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aiyaar · 3 years

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Nico di Angelo was ten years old when his life went to hell. He never felt so devastated, so ruined. The only person who cared about him, his family, his everything was gone.

Nico hated all of them. He hated sister for leaving him behind, as if he was nothing, just to die afterwards and leave him completely alone. He hated those stupid huntresses of Artemis for taking his sister away from him. He hated Annabeth Chase, whoever it was, for falling off the cliff and making them go on this quest. But most of all he hated him. Percy Jackson. The ultimate hero, so strong and cool. He hated everything about him. He let him down. Percy Jackson let his sister die.

It was already a month since Bianca left this world. A lonely, cold month. Grieve still strangled him. This month has passed in a blur.

Nico passed an empty street, not even bothering to lift up his head. Snow was falling from the white sky and Nico shivered slightly from the cold. He needs to find some warmer clothes.

The city clock struck twelve, sound cutting through the silence. Another day has come. As if Nico cared. Suddenly he stopped, absentmindedly looking at the date on the billboard. 28th January.

Nico titled his head. He didn’t even know his birthday was coming. He always loved his birthday, so excited to modestly celebrate it with Bianca. Bianca…

A lonely tear rolled down his cheek, followed by another. Nico didn’t bother to wipe them, letting them fall.

“Happy Birthday to me.” He said in a shaky voice, sitting in the snow right in the middle of the street. Nico buried his face in his palms, trying to quiet down choked sobs.

Nico di Angelo was eleven years old when he lost himself.

Nico di Angelo was eleven when he started to chase the dream of making his sister come back to life. He was obsessed with the idea, almost going mad in the company of hurt and angry ghosts.

Minos had promised him that he’ll see Bianca again. And Nico believed. What else he could do. He was alone. He was hurt.

Why can’t she talk to him? Why she doesn’t want to show up? She doesn’t want to see him. She despises him. She doesn’t want him.

Nico heard rustling sound under his boots. He picked up the newspaper, catching the date with his eyes. 1st February.

Well, another year passed. Nico didn’t care that he missed his birthday. But a little ache didn’t want to leave his heart as he remembered how Bianca smiled at him the day he turned ten.

And then, months later, she showed up, just to say him that he has to let go. Just to make Nico know that this plan wouldn’t work. Minos was a liar. He used Nico. His only hope was trampled.

Misery was what Nico felt. The weird, nasty feeling crawled up to his throat.

Aside from that, one image didn’t want to leave his mind. His face lived in his head, not wanting to leave. His stupid smile, green eyes, tousled hair. Why Nico keeps thinking of him?

Why did she want to talk to him, not Nico? This stupid guy, with his annoying grin made Nico want to- What?

Nico freezed, trying to finish this though. Did Nico want to kill him? Hurt him? No, it was something else. He felt weird every time he heard his name. Percy Jackson.

Nico di Angelo was twelve when he started to realize something about himself.

Nico di Angelo was twelve when he wanted to rip out his own heart. Abnormal, disgusting. He was sick of himself. He felt nauseous at the very thought of it.

It can’t be true, no. He’s mistaken.

He was lying on his bed at his father’s castle, staring at the ceiling. He couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw his face. Those gorgeous green eyes, goofy smile, tousled black hair. His mind was ranting: Percy Jackson, Percy Jackson, Percy Jackson.

Nico felt like he was about to cry. Why is he like this? Is he broken?

He looked to the side, at his night table. A bouquet of red roses stood there. An hour ago Persephone strode to his room with these flowers and a weird expression on her face. She silently put them in a vase and went back to the door. She stopped there, turning her head a little to look at him.

“Happy Birthday.” Was what she said. Then she left.

So it was his birthday. He’s thirteen now.

Nico stared at the flowers, a little bit shocked. She remembered about his birthday. His father didn’t even bother to check up on him.

Hades only cared about their deal. Nico was very hesitant about that. But after all, he agreed.

He just thought that if he does that then maybe Percy would… Like him? But he didn’t.

Percy Jackson hated him. He screwed everything up. It was horrible. He had to fix it.

So he did the best thing he could. He had to prove to Percy, to his father, to everyone that he is worth something. He was just a kid and the battle was scary. He was scared. But he was a hero.

Everyone respected him, some people wanted to be his friends. He even wanted to stay at camp. Nico was happy but only for a moment.

Days after the battle the whole camp started talking about how Percy and Annabeth finally kissed and got together.

Nico left without a warning. Not like he had anyone to warn. Not like anyone cared.

Nico di Angelo was thirteen when his heart was broken.

Nico di Angelo was thirteen when Percy Jackson had gone missing. Annabeth Chase went feral. And Nico promised to help. Of course he did.

He was actually worried. What could happen to him? Nico only knew that Percy was alive. It was somewhat reassuring.

Something bad was about to happen. Nico knew it. New demigods at Camp Half-Blood. One of them is a son of Zeus. That was a bad sign.

And now that Nico knows about romans…

Today was 28th January. His birthday. He already got used to ignore this day. Nico just marked the fact that he was fourteen now.

The door of his room swung open. Nico sat up on his bed, seeing his father in his usual black robes.

He stood there in silence for a minute or so, awkwardly staring at his son.

“Um, did you want something?” Nico said, nervously fumbling with the ring on his finger.

“Yes.” Hades came closer to his bed. “Well, not really. It’s just…” Lord of the Underworld sat on the corner of Nico’s bed. “It’s your birthday.”

Nico blinked, processing what his father was trying to say.

“Yeah, I know. Thank you for reminding me.” He finally said, scowling at his father. Like he ever cared about Nico anyway. “If that’s all you wanted to say-“

“No.” Hades looked strangely awkward. “You made me proud this year, you know?”

Nico’s eyes widened. Was his father trying to praise him?

“I wanted to say that I’m… Grateful. You made me make right choice. And what I said about you before… I’m sorry.”

Nico was more than shocked at this point. He felt awkward and Hades didn’t look better.

“Anyway, I vaguely know that mortals usually make gifts for the day one came from mother’s womb. And I thought that maybe you should spend time with your… peers?”

“What are you trying to say, dad?”

Hades took a deep breath, as if he was nervous.

“I want to give you a present. So that you will be able to go wherever you want, in those places where teenagers usually spend time.”

“You want to give me a car?” Nico asked, puzzled.

“No, you’re too young for that. I’ll give you a chauffeur, he’ll be helping you go to the mall or something. Because, well… I’m not able to do it for you.”

Nico blinked again, titling his head to the side.

“A chauffeur?”

Hades looked embarrassed for a moment. Then he put on a stern expression, standing up.

“Objections are not accepted. You should be grateful.” He strode off to the door. Then he stopped. “Happy Birthday, son.” He closed the door, leaving Nico alone in the dark room.

Nico di Angelo was fourteen when he received his first birthday present.

Nico di Angelo was fourteen when he met him. Will Solace.

It felt like a dawn after long, cold night. Will was his blessing, his salvation. And Nico didn't know what did he do to deserve someone like Will.

They've been dating for a couple of months, wonderful, amazing months. And Nico was genuinely thankful for everything Will had done to him.

Nico woke up at the knock on his door, blinking through the gloom of Hades cabin. He didn't know if it was morning already, because black curtains prevented any gleam of sunshine from crawling into his cabin.

Still, Nico knew exactly that it was early and he knew exactly who was outside, because there was only one person in this world who dared to wake him up.

Nico got out of bed and staggering came to open up the door.

Will Solace stood on the threshold. He was wearing his usual winter jacket and a scarf, a blinding smile on his face. He seemed to be particularly happy today and, judging by the flush on his face, he was running.

"Hey, Neeks." He ruffled his hair and came in, closing the door behind him as Nico shivered from the cold winter air.

"Good morning." Nico mumbled, still half asleep. "What time is it?"

"7 a.m."

"Why did you need to wake me up so early?"

Will looked him in the eyes, taking Nico’s cold hand with his warm one, which is weird, considering Will was the one who had a walk on winter air.

"Do you know what day it is?" He looked excited.

"Um, no, to be honest. I don't pay attention to the calendar." Nico sat down on his bed, wrapping himself in a blanket.

Will looked shocked.

"Are you serious?! I mean... It's 28th January!"

Nico's brain needed a moment to process what exactly Will wanted from him.

"Yeah. So?"

"So?! It's your birthday!"

Nico sighed.

"Guess I'm fifteen now. That also explains this." He pointed to his bedside table, where black envelope was perched on the top of black box. "Probably from my father."

Will looked at him, then at the envelope.

"So, like... Happy Birthday."

"Thank you." Nico got up again, reaching for the box. "Now go so I can change."

"Ok." Will strode off to the door, a strange expression on his face. Though Nico didn't pay much attention to it.

Nico opened the envelope. There was a thick wad of money and an invitation for a dinner. Nico will come, of course, but not today. In the box lay watches and a book in Italian.

The day went by as usual. Nico had a walk in the woods with Will before breakfast, then they were busy with their camp activities.

In the evening, right before they were about to go to the campfire, Will took his arm and told him.

"How about we won't go to the campfire today?"

"But you like-"

"I don't need to go there everyday. Especially today. Come to your cabin in twenty minutes." And he hastily strode off in the direction of the cabin thirteen.

Nico came in after twenty minutes to be met with dozens of candles around his room. Will was standing in front of him, holding a cake with fifteen lighted candles perched on it.

"Make a wish." He whispered as Nico came closer.

Nico looked him in the eyes and didn't know what to say. So he just did what he was told. Will smiled brighter.

"I baked it myself." He said proudly. "Well, Cecil helped me."

He put the cake on the table, now fumbling in his pockets.

"I have something for you, actually." He said, pulling out a small box from his pocket. "I don't know if you're going to like it but..."

Nico didn't hear what Will was saying as he opened the box with trembling hands. He pulled out a sun pendant on a thin gold chain. The sun looked just like the tattoo on Will's shoulder.

Nico couldn't hold back a tear that rolled down his cheek. Will watched him attentively, stopping his ranting when he saw it.

"Nico, what's wrong-"

The next thing Will knew, pale arms was wrapped tightly around him, Nico's face buried in Will's chest.

"Thank you." Nico said in a small, shaky voice before pulling back. He placed the sun pendant on his palm, watching it glisten in the candle light. Tears still rolled down his cheeks.

Will looked at him, his eyes filled with warmth and understanding. He always understood. His sunshine was so alone, for so long. All Will wanted was to make him happy.

Will moved to embrace Nico in a tight hug, kissing the top of his head and then lifted his head with long, gentle fingers on his chin.

"I love you so much." He said. "You're such an amazing person. You're brave, gorgeous, smart, brilliant. Beautiful." He wiped the tear from Nico's cheek. "I will love you with all my might. I promise."

And with that he gently kissed Nico, making him smile while the tears of joy kept rolling down his cheeks.

"I love you, Will."

Nico di Angelo was fifteen when he found his happiness.

#nico di angelo #heroes of olympus #percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson #pjo/hoo #will solace #jason grace #solangelo #frank zhang #annabeth chase #piper mclean #leo valdez #hazel levesque #reyna avila ramirez arellano #trials of apollo

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samlicker81 · 4 years

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Lucky | Part 5

Sam X Reader

Summary: You’re unlucky in love when you find a lost wallet outside a bar and are smitten with the photo on the ID inside. Could your luck have turned, or have you found yourself in the middle of something unfortunate?

Warnings: nightmares, bed sharing, cuddling, angst, dumb flirting

Word Count: 2.9K

Series Masterlist

You finally got the timeline nailed down with Sam filling in the holes. You were abducted from your home somewhere between four and five in the morning on Sunday, after your shift. Kept in pitch blackness, and in and out of consciousness due to a significant concussion and blood loss, there was no way of knowing that the entire day passed. Sam and Dean were able to locate and make it to the nest by nightfall. Monday morning found you here at the motel, after driving through the night to put a significant distance between you and what was left of your captors.

You called Emily, the only person who’d really worry about you, on a burner phone Dean let you use. But since then, the only people you’ve had contact with are these mysterious brothers. If you can call it contact. The past two days have been spent with Sam clicking away at a laptop in the corner of the room and making whispered phone calls in the bathroom, Dean leaving the place as much as possible and coming back smelling of booze or bacon to watch TV too loudly, and you sleeping off your concussion or listening to an audiobook on Sam’s IPod, because reading with your eyes still made you nauseous.

Evening is falling again as you lay on your bed pretending to sleep. Sam has his eyes on you almost every time you look up. It’s already been suffocating enough sharing the space with these two men without the constant puppy eyes.

Besides pain, anger is all you feel. You’re aware that it makes no sense to direct it at your rescuers, but you don’t care. Right now, they’re your new captors and it feels good to meet Sam’s overbearing glances with glares and his questions with silence or sarcasm. You’d snap at Dean too, but he left you alone. Sam keeps trying.

“Sammy. Outside.” Dean pokes his head in the room. You hit the pause button on the book you’re not listening to and strain your ears against the highway noise to catch the conversation drifting through the thin walls.

“I don’t like you going alone,” Sam’s voice rumbles.

“I won’t be alone. Two extra hunters are enough. We gotta get back there before they recoup too much. Or worse, move again.”

“You know what I mean. We don’t know these guys that well. They won’t have your back like I would.”

“I’m a big boy, Sammy. You’re still hurt, anyway. And you have to stay here with her. She trusts you more.”

You scoff at the same time Sam does. “She hates me, dude.” He mumbles something else too quiet for you to hear.

“You gotta stop doing this to yourself. None of this is your fault.”

“If I’d left her alone, they never would have come after her. They grabbed her the very next night after I staked out her place. Sebastian made it clear that it wasn’t a coincidence.” The guilt is heavy in his voice. You feel some of your own tighten in your chest. You might be being too hard on him.

“You can’t live like that, shutting everyone out. People get hurt whether you’re around or not. It’s not a crime to like someone every once in a while.”

“Dean…”

“Whatever, man. I’m meeting up with the guys now to game plan. I’ll be back late and then we leave bright and early.” Dean shuffles a bag and then his footsteps begin moving away from the door. “Don’t let her push you around too much while I’m gone!” he yells and then the car door slams.

You snap your eyes shut as the door clicks open. He doesn’t even try to be discreet when he comes around the bed and leans over you. He steps away and sighs, heading to the bathroom where you can hear him quietly place an order for Chinese food. He remembers to ask for no mushrooms in your stir fry.

He flicks off the lights and tiptoes back to his corner, so he doesn’t disturb your fake slumber. He clicks at his computer, unaware of your turmoil.

A swirl of contrition, doubt, and frustration makes your head hurt. This time all of it is pretty much directed at yourself. Every spiteful action you’ve taken towards Sam comes back and pummels you in the gut. Somewhere in the back of your mind you knew he never really deserved it. He’d only ever been nice. So annoyingly nice. Because he liked you? You press a thumb between your eyebrows, pushing away, not for the first time, the feelings you had when you met him. You feel like a silly teenager, denying your feelings, wanting to cry into a pillow, avoiding Sam as much as possible.

You’re a grown up. You can apologize. Just not right now.

You’re asleep before Dean gets back. The new unease in the presence of Sam, knowing you should talk to him, is making your head throb with a vengeance.

It isn’t the first time your dreams have taken a dark turn. You’re always back in that dark room. At least that’s where it feels like. You never saw the room where you were tied up, and your dream displays that same darkness. Every sense but sight is heightened. You hear every movement and hiss echo around you. You’re not tied up, but you can’t move. Hands grab at you, pulling hard at different limbs. Voices laugh at your cries as you lay helpless, only feeling the damage they leave to your lifeless form.

Sam wakes with a start when you cry out. The too small cot creaks as he extricates his aching body from it. Dean snorts loudly and groans, pulling a pillow over his head. Sam comes to your side and hesitates. Your face is scrunched up in obvious discomfort. His fingers twitch, wanting to smooth the lines between your brows. He wills himself to step away instead.

He’s almost back in bed when you start panting fast. This time he gives in to instinct, wrapping a hand around your ankle through the bedspread.

“Shh…It’s just a dream.”

The clawing hands turn to gentle caresses. Stroking your leg from knee to ankle, pushing hair from your forehead.

You blink and find moonlight streaming through cracks between thick green curtains. You shift in the sheets, grateful that you have control of your body again.

“You okay?” You jump hard at the gentle whisper. Sam’s hands move away from you and into his lap, but he stays seated on the edge of the bed by your feet. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. You were having a nightmare again.”

You blink a couple of times at his shadowed face and then burst into tears.

The mattress rocks as he settles his large frame next to you, and you let him pull you into his arms. The gesture wrenches a quiet sob out of you. “I know, I get them too. It’s awful,” he whispers into your hair, a warm hand moving in soothing circles on your back.

“I--I’m so scared…all the time.” The admission chokes out of you and into his soaked shirtfront.

He pulls up your chin, forcing you to meet his eyes. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Your breath hitches. Somehow the affectionate statement both warms your bones and twists like a sharp knife in your chest at the same time.

“Sam, I…I’m really sorry.”

“What?” He laughs in genuine shock. You pull back a little.

“You’ve gone out of your way to be nice to me and I’ve gone out of my way to make you miserable. You don’t deserve it,” you sniff. “I’m afraid. And I’m angry. But not at you.”

“You’ve gone through a lot.”

You roll your still teary eyes and let out a sad laugh, “Ugh, like that.” You sigh and pull your good arm out of his grasp to wipe at your nose. “Thank you for saving me. And thank you for keeping me safe. Even from my own dreams.” You try to laugh again, but it doesn’t come out right. You shudder and his arms flex automatically, pulling you into him again. You breathe in his warmth and clean linen scent. You’re suddenly very aware of how intimate the embrace is, being in your bed, and your stomach flutters. His heart beats too fast beneath your ear and you smile a little. He feels it too, but he doesn’t let go. You can’t deny it feels right.

“You get nightmares too?” You break the silence; it feels so good to talk.

“Yeah, it comes with the territory. Everything is different when you know what’s really out there. When you look evil in the face.”

“But this is what you do? You and your brother? You…hunt things?”

He chuckles dryly, “The family business. We never knew anything different, me and Dean. Our dad was a hunter. When we woke up afraid there was a monster in the closet, he came in with a shotgun.”

“Oh…I can’t imagine.”

“It’s not so bad. We save people, do what the cops can’t.” You nod against his chest, sniffling quietly. “You think you can sleep again?”

“Yeah, maybe. I feel like I haven’t slept in days. I know it looks like I just lay here and sleep all the time, but every time I close my eyes I’m back there. I feel like a kid afraid of the dark.”

“A very rational fear, really.” His long hair flops over his smiling face as he relinquishes you to your pillow and pulls the covers up. Your fingers still grip his hand. “Do you want me to stay?”

“Would you?”

“Let’s see…tiny cot, or pretty girl?” he quips, sliding under the covers.

You settle into his warmth, anxiety melting away. Your cheeks are still hot with the blush his flirty remark brought on when you fall back asleep.

Dean trips over the cot, just a few steps shy of slipping out. He squints in the still mostly dark room, finding the cot empty. His stomach flips for a second, head whipping around. He breathes a relieved chuckle, finding his brother deep in sleep with you barely visible in his arms. “Sammy, you dog…” He hikes his bag back up onto his shoulder and shuts the door quietly behind him.

You’re alone when you wake up from the best sleep you’ve had in days. Your head feels markedly clearer as you sit up.

The shower shuts off and your heart flutters. How quickly your body’s involuntary response has changed at the thought of Sam. He strolls out, lower half wrapped in a towel, top half bare and still beaded with water droplets. Your blush heats all the way down to your shoulders. He’s perfectly muscled, and you glimpse a tattoo brandishing his upper left chest before you look pointedly up at his face. His smile is just as disarming as his nakedness.

“You’re up. How’d you sleep?”

“Like a baby,” you rub your eyes, still a little puffy from your cry. “I didn’t bother you?”

“Just one night on this thing is one too many; I’ll take a bed hog any day.” He folds the rickety cot in half easily with one hand, ignoring your indignant scoff. He grabs some clothes out of a duffel on the floor and heads back to the bathroom. “Get dressed,” he throws over his shoulder, “We’re going out.”

You don’t have a lot of options, but Dean did all right on his shopping trip. You move as quickly as one good arm will let you, excited to leave the much-resented motel room for the first time. Soon you’re dressed in some comfortable leggings and a T-Shirt, teeth brushed, and knots picked out of your hair with Sam’s tiny comb.

“Ready.” You beam. Sam, fully dressed now and stretched out on the tidy bed where he slept beside you, looks up from his laptop. He smiles back, pulling glasses off of his nose. You like the change: smiling when he looks at you instead of stares full of concern. He probably appreciates the lack of glares himself.

“A movie?” He asks, eyebrows raised.

“What, too regular for you?”

He laughs, “No, it sounds perfect actually.” He pulls out a familiar leather wallet and throws some cash on the table between your empty dishes. “I just can’t remember the last time I went to the movies.”

“We passed a theater a few blocks down.” You shrug, not ready to call it a day and hole back up in the motel.

“Lead the way.” He gestures, standing. It felt like the day at the library again. Being with him was easy. If you didn’t both look like you’d been in a car accident, you could almost imagine nothing crazy had ever happened.

The comforting, buttery smell of movie theater plasters a grin on your face. “I almost wish we hadn’t just eaten. Popcorn is my favorite.”

“Candy guy.” He smiles down at you.

“Oh yeah?”

“Ooohhh yeah. Anything sour.”

You walked into the very next movie they had showing, some sci-fi thing that you never would have picked in a million years. It was mediocre. Most of the day’s events had been mediocre, running errands for restocking the first aid kit, snack bag, plus some extra stuff for you to get by. And then an okay lunch followed by a passable movie.

It was the best day you’d had in a long time.

Your head hurts and your fingers are like sausages sticking out from your sling, but you can’t wipe a smile off your face as you walk back to the motel. You want to lace your fingers into the large hand swinging next to you. Besides some light flirting, everything has been above bar. You’re trying to work out a reason why he’d sleep next to you again instead of a perfectly good unused bed when his phone rings. He stops in his tracks.

“Dean, finally.” You can’t hear the other end, but his face darkens. “Okay. Yeah, we have more. Be careful.” He hangs up.

It’s him that reaches for your hand, but not in the way you pictured it. His long legs move quickly, pulling you behind him.

“The nest moved. They could be anywhere.” His words shoot ice-cold fear down your spine.

You struggle to keep up with his pace the whole way until he finally stops in the parking lot of the motel. He drops quickly to a knee. Is he tying his shoe? You’re about to question him, antsy to get inside and out of the darkening night, when he pulls up his pant leg and unstraps a long knife.

Shielded behind his back, you watch him thrust open the motel door in one quick movement. You stand in the corner while he checks the rest of the room. He grabs a bag and quickly heads for the door again.

“Stay here,” he directs firmly.

“Sam—” You hear the fear constricting your voice. His hand stops on the doorknob; the concerned eyes are back.

“I know. I’ll only be a minute, I promise.” And then he’s gone.

He’s true to his word, returning for you soon after he left. After being assured it’s safe, you reluctantly follow him back outside and around to the back of the building. He directs you to a strange smelling fire burning in a metal trashcan.

“It’s not perfect, but it can help throw them off. The smell.” With that, you move closer, reaching out a shaking hand to try and let the warmth draw the fear from you. His arm wraps around you and you lean into his side.

You stand quietly this way until the fire is down to smoking embers. “Come on,” he whispers, gently bringing you back to reality. He pulls the trashcan with him to the door. You sit on the end of the bed while he disables the smoke alarm, staring at the sliver of exposed skin above his belt as he reaches up with long arms.

The trashcan is left in the room to smoke it up while you both sit on the curb just outside. The smell is still heavy around you as smoke leaks from the open window. You’re grateful for his arm around you; the night is cold without the fire.

“I’m sorry. I want this to be over too.”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault.” You only rest your aching head on his shoulder for a second before you snap it back up at his scoff. “Sam, I don’t blame you for any of this. I’d be dead without you.”

“You’d be at home still believing monsters aren’t real without me.”

You continue to stare at him, trying to catch his eye. “Well, I’m glad I met you.” It comes out angrier than you wanted it to. He finally meets your eyes. There is sadness there, but something else too.

In a second his lips are on yours. A shocked sigh leaves your mouth and enters his as his lips part. Your surprise and remaining dregs of fear melt away with the insistent heat of his mouth on yours. Too soon, he pulls away.

You’ve only just blinked open your heavy lids and he’s already pulled the metal can from the room and slammed a lid over it. He peers into the haze and looks back at you, eyes dark.

“It’s not too bad in there.” He jerks his head towards the open door and reaches out a hand for you.

#Sam Winchester #SPN #supernatural fanfiction #supernatural #bed sharing #cuddling #angst #sam x reader #series

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cupofteaguk · 5 years

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the write ups

PART OF THE REPUTATION SERIES

summary: head boy Min Yoongi is a lot of things: patient, perfect, popular, and unwavering; structured so that nothing can threaten that mindset. nothing, except for you.

pairing: yoongi x fem!reader

genre: hogwarts au, head boy!yoongi, enemies to lovers au | fluff

warnings: yoongi has a stick up his ass, many mentions of detentions various depictions of it that may or may not be accurate to actual Hogwarts detentions but alas i cannot say for certain

word count: 10k

When Min Yoongi is seventeen, he receives the school authority to go around acting as if there were a giant stick up his ass. In other words, he gets selected to be a Head Boy.

Unfortunately, the role is entirely too fitting for a boy who appears to have spent the first half of his childhood reading the handbook of rules for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry line by line and the second half of his childhood reciting those rules to anyone just barely beginning to step out of bounds. You would be very familiar with the lectures he gives, given how often you’ve had to listen through on several of his different accusations regarding your rule breaking and lack of discipline.

There’s no surprise you are slightly less than fond about the thought of Min Yoongi. After all, he’s served as the catalyst for several incidents that only continue to put a bad taste in your mouth. Like that time during your first year when you were frantically attempting to finish the rest of your Transfiguration homework the morning of the due date, only to be discovered and reported—resulting in a stern talking to from Professor McGonagall about the importance of time management and leaving your cheeks red with humiliation. Who had reported you? Min Yoongi.

Or the time in your third year when you and Karly were passing notes to one another about who was going to ask Quidditch star Jeon Jungkook to the approaching Yule Ball, only to be rapidly interrupted by a loud observation about your diverted attention. Long story short, not only did neither you nor Karly get to ask Jeon Jungkook to the Yule Ball, Jeon Jungkook (and everyone else, for that matter) knew of both your pathetic thirteen-year-old crush as well as the intentional process to progress an acquaintanceship with one of the most popular boys in school, but you also got your first taste of detention at the hands of Professor Snape. Who had delivered that loud observation? Min Yoongi.

To this day, just the sight of the polished silver trophies in the trophy room is more than enough to make you nauseous, having spent an entire night scrubbing relentlessly at the metal until a reflection appeared across the surface. Like bad memories, your hatred for Yoongi brew under the surface and became something you thought about constantly—despite the fact that he was more often than not barely even worth a breath or a thought.

Although you know not to dwell on his actions and the outcome you had to pay for those aforementioned actions, you learn quickly how to mask your embarrassment as well as a large extent of your emotions. Seventeen-years-old looks a little better on you as you have four years of life, experience, and the ability to develop immunity against general embarrassing moments or moments of distaste. Well, for the most part at least.

“What?” You have to bite your tongue to keep yourself from exerting too much of an exasperation, too much of a snarky nature that seems like the verbal form of rolling your eyes. “Min Yoongi got selected as Head Boy? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Good friend Karly sits opposite of you in the Leaky Cauldron, joining in on your criticism with an actual roll of her own eyes as her wrist flicks so that her palm faces upwards. “Apparently being charming in a way that involves kissing up to all the Professors is enough to guarantee you anything you would possibly want.”

You hum quietly underneath your breath, cradling the beer mug within your reach as you swirl the thing. The food you have ordered in front of you goes untouched. “I didn’t think Min Yoongi even wanted to be Head Boy. Thought he was too hung up on terrorizing young children who forget to turn in their homework assignments.”

Karly actually laughs at that, reaching over to pick at the french fries in the middle of the table. “I think that’s just with you.”

You roll your eyes back with a whine. “Please don’t remind me. As if Yoongi wasn’t already annoying enough, now he’s gonna be annoying with actual reason of authority. The highest reason of authority, for that matter.” You glare across at Karly. “Besides, he’s picked on you too. It’s not like his eagle eyes for trouble isn’t zeroed in on me. Have you forgotten the time we pulled that all-nighter in the trophy room because we had to clean all the trophies—because of Min Yoongi?”

“Oh no,” Karly interjects, palms directed at you this time. “I definitely remember that. But that’s the extent to which Yoongi has gone to rat me out, and I have a feeling that was only because you were gushing about how good Jungkook’s arms look like when gripping a broomstick!”

“Please do not remind me,” You emphasize, the slight flush on your cheeks serving as a reminder that of course you would remember such a thing. Jeon Jungkook has been part of Quidditch (and school, for that matter) royalty since his first year and all his accumulating friendships just add to that list of popularity. It explains why Yoongi is doing so well at the top of the school food chain.

Regardless, your crush on Jungkook is old news, as you are sure his head is too far up his ass, his mind is too fixated on playing professionally, and his mouth is prided upon kissing the most girls during after hours at the Three Broomsticks. You’ve taken to fixing your attention on much more pressing matters: like the upcoming NEWTs of your final year, or figuring out how to remain emotionally sane during your last year at Hogwarts, or just trying to navigate around handling Yoongi for one more moment.

“Oh god, speaking of…” Karly starts, trailing off when her eyes flicker towards the entrance of the Leaky Cauldron before immediately shifting back to you. Her eyes are hard and you don’t need a whole five years of friendship with Karly to know who she is referring to.

Although you normally would refuse to look over your shoulder to look upon what you know to be the bane of your existence, the temptation is strong this time around. Maybe it’s because you’ve gone the typical two months of summer vacation without having to hear his stupid voice that has only gotten deeper and silkier with the help of puberty or seen his dumb face that curves in all the right places. The thought only makes you hate him more.

As you look over to peer at him, you notice immediately that he’s with two other friends, two other pieces of the popularity crew. Kim Namjoon, Gryffindor, head of school newspaper The Hogwarts Daily, family who has just gotten back from China, or so you heard. Besides him is Jung Hoseok, Hufflepuff, a master at spells but also a master of tricks and pranks. You still remember one time during second year when he levitated a girl’s bottle of ink and accidentally spilled the entire content over her uniform.

You wish you could turn back around and go back to minding your own business, but a familiar yet unwelcoming weight places itself right behind your chair and Karly’s wary look leaves little to the imagination.

“Min Yoongi,” You greet in a false high-pitched voice that sounds anything but genuine. “I thought I could hear the cries of screaming children from that hell hole you crawled out of.” You rotate your hips enough to give him half of your attention. He’s alone, and when you flicker your gaze over you notice the two other boys already occupying a nearby table. “What are you doing here? Gonna stand outside Flourish and Blotts and breakdown all your horrible detention punishments to future students who’ll refuse to do their homework?”

Min Yoongi gives you a half-smirk, a little light setting in his eyes. “Charming as ever, I see. Although I’m warning you—you really shouldn’t talk that way to your new Head Boy. Haven’t you heard the news?”

“Unfortunately I did,” You return, turning around so that you give Yoongi your back. You reach for your mug of beer. “I hope you don’t expect me to go around kissing your ass and bending over for your every single whim.”

With your back on Yoongi, you don’t even know if he’s still around to hear these vaguely defined threats regarding his potential use of power. You do, however, stop when you feel a breath right at the shell of your ear. “I mean, you said it, not me.”

Your heart sticks itself right in your throat.

By the time you whirl back to look at Yoongi, he’s already making his way towards his friends at the other table. Karly is giving a wide-eyed look, as if she cannot believe what she just witnessed with her own two eyes.

You’re not even sure you would stand to explain it properly.

“I’m going to murder him slowly,” You say instead, reaching into your bag and pulling out enough money to cover the cost of the meal and the beers. You throw it on the table, grabbing your coat and scarf from the back of your chair. “C’mon, let’s get to Flourish and Blotts before Yoongi decides to make camp outside to terrorize the children.”

September first means an early wake-up call. It means meeting up with Karly at King’s Cross station and making your way together towards the platform division between nine and ten. It means running the carts headfirst and hearing the whistle of the train ringing loudly in your ear, serving as the best reminder that you are returning home.

Sticking to the normal pattern you have developed and memorized, you and Karly load your trunks and belongings into the side of the train before boarding. You meet up with Ronnie in a compartment he has saved for the three of you to occupy, giving you all a private space to gush to one another about the events of your summer holiday and what you hope the final year will consist of.

The art of catching up with two friends who have had their own set of vacations and plans and drama is a whole day ordeal. It helps time go by quicker, makes the hours between leaving Kings Cross to arriving at Hogwarts feel like nothing. Add the sweets from the trolley, it calls for a train ride of sugar and chocolate and a little too much laughter that leaves you breathless.

The sky is adapting a pinkish tint, a well-versed sign that the train ride is coming to a close—you assume it’s probably another hour or so before the train docks at the station and yet the conversations between the three of you are far from done. In fact, Ronnie is still telling you of the story in which he traveled to Japan over the summer holiday for one of those intricate silk bomber jackets when there is a knock on your compartment door. The silhouette doesn’t leave much indication about who could be on the other side, so you exchange a look with Karly before straightening up and sliding open the compartment.

You yelp slightly, blinking once, twice, thrice, upon the realization that Min Yoongi is standing right in front of you. From the looks of it, he’s already dressed and ready to depart from the train—all robes with his green tie perfectly grazed at his neck, the bright golden HEAD BOY badge displayed proudly right on top of Yoongi’s robe almost as if it were glaring at you or laughing at you instead. It takes a second to gather your bearings, which finds you leaning slightly against the doorframe leading into the compartment.

“Min Yoongi,” You greet.

He cocks up an eyebrow, repeating your name back to you.

“You’re a long ways off from that pit of fire you were created from.”

Yoongi cracks a smile. “Pit of fire—so you think I’m hot?”

You snort at that. “Did I say pit of fire? I meant more of a mixing bowl for the devil, from where I’m assuming he created you.”

The smile slips off Yoongi’s face as he levels you with a glare. “You’re lucky we’re not on school grounds yet and that I’m feeling lenient enough to let you off. But I can’t make those promises when we arrive.”

You roll your eyes. Did he expect you to be grateful about his current and extremely short-lived generous nature?

And yet, Yoongi is not done with his interrogation. “How have you fared with the summer holiday homework?” He inquires next, tilting his head to the side. “Personally, I thought the essay we had to write for Professor Snape was the hardest.” At your momentary gape of silence, Yoongi raises an eyebrow once again. “You did do the homework, right?”

“Yah, of course I did Min Yoongi!” You snap.

“For your sake, I hope you did too,” He replies, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “Otherwise I’d have to give you detention a lot sooner than I originally anticipated.”

“Hold your breath,” You retort. “I did the assignments.” You’ve been getting better at lying straight through your teeth, having to master the skill just to avoid certain situations like this with Min Yoongi.

Yoongi seems to yield at that, because he steps back and his eyes don’t look as dark as a few seconds ago—although you cannot recall when they became dark in the first place. “We’ll be arriving at Hogwarts soon,” He reports, eyes flickering down to you attire. “You should get dressed soon.”

“I know we’re arriving soon, I’m not a child, Yoongi,” You hiss.

“Well, from the way you were dressed at the Leaky Caldron, I was beginning to think otherwise—!”

You slam the compartment door right back in his face.

Ronnie and Karly are giving each other a look, a look that shifts as you move from the door frame back into your seat. It seems like there are a whole bunch of questions Ronnie wishes to ask in this situation, but he resorts instead to: “Did you really finish all your homework from the summer holiday?”

You’re halfway through on peeling the jacket off your frame when you give your friend a look of disbelief. “Of course not, that’s what the night before classes start is for.”

As you’re shifting your normal attiring for your Hogwarts robe and ties, you think about the encounter with Yoongi and how his attitude towards you hadn’t been that surprising considering the prior years in which the pair of you have known each other. Yoongi has been integrated into your life since the very first year, in which his attitude towards you always seemed to adopt a pattern of general sass and reporting. As far as you were concerned, you have been at the center of Yoongi’s target from the beginning in which you could never escape his mean remarks or his desire to have justice served in the form of seeing you planted in detention. Nothing much has changed from those earlier years. He still seeks you out and somehow it always ends up with you getting some form of detention and still knows exactly what to say to get you riled up—granted, in the more recent years he’s taken to banters upholding more flirtatious qualms.

But you had refused to put too much thought into it, staying secure on the thought and belief that the things he said and the things he did were made with no intention other than to mark up your permanent record. And for that, you only knew to hate Yoongi more and more and desired nothing but to return the favor of exasperation for him as he had done for you.

It seems as if it might be a more difficult feat than you originally thought, especially when you walk into the Slytherin common room with your bag of unfinished homework assignment later that evening only to find Yoongi himself situated right in front of the fireplace.

Yoongi turns his attention towards the source of noise, eyebrow raising at the sight of you standing in the common room with a bag slung over your shoulder. He greets you by your name. “Fancy seeing you this evening, Miss Y/N,” He starts, straightening up and out of his chair as you notice he is still in his school attire. “As pleasant as it is to see you, I hope you realize it’s past curfew for students to be out of their beds.”

You narrow your eyes at him. “There are no curfews for students of that limitation.”

“Well, when the school’s Head Boy is part of your House, there’s always a curfew for students to follow.” He tilts his head to the side in mock curiosity, and yet something in his eyes plagues you as it always does—as it always seems like Min Yoongi is one too many steps ahead of you. “Besides, there’s no reason for you to be down here unless you are, perhaps, working on something.”

You shift, gripping the bag of your materials tighter in your grasp. “What would I be working on? There’s no assignments yet.”

“You tell me, Miss Y/N,” Yoongi counters, shifting his standing position so he could lean back on one of his legs. Despite his more casual stance, everything about him reads serious. “Given that you’re not working on anything, I think that you should go back to the rooms and get some sleep. I’m sure you have a whole day of classes, do you not?”

You fingers curl tighter and tighter around the strap of the bag at your shoulder, debating whether knocking Yoongi’s head with your textbooks and parchment paper would do enough to knock him out.

You’re so caught up in the serious consideration of this plan that you fail to notice Yoongi has moved closer to you the tips of both your shoes are touching. “So, class tomorrow?”

You level yourself with Yoongi’s half curious half amused glance before you find yourself caving. “I can’t,” You finally answer.

He raises an eyebrow. “You can’t go to class?”

“No,” You interject, already starting to grow exhausted of the conversation and you wish you spoke the truth earlier on the train if only to avoid this type of confrontation. Or, rather, a part of you wishes that you had just done the assignments when you were supposed to. “No, I mean I can go to class but I can’t go to sleep and I can’t leave the common room.”

“Hm,” Yoongi ponders this as if the question is actually something he has to think about and as if this situation isn’t something he has been hoping for since the encounter on the train. “Why is that?”

“Are you really going to make me spell it out, Min Yoongi?” You growl.

“I think I would appreciate it if you did.”

If your glare could cut, Yoongi would be a dead man. But he’s a dead man with an extremely cocky smile, as if he knows exactly what his questions and observations and general playing dumb is doing to you.

“Fine,” You snap back, holding up the bag for him to see. “Inside this bag is my summer homework assignments, okay? I didn’t get to finish them over the holiday, so I really need this time to get everything done. There, see, that’s the reason why I can’t go up yet. Are you happy?”

He shrugs half-heartedly. “Not really.”

Your glare hardens. “Yah, what do you want from me, Min Yoongi? I told you the truth, I need to do my assignments—are you gonna let me do it or not?”

“See, I could but,” Yoongi starts, taking another step forward and forcing you to take a corresponding step backwards. “Allowing you to do such a thing would defeat the purpose of it being summer homework.”

“Yoongi, let me do the homework,” You grit out between clenched teeth.

Yoongi ponders this for a moment. “Alright then,” He allows, stepping to the side. You, however, barely make it one step before his stupid voice is ringing out again. “Detention, Miss Y/N.”

“Detention?” You echo loudly. “Just because I didn’t do the homework?”

“Honestly?” He starts. “I could care less about the homework. Lying to Head Boy, however, is something I cannot excuse.” He grins, a horrible Cheshire cat smile. “Not that I would want to, anyhow.”

You clench your teeth together, so sure that if something was in between your teeth it would have snapped in half. “You absolute piece of—!”

“Shh,” Yoongi hushes, actually having the nerve to step forward and bring his index finger up so that it hovers over your lips. “Careful, Y/N. I don’t want to have to give you more detention for also swearing in front of your Head Boy.”

You like to think there’s a lot of things you are thinking in this moment. Rather than simply knocking Yoongi to the ground, you ponder locking him outside of the common room or throwing him out the window or feeding him to the magical creatures hidden in the Forbidden Forest. But the fear of having this disagreement drag on further in a way that will waste more time that you could be using on your assignments keeps you at bay.

You keep your mouth shut, which leads to Yoongi delivering another smirk. “Alright, I’ll leave you to it then. Have a good night.”

And with that, he steps back and steps around you, leaving you to only imagine locking him out, throwing him out, or feeding him away—as well as imagine what your first detention of the new school year will be like.

You absolutely hate Min Yoongi.

Your first detention of the new school year takes place on an early Saturday morning a few weeks into the new school year, assigned to clean one of the abandoned bathrooms with no help and no magic. Naturally, the smell and the labor and the exhaustion is more than enough to leave you in a bad mood as you find that you are practically seething by the time you make it into the shower. The water washes off the sweat and grime of a day that has started at five in the morning, but does little to take away the irritation that rolls off your body like steam.

Despite starting so early in the morning, by the time you finish with your shower and prepare a bag of assignments to take with you throughout the day—the breakfast is set out in the Great Hall and students from each of the houses have gathered to enjoy the meal.

“Hey—woah,” Karly starts, stopping immediately as if she can see deep enough into your soul to see the fiery depths of your anger. “What’s up with you? What happened?”

You slide into the seat next to your friend, hair still damp and eyes red from the early morning wake-up call. “Shit,” You reply, leaning forward to rest your forehead into the palm of your hand.

“Really?” Karly inquires sympathetically. “Detention must have been rough?”

“No, literally—shit,” You try again. Eyes still closed, you turn to face her. “I had to clean the bathrooms on the third floor.”

Karly’s momentary look of disgust is all she needs to do. “Oh my god, the ones that were closed after Moaning Myrtle clogged a bunch of them?”

“Yes!” You emphasis with a whine, pulling away from your palms and pouting. How could the world be so cruel to assign you such a labor intensive job as punishment? “All because Yoongi is such a stick up the ass about some dumb misunderstanding we had gotten into.”

Karly narrows your eyes. “Didn’t you lie straight to his face?”

“Who’s side are you on?” You snap.

“You’re not mad because it was a misunderstanding,” Karly corrects, pouring more breakfast onto her plate. “You’re mad because Yoongi has a stick up his ass, period. And he does.”

You sigh, easing up on yourself just enough to put some food on your own plate. “Well, you’re not wrong.” You straighten slightly, gaze shifting up and down the Slytherin table. These first minutes of conversation with Karly has been nice, of course, but has also been unusual. Post-detention torture is usually followed up with a sickening smile from the man who assigned you the detention in the first place, followed by a whole bunch of inquiries about the detention session as if he wasn’t the reason for your misery. Post-detention torture is filled with Min Yoongi, which is exactly what your morning is missing.

“He’s not here,” Karly remarks.

You stare at her. “Well, where is he?”

“Not sure,” She replies with a shrug. “He sort of left out that information while we were braiding each other’s hair and sharing our deepest and darkest secrets with one another.”

“You could just said you weren’t sure and left it at that,” You grumble, sending a pointed glare to her cheesy grin. But just as you fix your gaze on Karly, your gaze immediately gravitates towards the entrance to the Great Hall and you see three familiar figures lingering in the frame. Familiar not because of the friendly feelings that the sight fills you with; but familiar because of the reputations that come along with it.

At the frame leading into the Great Hall stands Min Yoongi, Jeon Jungkook, and Kim Taehyung and it appears that they’re still in the middle of joking about something. Min Yoongi and Kim Taehyung are dressed in a casual Saturday attire of a polo, slacks, and the ties showing off their house colors while Jungkook is sporting a Ravenclaw sweater and is balancing his Firebolt atop shoulder.

“They probably just got back from the Ravenclaw Quidditch practice,” Karly voices your own internal observation. She follows your gaze down the hallway to where the boys are conversing; but the sight is enough to get you to turn back to your own meal. “I think Yoongi saw us, he’s looking this way,” Karly continues to comment, although her attention is still heavily diverted at staring quite openly at the three boys.

“Probably thinking about how he could embarrass me in front of Jeon Jungkook again,” You spit out, despite not being affected by the sight of Jungkook. Your little crush on him is ancient news, but the sight of Yoongi and Jungkook together sometimes just brings back memories that are four years old.

Karly actually laughs at that. “I doubt that. He keeps glancing over here. I wonder if he’s wondering how your detention went. Maybe if he knew you had to clean toilets, he’d feel a little guilty.”

“I don’t even think feeling guilty is in his limited range of emotions,” You note, digging a fork into your eggs. But something about her words stick with you for a moment. Although you doubt that Yoongi would ever think to connect guilt to your punishment, you like to think you could do something to level the playing ground. Or, more simply put maybe getting back at him this once would be enough to ease your desire for revenge. “Hm.” You ponder, placing your bag on your lap and immediately digging through the contents. It’s an old bag, something you’ve had packed since the beginning of the year and has since served as a trash can of sorts that you throw a wide variety of items into. You continue your search, mind wandering to your Diagon Alley visit and a corresponding purchase you remember stuffing into your bag.

Karly takes note of your silence long enough to shift her attention back to you. “What are you doing—?” She cuts herself off mid-sentence, eyes widening slightly when she sees the jar you are producing. She starts to laugh. “Oh my fucking god, dude.”

“What?” You inquire, lips starting to quirk up slightly as the weight of the U-No-Poo jar starts to settle more in your lap.

She continues to laugh, rolling her eyes slightly but the smile is still there. Karly isn’t your best friend, your partner in crime, well-equipped in the behavior that has landed you in detention, for nothing. “Well, alright, hand some over.”

Grinning, you pick out two pills of the U-No-Poo and hand it over to Karly. You watch for a moment as she pulls out her wand in order to break down the original structural integrity of the pills, reducing them into crushed particles.

Initially, you had purchased the jar of U-No-Poo from the Wealseys’ Wizard Wheezes shop in Diagon Alley with little intention of doing anything with it. Just the thought of having it filled you with a sense of power—especially considering what it did.

As you wait for Karly to bring you back to Earth, you turn the jar in your palm to read the labels. Basically, U-No-Poo is a product that brings constipation to the taker—not exactly the most pleasant experience for anyone who had the misfortune of ingesting this pill. That’s why you never had a genuine thought of sharing the product with anyone. But that was before Yoongi gave you detention under the prefix of something as stupid as a lie.

Just as you’re slipping the jar back into your bag, Karly holds up her plate that is now devoid of food with the exception of the crushed U-No-Poo pills. With another smile, you grab one of the glasses of water in front of you and dump the crushed remnants into the liquid. You look into the glass, swirling it once or twice before you look back out down the hall. Yoongi is still there with Jungkook and Taehyung.

“If you get caught, Yoongi will totally drag you to hell,” Karly advises, but she’s still smiling and even twists herself a little in the bench to get the best view. It’s almost amazing how neither of you have been caught or questioned, but the Saturday morning crowds for breakfast are never too crazy so it’s more natural for groups to come together and keep to themselves. It’s the perfect atmosphere for trouble.

“With the way he’s been my entire life, it kind of feels like I’m already there,” You retort, grabbing your bag and detaching yourself from the table as you make your way down the stretch of distance towards the end.

Jungkook and Taehyung are at the beginnings of disembarking from the group just as you’re approaching. Taehyung is making his way towards the Hufflepuff table while Jungkook is turning on his heel to exit the Great Hall—probably to take a shower and put down his Firebolt. This leaves Yoongi wide open to conversation, one he immediately invites you to with a quirked eyebrow and a call of your name.

“Heard you finally got your detention,” Yoongi greets, stuffing his hands into his pockets and the distance between you allows you to take in the stance. There’s something almost irritating and unfair about the veins that decorate down his arms and the traitorous lingering of your gaze makes you want to curse yourself. It also makes you want to punch him in the mouth.

“No thanks to you,” You say, still holding the drink to your chest. You try to think about how you want to play this out. “But luckily for you, it wasn’t that bad. Just cleaning. Anything worse and I would have attempted to drive a brick for your head as soon as you walked in.”

Yoongi quirks an eyebrow at the threat. “If a more challenging punishment lets me see the more feisty side of you, I may have to talk to Filch about changing some things around.”

“Why? Because you like seeing me feisty?” You retort, meaning nothing with that kind of question. Although the way Yoongi looks at you afterwards makes you falter.

“Oh, I think I might like seeing you a little bit more than that.”

Your heart stammers in your chest and you want to plummet it into the ground as a result. Yoongi is giving you a familiar challenging look, the type of expression that is encouraging you (daring you) to continue. Rather, you adjust the strap of your bag on your shoulder and give him a tight-lipped smile. “Are you going to go sit down and eat?”

If he’s disappointed in your abrupt change of topic, he doesn’t give an indication of that. Rather, he jumps on the new pace of discussion. “Naw, I stopped by just to walk with Taehyung. I actually have a meeting with some professors that I have to get to soon.”

“Hm, you should at least have something in your body,” You note, shuffling forward and tilting the glass of water towards him. “You want some?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Since when do you share?”

You snort. “Are you implying that you think I would be okay with you getting your germs on something I’ve already drank? Of course not. This is a new glass—something originally for me but given that I’ve already eaten, I wouldn’t mind letting you have this.” You don’t leave him with another choice as you step forward and practically shove the glass into his hands. This brings you closer to him, almost able to feel the warmth of his presence, but you pull back. “I have to go to the library.”

You make a beeline to get out of sight, looking over your shoulder just in time to see Yoongi take a sip of the water.

The remainder of the day proceeds normally—you spend a majority of your day in the library working on the first Transfiguration essay of the year as well as studying for your upcoming Care of Magical Creatures exam. Saturdays are filled with the books and the sunlight streaming in through the glass windows of the library, company that eventually takes the form of Ronnie and Karly.

In fact, it’s such a normal Saturday afternoon that you completely forget about the repercussions from the morning until you walk into the Slytherin common room and find Min Yoongi lying on the couch and groaning into the pillow.

“Oh my god,” Ronnie observes immediately, coming up to the edge of the couch where Yoongi’s feet are rested. “What’s up with him?” He lowers his voice, despite the fact that you’re the only individuals in the common room at this time of day. “Yoongi, are you okay?”

When Yoongi doesn’t respond, you tilt your head slightly. “Maybe he’s sleeping on a stomachache.”

“Maybe he ate something,” Ronnie supplies.

“Or drank something,” Karly includes with a playful wiggle of her eyebrows.

You scoff to hide a laugh. “Karly, no.”

“Uh, Karly yes,” Ronnie interjects, leaning over so that he can catch a better glimpse of the two of you. “What did you do? Poison him?”

“No!” You hiss.

“You might as well have,” Karly adds with a shrug, before turning to Ronnie. “She slipped U-No-Poo into his water.”

“Detention, Miss. Y/N!” Yoongi crows, sitting straight up on the couch as the sudden movement drags a scream out of the remaining three of you. It seems, however, that the action has prompted too much movement for a sickening Yoongi, because he falls back against the couch with a groan. “It was you! I knew that water had to be spiked with something—I’ve been feeling like shit ever since then.”

“Oh my god, keep it in Min Yoongi,” You retort, lips edging into a smile as you round the couch in order to hover near his head. “Not that you have a choice, anyway.”

Without a warning, Yoongi reaches out to grab the collar of your shirt and pulls you down. On instinct, your hands come up to land right on his chest. The arms distance away from him is more than enough to provide a separation between the two of you, and yet you can still feel the warmth of his body through his shirt and you can see the glint in his eyes.

Even though he’s upside down in your field of vision, it’s hard to miss the glint and the weight of his finger pulling at your collar. “Detention for a week, Miss. Y/N,” He grumbles and you almost forget to feel angry over the tripping of your heart.

Following a week’s worth of different detentions that consist of a wide range of different activities like polishing the silverware to sweeping the entire school grounds last into the night with the only company taking the form of airy ghosts, to cleaning the glass windows and venturing into the Forbidden Forest for unicorn blood. All these things have contributed higher and higher to your exhaustion and your increasing desire to keep counteracting Yoongi’s detention punishments with your own form of payback.

This mostly takes the form of Karly meeting up with you in the Slytherin common room on a Tuesday morning to begin descending towards the ground floor for your morning classes. “Are you good?” Karly inquires after a moment, shouldering her bag and directing you with a stare. “Like sanity-wise? You good? A week’s worth of detention seems like more than enough to drive anyone crazy.”

“I’m okay,” You answer, although the distant soreness in your legs and arms tells another story. “Sore, though. And filled with a desire to kill Min Yoongi.”

Karly nods. “The usual response.”

“I mean, what’s up with him?” You grumble as the pair of you enter your Charms class. Given that you and Karly do not sit together, you continue to linger near the doorframe in order to keep the conversation going. “I always figured that slipping U-No-Poo into water would have earned like a day’s worth of detention, not a week. Who gives people a week’s detention, anyways?”

“Like I said,” Karly supplies with a shrug of her shoulders. “He’s got his eye on you. Like, really has his eyes on you.”

“Shut up,” You snap back, flashing back to the conversation the pair of you had in the Leaky Cauldron all that time ago and suddenly feeling nauseous.

Karly’s laugh leaves little hope that she’s just fucking around to make you nervous. Instead, you choose to ignore her as you turn away and enter deeper into the classroom. The space between you and Karly is mainly emphasised by another desk and a row—a desk taken by Hufflepuff Jung Hoseok, someone whose connection with Min Yoongi is something you don’t really bat an eye to. At least, in comparison to the other boys and their relationship with Yoongi. More often than not, when it came to Jung Hoseok, he wasn’t really one to rat someone out.

Apparently, the day is counting on that because as soon as you settle in your seat and take in topic of the upcoming lecture, Hoseok is sliding a paper onto your desk. He gives you a head tilt towards Karly’s direction when you give him a pair of inquiring eyes, allowing you to lean forward just enough to catch aforementioned friends eye. She quirks an eyebrow, turning back to face the front.

You do the same, flickering towards the blackboard and mountain of books that Professor Flitwick stands atop of. He’s providing an introduction of a Gripping Charm, which is always about as interesting as one would think when learning about a spell but being unable to start practical application. The slow-moving pace of the day allows you to take the time and unfold the paper from Karly.

Look up, guess who’s watching you again

Eyebrows furrowing, you look at Karly again. She’s must feel the weight of your gaze because she quirks her head just enough to give you a look. You return it, holding the note a little higher to inquire about it without actually inquiring about it. She smiles a little, tilting her head a little towards the front of the room. Clueless, your eyes follow her line of sight and you’re not entirely sure why you feel your heart trip slightly when your gaze meets one Min Yoongi, who has turned slightly in his chair a few rows ahead of you just to watch you in your seat.

After a moment of this stare-down, Yoongi shift his gaze down to your desk before moving back up to your face. He knows you’re passing notes—well, not that you and Karly ever tried to be extremely subtle about your actions.

You press your lips together. Maintaining eye-contact, you take the parchment Karly had given to you and your quill and begin writing something down.

Min Yoongi is a poop head

Looking back up, you find Yoongi is still staring at you. His eyes have hardened slightly, challenging you to follow through on something that will most definitely get you in trouble. You don’t care. You turn to Hoseok, to which he takes the note and mindlessly hands it to Karly before—!

Yoongi straightens up out of his seat, darting towards the row separating you and Karly in order to snatch the note out of Hoseok’s hands. Yoongi gives Hoseok a look, one that Hoseok returns with amusement to showcase how little fucks Hoseok has in contributing to less-than-perfect behavior, for it’s in his nature and part of his charm. But of course, Yoongi overlooks Hoseok in the long run to feed you a look.

You tilt your head down slightly in a nod, lifting your palm up towards him in an inviting gesture. It’s a gesture to read the note you have so graciously written with the knowledge that he would see it and read it.

“Mr. Min, is something wrong?” Professor Flitwick inquires from the front of the classroom.

Yoongi doesn’t answer him at first, instead taking the time to open the note. His gaze takes in the note written across the parchment, silent for a moment before he lowers his arm and slips the note into the back pocket of his slacks. “Nothing, Professor,” Yoongi says after a moment. “I just want Miss. Y/N to know publicly that she just earned herself another detention.”

The statement is followed with a sound quieter than silence, one that envelops the entire room and leaves everyone shocked. Not over the fact that you have just garnered another detention under your belt, but because Yoongi had to announce it in front of everyone.

You, however, are not included in this pool of surprise. Rather, you raise your eyebrows and wear a more amused expression. “Never expected anything less from you, Mr. Min.” And really, you hadn’t. Judging from the slight tint across Yoongi’s cheeks, it seems obvious to believe that he had read the entirety of the note—including Karly’s observation about who had been watching you. His hesitancy to give you detention at the expense of his wandering eyes seems like a slight crack in his otherwise uptight facade and you think you might run with that.

The library during the first wave of exam season is always a wild mix of exhaustion—filled with all different types of students just collectively coming together to conquer a singularity goal: pass. With the looming mountain of tests and assignments and essays hovering over everyone, it’s normal to walk through the halls of the library and see students either laughing over the tipping of their sanity, beady eyed trying to get their fifth essay done, or students who have just given up entirely and spend time whispering amongst their friends.

You find yourself drawn between the second and third option, given that you are trying to write your third essay on Magical Creatures while also joking around with Ronnie and Karly.

“Ah, shit,” You grumble, looking over the requirements for your next essay for Transfiguration and realizing you don’t have any of that information in any of the notes (or lack thereof) you’ve taken throughout the lectures. You straighten slightly, tucking your quill, ink, and parchment under your arm. “Alright, I’m gonna go find that Transfiguration textbook. I’ll be right back.”

Karly and Ronnie wave you away as their own form of goodbye, too distracted with their own little game of Wizard’s Chest to process the whole reason for your departure. But you ignore that, slipping into the main hall of the library. You’re too busy overlooking the requirements of the essay and what you’ll have to look for when you locate the Transfiguration aisle of the library that you don’t notice someone equally as distracted walking towards you until you crash into them and feel something like cold, wet ink spraying everywhere.

“Oh—fuck!”

“Ow!”

You look up from your assignments, taking in the sight of Min Yoongi right in front of you. The blackness biting at his shirt and your own makes you realize that that ‘like cold, wet ink’ actually has been cold, wet ink that is now all over your shirt, all over Yoongi’s shirt, and all over the pile of whatever Yoongi had been holding before the collision.

The sight of Yoongi drenched in ink makes you inwardly groan, wondering what the punishment would be since you figure Yoongi would serve you detention under the pretense that you had purposely tried to sabotage his day. “Sorry Min Yoongi,” You speak first. “What’s the damage for this, since I clearly went out of my way to direct an entire bottle of ink on your chest.”

Yoongi stares at you for a long hard minute, but it’s missing that usual glint of scouting out for trouble. Instead, he’s looking at you like he’s seeing you for the first time.

“Just wash our clothes and we’ll call it even,” He grumbles before he brushes past you and continues down the hall, leaving you with your own ink-splattered shirt and a forgotten Transfiguration essay tucked under your arm.

However, in retrospect, having Yoongi entrust you to wash his uniform hadn’t been the smartest decision on his part. Mainly because you still hate him, and you suppose that getting detention would have been a better bargain for him considering that getting detention would avoid letting you get tangled with any of his personal belongings.

You do not know why he doesn’t hand out the punishment, but you want to make sure that he regrets this. You wash the shirt and robe perfectly, just to give this opportunity a fighting chance. You take his green tie, however, and steady it just as you take your quill between your hands once more. With a bottle of that really serious ink—the kind that is almost oil-based in the sense that it is nearly impossible to remove—you dip the quill in and start writing—!

“POOP HEAD?” Min Yoongi’s voice roars through the nearly empty Slytherin common room, earning a noiseless laugh to spread across your lips as your body lurches with the force of your amusement. You should be able to endure the loud kind of laughter that this kind of oncoming prank deserves, given that you are the only person in the common room at this hour on a Thursday. You’re skipping your Astronomy lecture for this, but it’s worth it.

You stay in silence, however, allowing yourself to hear the grumbling curses from Yoongi—talk of what he’s going to do when he finds you and how he’s going to make you buy him a new tie and all that jazz before—!

“Oh.” Yoongi stops at the sight of you leaning against the back of the chair; you, arms crossed and the highest of amusement dancing in your eyes.

“Something wrong, Min Yoongi?” You inquire, although it’s hard not to notice the giant POOP HEAD wording, followed by an arrow pointing upwards towards his face across his green tie. “Nice tie.”

Yoongi grips the fabric a little tighter in his hands, approaching you. “Look at this shit!” He retorts after a moment. “What kind of fucking ink did you use with this? It doesn’t come off, I swear to god Y/N—look at this! What am I supposed to do, walk into class with this? I’m the Head Boy—!”

“Well, I think,” You start, interrupting him as you start forward. Yoongi goes silent, watching as you make your way towards him. “I think the tie looks great.” Playing around a little, a corner of your lips quirk up at the sight of Yoongi looking increasingly frazzled to see you walking closer and closer to him. “I think the color of it really brings out your eyes.” To take things up to an extreme, you take the tie in between your fingers, tugging him closer to you. “Are you sure there’s really a problem to this?”

“I…” Yoongi starts, trailing off the longer his eyes are trained across the expanse of your face: from your eyes to your mouth. It looks like he wants to say something, like he’s dying to say something, but the words are lodged in his throat. You wonder when the last time Yoongi had been in such close proximity to a girl. With all his responsibilities as Head Boy and confiscating dung bombs from fourth years, you assume it must be hard to fit in simple and mundane things like flirting with girls and taking them out on dates or just having a casual conversation with them generally. Although the rest of his friends (especially Jeon Jungkook) have had their fair share of girlfriends, Yoongi always stayed out of the picture.

You never questioned it, sure that Yoongi spent more time terrorizing away girls rather than dating them, and the way he’s looking at you as if you’re growing spikes on your face makes you think that perhaps he’s just scared of you.

He’s standing so close to you at this point that you can feel the warmth of his body traveling towards you and there’s something almost comforting about it. He smells really good too. You wonder what kind of shampoo and soap they offer in the Prefect bathrooms where he probably goes to every night.

“You know what color I’m really thinking represents you?” You inquire, still playing with his tie. When Yoongi doesn’t say anything, you lean so close that your breath tickets his cheek. His breath hitches. “Brown.”

Yoongi nearly pushes you away, scowling at your color description in relation to the statement on his tie.

You laugh. “What’s wrong, Min Yoongi? Was that too much for you? Are you gonna give me detention now for fucking up your tie?”

He thinks about it for a moment before he untangles the tie from around his neck and bunches it in his hand. “I will just buy a new one at Hogsmeade later,” He reports quietly, mostly to himself before turning around and making his way up the stairs.

You watch him leave.

February means snow and chill and lovey dovey emotion that can only be felt in the air—for February also means flowers and chocolate and confessions. But to you, February means the most number of detentions, twelve in a row so far and you still reportedly have three more to go.

When you thought the previous two incidents and encounters with Yoongi might have softened him up, it seems as if fucking up his tie had been the wrong card to pull because if he had been hawkeyed on you before, now he’s just unfair.

Your uniform with just a tie out of place? Detention.

Showing up late by five minutes to a lecture simply because there was a line to the restroom? Detention.

In fact, things you’ve done within the past few weeks that have earned you another detention are as listed: whispering in the library, tapping your quill once on the desk, not walking fast enough in the halls, turning in homework with handwriting a little too sloppy—the list goes on. You would be annoyed if you weren’t so exhausted. Twelve detentions in a row is a lot to ask of someone.

Your exhaustion turns into the loss of sanity, until Professor McGonagall calls you into her office and you walk in to find Min Yoongi seated in front of her desk.

You stop short. “Uh, what’s this?” You inquire, gesturing between Professor McGonagall and Min Yoongi. “Is this because of the comment I made against cats in Yoongi’s write-up? That was just a joke, I promise. Am I getting expelled? Because if that comment against the cats is enough to warrant this kind of punishment then I should let you know that Yoongi has been up my ass—!”

Professor McGonagall interrupts you with a shrill call of your name. “Miss. Y/N, please mind your language—why don’t you put your butt on the seat instead of your foot in your mouth.” As you lower yourself slowly into the other chair opposite of her, she speaks again. “And for the record, Miss. Y/N, I had no idea about the comment you made against cats.”

You grit your teeth slightly, berating yourself for saying such a thing. Yoongi presses his lips together to hide his smile, and you kick him in the shin.

Just as Yoongi parts his lips in a silent ring of pain, you speak. “So, Professor McGonagall,” You start loudly. “What seems to be the issue?”

“Well, it has come to my attention that Mr. Min has been giving you a lot of detentions since the start of the school year,” Professor McGonagall notes. “An excessive amount, for that matter. Not that we have anything in our policy that goes against too much detention. In fact, Miss. Y/N—you are scheduled for another detention on February 14th, is that correct?”

“Uh—I assume so,” You reply, sparing a glance towards Yoongi. It’s not like Yoongi pencils you in for detentions whenever it’s convenient for you. He doesn’t even run the detentions for you himself, it’s always Mr. Flich, who has looked increasingly and increasingly more exasperated especially when you know he’s running out of things around the castle for you to do. “Yoongi doesn’t really… tell me anything after telling me I have detention…”

Yoongi looks like he wants to speak up, but he is quickly shot down by Professor McGonagall. “Mr. Min, I just need to let you know that no one will be able to run the detention for Miss. Y/N on February 14th so I will leave you in charge for that day.”

Both of you straighten up at that.

“What?”

“Wait, no.”

“Why?”

“I would rather bathe myself in any river in the Forbidden Forest past midnight and get eaten by a lion.”

“Okay, Y/N, first of all, there are no lions in the Forbidden Forest.”

“How do you know that? There’s no way not to know that. The Forbidden Forest is forbidden to students. What did you do? Sneak in with your idiot friends one time?”

“Kim Namjoon is not an idiot—!”

Your eyes widen and point a finger at Yoongi. “PROFESSOR.”

“Okay, enough you two,” Professor McGonagall interrupts, rubbing at her temples and you wonder if she’s held off on talking to the two of you for so long for this very reason only. It’s why your normal interactions with Min Yoongi were so short if you could help it. “This is not up for debate. Mr. Min, you are running Miss. Y/N’s detention. As Head Boy, it’s one of your responsibilities. Own up to it. Both of you are dismissed.”

Yoongi sighs, looks like he wants to argue more, but he detaches himself from the seat and makes his way towards the door frame exiting Professor McGonagall’s office. This leaves you little choice but to do the same.

Yoongi is still outside in the hallway by the time you exit. “You could still cancel my detention if you want,” You supply, hands in the pocket of your skirt. “I’m sure you have plans on February 14th that I would hate to intercept with.”

“It’s fine,” Yoongi grumbles. “Meet me in the detention chamber.”

“Bring some candles, Min Yoongi!” You call teasingly.

Min Yoongi is unsuspiciously moody on February 14th when you enter the confines of the detention chamber. He’s facing the blackboard and looks to be deep in thought. That thought, however, is crossed out when he grumbles something as soon as your footsteps sound through the chamber. “You’re late.”

“I got lost,” You lie.

“Shut up.” Yoongi whirls around, sneering. “You’ve been down here plenty of times—in fact, you were here just last week. Got lost, my ass.”

“Oh is that what I said? I meant I didn’t want to come here.”

He groans, running a hand through his hair. “Just sit down.” He gestures to the empty desk right in front of him. You slide into the seat, your bag slipping to the floor as your fold your hands atop each other and gazing up at Yoongi. “You’re gonna write lines today.”

You raise an eyebrow. “Wow, lines. That’s exciting. Just so original, oh wow.”

“When you only have two days to plan two hours worth of detention, there are limited options,” Yoongi supplies, taping his piece of chalk against his chin. “So you’re gonna spend two hours writing this.” He turns back to the blackboard, bringing the chalk up to the surface and—!

I AM AN IDIOT WHO CONSTANTLY NEGLECTS MIN YOONGI’S WORD OF AUTHORITY AND HENCEFORTH, I DESERVE EVERY SINGLE PUNISHMENT THAT HAS EVER BEEN HANDED TO ME EVER.

You sigh, reaching into your bag and producing a parchment and quill. “Charming with words as ever, Min Yoongi.”

He shrugs, leaning against the desk at the front. “I try.”

The full vantage of his profile allows you to scope a good glance over his uniform for the day. Polo shirt and slacks, still no tie—but the sleeves of his shirt have been pulled up to his elbow and his teeny waist showcased in his slacks. It’s not just distracting, it’s unfair entirely.

You get through about half of your first line before you put your quill down. “So, Min Yoongi,” You start.

“Do your lines.”

You ignore him. “If you didn’t have to run my detention for the day, what plans would have awaited the great Head Boy of our beloved school?”

“None of your business,” He grumbles.

“Because I am sure someone as… compelled as you are,” You start, purposely pausing when coming up with an adjective to describe Yoongi and the one you select makes him scowl harder. “Would have no trouble conjuring up an activity on Valentine’s Day.”

“Like I said, it’s none of your business.”

“Well, there’s a lot of things that you shouldn’t stick your nose in either,” You retort. “And yet here I am, probably servicing my one hundredth detention because you read my personal notes.”

“You were passing notes in class!”

“Passing personal notes in class,” You emphasis. “And it’s none of your business and yet I still had my privacy invaded so that excuse does not work on me, Min Yoongi.” You push yourself off the desk despite Yoongi’s noise of protest. “I couldn’t help but notice that you didn’t protest much or if at all to Professor McGonagall assigning you to watch over me for detention.”

“So?”

“So, is that because you don’t have any plans at all for Valentine’s Day?” You’re standing right in front of him now.

“Miss. Y/N, if I were you, I’d shut my mouth and write my lines.”

His defensive nature makes you quirk the corner of your lips. “Oh my god.” You’re grinning now. “Did you not have anyone to celebrate with?”

Yoongi’s gradually stiffening frame as you on the brick of laughter. “Shut up.”

“Not even a crush? No one to spare a confession for? That’s kind of sad.”

“Oh like you’re so high and mighty about this—do you have someone to celebrate with?”

“No,” You reply with a shrug. “And I don’t care too much. You care though, don’t you?”

“I don’t,” He retorts, but it’s a weak argument and you can hear the waver in his tone.

“You do like someone, don’t you?” You inquire, smirking a little. “What is that like? What is the girl like? Why won’t you say anything to her, Min Yoongi? You may be emotionally constipated but you should know how to process constipation by now right? Seven years and no girlfriend; doesn’t that bother you in the slightest? Why waste time with me when you could—!”

The rest seems like such a blur, because you are interrupted when Yoongi darts forward, one hand around your waist and the other curling fingers around the back of your neck, before he is kissing you. Your lower back hits the edge of the desk, a pain that you don’t register anymore as you find yourself completely distracted by the feel of his lips—which are a lot softer than you thought they would have been. Immediately, the sensation feels as if it has springboarded you through the galaxy above, his lips moving against yours and dragging out these whimpers that sound from the back of your throat.

Suddenly, it feels like you can’t get enough of him as your nails dig into his arms, his shoulder blade. His anger seems to subside the longer he kisses you, going from using his teeth to soothing the burn from his tongue, a gesture that sends a shiver up your spine.

The hand at your back finds its way under the material of your polo shirt, his thumb rubbing softly at the skin of your back as the pair of you separate. Your lungs feel like they’re about to burst, so the frantic beating of your heartbeat means you don’t think twice about resting your forehead against Yoongi’s. “Do you do that to all the girls who yell at you?”

Yoongi sighs like he’s waited years for this. “Just the ones whose attention I feel like I would lose unless I granted her with detention every two point five seconds.”

“So you aren’t entirely a stick in the mud,” You observe, almost losing your train of thought with the way Yoongi is tracing patterns into your back again. “You did have plans for Valentine’s Day.”

“Well, it was more along the lines of how I had plans to find you after your detention and get another fight out of you,” Yoongi starts, corner of his lips turning up into a meek smile. “So this is obviously a step up.”

“Aw,” You coo. “You really are emotionally constipated—I’m sure there would have been much better ways of expressing your emotions.”

He shrugs. “Just for the girl who was about to write sixty lines about how much of an idiot she is.”

“For your information, I only got through half of a line. What if I don’t want to write sixty?” You challenge, lifting your chin slightly towards him.

Yoongi hums, readjusting his hold around your waist so his nails are digging into your bare skin. You are too high on possibility to notice the potential bruising. “I’ll convince you,” He whispers, lowering himself closer and closer until he seals his lips with yours. A promise, and a challenge—as it always should be.

#bangtan bookclub #yoongi x reader #yoongi scenario #yoongi x you #min yoongi scenario #yoongi fluff #bts scenario #bts x reader #bts fluff #traci writes #hp reputation series

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fluffy-marshmallow-heart · 5 years

Text

A Twist of Fate ch.25 -The Importance of Friendship

The Elementalist au

Beckett x MC (Oriana)

Words: 1518

No warnings I can think of

Series Master List

Master List

This AU is set after everyone graduates Penderghast, and Beckett and Oriana were never friends. Fate, however, may have a different plan for them.

The next couple weeks flew by as his house officially turned into a home. Oriana had gone picture-happy, snapping lots of photos of the two of them and placing them in frames around the house. His neighbor gave them fresh flowers every week. Beckett was doing everything he could to make Oriana feel happy, safe, and loved. He’d wake up early and make breakfast, he’d make love to her as often as possible. They were happy, and when Saturday rolled around, Oriana decided it was time to confide in Zeph and Shreya. Beckett sat nervously next to her on the couch as they placed the laptop in front of them, dialing. A moment later, their smiling faces appeared on the screen, followed by a look of genuine surprise when they saw Beckett.

“Hey guys! God, I miss you so much!!” Oriana squealed. “I wish I could just hug you both!!!”

“Girl, no kidding. But we’ll be back soon, our journey is sadly coming to an end.” Shreya informed. “Beckett. I’m uh. A bit surprised to see you.”

“Hello Shreya, Zeph.” He nodded cordially. “I’m happy to see you looking so well. I can tell this trip has been good for you.”

Zeph blinked at him. “Um, yes, it’s been…really great…” He eyed Oriana. “You’re…glowing.”

“I’m happy.” She responded. “And, actually, that’s why we’re calling. We have news.” She flashed her ring in front of them, their gasps ringing through the speakers.

“Oh my god he knocked you up.”

Her face fell. “No, he didn’t. He proposed, and I said yes.” She looked at Beckett and he gave her a warm smile before she turned back to the screen. “You literally just said I was glowing. Maybe that’s because I’m genuinely happy for the first time in my life? And if you can’t get on board with that, then this will be the last time we speak until you can. Beckett is my life. I love him, I’m marrying him…he’s everything. And if you can’t see that then that’s your problem, not mine. But I really hope you can accept it because I need you guys at our wedding. You’re my best people.”

Both Shreya and Zeph were staring at her, eyes wide and jaws dropped. Beckett was so incredibly proud of her for sticking up for herself and what she wants. Ignoring the screen, he captured her lips with his own, and when they pulled back, both were smiling.

Zeph cleared his throat, bringing their attention back to the issue at hand. “You guys are serious.”

“Absolutely” Beckett told him. “We’ve discovered that we both already had feelings for each other, had a special connection. It’s grown exponentially since she’s moved in. I’d do anything to make her happy. If she’s not happy then neither am I. And I promise it will always be like this. I’ll never betray her, I’ll never hurt her. I’m not Chase, and I hate him for what he’s done to her over the years. She’s healing, but she needs you guys. So, what can I do to prove to you that this girl next to me is the love of my life?”

“I think you just did it.” Shreya said softly. “Ori you’ve never stood up for Chase the way you do for Beckett. And Chase definitely never said anything close to what he’s saying.” She started giggling. “Beckett fucking Harrington. I can’t believe I’m saying this but…thank god you were the one to see her when she left the world’s biggest asshole.”

“Yeah, if not for you she would’ve gone back to him for sure.” Zeph chimed in. “So wait. You’ve always had feelings for each other? What kind of connection are you talking about? How come the two of you never talked then?”

“Pride. I was a snob.” Beckett announced.

“Hard same.” Oriana laughed. “We were really stupid.”

“Exceptionally stupid.” Beckett agreed.

“Oh my god, you guys are adorable.” Shreya breathed.

Oriana looked at the screen suspiciously. “You guys are taking this a lot better than we thought you would. Honestly, we put off telling you for weeks because I was so nervous I’d get nauseous just thinking about what you’d say. Why the turn around?”

Shreya and Zeph share a look before Shreya spoke again. “Well…we’ve talked about the two you an awful lot. And we’ve been feeling really bad about how hard we’ve come down on Beckett.”

“And you.” Zeph interrupted.

“And we realized that every time we talked to you…you should see the way he looks at you. No one’s ever looked at me like that.”

“He looks at you like you’re the only thing in his world.” Zeph confessed. “We were just so worried you were jumping into a relationship with the first person who came around but…it’s obvious now that’s not the case here. And yes, girl, you are absolutely beaming.”

“We’re really sorry for how we’ve been acting. We’ve been so wary for so long. We could never trust anything if Chase’s name was involved…He basically took our spirited girl and destroyed her. Looked at her like a possession, a toy, a piece of meat, it was disgusting.” Shreya’s voice was laced with disdain.

“I would never…”

“We know. We know you’re nothing like him.” Shreya cut Beckett off mid-sentence. “I’m really sorry, Beckett. I’m sorry for everything I said. To both of you. I’m honestly not sure which one of you I was rudest to.”

“Same here” Zephyr grimaced. “Please accept my apology, both of you. And when we get home…we’d really like to hang out.”

Beckett winced as Oriana’s hand squeezed his own a bit too tightly. He looked over at her and saw the tears in her eyes. “Ori? Are you okay?” He murmured.

“Oh my god, yes!!” She squealed suddenly. “Oh my god, really you guys? You really mean it? You’re happy for us?”

“Definitely.” Both Shreya and Zeph laughed lightly, then three pairs of eyes landed on Beckett.

“Beck?” Ori questioned.

“Any friend of Oriana’s is a friend of mine. Apologies accepted.” His heart was thumping wildly, he hadn’t expected this conversation to go well at all. He watched the three friends cry over how much they missed each other, and how glad everyone was that she and Beckett were together. He blushed furiously when Shreya said that he saved her best friend’s life, and she knew she didn’t have to be worried that one day Chase would ruin her forever.

When the video chat ended, Oriana launched herself into Beckett, kissing him over and over, leaving him breathless and grinning.

At 6pm they left the house for the neighborhood block party. As they met all their neighbors, Oriana greeted each one brightly, gushing over their new engagement and how happy they are to be part of this community. Beckett was on cloud nine. Never in his life had he imagined he would ever have all this. Friendly neighbors, great friends, acceptance by everyone, and most of all, the love of the most wonderful woman he’s ever laid eyes on.

For once I actually have hope of a happy future. For once I know I really can have everything.

He saw Oriana wink at him as she chatted animatedly with someone he’s already forgotten the name of.

Everything really is perfect. I’m the luckiest guy in the world.

He froze as his next thought involuntarily crossed his mind. I’m happy. She’s happy. We’re engaged, we have good jobs…perhaps it’s time I reach back out to my parents and my sister. It wasn’t fair I cut Katrina off in the first place. If Oriana’s friends can come around and ask for forgiveness…maybe there’s a chance that my family and I can make amends.

Oriana sauntered back over to him, kissing him lightly on the cheek. “What are you thinking of right now?”

“Honestly? I’m thinking of my family. I…want to reach out to them. I want you to meet them.”

She nodded slowly. “I think…that’s actually a great idea, Beck. Soon they’ll be my family to. I’d love to meet them, but are you sure you’re ready? I know you haven’t spoken to them since, well…when did you last speak to them, anyway?”

“Before graduation.” He said glumly. “They didn’t approve of my life choices.”

“Right. It was the end of the world that you got a steady job instead going to grad school.” She remembered. She looked into his eyes, smiling. “Let’s call them tomorrow. Maybe they’ll answer or maybe they won’t…but at least you’re trying. I think it’s a wonderful idea, Beck, and I’m with you 100%, whatever happens.”

“Thanks, Ori.” He said gratefully. “I know they’ll love you if they give you a chance. It’s impossible not to.”

“Awww” She planted a kiss on his lips before smiling widely and pointing to a dark haired woman a few doors down. “Look! There’s Eloise, you have to meet her, she has her own yoga studio!”

As she pulled him along with her, Beckett found himself once again grinning from ear to ear. Yes. Things are absolutely perfect.

@annekebbphotography @gardeningourmet @zigortega4life @eileendannie @thequeenofcronuts @drakewalkerfantasy @friedherringclodthing @coffeebeandragon @drakewalker04 @jlpplays1 @desiree-0816 @alesana45 @mfackenthal

@xo-endlessmayhem-xo @endlessly-searching-for-you @rissah @damienswhore @giulia2372 @nerdynstoned @wickedgypsymoon @the-writerly-night-owl

@aworldoffandoms @cordoniasmost @syltti78

@feartheendlesssummer @elainew13 @the-soot-sprite @paisleylovergirl @dottie-minerva-mikas @emichelle @kendrasgue @pbmychoices @flyawayboo @divergentofhogwarts @brightpinkpeppercorn @symonde

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inkribbon796 · 4 years

Text

Belonging

For Virgil’s birthday.

Summary: One anxious bean just wants to grab a midnight snack and enjoy his birthday in peace and quiet. His new friends have other ideas.

Virgil crept into the kitchen, it was way too early, or for Virgil way too late, and no one else was around. He was hungry and wanted to hoard food so he didn’t have to see people in the morning.

Unfortunately, even at two A.M there were two people in the kitchen: Patton and King. There were talking quietly, trying not to wake more people up.

Before Virgil could back up, King noticed him. “Hey, Anx, how’s it going? Pat and I were heating up some water for hot chocolate and coffee. You want some, or both?”

Hesitantly, Virgil came closer, already feeling awkward, “Uhh, sure.”

“You don’t have to,” King reminded. “Silver got tacos, and bought too many since J.J and Chase are still out of town. There’s still some left if you want some of those.”

“He won’t get mad if I take them?” Virgil scoffed.

“Nah, he had seven yesterday, and said he didn’t want to look at another one for a week,” King dismissed. “Sometimes Silver gets into a food carving and he brings some of it back for us to have.”

“O-Okay,” Virgil round up taking a taco and some coffee. Putting one of the hot chocolate packs in it.

“So, ‘cause I didn’t get to tell you earlier: welcome to the Heroes’ Coalition, it’s a zoo, but you’ll fit right in.”

“Thanks,” Virgil looked away.

“Don’t worry, you’re not the first of the League to join us, and you won’t be the last if we’ve got anything to say about it,” King smiled. “Sides, I was watching you come into my park almost every day and I was getting worried about you some days. Cause it’s been getting cold and snowy.”

“Wait,” Virgil stared at him in horror. “You knew that was me?”

“Yeah,” King took a sip of his coffee. “It surprised me that no one else had put it together before me, probably because you like to hide your face so much. Compared to you, I might as well be V.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Virgil demanded. “You never let villains in.”

“Can I call you Virgil, or do you want me to stick with Anxiety.”

“Virgil’s fine,” he felt like his chest was trying to leap out of his throat.

King just watched him for a little bit, obviously searching him for something and Virgil wasn’t sure if he wanted King to find it. “Alright, Virgil, look my dad worked in Dark’s Network, he was a tough guy, but he tried to protect me the best I could. Unfortunately, I had some uses that the network liked, so I started working there earlier than some of my other siblings, and I hated working with some of his . . . co-workers? Employees?”

The hero looked like he was genuinely thinking of the right word to use. “Point is, my old man worked with the literal scum of the Earth, and I don’t see that in you. Yeah, your powers are freaky, and I don’t like slugs, but it’s nothing to draw and quarter you over.”

“You have a fear of slugs?” Anxiety asked, it was always interesting to know what he summoned for people.

“Oh yeah,” King nodded, eyes wide. “When I was ten, three of my brothers hid in my closet, waited until I was asleep and put slugs all over me. Then, like a gaggle of douchebags banged some pots and pans together to wake me up. They got grounded, but there was nothing my old man could do about it. Point is, it’s not your fault my brothers dumped slugs on me. Or made the Doc trypophobic. It’s not your fault you’ve got fear powers, right?”

“Maybe?” Virgil tried to hide behind his coffee.

“Okay, well, I can’t do anything about that,” King told him. “I can tell you that almost everyone here thinks you’re a good person who’s been dealt a bad hand. You’re one of us, and when I joined, Marv wasn’t too keen on me either but he warms up to people fast and you’re just sarcastic enough to get along with him great.”

“So, what?” Virgil asked.

“Well,” King pulled out a small box. “Patton got to talking, and we knew you wouldn’t want us to make a fuss about this, or all cram into the same room. So, happy birthday.”

“You traitor,” Virgil gasped in panic at Patton.

Patton just gave him a huge smile and pulled a box he’d been hiding in his lap. “Happy birthday, Virge.”

King passed the small box over. “This is from the eggheads, Logan couldn’t be in person. He didn’t want to overwhelm you. Bing we had to tie up in the closet cause he refused to sit back. But with this, we’re all saying welcome. You don’t have to open it now.”

Virgil took it, and after turning it over in his hand it found he could lift the lid to find a watch. It had a thin almost stretchy band and was more function over fashion. It had a digital display and was blissfully silent, Virgil couldn’t hear it ticking down.

“What is this?” Virgil picked it up to see ANXIETY stamped into the back of the watch. Bing’s emblem scored into the metal as well.

“It’s a welcoming gift,” Patton passed him the second box, which Virgil opened it to find a coffee mug with different song lyrics printed on the front of it. A lot of the lines of his favorite songs were on there. He smiled, touched by it.

“Thanks,” he told them.

“That watch is going to help you communicate with us, and if you’re ever in trouble you click this button,” King pointed out one of the buttons on the side, a red one, “and we’ll come to help you. So that way you can signal for help without being obvious. Also we put you on the same call list as Chase so if Anti is involved you don’t have to see him.”

“Thanks,” Virgil felt nauseous.

Anything else was interrupted when Marvin walked in, carrying something wrapped in purple wrapping paper in his hands. “Hey, just found this on the doorstep, Bing scanned it for yah.”

Marvin set it in front of Anxiety, then walked over to the fridge to grab one of the leftover tacos. Unlike Virgil he just ate it cold.

“You’re going to get sick doing that,” Virgil told him.

Marvin rolled his eyes, “Kay, Mom.” Then he took another cold bite in front of him. “Yer gonna be like Jackie, aren’t yah?”

“No,” Virgil told him, feeling that the contents of his new gift was soft. “Cause I’m just going to tell you not to do it, and then watch karma bite you later.”

Marvin smiled, “Yer not so bad. Long as yah keep doing that, we’ll get along just fine. If ye think Anti’s botherin’ yah, give me a call.”

“Thanks,” Virgil told him and opened up the new gift to find a black and purple scarf with gold fringes on it.

It didn’t come with a tag, but Virgil knew who had sent it. There was only one person who could have sent it to him.

“Who’s it from?” Patton asked, fawning over the scarf. “It looks nice.”

Virgil shrugged, “Who knows, but it’s warm.”

Everyone was all smiles and Virgil poured his old coffee into his new mug, enjoying the early morning and the quiet of the room.

#Superhero AU #Masks and Maladies #Thomas Sanders #Markiplier #Jacksepticeye #Virgil Sanders #King of the Squirrels #Patton Sanders #Marvin the Magician #Birthday Post

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theworldofsisi · 4 years

Text

Pretty (Finding Balance) 2

There was alcohol on his breath, and he was sure that it must have permeated the air around him like a stinking, suffocating cloud. He hadn't meant to drink that much because he knew that if had taken too much or his bandmate's liquor from his cabinet, he would find out and skin him alive.

That hadn't stopped him from completely losing control and cleaning the cabinet out of whatever was in it while the dorm was otherwise silent as the other members slept in relative peace. Ren had been left alone, his emotions in a tidal wave - he didn't know if he was sad or unfeeling, and honestly, he hadn't been able to find it in himself enough to care.

He had known that they had practice the next morning, but the rational part of him had been outweighed by the part of him that needed a quick fix to his pain, to forget all of the suffering he had been put through in the weeks past. And now here he was, sitting in the cramped and hot company van, on his way to practice with an ungodly hangover.

His head pounded like a bass drum and he felt nauseous, but he had still tried to eat breakfast so that he could at least appear like he was okay. He was able to hold it down until they started practicing, and the loud music, heat, and demanding dance moves unsettled his stomach and he found himself on his knees, heaving the contents of his stomach up onto the hardwood floor.

He held his hand up to stop the worried members from approaching him. Aron met his gaze when he was finished and sighed. “Ren, you're not sick. You're hungover, aren't you?”

“I had a little bit to drink last night.”

“A little bit? You cleaned out my entire fucking cabinet.”

Ren looked away and Aron shook his head. “I'm not mad about the liquor - I can buy more. I'm worried about you, Minki. I know you're smarter than that. There's no way in hell that you thought it was a good idea to get drunk knowing that we had practice the next morning.”

“I didn't get drunk on purpose.”

“Yeah, well what did you think would happen?”

“I don't know! I wasn't thinking, okay? Don't act like you've never showed up to practice hungover.”

“I didn't say that I haven't. Believe me, I know how many times I've done it. But you're also not me. You're more rational, hell more careful than me. That's why I'm concerned - it's normal for me, and unheard of from you.”

“There's a first for everything, right?” Ren knew that it was a petty move, but it was the only thing that he had left. He knew the comment had done its ob when Aron let out a long suffering sigh and turned his back to Ren. JR stepped forward, his leader mode activated.

“Arguing won't do anything to fix the problem now. I'll go tell the manager that we need to take you home.”

“No way! This will be the second time that we've called off practice early because of me in the last month.”

“Ren.” JR's voice was stern - he only used that tone of voice when there would be absolutely no bargaining with him. “Can you practice like this without puking across more of the floor?”

“Probably not.” Ren's words were seconded when his stomach gave another lurch and his hand flew to his mouth. He closed his eyes until the wave of nausea passed before meeting JR's gaze again.

“I thought so. We're going home, and that's final.”

An hour later, JR had gotten Ren back in the bed to sleep off the rest of his hangover and had situated himself on the couch. The leader was biting his lip as he scrolled through the contacts on his phone until the name that he was looking for popped up - Seong. He clicked her name and placed the speaker against his ear, his heart racing in his chest as he waited for her to pick up. It got to the third ring and he began to think that she wasn't going to pick up until the ringing stopped.

“Hello?” The voice on the other end was snippy and tired sounding, and JR began to wonder if he had woken her up. Shit - just what he needed to make this conversation even more awkward.

“This is JR. I know that I'm probably the last person that you want to talk to right now, but I really need you to hear me out. It'.s about Minki.”

“I don't want to talk about him.”

“I figured that much. But if you ever cared about him, and I know that you did, you'll listen. He went to practice drunk this morning.”

“He doesn't drink.”

“Not normally, no. Bu since you broke up with him, it's become a regular habit of his, but he hadn't managed to get drunk yet. He didn't care, Seong. He knew that we had practice today, but he still got drunk. Does that sound like the person you know?”

“I don't know the same person as you do, so I really couldn't say.”

“When will you wrap your head around the fact that he's both Ren and Minki? They're the same person, they just act differently. You know that he doesn't like drinking very much, whoever the hell you think he really is.”

Seong had a sarcastic comment on the tip of her tongue, but she felt it slip away when she heard the genuine concern in JR's face. It was now obvious to her that he was seriously worried about the possible implications of Ren getting drunk meant. Even then, she knew what he wanted her to do, but she couldn't bring herself to see Ren - not yet, not when his betrayal was still fresh in her mind. “I think I know what you're about to suggest, but I can't. I can't see him yet. You have to give me time. It still hurts too much to think about him, let alone see him.”

JR took a deep breath. He had been expecting the answer, but that didn't lessen the disappointment that he felt at actually getting it. “Yeah, I thought so. Thanks anyway.” T

“Hey JR?”

“Hm?”

“Try and take care of him? I.. couldn't live with myself if something actually happened to him.”

“I'll try my best.”

Ren stood in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at his long hair in distaste. He was getting tired of losing so much hair in the shower and clogging the drain, and waking up to find so much hair on his pillow that it looked like a cat had died. He knew that wasn't the only reason that he had the scissors in his hand, but he wanted to believe that this was completely his choice and just some simple change of fashion.

His hand was really guided by his desire to end the comments about his gender. While most of the comments about his sexuality had abated since he hadn't posted any more pictures with Seong, the rumors about his gender had gotten to the point that he couldn't go outside without someone recognizing him and asking him if he was really male. It was driving him crazy, and he hated feeling like he couldn't be himself, but if cutting his hair would make the comments end, then he would try anything at this point.

He grabbed one side of his hair and sighed deeply as he snipped it. The hair fell into the sink. He did the same with the other side until his hair was a good few inches shorter than it had been. It still was by no means short, but it wasn't as long either. He looked a little bit more masculine with his hair cut to his jaw, and surprisingly, he found the feeling empowering. He could choose to look more feminine or masculine just by making a simple change to his hairstyle.

He wasn't done yet. He couldn't stand to change his hairstyle without changing the color as well. He brushed his newly cut hair through with a brush, then opened the box of brown hair dye. He didn't even have to read the directions - he had dyed his hair enough in his career to know exactly what he was supposed to do.

Fifteen minutes later, he was in the shower washing out the dye. He watched as it whirled down the drain in a cloudy brown tidal wave. When the water began running clear, he stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel. His mind wandered back to the last time that he had dyed his hair and ruined Seong's towel - he had never apologized for ruining another one. She was sure to have found it and gotten appropriately angry by this point, and he wasn't there to promise to buy her another set to make up for it. The realization made his chest tighten and he closed his eyes against the tears pricking behind his closed eyelids.

With a sigh walked towards the mirror and stared at his handiwork. His hair was disheveled from being wet and freshly washed, but he could already see a difference in the shade of his hair despite the wetness. He smiled slightly as he collected the hair that he had cut from the sink and threw it into the trash.

He then proceeded to step two of his plan and got dressed in his favorite all black outfit. He did his makeup quickly, making sure to go light on the color of his lips and the darkness of his eyeliner, opting to use nude colors. He succeeded in making himself look more like a guy, and that made him happy.

He grabbed his phone and snapped a few photos of himself doing different poses and posted one to twitter. He didn't know what he was trying to prove, but he wanted to see if people still said the same things that they did when his hair was longer. He wasn't sure how much of a change cutting his hair would cause, but there had to be some improvement, right?

Ren couldn't have been more wrong. Within minutes, there were comments on his pictures that made his heart sink lower than it already had if that were possible. Some of the comments were worse than they had been before. It took everything he had not to throw his phone against the wall and watch it shatter into thousands of pieces, just like his sanity.

He couldn't please anybody, so maybe there really was no point in trying.

Ren didn't know why he wanted to go home, but he did. There was something comforting about the thought of being hugged by his mother, to hear her tell him that it would be okay. JR had managed to get the okay from the manager and company director to let Ren have a break. The leader had been worried about Ren going on his own, but he had managed to assure him that he would be perfectly okay to get back home on his own.

He had decided to take the bus route to Busan. It would take a little bit longer than driving would, but it would give him more time to think. Rather than thinking, he ended up falling asleep until the bus driver announced that they had arrived in Busan. He had kind of defeated the purpose of not driving, but if he had fallen asleep on the noisy bus, he didn't want to think about what could have happened if had chosen to drive instead.

He quickly exited the bus and made the short walk through the familiar streets of Busan until he came to his childhood home. He smiled when he realized that it was exactly the same - his dad was supposed to fix the broken step, but when Ren got to it, he felt it almost give under his weight and jumped up to the next stair quickly.

He threw open the front door and took one step inside. His mom was sitting on the couch and she smiled when she saw him. She stood up quickly when she saw her son and wrapped him in a firm embrace. “Minki, its so good to have you home, even if you're only here for a few days.” She took a step back to appraise him and bit her lip when she noticed how he looked. “You look... very pretty, son.”

“Do you have a problem with how I look?”

“You look a little bit like a girl. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but I'm afraid that it might make people.. wonder about you.”

Ren sighed. Somehow his mom had hit the nail on the head. “Yeah, you really have no idea, mom.”

His mom cast him a sympathetic look and kissed his cheek. “Your father might say something, but I still love you however you look, as long as you're happy.”

Ren nodded and smiled genuinely for the first time since Seong had broken up with him. “Thanks, mom.”

“It's not a problem Minnie. Now how are you and Seong?” Ren's face fell, and his mother released a long sigh. “You're not together anymore, are you?”

“We broke up about three weeks ago. There was a really stupid rumor about me, and for some reason, she believed it and she broke up with me.”

“You loved each other so much. Didn't you at least try to reason with her?”

“Of course I did, but she wouldn't listen. I haven't spoken to her since.”

“Do you want me to call her?”

"No. If she wanted to talk, she would have called me already. Will you please drop it?"

His mom gave him a sad smile but nodded anyway. "Sure. Have you eaten?" Ren paled and shook his head. His mother gave him a disapproving look. “You haven't been eating very much, have you?” She went straight to the kitchen and began preparing lunch for her son who smiled gratefully and sat on the living room couch. He soon fell asleep, and when the food was done, his mother simply sighed and covered him up with a blanket before planting a kiss on his cheek.

Ren awoke to the sound of his parents arguing, something entirely unusual in itself. He had only heard the two of them fight a handful of times during his entire childhood, and what made this time worse was that he heard continuous mentions of his name in his father's angry not quite yell. He rolled over onto his side and strained his ears to hear what his parents were saying. He managed to make out a few words, and none of them were reassuring.

“We had a son. We sent him off and he comes back looking like that - like some damn girl.” Ren's heart rose up into his throat as his mom yelled something back at his father, but he couldn't hear what she said over the roaring in his ears.

He felt physically sick and for a moment regretted not eating before falling asleep because he didn't have anything in his stomach to throw up. He had come home to his parents for consolation, and now here his father was talking about him while he thought that Ren was sleeping.

Ren heard more words being said, but he tuned them out as he buried his face into the couch cushion, fighting back the tears quickly springing to his eyes. He wouldn't cry - if his father felt like that about him, then he wasn't worth Ren's time. Crying over his father's opinions would prove that he cared, and he didn't care, did he?

When a choked sob escaped Ren's lips, he knew that he had answered his own question. He cared very much about what his father thought about him because he had always respected his father highly, despite his overly high expectations for his son. He had always known that his father had severe opinions when it came to how a man should look, but Ren had always thought that regardless of how he looked, his dad would never stop loving him. But that was what the fight sounded like it was over - how he was disappointed in him despite his growing success with Nu'Est. Ren could never be good enough to please him.

Fury and hurt spurred Ren into action as he stood up from the couch, causing the blanket his mother had covered him up with to fall onto the floor. He silently thanked his mother for her caring heart, then stormed into the kitchen where he heard his parents arguing. His father immediately stopped talking when he realized that Ren was awake, and his eyes bugged at the sight of his crying and obviously angry son.

“Minki.” he began, his voice shocked and almost... apologetic.

“Don't bother,” Ren said warningly as he wiped a hand across his face to brush away the tears. “I've been awake for awhile now, dad. I heard everything. I know what you really think about me, so don't worry. I'll find my way back to my dorm. Mom, I'll call you later. “

Without another glance back in his shocked parent's directions, Ren made his way out of the house, throwing the front door open as quickly as he could, not bothering to shut it. He got to the broken front step and jumped over it, not caring how hard he landed on the pavement below.

Ren hadn't realized that he was still crying until his eyesight was fogged up by the tears. He wiped them away furiously as he walked in a straight line away from his parent's house, not really sure where he was going but just knowing that he wanted to be anywhere but there.

He pulled out his phone and his fingers lingered over the one number that he didn't want to call, but knew that he had to. He wasn't even sure if she would pick up - it was late, and he knew that she had school the next day. But he still had to try.

The dial tone began ringing, and Ren's heart beat faster. He silently begged for her to pick up. A few seconds later, he heard a click and knew that his call had been picked up.

“Hello?” Came the sleep-tinged reply and Ren felt himself relax, even if just a little.

“It's Minki.” he muttered quietly, crying affecting the way his voice sounded.

“Are you crying?” he could hear the concern in Seong's voice, and it made something in his heart jump. She still cared about him, even if it was just about his well-being.

“Can you come and get me?” he knew that it was a bold request, but he needed her.

“Where are you?”

“Busan. I'll walk to the subway station. Can you meet me there?”

“I'll be there as soon as I can.”

Seong arrived at the subway station and found Ren leaning against a wall with his eyes closed. She touched his shoulder lightly, causing his eyes to flutter open. He gave her a weak smile and she led him to her car before shutting the door and getting in herself. He had fallen asleep with no explanation minutes later, and it was only then that she noticed how tired and worn he looked. His hair was also shorter and lighter, and she wondered when that had happened.

She drove him back to Nu'Est's dorm in a daze, the time seeming to pass by in a blur. She had called JR to tell him that she was bringing Ren home, and he had agreed to stay awake to let her in. Sure enough, when she pulled up to the dorm, the leader was sitting outside in a chair with his head laid against the house. He blinked his eyes open when the bright lights of Seong's car shone into his face.

He gave her a tiny smile as he opened the car door and pulled the still half asleep Ren into a standing position and led him to the dorm, turning back around to wave at Seong as she pulled away. With some effort, he managed to get Ren inside the dorm and into his bed before sighing and getting into his own. Worry filled his mind at what had caused Ren to come home after not even staying with his parents for a day and the look of pain that had been written clearly on his friend's face, even in sleep.

Ren awoke with dried tears on his face. He blinked the remaining moisture out of his eyes and sat up in bed, quickly realizing that he was in his room in Nu'Est's dorm, and not the living room of his parent's house. The memories of the night before came back to him in a rush, and more tears sprang to his eyes, but he fought them back.

With a sigh, he got out of bed and stumbled groggily to the bathroom. His hair was disheveled and his dark eyes puffy and tired looking, despite having just woken up. He ran a hand through his hair and winced as his father's comments ran through his brain again, causing a fresh wave of pain to course through his body.

He wasn't good enough to please Nu'Est's fans, hell he wasn't good enough to please his own parents. He really couldn't do anything right, so why should he keep trying? There wasn't a reason to keep fighting for approval, to keep caring what others thought if no matter what he did, he would never have been able to live up to the world's expectations for him.

A small laugh escaped him and he covered his mouth quickly, unsure of why he was laughing. It wasn't like him - the sound wasn't normal, and he wondered if he was beginning to have a mental breakdown. Huh, wouldn't that be great? He imagined the headlines for that one with a sarcastic smirk. 'Transvestite idol in a mental asylum after having a psychotic break' that would be just his luck, something more to ruin his already devastated reputation.

He laughed again against his will, a bit louder this time. At the same time, he realized that he was crying harder than he ever remembered crying before. He ran back to his room and dialed Seong's number, praying that she would be willing to talk to him again. He needed her to save him before he shattered into a billion pieces that could never be put back together.

“Minki, why do you keep calling me?” he hadn't even realized that she had picked up until he heard her angry voice on the other end.

“Seong, please. I need to talk to you - I know that I shouldn't be asking you because we're over, I know. But please give me a few minutes to talk to you. Just please.”

Seong was about to hang up, until she heard the desperation in his voice, and knew that he was crying. She had always had a weakness for him when he cried because it was so unusual for him to break down. “O-okay.” she agreed almost instantly.

“Meet me at the restaurant across from your apartment at seven.”

Seven o'clock rolled around quickly as Ren showered and changed into something presentable. He brushed his tangled hair, but didn't bother putting on makeup - he wasn't going out to please anyone. He just wanted to make things right. He'd been drinking for a few hours, once again “borrowing” some of Aron's liquor, this time not even caring if it was obvious that he had taken some. By this point, he wondered if his band-mate even cared. Why would anyone care about what someone like him did?

He was sure that he smelled like a drunk bum, but that was nothing that a bit of cologne couldn't fix. He squirted some of his favorite on his clothes, realizing as the scent wafted up to his nose that it was the one that Seong liked most on him as well. He smiled a little bit against his will before the cold reality hit him and he frowned again.

He checked his phone for the time, nearly dropping it as he read the time. It was already six forty-five, and he wasn't there. Ren walked quickly through the living room, not stopping to address the curious looks of his four hyungs as he walked by them. He was a man on a mission.

Ren arrived at the restaurant at 7:03, and saw Seong already sitting at the booth when he went inside the warm building. A waiter handed him a menu, and he ordered a salad, along with a bottle of soju. Seong gave him a distasteful look as she smelled his cologne from across the booth, mixed in with some other poorly masked but unmistakable scent.

“You've already been drinking tonight?” she asked quietly, and he just sighed.

“Yeah.”

“Why are you here, Minki?”

“I wanted to tell you that you were wrong. I've never kissed JR, I've never done anything with JR. He's my friend, like a brother to me.”

“How close you are to someone doesn't mean that those feelings can't turn into something else. Look at us - we were basically siblings, but we still ended up together.”

“Do you regret that we ended up together?”

“No. I regret that I put so much faith in you.”

Ren let out a tired breath. “You still believe that those pictures are real.”

“I don't know what I believe, Minki.” Seong was cut off by the waiter who gave them an apologetic smile as he set Ren's food out in front of him. Ren didn't bother eating, instead, he ended up grabbing the bottle and taking a long swig. He wasn't sure how much he had drank before coming to meet Seong, but he knew that he was definitely close to drunk already.

He continued to sip on the soju as Seong talked. Once half of the bottle was gone, he could barely comprehend her words, but it didn't frighten him. He enjoyed being numb - he couldn't think about all of the things that hurt him when he was like this.

The only thing that managed to break through the haze was the sound of cameras, many cameras snapping pictures, surrounding him and in his drunken state, making him feel trapped. He cast Seong a downcast glare, even though his vision doubled and suddenly there wasn't just one of her giving him a concerned look as her gaze darted from him and then around the small restaurant, seemingly searching for the source of the shutter noise.

Ren couldn't shake the feeling that it was all too damn convenient. He finally gets to the point that he needed Seong the most, and barely a few minutes into their meeting, it was being crashed by reporters. Somewhere in the back of his clouded mind he knew he was being irrational and jumping to conclusions, but that part wasn't dominant enough to quiet his fears.

Ren shook his head and cast his ex-girlfriend a look that he could only pray showcased the entire weight of betrayal and hurt he felt at her giving up his privacy like she so obviously had. He had trusted her despite their breakup, had trusted her because he had never known a time in his entire life that he hadn't trusted her. Clearly, that trust and their long past meant nothing to her if she had betrayed the one person that she promised to always be loyal to.

Seong wasn't inside of his head - she didn't understand the pointed looks that Minki was giving her, but at that moment, she realized that whatever pieces of her ex might have been left in the shell of him that becoming a member of Nu'Est had left him in, were gone and all that remained in his place was someone she didn't know at all.

Despite everything, despite the near hate-filled looks he was giving her, she knew that whatever happened, she couldn't let him out of her sight, lest he do something incredibly stupid. She watched him carefully as his brown eyes softened slightly, becoming more confused and frightened than angry. She realized that more of the alcohol must be taking effect and changing his judgment. She couldn't move in time as he cast her one final look, even though it didn't look like he saw her at all. He was out the door in an instant, like a startled cat trying to hide under a bed during a thunderstorm.

Only Ren wasn't running from a thunderstorm, he was running straight into the crowd of reporters that she knew all too well were waiting for him just outside of the restaurant's doors. Seong threw some money on the table, positive that it was entirely too much but not being able to find it in herself to care as the one she loved darted through the doors, obviously terrified and confused... lost even.

She ran in the direction that she hoped he had taken, ripping her arm away from a touchy reporter who tried to grab her for questioning about Ren. She was having none of it as she charged by the entire horde of people, desperate to catch up to Ren before he got into some sort of trouble. Ren stumbled blindly through the streets, no longer sure where he was or for that matter, who he was. The only thing that he could register was that he didn't feel normal. Whatever was going on with him was wrong. His vision should not be blurry, and the road sure as hell should not have looked like it was rushing to smack him in the face.

That's exactly what it did as Ren fell forward numbly, his stomach giving a lurch as he fell to his knees, expelling the contents of his stomach onto the pavement in front of him. A metallic scent filled the air, and in some quickly awakening part of his consciousness, he knew that he should not be coughing up blood. Blood was bad, and he could see even in the dim lighting that what he had thrown up was far more blood than alcohol.

Ren fell forward and vomited again, this time his vision going almost completely dark before slowly focusing again. He couldn't see through the tears in his gaze, the burning in his throat and the churning of his stomach causing him to roll as far away from the pile as possible before collapsing, too weak to move. He only hoped that he wouldn't have to throw up again because by that point he honestly wasn't sure whether or not he would have the strength to roll himself over so that he didn't suffocate.

A choked laugh that sounded more like a broken sob to his still hazy ears burst from his mouth as he realized fully the situation he had gotten himself into. He was in some alley god knows where throwing up blood. Using the last bit of his strength the singer reached into his back pocket for his phone, finally realizing how much his fingers were shaking as he tried to grasp the one thing that might be a lifeline to him.

He didn't know who he could call. The chances were that if something serious were wrong with him, none of the members of Nu'Est would be able to reach him in time to provide any sort of assistance. His mind wandered back to the one person who at this point in time, he really didn't want to see. Something in screamed that he should call emergency services, but he wasn't sure if he had enough strength to talk.

With Seong, it would be simple to alert her that something was wrong. Having known each other as long as they had, they had developed the makings of their own language at some point during their childhood. He wasn't sure anymore when it had started, but they had developed short words for important things, such as if one of them was in trouble and needed help.

He was sure that word would serve him well now as he typed their safe-word into his phone, fingers just barely managing to hit send before the shaking in his hand worsened and the phone fell from his grasp. His stomach continued to toss and he closed his eyes against overwhelming nausea, tears filling streaming from his eyes as he prayed that he would be able to keep it down. Moving was painful, but if he didn't move and he got sick, he would die.

He sent a silent prayer to whoever was listening that Seong would get to him in time and that he wouldn't die in that alley surrounded by his own vomit and God knows what else, crying alone having never made things right with the one person who despite her apparent betrayal, still meant the world to him.

Ren felt his vision blackening once again as the nauseous feeling that he had been experiencing reached an all-time high. He forced himself to roll over, not able to see where he was but having no time to think about it as he retched onto the pavement again, coughing and choking as he accidentally swallowed some of it. He managed to cough and spit it out before he asphyxiated, but the act caused the copper taste of blood to fill his mouth even stronger than before.

He slumped forward again, his head connecting with the pavement hard enough for him to see stars. He realized too late that he was passing out, the sudden injury to his head not even giving him enough time to make sure that he was rolled to a position where he wouldn't choke if he threw up again, before the darkness that he had been fighting finally took over. Silent tears trickled down his face as his world went black and he was aware no more.

Panic was one of the strongest human emotions. That much made itself well known to Seong as she frantically ran, covering more ground in those few minutes than she had covered in her entire life. She didn't know where Ren was, but she had a gut feeling that even in his drunken state, he had probably tried to go in the direction of Nu'Est's dorm. She could only pray that she was right, because if she wasn't, she was afraid that Ren was going to die. He had never used their word for help outside of the most extreme emergencies, and for the first time in at least five years, he had sent her a message with that very same word that instantly made her heart drop like lead into her already unsettled stomach.

She had already called for an ambulance, explaining to the woman on the other line that she was sure that someone was in trouble and would take full responsibility if it turned out to be a hoax. Deep in her heart she knew that it wasn't that simple. She told the rescuer that she would find where the injured person was and then call them back so that they could reach Ren.

Spurred by adrenaline, her feet pounded across the dark pavement until she found an alley. She had a fear of going into dark and shady looking places at night, but she would do it for Ren. She had always trusted her gut feeling, and at that moment it was telling her that Ren was there and that he needed her more than he ever had before.

The first thing that she noticed was the strong odor permeating the air of the alley. It smelled musty and uninviting like you would expect from a place where countless crimes had more than likely been committed, but that was overshadowed by a foul scent that made her stomach churn - she didn't have to guess that it was vomit. Vomit wasn't the only scent that caught her hyperaware attention - the unmistakable scent of blood hit her hard, and she stumbled forward blindly in the dark.

It was only then that she saw the crumpled heap lying on the ground, surrounded by puddles of what looked to be something red. Seong's heart broke when she noticed long black hair and she knelt down beside the collapsed figure, rolling him over so she could be sure that it was her Ren.

It was. A choked sob escaped her lips as she realized that her best friend and former boyfriend was deathly pale, his breathing shallow and labored. Not to mention that somewhere in her daze she had managed to place both scents together and knew that he had been vomiting blood.

She scooted behind him so that his head was in her lap. Trying to see through her tears she stroked his sweat drenched hair fondly, hoping to relax him some. His body stiffened as he coughed and she barely managed to turn him onto his side before more vomit splattered across the pavement. Seong rubbed his back carefully as she reached for her phone and called back the EMT. Her voice was low and dead sounding as she told them where they were. Ren retched again and more tears streamed from her eyes.

It felt like hours but it couldn't have been more than minutes when flashing red and blue lights assaulted her eyesight in the previous darkness of the alley. She barely registered it as someone pulled Ren off of her lap and wrapped her in a blanket before gently hauling her to her feet.

She's ushered into the ambulance, her spirit feeling like it's outside of her body. She briefly registers her informing the emergency personnel that Ren was an idol in a band and would need to be in a private room to avoid the publicity that she knew would severely damage Nu'Est's reputation. Her fingers seemed to act on their own accord as she dialed JR's number. She could barely understand his panic filled voice as she told him that Ren had been injured and was being transported to a hospital in Seoul. She hung up quickly, unable to handle the tears that she could already hear making the leader's voice deeper.

The only thing that broke into her haze was Ren, his dark brown eyes dazed and confused as he blinked them open and instantly reached for Seong's hand. She held it tightly, her heart breaking at how completely weak that his hold on her hand was. It killed her seeing him like this, but before she could find the words to apologize, he was saying the words that she wanted to say to him, his voice desperate and pleading despite obviously having no strength to be convincing. She had no idea what he was talking about, and could only attribute it to his drunken delirium and loss of blood causing him to say things that made absolutely no sense. She was the one who needed to apologize, for breaking his heart and leading him down a dark path that she hadn't even known that he had been traveling on ever since their sudden breakup.

Her earlier adrenaline began to wear off and she finally felt the full weight of the situation. Because she had jumped to conclusions and immediately assumed that Ren had been cheating on her without giving him a chance to explain, here he was in an ambulance, pale and very sick. His eyes were glazed as he fought to keep them open, to keep holding Seong's gaze. It was a losing battle, that much was obvious as his grip on Seong's wrist became even slacker.

Wanting to keep her hold on his hand, Seong tightened her own grip and it was only then that she realized how cold that his hand felt. There was no heat radiating from his body - it was like he was already dead. One of the EMT's working to stabilize Ren paused for a moment and cast her a sympathetic look. “He's freezing. The vomiting and loss of consciousness, as well as the lack of body heat, are all symptoms of alcohol poisoning. That's my guess as to what's wrong with him, but the doctor will have to professionally diagnose him. It's a good thing that you got to him when you did.”

Seong nodded, blinking back tears as she stroked Ren's cold hand. A few seconds later his eyes closed and her breath hitched in her throat. “Minki?”

The EMT put her fingers against Ren's neck, checking for a pulse. “He's alive, just unconscious.” The EMT gave Seong a curious look as something clicked in place. “You said he's an idol? I remember him now - Ren from Nu'Est, correct?”

“Yes.”

“This doesn't seem like something he would do at all - drinking himself to this point. I don't know him personally, but he's always seemed so bubbly and happy. I guess appearances can be deceiving.”

“He normally is happy. It's just that he's been going through some issues lately. Some “fans” of Nu'Est don't support his appearance and fan's opinions of him weigh heavily in his mind. And then... we broke up. This is really my fault - I knew what he was going through, but I still believed some stupid rumor. Of course, I still don't know if I'm convinced that it isn't true, but I didn't even give him a chance to explain. If I had, maybe he wouldn't have started drinking. He wouldn't be in this mess right now.” Seong didn't really know why she was spilling all of this information to the EMT, but she couldn't stop.

The woman gave her a gentle smile. “He seems like a fighter - I'm sure he'll pull through. You can let him explain everything first thing when he wakes up.”

Seong nodded and returned the smile, even though it didn't quite reach her eyes.

“He has alcohol poisoning. I'm guessing that he continued drinking even after he was drunk. Many lightweight people get drunk much faster than they expect so they continue drinking, not realizing that they're already drunk because the alcohol hasn't caught up with them. I'm also guessing that he didn't eat before he started the night. The prognosis is good, however. We're giving him an IV to prevent dehydration. He should regain consciousness in a few hours when some of the alcohol wears off.”

“Thank you, doctor.” The doctor gave Seong a knowing smile and nodded before walking out of the room and letting the door fall closed behind him. Seong laid her head on Ren's bed, feeling completely exhausted. She lifted it up after a moment and glanced across the room to where JR was sitting. The other members were in the lobby due to the hospital's two visitor at a time policy. JR had insisted on being the first one to visit.

The leader had his eyes closed, but Seong didn't have to guess that he wasn't asleep. He was probably just like her - wracked by worry and guilt, unable to sleep if his life depended on it. As if sensing Seong's gaze on him, JR opened his eyes and stared back before running a hand through his hair. “You alright?” he asked softly.

Seong shook her head in way of answer. “No. You?”

“Nope. I'm relieved to hear that he's okay, but I should have known that his problem was getting worse. It's my responsibility as the leader to know my members - to watch over them and know when something is wrong. Not that I didn't see it, I just didn't know what to do about it.”

“You knew what to do.” Seong felt like crying again when JR gave her a questioning look, so she proceeded with her guilty thoughts. “You tried to call me and tell me that something wasn't right with him, but I didn't care. I was too hurt and I refused to see him. If I hadn't been so hard-headed, we could have stopped this before it started. I'm.. sorry JR.”

Seong barely registered it as one minute JR was sitting on the couch, and the next minute he was standing in front of her, his arms wrapped tightly around her. Seong hugged JR back, unable to do anything else as tears streamed down her face. She could hear him whispering consolations to her, but she didn't want to hear them. After a moment, JR pulled away and looked her square in the eyes, his expression more serious than she ever remembered seeing it. “It's not your fault. Some people don't have anything better to do than try and make idols lives a living hell. It was only natural that you believed the rumor with everything else circulating.”

“I should have trusted him, though.”

“That's what you think, but that's why it hit you so hard. You trusted him too much and felt like he betrayed you. That's like a weapon of mass destruction and can tear apart any relationship. You reacted like anyone else would have, sadly it wasn't the reaction that Ren wanted.” JR gave her a concerned look before sighing. “You look like shit - sorry for being blunt. I'm going to go and update everyone about his condition. Try to get some sleep, will you?”

Seong nodded and watched as JR left the room, allowing the door to fall closed behind him. Suddenly feeling the true weight of her exhaustion, Seong blinked a few times to try and clear her vision. It didn't help and she knew that the only way to recover would be to give in and sleep. The couch looked completely uninviting and she knew that if she tried to sleep in the chair, her back would hurt so bad when she woke up that she wouldn't be able to move; the only option was to crawl into bed with Ren- the bed was plenty wide enough for her to sleep if she stayed pressed against his side.

Kicking off her shoes quickly, she gingerly sat on the bed, carefully avoiding the wires attached to Ren before laying on her side. Seong pressed her head against Ren's chest, listening to his heart beating steadily. Even though they had broken up, her position felt natural - like she was still designed to fit perfectly against his side. For just a moment, she didn't care about the turn that their relationship had taken - she didn't care about her loss of trust in him. Right at that moment, she wanted to be with him. She was lulled to sleep quickly by the melodic sound of Ren's heartbeat.

Ren woke up feeling like complete and utter shit.

His head pounded, and he was almost certain that his brain was going to break out of his skull, and his stomach felt like it was trying to reject anything that he had put in it since birth. Despite that, there was a pleasant weight settled against his chest and he looked down curiously to figure out what it was.

He was met with familiar rod-straight black hair fanned around a pretty face. It was Seong, and she was sleeping in a bed with him. The singer blinked a few times before opening his eyes again, convinced that what he was seeing had to be an illusion or the perfect dream. Seong was still there when he looked down at his chest again, and he was finally convinced that she was really there with him. Ren's hand acted on its own accord as he reached towards her hair, needing to feel the comforting sensation of her soft hair through his fingertips.

Ren stroked her hair gently for what seemed like forever, until Seong's light brown eyes opened and he stopped, resting his arm behind his head. A slight blush colored her cheeks as she sat up and moved to the edge of the bed before looking back over her shoulder at Ren.

“Do you remember what happened?” she questioned worriedly. She had read on the internet that amnesia was a common symptom associated with alcohol poisoning. Ren thought for a moment before a distant look appeared on his face and Seong sighed.

“Yeah... I was drunk and there were reporters. I was trying to get away and I went into an alley. I think I got sick and passed out.”

“I didn't call those reporters, Minki.”

“I know. I wasn't thinking rationally. I knew I was jumping to conclusions even then, but I wasn't in my right mind. I'm sorry for accusing you or that.”

“Don't bother apologizing. It was the same thing that I did to you when I saw those pictures.”

Ren turned his attention back to Seong before closing his eyes tightly. "I just wish you had given me a second to convince you. I would never cheat on you with JR."

"Will you be honest with me? When you touch him is it really skin-ship? I've seen the way you look at him, Minki. There's something there but I don't know what.”

Ren took a deep breath, steeling his nerves as he lowered his gaze from Seong's. “I'm bisexual, Seong.”

Seong stared at him as if caught off guard. Then the surprise faded from her expression. “So you do like JR?”

“Yeah. But I've never kissed him - I've never done anything with him. I don't know how to make that any clearer. Those pictures, every single one of them was photoshopped. I don't know why they look so convincing, but you have to trust me when I say that even if I've had thoughts like that about JR in the past, they're thoughts, and I've never acted on them. I'm never going to act on them because you mean the world to me.”

Seong felt tears pricking at her eyes and she looked away, desperate not to cry in front of him. “I'm sorry for not giving you the chance to explain. I don't even know why I didn't let you explain - something in me snapped when I saw those pictures. I was already upset because I felt like I haven't really known you since you debuted. But I should have known that those pictures weren't real considering what else was going on during that time. All of those comments about you, the hate and rumors, and I fell right into the trap.”

Ren sighed. “You did, but at least you realize that. It taught me something, though - we trust each other, but not as much as we thought. That might really be something to think about in the future.”

Seong gave him a defeated look. “You say that like you still that we have a future.”

“As far as I'm concerned, we do. That is if you want us to.”

Seong's eyes widened and she blinked back tears for what felt like the millionth time. “I'd like that.”

Ren's expression instantly brightened as relief swept over him. “Come here.” Seong settled back down on the bed beside him and he planted a kiss on her forehead. “I love you, Seong.”

“I love you too. Promise me that you're going to stop drinking. It's not healthy for you and I never want to see you like that again.”

The singer's expression became guilty as he stroked a hand through her long hair. “I promise. Drinking wasn't very fun anyway - I think I have a really low tolerance. Being hungover during practice was the worst thing I've ever done.”

Seong chuckled before snuggling into his side, her previous exhaustion once again catching up with her. Ren relaxed too, still feeling weak from his illness. The two soon fell asleep wrapped in a familiar embrace.

#nu'est #ren #jr #minhyun #baekho #aaron #pledis #mental health #angst

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rosymiel · 5 years

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1-100.. bitch

oh FUCK you (im jk.. i love you..)

The meaning behind my url: i love french, and so i wanted to spice up my url and have it not be sims related from the get-go (my previous url was ughplumb). at first i wanted my url to be “cherry wine” in french because my favorite song of all time is cherry wine by hozier, however the url was already taken. i settled for rosy honey, hence rosymiel

A picture of me: honestly just look at my tag “kyla has a face”! i don’t have any new selfies of myself aside from what i’ve posted.

How many tattoos i have and what they are: i only have one, and it’s right in between my shoulder blades on my back. it’s of my family’s crest, which says “miseris succurrere disco”, which basically means to help people in need.

Last time i cried and why: last night because i was watching queer eye

Piercings i have: i used to have my ears pierced, but i hated keeping track of my earrings so i just let them close up. i wish i never let them close up, and now i also want to get my nose pierced

Favorite band: i don’t really listen to any bands, just artists!

Biggest turn offs: burping and chewing sounds. chewing sounds legitimately anger me so much, i don’t know why

Top 5 songs: Cherry Wine (Hozier), Rain On Me (Joji), IDFC (Blackbear), I Love You (Billie Eilish), The Night We Met (Lord Huron)

Tattoos I want: OHHHHH MY GOD i want so many!!!! i just honestly want my body to be covered in flower tattoos to the point that i’m just a walking garden!! i really want to get a pair of watercolor roses or lilies right under my collarbones!!

Biggest turn ons: good cologne. i don’t know why, but cologne makes me go insane, i love it so much

Age: 18 going on 19!

Ideas of a perfect date: relaxing at home and cuddling with my boyfriend while watching our favorite show

Life goal: oh god this is super deep and i’ve sat on this question for a fat minute and all i can think about is how much i want to be content with myself, so i guess that’s my goal

Piercings i want: nose and ear piercings, babie!!!

Relationship status: happily taken!

Favorite movie: oh god, probably across the universe. i’ve loved it ever since i was a kid

A fact about my life: i’ve been in choir almost all my life

Phobia: the dark. when i was a kid i used to see faces on my walls when my room was dark

Middle name: marie

Height: 5′5.5 (basically just 5′6)

Are you a virgin?: yessirree

What’s your shoe size?: 7

What’s your sexual orientation?: i’m pretty straight, but i think i’m heteroflexible. i’d definitely get down and nasty with a girl, but i’ve never felt any romantic attraction towards females

Do you smoke, drink, or take any drugs?: no, my parents smoked cigarettes for most of my life, and my dad regularly smokes weed. the smell of weed makes my head hurt and makes me feel nauseous, so no thanks.

Someone you miss: my boyfriend. he’s been on a family trip to cuba, and he hasn’t contacted anyone (including me) in almost 10 days. i miss him so much that it genuinely hurts.

What’s one thing you regret?: not learning to love myself sooner and finding comfort in feeling depressed because it’s something familiar

First celebrity you think of when someone says attractive: zendaya

Favorite ice cream?: i don’t eat a whole lot of ice cream, so i guess cookies and cream

One insecurity: my teeth. my two teeth next to my front teeth are pointed, and i used to get called a vampire when i was young. i was always bullied for it, and for most of my life i would cover my mouth with my hand whenever i laughed or smiled. a recent incident that comes to mind was sophomore year in high school in my english class. i sat next to my friend mooney (i called her by her last name because we met in gym), and one day she was talking to the guy infront of her about how pretty she thought i was, and how she thought that i could’ve been a model. the guy who sat in front of me, who’s name was tristan and was also in my choir the previous year, said that i’d be pretty with me if my teeth weren’t so fucked up.

What my last text message says: “god this fan feels so nice”

Have you ever taken a picture naked?: :)

Have you ever painted your room?: no, but i’ve tried painting the bathroom with my mom

Have you ever kissed a member of the same sex?: nope

Have you ever slept naked?: yeah?????????

Have you ever danced in front of your mirror?: i can’t dance, so absolutely not

Have you ever had a crush?: yeah??!??!?!!? ofc. i had a major crush on my current boyfriend, and he had a crush on me first before we started dating. it’s actually a really cute story

Have you ever been dumped?: yeah, twice. my last one was really brutal, but not because of how he dumped me.

Have you ever stole money from a friend?: nope

Have you ever gotten in a car with people you just met?: nope

Have you ever been in a fist fight?: nope

Have you ever snuck out of your house?: nah, i’m a goody-two-shoes

Have you ever had feelings for someone who didn’t have them back?: oh HELL yeah

Have you ever been arrested?: nope, and not planning on it!

Have you ever made out with a stranger?: nope!!

Have you ever met up with a member of the opposite sex somewhere?: not in a sexual or romantic way, no

Have you ever left your house without telling your parents?: nah

Have you ever had a crush on your neighbor?: i don’t think so??

Have you ever ditched school to do something more fun?: i ditched my nesika (which was like homeroom, but only two days of the week rather than daily) to go to a coffee stand with a friend

Have you ever slept in a bed with a member of the same sex?: not in a sexual or romantic way

Have you ever seen someone die?: no, and i really don’t want to :^(

Have you ever been on a plane?: yup!! i love it

Have you ever kissed a picture?: maybe…………… :’^)

Have you ever slept in until 3?: oh my GOD no. i fall asleep relatively early and wake up early, even on my days off.

Have you ever loved someone or miss someone right now?: yeah??? lowkey this question is phrased in a weird way

Have you ever laid on your back and watched cloud shapes go by?: oh my god yes, it’s so relaxing

Have you ever made a snow angel?: yup!!!!

Have you ever played dress up?: oh HELL yes i have!!!

Have you ever cheated while playing a game?: okay does anyone remember doing the stock market game in freshmen year/middle school in history class? my friend and i looked up the answers online and cheated. we were rich that day in that class.

Have you ever been lonely?: i’m lonely right now

Have you ever fallen asleep at work/school?: maybe for 10 seconds, but no

Have you ever been to a club?: nope!

Have you ever felt an earthquake?: i don’t think so, no

Have you ever touched a snake?: SDKJGBSD NO!!!!!

Have you ever ran a red light?: nope!

Have you ever been suspended from school?: nope!!!!

Have you ever had detention?: i had lunch detention for saying “stfu” to a guy who was bugging me in 5th grade. i thought i was the shit for that.

Have you ever been in a car accident?: nope!

Have you ever hated the way you look?: 100%. i’ve always had huge insecurities surrounding my body or how i look.

Have you ever witnessed a crime?: bruh i literally stole a pack of gum from a store when i was 4. i COMMITTED a crime. in my defense, i stole it for my mom to make her happy. i got yelled at

Have you ever pole danced?: nope, but i would love to! it looks like a really good workout!

Have you ever been lost?: i got lost just last week

Have you ever been to the opposite side of the country?: nope!!! i don’t travel much

Have you ever felt like dying?: yes. i used to be suicidal

Have you ever cried yourself to sleep?: hell yeah babie!

Have you ever sang karaoke?: i sing karaoke on youtube almost every single day. not only that, but on the first day of practicing for my high school graduation i stopped by my choir class before it began (seniors got out earlier than everyone else), and i sang karaoke with them.

Have you ever done something you told yourself you wouldn’t?: 100%

Have you ever laughed until something you were drinking came out your nose?: NO?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Have you ever slept with someone at least 5 years older or younger?: no

Have you ever kissed in the rain?: how can u kiss the rain. bruh.

Have you ever sang in the shower?: i sang in the shower earlier today

Have you ever made out in a park?: nope!

Have you ever dream that you married someone?: yep!!!!

Have you ever glued your hand to something?: i don’t think so????

Have you ever got your tongue stuck to a flag pole?: no, but i got my tongue stuck to one of those metal low monkey bar things.

Have you ever gone to school partially naked?: no?????

Have you ever been a cheerleader?: no, but my childhood friend and i wanted to be cheerleaders in high school before i moved to a different state

Have you ever sat on a roof top?: nope

Have you ever brushed your teeth?: who are you, my mom?

Have you ever been too scared to watch scary movies alone?: oh my GOD yes

Have you ever played chicken?: nope!! im a pussy

Have you ever been pushed into a pool with all your clothes on?: nope!

Have you ever been told you’re hot by a complete stranger?: not that i’m hot, but i’ve gotten many compliments from strangers

Have you ever broken a bone?: nope!

Have you ever been easily amused?: i used to be one of those kids that would laugh before they could finish a joke

Have you ever laughed so hard you cried?: i’ve laughed so hard that i’ve pissed myself. so yes.

Have you ever mooned/flashed someone?: i mean????

Have you ever cheated on a test?: i cheated on a 2nd grade spelling test. who knew that i would end up actually being great at spelling shit

Have you ever forgotten someone’s name?: oh my god i have the worst memory and i’m terrible with names

Have you ever met someone who didn’t seem real?: my boyfriend :’’’’^)

Give us one thing about you that no one knows: a couple friends know, but when i’m too lazy to throw on shoes or socks to walk around the house i just pull my sweatpants legs a bit over my feet and just wrap it around my feet. it’s weird

#non sims #reply #roseiio

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trashforhockeyguys · 6 years

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Wholeheartedly /11/ Auston Matthews

A/N: In honor of that damn overtime win. I give you part 11.

“Are you feeling any better?” Auston asked you a few days later.

You shrugged, “Yeah, I just feel off still.”

“Off?”

“As in, not quite right,” You explained, “I think I’m still trying to bounce back from the season.”

“Do I need to cancel our date night tomorrow?” He questioned.

You could tell that he was still genuinely worried that you weren’t feeling well. Normally the two of you were a bit off and groggy for a few days after the season ended, just because of how intense playoffs could be. Add in the jetlag from coming back to Arizona, and everyone liked to sleep for a while.

But it was unusual for it to stick around with you for a while. Normally you bounced back first, because you had to take care of the boys, and Auston. You survived off of coffee and other sources of caffeine, while the boys acted like zombies for a while. However, this year it was the opposite.

“No, don’t do that. You’ve been planning whatever it is since we came back,” You shook your head, “I’m fine, I probably just need a good nap or something.”

“Are you okay for me to go to the gym for a bit?” He asked, fully ready to stay if you said he needed to.

“No, go. I’ll probably just go crawl in bed and call my mom or Erika,” You replied, “Or sleep, since your parents have the boys for the weekend.”

He smiled and kissed your forehead. You whined, motioning for him to come back. You pulled him down enough to properly kiss him. You sighed when he finally pulled away, knowing that he had to leave or he’d be late for his session. He brushed some hair out of your face, with a promise that he’d be home as soon as he finished.

You tried to pick up the house some, but all you wanted to do was go crawl back in bed, preferably with Auston next to you. But, rather than wallow in the fact that he had to leave, you picked up the phone and called your parents, or to be more specific, your little sister.

Erika was in the middle of summer workouts in preparation for her next season. But, she was quick to answer the phone when she saw it was you. She was still out of breath from the run she’d just come back from a long run. But that didn’t stop her from automatically asking about the boys.

“Jesus, Jake really threw his golf club like that?” She questioned.

“Well, he didn’t throw it, so much as he just let go of it,” You replied.

“Damn, I hate that I missed that,” She sighed, “I miss my little dude. And Bubs, of course.”

“They miss you too,” You sighed.

“Like hell they do,” She laughed, “Alex and Bree are filling that void.”

“Lies, they do miss you,” You giggled.

“Is that Y/N?” You heard your mom ask.

“Mom, back off, she called me!” Erika complained.

You shook your head as you listened to the two of the fight over who was going to talk to you. You pulled back the covers on your bed, and climbed in. You wrapped the covers around you, instantly feeling more comfortable. Your mom and your sister were still fighting, so you ended up hanging up on her. Two seconds later, you were connecting to a FaceTime call, so they could both easily talk to you.

“Better?” You questioned.

“Why are you in bed?” Erika questioned.

“You try having two boys under the age of five, and a professional athlete as a husband, then you can ask why I’m in bed,” You shot back, half joking.

“Honey, are you feeling okay? You look a bit pale,” Your mother stated.

“Ma, I’m fine. It’s just been a busy few days,” You shrugged, “And you know it takes a few days to adjust to being back in Arizona, with the time change and the heat.”

“Oh my god!” Erika suddenly squealed, “You are so pregnant.”

“Erika!” You and your mother both exclaimed.

“When have I ever been wrong about this?” She questioned, “I’m the one who told you to take the test when you were pregnant with Jake.”

You sighed and rubbed your face with your hand. Although Erika was right about that, she didn’t know everything. You’d started your period late last night, which was another possible reason that you were nauseous. You’d had hopes that you were already pregnant, but all of the signs kept pointing to no.

“I’m not pregnant Riks,” You shook your head, “Sorry to burst your bubble.”

You talked with them for a few more minutes before Erika announced she had to go shower before a date she had, and then hung up on you. You loved Erika, and you loved the way that she was pretty blunt about everything, but at some point, she’d have to slow down. Especially with college looming overhead.

You snuggled further into your bed, deciding a quick nap before Auston came home wouldn’t be a bad thing. You could only attribute your constant fatigue to the fact that you hadn’t stopped to take a minute for yourself since before playoffs ended. Everyone had kept you rather busy.

You woke up a while later, to the sound of presumably Auston, rustling around in the kitchen. You smiled, hearing him sing along to whatever music he was undoubtedly playing through his headphones. You rolled over, burring your head in his pillow. You just wanted a few more minutes, then you’d actually get up and probably have to figure out what you two were going to eat for dinner.

Even if your stomach was still upset and food was the last thing on your mind, you did have to keep Auston fed. Chances were if he tried to cook something, he’d burn the house down. Or at least, if he cooked without supervision. But the more you tried to pull yourself out of bed, the more you just wanted to stay there.

A few minutes later, you heard Auston starting to make his way up the steps towards your shared room. He was trying to be quiet, because he assumed you were still asleep. His eyes lit up when he noticed you were awake though. He smiled softly as he dropped his bag before making his way over to the bed.

“I’m sorry, did I wake you up?” He questioned softly.

You shook your head, “No.”

“Scoot,” He motioned for you to move over a tad.

Once he climbed in bed, he pulled you back towards him. You grinned and cuddled into his side. He started playing with your hair, brushing through it with his fingers, as softly as he could. Your body started to feel at ease again. You could feel him begin to relax as well. You wrapped your arms around him and smiled contently.

“Are you feeling better?” He questioned.

“A little,” You shrugged, “The nap helped.”

“Did you talk to Erika? She texted me while I was at the gym,” He told you.

“Yeah, she’s being nosey,” You laughed softly, “Plus, she’s in the middle of her summer training. So, her social life is a little limited to hockey.”

“Has she decided where she’s committing to yet?”

“No, she wants to tour some places again before making the big decision,” You mumbled, “Can’t say that I blame her.”

He laughed, understanding how stressful it could be to decide your future. It was well known that Auston chose a very unconventional path, forfeiting his college eligibility to go play in Switzerland, before being drafted and starting his NHL career. You knew it was tough on him to choose that path, but you also knew he didn’t regret it.

You only hoped that whatever Erika decided, she’d be happy. You remembered how stressful it was to decide where you’d spend your college years. Then of course, came the injury that ended your hockey career. But you still didn’t regret where you chose, because you still remained close to your old teammates. Plus, those relationships you’d formed there is what ultimately lead you to Auston.

“She’ll be fine, babe,” Auston promised, “She learned from one of the best.”

“Six years of marriage, and you’re still sucking up,” You joked.

“Just doing my job,” He whispered, kissing your forehead.

The two of you had a pretty relaxed night. You reheated some pasta from the other night, deciding that both of you were too lazy to actually try to cook. After that, the two of you just laid around and watched movies before actually deciding to go back upstairs and crawl in bed. Auston kept you wrapped up in his arms. Mostly because you didn’t have any little boys trying to crawl into the bed for once.

But early in the morning, you woke up feeling really hot. Your head was spinning by the time you shot out of bed and ran to the bathroom. You hunched over the toilet before empting your stomach, until there was nothing left. You leaned against the wall and tried to breathe. You didn’t feel like you’d get sick again, but your stomach was still clenching.

You tried to think of what you might have eaten, but nothing came to mind that would’ve caused you to actually feel like this. You’d eaten the same thing that you’d had a few nights before, and it hadn’t messed with you before. Or at least, didn’t make you feel any worse.

Your mind wondered to what your sister had told you yesterday. You knew you had one box of pregnancy tests in your cabinet, but you didn’t allow yourself to believe that you were actually pregnant. You and Auston never actually tried before, there was no way that it would be this easy.

Not to mention the fact that you’d started your period. Sure, it was lighter than it had been in years, but you’d come off of birth control, and all of the stress from the last few weeks couldn’t be helping. You wouldn’t get your hopes up. You wouldn’t wake up Auston.

You were shaking when you finally pulled the box out of the cabinet. You slowly walked back towards the toilet. You weren’t going to get excited. You weren’t going to let yourself believe that you were pregnant. You wouldn’t be able to deal with it if you weren’t.

Those five minutes, waiting for the test to finish, were always the longest. It didn’t matter if you wanted the baby or not, it always felt like a lifetime. You would say time and time again, those few minutes felt like a lifetime. You tried to distract yourself by playing around on your phone, but you couldn’t stop thinking about that little plastic stick.

When the timer finally went off, you felt like time had slowed to a stop. You took several deep breaths before you finally reached for the test. But you still couldn’t bring yourself to turn it over and actually check it. You almost didn’t want to, you were afraid if you were being completely honest.

It wasn’t that you weren’t ready for a third, because you were. You knew that it was something that you wanted. But at the same time, it’d change so much. You were both ready for another, you both wanted it, yet, you couldn’t help but think about how everything would be different.

Your breathing was uneven and almost labored as you finally turned the test over to look at it. You started crying almost immediately. You really hadn’t expected it to be positive, and super positive at that. You were used to taking one and it coming back with the faintest line possible, but enough for you to know you were pregnant. But there was no mistaking this.

You stumbled back against the counter. You almost wanted to laugh, but all you could do was cry. Despite the fact you were crying, you had the biggest smile on your face. You were in shock, you knew you were. Your body was shaking. But you were also so overwhelmingly excited. You hadn’t really had the oprotunity to be excited like this as soon as you found out.

When you found out you were pregnant with Brian, you’d been too afraid to do anything but cry. With Jake, all you could do was question the timing and fear what life with two babies would be like. But things were different this time around. You both wanted this, you’d somewhat planned for it. But knowing it was actually real, that this was actually happening, just felt so different.

Words couldn’t really describe how you felt. All you could think of was how you’d have another little one. You smiled to yourself and placed a hand over your stomach, which was potentially the most cliché thing you could’ve done. You knew you wouldn’t be able to feel anything, but something was there. There was actually a baby.

You heard Auston rustle in the bed. He’d probably somewhat wake up soon. You tried to pull yourself together and gain some sense of composer, but all you wanted to do was shout it from the rooftops. But instead, you slowly made your way back towards the bed.

Auston had since rolled over on his stomach, his hair was sprawled out over his face. He looked younger somehow. You smiled again and carefully climbed into the bed next to him. You propped yourself up on your forearms and took a minute just to look at him.

Carefully, you brushed some hair away from his eyes. He shifted a bit, his body seeming to move closer to you. You bit your lip when his eyes lazily started to open. He smiled sleepily, knowing you were right next to him, even if he hadn’t fully opened his eyes yet. You tried not to break out into a big smile, but it was getting harder and harder by the minute.

“What?” He asked groggily, “What’s wrong?”

“I’m pregnant,” You whispered, finally breaking out into a massive smile.

He automatically pushed himself up a bit, “Say that again?”

You could see the hint of a smile starting to appear as he started to process it. You giggled, it actually started to hit you now that you’d said it aloud. The two of you were having another baby. Jake and B would be big brothers. Your family of four was going to become a family of five.

“I’m pregnant, Auston,” You said again, “I’m pregnant.”

“You’re pregnant?” His smile grew wider.

“Yeah,” You nodded, tears starting to fall again, “I am.”

He moved towards you and quickly wrapped his arms around you. You were both laughing and crying, but no where did you feel an ounce of fear. You knew you could do this, you’d done it twice before. You knew your boys would be good with having a baby around, because they loved the little baby leafs.

“You’re pregnant,” He stated again, kissing your forehead

You leaned over to kiss him. Which then turned into him pulling you on top of him, holding you close to him. You could feel him smiling. You tucked your head into the crook of his neck. He tightened his arms around you, causing you to feel safe and warm.

“I think this is better than my anniversary dinner,” Auston laughed.

“You’re taking me to dinner?” You asked, lifting your head to see him.

“We got married six years ago, I figured a nice dinner was in order,” He shrugged, “But we have something else to celebrate now.”

“We’re having another baby,” You said, still in disbelief.

“We’re having another baby, Y/N,” Auston repeated.

#auston matthews #auston matthews imagine #auston matthews imagines #auston matthews fanfic #Auston Matthews fan fiction #dad!auston #nhl imagines #nhl imagine #nhl fanfic #nhl fanfiction #hockey imagines #hockey imagine #Hockey Fanfiction #hockey fanfic #nicolewritesthings

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seriouslyhooked · 6 years

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I Believe in You

Available on FF Here and AO3 Here.

A/N: Hey all! This is a short, cutesy one shot about the day Hope was born because I wanted to write about Daddy Killian for Father’s Day and I just had some need for CS family cuteness. This fic was inspired by the song ‘I Believe in You’ by Michael Buble and I am publishing it a day early so it can be a special birthday fic for @jennjenn615! Happy birthday Jenn, and I hope that the rest of you will all wish Jenn a happy birthday and enjoy this fic as well! PS – not sure if there was any cannon stuff about naming Hope or Hope being born, so if I am going against the show sorry!

Killian Jones had weathered many a storm throughout his life. After surviving the heartache of his childhood, the losses that came thereafter, and the darkness of his years of seeking out vengeance, he’d grown accustomed to the adrenaline of a fight and the uncertainty of Mother Nature. Time and time again he tested the limits of what could be done, and sure enough, all of these years later, he was still standing.

Recently he’d taken that experience and put it to better use, choosing the side of heroes and goodness over villains and dark deeds. He’d managed to find his other half, a woman he loved more than anything, who inspired him to give up a quest for revenge and to try for a better life instead. Through the magic inside her, Emma made Killian brave enough to try and make amends for his past sins and to do better in the present and the future. His Swan was a treasure, plain and simple, and though Emma might be a princess and a savior all in one, at her core she was just a woman of incredible strength and unyielding passion. Because of this, she was the best kind of partner, an incredible wife, and the only person Killian could ever imagine walking into this new battle by his side.

Perhaps calling this next chapter a ‘battle’ wasn’t exactly the right choice of words, but after the ordeal it had taken to get here, Killian lacked a better term. All the same, he’d do it all again a thousand times to get to this point, and he knew Emma would whole heartedly agree with him on that.

Looking down at his newborn daughter, Killian felt his heart seize up in his chest all over again. She was a tiny little thing, so fragile and so small, but his love for her was far from insignificant. All it took was one second – one precious moment when the doctor placed their little Hope in Emma’s arms – for Killian to love her with everything he had. Since the day Emma told him they were expecting a child, Killian had been filled with pride and excitement, but finally meeting his daughter was something he couldn’t readily express the impact of. This tiny lass had run away with his heart even faster than her mother did, and Killian knew that having this chance to be a family was the surest blessing a man could know. He had once been closed off, resigned to a life of loneliness and bitter resentment, but now his world had expanded, and all that heartache and pain could be forgotten as he and Emma gave their little girl the life she deserved.

“What should we call her, my love?” Killian had asked in that moment when the doctor placed Hope in Emma’s arms. They had discussed some options before, but Killian deferred to his wife in this moment for she would no doubt have something beautiful in mind.

“I know we had a couple of ideas before, but now that she’s here there’s only one name I can think of: Hope.”

“Hope,” Killian repeated, pressing a kiss to Emma’s temple as his hand came under hers where she held their little one. “It’s perfect, just like her.”

“You don’t think it’s too cheesy?” Emma asked, though Killian could tell that she had already decided on the name no matter what. He didn’t have the heart to ever take things from his lovely wife, and in this moment he had no desire to. Hope was a brilliant name and he could think of nothing more fitting for their daughter.

“I think anyone who says as much will have to deal with me,” Killian responded, pulling a gentle laugh from Emma. The sound sent a happy hum through Killian’s chest, which was increased tenfold when their daughter responded to Emma’s laughter with her own gentle cooing noise.

“Get ready, Hope. You’ve got one protective pirate Daddy on your hands,” Emma cautioned in a teasing way. “You’ll have to watch out.”

“I hardly think I’ll be alone in trying to protect her, Swan,” Killian argued and Emma only chuckled again before leaning back against him and letting out a sigh.

“No. Our little girl will never be alone. She’ll always have a hero in her corner.”

Killian felt the impact of that statement even all these hours later, and he trusted that Emma was right. Things would be okay. Hope would be safe, and their family would remain secure and intact. The time of battles and fighting and life or death was over. This was just life now, and despite its complications and occasional messiness, it was a magical thing. This was the kind of second chance a man could only dream of, and for that reason Killian was hesitant to actually go to sleep tonight. Despite the suggestions of the hospital staff, and despite the fact that Emma herself was tucked in beside him in the hospital bed dozing away, Killian remained vigilant, knowing that no dream could compare to his new reality. With his wife just by his side and his daughter in his arms, Killian knew a real and lasting kind of peace that he didn’t want to give up for even a moment.

This was only the first day of his new journey into fatherhood but already Killian felt the magnitude of this new calling. His time with Henry and Emma had prepared him for some elements of family and parental connection, and helping Emma’s parents with Neal had given him some insight into the world of infant care, but today truly marked the start of something all together different for Killian. The weight of his daughter’s world rested on his and Emma’s shoulders. It was their job to guide her, to keep her safe, and to love her all the days of their lives. Killian knew loving Hope would be the easiest thing he’d ever done. The only thing that could compare in naturalness was loving Emma, but even if love would always be there, there would no doubt be hazards along the way. The thought of the mistakes he might make or the failures that could come at his hand made him mildly nauseous, but he grounded himself in his daughter, who despite being just hours old was staring up at him with wide green eyes that perfectly matched Emma’s. In truth, she looked fascinated by him and it made Killian feel like more than an ordinary man, just as Emma’s looks of love always seemed to.

“Whatever happens, little love, I will not let you down. You’ll always have me, and I will always protect you and your mother. No matter what.”

He whispered the words so softly that his own ears barely heard them. Killian didn’t want to wake up Emma, but he felt the promise had to be said aloud. Hope deserved to know even if she was too young to understand that she was the most precious of all things. Both he and Emma had childhoods that never provided a feeling of being wanted or belonging, but Hope would have a very different life. This little girl would know from the start that she was supported and cared for, and Killian could just imagine how remarkable she’d be given that she was equal parts him and Emma together.

“Killian,” Emma murmured from her spot lying in the bed beside him. Her voice surprised him, but he resisted the instinct to jump. He’d hate to startle their little one when she was quietly looking up at him. “Much as I loved hearing your promise to her, and as cute as this Daddy-daughter time has been, you heard what the Doctor said. We need to try to sleep, and so does she.”

Killian should have known his wife would figure him out in the end and that he wouldn’t be able to get away with anything. He had thought Emma was truly asleep, and lord knew after the ten hours of unimaginable pain she’d gone through to bring their child into the world that she deserved a full night of uninterrupted slumber, but in typical fashion Emma anticipated his next move better than anyone else ever could. She looked at him now with still tired eyes, but a smile that spoke volumes. There was a wee bit of chastisement in her expression to be sure, but there was also an immense kind of joy and satisfaction that made her green eyes shine and her very spirit glow. Killian swore he’d never seen Emma look more beautiful and he’d never loved her more.

“I know, Swan, I know,” Killian agreed even as he shook his head and looked back down at Hope, seeing her little hand reach out to hold his shirt with a small but determined grip. “I just… I can’t let her go.”

“Because you’re afraid,” Emma said less as a question and more as an undeniable statement with a tone of understanding lacing her sleepy voice.

“Aye, love.”

“You know I felt the same way at first,” Emma confessed, shifting in the bed so she was sitting up with him and Hope. Her hand came to touch his arm, her thumb brushing lightly back and forth, and the comfort that simple touch brought was in itself profound. Still he sought out Emma’s counsel on this. He’d never known anyone as bright as his love, and surely she would have answers where he felt he had none.

“You did?”

“Mhmm,” she agreed as she cuddled in closer to him and their baby, her soft murmurings of love to Hope making both Killian and their child light up all the more.

“Well clearly you’ve gotten past it. How did you manage that?” he asked, genuinely wanting to know as Emma chuckled to herself, the reverberation moving through him and settling his frayed nerves all the more.

“I wouldn’t say I’m past anything. I’m not suddenly an expert on raising a newborn or enlightened in all things motherhood. If anything I’m still terrified, both to be this happy and that somehow we might lose this. I have some doubts about if I can really do this. I’ve never raised a kid from start to finish before, and there are so many mistakes you can make, it’s hard not to worry.”

“You’re a brilliant Mother, Emma. Never doubt that,” Killian said immediately, and Emma smiled at that as she pressed a kiss to his cheek.

“And that right there is how I keep going and why my fear will never win in the end. It’s why I’ll never give in to my doubts; because I believe in you and in us just as much as you believe in me. You’re going to be the best Dad, Killian, and I know in my heart that together we can do anything. I also know that this is real. My feelings are too vivid, my happiness too big for this to be some kind of dream or curse or whatever. It has to be real because it just feels so right, so when we wake up tomorrow it’ll all still be here - she’ll still be here, waiting for us.”

“It’s just hard to imagine that life has turned out this way,” Killian confessed as Emma took his hand and intertwined their fingers.

“For both of us,” Emma assured him, reminding him that though their pasts were hardly the same, they’d both overcome the hardest of trials to find happiness at the end of the line. “But we gave her this name for a reason – everything we found with each other and with her revolves around hope. It’s what got us here, and it’s what will keep us going.”

“Have I mentioned lately that I love you, Swan?” Killian asked as she pressed a soft kiss to his lips and took Hope from his arms to lay her back down in her hospital crib. Their daughter stretched and let out a soft yawn as Emma put her down for sleep, and Killian found himself fending off one of his own as well.

“You have,” Emma stated smugly as she snuggled in beside him, sending away the last of his worries and replacing it with the contentment holding her in his arms always brought. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t love hearing it.”

“I love you, Emma,” he whispered to her as he lay a kiss to the crown of her head, breathing her in and smiling to himself at all his good fortune today and in general.

“And I love you. So let’s not be scared, okay? We can do this, as long as we’re together.”

“Together,” Killian agreed, and with that the three members of the Jones family all found themselves drifting off to sleep. And sure enough, as their story continued to unfold Emma turned out to be more than right – for together they created a beautiful life, all made possible because they had love, belief, and more than a little bit of hope.

…………

Time goes by And I've been holding everything inside But now I've got nothing left to hide When I'm with you, oh, you

But I can see How strong a man I'm gonna have to be To do for you what comes so naturally It's in the way you move

And all I want Is a chance to prove Show all I can do

I believe in starting over I can see that your heart is true I believe in good things coming back to you You're the light that lifts me higher So bright, you guide me through I believe in you

And I don't mind If you want to hold onto me tight You don't have to sleep alone tonight If you don't want to

And all I want Is to know you're near You're all I need here

I believe in starting over I can see that your heart is true I believe in good things coming back to you You're the light that lifts me higher So bright, you guide me through I believe in you

I know that there are times Where you feel worthless Like all the love you get You don't deserve it Sometimes I feel my faith is just a burden On you, you, you

I believe in starting over I can see that your heart is true I believe in love You give me reason to You're the light that lifts me higher So high up in the sky I, I think we're gonna fly

I believe in starting over I can see that your heart is true I believe in love You give me reason to You're the light that lifts me higher So bright, you guide me through I believe in you I believe in you I believe in you You guide me through I believe in you

Post-Note: So there we have it. Just some fluffiness here in time for the weekend and the holiday and to celebrate someone in this fandom who does not get enough credit. Jenn, you are an absolute super star and I hope you have the best day possible. Thanks for always being a friend and a phenomenal cheerleader. Anyway, I hope that you all enjoyed and I would love to hear what you all thought! Either way, thanks so much for reading and I hope you have a great rest of your day!

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9,Part 10,Part 11, Part 12,Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21, Part 22, Part 23, Part 24,Part 25, Part 26, Part 27, Part 28, Part 29, Part 30, Part 31,Part 32, Part 33, Part 34, Part 35, Part 36, Part 37, Part 38,Part 39,Part 40, Part 41, Part 42, Part 43, Part 44, Part 45,Part 46,Part 47, Part 48, Part 49, Part 50, Part 51, Part 52, Part 53,Part 54,Part 55, Part 56, Part 57, Part 58, Part 59, Part 60,Part 61,Part 62, Part 63, Part 64, Part 65, Part 66, Part 67, Part 68,Part 69,Part 70, Part 71, Part 72, Part 73, Part 74, Part 75,Part 76,Part 77, Part 78, Part 79, Part 80, Part 81, Part 82, Part 83,Part 84,Part 85, Part 86, Part 87, Part 88, Part 89, Part 90,Part 91,Part 92, Part 93, Part 94, Part 95, Part 96, Part 97, Part 98,Part 99,Part 100, Part 101, Part 102, Part 103,Part 104, Part 105,Part 106, Part 107,Part 108, Part 109, Part 110,Part 111, Part 112,Part 113, Part 114, Part 115,Part 116, Part 117, Part 118,Part 119,Part 120, Part 121, Part 122, Part 123,Part 124, Part 125,Part 126, Part 127, Part 128,Part 129,Part 130, Part 131,Part 132,Part 133, Part 134, Part 135, Part 136, Part 137, Part 138,Part 139,Part 140, Part 141, Part 142, Part 143, Part 144, Part 145,Part 146, Part 147, Part 148,Part 149, Part 150, Part 151,Part 152, Part 153, Part 154, Part 155, Part 156, Part 157, Part 158,Part 159, Part 160, Part 161, Part 162, Part 163, Part 164,Part 165, Part 166, Part 167, Part 168, Part 169, Part 170,Part 171,Part 172, Part 173, Part 174, Part 175, Part 176,Part 177, Part 178, Part 179

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sherlockmonkeesstartrek · 6 years

Text

If You Could Only See Me (Part 1)

(Posted this on ‘Some Small Fics’, but decided to put it on here instead.)

Rating: Mature

Fandom: Based on the Hollies, mentions the Beatles

Finished: Yes!!!

Summary: Niki grew up with a boy named John in Liverpool. Spending much of her life with him and his band, in 1966 she fell in love with the front man of another band.

Or… Did she?

Chapter 1: The Present

The first thing I become aware of is a cut down my bottom lip. I don’t remember when I got it. My lips haven’t been broken, though it’s cold enough to make them all chapped. It doesn’t hurt. I gnaw on it slightly, but nothing. All I feel is the sensation of skin missing, broken in one place. I run my tongue over it, tasting the tender inside flesh.

I don’t recall it bleeding, nor anyone biting it. Aww, that would be hot. I’d run my tongue over it and know exactly who’d done it to me, who’d made me bleed. Alas, things like that haven’t really happened for a while. Allan’s been decidedly vanilla, if he’s been at all interested in that, and I’ve been ok with it. We’re just too tired at the moment. This week has been non-stop. We were on tour. We only got back yesterday in the early hours of the morning and yet we both had to work once we’d gotten a bit of sleep. Today, we’ve nothing to do, and though it might be nice to finally be intimate, since I’ve missed that a lot, I can’t even bring myself to sit up, never mind wake him and make out. Even if I were to wait for him to wake up, I’d probably fall back to sleep and forget. Really, it’s bad at the moment, not between us, just together, we’re hopeless.

That doesn’t stop me from dreaming, however. As I turn onto my stomach, my eyes shut tight, my bones creaking, I think about having him. I ache for it, I do, almost as much as I ache for sleep. I think about him having me, pushing me up against the cold walls of the shower while a hot spray cleans us both, yet I am content in the prospect of being turned on my side, my leg hooked over Allan’s and him lazily fucking me like that. I feel his body over me, a leg up by my butt, an arm over my shoulders, his nose buried in my neck. His warm breath spreads over the base of my skull.

You know what? I’m perfectly happy to just fall back to sleep now, imagining all the wonderful ways Allan could have me. I imagine that he already has and we are drifting off in the wake of a post-climax glow.

Content, I shuffle onto my side, careful not to move Allan too much. He is deep in a well-earned sleep. I would hate to be the one to wake him. I cannot, however, ignore my urge to press a kiss on his cheek. I pry open my sleep-lined eyes to make sure I’m aiming for the right place, and the sight that greets me causes my brain to falter. It’s quite sunny and bright. I must’ve slept for much of the morning. My eyes take a moment to adjust, but even before they have, the blurry, unfocused view presents something very wrong.

Fair hair in place of dark brown. Facial hair where I know there to be none. A mouth like that of a hamster’s and a thin, pointed nose and a long face, all of which I recognise, but not as Allan. No. I find myself in bed, about to kiss the cheek of his best friend. My eyes dart around. I realise I’m not even at home. What the hell!

Groggily, I sit up. My stomach turns. Am I that girl? Am I such an awful person to have unconsciously slept with my boyfriend’s best friend? I am well aware of the fact that I’m not a particularly ‘good’ person. I’ve had my fair share of selfish, rude and generally awful acts, and not all of which I can attribute to the fact that I live in an era now where certain things are more accepted than others- after all, I’ve been surrounded by rock stars all my life, bad behaviour taught or learnt, I’ve always been around it. This, however, I don’t remember at all. I’ve always been loyal and faithful. I’d never sleep with anyone other than Allan (unless he said I could, of course) least of all with Graham fucking Nash. Of all people!

Was I drunk? Was I high? I seriously consider it, though I don’t drink nor take drugs. I don’t even remember being anywhere I could’ve got spiked at. I was at home last night. And Graham hates me as much as I do him. Why would he even try to spike me? Perhaps he didn’t, and the night was just so awful, I blocked it from my memory. But what, what in the world would have persuaded me into Graham Nash’s bed? Why am I even at his house?

Oh, this is all too weird. I feel sick to my stomach with shame and guilt, though I’m sure I didn’t knowingly sleep with Graham. No one is going to look at this situation and see where I am coming from. Everyone will think me a liar.

While I try to think up some way out of this awful circumstance, I consider the big bedroom, the double bed. Actually, I’ve got to say, this doesn’t look anything like Graham’s place. Are we at a hotel? The leaking, built in wardrobes and messy cluttered beside tables tell me no. Are we at a friend’s place? The fact that I see trinkets belonging to Graham, as well as several clothes I’ve seen him wear, I guess that is a no too. Weird. More than weird. The nauseous feeling doubles. Nothing, nothing is right.

On the bedside table closest to me, I’m shocked to find my usual assortment of necklaces and bracelets I hardly ever wear. They’re all presents I keep in the draws of a small mirror jewellery box I’d had since I was a young girl. That sits at the very back of the table. In front, my two slender watches are dumped, one with a gold face that my sister gave me, the other with a grey, leather strap from my dad. They curl around each other like intertwining snakes, the grey one on top, as it was the last one I wore. In front of those are my two current notebooks. One is a hardback with gold polka dots on its cover, while the other is leather bound with engraved silver letters reading ‘notes.’ Both mine, both half full of meaningless scrawls written in my special black and silver fountain pen which sits atop the leather bound one, diagonal with the lid off. My wallet and keys are piled beside a lamp with a pearlescent white shade.

Not everything is mine, though. Attached to my keyring is a key I don’t recognise. It doesn’t open any door I’ve ever had to unlock. And there is a ring on top of my jewellery box. It has a twisted effect on it that makes it look similar to rope. I was never gifted anything even remotely like that, and I’d never buy myself a ring. I don’t wear them.

This is so uncomfortable. So unsettling. Why the hell is all my stuff here? Why would I have brought it? Even if it was just one of these things, why would I have had the impulse to bring it with me?

It gets even worse when cast my gaze to the floor. I had hoped to see a set of clothes I’d taken off last night- because it becomes apparent to me very quickly that I am not actually clad in anything apart from the bedsheets right now- which would make a speedy exit more possible. Unfortunately, I am faced with several day’s worth of my own clothes, dumped on the floor. I may be untidy, but I rarely leave that much lying around. And I certainly don’t leave my things all over someone else’s bloody floor. The clothes that aren’t mine, mixed in all the mess, I know to be Graham’s, about a week’s worth.

My tired, overwhelmed mind asks, ‘did I say here all week?’ I shake that thought away. I know what I’ve been doing all week. The band has been on tour and I went with them. Technically, Graham’s stuff shouldn’t be here either, unless he leaves his stuff all over the floors when he goes away. But that opens up even more questions I don’t have the capacity to even consider.

I have to prevent myself from screaming in confusion as I look up at the wall. A calendar hangs on a single, bent pin pushed into the wall paper. It shows a lovely sunset over some American horizon, as well as telling me that it’s September 1967, the same month, year, even day- since someone has ticked the days past- as when I went to sleep. Just… what?

As I stare helplessly at it, I feel something crawl up my back. The mattress behind me dips and a pair of arms wrap around me, lips brushing the back of my ear.

“You know we don’t have to get up yet, Luv.” Graham’s distinctive voice tells me that this is no dream. It’s as real as it can get. I feel his breath hitting the back of my neck, his words vibrating into my skin. He called me ‘luv.’ I shiver.

“No.” I mutter, “I do.” I go to toss the duvet off my body, when I remember that I’m still naked. No way Graham is going to get to see any more than he has already. I reach down beside and grasp a thick, grey jumper to cover my nakedness. As I put it on, I push Graham’s hands off of me. I see the surprise in his expression, but he still tries to be cool.

“Oh, at least don’t get dressed.” He groans. I shoot him a filthy look as I pull the duvet from me and kick my legs off the bed. Before I stand, I see a mixture of confusion and concern in his eyes. It looks very uncharacteristic for him, really unsettling. It’s like he genuinely doesn’t get why I’m suddenly so angry, like he doesn’t remember who I am, not only to him, but to his best fuckingfriend. Why, why would I ever be so friendly to him the morning after I’d cheated on the man I loved with him?

My legs feel weak as I stumble around the bed in search for a bathroom. Upon getting to my feet, a great pressure as heavy as an elephant weighs down on my bladder. I need to pee, yet have no recollection of where the loo is.

From behind me, Graham pipes up, “What are you…” I hear the swipe of the duvet being dragged off him too. The floor creaks a little as he stands up and his bare footfalls pad across it, heading towards me, “Are you ok?” With him trying to follow, I quicken my search, finally catching glimpse of tiles glinting in the low light feeding in through an ajar door. I push it open and leap in. The lock on it looks ancient and squeaks stiffly as I try to put up a wall between me and him. After putting all my weight behind it, I manage to pull it closed, finally feeling safe.

That is until I flick the light on and turn around. On a shelf on the wall, shower products are lined up. Many are brands I use, including a perfume I (try to) wear every day. My toothbrush stands in a translucent red cup beside the sink, with another one crossing over it.

As much as I need to pee, I also need to have a good scream. I don’t, I just knot my fingers in my hair and pull. I must be going fucking crazy.

But so is Graham. He calls in a half joking, half concerned tone, “Will you open up, Luv? I need to piss!”

“Fucking wait!” I squeal furiously. I cannot believe he’d think I’d ever open the door. Having sex is one thing. Doing your fucking business in front of someone is entirely another, something most people never do. Even angrier, I add, “And stop calling me ‘luv.’”

He falls silent. I pee in peace, though I can feel his bloody presence on the other side of that door. I can practically hear his brain struggling to find something else to say. To calm myself and try to piece together what that fuck is going on here, I recall the day previous.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, Allan and I had gotten home and fell asleep on the sofa. Neither one of us, once the acceptable morning hours came, wanted to wake, yet we heaved each other up with false words of encouragement and kisses. We almost made out when we shared a shower, but once more we were too tired and to concerned about the rest of the day for it to turn too interesting. I went to work dressed in the few clean clothes that awaited me at home after the tour, was hungry as soon as I got there as I’d skipped breakfast and I didn’t end up eating until lunchtime. When I came home, Allan was making dinner. We sat in front of the TV and promised each other we’d do nothing tomorrow, since we really had nothing on. Before conking out once more on the sofa, I persuaded Allan it was best we actually got into bed, so we dragged each other up the stairs, took off some, but not all, of our clothes, and lost consciousness almost as soon as our heads hit the pillows.

I didn’t go out. I hadn’t seen or spoken to Graham, or any of the band, since those early hours of the morning we came back from the tour. I certainly didn’t turn up at his… or whoever’s house, nor did I bring all my stuff with me to throw all over the floor… or set up on the bedside table… or stand on the shelf of the bathroom. This doesn’t make any sense at all.

Ok, if it weren’t for all my shit being here, I could explain this whole situation away, chalk it up to my first experience with sleepwalking or- more likely- an awful lack of any judgement. Even though the implications of that is pretty bad, I’d take having to get down on my knees and beg Allan to take me back despite me having slept with his best friend over… whatever I can call this fucking mess.

I dread heading out of the small, cool room into the oddly cosy bedroom, where Graham stands in wait for me, but I do, without hesitation. I’ve decided, I’ve got to see Allan. I have to explain to him what happened, even if I don’t know myself. I just feel like everything will fall into it’s right place if I see him. He’s always been the sensible one, the shy, sane one out of us two. Even if he’ll kill me, I’ve got to see him.

As I walk passed Graham, he caresses my cheek tenderly. Something else that I don’t get right now is why he’s being so… nice. Has he fallen for me? Poor boy has slept with me once and cares about me now? How sad. I brush him off as I look for a pair of trousers; I won’t bother with underwear. I just want to get the fuck out of here.

“Are you ok?” He asks again, his voice now displaying an undercurrent of frustration. I don’t answer, which doesn’t shut him up as I had hoped, “Bad dream?”

A wash of defensiveness rushes over me. Had I the ability to form coherent sentences I would’ve retorted, asked why the fuck he’d think I’d ever tell him if I’d had a restless night. He should assume as much. I have been in his bed after all.

Then he adds, “You used to get them when you were a kid, didn’t you?”

And I can’t hold myself much longer.

“What?” I spit. He looks wholly bewildered at my reaction, unable himself to think of an answer. I turn back to pulling on a pair of leggings just as he pulls be back into conversation.

“Niki, seriously, are you ok? You’re scaring me.” “I’m scaring you?” I parrot, furiously, then calm a little, “Look, whatever happened last night, can we forget about it. I’ve got to…”

He cuts in, “What happened? Are you sure you didn’t have a bad dream?”

“No, I fucking didn’t!” I cry. I’m getting nowhere! I want to get the fuck out.

Still stunned, he tries to calm me by suggesting, “Look, let’s just get up… have some breakfast, ok? I’ll cook.”

It’s in that moment, I realise he’s not going to get it, he won’t leave me alone. I don’t know what’s got him so clingy, but I have to take a different approach to this. Without saying anything, I nod in agreement and slowly sit on the bed as though I’ve calmed. He then tells me he’s just going to pee, giving me a small kiss before he goes. He doesn’t close the door properly- fucking gross- but he can’t see me, so I dart with nimble, silent movements, picking up a pair of socks off the floor as I make for the corridor outside of the room. I hurry down the stairs so quick I almost trip over my own movements.

Luckily, the front door is right at the bottom of the stairs. Unluckily, I’m stumped once again by what I see. There are two other doors, one leading into a living room, the other into a kitchen. More trinkets, more clothes, more décor meet my eyes. In the space between them, the tiny hallway at the bottom of the stairs, several coats hang on metal hooks. Some I know to be mine, one I wear practically daily, a blue trench coat with deep pockets big enough to hold A5 notebooks, which hangs in front of all the others. I pick that coat up, pull it on, then look despairingly below the others. There is a messy rack of shoes, again, a mixture of Graham’s and mine. I choose a pair of boots I can slip on and walk in without doing them up.

Suddenly, I hear Graham’s footsteps pound down the stairs. I peer over my shoulder, panicked. He stands three steps from the bottom floor, pulling on a flowy beige shirt, decorated with a series of hippy bead applique around the neck line. Other than that, he’s naked. Like a kid- and for the first time in my adult life- I shy away from the sight, instead looking desperately at the door.

“Niki, come on, it’s Sunday. Where the fuck are you going?”

Worked up, panicked and desperate, I clear my tear-clogged throat to reply, “To see Allan,” before swiftly pulling up the latch of the front door and squeezing through the tiny crack I open it to. There are a small set of three steps I almost hurl myself down, but I manage to grasp hold of a banister and safely get down onto the pavement.

Shit. I didn’t quite think this far. I’m faced with a street I don’t know, a set of houses I’ve never seen, no informative street signs and no sense of direction. I don’t even know if I’m in London! I mean, I assume I am. I look around at the other buildings surrounding and… I guess I am. But I’m hopeless. I’ve no idea where I am, I’ve no idea where Allan is, I’ve no idea where my home is. Basically, I’m lost, running from someone I think I’ve slept with. Graham will no doubt be following me out any second, so I have to be gone, but I don’t know where. Fuck!

I thrust my hands into my pockets and speed walk in a direction that looks as though it might lead to a main road. If I can get a taxi, I might be able to try and work out where the hell I am and go from there.

Then, as I’m hurrying along the quiet street, my fingers clasp around something in my pocket. I can feel coins, a tissue, and then something hard, like cardboard, with a dip in the middle. The dip seems to be made up of sections, many, thin section. I recognise it just by its feel. It may only be that old address book I got given a while back, but it feels like a lifesaver. I’m so glad that, not only do I always have it on me, I always have a pen too. I write down the details of all my friends in it, anyone important that I’ve met, anyone I want to stay in contact with. I also have mine and Allan’s home address in there, because I’m awful at remembering it. For once, I’m so glad I can be absentminded and write everything down. I pull the book out and flick through it’s pages.

Allan is there! My god, I could cry. I don’t, because I’m on a mission, but I could. I really could just sit down on the side of the road and bawl my eyes out. To stop myself, I walk a little quicker and glance, every so often, at a different page of my book. There are names in there that I do not know, people I’ve never met before. By Allan’s name, there is a someone called Jen with no address, no number, no last name. On the ‘E’ page, Eric Haydock is written in my handwriting. He was the old bassist for the Hollies before Bern, before I’d met the band. I was never acquainted with him, so why was he in my book, with a number scrawled there too? That’s not too weird, I guess. Of all the things that has happened today, finding a name in a book is hardly even shocking. What is annoying, however, is the feeling that I’m missing people. I can’t think who. It’s like they’ve been wiped from my book, so they’re wiped from my memory too.

It takes me a while to find somewhere I can hail a cab. One pulls up and the driver, a rough-spoken man, seems to know the address as I read it out to him. He knows the street.

“’s not too far from here.” He says and pulls out onto the road. The amount of traffic is minimal. People don’t usually go out on Sundays. I’m thankful, though I also half wish the journey would’ve taken longer. As soon as I’d done my part of speaking, placed my mission in someone else’s hand for the moment, a tear runs down my cheek. Once the first one is out, a whole stream follows. I bawl helplessly into my hands, unable to organise my thoughts, unable to see a clear course of action. It dawns on me, as does everything else, that seeing Allan may solve nothing. I don’t know what could possibly happen.

Mostly, I wish the journey was longer, so I’d have enough time to dry my tears before I go and see Allan. It is, however, not too short so that I don’t get to take in the surroundings. This is London, of course. The black cab gave it away. It’s a part I’m not properly familiar with, but at least I’m somewhere, a city, that I know. That narrows the number of unknowns down. Not too much, still too much to count, but I’ll take anything, anything that makes me feel more comfortable.

We end up down a street that looks pretty much the same as the one I’d escaped from. The driver helps me find which house exactly is Allan’s- I lean over to the front of the cab and show my address book to him, while he points out homes in hope that I can read the number beside the front doors. I then get out and find myself alone, standing on the doorstep of a nice looking home, beside a car in the driveway. I get that feeling, as if it ever left, that something is very wrong, but I’m still full of hope. I knock on the door.

Allan opens it pretty quickly. God, I almost cry when I see him, his dark, curly hair, his narrowed brown eyes adjusting to the light from outside, the half-smile on his lips. Without thinking twice, without even looking at him twice- I don’t need to, he looks so normal, which is such a pleasant change for me- I throw my arms around his neck and bury my face in his chest. I manage not to cry.

“Erm… hey Niki.” He mumbles, awkwardly. Almost instantly, that feeling of normality, the comfort of familiarity fades away. His arms hang loosely around my waist and he parts the embrace really quickly. He has yet to kiss me or even invite me in. “Are you ok?”

“Yes…” I say automatically, before my brain kicks in, “No… I’ve really no idea, Luv. I just need to see you and…” tears threaten again, so I bite my lip.

Allan seems like he doesn’t know what to do. It’s very unsettling. He knows me… or knew me, so well. Unsteadily, he steps aside and gestures, “Come in.”

How can he be as confused as I am? I hate it. As I walk through the dark hallway, I glimpse him to make sure he is my Allan. He’s dressed in a button up shirt he probably slept in and a pair of dark, soft-looking trousers with an elasticated waist that he no doubt pulled on to answer the door. He rarely wears much in bed, or, at least, he never did with me. As he shuts the door, I notice faint lines in his hair, which looks to me like he’s brushed it a little. He must’ve been awake before I turned up, yet it’s early on a Sunday. What reason would he have to be up?

He slips in front of me and guides me into what appears to be the only lit room, a joint kitchen/living space. A low, orange light beats down over in the living area, where two brown sofas are positioned at 90-degree angles from each other. The windows are all covered with brown blackout blinds, but floral curtains are already drawn letting in a little sunlight from outside. The rest of the room is mostly in darkness until Allan stands in the door way and lets me walk in. He flicks on the rest of the lights.

“Sorry.” I hear him say, “Jen’s not up yet.”

Jen? That girl in my address book. That’s why she didn’t have an address or number attached to her name. She lives here? With my Allan? My heart thumps like Bobby Elliot banging his drums on stage of a Hollies concert. Still, I don’t have much time to connect all the dots. Allan continues talking.

“Take a seat. You want something to drink?”

Allan hasn’t sounded this much like he was playing host since that first night he asked me round to his place. That was early 66. He was so stupidly shy, and sweet. So nervous. Probably because he knew I was taken, technically, by John Lennon.

John. The Beatles. That’s who was missing in my address book. That’s who I’d forgotten. My John, my Paul and George and Ringo. The boys I’d grown up with. How could I? How could they be written out of my history? My whole existence, my past, I could feel it slip away and nothing replaced it. I have no idea who I am.

Allan’s voice steals me away from my sudden crisis, “Niki?”

I realise I haven’t answered him.

“Erm, no thanks.” I say, taking a seat on the sofa by the arm. He’s very awkward and cautious and quiet as he perches on the other end, facing me. I try to smile at him. The best he can do back is half grin.

“I… um… just got a call from Graham.” He tells me. He sounds oddly calm about it.

“Oh God,” I groan in embarrassment and shame, “What did he say?”

His eyes dart away from mine, “He said you weren’t feeling yourself. And… you wanted to see me?” He sounds confused about the latter.

“Why would I not?”

“Well, Graham…”

Before he can continue, I roll my eyes in frustration and snap, “I’m sorry, but last time I checked, Graham wasn’t my fucking keeper.” Allan looks taken aback. It must be the first time I’ve ever spoken to him like that. We’ve rarely ever fought, and I’ve rarely ever been so angry. He has, but he hardly ever has taken it out on me. I feel bad. Quietly, I add, “You were,” in an attempt to remind him of us. But he takes a moment to reply.

“I don’t… understand.”

This is all very wrong. I can’t keep my cool much longer. I throw my head into my hands and mutter to myself, “Of course, you don’t, just like Graham suddenly actually cares about me and I fucking…” My voice trails off and my eyes begin to squeeze tears from the corners. I must look insane, but Allan is too polite, too caring to butt in. Calmly and fondly, he shuffles up closer, still a bit uptight, and he places a hand over my own.

“Graham… loves you.” He chuckles, lightly, though warily in case I take it the wrong way. I manage not to explode at him.

“You did.” I insist helplessly.

He doesn’t get it, of course. This whole day is so fucked up, I can’t take it anymore. I cannot stand the way he smiles softly at me, patronisingly as though I’m a kid talking nonsense.

“Of course, I do.” He says, “But in a different way. Come on,” He laughs, “Graham would kill me if I loved you like that!”

“Since when!” I growl.

Still calm, Allan responds, “Since 1950. For, like, 17 years.”

“But…” I feel my whole past being rewritten, “I only met you guys last year. I was… with the… Beatles”

Embarrassment washes over me, pinks my cheeks and laughs at me as Allan, very kindly, explains that I never met the Beatles, not properly. I’d seen them once or twice at the studio, they all had, the whole band. The only one who’d properly talked to them was Graham. That was before the whole ‘If I Needed Someone’ situation. Now the bands refused to talk to each other, and I refused to talk to them too. I didn’t know them, I didn’t have their numbers or addresses, I’d never been withJohn Lennon. Four wonderful men, huge parts of my life, my teenage years, my childhood in Liverpool, the early 60s in Studio 2. All gone, explained away. And Allan had not only summed up my entire new, confusing, alien life in around five minutes, but he isn’t as big a part of it as his best friend is. The man I had practically hated, or at the very least, tolerated on the rare occasion, was now my boyfriend, my partner, had been since we’d been old enough to understand the word.

Meanwhile, Allan was married.

A medium-heighted, wide-smiling girl with dyed blonde hair came padding slowly down the stairs, her steps so soft we hardly heard her. Jen leans prettily in the doorway and waves hello, blowing a kiss at Allan before she sees me.

“Hello Niki!” She cheerily exclaims, “I didn’t know you were coming round.”

I couldn’t bring myself to acknowledge her. My eyes darted from her to down to Allan for an explanation. Then I caught sight of a glinting gold band around his ring finger.

My heart stopped beating.

“Is Graham here too?” She innocently asks. I see Allan shake his head furiously, telling her to change the subject, but the damage is already done, I’m already hurt, just by her presence, not even by her words.

“No, just Niki. Will you get some tea?” Allan deflects the question and Jen, smiling, walks over to the kitchen area. While her back is turned, he tries to ask if I want to go into another room, but he can’t even catch my gaze. I’m staring at him, not seeing. Tears burn the back of my throat.

I have to leave.

Without a word, I get up. I wrap my coat around me, hands thrust into the pockets, and I head for the door.

“Niki.” Allan calls after me. I hear Jen turn around and ask what the matter is. Allan doesn’t answer her. He follows me into the hallway. I pull open the door and don’t look back, I can’t stand to, I can’t stand this Allan, this version of him who doesn’t know me as he should. This whole world is fucked. My life is now fucked.

I hop out into the street, turning my coat collars up to hide my tear stained cheeks. I’ve no idea where I am, not only physically, but mentally too.

Why, if this is my life, do I remember another as though it were real? Why, if this is not my life, do others think that it is and why has everything changed overnight? And why, if this is a dream, have I not woken up by now? Why, when I can feel very real pain right now? My chest aches, my lungs burn, my head throbs with all these questions swimming inside it. And what can I do now? I don’t have Allan to talk to. I can’t imagine unloading all this onto Graham. I don’t have the Beatles, nor Bri- Brian Epstein- who I adored. Who, who can I look to for a slice of normality?

I open my address book while standing across the road from a telephone box. I’ve walked a few blocks from Allan’s home and I’ve decided I need someone I can vent all my frustration onto, someone who could also pick me up, perhaps. A friend whose relationship with me could not have changed over the course of this switch. I file through the names in my book. They go back as far as Allan and Graham’s childhood in Salford, most I’d heard in passing conversations, almost always from Allan’s mouth, his friends, even some of his family. Being written in would suggest that I knew them too. Others, I really have no idea who they are. I skip over them. The pages fall to the ‘H’ section and there is scrawled an answer to who I could call.

Tony Hicks.

God, that boy would listen. I’m sure of it. He’ll listen to me, even if only because he is too polite and sweet to tell me to shut up. He’s kind, a good laugh, a good friend, as well as being a fucking epic guitarist. I hurry across the road, dip into my coat pockets to find some money and dial his number as I get into the phone box.

He picks up in a few rings, though it feels like forever between the last number I press and the sound of his voice. I don’t bother with pleasantries, I’m too desperate, too excited.

After he says hello, I ramble into, “Tony, it’s Niki. Do me a favour. I really need to come and talk to you, ok?”

“Ok…” He sceptically replies. He’s quiet. I think he’s been asleep. I feel bad for waking him, if I did.

“Please, if Graham or Allan phone, don’t pick up! They think I’m insane, and I might be, but I have to talk to someone.” I sound so desperate, my tone choked and hurried. I think he picks up on it. He sounds a little more awake when he speaks again, as though the fear in my voice has jogged his brain into gear.

“Are you ok?”

God, if I hear that question one more time! No, I’m not ok, I’m not. I know he’s trying to be nice. I know that everyone is, but it’s a dumb fucking question, because everyone expects you just to say yes, and if you don’t, if you say no, you look like you’re just grasping for attention. Still, maybe I want attention at the moment, just someone to listen.

“No,” I admit, “Just… please. I’ll be over soon.”

“Where are you? I’ll come and get you. That means I won’t be here if the others call.”

I sigh. It’s the first time I’ve felt content since this morning, before I turned around and realised I was locked in a hug with Graham Nash. I could cry from the relief. This may not bring my life back, it may not change anything, but Tony’ll listen to me and help straighten things out, even if he too thinks I’m crazy.

“Ok,” I say, “Ok thank you.” Then I tell him the name of the street, “It’s near Allan’s. I’ll explain once you get here.”

“OK. See you in a minute.”

I’ve no way of telling the time- I didn’t bring either of my watches. I forgot underwear, never mind a watch. It’s cold out. Bracing September air blows past me. Everything seems to hang in it, every uncertainty. I won’t know when Tony shows up; I don’t know which car is his. I don’t know what he’ll look like, who he might be with. God, he could be married for all I know.

I just let time tick by, not thinking of how slow or fast, hardly thinking at all. I watch every car that passes, every person as I stand rigidly against the wall of someone’s home. My arms are crossed over my chest, my legs crossed at the ankles. I find myself rocking to keep me warm, like a madman. A song plays in my head, ‘If I Needed Someone.’ I always liked both versions of the song. I always thought the Hollies did a good job of it, almost as good as the Beatles. I remember when they were recording Rubber Soul, I’d beg the three boys, John, George and Paul, to do the beginning of Nowhere Man for me. It was the first time I’d consciously listened to people do a three-part harmony until I started listening to the Hollies. But none of this happened.

As I say, I’ve no idea how long I stand there. Perhaps half an hour. It’s of no really matter, however, and regardless of everything, a car pulls up to the pavement down the road a bit and, though I’m several yards away, I can tell that the man stepping from it is the young-looking Tony Hicks. I practically run at him, bawling into his shoulder.

“Hey,” He croons, “What’s up?”

“Oh God,” I cry when I manage to make coherent sentences, “I’m no idea, I think I’m going crazy.”

“I highly doubt that.”

#the hollies #the beatles #based on #don't judge me #Allan Clarke #graham nash #tony hicks #Don't ask me why I hate graham #I don't know

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chriswhitewolf · 4 years

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Okay so. Uh. Just about a month ago I was diagnosed with hypersomnia, narcolepsy's slightly more chill younger sibling. I was given medication used for treating it, and was on it for 13 days before realizing that, hey, waking up and being inexplicably nauseous and dizzy to the point of rolling over in bed making the room spin might be something to do with the new med.

It was, and there were a number of other things I didn't realize were side effects that were listed as "Stop taking and call your doctor" if they happened.

It's my second day off the meds (doctor's office is hard to get ahold of so I'm still tryna talk to someone about it) and I'm genuinely not able to understand how I functioned before the meds.

I'M SO TIRED I CAN'T GET THE ENERGY TO WRITE!!

I LOVE WRITING STORIES!!!

Anyway so I'm sitting here with no obligations and not going outside cause, heh, global pandemic, and having serious trouble staying awake for anything, wondering at high-school me's ability to do anything.

As a high schooler I woke up at 5:45 am, went to early morning church classes at 6:15, left there straight to school. I did a full school day of honors classes, went home long enough to change clothes and pack a meal before leaving for work.

Depending on what year of high school were talking about my job was either a 6 hour shift as a bus boy/dish washer where I came home between 1 and 2 am, or a 9 hour shift as a Certified Nursing Assistant where I came home between 11:40 and 12:10 am (coworkers hated me and always did their best to keep me a little later than my shift).

THEN I'D WAKE UP AT 5:45.

How? I was a severely depressed high school student who hadn't woken up *not* exhausted since I was 9 years old, doing all this shit on 3-5 hours of sleep. Fridays I got to sleep in until 6:30, Saturday's I woke up only cause my parents didn't like me sleeping past about 10 am, and Sundays I woke up to get to mandatory church services at 9 am.

Four days a week I had on average 4 hours of sleep that didn't actually do shit for my fatigue, one day I'd get 5 or so hours, Saturday's I'd get about 9, and Sundays I'd usually have about 7-8.

All whilst being a depressed hypersomniac with reoccurring nightmares from PTSD I can't talk about cause my parents would never admit to having caused it, despite the shit they can't ever remember doing.

I was more of a trooper than I or anyone else realized. I feel a lot less guilty about my tendency to fall asleep on my history textbook at the table, or flat out ignore some of my assignments in favor of sleeping on my days off work.

And even though we didn't know about the hypersomnia at that time, heck we only just realized I've been displaying serious signs of ADHD for a decade, I still seriously resent my mom for sitting at the dinner table with the rest of my family (dad and three brothers, one of which is 4 years my junior) and announcing in the meal conversation that "Your sister can't be bothered to do her homework."

I don't care if you thought the cause of that was only my depression making me exhausted. We were all well aware I was severely depressed, I had twice weekly therapy appointments and more meds than I could keep track of. I was 15. Whether I have a diagnosis beyond the Depression or not, there is no logical reason in the universe you should ever have done that shit.

You don't look at me repeatedly falling asleep sitting up and crying my eyes out every other hour and say to my brothers in front of me that I'm choosing not to do all my homework.

Straight up humiliating me over being so tired I could sleep anywhere.

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neverbetheexpectation · 7 years

Text

Surprise! - Secret Santa

Okay so this story started out as a small idea that came to me out of the blue while I was in the middle of writing a completely different story. I’ve sort of fallen in love with this plot though! This took me much longer than I thought it would and somehow ended up being 9.6k?! I split it into 2 chapters on AO3 :) This is hands down the longest stories I’ve ever posted, and I’m glad it could be dedicated to you!

Also i’m sorry @mlsecretsanta, this took much longer than I had originally planned, I had some family issues arise and it’s just been an unfortunately busy week!

Anyways, @polkadotsdesign, I am your back up Secret Santa! I hope you enjoy this, I had so much fun writing it!

Title: Surprise! (AO3 Link)

Summary: Ladybug can’t wait any longer. It’s been four years since she and Chat Noir became partners, one month since they started dating, and three days since she decided she needed to tell him her secret.

CHAPTER 1

“Today’s the day,” She said softly, affirming the thought that had been swimming in her mind all night. Today’s the day to tell Chat. Her stomach churned with a giant ball of nerves mixed with something else, making her nauseous. She rolled over in her bed, thinking over exactly what she was going to say to her partner. Although they had been superhero-ing together for the better part of four years, Marinette still worried over what he was going to say, what he would think. He’d certainly be surprised… Her stomach churned again, filling Marinette with doubt. Maybe he’d be better off not knowing…

But she had put it off long enough. He was her partner, it was time for him to know the truth. The next time she saw him, she’d tell him.

Of course, she had intended on not seeing him until patrol that night. What Marinette was not prepared for was the large crash resounding from somewhere outside her bedroom window, and the shrill screams which followed it. In Paris, that could only really mean one thing. Akuma. Marinette groaned and rolled over to face her alarm clock. It was only six in the morning! Who the hell was awake enough to be pissed off at six AM?! Marinette made eye contact with Tikki, who was hovering close by with a sleepy look on her face. It looks like the akuma woke both of them up that morning.

“Do I really have to transform before I’ve even had my morning coffee?” She moaned, burying her head in her pillow. Tikki giggled and patted her chosen’s head.

“Come on Marinette! We need to fight this akuma, and then you can come back and nap.” The word nap sounded so glorious to Marinette that it actually got her out of bed. The best way to wake up was with the promise of returning to the warm comforts before long. She climbed down from her bed, but immediately regretted standing up straight. Her stomach heaved, and for one precarious second Marinette thought she was going to be sick. Tikki looked on with concern.

“I’m fine,” She said, waving a hand at the little red god. “I just really need to get this over with.” The thought of talking to Chat Noir sooner than anticipated was causing her anxiety to reach maximum levels. She wasn’t ready! She hadn’t thought up every possible outcome yet! She hadn’t rehearsed what she would say, how she would say it. What happened if Chat rejected her? She shook the thought away. After spending the last four years together as partners, and the last month together as partners, the idea that he would suddenly stop loving her was foreign. She knew better than that. But a small part of her still worried about whether or not he’d want to keep seeing her, after the bombshell she was about to drop.

“I’m fine,” She repeated sternly. She shook the thoughts out of her head and turned towards her Kwami. “Tikki, spots on!”

One transformation sequence later, and Ladybug was bounding over the city of Paris, her trusty yoyo carrying her above the streets and buildings. She headed towards the area with the most destruction, figuring that’s where she’d either find her partner or her foe. She wasn’t sure which one she was more anxious to see.

The Eiffel Tower was a prime location for akuma terrorization, as it was a landmark that everyone knew Ladybug loved. If you wanted to get her attention, the easiest way was by defacing her favourite monument. It was one of the reasons Ladybug had always been so vehement about keeping all aspects of their identity hidden from even her partner. The more they know about you, the more they can use against you. Somehow, one of them had let slip that defacing the Eiffel Tower was a travesty against Paris itself, and before long it became a sort of calling card for Ladybug action. As she touched down in the Champs de Mars, Ladybug pondered her decision to tell Chat again. She had always thought it was safer, smarter, better to keep all aspects of her life separate from Chat’s. But that had all changed after the first kiss, then the second kiss, and the third and fourth. Realizing she had fallen in love with her minou changed her entire mindset. She just had to tell him.

As if summoned by her thoughts, a black-clad figure dropped down next to her.

“Someone needs to tell Hawkmoth that akumas need to be made some time after nine in the morning.” He said with a large yawn and a stretch, reminding Marinette of a cat stretching out in the sun. She stifled her giggles behind her hand. “It’s an outrage really, interrupting my perfectly nice cat nap.”

“Tell me about it,” Ladybug said, purposely choosing to ignore his pun. “Some people need their beauty sleep.”

“Not you, my lady,” Chat said, turning to face his girlfriend. He pulled her hand to his lips, grazing his mouth against the back of her gloved hand. “You could never look more radiant.” Ladybug felt her cheeks radiate with heat, and she hated how Chat had the ability to make her blush now. Before the first kiss, she had always been able to brush off his flirtations as part of his act. But after seeing the genuine intensity of it, it never failed to make her heat up like a tea kettle. She had to tell him she had to tell him she had to tell him. Her stomach churned again violently. “You look especially glowing today love, is it-”

Ladybug cut him off with a flustered wave, dashing over to a nearby hedge and unloading the contents of her stomach. Her flight through Paris had left her dizzy and nauseous, and the ball of nerves, which sat coiled up in a large ball in her stomach, was about the only thing she didn’t throw up.

“Sorry, was that a little too cheesy for you?” Chat asked, rubbing calming circles on her back while she remained hunched over the defiled bit of shrubbery. She braced her hands on her knees. This revelation was supposed to wait, was supposed to happen after they finished the akuma and actually had tie to talk. It wasn’t supposed to happen in the middle of the Champs de Mars, with a vomit covered bush in the background. But the layer of concern in Chat’s voice and the loving way her rubbed her back was too much for her. She had to do it now.

“Chat, I’m pregnant.”

There was a beat of silence where Marinette was too afraid to turn around and look at Chat. His hand had stilled on her back, remaining a heavy weight on both her back and her conscience. She straightened up, despite her stomach’s protests, and turned to face Chat. His eyes were wide with shock. Marinette waited with bated breath as the shock began to wear off. She watched him blink a few times before his face erupted into a wide grin. The surprise was overtaken by a look of pure, unadulterated happiness.

“Really?” He asked, but not in a disappointed or resentful way as Marinette had feared. He sounded hopeful. She felt her heart squeeze painfully. “Are, are you serious? Ladybug…” His eyes shouted his fondness for her as he wrapped her in a huge hug. She could hear him giggling in her ear. “Ohmygod. I’m going to be a dad.” Marinette’s heart stopped working for one, painful moment. She opened her mouth to say something, but Chat had continued. “Oh LB you have nothing to worry about, my father can help take care of all expenses. I mean, he won’t exactly be thrilled to be a grandpa already but he’ll get over it as soon as he meets you! He’s going to love you, holy shit. We can move in together, we can rent somewhere for now or maybe we can buy a house! I can’t believe we’re going to start a family together Ladybug, oh my god!” As Chat continued rambling, Marinette’s heart continued to thud painfully in her chest. She pulled away from him, silencing him with a look.

“Chat…” She said, not sure how to continue. What was she supposed to say to him, when he was responding like this? She had expected him to be supportive, sure, but this? This was something else completely. Something that felt painfully like love.

“I love you,” He breathed, pulling her close once more, as if reading her mind. He pressed his lips to hers in what was supposed to be a soft, romantic kiss, but Ladybug had frozen beneath his lips. She pushed against his chest, feeling the tears welling up in her eyes.

“It’s not your baby.”

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

Chat’s whole world had been tipped upside-down, and it wasn’t even seven in the morning. As a model, he had been used to early morning shoots which required him to be up and pretty before the sun had decided to get up, but it had been years since he was subjected to the early morning shoots. As he had gotten older, his father had allowed him to decide some aspects of his own schedule, like which shoots he’d like to do and which brands he’d prefer to model. It wasn’t that Adrien hated or loved modelling, but he certainly enjoyed it a lot more when he could make his own decisions about it. The fact that it was still overseen by Gabriel’s personal assistant was a point that Adrien purposely overlooked.

This morning was something else though. Awaken by a noisy akuma, arguing with a stubborn Kwami who had grown far too used to sleeping in for something that claimed to be a god, and then had two bombshells dropped on him one after the other. He wasn’t sure he was really capable of going through so many emotions all in one morning. Annoyance at being woken up early after a late night spent thinking about his girlfriend, frustration with Plagg, smug satisfaction at convincing him with only one lump of camembert, despite having three additional ones stored up for bribing purposes – such as make out sessions with you superhero girlfriend while still in your superhero suit – and finally, the mess of emotions that said superhero girlfriend had dropped on him.

Her pregnancy was unexpected, but not in a bad way. Completely surprising, considering how they had been safe the first and only time they had ever been intimate like that. But he knew as well as any other teenager how contraceptives weren’t 100% effective, and sometimes mistakes happened. He shook the word out of his vocabulary. This pregnancy may have been a surprise for Adrien, but it never ever would be a mistake. Following surprise, Adrien had felt supreme joy. Almost bordering on ecstasy. Of course, the idea of parenthood and having to tell his dad and the whole concept of pregnancy was daunting and a little bit terrifying, but he couldn’t get over the euphoria of having a baby, a living, breathing mixture of him and the love of his life. Half of him and half of Ladybug. A part of him, living inside of her. Okay, that was bordering on incredibly freaky. But still awesome! Their future played out ahead of him, something he had only ever dreamed of. Now, it was becoming a reality.

At least, it was. Until she dropped the second piece of information. He knew something was off with the way she looked at him, the way the tears began to form in her eyes. He tried reaching out for her, but she only pulled away from him. He wanted to assure her he wasn’t disappointed, he’d never be disappointed, not when it was about spending his life with her. But then she said it. The words which rung in his head, driving him in circles. They… They didn’t make any sense. Ladybug was his girlfriend, they had had sex. Didn’t that make it his baby? Did she mean that she didn’t want to raise the baby with him? That was what she meant, right? She couldn’t possibly mean that it wasn’t his, biologically. Because, well, that would mean… It would mean Ladybug and someone else…

“Ladybug…” He started, but didn’t know how to continue the sentence. What was he supposed to say? “What do you mean, it’s, it’s not mine?” He didn’t want the answer, he already knew the answer, but he didn’t want to hear it. He had spent four years head over heels in love with the amazing woman in front of him. He had watched her grow, had grown alongside of her! He had lost all hope of ever getting her love in return, had tried to move on with someone else, but then it had happened! She had kissed him, and then kissed him again, and it never stopped. She loved him. They were finally together, he was getting everything he had ever wanted. He had finally found someone who thought he was worthy of love. And now, she stood before him, telling him… Well, telling him there was someone else.

He watched the tears fall from her eyes, and his heart beat painfully. He wanted to reach out to her, wrap her in his arms and say it was all okay. But it wasn’t. This wasn’t okay, he wasn’t okay. He could feel himself begin to shatter as she took a shaky breath, about to break down the dream they had created over the last month.

“T-the doctor says I-I’m six w-weeks.” She said, wrapping her arms around herself. The math was simple to do. Six weeks pregnant. They had only started dating a month ago, and they had only had sex two weeks later. There was no way. There was no possible fucking way that the baby could be his. And his heart shattered. There was one silver lining that he’d find, after a while of digging through the pieces of his broken heart. At least she hadn’t cheated on him.

He was hit with the urge to assure her again that it was okay, everything was okay, but the words wouldn't come. He wanted to play the part he knew so well. The son who always agreed, who didn't bat an eye whenever he soul or spirit were crushed. The boy who smiled and assured everyone it was okay, that he was fine. He wanted to be the boyfriend who could wrap his arms around the girl in front of him and tell her it was okay, he would always be there for her. But something inside him was broken. He couldn't do it, he couldn't play the part. Not right now, while his heart was in pieces. So instead he clamped his mouth shut, trying to find the girl he loves inside the stranger standing in front of him.

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

Marinette remembered the exact feeling she had when the kind doctor had told her the estimate. About six weeks along, everything is looking fine, it’s too early to tell much about the sex of the baby. The baby. The thing, growing inside of her. The living thing that had been renting her uterus for the past six weeks without Marinette knowing anything. What was she going to tell Chat? But then it hit her. Six weeks. That wasn’t right. That didn’t add up. Her and Chat… Well, they’re relationship was new, they had only been dating for a month, and the first time they… it had only been two weeks ago. Which meant only one thing. It wasn’t Chat’s baby.

The shame had boiled up inside of her. The fact that she had to try and figure out whose baby she was carrying brought out the female guilt trip of having more than one intimate partner in a period of time. She hadn’t done anything wrong, she tried to assure herself. She didn’t cheat on Chat. She would never, ever do that to him. And perhaps if she had noticed how deep and true his affections really were, maybe the original sex affair would never have happened. As it was, Marinette had had no idea how Chat felt. She knew that they would banter and he’d pretend to flirt with her. But it had always seemed so playful, so overly cheesy that it had to be fake. No one would seriously continue to flirt after four years of rejection. No one held on to a crush for that long…

Except for Marinette herself. The crush she had on one Adrien Agreste had continued despite the fact that he clearly didn’t reciprocate. She spent four long years pining after him, keeping track of his school schedules, trying to “randomly” bump into him every chance she could, with the hope that eventually he’d realize she was madly in love with him, while also realizing he had loved her all along, and he’d sweep her into his arms and kiss her madly. Of course, those sort of things only ever happened in Marinette’s imagination. Instead, with the prompting of Alya, the true MVP, Marinette learned the value of becoming Adrien’s friend.

It had taken far longer than it should have for Marinette to learn how to chill in front of the model. The stuttering stopped after a few months, but the constant blush had lingered for much longer. It got to the point where Marinette had thought her toes might fall off from lack of circulation, because of how much blood was constantly filling her cheeks. But once she began to relax, she really began to understand Adrien better. She could see that while he liked hanging out with Marinette, Nino and Alya, he still held himself back, as if shielding part of himself from the rest of the group. It was only when Marinette witnessed him laughing, unrestrained, for the first time ever, did she realize how reserved Adrien kept himself normally. It brightened Marinette’s spirits to continually watch Adrien become more comfortable with the group, to let a little more of himself shine through as time went on. Through the process of becoming his friend, Marinette learned that Adrien was a super dork, having read more Anime than any of the kids combined. He also was a bit of a nerd, with an absurd love of psychics which continued to baffle Marinette. He also made the worst puns ever, which Marinette found herself actually enjoying. It was a learning experience for everyone that day.

But one of the biggest things that Marinette learned was that Adrien wasn’t interested in her romantically. He wasn’t interested in anyone that way, because he had a secret crush on someone else, someone who he loved dearly. He had confessed it one day after Nino incredulously asked why he’d turn down a date with a super funny supermodel he worked with. He got starry-eyed as he explained the girl that he loved, how he could never love anyone else while he was still enamoured with her. Marinette had found herself agreeing wholeheartedly, staring sadly at Adrien. Alya and Nino watched the exchange with something akin to a second-hand-broken heart. Adrien was so in love with some mystery girl that he would never be able to look at anyone else like that. And Marinette felt the exact same emotion, but towards the boy who was so unavailable.

It was that day that Marinette realized she needed to move on. It had taken a while for her to think about Chat Noir that way, but once she had, she couldn’t stop. The way he made her laugh and smile, the way they kicked ass together, how they always seemed to work so well together. It was like they were synchronized to each other. And then Chat told her he loved her, and it was so genuine and real that she knew it. She knew it in her heart and soul that he was telling the truth, that he had been for four years, and that she needed to kiss him right now, that very second, or else she would surely die. Of course, neither of them died, but it was very nice first kiss.

Well, it was their first real kiss, but it wasn’t Marinette’s first. Even if you didn’t count Chat Noir while he was under Dark Cupid’s spell, Marinette’s first kiss had already happened. The same night she lost her virginity, the night that created the living organism in her uterus.

She wanted to regret that night. She wanted to wish it never happened. She wanted to want to erase the night for existence. But she didn’t. No matter how many times she thought about it in the following weeks – and trust me, she thought about it a lot – Marinette couldn’t bring herself to regret it. It was a night of fun and curiosity and no strings attached, something which the 18 year old had desperately wanted. Life was stressful, and having one night to actually enjoy herself with someone else took a little bit of burden off of her shoulders for at least the night. Of course, six weeks later and double the burden was placed upon her.

Still, she couldn’t regret it. What had started out as an innocent, curious kiss, had turned into one of the hottest, albeit sometimes awkward, nights of her adolescent life. The only moment which could rival it was the first time she and Chat had made love, which was earth shattering and amazing. And while part of her had almost wished she had saved herself for that exact moment, another part of herself was happy, so, so happy that she had had a chance to practice all of this beforehand, had gotten all of the awkward anxieties out of her system with her first love tryst.

The only part that made her regret the night was the little love bundle currently sucking some of her life forces from her. She dreaded having to tell the baby’s father… Things had been awkward in the weeks that followed their exploration session, both of them agreeing that they’d rather pretend it didn’t happen. It was supposed to be no strings attached, right? So there shouldn’t have been any reason for awkwardness to linger! Except this was Marinette, and awkward should’ve been her middle name. She wasn’t sure how that particular conversation was going to go, but that some something to worry about later. Right now… Well, right now she was standing in front of a shell-shocked Chat.

The thing she regretted the most was that she was doing this to Chat. Who was looking at her like she just told him Christmas was cancelled. Like she just reported that all of his favourite ice cream was forever out of stock. Like… well, like she had just told him his girlfriend was pregnant with another man’s child. The tears streaking down her cheeks were burning her skin, furious at herself for causing the pain in Chat’s eyes. She never, never wanted to hurt her partner like this. And yet here they were, standing in the middle of the Champs de Mars, with an akuma still on the loose somewhere.

She opened her mouth to say something, but Chat looked away, shaking his head. She could see him clenching and unclenching his jaw, as if trying to chew something that was very difficult to swallow. Finally he gestured to the Eiffel Tower, which was just as defaced as it was before the verbal and emotional bombshells dropped.

“We have an akuma to catch.” He said, his voice empty.

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

CHAPTER 2

Ladybug had never seen her and Chat more out of sync. The particular akuma they were fighting – I am the Graffitori, and all of Paris is my canvas! No law enforcement will cover up my art now! – was not one that would generally take the dynamic duo long to take down. The young girl was passionate and had the ability to create street art on any surface within seconds, but wasn’t really a tactical opponent. Perhaps if today was any regular day, Ladybug and Chat Noir would have been able to take the akumitized item (a purple spray paint can) in less than ten minutes. But today was not a regular day.

They had spent nearly an hour chasing the artist around Paris while different landmarks were tagged. First the Eiffel Tower, then the Arc de Triomphe, then Notre Dame, and finally the Louvre. There were no witty comments from Chat Noir, no playful banter between the two heroes. They barely said a word to each other for the majority of the fight, which definitely wasn’t helping their synchronization. It wasn’t until Ladybug finally got fed up and called upon her Lucky Charm that they could finally end the fight and restore the landmarks.

Ladybug did her best to comfort the recent victim, a young girl named Tori who had woken up this morning to find her beautiful mural covered by a slab of grey paint, destroying any remaining part of the artwork the girl worked so hard on. Normally Ladybug was good at talking to people, at understanding their woes and comforting them, but the superhero was distracted. Chat had his back to her, not bothering to offer a fist to bump. She felt the tears pricking her eyes again, and was almost relieved to hear her earrings beep.

“I… I should go,” She said, approaching Chat yet keeping her distance. “Um, I’ll see you tonight, for patrol?” She asked uncertainly. She hated feeling like this. Hated not knowing what was running through her partner, her best friend, her boyfriend’s head. Hated knowing she was the reason he was hurting so much, “I mean, we don’t to, if y-you… If you d-don’t want t-to…” Ladybug hated the way her voice quivered, how she stuttered out the last sentence. Ladybug was never supposed to stutter, that was a Marinette thing. It made her feel small and weak, nothing like the superhero she had become in the last four years.

“Ya, I’ll see you tonight.” He said, but his voice was cold and distant. They parted without another word. Ladybug’s heart sank when he bounded off, never looking back.

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

Marinette collapsed in her bed, worn out both physically and emotionally. It had been one hell of a morning, and it wasn’t even noon yet. She contemplated trying to nap, but the idea seemed impossible. As exhausted as she was, her mind raced with heartache and nerves. She had broken the news to Chat Noir, and that was… Well, it was done. She had told him, it was all out in the open. Now, it was time to tell the baby’s father. God that was one conversation she was not looking forward to.

As she lied in bed, Marinette contemplated how easy it would have been to tell Chat he was the father. It would have saved them both the heartache of this morning. Maybe things would have been perfect, her and Chat and the baby. Except it’d be a lie. Marinette was good at keeping secrets, had kept the most important one for four, long years. But this secret, the father, was far too big to keep hidden her whole life. No, lying may have been easier in terms of telling Chat now, but it would only be exponentially more difficult in the future. This was for the best.

She couldn’t lie around anymore. As much as her body protested and complained that it was too freaking early, Marinette’s mind was buzzing and she needed to do something. She couldn’t sit around worrying about the future, she needed to take action! She retrieved her phone from her bed where she had left it charging overnight. She opened her contacts and scrolled to one name in particular. Her finger hovered over the phone icon.

This is not a conversation for over the phone, she told herself. Besides, she was horrible at making phone calls. She got all flustered and her words got turned around and she always ended up saying things she didn’t mean, or twisting her sentences up. No, calling was definitely not her forte, and not the way to tell someone that you were having their baby. She clicked on the chat icon instead.

You can’t tell him over text either! Her mind shouted at her.

I know that! But I need to do this today. She argued back. She typed out a quick message, sending it before she could second guess herself.

From: Marinette Dupain-Cheng Hey, is there any way we could hang out today?

Marinette was surprised at how quickly she got a response. Her phone vibrated in her hand, almost causing her to toss it off of her bed. She caught it at the last second, peaking at the reply while holding her breath.

I’m free any time after noon :)

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Marinette had spent the rest of the morning with a constant ball of anxiety in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t bother trying to catch up on the rest she missed that morning, instead turning to stitching to try and clear her head. After poking herself five times, she finally set her needle and cloth down for good. Not only was the action not helping settle the ladybugs in her stomach, it was also proving to be a hazard to her health.

She tried to distract herself with her favourite Jagged Stone songs, playing the music far too loud. She attempted to focus on the lyrics instead of the task waiting for her at 1 o’clock in the Luxembourg Gardens, but it wasn’t working. She was halfway through the CD before her mother knocked on the trapdoor and asked her to keep it down, they could hear her music all the way down in the bakery.

She gave up shortly after that, and decided that if she was going to freak out about her meeting later on today, she may as well do it full-throttle. So she planned out how the conversation would go, the best and worst case scenarios, and then spent a good twenty minutes arguing with Tikki about the likelihood of burning down the Luxembourg was. Tikki reasoned that no matter how surprising the news would be, there was no worst-case scenario that ended with the entire park in flames all because Marinette was pregnant.

“And anyways,” Tikki reassured, patting her chosen on the head. “Even if the park does spontaneously combust, you could always just transform and put the fire out!”

“Thanks Tikki,” Marinette rolled her eyes, chuckling at the endless optimism of her Kwami. She was about to consider another possible worst-case scenario – this one ends with Marinette being kicked out of her Terminale year at Lycée, with no friends and no job and no future – when her stomach rumbled. She looked at the clock on her desk and noticed with surprise that it was already after eleven, and she hadn’t had anything to eat yet. She decided to take a break from her constant worrying to make herself something for lunch.

She set about the kitchen to make herself a croque-monsieur, hoping that the task of preparing it would keep her mind busy. It worked relatively well, except for the fact that she got distracted momentarily – oh my god Tikki what if he finds out I’m Ladybug?!?! – and ended up slightly burning one side of her sandwich. All in all, she would declare it a successful distraction, and eat her sandwich with pride.

Before she knew it, it was time to go. She wanted to make sure she got their early, so she could rehearse what she was going to say one last time. It had to be perfect. She just couldn’t mess this conversation up to.

Thinking about Chat Noir was a bad, bad, bad idea, something she had been avoiding ever since they departed. She preferred the anxiety over the heartache. She didn’t want to think about how hurt Chat was, and how she wasn’t sure if they were ever going to fix this. If she thought too much about how she may very well have ruined one relationship, she wouldn’t have the strength to potentially ruin another friendship. So she pushed him away, to the farthest corner of her mind. She had to focus on the task ahead of her.

She told her parents she was going out for a walk as she ran out the bakery door, barely registering their farewells over the sound of her blood pounding in her ears. It wasn’t a far walk to the park where she had planned her meeting, and it was a nice spring day that made for great walking weather. Of course, Marinette hardly noticed any of that as her mind was focused completely on the task ahead of her.

When she got to the park, she found a bench near the entrance and sat down to wait. Her phone said that it was 10 minutes to one, meaning she had a little time to wait until he got there. Perfect. Just enough time to freak out. She crossed her legs underneath her, twirling one pig-tail around her finger as she lost herself in thought. She would be the picture of cool and collected when he approached, would smile at him, greet him with a warm Oh, hello, lovely day we’re having aren’t we-

She was interrupted mid-thought by a tap on her shoulder. She jumped in surprise, squeaking loudly and managing to pull her own hair. She jumped to her feet before whirling around, chest heaving, heart pounding heavily.

“A-A-A-Adrien?” She cursed her stupid stutter. So much for being cool and collected, she thought miserably. She tried to smile at him normally, but she had the feeling she resembled a maniac. “You’re early!”

“Hey Marinette,” He said with a small smile, rubbing the back of his neck. “Sorry I’m early, I just didn’t want to keep you waiting. I can go walk around the block a few times, if you’d like?”

“Really?” She answered too quickly, and immediately regretted the words leaving her mouth.

“Er, I was just joking,” He said sheepishly, shrugging slightly. “I mean, I can, if you’d like?”

“NO! Haha, no, sorry, I knew you were joking, I was joking! Haha! So. Sit. We should?” Marinette wasn’t sure what her hands were doing as she overdramatically gestured to the bench behind her. God, she was acting like a nervous wreck! She was supposed to be better around Adrien, she had been making so much progress!

A lot of progress~ A dirty part of her mind whispered. The natural progression of socialization; Finally able to make complete sentences around him, finally becoming comfortable I his presence, kissing and having sex, and then back to awkwardly unable to keep eye contact or form complete sentences again! Isn’t that how every teenager makes friends?

Marinette banished the thoughts from her head as she and Adrien sat next to each other. The air between them was awkward, and neither of them knew where to start. Another moment of silence passed before neither of them could take it anymore.

“Look, I think I know what this is about,”

“I’m sorry this is so out of the blue,”

The teens blinked at each other, and Marinette gestured for Adrien to go first.

“Look, Marinette…” He said, rubbing the back of his neck again. Marinette noticed for the first time that there was a slight blush on his cheeks. “I know things have been weird between us. Ever since… Well… You know. I just don’t want that one night to change everything between us, you know? I want us to be friends. I don’t have a lot of those, and I hate the fact that because of me and my stupid, rash decisions, you and I can’t be friends again. Not like it used to be, at least. That’s never what I wanted. Marinette? Is everything okay?”

“No. No, everything isn’t okay Adrien.” Marinette felt the tears welling up in her eyes and she fought through them. Adrien’s words had poked holes in her composure and she wasn’t completely sure why. Was it the fact that he didn’t want to pursue anything with her? Was it that he regretted the night they spent together? Would he regret the child growing inside of her? Would he resent her? It was her worst nightmares come true. And it hurt. But more than that, it made her angry.

“I’m really sorry Marinette,” He said, seeing the tears in her eyes. He reached over to put a hand on top of one of hers, but hesitated. “Can’t we just pretend it never happened? For real this time, we can act like the whole night never hap-”

“No, Adrien, we can’t. Because it happened, and I don’t regret it!” Her voice was ragged and she hated how it sounded. It was better than stuttering though, so she powered through it. “We can’t pretend it never happened, we can’t go back to how it used to be. It’s never going to be like it used to be Adrien, and I’m sorry, I’m so, so, sorry. Because I’m. I’m.” She felt her anger dissipating as quickly as it had come. “I’m pregnant Adrien.”

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Adrien’s brain has stopped working. He couldn’t process anything. His brain was on a constant loop of I’m pregnant and what the fuck. He stared at Marinette, dumbfounded. Did he hear her right? Was this just some weird, déjà vu from this morning? Was he just imagining those words coming from Marinette’s mouth? But no, she had called him Adrien, which means that he wasn’t just reliving this morning. But that meant she was actually telling him she was pregnant. Which means…

“Am I the father?” He blurts out. He wondered vaguely if he was supposed to say something else first, like congratulations, or sorry for knocking you up. He just couldn’t process past the immense déjà vu. What was the statistical probability that the only two girls he had ever slept with both told him they were pregnant today? He cursed his horrible luck.

Marinette was nodding beside him. She looked unsure of what to say next. They sat in silence for another minute before she spoke.

“I’m six weeks pregnant, the doctor said. I know it’s a lot to take in right now. It… It took me a few days to process it to be honest. I wasn’t sure how to tell you… I know you want to act like that night never happened but this… thing kind of makes it difficult to do that. I’m really sorry Adrien, I- I never m-meant for this to happen. W-we were s-s-safe and everything!” Adrien listened as her voice warbled and the tears finally fell. He wanted to put his arms around her, to tell her it was okay, but he was too shocked to do anything. It was so much to take in all at once.

Six weeks, huh? What a coincidence. Didn’t Ladybug say she was six weeks pregnant too? Thinking of Ladybug sent a jolt of panic through his numbed brain. Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. What was he going to tell Ladybug?? How could he tell his girlfriend that he had knocked someone else up? Would she hate him? Would she still want him involved in her and the baby’s life? How the hell was he supposed to tell his father that he got one girl knocked up, and that he was also going to support his girlfriend and her baby which was most definitely not his?! Honestly, did the universe fucking hate him?

“I don’t expect you to d-do anything, or s-s-say anything. I just thought you should kn-know. I know you regret th-that night, and I wouldn’t blame you if you h-h-hated me…” Her voice broke on the last sentence, and it shook Adrien back to reality. Marinette was fully breaking down at this point, trying to hide her crying face in her hands. Adrien pulled her into a hug and rubbed her back gently.

“Oh Marinette, I could never hate you,” He said softly. He tried his best to comfort the girl, while still feeling hollow inside. Of course he liked Marinette, could even maybe love her one day. He had thought about it back then, six weeks ago, when he first confided his heartache to her. Marinette was kind, and brilliant, and amazing. If he hadn’t been in love with Ladybug back then, maybe something else would have happened. But he was in love with Ladybug.

The world was cruel and unfair. The woman he loved was pregnant with another man’s child. The woman in front of him was pregnant with his child, but he wasn’t in love with her. It left him bitter and angry, but none of it was Marinette’s fault, and she didn’t deserve to be treated like it was. So he rubbed her back and tried his best to sooth her, until her sobs had subsided into sniffles.

“I don’t hate you Marinette,” He repeated. She was peaking at him through the gaps between her fingers. “And I don’t regret the night we spent together. I’m sorry it’s causing you so much pain, this must be much harder for you… But I’m here to support you. Whatever you decide, if you want to keep it or not, I’ll be here for you. Whatever you need.”

“You’re handling this... well?” She said softly, her voice a hoarse whisper. He smiled at her softly. If only she knew what was going on inside of him.

“To be honest, I’m just glad this one is mine this time.” If it was possible to pluck those words out of the air and shove each individual letter back down his throat he would have done it in a heartbeat. He realized he said the absolute wrong thing as Marinette’s face morphed into one of pure shock, with anger on the side.

“Wait, what?!” She shouts, jumping to her feet. Her hands are in her hair, her eyes wide and panicked. She looked almost appalled. “This time? This time?! How many times has this happened to you?!”

Adrien got to his feet quickly, throwing his hands up in defence, as if Marinette might try to punch him out. I mean it wasn’t likely, Marinette only ever hit someone when she tried to put her jacket on and used a little too much force, or that one time she tried to close her locker door and accidentally punched Nino in the face in the process. She wasn’t usually the physical fighter type, but with the comment he just made, he wouldn’t be surprised if a baby came and punched him.

“Haha no! What I meant was, um! Well, you see, I just meant that I’m super glad I can be a part of this kids life, you know? Like, um, I’m super glad we can raise this kid together? If that’s what you want?”

Marinette regarded him suspiciously for another minute, before she smiled at him shyly. “Do you really want to be involved?” She sounded so uncertain, it softened Adrien’s heart.

“Of course Marinette, if you’ll let me. I want to be here for you.” He pulled Marinette in for another hug, a proper one this time. She squeezed him tightly in response.

“You don’t have to make up your mind right now,” She said softly, pulling away from him. “Think it over, please. I don’t want you to regret this decision. I won’t hold it against you if you’d rather not get involved. I have… I mean, there’s someone… Just, if you don’t want to, I know someone who said he’d help. I think.”

Adrien’s brow furrowed as he tried to work out what she was saying. Someone else offered to help her with the baby? Well, that’s awful nice of them, but there was no way Adrien was going to let his kid down, nor Marinette. She shouldn’t be the one dealing with all of this, regardless of whether or not some other guy said he’d help.

“Please, just think it over.” She pleaded. “We can talk tomorrow. I don’t want to feel like I’m pushing you into anything. I’d feel much better if you would at least think about it.” Adrien closed his mouth before he could refuse. If it would make Marinette feel better, he’d do whatever she asked. So instead he nodded his head, squeezing her shoulder reassuringly.

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The two parted ways shortly after that, finding that there really wasn’t much to say right now. Marinette wouldn’t hear anything he had to say about supporting her or the baby, but it was all he could think about. So instead, Adrien excused himself, saying he had to go get ready for a shoot later on tonight. It was sort of a lie – he didn’t have any shoot tonight, but he certainly had to get ready. He was supposed to meet Ladybug, and boy did they have a long conversation ahead of them.

He had told her he’d help support her and the baby, and he had meant it. Of course, that was before he found out it wasn’t his. The offer still stood, of course, but he hadn’t really told her that. In his defence, it was a little bit of an information overload. It still hurt to think about, but he had had some time to process it. Well, a few hours to process until Marinette had dropped another surprise on his lap. And now he needed to process that too.

Two girls, two pregnancies, two babies. Jeez, how did Adrien get himself into this mess?! Was his luck really that horrible? Don’t get him wrong, Adrien loved babies, and had always wanted to be a dad one day. It had almost become his mission, to be the dad for his kids that Adrien never had. There was no way Adrien would make his father’s mistakes. But that didn’t mean he was ready for two pregnancies at once!

“You know, Ladybug never said you had to help her out,” Plagg butted in to Adrien’s thought process. “If it isn’t your kid, why worry?”

“Because she’s my girlfriend Plagg! This doesn’t change that…”

“What if the baby’s father wants to be involved? What, are all four of you going to live in one big house? You, your girlfriend, her baby’s father, and your baby’s mother? It might get a little cramped in here!”

“Shut up Plagg!” Adrien pouted. He had never thought about that. Would Ladybug break up with him, so she could raise the baby with its real dad? Would she do that to him?

“You worry too much. This is why I say you should just stick to cheese! Cheese is never this complicated!”

“I just can’t believe it,” Adrien said, ignoring the annoying Kwami. “Six weeks. Plagg, does this mean that Ladybug was having sex with someone else the very same time that I was with Marinette?! Uhh, this is just too weird.” Adrien fell backwards onto his bed. He wondered if he squeezed his eyes tight enough, would he wake up and find it had all just been one weird dream.

“That is quite the coincidence,” Plagg said, floating up to hover right above Adrien’s head. “Both girls six weeks pregnant… Both of them tell you the exact same day… Very coincidental, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Cheese is much less complicated.” Adrien said, waving his hand in front of his face, trying to shoo the Kwami away. Plagg rolled his eyes at his chosen, giving up and going back to his camembert.

“Well, at least you can see Ladybug tonight, maybe you can find out who the father is.”

“Why does that matter?” Adrien asked, sitting upright. The thought of finding out who else Ladybug had been intimate with was tempting… “Besides, she probably won’t tell me anyways.”

“It’s worth a shot, isn’t it? She’s going to have to tell you anyways, especially if he plans on being in the picture.”

“True…” Adrien hummed, finding it strange to actually agree with his Kwami for once. He laid back down again, wishing as he often did, that patrol would come sooner. It was daunting to have to have to conversation with Ladybug, and he knew it would be painful. But at least he would have some answers.

He closed his eyes and began counting down the seconds until he could see Ladybug again.

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The feeling of a transformation wrapping around him was always empowering. The jolt of energy and power he received as he went from model son Adrien Agreste, to leather-clad superhero Chat Noir was still dizzying regardless of how many years he had been doing this. Something about super powers just never got old.

Chat Noir wasn’t generally the kind of cat to get anxious before battle, let alone a conversation. That was something Adrien worried about, the poor socially-inept teenager. Chat Noir wasn’t supposed to have those worries. He’d dive head first into battle without a second thought. So why was he hesitating now? He stood on the window sill of his room, wishing that the power from his transformation would carry on to him now. He shouldn’t be worried about talking to Ladybug, but he was. Today had been a rollercoaster of a day, and he doubted tonight would be any different. Ladybug could truly break his heart tonight, could reject him, or tell him she didn’t want him anymore. The thought terrified him, that he was so vulnerable to this amazing girl.

Ladybug would never hurt me, he tried to assure himself. But she already had. She had broken his heart that very morning, a wound that continued to sting all day. But she would never want to hurt me. She told me because she had to, because it was the truth. She would never purposely hurt me. The thoughts were reassuring enough to convince Chat to let go of the ledge. He launched himself into the night, ready to face this battle head on.

She was waiting for him when he arrived at the Eiffel Tower. Her favourite spot had become one of his, only because it belonged to her. It was truly a part of her, and it only made Adrien love it, her, this city even more. He paused to admire her from afar; she was sitting on one of the inside beams, where the lights on the tower couldn’t reach her. If her suit wasn’t bright red, maybe she’d be able to blend into her favourite landmark. Chat took a deep breath before jumping over to land on the beam beside her.

“Something on your mind, my lady?” He asked, sitting down beside her. His feet dangled next to hers, and he considered reaching out and taking her hand. He hesitated before thinking better of it.

“It’s been a long day, kitty.” She said softly. He hated how exhausted she sounded. Was it because of the pregnancy? Was it because of him? Before he could overthink too much, she leaned her head on his shoulder.

“Want to talk about it?” He asked, placing his head on top of hers. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, enjoying the fruity scent of her shampoo. God, if they could just stay like this for a lifetime, he’d be more than happy.

“Well let’s see. I was dragged out of bed at an ungodly hour by morning sickness and an akuma attack. I had to break the news to my boyfriend, the sweetest, kindest kitty I know, that not only was I pregnant, but it wasn’t his baby. Which was horrible, and I hated every ounce of pain that I caused him. After chasing an akuma around for an hour, I had to go break the news again to the baby’s father, and have a full-fledged breakdown in the middle of the Luxembourg Garden. Now I have to face the daunting task of meeting with my boyfriend again and prepare for him inevitably breaking up with me.” She paused for a breath, leaving Adrien stunned. “Sounds like a great day, doesn’t it?”

“Buggaboo, I’m not breaking up with you,” He said softly, nuzzling his nose in her hair. She had said everything so fast, almost on the verge of hysteria, but all he could really take out of it was her last few words. “How could you think I’d leave you? I love you. I want to help you, in any way I can.” He placed a soft kiss on her forehead. He was reminded of his conversation with Marinette today, and added, “I’m here to support you. Whatever you decide, if you want to keep it or not, I’ll be here for you. Whatever you need.”

Ladybug huffed out a wet laugh. Even without looking at her, Chat knew she was trying not to cry. Even when it was just the two of them, she was always trying to be brave and strong. “You sound like Adrien,” She sniffled, before stiffening up beneath him. They both realized what she said at the same time.

“I MEAN!” Ladybug exclaimed, scooting away from him, her wide eyes meeting his. “Um, I didn’t say Adrien. I said a dream. You sound like a dream. Ya! That’s what I said!”

Chat Noir wasn’t convinced. She had been so close when she said that, he had heard his name as clear as a bell. There wasn’t a shadow of a doubt in his mind that Ladybug had said his name.

There are plenty of Adrien’s in the world, his brain reasoned. There’s no reason she has to be talking about you. It’s probably just wistful thinking! Who knows, maybe she did just say ‘a dream’.

But she also said something about the Luxembourg Gardens. About being there today and having a breakdown. In the exact same park that he, Adrien Agreste, had been at today. Where he was sitting with a girl, who was also having an emotional breakdown.

Was he so focused on Marinette that he didn’t even notice Ladybug was in the park at the same time?!

… or…

Adrien liked statistics. They were easy to understand and use, and he always found them handy. So, statistically speaking, which was more probable: That two girls, both of which he had slept with were both six weeks pregnant, or that his girlfriend and the girl pregnant with his child were the same person… All the thinking made his head hurt.

He stared at the girl beside him. Ladybug had hopped to her feet, balancing on the beam, looking at him anxiously. He realized vaguely that he had yet to respond to her, but he couldn’t stop looking at her. Same hair, same eyes, same height, same build. Six months pregnant. She said his name, his real name.

“Marinette?” The world stopped spinning for one precarious moment. Which way would it fall? Ladybug had gotten even stiffer, and for one terrifying moment Chat thought she might fall from the tower. Instead, she blinked at him, her eyes wide and slightly terrified. Chat waited for her to deny it. He waited for her to call him a silly minou before brushing it off, continuing with their patrol like nothing had happened. As the silence had stretched between them, Chat was forced to face the truth.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” His voice came out in a hushed whisper, like the biggest secret in the world. Marinette was pleading with him with her eyes, but it was out there. The spell was broken, shattered into pieces, and suddenly he couldn’t not see Marinette. The way her mouth gaped open and shut was so Marinette that it hurt.

Ladybug gulped and nodded slowly. Chat’s brain couldn’t catch up fast enough. Ladybug was Marinette. Marinette was Ladybug. His girlfriend was both Ladybug and Marinette. Marinette was pregnant with his baby. Ladybug was also pregnant. Ladybug and Marinette are the same person and their baby is the same meaning that Ladybug’s baby was… was actually his? The other man Ladybug had been intimate with was Adrien Agreste?! He was jealous of himself?! Adrien was trapped between feeling utterly confused and hopelessly happy.

He took a step closer to Ladybug, the smile on his face growing wider by the second. Ladybug was giving him a strange look, waiting for him to say something. He wasn’t sure what to say, how to say what he was thinking. So instead, never taking his eyes off of her, he called his transformation off. The air was chilly but it couldn’t penetrate through the heat radiating from his smile alone. Ladybug’s stare somehow got wider as she realized who was standing in front of her.

“Adrien?!” She sounded bewildered, and Adrien didn’t blame her.

“Surprise?” He said softly, standing in front of her, marveling at the coincidence. He pulled his girlfriend in for a kiss.

"It's you?!" Marinette gasped as she pulled away from him, as if the pieces were all, finally falling into place. "You're you, which means you're him? And we... so you... oh my god!" Adrien watched her with amusement.

"Surprise?" He repeated with a small shrug and a sheepish grin. She moaned and thumped her head against his chest.

"Please, please, no more surprises today." She mumbled into his chest. Adrien chuckled as he wrapped his arms around her. He too had had enough surprises today to last him a lifetime.

END

#mlsecretsanta 2k16 #well sort of 2k17 #back up secret santa #i'm so sorry this took forever #miraculous ladybug #mlsecretsanta #polkadotsdesign

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