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charmandabear · 3 months

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Office Hours - Chapter Two

Summary:

You really want to get Astarion back for making you feel so flustered, but as a result you find yourself in a bit of an uncomfortable position.

Pairing: Astarion/F!Reader Rating: E Word Count: 3.7k Tags/Warnings: unprotected p in v sex, under-the-desk blowjobs, semi-public sex, vampire bites, modern au, college/university au, urban fantasy, enemies to lovers, poor gale doesn't deserve this

Oh shit she's writing? I had like six other things planned but I can't keep away from this world. Once again thank you @zipzoomzaria for the beautiful screenshots and also the inspo for Professor Astarion, and @aw11tht33tha for the beta!

You don't need to have read part 1 for this part to make sense, but it does help.

Read on AO3 ~ Masterlist

Ever since you slept with Astarion - or, perhaps more accurately, he fucked you mercilessly over his desk - you haven't been able to get him out of your head. It's been a little embarrassing, frankly. Every time you pass him in the hallway, a single glance over those round wire frames has you suppressing the moan that bubbles in your throat. One whiff of his fragrance and your pussy clenches in a Pavlovian response.

You're standing in front of your mailbox in the main office, reading some memo from the chair about season selection for next year. It's always a tedious process where no one can agree and you somehow all end up with shows you hate.

You smell him before you hear him, and you can feel your ears grow hot. He comes up behind you, standing closer than is probably necessary, and reaches above you to empty his own mailbox.

“Pardon,” he says politely, but you feel like he’s going out of his way to brush against you. A shiver runs down your spine as he very gently grazes the back of your neck while shuffling through the papers.

He turns and starts chatting amicably with Grace. How can he stay so cool when you're practically in shambles? You pretend that you're still reading the short memo just to collect yourself. When he finally leaves the main office, you manage to turn around and imitate some semblance of a normal person. Grace catches your eye and frowns.

“Are you feeling okay? You're looking a little flushed,” she asks, genuine concern coloring her voice. You twist your face into a smile, hoping that it reads like gratitude rather than annoyance.

“Yeah, I'm fine, thank you. Probably just a little dehydrated,” you say, putting a little extra rasp in your voice to sell your story.

“I’m about to leave for lunch, I can grab you something from the student union, if you're thirsty.” She smiles sweetly, fully unaware of the double entendre.

“I'm good, I have some water back in my office. I appreciate the offer, though.” The smile is now plastered to your face as you move to leave the office. You bump into Karlach while trying to make a hasty exit.

“Gods, soldier, you okay? You look like you just got out of a sauna.” She claps you on the shoulder and your knees buckle. The technical director had spent 10 years in the army, so you can't really fault her for the nickname, or the smack to the shoulder, for that matter.

“Just a little thirsty, is all,” you reply, continuing to scoot your way out of the office.

“Yeah ya are!” She points two finger guns at you and flashes a big suggestive smile. You freeze for a half second, then realize she’s making a generic lewd joke and not pointedly calling you out for your current condition. You awkwardly finger gun back as you finally slip through the doorway and book it to your office.

You sit down at your desk and grab your water bottle, taking a long sip. It's unbelievable how much of a hold he has on you. What you wouldn't give to be able to fluster him as much as he does you. Have him struggle for words. Make him look like an idiot in front of your colleagues.

You think back to your bathtub fantasy from a few days ago. You could not have predicted the dynamic more incorrectly. You really thought that you'd be the one in control, that you could have him coming undone for you. The image of him whimpering beneath you still sets your heart racing, though it can't be further from the truth. Your breath hitches slightly as the scenario plays out vividly in your mind, like your own personal erotica.

“It must be rather exciting, whatever's got your blood going that way.” His sultry voice interrupts your debaucherous thoughts and you yelp in surprise. You glare at him leaning in the doorframe, hands in his pockets and collar casually unbuttoned, looking like an absolute treat. He chuckles and saunters into your office, settling into one of the chairs across from your desk and crossing his lithe legs. Despite your newfound attraction, he's still an arrogant little shit.

“I thought you couldn't come in uninvited,” you scowl, keeping your voice low for fear of someone overhearing.

“I don't recall being invited last time, but you didn't seem to mind,” he says with a laugh, and you squirm under his piercing red gaze. “Regardless, the rule only applies to homes, not individual rooms within a public university.”

Your frown deepens, unsure if he's being condescending or not.

“Is there something I can help you with, or are you just here to frustrate me?” You lean back in your chair and cross your arms, trying to imitate his casual authority. You're not terribly successful.

“You seem to be doing that perfectly well yourself, the way I could hear your arteries pumping from down the hall.” His smile widens, flashing just a hint of fang, and your resolve weakens. He stands and stretches his arms above his head, his shirt raising just enough for you to see a sliver of porcelain skin. You’re positive he’s just doing this to annoy you.

“Well, when you have a free moment, stop by my office, I have something to show you,” he drawls, an almost bored lilt coloring his tone. “And do try to keep that pulse of yours under control, it’s distracting to the point of vulgarity.” He glances at you over his glasses one more time before retreating into the hall again.

You cross your legs, trying to ease the ache between your thighs. He's absolutely insufferable. And he’s so much worse now that he knows he has this power over you.

You gather your materials for Voice and Speech, plotting ways to enact your revenge.

***

Against your better judgment, you find yourself walking toward Ancunín’s office after class. You take a moment before knocking on the door, smoothing down the front of your dress and tousling your hair to give it a little more volume.

Suddenly the door opens and Mol comes barrelling out in a huff.

“D’you believe this berk? Gettin’ on my tail for ‘academic integrity.’ Ain't nobody more integrous than me!” she grumbles, adjusting her bag angrily. She turns her heated gaze to you.

“Can you talk to your boyfriend and tell him to leave me alone?” she spits and you splutter involuntarily.

“Mol, we’re not–”

“Come off it, miss. Everyone sees the way you look at ‘im. Just work your magic so I can get back to gettin’ a college education.” And without another word, she's off. You blink, trying to make sense of what just happened. Are the students talking about the two of you?

Shaking your head, you knock on the door frame as you walk into his office. It's just as cozy as last time, warm light emanating from lamps in every corner to compensate for the blackout curtains over the windows. Honestly, how does anyone not know he's a vampire? You can almost hear his excuse, something about how “direct sunlight is ruinous to one’s skin.”

“Destroying students' lives by keeping them academically honest?” you smirk as you gently close the door behind you with your foot. He takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“I swear, that girl is too clever for her own good. I'd almost respect it if she didn't get on my last nerve,” he sighs, putting his glasses back on and glancing up at you. His expression softens for a second before quickly shifting to mischievous. You slide over to him, leaning against the edge of his desk as you face him.

Any animosity you may have held dissolves as he looks up at you, his hand absentmindedly stroking your thigh just under the hem of your skirt. You shiver as you try to keep your voice steady.

“You said you had something to show me, professor?” You emphasize the title with the gusto of a young porn star. He smirks and pulls you down until you're straddling his lap. You wrap your arms around his neck and grind your hips into him, feeling the beginnings of an erection. He lets out a little puff of air that can almost be mistaken for a moan. He buries his face into your tits, running his nose along the neckline of your dress and slides his hands under your skirt to cup your ass. You breathe in sharply, your breasts rising to meet his lips.

Then a knock at the door.

You both freeze and stare at one another. You hear a muffled voice on the other side.

“Dr. Ancunín, do you have a minute? I have something extremely important to tell you,” Dr. Dekarios from the School of the Weave shouts through the door.

Astarion instinctually replies, “Just a minute!” and the two of you share a wordless exchange.

-What the fuck are you doing?

-I don't know, I panicked!

-What am I supposed to do?

-Hide, perhaps?

Without thinking you slide off his lap and under the desk. Just in time, too, as Dr. Dekarios doesn't wait for Astarion’s permission to open the door and waltz right in.

“Dr. Ancunín, thank goodness, I hope I'm not interrupting anything.” You can hear the Arcana History professor rush in and eagerly sit down in the red velvet lounge chairs across from Astarion’s desk. You groan internally as you realize that you might be stuck here for an unbearably long time.

“Actually, Dr. Dekarios, I was on my way out,” Astarion says as he starts to stand before quickly reversing that decision. You realize with a smug sense of satisfaction that he’s still slightly aroused.

“Completely understand, I'll keep this brief, then. So, the other day, you and I spoke of the use of bardic magic and its position amongst playwrights in Renaissance England.”

“Yes, I recall,” Astarion responds through gritted teeth. He sinks back down in his chair, resigned to sitting through this conversation.

“And how it was common practice at the time to use magic from the college of swords as decreed by Elizabeth? Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Beaumont and Fletcher, they all used college of swords magic.” Dr. Dekarios’ voice increases in pitch with his excitement. You suppress a sigh, preparing yourself for a long wait in this cramped space. It’s not particularly comfortable, especially with trying to keep out of the way of Astarion’s long legs.

Although…

You might not have to keep out of the way. Maybe if you just… brushed your hand along his leg…

Astarion coughs to hide the sudden intake of breath your touch causes. He crosses his legs and you smile knowing it's to give himself a little reprieve. A feeling you know all too well.

“Yes,” Astarion says, his voice frustratingly steady, “I recall your enthusiasm in telling me this.”

You're trying to read his response. Is he into this? Is this a game he wants to play? You test your luck again, dragging your fingers up his thigh more deliberately. His leg quivers and he shifts his posture as the Arcana professor continues.

“Well, I had a thought. Consider this: Shakespeare brought about a major shift in how we think of the Western theatrical canon as it pertains to bard magic, correct?”

You scooch forward and press your tits into his knees that are now pinched tightly together. You slide your hands up his inner thighs, prying them apart slightly. You lean into his legs further as your hands continue their journey upward, squeezing as they get to the top of his thigh.

He kicks suddenly, a soft thump into the back of the desk. Is he telling you to stop? You pull back and glance up at him, the top of the desk obscuring most of his face. He's stiffly nodding along to Dekarios’ rambling.

“And remind me, what other major storytelling convention did Shakespeare also shift during this time?” You honestly can't tell if he’s actually asking, or giving Astarion a mini exam in his own specialty.

You wait for a response from him. He lets his thighs fall open and gently nudges your hip with the side of his shoe. No, his foot.

This mother fucker is playing footsie with you?

Oh he is definitely into your little game.

You push his legs open again, this time sliding your hands all the way up to his cock, and you feel it twitch beneath the wool of his pants. You gently stroke him and his hips give a subtle twist into you.

“I'm not sure–” Astarion begins, but stops short when his voice cracks. You nuzzle his bulge, running your lips across it as it hardens. You slip a hand under him and give his balls a gentle squeeze. You can hear his breath stutter, but it's unlikely Dekarios can as he quickly answers his own question.

“The humors, correct? My understanding of non-magic literature isn't fully up to snuff, but I am correct in remembering this, yes?”

You lick a fat stripe across the fabric and you hear a metallic click above your head, like his watch just made sudden contact with the surface of the desk. You can imagine the veins in his hands bulging as he clasps them together tightly.

“Hm, no, ah yes, you are correct. Most English Renaissance playwrights understood characters as a balance or imbalance of the four humors.” Astarion manages to keep his voice relatively even, and you know you need to up your game. You reach up to undo his belt buckle as quietly and efficiently as possible. Luckily, you’re able to hide the noise within Dekarios’ exclamation.

“Yes! That's exactly what I was thinking! So, hear me out. What if these two shifts were related? In moving away from college of swords magic, Shakespeare felt less constrained by the four humors. Or perhaps the other way around?”

You reach into his pants and free his cock, now fully hard, and tease your fingers along his shaft. His hips buck a little more forcefully, as though controlling his movement is growing more difficult. You grip his pelvis tightly, holding it in place, and relishing the fact that you have the control for once. You flick the tip of your tongue across his slit and his hips twitch again under your hands.

“Could be…” is all Astarion can manage to reply. Hopefully at this point Dekarios is in a full-on oration and he won't need to contribute much, if at all.

You pop the head of his cock into your mouth, working the underside of it with your tongue. You clamp your arms down on his thighs, pulling them closer to you and pushing them into your tits. Your inner thighs grow damp as your own arousal quickens. You squirm as a miniscule moan works its way into your mouth. Not loud enough for anyone to hear, you hope, but you're certain that Astarion can feel the vibration because his hips jerk again. His torso and face above, or at least what you can see of it, gives little away.

“And this could even,” Dekarios continues, showing no sign of awareness of anything else happening in the room, “signal the shift into realism, could it not? Beginning with Shakespeare and culminating with Chekhov and Ibsen in the nineteenth century?”

You take in more of him, relaxing your tongue and letting him fill your mouth, discovering his taste. He almost lifts off his chair in his attempt to thrust into you, and you use it as a way to take him in deeper. Your jaw is beginning to ache with how slow you're going, but it's worth it to feel Astarion’s frustrated discomfort.

You can hear him take a slow breath before speaking again.

“You know who would absolutely love this discovery of yours?” His voice is low, smooth, as you bob your mouth on his cock. “Tav, the classical theatre professor. Her office is right down the hall.”

You choke and he deftly covers the sound of your gag with a cough.

“Bless you,” Dekarios says after a fraction of hesitation. He continues as though there was no interruption at all.

“Then I shall share my findings with her! Down the hall, you say?”

“Room 208.”

“Excellent!” Dekarios stands and you wrap your hand around the base of Astarion's shaft, letting some saliva dribble out of your mouth to lubricate it. You can hear the wizard quickly make his way out the door.

“Gale!” Astarion yelps as you twist your hand and swirl your tongue in tandem. He clears his throat and corrects his decorum. “Dr. Dekarios, the door, please.”

“Oh, of course! Apologies,” he says with slight chagrin, and then you hear the latch on the door click. Astarion rolls his chair back and grabs your hair, pulling you out from under the desk.

“You saucy little minx,” he growls and you stumble forward and into his lap, your lips crashing into his. He easily tears through your leggings and underwear, exposing your dripping cunt to the open air.

This man is wracking up quite the clothing bill.

He slides two fingers into you, roughly stretching you out and you groan into his ear.

“You didn't seem to mind,” you manage to squeak out, repeating his words from earlier with significantly less dignity. You grind onto his fingers with his cock trapped between you, and your clit slides against his shaft. Another shuddering breath rockets through you as your whole body clenches around him.

He yanks his hand out of you and you whimper at the sudden emptiness, but you don't need to wait long for him to grab your waist and sink you down onto his cock. You can feel the skin toward your perineum tear slightly but the stinging pain is nothing compared to the delicious stretch that comes with him bottoming out. He shoves his fingers in your mouth and you arch your back into him, the taste of your own juices flooding your tongue.

He keeps his other hand firm on your lower back as he thrusts up into you. You cling onto his neck, pulling his mouth toward your breasts as they rise and fall with your stuttering breaths. He takes his hand away from your mouth and slides the hem of your dress all the way up to your chin. His lips latch on to your nipple poking through the soft cotton of your bra.

“Gods, fuck,” you groan as you continue to roll your hips into his, and he flicks his tongue against your tit. You push down even further onto him and pull the cup down, pushing your now bare breast into his teeth. His eyes flicker upward, glasses sliding down his nose slightly. You bounce harder on his cock and grip the back of his neck tightly.

“Fuck, please, bite me,” you whine, aching to feel every part of him in you. He doesn't need to be told twice and he sinks his fangs into the sensitive flesh around your nipple. You cry out but try to stifle the noise by pressing your open mouth into his hair. You can smell that citrusy fragrance he wears and your fingers claw into him.

He sucks your blood out from around your tit, and with every swallow he laps his tongue against you, over and over. You're certain his devil tongue will be your demise.

Your pace increases and it becomes harder to suppress your moans. You clamp your mouth shut and bury your face into his ear. He releases your breast and roughly kisses you to keep you quiet, the taste of iron filling your mouth.

You come with an explosive cry that gets swallowed into his kiss. As you're still riding the wave of your orgasm you can feel his, his hips rutting as his dick throbs with the pulse of his semen.

The two of you finally slow, the sticky mess between you squelching lewdly. You listen intently past the sound of your heavy breathing to try to hear any indication that someone overheard. When you deem it safe, you let out a sigh of relief that dissolves into giggles. He drops his forehead into your shoulder as the hem of your dress gets overtaken by gravity and slides down your front

You disentangle yourself from him, wincing slightly at the feeling of him sliding out of your sore pussy. You get a better look at him, your blood still smeared on his lips and chin, his now-flaccid dick slumped above his waistband. You're certain you can't look much better, dress rucked up around your waist, hair mussed and sticking every which way.

You methodically put yourselves back together, Astarion stuffing his wet dick back into his pants, you straightening your dress and hair. You catch his gaze again and somehow he still manages to make you blush, his crimson eyes peering over his frames. He reaches out to tuck a wayward lock behind your ear.

“Maybe next time we’ll have sex in your office,” he chuckles. You swat his chest playfully only to find yourself drawn into him, not wanting to pull your hand away. It's strangely romantic, and if you were able to think clearly, his hands snaking around your waist might bother you. But your head is still spinning and your cunt is still throbbing with the aftershocks of your orgasm, and little could upset you right now.

That is, until the doorknob turns and Dekarios pops his head back in.

“Looks like she’s not–” His voice dies off quickly when he realizes what he's walked in on. He coughs, mumbles an incoherent apology, and backs out quickly.

“I swear to the gods I'm getting a scroll of arcane lock for that damn door,” he growls under his breath, and you lean your forehead against his chest in deflated embarrassment.

#astarion #astarion fanfic #astarion fic #baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate iii #baldurs gate astarion #baldurs gate fanfiction #astarion ancunin #astarion smut #baldurs gate smut #fanfiction #smut #professor astarion #astarion x reader #astarion x you #bg3 au #college au #bg3 modern au #office hours

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eirenical · 6 months

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It's nearly two months after the Bicha poison has been purged from his system before Li Lianhua picks up a sword again. He'll never be what he once was, will never be able to go toe to toe with Di-mengzhu and fight him to a standstill as he did in his youth. But he misses it: the grace, the movement, the sheer joy of the dance of blades. So he picks up Shaoshi, and he walks off into the forest, hyperaware of Di Feisheng following behind, eyes trained on him as though Li Lianhua were the only thing existing in his universe.

But hasn't it always been so?

Reaching a clearing, Li Lianhua slowly begins putting his body through the motions of the dance, weaving in and out through the bamboo, chasing an imaginary enemy as he moves through the steps. Di Feisheng has come to a stop a safe distance away, leaning against a tree with his arms folding his sword close to his chest, but he steps no closer. He seems almost afraid to interfere, to interrupt the dance before it's truly begun. Perhaps even afraid of pushing Li Lianhua back into the protective shell of Lianhualou to never pick up a sword again. But he can't stay away. Can't move from that spot.

Many people had called Li XIangyi beautiful and meant it. But only Di Feisheng had admired the dance as much as the dancer. Di Feisheng's eyes remain on him throughout the entire dance, barely moving a muscle even to breathe until Li LIanhua sheathes Shaoshi at his side. Li Lianhua returns to Lianhualou when he's finished, tired from the exertion but happy.

That night, Di Feisheng barely waits until Fang Duobing's footsteps have taken him up the first step to the second floor before pinning Li Lianhua against the wall and kissing him breathless. He doesn't explain, and Li Lianhua doesn't ask.

He doesn't need to.

The next time Li Xiangyi picks up his sword, Di Feisheng is there, too. And the next time, and the next. He never interferes, never unsheathes his own sword to offer to spar, because that isn't the point. The point is to give Li Xiangyi the space to rediscover what he loved about martial arts before the politics of the jianghu ruined it, before poison and betrayal stole both his strength and his joy in the sword. The point is the way a soft smile that alights on his face every time this dance comes to a close.

Di Feisheng doesn't want to bring the harsh clash of swords into that ease.

…until the day when he steps outside to follow Li Xiangyi to his practice to find that Li Xiangyi has tied a red ribbon to the hilt of his sword.

He watches, entranced, as Li Xiangyi dances a dance for him that he'd only danced for one other in his life. He is so absorbed, in fact, that he doesn't notice the red ribbon flicking ever closer and closer towards him until it's wrapped around his wrist, until Li Xiangyi has pulled him across the clearing and into the dance, a sparkle in his eye that has been long absent and deeply missed.

From there, it's easy. He's been watching Li Xiangyi so long, so often, that he's learned the steps of this dance without trying to. He knows where Li Xiangyi's imaginary opponent would stand to counter the moves he's making. It should be a surprise—it really isn't—when he figures out that the moves of the imaginary man in whose footsteps he's walking so closely and naturally resemble the steps of his own swordplay, as though Li Xiangyi has been dancing with him all along.

And from that point on, whenever Li Xiangyi picks up his sword and heads into the woods, Di Feisheng goes too. And there are very few moments when their swords clash against each other, but when they do, it's just another part of the dance, adding music to the steps, percussion to follow as they move together.

It isn't the fight Di Feisheng thought he wanted when they found each other again...

...somehow, it's even better.

#mysterious lotus casebook #di feisheng #li lianhua #li xiangyi #di feisheng x li lianhua #feihua #eirenical.fic #look #fan man huaisang #i finally cleaned it up and posted it #;D #just a little thing that's been noodling around in my head for a few weeks #thought i'd clean it up and post it finally #^_^#mlcb fic #enjoy?

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g1rld1ary · 1 month

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omg hiiiiii! just saw your requests opened, so excited! i was hoping you could write something for lockwood with the enemies to lovers trope. anything you feel like with that is awesome! and ofc if you don’t want to feel free to not write it 🩷🩷

-mel

what once was ; anthony lockwood x reader

➻ synopsis: you and lockwood hated each other, you had since you were just starting out as agents. when your team is made to work with his on a big case, deeper feelings might just get revealed

➻ word count: 10K (exactly, what are the chances?)

➻ warnings: swearing, mentions of kissing, angst maybe?, injuries

➻ thank u so much for this request lovely!!!! i am SO sorry this took almost a month, but it's the longest fic I've ever posted here so hopefully that makes up for it a little?? if this isn't what u had in mind pls let me know and I'd be happy to write something different! ik it might not be exactly enemies to lovers but I hateee when the dynamic has no respect or reason to be lovers. anyway thank u for the request lolol!!!! xxxxx

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

You thought you were a good person. You dedicated your life to fighting ghosts, you helped old ladies cross the street, you recycled when you could. That was enough to be considered a good person, right? You were almost totally convinced, except for the all the vile things you had to say about Anthony Lockwood.

He was, with no exaggeration, the bane of your existence. You had known him all your life, but hadn’t been friends with him since you were both twelve, just beginner agents. And yet, despite all of this hatred burning up within you, it seemed like the universe wouldn’t give you a moment of peace.

You understood running into his company every once in a while — agency events, maybe the occasional case, but lately it seemed like it was every week you had to face Lockwood’s nauseating grin and infuriating attempts at being charming. Whether it was your respective teams being sent on overlapping missions, picking up more supplies or just trying to pick up a coffee after a draining night, you had started to see Lockwood everywhere.

When you saw him again whilst you were picking up some doughnuts for your team you couldn’t help yourself snapping at him.

“God, are you obsessed with me or something, Anthony?” You barely spared him a glance as you finished the transaction with the cashier, quietly thanking him as you left. Lockwood did the same, practically throwing down his cash to catch up to you.

“You wish I was obsessed with you! I am just as unhappy as you are, trust me.”

“So what, you chased after me just say something we both already knew? Or do you have something you’d like to say, an apology perhaps?” You chanced a look in his eyes. Hurt flashed through them, and you felt a sick sense of satisfaction.

“I’ve told you before and I’ll tell you again, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” He cried, almost dropping his own box of pastries when he ran a hand through his hair in frustration. You didn’t try to hide the rolling of your eyes.

“Whatever,” You huffed, before being struck with an idea. “By the way, did you hear that I’m now a team leader? That makes me the youngest in at least ten years — maybe ever. Pretty good for someone not fit to be an agent, don’t you think?” You feigned an interest in his opinion. His face dropped for a moment, then contorted to become almost polite.

“That was never—” You interrupted him with another sigh.

“Anthony, I really don’t care to listen to you discredit my achievements anymore.” You left him on the side of the street, marching back to your dorm at Fittes. You didn’t need to hear him tear you down and ruin your self-confidence more than he already had — not that you would ever tell him that. Lockwood was similarly disgruntled. Every interaction between you two turned into a fight regardless of what he said; he just couldn’t win.

You had a week of blissful distance from Lockwood and Co before you ran into them, quite unfortunately. You and your team had been assigned to an apartment that allegedly housed a few Type Ones, nothing serious but the residents had complained of hearing noises at odd hours. You held a bit of doubt — living in the dorms had forced you to become accustomed to the most bizarre noises at night, and those were most definitely not ghosts. Plus, adults tended to be paranoid; the noise could be anything from rodents to their little children being awake in the early hours of the morning.

Still, you had a job to complete, so you trudged your small team up to the apartment in question, ready for a quick job and to be cozy in bed before midnight. When Lockwood and Co were standing outside the apartment next to your appointed one, your face dropped into a scowl.

“What are you doing here?” You snapped, talking directly to Lockwood. He hesitated for a moment before turning to face you, brilliant smile shining.

“Lovely to see you again too, sweetheart, we’re actually here on a job? Nice of you to come as our clean-up crew, but that really won’t be necessary. Run along now.” You had to hand it to him, Lockwood had perfected his condescending tone. You were going to respond when the girl behind him began to talk.

“Hey, I recognise you! You’re—” Lockwood cut her off quickly.

“Alright, Luce, I think it’s time we go inside, don’t you?” He was shepherding the girl through the apartment door before you could process what was happening. George, to his credit, looked highly amused at the whole thing. You always liked George, even when he was at Fittes, and seeing him was usually the only upside to your interactions with Lockwood and Co.

“Who’s the girl?” You asked, nodding your head to where she and Lockwood had disappeared to.

“Lucy Carlyle,” He answered, “She’s a Listener — still learning the ropes.”

“And she knows me how?” George just smiled, and you could tell he was keeping secrets.

“I’m sure you’ll find out one day.” He began to follow the rest of his coworkers and you pouted.

“I hate when you side with him!” You called after him, before composing yourself and directing your own team to start the night. They just went along with it, used to your behaviour, and set up your equipment for the mission.

It was not going well. You could all feel a supernatural presence, but no ghosts and no signs of what you’d thought might’ve been the source. Plus, all you could hear was the apartment next door — their stompy footsteps, their laughter over the tea you knew they always had, and one of them wouldn’t stop knocking on the fucking wall.

It was supremely childish, and you would put all of your bets on it being Lockwood trying to throw you off your game. Unfortunately, it was working. And your bad mood was spreading to your teammates. The mission was certainly not going well, all four of you picking fights and throwing digs at each other as you searched uselessly for what could possible be the source, all with no confirmed supernatural presence.

Just as you were about to say something really cruel to your favourite member of your team, the words died in your throat. The temperature rose a few degrees, and you could practically see all your negative thoughts floating away. By the looks of it, your teammates all felt it too. When the freezing shock of the change wore off, you all resigned to embarrassment, realising exactly what had just happened.

This was only furthered when Lockwood waltzed into the apartment, cocky grin practically blinding you.

“Guess that another successful mission for Lockwood and Co now includes saving the careers of egotistical Fittes agents too now,” He crowed, and you rolled your eyes so hard you thought they might disconnect from your face.

“Clearly,” You tried to keep your tone level, “The source wasn’t in this apartment, so we couldn’t have found it regardless of if you were here.”

“Plus they were just Type Ones. You didn’t save any lives, Lockwood,” Your best friend, Sarah, piped up and you smirked.

“Maybe not in the physical sense,” He conceded, “But I definitely saved the career of the ‘youngest ever team leader’ — don’t think you would’ve kept the position for very long if you couldn’t fight a simple Type One.” You turned red in humiliation. How dare Lockwood act so high and mighty, like you owed him the career you fought so hard for? You wanted to express all the seething fury that burned your tongue, but the only thing that came out was a vicious declaration.

“I hate you, Anthony Lockwood.” Lockwood at least had the decency to look somewhat hurt. Although you’d been arguing for years with the insults only getting meaner as you both grew up and developed more precise vocabularies, neither of you had ever vocalised any hatred before. It cut deeper than Lockwood thought it would. You didn’t wait to observe the intricacies of his reaction, storming out of the apartment, making sure your kit bag hit him heavily as you passed.

“Well,” Lockwood broke the awkward silence that fell over the apartment, “I think we’re all done for the night. Let’s go.” Lockwood and Co began packing up their kit bags and gear, Lucy sweeping some leftover magnesium dust under an armchair. Lockwood paused in the doorway, looking back to Sarah with a curious softness.

“Make sure she’s alright, yeah?” Sarah nodded, swallowing a curious look. With a final nod he was gone, leaving the rest of your team to wonder what had just happened to shift the dynamic.

Back in your dorm at Fittes, you were still fired up. Pissed off by Lockwood’s ego, his audacity, you had practically already paced a hole in the floor upon your short return from dinner. All of these years and he still didn’t believe you were a capable agent, let alone team leader! You may not have really hated him; it was hard to truly hate someone who you shared so much history with, but you were glad you said it. Glad you hurt him, even a little. Maybe then he’d know how you felt.

He had — probably unwittingly — saved you arse though. It was one of your very first missions and unfortunately Lockwood was right; a team leader who couldn’t defeat a simple Type One, or realise that their case was a goose chase in the wrong apartment, wouldn’t last. So although he was the one who had told you you couldn’t be an agent in the first place, you probably owed your current position to him, which only mad you more mad. It was an endless cycle of being angry at Anthony Lockwood.

When Sarah came in to sit on your bed, you still weren’t done, taking the opportunity to verbalise your stream of thought.

“He is simply the worst person in the whole world and has no respect for me! I mean, he wouldn’t have helped at all if it didn’t serve his own inflated ego ,” You said, throwing your hands in the air in anguish. Sarah simply watched, barely concealing her amusement.

“Ok, but have you considered maybe he just argues back because you hate him? I mean, where did it start?” You huffed, vaulting yourself back onto your mattress.

“When we were twelve years old, he told me I couldn’t be an agent. I said ‘fuck you’ and have worked my bloody arse off to be one despite it, and to become the youngest team leader at Fittes, and yet every time I see him he still tries to sabotage my career or make me look stupid! God, he drives me up the wall!”

“So you’ve said all these horrid things because he didn’t believe in you?” She laughed a little, eliciting a deep frown from you.

“You don’t get it,” You said, tone solemn, “He was my best friend. He was supposed to believe in me even when everyone else said it was dumb.” The dampened mood brought a premature end to your conversation, Sarah leaving you to your thoughts and feelings as you dwelled on the past in a way you would usually forbid yourself from.

You pulled a framed photo out from behind your stack of books on the shelf. You and Lockwood as children, smiling brightly on a day at the beach, a spade in your hand and a bucket in his, your free ones intertwined as kids often do. You didn’t know why you’d kept it after all these years, looking at any photo of Lockwood typically made you mad, but you felt a bit guilty discarding the keepsake, especially the handmade frame his parents had given you one birthday before they passed. Plus, the memory untouched was one of your favourites — one of the last of your carefree days in childhood when you and Lockwood were best friends and both your families were whole. You held it softly for a moment, indulging yourself in being swept away by memories before deciding enough was enough and returning to the present, distracting yourself with a novel you’d picked up.

You were given a few weeks to cool down, blissfully free from any trace of Lockwood. You thought he must’ve been aware of the heightened tension between you recently, since you’d seen Lucy shopping around Arif’s and ran into George whilst getting your usual Friday night takeaway.

Hearing your name being called from around the corner of an aisle you turned quickly, reflexes on edge. Seeing it was just the redhead you relaxed, making yourself smile.

“Oh, hi, Lucy. How are you?” You made polite conversation, continuing on with your shopping. She replied cordially, a vague awkward air between you that you were both trying your best to overcome.

“We’re all really sorry about the case the other day, by the way. We didn’t mean to take it over or jeopardise your job or anything.”

“It’s nothing,” You assured, “I shouldn’t have let my emotions get the best of me, every agent knows that.”

“Yeah, but if Lockwood hadn’t—”

“Lucy,” You interrupted, “You don’t need to condemn Lockwood, or defend him. We both know where we stand with each other and that’s ok. I hope that doesn’t stop us from being friends either; you’re sweet.” Lucy managed a smile, revealing a pretty sparkle in her eye.

“I’d like to be friends too. Maybe we just won’t tell him,” She giggled, and you nodded gravely.

“Sounds like a plan.” You left Arif’s with a bag full of groceries and plan for coffee sometime.

George was less forgiving than Lucy. As you bickered over who got the last can of Coke in the restaurant’s little fridge, he imparted some of his very much unwanted advice.

“You should apologise. I think you crossed a line,” He said and you rolled your eyes.

“He questioned my right to even be where I am — I think I have the right to be pissed at him.”

“He didn’t mean it,” George said quickly. Almost too quickly.

“How would you know?” You narrowed your eyes. George recoiled — he’d been caught.

“You know,” He trailed off, “Lockwood’s not like that. You should know that better than anyone.” You huffed again, fed up.

“I knew,” You corrected, “He’s shown me exactly how he feels about me now. And I am absolutely fine with that. I’m taking the Coke.” You ended the conversation abruptly, snatching the can out of George’s grip.

“But Lockwood doesn’t like any of the other flavours!” He called after you. You exaggerated a laugh, not looking back as you opened the restaurant door quickly.

“I know!” You yelled over your shoulder. George watched you leave, calculating look in his eyes. You said you hated Lockwood, he didn’t doubt you believed it, too. But he knew that most people didn’t remember which fizzy drinks their enemies liked.

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Thankfully, you got just the distraction you needed. Your team had been given one of the most exciting cases on the Fittes roster. One of those old boutique hotels with funnily named rooms and a long, terrible history that had you buried in fascinating research. You couldn’t believe your team had been given the assignment, it was a sign that you were really beginning to be respected as a team leader in the agency. So, you couldn’t screw it up.

You and your team had been practically camped out in the Fittes archives, researching as much as you possibly could about the old hotel. There were a smattering of unfortunate deaths across the years — some darker than others, but you were confident it was nothing you couldn’t handle. The owners hadn’t specified exactly what supernatural experiences they had seen around the hotel, just that it was clear there were several presences around and they wanted them all gone to reopen the hotel as soon as possible. This did admittedly make you a little apprehensive — you didn’t actually have a solid idea of how many ghosts you’d be dealing with, and it was anyone’s guess how many of them would be Type Twos.

Finally, you were confident you and your team had done as much research as you could, and you were prepared for anything. And so you packed your kit bags, took the train ride and rocked up to the hotel mid afternoon, confidence overflowing. By nightfall you’d been on a tour of the grounds, set up your base and had started brewing some tea to get you all in the zone. You took a glance out the front window, seeing movement in one of the windows of the house next door. It was owned by the people who ran the hotel and they intended to open it as a second venue, but delegated the job to some smaller agency since the stakes for it weren’t as high.

It was all going well for a while. You had a plan to go room by room, making each ghost free before finishing in the majorly haunted kitchen. You were inclined to believe there’d be a cluster of Type Twos there since it was set alight years ago, and the accident had been swept under the rug in favour of saving the business.

The entryway was easy; a few Type Ones that practically led you their sources, clearly just wanting to finally be laid to rest. There was one nasty Limbless that gave you all a fright, but your researcher, Ben, was always miles ahead of the rest of you and knew exactly who the ghost was and therefore how to put him to rest. You told him you owed him a beer later and moved on, crossing a single room off the floor plan and shifting into the library, which was not so easy.

You started to think things were not as great as you originally anticipated when you turned to face the mass of Type Ones. Not the end of the world, a little bloody annoying though. Sarah seemed to agree, kicking the leg of a couch in frustration. The four of you figured your way out of it, though significantly depleted of supplies.

You returned to your home base to recoup, physically and mentally battered.

“What’s the plan?” Sarah asked, chugging down mouthfuls from her water bottle. You bit the inside of your cheek as you thought hard, tapping your fingers insistently on the old wooden table.

“Alright, I think we’ve got enough for one more safely. Kyan, you go outside and get the rest of our equipment whilst we hit the second bedroom.”

“If we’re right then there should only be the one ghost there, right? The strangled woman?” You nodded in response to Ben, mentally drawing your plan.

“And if you’re wrong?” Kyan asked.

“We won’t be,” You affirmed, tapping twice on the table to get you all moving.

Kyan left the building to go fetch the spare supplies and the remaining three of you ventured into the second bedroom. Everything was as it should be; lower temperature, creeping feelings of unease and miasma. You’d put together your chain circle and were feeling good about the Type Two woman you were facing, well, as good as you could in those circumstances.

That was, until it wasn’t just one Type Two. Despite the research and preparation you’d undertaken, there was definitely more than one Type Two enraged by your presence in the room at that moment. There was the woman, an angry apparition of some sort — you didn’t have the time to exactly figure out which subtype she fell into when a man also appeared. Shit. He wasted no time showing you he was aggressive too, and your heart sunk into your toes.

Doing some quick mental calculations, you announced the new plan — to get out. As team leader, you refused to be responsible for an injury or something worse because you wouldn’t back down when you knew you didn’t have enough defences left.

“Soon as it’s safe, get the fuck out of here,” You said, feeling to make sure they were still both in the circle with you as you stood with backs inward. “Use your defences as liberally as you feel you need to — we’re all getting out of here tonight.”

“What about the sources?” Sarah asked nervously, “We’ve only got one or two so far.”

“Who cares? Most agencies get one or two a mission and we’re in a giant bloody hotel. We’ve got more nights to get this done. We can’t get it done if you lot go off and die, can we?” Ben shrugged.

“S’pose not. Let’s go.” With that the three of you made a run for it, bolting out the bedroom door and into the corridor.

“Oh fuck!” You yelled, dodging out the way of another phantom headed your way. Evidently your previous endeavours had attracted the attention of some of the other ghosts inhabiting the hotel, none looking all that happy.

Your swear words didn’t falter as you continued the escape, ducking and jumping and making an utter fool of yourself to ensure you all made it out alive. You’d been covered by Sarah a few minutes ago with one of her magnesium flares, and so returned the favour without hesitation, only faltering slightly when you realised it was your last. You tried not to worry about it too much, you were nearing the laundry where there was a back door you could get to.

The closer you got to your escape the fewer visible apparitions there were. That was a good thing, your chances of ghost touch reducing greatly. However, that didn’t mean you weren’t still being hunted. A poltergeist had found you somewhere along the way, and the stream of things being thrown at you hadn’t ended yet. You’d vaguely felt something heavy hitting the back of your head and shoulders, but the adrenaline pumping through your veins was withholding the pain for the moment.

You’d crossed the threshold into the laundry, the back door within your sights. Maybe you got complacent, believing the end was nearer than you thought. Maybe it was just awful timing. However, as your feet hit the tiles of the room, you were being swept off your feet by the washing machine sliding into you, crushing you between it and the wall. You cried out unintentionally, feeling a sickening crack inside your chest. Your teammates turned back, door wide open and safety in sight.

“Don’t you dare come back for me,” You croaked, the wind pushed out of you. “Or I swear to God I’ll come and haunt you.” Ben took the threat and ran, ducking out the door into the fresh air of the night. Sarah hesitated, turning back to lock eyes with you, regret painted across her features. With a final threat she left too, leaving you to try and push the machine away from you in order to make your own escape. However, in an unfortunate series of events, the adrenaline started to wear off after your chase and you felt the sharp pain running along your skull, a thick drop of blood making its way down from a strand of hair into your left eye. Plus, you were pretty sure the machine had broken one of your wrists as any pressure you put onto it trying to move the machine set your nerves on fire, leaving you just your legs to try and make an escape. Turns out it’s harder than it looks to push a stupidly heavy washing machine away from you with your legs when you’re incapacitated on the floor.

Seeing your best friend the strangled woman approaching you sighed, trying to resign yourself to your fate. There was no way you were making it out without a miracle, and you were never the lucky kind. As she spotted you, you sealed your eyes tightly closed, unwilling to watch your own demise. It never came. When you chanced one eye open all you saw was sparks, the unmistakeable smell of a magnesium flare filling the room. You didn’t know what to feel. Relieved, of course, pissed off that your team had disrespected your wishes and endangered themselves, faint from the adrenaline and blood loss. Mostly faint, you decided, as you lay your head back against the tile, a sleep sounding like the nicest thing in the world suddenly.

You must have passed out for a minute or two as when you opened your eyes again you were in the air, distant voices yelling over the explosions and lights, but you felt a million miles away. You cuddled yourself into the body of whoever was carrying you — they were warm and your body felt ice cold. Everywhere you looked appeared blurry (and slightly pink, presumably from the blood in your eye), so you granted yourself some mercy and simply closed them. You thought you heard a mumbled “Hold on for me,” But you couldn’t be sure, everything was ringing in your head and the weight of staying awake was heavy on your foggy brain.

The next time you woke up was about half an hour later, or so you guessed. The sky was fractionally lighter than you remembered seeing, inching towards dawn, and you were laid down on dewey wet grass. The cool of it was nice on your skin, though you knew it would do major damage to your hair. Not that that was your greatest concern at the moment. You pushed yourself up on your elbows slowly, looking around at the scene that was coming into focus. Your team were on one side of you, looking exhausted but mostly physically fine. Straight ahead of you was Barnes, not looking as disappointed as you thought he would after a failed case. To your left was Lockwood and Co. Why were Lockwood and Co here? Why was Lockwood looking at you so intently, and why did he look like he was worried about you?

Only the first of your questions was answered. Evidently Lockwood and Co were the ‘small agency’ the hotel owners had given a chance for the smaller house on the edge of the property. They heard the commotion your team had made and Sarah’s screaming outside the kitchen door and came to save the day — of course. You were about to put up the protest that you didn’t need saving but it died in your throat when you saw the serious looks of everyone around you. Clearly this wasn’t the time for any of your bullshit.

“Clearly this case is bigger than your team can achieve,” Barnes said, and the fire was reignited within you. He must have been able to see what you were going to say and cut you off, “But I’m not taking you off the case.”

“Thank you,” You said quickly, tension in your shoulders releasing slightly.

“Lockwood and Co will work with you until the hotel is ghost free.”

“What?” You and Lockwood cried in unison, and you felt his eyes fall back on you. You refused to meet his gaze.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Sir—” You started, being cut off by Lockwood.

“We don’t work well together—”

“I happen to know you both need this case, or do you not care about the future of your jobs?” Barnes raised an eyebrow in the intimidating way only he could pull off. He had you there. Failing in a case, especially one that resulted in a near death experience would certainly jeopardise your trajectory at Fittes, and, unbeknownst to you, Lockwood and Co were pretty desperate for some good representation, unable to receive the praise deserved from the Combe Carey Hall case. You looked at Lockwood to find him already searching your face. After a moment of silent arguing between the two of you, you turned back to face Barnes, exaggerated smiles on both your faces.

“We’ll do it.” You smiled sweetly. A few more formalities sent Barnes and the other DEPRAC officer off, and only the two teams were left standing around, shifting uncomfortably under the weight of all the kit bags.

“So what do we do now?” Sarah asked, a thought very similar to the ones bouncing around your head at the moment.

“Breakfast?” George suggested, and you didn’t think you’d ever seen your team agree to something so enthusiastically. The group of you all headed back to the train station, but Lockwood didn’t let you continue in the line to get your ticket. Instead he pulled you away from the crowd, seeming to have already told Lucy what was happening, judging from her cheerful wave goodbye.

You glared at him, yanking your arm away then groaning at the pain.

“What are we doing, Lockwood?” You asked with an exaggerated huff.

“We’re going to the hospital,” He said, unbothered by your protests. “And don’t say you’re fine because it’s clear you’re injured. I’d say a broken wrist, concussion and maybe a cracked rib, but we can let the doctors tell us I’m wrong, I’d be happy for them to tell you otherwise.” That shut you up, not least because you knew he was probably right. You’d been given a shot of adrenaline and a few painkillers by the DEPRAC officer who accompanied Barnes over, but you probably did need actual medical attention.

It was a very awkward cab ride to the local hospital. You and Lockwood were so used to arguing by now that silence felt like the only other viable option. You couldn’t make small talk, what would you even talk about? The only thing you knew about his life was his childhood, and you sure as hell weren’t gonna talk about that. The tension was palpable in the backseat, and when the cab driver wished you good luck for the hospital visit, you figured he didn’t just mean because of your injuries. You did force yourself to thank Lockwood when he paid for the ride though, even if it was just for the sake of the day moving on faster.

At least the waiting room created its own noise; beeping and chattering and footsteps filling the silence between you two. You struggled with the form in front of you, inconveniently having your dominant hand be out of working order. You painfully etched out your information over an embarrassing amount of time before Lockwood huffed loudly and snatched the clipboard from your lap.

“Fuck’s sake,” He muttered, pulling his own pen from his suit pocket, beginning to scribble down the answers for you. You just relaxed, your tired, drug-addled brain being allowed to rest for a moment. It wasn’t until he asked about your health insurance that you fully realised he was answering the questions by memory and forced your eyes to focus on the paper. Sure enough he’d gotten it all right, birthday and middle name included. You glanced up at him curiously, but it seemed like this was the moment he refused to make eye contact. You only had to inform him of things that had changed since you’d fallen out, neither of you verbalising that fact.

Things didn’t change when you were called into the doctor’s office either. The mix of pain, medicine and sleep deprivation led you to embrace the exam table and bordered on falling asleep as Lockwood talked for you. He’d gotten the rundown of the actual events from Sarah and his brief moments when he saved you, and explained the night as you got an x-ray for your hand. Plus, as you were waiting for the cast (it was, in fact, broken), he explained your previous medical history — the knee you dislocated when you were nine and the broken pinky finger from the year after. You only had to participate to explain the injuries you’d acquired during your career as an agent; the ones from after you and Lockwood stopped being friends.

The whole trip was extremely bizarre and slightly unnerving, and you were glad to get on the train on the way back.

“You were wrong about one thing,” You said, pulling out your walkman from your kit bag.

“And what’s that?” Lockwood asked, and you got the impression he was bracing to be yelled at again — you felt almost bad.

“No cracked rib for me.” You grinned, beginning to laugh uncharacteristically. You didn’t know why, it really wasn’t that funny, but Lockwood followed suit soon after. The two of you laughed borderline hysterically, much too energetic for that hour of the morning when everyone else was still heading to work. It only tapered off when your poor ribs couldn’t take it anymore (not broken but aggressively bruised), and the two of you fell back into silence. You had your music and Lockwood had a magazine you suspected he’d stolen from the A+E waiting room.

The only other time you spoke during the trip was when you summoned the courage to utter a somewhat genuine “Thank you.”

“What?”

“Thanks. For not letting me die. And stuff.”

“Oh. You’re welcome,” Lockwood shot you a smile, the glowing kind you rarely got to see anymore.

As you got back to London and closer to Portland Row where your team was waiting, the air seemed to get thicker between the two of you once again. Maybe it was the proximity to the things that had torn you apart or the sense that you had predefined roles to play, but the carefree air between you had dissipated, leaving only the familiar tension that had been building over the last four years.

You followed Lockwood inside, trying to hide the out of body experience you were having returning to his family home after so many years. It had changed a little, of course, but still felt overwhelmingly the same, which both scared and comforted you. All the freaky foreign ghost hunting objects still littered the shelves, and you took the liberty of admiring them once again, remembering the stories Lockwood’s parents would tell about them and the adventures they’d had when collecting them. In your periphery you saw Lockwood hurriedly grab something off the wall by the stairs, shoving it in a drawer, but you really had no interest, choosing instead to reacquaint yourself with the house. The glimpse you got up the stairs showed a myriad of framed pictures of Lockwood and you scoffed — of course his ego would be on full display within his own home.

⋆ ˚｡ ⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡ ⋆

It was surprisingly easy to get into the groove of working with Lockwood and Co. Obviously you already liked George and Lucy, but your team seemed to work unexpectedly well with theirs. You and Lockwood stayed out of each other’s ways, the few times you were left to work together resulting in another stupid argument. The first time when you thought he was calling you dumb, the second over something minuscule; who’d let the tea brew too long so it tasted shit. And then who had to subsequently get up and make the next pot. Despite both of you honestly trying to be professional and get on with the job, it was agreed by everyone that it was simply easiest to keep the two of you apart as much as possible.

However, when the hotel owners wanted the leaders of both teams to meet up for updates on the case, you couldn’t get out of it. The day wasn’t looking good. You’d shown up to Portland Row so you could get a cab together — the meeting being dinner in central London, and had already argued with him over his choice of socks. In your defence, the powder blue socks matching your dress did make it look like you were a high school couple trying to match at a formal! However, George had rolled his eyes and pushed the two of you back out and towards the waiting cab, effectively ending that argument. You’d also teased Lockwood for bringing his rapier to a business dinner, but that was neither here nor there.

You’d held it together for most of the dinner, both of you putting on your best fronts and using your most formal tones to convince the elder couple that you were confident about the case. You found yourself kicking his shins to stop Lockwood from making promises you couldn’t keep regarding the case, and he got you back with condescending remarks, correcting you when he disagreed with how you presented the case. Altogether though you thought you were pretty subtle, and the two of you were presenting a model image of your respective companies.

However, when you shot Lockwood one of your saccharine smiles under the pretence of friendliness — he’d just undermined your authority again and stolen the best piece of dessert that you were going for, as if he didn’t torture you enough — you were shocked to hear the woman across from you laugh.

“It’s so wonderful to see you two bicker like an old married couple,” She giggled, and both you and Lockwood’s jaws dropped. “I mean, it just seems so dismal to be dating in these times, but you two give me hope that the future generations will still be able find love despite the Problem.”

“And clearly you’re both sensible kids, which is very important for a lasting relationship. Working for two different agencies would surely diffuse tensions around all those dangerous missions and such you agents partake in — except for this one, of course,” Her husband chimed in, jolly glint in his eyes.

“Yes, yes, but it’s important to remember to be kids as much as you can. But you two playing footsies all night has proved that you’ve got that covered too. Silliness is just as crucial as being sensible, it’s how a marriage stays fun. We would know, we’ve had fifty odd years of it!”

You didn’t know how to react, and by the looks of it, Lockwood didn’t know either with his signature smile frozen on his face. First of all, you were not playing footsies with Anthony Lockwood — the bruise forming under his trouser leg was testament to that. Second of all, you had no idea how the woman could get your dynamic so incredibly wrong. Aside from all of Lockwood’s double edged comments and cocky corrections of basically anything you said, the two of you had hardly addressed each other directly all night, you might as well have been strangers!

The dinner wrapped up very soon after. The couple had taken a liking to you both and so trusted your teams to handle the case as you saw fit, only making you promise to take a romantic weekend getaway (or honeymoon! As the woman had remarked optimistically) to the hotel once it was completely ghost-free and renovated. For once you were glad that Lockwood was unable to ever shut up as he took the lead, seeming to believe that corroborating their assumption was the best choice in your situation. You weren’t sure you were entirely comfortable with lying to this sweet old couple, but you couldn’t deny that Lockwood was a better talker than you, and would probably handle the situation with more delicacy.

That was how you ended up being led out of the restaurant with Lockwood’s hand on the small of your back. You wondered if he’d ever done this before, and you didn’t know if you meant for a real or pretend relationship. You both said your goodbyes to the couple, flattered by the abundance of compliments they paid you — both personally and professionally, assuring you they were overjoyed to have your teams work the case. Just before they stepped into the cab the woman took you aside.

“Hold onto a boy who looks at you like that,” She said, “You might fight, but when he’s this in awe of you, you’ll find a way to make it work.” You didn’t know how to respond to that and so simply nodded, offering a weak smile as she slid into the back seat of the taxi.

That left you and Lockwood alone. You just looked at each other for a moment, unsure of how to proceed.

“Do you mind if we walk home? I really fancy some air right now.” Lockwood easily agreed, looking rather flustered himself, and off the two of you went into the night.

Neither of you spoke for a while, but you could tell he wanted to. Lockwood always chewed his lip when he was holding something back, he had since he was a child. You sighed and asked him, knowing it was the only way to make the habit go away.

“Nothing,” He said, “Just weird. Don’t you think?”

“Nah,” You lied, “Old people just say things like that all the time. They don’t care to know the full picture.”

“Which is?”

“We hate each other.” Hurt flashed through his eyes, but it didn’t make you feel as good as it did the first time you’d said it.

“I don’t hate you,” He said quietly, almost a whisper.

“What?”

“I don’t hate you. We don’t get along anymore, but I don’t hate you. I hope you know that.” You faltered for a second. Had his use of ‘anymore’ been intentional to create a stabbing feeling in your gut?

“Oh. I guess I don’t really hate you either, if we’re getting sappy about it.” You tried to diffuse the tension growing between you, not wanting it to evolve into a discussion about what estranged you in the first place. Lockwood refused to apologise and you refused to forget, resulting in the bitter stalemate you’d been locked in for the past few years.

Your distraction came with a glance over Lockwood’s shoulder, and the wisp of a phantom coming into view. Lockwood was trying to continue the conversation about your developing relationship, but stopped when he noticed you frozen beside him. Turning slowly he swore when he saw the ghost, going straight for his rapier.

“Put your hand into my coat pocket,” He said, effectively drawing you from your freeze.

“Excuse me?” You whisper-yelled, not in the mood for him to try and lighten the mood with whatever dumb joke he was trying to make.

“Just trust me, I have flares in the inside pocket, just reach in and grab them to defend yourself whilst I keep an eye on them.” Them? You wondered until you looked around, seeing other ghosts start to emerge from the shadows, attracted by the scene you were obviously creating. You wasted no more time, ignoring the intimacy of reaching into Lockwood’s jacket, grabbing yourself a flare for each hand. With you accounted for, Lockwood told you the plan, he’d fight a path back to Portland Row and you’d cover the both of you with the flares, since you weren’t good for very much else with a broken wrist and no rapier.

It was hardly the most intense situation you or Lockwood had been in, but as the primary fighter in the situation, Lockwood was still putting up a good show of skill. Despite yourself you were entranced, admiring the graceful way he moved with the rapier, so in tune with it you’d think it was connected to his arm. As much as you hated Lockwood — well, you’d just established you didn’t actually hate him. As much as you thought he was egotistical and irritating, you had to admit that you really admired him as an agent. Lockwood was undeniably talented with a rapier — it was the fencing competition that got him started in this business in the first place — but to watch him in action was really something special. If you didn’t know better you’d think it was easy for him, he fought with the same ease and elegance he might drink a cup of tea.

You were so caught up in watching him that you hardly noticed when you arrived in front of 35 Portland Row, both luckily un-ghost touched. You were also alerted to the proximity you’d found yourself in. You’d stayed close obviously, not wanting to be left to the ghosts, but when Lockwood had turned to make sure you were still with him safely inside the iron fence, you found yourself only inches apart.

At this distance you were alerted to just how much he’d changed since you were kids. He was taller, obviously, your chin tilted up to make eye contact. He’d lost the baby fat that used to fill out his cheeks, leaving his face defined and bordering on gaunt — you figured he wasn’t taking very good care of himself, judging on the dark circles that seemed by now permanent. Plus something had changed in his eyes. He didn’t look carefree anymore, something dark and tortured lay behind the charming smiles. It wasn’t hard to guess what it was, and you figured you probably had something identical. However, the small scar on his jawline from when you accidentally flung a plastic toy into his face was still there which drew a small smile from you. Something within you urged to run your finger along it, and you felt your fingers twitch before you realised how inappropriate it was. That instinct didn’t feel so bad though when you caught Lockwood’s gaze shift down to your lips. Only momentarily, but you saw it. And worse? The fact that you didn’t mind. After all of these years and the fighting and terrible words shared, here you were maybe about to kiss Anthony Lockwood. You would be disgusted with yourself if you didn’t have so many other feelings fighting their way to the top.

The front door opening was enough to make you both jump apart, you rushing towards it to get as far from Lockwood as possible.

“Hey Lucy!” You called, practically floating up the front steps you were going so fast.

“Uh, hey, guys. We thought we heard you outside so I got sent to check. Had to make sure you weren’t secretly making out or something,” She joked and you forced out a laugh, far too loud to be real.

“As if! Come on, I’m dying for some tea.” You slid past her, rushing straight to the kitchen for a minute to think.

Lucy watched you go suspiciously, before turning to Lockwood.

“What did you do?” She interrogated, all her scary Lucy-ness coming out.

“I don’t know,” Lockwood replied earnestly, still somewhat dazed himself. Lucy gave him one last look up and down before returning inside, leaving Lockwood to fix his smile on before rejoining the two teams.

⋆ ˚｡ ⋆୨♡୧⋆ ˚｡ ⋆

The week leading up to your team’s next attempt at the hotel was extremely weird. You and Lockwood hadn’t spoken about what had happened (or almost happened) out in the front garden, but you had had a long talk about your behaviour lately. Over a few cups of tea in the kitchen whilst the rest of your teams were working down in the basement, you managed to both admit you were being dickheads. There was no mention of the underlying factors of your resentment, but you both agreed for the sake of your jobs you would try and be friends, or at least civil. No more bickering, no more picking apart small comments, no more rolling eyes.

It worked for a bit, which was really complicating your emotions. On the one hand, Lockwood was lovely, like he’d always been, and it was kind of nice to be able to talk and joke with him again after so many years, although you both carefully avoided the topic of your personal lives. On the other hand, it made you sad to pretend that everything was fine when you knew what you did. He didn’t think you could be an agent; Lockwood didn’t think you were good enough. And you could both pretend all you liked to be friends, but as long as that was what he thought about you it could never be real. So, while you’d both stopped your rivalry on the surface and gotten on with the case, there was a tension bubbling behind your smiles that both of you could see whenever you locked eyes.

It all came to a head when you started discussing your action plan for the hotel. All seven of you were standing in the basement of Portland Row, staring at a blown up floor plan of the place, little figurines representing each of you. It didn’t take you long to realise that you weren’t being represented.

“Where am I?” You asked, an uneasy silence falling over the room.

“You’re not coming.” Lockwood took the fall, even though it had been a unanimous decision whilst you were on an Arif’s run one afternoon.

“Excuse me?” You couldn’t help the biting tone in your words, fury you’d worked hard to conceal bubbling back up to the surface.

“Your wrist—” Sarah tried to reason, but something in you had unlocked and you were not backing down this time.

“You and I know full well if this was a Fittes case I would still be out in the field, broken wrist be damned,” You spat, and you could practically see the gears turning in Lockwood and Lucy’s heads.

“They make you go into the field injured?” Lucy asked, but you weren’t focused on answering her — George nodded for you.

“So who’s barred me from being in the field, on what I might remind you, was my case first.” There were a few moments of silence where no one wanted to be the subject of your anger, but with a resigned sigh, Lockwood accepted the blame.

“It was my idea.” You couldn’t help the frustrated groan that came out of your mouth.

“God, this is so typical! You’ve never thought I was good enough, and now what? Sabotaging my cases? My career? Because you don’t believe in me,” Your voice broke on the last sentence, and you could feel the tears heavy behind your eyes, threatening to fall. You spat a final “Fuck you,” before running up the basement stairs, up to where you knew the bathroom would be for some privacy.

You realised when you were at the top of the stairs that in your time working with Lockwood and Co you hadn’t actually used their bathroom, and didn’t remember which of the closed doors it was. Choosing one blindly you shut yourself inside, finally letting the tears that blurred your vision roll down your cheeks.

You sobbed heavily, indulging all the terrible feelings you’d been concealing for far too long. When the tears weren’t so frequent the setting around you came back into focus, and you noticed with a start you definitely weren’t in the bathroom. The view from the window told you it was Lockwood’s late parent’s bedroom, but the used furniture and messy bed said someone was still living there. Your stomach dropped as you stood, wiping the tears from your eyes. Looking around you were sure this was Lockwood’s room, the suit jacket on the desk chair a dead giveaway. However, a picture frame on his nightstand attracted your attention the most. It was the same one you had in your dorm at Fittes, the one gifted to you by Lockwood’s parents for your birthday. Both of you grinning widely and carelessly joyful. It had been so long since you’d felt like that, even longer since you’d felt it around Lockwood. The thought made your heart ache a bit. His parents would be so disappointed in the two of you. That made you start crying a little again, picking up the photo to examine it closer.

“It’s been there since you left,” A voice from behind you said. “I couldn’t bring myself to put it away.” You hadn’t noticed Lockwood come in and you didn’t know how long he’d been standing there. You put the photo down with a start, turning away to wipe your face dry again.

“Go away, Lockwood. Just give me a minute and I’ll be back downstairs. I overreacted but I need to get over it, okay?” You snapped, praying your face wasn’t still red and splotchy (it was).

“No,” He said, and you turned to face him curiously. “Look, this has gone on long enough and we need to fix things.” You crossed your arms petulantly, a silent challenge for him to fix the damage you believed to be all his. “You said downstairs that I thought you couldn’t be an agent. Why?”

“Don’t you remember when I told you I wanted to be an agent like you?” You scoffed, “You all but laughed in my face! You said I couldn’t do it, that I’d be injured or killed and I couldn’t handle it. I’ve thought about that every case since, you killed my self esteem for years. I thought that if no one else, my best friend should have believed in me. But here I am, youngest team leader at Fittes with the highest successful case rate for my division. All in spite of you.” Lockwood stared at you, and you could practically see his neurons firing and making connections at a million miles an hour.

“That’s not what I said.” You could barely contain your bitter laugh.

“Does it matter? You didn’t believe in me, that’s what’s important.”

“No,” He said, “Because that’s not what I meant at all. I did believe in you — I do. I always have.” You scoffed again as he stumbled over his words. A little grovelling now couldn’t make up for all the years of anxiety and insecurity he’d caused.

“I mean it! If I didn’t believe in you, then what’s all this?” He led you to one of his dresser drawers. Opening it there were a stack of papers and you picked a few of them up, flipping through them. Every single one was about you. Photos from your childhood together, newspaper clippings of your successes throughout the years, the magazine article you interviewed for talking about women in power in the ghost hunting field. Lockwood had saved every piece of media about you, the ragged edges showing he’d ripped them out just to keep them. You remained silent, astonished by this new revelation. You looked up at him, and Lockwood could have cried at the look in your eyes.

“I didn’t say you couldn’t be an agent,” He explained, “Or that’s not what I meant. I meant that you shouldn’t, or more clearly, I was saying don’t. Asking. Don’t you remember? My parents were dead, my sister had just died. You were all I had left, and I didn’t want you to jump head first into the most dangerous job in the world. I wanted to protect you.” It was Lockwood’s turn for his voice to break and tears to arise, and you suddenly felt supremely stupid.

“Oh,” Was all you could say. After all of these years; the insults thrown and dirty looks exchanged, all your anger came from a misunderstanding? Not only that, a misunderstanding that twisted such an earnest declaration of care into something so awful.

“But you did it, and you weren’t just any agent,” He laughed slightly despite his emotions, “You were the best bloody agent Fittes has ever seen and all I could do was watch from the shadows and be proud of you silently. Why do you think Lucy knew who you were already? There were pictures of you all over the house before I made them take them all down when I knew we were working together. I didn’t want to scare you off.”

“But all the arguing…” You trailed off, still unable to completely process this information.

“Just because I love you doesn’t mean you don’t drive me up the wall, especially when you were being — or I believed you were — deliberately obtuse to my efforts to explain myself. But now I see we were just on totally different wavelengths.” You were really struggling, there was a lot of new information being revealed at such a rapid pace that was completely changing your perspective on your whole adolescence.

“You love me?” Lockwood did laugh this time, loudly and with the same charm he usually had.

“Yes, you idiot. I have since we were kids.”

Oh. Oh. You suddenly felt like an idiot. All of this time you thought that Lockwood believed you were weak, not good enough, not worthy of your successes, when in fact it was the complete opposite. And then you thought about how you felt about Lockwood. How his believed lack of faith in you affected you so much because you cared so deeply about what he thought of you. How you could never bring yourself to look away when he was fighting because he was so completely in his element. How nice it had been to be able to joke around with him during your research. Oh God. You thought you simply respected him and his skills as an agent, but evidently the truth had been just out of reach your whole life.

“Anthony?” He was already looking at you, eyes searching deep into your soul. “I think I might love you too.” Neither of you could help the kiddish smiles making their way on your faces, and he wrapped his arms around you tightly before you knew what was happening. It felt nice to be held by him again, the last time would have been after his sister died. These were much better circumstances.

When you both came down the stairs later, no one mentioned your intertwined hands. You all had a lovely dinner at Portland Row, warmth and laughter filling the space and making you feel at home like you used to when you were a kid.

It wasn’t until you were on your way back to the Fittes dorms that Sarah leaned over to you, mischievous grin on her face.

“Tell me you were making out up there, please,” She giggled, and you shoved her away lightheartedly.

“Shut up,” You laughed, “Besides, it wasn’t making out.”

127 notes · View notes

owlespresso · 16 days

Text

the red fruit which ripens

alpha!blade/beta!reader you are a beta courier. one of your clients is getting too close. tags: blackmail, mind games, nonconsensual touching, blade and luocha are just weirdos idk pt 2 of my part in @lorelune's a/b/o collab. the first part can be read here.

You have never known peace. You doubt any emanator ever has. The Mother of Harmony, of peace, bestowed upon you a fraction of her immortal grace. She cored herself, tore out a seed—jewel like and glistening, and beckoned you to feast. The taste went down so smooth and sweet.

That was the first and last time you held your blessing in awe. Xipe sentenced you, that day, to never know the peace she covets. You could catch glimpses of it, inhale the scent of it deep, but it would fade like morning mist, chased away by the winds of chaos and whatever awful business you were to tend to next.

When you strayed from The Family, tore yourself free of their clutches and hid where their millions of bulging eyes could not find you; you believed it possible to know peace. Perhaps not immediately. There was so much to take care of during your first days on the Luofu, paperwork and apartment hunting. It was all jarringly normal. You were mystified by the mundanity, delighted by it even. The world suddenly closed in for the better. There were no enemy factions to worry about corralling, no petty politics, no attempts to usurp you or take your life.

The world became the Luofu. It became your apartment. It became your favorite food stalls and your neighbors and the little birds fluttering about in the trees.

But it was not peace. Soon, you came to realize that even the average Luofu citizen did not know the concept as intimate as you hoped. They live in fear of Mara, of the Abundance, which they are so intimately intertwined with. Every pain is a life threatening risk, a potential trigger to a deadly malady. Outside of the Abundance, so many run themselves ragged, weighted by long work hours and petty squabbles with loved ones. The kindly folk by the docks find themselves cornered by the IPC.

No mortal knows peace, you have come to realize. Perfect tranquility is a ripe and red lie, birthed gold and glistening from the Goddess’s many lips, spread carelessly and listlessly across the universe. Unattainable by the emanator’s closest to her.

You believed once, and it hurt you. Not again. You will heed no honeyed words. You can only believe in what is cold, concrete, and solid.

—

“I feel like—” you begin, pushing through the rusted metal paneling of the dilapidated fence. “—you could have gotten here by yourself.” You usually don’t talk this much, but Blade’s habitual silence combined with your burgeoning irritation leaves you uncharacteristically eager to complain aloud.

The abandoned warehouse looms an eerie, empty monument of crumbling sheet metal and shattered glass. Long columns of broken machinery are gutted in pieces across the concrete yard. You make note to return later, just to make sure you’re not leaving valuable goods out to waste.

“I have never been here before. Kafka thought it wise to come with a guide.”

“And what do you think?” you pause, shoulder buried in the outside paneling of the building itself.

“What I think… does not matter.” Blade says cooly. “A blade is meant to be wielded. It does not choose who it cuts down or where it goes.”

“Hm,” you don’t have much to say to that. You shouldn’t have opened your yap in the first place. The less you know about the bizarre relations of the Stellaron Hunters, the better. You squeeze into the building through the gap. Blade hardly two paces behind. The metal groans and squeaks as he forces his way in. It feels like the loudest sound you’ve ever fucking heard, an offensive and high pitched screech that probably rings through the yard and neighboring alleyways.

“At least try to be a little quieter,” you grumble, squinting into the dark. The main room is made a maze by haphazardly laid out storage containers, many cracked open and already emptied. Wires hang from the ceiling, which has become an amalgamation of mechanical matter and rotting parts. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.

Black grunts his assent.

“Well. You’re here, safe and sound.” you waste no time, doubling back towards the Blade-shaped hole in the wall. Did he just walk straight through!? What are they feeding this guy? “So I—”

The sound of thundering footsteps and approaching shouts freezes you mid-step. Momentary panic jars you still. The Cloud Knights? Here? Now?

Your pulse thrums in your ears as you turn tail, ready to haul ass in the opposite direction, only to collide face-first with Blade’s firm chest. He jostles you to the side with his shoulder, ignoring your grunt of complaint. His hand rests on the hilt of his blade. Your stomach jumps into your throat.

“Where are you going!?” you hiss.

“To take care of the vermin,” Blade replies drolly, looking down his nose at you. His lips twitch into the beginnings of a puzzled frown.

“Absolutely not!” you say, and his frown pulls deeper. “Where there’s ten, there’s bound to be twenty waiting to back them up.”

It is unlike you to be so bold, but you seize him by the wrist, pulling him further into the jagged steel labyrinth. He allows himself to be led, surprisingly docile as you round corners and scuttle down corridors. Pale moonlight covers the room in a silvery sheen, providing just enough light for you to make out a door embedded into the outermost wall. Footsteps echo around you, calling voices made cacophonous by the echo. Blade’s grip on your hand tightens, likely annoyed and sorely tempted to begin the slaughter, but you yank open the door and jam yourself inside what seems to be a cramped server room.

A few circuit towers stand side-by-side, dark and dusty with disuse. Blade shuts the door behind you, opening his mouth to speak, but you’re already wedging yourself into the lone aisle between the wall and the towers, pulling him behind you.

A few moments later sees you crammed in the narrow space. The back wall and server towers rise on either side of you, caging you up against your troublesome accomplice. One of Blade’s thighs presses tight to your own. Warm and firm. The proximity betrays what you’ve expected since your first meeting. Blade is an alpha. Only now, brought so obscenely close, are you fully able to realize that. It’s a footnote in comparison to your agitation, which swims and simmers just beneath the surface of your skin.

“How long were they following us for?” you grumble aloud. “Tell Kafka she owes an extra 20% when you see her, and that I’m not doing this ever again.”

Blade sighs out of his nose. You can’t see his face well enough to make out his expression.

“You’re wearing a mask. Your identity is safe.” he says.

“The threat of being arrested still remains,” you grumble, listening to the clamorous noise outside. Trained troops rush back and forth, kicking up dust and old grease. You can’t quite make out what they’re saying, beyond a few paltry words, but no one has yet knocked on the door. Surely a good sign.

Blade squeezes your hand, and subsequently reminds you that you are holding it.

“That won’t happen. Destiny’s Slave would not risk your safety over something so simple. No harm will come to you, tonight.”

Well, isn’t that comforting. You wrest your hand away with a scowl, and clamp down on the pressing urge to let him know what you really think about his boss. He stares down at the place where your hands were once joined.

The next half-hour passes in relative silence. His eyes are all that is visible in the empty dark of the room, candlewick embers extinguished when he shuts them and leans back against the wall.

Eventually, the outside noise quiets. No more thudding boots or searching shouts, the warehouse silent as it had been when you arrived. Shimmying out from the pitch dark crevice is much more awkward without the frantic adrenaline, but you manage it, emerging in a new layer of dust.

“Alright. I’m heading out. Be careful.”

“They won’t return anytime soon,” Blade remains inside, arms crossed and impassive. Your frown deepens. You clamber through a hole in the wall. No Knights have remained behind. You feared a few would have stayed just in case, but none leap out from behind the rubble. Which means that the horrible feeling prickling up the back of your neck is just Blade’s cold, empty gaze trained on your retreating form.

Strange beast, you think to yourself, scuttling into the nearest alleyway.

—

One of your favorite things about Luocha’s home is that he is hardly ever in it. The first time you met him after helping him with his pre-heat, he pressed a silver house key into your palms, before turning and leaving. Not even allowing you to splutter a single, indignant protest. Back then, you mentally swore that you wouldn’t use it.

Now, you use it almost everyday. His neighborhood, smack dab in the middle of the Luofu, intersects with several of your regular routes. It’s just too easy so slide in between deliveries for a quick rest. It helps that he’s hardly ever home, leaving you to pilfer snacks from his fridge and take brief naps on the couch. You haven’t been bold enough to stay overnight. You’ve become far, far too intimate with the man.

No more, you decide, and stay firm to that decision even when he beseeches your company not a week later. It’s rude, but you can’t risk getting anymore attached than you already are. He’s become a bothersome burr stuck to your side, a looming presence in your thoughts even when he’s far across the stars, doing Xipe knows what.

There’s a knock at the door. You startle, because this has never happened before. You remain stock still on the couch. If you remain still, surely whoever is out there will get the message and bugger off. Another knock. You should have known that any solicitor determined to walk through the forest of a front yard would be too stubborn to give up after only seven knocks.

At the eleventh, you get up and stomp to the door. It’s mostly to preserve your own sanity.

You throw open the door, prepared to give the nosy bastard on the other side an earful.

It’s Blade. Blade is stood there. He blots out the afternoon sun, leaving you in the shadow he casts. It’s like seeing your clothes in the fridge. You blink several times.

“Ah. It’s you.”

“It is,” He’s holding a bouquet of flowers in his left hand.

“What… why are you here?”

“Kafka’s orders. She wanted you to have these,” he hands you the bouquet. You receive it. Fresh petunias and sprigs of rosemary curl next to daisies and tulips. It’s a nonsensical thing. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Nothing particularly artful about the presentation besides the pretty colors.

“I see… Is this your home?” He looks like he already knows the answer.

You decide not to humor him. You tuck the bouquet underneath your arm and lean up against the doorframe. “What’s it to you?”

He blinks, looks confused, and then responds after a moment of silent thought. “I… there is someone else who lives here. I remember it clearly, now.”

“You two know each other, huh? What a coincidence. But… how did you know where I was?”

“I asked the woman next door. She directed me here. I’ve been searching for you since the early morning.”

“All morning?” you tut, somewhat sympathetic. “That’s a lot of walking.”

“It is nothing compared to other pains I have endured.” Blade says, solemnly. “And I have traveled far greater distances on foot. You shouldn’t worry.”

“...Well,” you stare down at the bouquet for a moment. “I’d feel bad if I didn’t give you anything for the effort. You know that big, red maple by the pond? Go sit there. I’ll get you something to drink.”

Two minutes later sees you outside, cradling two crystalline glasses filled with lemonade. You didn’t get him the fancy stuff—the strawberry-kiwi-whatever fruit stuff that you hand mixed. But it’s something.

He’s hunched beneath the red canopy. There’s a dark, inky type of handsomeness he possesses. Dark hair tumbles down his back, shaggy bangs frame that wolfish face. He looks dour almost all the time. Like the frown lines and cold apathy have permanently creased it. He’s hunched beneath the shade. Like it sits on his shoulders as a physical weight. He looks up at you as you settle next to him, accepts his glass without fuss or thanks. Which is just fine, with you. You probably shouldn’t be doing this, anyways. He’s an intergalactic criminal. The less time you spend together, the better.

But at the same time… you can’t help but be curious. Curious about the mara which buzzes underneath his skin, yet somehow never breaches it. Curious about what manner of creature he must be to withstand the final stages of Yaoshi’s curse. Curious if there’s any real, lingering emotion beyond the stoicism he treats… well, everything with.

The two of you sit in silence and sip. You don’t feel any need for artificial conversation. It’s easy to sit down and simply exist next to him. No impulsive need for niceties.

“This house isn’t yours,” he says.

“No. The owner is a client of mine. He lets me stop by here, in between deliveries. It’s convenient.”

A few beats of silence. “How well do you know the man that lives here?”

“As well as I know any other client,” he looks at you expectantly, as though waiting for you to finish that statement. “Which isn’t very well. He’s not here most of the time.”

“You should remain cautious while in his presence,” he says, and you nearly raise a brow at the unsolicited advice. He levels you with his dull, candlewick gaze, as impassive as ever. A leaf flutters from the lowest branches onto his head. “That man draws his power from the source of the mara. He wields it under the guise of a blessing, and yet…” Blade frowns, almost a grimace, and doesn’t say anything else.

“I know.”

“Yet you take shelter under his roof and exist willingly in his space.” Blade stares at you. There’s a faint bristling in the air. A shuddering of the atmosphere that emerges from him. Thorny tendrils of bitter gold crackle beneath his pale skin. You don’t know exactly what aggrieves him so, but you get the feeling that you should say something to appease him, quickly.

“Well. I don’t know any other rich diplomats willing to offer me a free, mostly empty house to take a break in for… around twenty minutes a day,” you shrug. “It’s convenient.”

That seems to settle him.

“Do you… not like him? The merchant?” Does he even know Luocha’s name? What kind of relationship do these two weirdos have?

“In the strange purgatory of my existence, he acts as both poison and cure.” Blade informs you, as if it tells you really anything. As if sensing your befuddlement, he deflates a little, nose scrunching. He looks like a dour cat, stuck out in the rain. “He wants something from me. I can’t tell what it is. His unseemly fascination means it can be nothing good.” His attempt at elaboration gives you somewhat of a clearer picture, but it’s still some insanity that you’ll have to unpack later.

“I see. I’ll make sure to remember that,” you’re not sure if it’s possible to forget a conversation with Blade. Especially one that lasts more than a few moments. What prompted this? Genuine concern for your well-being? You have a hard time believing that. There are many things that are better off left unsaid, in your experience, so you don’t ask.

The rest of the visit passes in relative quiet. Blade finishes his lemonade.

You reach over. His gaze snaps to you immediately, a beaten dog evaluating a potential threat.

“You have something in your hair,” you inform him helpfully, plucking the leaf from his sable locks. You curl the stem around your fingers.

He doesn’t say anything after that. The two of you stand. He murmurs a brief farewell, and is off through the yard, slipping through the ferns to become one with the cast shadows. You’re not sure how long you remain after he leaves. The pond water ripples with each gentle breeze. Glimmering koi bob to the surface, in search of mid-afternoon snacks. When they find none, they dive beneath, water droplets flickering off their lashing tail fins.

Well, you think after another moment, at least you learned something.

Now, it is high time that you tend to the bouquet so generously sent your way. You dump the glasses in the sink, halfheartedly vowing to deal with them later, before taking a closer look at the arrangement of flowers. As you expected, it’s more than a paltry, sentimental gift. Tucked into the plastic wrapping is a small card.

Bladie said you got in quite the mess, the other day. You have my deepest gratitude for handling it so cleanly. He’s not that good at talking things out. He seems to like you, though! I wonder what makes you so special?

P.S. Next Tuesday, please escort Bladie to the address written on the back of this note. Please? Do it for me. :)

—

You hate working with criminals. Criminals other than yourself.

Though, you don’t fancy yourself much a criminal. Deliveries are an entirely different beast, simple points of contact which last at most for five minutes. Escorting a known, intergalactic criminal through multiple layers of the Luofu is completely different—something you would never do if anyone besides Kafka asked. You’ll dance to her tune, run her errands if it keeps you off her shitlist. But is there even a point if keeping off of hers just puts you onto someone else’s?

You’ll have some fierce thinking to do after you shake off the six Cloud Knights currently on your tail. You dive between market stalls. You leap over a counter, sending an array of fruits and vegetables tumbling onto the pavement. You ignore the enraged shout of the peddler behind you, pulse thundering in your ears as you weave between the passerby, narrowly avoiding a stack of crates.

The air stings at the corners of your eyes. The marketplace blends together to the point of featurelessness. You don’t know who you pass or what else you know over, too focused on what’s ahead to care about the wreckage left behind. At the very least, it may hamper the Knights as they shout and stomp and rush after you—and Blade, whose fault all this is.

You slide around a corner and into a red-bricked alleyway, lanterns strung between the two rooftops, gold and glittering against that fake, blue sky.

“Dead end.” Blade grunts. You hear the telltale click of his sword being unsheathed.

“No! Just follow me!” you snap, seizing his wrist and pulling him forward, all the way to the end. As you trudge forward, you tap a sequence into the walls on either side. The worn clay surfaces are coarse under your fingertips. None move after you touch them, but you feel a subtle shift in the energy as it rushes down to the focal point. The pattern ends at the back of the alley. You tap a chipped, ragged brick embedded into the dead-end wall. The slabs unfold, layer-by-layer, to form an opening.

You pull him through.

It folds shut behind you, the quiet sound of grinding stone following you through the passage. The hollering and thudding of the pursuit have been silenced. Their chaos of the market sealed away behind the otherwise impenetrable seal. You doubt the low-ranking footmen who chased you will know the way.

Yellow-green vines crawl up the pulsing walls. Luminous particles bob and float in the air like fireflies. The place is silent, leaving you with only the sound of your own panting and Blade—Blade’s rasping, spluttering wheezes.

You stop, right where you are, because you have never heard him make such a sound before. Even after a chase, or a fight.

The passage opens to a wider tunnel up ahead. You drop Blade’s hand, and turn to look at him. The adrenaline is fading, now leaving room for fresh, common sense.

Blades hunches up against the wall. The air enters and leaves his lungs in winded, rushed wheezes. His eyes are wide and unseeing. Those candlewick irises dart from the floor, to the place where your hands had been joined, and finally, then, to you.

A scent, like firewood charred too long, blistering into crumbled charcoal, blooms in and clouds the thin space. It’s like nothing you’ve ever smelled before, the vicious pheromones of an alpha at the very end of their tether. Something more, too, something earthen and ancient and charged. A flavor which has graced your palate only once or twice before.

Encroaching mara. You don’t know what he’s like, when his symptoms flare. You’re not eager to find out. The capricious nature of his mara has not once posed a threat to you. But his composure is slipping, his hands curling like claws and flexing. Like he’s getting a feel for his own body. Like the joints are sore and need stretching.

“Blade,” you stumble forward, pressing your palm to the cold, pale pane of his cheek. “Blade, look at me.”

His shaky irises hover awkwardly over your shoulder, before at last meeting your gaze.

“It approaches,” he rasps, looking as haunted as you have ever seen him.

“Blade, do not let the mara take you.” you take in a deep, steadying breath. The violent pulsing in your ears returns in full force, the unhinged mass of his disease gnawing at your physical form.

Bracing yourself, you reach within. You touch the very bottom of your long neglected wellspring. Harmonic Essence leaps to the surface, warm and loving and so eager to be put to use. It feels like an old coat slipped around your shoulders, a familiarity you wouldn’t dare indulge in under ordinary circumstances. It is a power long wasted on you, but useful this very once. It pulses from underneath your fingertips, washes underneath his pallid skin.

The acrid taste of his mara brashes against the tip of your tongue for a single, fleeting moment. It then skitters backwards. Retreats into the dark, churning void of what you assume to be his subconsciousness. It’s a temporary balancing of the scales, but his wild pulse settles.

You sigh, shoulder slumping in relief. The tension winds out of your body, hand dropping back to your side.

He still looms above you, jet black hair curtaining you in. When did he get so close? Or had it been you in your haste to soothe him? He runs hot as a hearth, the warmth which radiates from him thick enough to feel. This close, you can see his every breath, soft mounds of his chest straining the fastenings which hold his shirt together. Slender stripes of pale skin peek through his chest wrappings. You swallow and look away, up at the strong column of his neck.

“Are you with me?” you murmur. You don’t dare move, lest your retreat trigger the chase instinct which some alphas are known to possess. You don’t like making assumptions. You feel like Blade would be among that number anyways.

“Yes,” Blade’s voice is sandpaper rough. He moves before you do, shouldering past you into the wider tunnel. “You make use of these often, I take it.”

As though nothing had ever happened. Something bitter churns in your gut, but you don’t bring it up. There’s no reason to. He probably wants to distance himself from this episode as quickly as possible. You don’t blame him. The mara must be a humiliating affliction to live and cope with.

“It’s the fastest way to get around,” you break into a brisk walk, overtaking him. You’re the one who knows your way around, here.

“The mara would rend asunder the minds of anyone not wearing the correct protective gear,” Blade observes. There’s nothing pointed in his voice, but the weight of his gaze makes your skin crawl. Its keen focus is that of an apex predator’s, a beast somehow sated enough to keep his teeth from your throat. How long will that last? Fifteen minutes? An hour? The air here swelters with abundance. His mara must sup on it like a starved prisoner, far stronger and fuller than it could ever be on the surface.

He could easily match your pace, but he chooses to walk behind you.

“I could say the same for you.”

“I am an abomination of Yaoshi. The abundance has already taken hold of me.” Blade says, grimacing. You toy with the fraying edge of your sleeve between your forefinger and thumb. “All the saturation here does is spur on the symptoms.”

You make a face. He must sense your unease.

“I should be able to resist the pull until we surface. Provided we do not linger overlong.” Blade replies. It does remarkably little to reassure you.

A predator stalks at your back, one whose sanity may pop like an overfilled balloon at really any moment. Against your better sense, you feel anxiety lash at the bottom of your stomach, guts churning with that primal fear.

“Reassuring.” you bite out thoughtlessly.

“It would be in your best interest to focus on finding a way out, rather than back-talking me.” Blade says, and you swallow.

“Back-talking? I think my frustration is quite justified. You’re the reason we’re in this mess, after all.” you pointedly remind him. The words roll bitter off your tongue. Prickling discomfort coalesces with the saturation of abundance in the air, becoming a consistent buzz against the back of your skull.

Blade makes a ragged little noise, wedged between a wheeze and a laugh.

“Another do I make pay the price. I was not always like this. deathless beast borne of blind ambition and hubris…” he trails off. “I was once a man. Death walked with me as it walked with every other. It was never meant to—to become—”

A distorted warble slowly creeps into his voice. Shit, you just shouldn’t have said anything. The hovering energy coalesces, thin whispers congealing into thick, mist-like mass around him. It’s drawn to him.

“What’s your favorite food?” you turn on your heel and ask, crossing your arms. He looks down at you, brows furrowing as he roots around for an answer. “You haven’t thought about it, have you?” Do the mara-struck even have to eat? Blade is a particularly unique case among them, but you wouldn’t be surprised if he even remembers to eat. He is a blade, according to his own words. And a blade doesn’t need to eat. How desolate an existence he must have lived. Must still be living if his own preferences evade him.

“Well. Try to find an answer while I get us out of here.” you command. He’s quiet for the remainder of the trek. You emerge topside and immediately feel several pounds lighter. The air is fresh and sweet, the skies blue and open. You’re two blocks from your apartment in a dark, neglected alleyway.

“You can find your way back from here,” you sigh, chancing a glance at your companion as you stretch your arms above your head. “Right?”

He’s still quiet. You don’t sense the acrid tang of the illness. He looks thoughtful. You wish he would just give you an answer already. You’re not eager to be chanced upon again by a patrol, or by any other witnesses for that matter.

“Your question. I don’t have an answer.” Blade says. He sounds almost regretful.

Over your few interactions, you’ve come to realize that not much bothers him. Very little manages to budge that glacial mien. His demeanor, as you have come to understand, either sits as stoney neutrality or maniacal, giddy rage. The shades between are so very visited.

“It’s no big deal. You can just tell me next time, if you want.” If he even remembers. The idea of turning your back to him still riddles you with unease, but you do it anyway. Your steps are slow and measured. He stares you down until you disappear around the corner, meld into the crowds like just another thread in a blanket.

—

The sky above hangs a pale grey. It’s the threat of a light drizzle rather than a raging storm. You slip through the abundant foliage of Luocha’s front yard, unable but to notice that the shrubs and vibrant blooms have somehow grown in size since your last visit. The greens are hearty, fresh dewdrops glimmering off grass and unfurled leaves.

It’s not difficult to spot him. He’s lounged beneath the sole scarlet maple of the yard. He’s a spot of red himself, swathed in a richly-colored, likely richly-made, robe of it. The fabric pools on the lawn chair he lounges atop of. His eyes are shut, blonde lashes fanning against his perfect cheeks. Those eyes open as you skirt along the jagged stone edge of the pond, manilla envelope clutched in your left hand. He smiles, but does not lift his head. Sumptuous locks of golden blonde fan out behind his head like a halo. The very picture of serenity.

“Well, well. To what do I owe this visit?” he tilts his head, smiling like a contented cat. You huff, and avoid looking below his neck, where the plush robe parts to reveal the pale soft of his chest. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but any sliver of intimacy you may have granted him has long passed. The moment you look down, he’ll notice and impose upon you another outlandish favor.

“Don’t get excited.” You hand him the package, and begin to pull back, but he’s faster. He darts for you like a viper. Long fingers curl around your wrist to hold you in place. The look in his eyes is beseeching. He gently deposits the envelope on the side table next to his seat. He doesn’t look away from you for even a moment.

“Always so busy… doesn’t it exhaust you?” he murmurs, a sympathetic coo. He’s putting just enough strain on your arm to make standing uncomfortable, in hopes that you’ll sit down beside him.

“No. I’m used to it. I like being busy,” you bear the ache in your arm with unyielding ease. It is so small and insignificant in comparison to every other you have endured.

“Do you… like being busy, or is it that you’ve never known anything else?” Luocha tilts his head to the side, smiling. Your skin prickles. You resist the urge to swallow.

“You know what they say about assumptions.”

“Which is why I’m glad I’m not making one. You go to awfully desperate lengths to not be known, Courier.”

The corners of your lips twitch downwards, and his eyes gleam. “Don’t be coy with me. Did you talk to them?” You ask. The question has lingered on your mind for weeks, leaving you restless and more unkind than usual. The persistent threat of him is always at the back of your mind, represented in the throbbing between your temples, in the harshness of your voice as you snap at someone who might not deserve it. There’s no sense in beating around the bush, anymore. Not if you want to preserve your sanity.

“How very vague, for someone who just accused me of being coy. Be at ease, I haven’t had any contact with The Family. Merely some… particularly useful informants who have heard a thing or two. Hunches based on speculation that you’ve proven by being cagey.” Luocha assures you.

“...So, what do you want from me?”

“Merely conversation. I do find our interactions so compelling, however short they may be.”

“Being blackmailed doesn’t put me in the mood for conversation. There’s not much for us to talk about.”

“I beg to differ. I know so very little about you, despite all we’ve shared. I’m curious—what set you on the path of Harmony?”

“...” You look away, internally evaluating the pros and cons of going along with his little game. “Peace. She promised us peace. Because that’s what Harmony was supposed to be.” His eyes soften. The indignation sizzling inside of you sparks into a raw flame (he has no right to look at you like that), but you smother it.

“Did it live up to your expectations?” he asks. His thumb rubs circles against the hollow of your wrist. His gaze sweeps from your face, down your arm, to where he’s still got you. He’s waiting for you to be vulnerable, you just know it. A shark that smells blood in the water, circling and searching for tender flesh to lay its rows of teeth into. How does he imagine it will taste? Soft and meaty, melting underneath teeth and tongue? Layers of skin peeled back and pried open, made thin by older slices?

“It didn’t work out.” you reply. sagacious enough to play along only minimally. When you elaborate no further, he releases you with a smile.

“How interesting,” he hums. He reclines further, eyes fluttering shut. You could pounce on him so easily, like this. You could fix your teeth into his jugular and make it so he never threatens you again. The blood would be so warm in your mouth. His skin would be so sweet.

Don’t be gross. You grimace.

He drums his fingers on the armrest of his chair.

The fluttering of wings erupts in the canopy above you, a flock of songbirds taking an afternoon flight. He cracks open his eyes, then. He tracks some sort of movement (you aren’t looking up), idle, like you aren’t even there. He tilts his head to the side, the slender column of his neck completely exposed. The robe slips off of his shoulders, curvature of his collarbones and soft expanse of his chest open for your viewing pleasure. You’re annoyed.

“I’ve held you long enough,” he sighs. “Thank you for sharing. Though, I do hope we can manage a longer conversation next time.”

“We’ll see,” you just barely keep a sigh out of your voice as you turn to leave, speed-walking up the grassy slope.

—

“That old man’s damn cat has been coming into the yard and bothering all the birds,” you grumble, squinting into the aforementioned patch of forest.

Blade makes a noncommittal noise, indicating that he’s heard you.

“It pisses me off.”

“You care about the birds in someone else’s yard.” Blade observes. You frown deeper.

“It’s annoying. Cats are an invasive species, here. They slaughter all of the native wildlife—and sometimes they don’t even eat what they kill,” you sigh, tampering down your rising agitation. If you’ve learned one thing in your short and storied life, it’s that being impassioned isn’t good for you.

“So, how would you suggest the problem be solved? If the owner insists on letting it out…”

“I don’t really live here, so it’s not like I have any right to get involved,” you shrug, “It’s just… if you’re gonna be that irresponsible with an animal, you don’t deserve to have it. You know?”

Blade makes another noise. Closer to a hum, this time. You don’t know if he knows or not. But you do know that he’s listening. You stare into the yard, and in your periphery you can see him staring at you.

—

You see Blade more in the coming days. Despite your best attempts, a routine slips into being, like weeds through cracks in the cement. Silver Wolf doesn’t show up to accept her own packages nearly as much, anymore. It’s almost always Blade. You see him so often that you question if he even has a job anymore.

He glowers. “Don’t be ridiculous.” He says, low voice almost lost amongst the bustle of the crowd. The markets are especially full today. Nestled in the crook of your elbow is a plastic shopping basket, loaded with some bread, some spices, and some vegetables. The stall you’re at rests beneath a red tarp, casts warm shadows onto his pale, bone-weary skin. “There are currently no tasks which command my presence at the moment.”

“Well. It’s good to have time off, but you don’t need to follow me around.”

“...” he doesn’t reply, but he does follow you all the way up to the counter. You can’t tell if he doesn’t understand the nuance, or if he’s just being bizarre and stubborn. Regardless, tailing you like a lost puppy seems to alleviate his boredom. To each their own.

“If you’re just going to walk behind me, can you—” you shift the basket from the crook of your arm, preparing to offer it. He snatches it from you before you can even finish speaking.

“...Thanks.”

He takes his newfound job as the basket carrier very seriously. His dour face doesn't budge an inch as you peruse the rest of the wares, plucking a few items from open crates and wooden shelves to add to the bundle.

“So, see anything that piques your interest?” you’re not sure what prompts you to speak up. You should get through this as silently and as quickly as possible. The less time you spend in public with this man, the better. The presence of the Cloud Knights isn’t nearly as felt on this level, making it as safe a haven for criminals as can be. You suspect, sometimes, that it’s purposeful. In your many travels, you have come to realize that the criminal class is a valuable part of any economy, no matter how much those at the top may protest it. Those who disavow it the most fervently are usually the most involved, under the table.

Blade doesn’t respond, at first. His crimson gaze glances over the nearby shelves. He grabs a bottle of cloves and presents it to you, completely straight-faced.

You get the overwhelming sense he’s appeasing you more than anything.

“...Yeah,” you pluck it from his hand and halfheartedly eye the label. It’s hard to muster the energy to argue with him, especially when he looks so resolute. The fact that he’s continuing to tail you through the market is cause enough to ignore him. You drop the bottle into your basket and move on.

Thankfully, the rest of the trip passes in peaceful silence. You can feel Blade’s gaze, unreadable, lingering on your form as you pull your wallet out of one of your many pockets. The shopkeep, a sprightly young man with a head of bouncy, brown hair beams at the sight of you. You don’t remember his name, but you’re familiar with him. He opens his mouth to speak, but shuts his mouth tight before he can get a word out.

He glances over your shoulder. You swivel just barely to look at your stubborn shadow. Blade looms closer than you remember him being, leaving you with an up close and personal view of his chest. You tsk and look up at his face.

“Can you get a bottle of white cardamom for me? It should be with the rest of the spices.”

Blade looks at you, and looks at the shopkeep. He is silent. The lines of his face are harsher than usual, burdened with deeper shadow. For a few, agonizing moments, you fear he may object, but he turns almost robotically and walks off. You’re not sure what’s upset him this time. You don’t particularly care. If you troubled yourself with the qualms of every pouting client, you’d be just as miserable as you were with The Family.

“Thanks. I could hardly get a word out while he was giving me those evil eyes,” the shopkeep says, shuddering.

“I guess his manners still need work,” Not that men in his line of work really needed any.

“Alphas that smell that strong and don’t even try to put a lid on it are the worst,” he gripes, bagging your produce with nimble hands, before pausing and looking back up at you. He wrings his hands, contrite and sheepish. “—er, no offense.”

“He smells strong?” you tilt your head to the side.

“Well, yeah. He’s all over you,” the man blinks. Some of his bangs fall over his big, brown eyes. He swipes them behind his ear thoughtlessly. “You guys just get together? He’s probably trying to flaunt it. Stake his ‘claim’, y’know?” he says with a sympathetic roll of the eyes.

You don’t particularly care what he says about Blade. A man able to lift a three-thousand pound sword doesn’t need defending. It’s his misconceptions about your relationship that irks you, for some reason. You don’t care about the opinions of others (you try not to care about the opinions of others) but you can’t resist the sudden urge to correct him.

“We’re not together.”

“Oh,” he blinks at you. “Does he know that?”

“Ugh. Enough. It’s none of your business.” your lips twist, a sliver of teeth exposed in your displeasure.

The shopkeep nods and beams at you, all previous curiosity wiped clean off his face. “Heard loud and clear!”

He finishes ringing you up and sees you off with a “have a nice day~!”. Blade follows you to your next stop, a stall that sells fresh fruits.

The frustration builds within you slowly. It’s a candlewick of a thing, at first. Blade is following you around. Irritating, but you can cope with it. He would leave if he was asked. Maybe Kafka told him to stick around for a while. She’s gotten into a bad habit of pawning him off on you, like he’s a child that needs watching rather than one of the universe’s most efficient killing machines. That’s fine. You’re not keen to get on her bad side.

Blade is scenting you. He’s sticking to you tight as a cobweb and giving dirty looks to people you talk to. That, you cannot abide by. It takes you at least five minutes to simmer, from the crate of apples to the lefternmost all of the stall to the bundle of leeks close to its middle. You’re not really looking at anything. Lost in thought.

“I am not an omega for you to covet. I don’t need your protection,” you tell him, letting your gaze idly roam over the prices. They’re written on fancy little labels with red accents, each one neatly stickered just below the lip of each crate.

“I never said you did,” Blade replies after a moment of deliberating. You look over a crate of cantaloupe. Selecting a ripe one is a practiced art.

“You didn’t have to,” you pause, melon held in your hands as you give him a scathing look. “Control your pheromones. You’re not an animal.”

“No. Worse, I am a blade.” he sighs, suddenly sounding unusually surly. Your lips twitch in the barest beginnings of a frown.

“Not an excuse,” you helpfully remind him. A shadow is cast over his face, then, dark and brooding. The space between his brows wrinkles, an uncertainty you haven’t quite seen from him before. There’s so little need to deliberate in a life like his own, so what troubles him now? It nettles something in you, makes you feel in a way that you don’t care to name and don’t want to look into. You deliberate asking, but he makes the choice for you.

“I will leave you, now.” When you turn to look at him, he’s already walked away from your side, strides longer than usual. He dissolves into the crowd like a sunset shadow, naught left in his wake but the scent you know still clings to your clothes.

—

“My, my. You rarely ever visit at this hour,” Luocha says, giving you one of those mirthful smiles where his eyes scrunch, unabashedly delighted (and undeniably smug) to see you. He lounges on the ottoman, slender fingers parting the pages of a furniture catalogue. “To what do I owe the honor?”’ He’s already deduced that you want something from him. You take no excessive pride in your poker face but it still pains you to be so easily read. Luocha stands apart from the crowd with his soft hands and feigned delicacy, but he smells blood in the water just as easily as any other follower of the Hunt.

“I just wanted to talk,” you see no reason to dance around it.

“You came all this way for a conversation?” He rests his chin on the palm of his hand in a haughty way that pisses you off.

“Isn’t that what you’ve wanted this whole time?” you grouse, and he laughs.

“I’m flattered, regardless. Come, sit and tell me all that is on your mind.” he beckons to a seat at his side, which you stiffly sink into, unable to relax beneath his hunter’s gaze.

“You’re an omega—”

“Yes, quite,” his smile is now coquettish. You feel your face wrinkle in annoyance, line of your brows dipping low.

“I wasn’t done. You know more about secondary genders than I do—and I don’t have anyone else to talk about it with, so…”

“I appreciate you confiding in me like this,” Luocha says, sweet as honey, timbre smooth as silk. There’s an ease about him here, in his own domain, that soothes and disarms you despite your best efforts. “It couldn’t have been easy for you to ask, so unused to relying on anyone else. I’m no professional, but I will answer your questions as best as I am able.”

He steeples his fingers with a smile, way too delighted for you to feel good about his generosity. He just likes knowing something you don’t, doesn’t he?

“Well. I’ve been spending time with an alpha, lately. It’s a work thing, but he keeps hovering around. Even after I tell him he can leave.”

“Ah.” Luocha says. The corners of his smile grow taut with something you don’t quite recognize.

And it’s a question you suddenly have to wonder for yourself. Is Blade bothering you? You can count on one hand the amount of times you have been genuinely upset with him. He’s quiet, most of the time. He answers your questions and attempts to appease you whenever possible. He carries your bags whenever you happen to be at the markets, together. Even if you really wish he wouldn’t, you can tell he’s trying to be kind.

“He hardly speaks. And when I does, I don’t really mind. But he hovers and keeps grabbing my shopping bags whenever we’re at the markets. I don’t get it. Is it some sort of courting gesture?”

“He certainly sounds like a character,” Luocha muses, sounding far off for a moment. “You have the right idea. He’s carrying your things to both lessen your burden and to prove himself capable, even if he himself does not realize it.”

You grimace, face twisting up, The truth has an acerbic tang to it. Luocha laughs unabashedly at your dismay, the sound melodic and trilling. The longer you spend in his presence, the more convinced you become that the Aeons crafted him specifically to vex you. You give him a scathing look.

“Come, now,” Luocha wheedles. “My humblest apologies, Courier—it’s simply so rare for you to be so expressive. I was caught off guard. Shall I get you something to drink? Come, please, sit back down. Surely you have more to ask of me?”

Reluctantly, you drop into the armchair closest to the door, leaning back as far as you have the space for, You fold your fingers together, elbows perched on an arm rest each.

“I don’t envy you. It must be difficult to bear the attentions of such a peculiar alpha,” Luocha says.

“You know him, then.” You can’t keep the accusation from your voice, something frenetic and ugly kicking up your pulse, making your stomach go sour. How deeply do they know each other? Enough for Luocha to consider spilling your secrets? Enough for them to conspire against your purposes unknown?

No, don't be ridiculous. You're not important enough a figure to be the center of any such elaborate scheme. Weak, as far as emanators go. Painfully average, even as far as betas go. Unremarkable in status and career. All that threatens you is what you have long left behind.

“I do know him. Quite well, in fact.” Luocha muses, undisputed fondness in his voice. How close are they? The question lingers bitter on the tip of your tongue. It vibrates underneath your skin, wild and desperate and gods, you want to know so badly. “Though he may deny it, he can be shy. You’re alike, in that way.”

“I am not shy,” you bristle. It’s your curiosity alone that keeps you in his company.

“An argument best saved for another day. Let’s not get off track—Blade is an alpha, but he bears few of the typical mannerisms associated with his secondary gender, which makes this newfound attachment to you all the more significant.”

Progressively, throughout your conversation, you’ve been able to feel the wrinkles on your face multiplying and darkening.

“It makes sense, if you ask me. You’re quite the extraordinary individual,” Luocha says, drumming his fingers idly against the armrest.

“So how do I get him to stop?” you brush past his superfluous flattery with practiced indifference. He wants to fluster you, to see you squirm. It’s one of the ugly truths behind the chivalrous front he wears in polite company.

“Are you sure you want him to stop?” he inquires.

“What are you getting at?”

“If you truly wanted to no longer be the object of these behaviors, you would have no problem telling him yourself.”

You laugh, and it’s a cold and bitter thing. “Not all men take rejection well.”

“As I well know,” Luocha reminds you. He’s so haughty, so utterly confident that sometimes you forget he’s an omega, a demographic as subject to unwanted advances as any you are a part of. He stands up, empty glass cradled in hand. The sheer material of his robe billows around him like fine mist, treating you to the outline of his smooth, toned legs. Blade is more built, the thought comes to you unbidden. You squish it like the raspberries you juiced only a week ago on Luocha's kitchen counter. You wonder if the stains ever came out.

“Objectively speaking, you have more of a reason to hold your tongue around me than you do him. Yet, you hardly hesitate to make your displeasure known in my company,” he points out. “It’s not because of my secondary sex. You hardly ever remember that I’m an omega, unless my heat is soon.”

“And your point is?”

He seizes your chin, then tilts your head up until you’re forced to look into those grass green eyes. Cradled between his forefinger and thumb, you are left with nowhere else to go. You wonder briefly if it thrills him to do this because he is an omega. If he finds some kind of perverse pleasure in subverting the roles society espouses about his kind.

“You could have told him off on your own. Instead, you went out of your way to consult someone you deeply dislike, looking for another, less direct way of handling it. All of that implies some degree of care, whether you want to admit it or not.”

He’s right, and you hate nothing more than when he’s right.

“Thank you for your time,” you dip back into your customer service with a placid and empty drone, because you know how much he hates it. You say it to his chest, refusing to give him the eye contact. Unwilling to expend the effort. For plausible deniability, because you don’t know what you’ll find on his face. The air has grown balmy and cloying and fragrant. You stand up, and he steps backwards. “But I must be going, now.”

“How unfortunate,” Luocha coos as you awkwardly find your way around him, having been sandwiched between his body and the coffee table. “I was going to put the kettle on…”

—

The shroud of night has settled over the Luofu. A crescent moon winks down at you from the artificial sky, peering between the treetops. You’re laid on your back, on the concrete patio near the shed.

Footsteps head in your direction. You already know who it is. There’s no one else that has that blistering, writhing aura. Blade comes to stand over you. His brows wrinkle in displeasure. You don’t know why. It’s not his patio that you’ve gotten your blood all over.

“You’re injured,” he says, frowning. He crouches over you. A pale thumb smears the drying crimson on your upper lip. Your entire face scrunches up, gnarled like a gargoyle, recoiling from the unexpected touch.

“Nosebleed,” you mutter. The space behind your eyes throbs in protest, accompanied by a fierce pressure at the bridge of your nose. All typical symptoms. The gifts bestowed upon you as Emanator unfortunately do not shield you from your allergies. To think, an Emanator could still be laid low by something as mundane as allergies.

“Who gave it to you?” Blade looms a little closer, gaze steely.

“No one. Sometimes my allergies act up. That’s all.” you assure him, squinting irritably. You hope your judgmental flower will shame him out of your personal space, but he lingers.

“You should remain indoors, then.” he draws. He lifts his bloodied hand and looks at it, too contemplative for your liking.

“I take medication for it. Just forgot today,” it feels wrong to justify yourself. He isn't owed an answer, but this is a rare moment. Blade showing such outright concern over something so novel is interesting (a more sentimental person might call it touching). Has his immortality rendered him incapable of distinguishing a few pesky allergies from a deadly ammonia? You can’t imagine someone so riddled with regeneration to register the difference between a gaping gash and a papercut.

“Then remember to take them.” he advises coolly.

“I will.”

You lay there, then, in silence unperturbed for a few moments. The hard ground is cool against your back. It’ll fix your aching spine, you’re sure.

“Are you not going to get up?” Blade asks.

“No. It feels nice to be on the floor, sometimes.” you assure him quickly, lest he assume your nosebleed has robbed you of all mobility. He stares at you, blank-faced, but you somehow can tell he is skeptical. You pat the space next to you, a silent offering.

You don’t expect him to take you up on it. This rare creature, crackling with the energy of his divine “gift”. You don’t indulge in typical sentiments, and you spurn love and limerence for your own sanity, due to the madness you have seen both inspire. To adore is to give of yourself, to exhaust what limited energy you have left. Yet, there is no arguing the fact of his beauty. His hair pools like fresh slick pitch. Faint moonlight catches on the sable strands. His jaw cuts a sharp and handsome shape, eyelashes long and thick. He stares up at the sky, unreadable.

“Kafka has no need of me in the coming days.” “It is… strange. The Stellaron Hunters are few in number, so our hands are always full. To be bereft of any responsibility… is rare.”

“You don’t sound thrilled about that.”

“No. It will leave me restless. And the silence will only give the mara room to spread. It’s better��more manageable when there is a task at hand.” Blade admits, a shiver in his voice.

“I do. I believe you are familiar with the place,” he says. That catches your attention. And makes you just a little nervous.

“Do you even have anywhere to stay?” The Stellaron Hunters surely have a vessel of their own where he can lodge. You’re ultimately not too concerned. You shut your eyes and listen to the midnight breeze, feel the black of the night against your skin.

You turn to look at him, almost afraid to ask. “Familiar?”

“The merchant has opened his home to me. I will remain there for the duration of my… off time.”

Again, you are sorely tempted to question the exact nature and origin of their relationship, but it’s truly none of your business. You’ve long espoused a policy of isolation, but there’s no denying how thoroughly entangled you have become in them. Elbows deep. You’re not quite sure how it happened. They’re infiltrated your monotonous life, moved in so slowly that you didn’t even notice until this very moment.

“Well. He’s not there most of the time, so it’ll be like having your own place,” You can’t imagine Blade as a homeowner, for some reason. It just invokes the image of him mowing a lawn in khaki shorts with that same, placid face he always wears. He’s too ethereal and strange to trim the hedges or fix a leaky faucet. Sometimes, you think he’d look more in-place if he levitated instead of just walking everywhere.

“I had lemonade the other day,” he says, and this fascinates you, because it is so very rare for him to initiate conversation about something so little.

“...And? Did you like it?” Perhaps it’s petty, but you already have a feeling that he didn’t. You hate to presume, but you think you have similar palettes.

“...It was too sweet, and burdened by a lingering, chemical taste,” he confirms your vague conjecture and you very nearly laugh. Or make some sort of short, wry noise like a horse’s snort.

“Yeah. Ones that aren’t made from scratch tend to be like that.”

“And that is why you make your own.”

“Exactly,” you lift your gaze from him and return it to the sky. “When you make something from scratch, you can make however you like. Ones you buy pre-bottled have too much sugar.” He hums in acknowledgement, but says nothing else.

The twinkling stars are no more authentic than the clouds which hover during the day. But you wonder how many far off stars he has visited across the span of his long un-life. How many civilizations he has seen toppled, how many lives have ended at his hands. What a terrifying beast Yaoshi has created. Yet, here he lay beneath a sky he has likely long tired of, humoring your purposeless requests for reasons unknown.

—

You’re tucked on the steps off the side door, head leaned back and eyes shut, drinking in the warmth of the artificial midday sun. Blade leans up against the wall next to you, arms crossed. You don’t blame him for staying in the shade, not when he’s always dressed so darkly.

You shouldn’t show your stomach to a known apex predator. Your instincts are tampered down, but you still curl your spine and lift your knees to your chest when you usually it on the stoop. You haven’t done it, today. Anxiety thrums in the space right behind your eyes. The scared animal inside of you writhes in his presence. You look at him, gaze by happenstance falling on the profile of his chest.

Breasts, you think stupidly, and laugh aloud. The noise is so sudden that you almost don’t realize it came from you. Blade looks down at you like you’ve grown a second head, and you're still too caught up in your own disbelief. Spending so much time with him has softened your skill, started to fry your remaining brain cells. He’s always been handsome. But you’ve started to too keenly note the bow curve of his lips, the narrowness of his waist.

And you hate, hate, hate proving Luocha right.

“What is it that you find so amusing?” Blade speaks slowly, like he’s talking to a scared dog or a lost child.

“Nothing,” you shut your eyes and tilt your head back, letting it thump against the top step. Blade inhales sharply. “Just remembered a stupid joke I heard a few days ago.” When you open your eyes, Blade has turned away, inspecting a row of gladiolus planted next to the nearby shed. The line of his shoulders has gone tense.

“Pretty, aren’t they?” you muse.

“Did you plant them?”

“No. I delivered the seeds. Only a week ago, I think. They wouldn’t have been able to sprout this fast.”

“Under normal circumstances, perhaps,” Blade skates a finger over a bright orange petal. “That merchant utilizes his gift so shamelessly. Even while at the heart of his natural born enemy.”

“And it’ll all be for nothing if that damn cat comes and eats them,” you grunt. You’ev stumbled upon torn up patches of grass and bitten through flower patches, stems snapped and petals crushed. You briefly, in one of your pettiest and cruelest moments, nearly suggested Luocha plant lilies next. The callousness of your own thought had startled you into silence, so gladiolus it was.

“Ah. About the cat,” Blade begins. You blink, wide-eyed. A cold pit forms in your stomach, because—

“You didn’t,” you gape.

“I did not kill it,” Blade says sourly, clearly affronted by the assumption. “I brought it to Kafka. They seem to get along.”

The tension melts out of you at once. Your petty grudge isn’t worth the blood of an innocent animal. You let yourself fall back against the stoop. The edges of the stairs dig into your spine.

“That makes sense,” you say, a touch wry.

Blade grimaces. “They send me images of the little beast every day I am not there. If Silver Wolf is to be believed, it ‘eats better’ than she does.”

Does Silver Wolf eat well to begin with? “That was kind of you,” you say instead.

“Was it? Or was it cruel to the man who will wonder where his pet has gone?” Blade inquires. He doesn’t sound particularly bothered by the possibility.

You scoff. “I doubt he’ll even notice.”

—

You are natant in the dull haze of half-sleep. The soft scent of camelias and fabric softener and linens. A cloying warmth cocoons you, keeps you mired in a state of partial sleep. Burrowed beneath the comfort exists a nagging feeling of wrongness, like a pebble in your boot. You cling to the sensation, let it pull you from the inky, peaceful depths. You’re not sure how long it takes for you to breach the surface. It feels like ages by the time you pry your weary eyes open.

There’s a body crushed into you. An unyielding, solid mass of muscle. The scent of something charred wreathes around you. Your cheek is pressed up against a heartbeat, steady and strong. It would be comforting if you knew where you were, or who you were with.

Alarm, molten hot, jots down your spine. Shaken from your stupor, you begin to writhe. Your palms slap against the chest of the man beneath you. You brace yourself against him in an effort to pry yourself free.

An arm around your midriff tightens, and the panic grows. You lash out, snarl, a hand reaching behind you to grab onto the assailant’s wrist.

The room blurs, then. The breath is knocked from your lungs as you’re reoriented and pinned with minimal effort. Your eyes blow wide, gaze caught by those candlewick eyes. Blade’s hair is mussed from both sleep and the struggle. His lips are pulled into a snarl. Your gut squirms at the flash of those deadly canines—sharper than you’d imagined (he’s never bared his teeth at you).

“Stop,” he commands, low and throaty. You shudder, foolish hindbrain moved to obey the order. This, you realize, is what an alpha’s command must sound like.

As you lay beneath him, chest to heaving chest, the pieces of the previous night return to you in fragments and shades.

Blade came to your door at dusk’s end. The shuttles had shut down for the night. You let him in, quickly, before anyone could witness a known fucking criminal at your door. You fed him dinner, anyways. Spoke late into the night—about what you cannot truly recall. Somewhere around three in the morning, you must have nodded off.

“Have you calmed down?” Blade asks.

“Yes,” you grumble, feeling thoroughly chastised despite his flat and empty tone. You attempt to dislodge yourself a second time, but Blade stops you fast. “Blade—” The beginning of a feeling you cannot quite name crawls up your spine, up the back of your skull. It’s a creeping, white hot sensation. A sudden deprivation of air. His eyes have closed. You feel your pulse spike. “Blade.” You try again. “Let me up.”

He draws a shaky breath.

“You don’t understand, do you?”

“What is there for me to understand?” you ask, voice a tepid little thing. He laughs. The sound is manic and bitter. When he opens his eyes, they’re hot enough to burn a hole in you.

“I… remember you,” he begins slowly. There’s a creeping breathiness there, you feel it under your palms, writhing inside of his ribcage. “When you are not there. I remember how warm your hands are, the smell of your sweat—the taste of when we are… together. And I crave it every moment we are apart. It’s—maddening.”

“What.” you’re taken back, all the sudden, to the sixth time Sunday called you to his office. A servant of the Harmony, you were, still protected by your naivete, still convinced by the smiling faces and open arms which surrounded you. A child. A seed, among the older and wiser trees in Xipe’s forests.

You remember the exact shape of his lips when he said it—you remember how it felt. You feel the same way now, pinned like a little butterfly. Lost in the reeds.

“I remember you,” Blade continues, slower and calmer, now. Burning wood to dead charcoal. “When we are apart, you are all I remember, and the emptiness that exists in your shape is too much to bear. I need—” he licks his lips, his empty pupils blown so very wide.

“The mara becomes quiet, when we are together,” he whispers, like he’s sharing a secret. His eyes close. His forehead is a wide rash of heat, pressed against yours. He takes a single, shuddering inhale, breathing your air.

And you—you’re still frozen there, caught up in the vice of his body and the couch. You stare emptily beyond him. His face settles into the crook of your neck.

The lamplight flickers on and off.

#oz write #hungering for hsr #blade/reader #hsr/reader

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doetic · 3 months

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There's Doodles of Rams in the Margins - Enemies to lovers!Jschlatt x F!Reader (pt.1)

Masterlist

Plot: During a lunch with her best friend and roommate Shae, the love hating cynic Y/n is introduced to her new boyfriend Ted Nivision and his friend Schlatt. Little does she know, her and Schlatt would butt heads at a party later that night, leaving her storming out soaking wet and enraged, but with the phone number of a charismatic and attractive curly haired man named Hasan. Warnings: drinking, asshole schlatt, mentions of hookups, swearing Word Count: 2983

A/n: This is just setting up the plot. It'll have better pacing in later chapters. As per usual, not proofread, adhd has me in tight grip and if I get started on proofreading I'll never end and edit it forever. Might look for beta readers soon.

Perhaps in the past it was a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife, but nowadays you couldn’t help but scoff at the notion.

In the 21st century, the very idea of a man wanting to settle down with pure intentions seemed far-fetched, especially if the man happened to be wealthy. Many called you cynical for this point of view, but as a sex and romance advice columnist you’d heard of enough horror stories to swear off the concept of love entirely. So, when your best friend and roommate Shae told you over your regular saturday lunch that things were getting serious with a guy she had met, you couldn’t help but be suspicious of the man’s intentions, although you tried to politely bite back the majority of your thoughts on the matter.

“His name’s Ted, Ted Nivision.” Shae smiled as the name left her lips. The instant the name hit the air you pulled out your phone, ready to do a thorough background check on the man.

Shae’s hand flew across the table and landed on top of yours, gently lowering your phone. “That’s not necessary Y/n. Besides, you wouldn’t find anything personal anyways.”

“It’s not that rare of a name,” You reasoned. “It couldn’t be that hard,” You paused, eyes widening. “...Unless he gave you a fake one!” Shae let out a small laugh. “It’s not like that! He’s just a youtuber, he’s got all the personal stuff locked down as much as he can.”

You sent Shae an incredulous stare, putting your phone back onto the table. She smiled in return, used to your protectiveness, knowing what was coming next. “LA men are bad enough Shae, but an influencer?” You began to chastise her. “He’s–”

“I know the drill Y/n, we don’t need to go through this every time.” She rolled her eyes lightheartedly.

Others found your skepticism annoying, but Shae got it. She understood in ways no one else would or could. As your lifelong best friend, Shae knew your biggest secret: you were completely hopeless when it came to love, you’ve never had a romantic relationship. The shitty experiences people wrote to you about, your parents, and her own failed relationships were your only windows into what a relationship was like. Throughout your life she had a front row seat to witnessing you become so closed off to the idea of letting a man into your life. So, she appreciated and understood the pure intentioned concern, but still patiently tried to change your mind on the matter, even when everyone else considered it a lost cause.

“I’m just saying, you know how men like that are. Big fucking egos Shae, it gets in the way of everything,” You stabbed your fork into your salad a bit harder than you intended. “Is he actually successful or just some wannabe? You don’t want a guy with some trash soundcloud rapper mindset.”

“He’s got over a million subscribers I think?” She hummed, unlocking her phone and scrolling for a few moments before turning the screen to you, a dark haired man with glasses staring at you.

“I mean he’s cute I guess, if you’re into the geeky look,” You examined his face. “You could find someone hotter, but I’d probably hate him more if he was.”

Shae put away her phone and swatted the side of your arm playfully. “You haven’t even met him yet!” You paused as you lifted another forkful to your mouth.

“We both know how this is gonna go, Shae. He could be Jesus-fuckin’-Christ himself and he still wouldn’t be good enough for you.”

She let out a small laugh. “Well, please don’t be too obvious about your feelings. He should be here about–” She quickly checked the time on her lockscreen, but before she could finish her sentence the tall dark haired man you recognized as Ted speed-walked over right on cue, a brunette above 6ft with odd facial hair trailing after him. You couldn’t help but think he pulled off the mutton chop loop. In fact, with his sharp, prominent nose, large stature, and flowing, wavy hair that was partially covered by a NY Yankees cap, you found yourself admiring the man’s appearance.

“Sorry, sorry! Am I late?” Ted leaned down to kiss Shae’s cheek, your friend grinning at the small action.

“Right on time, Ted.” Shae’s grin was plastered on her face, but a quick glance toward you showed that her eyes asked you to play nice. “This is Y/n by the way.” She gestured to you expectantly. It took you a few moments to catch on, busy chewing on your salad and sneaking glances at the man who seemed to be a friend of Ted, but once you realized you were meant to do something, you quickly waved.

Ted sat in the seat beside Shae, leaving the uniquely attractive man who accompanied him standing beside the table. “Sorry, Schlatt wanted to tag along, but I figured he wouldn’t be too much of a nuisance.” He apologized, mostly to Shae.

“I wanted to spend time with my friend if I’m stuck here in smoggy L.A,” ‘Schlatt’ huffed.

“Oh Schlatt, you can sit beside Y/n!” She pointed to the chair beside you. You moved your purse onto the floor, watching the tall man as he crossed over to sit beside you, giving him a polite small smile. “It’s nice to meet you again.”

“You too.” He nodded in response, giving you a silent, examining look.

The man didn’t seem socially awkward, instead Schlatt just came off as reserved. From Ted’s comment about him being a nuisance, this behavior seemed odd to you. Perhaps he was just being good for Ted’s sake, or just getting a feel of the situation before getting more comfortable.

“I’m Y/n,” You introduced. Not knowing what to do or say, you went to take another bite of your salad, only to be greeted by an empty bowl. You tried not to frown at the betrayal, opting to take a sip of your drink instead. Schlatt let out a hum, turning on his phone. Perhaps he was just tired?

“So, are you two looking forward to the party tonight?” Ted spoke up, breaking the silence that fell over the table. Although his body language made him appear comfortable, with his arm stretched around Shae’s shoulders, you noticed the awkwardness he felt through the apparent stiffness of his shoulders.

“Party?” You looked over to Shae who smiled sheepishly.

“Ted! I was gonna ease her into it!” Shae laughed. “Ted invited us to a party with him and Schlatt, it’s gonna be a good one apparently. Some group rented out a mansion on AirBnB. You totally have to come!”

“I’m busy that day,” You said quickly. Schlatt, who was busy on his phone, let out a small chuckle that he tried to bite back.

“It’s tonight,” Ted restated.

“Yeah and I have plans tonight,” You said quickly, searching your brain for an excuse. Your search was cut short by Shae.

“You were complaining about having nothing to do all day when we got here. C’mon Y/n, It’ll be fun!”

You went to sip your drink to stall while you thought of an escape plan, only to end up slurping air. The world seemed to be against you today. “Okay, okay, only for a bit. And I’m stealing back the Jimmy Choos I let you borrow.”

Sometimes you wished you were better at saying no to Shae. Especially right now.

The party was lively. The bass throbbed throughout the rented mansion as if the building had a heartbeat and the large crowd of people gathered throughout the house swayed in time with it as if the party had cast a spell upon them and commanded it. Although you were committed to being huffy in the corner, you couldn’t help tapping a foot as well. Outside, in the absurdly large yard took place a makeshift game of baseball while others mingled on the deck.

Hate was a word you used quite liberally, despite being warned against it your whole childhood. Despite its secure place in your vocabulary, it was rare for you to truly mean the word as defined. However, in your current situation you felt yourself feeling the word so deeply it was as if you created it yourself. Your irritation was worsened by the knowledge that if the party was populated by any other group of people, you’d be having an amazing time. It wasn’t as if you were upset just because you were a buzzkill, usually you were the first one to suggest a night out and the last one to get into the uber home (after being pulled in by your friends). No, it wasn’t for a lack of loving parties. You just hated the people at this one specifically. You couldn’t stand Influencers.

Your eyes scanned the crowd for Shae, noting the amount of cameras out with scrutiny. You couldn’t help but wonder how many of these people actually liked each other. How many of them were actually friends once the cameras shut off? You couldn’t stand the insincerity that seemed to permeate through every interaction they had, not to mention the egos that they broke their back carrying.

Unfortunately, the familiar brunette you were searching for was not to be found, the two of you had been separated an hour ago when a group of people pulled her and Ted away to talk. Your phone battery was dangerously low, so you didn’t send more than one text her way. It was only a mansion, she couldn’t have gotten far, surely you’d find each other if you stayed in one spot. The situation made you feel a bit like a child lost in a supermarket. What was next? Practicing a stop, drop, and roll?

The sigh that escaped your lips was rendered inaudible by both the music and the laughter floating through the open patio door to your right, where out in the backyard a makeshift baseball game seemed to be occurring– with cameras out, of course. Unlike usual, your carefully crafted, much too expensive outfit wasn’t enough to lift your spirits. Opting for plan b, you raised your lips to take a sip of your drink.

It seemed as if brunette men over 6ft were scurrying into your life like rats, with the man who just came to stand beside you being no exception. You tried to subtly look at the attractive man under the guise of scanning the crowd for Shae once more as you sipped your drink, only to notice him staring at you. Like a cobra, the moment the rim of the cup left your lips, he struck quickly.

“I haven’t seen you around this type of thing before, what’s your name?” He questioned. You took the opportunity to get a better look at the man before looking away with faux disinterest. You were opposed to love, yes, but a good hookup was something you were glad to indulge in.

“Isn’t introducing yourself first the chivalrous thing to do?” You commented, opting to act hard to get to give him the thrill of the chase.

“Excuse my manners, I’m a bit buzzed. I’m Hasan Piker. Can I know your name now, mystery girl?”

You let out a small laugh, turning to face him finally. “Y/n.”

“Y/n? I don’t think I’ve heard of you. I’d certainly remember if I did. What type of content do you make?”

You tried not to grimace at his assumption. “I’m sort of a sexual anthropologist.” You stretched your job description to the limit.

He raised an eyebrow. “Onlyfans?”

“A magazine advice columnist. It focuses on sex and relationships,” You elaborated with a laugh. “Though I’m trying to break into real journalism.”

He laughed. “‘Sexual anthropologist’?” He ruminated on the words. “Well that’s a creative way of saying it, although it doesn’t seem to be entirely inaccurate.”

“Circumlocution is a guilty pleasure. I’m assuming you’re a streamer or something?”

“Quite a bit of political content.”

You hummed. “More respectable than most.”

Hasan let out a small chuckle. “But let's not talk business. I can’t talk long, content obligations. But I saw you across the room and wanted to give you my number, maybe we could get more acquainted later.”

You pulled out your phone, opening it up to the contacts app and handing it over. “I don’t hate the idea of that,” You smirked, internally beginning to enjoy being dragged along to this party now that you had the chance at spending a night of meaningless sex with his muscular form.

He took the phone from your hand and typed in his number. “I have to go, but text me. I’ll be looking forward to it.” His warm hand brushed against your exposed back, rubbing a small circle into your flesh with his thumb before slinking into the crowd from where he came.

You tried to hide the smirk that threatened to creep onto your lips, trying to play it cool in case anyone was watching. In an attempt to hide your smirk of satisfaction you raised your drink to your lips, only to find yourself wet and on the floor just a millisecond later, pain and the flashes and clicks of cameras flooding your senses.

The large form crashing into your body was far too sudden for you to even make a sound or register what had happened for a few moments. Slowly your brain began to piece things together. The open patio door in front of you, the baseball game going on outside that had halted with its players staring your way in shock, the impossibly heavy weight that kept you pinned to the hardwood floor. Some fucker had tackled you in an attempt to catch a ball. You were too stunned to speak, and the delayed full-body pain that flowed into your body only added to your silence.

“Watch where you’re standing, toots.” The voice, although with the telltale slur of a drunk man, sounded slightly familiar. Your disoriented brain took a bit to focus, but once it did you saw the face of Ted’s friend Schlatt hovering above you, illuminated by harsh camera flashes.

Your eyes stung as they teared up, embarrassment, pain, and anger flooding your senses all at once.

“Watch where I’m standing? You’re the one who fucking ran into me!” You shouted back in anger, not caring about the cameras and bystanders surrounding you. “Get off of me!”

The man huffed as he moved his large form to his feet, a motion your sore body copied once he released you from your prison beneath him. “If you paid more attention to your surroundings you’d’ve seen me coming!”

“It’s a dark room!”

“Try drinking less, you’ll be more aware of your surroundings.” He retorted with a pissed off chuckle.

“I’m not the one who reeks of whiskey!” You angrily jabbed a finger into his chest. “I’m not taking this from some ‘influencer’ with an over-inflated ego,” You hopefully accurately guessed his occupation from his attitude before turning on your heel and storming away, focusing most of your energy on not stumbling in pain with such a variety of pitying and angry eyes on your form. Behind you you could hear Schlatt yell out in triumph about having caught the ball, his announcement resulting in loud cheers.

“Y/n! What’s wrong?” You heard Shae’s worried voice as you neared the parties exit. Ted trailed behind her, looking confused at the state you were in. You must have looked like a wreck. Even without a mirror you could tell your hair was messed up and your backless white dress was stained from your drink when Schlatt barreled into you.

“That fucking guy, Schlatt,” You replied, sending a glare to Ted. “Crashed into me trying to catch a ball and blamed it on me.”

Shae’s face turned angry at your words, looking expectantly at Ted and presumably opening her mouth to tell him to do something about his friend.

“I’ll talk to him, he hasn’t been himself recently,” Ted spoke quickly, giving you an apologetic look.

“Don’t. I don’t want some coerced apology. He’s a dick, it’s whatever. I doubt I’ll even see him much after tonight.” You weren’t sure why Shae and Ted had such weird looks on their faces as you said that, but you felt too scrambled to question it. “I’m just worried about pictures and videos of it ending up everywhere.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Ted comforted.

“Let's get you home first, I doubt you want to be here any longer,” Shae spoke, placing a hand on your shoulder and guiding you out the front door.

The outside air was cool upon your skin as your drink dried into sticky patches on your skin. The slight breeze felt piercing on the wet spots of your dress that clung tightly to you. You let out a small sigh, the sound of the party fading into the background as the three of you walked to Ted’s car. He had agreed to be the designated driver for the night, something you appreciated. You would have felt awful making some poor Uber driver’s car reek of booze.

You were so exhausted you didn’t pay much attention to Shae helping you into the car, your body feeling heavy as you rested your head against the back seat window. Thankfully, the two in the front seat respected your reluctance to talk much. You found yourself ruminating on your latest interaction with Schlatt. It felt so fast, there wasn’t much for you to think of at all about it, but of one thing you were certain: you deplored the man, and you looked forward to never seeing him again.

Taglist: @ghostyoongs

#jschlatt #jschlatt x reader #schlatt #schlatt x reader #jschlatt fanfic

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izvmimi · 1 month

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All Roads Lead to Love? - Chapter II

cw: canon-typical violence. quirk use. oc characters are introduced. reader has a described quirk. Please see additional masterlist warnings! Masterlist

The remainder of the week passes without consequence. This new information about your life doesn’t change anything, because even if you can see the same man on every news channel, you have nothing to discuss and your lives don’t overlap.

Sitting by a couple of teenage girls at a train station and hearing them speculate about Uravity and Deku on your way to work the next day adds particularly to this sentiment. Their longstanding will they won’t they is only part of the reason why you’ve never made your feelings known. Uravity is perfect for him in every way, after all. You just wish they would hurry up and go public, hopefully even get married, so you can stop addressing the niggling feeling that perhaps, just perhaps, all these years you’ve made a mistake.

When you find your way into the clinic, Junko is wide-eyed and excited to hear everything you learned overnight, and you conveniently leave the part where in at least five universes except yours, not only are you not single, you’re romantically involved with Mr. Number One Pro Hero Deku himself.

“Who knocked the first one up? I have to know.”

You eye the Deku bobblehead on her work desk you’d desensitized yourself to, and shrug, pretending you don’t know.

“Any add-ons today?” you ask instead, and disappear into the back room before she can ask you more questions. At least you know what you’d look like if you were pregnant.

—

Sorry I can’t make it tonight. Please let me know if you or Iida need anything.

Izuku’s voice to speech has a tendency to make him sound excessively formal, but it’s better than typing in a hurry and having to correct ten individual typos, cursed by clumsy, large hands. He’s rushing to the third out of five meetings today - the unwelcome side effect of being One to Watch (although he wonders at one point he’s simply There given how long it’s been) - and then he’s set for a patrol in a particularly dangerous neighborhood for the evening. He wishes he could trade it, but considering the point of the patrol was less to fight a specific enemy but to show a strong Hero presence, specifically his presence, he’s aware that it must be him.

Ochaco will understand. After all, he’s been with Ochaco at Iida’s bedside most days this week in the evenings given a recent injury, and even if Ochaco won’t say it, perhaps the two do need some time alone. They’d both been reluctant to reveal their affections for each other, given Ochaco’s history with him, but a part of Izuku’s soul understands that this arrangement was probably for the better anyway. While he loved Ochaco dearly, he’d always had the sense something was wrong about them, like momentum having him hurtling in the wrong direction. But there’s not much you can do when one of your best friends proclaims their love for you where everyone can see, and you’re just a high schooler with the weight of the world on your shoulders and then some, and there’s even less you can do when the person you’d long hoped would return your feelings seemed to be preoccupied with someone else.

Either way, years have passed and there are no hard feelings between the trio of friends, and Izuku particularly has simmered down on the prospect of love.

Somewhat.

Just minutes later, a reporter asks him for the third time this month if he and Uravity have considered working as a pair, and he smiles and nods before politely redirecting the question to praising her talent profusely. He understands easily why she’s reluctant to go public with Iida, and wishes desperately he wasn’t in her way.

Perhaps in another universe, if they had ended up loving each other, this aspect of the job would be easier - the media circus would have died out by now; they’d both be able to focus on doing what they chose to do with their lives, which is be Heroes and help as many people as possible.

They’d be able to live quietly.

The reporter then asks if he’s still in contact with most of the people he went to school with. This question takes him aback, and he blinks for a moment as he watches the young woman before him resettle in her seat, eyes hungry for information.

He runs through the list of everyone he’s known. He’s 28 now, and it’s been a decade since he’s graduated from high school. Most of the people he’s known he interfaces with on at least a weekly to monthly basis, save for a select few like Shoto, Katsuki, Iida and Ochaco that he sees almost daily. He admits he hasn’t seen Koda in a while, now that he lives in the forest similar to the Wild Wild Pussycats, nor Jirou who dedicated more of her life to music these days, and then his thoughts settle on you.

He knows what you’re up to, but he hasn’t spoken to you in over a year, despite remembering your last conversation at UA’s 10 year reunion. Brief - you were already slightly tipsy, and you smiled at him, but seemed disinterested in whatever he had to say, almost like you wanted to leave as soon as possible. He’d asked you how your clinic was going, and you’d laughed, the warmth of alcohol deepening the complexion in your cheeks, and said noncommittally, “it’s going,” before turning back to your friends. You’d once been so excited to tell him every thought running through your head, and you’d bounce off ideas for hours, discussing everything from Quirks to biology to society to your hopes and dreams, and after just a few years apart, he received next to nothing.

Leave her alone, Midoriya, is all that ran through his head, after that, and he politely bowed and left.

“Yes, we all help each other out when needed!” he replies. It isn’t a lie. For every one of his classmates, even you. If you called him, he would come to your rescue. Anytime.

When the interview ends, he wishes for a moment that he had the courage to call.

—

The last person you could have expected to call you, calls you on a Thursday afternoon, as you make your way out of work, and from his voice, you can tell he’s surprised you actually sought to answer the phone.

“I… uh… wow. Hey.”

“Hey.”

Your cheeks warm, but it’s not love, it’s the nostalgia of several years coming back, and the fact that your high school boyfriend seems flustered to speak to you despite years of lost contact.

“You never changed your number,” Akira says, and you laugh. You can envision him easily, after all social media makes it such that no one truly becomes a stranger, and you know that he’s crinkled he has the same goofy smile on his face that helped you forget all that you’d been through in the Hero course, reminded you that there was more to life than self-sacrifice.

“You didn’t change yours,” you’re quick to reply.

“Touché.”

You can tell he’s grinning now, and it makes your heart light. You’re walking towards the train station and it’s a spring afternoon; you can see lovers hold hands as they walk past you, and you can’t remember the last time you’ve been on a date.

And as if he knows how you feel, he asks you on one.

“The truth is you’ve been on my mind a lot recently.”

“Are you newly single?” you ask. It’s meant to be a playful jab, but you can tell he’s stung when he replies, “Newly isn’t the word for it, but yes, I am single.”

You blow air through your nose, but Akira is harmless. He makes his way around women easily with a silly sort of charm, and being easy on the eyes, but he’s not the type to break a woman’s heart. If anything, you were the one who broke his by ending things when you decided to focus on graduate school.

“Remember how I really liked enka?”

Evenings in the dorm rooms laid side by side with shared headphones come to mind.

“Yeah. Are you famous now?” you tease. He tuts at you, but adds,

“Come to my open mic night on Friday. I’ll buy you sashimi afterwards and we can go drinking.”

You think for a moment that in 5 separate universes, you’re in love with Izuku and maybe you should figure out what that’s about, but in this one, Izuku is nowhere to be found and perhaps it’s more important for you to hear your ex-boyfriend belt ballads and loosen up over sake and sake don.

You think for a moment, and then say, “Sure.”

—

There’s probably a social crime involved in inviting your friends to a date, and you can tell Akira’s a bit annoyed about it from the slight scrunch of his eyebrows when he watches you walk into the bar with two of your closest friends flanking your sides. He’s at the front already, and waves at you enthusiastically, and he’s every bit the cute boy from the support class who helped you with your pageant routine (you didn’t win that year, but you placed thanks to him), just sharper in the face, and with longer wavy dark hair.

You wave back, and your friends push you to the front and take their seats in the back. They’d also both gone to UA, and one was in the hero class with you, while the other was a year ahead, in the support class, and recognizes Akira, even if she hadn’t particularly approved of him in the past. She hadn’t exactly disliked him, but you could tell she was less warm when it came to him. Your other friend doesn’t seem to recognize him immediately, turning immediately to order the two of you drinks.

You slip into the open seat beside Akira and he offers you a drink and a rose. It’s cheesy but it makes you smile.

“I’m going to wow you, just so you know,” he promises as he makes his way on stage. You raise your eyebrow, as if to say ‘prove it’ while he skips onto the stage.

And he’s a hit, all flashing teeth and low notes, and you can feel your face warm every time he sings in your direction. He’s always had a beautiful voice, and easily flustered, you look down at your drink, heart thumping.

And then, in a stroke of misfortune (to you), he slips your name into the song, and when you look up at him, he’s reaching a hand out towards you, bidding you to come on stage.

The very idea feels like hell to you. The rest of the bar’s patrons watch you and cheer and you glance at your friends, both of whom are waving their hands to push you on stage. When you look back at Akira, he’s still smiling, but you can feel the tinge of anxiety at the idea of you rejecting him in public. You wouldn’t, would you?

You can’t.

You slowly rise to take his hand, as people clap around you, but before you can take another step, before you can embarrass yourself in front of a room full of people, there’s a deafening sound that comes from your right side that practically stuns you, and shortly after, a forceful blast of air and shattered concrete follows and nearly knocks you off your feet.

The ringing of your ears mutes the abounding screams in the room. Your fortifying Quirk kicked in just in time, so you weren’t thrown that far, but bodies are strewn across the room. You don’t see Akira, and the right side of the room is practically cleared with tables and chairs tossed haphazardly and people scrambling for cover or already unconscious.

Adrenaline rushes through your veins, but you act first. You are a Hero after all, even if you’ve been out of the fray for years. A quick glance lets you know that your friends are already in action, trying to recover a few people thrown over the bar, and you attempt to push rubble off of you and start rescues.

Your Quirk activates again to fortify yourself as you begin to move, but a second, louder explosion occurs, one that does actually knock you off your feet, destroying part of the foundation of the building. The ceiling starts to cave in just above you - you’ve always had the best luck - and you’re too slow to move before it all comes crashing down.

You put yourself into a protective huddle, hopeful for your Quirk to minimize your damage, but never feel the pain of falling wreckage.

“... Hi.”

Says Izuku Midoriya, hovering over you and shielding your body from harm with a piece of the ceiling held carefully in his hands.

The love of your life in at least five universes and your current savior.

Your eyes meet and hold firmly.

“Hi, I-Izu.. Deku.”

Time seems to slow to a stop for a moment, then comes back up to pace when you let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding, your lungs suddenly burning in demand of oxygen. Izuku watches you carefully for a moment, really takes you in, even if you’re quick to thank him before looking around for someone else to save. You’re okay, just shaken; you’ve noticed him for a fleeting moment and now your attention is gone. You turn and scream your friend’s name, and he throws the large block of concrete to the side, remembering his job has only begun.

He’s happy he could do something for you, despite it all. There are more people to save, you remind him with your quick movements, the activation of your quirk to stabilize the first injured man’s bleeding as you crouch around him. He springs back into action - after all, he was meant to chase the culprits of those blasts, and can’t be sidetracked.

But this time, he has resolved to say more to you when the dust clears.

—

“Rampage, are you hurt? You did a good job back there.”

You can hear your Hero friend, code name Rampage, chat politely with Izuku as they both approach to where you’re huddled in a makeshift rehabilitation corner, a couple of people with the more severe injuries laid out on the ground, rolled up table cloths beneath their heads. No one is gravely injured more than you can heal with your Quirk, but you’ve exhausted enough of your body’s reserves that your head is starting to swim. She’s saying something playful about how Deku stole her thunder, when you turn to both of them and give a report, as Heroes are wont to do naturally.

When he comes over, you remind yourself to remain cordial but businesslike, despite your heart pounding hard in your chest. Nothing happened. Nothing changed. No clones or any lingering delusions can change that.

”I think we’ve accounted for everyone, right? These two -“ you gesture over to the people you’ve slightly sedated to reset a couple of broken limbs, “probably need to get to the hospital just so they have follow-up but it’s not urgent.”

Rampage nods, and Izuku pauses before doing the same. You remember now - the last time you interacted in this capacity was during the earliest parts of the war before things had gotten far out of your realm of ability and you were more helpful taking care of the sick and wounded. It feels like so long ago you’ve been active as a traditional Hero. Rampage on the other hand has kept in contact with Deku cursorily due to her familiarity with other Heroes of a similar level, particularly the noisy one named Dynamight, and while she and Deku are not exactly best friends, they get along well. He glances at her for reassurance before stepping forward to you.

“Thank you for helping out,” Izuku says with a reassuring smile. You try not to look at him when you reply, “Of course.”

In one universe, you have small children that look like some combination of the both of you. In this one, you can barely look each other in the eye.

There is a pause that lasts a little bit too long again, and you don’t notice the smile that forms on Rampage’s face as she steps backwards, hoping not to be noticed by either of you, but the moment dispels when Camilla, your Support friend, calls for all of your attention from across the destroyed hall. She looks absolutely ridiculous, enough that you stifle a laugh, with all manners of cutlery, jewelry, watches, phones, and anything metal, stuck to her from head to toe due to activation of her magnetic quirk.

”Anything you guys are missing?” She asks, stepping over rubble to meet you guys. You’re not sure how she can even see at this point with nearly every inch of her body covered. Close behind her is Akira, whose eyes widen once he spots you.

”You’re okay!” He exclaims running towards you. It’s almost theatrical, as if he hadn’t disappeared to preserve his own safety first, but he wraps you into a tight hug, as though you were long lost lovers. Next to you, Izuku stiffens for a split second, something Rampage and Camilla both notice, and Akira holds you at arms’ length, pretending he can’t see him.

Akira never liked Deku very much in high school.

”I’m so glad you’re okay, everything got so terrifying and…”

Your head is starting to pound, and Akira is gently pulling you away from the rest of the group, you notice, until Izuku speaks up.

”Hey, ___, you don’t look so good.” His voice is a little firmer, and he clears his throat. “Don’t move her so much, I think she needs to sit down.”

Akira flashes him a look that’s slightly poisonous, Camilla notices, then smiles to herself.

“Of course. I’ve just been agitated since our date got ruined, that’s all.” Akira stresses the word and Rampage rolls her eyes.

She never liked him either.

Izuku almost asks ‘what number?’ out loud then realizes it’s an insane question to ask of the thousands he could have reasonably asked. But he’s curious, you don’t seem like you’re particularly smitten enough by him as he tries to help lower you to a sitting position.

The paramedics and other reinforcements are starting to fill in. Izuku keeps an eye on you as he coordinates with Rampage and the rest of the Heroes that now arrive to clean up wreckage and get everyone back in place. Akira’s rubbing your shoulders while you look dazed, too drained in the absence of your energy-conserving Hero suit to shrug him off, and it irks him. Somehow, in just seeing you again for this brief moment, he’s become a high schooler again, thinking of the right words to say, standing in front of your dorm room door before giving up and leaving. He’s seventeen again and watching you poorly conceal a bouquet of flowers he wishes he were the one to give you, avoiding cutting through the grass on the UA campus grounds even though it would get you back faster. He’s eighteen and wondering why even saving the world isn’t enough to make you look at him before you part ways into the adult world that opens before you, and admonishing himself for even having the selfish thought.

He’s shy little Izuku and he wishes you liked him back.

“Deku, do you have a moment to talk with us?” a cheery reporter says, thrusting a microphone in his face. They’re everywhere, he swears, prettier and more persistent every time. He’s polite again, flashing the practiced million-watt-smile.

And just like that he’s Deku, the hero once again.

—

Electrolyte water and rest does its magic, and as you make breakfast the next morning, you wonder if you should consider packing part of your suit with you, or at least perhaps just the gauntlets that you used back in high school. A modified version that is compact and can slip into your purse so that you never find yourself in a similar situation. You’re greeted the next morning by text by an apologetic Akira who promises you sushi another weekend, which you decide to reply to later, and texts from your friends who make sure that you’re okay, and an email notification for an incident report due in the next two weeks.

You sigh.

That’s why you don’t do Hero work.

Scooping eggs onto a slice of toast, you settle onto your couch, snuggling close with a body pillow and wishing your mind would stop racing for a moment. You don’t want to admit it, but all you can think about is Izuku and his stupid handsome face, and the way his mouth seemed to part every time you met each other's eyes, as if he has a million and one things to say to you but has to hold back. You wish he’d go make those cloying eyes at everyone lined up for his interest. There’s no real claim to him after all, at least not in this universe, regardless of what supposedly exists in the multiverse. You don’t even know if that’s real after all; it’s something that absolutely disrespects the laws of physics, but then again, you know many people whose Quirks do. Aizawa’s adopted daughter Eri is the first to come to mind.

You should do some more research, you decide.

After spending a couple hours on databases and online medical journals researching the existence of Quirks that can interact with the multiverse, you come up with nearly nothing, save for a case report of a person whose Quirk kept generating a wormhole for him that handed him whatever tool he needed (most often chopsticks for some reason). Groaning, you decide Kazuo is unique and either way you’ll see him again in 3 months, and reassess how he’s doing, possibly get a (better) case report out of it. You wonder if he’ll generate the same set of clones, or hopefully a new set of clones, ones who aren’t romantically entangled with Izuku Midoriya, ones more like you who never cared much for him at all, or at least knew, like you, to back off when they saw him standing on the edge of a cliff with the girl who was made for him.

Maybe if you look at the narratives your clones wrote to you, crumpled in a drawer in the corner of your desk, you’d find some flaws. Perhaps this was all a big trick the universe was playing on you, and feelings sitting in your subconscious, sleeping for practically a decade, are now flooding back with a vengeance. It must be the power of suggestion. You do not love him. You do not even particularly like or dislike him. You feel neutral. Neutral is good.

The narratives don’t help. What also doesn’t help is the fact that you’ve stored them in the same place as you keep all other sentimental material, including a diary you kept sparingly since you were a kid, in addition to letters from friends and family, and trinkets you’re afraid to lose. Curiosity has killed many cats and you, so you pore through it as well. Everything in that period of adolescence is amplified, and you went through war, so of course you remember a strong feeling of love that might not be real and should not be held on to.

The diary doesn’t help either.

Of course, some entries are silly and whimsical like you’d expect from a young teen. Excerpts about friends, family, teachers that annoy you, celebrities you think are cute. You find remnants of an old crush on Suneater that must have been so short-lived you can’t remember it, and it surprises you.

And then there’s your thoughts about Izuku, sparse but poignant.

Oh yes, you were in love, and your entries end there. With war, with adulthood, with the life you have now.

#izuku x reader #izuku midoriya x reader #mimi's notes #mimi writes: arltl #daydreams: bnha

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zingaplanet · 7 months

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If you think about Federer and Nadal's unique sort of friendship and how it managed to lasts this long it's actually very bizzarre.

Apart from the fact that they're the unlikeliest of friends, ditto they're actual sworn enemies who have very little in common from the beginning (that's the whole premise of their rivalry), perhaps what's more fascinating is not how they kinda grew to have more in common and actually found they relate to each other a lot as they got older but also how much effort they put into creating and maintaining this relationship that they could've easily done without.

If I realised anything recently, especially after their retirement (or soon-to-come retirement) from professional sport, it's a bond that is nurtured as much as it is naturally grown and for no discernible logical reason. It's arguably good PR of course, two big rivals getting along when they're still competing and certainly plays a lot in landing the 'nice guy' image for both, but conflict and troubles are equally if not more, great PR as well, just look at Michael Jordan and his rivals. Or perhaps it was simply the 'gentlemanlike' nature of tennis that wouldn't tolerate this kind of behaviour and they're aware of this, or perhaps it's a simpler answer.

What's interesting is they seem to almost subject themselves willingly to this situation of friendliness and cordial relationship that they couldn't easily get out of, it's evident in the very beginning of their relationship for instance. It's true that after 2017 they did grow closer seemingly more naturally (with Federer experiencing injuries as Nadal has felt many times before, and them relating more to each other near the end of their careers), but before that? It was a remarkable effort. Nobody ever forced them to get along but they went out of their way to do it, and it's not as if it was ever 'easy'.

They did get good things about it in the media of course, like always having each other to rely on for their foundations' charity matches, etc., but it's also very precarious, as is expected. It's obvious that they've had fallouts, 2011 is one, perhaps no little frustration nor jealousy, and disagreement over the sports' politics. This is on top of facing each other in their favourite tournament finals every year. The truth is, they could, simply not bother - tennis is their world but it's not centred just around them. 2011 to 2020 at least, is a four-edged sword between the big 4, but you don't really see both of them making this much effort with Novak, Andy, or any of their big rivals.

Nadal and Federer obviously talked it out and made up their differences over the 2011 dispute in private, or else they would not have agreed to rejoin the players' council together. Nadal even apologised for making this disagreement too public. Federer could easily not come to Nadal's academy inauguration, and Nadal could simply rejected the Match in Africa and Laver Cup proposals (which he tried his best to fit into his busy schedule despite protests from his team). Novak, for instance, approached this rivalry he had with both of them in a much more detached way, always very respectful, occassionally friendly, but never really truly bordering on personal lines. He even admitted recently that he could never imagine Federer and Nadal as his friends.

I used to think that with two such complements in the world, somehow the universe would work its way to make it either blow up in pieces or come together naturally. But I realised I was wrong. The point is, it's not easy. It never has been. It's not natural nor is it inevitable closeness through time (like Nadal did with his Davis Cup teammates or Federer did with Wawrinka). They have absolutely no incentive to be friends. Federer did not have to come and open Nadal's academy, nor send congratulatory messages every year to the new graduates, Nadal did not have to leave his family to play in Federer's last match or fly all the way to South Africa. But that's why it's one of the greatest achievements in sports- that two of its biggest rivals absolutely did not have to get along, yet they did it anyway. It's a testament to their character, their sportsmanship, but above all, their immense respect for one another.

And what comes out of effort is trust. Both of them have repeatedly said that they trust each other more than anyone, Nadal said he could be open with Federer about anything including his injuries even when he's still playing, and Federer said he allowed himself to be vulnerable when he told Nadal first before everyone else about his retirement. It's very easy to find people you care about but very difficult to find one you wholly trust.

It's a valuable and meaningful bond of their own making and I can understand more now why Federer said he knew he'd still be in touch with Nadal after retirement out of all his tennis friends. Nadal's similar, now nearly completely out of the tour, he seems to not bother with anyone else in the field anymore but Federer. It's them calling each other still when there is no more tennis to discuss, no council matters to agree over. It's Federer saying "It happens, Rafa is like that" when saying their communications dwindle down every time Nadal is injured but clearly not worried about the durability of their friendship. Now, it's the effortlessness that comes after so many years of trying, it's "I know how he must've felt", it's absolute trust without complicated demands, it's being understood without having to say anything, it's the familiarity of an old friend, it's missing the old days and realising the world is moving on without them, it's accepting the present and not regretting the past, it's growing old together.

it's the feeling of simple, steady companionship, that they're in it together, always.

#I've done a lot of thinking about them recently #especially as we're changing eras and everything feels so fast #tennis is no longer the sport I grew up watching #and I can't imagine what it's like to be federer or nadal at this moment #here goes again my long reflections #sorry!#fedal #tennis #roger federer #rafael nadal

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mcflymemes · 10 months

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PROMPTS FROM HITMAN: WORLD OF ASSASSINATION * assorted dialogue from the video game, adjust as necessary

majestic, isn't it?

someone knows about us.

we received your message. loud and clear, might i add.

i dare say the possibilities are endless.

the situation... it's complicated.

this could be dangerous, and i thought you deserved to know. so... now you know.

in his own special way, he cares about you... and vice versa.

i didn't catch your name.

that's for you. keep it on you at all times.

i have seen the consequences. i have felt the cost. that's what defines me.

none of you are safe anymore.

someone's been meddling in our affairs.

that's why we're hiring you to take him down.

if it seems like a conspiracy, it probably isn't.

i hope you know what you just did.

does it matter? i was told there'd be no second chances.

anyone can kill.

get out of my sight.

they sent me here to spy on him.

don't believe everything you hear.

very well. it's your show.

look, i'm not an asshole. of course i'm concerned.

so what happens now?

you do catch on fast.

i want us to meet. your room.

all right. consider it done.

i think technology hates me.

you can't be trusted.

i have found that whoever wields the sword decides who holds the pen.

smile, [name]. your reputation is safe.

there are no second chances. not here.

maybe i'm not the only one being tested.

i read your case file. impressive work.

do you realize what kind of world you've been shaping?

i'm [name], i'll take you to your quarters.

someone likes to keep secrets.

they kept you alive because they needed you and now they don't.

that part is my job.

when we need you, we will contact you.

i don't care which of you does it. it's mandatory.

he did not, however, factor me into the equation.

you're not a superhero. they don't exist.

for sure. i'll keep an eye out.

you did well, [name], i'm proud of you.

i followed you from italy.

that... is your target.

powerful men have fallen by your hand. but by the same token, others have risen.

knowing your enemy is only half the victory.

secrets are our stock-in-trade.

shit. still no answer.

i think we could help each other.

i think i'm in. but i want to be clear on a few details.

from what i hear, you have a few of your own.

i'm not like you, in case you're wondering.

if they can bend the rules, then so can i.

that's not a name.

you know the expression "know your enemy?"

tell me. what did it feel like, taking lives?

is that why you came here? why you let us test you?

i should leave you to prepare.

are you sure about this?

i don't believe it. i took every precaution.

all agents have weak spots.

give me a chance, [name].

our team found no records of any kind. no name, nothing.

are you still determined?

may i inquire why?

at first glance, an impossible task. then again, i do know how you love a challenge.

we will be watching.

how is this our problem?

i wish i had been informed.

people die, [name]. it happens all the time, even to us.

there is no sign of forced entry. no alarms. nothing.

in the meantime, keep him under close watch.

perhaps i see possibility where others see limitation.

now you will do the same.

i play dirty. that's how you defeat a stronger opponent. you strike from behind.

well, this is just fabulous, isn't it?

good. i'll be upstairs.

this was no coincidence.

i should tell you, the trail went dead after romania.

you're making us look bad.

this is the universe's way of telling you to quit, to get out of the game while you still can.

can i offer you a drink?

i thought they were a myth.

someone's playing a game, [name]. the question is... against whom?

we can't allow ourselves to be manipulated.

so... what are we actually doing here?

i just pulled some strings.

i thought that was the point?

i will take full responsibility.

vary your strategy. improvise.

i can't believe we beat him at his own game.

his death will not be investigated.

i know you don't care about politics.

i guess when you're invisible, you stop looking over your shoulder.

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robininthelabyrinth · 8 months

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The Other Mountain - ao3 - Chapter 20

Pairing: Lan Qiren/Wen Ruohan

Warning Tags on Ao3

———————————————————————-

If there was one thing Wen Ruohan understood, it was patience.

After a hundred years and more, such a thing was inevitable. When he’d been young, he had been more impetuous, full of his Wen sect’s reckless arrogance, but even then he had been a little different from his brothers, who always rushed around from here to there, from secret plot to clever stratagem and back again without rest. Perhaps it had been the oddity of his earliest life experience that had first taught him the value of waiting, his family’s betrayal in the face of the Lan sect’s wrath having forced him to learn to rely only on himself to survive, and with that the painstaking slowness that came with doing things on his own. That lesson had been reinforced over the years, as his enemies had faded and he had not, as he outlasted first his own generation and then the next.

He'd never liked it, though.

He liked it still less now, when the waiting felt less like anticipation and more like helplessness.

That was simply contrary to the way the world was supposed to work. He was Wen Ruohan, the nearest thing the cultivation world had to a god, capable of moving armies with a flick of his sleeve; he was never helpless. Even when he faced a reversal of fortune, it was only ever temporary, a momentary upset, something to be incorporated into his schemes and paid back out later with interest. He was so incredibly powerful, both personally and politically – who or what in this world would dare to cause him to feel incapable of doing anything but worrying…?

Lan Qiren, of course. Who else?

That, he supposed bitterly, was the downside of having someone that he – that he cared for. It hadn’t really occurred to him before. He’d been too distracted by his pleasure at the notion of a genuine equal, someone who he could trust and be trusted by in turn, someone who would, as Lan Qiren had once so quaintly put it in his rules, be a partner to his wife, as his wife would be his…

No, it had been if, hadn’t it? If your wife will be yours.

Wen Ruohan hadn’t exactly been a very good partner to Lan Qiren.

Really, the only thing he disliked more than waiting and helplessness was guilt. There was a reason Wen Ruohan generally held himself above such petty emotions, and also, if he were willing to admit it to himself, a reason he’d reacted quite so badly to the notion that he had erred and erred so badly. His vanity generally did not permit him to dwell too long on such things, preferring to reorder the universe into one where everything was acceptable and nothing was actually his fault. It was just that, in the present situation, his conduct had been quite so egregiously wrong that it was making it a little more difficult than usual to readjust his perspective.

Wen Ruohan chuckled humorlessly.

No, he had to admit it: he was wrong, he had been wrong, and now, as a result of his own actions, he was forced to stand aside and wait while Lan Qiren, unsteady and already shaken, went on alone to face a man he had lost to in every prior encounter. The plan they had put together was completely reasonable, absolutely the most optimal way of countering everything Qingheng-jun had put together against them, but that didn’t mean Wen Ruohan liked it.

Just like he hadn’t liked it when he’d seen Lan Qiren like that.

Normally, Wen Ruohan enjoyed torture. He would hardly have refashioned the Fire Palace as he had if he didn’t – pain excited him, intrigued him, pulled him out of the dull boredom of the everyday and made him feel alive again. He enjoyed the sight of mangled flesh, enjoyed the workings of his clever machines, enjoyed the humiliation and enjoyed the screams. He enjoyed the way that those that survived were transformed by the experience, learning the meaning of fear and the meaning of shame, cringing away from this and from that, the monkey having been bitten by the snake learning to fear the rope…

Seeing the same in Lan Qiren made him want to obliterate the Fire Palace.

Lan Qiren’s torment hadn’t been as bad as it could have been, at least, and Wen Ruohan hated that he had to be thankful to his own subordinates’ disobedience for that. Lan Qiren hadn’t been maimed or crippled in any permanent way, hadn’t been shamed in some unspeakable fashion, hadn’t been broken – but he hadn’t been all right, either. When Wen Ruohan had returned to the Nightless City to see Lan Qiren standing there, expression as blank as a featureless stone, with circles under his reddened eyes and fingerprints of blood on his forehead ribbon, marked by what he later discovered were his own still-bleeding fingers…

It was as if all that beautiful arrogance that Wen Ruohan had spent so long helping Lan Qiren build up had been washed away, leaving nothing behind but the dull façade that he had been deceived by for so many years. It was a waste; it was a shame; It was – it was appalling.

Seeing it, Wen Ruohan had felt no pleasure, the way he usually did from seeing others hurting. There was no enjoyment to be had in Lan Qiren’s pain, no feeling of achievement, just – just –

(He gave his sons to you? Lan Qiren cried out, the memory playing again and again. To you?)

Just the knowledge that whatever benefit of the doubt Lan Qiren had previously extended to Wen Ruohan on account of their marriage was gone, he supposed. That whatever hope Wen Ruohan might have had of something better than he’d ever had before, a hope he might not even have wholly realized or acknowledged that he’d had, had been killed and buried with his own two hands.

And now, rather than try to repair it, rather than apologize or grovel or demand or explain or beg or do anything that he could think of to try to make it up somehow, he was here.

Waiting.

Their plan was sound, if risky. The lynchpin of Qingheng-jun’s plan as they had deduced it was the natural disaster, without which he could not drag the Lan sect into complicity and destructive guilt, but reasonably speaking they wouldn’t be able to stop the disaster without finding the core array, which could be anywhere – only Qingheng-jun knew where. Therefore, Lan Qiren would go to find his brother and try to convince him to take him along, counting on Qingheng-jun’s cruelty and hatred of him to overwhelm his good sense; once he had found the core array, he would set off a flare as a signal, and Wen Ruohan would come to his side at once, both to destroy the array and to prevent Qingheng-jun from attacking Lan Qiren. Even if he no longer trusted the word of his Lan sect spies, Wen Ruohan was still confident that he would easily be able to defeat Qingheng-jun in battle, even after the man’s ten years of secluded cultivation.

It was a good plan, a sound plan, and indeed the only possible plan. Lan Qiren had even agreed that he would try to let off the flare early if he thought Qingheng-jun posed a danger to his life or well-being, even if he hadn’t found the core array yet.

Wen Ruohan had pretended to believe him.

Of course, they weren’t foolish enough to rely entirely on Lan Qiren’s chance of success.

Cangse Sanren had headed off to Xixiang, planning to take advantage of Qingheng-jun’s hoped-for absence – and his distraction by Lan Qiren, if all went as they hoped – to try to convince the Lan sect to move their encampment away from the area near the mine. She’d reasoned, quite correctly, that if the Lan sect weren’t there, they would be less likely to be attacked by the ghosts in the mine and therefore less likely to blame themselves even if the mountain collapsed. Lan Qiren had initially objected to her focusing her efforts there on the grounds that it would do nothing to reduce the loss of innocent life from the disaster, but he’d yielded quickly enough when she’d pointed out that it would at a minimum prevent additional loss of life among the equally innocent Gusu Lan disciples through guilt and devastation.

Personally, Wen Ruohan thought it was an ingenious counterplay, threatening to rip out the heart of Qingheng-jun’s real goal. More importantly, if Cangse Sanren could pull it off, it would save Lan Qiren’s sect - which was Lan Qiren’s primary goal - and in so doing save Lan Qiren himself. As long as that was done and Lan Qiren’s safety was assured, who cared about the disaster…? Natural disasters happened, people died, it wasn’t their problem.

As for how Cangse Sanren planned to get the Lan sect to get up and leave…

(“Oh, please,” Cangse Sanren chuckled. “This is Gusu Lan we’re talking about, the sect of Do not tell lies. Tricking them will be a snap, easier than catching fish in a barrel… No, don’t glare at me like that, Qiren-gege, you know it’s true.”

“Moving an entire encampment is hardly a small undertaking,” Wen Ruohan pointed out. “They won’t do something like that just because someone asks politely. What is your actual plan?”

“Oh, I’ll think of something.” She grinned. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll tell them that they need to move as soon as possible because my master, Baoshan Sanren, is planning to park her celestial mountain there.”

A few moments of silence.

“No one would believe that,” Lan Qiren said flatly. “Or if they did, it would rapidly be disproven.”

“I don’t need them to believe me for very long,” Cangse Sanren said, unruffled. “I just need them to believe me long enough to move. We can worry about the rest later.”)

Indeed, We can worry about the rest later made up a considerable portion of their plan.

For his part, Wen Ruohan had assigned himself two tasks in addition to waiting for Lan Qiren’s signal.

First, there was the matter of the brewing war – while dealing with the disaster and the threat to the Lan sect was of necessity their first goal, they wouldn’t be able to act freely in the region if there was a war being fought at the same time. Not to mention the likely risk posed to any cultivators who were in the midst of battle when the disaster struck, especially if they weren’t good at or even incapable of flying away on their swords; Wen Ruohan might not care too much about the impact on his enemies, but he certainly cared about his soldiers, and Lan Qiren and Cangse Sanren were concerned about anyone innocent who might be in harm’s way.

That meant, of course, that they had to find a way to stop the war.

Since they’d decided that they couldn’t risk waiting for the rest of Wen Ruohan’s army to finish mobilizing, choosing instead to rush back towards Xixiang with the hope that the army would not take too long to catch up, Wen Ruohan had, on the way there, devised a plan to put an end to the war using only the single battalion he already had in place.

It was, he could say without false modesty, an absolutely brilliant plan. Moreover, it was a plan that was very characteristic of him, and something only he and his Wen sect could pull off.

When he’d explained, it had made Lan Qiren sigh loudly in exasperation and Cangse Sanren laugh so hard that she’d needed to sit down on her sword.

The plan consisted of dividing his battalion into small squadrons, each one led by a single captain, each captain entrusted with a special mission. The squadrons would all scatter throughout the area, using the cover of night and the forested hills to disguise their actions. Each one would separately and simultaneously approach one of the local sects, forgoing all subtlety. In each instance, the squadron captain would swagger up to the local sect’s front gate, shameless and arrogant in the inimitable style of the Wen sect, introduce themselves as the head of the entire Wen battalion, and offer the local sect the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to join Qishan Wen in a temporary alliance to overcome and conquer all the other sects in the area.

Which was to say – the chance to effectively stab all of their most annoying neighbors in the back.

(“And because each of them will think that my entire battalion is sitting on their doorstep, none of them will dare refuse outright, even if they don’t want to accept the offer,” he explained. Cangse Sanren had been hooting like an owl by that point, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes, while Lan Qiren had put one hand up to cover his eyes as soon as he’d first figured out where Wen Ruohan was going with his proposal and not removed it since – he seemed to be pretending that he couldn’t hear him, or perhaps that he didn’t know him. “In any event, they will have to stop taking any other action until they figure out their next move. Which will involve summoning and conferring with their elders, reaching a decision, planning a negotiation strategy…”

“And if no one makes any moves because your captains are all stalling them to the best of their ability, then there is functionally speaking no war for us to worry about,” Lan Qiren agreed. His voice was extremely dry. “At least until the other Great Sects’ forces arrive. Or until someone gets the bright idea of checking to see what everyone else is doing.”

“But no one will doubt the offer long enough to check,” Cangse Sanren hiccupped. “After all, no one can match the Wen sect for sincerity when it comes to treachery. Amazing!”)

Wen Ruohan had already accomplished that part of his plan. They had split up as soon as they’d arrived back in the area – Lan Qiren had already been gone for some time, Cangse Sanren for only a little less time than that, but army discipline meant that Wen Ruohan had been able to summon the captains and give them the necessary instructions relatively quickly. He had done so, and they had scattered at once, and although he’d had no time or to receive reports on their progress, he still had eyes. Around half a shichen ago, he’d started to observe significantly fewer visible movements in the surrounding area – no more sects activating their defenses, no squadrons of sect cultivators flying from place to place, and certainly no more skirmishes. Even straining his ears, he could not hear the clash of sword upon sword from anywhere in the region.

That was that for the war, at least for now.

As Lan Qiren had correctly noted, the stratagem only bought them time, since Wen Ruohan would not be able to similarly trick the other Great Sects, and no matter how much his captains tried to draw out negotiations – asking to be treated to dinner, insisting on looking over the local sect’s fighting strength, nitpicking a potential agreement, that sort of thing – eventually one of the local sects would choose to either agree or reject the offer. At that point, the bluff would be revealed, and the war would be back on, with his Wen sect very much in the middle of it all.

We can worry about the rest later, as Cangse Sanren had put it. Wen Ruohan could only hope that the rest of his army would arrive by then. He’d told them to hurry.

At any rate, once he’d completed that first task, Wen Ruohan had gone to ground at the edges of the mine at the base of the mountain, careful to avoid encountering anyone else. He’d followed the lengthy and irrationally laid out tunnels until he was as close as possible to the water – the poisoning of the local water source being by far the biggest threat from the disaster – then started walking slowly along the shoreline, breaking the enhancement arrays beneath his feet as he went, at all times still keeping an eye on the horizon for any sign of Lan Qiren’s signal flare. That was his second self-assigned task: to destroy as many of the arrays as possible in advance, so that should Lan Qiren fail in his mission, the effects of the disaster would be minimized.

(Lan Qiren had smiled when Wen Ruohan had announced that part of his plan. It had been very brief, the slightest curve appearing and then gone, easily missed, but it had been there.)

Unfortunately, the work was about what Wen Ruohan had expected: exceedingly tedious and exceptionally futile. He was both extraordinarily powerful and a master of arrays, able to interpret and pinpoint weaknesses in the ones he saw almost immediately and to act upon those weaknesses nearly as quickly – he could break three or even four in the time it took to drink a cup of tea, a truly staggering rate. Most cultivators that boasted themselves array masters would take that entire time to break just one, and a cultivator unfamiliar with arrays would need even longer.

Despite that, his progress was painfully slow. Qingheng-jun had had months to prepare, and it seemed that he had made full use of that time – there were hundreds of enhancement arrays in place, many generated through the application of talismans that he’d undoubtedly had his Lan sect disciples create, and any number of them had been cleverly supplied with alarms designed to alert the maker should there be any tampering. Naturally Wen Ruohan did not allow such a thing, disabling the alarm first and then the array, but that took even more time. And while he had had the wisdom not to mention it to the others, he knew that merely breaking the arrays was only an act of hope, not necessarily a surefire means of reducing the damage.

The real damage would be caused by the breaking of the suppression arrays through the initial activation and, eventually, by the landslide that would be caused by full activation – and neither of those relied on every single one of the arrays being intact, the way a large-scale spell might. Even if only a small handful of arrays remained, provided that they were in the right places, both effects could still be triggered…

No, truly preventing the disaster depended entirely on Lan Qiren.

On whether he could stop his brother – whether he could stop any of it.

Of course, there was also the problem of what to do with the mine and the ghosts, which they hadn’t fully settled. Lan Qiren had been adamant that whoever was involved in the Lan sect needed to face punishment, a notion to which Wen Ruohan hardly objected, but they had all agreed that to the extent it was possible to restrict knowledge of that punishment and the cause of it to the Lan sect, that would be preferable. Each sect had its own dirty laundry – and, yes, the Wen sect more than most, Wen Ruohan had to concede that undeniable truth – and there was simply nothing good about establishing a precedent of airing it for public consumption. There was still the Lan sect’s dignity to consider, not to mention the inheritance of Lan Qiren’s nephews, who were now also his nephews. It wasn’t just the Lan sect, either, but all the Great Sects: Wen Ruohan was as invested as anyone in making sure that the small sects did not band together in opposition and condemnation of their more powerful brethren.

Unfortunately, whether it would be possible to convince Qingheng-jun to keep quiet about the mine was very much an open question. For that matter, whether it would be possible to keep the ghosts from spilling the beans was equally in question – as Lan Qiren himself so often taught, the orthodox approach was for cultivators to first question and seek to liberate, and only later to suppress and eradicate. While the method practiced varied from sect to sect, every cultivator worth their salt had some means of communicating with upset spirits.

Well, again: worry about the rest later.

Wen Ruohan was considering proposing that Lan Qiren adopt that as a new rule for his collection. It’d probably make the other man make a face at him – which at least would be some sort of reaction –

Where was Lan Qiren, anyway? The core array could be anywhere within a very large space, to be sure, but there were still limits, and anyway Qingheng-jun couldn’t just up and abandon his sect in the middle of an offensive war he himself had proposed, planned, and launched. The array had to be somewhere nearby. Lan Qiren should have found him by now.

Lan Qiren should have signaled by now.

Wen Ruohan scowled and snapped the next array with somewhat more violence than strictly required.

It was rather maddening, all these thoughts and feelings. He had long ago started wondering if he would not be better off without them entirely – there were books he had found, ancient forbidden texts that detailed the heartless way, cutting off your emotions and achieving perfect clarity of purpose. It was said that being bound to worldly matters dragged you down, so theoretically if he followed that way and severed his emotions, he might grow even more powerful than he was now. He might even at last take that final half-step and achieve divinity, his long-sought-after dream, second only to his desire to master the cultivation world. Certainly he would never again be tied down by this – this dreadful feeling, this weakness, this sensation of his well-being being bound to another person against his will, of it being dependent on another person…

On the other hand, he would also probably have to give up sex, and he liked sex.

He liked Lan Qiren, too.

It was so frustrating. Lan Qiren was an endless mix of contradictions, confusing in the extreme: he was boring and he was fascinating, dull and brilliant in equal measure. He had a strange sense of humor beneath his severity, and he was wholly sincere in his pedantry. He was naturally ascetic, but still stubbornly refused to give up on that which he enjoyed, with duty being the only thing that would stop him. He genuinely sought to hold himself to each and every one of those ridiculous sect rules that he valued so highly, and by and large he succeeded, though there were certainly some he adhered to better than others – do not succumb to rage came to mind as a notable exception. And yet he also possessed certain wicked qualities that his sect would likely not approve of: he had not been playing the martyr when he had offered Wen Ruohan his pain, had enjoyed every moment, and he had been equally serious about his offer to pay Wen Ruohan’s threats back in kind, taking visible delight in tormenting Wen Ruohan in turn; he had called it mutually consensual sadism, and Wen Ruohan had to admit that the term seemed to fit.

Lan Qiren loved order, hated change, but willingly wielded chaos like a weapon.

He lacked social graces, lacked understanding of others, but had learned to play politics with the best.

He, like everyone, knew better than to trust Wen Ruohan. He’d chosen to do so anyway.

He had turned Wen Ruohan’s world upside down.

And Wen Ruohan…Wen Ruohan had made a mistake in choosing not to trust him in turn.

That was the real mistake he’d made, the one that no amount of face-saving explanations or distortions could dismiss. Anyone could be fooled by a good trick or an excellent spy, but Wen Ruohan could have foiled all their tricks if only he had been willing to hear Lan Qiren out. If only he had truly been as indifferent to betrayal as he’d taken himself to be…or if, given that he could not be indifferent where Lan Qiren was concerned, he had at least decided to take a chance on Lan Qiren’s good faith, which had never failed him yet. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t done that.

He had been wrong.

Simply, truly, unquestionably wrong.

And perhaps he really had ruined everything. Perhaps Lan Qiren really would now forever react to him with fear rather than joy, with suspicion rather than trust; perhaps there was nothing that could ever be done to fix it. Perhaps instead of living in the palace of heaven, he would live only in its ruins, seeing at every moment the shape of what could have been and the disappointing reality that remained in its place – and know that it was his fault that it was that way.

Well, if so, so be it. He was Wen Ruohan, was he not?

He had achieved things that others only dreamed of. He had outlived his brothers, taken his sect’s seat of power, conquered half the cultivation world – he had lived beyond a single human lifetime, breaking the shackles of time and seizing eternity in the palm of his hand, bending it to his will. There were things he could do that others couldn’t, but there wasn’t anything others could do that he could not.

Other people had survived a self-inflicted broken heart. So would he.

Especially since unlike most of them, he still had Lan Qiren. Lan Qiren was his. Lan Qiren had sworn it, had given him his oath and his vows, and Lan Qiren did not tell lies.

Wen Ruohan was going to find a way to fix things between them, or at least improve them, no matter what it took.

He was going to…

He was going to go kill someone if Lan Qiren didn’t use his fucking flare already.

It should have come by now. He should have seen it by now. They had been concerned that Qingheng-jun would find a way to disable the flare if he saw it, so Lan Qiren had both a primary and a back-up; the flares were resistant to damage, spiritual energy, and even water. Wen Ruohan had checked their solidity himself, and in cultivation, at least, he did not make mistakes.

Something was wrong.

If Qingheng-jun dared to lay a hand on Lan Qiren…

There was an extremely faint crackling sound, paper and powder whispering as it lit up in flame, the recognizable sound of a flare about to go off – at last! Wen Ruohan turned his head at once, eyes eagerly scanning the horizon, looking, hoping…but no.

It was a flare, but it was Gusu Lan’s cloud sigil, not his Wen sect’s sun. That was Cangse Sanren’s signal, as she’d promised, coming from well across the valley – she’d gotten the Lan sect to move, then, somehow. Hopefully they hadn’t actually fallen for her nonsense about the celestial mountain, as that would be just too ridiculous…

Still, that was good.

With the Lan sect out of the way, a core part of Qingheng-jun’s plan would not be able to come to fruition. If the Lan sect wasn’t there, the ghastly morality play Qingheng-jun had concocted wouldn’t be able to move ahead: the ghosts would not attack them, they would not counter-attack the ghosts, and they would not find themselves seemingly at fault for a great disaster.

Lan Qiren’s unstated threat would not come to pass.

He hadn’t meant it as a threat, Wen Ruohan knew. He had intended for it to be merely a statement of fact, but it was a threat nonetheless, and Wen Ruohan always took threats seriously. He wasn’t going to let Lan Qiren out of his grasp by any means, by any method, and he certainly wasn’t about to let the man die of grief or suicide because his sect had been destroyed.

No – it was good that Cangse Sanren had succeeded. It meant that their plan was working.

Only…if she’d succeeded, that meant Qingheng-jun definitely couldn’t be with the Lan sect now. And that meant that he had to be somewhere else. Presumably by the core array. Presumably with Lan Qiren. Who still hadn’t given out the signal –

What if something really had gone wrong? What if Lan Qiren wasn’t sending the flare because he couldn’t, because Qingheng-jun had somehow immobilized him or hurt him or driven him to that qi deviation he had been narrowly avoiding? What if Qingheng-jun became angry upon finding out that the Lan sect was no longer where he needed it to be and tried to take it out on him? What if…

Wen Ruohan’s ears were extraordinarily sensitive.

All of his senses were. His high level of cultivation had sharpened them to an extreme, to the point that he often spent a fair amount of passive strength just to dull them back to something normal lest he lose his mind. He had deliberately lifted his efforts at suppression now in his attempt to spot the signal he was waiting for as quickly as possible, using the eyes of an eagle and the ears of a bat to track all the elements of his surroundings – or, well, at least the specific sounds he was looking for, since trying to listen to something more general, like human speech or even familiar human speech, would be liable to deafen him. In this case he was listening for a flare, or something like it, and that had been the reason he had been able to identify Cangse Sanren’s signal from the infinitesimal sound of its ignition, well before the light of the firework had even started to spread out into the characteristic cloud shape.

He heard something now.

It was an even smaller sound than the flare. It was not unlike the sound of a small bit of gravel hitting the ground – quieter than a whisper, softer even than the faint sound of wind gently brushing over the grass. It was so quiet, so faint, that most people wouldn’t have heard it, and so innocuous that most people wouldn’t pay it any mind even if they did hear it.

But Wen Ruohan was not most people. He knew that sound.

It was the sound of an array activating.

And it wasn’t just the sound of initial activation, the moment an array began to fill with spiritual energy in order to prime it for later work. It was full activation: spiritual energy starting to flood through each of the enhancement arrays simultaneously, causing the complex machinery of the array to start to work at once, kicking off the spell that underlaid its workings, the array inexorably pushing forward to fulfill its purpose – like setting a great wheel rolling downhill.

Like setting off an unstoppable avalanche.

Qingheng-jun had activated the core array, just as they’d feared. Only, presumably realizing that his plan to destroy the Lan sect’s heart was no longer viable, he hadn’t chosen to activate it in two parts, but rather, all at once.

Wen Ruohan looked up at the mountain.

Before his eyes, the mountain shook.

The redirection arrays tried their utmost to twist the pathways of the tunnels within the mine the way they might twist a riverbed. The mountain, made of stone rather than silt, began, with a terrible grinding sound that grew into an even more terrible roar, to shift upon its base.

The tunnels within the mine began to collapse. Stone fell, destabilizing other stone, which in turn fell on top of it to take its place. The heavens themselves seemed to shudder as the mountain swayed, seeking to regain its stable footing…and then the grinding sound, which had come from deep within the tunnels below, faded, only to be replaced by a sound that was far more terrifying: the cracking sound of rocks splitting, coming from above.

The mountain’s summit was coming apart.

A landslide was about to begin.

Wen Ruohan was at that precise moment standing at the base of the mountain, right in the path of the upcoming destruction. He was no longer especially close to the reservoir, his winding walk along the tunnels having taken him further away from there. It seemed that he had destroyed enough of the arrays near there that the effects of activation were slightly muted, as he had barely dared to hope – the cracks in the summit were mostly focused on the other side of the mountain, such that the landslide would come tumbling down directly upon the prosperous little towns at the base of the mountain rather than falling into the reservoir that they relied upon.

That was good. The loss of life in the towns would be considerable, yes, but there would be no taint to the water supply, provided that the corpses from the town were cleaned up with relative swiftness. Assuming the common people here were supplied with sufficient silver in recompense, the local county would be able to rebuild itself within a few years, rather than having to wait a decade or more until the water was clear once again.

It wasn’t what they’d hoped for, especially Lan Qiren, but it was at least something, wasn’t it?

Wen Ruohan had done his best. It was not his fault that Lan Qiren had failed in his mission – he had succeeded in his own, both in averting the war to remove any innocent cultivators from the area and in destroying enough of the arrays to minimize the damage caused by the landslide. He had done what he had promised to do. He needed only to take to the air on his sword and he could watch the destruction from a place of safety, satisfied in having done what he could.

He could even use the time to go searching for Lan Qiren, who was undoubtedly even now in dire straits. Lan Qiren cared so much about righteousness and the preservation of innocent life, no matter the cost; he would never have willingly allowed Qingheng-jun to set off the array.

That was what Wen Ruohan should do.

That was not what Wen Ruohan did do.

Instead, he lifted up his hands and summoned every iota of spiritual energy he had ever possessed, pulling it all into the space between his palms and using it to call forth the most terrible weapon he had ever invented.

Wen Ruohan had discovered it decades before in a moment of idle experimentation, and he had nearly killed himself in the process. He’d noticed that his arrays were invariably less powerful the greater the area he tried to spread them over, so he’d started playing around in the other direction, miniaturizing his arrays, trying to see how small and pinpoint an area he could affect with any level of precision, and then going beyond even that. In fact, he had been right: making something smaller made it more powerful, and by an exponential degree, and when you then pulled the smaller out to become larger once more, all sorts of strange effects took place. Delighted by his discovery, he’d gone further and further and further, until he had discovered this.

He called it the black sun.

It wasn’t, of course. If anything, it was the opposite of a sun, a great gaping void of nothing but yin energy, cold and ruthless, sucking everything into its immeasurable belly, endlessly insatiable; if his own cultivation style hadn’t been so heavily yang, merely being in contact with it would have done him permanent damage. It was this power that warped his surroundings whenever he let even a little bit of it loose – he had never before brought it out in public as anything larger than the smallest grain of rice, and even just that had been enough to knock half the cultivators in the cultivation world to their knees back at the Lotus Pier, a magnificent display of his power.

He summoned more than that now. He needed more than that, now, if he was going to do this thing.

This incredibly stupid thing.

What are you doing, he raged at himself even as he pulled forth the black sun, first as a grain of rice, then as a grain of barley, then slowly, painfully, growing it to the size of a cherry, the sheer impossible force of maintaining it wracking his body with agony. You could just fly away! Why have you chosen instead to do the impossible, like some madman surnamed Jiang? No man can fight a mountain and win!

That was inescapably true.

But he might be able to fight it just long enough to keep the worst of the landslide from hitting the towns.

There was really no point to what he was doing. The people in the towns beneath the mountain weren’t cultivators, unless some unfortunate soul had decided to go to ground there to wait out the war. It certainly didn’t contain any member of his Wen sect, which he cared about, and he’d already seen Cangse Sanren’s confirmation that the Lan sect, which Lan Qiren cared about, was no longer anywhere in the vicinity. That meant that there was no benefit to saving the town, no gain, nothing he’d get out of it. It wasn’t a night-hunt and he wasn’t fighting evil, so he wouldn’t even win fame, except perhaps for being even more insane than he was already said to be.

There was no point.

There was no reason for him to do what he was doing.

Except only that Lan Qiren would want him to.

Wen Ruohan gritted his teeth as the first massive chunks of rock began to tumble down the mountainside, only to be obliterated by his black sun – not even ripped into pieces, but ripped apart, utterly destroyed, turning at once into dust that floated away with the wind. The earth under his feet was being warped by the pressure that wrapped all around him, the wind starting to scream loudly as it passed him by, being sucked into the black sun in his hands.

More and more rocks began to slide down.

A cherry would not be enough. He drew in more power, pushing the boundaries further than he had ever taken them before, not even in his most private and carefully guarded experiments.

The wind around him screamed.

The warping effect was getting larger: the earth beneath him was hollowing out, a sunken crater steadily forming around him as the sheer weight pulled him down, and above him the very clouds were bending their heads towards him as if to salute his achievement. Mist began to fill the valley as their vapor slithered downwards, drawn in by the force of his power.

The black sun was now the size of an unripe plum.

Wen Ruohan’s body felt as though it, too, were trying to rip itself apart, trying to disintegrate just as the rocks ahead of him were. His spiritual energy streamed out of him as if from a full barrel of water that had suddenly sprung a leak, gushing out freely, and he could no longer control how much or from where he was summoning that power, whether from his own reserves or from his very life force. He had truly committed himself now.

Out of the corner of his eye, he distantly noted the appearance of a familiar flag in the air, the fearsome beast that proclaimed the arrival of Qinghe Nie. For a moment he wondered if something had changed, if Lao Nie had done something different, made another choice – but no, it wasn’t just them. There was Lanling Jin’s peony as well, being held in front of a crowd of yellow-clad cultivators, and beside them was Yunmeng Jiang’s lotus and Gusu Lan’s cloud, each represented in turn. And in the air with all of them, in smaller numbers, were cultivators in dozens of different outfits, the representatives of all the local small sects.

The Great Sects had arrived.

And just when Wen Ruohan was starting to think that that was going to be an issue, that the war had somehow despite his best efforts kicked off in earnest, he saw his own Wen sect’s flag in the air as well, the blazing red sun right there along with the others, his red-and-white clad cultivators standing on their swords right beside the rest without any apparent rancor.

He couldn’t hear anything over the sound of the wind in his ears, couldn’t devote very much time or effort to thinking about anything other than the rocks and mud rolling down before him, but he thought he saw pointing – arms waving, sleeves flapping in the wind – the familiar sight of arrays flickering into the air…liberation arrays, backed with suppression and eradication, the sort used in night-hunts.

The sort used to fight ghosts.

Oh, well, that’s good then, Wen Ruohan thought absently to himself as he used a very small portion of his attention to watch the forces of the Five Great Sects, plus a bunch of smaller sects, descend all together against the wailing flood of ghosts and specters and jiangshi that were streaming out of the base of the mountain. This way they won’t have time to ask them any questions.

The activation of the redirection arrays had essentially destroyed the mine, as Qingheng-jun had no doubt intended – he wouldn’t have wanted people to figure out his involvement in what had happened, covering up his deliberate initiation of the disaster. But without the initial set-up, without the theater, there wasn’t any reason that anyone would ascribe the ghosts here to a single massacre, nor connect that massacre to the Lan. This was a whole mountain, after all, and who could tell at first view how old the ghosts and jiangshi and whatnot were? For all anyone knew, these spirits could be the accumulation of decades or centuries, victims of landslides and robbers and all the rest.

Best of all, it wasn’t just the Lan sect fighting them. The Lan sect was unknowingly hobbled by the circumstances: the ghosts from the mine massacre, strengthened by having justice on their side, would be twice as powerful when fighting against those they correctly blamed, and the Lan sect’s spells would in turn be only half as effective against them. This would have been noticeable at once if the Lan had been the only ones fighting them, but they weren’t. Now they were just part of a crowd, and the ghosts had no special advantages against the Nie, or the Jiang, or the Jin, or even his Wen. If perhaps the Lan sect would in the final count be found to have made somewhat fewer contributions in this battle than they typically did, then that could easily be overlooked, and perhaps blamed on their new leadership…

Yes, this was good.

A stray pebble shot past his face, the sheer speed of it cutting a gash into his cheek, and Wen Ruohan scowled, returning his full focus to the battle he was at that moment fighting. He’d gotten most of the bigger rocks by now, he thought, and stopped them early enough that they hadn’t been able to kick up too much mud and trees, nor to tear up the landscape as they fell and cause a real full-scale mudslide. Now it was the smaller bits that were coming down, inescapable, destructive but not necessarily deadly.

Good.

Now came the hard part.

Wen Ruohan very carefully began to close his hands. The black sun within his palms resisted him, not wanting to close. It was as insatiably hungry as his Wen sect’s ambition, an endless sucking mouth that consumed all it touched, even light; it was so cold that it burned him, leaving searing marks on his palms as he forced it down, bending it to his will. Forcing it to his will.

Smaller, smaller – it was back to a cherry now, but it was resisting him even more. It knew that he wanted to fold it up and put it away, cut it free so that it could not touch the world again without an explicit summons, and it did not want to be banished. It wanted to stay, and eat, and destroy all that there was, and it wanted to eat up Wen Ruohan not least of all, greedily drinking in all the spiritual energy that he was using to control it, sucking the qi right out of his meridians like water pouring down a open drain.

But it was not the master here.

A thousand arrays appeared between Wen Ruohan’s hands, woven into a complex matrix of overlapping lines, multiplied a hundred times over. Smaller, smaller, smallest – each array was built on ten others, which were built on ten more, and ten more besides; some of them, the littlest ones, were so small that even he with his tremendously sensitive vision could not see them, but that was inconsequential. They were all in his mind, drawn out in perfect detail, a thousand points of starlight blazing bright, and through his power were made real.

He pushed the black sun smaller.

Smaller. Smaller.

The black sun was the size of a grain of rice once more, spinning in place like a marble. The wind was starting to return to normal speeds, and the sky above him was starting to clear – despite summoning the clouds and rain, he had managed not to call down any sort of heavenly tribulation onto his head. This meant that he was not yet a god, but still only a half-step removed. He had more to do in order to achieve divinity.

But not now.

For now, he had done enough.

With one last great effort, Wen Ruohan brought his palms together, and the black sun disappeared.

With it, the wind died away entirely, leaving his ears strangely ringing from the sudden onset of silence. The crater he was standing in had grown very large, extending outwards all around him, and it was by now deep enough that, with his feet on the ground, the top of his head was still beneath the level of the ground outside the crater. He could no longer clearly see the horizon around him, but could only look up, instead.

Up at the sky – at the clouds that now drifted peacefully through the air, heedless of all cares beneath them, and, above even them, the blazing sun in the midday sky. That was good, too: Wen Ruohan’s cultivation style was classic Wen, yang-based to the extreme, and that meant his power was at its apex at midday.

Perhaps, if it had been any other time of day, he would not have been able to do what he had done.

What he had done…

Wen Ruohan blinked at the mountain, watching as the rolling wave of dirt and rocks – smaller than the ones from before but still considerable, with the biggest of the bunch being as large as his fist or even his head – rushed down towards him. He felt almost as if he should do something. Only at this moment he couldn’t quite think of what, exactly, that might be…

A pair of hands grabbed him by the waist and pulled, and then he was aloft on someone’s sword, flying above the pandemonium that rumbled beneath his feet.

“Forgot how to fly, did you?” Cangse Sanren asked in his ear, her voice warm and amused. “Come on, Sect Leader Wen, remember your dignity – summon your sword.”

Right. His sword. Flying.

He knew how to do that.

Only it was oddly harder than usual, calling for his sword from the pouch he kept in his sleeve, and it jerked around awkwardly when he stepped on it, letting it bear his weight. Cangse Sanren was right. He did not want to be carted around like some small child in need of rescue, not when he could make his way on his own, mindful of his pride.

His pride did not, however, object to Cangse Sanren guiding him in the direction she wanted him to go, taking him over to one of the nearby hills where the remaining remnants of the landslide would not hit. Even if it had, he would have been hard pressed to reject her – he was suddenly aware that everything hurt, pain radiating through his body in a way that suggested he was going to be very sore for quite a long while. It was a sensation he hadn’t had in at least a few decades, and he wasn’t remembering it very fondly now. Worse, though, was that his mind seemed unstable, genuinely unstable, as though his brain were slipping around inside his skull, unable to seize a firm foothold.

Speaking of which, the way he stumbled off of his sword and onto the hilltop was well nigh embarrassing. Any further and he’d have fallen flat on his face – he didn’t actually, of course, but he nearly did, or at least felt strongly like he might rather like to.

“You know, I think you’ve blown out all your spiritual energy,” Cangse Sanren observed. “I didn’t even know that was something someone could do if they had as much power as you…but apparently I was being too narrow-minded. And I suppose you’ve always been an overachiever. Don’t worry, it’s only temporary – you just overextended yourself, the way children do when they try to tackle too much. A bit of rest and you’ll be right as rain. Nothing to worry about.”

Wen Ruohan hadn’t been worried. Contrary to what Cangse Sanren might suggest, he was rather familiar with the feeling of overdoing it – what was experimenting for if not to do too much? But he did have to admit that it had been rather a long while since he had needed to use up quite so much qi…

Wait.

“Lan Qiren,” he said, noticing to his disapproval that he was slurring. “Lan Qiren – with Qingheng-jun. Where…?”

“Oh, you’re adorable,” Cangse Sanren said in what seemed to be a complete non sequitur. “I’ll tell him your first thought was of him, he’ll like that. Don’t worry, Lan Qiren is tougher than he looks.”

She wasn’t getting it. Wen Ruohan scowled at her.

Maybe Cangse Sanren didn’t realize to what degree Lan Qiren’s brother hated him. Sure, there was the taboo against harming blood relatives, but they’d already determined that Qingheng-jun was insane. Who knew how much he wanted Lan Qiren hurt right now? How much he wanted him dead? He could be hurting him right now. And yes, Wen Ruohan was aware that he wasn’t exactly speaking from a high moral ground here, but that didn’t change the facts – Lan Qiren could be in danger at this very moment, and someone needed to find him right away.

“I’ve got a whole bunch of people looking for him,” Cangse Sanren told him, as if reading his mind. “A bunch of Lan, trustworthy ones that like him and miss him – and a bunch of your Wen, too. And the word’s gotten out among the other sects, too, the smaller ones…did you know that he taught an awful lot of them, these past ten years? There’s a whole bunch of angry young masters that won’t stop chattering about their old Teacher Lan. They’ve volunteered to help search for him, and they’re not taking no for an answer, not even from their own sect leaders.”

Hah. Wen Ruohan had known that Lan Qiren’s teaching was going to bear fruit one day – and it seemed that that was already starting. He couldn’t wait to finally start harnessing that power for his own sect…

Hmm.

The world was starting to go black around the edges. He was fairly sure it wasn’t supposed to do that.

“You rest,” Cangse Sanren said, waving at someone who was flying rapidly towards them – oh, Wen Ruohan recognized that figure: it was his general, the one he’d entrusted Wen Xu to and who had been lured here right alongside him. He was the one Cangse Sanren had elbowed in the stomach. “Hey, did you hear me? You rest. I’ll stick around, make sure no one does anything untoward. Not that that’ll be hard, given that the rest of your army just showed up…”

That was good.

And…yes, rest sounded good, too. Very good, even. Cangse Sanren would handle finding Lan Qiren, and Qingheng-jun, and – and the rest of it. Wen Ruohan’s army was staffed by subordinates that he trusted not to screw things up, ones capable of independent thought and action, and they all knew what he would do to them if they embarrassed him. They wouldn’t double-cross him, either, because they knew what would happen to them if they did. And better yet, they could also join the search for Lan Qiren if need be…

Somewhere between one thought and the other, Wen Ruohan felt himself slip into unconsciousness.

He hoped Cangse Sanren had the sense to catch him.

#mdzs #lan qiren #wen ruohan #cangse sanren #my fic #my fics #Megafic #everything kept getting in my way this morning #but it's here!

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wealmostaneckbeard · 3 months

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Signalis: Unsubstantiated History Lesson

In the beginning there was the Empress, who had Bioresonant powers and used them to unite humanity. These powers were studied and reverse engineered to create technology that allowed humanities expansion beyond Vineta.

Telepathy industrialized became the production of Replikas. Telekinesis industrialized became artificial gravity. Conjuration industrialized became Klimaforming.

There was a great flourishing of art and culture. Studies of natural sciences and technologies struggled to catch up to the achievements of Bioresonance. Mysticism and esoteric rituals became widely practiced. Every world and several moons within the Sol system were colonized.

...And then the Empress committed suicide.

Why?

Perhaps she realized that she wasn't changing the universe to accommodate humanity. That she was changing humanity according to the whims of an incomprehensible terrifyingly sentient universe.

Perhaps she realized that humanity would never be free as long as she was alive. That the survival of the human species was pointless if every person's individuality was lost due to bioresonant subjugation.

Perhaps She wanted no part to play in the coming future but was trapped by her own supernatural powers in a position of political authority. Unable to retire to a quiet life and finally rest she had no choice but the deadly alternative.

Without the Empress, her empire fell slowly into chaos. Politicians, Corporate Executives, and Bioresonant Cultists formed a new aristocracy while collectively maintaining the veneer of a unified empire. These leaders were mere mortals, their longevity and power was inferior to the Empress. Their cruel incompetence begat competent revolutionaries. So those allegedly in control formed military and police forces to maintain their grip over their subjects.

Then a cult on Heimat successfully cloned the object of their worship, ironically an achievement of practical science. She was raised to do what the Empress would not. She would want to live forever, have absolute authority, and redundantly, even have an heiress.

When she was revealed to the worlds, The War started. The Eusan Empire was fighting for their freedom and the interests of their nobility. The nascent Eusan Nation fought for a future ruled by the Great Revolutionary. It should be spelled out that both sides were hypocrites in this apocalyptic interplanetary conflict.

Humanity was spread too far out and so their re-subjugation beneath a godlike figure was never going to be recreated.

As the war stagnated, The Great Revolutionary became concerned about threats from within her Nation. The cult that had created her could create her replacement if she did not obey them. In the interest of her own survival, she had them and any means of creating a challenger purged from existence. Even with her power, this was not easily done due to the cults integration with the Nation and the vast size of both organizations.

Cultists would purge themselves from the records and continue living under new identities. More intense law enforcement tactics were required to catch them. The Nation's war against an external foe shifted to face an enemy within.

Human suffering continues, and yet in these dark times two women fall in love with each other aboard the low-cost scout ship Penrose-512...

#signalis #world building #deepest lore #eusan empire #eusan nation #suicide #tw suicide #spoilers #replikas #bioresonance #cold war #cults #science fantasy #warhammer 40k related #head canon #headcanon #head cannon #history #writing

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dearheart42regenerated · 10 months

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What is "Vega"?

"I told him there's no way you'd be foolish enough to believe in a myth like Vega...looks like I was wrong."

so I was rewatching a few scenes and that line from Kane in the 2-part finale suddenly got my brain going brrrr about WORLDBUILDING!!! because if "Vega" was a thing completely made up by Kane, why would he talk as if the idea was an already-existing myth?? the implications are delicious to me, sooo. here's my own personal overly-elaborate theory/headcanon... *insert drumroll here*

Vega = "Anonymous"

by that I mean Vega is basically this universe's version of the hacker group...albeit much more focused and serious than ours. they're trying to save the world, after all.

there are many rumors, myths and conspiracy theories about what and where Vega is - "a spy organization in Cleveland" is just one of the bigger ones (for whatever reason lmao.) most of these stories have been planted by the members of Vega themselves, to make it all the more impossible to find them or prove their existence. they do their work quietly and thoroughly, without any announcement or warning, and any traces left of who they might be are either scrubbed or quickly swallowed up by all the tinfoil-hat "evidence" circulating around.

Vega is anywhere and anyone. they exist as a sprawling collective of spies, hacktivists, pirates, coders, digital archivists AND, perhaps most crucially...guerilla data cablers. any person with these skills is welcome to be part of the group, so long as they commit to The Priority.

"The Priority" is Vega's single unifying mission: to restore open, unrestricted internet to all corners of the post-apocalyptic world, and reconnect every pocket of civilization scattered around Earth. they believe achieving "complete connection" again is the key to saving humanity from total extinction.

are they gonna save the world with wifi? yes. yes they are.

there is no chain of command, no counsel, no head "in charge" of Vega handing out missions or telling everyone what to do...which means internal dissent happens a lot. but generally as long as the members all agree to dedicate their efforts to The Priority and work in good faith with each other, almost anything goes idea-wise...and yes, sometimes that does include taking direct action against fascist dictators. ;)

there are also four basic rules every member must follow while working in the group:

1 - "VEGA IS A MYTH." Vega will continue to "not exist" in the public eye until a two-thirds majority of the members agree that officially revealing themselves to the world is both necessary and unavoidable. they do this to make it harder for bad actors to weaponize their work or use their name for self-serving political gain.

2 - "SECRECY IS MANDATORY." YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB talking about Vega to outsiders is forbidden, unless inviting someone to join the cause. members revealing their identities to each other is also forbidden. anyone who publicly claims credit for something in Vega's name has either eventually been exposed as a fake, or thoroughly framed as a fake by the other members if one goes rogue.

3 - "CENSORSHIP IS THE ENEMY." having open access to the world's knowledge is absolutely sacred to Vega - it is THE "why" behind the "what" of their mission! so while members are free to act on their own, attacking libraries, journalists or the media is both forbidden and unforgivable. the only exception is when they find a media network/organization with censors or restrictions placed on it - in which case, they will only act to lift those restrictions, so people have the ability to find all the information for themselves.

4 - "CONNECTION IS THE PRIORITY." whatever the members do, their plans must be in service of Vega's mission in some way...whether it's restoring or preserving an ancient website, breaking into a new location to install or repair data cables, or hacking a corrupt politician's computer system.

there's a delicious irony in Kane using the "myth" of Vega to capture Mike. at some point in the future, the true Vega will play a key role in helping the Burners free the people of Deluxe from Kane's clutches once and for all...and finally, reconnecting all of Detroit with the outside world.

(also VEGA INVITES CHUCK AND JULIE TO JOIN THEM AND THEY GET TO DO COOL HEROIC SUPER-SECRET HACKER/SPY STUFF TO SAVE THE DAY AND IT'S FUCKIGN AWESOME)

#motorcity #my headcanons #is this dumb?? idc IT SOUNDS COOL AS FUCK TO ME #'We are Vega. We are Legion. Expect us.' DO YOU SEE THE VISION HERE

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lampochkaart · 1 month

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I know this is unrelated to Danganronpa, I apologize in advance. I only ask this with respect and hopes to understand. As an aroace person such as yourself, do you find romance (particularly with shipping) to be appealing as long as it isn't in your own personal life? I'm sorry my hetero ass is struggling to understand, I just want to be a better ally.

Hi, anon! You don't have to apologize, I don't mind talking about something other than Danganronpa X)

I'm rambling here for quite a while, maybe a got a little carried away, because the subject of ramance is quite complex

Every aromantic and/or asexual person is different. Everyone has different experiences so there's no universal rule. I'd suggest, if you want to be supportive to your aromantic friends, you should ask them how do they personaly feel about romance and shipping. Are they comfortable with this topic in general? Are they fine with it as long as it doesn't involve them, or would they rather avoid romace completety whenever they can? Everyone feels differently about that, so it's better to ask people's opinion on that topic rather than trying to find one universal rule.

If you're not asking that because of some specific people that you know, but because you want to support aro people in general, I think a good idea might be to look at some aromantic themed blogs, or read some of people's personal experiences for a better understanding of the topic.

I think it's posible explain aromaticism with an analogy. Let's say, romance is some kind of food, like an apple for example. A lot of people like apples and eat them often. However, there are people who dont. Some people can't stand the sight of apples. Some people can eat apples sometimes even though they don't like them very much. Some people don't want to eat apples themselves, but are completely fine with other people eating them. And so on, and so on.

Romantic attraction (and romance as a concept) is as different for everyone as food preferences. Some people just don't like some things. Everyone is different.

As for my personal experiences... I don't necessary hate the idea of a partner, but I think I'm very picky so I would be hard for me to find ideal option. I'm not opposed to the idea of having a partner, but I don't feel the need to have one. The moment when I realised that I'm actually aromantic was when I realised that people are not just being overdramatic when they complain about not wanting to be single. A lot of people genuinely feel upset when they don't have a partner/partners. It's not just a joke that people make. For a lot of people romantic relationships are very important. Never in my life I felt like I need to be in a romantic relationship and I never really questioned this. It took some time for realisation that not everyone feels like that to actually sink in.

When it comes to shipping, well. I like romance, but I don't really like plain romance. I like when characters have something else in their relationship aside from romance. They could be friends, enemies, rivals, collegues, allies, etc. Anything really. I just want something else going on with them aside from being romantic partners. I think it might even be better to put it this way. I like when romace is secondary to the primary character dynamic. Like, they're best friends first or they're rivals first, before they're romantic partners. It's some primary dynamic to which romance is added, instead of it being the other way around and this dynamic being just the flavor to romance. When the relationship borders between platonic and romantic, but perhaps gravitates more toward the romantic. I hope this makes sense.

I am not saying this is the only right way for interesting relationships, but it's just the way I prefer it.

So, in short, I do find romance appealing, but with some requirements.

Thank you for your question! You were very respectful an polite. Hope I explainded it alright. If you have more questions or don't exactly understand something here feel free to ask. Have a great day!💜💫

#lampochka rambles #not art #ask #i hope i don't have too many typos here and managed to convey my point #thank you for the ask!

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anthonybialy · 4 months

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Bill of Wronged

Our rights have been taken to not be safe. People get every benefit otherwise. Attempting to manipulate the universe on our behalf is super kind of authorities who expect the gesture to compensate for not actually doing it. We only get a vote technically.

Wondering how could one be in favor of guns is popular amongst those not into free will. Sanctimony about how implements hurt bodies and feelings replaces not thinking out that naughty types might obtain them, perhaps even in defiance of legal restrictions. The mere existence of that choice dissuades villains from initiating nefarious plans.

Figuring what crimes never occurred is hard to measure. But it’s easy to see what happens when the only people restricted from bearing arms are those who comply with laws.

Trying to get virus season going again is for your benefit. You’re acting a bit too independently. A sequel scare might get you to remember who rules over you. Visionary faux epidemiologists have to plan panic ahead, as one can’t spring fear a month before an election. The timing of picking a new president is surely coincidental. Paranoia is a symptom immune to vaccination.

Thoroughness is not a virtue when the right to shop elsewhere is treated as a sin. The fear of an even worse shutdown sequel serves as an extension of the sickly notion that government should and can be responsible for one’s health. You don’t get a choice. That’s supposed to make you feel reassured.

Treating companies who heal you as Satan’s minions is lamentably consistent. Contempt is similar to what simply must be justified demonization of the gun industry, as they couldn’t merely be offering a product customers want. Shooting bowling pins in the woods is almost as fun as scaring off potential muggers and tyrants. But aspiring buyers are told they’re beholden to diabolical shootie-manufacturing conglomerates that would profit any way they could and truly enjoy doing so off suffering. Compensation for offering something we want is tough to accumulate, anyway, what with inflation remaining a stubborn problem ever since corporations realized they could exploit the populace for excessive profit just after Joe Biden took office.

Pretending money isn’t involved makes life costly. We’re trying complimentary living right now to see how much more expensive existence can get. You may notice your consent wasn’t sought. Being aware of losing liberty is the extent of rights. so be grateful perception remains legal. That’s only because it’s tough to ban. The Biden White House’s efforts to control social media narratives through coercion show they try their hardest. It’s too bad they couldn’t invest efforts to suppress narratives into learning trades.

A caring government lovingly protects serfs from the torture of choice. Politicians who’ve never run businesses dream of reducing options down to one. The ensuing dream world will just like what happens when government kindly consolidates industries and takes your money without asking.

Bad examples to avoid will have to count as progress. Your rulers show their contempt for profit by taking as much of it as possible. They spend it at will to illustrate the peril of greed. A biblical situation leads to losing niceties such as options. Imposing unwieldy burdens upon amalgamations is justified by demonizing them as cruel indulgers of decadence. Similar logic leads to thinking efficiency means reducing options, not multiple options reducing supply.

It’s their fault for both charging too much and not offering enough. Those who think the only crime is paying bills also coincidentally double as enemies of capitalism, which as a reminder is another name for trading. Dragging down others because they have nothing which would enable them to participate flaunts a distinct lack of empathy.

If you want to spend six or seven years which could be spent getting a plumbing business going instead majoring in political science, don’t expect to pay. College shouldn’t cost anything, at least according to attendees. Students who take classes in self-righteousness specialize in claiming they benefit society, which is a common delusion amongst the least useful graduates. Humans who actually help went into business for themselves and contributed to society functioning as a byproduct. I thought liberals believed in collective benefits.

Endless interventions are based in the seemingly reasonable and wholly delusional notion that life should feature protections. Wanting to be free of fear is as natural as it is impossible. Evidence isn’t going to deter a plucky hero like your incumbent executive. We’re learning the notion does indeed alter our world. The problem is it’s for the worse. Making an impact on the world is easy as long as you don’t care what kind.

Deciding which amendments they exploit while scoffing at them is how de facto autocrats respect our Constitution. They’re free to say any moronic thing they want while law-abiding firearms carriers keep them safe. You don’t have to worry about sluggish trials or, if you’re a Biden, testifying against yourself. Meanwhile, the country is presently propped up by states possessing the option to have rights. Liberals would quarter troops, but only if they work for the IRS. They endure the cruel and unusual punishment of having to live with themselves.

#rights #Constitutiion #guns #shutdowns #big government #gun control #free market #incentives

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psilocybinlemon · 1 year

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DARK ENERGY - Fairy Tail x Half-Life 2

For the past seventeen years, the Earth has been scourged by an extraterrestrial alien race known as the Combine. The remaining humanity is bound in shackles while the planet is sapped from its precious resources. However, a covert group of rebels still persists, aiming to defeat the Combine and restore their freedom.

Natsu, a proficient Resistance soldier, helps escort citizens from the Combine-controlled City 17 into safer regions, while his older brother Zeref works restlessly in his laboratory to create a functioning teleport. If that succeeds, the evacuation operations would be much smoother, and Natsu and his team wouldn’t have to constantly put their lives at risk.

The process stands still until the missing piece is found and delivered to the team by a scientist named Lucy. But at the same time, long-lost forces awaken and join the fray, causing the Combine to launch a full-term attack for wiping out the Resistance. Let the war end in either total victory or their extinction – no further compromise shall they allow.

// Modern Post-Apocalyptic AU, based in the universe of Half-Life series. Rated Explicit for death, blood and gore, terrible politics, war, that kind of stuff you see in First-Person Shooter games. Pairing: Eventual Nalu Chapters in Tumblr: 1 Also in AO3

PROLOGUE: 17

“In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing a threat from outside this world.” - Ronald Reagan, Address to the 42nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, NY, 1987

// December 5th, 2017. Tuesday, 4:45 PM. Black Mesa East // The 5th of December had always felt like an anniversary of sorts, but for what exactly, Natsu couldn’t tell.

From the rooftops of Black Mesa East, the scenery opened far and wide across the wastelands. The sun was descending closer to the horizon, nearly hiding behind the Citadel, the enormous tower that pierced the skies. Even from afar, Natsu could see the flying synths returning and leaving their nest of darkness. The shadows of that tower, the enemy’s main fortress, stretched over his life like the plague, but he still clung to the rays of light that shone behind it.

Sometimes, when he stared at the setting sun long enough, he could forget the weight of the machine gun that rested in his arms, but not today. Not on the 5thof December, because this day, seventeen years ago, the world as he’d known it had come to an end.

And his hands were still covered in blood.

He let out a weary sigh. On the outskirts of the distant city, a cloud of black smoke rose from the depths of the canal, approximately where Station 12 was located. Natsu had been there when the bombs unfurled and fires began to spread. Earlier this day, his squad had been escorting a group of citizens through the underground railroad, when out of sudden, the Combine had ambushed them. Such a thing hadn’t happened in years – they had been able to operate covertly in peace, but now, the enemy had finally sniffed them out.

Though dread and fear had been building up in his chest since it happened, Natsu still couldn’t comprehend it. His missions had never failed. He lowered his gaze from the sun to his hands. The dark crimson stains on his gloves and the splatters on his gun were still there, reminding him it had truly happened. They had lost every citizen they were supposed to protect. His partner lay in the infirmary in critical condition and the rest of the team were still missing. Though he couldn’t feel the pain, the weight of this failure held him in a chokehold, like an open wound he couldn’t cauterize.

Yet somehow, ill precognition remained with him. Today had been only the beginning. The worst was yet to come.

Then, he caught a signal of someone arriving on the roof. Carrying the codename “Scarlet”, another soldier came to his field of detection, but stayed there at the edge for a while. Natsu didn’t need to glance past his shoulder to know Erza was staring at him, unable to say anything. She often used to complain about him coming to the roof, but now her silence felt much worse than her yelling ever did.

“Sergeant Dragneel, it’s time for a mission report.”

Natsu turned towards her. Clad in her black Overwatch armour, the commander of the Resistance units stood next to the door. The expression on Erza’s face was stern, yet even she failed to masquerade her pain. There wasn’t any disappointment in it, no. Only sadness. As they exchanged a wordless gaze, Natsu answered with a nod. He dreaded the thought of reporting today’s events to their leader, but it had to be done, for the sake of the lives they had lost. So, he stole one last glance at the sunset, and followed Erza back to the building.

“So, what happened?” Erza asked after a long silence, as they walked through the corridor towards the leader’s office. Her tone was softer now, as if the titles and formalities had been stripped from their conversation, giving him an opportunity to speak from friend to friend. When he remained quiet, Erza glanced at him. “Natsu?”

He scoffed dryly.

“Everything went to hell.” __________________________________________________________

// December 5th, 2017. Tuesday, 7:13 AM. City 17 //

The day had just dawned bright and crispy, and the 47thevacuation operation for this year was almost complete.

So far, everything had gone according to the plans. Natsu’s squad hadn’t encountered any unexpected hindrances or obstacles, except for a certain barnacle accident in the canals that Gray refused to talk about. Either way, the mission had passed without further injuries, and Natsu was anxious to make it back to Black Mesa East. If they’d travel fast, he could sleep in his own bed tonight. That thought always kept him going.

Since arriving in City 17 late yesterday evening, they had found a place to stay in the apartments near the main railway station. Despite having slept for only a few hours last night on a thin mattress in the cold kitchen corner, no signs of tiredness adorned Natsu’s face. In the bleak morning light, he ate some breakfast with Gray. They had found some coffee and wheat crackers in the cabinets, yet Natsu had not dared to check their expiration dates. Snacks from the previous century filled his stomach just as well if he didn’t think about it too much.

“Hey, Natsu, guess what,” Gray said, holding back a snicker of a laugh. “That Combine’s‘non-mechanical reproduction simulation’is pretty lit shit.”

Natsu’s gaze shot from the newspaper to the black-haired man, who sat on the opposite side of the small makeshift table. “Man, what the hell?”

Gray took the first sip of the coffee that had stopped steaming a while ago. “Yeah. When their soldiers have earned a hundred credits, they can get that as a reward. It’s basically some virtual porn, quite realistic, but the Combine’s representation was rather… weird.”

“Don’t tell me you tried it.”

“I found the data when I was hacking into their servers yesterday. Of course I had to check what that‘non-mechanical reproduction simulation’was.” When Natsu didn’t answer, Gray spread his arms in defence.So that’s why he was locked in the bathroom for two hours last night,Natsu thought. “Don’t judge, it’s my job to sniff into these things as a data scavenger!”

Sighing, Natsu leant his forehead onto his palm, unable to look at his fellow soldier. The yellow-papered newspaper, painted by numerous coffee stains, wrinkled beneath his elbow. A familiar headline covered most of the first page, one he had seen too many times before.EARTH SURRENDERS, it said, loud and clear. The ink had faded in the passing of the years, but the date was still visible in the upper corner of the page.15th of December, 2000, ten days after the incident that had changed everything.

“Can’t fucking believe it has been almost seventeen years and there still isn’t a fresh newspaper,” Natsu muttered, trying to distract himself from Gray’s shit. He lifted the white cup to his lips and poured down the last of his coffee, grimacing at the bitter taste. Just to be sure which day it was, he checked today’s date on his wristwatch.December 5th. He sneered. “It was this exact day when the world went to hell.”

Gray was quiet for a while. Talking about the First Days always made him shut down. The men were of the same age – Gray had also been only five years old when the incident happened, but he’d never told where he was then. Natsu had shared everything of his story with Gray, even the fact that it had been his dad in the test chamber that fateful day. Yet somehow, Natsu had always thought Gray’s story had to be so much worse.

Though memories surfaced from the depths of his mind on this particular day, they failed to make him cry. Few things did anymore. He had cried then when his mother shoved him to the train with his brother and sworn she’d find them later. She never did. He had cried when the lights had gone out for good – he hadn’t been afraid of the darkness, but the creatures that lurked in it. He wasn’t scared of them anymore. But if he could tell the five-year-old him that he’d come to kill those monsters later on, he wasn’t sure if he would.

Maybe his younger self would be better off without knowing where life after the world’s end would take him.

“I’d rather…” Gray started and sighed. From the sudden darkening of his eyes, Natsu could tell the man had drifted into his memories as well. “I’d rather not talk about it now.”

Natsu nodded.

“Me neither.”

They were the only ones in the apartment’s small kitchen, but the distant chatter of others could be heard from the living room. The doors between the rooms had been removed some time ago, yet the design of the whole block must’ve been bleak long before the world went down. Except for their own fortresses and industrial factories, the Combine had built nothing on Earth. City 17 was formed on the foundation of some East-European city, and the architecture was still from the Soviet era. What exactly had been the city’s name before it became City 17, Natsu didn’t know, and it probably didn’t matter anymore.

By the time Natsu’s group arrived here, most of the block’s citizens had chosen, orbeenchosen to be deployed to the Combine. It seemed to be the fate of many neighbourhoods recently. Only a group of nine had stayed in the building trying to survive with the little food and supplies they had left. When they were asked if they wanted to leave the city, their answer was a clear, eager yes.

In the living room, Cana and Loke were sharing details of their upcoming escape journey with the citizens. There were three men and six women, which meant they’d have to divide into two groups to stay under the radar. Each time it surprised Natsu to hear that most citizens had no idea the underground railroad – or Black Mesa East, the largest Resistance base in the area, where the road led – even existed, but at least they had managed to keep it covered so far. The trip through the Xen-infested canals wouldn’t be easy, yet many still chose to take the risk. Life had been getting increasingly more intolerable in City 17.

“If you want, I can share the files with ya,” Gray said after the silence. “Wouldn’t hurt to have a good laugh, right?”

“No thanks, idiot,” Natsu answered and turned a page on the newspaper. To ignore Gray’s meaningless rumbling, he kept reading, even though he had read the same article hundreds of times.Portal storms continue. Windows to another world open across the globe. Stay calm and indoors to avoid panic, experts advise. Natsu scoffed dryly. Staying indoors hadn’t helped much when a portal to Xen could randomly open at one’s toilet, and a swarm of acid-spitting monsters flooded the house. It hadn’t happened to Natsu, but he’d heard enough stories. No one had been able to avoid panic on the First Days.

“Why do you always have to be such a grim bastard?” Gray asked, grinning. “I could just upload those to your BCI while you sleep, you know.” He reached across the table and gently knocked the small metallic dots on Natsu’s right temple. “Maybe that would make you happier.”

Natsu shoved his hand away, shuddering at the thought. “If you do that, I’ll kill you,” he warned, though Gray knew he didn’t truly mean it. Natsu joked about killing his second-in-command man at least once a day, but he’d never let any harm fall on his most-trusted friend. “I really don’t want to experience some fucked-up alien porn, thank you very much.”

“Oh yeah? Got enough bitches on your dick?”

Natsu scoffed and stared into his eyes for a moment. “I got one bitch on my fucking face at the moment.”

Gray smirked, leaning back in his chair. “I’ve heard some folks saying that they’d join the Civil Protection just to get a proper meal. I think they just wanna see some alien porn. Think about it, man. Some people are giving up their entire freedom for the opportunity.”

Natsu glanced at Gray’s cup. “Well, if they’re forced to drink coffee and eat crackers that both expired in 1999, it’s no wonder they consider joining the CP.” Then he dug an old lighter and a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his cargo pants, took one and held it between his teeth as he ignited it. “Damn, these cigs are stale as fuck,” he muttered as he exhaled the cloud through the broken window, gazing down at the empty streets below.

Gray shrugged and took another sip of cold, black coffee. “If you don’t think about it, it ain’t that bad.” Gray laughed and beckoned at the pack Natsu had placed next to his empty coffee cup. “Gimme one of those.”

Natsu glared at him from below his brows. “Bad shit happens to greedy whores,” he growled slowly.

“Come on, just this once. I left mine at the base.”

“Too bad then. You have no idea how long it took to find a well-preserved carton.”

“Well, I guess I could tell Lisanna how much you’re smoking on the missions. Maybe she’d help you get rid of thatwell-preserved cartonby giving that to me instead,” Gray replied mockingly. “She’d hate it if you became impotent, you know.”

“Nah. She already knows how much I smoke, and I don’t think she even cares about my potency anymore, anyway,” Natsu answered and blew out some smoke. “You’re one really desperate bitch aren’t you?”

“Hey, I’m dying for a cig,” Gray whined. “Do you want me to beg or suck your –?”

“Man, just shut up.” Knowing he couldactuallydo that, Natsu gave in. “Here, but you’ll owe me a beer,” he muttered and offered the pack to Gray, pinching his brows when the man took two. Smiling wickedly, Gray put the extra one behind his ear, then stood up from the table and walked to Natsu, then bent down to ignite his cigarette on the burning end of Natsu’s smoke. As he straightened his back and leaned against the windowsill, Natsu’s scowling gaze was still on him. “That’s twobeers now,” he scoffed. “I hate it when you do that.”

“Whatever you wish, you grumpy cunt,” Gray answered, breathing out the smoke at Natsu’s face. He remained quiet for a moment, as if thinking back his words. “There’s some shit between you and Lisanna? That’s why you’re so cranky?”

Natsu shrugged. If Gray would rather not talk about the First Days, Natsu really didn’t like sharing his misfortunes with women. Both were equally catastrophic. “It’s complicated.”

“Complicated? As if you somehow forgot she’s your trainee and you shouldn’t actually be fucking her?”

“Something like that,” Natsu mumbled as he inhaled the smoke, then rubbed the back of his neck before exhaling it. “I don’t know. It just ain’t working.”

“It can’t be as bad as when you were Erza’s trainee, and –“

“For fuck’s sake let’s not mentionthat!”

“Jellal would skin you alive if he knew about it,” Gray snickered. “Hmm, I could use that to extort cigs from you, right? Why didn’t I think of that earlier…”

Natsu buried his face into his hands, holding the cigarette between his fingers, a bit further away from his hair. Sometimes even he couldn’t believe all the things he had done – and actually, some were so distant and unbelievable he kept forgetting about them, as long as Gray didn’t kindly decide to bring them back up at unfortunate moments. His little fling with Erza from years ago was a brilliant example of such things. Gray made sure he’d never hear the end of it.

Gray rubbed his chin. “We were in Erza’s squad when we raided the old warehouse near the canals, right? Remember that?” he asked, his tone less snarky than previously. Perhaps even he realised he’d hit the wrong subject, and it was better to shift to something else.

Natsu lowered his arms to the table, lifting his brow. “Was this the sex-tape case?”

“Yeah,” Gray laughed. “Somebody had hidden their VSC cassettes of home-filmed hot stuff into empty ammo crates. We took them to Black Mesa East and showed them to the vortigaunts.” Natsu’s open cringe made him even more excited. “Poor vortigaunts were so confused. What did they say? Shit, like,ga la lung... churr galing chur alla gung...”

Natsu failed to hold back his laughter as Gray imitated the vortigaunt speech. “You know, they often speak in our language until they wish to speak ‘unflattering things’about us,” he said and brought the cigarette back to his lips. “That probably meantgeez, these guys are fucking morons or something.”

“I kinda miss the vortigaunts when we’re away,” Gray said after a small silence, looking out from the window. “All they do is stare straight into your soul and utter poetry.” Suddenly, a frown formed between the man’s brows. He remained perfectly still while staring at the streets, until he flinched away from the windowsill. “Shit, the metro cops are here.”

“What!?” Natsu answered, disbelief and rage mixing in his whisper. He spun around in his chair and peeked out from the window, then instantly pulled his head back. A unit of Civil Protection, about six soldiers, marched down the streets towards the building. “Oh shit, you’re right.”

“Fucking hell,” Gray said, dumping the half-burned cigarette butt into the coffee cup, and then they both picked up their machine guns that had been resting against their chairs. He rushed to the living room with Natsu following his trail. The mention of metro cops – they probably hadn’t been listening to their whole conversation, hopefully – had already alerted the rest of the squad and the citizens. “We’ve gotta get going now. CP’s heading this way!”

“They’ve no reason to come to our place!” exclaimed one citizen, a younger woman whose name Natsu couldn’t remember – either Milly or Millianna, he wasn’t sure.

“Don’t worry, they’ll find one,” Natsu told her, and began counting the people. He made it to eight heads when he realised one was missing. When they had woken up an hour ago, there had surely been nine of them. “Where’s the dark-haired lady?”

“Minerva said she’d go pick up something important from the cellar, but she hasn’t gotten back,” the girl said.

“When did she leave?”

“Half an hour ago, maybe.”

Suspicion aroused in Natsu’s mind. “We won’t wait for her. The only important thing you’ll be taking from here is your lives. So, since the CP’s so kindly decided to raid this fucking building, we’ll escape through the roofs.” He gestured at Loke and Cana. “You two take them outta here, me and Gray will follow as soon as we can.”

Loke nodded, then ordered each citizen to the hallway. Natsu and Gray remained in the room as the others left, putting their helmets on their heads. While Loke and Cana wore just bullet vests upon long-sleeved jackets and scarves with the Resistance symbol, lambda letter, embroidered on them, Natsu and Gray were fully clad in Civil Protection armour sets. It was a part of their strategy, to use infiltration and escape methods to take citizens to safety. So far, it had always worked, and Natsu had no reason to doubt why it wouldn’t work this time.

Rubble sounded loud and clear in the staircase as the front door on the first floor was blown up, followed by many hasty steps. The short, blonde girl next to the brown-haired one fell pale as a ghost. “I told you they’d be coming for us next! It was just a matter of time!”

“Quit screaming and go,” Natsu ordered her, his voice transmuted by his helmet’s vocoder as he shoved the trembling girl into the hallway. He loaded his SMG just to be sure – despite using full armour stolen from killed CP’s, their cover wasn’t unbreakable. If they’d start asking too many questions, he’d have no other choice than to empty the magazine. Disguising into Combine uniforms and getting caught undercover meant gaining instant express to Nova Prospekt – a fate worse than death.

When the citizens had run to the second store on Cana’s and Loke’s lead, Natsu and Gray closed the apartment doors, pretending to have just finished a check-up. Through the vision shield of his helmet, Natsu detected the incoming soldiers before they reached the end of the stairs. He turned towards them, raising his hand to his brow.

“We’ve just finished inspection raids of this block. We found no disturbances in this sector,” Natsu reported with no falter in his voice.

There were eight of them, hiding their faces behind those white masks. It sickened him every time that the Civil Protection werestill human. They wore armbands with “c17:i4o” emblazons on them, and “C17” was printed on the back of their collars – same as Natsu and Gray, yet nothing about their hearts was the same. Just how many blocks had these bastards brutalized? How many had they killed, deployed to their forces, or sent to Nova Prospekt? Those who joined the CP had given up their freedom, theirhumanity,while the Resistance still clung to it, and wouldkeep clinging, no matter how hard the Combine tried to break them.

The leader of the squad held a stun baton, charged with electricity, in his gloved hands, as if eager to get to beat people with it. The officer stepped closer to them. “We’ve just gotten a report of a serious disturbance in this specific sector. According to the reports, there have been suspected anticitizens,” his voice altered into a robotic monotone, the same as Natsu’s and Gray’s.

… what?

“We heard the same, but we found no-one here. It must’ve been a false alarm,” Gray said. “This building is clear. We’re just leaving.”

The officer didn’t seem to believe them. “Fascinating. We weren’t supposed to have extra officers in this area today. Which shift are you in? Show me your IDs, so we can redirect you to your right area of responsibility before the big boss notices.”

Natsu and Gray glanced at each other, and though they couldn’t see each other’s expression, they knew they had the same thought.

They raised their guns and opened fire.

“243! Assault on protection team!” a soldier on the back shouted to his radio, the electric voice buried under the roar of the bullets. Natsu and Gray walked back while keeping their aim directly at the soldiers, and one by one their radios went static, a high-pitched humming echoing in the hallway. Blood splattered to the walls and began to pool on the concrete floor as the CP’s dropped dead, a sight Natsu had grown desensitized to long ago.

This time, they had the advantage of the surprise, but they wouldn’t have it again. When all eight men lay still and dead, sirens rang in the distance. One of them had managed to call for reinforcement, and before they’d come here, the Resistance was better to be far away. The Combine might be slow to wake, but once they’d get up, one didn’t want to get in their way.

So, Natsu and Gray began running.

“Shit,anticitizens? Did that bitch rat on us!?” Natsu growled, his mind connecting the dots rapidly fast. “There’s no other way the CP would’ve sniffed us out. I’ll fucking kill her if –“

“We can’t jump to conclusions. We’ll figure out what happened later, now we’ve gotta get the hell outta here!” Gray shouted and kicked open the staircase door Cana and Loke had closed. The circular stairway lead up to many levels, and soon they made it to the roof, the sirens sounding ever louder. Scanners – those flying machines taking pictures of citizens – floated closer to them, and Gray shot them down before running to the rooftops.

There was a route they had planned for a situation like this. They’d go along the roofs for about a few blocks, then descend back to ground level on a fire ladder, in hopes of leading the enemy astray. As they went, Natsu struggled – actuallystruggled, for the first time in ages – to concentrate on the task. His mind boiled with rage. Normally his BCI, the brain-computer interface, a part of technology stolen from the Overwatch, balanced the turmoil in his head when shit went to hell. Natsu’s brother had installed it on him years ago when he ascended to the elite forces of the Resistance, yet this moment proved that the unison of humans and machines was still far from complete – and Natsu found it oddly comforting to feelsomething for a chance.

But having a citizen turn against them was something that hadn’t happened before. Perhaps they were fools. They should’ve been expecting it as the Combine’s grip over the people kept ever tightening.

Until now, the Resistance could’ve trusted the people’s support. They had trusted thepeople,who trustedthem to fight the Combine, even if they wouldn’t want to fight it themselves. Just how much had the woman heard before selling them out? If the Combine knew about Black Mesa East, then it was critical to find out. It wouldn’t just possibly get them killed, it would endanger the whole Resistance.

As they ran across the roofs, hiding behind the chimneys and ridges while the sirens howled, Natsu’s inner turmoil began to ease. The momentary spike of adrenaline had been too much for the interface to deflect, but now it began to work as it was supposed to – keeping him alert, but suppressing his anger and distress. His brother always said that even the most perfect machines couldn’t always bendhislevel of emotional impulsivity – at least with the technology they had currently acquired. With each system update, he had felt it getting better, more intense, but at the same time, he lost another part of himself he didn’t think he’d ever get back.

By the time they made it to the fire ladder, the bullets were already flying.

A unit of Civil Protection had climbed to the building on the opposite side of the street, and from the roof, they opened fire. Natsu cursed silently and crouched below the half-collapsed wall, pulling Gray down with him as a rain of bullets swept past where they had just stood.

“We’ve gotta go down a different route. Can’t draw these motherfuckers to Cana and Loke,” Natsu whispered, holding tight to his gun.

Gray nodded, pressing a button on the side of his helmet, which opened an encrypted radio connection to Loke’s end. “Loke, do you copy?” he asked, and Natsu could hear a faint echo of Loke’s reply. “We’ll try to sneak behind the main station and head underground. We’re in a shitty place here, but we’ll make it. Meet us at Route Kanal.” Then he released the button, and glanced at Natsu. “Damn man, this is just like the old times, right?”

Natsu grinned at him, then looked up. The Combine forces seemed to have lined up on the other side of the street only, making their exit from the roof through the fire ladder impossible. So, Natsu peeked over the wall, aimed his gun and fired at the soldiers across the distance, though he knew his chances of hitting them were small. Only one high-pitched flatline sounded over all the firing. However, the distance worked in their favour as well.

On the edge of the roof, they could jump to the balconies, break the windows and proceed to the ground level within the building. To signal their agreement, Natsu and Gray nodded to each other, and then they went.

Running fast and avoiding bullets, they reached the edge, with no hesitation hindering their steps even when they noticed thereweren’tany damn balconies. This side of the block was covered by a forest of leafless trees, giving no spots for the CPs to shoot them here. Natsu grasped the rain gutter as he went down, hanging for a second before swinging forth and kicking in the brittle glass. Gray followed right after him as they jumped into the abandoned apartment, the sounds of a firefight still ringing loudly on the outside.

They quickly found their way to the hallway, then made it to the windowless staircase at the end of it, ever down through the empty stores until they reached the ground level. The front door led to the side of a park. Gray shot once at the glass, it shattered, and then they escaped back to the crisp, fresh air that smelled so heavily of gunsmoke. The CP no longer had a clear sight of them, they dispersed from the roofs, yet Natsu knew they wouldn’t hold the chase for long. If they’d shoot down all the scanners before they’d snap a picture of them, they could say they’d soon be safe.

Or so Natsu hoped.

Suddenly, another sound pierced the air. An artificial, feminine voice echoed loud from the broadcast speakers all around the city block. Natsu and Gray turned their gazes in the direction where it came, both knowing what it was: the Overwatch Voice, the harbinger of death. For too many, it was the last thing they ever heard.

“ATTENTION PLEASE. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON OF INTEREST, CONFIRM YOUR CIVIL STATUS WITH LOCAL PROTECTION TEAM IMMEDIATELY.”

All the guns went silent for a moment. Natsu knew he’d be petrified in terror without his BCI, as now the electrical signals it sent to his brain suppressed his ability to feel fear. Not a shiver ran down his spine as he stared at how the CP units descended from the roof, and a choir of running steps withdrew from them.

They were going in the opposite direction.

“ATTENTION GROUND UNITS. ANTICITIZEN REPORTED IN THIS COMMUNITY. CODE: LOCK, CAUTERIZE, STABILIZE.”

“She’s talking of just one person, right?” Gray whispered to Natsu as they hid behind the trees. Then, the ground began to quake as the steps of something gigantic approached – and from between the buildings Natsu saw a Strider passing by, with at least two dozen soldiers leading it – nearly as tall as the trees, the spider-like synth marched, still further away from them.

"CITIZEN REMINDER: INACTION IS CONSPIRACY, REPORT COUNTER BEHAVIOR TO A CIVIL PROTECTION TEAM IMMEDIATELY. FAILURE TO CO-OPERATE WILL RESULT IN PERMANENT OFF-WORLD RELOCATION."

“They aren’t coming for us,” Natsu realised. “What the fuck is going on?”

“I don’t know, but we won’t get a chance like this again! Let's get the hell outta here while we can!”

Natsu nodded, his gaze still locked on the Strider. Those monsters were rarely seen – when the Combine brought them to fray, it was better to start praying, and quick. “That’s one unlucky fucker who’s gonna get railed by that thing,” he muttered, then turned away and set forth to running. “Apparently they did something worse than we did.”

“Yeah, it isn’t every day the Combine gets pissed off like that. Let’s just hope Cana and Loke are alright,” Gray answered, then pressed the radio button again. “Do you read, Loke? We’re clear. Some shit is happening here, but we’re heading your way now.”Copy that, Loke answered the radio, and so Gray closed it.

The sirens behind them grew silent and distant as they ran through the park and jumped into the rainwater tunnel, making it to the other side of the city sector. In front of them, in the heart of the city, towered the Citadel. The Combine’s headquarters made navigating in the labyrinth of streets and buildings rather easy – across the years Natsu had learnt to recognize the landmarks so that he could always make it to the underground railroad, that started right near the main station.

They stopped in the distant alley near the plaza to catch their breaths and put their weapons on their backs. Though Natsu was still confused by all of that, he wouldn’t have time to think until they’d reached at least Station 12. He rested against the wall and stared at his boots for a moment, calmness settling into his mind again after seeing that Strider. The mission had to continue, after all.

“Everything okay?” Gray asked, and Natsu answered with a faint nod before raising his head. “Ready to keep going?”

They were almost there. To reach Route Kanal – the place where the underground railroad began – they’d have to cross the trainstation plaza, appearing as unsuspicious as they ever could. Usually, it went without a problem, as long as the Combine didn’t invite Overwatch soldiers to the fray. Those bastards could see through their masquerade faster than an atom would split. But if they’d just look like regular CP on patrol, everything would go fine. So, they took in deep breaths, and stepped out of the alley into the open square.

Compared to the previous onslaught, the plaza at the station was eerily silent. Only a few citizens seemed to have gotten off the trains and relocated to City 17. Natsu had heard how more and more of those who arrived were sent straight to Nova Prospekt – those were only rumours, obviously, but they always had more truth in them than the propaganda speeches they broadcasted on the massive screens.Welcome to City 17, sounded loudly from the speakers.It’s safer here.

They didn’t say a word to each other as they walked across the plaza. The citizens naturally avoided them, making Natsu feel sorry – if he could offer an opportunity to better life to all of them, he would. But each evacuation mission could only take so many citizens with them. As he’d seen today, City 17 was becoming an unbearable, more dangerous place. But as long as the Resistance was there, there was also hope. It beat within the hearts of those wearing the lambda symbol, even though Natsu’s scarf was hidden inside the CP’s helmet.

But as he passed by the station’s stairs, a strange feeling flooded his heart.

The feeling of being watched.

Natsu halted for a moment. He peeked over his shoulder, but saw nothing amongst the grey concrete, no scanners, no soldiers, no one. Still, he wassuresomeone was observing him. Someone familiar, someone he had lost since lost, shrouded in deep, deep shadows.

“Come on. We’re almost there,” Gray whispered to him. “Can’t keep them waiting for much longer.”

Then Natsu followed him, but the feeling in his guts just wouldn’t fade.

____________________________________________________

// December 5th, 2017. Tuesday, 7:00 AM. //

Silence.

Darkness.

Emptiness.

Time had stood still for him since he had made that fateful choice. It must’ve been years, yet now he was called for again.Rise and shine, the voice spoke, the same voice that had been the last thing he heard before falling into very, very long sleep.Rise and… shine.

There was a piercing light, blinding the eyes that had stared into the void for an eternity. A man in a blue suit appeared from the abyss, visions from his past endeavours vanishing through his waking mind. Faintly, he could remember the deal they had made.Keep my sons safe, he had asked from this man, who had promised tosee into it, as an exchange for his… assignment.

“Not that I wish to imply you have been sleeping on the job. No one is more deserving of a rest,”said the man, an otherworldly echo in his words. Slowly, the bleak void began to shift into a corporeal world.“And all the effort in the world would have gone to waste until...well, let's just say your hour has come again.”

In a moving train he awakened. The sceneries of an urban, decayed city passed quickly by, yet in that instant, he could tell that the world as he had known it was gone,ended during his absence.

“A right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. So wake up. Wake up, and smell the ashes.”

Then the voice faded, and the train arrived at the station. A man, who stood in front of the wagon's doors waiting for them to open, paid him a confused gaze. He mumbled something about not seeing him get on, but there was bleakness in his voice, as if he couldn’t even care if strangers appeared on the train from nothing. The doors opened, and the man stepped out.

And outside, a public annunciation echoed with a familiar voice.

“WELCOME. WELCOME TO CITY 17."

#fairy tail #half-life #crossover fanfiction #fanfiction #fairy tail fanfic #half-life fanfiction #nalu fanfic #natsu dragneel #lucy heartfilia #gray fullbuster #nalu

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sor-vette · 2 years

Text

❝𝐎𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐔𝐩𝐨𝐧 𝐚 𝐏𝐚𝐬𝐭❞

• type: Jimin x reader • rating: SFW • w/c: 3.1k • main masterlist

• genre/about: a prequel to "Once Upon a Saturday" so perhaps read that first to get what's happening; angst, fluff, slight enemies to friends even, the reader has specific zodiac placements but other than that nothing bodily-wise is mentioned

• c/w: mention of depression and losing oneself, sensory overload, mention of alcohol, Jimin is judgemental and the reader is no better - they've got opinions, alright

• permanent taglist: @ilsan-seoul; @chimchimmarie; @pinkcherrybombs; @introlxv

When Namjoon told Jimin of Tilla’s friend he rolled his eyes. Not necessarily malicious - it was merely an instinct by now. He knew the type - studious, reserved, judgemental. Goodie two shoes unwilling to take any risks acting their days out one by one like the world’s most mundane play. In a word - boring. And Jimin did not like boring, he liked wild and exciting. Or at least he hammered it into his head whenever he sat on the couch swarmed by intoxicated bodies and felt cold.

The first clash of Namjoon and Tilla’s social circles was epic - fists broke out, love was declared, someone definitely snuck out to indulge in casual pleasures. Quite the merry gathering. Initially, in the first half of the night, Jimin had his hands full. Literally! Of someone’s ass to be exact. They’re laying a series of sloppy kisses against the column of his throat. It’s all great, right? Except he’s still cold and dare he say - very droll. He’s done all there is to be done with various, eager yet short-lived partners and himself. Nothing is exciting anymore.

“Why you’re lookin’ so sour?” Namjoon asks curiously, one hand slung over Tilla’s shoulder. They’re so disgustingly in love that it makes Jimin physically ill. One should still follow some sort of a polite limit but as the two of them gaze into each other’s eyes as though life was a rendition of a steamy Edwardian-based romance novel.

“Dunno,” Jimin shrugs, lying. He’s good at that. “Just nauseous, I guess. Where’s your friend?”

He turns towards Tilla. He’s not quite sure what to make of her. Certainly by far one of the most bizarre fancies of his flatmate. Their mutual introduction was in the form of her cornering Jimin’s ass in the university hallway after clearing a whole flight of stairs in a single bound.

“Date and time of birth!” she spat.

Jimin’s eyes had crossed their ways trying to make out the expression of the blur.

“Um…October 13th, 1995. I don’t know the time.”

“Call your mother!” she squealed and Jimin laughed nervously along thinking of it as a joke only to swallow, terrified, upon seeing the thoroughly determined glint in her eye and so with trembling fingers he had dialled his mother and received this sacred piece of information underneath her frighteningly watchful glare. Having gained knowledge of this, Tilla had flipped her hair, winked with a perky “see ya, sweets!” and strolled away leaving Jimin none the wiser as to what just happened. Though it did feel a bit like he had just signed his soul away.

“She’s got your birth chart,” Namjoon tossed out in between large spoonfuls of ramen, eyes glued to the scene of a guy’s head locked inside a bomb collar. “She’s crazy about them. Soon you’ll hear which planet at which angle makes your heels dry.”

“You’re dating someone who's into astrology?” Jimin whistles - surprised. “You? Mr Reason and Rationality?”

“It’s just her hobby, leave her alone,” Namjoon demurely defends, frowning at his cooling cup of noodles.

“I meant no harm,” Jimin lightly affirms turning to indifferently observe the dying man. Namjoon had been lost to love, every lorn sigh and moan torn away from his lover was a glowing beacon of its proof. Shy, dimpled smiles directed at his phone and blissed gleam in his eye. As Jimin hugged the decorative discount pillow to his chest, he feels jealousy spill within his chest. He craves love in all its forms and this one was the one he’d gone by for the longest. Years had passed since the last time he was that excited for another person. He misses feeling anything at this rate yet the most he can do right now is settle on punching the pillow whilst breathing a heavy sigh. Chances? Slim to none on finding anything remotely as dizzying as what his friend was blissfully cruising through.

“Ouch,” Namjoon hisses sharply and Jimin jumps, startled for a second his thoughts were broadcasted out loud but sees Namjoon react only to the sight of the man’s head being blown off, blood scattering everywhere. Dejectedly, he sinks deeper into the sofa.

“So where’s your friend?” he asks, craning to spot the elusive, proverbial Bigfoot.

“Most likely climbing out the window as we speak,” Tilla huffs but her lips are curled into a fond smile. “Can’t help them Scorpios, you know?”

Jimin doesn’t know but still, he nods along.

“Yeah,” he chirps. "Though I did want to meet her.”

Namjoon casts him an astounded slow blink.

“She walked right past you,” he calls out. “Didn’t you notice?”

Jimin stands peering from left to right, a tad stunned.

“No,” he quietly surmises. “I did not.”

Tilla smirks.

“That’s _____________ for you,” she chimes all-knowing and Jimin is not particularly welcoming towards the lilt of her tone. “If she doesn’t want to meet someone, she doesn’t.”

“Doesn’t want to meet…me? Me?!” Jimin, offended now, calls out.

He was not blind and knew rather well of his own capabilities, able to charm anyone’s pants off - literally and figuratively. It was rare for anyone to dislike him so much from the get-go they made the extra effort to avoid him despite it being an unspoken rite of passage - the meeting of the lovebirds’ best friends where two objective parties were ready to dish out all their unwanted and unneeded opinions and advice. Something about it irked him to the bone - to be rejected outright without a chance. Perhaps it brings him back to middle school - standing in front of a foreign class, foreign life trying his little soul out to string together sentences filled with words with little meaning. No matter how hard he tried no one would take the awkward new kid speaking with such a heavy accent it made the language difficult to understand. He was…strange to them and he was as such until puberty and many people overcame their dislike as they were powered by the desire to sleep with him. It wasn’t exactly deep but Jimin took being liked for something than being hated for everything. But now he was once again strange, a strange, unfamiliar guy. Why else would you avoid him so keenly?

He decided that night that he doesn’t like you - you’re judgmental and boring and petulantly he pouts the rest of the week away - he doesn’t want to meet you either!

Life goes on and you’re nothing in his mind, not even a footnote only…only the cold persists. In fact, it’s getting worse so much so Namjoon sits him down one night night and worriedly frowns that Jimin looks positively depressed. While he denies it, the gnawing concern grows. Nothing brings him joy, he’s like a layer of cream cheese spread on far too big of a toast - worn and stretched, pulled in all directions but his own.

Tilla and Namjoon host their second party and Jimin does something he never had - he skulks. Gliding in and out of the shadowy corners he avoids everything and everyone, there’s not an iota in his body capable of being anything else but a slumbering husk.

The territory is unfamiliar as the party unfolds in Tilla’s shared apartment and occasionally he runs into either a string of crystals or a feathery…well, whatever it is. He doesn’t want to know. The crowd is too loud and the music hurts his ears, bass beating through his body and his skin is damp. It’s all too much. Becoming increasingly lucid, he bursts into the first door he sees and instantly relishes in its cool silence. Panting heavily, he rests his sweaty forehead against the wooden frame, listening to the now muted music. It’s like a different world.

“Do you know “Byzantine Emperor also known as the Philosopher?” a voice pops behind him and startles Jimin so horrid he managed to slip on thin air and badly bruises his tailbone. Squinting and rubbing the sore spot he takes in the person stretched out on the bed. She sits unperturbed, eyes fixed on the newspaper and pen twirling in between her fingers, all very casual.

“I’m sorry?”

“Do you know the name of the Byzantine Emperor also known as the Philosopher?”

Jimin blinks.

“No.”

“Shame.”

Tentatively, he raises to his feet.

“What are you doing here?”

She glances over the paper edge, those disturbingly sharp, weary eyes glaring him down like a partially disembowelled rodent laying squeezed amidst a mouse trap before she folds the newspaper neatly by her side with an exhausted sigh.

“I live here. This is my room and my bed,” she explains dryly and unwillingly, Jimin flushes at top speed. Going on defence, he then sputters -

“______________, I presume.”

“Yes, Mr Park.”

He’s not overly or even a little fond of the fact of how his guts simply summersault on their own will and so he dismisses it as oncoming indigestion.

“Why do you hate me?" he spits, cross, but she remains seated and uncaring.

“I haven’t formed any opinion of you yet, be it good or bad,” she shrugs. “We’re strangers.”

“You didn’t want to meet me,” Jimin argues, petulant, partially whining, strengthening his base form and finds it accomplishing absolutely nothing. “Tilla said so.”

“I don’t like meeting anyone, not just you,” a pause. “Did it upset you?” she leans her head to the side and Jimin’s mouth runs dry - not quite sure why.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean “why”?”

Another sigh falls from her lips and the frown in between her brows deepen.

“Why does my opinion matter so much? We’re not close in any sort of way.”

He thinks for a moment.

“I don’t know.”

Once more a beat of silence passes between them.

“Why are you not out there?” he tosses his head towards the bustling living room, splayed behind the magical door of solemnity.

“Because I don’t want to be there.”

“But it’s boring here.”

“Yes, and?”

Jimin wets his lips yet his mouth persists on being dry.

“You’re not making any new friends!”

“Yes, and?”

If socially feasible he would rip his own scalp out.

“You’re missing out!” Jimin heaves, frustrated.

“Yes. And how exactly is that your problem?”

“Dunno. You’re just…you’re just not leaving your comfort zone. It’s healthy to do so.”

She scoffs, lips stretched into a hard line.

“If all you interesting people would find more original sentences,” further punching the newspaper away, her gaze wanders over Jimin’s body with steeled calculation.

“I am not a circus monkey to prance at the liking of others. I do what I want, when I want it and enjoy my own time how I see fit. Whether or not I’m limiting myself is of my own concern. If people choose to see me as boring, they, you included, are free to do so but I will not suddenly go about changing myself because someone else doesn’t like me. This is my life and no one has the right to dictate how I live it, tedious or not. You have two working legs and you can walk away if wanted.”

Jimin stands stunned but makes no effort as upper mentioned to leave. It’s cold and silent here, but something about it doesn’t drive him into desperation. Not a cold of abandonment, a cold of peace, a compress pressed upon a fevered skin.

As he failed to get lost, her stance, previously caught in the heat of avid confrontation, lessened, morphing into a vague curiosity.

“And what pray tell are you doing in my room, huh? Not afraid of appearing dull?”

Though diminished, there was such a bite to her tone, that Jmin inadvertently felt an aching guilt gnaw on his chest.

“I’m just tired,” he confesses and she hums as though such a reply had been predictable. Jimin shudders with a sad exhale.

“I don’t know how to have fun anymore.”

“Whose fun are you having?”

“Excuse me?”

“Whose fun are you having?” she reiterates. “Your own?”

The question, tossed out with ease and precision he does not begin to comprehend, brings him right to a threshold of an earth shattering discovery. Somewhere along the way Park Jimin forgot how to be Park Jimin.

He does not reply, doesn’t know how to and more so from the expression on ________________’s face he gathers that right here and now it’s not terribly needed.

“I want to go home. To Korea,” he struggles out, fists clenching by his thighs akin to a lost child. Maybe that’s who Jimin was - not that he knew anymore.

“I can help you sneak out of here,” she offers and he nods in compliance.

She leads him out into the party and quickly parts the swaying waves of drunken hordes like a newly born Moses. Just a second and Jimin is free, standing alone outside of Tilla’s apartment. Tilla’s and ____________’s. He repeats the name in his head but dares not to speak it. It feels...intimate somehow.

“Thank you,” instead he bids her in earnest and she grimaces in understanding. _______________ leaves soon after and so does Jimin but not before taking one last fleeting look of her rushing indoors, a soft jumper wrapped tight around the waist to protect her from the cold. Why?

Why, he wonders trailing back to the dorm house feeling all sorts of weird, peculiar feelings rise and die all across his body.

“Still did it,” he mutters to himself.

“What do you mean you’re not coming?” Ian asks, wearing a spectacularly befuddled expression. Jimin shrugs, continuing to pack his bag.

“I have other plans.”

“Ice skating alone?! During the biggest party of the year?!” Ian cries out and Jimin’s almost amused - he’d never seen his classmate sound so scandalized, appalled even. “What’s gotten into you, Park? You’re becoming…boring!”

Jimin’s fingers halt on the zipper.

“I am having my own fun,” he casually tosses over his shoulder.

“Whatever, man,” Ian scorns.

Jimin glances at him from the corner of his eye. Ian may not be his friend anymore and soon by the looks of it but where once Jimin would tear himself asunder at that thought, now he lets it simply be. Privately, is somewhat relieved. As though some gargantuan creature had lifted its weight from his shoulders he finds it easier to breathe. The cold had dissipated and despite spending more time than ever before, he was having fun. Genuine, good fun getting to know Park Jimin once more. In his heart of hearts he knew that Namjoon would welcome him back no matter what and having now warmed up to Tilla, largely by exposure alone as those two were joined at the hip, he reckoned that not all good friends were lost this way. Perhaps only bad ones.

As he spun around the ice, breathing in the sharp sting, his mind wandered back to ________________ as it seems to do much of lately. Unintentionally. A rhythmic reminder does what it needs to, as did a snoozing clock used for naps and “five more minutes” it was simply their nature to do so and so does Jimin’s brain once every often rack itself upside over with questions. What were you doing? What will you do and say when you meet again? These wonderings are peculiar in nature but as they rise and fall they leave a quiet, diffident “oh” blooming within. An aftertaste, of sorts. Jimin tries his hardest to rationalize the sudden interest. Today his cheeks redden and he argues it’s because of the ice rink. All due to the blasted ice rink. Whatever this is, it’ll pass like everything always does. Nothing more than a peculiar meeting with a peculiar person.

Only he notices you sitting in the cafe window, lodged in the middle of a red cafeteria booth and stewing in nothing short of an all-consuming misery. It’s completely by accident and he can always leave. But Jimin doesn’t leave, instead, he walks closer. Tilla and Namjoon, the source of your bright agony, were eating each other’s faces, probably thinking they were being oh so polite with it.

Once near enough, Jimin pretends to barf all over their heads and the lovesick couple detaches their organs for what must be an excruciating span of three minutes and observe him with amazed expressions. Even their eyebrows moved in sync, shooting up into the hairline, Jimin noted. Namjoon was such a goner.

“Hey, what’s up?” the lipstick-ridden giant calls out, pushing Tilla deeper into his side. Looked comfortable. “Why are you not at the party with Ian?”

Jimin shrugs.

“Didn’t want to. Was having my own fun.”

He exchanges glances with ______________ or at least tries to as she averts her gaze before he succeeds.

Namjoon frowns at the answer but chooses not to pursue the line of thought.

“You want to join? We were just about to order.”

__________________ suddenly springs as if struck by a bolt of lightning and Jimin who’d been bending his knees to slide in the seat next to her echoes that panic. They examine each other with widened, nonplussed eyes and bearing a sense of vague premonition, Tilla squints at the unfolding scene.

“What do you all want?” she breathes out quietly and as Jimin slinks past the small space, he gulps in a scent of her perfume, lingering on the side of the neck. It’s nice. The perfume that is. Really, very nice.

“A hot chocolate, please,” Tilla purrs and wastes no more time - sinks her nose into Namjoon’s collarbone like it’s destined to be there.

“Green tea,” Namjoon coos as well, corners of his lips tugging into a dazed gleam.

Your face fills with a bottomless disgust and Jimin lets out a loud chuckle, ears then sweltering as your eyes at last fall on him.

“And you?” you ask cooly and he pretends he’s not all bothered by the heartbeat pounding harshly away in the ribcage. He smiles warmly.

“I’ll have what you’ll have.”

She gives a curt thumbs up and waddles away and Jimin, without knowing why feels compelled to accompany her with his gaze. Tilla smirks to herself.

“I got…us a matcha latte,” she says quietly pushing the cup towards him without looking. Rather she’s focused intently on the brown napkin holder practically slathered in non-descript food stains. “Hope you don’t mind.”

He actually finds matcha latte to be the second most abhorrent drink of all time, the first one being mango smoothies. Cause mangoes are and always will be nothing less than Satan's ballsack and yet he drinks it gladly.

“LEO VI.”

Namjoon and Tilla drift in their own stratosphere, uncaring of their friends joining along for the dinner but Jimin doesn’t mind.

“Sorry?”

“The answer to the question you asked. LEO VI - the Byzantine Emperor also known as the Philosopher.”

She blinks, taken aback.

“You remembered?” even the tone of her voice brightly depicts that feeling and Jimin’s lips, on their own free will, volition and set of rights, spread into a broad smile.

“Yeah. I guess I did.”

#jimin x reader #jimin x you #jimin x y/n #bts x reader #bts fic #bts fluff #bts fanfic #jimin fic #jimin fluff #jimin fanfic

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