that led up to the highest dorms. That must be the damaged section, he thought, blinking.

He shook his head and rushed onwards, up the stairs to the boys dorms labelled Sixth and Seventh years, and pushed his way in. He glanced down at the map, moving through the room, as silent and slumbering as his own had been, and ripped open the hangings at the foot of Colin Creevey’s bed.

Colin Creevey, living, not transparent, not dead and carried in by Oliver Wood, blinked and rubbed his eyes. “Wh- Harry? Everything OK?”

Harry stepped back, shaking his head, trying to turn away so he wasn’t staring like a creep. “Yeah. Sorry. Bad, uh… bad dreams. Got lost. Um. This was my dorm in sixth year.”

“‘Kay,” said Colin (who was alive!) lying back down. “‘Night, Harry.”

Harry stumbled out of the door and back down the stairs towards eighth year, a huge smile breaking over his face. He couldn’t believe it! He’d actually succeeded, actually saved someone. He could do this! Maybe he could bring them all back… maybe it just took a bit of patience and thought.

He was so dazed he didn’t see Draco Malfoy until it was too late, until his wand and the map went flying when they crashed into each other.

“What are you doing up here?” Harry blurted.

Malfoy turned away, his shoulders hunched. “I could ask you the same question, Potter.”

By the time Harry had gathered all his stuff and stood, Malfoy was halfway down the stairs. Harry watched after him with a deepening frown.

#My writing #Everything That Happens (Is From Now On) #drarry #angst #hurt/comfort #time travel

[make-it-mavis]

Darling, Without You

Summary -- Mavis and Felix have both lost someone they loved, and their grief brings them together for a night. 5682 words, angst, rated E for everyone lmao

Combined AUs -- Where Mavis is ‘reformed’ post-first-movie, and where Hero’s Duty is unplugged (inspired by convos in the discord server that I mod with allthefixins)

You can read it in google docs here if you prefer!

Hero’s Duty was unplugged.

That was the long and short of it. That was all anyone really needed to know. Its great, golden prongs backed out of Game Central Station without much warning at all, and left a hollow, cold tunnel that didn’t even catch the light that poured in from the arcade doors. Many were calling it a tragedy. Others, mostly the more seasoned sprites among them, showed a passing sympathy, but couldn’t be bothered for much more than that. In the thirty-four years that the arcade had been open, too many games had come and gone to bother being heartbroken over every loss. Such things happened. It was that way since the beginning, and would be that way until the arcade was no more. That was life.

That was the long and short.

Rather, that was what could have been the long and short, if not for one particularly beloved hero that faded away into the dark.

She was a difficult woman, to say the least -- intimidating, intense, tough as nails, not exactly friendly, but all the same, she was loved. Being one of the four sprites who achieved real hero status in the Sugar Rush invasion of 2012, she was admired. Idolized. An inspiration.

Sergeant Calhoun.

Tamora Calhoun.

Tammy.

Hard-ass.

Captain Buzzkill.

Cousin-in-law.

Cousin-in-law. Cousin-in-law. The phrase nagged at Mavis’ head like tiny birds pecking away. Once Calhoun married Felix, she became her cousin-in-law, a title that Mavis turned up her nose at. She never wanted Calhoun to be her anything. She would have been perfectly happy never seeing her again after the first day she laid eyes on her. Sure, the Sugar Rush infestation wasn’t technically her fault. But if Hero’s Duty never existed, then, chances were, Make-it Mavis would still be Pyrite. She would still have a circus full of performers and animals and firecrackers. She would still have an audience full of her favorite kids, smiling and laughing and cheering her name. She would still have the life she fought so hard to have. She would still live in the one place she ever truly considered home. And she would still have a best friend.

She would still have the one sprite she ever really loved.

Just one look at Calhoun, and Mavis would remember all-too-clearly the day that her life fell into the grinding jaws of a thousand metal monsters. But...

Cousin-in-law.

Technically, and legally… family.

Mavis would not have it. It took her long enough to even want her actual cousin to be her family. She could admit to herself that Calhoun’s absence was impossible to ignore. She wished that she were still around, if only so that everyone could stop being miserable and blubbery. But the idea that she should have felt sad, legitimately sad for losing her? She wasn’t about to go crying over some dead broad she never liked in the first place, just because of some stupid wedding.

All the room for grief in her heart was permanently occupied.

Said heart thudded heavily and bluntly in her chest as she sat atop Niceland, dangling her feet over the edge, her arms draped over her guitar, like every night. She gazed longingly through Fix-it Felix Jr.’s screen, across the arcade, at the pink, flashing, glittery eyesore over by the Whack-a-Mole. Sugar Rush. Home-sweet-home. There was a perfect view of it from the top of Niceland, which was both a blessing and a curse. It was unlikely that she would ever be allowed to set foot in her home again, and seeing it so close was just a visual reminder. But at least she could see it at all. Every night, during her designated, agreed-upon alone time, she could sit on the roof and try to soak up rays of its lights, or hear notes of its theme music. The good memories could come flooding back, and she could get by on that age-old coping strategy of hers:

Pretending.

At the very least, she could pretend he was with her again.

Once the rest of the game had long since gone to bed, she could ease herself into the feeling that she and her partner of thirty years finally had a moment alone. Downtime. Some peace and quiet, something she never truly learned the value of until she had to keep up appearances and pretend not to be as close to “the king” as she was. But away from prying eyes and big ears, behind closed doors, they could just… be themselves. Together. They could just talk.

Unfortunately, he stopped being talkative once he died.

She was never dumb enough to try believing he could reply. But maybe, just maybe, he could hear her anyways.

So, like every night, she began plucking a gentle melody on her guitar, and offered up a soft serenade to the stars.

“I’m trying to hold my breath

Let it stay this way

Can’t let this moment end…”

She closed her eyes in defiance of the utterly wrong world around her. Sugar Rush was so rarely dark, but maybe if she concentrated just right, she could believe the faint light coming from the arcade and glowing through her eyelids was just an elusive sunset, the sort that painted the horizon into an orange creamsicle.

Yes, she thought, as she felt her heart pick up. The sun would set soon, and Sugar Rush would fall into nighttime, a strange phenomena that came entirely too infrequently. Whether it was a glitch, or even an Easter Egg, she did not care to ask. All that mattered was that those nights were special.

“You set off a dream in me

Getting louder, now

Can you hear it echoing?”

The ledge she sat on was no longer the roof of Niceland. She was at the candy castle, perched on the balcony outside the royal chambers. Behind her, the ornate, windowed doors were cracked open just a bit.

“Take my hand

Will you share this with me?”

He was inside. He was listening.

“‘Cause darling, without you…”

Creak.

The sound grabbed Mavis by the heart and slammed her right back into the frigid ice water that was reality. Barely containing a furious scream, she whipped her head around at the culprit.

It was Felix.

Of course it was.

Or, rather, the weird, off-kilter husk shaped like him that had been shambling around the arcade. He looked, acted, and felt like a lethal chunk of his code had been sucked right out of his body ever since Hero’s Duty went down the tubes.

Since he lost his wife, anyway.

Mavis could not blame him for being… strange. Not at all. Even she could not be so bitter. But she hoped so sincerely that he would be strange somewhere far away from her. She wanted no part of his mourning process. She had enough mourning to do on her own, mourning for a sprite she loved for nearly thirty years, not four, and whose death was not an act of Litwak, but indirectly caused by said wife’s game. Mavis believed she could only be so sympathetic. There was only so much support she could offer him, and it was not nearly enough.

She was useless to help, and she knew it. It would have been easier for the both of them if they just kept their distance from each other for a while.

Yet, here he was. Intruding on her alone time.

He looked even less like himself than he already had in the past few weeks -- no hat, no uniform, no hammer. Just unkempt, unwashed hair, a wrinkled white undershirt, pajama bottoms, and dirty socks. An absolute mess. For him, anyway.

He looked at her, not even trying to smile. He said quietly, his voice ragged, “Mavy. Hi.”

Mavis felt her face heat up. She had no idea what to do or say, and she hated that. Looking away from him to study her guitar strings, she said coldly, “Do you know what ‘alone time’ means?”

“I do,” he said. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t sleep.”

She plucked a single note, and said a bit more gently, “Well… I’m not surprised. But why come up here?”

His voice came a bit closer. “I was thinkin’ about you.”

Her heart stuttered.

“...Why?”

“Because--” his voice cracked a bit, and he took some steadying breaths. “Because I need to ask you something.”

Mavis braced herself for the nasty feeling of having no answer, but otherwise, said nothing. After a long, uncomfortable pause, Felix went ahead and blurted it out, a little bit louder than she was expecting.

“Why haven’t you been here for me?”

Every muscle in her body tensed. It took all of her willpower not to just fly away and ditch the emotionally draining conversation before it could start. She hesitated, waiting and hoping for some suitable answer to just float into her head, one that would dissipate the situation.

Nothing came to her.

He continued, not a trace of anger in his voice, but heaps of pain, “I need you. I need my family. You know that. And I know-- I know you know what this feels like. Knowing that, how can you just leave me alone with this?”

“You’re not alone,” she interjected lowly. “The whole arcade is here for you.”

“But I want you,” he insisted. “I want my cousin. But you act like you don’t-- like you don’t even care.”

Her shoulders fell heavy. “You know that’s not true.”

“Do I, Mavis? Do I, really? What have you done to show me that? Why don’t I matter enough for you to actually try to show me you care? Do I matter to you at all?”

It was so unlike him to be so riled up, so accusatory. But Mavis knew all too well how grief could turn one into a different sprite.

She scanned the ground far beneath her feet for anything to busy her eyes with. “Sure. But it’s the things I don’t do.”

His voice hardened, crackling with upset. “Really. You know what you’re not doing? You’re not even looking at me. You haven’t been talking to me. You’ve barely been in the same room as me for over a week! How is that showing me you care? I mean, c’mon,” a humorless, pleading laugh jumped in his throat, “you’d rather sit on a roof alone than be there for your family!? Why!?”

Her defense mechanism snapped to attention, and she shot a razor-sharp glare at him.

“I don’t know! Maybe I’ve been some kind of quote unquote ‘villain’ for fifteen years and now I’m some cold, unfeeling monster,” she lied. “Maybe I have my own crap to deal with! Gimme a break, huh?!”

           She instantly regretted looking at him. There had been so much pain in his eyes lately, too much for her to stand looking at, and she had just added a grand old slap in the face to it. His exceptionally blue eyes were all pink and red-rimmed, but clearly bone dry. He really had been up all night, and he had probably been crying for most of it.

Perhaps the worst of all was what Mavis’ finally saw dangling from his neck on a chain that was way too long for him.

Dog tags. Her dog tags.

The sight struck a deep, painful chord in her. It seemed barely different from what she herself had done the first time the sprite she loved had been torn from her life, all those years ago. She had found the last bit of his world left to hold in her hands, and kept it with her, so that maybe she could carry even a near meaningless fraction of him with her wherever she went. A part of her always felt a bit stupid for it, but she just couldn’t let it go. Even the thought of it brought a lonely chill to her heart.

It had been nearly thirty years since they came into her possession, and even still, they hung around her neck as she sat on that rooftop. That tattered, distressed scrap of a red scarf, and those permanently smudged racing goggles, the leather cracked and blistered. They were probably garbage, but it hardly mattered. They belonged to him, once upon a time. So a part of him still belonged to her.

She knew too well the sort of pain that would lead a sprite to keep something like that. Seeing those dog tags around Felix’s neck, there was a pang of guilt deep in her stomach. Sure, he had loved Calhoun for four years, and not thirty. But Mavis had only known the sprite she loved for four years when she lost him for the first time, and that pain nearly destroyed her.

And through all that, who had been there for her, even when no sane sprite would have been?

Felix.

Of course, Felix.

Before she thought to speak, his eyes fell, and she could practically hear his heart crumpling. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, turning away to trudge back to the door. “I’ll stop bothering you.”

“Wait,” she called back. The door did not creak.

Clenching her jaw, squeezing the neck of her guitar, staring into the forest stretching into darkness below, she sighed. “It’s okay. Come sit.”

A hesitant moment passed, but out of the corner of her eye, she soon saw her cousin’s shape sit a safe distance from her, the same as any reasonable sprite would. It was only fair that they be cautious -- she had an impressive record of morally condemnable acts, even some that put blood on her hands. For all her jokes and threats, Mavis had no intention of causing real harm again without suitable cause in her eyes. She never really did kill without necessity. But to the more fearful sprites among the arcade, she was just a hair away from snapping necks left and right. An understandable assumption, she thought.

But that was not why Felix kept his distance, and she knew that. He was just respecting her space, something he was particularly unskilled at back in the 80’s. At that, she felt a twinge of appreciation. He really had grown up since she had been gone.

The two sat in silence for a little while, Mavis idly tuning her guitar that was already in tune. After some deliberation, confusion, and frustration, she spoke up.

“So… what are you looking to get out of me right now? Do you want comfort or do you want advice? Because, honestly, I’m hardly qualified to give either. You know I’m not great with feelings and all that mess, and if you’ll think back to ‘87, you might remember I’m not an expert at what anyone would call ‘healthy coping.’”

Felix did not answer. Mavis got the impression that he actually did not know what he wanted.

“I mean…” she shrugged. “I guess you could just… vent. You know, just... talk to me.”

He was silent for some time again, but he eventually took up the offer. In a voice so small, cracked, and fragile that it seemed it might fall apart, he began to speak.

“I feel like… I’m losing my mind. I can’t do anything. I can’t do anything, because all I can do is think about her. She’s… everywhere I look. Everything reminds me of her. I can’t even sleep in our bed anymore. Without her, it’s just so… I just wake up again and again, expecting her to be there when I roll over, but she’s… not. Honestly, no matter what I try, I can’t sleep at all. I just lie there thinking about her. And then, even when I do fall asleep, I just dream about her, and… and when I wake up and remember that she’s gone, I just…”

His voice began to quake, but, somehow, he was not crying. Part of Mavis wondered if he had used up all his tears for the night already. She glanced at him, and found him hugging his arms close and rocking the tiniest bit, eyes looking somewhere far away.

“I’m just… hit with the fact that… she’s gone. I’ll never wake up next to her again. I’ll never hold her hand again. I’ll never see her smile, I’ll never-- never hear her voice, or make her laugh, or-- or kiss her-- I’ll never kiss her again, oh-- oh Devs…”

He was quiet for a while, with his face buried in his palm. Mavis had no response. She was lost on what to say, if anything at all. Truth be told, his words were hitting far too close to home, and part of her was regretting asking him to speak. It all just felt like dustings of salt in wounds that never healed. All the same, she took her pain in silence and listened.

“How…” he continued, slow and uncertain, “how do I carry on like this? How can I ever move on without her, after knowing how beautiful my life was with her? How can I just… let things go back to the way they used to be, and… be okay? I feel like… I love my game, I love my friends, I know I do, but I… I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… it’s not enough. It’s not. I go through my whole day, and when it’s over, I just think… How was this ever good enough for me before? Can you believe that? Isn’t that… isn’t that awful of me?”

Finally, Mavis felt she had something to say. After a few moments’ thought, she replied in a soft, awkward, but sincere melancholy.

“Well…” she muttered, “Yeah. It is. But all this… this was never gonna make you feel anything good. You’re gonna think, feel, and probably do stuff you would never do otherwise. But that’s the way it goes. You gotta just deal with that and… let yourself be awful, a bit. ‘Cause it’s gonna happen, no matter what you do. That’s just part of hurting.”

“I don’t…” he shook his head a bit out of the corner of her eye. “I don’t want to be like this.”

“Hmm,” she hummed in short, begrudging agreement. “Yeah. I didn’t want to be either.”

Mavis waited, giving him a chance to elaborate. When he remained silent, she continued carefully, “And… look. You probably don’t want to hear this, but… things will never be the same again. Not really. You can’t just shake something like this. It’s been--” she swallowed, plucking a single string in quiet anxiety, “...it’s been four years… since I lost him for good. And I… I still see him everywhere. He still keeps me awake at night. Even when I’m not thinking about him, I’m… still, somehow, thinking about him. Like I expect to just run into him while I’m out and about. The stupidest part of my heart says, ‘Hey, he came back once before, so who’s to say he won’t now?’ But I know he won’t. I saw what happened to him. And the life I had before that… it’s gone. It’s gone for good.”

After a pause, she heard Felix breathe weakly, “Mavy…”

“But,” she interrupted, hauling herself back on track. “Y’know… things change. Your life won’t be what it was before, but what’s normal will change. Eventually, you learn to live with it, in whatever way you can. The pain never really does go away. It never will. But it changes too. So… it’s fresh now. For you. But it won’t always be this hard. Not in the same way. I think. I don’t know. I’m still… figuring all this out.”

Another silence fell, the air thick with heavy thoughts. Mavis was not sure how much of her words she fully believed. The grief still hurt almost too much to bear, but when she thought back to the time that it was fresh, open and weeping, the difference was clear. The healing process was slow, far too slow, and she was not sure where she would end up another four years later. She was not sure where she even hoped to end up. There was no future that she could sincerely long for without him in it. Maybe it would have been enough to just feel okay again.

She just could not imagine ever getting to a point where she would feel any less homesick.

Felix spoke again, quiet and pleading. “But… what do I do now, Mavy?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “...I don’t know. I don’t think I’m someone you’d wanna be asking that sort of thing. I mean… back when I was in your shoes, you sure had a lot of advice to give. Let others help you. Don’t try to take it on alone. All that stuff. Just take your own advice, I guess. It’s probably a lot better than mine.”

“Mavy…” he said a bit more insistently, “my own advice isn’t helping. That’s why I’m asking you.”

“You don’t wanna ask me for advice.”

“Yes,” he said firmly. “I do. I want to know… What helps you?”

She scoffed.

He read it clearly, and added, “What actually helps you. I don’t mean all the self-destructive behaviors. None of that ever really helped you. Mavy, how… How do you really get by?”

Mavis dug as deep as she could, scrounging for anything to tell him. Her mind traveled back in time, back to one of the lowest points of her life. 1987. The Roadblasters incident. She just barely made it out of that alive, but when all was said and done, and she really had to be there for herself…

“I bet there’s so much you wish you could tell her. Things you wish you’d said.”

Felix paused, but agreed quietly. “Yes.”

“Even though,” she gave a single chuckle through her nose, “even though you told her you loved her every five minutes.”

“Yes,” he said sadly. “But I just couldn’t say it enough. I’d say it every minute if she were here now. I’d say so many things.”

“Well…” Mavis took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Then say them.”

“...What?”

“Talk to her. She won’t talk back, but talk anyway. Get it out. Everything. Even if it doesn’t matter, like, if it’s just about what you did that day. Even if it’s ugly stuff. Just find a way to say it. That helped me.”

She saw him leaning her way just a bit. “It… did?”

She closed her eyes, preparing to open up what she otherwise would have kept under lock and key. There seemed little point in keeping it a secret from him anymore.

Her voice fell. “Back in ‘87… when I lost him for the first time, I… wrote to him. I wrote him letters. Every day, if I could stand to. Sometimes, it hurt too much. But, weirdly enough, it… just helped. I can’t say why, but it did.”

“...Wow…” Felix breathed. “That’s… so… so healthy. Mavy, I’m proud of you.”

Mavis frowned. “Don’t make it weird.”

“Sorry,” he muttered, and after pausing briefly he said, “so… it helped you back then, you said. What about now?”

“Hm?”

“Have you… been writing to him, still? Or… or talking?”

Mavis’ bones suddenly felt too heavy for her body. She traced her fingers over the designs scratched across the surface of her guitar and gazed out at Sugar Rush again, unable to bear just how much she missed him in that moment.

She answered softly, unable to keep the pain from her voice, “Who do you think I sing to every night?”

There was a distinct feeling of clarity that she could feel emanating from her cousin, a strange sort of heartbroken awe. “I…” he breathed, seemingly at a loss, before clearing his throat. “Mavy, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I never would have interrupted you if I’d known how important this was to you.”

She shrugged. “It’s fine.”

“No, I…” he stood, and she looked over to see his eyes downcast and regretful. “I’ll leave you to it. Thank you for talking with me, Mavy. I think I’ll try again to get some sleep.”

He began to walk away, but before she even realized she had spoken, Mavis called to him sharply.

“Wait. Don’t go.”

Felix looked back at her, eyes full of questioning disbelief. Mavis felt her face redden as she stepped into strange territory for her.

“Stay. It’s fine. Come sit down,” she gestured to a spot on the ledge, a fair bit closer than he had been sitting before. “I’ve… got some stuff I need to say.”

Hesitantly, as if he might have frightened her off if he moved too quickly, Felix approached again and sat, watching her, clearly concerned. She supposed that he was never really sure what she was going to say, especially… in moments where it seemed like she was going to say something nice. She could hardly blame him for that. But this time, she was going to try.

“Felix…” she sighed.

“...Mavy?”

“You were there for me in ‘87. Through everything. I… should’ve been here for you now.”

“Oh,” he squirmed slightly. “It’s… okay.”

“No,” she insisted. “It’s not. I do know what you’re going through. I know how much it hurts. And I know… how badly you need help. I’m not… exactly sweet or kind or nurturing. But we’re thirty-four in gamer years, now, not five. I learned a lot about myself in Sugar Rush. I learned how to… have a family. A found family. With him, and with all those kids. That’s… that’s all gone away now, and… I guess it’s hard to want a family that isn’t that. If that makes sense.”

He frowned and looked at the world below. “...It does.”

“But the thing is, well…” her mind drifted far back to the time of the Roadblasters incident, to something Felix said when he thought she was asleep. A sentiment she had always shared.

“I don’t know how to be the family you need.”

His eyes snapped back to her, a look in his eye like he knew he had heard that before, but could not quite recall.

She continued, trying her best not to look away or give up, “I never have. But… my whole world is gone. You’re… the only family I have left now. I want to try to do this right, or at least do it better. It’s hard, it’s really hard, but I’m... still learning.”

Felix’s eyes filled with too much sincerity for her to handle. Her gaze dropped to those dog tags again, the light of the arcade casting shiny outlines over the grooves that read ‘Sgt. Tamora Calhoun.’ Mavis lifted her hand to her neck, worrying her partner’s scarf between her fingers, as she so often did.

“I should have been there for you,” she confessed. “I’m sorry.”

For some time, they were both silent, merely listening to the distant themes and jingles playing from the other arcade cabinets. Mavis felt far too exposed, and the silence was only making it worse. Even so, she sort of dreaded what he might say, and was not too eager to look at his face again.

She did anyways.

He was just staring, mouth agape, looking like he could cry. In a different way than he already looked the whole time, anyway. Mavis felt herself shrink. Her insides told her that she had said her piece, and that she was valid to clear out of there already. But she still had to finish her song, after all.

“M-Mavy, that…” Felix whispered, shaking his head slightly. “That… was the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. I mean… ever.”

Her face grew way too hot, and she scoffed as she turned her eyes back to Sugar Rush. “Yeah, well. Lookin’ out for a bunch of kids for fifteen years can turn you soft.”

A short, incredulous, adoring chuckle drifted from Felix. “Wow. Thirty-four years and you still surprise me.”

There was a brief, pregnant pause, and Mavis could hear her heart thumping in her ears. She knew it was coming. Sure enough, she saw him scoot the tiniest bit closer, and he said it softly.

“I love you, Mavy.”

Her grip on her guitar tightened. Saying it back would have been the right thing to do. The family thing to do. But that deep-seeded, lifelong fear that had so devastatingly come true four years prior closed up her throat. She did not have the best track record for loving things and not losing them. And she could not bear to lose the last sprite in the world that she gave a single crit about.

So, rather than giving a real answer, she ran her nails slowly down her guitar strings, and breathed, “Yeah.”

Felix gave a single sad, but affectionate chuckle. “Not there yet, huh? That’s okay. You don’t need to say it.”

“...Thanks.”

A silence settled between them for some time, and Mavis could not decide if it was awkward or not. She could feel Felix thinking, could sense a question nagging at him, maybe one he could not decide if he should ask. It got on her nerves pretty quick.

“Out with it,” she prompted him.

He jumped a bit. “Oh,” he looked at his hands, “Well… I mean… If you don’t mind me asking, did he… I mean, did he ever tell you that he… I mean he did, didn’t he? Did he… say it?”

Mavis was certain she knew what he meant, but clarified anyway. “...That he loved me?”

Felix swallowed. “Yeah.”

Her heart squirmed and twisted as she watched the lights of Sugar Rush flash and dazzle. Memories resurfaced. Good ones. The best ones. And they hurt in the most precious, beautiful, agonizing way. Still, a smile crept carefully onto her lips, and she gave a sigh through her nose that could have passed for a laugh.

“He did,” she told him. “A lot, actually.”

“Huh. Wow.” Felix muttered, “Surprising guy.”

Mavis glanced over, easily reading her cousin’s mind. “You’re wondering if I ever said it back.”

He looked really quite embarrassed, but nodded. “Did you?”

“Of course.”

“Golly…”

“Yeah,” she sighed, feeling that pain digging deeper and deeper. She looked up to the stars, the ones she was so captivated by in her early years. “...But it took us so long. We… we loved each other for so long before we actually started saying so. If I could go back and do it again…” her chest tightened, “...I’d have said it so much sooner. I look back and I just see so many days we wasted pretending it wasn’t there. So many days that I should have told him. Honestly… every day. Every damn day.”

“Mavy…” Felix whispered, “I’m sorry. I understand.”

She hummed begrudgingly. “No. You were smart. You told her all the time.”

“I just…” he stuttered, “I just… wish I’d done it more, too.”

Mavis could have let her bitterness take the wheel and argue, but she stamped it down. There was no room for it in her heavy heart. It was time to finish her song. She had left him waiting long enough.

“It’s okay, though. I can make up for it with this,” she said, patting her guitar before positioning her fingers over the strings. “I can keep a stupid promise I made… and I can make up for all the times I didn’t tell him. All the chances to say it that... I didn’t take. And for--”

Her words stopped dead. It was too much. Her throat seized up, her body quivered, and her eyes stung. Felix did not ask if she was alright, but she could feel him looking. She heard him begin to sniff. Finally, Mavis’ lungs pulled in a sharp breath of their own accord, and she broke into tears. The pain burst out and spilled over like lava.

Voice quaking, she finished her thought. “And I-- I can make up for all the chances I’ll-- I’ll never get again.”

At that, Felix crumbled into whimpering sobs next to her. There seemed very little she could do for him, but she could not keep her song inside any longer. Mustering up all the composure she could, she played herself back into where she left off, and sang in a voice cracked and broken with grief.

“‘Cause darling, without you…”

Felix sucked his teeth hard. “Ngh-- oh--” he coughed, shaking his head. “Mavy--”

Somewhere deep inside, she found another ounce of strength to push into her voice.

“All the shine of a thousand spotlights

All the stars we steal from the night sky

Will never be enough

Never be enough,”

Every note seemed to carve deeper into her poor cousin, but he listened all the same, his face pushed into his palm, his back slouching dangerously over the edge. He must have found plenty more tears to cry in the time that he had been up there. It may have been breaking his heart, but Mavis fully believed that if he knew the words, he would have been singing along with her, singing to his wife.

Mavis, despite her better efforts, would not have blamed him for it.

“Towers of gold are still too little

These hands could hold the world, but it’ll

Never be enough…”

Tears streamed down Mavis’ face as she sang with what little might she could muster. This was supposed to be her designated, agreed-upon time to mourn, and that was something she chose to do alone. Having Felix there was not something she would be keen to repeat, but for one night, it was okay. They may not have been mourning the same sprite, but they could still mourn together. Just for one night.

Their circumstances may have been different, but once their walls really began to break down, it seemed as if their pain bled together into one color. Grief was grief. Mavis lost the love of her life, and so did Felix.

That was the long and short of it.

“Never be enough for me…”

#fanfiction #wreck it ralph #oc #fix it felix #make it mavis #fics #you're welcome