#rest assured he will pop up in a fic of mine one of these days

[romanarose]

Leather and Lace: Chapter 10

Santiago "Pope" Garcia x fem! OC

Masterlist

Chapter 9: Chapter 11

Summary: This is mostly just fluff, smut and comfort. I just wanted to give them a day together <3

A/N so long. it's gonna go: smut, shower fluff and comfort, more fluff, more smut (idk what happened here I popped off), more comfort. There will be scenes cut into flashback of the night before, where Laci talks to Santi about what actually happened. These parts are potentially very triggering but I put them all in italics as I always do with flashbacks, so if you want to read but are concerned about that content, you can just skip over italics.

Also, to the anon who left this shitty ask, I assure you, people do care about this story, and they care about Laci. She is not a raped bitch, disgusting or an idiot. She's doing great.

WARNINGS: Usual fic warnings for rape, sex trafficking, abuse, etc. Rape while on substances, substance use, mentions of STD's, physical abuse and death, nightmares, smt, NSFW, fingering, handjob, masturbation, oral (f recieving and kinda m), cum eating, 69.... lmk if I miss anything.

Santiago Garcia was luckiest man on the fucking planet. He knew that, the guys knew that, and after showing her off all night at Benny’s fight all wrapped in his arms and leather jacket, the whole town would know it too. Gossip spread fast. Santi had money, and although he didn’t waste it on extravagance, he knew he had the privilege of comfort and security. He had three of the best friends a man could have, three men who would have his back through anything, call him out on his bullshit and take care of the woman he loved. He had the most adorable little goddaughter on the planet, and although most of his blood family was dead, the life he built in this suburban Florida town was a happiness he never thought he was deserving of. Comfort, friendship, family.

Oh, and he had the prettiest girl had ever seen in his entire life, wearing his sleep shorts and his oversized Metallica shirt, in his bed, grinding her wet cunt on his thigh.

Luckiest man on earth, that was for sure.

“Fuck, Lace, you’re something else you know that?” His grip on her hip was tight, but she didn’t seem to mind. His other hand was wrapped around the base of her neck, fingers entangled in her hair as they guided her head to his for a passionate kiss, Santi licking into her and Laci biting on his lip whenever she had a chance. His boxers had ridden up, and he could feel her wetting his thighs. Santi ran the hand on her hip up to her breast, palming her through the shirt. His shirt. "All those men at Benny's fight eyeing you, watching you, but they don't get you, they'll never get to touch you, right?”

Laci’s hands massaged into his scalp. “Never, only you, wore your jacket, wanted to show them I’m yours, wanna be yours, only yours.”

“You’re mine, beautiful. And I’m yours, you have me, body and soul”

Her fingers tugged at his hair needing something to hold in the intensity building in Laci’s stomach. “S-Santi…” She whined out, one of her hands going to grip his shoulder for stability. Laci angled herself further so that his leg nudged perfectly against her clit. “Need more, need a little more.” She begged.

Santi moved both hands down to her hips again, pressing her body heavier down onto him, eliciting a choked out sob as the electricity shot through her. “That better, Munequita?”

A high pitched ‘uh-huh’ was all she could manage other than a slurred “s’good”, eyebrows pinched together as her shaky breath signified how close she was.

“Can’t believe I get to have you here with me, only I get to see you like this huh? Unraveling just from fucking yourself on my thigh? Think you can give me one like this, sweet girl? Soak my shorts in your come?”

Laci, despite tightly closed eyes and rapidly accelerating heart threatening to beat out of her chest, rested her forehead on Santi’s and took one of his hands off her thigh. He watched her carefully. She was still moving on his, but he made sure this wasn’t a signal to stop. 

With a thrill that shot through his achingly hard erection in her boxers, Laci slipped his hand between his leg and her. She  planted a light kiss on his sweaty forehead. “I think that ship sailed, baby”

Baby such a simple pet name and it just took his breath away. “Fuck, your soaked. Can I make you come like this, then lick you clean until you come again?”

“Fuh, god, fuck, Santi, please” her left over mascara was smudged from sleep, and Santi made a mental note to get make-up remover wipes so he could take care of her face after they got dressed up. (And they would be getting dressed up again, Laci deserved nothing but the best) but right now, he enjoyed how fucked out and wrecked she looked for him.

“Gonna come on my leg, Lacina? Gonna use me, show me how I don’t even need my hands to get you off, drown those shorts so they always smell like you?”

“Santi, so close, don’t stop” Don’t stop any of it, the way he ground her hips down, the way his filthy mouth just kept talking…

Pope was happy to oblige. “Wouldn’t dream of it, baby, love having you here, love waking up to you, loving having you in my bed and finally getting to taste you, better than I ever imagined.”

“You, hm” She whimpered, face all scrunched up.”You thought of me?”

Santi couldn’t help but laugh. “Of course I thought of you, Lace, I fell asleep every other night with you on top of me, you think I could know how you feel and not think of you? Think I tasted your mouth, and didn’t imagine what you’re pretty little cunt tasted like?”

Laci kissed along his neck, her grip on his shoulders seeming to tight with every drag of her pussy up his thigh. He continued talking, the sound of his voice alone about having her spill over.

“Thought of you too, Santi” She muttered, breath hot against his ear.

Santi had woken up hard, how could he help it when such a pretty woman was in his arms. “Oh yeah? That right?”

“Y-yeah. Would put a pillow between my legs and ride it just like this, pretending it was you. Imagined your fat cock up in me, claiming me as yours”

“Fuck baby, jesus christ” He sputtered out, incomparibly turned on by the sound of his sweet, innocent acting girlfriend saying such dirty words. 

“All those nights we kissed, I wanted you to take me right there on the couch, wanted to wiggle my way down your body take off those stupid sweats that leave nothing to the imagination and take you down my throat, choke on you as you feel me swallowing you down .”

“Fuck! Fuck Lace, shit” Santi kissed her pretty little mouth, licking into her. He wasn’t going to last, that was for damn sure. He knew she wasn’t ready for penetrative sex and blowjobs yet, and that was fine by him. Right now, he felt like he could be content with this forever, the stimulation of her thighs rubbing along his cock as she rode him being more than enough. “I know you don’t want hickies, but you can give them to me, if you want” He felt her smile against his neck before she began sucking into him. A high pitched wine escaped her mouth, and when her orgasm came, Laci bit down right where his shoulder and neck connected, and dug her fingers into the flesh of his shoulder. The beautiful sting of her teeth being enough to send him over the edge, his large hands gripped her hips far tighter than he meant. “Lace! Fuck!” He shouted as he felt his release, warmth filling his pant leg.

She collapsed on him, his strong arms catching her, gluing her still-clothed body to him, rubbing her back one hand, her neck with his other. “Fuck baby, you did so good, thank you.” He kissed her neck. “Thank you, Lace.” He buried his face in the crook of her neck, her hair tickling his face.

“Why are you thanking me?” She asked, still breathless from her orgasm and finally being with him.

“For trusting me with yourself”

“But… I haven’t even done that. You don’t even get to have all of me, I’m not-”

He held her tighter. “This is enough. More than enough.” 

“Hm” Was all she replied as she snaked her hand down his stomach, ready to jerk him off like the night before, when his hand stopped her, prompting her to look at him.

“That’s uh, that’s already taken care off” He smiled at her lovingly.

She stared at him, confused for a moment until the realization dawned on her face. “Oh shit” She giggled out, reaching back to feel the wet spot in his pants, then grinning back at him. “All that just from me riding your thigh?” 

“There was some stimulation from your leg rubbing on my dick, but yeah” She grinned back.

Laci carded her hands through his graying hair. “You get off without even being inside me? That’s… that’s insane” She laughed out again, bewildered at the idea.

“Lace” Santiago cupped her face, bringing her lips in for a kiss. “You have no idea how you make me feel, do you? No idea how special you are to me. Sometimes I think I could cum just from watching you bring me pizza rolls”

She kissed the tip of his nose. “Yeah, but you really like pizza rolls”

Santiago pressed him for head to hers, hands skirting up her sides “I do really like pizza rolls” he started tickling her, laying her giggling form back on the bed “but I also really like you”

They got up to take a shower before going to the park. Jana had woken them up this morning calling Santi (he was usually up by this hour, but last night's activities and the woman he loved finally in his arms made for a good sleep.) It was her and Rosie’s first day back in town, and she wanted Frankie to see Rosie. The agreement had been that Santi would accompany Frankie for the first meet up or two, so Jana could make sure he really was getting sober. One of the guys or Jana had to be with Frankie while he was with Rose until Jana felt safe that he wouldn’t relapse. Jana had of course invited Laci along, wanting to meet her finally. Santi himself hadn’t seen Jana since before Laci came into his life, but they had communicated through text when one was worried about Frankie. He always respected Jana for never trying to alienate Frankie from his daughter.

Laci and Santi had spent much of the night talking, Laci opening up about what had happened to her more and more.

“There was one guy, I don’t know where we were at the time, but it wasn’t where you found me. He was nicer. His name was Jaimie, younger than most of the others, younger than me. He was really nice most of the time.” Laci sat between Santi’s legs, he held each of her hands, squeezing the left, then the right, one after the other. “For a while I thought he was a safe person, we got along, he taught me some spanish. Snuck me food when the others were seeing how long I lasted without it. But when he kissed me, I tried to say no. In the end he was just like the others, he just didn’t beat me.” She tried to focus on the gentle squeeze of her hand. In therapy, if she was getting anxious or over whelmed, her therapist had a machine that Laci would hold two items in her hands and they would alternate vibrating. When Laci started to freeze while she tried to talk to him about what happened, she asked him to holder like this, to which he happily obliged, picking her up and plopping her in between his legs.

“That must be really difficult, thinking you had someone you could trust in all that, only for him to hurt you too” Santi tried to say enough to show he was listening, to show he cared, but to allow her all the talking she needed. He continued alternating squeezes.

“I think that’s why I was so hesitant when you guys found me. I should’ve trusted you. I’m sorry.”

“Sweetheart, no.” He wanted to hug her, but he kept on his repetition movement. “You had no reason to trust us. You were right to have been on guard.”

Laci scoffed. “Maybe if I had been on guard, I wouldn’t have been in that position in the first fucking place. The investigator was right, I never should’ve crossed the border with someone I barely knew.”

“Laci, no-”

“Don’t say it. Don’t say it’s not my fault, just let me be miserable.”

Santi crossed their attached hands across her chest, turning her slightly to look at him. “You can be miserable if that’s how you feel, but baby, I will never hesitate to tell you it’s not your fault. Ever. Because it isn’t, none of it is. And I hope you know I don’t blame you, neither do any of the guys.”

“I know.”

Santi peppered her with kisses as he undressed her, kneeling down as he pulled down his shorts that barely hung to her barely-there hips, glancing over the scars that were sporadically litter across her skin, but pausing at the bruises.

She watched him trail the pads of his calloused fingers over them. “Santi, are you oka-”

He looked up at her. “Did I hurt you?”

“No, no baby…” That was a lie. “You could never hurt me.”

He shook his head, going to stand up, but his knees wobbled a bit. Laci caught him and helped him up. He sighed, gently holding her face with one hand and trailing the neckline of his shirt on her. “I’m sorry, I’ll be more careful next time”

She stopped him, “Santi, don’t you dare apologize for anything that happened last night. You are perfect, last night was perfect. I’m going to bruise a bit, I’m pale and underweight.” Laci winced a bit at the mention of her weight, something that had plagued her long before she was taken, and something they never talked about. “And, baby, I like the bruises.” She kissed his softening features. “Reminds me it was real, that you’re real, not just another dream.”

Santi relaxed, smiling. “You dreamed about me?” He stripped off her shirt, taking her perfect body to him again, and he knew then that she’d never stop

A bright pink flushed her cheeks as she looked away. “Shush”

Not wanting to embarrass her further, he didn’t push it, only smiling as he started the shower and peeled off his sticky pants, leaving him bare. Santi reveled in the chance to care for her, using his shitty body shampoo and wondering if he still had some lotion he could rub on her afterwards so it didn’t dry out her skin. Laci keened into his every touch. So responsive for me… he thought to himself, and wondered what she’d feel like taking all of him… shit, fuck, not the time, not the time. Her back pressed against his chest, she rested her head back against him, melting into his touch. She reached for his shampoo, but Santi grabbed his hand. 

“Can I take care of you?” Santi asked softly. I’m

“You always take care of me”

“And I never want to stop, muñequita” 

Their peaceful moment was only briefly interrupted as Santi massaged her scalp, her short height making for easy access. Santiago inadvertently knocked over the almost-full shampoo bottle, causing a loud, echoing thud, Laci immediately turning to cling to him, her arms clutched to his chest as he wrapped his arms around her in turn. For a moment, she was shaking in his arms as Santi rubbed the skin exposed to him.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, I know that was loud, I’m here, you’re okay.”

She knew that, of course. He was her rock, her safety, her home. She signed. ‘I’m sorry’

“Hey, hey no, don’t be sorry.” He cradled her head as the warm shower fell on them. “Will and I can’t do fireworks, Benny is scared of dogs because he was attacked in his teens, nothing to be sorry for.” Santi looked down, she was still staring at the wall, looking vacant. “Hey, baby, come back to me.” Santi gently lifted her face up to him. “Do you want to talk about anything?”

“I met him at a bar” Laci focused on his hand squeezing hers. “I don’t remember exactly what I was on that night, not anything heavy, coke was the worst of it. Molly maybe? Or maybe it was just acid. Who knows. But he took me home that night.”

She felt Santi’s chest rise dramatically at that, knowing what had happened. She didn’t remember much as that night, just vague flashbacks to sweaty bodies. 

“That should’ve been my warning. But that morning he held my hair as I threw up, bought me food. No one had really taken care of me since my brother died… I was between places at the time, so I stayed with him... I don’t really want to go into that relationship right now, if that’s okay?”

“Yeah, Lace, whatever you’re comfortable with”

Still rested up against him, Laci made a gun with her hand.

“They shot guns around you?”

She motioned it shooting over her head and on either side of her head.

“Oh, they’d threaten you? Shoot them by you to scare you?” He held her tighter.

She nodded, then motioned loading a barrel, spinning it and firing.

“Russian roulette?”

She nodded again, sinking back into him.

Santi patted her hair down. “I’m sorry baby, that sounds horrible” He kissed the top of her head. “Do you want to talk more, or would you rather get ready to meet Frankie and Rosie.”

Nodding her head to the side, she cued to him that she was ready to get going. As Santiago and her dressed for the day, she seemed to have recovered from her flashback, starting to talk again in the little bits that she did when she would when she was gaining her voice back. Santi tried to act normal. Laci had opened up a lot the last few days. She had forgiven his mistakes, let him into her heart and body, and he knew it was very important to not let her notice. There was a familiar fury that was flowing with his blood, and he hoped to god she didn’t sense it, and if she did, he hoped she didn't think it was at her. But he couldn’t tell her what he was actually thinking.

Many times in these months, Santi had found himself glad that everyone in the house he found her in was dead. Sometimes, throughout his career, there were people he felt guilt over killing; Will remembered the exact number. But these men were the kind he didn’t feel bad for about, even going so far as feeling borderline pride. These were bad people who hurt women and children, the kind that beat, tortured, and raped them, and now they were dead, so that not only was Laci safe, but anyone else that came in their path. 

But the boyfriend. Her boyfriend. The one that sold her into sexual slavery, he was still out there, and was likely still doing it to others.

He was going to have to leave her. Not now, and not for long. The guys would help. Benny had a lot of connections and Frankie was good at tracking people down. 

They were going to find him, and Santi was going to kill him.

The afternoon was warm, gearing up for the hot, muggy Florida summer. Laci just had to break out shorts. She almost always wore dresses; pretty dresses that fluttered around her thighs, tempting him all these months. He never thought someone could look so, so good in just a pink tank top and white washed denim with white lace. She did seem to like lace… was that because of her name? Or was it just a physical representation of her soft femininity, going along with the pink and the pastel and the skirts…

And she just had to walk in front of him. Fuck, he couldn’t wait to get her back home and bury his face between her thighs again.

“Despertarse, hermano” Frankie's voice broke him out of his daydream

“Sorry” Santiago was not sorry.

Jana and Laci were walking ahead, Jana allowing Frankie time with his daughter without feeling like he was under supervision. Santi wondered what they were talking about, nosy shit that he is. Laci started out so quiet, barely able to talk,it was nice to see her able to talk to people other than him, Frankie, Ben and Will. She was nervous in the beginning of course, wanting Jana to like her, since she spent so much time with her daughter.

“I’m so happy to meet you, you must think I’m so weird, always being with Rosie and you’ve never met me…” Laci started after Frankie introduced them.

But Jana is a warm person, greeting Laci like an old friend. “Would it be okay if I hugged you? You can say no, I just feel like I know you already”

Laci grinned and nodded, hugging Jana back. 

Santi pushed the stroller, but Frankie was holding Rose, not wanting to be separated after so long apart and struggling with sobriety. As long as Frankie hadn’t gotten high behind their backs, he was two weeks sober.

“Ow! What the hell, Fish!” Santi exclaimed as Frankies free hand stopped him, turning his chin.

Laci turned around, a pointed glare at Santi “language!” She had a strict rule around swear around Rose.

Laughing, Jana patted her on her back. “You tell ‘em honey, glad Santi has someone to keep him in line” and stuck out her tongue. Fuck, those girls were going to be trouble. It occurred to him that although Laci had Ben, she didn’t have any female friends. He hoped Jana would be that for her. There was something powerful in feminine friendships, a set of shared experiences and understandings that Santi simply could not know. 

 They walked further ahead, allowing Frankie room to tease his best friend.

“You look like you took a vacuum cleaner to your throat” He said, referencing the litany of hickies on his neck.

Santi couldn’t help the shit-eating grin on his face. “Yeah, she didn’t want me to mark her, but boy, she didn’t mind giving them to me” They began to walk again, talking quieter.

“So that means you guys finally sealed the deal?”

“Uh, no, not quite.”

Frankie gave him a look to keep going.

“I don’t want to kiss and tell, but there was some mouth and hand stuff.”

Fish smacked his arm, laughing. “Mouth and hand stuff? Are you a fucking teenager?” Laci definitely can’t hear them, she would have chastised Frankie for swearing.

“I feel like one! This morning I came in my fucking pants just from her riding my thigh”

“Jesus" Frankie balked. “So, you guys haven’t had sex yet.”

“No, we almost did, but she’s not ready. Honestly, with some of the things she’s told me, I’m not sure she’ll ever be.” He watched his beautiful girlfriend, sun glowing on her golden hair that she parted into pigtails that reminded him of Bubbles from the Power Puff Girls, face slightly turned as she talked. She was smiling, she was happy. That’s all he needed.

“You gonna be okay with that?”

“Frankie…” Santi sighed out with a bit of a laugh. “If you experienced what I did last night and this morning, you’d be okay with that too.”

“The first place I went it was just one man, and it wasn’t the worst. I mean, it was awful, but compared to how things went later it just, I don’t know, I’m not mitigating it.”

“I know what you mean, sweetheart, it’s okay.”

“I don’t even know how many times I was sold, by the second person I just got… passed… It was multiple… well there was multiple people, I couldn’t really keep track of who owned me.”

Santi wanted to interrupt her, tell her they didn’t own her, no one ever owned her, but he knew that wasn’t the point. He wouldn’t get hung up on semantics, but he would do his best to help her reclaim her autonomy.

“I remember thinking, and this just… this a weird thought, what a weird thing to think.”

“It’s not weird, whatever it is”

“It was just… multiple men. I kept thinking ‘How do they not all have std’s?’ Well, turns out I was right about that. I thought ‘Oh my god, I’m going to die of syphilis like Al Capon’ which is just a strange dot to connect” Laci breathed out a small, nervous laugh. She had been put on antibiotics as soon as she had her initial exam at the doctor at the embassy. Everything cleared up fine, she was fine, but Santi knew she was humiliated on top of everything. “When it would happen, you just kinda… you go somewhere else. Just try not to exist in the moment, which probably sounds insane.”

Santi shook his head. “It’s not exactly the same, but in the military I’ve seen a lot of things and there’s some stuff you just… you can’t do anything about, you just have to get through it, so you go somewhere else mentally to get through it.”

She squeezed his hands back in reassurance.

Santi was knuckled deep in Laci, the moonlight shining and illuminating her skin, bare and open for him and he laid beside, grinding his erection against her soft, soft thigh. “You ever sat on someone's face?”

Laci burst out in a quick laugh, before realizing he wasn’t joking. “Oh. Uh, no. People actually do that?” She smiled nervously.

“Oh, people most definitely do.” He kissed into her neck. “Wanna try?”

“How do you breathe?”

Santi shrugged, grinning. “Suffocating between the legs of a beautiful woman is how I’ve always wanted to die, baby”

She smacked his chest with a blushing laugh. “I’m serious! I don’t want you to die, dummy.”

Slightly more serious, he reassured her. “I always do, Lace, I can breathe fine. We don’t have to, don’t worry.”

Laci seemed to be considering it for a moment. “Santi?”

He cupped her face gently, kissing the crease in the corner of her mouth. “Yes, Lacina?”

“What do you get out of this?”

The question caught him by surprise. “Out of you sitting on my face?” He pulled his fingers out of her wet pussy.

She shook her hand. “No… when you…” Laci squirmed a bit. “No, when you go down on me, I don’t see why you do it.”

Santiago sat on on his arm, still holding her close. “I know the people you’ve been with probably have been too full of shit to realize it, but you are a gift, Laci. The way you look, the way you laugh, the way you smile, fuck, the way you smell and the way you taste.” Santi brought the wet fingers to his lips, sucking them and really emphasizing the moan he couldn’t help but let out. “Fuck baby, you taste amazing, why wouldn’t I want eat you out?” He teased, and watched her smile, but continued. “I know you aren’t ready for sex, I don’t want you to worry about that for a second.”

“I don’t know when I will be…”

Santi kissed her deeply, nibbling a bit on her lower lip and dragging it out as he pulled away. “That’s okay, it’s okay if you never are. What we have now is all I need.”

“Promise?”

“Promise. Now, will you sit on my face, or should I eat you like this?“

She grinned widely. “I’ll do it”

He wanted to make her say it. “Do what? Say it baby, say what you want?”

Despite being the only people in the house, Laci leaned in to whisper. “I want to sit on your face”

Without further ado, Santi lifted a squealling Laci up and over his head. “Don’t just hover, sit down.”

Laci complied, sitting down fully and nearly-automatically moaning at the feeling of his tongue attaching her cunt, his large nose nudging against her clit “Fuck, fuck Santi shiiiit!” She leaned over, bracing herself against his firm chest. Fuck, was he smiling under there? Smug bastard, he knew what he did to her. How had she gone this long without him? Now that she knew his touch, Laci couldn’t imagine being without it. “Santi, more, please?”

Happy to comply, Santi gripped her hips, albeit softly, pulling her down. Laci knew he was holding back, concerned about the bruises he left on her before. She placed her hands over his and forced him to grip the meat of her hips. When she let go, he did not, massaging along her thighs and he vigorously licked into her, lapping up every drop he milked out as she rocked her hips back and force for the stimulation she needed on her clit, his five o’clock shadow perfectly rubbing against her folds. Laci’s view from here was divine. Her eyes trailed over the body in front of her; strong arms, strong chest, brown skin and writhing legs. She remembered their night in the forest, Santi taking off his over shirt to give to her (fuck, he was thoughtful) she saw a peak of his stomach as the long sleeve pulled his t-shirt up, showing off a firm stomach. That had changed. He had definitely gained some weight alongside her, despite his mini home gym of weights and a treadmill he bought when she moved in. Laci was in love with the way he looked, his body was so fucking perfect, he was perfect, everything she ever wanted.

Very much noticeable, also, was his hard cock standing at attention, shit, she did all that to him? Just the taste of her got him that hard? Fuck, she wanted him in her mouth, she wondered if he’d taste as good as he thought she did… just a taste… Laci walked her hands down further, taking his cock in her hand as Santi’s mouth faltered. It looked so perfect, so pretty. A full blowjob with all 8 inches made her nervous, but she knew Santi would be okay with whatever she gave him, so she started with little kitten licks at the tip, tasting the pre-cum that was leaking out

She felt hip lift up her hips enough to talk. “Laci you don’t-”

“I know, Santiago, I want to. Can I take care of you?” She echoed the words he asked her in their shower this morning. 

“You always take care of me.” He echoed her reply right back, and returned to his mission.

Fuck, he was good at what he did, that was sure. Santi moved her wherever she needed to be, depending if he wanted to suck on her clit or lick into her folds. 

Santi was in fucking heaven. He tried his best to focus on her pleasure but if was hard when she was licking up and down his shaft, mouthing over him, sucking over the tip. Laci never fully put him in her mouth, he didn’t think she would, considering, but fuck if she didn’t feel amazing, and christ, the way she tasted. He never had a woman taste so sweet. Her ass was right in his eyeline, he wondered if she’d let him, move his mouth there, put a finger- you're getting ahead of yourself there Santi, put your fingers back in her cunt first. 

A loud groan escaped her as she felt his large fingers reenter her. “Shit Santi, so close.” She sat back up, hearing a little whine escape him. “Touch yourself for me, Santiago, wanna see you come”

He loved hearing her say his full name; well, when they aren’t fighting anyway. It sounded so pretty rolling off her perfect pink lips. Santi did as he was told, fisting his cock tightly, hips bucking up at the feeling of her spit on his hand. 

The sigh of Santi jerking himself while eating her almost sent her over, but she wanted him to go first. “Come for me Santi, let me see your perfect cock come all over your hand.” Laci didn’t know where these words came from, she never talked during sex before but fuck if he didn’t bring it out of her, him and his dirty fucking mouth. His breath against her cunt was hot as he cried out, his white spend spilling out, covering his fist and painting his stomach in warm ropes. Fuck, he comes hard, that’s the kind that could easily get her preg- fuck fuck fuck, no, don’t go there. Too late. The idea of him spilling inside her and filling her up sent her over the edge, collapsing back over him and her orgasm washed through her, her face pressed against his cum covered belly. As Santi licked her up, she didn’t know what possessed her; Laci started licking his stomach. He cleaned her, she’d clean him.

When Santi felt her lick him, it took a moment for him to realize what she was doing. For a second, he thought she was just licking him. Alright, he’d roll with that, whatever she was into; certainly not the strangest place he’d been licked.

Then he realized what she was licking, and his cock began twitching back to life again. Santi pulled her off him, sitting her up as he joined her, looking at her face covered in his come from where she rested on his stomach. “Lace baby, your face looks so good like this…” Santi takes the hand that was inside her, using the same two fingers to wipe against her cheek, tapping on her lips for her to open and she obliged. Putting his come soaked fingers in her mouth and the taste of her on his lips, Santi attached to her face, sucking and licking his spend off of her, only pulling back when Laci was clean and removed his fingers muttering “See how good we taste together?”

Santi was woken up that night to Laci thrashing in his arms, whimpering as sweat dripped down her face. She was having a nightmare. Santiago gently shook her awake. “Laci, Laci it’s me baby, you’re having a night-” When her eyes shot open, she gasped awake and immediately clung to him, gripping onto his life a lifeboat, her rock in the storm.

“Light” She pleaded.

“Oh course.” Santi start to sit up to get the lights, only intending on moving away from her for a moment when she shouted no and glued herself to him. “Okay…” with one arms, she held onto her crying and shaking body, and his other arm awkwardly and slowly scooted towards the lamp to get her light.

He let her cry it out first, then, she spoke. “There were other women. I never saw them for very long, but there was one girl. She spoke Russian, but we became friends. She tried to escape and they beat her to death. They made me watch.”

“Jesus christ, Lace, that’s fucking horrible”

“I have a lot of nightmares, but tonight was about her. I think Jana reminded me of her.”

Santi was not happy by any means that she was suffering so badly, but he was glad she was opening up to him and could still talk. Overwhelming emotions usually resulted in her not talking, like earlier today, but she was able to speak, tell him what she was feeling.

“You have a lot of nightmares? Fuck, Laci, I’m sorry I didn’t know-”

“I didn’t tell you for a reason. That’s why I’d always sleep on the couch with the TV. You can’t fix this, this is just how I am, I’m sorry”

Santi brushed her short blonde hair away from her face. “It’s okay, Munequita, it’s okay. I’m here for you if you need to talk, or just be held, we can get a nightlight if that helps, or we can get a TV in here too. Or we can sleep on the couch? Any time you want. I want to help if I can but if you and the nightmares are a package deal, I’ll be here for you”

“I know” Laci snuggled up to him, already feeling sleep pull at her. “I know”

**********

Anyway I hope you guys liked it even though it was long! I put off doing my spanish for this so lets hope I can get the practice test done before midnight lol. This took hours to write.

Two chapters left! Next chapter I think will be shorter, Laci/Benny focused, as Santi has a *mission* lol, then chapter 12 is completely fluff/smut wrapping everything up! Then, I start on my Will story <3

Hope that last sex scene was good I've never written 69 before!

That last anon left me feeling really shitty for a while, I hope you guys actually do like this work as it means a lot to me, either way, i love writing it a lot

Would anyone be interested in my thoughts for laci and the boys love languages? What do you guys think is there love languages. I think Santi’s is touch primarily ☠️ comment below! I’d love to hear what you think!!

Finally, I'm looking to write a few winter fics! If y'all have any requests you'd like to see with Santi and the guys, please send them to my ask box! (which I will be widdling down more asks after this week, so if you have an ask in there, dont mind me lol) Ice skating, getting a christmas tree, sleding with the team, sex by a fire place etc, if you'd like to see a leather and lace specific winter short, send away! I know most of you probably know I am converting to Judaism, but! I was raised catholic, don't worry if you'd like to see christmas specific fics. The Millers were at least canonically raised in a semi-christian household, and since no one is canonically jewish, im totally cool writing christmas works, more religious based or just basic christmas.

Love you guys!

@littlenosoul @bensolosbluesaber @milkymoon2483 @gogh-with-the-flow @itspdameronthings @trinkets01 @p0edameronswife @welcometostayingawake @spxctorsslxt @username21mk @lucianadraven32 @sgt-morgan @xaestheticalien @howaboutcastiel

Please reblog to spread, and your comments mean the world!

And I knowwwwww the gif is bad bc blue is bad but my god it’s just so tender and she’s got the short blonde straight her just like laci it was perfect

#santiago garcia #santiago pope garci #santi garcia #santiago garcia hurt comfort #santi garcia fanction #santiago garcia x reader #santiago pope garcia #triple frontier fic #triple frontier #triple frontier fanfiction #hurt/comfort #comfort #santiago garcia smut #santiago garcia comfort #santiago garcia fluff

[perfectpaperbluebirds]

...

#so full disclosure #I'm not a true snzfckr #I think sneeze enthusiast would be more accurate. a fixation versus a true kink if you will. #But after spending a lot of time in this community I'm now hyper-aware of sneezes #and the person I work one-on-one with for most of the day is the most naturally sneezy person I've ever met #good Lord it's a good thing I'm not aroused by sneezes or I'd be in trouble #his sneeze isn't that great honestly but the sheer volume is just... wow #seriously it's at least 3-5 times a day #and he coughs a lot too #i think they would say he has a 'weak chest' in classic lit #rest assured he will pop up in a fic of mine one of these days #anyway I just thought you all should know #birdie blabbers

[jobean12-blog]

Hello!! I'm new here and absolutely love your Bucky fics! Would you be able to write one where Bucky and the reader are sleeping together but they are keeping it secret from the rest of the team. But one night Bucky rails the reader so hard that the next day she is wobbly and falls over infront of the avengers, so Bucky rushes to her side and helps her up and takes care of her. The team look at each other confused because they had no idea Bucky even cared about the reader or that they were close in any way, and then they see the fresh hickeys on Buckys neck and it allll makes sense. Thank you so much!! 💖😫

The Cat's Out of the Bag!

Pairing: Bucky x reader

Word Count: 759

Summary: Mac and cheese draws a crowd and your little secret gets discovered.

Author's Note: Thanks for this request lovely and thank you for your kind words! Welcome and glad you've been enjoying them! Hope you like this one! Have a great day! Hugs! ❤ Thank you all so very much for reading! Much love always! ❤❤❤Divider by the lovely @imerdwarf

Warnings: implied smut, fun and soft fluff, flirting :)

Gif not mine: Thank you so much to @mcavoys for this one :)

“Bucky I’m starving,” you murmur into his neck, slowly untangling your legs from his. “I need food.”

He chuckles and wraps you back up in his arms.

“I have something you can eat baby girl,” he teases, pressing his hardness against your stomach.

“It is my favorite,” you purr, “but how about we make some mac and cheese and then I can have you for dessert.”

His lips turn down into a playful pout and he reluctantly lets you go.

“Promise doll face?” he asks, pushing the sheets off his naked body.

“Yes,” you answer, letting your eyes wander over his bare skin.

“Or you could just come back to bed now,” he simpers, holding out his hands.

Before you can answer your stomach grumbles and you both laugh.

“Ok, ok, food first,” he relents with a smile.

Once you’re dressed and presentable you head into the kitchen and start to grab the necessary ingredients for mac and cheese. The smell of the food slowly attracts some of the team and before you know it, Sam, Nat and Steve are sitting in common room waiting to eat.

“It’s a good thing I made a lot,” you lean over and whisper to Bucky.

His lips brush your ear when he scoffs, “freeloaders.”

“I heard that punk!” Steve yells from the couch.

Bucky just rolls his eyes and continues helping you cook the meal. When the macaroni is done cooking you walk to the cabinet to grab the colander but your legs give out when you strain to reach for it. Before you hit the floor Bucky is at your side, his metal arm wrapped around your waist and his flesh hand cradling your cheek.

“Are you ok baby doll?” he says quietly, concern etched all over his face.

He holds you close, tracing your cheek with his knuckles and kissing your forehead.

“My legs are like jelly,” you tell him. “They got a good workout last night.”

His lips lift into a small smirk and he helps you up, still holding tightly to your waist. You steady yourself with a palm against his chest and the other hand clutching his shirt.

“Are you ok?” Steve asks the moment your head pops up above the counter.

“I’m fine, thank you,” you assure him.

Steve assesses the situation and he doesn’t look convinced, clearly noticing the way Bucky is fawning over you.

“What happened?” Steve asks.

“Oh nothing. My legs are just tired,” you explain with the wave of your hand.

Steve’s hands land on his hips and he pins you with a glare. You stare back for a beat but then give up with a huff.

“I did a really rigorous leg workout yesterday and I’m still sore!” you state plainly.

Steve’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline.

“Not in this gym you didn’t. I was there all-day training recruits,” Steve counters.

Your eyes get wide and Bucky clears his throat, running his hand through his short hair. Sam slides up next to Steve with a mischievous grin.

“I don’t think her leg workout was in the gym,” Sam snickers.

Steve’s look changes from suspicious to confused and Sam drops his head in exasperation.

“I think there’s some funny business going on here,” Sam continues, giving Steve a imploring look.

Nat joins Sam and Steve, her red lips curved up into a wicked smile.

“Hey Barnes, nice hickies,” she says, motioning to Bucky’s neck.

His large hand instantly reaches up to cover the spot but Nat’s smile just widens.

“You don’t have enough hands,” she teases, winking at you before taking the strainer and getting the macaroni.

“Do you get it now?” Sam asks Steve, who is still staring.

“I didn’t know you were seeing someone,” Steve says to Bucky. “Who is she?”

Sam grunts in frustration and punches Steve in the arm.

“Man! It’s her! The two of them. They were shaking the sheets last night. That’s why she’s all wobbly,” Sam shouts.

You and Bucky both stare at Sam, your mouths hanging open in disbelief.

“Shaking the sheets?” you whisper, dumbfounded.

“Get it now Cap?” Sam asks, slapping him on the back.

Steve continues watching you and Bucky. “So, you two, fondue?” he asks.

You burst into a fit of laughter and bury your head in Bucky’s chest.

Bucky smooths his hand down your back and kisses the top of your shaking head.

“We definitely fondue,” Bucky adds with a wide grin.

Steve finally smiles, giving Bucky a pleased look.

“Alright then, who’s hungry!?” Steve asks, rubbing his belly.

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x female reader #bucky #bucky x you #bucky barnes drabble #bucky imagine

[watchmegetobsessed]

ANOTHER TITLE

a/n: personally i’ve been waiting for this part to come since the beginning lmao, so here is the proposal finally!! it’s like so fluffy, almost disgustingly, but i just couldn’t help myself

pairing: Sebastian Stan X Reader

word count: 1.8k

This fic is part of the LITTLE ONE series, but can be read as a simple oneshot as well! Find the masterpost of the series HERE!

masterlist

(gif is not mine)

You’ve been eating like a hormonal teenage boy these past weeks and you know it needs to stop and held under control, but you just can’t help yourself. It’s like your stomach has become a black hole that needs to absorb any and every food that’s home, you’re constantly snacking beside the large portions you eat three times a day, there’s always something you’re craving, the shopping list on the fridge is changing every hour because you think of something else to eat.

Luckily, you haven’t gained that much weight besides the noticeable bump that’s your baby in your belly, seems like your little girl does need all the food and she uses it instead of letting it all get stuck on other parts of your body, so you’re fine for just now.

Sitting on the couch, watching some kind of soap opera, you’re snacking on an entire jar of Nutella this time, shamelessly stuffing your mouth with the sweet, thick stuff, pretty sure that nothing will be left of it by the end of the day. Sebastian is away again for his second filming that was scheduled even before you found out you were pregnant and he messed around with it a little, shortening it once again and you just visited him last weekend. Now that you are pushing the end of your second trimester, your bump is quite evident, not something you can hide easily, so when you showed up on set with your boyfriend, you didn’t even try to cover it up, knowing well someone would spot it sooner or later. However everyone on the team has been so respectful, keeping the news to themselves, because no headlines have been made about your pregnancy just yet, keeping the secret even longer. To be honest, you’re surprised it hasn’t been discovered sooner, you thoughr someone would catch you out and about and see right through your baggy clothes and sell the news to the tabloids, but now you are in the sixth month and no one knows a thing.

Your phone chimes next to you, a text from Seb and you hum to yourself happily, putting the jar aside to grab the phone and see what he wrote.

“How are my two favorite girls doing? Miss you a lot!”

He even attached a silly selfie of himself in hair and makeup, he looks adorable with the clips in his hair and some kind of patches under his eyes. Like a real beauty guru.

Grabbing the Nutella, you place it on top of your bump as you move the phone to a lower angle and take a selfie that makes your bump look even bigger, the jar on top and you grinning widely at the camera as you snap a picture and send it to him with your reply.

“Enjoying our third snack of the day at 11 am! Miss you too, can’t wait to see you next week!”

He reads the message right away, his reply coming just seconds later.

“Look at that bump! You look gorgeous, baby! Can’t wait to see you too, have fun with your sister today, love you lots Xx”

Since he has left you’ve been trying to keep yourself busy so you don’t miss him too much and you’re also using these weeks to spend as much time with your friends and family as possible, knowing well once the baby arrives you won’t be going out that much for a while, nestled up in your home, learning the ropes of being a mother. Today you are meeting up with your sister, she is taking you out to this alleged new, quite fancy restaurant you haven’t heard about before. She claimed that it’s really exclusive, so you don’t have to worry about being photographed or bothered, but she also told you to glam yourself up for the occasion. It’s gonna be some nice sister time, something you haven’t been able to do in a long time.

You take the assignment seriously, doing your hair and makeup the best you can and you decide to put on a flowy maxi dress with a soft, knitted cardigan, very much going for a kind of cottage core vibe. Leaving just in time you text your sister that you’re on your way, putting the address into the GPS and heading out of town, because the place is near the beach. She texts you back that she’ll meet you there and so your short little road trip begins. Sitting in the car you’re listening to one of the many playlists Sebastian has made for you and the baby, he likes to play them at home, humming the songs under his breath, hoping to start educating your little girl in the field of music as early as possible. You have to admit he has a good taste, so you don’t mind it at all.

As you follow the instructions of the GPS you find the place that’s supposed to be your destination, but it doesn’t seem like a restaurant at all, more like a mansion of some kind, a very expensive looking if you are being honest. There are no other cars, no sign of other people so as you park at the front you call your sister.

“Hey, I’m right outside, but I have a feeling I’m at the wrong place? It doesn’t look like a restaurant.”

“Oh, don’t worry! You’re at the right place! I’m a little late, but I’ll be there soon, just go inside, they are expecting us!” she assures you, but you’re still not convinced.

Ending the call you approach the entrance and for your surprise the heavy doors open before you could even knock or find the bell. A man in a tuxedo appears in front of you, smiling warmly at you.

“Miss Y/L/N?”

“Uh, yeah,” you nod, a little shy and confused.

“Please, follow me,” prompts as you walk inside and the two of you start crossing the grandiose hall of the building.

At this point you are sure it’s not a restaurant, but you have no idea why your sister wanted you to come here. You want to ask the man if you’re even at the right place, but he called you by your name so he was expecting you, this has to be the place where you’re supposed to be. More and more questions pile up in your head as you follow him out to the backyard, a gigantic, flower-filled garden that’s straight out of a fairytale, a path leading down to the beach where there’s a dreamy little pergola with even more flowers and fairy lights and as your eyes fall on the figure standing in the middle of the pergola, you immediately gasp.

Because surrounded with all the flowers and lights, there is Sebastian standing in an elegant suit, smiling widely at you as the man next to you helps you down the stairs before you start walking down the path to him.

Tears are flooding your eyes, because you already know what it is, but you can’t believe it’s really happening. He was so sneaky, he got home from filming earlier and even made your sister play along to surprise you, he is such a romantic soul, no one can change your mind about that!

“You’re not in Atlanta!” you tell him when he is finally close enough to hear you. He chuckles sweetly, taking a few steps forward to meet you sooner, his hands finding your waist as you cup his face in your hands, pulling him down to kiss you right away.

“No, I’m not, baby,” he smirks, his hands sliding to your belly, gently stroking the sides as you wipe your tears away, but there’s no use, because the next moment, he steps back a little, just enough so that he can get down on one knee and you’re crying again when you see him pull out a little velvety box from his pocket.

You were expecting it. You knew he would propose before the baby arrives, but you just didn’t know when and how, but he surely outdone himself with his little surprise.

“My Love, Y/N,” he starts after a deep breath, his hands finding yours and you can feel the shaking, but you’re not sure if it’s coming from yours or his. Probably both. “I’ve spent the best years of my life with you and I haven’t been the same man since the day I met you, but in the best way possible. You are the most amazing woman I’ve ever met and I’m so lucky that you did not only choose to be with me, but you are now carrying our baby under your heart as well, out little one who is equal parts of you and me, though you’re doing ninety percent of the job here,” he adds with a chuckle, making you laugh through your tears. “I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you the moment you were so badass on your first date, kissing me when I didn’t have the balls to do the first step, but I’m glad you did. I fell in love with you right then and there and the same thing has been happening every day, over and over again since then. I know we went a little out of order with everything we had planned,” he smirks, glancing down at your bump before his blue eyes find yours again, “but that doesn’t change the fact that I want to spend the rest of my life with you, so I have a question for you.”

He pops the lid of the box open, a gorgeous, brilliant diamond ring coming to your vision, sparkling in the warm afternoon Sun so perfectly, it takes your breath away.

“Y/N Y/L/N, will you make me the happiest man alive and marry me?” he asks, clearly nervous, even though there’s no doubt about your answer, you’ve told him plenty of times before that you want to marry him, but still, it’s a huge moment in both your lives.

“Yes, yes, yes!” you nod eagerly as you both start laughing in relief, his shaky fingers tagging the ring out of the box and sliding it to your finger gently, before he brings your hand to his mouth and kisses the ring.

Then he finally stands up and you basically throw yourself into his arms, kissing him like your life depends on it as he kisses you back with just as much force.

“I love you and I can’t wait to call you my wife,” he sighs pleased against your lips.

“Mm, another title in the line? Girlfriend, baby mama, fiancé and then wife,” you giggle giddily.

“You missed one,” he cocks an eyebrow at you slyly.

“Which one?”

“Love of my life.”

Thank you for reading, please like and reblog if you enjoyed it!

#sebastian stan #sebastian stan fanfiction #sebastian stan fluff #sebastian stan blurb #sebastian stan oneshot #sebastian stan one shot #sebastian stan fiction #sebastian stan x you #sebastian stan x y/n #sebastian stan x reader #bucky barnes #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes x reader

[gukyi]

into the wilderness | pjm

summary: alright, so last summer’s camp was... disastrous. from the murky green showers to the wasps nests, it was all-around a bad time. but none of those things could be quite as catastrophic as the end-of-camp counselor campfire, when you told park jimin that you were in love with him. and if telling him was terrible, then seeing him again this summer, one year after your fruitless confession, just might be the death of you.

{camp counselor!au, unrequited love!au, friends to lovers!au}

pairing: park jimin x female reader genre: angst, fluff, comedy word count: 27k warnings: unrequited love, camp shenanigans, awkwardness, secondhand embarrassment/hurt, ot7 cameos a/n: hello and welcome to the one thing that guyi has wanted to write for literal years now but never go around to! finally i can cross camp counselor au off my list. anyway, it’s been over a year since i wrote for jimin so i hope that this monster 27k fic can make up for that !!! i swear the ending is happy. i swear. i promise.

Something about last summer sucked. 

Maybe it was the record six wasps’ nests you found around the cabin, leaving you with more bee stings than mosquito bites by the end of camp. Maybe it was that weird murky green color of the water in the showers and the sinks that didn’t go away until three weeks in, when you were already positive you had contracted some sort of pond disease from brushing your teeth. Maybe it was the lack of Namjoon, who had an internship and couldn’t come, therefore removing all sense of order and leaving you and the rest of the counselors in a state of chaos.

Or maybe it was the fact that, on the very last night, at the very last counselor campfire, you told Jimin that you loved him. 

Truth be told, you weren’t sure how badly it would go. But telling him was so much easier than keeping it hidden, than letting it drag on and on, this boulder sitting on your chest for the rest of time. You had spent the whole eight weeks of camp rationalizing it to yourself, so much so that by the time the last counselor campfire rolled around, you were convinced that it wouldn’t be that disastrous. 

There was no part of you that thought Jimin would reciprocate your feelings. No part of you that secretly hoped that maybe he felt the same, and that you could end the summer with more money in your bank account and a boyfriend on your arm. You knew he didn’t. Jimin was sweet, and thoughtful, and gentle, which is exactly why you fell in love with him, but he was like that to everyone. You didn’t think that telling him would suddenly make him fall in love with you.

You told him because people like Jimin deserve to know that somebody loves them. 

You told him because you thought that nothing would change. 

What you didn’t really expect to happen was this:

Your marshmallow is burnt beyond recognition, poking off of the edge of a stick like a sad piece of coal rather than a sweet treat. At this point, it’s even darker than the chocolate sitting on the graham cracker in your lap, waiting to be smushed together into the sugar-fest known as a s’more, so eloquently named because you will apparently always want some more. 

“Uh, hello? Earth to Y/N?”

Taehyung’s hand waves furiously in front of your face as he leans forward to make eye contact with you.

“Huh?” You ask, shaking yourself out of your thoughts. Your mind has been awfully cloudy these days, overcast like the weather around here. It’s a wonder you’re able to make your way through. 

“Are you alright?” He asks, an eyebrow raised. “Your marshmallow looks like what happens when I try to make scrambled eggs.”

“Your scrambled eggs look like that?” Seokjin interrupts, pointing accusingly at your charred marshmallow. You’ve seen Taehyung in the kitchen. It’s not that bad, is it? “Next year you should sign up for some of Yoongi’s cooking classes. The six-year-olds can cook better than you.”

“You’d have to pay me way more than the shit they’re giving us to get me to teach Taehyung how to cook,” grumbles Yoongi. 

“I’m fine,” you promise Taehyung as Yoongi and Seokjin launch into a tirade about raising minimum wage. “I just—” You glance at your marshmallow. You don’t even think the fish monster at the bottom of the pond would eat it. And he apparently eats people whose hearts have turned to stone. Like Seokjin, who swears that it had eaten the tip of his pinky finger. “—like my marshmallows really cooked.”

Taehyung looks skeptical but drops the subject nonetheless, turning back around so he can find a different conversation to barge his way into. You’re willing to put money on him finding some way to annoy Jungkook. 

Insecure about your apparent lack of marshmallow-roasting skills, you pull your stick away from the campfire, blowing on it until you decide that you’re willing to risk burning the tips of your fingers. You pluck the marshmallow from the skewer, hissing to yourself as you quickly plop it onto the graham cracker, squishing the whole thing together. 

The marshmallow is so burnt that it barely gives underneath the press of your fingers, bouncing back up like rubber. You frown at your s’more, which clearly should be renamed to something else because nothing about the thing in your hands makes you want some more. 

Next to you, Jimin laughs at your pitiful attempt at a classic campfire treat. 

“You want mine?” He asks with a smile, holding out a flawless s’more, the kind that they make in movies to perpetuate the illusion of perfection. You look up at him and in the light of the fire he glows, like a spark from the flames had created him right then and there, like he had been born with light in his eyes, a halo surrounding his body. 

You wonder if Jimin knows how beautiful he is. How beautiful he has always been, radiating kindness and joy and laughter. He must know, right? It must be impossible for him to notice how everyone falls in love with him. You certainly aren’t an exception. 

He holds out the s’more in his hands, laughing as he looks at you because there must be something endearing about being a shitty s’more maker, and you think, what’s the worst that can happen?

“I’m in love with you.”

The s’more drops to the ground, hitting the grass with a thud. 

Jimin’s eyes meet yours, and for once, they are unreadable. This tragic sort of confusion, like he can’t believe the words you’re saying to him. Like his mind refuses to accept them as true. 

He opens his mouth, but you answer for him. 

“It’s okay,” you assure quickly, reaching a hand out to rest on his own. The touch makes him look away, like your fingers are the flames of the campfire, burning him where they touch his skin. “I—I know you don’t feel the same.”

It’s not a secret. Not to him, and not to you. Jimin purses his lips because he feels guilty for not loving you back. Because he is so good, so kind, that he feels as though he has wronged you because he doesn’t love you the way you love him. Like it’s his fault. 

“Y/N—” He starts, but he does not finish. 

“You…” you interrupt, looking down at your feet. You can’t look at Jimin because looking at him hurts, and you can’t look anywhere else because Jimin is all you think about. All you ever think about. “You don’t have to say anything.”

He speaks, and it’s as if the words don’t belong to him. Don’t belong to anyone. 

“What are we supposed to do?” He asks. 

You shrug, resigning yourself to this. You knew that he wouldn’t feel the same. You didn’t know how terrible he would feel because of it. “Nothing,” you tell him. “I just thought you should know.

He nods, because he knows, and he nods, because he can’t do anything else. 

The fire crackles beside you, s’mores forgotten on the ground as your friends laugh and cheer, distant sounds that echo in your head like white noise. Jimin is all you can think of and right now you’re thinking about what happens next.

“I’m sorry.”

Maybe telling him wasn’t such a good idea after all. 

“Me too.”

Your busted-up sedan revs angrily as you rally up the mountain, shaking your head in an attempt to rid the memories of the campfire from your mind. Unfortunately, the nasty thing about memories is that the more you try to forget them, the more you seem to remember.

You sigh. Something about last summer sucked. 

Nothing about this summer makes you feel like it’ll suck any less.

The good thing about being thirty minutes late is that you’re still thirty minutes earlier than Taehyung, who does not have a single punctual bone in his body. You can count on one hand the amount of instances where he’s actually been on time, all of which are because you and the other counselors conspire to tell him that events are an hour earlier than they actually are just to make sure he doesn’t stroll in an hour late and improperly dressed. 

The bad thing about being thirty minutes late is that everyone besides Taehyung is already here, waiting for you. 

Your sedan crawls to the clearing at the top of the mountain, fighting against gravity and itself as it chugs up the last few feet, coming to a rough stop in the dirt, sunken in from countless tires tracking across it. 

Through your windshield, you can make out two figures with two clipboards, only one of which has something genuinely useful on it. 

“Y/N!” Hoseok cries out excitedly, splaying his arms out as if to hug the entire front of your car only to reveal the near-blank clipboard in his hand. All that’s on it is a neon green Post-it note with a caricature drawing of who you assume to be Yoongi, if the grouchy expression and chef’s hat are anything to go by. There’s no signature or name, but Hoseok’s art skills are on par with those of the campers you work with and Jungkook has a fun and quirky habit of vandalizing all drawable surfaces with pencil sketches of the counselors, so you take a wild guess as to who the artist is. 

You pop the door of your car open and step out into the sticky weather, warm and muggy despite the clouds above. It’s the same as when you step into your bathroom after your two roommates have showered, using up all the hot water and leaving a layer of fog on the mirrors for you to all play hangman on. Only, this steam never goes away. 

“Hoseok!” You cheer, letting the man wrap you up in a sweltering hug, your hands gently patting the top of his back so as not to come in contact with the dampness soaking through his thin cotton t-shirt. You haven’t seen each other for nearly a year, though, so you give in more than you usually would and relax into his hold. “You look good, I like the hair,” you compliment, two fingers coming up to twirl at his bright red locks, deep and vibrant like the cherries you pick. 

“Dyed it just so I could tell the kids I’m a superhero!” Hoseok grins. He’s already heading over to the back of your car to pop the trunk and pull out your duffel bags so that he can park your car in the garage at the other end of the campsite.

“Then who’s the villain?” You call, tossing him your keys.

“I guess that would be me.”

You whip around to find a platinum-blonde Namjoon standing happily before you, looking at least a little bit resigned as he grins at you. His hair is longer this year, like growing it out would somehow compensate for frying it with layer after layer of bleach. And with his silver-white hair and the fact that he is the only counselor any of the kids are genuinely afraid of disobeying, you suppose he would be the antagonist after all. 

“Namjoon, nice to see you again.” You go in for a hug even though Namjoon clearly had no plans on instigating one himself, because someone as hardworking and patient as Namjoon deserves a little platonic affection every one in a while. What, with everyone else constantly conspiring with the campers to oust him every summer. 

The truth is that all of you know that without Namjoon, this camp would be nothing but chaos in its purest form, with the counselors unable to wrangle the kids and the kids using that knowledge to their fullest advantage. Take last year, where everything seemed to go wrong because Namjoon had his stupid internship with a business firm and spent the entire summer drilling finances into his head instead of losing brain cells watching kids eat sand.  

If you had any dignity left you’d blame your rotten confession to Jimin on Namjoon’s absence as well. 

“Nice to see you, too, Y/N,” Namjoon says when you part, checking your name off of the list on his clipboard. “I feel like it’s been ages since I was here.” You can see red marks all over the page, blank only where the name Taehyung is written. 

Some things never change, you suppose. 

“Well, we definitely missed you last year,” You say with a chuckle, trying not to immediately associate your personal misjudgements with the lack of Namjoon, who you can hopefully keep from ever finding out what happened at last year’s end-of-camp counselor campfire. The problem is that Namjoon picks up on social cues and body language like a sociologist, so your only hope is pretending that the campfire never even happened. “Camp was pretty much a mess without you.” In more ways than one.

“Namjoon!” Someone calls. You and him both jerk around to the source of the sound when you see a figure barreling towards the both of you, face obscured in shadow. 

You almost don’t recognize him, with his pitch black hair and thick voice, like he has somehow become a new person in the nine months you’ve gone without seeing him. But the moment he comes into view, you know, and you can’t even pretend to not know, not with the way your heart freezes in place, mid-beat, like the sight of him has turned you to stone. Not with the way that Namjoon is right beside you, and how you don’t think you can bear explaining to him why you and Jimin aren’t as close as you used to be. Not with the way that Jimin looks as beautiful as he always has and always will be, no matter how many summers pass, this timeless portrait, this piece of art that’s come to life. 

There’s a part of you that’s shocked still at seeing him, like you had almost thought that after last summer at least one of you would bail on this shitty summer job, filled with mosquitoes and mud and wifi that only works in the room that doubles as the gymnasium and the mess hall. It’s the same part of you that wants to go back to pretending that nothing ever happened last summer. 

But Jimin is here, in front of you, eyes wide and out of breath and gorgeous, and pretending that last summer never happened is the same as pretending that you never fell in love with him at all.

“The water in the boys’ cabins sinks is green,” he says with a tense smile, making Namjoon nearly smack his clipboard into his forehead. 

“Ugh, seriously?” He asks, and you can’t tell if you’re thankful or hurt that Jimin’s failed to acknowledge you. “Fine,” he scribbles something down on the clipboard, this handwriting scrawl that only he can read, “I’ll figure out what to do with that later. In the meantime, just don’t drink it.”

“Seokjin’s already made lemonade with it, though—”

“Great,” Namjoon says, exasperated as he takes off towards the main cabin, where Seokjin is sitting on the balcony with his feet up on the railing with a glass of suspiciously murky lemonade in his hand, one that he’s offering up to Yoongi with a devilish grin on his face. 

His disappearance leaves only you and Jimin left standing at the entrance, rocking back and forth on the balls of your feet in the hopes that one of you will either leave or spare the other the torture of a conversation. 

“Hey,” Jimin says quietly, trying to meet your eyes. 

You look away, pretending to smack an imaginary mosquito on your arm while an actual one bites your leg. “Hey, yourself.”

“It’s been a while.” The last time we saw each other you told me you loved me. 

“Yeah, it has.” I know.

“How are you doing?” Do you still love me, or was the distance and time enough?

“I’m alright. Same old, same old.” I never stopped. “How are you?” What about you? Did you stop seeing us as just friends?

“Doing well, thanks.” No. You’ll always be just a friend to me. Jimin sighs, looking up at the overcast sky with his hands shoved into the pockets of his shorts, taking in the scenery before him. He exhales, long and heavy, before turning to you with a soft little smile, the kind of grin that almost makes you feel like forgetting might not be the best thing to do after all. “I just feel like this summer is a fresh start, you know? Like, I feel like there’s something different about being here this year.”

Maybe this summer, you can learn to move on from me, too. Because something’s gotta give. 

“I hope you’re right about that,” you tell him, because being around him hurts and being away from him makes you replay that night over and over, wondering what would have happened if you had just kept your stupid mouth shut. You open your mouth to say something, anything else, anything to break the ice that didn’t used to be there before, cut between the tension that has settled between the two of you, but your tongue is dry and your heart is sore just looking at him. 

Defeated, you walk over to where Hoseok’s left your duffel bags, hiking them onto your shoulders and heading towards the girls’ cabins, ready to end this conversation before it tears you in two. 

Jimin seems to flounder, standing awkwardly for a few moments as he watches you walk towards the cabins, skirting around him a few feet away because brushing by his side seemed too close for comfort. But then he says, “Hey, Y/N?” 

And it makes you stop dead in your tracks, unable to deny him an answer. 

You turn around to look at him, and he offers you a grin. 

“Are we good?”

Your love for me, will it affect our friendship?

You swallow.

It already has. It always has. From the very beginning, loving you was part of our friendship. I don’t know how to be friends with you without it. Even when you didn’t know it, I loved you. In a way, it was easier back then. Telling you was the one thing I shouldn’t have done. 

“Yeah, Jimin,” you tell him. “We’re good.”

The trek to your cabin from the main buildings of the camp is nothing if not familiar. Familiar in the way that the ground curves beneath your feet, leading you up to the top of a small hill where the building sits, looking out over the rest of the clearing. Familiar in how the scent of the woods that surround you fills up your senses, this fresh, airy feeling, like the very oxygen is smothering you. Familiar in how this place reeks of the memories of summers gone by, summers spent beneath the stars and by the campfire. 

Summer memories that make your heart burst with fondness and summer memories that… don’t. 

The fact is that it has always started and ended here. 

When you kick open the door to the cabin, there is only one other occupied bed. It belongs to Hazel, a counselor in her sophomore year in college who joined the crew last year and assumed that the Namjoon-less pandemonium that was camp last summer was just the norm. Hopefully she can take a much-needed break this year now that Namjoon’s back and she’s not the only one fruitlessly trying to cajole the campers into behaving. 

You beeline towards the bunk bed that has been your summer home for the past three years, the one shoved right up against the back right corner, giving you a perfect view of the entire cabin. The downside is that it’s the same corner that spiders seem to prefer as their location of choice for their webs, but better you, a stone-cold college student, than a terrified six-year-old. 

Plopping your duffel bags on top of the mattress, you let out another sigh. You wonder what it is about this summer that is so damn tiring, so exhausting that you can’t help but outwardly exhale every ten seconds, like merely being here is wearing you out, bit by bit. 

You’re looking forward to when the campers arrive tomorrow. Sleeping alone (well, nearly alone) in a cabin feels uncomfortably empty. Plus, you’re hoping that they’ll provide you with some sort of distraction so you don’t have any free time left to spend dwelling on the what-ifs and the should-have-dones. When there’s only a dozen of you, it’s much easier to run into him. 

The moment you collapse on your bed, a messy brown head of hair comes bounding out from the shared bathrooms in the center of the cabin. 

“Y/N!” Hazel cries out, launching herself across the room and into your arms for the tightest hug you’ve had in a long while. 

“Hey, Haze,” you greet in return, offering her a squeeze back. You didn’t often mix in your camp activities, with Hazel in charge of the nature walks and animal conservation activities while you hide in your air-conditioned arts and crafts room, but living together brought upon you a closeness you otherwise don’t share with anyone else. Plus, Hazel keeps a family-sized pack of Oreos and a gigantic jar of smooth peanut butter by her bunk at all times for emergencies. 

“I feel like it’s been so long!” She laments when she finally releases you, looking positively thrilled to be here right now. 

Not long enough, you think to yourself, though you don’t suppose any more time apart from Jimin would make seeing him again any easier. “Yeah, but the year goes by so quickly,” you agree half-heartedly. Too quickly. 

“I’m so excited for this year.” Hazel grins, clapping her hands together. “I have so much planned for all the nature walks and everything. I spent all of last week reading up on edible plants and berries found in this part of the country. I’m gonna teach all of the kids what they can eat in case they get stranded in the forest!”

“Fun,” you say with a hesitant nod. It’s not that you don’t trust Hazel to have done her research, it’s more that, knowing the campers and knowing the counselors, someone’s going to try and get lost in the woods around the camp, eating everything they can. Not to mention the fact that Hazel’s so innocent she’d probably reveal to someone like Seokjin or Jungkook which plants were poisonous without even realizing it. 

Camp last year was a mess, but at least nobody died. 

“Hey, aren’t you excited, too?” She asks, a hand on your shoulder as she notices your reluctance. “Apparently Namjoon’s a great leader so this year isn’t going to be as bad as last year.”

“Last year wasn’t bad just because Namjoon wasn’t here,” you comment vaguely. Hazel doesn’t need to know about all of the drama that goes down between the counselors. Hopefully she can get out of here without being dragged into something by one of you. 

“Well, this year is supposed to be better!” She cheers you on, determined to get you to feel as enthusiastic as she is. “No matter what did or did not happen last summer. Plus, you know that if anything bad happens I always have my secret stash, counselors only.” She winks. 

“Thanks, Haze,” you say, sighing again like it’s your job to be worn out by life. “I think I just need a bit of time to get back into the swing of things.”

“That’s the spirit!” She rallies. “I’m gonna head back to the main camp and see if there’s anything good to drink. I’m thirsty.”

“Stick to soda,” you advise, eyes wide at the thought of her downing anything that Seokjin’s had a sneaky hand in making. 

She doesn’t seem to notice your worry, already bounding towards the door, light on her feet. “I was feeling a Fanta anyway. See you at the camp counselor meeting if I don’t see you around beforehand!” She pulls open the heavy wooden door, half outside when she stops to turn back at you, wagging a finger in the air. “Remember, Y/N, leaves of three, let them be!” 

The door slams shut behind her, creating a cloud of dust in its wake. You watch helplessly as the particles dissipate into the air, as the silence that was once so comforting begins to terrorize you once more. 

You collapse back onto your bunk. If only last summer’s murky green water had poisoned you. Then maybe you’d finally have a good enough excuse for your utter lapse in judgement, and you wouldn’t be sighing so much.

There were no camp counselor meetings last year. There were only haphazard caucuses, irregular get-togethers where no one knew quite what was going on and there were no real announcements to be said, no real orders to be given. You had almost forgotten what it was like to have someone with genuine leadership skills working here. 

The problem last year was not getting everyone into the same room for thirty minutes. It was keeping everyone focused in that same room for thirty minutes, which was essentially impossible because, at your age, submitting to someone of authority is the very last thing you want to do. Especially when the consequences pretty much only amount to having to drink Seokjin’s murky green lemonade.

But like with everything else, Namjoon has, somehow, made the impossible possible. 

“Guys, guys, can we stop drawing on the board, please? I need that,” Namjoon begs as he walks into the room to find Jungkook and Taehyung with chalk in their hands and a chalkboard at their disposal. What they’ve accomplished so far is an expert drawing of Spongebob and Patrick with their faces missing, waiting to be filled in by one of the unlucky people in this room. 

“Okay, so who’s Patrick?” Taehyung asks the audience. 

“Hoseok!” shouts Seokjin.

“You!” shouts Hoseok. 

“Seokjin!” shouts Hazel, too, just because she likes being involved in things. 

Jungkook lets out a cackle at that. “Are you kidding?” He asks. “If anything…” He does a quick sketch on the board, hand flying across it so quickly you’re actually a little bit impressed, “Seokjin would be Plankton.” 

He steps away from the board to reveal a scarily-realistic drawing of Seokjin’s angry face on Plankton’s tiny, antennaed body, making everyone—even Namjoon, who usually tries to keep the roasting between counselors to a minimum—laugh. 

Seokjin scowls, and normally you would feel bad for him always being the butt of Jungkook’s endless jokes, but you can see a half-empty glass of green lemonade by Jungkook’s side, and you decide that he can hold his own just fine. 

“I think you guys would be Spongebob and Patrick,” Jimin pipes up from the back. You freeze, turning your head slightly just to see him sitting on the table pushed up against the wall. You hadn’t even noticed him. Or maybe you had, and your brain just decided to pretend that you hadn’t. 

Nevertheless, hearing his voice doesn’t make it hurt any less.

“Jimin’s right,” Jungkook agrees, already beginning to fill in the blank space where Spongebob’s face would normally go with a caricature of his own. “I’d be Spongebob because I have a wider face than you, Tae.”

Taehyung doesn’t object, instead moving his hand to an empty spot on the board. “Yeah. Oh, and Namjoon’s Mr. Krabs, obviously,” Taehyung says, adding his own drawing of Mr. Krabs with Namjoon’s camp get-up on—cargo shorts, a short-sleeved flannel shirt, a baseball cap, and high-tops.

“I would not be—hey, give me that!” Namjoon shouts, indignant, before ripping the chalk from Jungkook’s hands as he cackles wickedly, clearly pleased with himself. Namjoon shoos the both of them away from the board before wiping it with the eraser, which has very obviously not been cleaned since last year, leaving a trail of pale yellow dust in its wake wherever Namjoon drags it across the chalkboard. “Chalkboard for official matters only.” He glares at Jungkook and Taehyung, who high-five each other. 

The chatter soon subsides as Namjoon writes down the meeting to-do list on the board in his same old scratchy handwriting. Namjoon’s one of those people that writes exclusively in capital letters, simply enlarging any letters that actually need to be capitalized. You’re almost one-hundred percent positive it’s to establish written dominance over the rest of the counselors. 

“Okay, first order of business,” Namjoon begins after coughing to get everyone’s attention. “It’s come to my attention that the entire cabin water system is green.”

“Hasn’t it always been—?” Hazel asks, innocent eyes wide in confusion. 

“I called the utilities people and they’re coming tomorrow to fix it, so in the meantime, do not drink the water. Showering and using the bathroom is fine. I would use water bottles for brushing your teeth, though,” Namjoon says, crossing off something on his clipboard as the rest of the counselors murmur in approval. 

“See, this is what happens when Namjoon’s here,” deadpans Yoongi, motioning up to him where he stands at the front of the room. “Shit gets done.”

“Okay, secondly, no swearing in front of the kids,” Namjoon says, adding that onto the board as a final reminder. “The fact that I have to tell you guys this multiple times every year is ridiculous.”

“Fuck you, I can do what I want!” Taehyung shouts, earning a chorus of fuck yeah’s. 

“You guys do know that I have the power to fire you, right?” Namjoon says pointedly, making Taehyung shut his trap. “Okay, moving on. Everyone’s been assigned to the same things that they were assigned to do last year, and if you weren’t here last year, then the year before that.” Namjoon receives some cheers and some groans in response to this, the former mostly from people who work indoors, and the latter mostly from people who don’t. 

“Seriously?” Seokjin whines. “I don’t think Yoongi has stepped foot out of the kitchens in literal years.”

“And I would like to keep it that way, thank you very much!” Yoongi counters. 

“Oh, shut up, at least you get to spend some time indoors teaching all of the kids how to play Hot Cross Buns on their guitars,” Taehyung counters. “I got more mosquito bites than freckles last summer.”

“My students have long advanced from Hot Cross Buns,” Seokjin says proudly and a little bit devilishly. “We’re working on something more technical now.”

“Like what?” Jungkook challenges.

“Okay, continuing…” Namjoon says loudly, eyeing Seokjin suspiciously. “If you’re new, you should have already received notification as to what activities you’re in charge of, but if you’re not sure, come and talk to me.”

“Oh, so Jimin’s still on first aid, then?” Taehyung asks, wiggling his eyebrows. “What do you think Y/N’s gonna do to get herself sent down to his tent? Glue her fingers together? Burn herself with a glue gun?”

“Shut up,” You mumble tensely, embarrassed that somehow you and Jimin’s relationship has turned into a counselor affair. 

Last summer, you had accidentally given yourself a palm full of splinters from the birdhouses that you had the campers paint to bring home with them, and the first aid tent is the only place that has bandages. Jimin was there, as he always is, and the two of you spent the evening plucking out all of the pieces of wood from your hand and patching it up with Band-aids that had Spiderman and Moana on them. Contrary to apparently popular belief, it was not on purpose, even though the hour of hand-holding was rather nice. 

“Or Jimin can just find some excuse to visit Y/N in the arts and crafts room,” Seokjin tacks on unhelpfully. “You know, last summer I don’t think I saw them eat lunch in the counselor room at all. They were always finding secret places in the woods.”

“Maybe we were just busy during lunch?” Jimin suggests, clearly equally uncomfortable. 

“Busy fucking, probably,” Taehyung mutters. 

“It’s none of your business,” you snap, because the last thing you want to be talking about right now is how wonderful your relationship with Jimin used to be, when all that’s left this summer are the burned remnants of it, the ashes of something that could have been. You don’t need a reminder of why you thought that you and Jimin would be alright, of why you thought that telling him wouldn’t be that bad. It was terrible, and now all you can do is pick up the pieces, patch together a friendship whose thread has come loose. 

“Alright, let’s keep going,” Namjoon says, picking up the weirdly tense atmosphere and doing his best to bring the attention back to him and the meeting at hand. “You guys should know that this year, Hoseok is thinking of adding in a counselor dance to the end-of-camp show…”

You look over at Jimin, who immediately turns away when he spots your gaze, making to pick at the rips in his jeans, doing anything and everything he can to avoid eye contact with you, and your shoulders sink. 

Jimin had asked you, “Are we good?”

And you had responded, “Yeah, Jimin, we are.”

And the two of you must have both known that was a lie. 

You turn back to face the front, focusing on how Hazel is rubbing your forearm and not asking questions, and you try to feel a little bit better. 

After the meeting, you and Hazel decide to spend the night holed up in your cabin eating from her Oreo stash instead of eating dinner with everyone else, half because it’s only the first day and already being around all of the other counselors is tiring, and half because you don’t think you can handle seeing Jimin any more today, but not before Namjoon stops you on the way out of the door. 

“Y/N,” he says, making you pause in your tracks. “Can we talk?”

“What about?” You ask, hoping to God that it’s not about everyone thinking you purposely injure yourself just so you can see Jimin at the first aid tent. 

“Just quickly, you and me,” Namjoon says casually, pulling you to the corner of the room, away from any windows so no one can see you two talking. “Did today’s meeting make you uncomfortable?”

“No,” you lie like a liar. “What are you talking about?”

Namjoon’s too observant for his own good, you decide, when he frowns at you, clearly not buying whatever it is you’re trying to sell him. “You don’t have to tell me everything,” he says quietly. “But I know that something happened between you and Jimin.”

You open your mouth to object and tell him that you and Jimin are fine, but Namjoon raises his eyebrows at you, like he’s challenging you to tell him another lie. 

“Well…” you begin, resigning yourself to the truth. “Yeah. Last summer.”

Namjoon purses his lips, nodding in understanding. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“You’re not my mom, Namjoon,” you say with a smile, even though maybe telling someone about it might not be a half-bad idea after all. Plus, Namjoon’s your friend and the only one around here who’s any good at keeping secrets, so getting the words off of your chest could be good.

“You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to,” he reminds you, because he’s wonderful like that. 

“No, it’s alright…” you sigh. “I guess someone else has to know.” You close your eyes, willing the words to come up from your throat, willing them to not hurt you as they leave your lips. “Last summer at the campfire I told Jimin that I loved him.”

Namjoon doesn’t say a word. 

“And he doesn’t love me back, which is not the problem because he shouldn’t change how he feels about me just to make me feel better. It’s not his fault, and I’m not angry at him or anything. I knew that he didn’t love me back when I told him,” the words come up like bile, slowly and carefully before spilling out in front of you. “But I was an idiot, and I thought telling him would make me feel better, or something. And it didn’t, because now Jimin and I don’t know how to act around each other anymore, and everything sucks.”

Namjoon offers you a careful, hesitant smile. 

“So yeah. That’s what happened.”

“Sounds like you and Jimin should talk about it,” Namjoon suggests, and maybe he’s smart, and a good leader, and attends a prestigious college along the coast, and studies business and sociology, but that is the worst idea he has ever had. 

“No,” you immediately say, shaking your head. “It’s no big deal. Jimin and I are still friends.”

“Are you, though?” Namjoon asks. 

You sigh, reaching up to rub at your forehead. “Yeah, we are,” you insist, perhaps more to yourself than to Namjoon. He looks skeptical, but doesn’t ask any questions. “It doesn’t even matter. I made a mistake and now I’m gonna deal with the consequences.”

“I can try to get the rest of the boys to stop teasing you and Jimin. I know it must be weird for you both right now,” Namjoon offers, always wanting to help. You scoff. Weird would be the biggest understatement of the century. 

“Jimin and I can handle it,” you say, not wanting to disrupt the rest of the counselor dynamic just because you and Jimin are dealing with things right now. Besides, the teasing has always been in good fun, and you know the boys well enough to know that they aren’t doing it out of malicious intent. “But I appreciate your concern.”

“Just doing my job,” Namjoon says proudly. You stand there in silence for a few more seconds until he coughs awkwardly to fill up the space. “You can go now, by the way, Y/N. I just wanted to make sure you were doing alright.”

“I’m fine,” you promise, silently hoping that one day, when you talk to Namjoon, you won’t have to lie to him anymore. “Thanks for checking in.”

“I’ll always be here for you,” he says in that comforting way, that warm way that wraps around you like a mug of hot cocoa on a cold winter night. 

You crack open the door to find Jimin, Taehyung, and Jungkook tossing around a frisbee on the open lawn as Seokjin and Yoongi watch from a picnic bench, soda cans sitting next to them. Someone must have mentioned the green lemonade. Jungkook purposely tosses the frisbee too high for Jimin to reach, making him jump wildly in a fruitless attempt to grab it. He falls backwards onto the soft grass, laughing alongside Taehyung and Jungkook as Taehyung pulls him back up to his feet. 

You smile to yourself, the longing and the pain and the love settling deep within your heart, finding a home amongst the wishes and the dreams. Seeing him there, the widest smile on his face as he tosses around a frisbee with some of his best friends, letting the rays from the setting sun fill him up with joy, it reminds you why you fell in love with him. It reminds you why you’re still in love with him.

Something seizes up at your heart, clenching it between its fingers. That used to be you, the thing whispers. You used to make him laugh like that. 

You did. From the moment you met him, you let his laughter fill your senses, burned the sound of it into your brain. You used to be so close. You used to think that maybe, just maybe, Jimin might love you back. 

You should have never told him, it murmurs, grip growing tighter. Look at where it got you.

If I could turn back time and redo that night, I would, you fight back. 

But you can’t.

The wicked thing releases your heart, lets it drop to the floor. You don’t pick it up. 

Every year, you and the other counselors keep a scorecard on the chalkboard in the meeting room to see how quickly someone gets sent to the first aid tent, whether it be from stumbling over a twig or contracting poison ivy or drinking the green water. Last year, it took two hours and thirteen minutes. 

This summer, it happens barely an hour after all of the campers have arrived. 

You make a mental note to write down the time on the scorecard as you run over to help the poor boy off of the ground after slamming into a spruce tree while playing an early game of tag with his friends. The side of his cheek is imprinted with the texture of the tree bark, and he has some scrapes on his hands and knees from the fall. 

“Whoa, hey, you alright?” You ask, leaning down to help him up. “You gotta watch where you’re looking, okay? Don’t want you to get hurt.” 

The beauty about young children is that very little actually causes them great pain. If it weren’t for all of the overprotective counselors, the kids would probably run themselves into the cabin walls and trees for the entire duration of camp.

“I’m not hurt,” the young boy says, standing up proudly. “I’m fine. My mom says I have thick skin.”

“What’s your name?”

“Eli,” the boy tells you matter-of-factly. “That’s my cabin.” He points to the one to the west of the camp that Taehyung and Jungkook are in charge of. Why Namjoon continuously assigns them to the same cabin year after year is beyond you. Once, they convinced everybody in their cabin that Seokjin and Yoongi’s cabin was haunted, and the only solution was to out-scare the ghosts by yelling and screaming right outside. 

“Is this your first year at camp?”

“Yup,” Eli says, rocking back and forth on his feet. He is not at all fazed by the blood and broken skin on his hands and knees, nor the pieces of wood and bark sticking out of the side of his face. 

“Alright, Eli, even though you have thick skin, I have to take you to the first aid tent. Really quickly, okay? Just to make sure you aren’t gonna get an infection. Then you can go and tell all of your friends how thick your skin,” you say, already beginning to usher Eli towards the first aid tent.  

“I think I have the thickest skin out of everyone here,” Eli says, as if goading you on. 

“You know what? I have to agree with you,” you say. “I get hurt really easily. My mom always says that I need to be extra careful here.”

“I’m sick of listening to my mom,” Eli pouts, stomping on the ground as you lead him towards the first-aid tent. 

“Me too,” you agree. No point in telling him that he needs to yield to his parents when he probably won’t even remember this conversation by the time he wakes up tomorrow. Besides, it’s never too early to begin teaching kids about rebelling against authority figures. “But you won’t have to listen to everything I say, okay? We’re just gonna be really good friends.”

“Like with my babysitter,” Eli says. 

“Exactly,” you say, stopping right outside of the first-aid tent. You’re not even positive that anyone’s inside, especially since it’s barely been an hour since camp officially started. Hopefully, Jimin’s somewhere else so you can just patch Eli up yourself. 

The first aid tent is not so much a tent as it is a shed with a fabric entrance, two curtains attached to a rod above the entryway to provide some semblance of privacy since nobody in the camp is handy enough to actually install a working door. But calling it the first aid tent is better than calling it the first aid shack, which, in the wise words of Yoongi, makes it sound like “a hospital where people go to die.”

When you push open the curtain, the first thing you notice is Jungkook and Seokjin in the far left corner, each with ice packs and suspiciously identical markings on them. They’re both making desperate attempts to patch each other up, fighting with the gauze and bandages that are laid out on the table beside them, as if in a competition to see who can better take care of the other. 

Besides that, Jimin is lounging along the wall, leaning back against it as he gazes into nothing, deeply lost in thought. His eyes trace the lines of the shed, foot tapping to an imaginary beat, brows furrowed. You wonder what the hell it is that Jimin could possibly be thinking about so intently, what it is that is making him not even pay attention to the two overgrown children in the corner of his tent, attacking each other with first-aid materials. 

Watching him, you almost don’t want to disturb him. Almost want to grab one of the kits on the shelf by the doorway and pull Eli outside, partly because you don’t think Jimin absolutely needs to be present for you to clean Eli’s wounds and give him some Spiderman Band-aids, and partly because you don’t think you can bear having to say hello to him. 

Eventually, and only because Eli would start thinking it was weird you weren’t talking to each other (and not because a part of you just wants to hear his voice again), you take another step forward, coughing. 

“Wha— oh, hi,” Jimin says, the sound of your arrival breaking him out of his trance. He rubs at the nape of his neck, clearly trying to brush off any awkwardness. “How can I help you guys?” His voice is unrecognizable. 

“Eli here crashed into a tree while playing tag,” you say tensely, doing your best to look around the room, anywhere else, literally anywhere else, just so you don’t have to look at him. “I just brought him here to make sure he’s alright.”

“I’m fine,” Eli insists. 

“Well, Eli, we just have to double check that,” Jimin says comfortingly, reaching down to bring Eli over to one of the benches. He sits him down and kneels so that he can be at eye-level with him, and says, “Sometimes our bodies say that they’re alright even when they really aren’t.” Out of the corner of his eye, Jimin meets your gaze, looking at you like there’s nothing left that you can do, looking at you like there is so much that he wants to say but no way to tell you. 

You open your mouth, willing for the words to come out, but your throat is dry and your heart is pounding in your ears, a painful thud with every breath that you take. He must have known that what you said was a lie. He must have known what you were going to say when he asked, but he asked anyway, not to get the truth but to see where your relationship stands. 

As it seems, your relationship doesn’t seem to be standing at all. 

It lies in front of you, shattered into a million pieces like a broken mirror, cursed but still doing its job, still showing you this fragmented reflection of yourself. Mixed together like this, you can’t see where your friendship ends and your love began. Mixed together like this, it is impossible to repair. 

“Y/N—” Jimin begins. 

“I should go,” you say at the same time, making the two of you stop in your tracks once again. “Thanks for, uh, patching Eli up. Just make sure he gets to the mess hall in time for dinner.”

“I will,” Jimin says with a nod. There is so much that he wants to say but you don’t think you can bear listening to another word come out of his mouth, to another apology for not loving you back when it wasn’t even his fault to begin with. 

You ruined your friendship but Jimin seems to think that he is the one to blame. 

“I’ll see you at dinner?” Jimin asks. 

You look back at him, wanting so desperately to say yes, to pretend that everything is back to normal, to act like this is the beginning of last summer instead of this one, where you loved him and he didn’t know and everything was alright. But you can’t, because it’s not last summer. It’s this one, and you still love him but he knows now. He fucking knows and just thinking about it makes your heart shake in its cage, holding itself together but unable to stop itself from cracking from within.

Jimin must have known you wouldn’t have agreed. Why did he ask?

“Wait, Y/N, hold up!” 

You’re already halfway out of the makeshift door when you turn around to see Jungkook barrelling after you, leaving Seokjin in the dust as he joins you outside, pulling you away from the entrance instinctively. No one has ever been particularly good at keeping secrets here. 

“Can I help you, Jungkook?” You ask, blinking at him, trying to act as normal as possible. 

“Are you alright?” He leans in close, looking into your eyes, concern washed over his features. 

“Everybody seems to be asking me this,” you say, acting like you don’t know why. “I’m fine.”

Jungkook, for all of his wide-eyed innocence, for the way that he views the world as perfectly imperfect, doesn’t buy it. “You don’t have to tell me anything,” he says. “I don’t know what went down between you and Jimin.”

“Nothing happened,” you say, forcing a laugh just so you don’t sound miserable. 

“Whatever it is, I just want you to know that it doesn’t always have to be like this,” he says, reaching out to take your hand in his own, his calloused thumb rubbing soothingly against your skin. “But you should be honest with your feelings, don’t you think?”

“You and Namjoon both think that I don’t have a handle on this, when I do.” You don’t. And being honest with your feelings is what got you into this mess in the first place. 

“Come on, Y/N, you don’t think we haven’t noticed, have you?” He asks, soft and sad and desperate to get through to you. 

“It’s no big deal,” you insist. “Jimin and I are alright. We’ve always been alright.”

“If you say so…” says Jungkook, no less skeptical than he was when he initiated this conversation. 

“Are we done here?” You ask, already pulling your hand from his grasp so you can go back to your cabin and pretend that the rest of the world doesn’t exist. 

“Yeah,” Jungkook says, resigned as he lets you go. “But you know I’ll always be here for you, right?”

“I know, Jungkook,” you promise, because he always has and he always will be. “Thanks for looking out for me.” You begin to scurry away from the first aid tent, praying that Jimin didn’t hear you and Jungkook and wishing that everything was the way that it used to be.

“Be honest!” Jungkook shouts when you’re a hundred feet away, rushing back towards your cabin. 

Jungkook wants you to be honest?

Telling Jimin that you love him ruined your life. It ruined camp, it ruined your friendship, and it ruined your future. Seeing him now makes your heart ache and your brain dizzy. Every night you replay that conversation in your head, over and over, wondering if there was something that you could have done differently, something that you could have changed so you wouldn’t have ended up like this. Jimin wants to be friends again but you don’t know how to do that without him feeling guilty for not loving you back. 

You want to be honest?

Jimin makes you feel like there is a fire beneath your skin that you can’t extinguish, the flames creeping towards your heart. 

The only solution, it seems, is to smother them. 

The worst part about being in love with Jimin is that he’s impossible to avoid. 

You peer into the mess hall to see if lunch that day is any good and you see him laughing at a table surrounded by elementary schoolers munching on hot dogs and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You go hunting in the storage shed for some extra packs of popsicle sticks and find him cleaning out the old flower pots to use in the greenhouse. You lead your group of campers from the arts room to the lake and see him and Taehyung setting up the net for some friendly water polo, laughing as they try to tie each other up in the rope. 

It feels like you’re watching a movie unfold in real time, one where he is the star and you are nothing but a background character, the desperate loser who confessed to him in the beginning of the film just to develop his character arc, make him seem personable and relatable, then forgotten about until the end when you spot each other on the street and nod silently to each other, as if to say you’ve both inexplicably reached a peace between the two of you. 

Is that what the future holds for you? A wordless camp, an empty conversation? Will you simply go the rest of the summer without speaking, then nod to each other right before you leave? Will this be the last time you ever see each other?

The worst part about being in love with Jimin is knowing that just because you want things to be different doesn’t mean they will be. Just because you want Jimin to love you back doesn’t mean he will. Just because you want everything to go back to normal doesn’t mean they will. 

As it turns out, love confessions don’t always end in fireworks.

Park Jimin is impossible to avoid not only because he’s everywhere but also because he is everybody’s best friend, the campers’ favorite counselor and the counselors’ favorite companion. He is kind and thoughtful and electric. He is magnetic. He makes others laugh without even trying, he names the plants in the greenhouse after the people he loves, he stays behind after activities to clean up when no one else will. 

Falling in love with Jimin wasn’t you picking out your favorite traits of his, wasn’t you seeing him do one selfless thing and deciding that he could do no wrong. It was submerging yourself in the lake, little by little before you dive in headfirst. It was catching glimpses of his goodness until you were consumed by it. It was knowing that you prefer yourself when you’re around him.

Falling in love with Jimin was like the heat in summer—endless. 

If only falling out of love with him would be just as easy. 

The weather has been unusually nice today. There isn’t a cloud in the sky as the sun beats down on you, rays peeking through the tall branches and leaves of the spruce and oak trees that surround you, casting hazy shadows on the grass beneath your feet. It isn’t too muggy, isn’t too sticky and sweaty, this perfect medium between warm and hot, between dry and humid. It’s the sort of day that you romanticize every day of summer being, only to realize that summer actually consists of sweating through three different t-shirts and needing to eat your ice cream in ten seconds before it melts into a puddle on the concrete. 

Nonetheless, camp policy has always been that when it’s a beautiful day, the campers are going to spend every hour they’re awake outside, going on nature walks and playing capture the flag and eating watermelon on the splinter-y picnic benches. It’s nice, because it gives you a break from having to tell the kids not to touch the tips of the glue guns, but it also stinks, because it forces you to leave your sweet, air-conditioned paradise in favor of a mosquito-infested summer hell. 

Luckily, the kids have been washing off the summer heat in the cool water of the lake with the counselors that actually prefer being outside, playing volleyball in the shallows or canoeing out where it’s deeper. Sometimes, you wonder why Namjoon will let so few counselors supervise so many campers, and sometimes, you decide that it’s better them than you. 

You take a seat on the picnic bench by Yoongi, who is drinking notably clearer lemonade than in days past, so you assume that Namjoon got the water problem fixed like he promised. The two of you have never been outdoorsy people. Why you’ve been working at a summer camp for the last three years escapes you both. You and him lean back against the edge of the built-in table. From here, you have a perfect view of the lake, clear and blue and filled to the brim with rambunctious children, keeping at least somewhat of a watch over them so that Namjoon can’t shout at either of you for slacking off. 

“You know that Seokjin gave you murky water lemonade earlier, right?” You ask, just to make conversation. 

“I know,” Yoongi says, wholly unfazed. He takes another sip and sighs, feeling refreshed. Without batting an eyelash, he deadpans, “You know that you and Jimin aren’t going to get any better if you don’t talk to each other, right?”

“What are you talking about?” You scoff, playing dumb. 

“Just because all of those other idiots didn’t hear what went down between you and Jimin last summer doesn’t mean I didn’t,” Yoongi mutters monotonously. 

You jerk up, stick straight at his words, eyes wide as you glare at him. He heard you?

Yoongi laughs at your reaction, reclining back impossibly farther. “Relax, I haven’t told anyone. You know it’s none of my business.”

“Well,” you sputter out, “if it’s none of your business then why are you talking to me about it?”

Yoongi frowns. “Because you’re my friend, Y/N. And I hate seeing you like this,” he says, that soft lilt to his voice peeking through the rigid words spilling from his lips. “I feel like I don’t even know who you are anymore. A lot of the other counselors do.”

You purse your lips together, guilty. 

“Especially Jimin.”

“I just need time,” you say, trying to be honest for once in your life. Loving Jimin was never going to go away without a fight. 

“You need to talk to each other,” corrects Yoongi. 

“Talking is what got us into this mess,” you huff out, dejected. Yoongi heard it himself—your confession sent you and Jimin’s relationship down the garbage chute. 

“And talking is what’s going to get you out of it,” Yoongi tells you pointedly, truthfully, in that horrible way where you know that he’s right but refuse to accept it. “Promise me you’ll try?” He reaches out to place a hand atop yours, looking into your eyes with hopeful promise. “We want you back.”

“I’ll try,” you sigh out, because it’s never been worth fighting with Yoongi. Not when he cares so deeply. 

“Try what?”

You and Yoongi whip your heads around to find Jimin standing on the opposite side of the picnic bench, helping himself to a piece of sliced watermelon. 

“Try enjoying the outdoors more,” Yoongi covers for you instantly, making you breathe out a little sigh of relief. “We both hate when Namjoon makes it an outside day.”

“It’s not that bad,” Jimin says with a smile. The only reason Jimin doesn’t mind it is because he gets the best of both worlds—half the day spent inside the first-aid tent, the other spent inside the greenhouse by the woods. “There’s beauty in everything.”

Yoongi scrunches up his nose. “Like that?”

In the distance, you spot three things: Jungkook and Taehyung, laughing evilly as they run down along the rocky beach. The clothes clutched in their hands, crumpled up in their grasps while they hoot and holler. And Seokjin, hair sopping wet and half-naked, with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist and ugly lime green water shoes on, chasing after them. 

“I’m out,” Yoongi says without missing a beat, grabbing his lemonade and dashing off to safety. Yoongi’s exit leaves you and Jimin standing there, stranded, frozen in place, as Jungkook and Taehyung rush by you, each grabbing a piece of watermelon on their way. Something falls from Jungkook’s hold as they pass you, and Jimin reaches down to pick it up. It’s one of Seokjin’s socks. 

“Give that back, Park Jimin!” Seokjin’s banshee screech rings in your ears. 

“Run,” Jimin says, and you don’t get another say in the matter before Jimin is grabbing your wrist and pulling you along with him, Seokjin’s angry caws echoing throughout the clearing. 

Even though Jimin didn’t even actually steal his clothes from the locker room by the lake, Seokjin has determined that anyone who runs from him is automatically guilty, thus lumping both you and him into a wild goose chase alongside Jungkook and Taehyung, who are almost always the guilty parties when it comes to practical jokes like this. For a few moments, it’s the four of you running across the open field with Seokjin hot on all of your heels, desperate to catch up to at least one of you despite being severely out-matched, both in athletic ability and footwear, and then suddenly Jimin is pulling you behind the shed as Jungkook and Taehyung make a sharp right, headed in the opposite direction. 

Crouched behind the shed, you and Jimin stop for a minute to catch your breath, chests heaving after doing more exercise in the last thirty seconds than you have in the last week alone. You’re pressed up against the back siding, and only after your heart rates finally slow down do you become faintly aware of Jimin’s hand still gripping your wrist, like he’s simply forgotten to let go. 

“You think we lost them?” He asks with a wicked grin, and it’s impossible to avoid his gaze when he’s so close like this, when there’s barely a foot of space between your bodies, when his fingertips still press against your skin. 

“I think so,” you heave out in response. 

“Better stay here for a bit longer just in case,” Jimin says, and it’s the flirty sort of thing that he would say if it were last year, the flirty sort of thing that he would say if you two were friends like you used to be, but you aren’t anymore, and now it feels like Jimin is trying too hard and you aren’t trying hard enough. 

“I… I mean,” you say, pulling your wrist out of his grasp, rubbing at where your skin sizzles from his touch. “We’re probably fine.”

“Are we?” He asks, and this is exactly why you shouldn’t try to talk to him, exactly why talking won’t erase the tension that has settled between you two, repair the cracks in what you are. You’re not fine, because everything changed when you told Jimin that you loved him, and you’ve never been good at adjusting. You’re not fine, because for the first time in your years-long relationship, loving him is getting in the way. 

“I hope we are,” you admit, more to yourself than anyone else. Oh, how you so desperately wish that things were back to normal. Oh, how it would be so easy if only things were just a little bit different. 

“Me too,” Jimin says, and he smiles and, oh, how it makes you feel real and true and whole. He stands back up and reaches an arm out to help you do the same. For once, it doesn’t feel like a Band-aid on top of a stab wound. It feels like a lifeline. 

You let Jimin help you back to your feet, and for some reason your heart feels just a little bit lighter. 

“You think we’re alright?” Jimin asks. 

“Yeah,” You respond with a nod. “I think we will be.”

One thing that Namjoon is big on is interdisciplinary recreation. This is half due to the fact that he attends a private liberal arts school on the east coast and half due to the fact that he doesn’t always trust some of the counselors when it comes to chaperoning a whole group of kids on their own. You aren’t going to name names, but they’re the same people that steal clothes for fun. 

He’s got a list up on one of those massive sheets of lined paper filled with suggestions for all sorts of things that combine two or more of the basic activities the camp offers, ranging from making handmade bird seed treats in the kitchen to put out on nature walks to dodgeball in canoes. Some of Namjoon’s ideas are a lot more feasible than others. 

Namjoon’s never been a pushy person. He’s repeatedly said that he purposely avoids telling people what to do within their activity sectors because he doesn’t want the counselors to think that he’s stepping all over them or doesn’t trust them to come up with their own entertainment. The list in the counselor meeting room is titled: ACTIVITY SUGGESTIONS, bolded and circled, just so everyone knows that he isn’t forcing you to do anything (if you’re being honest, the emphasis on suggestions somewhat works against his whole niche). But sometimes, especially for someone whose greatest fear is stripping away others’ creative freedom, he can be rather insistent. 

Take, for example, the two stacks of plain flower pots left anonymously inside the arts and crafts room when you walk in to set up the activity for the day. You were originally going to have the younger kids color in their own guitars to hang up in the music room—an activity that was not on the activity suggestions list—and give the older ones some clay and let them go to town, but you suppose that decorating flower pots will be just as entertaining. At least you didn’t have to go hunting for the materials. 

The only problem with decorating flower pots is that, once the campers have painted streaks and polka dots and glued charms all over them, the flower pots have a rather specific place to go. A place that is part of a notable Park Jimin’s domain. 

A sneaky little feeling beneath your skin suspects that someone may have let it slip to Namjoon that you and Jimin could do with a bit of relationship repair. And Namjoon and Yoongi have been bunking in the same cabin for as long as you can remember. 

Sighing to yourself as you begin to set up the flowerpots on old newspapers spread out on the wooden tables, you decide that spending an hour with Jimin in the greenhouse (maybe even less if you can find an excuse to get yourself out of there!) couldn’t be any worse than being crouched down behind that cobwebbed old shed with his hand on your wrist and his eyes gazing into yours. At least you’ll have thirty campers to maintain the distance between the two of you. 

You suppose that you do have the easier of the two jobs. Arts and crafts is a rather simple activity to oversee, barring the occasional papercut or glue gun burn. Luckily, painting flower pots means that you will really only have to worry about the campers mod-podging their fingers together, and even then, the bathroom is just down the hall. Jimin, with his having to wrangle the kids to garden neatly and not hit each other with the trowels, is going to have it much harder. 

There’s a part of you that knows you’ll stick around. Not just to lessen the load of campers for him, but just so you can spend a little more time in the same room, breathing the same air, pretending that things are the way that they used to be. 

When you leave the arts and crafts room to hike the ten minutes to the greenhouse, followed by all of the campers dutifully carrying their brand new flowerpots in their hands, you feel like a young bird leaving the nest. Taught to fly little by little, but one day forced to face the real world and exist without the safety net you’ve called home for so long. The arts and crafts room hasn’t always been your favorite place in the camp, but this year it’s felt like you’ve been holding on particularly tight.

Jimin is already waiting happily in the greenhouse for your arrival, this stupid old gardening apron tied around his waist with a faded picture of a cartoon cactus on the front that says free hugs. He watches fondly as all of the kids shuffle into the greenhouse, the whole room just barely big enough to fit all of you, wide eyes peeking out from behind seed packets and green leaves. 

You stay in the back corner as Jimin gets to work, having all of the campers place their pots on the tables in front of them, bright plastic buckets of soil at the ends of their tables, flower seeds waiting to be planted. 

As much as Jimin is fantastic at patching kids up inside the first aid tent, the greenhouse is where he really belongs. The harsh rays of the sun are softened by the glass walls as they beam down on him, surrounding him with this warm yellow halo, painting him into the scenery behind him. Here, amongst the lush vegetables and flowers and ferns, Jimin doesn’t look like an underpaid camp counselor carrying the weight of thirty children on his back. He looks like this fairy in the woods, this forest sprite that has grown up amongst the trees and the moss and the wildflowers, who has learned to tend to the world’s greatest garden. He looks like someone whose mere presence makes the plants smile a little wider. 

Jimin’s like that with everyone. It should come as no surprise to you that the plants feel better when they’re around him, too. 

Jimin has always been so good with kids. More so than any of the other counselors, really, though they all try their best to be fun and friendly and gentle and stern all at once. But there’s something in Jimin’s nature that just makes him the best at it, something about the way he cares for them so deeply, something about the soft lines of his face that earns him their trust the fastest. He’s good with everything that camp throws at him, from frisbees to murky water to lake monsters, but nothing has ever seemed quite as right for him as his connection with the campers. 

The children don’t know how lucky they are to know someone like Jimin. Someone who believes wholeheartedly in the goodness of others, someone who will stop at nothing to fix what has been broken. 

You think about how lucky you are to love someone like Jimin every day of your life.

“Mr. Jimin?” A squeaky little voice pipes up. It’s a young girl named Zoe, whose flower pot is decorated with a painting of her entire family, a group of four stick figures with red shirts and purple dresses holding hands together, loopy smiles drawn onto their faces. 

“Just Jimin, alright?” Jimin corrects. 

“Are you sure these seeds are going to turn into flowers?” Zoe asks, looking skeptically at the packets in front of her. 

Jimin laughs, and it is as warm as the rays of the sun that stream through the glass walls. “I can’t promise that they will, Zoe.”

“Then why are we doing this?” She pouts. 

“Because,” Jimin says, pointing to the packets in front of the campers, “the only way that I can promise that these seeds will turn into flowers is if you guys can promise to love them. Because no matter how much sun they get, no matter how much you water them, they will only bloom if you really, really love them.”

“How do they know?” Another girl pipes up. 

“Flowers are just like us,” Jimin tells her gently. “They can feel when they’re loved, and they love us back by blooming for us.” He shuffles around the back of the greenhouse where he stands, fishing through the shelves lining the walls until he emerges with a rather large pot in his hands, placing it down on the table beside him with a thud. “Take this hydrangea, for example.”

Your breath catches in your throat, the blue flowers flashing before your eyes. 

You planted those together. Last summer. You and Jimin snuck out to the greenhouse while everyone else was eating potato salad for lunch and spent the hour listening to pop songs from the eighties and planting a baby hydrangea. 

They will bloom every year, Jimin said. 

So they’ll always remind us of us, you responded. 

It’s the first time that you and Jimin have looked at each other since you entered the greenhouse. He catches you off-guard, eyes wide as you stare back at him, suddenly feeling this gut-wrenching ache from deep within your belly. And Jimin—

God, Jimin looks like he’s tried everything under the sun and moon to keep that damn hydrangea from wilting. 

“They were planted early last summer. And they bloomed, right? But they look so sad,” Jimin explains, rallying himself and turning his gaze away from you. “And I gave them new soil and watered them regularly, but I’m still missing something.”

“Love!” Zoe shouts. 

“Right,” Jimin says with a tense nod, eyes flickering to yours once more. Your shoulders slump. “But I have a lot of love to give, so hopefully they’ll be alright soon. You guys just have to remember that love is the most important thing that you can give to your flowers. Just like you and me, the flowers need to know that there is someone who loves them.”

But you do know, you want to shout out to him. You’ve known this whole summer and you knew back at the campfire and you probably knew even before that. You’ve known for so long and still the flowers that we planted together are fucking wilting. Like they can’t even bear that this is what we’ve come to. What do you mean, they need to know that there is someone who loves them? You do. And I love you. You must know that, don’t you?

You feel the vines of a thorny rose wrap around your heart, clenching it tight. It’s been in bloom for a year now, thick red petals filling up the empty spaces between your bones, nectar swimming within your veins. And when you picked it, cut it off at its stem to place in Jimin’s hand, it grew only stronger, bloomed only harder.

Oh, if only that hydrangea knew how much you loved him. 

Afterwards, you stay back to help clean up. There’s soil all over the floor, buckets knocked over in the campers’ frenzy to go play games in the gym with Jungkook, discarded paper seed packets and trowels left littered across the tables. 

Jimin doesn’t put on any eighties music. Instead, you stand there in silence, brushing the leftover soil into dust pans and buckets, placing the gardening tools on the rack by the entrance. 

Even though you know flowers don’t wilt that fast, it feels like with every second that passes, the hydrangea is a moment closer to death. The color seems to fade every time you look at them, going from its vibrant pale blue to a sallow green, no longer able to tolerate being in the same room as the two of you. 

Your love doesn’t seem like it’s going to fix it this time. 

“I didn’t know that it was doing so badly,” you say, and the words don’t even feel like they belong to you when you hear them back, making Jimin stop dead where he stands. 

“What?” He asks. 

“The hydrangea.”

Jimin looks over at the pot on the table, and he sighs, helpless. “I’ve tried everything. It just doesn’t seem to be working with me this year.”

It’s no secret to the both of you why. 

“Hopefully you can figure something out,” you offer alongside a half smile. “I would hate to see them die after only a year in bloom.”

“Me too,” Jimin sighs. 

“How have you been?” You ask him, because you never really did get a real answer when you asked him that very first day. And because no matter what you do, you’ll always be curious about him. 

“Alright,” Jimin says, and it’s not a lie. “I’m looking forward to graduating next year.”

“Yeah, me too,” you say, even though you’re only looking forward to the not-being-in-college part of graduating. Not so much the being-chucked-into-the-real-world part. “How’s the major coming along?”

“Well, physics never gets any easier,” Jimin jokes, and even though it’s a little bit forced it makes the two of you both laugh, desperate to get back to the way that things used to be, step by step. “What about you? Still going for English?”

“With a side of business so that I don’t end up a broke poet,” you remind him. “But yeah.”

“Maybe you can write me into one of your stories,” Jimin suggests. 

Oh, but doesn’t he know already? He’s the main character in every single one. All of your poems are about him. He is your inspiration and your muse. He fills up each blank page all on his own. Doesn’t he know? 

“Maybe,” you agree, even though there has never been a ‘maybe’ when it comes to him.

You nearly drop the plastic bucket of soil on your toe when you hear his next question. 

“Have you, uh, been seeing anyone lately?” Jimin scratches at the nape of his neck, clearly nervous. Your heart sinks. Out of all of the possible questions he could ask you to keep this relatively casual conversation going, he chooses that one? 

You look up at him, wondering why on earth he’s asking you this when your love has already been laid out bare in front of him, every corner unfolded so he can read across the lines like a map, memorize the splotches of color. You look up at him and you are helpless, desperate for him to realize that even with thousands of miles and hundreds of days between you, for you, it has always been him.

You wonder if the only reason he’s asking is to see if you were starting to move on. 

“No,” you mutter lifelessly. “I haven’t.” And then, like a devilish whisper in your ear, “Have you?”

You almost expect him to say yes. You almost expect to hear him recount all of the fantastic dates he’s been on, all of the loving relationships he’s been in, but instead, he says, “Me neither.”

And that? That makes your heart stop dead in its tracks. 

“I tried to, you know,” Jimin says, and each word is a puncture wound inside of you. “But I just couldn’t. Nothing really stuck.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” you tell him, because you are. Because Jimin deserves to love someone who will love him back. Someone that isn’t you, someone who hasn’t been hopelessly pining after him for a year. 

“No, it’s alright.” Jimin shrugs. “I’m kind of glad that nothing stuck.”

And if hearing the words “me neither,” leave his lips made your heart freeze up, then hearing these words set it aflame. You don’t respond, instead choosing to let the words etch themselves into your memory, carve themselves into your heart, give you hope, if only a droplet of it. Any is enough to have your heart beating a little faster.

“I miss this,” Jimin breathes out, and if you closed your eyes and pretended that you were somewhere else it would almost sound like a confession. You glance up at him, and he is so empty, clinging hopelessly onto the remnants of things past just like you, and you realize that being honest is really the only option you have left. “I miss doing stuff like this.” 

The with you goes unspoken, but it rings loud and clear in your ears anyway. 

“I miss it too,” you say, because Jimin must know already, doesn’t he? How if you could choose to go on loving him without him ever knowing, then you would do it in an instant? How loving him silently was painful but loving him like this, unbearable. “I feel like it’s been a long time.”

A long time since you both really spoke to each other. A long time since you were friends the way you used to be. A long time since you first began to love him.

“Can’t we go back?” Jimin asks, a foolish question. He should know better than to ask for something he already knows he can’t get. 

“You know we can’t,” you tell him. You’ve already tried.

“Then can we begin again?” He proposes, the two of you meeting in the middle of the greenhouse, right in front of the hydrangea. You hadn’t even realized you were barely three feet away from him until you were already there. “Please? I miss us, Y/N. Don’t you miss us, too?”

Gazing at Jimin, you feel your heart tremble. One thing that hasn’t changed is how weak you are to his touch, to his eyes, to the way that they make every part of you feel like jelly, feel like you’ll collapse without him to hold you up. You’ve never been able to say no to him. It’s one of the things you don’t think you’ll ever outgrow. 

“We can try,” you say, because being honest may be hard, and talking even harder, but now you would rather try to piece yourselves back together than spend the rest of the summer wondering what to do with the shattered remains on the floor, stepping around them instead of cleaning them up, repairing what has been broken. 

It’s like the words are music to Jimin’s ears, the way he lights up, grinning wide and real and true. He inhales and it feels like a breath of fresh air, like a brand new season has come to rest upon the two of you. It feels like relief. It feels like hope. It feels like new.

You hadn’t realized it before, but you’ve been dying to make him smile. 

Next to you, the hydrangea seems just a little bit brighter. 

It’s getting easier. 

No longer are you turning in the opposite direction whenever you see him hanging around the center of camp, praying that he hasn’t spotted you from where you stand. Nor are you making excuses about having to go help Namjoon with something or run back to your cabin whenever he shows up to spend time with you and the other counselors. 

And even though it’s still a little tense when you accidentally look up at the same time and meet eyes, even though it still feels like you two aren’t quite the same, it’s getting easier. 

You’ve even begun to eat lunch together again. 

It’s not exactly like it was before, not like when you would scurry off to the greenhouse or the shed or some other hidden place, spread out a picnic blanket and bask in each other’s company, laughing about anything and everything, but it’s better. It’s better than how it used to be, when you would always bring your lunch back to your cabin to eat in silence, drown yourself in your comforter and your thoughts, letting them pile on top of you, one by one. It’s better than how you used to pretend that you didn’t even know each other. 

Slowly, step by step, things have almost started to feel normal again. 

“You guys seem happier lately,” Taehyung commends mindlessly as he sits down across from you and Jimin, three pieces of meat lover’s pizza on the paper plate he sets on the tabletop. 

You and Jimin smile at each other. You suppose that you have been.

“Three, Tae?” The moment gone too soon, Jimin’s focus is immediately redirected to the behemoth meal in front of Taehyung. “Seriously? Aren’t you lactose intolerant?”

“The meat balances it out,” Taehyung says matter-of-factly, even though it definitely doesn’t. He takes an enormous bite out of one of the slices, eating nearly half the pizza in a single chomp. “But seriously, I mean it. You guys look a lot happier. Yoongi!”

Yoongi freezes in his tracks from where he’s walking by your table, spilling his open soda can all over his plate of pizza at Taehyung’s shout of his name. 

“Don’t you think that Jimin and Y/N seem happier?” Taehyung asks, motioning to the both of you. 

“I don’t know,” Yoongi says with a shrug, aloof as always. You chuckle to yourself, knowing fully well that it was him who got Namjoon to leave two stacks of flower pots in the arts and crafts room to give you an extra push towards talking with Jimin. Taehyung huffs, disappointed but not surprised that Yoongi contributed so little to the conversation, but he doesn’t notice how Yoongi gives you a smile and a thumbs up as he heads over to where Namjoon and Hoseok are sitting. 

“Well, I think you guys do,” Taehyung says pointedly. 

“Did we seem… unhappy to you?” Jimin asks, an eyebrow raised. 

“No,” says Taehyung. “I don’t know, you guys just seemed different. You know, I was talking with Jin and he and I were convinced that the two of you were dating last year and then broke up sometime before this summer because you guys were acting so weird earlier.”

“Really?” You ask, cracking an awkward smile just to keep the mood light because god, Taehyung really is a lot more observant than you give him credit for. “That’s so funny, honestly.” It’s not. “You know that we’re just friends, Tae.”

Next to you, Jimin is staring down his lunch like it’s insulted his family. Out of the corner of your eye, you watch as he opens his mouth to say something, anything, goddamnit, anything that will make you feel like you’re not the only one who wants you two to be friends again. Anything that will remind you that being friends is all you have left because he will never love you back. 

“You could have fooled me,” Taehyung acknowledges. “Seokjin was pretty convinced, too. We even had a bet going to see which one of you would admit it first.”

“You guys bet on us?” Jimin asks, a little horrified and a lot of something else, something that you can’t quite place. 

“Not with money!” Taehyung defends. “Marshmallows for the end-of-camp counselor campfire. But neither of you ever said anything so we ended up just dropping it and ate as many marshmallows as we wanted.”

Oh, if only Taehyung knew. Oh, if only he had heard you that night, heard you pour your heart out in front of that fire. Oh, if only he had noticed, noticed the warm yellow glow that made Jimin look like he had been bathed in candlelight, noticed those roasted marshmallows over the heat, noticed the words that replay in your head like a broken record. 

There’s a part of you that wants to know who Taehyung was betting on. A part of you that is wondering why on earth would either of them ever assume that Jimin would be the one to confess first when he has only ever seen you as a friend and you have always seen him as something more. Seen him as this dream come to life, seen him as the answer to all of your prayers. 

Jimin never would have confessed first. That hasn’t changed. 

“Thinking back, it was kind of stupid of us to bet on you guys when you hadn’t even confirmed anything,” Taehyung says with a sigh, pursing his lips together tightly. “I don’t know. I guess that Seokjin and I both really, really wanted you guys to get together.” He chuckles, but it isn’t funny anymore.

Believe me, Tae, you think to yourself. You guys weren’t the only ones.

“Eh,” Taehyung hums, shrugging to himself. He clearly isn’t as caught up about it as you and Jimin, who wonder every day how different things would be if you had just kept your damn mouth shut that night, if you had never loved him in the first place. “I guess I’m just glad to see you both smiling again.”

“Thanks, Tae,” you say, because even if Taehyung doesn’t know the whole story he’s still hit the nail on the head, and even if he can’t pick up the way that Jimin’s body has tensed up beside you, even if he doesn’t notice how normal feels like the furthest thing to describe the two of you right now, he has always wanted the both of you to be content.

“Makes me kinda sad to know you guys are just friends, even though I’m obviously not going to force you into anything.” Taehyung takes another bite of his pizza, the words just conversational to him even if they clearly aren’t to either of you.

Slowly, Jimin looks back up from his lunch, like he’s finally made up his mind. You meet Jimin’s eyes when he does, and for once you don’t dare jump into the swirling sea of his irises, for once you can hardly tell if the waves are calm or rough. For once, it feels like Jimin is looking at you the way you look at him—helplessly.

Taehyung smiles, looking fondly at the both of you. “You guys would have been cute together,” he says it because he means it. “You make each other so happy.”

He means that part, too.

The end-of-camp show is a longstanding tradition where all of the kids, divided by age group, celebrate the best part about summer and going to a sleepaway camp: being away from their parents. There are dance performances choreographed by the counselors (namely Hoseok, who has the most free time because his other job mainly consists of making sure Namjoon doesn’t lose his head), a guitar performance organized by Seokjin (who has promised not to rickroll everyone this year), and an art show setup by you to display all of the treasures that the campers have created. But your favorite part of the show is how, no matter how much time time is spent practicing and rehearsing, the performance will always end in chaos. The only predictable thing about it is its unpredictability. 

This year, as suggested by Hoseok and immediately implemented by Namjoon, the counselors are being roped into a performance of their own, one that is bound to be even more disastrous because even though you can all listen to directions, you are all also just as capable of purposely disobeying them. 

Part of you suspects that the only reason Hoseok even recommended that you all do this is because he enjoys watching the camp counselor collective crash and burn. Like there’s something cathartic about watching you go up in flames.

Nevertheless, you do it, because if not for yourselves then for Hoseok, and if not for him then for Namjoon, both of whom tirelessly to make sure that camp is a place where you and the other counselors can do the dumbest things without repercussions. If it weren’t for the two of them, camp would be a lot less fun.

Hoseok also just absolutely relishes in being in charge of something, something that involves dancing and singing and performing, which are his favorite things to do, and it would be cruel of all of you to deny Hoseok this opportunity, if only for a silly little camp performance. 

Hoseok manages to wrangle a time and space for rehearsal thanks to one of those magic scientists that perform cool things with chemicals, one that Namjoon has arranged to visit camp to give you and the other counselors a much-needed break from the endless excitement of children. 

And so, you all trickle into the empty counselor meeting room at three in the afternoon exactly, waiting to see what the hell Hoseok has come up with now. 

All of the tables, chairs, and other miscellaneous furniture has been pushed up against the walls, leaving just enough room for all of you to fit relatively comfortably, with Hoseok standing smack in the middle of the room, looking proud. 

“I’m scared,” Hazel admits to you as you pass by Hoseok to stand where the rest of the counselors have gathered. You sneak a peek at the clipboard in Hoseok’s hand, which isn’t empty this time, and is instead filled with sheets of paper that look like they belong in the hands of a sports coach, X’s and O’s and arrows littering the pages. 

“Don’t be,” you say, though the tremble of your voice is probably doing very little to calm her nerves. You end up grouped together with Jimin and Yoongi, who are both standing in silence, waiting for something to pull them out of their thoughts. “Hey,” you say softly, giving Jimin a nudge. 

“Hey,” Jimin responds, face lifting a little when he sees you. From behind him, Yoongi is eyeing the both of you, but he doesn’t seem very worried. Jimin laughs tensely. “I’m nervous about what Hoseok has in mind for us.”

You glance over to Hoseok as he talks animatedly with Namjoon, who looks a little bit in over his head. Namjoon must have known that Hoseok would spare no expense when it came to a counselor performance. 

“I’m sure it won’t be that bad,” you assure him with a squeeze to his wrist, making him smile weakly at you. 

“First Namjoon makes us sit outside, and then he makes us do exercise?” Yoongi huffs. “When will it end?”

“High time he got you out of the damn kitchens,” Jungkook mutters to himself, making all of the other counselors within earshot laugh. Yoongi turns around to give Jungkook half of a noogie before Hoseok claps to get everyone’s attention. 

“Alright, hi everyone!” Hoseok cheers. “Glad you all could make it.”

“Did we have a choice?” Seokjin asks. 

“Nope!” Hoseok grins. “Anyway, as you know, this year Namjoon and I have been thinking of doing a counselor performance at the end-of-camp show to show unity and entertain the kids, since they’re the ones who have been doing all of the work thus far to make the camp show a reality. And I, as your assistant head counselor and dance choreographer, get to set it up!”

“Oh, God,” Taehyung says. 

“It’s not going to be a super serious thing because this is camp and we’re literally performing for prepubescent children, so don’t worry!” He says, doing nothing to ease people’s worries. He turns around to face the chalkboard, and begins to magnet the pieces of paper from his clipboard onto it, page by page, as the rest of you stare on in horror. “But I have come up with a bit of a dance for us to perform…”

“Oh, God,” Seokjin repeats dramatically. 

“Anyway,” Hoseok says, clapping his hands together once more to redirect everyone’s attention from the mess on the board back to him. “It’ll be a bit of a partner dance for the first half, and then everyone gets about five seconds worth of a solo in the middle where you can do whatever you want—” when Hoseok spots Jungkook, Taehyung, and Seokjin already beginning to scheme, wicked smiles widening, he quickly adds, “—within reason, and then a big old group thing to finish it up. Does that sound good?”

“Whoop,” Yoongi deadpans.

“Great!” Hoseok says, fumbling for another piece of paper in the stack that he still has left on his clipboard. 

“God, a partner dance?” You ask awkwardly, feeling noticeably more worried than before. It’s not that you’re dreading having to dance, or even having to perform in front of a bunch of kids, it’s the idea of having to dance with someone else, a specific someone else in particular, that has your stomach doing flips. “Why did Hobi think that was a good idea?”

“It might be fun, don’t you think?” Jimin says, trying to keep the mood light. It’s clear he has no worries about the potential for being paired up with you, which might have been able to fly last year but this summer, you’re not so sure. You and Jimin just managed to start eating lunch together again without wanting to curl into a ball and hide. What’s going to happen if you have to dance with each other?

“I’m not a very good dancer,” you admit, a weak excuse for your real fear. 

“Then I’ll teach you,” Jimin says, and the words are hopeful and filled with light as he works so desperately to remind you that not all has been lost. That you can begin again. 

“Okay, partners,” Hoseok says, looking at his list. “Namjoon and Yoongi, Jungkook and Seokjin, Taehyung and Hazel, Maria and Ruby, Jia-yi and Quinn, and Jimin and Y/N.”

Shit. 

Yoongi, noticing your alarm, immediately interrupts, “Uh, is it possible for us to switch partners?”

“Why?” Hoseok asks innocently. 

And in that split second, that moment of pause, you look from the wide-eyed Yoongi to Jimin, who is gazing back at you like he’s finally got it right, like he’s finally been given an opportunity to fix what you had broken, to repair your relationship, brick by brick, if only for a stupid counselor performance. Jimin, who is smiling and smiling and smiling because you are finally eating lunch together and you are finally watering that damn hydrangea and you finally get to dance together, and everything in the world is slowly beginning to feel right, the dust is beginning to settle after a month’s worth of storms. 

You inhale, then you exhale, and you say, “I’m fine with my partner. I don’t think we need to switch, do we?”

And you swear, your heart feels lighter already. 

Jimin pops into the arts and crafts room more often these days. Sometimes he actually does it because he needs to drop something off, because a camper left something in the greenhouse or because Namjoon is making him, but most times, he does it just to say hi, just to charm all of the campers as they make collages out of old magazines or glue together fabric for no-sew pillows. 

And every time he does it, every time there is that familiar knock on the door, you nearly tumble over yourself from excitement. The best part about it is how normal it’s all beginning to feel, how familiar it is. You are almost back to where you used to be. 

Almost back to when you loved him, and he didn’t know, and everything was alright. 

Today, the kids are making cards for you to mail back home before the summer is done, before camp comes to a close and they return to their lives and you return to yours. Normally, you’d automatically send the letters back to the parents, but this time, you offer up an alternative. 

“These cards are going to be mailed back home to the people that you love,” you say, holding up your own as an example. It’s a basic one, yellow cardstock with daisies made out of construction paper glued onto it, but it serves as a good guideline for whatever the campers want to do with their own. “You just need to provide their address so that we can make sure it gets to the right person.”

“It doesn’t have to be our parents?” One boy asks.

“Nope,” you say with a smile, shaking your head. “You can send it to anyone you love. It’s just to let them know how you are, and that you miss them.”

“Who are you sending yours to?” A different girl, Rose, asks. 

“I’m not sure yet,” you say, because you don’t really need to let your parents know how you are when you text each other constantly, and all of your friends from back home can see all of the shenanigans you get up to on your social media, but a letter is no fun if only one person ever gets to read it. 

“You should send it to Jimin,” Rose suggests matter-of-factly, making you sputter out the water you were taking a sip of all over the table in front of you. 

“Jimin?” You repeat, forcing a smile. “I see Jimin all the time.”

“But you really like him, don’t you?” She asks, even though she obviously already knows the answer. Goddamn, kids pick up on everything. “I can tell.”

“Is that so?” You return, eyebrows raised. 

“Yeah, me too!” The boy chirps up. “You always look so nervous whenever he comes to say hello. Like you don’t know what to say. That’s what my mom looks like whenever she comes home from a new date with a boy she really likes.”

You do? That is news to you. 

“It’s okay, though,” Rose interrupts. “I think that he really likes you too. Otherwise he wouldn’t just be popping in every other day to say hello!”

“Maybe he really likes seeing you guys, instead!” You offer, feeling your cheeks heating up at the thought that you and Jimin have laid yourselves out bare like a board book for everyone to read. 

“I don’t think so. He looks too happy when he sees you.” The girl shakes her head. “You should send your card to him, so he knows that you love him.”

Oh, he knows, that’s for sure, you think to yourself. There’s no way that Jimin hasn’t already realized that you still love him. That you have always loved him. Even the campers have it figured out, and they’re still in elementary school. But you think that the worst part of this, the worst part of all of these freakishly observant children verbally beating you up with reminders of your relationship with Jimin, is how they seem to think that Jimin likes you back. That Jimin sees you as something more. 

Because he didn’t, last year. And he didn’t, earlier this summer. And there is no way things have changed that much. 

“You guys should keep working on your cards,” you say, desperate for the subject to drop, desperate to talk about anything, literally anything, besides Jimin. “We want to send them by the end of the week so that the people you love will get them before camp’s over.”

“So you do like him!” The boy exclaims. 

“Cards, Oliver!” You reprimand him, earning a chorus of giggles, though there is no mistaking the way your body has tensed, the way your words are shaking. No mistaking how your heart trembles at the thought of Jimin, sweet, wonderful, beautiful Jimin, actually liking you back. 

It can’t be. 

You and Jimin have always just been friends. That’s all you’ll ever be. You swear. 

You swear.

“The hydrangea looks better,” you comment as you enter the greenhouse, eyes immediately darting towards the pot on the table at the front. In it, the hydrangea has blossomed fully, its petals a vibrant sky blue, basking in the faint glow of the sun as it streams into the greenhouse, peeking between the misty gray clouds, painting everything with a hazy yellow warmth. 

“It does, doesn’t it?” Jimin asks from where he’s wrestling with an enormous packet of soil, pausing his battle to turn and look at the blossom, smiling to himself. “I think we must have worked some sort of magic.”

“Or maybe it’s just your expert gardening skills,” you tease, hauling in some plants by the door that Jimin has been meaning to bring inside the greenhouse for days now. “I’m not in here enough to make any sort of noticeable difference.”

Jimin scoffs disbelievingly. “You’re in here almost as much as I am nowadays.”

“Just to help out,” you defend weakly, pouting to yourself. It’s not like you’ve completely abandoned your air-conditioned arts and crafts room to fool around in the balmy greenhouse, soil underneath your fingernails and seeds stuck to your clothes. You just prefer to spend your free time here. Nothing criminal about that.

Plus, Jimin sure doesn’t seem to mind. 

“And for that, I thank you,” says Jimin with a grin, the bag of soil finally beginning to cooperate with him. He hauls it over his shoulder to bring into the back room, where he keeps all of the bigger tools and plants that are too advanced for the campers, and you pretend not to ogle the way his biceps bulge as he carries the soil away, the bag easily fifty pounds or more. 

What? You didn’t fall in love with Jimin just because of his electric personality. 

“Besides, you come into the arts room so often that all the kids are starting to think you work there instead of here,” you remind him pointedly. He laughs, and the sound bounces off of the glass walls, filling up the room. 

Jimin comes out of the back room, a little bit of soil smudged onto his cheek from his gloves, and he’s smiling. “Maybe I just like seeing you.”

“Next time we do a craft I’ll make sure to prepare an extra one so you can do it with us,” you joke, ignoring the way his words warm you from the inside out, convincing yourself that this is what it was like last year, too, so Jimin doesn’t mean anything by it. 

Convincing yourself that Jimin has never loved you the way that you love him. 

“Am I going to be allowed to sit next to you?” He asks as he walks up to where you’re working, that same flirty lilt to his voice, that teasing tone that he always used to use on you, especially whenever it came down to spending time together. 

“Only if you’re good,” you chide in response, leaning over to pick up a flower pot just so you don’t have to see his damn face, so you don’t have to see the way his eyes glint in the sun as he toys with you, as he presses all of your buttons with ease.

Obviously, you had seriously miscalculated how far away he was, because by the time you’re standing up straight he’s right behind you, playfully pinching at your waist, the sensation sending an electric jolt through your veins. You jump and gasp at the feeling, nearly dropping the goddamn flower pot, body suddenly turning to jelly. Behind you, Jimin is in stitches. 

“I could have dropped this!” You scold him as he doubles over in laughter, giggling and giggling and giggling, so much so that you can’t even pretend to be angry at him, too endeared by his happiness, by his pure joy, to shout at him any more. 

“You’ve always been so ticklish, Y/N,” Jimin says between puffs of air, trying to catch his breath.

“I am not! You just surprised me!” You defend, even though Jimin’s right and he knows it. Your outrage leaves him in hysterics still, amused by the way you so easily fall right into his trap.

“Whatever you say,” he singsongs, helping you haul in the last of the flowerpots. “I think that’s the last of them.”

“Next time I show up, a whole different part of the greenhouse will need work,” you say with a sigh, because no matter how much you do, no matter how much you clean and reorganize, there will always be something left. 

“The work is never done,” Jimin says with a smile, having already resigned himself to this fate. “But I think it looks pretty good.”

And looking at the greenhouse, looking at the vibrant hues that fill the room, from the rich golden marigolds to the bright pink lilies, from the rich green leaves to the soft blue hydrangea, you have to agree. It’s no wonder why Jimin loves this place so much, spends so much time in it despite its severe lack of circulation and the absence of reliable shade. It’s because everything in here he has had a hand in making. Everything in here is here because of him. 

This place will never not remind you of him. 

“It’s getting late,” Jimin says, checking his watch. “You think they have dinner ready for us?”

“God, I hope so,” you say with a sigh. “I’m starving.”

“Then shall we feast?” He asks, holding his arm out for you to take. 

You wrap your arm around his own, and you grin. “We shall.”

Then the thunder cracks, and the sky begins to sob. 

You’re barely three feet out the door before you feel the wet splotches on your shoulders, cold drops on your skin, made thicker by the leaves above your head, forcing you to retreat back into the greenhouse. Thanks to the glass, the raindrops that hit the rooftop ring like mallets on a drum, booming and loud, echoing throughout the room. 

“Damn,” Jimin says, staring out at the once sunny clearing, now shrouded in a grey haze. “It was sunny two minutes ago.”

“It’s just a summer storm,” you assure, arm still wrapped up tight in his own. “They never last long.”

“Think we should wait it out?” He asks. 

“Whatever you want to do.”

Jimin grins, squeezing you tight. “How about this? Five minutes, and if it doesn’t stop, we make a run for it?”

You nod. “Five minutes.”

Five minutes pass and the rain has no intention of letting up, seemingly getting heavier as you count down the seconds, the light grey fog that has blanketed the clearing turning to an angry deep blue, thick and endless. The alarm on Jimin’s watch goes off, signifying your wait’s end, and you open your mouth to suggest that maybe you should wait here a little longer, but barely get the first letter out before Jimin is flinging open the door to the greenhouse and pulling you out into the rain. 

You shriek as the drops hit you, little pellets of water striking you like beads, soaking your clothes and your skin everything in between. Jimin looks back from where he’s running in front of you, one hand still wrapped around your wrist, and his hair is in strands and his shirt is sticking to his torso, and you don’t think that, in your three years of knowing him, you’ve ever seen him happier. He pulls you out into the rain and he looks like a shot from a movie scene, looks like the hero in a coming-of-age film, letting the rain wash away his worries and his insecurities, letting himself be reborn beneath the crying sky. 

And he stops, and you stop, and you stand there in the pouring rain just looking at each other, picturesque frames, moments in time, letting the water soak into your skin, letting it trickle down your cheeks, decorating your eyelashes. You feel his hand sink down to your own, feel your fingers intertwine. And he is smiling, God, he is smiling so fucking wide, smiling at you like there is no place he would rather be, smiling at you like you smile at him when you think he isn’t looking, like you are the reason he is filled with light. Jimin stands there in the rain with his hand on your wrist and droplets of rain dotting his skin, and he is brand new. And you watch him, watch the way it rains down upon him, and you wonder what the hell he is thinking. 

You wonder what on earth he sees when he looks at you. 

(Is it the same as what you see when you look at him?)

“Aren’t you cold?” You ask him, feeling like your voice is a distant melody, feeling like it’s coming from somewhere else. 

He shakes his head, and you can see the rain spraying from the ends of his hair, soaked strands framing his face. “Isn’t this wonderful?” He asks up to the sky, tilting his head up to let it rain down upon him, let the droplets drizzle down his cheeks. “Don’t you love it?”

“It’s nice,” you admit, because there’s something refreshing about being here, about being caught in the midst of a summer storm, washing away the dirt and sweat and worries. 

“It’s perfect,” Jimin corrects, voice trampled by the rain, thick and heavy. “I feel like this is just what I needed.”

“Needed for what?”

He looks back at you, looks at the way your bodies are still connected, at the way you’re standing barely a foot apart in the pouring rain, and he grins and says, “Just what I needed to know.”

You don’t have time to ask him what he needs to know, what he has been so desperate to learn, before he’s pulling you back into him and up onto the deck, wet footsteps on the wooden porch as you heave yourselves out of the rain and into the counselor meeting room, drenched from head to toe. 

“Oh my God, what the hell happened to you guys?” Seokjin asks, shocked when he spots the two of you, still holding hands. 

“Got caught in the rain,” you say sheepishly, still feeling out of breath. 

“In the rain?” Taehyung asks. “For how long?”

“Long enough,” Jimin answers this time, finally letting you go to run towards the back of the room. You watch helplessly as he does, your hand clenching around nothing, missing his touch. When he returns, he’s got a dry windbreaker in his hand, crumpled up from being in his backpack for so long. “Here, use this,” he says, placing it over your shoulders, pulling the collar tight at your front. 

“Thanks,” you say breathlessly, wondering what the hell Jimin is going to use to dry himself off, clothing so soaked not even a day in the sun could dry it. 

“That was fun,” Jimin says, fixing the windbreaker over your shoulders to make sure it’s covering as much of you as possible. “Who knew, right?”

“Right,” your voice trails off, too focused on the way his brows are furrowed as he tries to dry you off with a jacket made of fabric meant to repel water rather than absorb it, mouth pressed into a pout as he shuffles it around, drying off whatever he can. 

“Maybe we can do it again sometime,” he says when he’s satisfied, gazing into your eyes, trying to get you to gaze back into his own. When you falter, he chuckles, this little huff of air dispelled from his lungs. “I’m gonna go bother Hoseok for something dry. Don’t stay in those clothes too long, or you’ll catch something.”

With that, he disappears into the other room, soggy footsteps leaving prints in his wake. You’re so busy watching his back disappear from view that you don’t even notice Namjoon coming up to you, a sage expression written all over his face. 

“What?” You challenge, not liking the way he looks so suspicious. 

“Nothing,” he says with a laugh and a shake of his head. “I just… don’t know if you really do have anything to worry about when it comes to him.” He nods his head in the direction of Jimin before vanishing, called over by Seokjin and Jungkook to complain to him about something, leaving you floundering in the doorway to the counselor’s room. 

Does Namjoon know something you don’t?

Are you missing something here?

Because as far as you’re concerned, you and Jimin are finally getting back to where you used to be. As far as you’re concerned, you and Jimin did these same things last year, worked in the greenhouse together, planted flowers together, ate lunch together (okay, maybe you didn’t stand in the pouring rain together), and you are positive Jimin didn’t love you back then. As far as you’re concerned, this isn’t different. This is normal. 

Outside, the rain has stopped, a rainbow hidden behind the trees the only reminder that it was ever there in the first place. 

Despite the fact that you will literally only be performing for a bunch of children, Jimin is insistent on teaching you how to dance. 

At least, that’s it looks like, when he asks you to meet him in the counselor’s room one day half an hour before the mandated practice that Hoseok’s arranged for the whole group of you while the all the campers are off on a nature hike with some of the local rangers from the reserve nearby. You don’t know why this couldn’t wait until during practice, when Hoseok puts on some upbeat dance music and lets everybody do what they want, which usually ends up in someone getting twirled (usually Seokjin), but you don’t really mind. Your other option was to lie around in your cabin waiting for the next social event. 

Jimin’s already inside by the time you arrive, this smooth, soft jazz playing from the little speaker that he brought with him, set up on a table at the front of the room. The furniture hasn’t been moved back to their original spots since the first practice, so anytime Namjoon calls a meeting everyone ends up sitting on the floor like a kindergarten class, but at least it makes dance practice easier. 

Even though he’s not really dancing, his body is still moving, absorbed in the music as it echoes around the room, hips swaying and head bobbing. He loses himself in the melody so easily, letting each and every note pluck along to the strings of his heart, this deep, mellow sound that fills him up like a wine glass, dulcet and sweet. 

“Hey,” you say softly from where you stand, watching him from the doorframe. 

Jimin jumps a little bit at the sound of your voice, almost embarrassed that he hadn’t spotted you sooner. “Hey,” he says in return, coming to a halt. “I didn’t, uh, see you there.”

“That was kind of the point,” you joke, walking into the room and joining him where he stands in the center. “Why did you want me down here?”

“You mean I need a reason to see you now?” Jimin teases in return, a little smirk playing along his lips. You frown, narrowing your eyes at him, unimpressed. He gives. “Alright, you got me. I promised you a dance lesson, didn’t I?”

“This isn’t the kind of music that Hoseok puts on, though,” you point out, even as Jimin intertwines his hand in your own and pulls you in close to him, the two of you stepping in time to the beat, not too slow but not too fast, either, this even, steady swing, the sort of thing an old bar would play during the evening rush. Jimin doesn’t pay your comment any attention, instead focusing on his hand on your side, your fingers laced together between your bodies. 

You have, admittedly, never been much of a musical person. You never go out to clubs because sweaty, drunk people just aren’t your style, you don’t ever dance, and you can barely keep a beat when you sing in the shower. Your body has always been stiff as stone despite your (and your friends’) best attempts to achieve otherwise, and as such, you had long resigned yourself to the fact that you do better with your mouth than with your feet. 

But still, Jimin rallies on, because you’re here, goddamnit, and even if you never dance again after this, at least you can say that you have. He moves you around the room in time with the honeyed melody, even daring to pull some advanced tactics like spinning you beneath his touch, hand held above your head as you twirl in place. And you try to let loose, try to lose yourself in the music like he does, but it’s hard when you have always been more of a wordsmith than a dancer.

What’s also not helping is how every bone in your body always seems to freeze up at his touch. 

“Relax, alright?” He says, guiding you across the old wooden floor, boards creaking beneath your feet. “It’s just me.”

That’s the problem, your brain supplies unhelpfully. 

“I told you that I wasn’t a very good dancer,” you say bashfully, unable to look Jimin in the eye when he is so close, when his body is practically pressed up against yours, when his fingertips leave burn marks where they press against his skin, sparks flying. 

It’s different than when it was raining, because when it was raining, even though you were close, there were other things for Jimin to look at besides you. He gazed up at the sky and thanked it for its tears, gazed around the clearing and surrounded himself in the navy blue haze, closed his eyes and felt the drops on his skin, felt them wash away his nightmares and replace them with dreams. 

It’s different now, because there is nothing impressive about the counselor room. Because the janky old tables and dirty windows aren’t something to be gazed at. Because Jimin’s focus is on you and only you, and it makes you feel like he’s staring right through you, like he’s gawking at your heart where it sits in its cage, trembling beneath his eyes. Jimin makes you want to board yourself up, wall yourself in, and reveal yourself bare all at once, like there is so much that he already knows but so much more that he could, if only things were just a little bit different. 

“You’re doing just fine,” Jimin promises, voice as soft as his steps, padding on the hardwood. You’ve lost track of the number of times you’ve circled the room, Jimin guiding you without reason or rhyme, just rhythm. He makes sure you’re always looking at him, reaches a hand out to tilt your chin back up if you dare glance away, keeping his steely gaze trained on you, determined to have you do the same. “Isn’t this nice?” He murmurs. 

“It is,” you agree. You don’t even have to think about your response, letting the words fall off your tongue, because even if you do feel tense, even if your bones are stiff, there is something about this that sets you at ease. 

And you stay like that, wrapped up in each other, swaying to the beat of this song, a beat that is strikingly similar to the drums of your hearts, and the moment feels as though it’s freezing. Feels as though the rest of the world is fading away, leaving only the two of you and the warm, rich tune that floats through the air, slowing down as time seems to come to a halt. 

“Do you still miss us?” You breathe, and you can see the words as they leave your lips, see them written out in puffs of smoke between you before they fade into nothingness. 

“No,” Jimin responds, equally as speechless. The word disappears quickly in front of you, replaced by his next ones, “because this is what I had been waiting for.”

The words stare down at you angrily, your eyes raking over them, line by line, letter by letter, hoping to imprint them into your skin and your brain and your heart, hoping to keep them locked up besides your love for you to replay, over and over, one of many memories that keep you up at night, that you flicker back to watch like an old film, reminiscing of who you used to be, what you used to do. 

They disappear far too quickly, and suddenly time begins again, and you get dizzy just from how much the rest of the world needs to catch up, whizzing by you in fast forward. Or maybe you’re just dizzy because Jimin has always made you feel this way, always left you gasping for air, weak in the knees, heart pounding. 

God, he makes your heart pound. He makes it drum in your ears like the Nutcracker, like thunder during a summer storm. 

“Don’t you want…” he asks, trailing off, eyes hazy and deep, absolutely unreadable. 

“Want what?” You respond, and you swear you aren’t doing it on purpose but you feel yourself leaning forward, closing the gap between you, inch by inch—

“Want to see me lift Seokjin up in the air?” Jungkook’s voice rings out into the room. “I can, you know, he weighs like two pou—whoa, alright.”

A hoard of people stop behind Jungkook as he stands in the doorway like a floundering fish, blinking at you and Jimin. His arrival does not give you enough time to part without things looking suspicious, without all of the damn counselors already making their assumptions, leaving the two of you separating awkwardly, smiling tensely. 

“What were you guys doing?” Taehyung asks, breaking the silence that has blanketed the room. 

“Practicing,” you say quickly, looking as far away from Jimin as possible. Not even you are buying into your excuse. 

“Sure thing,” Taehyung responds, eyebrows raised in understanding, already having formulated his own, likely more realistic answer. 

“Alright,” Hoseok says, appearing from behind the crowd with a clap of his hands. “I guess that means that Y/N and Jimin don’t need to be joining us today, off you guys go.” He gestures for the two of you to leave, but the only exit doubles as the entrance, which means the two of you are left to shuffle past a crowd of counselors, all of whom are staring at you as you pass them by. Jimin doesn’t reach out his hand, and you don’t make any attempts at changing that. 

You nearly suffocate on the way out, overwhelmed by the tension that has filled the atmosphere, leaving everyone helpless to it. 

Jimin goes in one direction and you go in the other, the both of you clearly too stupefied to say anything meaningful to each other, determined to spend the rest of the night apart in an effort to dispel the dozen rumors that you know have already begun to circle the camp. 

On your way back to your cabin, alone and lost in thought, you finish your conversation. 

“Do you want…” Jimin asks, voice trailing off. 

“Yes,” you say. “I want it all. I want you.”

You wonder if Jimin feels the same. 

There is something eerie about the camp late at night, when the only lights that shine are the dim yellow wall sconces outside of the cabin doors, when everyone is sound asleep in their bunks, when there is only the moon and its stars to keep you company, watch over you from their place in the universe. There’s something eerie about the quiet, not because you have a reason to feel unsettled but because you’re so used to camp being this lively, bustling place, filled with things to do and people to see. 

When you see it like this, empty and silent, it almost makes you think you aren’t even in the same place anymore. 

The one and only place that you go when you cannot sleep is the pier, extending out over the lake, the cool, clear lake, looking out into the midnight horizon, a perfect view of the stars and their reflections, cast over the water, twinkling endlessly. You take a seat on the edge, legs dangling over the water, and you stare out into the world, a cool breeze tickling your skin. 

You wonder what it is that’s keeping you awake tonight. What it is that is holding sleep just out of your grasp, your dreams suspended above your head. Camp ends in three days and for once you finally feel satisfied, feel as though you have done what you wanted and accomplished what you had hoped. The last few days of this summer are a far cry from those of last summer, where you were wearing yourself thin thinking about your confession, thinking about what you would say and when you would say it, and what you would do based on the fifteen thousand different things that Jimin could say in response, so hung up on telling him that you barely focused on anything else. 

But this summer, you and Jimin are finally starting to be alright again. And even though you don’t think you will ever move on from loving him, you have moved on from the fact that he will probably never love you back, moved on from your failed confession, and you are learning to be okay with what you have, even if it’s not what you want. 

The truth is that you and Jimin have never felt closer. Driven by your mutual desperation to be friends again, to return to the way that things were when you were together, when you were inseparable, you have been pulled together like moths to each other’s flames, like the thunder and the lightning. You can’t think of anything from this summer that you have wanted more than to be by his side again. But things are different from last summer, different because you and Jimin are not only friends but friends who have had to reckon with love, with its disastrous effects. 

So maybe that’s why you’re awake tonight. Because this summer feels inexplicably stranger than last summer, and you feel like you’re missing something. 

“I thought I’d be the only one still awake.”

You whip your head around at the voice to find Jimin standing at the other end of the pier, ink black hair hanging over his eyes, stars swimming in his irises. You can barely make out his face this late at night, when there is nothing to cast upon him a glow besides the moon and its lonely companions, but you will never mistake his soft, honeyed voice, never mistake the way his eyes sparkle and shine. He is grinning at you, warm and kind, as he slowly makes his way towards you, footsteps tapping along the worn wooden planks, until he sits down next to you, feet hovering above the water. 

“You and me both, I guess,” you feel yourself whisper, not daring to speak a decibel louder. 

“Lots on your mind?” He asks, looking out into the horizon. You sigh, too tired to respond. He understands anyway, just like he always does. “Mine too.”

You let the silence wash over you like a wave that bathes the shoreline, gazing out into a world that carries on no matter the time of day, no matter who watches over it. Like this, you and Jimin don’t need to explain yourselves to each other. Don’t need to force a conversation just for the sake of filling up the quiet night. Like this, your presence is enough, the knowledge that he is here beside you, staring out into the same sky, into the same moon and stars, is all that you need. 

Something has long gone unspoken between the two of you. Something that you can’t quite place. Jimin has had something to say for a long time but he lets his body do the talking, lets you fill in the gaps. But this time, it feels like the more you try to read between the lines the less you understand, and goddamnit you wish that he would just tell you, would just say it so you don’t have to keep wondering and wondering and wondering—

“I never did tell you,” Jimin says, breaking you out of your reverie.

“Tell me what?”

“Tell you what I was thinking, that night.”

He doesn’t need to elaborate any further for you to know what night he’s talking about. You stare down at the lake, at the way it seems to move into itself even though there is nothing to disturb it. 

“I guess I was just so shocked that you, you know, liked me like that, that I didn’t really focus on anything else. Didn’t think about why, or how, or when, or what to do. It existed separately from all of that,” he admits, breaths heavy. 

“You didn’t need to focus on that stuff,” you assure him softly. “It was my burden to hold. I was the one who chose to tell you. It wasn’t your fault.”

Does he know? Does he know that you never hated him for not loving you back? That you didn’t expect him to do anything about it? 

“I just felt so bad,” he says, and you hear the way the words prick at his tongue, leave burn marks along his lips. “Because I didn’t know what to do after that. I wanted to love you back so badly but I just couldn’t.”

And even though you already knew this, even though you were already well aware that Jimin has always only seen you as a friend, for some reason hearing him say it aloud still hurts, still pierces your heart, wounds that your love for him alone cannot fix. 

“It’s not your fault,” you promise him, because throughout all of this, no matter what, you have never, ever blamed him for not loving you back. “I didn’t expect anything. At all. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“Don’t I, though?” Jimin asks, and God, he sounds so helpless, sounds like he’s tried everything under the sun to figure things out and still, nothing has felt right. “We had always been so close. I wondered why I couldn’t fall in love with you and the things that we did together when you could. I thought that I was doing something wrong. You deserved someone who would love you back, and I so desperately wanted to be that person.”

“You owed me nothing,” you declare. “You still don’t owe me a damn thing. All I wanted was for you to know.” And look where that got you.

“Knowing didn’t feel like enough,” Jimin divulges. “I wanted to do more for you than just acknowledge it. I replayed that night in my head, over and over, wondering what more I could have said to you.” He sighs, deep and slow and filled with weight, filled with a year’s worth of thoughts he never told anyone else. “You told me you loved me and it was all I could think about. Then and now.”

“You still think about it?” You wonder aloud, sad because Jimin doesn’t deserve to have this weight on his conscience when you are the one at fault, and hopeful because maybe, just maybe, your confession meant just as much to him as it did to you. 

“I can’t stop,” he confesses. And then he turns to you, turns to you in the glow of the moon, his eyes drowning in starlight, and he says, “Every time I look at you I think about how you love me.”

You don’t know what to say. You are too absorbed in the swirling sea of his irises, letting the warmth wash over you in waves, filling you up before emptying out again, shocks of cold before the heat races through you. Jimin is right there, right here, and he is gazing at you and you wonder. 

You wonder, what if. 

You wonder, what if he loved me back?

“Even when I was away from you I thought about it,” he chuckles to himself, amused at his own obsession. “I thought about you, that night, at the campfire. You were wearing this neon pink camp t-shirt and your marshmallow looked like coal and you had this warm orange glow on you, and I swear to God, that image is imprinted in my brain. I see it every time I close my eyes.”

You didn’t know that. 

“When I went on dates, I saw you instead. I would be sitting in a booth with some girl and she would be trying to talk to me about the menu and all I would see is you.” Jimin exhales, filling the pauses that he leaves between his sentences, eyes raking you up and down as if he’s trying to commit this scene to memory, as if this night on the pier is something worth remembering. “They knew, too. All of them told me that I should get over my ex before going on a brand new date.” 

Get over you? What about you was there to get over? Your love has always been one-sided. You have never known a world where it hasn’t.

“And I wouldn’t even try to explain to them that I didn’t have an ex to get over, and that you were the one who confessed to me, and that I didn’t love you like that,” he forces another laugh, like he doesn’t even believe the words he’s saying himself. “Then this summer rolled around, and I saw you arrive and I just can’t tell you in words how happy I was to see you. How looking at you just lifted my spirits.”

“I hardly recognized you at first,” you admit shyly. 

“I dyed my hair,” Jimin reminds you. That’s right. He had brown hair last summer. “And I wanted to talk to you, but I didn’t know how to without bringing up all the shit that happened last year, and things were awkward between us, and I guess…” he trails off, thinking for a moment. “I guess I just really, really wanted us to get back to the way things were, but I didn’t know how to. And I didn’t know what had changed.”

“Nothing changed,” you say, even though everything did. But loving Jimin has always been a constant in your life, a truth, and this summer was no different. “I wanted to go back to being friends with you, too.”

“I thought I wanted that, too.”

This time, you are the one who turns to look at him. What could he possibly mean by that? 

(Can it be?)

“At first, that’s all I wanted,” Jimin begins. “I wanted us to go back to being friends, I wanted us to eat lunch together and have it not be weird, I wanted us to spend time in the greenhouse and the arts and crafts room together, I wanted us to hang around the rest of the counselors without them noticing how different we were. But then I noticed that the hydrangea was wilting no matter what the fuck I did to keep it alive, and I realized that wanting our friendship back wasn’t enough for me anymore.”

You are frozen in place. You are locked into his gaze, body turning to stone, unable to even utter a single word. To breathe a single breath. And you look into his eyes, Jimin’s beautiful, ocean eyes, Jimin’s sparkling, ink eyes, and you pray. 

“And then Hobi partnered us up for the stupid camp counselor performance, and we got caught in the rain, and then we danced in the counselor meeting room and I just—” His chest heaves, words flounder. As if he has so much to say, as if the words are practically spilling off of his tongue, and yet they are still not enough. He closes his eyes. Pauses. Catches his breath. And then he asks, “If I asked you if you still loved me, would you say yes?”

“Yes,” you breathe out. 

“If I asked you if you wanted me to love you back, would you say yes?”

“Yes,” you whisper again. 

Jimin blinks.

“If I asked you if you wanted me to kiss you, would you say yes?”

You barely get out the first letter before Jimin is pulling you into him and pressing his fiery lips upon yours. His hand cradles your cheek, the other one splayed out on the wooden pier to keep his balance, dragging you into a messy, desperate kiss, one that sends sparks ricocheting throughout your body, turning your blood into liquid flames, that fills you up from the inside out. The feeling of his lips pressed upon yours makes your heart shake so wildly in its cage that it frees itself, growing a thousand times wider. The rose inside of you vanishes, finds itself replaced by a blooming, bright blue hydrangea, one that settles deeply within your soul. 

Your legs dangle off the pier as your arms wrap around Jimin’s body, curling around his torso in a futile effort to bring him closer than he already is, to feel the warmth of him press against you, sending jolts down your spine, into your bones. You feel yourself getting dizzy just at the feeling alone, kiss drunk, the rest of the world spinning like a goddamn teacup ride, but you cling onto him and you know that he will always be there to catch you if you fall. You know that he will always be there to steady you when you feel the world slipping out from beneath your feet. 

You have him, you have him, you have him. You have him, and he is right here, and he loves you like the sun loves the moon, and you love him like the waves love the shore.

When you part, you almost lose your balance and fall right off the damn pier. Jimin reaches out to grab you just in time, saving you from a watery grave (or just major embarrassment), and the two of you laugh, letting your voices fill the moonlit air, heads light, bodies blissed out. 

“Honestly, I was a little nervous you were going to say no,” he admits with a laugh. 

“Impossible,” you chide. “You know I’ve always loved you.”

No matter what, that will never change. 

“And now,” he says, pressing another kiss to your forehead, this one gentle and plush, “you know that I will always love you, too.”

It doesn’t feel like something long overdue. It doesn’t feel like something that you have been waiting and waiting and waiting for, something you have expected from the moment you told him. 

No. This feels like something new. 

This feels like your heart is in bloom. 

The end-of-camp show, no matter how much time and effort Namjoon puts into making it go smoothly, is a train wreck. But it is a train wreck in that wonderful way, in that way where you would be suspicious if things actually went according to plan, in that way where chaos and disarray reign supreme. Quite frankly, when it comes to the end-of-camp show, you never expect anything less. 

The truth is that the majority of the end-of-camp show performances are just for the counselor’s entertainment, an afternoon of fun to wrap up the end of camp, topped off by a fun meal (usually pizza) and a night around a bonfire, letting the heat warm your bodies from the inside out. Unless Jungkook and Taehyung pull some extremely ridiculous prank, the last official day of camp is usually everyone’s favorite, filled with snacks and music and laughter.

The performances by the campers go about as well as any performance by a bunch of elementary schoolers can go—that is to say, the kids remember the first five seconds of the choreography before they devolve into pandemonium, dancing as many weird, trendy dances as they can, and some you don’t even think have been invented yet. Nonetheless, Hoseok is proud, and beams at all of the campers as they scurry away from the center of the gymnasium once their dance is done, grabbing little snacks on the tables by the windows before settling in to watch the next stage. Hoseok does a good job of keeping the music current and upbeat so that nobody falls asleep, and gives the campers enough creative liberty so that it doesn’t feel too practiced. 

Lightly rehearsed, Hoseok likes to say. 

Absolute madness, Yoongi usually corrects.

After the dances, Seokjin and his hoard of campers with guitars the size of an overgrown ukelele make their way to center stage, and you and the other counselors bet on what stupid song he’s taught them all. He starts it off with everyone’s favorite and the most timeless of all tunes—Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star—before the musical highlight. 

(“It’s gonna be Fireflies,” Taehyung insists, so confident in his choice that he even wagers two of the homemade Rice Krispie Treats that Yoongi got all of the campers to make for today’s celebration. 

“It’s been too long since he rickrolled us,” Jungkook says, eyes narrowing suspiciously to Seokjin at the front of the room. “I’m just waiting for it.”

“Wonderwall, obviously,” Hoseok contributes, even though Seokjin got all of the campers from last year to play that. 

You and Jimin are both almost positive Seokjin has chosen to perform Let it Go, a song that will never truly escape you, but you keep your comments to yourselves. 

“I’m thinking Photograph,” Namjoon comments mindlessly, late to the conversation.

“The Nickelback song?” Yoongi says with a scoff. “Dude, we’re the only ones old enough to even know that song. No no, I think it’ll be Despacito.”

“If I have to hear Despacito one more time, I’m going to jump out of the f—” Taehyung stumbles on the syllable as Namjoon turns to glare at him, making Taehyung sputter for a replacement. “F… -reaking window. Watch me.”)

In the end, none of you guess correctly, because Seokjin has chosen to teach all of the campers how to play Country Road, Take Me Home, and honestly, none of you can even be mad about it because by the thirty second mark, you’re all singing along. There’s just something about that song that forces you to belt out the lyrics, something magical and irresistible. 

Afterwards, it is finally time for the counselor’s performance, which, if the camper’s excited screams are anything to go by, is apparently the peak of the afternoon. Hoseok puts on the same upbeat dance music and all of you go to town, following his choreography without any hitches before jumping into the solo section. Namjoon and Yoongi both attempt a trendy Internet dance and fail miserably, Taehyung and Hazel do a little tango that involves no accidents, and then it’s you and Jimin’s turn. 

The music isn’t really appropriate for the slow dance that Jimin taught you in the counselor meeting room, but he makes it work and you follow along, tracing his footsteps and laughing at the prickly sensation his hand on your waist sends shooting through you. You really have always been ticklish there. Hoseok only gives everyone thirty seconds before they’re booted off to the sideline, but thirty seconds is just enough time for Jimin to spin you once before pulling you into a kiss in front of dozens of campers and all of the counselors, whose hollers and hoots fill the gymnasium, bouncing off of the walls and ricocheting into your ears, when they watch you. It has your cheeks heating up something fierce, all embarrassed by Jimin’s big reveal, but the great big smile on his face makes it all worth it. He looks so happy to be here with you. He looks so goddamn happy to have you. 

It makes you feel like you can do anything. 

Ultimately, Jungkook and Seokjin get the greatest applause, because Jungkook lifts Seokjin into the air figure-skating style before Seokjin comes crashing down on him, and they land in a puddle on the gymnasium floor to the screams of all of the campers and counselors, who have never seen anything quite as artistically dramatic in their lives. 

Afterwards, you and Jimin retire to the snack tables alongside the rest of the counselors as the campers are free to roam the building, check out the art on display and eat as many ants on a log and homemade Rice Krispie Treats as they can get their grubby hands on. 

“Congrats, you guys,” Namjoon says, raising his dixie cup filled with lemonade. “It worked out after all.”

“I’m proud of you,” Yoongi murmurs to you, a soft smile gracing his features. 

“Love always prevails,” Jungkook declares, sighing happily, always a hopeless romantic at heart. You sure hope that one day, Jungkook will fall in love with someone who loves him back unconditionally, because he deserves it. 

“Which one of you confessed first?” Seokjin says, Taehyung nodding furiously behind you. You see that the bet is still on. 

“Me,” you say. 

“Me,” Jimin says. 

You both look at each other, eyebrows furrowed, clearly on separate wavelengths. 

Seokjin narrows his eyes. “Alright… which one of you said ‘I love you’ first?”

“That would be me,” you admit sheepishly, having a year’s headstart on Jimin when it comes to love confession. 

“I fucking knew it,” Seokjin says, palm out. Taehyung begrudgingly smacks five dollars into Seokjin’s hand, muttering to himself about how he was convinced that Jimin would tell you first. It makes you wonder, just a little bit, how long Jimin had known.

You open your mouth to defend yourself and your weak, weak heart, when you feel a tap on your side. Behind you is the same girl from the day that you were making cards to send back home to people you love, the one who absolutely grilled you about your feelings for Jimin. 

“Yes, Rose?” You ask happily. 

“So did you send it to him?” She questions. 

“Send what?”

“Your card. Did you send it to Mr. Jimin?” She elaborates, eyes wide in curiosity. You make a mental note to remind her to never stop being inquisitive. It will take her far. 

“No, I didn’t,” you say with a laugh, shaking your head. You look back at Jimin, where he’s laughing with Seokjin and Taehyung about their stupid bet on you, and you grin. He is so beautiful. It’s still hard to believe he’s yours. “Jimin doesn’t need a card to know that I love him.”

Not when he’s right here, and not when you know he loves you back. 

The counselor campfire is held on the day very last night that you spend together, after all of the campers have left the mountain, returning home, and you finally have the place to yourselves. Namjoon and Yoongi light it because everyone else has been banned from doing so after the Great Flame Incident two years ago, and then you all sit on the logs around the fire pit, reminiscing of the summer gone by, musing aloud about what the future holds. 

You and Jimin snuggle up together, and this night faintly reminds you of the one from last year in the way that Jimin still glows, warm and yellow, in the light of the fire, in the way he seems to make perfect s’mores no matter what, in the way that he laughs at everything that you say. But even with all of the similarities, nothing, literally nothing, could top how you feel right now, dancing on cloud nine with Jimin by your side. 

Never in your wildest dreams did you imagine you’d have him. Never in your wildest dreams did you think your confession would amount to anything more.

“You’re burning your marshmallow again,” Taehyung points out crudely, the side of your marshmallow already turning an ashy coal color. 

“Ah, fuck,” you mutter to yourself, yanking it away from the fire as you blow on it. 

“You’re never gonna learn, are you?” Jimin teases. He plucks his off of his stick, perfectly toasted, and holds it out for you. “Here, have mine.” You open wide and he pops it onto your tongue, the crisp, sweet flavor melting in your mouth as all of the other counselors groan, clearly wishing that they were somewhere other than here. Jimin’s fingers reach up to your chin, tilting your face towards him, before a thumb comes out to wipe away at the smudge on the side of your lip, a sticky white crumb that he pops into his mouth, earning another round of whines.

“Gross,” Seokjin says, nose scrunched up. “Just because you guys are in love now doesn’t mean you have to keep showing us. We get it.”

“Oh, just leave them alone,” Yoongi chides. “They’ve been pining after each other for so long, let them have this.”

“Thanks,” you murmur to Yoongi. You have a lot to thank him for. He has always been on your side, even when you weren’t. 

“Anytime,” he promises. 

“If they’re gonna be like this next year, then I don’t know how long I’m going to last,” Taehyung admits with a fond sigh, because no matter how much he pretends to be annoyed, you know that he’s happy for you. 

Namjoon sucks in a breath. “Uh, yeah, about next year…” he says, wringing his hands together. “I’m not going to be coming back.” You fall into silence, the only sounds the crackle of the fire, the rustle of the wildlife in the woods. “I have another internship at a firm, and then I’m going to be going into the job market, so I don’t, uh, I don’t really see myself coming back here.”

“Me too,” Yoongi chirps up, earning a surprised look from everyone else. “I’ve just been given an offer to produce music for this small record company, but they’re located across the country, so I’ll be moving soon. I guess—well, I guess now’s as good a time as any to tell you all.”

“Congrats,” you tell him, sad to hear he won’t be back but thrilled to know he’ll be doing something he truly loves instead. “Seriously, Yoongi. That’s amazing.”

“Yeah, man, that’s sick,” Jungkook pipes up. “When you’ve won your Grammy you have to remember to mention us.”

Yoongi chuckles to himself, small and quiet, but even in this orange light you can see the way his cheeks are turning cherry red, relishing in the praise. “I’ll miss you all,” he says. 

And slowly, one by one, you all begin to admit that even though you love it here, being a camp counselor had always been temporary, and it just wouldn’t be the same without everyone else here with you too. You and Jimin will be graduating this coming school year. So will Taehyung. Seokjin has a Master’s degree in acting that he wants to pursue. Even Jungkook, who is younger than all of you besides Hazel, has said that he plans to travel with his college lacrosse team next summer. 

“Damn,” Taehyung says when everyone is finished, as you all begin to count how many of you there will be left for next summer. “Who’s gonna do Namjoon’s job?”

“I already asked,” Namjoon says with a proud grin, “and Hazel said she is happy to take on the responsibility.”

“Oh, fuck yeah!” Seokjin shouts, giving Hazel a massive hug, nearly crushing her in two. “Hell yeah, Haze! You are going to be kick ass at that. I’m proud of you!”

The rest of the counselors soon follow suit, congratulating Hazel and cheering for her future. It almost makes you want to come back, but you know that Hazel will be fine without you. As long as she still has her secret stash. 

“Nice work, Haze,” you tell her, earning a shy smile from her in response. “You’ve always been a leader.”

“I’m just nervous I won’t be as good as Namjoon,” she admits timidly, clearly a little overwhelmed at such an enthusiastic response. 

“You have nothing to worry about,” Namjoon assures her. “I know you’ll be fine. Plus, you won’t have all of these losers to worry about, so your workload will be much lighter.”

“Hey!” Seokjin, Taehyung, and Jungkook all shout at once. 

“Don’t get me started on the two of you,” Namjoon chides, eyes narrowed. “You’ve caused me more stress than my senior thesis.”

“Out of love,” Seokjin swears, Jungkook and Taehyung nodding enthusiastically next to him. Namjoon rolls his eyes, even though you know that he secretly loves the extra work that they give him. It keeps him young, in that old-timey kind of way. 

“Then I guess this is it, isn’t it?” Hazel asks, standing up and holding out a finished s’more, already taking on her newly-bestowed head counselor duties. “I suppose I’ll do the honors. Congrats to Y/N and Jimin for finally figuring their relationship out, congrats to Yoongi for getting into that record company, congrats to Namjoon for getting his internship, and congrats to everyone else for doing what they love, and for not letting their dreams be dreams. This summer feels sort of like the end of an era, in a way, don’t you think? I mean, lots of us are moving on to bigger and better things, celebrating the past and aspiring to become people that we hope will be admired in the future. And I guess that I just want you all to know that no matter who you become, no matter what you do, I’ll always be someone who admires you.”

If you were a little drunk or just a little more sentimental, Hazel’s words would almost bring tears to your eyes, but instead you just join everyone in cheers, standing up and clinking your s’mores together.

And in a way, it really does feel like the end of an era. No more summers on the mountain, no more late-night camp pranks, no more hydrangeas in the greenhouse. You’re moving on, not only from this part of your life but from your almost-fruitless quest for love, from the place that led you to fall so deeply for Jimin, the place that has housed every memory you have ever saved of him. You’re moving on to a world where Jimin is with you every step of the way, where you know that he will always be there for you, where you no longer have to fight yourself to keep from loving him, where you have to do everything you can to preserve an already-fragile friendship. 

No. Now, you can take your first step forward with Jimin by your side. 

“Cheers!” Everyone shouts. 

“Cheers,” Jimin says to you, pulling you in for a quick little kiss, and no matter how hot the campfire burns Jimin’s lips upon yours will always be what warms you from within. “Cheers to us.”

You grin against his lips, pressing back because you can never get enough, and you murmur, “Cheers to us.”

“Hey! Jungkook!” Seokjin shouts right as Jungkook hops into his car. “When we text you in the group chat you better fucking respond!”

“I will, I will!” Jungkook screams back, voice so loud you can hear it despite the fact that all of his windows are rolled up. 

“No, he won’t,” Yoongi deadpans as he passes you by, duffel bags hanging from his shoulders. “You know he won’t.”

“He never does,” you agree. Getting a text from him is almost as impossible as winning the lottery. “I’ll call you, alright? I know you don’t really like texting, either.”

“Talking is just easier,” he says with a nod. “I’m looking forward to it. Call me whenever you need me.”

“I will,” you promise, watching as Yoongi bids you one final goodbye before heading to his own ride. He plops his bags into the trunk of Namjoon’s car before getting into the passenger seat. Namjoon pushes his head out of the window to wave, smiling wildly at you as he starts the car. You grin, waving back, and watch him, Yoongi, and Jungkook, disappear down the mountain. 

“You’re next, right?” 

You whip around to find Jimin standing behind you, a frisbee in one hand and a suitcase in the other. He won’t be leaving for another couple of hours, when Taehyung’s finally ready to go. They live close to each other so they figured they’d save money by splitting an Uber, which will be waiting for them at the bottom of the mountain.

“Yeah, gotta get back before college starts,” you say, dropping your bags at your feet. “But we’ll see each other before then, right?”

Jimin and you attend universities on opposite sides of the country. Loving each other is the easy part. Staying in love is what will challenge you. 

“Of course,” he promises. “I’ll visit whenever I can. And I’ll come see you on all my breaks during the semester, too. You and Jungkook.”

“Good, you better,” you say, and you pull him in for a bruising hug because you know that this will be the last time for a while. Not a long while, but a while, and even if you have committed every slope of his figure, every inch of his face to memory, you still have to remember how warm he is when you hold him, how soft his lips are when they touch yours. Those things… those are new. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll see you soon,” he assures you. “But I’ll miss you too.”

Several feet away, Hoseok honks the horn of your car to let you know that you’re all ready to go.

“I’ll call you when I’m home, okay?” You promise, pulling him in for another hug, one last time, feeling this strange desperation rush through you, like you won’t see him for weeks and this is all you’ll have left. “Isn’t it weird? You’re right here and I miss you already.”

“We’ll see each other again before you know it,” he says, pressing his lips to yours in a sweet, quick kiss. No matter how many times he does it still sends sparks shooting through your veins, but you suppose that that’s just another thing you’ll have to remember. When you part, he notices your worry, eyes softening at the sight. “Hey,” he says, lifting your chin up so you look at him. “I love you.”

You crack a smile. “I love you, too.” 

It’s not a goodbye. 

It’s an until I see you again.

You grab your duffel bags and hike them over your shoulder, footsteps heavy and weighted as you slowly make your way towards your car. Every four steps or so, you turn back just to make sure that Jimin’s still there, and sure enough, he’s watching you, this lopsided, love-drunk smile lacing his features. 

You place your bags in the backseat of your car before heading to the driver’s side, hand on the handle as you look up one final time. 

There Jimin stands in the middle of the clearing, the warm afternoon sun bathing him in a halo. There he stands, beautiful, and kind, and lovely, and in love. And you are so in love. You wave. He waves back.

And you know that you two will be alright. 

You jump into your car and tug the door shut behind you, keys in the ignition, engine revving, and you sigh, content and feeling confident in life. You peer into the rearview mirror to see Taehyung running up to Jimin, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and waving goodbye to you. You lift your hand up in response, watch as they bid you farewell as you creep towards the slope down the mountain. 

As you drive down the mountain, you take a deep breath, inhaling the fresh summer air, and you smile. 

↳ links are broken, but don’t forget to message me with any thoughts or feedback!

#jimin angst #bts angst #jimin fluff #bts fluff #bts fic #jimin fic #jimin x reader #bts x reader #jimin au #bts au #w: into the wilderness #UHH THATS THE FUCK RIGHT THATS WHAT I SAID !!!!!! #okay but also i havent felt as emotionally redeemed abt a climax scene in a long time #anyway i hope you all enjoy !! this is my baby so you BETTA TREAT IT THAT WAY

[hepalienstuckyrecs]

Hidden Gems Stucky Fic Rec

Amazing fics with <10k hits

raise the flag by mcwho [M, 1k]

Slice of Life, PWP

Steve had made the mistake of laying on the sofa lengthways, on his stomach, so of course as soon as Bucky walked into the room he was all over that

Heart by @concavepatterns, everandthe [T, 1k]

Fluff, Love Confession, Post CATWS

"You're not my friend, Steve."

softer than whispers by @spacebuck [E, 1.4k]

Fluff, PWP, Table Sex, Rimming

"concept: steve fucking bucky in knee socks bc thighs and long sweaters"

Concept: The sweater hangs down nearly to Bucky’s knees as he walks past the couch Steve’s sprawled on, the hem swaying a little with each step. Steve doesn’t recognise it, realises Bucky must have gone out of his way to get something too big for him, and smiles just a little to himself. Bucky’s oblivious to his presence in the way a content cat is. Steve’s his, so he belongs.

i want it, i got it by bornes [T, 1.5k]

Fluff, Humor

Ten minutes into their impromptu mall adventure, Steve has offered to buy Bucky a designer sofa he had sat on briefly to rest his legs, a $600 headband, and a diamond-encrusted butterfly clip

more under the cut

no grave can hold my body down by @biblionerd07 [G, 1.9k]

Bucky Feels

Bucky has died more than once, but he never stays that way. Companion to let me give you my life.

Not the Needle, Nor the Thread by @steebadore [E, 2k]

Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex

Bucky wakes to a noise.

No, Bucky wakes to the noise. It's not the hoarse shout of nightmares born of battlefields and blood that so often tear them both from sleep. No, this is smaller. Bitten off. Choked back. A furtive, strangled keen, nearly silent but pitched at a frequency that would raise Bucky from the dead.

in the morning i’ll be sober and you’ll still be mine by mcwho [T, 2.2k]

Drunken Confessions, Kissing, Light Angst, Team fic

Steve always marveled at how people lost all their inhibitions after they got a little alcohol in them.

And then Thor gets him drunk on Asgardian liquor. Events unfold.

tutorial by @belovedmuerto [T, 2.4k]

Modern AU, High School AU, Practice Kissing, Fluff

“I’m pretty sure I’m a terrible kisser,” Steve mutters, mostly to his pencil and paper.

black eyes, bandages and bloody knuckles by @concavepatterns [M, 2.7k]

5+1 Things, Post CATWS, Prewar Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort

Five times Bucky says “Jesus, Rogers” out of pure exasperation, and one time he means it in a completely different context.

Gorecki by @ataraxetta [M, 3k]

Hurt/Comfort, Soft, Post CATWS

Steve has a crummy mission. Bucky has a crummy dream. They cuddle it out.

hold some dirt with those hands by magdaliny [T, 3k]

Post-IW, Fix-it

It had sent him to his knees.

I Had a Marvelous Time Ruining Everything by fallendarlings (@pressrestartwrites) [T, 3.2k]

War Era, CATFA, POV Steve, Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining, Love Confessions, Light Angst

“I’m not worth all that. Not worth your life.”

“You’re worth everything to me.” And there it is, the secret truth. There’s no way to interpret it as anything but what it is. Steve’s heart, held out in his hands. The one that didn’t work right, ugly all over from damage. The one that was Bucky’s first, has always been Bucky’s. They say his new one is perfect, but he knows the truth. Even if they fixed everything else, they can’t fix this. Every inch of his heart, scarred with Bucky’s name. Over and over and over.

(Not Quite) All The Small Things by @leveragehunters [T, 4.1k]

Prewar, Post CATWS, Magical Realism AU, Fluff, Bucky POV

Bucky was used to finding Steve in alleys. Not every day, thank baby Jesus and all the saints or he’d be as grey as Mrs Milligicutty, but often enough.

The thing about Steve in alleys was, it meant finding Steve in fights. Or finding Steve after fights, bloody and bruised, picking gravel and dirt out of his skin, having come off third best in a two-person punch-up. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, it meant finding Steve standing, bruised but unbowed, glaring down some hapless meathead who’d underestimated just how much sheer goddamned never-say-die was packed onto those skinny bones.

That was Steve in alleys. Not this hunched over sack of glare, facing down a mangy orange tom cat that was glaring right back and trying to dart past his legs.

My Kind’s Your Kind by @callmejude [M, 4.1k]

Prewar, Practice Kissing, Smut with Feelings

Steve's beginning to get self-conscious of the fact that he's never been kissed.

let me give you my life by @biblionerd07 [T, 4.3k]

5+1 Things

Five times Steve chose to live when he could have died. Companion to no grave can hold my body down.

To Seek a Nood-er World by jehans (@lafbaguette) [E, 8.2k]

Misunderstandings, Humor, Sexting, Canon Verse, First Time, Idiots in Love

Send noodz

Steve has been staring at his phone for the last six minutes, eyes narrowed so much they’re almost closed at this point, trying to figure out what the hell Bucky means. Noodz? What the fuck are noodz?

Listen, Steve is at least marginally aware of modern pop culture. He’s heard of nudes — not that nudes are exactly a modern invention; artists have been creating them for millennia — and he does know that people tend to misspell words to be cute or funny. They did that when he was young, too. Because time is a flat circle, apparently.

But, wait—does that mean…?

No. Not possible. Bucky isn’t asking Steve to send him…nudes.

Right?

TBC (taking care of bucky) series by @steebadore [T, 8.6k]

Domestic, Fluff

It starts, as most things do, with spite. The problem is, it doesn't end there.

Glad to love you, Steve Rogers series by @maddiewritesstucky [E, 9.2k]

Modern AU, Stripper Bucky

Steve’s first thought is that he knows this song.

His second thought is little more than a stream of expletives, as the male embodiment of Fuck Me walks out onto the stage. Although, ‘walk’ seems an entirely inappropriate word…the man struts, stalks, and all at once the frenzied reaction of the crowd makes perfect sense.

If Steve had known this was about to make an entrance, he’d have been screaming for it too.

_____

In which Steve Rogers is promised a night of highly-skilled dance performance, and gets exactly that...just not in the way he expected.

Strange Human Mating Rituals by @liionne, art by velvetjinx [E, 13.7k]

Post CACW, Canon Divergent, Bucky Recovery, Sexting, Fluff

Bucky doesn't have a job. Steve assures Bucky that there's no pressure for him to do anything; Steve's army back pay and his avenging days mean they're taken care of. Bucky's a kept man, and whilst he loves that, he isn't much of a house husband. So he goes out, and that's how it happens. He's sitting on the subway when he sees the magazine, garishly pink with a woman flashing big pearly white teeth on the front cover. He can't help himself. Letting himself do things he wants to do is one of the things the Wakandan healers had taught him, so maybe it's a step in the right direction.

The magazine turns out to be a little less factual than Bucky’s usual reading material, but he loves it. He reads an interview with some actress he's never seen before, then an article on how to get the perfect brows (and he looks up at his reflection in the subway window then to find that his brows are-- what does the magazine say? on fleek already), and then he gets to something interesting.

Sexting 101: What your man really wants to hear

Now that is something Bucky wants to know more about.

#stucky #stucky fic #stucky fic rec #stevebucky #stevebucky fic rec #reclist #hidden gems #changed the title because this seems more fitting

[plainbrunettelbl]

ABO (A) Aizawa Shota x (O) Reader Chicken Noodle Soup

Word count: 1475

Warning: Sweet fluff that will send you into cardiac arrest. 

Title: ABO (A) Aizawa Shota x (O) Reader Chicken Noodle Soup

Summary: You don’t show up to work because you are sick so your tired eyed Alpha visits your apartment to take care of you. 

(Gif is not mine credit to owner)

💤-You felt like you were run over by a truck. Your nose was stuffed and your head felt like an ice pick was going through it. You constantly felt hot and cold. You had to keep rearranging your nest to fit your body’s needs.

💤-One second a light sheet felt like heaven against your skin and the next you felt like if you didn’t pile blankets on you, you would freeze to death. The only thing that was a constant in your nest was a plush black cat you clutched against your chest.

💤-The smell of your Alphas firewood and rain scent calmed your aching body just a little.

💤-You had called into work and said you would be out for the next couple of days. You knew your absence wouldn’t go unnoticed. As soon as your tired eyed mate found out you weren’t in today he would come straight to you.

💤-You knew the moment he realized you weren’t at work. Your phone was going off on the nightstand. No doubt the concerned Alpha was pacing in the office worrying about you. You wanted to ease his worry but the thought of getting out of your nest and crawling to your phone was too much.

💤-Your body was drained and you weren’t moving anytime soon.

💤-Thirty minutes later a knock was heard on your apartment door. You just snuggled further into your nest. The loud thuds sent pulses of pain through your head. Your Alpha had a key so you knew he would just let himself in anyways.

💤-“Y/N? Omega?” He quietly called throughout the apartment.

💤-You heard plastic bags rustling from the kitchen before you head his footsteps padding to your bedroom

💤-The sound of you coughing alerted him to where you were. He opened the door and peeked in. The bed was empty but he spotted your nest in the corner of the bedroom. He saw the pile of blankets shudder as you coughed again.

💤-“Oh, Kitten.” He cooed, at the doorway.

💤-He knew some Omegas felt weak and vulnerable when sick. Your relationship was still a little new so he didn’t know how to proceed. What if you didn’t want him near you and your nest?

💤-“Can I come in, baby? I won’t go near your nest.” He assured, keeping his voice low.

💤-“Yeah. You can come close to my nest. Just not in.” You rasped wiggling in your nest to pop your head out.

💤-The sight of your flushed cheek and tangled hair made his Alpha purr. His Omega was so adorable. Your blurry eyes peered up at him. The smell of him so close made your Omega whimper sadly.

💤-Your omega wanted to be close to him but she also didn’t feel safe enough to finally invite him into her nest. If you were healthy you felt like you wouldn’t have a problem but with the state you were in now, you were just feeling a little too vulnerable.

💤-You dazedly watched as your inky-haired Alpha came closer.

💤-He held one of his hands close to your face, cautiously waiting to see if his touch would be accepted or not. You wasted no time nuzzling your heated cheek into his calloused hand. You let out a soft sigh at the contact.

💤-“You are burning up babe. I’ll go get you a wet cloth.” He said, slowly putting his hand away.

💤-You whined at the loss of his hand. You blinked your eyes open, having closed that as soon as his hand made contact with you, and gave him a pout.

💤-“Can you scent this first?” You whined, lifting up the plush black cat.

💤-“Of course, Omega.” He said, reaching down and plucking it from your weak grasp. He brought it up to his neck and vigorously scented the soft animal. Once done he handed it back to you before dropping a quick kiss on your warm forehead and walking into your bathroom to wet a washcloth.

💤-Before he soaked it, he made sure to scent it as well.

💤-By the time he came back, you were already half asleep. He gently put it on your forehead. You startled a little at the cold contact but settled when you heard his gentle purr to soothe you.

💤-He knew rest was important for recovery but he also was worried when he didn’t see a glass of water in your room. He went to the kitchen and filled up a glass of cold water. He eyed the groceries he brought.

💤-He had gotten you your favorite flavor of Gatorade but he didn’t think you would be able to keep it down right now.

💤-He softly padded back to your room. He was careful not to disturb your nest. His big hand cupped your face again. You purred into his touch, still asleep.

💤-“Omega.” He softly called, rubbing his thumb up and down your soft cheek.

💤-You were clearly out of it. Your eyes didn’t so much as flutter. He didn’t want to wake you but he knew it was best if you had some water in you.

💤-“Omega.” His Alpha called, his voice taking on a deeper tone.

💤-You opened your eyes in a daze.

💤-“Alpha?” You whispered, your Omega having woken you up.  

💤-“Drink this Omega. Small sips.” He hushed, brushing your hair out of your face.

💤-“Yes, Alpha.” You mumbled, slowly drinking from the cup he held up to your mouth.

💤-Once he thought you had drunk enough he pulled the glass away.

💤-“Go back to sleep, Omega. I’ll be here when you wake up. I’m gonna make you some chicken noodle soup.” He cooed, pecking your forehead once more.

💤-You hummed before slipping away again.

💤-He walked to the kitchen with a determined look on his face. He was gonna make his Omega some soup! He quickly tied up his long black hair and got to chopping.

***

💤-With the soup finally done, he poured you a bowl. He made sure it was a decent amount but not enough to upset your stomach. He went to the living room and set it on the coffee table before going to wake you up.

💤-He knew you wanted to rest in your nest until you were feeling better but he also knew you would be upset if some of the soup spilled on any of your blankets. Omegas hated food in their nests.

💤-Any drink that could sticky your soft blankets or chips that would leave behind itchy crumbs was forbidden. He didn’t want you stressing over your nest when you needed as much rest as you can get.

💤-He used his Alphas voice once again.

💤-“Omega.” He called, softly rubbing your scalp. You felt a little cooler. His Alpha was pleased with the change in your temperature.  

💤-“Alpha?” You hummed, not opening your eyes but responding to him nonetheless.

💤-“It’s time to eat, Omega.”

💤-You just whined and snuggled back into your nest. You didn’t want to get up. The soft blankets surrounding you were just right and you were having the best dream about Shota and you enjoying a day at the beach.

💤-His Alpha let out a warning growl. He wanted you to get better. In order for you to get better, you had to eat. You barely had time to snap your eyes open in alarm at his growl before he plucked you from your nest.

💤-He carried you, bride style, out of your bedroom.

💤-“Alpha!” You squealed, look up at him in surprise.

💤-“You have to eat, Omega.” He reprimanded, carrying you out of the living room.

💤-He sat down on the couch with you in his lap. He made sure to throw a blanket over you before leaning forward and grabbing the steaming bowl of soup on the coffee table.

💤-You were grumpy at being taken from your nest but as soon as you set sight on the bowl your stomach growled. All grumpy thoughts faded away. You gratefully took the bowl from him and ate a spoonful.

💤-“Mmm. Thank you, Alpha.” You chirped, going straight for another taste.

💤-“No problem, Omega. Make sure to eat slow. I don’t want you getting an upset stomach.” He warned, wrapping his arms around your waist.

💤-“Yes, Alpha.” You purred, snuggling into his chest.

💤-You obediently ate the whole bowl while watching a cat documentary Shota put on. Soft purrs left your chest as your body slowly got heavier and eyes blinked closed. 

💤-Shota made sure the blanket was covering you well. He leaned down and kissed your head, making sure to keep it tucked into his chest. He let out his own rumbled purr to help lull you to sleep even more.

💤-“Rest well, Kitten.”  

I hope you like this small fluff fic! 

This was a custom one I did for a friend so if you find any physical traits that don’t belong let me know! I wanted to post as soon as I could since I know y'all have been waiting a while for me to upload! 

Please make sure to leave a note or comment! Love y'all! 🖤🖤

#mha fanfiction #aizawa shouta #bnha aizawa #mha aizawa #aizawa x reader #bnha shota #fluff #bnha fanfiction #bnha imagines #bnha fluff #mha imagines #mha shota #Omega #Alpha #abo #omegaverse #bnha omegaverse #mha omegaverse

[onlydreamofmysoul]

can you please write a fic where remus has a really bad allergic reaction, and sirius freaks out for a while after!!!?!?!?

Hiya! This is pretty short but I hope it’s a little bit like what you’re looking for! Sorry it took a couple of days - I had a few allergic reactions of my own get in the way🤣🤣🤣 Who doesn’t love a bit of irony, am I right? (I’m completely fine though no worries) 

I feel like it’s obvious but I’m gonna put a warning anyways - this fic revolves around allergic reactions and there is a bit of description, nothing overly graphic though. 

“Sirius,” Remus wheezed, and the other three marauders all looked up at the harsh gasp. Remus sat on the grass next to James, jumper lying beneath the tree somewhere and his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows in the heat, but the skin of his arms was turning red and blotchy and when Sirius looked up, Remus’ face had already begun to swell. Sirius had kissed those every lips not two minutes ago and Remus had been just fine, but now he was almost unrecognisable. 

“Oh fuck,” Peter said as he scrambled away. “What’s wrong with him.”

“He’s having an allergic reaction you twat.” James spat as he jumped to his feet, searching the grass around him. “Fucking shit, I can’t see my wand anywhere.”

“Mine is inside!” Sirius cried as he reached Remus and dug through his boyfriend’s pockets. “Cone on Re, you never go anywhere without your wand, work with me here.” He found nothing but empty fabric and for a long moment, Sirius felt the most horrific pool of dread he had ever felt, like a quaffle of steel had been dropped in his stomach, but finally his fingers closed around a cool length of wood. Sirius could have cried in relief when he pulled out Remus’ wand and cast the spell that would offset the reaction. 

“Go fetch Madam Pomfrey right now.” He ordered and he didn’t even watch Peter scuffle off as James came around to Remus’ other side. 

Remus’s breathing became less raspy and began to even out, the swelling not going down quite yet, but it had stopped growing at any rate. 

“There you go Re, you’re gonna be just fine, yeah? Madam Pomfrey’s on her way and we’ll get you looked after.”

James looked how Sirius felt, all pale and clammy. “I knew he told us that this could happen,” He muttered, so quietly Sirius wasn’t sure if he was even aware that he had spoken aloud. “But I never really thought that it actually would.” 

Sirius nodded as he carefully brushed Remus’ hair back from his face. “Me neither. I don’t even know what happened, did you see him eat anything?”

James shook his head as Madam Pomfrey came running out the doors of the castle, Peter leading her. “Not since lunch and that was over an hour ago. I thought he said reactions happen really fast.”

Sirius nodded. “Yeah, they’re supposed to anyway.”

Madam Pomfrey finally arrived, taking a quick moment to assess Remus before carefully levitating him, keeping him unconscious as she floated him through the air next to her.

“Alright boys,” She said as Sirius walked beside her, James a moment or two behind them as he stopped to gather their things. “Tell me what happened.”

“We’re not sure.” Sirius told her, truly baffled, his heart still pounding. Remus’ skin was losing its angry red colour, but it was burned in Sirius’ memory. “He was fine one moment, and then he wasn’t. No one saw him eat anything. I cast the spell on him, but I don't know how strong it was, I had to use Remus’ wand.”

Madam Pomfrey nodded curtly, taking another look at Remus as they walked inside. “He looks well enough right now, I’d say the spell you cast worked quite well.” She stopped Sirius when he tried to follow her to the hospital wing and sent him away saying that she needed to look after Remus now and they could come back to visit after dinner. 

Sirius felt himself float through the day in a daze. It wasn’t the fact that Remus was sick was the problem (not that he wasn’t worried, he was), but he was far more concerned that he didn’t know why Remus was so sick. No known causation meant Sirius couldn’t come up with a plan of action. He didn’t really like that feeling. 

They collected a few things of Remus’ to bring with them to dinner so that they could go straight from the great hall to the hospital wing. Sirius would have skipped dinner completely if he didn’t know for a fact that Madam Pomfrey would check if he had actually eaten before allowing him to enter the hospital wing. 

“He’s gonna be fine Pads.'' Peter reassured as he set one of Remus’ chocolate bars on the table so it wouldn’t melt in his pocket. “He’s used to this, he’ll be back and better than before in no time.”

Sirius nodded and picked at his beef wellington, glancing over at James who was filling Lily in on what had happened. “I know,” He replied, but really it was more of a mumble to himself. “But he shouldn’t have to be used to it.”

For a dude who had been nearly unrecognisable just a mere five hours ago, Remus looked pretty good. For a werewolf-wizard-teenage boy, he looked pretty shite. 

“Wow Moony, trying to be pale enough so you can be mistaken for the actual moon?” James teased as he slid into the chair by Remus’ bed. Peter sat on the bed by his feet while Sirius stood, brushing Remus’ curls out of his eyes as he searched Remus’ face for any lingering signs of distress. 

“‘M fine pads.” Remus assured him, as he caught Sirius’ hand, but he didn’t pull it away. Instead he held it to his cheek for a minute before kissing Sirius’ knuckles softly and letting their hands fall, fingers still interlocked. “I need a haircut, but other than that I think I’m pretty good.”

“I’m not going to lie,” Peter chimed in as he opened the chocolate bar, passing a square to Remus, then popping a piece in his own mouth. “I thought you were a goner for a second.”

“Oi, don’t be rude.” James defended, even as he rested his feet on the bed as he turned to look at Remus sweetly. “We thought you were nearly a goner.”

Remus just chuckled and rolled his eyes. “Nah, I want my death to be super dramatic. Bee sting is totally not how I want to go.”

“It was a bee sting?” Sirius asked, scanning any visible skin Remus was showing as if he could will a tiny puncture mark into being. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Remus nodded, rolling up his sleeve to show a still-red bump on just above the inside of his elbow. “That was a fun way to discover a new allergy.”

Sirius just shook his head, relief flooding through him. Bees were to be avoided at all costs from here on out. That was something he could do. 

“Moony babe, I think you and I have very different ideas of fun.”

“And with that, we’re leaving!” James announced, almost leaping out of the chair and pulling Peter with him.

“Hey!” Sirius yelled after them, “I didn’t mean it like that! Get your head out of the gutter!”

James just waved them off as Peter made kissing faces, soon disappearing through the doors. 

“Although,” Remus conceded, pulling Sirius down onto the bed next to him so he could wrap an arm around his shoulder. “In a day or two I definitely wouldn’t be averse to you teaching me how you like to have fun.”

He leaned in and pressed his lips to Sirius’ ear as someone walked down the aisle past his bed. “Mind in the gutter or not.”

#wolfstar #Remus Lupin #Sirius Black #James Potter #peter pettigrew #Marauders #marauders era fanfiction #wolfstar oneshot #Remus Lupin/Sirius Black #cw allergic reaction #marauders at hogwarts #wolfstar fic

[write-out-hysteria]

Care

Matsukawa x gn reader fluff

Author’s Note: This is sort of a prequel to my first fic? It’s a lot longer though and uh, tw disordered eating maybe

For as long as Issei had worked this job, he had been an early riser. He rose before the sun, sitting down on the edge of the bed while you lay fast asleep. He stretched and popped and cracked instinctively before getting up to brush his teeth. He’d walk, eyes still half closed, to his ‘home gym,’ or the space in the guest bedroom he had converted, knowing full well you wanted it in the garage. ‘It’s too spooky in there in the morning,’ he’d laugh, both of you knowing he just wanted to work out in the air conditioned room.

He’d finish off with yoga and meditation, centering his mind, body, and spirit, before hopping into the warm shower. He’d always leave the bathroom door open in case you woke up, ready to goofily tease you before you even remembered where you were.

“You like what you see, baby?” He’d wink, holding his Discobolus pose as you shook your head.

“Put some clothes on, Zeus,” you rolled back over but soon heard footsteps approaching.

“I’m offended that you’d compare me to the most promiscuous man on Mt. Olympus,” he kneeled next to the bed, grabbing your chin in his hand. “I’d prefer to be Perseus, and have my Andromeda ruling at my side.”

“It’s too early,” you dragged out the syllables as Issei rested his hand on your hip beneath the covers.

“What do you want for breakfast, sweetie? I can make pancakes,” he pressed a kiss to your hand resting on the pillow. You nodded, pulling the blanket back over your shoulders.

“I’m sure Perseus wore pants.” He rose, grabbing a pair of cobalt blue boxer briefs from the shared dresser.

“I’m sure Andromeda made the pancakes.”

Your arms found their way around Issei’s firm torso while he flipped each finished pancake on either of the two plates on the counter. He had a system, every other pancake was chocolate chip, “maybe you’ll be sweeter to me if I give you sugar,” he’d always say. The plain ones were for him, though he would spread peanut butter over them anyway. He’d learned that from you the first time he had made you pancakes, the first time you had spent the night in his arms.

“Do you want anything else, angel?” You shook your head against his back. He carefully turned around, handing you your plate. “I’m surprised you’re up so early,” he laughed.

“It was cold last night, had you brought out the winter blankets like I asked, I probably wouldn’t be.” You had made your way to the stool at the counter by now, cutting into your pancakes eagerly. It was his turn to hold you now, nuzzling his face into your neck after leaving a soft kiss on your jaw.

“Just say you missed me, baby. That’s okay, too.”

“Do you want to meet at that ramen place for lunch?” Issei was getting ready for his break, awaiting your text response. He was going to go anyway, he hadn’t packed any food. He just wouldn’t mind picking you up on his way.

“I can’t, I have a lunch meeting.” He frowned, those usually meant the worst for you.

“Do you want me to drop something off for you?”

“I’m not hungry,” he rolled his eyes before putting his phone back in his pocket, walking calmly down the street.

He had been battling your loss of appetite due to stress for the entirety of your relationship without much luck. He had never been one to push, but sometimes the only food he could assure you ate was breakfast. He had only gotten you to eat breakfast by making dinner early, leaving you starving by morning. It was only on bad days, it’s like your body would forget. Sometimes you noticed, but were afraid of getting sick if you ate something when you had already felt “full.”

He ate his ramen, debating bringing some back for dinner. There had been weeks where you ate the equivalent of one large meal a day. Every ‘not hungry’ made him fear a week like that, making food that you’d barely touch and praying you’d take it to work with you tomorrow so you wouldn’t wither away. His only solution up to this point was eating, and reminding you that normally this is when you’d eat too. Using your love for routine against you was his only hope, and it hadn’t been working as well as he wanted.

He could tell you felt bad about not eating, that you felt bad about worrying him. What else were you supposed to do if you simply weren’t hungry? Force feeding only made you feel inadequate, you felt full after half a sandwich or a few bites of pasta. The thought of eating a full protein made you sick. At your lowest points you’d start crying while watching tv with him, watching him snack on something you couldn’t bare the thought of consuming. ‘Issei, what’s wrong with me?’ He never knew what to say. When you got stressed your body simply refused fuel, and that worried him.

“How was work, angel?” His job had given him the ability to appear entirely composed regardless of the environment. You could never tell if he was stressed unless he dropped the facade and told you. When it was about you, he’d never tell you. When it was about you, though, you could tell. Issei was always caring. If he could tell you were in distress he’d pull out all the stops. He’d light lavender candles, he’d cook, he’d clean the counter. He wouldn’t complain if you wanted to watch something he didn’t, he wasn’t planning on taking his attention off of your subtle emotional responses.

“It was okay,” you lied. He already knew it wasn’t, but you didn’t want to talk about it. He always got home before you did, he didn’t have nearly as many responsibilities as you did. His work didn’t change, yours did. New projects meant new worries and new responsibilities.

“I’m almost done making dinner,” you had dropped your things by the door as soon as you stepped inside, making your way towards the man slaving over a pot of chicken soup. “I took the winter blankets out, I thought this might help warm you up.” You snaked your arms around his waist, hiding your face into his back as it warmed up, holding the tears welling up in your eyes. You could eat a little bit of soup, just a little bit, if it would make him feel better.

“Thank you,” you let out a deep sigh into his back. “I’m gonna shower.” He was already in his ‘pajamas.’ Issei ran too hot to sleep in anything but underwear, but enjoyed lounging around the house in your oversized Batman pants. You’d offered to buy him his own so you could match, but he said it wouldn’t be the same.

You both sunk onto the couch, searching for something comforting to watch. Maybe a disney movie, or something else you’d seen a million times. “You know how I played volleyball in high school?”

“Yeah, why?” You hadn’t forgotten. He even taught you how to play so your beach trips would be more fun.

“After practice Makki and I would compete to see who could make the better protein shake. I always won.” You laughed, probably way too much.

“You’re bragging to me about protein shakes you made 10 years ago?”

“What? They were good! Have some faith in me,” the movie kept playing, he tightened his grip around your waist. “I have no clue how I’d drink one everyday, though. If I had one now I’d probably puke. Oh, the joys of youth,” he laughed.

“Are you still hungry or something?” He wasn’t, his teenage athlete appetite had gone away as he aged.

“I was thinking about dessert.”

“I’ve had your protein shakes, I wouldn’t consider them a sweet treat.” He gasped, feigning offense.

“You know how much I hate protein powder, you think I was downing that everyday in high school?” You looked at him confused. His current protein shakes weren’t bad, for a protein shake at least. “It’s an acquired taste, and I still hold my nose and chug it.”You laughed at one of your favorite Matsukawa quirks.

“So why'd you stop making them taste good?”

“I was too broke in college to buy all that ice cream.”

“Ice cream? For protein shakes?” He rolled his eyes before pausing the movie.

“I’m gonna make you one, you’re underestimating my 17 year old metabolism.” He stood up, gesturing that you stay put. Issei was having another chaotic urge, apparently.

You turned on the couch, facing the kitchen instead of the tv. He began pulling every sugary food out of the pantry and fridge. Every flavor of ice cream, cookies, granola bars, peanut butter, anything and everything sweet. “You’re using all of that?” He nodded, haphazardly throwing everything in the blender followed by some milk, chocolate syrup, and two scoops of his protein powder. This really was a chaotic recipe, straight from the mind of a gross teenaged boy.

He came back to the couch with glasses for each of them, they looked like they had been filled with a child’s birthday cake puke. “Drink it, I promise it’s good! It’s so you can’t taste the protein powder.” It probably just tastes like chocolate and peanut butter, but you were still hesitant to drink it. “I promise, the team always liked mine better than Makki's.”

You held the glass up to your mouth, slowly drinking it, widening your eyes when you realized how good it actually was. You understood now. Your 26 year old bodies would cease to function if you had these everyday. You couldn’t pull the glass away until you were done.

“Yeah, I definitely didn’t think it’d be that good.” You laughed, wiping your upper lip.

“You couldn’t taste the protein powder right?” You nodded, watching him sip slowly on his, as his face suddenly scrunched up. “You know, I ate a lot at dinner. I probably shouldn’t drink the rest of this. You want it?” You shrugged, taking the glass out of his hand, drinking the rest like you hadn’t eaten anything all day. Oh wait, he thought. You haven’t for 14 hours. Oh wait, he thought, this is it. This was the solution to his biggest worry. A hidden reset button, your sweet tooth.

#hq #haikyuu!! x reader #matsukawa x reader #haikyuu x reader #mattsun #gn reader

[flameo-firelord-hotman]

Flames & Feelings — Zuko x GN!Reader

Genre: fluff

Warnings: none

Words: 1.6k

Summary: Zuko struggles to control his firebending whenever you’re around.

A/N: the idea for this came from the very first episode of ATLA, when Katara's frustration at Sokka caused the ice around her to crack. Emotions play a part in bending, but we really only saw anger in the show. What about love? Also, apologies in advance, I am so bad at figuring out how to end my fics 😅

Masterlist

Skich. Skich. Skich.

After finding those spark rocks in the market, Sokka insisted that he use them to start the campfire. Unfortunately, he was having no luck. He scraped and scratched them together, but the sparks they produced were pathetic.

Zuko sighed and dropped his head. Watching the non-bender try to do something that he could do instantly was aggravating. “Sokka, just let me—”

“No, no, I can do this!”

Everyone let out a groan.

“What’s all the fuss?” You asked, walking over to the group.

Skich. Fwoom!

“See, I told you guys I could do it! Now look who’s the firebender,” Sokka said proudly. Indeed, small flames had erupted from the wood pile.

“It’s about time! I can finally start cooking dinner,” Katara grumbled, not holding back her frustration. “Somebody hide those spark rocks from him, so he doesn’t do this again!”

“No! I bought them, they’re mine!” Sokka cried as he clutched the rocks to his chest. You giggled and shook your head at them, taking a seat next to Zuko.

As the water tribe siblings continued to bicker, Zuko tried to relax himself. That fire wasn’t started by Sokka; it was him. Whenever you were around, he seemed to lose control of his firebending.

He couldn’t help it; he really liked you. You were kind, funny, smart, strong, beautiful, and the list went on. Being with you made him excited. It also made him nervous.

What if [y/n] doesn’t like me back?

Zuko was all too familiar with rejection—his father banished him, his mother abandoned him, his sister hated him, and he was sure his uncle did too—but still, he was deeply afraid of it. At 16 years old, he finally started to make real friends. There was absolutely no way Zuko would risk ruining the friendship he so treasured with you.

And so, he kept his crush a secret...

...but his firebending did not.

Zuko didn’t know how long this problem had persisted for, but it had to have been a while. The first time he noticed it was when you stopped by to watch him practice firebending. Feeling pressured to impress you, he lost control of his flames and almost lit a nearby bush on fire.

Another time, Zuko was meditating in his tent. He always lit candles when doing so to help him focus. Hearing that sweet, bubbly laughter of yours outside made his heart skip a beat, causing the thin flames to rapidly grow taller. Fortunately, he caught them in time before his tent set on fire.

And now, just sitting next to you at the campfire made him anxious, which caused the flames to reach a little higher, making him more anxious, which made the issue worse. It was like he was trapped in a continuous cycle of anxiety. The only thing we could do was slow his breathing, steady his heart rate and calm his mind, while hoping no one would notice.

“Zuko?...Zuuuuko?”

“Huh?” Zuko snapped out of his thoughts.

You furrowed your eyebrows. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Okay...well I was just asking you how your day was.”

“Oh. Uh, also fine.”

As much as he wanted to talk to you, Zuko knew he couldn’t. Talking would make his situation worse. So he gave you short responses and hoped you would get the hint. However, that only made you worried about him.

“Are you sure you’re okay? You seem, I don’t know, distant lately,” you said with concern.

“Yeah, just fine,” he gave you a smile. It was suspiciously fake.

You huffed. You knew something was up—it was so obvious—and it was frustrating that Zuko wouldn’t admit it. For now, you let it go. It was time to eat dinner anyway.

After a nice, hearty meal of soup, it was time to go to sleep. The sun had set long ago. Story telling, jokes and witty banter had been replaced by mather nature’s ambiance; crickets chirped and the campfire crackled. Everyone was tired.

Aang yawned, “I think it’s time to sleep.”

“Agreed. Last one to bed, don’t forget to put out the fire!” Sokka said as he got up to leave.

One by one, the Gaang members said their “good nights” and withdrew to their tents. Then, it was just you and Zuko.

“We should get to bed too. I’ll put out the fire.” He stood to leave, but you grabbed his sleeve.

“Wait. Can we talk for a second?”

Oh no. The fire grew a little. What does [y/n] want to talk about? Do they know I like them? Do they know I can’t control my firebending? Or is it something else? Are they mad at me?

Zuko hesitantly sat back down. “Uh, sure. What’s up?”

You turned to face him. “Can you please tell me what’s wrong?” You asked sincerely. Now that everyone else was gone, maybe Zuko would feel more open to talk about it.

Unfortunately for him, that wasn’t the case. Zuko couldn’t find the courage to tell you about his feelings. Instead, he racked his mind, trying to find a way out of this conversation without being too weird. Meanwhile, the flames of the campfire flicked and danced wildly.

“I-I don’t know,” he replied bashfully.

You furrowed your eyebrows. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I, uh, can’t tell you,” he stammered.

“What? Why?”

The campfire cracked and popped loudly. Not only was it becoming bigger, it was becoming hotter too. Zuko bit his lip trying to think of a good response. He had never been this nervous before.

“Because, umm,” he trailed off.

You leaned forward slightly, raising an eyebrow. “Because...?”

Now you noticed yourself feeling much warmer than before. Something big and bright caught the corner of your eye. When you turned to look at it, a gasp escaped your mouth.

“Zuko! The fire!” You cried as you backed away from it.

All the tension Zuko had built up inside turned the previously small campfire into one that was the size of a bonfire. Bigger, taller, hotter and brighter, it was out of control.

You grabbed a small bucket of water near you and splashed it on the fire. It wasn’t enough to put it out and barely did a thing.

“Zuko, do something! Put it out!” You hissed, trying not to wake up the rest of the team.

“I’m trying!” Zuko waved his arms trying to diminish the flames. He already had a hard time taming them when he was just sitting with you. Now that you were freaking out, he was really struggling. You ran to Katara’s tent to get help.

“Katara! Wake up!” You shook her body.

“Huh? What’s going on?” She said, wiping her eyes.

“Fire! Campfire! Out of control! Zuko can’t stop it!” You rambled while gesturing wildly with your hands.

Katara grabbed her waterskin and rushed out of her tent. With the wave of her arms, she guided her water to the fire and put it out within seconds. Smoke arose from the sizzling, burnt firewood.

“Phew, thanks, Katara,” you said with relief.

“Yeah, you’re welcome.” She turned to Zuko and pointed at finger to his chest. “Next time you want to impress someone, why don’t you just give them flowers instead of firebending and burning down the whole campsite?” She scolded.

Zuko’s eyes widened in shock. How does she know I like [y/n]?!

“What? No! That’s wasn’t what I was doing!” Zuko said, pleading innocence. Katara pursed her lips and shook her head as she returned to her tent.

“Good night, you two,” she said cheekily before slipping inside.

You turned to face Zuko, jaw slacked. You were shocked and confused by everything that just happened. He whipped the swear off his brow and took a deep breath.

“I think I’m ready to tell you what’s wrong now.”

You gave Zuko a puzzled look. Now you were even more confused. Nevertheless, you sat down next to him, because you were glad that he would finally open up to you about it.

“This is going to sound weird, but I can’t control my firebending when I’m around you,” Zuko confessed.

“What? Why? Did something happen?” He shook his head.

Zuko’s inability to bend properly reminded you of when he lost his firebending in the air temple. It was because he was previously taught to fuel it with anger. If firebending can be fueled with anger, you wondered if Zuko was unable to control it now because he was upset with you.

“Did I do something?” You asked worriedly.

“Mmm-mm,” he shook his head again. “No, actually, you’ve done nothing at all,” he chuckled a little.

“I don’t understand. You’re not mad at me, are you?”

“No, I’m not. It’s the opposite actually. I like being with you, but I get so nervous, because...well, I don’t think you like me.” Heat pooled in Zuko’s cheeks. He looked away so you wouldn’t see it.

“Why would you think that? Of course I like you, Zuko,” you assured, placing a hand on his shoulder.

He sighed. “I meant as more than a friend.”

“You do?” You asked in disbelief, blushing.

“Yeah,” Zuko mumbled quietly.

“I like you too,” Zuko turned to you with raised brows before you continued, “as more than a friend.”

“Really?” Now it was his turn to be surprised.

“Yes, really.”

You smiled, and Zuko smiled back. He brought a hand up to your face and gently cupped your cheek, rubbing his thumb back and forth. Your eyes locked with his, and, for a second, you saw him glance at your lips. You knew what he was thinking. Slowly, you leaned forward, and he did too, until the gap was closed. His lips were soft and warm. You melted right into him.

When the two of you separated, you nuzzled your head in the crook of his warm neck. His arms wrapped around you to bring you closer. Instead of heading off to bed like everyone else, you both silently agreed to stay up just a little bit longer. And just like that, all the butterflies in Zuko's stomach flew away. He would no longer have any trouble controlling his bending.

#imagine being a firebender and having epic mental breakdowns #ok they wouldn’t be epic but still #zuko x reader #zuko imagine #avatar the last airbender #atla #avatar #zuko #prince zuko #atla zuko #avatar zuko #zuko fanfic #atla fanfic #atla x reader #zuko x you #zuko x y/n #my fic #ffh writes #sokka #katara #aang

[vee-vee-writes]

The Hardest Day (Thorin x fem!reader)

A/N: This is the first fic I have written in a very long time so I am a little out of practice but I hope you like it. The dwarvish might not be 100% correct. 

The idea behind the y/n is that you name the character - I’ve called it an oc now because it’s not inclusive as I’ve gendered the character (I was confused about fic labelling)

Part two

The hardest day of (Y/N)'s life to date had been the day she had been made to leave her adad (father). In the days preceding the Battle of Azanulbizar her adad had been swamped under the weight of trying to help stay the King's madness. Although it was a hard decision, her amad (mother) had decided that it would be best to take her young dwarfling to live amongst her kin. The Stiffbeard's were a proud people that would do their best to help one of their own. No longer would (Y/N) must suffer the hardships that had befallen them after the Sack of Erebor. Furthermore, Y/N would get a proper education where she could become a proper Dwarven lady.

That night as the girl peeped through the crack in her door, she watched her khahay (family) fall apart. Pacing back and forth her father argued in harsh hushed whispers with her mother who was perched in an armchair in front of the fire. "You cannot take my only child from me. She is the future of our clan and I have as much right to make these decisions for her as you do" her father snapped. Calmly her mother reasoned back, "Now you listen to me and you listen good. Our nathith (daughter) is not safe here, she is not safe here, if she is the future of this clan and your love is as deep as mine then surely you wish for (Y/N) to grow up in a place where she can flourish. I have not made this decision lightly."

Her adad looked away, brow furrowed, and jaw clenched. Her mother reached out, gently grabbing him by the chin and guiding him to look back at her. "Amrâlimê (my love) this is a hard decision, but you know that it is best for our Mizimith (jewel that is young)" her mother spoke softly. A sigh of despair left his lips, head hung low. Her ama held him to her chest, tears pooling in her eyes. "Preperations have been made for us to leave on the morrow" her amad choked out as tears tracked down her cheeks. The two lovers embraced as they simultaneously felt their hearts shattering to pieces.

Rubbing fiercely at her eye’s Y/N whimpered at the thought of her family being broken. Rattling pants left her mouth as she fought desperately to gain back her breath as anxiety crept in like a thick fog creeps over a swamp. Out of the corner of her eye the girl noticed movement, her father was moving towards her room. Hurriedly the girl wiped the tears from her eyes and scrambled towards the bed, pulling the furs up and turning on her side away from the door.

The door creaked and heavy footsteps filled the silence. The bed dipped beside her and her fathers calloused hand caressed her hair. "I'll miss you Khajimel (gift of all gifts). Knowing that I will see you at the end of the everyday fills my heart with love and gets me through hard days. The thought of not being around to protect you or teach you, to miss you growing and learning fills me with an endless sadness. I long for the days of old where our kin were safe behind the stone walls of Erebor, and I could have provided with you with anything your heart desired." his voice was thick with emotion. The girl who had been trying hard to keep her tears at bay let out a sob, rolled over, and threw her arms around her adad's neck. Taken aback he wrapped her in a tight embrace shushing her gently. He placed a rested his forehead against her smaller one and wiped her tears with his thumb.

"I don't want to leave you adad" the little girl wailed as she clung to him. "I know my child, I know. I do not want you to leave either, but your mother is right, until our people have found safety and settlement this is no place for a small dwarfling like yourself." he said gently, squeezing his eyes shut as not to cry in front of his already distressed child. Sobbing Y/N buried her face into the furs of his coat, clinging to him desperately. He cooed at her, softly shushing her, and occasionally laying gentle kisses on her hairline. Eventually the young dwarfling drifted off in the arms warm embrace of her adad.

-//(Next Day)//-

Y/N was awoken with a start as her amad shook her awake. Blinking in confusion the youngling sat up, rubbing her eyes. "It's time to get up and have some breakfast before we leave" her mother uttered. Her voice was strained, and her eyes were rimmed red. Her usually neatly kempt braids were sloppily pulled together. The sight of her mother in distress upset Y/N and the events of the previous night flooded in. Whipping her head around she searched the room for her father but did not find him. Rising from the bed she undressed as her mother prepared a quick bath for her, telling her that it might be some time before she next bathed. Her mother was rough and hurried as she scrubbed the dwarfling clean. Just as quickly as she had gotten in the bath Y/N was out and dressed in a rather uncomfortable woolen tunic. Scratching uncomfortably at the fabric the girl heard a deep baritone chuckle from the doorway. Y/N's eyes snapped up where she found her adad resting against the doorway.

"Come out into the kitchen little one, I'll braid your hair for you while your mother finishes packing the things you will need" he said, smiling tenderly. Nodding the girl retrieved her brush and padded out after her father. He sat down on the rug in front of the fireplace. The soft glow lit up the room, dawn had not yet cracked in the sky. Y/N sat down cross-legged in front of him. His large hands unclasped her braid caps and began untangling the hair. Leaning into his touch Y/N smiled, it had been a long time since she had gotten to spend time with her adad like this. The dwarfling furrowed her brow, closed her eyes and tried desperately to burn this moment into her mind. If she left with her amad then it may be some time, if ever, that she spent a moment like this with her adad again. A stray tear tracked down her cheek. Her fathers calloused thumb wiped it away. Running the hairbrush through Y/N's thick hair he broke the silence.

"I know you do not want to leave me kurdu (my heart) but things are too uncertain for you to stay. Just think of it as an adventure, imagine all the things that you will see and all the people you will meet. You'll hardly have any time at all to think of me" he assured, a half-smile painting his lips. "Besides, I'll write you whenever I can, and you can write back whenever you feel" he assured. By this time, he had begun to intertwine strands of her hair together, capping them off with the braid clasps he had made her.

"It…It is only temporary isn't it adad?" Y/N spoke hopefully. Thorin adverted his eyes but hesitantly answered her question, "yes but it could be some time before we are find somewhere and then fully settle into the land. Until then, you would have to stay." Y/N's little bottom lip began to quiver again. Thorin tilted her head up gently so she looked him in the eye. "It is not forever Mizimith (jewel that is young)." he comforted. "Come now let’s go find your amad" he smiled kindly down at her, caressing her cheek.

Taking her father’s hand, which dwarfed her own, the two strolled outside. Parked in front of their cottage was a carriage filled with the few worldly possessions belonging to them. Stood in front of it her mother was in deep conversation with the carriage driver. Spotting them she wrapped up her conversation and headed towards them. "The time has come, we should leave now before it gets too late in the day" her mother announced, a weak smile painting her lips as not to upset her dwarfling. Her father sighed but nodded in understanding. Hoisting Y/N up on his shoulder he carried her up into the carriage and popped her on the bench inside.

Kneeling down he spoke up, the final few utterances to be shared between them for a while. "I want you to have something" he reached up to one of his braids and unclasped the braid cap. They had been forged by her sigin'addad (grandfather) and gifted to him upon his coming of age. "This braid symbolises my future, our future, and the future of our people. All are intertwined. The time will come when I take back our homeland, if I am successful I want you to bring this back to me to symbolise our new future." He pronounced; eyes gleaming. Placing the clasp into her small hand he curled her fingers around it. He pressed his forehead against Y/N's in a last show of affection. A stray tear tracked its way down his cheek. He broke away from his young child and hastily wiped the tear from his cheek before retreating out of the carriage.

A few moments passed before her mother entered the carriage, hastily shielding her eyes from her dwarfling while taking a seat across from her. With that her mother rapt on the wall and the carriage began to move. Kneeling on the seat Y/N gazed out of the window at her father’s figure shrinking in the distance. He stood stoically watching the carriage leave, his expression foreign to his young daughter. Eventually his figure disappeared in the distance and still his dwarfling looked on, longing to go back.

#the hobbit #lotr #the hobbit x reader #dwarves #elves #lord of the rings #imagine #alternate universe #thorin oakenshield x reader #thorin x reader

[nanoland]

drowstiel fic in progress

title: Clean Hands

fandom: Supernatural

pairings: Crowley/Castiel, Crowley/Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester

blurb: In which Crowley is no one's first choice and he's totally fine with that! :) Really! :) :) :)

warnings: smut, cannibalism, demons getting themselves Extremely murdered

0 

Trumpets sounded. Mortar cracked. The ceiling collapsed, squashing half of Crowley’s court, and holy, horrifying light flooded into every corner.

“We are going,” Castiel growled, storming up to the throne and grabbing him by the scruff, “for a drink.”

Crowley’s tail twitched, wordlessly instructing his bodyguards to stand down. “Um. Fine?”

“Now.”

“Alright, alright. Where?”

“I don’t care.”

So Crowley teleported them to a cosy little nook in Finland, highly ranked among his personal favourites and unknown to any colleagues or enemies. It had a roaring fireplace, generously padded chairs, thick faux fur rugs, and a table by a window through which one could watch snow gently blanketing the city of Rovaniemi.

They ordered Koskenkorva and cider and Salmari and beer – or rather, Crowley did, while Castiel stared broodingly into the fire – and competed to see who could get totally hammered first.  

Castiel won. Castiel always won.

“Coke?” Crowley offered.

Scowling, the angel mumbled, “No. Nnn-o. Dean drinks Coke. Dean bought me a Coke once. Said I should try it. He always wants me to try things. Bacon and Star Wars and cowboy paraphernalia. Human things. Never wants to recipra… recipe… recital… never wants to try my things. Angel things. One-way street. Always.”

“Mmm. I can understand how that might feel invalidating, kitten. However, I was in fact offering you cocaine. Top-quality stuff, of course. Or weed?”

“Oh. Uhh – no. Thank you. Can I sit in your lap?”

With a put-upon sigh, Crowley settled back into his chair.

A woman seated across the room tutted disapprovingly as Castiel clambered onto him, twisting this way and that until he’d made himself comfortable with his legs dangling over the arm rest and his tousled head heavy on Crowley’s shoulder.

Looking her way with a pleasant, if carnivorous smile, Crowley said, “Your husband’s name is Verner. Your sister’s name is Aurelia. They’re currently having sex in your kitchen. Her bare, perky arse is resting on your oven mittens – the nice ones with the canary pattern. If you leave right now, you can catch them at it.”

“You are an abomination,” Castiel murmured into his neck as she bolted.

“You’re an absurdity,” he countered, sniffing his hair. Cheap shampoo. Cheap conditioner. Wood smoke, presumably from the boys’ latest hunt. Traces of blood. Traces of God.

The fire crackled. They drank some more.

“I gave Dean a feather,” Castiel said. “One of mine. It’s what we do to show loyalty. Admiration. When I served Heaven, I received feathers from various admirers every week.”

He sounded smug.

Adorable.

“It wasn’t sexual, mind,” he added, quickly.

“Of course.”

“Nor romantic. We don’t engage in such things. Nonetheless, it was meaningful. Is meaningful.”

“And Dean, I imagine, didn’t realize that.”

“Obviously not. I wasn’t expecting him to. He’s a human; why should he understand our customs? But I thought… I thought he’d at least ask. I was prepared for him to ask. I had an explanation ready to go. And then he didn’t. He took the feather, looked embarrassed, smiled, thanked me, and returned to doing Sam’s laundry.”

“Ouch.”

“I’ve never been so humiliated.”

Crowley gave him a consoling kiss, which he returned hungrily, though not cruelly. In this, Castiel was never cruel. Only demanding. Which was fine; Crowley liked being in demand.

When Castiel withdrew his questing tongue, he looked unsatisfied. (Brattish.) “Why must you always lurk so deep? Come forward. I want to see you.”

Huffing, like it wasn’t something he was asked to do and gladly did every time, Crowley let himself slide from his host’s brain into his eyeballs, turning them crimson; from his chest to his tongue, causing his breath to stink of petrol and graveyard dirt; from his veins to his extremities, prompting his fingernails and toenails to adopt a distinctly claw-like appearance. His expensive black socks would be ruined. “Better, birdy?”

Immediately, Castiel returned to kissing him. (Really, it felt as though he was trying to suck Crowley from his host’s mouth into his own.

Like he wants to eat me.

Crowley shivered happily.)  

Drawing back, Castiel said, “Take us to a hotel room. I want to touch your penis.”

“I live but to serve.”

It had taken Crowley a while to work out what Castiel’s odd sexual ministrations made him feel like; a stim toy. The angel liked nothing more than to fiddle with him. To tug at his chest hair, to pluck at his nipples until they were plump and rosy, and yes, to poke and pat and play with his cock until Crowley whimpered.

“I don’t understand why he’s so reluctant to open up to me,” Castiel sighed, breath-taking on black silk sheets and settled between Crowley’s thighs, twirling grey-streaked pubic hair around his index finger.

“I like opening up to you,” said Crowley, and demonstrated.

Castiel lowered his head and peered appreciatively. “Your vessel is so much furrier than mine. Like you’ve glued a badger’s pelt between your buttocks.”

Some might have found a fuckbuddy who had only two settings – i.e. ‘the worst dirty talk conceivable’ and ‘pining for another man’ – frustrating. Crowley had long since put such petty grievances aside, because he was emotionally mature. Worldly. Smooth. Definitely not because he craved Castiel’s presence all day long and whispered his name to the stars at night.

“Hurry up and stick it in me, you twat.”

As Castiel hoisted Crowley’s legs over his shoulders, he stroked the hair there too. “Mmm. So fluffy. Honestly, with all this to keep you warm, I don’t see why you have to cover yourself in so many layers.”

“You’re one to talk! You’d wear that trench to the scorching outback if you got half the chance.”

“Temperature isn’t a factor for me. Besides, Dean likes me wearing it. It gives him a sense of continuity that he lacks in other areas of his life.”

Castiel couldn’t tell the difference between a groan of pleasure and a groan of exasperation. That was for the best.

Afterwards, Crowley arranged his host such that the majority of his weight rested on Castiel’s chest. So far, it was the only reliable way to ensure he didn’t get dressed and leave the moment they were done.

“Were you busy?” Castiel asked, panting. “When I entered Hell? You probably were. You’re always busy. You work even harder than Raphael used to.”

“Never too busy for you, pet,” he purred, punctuating his assurance with a saucy wiggle.

Castiel’s phone rang.

Castiel actually answered it (rather than his usual reaction to ringing phones – his or Crowley’s – when they were in bed, which was to narrow his eyes at them until their screens cracked and they leaked smoke), which meant it was Dean.

“I am needed,” he announced, rolling Crowley off him.

With a mocking salute, Crowley slithered into the warm spot his body had left. “Godspeed, mighty warrior. Try not to lose any more feathers.”

Fumbling with his tie, Castiel said, “I’m planning to give him one more. A second chance. If he doesn’t react appropriately, I’ll…”

“You’ll what?”

The tie was abandoned, flopping half-knotted against his crisp white shirt. “I’ll be back for more sex. Goodbye.”

With that, he was gone.

Under his stolen skin, Crowley curled into a smoky ball and cursed the whole world. 

0 

‘Never too busy for you,’ he’d told Castiel.

‘My door’s always open,’ he’d promised Dean.

But surely they both understood that if they were going to summon him in the middle of the working day, they would, occasionally, be interrupting something?

“Is that a kidney?” said Dean, staring at the bloody lump in Crowley’s hand.

Flustered, Crowley popped it into his mouth and swallowed it. The thought occurred, a second later, that his instinctive, perfectly normal as per demon etiquette attempt to make the situation less awkward might have been ill-advised.

“I’ll just go, shall I?” he muttered dejectedly.

Dean shook his head, sighing. “Nah. Won’t make me unsee it. But we’re not kissing.”

“Could brush my teeth? Suck on a mint?”

“No. Now get your pants off. I don’t have all day.”

Dear boy. He wasn’t always like this. Often, Crowley appeared in the circle to find him red-eyed, puffy-nosed, and at least slightly drunk, and he’d touch Crowley without saying a word all evening. Other times, he’d be wound tight, buzzing with frustration after a hunt gone wrong or a fight with Castiel or Sam. On such occasions, sex would be more like a wrestling match, Dean’s quick reflexes and pickpocket cunning pitted against Crowley’s ability to lift a car with one hand, and after they’d brutalised one another for a few hours Dean would slide off Crowley’s cock with a bone-deep groan of satisfaction and sleep like the dead. Those times tended to be Crowley’s favourites.

But this was nice, too. Brisk, rude, faux-impatient – today, Dean was in a good mood. And Dean in a good mood meant one thing and one thing only.

“Jesus fu-aaah,” Crowley exhaled, having barely slipped his 100% virgin wool trousers down his thighs before the hunter entered the circle, dropped smoothly to his knees, and latched onto the waiting erection like there was a panel of judges mere metres away and a million dollar cash prize on the line.

Dean Winchester wasn’t nearly as good at sex as he thought he was. But he always, always tried his best, and sometimes that raw enthusiasm was erotic enough all on its own.

“So,” said Dean, pulling back to study his work with that critical mechanic’s eye. “Something weird happened the other day.”

“Really? To you?”

“No, not normal Winchester-brand weird. No new apocalypses brewing, far as I’m aware. Just… y’know. Odd.”

Abruptly, he stood up, wiping his lips, and took Crowley by the arm. Sweeping the edge of his shoe through the circle, he all-but-frogmarched him across the room to the old mattress he’d set up in a corner specifically for these occasions.

(They didn’t always have sex in a grimy abandoned shed three miles from the nearest road. Sometimes they had sex in grimy abandoned cars with wheels buried in knee-deep weeds or, when Dean was feeling unusually romantic, dive bar bathrooms. Crowley didn’t care. He’d fucked Napoleon III in a haystack once.)

Absentmindedly arranging Crowley to his liking, Dean said, “Cas gave me a feather.”

Unnoticed by Dean, every microorganism within a seventy-foot radius – excepting those within his own body – died in a flash of hellfire. “Oh?”

“Yeah. And not, like, a pigeon feather or whatever. One of his. Weird, right?”

“Mm. Very.”

Dean thrust into him, business-like. “You read a lot, yeah? Probably even more than Sammy. Ever found a book that analyses – I dunno – weird angel shit? Or ancient prophecies involving angel feathers?”

Goddamn rotten bloody humiliation kink, he thought moodily, feeling his cock begin to leak. Probably done more to damage my reputation than that time Lilith caught me sneaking into David Cameron’s bedroom wearing a silk chemise and a British Lop. “Not that I can recall, no.”

Giving his arse a friendly smack, Dean said, “C’mon. You gotta know something. Or, if you don’t, you gotta have a theory. I know that nasty li’l brain of yours never stops working. Why would an angel give a human a feather?”

The deranged, beautiful monster hadn’t stopped buggering him.

Even worse, Crowley hadn’t stopped liking it.

“Alright, alright,” he groaned, fingernails surreptitiously sharpening as he dragged them over the mattress. “Stop. Lemme think for a moment. No, no, scratch that. Absolutely do not stop. Oh fuck, fuck, please don’t stop.”

“Crowley,” Dean whined, and while he’d have loved to think that he was whining in passion, he knew better.

“Look, it’s a gift, yeah? He gave you a gift. Use – fuurgh – use your brain, squirrel. Why do people usually give gifts?”

A big, calloused hand wrapped around his cock. “Birthdays. Bribes. To say thank you. To say sorry. Hey, could that be it? Has he… aw, shit, has he done something stupid behind my back? Again? And he doesn’t want to admit it but he’s feeling guilty so he’s giving me weird presents? I bet that’s it.”

Crowley wasn’t certain what language he used to say, “Jesus Christ, you’re both beyond hope,” in the seconds before he came. He was only just mentally present enough to make sure it wasn’t English.

After finishing off with a hearty grunt, Dean belly-flopped onto the mattress next to him. “Fuck yeah, man. That was great. Wonder if I can use it for something? A bona fide angel feather’s gotta have serious mojo, right?”

Facedown and breathing into the pillow, Crowley made a ‘who knows?’ gesture.

“Maybe it could be made into a weapon,” Dean murmured, gently stroking Crowley’s scalp. “There’s precedent. The First Blade was a mule’s jawbone. Or maybe I could write with it – like a quill. Heh, imagine a devil’s trap drawn with an angel’s feather. That would fuck you guys up, right?”

“Sure,” Crowley rasped, lifting his head. “Why not?”

Dean yawned. “So how’s Hell? Been about a month since we last did this, so… what’s that… about a decade down there? Had any problems? Moved the furniture around?”

“No. Hell doesn’t change much these days. Lilith was the innovator. Always installing a new lake of fire here, a new torture chamber there; slaughtering her political opponents en masse; throwing out promotions and demotions and beheadings left and right. Not my style. I prefer stability. Behind my back, they say that I’m the most boring monarch Hell’s ever had. Well, no – they say that wherever they want. When they’re behind my back, they try to stab me.”

He rolled over, wincing at a twinge in his well-used arse.

“Stability’s great and all,” Dean mumbled, sounding half-asleep. “And for real, I think it’s cool that you’ve made Hell so much less… torture-y. But y’ever think about aiming higher?”

“Eh?”

“Making Hell not suck, I mean. You know? Not just stable but actually tolerable for everyone who’s gotta live there. Now and then when I’m ganking some demon dickbag, I start thinking that maybe they wouldn’t always be causing so much trouble on Earth if they liked being in Hell more.”

Crowley laughed. Long and loud. “Where’s this coming from? Is this a Sam idea? It sounds like a Sam idea. Your bleeding-heart centrist of a brother going through another introspective phase, right? Bless.”

Scowling, Dean said, “Wow, someone’s defensive. What’s wrong? Pissed that the Boy King could run the place better than you?”

“Come off it, Dean. You don’t believe that for a second. Sam’s no leader. Much less a leader of demons. And the notion of ‘fixing’ Hell… it’s Hell. It’s not meant to be fixed. It’s not meant to be tolerable, it’s not meant to be endurable. It exists to break people. Horror is its bedrock. Sure, I can tidy up, I can replace the Gitmo vibe with the good ol’ eternal queue, but I can’t make it nice.”

“Huh. Okay, I get it,” said Dean, stretching, slyness in his eyes. “It’s not that you don’t want to – it’s that you don’t think you can. You’re not powerful enough, or smart enough, or whatever. I guess that’s fair. Surprised to hear you admit it, though.”

Like a blowfish, Crowley’s smoke puffed up to thrice its usual size, spilling from his eyes, ears, and lips as he pounced on Dean and pinned him to the mattress.

“Watch your tongue, brat,” he hissed, tail manifesting with its point aimed at Dean’s throat. “I’m not your pet pigeon. Had I the magnanimity of Saint Francis himself I’d not sit here and listen to some cunting mortal question my leadership. What in the name of God’s greasy bollocks do you know about ruling anything? You’ve never so much as managed a fucking corner shop. You’ve never even been employed.”

Dean grinned. “Damn, did I touch a nerve? Sorry, sweetcheeks.”

A canine rumble poured from Crowley’s thick throat. He felt Dean’s wrist bones creak under his grip. “Arrogant little rat.”

They glared at one another, unblinking.

“You ready to go again?” Dean asked.

“Yes.”

“Me too.”

In a violent flurry, they competed to see who could jack the other to completion first. Dean won. Dean always won.

“Same time next month?” Crowley enquired, watching him get dressed afterwards.

“Maybe. It’ll be coming up on Halloween and that’s always the worst time of year for us.”

“Mmm. Same. You’d be amazed how many false alarms we get; idiot teenagers deciding to summon a demon for fun and not actually wanting to make a deal or not letting them out of the trap afterwards. Last year, my secretary found them waiting for her with SuperSoakers full of salted holy water. Still – unless I’m busy – and, obviously, I probably will be busy – I’ll only be a phone call away if you poor lost lambs get yourselves mixed up in something you can’t handle.”

“Cool,” Dean said over his shoulder, already halfway out the door. “Catch you later.”

Crowley waited until his footsteps had faded and his scent had cleared. Then he grabbed the pillow, pressed it to his face, and screamed for forty minutes. 

(to be continued) 

#supernatural #crowstiel #drowley #crowley #castiel #dean winchester #drowstiel #fanfic #my fic

[remys-lucky-franc]

Kissing Promts Request - Remy x MC (QOT)

#40 - A gentle kiss that quickly descends into passion, with little regard for what’s going on around them.

Written from MC POV

~1300 words

Again, it’s not totally nsfw, but these kissing prompts are lending themselves to somewhat racier writing than I usually post - so, that was your warning if that’s not your fic preference, folks 💕

[MORE] [[MORE]]

The Poppy’s latest heist has just finished: relieving an undeserving London-based oligarch of his extensive art collection. As Nikolai said when we toasted in celebration last night, ‘it’s been a somewhat protracted endeavour, but all really very satisfying and worthwhile’. It’s taken several months to complete and has been a particularly challenging and tiring escapade, so we’ve all decided that some downtime to rest and recharge before the next heist begins would do us some good.

Remy and I decided to head back to France as soon as we could, to the chocolate-box cottage we bought outside the city dubbed by Remy as ‘Château Chevalier’ - our little love nest: where we escape to when we want to spend some time alone - just us - secluded from the world in our perfect domestic bliss. It’s not as large or grand a space as the moniker suggests, but it fits us so wonderfully: a modern open plan kitchen and living area, a beautiful master bedroom and a smaller one where I can paint, a bathroom, and a small private garden lined by hedges that basks in sunshine most of the day. From the first time we set foot inside, I felt at home and could picture us happy here - croissants for breakfast on the terrace, relaxing on the sofa watching movies, tangled together as moonlight spills through the bedroom windows. Our home; our castle.

Remy’s cooking dinner for us, as has become our little routine in our château. He loves to cook and it’s a joy to watch him. Music plays in the background as I perch at the end of the small breakfast bar with an intoxicating glass of red wine that we only ever have here. We chatter and laugh about the heists gone by, his brother’s new romance, our friends and dozens of other topics as they flit through our minds. Remy glides effortlessly around the kitchen and makes even the most complex of tasks look like child’s play. I observe with admiring eyes: everything my husband does, he does it with flair - from the way he rapidly chops ingredients and tosses them into the pan, to how he decants wine directly from the bottle into our food with never a measurement taken. I offer to help and my assistance is swiftly declined,

“Everything is under control, ma cherie”, he assures me, shooting me that bright signature smile that makes my heart skip every time, “Sit. Relax. Enjoy the wine with your Remy.” Normally, I simply nod, sit back and enjoy the show, but tonight I choose to pout and fix my saddest brown eyes on him - the ones I know that he just can’t say ‘no’ to, “Please? Let me help you?”

Remy opens his mouth to object, but quickly closes it again before silently agreeing with a flourish of his hands. He would do anything to make me happy and I love him for that. I bounce down from the bar stool, wine glass still in hand, beaming at him, “Yey! What do you want me to do?” He passes me a knife and asks me to julienne some veg, so I wash my hands and get to work slicing as I sing along the music. Before too long I have a bundle of matchstick vegetables and can feel Remy’s eyes on me. One arm snakes around my waist, a whisk in the other hand. He appraises the quality and quantity of my veg - satisfied, he rewards me with a sweet kiss on my cheek, making me blush before returning to his saucepan.

My first task successfully completed, I lean back against the cabinets, sip my wine and watch as he tosses ingredients into one of the simmering pans on the stove, “What can I do next?”, I ask him. Remy gestures to the pantry and requests some flour for his roux so I place my glass down, steal a kiss and playfully squeeze his behind as I pass him. A sound of feigned offence follows me into the pantry and makes me giggle.

After a little searching I locate the packet of flour on the top shelf and as I stretch overhead to bring it down I realise the bag isn’t tightly closed. A little plume of white powder sprinkles to the floor and I dance to avoid it’s path: I do reasonably well as it only dusts my hands leaving my black clothing unharmed! Biting back a mischievous little chuckle as an idea pops into my head, I head back into the kitchen and hand Remy the flour packet, before booping his button nose with my other flour-covered hand. Taken by surprise, he splutters and tries to wipe it away before pulling me close to him. I try to wriggle out of his grasp, laughing but fearful of a flour-filled revenge - but he grips me firmly and his green eyes are glittering as his lips meet mine. A kiss, like so many of ours, that begins in a grin - joy-filled and gentle.

“I’m sorry-“ I mumble against his mouth, “I couldn’t resist...”

His hands settle on my sides, thumbs skimming over the waistline of my jeans grazing the bare skin of my hip bones. A series of soft kisses nuzzle my lips peppered with the words, “And I. Can’t. Resist you. Cherie.” I smirk, as I run my fingers through his hair, teasing him, “Hmmm. I am pretty irresistible.”

The lighthearted humour between us evaporates and everything slows down as Remy closes the little space remaining between us. My stomach stirs recognising the growing hunger in his eyes as they lock with mine. There’s a tinge of dark, rich Merlot on his warm breath as my lips yield and I melt into his touch. Within seconds our kiss has deepened, tongues tangle and my hands rake over the expanse of his toned back, shoulders and rear - my pulse racing. We gravitate clumsily back toward the cool granite top and I groan as I make contact; the hard lines of Remy’s body crush against mine while deft fingers burn beneath my shirt roaming over my curves. Remy hoists me up to sit on the counter effortlessly and instinctively my limbs wrap around him drawing him ever closer to me - every kiss more frenetic than the last, every subtle shift of his hips electrifying me. Just two thin layers of clothing between me and all that I ache for, with every touch stoking the flame between us and making my head spin.

As addled by lust as my brain is, I’m vaguely aware that the saucepans on the stove bubble away furiously now neglected - and that dinner is probably ruined. If Remy has noticed he is as far past caring as I am. Kisses sear across my collarbone as I feebly mouth, “Remy... The sauce is burning...”

His teeth drag slowly from the hollow of my throat to my ear and he rasps, “So am I, ma rêveuse,” he breaks away from me momentarily to turn off the stove, grinning wickedly, “and only one of us can be saved.” Helping me down from the countertop our lips collide once more and our passion overtakes; discarded clothing, declarations of love and scandalous intentions litter the path to our bedroom. As we sink into the soft mattress together a little voice far in the back of my head briefly considers that we can perhaps try to salvage our dinner later but I know from the look in my Remy’s eyes that very soon I’ll have forgotten my own name, never mind the ability to think about what state our meal is in. I laugh to myself as I decide ‘there’s always pizza’ - and that’s the last thought in my head before my brain short-circuits and I’m losing myself to something infinitely better and more satisfying.

#lovestruck #remy chevalier #kissing prompts

[thran-duils]

You’re Now Mine (P.16, FINAL)

Title: You’re Now Mine (Part 16) Summary:  Fulfilling a request for @lets-personofinterestontumbir! – “Could you do a drabble for the Persephone AU I don’t know If you’ve seen once upon a time but the episode 1x07 reminded me a lot of this story when the evil queen ripped out the huntsmen’s heart if you could do something like that it would be awesome. Thank you.” Words: 1,553 Warnings: DARK AF, Emotional/Mental abuse, smut Author’s Notes: I think the hardest thing for me continuing this fic was it ending up the way I thought it should even if I thought it might make people mad. lmao but cheers.

Chap 15 || Masterpost (mobile) || Fanfic masterpost

Lucifer held up a finger, leaned his sword against the wall, and said, “Give me a minute.” Before disappearing.

Sam and Dean stared at the spot before exchanging a look, throwing out their hands in annoyance.

Crowley and Rowena had joined them upon their request, both reluctant but knowing the gravity of the situation. They had been discussing their plan before Lucifer up and disappeared when discussing weapons.

“What the hell?” Dean asked no one in particular.

Suddenly Lucifer reappeared, looking proud of himself. Chuck was the first to notice what he had gone to fetch. More so because he was able to sense it.

“Where did you get that?” Chuck asked as soon as he saw the bag in Lucifer’s hands.

“An old friend,” Lucifer returned. He paused and then considered before correcting, “Well, I would not say ‘friend’. She was not fond of me at all. But I struck a deal, yada yada.”

Chuck was in front of him then, not hearing what he was explaining now. All of his attention was on the bag. He made to reach for it and Lucifer jerked back instinctively, causing Chuck to pause, his gaze moving up to meet Lucifer’s.

Chuckling uncomfortably, Lucifer explained, “We’ve been through this before. Twice actually. It’s a one and done kind of deal; the power is truly short lived. We don’t want to be jumping the gun here. Now, I was thinking—”

“You should use it,” Chuck interjected, catching Lucifer off guard.

Lucifer’s eyes widened at the suggestion. “Uh.. well… I mean, that is what I was going to say, but—”

“No, it should be you. She wouldn’t expect that. Plus, powering you up especially with your sword is the smart thing to do.”

“Hmm,” was all Lucifer said in response.

Chuck’s hand landed on Lucifer’s shoulder and he told him sincerely, “I trust you with it. We can do this.”

<> <> <>

“Cas?”

The voice was very far away. Castiel was groggy, and he hurt something fierce all over his vessel. He stumbled in the dark trying to find his grounding.

“Cas?”

The voice sounded again, sounding much more familiar than it had before. It was like a cloud was lifting. He followed the voice.

His eyes fluttered open and his vision cleared, showing Dean was leaning down beside him, concerned etched in his features.

“What… what’s happening?” Castiel grated, adjusting and wincing at the movement.

Dean looked relieved. “It is you. What happened?”

Castiel swallowed sharply, looking inward. It was just him; he was alone again. “Lucifer is gone. I don’t know… Amara yanked him out of my vessel. I don’t know where he went.” He looked up at Dean expectantly. “Amara?”

“She’s locked up. Those sonofabitches did it,” Dean said, exhaling deeply. Castiel breathed easier hearing this. Dean helped Castiel stand up, clapping him on the shoulder. “I’m glad you’re back.”

Suddenly Chuck was in front of Castiel, laying a hand on his chest. Castiel’s vessel was spotless and he stood taller. “Feel better?” Chuck asked, half smirking.

Castiel nodded, “Yes. Thanks.” He fell silent, looking around the room at Sam, Dean, Rowena, Chuck, and Crowley. Realization dawned on him then. “Where is Y/N?”

“We don’t know,” Sam said, shooting an accusing look at Chuck which Castiel followed suit with.

Chuck breathed heavily, “She’s safe.”

“But where?” Castiel demanded, stepping closer to him.

Chuck held up a hand to stop him from coming any closer. “Lucifer was right earlier when he told you it was no longer part of your concern,” he said to Sam and Dean.

Castiel was not having it, cussing, “The hell is that supposed to mean, Chuck?”

“It was part of the bargain to get Lucifer to help us.”

“’It’? You mean Y/N?” Dean snapped.

Chuck said nothing.

“So, so what? You just gave Y/N away to him?” Sam asked incredulously.

Chuck exhaled deeply, meeting Sam’s eyes. “Yeah.” He looked at Castiel who looked murderous. “Don’t look at me like that, Castiel. Humans are ephemeral.”

“I don’t care,” Castiel practically growled.

Throwing his hands out, Chuck told him, “Things are lost in war, Castiel. You all know that better than a lot. It was a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things.”

Castiel’s shoulders visibly slumped, his features falling. “Not to me,” he said weakly.

Groaning, Chuck threw his head back. “You guys! This is supposed to be a time of celebration! We won! Look, Castiel, here.” He waved his arm in Castiel’s direction, causing Castiel to flinch, fearing the worst.

Instead, Castiel inhaled sharply, his eyes going wide. The others stared in astonishment, worried for him and what was going on. He did not seem to be in pain… rather fulfilled. Castiel rolled his shoulders a few times, stretching out. A sigh of contentment escaped his lips, his eyes closing. He was focusing hard, breathing deeply.

“Bet that feels good,” Chuck commented.

Castel’s eyes opened and he stared at Chuck determined, his mouth set in a thin line. “I am going to find her,” he said defiantly.

“Well,” Chuck said amused. “You’ve got the means to do so now more freely. And quicker if you manage to.”

To Sam and Dean, Castiel said, “I’ll come back.”

Before they could ask what the hell he was talking about, he disappeared, the air shifting at his disappearance.

Chuck was smiling fondly at the spot Castiel had just been in. “Hmm,” he murmured. “That should be entertaining. For a little while at least. He is not going to find her, of that I am sure. But he sure is unfaltering in his devotion. That should make me jealous.”

He turned, beginning to walk up the stairs, leaving the rest of the group. He paused, turning to look at them over his shoulder. His eyes landed on Sam and Dean and he looked apologetic. “You know, I really am sorry you had to lose a friend. But perhaps I can make it up to the pair of you.” Turning his gaze upward, he said, “You’ll find it back at home. Or should I say… her.”

And then he left them there, standing perplexed and lost.

<> <> <>

The water coming out of the rain faucets was running down your skin in the natural stone shower in your bedroom. You remember the shower had intimidated you at first, being an open one where anyone could walk in and see you. But that had been a silly thought; Lucifer was the only one who would see you. You had not seen anyone else besides God over the years sparingly – and that other angel the other day. He had been the first. The way he had watched you was odd and you were anxious to have Lucifer back.

Chuck had left you hours ago and with each passing hour, you had grown more restless.

The shower was doing some to help relieve stress, the warmth soothing you.

Hands were on you suddenly and you startled, your eyes popping open. Jumping away, you gasped. Upon seeing his face, you relaxed instantly. You rushed to his embrace and he leaned forward to meet you in a kiss. He was nude, planning to join you in the shower certainly.

“Where were you?” you asked, running your hands through his quickly wetting blonde hair.

“Dealing with a problem,” he answered. Your brow creased and he assured you with another kiss, “It’s been solved. No need to worry, princess.”

“Your father stopped by,” you told him. Lucifer acknowledged this with a hum. “He told you?”

“Yes,” he nodded, pulling you closer. “He seems to want to be keeping an eye from time to time. It is not unusual, no?”

“He brought someone here though.”

Lucifer cocked his head at this, and fear sparked in you realizing he did not know that part.

Clearing his throat, Lucifer told you, “I am sure he just did not have time to stop and leave them somewhere. You don’t need to worry about it. Trust me.” He brought your hand up to his lips and gave you a kiss on your fingertips. “You trust me, don’t you?”

Nodding, you told him, “Of course I do.”

Lucifer’s lips parted into a smile, satisfied with your answer. “I suppose I was right when I said I would have you.” His eyes were searching you, as if looking past you, inside of you. His fingertips traced your skin, his lips parting in pleasure. It set a fire deep within you feeling his yearning for you, the object of his affection. His voice was barely above a whisper when he spoke again, “One way or another.”

Confused, you gave a little laugh. “Whatever do you mean?”

He seemed to push the thought away, his eyes focused again on yours. “Nothing, princess. Nothing at all.”

He pulled you to him again, a hand holding your head in place as he dived in for a deep, dominant kiss. Falling into his embrace, you followed his movements, devouring the taste of the other. When you came up for air, his forehead rested on yours, a hum of approval rumbling low in his chest. His hand rested on your chest and you felt warmth emanating from it, deep within your core; a comfort you could trust forever.

~~~

CASTIEL FOREVER TAGS: @willowing-love @perseusandmedusa @greenappleeyes @afanofmanystuffs @earthtokace @shikaros-blog @marisayouass @splendidcas @stixnstripesworld

For this fic: @itsmeempar

#lucifer x reader #casifer x reader #spn fanfic #supernatural fic #my shit

[themurphyzone]

Pinky the Snowmouse Ch 1

Summary: On a lonely Christmas Eve, a lab mouse finds himself unable to concentrate on world domination. When an ACME scientist claims to own a magic silk hat, Brain initially dismisses it as superstitious nonsense, but finds that this boast could hold more truth than he could ever imagine.   

AN: So I posted this idea back in May (I know, nowhere near Christmas season) but it made for such a viable fic that I had to do it. Besides, I wanted to write a great Christmas fic since I focused more on Halloween last year. 

This fanfiction is also a tribute to all the Christmas specials we love so much every year, from the Christmas Carols to the holiday specials in our favorite cartoons to the Grinches and Rankin-Bass features.

Ch 1: That Old Silk Hat

AO3 Link

It was Christmas Eve, the day bolded and highlighted on the calendar, topped with a picture of Snoopy and his doghouse decked out in festive accessories.

Impossible to miss the overly cheerful music, the jingling bells, and the calls to be charitable to the poorer, less fortunate beings of the world.

Except humans never practiced what they preached.

No matter how much they claimed to care, Brain knew they never would. All of those charitable feelings would vanish as soon as Christmas was over, and they’d go right back to wallowing in their ignorance.

If they truly wanted to be charitable, they’d recognize Brain as the indisputable ruler over the world. But since humans always looked down on non-humans, it was an uphill battle with no end in sight.

But that was just fine with Brain. He wanted to be recognized for his merits and intelligence. He wanted to accomplish something other than achieving the lowest times on maze runs.

In time, his efforts would be rewarded. The bitter defeats would gradually transform into sweet victories.

But for now, he was unable to make headway into world domination since all the ACME employees had gathered by the main entrance, waiting for 3 pm to roll around like a class of bored schoolchildren who desperately wanted to go home.

If the higher ups were expecting all these mediocre scientists to show up for work and be productive on a snowy Christmas Eve, they were sorely mistaken. They were only here to collect their paychecks and didn’t care about scientific progress at all.

One lab tech popped a CD full of classic Christmas songs into an old stereo, and a chorus of Feliz Navidad began. Several scientists spun in their chairs, absentmindedly sucking on candy canes.

Brain was just as impatient as they were, but at least he’d be productive with his time once they all left.

“So ya got any plans, Bill?” a scientist asked.

“Go home,” Bill replied with a shake of his balding head. “Sleep because there’s no way I’m getting any shuteye with the twins bouncing off the walls for their presents tonight.”

“Kids are gonna be like that,” a lab tech spoke up. “I had to stop mine from taste-testing the cookies she wanted to leave out for Santa.”

Laughter rang out from the group, everyone taking turns to relate Christmas mishaps with their families. Soon almost every human joined in on the camereradie, except the most eccentric and inept scientist of them all.

Dr. Henry Hinkle was a man who claimed to bridge the fields of science and magic. However, he was woefully mediocre in both departments, and Brain had long ascertained the man had faked his credentials. Even Hinkle’s fashion sense was peculiar, as his gray lab coat was cut into the style of a magician’s fanciful tailcoat. With his brown handlebar mustache, he seemed more like a harried time traveler from the 19th century than a modern citizen.  

His most prized possession was a tall silk hat with a pink flower attached to the band. Hinkle often claimed it was a magic hat, one that performed wondrous and mystifying deeds far beyond human comprehension. Hinkle was attached to that hat, and nobody had ever seen him in public without it.

Hinkle stood apart from everyone else, an outsider from the science clique. He frantically paced back and forth, desperately trying to get the so-called magic hat to perform properly.

"Say, Hinkle? Didn't you have a gig at the elementary school last week? How'd that go?" Bill called, and all eyes turned to Hinkle, whose eyes nervously flicked back and forth at the sudden attention.

"Swell, very swell," Hinkle mumbled as he nervously fiddled with his hat. "Those little ankle-bi...I mean those delightful, darling angels were floored by my magic."

A woman scoffed and rolled her eyes in disbelief. "Yeah, right. My son was part of that class, and he thought it was the worst Christmas party he'd ever had. How embarrassing that you can't shuffle a deck of cards."

“Madam, I will have you know I can shuffle a deck with my eyes closed and one hand behind my back!” Hinkle retorted. He flicked his left sleeve, and an entire card deck slipped out and spilled onto the ground. As Hinkle bent down in a hasty attempt to get the cards back in order, a small wand, several rubber balls, and colorful scarves tumbled out his other sleeve.

Nobody bothered to help Hinkle out with his misfortune. His coworkers elbowed each other, pointed fingers, and snickered among themselves instead.

The situation was far too pathetic to be humorous.

Brain wasn’t surprised by humans anymore. Peace and goodwill toward their fellow men didn’t exist, though the holiday season claimed otherwise.

It was now 2:40 pm. Only twenty minutes left in this humiliating performance, and Brain could formulate his next plan for world domination without further interruption.  

Hinkle quickly stuffed the mess into his coat pockets. Then he straightened up, pulling on both ends of his bowtie in a vain effort to appear calm and collected once he was finished.

“If your hat really is magic, show us a few tricks!” Bill jeered, and the other employees joined in with challenges of their own.

“Oh, I will. And all of you will feel silly for doubting me after I’m through! Silly, silly, silly indeed!” Hinkle shouted. He tried to remove the hat from his head with a graceful flourish, but clumsily dropped it instead.

He chuckled nervously, a bead of sweat running down his forehead despite the chill.

“As with any exercise, a good magician always warms up with the basics,” Hinkle declared as he showed his audience a small red ball. “For my first trick, I will put this red rubber ball into my magic hat like so, and presto change-o, I have five red rubber balls to-”

He tipped the magic hat upside down. A single red ball bounced out, rolling along the floor before it hit an unimpressed lab tech’s shoe.

“-go,” Hinkle finished dejectedly. He peered into the hat, futilely shaking it as if the other four balls would pop out. Once he realized that wouldn’t be the case, his shoes scuffed the ground in shame as he picked up the single red ball and dropped it back into his hat.

“Look on the bright side, man! You produced invisible balls without trying!” someone called, garnering laughter from the rest of the audience.

Hinkle’s face turned red.

And while the scorn wasn’t directed at Brain, he thought the heckling was an unnecessary endeavor. There was little point in prolonging the man’s misery, no matter how incompetent or delusional he was at magic tricks.

“N-now, as I said before, that was just a warm up,” Hinkle said, nervously tugging at his collar. Then he pulled a small pink scarf out from his pocket, spilling several cards and dice onto the floor again. “But my second trick is sure to amaze you! Watch as I place this scarf into my hat and let the magic focus, now hocus pocus I say, and out come green, gold, and...gray?”

To nobody’s surprise, there was only a lone pink scarf in Hinkle’s hand. “There were supposed to be endless scarves attached to this…” he muttered. It fluttered out of his hand and back into the hat.

But nobody was paying attention to Hinkle anymore. The clock struck three, and the dull atmosphere changed to a holiday-induced fervor as everyone pushed and shoved their way to the front so they could card out and leave.

Brain crept to the front of his cage, one hand resting on his crooked tail as he prepared to unlock the cage and make headway into his plans as soon as they left. He was brimming with viable ideas, and they needed to be written down before he forgot them.

“EVERYBODY, WAIT!” Hinkle bellowed over the noise, and his colleagues turned to him with annoyance written all over their faces.

Brain gritted his teeth. Just let them go already! Was that really so difficult?

“I have one more trick, yes, just one more teensy trick up my sleeve! A real one, I assure you! You won’t be disappointed!” Hinkle said, rubbing his hands together frantically. He emptied his pockets, tossing props everywhere in a vain attempt to find something useful.

Then Hinkle donned a pair of white magician’s gloves, his eyes falling right on Brain. And Brain realized he was about to be conscripted as an unwilling volunteer.

Since his usual tactic of biting fingers until he was left alone wouldn’t work on gloved hands, Brain beat a hasty retreat to the back of his cage, intending to use the exercise wheel as further cover.

But he only made it halfway to the wheel when the door opened and gloved fingers pinched his tail, dragging him out of the cage and dangling him over the magic hat for everyone to see.

“Watch as I transform this ugly lab mouse into a beautiful dove!” Hinkle yelled, and just as Brain processed the insult, he was unceremoniously dropped into the hat. He fell right on top of the rubber ball, knocking the wind out of him. “Abracadabra alakazam!”

Brain pressed himself against the inside folds of the hat as he tried to catch his breath, but he was only given a moment of reprieve before he was snatched up and thrown into the air, as if Hinkle expected him to grow wings because of a nonsensical phrase.

He slammed against the window and fell to the table below, shaking his head to clear away the stars circling in his vision. Every part of his body ached, agony starting from the tip of his tail and snaking up his spine. Slowly, he sat up and checked himself over in the window.

There was a distinct lack of avian features in his reflection, as he expected. He had a new break in his tail from the rough treatment, but there weren’t any other new markings.  

Everyone stared at Brain in silence, and the only sounds were barely suppressed squeaks of disbelief from Hinkle and a chorus of Deck the Halls.

Then there was a booming laugh.

“Prettiest dove I’ve ever seen!” Bill said, to the mirth of his coworkers.  

Brain’s ears flattened, and he wanted nothing more than to sink into the ground and disappear forever.

His fists clenched at the sound of their mockery. He never chose to be involved in this ridiculous demonstration. Or deal with their scorn and stupidity every day. Or live at ACME Labs at all, where he had to suffer through experiment after experiment on top of attempting world domination and failing every single night.

“Come back! I have trick cards! Magic 8-balls! I’ll saw something in half and put it back together, I swear!” Hinkle shouted at the scientists’ retreating figures as they all carded out and stepped into the bitter chill of winter. They shuffled through the snow-covered property and into their vehicles, not wishing to be delayed any longer.

The prized silk hat crumpled in Hinkle’s hand.

“Bah! The only thing this junk hat’s good for is the trash can!” Hinkle snarled as he hurled the hat at the wastebasket by the door, but it only hit the nearby wall instead.

Then he stomped out the door, slamming it shut behind him.

Brain peered out the window, his breath forming a small patch of fog against the cold glass as he watched Hinkle trudge towards the city. He waited a minute to ensure Hinkle wasn't coming back, then rushed over to a drawer where he'd hidden a roll of blueprints and writing utensils.

He was finally, blissfully alone.

Strands of colorful Christmas lights twinkled along the walls, casting a festive hue onto the unfurled blueprints.

Solve for x. Cube the most wonderful time of the year. Multiply by pi.

Peppermints, candy canes, and chocolates were mixed together in a snowflake-patterned bowl. Brain snacked on one of the chocolates as he scribbled a preliminary design for a machine. The candy was bittersweet on his tongue.

Sodium and chloride to form an ionic bond. Three irons needed to balance the equation. Symbol H stood for the hap-happiest season of all.

Only the scratching of his pencil, the hum of a heater which barely worked, and an old, droning carol. The Christmas bells subdued, the computers shut off.

And hearts will be glowing when loved ones are near. Loved ones are near. Loved ones are near...  

There was a wet spot on the blueprint, directly over where he was trying to write. Frowning, he rubbed out the excess moisture, but only succeeded in smudging his numbers. He started over in an empty space, only for the wetness to appear again. Annoyed, he flipped his pencil around and rubbed the grayed area with his eraser.

The blueprint ripped.

Though the hole was tiny and didn’t affect the rest of his work in the slightest, it seemed that his plan had failed before he’d implemented it.

And it occurred to him that he’d never considered how the machine would function or how it would help him accomplish his takeover.

His face felt strange, so he rubbed his cheeks to get rid of the sensation. His hand came away damp.

Oh.

He was crying.

It was that stupid song’s fault. He dropped his pencil and walked over to the stereo, slamming his hand against the stop button just as the song reached its end.

The sound cut off immediately.

Only the dying thrums of a malfunctioning heater now.

The silence was overwhelming.

Christmas media always said the holiday season was a joyous occasion for family and friends, a time for reflection and rebirth as the year wrapped up and began anew.

But it was just propaganda. Nothing more than lies so people would praise themselves as right and virtuous and loving when they were nothing of the sort.

Brain splashed cold water onto his face, ridding himself of the useless tears. Then he looked out the window. A light flurry had begun, the clouds low and dreary gray. The land was already blanketed in snow from the blizzard on the winter equinox, and temperatures hadn’t warmed up since.

And while there were footprints in the snow from passersby, much of the surrounding property was untouched.

Maybe that’s what he needed.

An opportunity to numb himself, to walk around in the cold and discard these useless, empty aches in his chest.

He tore up his blueprint and threw it away. He was better off starting over after his stint outside.

Then he put on his winter gear, nicked from a doll somebody had brought in as a donation to a toy drive, but now lay forgotten in the lab.

The thick white jacket was comfortable and padded with extra fluff. He threw the hood over his head and tucked in his ears, then pulled on his snow boots and gloves.

As he wound a long piece of string around the window latch, he caught sight of the silk hat that laid beside the wastebasket, considered nothing more than trash since it wouldn’t do what Hinkle wanted. The rubber ball and scarf was still inside, crumpled and forgotten.

Magic wasn’t real. It was simply the art of misdirection and illusion. Or a word the uneducated used to describe occurrences they couldn’t explain with science.

Despite his beliefs, Brain built a simple pulley system with thick yarn and an empty spool to haul the silk hat up to the counter.

He could use the hat for extra fabric. Repurpose it. Shrink it so he could have a formal hat for himself.

He opened the window, allowing the cold wind to numb the exposed fur on his face. With all the flurries, he’d probably regret this decision later, but that wasn’t anything new. Then he dropped the loose end of the string outside and tugged the knot around the latch. Once he was satisfied with the knot’s tightness, he dropped the silk hat into the snow-covered bushes below.

It was ironic, how he experimented with chemicals and complicated machinery every night, but didn’t know what he was doing with a simple hat.

Maybe that humiliating demonstration had messed with his mind, overriding all his logic and planning capabilities.

But it seemed like such a flimsy excuse, not providing a satisfactory explanation as to why he’d dragged a so-called magic hat outside on what was supposed to be a simple break.

Brain slid down the string, his boots crunching against the snow as he landed. He stuck out a gloved hand, catching several flurries.

No two snowflakes looked alike, they always said. But their crystalline structures couldn’t be seen without a microscope, so they were nothing more than white powder to the naked eye. He rolled the flurries in his palm until they formed a tiny snowball.

It gave him an idea.

But...it was childish. Stupid.

Yet he found himself rolling snow anyway.

This patch of the property was completely undisturbed, so he had a nice layer of clean, white snow untouched by human footprints to work with.

Nobody was around to see him. And it gave his hands something to do instead of remaining idle.

He quickly found that rolling snow into a spherical shape per the typical snowman wasn’t as easy as television depicted. The snow didn’t want to move in the way he wanted, and it came out as a lumpy, ovular mound that happened to be the same size as him.

He kicked aside a thin, whiplike twig that had broken off from one of the nearby bushes as he gathered more snow to form the head. Then he reconsidered and picked up the twig.

In his hands, it looked very similar to a mouse’s tail. One that wasn’t broken by mishandling.

While he didn’t have the height or the tools required for a full-sized snowman, maybe he could create a snowmouse instead.

He carefully threaded the twig into the backside of the mound, curling it around so it resembled an actual tail.

Then he brushed extra snow away from the front, smoothing out the mound until it had the snowy equivalent of legs.

The head was more difficult to sculpt, but he managed to create something that would be recognizable as a mouse’s head, with two small snowballs forming the ears and a muzzle that jutted out. He would’ve made the muzzle smaller, but the increased size was necessary to counterweight the ears. Lastly, he slid two sticks into each side of the snowmouse to serve as arms.

The snowmouse was twice Brain’s height, and while it had the proportions of a mouse, it was ultimately just a cold white body with three embedded twigs. No personality, no splashes of color.

Anyone could easily miss or step on it.

The snowmouse would be gone by next week, once the temperature rose above freezing. No trace of his handiwork would remain.

Such was life. Short and brutal, with nothing to show for it.

The faceless snowmouse seemed oddly alone, the only other thing besides Brain in this wintery courtyard. There wasn’t anything for either of them here.

“Sorry,” Brain said, unsure of why he was apologizing to something that couldn’t hold a conversation. He’d wasted far too much time here. He had to get back to his plans. “I’m going inside.” 

A chilly breeze blew, and Brain held fast to his hood so it didn’t come off. As he turned to the lab, he saw the silk hat become airborne, flying several feet until it landed by Brain and the snowmouse.

He didn’t think the breeze had been that strong.

But the strangest part was how the hat was much smaller than before. It wouldn’t fit a human anymore.

Even the red rubber ball and pink scarf shrunk. And there were several pebbles that hadn’t been there previously, though Brain guessed they could’ve just gotten inside when he’d dropped the hat.

Brain stared at the items, then back at the snowmouse.

“Just this once,” he sighed as he draped the scarf between the main body and head, then placed the rubber ball at the end of the muzzle for a nose.

Two of the pebbles became unseeing eyes, though Brain was at a loss of what he should do with the other two pebbles. He tried using them as a replacement for buttons on the body, but that didn’t seem right. And placing them on the cheeks just looked awkward.  

Brain held a pebble in each hand, stepping back to determine the placement. But he didn’t find anything satisfactory.

He was about to discard the pebbles entirely, but then he noticed that the snowmouse seemed to have an odd pair of buckteeth sticking out at the end of its muzzle with the way he held the pebbles.

Perhaps he should’ve left it as a matter of perspective. It was stupid. It was silly.

But Brain stuck the pebbles on the underside of the muzzle anyway.

The snowmouse looked ridiculous with its red rubber nose, pink scarf, and pebbles for eyes and goofy buckteeth.

Another breeze picked up, and one of the snowmouse’s stick arms waved, moving up and down like it was saying hello.

Like it was...friendly. Alive. Happy.

Slowly, Brain approached the snowmouse. He placed one hand on the snowmouse’s body, balanced on his tiptoes, and threw the silk hat on top.

For reasons Brain couldn’t explain, the hat just seemed to go with the rest of the snowmouse.

And then he caught himself.

What a ridiculous concept.

Creating a snowmouse wasn’t his worst transgression, if he’d just left it at the creation process. No, instead he had to go personifying it! Assigning qualities that shouldn’t be designated to inanimate objects!

Snow wasn’t alive. It was water. That’s all it was.

“You’re snow. You’re just a pile of frozen water!” Brain yelled, turning away from the snowmouse. Enough with these idiotic fantasies. He was going inside, back to the cruel reality of trying to take over the world. “You’re not alive, so just leave me alone! Quit toying with my perception!”

He stomped towards the window, but only made it a few steps before an odd sound gave him pause.

“Toys? Narrrrrf! That sounds like jolly good fun! Can I play with toys too?”

Brain looked over his shoulder, and promptly tripped over himself in surprise.

A pair of bright blue eyes was looking back at him. Actual eyes, not pebbles.

And the snowmouse was talking.

End AN: I feel really bad for calling Brain ugly. *sobs*

I actually kinda find writing Hinkle’s dialogue fun. A bit of a strange character to crossover with, but fun. Hocus Pocus the Rabbit won’t be making an appearance. 

Also some changes will be made from the original Frosty the Snowman cause some parts of the cartoon don’t make sense. A greenhouse at the North Pole, really?

#pinky and the brain #patb fanfiction #pinky the snowmouse

[wrenhyperfixates]

Doubt Comes In

Requested by anon: Hey!! Can you maybe right a fic where the reader is having a panic attack and Loki finds them and helps them or maybe where they’re having a panic attack and they go as Loki for help. Whichever you’re drawn to I’d love either. Thanks sm, sorry to bother. You’re amazing btw Pairing: Loki x reader Summary: When depression and anxiety get the better of you, Loki is there to help you through it. Warnings: Talk of self-harm, depression, and panic attacks, as well as a brief mention of suicide. If any of these things upset you, please do not read. A/N: This is the first request I’ve ever gotten, so thank you to the lovely anon that sent this in. Sorry that I added some things to your request, but I’d already started writing this and felt that they worked well together. Hopefully I still did your request justice :)

Disclaimer: Gif not mine

There were days where you just had to shut yourself away from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the world. The first time you did this, it alarmed the rest of the team who were used to you being one of the most social of the group. You seemed to have infinite patience for the people who stopped you on the street, both fans and media alike. During parties, you could be found with a large group of people, nodding along and adding your own thoughts where they seemed appropriate. Of course, if anyone bothered to look close enough, they would have seen that your smiles were just a little too bright, and your responses just a little too polite. No one ever did, though, so you suffered in silence.

On days like today when depressive thoughts claimed your mind, the whole act was too hard to put on. The team had come to know times like this as your sick day, though they were all suspicious of the flimsy excuses you made when you told them that’s all it was. Just a stomach bug, you’d say one time. Another, a minor headache supposedly plagued you. Nothing to worry over, you assured them. Out of respect to you and the space you obviously needed, they hardly ever questioned you any further.

You tried to calm the shakiness of your breaths as you made your way to the kitchen. Tony had taken the rest of the team out for mini-golfing, something you usually would have been ecstatic to take part in. Even if you had to force a smile for strangers, you were genuinely happy to do things with your friends. It was just the overwhelming feeling of worthlessness that kept you from joining them today. You did your best to ignore your feelings, which always left you on a hollow sort of auto-pilot. Staring blankly into the fridge you opened upon arriving in the kitchen, you tried to force yourself to find something you wanted to eat. You knew you needed some kind of sustenance, but somehow your brain always convinced itself you didn’t deserve to eat when in a mood like this. You grabbed a berry smoothie that you knew you probably wouldn’t finish and headed to a common room couch.

The view was much better here than from your room and you were glad that everyone else was out, allowing you to wallow anywhere in the Tower, not just your bedroom. You hated to be inside at all, let alone cooped up in your room, on a day as nice as this. Going out, though, meant you ran the risk of running into someone. So, you leaned back and felt the warm sun filtering in from the large windows wash over your skin, and opened the cap of your drink. You managed to take a few sips before setting it down on the table in front of you. That relentlessly chipper voice in your head told you that if you weren’t going to eat, you should at least finish the smoothie, but it was met with an even louder, more persistent voice telling you that you shouldn’t. You peered at the pinkish liquid and managed to take one more gulp before setting it back down. It was better than nothing, you figured.

Psychoanalyzing yourself never really ended well for you. You had a nice home, friends that were practically family, and pretty much anything you could ever want. So why the fuck were you so messed up? Deep down, you knew it was in a large part, if not wholly, due to your home life from before becoming an Avenger. Your parents would tell you to talk to them, to express your emotions, but the second you did, they told you it was wrong to feel that way. To just stop feeling like that without any clue as to how to do that. It left you drowning in emotions too difficult to repress, in a house filled with screaming matches between people who supposedly loved each other. Eventually those screams gave way to icy glares and clipped conversations. You quickly learned your place in a house like that: Listen to everyone else’s problems and deal with your own, on your own.

You were trembling now, just like days long past in your childhood home. You still remembered times you just collapsed into a ball on the floor behind closed doors, silent sobs racking your body. You weren’t so quiet now that you didn’t have to worry about anyone overhearing. Hands trembling, you reached into your back pocket as you remembered the other way you used to deal with your emotions. You held the Swiss Army knife in your hands and stared at your red eyes reflected in the unforgiving metal. You weighed the pros and cons of what you were about to do, but right now you were only interested in the relief it could offer you. You’d deal with the guilt after.

Before you could bring the blade down to meet your tender flesh, a hesitant voice called your name. Your head whipped around to meet eyes just as raw and red as your own. It made the green of his irises pop.

“Loki,” you gasped, hastily standing up. His eyes flitted down to the knife still in your hand, and you quickly hid it behind your back. “I can leave if you want.”

“No. You stay, I will go. Unless, that is, you wouldn’t mind if I...if I joined you?”

You still didn’t particularly feel like talking to anyone, but staying alone now meant that you would hurt yourself. The part of you that desperately did not want to go back down that road beckoned Loki to sit next to you on the plush cushions. He didn’t press for any more information, and you both sat in the silence, sniffling for the next half hour. After a few deep breaths, you gently placed one of your hands on his.

“Are you alright?” your raw voice said, cutting through the stillness of the room.

Loki laughed, though not unkindly. Something flashed across his features, but you hadn’t spent enough time with him to know the nuances of his expressions. True, you’d been getting closer with him these past few months, and he ranted to you about some of his troubles such as disagreements with his brother, but you’d never seen him in a state quite like this.

“And why, my sweet mortal,” he said, picking up your hand and holding it in both of his own, “should you have to worry about that when you are so obviously distressed yourself?”

There was nothing you could do to stop the tears that burst forth from you. Slowly, Loki wrapped you in a hug and stroked your hair.

“It’s alright,” he cooed. “I am right here. You can trust me.”

“I’m just-just so worthless!” you shouted between hysterical sobs. “I can’t even deal with my feelings properly. Everyone would be better off if I was dead.”

“Do not say such things!” Loki said with a sudden fury, grabbing your shoulders and pulling your body away from his so he could bring his face level with yours. Not that you could see him through your tears and hands, which were rubbing your eyes in a desperate attempt to stop the deluge. “If you were to leave, you would be missed by anyone who has ever known you. Your family. Your friends. Me.”

Apologies fell from your lips, almost in a chant. He shushed you, returning to gently hugging you after his own emotional outburst. You stayed like that for the better part of an hour until your sobs subsided and turned to shaky breaths.

“Darling, look at me,” Loki said when he felt you’d calmed down enough. “You matter. You need to hear that. You deserve to hear it. You matter.”

You barely manage to stop another round of tears from taking over your body. “Thank you,” you croaked out. “I don’t think anyone’s ever let me know that before.”

Actually, you knew they hadn’t. For most of your life, people never even bother to check if you were ok. You’d been told that crying was wrong, and you’d never been allowed to weep into someone’s arms as Loki had just allowed you to.

“It is no problem, my dear. In fact,” Loki started, but trailed off, tears forming in his own eyes.

“Talk to me,” you said with rapt attention, ready to be his shoulder to cry on.

“I understand what you are feeling all too well. That feeling of worthlessness... It is all-consuming. And it is ok that you feel this way, but you must know that you can work past it.

“I don’t know how,” you whispered.

“Remember all the good you put into the world. And do not say that you you haven’t contributed anything; I know you have. Think of times when you have helped me. When you have saved the city. Even when you have held the door open for someone. It all counts, and it all matters.”

You contemplated his words and slowly nodded. After a whispered ok passed your lips, Loki lifted you and placed you on his lap. He rested his head on your shoulder and, in turn, you placed your head on his own.

“And,” he added, his breath tickling your ear, “if you cannot think of anything, come find me. But do not ever even think of harming yourself again.”

You nodded and snuggled in even closer to him, enjoying the peace for as long as you could. Soon, the rest of the Avengers returned to the Tower. You made some small talk with them before excusing yourself to your room. Loki was waiting for you in the hallway with a tray of food that he sheepishly passed to you when you reached him.

“How did you know?” you questioned the god, wide-eyed. Never before had someone noticed your poor eating habits when depression set in.

“I am the same way myself,” he responded with a distant look of sadness and resignation on his features.

You thanked him and stood there awkwardly for a few minutes, neither of you really knowing what to say. Finally, he took your hand and placed a gentlemanly kiss to your knuckles, and with a promise to check on you tomorrow, Loki took off down the hall.

You managed to finish the sandwich he brought you before collapsing on your mattress and falling into a restless sleep.

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

It had been months since you’d first opened up to Loki. After a little while, he finally confided in you, too. Most days, things were better for the both of you now that there was someone to talk to about it all. Despite your best efforts, you fell for him. Hard. You just couldn’t help it, not when he felt so safe. Not when he felt like home. That’s why you hastily agreed to a date when he asked you out after teary, late-night confessions of love.

Tonight was the night of your first date and you knew he had something amazing planned. You should have been over the moon, but some nasty voice in your head was keeping you from that feeling of elation. It kept telling you that you were going to screw things up and drive Loki away. You didn’t doubt that he cared about you, but you certainly didn’t understand why he did either. He was a god, for crying out loud, and you were just, well, you. Trying to still your shaking hands as you put on your shoes, you reminded yourself of all the tender words Loki whispered to you. Unfortunately, your mind was quick to warp those thoughts, telling you that they were probably lies. That’s what he was the god of, after all.

Suddenly, you realized what was happening to you. You’d experienced it once before; you recognized it in the uncontrollable shaking of your hands and shortness of breath. You attempted to calm yourself down before it got too bad but to no avail. Before you knew it, you were hyperventilating, tears streaming down your face. You wanted to call out for help, but the words wouldn’t come. Then came the crashing sensation of impending doom. Your mind was a jumbled mess, repeating over and over again desperate pleas for it to stop.

A knock sounded at your door, but you barely heard it over your own thoughts. So deep into this pit of despair, you couldn’t pull yourself out to answer whoever was there. Through bleary eyes, you saw a flash of green in your room, and soon you were caught in a loving embrace.

“Look at me, darling,” Loki said. “I am here now. Just breathe. It will all be ok.”

He continued to whisper calming things in your ear as you gasped for air, the panic attack subsiding. Slowly, the rest of the world came back into focus and you grounded yourself, staring straight ahead and concentrating on Loki’s soothing hands rubbing circles on your back. As you calmed down, you noticed he was softly singing in a language you didn’t recognize. Still, though, he sounded beautiful.

“It’s something my mother used to sing to me when I was a child,” he explained after finishing the song, the comforting melody still ringing in your ears.

“Will you sing it again, please?”

He obliged and this time you hummed along, a small smile playing at your lips. You were still shaking when he scooped you up and placed you on the bed. He pulled your back against his chest as he continued the Asgardian song.

“Our date,” you gasped, suddenly remembering your plans for the night. “I’m so sorry.”

“Do not apologize, my sweet. After all, I see no reason why we cannot still have our date.”

With a snap of his fingers, you were both in your pajamas, and pizza boxes were resting on your nightstand. You smiled at Loki as he stared in confusion at the TV remote. You giggled and helped him flip through the channels, before settling on The Wizard of Oz. You were glad to know that no matter how many times your mind was filled with doubt, Loki would help you through it. The safety you provided for each other was so precious to you that you wanted to stay in this moment forever.

“Hey Loki?” you said as the movie was finishing. “What did that song from earlier mean?”

And so he began to sing it again, this time in English so you could understand the words.

Don’t worry, sweet darling, do not cry Let me wipe those tears from your eyes Don’t fear, sweet darling, do not fight Let me hold you; everything’ll be all right

You gazed at him with admiration in your eyes. He looked away as a slight blush colored his pale cheeks, but you cupped his face and brought your lips to meet his in a sweet kiss.

“Rest now, my love,” he said after you had to break away for air.

The complete fatigue you felt made you follow his gentle command as he sang you off to sleep.

#loki x reader #loki x y/n #loki x you #loki laufeyson #loki odinson #loki friggason #request #loki angst #angst #loki fluff #fluff #anon request #tw: self half #tw: depression #tw: anxiety #tw: suidice #marvel reader insert #mcu loki #mcu #marvel #reader insert #tw: panic attack