#and then i spent way too many hours staring at this canvas. free me | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

swannieluv · 3 months

Text

.𖥔 ݁ ˖꩜ Portraits and flowers- PLATONIC Albedo and Klee x Child!Reader

✦⸼࣪⸳ 𝐆𝐍!𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

✦⸼࣪⸳ 𝐖𝐜: 1,4k

✦⸼࣪⸳ 𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆!!: Slight mention of a bruise.

✦⸼࣪⸳ Part II of: Alchemy, bombs... Family?

✦⸼࣪⸳ A/N: HII!! Writing for Klee is so nice, she's just a silly ball of energy. Hope you guys like it!! Also, a friendly reminder that you're free to send whatever thoughts you have about this or my other fics on my asks <3

"Stay still."

These two words had been repeated thousands of times over the last two hours. A single command that should be simple, if it weren't terribly boring to sit in an armchair posing for so long.

"I still don't understand..." Their eyes turned to the back of the easel, which concealed Albedo's work. "Why do you want to make a portrait of me?"

"Because you're our new addition to the family; it's only fair that we have a portrait of you to put on the wall."

He wanted to present them with a painting that he would do himself. Although most of his drawings didn't make it out of the sketch phase because he always found other inspiration and left his unfinished projects lying around, Albedo was clearly making an effort for them.

For Albedo, this wasn't just a gift. It had been a few days since [Name] had joined the small family made up of Albedo, Klee and Alice; although they still hadn't had direct contact with the latter.

They were still adapting to the new reality they were living in, in the midst of a great deal of internal confusion because they couldn't remember anything about their past. That's where the idea for this gift came from, something that would make them feel embraced by him and Klee.

Albedo then returned his attention to the painting. He seemed focused, trying to capture every possible detail in his work and create the best possible representation of the person in front of him.

"It's already a great honor to have the opportunity to be painted by the 'genius' Albedo..."

They teased him in a light-hearted way. Albedo was known to many as a 'Genius'. Something in his mind said that the person who told [Name] about this title was a certain Cavalry Captain with, apparently, too much free time for his liking.

He wasn't particularly fond of being called that, thinking it was a big exaggeration on people's part. Nevertheless, he decided to join in.

"And it's a great pleasure to be able to paint the great Dodoca..." he smiled and looked at the canvas, his eyes analyzing every detail of what he had already done so that he could correct the mistakes.

"The mini terrorist will surely want a portrait if she sees it."

"Mini terrorist? New nickname for Klee, I see."

In a small family of three - or four if you count Alice - Klee was the bomb-maniac little sister. Although Albedo was the one who spent most of his time looking after the little girl, now that [Name] is here, she has been dividing her time between the two of them. Whenever Klee met [Name] along the way she would jump around and show off her new bombs, causing the two to end up in solitary confinement more than five times before even a week had passed since their arrival.

And today would probably be no exception.

"Mr. Albedo!"

Klee appeared as energetic as ever. The girl looked as if she had just returned from her adventures in Mondstadt, adventures she could only experience outside solitary confinement. In her hands was a bouquet of orange flowers: Windwheel Asters.

"I did it! I've collected all the flowers!"

Albedo stared at Klee in silence with wide eyes, his panic inside was apparent. He had agreed with the little girl to deliver the flowers after the painting was finished, not before!

But seeing Klee's sparkling eyes, he could only laugh softly and stroke her head gently. The little girl was really excited to hand over her present.

"Thank you, Klee."

As soon as Albedo's hand left her head, she ran and threw herself over them in a tight hug. Causing some of the flowers in her arms to slip, not that that was a problem at the moment.

The seat didn't have a back support, so as soon as Klee jumped, they both fell straight to the hard floor and remained there completely motionless while hugging each other.

The sound of two awkward giggles echoed around the room. The fall was funny, but a little painful for [Name]'s back.

"That was so fun!"

Klee stood up awkwardly; her backpack weighed a lot, even if she could carry it around. The contents of the backpack? A mystery, she always took the most random trinkets out of it. The only thing you could be sure of was the dozens of bombs she must hide in there every day.

"Klee picked the best flowers she could find! Just for you!" She brought the flowers close to their faces; a sweet but early surprise for [Name].

"You didn't have to..."

They prepared to get up, wiping the accumulated snow from their clothes. Their efforts were met with a gentle hand extended to them, just like the day Albedo and Klee had helped them.

"Thank you."

They accepted the support and were finally on two feet. Their sore backs would probably end up having a few bruises from the sudden impact they had suffered, but they didn't want to have to worry when they were having such a good time.

“Did Klee hurt you? I didn't intend to…” she mumbled under her breath, a hand over her mouth as the worried girl looked at them.

“I'm not hurt at all. It's okay.”

It wasn't exactly the truth, but what heartless person would say that to her? She looked so guilty right now, fearing having hurt her new friend like that.

“You could've used your vision to avoid your fall. Why haven't you done so?”

That was a reasonable question. The fact they wielded an anemo vision and weren't actively using it when needed was quite curious for him; maybe he could get the answer he was searching for. All evidence, from their vision's shape to their past clothing pointed out their origins coming from Snezhnaya.

It would start to make sense if they truly had come from the snowy nation, since they could stand the cold naturally without feeling slightly bothered by the lack of natural warmth inside his lab – unlike Klee, who would complain to no end about how her ears were “freezing” before getting her vision and becoming the walking heater she is – and their effortless pacing around the mountain, when even skilled adventurers would find the area rather hostile for exploring sometimes.

Yet, no answer would be concrete while [Name]’s memories continued to stay locked inside their mind for who knows how long. But even so, Albedo was more than willing to help them and wait for the right time when things will finally become clear.

“I don't know…” they answered with a rather puzzled look on their face. Their hands clutching to the hanging vision on their side.

“It's alright, just take your time.”

He put a hand on their shoulder, it was a reassuring action to make sure they knew he truly meant those words. Behind him was Klee, picking the flowers that fell when she jumped.

“Remember, no one's pressuring you into remembering anything”

Albedo's tone always carried a wave of gentleness with it. Years of taking care of Klee had surely improved his skills when dealing with children, she was the perfect definition of a ball of sunshine that could melt everyone's hearts.

“Yes, thank you—”

“What's this?” Klee’s question caught you two by surprise. She was standing close to the canvas, eyes exploring the painting quickly as if she was searching for something specific. Yet her facial expression showed a hint of confusion. “Oh, a drawing?”

“Yes, I'm important now so I can have one.”

They playfully stuck out their tongue to her, which she responded by leaving the flowers on a table and putting her hands on the hips with a pouting face. Of course Klee found [Name] amazing now that she was their friend, yet it didn't prevent her from feeling slightly jealous of Albedo's attention. Though it was more of a lighthearted, childish kind of jealousy.

“Right, Mr. Albe—”

He was gone.

“Oh.”

Albedo disappeared without saying a word, leaving them both alone in the lab without any kind of explanation.

“Let me see it.” [Name] ran to where Klee was, in front of the easel. Instead of a half done portrait, there was only a sketch.

Two hours, two freaking hours staying still like a porcelain doll for a sketch. It was quite infuriating, but maybe that's how artists worked? They wouldn't know.

“...”

They were so focused on their representation in the canvas that had failed to see the other two faces composing the picture. It wasn't only them; Albedo and Klee were also present in the sketch by their side. Written delicately in a small blank space was the word “family”.

“Family…"

A cozy home, big dinner, and a fireplace. Those images appeared for a second in their mind alongside the face of a familiar woman, but they couldn't remember whose face was that. It was blurred, just like everything else about their past.

"[Name]?" Klee's voice cut their thoughts. She had the flowers in her hands, ready to gift them with it.

Klee finally gave them the Windwheel Asters. A small smile on her face as she placed them carefully in [Name]’s hands. Maybe, just maybe, they were accepting it better than they thought.

“Klee wants you to be happy. Let's be siblings! I promise I won't explode you with my bombs, really!”

This time, though, the one to start the hug was [Name]. Their arms cautiously wrapped around the smaller child, afraid of hurting her somehow.

If Klee was a small flame due to her vision, [Name] would be the calm breeze to carry her with themselves. It's the very concept of siblings, right? Fighting, yet hugging by the end of it all.

“Thank you, Klee.”

#genshin impact #genshin platonic #genshin x reader #genshin x gender neutral reader #mondstadt #albedo x reader #albedo x you #albedo #klee #genshin klee #genshin #Swanniesarchive<3

43 notes · View notes

hqmillioncorn · 3 days

Text

Greet the dawn with me!

"UM okay so me, pancake and cinnamon were having dinner when babycorn knocked on the door to our room?? Hey hair was down by the way . She asked if she and cherrypit could sleep in our room for tonight? I said yes faster than i could feel nervous about it. Babycorn told me thanks and told me she would be right back with cherry and airy. Then i turned around and pancake and cinnamon were both giving me thumbs ups. Pancake went to go get some of the expensive extra snacks out so we could eat them . and i am now very nervous waiting for babycorn to come back im hiding under the covers writing in my diary."

Lalapril 4/28 with @windupnamazu's Butter, Pancake and Cinnamon

babycorn cant sleep and decides to go out for a nice walk :) then to visit someone! its a busy night

Tomorrow was the day.

The day she was going to meet with Hildibrand once again. Because of course he needed her help! And of course she was going to help him! She would do anything for him cause Hildibrand was so cool and smart and amaaaaazing!

Then one day soon Hildibrand would finally propose to her and they would get married and live happily ever after! Forever and ever!

…Or at least that’s what Babycorn used to dream of happening.

After the whole ‘Mandervillian’ thing she was having a few second thoughts about the whole thing. On the day they all learned about it, Babycorn was frozen to her chair for about an hour or two. Then she was frozen staring out of a window.

Some of it might had been because of the concussion she received earlier but most of it was the shock of the whole thing.

It sort of opened her eyes about her feelings. Did she really want to marry Hildibrand? Something about learning he was a terrifying alien had caused her feelings to immediately stagnate. Not that Babycorn was an expert in love or anything but it just didn’t feel right.

She knew what falling in love felt like. Right?

This whole conundrum was weighing on Babycorn’s mind just enough to keep her awake at night. Staring up at the ceiling wasn’t doing anything to help her either. Though it was fun occasionally seeing Cherrypit run back and forth, screaming his head off about something.

No matter what was bothering her, at least she could be happy that Cherrypit was safe. It was far nicer to be worried about issues of love than not knowing if her brother was going to be okay.

“Get back here little man!” A very angry Airy flew by with paint drawn all over her face. It seemed like a certain someone decided to a napping Airy’s face as a free canvas to practice his artistic skills on. “I’m going to make you pay for what you’ve done!!” For Airy, making someone pay usually meant trying her hardest to hit you.

Sadly her little cookie fairy fists could only hit someone so hard. Which is to say, not hard at all.

Babycorn watched as Cherrypit and Airy went back and forth, over and over. Despite that she had told them earlier it was bedtime and they needed to get some sleep for tomorrow they were still very much awake. Old habits die hard, she supposed.

As noisy as they were, Babycorn was glad for it. She had spent far too many quiet nights by herself by now.

Babycorn sighed, turning over in her bed again for what felt like the hundredth time that night.

This time Cherrypit noticed the long sigh his sister had made. “Bebe?” He jumped right over a flabbergasted Airy by bouncing off her head. A handy trick he learned the last time they had helped Hildibrand out. “OW?!” Airy, hunched over, looked back to see Cherrypit crawling onto Babycorn’s bed as he lightly began to pat her shoulder to get her attention.

“Bebe! Bebe!” Cherrypit laid his head down on Babycorn’s arm. “Bebe okay?”

Babycorn couldn’t help but laugh a little. She sat up and grabbed Cherrypit in a hug. “I’m fine! Don’t worry! Just having a little bit of trouble getting to sleep.”

“Sleep? How you gonna sleep?” Cherrypit asked. He reached a claw over to one of the bed’s pillows and started to chew on it.

“I wish I knew.”

At this point Airy had enough of being ignored. She flew her marker-covered face over to where both siblings were sitting and flew above them. “So you can’t sleep hmm…” A little bit of her magic dust was falling on both siblings. Sadly for Babycorn the dust had no instant sleeping properties to them.

Though it did make Cherrypit do a cute little sneeze. Babycorn grabbed part of her blanket and wiped Cherrypit’s nose with it.

“What if I hit you over the head with a really big stick?!” Airy asked while mimicking the movement of her hitting Babycorn over the head with something. It looked like she was enjoying the hypothetical act of doing that a little too much.

Babycorn grabbed Cherrypit and scooted away from where Airy was floating. “No thank you!!” One concussion a year was good enough for her. That being said, her record was currently ten a year but that still didn’t mean she would let Airy attack her with a huge stick.

“Well that’s all I got.” Airy shrugged and flew off somewhere to presumably clean her face.

Which left Babycorn and Cherrypit by themselves to figure things out.

Babycorn watched as her brother babbled a bunch of baby talk to himself. Something about how he was gonna bite a big piece of bread tomorrow? It sounded yummy. Babycorn wondered if there was bread for him to share with her.

While Cherrypit talked away into the night, she turned her head to see if she could see outside the window.

It was dark out and a small part of her was expecting the face of a ghost to press itself up against the window. It just felt like her luck was bad enough for something like that to happen.

“Brr…” Babycorn shivered.

Cherrypit grabbed the blanket Babycorn used before and threw it on Babycorn. “No more cold!” He assured her. Babycorn moved the blanket to where it was just covering her head. “Thanks Cherry!” Not that she was actually cold but it was still nice.

Cherrypit smiled back at her and crawled right off the bed. The toys he was playing with before on the floor had caught his eye again. From the looks of it he wasn’t going to be tired anytime soon. Which left Babycorn with more time to see if she could somehow force herself to sleep.

Then, Babycorn’s attention fell to the door.

As soon as it did she bounced off the bed, put on her pair of slippers and adjusted her pajamas. At the same time Airy happened to reappear, now with a much cleaner face free of swirls and stars. “What are you doing now?” She was still wiping her face dry with a towel.

Babycorn walked closer to the door and opened it. “I’m going outside for a little bit!”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Airy asked, “Won’t it be bad if you and Cherry get separated or something?”

Babycorn shook her head. “Nah. That doesn’t happen anymore! Rember’?” While it wasn’t entirely true that there weren’t any side effects to getting too far away from Cherrypit, it was true that Cherrypit didn’t drop dead and take over her body anymore. Thankfully. “Besides–I’m not going anywhere too far! Just getting some air!”

Airy couldn't help but wonder if that phrase was something that Babycorn heard someone say once. That would make sense, she just knew that if Babycorn hadn’t she would think it meant flying off or whatever. “Don’t you at least wanna take Cherry with you?”

Babycorn looked down at her brother. He was still busy playing with his toys. Re-enacting what looked like a pretty dramatic scenario featuring two people slap fighting on top of a giant cannon. “It’s okay! Besides, it looks like he’s having fun playing.” She would hate to interrupt whatever story he was telling. “I’ll be back really soon I promise!”

Airy knew that if Tilika were here she would probably try her hardest to convince Babycorn not to go roaming outside in Radz-at-Han by herself. Tilika practically drilled it in all of their head's that Babycorn needed to be accompanied by someone at all times while they stayed here.

Which Airy thought was ridiculous but agreeing got Tilika to shut up so she just said Sure.

It wasn’t often that the perfect opportunity presented itself. What better way to start a reign of evil than breaking a few rules? Cause that was totally what Airy was still after! Uh-huh! Yup! Yup! “Alright! Take all the time you need!” Airy cheerfully sang, waving her goodbye.

It caught Babycorn a little off guard. “O-Okay!” Babycorn opened the door and stepped outside. “Keep Airy safe! Okay Cherry?”

Cherrypit gave her a little salute as Babycorn closed the door behind her and walked away.

It was a little cold outside.

Or at least colder than Babycorn had expected. As she climbed up the steps of Paksa's path she looked up at the sky above her. It was pretty cloudy. Looking at the clouds moving made her feel kind of dizzy.

Eventually she made it to the top. The dodos that were usually running around were gone, probably sleeping in their really comfy dodo beds. Which was a shame. Babycorn had really wanted to wave hello. “Goodnight…!” Babycorn whispered in the direction she hoped the dodos would be. With any luck they heard her and wished her a goodnight too, even though she couldn’t hear them either.

It was a little quiet. Which was nice, but it made Babycorn sort of curious.

Normally it was rare for her to have a chance to walk around her without at least one person beside her. Usually that person was Tilika and she always made sure they never spent more time outside than they needed to.

Now here she was–walking around Radz-at-Han at night all by herself.

At first Babycorn didn’t mind it, since it was always nice to have someone around. But lately, she was starting to get a little worried. Was there something she didn’t know? Of course there was. Babycorn hadn’t wanted to ever think about it but every time she visited there was always a feeling in the back of her mind that there was something missing.

Something that she should know, but just didn’t.

Babycorn sat down on the grass, taking a fistful of it and sticking it in her mouth. As she chewed she stared straight ahead and tried to reach towards the part in her memories that she could feel was cut off. But no matter how close she thought she was to reaching what she thought she was missing, she always came up short.

…That was weird. Usually by now Babycorn would be having some sort of piercing headachOh there it was!! Right on time!!

Babycorn gripped the sides of her head and held in a cry of discomfort. Fearing that if anyone heard her out here they would tattle on her and she would get in big trouble.

Then just like that. It was all gone.

Babycorn looked around, there were no people around. She looked down, her cozy pajama pants were stained green alongside her hands. There was a big patch of dirt where she had taken her midnight snack from. The grass needed more salt.

None of this was helping her feel any sleepier than before. It just created more worrying thoughts in her head! What was she worried about? Why couldn't her head just decide?!

Babycorn stumbled to her feet. She was still a little out of it. The missing parts of her memories were busy trying to fill themselves out. In her stupor Babycorn’s instincts managed to take over, as her body decided to run towards the direction of someone she knew could help with her with whatever problem she had.

Then before she knew it, she was already knocking on their door.

The thought she was knocking on the wrong person’s door never even crossed her mind. It should be noted that Babycorn was not very smart.

It should also be noted that this was not the first time something like this had happened.

Somewhere in Radz-at-Han Butter, Pancake and Cinnamon were busy having their own interesting night.

Pancake and Cinnamon were very busy testing out the local cuisine by ordering as many different drinks as they could and rating them on a scale of one to ten. As their entire budget was being covered they went ahead and ordered to their heart's content.

Surely Lunya Lanya herself would be very proud of them.

Butter, meanwhile, was busy writing in his diary.

In a way he was in the same boat as Babycorn. He was restless about tomorrow. So much so that he couldn’t stop thinking about it. On the other hand his reason was a bit different than why Babycorn couldn’t get herself to sleep.

He couldn’t help but think about what if tomorrow was the day Hildibrand finally opened his eyes and realized that Babycorn was in love with him. Then he would sweep Babycorn off her feet and they would ride off into the sunset.

Would Butter be happy for Babycorn? Yeah, of course.

And would Butter wish a thousand deaths upon Hildibrand at the same time? Well no duh.

The same sort of worries had spiraled around his head the last time they all went to help Hildibrand. His biggest fear was that if he didn’t tell Babycorn his true feelings before it was too late, then he would never get the chance to.

Butter groaned and let his head fall flat onto his diary. “I love Babycorn…” He mumbled to himself. With his face buried in his book however, it came out very muffled and no one could possibly understand what he had said.

No one, except maybe his dear sister. “Does that mean you’re finally gonna ask her out tomorrow?” Pancake chimed in.

Butter lifted his head up ever so slightly and gently pushed Pancake away.

Pancake crossed her arms and leaned herself against the wall. “Come on Butter! Time's-a-ticking and I’m not getting any younger!!”

“What does your age have to do with anything???”

“Everything! Cause I’m gonna die of old age before you tell Babycorn anything!!”

Before their conversation could continue, a knock at the door interrupted them. “I got it!!” Pancake yelled, running to get it. No one was exactly racing her to get it but the important thing is that she won either way. When Pancake opened the door she saw–nothing. “Huh?” Then she looked down and saw Babycorn! Her pants were stained green and she looked a little tired.

“Hi Pancake! Sorry if I woke you guys up! I was just wondering if I could ask about something?” Babycorn nervously smiled, rocking back and forth.

Pancake was going to answer in a completely normal way but stopped herself. She smirked, a plan brewing in her head. “Oh yeah no problem!” She turned back and cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “BUTTER!!! YOUR GIRLFRIEND IS AT THE DOOR!!!!!!!!!!”

She hummed to herself as she heard the telltale signs of Butter scrambling himself off the bed and running towards her. “I’ll let you two talk it out!” Pancake happily bounced herself off the door and back into the room just in time for Butter to reach her.

“Hey Butts!” Babycorn smiled. Like usual she didn’t notice the nervous smile on Butter’s face.

“H-Hey Babycorn!!” Butter honestly didn’t know where to start. A million thoughts were zipping around his head at once. It was probably better to clear up any misconceptions before anything. “D-Don’t listen to Pancake! I didn’t call you my girlfriend! I-I mean not that I wouldn’t want to-! I mean who said that?! I’m just-”

Thankfully for Butter, Babycorn interrupted him before he could say anything else that would turn his face even redder than it already was. “But I’m a girl!”

Butter looked at her, blinking just a little too fast. “Y-Yeah!”

“And I’m your friend…?” Babycorn’s eyes began to water. “R-Right…?!”

“Of course! Of course you are!!”

“Then I’m your girl friend!!”

Butter decided to give up. Not only because this type of talk had already happened countless times before but also because the way Babycorn was smiling at him was so cute he was feeling his knees turn to jelly in real time. “So? What did y-you wanna ask us?” Butter struggled to ask.

For a few seconds Butter regretted asking, because as soon as he did, Babycorn’s smile disappeared. “I was just wondering if…” She tapped her fingers together nervously, looking away. “Could me and Cherry and Airy sleep with you guys tonight? If it’s not a lot of trouble?”

“Yeah! It’s no trouble!” Butter immediately answered. Even Pancake and Cinnamon were caught off guard by how quickly he answered and they weren’t the only ones.

“Huh? Really?” Babycorn was a little surprised. She had planned out a whole explanation in her head and everything. It would be a waste not to explain herself, if only just a little bit. “It’s just…I’ve been having trouble sleeping and I just thought maybe it would be easier to sleep if I…” Babycorn trailed off.

“If you were?” Butter asked.

“...If I felt safe. You know?”

That’s not to say Babycorn didn’t feel safe around Cherrypit or Airy, but if anything happened to her she wanted to make sure someone else could protect them if she couldn’t. “I just feel safe when I’m around you Butts!” She smiled, holding her hands together.

Butter couldn’t blush any harder. “I-I’m glad-!” Because there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect you, he wanted to say. In the end, he ultimately just let Babycorn know she could come over anytime she wanted to. “We’ll be here all night! We’re not going anywhere!” He assured her.

“Great!” Babycorn turned and began her run back to her room but not before turning back one more time and shouting back, “Don’t worry I’ll bring all the blankets and pillows we need! And me and Cherry can sleep on the floor! Airy brings her own bed!” With that out of the way Babycorn ran off again.

Butter waved at her until she was out of view. A lovestruck smile on his face.

True to her word Babycorn had arrived with almost a mountain of blankets and pillows balanced on her head and some of them on Cherrypit’s head too. Airy was dragging a small doll bed behind her.

Judging from the scowl on her face she was much less happier about this arrangement than Babycorn and Cherrypit were.

Her attitude took a turn for the positive when it turned out that Cinnamon had some extra sweets to share with her sister as they gossiped all about Babycorn and Butter respectively.

Cinnamon had a lot of the usual to say but Airy had some new juicy gossip of her own…

Meanwhile both Starsinger siblings had easily inserted themselves into Pancake’s drink judgment bracket. There were plenty of smoothies to go around and even then she could just order some more from the allowance Tsuna gave her earlier. Butter had joined in too, deciding right off the bat that the first pineapple smoothie he tried was the best.

It had felt a lot like this had turned into an impromptu sleepover rather than a way to help Babycorn get to sleep.

Though as the night went on–the more tired everyone began to get.

Cherrypit was the first to fall asleep. Wrapped in Babycorn’s arms in the middle of a triple triad match between Babycorn and Butter. Which Butter ended up winning by default because Babycorn had ended up eating half of one of her cards by accident.

Next was Pancake, who swore up and down the room that she was only going to close her eyes for a minute or two as she got comfy on her bed. Even as she was talking Butter was shaking his head, knowing his sister much too well. He ended up being right. As soon as Pancake’s head hit the pillow she was out like a light.

That left just Babycorn and Butter awake. Alongside their fairy companions.

Both of them decided to go ahead and start setting up the numerous blankets that Babycorn brought with her. There were so many of them that piling them up was just as good as bringing a whole other bed into the room.

Or at least, to Babycorn it did. “Come on Cherry…” Babycorn whispered, gently picking her brother up and carrying him onto their makeshift bed.

After she covered him in a warm blanket she took a seat on the floor, letting out a sigh. She was more tired now, that was true, but there was still some worry left in her about tomorrow.

Babycorn looked over to see what Butter was doing. He had just finished checking up on Pancake and had gone over to his own bed. Weirdly enough Babycorn noticed him looking at her then he would look surprised and look away really fast. She poked her own nose. Did she have something on her face again?

Eventually Butter got off his bed and walked over to the window, a book in his hands. Butter took the book and slipped it under some extra pillows. He was really hoping no one would notice what he was doing. Especially not Babycorn.

“What are ya doing Butts?” Babycorn just happened to ask. She was standing up on her tippy-toes to see if she could get a better view of what he was doing.

In a panic, Butter was caught entirely off guard. “Just hiding my diary!” WHY DID I SAY THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“Oh! Cool!” She had no idea what a diary was.

Butter hid his diary as fast as he could and rushed back as fast as he could. But before he could even get close enough to hide under the covers–Babycorn called out to him.

“Hey Butter? Can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah!” Butter answered, turning to look at her. “What’s up?

Babycorn took a deep breath. She sat down on the floor, clutching a pillow tightly. “Do you think Hildibrand loves me?”

Butter froze. For a second he even stopped breathing completely. He turned around to look at Babycorn. His eyes met hers. It was like staring into a warm summer day, he couldn’t help but be drawn in. Butter walked up to Babycorn and knelt down in front of her. As much as he didn’t want to think about Hildibrand he knew there was only one answer to the question.

“I think…” Butter struggled to speak. “I think he would be crazy not to be in love with you.”

Babycorn was stunned. “Do you really think so?!”

“Y-Yeah!!” Butter smiled, gritting his teeth. “No. Doubt. About. It.”

“I see…” She noticed that Butter looked really happy to be telling her that. Of course he would be, he was like one of her bestie best friends. Just all her other friends! Because of that she didn’t have the heart to tell him how she really felt.

If Hildibrand proposed to her tomorrow, well, she had no idea how she was going to react.

“Hey Butts? You’re coming to help tomorrow right?”

As much as Butter wished that he didn’t have to go through another whole day or more of seeing Babycorn making googly eyes at Hildibrand, of course he was going to help. “I wouldn’t miss it for anything! Ahahaha…”

That was a relief! “I’m glad you’re coming with!” It just wouldn’t be as fun without Butter and everyone else around! As long as he was around then maybe Babycorn wouldn’t have to spend another four hours sitting on a chair scared out of her mind about aliens.

Why, oh why, was marriage and love just so complicated? She bemoaned.

Why couldn’t everything be as easy as eating worms from the wet ground?

As dawn broke through, Cinnamon and Airy giggled quietly to themselves.

Airy poked her head out from behind a fort of blankets they had created to hide themselves behind just in case anyone woke up and interrupted their secret plan. “I literally can’t believe this.” A part of her wanted to just fly in and kick them awake but Cinnamon managed to convince her to hold back the violence. Using nothing but a delicious cookie,

The (self-proclaimed) more artistic of the sisters was furiously drawing as fast as she could. “Have they moved at all yet?” Cinnamon cried out.

“Nope. Still the same as last BAJILLION times you asked.”

“Okay! Good!” Cinnamon continued to draw as fast as she could. “Just a little bit more…!” As soon as she was finished with it she would go ahead and place it inside of Butter’s diary, right on the newest page so it could be the first thing he would see when he opened it back up.

She had to be quick, because any second now either Babycorn or Butter would wake up and ruin her reference. It was hard for her to draw any faster. Small as she was, drawing for her meant almost carrying a pencil across a page.

But it would all be worth it when she finished.

Cinnamon needed Butter to know that they had fallen asleep sitting next to each other. Babycorn resting her head on his shoulder and holding their hands together.

A smile on their faces.

#lalapril #lalapril 2024 #Babycorn #Cherrypit #Airy #Butter #Pancake #Cinnamon #buttercorn #phew #this was the last one i wrote for this year and its the one that made me the most nervous #anyway i think babycorn keeps these feelings all the way to dawntrail hildibrand quests #she doesnt get to hear theyre not actual aliens and nobody tells her opps #babycorns scared of aliens but shes got some dragon in her and shes gonna find that out next expansion probably and stare out a window agai #anyway i love buttercorn i hate them #i love using butters diary as future writing prompts i ll probably do it again

1 note · View note

ohheyitsokay · 3 years

Note

Omg I'm SO sorry!!! I'm the soulmates pain AU anon, I was completely aware you were the one with the milestone!! I saw the post through Molly's rb and I was almost completely sure I had opened your blog to send you the ask but alas, the Tumblr app can never give you any certainties. That long-ass message was completely dedicated to you, I still can't quite grasp how I managed to send it to scribbledghost 🙄🙄🙄 Sorry!!! Congrats again, I love you!!!!

for reference a Din Djarin x reader soulmate request where your soulmate feels your injuries and pain

hello, dear heart!

I wanted to say, before anything else, thank you. I've reread your words multiple times since you sent this, confirming they were to me, and they really mean the world to me. thank you so, so much! anyway, your idea is fantastic, I had a lot of fun with this one! I hope you like seeing what I did with your already wonderful thoughts 💕

ps it's well documented that I'm a big fan of sprawling thoughts, so please never apologize for sharing them!

warnings: mentions canon-typical injuries, a bunch of fluff. at least enough for a couple of throw pillows

soulmate requests / follower celebration

There's a short burn on his forearm when he wakes.

Din stares at it, wondering at the dull ache, trying to place the injury from yesterday's adventure when it hits him. Hot and golden warmth, flooding through his chest, thawing his flesh against the cold filtered air.

It's one of yours.

A burn, on his forearm.

And selfishly, indulgently, he pauses for a moment, mind slipping away from duty and expectations to dwell in the daydream of his soulmate.

First, his mind creates an image of a blurry mandalorian caretaker, gently moving around a kitchen in the covert. You stir a pot, tapping the spoon on the side before setting it down. Hearing distant calls, you turn too quickly and oh - a sliver of burn along your arm.

Din wants to help, wants to pull you away from the domestic .... danger, and he rushes forward. Your helmet turns to him and he almost sees it - before his mind can no longer produce the answers he aches for late at night.

The second image is of you, in armor as gleaming as his own, in a thick, unrecognizable forest. The hairs on his neck are at full attention, already subconsciously wanting to shout - but you don't need his help. You're breathtaking in all versions of his daydream - but watching you fight with practiced ease punches the air from his lungs. For a moment he feels self-conscious of his awkward maneuvers and slapdash fighting but then his mind pulls him back. You're protecting someone, or else you wouldn't have messed up - you never do, injuries from you are too rare - but you shove them behind you, shooting an enemy over your shoulder before your helmet snaps back. There are so many - you're surrounded - and a hot, sharp blaster bolt grazes your forearm before your fury is truly unleashed.

He runs his fingers over the burn, almost giddy at the possibilities.

Mandalorians are few and far between, but he's grateful he has a soulmate, and even more thankful you've kept yourself out of harm's way almost entirely, since you'd been connected.

As he dons his layers, the shine of his armor reflects bruises and scrapes littered across the expanse of his skin. His own, from his journey, and one beautiful little burn from his soulmate.

And then they're covered, and the armor is tied securely in place, and he leaves his daydreams in the room as the ship door slides unceremoniously shut.

You hiss at the burn, clutching your arm.

Great. Just what you needed - another injury to add to your impressive collection.

At least my soulmate gets a gift from me this time. You roll your eyes.

The vendor next to your stall is a sweet lady, already apologizing for her steaming pots and pans and offering you compensation.

The credits would be nice, but you could hardly justify taking anything, especially since it was your soulmate's fault your body was riddled with aches and pains in the first place.

Waving your hand, you accept her counter offer - a bowl of her perfect broth and noodles - before retreating. You sell cloth, from beautiful dyed lengths tucked away to sturdy, unstainable blacks, and it was days like today that you thanked your stars for that choice.

There's a thick pile in the middle that you perch on, sinking into the folds as your body cries at you, and you sigh over your soup in relief. The burden of waking to webbing bruises and sprawling scrapes and the more-than-occasional broken bone is eased by your stall - sitting and haggling until the sun goes down. That is, unless there's drama in the market, as it seems there is today.

In the distance you hear shouts, more than those of vendors selling meat on sticks to passing warriors and merchants - the taunts of drunkards.

Someone is coming, and you almost laugh when you see his form in the distance, because he's trying and failing to be inconspicuous. It's impossible, with his gleaming armor, but still he ducks into shadowy spots, forgetting - or maybe ignoring - their inhabitants.

"A Mandalorian has graced our market," your neighbor remarks dryly. They were respected, but it was well known that chaos followed them. You share a look, both wishing you were wealthy enough to conpletely pack up shop. If anything, a logical person would put away most of the stock and hunker down for a few hours. Weighing the odds was difficult: if you were lucky, the chaos wouldn't bother your business, and shoppers might be drawn out, hoping for entertainment and spending as they waited. If you weren't, a wayward burst of plasma or blaster fire would destroy your whole month's stock.

You looked at him again, the Mandalorian kneeling down the street. His form was... almost handsome, formidable but careful. He was light on his feet, seemingly with gentleness on his mind, and it drew you in like a moth to flame. You decided to stay, and hope for the best, your curiosity pulsing like your bruises.

And you were lucky, that day, because he ducked away not a moment later, taking the exciment with him.

Until, he came back the next day, this time on the prowl, stalking up and down the edge of Dicer's Row, one hand on his blaster and the other atop a bulky, wriggling bag. This time, you ventured to stand, folding and refolding your displays as you watched him through your lashes.

And then he made his move, and you sighed, feigning a yawn to cover your disappointment from your neighbor's knowing smile. She shouldn't be wiggling her eyebrows over the box wall between you - honestly his type were more annoying than anything. A crash from the alley confirmed it: there was no way a guy like that cared about his soulmate. The gentleness from before was surely a trick of the light.

Your whole side lit up with pain, the impact of something hard against your whole side and you groaned, settling into your mound again. Any curiosity or attraction was snuffed under your annoyance and pain, and your mood soured like fruit left unpicked on the tree.

Selfish, you thought, glaring as a chicken ran squawking from the commotion. What a jerk.

The next day, you tried to maintain the sentiment, huffing as he wandered the stalls.

Why does he keep coming back?

You'd have thought his time here was over when he'd dragged that lowlife out of town yesterday. But here he was, buying a crock of soup at the stall next to you, and ignoring her comments about how he couldn't eat it with his helmet on.

She had warmed to him, since he'd put money in her pocket, chattering in a way that kept him stuck for long moments.

It struck you as strange - he almost seemed too awkward to leave, like her returned generosity actually meant something to him. A man like him... surely could've just walked away.

But he stayed for awhile, nodding and looking at the spoons she carved in her free time, and you almost thought he was looking at you, too. Then he ducked his head and planted himself in front of you, and certainly he was.

For all the years you'd spent weaving words to sell your fabrics and goods, you'd never been so speechless. The Mandalorian was large, sharp, shining edges and bulky canvas packs tied to his shoulders - he seemed out of place, filling your whole stall, shuffling as he loomed over you.

He asked for soft brown things - children's clothes.

"Of course, I - I mean, yes, just over here -" you tripped over your words, caught completely off guard by the shape of him, the feel of him just an arms width away, and his request. You stumbled from your seat, nearly toppling in your hurry and his gloved hand wrapped around your arm, catching you.

"You're injured," he stated not really asking. It was... overwhelmingly intimate, him knowing, and acknowledging it, like he cared.

"Yeah, my..." you swallowed, trying not to get lost in the dark glass inches from your face. "My self-centered soulmate keeps getting himself nearly killed."

Even with your heart thumping in your chest, you couldn't keep the bite from your words, bitterness having collected over years of nursing injuries that were consequences of someone else's actions. He didn't let go of you for a moment, his helmet pulling back and tilting, like he was startled.

Then he was cautious, unbearably so, releasing his grip like a child freeing a captured creature when it was time. The topic was dropped, and he made his purchase quickly, but before he left, he paused. The Mandalorian's gloved hand ghosted over your cheek, slowly moving a hair back into it's place, and if you hadn't known better, it was almost an apology.

And then, thick cape swirling in the dust, tiny clothes in tow, he swept away, leaving you along with your whole body alight with a foreign longing.

Din felt as though he'd been stabbed.

Hot, hot feelings poured through his chest, spreading fast as fire as he desperately tried to sort through them.

You - you were incredible, fragile and bruised, with the most stunning, determined eyes he had ever seen. Not a Mandalorian, and you had a ... a soulmate, a fucker who left your skin littered with marks, burdening you with ...

He felt panicked, shocked, and guilty, just as he had when you'd told him. It had never occred to him that his soulmate might be there... out there, constantly burdened by his recklessness. His body screamed for attention, something he so often ignored, but this time, he was almost deafened by it.

His feet, legs, arms, chest, heart - all of them wanted him to return to you, in your little fabric stall. To... what? Truly, he hadn't the slightest idea, so his mind won out, shaking a little to try to reign in the muscles that he'd taught to obey him.

He couldn't go to you.

But, he couldn't stay away.

He was back in the market, and this time, he wasn't being subtle about staring at you.

Tall and ... slow, he waded through the crowds, making his was towards you like he was following a careful path.

"Can I help you?" You stood, moving almost involuntarily towards him. "Was there something wrong with my -" he was already shaking his head, hands reaching to make you shush.

Waiting, an irrational part of your mind wished he would touch you again, would place his big hands on your skin and sooth the aches that haunted your life. It was unfair, but you didn't stop it, couldn't if you tried.

Carefully, he slid a single finger to your arm, pushing up your sleeve to reveal the little burn you'd gotten.

He was being gentle. It made you want to stomp your feet, jealously welling up in your heart like bile, bitter and hot. How could it be, that someone so powerful had learned so quickly, wanted to, and he wasn't - he wasn't even your -

Then he moved again, pushing up his own sleeve and your thoughts tumbled over each other. It was intimate, even more than before, desperately trusting, as his skin near glowed in the morning light. And there was a burn on his skin, hairs singled like they'd met the edge of a pot of boiling broth.

You wanted to punch him. This man has spent years tossing his body around like he had one one spare, making your own as brittle as bread crust and - you wanted to kiss him. This man had learned after a single day, the impact of his actions, and had been nothing but kind.

The forehead of his helmet pressed into yours, and the two sides of your mind compromised.

Later, words would come - they had to.

But now, your eyes closed, and you sighed. He had the rest of your life to make it up to you - and he would, you were sure.

taglist:

@fangirl-316 @scribbledghost @writeforfandoms @beautyagegoodnesssize @princess76179 @mrsbentallmadge @horton-hears-a-honk @saradika @zinzinina

#din djarin x reader #soulmate requests #anonymous and elle #elle only posts soulmate rqs at weird hours thats the rule

155 notes · View notes

cryptiql · 3 years

Text

smoke signals

pairing: dabi/m!reader

warnings: smoking, mentions of anxiety and abuse, but otherwise okay. please do not read forward if any of the listed warnings might trigger you in any way, and stay safe <3

words: 6.5k

a/n: this is my first ever mha fic and the fact that i decided to do dabi first shows i have some massive balls but i'm giving it a try! if he seems ooc at all or i get some facts wrong, please lmk and i'll fix them. (heavily inspired by smoke signals by phoebe bridgers—would recommend listening to it or any of her other songs while reading)

dabi found the meaning of life in a simple strum of chords; a melody twisted by melancholy tunes that resonated deep within the gates of his mind. they haunt him—either by breaking his conscious from a much needed rest to bring him tossing and turning in the damp air of the loft, or making sure that he stayed wide awake during the late hours of the night and well into the creeping day. the lyrics are so surreal that he has to sit down and contemplate their meaning like an english teacher would to the color red, but they're painted saccharine and drip with honey flowing from the mouth that sings them and he hates it. he hates that he's wasted moments better spent wrecking havoc just to understand that stupid little ditty that clings to his heart like a leech. but this song did not come from his own craft—no.

dabi had known the putrid stench of sweat and vermillion blood when the flames licked at his skin, breaching the coarse flesh of his palms to rain hellfire upon all those who dared oppress him. he could weave lies with knots that would take years to unravel, and set whole cities ablaze with a mere finger. clawing oneself from a well built to drown them in their trauma does tend to leave scars on ones hands, and dabi's body was practically a canvas for mutilation, so he could consider himself an expert on the matter. he could attempt to make such a song by strapping in with his many hours of free time and diligent persona, but his hands were not made for music; neither delicate, sonorous tunes or dark, grating strains. they were made for war.

so if anyone had asks, "no" is his answer. "i don't play." and yes, it is while he's drumming a rhythmic beat that he claims this to be true, but the last thing he thinks about is donning a set of drums during his free time. he's far too distracted by the image of your taper fingers curled around the neck of your guitar to consider anything else.

the gentle but keen plucking of chords startles him from yet another ridiculously long-winded spiel by shigaraki, and dabi swallows a strangled groan behind his grinding teeth. it's in his head, now, and so far the only thing that has succeeded in reaping it from his memory—if only for a few minutes—is the blood stained battlefield that he's found himself fighting on far too many times this month alone.

what's he complaining about, though? it's not as though he minds getting down in the dirt. in fact, he's ecstatic to dig his claws into any gruesome ordeal so long as it benefits him in some way, so why is he so invested in this little to and fro game of twenty questions with the likes of you; someone as significant in the world as a paperclip without paper to hold? why come back, despite there being nothing in it for him besides a series of migraines?

not from you, a voice answers from inside. you're an absolute pleasure.

dabi nearly snarls at the confirmation that his own mind is turning against him, and as he does this, a plume of smoke erupts from his lips, billowing and curving to create intricate patters before dissipating into the atmosphere. a second time. a third. a fourth drag from the cigarette has completely obscured his face from anyone's view, and he relishes in the instant of privacy it gives him. however, it has also blocked him from seeing everyone else in the room, and while he normally would have considered that a blessing, it appears tomura has had enough of it.

you get headaches because you smoke too much, comes a second voice; yours, scolding in a way he'd only expect from a worried mother. dabi only has a split second to register it before shigaraki's head pokes through the fumes, red eyes alight with rage and lips pulled back into a snarl.

"would you quit doing that inside? it's fogging up my brain and i can't think straight." he grates.

"strange—i assumed there wasn't a brain in there to fog up in the first place." tomura's nostrils flare and dabi's pride spikes.

"besides, you came in here and looked directly at me as i was smoking—why didn't you ask me to stop then?"

"i was telling you with my eyes, idiot. you should know when it's time to either take it outside or put the damn thing out. there are ashtrays for a reason, and not everyone here wants to inhale that shit." he interrupts their intense staring contest only to wave his hand to clear the smog. now he can see the rest of the league clearly (oh joy, he thinks) and gives an indignant grunt when spotting toga at the bar table, covering her mouth and nose as a pitiful aim to block her lungs from the smoke. twice, who had unfortunately used up the last pack of his own cigarettes that morning, leans forward to take a whiff, exhaling soon after with satisfaction.

kurogiri stands at his usual spot behind the bar, seemingly unaffected as he idly scrubs away at grime infested glasses, while sako lounges at the opposite end of the room. his mask is on, leaving dabi to wonder if it's been like that all day, or if he just recently put it on to better fend off the fumes. he doesn't really care, whatever the case.

after a beat of silence, dabi wets his lips to respond, a lopsided smirk growing on his features.

"oh, i'm sorry your frail body hasn't adapted to a bit of vapor in the air. and with that flakey skin of yours, it's no wonder you're extra sensitive—"

shigaraki's hands come flying through the next waft to slam against the tabletop where dabi's feet lie, causing it to wobble and creak in protest. the ravenette doesn't even flinch as the harsh, raspy words are spat in his face.

"if you're not going to pay attention, then leave. actually, i'd prefer you do that either way."

and dabi would have happily disregarded his request if not for the faint ringing in his ears, rising higher and higher before receding back into his skull like the tide. a scowl morphs its way onto his once vacant expression as he puts pressure on his temple, rubbing softly where his eyebrows knit together. just for today, he'll indulge his so-called boss's whims. the piercing screech that emits from below when he pushes his chair back does nothing to help with the ever-growing headache, but it hardly matters now that he's headed out the exit. he's able to catch the last fragments of shigaraki's raving before the door closes, leaving him to stand amid the tumult of the city in all of its glory.

the alleyway is dark with looming shadows, but people are still milling about, so dabi considers himself lucky for already being dressed in his disguise. he flips his hood up, pulls the surgical mask over his nose and quickly slides on his sunglasses for good measure before slipping out into the traffic, sometimes going with the flow and then weaving past those moving too slow for his liking.

right now, his patience is a mere thread; hair thin and on the edge of snapping whenever someone bumps his shoulder. their negligence is infuriating, and he's tempted to roast them into a charred, mangled mess then and there—the consequences of blowing his cover be damned—but by some miracle, he manages to refrain from doing so. it takes about five minutes for his temper to shorten to the length of a matchstick, and he knows that one more shove will be what strikes it. dabi pauses for a moment to crane his neck, allowing the sea of people to flow around him like a stream to a rock as he searches for an alternative route. it appears as though he'll have to take his chances with the crowd until he hears the repetitive ringing of a bell and a man's voice calling for passengers to board. public transport was risky, what with him being a menace to society, but he can't possibly be the single most shady dressing person on the train, right?

he wouldn't bother answering his own question when daylight was burning, so dabi pushes himself from the swarm and leaps for the streetcar just as it begins pulling away from the stop. there's a shuddering jolt before the passengers settle in for their departure, and as his palms squeeze the metal railing in response, he notices the peeling red paint clinging to the car's exterior and finds himself staring at it for a ludicrous amount of time, not thinking about anything in particular.

the rickety trolley is semi-packed with civilians, none of whom regard his presence with anything more than a noncommittal glance. good—that makes his job ten times easier. to his chagrin, it runs over more than a few opposing train tracks or crudely paved bumps in the road, and this causes the whole cart to jostle before stilling completely, the process repeating itself over and over.

the knowledge that his trip to the outskirts of town is a short one is the only thing that calms his nerves.

when dabi finally arrives at his destination, the sun is gradually descending from its peak in the sky, and the clouds are more like wispy tufts than the luscious, cotton candy lumps they were just hours earlier. overhead, the baby blue hues turn to shades of opal; a forewarning of rain. the feelings of irritation and malice from earlier are still bound to him like chains that threaten to snap him in half when drawn too tight. the crippling weight causes his feet to drag along the gravel path at a sluggish pace, his own hot breaths fanning against his face from behind the mask. if anyone actually lived out here and they were to see him, their first impression would be that a living corpse had just waltzed onto their property. it was just his luck, then, that you were the only person out here, and by extent, the only one not deterred by his appearance.

even so, dabi's mind kicks into gear. was this a good idea? he doesn't even know why he came here—he just needed a place to blow off steam and his body had already made the choice on its own. this isn't any different from all the other times, though, and he can't ignore the fact when it sits in the pit of his stomach like an anchor. you're always the first person he goes to at times like these (dabi subconsciously rules out the man working at the local 7/11 who sells his liquor cheap, though he's still appreciative of the bottle to numb his thoughts). that tells him more than he wants to know.

your house is quaint, like those old country cottages he sometimes sees pictures of, and squats on a large, grassy mound of earth surrounded by heaps of rocks and sand from the neighboring beach. it merges with a towering lighthouse, and dabi notes that there must not be any sailors due to make port yet, otherwise the light would be on. the second thing he takes in are the flowerbeds sitting under your two front windows, and how they look withered and close to death.

"i wanted to add some color, but i can't keep plants alive for shit." you had said, huffing in amusement to yourself as you tended to the weeping alliums. "succulents are the only exception."

a small pot of them sits on the windowsill, but they seem to have gotten to big for it; the rubbery leaves spilling over the cracked rim. he hardly registers how much of a stalker he must look like until he stands on your welcome mat, peering through the dirty glass panes to find you nowhere in sight. the lights aren't on, so he can only see the outlines of furniture when bands of light stream in to reveal them.

sitting back on the balls of his feet, dabi curses under his breath. it's not like he was expecting anything. how was he supposed to know whether or not you were home when you had no way of telling him?

"jesus, patch!" a shout startles him from his brooding, but he doesn't let it show as he looks towards to ocean. you're hauling yourself over a large rock to wave him over, wearing a familiar grin. so that's why he couldn't see you. dabi makes careful work of leaping over jagged stones and threatening to bake any nosy seagulls as he makes his way to where you sit, with your favored instrument slung over your shoulder. the ghost of a smile graces his lips when he recalls how you would have scolded him for being mean to the birds, but that was before last week.

"pesky fucking bastards—they keep shitting on my music sheets!" another seagull waddles into your vicinity, only to squawk in distress as you shoo it away with your foot. "i wonder if this is natures way of telling me to quit while i'm behind. . ."

after breaching the treacherous terrain and nearly scraping himself in the process, dabi squats on the stone beside yours, looking up at you with hooded eyes. you meet his gaze with nothing short of merriment and a shake of your head.

"if someone had seen you, you would have been arrested on the spot for being a peeping tom." you chuckle, combing a hand through your hair with a smirk. "what? you lookin' you catch me in the nude or something?"

dabi scowls, choosing to ignore the question rather than give into the bait. as if i would be satisfied by looking at anyone but you in that state. he swats the air as if it would drive the notion from his mind like a bothersome fly.

"in the middle of fuck-ass nowhere? i'd never get caught."

"aw, don't be like that. if you really wanted a peek you could've just asked." the mocking tone in your voice spurs him to smack your thigh, which earns a hearty laugh in reply.

"ooh, don't treat me so roughly, or i might begin to like it!"

dabi has had more than enough experience with your flirtatious tendencies, and he feels he should have gotten used to it by now, but his heart still clenches every damn time. the worse part? he can't say that he minds. you don't give him a chance to respond, but dabi hasn't a clue what he would have said, so he lets you continue, watching intently as you rifle through your bag to fish out a guitar pick. shifting into a crisscross position, you perch the guitar on your lap and begin tuning the strings, idly talking about how uneventful the past days have been. dabi pretends not to have heard that it was because he wasn't there to visit, and instead gives his attention to the lighthouse in hopes that you won't see the faintest of reds dusting his ears.

five minutes pass before you actually start playing, and even then, it's only a few experimental notes here and there that help you build towards the perfected melody.

it's too sweet for his taste; dabi swears that's why his stomach turns so ferociously and prompts him to lean against the boulder to his right for some sort of stability. he won't even humor the idea that it's because of the way your lips twitch into a near half-smile before melding back into a concentrated frown the moment you strike a wrong cord. an embarrassed flush captures your cheeks as you study the music sheets, briefly pressing down on them when a sudden breeze flutters the pages. the pencil that was once tucked behind your ear now sticks out from one corner of your mouth, a flash of pink and orange melding together when you go to absentmindedly gnaw on the wood.

many more minutes fly by, and you've long since abandoned the new tune just to pick up an old one. dabi's back straightens at the first set of strings you pluck, and he recognizes them as the same ones that have been playing on repeat in his head since the day you met.

dabi's heart hammers in tune with every footfall that slaps against the pavement, tearing through the small pools of water that grow with every second. it hasn't stopped raining since the chase began, and there isn't an inch of him that hasn't been soaked through. still, something good must come from this little dilemma—the burning sensation that clings to his arms has almost settled down. the silhouettes of trees merge with inky blackness when he blinks, and he reaches with trembling hands to wipe the droplets of water clinging to his eyelashes.

a yellow square of what assumes to be light shines in the distance, contrasting wildly adverse to the darkness that sweeps him up from under his feet and pushes him forward. the sound of police sirens has been reduced to a mere memory in the time that was running, but he isn't about to risk going back to the league's base in fear of a stakeout waiting to get the jump on them. besides, why stop there when the possibility of shelter awaits him?

the bottoms of dabi's shoes are slick with mud, and blades of grass have snuck their way under the cuffs of his jeans to scratch at his skin. the sensations paired with the numbing cold are beyond uncomfortable, but he won't have to worry about that once he gets inside—that being if the person inside doesn't put up a fight.

he'd expect them to be mad if they did anything except that, no matter how welcoming the house looked. dabi's instincts tell him that someone out this far from the city doesn't a have a lot of connections, and thus killing them wouldn't cause an uprising if it were needed, but the minute he grips the doorknob, a thought occurs. if they have a quirk, its power could level my own or even surpass it. . . he grits his teeth. but like hell i'm going to let them win.

the hesitation vanishes in an instant as dabi turns the knob and thrusts himself inside, wielding a blue flame in his dominant hand to further illuminate the room. the wind is so fierce that it pulls the door shut for him, and the villain finds himself staring down the unperturbed figure of another man, perhaps around his age, hunched over a stove and glaring at a steaming kettle. they lock gazes, and almost immediately, the kettle gives a high pitched whistle. you look away first, lifting the pot and turning the burner off whilst opening the cupboard overhead to pull out two mugs, both of which adorn ugly christmas-themed patterns that dabi wishes he could forget ever seeing.

his glare hardens when you move to the table in the far corner and begin pouring what he assumes to be tea, taking one cup into your own grasp and leaving the other at his own disposal. your one mistake is grabbing your phone from the counter, but when dabi's flame enlarges, you hold your arms up in defense. then, before he can even formulate a proper threat, you toss the phone to him. he catches it easily and observes the dark screen, masking his astonishment with a more sinister expression.

the only other move you make is to drape yourself across a cushion on the window seat with an acoustic guitar in hand. you look more relaxed by the second despite being cornered by a dangerous criminal, and dabi has to refrain from voicing his shock when you address him with an almost bored tone.

"if the tea isn't to your taste, there's more in the cabinet. shower is down the hall to your left, and there's a spare bedroom upstairs to the right. do whatever the hell you want, just don't burn the place down or touch my freddie mercury records."

dabi is stuck to the spot for one of three reasons, he determines. one, your attitude has surprised him into a stupor that not even hiw own will can break. two, his refusal to believe that you're handling this situation in a calm manner is really just his defense mechanism kicking in, and he won't move until proven that you won't do anything when his back is turned. and three, you're quirk is similar to that of madusa's and you've successfully turned him into a fleshy mannequin.

"if you're worried about me calling the cops, what you're holding is the only working phone here. the power is out due to the storm, so my landline is dead, and the nearest form of help is a crippled old widow five miles west. i'm not going to risk running when i'm up against someone with a quirk."

dabi considers everything said, but never once allows his fire to dim. he took the surrounding area into account while making his escape, and he can see the landline is in fact out of service, so the male's assurances checked out. hell, the light source that guided him here was nothing but an old-timey oil lamp. the fact that you're quirkless does him a great amount of good as well.

with cautious steps, dabi makes a beeline for the bathroom, but he stops halfway to stare at you again. you respond by quirking a brow and kicking your feet up, something akin to mischief in your guise.

"i can take the shower with you since you're so afraid i'll make a break for it." you drawl, and dabi snarls, a fowl cuss bubbling in his throat as heat crawls its way up his neck.

"why, with a blush like that you might not need any drying off~."

dabi decides that he's had enough and storms down the hall, already peeling off his dripping clothes and and silently promising that he'll burn the guy to a crisp if he so much as tries to catch a peek. he can hear you calling out in hilarity even as he slinks into the shower and attempts to drown you out with the static-filled haze that captures his senses.

"the name's, y/n, by the way!"

try as he might, dabi had never been able to keep from coming back. now the reason why has been revealed to him on a silver platter, and he won't even spare it a glance.

your soft singing snaps him from his reminiscing as he stretches his legs, stifling a groan when something pops as not to disturb you. while digging through his pockets for a cigarette, he stops momentarily for fear of forgetting how to breathe when he lays his sights on you. you're in your own little world; everything else—him included— seems to have disappeared as you play from the heart. you need no standing ovation, no adoring fans or fantastic lightshows. you've said it once, that fame and glory mean nothing to you, and that you have all you could ever want or need right here, nestled in the beachside view of what you call home.

"and i have you." a cool breeze ruffles your dirt stained overalls as you reach up to wipe a bead of sweat from your forehead. the sun beats down on you, never shining half as bright as your smile, and the shore kisses the boulders with waxing and waning waves of aquamarine; frothy, foamy masses washing up with it to carry lone strands of seaweed. "otherwise i'd go mad without your company."

okay, that was lie. the truth is right there, practically spitting in his face how much of an idiot he is for trying to deny it, and dabi is glaring right back at it. he feels like an impatient kid on christmas eve, sneaking glimpses of gifts under the tree and feeling like he's committed a felony after getting caught. and you do catch him.

"penny for your thoughts, patch?" there it is—that stupid nickname. it's always been laced with mirth when you call him as such, but now it's replaced by genuine curiosity. and is that a hit of concern he hears? you study him with pursed lips and stony features that gradually morphs into that of concern when the silence stretches on. dabi forces himself to sneer at you, and something stirs inside his chest when you don't flinch.

he hates it. he hates you.

dabi nods to the sky, a guarded noise building in the back of his throat as he tugs on his earlobe.

"s'gonna rain." your jaw visibly clenches, but you humor his evasive habits just like you always have, looking to the clouds, which have darkened considerably in the last hour or so. it's around this time that the weather patterns become more unpredictable, but you've noticed the distinct lack of rainfall in spite of the gathering storm brewing overhead. you could sit out here for a while longer without much activity in the sky, and it would take more than a little shower to drive you inside, especially when you finally had the chance to enjoy some quality time with dabi. you notice the way his shoulders droop and the tension from his facial muscles all but disappears when he sits amidst the smell of fresh salt water and unpolluted air—the weight of his past slowly but surely ebbing away. you'd like to hope you have some part in that. oh god, do you ever hope.

you plead to whatever omnipresent being above that he's not just here to hit a blunt without getting reprimanded for it, or that he's making these daily visits out of pity.

"nah. it's been like this for a little while—looks like a storm will hit, but then it passes before it even begins." you sling the guitar back over your shoulder and gather up your music sheets, eyeing dabi from your perch. you're challenging him now, and normally you would never dare force him to speak if he didn't want to, but something about his aura is off. you can sense it in his words; the very air he breathes; and it compels you to hold him close, if only he would let you.

"so, you gonna tell me why you're avoiding the ques—" a deep rumble interrupts you, and dabi lets out a sigh of relief that you're thankfully too distracted to hear. a single drop of water hits your nose, followed by another, and another, and—

"you were saying?"

"oh shut it." you don't get to finish speaking, for a crack of lightning strikes the far end of the beach, scattering sand in every direction. you just barely manage to scoop up your belongings before sliding from the rock, but your footing betrays you and send you stumbling to the ground. dabi is there to catch you, wasting no more time in hauling you to your feet and rushing you as carefully as possible through the jagged maze. he can't refrain from smiling when you splutter a string of profanities pass poorly hidden laughter, an unmistakable "FUCK ME!" spilling into the cold evening when you accidentally stub your toe on a particularly sharp stone. it's pouring within seconds, and no sooner do you reach the doorstep do you both realize how sopping wet you are.

the last thing you think of is your chattering teeth, however, when you see dabi's spiky tufts of hair dripping with residue and his electric blue eyes gazing into yours. what you do think is that for the first time in your painfully ordinary life; your twenty three years of mediocrity and progressive isolation from the world around you; you have found the single person who understands your struggles and has chosen—for some unfathomable reason—not to abandon you. you wish you could say your parents were the same, but you also have scars from a distant childhood that brought you to this place.

this old lighthouse is your home, yes, but dabi is your sanctuary. he might as well be a god by how often you worship him from afar, wondering if ever you'd be so lucky; so eternally blessed; as to call him yours.

you don't register that he's opened the door to let you both inside until a cozy warmth envelopes you. no, wait, that's dabi's fire. it should terrify you that the same man who threatened you with those flames is now at arms length, but you trust him not to hurt you in any way, and so you lean into the gentle licking of heat on your skin, humming in content as your shivering comes to a halt.

dabi's fear of burning you diminishes when you flash him a grateful smile, a whisper of thanks echoing across the walls and pummeling his heart without resistance. he averts his eyes with a curt nod, a feeling like molasses weighing down his tongue and drowning the words he wants to say.

"you're welcome." is all he can muster.

half an hour later, your guitar is drying by the hearth and the two of you are huddled on the window seat, nursing cups of coffee and watching the storm in a comfortable silence. you haven't blinked in a while, meaning you've wandered off the tracks of consciousness as suspected, and pretty soon, you start singing quietly to yourself; the deep crooning used as background noise to your aimless meditation. dabi nudges your calf with his foot and is rewarded with a brief quirk of your lips and a nudge back. he doesn't have the patience nor the brain power to decipher how long this goes on for, but it doesn't matter.

this is fine. the image of red hair and a tall, intimidating figure invades his train of thought, and dabi curls inwards on himself. this is fine.

but it's not.

trembling, he places his mug on the table before retracting back into his seat, clasping his hands together. he tries visualizing the ties of his life coming together to form a rope. the fingers on his left—memories from his past—linking together with those from his right—memories made with you. his palms connect, bringing instant relief with the knowledge that he's here now, practically nestled between your legs, out of harms way. you're both fine.

dabi takes the swelling anxiety and pretends to crush it within his fist; clenching and unclenching it until his peace of mind returns.

"penny for your thoughts, patch?" you ask again, still in somewhat of a trance. this time, dabi answers.

"why do you call me that?"

you're caught of guard, half expecting him to ask why you haven't turned him in to the authorities. you've seen him without his disguise, you know his name, and for the past eight months you've been socializing with him like normal human beings do. that's more than both of you could have said in the past. of all the burning questions, he chose that one? "i've heard 'patchwork' and 'staples' and just about everything in between. why shorten it to patch?"

you gape at him, opening your mouth, then closing it, and so on. the pitter patter of rain against the window has ascended into relentless pelting. it sounds like gunfire to dabi; assaulting his ears in floods; but to you, it's nothing more than a waterfall hindering your view of the ocean. the deep breath you take seems to put more suspense in the atmosphere than needed, and it makes dabi's heartrate quicken for an entirely different reason, yet he makes no sign of stopping you.

"because my first thought whenever i see you is how much you remind me of a doll." oh. what?

you can tell by dabi's reaction that that wasn't what he was expecting, so you gesture for him to wait. he isn't sure he likes the forlorn expression you're wearing.

"typically, when kids first get a doll, they treat it like glass and make sure to tend to it with love. other times, doll owners are reckless and tear them apart just to stitch them back together like nothing happened. you use that camouflaged to blend in with the public, and i'm lucky enough to see what's under it. . .but sometimes i wish you'd keep the mask on so i don't have to see you upset."

upset? a fizzing sound erupts from his palms that he struggles to put out. he's not upset.

"don't try to hide it. you're always scowling when you think i'm not looking, or when you forget i'm even here, and i know it's because someone broke you without the intent of fixing you up."

once more, red clouds dabi's vision, and he moves to stand up.

"you had to clean up after their mistakes because no one else would, but instead of reusing the bits and pieces of your old self, you burned them. you destroyed any and all evidence of who you used to be and now you're patching yourself together with parts that aren't your own, because you don't want to hold onto what happened. though, something tells me you still haven't let go, otherwise you wouldn't be so angry."

"you don't know that!" he snaps, but he knows it's not true.

your hand closes around his wrist, and dabi recoils with such strength that it yanks you from your seat. dabi doesn't want you to let go, no matter how much he thrashes in place, because the sensation of your skin on his grounds him. somehow you know this, and you give a comforting squeeze to his pulse.

"but that's not all i see. because dolls are beautiful, and it's the ones who still love them after they're broken that they need the most. no one's told you they think you're beautiful, have they?"

dabi shakes his head, refusing to meet your gaze even when you cup his cheek with your free hand tilt it towards you. every touch is filled with hesitancy; feather light and more intimate than anything dabi has ever witnessed, let alone experienced personally. with the way you hold him like he's water in your hands, your eyes overflowing with a love he hasn't known in forever, dabi knows he won't find another feeling like it. you're not the embodiment of good—at least not by society's strict standards—but at least you can sit there and say you've committed a crime. you've never bloodied your hands by hurting others, much less gotten a thrill from doing so, and that's why he pulls away. he has to, because dabi is a harbinger of war, and if he holds you any closer it will only be to kill you.

he says something; a snarl mixed with a broken plea that he prays will make you stop; and you do. his silent victory doesn't last for long, though, because then you're using both hands to cradle his face and fuck, the pads of your thumbs grazing his scars feel like heaven. "won't you let me be the first?" how could he say no? how, when the taste of honey and whiskey is so addictive that he's already drooling into the kiss and willing to beg for more; when your mouth slots perfectly with his and dabi begins to wonder if he's stumbled right into the scene of a cliché wattpad story. the idea causes him to huff out a growl, and although neither of you can talk, he can imagine how strongly you must want to poke fun at him for the action. he can feel you smirking—the smug little bastard you are—and dabi ponders how long it will take to reduce that attitude of yours until you're submitting to him.

not yet. he chastises himself, completely unaware that you're currently thinking the same thing. dabi kneads the flesh of your hips through your jeans while you comb your fingers through his hair, gasping sharply between bruising, wet kisses and keening when he leans down to nurse your lips with soft pecks afterword. you're still trying to process the fact that you've coerced this devious criminal into making out with you in the pale glow of your seaside residence, but for the moment, you need not concern yourself with the details. you've forgotten all about dabi's ego and how this whole situation is no doubt feeding its flames. his grip on your waist is making you too delirious to care.

"fuck." dabi's breath is staggering when you finally pull back, an aura of clarity and desire hanging between the two of you.

"y-yeah. . .that was. . ." you can't produce a word, or even a paragraph to describe it. you know you're going to hit yourself later for admitting such a banal phrase in the midst of what could be classified as your very first kiss, but that is neither here nor there, and you would rather suffer an agonizing death than let dabi find out that he stole your first. you're too preoccupied envisioning all the other firsts to come, so you don't notice the way he stares at you like some precious jewel, but his fingertips brushing your bottom lip succeed in snapping you out of it.

"hm?"

dabi goes quiet, contemplating what to say as the thunder moves abroad and the rain comes to an end, leaving the house in a numbing state of tranquility.

"why not call me doll, then? it'd be easier."

you chuckle in response, playing with the hairs at the base of dabi's neck and making sure not to miss the way he melts into the affection. "i thought that'd be moving too fast." and dabi; still drugged from your kiss and what he can only hope is love; rasps out a genuine laugh, cupping your jaw with a tenderness that makes your knees weak.

"you offered to take a shower with me the night we met, and you think a nickname is moving too fast?"

you stick your tongue out at him, and dabi resists the urge to grab it, even if it's just a bluff.

"would you have let me call you that anyways?" you ask, something hopeful ridden in your tone. dabi feigns consideration as he looks to the ceiling, snickering when you smack his chest. eventually, he murmurs what you audibly hear as "brat" before resting his forehead on yours, an impish glint in his gaze.

"no."

you turn your chin up at him, giggling when he nips at the skin. dabi knows just as well that your attempts at escaping him are halfhearted, so he encircles his arms around your waist tighter, delighting in the flush that paints your cheeks.

"then i think i'll settle for my love, or darling, if that's alright with you."

dabi can't fend off the blush for his life, but he's not afraid if you acknowledge it. he can get you back easily, and he plans to. "fine by me, doll."

#⛓.dabi #dabi x male reader #dabi x reader #anime x male reader #mha x male reader #touya todoroki x male reader #my hero x reader #my hero x y/n #boku no hero x reader #x male reader #bnha x you #dabi fluff #dabi angst #dabi imagine

150 notes · View notes

someonestolemyshoes · 3 years

Note

Yo, saw your post about levihan prompts:

How about Hange discovering Levi’s secret hobby (of your choice)

Feel free to do whatever you feel like

And I love your work! 💕 have a good day

Hello! So sorry for the delay in this one, but thank you so much for your patience 🙏 I got stuck for such a long time in the middle of this ksksks but it is finally done! I also played around a little bit with the whole...discovering a secret aspect, but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway! And I hope you're ready for some sweet sweet childhood friends levihan~

Levi likes photography.

This, in itself, is no great secret. Hange can barely remember a time he wasn't following after her with a camera strapped around his neck, or packed into his bag—always within reach, should something striking catch his eye. A little neon plastic toy, at first; each click of the shutter cycled through preloaded images, expert shots of famous landscapes, places they could only dream of seeing. And then, a polaroid—still a toy, in essence, still plastic, still gaudy, but this one took real pictures in real time, and spit them out into their eager, shaking fingers within seconds.

Hange remembers them ruthlessly wafting the little laminate squares and watching with bated breath as black mottled into foggy grey, as the blurred silhouette of the park bench faded slowly into being. It was a fascinating thing, at the time. Magic at their fingertips. The picture turned out fuzzy and overexposed in places, where the sun had glared in over the corner of the park bench, but Levi had settled the little square on his little palms and looked at it like he held the whole world in his hands.

There were innumerable disposable cameras, too. Light little things with reels of film, never enough for Levi's insatiable desire to snap pictures of every single thing he saw. They spent half their childhood in the chemist, sitting in the hard plastic chairs, wriggling anxiously as they waited for the film to develop. Kuchel always handed them the envelope, fat with prints, with a small smile curling the corner of her mouth and a fond twinkle in her eye, and Levi always took it politely, while Hange gave a boisterous thanks, and the pair of them delved greedily into their spoils.

He was older, in his early teens, when he was gifted his first real camera. It was heavy, compared to all the others, a case made of metal with buttons and gadgets and a fancy screen on the back, to preview each picture he took. Levi was wholly enamoured with it. He spent hours adjusting it, figuring out what each button and knob did, how they affected each picture; took countless shots of the same rock in the park until he'd tested every combination of settings he could think of.

He had cycled through more cameras since then. Grown a small collection, each one a little different, a little more suited to particular shots. Hange understood the concept in theory, but the particulars were lost on her, and Levi never took the time to explain. Not that she minded—Levi's pictures were beautiful, breathtaking in the way he could capture even the most mundane details and make them something wondrous. Perhaps for the first and only time in her life, Hange had no desire for the magician to reveal his tricks.

He has an eye for things that Hange simply cannot see. She is observant—to a fault, at times, intensely analytical and endlessly curious. Everything is a question, an opportunity to research, to learn, but she doesn't see the way Levi does.

Wild daffodil. Narcissus pseudonarcissus. Hange sees a perennial flowering plant, native to Western Europe, classified by its pale yellow petals and elongated central trumpet. She sees phylogeny with a rich taxonomic history; subspecies originating all over the globe, some larger, some smaller, some more vibrant and some more muted. She sees anatomy, science.

Levi sees the way the evening sun rusts the buttery petals until they blush; sees the way dew drops hang like pearls from the tips of the leaves in the early morning, when the light is still smoky and thin. He sees a moment to be captured.

It should be impossible for a picture to hold so much detail. Hange can look at Levi's daffodil and feel the way the spring wind blows gently on her skin, the sun warm but the breeze a little biting, a remnant of the fading winter. She can smell the pollen heavy in the air, feel the tickle of short grass on her ankles, hear the trill of songbirds in the branches of distant trees.

His proclivity for photography grows with them. Hange's interests spear out in a thousand different directions, from physics and chemistry to botany, to engineering, to literature and mathematics, to history, languages and landscapes—life is a limitless source of information and Hange chases it every which way, insatiable.

And wherever she goes, Levi dutifully follows, with his camera in hand.

Until now.

Now, they are eighteen. The summer is lazily drawing to a close, and tomorrow, at 8:45am, Hange will be boarding a plane that will take her to the other side of the world to attend the university of her dreams.

And Levi will be staying here.

Despite Levi's perpetual scowling and indiscriminate grunting, their last evening together had overall been a pleasant one. Levi and Kuchel had worked hard on their meal, and it had been nice in a warm, filling kind of way, to spend her last night at home with the two of them.

Now, she and Levi are holed up in his bedroom, while Kuchel had insisted on doing the clean up herself. Hange's mind has been churning non-stop for weeks now, ramping up with each passing day, and tonight, her thoughts are unstoppable, and they spill from her with giddy, jittery excitement.

"The university is huge, but my course is pretty small—only like, 30 places. It'll be easy to get to know everybody."

"Nn."

"And did I tell you? There's a museum right on campus? They've got a huge collection, and I heard students can access it after the first semester."

"Hm."

"And there's a flower garden, too—they've got species from all over the world, Levi. They'll have plants I've never even heard of."

"You said."

"Oh! And—my accommodation isn't all that far from the coast. The water looks beautiful in all the pictures I've seen—look, see?"

"I know. You showed me already."

Hange looks up from her phone, where the screen is lit with a bright, sunny beach, tan sand and a stark blue ocean. Levi flicks his gaze over it and offers a noncommittal shrug of his shoulder. Hange frowns at him.

"You could at least pretend to be excited, you know."

Levi gives her a deadpan stare.

"It looks...warm."

Hange sits back with a thump, and kicks weakly at Levi's shin. She pouts over at him. "Better than nothing, I guess."

They sit at opposite ends of the window bench in Levi's bedroom, legs tangled haphazardly together in the space between them. The window was thrown open in some vain hope of tempting in a breeze, but the air is thick, and the soft wind that does blow is still stiflingly warm. It sways Levi's fringe against his brow, but does little to stave off the oppressive heat.

The sky outside is dark, but it is alive with stars. They cast bright sparks on an inky black canvas, and there is no moon in sight. Already, Levi has snapped pictures of it, twisted dials and pushed buttons and switched lenses until he was satisfied.

It is a beautiful sight. Infinite.

Hange lets one leg dangle out the open window. Levi gives her a sour look and wordlessly closes one hand around her other ankle. She has a long history of behaving carelessly—Levi has borne witness to one too many slips and stumbles to trust her entirely. It would be just like Hange, to miss her flight in favour of a trip to the emergency room.

His thumb strokes back and forth absently. There is a callus there, rough and catching, that scratches against her sensitive skin.

Her predominant feeling is one of excitement. Studying abroad had been a dream of hers for almost as long as Levi had owned a camera—to travel beyond the bounds of their small rural town, to see more, learn more, fuel the relentless hunger in her. But there is an undercurrent of something else, some squirming discomfort that refuses to settle. It intensifies with every sweep of Levi's thumb against her skin until it sits heavy in her gut.

She looks over at him. His gaze is trained out the window, a small frown furrowing the skin between his brows, but his eyes are glassy, with none of their usual sharp, unwavering focus. Whatever he is looking at, he is not really seeing it.

It would be a lie to say that his silence had not troubled her. He had been quiet throughout dinner, opting instead to listen to Hange and Kuchel's companionable chatter as he pushed his food around his plate, and he had barely said a word since they had cleared the table and retreated to his room. He had hardly even looked her way.

Irritation bubbles within her. Levi is always more subdued than she is, content to sit quietly while Hange babbles endlessly, about anything and everything. But he usually has something to say. His silence, today of all days, makes her angry. They have one night left like this—one more night to talk, face to face, before they will be separated for who knows how long, and Levi is offering her nothing.

"Levi," she says, before she can think. Something in her tone must startle him, for he blinks rapidly, as though pulled out of a daydream, and rolls his eyes to look in her direction. His gaze settles somewhere near her shoulder. She bristles. "Can you at least—"

"Levi?" Kuchel's voice is distant, floating up from the bottom of the stairs. Levi looks at the door instead. "Can you come give me a hand for a minute?"

Hange clamps her jaw shut. Levi casts her another sidelong glance, and ticks his tongue against the back of his teeth. He squeezes her ankle once, then pushes himself to his feet. "Don't fall, idiot. I won't be long."

Hange feels distinctly like a child on the verge of throwing a tantrum. It's immature, and perhaps it's unfair of her, but she had assumed that Levi's invitation for dinner might, at the very least, come with a little conversation.

She takes a deep, steadying breath. They never fight, not really—they bicker endlessly, poke each other's cheeks and pull each other's hair, childish rough housing that they never grew out of. But they don't fight and as grumpy as Hange feels about Levi's near silence, she doesn't want to start now. She runs a hand back through her hair and sweeps her eyes about the room, counting long, even breaths as she does.

Levi's room is immaculately neat and tidy. Everything has its place, on clean, dusted shelves, or stacked in straight, neat piles atop his desk. It is a level of organisation Hange has little energy for; she herself is a hurricane, picking up and dropping off detritus everywhere she goes.

But Levi's borderline obsessive cleanliness makes it easy to spot something that is out of place.

Hange's gaze falls on a drawer in the desk. The drawer itself is as immaculate as everything else, gleaming wood and a reflectively polished brass handle. What catches her eye is the corner of a glossy piece of paper, caught when the drawer had been closed.

Hange is a curious creature. Rarely can she hold herself back from exploring an unknown, and now is no different. She unfolds herself from the bench and stretches to stand, then crosses the room on light, tip-toed feet.

Levi is, by and large, a rather private person. He does not share much of himself openly, hides behind an impassive mask, guards what is dear to him close to his chest. Hange is an exception to this rule, whether Levi wanted her to be or not.

As such, she has no real issue prying the drawer open, and is unsurprised by the predictable contents within.

Photographs.

Of course it was photographs.

Her lips tug up in a fond smile and her eyes roll, but it is as she is reaching in to flatten out the rumpled picture that had been poking out of the drawer, that she notices what they are photographs of.

Her.

Hange picks out a stack and sits cross-legged in the desk chair. She flips through them, eyes growing wider with each new picture she uncovers. Every single one is of her. Some recent, some not so recent—some must be from the very first real camera, for she is still in her braces, all thin, gangly limbs and scruffy hair and taped up glasses.

There are pictures of her in the winter, mitten-clad hands wrapped around a paper cup of hot chocolate, blowing steam into the chill air. She can see in stark clarity, the red tip of her nose and the chill bitten over her cheeks; she can almost feel the cold, taste the cocoa on her tongue.

She finds a picture of her from an autumn years gone by. She remembers it as though it were yesterday—they had spent the whole afternoon raking fallen leaves in the courtyard behind Kuchel's cafe, scooping them into a terribly tempting mound beneath the shedding tree. Hange had been unable to resist. Levi had captured her moments after her dive into the pile, sitting up with her weight propped back on her hands, dry leaves clinging to her messy hair and sticking to the fibres of her cardigan. The sun was low, and it cast her in a golden glow, highlighting the vibrant red and orange of the fall foliage around her, drawing out the auburn undertone in her hair and the amber of her eyes. Her smile is almost blinding.

Another shows her in the spring, laying on her belly in the long grass beside a row of blooming daffodils. There is a book spread open before her and she is, as expected, engrossed in it; Levi has snapped the shutter as she was turning the page, the thin edge of the paper caught between the delicate tips of her fingers.

Hange has never considered herself to be particularly pretty. She is just...Hange, a little bit of wild, a little bit of manic, a lot of clumsy and dirty. Being attractive has never been of much concern.

But there is something in the way Levi has photographed her, time and time again, in the way the light catches her, the candid ease of each new picture, that looks....beautiful, in its own way. Somehow, he has made her mess into a masterpiece.

Levi likes taking pictures of things. Plants, rocks, rivers, landscapes and skylines—he likes capturing the mundanity of everyday life and turning it into something spectacular, but he has never done the same thing with people. As far as Hange was aware, Levi had taken very few pictures of anybody at all.

And yet, she holds this pile in her hands, and there are plenty more pictures littering the drawer before her.

There is a strange feeling brewing on her as she stares at them. She had been so excited about moving away to study, so eager to explore the world beyond their quiet countryside home, that the reality of leaving had never truly sunk in. She feels it now though, acutely; a hollow ache in her chest that grows with each picture she flicks through.

Levi has been her shadow for as long as she can remember. There are few memories that he is not a part of, few moments that she can recall in which Levi was not by her side—he has been a constant for her. Something certain and dependable.

And from tomorrow, he will no longer be there.

Hange had known this. She had known it from the moment she had accepted her offer, and she had known it as they looked through her options for accommodation together, as they explored the local area through pictures and videos and maps online. She had known it as they had prepared her visa, organised her finances. Booked her flights. Every step of the way she had understood, logically, rationally, that studying abroad meant leaving Levi behind.

But the weight of it is only hitting her now. The reality of it is like a slap in the face, a punch in the gut—it leaves her shaken and breathless in the worst way.

From tomorrow, Levi won't be with her at all.

Her grip tightens on the photographs hard enough to wrinkle the glossy paper.

She had done a pretty good job of not getting too emotional about the whole thing. For the most part, Hange had been overwhelmed by her own excitement—there had been no time for sadness between all the loose ends she’d had to tie up in order to make the move a possibility. Now though, all that is left is to head to the airport and board her plane. No more distractions.

Hange doesn’t realise she is crying until the bedroom door opens again, and Levi steps into the room, coming to a sudden halt halfway over the threshold.

Hange can't tell if Levi's look of shock is because of the open drawer and the pictures still clutched in her hands, or the tear tracks on her cheeks. He stops dead in the open doorway, fingers still curled around the handle, and for a moment he stares at her with eyes wider than Hange has ever seen them, but then his brow dips low and his lip curls, and his grip tightens around the door handle. Hange holds the pile of photographs close to her chest.

She is expecting anger. She doesn't suppose she could blame him if he lost his temper with her, then. She has a terrible habit of bulldozing into everything, after all, and perhaps this was the one thing Levi had longed to keep secret from her. Her snooping, on top of his already sullen mood—perhaps this is the final straw.

But instead, he turns his face away, staring resolutely into the corner of the room. Starlight spills through the open window. Even in the thin, muted light, Hange can see a vibrant flush colouring the skin high on Levi's cheeks.

Hange sniffles, and wipes clumsily at her cheeks.

"I didn't have you pegged as a closet pervert, Levi," she says, waving the handful of pictures at him. Her voice comes cracked, and weaker than she'd hoped. Levi's knuckles turn white.

It's a funny thing, seeing Levi embarrassed. His emotional expression is usually limited to small twitches, here and there—a slight furrow of his brow, a wrinkle of his nose, a soft twitch of his lip. Hange can count on one hand the number of times she has seen his feelings show so completely. It's almost painful to witness.

"I don't mind," she says. Levi doesn't look at her. Hange looks down at the pile again. "They're nice."

Levi finally releases his death grip on the handle and pushes the door closed. His eyes are still downcast and his cheek is still cherry red, but he hasn't run away and he hasn't snapped at her (yet). Hange takes these things as good signs.

"I didn't know you took pictures of people," Hange says.

"I don't."

"Are you saying I'm not people, Levi?"

Levi lets out a disgruntled sigh. He crosses the room, and plucks the pile of pictures from Hange's hands. His cheeks are still pink, and his brows are still furrowed, but he has composed himself some.

“No, you’re not,” he says. “You’re a creature. You’ve got snot all over your face.”

Hange laughs wetly, wiping her nose with the back of her hand and rubbing the mess on her pants. Levi gives her a look of pure disgust, parking his hip against the edge of the desk beside her and skimming through a few of the pictures. There’s a curious expression on his face, a softness in his eyes that Hange isn’t used to seeing.

“Stalker,” she says. Levi kicks at the desk chair without looking up. “If you wanted a photoshoot, you could have asked.”

Levi scowls. He straightens the edges of the pictures with care, and sets them carefully on the desk. “If I wanted to take pictures of you posing, I would have asked.”

“Wanted to capture me in all my natural glory, huh?” Hange braces her elbows on the desk and rests her chin in both hands, grinning cheekily up at Levi. It must look ridiculous, with her watery eyes and the red point of her nose, but Levi isn't even looking at her to notice.

Levi says nothing. His gaze lingers on the pictures for a little longer, and the colour in his cheeks deepens. Hange nudges him with her elbow, smiling. The pictures are...sweet, in a way. There's something flattering about it. She slumps back in the chair, her smile wavering where a fresh wave of melancholy tugs at the edges of her lips.

“I’ll miss you, you know.” Hange’s voice cracks humiliatingly as she speaks. Levi looks over at her. Hange curses the wobble of her bottom lip and wipes at her eyes beneath her glasses. She isn’t expecting much; Levi is terrible at expressing feelings at the best of times, and so it’s more than surprising when, after a moment of consideration, he nods at her.

“Same.”

Fresh tears spill down her cheeks. Hange presses her fingers into her eyes, trying to stem the flow, ease the sting there. She doesn’t want to spend their last evening together crying, but now that the tears have begun, Hange can’t seem to stop them. A lump builds in her throat, aching beneath her tongue and she can feel her chin wobbling, lips pulling down at the corners. She sniffles pitifully, draws a shuddering breath.

“Oi…” Levi says, though he doesn’t sound angry, or even uncomfortable like she had expected. His tone is gentle. It rips a sob from her.

Hange feels him move closer. He jostles the front of the chair, and when she opens her eyes to look at him she finds him standing right in front of her, between chair and desk, looking at her with a furrowed brow. It’s different to his usual scowl—his brows are a little upturned in the middle, exposing some kinder emotion; something like worry, or concern.

Hange tilts forward until her forehead presses into his chest. Levi’s hand comes up quickly to the back of her head. His touch is familiar, comforting, and Hange cries a little harder when his fingers tunnel into her messy hair, cradling her against him.

She cries until she feels spent, sniffling and gulping empty air. Her fingers twist into the hem of Levi’s shirt as she composes herself, mumbling, “you’ll keep in touch, right? You won’t forget about me?”

Levi clicks his tongue at her. “Stupid,” he says. “As if you’d let me.”

“I’m serious.” She sits back and looks up at her. Her eyes are burning, raw and wet, and the skin of her cheeks stings from crying, but she looks at him with as much determination as ever and says, “call me. Every day.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s not! Just once, every day. Even if it’s only five minutes.”

Levi flicks her between her brows. “You won’t have the time, dumbass.”

“I’ll make time.”

Levi scrutinizes her for a moment, then says, “I’ll text.”

“Well, yeah, obviously.”

Levi curls his lip and pulls at a lock of her fringe, muttering, “brat. Why don’t you call me?”

“I will,” Hange says plainly. Levi’s eyes widen a fraction. “I’ll call as much as I can. But you need to call me too, okay? I wanna hear from you a lot.”

There is a long pause, and then Levi turns his eyes away. The light in the room is pale and muted, but it is just enough to highlight the pale flush gathering anew on his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose. It’s almost cute.

“Fine. I’ll call. Happy?”

Hange grins at him. “Very. And I’ll send you photos of everything, all the time.”

Levi leans down towards her, pinching her nose between his thumb and forefinger and giving her head a little shake. “On your shitty phone camera?”

Hange nods. She bats his hand away and cranes herself up into his space, smiling something wicked. “You’ll hate it. They’ll be all blurry and I’ll have my thumb in the corner of every picture.”

“Pest.”

“Lots of selfies, too. So you won’t forget what I look like.” Hange blindly swipes up a picture from the desk, holding it up between them in front of her mouth and nose. Between Levi dipping down into her space and Hange stretching up into his, they are so close that Levi has to cross his eyes to get a look at it. “Not that I think it’ll be a problem.”

He rolls his gaze up to look at her over the top of the photograph. Up close, Hange can see just how bright the blue of his eyes is, how dark his lashes are; she can see the shadows they cast on his cheeks, the deepening flush bruising the skin red. Levi has always been a pale thing, but now, Hange can see the smattering of light freckles across his nose, barely visible in the low light. He looks pretty. Her heart stutters in her chest at the sight.

Hange has never fully understood Levi’s drive to photograph everything. To preserve any given moment, bottle up every minute detail. She sort of understands it, then—it’d be nice, she thinks absently, to save this particular view for forever. The thought makes her face grow warm.

“I won’t forget.” Levi’s voice is quiet, caught somewhere between embarrassment and uncertainty. He sways closer, rocks back, hesitates. And then he leans down and lets his forehead drop against hers. Hange can feel the press of his nose against her own, separated only by the picture between them.

Hange is used to being close to him. She’s a clingy person by nature, always grabbing him and hugging him, smooshing her cheek against his or shoving her face into his hair, but she is always the one to initiate such contact. Levi is tactile, in his own way—small, non-invasive touches, his fingers on her wrist or his palm at her back, always delicate, understated.

To have Levi enter so wholly into her space like this is new. It’s nice. Hange finds herself feeling very, very thankful for the paper between them, for the urge to lean forward and kiss him comes unbidden, so suddenly she isn’t sure she’d be able to resist the impulse if there hadn’t been a barrier in her way.

“Is it my dazzling good looks?” she says, acutely embarrassed by how breathless she sounds. Levi makes a small, noncommittal noise. His fingers find hers where she’s holding the picture, gripping it and pulling it until it slips out from between them. For the smallest moment, Hange feels the skin of Levi’s nose against hers, and the warm puff of breath on her lips, and then Levi straightens up, flipping the picture for her to see it.

“I’ve looked at your ugly mug every day for long enough. Don’t think I’d forget it so easily.”

It’s a truly unflattering photograph. Hange has her head tipped back, laughing boisterously at some thing or another, with her eyes pinched closed and chocolate sauce smeared over her lips, a drop of cream stuck to the end of her nose. Hange is sure she has looked better, but the thing is—despite her state, the picture still isn’t bad. Hange can hear the lilt of her own laughter and feel the tacky syrup, savour the sweetness of the cream on her tongue. There’s something so...animated about it, about the way the light dances over her skin and in her hair, and the way the background blurs around her, drawing her into sharp focus.

It’s nice, in a strange, unreserved kind of way.

But she’s still a mess. Hange snatches it and slams it down on the desk, glowering up at Levi.

“Why would you take that,” she whines, petulant. “You’re supposed to take pictures of nice things!”

“Because it’s very...you,” He says, neatly slotting the pictures back into the drawer, and moving back to sit on the window. Hange follows, drops herself onto the ledge opposite him with a pout.

“What, disgusting?”

Levi shrugs. “Messy. But...not bad.”

“I’m supposed to take that as a compliment, I guess? That’s almost sweet coming from you, Levi.”

Levi scowls over at her. She dangles one leg back out the open window, dropping the other heavily into Levi’s lap. He adjusts it until he is more comfortable, his hand wrapping again around her ankle, but does not let go once he has settled. He keeps a hold of her, his fingers tracing thoughtless patterns on her skin. The space between them is warm, comfortable. Hange leans her head back and breathes it in—the peace, the quiet, the simple pleasure of spending a tender evening with her favourite person in the whole world.

It’s nice. A small, frightened part of her doesn’t want it to ever end.

Hange has been set up in her student apartment for three weeks when the package arrives.

Moving had been harder than she had anticipated. She’d accounted for common issues—problems with her visa, her plane tickets, and had checked multiple transport options from the airport to her accommodation in case problems arose—but she hadn’t put all that much thought into what would happen once she settled at her apartment.

Unpacking had been boring. Her roommates were nice enough, the studious, bookworm-y type, but unlike Hange they weren’t overly sociable. They kept mostly to themselves in their rooms, perfectly content with brief conversations in the kitchen before retiring again, and with classes still two weeks away, Hange was finding the lack of social interaction difficult. She had explored some, but the city was vast in a cluttered, claustrophobic way. Hange had always enjoyed travelling, and had talked relentlessly of every adventure she could take herself on in a whole new country and all the new places she could explore, so much so that it was almost embarrassing, the way she had found herself so unwilling to stray too far from her accommodation without a companion by her side.

She’d felt a little homesick in the first couple of days, lonely and isolated. She missed the small comforts of the country, things she hadn’t even realised she had taken for granted. Quiet nights. Star studded skies. Long grass and trees and the fresh, earthy smell on the breeze. The city was unbearably loud at times, and even when the wail of sirens or the beep of car horns quieted, there was an unidentifiable hum beneath it all that never ceased even for a moment.

She felt Levi’s absence most acutely. Hange had known she would, but she hadn’t been prepared for how much it would hurt to be apart. She felt silly for it—it was ridiculous, to miss her friend more than she missed her own family, even. But Levi’s presence had been more constant than anything else, back home, and without him, she felt like a small part of herself was missing.

He called, as promised. Once a day, though oftentimes it was very late in the night for him, and he sounded tired. If Hange were less selfish, she might tell him to get some sleep instead—but she missed him. Hearing from him was the best part of her day.

It was about an hour before their designated call time when the post came. Hange answers the bell with a frown, which only deepens when the delivery driver hands her the package.

She takes it into her room, settling cross legged on the bed and inspecting the mystery item. It's a decent size, like a large shoe box, wrapped neatly in brown paper with her address lettered in tidy, familiar handwriting in one corner. Hange’s stomach lurches—she’d have recognised the writing anywhere, but her suspicions are confirmed by the return address. Levi’s.

She rips into the paper quickly, snatching up her keys to tear through the tape on the top of the box. It is stuffed full with packing paper, an envelope with her name on it sitting on the top. Hange picks it up and with trembling fingers, she opens it and unfolds the short note inside.

Hange,

Sorry things have been kind of shitty. This stuff might help or it might make things worse, but I figure you can just throw it out if it’s no good. Or give it away. Whatever. I don’t even know if all of this shit will make it through customs, so if you get an empty box it’s not my fault.

I don’t get how you eat half this junk, but I hope it makes you feel better, anyway.

Look after yourself. Eat real food.

Levi

Hange presses the note to her chest, grinning. Her heart aches, but having Levi go to this much trouble for her...it feels nice. Knowing he is still thinking of her. She’d never have admitted it out loud, but Hange had been concerned that perhaps Levi would forget about her after all, without her there to pester him all the time.

She pulls out some of the packing paper, and smiles widely at the rest of the contents.

Levi had put together what Hange can only call a care package. There are packs of her favourite snacks and sweets, things she’d complained she hadn’t been able to find in stores here; crisps, chocolate, hard candy, little mini boxes of sickeningly sugary cereal. There are tea bags with blends Levi knows she likes, each neatly labelled with instructions on what temperature to brew at and how long for. Levi had also packed some of the soaps Hange likes, the ones he uses but she refuses to buy for herself. The lavender scent drifts up out of the box and Hange’s heart squeezes tight in her chest. There’s a shirt in there, too—Hange recognises it at once, as one of Levi’s old, worn tees, thin grey cotton that feels impossibly soft in her hands. It’s far too big for either of them, and had always been the go-to item Levi would chuck at her when she decided she was staying over for the night and had nothing to wear to bed. Hange pulls it on quickly, savouring the soft feel and the smell of it.

In the bottom of the box, there is another envelope. This one is thicker than the first, and Hange knows what it contains before she even opens it.

Photographs. A small pile of them, depicting places she and Levi had frequented from when they were children right up until this last year—her favourite part of the forest, where the trees thin out and the river pools at the foot of a small waterfall. The great, open fields, sometimes full of long grass, sometimes clipped short and striped with windrows. Kuchel’s cafe, with umbrellas raised to block the sun on the tables outside, or else warm and low-lit and cosy in the cold winter. Hange settles back on her pillows as she flicks through each picture, a soft smile on her face. Looking at the images of home hurts, but it isn’t a terrible pain—she longs for these old times and these familiar places, but each recovered memory makes her happy.

In Levi’s pictures she can vividly recall moments in each and every location. He works some kind of magic with a camera, to trigger so many sensory memories—the scent of freshly cut grass, the feel of hay, dry and sharp, poking into her back through her clothing, and the gentle trickle of the river water, the splash of it as it runs over the falls, the feel of it cool on her skin. The tangy zest of fresh-pressed orange juice in the cafe, peach fuzz on her lips and the soft flesh of ripe fruit bursting between her teeth, sticky nectar coating her fingers.

Hange looks at each picture in turn, until she reaches the bottom of the pile, and there she stops abruptly, eyes widening at the last photograph Levi has packed for her.

It is one of Hange, taken in the window of Levi’s bedroom. She was looking out at the night sky, her elbow braced on her bent knee, chin in her palm, a small smile lifting the corner of her mouth. The starlight haloed her, shining from her hair and illuminating the jut of her chin, the curve of her nose and the slope of her brow. Behind her, Levi had captured the bright glow of the stars like jewels on a deep velvet canvas. She looked peaceful. Happy. For lack of a better word, beautiful.

Hange grins widely. Her eyes sting and her throat aches, but the picture—the whole box, really—makes her happier than she's felt in weeks. She brews her favourite cup of tea from the blends Levi had sent her and settles into the corner of her bed, lifting her phone to snap a quick selfie. She sends it to Levi, complete with a caption: thank you for my presents 😊 all ready for your call!

Levi responds almost immediately, first with a simple you're welcome. And then, after a minute, you look good. Speak to you soon.

Hange sinks deeper into the cushions, cradling her tea close to her face, masking the pleased flush on her cheeks with the heat from the steam.

Hange keeps him longer than usual, today.

There is a simmering warmth in her stomach as she listens to Levi's voice over the line. It comes tinny through the speakers, low and rough in the late hour, and his dark, grainy image looks tired, lamp light casting him half in shadow. They talk of everything and nothing, same as always—Levi tells her about his day, about the cafe and Kuchel, and Hange pouts as she tells him how little progress she is making in befriending her new housemates. Levi never voices any concern for her aloud, but Hange can sense it in the dip of his brows as she talks. She gives him a genuine smile when she reassures him that classes will start soon, and she's confident she will settle better after that.

Levi seems reluctant to leave, but after a little over an hour of aimless, comfortable chatter, he is yawning and blinking heavily, the lower half of his face nuzzled into his pillow. In the end, Hange makes up some watery excuse about visiting the coast while the sun is still high, if only to let him get some sleep.

"Sure. Have fun."

"I will! Sleep well, Levi."

Levi hums. The view shifts, blurry and indistinct, the mic muffled by the rustle of sheets, and when everything settles he is laying on his side, fringe mussed and falling over his eyes. He covers another long yawn with his fist. "I will."

"You'll call tomorrow?"

Levi rolls his tired eyes, but the corner of his mouth pulls up in a fraction of a smile. "Sure."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Hange grins. Levi watches her for a long moment, eyes scanning over her face. Then he holds up a hand in a tired wave. "Night, Hange."

"Night."

Hange stares at the screen for too long when the call ends. That terribly selfish part of her would have loved to keep his company for the rest of the day. Maybe, with a little travel sized Levi in the palm of her hand, she'd have been brave enough to explore some more, enthused about all the new things to see with somebody to share them with.

Sighing, Hange drops her phone to the desk and stands from the bed, stretching. There are still things she can do—she has plenty of recommended reading to get through, a small mountain of books at her disposal, and she has mapped the route to her campus often enough that she isn't feeling too overwhelmed by the prospect of the journey.

As she heads for the door, Hange notices something on the floor beside the bed. A neat, rectangular piece of paper; one of the photographs Levi had sent her, laying face down on the ground.

She picks it up again and brings the paper close to her face. Levi had written something on the back of it in small, quick letters, less tidy than his usual practiced script, as though he’d scribbled it as an afterthought, or else that he wasn’t sure he really wanted her to read it.

There is a date, the same night she had found Levi’s secret photo stash, followed by Hange’s name, and the location of the shot. And beneath that Levi had scrawled a few words. Hange squints to read them, and then her eyes grow wide, blinking owlishly down at the note. Her heart swells almost painfully and something solid balloons within her chest, squeezing the air from her lungs. Her lips tremble into a smile as she props the picture carefully on the bedside table.

The day is still young. Hange brews herself another cup of Levi’s tea and settles on the bed with one of her books, content to spend the next few hours reading—though she finds it strangely difficult to focus, with the words Levi had written on the back of the photograph swirling round and round in her head. Hange doubts they will leave her any time soon. They left her feeling more homesick than ever, but there is a soft, giddy kind of comfort in them all the same. It's a feeling that Hange will savour for as long as she possibly can.

It's weird here without you. Come home again soon x

#ask #levihan #my writing #snk #the way this has kicked my ass for hjkjhg MONTHS #I'm so sorry for the delay but thank you so much for the prompt!!! I was so excited to work on it #and I'm glad I finally got it finished :)#sorry it once again got incredibly out of hand length-wise #drabble my ass

122 notes · View notes

merakiclosed · 3 years

Text

Princess of the tower

》Pairing: Thief!Jungkook x Princess!reader 》Summary: The thief of the town who goes by the name of JK finds the lost princess but didn’t expect to fall in love with her along the way. 》Genre: Fluff, a bit of angst, Disney!au/Fantasy!au , Strangers to lovers!au, Tangled!au (2010) 》Word count: 7k 》Notes/Warnings: Swearing, mentions of blood and fighting, manipulation, long-haired Kook because that’s a danger in its self.

The sky looked like a fresh blend of colours brushed onto a canvas. Pomegranate pink and papaya orange teased each other, daring to touch but not completely mixing. You’re tempted to close the shutters and go to bed, tiredness pulling at your being. But you were defiant, what good would tomorrow bring? It would be like any other day; clean up, read, paint, sing, cook.

Pascal sleeps on your shoulder when you look down, unconsciously he matches with the sun, his normal green scales changing golden. Sighing, you move your gaze to watch the silhouette of birds fly past, wishing to be as free as them. Reaching out, you touch the plants that wind around the tower, almost crying out to be touched and held as you caress the soft ridges with your fingers.

Finally, you stand up straight and brush the imaginary dust off your purple dress, the silk smooth on your skin. You can remember vividly the day that you made this with your own hands, sewing and cutting material for hours because you grew out of your previous one. Unfortunately, this was the cheapest material your mother could get you, meaning that all of your dresses looked similar. You were dying to get out of the tower and get some more material, experimenting and trying on different styles and colours. But that would never happen. You weren’t allowed out of the tower. It was mother’s number one rule, not under any circumstances were you to step foot outside of this tower.

Your bare feet echo in the empty room as you descend to your bedroom. Along the staircase you run your hands along the carvings that were like a tale of a story that was long forgotten, remembering the day you spent on the hard work. Were you 15 at the time? Maybe, the days are all forged together.

Carefully, you set Pascal down on one of the pillows as you flop down beside him, trying to not wake him up. Gazing up at the roof, you find the multiple paintings you did, filled with flowers, birds and butterflies, thinking when your life will truly begin.

Your hand moves along the wall, almost like your mind is directing it without you. You never think too much whilst painting, it’s where you see the reflection of your own imagination and mind. Every colour is bold and painted with precise lines, curved yet defined. Small dots of gold contrast with the deep blue of the background, representing the floating lights. The same ones that you know will appear tomorrow night, on your birthday. You could only hope and wish that this year, your mother allows you to go see them.

Faintly, you could hear the familiar echo of shoes on the stairwell causing you to shove the paint palette down and draw the curtains to hide the painting. Quickly, you get down from the fireplace, getting ready to greet her as the chain and lock sound heavy against the door.

“My precious daughter.” she cooes, pinching your cheeks making you wince slightly.

“Mother -”

“Would you let your mother brush your hair whilst you sing dear?” she interrupts you. Instantly you’re moving around, grabbing a chair and the brush, rushing to sit her down.

As soon as she is sat down you put a pillow on the floor to sit on, singing the song as fast as you can. Your hair reached the bottom of your bum, thick and tangled from having a busy day, though you don’t wince or groan when she pulls at a knot, too excited and nervous to ask a question. Behind your closed eyes, you briefly see the glow of your hair along with a Zapp at how fast the magic worked.

“Y/N -” mother begins to scold, but you couldn’t care less.

“Mother, I was thinking about what I want for my birthday. Wou- would I b-be able to go outside. To see the floating lights?” Your once confident voice trails off with uncertainty, “They only appear on my birthday and I need to know what they are” you plead, moving to show her the painting you did today, behind the closed curtains. But your grip quickly loosens when you hear her next words.

“Y/n. You want to go outside? You know why we stay in the tower, trust me mother knows best.” She says firmly, standing up towering over you. Her eyes are as dark as her hair as she looks unimpressed, “there are many bad guys out there, diseases that can wipe you out. You know what they do to bright things in the world. They eat them up.”

“You don’t ever ask to go out of this tower ever again.” she finalises, pulling at your dress harshly, “do you understand?” Her gaze is firm and hard making you nod your head meekly. Though, she wanted more than that as she grabs your chin roughly, tilting your head to look her in the eye, “Yes mother I understand.” She beams at you and kisses your cheek. Grabbing the keys, she heads for the door and with another kiss to your head along with a quick I love you, she’s gone again.

Not soon after you could hear laboured breathing coming from the door, the person bangs against the door, followed by a groan. Frantically, you look at Pascal who also has wide eyes, who then points to the frying pan, “Pascal you’re a genius” you whisper. You run behind the door, continuously hearing the stranger try and break the door, making it rattle and echo throughout the room. Any moment now and he’ll end up-

The door breaks off its hinges, the chain now scraping across the ground. It’s silent for a moment as you watch the man look around, failing to look behind him. “OW.SHIT” He shouts when you hit him in the leg with the frying pan, he whips around to look at you. Your mother’s voice sounds in your head of the hideous men with sharp teeth and ill intentions. But this man in front of you was nothing like that. His white shirt was dirty and rolled up to his elbows as underneath was a blue vest, wheat-like string buttoning it together. Brown pants are tucked into brown, leather boots that have clearly been worn for a long time as they are scuffed with mud splattered on them. When your eyes finally land on the satchel in his hand, he moves it closer to himself protectively, interesting.

Like deja vu, you hear another step of footsteps and instantly you know who it is. You and the strange man look at each other wide-eyed and shove him under the stairs, where the kitchen is and hide him behind the curtain. The man stumbles from your push as you take the opportunity to take the satchel out of his hands. Luckily, your mother only gets halfway before she decides to shout, “Y/n, did you want me to get the paint from the beach?” you know that she is doing this so that you don’t talk about going out of the tower, “Yes, mother.” And she’s gone, once again, thankful that you didn’t have to explain why the door was broken.

Cautiously, you creep towards the kitchen, coming face to face with the man, frying pan at the ready in one hand, the satchel in the other. You both looked at each other, he was young, possibly around your age judging by his face. His eyes were deer-like, sparkling with a hint of mischievousness in them, slightly round cheeks but sharp jaw and eyebrows as his black hair slightly hung in front of his eyes, obvious that he hasn’t had it cut in a while. His eyes scan your figure, wanting to roll his eyes, you look innocent and scared. It was obvious that if he shouted at you right now, you would cower. However, he notices the satchel in your hand, “that’s mine, give it back.”

Shaking your head, you hold it closer to you, “No. why are you here?” you foreign confidence when in reality you could feel your erratic heartbeat in your chest. He wasn’t threatened as his face showed confusion, making his nose scrunch up, “Is that all of your hair?”

Your mind starts to connect the dots, “Do you want my hair, is that why you are here? How did you find me?” you accuse, trying to sound threatening.

“I don’t want your hair, I want to get out of here. Now, give me my satchel.” You were shocked by his firm and deep voice as he hardened his gaze on you. Neither of you said anything, his ice-cold stare not wavering as you came up with an idea.

“No. I won’t give you the satchel until you take me to see the floating lights tomorrow night. You will take me there and in return, you’ll get your satchel.”

“That’s it? You want to see the lanterns?” he sounds bored. Well, he shouldn’t have broken your door! You unconsciously pout and nod, “Yes.”

“So, is this a deal then?” he says, cocking his eyebrow. This will be easy.

“Yes.”

“Well let’s get going then”

The words make you pause, you’ll be leaving the tower. Without your mother’s permission. It was against the rules. What if she comes back early. No, you can’t think of that. You either leave the tower now or stay and never be able to see the outside world, “well what are you doing just standing there princess, let’s get moving.”

Feet firmly planted, you look up to the sky that is bright but soft all at once, it looks bigger from down here, reminding you how small you are in a big world. Looking back, you see the plants that have grown thick on the tower, stone of grey peeking out as rigid pieces crumble to the floor. The grass is soft on your feet as you timidly take a step forward, the bottom of your dress soaking up the morning dew as you bend down to pick out a flower. The petals are vibrant and proud as you softly brush your finger along the soft texture. Your hair flows behind you in the grass, but you don’t care. Pascal takes in a big, deep breath of the fresh air, peering over at the young man. He doesn’t trust him.

The man looks at you unimpressed, but in reality, he finds it quite endearing as you look around. The scenery was normal to him, but watching you appreciate all of the little details makes him think more about taking things for granted. But he can’t think like that. He needs to leave you - somewhere safe of course- and run. All he has to do is steal the satchel from you when you sleep and then he will be on his way. He strolls up to you and plucks the flower out of your hand, causing you to pout, but soon turns into a shy smile once he places it in your hair, next to your ear. Firstly, he has to gain your trust.

Walking away, he hears your feet pad on the ground before you walk next to him, “So, princess what’s your name?”

“Y/n.” You say softly, looking up at him, he mulls over what to say before talking, “Mine’s Jk.”

Now fully in the forest, you take it all in. Trees that you once looked over, towered over you causing you to smile like a kid in the candy store, they were bigger than you imagined. You gasped at the sight of a bunny, running over to it, the motion causing it to squeak and hop away. Subconsciously you frown with a pout prominent on your face, you only wanted to pet it, the fur looked so soft! JK looks over at you, cocking his head to the side. How strange and innocent you were, shrugging it off he walks off, wanting to get this over and done with.

“Hey - wait up.”

The woman trudges up the stairs, huffing with every step, her shoes clacking against the stone. She can sense that something is wrong, the echoing doesn’t sound as harsh to her eardrums as before. Thoughts of something getting to her precious prize, causing her to fasten her steps before she abruptly stops, two steps before the top. The wooden door lays on the floor, pieces of wood aloof. She can hear her heartbeat in her ears, adrenaline rushing through her as she shouts out, trying to find her. Pots and pans on the floor, material is thrown all over. Nothing.

As she lays on the cold, hardwood floor, she thinks about all of the possibilities of what could have happened. She can’t lay around all day, she has to do something. Standing up, she pulls her black cloak over her head as her blood-red dress dances against the door, her boots crushing the debris. She will do whatever it takes to get her back.

You walked until it was dark, the atmosphere between you both was awkward for the full day, asking him questions but only getting either one-word responses or gestures of yes or no. Goosebumps appear on your arms from the evening chill as crickets start to sing in the swaying grass.

“I’ll get some firewood, stay here.” He commands, not waiting for an answer as he walks off into the woods. The green canopy almost looks black, drained of colour almost like it was muted under the artist’s hand. Every noise and russell from the bushes makes you jump, you’ve practically been alone for most of your life, but you were surrounded by the tower walls. You’re vulnerable under the moon that shines in the night. It was a weird experience, you’ve seen the nightfall and the sunrise, yet witnessing it outside was so much more magical. You only wish that your companion would be better, but at least Pascal is with you, though he isn’t much help as you look over to find him knocked out on the edge of the branch that you’re sat on. The familiar crunch of boots makes you gaze up at the man, his biceps bulging in the shirt that he wears.

The fire crackles as soon as he has light it, you watch him silently as he tears a bit of his shirt off to stop the bleeding of a scrape on his arm. Maybe, you can get him to talk if you become closer. Wordlessly, you scoot over to him and reach out softly to stop him, he looks at you with furrowed eyebrows wondering what you were doing. Winding some hair around the cut, he hisses as your small hands press harder onto his forearm, with a cautious gaze you look up at him, “Please don’t be scared.” The vulnerability in your voice is evident as he looks at you skeptically.

“Flower gleam and glow” Let your power shine Make the clock reverse Bring back what once was mine”

Jungkook watches you as if you were crazy, but confusion knocks into him once he feels a tingle in his arm, looking as your hair starts to glow. Staring at your face, the light illuminating your face. Your eyes are closed firmly, he observes the silent features on your face that draws him closer to you, you look so young, yet so worn out. Watching as delicate lips sing the song.

“Heal what has been hurt Change the fate’s design Save what has been lost Bring back what once was mine What once was mine.”

What and why were you in that tower?

Opening your eyes, he’s taken out of his thoughts, clearing his throat. Meekly, you look up at him as you unwrap your hair from his arm, the cut no longer there. You wait anxiously at what he will do next. You haven’t shown anyone other than your mother that.

“H-how long has your -uh. Magical Uhm. Hair been doing that?” He coughs when his voice cracks, not wanting to show how scared he actually feels.

“Forever. Something like this” You gesture to your hair, “has to be protected, that’s why my mother - why I never left the tower.” Your voice trails off at the end, still uncertain about what he is thinking.

His thoughts are running wild. He’s sitting there, in the middle of the night, with a girl who has magical hair. Is this a dream? Something like this doesn’t happen, maybe he’s going crazy. Maybe the guards have already taken him and this is all some sort of hallucination. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see you twiddle your thumbs, waiting anxiously. He had a perfect plan for tonight, wait until you fall asleep, take the satchel and run. He knew you wouldn’t be able to stay awake for long, yet he doesn’t think he can do it. If someone gets to you, you’re a goner. And for some reason, it makes his gut twist at the thought of you in danger, especially after you showed him your little trick. People like him, eat people like you for dinner. He yearns to know everything about you already, but he doesn’t think he can bring himself to do it. He’s not a good person and you don’t deserve that.

“Jungkook.”

“Huh?” You look up at him quizzically.

“My name is Jeon Jungkook.”

You gaze up into his deep, marble eyes where you could see tales - most likely fascinating, secrets and stories that he’s held up in his head for years. He was far more interesting than you, that’s for sure.

“How did you find the tower?” You questioned, averting your eyes to pascal as he sleeps peacefully.

“I ran, I didn’t plan the journey to the tower, I just ended up there.” He says with a humourless laugh, thinking about how he had run away from the guards at the palace, then proceeding to ditch the two others. His eyes unconsciously flicking to the satchel around your shoulder. Was all of this worth it?

You nod at him, not knowing what to say, you want to know what he was running from, why he never gave you his real name from the start, why he was so desperate to get the satchel. You had so many questions for people outside of the tower, but now sitting in front of him, Jungkook, your mind runs blank. Yawning, you rub your eyes, but you’re fearful of sleeping outside. Will someone attack you? Will it rain? What if a giant creature comes and gets you?

“Easy there, princess. I can see your head about to blow smoke from how hard you’re thinking.” Jungkook said in a small voice, presumably not wanting to disturb the quietness of the night. Laying down, pieces of wood stabbed your side, but it would have to do if you want to get to the lanterns tomorrow. Your head lays gently on the bark, the constellations that have witnessed centuries watch over you both in this small moment before you finally close your eyes drifting off to sleep.

Jungkook looks over when he hears your breathing slowing down, to see you knocked out like a light. Chuckling to himself, he can imagine how hard today was compared to being in that tiny room in the tower. He sits on the grass, leaning against the log you’re asleep on, looking at your figure. He was so curious to know you, he never heard anything about a girl being locked up in a tower, and surprisingly, he felt bad for you. So youthful and full of wonder, and he was youthful but full of danger.

Luckily, the town wasn’t far from where you slept, only a couple of hours in the morning and you finally saw the opening to the village. Even from afar, you could feel the energy that the people emit, vibrant clothing shining in the sunlight as people dance to the music. They move around each other like pebbles in the water, flowing around one another, as they fill each other with adrenaline-pumping happiness. You only see joyful faces as they bring the village to life. Chatter between sellers and buyers as if they were old friends. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Mother was wrong, there are good people in the world. Pascal looks in wonder, as he hides in the pocket of your dress, he’s never seen something like this in his life. If he thought your paintings were colourful, this was on a whole other level as they whizzed past him.

Purple seemed to be the main colour as it is splashed onto every bit of material you see, as you get closer you see a group of young girls that paint a mural on the floor, a star in the middle of purple paint. A picture of, who you presume are the king and queen with a young daughter in their arms, was in front of the painting.

Jungkook watches you silently as you smile widely, your eyes darting in every which way to take everything in. He gently grabs at your sleeve and tugs you towards one of the stands who does hair, sitting you in the chair. You look up at him questioningly, as the woman starts to braid your hair, making sure not to hurt you. She doesn’t question the twigs and leaves she finds, simply plucking them out. You sit in wonder, trying not to dart your head around to see more.

Your hair feels lighter and is easier to manage as you walk past the stalls. Briefly, you smell something sweet as you get closer to a particular one, your face lighting up at the sweetness. You pause your steps, taking a closer look at what it was.

Jungkook turns around to find that you’re not following him anymore, sending him into a panic as all he can see is a crowd of people. He’s familiar with his heart racing, normally from running away, but as he looks around he feels a different type of adrenaline, but all he has to do is breathe before calming down. His eyes are quick to find you, your purple dress matching perfectly with the theme as your hair flows down your back, flowers intertwined in certain strands. Walking towards you, he laughs when he sees your nose practically smudged against the glass that holds the doughnuts. You stare at him in shock, forgetting that you were supposed to follow him, causing heat to rise in your body.

“Do you want one?” He asks softly, nodding towards the sweet treat. You nod enthusiastically, causing another chuckle to rise from his throat as he hands the man behind the glass some money. You whisper a thank you as you take it from him, “what is this called?”

“It’s a doughnut.” He’s careful in calling you princess in the village, knowing it’s a sensitive topic and he doesn’t need to be at the center of attention right now, especially with all of the guards that he has seen. Tentatively, he watches you take your first bite, a giggle passes your lips once you’ve eaten it, taking another bite, clearly enjoying it as your cheeks fill like chipmunks. He watched fondly, before catching himself. No, he can’t fall for you. In a flash, he turns serious, cocking an eyebrow at you. Humiliation falls over you, at your obvious display of enjoyment. You’re not sure what you’ve done, but you still feel it as he looks at you with his sharp gaze. Lowering the doughnut, you avoid eye contact before nodding at him to continue with where you were walking to, giving the last of it to pascal.

However, you get distracted once again at a group of people dancing, their bodies speaking for how they feel. You have danced before, in the comfort of the walls you call home, but here where you see young girls skipping and weaving past the seas of people, smiling as if nothing bad ever happened, you realise that you’ve never truly danced. Forgetting about the moment earlier, you grab Jungkook’s hand and dance with him. His larger hands encased in yours as you follow the rhythm, being carefree of everything, feeling freedom run in your bones. You know that after tonight, life goes on as normal, so today you will be free of all of your worries.

Smiling and giggling you look up to find him mirroring your expression. His laugh is beautiful as you finally get to see him enjoy himself, maybe he has realised that he can also be carefree. Your feet pad against the stone floor, you know you’ll have to make up an excuse as to why your feet are battered and bruised when you get home, but right now you don’t care.

But you’re soon thrown out of this dream when his eyes widen, looking at something behind you. You go to look back when he softly puts your head in his chest, holding you close, your breath hitches at the contact of your bodies pressed together. The feeling of having someone so close was bizarre, even your mother didn’t hold you like this especially as long as this. Suddenly, he pulls away, holding your hand in his as he runs, shouting of guards impales your ears, clattering of boots and metal follow behind you as each step is calculated. Not used to the exertion of energy your breathing starts to get laboured as you both rush past people, it’s all a blur as your steps start to falter, Jungkook’s grip on your hand getting tighter. Your bare feet sting as they slap against the moss-laden rock, each stride of his were worth at least two of yours, his long legs and previous endeavours made this easy, barely breaking a sweat. With a good distance between you and the guards, Jungkook drags you around another corner and into a darker and smaller passageway. Abruptly he shoves you against the wall, causing you to wince, his body once again up against yours. In your pocket, you barely realise that Pascal is shaking, clinging onto your dress for dear life. But all you can do is look at his face, tight-lipped and his gaze is sharp as he listens for the guards, your breath hot against his hand that is against your lips, keeping you quiet. His own breathing is steady but slightly offbeat as for the first in a while, he is scared of being caught. He’s been running away from guards the whole of his life, but he couldn’t get you in trouble because of his actions. You can hear the guards getting closer, footsteps matching in beat with each other, trained to perfection as they rush past you both.

A sigh of relief from him as you smile up towards him, “that was an adventure” you laugh. The adrenaline that pumped through you was certainly a new experience, though your feet are paying the price as you look down at them. Jungkook copies you and looks at how red and bruised your feet are making him grimace. He opens his pouch in his pocket and hands you some coins and points to one of the stalls, “I’ll stay here, are you alright buying your own shoes?”

Looking around you don’t see any of the guards and nod at him, slightly uncertain. You’ve only socialised with two people, but you can do this! You can totally do this! Hesitantly, you walk up to the stall before looking back to Jungkook to find him standing with a smile and two thumbs up. Briefly, you look down to Pascal who nods at you, a small smile on his face. You nod your head again and continue forward, with timid steps before looking around at the shoes on show before finding a pair of loafers, white with a golden pattern on the front, matching perfectly with your dress. The woman that owns the stall laughs at you before guiding you to try them on. You smile widely at her before giving her the coins, to which she accepts with a small smile, her eyes crinkling into crescent moons. Putting them on your feet, you wiggle your toes before skipping back to Jungkook. He smiles at you watching your eyes brighten up, talking animatedly about how you think they’re pretty and soft. Again, he can feel his heart skip a beat. But once more he ignores it. He’s not meant for you.

Unknown to both of you Pascal notices the looks he gives you and tilts his head, maybe he isn’t as bad as he thought.

As the sun descends and an ashen moon rises into the darkness he walks you along the beach, where a river lies in front of the castle. A small rowing boat sits upon the pale yellow of the sand, still against the calm waves. Jungkook unwinds the rope from the wooden pole and throws it into the boat. Holding out a hand he helps you get in as he pushes it off into the ocean, jumping in after, making the boat rock. You yelp and hold on to the side, crouching into a ball as you can feel it rock beneath you. You hear him laugh as he sits down, not bothered by the sway of the waves. He grabs the paddles and starts to row, you watch as his face contorts into concentration, his tongue bulges against his cheek, his once injured hand gripping the paddle with a tough grip, veins run along his forearm. A foreign feeling surges through you as you watch him, butterflies invading your stomach.

Soon enough you’re in the middle of the river, as he stops rowing, wiping off the sweat that formulated on his forehead with the back of his hand. Swiftly, Pascal crawls to the side of the boat and seats himself on the wood, waiting for the lights to warm up the sky. One particular question has been nagging in the back of your head ever since you saw the lanterns, “why do they send them off every year on my birthday?”

“The lanterns?” You nod.

“The daughter of the King and Queen was taken on this day and was never seen again. They hope by sending these lanterns off that she will find her way back.” He sighs, running his fingers through his already unruly hair. You know that he is hiding something as he avoids your eyes, looking out in the water. Before you can say anything a singular light floats up into the sky followed by thousands more. Gasping, you jump to the edge of the boat, trying to get a closer look, ignoring the tilt of the boat in your excitement. Lanterns illuminated like stars against the inky black night, the water merged the reflection of those in the sky, an autumn orange. Inside each lantern holds a small candle, lit with a prayer, calling out for the lost daughter. The pale silk hand-painted with the same star you saw earlier.

A cough from behind you causes you to look back, to find Jungkook sat with two lanterns in his hand and a sheepish smile on his face. Gasping, you reach forward to grasp one, and softly it floats between your fingers and into the sky, circling around Jungkook’s. The world feels like it’s shifted, warm and bright even in the crisp night. Turning around, you thrust the satchel in his hands, “You took me to the lanterns. This is my end of the deal.”

Shaking his head, he pushes it away, “I don’t want it.”

Tilting your head in confusion, he continues to look in your eyes, his eyes uncharacteristically soft, leaning closer to you, “I don’t know how you’ve done it, but you’ve changed me. You made me question everything that I’ve done if only I had met you sooner.” you can feel his breath on your face, his gaze wavering to look down at your lips as you unconsciously lick your lips. Your heart is hammering in your chest as you scoot closer to him, resting your hands on his knees. Your lips centimetres apart before the boat rocked, but it wasn’t due to the waves. A dark shadow cast over the both of you, laughter of three people getting closer to the boat, “well, look what we have here.” A rough voice calls out.

Looking up, you find your mother standing next to two men who are easily 6 foot in height, scars all over their bodies. Slamming their boat into yours, you go to topple over the edge beforehand reaches out and pulls you into them, “My sweet, precious daughter.” Her familiar scent engulfs your senses, her bony frame hugging you in a death grip. Jungkook heaves in a breath as his wet form is slung into the boat, coughing up water. The two men hold him in a vice grip, hauling him up by his arms as his body shivers from the cold.

Struggling to get out of your mother’s grip, Jungkook looks up at you and shakes his head, telling you to stop. Ignoring him, you continue, “Let him go.”

“Oh no, sweetheart. He took you from me, we can’t have that can we?” her patronising voice sings in your ear. One of the men punches him in the gut, as the other kicks his back legs causing him to fall to his knees, the wood digging into his skin from the impact. “And these lovely boys helped me, aren’t they sweet,” she says, grabbing your chin and harshly tugging it to make you look at them. An uppercut to head and he spits out blood, “Mother. Stop.” your voice is filled with panic, watching helplessly as they repeatedly punch him and kick him. Your mind goes wild, why isn’t he fighting back? Pascal watches on with wide eyes, knowing that he can’t do anything, feeling useless.

The pain that he feels is excruciating but he doesn’t do anything other than let it happen. He hears your blood-curdling screams but it comes in and out like waves, his sight becoming blurry as they continue. He deserves this. The stealing, the robbing, the slowly falling in love with you. He doesn’t deserve to be in your life. He screams as he’s cut in the shoulder, the knife shortly ripped out of him to be plunged into his left side. His blood is hot as it pours out, burning his cold figure. Looking up, he finds your face covered in tears, eyes bloodshot as you kick and scream for your mother to stop. You were one of a kind. He didn’t know how you did it, but you made him want to change for the better. He didn’t want the crown. He didn’t want wealth. He wanted you. But fate had a cruel way of showing him that he couldn’t have you. Another stab, another scream. Not from him, but you. He smiles weakly at you as he can feel himself about to pass out, his skin turning paler by the second.

“Mother, please,” you beg, tears cascading down your face like lava.

“Boys.” She says simply, both of them stopping and holding a bruising grip on his arms. His head sags, not having the energy to look up at you anymore.

“P-please. Please… Let me heal him and then you can take me. I’ll l-live with you forever. You and me. I’ll never go outside, I’ll do everything you ask of me. Just let me heal him and let him go.” You sniffle and choke on your words, breathless from screaming. Your mother cocks her head to the side before looking back to the two men, “Shoo. Take the crown and go.” A sick, twisted smile coats their faces as they both look at each other before jumping into the boat you came on, picking up the satchel and rowing away. Jungkook slumps to the floor, weakly holding onto his side.

Her grip on you disappears and you throw yourself to the floor, “Jungkook.” You frantically try and stop the blood, but too much has already been lost, “You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.” you whisper, pushing down on one his wounds causing him to wince.

“Y/n.” you ignore him, grabbing your hair in your hands to wrap around him, before pale hands grip yours, “I can’t let you do this.” A single tear makes its way down his face, his hands are cold against yours signifying that you don’t have much time left.

“Please, please let me do this or you’ll die.” you softly caress his cheek, moving some hair out of his face, “If I let you do this, you’ll die.” he whispers, eyes blinking rapidly to try and stay awake. His breathing is heavy as he wheezes. Gently, he wraps his arms around you and brings you into him as your body shakes, “I love you.” With all of the energy that he can muster he snatches the knife from the floor before grabbing your hair and cutting it in one swipe. Jagged lines of hair fall to the ground, as you gaze at him with wide eyes.

A piercing screech comes from your mother, “what have you done?” she shouts, pulling her cloak over her, as she stammers around the boat before reaching the edge. It was like it was in slow motion as she topples over the edge and into the water, her arms flaring, struggling to keep afloat before her body slowly sank, as her body ages before you.

Jungkook’s grip around you becomes weaker, his breathing getting slower. Your heart sinks to your stomach, as you watch him take his last breath. “No, no, no, no, no” you whisper, choking as a sob threatens to tear at your throat. Pascal climbs on top of him, eyes sad as he watches the both of you, beneath him he can feel Jungkook’s breathing slowing down. Your hands shake as you watch blood ooze from his wounds, and you burst like a dam. Salty tears run down your face, racking with sobs. This was your fault, he didn’t deserve this. If only you would have stayed in the tower. If only you didn’t fall in love with him.

“Flower gleam and glow” Let your power shine Make the clock reverse Bring back what once was mine.

Heal what has been hurt Change the fate’s design Save what has been lost Bring back what once was mine What once was m-mine.”

Your voice cracking continuously as you breathed the song. It was a bittersweet moment as the lanterns around you continued to float around you, full of life, burning into the ever glowing night sky, almost like they were mocking you. Light beamed around you, a golden hue spiraled around the both of you like it was dancing to a song before bursting, like a firework, into the star that has been engraved into your memory since this morning.

A wave of dizziness crashes over you, making you lose balance, your hands scraping against the wood. Flashes of memories burst through your mind. A small hand touching bigger ones. Chubby legs that look like they’re learning to walk for the first time. A mobile hanging from above the crib. And a star. The same star that you painted on your ceiling. The same star that’s been in front of your very eyes this entire day. Another flash and you see a man and a woman. The parents of the lost daughter.

Gasping, you see Jungkook getting up and holding his head in his hands, his body feeling sore. Throwing yourself at him once again, you swallow thickly holding back another sob. Gradually, he lifts himself up whilst keeping his arms around you, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“J-Jungkook. I-”

“It’s fine, I know,” he whispers, kissing the top of your head as he manoeuvres your body to sit in his lap. “Y-you know what I am?” you sniffle, looking up at him, watching as he nods. “There was no way that you weren’t the missing princess. A girl that was kept in a tower, magical powers and the fact you looked identical to the picture painted on the wall in the middle of the village? I put it together fairly fast”

Leaning up, you kiss him softly on the lips but soon gets broken as you both start smiling uncontrollably, “Let’s get you home, princess.”

The balcony stood over the village, the open porch in front of you was held with detailed pillars, painted in a brilliant white. The architecture fitting perfectly with the village buildings, get standing out in the most ostentatiously way as the castle stood the tallest. Guards surrounded the both of you, causing Jungkook to be on his toes. If this all goes wrong you’ll both be jailed for life. The white stone of the castle glistened in the summer sun as you both wait anxiously.

Heels clack on the polished floor, steps full of purpose as you clutch Jungkook’s hand tighter. Two people; a man and women step out. A gasp escapes them both as your eyesight gets blurry. Your parents. Your mother runs towards you and embraces you, knocking the wind out of you as she storks your cheek as if you were made of glass, her bloodshot eyes smiling at you with love, “y/n.”

“Mother, father.” you smile at them taking a hand each in your own.

“This is Jungkook. He helped me get here.” You say as you turn around to face him. Your dad walks towards him, boot heavy on the ground as he embraces him, “thank you for bringing my daughter home.”

Smiling at the sight, you pull Jungkook towards you and squeeze him tight, “thank you.” you whisper into his chest, feeling the rumble of his chest as he laughs, “anything for you princess.”

Pascal squeaks from Jungkook’s shoulder before turning blue, when all of the attention is on him from his celebration of joy, making you all laugh and coo at him. The princess of the tower was finally free.

Please comment and reblog, tell me what you think!! It took me around 2 weeks to write this and I’m sorry if the ending isn’t as good :(( But I still hope you enjoyed

202 notes · View notes

ohallthecrushes · 3 years

Text

Keep calm and carnival on

A/N: @deangirldream requested a fluffy fluff. Thank you for it! ^^ It was a joy to write it. I was trying to put jokes and a lot of fluff to it. I hope you like it. 🙂

Summary: You went to see your clown at work and you ended behind a tent with your face painted up by Carnival. Cause you as his clown girlfriend have to look like one!

Words count:2016

It was a long weekend as most people had three days off of work and almost everyone had some plans of how to spend these days. Most wanted to spend it with their loved ones and you were one of them.

Unfortunately, most people didn't mean everyone, someone always had to work and this time it was Artie. He had a really busy days ahead of him. A small festival was happening in a park and Arthur as Carnival was one of the clowns that were performing there. You promised him that you'd go to see him as soon as you finished your chores, and you kept your promise as you were already heading to the park to greet him and spend some time watching him in his natural environment. There was something delightful and uplifting in how a person could thrive when they did something they loved. And watching Carnival was really joyful and entertaining.

You couldn't wait to see your boyfriend, but as soon as you got there, you realized you didn't know where to find him. It was more crowded than you expected and every few meters there was another small tent with something fun to do or to buy. Arthur had to be in one of them.

You spent some time walking aimlessly from one tent to another, enjoying the weather and a cheering atmosphere. You saw one clown but not with green curls and you waved to Gary as you noticed him in a crowd. He waved you back and pointed to the right, showing you where you could find Arthur. Sweet Gary, he was as helpful as always.

Your feet took you to the green tent as you almost ran the rest of your way there. There was a small group of people standing in front of it, mostly children so you didn't have a problem to see your favorite clown dancing and singing a song to kids. They were all amused and laughing, and you could see it was giving Carnival a motivation to put even more effort into his performance. You stood there for a moment, enjoying him dancing, and looking at kids happy faces. There was only you and Carnival and the happy crowd, nothing else. No problems, no work, no shitty people, no difficult situations. One of those rare happy moments that you wanted to frame in your mind so you could come back to it any time.

Carnival made a cute spin with his hands threw aside in a comical and ending manner as he finished his dance with a bow. He spotted you and sent you a big smile before he waved his hand to you, showing to come to him now. His gesture was a bit theatrical and funny, but Arthur liked to stay in his character for as long as he could.

- Hi there, Carnival - you said with a smile before you came closer to give him a kiss to his cheek. But as you leaned towards him, your foot tripped on his big clowny shoe and you fell on him. He caught your arms and chuckled.

- You can't help it but fall for me, ha? - he joked.

- What can I say? - you shrugged - Your charm is irresistible.

You leaned again, this time without stumbling, and gave him a peck on his cheek. He smiled and you were sure he blushed, but the white paint covered the redness.

- Mr Caaarnivaaal - a soft squealing voice came from behind you - Is that your wiiife?

You looked behind you at a small girl with a lollipop and you gave her a smile.

- Soon to be, yeah. She's my girlfriend - Carnival responded, his voice full of proud, and you turned your head to him so fast you could hear something in your neck cracked.

What? Did he mean it?

He didn't look at you but he noticed the surprised look on your face. His hand found yours and gave it a squeeze.

- But she's not a clown? - the little girl questioned with a suspicious stare. For her the only proper girlfriend for a clown was of course another clown. Simple as that.

- How can you tell she's not? - Carnival leaned down to her height level and raised an eyebrow.

- Because she's not looking like one.

- Oh! You're right - a faked shock appeared on his face - we should change that than, shouldn't we?

The little girl nodded approvingly and Carnival chuckled before he pulled you with him.

- One moment, smart one - he said to her while pointing his index finger up in the air as you both disappeared behind the green tent.

- What are you doing? - you asked with curiosity - You want to changed me into one of your kind?

Mhmh - he nodded smirking - Wait a moment, ok?

He went into the tent and after a moment you saw him back with two stools and a set of grease paints and brushes.

- Are you serious? - you chuckled as he asked you to sit - Can you even disappear behind the tent like that? Won't Hoyt be angry?

- I'm on a break - he shrugged - Besides... - he reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter - I haven't smoked for four freaking hours.

He lightened the cigarette and took a deep breath.

- Better? - you asked as you watched a ball of smoke leaving his mouth.

He nodded with a smirk as he took another puff and sat down on the other stool.

You sat down too and watched as he was setting up his supplies, putting them on a grass, choosing the right brushes and colors for you.

- Alright - he said with a smile as he picked up a large brush - Let's get it started.

You giggled like a child when he leaned towards you with a white paint on the top of the brush. The smell of it was familiar to you, since you smell it often from Arthur. You tasted it a bit even when you were kissing him with the greasepaint still on his face. But you'd never known the feeling of it on your own skin. When he was slowly painting your face, starting from your cheek, you closed your eyes and focused on how that felt. The paint wasn't cold as you thought it would be, the smell was stronger, yet bearable. It tickled sometimes, especially around your mouth.

- How does it feel? - his voice came closer to you.

- Nice.

When he finished painting your face white - the blank canvas he needed to create his work - he picked up the smaller brush, more pointed, and chose the first color to frame your eyes with. He told you to keep your eyes closed, and your chin had been lifted as he carefully started coloring your eyes. The smell of greasepaint mixed with the smell of a cigarette and you wrinkled your nose.

- That was cute - he said as he picked up another brush to put a different color on you. This time red. This was going to be your new smile. Oh, that was going to be great. He had a chance to put a smile on your face, but in a different way than usual. This time it was going to be almost permanent. He was sure you'd look beautiful when he finished.

- That's tickling - you chuckled as he brushed the paint across your lips.

- I know. It's like that until you get used to it.

- Am I going to look like you? - you opened your eyes. You wished there was a mirror so you could look at yourself.

- No, a little different. I'm using colors that you like the most.

- Oh, that's going to be awesome.

He nodded and took the cigarette between his lips. It was hanging from his mouth as he leaned a bit closer to you, putting his free hand on your tight. He wanted to touch you, he hadn't touched you much today and the last time was 10 minutes ago when you fell into his arms. You were more addicting than cigarettes.

- Now hush, sweety, we don't want you to have red teeth. It would scare the kids away.

You smirked as you watched his eyebrows knitting together in concentration. His eyes got those more intense look as he very precisely was drawing lines on your face. It was exciting and fascinating to watch him doing something artistic, something he liked to do. You could see it in his eyes, that he was excited too and he was very focused on you. This extra attention was making you feel like a princess. Clown princess. You would even like that title.

He inhaled the last time before taking the cigarette from his mouth to throw it onto the ground.

- Done! - he tilted his head as he admired his work, checking if everything was done correctly - You look beautiful.

- I wish I could see myself now. I don't have any mirror.

- There's a mirror inside the tent. You can look at yourself while dressing up.

- Dressing up?

- Yeah, there's a trunk there too. I think there should be a costume you could try on.

- Wait, you want me to perform?- you laughed as you got up - I don't know how.

- You know how, you watched me so many times. We will dance together and sing songs. It's easy you'll see - he said hyped as he took your hand in his - and you can make animals from balloons with me.

- Artie... - you chuckled but agreed to his idea - you know the only animal I can make from a balloon is a snake.

- That will do - he chuckled.

You helped him with supplies and he left you inside the tent, giving you time to dress up. You couldn't wait and you looked in a mirror to see what he'd created on your face. You were amazed. The colors he picked, your favorite ones, were very vibrant and he did an amazing job bringing them together into something colorful and matching.

You wanted to admire his work longer, but at the same time you didn't want him to wait for you.

You looked around and found the trunk. You opened it and picked up the first costume that was there. It was a little too big for you, but was comfortable enough to dance with it. And it even matched Carnival's outfit. After a while you decided to stay in your shoes however, there was no way you could dance or even walk in those big clown ones. You wondered how Arthur could do it.

When you were ready you went outside and when Arthur saw you he did that funny little jumps clapping his hands with excitement. You laughed as you walked over to him to stand beside him. He took your hand and swirled you around before he looked at the small girl that was still there, sucking on her lollipop. Her eyes opened wide in shock. Your transformation was spectacular to her.

You swayed shyly to the rhythm of a song playing somewhere in the background. Arthur was already doing a little dance facing you as he swirled you around one more time. You tried to mimic his movement and have fun, and soon you both were facing the crowd, doing some funny silly dance together. The kids were curious and seemed to like you.

The small girl came to you pulling her lollipop out of her mouth.

- You are Ms Carnival! - she said as she smiled at you.

You nodded and smiled back as you glanced at your boyfriend. You started to enjoy it more and more, gaining some confidence along the way. It indeed was easy like Arthur said. Actually, with Arthur, everything seemed to be easy. If you already didn't have a job, you could maybe work at Haha's with Arthur. You could just dance and sing and play around and entertain kids. You wouldn't have to do anything else and kids still would be impressed.

The girl pulled you by your sleeve bringing you down to Earth.

- Can you do any tricks?

Oh no.

#arthur fleck #joker #arthur fleck imagine #arthur fleck x reader #joker x reader #joker x you #joker fanfiction #arthur fleck fanfic

61 notes · View notes

sugarmaplewings-fics · 3 years

Text

My Universe

────── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ──────

Request (from @kreampop1257): Hi! Could I request a fic where Bakugou and his fem!s/o go camping? it's ok if not!!

Pairing: Bakugou x reader

Warnings: None o.O? Ig y’all get a lil kissy kissy but it’s nothing crazy. Also you eat food

Author’s Note:

Sorry again for the long wait! Have some incredibly soft Bakugou (like literally almost ooc söft). Also this one ended up being gender-neutral (no pronouns) so yeah :D

Enjoy!

-Sugar

────── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ──────

“Where’d you say this thing was?” Your question was directed at the back of Bakugou’s head, his spiky blond hair seemingly flatter from how much he’d been sweating the past few hours.

“It’s not much farther,” he grunted.

You knew how annoying he found complaining to be, so you’d kept quiet on that front for most of your little adventure. But your bags only seemed to be getting heavier, and the sun already hung low in the sky.

Your boyfriend had suggested that he take you camping with him as a sort of romantic getaway. Granted, that wasn’t how he’d put it, but you were inclined to think so. It wasn’t every day you got to spend so much time alone with him. But now you were hot, tired, a little sweaty, and Bakugou had hardly said a word to you on your entire hike up the mountain. Figures.

Following him for a few more minutes, he led you to a small clearing between a circle of trees and unceremoniously dropped his bag. “Here,” he announced, already crouching down to pull out the tent.

You set your own backpack on the ground, taking a look around you. The trees stretched up and up above your head, a thin canopy of leaves just allowing you to see small patches of the darkening blue sky. “This is nice,” you said, twirling to see how large the site was. There was just enough space for your tent and a small fire.

“Don’t just stand there gawking,” Bakugou said. “Help me.”

You walked over to where he’d laid out the canvas of the tent, holding it up so he could put the rods in the support system and keeping it steady as he hammered in the stakes. By the time you were finished, the sky was already streaked with pink and orange hues.

“Clear that spot for the fire,” Bakugou instructed, pointing to a patch of dirt a few feet away from your tent. “I’ll go get some wood.”

And a few minutes later, you had a fire going. You leaned against your boyfriend as you both finally sat and rested on the ground, devouring sandwiches you’d packed earlier.

“Are you having fun?” Katsuki asked you, his eyes averted to his feet as he took another bite from his sandwich.

“Yeah, actually,” you answered, watching the fire dance in front of you. “I like being out here, and the hike up wasn’t too bad.” You laced your free hand with his, turning to face him. “And I like spending time with you. Even if you can be a little bossy.”

“I’m not bossy!” Bakugou said, finally looking at you with an indignant pout.

You giggled, lightly bumping your shoulder against his. “Are too.”

“I just—want things to be perfect for you,” he grumbled, looking away again. “It’s what you deserve.”

You let go of his hand to cup his face in your palm, turning his chin so your noses could brush together. “That’s sweet of you.” You kissed him gently, and you couldn’t help but notice the way he almost seemed to melt into your lips. You went back to your sandwiches a moment later after you’d pulled away, finishing them in silence.

“S’more time!” you announced, pulling the packet of marshmallows out of your bag. You passed it to Bakugou along with a skewer and began roasting them.

The blond hovered his over a glowing ember while you immediately shoved yours into the fire, watching the puffy treat burst into flame.

“You actual fiend,” Bakugou accused disapprovingly with a quirked brow as you raised the blackened flaming marshmallow high enough to blow out.

“The pot and the kettle,” you muttered, flicking off a piece of the scorched skin. “This is the quick way to do it. Besides, now it’s all nice and melty.”

“And burnt,” he quipped, turning his own so you could see the golden brown tone his had taken on.

You shrugged, pulling out a graham cracker and a square of chocolate. “Works for me.”

You tried your best to be neat while you took a bite out of your s’more, but the marshmallow had other plans. It refused to separate from itself, pulling apart in a single gooey string and sticking to your face.

Bakugou watched you out of the corner of his eye with a smirk as he finally pulled his perfectly toasted marshmallow out of the heat of the fire. He took a bite from it plain off the skewer, still amused with watching as you got specks of chocolate and marshmallow around your mouth.

“I’m struggling,” you admitted to him, still trying to figure out the best way to smush down your dessert so it would stay together.

He chuckled at your predicament, waiting until you finished. “You’ve got something on your face.”

“I’m aware.” You pulled a wet wipe out of your bag, grateful that you’d thought to bring one. Once you were finished wiping off your sticky fingers, you moved to swipe it over your face. But Katsuki stopped you before you could, taking your wrist in his hand and sliding closer to you.

Wordlessly, his lips met your face again, pecking away the sweet fragments of your s’more from your skin. You could feel his tongue swiping out, kitten licking at a crumb of chocolate in the corner of your mouth.

“Sweet,” he mumbled lowly in that gruff voice of his, almost making you shiver and causing your cheeks to heat even more than they already were. Finally he moved in even closer, kissing you fully on the lips once more for a long moment. You relaxed into him, fingers settling under his jawline to pull him in. His tongue swiped over your bottom lip as he pushed against you, exhales from his nose mingling with yours. Katsuki finally pulled away, his lips grazing over your cheekbone as he moved to whisper in your ear. “I want to show you something.”

You nodded and he stood, offering you his hand. You took it and straightened, allowing him to lead you off into the woods.

After a few minutes of walking, you noticed the trees begin to thin out. Soon, you were standing in some sort of meadow, wild grass growing up past your ankles.

“Look up there,” Katsuki whispered.

Your eyes flicked to the dark blue canvas of sky and widened as they took in the sight above you. Thousands of stars glittered in the distance, twinkling and bright in the clear atmosphere.

“I’ve never seen so many,” you whispered in awe, entranced by the bejeweled heavens.

“There’s no light pollution up here in the mountains,” Katsuki said, letting go of your hand so he could flop down on the ground. You followed, laying at his side and looking above the treeline, the grass tickling your cheek.

You laid there together in silence for some time; fingers newly entwined, eyes tracing clusters of stars, searching for familiar constellations. You stared up for so long, your eyes began to burn. You let them drift shut, allowing your other senses to take over.

You could hear the steady breaths of Katsuki beside you, accompanying the symphony of insects orchestrating music of their own design. The grass fluttered against every inch of your exposed skin, stirring ever so slightly on every draft of cool night air. You were quick to get lost in the earthly scents surrounding you, each one deeply penetrating your lungs and seeming to spin in your mind.

“Getting tired?”

Bakugou’s rough voice shook you out of your thoughts. You opened your eyes again, focusing on the heavenly view above. “This is so cool,” you mumbled, ignoring your boyfriend’s previous question. “Thanks for bringing me here.”

He tched. “Of course, dummy.” Bakugou squeezed your hand a final time before sitting up, stretching. “Come on, let’s head back before you fall asleep. It’s been a long day.”

Once you were at your campsite again, you pulled out the bedding and your pajamas. Bakugou doused the smoldering remains of your fire before helping you spread out the sleeping bags and blankets inside the tent, your actions lit only by a single lantern.

Settling in, Bakugou shut off the light, plunging everything around you into a thick darkness. You heard him turn over, and you realized with a hint of frustration that he was facing away from you. You knew your boyfriend wasn’t always interested in cuddling, and you respected that. He wanted his space from time to time, that was all. But did it have to be now? Tonight?

You internally grumbled to yourself, regretting not shoving your sleeping bag even closer to his. Your mind began to wander, but you quickly took notice that you weren’t as sleepy as you should be. Pouting to yourself at your horrendous luck, you turned over, frowning at the feeling of hard earth under your shoulder and hip. You’d literally spent the past several hours physically exerting yourself. The least your body could do for you was allow itself to get the sleep and rest it ached for. But your head was too noisy, the ground too hard, and it was slowly sinking in how cold the woods got at night.

You couldn’t take it anymore. Cringing at the loud shuffling sounds of your sleeping bag, you shimmied your way over to your boyfriend. To your dismay, you could tell by his breaths that he was already some level of asleep. Stealthily, you tried pressing your chest into his back. Already, warmth began to seep into your skin, and you finally sighed in contentment, draping your arm over his side.

And then his breathing changed. Man, he was too easy to wake up.

You heard him chuckle, low and breathy from his still-sleepy state. “You really can’t last long without me, huh?” he said, face invisible to you, still turned away in the dark. “What was that?” he went on. “Five seconds and you already want me again?”

You scowled at the vague outline of his hair, catching onto what he was getting at. “That was so not five seconds!” you protested. “You fell asleep! And besides, it’s cold out here.” Even though he couldn’t see you, you knew he’d be able to hear the pout in your voice.

Still chuckling to himself, he rolled over to face you. “Come ‘ere, Teddy Bear, you know I’m just messin’ with you.”

Your pout remained present on your face, but even so, you found yourself snuggling into his warm chest. It was infinitely softer than where you’d previously been laying, and the way his arms snaked around your body heated you like nothing else.

“How’s this, babe?” His hand smoothed over your back, pulling at your blankets so you could effectively be cocooned against him.

“Perfect,” you whispered, finally relaxing your face and letting your smile creep across your lips. Settling in, you gripped the soft fabric of his shirt between your fingers.

He pressed a kiss to the top of your head, inhaling the scent of your hair. “Was this a nice trip?” he asked, abandoning his initial teasing tone for a more vulnerable one.

“Yes,” you answered, and of course it was the truth. “Thanks for showing me the stars.”

“Knew you’d like them,” he snorted, playing with a strand of your hair.

“The world’s so big,” you quietly mused to yourself, lids finally growing heavy. “The sun. The earth. The moon. And all the stars. But you’re my everything, Katsuki.”

His breath suddenly caught in his throat, causing him to freeze for a moment before he looked down again at your dark form snuggled into his chest.

“My universe,” you mumbled, finally drifting off in his arms.

How could you know that he felt the same? How could he express what you did to him every time you laughed? How he wanted to be there for it all? How he wanted to hold you when you were sad and lift you up when you were happy? How could he say that you meant more to him than you’d ever know, that he’d move mountains just for you if he thought for a second that it would make you smile? How could you know that you were his universe too?

“Of course I am,” he muttered to your sleeping self, pressing a final kiss to your forehead. “Always will be.” And with that, his consciousness joined you among darkness and stars.

────── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ──────

Taglist: @aahilovetheatre @basicaegyo @hyunmin-1404 @iiminibattlehero @katsugay @nabo39 @pyrofanatic @rainy-skys-and-bright-stars @sendhelpimstupid @sxngwoos-ash-box @xoxopam4

#katsuki bakugou #bakugou katsuki #bakugou imagine #katsuki bakugou imagine #bakugou katsuki imagine #bakugou x reader #katsuki bakugou x reader #bakugou katsuki x reader #bnha x reader #mha x reader #reader insert #request fulfilled!#sugar fics

199 notes · View notes

glxssylaufey · 3 years

Text

Mischief Maker - fic teaser

a/n: this is my very first time writing so please forgive me if it’s not that great or if there’s lots of mistakes! i hope you enjoy it nonetheless :)

summary: loki x reader ; There’s a new guest staying at the Avengers Tower. To make matters worse, the reader is put in charge to watch over the new member of the compound.

word count: 1,782

warnings: none

There was something exceptional about the way you could stroke your paintbrush upon a canvas so many times until an entire story formed upon the platform. You were sat on top of a grassy hill about a mile or so from the Avengers tower, basking in the warm sunlight while you painted away at a piece you had worked on for quite some time now. Being an Avenger was all you could have ever asked for, but of course it had its moments that never failed to make you completely irritable. Whether it be Tony’s constant fuss about literally anything or even Thor simply chewing too loud. Because of this, you found painting was an excellent outlet for all the negative energy that builds up throughout time. Not to mention the pieces you made were high quality. You had never attended any kind of art school in the past, the talent had come to you naturally.

Though like most great things, nothing lasts forever. Your concentration was abruptly interrupted when your phone started ringing. Glancing down at your phone, you weren’t at all surprised to find that the caller was Tony. You swore that man had something going on practically every hour of the day. Not even giving the call a second thought, you continued your gentle painting. Of course, Tony was stubborn. A second round of ringing started almost immediately after the first had finished. Sighing with obvious displeasure, you sat your brush down and wiped your hands of any wet paint. Clearing your throat, you quickly tap the accept button and hold the phone to your ear.

“Tony, I’m-”

“Busy, yes, yes, aren’t we all?” he cuts you off. You roll your eyes. “Listen, I just need you to get in here, we’re having an emergency meeting.”

As much as you would have loved to keep the day as peaceful as it was, you were an Avenger and had a job to do. Besides, Tony never called to have an emergency meeting unless it was truly an emergency. Glancing to the direction of the tower, you sigh into the phone.

“I’ll be in soon. This better be good.” you grumble before ending the call, not even waiting for Tony’s response.

When you entered the tower, you immediately made your way to the kitchen to wash both your hands and art supplies. Much to your dismay, you found that Tony was already there waiting for you. You weren’t necessarily going to avoid him, but you were contemplating setting off this meeting for as long as possible. This was supposed to be a relaxing day after all.

“Aha! You’re finally here Picasso, now get over here.” he spoke in his usual pushy manner. He took long strides towards you and snatched everything out of your hands, quickly setting them down on the counter with very little care.

At this point, what could you really do besides listen to him to get this whole situation over with?

“Good god, Stark, what’s going on here?” you asked, making the irritation in your voice noticeable. Tony simply scoffs as he quickly walks you into the next room where everyone else was uncomfortably sitting.

“Well, I don’t think ‘good god’ is the way to put it.” he sarcastically states, pushing you softly into the meeting room. Tony’s remarks suddenly make sense when your eyes meet the god that was sitting in the room, handcuffed and muzzled. He looked at you through dark eyelashes, a strand of raven hair resting upon his face. Loki. Knowing his past, you were surprised at how calmly he sat there next to his brother in a room full of the same heroes that took him down. You weren’t an Avenger during the attack on New York, but you most certainly heard all the stories. From the traumatic experiences, to the excessive repair to the city, you’ve heard all the things imaginable. Not that you needed very much explanation, seeing as you lived in New York when the incident happened.

“Is this some kind of joke?” you ask, turning to look at Tony, your voice barely a whisper. There was a quiet wave of sighs from the rest of the Avengers in the room, almost as if they all already knew your reaction ahead of time.

“Oh, I sure hope so.” Tony spoke loudly. “If this is a joke, now’s the time to tell us, Point Break.”, he said, stepping to the side so he could create full eye contact with the blonde god.

“This is not a joke, Stark.” Thor claimed, keeping the eye contact as he stood from his previous seat. “My brother has spent a great deal of time in the dungeons back on Asgard. He has changed.”

There was a small exhale from Bruce that caught your attention. When you looked at him you found a look of impatience on his face.

“So why bring him back to Earth?” Bruce asked, lightly pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I decided it would be best to allow my brother to work here as an Avenger.” Thor explained. The remark made your eyes go wide. “Do you all not agree that keeping him here in our sight is better than allowing him to wander free where he could possibly do more harm than good?” Thor’s suggestion caused Tony to throw his hands up in the air.

“Then I don’t really think he’s really changed that much if we have to babysit him.” he advised. You sighed lightly and looked back to the older brother.

“I don’t know, Thor.” you started “I have to agree with Tony. Plus, I’m sure the rest of us are thinking the same thing.” you gestured towards the rest of the people in the room. Thor scanned the room to find both Natasha and Steve nodding their heads in silent agreement. But Thor was relentless.

“Please, Lady Y/N, I assure you my brother means no harm.” he turned to you with pleading eyes. “I beg that you give him just ten days to prove himself worthy of an Avenger. I beg you all.”

You had always had a soft spot for Thor and watching him look around the room desperately at everyone wasn’t helping you at all. Thor Odinson was one of your closest friends and you felt you owed it to him to allow his brother to share the compound with the rest of the team. Even if the brother in question was a cold-hearted mass murderer.

“If nobody else will agree to keep tabs on him, I will.” you agreed with a heavy sigh. There was a loud eruption of voices from the room, Clint had even walked out. They didn’t seem to matter though, as all you could focus on was the excitement on Thor’s face.

“Oh, it’s a miracle!” Thor exclaimed, ushering towards you to pull you into a bear hug. “My family will be forever grateful, Lady Y/N!” he vowed as he nearly squeezed the life out of you.

While Thor proceeded to embrace your body to his, you couldn’t help but look over his shoulder to Loki who still sat so motionless. After moments of staring, he slightly cocks his head to the side, carefully observing you. Observing the person that would act as his chaperone for the next couple days. You couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but something about his piercing gaze made your skin crawl. Thor finally sets you back onto your feet, snapping back to reality. You soon realize that you were just left in the room with Tony, Steve and the two brothers.

“Like you said, Thor, he gets ten days!” Tony declared, walking out of the room. Thor quietly mutters something under his breath before turning back to Loki, who was now craning his neck to look up at his older brother. Thor began to speak to him when you felt a hand placed tenderly on your shoulder. When you turned around, you were met with Steve who had clear concern written all over his body language.

“Are you sure you’re up for this? This is Loki you’re dealing with.” Steve spoke in a whisper. You nodded quickly, not giving what he was saying much thought. Mostly because you knew that if you dwelled on the situation, you would start to panic.

“Of course I’ll be okay. I wouldn’t have agreed if I knew I couldn’t handle it.” you confirmed to him. Steve could tell you were anxious, yet he let you be. He gives you a small pat on the shoulder before exiting the room as the rest of the Avengers did. Looking back towards the gods, you found Loki was standing and out of his chains while Thor removed his muzzle in a not so brotherly manner. Loki was tall, much taller than you that’s for sure. The only person that stood taller than him was Thor, even then he was only taller by an inch or so. Once it seemed like Thor was done practically unwrapping Loki, you slowly took a step towards the two of them.

“I’ve told Loki that you shall tell me if he starts to misbehave.” Thor confirmed to you with a caring smile. Loki gives a curt scoff and rolls his eyes, making your body go tense with nervousness. Thor must have noticed because he gave his brother a swift shove in the back. “I will leave you two alone. Please tell me if things go wrong, Y/N.” and with no further instruction, you were left alone with the God of Mischief himself. The room felt heavy with silence as Loki continued to look everywhere in the room except for you. Although you did not mind at all, seeing his stares seemed to make you jittery. You couldn’t help but jump a little when you finally heard him speak.

“Am I allowed my own chambers or will I be forced into that cage again?” he asked with bitterness. His voice was deep and smooth, it almost seemed to echo in your ears. When you looked back up at him, you noticed he still wasn’t looking at you much to your relief.

“Oh, um, no. I’ll show you to your room.” you spoke quickly once you remembered how to form words again. You turned on your heels towards the door to lead Loki to one of the spare rooms in the Avengers compound. It was at that moment that you began to question your chaperoning skills if you couldn’t even bring yourself to look him in the eyes. One thing was for sure, these were going to be a very long ten days.

#tom hiddleston #loki x reader #loki odinson #loki #marvel #marvel fanfic series #loki fanfic #loki (marvel)#fanfic #fic teaser

83 notes · View notes

imagines-by-a-typical-fangirl · 3 years

Text

White Lies (Pt. 16 of 21)

Pairing: Keanu Reeves X Reader

Word count: 2.8 K

Summary: Keanu found the girl almost dead, in the wrecks of what was once her car. While she was in surgery, stuck in a coma, he gathered the best doctors of New York to attend to her. They told him she is likely to have some kind of brain damage, what may lead to memory loss. And this possibility added up wit the fact that she's pregnant, made the council come up with an odd idea. They asked Keanu to pretend to be her husband, since the stress of finding out everything that happened could put the baby in danger. He reluctantly agreed, but only if she does has some kind of memory loss. He still goes she'll wake up soon, with her memories intact.

But when you finally wake up, there's nothing inside. You're quick to find your head is empty, void, like a blank canvas. The only thing that brings you some relief, that makes you feel less lonely is the mention of a husband. And you can't wait to meet him, because you know you can't deal with this by yourself.

<- Previous part (15)

Next part (17)->

{Keanu Reeves Masterlist}

{John Wick Masterlist}

Birth

Dr. Williams and two other nurses are the only ones here besides Keanu. You've been in agonizing pain for over an hour now, but it's finally time.

“You're completely dilated now.” Dr. Williams says from her place in between your legs. “You just have to push, alright? Can you do it?”

“No.” You cry, many tears staining your cheeks, hair attached to your face because of the sweat. The pain is too great, and you're conflicted by Keanu's presence. And you just can't. “I can't. I want a cesarian.” Pleading, you rest your back against the bed, hands covering your face.

“We can't perform a cesarian now.” Dr. Williams says. “(Y/N), you're ready. Your baby is coming and I get it that you're scared, but you're almost there. Just push.”

“I can't. I can't.” Voicing breaking, you feel as the sobs shake your body.

“(Y/N).” Keanu's voice reaches you, ripping through the chaos. Your eyes find him, standing away. But soon enough he comes closer, taking your hand. “You can do this, sweetheart. I know you can.”

Nodding, you close your eyes tight and push, biting back a groan as it feels like all strength is leaving your body. You can't faint now... You have no idea what would happen if you pass out.

“Good, (Y/N). Again.” Dr. Williams says, and so you do it.

“I can't.” Shoulders shaking, you squeeze Keanu's hand.

“I can see the head. A big push and it's over, (Y/N), c'mon.”

“One more,” Keanu repeats, moving to seat on the bed next to you. Nothing else matters now, and everything that happened is forgotten. You need him, so you just move, the best you can, your back against his chest as his free hand comes to grab your thigh, keeping your legs spread. “One more push and you'll meet Liam, sweetheart, you can do it.”

His voice brings you a new strength, and you turn your face to look at him, a hand finding its way to his face, pulling him closer so you can kiss him. Then, with your eyes still closed, you hold on to his biceps and push, with whatever strength still left inside you. You're almost giving up when a cry fills the hospital room, the pain surrenders, and Dr. Williams stands up straight, holding a tiny little human in her arms.

“Here he is.” She says, smiling. “I'll clean him up and I'll hand him over to you, alright?”

Still catching your breath, you nod, lying back down, colliding on Keanu's chest. The doctors do their stuff as you try to calm down after all this effort. You knew it wouldn't be easy, but you never thought it would be this hard. “I can leave if you want.” He says, letting go of your thigh. There will be a bruise there, but you don't mind.

“No.” You're quick to answer, voice a little harsh. Part of you doesn't want to need him, to love him this much, but you do. The heart wants what it wants. It loves who it loves. “Stay to meet the baby.”

“Alright.”

It takes a few minutes until Dr. Williams brings Liam to you. He's wrapped around a pale blue blanket since Keanu remembered to bring your bag when he went to pick you up at the hotel. And he's absolutely beautiful, so light you barely feel him in your arms.

“Hi, baby.” You whisper, barely hearing your own voice. Slowly, you touch his forehead with your fingers, softly, as if he's made of glass. You can't control the tears rolling down, but they're from joy this time. You can't believe you're finally seeing him, face to face, after carrying him inside you for so long. He moves his mouth a little, and slowly, he opens his eyes, curiously looking around before blinking a few times. “It's mommy, little one. And...” The words get caught in your throat, your heart sinking a little. “...And daddy...” You push out because Dr. Williams said babies can recognize the parents' voice from the moment they're born, and the father's voice belongs to Keanu, and you know how much it hurts to miss this man, you don't want Liam to feel the same pain. Turning your head to look at Keanu, you're surprised to find teary eyes focused on the baby. “D-do you want to talk to him?”

He nods, glancing at you. He does love this child, that's not up to discussion. “Hi there, little one.” He starts, voice a little clouded. “It's so good to finally meet you.” Liam seems to find you with his eyes, and they move from Keanu and back at you.

“Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Reeves.” Dr. Williams says, and the way she addresses you makes you move uncomfortably. “I must take the baby now. Run a few exams to be sure he's one hundred percent fine. Then we'll bring him back so you can feed him”

“Alright...” You don't want to let him go yet, but you knew about these exams. “Keanu, can you... Just keep an eye on him?” You ask in a low voice before Dr. Williams comes to take Liam from your arms.

“Sure.” Keanu slowly gets up, and you feel a little abandoned. But you shouldn't. You shouldn't have him this close, and you definitely shouldn't have kissed him.

But you can't take those things back. And you're not sure if you would if there was a chance.

You spend two days in the hospital, with Dr. Williams teaching you everything you'll need to know. But you've been taking classes, and reading many things about how to take care of your baby, so you think you can do it. Well, at least the theory. Laura comes to visit, and so does Lucia. Keanu doesn't leave except to shower and have dinner. Other than that, he's always around.

But the day comes when you can leave, so you bathe, dress up and wait for the nurse to bring Liam. You were trying not to think too much about it, but eventually, you have to. As you thank and watch the nurse leaving, you see as Keanu comes in, always a little embarrassed, avoiding your stare, head low. You haven't spoken much. Actually, you haven't said anything to him since the birth. You did thought he'd leave after that, but surprisingly, he stayed.

Holding Liam on one arm, very, very carefully, you try to pick up your bag. “Let me.” Keanu quickly says, making you stop your motion, eyes following him around as he takes the bag himself. “I can drive you wherever you'll be staying.” The words come out heavy as if they're piercing through his throat. “Or a cab, if–”

“No.” Cutting him short, you shake your head. There isn't anywhere else. The hotel is out of question, as is Lucia. And you don't want to crowd Laura's apartment with a loud, crying baby. And the house is ready to receive Liam, so, for now, there's no other place. “For Liam's sake, I believe it would be better if we stayed at your place. If that's not a problem for you, of course.” It takes a lot of effort not to call his place ‘home’. Because that's what that place is.

“Of course not.” He seems perplexed, furrowing his eyebrows a little before gesturing at the door. “Let's go.”

“Let's go.” You mutter, setting in motion.

• • •

Liam proved that knowing the theory doesn't mean you'll nail the real thing. At first, you find it strange that he sleeps too much, even though you read that newborn babies sleep for like seventeen hours a day, only to wake up when they're hungry. And that happens every two to three hours, which means you barely have any sleep. But you're completely focused on him, jumping to your feet whenever you hear that low-pitched cry.

You also start with the postpartum exercises, which was already planned, with a personal trainer that comes three times a week, so your body will go back to normal. You dropped many pounds very quickly. These things aren't that important, not now at least, that everything got real and you're still trying to deal with the web of lies you were caught into, but the routine gives you something else to think about.

The diet is carefully followed too, but that's all Keanu. You don't really see him, since you confined yourself to the guest room, where Liam is also sleeping in his crib, but the meals are always ready. He doesn't even give you the chance to cook something. When you go downstairs to eat, there's something ready for you.

The first month goes by slowly, and you're starting to get the hang of things. Since Liam spends most of the day in the bedroom with you, you asked Keanu to take him for his daily morning walks around the neighborhood. You agree with Laura, you can't and won't pull Liam away from him.

Sometime around Liam's second month, you're checking your face in the mirror. You look terribly tired, and you feel even worse. But the exhaustion is worth it, and you get a reminder every time you see or hear Liam. Taking a step back, you take a look at your body. You did recover from the baby weight pretty quickly since sometimes you have nothing to do but to keep repeating the exercises. You barely remember how you looked before.

Despite being a little early, you decide to call it a night, curling up in bed. You did miss sleeping on your stomach, but you spent so much time sleeping on your side that you just feel a lot more comfortable like this. You're having some kind of dream, about a peaceful beach when you're awakened by a gentle shake on your shoulder. Breathing deeply, you slowly float back into consciousness, raising your head and finding Keanu seated on the bed with a teary Liam on his arms.

“What happened?” You ask, already pushing yourself into a sitting position.

“Liam was crying. You didn't hear it so I came and changed him. But I think he's hungry.” Keanu says in a low voice, and you take Liam from his arms.

“I'm sorry he woke you up. I... I'm just tired.” You're surprised you fell in such a deep sleep you didn't hear Liam. “Thanks, though.” Sliding the strap from your tank top down your shoulder, you open the bra, freeing your breast which is easily found by Liam. It takes a while until you get reminded of Keanu's presence, your senses overcome by the need to feed your baby. So you give him a look, and you find his eyes locked on his hands cupped together on his lap.

“You don't have to thank me. I'm here if you need me.”

“Why did you do this, Keanu?” You didn't want to talk about it, but there's a freaking elephant in the room and you can't take it anymore. And you need to hear it from him because you're not sure where you're going from now. You're living one day after the other, but still, you feel lost. Clueless. “Why did you lie to me like that?”

“They told me you could lose the baby.” He begins, sad eyes finding yours. “Depending on how you'd take the news about the memory loss, Daniel's death, and the pregnancy. Dr. Wright said you were too hurt already, and your body wouldn't be able to deal with the stress.”

“Then it wasn't your idea.”

Silently, he shakes his head no. “I knew it wasn't fair to you. You needed Daniel, not me, a complete stranger, but if anything happened to you or the baby because I didn't agree with that crazy idea I'd never forgive myself.”

You're about to say something when Liam makes a little noise, and you look down at him. “Slowly, baby, slowly.” You whisper, caressing his cheek before speaking to Keanu again. “Why did you... Why did you...”

“Because I was in love with you by then.” He answers, knowing exactly what you're talking about. “I didn't want to. I mean, I did, I just... I knew I should have stopped, but I couldn't. I loved you so much. I love you so much and I–”

“I felt so violated. I thought I was making love with my husband, not with a stranger.” The words are harsh, but they're true. And the truth must be spoken.

“I'm so sorry, (Y/N). And I completely understand if you hate me.”

“I hate that I love you.” Muttering, you focus on the baby in your arms because you can't bring yourself to stare at Keanu anymore. “But I do. And it sucks because I feel that everything you told me was a lie. The first ‘I love you’ certainly was.”

He takes a deep breath, and you feel his eyes burning on you. “The first was, but all the other times...” Keanu moves closer, and you raise your eyes to meet his. “I love you. And I hate myself for everything I did, but I did it for you. And for Liam. I was terrified that you'd leave after knowing the truth, that you'd never want to look at me again but I rather have you hating me than seeing you or the baby in danger.”

“Ke, I...” You don't know what to say, and you curse yourself for calling him that.

“The only thing I need to know, if you have any affection for me, even if it's as small as a speck of dust... Please... Is there any chance we could... Somehow make this–”

“I don't know.” Cutting him off, you feel a tear rolling down, so you look away. The hurt in his voice breaks your heart, and you want to hug him, kiss him. “I don't know. I-I'm here, and I don't know what to do next... I have feelings for you but I'm still heartbroken. I don't know when I'll be able to... Look at you as I did before. You're not my husband, and I'm not Mrs. Reeves.”

“And Liam is not my son, I know that.” With a heavy sigh, he gets up, making his way to the door.

But you won't let him go, not until he hears it. Not until he hears the truth. Now, more than ever, the truth is a sacred thing, and you will speak it, it doesn't matter how you feel about it. The truth is above that. “You may not be his biological father, but I'll let you be his father.” You raise your voice just a little for him to stop, but not enough to bother Liam. “He grew up inside me listening to your voice, feeling your presence, if that's even possible, and influenced by all the love I have for you. And I won't take that away from Liam, I know he loves you.” It's pretty clear that the baby knows Keanu. He feels good when held by him, and when for some reason the morning walks can't happen, Liam cries his heart out, only to be put to rest if Keanu takes a fake walk with him through the house. “If you love him... It doesn't matter what will be of us, I want you to be around Liam.”

His eyes are intense, full of sadness, confusion, and things you can't understand. “I do. I love this baby and I love you.”

“Then will you let us stay? Until... I don't know. Until somehow we figure this out. Because even if I move out, I won't be far.” You're trying not to cry, at least not in front of him. You don't know what will happen next, or when, but you're happy to know you'll be here today, and tomorrow, and the day after. Then... You'll see.

“(Y/N), you can stay here for as long as you want. This is... Your house too, even though you don't feel like it anymore.”

Nodding, you look down at Liam again, who already stopped sucking and has fallen asleep again. “He's out.”

“Do you want me to put him back in his crib?” He reluctantly offers. Keanu is back at the very beginning of this. Distant, trying not to make you feel uncomfortable.

“Yes, please.” Slowly, you pull him off your breast, quickly covering yourself before giving him to Keanu. You watch as the mountain of a man delicately puts Liam down, fixing the blankets around him before walking away.

“Good night, beautiful.” He says, immediately stopping by the door and looking at you. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have called you–”

“Good night, Ke.” You mutter, turning on your side and closing your eyes shut again.

@multific @inumorph @aestheticallywinchester @bvbwestfall @liviiii98 @allie1804-fan @gian-giannina @playboygeniusphilanthropist @partypoison00 @mariafetamina @fortheloveoffanfic @trin303

#keanu reeves x reader #keanu reeves imagine #keanu reeves fanfiction #keanu reeves fanfic #imagine keanu reeves #keanu reeves

77 notes · View notes

tobesobri · 4 years

Text

Bust | Part One: Chisel (7.8k)

“Disappointed?” She tilted her head, smirking at him. She had no right to think he liked her better than Rose. She, herself, liked Rose better too. So she was sure he had to be at least a little bit sad to see Rose missing.

He smiled and the second she saw those dimples she was reminded of his Instagram all over again.

“A little,” he nodded, pinching his thumb and index finger together in the air and she painfully agreed.

“Well, you get me all by myself tonight.” She didn’t realize how it sounded until it was too late. Until she was cringing at all the sexual insinuations she’d just made for absolutely no reason. She could have said something else that wasn’t laced in an innuendo. But no, of course not. She had to continue her embarrassing streak when it came to Harry.

Instead of being creeped out by her, however, and pulling a confused and slightly terrified face, he laughed. And, on God, his laugh was the most amazing thing she’d ever heard. This wasn’t the first time the sound of his laughter graced her eardrums, but it was the first time he was laughing because of something she said that wasn’t about crooked penises.

“Lucky me.”

In which Y/N is an annoyance in Harry’s sculpting class.

story masterlist | my masterlist

It’s not her forte. Her hands don’t know how to hold onto things. They tremble under pressure. They mess things up no matter how hard she tries.

Not that she had really tried very hard to begin with.

Sculpting was just not something she saw herself doing. Ever. Not with her lack of agility and poor attention to detail. But to appease her whining best friend… she’d do just about anything.

The class was held in a little art studio with large windows for ventilation and tall ceilings to display the mass amounts of student artwork on butcher block shelves. She never thought she’d be back in a classroom type setting after graduating college, but here she was.

Learning, what she proclaimed as, a useless skill.

The studio was smack dab in the middle of an inclined street. Little quaint buildings that sat on an angle because why not pour foundations on a hill and make her weekly walks to the studio a little sweatier than she would have preferred. Even if it was winter in their little beach village town. Sweat still happened. It just happened underneath a scarf and a hand-knitted beanie from the sewing shop next door.

She could not deny, however, that the late afternoon classes every Wednesday and Saturday brought her way more joy than she’d anticipated. She looked forward to meeting up with Rose at the bottom-of-the-hill cafe, sharing the daily special with her before making their way up to the studio. It was calm in the middle and end of her hectic weeks that she most definitely needed.

What she didn’t need, however, what she most certainly did not look forward to, what she could have done without, what took her joy and smashed it against a wall was him.

The instructor.

Harry ‘I have nice hands and a misleading smile’ Styles.

It had only been two weeks into their classes and he had already told her one of her bowls was garbage. That the way she sculpted a face was terrifying. That she couldn’t draw for shit and that made her attempts at sculpting even worse.

So by Saturday of their second week, she didn't care anymore. He was a jerk and she would be the best pain in his ass she knew how to be.

While everyone called him Harry, like he’d asked them to the very first day, she called him Mr. Styles. Just to see the way his eyes rolled back into his head and his nostrils flared. While everyone asked him insightful questions, like what glaze was best to use or what tool sculpted eyes most efficiently, she asked him if she could use the bathroom.

She got a fucking kick out of irritating him. Knowing he went home after their classes just as irritated as she’d been. With clenched fists and a pounding headache.

It helped that he was insanely too attractive to be teaching a bunch of millennials about sculpting in his free time.

“You should really leave him alone, he might kick us out, you know,” Rose said on their first third week walk up Justice Hill. There was no justice in walking uphill, and most fucking certainly not in the humidity-ridden beachside town. She found the street name personally offensive.

“Oh fuck him. If he kicks us out, he’ll have to refund us.” Y/N did not, even for a second, bother to lower her voice as they neared the studio, knowing any one of the other students could hear her if they were to walk by.

“Refund us what? We got the class for free, remember?”

Y/N racked her brain like she’d completely forgotten that little detail before shrugging it off. “Whatever. He won’t kick us out.”

“How do you know for sure?”

Before she could make some stupid remark about how Harry secretly liked her pestering him or about how much he seemed much too impressed by Rose’s progress to ever get rid of them, the devil himself turned the corner in front of them.

He came out from an alleyway that connected the street to a tiny parking lot. And while they were going uphill, he was coming down. He was hard to miss and so were they, but still he attempted to not see them.

“What a prick,” Y/N mumbled under her breath as they got closer to each other. And almost as if he could read her lips, he rolled his eyes so fucking hard she thought maybe they’d finally pop right out of his head this time.

“Shush,” Rose warned as the three of them finally met in the middle, at the door to the studio that was decorated with a bright yellow ‘Open’ sign, children’s drawings, hand-painted hours of operation, and one too many polaroids of past students and their sculpting creations.

They all stood and stared at each other for a moment before he opened the door first, holding it as, to Y/N’s surprise, he let them go in first. And while she was still in shock at the gesture, his body language said it all. Like he was forcing himself to be nice to the dynamic duo, to the bane of his existence. While she was too distracted by Harry and his clay-stained trousers and cable-knit sweater with a cartoon deer embroidered on it, Rose walked into the studio first. Giving Harry a polite smile that he returned almost… genuinely.

And right when Y/N made a move to follow, Harry stepped in front of her. She jolted back as he just about let the door slam her in the face.

Today was going to be fantastic.

* * *

“Right, so,” Harry began, clapping his dry hands together as he took a seat behind his messy table at the front of the studio. “I know some of you haven’t finished your heads yet, but our focus today will still be on the bodies. We’ll have a catch up on Saturday to make up for it.”

Y/N sought out her head on the wall where she’d placed it last week beside Rose’s, realizing for the first time just how ugly it really was. And to think she’d been trying to sculpt Harry’s annoying face. Even more annoying that no matter what she did, he was always a lot more handsome than her hunk of polymer clay.

“... because, like I mentioned, we have special guests today who will be modeling for you.” Harry stood again while two very thin and very conventionally perfect people came out in white robes. Y/N couldn’t help but gag.

“This is Hope and Jordan.” Harry motioned as he introduced them, not getting any further in his instructions before Y/N raised her hand in the back of the class.

Rose attempted to get her to put it down, too, because Harry was clearly in the middle of something, but it didn’t really work out so well. Y/N was a stubborn son of a bitch.

“Yeah?” He pointed at her, sighing while planting his hands on his hips. He knew nothing she had to ask was going to be at all beneficial to the group.

She cleared her throat and just from the smirk on her face, he braced for impact. “Are they going to be modeling nude?”

She made just about everyone blush, except for Harry. He hated how she never took anything seriously. That the art he’d spent years perfecting enough to teach meant nothing to her. It was all just a primary school joke in her eyes.

“Yes, actually,” he answered bluntly and then returned to what he was going to say before Y/N’s interruption. “So I want everyone to get a piece of paper and while they’re modeling, do a rough sketch of what you might want the body of your sculpture to look like. The importance is to get the proportions down so that when you use the clay, you’ll know how much you’ll need for each part. Just like we did for the heads.”

Harry walked around the class once the models were stripped and the sketching began. Rose started immediately, concentration on her face as she flipped between the female model and her piece of sketchbook paper.

All Y/N had was a scratch piece of grey-toned mixed media paper she’d found laying on their table. And absolutely no clue where to even begin.

She stared at Harry instead of the naked models, watching as he helped others around the room, pointing at their sketches and where they could improve. His other hand behind his back that gave her perfect access to stare at his rings. Remembering how he’d taken them off guide their first few sculpting lessons. Remembering how his hands had so gently but so fucking firmly caressed the mound of clay into the exact shapes he wanted like he knew exactly what to do with those things.

“See it’s going just as I expected back here.” When his voice was at her ear, she jumped out of her skin and out of her daydreams. Twisting her head around to him as he stood behind her, she found him staring over her shoulder at her blank piece of paper.

She narrowed her eyes at him once she’d fully processed what he said. “Sorry I’m trying to figure out the best way to scale up that dude’s micro-cock, proportionally, if you don’t mind.”

He just about choked on his own spit, and rightfully so. But when he glanced to her eyes instead of her disappointing blank canvas, with his eyebrows furrowed and his cute little nostrils flared just the way she liked them, it was clear his reaction wasn’t for the reasons she’d intended.

He was quiet. Lips pursed, mind completely empty apart from hearing her say cock over and over again. Echoing against his skull. Making a home for itself in his hippocampus for later purposes. When he was not in a class full of students with their eyes on him, watching him get hard at the fucking way she said cock.

“Leave you to it then,” he cleared his throat and continued on.

“He may not kick us out, but killing you is still an option,” Rose whispered once Harry was a safe distance away from them.

Y/N leaned back in her seat to watch him walk down the rest of their row. His hands behind his back again, eyes wandering over shoulders.

As long as he had those rings on while he choked her out, she was okay with that.

* * *

Everyone had moved on to their bodies. Gathering the clay they needed from the front and using their sketches as guidelines to build around the pre-made wire and aluminum foil armature. Most everyone had some sort of a form being attached to the heads of their sculptures by the time Y/N even got started.

Because she decided on using Harry as reference after all and he would just not stand still.

With the models gone, they were on their own, with help from Harry of course. He played several videos and gave various demonstrations to aide them. It wasn’t supposed to be perfect, but after she gave it her all for about ten minutes, she was ready to give up. Her body looked like a very lumpy, very deformed version of Shrek.

She took a break again, watching Rose sculpt for a while instead. She watched Harry sometimes too as he walked around the class again in gloves this time. Smoothing out features and picking up tools to aid in the process of forming collarbones and wrinkles.

The studio was in its typical state of disarray. Random cups of milky water on every table, pieces of clay smushed into the tile floor, tools and used gloves strewn about with no rhyme or reason. Harry thrived in that kind of environment while Y/N well… she hated it.

She wanted organization and cleanliness. Her nine-to-five called for that kind of thing. But she was slowly getting used to it. To letting go and embracing the mess while she was here. She wasn’t the one that had to clean it all up anyways.

The only time she wasn’t daydreaming was when Harry started up their aisle again, walking in front of their table this time however. He helped a couple others at the end of their row, watched some of them work before eventually landing right in front of Rose’s station.

He cocked his head to the side while he watched her struggle to form an even pair of breasts on her headless lady. And even though Y/N was trying her best to look busy, she just couldn’t help it.

Rose handed her work in progress over to him with a frustrated huff after he offered his assistance. And like… no way was Y/N missing out on Mr. Harry fucking Styles fingering some clay into the perfect set of boobs. No way.

Especially fucking not when he removed his gloves and used those fingers in their bare glory the way she wished he’d use them someplace else. She watched while he slapped some more clay on Rose’s poor flat-chested model and proceeded to smooth it out with his expert fingertips. She watched the clay melt under his touch, watching him dip into their shared cup of water to aid the process. She looked away long enough to admire the concentration on his face, the way he bit down on his lip and furrowed his brows the way she was used to. She watched again while he fixed all of Rose’s mistakes just by gliding his thumbs over the two perfect little lumps on her sculpture that sure as hell hadn’t started out so perfectly.

She had no idea why Harry sculpting a tiny set of breasts on what would eventually become a mermaid got her so hot and bothered but… it did. It did so fucking much, she was almost salivating like a dog by the end of it, thinking about what his hands could do with the real deal. But then he handed it back to Rose with a content smile on his face and burst Y/N’s little bubble.

“Might be better,” he said softly and Rose nodded in agreement. She hadn't noticed before, but when he stood to his full height it was clear he’d been leaning over on their table. Closer to the both of them than he’d ever really been before. And she knew he was tall, taller than Rose, who was five foot seven inches herself. And not just that but his shoulders were broad and his arms were a humble amount of muscular. Almost like he was a sculptor that kneaded clay a hundred hours a week. Maybe that was why she was a soaking wet mess.

He stretched his gloves back onto his hands and glanced Y/N’s direction. Eyes going straight from her disaster of an art piece to her flushed face and back.

“Don’t even know where to start to fix yours up,” he commented while moving slightly to his right until he stood directly in front of Y/N this time.

She looked at her abomination, wondering if it would be her worst idea to push more of his buttons or not. But, she went for it anyways. Her lack of impulse control would definitely come back to bite her in the ass one day.

“It’s the penis. Still haven’t gotten that down yet.”

He nodded, amused rather than his previous reaction to her antics. “Can see that, yeah. He’s got a bit of a crooked willy there.” Harry poked at it with his index finger and she became hyper aware of his closeness this time while he leaned over her tabletop again. Because his hands were right there, almost touching her own. And they were big, bigger than she realized. She could see him perfectly through the transparent gloves, his long fingers with clipped nails at the end that were well taken care of, considering.

She would need to soak herself in holy water for a while after this.

“Oh, is that not what the male anatomy looks like?” She teased, not fully realizing they were getting along for the first time and it was because of dicks. Because she’d put an oddly shaped protrusion on her figure before she’d even done much else with the blob of clay stuck to her form.

“No,” he laughed, shaking his head at her and standing up straight again. “Maybe if you paid attention when the models were out here, you’d know that.”

“Maybe if you hired someone who’s cock I could actually see from all the way back here without a fucking magnifying glass.” She was only slightly aware of how fully immersed she was in the debate over this penis.

But all he heard was cock again. She really needed to stop saying that. Because this time his mind was a little more imaginative while he stared at her lips and thought about the way she might say that on her knees in front of him.

He shook his head clear. She was an insufferable nuisance that he just barely tolerated on a good day. He didn't need her clogging up his brain with her cock talk too.

“Just fix it.” He mumbled.

She huffed when he left her to her own devices, not even bothering to offer his help, but she really shouldn’t expect any less. If he helped her, he would be doing it all for her. And that was hardly the point of taking a class to learn how to sculpt if the hot instructor was just going to do everything for you.

“Is there a reason why you’re arguing with him about penises?” Rose asked, hushing her voice around the apparently taboo word.

“It’s fun. And if I’m going to sit here in this stupid class with you I’m going to have some fun.” Y/N, on the other hand, was not hushed or subtle at all, as she ripped off the phallic piece of clay from her sculpture.

Rose cringed when she glanced past Y/N to find Harry looking right at her. He had been helping someone a few seats down and clearly not far enough away to have missed what Y/N said. All of his features drooped and he looked genuinely upset. Rose wished she could put a filter over Y/N’s mouth to save everyone from her insensitive outbursts. Especially Harry. He always tried so hard and for Y/N to brush everything off and boil it all down to a ‘stupid class’ even broke Rose’s heart a little. So she could only imagine how Harry felt.

After their typical hour and a half was up, once everyone at least had some semblance of a body minus the legs and arms, Harry called the class back to order.

“Alright, that’s time. You can put your armatures back on the shelves, carefully. As always, I’ll be around for a little while after. Have a great rest of your night, I’ll see you all on Saturday.” He finished his spiel, turning away to help clean up before a lightbulb went off in his head and his voice rang through the studio again, “Oh, and make sure you bring your sketches back with you!”

Everyone worked on cleaning up, including Harry. And while Y/N took both her and Rose’s sculptures over to their respective spots on the shelves, Rose walked up to the front of the class without any warning whatsoever.

She tapped Harry’s shoulder and watched while his smile faded just the tiniest bit after he turned to find her. That Rose’s poor face had to be associated with the thunderstorm that was Y/N.

“I just wanted to say sorry… about Y/N.” Both Rose and Harry glanced at the girl in question near the back of the studio, playing with their two sculpted bodies like they were barbie dolls. “I forced her to do this with me so she hasn’t really taken it seriously. But I’m really enjoying the class, you’re a fantastic instructor.”

His smile returned again and if he was being honest with himself, it really did make him feel better to hear her say that. He had some sort of a reasoning for Y/N’s horrible attitude and while he wished it was her apologizing and not Rose, he figured it was good enough.

“Thank you. You’re doing really well so far. I’ll see you on Saturday, yeah?”

She nodded, giving him one last polite smile before trotting back to Y/N and helping her clean up the last bits around their workstation.

“Please do not tell me you were flirting with him.” Y/N gagged, using a ball of clay to gather the little pieces spread across their table like a magnet.

“No, actually, I was apologizing to him for your behavior.”

Y/N snapped her head up, first at Rose and then Harry all the way across the room from them. “You what?”

“He’s just trying to teach and you’ve been a fucking knobhead.”

Y/N gasped in fake offense, which was actually slightly real offense. “Excuse me, he made fun of my bowl the first day, you seem to have forgotten about that.”

“A toddler could have made a better bowl than that, Y/N, and you know it.”

She frowned, grumpily averting her eyes to the table with her arms crossed over her chest like she really was a toddler.

“I’m just saying,” Rose started, a bit calmer this time, “stop pestering him.”

* * *

Y/N thought about everything Rose had said. About how much she wished she could take things seriously and not constantly get on people’s nerves all the time, but she simply did not know how to. Taking the piss out of things and making jokes was how she got through her days.

But she did agree. Harry didn’t deserve her behavior. Maybe he was a bit of a jerk to her to begin with, but insulting his class might’ve been crossing a line.

Because she didn’t actually think it was stupid. She quite enjoyed listening to him. She liked learning something new and following his instructions as he walked them through some of his techniques. She liked being connected to all the people in the little studio, even if only briefly. Complete strangers all shared that one little thing in common and it made her all fuzzy and warm inside each time she met up with Rose at the end of every Wednesday and Saturday.

Hiding behind a bit of humor, however, was a lot more comfortable than admitting she found pleasure in anything as corny as sculpting classes.

On Friday night, boredom got the best of her and she took a chance upon searching Harry’s name on Instagram while she took her weekly bath. It had been Rose’s idea, the bath, not stalking her attractive sculpting instructor online. That decision was completely her own. But the baths at the end of stressful weeks had a little influence from her best friend, as did most aspects of her life. Baths were a waste of time, in her opinion, and she preferred the efficiency of showering. But Rose had given her nice smelling soaps and weird fizzy things for bath time and well… she couldn’t let them go to waste.

So, amid her regularly scheduled, once-a-week bath, she scrolled shamelessly through Harry’s feed. Because he did, in fact, have an instagram. And she only knew it was him because every fourth post was a video and in said videos were his hands. And, fuck, they were just as nice on film as they were in person.

He didn’t post much of his face, which she thought was an actual crime, but there was a lot about him and his sculpting. She found out it had been his sister’s birthday recently, who, when she smiled, looked just like him. He’d also just finished a piece he seemed really proud of, a clay head and bust of a pit bull, to which he linked in the caption about a local shelter who rescued the breed specifically and needed donations. Her heart nearly fucking melted.

Harry wasn’t much of an open book, though, unless he let his art do most of the talking. He seemed to enjoy sculpting women the most, which is probably why he’d been so good at de-lumping the breasts on Rose’s mermaid. But all the female sculptures he made weren’t sexual at all. They had meaning behind them. Like every single clay face she clicked on throughout his photos had a story. Like he was uplifting rather than fetishizing.

And not every single one of them was skinny and had perfect features. She was shocked to see at least half of the creations she’d skimmed through were of larger women with imperfect breasts at times and asymmetrical faces. Not sticking to typical European beauty standards as she may have originally assumed he might.

It made glancing down at her very much imperfect body feel a little less like an attack. Because Harry spent his time putting all his love into his little sculptures with diverse body types that she almost felt ashamed for ever hating hers.

Once she was done clicking on just about every single post he’d ever made, she finally found a selfie. Well… not really a selfie. Someone else had clearly taken it of him candidly while he had been working. But there was an awfully cute smile on his face and very familiar dimples poking into his cheeks that make her heart warm up again.

He wasn’t a damn thing like she’d assumed he was from the beginning. She thought his art centered around the ideal, and that maybe he was a little condescending because of it. But his Instagram told a different story about his art. And she wanted to know so much more about him.

She was completely lost in her dreams about him that just the smidge of distraction led to accidentally liking a photo of his from two years prior.

She’d have to move countries. Change her name. Delete everything. Never look back. Y/N? A distant memory.

Before dropping her phone in the tub and really making a complete ass out of herself, she threw it, instead, onto her furry rug in the middle of the bathroom and sunk herself down into the water. Wondering if it would really be so bad if she just drowned a little bit.

Because she desperately wanted to. There was nothing she could do. Not even unliking the picture would help. He’d still see the notification. Still click onto her page and realize who in the fuck had just liked a two-year-old post of his that he, himself, had probably even forgotten about.

She wanted nothing more than to sink her head under the pink-tinted water and never come back up. Her mind would not stop with the visualizations of what his reaction might be. Things he might be thinking. Like is this that fucking bitch from my sculpting class? Or whether or not she might find herself blocked by morning.

God, just make it stop.

But suddenly her phone buzzed and her heart just about stopped beating. It had to be the notification that Harry blocked her. Was that even a thing? Did Instagram notify you if someone blocked you? And why was her phone on silent? Because her Instagram notifications and her text messages made very different sounds. If it was just a text, she’d consider ignoring it. She’d continue marinating in all her shame a little while longer. But it ate her alive not knowing what the buzzing was from.

So, carefully, she pulled herself upright and reached across the floor until she had her phone in her hand. Before she clicked the screen on, though, she closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath.

But when she opened her eyes and found out why her phone had buzzed, she let that breath out and settled her ass down again. It was Rose.

Hey, I can’t make it tomorrow for class. Felt like absolute shit at work today and had to go home because as it turns out I have the flu.

“Fuck,” Y/N mumbled to herself. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to go alone because facing Harry after she just did what she did was one thing, but doing it all by herself was another. But a part of her did still want to go tomorrow. The part before her horrific accident when she was full on getting a love boner over Harry. She’d wanted to see him again so fucking bad.

Okay. I probably won’t go too then

Y/N physically frowned at the idea of waiting another five days to see Harry again. Her brain really needed to make its fucking mind up about him. Did she want to see him or not?

No! You have to go and tell me what I missed!

Y/N rolled her eyes, but felt relieved. Even after her embarrassing slip up, her desire to see Harry again still prevailed. And she hated it. How was she even supposed to look him in the eye tomorrow, both of them knowing damn well she’d been stalking his Instagram back to two fucking years ago?

* * *

It was beyond weird sitting in their usual cafe on Justice Hill alone, even without the whole Instagram fiasco of the previous night she was trying everything in her power to forget about.

However all the desperate attempts to bury that awful experience were fruitless when she glanced across the room over her latte and found a very familiar set of grumpy-looking eyes already staring at her. But once she did notice him, he immediately looked away, stepping up to the counter to order his own cup of coffee.

She nearly choked on her drink, having to set it down and wipe what had spilled onto her chin off with a napkin she’d already used to sop up another one of her messes.

Of the three weeks now they’d been going to classes and frequenting the cafe just before, she’d never seen Harry. It was like he didn’t have a life outside being an instructor. He just popped up in the studio and she always left before him so she had no idea what he did after class either.

But seeing him here was like seeing a fucking unicorn in real life.

She couldn’t help watching him either, even if she knew she shouldn't. But, in her defense, he was wearing beautiful wine-colored corduroy pants with a tight white t-shirt tucked into them and a beige coat thrown over his arm to match. And for shoes he had on his usual white vans that had gained a few more scuff marks since the last time she’d seen him. His fashion would look terrible on anyone besides him.

He glanced her way again, briefly, when he left the counter with his cup, fighting his legs from walking in her direction but not exactly winning that battle.

And to her surprise, he stood right in front of her, behind the chair where Rose usually sat.

And when she looked up at him, he completely forgot why he had come over. He had no fucking clue what he was doing there. But it was too late now for him to back away and pretend like it never happened.

“Your friend's not coming?” His voice shook, but she didn’t notice with the way he finally took his fucking eyes off of her and gave her a chance to breathe again. He glanced at his watch just to confirm that it was, in fact, only five minutes until class started and it seemed reasonable to assume Rose wasn’t meeting her before then.

She pulled herself together and pretended like his close presence wasn’t intimidating her in the slightest.

He smiled and the second she saw those dimples she was reminded of his Instagram all over again.

“A little,” he nodded, pinching his thumb and index finger together in the air and she painfully agreed.

“Lucky me.”

He left her so fucking speechless, that after he started backing away from her table, reminding her to not be late, she still ended up being late. Because she sat in her chair for what felt like a century repeating his two words over and over again in her head.

Lucky me.

She knew he was only teasing but the way he’d just gone along with her original joke and how his voice sounded when he said it, she could not believe it. She could also not believe how Harry had some kind of massive hold on her that she sat staring at a wall for ten minutes trying to figure out how to operate properly again just to get up out of her chair.

Lucky fucking me.

She could scream.

If she wasn’t in public.

There was an extra pep in her step as she took Justice Hill alone this time, partially because of how giddy Harry had made her and partially because she was late… right after he told her not to be. But how was she supposed to be on time after what he’d just done to her emotions. And to the throbbing mess between her legs, but that's another story entirely.

Everyone was all over the place when she’d finally arrived, though, so it made slipping in the back that much easier. Not that she got past Harry’s watchful eyes, though, but at least she wasn’t interrupting anything while the class readied their workstations for another full night of going ham on their sculptures.

Harry kept his eyes on her mostly the entire time she did the same at her empty little area, watching as she tucked her purse under the desk for safekeeping and threw a couple tools he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her use onto the table. When she wandered off to the wall of shelves to retrieve her absolutely horrifying work of art, he finally gave her some privacy again. But he couldn’t help the fact that he’d been worried sick when she didn’t show up on time after he’d just seen her at the cafe, thinking something horrible could have happened to her between there and here.

So making sure she was unscathed before he, too, got his area organized was essential.

She sat in her chair and stared at what she had made the past three weeks. They’d started with something simple on the first day, taking a pre-cut slice of clay and free-handing a bowl with a few tips from Harry thrown in here and there. Then they jumped straight in after he showed them a few clips of sculptors working, pausing to explain specific things about creating a head and face. They were given everything they needed to make sculpting a complete figurine of a human body as easy as possible.

And still, she managed to create a combination of Shrek and the abominable snowman.

She huffed, wondering if she asked nicely enough Harry would let her just start all over. But before she could even think to do so, he clapped his hands together and got everyone’s attention for today’s mini-tutorial.

He explained smoothing to them and how there were many different ways of doing it so that your end results weren't littered in fingerprints. He reminded them to use water to smooth out the initial shapes of the clay they wanted and if they were having a really hard time with too much warmth from their fingers to use the gloves.

He ventured a little into detail work of the bust, showing a short clip of another artist forming collar bones with just two tools and her fingers. He explained what tools those were and why they were the most efficient for details and went on some more about other detail tools that were good for different things.

And the entire time she was far too lost in his voice and how his eyes lit up passionately when he rambled to even think about the fact that she wasn’t taking a single note for Rose’s sake.

They’d done a few lessons on details for the face, but they had yet to really get that far, only having put on tentative eyelids, lips and a nose for their heads before he really dove deep into details in what she assumed would be a full class later on.

And when he finally took a break to ask for any questions, she was, of course, the first to raise her hand. He thought about ignoring it, knowing all too well that anytime Y/N raised her hand in the back of his classroom, she was up to no good. But he was too nice to do that to anyone, even her.

So he called on her by nodding his head and she cleared her throat while he grimaced, expecting the worst.

“So, um, for example if we were going to do bigger details like abs on a male figure, what would be the best tool for that?”

He could have sworn he was having a heart attack. He had to blink a few times just to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. She was actually asking him a legitimate question, and a good one at that. He had to repeat what she said in his head first, just to make sure it was real, before he answered, completely unprepared.

“Um… well after you lay out the clay where you want on the body, you can use one of the knives to blend the edges,” he held up an example of one for her, “and then a large ball or oval tool like this,” he held up another, “to smooth everything out. You’d probably want a more blunt pointed end to shape them, though, after you blend the clay in.”

She nodded like she’d been fully absorbing every single word coming out of his mouth and then he watched as she dug around quietly in the tool kit on her desk, in search of the types of tools he’d mentioned.

He could not fucking believe it though. She finally showed a stitch of interest in learning about sculpting. And he had no idea why she decided to right now. Maybe it was because she was without her partner in crime, but either way he was stunned. Absolutely fucking marveled.

After a few more questions and some demonstrations, he let everyone go and continue working on their projects while he circled the room as he normally did. And he found himself glancing at her from time to time, all by herself in the back with a genuine look of concentration on her face as she attempted making her creature a little less loch ness monster and a little more human.

Eventually, after he figured she was giving it enough effort for him to step in and help if she needed, he headed her way. And just as she sensed him walking down her aisle, while she was busy shaving off clay, a piece of it went flying into the air, completely out of control.

He stopped in his tracks after almost being smacked in the face with a chunk of clay and bent over to pick it up before someone squished it into the bottom of their shoes. He leaned over the edge of the table in front of her again, setting the piece of clay down next to her gently while she bit her lips between her teeth and tried to hide her embarrassed red cheeks behind her hands.

“Sorry!” She squealed at him, further digging herself into a hole.

He shook his head, “S’alright. Not the first time that’s happened.”

She laughed at the thought of him actually getting hit in the money maker with a hunk of clay and it eased her worries a little.

“So how are those abs going then?” He asked.

She stared at her sculpture for a moment before she sighed and turned it around to face him. It wasn’t as bad as it had been before, but it was still pretty rough.

“Mind if I…?” He held his hands out and she, without a single hesitation, handed it over to him.

He immediately grabbed the shaving tool she’d been using, and since it still sat next to her where she’d put it down moments ago, his fingers brushed against her hand when he picked it up. Sending every one of her nerves in the general area on a field day to mess with her nether regions again. It’s just… his fucking hands were an art form in and of themselves. His knuckles prominent, stretching soft skin around the bone. His veins protruding every time he made a more delicate move that required precision. Even the ones on his arms underneath the ink when he was a bit more rough with her sculpture sent her over the moon, while he shaved off bits and pieces with firm pressure to define the shape of the body and somehow create a human-like figure from her mess.

Then he started smoothing down the surface with a little water on his fingers and she went batshit. His hands while dry were one thing, but sparkling, wet, slippery fingertips? Lord have mercy.

She watched him spread a chunk of extra clay onto what would be the figure’s chest to build it up a little more with the knowledge of their previous conversations about dicks and abs making it clear she was attempting to make a male figure. She couldn’t help but watch his muscles flex underneath his tight white t-shirt. From far away across the cafe it had caught her attention. And now right here, she was definitely not letting it go unnoticed. It wasn’t too tight that he looked ridiculous, but just the right amount to show off every curve of his biceps and triceps and whatever other -ceps he had hiding underneath the shirt. He was normally in oversized tops so she was taking full advantage while she still had the chance to.

When he handed it back to her, it was like he’d done some kind of magic spell to get it to look so good after what she’d given him to work with. He leaned forward a little more and pointed at the figure’s chest and she was only halfway paying attention to him when he spoke, mostly focusing on how close he was and every single time he accidentally brushed his skin against hers.

“So if you want to make the abs,” he paused to glance over and dig through her pile of tools until he found the one he was looking for. “Use this to kind of sketch out the shape like we did with the faces,” he took the ball tool and rolled it down the middle of the chest, making a short indent to separate where the pectorals might be, “then you can add on the dimension like I was saying earlier.”

She took over the tool when he flipped it around and gave it to her so she could try for herself. And he watched for a short while as she did what he said to do, sketching out tentative abs, but not really knowing exactly what they looked like to come to any sort of realistic end. Her figure started to look like a shirtless Johnny Bravo.

He just giggled and pointed his stupid finger back into her personal space, smoothing down her mistakes until they disappeared, “Have you never seen a six-pack that wasn’t on a cartoon character?”

She racked her brain, trying to say something funny, but once she looked into his eyes, nothing came to mind. “Of course I have. I just don’t know how to make them look realistic.” She couldn’t exactly remember the last time she’d been faced with a naked man’s chest, but she had seen them before.

“Well…” Harry sighed, resting his head on his hand and staring at her sculpture sideways, “he doesn’t have to have abs.”

And then she said it. Something worse than her earlier set of words back at the cafe. She had no clue what was going on with her tonight, but she needed an ass-kicking for it.

“Do you have abs?”

“Me?” His eyes flickered up to hers in shock and it was far too late for her to backtrack, she was here and she had to face what she’d done. Even while he looked at her like she was fucking insane.

“Uh, well. I mean…” She had no fucking clue what she meant. And even if she did, she sure as shit wasn’t telling him.

Then it clicked in his brain. “You’re not using me as reference, are you?”

After a solid three seconds of just staring at him, she laughed. “No, of course not.”

“Hope so after you gave him that wonky penis.”

She sighed once they were through it. Once he’d proved, yet again, that he didn’t make her embarrassing statements feel as bad as they really were. He kind of just... went along with it.

But then she made it even worse.

“So yours isn’t wonky and crooked, then?”

Jesus, fuck Y/N just shut up.

His smile never faded, however, and instead, he leaned close again and whispered, “Maybe one day you’ll be lucky enough to find out.”

#harry styles fanfiction #harry styles imagine #harry styles fanfic #harry styles writing #sculptor!harry

946 notes · View notes

anystalker707 · 3 years

Text

You're like art

Pairing: Gerard x Reader Word counting: 1 603 Genre: Fluff / Cottagecore Summary: Gerard and (y/n) have a peaceful day, painting by the lake and laying down on flower fields

Requested on Wattpad

Gerard and I have been planning it for a time already, but the universe never seemed to comply with us until today, when the sun finally decided to show up in a day when we're completely free from any appointment. We shared the same thought as soon as we woke up, even without having changed any word. Our equipment has been prepared for a long time so we wouldn't waste time before just grabbing it to go, leaning against the wall of the bedroom, to a point a thin sheet of dust covered them objects when we moved to grab them.

I organize a bag with food and a few drinks since we obviously won't be returning so soon and make sure we have everything for us to leave.

We have had lunch about half an hour ago, in a way the sun is bright and high in the sky once we leave our house, but it isn't exactly a problem since the place we're going to isn't far from here and perfectly shaded by trees at this time of the day. The warm embraces us like a warm hug from the woods once we start walking into it, proving we were right in choosing lighter clothes to wear.

"Did you grab the solvent?" Gerard asks, voice muffled among the sound of the wind going through the tree's leaves and the dry ones cracking under our feet along with twigs. The woods so silent, yet so loud.

"Of course, I had left it along with the paints already," I tell him, glancing at Gerard with a smile before I press a kiss to his cheek.

Thankfully, the lake soon comes into view.

The lake isn't that wide, water almost completely clear as it is surrounded by bright green grass which covers the way until the small plants start turning into trees. Lilac flowers grow on a few points, along with a few yellow ones, giving the place an even more pleasing, comfortable, warm vibe.

Both of us have been working on a painting together – we made sure of bringing it with us today so we can work more on it. Maybe it's the excitement for doing everything, the whole time we spent wanting to work on this, even the setting, but the need to paint is so great. Seeing the paint laying around, having stains of paint all over our hands, observing the delicate result of the soft brushes against the canvas are almost like if a necessity as important as eating, right now, making us feel like the lack of it will drive us to death, in a way.

Gerard observes me throwing a blanket over the grass before he takes a seat beside me, carefully placing the canvas down on the ground. We start organizing everything, the brushes, bottle of solvent, paints and palette, along with the cloths to clean the brushes on. Bringing the stand wasn't really an option since it wouldn't be exactly convenient, so the ground it is.

A sigh escapes my lips as I observe Gerard carefully starting to fill the palette with paint and mixing the colors carefully to reach the tone he wants.

The sunlight casts over Gerard, squirming between the leaves and making its way through the trees, creating light spots that illuminate his pale skin and create beautifully contrasted shadows, giving Gerard a baroque air, which gets even richer when his eyes are illuminated the right way.

"What?" Gerard asks, a shy smile taking over his lips when he notices I've been observing him.

"You're just so beautiful," I tell him the truth with a smile, watching it as his cheeks gain a red tone with the compliment and his eyes drift downwards.

"It's just because you love me." Gerard turns back to the painting, thought noticeably happy with the compliment. "C'mon, paint with me, quit gazing at me so much," he teases lightly, momentarily pausing his actions to pull a dark strand of hair away from his face, hooking it behind his ear.

"Sure, love." Despite my words, I instead move to grab the polaroid camera from the bag and proceed to take a picture of Gerard. He only notices it due to the sound of the picture being taken.

"Hey!" He glares playfully, humming as he leans in closer to me. "Let me take a look."

The picture slowly appears on the small piece of paper and I smile pleased with it, though it absolutely doesn't make justice for Gerard and the beauty he holds right now. He doesn't share the same thoughts. I roll my eyes, giving his arm a light slap. "Let's paint," I say as putting the camera aside and finally moving to help him with it.

At some point, the attention we once gave the paint is reduced to neglect since we end up getting more distracted with snapping multiple pictures of each other, giggling as we roll around on the grass. I take more pictures of Gerard, easily snatching the camera from him, managing to capture all the moments in which he's giggling or trying to act angry at me. Gerard quickly tries to solve this and, before I can notice, he's straddling my hips to prevent me from moving and taking uncountable photos of me like I did to him moments ago.

"I guess we ran out of paper..." Gerard mutters, furrowing his eyebrows as he presses down on the button a few times, but nothing comes from the camera. He just stares at it in frustration, pouting.

"'Seems like it," I say with a sigh, calming myself down after all the laughter. My hand runs up and down Gerard's thighs in an affectionate motion while I observe him still fidgeting with the camera. "I didn't think we would take this many of pictures, so..."

"Sounds fair." Gerard puts it away and his expression changes into a loving one once he turns to me again, hands taking place on my shoulders. His lips meet to mine in a sweet kiss, his hand cupping my neck as his thumb traces my jawline softly. He pulls away at some point, but quickly pulls me to a kiss again, humming quietly against my lips. "We should go to the flower field nearby. You know how beautiful it gets during the sunset."

"Of course," I say with a smile, brushing my nose against his lightly. "There will be no problem if we leave our things here, right?"

"Well, if anyone wants a halfway done painting and pictures of two random strangers being weird... good for them, good for them," he says sarcastically and both of us break in chuckles. "Let's go." Pecking my lips, a last time, he moves to stand up.

We grab the cans of tea we brought with us and head towards the flower field. There's a small space on which we like to lay, mainly because we end up not damaging any of the flowers due to the lack of anything but grass there. The flowers aren't too tall and are the same lilac and yellow ones from around the lake, giving us a notion of their origin, though the field holds a greater variety of flowers and colors.

I press my lips to Gerard's suddenly, stealing a kiss from him and continue pressing kisses all over his face, what has him giggling. "I won't be able to drink my tea, that way," he complains, but all I do is to roll my eyes and press a kiss to his pouting lips. He stares and I can't help but to chuckle.

The sun is starting to set itself down in the horizon when we start sipping on our drinks and I start observing the field, which's down a hill that ends in another clearing in the woods. Gerard resting his head against my shoulder brings me back to reality – I observe him for a moment and sigh happily, pressing a kiss to his head.

Everything is quite peaceful. Our cans are empty by the time the sun has almost completely hidden itself behind the hills in the horizon – casting bright and beautiful colors on the clouds standing in the way of the sunrays – and we set them aside to get it again when we leave. We lay back on the grass to watch the sky, side by side, hands holding onto each other.

Gerard's fingers play with mine, in an almost tickling sensation because of how gentle his touch is. His hand wraps itself around mine again, giving it a squeeze before Gerard is rolling over onto his stomach and bringing himself up on his elbows, looking at me with a loving gaze, one that has me feeling my heart fluttering.

"You're losing the sunset," I whisper for no apparent reason, but it feels like the atmosphere is too delicate even for a loud voice tone.

"Why would I?" Gerard has an amused air on his expression, speaking with such a certainty, in the same quiet tone as me. "You're much more beautiful. I prefer to appreciate you."

"There'll never be a sunset like this again, yet, I'll continue like this for a long time," I tell him.

"And you'll never be under the light of a sunset like this again, so I guess I have the right of choosing my priorities." It's clear he isn't able to hold back the grin his lips part into and he seems pleased with how he makes me flustered, wordlessly bragging about it by pressing an unexpected kiss to my lips.

#gerard way #gerard way imagine #gerard x reader #fan fic #fanfiction #oneshot #imagine #x reader #mcr #mcr imagine #fluff #emo #my chemical romance #writing #cottagecore #request!#my post

64 notes · View notes

teaandatale · 3 years

Text

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO @geekynerddemon who so lovingly wished for me to finish Layer on Layer. And though I haven’t been able to do so, I thought I would whet your appetite with a preview of Part 1 of my 2 Part Epilogue.

Please note this is a rough draft & subject to thorough revisions when I get the writing muse under control again.

Layer on Layer: Epilogue- PART ONE

“You see one painting, I see another, […] it’ll never strike anybody the same way and the great majority of people it’ll never strike in any deep way at all but—a really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart through all kinds of different angles, in ways that are unique and very particular. Yours, yours. I was painted for you.” ― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

Despite the scorching heat radiating from the sudden summer outside, Steve had turned the AC off while the sun blazed in through the windows of the loft’s living room where he’d been painting. He had his music turned up and he was humming as he worked.

Peggy had given him the custom made easel, sturdy, adjustable, gorgeous, no doubt pricey, as a gift. He’d been painting so much that Peggy had deemed it necessary he have an easel at her place, a designated space to work since he spent so much time there anyway. She had claimed is a selfish gift after he voiced concern about her being too generous, assuring him she looked forward to watching him paint from the comfort of her couch. And she often did, taking breaks from her work by watching him mix colors and paint broad strokes.

The first thing he had painted at his new easel was for her, another detailed flower arrangement, just for her.

After unveiling the final product of Ana’s anniversary painting, which reportedly made Ana cry, happy tears Jarvis assured, she had given Steve a tremendous hug and after their double date dinner, they discussed art for a long time, their significant others at their sides sipping tea opting to discuss the dessert spread instead. He’d been so happy and warm to sit there among her friends, her make-shift family, accepting and open to him. How he could possibly love Peggy more he didn’t fully understand other than that he was learning he did it with every passing day.

Not long after that, Peggy started suggesting dates at more art museums and galleries. She watched him paint and encouraged him to do it more broadly. To show his work. To do more commissions. He wasn’t sure about all that, but he did start to paint more and more. He’d started even transferring images out of his therapy journal into oils. He’d done several, even brought one in to show his art therapy group. They encouraged him to make a series, to show his stories on canvas.

Steve swirls his paintbrush into his yellows, ochres melding with browns.

He’s deep in concentration getting her warm brown eyes just right, the right shade, the touch of a knowing glimmer in them. He remembers the first time they locked eyes, across her bedroom, just down the hall from where he stood right then.

He’s so deep in concentration, he doesn’t think twice at the sound of the front door opening and then when he hears footsteps approaching.

“Hey Peg, aren’t you late?” he asks distractedly without looking up.

“She sure is,” a voice that’s not Peggy’s startles him. He nearly drops his palette, tipping it over and paint gets on his bare chest.

He looks up and sees Angie.

“Sorry!” she cries out, and he notices she’s not looking at his face when he sets the palette down, trying to wipe at the pint on his skin. “Wow. This is a look. Go English!”

Steve blushes, grabbing his rag and using it as a make-shift cover for at least part of his bare torso.

“I thought you two were meeting at your hotel for drinks,” Steve said, reaching over to the couch for his shirt. Angie is still staring when he slips it on.

“We were but she was running late. And so when she didn’t show I thought I’d see if we got our wires crossed and see if she was here. Sorry for scaring you. I still had my key, and I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t realize you’d be here.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m sure Peggy just got caught up or stuck in traffic. You know how her work is.”

Angie nodded. “Yeah, she’s always going at a hundred miles a minute.” She stepped further into the room until she was right in front of the canvas. “You’re painting Peggy! You’ve been painting a perfect portrait of her half-naked looking like a Greek God. Unreal.”

Steve blushed further. “It’s hot in here but I prefer the breeze and the sunlight filtering in while painting so I turned the air conditioning off.”

“Oh don’t apologize, Steve. This has been the best surprise to walk into. I can’t imagine how Peg handles coming home to this every day.”

“We’re not living together.”

The yet goes without saying.

She giggled. “Yeah and when’s the last time you were at your place?”

“This morning,” he said defensively.

She just smirked and continue to devolve into giggles.

“You’re an amazing artist. That looks just like Peggy, down to that spark in her eye. I might need to hire you to paint me.”

He laughed. “Free of charge Angie. Friends and family plan.”

She grinned. “You’re as sweet as a button, you know that?”

“Can I get you something? Water?” he asked, already headed into the kitchen.

“Water’s good.”

They say down in the living room together chatting.

“How was your flight? Did you have press today?”

“Yup. Did a few of the morning shows. I have a late-night show appearance tomorrow afternoon that I’m pretty excited about. I can’t believe they’re having me on it!”

“We’ll have to record it. Peggy and I have been watching every episode by the way. But we’re a few behind because I have to wait and watch them with her. But you’re our favorite!”

“Aw, shucks. I cannot believe you got Peggy watching network TV.”

He laughed. “No I got her to use Netflix. You got her into network TV. She says you’re the most believable, though she always figures out the plot twists before I do. Are you giving her spoilers?”

“No way! And give away the impact of my performances before she sees them? That’s definitely all English. How’s she been? Super busy?”

“A little, but less so recently. She had a busy few weeks before her conference with the EU but she’s been keeping a regular schedule lately, coming home for dinner most nights.”

“Guess I just got unlucky with my timing,” Angie replied. “But I’m glad Peggy’s been taking some time for herself.”

Steve nodded. He’d seen Peggy in all sorts of ranges of stress in the last ten months. He’d been so glad that she’d been taking more personal time off, delegating, taking care of her well-being, seeking out his support when she needed it. Of course she was a busy woman. That was a given. But she always tried to make time. She always took the effort to stay present when they spent quality time together.

She’d gone out of her way to support his painting. They’d spent so many evenings out, sipping wine and swinging by the latest “hot” opening only for Peggy to proclaim that his work was much better, more moving, worthy of his own showing.

He still wasn’t all too sure about the whole artist career, but he loved how supportive she had been. How much she cared. How much she believe in him. It was nice to know if nothing else, he had a fan in Peggy.

“I’ve been trying to make sure she’s been taking care of herself better.”

“Good. I already know how good you are to her. She’s always happy to talk about you. I wouldn’t have believed it before actually meeting you.”

He shrugs off the compliment, after all he didn’t want the praise for just being there for someone he loved. Besides she deserved it and more.

“Maybe she’s got held up in a meeting. I’m sure she remembers our reservation,” Steve said after another fifteen minutes without hearing from her. “I’ll try to call her again.”

He didn’t catch her, but he did leave her a message reminding her of their reservation and that he and Angie would meet her there. Steve changed quickly in Peggy’s room and then the two of them hailed a cab. Angie filled him in on some L.A. gossip and some stories of her cast mates. He liked how bright and bubbly Angie was. He liked hearing stories of how she and Peggy became friends. How Peggy had always believed in Angie becoming an actress, and how the two always had each other’s backs. He liked knowing there were people apart from himself that cared so much for her.

They were early for their reservation, opting for the bar while they continued to swap stories. He checked his phone once they were seated but there were no messages. Angie convinced him to split an appetizer as she was starving and he hadn’t eaten since lunch.

“Must be some hell of a meeting English is stuck in for her to respond to my texts for like five hours.”

Steve hummed, checking his phone.

“Wait. What did you say? You haven’t heard from her in that long?”

#geekynerddemon #steggy #my fic #I’m sorry I couldn’t get you the whole thing #may has been kicking my ass #also doing this on tumblr mobile was not fun #happy birthday friend!!

30 notes · View notes

monst · 4 years

Text

Stargazing

Tokoyami Fumikage + Dark Shadow x Reader

"He touched hearts and moved even stones, they say even the god of death was moved to tears."

A canvas of deep indigo stretched for miles on end, in it’s depth were hints of plum and streaks of white. From your reclined position it looked like someone had pushed millions of needles into the fabric of the canvas and lit a candle behind the holes… Stars millions upon billions of stars decorated the inky sky and only one word could describe it. Breathtaking.

You felt your ‘pillow’ flex and took your gaze away from the masterpiece above to the one laying next to you. Vermillion pools met your stare and a smile curled your lips, the chirps of crickets and cicadas became your soundtrack as Tokoyami leaned over to nuzzle his beak to the side of your head. The cottony feathers of his head tickled your cheek as you cuddled into him.

“Uherm.” A snort left your lips when you felt dark shadow get between the two of you. You wrapped your arms around the dark mass and hugged him to your chest. He resembled a pillow as he curled into you, your eyes shifted back to the sky and as you followed Tokoyami’s pale finger.

He traced a shape and you sighed happily. He’d been pointing out constellations and telling you stories for about an hour now and if there was one thing most people didn’t know about him was that he was an amazing storyteller.

“Lyra.” He named.

You traced the points in the sky along with him, mumbling the name of the groupation. You waited patiently for him to tell the tale you knew would follow.

“Orpheus.” He began, the deep rumble of his baritone instantly captivating you. “There was once a man named Orpheus, rumor has it he touched hearts and moved even stones, they say even the god of death was moved to tears. He was the son of a great king and a muse.”

“Wait how’d that happen?” You asked.

“Love?” Dark shadow interjected.

“We’ll go with that.” Tokoyami chuckled. “The man was musically gifted as his mother was the muse Calliope and when he was young the god Apollo gifted him with a golden lyre.”

“The one Hermes gave him?” Tokoyami gave you a pointed look. “Okay, okay I’ll save the questions for after.” His hand curled into yours in silent thanks as he continued.

“It varies from person to person but some say he learned how to play from the god of music himself, others say his mother taught him and showed him all he knew of poetry. He lived his life traveling and charming people with the sweet melodies he’d pluck. His soothing rhymes swayed trees and he captured the hearts of many until one day his was ensnared.”

“Just say he fell in love. You don’t have to sound all fancy.” Dark shadow mumbled, cooing as your scratched under his beak.

“Anyways.” Tokoyami continued. “He was set to wed Eurydice and was swept away with thoughts of their future together… However, tragedy stuck and his young love was assaulted by Satyr on the wedding day. She ran from her pursuer, but he was persistent and the treacherous ground disbalanced her and she tumbled down into a pit of vipers.”

“Oh no..” He nodded.

“They didn’t take kindly to the disturbance and their venom claimed her. When Orpheus stumbled across her he was mortified and lamented in the only way he knew. His songs made the heavens weep, Nymphs would sob at the heartwrenching melody. The gods on Olympus were so moved that they conspired with him. They too were wrought with grief and suggested he go into the underworld and ask the king of death to return her to him.”

“He went to hell for her?!” You and Dark shadow chimed.

“He did, for days he sat in front of Hades and his gloomy queen Persophone and he played. Cerberus whimpered and Persophone wept and even the great pluto shed tears. His heart softened and he told the musician to leave, his wife would follow behind him and once at the surface she would live again. But he was warned, should he look back at her she’d return to the depth of the caverns and remain there.”

He paused dramatically and waited until you tugged at his shirt to continue. “He walked, the dark corridors of the underworld chilled his bones and all he could hear were the screams of the damned but he heard no footsteps. This concerned him but he pressed on, it nagged at him that he couldn’t feel anyone following and he had the thought that maybe he had been lied to…”

“Don’t tell me he…” Tokoyami nodded at your question.

“Just as he was nearing the light of the surface, his curiosity betrayed him and he turned. There he caught sight of the pale face of his lover who cried woefully, her spirit slinking back into the inky darkness… Hades would not make him the offer again and he suffered a lonely life until his end. Many still debate on how his time came but one thing remains true, the musician was finally reunited with his love.”

“....Wow..That’s.. That’s kinda-

“Depressing.” Dark Shadow cut in.

“Yeah.” You laughed, looking up at Lyra. You then sat up suddenly, your lover quickly following suit, curiosity filling his lava hues. You furrowed your brows and decided to ask.

“Say Fumi.”

“Hm?”

“Would you travel into the underworld in search of me?” You asked a teasing smile on your visage.

“Of course.” He didn’t hesitate. “Me and Dark shadow will travel the ends of the earth for you.”

The dark shape of Dark shadow flipped you a thumbs up in agreement, you grinned a warmth blossoming on the apples of your cheeks. “Okay… But hypothetically how would you convince hades to set my soul free?”

“Oh that’s easy.” He smirked.

“Oh? I don’t recall either of you knowing how to play a lyre.”

“Precisely. He’s bound to get annoyed at some point.” He snorted.

“Pfft seriously?”

“Seriously.”’

You rolled your eyes, motioned for him to lay back down. The rest of the night was spent sharing myths and watching Dark Shadow catch tiny luminescent bugs. All in all a perfect autumn night.

Pick a different date?

#tokoyami fumikage x reader #tokoyami fluff #tokoyami x reader #dark shadow x reader

242 notes · View notes

fleckcmscott · 3 years

Text

Out of Sight

Summary: Y/N has an unexpected dash of inspiration. Arthur doesn't require much convincing.

Warnings: Swearing, Smut

Words: 4,221

A/N: This fun little request comes from @sweet-nothings04. You're wonderful and I hope this meets your expectations. Thanks for the request - I can't imagine ever writing this without it! 🙈 Special thanks to @jokerownsmysoul for agreeing to beta!

If you have any thoughts or questions, please comment, feel free to message me, or send me an ask. Requests for Arthur and WWH are open!

Words didn't often fail Y/N, but the admission left her foggy, reminiscent of what she'd experienced after tipping over in a wheelbarrow race at a school fair. Her foot swung back and forth as she sat on the counter. Fiddled with the phone cord and twisted its beige, plastic curls around her fingers. Were there signs she'd missed? Was her gut right in insisting she was a terrible friend?

"Marriage counseling?" she repeated.

Arthur stopped filling his bowl with sandy, pecan cookies, alarm encroaching his features. She waved off his concern, mouthing "not us" before she spoke into the receiver. "I'm so sorry." With a grimace of understanding, he patted her knee and ducked out, sweets in hand. No doubt he'd ask her to elaborate. Not that she had anything to share. Not yet. "I had no idea you and Robert were having problems."

Patricia laughed lightly on the other end. "Neither of us have our bags packed." A whistle came from the background. Vague cheering. Then mild cursing about how terrible this season's Gotham Guardsmen's picks were. She sighed. "The little green monster's dropped-in since your wedding. Don't get me wrong. I couldn't be happier for you if you were my own sister."

Y/N wished Patricia was within arm's reach instead of all the way in Burnside.

"Next month we'll have been married thirty-five years," Patricia continued with a rare nostalgia. "We're a team, Robert and me. But we've both let things go, gotten old. I'd like the spark back before we lose the kindling."

Pursing her lips, Y/N bit back her qualms. Rebutting the steps Patricia had taken was uncalled for, and doubly so when she needed her support. Besides. Y/N understood them. She'd climbed them once, too.

When she'd begun to figure out the direction in which the weather vane of her life pointed, the comfort and confidence she'd shared with her ex-husband had started to wither. Transformed over the years into an awareness that her childish belief in love being enough was inaccurate. It was natural, she thought in hindsight. They'd wed at seventeen and twenty-one. But divorce had been uncommon back then, particularly in a small town in the Bible Belt. The night she'd moved in with a friend (a tactic to delay confessing defeat to her family), Jeff suggested they speak with a professional. Though her heart had known it was over, she cared for him. She couldn't deny them the chance to salvage their union, no matter how remote.

A solitary counselor was available, a disadvantage of rural living. The man claimed to be a pioneer in couples therapy, having begun his practice in the thirties. One forty-five-minute drive later and they'd found themselves squished into a leather loveseat in a smoky, cramped office. Diplomas and certificates covered the walls, the veracity of which she couldn't verify. Dr. Ellis's puffy pink cheeks and offer of sweet tea had been kinder than his approach.

Fountain pens and worksheets were provided with the mumbled instruction to answer honestly. But the questions had not fit her situation. They were for women who desired to be happy homemakers. To plan meals and do the weekly shopping. To nurse children and have dinner ready by six. Responsibilities and life stages that had given her mother purpose - a purpose that mostly eluded Y/N. Every comma and quotation mark inferred fault. And Dr. Ellis had read her responses like a disappointed teacher.

Somehow the filmstrips, accompanied by a crackling LP, were worse. Mr. Provider and Mrs. Housewife were featured. He consistently came home on time. She always wore an apron. The narrator's spiritless voice contrasted with the cheery soundtrack while matching Y/N's mood. A lively ping! cued them to advance to the next still, a duty switched between her and Jeff to practice teamwork. At least the sidelong looks they shared could still connect them.

The slides, the homework, the speeches. They all pointed to one problem: her. Her parents were a model couple. Didn't she know encouraging her husband in his livelihood was her job? That his main obligation was to invite her to share his success? She had to mend her ways. Make herself more attractive. Be grateful he displayed his affection by returning to her after a long day at the office; he could just as easily hang out at The Rusty Boot.

Not a little indignant, she'd stared at Jeff's profile. Downcast eyes betrayed his regret and assured she'd maintain composure, for his sake if nothing else. She fixed her focus on Dr. Ellis and gave the situation a good, long think. Jeff had never questioned her ambitions. Who the hell was this jackass to judge?

She'd covered Jeff's hand, rubbed his knuckle with her thumb. "You're the expert here, doctor. But isn't it possible neither party is at fault?"

"Mrs. Thompson, I've heard that misconception from many of my clients. It's never led anywhere positive. Now-"

"But what if they're both good people?" she interrupted, hanging onto diplomacy by a thread. Her resolve stayed, even as her volume lowered at the prospect of wounding the man she'd loved as a girl. "Good people who've grown apart?"

Dr. Ellis took what she'd learned was his usual position on the corner of his cherry desk. "You're mistaking natural sex differences for incompatibility. Not every husband allows his wife to work outside the home." His paternal smile hadn't diminished the sting of his words. "If you want your marriage to thrive, I'd advise a little more maturity. And I think I have just the book to help you."

Twenty tons of silence festered on the ride home, louder than the pulse beating her eardrum. Distress distracted her from noticing the run in her stockings. And it was drizzling. She cracked the passenger window of the Lincoln Continental, anyway. Closed her eyes at the bite of raw air against her overheated face.

"Look, I don't agree with what that guy says," Jeff started. He pulled at the gearshift and flicked the turn-signal. "Not when it comes to you."

As the car came to a stop, she swiped at her eyes. "I'm not going again." The press of a napkin to her palm prompted a mix of appreciation and annoyance. For his courtesy and that he'd detected her tears. "Do you even like being married to me?"

"Y/N-"

"Please." She flinched at his attempt to embrace her. "Don't spare my feelings."

Headlights from a passing car flashed in the cabin, revealing his stretched lips. He raked back his thinning hair. The quiet shake of his head when he moved to gaze at her was a relief. "I miss the girl I fell in love with."

She offered a slight shrug and pulled the corners of the tissue. "I don't like it, either."

His rapid blink softened her posture, along with the recognition that the dream they'd had was also out of reach for him. "I'm proud of the woman you've become," he said. "Even if she's not what I need."

"I don't want to be a lawyer's wife." A quiet laugh bubbled up. "The oral arguments are terrible."

He checked his blind spot and put the sedan back into drive. "I'll file the papers tomorrow. We can tell your parents and sister together. If you'd like." After some seconds, she'd slid across the bench seat and put her head on his shoulder, heartened by an affinity she'd nearly forgotten.

Counseling techniques must have evolved, Y/N considered. Perhaps Patricia would find help instead of blame. If not, tips in women's magazines were a tacky if economical alternative. She'd have to check the breakroom at work for forgotten issues.

She hopped off the counter and poured herself another cup of decaf. "Let me know if we can do anything. And how it goes."

"The first few sessions were great. I picked up a few booklets. 'Modern Marriage,' 'The Complete Woman...' Oh!" Paper shuffled as Y/N put back the milk. "'Enrichment & Exploration: Tips for Bedroom Fun.' I tried reading it with Robert the other night, but he left when I mentioned massagers and blindfolds."

"He's sixty," Y/N snorted. "Give him time."

Peeking around the corner, she spotted Arthur in his writing nook. He stood to stretch, then grab his lighter and pack of Stuttons. The low sit of his pajama bottoms was enough of a temptation for her to tuck her lip. An unexpected spasm tickled her abdomen. "Brief me on the blindfold chapter."

~~~~~

Nervous anticipation had kept her feverish for hours, ever since she'd bid farewell to Arthur with a "Save a smile for me" on her way out the door. His clumsy smooch lingered as she changed the date on her rubber stamp. While she cleaned the office refrigerator, she spent a good sixty seconds pressing a cup of expired yogurt to her flush cheeks. When the shoulder strap of her canvas bag gave out, she shrugged rather than cursed and settled the tote in her lap. With her plan in mind, the corners of her lips refused to relax .

After working the grand opening of the Gotham Mall, Arthur had the workshop she'd registered him for, a beginners' seminar for stand-ups. He'd be home right around six. That would give her thirty minutes to change into her mini nightdress with the ruffled hemline, dab musk oil behind her earlobes, and put on an LP. Dinner would be delayed - neither of them would be in the mood if they were too full. If she remembered correctly, they had a pizza in the freezer, the good kind with the real pepperoni and rising crust. She just had to figure out if she should wait in the bedroom or lounge on the sofa like a poor-man's Lauren Bacall.

As she unlocked the apartment, however, there came a muffled phomp-phomp-phomp. The unmistakable sound of a sink plunger. Fuck. This was the third time this month. Pushing through the door, she hoped the super had called a different plumber. It had taken ages to clean up the stray sediment left behind by the last one. Upon entering, Arthur's plaid bag came into view, next to his keys on the counter. A glance into the kitchen confirmed he was trying his hand at the repair.

"Hey." Y/N hung her coat, glad her consternation was hidden by the wall. "What happened to your class?" she asked with deliberate playfulness. "Did they decide you were too advanced?" She crossed her arms and moved to the doorway. Tried to hold onto the tendrils of fading arousal by taking him in.

A pleased chuckle. "The instructor left a message." Phomp-phomp-phomp."It'll be rescheduled."

"I know you were looking forward to it." The rolled-up sleeves of his shirt and flexing biceps were having the right effect. She ambled towards him. "Let me help."

"It's fine. I had to do this a lot at my old place." The set of his jaw tightened as it gave it another go.

They went through the litany of usual questions. Arthur contently reported the mall had gone well, except for a couple of teenagers who'd given him grief at the start. ("Nothing serious. They were just kids.") Her nine-to-five had been quite low-key, she explained, and had allowed her to catch-up on a backlog of paperwork. ("With the new judge, we keep having to file motions for correction.") But when he asked about this evening, she mused and tapped her fingertips on the counter. Horny, annoyed at her thwarted plan, yet nevertheless itching to seduce him

Water streamed as he turned the faucet's handle, followed by his satisfied hum. He tidied up, then washed to his elbows. Grabbed the nearby dish towel and pivoted on his heel to face her. "What is it?" he asked at her lack of response. He wiped his hands a little harder. "I thought you'd be glad I'm already here."

Seeking to allay his concern, she scooted next to him with a gentle nudge. "You know I am. You've been running through my head all day." She scrunched her nose. "I just had this idea for a romantic evening and wanted to surprise you."

"Oh." Pink colored his chiseled cheekbones and his eyes softened. "You still could. I'd like that." Ardor sparked anew in her belly. Unfurled as he leaned into her, grin cutting across his mouth and straight into her heart. "Would ten minutes be enough?"

Her toes curled. His enthusiasm for her, for them, had a habit of sending electricity up her spine. "Better make it eight," she pronounced.

A sharp nod and a pat to her bottom later, he dashed off. Once the bathroom door shut, Y/N rushed to rummage in his workbag, delighted when she found her prize. She scurried to the stereo and put on one of her soul records. Adjusted the volume to a suggestion instead of distraction. Though the genre wasn't his favorite, it never failed to induce the swivel of his hips. Unbuttoning, unzipping, she made her way to the bedroom. Yanked off her tan skirt and jacquard sweater before carelessly tossing them in the nearby chair.

She'd just gotten settled on the foot of the bed when Arthur sauntered in. Clad in his white briefs and wrinkled socks. "That was five," she said and wadded her pantyhose to hurl at him.

He dodged it easily, stepping forward to gaze at her with hooded eyes, their clear green darkened with need. He licked his lips. "I think it was four." Without further preamble, he knelt between her legs. Scrambling up the bed, she kicked subtly against his hold on her calves. Bit her lip on a giggle as he crawled over her lap to smother her with kisses. She rested on the headboard and nabbed his red and gold Carnival tie from under her pillow.

He quirked a dark brow. "What, you want me to wear it?"

Before any reservation could resurface, she smoothed the broad neck of the tie over her eyes and secured it loosely at her temple. Hesitation floated through the air. Threatened to pierce the veil of desire that enveloped her. She wondered what he was waiting for. If he was wearing that wolfish grin he saved for the bedroom. Or if a modicum of anxiety had spawned. She had sprung this on him without prior discussion. The muffled music from the living room switched to the next song. She attempted to peek under the bottom of the makeshift blindfold, tried to make out more than a vague shadow in the muted light.

But then he sunk into her. Wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pressed her into the mattress. "If you're uncomfortable, tell me," he murmured into her mouth. "Please."

The implication of his request, albeit more loving than licentious, wracked her with want. She couldn't halt her shudder. Blindly, she reached to cup his face. "I trust you," she promised. To both him and herself.

His round nose dragged down the underside of her jaw. "Where'd you get this idea?"

The caress of his smile on the crook of her neck caused a delicious heaviness to settle in her center. "A pamphlet."

"On what?" He tugged at the knot between her ample breasts. Fondled her through the thin satin. "How to make your husband high-strung?"

She carefully skimmed the rigid bulge in his briefs with her knee. "It was actually on how to loosen him up," she retorted. He always loved it when she paraphrased one of his jokes.

Every hushed kiss, every whisper of him against her flesh was magnified. Forced her to concentrate solely on him, to pay attention to each move he made. His humid, hot breath teased her nipple, prompted it to pebble with a twinge. When she released an embarrassingly desperate whimper, he snorted lightly and slipped his palm to the middle of her back. Following his lead, she arched into him. His soft curls brushed her as he laved her areola, swirled his tongue around it, her skin coming alive at the contact. Weathered hands that had so eagerly learned how to touch her groped her neglected breast, rolled its peak between slender, nimble fingers. She fisted the pillow, tipped her head, and grasped his shoulder with a cry. "Arthur..."

Getting her going usually wasn't difficult. Especially when she'd been thinking about making love for an inappropriate number of office hours. But the suspense of not seeing where he'd next pet her, of every caress being a discovery, had her core already pulsing for him. The intrigue was a treat. The best case she'd ever worked on. His strokes walked a path to every clue.

His fingertips skimmed her inner thighs. Groaning, he hooked them under the waistband of her bikini, tugged until she lifted her rear. He pulled them off hastily. With a gentle pressure, he encouraged her to open herself to him. She did so gladly, splaying her legs without a hint of self-consciousness. The relatively cool temperature of the room hit her hot, swollen folds and she quivered.

Then there was an odd sensation at her clit. Scratchy. Rough like a canvas. And was that a corner? After a few seconds it was clear it wasn't doing it for her. And she didn't think Arthur was trying to wipe away her slick. Reaching down, she found a twisted bedsheet in his fist. She was relieved he hadn't run to the kitchen for ice.

"Not good?" he asked.

She softened the blow. "You feel better."

The pad of his thumb trailed over her patch of springy hair, a faint tease that sent a dizzying current racing through her limbs. She strove towards him but he didn't oblige. Rather, he took her hand and placed it on her labia. Guided her to dip within her inner lips. A short moan left her, at the sensation and the sound of his increasingly labored breathing, tinged by his deep voice. "You look like sex," he blurted.

Laughing, she halted. Whenever something brazen spilled from his mouth, however left-footed, she adored it. She clasped his sides. "What does that mean?"

"If I'd seen you in a magazine," he started, moving to settle over and straddle her. His hard-on grazed her abdomen, leaving a damp trail of his arousal in its wake. Even as she wondered when he'd taken off his underwear, her muscles tensed and she gasped. Playful pecks met her cleavage. "You'd be pasted on every page of my journal."

Her reply slipped out before discretion could take hold. "We better buy a Polaroid." A stitch of reluctance before she added, "Just keep them in your desk."

He uncurled her fingers and pressed her palm to his chest. "Touch me," he whispered, pleaded. Her pulse quickened. With an unhurried deliberation, he guided her over the peaks and valleys of his body. The lean pectorals she loved to nuzzle after a weary day. The freckled indent of his sternum. Downward, to the slightly loose skin around his navel, then the soft, toned curve of his abdomen.

Unable to resist, she stretched to chart the ridge of muscle leading to his groin. "You make me so wet."

He let out a bashful giggle, edged with excitement. The instant he rasped his next words against her forehead, she knew he was doing his damnedest to rival her. He pushed her hand to his erection. "You make me so hard."

She followed the bulging vein from base to tip, encircled him with a firm grip. The vibration of his harsh grunt rumbled through her and he jerked forward. Released her wrist to stroke her vulva and flick back and forth along her aching nub. Focusing on the satiny feel of his flesh, the heaviness of his length, she felt petite. Feminine. Powerful. Her hand glided between his legs, cupped the sensitive skin with care. His practiced rhythm faltered. The elbow beside her ear trembled.

While he was a captivating visual, one she missed, her imagination was determined to compensate for her lack of sight. Breathless moans spun her fantasies. Perspiration tickled her nose, woodsy and sweet, conjuring memories of his taste in her mouth. Then all at once he was inside her, going down on her, sucking at her while fucking into her. Impossible feats that nevertheless caused a fever in her brain. "Oh, god," she mewled. Her wanton writhing hastened. She ground against his thigh. "I want your cock in me."

He took hold of himself as she held herself open. The blunt tip of him slid just inside her entrance, a drop when she needed an ocean. She grabbed his hips and thrust upward, hissing as he stretched her completely. "You're fucking tight," he uttered through clenched teeth.

She smoothed her palms over his back, memorized each notch of his ribs. The odd angle of his distended shoulder. The strong tendons at the nape of his neck. He crushed her closer, until her mouth bumped his clavicle. She nibbled lightly, licked the salty sheen of sweat from its hollow, drawing her name from his lips and rapid bucks of his pelvis. "Fuck me," she said, a command and an appeal.

A creak came from above. She followed his taut arm to find he'd clutched the headboard. It occurred to her, then, that her inability to see had been liberating for him. Enough to let go of his inhibitions, to give voice to the bawdy, wonderful things he'd said, to not worry about his appearance.

She reached to swipe her clit steadily, relentlessly. Tears pricked her eyes as she became weightless. Her frame seized, and she came with a choked cry. She sniffled and laughed into his neck, overwhelmed by him. The way he made love to her as if he sought to erase her earlier trials and replace them with the present.

His throaty, punctuated groans, his fingernails digging into her ass divulged his approaching release. She ran her foot along his calf, relished in his body as its angles pressed into her. He balanced himself on his knees, snapping into her at an erratic pace. Then all at once he moaned sharply and went rigid, cock twitching. She cradled the back of his head while his essence marked her walls, closed her eyes when he sprawled on top of her.

Raking her hands through his loose waves, she swallowed thickly. Although she'd always enjoyed sex, exploring this way hadn't been conceivable with anyone else. Allowing that match to light, allowing herself to fan that flame had been unthinkable. She'd felt inadequate. Unable to live up to others' demands, especially her own. There'd been too many boxes to check. Revealing herself in that way would have been a demonstration of trust she wasn't quite ready for.

Being an established woman on equal footing with her partner wasn't something she'd believed possible. She'd been content to go without and find meaning through her work. Arthur had helped her augment that. She could be tough as old leather or delicate as gossamer without concern he'd see her differently. If expectations were left unmet, their easy discussions and compromises promised they'd never become resentments. They supported each other - authentically and as themselves.

For the first time, she knew she was loved for who she truly was. And she wouldn't have to change to keep it.

Choppy panting gradually ceased, replaced by leisurely, happy sighs. He skimmed her flank, then the curve of her hip. She tickled his midriff gently, only stopping when he reclaimed her lips and slid his tongue against hers. Tenderly, he loosened the knot at her temple. She blinked at the orange, evening light invading her eyes. When his came into focus, they were still dilated, a tad sleepy. And so full of affection her breath caught.

Cheek propped on the heel of his hand, he raised his eyebrows. "How was it?"

"You have to ask?" she chuckled, swatting his backside.

A stray lock tumbled towards her as he bent closer. "I wanna hear it."

"Wonderful." Her thighs tightened, keeping him within her. "What I've been craving all day."

His smile was a slow build, equal parts shy and deservedly smug. Then he stared at his tie. "I- I don't know if I'll ever be able to wear that again."

She snorted and looped it around his neck, secured it with a half-Windsor knot. "You're a professional, Mr. Fleck. You'll manage."

He rolled to her left and yanked open the nightstand drawer to riffle through its contents. "What else is in the pamphlet?"

"Hey!" She batted him half-heartedly, boosted herself on her elbow, and spooned him. "What if I had a surprise hidden in there?"

Undeterred, he huffed. "It wouldn't beat this."

"Patricia told me about it." He stilled and slanted his gaze her way. "I can get a copy."

At first, Y/N assumed he'd contradict her. That he wanted to keep their escapades private. But once a few seconds had passed, Arthur acquiesced with a smirk and snatched a nearby tissue. Wiped himself off and tossed it in the woven wastebasket. He reclined beside her, hands folded behind his head. "Okay. Just don't give away my whole act."

~~~~~

Tag list (Let me know if you want to be added!): @harmonioussolve @ithinkimaperson @sweet-nothings04 @stephieraptorr @rommies @fallenstarsabyss @gruffle1 @octopus-plasma @tsukiakarinobara @arthur-flecks-lovely-smile @another-day-in-chuckletown @hhandley80 @jokerownsmysoul @mrscarnival

#arthur fleck #arthur fleck fanfic #arthur fleck smut #arthur fleck x reader #arthur x female reader #arthur x ofc #joker 2019 #watchwhathappens

60 notes · View notes